Report from Gaza: Two Palestinians Describe “Horror” on 6th Day of Israel Bombing Besieged Enclaveby Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 12, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12/gaza_updateTranscriptWe speak with two Palestinians in Gaza City about Israel’s devastating bombing campaign while blocking all food, water and fuel from entering the besieged territory. The U.N. reports that all of Gaza’s 13 hospitals are only partially operational due to a lack of fuel and medical supplies as the International Red Cross warns “hospitals are going to be turned into graveyards.” The territory’s only power plant has stopped operating due to a lack of fuel, yet Israeli authorities are vowing to continue the siege of Gaza until Hamas releases the over 100 hostages it seized during its unprecedented attack on Saturday. Yousef Hammash, working with the Norwegian Refugee Council, says humanitarian workers “cannot secure ourselves to start to deliver assistance for the others” and warns locals barely have time to think about political responses as resources run out. “Within days, we will have nothing in Gaza.” While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha asks, “Why don’t they come here and listen to us?” He adds that “Gaza has been the largest open-air prison in the world,” but with the closure of the passage between Gaza and Egypt, “now it has become a prison cell with no window.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The International Red Cross has issued a dire warning about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, saying, quote, “Hospitals are going to be turned into graveyards.” Israel is continuing its devastating bombing campaign while blocking all food, water and fuel from entering the besieged territory. An Israeli ground invasion appears imminent. Gaza’s only power plant has stopped operating due to a lack of fuel. According to the United Nations, all of Gaza’s 13 hospitals are only partially operational due to a lack of fuel and medical supplies.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health says at least 1,350 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began bombarding the territory after Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas. Meanwhile, the death toll in Israel has topped 1,300, including at least 200 Israeli soldiers. According to authorities in Gaza, Israeli attacks have killed at least 326 Palestinian children. The dead also include at least seven Palestinian journalists, 11 staffers at the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency and four medics. Earlier today, an Israeli strike killed 18 Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Many children are now seeking refuge in the courtyard at al-Shifa Hospital, which is considered to be one of the only safe places in Gaza. Remas Abu Tabeekh is an 11-year-old Palestinian girl.
REMAS ABU TABEEKH: [translated] I have spent my 11 years in fear and anxiety. We left our home and stayed in the streets. There are planes. It’s all scary. They are bombing us. Even while we’re here, they are bombing us, and we’re scared.
MOHAMED HALAS: [translated] As a 15-year-old child, I’m displaced from my home and came here to al-Shifa Hospital. We’re sleeping in the hospital with nonstop bombing above us. I hope that the world will have mercy on us.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Mohamed Halas, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, speaking in the courtyard of the al-Shifa Hospital. Other Palestinians seeking refuge at the hospital called for the international community to help stop Israel’s bombardment.
TAYSEER HALAS: [translated] They slaughtered our children and destroyed our houses over our heads. And here we are, in the streets and hospitals. They’ve demolished all the houses on us and on the children and toddlers and women. And here we are, scattered. Let the world come and see how it is packed here. Dead bodies are stacked over each other, children and toddlers. No country is able to control Israel. Where is the United States? Where is the rest of the world? Let them say something. You don’t see how affected we are. We are homeless. We’re destroyed. It’s been five days with no food and water, and we don’t know where to go. Children are everywhere here and homeless. This is not right. Let the world support us. We are restless. We are poor people, the Palestinian people.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Israeli authorities are vowing to continue the siege of Gaza until Hamas releases the 150 or so hostages it seized during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Saturday This is Yifat Zailer, an Israeli woman who fears six of her relatives, including a 9-month-old baby, were taken hostage.
YIFAT ZAILER: It all started Saturday morning, five days ago. Around 9:00 in the morning, we lost connection with my family that lives down south in kibbutz Nir Oz. … When the military finally entered the kibbutz and went through the houses to look for survivors, they didn’t find my aunt and uncle in their apartment, and they are considered missing, as well. So, this is the situation. Six members of my family right now are being held in Gaza. … Time is rushing. There’s a 9-months baby and a 3-year-old child, and my aunt has Parkinson’s disease. I want them back. We all want our family back.
AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Gaza, where we’re joined by two guests. Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and author, columnist, teacher, founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. His recent piece for The Washington Post is headlined “In Gaza, no one can believe their eyes.” He’s the author of the award-winning book, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. And we’re joined by Yousef Hammash, an advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council, lives in the Gaza Strip with his wife and two kids. He recently posted his video showing the destruction of Gaza.
YOUSEF HAMMASH: This is where people in Gaza used to flee from the northern and eastern part seeking safety. This is Gaza City, the center of Gaza City, where people used to consider it safety. This is just to prove that there is no place safe in Gaza. Destruction is everywhere. Where the people can go? Where we should go?
AMY GOODMAN: That was Yousef Hammash, advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Yousef, let’s begin with you. Describe the situation. What does a total siege of Gaza mean right now? From the hospitals to the schoolyards where people are taking refuge, describe it for us.
YOUSEF HAMMASH: So, the siege, in general, is nothing new for Palestinians who lives in Gaza. We are under the siege for more than 17 years. Then add to that the cycles of violence, the nonending cycles of violence.
Especially this war, we cannot compare it with whatever we witnessed before, the massive bombardment that we see, destruction everywhere. If you want to cross from a place to another place, it’s like a maze now. We couldn’t recognize the areas when we move from a place to another place. Thousands of people are getting killed.
Almost one-third of the population had fled their houses, seeking shelter at UNRWA school, which is now over — it got overrun. It’s above their capacity. Now people are lucky to have some relatives live in some areas considered safe, but, I’m really sorry, I don’t think there is a safe place in Gaza. But sometimes people go in from a place when it’s getting bombardment, especially from the north and eastern part of Gaza, seeking more safety in the center of Gaza City.
The situation is unacceptable. You cannot imagine. Again, what we have seen in Gaza, in the streets, in the daily, people under this war, we never imagined it before. This is something — a new level of devastating war in Gaza.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Yousef, could you describe, given that devastation and the number of people who have been injured and displaced, what is the condition of the medical facilities in Gaza? The Health Ministry has warned that the healthcare system has truly begun to collapse.
YOUSEF HAMMASH: So, the medical sector, in general, already had an issue because it hadn’t been upgraded since more than 17 years because of the siege and the blockade on Gaza. Now with the lack of electricity and the number of people who get injured, thousands of people injured, they are above the capacity of the hospitals. I was in Shifa Hospital, and I saw how they were treating, trying to provide medical treatment for injured people in the corridors in the hospital and the garden in front of the hospital, while it hosts also — people are also seeking shelter inside Shifa Hospital. Now with lacking electricity, this is affecting everything. This is — the entire process of the medical system is affected, while it’s already collapsing before. It’s a horrible situation. This is really horror. What we are seeing in Gaza now is really horror.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what have you heard from Hamas about releasing the hostages or taking any steps to change the situation?
YOUSEF HAMMASH: Unfortunately, until now, we didn’t see anything on the horizon, either from the local or the de facto or even from outside. We don’t see a real intervention from outside or inside. No one is, as Gazans — I’m a Gazan. I am a refugee from Jabaliya camp. I don’t have enough space in my head to think about the political situation and what they are doing now. All what we are thinking, trying to provide safety and shelter for our own children. We cannot provide our daily need without water, without electricity, no internet connection. To do this interview, I had to come from the northern part of Gaza, where I live, where I am hosted now because I had to flee my house, to Gaza City in a church to find internet just to have a space to deliver the message from Gaza. There is nothing in the horizon, either from inside or the outside, for a solution. And that’s what make us terrified. We cannot stay in this situation longer. With lack of everything in Gaza, within days we will have nothing in Gaza. Now we have no electricity, no water, no food. But then we will lack food and others.
AMY GOODMAN: Yousef Hammash, you have described the sound, the panic everywhere. Also, you are with the Norwegian Refugee Council, and you mentioned you came from the Jabaliya refugee camp, which was bombed. If you can describe, where was it bombed? How many casualties? And also, you’re with NRC. You have 52 staff members who live and work in Gaza. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says a total of 12 of its workers have been killed. How can you all function?
YOUSEF HAMMASH: So, first of all, to come from Jabaliya to Gaza City to do this interview, it was literally a maze. Wherever, any street you go, and you will find destruction. Rubble is everywhere. You find people are trying to move from here and there. It’s a chaotic situation.
Regarding our work as humanitarians, even our staff, and, I believe, other partners in Gaza, we cannot secure ourselves to start to interfere. And our role as humanitarian organizations, the Norwegian Refugee Council, is to serve people who were forced displaced. Now we are trying to secure ourselves, which is rare. I don’t have an accurate number, but I think the majority of our staff had to flee their houses, along with a lot — most of our partners here in Gaza or the U.N. agencies. We cannot secure ourselves to interfere. This is one of the immediate things that we need, an access for us as humanitarians to deliver assistance for people who are really in dire need. Before this war, more than half of the population was already on humanitarian aid. We have one of the highest rates of unemployment rates on the planet. Add to that this cycle of violence, people who were displaced with nothing. We need to serve these people. We are trying to evaluate how to interfere remotely with our partners, but until now we cannot secure ourselves to start to deliver assistance for the others.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I’d like to bring in Mosab Abu Toha, who is also in Gaza, a Palestinian poet and author. He’s a columnist, teacher and founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. His recent
piece for The Washington Post is headlined “In Gaza, no one can believe their eyes.” He is also the author of the award-winning book titled Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. Mosab, welcome to Democracy Now! If you could describe the situation around you and speak specifically about the impact of what’s happening on children? You, yourself, have a 7-year-old daughter.
MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, in fact, I have three kids. The youngest is three-and-a-half years old.
The situation hasn’t changed. It started, as everyone knows, six days ago. The bombing never stopped. What is different this time is that every hour you hear about the deaths of dozens of people. Just last night in a refugee camp, Al-Shati refugee camp, about 15 people were pulled from under the rubble of their houses, while they were sleeping inside, thinking that they were safe. I was born in that refugee camp. And now I live in Beit Lahia City, which is a city in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. And the bombing hasn’t stopped. I can see from my window plumes of smoke rising up in the sky, just covering every house that it crosses.
And the children, of course, are victims. I mean, everyone in Gaza is a victim of what’s happening and what has been happening in Palestine and in Gaza for so many years. But the children especially have been the main victims of these terroristic attacks, whether it’s the sound of the explosions, the lights of the explosions, the shaking of the houses, the scenes on Facebook of so many limbless and beheaded people who were pulled from under the rubble of their houses. Just today — I mean, last night, my son, who is 3 years old, was sleeping, and there was bad bombing in the area. And he woke up, and he said, “Who did that?” And he said, “Let it stop.” I mean, that was the first time he was asking me to do that, as if I was responsible for the bombing.
So, I have nothing to do as a father. I have nothing to do as a neighbor or as a son. We are helpless here. We have been helpless all our lives, while the United States, unfortunately, is always stepping in to support Israel. And instead of trying to understand why what is happening is happening and to change it and offer solutions, they are just adding more fuel to the fire.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you respond to President Biden? Antony Blinken just arrived in Tel Aviv and had a news — made a statement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who say that terrorism will not be accepted. You have people like the far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said, “Palestinians have one of three options: only either to immigrate or accept a life of subjugation to Israelis, or die.” Can you respond to what has taken place and these statements?
MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, this is not very shocking to me. In fact, if Mr. Blinken could visit Tel Aviv and stay with the Israelis there, I’m so sorry to say that the Palestinian president cannot come to Gaza and visit us, because Israel would deny him permit. So there is a big difference between the supporters of Israel, the powers that are supporting Israel, and whoever wants to support the Palestinians, whether in Gaza or in the West Bank. I mean, why don’t they come here and listen to us? I have never heard of any president coming to Gaza and talking to us as people, the way that they come to Israel. And they are not only talking to them. They are providing them with assets. They are providing them with weapons. And they are trying these weapons on us.
And we have no option. I mean, where do we immigrate? We have been — we were born on this land. My parents were born on this land. My grandparents were born on this land. My great-grandparents were born here. But if you ask anyone in Israel, most of them would tell you that their grandparents were born somewhere else. And even I only have a Palestinian passport, which is really not very helpful when I leave Gaza — if I could leave Gaza. I mean, I remember one time when I went to the United States for the first time in 2019, I gave my passport to the officer at the airport, and they said, “Oh, your passport is expired.” And they were reading the wrong date, because in Arabic the dates are written from right to left, opposed to the English way of writing the dates from left or right. I panicked, in fact. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t read that this is a Palestinian passport. This is from an Arab country. It’s different from Europe and the United States. So, where do we go? And Netanyahu, on the second day of the escalation, asked the Palestinians in Gaza to leave. He said, “Leave now.” But where do we leave, and why should we leave? We have nowhere else to go.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mosab, earlier today, Palestinian officials said that Secretary of State Blinken will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday — that is to say, tomorrow. Could you respond to that and what you think might come out of that meeting?
MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, unfortunately, President Mahmoud Abbas couldn’t help with the situation in Gaza. I mean, if you want to help the Palestinians, you should come to Gaza — I mean, not necessarily these days. You could come, send any officials to the Gaza Strip and listen to our desires, listen to our basic needs. I don’t want you just to say, “I’m going to meet President Mahmoud Abbas,” with all due respect. He is the president of the Palestinian Authority. I think they are just meeting him because they want to show the world that we are meeting with Netanyahu and we are meeting with the Palestinian president. But this is not about — this is not going to save our lives.
Meeting with Netanyahu, I know they are supporting him economically, politically, militarily. But if he is going to meet with President Mahmoud Abbas, what is he going to tell him? Is he going to support him, send food trucks, medicine trucks to the Gaza Strip? Israel did threaten the Egyptians that if they are going to send any trucks into the Gaza Strip, they were going to bomb the trucks. And they did bomb the Rafah border crossing area, which led to Egypt shutting down the border crossing. And I did say in one time that Gaza has been the largest open air-prison in the world. Now it has become, with the closure of the two border crossings, between Gaza and Rafah — Egypt, sorry, and Gaza and Israel, now it has become a prison cell with no window.
AMY GOODMAN: Yousef, we have less than a minute to go. If you can talk about what needs to happen right now? The government media office has just released a statement warning the delay in response to the relief appeal is turning the besieged enclave into a mass grave.
YOUSEF HAMMASH: To be done immediately, we need to stop all of this massacres happening around us. And we need a longer-term solution. We cannot keep finding ourselves in this cycle of violence. I can keep calculating for an hour what I witnessed from the escalations, 2012, 2008, 2014, 2021, and I can keep calculating even the small escalation between them. We need a longer-term solution. The international community and the world leaders should stand ahead their responsibilities, ensuring a longer-term solution for Palestinians who live in Gaza. It start by immediate stop for this war and then lifting the blockade and finding a longer-term solution for us. This is unacceptable. We cannot keep finding ourselves — they made us feel be useless in front of our children. I agree with my neighbors, but it’s — what we are going through is traumatizing us, and I really believe we need years to recover from what’s going on now. This has to stop immediately.
AMY GOODMAN: Yousef Hammash is advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and author. We’ll link to his new piece in The Washington Post, “In Gaza, no one can believe their eyes.”
Coming up, we go to Tel Aviv to speak to a leading Israeli human rights attorney. Back in 30 seconds.
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Human Rights Lawyer Michael Sfard: “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils”by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12 ... tional_lawOCTOBER 12, 2023
TranscriptMichael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer and expert on international human rights, calls for Israel to act within international law in response to Hamas’s attack on civilians Saturday. “My government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes,” says Sfard. “They want revenge, as if a revenge would bring back the dear ones that are gone.” Sfard says Israel should end its bombing and lift the blockade on Gaza because civilians do not deserve punishment for militant attacks. “Modern international law prohibits, with no exception, collective punishment.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: To talk more about the Israeli assault on Gaza, the siege and Hamas’s shocking attack on Israel, we’re joined by longtime Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard. He’s an expert on international human rights and international laws of war. He represents Palestinian and Israeli activists and human rights organizations. He’s also the author of the book The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights. His new op-ed on Haaretz is titled “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils.” Michael Sfard joins us in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Thank you so much for joining us, Michael, and welcome to Democracy Now! If you could talk about your piece that you wrote for Haaretz, “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils”?
MICHAEL SFARD: Well, good morning to you, and thank you very much for having me.
These are terrible, terrible days, actually quite a nightmare that we’re living through, and my heart goes out to the previous interviewees from Gaza.
We have experienced a shock. I have to mediate to you the sentiment in the Israeli public, in the Israeli society. The attack on Saturday was a savage attack, targeting civilians, going from one house to another in civilian neighborhoods and killing, murdering women, children and elderly and innocent people, and also, in the scene of the party, killing hundreds of people. And the blood boils. And the blood boils. It’s not just that the blood boils, but also one feels a puncture in the heart, a hole in the stomach.
And now the question is: What do you do with that, with this, confronting this inhuman attack? Do you fill the punctured heart and the hole in your belly with cement, with concrete, or do you fill it with the warmth of compassion? And I’m afraid to say that many Israelis are extremely filled with rage and desire for revenge. And I, as a human rights lawyer — and in the last three decades I have been working tirelessly, dedicating my professional career to protect the rights of everyone, and especially Palestinian communities who are under occupation, under a regime of apartheid and under the very cruel blockade in Gaza — the only way that I know is to put a cry to adhere to the norms of international law. And I have to say I want to shout, but I understand that at this time there is very little space for a voice like that.
And when I hear the leaders of the state of Israel and the generals, and their rhetoric suggests that things that in the past they denied that the Israeli army is doing in the cycle of attacks on Gaza is now almost probably an official policy — targeting en masse inhabited areas, starving people as a method of warfare. I mean, this is — if what Hamas has done was a blatant war crime — and, I mean, the legal term is “war crime,” but, in fact, it’s a crime against humanity, not in the legal sense, but in the moral sense. It was an attack on everything that is human. To take hostage women with their children, elderly men and women on wheelchairs, this is just incomprehensible. But now my government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes. And this is definitely not what should be done now.
AMY GOODMAN: As a lawyer, as an Israeli, as a Jewish human rights lawyer, can you talk about what collective punishment means, legally and morally? I mean, I think about the Pittsburgh synagogue, which was the worst killing of Jews in the United States in many years; this brutal attack this weekend, the worst killing of Jews since the Holocaust. But the idea of the response being to attack an area of land that is the home to over 2 million people — in this case, 2 million Palestinians — if you can explain? When the shooter shot up the Pittsburgh synagogue, they didn’t destroy — U.S. authorities — his community, his neighborhood. They went after him. They tried him. Michael Sfard, can you respond?
MICHAEL SFARD: Yes. I mean, every moral, human moral system that I know rejects collective punishment, definitely modern ones, but also we find it in the Bible, that children should not bear the spoiled fruits that their fathers have eaten. I mean, there are many, many commandments even in the Bible, which is a very old system of norms, that says that people should individually be found responsible for crimes they are committing. And, of course, international law, modern international law, prohibits, with no exception, collective punishment. We have very clear language written into the Fourth Hague Regulations of 1907 and in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
But I don’t think I need to reference to international treaties. It is something that each and every one of us has to have as an instinct, as a moral basic principle: People should bear responsibility for their deeds, and not their neighbors and not their people and not their sisters or brothers or mothers or fathers.
And it’s not the first time that Gazans are paying the price for things that are done by Hamas or by other groups in the Palestinian society, and not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. I mean, this is abhorrent, but this is exactly what’s going on. And under international law, it’s a war crime to inflict collective punishment definitely on civilians.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Michael, I mean, more Israeli citizens were killed Saturday than during the entire Second Intifada of 2000 to 2005. As Amy mentioned, more Jewish people were killed than — 1,300, over 1,300, since the Holocaust. Tony Blinken, secretary of state, speaking earlier today, invoked the experience of his stepfather who survived the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. Now, if you could say — you’ve said it’s very important to understand the context under which Hamas’s attack took place. Do you believe, in Israel or elsewhere, there are enough people coming out with your position, condemning both Hamas’s attack as well as the occupation and Israel’s response in Gaza?
MICHAEL SFARD: There are people in Israel that feel — that have the same sentiment that I’ve voiced in my op-ed and I’m expressing here, but I have to be honest. I mean, we’re experiencing now a huge setback. I don’t know when there will be space for these kind of messaging in Israel or in Palestine, for that matter. Again, when the blood boils, people choose — and this is probably a human feature, but it’s not a good one. Humans have many, many good features, but they have a lot of bad ones. And this is a bad one. They want revenge, as if a revenge would bring back those, the dear ones that are gone.
And, yes, in reference to the Holocaust, people in Israel have a very special mental vocabulary. And the events of Saturday have immediately triggered the scenes of pogroms in Russia and Ukraine of the 19th century and, of course, the Holocaust, and the threat of annihilation, which is, of course, irrational, because we do — we have an army that had a huge, huge collapse, and, of course, one that would be investigated, an amazing failure, and yet the Israeli army is strong, and Israel is not under threat of annihilation. And yet this is exactly what people feel. And one has to understand that in order to understand the Israeli sentiment. People are feeling under threat of annihilation. And that is a part of our collective psychology. It’s not just benign. It’s not just something that we’ve grown into by chance. It’s something that is injected and indoctrinized from early age. I’m not different in that sense. I mean, I have to struggle with making these comparisons. And that allows the Israeli government and the Israeli army to do stuff that are just — that people should, in a normal circumstance, object to.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you respond, Michael Sfard, when you bring up the occupation, not as a justification for what happened this weekend, but saying that it is essential to understand and to resolve at this point, that these are not two equal nations where one invaded another? In the midst of all of this, Israel is responsible for what happens in the West Bank and Gaza.
MICHAEL SFARD: Yes, Amy, context is important. But I want to pause for a moment and say context is important in order to understand the root causes and in order to think of what is the way out, what is the way forward. But sometimes context is brought as a means to mitigate the horrific nature of what has happened. So, while I am ready and I will say some things about context, I do wish to say that what we’ve seen on Saturday has no justification whatsoever. It’s a crime. It’s inhuman. And this is something that — because every abhorrent crime in humanity’s history has a context, of course.
So, having said that, yes, Gaza is under occupation. And it’s not just any occupation. It’s an occupation coupled with a cruel blockade, blockade that put more than two-and-a-half million people for more than a decade and a half in a closed-up area, where Israel controls most borders and the airspace and the goods that flow in and the people that go in and out. And Israel retains Gaza on the verge of suffocation. And this is inhuman. And by the way, in the line of those responsible for this blockade, Israel stands first. But the line is long, and it includes the Western world that allows it. I can’t recall any other context in which the international community and the Western powers allowed such a blockade on millions of innocent people and not came over with a plan to end it. So, occupation and, yes, Israel is the strong power here, and, yes, Israel is the one that maintains that blockade. And if you look in the last decade and a half, it seemed like there was no reason for Israel to change its policy. America was fine with it. Europe was fine with that. The U.N. didn’t do much about it.
And I just hope — I hope, from this very deep pit that we’re in, that we will start now to — I mean, we’re now in the eye of the storm, so it is too early to say where we’re heading. But I — you know, I don’t pray; I’m not a religious person. But I desire that maybe from this calamity we will start crawling out of that pit. And we can try to do all these — trying to go through different roads. Eventually, the road map is right before us. It’s international law. It’s justice and human rights and respect for the dignity of all people and for their rights and for their collective rights, for the right of self-determination. There will be no end for this, no end to bloodshed, there will be no end to the conflict, without adhering to the principles that humanity has adopted throughout its long, scarred history of man-made catastrophes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Michael, we have less than a minute, but if you could say something —
MICHAEL SFARD: My —
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sorry to interrupt you — about the status of the Israeli hostages who have been taken by Hamas? What do you know about them, and what do you expect will happen? What do you know about what might happen?
MICHAEL SFARD: Well, one of the terrible things about the hostages situation is that Hamas would not provide any information about their condition. And that is an abuse, a psychological abuse, for the families. I mean, I heard all kinds of statements threatening to hurt them, to kill them. This is — I know very little. And unfortunately, my friends in Gaza, who are human rights — my colleagues in Gaza, I am not in — I fear for them, too, and I don’t know how they are, if they are safe, if they are alive.
You know, I just want to end with the following. My grandmother, my maternal grandmother, was a Holocaust survivor. She hid in the Warsaw Ghetto and then in the Aryan side of Warsaw for several years with her mother and sister. And she wrote an autobiography, where she wrote that probably the biggest challenge in the face of inhumanity, of being a victim of inhumanity, is to remain your own humanity. That’s the biggest challenge. And in this area, there are so many victims. So many victims. And the challenge is that those victims, that went through living hell, will retain their humanity.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Sfard, I want to thank you for being with us, Israeli human rights lawyer. We’re going to link to your new article for Haaretz titled “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils,” speaking to us from Tel Aviv.
Coming up, we speak with the Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi. Stay with us.
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Palestinian Journalist: Latest Violence Shatters Notion That Israeli Apartheid Is Sustainableby Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 12, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12/amjad_iraqiTranscriptPalestinian journalist and senior editor at +972 Magazine Amjad Iraqi believes Hamas breaking through the military border between Gaza and Israel has shattered the belief that the occupation is sustainable. Without being able to ignore Palestinians, Iraqi says, long-term reflection on Israel’s apartheid system is possible, but in the short term, the international community is indulging Israel’s desire for revenge. “Now for the far-right government, this massacre, as atrocious as it is, is for them a historic opportunity,” says Iraqi, who describes the desire of Israeli leadership to force out Palestinians or completely destroy Gaza in response to Saturday’s attack by Hamas. “There is no military solution to this issue, and the real problem in the end is this wider apartheid regime.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: “Palestinians and Israelis have grown accustomed to wars in the south in recent years. But the war that began in the early hours of Saturday, 7 October is nothing like the others.”
Those of the opening lines of a new piece in the London Review of Books by our next guest, the Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi, who joins us now from London. The article is headlined “’Get out of there now.” Amjad is senior editor at +972 Magazine and a policy member of Al-Shabaka. His latest piece for +972 is headlined “A psychological barrier has just been shattered in Israel-Palestine.”
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Amjad. Thank you so much for joining us. If you could explain why you think this invasion is different from the past, the 7th October one, and what psychological barrier has been broken?
AMJAD IRAQI: Thank you all for having me.
I think there’s no doubt that in many respects what we’ve been witnessing over the past couple of days is what is being described as a game changer. And there are two ways to kind of think about this. One is this kind of material and military shift that has just occurred by the fact that Hamas broke out of the Gaza Strip, a besieged enclave, both in terms of targeting the military infrastructure, but also the massacres that happened in these Israeli southern towns, that has really not only kind of broken this assumption of Gaza as this place that could maintain Palestinians and encage Hamas, but has really shaken the psychological barrier that exists in Israeli society and the Israeli establishment that the occupation is somehow sustainable, and that if they just keep enforcing the institutions of apartheid, that if they keep pounding Hamas and the Gaza Strip as often as possible, that somehow that is actually going to bring them security, that is going to bring safety, and through that, they can then continue to claim that Israel is a democracy, that Israel is a safe place for the Jewish people. And what we’ve witnessed with these atrocities that have happened is a complete shattering of that. It has broken to Israeli society that the Palestinians are not some distant problem, and that they cannot keep having the boot of their military apparatus upon them.
Unfortunately, as Michael was referring to earlier, I’m not sure how much this will have a lot of soul-searching and reflection, as right now we are seeing this complete desire to inflict total revenge on the Gaza Strip, from the political establishment to the media, all the way down. But I think that barrier that existed in the minds of Israeli society and the Israeli state that this system could work, I think, has really been broken by this assault.
AMY GOODMAN: You write, Amjad, in your +972 piece that these events will allow the most extremist elements within Netanyahu’s far-right administration to carry out as much of their agenda as possible. Can you respond, in particular, to what the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, convicted of supporting a terrorist organization and inciting hatred against Palestinians — what they want to happen now, and if you think that will become the dominant actions of the Netanyahu government, the war government, as they’re calling it right now, bringing in others into the government, as well, at this point?
AMJAD IRAQI: So, it’s no secret that the Israeli government now is really primarily being led by a gang of far-right demagogues, who have been very explicit for years, even before they arrived in office, about their ambitions for the Palestinians as a whole. And we’re seeing that being put out in full force over the past few months since the government has been in place, through the enabling and almost overt support of settler pogroms against West Bank towns and villages, and what is now eventually leading to the total expulsion of numerous Palestinian hamlets and people in order to make way for even more settler outposts and to even pave the way for more assertion of what they describe as Israeli sovereignty. We’ve been seeing this really being expedited in full force.
And now for the far-right government, this massacre, as atrocious as it is, is for them a historic opportunity. It is, for them, reinforcing this idea that the only solution to what they regard as “the Gaza problem” is either the complete mass destruction of the Strip or to try to eliminate, rather than merely contain, Hamas’s political and military apparatus, and, if possible — and this is really one of the most horrific potentials — is the potential that this moment could be used to try to expel masses of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. The far-right ministers are very explicit about this ambition, and they really are trying to mobilize Israeli institutions in order to implement that process. And while we’re still in the throes of the storm, we’re already seeing that first demand on their wish list being implemented in a way that our Palestinian colleagues from Gaza were just describing.
And there’s a massive mutual interest, not just on the part of the far-right politicians, but also the Israeli military, which has been really humiliated by this massive breach of the Gaza fences by Hamas, completely subverting its intelligence or its appearance of being able to know at all times what Hamas is doing. Because of this shattering, the Israeli military also, arguably, is in line with the political establishment over what to do with this.
And time will tell where this leads, but we’re already seeing this indulgence of revenge, not just from the Israeli institutions themselves, but also the international community, including the United States, which is basically telling Israel to go ahead, and to actually justify that revenge and removing the political context, without necessarily having to excuse the massacres — which they should not — but to nonetheless realize that there is no military solution to this issue, and the real problem in the end is this wider apartheid regime that is activating even when you don’t have a war around Gaza, that is activating even on your, quote-unquote, “calm.” And this is the bigger issue that needs to be addressed.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Amjad, we just have a minute, but if you could say — you know, everybody says, as you said, this was unprecedented that Hamas broke through this barrier. People say, you know, they’ve been planning this attack for a long time. What statement have they made since this military assault on Gaza began? And what do you know of what they’re doing with the hostages and whether they’re willing to release them in exchange for Gaza getting some basic resources?
AMJAD IRAQI: It’s quite hard to say what the endgame is entirely. In many ways, the assault also probably surprised them as much as it did the Israelis. And right now I think they’re trying to — it seems like they’re trying to figure out what kind of bargaining chips they have in order to gain certain new kinds of agreements with the Israeli authorities, with the aid potentially of Arab states to try to mediate some kind of ceasefire, that helps to meet certain Hamas demands.
And they’ve been quite explicit about some of the things that they’re seeking, which are long-standing issues that have existed even before this far-right government, including the issue of release of Palestinian prisoners, including provocations and aggressions around Jerusalem, especially around the holy sites, and also, of course, what’s been happening in the West Bank under the Israeli occupation and settler violence. So, these are kind of the big structural demands that are still at play, and it seems that Hamas is now trying to use tactically, basically, what they have right now to kind of turn the tables. But because we’re still —
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
AMJAD IRAQI: — in the eye of the storm, because we’re still seeing the mists of this, it’s very hard to know where this is leading.
AMY GOODMAN: Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi, we thank you so much for being with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.