This episode of The Project Censored Show originally aired on Project Censored on July 22, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
Ten months in, the US role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza goes far beyond complicity. Israel is butchering Palestinians with US bombs, funding, and political and military support, and some members of the US military are resigning in protest. In this episode of the Project Censored Show, which is now syndicated by TRNN, host Eleanor Goldfield speaks with Palestinian-American Mohammed Abouhashem, who on Oct. 21 of last year left the US Air Force after 22 years of service. Abouhashem discusses his decision to leave amidst the murder of six of his family members in Palestine. He describes the ongoing genocide through a lens of military experience, highlighting how Israel and its ally the US are well aware of the civilian casualties—an awareness that, for Mohammed, made any further military service impossible.
In the second segment of the show, Goldfield speaks with filmmaker Kym Staton about his film ‘Trust Fall,’ which was recently released in the US. The documentary chronicles the personal and professional life of Julian Assange as well as the US case against him. Staton makes clear the importance of this story and case, even after Assange won his freedom, and offers insight into the remarkable smear campaign against him and how people power is the key to not only combating misinformation, but in freeing one of the most significant political prisoners of our time.
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Welcome to the Project Censored Radio Show. I’m your host this week, Eleanor Goldfield. In the first half of the show I speak with Palestinian-American, Mohammed Abouhashem, who on October 21st of last year left the US Air Force After 22 years of service.
Mohammed discusses his decision to leave amidst the murder of six of his family members in Palestine. He describes the ongoing genocide through a lens of military experience highlighting how Israel and its ally, the US, are well aware of the civilian casualties, an awareness that for him made any further military service impossible.
Next up, I speak with filmmaker, Kym Staton, about his film Trust fall that has just come out in the United States. Trust Fall Chronicles the personal and professional life of Julian Assange, as well as the US case against him. Kym makes clear the importance of this story and case, even after Julian’s freedom, and offers insight into the remarkable smear campaign against Julian and how people power is the key to not only combating misinformation, but indeed freeing one of the most significant political prisoners of our time. All this and more coming up now on Project Censored.
Speaker 1:
… minds collapsing. All the prisons filled to capacity, citizens in the times for the master thief. Divide and conquer, still a masterpiece. Open your eyes and realize what’s happening. Time’s running out to reach our potential, fame, at the table, then you’re probably on the menu. We won. We got that [inaudible 00:01:36] with our brothers and our sisters. We won. The people [inaudible 00:01:37]-
Eleanor Goldfield:
Thanks everyone for joining us at the Project Censored Radio Show. We’re very glad right now to welcome to the show Mohammed Abouhashem, a Palestinian-American veteran, former Air Force Senior Master Sergeant of the US Air Force, having served 22 years, before submitting his separation request from the government on October 21st, 2023.
He was previously a fifteen-year mechanic on cargo tanker aircraft that provided rapid global mobility. And for the past seven years, he has served in different leadership roles in six military readiness units, including reconnaissance and aircraft readiness. He has lost six family members since October in Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Mohammed, thank you so much for being here.
Mohammed Abouhashem:
Thank you for having me.
Eleanor Goldfield:
So I’d like to start with a question that I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot, which is why now? Or why then? Why was that the moment that you felt that you needed to walk away from those 20-plus years of service?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
Well, the main purpose originally when I joined the Air Force was right after 9/11. As a young 18-year-old, I was scared for the family that I have here in the US, and I wanted to join because I wanted to make sure that they were protected. That was the main reason.
But I almost got out after four years of service, but the only reason why I stayed in was after talking to some relatives, I had family members that convinced me that this could be an opportunity that I could stay in and use my voice as a Palestinian-American. We don’t have a lot of representation. Representation matters. Knowing that my family’s lineage from Palestine and how they went through the 1948 war and the 1967 war as well, I could have used my voice, and that’s why I decided to stay in the 22 years.
But everything in October, obviously, once I finally had the opportunity and I started having those conversations, I found out only three days into the conflict that my aunt was killed in an Israeli airstrike. And immediately, obviously, I started gathering the data that I needed in order for me to provide to the intelligence community.
Luckily, I was working in the District of Washington where I had members, even my direct report, who saw oversight over the Defense Intelligence Agency, which was great for me because I knew that the intelligence that I was going to provide on the location of where my family’s home and who lived in those apartment complexes was going to make it directly to our intelligence community and was hopefully going to raise a lot of red flags into what Israel was doing.
But unfortunately, I was met with complete silence. I never received a response back. And it took me two weeks to realize that I’m probably not going to receive a response. And even moreso, after I submitted my request to part ways from the military, when I started seeing members from the State Department themselves leave because they were advising the Biden administration of the same kind of actions that Israel was taking and our complicity to our own US laws and international law, I knew right then that there was no specific rank I was going to reach that would’ve made my impact more meaningful. So I had to use my voice in a different way.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m curious about that intelligence that you said that you shared. Is that common practice for people then to share with higher-ups intelligence about, “Hey, there are civilians here”? Or, “Hey, we actually know these people here”? Whether that be in a place like Palestine or Iraq or Afghanistan, is that typical practice?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
It is typical practice. I can sit there and speak on everyone that has went through several conflicts in the past, whether they had direct ties to the conflict with family members that are being the ones that are being slaughtered by Israel and US-made bombs.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah, absolutely. And indeed, I found you through a joint open letter titled Service in Dissent that was released on July 2nd. And in one part of the letter, it states, that, quote, “Each of us has had our own experience of the cascading failures of process, leadership, and decision-making, that have characterized this administration’s intransigent response to this continuing calamity,” end quote.
So you mentioned that you were just met with silence. Has there been any kind of side door, or, “Hey, I wish I could help you, but I just can’t,” kind of conversations? Or could you talk a little bit more about that kind of reaction or conversations that you’ve had?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
No. To be honest with you, I’ve had several leaders that extended their hand on a personal level of how they can help me get through these times.
But beyond what our own intelligence community, what the administration, no one within the higher military echelons even reached out. No one contacted me directly. It was mainly my own peers or leadership team that I worked for directly that ever reached out to me and continued to reach out to me to make sure that everything was okay.
Eleanor Goldfield:
You had this information, and I’m assuming this intelligence that you then shared was not heavily classified, or you had to have some kind of high, top-secret pass in order to read it, right?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
Correct.
Eleanor Goldfield:
So then it would then suggest very obviously that the United States is well-aware of what Israel is doing, and it’s not under the impression that Israel is actually actively trying to minimize civilian casualties?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
Absolutely. And it’s difficult to say that all the intelligence that we’re sharing with them, the amount of reconnaissance that we’ve flown in the past in that region and continue to fly in that region, we have enough intelligence to share with them what they’re doing.
But not only the United States. I mean, you see what’s going on around the globe of all the different countries joining the ICJ case because they see enough evidence themselves of the complicity in a plausible genocide.
So it’s not far from anyone to say that we as the United States are seeing what’s going on, on the ground. I’ve had members from the intelligence community, and I quote, state, what we’re seeing, what me and you are seeing, what the common public are seeing, they’re seeing twofold.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Which is absolutely horrifying. And of course, we’re recording this on Monday, July 8th, and the Lancet recently just came out with a report that says that the death toll conservatively, according to their research, is actually more like 186,000 people. And of course, the State Department has announced that they’re not going to count the dead anymore, so they’re just going to continue with this genocide denial in a really stark and overt way.
And I’m curious, this open letter was not just signed by you, but it was signed by several people who had left their posts not just in the Air Force but in a variety of places. Could you speak to how did you guys find each other? Was there just some internal memo like, “Hey, this person quit”? How did you find other people that were in a similar position as you?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
Eventually, we started connecting with each other through the first members that started to leave the State Department, with Hella and Josh. I reached out to Josh directly in regards to his resignation and just asked him about how I should approach certain situations, and he started connecting me with other members of the media.
Because when I first made my decision on 21 October, I was going and trying to reach out to the media myself, but unfortunately, I wasn’t getting anywhere. And so I wasn’t able to voice my opinion until later in June, once I finally started connecting with all the right people. And Josh kind of brought us all together as a team to start having those conversations together.
Because you see the reports. Even in the letter, we talk about how we all had our different levels of the departments that we worked on, yet we all felt the same exact dissent towards what was happening. And multiple different military members, you have myself, Riley, and Harrison, Harrison serves in the army, and both myself and Riley are in the Air Force in completely different departments.
If multiple different people from different departments are noticing the same thing, you’re talking about advisors that are advising our government on the complicity that we might be facing in this genocide, it should send a red flag to most Americans that this impacts our national security on a level that we have not seen, and it’s concerning to us. Although we decided to walk away from our positions, we swore an oath to this constitution, so we are continuing to serve the American people just in a different capacity.
Eleanor Goldfield:
And could you talk a little bit about that capacity? What do you feel like your role is now?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
My role personally obviously is to try to help people understand the military readiness aspect of what’s happening. For me, this is one of the discussions that I had with members of the media about my fear as a first sergeant and how this has impacted our service members to include our junior members. It’s a little bit concerning to me.
I’ve had multiple service members that were asking about how to submit the conscientious objector package. I’ve had members come up to me and say this is affecting their health, this is affecting their anxiety. They’re watching a genocide happen live. There’s nothing that we can hide anymore. Every social media platform is broadcasting this live.
And additionally, in only a few cases, I’ve had members that wanted to leave the service no matter what, and they were going to drastic measures. In one case that I know of, a member turned to legal drugs in order for them to separate, because it’s incompatible with military service.
And to me, this is concerning because if this is happening within our military community, you’re talking about all our NATO allies, all nations. The junior service members, they’re watching this and they are thinking the same thing: how in the world are we letting this happen?
Eleanor Goldfield:
And kind of circling back to what I asked you personally about why now? I’m curious what you’re hearing from other service members, because we’re seeing the first live-streamed genocide in the world, which is horrifying, but also very powerful in terms of its effect on how people are dissenting.
But of course, the US has committed atrocities in Iraq and in Afghanistan and Vietnam, and going back quite some time. So why do you feel that this in particular is affecting service members differently or moreso than what happened in the past?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
In the past, to include even when I was serving back in 2003, it’s a huge difference when every single member of the military is watching these atrocities live on their phone. There is no hiding what is going on anymore. There is no hiding how many people are being killed.
It’s imperative for them to see all these things, because they have to make a decision for themselves on whether they feel that our service is illegal, immoral, or unethical. And each person engages their morality a little bit differently. But this is something that we are taught in the military all the time. We continue to say, “You follow all orders unless they’re illegal, unethical, or immoral.” And unfortunately, I found right from the beginning that all three have been crossed, and that’s why I had to step aside.
But I continue to have the young service members reach out to me asking me what they should be doing. And I continue to ask them those questions. Do they feel that this is immoral in their own ethics? And some of them have to make their own decisions on whether they value their morality over what’s going on.
Eleanor Goldfield:
But I’m also curious with that as somebody who’s never served in the military, when they say morals and ethics, what are the morals and ethics that they instill in you? Because I’ve been a peace activist since I was 14, so I’m obviously not talking about it from a military perspective.
But what do they instill in you in terms of that? Is it kind of strictly going by the constitution? Or could you talk a little bit about more of those moral and ethics that the military then suggests are ones you should follow?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
So the military doesn’t really deep-dive into which morality you should follow or which ethics you should follow. We have basic guidelines, but those are basic guidelines. Each person in the military comes from a different perspective, different background, different part of the world where they view morality and ethics a little bit differently from each other. That’s what makes us diverse.
So in the case of some members, they see and view this as morally wrong, while others may not, and that’s where it’s just a guideline for the military. But we’re all given that same guideline. We have to look within ourselves.
And that’s why anytime any military member reach out to me, I ask them those questions: do they feel as if their morality or their ethics are being violated? Do they feel like what we are doing and what we are helping Israel accomplish as illegal? And if they do, then those are the choices that they have to make personally.
Eleanor Goldfield:
You’re listening to the Project Censored Radio Show. I’m your host this week, Eleanor Goldfield. We’ll now continue our conversation with US Air Force veteran, Mohammed Abouhashem.
There’s also in that Service in Dissent letter, a place where you talk about a message to former colleagues. Could you talk a little bit about that? And in case there are any people that are still in service in the military listening to this, what would a message be that you’d share with them about this situation?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
If I can share any message with them is they don’t have to suffer in silence. We know that there’s a lot of people that are still currently serving that have a major issue. There were members that I know of personally that resigned silently. They did not come out publicly to resign, but they’ve called me directly and told me that the reason was because of the conflict. And unfortunately, we’ll never know what number that is because each one of us has made our choice whether we were going to come out publicly with the matter or go silently.
But what we are hoping to call on our colleagues to do is, if they are still in, to use their power to try to pressure the administration, because things have not changed. We’re in July, and the complicity in genocide has not changed. The plausible that this may be a genocide has not changed.
For them, they can use their power still while they’re still serving, and if they cannot find any alternate means, they can reach out to any one of the 12 members. They can find us on our social media platforms and reach out to us directly if they feel like coming forward or if they feel like resigning publicly. We can help them with those matters so that they don’t feel the same thing that I went through back in October where I felt that I was not able to reach out to anyone directly or any news media outlets because no one really knew how big this was going to be back then.
Eleanor Goldfield:
And this is a bit of a personal question. Being a Palestinian-American, do you feel that there’s a splintering of your identity? Do you feel that it’s difficult to be an American at a time like this because you are also a Palestinian? Just like somebody who is from the former Yugoslavia might find it difficult to have been American at the time that NATO was destroying Yugoslavia or Iraq or Afghanistan, do you feel this splintering happening with your identity?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
I do in a sense of obviously what is going on in the Gaza Strip mean? We’re talking about a 25-mile strip. And what has gone on in Palestine for the past 76 years, it definitely affects how I approach certain situations, but I’m also an American, right? When we moved here, this is what I’ve known my entire life, this is what I’ve known for the majority of my life, is how to be an American.
So what I can make as a change and what I can implement is the changes to the US policies that continue to drive these kind of actions in Gaza from Israel. And those are the things that I’m focusing on. I can’t change the policies of Israel, so unfortunately, even though it is, as you stated, splintering between being Palestinian and being American, I can’t change what Israel is doing.
And unfortunately, as an American, this is what I know and this is what I can change. I can help the American people understand how this affects their national security and how it impacts their every-single-day life when they watch the majority of our allies turning towards the ICJ in the case against genocide from Israel. And if we are complicit in this, it does affect them. And we’ve seen it even in the letter that we wrote, how we affected our soldiers in Jordan, with the three members that were killed.
This only paints a target on the American people. So in two ways, I’m affected because I have direct ties and I have my people that are being affected in Gaza, but at the same time, my people here in America are being affected by our policies and blind complicity in genocide that our administration continues to go with.
I talked about the bombing of my family’s home, of my aunt’s home, and I talked about how the Israel military’s response, when I finally received the response, was that it was a Hamas operational structure. Which I quickly rebutted that, because we know the members that live in that family. They’re regular family members, they are teachers, they are market owners. There’s nobody in there that anyone does not know. There were 12 children killed in that same building, yet it doesn’t equate to what the law of armed conflict, specifically proportionality, of if you’re targeting a Hamas operational structure.
Most of the family members, when they heard the Israeli military, the initial what they call a roof knock, they stepped outside of the building, and they were outside the building for 90 minutes waiting, and when nothing happened, they went inside. From my uncle, from my cousins, basically what they said is the minute that they entered the living room, by the time they made it into the apartment and into the living room, that’s when the building was struck, and they found themselves underneath the rubble.
So if it was a Hamas operational structure, why did Israel military decide not to attack it when all the people were out of it? And we questioned their response. And when we asked them again to explain how it was a Hamas operational structure, they declined to answer. That, to me, is important, because it shows that they are not willing to give a direct response or intelligence on anything.
And I don’t know what they’re concerned about. If they’re saying it’s a Hamas operational structure, they should not worry of explaining to the people how it was used in that way to cover themselves. But the fact that they declined to answer and the fact that they’re refusing to give anything more than the blanket statement that they continue to give the media of Hamas operational structure, it doesn’t cut it, and it doesn’t cut it in a ICJ case as well.
Eleanor Goldfield:
And did you reach out as an Air Force veteran? Or did you reach out as a civilian?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
As a civilian through the media outlets.
Eleanor Goldfield:
And so then they responded to you via the same media outlets?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
They responded through different media outlets, declining to answer.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Wow. And I’m also curious now that you mentioned that, because Hamas is the government in Gaza, and so to say that something is a Hamas structure, isn’t that kind of like saying it’s a government structure, which could be anything? It feels purposefully vague.
Mohammed Abouhashem:
It does feel purposefully vague. You’ve heard them multiple times. A school is a Hamas operational structure. A hospital is Hamas operational structure.
Well, if you look at the laws of war, when you’re defining how to strike a school, it has to have an imminent threat to you or your personnel. You can’t say that it’s just a Hamas operational structure and we struck it. That’s not how the laws of war work. You have to define that this was an imminent threat and it was used that way.
Well, what imminent threats have we noticed when every single hospital and every single school has been destroyed? No one is talking about, well, there were missiles fired from the school at Tel Aviv, or there were missiles fired from this hospital at another city in Israel. So what imminent threat were they facing exactly?
They use this blanket statement so that they can justify that they can destroy this building. They’re going to have to try to defend themselves in the ICJ case that what they’re doing was right, and unfortunately, I don’t see how that’s going to work.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Well, an imminent threat, you can’t compare the firepower of the Palestinians against Israel. It’s literally like comparing rocks and tanks.
And I’ve used the example, let’s say that there were an active shooter in a school here in the US, if the cops then bombed that school, would everyone be like, “Yay, we did it”? You’d be horrified that that would be the response. That’s not how you deal with a threat. If there were one in a school, you would try to pointedly address that threat, and yet it’s okay if it’s done in Gaza.
Mohammed Abouhashem:
We can even look at it even further. The international community continues to say that we’re trying to help out minimize civilians. Gaza is a 25-mile stretch with 2.2 million people. Gaza is not its own country that’s separated from Israel. It’s inside Israel.
If you were really trying to minimize civilian population, just like if we were to say that there was a terrorist threat in Texas and they’ve embedded themselves among civilians, the first thing we would start to do is try to minimize the civilian casualties by getting them out of the state of Texas.
If you remove the civilian population from Gaza into Israel, because that is their country, and they could have had the multiple coalitions of forces helping them with maintaining the population right outside of Gaza so that they can go in and get the hostages safely. There is no reason that anyone should believe that they were protecting the hostages when they were firing almost 6000 rockets per day from the very beginning of the war.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah. No, of course.
Mohammed Abouhashem:
I want to say this also. I mean, this is a comment from some of the Palestinian people, to include my family members. They always say, “Let them bomb the buildings. We can rebuild buildings. It’s fine. Why are they bombing the people that are in the buildings?”
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah. And of course, unfortunately or fortunately, I think it’s necessary for people to learn the history of Israel. If you do, then you realize that the whole goal is ethnic cleansing and genocide. So it’s not about Hamas, because Hamas has only existed for the past 30-some-odd years.
So when you were talking, I was thinking about something else, because obviously, you understand military operations, which I don’t, and I think a lot of listeners being civilians who have never served, don’t either. Do you think the understanding of how things could be done differently in a military sense is also pushing US service members to dissent because they know you could have done it differently?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
I do believe so. I’ve had certain conversations with some of my colleagues regarding that fact. But even moreso that we know that Israel had the intelligence on the 5th and 6th, and they could have prevented this.
And now from what I can talk about, obviously I can’t talk about the intelligence besides the fact that I received information from within the intelligence community, from some of my colleagues, that told me that they had all the proper intelligence to tell them that they should have been on alert status and they could have stopped Hamas on the 6th of October.
But what I do understand is military readiness, meaning aircraft readiness. Just to use as an example for anybody that’s listening that doesn’t understand, on the 4th of July, when we heard chatter, when the intelligence community heard chatter, that there may be intensified incidents that may raise alarm, and that’s why we raised the threat levels within the military installations overseas, it should give people a reason to understand that when the intelligence community from Israel received credible sources, not only from the intelligence community, but even the outposts near Gaza, their own people stated in an article, it was written, I believe, in the Haaretz newspaper, when they were talking about the Hannibal objective.
They warned that there was a lot of activity happening. Why the alert status of the Israeli government was not at the highest level? Why their aircrafts were not ready to go within 15 minutes? As if everything that we trained on between our coalition forces when it comes to alert status, we train that they can get up in the air as quickly as possible. Why was that not a priority for them? Those are the questions that the people need to be asking of the government of Israel. How in the world did they let this happen? What broke down? What intelligence was not provided to the right people? Or was this done purposefully?
I mean, most of the people can really look into the force protection levels. Everything that I’m saying is all on Google, Wikipedia. We don’t shy away from posting the force protection levels, neither does our NATO allies. This is how we prepare for certain actions and we practice together in Red Flags in Vegas. We practice what alert status and how to quickly get fighter aircrafts into the air. So this isn’t news to anyone of how we operate together as a coalition. How we helped Israel.
Actually, the first time in seven years that they joined Red Flag was last year in 2023, so they know what heightened alert status is. They know what force protection is when it comes to intelligence and where they should be standing.
And I don’t want to be quoted, that I read in one or two news articles that it took almost 8 to 12 hours to respond. How did it take 8 to 12 hours to respond when you had multiple credible sources stating that the threat levels of what Hamas was doing? It shouldn’t be any question in people’s minds that they could have prevented all of this.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Absolutely. Gaza is the most surveilled place on the planet. Israel literally has counted calories for the people who live there. And so the idea that you couldn’t know about this, it’s absurd. If you know anything about how Gaza is run as an open-air prison, it would be like there being a mutiny inside of a prison and the guards didn’t know. It’s ridiculous.
And finally, I’d like to just ask you, there’s a quote, I am going to attribute it to the wrong person, so I won’t even bother, what if they held a war and nobody came? It’s the idea that, well, if the soldiers just didn’t show up to a war that they felt was immoral and unethical, then who would fight it? We’re not going to send Biden to the front lines.
So I’m curious, how do you feel the levels of dissent are? And do you see the military being a powerful and perhaps even primary place where we could shift US policy with regards to Israel?
Mohammed Abouhashem:
I do feel like, especially within our senior advisors, especially within our general senior enlisted leaders, the dissent from them would definitely change the course of where the administration is going. You can’t have the majority of your top leaders leaving the military without feeling that maybe we are going a little overboard with the support for Israel.
Those are the questions that the American people need to also be asking of their own politicians, their own congressmen. How we’re blindly supporting Israel with this much aid, with this much money, when we have our own infrastructure that is failing? Our education systems that are not as strong?
Yet Israel, it’s one of the countries that we continue to supply economic aid and defense to, and they provide free education and free medical for all their citizens and subsidized housing. We probably pay for their own government officials on top of that.
This is what the American people need to be asking of their members of Congress, from their candidates. Why are we supporting a country that can support themselves, it seems like, but we continue to provide them weapons when there’s an ICJ case of a plausible genocide on top of that? How are we not helping the American people first and using all this aid to help a country that already knows how to help itself? Who already has a defense system that they state is impenetrable?
Maybe just one more thing. This is more of a personal opinion [inaudible 00:30:07]. So our government officials created this policy for our Department of Defense personnel and their spouses that they can’t accept gifts that are larger than $300 from foreign entities, and the reason why is because it affects or undermines their ability to do their job correctly.
I would definitely question how we’ve created these policies for all our government agencies to not be able to accept money from foreign entities, yet our politicians accept millions of dollars from foreign donors. How does it not affect their ability to perform their job to their fullest ability for the American people?
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah. I mean, the fact that AIPAC is allowed to operate is just remarkable. They give billions of dollars to members of Congress who then claim that they are objective in their dealings with regards to Israel. It’s laughable in the most morbid way. Thank you so much, Mohammad. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to sit down with us.
Mohammed Abouhashem:
Thank you so much.
Eleanor Goldfield:
You’re listening to the Project Censored Radio Show on Pacifica Radio. Coming up, I speak with Australian filmmaker Kym Staton about his film Trust Fall, the personal and professional life of Julian Assange, the US case against him, and the power of the people, coming up after this brief musical break. So please, stay with us now.
Speaker 4:
Well now, it’s passed, way fast-forward behind. Oh, it’s a fire. I can feel this burn in my mind. What do you live for if they tell you to kill for all time? Well, the world’s on fire, and I’m going to stand where it burns. We built this pyre, and I’m going to stand where it burns. What will it take to stand right here where it burns?
Eleanor Goldfield:
Thanks everyone so much for joining us, the Project Censored Radio Show. We’re very glad right now to be joined by Kym Staton, who’s a filmmaker, poet, and musician from New South Wales, Australia. He’s the writer and director of The Trust Fall: Julian Assange, and the founder and director of Films for Change.
He won an award for Best Emerging Director Australia at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival in 2023. The Trust Fall comes out in US Cinemas on July 17th. Kym, thanks so much for joining us.
Kym Staton:
My pleasure. And thanks for having me.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Absolutely. And I must congratulate you on a very powerful and beautifully made film. And it must be perhaps the most joyous event of feeling that you might have to do an updated edit of that film?
Kym Staton:
Yeah. The film was made with the aim to add weight to the campaign for Julian’s freedom. And guess what? Here we are. He’s free, he’s with his family. He’s even in my country. He might end up being my neighbor one day.
Eleanor Goldfield:
You would be so lucky. I want to get right into the film, because there’s a lot that I really appreciated about it. But something in particular that I wanted to start with was an interview with Nils Melzer, who’s the former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.
And he became very outspoken about what was being done to Julian, and yet he highlights how he initially ignored the request to take a look at Julian Assange’s case because he felt, quote, that it was just this hacker, this traitor. And he admits that he didn’t know where he got his negative emotions towards Julian from, that he recognized that he was emotionally convinced, even though he didn’t actually know about Julian’s case.
And he goes on to say that, quote, “If you think that Assange is a traitor, a rapist, a hacker, I don’t blame you, because you have been deceived. And if you think you’ve not been deceived, that’s normal. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be deception,” end quote. And I think that’s such a powerful quote.
And in your film, you cover both his personal life going back all the way to his school days, but also his professional life. And I’m curious, what did you notice in your research and filming that hit with people the most? Was it the personal character assassinations, like, “Oh, he’s just a hacker and a rapist”? Or was it more the professional side, like, “Oh. He’s guilty of so-called treason or terrorism”?
Kym Staton:
Yeah. I like that you picked up on that Nils Melzer statement. I found Nils’ involvement in this was very pivotal being in his role as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture at the time. That he’d visited Julian in prison with two other doctors, one of which we feature in the film, Pau Pérez-Sales. He visited Julian in Belmarsh a few years ago, and they assessed him under the Istanbul Protocol for Torture, and determined that he was a victim of torture.
And that line that you mentioned, Nils says that he felt like he already had an opinion on Assange, but he didn’t know where he had it from. I just felt that was so relevant to so many people. I put that in the film because I felt like, especially at that point where we’ve attempted to debunk and dismantle those smears, those main smears, that Julian is a rapist, a hacker, a traitor, a Russian agent, that he didn’t redact.
Putting that line of Nils’s right there was intended so that the audience could be invited to actually just identify with Nils and say, “Yeah, that’s me. I had that same thought based on his character. I bought into the false narratives that have been created.” So that was placed there so that hopefully it would be a turning point for those people that still had some prejudice or some doubts.
And I think those are still prevalent. Even after his release, we had even the Australian media, these rubbish rags, The Age, and The Australian Newspaper, and Sky News regurgitating, recycling those smears, especially the one about he put lives at risk, and it was just astonishing.
Especially in the actual court hearing, I’m not sure if you heard the audio from Saipan, where the judge literally recognized that no lives were put at risk, and that was part of the acceptance by the US that no one had been harmed, was basically presented as part of the reason that he could have that plea deal. And for them to reduce the indictment, the counts of the indictment, basically from 18 counts down to one count, one single count, that he pleaded guilty for.
So Judge Manglona, this is the quote from what she said in the courtroom in Saipan two weeks ago. Quote, “There’s another significant fact. The government has indicated there is no personal victims here. That tells me the dissemination of this information did not result in any known physical injury.” End quote. And that’s on top of the original debunking of this claim, which occurred in 2013 at the trial of Chelsea Manning in the US at Fort Meade, where the Pentagon had to admit under oath that no lives had been put at risk.
And yet you still had Sky News Australia do their coverage. And the first thing I heard one of the hack journalists say was, “He put lives at risk, however the public are applauding him as a hero, and he’s home, and he’s blah, blah, blah.” So they use that as a preface to their whole segment as if it was fact. And that’s one of many Australian journalists, and I guess the UK as well, and the US, where they’re just using these false narratives repeatedly without doing any research of their own.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to get into that, because I obviously live in the United States, and I’m also Swedish, so I can speak to how people in the US and indeed Sweden view Julian Assange very twistedly.
But I’m curious about how people in Australia, his home country, view Julian? And if that was an impetus to why you wanted to make this film, was it to shift opinion also at home? How has the perspective of Julian been in his own home country?
Kym Staton:
I think in Australia, really, right from 2011, 2012, he’s had massive support. Some people believe some of those smears, but the majority of people knew what was up.
There’s been surveys in the last couple of years, I think two different surveys have been done, I think it was the Australian Assange campaign that did those surveys. So they basically paid a company to do a proper survey on the public opinion, and they basically found that of people that understood the issue and knew what was going on with Assange, that about 80% of them supported his freedom. That was a previous survey. And when I heard about that one, I thought, “Well, what about the people that don’t know about him?”
And so that’s a big part of the aim of the film, is to educate people in the first place, but also those, the other 20%, that think that he should be sent to the US and thrown in a US jail for 175 years, well, why is that? Most likely, it’s because they believe those smears. But definitely massive support in Australia, and it’s definitely grown since he became free, and he basically received a hero’s welcome. The support and the interest has grown even more.
You can sort of see it in the way the film has been embraced. When we first brought it out in Australia, we had no advertising budget, but we were getting full cinemas with hundreds of people. And then when we did take on investors and we were able to advertise, it absolutely blew up. It’s the most-watched Australian documentary of the year in cinemas. We’ve had 350 cinemas across Australia, New Zealand, UK. So we had people going to all kinds of lengths to convince their local cinema to show it, so there’s incredible interest and incredible support.
So interest in Australia and New Zealand has been extraordinary, but the response to the US, from US programmers, it’s been way, way lower. And I think that’s an interesting thing to talk about. To what degree are US people, American people, scared to get behind this?
And to what degree maybe half of them or so feel like Julian was a traitor and he’s anti-American? Which is ridiculous. But there was also a survey in America that showed that 52% of Americans believe that he should be on trial and he should be found guilty. So very different levels of support in America versus Australia, and we’re seeing that reflected in the uptake so far from US cinemas.
But I do hope that this film, especially in light of Julian being freed and all of the documentation of the work that he’s done and so on, that hopefully there’s a changing of opinion in regards to Julian in America. And also hopefully those that see the initial screenings of The Trust Fall in US cinemas, hopefully, the film makes them feel embarrassed as US citizens, that it’s their government responsible for this persecution of an Australian journalist.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah. And I think also with that, kind of going back to what Nils Melzer talked about, is what I appreciated about your film is that it didn’t talk down to the people who had had these incorrect perspectives about Assange. As Nils says, “I understand. I was with you, and I was the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.” If you can fool him, then clearly the rest of us have little hope of battling the immense propaganda machine.
And so I really appreciated that you didn’t talk down to people who had that perspective, but instead, you invited them to change that perspective. And this is something that we’ve also seen, for instance, Kevin Gosztola, who wrote the book, Guilty of Journalism, that covers the case of Julian Assange, who’s been a frequent guest on this show as well, highlights that point very well, that the media created, actually, I have to hand it to them, this brilliant campaign, to smear Assange, much like they did with Snowden and Chelsea Manning, and this is what they do. They have a lot of practice.
Kym Staton:
It was an astounding campaign. They had 100 people on the task force to bring down Assange and WikiLeaks. And I think one of the most compelling, powerful examples of the lengths that they went to, to spin this narrative, it’s something we forgot to put in the film.
But about a month before, they knew already that the Ecuadorian government had agreed that they could take Julian out of the embassy, so they had about a month to plan that scene, this bit of theater, where Julian is carried out and put in a van like a criminal. So what they did was somebody stole his shaving equipment, his razor, his scissors, and when they pulled him out, he looks like a hobo. He looks bedraggled, long hair. He looks like a loser. And that’s what they wanted to do. And that’s not how Julian likes to present himself.
And then as soon as he arrived at Belmarsh, I think within a few days, we saw that leaked footage of him inside the prison, and he’d gone back to his usual self. He was clean-shaven, and he’d had a haircut, and that’s how he would prefer to be. It was so much effort that they put into bringing him down and undermining the public opinion of Assange over all those years.
Eleanor Goldfield:
You’re listening to the Project Censored Radio Show. I’m your host this week, Eleanor Goldfield. We’ll now continue our conversation with Australian filmmaker, Kym Staton.
And I want to talk a little bit about that, because having organized in the US for Assange, there was always this conversation with fellow organizers about how much we should spend time on the personal side of things and how much we should say, “Look, it doesn’t matter if you like Julian or not. This is an atrocious way of dealing with somebody who’s a journalist.”
And I wanted to ask you about that, because you go both into his personal side of things. As I mentioned, you talk about him going back to his school days and wanting to use what he’s learning about tech and things like that to really expose corruption and to uncover truth.
What do you think the importance is of uncovering the personal aspect of Assange versus the professional? How important do you think it is that people understand that this is an intensely morally driven person, versus, “Look, it doesn’t matter if you like him or not, but let’s just focus on the fact that he’s a journalist”? What do you think the balance is there?
Kym Staton:
Yeah. Interesting point. That’s something I really considered deeply was to what degree should we spend time in the film revealing the visions, the mission of Assange and WikiLeaks, and also his character?
I thought it was really important because most humans, not everybody, but most people do judge the book by its cover. I’ve heard so many comments from people, and radio people, and journalists, and even very recent articles where there was one, I can’t remember the exact lines, someone described him, I think it was the Australian newspaper who they said something like he’s vulgar, and he eats with his hands. And they were just looking for anything that they could find.
You’ve had journalists criticize his hair because he’s got this unusual appearance because he went gray so early in life. Interestingly, his mother Christine told me over the phone not so long ago that his hair went gray when he went through a separation with his partner, when they had their first child, Daniel, as very young adults.
And the stress of the court case where he was battling for custody of his son made his hair go gray. And Julian’s someone that’s battled with lots of challenges in life, not only because he’s taken on basically every country in the world by exposing their dirty laundry, but also he’s had personal struggles. And you could go right into all of this stuff.
In the film, we chose to start from his university days. I didn’t want to go back too far, because it was already going to be a long film, and you can only fit so much in. We start from his university days, and I wanted to interview his friends at the time, because I wanted them to paint a picture of this young adult, Julian, prior to WikiLeaks. Just before WikiLeaks, what was he like?
And his friend at university, Niraj Lal, who’s now a scientist, described him as further ahead than all classes at university and even ahead of the professors that were teaching it. So we got this picture of Julian as being incredibly bright. Basically a genius is my opinion.
And then the wonderful Suelette Dreyfus, who’s probably the most eminent professor in Australia of encryption at the moment, and she knew Julian from way back in his sort of days as an ethical hacker, as someone that was interested in the creation of the internet in Australia. She met him on online forums, and she described him as quirky. Just an interesting character that didn’t really care about what people thought about him.
And if you look back at some of Julian’s early writings, some of the first books that he put out, and even some of his blogs, he was writing really interesting stuff. You could make a whole film on that stage of his life, but we just wanted to show that he was on a mission. But as Suelette Dreyfus said, and which ended up being one of the main lines in that chapter of which we call Genesis, the Genesis of WikiLeaks, basically, she said that he had this burning desire to expose corruption, and he felt that if that was done, that we could solve the inequity in society.
Suelette Dreyfus also mentioned, which we didn’t get to fit into the film, but she said when he was at uni, he was horrified to discover that the university was receiving funding to do research on weapons. For example, how to make tanks that could drive very comfortably over the top of dead bodies. He was just disgusted that they were using university funds to assist war profiteers. So there’s just an accumulation of all of these things that impel Julian.
I think he was just always searching for something that he could do to make a difference, and when he came up with this idea of an anonymous drop box to protect whistleblowers using encryption, he was an encryption expert, and he just realized that this was in combination with this new thing called the internet, where you could just have mountains of documents spread at little to no cost. And he just put all this together and came up with this invention that changed the world.
So we wanted to simultaneously humanize Julian, show a little bit of what he’s like. He’s an interesting character, an intellectual, but above all, that he is a compassionate person that cares about the state of the world and wants to make a positive difference.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah, absolutely, and that definitely comes across. And I think what you’re saying also points to something that I highlight as well when I do frontline trainings and things like that, or speaking to folks who are curious about, oh, how do I become an activist? And it’s there’s no such thing as a professional or an expert activist. It’s just people who decide that they care deeply about something or some things. They see injustice, and they want to make it just, and they use whatever skills they have.
You pointed out that he was really good at encryption, so, “Okay. How can I use that to address this idea that I’ve had since I was eight to end corruption? Oh, this is a way to do that.” And so I think it’s just taking the thing that you’re passionate about or that you are really good at and tying that into addressing injustices that you see. And I think that’s a really powerful message as well. And we could talk about this for days, and I would definitely recommend that people take a couple of hours to check out this film, the trailer, and more information about it at thetrustfall.org.
But finally, Kym, wrapping up here, I think a good thing that you kind of prophetically highlighted on that website is Julian Assange will not be saved by the law. He will be saved by the actions of the public.
So just wrapping up here, any final thoughts on kind of the arc of making this film, where you started and he was obviously still imprisoned and being tortured, how do you see this film project with regards to what’s happened with Assange and what could happen moving forward with his continued drive to address corruption?
Kym Staton:
Firstly, it’s just absolutely wonderful that Julian is free, that he’s with his family back in Australia, that he’s alive. This is a victory. Stefania Morizio did a great post on X where she said, “The outcome of this is that we now know that you can expose the crimes of the powerful, including war crimes, really serious crimes, and live, survive.”
He wasn’t assassinated. The CIA plotted to poison him or kill him in some way. They tried to kill him by keeping him in the embassy and in Belmarsh for a combined more than 12 years, but he didn’t lose his mind. He’s still together, he’s still alive, and we’re left with a precedent that’s been set.
It’s a shocking thing that a journalist has been convicted of espionage under the Espionage Act, and this is the first time a journalist has been convicted. They’ve thought about it and tried it before. Now, it’s been used against a journalist and used against the world in that way, because it reduces our ability to know what’s going on.
So this is a precedent that’s been set. It’s really important that the campaign now moves towards pardoning it, getting us a pardon for Assange, and compensation as well for all the suffering that he’s endured and his family. And as Nils Melzer said, they use intimidation, this threat of legal action and jail time against journalists. In the case of Assange, it was to intimidate the whole world. I really agree with that.
And so I think the campaign now will move towards pardoning Assange. That, again, will require more awareness. The Trust Fall can be part of that. The Trust Fall was one small part of creating the pressure that resulted in Julian’s freedom. I think that his freedom, of course there was diplomacy and legal efforts involved, but the main thing was the public support. It was the public pressure, because that was growing day by day, and I think the US knew that. They knew that they couldn’t have a journalist arrive onto US shores in handcuffs leading up to the election. It wasn’t going to look good.
So it was the efforts of many, many people all around the world that created this pressure, combined with the legal battle and the diplomacy, that resulted in saving the life of someone very courageous and very heroic. And now, he has an opportunity, if he so chooses, when he recovers, to be somewhat involved.
And it’d be fascinating to see what he does next, even if it is just to have a quiet life, write a few books, and get back onto his Twitter page and have some sort of voice. Certainly, I said in the film, wherever Julian goes, free speech goes with him, and his voice is going to be louder than ever. We can’t wait to hear it. And if he does decide to go back to some sort of involvement in politics and world events, then that’ll be an exciting thing to see.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Absolutely. And lest we forget the Espionage Act, I would say to folks listening in the US, which is most of our audience, I feel that an important next step is just getting rid of the Espionage Act, because the Espionage Act was created to go after activists. I mean, the likes of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were some of the first people to be in the crosshairs of the Espionage Act. So this was created, like a lot of legislation in the United States, to go after people who go after the empire. So I think that’s an important next step for folks here.
Kym, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us. Again, folks can go to thetrustfall.org. This film will be out in the United States July 17th. Kym, thank you again so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.
Kym Staton:
My pleasure, Eleanor. Thank you so much for this coverage of the release in the US of The Trust Fall and also your support of Assange and free speech in general. All of your efforts in that is wonderful, what you’ve done.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Thank you. Likewise.
Kym Staton:
Keep up the great work. Take care.
Speaker 1:
We want to smash, crash, bash, smash, blast the system. We want to get it hype, get it loud, get with the mission. We want the crowd loud, fists bumping, rhythm is hitting. We want to-
Eleanor Goldfield:
Thanks so much for listening. That does it for this week’s show. I’m Eleanor Goldfield, and along with Mickey Huff, we are your Project Censored radio hosts.
The Project Censored Radio Show airs on roughly 50 stations across the US. Please follow us on social media and check out projectcensored.org for more rad content. Thanks so much. See you next time on the Project Censored Radio Show.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.