Air Date 8/30/2024

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JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. 

Israel's assault on Gaza is fueled by pain. Rage. Trauma. A desire for safety. A desire for revenge. The hope for the safe return of hostages. It's a complicated mix of all of the above and more, and it will be different for each person. However, there's also a deep well of denial and delusion about the decades-old status quo between Israel and Palestine that made the current conflict all but inevitable, and the pursuit of genocide by some in the Israeli government, as well as the support of the US and other governments, possible.

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include The Intercept, Citations Needed, Zeteo, This Is Hell, Double Down News, and Democracy Now!. After those first clips, I will have some thoughts on the nature of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, going back to the founding. Mostly though [00:01:00] I'll be sharing insights from an excellent long form piece that thoughtfully and empathetically explains why the project of Zionism can only be undertaken with a heavy dose of denial about the harms caused. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half the show, there'll be more on four topics: Section A. The Uncommitted; Section B. Torture; Section C. Arms Embargo; and Section D. Journalism.

Kamala Harris Mentioned Palestinian Suffering — in the Passive Voice - The Intercept - Air Date 8-26-24

AKELA LACY, THE INTERCEPT: It's been just a little bit over a month since Joe Biden dropped out of the race and Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee for the party. It's been 10 months since October 7th, and there have been tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza with weapons that the US is continuing to send to Israel.

Just the week before the convention, the US approved [00:02:00] another $20 billion weapons sale to Israel. And ahead of the convention, organizers and protesters were planning demonstrations in Chicago, which is home to the largest Palestinian population in the country. Delegates who pledged to be uncommitted rather than support Harris and her role in the Biden administration's arming of Israel planned to pressure the DNC to let them host events at the convention, but also to have a Palestinian American speaker on the main stage. 

ALI GHARIB, THE INTERCEPT: You wrote a little bit about some of these protests, both inside and out. And with regards to the uncommitted movement, there's the organized campaign for uncommitted delegates who are demanding a change in US Gaza policy before they would commit to any Democratic candidate.

But there are delegates who are committed to support Harris, who also were protesting. And can you tell us just a little bit about the protests that you covered inside where a banner was [00:03:00] unfurled and the kind of assumptions that were made about the uncommitted delegate who actually is an avowed Harris supporter.

AKELA LACY, THE INTERCEPT: So I went into the United Center on Monday night, against my better judgment. But it was good because I was there to capture the moment when a Florida delegate named Nadia Ahmad unfurled a banner that read, "Stop Arming Israel" a few minutes into Biden's speech that night. Ahmad and several other delegates held the banner together. Another Michigan superdelegate named Leanna Sharon and several other folks. And almost immediately I saw other delegates in their section and other people in the section behind them, both stand up to use the We Heart Joe signs that everyone had that night to block the sign, and then to start hitting Nadia and several of the other people who were holding the banner using the signs [00:04:00] to hit the banner itself.

Ahmad is a Harris delegate who has been pushing her for a ceasefire, one of around 200 or so delegates who are pledged to support Harris in November, who are pushing Harris and the Biden administration to secure a permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo. 

That demonstration on Monday was notable because Nadia is a Harris delegate. She's not part of the uncommitted movement. And the narrative around a lot of the work that uncommitted has been doing is that they are undermining Democrats' chances of beating Trump in November by withholding their support for Harris. And that is the primary source of the opposition to the Biden administration's policy towards Israel. When the reality is that many of these calls are coming from within the party, from folks who are committed to helping Democrats win the White House, and that the [00:05:00] position against the current administration's policy towards Israel is the position of a majority of Democratic voters. 

ALI GHARIB, THE INTERCEPT: The kind of backdrop for all of this is that progressives have really come under attack from groups like AIPAC. You've done a ton of reporting about this. AIPAC has become the biggest player in Democratic primaries. And they actually took down a couple of incumbent Democrats, Cory Bush and Jamal Bowman in the House. And it's become this real rift within the Democratic party, which was reflected in the tensions around the convention, the protesters outside.

So it was even part of the rift between members of the Squad, which is the progressive group of members of Congress that Bowman and Bush were both part of. And your reporting this week touched on that. You contributed some reporting to a story by Aida Chavez, where you recorded Ilhan Omar making a remark about what was before Kamala Harris's speech, one of the only mentions of Gaza from the main stage, [00:06:00] which was by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but it was very much in the frame of cheerleading Kamala Harris's role in dealing with the Gaza crisis. Can you talk a little bit about what AOC said, and what you reported on Ilhan Omar, the progressive representative from Minnesota, saying about effectively about her remarks. I mean, it was a little bit veiled because she was addressing the Biden administration, but she actually quoted AOC directly.

AKELA LACY, THE INTERCEPT: Sure. So in Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's speech on Monday, she said that Harris had been working, quote, "tirelessly for a ceasefire in Gaza." 

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: And she is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home.

AKELA LACY, THE INTERCEPT: During a press conference the next day with uncommitted folks and Rep. Bush, Rep. Omar spoke about how she has been watching her colleagues in the Biden administration for the last [00:07:00] 10 months sweeping aside what the US has been doing to allow Israel to continue executing civilians in Gaza, and she said that "working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire" doesn't really mean anything when we're continuing to supply weapons to Israel. 

REP. ILHAN OMAR: It's been unconscionable for me in the last 10 months to witness my colleagues in this administration refusing to recognize the genocidal war that is taking place in Gaza. To not see the mothers with lost, helpless children, the babies whose dead bodies are being dug out. I do not understand that "working tirelessly for a ceasefire" is really not a thing and they should be ashamed of themselves. 

AKELA LACY, THE INTERCEPT: That was the [00:08:00] exact phrase that Ocasio-Cortez used on Monday. I don't know that Omar herself would characterize it as a direct attack on her, but that's certainly how many observers read it. We reported on that. And this has been part of the analysis of the evolving role in the Squad, both in Congress and in Democratic politics writ large. What, if any power they have been able to build, given that two of their members have been knocked out, that other progressives have been knocked out by the pro-Israel lobby in previous cycles, and what the strategy will look like as they wrestle with those attacks and those losses. There are people who say that AOC is the example of what progressive should be doing: building power within the administration, creating a space to be on the main stage at the DNC, just after several years after first being elected to Congress as this very much this progressive upstart who [00:09:00] was antagonizing, in a positive way, the administration to acknowledge what progressives wanted to see.

And the criticism from folks who don't necessarily see that strategy as being an effective one is that what is all of that worth if, when you do get that opportunity beyond the main stage, you conceal and hold water for what the administration is allowing to happen in Gaza.

Substance vs Vibes in VP Kamala Harris' Gaza PR Reboot - Citations Needed - Air Date 8-2-24

NIMA SHIRAZI - COHOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: The White House, as we've talked about on this show, since the Michigan primary, rather in anticipation and immediately after the Michigan primary, when the uncommitted movement was gaining steam, switched the definition of ceasefire to mean something completely different than what activists, what Oxfam, what Amnesty International, what UN agencies and the hundreds of ex-Biden alum and Nobel laureates who signed petitions calling for a ceasefire. They completely switched the definition of ceasefire to mean something else. And the question became -- and this bought them time, I wrote for my SubStack, this was a very successful PR effort. It took a lot of the heat off in conjunction with college campuses shutting [00:10:00] down for the summer and police crackdowns -- but this really helped contribute to a vibe shift away from blaming Biden because they could point to these nebulous ceasefire negotiations.

So what does that mean? I'll do a quick, brief recap of what that means. So in October, November, December, calls for a ceasefire had a very clear historical precedent based on previous conflicts. 2008, 2009, Cast Lead, 2014, Protective Edge, 2018, 2021. There was a precedent for what ceasefire meant, which means the US uses its dispositive leverage to compel Israel to stop bombing and invading Gaza, and then Hamas will stop as well. Typically, Hamas is the one that wants a ceasefire since they are a sub state actor. And they don't have an air force, so they benefit far more from that. And Israel, of course, has these bunker busters, these 2000 pound bombs, F-35s, F-16s, F-22s.

So there's a historical precedent for what that means. Everybody knows what it means. Everybody, at least for the first few months, didn't act like they didn't know what it meant.

But then when the uncommitted movement picked up [00:11:00] steam in February and March, and this is after the White House issued a memo in October 20th, rather the State Department issued a memo on October 20th, preventing all State Department employees, White House employees from using the word "ceasefire." So they initially rejected it because they knew what it meant, right? It had a very specific contextual meaning. In the context of Gaza, everybody knew what it meant. 

But then they realized they were getting hammered on this issue. This was right before the college campus protests really caught fire, but there were protests every day. And there was of course the uncommitted movement, which was leading to some embarrassing headlines, and delegitimizing the Biden 2024 run. So then they decided to do, again, if you paid me $700,000 and I worked for the White House and I had a soul lobotomy, this is what I would have suggested, which is to just say you're supporting a ceasefire, but just change the definition of ceasefire, right? This is kind of PR 101. Which is exactly what they did. Now it means temporary pause. It doesn't mean that actual cessation of killing people. It's just a temporary pause. 

ADAM JOHNSON - COHOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: Well, it's a temporary pause for the purposes of hostage exchanges, immediately followed [00:12:00] by a firm commitment by Israel to continue the destruction of Gaza for quote unquote, "years if necessary."

And so people say, well, they wanted a temporary pause because it could lead to a longer. But that's actually not true. In fact, the second, then of course, on May 31st, Biden gave his deeply cynical speech where he calls for a quote unquote, "end to the war" that gave people some brief hope, until it was followed up by Matt Miller and others at the State Department who clarified that no, they support Israel's goal of quote unquote, "eliminating Hamas," a goal that is not possible by definition, even according to Tony Blinken, who told Netanyahu that behind closed doors in January, according to NBC's Andrea Mitchell. 

So they have a pretextual, and by definition, unachievable goal of eliminating basically an ideology or pretty much anyone with a gun fighting back, which, good luck with that. We saw how that worked out for the US in Afghanistan. And that is, of course, not really their goal. Their goal is to displace, to force emigration out of Gaza, to kill, to make life a living hell, as part of a very open policy of collective punishment. And so they want this to go on for as long as it needs to go [00:13:00] on.

Former Israeli Spy Chief- If I Was A Palestinian, I Would Fight Against Israel’s Occupation - Zeteo - Air Date 8-19-24

MEHDI HASAN - HOST, ZETEO: Early in the war, you co-authored a piece for foreign affairs titled "Why Netanyahu Must Go". As the former head of Israel's security service, what made you want to make such a provocative intervention so early on? 

AMI AYALON: Well, when it comes to Netanyahu, I'm saying it for the last more than 18 months: since he created this very extreme right-wing coalition and he let Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, to lead Israeli policy. So, it's not new. I didn't say it only after the 7th of October. I think that, first of all, he himself, he's, in a conflict of interest. He's on trial and, the way it seems to me, he prefer his own future [over] the future of the state of Israel. 

MEHDI HASAN - HOST, ZETEO: Just on Netanyahu and Hamas, pre-October the 7th, do you believe Netanyahu was deliberately propping up Hamas in Gaza as a [00:14:00] way of dividing Palestinians and preventing a two state solution?

AMI AYALON: Well, his policy, and he didn't hide it, he's totally against a reality in which there is a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He said it. His policy, the way he explained it, is divide and control to make sure that Palestinians will not have a unified government. And the only way to do it is to do everything in order to maintain Hamas in power. Even, if it was necessary to approve sending more than probably 1. 5 billion dollars from Qatar and every time when security leaders, military, and the Shin Bet came to him and told him, Look, Hamas, will not control his violence. And the moment that he believes that he can launch a war or a battle, he will do it.

MEHDI HASAN - HOST, ZETEO: Yes. 

AMI AYALON: So he did not approve it. So, uh, [00:15:00] it's not a secret. Yes, this was his formal policy. He did everything in order to increase the power of Hamas and to make sure that, Abu Mazen and the Palestinian Authority will not be able to create a unified government. 

MEHDI HASAN - HOST, ZETEO: So, isn't the problem, Ami Ayalon, that even if Benjamin Netanyahu were to listen to you and quit and resign in shame, the problem goes way beyond Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. According to Gallup, 65 percent of Israeli adults are currently against a two state solution. So, Netanyahu disappears tomorrow, Israeli society has still moved over the last decade or two since you started campaigning for a two state solution way to the right. What do you do in a society like that when your fellow Israelis are not interested in the kind of deal you're pitching, they don't agree with you?

AMI AYALON: I present a political horizon. I can give you... the most important example during the... if you would ask Israelis during the first intifada, whether [00:16:00] they agree to negotiate with Palestinians, we would tell you that you are crazy, a lunatic, or whatever, because we hated them and we were sure that they will do everything in order to destroy Israel and we did not understand why they are doing it. But this is history. The moment that a new horizon and Oslo process was presented, it was a dramatic change in the Israeli street and among Palestinians. 

So, I believe in presenting new ideas. I see that Israelis and Palestinians, today, we hate each other. We are confused. We are humiliated. Both sides and, nothing good will come from Israeli leadership and Palestinian leadership. Most Israelis believe that all Palestinians are Hamas, and most Palestinians believe that all Israelis are Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu. And it is all totally wrong. Seventy five—by the way, you, you said something about [00:17:00] polls—seventy five percent of the Israelis, —and the question is, how do you present the question?—seventy five percent of Israelis will agree to stop the war and to create what we call the a regional coalition that will face Iran. We understand that the condition, in order to ignite this process, will present a future policy for a Palestinian state but we support it on the condition that all our hostages will be back and this coalition will be created with the support of America, of course, the [inaudible], the Saudi Arabia, et cetera, et cetera. 

MEHDI HASAN - HOST, ZETEO: Okay. 

AMI AYALON: So, polls are very, very tricky.

MEHDI HASAN - HOST, ZETEO: Fair enough. You mentioned Iran. Last week, Israel not only killed the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, while he was in Iran, but they also killed the top Hezbollah commander in Beirut. As the former head of the Israeli Security Service, as a [00:18:00] former Israeli Navy chief, tell me, in your view, Ami Ayalon, have those actions made Israel safer?

AMI AYALON: They are not making Israel safer. In certain cases, and I was in the Israeli Shin Bet and what we call targeted killing was based on a condition in which we know that a terrorist is going to attack, many Israelis will die, and there is no other option to stop him. We cannot arrest him. We don't have the operational capability to do it. Today, of course, Israel is taking a totally different type of policy. I think that too many Israelis and too many politicians believe that by killing leaders, you know, uh, the ideology will be evaporated. It's nonsense. Yes, you said something very, very true, by killing the leader, in our case, ideology even will be deeper rooted [00:19:00] within the Palestinian and Arab society. 

MEHDI HASAN - HOST, ZETEO: So, it's made Israel less safe from what you're saying. 

AMI AYALON: I think that it is a mistake. 

MEHDI HASAN - HOST, ZETEO: Has it made Israel less safe, those killings? 

AMI AYALON: Right, exactly. Exactly. 

MEHDI HASAN - HOST, ZETEO: So let me ask you this... 

AMI AYALON: And the only way to do it is to create this coalition and to present a different political horizon and there is a huge opportunity ahead of us on that note After the 7th of October, it is not a conflict only between Israelis and Palestinians. It is a conflict, a regional conflict, shaking the stability in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and with a global impact.

Torture Is Systemic in Israel's Prisons / Shai Parnes - This Is Hell! - Air Date 8-21-22

CHUCK MERTZ - HOST, THIS IS HELL!: Welcome to Hell also states the logic of the base of the incarceration project is the same followed by the Israeli apartheid regime elsewhere. The differentiation between Palestinian prisoners from Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, and the varying laws and practices applied to them interchangeably, demonstrate how the Israeli regime tears apart and reconstructs the Palestinian [00:20:00] collective to fit its needs. Shai, what are the needs of the Israeli regime? If Palestinians are not allowed to democratically choose their government, what will whoever controls Palestinian lives in Gaza and the West Bank look like? What are the needs of Israel and Gaza? 

SHAI PARNES: It's not the needs, it's what Israel believes or wants to believe are their needs. And again, it's been true for decades, Israel wants as much territory as possible with as less, uh, Palestinians as possible. And the means, the tools are changeable. Sometimes it's war, and sometimes it's incarceration, and sometimes it's taking their lands. But the framework, the policy, the goal, the Israel regime and all governments is [00:21:00] practically the same goal: to take as much land and with as few as possible Palestinians living in it.

CHUCK MERTZ - HOST, THIS IS HELL!: The report states that the testimonies reveal the policy implemented in these facilities since the declaration of a prison state of emergency and the pursuant enactment of a temporary order in keeping with the stated agenda of Minister Ben-Gvir. They indicate that this policy, which entails violation of the basic human rights, is targeted at members of a specific ethnic national group, Palestinians. As part of this new policy, Palestinians held in Israeli prisons are stripped of the basic package of rights to which they are entitled under Israeli and international law, as well as other universal rights. Was their debate over implementing the temporary order and... Shai, to what degree do you think the likelihood is that this temporary order will in fact be temporary?

SHAI PARNES: We [00:22:00] do have kind of a semi-joke, but, you know, as jokes are, that in the Middle East the temporary is the most certain thing. There was not any debate about this legal framework because it was the first days after October 7th and that's what I've said before. Ben-Gvir and the rest of this government took advantage, cynically, of what the public, the Israeli public really felt, and they did that to act out their own sadistic and racist agenda. What was worrying [was] that the entire system, the Israeli prison system or the entire legal system, [00:23:00] sometimes cooperate [with] and sometimes crumbled to this agenda and procedures. 

CHUCK MERTZ - HOST, THIS IS HELL!: Just a few more questions for you. The report states that the High Court of Justice has thereby green-lighted the denial of Palestinians prisoners' basic rights. Meanwhile, judicial or administrative review of the arrests themselves has been suspended de facto for weeks or even months. The court's abstention from intervening in this matter too and the fact that it has knowingly allowed prisoners to be almost completely isolated, underscores the court's rule in lending the gross violation of prisoners' human rights a facade of legality. How long do you think they can keep that facade of legality up, Shai? 

SHAI PARNES: I don't know, because it depends [on] who's the observer. If you followed the ICC warrants requests, and if you followed the ICJ, they [00:24:00] already indicate that the Israeli Supreme Court or the legal system is just a whitewash mechanism. We at B'Tselem say that for many years now, the entire legal system or investigation system—and it doesn't even matter if that's the military police, Attorney General, or with the Supreme Court—they're all in power, part of different branches of the aparthheid regime and used as a whitewash mechanism. And for the last month, it's not just B'Tselem saying and reporting and publishing reports about that. It's the most respected legal tribunals in the world. It's the ICC and the ICJ. So, uh, it's very hard to [00:25:00] see it differently as long as your eyes are open. 

CHUCK MERTZ - HOST, THIS IS HELL!: Israel is not only violating international humanitarian law, it's violating its own laws, as your report points out. What happens to any state when it not only violates global legal norms, but their own legal norms? What happens when a government decides to pick and choose which legal obligations to fulfill and which to ignore? What kind of government, to you, would that define? 

SHAI PARNES: Uh, I have to say again that it's not a new practice. Let's take what they called the illegal outposts versus the settlements. They're all illegal under the international law. But the Israeli governments—and again, not just the current real extreme government, but also the previous ones—say, Yeah, there is a problem with the illegal outposts. [00:26:00] Okay, but if you tour in the West Bank, you see that these outposts are defended by the military, getting electricity and water from the Israeli infrastructure systems. So, don't tell me they are illegal if you're building them. It was always the case, what's going on with the current government, I would say, as it's nothing hidden anymore. We don't play the game anymore that Israel used to do, like Saudi negotiating with the Palestinians and keep expanding the Palestinians. That is the real change. It's not hidden anymore. 

CHUCK MERTZ - HOST, THIS IS HELL!: Has the Israeli system made Palestinian lives, and lifestyles, cultures, and traditions, crimes? Is the intended goal to make Gaza a place where the people do [00:27:00] not have a representative government? In Gaza, has Israel made democracy a punishable, detainable, torturable offense? Has Israel made Palestinian culture and Palestinian democracy, a crime? 

SHAI PARNES: As you've seen in the report, you can conclude that the only "crime" is detainees [being] charged of being a Palestinian. 

CHUCK MERTZ - HOST, THIS IS HELL!: Do you think that the goal of Ben-Gvir is to provoke Palestinians, even his policies prior to October 7th, into doing something? And if so, what are people like Ben-Gvir trying to provoke Palestinians into doing by employing strategies meant to humiliate torment and dehumanize Palestinians? 

SHAI PARNES: As I just said a couple of minutes ago, what's, I would say, good [00:28:00] about Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and this government: you don't have to guess. They just say out loud [that] they want to resell the Gaza Strip, they want to make changes to Al Haram Ash Sharif / Har Habayit status quo, they want to annex the West Bank, they're not hiding it. They say it on their own, and in the Israeli press and also outside. One [doesn't] have to speculate anymore.

EXPOSED- Netanyahu's Plan to Set World on Fire - Double Down News - Air Date 8-23-24

DAVID HEARST: A war against Hezbollah is regarded as a matter of when, not if. If Israel has failed in its primary objective to dismantle Hamas after 10 months of unleashing more bombs on Gaza than the Allies dropped on Dresden and Hamburg in the Second World War, how on earth does it think it will unseat or push Hezbollah back? Hezbollah is much better armed than Hamas, with very [00:29:00] accurate missiles that can sneak under The Iron Dome system. So the whole of Israel is vulnerable to a regional war on five fronts.

This is fundamentally against all Western interests, particularly after a series of defeats for Western policy in Iraq, in Yemen, in Syria, in Libya. American foreign policy has basically labored under a huge self-imposed burden: They have been trying to persuade Netanyahu to stop the war, but they provided no incentive for Netanyahu to stop the war.

And it still remains a bipartisan policy of whatever happens in the Middle East, however badly Israel has behaved, we are going to support Israel. Which not even Ronald Reagan or H. W. Bush, the two Republican presidents, allowed themselves to work under. 

If you remember, Reagan stopped Yitzhak [00:30:00] Shamir from bombing West Beirut in 1982. Because the scenes of the nightly bombing were so grim on CNN that Reagan, as the sort of consummate television frontman, said, No, I don't want it. Stop it. And he stopped it. He stopped the shelling within 20 minutes. H. W. Bush threatened to cut aid off for every settlement that was announced. 

So now you've got a president in Joe Biden, who is an instinctive Zionist, a generational Zionist, who has given far more leeway to Israel, committing far more barbaric crimes over a much longer period of time and just giving it the green light for Biden now to say, stop, stop, stop is also an incredibly weak position because he could have said everything he's saying 10 months ago. Nothing has been achieved except the deaths of 40,000 Palestinians, 100,000 wounded. And even that could be a huge underestimate. [00:31:00] And it is in US policy's interest to deconflict the Middle East, their interest is in withdrawal to confront China in the China Sea. So all of this is absolutely against America's interest, and yet its default position is we've got to protect Israel. Israel has to have the arms it needs. So it is fighting against its own policy. There's no coherence in American foreign policy. 

The one obstacle to the deal is not the Israeli negotiators, not the Israeli deep state, not even the Israeli army. It's Netanyahu himself, because he fears his government could break up. As soon as the war ends, this king risks being deposed. 

After 10 long months, we've had some quite threatening and key statements from Netanyahu's point of view. The first was his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, saying that Israel could not achieve its objectives militarily. That's his own defense minister.

And now you've got Biden himself and the US saying Hamas can't be defeated militarily. Its tunnel network was much more [00:32:00] extensive than they thought. The only way of getting the remaining 115 live hostages out is through negotiation. And he doesn't have any trophies for this war. 

Mohamed Dief is still alive, according to top Hamas officials. He's directly responsible for the October 7th attack. And he hasn't killed Yahya Sinwar, who is now the new leader of Hamas. Gaza and Hamas and the resistance movement are very, very much alive, and still capable of firing missiles at Tel Aviv after 10 months. 

The one senior figure in Hamas that Israel has killed is Ismail Haniyeh. Ismail Haniyeh wasn't hiding in any tunnel. He was openly operating in Tehran as a spokesman and as a diplomat for Hamas. And it was the clearest indication that Israel was not interested in real peace talks and negotiations by basically killing the chief negotiator. And they didn't just kill Haniyeh. Before that, they had killed 60 members of his family, his sons and grandsons. [00:33:00] That act basically tore up negotiations and any thought of returning the hostages alive. Because one of the big, big tensions in Israel is that, incredulously, Netanyahu's policy on the hostages was that it is only because of our military pressure that Hamas will surrender the hostages. It's exactly the opposite way around. The main killer of hostages by far has been the Israeli army bombing itself. Even three hostages which were trying to surrender got gunned down by Israeli soldiers. 

But the only way of getting the remaining hostages back is through peace and through negotiations with Hamas.

It basically demonstrates the total folly, stupidity of Netanyahu's thinking, which is all about tactical strikes. It's not about the day after. Firstly, you can't decapitate an organization like Hamas or Hezbollah. So every time you kill one person, two or three people will step up. It's a proven system that [00:34:00] keeps the organization funding. If you take out the leader, you do not take out the organization. So that's mistake number one. 

Mistake number two, it is an open provocation and an escalation, and they know that. So, Israel escalates and then the rest of the world says, Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't reply to it. The chief of staff of Hassan Nasrallah was also killed in a related attack. Iran and Hezbollah have both said they will avenge the deaths. I think Iran has got Israel over a barrel because it has vowed revenge. Israel doesn't know where that wave of missiles is going to come from. Is it going to come from all five fronts simultaneously? And you've got this enormous pressure on Netanyahu himself now from a Western alliance that backed him, but now has basically had enough and wants the whole thing to come to an end tomorrow.

And also, most importantly, one of the war aims was to push Palestinians into the sea. If the war has been won by anyone, it's been won by the people of Gaza, not Hamas, but the people of Gaza, saying, [00:35:00] yeah, we're going to die here, rather than repeat the mistakes of 1948 or 1967. 

Netanyahu had a plan to thin out the population of Gaza and tasked his right hand man, Ron Dermer, with a plan for executing that. And it's clear from the bombing and from the pattern of strikes that the target wasn't Hamas, it was all the people of Gaza. And that was a fundamental strategic error. And it made the war an existential war for all Palestinians everywhere, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank too.

Israel has really damaged itself in this war. It's under huge pressure now, basically just to wave the white flag. 

Well, I would argue that Netanyahu isn't just a threat to the region, but he's a threat to Israel itself. Before this war, Israel had and has total dominance between the river and the sea. But Netanyahu wanted it all. This is the classic mistake of all colonial powers. Napoleon made [00:36:00] it, Hitler made it as well. Both thought that they could crown their military dominance of Western Europe by attacking Russia. And this is a classic case of colonial imperial overreach. 

The clearest historical precedent to what he is doing in Israel is Algeria under French colonial rule. They were the dominant power, the Colon, and they went too far. So in trying to seize all, France lost Algeria in its entirety, and this could be the position of Netanyahu in Israel today. 

Another example is South Africa, before the apartheid regime made its peace with the African National Congress and realized that they had to fundamentally undo everything they were trying to do. They were busy setting fire to the whole region.

Rami Khouri on Latest Israel-Hezbollah Escalation & Stalled Ceasefire Talks - Democracy Now! - Air Date 8-26-24

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this escalation of violence. I mean, we haven’t seen anything like this on the northern [00:37:00] border between Israel and Lebanon in many months.

RAMI KHOURI: It’s an escalation of aggression by Israel and resistance by Hezbollah. And the mutual attacks back and forth have been going on for probably the last 16, 18 years, since the 2006 war between them. But this is significant for several reasons. First, it’s a much higher level of attack in the number of fighter jets from the Israeli side, and sites attacked and the number of rockets and drones sent by Hezbollah. Both sides are claiming things that we can’t verify, so we just have to wait a little bit, a couple days more, for the actual factual evidence to come out.

But what’s significant from the Hezbollah side is that they used Katyusha rockets mostly, which are old-fashioned, [00:38:00] limited-capability rockets, not very good in terms of hitting — being aimed, etc. And then they used some drones. And their focus was to detract the defense system in Israel, the air defense system, with the rockets, and then get the drones in to attack some military sites. They’re clearly targeting military sites. And the Israelis say everything is fine. Hezbollah says they hit some of their targets, but they’re assessing the situation now. 

But the more sophisticated weapons that Hezbollah has, with much better guidance systems, much more accurate and can evade the Israeli defense systems, haven’t been used yet. So, this is a sign from Hezbollah that they’re going to attack, to avenge the killing of their commander in Beirut about a month ago, and [00:39:00] they are going to do it with increasingly sophisticated weapons system down the road.

Their aim is to do psychological warfare, as well as actual damage. They want the whole country to remain on edge. They want the army to be preoccupied in the north. They want the 70,000, 80,000 civilians who were evacuated from north Israel to remain evacuated and annoyed and angry, disruption to businesses, to tourism, to all kinds of investments, and to keep the military guessing what’s going to come next. So, this is an escalation of a pattern that’s been really the norm for many, many years.

And both sides, remarkably, but expectedly, said earlier today that they have finished this phase, and therefore, they’re not going to continue large-scale attacks today or tomorrow, it seems, that [00:40:00] they’ve done what they did. And this is the pattern that one side does something, the other does something of equal magnitude.

And it’s going to go on until two things happen: The Israelis get out of Gaza, and Palestinians can rebuild their lives there, and, second of all, some signs of action or movement towards resolving the overall Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli conflict, some signs of that materialize, because, until then, this is going to continue. There will continue to be this antagonism by the Hezbollah and Lebanese and Syrians and Palestinians and others and Yemenis towards Israel for what it’s done in Palestine. And this has to be resolved politically. It can’t be resolved militarily.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Israeli army spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, speaking Sunday.

HASSAN NASRALLAH: [translated] We look around the state of Israel all the time, also at [00:41:00] Yemen, also at Iran. I remind you that Hezbollah is an extension of the Iranians. They are financed, armed, targeted by the Iranians. And I am convinced that this widespread shooting is also directed by Iran, also under Iranian responsibility. And we will attack and remove threats wherever necessary.

AMY GOODMAN: You can respond, Rami Khouri. 

RAMI KHOURI: This is a typical Israeli Zionist propaganda message that has been going on for years and years. They will always — and with the U.S. close behind them, following their lead -- they’ll always find some threat in the Middle East. Before, it used to be Saddam Hussein. It was al-Qaeda. It was the Russians. It was the PLO. Now it’s Iran is behind everything bad. And they will focus a lot of attention on addressing that issue, trying to evade the central reality that the Palestine-Israel conflict, the conflict between Zionism and [00:42:00] Arabism in Palestine, which has been going on for a hundred years, that’s the real core of the problem. So, these are evasive tactics, diversionary tactics.

Iran is a very close ally of Hezbollah. They’re deeply involved in increasing its technical and military capabilities, as they are with Hamas and the Ansar Allah in Yemen, the Houthis. But to say that Iran directs them and tells them what to do, I believe, is a bit of a stretch. 

So, it’s like the relationship between Israel and the United States. They’re very close in armaments and strategy, and the US now is actively, almost enthusiastically, supporting the Israeli genocide in Gaza. But Israel does what it feels it needs to do, and the US doesn’t seem to be able or willing to stop it. And I think we have a similar relationship between [00:43:00] Hezbollah and Iran. They’re very close, but Iran doesn’t command, direct Hezbollah in telling it what to do. 

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about what’s happening right now, this whole — the Gaza ceasefire negotiations? Hamas sent representatives to Cairo. Israel had their delegation. Egypt and Qatar are involved. But it looks like they broke down once again, though they say they’re continuing. 

RAMI KHOURI: Well, they had reached an agreement in early July, when Biden announced his so-called plan for a ceasefire. And Hamas accepted it. Biden said this came from the Israelis. And then, when Hamas accepted it, the Israelis, Netanyahu came back and added more conditions. And this has been the pattern ever since. And whenever Hamas accepts it, they add more conditions, suggesting that Netanyahu doesn’t really want a ceasefire. He wants to just keep negotiating.

And I think it’s [00:44:00] pretty clear now that the ceasefire negotiations today are the equivalent of the so-called peace process in the bigger Arab-Israeli conflict over the last 40 years, which also was under US management or direction. And the ceasefire talks seem to be, in the eyes of most analysts and observers in the Middle East, seem to be a mechanism just to delay anything serious from happening, to allow Israel to continue with its genocidal killing of — the figures, the official figures, are over 40,000. Most people say it’s closer to 150,000 dead, but we’ll find that out in the future. 

So, the ceasefire talks are a fictitious political dynamic. And the reason they’re fictitious is because the United States is trying to be the main driver of the peace process, to the point where Biden announced [00:45:00] an agreement back in early July, but the US is also the main funder, arms supplier and political cover provider, diplomatic protector of Israel in the U.N. and other places. So, you can’t have the one party that is the major force for letting the genocide happen, technically and politically, and at the same time claim to be a mediator that’s trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas. This is the kind of fiction and fantasy that comes out of the State Department and the White House, and most of the world just watches this on TV, thinking, “Oh, something might happen.”

The important point is the Hamas — and you see it in Hezbollah — is that they have taken a much harder position. They say, “We accepted the ceasefire that Biden provided, that came from Israel. What more do you want from us? We are ready to [00:46:00] stop the fighting, exchange prisoners and hostages,” etc., etc. But they have certain hardcore demands. And what’s obvious now is that both Hezbollah and Hamas refuse to play the game that all the Arab governments, and Fatah under Arafat and now under Abu Mazen, the Palestinian leadership, played for so many years, which is to make concession after concession after concession, rely on Western or other international intervention, and then expect something to happen.

We’ve realized — everybody in the Arab region has realized that this is not a serious process. This is the latest manifestation of a colonial process managed by white, Northern, racist, militant groups, countries — it used to be England, now it’s the United States — that keeps playing games with the people of the region for [00:47:00] the benefits of either the Western powers or, today, for Israel. 

Note from the Editor on the deep denial at the heart of Zionism

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with The Intercept, analyzing the Democrats approach to addressing the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Citations Needed looked into the rhetoric of a ceasefire. Mehdi Hassan on Zedio talked with a former Israeli spy chief who spoke with clarity about the disaster of Israeli policy against Palestinians. This is Hell discussed the systematic abuse and brutality in Israel's prisons. Double Down News discussed Israel's expansion of the conflict to Hezbollah. And Democracy Now! also looked at the dynamics and rhetoric of the expanding conflict. 

And those were just the top takes, theres a a lot more in the deeper dive section, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes featuring the production crew here discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often trying to make each other laugh in the process.

To support our work and get all those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to [00:48:00] support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support—there's a link in the show notes. —through our Patreon page, if you prefer, or from right inside the Apple Podcasts app.

If regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information. 

Now, before we continue on to the deeper dives half of the show, we're I want to share a bit of a really good long form piece from New York Magazine titled My Father and the Withering of Liberal Zionism. So, the writer's father was part of the early days of settling Israel for Jewish people in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. he was part of the kibbutz movement based on what is generally described as secular socialism. So, like a hippie commune movement, if hippies had to fight battles with the native peoples in order to occupy the land. And if the idea of lefty hippies having to fight battles to take over a land feels like a bit of a [00:49:00] contradiction in political terms, that's exactly the right conflict to zero in on. 

From the article, quote: 

But this dream of a leftist version of Zionism, the dream my father nurtured for his entire life, cannot exist without denial of the crimes and atrocities committed both during the founding of the state and after. My father's fantasy of his war years and of the years on kibbutz is one all but devoid of Arabs. In his letters, he writes little of the Palestinians who were displaced, and only then with a casual racism that jars me, referring to them derisively as "Abdullah." He does not acknowledge that "the rocky spot south of Haifa" where he and the members of his garin learned how to farm was Kabara, once a Palestinian village of over 117 homes. He makes no mention of the village of Al-Zraiye, 2. 2 kilometers from Kissufim: 4,790 people [00:50:00] driven from their homes in 1948. 

 Don't mean to single my father out in this. Israeli society as a whole has conspired to eradicate the memory of the more than 500 Palestinian villages depopulated and destroyed in 1948, the three quarters of a million people expelled, despite attempts by some Jewish Israeli historians starting in the late 1980s to more accurately rewrite the narrative of the Nakba. This denial continues to this day. 

And then the article makes the connection from the past to the present, describing the media blackout that helps preserve this ignorance. It says, quote: 

Very few Israeli Jews even talk about what is happening in Gaza. When I asked why, I was told again and again that the Israeli media do not cover events on the ground. The public does not see images or hear stories of dead Palestinian children or devastated communities. Al Jazeera, the only network to reliably report on the horrors ongoing in Gaza, was recently banned in Israel. Yet we live in [00:51:00] an interconnected world; we live online. Though it's true that our social media and news silos can isolate us from the views and opinions of others, it's hard to imagine that anything but a concerted effort could keep a person from knowing the toll the war has taken on Palestinian civilians.

This carefully nurtured ignorance reminds me of my father and his stories about kibbutz life in the 1940s, which never included raids across the border into Gaza, the driving out of villages full of people, the murder of civilians. It reminds me of another saying we learned in Hebrew school: "A land without a people for a people without a land."

And this is what I really appreciate about this piece, connecting the dots between the past and the present that show how the pattern of denial runs like a straight line from the founding of Israel to the present. But, on top of the carefully nurtured ignorance, as the writer puts it, it's also important to recognize the dehumanizing propaganda that compounds the issue. For many, it is simple ignorance of the [00:52:00] destructive nature of the history of Israel, but for others, it's clear that incontrovertible evidence of atrocities would not be enough because they would always be able to simply fall back on the denial of the full humanity of Palestinian victims. Or, in the most extreme cases, they'll deny the existence of Palestinians as a people altogether. 

But there's more denial to be had. The article tells the story from the father's perspective of claiming that Arab militants in the 1940s were cowards, easily defeated. It's made blatantly clear in the article that this was a bald faced lie, but it's possible that myth of Arab cowardice influenced the thinking that led to the propping up of Hamas by Netanyahu as a political strategy.

So back to the article, it says, quote: 

"It was an enormous fuckup," Yosi says of Netanyahu's attempts to prop up Hamas, believing the group had lost the will to fight and could be isolated from the broader Palestinian [00:53:00] cause. "We were completely betrayed." 

 Only a country in deep denial could believe the Palestinians and Gaza would live in perpetually abject, but passive misery. It is a denial so ingrained that Jewish Israelis extend it even to Palestinians who live outside the occupation in Israel proper. 

Now, before I get to the closing section, it's important to strive for an understanding of where these layers upon layers of denial come from. Maybe not to excuse, but to understand. This next quote is about the aftermath of October 7th, but it could just as easily be about the aftermath of the Holocaust. In short, hurt people, hurt people. And here's why. Quote: 

Roni Aboulafia, a filmmaker and peace activist who believes a negotiated two state solution is the only way forward, has a compassionate explanation for why even liberals who consider themselves humanists in Israel are not [00:54:00] focused on the suffering of the people of Gaza. "We are all living through trauma," she said. "Every day brings new stories of the horrors that survivors went through and are still going through. The hostage situation is a very, very painful open wound." She added, "We are in a collective state of processing that limits our capacity to absorb Gazan pain and accept our accountability for it."

Just as there's a difference between explaining and excusing, it's then perfectly possible to have compassion without acting as an accomplice or enabler of destructive reactions. 

The events of October 7th were obviously traumatizing—they were intended to be—but that doesn't mean that any response by the victims becomes justified. Nor does it mean that allies of that victimized country then must support whatever retaliatory action is taken. In fact, it's the best friends who hold their friends back from their worst instincts in their darkest moments. [00:55:00] It's a poor friend who says, "Oh, you want revenge? Great, I'll get you some weapons and drive the getaway car." 

Now, I have one last excerpt for you and I know it's been a lot already, but there's so much more that's worth reading if you have the time. The last segment discusses the idea of sobering up, something many supporters of Israel have claimed to have done since last October. But, with just a little bit of clarity, it becomes obvious that sobering up from the defensive Israeli perspective is to dig deeper into a psychologically protective cocoon of denial and delusion. 

The writer starts the section by telling a story of an Arab woman living in Hafe on the outskirts of Tel Aviv in Israel. She grew up going to Israeli school and struggles with her identity and existence within a society that does not openly welcome her. And she concludes with this comment. Quote: 

"I don't want to be in partnership. I don't want to be in a place where I always have to convince the [00:56:00] other side that I'm human and my kids are worth living." Maybe, she said, she has also sobered up. 

Her use of that phrase, of course, is spiked with an irony entirely missing when it is spoken by left and center-left Jewish Israelis for whom to sober up means to reject the possibility of coexistence, to embrace the canard that Israel has no partner in peace among a Palestinian community of more than three million people. By the upside-down, looking-glass logic of modern liberal Zionism, a person of conscience and principle becomes "sober" by embracing a willed oblivion, remembering only incidents of Palestinian terrorism, and forgetting the generations of Palestinians who have sought redress through myriad legal and non violent ways. This "sobering up" is to focus on incidents of antisemitism on American college campuses, which are [00:57:00] analyzed in excruciating detail in the Israeli and U.S. media. It is to embrace the balm of victimhood, to wrap ourselves in the mantle of an age-old hatred that led to the murder of six million—victimhood that has now been transferred to October 7, which is referred to again and again, including by Netanyahu and President Biden, as the worst tragedy the Jews have experienced since the Holocaust, in order to expiate the shame of the war in Gaza. 

To "sober up" it is to forget the 750,000 Palestinians expelled and the 500 villages destroyed in 1948, and the massacres and abuses since. It is to mourn the 1,139 murdered in the horrific massacre by Hamas on October 7th, the 240 taken hostage, 70 of whom are believed to still be alive, while ignoring the tens of thousands killed in Gaza, among [00:58:00] them aid workers and physicians, the elderly, and women and children dismembered and burned alive.

So if you continue to deny or even attempt to justify the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the decades of injustice that preceded it, then the only explanation is denial. However, there are several levels of denial to choose from, so, from which are you, your loved ones, or members of your community suffering? I'll go back to what I've said before, Israel doesn't need shipments of weapons, or even, in the long run, peace negotiators. What they need, for both Israelis and Palestinians above all, is therapy.

SECTION A - UNCOMMITTED

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now, we'll continue a deeper dive on four topics. Next up, Section A, the Uncommitted; Section B, Torture; Section C, Arms embargo; and Section D, Journalism.

Palestinian-American lawmaker denied opportunity to speak at DNC shares what she would've said - All In With Chris Hayes - Air Date 8-23-24

CHRIS HAYES: This week we saw a really well produced Democratic Convention, which clearly was seeking to, and I think successfully, sought to construct this [00:59:00] big tent, right, that welcomes as broad a political coalition as possible. So for example, we saw Senator Bernie Sanders rallying against the ruling class, followed by Illinois Governor J.

B. Pritzker boasting the fact that he is a billionaire. We saw the exonerated Central Park Five on the need for criminal justice reform, followed by prosecutors selling Kamala Harris as the tough on crime candidate, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren rallying the progressive base, and former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Jeff Duncan, former Congressman Adam Kinzinger welcoming Republicans in the fold.

There's one glaring exception this week, which was on the issue of Israel and Gaza and the ongoing war there. The convention heard incredibly moving, searing, compassionate words from the parents of Hirsch Goldberg Polen, who's one of the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7th. 

We've met with President Biden and Vice President Harris numerous times at the White House.

They're both working tirelessly for a [01:00:00] hostage and ceasefire deal That will bring our precious children, mothers, fathers, spouses, grandparents, and grandchildren home, and will stop the despair in Gaza 

CHRIS HAYES: and Harris herself brought the crowd to its feet with a condemnation of Hamas' brutality. Paired with a call for Palestinian self-determination.

KAMALA HARRIS: President Biden and I are working to end this war. Such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self determination. But 

CHRIS HAYES: absent from the stage on any day across the four days were any Palestinian American voices.

The uncommitted [01:01:00] delegates attempted to negotiate a speaking slot with the DNC, but their efforts were ultimately rebuffed. So joining me now is one of the Palestinian Americans who requested to submit a speech to the DNC for vetting to deliver. Georgia State Representative Rua Roman, who attended the convention and intended to endorse Kamala Harris, but was not granted permission to speak.

Representative, it's great to have you. And I guess what I want to hear from you and Is what you wanted to say, what you would have told folks, uh, had you had the opportunity to, to get up there. 

REP. RUWA ROMMAN: Yeah. Thank you for having me. And I want to be clear, although I'm not an uncommitted delegate, um, I wasn't even a convention attendee.

I was there for a different panel with our American Institute. Um, I was asked by uncommitted, Um, I would help push for a speaker, and, um, that's sort of how the conversation about a speech even started. Uh, some members of Congress wanted to be able to vouch for a potential speaker, asked for some sample language, and we provided it.

And The language that we wrote was [01:02:00] meant to be in good faith. It included an endorsement. Um, it included a call for unity. Um, it included a personal story. Um, the reality is anyone who knows me knows I'm incredibly passionate about this issue. I am Palestinian. I have a responsibility for this. And so even though it doesn't call for an arms embargo, those are things we do work for.

Even though it doesn't call it a genocide, we still try to capture the massacres that are happening. But at the same time, we understood that this was going to be a moment to show some good faith. And so that is what we were going to talk about. 

CHRIS HAYES: Um, yeah, that, that, that, that point of the good faith, because I think a lot of the, the discussion about it I saw was about, well, you know, you don't know what they'll say.

And, um, and, and, and I think one argument which seemed legitimate to me is like, if a person's not going to endorse the candidate or they're going to trash the nominee, like we're not going to give them a slot. That seems reasonable. But I think the point that I'm hearing from you is like, You were willing to go up there.

I want to just read from the part of the speech that's okay with you because, um, you said this in the speech that you [01:03:00] released. You said, Let's commit to each other to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump, who used my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let's fight for the policies long overdue from restoring access to abortions, to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza.

Did you think there was a chance that this would happen? 

REP. RUWA ROMMAN: Yeah, I mean, um, from my understanding, uncommitted was told that as long as they were not told, no, there was a good chance this was going to happen. And so they were asked to submit names and this has been going on for a while. This did not start, you know, this week, this, these negotiations had been ongoing.

And from my understanding, I was basically myself and actually representative Abdel Nasser, who's also a Palestinian in Illinois. Um, we were kind of pushed as, okay, you're elected officials, you're Palestinian, surely, surely. We can at least focus on the two of you out of the list of many people that were already submitted, and we were already on that list to begin with, but it was just one of those, let's [01:04:00] focus on them, and we still don't understand why there wasn't a speaking slot for any Palestinian.

To be clear, it didn't have to be me. It didn't have to be Representative Abdel Nasser. It could have been, you know, Any Palestinian, and there wasn't a single one. 

CHRIS HAYES: One of the aspects of this that I found a little confounding about that, too, and again, like, conventions and candidates are going to enforce the discipline of what they want to say, and that is how this all works.

But, at this point, it does seem to me that, um, both the bulk of the hostages families, both American and Israeli, The bulk of, the bulk of the Israeli public, if you believe polling, the bulk of the Israeli security establishment, according to much reporting in Haaretz and other places, the bulk of Palestinian Americans all kind of want the same thing, which is the levers to produce a ceasefire.

REP. RUWA ROMMAN: Yeah, we had organizations. I mean, so many organizations from Ben, the arc to, um, you know, obviously uncommitted was pushing for this. We also had members [01:05:00] of Congress request this publicly and privately, including representative Richard at the representative Corey Bush representative Ilhan Omar. But also, um, you know, we had folks like, um, AOC and others who were pushing and saying, why is there not a single Palestinian speaker?

And again, Yeah. The ask wasn't sort of we want anything special or different. The idea was if this is going to be a big tent, can we please make sure it includes everybody that we are trying to reach this year?

The Young Person's Illustrated Guide to American Fascism + DNC Vibes - Refuse Fascism Podcast - Air Date 8-25-24

Listen to the doctors who went to the DNC to testify on this war on children in Gaza.

I'm fueled by a lot of rage. I was in Gaza, uh, working in the ICO, accession to the hospital for about three weeks. I have been to Gaza twice, uh, since the assault began in October. Went to Gaza in January. And was turned away in May after the border was stormed. I was in Gaza earlier this year and multiple times over the past [01:06:00] decade.

As a physician and as a witness on the ground, as one of the few international eyes allowed in Gaza by design, what I saw was indescribable with any other word other than I, as a doctor, cannot do my job if my elected leaders and my politicians are making it literally impossible for me to treat patients.

I can't save lives if you keep sending weapons. And it's really tough to reconcile with the fact that you're in the hospitals, you're watching people suffer and die, and to know that overhead there are fighter jets that came from America. They're making Gaza unlivable. They've destroyed the water infrastructure.

And so we were seeing kids die of diarrheal illness. They prevented all medical supplies in, and I can tell that by first hand witness, not by hearsay. They refused me the medical supplies that I was able to gather over months from wonderful people in Arkansas. Things like endotracheal tubes and Foley catheters, things like antibiotics and sedative medications that were [01:07:00] denied at the border.

First hand experience. They do not allow medical supplies in to treat children that are dying. You heard my colleagues speak just now at the press conference. The fact that. Uh, these children haunt us in our dreams, the fact that their parents come to us in our dreams, uh, asking us why we didn't save their children.

There's definitely a cognitive dissonance that's required to go from a place where you see children die every day from bombs dropped with a Made in USA sign on them, uh, then to come, to come here to the DNC and see almost a party like atmosphere, ignoring the fact that every day I was in Gaza, I heard children crying for their parents that were gone.

I saw the reality on the ground. I saw the product of our policies. I saw the product of the Biden administration's policies here. And for anybody to suggest that this is just a one issue, or we don't want to make this a one issue voter, uh, I'm offended by that, and I think most people who recognize the tragedy of what's taking place in Gaza, [01:08:00] they're offended by that.

And I think all of us are here not because, uh, we want to be, uh, we're here because we feel like it's important. It's our responsibility, uh, and we feel like we're, we're accountable, we're accountable to all the civilians who were killed, who were injured, who are killed today, who will be killed tomorrow, unless the U.

S. stops funding this. We are enabling a genocide, and that's what we're doing. That should be front and center stage, uh, at a convention of, uh, one of the main two parties, uh, of a country's political system. I know, that's, yeah, I don't, I don't have any capacity to give anybody excuses anymore. I, I literally can't, like, there's no excuse.

There's, yeah. 

Uncommitted Delegate Details His DNC Experience - Daniel Denvir - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 8-22-24

 I've got to say it was a spectacular act of anti Palestinian Racism to allow the family of israeli hostages an israeli hostage who obviously are going through hell But there are 40 [01:09:00] 000 plus palestinians dead in gaza since israel's begun this genocide and to refuse Any sort of palestinian presence on the stage, even though the uncommitted leadership is absolutely Open to negotiating on who that speaker is all the speeches here are very heavily vetted The same would be true for any palestinian who went up there And spoke but the fact that any palestinian saying anything at all the mere presence of a palestinian human being on the stage at the dnc Is on that that's impossible.

That's a spectacular spectacular spectacular evidence of anti Palestinian racism. Trump has been using the very identity of Palestinian, the national identity of Palestinian, as an epithet. It's clear at this point that many in Democratic Party leadership believe that being, being Palestinian is. is an epithet, is an ugly thing, is synonymous with terrorism, it's spectacular anti Palestinian racism.

And as we know with any form of racism, and Abbas said this last night, I believe when [01:10:00] Summer Lee was visiting the sit in, as Abbas, one of our leaders in Uncommitted said, um, racism is a, is a, uh, is a politics that legitimates Violence against the people who are subject to that racism and we're seeing that violence unfold right now with U.

s bombs being used to commit this genocide in gaza it is um notable to me that the president of the united states in my view is one of the Most rabid, uh, anti Palestinian and racist that I can remember in the Democratic Party, um, and seemingly is, is continuing to triple, quadruple down on this notion about a ceasefire being around the corner, um, and the, the necessity to negotiate a ceasefire.

The thing is, is that if it's so necessary, then you need to do the steps to make that necessary action happen. Um, and as we have seen. It's [01:11:00] not happening with the current strategy that Biden is employing, uh, arms, the arms embargo, which is a key demand, uh, or ask from the uncommitted movement doesn't seem to be breaking through with Biden.

Um, how have, uh, you and the fellow uncommitted delegates, uh, balanced trying to uh, Deal with the biden administration or biden himself and his team currently I think mostly across uh these negotiations Versus harris and putting that in the context of electoral politics as you're at the convention, right?

I mean, it's definitely like a series of balancing acts. We're inside the convention representing democratic primary Uncommitted voters, hundreds of thousands, over 700, 000, and those are only in the states that had an uncommitted option. Uh, far more than 700, 000, uh, Democratic voters in this country want an arms embargo on Israel and want the genocide to stop.

But obviously this is a, this is a, a tyrant act because we're representing this [01:12:00] within a Democratic party whose current President is sending the bombs to Israel that are being used to commit the genocide. I think everyone. Um, you know All sorts of democrats including those who very much including those who want an end to the genocide Which is a majority of democrats majority democrats want an arms embargo polls are clear on this um I think thinks that there's a better shot at getting a better solution under Harris. Biden has a deep sort of romantic, gentile, Zionist like attachment to Israel, that there's no limit to what Israel can do, clearly no limit that would cause him to actually put an end to this.

I don't think Harris and Walz have that kind of ideological commitment to Israel, but obviously this isn't just about the ideology of one president, this is a deep, structural, systematic Um piece of of how u. s imperialism And that and also american domestic politics function this attachment to israel And so changing out biden, we know is not gonna is not [01:13:00] gonna.

Uh, um, you know lead to you know Harris or walls taking office and and supporting our vision of of palestinian Liberation and, and, and freedom and equality and, you know, in the entirety of Palestine, you know, but there is, I think there is some grounds for hope of some kind of change from this and that's why we're inside making this fight and making this appeal that listen, we, none of us want Trump to win.

You know trump is a would would be monstrous on this issue and so many other issues But you know, I think some people in the democratic party leadership accuse uncommitted leaders of dividing the party It is we are the messengers of democratic voters who have been profoundly alienated from the party by President biden's support for the israeli genocide.

So for us the key it's not only a moral urgency To stop the bombs You It's key to ensuring that Harris can win against Trump. And it seems pretty obvious to me that that's necessary. That was the whole idea of Listen to Michigan, [01:14:00] which began the whole Uncommitted movement. You know, that like these, you know, in a state like Michigan, which was won by what?

I think it was like 10, 000? Votes last time that they're right. It's a low number. I don't have it off the top of my head, but yeah, there are a hundred thousand people who there, you know, and there's who voted uncommitted and there are tons and tons and tons of Arabs, Muslims, progressive black people, Latino people in Michigan.

And all across this country, who need to see a change to feel good about voting for Harris in November. This is a fact we're not create as on committed delegates. We're not creating that fact. We're not out there telling people, How to vote. We are messengers from those voters. Right. And, and I, I couldn't agree with the way that you've characterized Biden, um, more.

I mean, we, I quote this all the time, but we had Peter Beinart on this program. Um, and our listeners will probably have heard this for the 20th time, but it just stuck with me to such a degree. Um, where [01:15:00] People who believe and buy into the myth of America as a promised land on a hostile frontier also buy into the myth of Israel as a promised land on a hostile frontier, and it's the romanticism of colonialism that Biden Biden.

Has bought into, and from my view, his brain has ossified to the point where he's not able to change his racism and his view of this issue. Um, I read an interview, actually very good profile, uh, thankfully, um, of, uh, Abbas, uh, uh, Alawiyah, um, the, uh, one of the uncommitted, uh, movement leaders in the Washington Post.

That's very good. Uh, I'm glad that they gave, uh, him a voice in a way that wasn't, uh, you know, condescending in any manner, and it was good because he clarifies for that readership that he's going to vote for Harris in the fall, right? And it's the kind of thing where A lot of, some Democrats would just excommunicate you and not listen to you at all, if [01:16:00] you didn't bring that point up first.

I'm sure you've dealt with that, uh, a lot, but, uh, also seems to say that he feels like there has been a little bit more oxygen and more receptiveness, slightly, even if it's just lip service, like, is there hope there? Do you, do you feel, or is there an understanding among the rest of the uncommitted delegates that There's at least a crack in the door where it was a bit where it wasn't back the way it wasn't that way under Biden.

I, I certainly feel more hopeful now that Biden is not at the top of the ticket, but, you know, hope, hope is just not, not enough. The bombs raining down on Gaza, we need to have an indication and people will say, you know, that there'll be an actual substantive policy shift. And that substantive policy shift has to be to stop sending bombs. 

Um, and I think, you know, we get pressure from, uh, you know, various, you know, [01:17:00] with the response we get from, from Democrats here who are, who are more, you know, protective or, uh, of, of Biden, um, I'm sorry, of Harris is, you know, what do you want her to do? She's the VP to the sitting president. And obviously, yes, there are complications there, but there are things she could say, like under my administration, U.

S. military aid will. Yeah. Uh, be governed by domestic and international law. That that would that would say a lot. That would say a lot but they're not saying that. And you'd think that would be easy enough to say that the law will be followed. But it's not easy because the law is clearly not being followed right now.

All these weapons transfers in Israel under current domestic and international law are illegal. Israel's using them to Commit atrocities that's illegal. It's a violation of the Leahy law.

Omar Calls Out DNC’s Refusal To Acknowledge Israel’s Ongoing Genocide In Gaza - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 8-22-24

 As we see Alexandria Ocasio Cortez begin to, to shift, honestly, her rhetoric in a way that I, I'm disappointed about.

Um, Months ago, she was on the House floor calling it a genocide. And then she [01:18:00] did her convention speech as there were major protests outside. And she repeated the State Department Biden administration line about a ceasefire and hostages. That is not happening. Um, It's now quite clear that Benjamin Netanyahu will not agree to a ceasefire and it needs to be imposed upon them in the form of sanctioning Israel and doing an arms embargo.

These are the things that are going to be necessary because if the war Genocide stops. Netanyahu is both going to be under criminal prosecution, will be out of power, and the messianic freaks that are a part of his majority coalition government won't stop until they kill every Palestinian that they can, and also may, maybe, attempt to spark a regional war to drag the United States into it.

Um, we're, like, the, the amount of people that are dead in Gaza, We have no clue. Um, [01:19:00] a week or two ago, there was a letter written by American doctors working in Gaza that put that number over 90, 000. There are other estimates that put it in the hundreds of thousands. They've killed all the journalists and the record keepers.

So we're not, that's another part of why They aren't interested in ceasing fire because war crimes investigations will happen and will know the true death toll. If you're alive, but everyone you loved has been killed, um, or you are so emaciated that you'll never retain like your full health again. Like that doesn't count towards the, uh, conservative death tolls that we are talking about right now, which are on their own, uh, horrific or your limbs are gone.

I mean, the trauma that, that, that the people in Gaza. We'll live with, who survive for the rest of their lives. We saw so many Zionists talk about decapitated babies, I just saw the, another, and I retweeted it, another image of a kid's head splayed open because of a bombing. [01:20:00] A little boy, it seemed like, being held up by somebody.

I've seen a flesh of children that is so torn apart that it almost, it looks like, um, putty. Um, so with that said, uh, these protests are righteous, they're necessary, and I'm encouraged to see Ilhan Omar, who I gotta say is probably my favorite member of Congress because she both stands on her, on, on her principles and plays the inside game as like the progressive caucus whip, uh, really well.

She deserves more credit for her political shrewdness as well as her principles. So, And her ability to win in Minnesota, which I, yeah, like the people always want to suggest like, that's like a majority Somalian migrant immigrant. Uh, district. It is not. I would recommend looking into the demographics.

That is a single digit minority in Minnesota, if I'm not mistaken. That's just white supremacist, minnesomalia sort of talking point. [01:21:00] And and and so that's I'm I love that efficacy and I made this point the other week, but Corey Bush and Jebal Bowman lost, and I hate that they lost. Um, but In part because I think the members that staved off AIPAC from either, you know, not pouring a ton of resources in or staying away entirely, it was Summer Lee, it was Ilhan Omar, it was Rashida Tlaib, they were all state representatives before They got into Congress.

So they had this kind of like infrastructural support more of a machine then, you know, inquiry Bush just didn't have that Jamal Bowman had the Democratic Party that was actively hostile to him in New York State. So these are things that we just should flag. Uh, and now that Ilhan Omar has survived her primary, she's still keeping up the good fight.

This is what she had to say at, um, the uncommitted rally outside of the Democratic National Convention. Uh, just, you know, about an hour ago. Palestinians. [01:22:00] It has been unconscionable for me in the last 10 months to witness my colleagues in this administration refusing to recognize the genocidal war that is taking place in Gaza.

To not see the mothers with lost helpless children, the babies whose dead bodies are being dumped out. I do not understand that working tirelessly for a ceasefire is really not a thing, and they should be ashamed of themselves for saying such Palestinians. No. Yes. And by the way, that is a split from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and almost seems like, um, I don't know.

Direct reference. A direct reference. Which, I mean, I don't know, it's unclear to me, but just to say what she says there, um, uh, calling for a ceasefire is not really a thing and shame on the people who are [01:23:00] doing so. Now, I'd be curious what she said directly after that, but, I am, If it's not a shot directly at AOC it should be because AOC did do that That's what she did on the very first night of the election as people who helped the DNC Helped to get her elected were protesting that trying to get the more buy in for the uncommitted movement to get some movement on the Embargo if you know, I guess aid is maybe the where they're The Split the baby thing, but um Yeah, I mean good for Ilhan and shame on AOC is right And I think you know look AOC seems to have larger ambitions whether it's for Schumer Senate seat in In four or six years, I forget exactly when or whether it's to primary Kathy Hockel for governor.

And I hope she beats both of those people if she runs. She'd be better than both. But if the price is you have to lie about a genocide, [01:24:00] um, and about a party's complicity in doing so that we have to name that price. We have to be very clear about it. This, we need marketplace , transparency when it comes to the cost of doing business in the democratic party here.

SECTION B - TORTURE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Torture.

Palestinian Healthcare Workers Chained, Starved, Sexually Abused- New HRW Report on Israeli Prisons - Democracy Now! - Air Date 8-27-24

MILENA ANSARI: The report on the torture and detention of Palestinian healthcare workers includes eight testimonies of Palestinian paramedics, nurses, doctors and surgeons who currently have been working in Gaza and living in Gaza for the past 10 months during the current hostilities. Many of the doctors and the nurses — six of them — were detained and arrested when they were actually in the hospital doing their duties and whatever they can to make sure Palestinians who are injured and Palestinians who need the medical care for their own survival are granted this humanitarian medical need. So, six of the doctors were detained during a siege on the hospitals, [01:25:00] as well as during coordinated evacuation missions from the hospitals that are in the northern area of Gaza to hospitals in the southern areas. So, what I’m trying to say is, clearly, these healthcare workers were detained while they were doing their job, tasked and in a situation where Palestinians in Gaza are urgently needing medical care and medical assistance.

The testimonies, as you mentioned, are consistent with many other testimonies gathered by OHCHR, for example, Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, where it gives us a window into how Israeli authorities are treating Palestinians in detention. We were able to speak to eight healthcare workers in order to really connect and better understand the health infrastructure in Gaza. So, the detention and torture of healthcare workers at this current [01:26:00] moment in Gaza is only exaggerating and worsening the conditions of the catastrophic health infrastructure in Gaza.

So, the testimonies are of torture, beatings, punches, kicks with steel-toed boots by Israeli soldiers, using military dogs to attack and intimidate detainees, but as well as using stress positions for prolonged period of times while being blindfolded and cuffed by the hands and feet. Many of the healthcare workers we spoke to, as healthcare workers being experts in medical knowledge, testified to us and reported seeing and witnessing and being themselves subjected to medical neglect, where they have seen detainees with visible trauma and blunt trauma on their bodies, visible bites of dogs on their bodies, as well. [01:27:00] They told us, as well, from their wounds during their detention and arrest, they were not given any proper medical treatment. And when I talk about medical treatment inside detention, this is the bare minimum that’s guaranteed under international humanitarian law, where the Geneva Conventions require the detaining authority to provide proper medical healthcare, proper monitoring of the conditions. But then we have testimonies and we have reports that talk about amputation of Palestinian limbs, including hands and feet, from prolonged cuffings, and amputations without anesthesia, as well.

So, sadly, this is, honestly, just a small example of what Human Rights Watch was able to document. But we’re talking about hundreds of other cases of testimonies from either U.N. or Israeli human rights organizations that talk about some kind of a systematic [01:28:00] pattern of ill-treatment and abuse in detention.

And really important to highlight that when we talk about these eight healthcare workers, for example, for specific, they were not charged with any offenses. They were not brought before trial. So this is why we concluded that the detention was unlawful. They were either detained from seven weeks up to five months, none of them being informed why they are being detained or for how long they are being detained. They’re just experiencing ill-treatment and torture at the hands of the Israeli authorities, which is, again, only a window into the general detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. And currently, we’re talking about 9,000 Palestinians who are in Israeli custody. Three thousand of them are under administrative detention, which is detaining a person without trial, without charge, for an indefinite [01:29:00] time. And this includes hundreds of children, dozens of women, as well, elderly, journalists and human rights defenders.

So we’re really ringing the alarm about the situation inside the Israeli custody and detention facilities. And again, when we talk about military bases or detention facilities where Palestinians are detained, these cases are of Palestinians who were taken outside of Gaza. So they were forcibly deported from Gaza into detention facilities and detention military bases inside Israel. And this is considered a war crime under international humanitarian law, of forcible deportation. And for those Palestinians who were detained inside the occupied West Bank or inside the Occupied Palestinian Territory, have been forcibly transferred outside of their occupied territory, which is also a war crime under international [01:30:00] humanitarian law.

So, the alarms are ringing. And this is why Human Rights Watch is calling for the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor to ensure including the treatment of Palestinian detainees and prisoners in their open investigation into the situation in Palestine. We know that the prosecutor at the ICC requested arrest warrants for two Israeli senior officials, as well as Hamas officials. So, for the Israeli officials, they are being — the arrest warrants are for war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, we did not notice that the ill-treatment, the detention and the torture of Palestinians inside Israeli detention was included during the calls or applications for arrest warrant. And we really sincerely put pressure on states and governments to also make sure that there is genuine [01:31:00] accountability for the treatment of Palestinians inside Israeli detention.

As you may know, or to really highlight this information, that the International Committee for the Red Cross, that’s mandated to monitor detention conditions in order to make sure they comply with international standards, has been banned, since the start of the hostilities, from monitoring Israeli prisons and detention centers, which rings the alarm and the bells even higher with regards to what exactly is happening inside detention and inside Israeli custody, because we are hearing about reports of Palestinian deaths in custody. According to Haaretz, there are 48 cases of deaths in custody since the beginning of the hostilities, of Palestinians who were declared dead or have been killed inside detention. And there is no clarity to the reasons or the circumstances that [01:32:00] led to their deaths. Physicians for Human Rights Israel was able to participate in the autopsy of five cases of Palestinian detainees who were pronounced dead inside Israeli detention. And some of the cases included clear medical neglect, and others included that the deaths was a cause of torture and ill-treatment. And I would just highlight that two cases of these deaths in custody were of Palestinian healthcare workers, like Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who was declared by the Israeli Prison Services back in April killed, and as well as Dr. Eyad al-Rantisi, who was also killed during detention.

So, again, the bells are ringing. And there needs to be better clarity and understanding to what’s happening inside detention, but also to be confident in asking the question of “Why are these Palestinians inside detention, when they’re [01:33:00] being detained for prolonged periods of time without being brought before a judge or even without any charges presented against them?” So, there’s a lot of questions that should be asked.

Israel Accused of Running “Torture Camps” as Video Emerges of Soldiers Raping Palestinian Prisoner - Democracy Now! - Air Date 8-8-24

ASHRAF AL-MUHTASEB: In another interview conducted by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, 50-year-old Firas Hassan, an official in the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Youth and Sports, describes not only being beaten by prison guards while in detention, but hearing that their brutal attack is being live-streamed for Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security of Israel, to watch.

FIRAS HASSAN: [translated] On November 9th, 2023, two prison forces, the District Unit and the Initial Response Force, came into cell 14 we were in, on wing 28. We were 10 Palestinians [01:34:00] in the cell. The forces came in masked and beat us for 50 minutes. They laughed while they hit us and live-streamed it all. I understand Hebrew, and I heard one say, “We’re live-streaming for Ben-Gvir, directly to Ben-Gvir.” They beat us in various ways, with their hands and feet, and then brought in police dogs, after they tied our hands behind our backs and blindfolded us.

AMY GOODMAN: B’Tselem also spoke to Sari Huriyyah. He’s a 53-year-old real estate lawyer and an Israeli citizen. He was arrested and detained over a Facebook post November 4th last year. [01:35:00] In this clip, Sari describes 'Abd a-Rahman Mar'i, a 23-year-old man in the isolation cell next to him, screaming in pain and later being brought out in a body bag.

SARI HURIYYAH: [translated] He screamed in pain constantly, begging for the doctor. The guard would come now and then and swear at him and tell him to shut up. In the morning, the guards came to count us. One said, “Get up, you animal. Get up, you dog.” They checked him, and the whole place went silent. Finally, the doctor said, “There’s nothing to be done.” One of the guards said to them, “My condolences.” And they all started laughing. They put him in a black body bag and carried him out like trash.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by Sarit Michaeli, international advocacy lead for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. The group’s new report [01:36:00] is titled “Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps.”

Sarit, thanks so much for being with us. Just as we listen to these horrifying accounts, please lay out your findings.

SARIT MICHAELI: I think on a very fundamental level, Amy, our findings look at the systemic, ongoing and state-sanctioned, government-sanctioned use of torture and abuse in the Israeli prison system vis-à-vis Palestinians, Palestinians who Israel considers to be — views as security prisoners.

Now, this is something that we have discussed in the past. I mean, torture and abuse of Palestinian detainees in detention and interrogations have occurred. They have been documented. But the level, the degree, the scope, the scale of this phenomenon since October 7th [01:37:00] are simply unrelated to anything we’ve seen in the past.

And when we look at the way these people are treated — you showed some of the testimonies. Some of the — many more testimonies are actually available on our website, and we are sharing them online. You see that, clearly, this isn’t the actions of any sort of rogue element of the Israeli prison system. It’s a government-sanctioned and also government-supported, government-mandated policy. And that’s the central conclusion that we have from all of the information that we’ve collected in recent months.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about Firas, who was describing not only being beaten by the Israeli soldiers, but also the fact [01:38:00] that this beating was being live-streamed for the national security minister of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to watch?

SARIT MICHAELI: So, I just want to clarify: We know that the police say — or, sorry, the prison guards were discussing this. Certainly, we have not — you know, we clarified in our communications that we don’t know whether this was indeed, like, literally live-streamed for Itamar Ben-Gvir or whether it was more about the spirit of Itamar Ben-Gvir, because a lot of the things we see on the ground today in the Israeli prison system are directly related to the influence, to the spirit of Minister Ben-Gvir.

I think it’s certainly not the case that Minister Ben-Gvir is the only person responsible. Absolutely, the prime minister, Prime Minister Netanyahu, who gave him all of [01:39:00] his authority, is absolutely responsible and culpable for this reality. But the Israeli government and Ben-Gvir have shown again and again, since October 7th but also before October 7th, that they are hell-bent, that their intention is to cause this deterioration to increase the pressure on Palestinian prisoners.

And this was — this has been done, and we saw these kinds of developments even prior to October 7th. From the beginning of the tenure of Minister Ben-Gvir as minister of national security, he has been imposing his racist, his Kahanist agenda, both on the Israeli police, with great success, unfortunately, and also on the Israeli Prison Service. October 7th, the horror, the crimes committed against Israelis on October 7th, served as a golden [01:40:00] opportunity for Ben-Gvir to continue to cynically manipulate the Israeli trauma, the Israeli fear and anger, in order to push forward this agenda that he has been promoting even beforehand.

So, I think one of the clear things that we’ve seen on the ground and in the system since October 7th was that much of this Israeli policy, at least the parts about starving prisoners, about cramping them all together in large numbers in cells, canceling any possibility for them to have any sort of sustenance, to buy additional food, for example, all of these policies have been declared. They’ve been stated by the Israeli government. They haven’t hid this. Ben-Gvir himself has been on the media promoting these policies and showing — you know, having these, [01:41:00] like, show visits to visit prisoners that he claims are Nukhba — right? — are Palestinian, are Hamas fighters from Gaza.

But what we have seen again and again, based on the testimonies that we’ve taken, is that the Israeli policy wasn’t just applied Palestinian Hamas suspects. We would argue, by the way, that this is absolutely, categorically prohibited regardless of the crimes people have been — have committed. Torture and this type of treatment is absolutely prohibited. But Israel is claiming, and in some cases showing — right? — performing, in a way. And this is — I think the incident that was described in this testimony seems very much an example of this, not just the kind of actual violence and ill-treatment and humiliation, but making it very, very public. And this is something that [01:42:00] is simply chilling and is part of the really deep moral abyss that this report exposes, I think, within our society today.

Francesca Albanese on Gaza and the Anatomy of a Genocide - The InnerView - TRT World - Air Date 8-26-24

 What I've seen after the submission of my report, um, confirms my. My reading, my understanding, and I'm glad, very glad to see that exposing what I've called in the report the humanitarian camouflage, meaning Israel's use of international humanitarian law jargon and categories, like evacuation, safe zones, evacuation orders, or military objectives, uh, collateral damage.

This is, this is justified in Israel's view, um, the violence that Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians. So by doing so, Israel has capsized. The value, the protective function of international law. I'm glad to see that this is shaping a little bit the [01:43:00] mindset of a number of observers who do see this pattern, which was already present prior to this, uh, this assault.

The third element is how my report was received. I, look, there is no much to celebrate with the genocide ongoing, but I do think that the report has made a huge impact in, um, at the, at the level of public conscience. And it has contributed to, uh, to the awakening and the conscientization around what Israel is doing.

Nothing, nothing of what I've said has been proven, has been proven wrong. Uh, rather the contrary it has been further corroborated by the massacres and the arbitrary killings and destruction of Of everything that is necessary to to live in gaza and unfortunately It's expanding beyond gaza. [01:44:00] Yeah, when you say it's expanding beyond gaza.

It's an interesting Opportunity for me to ask you technically when we look at the fact that it's not just gaza. We also have You Uh, a lot of conflict, a lot of violence happening in Northern Israel, Southern Lebanon. So the Israelis see themselves as fighting Hamas and Hezbollah on two fronts. So, you know, everything is interrelated here.

When it comes to that aspect of the conflict, are there limits to, to what you can analyze, what you can report on? Do you have to stay away from what's happening in, in Northern Israel, for example? Well, yes, there are limits, because my mandate only, uh, covers the occupied Palestinian territory, meaning the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

Uh, I do refer to Um, to facts or legal implications that are relevant to the occupied Palestinian territory. But for example, in this specific case you are mentioning, I [01:45:00] cannot start an investigation on what's happening in, in Lebanon or in Syria or in Iraq or in Iran, which Israel has been bombing. Uh, so yes, the conflict is expanding, but what I, what I was referring to Imran is something else.

The threat against the Palestinians. The violence against the Palestinians that puts an obligation to prevent genocide on international community might be expanding to the West Bank, because the few that I see and other observers, like just today, B'Tselem published a report commenting on the systematic, uh, deprivation of liberty and abuses against the Palestinians in Israeli custody.

This gives a sense of how. How grave, how serious and perilous for the Palestinians the situation is in, uh, including in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, [01:46:00] which poses, as I said, an obligation on the international community, on member states, especially those who have influence on Israel, to intervene And, uh, uh, and, and stop the violence.

Right. It's interesting that you mention that, because a lot of, uh, experts have been pointing out the fact that perhaps the West Bank and East Jerusalem are, in a way, being ignored while the catastrophe is unfolding in Gaza, and it's worth people focusing their attention on the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

As well you speak of international intervention and in the recommendation Portion of your report you talk of an arms embargo you talk of sanctions Who's going to impose that when we have the security council as it is when we have the united states as it is How does this actually happen? How would you like to see it play out downstream?

Look at what ordinary citizens, especially in the West, are doing, uh, [01:47:00] through the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement. They are taking the situation into their hands and they are, um, activating in within the realm, of course, of their possibilities. Adherence with the International Court of Justice, uh, recommendations and, and provisions.

So each, each member state has the opportunity to impose sanctions on, on Israel. Of course, ideally it would be better if it were done by the security council, but With impasse that is registered owing to the persisting, persisting U. S. veto, it's more likely that individual member states would, uh, put an, uh, impose an arms embargo on, on Israel, cartel the economic ties, both the imports and exports and other forms of partnerships, including with the academia.

Which [01:48:00] has been supporting the, the legal endeavor that Israel has established to the detriment of the Palestinian people for decades, if not now, when? I want us to have a little watch and listen to something from three to four months ago, you had a q and a session at the UN Human Rights Council. There was a question asked to you by, I think a German journalist.

I want, I wanna play that and I wanna talk about it afterwards. Let's have a little watch and listen. I would like to ask you, do you have a written document by the government, which a cl with a clear intent to commit genocide?

Do you think that in Rwanda. And in Bosnia Herzegovina, any government officials wrote a document saying I want to commit genocide? [01:49:00] Have you seen anything like that? I'll answer this for you. No. It doesn't work like that. There is, those statements are just the tip of the iceberg because I have a word limit in, uh, in my reports.

Which is quite strict. Otherwise, we could write an encyclopedia with what has been said and done. And I said it, and I mean it. If the International Criminal Court is serious about investigating what Israel has done in Gaza, as of the 7th of October, only as of the 7th of October, it will be busy for decades.

I had to watch that a few times, and it felt like it was an onion clip. You know, it felt like satire for a for a second there at the beginning. Tell me what was going through your mind When you were asked that question And without wanting to sort of pinpoint too much on on this journalist and so on that's not the point But tell me about some of the frustrations [01:50:00] involved When you have to field questions such as that Um Look, I remember what I felt.

I that day I felt completely sick Which added to the dramatic reaction with the posing I, I had, I was really sick in my stomach from the very morning. And this is also because that it was, uh, it took a huge, uh, toll on me to investigate, uh, for that report and write that report. It was really painful. And probably after that, I felt as a sort of, uh, Relaxation.

So the day after when I had the press conference, I was not in the best of shape. At the same time, I had to pause and think how to answer that question, because it was very embarrassing. It was, again, I'm, I'm sorry for the journalist who has been vilified so much, but probably he embodied [01:51:00] a, a genuine spirit that many in Germany have.

They think that every, in order to have genocide, you need to have the written down, industrialized the policy of extermination that you had with the Holocaust of the Jewish people and the Roma and Sinti and others. Uh, and it doesn't work like that. This is not written in the genocide. So this is what I, this is what I thought and this is what I tried to say.

SECTION C - ARMS EMBARGO

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section C: Arms embargo. 

The US is allowing Israel to get away with genocide- Marwan Bishara - Al Jazeera English - Air Date 8-14-24

 Going through the statements that we've heard before from the U. S. about the concern that they have for the number of casualties, particularly in Gaza, and she did say that Israel has a right to respond to threats, but how it does it matters.

Nevertheless, It seems as though she was, again, reiterating the U. S. line that any fault, any delay when it comes to negotiations lies with Hamas rather than with the Israeli government. And it seems to [01:52:00] be an encouragement to try to get Hamas to the negotiations, but of course, that may prove difficult.

Well, I tell you, I actually envy you for the capacity to repeat all of that. Uh, when we all know it's Groundhog Day. Every time the U. N. Security Council convenes and the Americans repeat more of the same. The same thing for the English. The same thing for the Algerians. They all seem to be, you know, um, basically political commentators rather than, uh, diplomats representing states.

With the exception, perhaps, of the Americans. And the American ambassador basically read the same soundbites, the same lines she did in previous speeches, with one difference. I'm not sure you've noticed, uh, perhaps our viewers around the world did. The United States is not just concerned now. The United States is deeply concerned.

That's the difference. Deeply concerned. I'm sure the people in Gaza, the children of [01:53:00] Gaza, are going to sleep better tonight because the United States is deeply concerned. While, of course, repeating more of the same mantras, it's very Orwellian for the United States to continue to talk about the United States.

defense and stability and peace and ceasefire and so on and so forth, while it's edging on financing, arming Israel. And here I'm repeating myself, shielding Israel at the United Nations, supplying it with all the arms it needs to carry its genocide and to carry violations of international law against Lebanon and Iran.

and to defend it when those countries would want to retaliate. This is basically, as I said, groundhog day every day, the past 24 times, as, uh, as Gabrielle told us earlier, since The Algerian representative, Amar Benjama, when he was speaking, and as I mentioned, it was Algeria who called this emergency meeting, was talking at [01:54:00] one point about the attacks that have been going on in the West Bank, but also particularly in Gaza.

He made the point that the attacks would not be possible without the generous support that Israel gets. Now, I'm paraphrasing what he was saying, but that was essentially what he was meaning. And As I was discussing with Gabriel Elizondo, a correspondent, almost at this exact moment, the notification started to come out on the wires that the U.

S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has just approved 20 billion worth of U. S. military equipment to be delivered to Israel. And this is really where we see, as you were just talking about, the heart, the split, if you like, in the situation that we find ourselves, because on the one hand, the U. S. is Saying that it's concerned about the number of casualties that Israel has to the right to respond, but how it does it matters.

But at the same time, of course, it does not stop the flow of military aid to Israel. It's truly unprecedented audacity in international relations when it comes [01:55:00] to the United States justifying, um, Israel's crimes and supporting Israel's crimes. and arming and financing Israel as it carries its crimes, all the while talking about peace, stability, ceasefire, and the concern over it, the deep concern for casualties in Gaza.

It's an unprecedented, uh, audacity. It's, it's Orwellian in every possible way. But what, what is happening in the meanwhile? I mean, I'm not here. None of us is trying to be clever about this. At the end of the day, You can't really clever out, uh, death, right, and destruction and genocide, I should say. Because what is happening is through, through these 24 type meetings at the UN Secret Council and through the very support that you just spoke about from Antony Blinken on the lives, America sends its diplomats to the region.

Now, I [01:56:00] think three or four of them are going to show up. MacGurk, Antony, Blinken and, uh, and the CIA director, Bill Burns, and perhaps the UN, the US National Security Advisor, they will all be in the Middle East. All the while, it's sending armadas, strike forces, the most powerful armadas in the world, the biggest aircraft carriers the United States has, the Lincoln, right?

So it sends the diplomats, but it also sends the armadas. It talks about diplomacy. But it's really more or less like gunboat diplomacy, right? It's just sends in the armadas and threatens everyone around as if the Middle East is its background, back, backyard. The Middle East is two oceans away from the United States, but it behaves like it's the Gulf of Mexico.

It is not the Gulf of Mexico. The Middle East is the Middle East. American or North America is two oceans away. But anyway, be that as it may, and this is my real, you know, my essential point here. The United States is allowing Israel to get away from [01:57:00] with genocide by arming it, financing it, and shielding it at the United Nations.

The United States is enabling Israel's genocide and allowing Israel to get away with genocide. Not only that, now it's allowing both the Israeli government and its prime minister, to get away with their war crimes by shielding it by shielding them from the ICC and the ICJ and the riots. And even giving them all kinds of guarantees so that if they do reach a ceasefire, their government will not implode because secretly the United States is guaranteeing that Israel can go back to the war after phase one of phase three of three phases of the ceasefire, according to Israeli media reports.

So really, all in all, it is tragic. That we sit here and we try to analyze just to find any light in the end of the tunnel. And we find the word [01:58:00] deeply concerned instead of just concerned. While the United States, once again, is enabling genocide in Palestine. Marmon, we're waiting to hear from the Russian representative to the UN Security Council.

So I just want to keep asking you some questions until we get to that point. Forgive me if I have to break away if you're giving me an answer. But I want to widen this out a little bit and just talk about the negotiations themselves. Two things. Absolutely evident. Um, Hamas now has a leader, uh, Yael Sumwar, who is in Gaza.

Ismail Khaneo, when he was alive, uh, was the political head of Hamas, and he traveled the world as part of these talks in order to be part of the negotiations. Sumwar is in Gaza. He is very unlikely to leave Gaza. That's going to slow things down. any process down. Now, uh, Linda Thomas Greenfield saying, no, Hamas has to be at the table in these talks.

They have to be represented. Qatar says there will be some sort of representation. What kind of impact do you think this is going to have on the effectiveness of whatever talks we're going to see on Thursday? [01:59:00] Uh, I'm actually pretty sure, analytically and from the various sources and reports that I've seen.

That nothing changes with Sanwar being in Gaza and Ismail Haniyeh being assassinated. In terms of the logistics and in terms of who makes a decision and how collective is a decision and how it's consensual and institutional within Hamas and why Hamas is in fact a very disciplined group regardless of who's on the head and regardless the geography of where is the person who hits it.

And I think they already said that, uh, that that issue is not going to be a problem and they've already made some proposal towards. How they see this thing needs to move forward in order to end as quickly as possible. Now having said that, let me remind our viewers around the world and let me tell you about the New York Times Report today.

It's a exclusive report in the New York Times, and I bet you anything you want that the American Ambassador already, just like the English [02:00:00] ambassador and the other ambassadors, they read it because it's a very important report in the New York Times that basically says that they got the documents. From the various ceasefire, uh, negotiations, from the various, uh, roundtables, you know, what went on and so on and so forth, what were the documents.

And the New York Times concluded that it was Netanyahu, Netanyahu, Netanyahu that obstructed the progress towards the ceasefire. That each and every time he either underlined, expanded, His conditions or added new conditions for why, at least since May, when the UN Security Council adopted that it's region 2735 for the worst, for the ceasefire, Israel has been obstructing its own or its American version of its own ceasefire proposal because Netanyahu does not want a ceasefire.

He didn't want the ceasefire. I'm not sure if he's going to be pushed in the top [02:01:00] corner now with Biden basically saying, If you're going to continue to obstruct as the New York Times reports, we're going to have to call you out on it this time because Biden basically is not running for re election and there's a good chance, according to at least a number of his reports, that Biden might Call him out on it this time around.

Israeli Holocaust Scholar- Why Gaza Is Genocide - w-. Prof. Omer Bartov - Owen Jones - Air Date 8-21-24

Following a visit to Israel, and it should be noted, I should make it clear, of course, you're an Israeli American, um, you've been convinced that it's no longer possible to deny.

Israels engage in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocidal ideations. And I think the key central point here is where you write, it is also clearly indicated the ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable and debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out, or seek all possible options to flee the territory.

That brought to mind, to me, Giora Ireland, an Israeli [02:02:00] general who wrote a piece for Fathom, which is a journal, I should say, is affiliated to BICOM, the main pro Israel lobbying organization in Britain, which was cited in South Africa's case, alleging genocide, in which he set that out as a strategy, starve, stay and starve, or, um, and die or leave.

Um, and he's an advisor to Yov Galan. The defense minister. Is that I mean, is your do you think basically that now that's been the strategy from day one that the starting point is the entire population. We don't want them there. And how we get from them being there to not being there. That's where you know, the questions emerge.

What do you think? Well, you know, I mean, this is really the question, and I'm not sure we'll ever know for certain, uh, what the plans were and if there were any clear plans at the beginning, my own sense is that judging [02:03:00] by the general incompetence of army planning for this operation and the various voices that were raised, I think that there were pressures in one way or another.

I think there were people Meaning, I don't think that there was a clear plan from the beginning that everybody agreed on, but rather that there were various, uh, pressures, including, of course, the ideas by Giora Eiland. Um, the, the general idea, I think, was a combination of the goals that they had, uh, declared at the beginning, that they wanted to destroy Hamas and to free the hostages.

And that they wanted revenge and they wanted to flatten as much as Gaza as they could. This is, I think, the general outline that they had, but the operations, as they started rolling them out, and I think we talked about it last time, there was a certain [02:04:00] tactics, uh, that the IDF had used already in 2014.

That was scaled up to the whole of Gaza rather than to these more limited operation of 2014. And that means that in the areas in which you operate, you first of all destroy them. You destroy them by air bombardment, by shelling, by tank fire, by bulldozers, and then you move in. the infantry. So if you scale that up, uh, to saying I'm going to destroy Hamas entirely, then you are assuming already that you're going to destroy much of the area.

Now, as they were failing to do that, and as Hamas continued to fight, uh, I think increasingly the, those who were talking about taking over the whole thing, um, got the upper hand because had the army been more effective. And if, had it been able to, and I'm not sure it [02:05:00] was, but had it been more effective in, uh, accomplishing its goals, maybe there would have been fewer pressures.

But since, um, this was not going well, Uh, very slowly. Uh, I think those pressures built up and you can see that in the kind of policies that are being carried out right now. So a few weeks ago, there was a report that the whole northern third of Gaza. And this was a very detailed report with aerial photography and so forth.

That whole area has been flattened. Now there, there seem to be about 300, 000 people there, so most of the people have been kicked out, and most of the buildings have been destroyed, universities, houses, schools, uh, a new road has been paved, and army camps have been built there. Israeli army camps. Uh, now, whether this was the plan at the beginning, I'm not sure, but [02:06:00] as it is rolling out, this appears to be the case.

So if you try to connect this to the notion of, is it, uh, a, a premeditated genocidal plan or not, um, My own sense is that the whole thing was not premeditated, uh, but that it has become that. And so, in that sense, my evolving thinking has to do also with the evolving policy on the ground, and that by now, uh, conditions are such that if you look back at what has happened, you can see that over time, Um, this is what the IDF has accomplished.

And at some point, and I don't know that we'll ever know at which point, uh, this became, by and large, the strategy. Now, can it work? And I'm, I'm not sure. Uh, but it depends very much, uh, on outside [02:07:00] pressures. Um, as well as to some extent on internal Israeli politics, but internal Israeli politics right now is at a stalemate and Netanyahu has probably more power now than he did several months ago.

What you wrote actually made, it brought to mind what the International Criminal Court's Chief Prosecutor wrote in his application, um, for arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Galant for crimes against humanity and war crimes, um, in which he set out. in detail. Um, well, he, he partly explained what the war crimes and crimes humanity alleged were in service of.

Uh, one of them was to collectively punish the civilian population of Gaza, whom they perceived as a threat to Israel. And I mean, if we go back to what, um, on the 9th of October, 2023, major general Gassan Alyan said, Israeli army coordinated government activities and territories. He [02:08:00] said, that Hamas became ISIS and the citizens of Gaza are celebrating instead of being horrified.

Human animals are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade in Gaza. No electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you'll get hell. Clearly no demarcation there. He means the entire civilian population. That's what he's talking about. Do you think that's what, you know, I mean, could you say whether or not there's a blueprint or not?

I mean, and, and lots of genocide throughout history clearly didn't have blueprints at all at the beginning. That's, I mean, we'll talk about that, but it was that this idea that the population, the civilian population collectively is held actually to be a threat that you can't demarcate, the enemy, military enemy, and the civilian population.

And that's where Israel starts with and then works backwards. Yeah. So, so first of all, um, there were many statements, um, not only by Hassan Ali and, but many others, of course, at the beginning, uh, that we should wipe them out, that there are [02:09:00] no uninvolved people, that everybody is involved somehow. Um, you add to that, the sort of rationale that the IDF is trying to sell that, well, they're using the civilian population as human shields.

Of course, if you operate in Gaza, there is no other way but to operate from within populated areas because it's a very small area, very densely populated. So anywhere you operate, there are civilians there. Uh, and so if you connect the Statements that were being made at the time. and the policies that have gradually rolled out, you see a logic there.

Uh, whether that logic was there at the beginning or not, as I said before, as a plan, um, that's not entirely clear. Uh, [02:10:00] the ICC, the, the prosecutor, was a bit wary of saying that too, and he really focused more on policies of deprivation of food, of hunger, because it was easier to prove that, right? Now, generally speaking, I think you're totally right.

That is, generally speaking, the problem, as it is seen by Israeli policymakers and the military, is that Gaza is an area that is full of, um, densely populated by Palestinians, mostly by refugees, uh, and that it is from that mass of population that, uh, as Israeli policy makers see it, um, uh, violence emanates toward Israel.

Uh, and how do you solve that issue? Now, obviously there are two ways, generally speaking, of doing that. One is political. [02:11:00] That is, you have to find some way of living side by side. The other is military. And if it's military, the military has not been able to resolve it. And this is not something that started this year or last year or in 2014.

This goes back, as I write in this piece, at least to 1956. That is that most of the Palestinians living in Gaza mostly descendants of Palestinians would live very close to Gaza in towns and villages in southern Israel, what is now southern Israel, northern Negev, southern Israel. And so if you don't find a political solution to this, You have to find a military solution to this and that military solution can be either to fence them in, which is what Israel has been trying to do.

And all this, um, [02:12:00] attempt by Netanyahu for years to bribe Hamas in a sense, to have money go to Hamas from Qatar so that Hamas could. run the business in Gaza. Um, and he could say that he cannot negotiate with Hamas because they are so, um, radical. And of course he can't negotiate with the people in the West Bank because it's so ineffective and therefore we can just manage things.

Uh, that, that kind of policy failed on October 7th. Uh, and so if you can't manage it and you don't want to politically resolve it. What is left? What is left is some kind of destruction. You have to flatten it. You have to debilitate the population. And if you can, you have to push it out. So the logic of this has always been there.

Uh, and it's [02:13:00] based on the, uh, on, on Israeli decision, which is not only by, by, uh, people like Netanyahu, he goes way back. He goes to people like Dayan, uh, Moshe Dayan in the 1950s. We cannot, uh, um, reverse things. We took over their land. Uh, and they know it and they will keep fighting us. And and then the question is, do we have a political solution to this or a military one?

And from the 1950s, the answer is a military one.

The UK’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel - Today in Focus - Air Date 8-20-24

Mark Smith, this British diplomat is saying that the UK's arms sales to Israel may be making the country complicit with war crimes and possible breaches and humanitarian law. What exactly is he referring to here? He's referring to a variety of issues about the way Israel has responded to the Hamas attack on October the 7th.

He's referring to the blockages of humanitarian aid. He's referring to the, what he described as indiscriminate bombing [02:14:00] in Gaza. And he's also referring to the way in which leaders in Israel have openly expressed, in his view, genocidal intent, and that these are all issues that have been addressed by the international courts.

So for the UK to continue to sell arms to a country that has been found by the International Court of Justice, and more arguably by the International Criminal Court, guilty of all crimes, is, in his view, a breach not only of UK law, but of international law. How significant is it that a diplomat specialised in this area from the Foreign Office would take this view and then decide to resign from his position?

Well, I think it's significant because he's the first occasion we've known about dissent within the Foreign Office. It's been very well kept under wraps as to how the civil service have been viewing this over the last 10 months. He says that he's been raising this issue internally, including through the kind of formal mechanisms, as well [02:15:00] as in a letter to the current foreign secretary.

And largely he was receiving replies to the effect that, um, we note your concerns and, um, nothing more. So there is also going to be an issue to be discussed in the future about how the Foreign Office allows officials to make their dissent known and whether it is treated with any seriousness. But his resignation is the first by a UK Foreign Office official that has been parallel resignations been going on in the US State Department, including some quite high profile figures, but there's been nothing of this ilk inside the UK Foreign Office.

I raised it pretty much every level in the organization. That's my duty. And that would be quite normal. I think for public servants, we're very used to upholding the law. And so we would normally raise things internally. that we might have a question over, particularly if we have a [02:16:00] subject matter specialism as I do.

So, suffice it to say that any response was not satisfactory. Patrick, what's the nature of the UK's arms deal with Israel? What exactly do we export and how lucrative are these arms licenses? Well, there were some statistics that were produced by the previous government, and they showed that the UK had issued at least 108 arms export licenses to Israel since the Hamas attack on Israel on the 7th of October.

And the campaign against the arms trade, and these kind of statistics are very widely used, says that since, uh, 2008, the UK has granted arms export licenses that are worth 1 billion. 574 million pounds in total. But I think the amount of sales in the last year is down very considerably. Today marks a grim milestone for the world.

The people of Gaza are now grieving 40, 000 Palestinian lives lost, according to Gaza's health ministry. [02:17:00] This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli defense forces. to comply with the rules of war. Patrick, what do we know about how these weapons exported from the UK to Israel are being used in this conflict?

Well, there is very little information about which arms have been used for what purpose. There was an attempt by the Foreign Office when, under pressure about the arms export licenses, they took a report. issued by Amnesty International, which had, I think, five or six specific episodes and incidents, which Amnesty said were particularly egregious.

And they wrote to the Israeli embassy and asked them to comment on those incidents. And the Israelis said they couldn't. respond, uh, about specific events and then gave a kind of general defense of its position. So there's been very little [02:18:00] tracing back of individual weapons and individual incidents.

It's very, very hard to do that. And also the complex nature of these sorts of supply chains, because it's about parts rather than the weapons themselves. Indeed, that's the case with the parts that the Brasiera Space supply for the F 35 jets that Israel uses. But I don't think, in a way, the whole of the case rests on the level of armed supplies.

There's also principles involved in terms of complying with. domestic legislation and international law and also the UK's international reputation. I think one can get lost slightly in the weeds of exactly what weapon and how many weapons have been sold. What, what does matter is whether we're continuing to do so as a matter of principle.

And I think it's one thing that's interesting out of this is there seems to be an attempt by the current government to see if there's a distinction that can be drawn between Arms export licenses for weapons that are used for offensive [02:19:00] purposes in Gaza and then weapons that are used for defensive purposes, for instance, to guard Israel against attack by Iran.

But whether that distinction is valuable or whether it can be made is one of the big issues that I think has to be discussed. So how does the UK compare with other countries that we know to be arming Israel? Well, we're a relatively minor player. The big player is obviously America, which has been through similar processes to try to judge whether any of its weapons are being used in breach of international humanitarian law.

Germany, Used to supply a large amount of weapons, but there's been again a big drop off since October the 7th. But America is the main exporter. The U. S. State Department also announced an additional 20 billion in arms sales to Israel for fighter jets, missiles, and tank ammunition, along with an additional aircraft carrier group.

How much international pressure [02:20:00] has there been to stop Israel getting these weapons from the U. S., the U. K. and Germany and others? Well, the reality is that there aren't that many countries that are saying that the U. S. should stop doing this. It's more that within each country, European and, uh, and within American politics, there is, you know, these very, very strong movements that are absolutely disgusted by what they've seen on their television screens and find it appalling that after 10 months, there still seems to be no end to this war.

SECTION D - JOURNALISM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D: Journalism.

Uncovering Settler Terrorism In West Bank | Jasper Nathaniel - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 8-24-24

JASPER NATHANIEL: The reality is in the West Bank, it's like, there's violence and destruction, and then sometimes they then sort of retroactively legitimize it with laws.

Like, a lot of these illegal outposts have been since recognized as settlements, which makes them legal. Under Israeli law. So like the law to a certain extent doesn't matter because they're either breaking the law. And then later it's being legitimized. They're breaking the law or they're not being convicted.

[02:21:00] Like 3 percent of violent settlers are ever actually convicted. Um, or they're, they're not breaking the law. They're, you know, being violent and destructive within the law. And I should also just say that like, What I write about in this article is that the man who shot Zechariah, Yitzhak Nir, um, his father was, uh, a convicted terrorist.

He shot up an Islamic university, killed three people, wounded 29 others with his brother. And they were part of this, um, movement of really extreme religious fanatical settlers who were very clear in what their aim was. In, uh, being in the West Bank, they were there to start a war with the Palestinians that would end in either the death of all the Palestinians or the Palestinians expulsion.

So it's not as if they were there to try to, you know, live there and have a good life and live, you know, potentially in, like, you know, side by side, like, they knew exactly what they were doing. Um, they were building outposts [02:22:00] in places that they knew were going to cause problems. They were, you know, instigating violence and, um, you know, that's exactly what's happened.

Of course, it's like, there's this constant violence now. 

SAM SEDER: All right. We just jumped over something though, that I think is like really sort of what your piece really captures. Um, you named the Jewish settler. I mean, we see the video, we see who shot, uh, Zachariah. Um, the, the, the guy shows up when Zachariah comes out of the hospital, he's outside the door, they know it, I mean, this is the part that I think is like, sort of like the, you know, as if it's like, uh, you know, uh, sort of our classic sort of mafia mob, uh, gangland thing, uh, but they're, it's like, uh, they're all on, you know, not literally on meth, but they're acting, uh, like it on some level, but the point is everybody knows who it is.

And so, I mean, take it from there because this is the part that I don't think that people [02:23:00] fully understand. You know, we hear the U. S. government is, um, uh, you know, uh, making what I think is just sort of like platitudinous, um, um, uh, issue out of, uh, settler violence in the West Bank. And supposedly this is, I mean, this isn't even at the level of an apartheid regime where there is no, there doesn't seem to be any accountability whatsoever, even in the context of a system that has 2 separate laws, like theoretically, it's still not legal for a settler to attempt to kill and shoot Uh, just a, you know, a Palestinian civilian for no reason whatsoever.

But so how, like, how is this guy identified and what has been the process. Uh, of, of like, uh, has he been reported? Like, why is he now able to continue to terrorize his [02:24:00] family? 

JASPER NATHANIEL: Let me just first clarify that we don't know that Yitzhak Nier himself has been back to Tawani, but other settlers from the outpost have, have been back.

Um, but okay. So, so this was also one of the most. to me, which again, in hindsight, especially after seeing what's happening in Gaza, it's, it's like, of course there's no accountability, but to me, it's like, it's on video. Clearly there's no, um, you know, legitimate claim of self defense, like how, how could this guy still be walking free?

So basically, um, this is what happened. So this was on October 13th. It was, you know, just, just under a week after October 7th, the, um, civilian security squad at this outpost had just been armed. By the military, so they were given assault rifles, American assault rifles, I should say, um, and military uniforms that they could, you know, be like conscripted into this war against, um, the, the, the Palestinians really.

And, um, [02:25:00] what, what they did is, you know, they, they went down, um, uh. They would, the Yitzhak here would later claim that he had a report from Shin Bet, which is the, from the Shin Bet, which is one of the intelligence agencies in Israel, that there was an attack coming from Attuani, which is almost certainly bunk.

Um, there's, there's no armed resistance in this village. I should say, like, these are farmers and shepherds. There's no guns here. There's really no, there's no violence. Um, so they go down, he claims that after they got this report, they heard a commotion, um, and they went down for, you know, in their capacity as the armed security.

Um, he goes down and he shoots Zachariah. And if you watch the video, you see them sort of like hiding behind a boulder, as if they're in war, when again, they've just entered this complete peaceful farming village, like hiding behind a boulder, coming out with their guns, And he shoots Zachariah and then he's called back by a [02:26:00] guy in military fatigues again as if they're in war So like to a certain extent they're cosplaying here They're pretending that they're in a war when they're actually just shooting unarmed people in a in a farming village um, but what happens is immediately after And I should say like just getting zachariah to the hospital was a debacle because of all the roadblocks um, and he almost bled out in the You In the car on the way there, they couldn't even get an ambulance to him.

But what happens is the police, um, according to the court documents, the police go, um, to investigate the next day, they immediately identify Yitzhak Nir as the man who shot him. I don't know if that was from the video or if, you know, somebody just outed him, but like they immediately knew it was him. Um, he told them that, uh, Zachariah intended to throw a stone at him, intended to throw a stone.

How he knew that, you know, anybody's guess. You can watch the video yourself and see if it appears that he intended to throw a stone. [02:27:00] Um, but that's what he says. The police, um, again, according to court documents, they, they take away his weapon. Um, but they don't do anything else. They don't take them into the station.

They don't investigate. So then the, that same day, um, Zachariah, who is, you know, he's in the ICU at this point, um, Really touch and go. His father and brother go to the local police station, uh, which is, you know, Israeli military police and they try to file a complaint and the police say the victim has to come in here and file a complaint himself.

A criminal complaint. And they say, well, you know, the victim, as you can see in this video here, which has a million views or something, um, was shot in the abdomen is, you know, potentially going to die in the hospital. They said, well, he has to come here himself and file a complaint. So they said, well, why don't you go to the hospital and, um, take, take his testimony.

They refused to do it. So again, according to the court documents, there's a five month investigation, um, and [02:28:00] then no arrests are made. The case is closed. So then finally, once Zachariah is well enough to travel, this is just in July. So, you know, nine months later, um, he and his lawyer actually do go, he and his attorney, who's an Israeli Jewish guy, um, go to the police station and file that criminal complaint.

So, uh, allegedly the case has been reopened, but I haven't been able to get any details on if there's another investigation going on. I should say they also did get a restraining order on, um, near. So he is. For 180 days, not allowed to go into a 20, um, and not allowed to carry a weapon. Now, why he should ever be allowed to go there is, is, you know, anybody's.

Yes. But so that's where we, that's where it stands today. 

SAM SEDER: How, how, how indicative, um, lastly of like, this is, you know, one individual story and people can say, well, the, you know, there was a bureaucratic snafu. How indicative of, is this, uh, you know, based upon your having spent, um, [02:29:00] uh, fairly considerable amount of time over the past eight months there, I guess.

JASPER NATHANIEL: Yeah. I mean, I'll, I'll just put it this way. Um, when, when I was traveling around with my fixer, uh, uh, You know, we kept meeting these people who had been maimed by, um, bullets by IDF bullets or settler bullets, or they had lost a son or a father or somebody to the IDF, and I would ask them, you know, what was, what, what was your recourse after?

Who did you call? What was the investigation? What was the, the, what were the proceedings like? And Zaed would sort of smile. Uh, my, my fixer and then he would translate and they would look at him like they didn't understand the question because just the concept of there actually being any recourse against this violence from soldiers and settlers is so absurd that people don't even, they didn't really even understand the question that I was asking.

So, so this is incredibly typical. His attorney, his attorney said it himself. Um, this happens all the time. It's happened since [02:30:00] well before October 7th. It got worse in 2022 when, you know, this new Israeli government came together and, and further emboldened this violence. But yeah, the only difference here is that this was caught on video, but otherwise, you know, this happens every single day.

Emmys Defend Nomination Of Gaza Journalist Bisan - Novara Media - Air Date 8-22-24

 That documentary was awarded a prestigious Peabody Award for excellent journalism earlier this year. And in July, it was nominated for an Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Hard News Feature Story Short Form.

But not everyone was happy about it being recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. This is from a write up in film industry paper, The Wrap. A pro Israel non profit called the Creative Community for Peace, or CCFP, wrote a letter to the Academy calling on it to rescind Basson's nomination over her alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The rap goes on to say this, CCFP, a pro Israel non profit organization, [02:31:00] discovered ALDA's long standing ties to PFLP, which has been a designated terrorist organization in the U. S. since 1997. The journalist regularly spoke at PFLP rallies and hosted events to honor Palestinians injured or killed in violent confrontations with Israeli soldiers.

In 2018, the PFLP explicitly referred to ALDA as a member of the Progressive Youth Union of the organization. And CCFP director Ari Ingle told The Wrap this. The ME's decision to honour someone with clear ties to a US designated terrorist group is inexcusable and should have never happened. It would be legitimising a terrorist organisation.

If the Emmys don't change course and rescind this nomination, they will be glorifying someone who is a member of an organization that has carried out numerous aircraft hijackings, participated in the October 7 massacre in Israel, carried out waves of bombings on markets and restaurants, and murdered innocent women and children.

The Emmys cannot allow their prestigious [02:32:00] award show to be hijacked by terrorists and instead should continue to promote peace and tolerance through the arts. And Ingle went on to say this, The entertainment community, including the National Television Academy, should use its voice to help build bridges for peace and understanding.

However, the Emmy nomination of Besan Aouda, someone with documented terrorism ties, is unfathomably irresponsible. With it, the Academy is condoning violence and helping to normalize PFLP terrorism around the globe. Now, more than 150 people signed that letter, including Will and Grace star Debra Messing and former CEO of Paramount Pictures, Sherry Lansing.

Now, look, we can't verify those supposed links, but what we do know is that the PFLP, a revolutionary socialist group, has at times been opposed to both the Hamas government in Gaza as well as the more moderate Fatah party. Its members have included Palestinian liberation icon Leila Khaled, and yes, the group has committed acts in breach of international law, [02:33:00] including attacks on civilians.

Now, the academy has responded to the letter from the CCFP with its president, Adam Sharpe, saying this. The news and documentaries Emmys have recognised excellence in television journalism for nearly half a century. The honoured programmes and reports have taken viewers to the front lines of every world conflict, probed political and cultural divides, and sought to illuminate even the darkest circumstances.

Some of these works have been controversial, giving a platform to voices that certain viewers may find objectionable or even abhorrent, but all have been in the service of the journalistic mission to capture every facet of the story. Natas is aware of reports cited in your letter and initially surfaced by a communications consultant in the region that appear to show a then teenaged Bissan Alda speaking at various PFLP associated events between six and nine years ago.

Natas has been unable to corroborate these reports, nor has it been able to date to surface any [02:34:00] evidence of more contemporary or active involvement by Alda with a PFLP related event. organization. The academy also in that letter rejected the request from the CCFP, meaning Bissan and Al Jazeera are still in contention for the prestigious TV award.

Helena, Bissan's journalism has opened a lot of eyes, a lot of people's eyes, to what's happening in Gaza. It's been incredibly important in many ways. So what do you make of this story? I mean, there's a large level of hypocrisy here as well, where of course, as you said, there have been plenty of attacks that the PFLP have done historically.

There have been violations of international law. The IDF, they violate international law all of the time. Do you think there would have been the same reaction if somebody else had previously served in the IDF? was being given an award somewhere else. Do we ever, ever, ever see anyone wanting, anyone being removed from a potential category for any kind of award show off and being acknowledged in terms of the [02:35:00] things that they do with for the arts?

Do we ever, ever have these people, their awards rescinded because they have previously served in the IDF? Of course we don't. Of course we don't. And even then, like she has, been speaking at rallies. She allegedly has links to a social movement that has links to the PFLP. Has she ever been a member of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades?

No, they have no evidence for these things. Again, we've got to separate the fact that the PFLP are a political organization and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades are their military wing, who are the ones who have previously engaged in violations of international law, some terror attacks as well on Israeli soil.

For example, but the last claimed terror attack by the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades was in 2015 anyway, before any of these claims about Bisan were even talked about. One point that they made in the letter too, was saying, oh well this is a group that was involved in the October 7th massacre in Israel. Um, Well, whilst again, there were plenty of violations of international law and war crimes that [02:36:00] were committed by the Azad Din al Qassam brigades and the al Quds brigades on October the 7th, there's been no evidence, at least not that I could find, that there were any terror attacks or any violations of international law committed by the PFLP's Abu Ali Mustafa Brigade specifically on October the 7th.

Even NGO Monitor, a pro Israel front group that is used to smear anti Zionist groups, even NGO Monitor couldn't provide any evidence at all that the PFLP did anything that was targeted at civilians specifically, let's say, on October the 7th. There are plenty of videos of the PFLP's militant wing attacking military targets, but that is, of course, a legitimate target for people attacking an occupying force under international law.

And if that's all the NGO monitor has, like, again, a pro Zionist a pro Zionist group used to smear anti Zionist groups, then that's not really particularly good evidence that it's now, is it, that they participated in October the 7th massacres? Because we definitely, there's no evidence that's been [02:37:00] provided, at least not that I could find in terms of this.

So using this pretty weak, this pretty weak evidence to be able to remove Bissan's incredibly important journalism from such prestigious awards, it strikes to me, like, that it's desperation to ensure that we do not actually have proper credit being given to somebody who's done a lot of good work to expose the failure of American foreign relations with Israel at a time where this should be being put under as much scrutiny as possible.

And it seems like some people want these, what the hands to be washed of this, rather than for everybody to see this in the open and have the people who have exposed it rewarded, at least given recognition for the hard work that they have done in exposing America and Israel's crimes.

Credits

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The additional sections of the show included clips from All In with Chris Hayes, a montage of [02:38:00] doctors speaking out against genocide, The Majority Report, Democracy Now!, TRT World, Al Jazeera English, Owen Jones, Today in Focus, and Novara Media. Further details are in the show notes. 

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