Air Date 1/5/2024
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast in which we will look at the accusations of genocide by Israel that have been filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, and are reminded that the tactics and technology that is real develops and tests against Palestinians are sold around the world. Sources today include Democracy Now!, The Intercept, Up First, Making Contact, and The Chris Hedges Report, with additional members only clips from The Chris Hedges Report and the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
But first, I just want to quickly address a concern that seems to be fairly widespread, which is that antisemitism is being perceived based, not just on what some are saying about Israel, the war, or Jews in general, but also based on what's not being said, primarily from generally left-wing advocates, activists, and organizations. The accusation is that many on the left haven't prefaced their criticisms of the war or of [00:01:00] Israel with enough condemnation of the attack on Israel by Hamas, or with enough recognition of the pain being felt by the Jewish diaspora. For me, I can actually sort of understand the oversight and why so many on the left wouldn't have felt the need to condemn the attack by Hamas. And it's not out of a lack of concern for the Jewish community or some deep seated antisemitism. It's just so obvious. It seems like something that should go without saying.
Well, that's how it feels from a left-wing, non-Jewish, non-antisemitic perspective. But the problem is that there are enough antisemitic extremists out there for whom an attack on Israel is not obviously bad which muddies the water to the point where everyone actually has to state their position on being for or against a war crime massacre. It seems absurd, but that's the [00:02:00] current state of play. Anyone speaking up to criticize Israel would be wise to state clearly their condemnations of the attack on Israel. And not just because it's being demanded of them, but because as Naomi Klein explained in her article a couple of months ago, "In Gaza and Israel, side with the child over the gun": "These Zionists' worldview is keen to interpret any perceived lack of support for Israel or Jews more broadly as antisemitism. Which is evidence that their project to build and maintain an ethno state through overwhelming force is justified".
So for those of us who don't support the use of that overwhelming force to maintain their ethno state, we don't want to do anything that would even accidentally help them support that ideology. And besides, for those of us who genuinely do stand with innocent people [00:03:00] against violence and murder being committed against those innocent people, our condemnation of the attack on Israel by Hamas back in October also happens to just be true. And there's really no harm in saying what's true.
So, it's an absolute tragedy that condemnation of war crimes is something that needs to be clarified. But that is in fact, the tragic circumstances we are currently living with. So as we get into today's episode, which contains much criticism of Israel, I have no problem, starting with a full throated assurance that we stand against all violence related to this conflict, whether it's those in Israel and Gaza or those in the U.S. or elsewhere who are being targeted based on anger and hatred, inflamed by the current war. And stay tuned to the end where I'll talk a bit more about the perception of antisemitism coming from, not just the right, but also from the left.
Israels Push to Expel Residents of Gaza - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-3-24
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Mouin Rabbani, I want to ask you about your new piece for [00:04:00] Mondoweiss headlined, “The long history of Zionist proposals to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip.” Israeli news outlets report that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told a group of Israeli lawmakers last week, quote, “Regarding voluntary emigration, this is the direction we are going in,” Netanyahu said. Israel’s Minister of National Security, the man who’s been convicted of terrorism, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has made similar comments.
ITAMAR BEN-GVIR: [translated] The solution of encouraging the residents of Gaza to emigrate is one that we must advance. It’s the right, just, moral and humane solution. I call on the prime minister and the new foreign minister, who I congratulate on his appointment: Now is the time to coordinate an emigration project, a project to encourage the residents of Gaza to emigrate to the countries of the world. Let’s be clear: We have partners [00:05:00] around the world whose help we can use. There are people around the world with whom we can advance this idea. Encouraging their emigration will allow us to bring home the residents of the communities near the Gaza border and the residents of the Gush Katif settlements.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Those were the words of Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir. On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department issued a statement rejecting Ben-Gvir’s comment, as well as those made by Bezalel Smotrich. Meanwhile, The Times of London reports Israeli officials have held secret talks with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and several other countries to take in Palestinians from Gaza. If you can talk about the history of this, Mouin? And also talk about when they refer to “voluntary migration” in Gaza. And also talk about Egypt and the pressure that’s being brought to [00:06:00] bear on Egypt to open its borders to the Palestinians of Gaza.
MOUIN RABBANI: Yes, and voluntary emigration is now, referencing that article you mentioned, being marketed as humanitarian emigration. In other words, we’re doing these people a favor by ethnically cleansing them.
I think the problem here is that many people associate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians with the Israeli extreme right, with people like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Netanyahu and so on. But the point I was seeking to make in that article, which is actually a lengthy Twitter thread that I then posted on Mondoweiss, is that ethnic cleansing, or what Zionists would call transfer, is intrinsic to Zionist and later Israeli policy towards the Palestinians from the very outset.
So, as early as 1895, Theodor [00:07:00] Herzl, the founder of the contemporary political Zionist movement, wrote that we need to “spirit the penniless population across the borders” and find employment for it in other lands. If you go to the period between the British Mandate and the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, you find that the Zionist movement set up a Transfer Committee, with very clear terms of reference, to ensure that refugees who were expelled would not be able to return to Palestine, to destroy their villages, and things of that sort. And the Gaza Strip, in fact, with a population that consists of more than three-quarters of Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed in 1948, has, since the 1950s, been a key target for depopulation by Israel, because it doesn’t want all [00:08:00] these refugees living within sight, so to speak, of their former homes on its borders. And it has produced a number of proposals and initiatives over the years to achieve that goal, including even one in the late 1960s to send over some 60,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Paraguay, in return for which the Mossad would discover that it no longer had the resources to hunt Nazi fugitives being sheltered by the Stroessner regime.
So, my point was really to demonstrate that this is not a recent policy proposal by the extreme fringes of the Israeli political spectrum, but has been intrinsic to mainstream Zionism and later Israeli policy from the very outset.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: You say at the end of your piece, Mouin Rabbani, “As importantly, the 1948 Nakba did not defeat the Palestinians, who initiated [00:09:00] their struggle from the camps of exile, those in the Gaza Strip most prominently among them. It would take a Blinken level of foolishness to assume the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip would produce a different outcome.” Talk about Netanyahu’s goal to de-Hamasify Gaza, and what exactly that means, and the effect of the killing, at this point, of over 22,000 Palestinians.
MOUIN RABBANI: Yes. Well, that takes me back to the second part of your previous question, which I had neglected to answer, which is that at the outset of the current war, Israel saw that it had unqualified, unconditional Western support from its U.S. and European sponsors, and resurrected this long-standing ambition to cleanse the Gaza Strip of Palestinians.
And the proposal that was put front and center, literally on October 7th and onwards, [00:10:00] was to move the population of the Gaza Strip to the Sinai Desert, to Egypt. And this was an idea that was very enthusiastically embraced by the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. And on his first trip to the region, he actually sought to market this to Washington’s Arab allies. And I think he is somewhat of a clueless airhead when it comes to the Middle East. And I think he was expecting to hear from U.S. allies, Arab allies, “How can we help you help our Israeli friends?” And instead he was met with categorical refusal and rejection for this proposal, first and foremost by Egypt.
And the U.S. and European governments later came out with a position that they would oppose forced displacement from the Gaza Strip, leaving open the possibility of what we’re seeing now, an Israeli [00:11:00] military campaign, a primary objective of which is to make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation, and then the encouragement of voluntary, or what is now even being called humanitarian, emigration in order to achieve the ethnic cleansing. And I think the genocide that we’re now seeing in the Gaza Strip — and this is something, of course, that’s going to be adjudicated by the International Court of Justice in The Hague after South Africa recently made an application under the Genocide Convention — all these things put together making the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Mouin Rabbani, we’re going to have to leave it there. I thank you so much for being with us, Middle East analyst, co-editor of Jadaliyya. We’ll link to your piece, “The long history of Zionist proposals to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip."
South Africa Files Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice over Genocidal Gaza War - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-2-24
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: If you can explain why it’s South Africa that’s bringing this charge, and what exactly is the International Court of Justice, where it fits into the [00:12:00] world justice system? And talk about the charge of genocide.
FRANCIS BOYLE: Well, thank you very much for having me on, Amy. My best to your listening audience.
Not to toot my own horn here, but I was the first lawyer ever to win anything under the Genocide Convention from the International Court of Justice, that goes back to 1921. I single-handedly won two World Court orders for the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina against Yugoslavia to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide.
And based on my careful review of all the documents so far submitted by the Republic of South Africa, I believe South Africa will win an order against Israel to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against [00:13:00] the Palestinians. And then we will have an official determination by the International Court of Justice itself, the highest legal authority in the United Nations system, that genocide is going on. And under Article I of the Genocide Convention, all contracting parties, 153 states, will then be obliged, “to prevent,” the genocide by Israel against the Palestinians.
Second, when the World Court gives this cease-and-desist order against Israel, the Biden administration will stand condemned under Article III, paragraph [e], of the Genocide Convention, that criminalizes complicity in genocide. And clearly we know that the Biden administration [00:14:00] has been aiding and abetting Israeli genocide against the Palestinians here for quite some time. This has also been raised by my friends in the Center for Constitutional Rights and in the National Lawyers Guild in a lawsuit against Biden, Blinken, and Austin.
So, I believe we will be able to use the World Court order. Right now my sources tell me the hearing will be January 11, January 12. Based on my experience with the Bosnians, we can expect an order within a week.
I would also say, with respect to the Biden administration, they are currently in violation of the Genocide Convention Implementation Act, that makes genocide a crime under United States law. And again, [00:15:00] once South Africa wins this order, the Biden administration also will stand in violation of the Genocide Convention Implementation Act.
So, I believe this is where we will be going between now, I would say, and the end of this month. And it is up to all of us, as American citizens, to figure out and support what South Africa is doing at the International Court of Justice here.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Francis Boyle, what’s the difference between the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, which is already considering allegations of war crimes by both Israel as well as the Palestinian militant groups?
FRANCIS BOYLE: Right, Juan. The International Court of Justice was originally established back in 1921, its [00:16:00] predecessor, legal predecessor, in law. And that is where I filed the genocide case. I was the first lawyer ever to win two orders in one such case since the World Court was founded in 1921, and it was on the basis of the Genocide Convention. The International Criminal Court is a separate international organization, set up in 2000.
The problem, Juan, is this. Back in 2009, after Operation Cast Lead, I advised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court for Palestine, which he did. I regret to report that the International Criminal Court has not done one darn thing [00:17:00] to help the Palestinians since 2009. The International Criminal Court has all the blood of the Palestinian people on its hands since 2009. And, Juan, that is why we set up a campaign to find a state willing to file a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice, the World Court.
The ICC basically operates at the behest of its funders and founders and masters, which is the U.S., the NATO states, the European states, etc. Until their expedited indictment of President Putin as U.S.-NATO lawfare against Russia, the International Criminal Court had not indicted [00:18:00] one American, one European, one Brit, one NATO citizen, and one Israeli, and one white person.
So, we have a campaign now to support the Republic of South Africa at the International Court of Justice. And we are asking — we’re starting this campaign today. I’m part of a coalition. We’re starting this campaign today to get members of the Genocide Convention to file declarations of intervention at the World Court in support and solidarity with South Africa against Israel and in support of the Palestinians.
A Conversation on the Horrors in Gaza with Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous - The Intercept - Air Date 12-20-23
JEREMY SCAHILL - HOST, THE INTERCEPT: I'm watching Al Jazeera and I see Wael wheeled into a hospital, his press vest with [00:19:00] blood on the side of it, and him wincing in pain as they have to then cut through clothes and figure out what kind of injury he suffered and he had been hit when he went to a hospital that had been bombed in an Israeli drone strike and Israel followed up when reporters were there by doing another strike and while got hit with shrapnel.
And the entire time when he's on that bed, he's telling them you need to go back for Semir, his longtime cameraman, and he's saying he's critically wounded. He's bleeding out. We need to send an ambulance back to get him. And so an ambulance tries to go and retrieve him and the Israelis fire on the ambulance, and they blockade the road, they will not allow anyone to retrieve the body of the main cameraman for Al Jazeera's bureau chief. And Al Jazeera's response to this then was to put a clock on their screen and start a timer of how many [00:20:00] minutes had gone by that Israel wasn't allowing any medical personnel to go and retrieve their cameraman, and it went on for more than five hours. He struggled to stay alive, and then he bled out and died.
This is not collateral damage. This is murder. This is murder of a journalist on television. This is beyond anyone's excuses or justifications. This is murdering journalists to silence them, to take the main network whose cameras have been capturing the war crimes and knock them out, and knock the people operating those cameras out. And you know what? Let's kill multiple generations of their families.
If I sound angry, it's because I am. I'm furious. I'm furious at what is happening to the people of Gaza and to my colleagues in Gaza. Sharif, it is unconscionable, the silence that we hear from so many. It's deafening in this country and around the world. [00:21:00]
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yeah, Jazeera is preparing a legal file to submit to the International Criminal Court over what it calls the assassination of Semir, and Reporters Without Borders is also intending to file a lawsuit with the ICC against Israel for targeting journalists in Palestine.
I don't think, unfortunately, those are going to go anywhere. And then you're watching the journalists who are still alive, Dahdouh or Motaz Azaiza or these journalists will become the faces through which we understand of what's happening in Gaza, and I'm really afraid they're going to be killed.
Like I don't know how well is alive, actually, He was almost killed. And he keeps going out there and he keeps reporting. He's not leaving. And yeah, what angers me almost more is that yes, this response by Western news outlets. I'm not talking, they are reporting on what's happening, increasingly, there is more reporting on it and they do report on these journalists being killed. But [00:22:00] on the editorial line of it, the "Democracy dies in darkness" or whatever, stuff like that. Or the way they responded to Jamal Khashoggi or the way they responded to Evan Gershkovich. There isn't the same response, and this is so much worse. And yeah, it lays bare of a terrifying bias. Often corporate media outlets and journalists, there's this big debate over whether you're allowed to have a political opinion or not or objective journalism. And they often label outlets like Democracy Now!, like The Intercept or independent journalists as "activist journalists," as if we have some bias that that skews our reporting in a bad way.
I can't see a stronger bias than what is being reflected in their coverage. It's just that their bias is framed by establishment orthodoxy. And it spans the political spectrum of Washington, basically. It doesn't fall outside of that. Anything that falls outside of that is [00:23:00] radical. But they're the ones who have a radical agenda, I think -- that is, if you're just an honest journalist, then you should be outraged. And this should be the number one story that you're covering.
And I've spoken about this before with you, Jeremy, on Intercepted, about the coverage of places like the New York Times that I'm still somehow shocked by. I'm still somehow shocked. It's gotten better because of the scale of the killing and the length of it. But especially in the beginning, it was just outrageous reporting that on a very basic level of journalism was really handing a microphone to Israel and publishing their narrative without challenging it. That's a terrible bias.
And then, yeah, what is going to happen to Palestine? What's going to happen to Gaza? They have made it unlivable. Even if the bombing stopped today, if there's a ceasefire at this moment, what's going to happen? The people have nothing to go back to. There are no homes left. They've destroyed it. [00:24:00] There's no water. There's no sanitation. They've bombed bakeries. They've bombed wheat mills. I don't know what the plan is. I don't understand. And I don't frankly, I don't think that there is one, a coherent one.
Mosab, the poet that I just heard talk, he said, "You're not allowed to stay in Gaza. They're driving us out, but you're not allowed to leave it either." And he's, " I don't know what they want. I don't think they know themselves what they're doing. They're just killing and destroying." And I think that is right.
Northern Gaza has been turned into this hollow shell. It's an uninhabitable moonscape with few residents left. There's bodies, thousands of bodies or hundreds of bodies buried under the rubble. Southern Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crammed into this even smaller space of the Strip, displaced in schools and tents and shelters. And there's a relentless bombardment and assault there as well.
And can you think of any twin image that is more [00:25:00] illustrative of colonial expansion than that, a destroyed and empty geography alongside an overcrowded ocean of displaced suffering?
And one can only assume that this mass slaughter and destruction that Israel has wrought in Gaza, it's just an intention to make the territory uninhabitable for the 2.2 or 2.3 million Palestinians who live there and to push for expulsion via a military-engineered humanitarian catastrophe.
Disease In Gaza, New York Times vs. ChatGPT, Hottest Year On Record - Up First - Air Date 12-28-23
A MARTINEZ - CO-HOST, UP FIRST: In Gaza, access to food, sanitation and clean water is scarce as the war between Hamas and Israel rages on.
ASMA KHALID - CO-HOST, UP FIRST: The World Health Organization warns disease may eventually kill more people than actual combat if the health system is not fixed.
A MARTINEZ - CO-HOST, UP FIRST: You've got NPR's Ari Daniel here to walk us through what's being done to try to stay ahead of an outbreak. Ari, first off, can you give us a snapshot of infectious disease in Gaza right now? What's it looking like?
ARI DANIEL: Sure. It's bad, and it may well get worse. The WHO says rates are, quote, soaring. [00:26:00] Here's one example: more than 100,000 cases of diarrhea, with rates among children that are 25 times higher than before the war. Our producer, Anas Baba, spoke to pediatrician Tahrir Alsheikh, who's seen some brutal cases of diarrhea.
PEDIATRICIAN TAHRIR ALSHEIKH: I treated a four month old baby who had 20 bowel movements in a day.
ARI DANIEL: Along with a torrent of respiratory diseases.
PEDIATRICIAN TAHRIR ALSHEIKH: I've had cases that didn't respond to any treatment.
ARI DANIEL: The WHO says there are also numerous cases of meningitis, rashes, scabies, lice, and chicken pox.
A MARTINEZ - CO-HOST, UP FIRST: Wow. Now we hear how hard it is to treat people who are hurt and sick right now.
Ari, what combination of conditions created the situation where an infectious disease disaster could really be right around the corner?
ARI DANIEL: Well, Gaza's health infrastructure has really crumbled amidst Israel's bombardment and ground offensive. The WHO says more than half of Gaza's hospitals are no longer functioning. [00:27:00] And that's because Israel has accused Hamas of harboring fighters and weapons in and around those hospitals and under them in tunnels, putting them in the line of fire. Plus, the conditions inside Gaza are a perfect storm for the spread of infectious disease. There is intense overcrowding, colder winter weather, and a lack of clean water, sanitation and proper nutrition, which are services that are difficult to secure under Israel's near total siege of Gaza.
Here's Amber Ali, a deputy program manager for Doctors Without Borders in the Palestinian territories.
AMBER ALI: It's just sort of a cauldron of possibility of infectious disease. This really just is an infectious disaster in waiting.
A MARTINEZ - CO-HOST, UP FIRST: And that brings us back, I suppose, to the World Health Organization's prediction that disease could endanger more lives than military action.
ARI DANIEL: Exactly. And it's why global health groups are racing to ramp up disease surveillance efforts.
A MARTINEZ - CO-HOST, UP FIRST: What did [00:28:00] that look like in Gaza before the war?
ARI DANIEL: Pretty good, actually, despite the Israeli blockade. But the war's compromised all that. Here's Dr. Alsheikh again.
PEDIATRICIAN TAHRIR ALSHEIKH: We used to culture bacteria in Gaza, prescribe medication based on the results. Now, we can't do cultures or anything, and the infections are spreading.
A MARTINEZ - CO-HOST, UP FIRST: So then what are public health professionals doing to try and catch an outbreak before it even takes off?
ARI DANIEL: Well, a WHO official recently traveled to Gaza with rapid tests for hepatitis and cholera. They want to resuscitate one or two of the local laboratories that used to do pathogen screening. Negotiations are also underway to bring a mobile lab into Gaza or ferry specimens out to Egypt for testing. For now, Rick Brennan, a regional emergency director with the WHO, told me it's fortunate that terrible diseases like measles or cholera haven't yet surfaced.
RICK BRENNAN, WHO: To be honest, I'm grateful that we've got to [00:29:00] this point. We've got increased rates, but we haven't had a deadly outbreak yet.
ARI DANIEL: Whether that good fortune lasts isn't certain. But early detection will be critical to keeping potential disease outbreaks contained before they lead to further suffering.
Gaza, Solidarity, and the Movement for Palestinian Liberation - Making Contact - Air Date 11-29-23
LUCY KANG - HOST, MAKING CONTACT: We're going to zoom out from the situation on the ground in Gaza to looking at the various actors involved in these atrocities.
So I sat down with Nora to hear about the weapons that Israel is using in attacks like on al Shifa hospital and where they're coming from. I want us to take a closer look at Israel's military industry. So, Israel is one of the world's most militarized countries, as well as a major weapons supplier internationally. I'm wondering, could you maybe sketch out for us a broad picture of what Israel's military industrial complex looks like and how it enables this current genocide and the ongoing occupation?
NORA BARROWS-FRIEDMAN: Israel is a settler [00:30:00] colonial rampart of Western imperial interests in the Middle East. Israel is not only a leading arms manufacturer that sells its so-called battle tested or field tested weaponry to other states around the world.
Of course, the research and development wing of these weapons are the people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, specifically Gaza over the last, 20 years. Tons of brand new weaponry are tested on Palestinians and then sold in the world market by Israeli arms companies, but it's also a leader in surveillance technology and biotech weaponry and technology.
So Israel is also a leading supplier of spyware for governments and bad faith actors around the world. And of course it is all supported and financed by the [00:31:00] US. The US finances the Israeli military up to three, sometimes six billion dollars a year. A lot of that is also through weapons contracts.
The US also uses Israel as a weapons storage depot where it can store weapons for US led imperial interests in the region. I mean, it is so expansive and it is so insidious. Israel's weapons industry is its biggest export. I mean, where do we start? I, Israel uses surveillance drones on Palestinians right now, as we speak. These same surveillance drones are the ones that the Department of Homeland Security has purchased to patrol the border wall between the US and Mexico.
There are these weapons something that's called the ninja missile, I believe, and it is designed [00:32:00] to, upon impact, fan out these blades, and they're designed to rip flesh just into pieces. I'm just imagining. people in business suits, sitting around boardrooms, coming up with designs for these kinds of weaponry. I just, I have a lot of just fear for humanity that this is what our minds can come up with, and that these weapons are being used against mostly children in the Gaza Strip is just, I mean, there are no words. I keep losing words for this horror that we're seeing. I feel like we need to come up with a brand new vocabulary.
LUCY KANG - HOST, MAKING CONTACT: Yeah, absolutely. And when you were talking about this vision that you had of people in boardrooms, I was also thinking about the role of global defense corporations as well, who are not only enabling [00:33:00] the genocidal war, but also profiting from it. Can you talk about some of the other players who are profiting actively now?
NORA BARROWS-FRIEDMAN: Yeah, the big three, in the US which is Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which design and manufacture not just missiles, but also, the war planes the fighter jets, drones. We're talking about Elbit systems, which is an Israeli company, but which has headquarters in the UK and facilities in the US, especially on the East coast. I mean, it is an enormous industry, I think, and it's so ingrained with Western capitalism. I mean, they're just normal factories producing normal products for normal states to be used in normal situations. That's how it's marketed.
Boeing, oh, they make airplanes as well. We all fly passenger jets. Boeing also makes weapons that kill people. Raytheon is one of the biggest weapons [00:34:00] manufacturers on the planet, Lockheed Martin as well, and it's just, these players are always excited when there's a global conflict or a war or a genocide happening because their stocks go up, because their products become more valuable. And we're seeing now, we're seeing these stock prices rise. We're seeing economic experts talking about how great this war on Gaza is for these weapons manufacturers. How it's all just normalized and into this sort of natural outcome of capitalism and Western interests. It's just, it's devastating, and it should not be normal.
These weapons manufacturers are complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity, and when we look at what's happening in Gaza, when children, fathers and mothers and grandparents, and doctors and journalists and school teachers are being shredded to bits by Western [00:35:00] weapons. We have to figure out ways to stop it.
There are activists all over the country all over the world, but if we're focusing in on the US there are activists who every day since the start of this genocide in Gaza have been engaged in incredible direct actions and protests to stop these weapons manufacturers and these war criminal, conspirators from profiting and that is incredibly necessary. People are getting arrested. People are locking themselves down at the gates of Boeing and of Elbit facilities and stopping the weapon shipments on cargo ships just like the port of Oakland a couple of weeks ago, and then two days later at the port of Tacoma, Washington.
It's time for people to not see this as business as usual. The majority of people in this country do not want this genocide to happen, and It is incumbent upon us to do whatever we [00:36:00] can to stand in the way of these war crimes. We're seeing these marches nearly every weekend just here in California, and every day around the country, where thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are gathering to add their voice to this growing, exponentially growing choir saying not in our name, stop the bombing, stop this genocide, and warning the Biden administration that they're going to be voted out.
Gaza is a weapons lab for the arms industry w Antony Loewenstein - The Chris Hedges Report - Air Date 12-8-23
CHRIS HEDGES - HOST, THE CHRIS HEDGES REPORT: Let's talk about privatization. You talk about the neoliberalism that transformed Israel, which was a socialist state, major state-owned enterprises were sold off, privatized, especially in the 1990s. Israel has very high income inequality. Poverty rate at 23% in Israel, 36% for the Arab population. And you write, "Many Palestinians are unaware at how the occupation has been privatized, because it [00:37:00] makes no difference if a state officer or a private individual harasses or humiliates them". You go on to write, "Many checkpoints through which Palestinians are forced to travel to access their schools, workplaces, or Israel, if they are fortunate enough to get one of the few work permits handed out by the Jewish state, use facial recognition technology and biometric details to document their every move". But these are private companies, so explain that, what's happened to how essentially private for profit firms are managing the occupation?
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: It's worth saying obviously that Israel was a self-described socialist country, but socialist country for Jews, and that's...
CHRIS HEDGES - HOST, THE CHRIS HEDGES REPORT: Well, yes. Yes. That's right.
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: And also, yes, and clearly I mean as some older viewers will be aware, it's amazing to think now that so much of the global left was enamored with Israel for the first really 20 years of its existence. Anyway, that was a bit of blindness that we can talk about some other time. But anyway.
Yeah, look, Netanyahu [00:38:00] was a key factor in this, that yes, Israel had a quasi-socialist background. In the last 20 or so years, there's been a shift, to not just neoliberal policies within Israel itself, but also outsourced in the occupation. And in some ways, it sort of goes along with the massive expansion of settlements. You now have roughly three quarter of a million Jewish settlers living in occupied territory, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And a lot of the guards or security officers that are working on both settler checkpoints, but also Israeli checkpoints are run by private companies.
And I've spent some... I lived in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020 and been visiting there for close to 20 years. So I spent a lot of time looking into these kinds of issues and it's worth saying that, as I say in the book, yes, it's been outsourced and the accountability was zero, even if an Israeli soldier commits an abuse, let alone if a private interest does. And it's important also to say that, yes, a lot of these [00:39:00] companies are Israeli, but many of them, in fact, that are doing this are also foreign and international. And that's relevant because some viewers will remember the last years, the UN had tried for years to release this list of global companies and Israeli companies that were directly complicit in the occupation, and therefore they should be boycotted, essentially. And they released a list a number of years ago. It caused a big scandal in some circles. About 20 or so of those companies then removed themselves from being involved in managing the occupation, so to speak. But there are still, I think, around 100 companies, Israeli and foreign, that are directly involved day to day in so called managing the occupation.
That, to me, is not just illegal and immoral, but also ripe for a kind of boycott campaign, which I suspect will increase in the coming years after what we've seen in the last six weeks.
CHRIS HEDGES - HOST, THE CHRIS HEDGES REPORT: Can you talk about AnyVision, I think it's changed its name to Oosto, and then Unit 8200?
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: AnyVision, which you said [00:40:00] has changed its name, is a facial recognition company, an Israeli company that was testing this at Israeli checkpoints. So, what that means is that when Palestinians want to, say, move around the West Bank, if they want to potentially go from the West Bank into Israel proper, they have to have their details checked, their irises often checked now, and they were gathering all this information. We don't exactly know where that information was going, but clearly it was going into Israel, a massive database that they were using to gather personal data on pretty much every single Palestinian in the Occupied Territories.
Those tools are then marketed globally. They have appeared in huge amounts of infrastructure from airports to other places around the world. And when those companies promote it, whether, AnyVision uses the term 'battle tested'. I'm not sure, but they are saying it's been tested in Palestine successfully. So called successfully. And that does tie into Unit 8200, which is, as I said, [00:41:00] Israel's NSA. It is the body that is gathering intelligence on Israelis and on Palestinians and increasingly, I should say, there is a lot of evidence that increasingly the occupation is coming home. That a lot of Israeli Jews who for years believed that this was just happening to Palestinians down the road are increasingly being surveilled themselves.
And I'm not just talking about since October 7, although particularly since then, that there is a mood within Israel, increasingly, of criminalizing dissent entirely, whether it's by Arabs or Jews. But Unit 8200 has become this kind of quite infamous funnel of people who work in the military for years developing all these tools and methods to surveil Palestinians, which they then take to the private sector to develop various forms of repression, which they can then sell around the world.
And by maintaining those close ties, that's how it goes to my point earlier on, the NSO group was essentially an arm of the state. Many of these companies, these surveillance [00:42:00] companies, repressive tools, biometric companies operating in the Occupied Territories or in Gaza are then used by Israel as a key selling point to make new friends, so to speak.
It's a transactional friendship, transactional relationship, and it's why, as I really think, I think this more and more, that the Israeli arms industry really is an insurance policy. It's an insurance policy because, yes, there are some countries that oppose what Israel's doing. Not many, not enough. But even the countries that publicly do oppose what Israel is doing, many of them are still buying Israeli repressive technology. I mean, Mexico is one example amongst many. So, often I think words matter. Sure. What a government or, you know, prime minister or president says, it's not irrelevant. Yeah, sure. But what matters more is what you're doing, what you're buying, what you're deploying yourself in your own country.
So, when you have 130, 140 nations in the world that have [00:43:00] bought some form, in the last decades, of Israeli defense technology, drones, missiles, spyware, whatever it may be that's what matters. And I think those Israel believes probably with justification, those nations, at least for now, are unlikely to turn on Israel while they're so reliant on those tools of repression.
Gaza, Solidarity, and the Movement for Palestinian Liberation Part 2 - Making Contact - Air Date 11-29-23
LARA KISWANI: As Palestinians, we understand our movement as part of the movement against settler colonialism. We understand our movement as the struggle against Israeli apartheid. We understand that struggle as against ethno supremacy, white supremacy, religious supremacy, fascism, and right wing authoritarianism. And we understand that all these systems of oppression are used to exploit and dominate indigenous people and land, from manifest destiny to the Zionist colonization of Palestine, to fascist coups across the global South.
And as such, what we're witnessing in Palestine as part of a 75 year struggle against colonial [00:44:00] violence, 16 years of a brutal and inhumane siege on Gaza, most importantly, backed by and made possible by the economic, military, and political support of the US government.
So from an abolitionist perspective, we need to unpack the violence the system uses to exercise state repression and inhibit people of color and poor people from their own self determination. I won't get into all the specifics of what Israel has done, but we know that they have oppressed us as Palestinians for 75 years. My father is older than the state of Israel. And they imagine that the old would die and the young would forget, and what we're seeing in the streets today and what we're seeing around the world is evidence that that is absolutely not true.
And today, as anti racists, as feminists, as abolitionists, we must recommit ourselves to the critical work of defunding genocide, defunding war, defunding apartheid and militarism, and funding people's health, well-being, and freedom. Abolition, I [00:45:00] believe, forces us to ask the critical question of what are the economic and political priorities of this US government, and what do we need to do to shift those priorities?
Our immediate strategy as a movement is quite clear, it's plain and simple. We must do everything in our power to stop this war on Palestinians in Gaza and demand an immediate ceasefire. Without that, we cannot build or strengthen our movement, let alone any social justice movement. We, when I say we, it's the big we, right? It's all people of conscious. We're lucky today to have our anti Zionist Jewish allies like Jewish Voice for Peace taking bold and necessary steps to engage in mass civil disobedience against this war. We are fortunate to have other social justice movement partners joining us in that struggle, but right now we need everyone.
The call for an end to this war should be echoed by anybody who values human life, by all [00:46:00] freedom loving people. And we know that we will not stop until there is a ceasefire. And once there is, we will not stop until there is no more siege on Gaza. And once that happens, we will not stop until we end apartheid and Palestine is free and myself and my six month old child have the right to return.
What we have seen in the past, and in the current, that has had an impact, are the mass direct actions, what we witnessed at Grand Central Station with our Jewish allies, shutting down federal buildings, shutting down freeways, disrupting warmongers when they speak, as we saw with Blinken, making it so that nobody can turn a blind eye to this.
And let's continue to do that, to do everything we can to build and shift power, but while we work to demand an end to this war, we are also drawing on our historical memory of 9/11, and working to defend and protect our communities right here in the United [00:47:00] States against the growing rise of anti Palestinian, Islamophobic, racism, and violence, facilitated by the systems of policing, imprisonment, and surveillance.
We're seeing the criminalization of any Palestine solidarity. Prior to this war on Gaza, in 37 states it was illegal to engage in boycott, divest, and sanctions against Israel. We are seeing the emboldenment of political repression, more laws attempted to be passed right here, including in California, where I live, to make Palestine solidarity on college campuses illegal. We're seeing surveillance increase with the targeting of Palestinian homes, communities, and faith institutions. Superintendents and school districts, democratic club parties, elected statements are fanning the flames of racism, calling for people to "stand with Israel". In layman terms, stand with genocide and war.
And just as the struggle, we know, [00:48:00] for a free Palestine emboldens those repressive systems of the prison industrial complex, Palestine solidarity also expands the terrain for social justice movements. To unpack and challenge militarism, policing, surveillance in the spirit of solidarity and collective liberation. So while we're watching the United States government. And so many of its Western allies clamor to beat the drums of war and annihilation of my people, we have a duty, for those of us in the belly of this beast, to stop this war, to defund this war, to defund apartheid. And we have learned from the movement against apartheid South Africa, what has worked.
As such, we call on everybody to boycott Israel. We call on institutions to divest from Israel. We call on the US government to sanction Israel and end its billions in military aid. We call on our communities and allies to stop the [00:49:00] annihilation of Palestinians by demanding an end to the siege on Gaza, end to the occupation, freedom for all of our political prisoners, and an end to US aid to apartheid Israel.
But despite The egregious violence our people are facing today, I also want to remind us of the gains we've made, because we have made gains over the last few decades where the question of Palestine is central to any social justice movement. Today, there's consensus across progressive communities that an attack on Palestine is an attack on all movements for justice.
And fundamentally, we also know it's never really just been about Palestine, it's about what the movement for Palestinian liberation represents—the ongoing anti colonial struggle against US imperialism, racial capitalism, global militarism, the decolonial liberatory potential of all our movements, and the development [and] implementation of a people-centered, multi racial democracy.
The revolutionary Palestinian [00:50:00] Arab tradition I come out of is indebted to, and shaped by, international feminists and abolitionists such as Angela Davis. Through that lens, we know what is made possible by understanding our struggles as linked, understanding the necessity of solidarity and internationalism. Bringing it back to the radical understanding of intersectionality, the Combahee River Collective. We understand solidarity's not just simply a moral imperative, it's a necessary way of life for all those committed to changing the course of history, and transforming society and ourselves in the process.
The embodiment of that tradition is why and how I and AROC understand the struggle to abolish apartheid, the struggle to abolish Zionism, the struggle to abolish fascism in our homeland, As one in the same with the international struggle to free all political prisoners for economic and political democracy, for [00:51:00] education and healthcare, for right relations to the land, for social justice, for gender justice, for climate justice, shaped in the interest of working people.
So with the rebellions we've seen in the United States in recent years, we've also seen the unmasking of violence, of the violence of racial capitalism and policing. The whole world is questioning the foundation of this system, the historical exploitation and dispossession of Black and Indigenous people. And just as the system finds its origins in the exploitation of Black and Indigenous communities, it's also true that it finds its undoing in the centuries long emancipatory visions of these same people. Freedom for the indigenous people of Palestine is part and parcel of that emancipatory vision.
BONUS Gaza is a weapons lab for the arms industry w Antony Loewenstein Part 2 - The Chris Hedges Report - Air Date 12-8-23
CHRIS HEDGES - HOST, THE CHRIS HEDGES REPORT: Let's talk about the Alpha Gun Girls. So, a little sidelight, but something, just disgusting, didn't know existed until you wrote it, until I read it.
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: [00:52:00] Yes. Well, there is a side industry, I guess you could call it, of Israeli women, Jewish women, who are... often they've been in the military, they kind of have fetishized or sexualized the Israeli military. So, you have these groups of women who are scantily clad, often holding guns, often posing in photo shoots as if they're kind of in war in Gaza or somewhere else, as an idea and a way to show two things. One, the IDF is female-friendly. You can be a incredibly sexy woman and still be in the IDF and kill Palestinians. That's the implication. And secondly, that Israeli women are cool. I mean, that's the message they're trying to send. I don't know if it's particularly effective, but that's the message they're trying to send.
And for years, you know, I've been following this story that there's been a real push by the IDF, the Israeli army, to [00:53:00] show how gender-friendly they are, how in fact gay-friendly they are, how trans-friendly they are. By how vegan-friendly they are. I mean, this is, we sort of laugh in a way by saying this, but I have a big section in the book talking about, this is such a key part of Israeli messaging, so called 'hasbara'.
I'm not entirely convinced it's massively successful. I mean, people can argue that either way. But a lot of Israel's social media in the last 10 or so years has focused on this issue. We give vegan meals to soldiers who want it. We are trans-friendly. We are women-friendly. We are gay-friendly. You can, you know, wave the rainbow flag. In fact, some viewers will see, about two weeks after the Israeli invasion of Gaza, there was this Israeli soldier in Gaza, the background was apocalyptic, holding the rainbow flag. And this image kind of went viral, I did a story about it, essentially saying, and the message was very clear, you see, we want to liberate Palestinians in Gaza who are gay to just be [00:54:00] themselves.
Now, the mocking that this got, justifiably, was clear, as if people were saying, Right, so you've decimated Gaza and it's apocalyptic, but gee, you can be a gay Palestinian and some may have freedom in Gaza. I mean, the cognitive dissonance to actually believe that. And that ties into these girls you're talking about, just finally, that these women over the last years are traveling around Israel and the world promoting an image of Israel as liberal, but also militaristic, pro-feminist, but also gun-friendly. And that's why a lot of pro-gun groups in the U. S., and mostly men, let's be honest, are into these kinds of sexualization of Israeli gun wielding women.
BONUS Christian Zionism - Ralph Nader Radio Hour - Air Date 12-30-23
HANNAH FELDMAN - CO-HOST, RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR: Reverend Wagner, my question is about how American fundamentalist Christian clergy fetishize the Holy Land. We've had previous guests speak to how Birthright Israel and other similar programs [00:55:00] fetishize Israel and try to turn Zionism into a core tenet of American Judaism. Could you speak to how American Christianity, whichever relevant sects, how they fetishize the Holy Land, and the work that you're doing to counteract that.
REV. DR. DONALD WAGNER: Yeah. Well, that's a book right there, but you can find it in my memoir, Glory to God in the Lowest. I deal with that. I grew up in this right wing evangelical Christian Zionism. It's actually a form of fundamentalism. It actually also predates Zionism, and worked with Zionism like as a handmaiden, symbiotically, back in the 1890s and so on.
But Christian Zionism as an evangelical fundamentalist movement really elevates the modern state of Israel, and it equates biblical Israel with the modern state. That in itself is [00:56:00] a heretical teaching. There's nothing in the Bible that says a modern state will be the fulfillment of prophecy. But this movement takes that kind of a direction, and it has kind of a three act scenario to it.
The first act is that we are now in a difficult period, but we must support Israel because that is not only the locus, but the movement that will bring Jesus back. The second act of this scenario is that soon we will enter a final period where Israel will be attacked from the north. Christians, who are true believers, as born again Christians, will be raptured, lifted out of history, conveniently. Now, this is all heresy, in my opinion. So, two thirds of the Jews will die in the final battle of Armageddon. So, that's Act 2. And Act 3 is that Jesus comes back, [00:57:00] and you have a chance to build a thousand year rule and convert to Christianity or go to hell.
A great Jewish writer, Gershon Greenberg, was on 60 Minutes once, and he was asked about that. He said, yeah, it's a three act scenario, and we Jews, two thirds of us, die in act two, or we have to convert to Christianity. He said, as a Jew, I don't like my chances. So, that's a summary of the movement. It's very strong. It has a movement called Christians United for Israel, which has offices in every state, mobilizes groups, and Trump loved them and he had John Hagee, the director, on.
They work hand in glove with the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, to mobilize evangelical Christian support and funding. They are funding settlements, they raise money, Hagee raises money and gives millions of dollars to the Israeli Defense Forces, and it's all tax exempt. That is a loophole that [00:58:00] has to be closed to shut this down. And they're aligned with many of these militant settlement groups.
So, this is a dangerous movement, and it's not just in North America. It's growing in Central and South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. So, Netanyahu is reaping global support, and they bring people to Israel and spend a lot of money when no one else is coming, like now.
So that's just a summary, but you can get more of this in my book, Anxious for Armageddon, and there's a great website that I worked on for a while called www.christianzionism.org, where evangelicals critique this heretical theology and show alternatives.
What we're hoping is we're going to have a powerful coalition working from the bottom up to mobilize more people at the grassroots to change Congress, but we're not quite there yet. So we need your help.
Final comments on the impacts of the antisemitism that is felt by the Jewish diaspora in the wake of the Hamas attack and war in Gaza
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with Democracy [00:59:00] Now! describing Israel's strategy of voluntary migration. Democracy Now! also explained the process ahead at the International Court of Justice. The Intercept discussed a journalist being killed in Gaza. Up First looked at the rise of infectious disease amid limited medical resources. Making Contact focused on the export of Israeli military technology around the world. The Chris Hedges Report looked at the security apparatus in Israel and how it's sold abroad. And Making Contact featured a monologue laying out an anti-colonial vision of freedom.
That's what everybody heard, but members also heard bonus clips from The Chris Hedges Report highlighting the inclusive marketing of the IDF, and the Ralph Nader Radio Hour discussed Christian Zionism in the U S.
To hear that and have all of our bonus content delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support, or shoot me an email requesting a [01:00:00] financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.
For more on our take of the war in Gaza and Israel more broadly, we've done several episodes recently that are worth checking out. Number 1584 covers the political turmoil in Israel before the attack by Hamas in October. 1589 gives first impressions, just 10 days out from the Hamas attack. 1591 looks at both traditional and social media in relation to the war. And 1592 looked deeper into some of the underlying causes of the conflict. So check those out. Again, those are episodes 1584, 89, 91 and 92.
Now to wrap up, I wanted to share a couple of contrasting points that I came across while reading some of the latest on the reverberations of this war currently being felt here at home. There was an article in Politico titled "California lawmakers pull the fire alarm on anti-Semitism"[01:01:00] and it features an interview with a California assemblyperson who is also the co-chair of the legislative Jewish Caucus, expressing their concern about growing anti-Semitism that seems to be coming from both the left and right, in their perception. The quote that really stuck out is this one: he says, quote, "We now find ourselves in this incredible situation where we are trapped between the far right and the far left. Those two groups hate each other, see each other as a threat to everything they love and believe as holy, and the one thing they seem to agree on is that Jews are uniquely evil and that we are responsible for the world's problems. " Continuing, "Those are two segments of our society in the United States and around the world that are growing. And if one of the core ideologies that's made its way into both of those groups, is that Jews are bad and Jews are oppressors and Jews are evil. That's a very [01:02:00] problematic and scary thing for us given how we've seen this unfold in history over and over again." End quote.
Now to me, that sounds practically unhinged. I mean, the description of anti-Semitism, as displayed quite frequently from the far right, makes perfect sense. The sort of conspiratorial anti-Jewish vision of a cabal of Jews being evil and causing all the problems in the world -- that's not a fantasy, that's not something that doesn't exist in the real world. It does. But I basically never hear about it coming from anyone who claims to be on the left. That seems to be almost exclusively a far-right conspiratorial mindset.
Now I'm sure that there are some outlier examples that could be pointed to, but I mostly think that this kind of thinking stems from what I discussed at the top of the show: [01:03:00] that anyone who didn't do a good enough job of condemning the Hamas attack gets suddenly categorized as antisemitic in the minds of people like this California politician, that is basically equivalent to white supremacists.
But for another perspective on this, let's turn to another recent article, this one is from the Guardian titled, "Anti-Defamation League staff decry dishonest campaign against Israel critics." So the Anti-Defamation League has made a name for itself over the last more than a hundred years as experts in extremism by tracking and cataloging antisemitism and extremist violence. However, they're not just a hands-off data organization. They also advocate quite explicitly for the state of Israel and for the ideology of Zionism. In 2022, the ADL CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said that, quote, [01:04:00] "Anti-Zionism is antisemitism." And he singled out Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace as groups that, quote, "Epitomize the radical left, the photo inverse of the extreme right that ADL long has tracked." End quote.
So, again, this is taking an extreme position that I would argue defines antisemitism so broadly as to be basically absurd, and which has the effect of stoking far more fear of antisemitism from the left than could possibly be justified.
It sort of conjures the idea that, before we thought the only danger was coming from the far right, but now we see that the danger has basically doubled and that it's coming from both sides, as the left-wing peace activists who criticize the policies of the government of Israel are equally dangerous to Jewish people as those primarily on the right who hold [01:05:00] conspiratorial. antisemitic views.
But the good news being focused on in this article is that there seems to be a healthy amount of dissent within the ADL, which I had not heard before. Continuing from the article, just after that quote from the CEO, quote, " His remarks didn't only upset grassroots activists and Jewish groups critical of Israeli policy. It also set off a firestorm within the Jewish advocacy group. Some members of ADL staff were outraged by the dissonance between Greenblatt's comments and the organization's own research, as evidenced by internal messages viewed by the Guardian. 'There is no comparison between white supremacists and insurrectionists, and those who espouse anti-Israel rhetoric, and to suggest otherwise is both intellectually dishonest and damaging to our reputation as experts in extremism,' a senior [01:06:00] manager at ADL's Center on Extremism wrote in a Slack channel to over 550 colleagues. Others chimed in, agreeing. Quote: 'The afore-mentioned false equivalencies and the both-sidesism are incompatible with the data I've seen,' a long-term extremism researcher said." End quote.
So I was really glad to hear that, and hold out hope that this perspective, one based on the evidence and data about where the actual dangers of antisemitism stem from, will be the one that prevails in the long run. But we can't depend on data alone. This is a mistake that the left makes often. How people feel, and how they perceive a situation, is almost always more relevant than what the data says. And the Jewish community feels attacked right now, obviously. The California assemblyman, when asked what [01:07:00] he wanted support to look like, ended up just talking about how it simply felt bad when critics of Israel didn't also acknowledge the pain and suffering that's going on in the Jewish community.
Now for some, like the CEO of ADL, any criticism of Israel will be seen and felt as antisemitism. And I'm happy to have that debate, because I think that's nonsense. But for others, it seems like they feel attacked and just don't want to also feel abandoned at the same time. So if acknowledging the pain and suffering actually helps people feel less threatened, and helps sap the energy from the more extreme and dangerous instincts within the Zionist ideology, then, if you're criticizing Israel from the left without making your holistic perspectives clear about all of the violence on all sides, then I think you're doing your [01:08:00] left wing politics wrong.
That is going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about this or anything else. You can leave us a voicemail or send us a text to 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].
Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist trio, Ken, Brian, and Ben for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work on our social media outlets, activism segments, graphic designing web mastering, and bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at BestOfTheLeft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny bonus episodes, in addition to there being extra content, no ads, [01:09:00] and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community where you can also continue the discussion.
So coming to from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.com.
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