“Genocidal Machine”: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah on Israel’s Destruction of Gaza’s Hospitals
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 1, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/1/g ... transcript
Israeli forces withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City today after a two-week raid that has left most of the medical complex in ruins. Since October, Gaza’s health sector has been completely decimated, leaving only a dozen hospitals partially functional as the entire medical infrastructure is relentlessly shelled, besieged and raided. We speak to British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who spent over a month treating patients at Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals. He pays tribute to Dr. Ahmad Maqadmeh, a fellow surgeon who was found killed today alongside his mother at Al-Shifa. “I blame the Western journalists, who perpetuated the narrative that militarized the hospital as a justifiable and acceptable target,” says Abu-Sittah about Maqadmeh’s death. “This was a war Israel declared on Palestinian children,” he later concludes, “because Palestinian children represent the Palestinian tomorrow that is incompatible with the Zionist settler-colonial project.” Plus, we hear from a trauma surgeon currently volunteering at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa describes the scene at the hospital as a squalid shelter for thousands of refugees. “There’s no privacy, no dignity for any of these people,” he says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, today after a two-week raid that’s left most of the medical complex in ruins, with dead bodies on the ground and a wasteland of charred and destroyed buildings. The government media office in Gaza said over 400 Palestinians were killed and over 1,000 homes in the area of Al-Shifa destroyed. Army bulldozers also plowed over a makeshift cemetery in the hospital courtyard. The World Health Organization said at least 21 patients died since the raid began March 18th.
Built in 1946, Shifa was once the flagship medical facility in Gaza. Since October, Gaza’s health sector has been completely decimated. Only two hospitals are minimally functional and 10 partially functional, according to the United Nations. The rest have shut down completely after being shelled, besieged and raided by Israeli troops, or running out of fuel and medicine.
On Sunday, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent encampment outside of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. The attack killed two Palestinians and injured seven journalists.
The death toll in Gaza is nearly 33,000, including 14,000 children. Many thousands of others are missing under the rubble and presumed dead. The number of wounded has topped 75,000.
For more, we’re joined by Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon. He worked in Gaza for over a month as a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals. He’s joining us from London.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. So, you have heard the news, Dr. Abu-Sittah, Al-Shifa destroyed, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip. Can you talk about its significance and then talk about your experiences when you were in Gaza?
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: First of all, if you’ll allow me, Amy, I’d like to start by paying tribute to my friend and colleague, Dr. Ahmad Maqadmeh, a young, brilliant plastic surgeon with whom I had worked at Shifa during this war and at Al-Ahli Hospital. And I had worked with him before during the '21 war and during the Marches of Return. His body, alongside that of his mother, were found today when the Israeli troops withdrew, and they had been executed by the Israeli army while trying to escape Shifa. Dr. Ahmad was a brilliant and dedicated young surgeon who had won the humanitarian fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. And it's critical that we remember their names and we remember their stories. And today I want to send my love to his wife and to his children, both under the age of 5, who are now left without a husband and a father. Along with so many of my colleagues who we’ve lost, this is the second plastic surgeon who I had worked with at Shifa who has been killed by the Israelis, and over 345 doctors and nurses and paramedics who have been killed by the Israelis, intentionally targeted.
Now, with regards to Shifa, Shifa was 30% of the capacity of the health system in Gaza. And so, the destruction of Shifa, the wanton destruction of Shifa, is a critical component of Israel’s plan to genocidally make sure that Gaza becomes an uninhabitable place even after a ceasefire happens. By destroying Shifa and making sure that it is irreparable, the Israelis are trying to make sure that, for years to come, Gaza does not have a functioning health system. Shifa now needs to be completely demolished, and a new building and a new hospital built, which means you’re looking at three to five years once the building starts. This is part of the genocidal machine.
But for me, as someone who has — you know, I went, I reached Shifa Hospital on the 10th of October, on the morning of the Tuesday, and was in Shifa on and off throughout my whole 43 days in Gaza. It is not just the Israeli soldiers and the Israeli leaders, the genocidal tip of the iceberg, that I blame. I blame the Western journalists, who perpetuated the narrative that militarized the hospital as a justifiable and an acceptable target to the Israelis. These genocide enablers, these Western journalists, from the very beginning, peddled these stories that the Israelis were feeding them about Shifa being on top of this massive complex of a command-and-control center. And their job was to enable the genocide to take place. And the genocide can only take place if the health system is destroyed. And so, they have the blood of my friend — the blood of Ahmad Maqadmeh is on the hands of the CNN journalists and the BBC journalists and the ITV journalists, who, from the very beginning, were peddling this narrative.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at a comment right now from Raed al-Nims, a representative for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, who said many departments at Al-Shifa Hospital were “set on fire.” “Many bodies” are lying around the ground. Al-Nims told Al Jazeera, “The situation is dire, the medical staff, some of them were killed, others tortured, others detained, and above all, they have been besieged for two weeks without any medical supplies or even food or water.” “Shifa” itself means “healing.” It’s a house of healing. Also, a thousand houses in the area were also destroyed as the Israeli military destroyed the hospital. Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, as you worked there, can you talk about, especially since you are a reconstructive surgeon, the child amputees and what they face, in there and the other hospitals you worked in?
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, from the very beginning, it was obvious that half of the wounded were children. And, you know, on a daily basis, my operating list would be between eight and 12 surgeries, and half of them were children. And the sheer ferocity of the bombing, the fact that the Israelis were targeting people’s homes, meant that a lot of these children, either their limbs were blown right off at the explosion or were crushed beyond repair as a result of the debris and the collapsing buildings that they were taken from underneath. As the war progressed, as the health system became so overwhelmed, previously reconstructable limbs became unrestrictable and required amputation to save the patients’ lives from gangrene and infection.
And so, what we have is a process by which these children — and my estimate is that they are now probably around 4,000 to 5,000 — these children are now left with disabilities that will change the course of their lives. We know from the medical literature that each child with a lower limb prosthetic will need a new prosthetic every six months, because their body outgrows the length of the prosthesis, and will need between eight and 12 surgeries by the time they’re of adult age, because the bone grows faster than the soft tissues, or the nerves attach themselves to the skin and they can’t wear the prosthesis. And so, this is a lifelong trajectory of surgery and of disability and of mental health scarring as a result of the deformity.
Take into account, in addition to that, that a lot of these children are orphaned. You know, there are 17,000 children in Gaza who have lost their parents, and many of these are wounded children. And so, to go through all of this with no family to look after you is just — the legacy will be the legacy of this war. And this is a war — from the very beginning, this was a war Israel declared on Palestinian children. You know, Israel wants to wipe out Palestinian children, because Palestinian children represent the Palestinian tomorrow that is incompatible with the Zionist settler-colonial project. Zionists cannot envision a Palestinian tomorrow and were targeting Palestinian children.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to quote from The New Yorker, that quotes you extensively, Doctor, as you talk about this is the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history. Eliza Griswold writes, “To mark the gravity of these procedures, and to mourn, Abu-Sittah and other medical staff placed the severed limbs of children in small cardboard boxes. They labelled the boxes with masking tape, on which they wrote a name and body part, and buried them.” Talk more about what you did.
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: There was one night when I was in Ahli Hospital when the Israelis had targeted a mosque which had been used by the internally displaced, where, by 5:00 that morning, I had performed amputations on six children. And such is the aim, to dehumanize these children, the aim of the settler-colonialist genocidal war, to dehumanize these children, that my colleagues and I wanted to maintain their dignity and wanted to not just bear witness but to hold on to anything that makes us and them human in the face of this dehumanizing war machine. And so we insisted that whenever there was a limb that was amputated, that it gets the right burial and that this child’s name is on that amputated limb and that we maintain the dignity of our patient to the extent that we can.
AMY GOODMAN: Doctor, The Washington Post is reporting the Biden administration just authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel, the arms package including more than 1,800 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, which can be used to level entire city blocks, U.S. also sending 500 MK-82 500-pound bombs and 25 F-35 fighter jets. I’m wondering if you can comment on this, especially in light of recently being elected rector of the University of Glasgow, your alma mater. It was a position once held by Winnie Mandela. You won by a wide majority, running on a pro-Palestinian solidarity platform and urging divestment from the arms trade. Can you talk about this?
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, one of the things you do realize when you leave this death world in Gaza and you come out to the outside world is that you come to realize that Israel is just the tip of genocidal iceberg, that the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, all of these NATO countries represent the remainder of the genocidal project. And these countries are not just supporting Israel. They are supporting Israel’s genocidal project, because, as the Colombian president said, they want to send the message to any other troublesome Native who considers changing the rules of the global game by rebelling.
And so, when we talk about the genocide, we should not just talk about the Israelis as the perpetrators of the genocide. We should talk about the “Axis of Genocide,” these countries, these governments that are perpetuating this genocide. And we know just not just this article. There’s also been another article showing how much intelligence information has been passed on to the Israelis that ensured the Israelis are able to carry out these massacres. And so, when we talk about the genocide, it’s an American, British, French, European genocide against the Palestinian people, of which Israel is the spearhead but not just the sole perpetrator.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, there were perhaps as many as 200,000 people protesting in London alone this weekend. That’s where you’re speaking from, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah. Talk about the significance of this and if this is making a difference. Wasn’t there also a letter from something like 150 British MPs who wrote a letter demanding stopping the arming of Israel?
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Since the International Court of Justice produced its interim ruling that this is plausibly a genocidal war — and I think there’s no one that has any doubt about it — the British government is now legally complicit in the act of genocide. The universities that hold shares in BAE Systems, the arms manufacturer that has continued to supply weapons to Israel, are also complicit. And this is one of the things that we ran on as part of the campaign for rector of Glasgow University. If you own shares in an arms company that has sent parts or complete weapons to the Israelis in this genocidal war, you are complicit, under international law, in genocide.
All of this highlights the fact that this is a genocidal project that extends from Tel Aviv to London to Washington to Paris to Rome — to all of these countries. These are genocidal partners, complicit in an attempt to wipe out the Palestinian people. The 200,000, hundreds of thousands of people who are coming out every weekend, be it in Europe or North America, are basically saying, “Not in our name.” They will not be complicit in the acts of genocide that their governments are perpetrating. These people want to absolve themselves from what their governments are doing, by refusing to be part of a genocidal war in the 21st century.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who’s currently volunteering at European Hospital in Khan Younis, in Gaza right now. We’ve been trying to reach him nonstop for the show today, but in case we couldn’t, which we can’t — he can almost never do live communication; it just doesn’t work — he sent us this voice message. He’s working with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization. On Sunday, Dr. Sidhwa sent this update as he walked from his living quarters to the European Hospital.
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: The hospital itself is basically a displaced persons camp. I just walked out of my — I live in a little building called the Midan at the end of the square. It’s a kind of an outlying area of the hospital. And yeah, just walking, walking into the hospital. It’s only about a five-minute walk. It’s just squalor everywhere, the kids running around without shoes, kids running around with sores, people actually wheeling their family members around in a hospital bed sometimes, a bunch of cars that can’t move anywhere because there’s no gasoline. They’re using them as beds and shelters sometimes. But, you know, you can see there’s no privacy, no dignity for any of these people.
But they somehow maintain their humanity. It’s pretty impressive to see, actually. I’m walking by the four latrines that people share here. I’m told there’s 20,000 people on the hospital grounds, and they share four latrines. It’s ridiculous. You can imagine the smell. And it’s literally right in front of the hospital main entrance, which is also a giant tent city. But yeah, no, you know, the way these people attempt to maintain some of their own dignity and humanity, you know, they’re maintaining their custom of Ramadan. They’re still staying in family units despite the fact that they have been displaced multiple times each. A lot of them, this is their — you know, leaving aside the 1948 or 1967 displacements, some of them have been displaced three or four times just from this war. Half of the medical students, their families are dead. They were displaced.
CHILD: Hello!
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Hello. Half of them were displaced from — the kids love to say hello to anybody that they’ve figured out is a foreigner. And, you know, half the medical students, their families — they have family members who died. And still, you know, they’re not even in medical school down here, but they go, they come down here, and they just came to Gaza European Hospital to volunteer. And they actually run the emergency room, for the most part, right now.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Feroze Sidhwa at European Hospital in Khan Younis Sunday. Final words to Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who is recently out of Gaza, British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon. Your final thoughts?
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: You know, today, as we grieve for our friend, one tries to maintain a level of hope. And so we end with the words of the immortal Bobby Sands: We will defeat them with the laughter of our children.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, I want to thank you so much for being with us, British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, worked in Gaza for over a month as a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders, treating patients at both Al-Shifa, which has now been almost totally destroyed, and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals.
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“Dying Slowly While the World Is Watching”: Bethlehem Reverend on Israel’s War on Palestinian Christians
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 1, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/1/e ... transcript
As Christians around the world celebrated Easter Sunday, Palestinian Christians from the occupied West Bank were prevented from reaching Jerusalem for Good Friday to walk the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus is said to have followed on the way to his crucifixion more than 2,000 years ago. Meanwhile, Jesus’s birthplace of Bethlehem is uncharacteristically empty of tourists this year as Israel’s assault on Gaza and crackdown on the West Bank escalate. “Nothing can wash the blood from your hands,” said the Reverend Munther Isaac at an Easter vigil for Gaza on Saturday, about Western complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Isaac is a Palestinian Christian theologian and the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He joins Democracy Now! to discuss the history of Palestinian Christians in Gaza, Israel’s occupation of Bethlehem and its strangling of freedoms in the West Bank, U.S. Christians’ support of Israel and more.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
As Christians around the world celebrated Easter Sunday, Palestinians faced severe restrictions on entering the Old City in Jerusalem. Palestinian Christians from the occupied West Bank were prevented from reaching Jerusalem for Good Friday to walk the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus is said to have followed on the way to his crucifixion more than 2,000 years ago. Even before October, Palestinian Christians had to seek permission to visit the Old City. In Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, the wall separating Israel from the West Bank cuts through the city, largely empty of tourists this weekend.
The Reverend Munther Isaac, who is the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, participated in an Easter vigil for Gaza on Saturday. This is some of what he said.
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Today we have entered a new phase of the war of genocide, in which the people of Gaza are being killed by hunger, thirst and disease. They are starved to death. It is a slow death. They are hanging between heaven and Earth, dying slowly while the world is watching. They have no form or majesty, that we should look at them, from whom men hide their faces.
It took more than five months and 32,000 people killed, including 13,000 children, for the U.N. Security Council to finally pass a ceasefire. But nothing has changed on the ground. Since when does Israel care about U.N. resolutions? Israel has never been held accountable or even condemned by Western leaders. This remains the single biggest problem today. Right now we are pleading for aid and food to enter. We gave up on a ceasefire. Just bring food, water and medicine. Lord, have mercy.
Friends, a genocide has been normalized. And as people of faith, if we truly claim to follow a crucified savior, we can never be OK with this. We should never accept the normalization of a genocide. We should never be OK with children dying from starvation, not because of drought or famine, but starvation, man-made catastrophe, because of the empire. A genocide has been normalized, just as apartheid was normalized in Palestine and, before that, in South Africa, just as slavery and the caste system were normalized. It has been firmly established to us that the leaders of the superpowers and those who benefit from the modern colonialism do not look at us as equals. They created the narrative to normalize genocide. They have a theology for it. A genocide has been normalized. This is racism at its worst.
And the very same political and church leaders who lined up in October, one after the other, to give the green light for this genocide, giving it the cover of self-defense, cannot even bring themselves to condemn the obvious war crimes being committed by Israel. They are good at raising their concern, make statements that they are “troubled” by the killing of our children. We’re sorry that the killing of our children by your weapons, actually, troubled you. They want to convince us that they actually care. So, their response? They are silent during the genocide and then show up afterwards with charity to say that they care. Can we really accept this?
Many countries rushed to suspend their funding of UNRWA based on mere allegations that were not fully proven, yet did nothing with regards to the clear findings of the ICJ. The amount of hypocrisy is incomprehensible, and the level of racism involved for such hypocrisy is appalling. And now some politicians claim that their patience with Israel is ending. And we say nothing can wash the blood from your hands.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the Reverend Munther Isaac — Isaac in English — pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, speaking in Bethlehem at an Easter vigil for Gaza Saturday, joining us now from Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
Reverend Isaac, thank you for joining Democracy Now! again. You joined us at Christmas time after you had made that famous “Christ in the Rubble.” I’m wondering if you can share a description of what’s happening in Bethlehem today, in the occupied West Bank, and also talk about what happened on Good Friday.
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Thank you for having me.
Bethlehem, like the rest of Palestinian cities in the West Bank, continue to be almost completely isolated since the war began. And when I say “isolated,” I’m not just referring to the fact that we cannot go to Jerusalem, but even a trip to other Palestinian towns and cities right now is a big hassle. It’s a risky trip because of the potential of settler violence on the roads that Israel control between all the Palestinian towns and cities, and the delays that the checkpoints are causing. Sometimes you could wait up two to three hours just on the checkpoint with no movement. It’s all part of Intimidation and control.
And as I said, here in Bethlehem, we’re also completely now isolated from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a 15-, 20-minute drive from where I’m speaking from. Jerusalem, you know, we used to be considered like another neighborhood in Jerusalem, like two twin cities. But right now, for the first time in history, we are completely isolated as Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
AMY GOODMAN: And again, if you could talk about what happened on Good Friday, the procession in the Old City?
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Well, it was not the normal procession. I mean, at least in previous years, some Palestinian Christians from the West Bank were given those permits by the Israeli military to cross to Jerusalem and attend whether the Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem, or, you know, visit Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, during the holy week. Permits are not available these days. The normal processions and prayers that take place in the Old City with many faithful were missing. And you could see that very small numbers took part in these prayers.
And let’s be clear: The idea that we need a permit is ridiculous, to begin with. That’s the problem. The problem is not that Israel is not giving us permits. The problem is that we need permits, to begin with, as Palestinian Christians from Bethlehem or Ramallah, that we need those permits to go to Jerusalem. This is the real scandal here.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe the wall through Bethlehem, for people to understand who haven’t been there?
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Yes, it’s a really ugly concrete barrier that’s taller even than the Berlin Wall, that cuts deep into some of our neighborhoods. It’s very visible from very many places in Bethlehem. It gives the impression that we live in a big prison. And this is not just an impression, because all it takes for Israel right now is to close two checkpoints, and then we’re completely isolated in Bethlehem. The wall speaks volumes. I mean, it’s the message that it’s sending, that we are not wanted, that we are as if dangerous. There is a psychological effect to it, again, because it’s very visible.
And the route of the wall is very indicative. As I said, it cuts deep into Palestinian neighborhoods in Bethlehem, and it basically confiscated all the land surrounding Bethlehem area. By that, I mean the agricultural land and land that would have been the space for natural expansion. That’s why Bethlehem is very crowded right now. And when we say it confiscated Palestinian land, please understand I’m not just making a political statement as if to say this is Palestinian land. This is land owned and farmed by Palestinian families, including Palestinian Christian families, for generations. But the wall has completely isolated us from these, from our lands.
AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Munther Isaac, if you can talk about Gaza now? How many Christians, Palestinian Christians, are there? Why didn’t most Christians leave Gaza City to go to Rafah?
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Yes, there is around anything between 800 to 900 Palestinian Christians left in the Gaza Strip. And as you said, most of them preferred to stay in Gaza in the city, and they preferred to take refuge in one of the two churches, the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, with the Catholic Church now hosting the majority because it has a bigger compound with a school.
The decision was made, from what they told us, by everyone involved. They met, and they decided that they don’t want to go to the unknown. They don’t want to end up in tents in Egypt maybe or in the desert. Don’t forget that many still carry the memories of 1948, the Nakba. So they don’t want to leave their homes again. And the message they told us is they’d rather die in the church rather than leave to the unknown and end up somewhere that they don’t know. So they chose to be together. They chose to be in the two churches.
And at times, it was very difficult. The Shifa Hospital is from walking distance from the two churches. So you could imagine the amount of trauma and fear they experienced. Many were killed in this war already, whether by bombardment or by snipers or from diseases. You know, the problem right now is, if you get sick in Gaza, chances are very high you don’t survive, because there is no medical care at all.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you two questions, one about the pope giving his Easter sermon at the Vatican, calling for a ceasefire. While he called for peace, a Republican member of the U.S. Congress publicly suggested Gaza should be bombed, quote, “like Nagasaki and Hiroshima.” It was Michigan Congressmember Tim Walberg, who himself is an ordained pastor, who made the comment during a recent town hall. Listen carefully. It’s a little off mic.
REP. TIM WALBERG: We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.
AMY GOODMAN: Your thoughts? Shouldn’t be spending a dime of humanitarian aid, and it should be dealt with like the U.S. dealt with Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: I’m angry. It really makes me angry. And I’ve heard these comments, and I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t believe it. It makes me angry as a Christian, makes me furious as a Christian, for the lack of mercy and compassion. This is definitely not Jesus’ way. I can’t understand which Bible are they reading. And then, when I search about this congressman, only to discover that he went to prestigious and influential evangelical seminaries — he was a pastor — I couldn’t — I couldn’t believe it. I mean, this is a stain on the credibility of the Christian witness. And the idea that he brings those two cities as a positive example, it’s beyond my comprehension. He brings the example of two cities that were completely destroyed, with hundreds of thousands killed, as a positive example? I couldn’t believe it.
I couldn’t believe that, you know, he would think of that, only to think that the real scary part of all of this is that Israel could actually do it and get away with it, because of people like him providing the political and theological cover to execute such a genocide, just as we’ve been witnessing for the last five to six months. This is the scary part, that he thinks of it as a possibility, and that we know that if it happens, there are those who will continue to defend it. I’m horrified by this. As a pastor, I’m appalled and I’m angry, because this is not a Christian witness.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally —
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: And we need more calls for ceasefire. We need stronger calls for a ceasefire, like the one Pope Francis made. We need those church leaders to come to the Holy Land, come and demand a ceasefire. It’s beyond tragic. We need to be very forceful in our demand right now for a ceasefire.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, in a moment, we’re going to be talking about the mass protests in Tel Aviv around calling for — it used to be the resignation of Prime Minister Netanyahu, now it’s for the overthrow of the government. Your thoughts?
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Well, I think Netanyahu should have resigned on October 7th. He led us to this mess. And I’m not just saying that because of his negligence. But his policies, this current Israeli government’s policies, their policies with regard to continuing the split between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, empowering one of the other, even bringing cash money, the fact that they intentionally killed the two-state solution, all of that led us — I mean, these are all the policies that led us to this mess. And we’ve been saying that things are about to explode. We’ve been warning for that. So, to me, he should have resigned — if he had any integrity, he should have resigned immediately after October 7th for causing the death of so many innocent Palestinians and Israeli civilians, as we are witnessing right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Munther —
REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: We definitely need —
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Reverend Munther Isaac, Palestinian Christian theologian, pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He addressed Easter vigil for Gaza on Saturday.
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Israeli Protesters Accuse Netanyahu of Delaying Hostage Deal for His Own Political Survival
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 1, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/1/i ... transcript
On Sunday, tens of thousands rallied across Israel calling for the return of hostages and the removal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the largest nationwide protests since the October 7 attacks. From Tel Aviv, we’re joined by Oren Ziv, a reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine who has been covering the Israeli protests. Ziv says the majority of Israelis generally support the war on Gaza but are increasingly turning against Netanyahu’s far-right government, whose refusal to entertain a ceasefire is seen as an obstacle to the return of Israeli hostages.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.
On Sunday, tens of thousands rallied across Israel calling for the ouster of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the largest protest since the October 7th attacks. In Jerusalem, police fired skunk spray at demonstrators blocking a major highway. The protesters called for a ceasefire and the release of all hostages. As calls mount for his resignation, Benjamin Netanyahu is now recovering after undergoing hernia surgery Sunday night.
For more, we go to Tel Aviv to speak with Oren Ziv, reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine, who’s been covering the protests, joining us from Tel Aviv.
Oren, welcome back to Democracy Now! It seems that the demands have changed over the last half-year, from the resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu now to his overthrow, to his ouster. Can you talk about — describe these protests across Israel and what people are calling for.
OREN ZIV: Thank you for having me.
We’ve seen those protests before October 7, hundreds of thousands of Israelis against Netanyahu and his government and the legal changes they were leading. After October 7, of course, the Israeli public, the vast majority of it, was in shock and trauma. And many of the center-left protesters were focusing in civilian help inside Israel and also in the struggle to release the hostages. But with the weeks and the months passing, more people felt that even during time of war — and I’m talking from the Israeli mainstream perspective — Netanyahu is just dealing with his own survival, with internal politics, and also he doesn’t want eventually to release the hostages, with delaying the deal. And the common idea among the protesters that I spoke to, dozens of them, is that Netanyahu is delaying the war and dragging the war to save himself politically, that he doesn’t really want to pay the political price to release the hostages, meaning to release Palestinian political prisoners, and therefore, more people are going out.
Secondly, and very interesting, while the mainstream — like, the vast majority of the families of hostages, that have relatives who are held in Gaza, in the beginning they were trying to be nice and polite and have kind of apolitical protests and not to annoy the government so much, because they needed the government to agree on a deal. With time, and as we’ve seen that Netanyahu himself and, for sure, the more extreme ministers declared that releasing the hostages is not more important than defeating or destroying Hamas, more and more families realize that they have to go out to the streets and to protest not just for a general deal or negotiation, but specifically against Netanyahu. They see Netanyahu, and, of course, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, as the obstacles to release their relatives from Gaza. And this is why on Saturday we saw that the forum that unites many of the hostages’ families declared that they will not make any vigil or quiet gatherings, and they will join the more active families that were blocking roads, lighting fires and doing more direct actions.
And one of the reasons that this is happening is because Netanyahu and the people around him — in general, the right — was inciting against these families, saying that they should be silent, saying they’re serving Hamas by protesting, connecting between them and the anti-government protesters, although not all of them were center-left. But with this incitement against them, Netanyahu actually pushed them to unite with the anti-government protests.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about what the protesters are saying about the future of the occupation? And also, we rarely hear that there’s been this vigil outside of the military intelligence headquarters in Tel Aviv, led by the hostage families, demanding that their loved ones be released and that the Israeli government work towards that and prioritize that.
OREN ZIV: So, yes, from the beginning of the war, from days after the war began, you had a small group of radical left-wing activists protest against the war, for ceasefire, saying this, the massacre against Palestinians, cannot continue, and also mentioning, of course, that in order to release the hostages, the war has to end and there has to be a ceasefire and a deal. This is a few hundreds of people that have been attacked and arrested by the police, while the mainstream public, their opinion is more complicated. Many of them support the war generally, but think that now the only way to release the hostages is a deal. But with time, more and more of them understand that also Netanyahu doesn’t have a plan for the day after, regardless the horrific things, the killings in Gaza and the massacre. Netanyahu doesn’t want to plan anything ahead. He doesn’t want Hamas to be there. He doesn’t want the PA to be there. He doesn’t want any kind of a Palestinian authority in Gaza.
And with that understanding, many people understand that Netanyahu just wants to stay in this status of war maybe forever. Then he doesn’t have to bring the hostages. To release the hostages, he has to pay a political price, to release Palestinian prisoners. This can endanger his coalition with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and the other extreme-right-wing figures who oppose any release of Palestinian political prisoners. So, with time, you do hear — so, people are calling for ceasefire and for a deal, but from an internal Israeli perspective of releasing the hostages and thinking about the day after, unless from the perspective we’re seeing abroad, of just calling to end the massacre in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, we just have about 30 seconds. We last talked to you where that thousands of Israelis gathering, with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir calling for Jewish settlements in Gaza, etc. Do you see a growing group of people opposing that in Israel?
OREN ZIV: Yes, definitely. The group that was calling to settle in Gaza, among with the activists who are blocking the aid, are confronted by the Israeli mainstream public, that thinks that this is, A, irrelevant and cannot be done, and also thinks that, again, from an Israeli —
AMY GOODMAN: Oren Ziv, we’re going to have to leave it there, but I thank you so much for being with us, reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman.