Israeli forces killed four people in an attack on a humanitarian aid convoy organized by a U.S.-based group on Thursday, the day after the World Food Programme announced that another Israeli attack earlier that week was forcing it to suspend movements for safety reasons. The aid convoy organized by U.S.-based nonprofit American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera) was carrying food and fuel to a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down on his insistence that the Israeli military permanently occupy Gaza’s border with Egypt, further obstructing ceasefire negotiations as protests for a hostage release deal erupt in Israel. On Monday, Netanyahu hosted a long press conference in which he pledged not to “surrender to pressure” that he strike a ceasefire deal.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The U.K. is suspending 30 arms export licenses to Israel, the country’s foreign minister announced Monday, citing the “clear risk” that Israel would use the weapons to commit grave violations of international law amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza and raid on the occupied West Bank. Foreign Minister David Lammy told parliament that the decision to suspend 30 of the U.K.’s 350 arms licenses to…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
An independent United Nations expert warned Monday that “Israel’s genocidal violence risks leaking out of Gaza and into the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole” as Western governments, corporations, and other institutions keep up their support for the Israeli military, which stands accused of grave war crimes in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Francesca Albanese, the U.N.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Jeremy Corbyn and the Independent Alliance of MPs have released a statement calling for the UK Labour Party government to issue a full arms embargo on Israel.
The demand came in response to the Labour government announcing it was suspending 30 out of 350 arms licenses to Israel. That’s 8.5% of licenses.
Of the 12 independent MPs elected in the UK since 1950, almost half were elected in 2024. As well as Corbyn, Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed all pointed out that the government has now:
finally admitted there is a clear risk of weapons being used to commit violations of international law
They continued:
It is beyond shameful that it took the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians for this admission to be made public
The Independent Alliance called for the limited arms suspension to be the:
first step in ending all arms sales to Israel. That includes parts for F-35 fighter jets, used by the Israeli military to commit genocide in Gaza.
As the Canary has reported, the statement comes as the Danish outlet Information and NGO Danwatch document the use of F-35 fighter jets in a specific Israeli bombing that killed around 90 Palestinians and injured over 300. 15% of F-35 fighter jets are produced in the UK. The bombardment was in an area – Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza – that Israel had previously designated as a ‘safe zone’.
In June, the Department of Business and Trade revealed that Rishi Sunak’s government had approved 42 military export licenses to Israel from 7 October 2023 to 31 May 2024. Of these, five are open licenses. This means they greenlight unlimited exports of specified items under just one license.
The Independent Alliance of MPs said its call for a “total arms embargo” includes:
weaponry used by Israel in its egregious assault on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank
Israel has recently launched its largest attack on the West Bank, which is already occupies, since 2002. And Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again been showcasing a map that erases the West Bank entirely.
The Independent Alliance’s statement concludes with a demand for an:
end to the illegal occupation and settlement policy and the immediate and unconditional recognition of the state of Palestine
Labour’s manifesto pledged to recognise Palestine. But a party source later walked that back saying that UK recognition of Palestinian statehood was a “process” that should be done in “co-ordination with allies”.
With Ireland, Norway, and Spain formally recognising Palestine in May, 146 out of 193 UN member states now uphold Palestinian self-determination in the form of a nation.
Keir Starmer suspended Labour MPs Aspana Begum and Zarah Sultana for voting to end the two child benefit cap. Sitting currently as independents, they joined calls for a full arms embargo.
Begum challenged David Lammy in parliament:
End ALL arms sales to Israel now. pic.twitter.com/6CAp2H7tIj
— Apsana Begum MP (@ApsanaBegumMP) September 2, 2024
Meanwhile, Sultana made the call on the BBC:
When Israel is carrying out a genocidal assault on Gaza, we need to ban ALL arms licences to Israel, not just a small fraction of licences. pic.twitter.com/043Nn8rh4W
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) September 3, 2024
Featured image via Guardian News – YouTube and Middle East Eye – YouTube
By James Wright
This post was originally published on Canary.
Independent UN expert Francesca Albanese has warned that Israel’s “genocidal violence” in Gaza risked spreading to other parts of the occupied Palestinian territories. It comes amid the IDF’s large-scale military operation in the occupied West Bank.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, warned in a statement that Israel’s recent intensification of its operations in the occupied West Bank, which is separated from Gaza by Israeli territory, marked “a dangerous escalation”.
She said:
Israel’s genocidal violence risks leaking out of Gaza and into the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole. The writing is on the wall, and we cannot continue to ignore it. There is mounting evidence that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s unfettered control.
Francesca Albanese is an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who does not speak on behalf of the UN. She has repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide in its war in Gaza.
Israeli violence has surged in the West Bank. The Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry said on Monday 2 September that Israel had killed at least 26 Palestinians since last Wednesday, when the IDF launched simultaneous raids across the northern West Bank.
As the Canary previously reported, Israel killed at least 10 Palestinians on Wednesday 28 August in its raids and strikes in the occupied West Bank. The Red Crescent added that 15 other people have been wounded. Two Palestinians were killed in the city of Jenin, four others in a nearby village, and four more in a refugee camp near the town of Tubas.
Middle Eastern and Western governments as well as UN officials have called on Israel to end the large-scale operations in the Palestinian territory, which it has illegally occupied since 1967.
Francesca Albanese said:
Apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement and territorial expansion.
The long-standing impunity granted to Israel is enabling the de-Palestinisation of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the mercy of the forces pursuing their elimination as a national group.
She called on the international community to:
do everything it can to immediately end the risk of genocide against the Palestinian people under Israel’s occupation, ensure accountability and ultimately end Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian territory.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has so far killed at least 40,786 people in Gaza. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
Featured image via the Canary
Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
Palestine Action has once again targeted Elbit System – but this time, not directly. Instead, the group has taken action against one of the major lobbyists for Israel’s arms industry -and in doing so, exposed how the revolving door between parliament and weapons manufacturers.
At 7.45am on Tuesday 3 September, Palestine Action struck at the 40 Strand, London offices of ‘APCO Worldwide’, political lobbyists for Israel’s biggest weapons firm, Elbit Systems.
Red paint was sprayed across the premises using repurposed fire extinguishers before three activists attached themselves to each other using a lock on device within a suitcase:
The front door was closed using a D-lock and a banner was unfurled which reads ‘Stop lobbying for Genocide. APCO Drop Elbit’:
BREAKING: Palestine Action blockade and drench the London offices of APCO Worldwide.
APCO are paid lobbyists for Israel’s biggest arms firm, Elbit Systems.
They work to secure government contracts for weapons which are “battle-tested” on Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/vys7GmNkPa
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) September 3, 2024
According to the Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists, APCO provides consultant lobbying services to ‘Elbit Systems UK’. At a time when Elbit is playing a central role in the genocide in Gaza, APCO is working to embed its client into the top ranks of Whitehall and Westminster. These lobbyists, including those who have previously secured back-door contracts for Elbit in the past, are working to shore up British support for Israel’s arms trade at a time when 16 activists are imprisoned for conscientious action taken against genocide.
These lobbyists work to strengthen Elbit’s ties to politicians and civil servants responsible for British Ministry of Defence (MoD) procurement, helping to advertise the weapons it boasts of having “battle-tested” against Palestinians.
APCO’s senior staff includes Lord Polak, who joined APCO when it acquired his pro-Israel lobbying firm ‘TWC’ in 2018. According to the Sunday Times, TWC was reported as having secured, through a “secret campaign”, a £500,000,000 MoD contract for Elbit in 2012.
It is unclear how much the ‘lord’ makes from APCO. Polak’s parliamentary register of interest says his APCO renumeration is paid to his and his wife’s company Markham Services Limited. A glance at their accounts shows that, due to exemptions, Polak doesn’t declare his income. Instead, Markham had around £222,000 in equity in 2023.
Polak, meanwhile, is president and director of Conservative Friends of Israel.
He also visited Israel at the start of the year, at the height of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Polak’s trip was paid for by Elnet, another lobbying group for Israel. openDemocracy described it as having:
branches across Europe and Israel and describes itself as “the most influential pro-Israel advocacy organisation in Europe”. It even counts the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs as one of its “partners”. It has also promoted highly controversial views – including recently telling supporters that there is “no starvation in Gaza” and saying the IDF should not worry about killing innocent civilians who live near Hamas terrorists.
Recently, Elbit CEO Bezhalel Machlis remarked: “[Elbit’s] portfolio was improved drastically and this war has been an accelerator for many developments. The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) is using these technologies now and in the future, we will bring them to the rest of the market as well”.
With the help of APCO Worldwide, the British MoD will remain front of the queue for the weapons Israel has tested out in this genocide – including new lines of missiles, and its ‘quadcopter’ drones recently displayed for the British market at Elbit’s Bristol HQ.
Furthermore, lobbyists for Elbit have consistently pushed the state to increase the its repression of the activists who are working to end complicity in the 21st century’s worst genocide, and in history’s longest military occupation.
Since Keir Starmer has been prime minister, the state has employed unprecedented powers against Palestine Action activists: detaining them under ‘counter-terror’ and ‘organised crime’ powers, in such a way as organised lobbyists for Israel’s arms trade have long-demanded he use.
Currently, 16 prisoners are held within the British prison estate for taking action against those fuelling mass atrocities in Gaza. These individuals, five under custodial sentences, eleven held on-remand, are imprisoned for engaging in Palestine Action’s justified and necessary action to do what the government refuses to do: attempting to end Britain’s contributions towards the mass-slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Palestine Action commented:
While the British state’s continued arms exports to Israel stands in violation of its own arms-export regulations, and in contravention of international obligations under the Genocide Convention and Arms Trade Treaty, such action is a necessity.
Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on Canary.
On Monday 2 September, foreign secretary David Lammy today made a statement to parliament on the results of a review of arms export licences to Israel, announcing the suspension of 30 export licences for use by the Israeli military that could be used in Gaza. However, he stated that the ‘Open General’ licence relating to the F-35 combat aircraft, 15% of which is produced in the UK, and for which Israel is one of the recipient countries, would be exempted.
This statement came on the same day that Danish news outlet Information, together with NGO Danwatch, revealed that, for the first time, it has been possible to definitively confirm the use by Israel of an F-35 stealth fighter to carry out a specific attack in Gaza.
The attack took place on 13 July, on an Israeli-designated ‘safe zone’ in Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, killing 90 people and injuring at least 300. The Israeli military claims that the target of the attack was Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’s military wing.
The attack involved three GBU-31 2000lb bombs, which have a ‘lethal radius’ of 360m, and are thus certain to kill large numbers of civilians when used in highly-populated areas. Such attacks are clear violations of the International Humanitarian Law (IHL) principles of proportionality and distinction, and are likely war crimes.
The use of F-35s by Israel in the attack on Gaza has been confirmed since the beginning of the war, including their use to deliver 2000lb bombs. However, it has rarely if ever been possible to establish which type of aircraft was used to attack which targets.
In this case, Danwatch uncovered an article describing Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant personally going to an F-35 base to thank the pilots involved, and the Israeli military has since confirmed in response to a request by Information and Danwatch that an F-35 carried out the attack.
The use of such advanced aircraft in intensive combat operations requires a constant supply of spare parts, The US says it has been moving at ‘breakneck speed’ to increase the supply since the start of the war. This supply will certainly include spare parts from the UK.
Exports of parts for the F-35, whether for their manufacture or for spare parts, do not require individual export licences as they are covered by an “Open General” licence. Therefore, their supply is thus not recorded in regularly-published government information on export licences.
In his statement, Lammy highlighted concerns around disrupting the global supply chain for the F-35, which the UK and its allies also use. However, there is nothing to preclude the government from simply removing Israel from the list of approved recipients for the Open General licence.
Sam Perlo-Freeman, research coordinator for Campaign Against Arms Trade said:
The government’s statement today that it is suspending 30 arms export licences to Israel is a belated, but welcome move, finally acting upon the overwhelming evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
But exempting parts for Israel’s F-35 is utterly outrageous and unjustifiable.
These are by far the UK’s most significant arms supplies to the Israeli military, and just today we have confirmation that they have been used in one of the most egregious attacks in recent months. The government has admitted that there is a ‘clear risk’ that Israel is using fighter aircraft among other weapons to violate international humanitarian law. How can this ‘clear risk’ not apply to the F-35s? The only right and legal course of action is to end the supply of F-35 parts to Israel, along with the rest of UK arms sales.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
Headlines such as ‘Antisemitism hits all-time high in explosion of hatred against British Jews’ and ‘Antisemitic incidents quadruple in UK since Hamas attack in Israel’ have again been splashed over the pages of our mainstream press. While the Canary has recently reported on two British journalists arrested for speaking about Israel’s human rights abuses in Palestine, many other areas of our society are also being prevented from speaking up, too.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a British charity that ’provides security to British Jews, records antisemitic hate crime data and analyses the activities of antisemitic extremist political movements’, documented a record number of antisemitic incidents in the first half of this year, whilst their Antisemitic Incidents Report states that in 2023, reported cases of antisemitism rose by almost 150% from the previous year.
Year after year, antisemitism figures rise despite increased government funding. Back in February, Rishi Sunak pledged to give the organisation record funding of more than £70m over the next four years, as part of the Jewish Community Protective Security Grant.
Should Jewish people be fearful of this exponential rise in antisemitism sweeping our country, or is there another explanation?
Antony Lerman, an antisemitism expert, founder and former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, is also an anti-Zionist Jew. He told the Canary:
Confusion and disagreement about what is meant by anti-Semitism have never been greater. Up until the 1980s, most people monitoring antisemitism didn’t need to have a formal definition, because everyone knew antisemitism is hatred of Jews.
But, particularly since the 1980s, the term has been expanded to include criticism of Israel.
Lerman’s book, Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the ‘Collective Jew’, discusses how Israel and its supporters began framing criticism of the state as criticism of Jews, which could be thought of as antisemitism.
He explains that from the beginning of this century there was a more formal move towards a new definition of antisemitism, equating it with anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel. This included the working definition, which was developed in 2004 mainly by pro-Israel Jewish organisations. However, it was slow to catch on until adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016, just a few months after Jeremy Corbyn – a life-long anti-racist and pro-Palestine campaigner – was elected leader of the Labour Party. Almost instantly, Corbyn fell victim to a politically motivated antisemitism smear campaign by the Israel lobby, falsely labelling him and many in his party as antisemites. Politicians and the corporate media, including the BBC, fuelled this lie, and these allegations eventually led to his suspension from the party in 2020.
Lerman argues that signing up to the IHRA definition of antisemitism is a way of establishing your antisemitism credentials, something he describes as “virtue signalling”. He points out that adopting it requires no action to be taken, but has the advantage of coming from a respected international organisation with ‘Holocaust Remembrance’ in its title.
He noted:
Who would dare question the authority of a definition of antisemitism coming from such a body? But, in my view the IHRA working definition (IHRA definition) is a fundamentally flawed document, an anti-Palestinian charter, as you can turn anything into antisemitism on the basis of what’s in the definition. I think it’s an appalling document, but it took off like wildfire and it’s been amazingly successful.
The IHRA definition was not designed to determine what hate speech is, and has been instrumentalised for political purposes. It says:
Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
It also includes 11 examples of situations which could be antisemitism. The idea is that these are used to determine if a specific incident is antisemitic. They have sparked much controversy and debate:
Dr Lewis Turner, chair of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) Committee on Academic Freedom, told the Canary:
There are seven references to Israel, in these illustrative examples, and they effectively conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism with racism and discrimination directed at Jews, erroneously essentialise Jewish self-determination as indistinguishable from the State of Israel, and delegitimise Palestinian claims to self-determination and opposition to Israel’s discriminatory policies against Palestinians as antisemitism. It is simply not possible to use the IHRA definition to determine whether or not an individual incident or statement is antisemitic, whilst simultaneously protecting freedom of speech and academic freedom and preventing discrimination.
Even though the use of the IHRA definition stifles free speech and academic freedom, it is often framed as an essential tool in combating antisemitism. As of 1 April 2024, 45 countries, mainly in Europe, have ‘adopted’ it, the UK being the first.
Our government, police forces, local councils, banks, businesses, the majority of universities, and even soccer teams have endorsed it, and it is utilised by both government and non-government agencies to train police, prosecutors, and judges. Although advertised and promoted as ‘non-legally binding’, it is increasingly used by public and private bodies as if it were law, especially to counter anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel.
Professor Haim Bresheeth, an anti-Zionist Jew, historian and filmmaker, is also founder member of Jewish Network for Palestine. He believes the IHRA definition is designed to distract from Israel’s actions. Bresheeth told the Canary:
It’s one of the smartest tricks of the Israeli Hasbara– the Israeli propaganda machine. Instead of talking about the genocide in Gaza, instead of talking about the many war crimes of Israel and Zionism, we are talking about something else- antisemitism. So it’s already succeeded in moving us from the real crimes of Zionism to another issue altogether, which is indeed related and important. Israel and its many partners in crime are using the IHRA to confuse people into thinking and believing antisemitism is anti- Zionism. Many are accepting it, and a whole lot of the elite are supporting this major lie. This means that Palestinians cannot defend Palestine, because they are immediately dubbed antisemites. The same also applies to everyone else who supports Palestine.
CST blames Hamas’s 7 October attack for the record high figures in its report, describing it as “a trigger event, which had a seismic effect on antisemitic incident levels in the UK”. However, as Bresheeth points out:
If supporting Palestine and opposing Zionism is antisemitic, then of course there is a record rise in this. People are so inflamed about the situation in Gaza that they are actually taking to the streets, writing articles, speaking on social media, to speak up against Israeli war crimes, for the simple fact they are being human and supporting the Palestinians. This, according to the IHRA, is antisemitic.
Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), stresses that by equating antisemitism with anti-Zionism the IHRA definition is used to silence critics of Israel, and shield the country from criticism of its actions. He told the Canary:
Of course, antisemitism is as abusive as any other form of racism, and should be challenged by all of us. But misuse of it, in the protection of the state of Israel and what Israel is committing in the form of apartheid, genocide, war crimes and illegal occupation- which are all proven, is totally unacceptable. The vast majority of Zionists in the world are not even Jews. They are Christian Zionists and others, who are committed to that political ideology. So, to say anyone who is anti-Zionist or anti-Israel is antisemitic, really goes against all the facts and figures.
Shadjareh says that he, his colleagues, and even his Jewish friends have been targeted as antisemites just for “opposing the very clear abuses by Israel”. The IHRC put a Palestinian flag in front of their building, as a means of supporting the Palestinians, but this led to complaints and vandalism of their building. The campaign was so vigorous that police advised them to take down the flag, which they claimed was endangering themselves and their premises. Similar happened at the University of Birmingham:
He said:
What’s so antisemitic about a Palestinian flag? They can make it unlawful for Palestinians to have their flag in the occupied Palestinian territory, but they can’t force that on all of us everywhere else. But these are the ‘antisemitic’ incidents they add to these reports. There is a huge infrastructure used to silence any opposition to the state of Israel. Part of that is the CST, which is financed mostly by our government, part of that is the Zionist Federation, and part of that is those elements who claim to represent all Jews.
The IHRC sent an open letter to the home secretary and police chiefs, complaining that:
Enabled by their Zionist financiers abroad, far-right elements have weaponised the tragic murder of three young girls in Southport to incite the country into pogroms against Muslims and people of colour.
This led to 50 members of the House of Lords claiming the remark to be antisemitic, as it perpetuates harmful antisemitic stereotypes of a ‘shadowy Jewish conspiracy controlling the world’. But, Tommy Robinson has been a key instigators of the recent far-right race riots, and he hates Muslims. We also know his benefactors are Zionists. This is the truth. It is fact. The issue of antisemitism has nothing to do with this.
Shadjareh argues that:
The Times of Israel says the rioters are supported by the Zionists. Why are they allowed to say this but I can’t and, as a non-Israeli, and non-Jew I get called antisemitic. The names of those who complained about us are almost identical to those who told Barclays not to cut its ties with Israel. They are supporting the state of Israel, but hiding behind antisemitism.
Barclays, along with other high street banks, holds billions of pounds worth of shares in companies selling military technology and weapons to Israel, provides them with loans, and has been the target of a long-running BDS campaign:
However, more than 50 members of the House of Lords recently wrote to the bank’s chairman, urging him not to cut financial relations with Israel. They argued that the BDS campaign against Israel “often crosses into antisemitism through inflammatory language and endorsements of violence” and to give in to the demands of “political activists” would “severely damage Barclay’s reputation”. A few days previous to this, Yali Rothenberg, the accountant general of Israel, told the bank:
It’s crucial that leading global financial institutions, such as Barclays, choose to resist boycotting Israel and support its legitimate right to self-defence as a leading Western democracy.
Shadjareh said:
At a time like this, while the biggest genocide of our lives is being committed by the state of Israel, this group of people – CST, the Zionist Federation, the Jewish Board of Deputies, the Chief Rabbi, and others – prevent any criticism by labelling all those supportive of Palestine as either antisemites or terrorist sympathisers. It’s shocking they get away with it, and it’s shocking that groups like CST are embedded in our police departments. At the present time, there is no way any of these people, including members of the House of Lords could defend the state of Israel, except through this hidden agenda. How else could you justify, protect or support a state that, every night, is committing genocide in front of our eyes.
According to the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), making unfounded allegations of antisemitism and terrorism are indeed methods intentionally used to silence Palestinian rights advocates or organisations, and isolate and stile their work, and can also result in their defunding.
The mechanisms of silencing vary but are in force across countries in Europe, as last year’s report by the United Nations Human Rights Council details. It states that there is an:
increasingly restricted civic space resulting from an intentional strategy, pursued by the Government of Israel, of delegitimizing and silencing civil society. This includes criminalizing Palestinian civil society organizations and their members by labelling them as “terrorists”, pressuring and threatening institutions that give a platform for civil society discourse, actively lobbying donors and implementing measures intended to cut sources of funding to civil society.
According to the document, certain departments of the Israeli Government, including the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy and the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, are also “working towards delegitimising civil society locally and internationally”. In addition, Likud Members of the Knesset have recently set up a lobby to fight against antisemitism and delegitimisation, which focuses on combating the ‘undermining’ of Israel by foreign countries that finance human rights and civil society organisations.
Using the IHRA definition to successfully distort the meaning of antisemitism and suppress criticism against it, Israel with the help of many western governments has been able to continue, unabated, with its war crimes in Gaza and settler colonial project in the West Bank, whilst delegitimising and undermining the work of its critics – including that of international lawyers, the UN, and the ICJ.
Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem have found themselves targeted by allegations of antisemitism under the IHRA definition due to their critical reports on Israel’s human rights record. Much of their research into Israel’s practices – whether in the form of reports on settlement expansion, treatment of Palestinians, or military actions – is construed as antisemitic, leading to attempts to discredit their work.
A spokesperson for Amnesty International UK told the Canary:
The IHRA definition of antisemitism has never been fit for purpose. The definition’s overly-broad nature means that legitimate – and indeed necessary – criticism of Israel’s human rights record can be labelled antisemitic, with free speech and respect for international law both suffering as a result. The Israeli authorities and their apologists regularly weaponise the notion of antisemitism when Amnesty and other critics of Israel’s appalling human rights record speak out, and the Israeli government uses the term as an all-purpose shield. This is highly cynical and risks undermining the fight against real antisemitism.
Groups like NGO Monitor, a right-wing Israeli organisation, have accused Amnesty of disproportionately singling out Israel for condemnation. This has led to situations where detailed and well-researched reports, like Amnesty’s Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity, are dismissed or labeled as antisemitic under the IHRA definition, as one given example of antisemitism is:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, for example, claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.
Critics argue that these accusations, which have been directed at, among others, the United Nations, the International Court and international lawyers, are a means of deflecting criticism and maintaining a narrative that aligns with pro-Israel interests.
But it is not only human rights organisations that are bearing the brunt of this definition. Employees, academics, and students are also affected, as our places of work and entertainment, schools, universities, and police forces – along with on-line moderators – are suppressing pro-Palestine voices and activity, up and down the country, in a variety of ways.
Afra Sohail, an employee at Lloyds Bank at the time, took to the company’s internal communications channel to voice her opinion, after receiving an HP monitor for work purposes. She was then subjected to investigations and disciplinary hearings, and issued with a sanction which was reported to the Financial Conduct Authority and will stay on her record for six years. She is now suing Lloyds.
It was May 2021. Israeli soldiers had stormed the third holiest site of Islam, and Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, which killed at least 260 people, was underway. Sohail said:
I was absolutely disgusted and wondered why there was no uproar, and why were these issues not being talked about at work, when other subjects were?
Sohail, who was working from home, had just become aware of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign accusing HP of:
providing hardware to Israel’s military and of being complicit in Israeli ’racial segregation and apartheid.
So, when the HP branded monitor from Lloyds bank arrived at her door, she knew she wanted to return it. She took to the bank’s internal portal, highlighting her concerns and called on Lloyds to question its moral stance, and not be complicit in the violation of international humanitarian law.
Several weeks later, Sohail was asked to go along to a meeting, and was surprised to discover it was about her comments, which had offended a work colleague. She said:
Although I felt there was nothing in them that would offend, I was asked very leading questions, such as ‘Did you know anti-Semitism has increased by 400 percent?’ They beat around the bush, accusing me of anti-Semitism, without putting that label on me. Because I mentioned that Palestinians are given inferior status compared to Israel Jews, who have a lot of benefits, I was being portrayed as a criminal against Jewish people, but I was coming from the perspective that everyone should be treated equally.
Sohail, who no longer works at Lloyds, was accused of going against the group’s anti-racist values. She says it was a distressing time that left her feeling worried and confused. As a result of the allegation, she also lost out on a graduate job promised to her:
An appeal against the disciplinary action was denied. So, last month Sohail and another colleague in a similar position, both of whom are being supported in their legal fight by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), took Lloyds to an employment tribunal, claiming they were discriminated against because of their religious and philosophical beliefs.
While a HR manager at Lloyds involved with the investigations admitted she did not know the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, a lawyer for the women said the posts were not offensive, and the allegation claiming they were antisemitic was “irrational and spurious”.
Sohail said:
As a Muslim I believe oppression and injustice are wrong, and we should stand up against it if we can. My philosophical belief is that Zionism is racism, and it’s wrong and therefore should be opposed. There needs to be safe spaces to speak out about this, without feeling scared, but the state is penalising people and trying to put them down. We all need to come together collectively and speak out about this injustice, without facing repercussions, because silence will only perpetuate it further.
The closing submissions for this case are taking place in October.
Last November, Bristol’s Arnolfini Gallery cancelled two Palestine Film Festival films, saying they put a strain on the legal requirement for arts charities to remain apolitical. An angry backlash resulted, in more than 1,000 artists vowing to boycott the venue. Arnolfini eventually apologised unreservedly, saying freedom of expression was important and the decision was “based on the information and understanding we had at the time, but now believe it was wrong”.
But their apology, which stated “the International Court of Justice has described Israel’s actions in Gaza as plausible acts of genocide”, has now been picked to pieces by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), because it contains “dangerous untruths”. UKLFI denies any genocide and claims Arnolfini was a platform for “one-sided Palestinian voices” and it needs to “remain non-political”.
Bresheeth said of the situation:
The Jewish organisations supporting Israel say there is no genocide but this is a denial of such proportions, that we haven’t seen anywhere else, and it’s really quite amazing that people would even accept this as information- but they do! Jews in this country, who support Israel’s actions, believe Israel is acting in self defence, and that Jews are in danger, everywhere, but this is completely false.
In 2020, there was a drive to encourage all universities to sign up to the IHRA definition, with the government threatening to withdraw their funding if they did not comply. As a result, suppression of voices speaking out about injustice in Palestine has been especially severe in higher education settings.
Last year, a report by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) advised against the adoption of the IHRA definition in a higher education setting – saying it was unfit for purpose.
It analysed 40 allegations of antisemitism against university staff and students between 2017 and 2022, based on the IHRA definition. The report found, in all 38 concluded cases, the accusations of antisemitism to be unjustified.
But damage had already been done.
Events were cancelled, student groups stamped out, not to mention reputations and careers in tatters and, in all cases, staff and students reported various levels of anxiety and stress.
Although freedom of speech and expression are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, the report found the IHRA definition of antisemitism:
undercut academic freedom and the rights to lawful speech of students and staff, and caused harm to the reputations and careers of those accused.
The definition is now starting to take on the function of a speech code and, as the blurring of antisemitism and anti-Zionism continue, the UK now ranks lower in the ‘Academic Freedom Index’ than any other Western European country. Due to the wide adoption of the IHRA definition, academics and students with critical views of Israel or Zionism can easily be intimidated or silenced because of the fear of being labelled an antisemite.
This results in the chilling of discussion, making it extremely difficult to research, teach, or debate on Israel and Palestine – in relation to the conflict, Israeli government policies, the nature of the formation of the Israeli state, and the nature of Zionism as an ideology and movement.
According to Dr Turner from BRISMES, since the report findings were published last year, there has been an even greater clampdown on freedom of expression and academic freedom, with regards to Palestine, at universities throughout the UK:
Since October 2023, BRISMES has received numerous reports of university managers seeking to suppress, censor and surveil lawful expression and peaceful events relating to Palestine on university campuses. This includes cancelling events, creating unreasonable bureaucratic hurdles for event organisers, as well as subjecting staff and students to investigations, and even referring students and staff to Prevent based on their social media posts and other instances of lawful expression.
Although the University of Birmingham claims to have a ‘long track record of authorising events on campus, in recognition of the importance of the rights of freedom of speech and assembly’, back in December it prevented the go ahead of an event discussing law in Palestine, because of the inclusion, on the flyer, of watermelons, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.
A University of Birmingham student, who wanted to remain anonymous because of fear of reprisals, told the Canary:
It was really important that I go to this event, because I study International Law and Globalisation. When the genocide started, the module we were studying was Transitional Justice After Genocide. We learned about previous genocides, such as in Bosnia, but there was no mention at all about Palestine. It was really hurtful for a lot of students there, especially those from Palestine. We really wanted our teacher to talk about how the international law was being broken.
Students wanted to know why, as future international lawyers, they were not being taught properly about this topic. Why was there was not even a mention of Palestine? That is why there was such excitement about the planned event, organised by some lecturers in the law department. Internal lecturers, who were experts in their field, were scheduled to discuss the topic.
The student said:
We also really liked the watermelons on the flyer because, at the beginning of the genocide, all the rhetoric was about Israel, and Israel’s right to self defence. So the watermelons were a good start.
But the night before the event, students received an email claiming it had been cancelled, with no explanation given:
We were all very confused, so we emailed our lecturers, and were told there were issues with how the event was advertised. We all emailed complaints to the Dean, and the head of the law school, saying it wasn’t freedom of speech. Then, all of a sudden they switched the story, and said the event hadn’t been cancelled, only postponed, because they wanted to make it ‘more inclusive’. The teachers themselves said that they were told by management that it was the watermelons that were the issue, not inclusion. We talk about the rule of law, but it seems as though we only apply this to certain groups and certain powers, not to everyone. I am questioning everything now, even the ethics of being a lawyer.
The student the Canary spoke to claims the event still has not happened, and all has gone quiet.
Rebecca Ruth Gould, distinguished professor, Comparative Poetics and Global Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and author of Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom, found herself at the centre of the UK’s first major conflict over the definition of antisemitism and the censorship of Israel-critical speech, in 2017.
Frustrated and outraged by the injustices she witnessed in 2011 while living in Palestine and commuting to Israel, in 2011, Gould penned ‘Beyond Anti-Semitism’ which argued that the long history of antisemitism and of the Holocaust, forms the background against which Palestinian lives have been sacrificed since the creation of the state of Israel.
She wrote:
No people’s past should be allowed to determine another people’s future.
Five years later, while a lecturer at the University of Bristol, one of her students who identified as a Zionist found this piece of work online and wrote to the student newspaper, denouncing the piece and labelling Gould an antisemite. The Telegraph then spotted the piece, and wrote an article. A huge backlash followed. Gould was accused of Holocaust denial, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews called for her to be sacked.
She points out that although fear of being perceived as antisemitic stifles necessary criticism of Israel’s policies, speaking out against its injustices is crucial. Gould told the Canary:
Silence in the face of oppression only perpetuates further injustice… At a certain point I realised my ability to speak out about Palestine was central to my reason for existing on this earth. I could not relinquish my voice without surrendering my own humanity. My only option was to write openly about what happened, and in doing so, hopefully to empower and embolden others to speak out as well.
We should all speak out for what we believe is right, and should feel encouraged to do so by the recent of David Miller’s employment tribunal, as it has now become much harder for universities and workplaces to sack anti-Zionists for expressing their viewpoint.
Miller’s anti-Zionist belief – that Zionism is inherently racist, imperialist and colonial – was ruled, by the tribunal, not to be racist or antisemitic, and qualified as a philosophical belief, protected under the Equality Act 2010. Miller, who was unfairly dismissed from the University of Bristol in 2021 because of his viewpoint on Zionism, suffered an organised campaign to silence him, mainly by Jewish student groups and the CST. In a lecture, Miller had mentioned Zionism as being a driving factor in promoting Islamophobia. The Community Security Trust, which has found its way into British universities by employing National Student Security Co-ordinators, called Miller’s lecture a “false, vile, antisemitic slur”.
This ruling has reinforced the need to move away from the politicised IHRA definition, which equates antisemitism with Zionism and criticism of Israel. As the ELSC/BRISMES report stated, it is not fit for purpose. In the workplace, universities and wider society, legal protections are already in place against racially-motivated behaviour of all kinds – including antisemitism – are covered by Equalities legislation, such as the Equalities Act 2010, and by internal codes of conduct – and these are very effective when implemented correctly.
The above are just a few examples of the many times in which the IHRA definition of antisemitism is used in an attempt to silence criticism of Israel and any debate around Palestine, and to hide all that the Palestinians endure. These are also the incidents that make up the annual CST reports, and contribute to the ‘explosion of hated’, so often wrongly reported in the press.
By automatically branding opposition to Israel as antisemitic, the Israel-focused IHRA definition is also very harmful to the real fight against antisemitism, and this is extremely worrying for Jewish people such as Lerman.
Bresheeth concluded that:
I’m the son of two holocaust survivors from Auschwitz. I’m totally against antisemitism. The Israel lobby is the strongest lobby in this country, and at the moment there’s a very systematic approach that’s trying to demonise those supporting opposition to what’s happening in Palestine.
They are selling this criminality as the way to be Jewish, but Jews have never done this in 2000 years of history.
It’s not Jewish. There’s nothing Jewish about Israel.
All Jews really must oppose this, in the name of what’s happened to them.
What Israel is doing now, is definitely adding to the problem of antisemitism and will indeed make the problem worse.
Featured image via the Times – YouTube
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Israeli military killed nearly a dozen people Sunday in its latest bombing of a school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip, an attack that came amid limited pauses aimed at allowing relief workers to vaccinate Palestinian children against reemergent polio. Israel’s strike on the Safad school in Gaza City killed at least 11 people, including a woman and a girl, a spokesperson for Gaza’s civil…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Update: The chairman of Histadrut, Israel’s largest trade union, instructed workers to return to their jobs following an order by an Israeli court to end the general strike on Monday afternoon. Earlier: Workers across Israel walked off the job and took to the streets on Monday to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to agree to a cease-fire and hostage-release deal…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
PM says he will not take lectures from previous government as Kemi Badenoch launches Tory leadership campaign
Kemi Badenoch is speaking now. She says she wants to talk about the future.
She was born in the UK, but “grew up under socialism”, she says (referring to her childhood in Nigeria).
Labour have no ideas. At best, they are announcing things we have already done, and at their worst, they are clueless, irresponsible and dishonest.
They are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public about the state of Britain’s finances, placing political donors into civil service jobs, pretending that they have no plans to cut pensioner benefits before the election and then doing exactly that to cover the cost of pay rises for the unions with no promise of reform, But their model of spend, spend, spend is broken, and they don’t know what to do, and this will only lead to even more cynicism in politics.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
After Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas Political Bureau, was assassinated in Tehran, the Movement’s senior consultative body, the Shura Council, quickly and unanimously chose Yahya Sinwar as his successor. At the time of his killing, Haniyeh had been leading the Hamas effort in the ceasefire negotiations with mediators, and many analysts claimed that Sinwar’s rise signaled a total break with the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In my book, Black Bodies, White Gazes, I interrogate the white gaze, which I describe as a structural and habitual way of racially distorting the world in binary and hierarchical terms, buttressed by ideological, material and institutional power. In that book, I argue for the dismantlement of whiteness and the eradication of the white gaze. In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon tells the story…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As Israel tightens its siege, medical supplies in the Gaza Strip are running out, and doctors confront patients with unimaginable injuries. The orthopedist Hani Bseso operated on his niece Ahed’s leg, after a shell plowed through their home. Bleeding profusely, Ahed remained in an agonizing daze, as relatives carried her downstairs. Reaching a hospital was impossible. So Bseso amputated her…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The greatest threat to Keir Starmer’s leadership is Keir Starmer. It’s not the Tories. It is not Farage. The Lib Dems are as threatening to the Labour prime minister as a hungry vegan is to a bowl of pan-fried offal.
Starmer — delivered to power on the crest of a wave of apathy and a deep, burning hatred for the Tories — is set to make exactly the same catastrophic mistakes that the Tories made for the last fourteen miserable years.
I say “mistakes”, but let us be absolutely crystal clear. Austerity isn’t a mistake. It is a political decision, not an economic necessity.
Austerity is neoliberal policy agenda designed to rapidly enhance the growth of capitalism while reallocating the burden of the failures of capitalism onto an overwhelming majority of the population. This is just so 2010.
What did austerity ever give to us?
Increased child poverty, homelessness, and rough sleeping.
But what else did austerity deliver?
Increased racial inequality and the social murder of hundreds of thousands of disabled people.
Maybe austerity did have its good points?
If you consider an unprecedented decay in public services and a staggering decline in life expectancy to be a good thing, then yes – mission accomplished.
I am absolutely sick of being told by bought-and-paid-for multi-millionaires that we need to tighten our belts. Haven’t you had enough yet? Is this what you were hoping for when you voted for Labour, just so you could get rid of the Tories?
I can remember this new Labour government pledging to halve spending on external consultants during this parliament amid warranted criticism that Whitehall has grown overly reliant on ludicrously expensive advisers.
Yet less than two months into the age of beige, external consultants KPMG have seen a contract worth an eye-watering £223 million to train civil servants signed off by Labour.
So let me get this right. Another round of cuts for pensioners and disabled people, regardless of the human cost, but there’s plenty in the British kitty for proxy-wars and nearly a quarter-of-a-billion quid for exactly the type of contract that Labour promised to cut back on?
Stagnant Starmer’s own personal approval ratings are tanking for a very good reason.
Starmer has never been particularly likeable. It’s very easy to mistake a whopping parliamentary majority achieved through an archaic and undemocratic voting system with personal popularity.
His best hope of building on the general election victory was to deliver the change that he promised, speech after speech, throughout the general election campaign.
But Starmer has typically betrayed the electorate, because he has got himself into power and planted himself to the right of where David Cameron was when he came into office in 2010. Nobody voted for this.
Keir Starmer has promised you ‘misery now’ for long-term gain. What next? Hug-a-hoodie? Cut the green crap? The big society? We’re all in this together? Nobody voted for this.
Kid Starver and Rachel Thieves are the David Cameron and Gideon Osborne of 2024. Pensioners, children, disabled people, those without a home, and some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society were promised a better tomorrow, but now their futures have never looked so fucking bleak. Nobody voted for this.
Cast your minds back to 2020. I wonder how many of you centrist dads (and mums) that promised us “another future is possible”, in exchange for a promise to vote for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party at the following general election, only to now realise you have conned the electorate into voting for a full-blown police state to provide a safe space for Israel’s ongoing genocide?
Sarah Wilkinson, a respected left-wing journalist and human rights activist, was arrested by “9 or 10” police officers following her online posts that routinely expose the brutality and criminality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Sarah, someone who I have admired and been inspired by for the last ten years, isn’t the first left-leaning pro-Palestine journalist to feel the full force of the law, simply for exposing the atrocities that are being committed by the genocidal state of Israel.
Just last week, journalist and activist Richard Medhurst was arrested on board his plane at Heathrow. Medhurst was charged with supporting a proscribed organisation and was bailed for three months for his reporting on Gaza and the Palestinian resistance.
Isn’t it quite incredible how the BBC still refer to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party as “centre-left”? I don’t know of any apparent centre-left outfit that would commit such a blatant assault on press freedom.
‘Leveson Two’ has never been such a remote possibility.
We shouldn’t be surprised by authoritarian Starmer’s intensifying attacks on our freedom. After all, the ex-Trilateral Commission member is an asset of the British security state.
But we cannot accept left-wing journalists being locked up for their part in exposing the genocide of Gaza, simply to protect the deranged, racist state of Israel, can we?
Here’s the thing. We might not agree with people from the centre and the right when it comes to war, public services and austerity, but we and they have liberties that must be protected in order to maintain a healthy, functioning democracy.
Starmer’s rapid lunge towards an oppressive police state is undoubtedly designed to crack down on what he believes is anti-Israel sentiment, both online and on the streets.
Being vigorously opposed to the current genocide in Gaza doesn’t make you anti-Israel, or even the old favourite, virulently antisemitic. But it does make you pro-humanity, and that is something to be proud of.
So, what have we learned since Keir Starmer was gifted the keys to the front door of Number 10, Downing Street?
Ideological austerity, war, and an assault on our press freedom and civil liberties is equally as wrong, no matter who is in power, and no matter the colour of the rosette that is pinned to their chests.
Without some remarkable, screeching U-turns, Keir Starmer’s popularity will continue to decline, and the vultures from the hard-right of the Labour Party will swoop.
Has anyone got a spare lettuce?
Featured image via Rachael Swindon
This post was originally published on Canary.
Despite much grandstanding in the Biden administration about halting specific arms shipments to Israel over feigned concerns about how they might be used (inflicting death is the expected form), US military supplies have been restored with barely a murmur. In a report in Haaretz on August 29, a rush of weapons to Israel has been noticed since the end of July.
August proved to be the second busiest month for US arms deliveries to Israel’s Nevatim Airbase since the October 2023 attacks by Hamas. This has taken place alongside an increased concentration of US forces in the region since Israel’s assassinations of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh at the end of last month. Two aircraft carriers, a guided missile submarine, and deployments of advanced F-22 stealth aircraft in Qatar, have featured in a show intended to deter Tehran from any retaliatory strikes.
After examining open-source aviation data from the end of July, Haaretz concluded that the issue of delayed shipments of US weapons had “been solved.” Dozens of flights by US military transport planes, along with civilian and military Israeli cargo planes, mostly from Qatar and the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, had been noted. Demands by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his July 24 speech to Congress that US military aid be “dramatically” expedited to “end the war in Gaza and help prevent a broader war in the Middle East”, had been heeded.
On August 26, Israel received its 500th aerial shipment of weapons and military supplies from the United States since the latest war’s commencement. The 500 flights have also been supplemented by 107 sea shipments, altogether facilitating the transfer of 50,000 tons of military equipment in an initiative between the US military, Israel’s Defence Ministry’s Directorate of Production and Procurement and Mission to the United States, the IDF’s planning Directorate and the Israeli Air Force.
During the same month, the Democratic National Convention, which saw no debate about the candidature of Kamala Harris as its choice for presidential candidate, had tepidly promised some agitation on continued arms to Israel. Ahead of the event, the Uncommitted movement’s 30 delegates, picked by voters alarmed by US support for Israel’s war machine in Gaza, were hoping to convince the 4,000 pledged delegates Harris had captured to add an arms embargo to its campaign in order to induce a ceasefire.
A petition by the group sought two outcomes: the adding of language to both the party and campaign platform “that unequivocally supports a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a cessation of supplying weapons for Israel’s assault and occupation against Palestinians.”
These wishes proved much too salty for the apparatchiks and party managers. The Democratic Party’s 2024 national platform ironically enough begins with an effusive “land acknowledgment” to “the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations” but plays it safe regarding an ally very much the product of territorial seizure, violence and occupation. Despite mutterings in the party room about a split between moderate and progressive members on Israel’s conduct of the war, the topic of a ceasefire never made it to the committee hearings when the document was drafted.
In firmly insisting on continued US support for Israel in its war against Hamas, much is made in the platform about US efforts to forge a way that will see a release of the hostages, “a durable ceasefire”, the easing of “humanitarian suffering in Gaza” and the “possible normalization between Israel and key Arab states, together with meaningful progress and a political horizon for the Palestinian people.” The language is instructive: the Palestinians are objects of pitiful charity, at the mercy of Israel, the US, and various Arab states. Like toddlers, they are to be managed, steered, guided, their political choices forever mediated through the wishes of other powers.
With Israel remaining Washington’s paramount ally in the Middle East, that process of steering and managing the unruly Palestinians has been, thus far, lethal. During her first interview given after the convention (she has an aversion to them), Harris scotched any suggestions on going wobbly on Israel. “I’m unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defence and its ability to defend itself, and that’s not going to change,” she told CNN’s Dana Bush. In what has become a standard refrain, Harris lamented that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” while acknowledging Israel’s right to self-defence.
When asked whether she would alter President Biden’s policy on furnishing military assistance to Israel, “No” came the reply. “We have to get a deal done. The war must end, and we must get a deal that is about getting the hostages out. I’ve met with the families of the American hostages. Let’s get the hostages out. Let’s get the ceasefire done.”
This middle-management lingo says much about Harris’s worldview; in wishing to “get the ceasefire done”, she is encouraging a range of factors that will make sure nothing of the sort will be achieved. The Netanyahu formula has worked its usual black magic. Hence, the lack of an arms embargo, and the continued, generous supply to the IDF from their largest military benefactor.
The post A Return to Form: Expediting US Arms to Israel first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Israel’s ongoing military onslaught on the northern West Bank cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas has now entered its third day. The Israeli army has made a point of describing it as the largest-scale invasion of the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, a message largely meant for its Israeli audience, and perhaps also meant to terrorize Palestinians as a form of psychological…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
From rumors that Beyonce was going to perform to Uncommitted delegates staging an all-night sit-in outside the United Center to demand that a Palestinian voice be given time to speak on the main stage, there were many storylines that emerged from the 2024 Democratic National Convention. But the DNC also showed how the ruling establishment and corporate media work together to curate a fantasy version of reality, especially when it comes to whitewashing the Biden-Harris Administration’s unequivocal support for Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Sarah Lazare and Adam Johnson about what reporting at the DNC taught them about the changed media environment we are all part of.
Sarah Lazare is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for In These Times; she was reporting from Chicago as a freelancer for The Nation magazine, separate from her Workday responsibilities. Adam Johnson is cohost of the podcast Citations Needed, a columnist at TRNN, and the author of the The Column on Substack; he was also reporting from Chicago as a freelancer for The Nation magazine.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome everyone to the Real News Network podcast. My name is Maximilian Alvarez. I’m the editor in chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us. Before we get going today, I want to remind y’all that the Real News is an independent viewer and listener supported grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t have ads, and we never put our reporting behind paywalls. Our team is fiercely dedicated to lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle around the world. But we cannot continue to do this work without your support, and we need you to become a supporter of The Real News now. Just head over to the real news.com/donate and donate today. It really makes a difference. So we are back in Baltimore after an intense week of filming inside and outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The 2024 DNC concluded on August 22nd with Kamala Harris officially accepting the party’s nomination and addressing the convention. And now it is a full on sprint to the general election on November 5th from the back and forth rumors that Beyonce was going to perform at the convention to Uncommitted delegates, staging an all night sit-in outside the convention center to demand that a Palestinian voice be given time to speak on the main stage from the Gaza Solidarity protest that took place on the streets of Chicago during the convention to the over 200 staffers who worked for George HW Bush, George W. Bush, Senator Mitt Romney in the late Senator John McCain endorsing Harris. There were many storylines that emerged from the DNC all mixed into a frenetic content stream and extruded through a highly fractured digital media ecosystem that is heavily partitioned by class algorithm and ideological preference. As you all know, the real news was there on the ground in Chicago, inside the convention and on the front lines of the protests, and we were there partnering and working in collaboration with the great in these Times Magazine, as well as other vital independent outlets like Truth Out Prism Magazine and other members of the newly formed Movement Media Alliance of which The Real News is a proud member.
Now in this podcast, we want to take a little step back from the immediate storylines that came out of the DNC and we want to talk about the peculiar roles that the media plays in the creation and curation of media spectacles like this, and what reporting at the DNC taught us about the changed media environment we are all a part of now. And to talk about all this, I could not be more excited to be joined by two incredible movement media fellows and coworkers and colleagues with whom we collaborate regularly. The great Sarah Lazar, who is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for in these times, both incredible outlets that The Real News is a proud partner with. And Sarah was reporting from Chicago as a freelancer for the Nation magazine, which was separate from her Workday responsibilities. And we are also joined by Adam Johnson. Adam is co-host of the podcast Citations Needed, which everyone should listen to, and he is also a columnist here at the Real News Network, and you can find more of Adam’s writing on his substack titled The Column. Sarah, Adam, thank you both so much for joining me today on The Real News Network. I really appreciate it.
Sarah Lazare:
It’s so good to be here and I really want to give a shout out Real News’ coverage was incredible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Thank you so much, sister. That means the world to us and right back at you guys doing the incredible work you were doing for the nation and beyond. Really vital stuff that everyone out there should read. We will link to Sarah and Adam’s pieces in the show notes for this episode. And yeah, I want to kind of dive right in here with a big meaty question that I’ve been dying to talk about with you guys specifically. So we’ve had a little time to rest after the DNC. We’ve had a little time to process and decompress, not catch up on sleep enough. I think we are all still in a sleep deficit, but we’ve had some time and some distance to sort of reflect on what we all just took part in. And as members of the media, we were all three of us and my colleague Mel Bier and the great folks who were with us there on the ground, we were all there in Chicago to cover the events unfolding at and around the DNC. But I want to table that for a second and I want to talk specifically about the presence and role of the media at the DNC. So as people who occupy that middle space between the reality on the ground and the viewers, readers and listeners out there who want to see it, what did you guys observe from the media side that you think people who weren’t there at the DNC need to know and consider?
Sarah Lazare:
I was struck by the incredible gulf between people who were there mobilizing around Gaza and the grief and desperation and urgency with which they spoke enchanted and marched about the need to stop us support for what Israel is doing in Gaza, the Gulf. Between that and the message of Joy and Brett Summer and celebration at the DNC, it was really, really jarring. I think as a member of the press, I saw how sad and upset and scared people are who are focused on Gaza Right now. Chicago has the biggest Palestinian diaspora community in the United States. I said Chicago, what I mean is a Chicago metropolitan area, including suburbs like Bridgeview, which are sometimes referred to as little Palestine. And there are a lot of people in the Chicago area who are directly impacted by what the US and Israel are doing in Gaza right now.
There are people who have lost dozens of family members. I talked to one person, Narin Hassan, who has a friend who lost a hundred family members. People have family in both Gaza and the West Bank who are scared, who are displaced, who are dispersed all over the place. And those folks have been mobilizing for months. Chicago has seen 1, 2, 3 protests every week, some of them the tens of thousands people protesting at lawmaker’s homes, people doing creative direct actions, and a lot of the grief and anger and outrage that Palestinian Americans and other people of conscience brought to the demos outside was just such a contrast with what was going on inside. The day after the panel that uncommitted organized, there was another separate event on the fourth floor of McCormick Place. It just felt kind of far away from the daytime programming. It felt like it was tucked away in a small corner.
And there doctors who had done medical humanitarian work in Gaza provided moral witness to what they experienced, and it was unbelievably devastating. They shared stories of holding the hands of children as they died with no family members left alive to comfort them. They shared the stories of one woman who was suffering severe burns all over her body and they discovered she was pregnant and they knew she was going to die and there was nothing they could do to keep her alive. And every day she was there, she was in agonizing pain. We heard these stories over and over again. There were a lot of tears. Shed not only by presenters, but honestly members of the press. At one point, an uncommitted delegate held his head in his hands and cried and turned his back to the crowd. Tissues were passed around, there was crying and sobbing, and some of these doctors had traveled from across the country just for that event just to talk to any press outlets that would listen.
And it was a small room. There was definitely press there, but it could never ever feel like enough press for the messages that they carried. We talked to one doctor who traveled all the way from Arkansas and was going to catch a flight later that afternoon, and it just had the feel of these people are so desperate to tell the world what Israel is doing in Gaza with US participation and munitions and arms, and they will do whatever it takes to try to make people listen, including rehashing their trauma over and over and over again. And to go from that incredibly somber event inside of the United Center where there were jubilant signs, there were people cheering. It was an era of festivity and party. People were clearly using that as social time, it as time to have fun. It was deeply disturbing and I feel haunted by that contrast.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And just to add two quick footnotes there before we toss to Adam, just to really flesh out two things that Sarah said when she says that these events at McCormick Place felt far away from the United Center, I want to emphasize for people they were, if you’ve been to Chicago, you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to get from the west side of town where the United Center is to the McCormick Place, which is on the south side of downtown. It’s not an easy place to get to, but they are quite far apart. They’re not right next to each other. If you’re in McCormick place, no one in the United Center is going to know who you are, what you’re doing, or if you even exist. So I just want to emphasize the spatial distance as well to say nothing of how grossly huge and monstrous the McCormick Place itself
Adam Johnson:
Is. Yeah, it’s about seven and a half miles away.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And then to also emphasize the sort of disconnect here, we will link to this as well, but over at Breakthrough News, I’m sure a lot of folks saw the viral video of DNC attendees walking past the security perimeter at the United Center while protesters were reading the names of killed Palestinians and Gaza, and you had DNC attendees literally plugging their ears and walking past with disdain, refusing to hear those names. So that is also what we saw on the ground to give that additional context for what Sarah just put so powerfully. Adam, what about you? What did you see? What do you think folks out there need to see about that media side?
Adam Johnson:
And to be clear, those protesters who I think are 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 I worked on a piece for the nation about what I’m calling or what I call the compartmentalization, which is to say 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 frankly union brothers and sisters who are there celebrating. Again, this is all very complex. We can get into that. While the administration, the current administration and its current replacement running on the Democratic ticket, the vice president, vice President Harris 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 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 the second they began doing it because for the first five months of this, so-called conflict, 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 reelection, 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 in concert with that switch from the White House as part started 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 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 again, finally the New York Times today said on the daily podcast, Patrick Kingsley, their Jerusalem correspondent, said literally is Netanyahu opposes a lasting ceasefire? So now finally, I guess people are acknowledging that reality that when they talk about ceasefire, when liberal Zionist organizations talk about ceasefire and the White House talks about ceasefire, they’re talking about a temporary pause for a few weeks while they exchange hostages, get leverage from Hamas or whatever, militants have hostages, and then continue doing the sort of genocide which they’ve been carrying out. I think pretty much consensus among genocide scholars who are not in denial, I know that’s a bit of a tology, but it is a genocide as Gaza is not livable.
They are pushing people to a very small airport, LAX airport size piece of land, and they are continuing to punish them with engage in collective punishment and displacement and unleashing diseases, especially polio, which has now taken off and that this is not going to stop unless the US conditions arms to Israel. Everybody knows it. Again, to their credit, although they did not withhold their endorsement on this condition, seven unions representing 6 million workers, including U-A-W-S-E-I-U, demanded that Biden engaged in a full arms embargo of Israel until it ends its genocide, which is now the sort of baseline ask I think of humanitarian organizations. Again, this was always the implied mechanism of the ceasefire, but now I got to say it literally. And so when they did the switcheroo from Biden to Harris in a matter 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.
The uncommitted, which of course began under Biden during his primary and continued until up until the DNC continues to this day saying, we’re going to withhold our support until you agree to an arms embargo in Israel, which sounds scary to some people, some lay people who say, arms embargo to Israel, but what about blah, blah, blah? But really what it is, another way to phrase it is conditioning aid until Israel is in line with international and US law, which by the way, the US is supposed to be doing anyway, otherwise, I’m not sure what the point of having these laws are. And many experts, many normy experts just today just security had an article showing how, again, this is kind of a very normy publication showing how Israel’s engrossed violation both in Gaza and the West Bank of international law and the Lehe 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 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 protestors are demanding, the baseline ask, obviously protestors outside the perimeter, their asks are more ambitious in apartheid and occupation, liberate Palestine, all that. But the baseline ask that every organization agrees on liberal progressive left far, left Palestinian, even frankly some non Zionist Jewish groups and anti-Zionist Jewish groups over 30, I think at this point, 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 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 FAE humanitarian efforts through humanitarian peer, 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 you’re actually physically going into the dnc, as you know, you’re bombarded by protestors calling out the names of the people that their candidate has agreed to continue, frankly supporting and killing because she has 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 school being back in session.
Sarah Lazare:
If I could just jump in for one second to talk about the demands of protestors. So the Coalition of March on the DNC is composed of more than 250 organizations 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 US PCN actually moved to join the coalition before October 7th because 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. One Lancet study estimated that 186,000 people have been killed when you consider both direct and indirect death. We’re seeing the most efficient killing campaign in the 21st century if you’re speaking just in terms of daily death toll.
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 genocide and two was end all USAID to Israel. 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 US that Adam mentioned, their demand was specifically around an arms bargo pursuant to a permanency fire. 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’ve told you that was absolute bottom of the barrel lowest possible bar demand. And they did go in there calling for an arms embargo. And so even though these demands have some variation and difference, that what unites them is a focus on ending material support, which is a recognition that it’s not enough to shift rhetoric, you have to change material reality.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and speaking about shifting rhetoric, I want to just quickly follow up because 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 kind of 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 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 train clapping seals. I dunno if you’ve ever been to the shed aquarium, but they have a seal that does the clapping. This is lower than that. I mean, when Harris, 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 sort of 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, Israel, again, to Netanyahu’s credit, every single day he’s asked, he goes out and says, we do not support a lasting ceasefire.
We are not going to end this war until we defeat Hamas 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 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 the war twice, three times, and then in follow-up questions to their dead eyed zombie press, Matt Miller, these guys, John Kirby, they’d 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.
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, 20 14, 20 18, 20 21, when a ceasefire meant Israel ends its current military game. Doesn’t mean kumbaya, doesn’t mean we solved the problem, but it means we stopped killing dozens of people in 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 says, 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, to an arms embargo, 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 shed aquarium started going, 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 foreign policy adjacent sort of sheep dogging. They started doing all this kind of tea leaf reading like, 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 administration had been using Palestine needs dignity and freedom and sort of these meaningless buzzwords that this doesn’t mean anything, that 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 material consequence. It’s actually an ask that’ll make APAC have a five alarm meltdown. And that’s how you know this bullshit rhetoric doesn’t matter because 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 is a right to defend. It’s always kind of 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. She keeps saying it.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and that goes double for the party’s policy on immigration and the border as well. I mean, I think two things were made abundantly clear at the policy level that even though there is a new name at the top of the Democratic ticket as far as policy goes towards Israel and its genocidal war on Gaza and the immigration debate and the quote border crisis, the policy is going to be the same as it was before. And I want to talk about that disconnect between policy and rhetoric, policy and spectacle here in this next question. But just to kind of add a couple of thoughts and observations from my side on the ground there as well, you guys covering the protests going inside the convention center, getting to see both sides of that really made me think about the core of what media is, what it does, what functions it serves.
I mean, in a past life, I was a media historian when I still wanted to be an academic. And I think a lot about how going back to its Latin root media means middle, it is the middle space. It is the place between two things that are unconnected. It is the connector between those things. And what I saw in Chicago last week was as much a lesson in where those connections are and how they shape what we see and hear, and also where they are not and how that shapes our politics. I mean, even some of the examples that have come up in this conversation so far, the heavier panels focused on things like Gaza that were taking place almost two miles away at the McCormick Center on the other side of town where no one could really see or hear them if they were going to the United Center.
So you have that sort of partitioning off. You had the battle by the organizations represented in the coalition to march on the DNC. They were battling with the city of Chicago and with federal courts for months over the protest route demanding that they be allowed to march, quote with sight and sound of the DNC, right? That’s a media question. It’s like we want to be immediately heard and seen by the people who are walking into that United Center. Otherwise, what you see if you’re there on the ground is the caveat to the American religion of free speech, which is that people may have a right to speak, they have no right to be heard. And the DNC and the powers that be, this is not particular to the DNC. My colleague Steven, Janice and Te Graham showed us that the barriers around the RNC in Milwaukee in July were just as high, especially after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
So from that to delegates literally plugging their ears, walking past protestors, I think that’s a question I want to really leave listeners with. What do we have to be heard and seen and what mechanisms are being put in place seen and unseen to prevent us from seeing and hearing the truth? And I think that to add on that too, two things that covering the DNC really taught me about the media environment that we are in. I feel like I did learn a lot by being there in that environment about the industry that we’re in, that maybe I hadn’t ever covered anything like this before. Maybe this is the first time that I’d cover something like this since the Covid lockdown in 2020, where that forced a lot of evolutions in the digital media ecosystem. I don’t know. But what I did really take note of is that at so many of these marches, there were as many media and police as there were protestors.
I mean, that was very apparent to me on Sunday during the bodies march where the street Michigan Avenue was lined with hundreds of police and cameras everywhere, not to diminish the efforts of the protestors, but to those who maybe saw pictures, it may have felt like it was a more overwhelming presence than it actually was because there were so many police I press there. And to add onto that, whether it was at the march, whether it was at the Uncommitted Delegate, sit-in, another thing that really struck me when I was standing there holding my camera focused on the shot, and then I’m looking around and I see dozens and dozens of other cameras focus on the same thing being held by people who represent such radically different media projects, knowing at that moment that we were all looking at the same thing, but the feeds that we’re going to be reaching viewers and listeners out there, we’re not going to be showing the same thing.
And there’s a lot to unpack in that we don’t have time to, but I want to leave you guys with that thought because I was there. I was with Sarah and Adam. I was standing right next to them outside the United Center filming the Uncommitted Delegate, but we were also there with folks that people will know, like Amy Goodman from Democracy Now, Coates was right behind me, Kaaboo really great folks that we know. At the same time, there were a bunch of grifters and douche bags. There was News Nation out there, right? NBC Chicago was there, right? And again, what that taught me was that even though the physical space we shared was the same, what we were watching was the same. I knew for a fact that the people who were watching it through the media that was projecting that image back to their audiences on their phones and their cameras, were not going to be seeing the same thing.
And that really is a testament to where we are in the 21st century hyper digitalized media ecosystem that we’re going to kind of circle back to here at the end of the conversation. But guys, I want to turn this into kind of a broader meta question here, which I know you guys have lots of thoughts on, and we don’t have to get to everything, but I want to kind get your thoughts on this, which is that conventions like these, as we said, they are an object lesson in how politics becomes spectacle and how spectacle replaces policy as the primary vehicle of politics. I guess put another way, conventions are the height of politics crafted for the camera. Now looking at it through that lens, pun not intended, what did the DNC reveal to you both about how the spectacle of party politics is crafted, the disconnect between the media spectacle and the concrete reality of policy and what role we as viewers, readers, and listeners are expected to play in all of this?
Sarah Lazare:
So that’s a really important question and a question that I’ve been finding myself grappling with too. The thing that is so frustrating is that those who showed up to air their concerns about what the US and Israel are doing in Gaza, they are not a fringe element. They’re not a small force. They represent people in the many, many tens and tens of thousands. So the 29 uncommitted delegates who were there collectively represent an estimated 740,000 voters. The unions that have called for an arms embargo pursuant to a permanency fire represent roughly 6 million workers. The Chicagoans and people who came from across the country to mobilize in the streets represent as we know, a far greater public that’s concerned about what the US and Israel are doing in Gaza. Polling shows that a clear overwhelming majority of people who identify themselves as democratic voters want a ceasefire and say that what Israel is suing in Gaza is unpopular and setting aside democratic voters, we know that a majority of the public wants a ceasefire.
So those bringing grievances to the DNC represent a large number of people. That’s a serious base of people. Yes, we always want the base of those who are mobilizing to grow, but this is not a fringe movement at all, not to dismiss all fringe movements because some are really important and morally righteous, which is to say this is a gigantic base of people. So to see that gigantic base of people just sidelined over and over and over, whether it was the repression in the streets or whether it was the way that the DNC sanitized any mention of Gaza was truly discouraging. You mentioned the police presence, and I did want to just share an update from the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Chicago has a wonderful vibrant ecosystem of movement lawyers and movement legal workers and mass defense organizers, and so they condemned massive shows of force brutality and mass arrests, which they say define the police response to protests.
During the week, CPD conducted a total of 76 arrests from Sunday through Tuesday, two on Sunday, 13 on Monday, 59 on Tuesday and two on Thursday, which resulted mainly in municipal citations for disorderly conduct, but also several people charged with misdemeanors as well as four felonies. NLG Chicago received reports of several people who were injured as a result of the police melee on Tuesday outside the Israeli consulate, one protestors in the court process and all other protestors arrested this week were ordered, released on their DNC related cases. So that’s just a reminder that there are sectors of Chicago movements that are still going to be dealing with the consequences of that mobilization for some time.
Adam Johnson:
Yeah. Let me talk a bit about the DNC because on some level, people talk about the gross spectacle of the DNC, and they may say, well, you’re like a vegan who shows up to a barbecue restaurant, complains they don’t have quinoa, right? I mean, it’s what it is by definition. It’s a vulgar media spectacle. It used to be a place where you go and contest and you’d accidentally nominate James Garfield or whatever, but that’s obviously all done behind closed doors or done through primary systems. So on the one hand, yeah, it’s to be expected, but just because something is expected or something that is sort of by its very nature, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come off as incredibly glib and cruel to those who are trying to change this. Again, this is ostensibly the liberal party, ostensibly the left-wing party in this country that is actively supporting a genocide and continues to support the basic premises of an ongoing genocide.
So there really was a real kind of other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play element? Again, we’re taught from a young age that genocide is the crime of crimes. It’s the worst thing you can possibly do, never again, this is what we’re taught, whether it’s the Holocaust, whether it’s Rwanda, whatever it is, we’re sort of taught that that’s the thing you’re not supposed to do, and then to seen have it be viewed as this kind of separate issue or yeah, it’s a little muddy or it’s a war, it’s kind. Well, well, Trump would be worse. That’s their kind of favorite zombie rejoinder as if Democrats don’t have control over their own destiny. This kind of trolley problem, which again, is a trolley problem. Democrats can end at any point they want to, and at which point they do, I’ll get a coconut meme tattooed on my face.
This is not an unachievable goal that activists are pleading for the White House to do. They’re just saying, we can’t just vibe through it. You can’t just sort of ignore it like you would a cancerous mold and sort of say, well, it’ll just go away because the fact of genocide is very real and it’s ongoing, and the reality is that there’s no real news at the conventions. Nothing news happens, and this is what you have to realize is that the vast bulk of media who go television, people got to go because a television spectacle, but mostly it’s to party. I mean, let’s just be honest here. It’s people especially because there really wasn’t one in 2020. This are people that haven’t seen a lot of the same, and a majority of the political media is liberal, is Democrat. I don’t think that’s a controversial claim.
That doesn’t mean they’re left wing, it doesn’t mean they have good politics, but they’re mostly lever pulls. They have friendly relationships with a lot of these people. They have the $500,000 corporate suites that sort of wrap around the United Center where the big dogs are, and they want to kind of just go and party, and they don’t want to think about dead children and women with third degree burns dying while pregnant. They don’t want to think about these things. I think the desperation and anger and bitterness, I think from the Gaza activists, which is to say morally sound human beings, was that this was seen as the last opportunity to really put any pressure. There wasn’t a primary, there wasn’t a meaningful primary. None of the protests worked. They were subject in the sense that they were subject to police brutality, arbitrary campus changes in rules and suppression and firing people and doxing and all these kind of sophisticated counterinsurgency tactics, although they don’t typically work that well against Palestinians.
It is a cause that is somewhat difficult to be co-opted by the nonprofit industrial complex, and obviously they’ll kick back up again soon, and they’re always ongoing, but there was no sense that anyone was going to listen and that this was kind of the final nail in the coffin that this, they had switched out Biden with Harris. She continued his policy and that because of the understandable threat of Trump in Project 2025 and all that, we were just going to have to. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play a genocide? And again, this is a problem entirely of Harris’s creation. It’s a problem she can solve overnight by making a simple commitment to follow us and international law. This is not some exotic ask, this isn’t asking for her to arrange Congress for some impossible Medicare for all or whatever. This is something she can do overnight whenever she wants, and every single day she and President Biden wake up and decide not to do the right thing.
And there’s a finality to it. And so when you see people like Alexander Ocasio-Cortez go on stage and say, Harris is working tirelessly for a ceasefire, you become very, very, very cynical because that is actively trivializing the protests and the uncommitted movement and the doctors who flew all the way from California, Arkansas, North Carolina to come plead to the Democrats to pay attention. Otherwise, if she’s working for a ceasefire, why are they there? And so that is kind of direct counterinsurgency direct. Well, thankfully it’s a lie. It’s not true. Not in any meaningful sense. And when these people talk about, oh, they’re fighting for a ceasefire, I’m like, so is it your opinion that China is a people’s republic of China? I mean, not to say it is or it isn’t, but obviously this is just a fucking label and people reject labels all the time.
So there was a finality to it, and I was there Monday when a OC was giving her speech, and it was actually going on as I was leaving, and then I looked around and I turned to Sarah and I was like, I hate to say it. This is not about my own kind of feelings, but it was profoundly depressing. It really did show that the one pathway to getting this administration and as vice president to change course, there was some sense that the one thing they were going to listen to, because obviously they were stubborn and racist and very pro-Israel sort of, again, Harris went to APAC for every single year until she ran for primary or the primary 2019, that the idea of electoral suffering was the one thing they may respond to, but they may respond to this idea they’re going to lose tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of votes.
They had youth depression and then they switched to Harris. And then youth support poll show goes skyrocketing, volunteers, social media sort of vibes, which are important. They skyrocket and you say, oh, the one thing that may have worked is no longer an arrow in the quiver. That’s it. It’s like game over pretty much. That isn’t to say you don’t keep trying. Don’t keep pressing. I’m not trying to so cynicism, but you saw the way in which this co-option of ceasefire, this kind of brat summer stuff, all these vibes, this sort of positive media coverage, it worked and the bad guys won, or at least they’re winning so far.
Maximillian Alvarez:
There’s another point there to be teased out that about the function that these spectacles really serve in our political milieu, right? I felt what you guys are describing, I mean, I expressed many of the same sentiments, and whether it be the continuing news coming out of Gaza and the West Bank, whether it be more updates of people, migrants like my foster daughter and her friends, and people like my family dying in the heat, trying to cross the border to find a life for themselves, whether it be texts that I got from residents living in and around East Palestine, Ohio where the train derailed notifying me that a resident took her own life the very week that the convention was happening, and the people living there are still being poisoned. They’re still sick from that derailment. They’ve been abandoned by their own government along with Norfolk Southern.
That cognitive and emotional dissonance between the reality that we know all too well as conscious human beings, conscientious human beings and people in the media, we can’t turn our blind eye to that literally our job to look right and try to get others to look. So I was feeling that dissonance along with you guys, and it left me feeling broken and depressed and just existentially unmoored at the same time. I think if there’s one thing I hope people take away from the work that I do, that emotional intelligence is a thing and that political emotions are worth analyzing and play a critical role in shaping who we are and how we act in that way. I saw what people need out of a spectacle like the DNC and the RNC, I want to be very clear, this applies across the board to both parties, both conventions. It is like mots to a flame. It is a spectacle that is so chock full of carefully curated vibes that people desperately want and need. And we are not here to tell you dear listener, that it’s bad to want to feel joy.
Adam Johnson:
And to be clear, I want to be clear, there’s not, when you’re there, you realize very quickly that yes, there’s the big wigs and the corporate money, but it’s a lot of rank and file normy Democrats. It’s not like a bunch of people with monocle smoking cigars mean that is up there, right? Yeah. And then you quickly realize that you can have a party with working people to an extent, but as long as the people with a $500,000 suites are up there and sanction everything they’re doing, then that’s sort of the way you contain it. But it is inaccurate to say that again, I think the Republican parties we’re evil, yay. And they celebrate Democrats perhaps promote a different message. But look, you look around and nobody wants to be a bummer. You don’t want to go around saying you’re a postal worker, you’re with the NEA with the teacher’s union.
You make $80,000 a year. This is your time to party, or you’re just some obscure delegate. This is not all sort of smoky backroom type stuff. It’s a lot of people who want to be excited, who are understandably scared of Trump. And you’re right. That’s a very, any, I think kind of left wing messaging around again, what we consider to be the crime of crimes has to sort of understand that and calibrate for that. It’s not about shaming random people, but there are bigger forces at work that are not about that. Again, it’s all understandable. It’s not like you don’t understand why people don’t want to sit around feeling dour all the time. Lord knows it’s not the funnest existence,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Right? And again, it’s a very sinister sort of outcome where people’s genuine desire and need for things like joy that I think the democratic messaging is capitalizing on, especially after the last decade we’ve been through, especially with the prospect of Trump and a campaign filled and fueled by fear. I guess what I’m pleading to listeners is to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. I mean that joy was both real and sinister in the role, the function that it was being deployed for to provide a salve and an enforced complacency when it comes to the issues that no one wants to encroach on their joy. And I guess that’s really the thing we would want y’all to sit and think with not that joy is bad, but that it is bad to use joy to try to silence the need and cries of our fellow human beings around the country and around the world, especially those who are being slaughtered and obliterated by bombs that are manufactured here with our own tax dollars. We got to be able to understand those two things at once. And guys, I could talk to you about this for hours, but I know I got to let you go. And so in a rapid fire final wrap up, I wanted to just end this by focusing on an action question here. I wanted to ask if you had sort of basic tools, tips, critical media literacy strategies that we can offer our listeners for helping them navigate this media environment, especially over the next two months and beyond?
Adam Johnson:
Donate to my Patreon. No, I’m kidding. Sorry. You want to go ahead?
Sarah Lazare:
Yeah. So first of all, max, I want to say, I’m so sorry to hear that a resident of East Palestine took their own life. That’s horrific. I’m so sorry to hear that. I think that the greatest resource right now is the people who are continuing to mobilize despite the very muddled, confusing, and whiplash inducing political climate that we’ve been discussing. I have a lot of respect. I know that there are really tough strategic questions that people are navigating right now with respect to how to deal with the fact that Harris is doubling down on US weapons to Israel. I know that those questions are not easy, and I’m just so impressed that people are forging ahead in this difficult climate, especially given that so many of them are experiencing direct loss at this moment, whether it’s because they have family members in Gaza, the West Bank, or because their broader community is impacted, people in their schools, religious institutions, extended community networks. I mean, this is a real moment of collective grief. Nere Hassan told me every day is a funeral. Rine is an organizer with Palestinian feminist collective in U-S-P-C-N. And so I think that the people who are steadfastly pushing forward an alternative message are the people who are continuing to mobilize, and I’m just very impressed because that’s a really hard moment. So I would point people to learn more about organizing happening in their community.
Adam Johnson:
Yeah, I mean, again, I know I had somewhat of a downer note, but I mean, I am inspired by the seven or eight protesters who were outside the DNC simply reading off the names of the people being killed. I mean, this was obviously a popular protest tactic during Vietnam. It provides humanizes them. They’re not just numbers. They’re not just random sort of violent images on your social media timeline. These are people who had whole world’s whole universes, and I found that kind of inspiring. It’s like, oh, again, as I said earlier, there’s there’s no ulterior motive here. This is an entirely moral act, and that is one part of a broader ecosystem of activism around this issue that is not going to give up and has made it clear they’re not going to give up regardless of my existential dread as I left the convention center on Monday night.
And I think that so long as that fire burns, I think it’s something that let that be your guiding light, right? Don’t let bullshit think pieces in the Atlantic or New York Times be your guiding light. Think about people who are doing this for no, again, these are people who can’t afford to do this and do it anyway. These are people who are already traumatized 10 times over from losing loved ones and Palestine and do it anyway. And I think that as long as you sort of keep that as your North star and you don’t get lost in all the discourse and jockeying and trying to get this person elected over that person, I think in terms of media consumption, I think that’ll help one, keep some perspective.
Sarah Lazare:
And I just want to say one thing. I want to speak to the limitations of our conversations. So Adam and I went to the DNC with the intention to solely focus on Gaza. It was a capacity issue and it made sense to us strategically. But you have brought into this conversation really important things that also are dire and urgent and extremely harmful. For example, US Border Policy, also Real News did really excellent reporting about climate and the fact that we’re careening towards an existentially threatening ever worsening climate crisis that could kill people in the hundreds of millions or even billions. So I just want to acknowledge that those are not topics that Adam and I discussed just now, but are incredibly important, and I would just encourage listeners to check out Real News’ coverage because I found that coverage very strong
Adam Johnson:
Indeed.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So that is the great Sarah Lazar editor of Workday Magazine, a contributing editor for In these times. Sarah was working as a freelance reporter on the ground in Chicago reporting for the Nation Magazine, separate from her workday responsibilities. Adam Johnson, of course, is the co-host of the great podcast citations needed. He’s a columnist here at the Real News Network. You guys should check out his great writing and you should go support Adam and his writing at substack. Subscribe to his substack, the column, Adam. Sarah, thank you both so much for joining me today on the Real News Network podcast. I really appreciate it. And to all of you guys out there listening, please one more time, head on over to the real news.com/donate so we can bring you more important coverage and conversations just like this. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Israel withdrew an evacuation order in Gaza for the first time this week — the day after the Biden administration sent Israeli officials a memo urging restraint on the sweeping evacuation orders that have displaced 90 percent of Gaza’s population so far. On Thursday, the Israeli military announced that, on August 29 and 30, Palestinians could return to certain parts of central Gaza that were…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Vice President Kamala Harris has sparked fury after saying that she would not break from President Joe Biden’s policies toward Israel and its U.S.-sponsored genocide of Palestinians in Gaza if she were elected president this fall. In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Harris said she would not stop sending Israel weapons and that Israel “has a right to defend itself” — after it has killed…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
An aid convoy that a US charity organised shared its coordinates with Israel. But Israel then used that information to strike the first vehicle in the convoy, killing five people.
The vehicles were carrying fuel and medical supplies to a hospital in Rafah city, south Gaza, late on Thursday 29 August.
Sandra Rasheed of Anvera, the charity, said:
This is a shocking incident. The convoy, which was coordinated by Anera and approved by Israeli authorities, included an Anera employee who was fortunately unharmed. Tragically, several individuals, all employed by the transportation company we work with, were killed in the attack. They were in the first vehicle of the convoy.
This is not an isolated incident.
In May, Human Rights Watch documented eight incidents where aid convoys and workers shared their location with Israel, only for the state to have killed or injured a total of at least 31 people. Israel gave no warning before the attacks.
Aid organisations targeted include World Central Kitchen, Doctors Without Borders, International Rescue Committee, Medical Aid for Palestinians, American Near East Refugee Aid Organisation, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The UN reports that Israel has killed at least 280 aid workers, the majority from UNRWA, since October.
The latest airstrike on aid workers came shortly after Israeli forces open fired on two clearly marked WFP trucks. Again, the organisation had liaised with Israel. It said:
Despite being clearly marked and receiving multiple clearances by Israeli authorities to approach, the vehicle was directly struck by gunfire as it was moving towards an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) checkpoint. It sustained at least ten bullets: five on the driver’s side, two on the passenger side and three on other parts of the vehicle
This time, no one was injured. The vehicle had bulletproof glass. The UN’s WFP then announced it was suspending operations.
It was December when Human Rights Watch said Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war, which is a war crime. Still, it goes on. As well as blocking critical aid trucks from entering Gaza, Israeli forces appear to be terrorising the aid workers cleared to enter to deter them from continuing.
On 25 June, the UN’s Famine Review Committee, analysing a report from Integrated Food Security, found:
The situation in Gaza remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of Famine across the whole Gaza Strip. It is important to note that the probable improvement in nutrition status noted in April and May should not allow room for complacency about the risk of Famine in the coming weeks and months. The prolonged nature of the crisis means that this risk remains at least as high as at any time during the past few months.
The FRC encourages all stakeholders who use the IPC for high-level decision-making to understand that whether a Famine classification is confirmed or not does not in any manner change the fact that extreme human suffering is without a doubt currently ongoing in the Gaza Strip, and does not change the immediate humanitarian imperative to address this civilian suffering by enabling complete, safe, unhindered, and sustained humanitarian access into and throughout the Gaza Strip, including through ceasing hostilities. All actors should not wait until a Famine classification is made to act accordingly.
On 26 August, Human Rights Watch noted that Israel’s restrictions on aid, as well as its siege and attacks, have facilitated a Polio outbreak in Gaza. Julia Bleckner, senior health and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, said:
If the Israeli government continues to block urgent aid and destroy water and waste management infrastructure, it will facilitate the spread of a disease that has been nearly eradicated globally
In the UK, meanwhile, foreign secretary David Lammy has remained remarkably silent on the latest Israeli strike on aid workers and the similar attacks before it.
Featured image via Al Jazeera – English – YouTube
By James Wright
This post was originally published on Canary.
Sen. Bernie Sanders pledged Thursday to introduce a resolution to block the Biden administration’s proposed $20 billion sale of additional U.S. weaponry to Israel, telling an audience in his home state of Vermont that he will “lead the effort to make sure that we do not give any more arms to Israel unless there’s a radical change in politics.” “There will be another shipment of military…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel’s Ministry of Defense acknowledged a landmark on August 26: The Israeli military had received its 500th airlift of supplies from the United States since the attack by Hamas and other Palestinian militants on October 7, 2023. According to the ministry, those flights and more than a hundred sea shipments have delivered over 50,000 tons of military equipment, including armored vehicles…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The ruthlessness of the Israeli genocide machine in Palestine, and the direct complicity of the U.S., U.K., and other Western governments are two key pillars in the horrors being perpetrated against the Palestinian people (and in the attacks on human rights defenders around the globe). But there is an essential third pillar: the role of complicit Western media corporations knowingly…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
We turn to Kamala Harris’s position on Israel’s war on Gaza, which many are calling a genocide. After she was asked about calls to condition U.S. arms shipments to Israel by CNN reporter Dana Bash, Harris refused to consider halting the flow of weapons and instead affirmed her support of Israel. This position violates both federal and international law, argues Palestinian American political analyst Yousef Munayyer, and, coupled with her campaign’s denial of a requested Palestinian American speaking spot from “uncommitted” voters at the DNC, he warns that “Harris could be worse than Biden” when it comes to U.S. support for Israel.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The state has served three new charges – including one under the Terrorism Act – to a Palestine Action activist simply for speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
On Thursday 29 August, the UK state served Palestine Action’s co-founder Richard Barnard with three charges for two speeches. Specifically, the state is accusing Barnard of supporting a proscribed organisation under section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act. Alongside this, British authorities seek to charge him with two counts of encouraging criminal activity, namely ‘criminal damage’ against weapons manufacturers.
The state served the charges on the same day counter-terrorism police re-raided another Palestine Action activist’s home. The activist was a member of the ‘Filton10’ who dismantled the research hub of Israel’s biggest weapons firm, Elbit Systems. As the Canary’s Steve Topple previously reported:
The action caused over £1million in damage to the heavily guarded Filton-based research hub of Israel’s biggest weapons producer, which was opened in the summer of 2023.
In total, 10 activists have been charged in connection to the Filton action — all of whom were first detained without charge for nearly a week and interrogated constantly under the powers granted by the Terrorism Act.
Now, over three weeks after cops first arrested the Filton10 member, police have once again abused these powers to crack down on one of these activists.
However, the state hasn’t only targeted Barnard and the Filton10 activist with terror charges. On the same day, counter-terror cops also arrested prominent journalist and Palestine Action supporter Sarah Wilkinson for online posts.
As the Canary’s HG detailed, this authoritarian overreach of state power to silence a journalist could breach international law. Specifically, it could contravene Resolution 2222 (2015) of the UN Security Council which:
Condemns unequivocally all attacks and violence against journalists and media workers, such as torture, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and arbitrary detention, as well as intimidation and harassment in both conflict and non-conflict situations;
Therefore, HG wrote that:
Clearly, the UK government could be in breach of that by creating an arena where journalists like Sarah Wilkinson cannot report freely on the truth without fear of unfair retribution
Despite this, it hasn’t stopped British authorities from using these trumped up terror charges to silence activists speaking out against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Cops first arrested Barnard for the accusations he has been charged on November 9 2023. This was four days before he was due to begin trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court as part of the ‘Elbit Eight’. During that trial, the state accused him of several offences. The court acquitted him of 3 of them, including a charge of encouraging criminal damage. Authorities previously stopped him under Schedule 7 counter-terrorism powers in November 2020 alongside fellow activist Huda Ammori. This appeared a punitive measure to intimidate the co-founders of Palestine Action.
Richard Barnard is scheduled to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court, London, on September 18 for his plea hearing.
On the state’s abuse of counter-terrorism powers against pro-Palestine activists, a Palestine Action spokesperson said:
The British state is deliberately abusing counter-terrorism laws to target Palestine Action and the wider movement in order to protect the interests of a foreign genocidal entity over the freedom of its own citizens. As a movement we will only become stronger in the face of increased repression.
Featured image via Palestine Action
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
During a week of action focused on UN potential to end Israel’s genocidal attacks, I was part of a coalition that met with twelve different permanent missions to the United Nations. We urged that if countries that are parties to the Genocide Convention or the Geneva Conventions stop trading with Israel as international law demands, (cf. the July 19th advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice), the genocide will end quickly.
In each encounter at a Permanent Mission to the UN, its staff asked if we, as U.S. citizens, have addressed our government’s unwavering support for the genocide against impoverished and forcibly displaced people.
It was a deeply meaningful moment when the Irish Ambassador to the United Nations showed our delegation a miniature replica of John Behan’s poignant statue depicting the Irish exodus – it showed weary, hungry people disembarking from a boat after a stormy ocean voyage.
“You have to see each one of these as a human being,” he said.
My mother was an Irish indentured servant first in Ireland and then in England. As things go, she was among the more fortunate. She never endured being chained day and night in the Middle Passage of a slave ship carrying captives here, or in a human trafficker’s overcrowded, lethally airless truck container. Nor did she have to cling to the remains of an overcrowded ship to keep from drowning after it capsized in the Mediterranean.
Life in Gaza is a desperate moment-to-moment ordeal of clinging to such wreckage, trying to stay above water, to stay alive, while both major U.S. political parties struggle to push you under.
In an article published by The Guardian, Israeli-American Omer Bartov, an eminent Holocaust historian and expert on genocide, lamented the unwillingness of many Israelis—some of whom are his friends, neighbors, colleagues, and even former students—to see Palestinians as human beings. He comments: “Many of my friends…feel that in the struggle between justice and existence, existence must win out…it is our own cause that must be triumphant, no matter the price… This feeling did not appear suddenly on 7 October.”
Is it futile to ask Israelis to reconsider this vengeance – avenging hundreds of civilians with several hundred thousand, half of them children – while the U.S. continues to arm Israel for the task?
Bartov continues: By the time I travelled to Israel, I had become convinced that …Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions. … the ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory. In other words, … as the 1948 UN Genocide Convention puts it, … Israel was acting ‘with intent to destroy, in whole or in part’, the Palestinian population in Gaza, ‘as such, by killing, causing serious harm… inflicting conditions of life meant to bring about the group’s destruction’”.
How can United States citizens cope in a nation not just gone mad on war, but gone mad on genocide? We do not have to cope with lingering, state-enforced starvation or the memory of our lifeless children pulled from under rubble. But we must cope with our complicity.
When we can, we must act.
We cannot say we did not know. The United Nations member states watch the entire edifice of international law crumble as a genocide is broadcast across our screens. Israeli military forces may have killed close to 200,000 Gazans although only 40,000 bodies have been recovered for counting. The Israeli government’s siege is starving Palestinian children and has brought Gaza to the brink of a full-blown famine. Meanwhile, polio has made a return.
From September 10 – September 30, World BEYOND War, Code Pink, Veterans For Peace, Pax Christi and other coalition partners will leaflet, demonstrate, and nonviolently act to expose and oppose Israeli and U.S. actions which flout international law. We will gather before both the United States’ U.N. Mission and the Israeli consulate demanding both nations desist from further massacres, forcible displacement, and the use of starvation and disease as weapons.
We will remind people that Israel possesses thermonuclear weapons but refuses to acknowledge this fact and thereby avoids any assessment or safeguards by the International Atomic Energy Association and any involvement in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
We will express earnest concern both for Hamas’ prisoners and the more than a thousand Palestinians incarcerated without charge by Israel, many of them women and children.
Currently, the United States and Israel have effectively decided on death for the remaining hostages rather than a settlement that would free Palestinian women and children. In a reckless bid to spark a U.S.-Iran war, Israel recently assassinated, in Tehran, the chief Hamas negotiator for a hostage release.
And still the U.S.’ arms flow continues.
Last week, the world watched as the Democratic Party leadership, at its convention, squelched voices of the uncommitted delegates. DNC speakers repeated the lie that their party was seeking a ceasefire, while flatly refusing to stop replacing the guns and missiles Israel has used to shed blood and destroy infrastructure.
We all should rely on the covenant virtues of traditional Judaism, those virtues celebrated as essential for survival: truth, justice, and forgiving love. We should appeal to secular and faith-based people across the United States as we face precarities of nuclear annihilation and ecological collapse. Securing a better future for all children requires bolstering respect for human rights, searching always for ways to abolish war.
The U.S. government is complicit in genocide, and we, in whose name it is acting, are also complicit if we remain silent.
It is time for the United Nations to liberate itself from a Security Council structure giving five permanent, nuclear armed members a vise-like grip on the world’s ability to counter the scourge of war. We must join with the call of the South African government which bravely upheld international law. We must clamor for the General Assembly to enact the “uniting for peace” resolution.
As the forthright Jewish delegate at last week’s DNC, after he and two others unfurled a banner “STOP ARMING ISRAEL”, said, “Never again means never again!”
We invite you to join us. https://events.worldbeyondwar.org/
• A version of this article first appeared on World BEYOND War’s website. https://worldbeyondwar.org/hanging-on-with-gaza/
The post Hanging On with Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.