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“Politics of Memory”: Masha Gessen’s Hannah Arendt Prize Postponed for Comparing Gaza to Warsaw Ghetto
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 15, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/15 ... transcript

We speak with the acclaimed Russian American writer Masha Gessen, whose latest article for The New Yorker looks at the politics of Holocaust commemoration in Europe. Gessen was scheduled to receive the prestigious Hannah Arendt Prize in Germany on December 15, but the ceremony was postponed after some award sponsors withdrew support over Gessen’s comparison in the article of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. A smaller award ceremony is set for Saturday. Gessen says Germany’s culture of learning about and atoning for the sins of the Nazi regime has morphed into steadfast support for the state of Israel despite its actions, while banning most forms of pro-Palestinian solidarity as part of a flawed effort to fight antisemitism. The cornerstone of this form of “memory politics” is that “you can’t compare the Holocaust to anything,” says Gessen. “My argument is that in order to learn from history, we have to compare.”

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

We begin today’s show with the acclaimed Russian American writer Masha Gessen, scheduled to receive the prestigious Hannah Arendt Prize in Germany today, but the ceremony had to be postponed after one of the award’s sponsors, the left-leaning Heinrich Böll Foundation, withdrew its support for the prize after Masha Gessen compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto in a recent article for The New Yorker titled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today.” The German city of Bremen also withdrew the venue where today’s prize ceremony was scheduled to take place.

In the essay, Masha Gessen wrote, quote, “For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time — in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany.”

Masha Gessen went on to write about why the term “ghetto” is not commonly used to describe Gaza. They wrote, quote, “Presumably, the more fitting term 'ghetto' would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”

Masha Gessen’s essay sparked some outrage in Germany. In its announcement withdrawing support for Gessen’s prize, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is tied to the German Green Party, criticizes Gessen’s essay, saying it, quote, “implies that Israel aims to liquidate Gaza like a Nazi ghetto,” unquote. While the foundation pulled out of the Hannah Arendt Prize ceremony, a smaller ceremony will take place Saturday at a different venue.

For Gessen, the controversy in Germany comes just days after being added to Russia’s most wanted list for comments they made about the war in Iraq — in Ukraine.

Masha Gessen joins us now from Bremen, Germany. Masha Gessen is staff writer at The New Yorker, author of numerous books, including, most recently, Surviving Autocracy.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Masha. If you can start off by talking about this controversy, talking about what you wrote in The New Yorker magazine? And the fact that, well, the ceremony hasn’t been completely canceled, but just explain what’s happened.

MASHA GESSEN: Hi, Amy. It’s good to be here.

I don’t know that I can fully explain what happened, because I don’t think I quite understand what happened, because the Heinrich Böll Foundation first withdrew from the prize ceremony, causing the city of Bremen to withdraw from the prize ceremony, causing the prize organizers to tell me that, first of all, they stand by me and by their decision to give me the prize, but also to — oh, and then the university where the discussion the day after the prize was supposed to be held also withdrew. And this is interesting, because the university said that they believed that having the discussion would violate a law. Now, by the law, I think what they actually meant was the nonbinding resolution that bans anything connected with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which is nonbinding but has a huge influence in Germany. And that was largely the topic of my article.

So, then the prize organizers decided to have a smaller ceremony at a different location, which I’m not going to mention, not because I’m afraid of Germans, but because I’m concerned about Russians. And then the Heinrich Böll Foundation, after quite an uproar in German social media and conventional media, issued a new statement saying that they stand by the prize, but the venue had canceled, so they couldn’t hold the award ceremony, so it was postponed, which I don’t think was entirely forthcoming on the part of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and their first statement was on record. But that’s where we stand now.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about the heart of what the Heinrich Böll Foundation has found so controversial. Talk about this piece that you wrote for The New Yorker magazine, the comparison you’ve made to Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto.

MASHA GESSEN: So, the piece is fairly wide-ranging. It’s a piece in which I travel through Germany, Poland and Ukraine and talk about the politics of memory in each country, but a large part of the piece — and how we view the current war in Israel-Palestine through the prism — or, fail to view the war through the prism of the Holocaust. A large part of the article is devoted to, in fact, memory politics in Germany and the vast anti-antisemitism machine, which largely targets people who are critical of Israel and, in fact, are often Jewish. This happens to be a description that fits me, as well. I am Jewish. I come from a family that includes Holocaust survivors. I grew up in the Soviet Union very much in the shadow of the Holocaust. That’s where the phrase in the headline came from, is from the passage in the article itself. And I am critical of Israel.

Now, the part that really offended the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the city of Bremen — and, I would imagine, some German public — is the part that you read out loud, which is where I make the comparison between the besieged Gaza, so Gaza before October 7th, and a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. I made that comparison intentionally. It was not what they call here a provocation. It was very much the point of the piece, because I think that the way that memory politics function now in Europe and in the United States, but particularly in Germany, is that their cornerstone is that you can’t compare the Holocaust to anything. It is a singular event that stands outside of history.

My argument is that in order to learn from history, we have to compare. Like, that actually has to be a constant exercise. We are not better people or smarter people or more educated people than the people who lived 90 years ago. The only thing that makes us different from those people is that in their imagination the Holocaust didn’t yet exist and in ours it does. We know that it’s possible. And the way to prevent it is to be vigilant, in the way that Hannah Arendt, in fact, and other Jewish thinkers who survived the Holocaust were vigilant and were — there was an entire conversation, especially in the first two decades after World War II, in which they really talked about how to recognize the signs of sliding into the darkness.

And I think that we need to — oh, and one other thing that I want to say is that our entire framework of international humanitarian law is essentially based — it all comes out of the Holocaust, as does the concept of genocide. And I argue that that framework is based on the assumption that you’re always looking at war, at conflict, at violence through the prism of the Holocaust. You always have to be asking the question of whether crimes against humanity, the definitions of which came out of the Holocaust, are recurring. And Israel has waged an incredibly successful campaign at setting — not only setting the Holocaust outside of history, but setting itself aside from the optics of international humanitarian law, in part by weaponizing the politics of memory and the politics of the Holocaust.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk more about that, that learning about the Holocaust through the idea that it is separate and apart and can be compared to nothing else, versus how we ensure “never again” anywhere for anyone.

MASHA GESSEN: I don’t know that we can ensure “never again” anywhere for anyone. But I think the only way to try to ensure it is to keep knowing that the Holocaust is possible, keep knowing that it is — it can come out of what Arendt called “shallowness.” I mean, this was very much her point in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. And by the way, this was a book that got Arendt really ostracized by both the Israeli political mainstream and much of the North American Jewish political mainstream, for things that she wrote about the Judenrat, but also for this very framing of the banality of evil. It was misinterpreted as trivializing the Holocaust. But what she was saying is that the most horrible things of which humanity has proven capable can grow out of something that seems like nothing, can grow out of thoughtlessness, can grow out of the failure to see the fate of the other or the inability to see it. And I interpret that as a call to constant vigilance for failure to see the fate of the other, for doubting the kind of overwhelming consensus that, certainly in Israel and in the North American Jewish community, appears to back the Israeli onslaught on Gaza. This is the way in which we stumble into our darkest moments.

AMY GOODMAN: For people who don’t know who Hannah Arendt is, the Jewish philosopher, political theorist, the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition, The Banality of Evil, as well, covered the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker magazine, the magazine that Masha Gessen writes for.

Masha, last week, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed the acclaimed Palestinian academic, the activist, the poet Refaat Alareer, along with his brother, his sister and his four nieces. For more than 16 years, Alareer worked as a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught Shakespeare and other subjects, the father of six and mentor to so many young Palestinian writers and journalists. He co-founded the organization We Are Not Numbers. In October, Democracy Now! spoke to Refaat Alareer, who also compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.

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

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Palestinian poet, writer and professor Refaat Alareer, who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike that killed his brother, sister and four of her daughters. This is Scottish actor Brian Cox, famous for Succession, just nominated for a number of Emmys, reading Refaat Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die,” in a video that’s gone viral.

BRIAN COX: If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.

AMY GOODMAN: Scottish actor Brian Cox reciting Refaat Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die” in a video produced by the Palestine Festival of Literature, PalFest. Masha Gessen, if you can comment on both what Refaat and you are saying about the Warsaw Ghetto, and the significance of him dying in this strike, like so many other Palestinians? I think the number, as we speak, we’re at something like 19,000 Palestinians dead, more than 7,000 children, more than 5,000 women, Masha.

MASHA GESSEN: I wasn’t aware that he had made this comparison, but I’m not particularly surprised, because the comparison lies on the surface. And so, the question I had to ask when writing this, it was, “Why hadn’t this comparison been made before?” The trope that’s been used for at least a dozen years in sort of human rights circles is “open-air prison.” And “open-air prison” is not a good descriptor for what was Gaza before October 7th. There are no prison cells. There are no prison guards. There is no regimented daily schedule. What there was was isolation. What there was was a wall. What there was was the inability of people to leave, with the exception of very, very few. What there was was a local force, enabled in part by the people who built the wall — and I’m talking about Hamas now as the local force — that maintained order, and in this way serviced, in part, the needs of the people who built the wall. That was the bargain that Israel had struck by pulling out of Gaza, was that Hamas would maintain order there. And obviously, there are huge differences. I’m not claiming, by any means, that this is a one-to-one comparison or that even there is such a thing as a one-to-one comparison. That’s not a thing. But what I’m arguing is that the similarities are so substantial that they can actually inform our understanding of what’s happening now.

And what’s happening now — and this is probably the line in the piece that made a lot of people throw their laptops across the room — what’s happening now is that the ghetto is being liquidated. And I think that’s an important thing to say, not just because it’s important to call things — to describe things in the best possible way that we can, but because, again, in the name of “never again,” we have to ask if this is like a ghetto. And if what we’re witnessing now in this indiscriminate killing, in this — in an onslaught that has displaced almost all the people of Gaza, that has made them homeless, if that is substantially similar to what we saw in some places during the Holocaust, then what is the world going to do about it? What is the world going to do in the name of “never again”?

AMY GOODMAN: Masha Gessen, the cancellations of speeches, of festivals that are seen as pro-Palestinian are on the rise. You have taught at Bard for years. You know the kind of pressure that professors and students are being brought under all over the United States. You’re in Germany right now. I’m wondering if you can comment on this. Some are calling it a “new McCarthyism.” And yet, interestingly, like you, so many of the protesters are Jews, are Jewish students, Jewish professors. But when this ceremony was first canceled, then postponed, what kind of response did you get from the press? Was it an avalanche of interest? And especially in Germany now, where people like Greta Thunberg — right? — the young climate activist, spoke up for Gaza and got pilloried in the German press?

MASHA GESSEN: Well, funny you should ask, because I was making my way to Bremen after having woken up to an email telling me that this was all going on, and I started seeing media reports that were wildly inaccurate. They said, for example, that the prize had been rescinded, which it never was. The jury was very firm, and I can’t say enough to express my appreciation for them. I think they’ve shielded me from how much pressure they’ve come under as a result of this controversy. But I’ve felt so well hosted and supported by them. But, yeah, the media were reporting all sorts of things and also making up biographical facts about me.

And in all that time, not a single German reporter contacted me, and only one U.S. reporter contacted me, a reporter from The Washington Post. So I tweeted about it. And it was like I reminded journalists that that’s what we do, is we call people and find out what actually happened. So, I have been talking to the media now nonstop for the last 28 hours. I almost wish I hadn’t tweeted it, but I also think it’s very important to try to have this conversation in a meaningful way. So I’ve been concentrating mostly on German media. Every single German media outlet I’ve ever heard of has reached out to me. So I don’t think it’s that they didn’t want give me a voice. It’s that the habit of aggregating the news has just become so ingrained that people forget that the substance of our profession is to actually call people and ask them.

AMY GOODMAN: Go to where the silence is. Masha Gessen, I also want to ask you about another issue. Russian police recently placed you on a wanted list after opening a criminal case against you on charges of spreading false information about the Russian army. The Kremlin is accusing you of spreading false information over your remarks about the massacre of Ukrainian civilians by Russian forces in the city of Bucha in March of last year. Can you comment?

MASHA GESSEN: Well, it’s been quite a week. I kind of feel like I want to stop making news. But you know what? It’s not crazy to me that I’m both placed on the Russian wanted list and running into trouble with German authorities, because I think that there is a kind of politics — and this is what you referred to in the first part of your earlier question — which is, you know, the thing that some people are referring to as the “new McCarthyism.”

This is, to me, the most worrying part of domestic Western politics, both here and in the United States, that the right wing is riding the horse of anti-antisemitism. In Germany, the AfD, which is the far-right anti-immigrant party, has been using antisemitism as a cudgel to — both as a ticket into the political mainstream and as a cudgel against a lot of anti-Israeli policy voices, many of which belong to Jews. And I think that what we have observed with the university presidents being called into Congress in the United States has definite similarities. It is also Elise Stefanik’s ticket into the political limelight and political mainstream. But it also — and this is the really important part — it is also based on a profoundly antisemitic worldview. Elise Stefanik is using these university presidents to attack liberal institutions, to attack Ivy League universities. And I think, in her imagination — and I think we know enough to know that this is how her imagination is working — she is trying to get donors to withdraw funding to undermine these institutions. And, of course, in her imagination, the Jews control all the money, so the donors are Jews. This is the most sort of basic antisemitic trope.

And the fact that the right is able to hijack the issue of antisemitism so effectively is truly dangerous, because you know what? Antisemitism is real. Antisemitism, when right-wing politicians or stupid politicians mix actual antisemitism with fake antisemitism, with what in Germany they called Israel-related antisemitism, which is basically criticism of Israel, what we end up with is a muddled picture in which Jews are being used and antisemitic worldview is being reaffirmed, and, ultimately, actual real antisemitism becomes a bigger danger.

AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to end with another victim of the Holocaust, the LGBTQ community. Russia’s Supreme Court recently banned LGBTQ+ activism in a landmark decision Amnesty International blasted as “shameful and absurd.” The ruling, which asserts the international LGBTQ movement is extremist, threatens to further endanger already persecuted communities. Masha, isn’t that part of the reason you left the Soviet Union, you left Russia, to begin with? We just have a minute, but if you could comment?

MASHA GESSEN: Yes. I left — next week is 10 years since I was forced to leave Russia because of the anti-gay campaign that was already underway in Russia, and the Kremlin was threatening to go after my family.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Masha Gessen, we thank you so much for joining us, staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, distinguished writer-in-residence at Bard, award-winning Russian American journalist, author of numerous books, including, most recently, Surviving Autocracy. Masha’s most recent piece for The New Yorker is headlined “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: How the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today.” We’ll link to it at democracynow.org. Masha Gessen has been speaking to us from Bremen, Germany, where they will be receiving the Hannah Arendt Award, albeit at a different venue, not sponsored by as many organizations that originally were sponsoring that award.

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Israel Raids Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp; Director Speaks Out After Being Jailed & Beaten
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 15, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/15 ... transcript

The Israeli military this week raided the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, a renowned cultural institution whose mission is to fight for Palestinian justice, equality and self-determination. It’s part of a wave of violence Israel has unleashed across the occupied West Bank since October 7, killing 58 people in Jenin alone even as the country intensifies its assault on Gaza. We speak with Freedom Theater artistic director Ahmed Tobasi, who was just released after being held for 24 hours. Two of his colleagues remain in Israeli detention. “The Israeli soldiers believe we are not human beings,” says Tobasi. “You are under occupation, and that’s your destiny as a Palestinian.” He decries the decades of international impunity under which the oppression of Palestinians operates, and calls on Americans to resist the use of their tax dollars to fund Israel’s violence. “They believe no one in this world can ask them to stop,” he says. We also get a reaction from Peter Schumann, the founder and director of the Bread and Puppet Theater, the legendary political and social justice-oriented theater company, marking its 60th year with a puppet show in New York City that is an ode to 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 the occupied West Bank, where Israel has killed at least 12 Palestinians during a three-day raid on the Jenin refugee camp, the largest raid there in 20 years. On Wednesday, Israeli soldiers raided the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, a renowned cultural institution whose mission is to fight for Palestinian justice, equality and self-determination. The theater has been repeatedly targeted by Israeli forces since its founding in 2006. In 2011, one of the theater’s founders, Juliano Mer-Khamis, was assassinated. In July, the theater was struck in an Israeli drone strike.

We’re joined now by Ahmed Tobasi, the theater’s artistic director, who was detained and beaten this week. Two of his colleagues remain detained, including the theater’s general manager Mustafa Sheta.

Ahmed, thank you so much for being with us. Describe where you are sitting right now, and then what happened to you this week. We’re seeing a raid that is one of the largest that Israel — I mean, frequently raids Jenin. One of the times it raided Jenin, it killed the Al Jazeera reporter. But, Ahmed, if you can talk about what’s happened now?

AHMED TOBASI: Just there is no words, actually. I could not find words to describe the pain, the sore that we have as the Palestinian and especially the people in Jenin and Jenin camp. I’m sitting in the middle of my office and Mustafa’s office. And for me, just like everything is destroyed. And you see all this mess. And I don’t know why. It’s because — this is theater. It’s not a military base. It’s not an artillery house. It’s not an armed place, or there is no guns. There is books, pictures, cameras, music and instruments. All of it been destroyed. The whole theater been — like, all computers, all offices been destroyed. And they’ve been writing and writing and drawing Hebrew things all around.

And, you know, just yesterday — before yesterday, I was actually in my house, which is in front of the Freedom Theatre, and I know — I was waiting — they’re going to come to check us in the house, because they’re going house to house. They’re arresting everyone, from like 13 to 60, 50 years old. And I was hearing them. They’re coming to my house, because they’re going house by house. And then they just broke the door of my house. I just went out to them and told them, “Please, there is children here. We are a whole family here, and we can do whatever you want. There is no need for violence. There is no need to do anything.” But quickly, they put the guns on me. They took me, put me down, and they started to beat me. And I don’t know why. I was telling them, like, “I have a Norwegian passport. I have Norwegian citizenship.” But they didn’t care.

They stormed in. They broke all the house. They broke everything, any electronic stuff, any glass. And they took my brother, too. The children were screaming, crying. And even they were screaming on them. And because I understand a little Hebrew, they were swearing at the children. They were screaming at my mom and dad, which is old people. And then they started to beat me, and then they handcuffed me. And they took me, and they put some even like army clothes on me, and they started to take pictures of me, taking poses, soldier by soldier, to show their girlfriends they are heroes. But while I was under arrest, under the guns, and they were taking these pictures from me.

And then they put me in a truck. They took me to al-Jalama checkpoint, and they threw me in the mud. It was raining. They threw me beside the street, where all the Jeeps, the vehicles, army go around me. And I don’t understand what is going on. Are they going to drive on me? Are they going to kill me? I don’t know what is going on, because I was blindfolded. And then they put me in another truck, and they took me to another place, where they throw us again outside, start to do like an immediate interrogation about my identity and, like, you know, intelligence. But it’s outside intelligence, in the rain. They didn’t let me even take my shoes or clothes to cover myself. It’s December. It’s very cold with the rain. And it was a torture in somehow, a psychological torture, mentally torture, that all the time the soldiers go around you with the guns, their guns touching you, and you’re just waiting the moment when they’re going to shoot you. Are they going to drive on you? Are they going to smash you? And, you know, they take you from place to place, place to place, makes you walk, that you don’t know, without shoes, with the mud.

So it was a whole crazy — I cannot — I cannot describe. This is happening. For me, it takes me directly to 2002, when I was 17 years old. It’s exactly the same thing happening. The Israelis have the machine time to bring you back 20 years just with one button, with one invasion. And for me, I am wondering how long this is going to happen again and again in the same way, and still the whole world looking, and they cannot do anything for us. We, as the Palestinians, we are too bored of this life. We are too bored of this legacy of the world, that they’re promising humanity, promising democracy. This is — this is — I cannot go on again. I mean, we, as the Palestinians, now we are at the point that we cannot wait for another promise. We have to do something even as the Palestinians.

But even though we still, in the Freedom Theatre, is a cultural, artistic place, where we have children, young people, girls, boys, women to come here to practice, to find a place where they can express themselves, where they can imagine there is a better life, a better place in this world, where they can decide their future in different ways, to choose to be different from the reality that we’re living. And still the Israelis come, and they’re telling us, “No, you cannot dream. You cannot think that you can be something different from the reality around you. You are under occupation, and that’s your destiny as a Palestinian, to grow up, to be born, to grow up and die under brutal, crazy, violent occupation,” that they don’t believe in anything, not in art. They arrest us as artists, as the people who do theater. They arrest — they destroy everything that shows there is culture, there is art, that we Palestinians, we are a normal people. The Israeli soldiers believe we are not a human being. That’s why they’re killing us in very easy way. That’s why they destroy theaters and cultural places, because also they believe no one in this world can ask them to stop. No one can tell them, “You can’t do this.” They believe, as Israelis, they can do whatever they want, and no one in this world can tell them what you are doing.

So, I am asking all the artists in this world — and, you know, as Juliano Mer-Khamis and Zakaria Zubeidi, the main founders of the Freedom Theatre, was believing the Third Intifada, which we’re doing now, is going to be a cultural, artistic intifada. We’re asking also all the friends all around the world, you have to unite, and we have to fight not just for Palestinians. We have to fight this planet, for the humanity, for each community and each country still under colonization or under occupation. This planet is very important, that we can live together in this planet without all this hate, without all this violence, that the only country creating this and make all this world unstable, it’s Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play the words of Juliano Mer-Khamis, again, the co-founder of the Jenin Freedom Theatre. He was killed in 2011 in Jenin, shot by masked assailants. We talked to him when he was in the United States. He talked about the theater’s mission, that you’re sitting in right now, the theater that is once again ransacked. This is Juliano.

JULIANO MER-KHAMIS: My name is Juliano, and I’m the director of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp. The Freedom Theatre is a venue to join the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation. We believe that the Third Intifada, the coming intifada, should be cultural, with poetry, music, theater, cameras and magazines.

This place never had a theater. This place never was exposed to these arts. So, actually, we are building everything from scratch. We are building capacity, building of actors. We are building capacity, people of audience. You know, sometimes it’s easier to create actors than audience. We are dealing with the young generation to expose them to these arts.

The location of the Freedom Theatre — and don’t let this view to deceive you — we are sitting in the mid of the most attacked and poor refugee camp in Palestine: the refugee camp of Jenin. We are talking about almost 3,000 children under the age of 15 suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It means they pee in their pants when they are 11. It means they cannot concentrate. They cannot deal with each other without violence.

AMY GOODMAN: That was a promotional video that Juliano Mer-Khamis did for the Jenin Freedom Theatre, talking about the theater’s mission. And we’re right now in the Jenin theater, in the Freedom Theatre, with one of the people who — Ahmed Tobasi, who is now the artistic director. Juliano was killed, assassinated in 2011. So, Ahmed Tobasi, you were held for 24 hours. The general manager of the theater, Mustafa Sheta, is still being held. Do you know what’s happening to him, and the other scores of men who have been taken at this point, Israel saying they are Hamas?

AHMED TOBASI: You know, in a way, that the Freedom Theatre, as you said and as you mentioned, being attacked all the time, that Jenin camp being attacked, it’s like we are part of this place, and the Israelis have no differences to look at the organizations, like Freedom Theatre as an artistic, cultural organization which should be safe as an international organization.

Yes, at the same time, Mustafa Sheta also was taken, the same time I was taken. And I think he been taken to other place, which is clearly that they’re going to hold him. We still do not have any information about him. Soon after this program, I will go to his family to see if they got any news about him. But, for sure, there is many friends around the world trying to push to get some information or at least to push to release him.

Another student also was also arrested yesterday. You know, even our kids, after the July invasion, being killed in front of the theater. We have now three people, three young people, been killed from the children of the Freedom Theatre. And still, like 15 years now, 20 years, we work in building this place. In the last July, been destroyed. We rebuild it again. We fix it again. But now, after two, three months, again they come and destroy everything. They even stole the computers. It’s crazy. This army have no morals. They steal computers. They are not soldiers. They are just thieves.

But, yeah, it’s crazy that — we talked to a lawyer, that he’s going to start looking for information and see what the situation of Mustafa. But, for sure, Israelis do not give informations that easy, and because he’s still not in, like, a clear prison. He still may be under interrogation. And that’s what we are worrying about, because also the head of the board of the Freedom Theatre been already one year, arrested before one year, and there is no any clear evidence about what is the accuse about him.

So, you see, as an artistic field, as an artist in Palestine, that’s the way that we live our life. That’s the way we do our theater, our work in art. We are not looked as a different way. But that’s our mission. That’s my mission, to keep the Freedom Theatre open, to save Juliano’s legacy and keep fighting for the same things that we believe. And we know that in Palestine, to be an artist, that’s also a chance that you’re going to be arrested or killed even.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to end today’s show, if you will stay with us, Ahmed, with another theater director, Peter Schumann, the 89-year-old co-founder of the legendary Bread and Puppet Theater. It’s here in New York at the Theater for the New City with a show that is an ode to Gaza. I went to it last night. Peter, we only have a minute. Then we’re going to continue the conversation after with Ahmed. But if you can — if you want to share your thoughts with Ahmed right now about what you’re doing as he called for solidarity with his theater?

PETER SCHUMANN: Oh my god, Amy, just to listen to this report of Ahmed and this company. Oh my god, I’m crying all the way through it, in fury and in solidarity. It’s unbearable. Unbearable. And to think that this stupid organization called the Freedom and Democracy, or some [bleep] like that, that doesn’t exist —

AMY GOODMAN: You can’t curse, Peter. You cannot curse on the air.

PETER SCHUMANN: OK, no more cursing. OK, no. Big honor. It’s so wonderful. Right. Unbelievable that this is a Congress of cowards, a president who seems to be an idiot. So that’s a curse. It’s unbelievable what this country is supporting. I don’t get it, because it isn’t just Israel at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask —

PETER SCHUMANN: It’s the weapons and the —

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask, in the last 30 seconds, Ahmed Tobasi, about the U.S. position, and if you have a message, Ahmed, for President Biden?

AHMED TOBASI: I’m sorry for the Americans that the Israel — all the support of taxpayers goes to Israel to kill children and kill women. For me, this money should go to create art, to create culture, to support artists, to build theaters, to build artistic and cultural organizations all over the world, to save artists in China, in Russia, even in U.S. I want this money not goes to create weapons. Americans, you are getting your picture in a way — not in a right way, because all this military support and all this military crazy support goes to change your pictures as a human. I believe our friends in America — we have the Friends of the Freedom Theatre in New York. They are Jewish, and they are supporting us. And I’m asking them: Change the tax.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed, we have to leave it there. Ahmed Tobasi, artistic director of Freedom Theatre, just released by Israel, and Peter Schumann. Thank you.

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Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara on IDF Killing AJ Journalist, the 3 Hostages & U.S. Support for Israel
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 18, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/18 ... transcript

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing growing calls for another ceasefire in Gaza after Israeli troops mistakenly shot dead three Israeli hostages who were shirtless and waving a white flag. This comes as Israel continues to target hospitals, refugee camps and journalists in Gaza. On Friday, Samer Abudaqa, a reporter from Al Jazeera, bled to death after being injured in an Israeli drone strike on a U.N. school. Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him for five hours. “This is not the first time we’ve gone through this,” says Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bishara of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, that has impacted citizens like journalists, teachers and doctors the most. “Gaza has been the target of this war, not Hamas.” Bishara addresses how the United States is increasingly isolated in its opposition to a ceasefire, growing focus on Israel’s collective punishment, and more.

Transcript

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

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

Israel is intensifying its attacks across Gaza as pressure grows on Israel to support another ceasefire. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports the head of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, has met with the prime minister of Qatar and CIA chief William Burns in Poland. Talks between the Mossad and Qatar also took place this weekend in Norway. Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has arrived in Tel Aviv for talks.

This comes as Israel continues to carry out attacks across Gaza, targeting hospitals, schools and refugee camps. Authorities in Gaza say an Israeli attack on the Jabaliya refugee camp killed 110 people on Saturday. Israel has also raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, where doctors say Israeli bulldozers crushed Palestinians to death, including wounded patients who were living in tents in the hospital’s courtyard. Israel has also attacked Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing growing calls to secure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza, after Israeli forces mistakenly shot dead three Israeli hostages who managed to escape captivity in northern Gaza. The three men, who were all shirtless, were shot as they cried for help in Hebrew while holding up a white flag.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to attack Palestinian journalists. On Friday, Al Jazeera journalist Samer Abudaqa was killed after an Israeli drone struck a U.N. school in Khan Younis where displaced Palestinians were being sheltered. In a statement, Al Jazeera said, quote, “Following Samer’s injury, he was left to bleed to death for over five hours, as Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him, denying the much-needed emergency treatment,” unquote. This is Ibrahim Qanan, a reporter for Al-Ghad in Gaza.

IBRAHIM QANAN: [translated] This is a horrific crime, a direct target. The first missile hit Samer, and he tried to crawl for 200 meters, but the Israeli warplanes hit him again and directly, so he became a martyr, and his body was cut into pieces. This is a crime, day and night, against journalists and against the media outlets who are working to reveal the Israeli occupation crimes in Gaza Strip.

AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera says it will ask the International Criminal Court to investigate the killing of Samer Abudaqqa. He was working with his colleague Wael Dahdouh, the head of Al Jazeera in Gaza, who was injured in the same drone strike. They were reporting from the school together. Wael was able to walk to a hospital, dazed, to receive medical attention. He already had lost his wife, son, daughter and grandson in an earlier Israeli attack.

We begin today’s show with Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, longtime Palestinian journalist and author. His books include Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid: Prospects for Resolving the Conflict. He’s joining us from the studios of Al Jazeera in Doha.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Marwan. We welcome you back. If you can start off, since you’re there at Al Jazeera, by talking about the International Criminal Court complaint that Al Jazeera has filed after the death of a beloved cameraman who’s worked with so many Al Jazeera journalists there, was working with the head of Al Jazeera in Gaza at the time, with Wael Dahdouh? Talk about what happened to him and just what it’s like to walk the halls of Al Jazeera right now, as I watched Al Jazeera over the weekend, every hour the tributes to him, the video, the photos of him, his colleagues remembering him, his family crying out for him.

MARWAN BISHARA: Well, as you know, this is not the first time we go through this. We’ve gone through it a number of times already, mourning our colleagues, the death of our colleagues and the death of their families. They are our family, and their families are also our extended family. And that’s just been going on for too long. We’ve covered too many wars. I personally have been in since the First Gaza Wqar back in 2008, 2009. We’ve gone through four wars like that. And only a couple years ago, one of our colleagues, as you know, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed in the Jenin refugee camp. So this is all too close to home.

I mean, you know, every day we live the tragedy of the death of several hundreds in Gaza the past 10 weeks. But when it comes to our very own, I guess it’s human nature, right? You just can’t ignore it, can’t go on without being preoccupied with it and preoccupied with the feelings of those loved ones, that continue to endure the bombings, the inhumane bombings that we’re seeing in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. So it’s a somber atmosphere, but people here just, I guess, plow ahead — there’s no other option — as countless people die and countless families suffer without shelter, without medical treatment, even without food. It’s just the tragedy that we just have to live through every day and report on every day.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about that issue of food. You have this new Human Rights Watch report that’s out that’s accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, saying, “Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.” This is Carl Skau, the deputy executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme, speaking to reporters last week in New York after a recent visit to Gaza.

CARL SKAU: What we found there was that half of the population are starving. The grim reality is also that nine out of 10 people are not eating enough, are not eating every day, and don’t know where the next meal is going to come from. … We are ready to deliver to another million people within a couple of weeks, should the conditions allow. And let me reiterate that caveat, that should those conditions allow, which would be opening of more crossings and a humanitarian ceasefire to be able to reach people across the strip.

AMY GOODMAN: The deputy executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme. He says nine out of 10 people are not eating enough in Gaza. I mean, in the past, with all of Gaza’s problems, hunger was not one of them. Can you talk about the significance of this, and also this latest news? I mean, even as we’re broadcasting, these attacks on one hospital after another. I mean, Abudaqa and Wael Dahdouh were covering the strike on the U.N. school in Khan Younis when Abudaqa was killed.

MARWAN BISHARA: Yes, absolutely. Just as a reminder to your viewers, there was also a report by Oxfam on October 23rd — that’s also just two weeks after the war started in Gaza, or on Gaza — where it also spoke about the weaponization of hunger, because this has actually been going on since day one, since October 8, when defense minister — so-called defense minister, minister of war, Yoav Gallant, if you remember, made his infamous threat by saying, “We’re going to cut their food, their fuel, their electricity,” basically denying the Palestinians of every basic need. It’s part of the collective punishment that Israel decided from day one to impose on the Palestinians, which of course is a war crime.

But that’s been the nature of the war, because right after he said that he’s going to deny the Palestinians in Gaza all of this, he said they are “human animals.” This was basically an intent for genocide, because right after he did make those infamous declarations, the president of Israel, Mr. Herzog, also came out with his statements about the fact, to his view, there are no innocents in Gaza. No innocents in Gaza. And that was followed by the prime minister, Netanyahu, who said something about an analogy with some biblical times, comparing the Palestinians to the Amalek, and hence basically saying that Israel will go after their families, their parents, the children, even the infants and their families. So we have the three leading Israeli officials basically admitting in public, once and again, [inaudible] collective punishment against Palestinians in general in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Marwan, if you can talk about what’s happening, the increasing isolation of Israel, and the United States supporting Israel? You have yet another vote today in the U.N. Security Council around a ceasefire. You have the British and German foreign ministers calling for a ceasefire, further isolating the U.S., which blocked a ceasefire at the U.N. Security Council. Lloyd Austin is in Tel Aviv meeting with the Israeli leadership. If you can shed light on — you know, Netanyahu, after the killing of the three Israeli hostages, held a news conference. He is under enormous pressure right now to put the hostages at the top. You’ve got negotiations going on, apparently, in Norway between the Qatari and Mossad officials, and now William Burns, head of central intelligence, is in Poland to meet with the Qatari officials. Talk about all that’s happening right now, Netanyahu not wanting to end this war right now. And there is a question about, since he’s facing one criminal trial after another himself, whether, once this ends and there’s a real evaluation done, he could end up in jail himself, so putting that off.

MARWAN BISHARA: Well, OK, so let’s try quickly to dissect all of these very complicated issues. Let me just start by a quick — not going to call it “correction,” but just, you know, shed a light on the German, British position. They have not called for an immediate ceasefire. They called for a sustained ceasefire, which is the opposite of an immediate ceasefire, because, basically, they said it’s not anything that we think of that will happen anytime in the near future, when they mention “sustained,” which means the circumstances have to be suitable, which is basically very close to the American position. Unfortunately, the European clients of the United States, for the time being, remain so, clients of the United States, following in the footsteps of the United States, basically to the displeasure of the majority of their public opinion, also like that of the public opinion of the United States, apparently.

But clearly the Biden administration wants to beautify the genocide in Gaza. I think they’re being embarrassed, because the reports coming out of Gaza, the images, the suffering and all of that, is reaching American public and the Western public in general. And they need to, you know, give the impression that they’re doing something, hence they’re sending these envoys to the region and writing articles and so on and so forth, to at least prove that they are trying to do something, while, in fact, in reality, the United States continue to subsidize this war, manage this war, because we see Lloyd Austin sitting along with Yoav and the rest of the Israeli generals. And they also, of course, as we know, sent the two aircraft carriers and the nuclear submarines to the area, hence shielding Israel, not just militarily, but also at the United Nations, committing $14 billion to Israel’s war effort. So, all in all, the United States continue to unconditionally support Israel, while claiming to distance itself from the intensive phase of the war, claiming that they want to phase out to something different. Right? So, that’s what we have for the time being.

But the fact of the matter is that, until today, 10 weeks later, the United States has yet to condemn Israel in public, its war crimes in Gaza, yet to distance themselves from those war crimes that have been reported once and again that are taking place in Gaza. All what they’re saying is that Israel should try to minimize, because too many Palestinians have died over the past 10 weeks. And now when they talk about the phaseout — and here, this is a very, very interesting fact that we see — they’re saying Israel should perhaps target Hamas fighters, Hamas tunnels, and assassinate their leaders. That’s what they’re saying. So, it begs the question: If this is the way to fight Hamas, why did they go on and destroy Gaza, leading to tens of thousands of casualties the past 10 weeks? There is clearly another way to fight this war, which is going after Hamas, not going after Gazans. But from the beginning, Amy — and this is, again, very important to underline — is the fact that Gaza has been the target of this war, not Hamas. And if you look at the statistics, Gazans — the journalists, the doctors, the nurses, the teachers, the academics, the children — have been the main victims of this war. Hamas fighters, Hamas militants have been the collateral damage in this war. For the past 10 weeks, it was Gaza that’s being decimated, its civil infrastructure being decimated. It’s been a war on hospitals, on schools, on mosques and, yes, a war on children. And yet it was unconditionally supported by the United States and other Western powers. And we haven’t heard a single retraction for that support. And it’s still being shielded at the United Nations. Hundred and fifty-three members called for an immediate ceasefire, and what did the United States do? Voted against it. Thirty members of the U.N. Security Council voted for an immediate ceasefire. Britain abstained. The United States vetoed the resolution. The United States and Britain, until today, they sit isolated in the international community.

So, when President Biden tells a small group of people in Washington that Israel is perhaps losing the public support, what public support? What international public support? A majority in America, to my knowledge, ask for a ceasefire. A majority of the [inaudible] out are the Biden administration and his lackeys in London and Berlin. The rest of the international community, including the absolute majority of everyone in this region, wants a ceasefire.

And just quickly to cap that, we just interviewed a number of people in Gaza, in the streets in Gaza, asked them, “What do you think about Lloyd Austin coming to the area?” They said something to the fact, “Oh my god, this means we’re going to be bombed again and again the next few days,” because think about that. Since Biden landed in the middle of October, every time an American official showed up in Israel, Israel had intensified the bombings. After Biden came, the land invasion started. And every visit by Blinken or Sullivan or Lloyd Austin, we have seen an intensification of the bombings of the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, of the residential buildings in Gaza. That’s been the case. That’s been the reality. There’s no other interpretations of it.

So, the diagram, the process, if you will, shows unconditional American support, despite the various acrobatic verbal diarrhea that comes out of Western capital about, “Well, we’re not very happy about too many Palestinians dying.” Well, how many is enough exactly for them to stop Israel from continuing? Because Israel couldn’t launch this war, couldn’t sustain this war, couldn’t survive in the region like this without American support. In fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu says that “We will win this war with the support of the United States.” So, imagine: A country that calls itself the most important power in the Middle East is incapable of defeating a small guerrilla group that’s been under siege for the past 17 years, and it requires the deployment of aircraft carriers and the financial and military power of the world’s superpower. And yet, until today, it still insists it’s not even done with half of the job, because despite the tens of thousands of casualties, despite the death of more than 7,000 children, only a fraction — a fraction — of Hamas fighters have been killed in this war. It all goes to tell you that the endgame and the military objectives, none of them have been reached, despite the genocide that continues to unravel in Palestine.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Netanyahu holds this news conference on Saturday after the killing of the three Israeli hostages in Gaza, and he says, “We have to intensify the war to make Hamas release the hostages.” What is your response to this? Clearly at odds with even Israeli public opinion. And the idea that these three men, who were killed by Israeli forces, Netanyahu saying that his own forces violated the rules of war, was this any different or any surprise than the thousands — the way thousands of Palestinians have been treated, many also holding up a white flag? The surprise here is that these hostages were not treated differently than Palestinians.

MARWAN BISHARA: Absolutely, shirtless, white flag and shouting in Hebrew, and yet they were murdered by their own, which tells you, according now to a good number of Israelis speaking out, that there are no rules of engagements. It’s crap. It’s humbug. There are no rules of engagement in Gaza. You shoot whatever moves in Gaza. And, yes, it’s odd, because the Israelis have been doing exactly that since day one.

Now, as you said, it’s also odd, his arguments about the captives, because this is the most ridiculous arguments of all arguments. We’ve known from the beginning that they said the aim of the war is first to defeat Hamas, second to release the captives. And they kind of connected both by saying, “If we intensify the war, Hamas will be pressured to release the captives.” It never did. So they had to resort to diplomacy, asking the Qataris, the Egyptians and the Americans to help. And they did. And through diplomacy, they were able to release some of the hostages. And then they went back to war the day after. Now they want to try it again.

Well, the news is that Hamas will no longer accept humanitarian pauses. Hamas now insists on permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from Gaza. Otherwise, what incentive does Hamas have in order to release any more of the, especially military, captives that it has in Gaza? Because if the Israelis, with the support of the United States, are going to continue the bombings the next day, and they insist that the war objective is to kill Hamas fighters, there is zero incentives why they would release anyone.

So, today, we are in the Netanyahu logic. And the Netanyahu logic is neither in the interests of Israel or the United States. And Biden knows that. Apparently, he got a file from Israel, through his intelligence agencies, that says something to the fact, according to Haaretz, the Israeli mainstream paper, that Netanyahu has a vested — has a personal vested interest in prolonging the war, because he, you know, as a political-criminal-indicted-on-corruption-charges-cum-war-criminal, he has a vested interest to prolong the war as much as he can in order to improve his chances for reelection. In fact, he just put in the military fatigue and started making his populist slogans, the ones that we know them, saying that only he can prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state, that only he can stand up to the United States, and hence the Israelis need to elect him again. So, Netanyahu, as a person, the military establishment, as well, have vested interest to continue with this war.

AMY GOODMAN: Marwan Bishara, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, speaking to us from Doha, Qatar, born in Nazareth, in the occupied West Bank. Thanks so much for being with us.

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“Beyond Our Imagination”: Journalist Describes Total Destruction, with Fellow Gazans Buried Alive
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 19, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/19 ... transcript

We are joined in Cairo by Fadi Abu Shammalah, the head of Gaza’s General Union of Cultural Centers, who describes the inhumane conditions he was able to escape in Gaza. “Every city in the Gaza Strip is beyond our imagination,” says Abu Shammalah. He notes that in just the last 36 hours, at least 170 civilians were killed. “Witnesses say that the Israeli bulldozers buried the injured people in Kamal Adwan Hospital. They buried them while they are alive,” says Abu Shammalah. “They were still alive. They killed and they buried them.” He calls this a war on Palestinian civilians, meant to destroy as much of Gaza’s infrastructure as possible.

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 in New York, with Democracy Now!’s Juan González in Chicago.

As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepens, we turn now to Palestinians and Palestinian Americans who are trying to evacuate their family members to the United States. At least two Palestinian Americans have now filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, saying its failure to help them violates their constitutional rights. This is Yasmen Elagha, who says she lost at least a hundred relatives in Gaza, including two American citizens.

YASMEEN ELAGHA: The only thing that I’m being told is that there is nothing further that the U.S. government can do, which I don’t believe all.

AMY GOODMAN: The lawsuit notes that after the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, the U.S. government organized charter flights from Tel Aviv for Americans to leave Israel. So far, they say, the United States has not organized any flights to secure the exit of at least 900 U.S. citizens, residents and family members still in Gaza.

Al Jazeera reports more than a hundred staff members at the Department of Homeland Security signed an open letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas denouncing the response to humanitarian crisis in Gaza so far, saying it should be, quote, “commensurate with past responses to humanitarian tragedies” and offer a humanitarian parole program to Palestinians like it did after conflicts in Afghanistan and Ukraine.

More than a hundred Democrats, led by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, have called on Biden to make Palestinians who are already in the U.S. eligible for temporary protected status, or TPS.

Today we’ll hear two stories, one a Palestinian American woman in Detroit whose mother died in Gaza. She was approved to evacuate but was still but waiting to get out. The daughter is desperately seeking the government’s help to evacuate the rest of her family. We’ll also be joined by her attorney, Sophia Akbar. But first, we go to Cairo, Egypt, with another one of Sophia’s clients, Fadi Abu Shammalah. He is Just Vision’s outreach associate in Gaza, executive director of Gaza’s General Union of Cultural Centers. We spoke to him last month, when he was still in Gaza, about his New York Times op-ed, “What More Must the Children of Gaza Suffer?” Well, he was able to leave Gaza and is joining us now as he works to be reunited with his wife and his three children, who are still in Gaza — Ali, Karam and Adam.

Fadi, welcome back to Democracy Now! In a moment, we’re going to talk about the legal case here. But if you can talk about what is happening in Gaza right now, what’s happening in Rafah, in Jabaliya? Talk about why you left Gaza and what you think needs to happen.

FADI ABU SHAMMALAH: Oh, thank you so much for having me for the second time. I wouldn’t do the — I wouldn’t do the same for me. But, yeah, again, thank you so much for having me in this interview.

I will start by telling the situation on the ground, not in Rafah city itself, like in every city in Gaza Strip, is beyond our imagination. Like, not all of the news really come out to us here. I’m talking with you from Cairo. And the situation on the ground itself, it’s more horrible than what you can see by your screens and TVs. I would say also a horrific number. Like, all I would say that 1.9 million of the Palestinian people are displaced, already displaced, their homes. They all, most of them, were pushed into the far south of Gaza Strip in a city called Rafah. In the last — sorry, in the last 36 hours only, 177 Palestinians, civilian Palestinians, were killed.

This war, I would call it the war against the civilian, the Palestinian civilian, in order only to kill. That’s it. This is the main goal. I would say that there’s two goals. The first one is to kill the civilians as much as they can, and the second goal is to destroy as much as they can. Gaza City itself is erased. You will be shocked when you — if you will send your cameras after, hopefully, this nightmare and this war will end. You will be shocked because of the numbers of the neighborhoods, that it’s completely, completely damaged.

The south — the north, sorry, the north of the Gaza Strip, no one knows about the north of Gaza Strip. Only there is two journalists, according to what I knew — according to what I know, that only there’s two journalists who are trying to cover the situation, the situation there. Like, they are killing people in tents. That’s what I hear also. Like, also, sorry, witnesses say that the Israeli bulldozers buried the injured people in Kamal Adwan Hospital. They buried them while they are alive. They were still alive. They killed and they buried them.

This is — we should find a word that can express more than the word of “genocide.” That’s what is going on there. Like, the medical situation is horrible. The humanitarian situation is horrible, the water itself, the food itself, the electricity, the number of the killed people, the number of the bombed homes over the head of its residents. At the end, no one knows when this war is going to end. But what I know for sure, that we were all devastated, that our all hearts is broken for the destruction —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Fadi, I wanted to ask you —

FADI ABU SHAMMALAH: — that’s happened, the cruel destruction that’s happening.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — about your decision to leave Gaza. And also, what is the situation with your wife and your three children? Could you talk about the obstacles of them not being able to get out? Fadi, could you hear me?

AMY GOODMAN: Fadi, I’m going to put Juan’s question to you. For some reason, you’re not able to hear him. He’s talking about — he’s talking about your family and trying to get your family out. Can you describe —

FADI ABU SHAMMALAH: I don’t hear you, sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: I think the IFB has dropped, and we’re going to go back to you.

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

Palestinian American Woman Tries to Save Family in Gaza After Her Mom Dies Awaiting Evacuation
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 19, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/19 ... transcript

As the Biden administration faces accusations of being too slow to help Palestinian Americans and their families trapped in Gaza, we speak with Narmin Abushaban in Detroit whose mother died from lack of medical care while waiting to leave Gaza. She is working now to rescue the rest of her family members. This comes as calls grow for the U.S. to grant temporary protected status (TPS) to Palestinians already in the United States. We are also joined by civil rights attorney Sophia Akbar to discuss a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of violating the constitutional rights of Palestinian Americans by withholding support for U.S. citizens, residents and their family members trapped in Gaza, despite having organized charter flights from Tel Aviv for Americans to leave Israel after the October 7 Hamas attack and having accepted hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go right now to your lawyer — and we’ll try to fix the sound system to Cairo — Sophia Akbar. Sophia, can you talk about the situation that Fadi and a number of other people are in? Talk about what’s happening in the United States and how Palestinian Americans in the United States, trying to get their families out, and Palestinians who are trying to come into the United States from Gaza — talk about, with your experience as a civil rights attorney who’s been working with other attorneys and advocates to grant TPS to Palestinians here already, and what’s happening to, for example, your client, Fadi.

SOPHIA AKBAR: Thank you for having me, Ms. Goodman.

My clients’ family members need immediate evacuation from Gaza to reunite with their families and to escape near-certain death due to Israel’s brutal war on Palestine. We need the U.S. government to demand an immediate ceasefire from Israel and to stop U.S. taxpayer dollars to facilitate the genocide of the Palestinian people. We need the U.S. government to create immigration pathways for Palestinians to come to the U.S. to escape deadly and inhumane conditions.

We know that last week UNICEF declared Palestine to be the deadliest place for children in the entire world. In just the last 10 weeks, Israel has killed over 10,000 Palestinian children, and that’s not including the numbers that are trapped under the rubble, and has injured over 18,000 Palestinian children while they’re walking to school, playing outside, receiving medical treatment in hospitals, staying quietly in their homes or waving a white flag while crawling to them.

Both of my clients have children that have been affected by — children in their families that have been affected by this war. Fadi has three children, and we just found out this morning that they were able to evacuate from [sic] Egypt. But this has been —

AMY GOODMAN: To Egypt?

SOPHIA AKBAR: a grueling process. I’m sorry?

AMY GOODMAN: Able to evacuate to Egypt?

SOPHIA AKBAR: That’s correct. They were able to evacuate just this morning. And prior to this, they were in a refugee camp that was bombed. There were 20 people that died in that bombing. And Fadi was frantically looking through pictures to make sure that his family members were not included in the dead. It has been a grueling process of waiting while Fadi has been separated from his family. And hopefully they will be reuniting in the next few hours. But Fadi still has 20 family members who are in Gaza. And my other client, who we’ll hear from, as well, Narmin, she has 20 nephews and nieces under the age of 21 who are in Gaza. And some are in the northern part of Gaza, where they rarely hear from them.

So, regarding efforts to grant temporary protected status, as you mentioned, Senator Durbin and Senator Jayapal wrote letters to the Biden administration demanding that temporary protected status be extended to Palestinians. I am also part of a collective of attorneys and advocates across the country, and we, along with the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, wrote a letter, as well, to the Biden administration demanding that TPS be extended to Palestinians. And we had over a hundred organizational signatories.

TPS is typically granted to countries that are undergoing armed conflict or an environmental disaster. In Palestine, there are no more buildings where people can work. There are no more schools for children to attend, to allow parents to work and for children to have a future. Even if we have a ceasefire tomorrow, the amount of destruction that Israel has unleashed onto Palestinians in Gaza has made life impossible. So temporary protected status would allow Palestinians who are already here in the United States extended status so that they do not have to return to a death sentence. But TPS is not enough. That only applies to Palestinians who are here. So what we really need is a humanitarian immigration pathway that would allow Palestinians who are in Gaza a pathway to come to the United States and find refuge here.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sophia, could —

SOPHIA AKBAR: You mentioned that — yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sophia, could you talk about the difference between how the administration has been dealing, for instance, with those fleeing the war in Ukraine versus the Palestinians?

SOPHIA AKBAR: Absolutely. That is an extremely stark difference. Under the Uniting for Ukraine program, all requirements of having connections to green card holders and U.S. citizens were waived. So, Ukraine, about — over 270,000 Ukrainians were allowed to come to the United States under this program. And as advocates on the ground right now serving, you know, our clients who have families in Gaza, we cannot even get U.S. citizens out. Our advocates had to sue the Biden administration just to get U.S. citizens evacuated. And that didn’t even — that didn’t even prioritize the issue. We had to — my colleagues had to sue, you know, place two more lawsuits last week to evacuate U.S. citizens. And so, that’s not to say how the family members of U.S. citizens and green card holders are treated. And the Uniting for Ukraine program applied to people beyond that category, as well. So what we really need is a similar program, like Uniting for Ukraine, where Palestinians can have an immigration humanitarian pathway to come here and seek refuge.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what are the obstacles posed by the fact that the United States does not recognize Palestine as a foreign state when it comes to immigration issues?

SOPHIA AKBAR: That’s absolutely a challenge, and it is something that we had to address in our efforts to request TPS. And we have seen that the United States has offered temporary protected status to territories, so that is something that we included in our letter, in our request. But, absolutely, it is a challenge. And, you know, ultimately, without a solution that grants Palestinians freedom, there is no immigration solution that will properly address this problem. Even if we allow Palestinians to come here, to open our borders to them, we have no way of assuring them that when they want to go back, that they will be allowed to return. Palestinians and Native Americans are the only groups of people in the entire world where their return to their land and their property is not governed by them. And that has to change.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Narmin Abushaban into this conversation, Sophia, another of your clients. Narmin, thanks so much for being with us. You’re a Palestinian American attempting to expedite your request to rescue your siblings and their families from Gaza. We’re speaking to you in Detroit. First, our deep condolences on the loss of your mother. Can you talk about what happened to her and what your situation is?

NARMIN ABUSHABAN: Hi. Good morning. I just want to thank you for having me here to share my story about my mother, even though there are like no words that can describe what happened.

My mother is an old lady who was living safely in her home. She was displaced many times. Every time they get displaced, they move to another house, they are threatened to bomb the — the Israeli forces are threatening them to bomb the house. So my brothers had to displace her. She’s paralyzed. She’s on medications. And due to the air forces threatening them to displace many times — they were in the north — they had to go to the south. Even when they were in the south, in Khan Younis, they were threatened in the middle of the night to leave their house. They had to displace her again, until they reached to Rafah. And there, her health was getting worse and worse, until she didn’t have the medication, the right medication, due to the Israeli forces. They prevented the medical supplies to get into Gaza. So she had to switch to another medication that did not help her at all. And she passed away, Allah yerhama.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Narmin, how has it been possible for you even to communicate with family members in Gaza to assess their situation and their state?

NARMIN ABUSHABAN: It’s really hard for me to communicate with them. I had to have my phone, international calls to be able to call them. Nowadays it’s not working. It was working before, but now it’s not working at all. They have to go to the hospital to get some internet connection so they can talk to me. They send me — like in specific times of the day, like in the middle of the night, I have to keep my eyes open so I can see when they can text me or when they can send me a WhatsApp, like, message to see if they’re OK or not.

But my siblings that are in the north, I have no communication at all. My brother, I haven’t been hearing from him for two weeks now. And he’s in the healthcare, and the Israeli forces are targeting all the healthcare professions. And all I know, that they surrounded the houses there, and they’re shooting on people. But I don’t know anything about my brother and his family, that are like more than 10 kids and grandkids.

AMY GOODMAN: Narmin, have you been speaking with your senator, with Dick Durbin? And what has been the response?

NARMIN ABUSHABAN: I have been — actually, I did send emails, but I didn’t get any reply. I filed the crisis intake. I put all my siblings, my mother. And I’ve been emailing them, telling them about her situation and my siblings’ situation. But I didn’t get any answer. They’ve been saying that they’re not in the category. They don’t fall in the category to get them: only immediate family. And they are immediate family. Like, what do they consider immediate family?

After my mother’s death, like two days after, I got an email that they put my mother’s name on the list to be evacuated. So I had to send them again that she’s dead, it’s too late. They told me that they’re going to put my siblings’ names on the Rafah crossing. They even sent me the names that they will put them and that they send them to Rafah crossing. But still, it’s been like three weeks, and I haven’t heard anything.

And I don’t want to lose my siblings as I lost my uncle, as you know. Like, my uncle, his entire family were bombed by the Israeli forces, by the airstrike. And my uncle is an old man. He was in his home playing with his grandchildren. His wife was feeding her grandchild. They bombed the house on top of them. They were under the rubble for one week. They could not get there. Nobody could get in there to help them until the air forces, the Israeli soldiers left. They wouldn’t allow anybody to get in there.

So I don’t want to lose my brothers and my sisters. Every day I hear like bombing and striking people and targeting hospitals, civilians. I want to reunite with my siblings. I don’t want to lose them the way I lost my mother. I just want them to evacuate. If they don’t stop the genocide, they don’t stop it at all, so they even can’t sleep. There are children. There are women. There are like all of them, they’re always scared. They can’t sleep. So, if they don’t stop the genocide, this is the only thing I can do. I can, like, ask for your help, for the Department of State to help me evacuate my siblings.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re speaking to Narmin Abushaban, Palestinian American, talking to us from Detroit. She’s already lost her mother, her uncle, attempting to have her request expedited to rescue her siblings and their families from Gaza.

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Israel’s War on Children: Fadi Abu Shammalah on Horrific Ordeal Facing Kids in Gaza, Including His Own
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Democracy 19, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/19 ... transcript

In Part 2 of our interview with Fadi Abu Shammalah, the head of Gaza’s General Union of Cultural Centers, he describes how his three children were finally able to flee to Cairo this morning. He is now working to secure safe passage for more than a dozen family members still stuck behind the blockade. “The international community are silent. And a lot of them are supporting it,” Abu Shammalah says.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: And we are rejoined by Fadi Abu Shammalah from Cairo. Fadi, we understand that your kids, your three kids, and wife just got through Rafah into Egypt just before this broadcast, as you were attempting to get them out. Can you talk about their situation and how you’re trying to get into the United States at this point? You are Just Vision’s outreach associate in Gaza and the executive director of Gaza’s General Union of Cultural Centers.

FADI ABU SHAMMALAH: Yeah, I will start answering this question by saying that the trip and the journey that my kids had to go through, it start from October 9, when we decided to evacuate our home from Gaza City into my parents’ home in Khan Younis. And working in journalism and speaking up about — for the Palestinian people and all the massacres and genocide that is going on on the ground by the Israeli commission, we reached a point that I have to evacuate. I had to, sorry, leave Gaza Strip, because there was like really a risk over my family, because Israel, until that day — I’m talking about November 14 — until that date, around 61 journalists have been killed. My family felt that they are in dangers and they might be bombed anytime. That’s made me have to sleep in my car for one time, the night before I leave Gaza Strip. And I thought that by traveling to Cairo, I will be able to help my family to evacuate. I mean, my name only was on the list of November 2. I mean the U.S. list of November 2. So, but it wasn’t — it didn’t happen. That’s what I want to say.

Then, on December 5, the Israeli commission did throw leaflets asking the people of Khan Younis to evacuate to Shaboura refugee camps, which is in Rafah city. And the next day — before the next day they have to evacuate, like after seven hours, I figured out that they arrived safe to Rafah city. It wasn’t easy for me, like, to be waiting, because I knew in the news that they were bombing in the streets, I mean, the same streets that they are using to evacuate to Rafah city.

The next day, on December 6, while I don’t have connection with my wife and my kids, I get — I knew that from the news that the Israeli commission bombed in the Shaboura refugee camp, exactly where is my family are evacuating. And to get more, like, orientation about this refugee — it’s just only 15 kilometers square. It’s a very small neighborhood. And it consists of also old building. And there is a very high risk that all these buildings will be demolished because of this bombing. For two hours and a half, I was waiting any sign that my family are alive. I had to go through the news of WhatsApp thread to look for my kids’ photo. I had to look into the photos of the killed children, because I knew that there’s 20 women and kids were killed in this bombing. I had to open the photos and zoom in to determine if one of these photos is one of my kids. It wasn’t easy for me at all, like, to have these 2.5, two hours and a half, waiting any sign that my family alive. It was in the end. But even so, the next night and the next night and the next night, they have daily bombing in Shaboura and in Rafah city. This is the place that exactly Israeli commission said it is a safe area, as exactly they said that the Palestinian people from Gaza City have to evacuate to Khan Younis, they considered Khan Younis as a safe area, and then they asked us to evacuate to Rafah.

My kids have to go through all of this. They have to be in — by the way, yes, you are right, my kids are coming to me to Cairo, but the three of them, they are sick. I will move them immediately once I hold them. I will move them to the hospital because they are very sick. There is no clean water. They don’t have healthy food there. It’s horrible. I’m happy that my kids are coming to my hug, that I’m going to hold them, but I’m so devastated about the hundreds of the thousands of the kids in Gaza Strip. They have to go through all these circumstances.

And the international community are silent. And a lot of them are supporting it. Like, as Paul Pillar said, that Biden is a partner in making the biggest human disaster that the world is witnessing since 500 years ago. This is the situation that the kids and the women have to go through it, that they don’t have food to eat, clean water to drink. My kids have infection in their mouth, in their stomach. They are very thin. My wife has to send me photos for them after I asked her many times, “Send me photos of my kids.” I was shocked. They are not my kids at all. I just left them for one month, and they are completely changed.

I will do my best to get them recovered and get better health and get better food. But what about the other people in Gaza Strip, the other kids, the women who are not — who don’t find milk for their kids? My wife couldn’t find antibiotic for my kids. Only antibiotic. Antibiotic. I mean, this is the most simple medicine that you should have in any place in the world. Even in the jungle you will find antibiotic and painkiller. I will do my best with my kids, for sure. But I’m very devastated, very sad about 2.3 millions of Palestinians who are pushed into the south of Gaza Strip.

I would say that, yeah, my kids, we made it. They are coming to Cairo like in five, six, seven hours. Whatever, I don’t care. They are coming to my hug again. And I’m going to — all of us are going to travel to U.S. for five months, starting from January until the end of May. I was so lucky to get a fellowship from an American organization. But the majority of the people do not have this chance and do not have this privilege to do the same.

This is injustice at all. It’s insane at all. What is happening there cannot be explained, cannot be discussed, I mean, in a normal conversation. We need millions of cameras. I always keep saying that every Palestinian family has its own story, and every member of every Palestinian family has his only — his or her own story, because everyone has a story that is full of tears, full of fear, full of being scared, full of hunger.

We are being fighted by making us starving, as the Human Rights Watch have said, I think, yesterday or early today. Yes, Israel is fighting us by food. They are preventing us to get food. The number of the trucks that’s of humanitarian aid that should be allowed to enter Gaza, it’s nothing. We need much, doubles. We need thousands of trucks to enter Gaza, 24 hours, until three months, until we get a balance, at least for the food only. We will need at least 10 years to reconstruct and rebuild the destroyed Gaza Strip.

That is the real face of the Israeli occupation by — and Palestinian people will never forgive the world. The Nakba in 1948, it happened while there is no cameras, there is no TVs like now. But now the international community are silent. I do thanks, of course, and appreciate all the demonstration and the marches that went to the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We think that it’s not still enough. We need from you more pressure against the international community, against your leaders, especially the U.S. administration. They have to stop supporting Israel by providing them the military that we are being killed by it. They have to stop financially support Israel, or at least asking Israel — or at least, I mean, preventing of issuing veto in the Security Council when the Palestinian people need only humanitarian ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: Fadi Abu Shammalah, I want to thank you so much for being with us. In fact, our next segment, we’re going to look at that Human Rights Watch report with its author, yes, the report called “Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza.” Fadi, I want to thank you for being with us, Fadi Abu Shammalah, Just Vision’s outreach associate, usually in Gaza, now in Cairo, executive director of Gaza’s General Union of Cultural Centers, will be reuniting with his three children and wife in just a few hours, then soon coming to the United States. We want to thank civil rights attorney Sophia Akbar and Narmin Abushaban, Palestinian American attempting to expedite her request to rescue her siblings and their families from Gaza. Her mother died there while waiting to get out, as did her uncle.

Coming up, Human Rights Watch. Stay with us.

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Starvation as a Weapon of War: Human Rights Watch Denounces Israel for Denying Gaza Access to Food
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 19, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/19 ... transcript

Israel is deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and fuel in Gaza, prompting Human Rights Watch to accuse the occupation of utilizing starvation as a weapon of war. Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director, Omar Shakir, says 97% of the groundwater in Gaza is unfit for human consumption after the destruction of pipelines and treatment sources, the rejection of humanitarian aid and the collapse of the medical system under incessant bombing, leading to mass dehydration and contagious disease. Shakir calls on the international community to condemn Israel’s actions and to increase pressure on U.S. support in particular. “The United States and Israel are isolated in the international community,” Shakir says. “The use of double standards in Israel and Palestine harms civilians all over the world.”

Transcript

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

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

As the death toll in Gaza nears 20,000, Human Rights Watch has accused the Israeli government of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. Human Rights Watch says Israel has deliberately blocked the delivery of water, food and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance. The group said Israel has also apparently razed agricultural areas inside Gaza as many Palestinians face starvation.

We’re joined now by Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, which has just published a report headlined “Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza.” He’s joining us from Amman, Jordan.

Omar, why don’t you lay out your findings?

OMAR SHAKIR: We found five very disturbing trends coming together that led us to this conclusion, the first of which has been for more than two months now the Israeli government has been blocking all but a trickle of aid, food and water from entering the Gaza Strip. Secondly, the Israeli government has, in essence, cut off the entry and exit of goods from its own crossings with Gaza, despite being the occupying power that’s obligated to provide for the civilian population. Third, satellite imagery that we’ve been carefully studying shows the apparent deliberate razing of agricultural land. You can see entire farms and other areas turned from lush green agricultural land into barren wasteland in different parts of the Gaza Strip. Fourth, we look at the destruction of the kinds of objects necessary for human survival — bakeries, wheat mills, sanitation and water facilities, hospitals. In northern Gaza, you cannot find many of these facilities that are functioning. And fifth and finally, statements from Israeli government officials that set out in very plain terms — and this includes the defense minister, the national security minister, members of COGAT, the Israeli army — that state clearly that they will continue to prevent these basic supplies — food, water, aid — from entering until they accomplish the objectives they’ve set, such as the return of hostages and the destruction of Hamas. All this collectively amounts to starvation used as weapon of war, which is an abhorrent war crime, adding to the Israeli government’s many other war crimes, like collective punishment, that have been taking over the last 10 weeks.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Omar, specifically in terms of the deprivation of clean water to drink and fuel, could you talk about the impacts of this policy in terms of the spread of disease and access to food?

OMAR SHAKIR: Absolutely. Look, I mean, I think water is a basic thing that’s needed for health services, for everyday life, for cleaning. And you’ve seen several things take place with water. The first thing is to note that 97% of the groundwater in Gaza is unfit for human consumption as a result of overextraction of the ground aquifer that comes in from Israel, so Gaza has long relied on water that’s coming in from Israel. Israel cut that water supply after October 7th. It’s resumed piping to parts of southern Gaza, but in northern Gaza that’s not the case. We’ve also seen significant destruction of the water infrastructure. We’ve also seen destruction to other water facilities, pipelines. And you have the lack of fuel, that’s led to the shutdown of desalinization and water pumping facilities.

So you have some water coming in on trucks, but bottled water is not enough to allow the population to drink, for hospitals to function, for sanitation to take place. And the results are quite deadly. We’re already hearing, seeing reports of thousands of cases of contagious diseases, and we’re seeing hospitals trying to make do. And, of course, the majority of hospitals in Gaza are not functioning. The Israeli government has been systematically attacking hospitals, especially in northern Gaza. But those that are operating are trying to do so without adequate supply of medical supplies and water. And the consequences are stark. And they will get worse unless we see the taps switched on water and the ability for the water infrastructure to be repaired, and fuel to enter, so those pumping stations and desalinization plants can operate.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What actions do you see necessary by the international community at this point, especially given the fact that the United States continues to veto any resolutions in the Security Council?

OMAR SHAKIR: I think today’s U.N. Security Council vote is quite essential. There’s an opportunity to take concrete action to protect civilians. It’s critical that states support that resolution, and the United States not exercise its veto. Lives quite literally hang in the balance.

Beyond the action at the Security Council, there is absolutely a need for states to unequivocally condemn this war crime. We’ve seen far too often, especially the United States and its allies in Europe that are condemning, rightfully, abuses that are carried out by Palestinian armed groups, but not using the same language to condemn the clear war crimes committed by the Israeli government.

There needs to be a call for an immediate resumption of full aid, not the trickle that’s being allowed in. But the aid alone is not enough. There needs to be a restoration of electricity, water and other basic services. And ultimately, that’s not going to matter, if unlawful attacks and incessant bombardment continue to wreak havoc on the lives of people. There must be an end to unlawful attacks.

And obviously, more long term, beyond these sort of immediate needs of the civilian population, there are a couple of essential things that are needed. One, there must be accountability for unlawful attacks and other violations, including at the International Criminal Court. Secondly, there must be an addressing of root causes, such as Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians. And finally, all states must evaluate all forms of potential complicity in these grave abuses. And in the case of the United States, that means imposing an arms embargo, ending the provision of military assistance and arms, given the high risk they’ll be used in the commission of grave abuses.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk, Omar Shakir, about the Biden administration’s, to say the least, mixed message, bypassing Congress, sending tank artillery that is being used against Palestinians, saying that they’re staunchly behind Israel, then at the same time saying they’re putting out a private message that they’ve got to reduce the casualties, and at the same time vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions, though it’s not clear what’s going to happen today? They want the language watered down, but may not stop that resolution from going forward. We’ll find out soon. Can you talk about what exactly the U.S. is doing versus France calling for a ceasefire, versus Germany, Britain, and what it would mean if the U.S. were on the front of calling for permanent ceasefire?

OMAR SHAKIR: Look, I think the United States and Israel are isolated in the international community. There’s a growing consensus, as reflected in U.N. votes and otherwise, about the enormity of the catastrophe that we’re seeing taking place in Gaza and the urgent need for action to end that.

There has indeed been a shift in the U.S. government rhetoric. President Biden spoke of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing in Gaza. Indiscriminate bombing is a violation of the laws of war. So, if this is the assessment of the Biden administration, how can it justify providing military support? That risks complicity in what they themselves have acknowledged to be war crimes. The reality here is the Israeli government has a long track record of unlawful attacks. U.S. weapons, as has been documented in previous rounds of hostilities by Human Rights Watch, as has been documented by Amnesty International, has itself been used in the commission of grave abuses over the years. The reality here is the United States, by continuing to provide arms and diplomatic cover to the Israeli government as it commits atrocity, risks complicity in these underlying abuses. That not only sends the wrong message, that not only undermines the protection of Israeli and Palestinian civilians, but it undermines the very international human rights and humanitarian law that the United States mobilizes and cites when it comes to places like Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. Undermining the protection of civilians, the use of double standards in Israel-Palestine harms civilians everywhere in the world.

The Biden administration has the chance to make the right choice here to begin to match some of its recent words with action, and we hope the United States will not veto today’s resolution. Doing so will be incredibly damaging to civilians on the ground and to the United States in its position globally.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but this issue of starvation is not only being raised by Human Rights Watch. World Food Programme warned of the immediate possibility of starvation on December 6th. You have this high risk of famine right through to now. As we wrap up, what this means? We just heard our previous guest talking about what’s happened to his children, from disease to hunger. Your final comment?

OMAR SHAKIR: Look, you have a reality where nine out of 10 households in north Gaza have gone — you have a reality where nine of 10 households, according to the World Food Programme, in north Gaza have been without food for a whole day and a whole night. Imagine families that have to spend hours or more a day just to be able to get a couple of pieces of bread to feed their family. We’re seeing hundreds of bodies pile up a day in airstrikes. We risk seeing that or more in the days ahead if there isn’t urgent action by world leaders to end these atrocities. We’ve been on the wrong side of this.

AMY GOODMAN: Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch, we thank you so much for being with us.

[admin]

“This Is a Colonial War”: Historian Rashid Khalidi on Israel, Gaza & the Future of Palestine
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 20, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/20 ... transcript

Historian Rashid Khalidi discusses the pending United Nations Security Council vote on suspending fighting in Gaza to allow the entry of humanitarian aid, and the future of Palestine. The Biden administration reportedly delayed the U.N. vote and pushed other countries to water down the language. This comes as Israel and Hamas leaders have signaled they are open to another truce and hostage exchange. Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza has now killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians and displaced over 90% of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people. “The situation in Gaza is unspeakable,” says Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. “We are talking about traumatic events that are going to scar generations to come.” He also discusses how the Gaza war risks sparking a regional conflict, ways to pressure Israel, and how U.S. leaders are prompting anger from “whole generations” in the Arab world and beyond.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: The head of Hamas’s political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, has arrived in Cairo, Egypt, for talks as hopes grow that a new deal could be reached for a ceasefire and the release of more hostages. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza began 75 days ago, on October 7th, just hours after Hamas’s attack on Israel. Health authorities in Gaza say at least 19,600 Palestinians have been killed so far. Thousands are feared to be still trapped under the rubble.

Just before this broadcast, Israel struck residential buildings in the southern city of Rafah near the Kuwaiti Special Hospital. A reporter from Al Jazeera, Hani Mahmoud, was on the air when the attack occurred.

HANI MAHMOUD: As we’re getting into — ooh! Oh my god! Did you hear that?

ANCHOR: Yes. Yes, we did, Hani.

HANI MAHMOUD: Oh my god! Oh, that’s the hospital! That’s the hospital! That’s the hospital! Oh my god! Are you guys hearing this?

ANCHOR: Yes, we are. We are hearing that, Hani. Are you — are you OK?

HANI MAHMOUD: Are you hearing that? All the debris.

ANCHOR: Are you — are you in a safe place to continue to talk to us?

HANI MAHMOUD: Why? Why? Why?

AMY GOODMAN: “Why? Why?” Hani Mahmoud asks, the Al Jazeera reporter. Al Jazeera reports the Israeli attack destroyed a large mosque in Rafah, as well as two residential homes. Israeli drones had been seen in the sky just before the strikes. Earlier, an Israeli attack on the Jabaliya refugee camp killed at least 46 Palestinians and wounded dozens.

The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote on a new Gaza resolution today. The vote was postponed Tuesday after the United States voiced opposition to a draft of the resolution. On December 8th, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for ceasefire.

This all comes as tension is growing in the Red Sea. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has announced the U.S. will lead a new military task force to protect ships in the Red Sea following a number of attacks by Houthi forces from Yemen.

We’re joined now by Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University here in New York. He’s the author of several books, including his latest, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. His recent opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times is headlined “How the U.S. has fueled Israel’s decades-long war on Palestinians.”

Professor Khalidi, I’m wondering if you can start off by just talking about the situation overall in Gaza? Your family is from the West Bank. You also have family in Gaza. And I want to just point out that I particularly talked about, named the journalist with Al Jazeera, Hani Mahmoud, because it has been so horrifying to only name journalists after they have been killed, and so many scores of them have died. Hani Mahmoud’s bravery is astounding as we watch him through the Gaza Strip and today in the midst of this attack. Take it from there, Professor Khalidi.

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, he’s very fortunate that he’s still alive. Over 90 journalists have been killed in Gaza since — we’re now in the 11th week of this war. Two hundred and eighty-three healthcare workers have been killed. A hundred and thirty-five United Nations workers have been killed. It’s the highest death toll the United Nations has ever suffered in its entire history. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You cited a number of 20,000 people earlier, apparently having been killed. Probably the number is much higher, because there are so many thousands of people buried under the rubble or missing. And we will probably not know the final death toll until many, many months from now, when operations to remove the ruins of the buildings that have been destroyed are completed.

The situation in Gaza is unspeakable. What we hear from my niece’s family there is — I can’t describe it. It’s beyond belief. People are scrambling for the basic necessities of life and are sometimes not finding them — firewood to heat water and cook, enough water for everybody to have sufficient water to drink, let alone wash. I could go on. It is unspeakable. It is intolerable.

And the tragic thing about it is that this is clearly intended. Neither our government nor the Israeli government recognize the fact that what is happening there is causing this immiseration of over 2 million people. And this could easily be stopped, and should be stopped. I can’t — I can’t — I can’t understand how this country can allow this to continue. The idea that going after Hamas entails the destruction of more than half of the housing in Gaza, the idea that going after Hamas entails the wounding of 50,000 people and the killing of 20,000, is just — it’s incomprehensible to me that our government can be so callous and can be so determined not to separate itself from Israel, as far as this basic — the basic nature of this war, which is really directed against the people of Gaza. Over 2 million people have been forced to leave their homes. This is the largest displacement in Palestinian history. The killing of 20,000 people, almost half of whom are children, is unprecedented in Palestinian history. So we are talking about traumatic events that are going to scar generations to come. And this doesn’t seem to be a matter of concern to our government, let alone the government of Israel.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Professor Khalidi, we’ve seen massive, unprecedented demonstrations in support of the Palestinians throughout the world. A majority of governments in the General Assembly, overwhelming majority, have called for a ceasefire, yet the Security Council continues to be a roadblock, especially the United States. Can you talk about what this is doing to the legitimacy of the U.N. itself?

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, I think it’s harming the United Nations, but I think it’s also harming the legitimacy of the United States’ position. It’s not the Security Council that’s blocking action. It’s the U.S. government that’s blocking action. There was one abstention, 13 votes in favor last time that a ceasefire resolution was before the Security Council. And they spent three days trying to get a resolution which involves not a ceasefire, but a humanitarian pause, and the United States has been obstructing that, as I’ve said, for three days. So, I think this is going to harm not just the United Nations, because it’s manifestly helpless in the face of this catastrophe; it’s harming the United States.

There is overwhelming support the world over for ending this. There is overwhelming support, sympathy, the world over for the Palestinians. There is — I think the polls show very strong support even in the United States for ending this war, and at the very least for stopping what’s going on so that humanitarian aid can get in. And the administration is clearly impervious to all of this. And I think the mainstream media, frankly, are complicit in this. Nobody knows that four major trade unions have come out for a ceasefire: the United Auto Workers, the nurses, the electricians and the postal workers. The New York Times, for example, has not deigned to mentioned that. Well, that’s a large chunk of labor. We’re talking about a great deal of anger and opposition to the Biden administration’s policy among wide swaths of the American people. And they just plow on as if none of this mattered. I find it very hard to explain, frankly.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about — there have been numerous media reports of attacks on U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq, that are threatening to expand the conflict beyond just the Occupied Territories and Gaza. But what the heck are U.S. troops still doing in those two countries? Has Congress authorized their presence there? Do the governments of those countries even want them there?

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, the government of Syria, the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, certainly doesn’t want them there. And the pretext for their being in Syria [inaudible] against the Islamic State. I don’t think there is any authorization for their being there. The troops that are in Iraq are supposedly engaged in training the Iraqi army but there’s a great deal of opposition in Iraq, even though the Iraqi government has accepted their presence there. There’s a great deal of opposition in the Iraqi parliament to the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq.

And I think what we’re seeing are attacks, whether from Yemen on shipping or firing missiles at Israel or attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq or in Syria, which are a response to what Israel is doing in Gaza. And the same is true, obviously, of the fighting that’s going on between Hezbollah and the Israeli army along Israel’s northern frontiers. The fear is that this will — that this could possibly be expanded, that this could become a regional war. So far, we are now in the 11th week of this war, since the 7th of October. And so far, that fear has been — or, that possibility has been contained. But it is always there. And it would lead to, I think, possibly terrible consequences, were the war to expand beyond its already quite horrific level in Gaza and were that to spark a further increase of fighting on the Lebanese border, in Syria, Iraq or out of Yemen.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about also what’s happening in the Red Sea? You have a dozen corporations who say they won’t ship their goods through the Red Sea. You have U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announcing a 10-nation coalition to protect trading interests there, including Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the U.K., the Seychelles; Houthi officials saying that their drone and missile attacks will continue as long as Israel bombards Gaza.

RASHID KHALIDI: There is enormous anger in the Arab world about what is happening in Gaza. Things that Americans don’t see, or don’t see enough of, the scenes of what is actually happening in Gaza, are being watched all over the Arab world, and across much of the world. And the anger that people have and their frustration at the unwillingness of their governments to do more to try and stop this is palpable. In Saudi Arabia, people can’t demonstrate. In some countries, they can demonstrate. But you talk to anybody in any of these countries, and public opinion is boiling. And the passivity of Arab governments in the face of this, their unwillingness to actually take action, I think, is — contrasts with Hezbollah, militias in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen actually engaging militarily in doing something.

And I think it is really time for countries that want to have to ceasefire to begin to group together, whether Arab countries or European countries or countries in the Global South, to group together and say there will be X, Y, Z sanctions if this doesn’t stop. At the very least, if sufficient humanitarian aid, if sufficient field hospitals, if sufficient water and food and so forth are not allowed into Gaza, this and this and this will be done to Israel, which is responsible. And I think that there are countries that could do this, including Arab countries. Jordan has recalled its ambassador. Well, that’s not going to affect Israel very much. But stopping the transportation of food from the Gulf to Israel — apparently the Emiratis are shipping food to Israel — would actually affect Israel. Doing things that threaten diplomatic relations would have an impact. Now, that, in and of itself, is not enough, but I think a lot more has to be done.

The United Nations, as we can see, is paralyzed by the U.N. veto — by the U.S., I should say, veto. The General Assembly has done what it could, 153 to 10. You can’t have a more lopsided vote than that. I think more has to be done to bring home to people in Washington, in particular, that this is unacceptable and actually unsustainable, that the possibility of this overflowing into regional conflagration, which is always there, is only part of the damage that is being done. Whole generations are being brought up angry at the United States, enraged at Israel, all over the region. And Israel is going to have to deal with this for decades to come. The United States is going to have to deal with this for decades to come. We are seen as complicit. These are American artillery shells, American bombs, American rockets, American planes, American helicopters, American artillery that are being used in this war. Twenty thousand people have been killed mainly with American weapons, mostly civilians, in Gaza. And people are not going to forget that, unfortunately. And I don’t see a sense of the impact of this in Washington. I don’t — I really think they live in some kind of a bubble, in some kind of a vacuum, in some kind of a fact-free space, where they don’t seem to understand the impact of all of this. What they are thinking and why they are thinking that is actually beyond me, as I’ve said.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you, Rashid Khalidi, about the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Egypt to discuss a possible new truce, The Wall Street Journal reporting Hamas is also in discussions with Palestinian rivals, like Fatah, about a possible joint scenario for ruling the West Bank and Gaza afterwards. Of course, Netanyahu is completely against this. If you can talk about the discussion of the hostage negotiations, where we have seen reports of possibly Marwan Barghouti — and if you can explain his significance — being released for a number of Israeli soldiers released? Talk about all of this that’s going on right now, so people can understand what’s next.

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, that’s a big — that’s a big — that’s a big number — that’s a large number of questions.

I think the first thing, the hostage issue. There has been a huge problem around the hostages, because what Hamas has been demanding up until now is essentially an all-for-all exchange, all of the prisoners and hostages. I mean, some of the hostages are military, and many of them are civilians. And what they’ve been saying, apparently, from what we can tell from press reports, is that if you want all of the hostages, you’re going to have to release all of the prisoners. And that is one possibility, I think unlikely. And one of the prisoners who could, therefore, be released is Marwan Barghouti, who’s a senior Fatah leader who was convicted of multiple murders, by an Israeli military court that he never recognized, and who might well be a candidate for president who could win a majority of Palestinian votes.

I think the other issue — and there are other possibilities as far as hostages are concerned — for example, release of all the civilian hostages in exchange for a certain number of prisoners. And I have no idea where that negotiation is going. Some Israeli press reports indicate that the Israeli government is talking about progress, when there hasn’t actually been progress, in order to decrease the pressure of hostage families, who are demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners in order to get their loved ones home. I think the broader question is —

AMY GOODMAN: Especially after Israel killed three of the hostages from Israel.

RASHID KHALIDI: Accidentally, exactly, yes. And many others apparently have been killed in the bombing. And released hostages have said, “We were terrified for our lives because of the bombing that was going on.” I’ve read accounts in the Israeli press from released hostages, who’ve talked about how — the kind of danger that they were in, not so much from their captors as from the possibility that they would be killed by the Israeli bombardments.

The other aspect of this is the political aspect. Hamas has a position in Palestinian politics that is not going to be eradicated, no matter what Israel does in Gaza. If Israel entirely defeats Hamas’s entire military network, infrastructure, if it kills every single fighter — these are, of course, probably unrealistic, but even assuming that they can do that, Hamas continues as a political movement. Hamas continues to have support among Palestinians — not majority support, according to almost every poll I’ve ever seen, but a certain amount of support. If the — when and if the Palestinians manage to put together a government — and, you know, everybody else is going to try and do it for them. The United States is going to try and impose its intentions on them. The Israeli government will undoubtedly try and do the same. And the Europeans, in their colonial way, will probably try and do the same, telling the Palestinians what’s good for them and telling them who they can have and not have in their government. But when and if the Palestinians can get their own act together and form some kind of, for example, reformed PLO, there is no way to exclude Hamas from that. This idea that Hamas, because of what it did on October 7th, is completely excluded from Palestinian governance is a fantasy, an Israeli, American, European fantasy.

You do not negotiate with the people who have already agreed to your terms. You couldn’t do that in Ireland; you had to bring the IRA in. You couldn’t do that in South Africa; you had to bring the ANC in. You couldn’t do that in Algeria; you had to bring the FLN in. These are groups that had carried out horrific attacks, in many cases, on civilians. These are groups that were described by the colonial power in South Africa, in Algeria, in Ireland as terrorists or bandits, or they had different terms at different times. But the only people you really need to negotiate with are the people with the guns, after all. And until that fact gets through the thick skulls of people in Washington and in Paris and London, we’re not going anywhere. They can pick quislings. They can pick technocrats. They can select the Palestinians who are acceptable to them, who meet whatever tests, who get down on their knees and condemn Hamas, or whatever litmus test is imposed, and those people will represent nobody, will have no credibility, will have no legitimacy and will have no control over the situation.

And so, you are looking — barring an acceptance that you have to eventually deal with your real enemies, you are looking at a situation of unending Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, direct or indirect. You are looking at a situation which implies unending resistance to that occupation. How many people can they kill? If Israel claims that there are 25,000 or 30,000 militants, armed militants, in Hamas, how many of them can they kill? Ten, 12, 11, 15? There will eventually be others, people who are still there. And that means that an imposed solution, with Israel continuing to operate in the Gaza Strip, which it has said it intends to do, will provoke continued resistance. So, nothing will be solved.

And the reconstruction and the end of the misery of the people of Gaza can’t take place until those kinds of changes, from occupation to some kind of Palestinian governance, takes place. And I don’t see — you read The Washington Post, David Ignatius. The idea that Arab countries are going to go in and do Israel and the United States’s dirty work for them is a fantasy. The Emiratis and the Saudis and the Egyptians and the Jordanians will not go in and govern on behalf of Israel. It is not going to happen. There has to be Palestinian governance of Palestinian territories.

And that is going to have to, one way or another, involve all the groups within the Palestinian political spectrum. The Palestinians have been divided by their own, you know, for reasons that have to do with Palestinian dysfunction, but they’ve also been divided by the divide-and-rule policies of the United States, Israel and the Europeans. As long as that continues, this festering sore will continue, and there will be violence. And it will not only be violence caused by hard men in Hamas. It will be violence caused by the horrors visited on the Palestinians by 56 years of occupation, by 75 years of colonialism, and the fact that people, inevitably, necessarily, resist occupation. You have to — they have to come to terms, sooner or later, with the fact — in Washington and in Israel, with the fact that Palestinian governance is a matter to be decided by Palestinians. And that is simply not in the mindset, if you read what comes out of Washington or what comes out of Israel, of our government or the Israeli government or many European governments.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Professor, we only have a couple of minutes left, but I wanted to ask you — you’ve said that there’s an unquestionable connection of Judaism and the Jewish people to the Holy Land, and yet that Israel — the Israeli state is a settler colonial project. And in your L.A. Times piece recently, you called it, the assault on Gaza, “the last colonial war of the modern age.” Could you elaborate?

RASHID KHALIDI: Right. Sure. I mean, this goes back to the nature of Zionism. Zionism is a national project, which distinguishes it from every other settler colonial movement, project. But at the same time, it was a self-identified colonial project. I mean, the Jewish Colonization Agency, the Palestinian Jewish Colonization Agency, is the term that that organization, which existed until 1958, applied to itself. That was something that was accepted by early Zionist leaders. They argued they had a claim to the Holy Land, there’s a connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. All of this is true, that there is such an attachment and such a connection, but Zionism is a European colonial project, backed by imperialism, British imperialism, and which intended to replace an Indigenous population with a Jewish population. As Ze’ev Jabotinsky said, “We want to transform Palestine into the land of Israel.” And that meant a demographic transformation, and that meant dispossession of the population and theft of their land, as happens in every settler colonial scenario. So, Israel is both the result of a national project, Zionism, and the result of a settler colonial project. There’s no — you can walk and chew gum at the same time. There’s actually no contradiction between it.

And it’s unique, in that it was not just an extension of a mother country’s population and sovereignty. It had its own independent ambitions: to establish a Jewish state, not a British state — came in under the protection of Britain, but it had its own aims, separate, independent aims. So, it’s a unique — it’s a unique phenomenon in the modern world. And it learned everything it did from the British. The Israeli army’s earliest leaders were trained by British colonial counterinsurgency specialists, to blow up houses over the heads of their residents, to shoot prisoners, to attack villages at night. This is British counterinsurgency, which was transmitted to Israeli — members of the Palmach and the Haganah in the 1930s in order for them to help the British fight the Palestinians. And those are the founders of the Israeli army. Moshe Dayan was trained by British counterinsurgency specialists. Yigal Allon, Yitzhak Sadeh, many of the leading figures in what became the Israeli army have that training. And Israel is using the laws left over, the 1945 Defense (Emergency) Regulations, under which people are put in administrative detention, no indictment, no trial, no conviction, nothing. They’re just put in jail and kept there. That’s a British 1945 emergency regulation. That’s a typical colonial instrument.

So, this is a colonial war, fought in order to maintain the supremacy of this group, which has taken the country over, at the expense of the Indigenous Palestinian population. The connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is, in my view, incontrovertible. But that, in and of itself, doesn’t justify the colonial methods that have been used in the establishment and the maintenance of Israel’s supremacy over now the entirety of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

AMY GOODMAN: Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, author of a number of books, including The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. We’ll link to your opinion piece for the L.A. Times, headlined “How the U.S. has fueled Israel’s decades-long war on Palestinians.”

Coming up, we look at how a group of Palestinian Christians are trapped in the Holy Family Church in Gaza, where a mother and daughter were shot dead this weekend by an Israeli sniper. Stay with us.

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Pope Condemns Israeli Killings of Palestinian Christians; Relative of 84-Year-Old Victim Mourns Her Death
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 20, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/20 ... transcript

As international outrage grows over Israeli attacks on churches in Gaza, we speak with Philip Farah, co-founder of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace. Israeli snipers shot dead an elderly woman and her adult daughter at the Holy Family Parish, a Catholic church, on Sunday. Pope Francis denounced the killings as “terrorism.” Farah’s elderly relative Elham Farah, a beloved music teacher and member of one of the oldest Christian families in Gaza, was killed by an Israeli sniper in November while sheltering outside the church. Israeli soldiers have also attacked Palestinian Christians elsewhere in Gaza as part of this “genocidal war,” says Farah. “There’s no other name for it.”

Transcript

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

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

“It is terrorism.” Those were the words of Pope Francis after an Israeli sniper shot dead two Christian women, an elderly woman and her adult daughter who tried to save her, at a Catholic church in Gaza City on Sunday. The shooting took place at the Holy Family Latin Parish, where scores of Palestinian Christians have been trapped with little food or water. The pope condemned the shooting in remarks Sunday.

POPE FRANCIS: [translated] And let us not forget our brothers and sisters suffering from war in Ukraine, Palestine, Israel and other conflict zones. May the approach of Christmas strengthen our commitment to open paths of peace. I continue to receive from Gaza very serious and painful news. Unarmed civilians are being bombed and shot at. And this has even happened inside the Holy Family Parish compound, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, and sick people with disabilities, and nuns. A mother and her daughter, Ms. Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter Samar Kamal Anton, were killed, and others wounded, by the snipers as they went to the bathroom. The house of Mother Teresa’s nuns was damaged, their generator hit. Some say it’s terrorism. It’s war. Yes, it’s war. It’s terrorism. That is why Scripture says that God stops war, breaks bows and breaks spears. Let us pray to the Lord for peace.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the pope this Sunday. British MP Layla Moran has also denounced Israel’s attacks on the Gaza City Catholic church. Some of her relatives are trapped inside.

LAYLA MORAN: I’ve spoken before in this House about my extended family who are in the Holy Family Parish Church in Zeitoun in Gaza. And the situation has been desperate for weeks, but now it’s descending. There are tanks outside the gates. There are soldiers and snipers pointing into the complex, shooting at anyone who ventures out. And the convent was bombed. On Saturday, two women were shot. They were simply trying to get to the toilet. There is no electricity. There is no clean water. And the update that I had last night was that they’re down to their last can of corn. I’m told, after pressure, that food has been delivered. But they’ve not seen it.

And when this began a week ago, the IDF soldiers ordered these civilians to evacuate against their will. Can the government confirm that it sees the forcible displacement of civilians as unacceptable? The people in this church, Mr. Speaker, are civilians. They have nothing to do with Hamas. They are nuns, orphans, disabled people. They are a small Christian community, and they know everyone. As the pope has said, and my family can confirm, it is categorically untrue to say Hamas are operating from there. This situation has been condemned by many. Will this government do so?

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Philip Farah. He is a co-founder of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace, has relatives sheltering in the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City, which has also come under attack. Last month, one of his relatives, Elham Farah, who was a beloved 84-year-old music teacher, daughter of a famed Palestinian poet, was killed by an Israeli sniper outside the Holy Family Church, where the mother and daughter were killed on Sunday by an Israeli sniper.

Philip Farah, can you describe what is happening there right now? And talk about this small Palestinian Christian community under siege. How is this happening?

PHILIP FARAH: Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Democracy Now!

Yes, three of my grandparents are from Gaza. I was raised in Jerusalem, but we had very strong connections to Gaza. There were many, many Palestinian Christian families in Gaza. It was a thriving community. Our relatives, the Medbaqs, the Tarazis, the Sabas, the Jahshan, Farah, including Farah, and Sayeghs, were a thriving community that lived in peace with their Muslim neighbors and even their Jewish neighbors. Back then, one of my granduncles was a greens merchant, and some of his best friends were Jewish greens merchants, as well. They were in the business of exporting barley, actually, to the United Kingdom for upgrading beer in breweries in the U.K.

Over the years, that community has dwindled to a tiny minority because of the horrible conditions that Israel has imposed on Gaza, especially — back in 2013, the number was 3,000, far, far smaller than it was, say, at the turn of the century. Now it’s only barely a thousand people. And they’re all sheltering in Saint Porphyrius, the Orthodox church. That is the church where my father, uncles and aunts and members of my extended family were baptized. So, many were sheltering in Saint Porphyrius. I think still some are. Four of my Tarazi relatives were killed there.

Elham actually was sheltering at Saint Porphyrius until the bombing that killed — the Israeli bombing that killed 18 Christians in that church. And then she moved to the Holy Cross, the Holy Family Church. She was a delightful 84-year-old woman, beloved of many students in Gaza. But she was strongheaded. And against the advice of her fellows who were sheltering there, she wanted to go home. She just simply wanted to go home. And she proceeded to do that. A sniper shot her in the leg. And folks who were trying to rescue her were all being shot at, so she bled to death. What could a woman like that, 84-year-old woman, have done to hurt Israelis?

So, you know, this is a continuing saga. Now the vast majority are sheltering in the Church of the Holy Family. And as you said, the snipers have shot two other elderly — well, Nahida, an elderly woman, and her daughter came to carry her, and she was shot and killed. And several others were also injured.

I have a relative by the name of Philip Jahshan. Actually, my family originally was Jahshan. Philip Jahshan is the only Gazan whom I’m able to reach through social media. He’s sheltering there. You know, for four days, I was worried about him and tried to reach him, but communications was shut down. Finally, I was able. He told me that he was OK. But, like you said, they have no food. And as you know, Israel has used water and food and electricity as part of its genocidal war. There’s no other name for it.

AMY GOODMAN: Philip, we want to continue this conversation after the broadcast, and we’re going to post it online. Philip Farah is co-founder of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace, has relatives sheltering in the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City, which was bombed by the Israeli military. Porphyrius is thought to be the third-oldest church in the world. Last month, his family member Elham Farah was killed by an Israeli sniper outside the Holy Family Church, where she had been taking refuge.

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“The Hostages Weren’t Our Top Priority”: Israel’s “Bombing Frenzy” Endangered Hostages Held in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 21, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/21 ... transcript

A new investigation reveals Israel launched its military campaign of relentless airstrikes, which has killed nearly 1% of the population of Gaza, with little intelligence about where hostages taken by Hamas were being held. Jerusalem-based journalist Yuval Abraham reports the military decided hostages were “just not a priority,” their safety “relegated in favor of carrying out this bombing campaign.” The revelation comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces increasing pressure to secure the release of the hostages after Israeli forces shot dead three Israeli hostages who managed to escape captivity in northern Gaza. Abraham lays out the “outrageous” differences between the media reaction to the IDF killing Israeli hostages rather than Palestinian civilians. “Really, at the heart of a lot of what is going on is this disparity between having some people whose lives have meaning and other people whose lives have no meaning for so many people in the West and in Israel.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Health officials in Gaza say the death toll from Israel’s 10-week bombardment has now topped 20,000, including more than 8,000 Palestinian children. Officials in Gaza say the death toll also includes 97 journalists and 310 healthcare workers.

On Wednesday, the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, traveled to Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials about a possible new ceasefire and the exchange of captives. Israel believes about 129 Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under increasing pressure to secure the release of more hostages, after Israeli forces mistakenly shot dead three Israeli hostages who managed to escape captivity in northern Gaza. The three men, who were all shirtless, were shot as they cried for help in Hebrew while holding up a white flag.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham. His latest article for +972 Magazine and Local Call is headlined “'The hostages weren't our top priority’: How Israel’s bombing frenzy endangered captives in Gaza.”

Yuval, if you can start off by talking about exactly what you understand happened? Now there is apparently a GoPro on a dog that captured what took place. The reaction of the Israeli public, and then what this means about the Netanyahu administration and how they’re dealing or prioritizing, or not, hostages?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah, sure, of course. So, these are three hostages — Yotam, Alon and Samir — one of them is a Palestinian Israeli, two of them Jewish Israelis — who somehow managed to escape their captivity. We don’t know how. And they roamed around Gaza for a few days. They have written in Hebrew on buildings, “Help,” in Hebrew, “Hostages are released.” They have, as you said, communicated the fact they were Israeli captives to a dog that — an army dog that had a GoPro camera.

And they were, I mean, essentially, executed by soldiers. One of them held a white flag. They took off their — they approached soldiers. They took off their clothes to show that they were not wearing any explosives. And soldiers opened fire at them, immediately killing two of them. The commander on the scene realized that they were perhaps Israelis, and told soldiers to stop firing. The third captive managed to run back to a building. And when he came out, soldiers shot at him again, killing him.

And yeah, I mean, I’ve heard — I mean, it’s being reported as a mistake that soldiers have made. I think that it was not a mistake when they thought they were Palestinians. I mean, clearly, you do not, you know, accidentally shoot at somebody who is holding a white flag. And, of course, it becomes a mistake when they realize they’re Israeli hostages.

And it shocked Israeli society. It triggered protests calling on the Netanyahu government to reach a deal with Hamas to release more captives and hostages. But currently, from the way I am reading both the political situation and the public situation, such a deal seems unlikely for now.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Yuval, could you explain why you think such a deal is unlikely? And then tell us what the intelligence sources you spoke to for your piece, what they told you about the concerns that hostages had, the fact that you write in this piece that Israeli hostages often said that they were more afraid of being killed by Israeli airstrikes than they were by Hamas.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah, of course. So, I think it’s unlikely, because I think Netanyahu politically is not going to be willing to pay the price that Hamas is asking, which is to reach a more substantial ceasefire, or perhaps a permanent ceasefire, and to release a lot of Palestinian prisoners, including people like Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sa’adat, who are considered to be Palestinian leaders, including many Palestinians who are serving, you know, long prison sentences in the occupation jails, some of them for killing Israeli civilians. And this will, you know, ruin Netanyahu politically, even more than he’s already ruined, which I think is why he will not do it and why he is making it clear publicly that he plans to continue the war for months.

And this relates to our investigation at +972 Magazine, because we have basically spoken to Israeli intelligence sources who have described how during the first weeks of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, the military knowingly carried out a striking policy, relentless bombardment policy, that not only decimated Gaza and killed thousands and thousands of Palestinians, but also endangered Israeli captives and hostages. And sources have told me, in intelligence, that at the time, they had very little intelligence as to where these captives were being held and that the general atmosphere was, in the top military commanders, is that the hostages are just not a priority, that their safety is relegated in favor of carrying out this bombardment campaign.

And as you said, you know, in the end of November, when captives were released from Gaza for the first time, many of them have described being hit by Israeli airstrikes or attacks, describing a fear, you know, this sort of traumatic fear, of feeling that the power that is supposed to supposedly protect you is actually a very, very, very big threat to your life, you know, talking about really being on the verge of death. And we know that in some cases hostages were hit by these Israeli attacks. Now, the conditions in the captivity of Hamas were horrific for some hostages, as well. We also cover that in the report. We also talk about testimonies of released captivities and sources inside the military of sexual assault against some of the captives. But a recurring theme in many of the testimonies of the captives is really being terrified from the Israeli airstrikes. And again, it seems that, at least for the first few weeks of the war, this was done knowingly, in a sense, by the military.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I mean, quite rightly, there has been a lot of emphasis on the Israeli hostages. But at the same time — you mentioned earlier Palestinian activist and politician Mustafa Barghouti — speaking to the BBC this morning, he talked about how Palestinian prisoners are not so much the focus of discussion. Some who were released from a detention center in northern [sic] Israel earlier, they said that they were — that they were tortured, and some died as a result. He was speaking to the BBC on Thursday.

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: They told me they were kept, more than 1,000 people, in detention or concentration camp near Beersheba, and they were beaten badly. They were tortured with different methods. Some people were hit with electrical shocks. They also used drowning their heads in the water while they were interrogating them intensively for hours. They are kept in a place which is very cold. They don’t have enough clothes. And the food they are given is very little. But the most important thing, that a number of prisoners that they witnessed died because of the beating and torture. Some of them were old people who had diseases, like heart diseases.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that’s Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, speaking earlier today to the BBC. And just a correction: The detention center where the Palestinian prisoners were held was in southern Israel, not northern. Yuval, your response?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah, it’s appalling. And I’ve seen these testimonies. I’ve also seen live testimonies of these Palestinians being released from Israeli interrogation. And honestly, to me, it reminded me of scenes that I saw of Jews in Eastern Europe, you know, in the '30s and ’40s. You see their hands are filled with bruises. They were handcuffed for hours. Some of them have died. They spoke about being electrified by soldiers, being beaten by soldiers, really torture. I mean, you could see on their faces. I mean, it's horrific.

And I think that — you know, you said at the start of the show that now it’s more than 20,000 Palestinians who were killed in Gaza, roughly 1% of the population. That’s unimaginable numbers. I mean, just to put it in some sort of proportion for audiences in the United States, 1% of the population in the U.S. is 3.3 million people being killed in 75 days.

And yeah, I agree with you that, in a way, I’ve heard Israeli journalists using the term “war crimes” for the first time after the three Israeli hostages were killed by soldiers. And obviously — obviously — soldiers thought that they were Palestinians, which is why they felt comfortable, it seems, to shoot somebody who was holding a white flag in their hand. And to me, it’s really outrageous how there is like two completely different sets of ways we look at the world, not according to the crime, but according to the victim of the crime. Because, you know, how many Palestinians were executed by Israeli soldiers? And how often does that happen without any response from journalists, without using words like “war crimes”? And I think, really, at the heart of a lot of what is going on is this disparity between having some people whose lives have meaning and other people whose lives have no meaning for so many people on the West and in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Yuval, I wanted to ask you about the number of prisoners being taken by Israel on the West Bank. We’re talking about something like 4,000 just since October 7th. Do you have the sense that they are just rounding up people because, as they negotiate a prisoner exchange, they’ll have more to give back? That’s one question. And the other is about Human Rights Watch’s report released today, “Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook,” people being systemically knocked off of Facebook and Instagram if they are posting about what’s happening to Palestinians.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah. So, you know, Israel has a long-standing policy of these mass arrests. We’ve seen them happening in the previous Gaza bombardments, also in 2021. Many of these — I think thousands of these Palestinian prisoners are held without trial, without charges being pressed against them. Even when charges are pressed, the system of the military occupation and the military judicial system is extremely unjust. Ninety-nine-point-four percent of the cases end up in indictment.

I’m not sure — I mean, I think part of it has to do with getting numbers. It seems very logical. I don’t have any inside information about it, but what you suggested seems logical. Again, I think that for the next prisoner exchange, Hamas will insist on releasing much more prominent Palestinian prisoners. So, unlike the last time, when, really, you know, you saw Palestinian prisoners being released after they spent a short time in prison, I think if — for a next hostage deal to take place, they will need to have more substantial Palestinian prisoners.

And, I mean, there is repression online. I know that there are Israeli ministries that are constantly working with Meta, with Facebook, with X, as well, and with Instagram to aid in this process. There have been reports about sort of this mass scanning that Israel does of social media to find posts to flag, in a way, for these international social media organizations. And yeah, the repression is taking place, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Yuval Abraham, I want to thank you for being with us, journalist based in Jerusalem who writes for +972 Magazine and Local Call. We’ll link to your new article, “'The hostages weren't our top priority’: How Israel’s bombing frenzy endangered captives in Gaza.”

Coming up, on Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council forced to postpone a vote for the third time on Gaza due to U.S. opposition. We’ll speak with Phyllis Bennis. Back in 20 seconds.

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“The U.S. and Israel Stand Alone”: World Demands Ceasefire as Gaza Death Toll Tops 20,000
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 21, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/21 ... transcript

President Joe Biden has called the over 20,000 Palestinian deaths from 75 days of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip “tragic,” while Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Israel’s military will be expected to shift to a “lower-intensity phase” of its assault on the territory. Phyllis Bennis, author and fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, says Biden must move from protecting and funding Israel’s war crimes to holding Israel accountable. “There’s no way that Israel feels compelled to respond to that until the requests become requirements, and the requirements come with conditions that make a difference,” says Bennis. At the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. continues to delay and threaten to veto measures calling for a ceasefire after days of negotiations. “Not only is the U.S. isolated at the United Nations, but the Biden administration, on this issue, is massively isolated within the United States itself,” says Bennis.

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: The United Nations Security Council has for the third time this week postponed a vote on a resolution calling for a halt to the fighting in Gaza and for Israel to allow shipments of food, water, fuel and medicine into the besieged territory. Several Security Council members have expressed frustration with the United States for repeatedly delaying votes and for threatening to once again veto any resolution.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, serves as an international adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace. Phyllis has written a number of books, including Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, her recent piece for In These Times headlined “The Christmas Truce of 1914 and the Demand for a Cease-Fire in Gaza.”

As we went to air today, Phyllis, there is no resolution at this point at the U.N. One is expected today, but we said that Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. If you can talk about what’s going on there? And then we can talk about that Christmas truce, as we move into the weekend.

PHYLLIS BENNIS: This is, in some ways, a very old story. The United States refuses to accept a globally demanded ceasefire in the context of Israeli assaults, particularly on Gaza. And we’ve seen it before; we’re seeing it again now. The U.S. is refusing to allow the term “cessation of hostilities.” They certainly will not allow the term “ceasefire” to be used. They want to talk about a suspension of hostilities, meaning just a temporary pause, like we saw two weeks ago, to allow in a certain amount of aid, reduce the pressure on Israel, get some of the hostages released, and then go back to the Israeli assault and kill more thousands of Palestinians presumably.

So what we’re looking at is the question of whether the other members of the Security Council will be able to persuade the U.S. — and I think this is very doubtful — to change their position and allow decent language about a real cessation of hostilities or a ceasefire. And if they don’t, will the council go ahead and force the United States to use its veto, something the U.S. does not like to do, or will it essentially collapse under its own pressure and simply withdraw the resolution and say, “Well, we couldn’t get the U.S. on board, so we’re not going to go forward”? The issue then becomes whether you’re letting the U.S. off the hook by saying, “We will simply” — excuse me — “We will simply withdraw the resolution,” or do you force the U.S. to use its veto, which then has consequences, including sending the resolution off to the General Assembly, where it passes under very particular conditions that can make it much more influential and, by some arguments by legal scholars, perhaps enforceable, like a Security Council resolution would be? So that’s where the council is right now.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Phyllis, so, if you could explain that? Because normally a General Assembly vote is not legally binding in the way that a Security Council vote is —

PHYLLIS BENNIS: Right.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: — which is why there’s so much emphasis on what the Security Council does.

PHYLLIS BENNIS: The particularity here, Nermeen, is that when the U.S. or any other of the five permanent members of the council actually uses a veto, a new regulation at the U.N., that was passed a couple of years ago, requires that the General Assembly then meet within 10 days to take up that same issue. You know, ordinarily, this is very closely held. The Security Council deals with threats to peace and security around the world. The General Assembly can deal with everything else. But when one of the five permanent members — in this case, of course, the United States — uses its veto on an issue of peace and security, under those conditions, the General Assembly is required to hold an emergency session. And it’s held under what’s known in the U.N. as “Uniting for Peace” precedent. This was something the U.N. was forced to accept back in 1951 at the instigation, ironically, of the United States. It’s how the U.S. got the United Nations to endorse its war in Korea. And under those conditions, the decisions made by the General Assembly, which officially are considered nonbinding, not enforceable, take on additional power, because it’s derivative of United Nations Security Council power. So, the decisions are uncertain, whether it’s really enforceable, but it’s a much stronger resolution in the General Assembly if it follows a veto in the Security Council. That’s one of the big reasons why the United States does not like to use its veto, if it can avoid it.

The other reason, of course, is that it shows the world just how isolated the United States now is. The U.S. and Israel stand alone. The vote in the General Assembly on a very similar resolution was 153 countries, out of 193, who voted “yes,” and only 10 countries, including the U.S. and Israel, voted “no.” And under those circumstances, it really demonstrates the isolation of the U.S. And that’s not something that the Biden administration is eager to be showing up again.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, if you could say, Phyllis — I mean, talk about the significance of U.S. support. Explain why it’s so strident, despite what’s happening in Gaza, and also the fact that when Biden did lightly criticize Israel for its indiscriminate bombardment, saying that it was losing international support, the Israeli foreign minister very quickly said that Israel would continue, quote, “with or without international support.” Your response to that?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: Yeah.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I mean, is that accurate, you think?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: Right. Well, I think what is true is that the United States has made a number of polite requests of the Israeli government. They have said, “Please stop killing so many people. What you’re doing is OK. Using massive bombardment is OK. But try and pull back a little bit. Maybe change the tactics of the ground invasion so that you’re not killing quite so many civilians. It doesn’t look good.” But there are no consequences when the Israeli response, as you just said, from Prime Minister Netanyahu or others is simply, “No, we’re going to continue what we’re doing.”

There’s no way that Israel feels compelled to respond to that until the request become requirements, and the requirements come with conditions that make a difference, so that when the United States says, “You’ve got to stop bombing Gaza. You’re killing civilians, and it’s illegal under international law. You’ve got to stop,” and Israel says, “Nope, we’re going to continue,” then the next sentence out of the mouth of President Biden or Secretary of State Blinken, or whoever is relaying that message, is, “OK. Then, you know those billions of dollars we send to your military every year? You can kiss that goodbye. And you know how we’ve been protecting you at the International Criminal Court so you’re never held accountable for war crimes? We’re not doing that anymore.” So, those are the kinds of things that will begin to have a real impact on Israel. As long as the Israelis are clear that the Biden position of what we might call bear hug diplomacy, where the symbolism of his embrace, physically and politically, of Netanyahu and the Israeli state is “We have your back. We will protect you no matter what, but please make a few amendments,” they have no reason to take that seriously —

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn —

PHYLLIS BENNIS: — because the U.S. doesn’t express it seriously.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, speaking Wednesday in D.C. at a State Department briefing.

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: I hear virtually no one saying — demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that. This would have been over a month ago, six weeks ago, if Hamas had done that. And how could it be — how can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor and only demands made of the victim?

AMY GOODMAN: Phyllis Bennis, your response?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: You know, it’s ironic that the secretary of state of Israel’s biggest supporter, the provider of 20% of its entire military budget, among other things, will move forward to say that it’s — that there’s the need for the people of Gaza — because this war is against the people of Gaza. It is not just against Hamas. That’s simply not the case. The notion that the U.S. is saying that the demand should be made on Hamas, when it’s been the United States’ backing of Israel that has allowed Israel to impose a siege on Gaza for 17 years? We should be clear: This siege did not begin on October 7th. It was escalated after the atrocities that were committed on October 7th, for sure. But this had been going on for 17 years, harshly enough that 20% of all children in Gaza were stunted by the age of 2 because they could not get sufficient food necessary for children to thrive. That was way before October 7th. So, we have to look at this in the context of the ongoing war that Israel has been waging in Gaza, against Gaza, against the people of Palestine. And it’s a war that has become genocidal in its impact. So, this notion that Secretary of State Blinken, who is desperately trying to divert the focus of U.S. outrage, global outrage at Israel and at the United States for enabling the Israeli war crimes to continue, he’s using every possibility that he can.

The negotiations are underway between Israel and Hamas in Cairo, with Egypt and Qatar as interlocutors. There’s other negotiations underway, of course, at the United Nations, as we’ve been discussing. But the bottom line is that Israel has killed 20,000 people, 70% of them children and women. And that doesn’t even count the thousands of people that have been killed under the rubble when Israeli bombs have destroyed buildings and homes over people’s bodies. So we’re looking at something that has never happened at this scale in this century. And that has to be our focus. That’s why we need a ceasefire. You’re not going to be able to protect the hostages and bring them home without a ceasefire. You’re not going to be able to bring in sufficient aid to make it possible to stop what is now real starvation in Gaza. We have not seen that before, even under the siege. We have not seen actual starvation. And now the United States — sorry, the United Nations World Food Programme is saying that more than half of the families in Gaza are starving and that 90% are food insecure. That doesn’t exist anywhere in the world right now, where 50% of a population is starving. And that’s what has to stop. And that’s why we need a ceasefire, to end those realities.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Phyllis, we just have a minute. If you could respond to The New York Times/Siena poll that was released earlier this week, where it’s clear that the majority of Americans are opposed to the Biden administration’s policy, but, in a perplexing finding, a number of them say that they would, in the 2024 election, vote for Trump instead as a result?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: I can’t explain it. I don’t know exactly what the question was that they asked, and that’s always a key part of how they get answers like this. But I think what’s key is the first thing you said, Nermeen. There is massive opposition in this country to what the Biden administration is doing. Eighty percent of Democrats, President Biden’s own party, want a ceasefire now. We’re seeing massive opposition within the State Department, within the White House. The White House interns, these young ambitious students, high school and college students, the youngest of the federal workforce, came out publicly and said, “We are not the leaders of today, but we aspire to lead in the future, and we cannot stand by and watch this genocide being perpetuated by Israel with our support.” That’s extraordinary. That’s never been seen before in this country. And that’s why we say that not only is the U.S. isolated at the United Nations, but the Biden administration, on this issue, is massively isolated within the United States itself.

AMY GOODMAN: Phyllis Bennis, we want to thank you for being with us, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, international adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace. We’ll link to your new piece in In These Times, “The Christmas Truce of 1914 and the Demand for a Cease-Fire in Gaza.”

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Christmas Canceled in Bethlehem as Churches Mourn 20,000+ Palestinians Killed in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 22, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/22 ... transcript

In “mourning and honor” of Palestinians killed in Gaza, the city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, has announced the cancellation of traditional Christmas festivities. In Bethlehem, we’re joined by the president of Dar al-Kalima University, Reverend Mitri Raheb. Reverend Raheb relates the story of Jesus, a refugee whose mother had no place to safely give birth, to the plight of displaced Gazans facing a dearth of medical care. “The Christmas story actually is a Palestinian story, par excellence,” he tells us, yet “we don’t hear the Christian community actually doing much about the atrocity happening in Gaza today.” As the world turns its back on the ongoing genocide, Rehab says he fears this could be “the end of the Christian presence in Gaza.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Christmas has been canceled in Bethlehem. As the death toll tops 20,000 in Gaza, we begin today’s show in the occupied West Bank — yes, in the city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ. The Christmas season is normally a festive time in Bethlehem, but not this year, as church leaders have canceled public Christmas festivities, citing Israel’s devastating attack on Gaza.

This is the Reverend Isaac Munther, the Palestinian pastor of a landmark Lutheran church in Bethlehem. He addressed his congregation earlier this month in front of a nativity scene with the figure of Jesus Christ in a keffiyeh, surrounded by rubble.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: [translated] Christmas is a ray of light and hope from the heart of pain and suffering. Christmas is the radiance of life from the heart of destruction and death. In Gaza, God is under the rubble. He is in the operating room. If Christ were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble. I invite you to see the image of Jesus in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble, in every child struggling for life in destroyed hospitals, in every child in incubators. Christmas celebrations are canceled this year, but Christmas itself is not and will not be canceled, for our hope cannot be canceled.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Reverend Isaac Munther, the Palestinian pastor of a landmark Lutheran church in Bethlehem. He spoke in front of a nativity scene with the figure of Christ surrounded by rubble, the baby Jesus.

Earlier this week, Pope Francis accused Israel of committing terrorism in Gaza, after an Israeli sniper shot dead two women — an elderly woman and her adult daughter who had tried to save her mother — at a Catholic church in Gaza City where they had sought refuge. It was the Holy Family Parish church.

Politico reports Israel recently attacked a church and a convent in Gaza, even though congressional staffers in Washington had urged Israel to protect the religious sites and gave them the coordinates of the churches.

We go now to Bethlehem, where we’re joined by the Reverend Mitri Raheb. He’s president of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, Palestinian Christian theologian who’s authored many books, including Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, the People, the Bible.

It’s hard to say “Merry Christmas” to you, Reverend Professor Dr. Mitri Raheb. But I will ask you how you’re observing Christmas this year. Talk about Bethlehem.

REV. MITRI RAHEB: You know, it’s a very sad Christmas. I don’t think in my entire life I experienced so much sadness, but also so much anger about what’s happening in Gaza. As you said, the celebration — I mean, the festivities were canceled in Bethlehem, so you don’t have Christmas lights. You don’t have a Christmas tree in Bethlehem. There are no tourists coming, because of the war. And the people are not up for celebrations, because our people in Gaza, but not only our people in Gaza, also our people in the West Bank, we here in the West Bank, we’re experiencing apartheid, colonization by Jewish settlers. And, you know, the death toll’s, as you said, 20,000 in Gaza, but also even in the West Bank in the hundreds. And also the detainees, Palestinian detainees, within these 75 days in the West Bank are over 3,000.

AMY GOODMAN: You have said that the story of Christmas, the story of the birth of Jesus, is more relevant now than ever, even though you will not be having festivities around this.

REV. MITRI RAHEB: Correct, because the Christmas story actually is a Palestinian story, par excellence. It talks about a family in Nazareth, in the north of Palestine, that is ordered by an imperial decree of the Romans to evacuate to Bethlehem, to go there and register. And this is exactly what our people in Gaza has been experiencing these 75 days. It talks about Mary, the pregnant woman, on the run, exactly like 50,000 women in Gaza who are actually displaced. Jesus was born actually as a refugee. There was no place at the inn for him to be born, so he was put in a manger. And this is exactly what also the kids that are coming to life these days in Gaza are experiencing. You know, most of the hospitals are damaged, out of service, and so there is no delivery places for all of these pregnant women in Gaza. And then you have the bloodthirsty Herod that ordered to kill the kids in Bethlehem to stay in power. And in Gaza, over 8,000 kids, they have been murdered for Netanyahu to stay in power.

And you have this message that the angels declared here, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on Earth,” which was actually a critique of the empire, because glory belongs to the Almighty and not to the mighty. And the peace that Jesus came to proclaim is not the peace, the Pax Romana, the peace that is based on subjugation and military operation, but on human dignity, equality and justice. And this is actually what we call for. And I have to say I find it really a shame that in this season, where every church hears these words, “peace on Earth,” that the United States is vetoing even a ceasefire. It’s a shame.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about this report in Politico, “Congressional staff tried to protect Gazan churches by sending locations to Israel.” That’s the headline. Now, you’re in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, and this is about Gaza. “The Israeli military received and confirmed the coordinates of the church and covenant in Gaza, both of which aid groups say were later struck by rockets and snipers.” It goes on to say, “The Holy Family church in Gaza was struck last weekend. The location of the church was included on a list of coordinates provided to the Israeli military by aid organizations and staffers on Capitol Hill in an effort to protect those sheltering there.” We reported in the last few days, among others, about the mom, the elderly mother, and her daughter, who were sheltering at the Holy Family church. This is what the pope referred to when he talked about Israel engaging in terrorism. First, the mo was hit. The daughter carries her, and then she’s hit. This is Pope Francis speaking on his 87th birthday at the Vatican Sunday.

POPE FRANCIS: [translated] And let us not forget our brothers and sisters suffering from war in Ukraine, Palestine, Israel and other conflict zones. May the approach of Christmas strengthen our commitment to open paths of peace. I continue to receive from Gaza very serious and painful news. Unarmed civilians are being bombed and shot at. And this has even happened inside the Holy Family Parish compound, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, and sick people with disabilities, and nuns. A mother and her daughter, Ms. Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter Samar Kamal Anton, were killed, and others wounded, by the snipers as they went to the bathroom. The house of Mother Teresa’s nuns was damaged, their generator hit. Some say it’s terrorism. It’s war. Yes, it’s war. It’s terrorism. That is why Scripture says that God stops war, breaks bows and breaks spears. Let us pray to the Lord for peace.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the pope speaking on his 87th birthday. I want to go on with this Politico piece. It says, “A church and a convent … were struck in Gaza … listed among Christian facilities congressional staffers had flagged to Israeli authorities for protection — according to a series of emails from October. The emails, which were obtained by POLITICO, show an increasingly frenzied back-and-forth between Catholic Relief Services — one of the largest Christian aid organizations in Gaza — and Senate staff over an effort to get a commitment from Israel to avoid targeting a number of buildings where its staff and civilians were sheltering.” They would ultimately be attacked. Reverend Mitri Raheb, your response?

REV. MITRI RAHEB: You know, Israel have been attacking churches, mosques, hospitals, schools, universities. Believe it or not, 11 universities were destroyed in this war. Over 200 schools were destroyed. Most of the hospitals, except nine, are out of service right now because of Israeli attacks on them.

But let’s come to the churches. You know, this is not the first attack, that happened last Saturday, that the pope talked about, because the first attack on a Christian institution happened to the Ahli Hospital, a so-called Baptist hospital, that belong actually to the Anglican Church. And then Israel had an airstrike on the Greek Orthodox church, Saint Porphyrius, where they destroyed fully the assembly hall of that church, where 50 Christians were having refuge. Twenty were killed, and 14 were injured. And then Israel destroyed a brand-new state-of-the-art Arab Orthodox cultural and social center. It costed $6 million. It was inaugurated just a few months ago. And it was made to rubbles. It doesn’t exist anymore. You cannot see it anymore. And then Israel attacked the Rosary Sister, another Catholic school.

This last week, they attacked — and the Pope spoke about it — actually a rehabilitation center for children with disability, that is run by the Sisters of Mother Teresa. And they attacked again last week the Ahli Hospital, that is now almost out of service, beside the sniper killing these two, the older woman with her daughter, within the Holy Family compound. And you know what? When some other parishioners in that compound wanted to go out to help them and to save them, Israel launched a missile on them, and 10 people from that parish were injured in that missile attack. I’m, on daily basis, in contact with those two parishes to see how they are doing. And I tell you, just a few hours ago, I received again another cry for help that that compound, the Holy Family compound, is surrounded by Israeli tanks, and Israeli snipers are all around on the rooftops of the neighboring buildings.

And this is just two days before Christmas. These are the Christmas gifts of Israel for the Christian community in Gaza. And I fear that this is the end of the Christian presence in Gaza. And, you know, the Christian presence in Gaza is a 2,000-years-old presence. I mean, these are not new converts. Christianity came to Gaza already in the first century. And throughout the last 20 centuries, there was a living Christian work there, and actually an affluent Christian community in Gaza. And I think this community is going to be extinct because of Israel war on Gaza. Three percent of the Christian community in Gaza was murdered in these 75 days. Three percent.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you — and we played this earlier in the week — the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, recently appearing on British news program LBC and claiming, in fact, there are no Christians in Gaza.

NICK FERRARI: Why is it necessary? It would — is reported to start shooting, having snipers outside a church.

FLEUR HASSAN-NAHOUM: I don’t — I saw the report this morning. The church — there are no churches in Gaza. So I’m not quite sure where the report —

NICK FERRARI: Well —

FLEUR HASSAN-NAHOUM: — is talking about.

NICK FERRARI: There’s a Catholic Church in there, isn’t there? That is in —

FLEUR HASSAN-NAHOUM: Yeah, unfortunately, there are no Christians, because they were driven out by Hamas.

NICK FERRARI: Well, there are — respectfully, there are Christians, because I spoke to an MP yesterday who has family members in the church who are Christians.

FLEUR HASSAN-NAHOUM: Well, I don’t know what happened.

NICK FERRARI: Unless you’re telling me she’s wrong.

FLEUR HASSAN-NAHOUM: I don’t know who was attacked. I didn’t see the report.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum speaking on the British news program LBC. Your response, Reverend?

REV. MITRI RAHEB: You know, I mean, we are unfortunately used to Israeli lies and fake news that they keep spreading. You know, how they cannot know that there are a Christian community in Gaza? I mean, you spoke before that they got the coordinates of the two churches, like they get also the coordinates of the hospitals. And remember, these Christians, every year, were applying for permits to come over Christmas to Bethlehem. So the Israeli authorities, they know everyone by name, by picture, by age, by gender. Again, but these are the lies.

And do you know why Israel can do all of this? Because they are impune. Nobody, because of the American veto, brings them, actually, and makes them responsible for what they are doing. And now they actually are destroying all of Gaza. And guess who will pay for it. They will call some Arab countries or Europe or others to rebuild Gaza. Once Israel is made responsible for its atrocities, they will stop doing that.

And for me, as a pastor, I have to say, you know, imagine — imagine if a synagogue was attacked and 20 Jewish worshipers in a synagogue were killed by an airstrike by any country. The whole Christian world will be in uproar. Unfortunately, we don’t hear the Christian community actually doing much about the atrocity happening in Gaza today.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Raheb, I wanted to ask you about your latest book, Decolonizing Palestine, which challenges the weaponization of biblical text to support of the current settler colonial state of Israel. That’s how it’s described. And I was wondering if you could comment on: Some of the most adamant supporters of the Israeli military are U.S. evangelicals, and some of the fiercest critics are progressive Jews, like Jewish Voice for Peace. And if you could comment on both?

REV. MITRI RAHEB: Yes. Actually, in this book, I try to show that, actually, the current state of Israel, in its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, is actually a settler colonial project. And a settler colonial project means these are settlers, that they come, in this case from Europe mainly, to settle permanently in another country, not to live with the native people, but to replace the native people and to drive them out of their own country. And to do that, they have to create a policing state, and they have to demonize the native people as savage, as terrorists, as backwards, as human animals — as you are hearing from Israeli politicians right now.

And actually, if you heard Netanyahu when he said that the Israeli troops are entering Gaza, that same day in October, late October, he quoted the Bible and talked about Amalek. And that is from 1 Samuel 15:3, where God is telling Saul to go and extinct the whole Amalek community, not to spare man, woman, elderly, child, even ox and sheep. And so this is a call for genocide. And this is, again, a settler colonial tool, that was done in North America. It was done in South Africa. It was done in many other countries. So, what happened in the United States 400 years ago to the Native Americans is happening to Palestinians today in Gaza. So this is what I’m talking about.

And this weaponization of — the weaponizing of the Bible by Christian Zionists is something that is, for us, very troublesome. You know, for us, these Christian Zionists are actually antisemite, because they don’t love the Jewish people. They want all Jews to come to Palestine, according to their ideology, that two-thirds will be killed in a war, and the last third will convert to Christianity. So, basically, they are calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people. But Netanyahu has no problem to share bed with them, not out of love, but to fulfill selfish desires, so to say.

And I’m so glad that, actually, Netanyahu doesn’t represent the whole Jewish people. You know, Judaism is very broad, like Christianity and Islam. It’s a very broad religion. You have from the far right to the far left. And for me, groups like Jewish Voices for Peace, Not in My Names and many other groups that I’m in contact with them, they are a sign of hope that actually together, as Jews, Muslims and Christians who are interested in equality, in human dignity, in justice, so that both peoples can share the land and the three religions can live side by side. I think this is the vision that we are calling for.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Mitri Raheb, we want to thank you for being with us. Reverend Mitri Raheb is the president of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, Palestinian Christian theologian who’s authored many books, including Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, the People, the Bible.

Coming up, the United Nations Security Council is preparing possibly to vote on a watered-down resolution on aid to Gaza, after the U.S. repeatedly pushed for delays even though the U.N. is warning more than half a million Palestinians, about a quarter of the population, face catastrophic hunger and starvation. Back in 20 seconds.

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Gazan Attorney Who Has Lost 60 Relatives in Israeli Attacks Says U.S. Is “Complicit in Genocide”
STORYDECEMBER 22, 2023Watch Full Show
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The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote today on a watered-down resolution on aid to Gaza. Though the resolution originally called for an immediate ceasefire, the United States repeatedly pushed for the vote to be delayed and the resolution’s language weakened before agreeing to support it. In the meantime, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 20,000, while an additional 500,000 now face hunger and starvation. Ahead of today’s Security Council session, we speak to Ahmed Abofoul, a Gaza-born and now Hague-based attorney with ‎the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, who calls out the “double standards” of U.S. support of Israel’s actions in Gaza, as compared to its mobilization of international enforcement mechanisms against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The American government is complicit in this genocide. There is blood of Palestinian children on their hands.”

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.

The United Nations Security Council is preparing to vote on a watered-down resolution on aid to Gaza, after the United States pushed for the vote to be delayed four times this week as Israel continued its massive assault on Gaza that’s killed at this point over 20,000 Palestinians, reaching about the death of 1% of the Gazan population. Health officials in Gaza say at least 390 Palestinians have been killed over the last 48 hours. The United Nations is warning more than half a million Palestinians in Gaza — about a quarter of the population — face catastrophic hunger and starvation.

We go now to Ahmed Abofoul. He is a Gaza-born attorney who works as a legal research and advocacy officer at Al-Haq, the oldest Palestinian human rights organization. He recent wrote an article headlined “We are Witnessing a Genocide Unfolding in Gaza: To Stop it, the ICC Prosecutor Must Apply the Law Without Fear or Favour.” Ahmed is joining us from New York City.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! When you use the term “genocide” — you’re an international human rights lawyer — explain exactly what you mean and why you believe this applies to Gaza, Ahmed Abofoul.

AHMED ABOFOUL: Thank you for having me, first of all.

Second of all, the word “genocide” is a legal term that is specifically defined in international law, and it’s also a crime that has elements. Once these elements are met, the crime is committed. And as you know, this is a term that has not been used a lot before in the context of Palestine, although the crime, we believe, it has been committed. So, for example, what happened in 1948, many would argue, and I agree, was an act of genocide. The only reason we didn’t call it genocide then, that we didn’t have the concept of genocide had crystallized yet. We didn’t have the Genocide Convention. We didn’t have the definition. It was also used in the context of Palestine in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. And this is the only time that the U.N. described the situation as genocide. Genocide in international law is a crime, and it’s defined when there are — certain underlying acts are being committed with the special intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a certain ethnic or religious or political group. And in this case, we believe the situation in Gaza is that of genocide.

Usually in genocide, the hardest thing to prove is the mental element and the special intent to commit genocide. And in order to prove that, courts usually recourse to statements of the perpetrators. In this particular situation, we have numerous statements of genocidal intent, that are also being translated into actions on the ground. We see the level of destruction, the disregard of human life, the — in the words of Biden, the indiscriminate bombing of civilians. And this is not only our conclusion as Palestinian human rights organizations. As a matter fact, 800 genocide and Holocaust scholars have also described the situation as genocide. And certain scholars describe it a textbook case of genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Ahmed Abofoul, if you can talk personally about Gaza, about your homeland? You grew up in Gaza or were born in Gaza. In fact, your name, Ahmed Abofoul, didn’t someone in your family by that same name just die?

AHMED ABOFOUL: Well, now over 60 of my family have died, including my — have been killed, to be accurate, including my eldest uncle, some of my cousins. And like most Palestinians, we don’t feel like we even have the luxury to grieve, considering the level of destruction and the horrific crimes that are being committed. It’s really heartbreaking. We’ve always grew up to hear the stories of the Nakba. We’ve never imagined that we would live it. It happened in 1948 because it wasn’t televised. The world didn’t know what’s going on in Palestine. But now it’s quite disgraceful that it’s a televised carnage, and the world is literally watching.

You mentioned the Security Council resolution that was watered down and will be voted on today. But if you look at this situation and if you look at the voting record, it’s basically the U.S. versus the world. The U.S. is actually promoting this genocide, supporting this genocide. I would never know, and most probably my family was killed by American weapons. Our children are being torn apart on TV, on your TV screens, by American tax money, by the support of the American government. The American government is complicit in this genocide. There is blood of Palestinian children on their hands.

And that’s why, with our partners in the U.S., with the Center for Constitutional Rights — and I know you interviewed Katie Gallagher, who spoke more about this — but we’re suing Biden and — President Biden, but also Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin, not only for their complicity in genocide, but also for the failure to prevent genocide. If there is any country in the world that can influence Israeli policies, it’s the U.S.

And if you’ll allow me, I mentioned that I come from a refugee family. So I’m not originally from Gaza. Like over 75% of the population in Gaza are refugees. So, when we say this is a second Nakba, it is a second Nakba. In 1948, over 80% of the Palestinian population were forcibly displaced. Now we have over 90% of the population that is displaced. We have over 60% of Gaza’s residential units have been destroyed. Most of the population are on the edge of starvation. It’s quite shameful, to be honest, that until this very moment the U.S. cannot do the bare minimum of human decency, which is calling for a ceasefire, and trying to provide diplomatic coverage for the genocide that is unfolding in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you account for — on the one hand, you have President Biden warning Israel about indiscriminate bombing, and, on the other hand, you have the U.S. dragging its feet all week. Yesterday, we thought right after the show, I think 10 a.m., they were going to be voting. But now it is Friday. Four times this vote has been delayed, a resolution that will clearly not be for a ceasefire. Can you explain the significance of — what difference does a U.N. Security Council resolution even make? Is it binding? What would it mean? And what it has been watered down to at this point today?

AHMED ABOFOUL: Of course. Well, the Security Council resolutions are binding, although Israel has a history of not respecting those resolutions. The U.S. has been trying to water down the language not to include clear call for an immediate ceasefire. In the same time, they call for safe and unhindered humanitarian supplies and humanitarian aid. But in the same time, they don’t call for a ceasefire. And quite strange formula from the U.S., on the one hand, to want safe and unhindered humanitarian access, but without stopping the fire. So, basically, it wants humanitarian aid workers to work under the hell that Israel unleashed on the Palestinian civilian population.

And as you mentioned, Biden didn’t only warn the Israelis; he actually made a determination, and we agree with him. He said Israel is engaged in indiscriminate bombing. This is a war crime. So, the question is: Why do you then send weapons to Israel? The position of the U.S. is quite hypocritical. And the U.S. cannot claim leadership in the world, because it’s not showing us that leadership. Actions speak louder than words. The U.S. — or, President Biden, only yesterday, tweeted that the U.S. supports the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Two days before that, the U.S. voted against the resolution on the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. So, we don’t want to see words. We want to see actions. And the hypocrisy of the U.S. is quite flagrant. You know, a principal leadership and true leadership is about the consistent application of international law, the principal application of international law on your foes and your allies alike. Hypocrisy, double standards and selectivity don’t reflect characteristics of leadership, but of complicity in genocide.

And if you’ll allow me, what’s at stake at the moment is not only the dehumanization of the Palestinian people and the genocide that they’re facing, but also the whole body of international law is being put to test, because, basically, we saw how the West, led by the U.S., mobilized this body of international law in the case of Ukraine, but in the case of Gaza, they’re preventing or failing to do the bare minimum, which is call for a ceasefire. So I think what’s also at stake is the credibility and the reputation of the U.S., which always portrays itself as a beacon of democracy, but, in fact, is showing us that it supports genocide.

And what’s also, I think, interesting in this situation, that it’s also putting all of these, quote-unquote, “liberal democracies” to test, because all polls show that most Americans want a ceasefire, most Democrats in Congress want a ceasefire, but there seems to be a disconnect between what the people want and what the U.S. leadership is doing. So, we call on Biden and the Biden administration to listen to their people, to listen to their people and do the bare minimum, which is calling for a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed, I want to thank you so much for being with us. And also, our condolences on the death of so many members of your family in Gaza. Ahmed Abofoul is legal research and advocacy officer at the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq. We’ll link to your piece,“We are Witnessing a Genocide Unfolding in Gaza: To Stop it, the ICC Prosecutor Must Apply the Law Without Fear or Favour.”

Coming up, we speak to Brazil’s first-ever m

[admin]

“Christ in the Rubble”: Watch Palestinian Pastor Deliver Powerful Christmas Sermon from Bethlehem
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 26, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/26 ... transcript

In the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, city and church leaders canceled all Christmas festivities this year to mourn the more than 20,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza. We feature the Christmas sermon, “Christ in the Rubble: A Liturgy of Lament,” delivered Saturday by Reverend Munther Isaac at the landmark Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, which has received international attention for a nativity scene depicting the figure of baby Jesus in a keffiyeh, surrounded by rubble. “If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza,” preached Isaac, who condemned using theology to justify Israel’s killing of innocent civilians. “If we, as Christians, are not outraged by the genocide, by the weaponization of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and we are compromising the credibility of our gospel message.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in the occupied West Bank in the city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. City and church leaders canceled all Christmas festivities in the Holy Land this year to mourn the more than 20,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza. The landmark Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem created a nativity scene with the figure of baby Jesus in a keffiyeh, surrounded by rubble.

Later in the show, we’ll be joined by the church’s pastor, the Reverend Munther Isaac, but we begin by airing his Christmas sermon, which he delivered on Saturday.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Christ Under the Rubble.

We are angry. We are broken. This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful.

More than 20,000 killed. Thousands are still under the rubble. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways, day after day. One-point-nine million displaced. Hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. This is a genocide.

The world is watching. Churches are watching. The people of Gaza are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares. But it goes on.

We are asking here: Could this be our fate in Bethlehem? In Ramallah? In Jenin? Is this our destiny, too?

We are tormented by the silence of the world. Leaders of the so-called free lined up one after the other to give the green light for this genocide against a captive population. They gave the cover. Not only did they make sure to pay the bill in advance, they veiled the truth and context, providing the political cover. And yet another layer has been added: the theological cover, with the Western church stepping into the spotlight.

Our dear friends in South Africa taught us the concept of the “state theology,” defined as “the theological justification of the status quo with its racism, capitalism and totalitarianism.” It does so by misusing theological concepts and biblical texts for its own political purposes.

Here in Palestine, the Bible is weaponized against us — our very own sacred text. In our terminology in Palestine, we speak of the empire. Here we confront the theology of the empire, a disguise for superiority, supremacy, chosenness and entitlement. It is sometimes given a nice cover, using words like “mission” and “evangelism,” “fulfillment of prophecy,” and “spreading freedom and liberty.”

The theology of the empire becomes a powerful tool to mask oppression under the cloak of divine sanction. It speaks of land without people. It divides people into “us” and “them.” It dehumanizes and demonizes. The concept of land without people, again, even though they knew too well that the land had people — and not just any people, a very special people. Theology of the empire calls for emptying Gaza, just like it called for the ethnic cleansing in 1948, a “miracle,” or “a divine miracle,” as they called it. It calls for us Palestinians now to go to Egypt, maybe Jordan. Why not just the sea?

I think of the words of the disciples to Jesus when he was about to enter Samaria: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they said of the Samaritans. This is the theology of the empire. This is what they’re saying about us today.

This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. Maybe it’s the color of our skins. Maybe it is because we are on the wrong side of a political equation. Even our kinship in Christ did not shield us. So they say if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single “Hamas militant,” then so be it. We are not humans in their eyes. But in God’s eyes, no one can tell us that.

The hypocrisy and racism of the Western world is transparent and appalling. They always take the word of Palestinians with suspicion and qualification. No, we’re not treated equally. Yet, on the other side, despite a clear track record of misinformation, lies, their words are almost always deemed infallible.

To our European friends: I never ever want to hear you lecture us on human rights or international law again. And I mean this. We are not white, I guess. It does not apply to us, according to your own logic.

In this war, the many Christians in the Western world made sure the empire has the theology needed. It is thus self-defense, we were told. And I continue to ask: How is the killing of 9,000 children self-defense? How is the displacement of 1.9 million Palestinians self-defense?

In the shadow of the empire, they turned the colonizer into the victim, and the colonized into the aggressor. Have we forgotten — have we forgotten that the state they talk to, that that state was built on the ruins of the towns and villages of those very same Gazans? Have they forgot that?

We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear, friends: Silence is complicity. And empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and end to occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action, all under the banner of complicity.

So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. Gaza was hell before October 7th, and the world was silent. Should we be surprised at their silence now?

If you are not appalled by what is happening in Gaza, if you are not shaken to your core, there is something wrong with your humanity. And if we, as Christians, are not outraged by the genocide, by the weaponization of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and we are compromising the credibility of our gospel message.

If you fail to call this a genocide, it is on you. It is a sin and a darkness you willingly embrace. Some have not even called for a ceasefire. I’m talking about churches. I feel sorry for you.

We will be OK. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we, the Palestinians, will recover. We will rise. We will stand up again from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, although this is by far maybe the biggest blow we have received in a long time. But we will be OK.

But for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this? Your charity and your words of shock after the genocide won’t make a difference. And I know these words of shocks are coming. And I know people will give generously for charity. But your words won’t make a difference. Words of regret won’t suffice for you. And let me say it: We will not accept your apology after the genocide. What has been done has been done. I want you to look at the mirror and ask, “Where was I when Gaza was going through a genocide?” …

In these last two months, the psalms of lament have become a precious companion to us. We cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Gaza? Why do you hide your face from Gaza?”

In our pain, anguish and lament, we have searched for God and found him under the rubble in Gaza. Jesus himself became the victim of the very same violence of the empire when he was in our land. He was tortured, crucified. He bled out as others watched. He was killed and cried out in pain, “My God, where are you?”

In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.

And in this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is not to be found on the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. He’s in a cave, with a simple family, an occupied family. He’s vulnerable, barely and miraculously surviving a massacre himself. He’s among the refugees, among a refugee family. This is where Jesus is to be found today.

If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza. When we glorify pride and richness, Jesus is under the rubble. When we rely on power, might and weapons, Jesus is under the rubble. When we justify, rationalize and theologize the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble.

Jesus is under the rubble. This is his manger. He is at home with the marginalized, the suffering, the oppressed and the displaced. This is his manger.

And I have been looking and contemplating on this iconic image. God with us precisely in this way, this is the incarnation — messy, bloody, poverty. This is the incarnation.

And this child is our hope and inspiration. We look and see him in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble. While the world continues to reject the children of Gaza, Jesus says, “Just as you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.” “You did it to me.” Jesus not only calls them his own, he is them. He is the children of Gaza.

We look at the holy family and see them in every family displaced and wandering, now homeless in despair. While the world discusses the fate of the people of Gaza as if they are unwanted boxes in a garage, God in the Christmas narrative shares their fate. He walks with them and calls them his own.

So this manger is about resilience. It’s about sumud. And the resilience of Jesus is in his meekness, is in his weakness, is in his vulnerability. The majesty of the incarnation lies in its solidarity with the marginalized. Resilience because this is very same child who rose up from the midst of pain, destruction, darkness and death to challenge empires, to speak truth to power and deliver an everlasting victory over death and darkness. This very same child accomplished this.

This is Christmas today in Palestine, and this is the Christmas message. Christmas is not about Santas. It’s not about trees and gifts and lights. My goodness, how we have twisted the meaning of Christmas. How we have commercialized Christmas. I was, by the way, in the U.S.A. last month, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, and I was amazed by the amount of Christmas decorations and lights and all the commercial goods. And I couldn’t help but think: They send us bombs, while celebrating Christmas in their lands. They sing about the prince of peace in their land, while playing the drum of war in our land.

Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger. This is our message to the world today. It is a gospel message. It is a true and authentic Christmas message about the God who did not stay silent but said his word, and his word was Jesus. Born among the occupied and marginalized, he is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness.

This message is our message to the world today, and it is simply this: This genocide must stop now. Why don’t we repeat it? Stop this genocide now. Can you say it with me? Stop this genocide —

CONGREGATION: Stop this genocide now.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Let’s say it one more time. Stop this genocide —

CONGREGATION: Stop this genocide now.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: This is our call. This is our plea. This is our prayer. Hear, O God. Amen.

AMY GOODMAN: The Reverend Munther Isaac, the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, delivering his Christmas sermon on Saturday. He titled it “Christ in the Rubble.” Coming up, Reverend Isaac will join us from Bethlehem in occupied West Bank. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Song to the World,” a version of the popular Christmas song “Little Drummer Boy” sung by the Ramallah Friends School in the West Bank. The three Palestinian college students who were shot in Burlington, Vermont, last month are graduates of the Ramallah Friends School and met there in the first grade. The three students who were shot now go to Haverford, Trinity and Brown in the United States. In the video shared by the school, current students sing in Arabic with English subtitles. The school wrote, “Our hearts come together in prayer for the safety of the children in Gaza. May our shared prayers echo for peace and justice, weaving a tapestry of hope that goes beyond borders, embracing the shared humanity we all hold dear.”

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Christmas in Palestine: Bethlehem Reverend Slams West for Praising Prince of Peace & Beating Drums of War
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 26, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/26 ... transcript

Through the Christmas holiday, Israel continued its relentless bombardment and siege of the Gaza Strip that has seen over 20,000 Palestinians killed. In the West Bank, we speak with Reverend Munther Isaac, pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, which canceled Christmas festivities in the storied birthplace of Jesus to mourn the deaths in Gaza and received worldwide attention for their nativity scene depicting the baby Jesus surrounded by rubble. “Christianity started here and never ceased to exist here,” says Isaac. “This is what Christmas is in Palestine: displaced families, destroyed homes and children under the rubble.”

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 in New York, with Juan González in Chicago.

“Christ in the Rubble.” That was the name of the Christmas sermon we just heard from the Reverend Munther Isaac, the pastor of the landmark Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Reverend Isaac’s church gained international attention for creating a nativity scene with the figure of baby Jesus in a keffiyeh, surrounded by rubble.

Over the Christmas weekend, Israel carried out raids across the West Bank, including in Bethlehem, in Jenin, Nablus, Jericho and Ramallah. The Reverend Munther Isaac joins us from Bethlehem, where Christmas festivities were canceled this year to mourn the more than 20,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza.

Reverend, welcome to Democracy Now! I wish I could wish you happy holidays, but they are far from happy this year. I’m wondering if you can talk about the message we just heard. It was clear it was not just for your congregation in Bethlehem, not just for the Occupied Territories and Israel, but you were really sending out a message to the world, and particularly talking about the United States. Why you feel where we are talking to you from, where you just recently were, is so important when it comes to the almost 21,000 Palestinians dead since October 7th, since the Hamas attack on Israel?

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Yeah. Good morning. Thank you for having me.

This was a service we held the day before Christmas for Gaza, and it was Jesus under the rubble, from Bethlehem to the world. And as I said in the introduction, we are broken, as Palestinians, by the magnitude, the horrific killing of our people in Gaza. But I also wanted to speak not just for the people of Gaza, for all Palestinians, who are appalled by the silence of the world and the dehumanization that has been taking place of the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza, the dehumanization that allows such atrocities to take place with the world watching, and with Gazans themselves filming their own execution.

We are really tired and troubled from seeing, day after day after day, images of children and families being pulled from under the rubble. We can’t understand how the world is OK with this. And as a pastor who regularly speaks with churches around the world, I can’t understand how we can preach the gospel of love and justice, while ignoring and, in some cases, justifying what is happening in Gaza. It’s unfathomable to me and to many Palestinians.

And as such, I felt the need to deliver such a message with very direct and clear language. This is not the time for soft diplomacy, especially with the genocide still happening day after day after day. And I’m grateful for those who enabled us to broadcast this service to the world. And I am grateful that it is reaching. It’s not that we’re going to stop what’s happening in Gaza. I wish we could. We’re trying all we can through messaging and lobbying. But I hope that people will feel the weight of responsibility that they have. And I’m talking about not just Western government. Many churches, they have enabled what is happening right now in Gaza. And I felt we need to send this message.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Reverend Isaac, you mentioned that you were recently in the United States. You went to Washington, D.C., with a group of Christian leaders from Bethlehem. You spoke to congressional leaders. And you also delivered a message to the White House — a letter to the White House. What was your sense of how the political leaders in this country are regarding what’s going on there right now in the — with the Israeli attacks on Gaza?

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: We received a mixed reaction. But I left really depressed. And clearly, back then, we saw the intention and that as if everybody has given in to the idea this war is going to last for long.

I left with several impressions. A lot of it has to do with how unwilling to even have a good conversation some congressmen — I’m talking about their staff — are willing, you know, to do. I mean, you share from the heart of our suffering and pain, and then you just get the response, “Well, Congressman so-and-so or Senator so-and-so has made it clear that this war wants to continue.” And they speak with so much distance from the fact and also almost with lack of empathy whatsoever.

When we met in the State Department and the White House, to be honest, you know, they understand the details of what’s happening. When I told them that this war is definitely not bringing any results other than killing innocent people, you know, they seemed to agree. But they seemed to have, as I said, given in to the idea that this war must continue. And I was — you know, I challenged them: “How do you allow such a government in Israel, such leaders, to drive you into committing a genocide?” I can’t understand it, especially with some of the, quote-unquote, “ideals” many of these American politicians keep bragging about or calling for. Yet when it comes to the Palestinians, it seems no one is willing to extend these human rights and international principles to us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you lay out the significance of Palestine for the Christian faith? It’s not only the birthplace of Christianity, but also the site of several key events described in the Old and New Testaments.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Yeah, Palestine is where it all started. And in addition to the sites themselves that church fathers have called the fifth gospel, meaning that the geography speaks about what happened here over the years, I think we have to realize that Palestine also hosts the oldest Christian tradition in the world. Christianity started here and never ceased to exist here. So, not only is this the land where it all started, this is the land that continued to witness nonstop and give the Christian message.

We always emphasize that Palestine without the witness of its people means nothing. And I hate to see Palestine one day turned into a museum of holy sites for these Western pilgrims who come and visit only interested in certain sites that relate to the Scriptures, without acknowledging the presence of people, without acknowledging the presence of a church that has long carried the Christian witness in Palestine for 2,000 years. But, sadly, we continue to be ignored.

And I think even Palestine, apart from being the destination for pilgrimage, is somehow — you know, people view the biblical land as somehow a mythical land, a land from another universe. You know, we just celebrated Christmas, and millions sang about Bethlehem and read about Bethlehem. I wonder if they know that Bethlehem is a real city, in Palestine, with people, with a long cry for justice. But it seems that, you know, for some reason, people don’t make that connection and are not as much concerned with the plight of Palestinian Christians and even Middle Eastern Christians.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Isaac, can you describe for us — half of our audience is television; they see the nativity scene. Half is radio; they cannot see it. Can you describe the nativity scene that was right next to you as you delivered your Christmas sermon? Describe it in detail and why you chose to do this this year, as Christmas celebrations were canceled in your city of Bethlehem.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: So, we created this nativity scene earlier this month, in the beginning of the Advent season, from rubble, bricks, that resemble a destroyed house. So it’s a pile of bricks that resemble a house that was bombed. And on top of it, surrounded by bricks, we had baby Jesus. And the characters in the — usually in the manger, the shepherds and the magis, are all outside, surrounding the rubble, watching in as if they’re looking for any sign of life, looking for Jesus. And we’re sending a message that Jesus is under the rubble.

We created it because this is what Christmas looks like in Palestine today. But we created it because, you know, there is a strong message we wanted to send from it, which is that in a time when the world continues to justify and rationalize the killing of our children, we see the image of Jesus in every child pulled from under the rubble.

These have been very difficult times for us as Palestinians. We ask difficult questions, including: Where is God in the midst of suffering? And I’ve been saying God is under the rubble. God is with those who suffer. God suffers with us. So, with Christmas coming, the connection to me was natural: Jesus as a baby who survived a massacre, Jesus as a baby who became a refugee with his family to Egypt, identifies with us in our suffering. He was born with the marginalized. So the connection was natural.

And we created this manger to send a message to the world: This is what Christmas means to us as Palestinians. It was a message to our people. I know that everyone saw it in the international media, and it resonated with — I mean, it created maybe a shock to many. But for the Palestinians, it sent a very strong message. And many, many Palestinians reached out to us, to our church and to myself, thanking us for explaining the true meaning of Christmas, for sending a message of comfort and hope in the midst of very, very difficult times.

And so I spoke even in my sermon that this manger somehow resembles our resilience as Palestinians. From the midst of destruction, we will rise. And I’m convinced of that. It sounds so dark right now. We’re traumatized. I mean, honestly, we’re traumatized as a people. And I can’t even think of the people of Gaza. But I know that we will rise.

And I’m pleased that this manger was able to bring a small sense of hope to our people, but that it also sent a powerful message to the world about the reality in Palestine. This is what Christmas is in Palestine: displaced families, destroyed homes and children under the rubble.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Munther Isaac, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian Christian theologian, pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He titled his Christmas sermon “Christ in the Rubble: A Liturgy of Lament.”

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Labor Demands a Ceasefire: UAW, Electrical & Postal Workers Call for Israel’s Assault on Gaza to End
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 26, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/26 ... transcript

Unions across the United States have begun to shift from a long history of supporting Israel to condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestine amid growing calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel’s 80-day assault has killed over 20,000 people. As ceasefire demands from teachers to Starbucks workers are published across the country and a major march led in part by union organizers in New York called on members of Congress to stop taking campaign cash from pro-Israel lobbyists, Democracy Now! speaks with longtime trade unionist Bill Fletcher and labor historian Jeff Schuhrke about the United States labor movement’s history with Israel and Palestine, Biden’s Zionism clashing with his union support, and the labor movement’s “tailspin” about how to respond to the war on 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, with Juan González.

We look now at the growing pressure from the U.S. labor movement on President Biden to demand a ceasefire in the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Gaza. Unions helped organize a march to AIPAC headquarters here in New York last Thursday that called on lawmakers to stop taking campaign money from pro-Israel lobbyists. This is United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain speaking alongside progressive congressmembers at a news conference Thursday on Capitol Hill.

SHAWN FAIN: We cannot bomb our way to peace.

REP. CORI BUSH: That’s right!

SHAWN FAIN: The only path forward is to build peace and social justice, is through a ceasefire. … As union members, we know we must fight for all workers and suffering people around the world. We must fight for humanity. That means we must restore people’s basic rights and allow water, food, fuel, humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests in Washington.

Bill Fletcher, longtime trade unionist, co-founder of the Ukrainian Solidarity Network, member of the editorial board of The Nation, where his latest piece is headlined “Gaza, Biden, and a Path Forward.”

And in Chicago, we’re joined by Jeff Schuhrke. He is a labor historian, journalist, union activist, and assistant professor at the School of Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State University in New York City. His latest piece for Jewish Currents is “The Problem of the Unionized War Machine.” His recent articles for In These Times, “The AFL-CIO Squashed a Council’s Cease-Fire Resolution. What Does It Say About Labor Right Now?” and “The Labor Movement’s History of Backing Israel — and the Changing Climate Amid the War on Gaza,” which was also published in Jacobin magazine under the headline “US Labor Should Act Boldly and Choose Solidarity With Palestine.”

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jeff Schuhrke, let’s begin with you. If you can just go through the labor unions, every one, from the United Postal Workers Union to the powerhouse UAW, United Auto Workers, and talk about the Gaza activism that we’re seeing today?

JEFF SCHUHRKE: Good morning, and thank you for having me.

Yeah, since October, scores and scores of unions and labor bodies at the local, state, regional and national level have been calling for a ceasefire. There is a statement, a U.S. labor movement call for a ceasefire. It also includes a call for restoring food, fuel, water, electricity to Gaza and a call for the release of all hostages, that was started around October 17th by United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, UE, which is a relatively small, but historically very progressive, trade union here in the United States. So, UE, along with United Food and Commercial Workers, UFCW Local 3000, started this petition with the ceasefire call and asked or called on other unions to sign on to it. And so far, as I say, I’ve lost count how many have signed on to it. And other unions have also issued their own statements and resolutions calling for a ceasefire. So, these are unions of teachers and academic workers, healthcare workers, roofers, painters, dockworkers.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you list some of the — can you list some of the unions?

JEFF SCHUHRKE: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Like the UAW, in talking about —

JEFF SCHUHRKE: Yeah, yeah, sure. Certainly. So, I mentioned the United Electrical Workers, the American Postal Workers Union, United Auto Workers, 1199SEIU, which is the largest healthcare union in the country, the National Nurses United, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, the Chicago Teachers Union, the Boston Teachers Union, several locals of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and on and on. It would take a long time.

But these represent millions of working people across the country. And I think it’s an illustration of the fact that, as the polls consistently show, a majority of people in this country support calls for a ceasefire. And when you’re talking about a majority of people in this country, you’re talking about working-class people. And when they have organizations, like unions, that represent their voices, that give them a democratic say, then you’re going to see those organizations, those unions express the stance of working-class people, which in this case is a call for an end to the slaughter and for a ceasefire. Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Jeff, we still have a considerable number of the national unions, obviously, who are not taking that stand. And you’ve explained in prior articles the role of the AFL-CIO in, for decades and decades, basically supporting U.S. imperial projects around the world. And you’ve written about this guy Jay Lovestone, who was a former communist who played a major role in getting the AFL-CIO united with CIA and imperialist ventures. I’m wondering if you could talk about some of our — to some of our younger viewers and listeners who may never have heard of Jay Lovestone.

JEFF SCHUHRKE: Yeah. There is a really kind of unfortunate and ugly history of the U.S. labor officialdom, including the AFL-CIO, in particular, working hand in hand with the U.S. foreign policy apparatus, especially during the Cold War decades, roughly 1940s to 1990s, working with the State Department, the CIA and other entities of the federal government to try to undermine unions in foreign countries, particularly more left-wing unions, anti-imperialist unions, and divide labor movements. Jay Lovestone for many years was the director of the AFL-CIO’s International Affairs Department. He was a CIA agent, as well. There’s a long history to that.

But particularly when it comes to Israel and Zionism, there’s a long history there, as well, of U.S. labor officialdom being one of the strongest supporters in the U.S. of the Zionist movement, going back as far as 1917, and being strongly supportive of the state of Israel, not just vocal support or political support, but also material support, with millions and millions of dollars from U.S. unions donated to, first, early Zionist settlements, before the state of Israel, and then to the state of Israel for housing, for healthcare clinics, for community centers, sports stadiums. So, throughout the 1950s and '60s, in the early decades of Israel, many of these kinds of public facilities bore the names of famous U.S. labor leaders, like Walter Reuther, George Meany, Jimmy Hoffa, you know, orphanages and sports stadiums named after U.S. labor leaders because of this material support. There's also State of Israel bonds, which U.S. unions have been among the most — the top purchasers of, for many decades. This is money that U.S. unions put dues or pension money or healthcare fund money from unions directly invested into the state of Israel for infrastructure projects.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Jeff, specifically about those Israeli bonds, I remember back in the 1980s attending a fundraiser of the Philadelphia unions for the Israeli labor federation. And one of the leaders got up there at that time and said, “We invest millions of dollars in Israeli bonds from our pension fund, but members sometimes tell me that they don’t give as good a return. But I tell them this is the right thing to do.” So, many union members do not know that their funds were being invested in Israeli bonds for decades.

JEFF SCHUHRKE: Yes. But there has been also a kind of slow but sure — slowly but surely, a movement from the rank and file over many decades to try to push back against that. Going back 50 years ago, in 1973, Arab American auto workers in Detroit who were members of the United Auto Workers staged a wildcat strike at the Dodge Main assembly plant to protest the UAW leadership’s decision to purchase $785,000 in State of Israel bonds and called on UAW leaders to divest.

And so, over the last 20 years or so, you know, there’s been the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, led by Palestinians, including Palestinian trade unions, and some unions in the U.S. have tried to endorse BDS and talk about how their own funds, their own dues and pension funds, how they’re invested in Israel.

So that’s one of the significant things, I think, about the UAW’s recent call for a ceasefire. They also created a new working group called the Divestment and Just Transition working group that’s going to look into the UAW’s own investments in Israel and talk about potentially divesting, as well as talking about — when they say just transition, they’re talking about in the arms industry, because the UAW represents thousands of workers in U.S. weapons factories, weapons that are being sent to Israel. And if we want to talk about shutting down those factories, we also have to talk about what happens to the people who work there who are union members. And so, just transition is similar to the same idea of what happens to fossil fuel workers as we transition to a green economy, making sure — and this goes back to an earlier, you know, in the 1970s, '80s, calls for economic conversion, or conversion from a wartime economy to peacetime economy. So the fact that the UAW's new leadership, under President Shawn Fain, has committed to trying to work towards these goals, I think, is probably even more significant than the calls for a ceasefire, because, after all, a ceasefire is sort of the bare minimum here.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill Fletcher, I wanted to bring you into this conversation. You’re on the editorial board of The Nation, your new piece, “Gaza, Biden, and a Path Forward.” And you wrote, for In These Times, “The Fascist Movement’s Biggest Threat: Labor Unions?” Can you talk about what you mean?

BILL FLETCHER: Amy, Juan, thank you for having me on the program.

Can I — I just want to say one thing before getting into that question. The U.S. trade union movement has always been divided on international affairs, I mean, going back to the Spanish-American War, going to the Spanish Civil War, going to the Vietnam War, Central America, South Africa. What has been a generally consolidated position, going to your point, Juan, is at the level of the national leadership of the AFL-CIO, and most unions, they’ve been largely in lockstep with U.S. foreign policy, but not always. Now, what’s different is that when it comes to Israel and Palestine, up until fairly recently, at the national level, there’s almost no discussion about alternative views as opposed to supporting Israel. And so, that’s what’s changing, which is really, really important to emphasize.

And one of the things, Amy, to your question, is that there is great fear within the union movement about what’s going to happen in November 2024 and what will happen in terms of whether Biden or whoever gets elected. And so, with the October 7th, the Hamas attack, and the Israeli genocide following that, the union movement has been in a tailspin as to how to respond. And part of that response is to go back to its general position of supporting anything that Israel does. Another position is that of silence. And then a growing position, which we’re now seeing, that’s represented by the APWU, UAW, NNU and others, is to take a critical position on the views or on the policy of the United States and of Israel. And that’s where we should have hope.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about President Biden, Bill Fletcher? I mean, you have this really interesting discussion going on right now as we move into the presidential election year. Look at Michigan, huge Arab American community in Dearborn, you know, United Auto Workers so powerful. And it looks like, to say the least, he is — though one of the most powerful supporters of unions when it comes to presidents, Arab American —

BILL FLETCHER: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — community is enraged, the Palestinian community of Michigan.

BILL FLETCHER: Well, and they should be. And the rest of us should be. I mean, as you said, I mean, Biden is probably the most pro-labor president that we’ve had in decades. But the thing about his response to Gaza, which is one of the reasons I think that he really should step aside and there should be another candidate for president on the Democratic slate, is that Biden is fundamentally a Zionist. He believes this stuff. I mean, this is not just the sort of the kind of opportunism that we saw with Obama, who I actually don’t think was a Zionist but for very opportunistic reasons was prepared to align himself with supporting Israel on so many things. I think Biden actually believes this.

And his embrace of Netanyahu, this defies politics. It defies reality. It defies humanity that he cannot look at what’s happening and, even at the level of pragmatic politics, say, “Wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on. Let’s reevaluate the situation,” and, at best, call for greater humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. This is unacceptable. And I think that’s why it’s really important to right now hammer the administration around Palestine. We’ll get to the issue in November.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, Bill, but we’re going to continue the discussion and post it online at democracynow.org. Bill Fletcher, longtime trade unionist, member of The Nation's editorial board, and Jeff Schuhrke, labor historian, journalist. We'll link to all of your pieces.

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“Axis of Resistance”: Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis Challenge U.S. & Israeli Power Amid Middle East Tension
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 27, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/27 ... transcript

We look at how Israel’s war on Gaza has inflamed tensions in the Middle East and threatens to pull other countries into the fighting, including the United States. The Pentagon says it has intercepted a number of drones and missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi forces — known as Ansar Allah — in the Red Sea aimed at disrupting international shipping, with the group vowing to continue the attacks on ships in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The U.S. and Israel have also exchanged fire with groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, and violence continues to increase in the occupied West Bank. The growth of forces openly fighting against Israel and the U.S. is a major development in the Middle East that most Western commentators do not fully understand, says Rami Khouri, a veteran Palestinian American journalist and a senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut. This “axis of resistance” is largely motivated by outrage over the treatment of Palestinians, he says. “The U.S. and Israel at some point need to acknowledge that the Palestinian people have rights that are equal to the Israeli people.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We had hoped we’d begin today’s show in Gaza, where the Health Ministry says the overall death toll now tops 21,000, including over 8,000 children, but communications in Gaza are now down for the umpteenth time, and neither we nor our colleagues with the Associated Press can reach our guest in Rafah in southern Gaza.

As we reported in headlines, the Pentagon is saying it intercepted and shot down 12 drone attacks, three anti-ship ballistic missiles and two land attack cruise missiles launched by Houthi forces in the Red Sea during a 10-hour period on Tuesday, as concerns grow over a wider regional war in the Middle East. The Yemen-based Houthis have vowed to keep carrying out attacks on ships in the Red Sea to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

This comes as the Pentagon said it carried out three strikes on Iraqi territory Monday at President Biden’s direction in response to a drone attack on an air base in Erbil, Iraq, that wounded three U.S. service members, one of them critically. Iraq’s government said the U.S. attacks killed one member of the Iraqi security forces and wounded 18 people, including civilians. It condemned the Pentagon’s, quote, “unacceptable attack on Iraqi sovereignty.”

Meanwhile, Turkey’s military launched airstrikes in northern Iraq and Syria over the weekend, targeting bases, shelters and oil facilities operated by the Kurdish PKK militia. The attacks came after the Turkish Defense Ministry said 12 of its soldiers were killed in northern Iraq in battles with PKK fighters.

Elsewhere, an Israeli airstrike on northern Syria on Monday killed Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a senior adviser in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for coordinating Iran’s military alliance with Syria. Iran’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, saying, quote, “Iran reserves the right to take necessary measures to respond to this action at the appropriate time and place.”

For more on all of this, we’re joined in Boston by Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut. His new piece for Al Jazeera is headlined “Watching the watchdogs: Why the West misinterprets Middle East power shifts.”

Well, why don’t you tell us why the West misinterprets these power shifts, Rami Khouri? And do you see what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank as leading to a wider Middle East war?

RAMI KHOURI: Thank you for having me, and thanks for the great work you do every morning.

The second part of your question, I can pretty surely say that I don’t expect the wider war. But wider wars don’t usually happen by planning. They often happen by accident. So it could happen. But I don’t think so, because, first of all, a wider war isn’t going to solve anything; second of all, people, generally, on all sides, don’t want to fight a wider war, and certainly civilian populations are against it.

Your first question, the short answer of why the mainstream media in the U.S. and most of the Western world doesn’t follow, analyze, acknowledge what I think are the biggest geostrategic changes taking place in this Middle East region in the last maybe 30, 40 years — the short answer is that the U.S. and Israel are joined in a kind of settler colonial assault on Palestinian rights. They have been for half a century. The British and the Zionists started this in the 1910s, and then Israel was created. And after '67, the U.S. became the main supporter of Israel. So this is a centurylong conflict that has pitted Israel, Zionism and Western supporters against Palestinian rights. Other Arabs got involved, but it's essentially a Palestinian-Israeli, Palestinian-Zionist struggle.

And the U.S. doesn’t want to acknowledge anything — the U.S. mainstream media, broadly, doesn’t want to acknowledge anything that doesn’t fit the script that the United States has a righteous policy, that the Israelis have a moral army, that what they’re doing is legitimate defense, and that all the other people in the region who challenge them or fight them are either terrorists or just, you know, violence-loving Muslims and Arabs beyond any help that anybody can give them — they just love to kill Jews and Americans. So, this is the kind of nonsense that permeates so much of the mainstream media.

And this is why I mentioned in this column that this tremendously important sign that we had just last week really needs to be appreciated. And that sign was that the Yemeni Ansar Allah group, but people call them the Houthis — you know, one sign of good reporting is to use the people’s proper name. So, Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah, that makes a difference. And so, these three groups, Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah, are part of a regional network of groups, Arab groups, nationally anchored, one in — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Ansar Allah in Yemen, who coordinate very closely with each other and coordinate and get assistance from Iran, just as Israel coordinates closely and gets huge amounts of assistance from the U.S. This is how, you know, the world works. But the difference is that Hezbollah and Hamas have already shown that they can develop technical, military and other capabilities that can check the Israeli-American assault on Palestinian rights.

The U.S. and Israel can wipe out the entire Middle East if they want, the entire Arab region, with their nuclear weapons and — sorry — other facilities. But this wouldn’t solve anything. But the U.S. and Israel at some point need to acknowledge that the Palestinian people have rights that are equal to the Israeli people, and the two should live side by side, or if they want to live in one state, that’s up to them, but probably two adjacent states.

The Hezbollah-Hamas-Ansar Allah combination brought us last week to a situation where at one moment — and it’s kind of still going on — the U.S. and/or Israel were exchanging military fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, some other Palestinian groups in the West Bank, Ansar Allah in Yemen, the Popular Mobilization Forces, Iranian-backed militant groups, in Iraq, and the Syrian government, which is supported by Iran. So the U.S. and Israel were actively engaged, small levels, low levels, but actively engaged in military action against six opponents on six different fronts. But those opponents were all coordinating together.

And the more important point is that — not just that they coordinate together, but we’ve seen in Hezbollah and Hamas now and others that they are increasing their technical capabilities steadily and significantly. The Israeli government, with its massive attack against Palestine, using over 500 2,000-pound bombs — was reported yesterday — and other, you know, massive ethnic cleansing, everything they’ve done, they haven’t made any significant gains on their three strategic goals, which is to eliminate Hamas, release the hostages and to bring about a new political situation in Gaza. So this is quite extraordinary. When you get two of the most powerful militaries in the world, Israel and the United States, with a lot of other militaries supporting them, unable to achieve basic goals after two-and-a-half months of barbaric attacks, that’s pretty significant.

And the last point I make here is that one of the reasons they’re not able to make significant gains is that these other groups, who are these Arab groups who are close to Iran, they work together in something called the “axis of resistance.” And this axis of resistance is starting to become much more effective in deterring or checking the Israeli-American military assaults and/or the political demands that they want. And we’ll see this now in the negotiations that will happen. What are happening now, they’re negotiating another exchange of prisoners and hostages and other things. And if there’s a peace negotiation that might happen later, you will see the power of this resistance axis manifesting itself politically rather than just militarily. This is a huge, huge development.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Rami Khouri, I wanted to ask you — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal in the past few days, and one of the points that he raised there in terms of the goals of Israel in the assault on Gaza is, to me, a completely new point that he’s raised here. He said that not only do they want to destroy Hamas and demilitarize Gaza, but that they want to deradicalize the Palestinians. In essence, that sounds to me, is to stamp out all potential opposition to Israel in the future. Nothing about a long-term settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I’m wondering your — how you reacted to that opinion piece.

RAMI KHOURI: I don’t take it very seriously. I don’t take anything Benjamin Netanyahu says these days very seriously. This is a guy on the run. He is running from the law, his own law in Israel. And the only way that he can stay out of jail is to keep fighting, make himself indispensable by being a tough guy. And all it’s doing is killing more Israelis, killing more hostages. The death level among Israeli soldiers in the fighting in Gaza is getting higher and higher. Ten, 15 die on some days now. So, I don’t take anything he says very seriously. Neither should anybody else. He is the prime minister of Israel, and he does head this barbaric coalition of right-wing fascists that’s been let loose now in the West Bank and in Gaza and other places.

But I would also make the more important point that when he says that he wants to deradicalize Palestine, this is in keeping with a century of Zionist lies and propaganda and PR and spin, which the Israelis now do through their government — they have a ministry for international propaganda. And one of their key propaganda techniques, nonstop since the 1920s or '30s, has been to associate any of their foes in the region, whether it's Palestinians or Iranians or it’s Gamal Abdel Nasser or Saddam Hussein or al-Qaeda or anybody who they might not like in the region, they link them with the most awful person or group that is most awful for people in the West. So, with the Palestinians, Netanyahu has compared them to ISIS, to al-Qaeda, to Hitler, to, you know, any — he didn’t compare them to the Khmer Rouge, but he probably will if you give him time — to any group that does terrible things around the world. He says that’s what the Palestinians are like. And the reality is, if you go to any place in Palestine, including Gaza, and you sit with ordinary people, you see that this is a bunch of nonsense. But this is their strategy.

One of the critical things that’s happening now — and I’m working on a long article on this that will come out soon — is that along with the ability of the resistance axis and other — and popular support, by the way, that they have a lot of popular support in the region, as polling shows us, including 90% of people in Saudi Arabia don’t want to make peace with Israel until the Israelis make peace with the Palestinians. And Hamas’s popularity has risen.

But along with this major development which I mentioned, the second one, which I think is absolutely critical and explains a lot of the stuff that’s happening not just in the region but here in the United States, where Palestinians are, you know, thrown out of their jobs because of a tweet they did two years ago or for wearing a scarf that is part of their identity or for calling for a ceasefire, people are — Palestinians are punished for this. This is because this centurylong legacy of Zionist and then Israeli government public relations spin, diversion, lies, exaggerations, distortions, it’s still going on, but it doesn’t work as well. They don’t fool the world like they used to, because everything they do is out in the open. And you go to your social media, and you see everything that the Israelis are doing. It’s all now being documented. Files are being prepared for the International Criminal Court.

So, this is why the Israelis become extremely more violent and more outrageous in their political statements. And it also explains why I believe that they’ve focused heavily on the antisemitism accusations, which, of course, antisemitism and the Holocaust are seen as like the worst human crimes in modern history, even though antisemitism goes way back. So, they’re focusing a lot on antisemitism, they accuse people of being antisemitic or terrorists, because most of their other arguments don’t work anymore.

So this is a really important moment. That’s why it’s so important now for a credible group of people — not the United States government, which is not credible in this, but a credible group of people that includes the U.S., but not run by the U.S. — put together some kind of serious proposal to stop the fighting, get the prisoners and hostages exchanged and released, and start a serious political negotiation that can move the Palestinians and the Israelis and the whole region towards a negotiated permanent peace agreement. It’s very hard to do with the existing governments.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you — you mentioned Saudi Arabia and the 90% support for the axis of resistance within the country. Could you comment on Saudi Arabia’s role right now, for instance, declining to join the coalition that the United States is trying to set up to protect shipping in the Red Sea? What do you make of Saudi Arabia’s stance right now?

RAMI KHOURI: Well, Saudi Arabia waged war against Yemen for five years with American and British technical support, refueling and intelligence and all this stuff. And they lost. They were driven out. The Saudis had to get out of Yemen. The Emiratis got out before, because they’re even less efficient at warfare. And the Emiratis are hunkered down in south Yemen trying to set up some kind of new country or something there. We don’t know what they’re doing. The Saudis got out. So, they understand the capabilities of Ansar Allah and the Yemeni people. Over time, the Yemenis have defeated almost every single person who has tried to come into their country and dominate them or occupy them or order them around. So, that’s one fact.

The second fact is the United States is radioactive politically in the Middle East and in most of the Global South. I would say about 80% of the population of the entire world wants nothing to do with Joe Biden or his amateur, you know, State Department and Defense Department leaders. And even the Defense Department of the U.S. is hesitant to get into any kind of military interaction in Yemen, because they understand how difficult it is. So, the Saudis understand this, as well. They don’t want to be sucked into some cockamamie American plan drawn up in some underground bunker in Iowa or Kansas — I don’t know where these things are — where they come up with these incredible ideas.

I’m old enough to remember the 1960s and '70s, when I was in college, and until today. The U.S. has tried four or five times over the last 60 years that I've been a journalist to come up with coalitions of Israelis, Americans and Arabs against some bad guy in the region. It could be Iraq. It could be Iran. It could be al-Qaeda, could be Nasser, could be the communists. It changes over time. Every time they’ve tried to do this, it doesn’t work, because the people running American foreign policy do not have the fundamental decency or strategic knowledge to understand that you can’t go into an Arab country, where 90% of the people support the Palestinians and want the Palestinians to live peacefully with an Israeli state. We are not against an Israeli Jewish-majority state, but it has to live with Palestinians peacefully. Ninety percent of people across most of the region want Palestinian rights to be resolved, and they don’t want 25 American bases all around the region, which is one reason people in Iraq are shooting at American bases in Iraq and Syria. And you can’t get Arab governments to just run roughshod over their people and say, “The hell with you. We’re going to make an alliance with Israel. We’re going to make an alliance with the U.S.”

They’ve learned the hard way that the populations in the Arab countries are not perpetually docile. We’ve had 10 years of uprising, from 2010 to 2020, and there are still things happening in many Arab countries. But there is no realistic way that you can get serious Arab governments to go into an alliance with the U.S. and Israel, whether it’s to protect shipping or to do anything else. The way you protect shipping in the Red Sea is you stop the assault on Gaza. That’s what the Yemenis have made clear. They’re only doing this, they’re only firing at Israeli-linked ships, because of what Israel is doing in Gaza. They said, “Stop the assault, the genocide on Gaza. We will stop shooting.” It’s in Yemen’s interest to have the ships come and go.

So, these are fundamental, commonsense elements of foreign policy, which, for some odd reason, do not pertain in Washington. Washington doesn’t know how — broadly speaking, doesn’t know how to engage in foreign policy. They use their warfare capabilities. They use sanctions. They veto stuff at the U.N. They make threats. They try to come up with these grandiose coalitions. And most of these have failed, since Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen today. They don’t work. And they keep trying them. It’s very puzzling. This is really one of the great puzzles that American political scientists and psychiatrists need to study. Why does the U.S. refuse to see realities around the world, until they’re defeated, and they get out, and then they, you know, negotiate with the Viet Cong, they negotiate with the Taliban? And they’ll negotiate with Hamas, as they negotiated with Arafat and the PLO. You’re going to see American officials sitting with Hamas, I would say six, eight months down the road probably. They start quietly meeting in cafes in Vienna and stuff, and then…

So, there’s something about American foreign policy, that’s formulated in the public sphere, that is both irrational and ineffective. And it’s largely because the people doing it do not understand how the world works, and respond to political, financial, electoral pressures in their own constituencies. The political leaderships in the U.S. are highly deficient in conducting a moral foreign policy, but they’re highly efficient at conducting a profitable mercantile electoral policy, where they get votes, where they get support for advertising, where they get favorable media. And this is a tragedy for the United States, which tries to tell the world that it is for human rights and decency, equal rights. And the world believed this for 30, 40, 50 years, but don’t believe it anymore. And Gaza is the kind of the exclamation mark on this, where the U.S. actively supports this genocide, will not do a ceasefire, and therefore this is the consequence. And the Saudis don’t want anything to do with this.

AMY GOODMAN: Rami Khouri, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut. We’ll link to your piece in Al Jazeera headlined “Watching the watchdogs: Why the West misinterprets Middle East power shifts,” speaking to us from Boston

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Who Funds Canary Mission? James Bamford on Group That Doxxes Students & Profs for Palestine Activism
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 27, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/27 ... transcript

Longtime investigative journalist James Bamford’s latest piece for The Nation looks at Canary Mission, a shadowy pro-Israel group that publishes the photos and personal details of students who take part in Palestinian advocacy on U.S. colleges, branding them antisemites and often damaging their career prospects. Bamford explains how this operation has direct links to the Israeli government, and that wealthy Americans who fund this effort could be breaking the law by acting as agents of a foreign power. “The purpose is to blacklist and dox students, professors, and largely anybody who disagrees with Israel or is pro-Palestinian,” Bamford tells Democracy Now!

Transcript

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

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

We look now at what some are calling the “Palestine exception” to free speech and academic freedom on college campuses across the United States. Soon we’ll hear from a student and professor at Barnard, but we begin with a new report by longtime investigative journalist James Bamford in a series for The Nation on Israel’s spying and covert actions in the United States against pro-Palestinian students, supporters and groups. It’s headlined, the latest piece, “Who Is Funding Canary Mission? Inside the Doxxing Operation Targeting Anti-Zionist Students and Professors.” Last month, Jim Bamford wrote a piece headlined “Israel’s War on American Student Activists.” He’s joining us now from Washington, D.C.

James Bamford, welcome back to Democracy Now! Tell us what the Canary Mission is.

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, it’s a very massive program that’s been going on for years and years. It’s secretly run out of Israel. And the purpose is to blacklist and dox students, professors, and largely anybody that disagrees, largely, with Israel or is pro-Palestinian.

Many, many people suddenly wake up, and they find out people are calling them and saying, “Your name is on a blacklist,” the Canary Mission blacklist. And, you know, it’s designed to intimidate these people, to get them to stop joining pro-Palestinian groups or to stop being activists and to comply with whatever the people behind Canary Mission want. And that’s basically to silence them.

And the threat is that if you don’t be silent, then, you know, your name is going to go on the blacklist, and if you go look for a job when you get out of — when you graduate, or if you’re trying to rise up in the professional ranks or a professorship, it’s going to be blocked, because your name is on this list. And it’s almost impossible to get off the list. So, that’s just one of the many ways that the Israeli government has been pushing the American public, basically, to steer away from pro-Palestinian activism.

AMY GOODMAN: But how do you know that the Israeli government runs the Canary Mission? And why is it called the Canary Mission?

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, I don’t know why it’s called Canary Mission. It has something to do with canaries in the mine or something like that.

AMY GOODMAN: In the coal mine?

JAMES BAMFORD: Yeah, I guess so. The organization that runs it is very, very secret. Two of the organizations that looked into it was the Jewish Forward magazine and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and they determined that it was being run secretly from a place in Israel, very secret place in Israel, and that there was a rabbi behind it. Tracing all these links back is very difficult, but that’s where they traced it, to these people in Israel that were basically running it. A lot of the funding comes from — and again, this is from Haaretz and also from The Forward — a lot of the funding comes from American — wealthy Jewish Americans and Jewish American foundations, millions of dollars and so forth. So that’s where a lot of the funding comes from.

The Israeli government gets involved, because they use Canary Mission as a tool. So, if people are coming over from the United States, either Jewish or Palestinian — they’re maybe going to visit families — they look at Canary Mission. They actually have it there, and they look at it. And they’ll kick people out of Israel. They’ll land at the airport. They’ll be questioned — and they’ll be questioned because their name is on Canary Mission — and then be deported, held in confinement for, you know, a couple days or whatever, and then deported. That’s happened numerous times to people. Again, they tried keeping secret the fact that they’re using Canary Mission, but a number of the professors and students who have been thrown out have seen that their name is on the — the guards at the airport or the inspectors are checking their names off the Canary Mission list. So, there’s a heavy involvement of the Israeli government in there, in this. It’s run by mysterious Israelis, and it’s funded by pro-Israeli money in the United States. So, Israel has its fingers all over Canary Mission.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, James Bamford, could you talk about the reasoning and the context in which they created online profiles, Canary Mission did, for members of The Harvard Crimson’s editorial board, the student newspaper?

JAMES BAMFORD: Sure. Soon after October 7th, the attack, the student newspaper came out — well, there were about 33 organizations that supported a statement basically saying this all didn’t start on October 7th, these activities have been going on for a long time, the fighting between Israel and Palestine, with the Palestinians, obviously, being on the losing side of the war against them by the Israelis. So they were basically saying that, look, it didn’t just start on October 7.

Well, that created a storm of opposition. And almost immediately, almost all the people involved found themselves on Canary Mission, even people tangentially involved that happened to sign this letter. So, that’s how it works. You know, you want to intimidate these people into not being an activist. Then you create this blacklist and doxxing, that tells where they are and who they are, and basically creates a dossier of them on this list. And so —

AMY GOODMAN: Jim, didn’t that happen —

JAMES BAMFORD: — you don’t want to get on the list. You don’t — activists —

AMY GOODMAN: Didn’t that happen when The Harvard Crimson had an editorial supporting BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions?

JAMES BAMFORD: Exactly, yeah. That’s, you know, any — it’s not just at Harvard. It’s at schools all over the United States. And Harvard was one perfect example. When they had that student letter come out and it was published in The Harvard Crimson, a lot of people the who were on that, who signed that letter, ended up on the blacklist for Canary Mission. So, again, it’s a tool for intimidation. And a lot of times it works.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And who are some of the prominent American donors who are involved in funding this effort?

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, it’s very difficult to find that, because it’s secret who donates money to the organization, largely secret. There was a mistake some group made on a tax form. And what that showed was at least one of the groups was the Diller family in California. They’re one of the wealthiest families in California, billionaires. And they had donated $100,000 to the front organization of Canary Mission. It’s a thing called Megamot Shalom. It’s basically a front organization in Israel.

And so, what they did was they donated $100,000 through the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. And then, from there, it went to another organization, the Central Fund for Israel, which is set up in New York, because if they send the money directly to Israel, they don’t get a tax advantage. So, by sending it through the sort of front organization, the Central Fund for Israel — or, Central Fund of Israel, in New York, then they get a tax advantage. And then the Central Fund of Israel just forwards the money to Megamot Shalom, the front organization for Canary Mission, and then it goes to Canary Mission.

And again, this was very difficult to figure out, because there are so many obstacles to trying to find out how the money actually goes from these wealthy individuals and organizations to this group in Israel. And so —

AMY GOODMAN: You’re saying the Canary Mission should have to sign up as a foreign agent?

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, yeah. I’m saying that the people who — first of all, this is a clandestine organization. It’s very secretive. It’s hidden behind a front company in — or, front organization in Israel, and it’s being used by the Israeli intelligence to find people that they could deny entry at the airport and deport and so forth. So, this is an organization that’s secret. It’s being used by the Israeli government to the detriment of American citizens. So, if you’re contributing to it, you could be considered a — contributing to a foreign entity, and you could be considered an agent of a foreign government.

So, those are issues that should be looked into. You know, I’ve been doing all these stories. I’ve talked to numerous FBI agents, and the FBI agents are fully in favor of actually taking cases. The problem is, once they try to bring these cases up the channels to the Justice Department, nothing ever happens.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jim, we’re going to have to —

JAMES BAMFORD: So, no matter what it is —

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. We’re going to be speaking with a Barnard professor, but you do write about a Columbia University Law School professor, Katherine Franke, who at one time sat on the academic advisory council steering committee of Jewish Voice for Peace. Upon her landing in Tel Aviv, you write, an official at the airport showed her what appeared to be her Canary Mission profile. After being held in detention for 14 hours, she was deported and informed that she would be permanently banned from Israel. Just one example. Jim Bamford, we want to thank you for being with us, investigative journalist, well known for exposing National Security Agency, the CIA. The New York Times has called him “the nation’s premier journalist on the subject of the NSA.” The New Yorker called him “the NSA’s chief chronicler.” We’ll link to your series in The Nation, including the last one, “Who Is Funding Canary Mission?”

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As Phone Line Breaks Up, Palestinian Journalist Akram al-Satarri Describes “Dire” Conditions in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 27, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/27 ... transcript

Amid a communications blackout in Gaza, we are able to reach Palestinian journalist Akram al-Satarri in Rafah, where much of Gaza’s population is now displaced near the Egyptian border as Israel intensifies its assault on the besieged territory. The overall death toll in Gaza has now topped 21,000, including over 8,000 children, and Israeli leaders have suggested the war could continue for months. “The situation is dire,” says al-Satarri, who describes continuous airstrikes leveling buildings as Gaza residents live in terror, not knowing when, where or why Israeli bombs will fall. “It’s a continuous struggle to live. It’s a continuous struggle to survive.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to a Barnard professor, but we just learned that we’re joined now, if we can reach him, by Akram al-Satarri, a Gaza-based journalist, talking to us from Rafah in southern Gaza. It’s so hard to get him, that we want to go directly to him, if in fact he’s on the line.

Akra, are you there?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Yes, I’m there.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much for being with us.

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you just tell us what’s happening right now in Rafah and in southern Gaza?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, it’s extremely difficult to describe how difficult and futile the situation in southern Gaza, Rafah and Khan Younis area, in particular. The area has been subjected to a complete shutdown of all communication system and a comprehensive jam of all communication, including the eSIMs, that the Israeli authorities learned that the Palestinians using to take and [inaudible] the truth to the world.

The [inaudible] is heavier than ever. Every few seconds, a very heavy bombardment, very large destruction. I have just learned that the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, Al-Amal Hospital — “al-amal” means “hope” — Al-Amal Hospital was just hit, and 22 people were killed because of that bombardment. And the Israeli occupation army is still bombarding the whole area, in Rafah, in Khan Younis, in Deir al-Balah, in the Gaza central area, in Nuseirat, al-Maghazi, al-Bureij and also Juhor ad-Dik area. So, it’s a very heavy — and it’s a very heavy, sustained [inaudible] one-ton missiles, two-ton missiles are hitting the houses and destroying whole blocks sometimes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Can you talk — how difficult — I can’t imagine how difficult it is for you as a journalist working in Gaza to be able to report. Could you talk about some of the problems that you face?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, one of the problems that I’m facing is that this complete lack of communication. We scheduled a meeting for your good service. It was supposed to be starting around two hours ago. And because of that complete, complete blackout of the communication, I could not join you.

To the [inaudible] becomes the first and the most priority. Journalists are people. Journalists are fathers. Journalists are brothers. Journalists are mothers. Journalists are [inaudible]. And, trust me, I personally have been struggling to live. I’ve been moving from one area to another. I was asked to move from where I live to another place. Then I was asked to move from that place to another place. For the whole Palestinians and journalists, in particular, this is extremely [inaudible]. Survival becomes the first priority. [inaudible] You don’t know when they’re going to hit. You don’t know who they’re going to hit. You don’t know the reason of why they’re hitting. But you might end up being targeted by them.

Now you see the people walking down the street. It’s like people are going nowhere certain. They are confused. They are in fear because of the ongoing bombardment. And they end up killed even when they’re walking, when they’re sleeping, when they’re trying to secure the food. The situation is dire.

And when it comes to the journalists, I was today in Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Nasser Medical Complex. I saw the journalists waiting because they don’t have any communication whatsoever. They have been struggling to secure whatever connection they can. They, I — me and three other journalists were like [inaudible] hospital in the hope that we would find connection, find internet connection. We went down. We were trying. Now, we could not make a connection until a few seconds ago, when I could do a connection, thanks to one international eSIM that I have.

So, it’s a continuous struggle to live. It’s a continuous struggle to survive. And it’s a continuous struggle to secure the very basic need of journalists and their families, as well. So it’s no more a professional duty, so a professional and a humanitarian duty, as well. And the journalists are torn apart between their duty towards their families and their duty also toward their career.

AMY GOODMAN: So, why do you do it, Akram al-Satarri? Akram? Well, it looks like we lost Akram al-Satarri. We’re going to try to get him back on, and we’re going to post that interview at democracynow.org. He is a Gaza-based journalist, incredibly brave, very difficult to get this connection, talking to us from Rafah in southern Gaza.

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Palestine Exception: U.S. Colleges Suppress Free Speech, Academic Freedom for Students & Professors
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 27, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/27 ... transcript

We look at the “Palestine exception to free speech” on U.S. college campuses, where students and faculty face backlash and professional retribution for speaking up in defense of Palestinian rights amid the Israeli war on Gaza. We hear from Safiya O’Brien, a Barnard College student and organizer with the Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and speak with Barnard College professor Premilla Nadasen, who describes an organized campaign “to censor student and faculty speech and curtail academic freedom.” The New York Civil Liberties Union recently sent a letter to the president of Barnard to protest a new policy that requires departments to submit content for their websites for approval by the Office of the Provost.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to end now with a Barnard professor and student, as we continue to look at what some are calling the “Palestine exception” to free speech and academic freedom on college campuses across the United States. A New York Times story this past weekend noted, quote, “a sustained antiwar protest like the one against the Gaza invasion has not been seen for decades,” unquote. But many schools have tried to shut down students and teachers who comment on Gaza or call for a ceasefire.

In one of the latest developments, professors at Syracuse University say upper-level administrators surveilled, harassed and intimidated undergraduates peacefully gathering for a study-in in support of Palestine earlier this month. So they issued a “Statement of Solidarity in Opposition to the Repressive Climate on US Campuses.” That’s what the letter was called, signed by more than 900 educators at this point nationwide, and the list is growing.

In a minute, we’ll be joined by a professor from Barnard College, sister school to Columbia. New York Civil Liberties Union recently sent a letter to the president of Barnard to protest a new policy that requires departments to submit content for their websites for approval by the Office of the Provost. Democracy Now! spoke with Safiya O’Brien, a Barnard College student and student organizer with Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

SAFIYA O’BRIEN: The most prominent discrimination and harassment on campus has been through not only other students and faculty on campus, but the administration’s vilification of Palestinians through these university-wide emails that they’ve been sending. This is not only vilifying us as student groups that are advocating for an end to the violence as it ensues, but even allowing professors and adults that have very prominent positions in the university to speak so harshly against us and call for harm against students of color that are advocating for Palestine, and with impunity. We have documented hundreds of harassment complaints, because the administration hasn’t helped us at all with these harassment cases.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Barnard College student Safiya O’Brien, organizer with the Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

For more, we’re joined by Premilla Nadasen, a professor of history at Barnard College, also co-director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women and author of the recent book, Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Nadasen. We just have a minute. Then we will do a post show interview and post it at democracynow.org. But if you can talk about what’s happening on campus and why you signed this letter?

PREMILLA NADASEN: What we’ve seen, Amy, over the past couple of months is a whole series of strategies that universities have deployed, including Barnard College and Columbia University, to censor student and faculty speech and curtail academic freedom. This includes the suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace on campus, the cancellation of events, the policing of content on departmental websites, as you’ve mentioned, the presence of NYPD on campus. And this relates back to what you started with, and that is a Palestine exception.

What Barnard College has been doing is actually writing new policy as a way to then retroactively decide that events are unauthorized or, in fact, do not follow procedure. And I think there are some really critical issues here, and one of the critical issues is how are decisions at the university made. A lot of these have been made unilaterally, without consultation by faculty or students, and is, in fact, a violation of the university’s own conduct guidelines. And clearly, there’s a tremendous amount of influence by trustees, administrators, alumni and donors, who are making decisions about what kinds of speech ought to take place on college campuses and what can and cannot be posted.

AMY GOODMAN: You signed a statement headlined “Solidarity in Opposition to the Repressive Climate on US Campuses.” Professor Nadasen, if you could start off by talking about what’s happening at Barnard and Columbia University around the groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, and then what you’re being told to do as a professor in dealing with this crisis?

PREMILLA NADASEN: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Amy.

So, what we’ve seen at Barnard College — and Barnard is a sister college of Columbia University — is where the college and the university are really creating an infrastructure of rules and regulations in order to censor speech and curtail academic freedom. We’ve seen this in a number of instances — the suspension of two student organizations, Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, presumably because they arranged an unauthorized walkout and rally, because there was supposedly threatening rhetoric and intimidation. However, when pushed, the administration is not able to identify the specific instances of this intimidating behavior. Threatening letters have been sent by deans to students.

We’ve seen the cancellation of events. I direct the Barnard Center for Research on Women. We had organized an event in sponsorship with Students for Justice in Palestine, which the university canceled the night before the event, claiming that Students for Justice in Palestine is an outside organization, even though it’s a Columbia organization, and Barnard students are members of that. They claim there was now a new five-week prior approval policy for co-sponsored events. And then there was an event that the Columbia Law Students for Palestine organized with Omar Shakir, who’s with Human Rights Watch. And so, all of these events have been canceled on, presumably, procedural grounds. And what the university and the college are doing is they’re using procedure and codes of conduct as a way to cancel events and silence students and faculty.

The other example, which you mentioned in your opening, is the control of faculty websites, departmental websites and center websites. Our Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department wrote a statement in solidarity with Palestine that was posted on October 22nd — on October 21st, sorry. It was removed on October 22nd by the Provost’s Office. And just a few weeks later, the college created a new policy saying that any website content on departmental pages must be reviewed and approved by the Provost’s Office prior to posting.

And so, this is really crucial, because I think what it suggests is that decisions are being made unilaterally by the university officials, by college officials, without consultation with faculty and without through proper procedure, which includes going through the University Senate. Trustees, administrators, alumni and donors are the ones who are actually having undue influence in what — in the kinds of decisions that are being made around academic freedom and freedom of expression.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Nadasen, I wanted to —

PREMILLA NADASEN: And, you know, the —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask you, several — about a decade ago, the University of Chicago initiated a whole new movement among administrators at American universities, which they called the “Chicago Principles,” that supposedly, quote, said that, quote, “the University’s overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate.” And then they got universities all around the country to sign on to this. Columbia signed on in 2016. How does the university reconcile its commitment to these Chicago Principles while at the same time shutting down unpopular speech, as far as they’re concerned, that has to do with Palestine?

PREMILLA NADASEN: What Barnard College has done is that it has actually rewritten its political activity guidelines. It rewrote it on November 13th. And what the new policy suggests is that specific actions, statements or positions taken by public officials or governmental bodies is off limits to faculty or is not protected by academic freedom. We cannot attempt to influence legislation or the outcome related to actions by the legislator. Previously, political activity was understood in terms of electoral or partisan politics. But clearly what the college is doing is expanding this notion of political activity and suggesting that faculty and students are in fact in violation of its policy.

But the Chicago Principles are extremely important. And what it says is that there, in fact, should be free and open inquiry, debate, discussion around all sorts of political issues, even if those are difficult and perhaps uncomfortable for people. Our faculty voted just a few weeks ago in favor of the Chicago Principles, because what we have seen now is, in fact, the administration using the power it has as a way to suppress any kind of debate and discussion, especially around Palestine.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Nadasen, are you concerned about speaking out? And do you need any prior approval? And what kind of discussions are you having among the professors at Columbia and Barnard? And talk about your decision to sign on to this letter, which speaks out against censorship and repression on college campuses, started by these Syracuse University professors, that has now close to a thousand signatures.

PREMILLA NADASEN: Students — faculty and staff at Barnard and Columbia formed a Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine shortly after the suspension of JVP and SJP on campus. So, we believe it’s extremely important for faculty and staff to be able to speak out on this issue, partly as a way to protect students. Students have been bearing the brunt of the intimidation and the threatening tactics on the part of the administration. They are the ones who have been suspended, who have been threatened with suspension individually.

And there are always risks. There are always risks in speaking out. I am on the Canary Mission website, and I have been for a very long time, because this is not a new issue for me. But I do think that there is really too much at stake right now. There’s too much at stake around what is happening in Gaza and in Palestine. There’s too much at stake in terms of what we need to be able to do on college campuses.

This is not the first time this has happened at Barnard. In 2015, the college changed its banner policy. It used to be that students could put banners up announcing events that were happening. In 2015, during Israeli Apartheid Week, students put up a banner. Shortly after that, the college changed its policy, and students are no longer to put — are no longer allowed to put banners up.

And so, I think we have to think about the meaning, really, of a liberal arts education and how we want to be able to create a climate that is for — that is one that allows academic debate, allows discussion, allows people to disagree with ideas, where we can have students challenged and give students a space to voice their opinions and faculty the space to teach very difficult topics.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you: In terms of the impact on the student movement, overall, on student organizations, what has been the response of the organizations, given the fact that this is not government censorship? This is basically censorship imposed by donors, in essence, through their dollar contributions or the withholding of money to these universities.

PREMILLA NADASEN: Right. Students have been leading the way in the struggle. So, after JVP and SJP were suspended on the campus, 80 student organizations came together and formed CU Apartheid Divest as a way to represent the pro-Palestinian issue and to incorporate a lot of the agenda of JVP and SJP. Students on campus are currently calling for a tuition strike in the spring and trying to build support for that. So students are leading the way despite the threatening and intimidating behavior on the part of the college administration.

AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to ask you about the congressional hearing where Elise Stefanik went after these three female college presidents — right? — the president of MIT, the president of Harvard and the president of University of Pennsylvania, who ultimately resigned. The president of Harvard got support from students, from professors, and she did not resign, Claudine Gay, but is under enormous, withering attack right now. Now they’re saying she’s guilty of plagiarism and has to step down. If you can talk about whether you’re following that, and the effect that that has had at Barnard and Columbia and around the country as college presidents are taken down, the most vulnerable, women and women of color? She was the first Black woman president of Harvard. And, of course, UPenn was President Magill, who is a female president of UPenn.

PREMILLA NADASEN: That’s right, Amy. And, in fact, many of the students who have been targeted on the campus here at Barnard and Columbia are largely students of color, and women of color, as well. So we’re seeing this across the board. It’s hard.

You have to place what’s happening at Barnard and Columbia right now in this larger national context. And the House subcommittee that you’re talking about, the hearings on antisemitism on college campuses, the Biden’s administration issuing of guidelines around antisemitism on campus, I think the core issue here — oh, and I will also add the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, that is investigating a number of schools around the country. I think part of the problem with this is the creation or the assumption that any criticism of the state of Israel is, in fact, antisemitic, and the ways in which, as you mentioned, donors, trustees and alumni are having undue influence on the ways in which there is space to critique the state of Israel on college campuses.

The AAUP has principles of academic freedom that state very clearly that the purpose of academic freedom is to protect the academe as a space for the production and dissemination of knowledge, that serves the public irrespective of governmental, corporate or institutional interests. And so, what we’re seeing right now is a violation of that, at Barnard, at Columbia, at Harvard, at Brown, and Penn, and a shutting down of debate, particularly around Palestine. And this is precisely why the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote this open letter to the Barnard administration about control of websites.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Nadasen, I want to end by asking about your own background. You said you have been outspoken on Palestinian issues for quite some time. You said your profile is on the Canary Mission website. We just spoke to the investigative journalist James Bamford about the Canary Mission and what it has been doing around profiling students and professors in the United States. People go to democracynow.org. But why you are interested in this issue? Can you talk about where you were born, and what that means for your analysis of the situation in the Middle East?

PREMILLA NADASEN: I was born in South Africa under apartheid. I lived there as a child and moved to the United States, but went back periodically. So I was deeply impacted by apartheid in South Africa and became active in the anti-apartheid movement in high school, and then in college, and knew about what was happening in Palestine, but don’t think I fully understood.

I did go on a delegation to Palestine for the first time. My first time in the region was in 2011 on a women of color delegation. And, Amy, I will just have to say I was shocked by what I saw. And I was shocked mostly with the parallels I saw to apartheid South Africa — the gates, the control of roads, the control of movement, the checkpoints, the use of military force, threatening military force, soldiers with guns. The areas we went to were essentially a militarized state. And even though I had spoken out about Palestine prior to that, I think traveling there and seeing for myself what is happening in Palestine had a real impact on how I could understand and see the issue there. And so I made a commitment at that point to continue to speak out, and to speak out whenever I could, because I think it’s unconscionable. I think what has been happening for decades in Palestine is unconscionable.

And I think what we’re really seeing now is a collective punishment and mass starvation in Gaza and unprecedented attacks in the West Bank. And it’s something that’s being supported by U.S. dollars. So I think it’s very important that we, as Americans who are paying tax dollars that are going to support the Israeli state, speak out about the things that we think are morally just, morally right, and to try to have — and to vote — and to vote as a way to make our voices heard.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Premilla Nadasen, we want to thank you so much for being with us, professor of history at Barnard College, co-director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women, one of close to 1,000 educators who have signed a statement, the headline, “Solidary in Opposition to the Repressive Climate on US Campuses.” The list is growing.

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Meet Aida Touma-Sliman, Palestinian Knesset Member Suspended for Criticizing War on Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 28, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/28 ... transcript

As Israel threatens to continue its assault on Gaza for “many months,” we look at growing Israeli civil opposition to the war. This week, 18-year-old Israeli Tal Mitnick became the first conscientious objector since October 7. We speak with Aida Touma-Sliman, an Palestinian Arab member of the left-wing party Hadash who was suspended from the Knesset last month for criticizing Israel’s assault. She was punished for a social media post she made condemning Israel’s attack on al-Shifa Hospital, and decries the “extreme right-wing government” and its suppression of critical voices in Israel.

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As Israel is threatening to continue its assault on Gaza for “many months,” we begin today’s show looking at resistance to the war inside Israel. On Tuesday, an 18-year-old Israeli teenager named Tal Mitnick was sentenced to 30 days in prison after he refused to enlist in the Israeli army. He spoke out against Israel’s assault on Gaza before his sentencing on Tuesday.

TAL MITNICK: [translated] I am standing today in Tel HaShomer base, and I am refusing to enlist. I believe that slaughter cannot solve slaughter. The criminal attack on Gaza won’t solve the atrocious slaughter that Hamas executed. Violence won’t solve violence. And that is why I refuse.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Last week, Tal Mitnick spoke to Novara Media about why he decided to become a conscientious objector.

TAL MITNICK: What led me was the realization that it’s not just a couple soldiers that are bad soldiers or that enact a violent occupation on Palestinians, but it’s actually a whole system, system of violence, of pulling people into the army and making them work for the occupation and for oppressing Palestinians. …

A lot of my friends are serving and right now are in military service. And when I tell them my opinions, because I am their friend, they see the humanity in my positions, and they see that my only — I only want further to be good in this place. I want security, and I want peace for everyone. And when people get to know me, when people hear this opinion, they — this opinion is very humanistic and very normal.

So this is what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make more teens, make more young people hear this position that there is an alternative to the massacre that is happening right now in Gaza and to the massacre that Hamas committed on October 7th. There is an alternative in peace, of peace and nonviolence.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Tal Mitnick speaking to Ash Sarkar, the British journalist. He has now been sentenced to 30 days in prison for refusing to enlist. Israel is facing growing criticism for stifling antiwar voices.

We’re joined by Aida Touma-Sliman. She’s a Palestinian member of the Knesset from the progressive Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, known as the Hadash party. She was suspended from the Knesset last month for criticizing the Israeli military assault on Gaza. She is joining us now from Akko in northern Israel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Aida Touma-Sliman. If you can start off by talking about the significance of Tal’s resistance, but then go on to talk about the situation in Gaza today and why you were suspended? I mean, you’re an elected leader of the Knesset. Who gets to suspend you?

AIDA TOUMA-SLIMAN: Well, hi. Thank you for hosting me.

Actually, those who suspended me are the same people who are putting Tal now in prison because he has refused to enlist himself to the army. Those are those who are ruling Israel, this government, very extreme right-wing government, who is refusing to hear any voice, antiwar voice, anybody who is opposing this bloody war. There are massive pressure used by the government in order to silence the voices who refuse to believe that military actions and wars and killing innocent people might get us anywhere or can be a way to solve the problem.

I think it has been already a month since I was suspended by the so-called ethics committee, parliamentarian ethics committee, who punished me for quoting testimonies from physicians from al-Shifa Hospital, which were published in the international media. And for that, I’ve been punished and not allowed to speak out in the Knesset or to participate in the committees for two months — one has passed already.

Of course, this is not democratic. But when you see that the same government, the same Knesset is supporting a war that is killing more than 21,000 people, 70% of them children and women in Gaza, you understand that it’s ridiculous to speak about democracy in such situation, because launching such a war was as if a reaction to Hamas’s attack on the 7th of October, which also we don’t — I don’t see it as in any way legitimized to kidnap civilians, including children, but it, of course, do not legitimize also this crazy war that has been going on in the last more than two months. It’s already 80 — more than 80 days.

So, you can understand that when Tal refused to enlist himself, he is a unique voice in the Israeli society, for a young man to stand up against all the mainstream — and not only mainstream, but kind of consensus. Today the situation in Israel is almost 90% of the society is in consensus of supporting the war. To stand up and to say that he will not take part in this war, he is not willing to be part of this military forces that are attacking, bombing in Gaza, it’s a very brave position to take. It is not easy. I’m sure he will not be embraced or tolerated inside the military prison. But we have to also remember that he is the first one to do it during this war. We hopefully think that there are — might be some young women and men who are finding other ways to avoid enlisting themselves, but at least they are not going publicly about it or turning it to a political issue. But he’s still a unique voice and not the majority voice, for my regret.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, MK Aida, if you could also talk about — you’ve mentioned the fact that, you know, 90% of Israeli society is supporting the war, but there is a minority that is opposed to it. And you’ve mentioned that this number, the number that is critical of the war, has increased in recent weeks. If you could explain where that resistance is most prominent and what you think has led to an increase in this opposition?

AIDA TOUMA-SLIMAN: Well, from day one, we understood that the forces that — democratic forces, the antiwar, anti-occupation forces that existed before the 7th of October will — with no regard to the shock that happened on the 7th of October, will still continue to believe in peace, will still continue to believe that occupation should be ended and the war should be ended. In the beginning, there were, as I mentioned to you also, a lot of anger and fear of people that avoided having clear activities against this war. Most of the activities were to put pressure to release the kidnapped Israelis in Hamas — at Hamas in Gaza.

But more and more people started to understand that, first of all, even this war, if they thought the war — the Israeli government had persuaded them in the beginning that this war is needed also to release the kidnapped Israelis. Today they understand, especially with the testimonies of the released hostages telling how dangerous it was to stay under the shelling and the bombardment of Israel. So, they understand that this war, first of all, is risking the security of the hostages who are still — 109 people are still in Gaza. And second, they started to understand that what really released part of the hostages was the negotiation and the contacts and the diplomatic path, and not the military path. So, more and more people are understanding that this war is not bringing them anywhere. Of course, 20% of the population in Israel, which is the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel, are against this war. But we need more from the Jewish side also to be against the war.

Lately, we managed to put together a big demonstration in Tel Aviv, which was the first demonstration against the war that was challenging the silencing policy that was led against especially the Palestinian citizens of Israel. You know, we were under a crackdown on — not only on the citizens, the Arab citizens, but also the leadership. If me silenced in the Knesset, there were also former MKs and the head of the High Follow-Up Committee who were arrested just because they were on their way to have a small protest against the war. Many students were dismissed from school, from university. And people were dismissed from their jobs, only because they published something that expressed sympathy to what’s happening to the people in Gaza, to our people in Gaza.

But today, for example, we challenged this silencing policy again, and we had a protest in Nazareth. Despite the warnings of the police and the fact that they wanted to avoid this protest, we insisted, and we had this protest. Tomorrow we will have a big meeting of different groups and organizations, anti-occupation, antiwar. And we are going to establish a big coalition against this war. We are not intending to bend for this silencing policy and terrorizing people who are against the war. We understand very clearly that crimes are committed and civilians are killed and that the amount of destruction is huge. And if the international community choose to be silent, that’s their problem. We are not going to be silent, and we want to stand up against this war.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, MK Aida, there are places where you still see in Israel criticism of the war, including Haaretz and +972 Magazine, journalists who have also appeared from there on our show. In addition, of course, to the concern about the hostages in Israel, now over 150 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza. If you could talk about the impact of that, as people in Israel see the costs to Israeli lives as this war goes on? Is there a sense within Israel of what it is that is being fought for?

AIDA TOUMA-SLIMAN: Yeah. Well, as I mentioned before, gradually more and more people are understanding that the war is not going to bring any security or any peace for both sides, including and mainly the Israeli side. More and more people understand that they cannot continue forever with this war, because there are implications of that war not only in the meaning of losing lives. There are also injured soldiers. More than 5,000 soldiers have been injured. Some of them will stay handicapped for all of their lives. Families are seeing how their sons, the soldiers, are coming back from war traumatized and need psychological treatment. There are implications on the economy. We are going to face — there’s a raise — just yesterday, there was the poverty report that shows there is a raise in the percentages of people who are dropping down of the poverty line. And we are expecting a very difficult economic year to come because of this war. And people are starting to ask the hard questions: why we need to continue this war if we are going to pay such a high price and still not reach any security?

You have to understand also that people in the north of Israel, near my house, and in the south of Israel are not living in their homes because of this war. Still, we are not saying that this is the most difficult situation. Of course the war is horrific in what’s happening in Gaza. But to make the Israeli society stand up against the war only because of the suffering of the Palestinians, as much as it is moral, I’m afraid it’s not enough to make the people in Israel, especially after the 7th October — it’s not going to make them stand up against the war. But what is happening in the Israeli society, the fact that more than 150 soldiers have been killed, the fact that the families are receiving their sons, their soldiers injured and handicapped, it might be more — sorry — sufficient in convincing the people to go out against the war.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask specifically about the power of the voices of the hostages or their loved ones who are speaking out for them. This is Sharon Kalderon speaking last week, sister-in-law of Ofer Kalderon, who’s being held hostage in Gaza.

SHARON KALDERON: We just want them to sit, all the cabinet, will sit and will find a way to negotiate and to bring our people home. We want them home, but no one is doing nothing right now except fighting. And fighting is not the answer right now. We want our people here, back home with us. And if we fight, we cannot bring them alive. And we don’t want to get bags. We want to get them alive. So this is why we’re here, every day, until we hear from the government that they are sitting, talking.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, this is a powerful voice, the families of the hostages. You have, on Monday, them screaming, shouting in the Knesset as Netanyahu was addressing the Israeli parliament, ”Achshav! Achshav!” — “Now! Now!” — demanding that the hostages be released. Already it’s clear that a number of them, not just the three men who were killed by Israeli soldiers, the young hostages, but a number of others were killed in the Israeli bombing in Gaza. The significance of this voice, and if it’s being amplified by others? Did you expect the hostages to play this kind of role — the hostage families?

AIDA TOUMA-SLIMAN: Well, of course. I mean, no one can imagine the suffering of people who don’t know what is happening with their family members. If I was in their place, I will also be not quiet, and I will do whatever I can in order to change and to bring them back. So, yes, I think it is expected, although they are showing very high, really, effect — they are very effective in how they organize themselves and how they are very vocal and speaking out and demanding to bring their families.

This is also happening, I think, as a counter to the fact that this government, the Israeli government, is not giving this issue much attention, if you compare it to the other targets or goals that Netanyahu put for this war. And that’s why they’ve felt neglected. That’s why they’ve felt that they don’t have enough backup from the government, and they needed to organize themselves and to be so vocal about the issue.

AMY GOODMAN: Aida Touma-Sliman, we only have less than a minute, but you are a Palestinian journalist, as well as an MK, a member of the parliament. I wanted to get your response to — it’s believed over a hundred journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza. The headlines today, TV journalist Mohammad Khair al-Din and Ahmed Khair al-Din, the journalist and cameraman, also died in a bombing in Gaza. Your response to the demand, for example, by Al Jazeera for the International Criminal Court to take on the issue of the targeting of journalists?

AIDA TOUMA-SLIMAN: Well, there are 105 journalists who has been killed since the beginning of this war. If you remember, it started also by other journalists before who were killed, including Shireen Abu Akleh, who was targeted and killed, from Al Jazeera. We have the feeling that the journalists are targeted in order to silence the voices who are coming out from Gaza and exposing the reality of what is happening.

AMY GOODMAN: Because Western journalists are not allowed in by Israel.

AIDA TOUMA-SLIMAN: Of course, I think that there should be an investigation. Of course, there should be an investigation, and it should be a clear out that there is no possibility to continue to be quiet about this targeting.

AMY GOODMAN: Aida Touma-Sliman, we want to thank you so much for being with us, a member —

AIDA TOUMA-SLIMAN: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — of the Israeli Knesset, a MK — that’s a member of the Knesset — Palestinian member, suspended last month for criticizing the Israeli military assault on Gaza, joining us from Akko in northern Israel.

***

“Absolutely Unimaginable”: Children in Gaza Face Amputations Without Anesthesia, Death & Disease
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 28, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/28 ... transcript

Israel has killed more than 8,200 children in Gaza, which the U.N. now calls the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. We speak with Steve Sosebee of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which provides medical and humanitarian aid to Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank, about how at least six Palestinians the organization had brought to the United States for free medical care have now been killed in Gaza. Sosebee shares the stories of Izzeddin Nawasra and Mohammed Al-Ajouri, two young men who were shot by Israeli snipers during the Great March of Return protests in 2018 and received medical care in the U.S. from PCRF. Both were killed alongside their families by Israeli airstrikes on and after Christmas Day. Sosebee also describes the state of medical care in Gaza, where patients are being forced to undergo amputations without anesthesia and forgo life-saving medications amid Israel’s ongoing blockade.

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 Sheikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We continue to look at Israel’s war on Gaza and turn now to the war’s impact on children. According to Palestinian officials, the Israeli assault has killed more than 8,200 children in Gaza over the past 11 weeks. At least 8,600 children have been injured. UNICEF says some 1,000 Palestinian children have had limbs amputated without anesthesia due to the lack of basic medical resources.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Steve Sosebee, founder of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, an organization that provides medical and humanitarian aid to Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank. The fund, founded in 1991, has helped build pediatric cancer center units, emergency departments and ICUs in Gaza.

Six Palestinians that the group brought to the United States for free medical care in recent years have been killed in Gaza since October 7th, two of them killed this week within a day of each other. Izzeddin Nawasra was killed on Christmas with his entire family, and Mohammed Al-Ajouri was killed the day after Christmas with his wife and baby.

Steve Sosebee, our deepest condolences. If you can talk about these two, well, people who were children when you met them, when they were brought to the United States? You brought them to get them medical care, and now killed in the Israeli attacks in Gaza. Tell us about them.

STEVE SOSEBEE: Yeah, well, both of them were amputees. Both had been shot by snipers during the Great Return marches of 2018. They were teenagers who were participating in peaceful protests at the gates, at the borders of Gaza. They’re refugees. They were born into refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. Their families were the descendants of refugees from 1948, when the state of Israel was created, and were, as all refugees in Palestine, demanding the right to return to their villages, to their homes, to their towns within Israel.

During these protests, both had suffered below-knee amputations from the result of being shot by a sniper. And our organization, as a humanitarian organization, identifies these kids who need medical care they can’t get locally. And the quality of prosthetic care in Gaza before October 7th was really underdeveloped and in need of improvement, which we were working on. So these kids were brought outside for treatment.

Izzeddin was brought to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he was provided a new leg and taught to walk again. And Mohammed was brought to Dayton, Ohio, where the same thing. Both of them were provided below-knee prosthetics for free, treated by excellent facilities and also by our communities, who took care of them as host families. And they became very much integrated in the communities, part of the communities where people want to be involved more in helping these children. Both of them had great experiences during their treatment. They flourished, being outside of Gaza for the first time in their lives.

And when we sent them back home, as we do with all of our injured kids, both of them started to have a new hope in life. For the first time since their injuries, they were able to go back to school. They were becoming independent. They were mobile. In the case of Izzeddin, we even hired him to become a field worker for our organization. And one of the areas that he was quite interested in was photography. And so we gave him the opportunity to learn and to train in photography to become part of our communications team. And he was flourishing. He was, you know, having an opportunity to — it was a dream for him to help his own people.

I’ve been in touch with both of them during the war, the bombings in Gaza. And Izzeddin, in particular, I was quite close with, because I had taken him back home after his treatment. And he had mentioned that, you know, he was still alive, because that’s the communication you have with people in Gaza these days. It’s just a very basic, “Are you still alive?” It’s not much else you can really say. “I hope you’re OK.” It’s kind of a painful way of expressing your sympathy and support for the people there. And, you know, he was always responding, “Yes, I’m fine. How are you?” and then, recently, was asking, you know, “How can I do more to help my people? I’m looking for ways to be part of humanitarian work here on the ground during this terrible crisis.” So, even during this period, a boy who had lost his leg and who was, you know, disabled for the rest of his life, in a certain sense, was looking for ways to help his own people during this terrible crisis. And both of them are, as you mentioned, two of six kids that we brought to the United States who have been killed over the past two-and-a-half months.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Steve Sosebee, you mentioned, of course, that even before October 7th, the care for amputees in Gaza was very, very poor. If you could talk about what you’re hearing from your colleagues in Gaza now, where there are so many children who are in need of prosthetic limbs? What is the situation there now, especially since also, as we reported, you know, there isn’t even anesthesia available for operations for children who are so much in need?

STEVE SOSEBEE: Yeah, it’s hard to even convey the idea that in this world today that children are being amputated, having limbs amputated, as a result of traumatic injury, without anesthesia. And by the way, there’s plenty of anesthesia medicine at the border of Egypt waiting to enter Gaza. There’s plenty of food at the border of Egypt ready to enter Gaza. Children are starving. People are starving in Gaza. It’s not as if there’s some kind of natural disaster that’s preventing anesthesia medicine to come into Gaza and be able to be utilized to treat injured children. This is absolutely unimaginable that this is happening in this modern world. And we’re witnessing it, and everybody sees it, and nothing is changing.

The fact that there’s now 1,000 new amputees, at least — and that number is going to grow, because a lot of these kids are with significant injuries in which their limbs are going to have to be amputated in the coming weeks and months. Let’s keep in mind, not only were they amputated without anesthesia, but many of them were amputated in a very quick fashion. And, you know, God bless the doctors and nurses in the health sector in Gaza. They are the true heroes in this, if there are any heroes in this, and there are, of course, among the Palestinian health workers. They’re the ones who are, day and night, in the hospitals, exhausted, as their own families are living under bombs and being killed, trying to help their own patients. And they’re doing these amputations in a very quick manner, because they have so many injured cases coming in. And a lot of these kids who are suffering traumatic amputations have to have surgery again in the future and even furthe amputations, because they’re not getting the adequate care in the initial stages of an amputation. So they’re going to need revision surgery.

So, what we’re trying to do is we are identifying these kids, get them out and get them the treatment they need first, and ensuring that they have adequate surgical services, and then fitting them with prosthetics and getting them walking again. There is no services at all in Gaza for amputees. The hundreds of kids that we’ve treated over the years who’ve suffered traumatic amputations in Gaza, like Mohammed and Izzeddin, who were killed this week, those kids are — their limbs are breaking down. They’re being destroyed. They’re being — they need to be adjusted. They need to be repaired. So these kids are now going again without limbs. And you can imagine, under these circumstances, once again being dependent on others to carry you around, or being on crutches while your neighborhoods are being bombed or your refugee camps are being bombed, is just an unimaginable situation. And this is the reality. There’s absolutely no services available for them right now.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, on November 25th, during the seven-day truce, Defense for Children Palestine filmed an interview with 12-year-old Dunia, who lost her leg in an Israeli airstrike that killed her whole family. Dunia then was herself killed on December 17th after an Israeli tank-fired shell hit her while she was recovering in Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. This is part of her interview with Defense for Children Palestine, which we’re playing posthumously.

DUNIA A.: [translated] When they shelled us with the second missile, I woke up and was surrounded by rubble. I realized that my leg had been cut off, because there was blood and I had no leg. I tried to move it, but it wouldn’t move. My father and mother were martyred. My brother Mohammad and my sister Dalia, too. I want someone to take me abroad, to any country, to install a prosthetic leg, to be able to walk like other people, so that I can move and go out and play with my siblings. I want to become a doctor, like those who treat us, so that I can treat other children. I only want one thing: for the war to end.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s 12-year-old Dunia, who was killed on December 17th. Steve, if you could talk more broadly about the crisis in medical facilities generally, I mean, even the most basic care that’s no longer available to people in Gaza, who need it now more than they ever have, and talk also about specifically the cancer hospitals that you’ve built there?

STEVE SOSEBEE: Yeah. So, prior to October 7th, we were on the ground in Gaza identifying needs in all of the various specialties in the health sector and developing programs to support the improvement of patient care and reducing the need for patients to leave the Gaza Strip for medical treatment that they should be getting locally. We were training doctors. We were bringing in medication, medical support. We were bringing in medical teams from all over the world — we’re the main organization doing this — and providing hands-on training and support in various specialties that don’t exist in Gaza — open-heart surgery for children, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, and so on and so forth, reconstructive surgery. These were all specialties that we were identifying as a need on the ground and bringing in teams to address those needs.

And in addition to that, we were identifying significant gaps in the health sector, like the lack of pediatric cancer treatment for children, in which prior to our opening of the only cancer department in Gaza in 2019, every single child in Gaza with cancer had to travel outside for treatment. And a lot of them were suffering, and in many cases even dying, due to the lack of permits being issued or the access to care.

After October 7th, the health sector, as you all know, has been almost completely destroyed. There’s only a few hospitals now functioning, most of them in the south. The European Gaza Hospital, Nasser Hospital, Al-Aqsa Hospital are the three main hospitals in the center and in the south of the Gaza Strip that are now operating, but they’re basically just triage centers. They’re doing some CPR there.

And this is what needs to be pointed out, as Amy said in the early part of the show when she mentioned the statistics of over 8,000 children in Gaza have been killed. They’ve been killed by bombings. They’ve been killed by traumatic injury. What about the children who have heart disease, who need medical care they can’t get in Gaza anymore? What about the kids who have neurological disorders or have cancer or have other types of, in many cases, quite serious injuries or diseases, that they otherwise would get through our medical teams coming in or through the health system being available that can do elective surgeries, no longer having access to treatment, kids with diabetes, kids with dialysis? All of these children no longer have medical care, and they’re dying, or they’re not getting treatment. In many cases, their conditions are getting worse, and they’re suffering.

What about kids that are now in these internally displaced areas, like these U.N. schools, where they’re sharing a toilet with 700, 800 people, all these communicable diseases going around within these small communities, or these huge communities now, of internally displaced people? They’re getting sick. They don’t have access to primary care. And in some cases, these children are dying.
Add to that the fact that a significant number of children now in Gaza are suffering from hunger and from starvation. All of these factors, in addition to the over 8,000 children that have been killed through bombings of their homes and of their schools and of their mosques and churches and hospitals, you add all of those numbers up, and it’s an absolute humanitarian catastrophe, far beyond what anybody can even articulate properly in words. It’s unimaginable.

Our cancer department, which we opened up in February 2019, was the first shining symbol of hope in Gaza that we can do something. It was built by our community. It wasn’t built by a government. It wasn’t built by a foundation. It was built by thousands of people coming together and saying children with cancer in Gaza shouldn’t have to go without treatment. And that’s the kind of ethos that we believe very strongly in, that you bring the services to them, you develop the services, and these children get treatment near their families with the best care possible. That’s destroyed. That hospital has been closed down since November 7th. It was bombed on November 5th.

When you hear the words of Dunia, the 12-year-old girl who was killed — God rest her soul — and what she expressed, that she wants to go outside, she wants to walk again, she wants be a doctor, this is the hope of all the children in Gaza. And what we’re going to do, what I’m going to do in the future is — every one of these children needs not only a new leg to walk again and to have their bodies repaired, but they need long-term healing. They need an opportunity to develop themselves into doctors. We have to give them that opportunity. Their lives are being destroyed. Their lives are destroyed. But they want hope for a better future. We have to come together as a community. We have to come together as people who have love in our hearts, not hatred, and serve these children for the long term, develop programs where kids like Dunia, who’s 12 years old without a leg — God rest her soul — have a chance for a better future. We have to take that responsibility. We’re going to take that responsibility. That’s the only way we can bring peace and healing to the children of Gaza during this nightmare of suffering and death that they’re enduring today.

AMY GOODMAN: Steve Sosebee, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Again, our condolences. Founder of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, an organization that provides medical and humanitarian aid to Palestinian children in Gaza, speaking to us today from Washington, D.C.

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U.S. Complicit in “On-Air Genocide”: Palestinian Amb. Husam Zomlot Slams 12-Week Gaza Assault
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 29, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/29 ... transcript

Gaza health officials report the past 12 weeks of Israeli assault has killed more than 21,500 Palestinians as Israel admits to killing civilians in an attack on the Maghazi refugee camp on Christmas. We speak with Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the United Kingdom, where Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says “too many civilians” have died in Gaza and has called for a sustainable ceasefire. “What Israel is doing is the first-ever on-air genocide,” says Zomlot, who warns that suppression of dissent and obstruction of international order by Israel and the U.S. will have wide-ranging effects on democratic rights around the world. “These millions of people here and worldwide have discovered that Israel is not just oppressing Palestinians. Israel is oppressing every one of them. Israel is oppressing humanity.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Another 187 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past 24 hours as Israel continues to attack refugee camps and other areas across the Gaza Strip. Gaza health officials say the Israeli assault has killed more than 21,500 Palestinians over the past 12 weeks. In central Gaza, Israeli attacks killed at least 35 Palestinians in Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps. At least 20 more Palestinians died when Israel attacked a residential building near the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah, the southern Gaza city overflowing with displaced Palestinians.

In more news from Gaza, Israeli military officials have admitted it carried out a deadly strike on the Maghazi refugee camp on Christmas Eve that killed at least 86 Palestinians. The IDF said it “regrets the harm” caused to civilians, and claimed that Israeli troops had used the wrong type of bomb. An Israeli official said, quote, “The type of munition did not match the nature of the attack, causing extensive collateral damage which could have been avoided,” unquote. Despite the admission, Israel continues to attack the Maghazi refugee camp. On Thursday, at least five people were killed when Israel bombed a girls’ school housing displaced Palestinians.

Meanwhile, UNRWA, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, has renewed its call for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying the besieged territory is grappling with catastrophic hunger.

For more, we go to London, where we’re joined by Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Ambassador, welcome to Democracy Now! If you can just respond to this latest news, Israel’s admission that they said they were apologizing for causing unnecessary collateral damage, what this means, and, overall, if you can talk about what’s happening in Gaza — in fact, the place where you come from?

HUSAM ZOMLOT: Hello, Amy.

Well, killing 187 Palestinians, primarily children and women, in U.N. shelters, girls’ school, is not collateral damage. More than 21,000, as you reported, mostly, 70% of them, are women and children. And by the way, we have 8,000 unaccounted for under the rubble, so the numbers are going to be much higher. Rescue teams are unable to reach, let alone rescue, all these people under the rubble for days and weeks.

What Israel is doing is the first-ever on-air genocide. This is not just about how many they are killing, primarily families and civilians. It’s also about turning Gaza completely lifeless, unlivable. And you have all reported the targeting of the very infrastructure of Gaza, be it hospitals, be it schools, universities. And weaponizing food and water, starving 2.3 million people and displacing almost 2 million, most of them in Rafah, while still bombarding the very area they claim to be safe is a very classic design of genocide and ethnic cleansing. I think Israel has been engaged since its establishment in one theory, one ideology, one idea: It wants the land, all of the land, without the people. Remember the mantra that, you know, “a land without a people for a people without a land.” And this explains much of the Israeli actions; otherwise, nothing justifies what has been happening over the last 12 weeks.

And here, the problem really, really is not Israel. Israel is committing crimes against humanity. Israel will have to be held accountable. Its generals, its politicians will have to be behind bars. And justice will have to be served. And we Palestinians must think about our right of self-defense. This is number one priority. And our priority now is a complete, comprehensive, permanent ceasefire, because we cannot even assess the situation unless the mass killings of Israel ends. And we want to see a massive humanitarian assistance immediately to Gaza from all sides, air-lifted, sea-lifted and what have you, because the level of catastrophe is unprecedented in recent human history. We have to prevent Israel’s actual real plan of pushing people out of Gaza toward Sinai, the ethnic cleansing, and we must assure that Israel does not take any part of Gaza, as they have been claiming.

But there, we must revisit all that happened, including the U.S. role, Amy. And here, we very much regret — you know, the U.S. has been losing its credibility, its standing over years and decades. But this time is different. This time is absolutely different, for many, many experts are — and lawyers are looking into the U.S.'s direct material participation, contribution to the genocide we're talking about. But we leave that to the lawyers. But definitely the U.S. could have prevented these atrocities that have really shocked humanity all over. But it did not, as you know. It did use the veto power to stop the Security Council from taking its own responsibility of enforcing law and order. And the Biden administration will be remembered by this. We will not forget.

The Biden administration is complicit. It has enabled Israel to do so. It has enabled Israel to drag the whole region into this instability. It has enabled Israel to drag the whole world. Look what is happening to the international order, the rules that we created together after the Second World War, the horrors of the Second World War, when we all said “never again.” The U.S. is there, going out of its way to shield a Netanyahu, a Netanyahu and a Smotrich and a Ben-Gvir, the most fanatical supremacist government in the history of mankind, not only Israel. And then the U.S. is there to shield this government?

And the U.S. knows that this is Netanyahu’s war. This is Netanyahu’s war of choice. Netanyahu is doing this only to save his political career. He’s not doing this for Israel’s security. He’s not doing this for any prospects for his people. He’s doing this because he knows the moment the guns — his guns — would stop, the moment the political guns will turn against him, and he might end up in court and in jail. And then the U.S. fails to be the grown-up in the room, is a moment to taint the U.S. for a long, long time to come, to taint Biden himself personally and every member of his administration.

AMY GOODMAN: What exactly do you think President Biden should be doing right now?

HUSAM ZOMLOT: To stop the carnage, first and foremost. A president of the United States of America, and given the Constitution, the making of the U.S., the Bill of Rights of the U.S., your history — a president sitting there seeing all these children, hearing the U.N. secretary-general saying Gaza has become graveyard of children — and I’m sure he sees all these footages — and allowing this, enabling this, spinning this, giving Israel the political, legal, material cover to do this?

You know, every bomb Israel is dropping on our children is American-made. These 2,000-pounds bombs that they have been dropping — and you’ve just quoted their spokespeople saying that, “Oops, these bombs killed many people, when we intended this bomb has more 'collateral damage'” — these are American bombs. So, who’s responsible here? So America would stop this now if they stopped providing Israel with weapons, with bombs, with these lethal weapons that have ended up in the bare bodies of our children. So America is responsible, Amy. It is responsible. And it must stop sending weapons to Israel immediately. And it must stop vetoing our efforts at the Security Council to stop this carnage, this madness.

And by the way, Amy, this madness is not going to stop only on the borders of Israel-Palestine. You are already seeing the region, and, you know, more than six arenas are engaged now, and Israel is bombarding Lebanon, Syria. Yemen is involved. And God knows what will happen next. But also, the effect of this on humanity, I mean, on liberal democracies. Look what is happening in the U.S. Look what is happening in the U.K. and everywhere. There are some politicians who are going out of their way to shield Israel, and, in the process, undermining the very foundation of liberal democracies, like people’s right to protest, to speak, to express, to boycott. In your country, in the U.S., you know, many states have used the power of the law, legislating so people will have to, in a way, sign a contract, if they are going to deal with the federal government or any public body, that they will never boycott anything to do with Israel, even the settlements. Here in the U.K., they’re using the power of the law to make sure that here people will not divest from the illegal settlements, the illegal colonial settlements, according to U.K. law, U.S. law and international law, of course.

So this is a moment when everybody — that’s why, by the way, Amy, you’ve seen the hundreds of thousands of people here — here, behind me, in London — a couple of weeks ago, and you will see many of them, because these millions of people, here and worldwide, have discovered that, actually, Israel is not just oppressing the Palestinians. Israel is oppressing every one of them. Israel is oppressing humanity. Israel is dragging the entire world into this immoral orbit of wars and oppression and suppression of an entire people. And in the process, the world is losing its own international system, i.e. the United Nations, the Security Council, all the rules we created after the Second World War.

What is the international order? What is the essence of the international order? It is that war should not be the first option. That’s the number one rule. That’s why we have Security Council, to prevent wars. Number two, should wars be an option, there are rules for these wars, the Geneva Conventions, one of which is don’t target civilians, and you must protect civilians as an occupier. And number three, there is accountability, should war crimes have been committed. The U.S. has completely destroyed, enabled Israel to destroy all these provisions and rules and premises of the international order.

And, Amy, if you’ll allow me — and this is for the Biden administration to think about very seriously, to think about the impact — the impact — that Israel has normalized the mass murder of children, the mass murder of families and civilians, the mass destruction of hospitals, schools, universities. Normalizing such scenes is going to have severe, severe consequences on our humanity, on how the world will function — not even about the U.S. role.

I think, I believe the U.S. has lost its role, not only in Israel-Palestine. The U.S. will not have standing in the South. The U.S. will not have standing in the East anymore. The U.S. has really made this all about Israel, for reasons beyond our discussion. It’s almost — for many people in the South and in the East, it feels it’s a cultural war waged by the U.S. And Israel is the — you know, that alliance, unbreakable, trumps anything. It trumps our laws. It trumps our humanity. It trumps our security. It trumps our children, trumps everything. And therefore —

AMY GOODMAN: Amba—

HUSAM ZOMLOT: — it’s a moment to pause —

AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador, I wanted to ask you about Britain, about the tens of thousands of people who have protested, about Prime Minister Rishi Sunak firing the hard-right Home Secretary Suella Braverman, coming a month after she called Palestinian solidarity marches, quote, “hate marches.” This is what the Prime Minister Sunak said [sic].

SUELLA BRAVERMAN: We’ve seen now tens of thousands of people take to the streets, following the massacre of Jewish —

AMY GOODMAN: This is Suella Braverman.

SUELLA BRAVERMAN: — people, the single largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, chanting for the erasure of Israel from the map. To my mind, there’s only one way to describe those marches: They are hate marches.

AMY GOODMAN: “Hate marches,” Suella Braverman said. And then she was out. The significance of this?

HUSAM ZOMLOT: Very, very significant. The main message is that this country, the people of this country, the British people, will not allow for such divisive politicians and rhetoric and discourse. And the people have really delivered their verdict. I have participated in all these demos, in most of them. I spoke there, and I’ve seen. I’ve seen firsthand. I’ve seen every color, every background. I’ve seen the Christians and the Muslims and the Jewish brothers and sisters, who have been with us for a long time. I’ve seen a moment of unity of the British people delivering their message that “ceasefire now,” “not in our name,” that we have to end this once and for all.

And by the way, this is the power of the people. I must admit, Amy, the position of the U.K. government is very concerning, very regrettable, so far, until now, lagging behind yet the position of the people. The energy of the people is really inspiring and, I must say, very hopeful, because if we go back to history, it’s people who ended up illegalities and oppressions, including the apartheid regime of South Africa. It’s London here that the anti-apartheid movement emanated from. It’s the British people and the American people, the Europeans, the Africans, the Asians, that came together in that global movement and suffocated the apartheid regime, sucked oxygen out of the apartheid regime. And then we saw the end of that regime, and we saw the release of Nelson Mandela. So, the power of the people is important.

And as much as we despise governments’, Western governments’ position, that will be remembered in history, they will be judged through history. As much as we really are appalled by that, we are so inspired, empowered and certain about the power of their people, in the U.K., in the U.S. and everywhere. And I think this is different. Now it’s a moment of confliction. I believe this is a movement in the making that will go all the way to ending Israel’s illegality and occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about what they call the day after, the plan for afterwards. You have Netanyahu canceling the war cabinet meeting. And I was just reading an article in The Times of Israel that says, “In 2019, Yitzhak Ilan, a former deputy head of the Shin Bet” — that’s the Israeli intelligence agency — “who was running for Knesset with the centrist Blue and White party, told a political gathering that Smotrich was a 'Jewish terrorist' who planned to blow up cars on a major highway during the Gaza disengagement. Ilan claimed … he had personally interrogated Smotrich.

“Smotrich … denied any connection to any plan to destroy infrastructure or commit terror offenses.

“Dvir Kariv, who was a senior agent in the Shin Bet at the time, claimed earlier this month in an interview with Channel 12 news that Israeli authorities decided not to prosecute Smotrich and his alleged collaborators because the Shin Bet did not want to expose [its] sources.”

Now, I bring this up because, apparently, the finance minister, the far-right settler, Bezalel Smotrich, is the one who prevented the war cabinet meeting from going, or at least that Netanyahu caved to, afraid he’d lose his coalition, which could mean that he would no longer be prime minister, which could mean he could be going to jail for his own corruption cases. But if you can talk about the cancellation of this war cabinet meeting, and what you want to see happen afterwards?

HUSAM ZOMLOT: Well, the cancellation of the war meeting, whatever it is, is just another expression of how fanatical, how extreme, how supremacist, how dangerous these people are — not only Smotrich. By the way, Smotrich has published a plan — you can read it, it’s online — that he calls — already a few years ago, that he calls for the ethnic cleansing of the rest of Palestinians. He gives us three options: Either we stay as slaves in our own homeland, or we leave en masse — look what they’re doing in Gaza — or we are killed by the army. And he published this. So, this is a man who now handles Israel’s finance. He pays for the settlements. He pays for the army, etc.

But there is a sitting convicted terrorist in the Israeli Cabinet, including Ben-Gvir, who’s now handling the so-called national security, minister of Israel. It’s unbelievable. And, you know, one of the declared aims of war for Netanyahu is to deradicalize the Palestinian people. I mean, who needs to be deradicalized here? Ben-Gvir, who was convicted by an Israeli judge, Israeli court as a terrorist and as a racist.

And, you know, this is a moment when we don’t really waste our time. We should not discuss the day after. The day after is going to be up to the Palestinian people. We have our structures. We have our legitimacy. We have our umbrellas. And we will make sure that the day after would be one in a united people, like, and a united land. Gaza is a part of Palestine. And any day after will have to include Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in one unit. We will not accept Israel’s dreams, daydreaming that Gaza will be carved out, as they have been trying to do for many, many years now. Israel is a beloved part of our territory.

And the thing that we need to discuss, Amy, is the day before. And everybody now is wanting us to discuss the day after. No, the day before, the day before the 7th of October — the occupation, the colonization, the racism, the supremacy, the murders all over the West Bank, the provocations in Jerusalem, the rounding and arresting of our children without trial, without charge, without access to their parents or lawyers. This is what needs to be discussed, the decadeslong oppression, suppression of an entire nation. The denial, the bare, basic denial, of basic rights needs to be discussed. The whole idea that Israel could keep a permanent occupation, permanent colonization, permanent siege, permanent denial of refugees to go back to their homes, with the help of the U.S. administration and the rest of the West, to really bypass the Palestinian issue, that is what we are going to discuss soon, because, you know, for the last so many years, the West has enabled Israel to actually be convinced that it can bypass us, that the Biden — remember the Trump administration. I was the ambassador in Washington during the Trump time, if you remember, Amy. And, you know, the Trump administration —

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what happened.

HUSAM ZOMLOT: The Trump administration has simply, completely gave Israel the stamp of approval to undermine any prospect of a two-state solution and to actually keep believing that they could turn their occupation permanent. But then comes the Biden administration, who promised during the election otherwise, but they failed miserably. They did not reverse any of the Biden — of the Trump’s administration very lethal policies. And, actually, they doubled down on the psychology and on the mindset of bypassing the Palestinian issue. They pushed for further normalization between Israel and the nonconflicting parties, you know, Emirates, what have you, even Saudi Arabia. And the fact is, the Biden administration knows that Israel’s issue is with us, not far away.

So, there are two agendas here. There was one of Netanyahu and co., because successive Israeli governments, which is a nonsolution agenda, as basic as that. And there was the Palestinian and the international agenda, which is, so-called, the two-state solution, i.e. Israel has got to end its occupation.

The Biden administration has got — they did nothing whatsoever in the last three years or so to actually go in that direction. Everything they did was in the opposite direction. And now they are in this mood of trying to curb Israel, but they are failing to do so, because they will not be able to use the stick. They are unable to tell Israel, “We will stop arming you. We will stop funding you. We will stop protecting you in the Security Council.” So Israel is not listening. That’s the unfortunate situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador, I want to —

HUSAM ZOMLOT: And the onus will be on the U.S.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to get your response to a tweet posted Thursday by Secretary of State Tony Blinken. He said, “This has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world. Many killed, many more wounded, hundreds detained, attacked, threatened, injured — simply for doing their jobs. I am profoundly grateful to the press for getting accurate, timely information to people.” He wasn’t talking specifically about what’s happened in Gaza. But I’d like you to address this. You addressed a rally recently where you talked about the astounding number of journalists who have been killed in Gaza. The numbers are believed to be up to something like 105. And the significance of journalists being killed?

HUSAM ZOMLOT: It’s part of Israel’s deliberate targeting of journalists all over. And remember Shireen Abu Akleh. And Mr. Blinken was involved with the case of Shireen Abu Akleh. And yet again, America put its weight behind acquitting Israel of any responsibility about Shireen. And by the way, Shireen is both Palestinian citizen and American citizen. But now this whole —

AMY GOODMAN: The Al Jazeera reporter.

HUSAM ZOMLOT: — targeting — yeah, yeah, yeah, Al Jazeera, but a Palestinian icon, a beloved Palestinian voice of the Palestinian people, a Jerusalemite. And, you know, she’s a most prominent — a most prominent journalist, sniped, killed by an Israeli soldier in Jenin as she was covering live events. And, you know, Mr. Blinken was involved, the U.S. was involved, the FBI was involved, about their own citizen, and nothing came out. Israel is the exception. Everybody just — every U.S. administration has just simply looked the other way when Israel commits crimes. That’s the issue. Israel has been made so immune, above every law, above every single basic human value.

Now, back to your question, this is also part of the suicide — I’m sorry, the sociocide, sociocide of the Palestinian people, because if you kill their doctors, their professors, their journalists, etc., then if you kill their elites and the sectors that provide life, be it health, be it education, be it media — because media is an integral part of any society — then the society will be unable to survive. And go back. More than a hundred journalists have been killed in Gaza, and the count is still going on. So, this is part of making our society simply lifeless, unable to survive, unable to stay.

And let me say this. Maybe this will sound a bit emotional. But it’s not going to happen, because we have a very, very special society, very rooted, very tradition, and knows how to come together in these moments and knows how to survive. We have learned how to survive, since the Nakba of 1948. So, Israel can break all these laws. Israel can break the very basic human values. But it cannot break us. That’s a fact. And look at Gaza. You are following what is happening in Gaza. All what Israel is doing is just exposing the savagery, the barbarism this whole entity is about, and our need to end the idea that you can control things by military means. You can’t control things by military means. You can only control things when you end the illegalities and the occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Husam Zomlot, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, who himself lost family members in Gaza, where he is from.

***

“Utterly Illegal”: U.N. Special Rapporteur Slams Netanyahu’s “Voluntary Migration” Plan for Gazans
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 29, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/29 ... transcript

More United Nations workers have been killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip than in any other conflict in the organization’s history. As the death toll for U.N. workers ticks above 136, Israel has announced it will no longer grant automatic visas to U.N. workers, after accusing the organization of being “complicit partners” with Hamas after months of U.N. officials repeatedly calling for a ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, calls Israel’s accusations “baseless” and part of a long pattern of smearing and obstructing the U.N.’s operations in Israel and Palestine.

Transcript

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

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

As we continue to look at Israel’s assault on Gaza, we’re joined by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory. Earlier this week, she denounced reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed expelling all Palestinians from Gaza.

Israeli news outlets report Netanyahu told a group of Israeli lawmakers Monday, “Regarding voluntary immigration … this is the direction we are going in,” he said.

Palestinian leaders denounced Netanyahu for embracing what they describe as ethnic cleansing.

Earlier this week, Francesca Albanese tweeted, quote, “Voluntary migration? No matter how ISR gvt calls it, Forced Displacement is a CRIME, prosecutable under the Rome Statute. Its architects shall be investigated/prosecuted by @IntlCrimCourt.”

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Francesca Albanese. Thank you for joining us. Talk about what has been reported as Netanyahu’s plan.

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Good morning, Amy.

Yeah, the plan becomes clearer and clearer. We have heard statements made by Israeli politicians, Israeli military commanders, referring to the need for the Palestinians from Gaza to move south, south first and then more and more south. But at the same time, we have seen soldiers entering the Gaza Strip, saying, quote-unquote, “We destructions to destroy this place and settle.” And the more the time passes, the more it becomes clear that there is a plan in certain corners of the government to repossess Gaza, to reconquest Gaza, and to convert it into an Israeli area. This is pure madness, and it’s utterly illegal.

Now, it’s not new, because forced displacement is the main trait that characterizes Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It has gone through 56 years, not to mention what has happened before.

But now this — I mean, it’s so cynical to call it “voluntary migration” and continue to evoke as the only possibility for the Palestinians in Gaza to survive to move somewhere else, to the Sinai or somewhere else in the Arab region, saying that the Palestinians are Arabs. This is like saying that Italians can go anywhere because they are European. This is so racist, the classic forced displacement. It’s a crime against humanity and cannot be [inaudible]. It should be stopped. It’s shocking to see the silence of the international community in the face of these unfathomable ideas.

AMY GOODMAN: In a post earlier this week, you compared the Israeli assault on Gaza to the genocidal massacres in Srebrenica and Rwanda. Can you explain?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, actually, I didn’t necessarily compare the two. I’m saying that the international community has been silent and unable to prevent the genocide in Rwanda, to prevent the genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Srebrenica, and in the same way it’s looking idle at what’s happening in the Gaza Strip. But it’s worse, because, as the Ambassador Zomlot was saying right before — I think it’s true — this is televised. If people had not realized what the Nakba is, this is ongoing under our eyes, but the genocidal element is more clear.

Here is not about just the displacing people, pushing them out. It’s the killing, the number of killing in the Gaza Strip, which has been turned into an assassination factory, to use an expression by journalists in +972, Israeli journalists in +972. But also, look at what’s going on in the West Bank, where there is no Hamas military control, military presence, and still this year 500 Palestinians have been killed.

So, there is a mass killing of Palestinians ongoing, accompanied by genocidal incitement. And this must be stopped. This triggers an obligation to prevent genocide among member states. But again, no one — no one — seems very preoccupied in the international community, other than human rights actors and, yeah, those concerned with real peace.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca Albanese, you are the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory. Israel has announced it’s going to stop automatically granting visas to employees of the United Nations, after it accused the U.N. of being complicit partners with Hamas. Your response?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Baseless, baseless accusations. I’m appalled onto how these attacks against the U.N. continue to escalate, because, on the one hand, you have two big failures here. And one is induced, and the other is inevitable. The induced one is the political failure of the U.N., because it’s paralyzed because of the political — sorry, of the U.S. veto in the U.N. Security Council. They should — I mean, there was — they were close to a vote on the ceasefire, but there was the U.S. veto. And on the other hand, the other failure, which is inevitable, it’s the humanitarian machinery of the U.N. system, which is also under attack. The U.N. should be strengthened. The multilateral system is put — can drag us out and reestablish a minimum, a modicum of order here.

But, look, what Israel is doing is raising the attacks against the U.N. because the U.N. are being increasingly critical in the face of the crimes that Israel commits through and through. But the threatening U.N. staff of withdrawing visas, this is not new. I mean, we have to — for example, those in my position — this is not something about me particularly, but also the three special rapporteurs on the occupied Palestinian territory who have preceded me have not been able to enter the occupied Palestinian territory because of the Israeli decision not to cooperate with the mandate, which is a violation of U.N. member states’ obligation to comply with the U.N., including its investigative mechanisms. Israel behaves the same way with various commissions of inquiries, including the current commission of inquiry on Israel-Palestine.

And more seriously, Israel has basically kicked out, three years ago, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights — this has gone completely in silence — but withdrawing visa to all its international employees, who are operating now from Amman. Such a weird precedent.

Again, this is the thing. The U.N. has also accepted Israel’s hubris to become fatter and fatter. And this is the reality today, that you have Israeli ambassadors and political leaders smearing everyone, especially rapporteurs, committee, commission of inquiries, the U.N. secretary-general, everyone. Where shall we draw the line?

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about information new out this morning. UNRWA has posted on X that this year has been the deadliest year in the West Bank on record, with a total of 504 Palestinians killed this year. I mean, this is for the whole year. It was already the deadliest year before October 7th, when Hamas attacked Israel. Now more than 300, since October 7th, Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by either Israeli soldiers or settlers.

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, primarily soldiers. And this is one — probably the only issue with an otherwise great report by the U.N. Human Rights Office. It has pointed to the disproportionate, unnecessary use of force through military means, which have resulted, yes, in the killing of 500 people, 500 Palestinians this year, mostly by Israeli soldiers. The emphasis on settler violence, though, while it’s true, shouldn’t distract from the fact that the settlers are there as part of an enterprise, the Israeli enterprise to colonize and annex occupied Palestinian territory, that Israel, as a state, should be held responsible also for the actions of the settlers, which are never prosecuted, by the way.

But again, you know, we have to think that, yes, this has been the deadliest year since 2005, when the U.N. started collecting the data outside of conflict against Gaza. But in Gaza, 4,000 people, including 1,000 children, had been killed in 16 years, during five wars occurred during 16 years of blockade. This is just for those who believe that everything started on the 7th of October. No, it didn’t. The situation was appalling before.

And we have — as special rapporteur, I belong to a community which includes Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations and many scholars who have called for the end of the oppression of the Palestinian people, because — and the end of the annexation and colonization of the occupied territory, because this was the only way to guarantee the security, the safety, the well-being of both Palestinians and Israelis. And we have gone unheard, unfortunately.

AMY GOODMAN: Last question: The role of the United States? In resolution after resolution, they vetoed any call for a ceasefire. The last one, they didn’t veto it, but they abstained once they got the U.N. Security Council not to include ceasefire in the language. Where do you see the U.N. going and the role of the United States in all of this? How powerful, how important is the United States, Francesca?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: The United States is very important, very powerful, very influential, is the only single state that can really change the dynamics between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, not only because the United States provides a lot of means and military aid to Israel, but also because it shelters Israel from its responsibilities, political and legal responsibilities.

Again, yes, the last resolution, I mean, the U.S. managed to water it down to a point that it makes no sense. The only thing that is needed now — and it’s already late — is a ceasefire. So, the fact that the U.S. is still sort of not considering this as an option, because it doesn’t, and it continues to engage with Israel as it was business as usual, shows profound disrespect toward the Palestinian people. And again, this is a level of dehumanization that I’ve never seen in other — I mean, it’s not new from Israel, but it’s new at this level, with this magnitude, like endorsed also in the U.S. but also in Europe. I mean, yeah, there is huge responsibilities, and the U.S. is leading the front of those who could change the reality on the ground and chose not to do so.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you see this ending, in the last minute we have, Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory? As I was just discussing with the Palestinian ambassador in the United Kingdom, Netanyahu just canceled his war cabinet meeting under pressure from the even more far-right finance minister, Smotrich. Where is this headed?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I know it’s heading toward further madness, unless and until it’s stopped. And it’s going to be a very heavy, loaded, dark, grim future for both Palestinians and Israelis. So there should be a huge U-turn here and restore international law, basic respect, equality, human rights for both the Israelis and the Palestinians. And it starts with a ceasefire and with a protective presence that allows — that supervises the withdrawal of Israeli troops. This is the moment to end the occupation. And it cannot happen without, I think, a protective presence that guarantees for a while the safety and security of both.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, speaking to us from Italy.