Air Date 10/1/2024

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JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. There is still no end in sight to Israel's real war on its neighbors and the US continues its toothless efforts to deescalate, while maintaining seemingly unconditional support in spite of standing laws that should prevent our sale of weapons to any country committing war crimes, which Israel certainly is. Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes The Muckrake Political Podcast, Democracy Now!, The Real News Network, and The Book Cafe Podcast. 

Then, in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections: 

Section A: State terrorism; 

Section B: Global complicity; 

Section C: Protests and indoctrination; and 

Section D: Resistance.

Israel Terrorizes Hezbollah With Exploding Pagers - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 9-20-24

 

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: [00:01:00] People, we have a whole lot to talk about today, but we have to start with a really really bizarre story that I think has huge implications. Over the past few days Israel has carried out—I don't even know what else to call it—a strange, innovative, tragic attack in Lebanon against Hezbollah, blowing up pagers and walkie talkies.

So far, it looks like the death toll has climbed up over 30 and we're talking about over 2000 people being injured by this. The details are starting to come out a little bit here and there, how this might've happened, what exactly took place. Israel has officially called this "a new era of war". And also it seems that they're now turning their eye towards Lebanon in their operations as peace remains unfortunately and tragically far off or nonexistent. 

Nick, I have a lot of thoughts about this. I've been [00:02:00] walking around thinking about it for a few days now. What were your initial reactions when you heard about this?

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: I mean, it sounds like a Mission Impossible thing where somehow a number is dialed... and at some point, I thought, like, they could have put explosives in there and then the next page is when it blows up, but it's supposedly, no, it was coordinated to only a specific number received, so they all go off at the same time. And I suppose the real question now is, why now? That was really what's on my mind most, is why are they widening what's going on in Israel to another front basically. And so, you know, we have to now decipher or maybe we get more information eventually about the timing. Was it simply a use it or lose it situation, where somebody was about to tell them what was happening and they were going to find out and obviously Israel wanted to continue this mission for whatever reason, and then, you know, pull the trigger on this thing? 

So, that is what I find most interesting, exactly what's going on and [00:03:00] why they have to do it now in the midst of a war they're in with Gaza, on the other front. 

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, it appears—and there have been leaks that have been coming out and of course, the Biden administration has handled a lot of this by leaking to the press its frustrations, what it's trying to do, what it can achieve—it does appear as if Israel felt like this plot wasn't going to come to fruition or it would be discovered and they needed to do it. 

On one hand, I think it is evident of a new type of attack that I want to talk about in just a moment because I'm truly horrified by this and its implications and larger thoughts that we need to have. But I think logistically, you know, Israel has been given the most state of the art weaponry and innovations that you could imagine. The United States has kept them afloat and awash with weapons. Meanwhile, America just continually is just, like, I don't even know what to do here. And now we're hearing leaks that they're [00:04:00] trying to keep them from, you know, putting troops on the ground in order to follow this thing out. 

But I think the other thing with this—and, Nick, we're talking about over 2000 people being injured, children being killed, innocent bystanders being injured and killed—like, this is again, I think, another moment where Israel has all this innovation, it has all this support, it has all these abilities, and it's just haphazard, right? It really doesn't matter. Like, we can hear about "terrorists". That is a very, very handy rhetorical designation. Like, if you got killed by this thing or you got wounded by this thing, then that means you're a terrorist.

But I think it is the, the sloppiness and the brutality that the Netanyahu regime represents. I think it shows that they have no interest in peace whatsoever. I think it's only going to continue and any idea that this is going to be taken care of in November, much less just in a timely manner, I think we can wave [00:05:00] goodbye to that and just, uh, you know, settle up to the reality that Netanyahu absolutely depends on this thing growing and continuing. And that's where we are. 

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Oh, I agree wholeheartedly as far as the resolution of conflicts going on there. None of this is going to get settled by probably the middle of next year, the way this is going. And there are plenty of reports that Netanyahu continues to torpedo any kind of ceasefire in Gaza. And so, if that's the case and they're trying to just continue keeping chaos going so he can stay in power, this is how you would do it. 

But, Hezbollah is going to respond and Israel is going to respond. So, you kind of have to wonder. 'Cause again, there were two choices. It's not a use it or lose it situation. You could have decided, You know what?, we're not going to send out that code anyway, even if they do find out. In fact, they could have made it into some sort of a diplomatic thing where they said, Okay, you found that we didn't do it. We showed restraint. [00:06:00] Something! You know? They could have tried to make a positive out of that.

But, here we are now where... yeah, they're going to mount some sort of attack. It's going to widen the war. And then when mistakes are made, which are inevitable in a war situation... 

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Already happening. Yes. 

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Yeah. It widens, it gets worse and worse. And so, it's still unfathomable that this guy can still be in power. 'Cause you have to imagine that Netanyahu had final say on whether they detonated these things. And I don't believe that they had done this like a year ago. This is not a thing where, I mean, I don't know. To me, it seems like it would have been more recent when they would have gotten... 

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: It appears that this was put into motion a few months ago.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Right. So, it's like in the middle of what they're doing already, with the whole thing going on in Gaza, they're actively planning this stuff, too. It just, it doesn't make a lot of sense if any kind of resolution is the goal here. 

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Oh, it's not. And I think one of the things that we have to do is we have to change the way that we view Netanyahu. And I've been thinking about him a [00:07:00] lot through the lens of someone like a Kim Jong Un, like a dictator who only relies on fear and paranoia. Right? Like, the only reason that North Korea is able to operate the way it is, is because it has the "threat" of the West. Right? 'There are spies everywhere, they're going to attack you, they will annihilate you', and that is the entire basis of power, which is the entire basis of Netanyahu's power.

What concerns me, Nick, I've been thinking a lot about the horror—I mean, this is state terrorism. Let's make this clear. That's what this is. Like, literally, this was done not just to kill and assassinate members of Hezbollah, but the way that it was done was intended to sow fear. We're hearing reports now out of Lebanon, people are turning off the refrigerators, they're turning off their baby monitors, they're turning off every appliance that they own for fear that somewhere or another there's a bomb that is hidden in this that could kill them or their family. That is a lot different [00:08:00] from state power in the past, such as drone attacks and drone strikes.

I was thinking a lot about Barack Obama and the regime of drone strikes. Like, you would be going to a wedding and if there was a suspect there, a drone strike could wipe out your entire extended family. But that actually, Nick, that involved intelligence. At least there was somebody in a room looking at a report that said these people will be here. That's not what this is. It's literally a device that they're not tracking. They don't know who has it. They don't know what the vicinity is. We've now seen like footage of people being in like marketplaces and places, and it just goes off and it can kill anybody. 

On top of that, this is also a weaponization of the global industrial chain. Like, the reason this happened is because Israel made a deal. These pagers, I don't know about the walkie talkies, but the pagers came out of a company in Taiwan called Gold Apollo. Israel went over [00:09:00] there, worked with Taiwan and talked them into putting weapons grade explosives in their products. How are we supposed to feel about this?

Knowing that the global supply chain can be taken over by states. and have weapons put in them. And by the way, it's not like this happened and no one's ever going to do it again. This, you know, it's like you develop a weapon, somebody's going to develop their own version of it, and somebody's going to use it. And now, like, to look at that entire sort of new sort of frontier for a person who worries about state power, particularly with growing authoritarianism, it has me really, really concerned. 

Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-26-24

 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We go now to Beirut, where we’re joined by Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization.

Lara, if you can talk about what’s happening on the ground in [00:10:00] Beirut? And here we are in New York right next to the United Nations. You have this international call for a ceasefire, but apparently the Netanyahu government of Israel is saying no, the Israeli general in charge of the IDF forces rallying troops, saying he’s preparing them for a ground invasion of Lebanon.

LARA BITAR: Good morning.

Here in Beirut, nobody really has any hope in these processes in the United Nations, in the words of the Biden administration or in the words also of the Netanyahu government.

I wanted to share with you some things that were relayed to me by one of our journalists who is now working in the south. He is going around to different schools that are hosting people who have been [00:11:00] displaced from their homes but remain in southern Lebanon. So, first, he relayed to me that people are very, very tired. They’re unable to sleep for longer than a few minutes at a time because of the relentless bombardment by Israel. And he said that the shelters are full with elderly people, who have lived through so many massacres and witnessed so much horror inflicted by the Israeli settler colony. And he shared the story of one woman in particular. He said that she was in her eighties. She was wearing her house key as a pendant. And she told him that this is nothing in comparison to what they have lived through over the past few decades. And she mentioned the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut, the first Qana massacre in 1996, the second Qana massacre in 2006, and so on and so forth.

And the one [00:12:00] thing that I want to relay here is that for a lot of these people who have been displaced from their homes, whose homes have been destroyed, their attachment to their land only grows stronger. And this is a prevailing sentiment among those who have been displaced. And this is not uncommon for Lebanon.

So, if you will just allow me 30 seconds or so, I would like to read a brief passage that I came across yesterday, written by Mahdi Amel, who was a Marxist intellectual. And he wrote this a few months after the 1982 invasion of Beirut. And he writes, “They said that the war in Lebanon would be swift and that in a few days those who have not knelt and who understand only the language of force would kneel. They declared that there would be no salaam, but shalom, and that Israel is the Rome of our modern times. To the kings [00:13:00] of Israel, to the scum of our nation and our foul Arab regimes, to the petty fascists and to their imperialist masters, we say: It pleases us to spit in your faces. We will fight you even with our nails. Our fists are the compass of history. And the bullet of our freedom will pierce your hearts. To them, we say, brick by brick, we build a world on your graves. You are the dustbin of history, and Beirut is the city of the free. We have vowed that we will resist you.”

And this is not to say that everyone in Lebanon shares this sentiment, and definitely not the over 200,000, up to half a million people who have been displaced from their homes over the past few weeks, because there is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now. People are struggling to find housing, shelter, food, diapers, milk. [00:14:00] Hospitals are at capacity. People are really exhausted and suffering across the board. But for the most part, this pain can be pinpointed — the source of this pain can be pinpointed to the presence of the Israeli settler state in our region that continues to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Lebanon and across most of the world.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Lara Bitar, you talked about this quotation that you read from 1982, when Israel invaded in 1982, and you’ve said that you don’t have much faith in a ceasefire. So, if you could provide some context to a possible imminent invasion, Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Talk about what happened in not just 1982, but also in 1978 and 2006.

LARA BITAR: [00:15:00] I think we have to take very, very seriously every genocidal intent that is now being uttered by different government and military officials in Israel. Lebanon has a long history of invasions and occupation and terror by the Israeli state. And we can go even further back, to ’47, ’48. Lebanon [sic] seized over a dozen Lebanese towns and villages in ’78. There was also an invasion in ’82. The ’82 invasion lasted until the liberation in May 2000. There was also an attempted ground operation in 2006. And in terms of the 2006 attempted ground invasion into Lebanon, [00:16:00] soldiers who returned home recounted how traumatizing it was for them, how they felt that they were fighting with ghosts. They could not see the fighters on the other side.

So, I think it’s important to note that coming into Lebanon is deeply traumatizing and frightening experience for the Israeli soldiers, who are accustomed to throwing bombs from the safety of the airspace. But on-the-ground battle, on-the-ground confrontation with real fighters who are fighting for their land, for their country, for their people, they don’t stand much of a chance.

And to the point of pushing for a ceasefire or for a truce or for the Biden administration having any kind of redline, we saw exactly what happened in Gaza over the past 11 months. The Biden [00:17:00] administration was repeatedly saying that Rafah was a redline, that a ground invasion into Gaza was a redline. But the Israeli state, there were absolutely no repercussions, no ramifications for any of the actions that the Israeli state was doing. And this is what compelled it to continue to escalate, to continue to escalate its massacres, its terror of the Palestinian people in Gaza, who to this day continue to endure daily massacres that are not being reported on as much as they were at the beginning of the war.

U.S. Gov't Agencies Found Israel Was Blocking Gaza Aid. Blinken Ignored Them to Keep Weapons Flowing - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-26-24

 

NERMEEN SHAIKH: ProPublica has revealed USAID and the State Department’s Refugees Bureau both concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top Biden officials rejected the findings of the agencies even though they’re considered the two foremost U.S. authorities on [00:18:00] humanitarian assistance. Blinken’s decision allowed the U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel. Under U.S. law, the government is required to cut off weapons shipments to countries preventing the delivery of U.S.-backed aid. Days after receiving the reports, Blinken told Congress, quote, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, called for Blinken’s resignation, accusing him of lying to Congress. [Blinken] was asked about the ProPublica report Wednesday on CBS. This was his response.

SOS ANTONY BLINKEN: So, this is actually pretty, pretty typical. We had a report to put out on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and what Israel was doing to try to make sure that people got the assistance they needed. And I had different assessments from different parts of the State Department, from other agencies that were involved, like [00:19:00] USAID. My job is to sort through them, which I did, draw some conclusions from that. And we put our report, and we found that Israel needed to do a better job on the humanitarian assistance. We’ve seen improvements since then. It’s still not sufficient.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Of course, that was U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

We’re joined now by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Brett Murphy, a reporter at ProPublica, where his new piece is headlined “Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.”

Can you respond to Blinken’s response to your report, Brett?

BRETT MURPHY: Yeah. So, he said, basically, it was his decision to make. He was getting a lot of information, and he ultimately decided that it was not the assessment of the State Department that the Israelis were deliberately blocking aid.

What he didn’t mention and what’s really important to note here is that the two agencies that had told him that they were in fact deliberately blocking aid, one being USAID, are the [00:20:00] foremost experts in this, as you said. They are the ones responsible for delivering humanitarian assistance into Gaza, into war zones all over the world. In addition to that, his own refugees bureau had made a similar conclusion called that a law called the Foreign Assistance Act should have been triggered because the Israelis were restricting aid.

The other assessments he was receiving were nowhere near as detailed as what he received from USAID. They sent a 17-page memo with detailed evidence describing exactly what they knew to be the truth on the ground, and he ultimately rejected those findings in what he told Congress.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, if you could elaborate, Brett, also on what U.S. obligations are under the Foreign Assistance Act?

BRETT MURPHY: Sure, yeah. So, it’s this law that has not been used very much systematically, but it basically says a foreign partner or ally that is receiving military assistance from the U.S. [00:21:00] cannot at the same time be blocking U.S.-backed humanitarian assistance into a war zone. If it is the conclusion of the U.S. government that that is happening, the U.S. government is then required to cut off the military assistance. That’s what the law says.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Is there any other context in which this has occurred, that the U.S. has denied that a country is preventing U.S. aid from getting in in a conflict zone?

BRETT MURPHY: The last time it came up was in Turkey and Armenia. That was kind of the original context of the law itself. But, like I was saying, we have never truly been applying this in a systematic way. So, this has really been an obscure provision in the Foreign Assistance Act, but this year lawmakers, activist groups have been calling for the Biden administration to be using this exact provision.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We interviewed two people: Stacy Gilbert, the former senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration — she resigned over this after 20 years in service — and Alex [00:22:00] Smith, a former contractor for USAID, who was forced to resign over the Biden administration’s support for the war on Gaza. Talk about the significance of what they did, and Antony Blinken understanding full well what they understood and why they left.

BRETT MURPHY: Stacy Gilbert worked on the report that Secretary Blinken ultimately delivered to Congress. She was working on the drafts of that report. She was in the refugees bureau. She had a very clear understanding of what was going on. And what she ultimately said, when she resigned, when she saw the final version of what he had told Congress, she said, “We know this not to be true. We, the experts inside of the government, know that the truth on the ground is that the Israelis have been blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza.” This is what she said, and this is what she resigned over. And she said in her resignation letter that this report, what he told Congress, “is going to haunt us.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And can you explain: How detailed was [00:23:00] that USAID memo that Blinken saw?

BRETT MURPHY: It was extremely detailed. It’s 17 pages of evidence that they were bringing to bear. The example that stuck out to me the most was on food, food shipments that were being held up just 30 miles outside of Gaza. There was enough flour, USAID said, to feed 1.5 million Palestinians for at least five months. But at the time — this was in the February to March timeframe — Israelis were not allowing flour into Gaza, because they said it was going to the U.N.’s branch there that had been accused of having ties to Hamas, so they were not allowing the flour in.

And this is what — this is the kind of thing that was really bothering USAID and frustrating their efforts. They couldn’t get food in. They couldn’t get medicine in, other supplies. A lot of their trucks, from, like, the Red Crescent, other humanitarian groups, were being turned around because of items in there the Israelis were not allowing in. Aid workers had been killed. [00:24:00] Their convoys had been targeted. These were all the types of examples that USAID was telling Secretary Blinken.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And basically, there’s no recourse now, right, because it’s done? Or is there anything that the U.S., the Biden administration could now do differently?

BRETT MURPHY: Yeah, the law is not — it was not just a one-time shot. And this is what the U.S. government said, too, in response. They said, “We’re currently — we’re always assessing the situation.” They said that they believed that the situation was improving since after they applied leverage with this. The folks I talked to, both inside the government and in the humanitarian world, said that’s not true at all. The situation is as bad as it’s ever been, including since the Rafah incursion. But this law does not only have — you know, whenever Blinken addresses Congress to it; it can be applied at any point.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: That they could cut off, that the U.S. government could cut off aid to — military arms to Israel.

BRETT MURPHY: Absolutely. If it assesses that the Israelis are deliberately blocking [00:25:00] humanitarian assistance at any point, they can apply this law. That’s right.

'Whitewashing genocide' How Democrats & the media kept Gaza out of the DNC - The Real News Network - Air Date 8-31-24

 

MAX ALVAREZ - EDITOR, TRN: Well, speaking about shifting rhetoric, I want to just quickly follow up. I got some thoughts on what you guys just said, but I wanted to follow up really quickly on the role that the media was playing in laundering this rhetorical change that we saw manifest on the DNC main stage, where some of the loudest applauses I heard throughout the week came when people like Bernie Sanders mentioned the word "ceasefire," and suddenly the stadium's clapping. And I know you guys were losing your collective minds. I saw Adam losing it on Twitter in real time, as mainstream and corporate media journalists were doing the work of laundering this rhetorical shift. Could you just say a little bit about that, about the role that certain actors and institutions in the media are playing to make that rhetorical shift where Kamala Harris [00:26:00] is calling or mentioning a ceasefire, but it's now meaning something different, and the media is there to massage that difference out of perception.

ADAM JOHNSON: Yeah, this is the most literal minded -- this is trained clapping seals. I don't if you've been to the Shedd Aquarium, but they have a seal that does the clapping This is lower than that, I mean this is when Harris, again, she's very clear she's not going to engage in arms embargo, not going to use real leverage, and I understand why this is confusing to passive media consumers who can't really keep up. I get it. 

But those in the know, those who track these things, know better. And they know that what Harris talks about the word "ceasefire", she means exactly what Biden means, which is appeal to these nebulous talks that are like the peace process. They're designed to provide cover for Israel. They're not in good faith. 

Israel is very clear, to their credit, to Netanyahu's credit. Every single day he's asked he goes down and says, "We do not support a lasting ceasefire. We are not going to end this war until we defeat Hamas." Quote, unquote, "Total victory." He's very clear about that. 

But that goes through the liberal media laundry machine and comes out as Israel supports a ceasefire. Hamas is the one holding it back. But [00:27:00] Israel is very clear. They support a temporary pause for the purposes of hostage exchanges. 

So when Harris talks about how we need a ceasefire, that's what she's talking about, a genocide cigarette break. And she's been very clear about this. Biden's been very clear about this.

On his May 31st speech, which is one of the most cynical things I've ever seen, Biden used the term in their twice, three times. And then in follow up questions, their dead-eyed zombie press -- Matt Miller, these guys, John Kirby -- they say, well, wait a second, do you support a lasting ceasefire that keeps Hamas in power? Because that's implied in the idea of ending the war, because obviously, insurgent militias, maybe in some normative sense you may not like them, but typically, you don't just defeat them by magic, right? And they're not even remotely close to defeating Hamas to the extent they could, it would basically be tantamount to genocide, which is why they're carrying out the plan they're carrying out. And they say, Oh, no, no, we're not going to support an end of the war until Hamas is defeated.

Well, okay, so what's the mechanism here? So clearly it's bullshit. Again, when people said ceasefire, they were referencing things like 2009, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, when a ceasefire meant Israel ends its current military campaign. It doesn't mean [00:28:00] kumbaya, doesn't mean we solve the problem, but it means we stop killing dozens of people and scores of children per week. That's what it meant. Everybody knew it. 

But then they switched the definition to this ambiguous open ended peace talks. So when Bernie Sanders calls for a ceasefire and he gets all these write ups, it's like, well, he's just appealing to the same bogus ceasefire talks, unless he's explicit, when the demand shifted months ago from this vague sort of normative appeal of a ceasefire -- which again could mean anything from two days to two years to two decades, right? -- to an arms embargo. Because everybody knows that's the only mechanism with which Israel will agree to anything. And we know that because that's what they keep telling us. 

And so, when the trained seals at the Shedd Aquarium started going, ah, ah, ah, ah, when she said the word ceasefire, I was like, oh, here we go. And then people started doing all the bullshit, all the kind of progressive and foreign policy adjacent sheepdogging. They started doing all this kind of tea leaf reading like, oh, oh, her empathy speak was slightly better. And she said this words. And then you look it up and it's actually the exact language Biden used four months ago. 

And by the way, the exact language the Trump [00:29:00] administration had been using: Palestine needs dignity and freedom and these meaningless buzzwords. 

This doesn't mean anything. People don't need better tone. They don't need better nonprofit speak. They need her to change her policy and to support an arms embargo. And it's a very clear ask. It's an ask with a material consequence. It's actually an ask that'll make A-PAC have a five-alarm meltdown. 

And that's how this bullshit rhetoric doesn't matter. 'Cause they're not saying anything. They don't care. And in fact, they praised her speech, which reinforced every basic premise of this genocide. Israel has a right to defend. It's always this sort of liberal code for "we're going to keep sending arms and let them do as they wish in Gaza."

And so, I know that was immensely frustrating because they're just rebranding the same policies with a different face. It's just the same thing Biden did. And then whenever she's asked to clarify, she's very clear that she has the exact same position as Biden. I'm not sure how much clearer she can make it because she keeps saying it.

Palestine In Israeli School Books w Author Nurit Peled-Elhanan - Book Cafe Podcast - Air Date 2-22-24

 

NURIT PELED-ELHANAN: Well, this idea was even before the Holocaust with the beginning of Zionism. The idea of Zionism at the [00:30:00] beginning was to create what they called a Jew with muscles. Because the diaspora Jew -- Jews who lived everywhere -- was considered, in anti Semitic discourse but also in Zionist discourse, as a weak, spiritual, effeminated man. They never talk about women. Women are just there to produce more men, you know? 

And, the idea was to create a new Jew that would be the opposite of this Jew. 

So when they came to Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century, and even the end of the 19th century, they wanted to indigenize themselves. They wanted to look like Arabs. To be suntanned, muscly, to master Arab horses, to know how to use guns, and to work the [00:31:00] land, to be farmers. Because Jews in Eastern Europe were not allowed to have land. So they were all merchants and bankers and whatever. 

That's why, whenever you go to Poland, they sell you these little puppets of a man who holds a coin in one hand and the Torah scroll in another. And when you ask the lady who is sitting there in the street, what is this puppet? She said this is a Jew. I don't think she knows what a Jew is, but this is the image. And that's because they could not work the land and so on and so forth. 

So the idea was to heal the illnesses of diaspora by becoming farmers and warriors. So this was the counter to the diaspora Jew. 

What happened was, as you know, they became too muscly and much less spiritual. And they lost it. They lost [00:32:00] this Jewish quality of being spiritual. And they became thugs, as you know today. 

But it was even before the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, David Ben Gurion, who was the first prime minister later, said you can call me anti-Semitic, but I'm ashamed of the Jews in Europe because they don't fight back. And I grew up to despise these people who didn't fight back. They told us they went like sheep to the slaughter.

Later on, so we were educated about Holocaust heroism whenever there was some uprising, which was nothing but a choice to die with a gun in your hand, because they could never win. This was commemorated in the culture of Israel in school books, everywhere. Even today you can find statues of these people who don't resemble the people at all, because they were small and weak and pale, but the statues are like Michelangelo's [00:33:00] David.

And Ben Gurion set the tone to despise them, to really despise them. And then when the survivor came, he despised them even more because he said, how come you could survive? There's something tricky in here. Okay? 

So the attitude towards the victims and the survivors were of complete contempt.

Now, later on, they decided that there's something wrong with that. And the school books started to say that even living day-to-day life in the conditions of Nazi Germany was heroic. So today we celebrate, celebrate. Every year we commemorate Holocaust and Heroism Day.

But still the idea that you have to be heroic when you are being exterminated. Okay. And the way these people are represented in school books to this [00:34:00] day is very demeaning. We know nothing about them. We know only that they were annihilated, exterminated, but we know nothing about their life before. 2,000 years of life, of rich life, of contributive life, of industrious life. We don't know nothing about it. Just as we don't know anything about Palestine in all those 2,000 years. Nothing. 

I studied especially the photographs. Because the school books present what a Holocaust historian by the name of Hannah Blanca said, what they teach the children is the pornography of evil. They show you naked bodies on a cart. They show you naked bodies of tortured children. They show horrendous, gruesome, terrible photographs. And also they tell every single detail of German sadism. So you [00:35:00] don't really learn about the history. You learn to fear. You are being traumatized. The children are being traumatized. Because it's enough to see one photograph in your life of Jewish victims or victims of Nazis, whether they're Jewish or not. To change your life. 

Susan Sontang, the famous photographer, she wrote this very famous book looking at the pain of others. And she tells there that when she was 12, she walked on the beach and she saw someone selling old photographs. And there she found a photograph of these emaciated bodies on a cart from Bergen Belsen. And she said, my life has changed that very moment. I can speak of before and after. 

So can you imagine what happened to Israeli children when they're exposed to these photographs from the age of three, [00:36:00] every single year, every single year. 

Now what it creates is heterophobia. They are afraid of anybody. Anybody. Now at the age of 16, 17, they go to the death camps, wrapped in Israeli flags, accompanied by armed Israeli soldiers, and they come back nationalist and imbued with the urge to revenge. But their revenge is not towards the German or their collaborators. No, their revenge is directed towards the potential exterminators, who are the Palestinians and the Arabs in general.

Okay. So it's a very sophisticated education that really educates the children to take revenge at the wrong people. 

Now there is an organization in Israel called Breaking the Silence, in [00:37:00] which soldiers confess about the terrible things they did during their army service, until something changed in them. And all of them say, I was educated to believe that whatever I do to Palestinians will save us from another Holocaust. And it wasn't until I found myself aiming my rifle at a little girl that I realized that I was the evil one here. Okay. 

So it's so deep and thorough and abusive, I would say, really. Abusive, because as this professor Yablonka says, you only teach the children to be victims. And since they are victims, they must be super powerful and must mistrust everybody, especially the neighbors. 

How U.S. College Administrators Are Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-5-24

 

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring into this conversation another professor, Natasha Lennard, columnist at The Intercept, associate director of the Creative Publishing and Critical [00:38:00] Journalism Program at The New School, not far from Columbia University. Her most recent piece, “College Administrators Spent Summer Break Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests.” Can you put Professor Thrasher and Professor Franke’s experience in a broader context of the universities from here in New York, NYU, to other universities around the country?

NATASHA LENNARD: Absolutely. And thank you. It’s lovely to be back. And I firstly want to say thank you to Professor Franke and Professor Thrasher for being among the professors who refuse to be silenced in this moment of what is widely being called a “new McCarthyism.” And I think that’s an accurate description.

Their cases are not unusual, and it is indeed sad, and it is indeed disappointing, indeed no less than ghoulish. We are having, both de facto and through policy, [00:39:00] both in terms of new regulations and student conduct guides coming through for this semester, as well as punitive actions against students and professors, a real reification of the claim that Israel critical speech and pro-Palestinian speech should count under violations of Title VI nondiscrimination law and regulations and policy in universities. What that does is align university policy with the right-wing agenda of Congress and right-wing lawmakers who follow in the footsteps of a right-wing Israeli-U.S. consensus.

And I think if a university is not a place where that can be critically challenged, especially at a time of genocide, when there are no universities left standing in Gaza — which we cannot forget — and the [00:40:00] concerns of our academy is the speech of professors speaking out for academic freedom and speaking out for the liberation of an occupied people, we’re in very dark times indeed.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Natasha Lennard, you write in your piece in The Intercept that, quote, “Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the NYU” — New York University — “guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include 'Zionists' and ’Zionism’”?

NATASHA LENNARD: Yes, this is a very exemplary, in the worst of ways, document that was just released by the administration at NYU. It is a new updated guide of student conduct about nondiscrimination and harassment. It goes further than any document I have seen in asserting that Zionism, [00:41:00] when used critically, should or at least readily can be understood as — and I quote the document — a “code word.” It doesn’t say that occasionally by antisemites that Zionism is used as a code word. It takes that as a given.

So, that is — to clarify, that is a student conduct guide, very poorly written, very open to misuse, that is asserting that the political ideology founded in the 19th century of the ethnostate of Israel being a Zionist project, that that should be considered part of the protected class of Jewish identity, religion and ethnic and shared ancestry. That is what we’re seeing in attempts of statehouses nationwide to attach Zionism, the [00:42:00] political ideology, to the protected class of Jewish identity. It’s extremely dangerous. It performs de facto apologia for Israel. And to have that put into writing by a university so clearly is just open for further abuses and an escalation of the sort of repression we’ve already seen.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Franke?

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, I teach a class on citizenship and nationality in Israel and Palestine. And we begin with a critical look at the concept of Zionism. Of course, it was advanced as a place, as an idea, about the safety of the Jewish people being located in Mandate Palestine, but there were plenty of Jewish people at the time who said, “This is actually a horrible idea from the perspective of the safety of Jewish people, because what it says is the Jews all belong in Israel and nowhere else, not in Europe, not in the United States, nowhere else. And so this will lead to more violence, more expulsions, more [00:43:00] antisemitic pogroms, if we lean in too much to the idea that Jews belong primarily and especially in Israel.” And those were critiques coming from Jews, again, themselves.

So, if we are not allowed to talk about that anymore in universities, what we’ve done is surrendered the very idea of the university itself. And that is so much what troubled us about Minouche Shafik, our president — former president of Columbia’s testimony in Congress, and some of those other presidents who came, who were called before Congress, is they not only did not put up a robust defense of the idea of a university where we teach students how to be critical thinkers in such a critical time, but they actually joined in to the criticism of the university. My president did not stand up for any one of us, nor did Professor Thrasher’s at Northwestern.

And this is part of what concerns me, is that our [00:44:00] universities are places now where we could not have a protest and say things that are now being said in Tel Aviv by Israelis. The protests that are happening there this week, if they took place on Columbia’s campus, our students would be expelled or charged with very serious disciplinary violations. This is where we’ve come. It’s impossible to talk about the kinds of things that, Amy, in your setup, of the just horrible things that are happening right this week in Jenin, in Gaza — we can’t talk about that at Columbia. That’s part of what concerns me is, is that we don’t know our history, and these new policies are keeping us from learning it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Natasha Lennard, we just have about 30 seconds, but you’ve noted that universities are not only facing attacks from Congress, they’re also being subjected to lawsuits all around the country. Could you talk about that briefly?

NATASHA LENNARD: Yes, we’ve seen a series of litigation, including at NYU, [00:45:00] Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, brought by often unnamed students and faculty, often very frivolous suits that universities are forced to answer to nonetheless, and then, through settlements and often nonpublic agreements, are then forced to change policy, often leading to the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

Arrest Netanyahu: NYC activists call for mass march during Netanyahu's UN address - The Real News Network - Air Date 9-25-24

 

JU-HYUN PARK - ENGAGEMENT EDITOR, TRN: Some people may be wondering by this point, if the things we do from within the U. S. are truly having an impact, what's it going to take for the movement in solidarity with Palestine to achieve its political objectives? 

LAYAN FULEIHAN: Thanks for that. I mean, I think the number one thing that we need to be doing as organizers, as the movement, the people that make up the movement for Palestine in the United States, is to continue growing the movement. And that means a lot of different things. 

One, it means showing people the fact that [00:46:00] growing the movement and the movement itself is actually important. It can feel strange because people came out on the streets almost now a year ago saying, 'no genocide on Palestine, we want to end the genocide on Palestine', and spoke directly to the United States government, of which we are constituents, to say please stop everything that you are doing to make possible this genocide.

As the months went on many people grew conscious of the fact that the United States is actually the perpetrator of genocide. The way the relationship between Israel and the United States is shaped and it's formed means that Israel cannot do any of the things that it is doing without the support, whether it is public open support or not, of the United States.

And we saw multiple moments in which the U. S. 's role was actually exposed in more direct ways. Whether it was actual U. S. military personnel on the ground in [00:47:00] Gaza, helping the Israeli occupation forces carry out massacres, or whether it was U. S. intelligence agencies providing more information for the Israeli occupation than the Israeli intelligence services themselves.

So the question of complicity has moved to, now to be transformed into a greater understanding that it's not about complicity at this point. The United States is responsible for the genocide. That said, it isn't the movement in the United States that is fighting on the front lines in Gaza. It is the Palestinian resistance, the Palestinian people, who are the ones fighting directly against the military machine of imperialism.

And we've seen that the United States is completely unwilling to listen to the demands of its own constituents, of its own population and to shape its foreign policy along the lines of the demands of its population. And so what we've watched over the past year is that the battle [00:48:00] has been played out and has prolonged, primarily because the Palestinian people have not yet been defeated.

There have been huge massacres. The pain of the losses and ththemmensity of the losses is impossible to describe at all in words. And the everyday torture that the Palestinian people are going through in Gaza is just impossible for anyone to really understand. What we're witnessing is so inhumane and so brutal that it is just beyond human comprehension. 

That said, the Palestinian liberation struggle has not been defeated. And we can see the results of that. I think what you mentioned about Lebanon is extremely important. And I want to say a few words on this because what we've now seen is that Netanyahu and his administration, frustrated by the fact that they can't win in Gaza, have now moved to open a new front of the war. They've been [00:49:00] threatening this for the past year, but with the massacres that they committed and the terrorist attack that they committed yesterday and their declarations of war with that act and with their actions today, as well, claiming that they're going to triple their bombardments of Lebanon every day, that now Lebanon is the focus of the war. They've added a new objective to the war, which is returning the Israelis back to the north, which they had been evacuated from to avoid casualties from the conflict across the border. So, we've seen now that Netanyahu has no qualms about expanding the war of extermination to Lebanon because he's unable to reach a conclusion that works for him in Gaza.

Now, I'm giving all of this context because It's important for us to understand the shape of the genocide and the war of extermination that the United States is carrying out alongside its Israeli partner. And we have [00:50:00] to understand also that our role is extremely important. The United States cannot publicly say right now that they're willing to go ahead and open another front of the war of extermination with Lebanon.

If you listen to what the White House is saying, They are saying diplomacy, de-escalation, et cetera. They've been saying now for months, and they've been trying to trick the population into thinking that they are engineering a ceasefire, when in fact, we know that they are providing cover for Netanyahu to create obstacles to the negotiation process.

But again, we're not believing the words of the White House, but this is a sign that the public opinion is acting as some form of restraint, that the White House is anxious to fully associate itself with its own actions in the region right now. And we need to keep building that restraint, keep building that pressure. And most importantly, the most important thing that we can do is through the movement change public consciousness [00:51:00] in the United States. Public opinion is one thing. Public opinion right now is not on the side of the White House and on Israel. The majority of people in the United States would like to see an end to this chapter, this terrible chapter of human history.

Consciousness is another thing, and consciousness is that realization of the fact that it's the U. S. system itself, the U. S. capitalist and imperialist system itself, that has created the conditions for this genocide to occur. And it is only by changing that system that we are going to be able to end, not just this chapter of the genocide, but the entire occupation of Palestine and all other U. S. imperialist wars across the world. 

One. And two, that we're going to be able to have a system in which the demands of the population itself has an impact on the decisions that the government makes in regards to both foreign and domestic policy. 

So I kind of was a bit long winded there, but I [00:52:00] think it's a complex issue, and one of the main roles that we have in the movement here is to bring this kind of analysis and this kind of understanding to people who have been in the streets now for almost a year, who have changed their entire way of living. I mean, many people used to do things on the weekends, like other things, like go see people and have brunch. I don't know what people did. Now, you go to protests. You go to meetings. You go to actions. You go to teach-ins. A large section of the population, their whole daily life has been transformed. They have changed their routines. They have reorganized themselves, to become not only people who participate in the movement, but who organize it. And it's important that all of us actually develop the skills and the capacity to understand the shape of this genocidal war as it continues. Because the number one thing we need to do is not let down of the movement. We need to keep it [00:53:00] growing. If war breaks out in Lebanon, direct war, a larger scale war with Lebanon, if it breaks out in the region, if it breaks out in other places, this new shift in consciousness that we've created, we need to build off of it. We don't want to have to rebuild it again. 

So, we are really committed to continuing to mobilize, continuing to organize, and to not allow the White House and the propaganda arm, the mainstream media, to distract people from our task.

Note from the Editor on the ease of misunderstanding when discussing Israel

 

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with The Muckrake Political Podcast describing Israel's state-sponsored terrorism in Lebanon. Democracy Now! discussed the history and present conflict escalating between Israel and Lebanon. The Real News looked at the language of ceasefire. The Book Cafe Podcast looked at the development of the Israeli self-image after the Holocaust. Democracy Now! looked at the impact of universities expanding the concept of protected class to [00:54:00] include Zionism. And The Real News looked at the role of the US complicit in the escalating conflict.

And those were just the Top Takes. There's 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. This coming week, we will be continuing the discussion on Israel and anti-Semitism. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support -- there's a link in the show notes; through our Patreon page; or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. Members also get chapter markers in the show, but I'll note that anyone, depending on the app you use to listen, may be able to use the time codes in the show notes to jump around the show similar to how chapter markers work. 

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 [00:55:00] hearing more information. 

Now, before we continue on to the Deeper Dives half the show, as I said, we're going to be having a much bigger discussion about the role of antisemitism, both real and imagined in the debate over the escalating crisis in the middle east, on the bonus show for members. But I just wanted to share this one passage that I found in an article prepping for that larger discussion. And I'm sharing it because I find it hopeful and instructive. 

And this is the author of the book, Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, which comes at the whole issue from the left, arguing that the left needs a better structural understanding of antisemitism in order to be better equipped to fight it. And in this article. That author said, "At one of our book events, someone said, 'I'm offended by all the talk about anti-Zionism. I'm a Zionist. And for me, Zionism means full equality between Jews and Palestinians in the [00:56:00] Holy Land.' I responded, 'Well, okay. For me, anti-Zionism means the same thing. So maybe let's stop arguing about the word Zionism altogether.'" And then he continues: "We certainly don't want to give anyone a pass for supporting Israel's genocide. At the same time, being more attentive to the nuance is important for winning over more American Jews, for whom the definition of Zionism might not really mean support for an ethno state. It might be more of an identity, meaning more or less 'Jewish pride.'" End quote. 

And for more, the article is "A Leftist Analysis of Antisemitism" and that's from Jacobin magazine. 

And I just wanted to share that above all other potential quotes I could have pulled or points I could have made, because I think it exemplifies how language can get in the way of the real discussion we're trying to have, particularly on a topic that is so fraught with opportunity for miscommunication, confusion, distraction, [00:57:00] obfuscation, and yes, accusations of antisemitism that are sometimes, but definitely not always, well founded. 

Here's just one example that always comes up during discussions of antisemitism: "from the river to the sea," often with the addendum, "Palestine will be free." It's perfectly understandable that many hear this as an anti-Jewish, anti-Israel code phrase. I'm not going to debate here whether or not it should be heard that way, now or in the past or ever. My point is that it is heard that way. And therefore becomes a flashpoint in accusations about antisemitism. However, it's also incredibly understandable that many particularly young people who are only awakening to this issue in the past year or so wouldn't understand the backstory and context of that phrase, and therefore take it at face value, hear it as a perfectly innocuous [00:58:00] call for peace and freedom, and then repeated themselves with that exact intention. 

So knee jerk labeling of the use of that phrase as antisemetic makes nothing but perfect sense for some, while being completely nonsensical for others. And how does that help sort out people's true feelings on the war or the dynamic between Israel and its neighbors? Obviously it doesn't. But continuing that debate rather than getting to the underside of what people truly mean only works to the advantage of those who want to maintain the status quo of Jewish supremacy and apartheid in Israel. 

So for those of us who oppose that unjust status quo, just like the discussion at the book signing where the author and the audience member turned out to mean the exact same thing while using diametrically opposed language, we all need more understanding of what people actually [00:59:00] believe what they mean with their words, and, most importantly, for what we can control ourselves -- how our own words may be interpreted by others. 

When there's so much opportunity for miscommunication, not being mindful of language can blind us to actual fundamental agreement that we have with others, and undercuts opportunities for gaining would-be allies, all of which weakens our ability to oppose the ongoing injustice. 

So language is important. Be careful how you use it. 

In the meantime, I might suggest going with something like "from the river to the sea/coexist peacefully." 

Just a thought.

SECTION A: STATE TERRORISM

 

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up, Section A: State terrorism. Section B: Global complicity. Section C: Protests and indoctrination. And Section D: Resistance.

Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-26-24

 

NERMEEN SHAIKH: [01:00:00] Lara Bitar, so, if you could tell us a little bit more about how you think Hezbollah might respond to a possible invasion? And also explain Resolution — U.N. Resolution 1701, because the U.N. secretary-general, speaking Wednesday, he warned that Lebanon is at the brink, calling for an urgent ceasefire, but he also called for the implementation of U.N. Resolutions 1559 and 1701.

LARA BITAR: I can’t really predict how Hezbollah will respond, but what we know is that, so far, Hezbollah has continuously tried to deescalate. Hezbollah is not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure. They have consistently aimed their weapons at military [01:01:00] infrastructure and sites and soldiers, even after the pager attack, the walkie-talkie attack, repeated campaigns on Dahieh. Just a few minutes ago, before I joined you, Dahieh was yet again bombarded by the Israelis. I think this is the eighth attack on the Lebanese capital. Despite all of this escalation from the Israeli side, Hezbollah remains restraint, continues to try to deescalate. And the only ask here, which is not a really unreasonable ask, is for Israel to immediately end its war on the Palestinian people of Gaza after 11 months.

As far as U.N. resolutions, for the most part, they’re not legally binding. For the most part, they’re not respected. The 1701 Resolution, that was adopted after the 2006 war, [01:02:00] is habitually, if not daily, violated by the Israelis in a variety of different ways. That’s why the majority of the Lebanese population is not holding its breath waiting for a U.N. resolution or for the Security Council or even for the international community. I think not just the people in Lebanon, but people around the world have completely lost faith in the so-called international order, the rule of law.

So, right now we can only expect things to get significantly worse. So long as the international community does not take any action to halt the insanity and the barbarism of the Israeli state, so long as the Western world continues to supply the Israelis with weapons, with support, with diplomatic [01:03:00] cover, we have very little chance of seeing an end to this campaign anytime soon.

But on the other hand, what people can do, people anywhere can boycott Israel, can put pressure on their institutions, on their universities, on the corporations in which they work, and to divest from Israel. The only chance that we have is for the world and for comrades around the world to put this kind of pressure on their governments and on their institutions to isolate Israel, because Israel will only stop this campaign and this war around the region if it becomes too costly for it. And right now it’s not paying any kind of price for its actions.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: As we wrap up, Lara Bitar, there is a protest that is approaching the United Nations now, especially people protesting what’s happening in Gaza. You have Netanyahu, the Israeli [01:04:00] prime minister, who delayed his trip by a day. He was supposed to address the U.N. General Assembly today; he’s going to do it tomorrow. What do you expect him to say? And in the U.S. media, on television, they’re saying that Blinken has been desperately, you know, rallying countries on the sidelines to get this 21-day ceasefire that the U.S., France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are now calling for. But you have The Guardian reporting that, in fact, an effort by France and Britain to secure a joint statement by the U.N. Security Council calling for a ceasefire has stalled in the face of U.S. objections. Your final thoughts, Lara?

LARA BITAR: At the risk of repeating myself, I don’t see —or, we, for the most part, don’t really believe anything that’s coming [01:05:00] out of the Biden administration, neither its White House spokespeople or Blinken and others who are representing the U.S. And again, we have seen these maneuvers and this manipulation of public opinion, manipulation of the press for 11 months. They are not serious about a ceasefire, neither in Gaza nor in Lebanon, regardless of what they’re saying, regardless of what narrative they’re trying to sell us. We’re simply not buying it.

Jon Stewart on Israel's Widening War & Biden Admin's Stalled Ceasefire Attempts - The Daily Show

 

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: the Americans have been working tirelessly On a ceasefire in Gaza, But this new conflagration points to another outcome the United States has been very much trying to avoid. 

ANTHONY BLINKEN: From day one, since October 7th, it's been one of our primary objectives to prevent, Prevent the conflict from escalating, from spreading in other places.

Prevent an escalation or widening or deepening of this conflict. 

WH SPOKESPERSON: We have been laser focused on trying to prevent that wider war since October [01:06:00] 7th. 

PRES. JOE BIDEN: I don't think we need a wider war in the Middle East, that's not what I'm looking for. Why would you be looking for 

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: that? You know what I'd love? A wider war in the Middle East!

Well, uh, now that a wider war has broken out in the Middle East This is President Biden yesterday talking about what we're going to do about it. a wider war from breaking out. How f ing wide does this war have to be before we call it a wider? Without Turkey, it's still technically in the margins.

Look! As far as I'm concerned, it's not a wide war until it includes Mongolian archers. Cut.

What are we doing? And by the way, if this isn't the wider war, then what is this? 

BIDEN ADMIN SPOKESPERSON: It continues to be a very dangerous [01:07:00] situation, a very difficult situation, a very difficult, volatile situation, um, and, and the, the situation could, um, could escalate at any moment. Tch. F 

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: it. Oh, I'm sorry, okay, so it's not a war, it's a volatile situation ship.

Uh, uh, Friends with Bamafits, if you will. But what, what if,

what if you really want to experience the full cognitive dissonance and language calisthenics that have to be deployed to describe the Middle East over the last, I don't know, 000 years? How we're describing what's I give you the golden Sound bite brought down from Sinai to explain how f ing convoluted this has 

CNN GUEST: to be.

What the [01:08:00] Israeli government is saying, and the Biden administration is in many ways subscribed to this idea, is de escalation through escalation.

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: Or as that is sometimes called, War! That is World War II! Look at the subhead! here's the worst part. Now, the country that's providing all the bombs to the Middle East, or I guess now we have to call the bombs escalators, seems to have no idea when these bombs are going to be used. 

PENTAGON SPOKESPERSON: We were not notified by the Israelis about their, um, strike or the intended target of their strike.

ANTHONY BLINKEN: First, uh, this is something we were not aware of or involved in. The United States, uh, did not know about, uh, nor was it involved in, uh, these, uh, [01:09:00] incidents. 

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: Oh, you're not telling me anything, huh? Have you checked your pager?

I mean, my God, there have to be other ways of achieving de escalation without all this Respectful exchange of missiles. Historically, that part is generally followed by years of sorrow and bloodshed. And we know there have been opportunities for de escalation, but Netanyahu did not seem particularly interested in it.

Oh my God. I've criticized Netanyahu. 

PRES. JOE BIDEN: What have I done? Go, go ahead. The people who are criticizing the Prime Minister, it is shameful, it is pathetic. 

FOX NEWS GUEST 2: We should be standing shoulder to shoulder with our strongest ally in the Middle East instead of launching this criticism. They criticize them for going too far, constantly, and that gives Hamas comfort.

I'm 

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: [01:10:00] sorry? Criticism of the war is shameful and it gives comfort to Hamas. You know who might be surprised to hear that? The Israelis, who are unbelievably critical of the war and Netanyahu. 

PRES. JOE BIDEN: The Prime Minister did not look the public in the eye and tell the truth. That he won't bring the hostages alive. It's a 

ISRAELI: total failure. The Israeli government. No strategy. No vision. He 

PRES. JOE BIDEN: is trying to do everything to prevent a deal. He don't have any intent to end this war.

Netanyahu is lying as he breathes. 

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: What anti Semites the former prime minister of Israel and defense minister are. But still, people are going to see this segment and go, all right, maybe Israel isn't perfect, but criticizing them feeds the fire. Don't you worry about anti semitism? And to that I say no. I believe anti [01:11:00] semitism will be fine.

laughter I gotta say applause not for nothing applause but from what I've experienced It's very resilient. And it's not really tied to any event, or war, or activity, or reality. For God's sakes, Kanye thought we ruined his Adidas deal. We just need orthotics, that's all.

Anti Semitism will survive this war like it survived all wars, going back to the brave Hebrews at Masada.

Do you see, Rabbi? I was paying attention and he wasn't. But you know what? You know what? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the blame the Jews from the Black Death, the Spanish Inquisition, to [01:12:00] the space lasers will all go away if Israel does right. And peace will reign. And people will no longer baselessly and conveniently blame the Jews when things don't work out exactly the way they want them to.

DONALD TRUMP: This is the most important election in the history of the United States. I'm not going to call this as a prediction, but in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I'm at 40%. 

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: SON OF...

“Lebanese Civilians Are Paying the Price”: Israeli Strikes Kill Nearly 600, Displace Tens of Thousands - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-25-24

 

AYA MAJZOUB: I mean, the onslaught that started Monday was really unprecedented. We saw tens and tens and tens of thousands of families hastily pack up their bags, leave their homes, without any idea where they’re going to next. All across Beirut now, you see cars that are parked with displaced families that have nowhere to go. The [01:13:00] strikes have been expanding. There’s a lot of misinformation around. People are paranoid about another pager or walkie-talkie attack. I mean, the situation is really devastating.

And, Amy, you know, I really want to put the death count into perspective here. In a single day, on Monday, more than 500 people were killed, and that is a really astounding number. It is one of the highest daily death tolls in recent global wars. It is higher than most daily death tolls in Gaza in the past year. You know, in Gaza, despite the horrific Israeli onslaught, it took 18 days for the death count to reach 500. This happened in Lebanon in about 24 hours. In 2006, the 33-day war that took place between Hezbollah and Israel resulted in 1,100 deaths over 33 days. We’ve already achieved half of that in just 24 [01:14:00] hours. So the numbers are really unprecedented.

And you see a major panic across the entire country. People don’t know where is safe anymore. The Israelis have expanded the areas that they’re targeting. They’re not limited to some areas in south Lebanon along the border and in the Beqaa. They’ve really expanded inwards into coastal cities, into mountains in the north. It really feels like nowhere is safe, and people are very much at a loss for what to do and where to go.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Aya, what about these phone calls and text messages and also reports of dropping of leaflets on the population by the Israelis? How are people reacting to that? And what indication do they have of even where to go?

AYA MAJZOUB: So, on Monday, the information minister said that around 80,000 people [01:15:00] received calls to evacuate. And we tried to look into some of those calls, and there didn’t seem to be any pattern for who was receiving these calls. Some people in Beirut received them. Some people in the south received them, in the Beqaa. It was really all across the country. So it seemed like a tactic that was more intended to cause fear rather than an actual evacuation.

Some residents in south Lebanon did get more specific evacuation orders. But again, under international law, for evacuation orders to mean anything, they have to be effective, meaning that people must have the time to leave, and they must have the means to do so. What we saw on Monday was anything but. I mean, the instructions that people got were stay away from Hezbollah targets. Nobody knows — a civilian doesn’t know where a Hezbollah target is. So people just fled with the clothes off their back. It took 14, 15 hours for some families [01:16:00] to make it from south Lebanon to Beirut. And we were receiving reports that there were some strikes on, you know, near where civilians were gathered to evacuate, in traffic jams. We’re still looking into those. But if that holds up, then that is also a serious violation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And I wanted to ask you — that Amnesty is calling for an international investigation into the deadly attacks using these exploding portable devices. Could you talk about what you’re calling for and why? And why isn’t this patently labeled as a terrorist attack?

AYA MAJZOUB: So, under international humanitarian law and human rights law, we don’t use the term “terrorist attacks.” For us, attacks are either lawful or unlawful. Our qualification of the pager attacks is if, as [01:17:00] is being reported and as U.S. officials and Lebanese officials have said, Israel was behind the attacks, then international humanitarian law applies, because these attacks were part of an armed conflict. Under international humanitarian law, it is prohibited to use weapons indiscriminately, which we found that the pager attacks were. The people who detonated the pagers did not know who was given the pagers or the walkie-talkies, and they did not know who would be around the individuals carrying those pagers and walkie-talkies. Therefore, the attack was indiscriminate and, therefore, unlawful under international humanitarian law and should be investigated as a war crime.

The reason that Amnesty has called for an international investigation on this particular attack is because of the risks of this kind of warfare. It transforms everyday objects, like pagers and walkie-talkies, into essentially booby traps. And there is an [01:18:00] explicit prohibition under international humanitarian law on the use of such booby traps. But we felt that such an attack, although it didn’t cause nearly the same number of casualties as Monday’s onslaught, did instill some fear and panic into the Lebanese society and is a really dangerous method of warfare to be using. It was unprecedented. And the involvement goes far beyond just, you know, the Israeli military. There are allegations around various shell companies. So we’re trying to look into all of the multifaceted aspects of this attack, but we do feel that an international investigation in this case is warranted.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to ask you, Aya Majzoub, if you consider this a war on Hezbollah or Israel’s war on Lebanon.

AYA MAJZOUB: I mean, in terms of the [01:19:00] impact on civilians, it is undeniable that Lebanese civilians are paying the price. You know, a lot of the media coverage of Monday’s attacks was Israel strikes Hezbollah targets. However, you know, we’ve looked at entire neighborhoods that have been flattened, residential towers that have been brought down, people’s livelihoods, their shops, their homes, their cars, all in ruins. You mentioned the deaths of the two UNHCR staff members. The health minister also mentioned the deaths of four medics and paramedics. Ambulances are being hit, medical centers. And the wave of displacement from south Lebanon, the Beqaa and other areas is now, I think, almost 500,000 people have had to leave their homes. Not all 500,000 people are Hezbollah. So, the impact on Lebanese civilians has really been catastrophic.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And the response of the United States? President Biden [01:20:00] just gave his last speech at the United Nations as U.S. president. He — let’s see — the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has characterized this as almost a full-fledged war. President Biden said, “Too many on each side of the Israeli-Lebanon border remain displaced. Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest.” Even though a “situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is not [sic] possible.” He said “is still possible,” he said. Aya Majzoub, at the same time, the U.S. continuing to provide billions of dollars to the U.S. military — to the Israeli military.

AYA MAJZOUB: Yeah. I mean, there’s an obvious hypocrisy there. We consistently, since October 7, have been calling for the suspension of weapons sales and shipments to Israel. We’ve continued to call [01:21:00] for respect of IHL. We have, in at least one instance, documented a possible war crime that Israel committed in Lebanon using U.S. weapons. So, if the U.S. really was serious about a deescalation in the region, then they should start by stopping arms and weapons shipments to Israel and by also supporting judicial criminal proceedings, including at the ICC.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Aya.

Israel Terrorizes Hezbollah With Exploding Pagers Part 2 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 9-20-24

 

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, and by the way, the idea of state control versus small d democratic populist movements against it, Nick, think about the implications here.

And one of the, one of the worst things America has done in the 21st century, and we have done plenty, was the war on terror. And the designation of the idea of a terrorist being anybody that we decide is a terrorist, which Israel has now learned from, um, That idea that state power needs to defend itself against the people, [01:22:00] like, I'm, I'm sorry, but like, if you look around the surveillance that we've been under during the 21st century is overwhelming.

We now know that all of these companies have worked with the government in order to provide constant surveillance. On top of that, like now the idea that any product or anything, cars, phones, laptops, you name it. And by the way, like in a, it almost, It's almost quaint. It almost feels like the old plots to kill Fidel Castro, right?

With like an exploding cigar. Like that idea that a state can then weaponize, uh, the, the articles and artifacts of consumerism to basically carry out targeted assassinations. And by the way, I just want to remind you and everybody listening, cause I almost forgot about this. Remember how the Supreme Court said that a president can do anything under their official power, including possibly killing political opponents?

Like this type of stuff starts to grow and grow. And a large part of the problem, it's not individual based like Netanyahu didn't come up with this, right? [01:23:00] Like he, he wasn't sitting around and he came up with this. It's expressions of power by the state as things become more and more destabilized. Like there is a creep.

That happens here, whether it's Israel, the United States, Great Britain, you, you name it, whatever it is, that creep mixed with the willingness to use state power to kill randomly and indiscriminately, like I've been seeing people like laugh about this online. I don't find this funny. This isn't about supporting Hezbollah.

This is about needing to always be curious and to always have a critique of state power, because unchecked state power only will grow and grow and grow and take advantage of whatever is given to it. 

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Absolutely. I mean, listen, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. Sure. Generally people who are affiliated with it are people who are terrorists.

Uh, but you know, people are getting named. They're losing eyes. They're losing limbs. Uh, they're, you know, they're, they're dying. Um, and then, yeah, again, the residual or the, um, you know, people who nearby or getting [01:24:00] injured again, those are the, that's where it becomes terrorism on Israel's part. Did, by the way, did you mention maybe a couple of times, a couple of pods before about how wifi routers can actually see people?

Did you ever see that report? No, I didn't, but I'm not surprised. There was a, there's a report about that where somehow they could take data that they're receiving and it can actually map like movement in rooms so they can almost have like that matrixy, matrixy looking thing. Um, and now see where you are and where you're moving.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: No. And we, we've even heard, you know, that like things like Roombas do that. And what we've basically done is we've come to accept all of this. I'll, I'll never forget back in the early 20th century when the Patriot Act was happening, whenever the whole PRISM program was coming out, people would tell me like, Hey, we don't need to worry about this.

Like, you know, just sort of relax about it. That's not how this stuff works. It grows and grows and grows. And if you really want to know how any of this works, look at China, which isn't just an authoritarian state. It's a model for how Western societies are starting to [01:25:00] change themselves. And like, Eventually, over time, this sort of access that we give, uh, corporations, which for the record, just to go ahead and connect the dots, Nick, am I wrong or do all these corporations work hand in hand with authoritarian regimes when it serves their bottom line?

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Yeah. I mean, they want to make money. So they want to make 

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: money and they want to, you know, have their contracts going back and forth. They want access to, you know, giant markets like China and India. Like there is a relationship that starts to take place and anything that happens overseas, particularly an American knew about this, we've now heard that they gave America a heads up that they were going to carry out this attack.

They didn't give them all the specifics. If you believe that. All the stuff that happens to people across the ocean and other countries, it's always going to boomerang back. That is just how this stuff works. And this thing, I'm sickened by it, Nick. I really, truly am. And like, the first thing I had was surprise and shock by it.[01:26:00] 

But the more time that has passed since these attacks took place, the more that I am absolutely concerned and sick. 

SECTION B: GLOBAL COMPLICITY

 

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

U.N. Experts Accuse Israel of Starvation Campaign in Gaza & Demand End to Western Complicity - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-17-24

 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Top experts at the United Nations have strongly condemned Western countries for supporting Israel's devastating war on Gaza. Speakers at a U. N. press conference Monday included Pedro Arroyo Agudo, the U. N. special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation. 

MICHAEL FAKHRI: The lack of clean water has led to 1.

7 million cases of infection diseases, mainly diarrhea, dysentery and hepatitis A, particularly affecting children, as well as cases of polio, smallpox, and other infectious diseases that can trigger massive [01:27:00] and deadly epidemics. All these, coupled with the lack of medical care, result in deaths, especially of babies and children, making water scarcity and contamination a silent bomb, which has far less visibility than those that destroy buildings, uh.

But Uh, no less lethal bomb. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: This comes as the U. N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhry, has accused Israel in a new report of carrying out a starvation campaign in Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the U. N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, wrote to the U. N. In response to the report, quote, The way Israel is destroying Palestinian food sovereignty will be studied not only as a shocking example of genocidal conduct, but also as a textbook case of sadistic disrespect for human life and dignity, unquote.

U. N. Special Rapporteur Francesca [01:28:00] Albanese is joining us now from Tunisia, and Michael Fakhry is joining us from Brasilia. in Brazil. We thank you both for being with us. Michael Fakhry, let's begin with you. You have just released this report. Can you explain what you found? 

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Yes, Amy. What we're witnessing in Gaza is the starvation of 2.

3 million Palestinians. We've never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so quickly and so completely. So in this report, I answer the question, How was this possible? How was Israel able to starve so many Palestinians so quickly and so completely? And the story starts of course, with the political economy of Gaza.

This story starts to, in some ways. In 1991, Israel started restricting the, the flow of goods into Gaza. Starting in 1991. By 2000, it imposes a full blockade. So what we saw from 2000 to 2002 is the rate of malnutrition [01:29:00] amongst children in Gaza double. In 2005, what Israel did is it changed the nature of its occupation.

It pulled its military out of Gaza and surrounded Gaza in a siege. So since 2000 until now, Israel has created a wall, in effect, a wall around Gaza, limiting the flow of goods. And what they did is they counted calories. They made sure that people in Gaza were just hungry enough to be weak, but not so hungry to raise an alarm.

So right before October 7th of last year, 50 percent of Palestinians in Gaza were food insecure, and 80 percent depended on humanitarian aid. So when this war started, Israel announced its starvation campaign on October 9th, and that's in effect what they did. And they've been pushing people from the north into the south.

While at the same time continuing to bomb civilian structures and target schools, hospitals and homes. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Can you [01:30:00] explain, this is the first report that includes graphic reporting, Michael Fakhry. 

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Yes, the situation is so horrific in Gaza right now that I felt that words weren't enough to explain what's going on, but words weren't enough also to imagine a better future for Palestinians, but for people all over the world.

This report focuses on the Palestinian people's food sovereignty, but it looks at how starvation is being used as an increasing rate by forces all over the world. So I was lucky to work with Ammar Jure, an artist from Lebanon. And what we presented are illustrations and graphic reports highlighting the struggle of fishers, highlighting what food sovereignty means for the Palestinian people, but for everyone.

And highlighting what it means to maintain and fight for your dignity despite the the genocidal violence that the Palestinians are experiencing. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: [01:31:00] Michael Fery, who did you talk to for this report? 

MICHAEL FAKHRI: For this report, I've consulted, uh, starvation and right to food experts from all over the world. I received, uh, direct testimony from people in Gaza.

I, uh, spoke to, uh, UN, um, workers, uh, both within Palestinian territories and around the world. I spoke to diplomats from countries from all over the world. Um, And I did my own research, and I drew from statistics from the U. N., and this was standard, standard methodology for any U. N. human rights report. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has suggested starving the entire Gaza Strip To death could be justified.

He told a conference last month, quote, nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned. SMOs also [01:32:00] repeated the Israeli government's goal of removing the threat of Palestinian statehood. You have that. And then you also have, um, what, uh, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, um, that accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were outrageously false.

He said a deliberate starvation policy, you can say anything, it doesn't make it true. Your response, UN rapporteur Michael Fakhry. 

MICHAEL FAKHRI: There is never an exception to starving civilians. There's never a justification for starving any civilian, whether it's one person or 2. 3 million. And this is in the context of genocide.

And there is no exception to genocide. Israeli officials since October 9th until today have explicitly announced their intent to starve civilians. And they've executed their plan and we've seen the effects of their plan. We also have received [01:33:00] reports regularly and consistently, um, from UN sources that humanitarian aid is either blocked or restricted.

And then even when it goes through these humanitarian convoys that are coordinating with Israeli forces are targeted by Israeli forces. And then even when these humanitarian aid, uh, convoys reach civilians, civilians have been repeatedly targeted, shot and killed you. While trying to get aid, but the issue is not just aid and the denial of goods.

The issue is Israel has been weakening and destroying the food system in Gaza in this war and previously they're just over 75 percent of the agricultural system has been destroyed. Uh, fishers have been targeted, uh, orchards have been uprooted, shepherds have been targeted and shot at. So what Israel is trying to do is making sure they're trying to make sure that the Palestinian people can't feed themselves.

This starvation campaign is part of displacing Palestinians from their land. And it's part of a [01:34:00] plan to annex not just Gaza, but the West Bank as well. This is the last two years have been, we've seen record violence against Palestinians, especially Palestinian farmers. Uh, this is, again, targeting all Palestinians and all of their territories.

So it's not just about Gaza. It's Israel has, over the decades, attacked and destroyed the Palestinian food system as a way to create the conditions of starvation and, in this case now, to the degree of genocidal violence. 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Michael Fakhry, according to your report, 34 Palestinians, the majority of them children, are known to have starved to death since October 7th?

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Yes, and this is this is what indicates to us that it's a full blown famine across all of Gaza. So you can imagine a situation when a community is struggling. The first thing they always do is they feed their children. This is true throughout history. And so when a parent is watching their child, Waste away before their very [01:35:00] eyes and is unable to do anything and that child dies when the first child dies in a community.

That indicates to us that that whole society is being attacked. And when the first Palestinian child died, that confirmed that the situation in Gaza is a situation of famine. 

'Whitewashing genocide' How Democrats & the media kept Gaza out of the DNC Part 2 - The Real News Network - Air Date 8-31-24

 

ADAM JOHNSON: And to be clear, those, those protesters who I think are, are, uh, terribly courageous.

I mean, again, these are people who were there for hours. They have nothing to gain. There's no career gain. They're not getting paid to do it. Although of course Fox news would say they are, who are literally just trying to get people to pay attention. And, and I worked on a piece for the nation about the, what I'm calling or what I call the compartmentalization, which is to say, There's been an, there's an elaborate regime of excuse making and burden shifting that liberal media has propped up to make it so people can go celebrate at the DNC, including some of our, you know, frankly, union brothers and sisters who are there celebrating again, I, there's, this is already [01:36:00] complex.

We can get into that while while the administration, the current administration, and it's, it's Current replacement running on the Democratic ticket, the Vice President, Vice President Harris have have committed to doubling down, tripling down on the policy of supporting genocide. Again, this is not and I think some people have a hard time drawing this connective tissue because ostensibly, right?

They sort of use the magical C word. They say they support a ceasefire and that they correctly guess that would be sufficient. And they were right because what they did is they simply redefined the term ceasefire. Something I've been writing about since March. Mhm. The second they began doing it, because for the first five months of this, of this so called conflict, the, the State Department issued a memo banning people from using the word ceasefire in related terms.

And then on the eve of the Michigan primary, when the uncommitted movement was increasingly embarrassing the administration, who at that point, of course, was running for re election, they decided to co opt the term ceasefire and just make the temporary pause hostage exchanges, which they used to call temporary pause, and rebranded that ceasefire, which is why activists And in concert with that switch from the White House's part, started [01:37:00] talking about an arms embargo and conditioning aid to Israel as being the ask, because that was the implicit ask of a ceasefire demand.

But because the White House and liberal media and more generally started to play stupid, they had to explicitly state what the demand was, which is using the leverage of conditioning aid or arms embargo to compel Israel to agree to a lasting ceasefire, which, you know, is Again, finally, you know, the New York Times today said on the daily podcast, Patrick Kingsley, their Jerusalem correspondent said, uh, literally is Netanyahu opposes a lasting ceasefire.

So now finally, I guess people are, are acknowledging that reality, that when he, when they talk about ceasefire, when liberal Zionist organizations talk about ceasefire, when the white house talks about ceasefire. Yeah. They're talking about a temporary pause for a few weeks while they exchange hostages, get the only, you know, get leverage from, from Hamas or whatever militants have hostages and then continue doing, uh, the, the sort of genocide, which they've been carrying out.

I think pretty much consensus among, among genocide scholars who are not, you know, in denial. I know that's a bit of a tautology, but that it is a genocide as every, you know, they, Gaza is not livable. They are [01:38:00] pushing people to a very small, Airport, you know, airport size, a piece of land, and they are continuing to punish them with engaging collective punishment and displacement and unleashing diseases, especially polio, which is now taken off and that this is this is not going to stop unless the U.

S. conditions arms to Israel. Everybody knows it. Again, to their credit, although they did not withhold their endorsement on this condition, seven unions representing six million workers, including UAW, SEIU, demanded that Biden engage in a full arms embargo of Israel until it ends its genocide, which is now the sort of baseline ask, I think, of, you know, humanitarian organizations.

Again, this was always the implied mechanism of the ceasefire, but now you got to say it literally. And so when they did the switcheroo from Biden to Harris in a matter of 48 hours, Because the issue of Gaza was not allowed to be litigated in a primary, because there really wasn't one, there was an attempt to try to push Harris, again, to the extent that's even possible, uh, the uncommitted, which, of course, began under [01:39:00] Biden during his primary and continued until, up until the DNC and continues to this day, um, saying, we're going to withhold our support until you agree to an arms embargo on Israel, which sounds scary to some people, some lay people who say, arms embargo on Israel, but what about blah, blah, blah, but really what it is, another way to phrase it is conditioning aid until Israel, uh, Is in line with international U.

S. law, which, by the way, the U. S. is supposed to be doing anyway. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the point of having these laws are. And, you know, many experts, many normie experts just today, just security had an article showing how again, this is kind of a very normie publication showing how Israel's in gross violation, both in Gaza and the West Bank of international law and the Leahy law compels the White House.

And ought to compel a future harris white house to comport to that law as israel commits gross human rights violations The state department's own internal memo a few months ago Said, uh, they committed human rights violations, but they're taking the necessary steps to prevent in the future Which everyone knows was a total whitewash job And so what the protesters are demanding the baseline ask obviously protesters outside the perimeter, you know Their asks [01:40:00] are more ambitious right in apartheid and occupation liberate palestine all that But the baseline ask that every organization agrees on Liberal progressive left, far left, Palestinian, uh, even frankly, some non Zionist, you know, Jewish groups and anti Zionist Jewish groups, uh, over 30, I think at this point, uh, hundreds of Nobel laureates.

They say we have to end selling arms to Israel to compel them to stop this madness. So it's a very basic ask. I think it's incredibly reasonable ask. It's a ask that the Biden White House and a future Harris administration can do unilaterally. They don't need Congress. There isn't some parliamentarian who they can appeal to to sort of block their way.

And it's something Harris could have agreed to that she decided not to. And so that's the connective tissue that, again, through the ceasefire co option PR effort and all these kind of other faux humanitarian efforts, the humanitarian peer, um, all these other public relations campaigns they've undertaken, the White House, that they've confused liberals and so they kind of put Gaza out of their mind.

And so when they, when they're going into, when you're actually physically going into the DNC, as you [01:41:00] know, You're bombarded by by protesters calling out the names of the people that their candidate has agreed to continue, frankly, supporting and killing killing because she is now through her foreign aid advisor or foreign policy advisor.

Phil Gordon has reaffirmed their support, unequivocal support for continued arms sales to Israel. So she's not budging. And so she's just assuming she can kind of do brat memes and vibe her way beyond the criticism from Gaza protesters, which theoretically ought to be picking up this week with with school being back in session.

SARAH LAZAR: If I could just jump in for 1 second to talk about the demand of protesters. So the Coalition of March on the DNC is composed of more than 250 organizations. It's a lot from across the country and a lot of Palestinian organizations are numbered among them. For example, US PCN, the US Palestinian Community Network.

And so U-S-P-C-N [01:42:00] actually moved to join the coalition before October 7th, 'cause their position was. What Israel is doing to Palestinians, the injustice, the apartheid, the colonial settler context predates October 7th, and so they had reason to protest before that, but then given what Israel has done over the past 10 months, 40, 000 Palestinians killed, this is likely a dramatic underestimate, you know, one Lancet study estimated that 186, 000 people have been killed.

This is likely a dramatic underestimate, you know, one Lancet study estimated that 186, 000 people have been killed. When you consider both direct and indirect death, you know, we're seeing the most efficient killing campaign in the 21st century if you're speaking just in terms of daily death tolls. So given that emergency, the coalition march on the DNC decided to center Palestine and Gaza in the multiple marches that they held that had thousands of people in the streets.

The two demands that they put out were very simple. One was end [01:43:00] the genocide, and two was end all USAID to Israel. The end, the demand to end all USAID is a little different from some of the demands that we've been seeing, focusing on arms specifically. The seven major unions representing nearly half of all unionized workers in the U.

S. That Adam mentioned, their demand was specifically around an arms embargo pursuant to a permanent ceasefire. And then the uncommitted delegates, there were 29 who went to the DNC. They were also demanding an arms embargo. That was their demand that they had painted on their banners. And that they had put out in terms of their messaging around not another bomb.

We all know that they ended up putting out more moderate demands, so they did their sit in because they were denied a Palestinian American speaker on stage. Any of them would have told you that was absolute bottom of the barrel, lowest possible bar demand, and they did go in there calling for an [01:44:00] arms embargo.

And so even though the these demands have some variation and difference. The, what unites them is the focus on ending material support, which is a recognition that it's not enough to shift rhetoric. You have to change material reality. 

U.N. Experts Accuse Israel of Starvation Campaign in Gaza & Demand End to Western Complicity Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-17-24

 

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Now you are expecting to give, present this report, um, to the UN General assembly, uh, in October. What are you expecting? How will this be presented 

MICHAEL FAKHRI: right now?

Uh, all of us, all the U. N. Human rights experts. And I think the whole world is watching closely the current draft resolution that's before the General Assembly. That is, uh, in the draft. They're calling for sanctions against Israel. Since the first weeks of this war, we as human independent human rights experts have been calling [01:45:00] for a cease fire.

An immediate ceasefire and sanctions against Israel. And we'll see how this resolution goes through. By the time I get to New York on October 18th, if there are no sanctions, I will repeat that call for sanctions against Israel. And what I will, I will tell the general assembly, what is at stake? What is at stake is the global order itself.

How the world responds to Gaza and to the Palestinian struggle for liberation will determine the structure and the fate of the U. N. and the global order. Because what's at stake is, of course, the Palestinian people's right to self determination, their right to return to their territory in Palestine, and American global power.

And the, the, and Europe is facing an existential crisis. This is its, what's at stake. This is why millions of people are marching in the streets. in solidarity with the Palestinians. If the world does not respond to Palestine today, just like the world is not responding to the starvation in Sudan, [01:46:00] we're going to see more and more starvation campaigns around the world into the future.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We want to bring in Francesca Albanese into this conversation, U. N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. You're in La Marza, Tunisia, where you participated fromin that news conference yesterday in Geneva. Um, uh, you, uh, talked about the significance of this report. Can you respond? 

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, I was really, um, impressed by the report that my colleague Michael Park reproduced, because not only it analyzed what he just said, I cannot really add to the brilliant presentation he gave, but he put things in context, which is something that tends to be missed when discussing, uh, the situation of Palestinians under Israeli's military rule.

People tend to, um, Align themselves or [01:47:00] accept critically the narrative of the two parties in conflict without capturing the troubling asymmetry that exists, um, between the Palestinians, the occupied people, and Israel, the protracted occupier, which is colonizing by force. The little erritory that.

bringing the attention back to the root causes and the fact that these didn't start on October 7th, didn't start even with the blockade that has been declared on Gaza 17 years ago. This is a long term plan that Israel has somewhat devised. to achieve its final goal, which is getting as much control as possible over maximum land with minimum Palestinian people.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Naezy, you've said the attack [01:48:00] that Israel has unleashed is not just against Palestinians in Gaza, it's against Palestinians as a whole. Explain. 

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Absolutely. Um, Amy, since the beginning of the assault against Gaza on the beginning of October, following of course the attack unleashed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, we have recorded an escalation of violence against the Palestinians in Gaza.

The rest of the occupied territory, both is Jerusalem and the West Bank. Over 11 months, 670 Palestinians have been killed. Carfew incursions and raids have escalated at unprecedented rates, particularly against the north and Gaza that over the past Tweaks as experienced least less lethal, but similar, um, attacks [01:49:00] on civilian infrastructure, roads, water reservoir, electricity, um, uh, electricity sources and homes that are unjustifiable.

And, uh, The other thing is the detention, arbitrary detention, detention without any legal justification of Palestinians, both from the West, the Gaza Strip, but all the more the West Bank and East Jerusalem have skyrocketed. And all Palestinians, no matter their place of residence, have been exposed to humiliation and sadism.

That's what we're And what B'Tselem has qualified as a network of torture across Israeli detention center, how can we explain that? This is why I say when international community has failed to prevent genocide in Gaza, we have to be very careful because I do see patterns of violence clearly expanding to the West Bank and East Jerusalem.[01:50:00] 

And ultimately, the goal is the same. expel the Palestinians or simply displace the Palestinians from the little that remain of their land. And this is not something that I'm inferring from the evidence. This is something that is accompanied by endless statements of Israeli political leaders and actions of Both army and settlers, illegal settlers, that have been armed by Israeli ministers.

So this is a state, there is a state endeavor sustaining this wild attack against the Palestinian people as such. 

Ilhan Omar On The Shallow Divide Between Dems And GOP Over Israel’s Gaza Genocide - The Majority Report - Air Date 9-16-24

 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We just heard from the Israeli military that they killed three hostages that were found dead, I guess a couple of months ago. They killed them early on in their, um, a bombing campaign. It is, it's almost feels like shock that Israel was [01:51:00] going to admit this, but there definitely seems to be more pressure on them.

There's also been reports out now how, when there was an outcry about, uh, the, um, hunger situation in Gaza, Israel let in a trickle of food and is now sort of like tightening up again on it. Um, we also have a story of the first, uh, UN worker, uh, in, at least in the past year, who was, uh, killed by a sniper in the West Bank.

This after, um, an American citizen also killed by an Israeli sniper, uh, which. Joe Biden claimed was like an accidental shot that ricocheted, I guess, off the ground up into her head. Sounds like something Trump would say. And, uh, with a lot of evidence that, um, That, in fact, was not the case, that it wasn't a bullet that bounced on the ground.

No 

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: evidence that it was the case. [01:52:00] 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: No evidence. 

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And the Biden administration has been kind of propping up Yoav Galant as somebody who's more reasonable within Likud, the defense minister who they can reportedly work with in this administration. News broke this morning that Netanyahu is apparently planning to fire Yoav Galant from his post.

Uh, that's maybe, it hasn't happened yet. But it's this, as we've been saying, the reality of Netanyahu and the far right of the Israeli government being together on this has not changed since October 7th. It's been that reality for that this entire period solidified. Yeah. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Here is Ilhan Omar on, uh, with the CNN's Kaitlyn Collins and, um, commends, uh, Harris on a rhetoric, but says.

We got to do more. 

CNN REPORTER: Well, I'm glad you brought that up because there's really important constituencies in places like your home state and michigan and others. There wasn't a lot of time spent on on the Israel Hamas war that [01:53:00] is that is underway last night between the two candidates. But when they did talk about it, despite trump saying that Israel would cease to exist if Harris was elected, they largely agree on the policy of that supporting Israel and backing it on a ceasefire hostage deal.

She said that she would work around the clock. But she didn't offer any specifics on what that would look like. Was that enough of a plan in your view? 

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah, I mean, I think there is a, um, I believe there is a great appreciation, um, in, in the empathy and compassion that she offers. Uh, but I do believe that voters both in, in my district, um, and in, in Minnesota and across the country that care Um, want to actually see either an implementation of a ceasefire, um, or an actual, uh, concrete answer, um, to how we get a ceasefire and why we have not been able, um, to utilize, [01:54:00] uh, the leverage that we have in order for that ceasefire to be implemented.

CNN REPORTER: And of course, I assume by that in part you mean sending arms and weapons to Israel, which Something, you know, we can 

REP. ILHAN OMAR: hear intangible actions that could be taken, right? We are supplying the weapons that are causing the catastrophe. Uh, and so, you know, to, to say you're working around the clock and, and not, you know, take any actionable steps that the, the voters, um, and, and the American people can see, um, makes that rhetoric really hard to, to swallow.

And is that, 

CNN REPORTER: I want to hear this follow up, you know, that was her rhetoric last night. And so when you hear about the implementation of a ceasefire deal, we hear off all the time from the administration. Take it or leave it is on the table. Take it or leave it is on the table. I talked to the Israeli ambassador to the UN last week.

He said the idea of a ceasefire being close is is just not realistic at this moment. 

REP. ILHAN OMAR: And I think, and I think that is where, um, it does feel disingenuous, [01:55:00] right? Because we hear Our Secretary of State, Blinken, um, who has now traveled to Israel, I believe 11 times, um, you know, who makes these statements, um, as he's departing, uh, the country from Egypt and says We are.

You know, very close and deal has been reached. Um, BB Netanyahu is there and then we see the humiliation that follows as BB takes the stage right after he departs and says there is no such thing. Uh, and I think For a country that is not only considered as a leader, uh, in, in the world, but a country that is directly in, in support, in, in supplying these, these weapons, um, to, to Israel to, uh, you know, not, not do that after the first time that they backtracked on, on what they promised us, not do that on the second time, not do that on the third time.

Um, now, you know, 11 months in, [01:56:00] uh, I, I think it is starting to, to sound like this is not a, a, a serious thing, um, that, uh, our secretary is, is working on. 

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah. Congressman Ilhan Omar. Understated, uh, but, uh, accurate. 

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Carrot and stick, right? So she's opening with the empathy thing to appeal to Harris and her supporters, I guess, but then giving her a path forward because Ro Khanna now has come out on cable news and said that she should talk about enforcing the law.

Elizabeth Warren has done the same, and Ilhan Omar as well, still being like, I'm a team player, but this is what you can do. Um, I was just like appreciative of that because, can we pull up this tweet? This was from over the weekend. This is why she needs to now begin to, like, the Biden, Biden officials are complaining to ABC that she didn't defend him more in the debate.

Selena Wang of, uh, of ABC reports some White House officials are, uh, also disappointed that Harris did not stand up for [01:57:00] Biden during the debate. A former Biden White House official tells me many feel Harris missed opportunities to acknowledge that Biden deserves thanks for his service, according to the source.

So the point is that They're already, she, she, she tried to distance herself from Biden in the debate by not really mentioning him. She at one point said, I'm not Joe Biden, I'm Kamala Harris. She didn't go out of her way to full throatedly defend Biden in any way because he's an extremely unpopular president right now.

So, a way that she can distance herself from him is also on this matter. On this matter, and there are a lot of lawmakers trying to give her the, the path forward to do so. But if the Biden administration and his, like, lame duck lackeys are going to whine and complain in the press that she's not being more forceful in her defense of him, First of all, then why not go all the way, all, uh, full bore on this and actually do something that is both right, good policy, and in her interest to distance herself from him in some meaningful way?

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Because, uh, for all the talk [01:58:00] of all these Reagan staffers, uh, supporting Kamala Harris, there's no votes there. There's not, that's not going to turn people out. We know undecided voters turn out because they're activated by the partisan leading they already have, not because they're right in the middle and are waiting to see who's the most center of all the candidates.

So they're just, this, this like sort of conservative look at what they're doing is, I think, because they think they can walk to a victory, and they don't need to break that glass and actually change the policy, because they'd rather win with these freaks than with people who, uh, expect to win. People to stop a genocide.

SECTION C: PROTESTS AND INDOCTRINATION

 

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section C: Protests and indoctrination.

Whose Speech, Whose Campus - What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law - Air Date 9-10-24

 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, until 2004, it wasn't really obvious that the kind of problem you see with the student protests of this past year have anything to do with Title VI. But in 2004, the Office of Civil Rights under the Bush [01:59:00] administration issued a new interpretation of Title VI.

And under the new interpretation, Title VI's protections also apply to students who are discriminated against based on what the office calls shared ancestry. And that includes being part of a group that is identified for its racial, and religious characteristics. The 2004 interpretation specified that title six could now apply to students who are Muslim, Sikh, or Jewish and say, well, hey, I'm being discriminated against at my school.

And so specifically for Jewish students, this means that the office of civil rights now considers Judaism like a race or a nationality, not just a religion. And it's that 2004 interpretation. which is applying Title VI's protections to students of religious faiths who are targeted for what the Civil Rights Office calls perceived shared ancestry.

That new [02:00:00] interpretation has been adopted by every presidential administration since, including the Biden administration. 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So how does this expanded interpretation of Title VI, to include shared ancestry and Jewish students, how does this affect the protest? 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, because of the enforcement powers possessed by the Office of Civil Rights.

So Congress has given the Office of Civil Rights broad powers to investigate complaints of potential Title VI violations. If there's a violation of Title VI, the office is supposed to first find some cooperative resolution with the school that's being investigated. So that might mean persuading a college to change its policies or how it treats students or maybe doing something different or to stop doing something it had been doing before.

And of course, we're talking about federal funds. And as a very last resort, the department of education could seek to cut off federal funding for the college or university. And that could mean the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. And practically that's [02:01:00] probably unlikely, but the threat of it does give a college the incentive to change its behavior.

If it's been found in violation of title six and since October 7th. The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights has opened dozens of investigations into claims of anti Semitism at colleges and K through 12 schools under this relatively recent interpretation. 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So how does the language of the protesters.

you know, when they're sort of taken in and perceived by Jewish students, how does that violate title six? 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: That is a much, much more difficult question. So a title six violation can happen with a school, either one, when the school treats a student differently because of their race, color, or national origin, or two, because the school creates what courts have called a hostile environment.

So a hostile environment means that the school might know that a student is being treated differently because of their race. Mm 

MUSIC: hmm. But 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: the school does nothing [02:02:00] about it. And so it's that kind of indifference that can violate federal law. And the Office of Civil Rights has recently released some examples of how this might work.

So imagine a college student whose dorm room is defaced with swastikas or white supremacist slogans about Jewish people. Or a Muslim student who is targeted for wearing a hijab. And if the school is told about this and does nothing, The office of civil rights has said that can be the basis of a hostile environment investigation for a violation of title six, based on this idea of shared ancestry.

MUSIC: Yeah. 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So if any pro Palestinian protester acts in ways that are similar, that would be a potential violation of federal law for the schools. But it's not so easy, right? Because what about some other statements? What if a campus protester puts up a sign that says, Israel is a racist state that must be dismantled?

Or if a professor says that we must oppose Israel at all costs? Are those [02:03:00] statements violations of federal anti discrimination law? Because if you're a Jewish student hearing these words, and you consider Israel as part of what it means to be Jewish, then it could feel threatening. And if you're asked to disavow Israel just to cross campus and get to your classes, it can feel like maybe you have to deny your own identity just to be a student on campus.

But even if these kinds of statements might violate Title VI, Aren't these also the kinds of statements that are protected by the First Amendment? So thus far, there haven't been any major court decisions that answer these questions. But there may be soon, because ever since October 7th, a number of lawsuits have been filed that ask this very question, whether highly critical statements against Israel can violate Title VI.

Because Title VI has been interpreted not just to give powers to the Office of Civil Rights, but it allows private individuals to bring lawsuits too. [02:04:00] So for example, there is now a lawsuit by a group of Jewish students who have sued the University of California, Berkeley Law School. 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: What's the story with that lawsuit?

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, some student groups at the law school had established a policy. They said, look, we're not going to invite any speakers who hold views in support of Zionism. So the UC Berkeley lawsuit argues that this student policy violates title six. Because it's anti Semitic and the law school tolerates it. It allows the student groups to do this.

Now the law school, on the other hand, has argued that, well, we can't punish student groups for their policy because that would violate their own first amendment rights. And in June of this year, a group of Jewish students at UCLA filed a federal lawsuit over pro Palestinian protests held at UCLA's campus in April.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So what happened there? 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, there, the protesters established an encampment on part of the campus called Royce Quad. And according to the [02:05:00] lawsuit, protesters established checkpoints at the campus and required people who wanted to cross the quad to go to class or go to the library, they had to denounce the state of Israel.

MUSIC: Uh huh. 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: And the plaintiffs here, these Jewish students, argued, well, they had a religious obligation to support Israel. And the fact that the university did nothing to stop these checkpoints violated their rights. And on August 13th, a federal district court judge granted the plaintiff's request for a preliminary injunction or to order the university to stop doing what they were doing.

And the judge ordered UCLA to ensure equal access to Jewish students when they wanted to be on campus and go to class. Now, this lawsuit claimed that UCLA violated the students First Amendment rights, including their free exercise of religion rights, as well as their rights under Title VI. On the preliminary injunction motion, the judge found that the students were likely to win on their First Amendment free exercise of religion claim, so he didn't resolve the Title VI claim.

And on August [02:06:00] 23rd, UCLA decided not to appeal the judge's decision. So that was a victory, uh, for the students at UCLA who had argued that they'd basically been denied their ability to freely access libraries and classes on campus. 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Because they had to go through these checkpoints. 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: That's right. At the very least, this means that other lawsuits are also going to be coming to test out whether these kinds of actions that we're seeing and have seen violated federal anti discrimination law.

Whose Speech, Whose Campus Part 2 - What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law - Air Date 9-10-24

 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So describe institutional neutrality.

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, after October 7th, many colleges and universities offered official statements of support for 7th attack. And many colleges offered official statements in support of Ukraine over the Russian invasion. Many colleges also condemned the attack on the Capitol in 2021. And many of them also made official statements regarding George Floyd's death when he was killed by a police [02:07:00] officer in 2020.

But it's been the October 7th statements that have put universities maybe in the most uncomfortable position because They received a response from students and some faculty that were not in support of the statements that they'd made. They wanted them to reverse those statements. And so after the campus process of last spring, where you had hundreds of arrests of students and some faculty, several colleges, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Texas have said that they will adopt what they call institutional neutrality.

And you asked about it. It really means that yeah. The university is officially saying we will stay out of political and social issues. And it's a policy position most commonly associated with the university of Chicago, because it comes from a document called the Calvin report from 1967. The university of Chicago had studied this through a committee saying, what should we do in the wake of these violent protests of the sixties?

And Chicago ever since has said, we stay out of these things. We [02:08:00] don't say one way or the other, uh, in terms of our political support. 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So if henceforth all these institutions were, you know, neutral, how would this affect the protest going forward? 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, it does affect it because of what the students protesting for Palestine have been asking for.

First of all, they've been asking for campuses to condemn Israel. So if a college is institutionally neutral, they'll say, we're not going to say one way or the other. They've also been asking campuses to divest their financial holdings from companies that have anything to do with Israel. And that too can be related to institutional neutrality.

So if a college says from now on, we are institutionally neutral, then they could respond to these demands by saying, look, politics do not dictate our financial decisions. We're not going to change based on what students are asking for. I 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: mean, through all of this, how did the University of Chicago fare?

Like, if they adhered to the Calvin Report since, you know, the late 1960s, were protests [02:09:00] substantially different there? 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, they didn't reach any level of violence. They certainly restricted, uh, the way in which students could protest. And I think more than that, you know, for a long time now, the University of Chicago has, uh, promoted a certain culture that you can have respectful protest.

You're allowed to protest in these places and in these ways, but that's it. If you go beyond that, we're going to crack down on you. And I think other colleges have promoted freer interpretations of how and whether and when to protest. And some of that of course has backfired because it's led to calling the police in and sometimes, um, some violence and a lot of tension on campus.

So what you see with these student protests of 2024 is colleges having to take a new look at what free speech really does mean in practice for them and how much they're willing to tolerate. 

MUSIC: Yeah. Yeah. 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: And, and keep in mind that some of the faculty themselves were part of another generation of protests.

So [02:10:00] there's some irony here too. 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just goes back to this whole idea of, like, when there's conflicting ideology, free speech is extremely complicated. So is neutrality. I mean, like, neutrality, the idea of neutrality, you know, could mean, oh yeah, I'm not on anyone's side. And then another interpretation of neutrality is the Swiss, like, laundering Nazi gold.

You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, both of those things are. Kind of their own mess. 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Yeah. And of course, neutrality is a statement, right? Yeah, exactly. So if you look at the, if you look at the University of Chicago statement, um, for January 6th. It only says we understand there was a terrible incident and we have counselors and people to help for students who are upset.

That's very, very neutral to say that there's been a thing that happened. Whereas other campuses were much more willing to say, we condemn this attack on democracy. Now it all works when most of the campus is behind that [02:11:00] statement. It doesn't work when there's incredible division. 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Right, right. Right. And so is there any sense of how this will play out?

I mean, is it just like a matter of there really being no solution if the temperature is hot enough, you know what I'm saying is the only solution just like. Things not being quite so volatile. 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, I mean, I, I think it's, uh, early yet in the school year to see whether these protests will be of the same size and intensity as last spring.

I do think there will be continuing conflicts in the courts now that there have been investigations and there have been some successes in the courts, um, on the part of, um, Uh, Jewish students who say, look, this is a title six violation. And I think it will be really interesting to see how courts grapple with, is this a protected speech issue or is this a federal anti discrimination issue?

Because there does have to be some kind of decision and it's not obvious, um, which way [02:12:00] to go for some of the most difficult questions. 

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Yeah. It doesn't seem obvious to me at all. It seems completely case by case with every utterance, like every message. It seems completely different. 

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: That's right. And I think the problem then, of course, as someone pointed out, is that if you have the potential for the Office of Civil Rights to investigate you as a college and you just don't want to get involved in too many lawsuits, then you pull back and you actually curb student speech.

You say, you know, you can't say stuff like this because we don't want to get sued in court.

SECTION D: RESISTANCE

 

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

Anti-Zionism Sweeping Across Jewish Communities - The Majority Report - Air Date 9-12-24

 

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: And I think it came from, you know, a real sense of like, These really harmful ideas can get bonded with our identity such that we think that that's who we are. And so, you know, that's part of why we talk about racism, and we talk about white supremacy, particularly that there's this idea of supremacy that got bonded [02:13:00] in with what it meant to be a white person when the whole world.

idea of whiteness was being formed. It was being woven in, right? That supremacy is a part of it. And so now when people are like, Oh, I'm an anti racist, like I'm a white person, but I'm actively working against that, that connection that happened. I think the same thing happened for Jewish people with Zionism.

There's been Judaism forever. There's been Jewish people since the beginning, and they've been practicing in so many different ways. It's so many communal ways, so many beautiful ways. Um, I have a lot of incredible Jewish friends in my life who have gifted me the practice of ritual with them, of Shabbat with them.

Um, I've gotten to go through some of these things. I'm like, Oh, what it means to be Jewish is actually to be loving, to be caring, to be looking out for your neighbors, to be thinking about repair from harm. Zionism comes in and is like, this is about taking land and claiming something and trying to create an ethno state.

That, that. That's a totally different project from what Judaism has [02:14:00] been about for its entire existence, but it comes in at this interesting moment where there's a ton of trauma and you can take advantage of that and you can fuse these things together. So I wanted to talk about that because I learned that from anti Zionist Jewish people.

That they were like the way that I began to understand that Zionism wasn't a fundamental aspect of being Jewish. It was actually a really harmful thing that was happening. And it was. We were raised to think it was a beautiful vision and that it was our destiny, but actually it's, it's causing so much harm.

It's causing, um, so much dissonance in our community. And, and now we see this genocide playing out where I think if any other country was doing what Israel is doing right now, we would be very clear headed. And it's even interesting, you know, to watch the debate and to be like, Oh, look at this, the differences in the stance on Ukraine and the stance on Palestine, where the power dynamics are so similar, and we're showing up in one situation for the person who's being attacked, and in one situation for the person [02:15:00] who is doing the attacking.

And, yes, there, There's so much, I mean, we can unpack and unpack and unthread and unthread, but for me as a black person who has really lived in this country and watched and become in deep community with white people, undoing racism, it felt so important to me to see that there was an option like this for Jewish people that was like, oh, we can undo this work as well.

And in this moment. I think one of the most beautiful things I've seen, um, amidst all the horror is how many Jewish people are like, oh, I can let go of Zionism and I can heal. I can recover my soul and I can recover community. And in, in doing that, that's the way that we will actually stop this problem, not just in this moment, but in an ongoing way.

Because I think that's also the piece is now people are not just saying we want to cease fire. It's like we want an arms embargo and we want to stop this occupation. We want to end this. And I will also say this. I live on land that was stolen. I live in the United States. And so it's very [02:16:00] personal for me.

I'm like, I didn't get, I wasn't there at the moment in history when I could have intervened on this happening and could have changed the story of this happening. But I'm here now and my country is supporting the same thing happening somewhere else. And I can intervene. I can play a role in that. So it felt really important for me to include that.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, um, and I think the optimism about that moment, that, that display of solidarity for a free Palestine in this current moment is, I think, you know, part of the vision that you're, you're hoping for, which is a glimmer of hope in, in this and, um, can you expand a little more on the notions of power and whiteness and how, um, the, the, you, you including that section, you know, it's also, you know, An acknowledgment that whiteness and, and, and power through whiteness is, is done through imperialism, too, um, and that Zionism has folded into that, obviously, but that that history is so present, [02:17:00] I think, in white supremacy all around us.

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: Yeah, I think that's important. I mean, I want to acknowledge, you know, and I was, as I was writing it, I was like, I understand that Jewish people are multiracial people, um, and then I also understand and what I see, the visual of what's happening between Israel and Palestine is very much um, That Israel has, in part of its development, really drawn in white Jewishness and really created a space of whiteness for Jewish people.

And if you study American history, you see how whiteness developed and how it has claimed one people at a time, right? It's like, okay, we're starting off with these British people, these French people. Okay. Now, all right. Italians, okay. Irish people, like y'all can be down. Now Jewish people come in in a different way where they're like, we were oppressed by white people.

We were oppressed by people who wanted to be Aryan. So the journey from going from that to being in a space where you're like mostly in the U. S. when we were moving through the world, we're identified as white people. We're seen as white people and it gives us a different kind of [02:18:00] access and a different kind of power than brown people have.

And when I speak with anti Zionist Jewish people, they're like, I can see that. I can understand that. I can acknowledge that. And then I can take responsibility for it. I think that's part of what we're seeing play out internationally now is that we're looking at the Middle East and we're partnering with people who have the whitest looking leadership, people who would come to this country and be acknowledged as white people.

We're being like, that's where we're going to pour our energy and attention. That's who we're going to call our ally. That's who we're going to call our friend, the people who will serve Western interest in this part of the world. It's deep and. The other piece of this I think that we have to bring in is we're in a, you know, it was 9 11 yesterday.

It was like we're in this, we're in a long arc in the U. S. with our Islamophobia, with our anti Arab sentiment, with our racism against people from that part of the world. So these things are all tied in, right? And one of the things I keep trying to do is like pull them apart [02:19:00] just enough so we can look at them clearly and be like, oh, we were told to see these people.

As untrustworthy as terrorist as violent. We were told that as a black person. I'm like, I've been on the other end of that same kind of storytelling where all of my people are something and all of us deserve some kind of, um, punishment and all of the white people are innocent and all of them are victims and all of them deserve protection.

And once you start to see it, you can't unsee it. Right? This book, the ideas. It's exactly the same tropes. Yeah, and it's sexual violence, but it's also like the story only gets told one way, right? I mean, I think it was so interesting in the debate when Kamala was like, well, look at where all this started, October 7th.

And I was like, oh, that's such, um, that's, that's a very Western way to tell that story, right? To say, oh, you know, You know, and again, because it's the same thing that happened with 9 11, where it's like, oh, this just happened to us out of the blue, out of nowhere. We have no idea why it happened. Instead of saying, what are the conditions that are being [02:20:00] created around the world that would make people want to do this, right?

Can we get curious about it? And without having to justify it, right? I think that there's a disparate distinction that's important. That's being able to say, I'm not in charge of whatever strategies people are using for their resistance, but can I understand why people might engage in resistance or why people might engage in pushing back against empire or why people might engage in pushing back against those who are oppressing them?

And one of the things I think we are privileged in is that we get to sit in a place where I'm like, well, I'm not. Under bombs and constant attack and being enclosed in a small space. I have room to have a ton of nuance about everything that's happening. When I have been in situations of deep oppression, I, that nuance fell away.

All I was concerned with was how do I get this person to stop hurting me? And. whatever story I need to change to get them to stop hurting me, I'm going to try to do that. I think we're in that situation right now where there's a ton of people who are like, how do I get this person [02:21:00] to stop hurting me?

And to be a U. S. citizen is to recognize like, we are the funder of most of the harm that's happening in the world. We are thinking it through. We are collaborating with those who are causing harm and we need to take responsibility for that. If we hope to continue to exist. 

Palestine In Israeli School Books w Author Nurit Peled-Elhanan Part 2 - Book Cafe Podcast - Air Date 2-22-24

 

NURIT PELED-ELHANAN: So I'm an Israeli Jewish woman. Well, I didn't choose to be Jewish. You know, this is forced upon you. There is something like Jewish blood, which is really a very racist way of looking at people. If your mother is Jewish, then your blood is Jewish, then you are Jewish, but it's not a matter of choice.

And in Israel, they divide the population between Jews and non Jews. The non Jews are nothing but non Jews. Nobody tells you what they are, only what [02:22:00] they aren't. And these are, of course, the Palestinian Arab citizens. They are defined as non Jewish population or non Jewish sector, and that's it. Okay, I grew up here in a very patriotic, chauvinistic, racist society.

Uh, we didn't have television. We didn't have any way to know what's going on in the world. And, uh, but then I went, uh, abroad to study and I started looking at things differently and I learned a lot of things that I didn't know about, uh, Israel. And that changed me a little bit, you know, Little by little.

My family was mostly socialist. My father was in the army. He retired as a general, but he was very critical of the army and of the politics of Israel, of course. [02:23:00] After he retired, he devoted himself to, um, to the study of Arabic and especially Palestinian literature. And he was a professor of Palestinian literature in University of Tel Aviv.

I am a researcher of, um, the educational discourse of Israel. So I started by studying the development of literacy at school, uh, writing and reading and speaking at school. This is my PhD. And then I studied the classroom discourse and dialogue in the classroom. Class, and I came upon racist discourse in class, especially towards Ethiopian children.

So I did some study about that. And then I wanted to study the teaching of scientific discourse. Because there are a lot of [02:24:00] literature that says that the fact that so many children decide that science is not for them is not because of science, but because of the language of science. And I started studying that, but when I I read the school books.

I realized there's something much more urgent to look at, which is racism in Israeli school books. Uh, so my first book is about the representation, misrepresentation of Palestinians in Palestine in Israeli school book. And my second book just came out is about other minorities, Jewish minorities that are marginalized and discriminated.

And also, of course, in the textbooks, who are the Arab Jews, Jews who came from Arab countries and the Ethiopian Jews who were brought in the 90s. Um, and of course, Holocaust education, Holocaust education is, is the key [02:25:00] factor to understand a lot of things about Israeli education and Israeli behavior also.

It is the main factor of Israeli identity, both personal and national. More than Zionism, more than Judaism, more than anything, it's a holocaust. Israel is presented to the children as an alternative to holocaust. And the potential exterminators today are Ever since, you know, we befriended Germany at 53, 1953, the Arabs received the role of potential exterminators.

So all the feelings and actions of revenge go to them. The idea is that since we are the eternal victims, we have to be very strong and domineering in the area in order to prevent another holocaust. And that's the main, uh, the [02:26:00] main foundation of, uh, the Holocaust. 

Anti-Zionism Sweeping Across Jewish Communities Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 9-12-24

 

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But, um, personally, you had your section on your conversation with your sisters was something that I really loved. Like I have a sister and I really resonated with how you talked about how you guys would argue and, uh, lacking, uh, Uh, models of conflict resolution when growing up, uh, like my parents are lawyers, so, uh, we were taught to argue a lot, uh, that's why I'm in this job, maybe a little bit, um, but not the conflict resolution part, and we've gotten better, but like some of your suggestions about these kind of inter familiar, familial Dynamics are really key here too because we always get I am from viewers about my my brothers in the QAnon rabbit hole My dad is a trump supporting The whatever and how do I approach them about this?

I think this the the the conversation that you transcribe between you [02:27:00] and your sisters is About repair in those relationships if you could talk a bit about that. Yeah 

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: Yeah, well, you know, I I do appreciate it's all connected to me, right that i'm like You Even when I look at Israel Palestine, I'm like, y'all are all brothers and sisters.

We're all brothers and sisters. Like, in all these places where conflict is happening, we're actually all family. We're all related. We're all coming from the same root systems. All of us are, but none of us learn conflict resolution. Almost none of us learn it at a young age. And that plays out. at the small scale, at the, you know, local scale, at the federal scale, and at the international scale.

Like, I think it's the same thing happening in, at every level. So for me, I'm like, okay, let's bring it back down to the most accessible place for many of us, which is every year I'm going to see my family, at least once. How do I shape those conversations? And this idea of repair, of being proactive about it, is, you know, Recognizing most of the time that the conflicts that are happening, it's, it looks like it's about something that's [02:28:00] happening between us, but so often it's actually about stuff that's happening within our own lives and things that are not being seen, right?

Those, that cousin who's like slipping off into a cult, something was not being seen usually in that person. There was a way that that person was not being heard. They were moving into a crisis of isolation. of individualism, of not feeling honored, of not feeling smart enough, not being recognized in dating or whatever it is.

Something's happening where that person's being lost in the social, um, fabric. They're slipping through. And as siblings, as loved ones, as family, we're in a unique position to be like, Hey, I see you. I see that something's going on. Can we talk about it? Can you tell me what's happening? When we started doing these check ins, like we have political differences.

They're not that, that kind of, um, you know, it's not like that kind of golf, right? Yeah. It's not like a huge chasm. I'm like, Hey girl, you know, but, but we were coming together and being like, [02:29:00] we're exploding over how the dishwasher got loaded or something. And then having to, Cry it all out and be like, well, what was really happening is I'm super stressed at my job or My money's not right or I just went through a breakup or something's happening with my health or I'm in a grieving process And I need you to know that so that you can be tender with me That's the thing that almost everyone wants is someone People to look at them be like I can be tender with you.

I can still see the child in you I can see the person that I love in you and I can give you room for your humanity and your contradictions And your need for repair, whatever that might be, um, I can learn to give you a good apology. And then I can learn, you know, the good, the best apology is the one where it includes how you're not going to do something again and you don't do it.

So it's like really learning to make those adaptations as well. Um, I think that if more people are able to practice this at the intimate level, and I also want to say, like, if your family doesn't feel like a safe space to practice this [02:30:00] chosen family or other, your friendship circles. There's tons of places where you can actually practice this.

The idea is to just be very intentional. Like, we're going to be together. How are we? Let's start off with, how are we actually coming into this? And then let's be. 

Credits

 

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Democracy Now!, The Daily Show, The Muckrake Political Podcast, The Real News Network, The Majority Report, What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law, and The Book Cafe Podcast. Further details are in the show notes. 

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet—Ken, [02:31:00] Brian, Ben, and Andrew—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community where you can also continue the discussion. 

So, coming to you from far outside, the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from BestOfTheLeft.com