Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s top ceasefire negotiator, has been assassinated in an airstrike in Tehran, with Hamas leaders saying that Israel is responsible and that the move will severely undermine talks for a ceasefire amid Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Haniyeh, who was head of Hamas’s political bureau, was killed in the early hours of Wednesday in his residence in Iran’s capital…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The death toll in Gaza is way too low by every imaginable metric. We need to be stressing this – all the more so when Israel’s apologists are vigorously engaged in a disinformation campaign to suggest that the figures are inflated.
On 6 May, 7 months into Israel’s slaughter, there were reported to be 34,735 dead. That was an average of 4,960 Palestinians killed each month.
Today, nearly three months on, the reported death toll stands at 39,400 – or an increase of 4,665.
It should not need a statistician to point out that, were the rise linear, the expected number of deaths would stand by this point at around 49,600.
So, even by the simplest calculation, there is a large shortfall in deaths – a shortfall that needs explaining.
Such an explanation is easy to provide: Israel destroyed Gaza’s institutions and its medical infrastructure, including its hospitals, many months ago, making it impossible for officials there to keep track of how many Palestinians are being killed by Israel.
The death toll figures started to stall in the spring, around the time Israel completed its destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and kidnapped much of the enclave’s medical personnel.
More than a month ago, Save the Children pointed out that some 21,000 children in Gaza were missing, in addition to the 16,000 known to have been killed by Israel. Many are likely to have suffered lonely, terrifying deaths under rubble – gradually suffocated to death, or dying slowly from dehydration.
But again, even those shocking figures are likely to be a severe undercount.
The linear figure entirely misses the bigger picture. How?
1. Because in addition to the continuing Israeli bombardments, Palestinians have had to endure three more months of an intensifying famine. With each day of a famine, more people die than died the day before. The deaths in a famine are not linear, they are exponential. If 5 people died yesterday of starvation, 20 people will die today, and 150 tomorrow. That is how prolonged famines work. The longer you are starved, the higher the probability you will die of starvation.
2. Because Palestinians have had three more months deprived of medical care after Israel destroyed their hospitals and medical institutions. If you have a chronic illness – diabetes, asthma, kidney problems, high blood pressure, and so on – the longer you are forced to go without medical attention, the greater the chance you will die from an untreated condition. Again, the death rate in such circumstances is exponential, not linear.
3. Because without medical care, all sorts of other things that happen in everyday life become more dangerous. Childbirth is the most obvious example, but even cuts and grazes can become a death sentence. So given the fact that Palestinians now have even less access to medical care than they had in the first six months of Israel’s war on Gaza suggests that people are being killed by life-events in even greater numbers than was the case earlier in Israel’s slaughter.
4. Because, for exactly the same reasons, those injured by Israel’s continuing bombardments are likely to have poorer outcomes than those similarly injured in earlier attacks. Fewer doctors means less chance of treatment, means greater chance of dying from your wounds.
5. Because we know that – given the insanitary conditions, the lack of water and food, the weakened health status of the population, and the destruction of hospitals – epidemics now are breaking out. The WHO has already warned of a likely outbreak of polio, but there are sure to be other diseases emerging such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery that have yet to be isolated and identified. Even the common cold can become a killer when people’s health status is this compromised.
A letter from researchers to the Lancet medical journal this month warned about the likely massive undercount of the dead in Gaza, even relying, as they had to, on the established death toll.
Their point was that indirect deaths – of the kind I enumerate above – need to be factored in as well as the direct deaths from Israeli bombs. They very conservatively estimate that the total number who will die over the coming months – not just from bombs but as a result of the lack of medical care, insanitary conditions and famine – is 186,000, or 8 per cent of the population.
But that figure assumes that Israel’s current slaughter and starvation policies come to an immediate halt, and that international organisations are able to bring in emergency aid. There are precisely no signs that Israel is going to allow any of that to happen – or that western states are going to put any pressure on Israel to do so.
The medical researchers suggest a less conservative estimate could ultimately put the death toll in Gaza nearer 600,000, or a quarter of the population. Again, that assumes Israel reverses course immediately.
Remember too that for every person killed, several others are maimed or badly wounded. According to the current figures, more than 91,000 Palestinians are reported injured, many of them missing limbs. But again, that is likely to be a massive undercount too.
Harrowing as these figures are, they are just numbers. But Gaza’s dead are not numbers. They were human beings, half of them children, whose lives have been snuffed out, their potential erased forever, their loved ones left with an all-consuming grief. Many victims died alone in extreme pain, or endured unimaginable suffering.
None of their lives should be reduced to cold statistics on a graph. But if that is where we are at, and sadly it is, then at the very least we need to point out that the headline figures are a lie, that Israel’s barbarism is being grossly minimised, and that we are being lulled into a false sense complacency.
The post The official death toll in Gaza is a lie: The casualty numbers are far, far higher first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
In her first week officially running for president as the de facto Democratic nominee, there’s been a lot of confusion over Vice President Kamala Harris’ position on Gaza. After the moral and electoral nightmare that was President Joe Biden’s 9.5 months of lockstep support for Israel’s campaign of destruction and mass killing, many are looking for a sign—any signal—that a Harris White House would change course. This desire for good news is understandable, but in the rush to turn the page on the horrific Biden record, one must be sober and honest about what Harris is actually saying—and, more importantly, not saying—on the fact of genocide in Gaza.
Thus far, we’ve seen no evidence she would break from the White House’s current position, and in key ways she appears to be latching on to the same obfuscating tactics of her 81-year-old predecessor.
In a time of ever-shifting focus, sophisticated social media narratives, and the genuine fear of a second Trump term, it’s easy to simply vibe one’s way into thinking Harris is breaking from Biden on Gaza.
Now, this isn’t to say Harris won’t eventually change—or that her position is cemented—but it’s essential to be clear-eyed and know what meaningful change would look like in the event she actually does go beyond the superficial tweaks.
First, what we do know and where we currently are: As I laid out last week for In These Times, Palestine solidarity activists, the National Uncommitted Movement, and mainstream labor unions have shifted their demands of the White House from simply calling for a “ceasefire” to ending military aid to israel. The reason for this, as I’ve been documenting for months, is that the White House PR machine has successfully warped the commonly understood definition of ceasefire to mean something else entirely. The term, based on its usage in half a dozen other Gaza bombings over the past 17 years, was broadly understood to mean a demand was for the US to use its dispositive leverage to compel Israel to withdraw from Gaza and end the bombing. But the White House—after initially banning everyone in their administration from using the word—began to embrace the label “ceasefire” on the eve of the Michigan primary in February, but shifted its definition to mean only a “temporary pause.” Basically, the White House supports a brief pause in fighting followed by continued, indefinite support for Israel waging war in Gaza under the unachievable auspices of “eliminating Hamas.” As such, they can continue to appeal to open-ended, bad-faith “ceasefire negotiations” that must be “pushed”—while painting themselves as a neutral, powerless third party.
Evidence of Israel’s bad faith “negotiations” was made undeniable early Wednesday morning when they apparently killed the head of the Hamas ceasefire delegation, Ismail Haniyeh, while he visited Iran for their presidential swearing-in ceremony. This is not consistent with a party seeking to “end the war,” but it is consistent with a party that has pledged––as they have dozens of times, including in front of Congress last week––to achieve “total victory.” US officials and pundits simply ignoring this reality and projecting peaceful intentions onto them won’t make it so.
But this fictitious support by the White House for a “ceasefire”—which we will call NuCeasefire—has worked to perfection, confusing liberals and leftists alike and lowering the temperature on the protests. The US is no longer seen as the sole patron of a country leveling Gaza that could stop backing genocidal acts whenever they choose. It can now be seen as a force of peace, brokering a mysterious “ceasefire negotiation” process that simply never gets anywhere as deaths in Gaza continue mounting.
If anything, savvy and convincing use of Empathy-Speak while still rubber-stamping shipments of weapons and munitions could be less of a “step in the right direction” and more a harbinger of an increasingly sophisticated bullshitting media apparatus.
From what we’ve seen of Harris’ comments on Gaza since Biden withdrew from the race, this appears to also be her position, with modest changes in tone. Harris’ public comments made before and after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the day after his July 23 speech before Congress indicate that she has settled on a combination of bleeding-heart empathy-speak and vague appeals to NuCeasefire.
Many have noted a shift in “tone,” but this is true only if one limits the Biden administration to Biden. While it’s true President Biden hasn’t really bothered even acknowledging Palestinians exists, much less are human—and Harris rhetorically doing so is a change—Secretary of State Antony Blinken has trafficked in similar crocodile tears, so it’s not clear what Harris’s use of Empathy-Speak really counts for. If anything, savvy and convincing use of Empathy-Speak while still rubber-stamping shipments of weapons and munitions could be less of a “step in the right direction” and more a harbinger of an increasingly sophisticated bullshitting media apparatus.
Part of this media curation process aimed at low-information liberals is the specter of meaningful disagreement between Harris and Netanyahu. Biden aides have been feeding these stories to the press for months in a trope so stale I wrote about it for The Real News back in December. The most egregious laundromat for these self-serving non-events, as I’ve noted many times before, is Barak Ravid at Axios. So it’s entirely predictable that the first outlet to run an “Increased Tensions Between Harris and Netanyahu” story was Ravid, a White House stenographer whose primary beat is creating the illusion of anger and dissent from an administration that keeps, mysteriously, signing off on every single weapons and munitions shipments to Israel.
A common rejoinder to the left’s criticism of Harris not shifting policy on Gaza is that she simply cannot. She’s running for office while at the same serving in an administration, and she can’t openly break from the president. While it seems morally stunted to not act as if there aren’t more important things in life than loyalty to one’s boss (say, for example, ending a genocide), this evasion misses the obvious solution to this problem: Harris can have conversations with—and make assurances to—independent groups who could very easily vouch for her. There is no shortage of independent Palestinian groups or individuals (not tasked with simply electing Democrats) who would be more than happy to take her phone call, listen to her pitch, and endorse her candidacy in exchange for an actual end to the mass killing of Palestinians. Alas, these phone calls have not been forthcoming and, as the vice president of the United States, we have little reason to believe it’s because she doesn’t have their contact information.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the sole Palestinian American in Congress, has said she is withholding her endorsement of Harris until she hears a credible plan to end US backing of Israel’s “war.” Thus far she has not mentioned seeing any such changes.
So, will a meaningful shift in policy come? It’s still possible, and one should not stop pressuring. Indeed, this is the aim of the mass protests planned for the DNC in late August. But one should not let rose-tinted campaigning get in the way of what is actually said and what policies are actually being laid out. In a time of ever-shifting focus, sophisticated social media narratives, and the genuine fear of a second Trump term, it’s easy to simply vibe one’s way into thinking Harris is breaking from Biden on Gaza. But one must stay focused and keep in mind three central questions: (1) Are kids still being bombed? (2) Are US bombs still being shipped? (3) Is the person in question refusing to commit to stopping the shipment of said bombs? If the answer to all three questions is yes, then bleeding-heart box checking and vague appeals to “ceasefire negotiations” don’t matter much at all.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Over the past few years, the battle against the proposed 85-acre Atlanta Public Safety Training Center — commonly known as “Cop City” — has emerged as a national flashpoint of resistance to militarized, corporate-backed police power. As it turns out, Cop City is also backed by some of the top donors to the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On Palestine Action’s 4th anniversary, it marked the auspicious occasion in the best way possible: shutting down an Israel genocide-complicit factory operated by Elbit.
On Wednesday 31 July, Palestine Action activists used two vehicles to block both entrances into Elbit’s UAV Engines factory in Shenstone, Staffordshire:
From on top of a van at one gate, activists have lobbed glass jars of red paint towards the building to symbolise the company’s ongoing complicity in Palestinian bloodshed.
Security were quick to try and stop them:
Cops predictably turned up to protect corporate interests, and nicked five people:
UAV Engines Ltd is owned by Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems, the primary target of Palestine Action’s four yearlong direct action campaign. 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land-based equipment is supplied by Elbit Systems, which uses Gaza as a laboratory to develop weaponry which is later marketed as “battle-tested”.
Crucial components for such battle-tested weapons are made in factories across England, with engines for drones being manufactured inside Elbit’s UAV Engines ltd.
Two similar factories have been forced to permanently close down since Palestine Action launched four years ago.
Most recently, Elbit was left with no choice but to sell their factory in Tamworth after their profits were reduced by 75% due to constant disruption and sky rocketing security costs. The Tamworth factory used to make cooling units for Israeli tanks, now it only produces parts for public transport.
As part of the direct action strategy employed by Palestine Action, the campaign has also succeeded in driving several companies to cut ties with Elbit. As one activist said from inside the van blocking UAV Engines today: “If you associate with Elbit, Palestine Action will associate with you”.
Around 10% of Gaza’s population is killed, injured or missing due to the ongoing genocide carried out by Israel since 7 October. Despite rulings by the International Court of Justice which confirms Gaza is illegally occupied and Israel is committing a plausible genocide, Britain has continued to maintain military relationships with the Zionist regime.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
Whilst Palestine Action’s campaign has been ongoing for four years, there has never been a more crucial time for ordinary people to take action against Israel’s weapons trade. During the ongoing Gaza genocide, Israel’s biggest weapons producer has been allowed to continue operations on our doorstep.
It’s now a legal and moral obligation for ordinary people to take direct action to shut Elbit down.
Many people don’t approve of Palestine Action’s methods. Mostly, these are people who DO approve of what Israel does – or criticise it with the usual limp caveats.
So, after four years the Canary would like to send its love and respect to everyone at Palestine Action – one of the few groups that has a tangible effect on what it takes action over. We wish them well for another four years of shutting the Israel war machine down, and smashing up shit in the process.
Featured image and additional images via Martin Pope and additional video via Palestine Action
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
Fears of all-out war in the Middle East are growing after top Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday. Haniyeh was in Iran for the inauguration of the country’s new president. Iran and Hamas both blamed Israel, which has not officially claimed responsibility but had previously vowed to kill Haniyeh and other top Hamas leaders over the October 7 attack. The assassination came less than 24 hours after Israel took credit for killing Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, in an airstrike on Beirut. For more on the significance of the assassination, we host a roundtable discussion with Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv; international politics professor Karim Makdisi, who teaches at American University of Beirut; and Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri in Boston. “Killing Haniyeh really is a sign from the Israelis that they are not interested in negotiating the ceasefire, the hostage release, prisoner exchanges. They just want to assert Zionist Jewish supremacy in all of Palestine and control the powers around the region,” says Khouri.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Israel’s series of overnight attacks on Iran were a dramatic and calculated attempt to spark a wider war in the Middle East by Netanyahu.
The killing of Ismail Haniyeh in particular could not have been more provocative. Haniyeh was not just the political leader of Hamas, he was the lead Hamas figure in the negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza taking place in Qatar and elsewhere.
Israel chose to kill Haniyeh in Iran rather than in Doha where he lived, quite deliberately throwing down a gauntlet to the Iranian regime. Amongst other things all the strikes were attacks on foreign sovereign territory, justifying responses in international law.
The level of provocation is only underlined by the fact that the killing of Haniyeh took place during the swearing in of recently elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian who has vowed to try to end the sanctions regime imposed by the US on the country.
If you are serious about a ceasefire, you don’t assassinate the people you are negotiating with. All this points to the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, given carte Blanche by the Israeli cabinet as to how to respond to the recent attacks on the Golan Heights, is looking for a way to escalate his war.
Netanyahu’s last hope is to drag the US into a wider war with Lebanon or Iran. The attack on Tehran comes a few days after he received a standing ovation in the US Congress. The US have been deeply involved in developments since the attacks on the Golan Heights. It is almost inconceivable that it hadn’t discussed Israel’s plans.
The job of everyone who opposes a wider war in the region is to escalate our global struggle against the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s spiralling aggression.
Britain is the main Western backer of US policy in the Middle East and a prime supporter of Israel. What happens here matters.
This Saturday’s national demonstration against Israel’s genocide in Gaza now also needs to be a massive show of strength against a wider war in the Middle East. Labour’s decision to reinstate funding for UNWRA and the abandonment of a proposal to block the ICC’s warrants against Netanyahu are victories for our movement. Now, we call on them to suspend all arms sales to the apartheid Israeli state. Let’s step up the pressure and do all we can to force their hand.
Make sure you’re there.
The forces fomenting endless war in the Middle East must feel the weight of opposition to their constant warmongering.
Join Stop The War Coalition here.
Featured image supplied
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the primary humanitarian aid provider for Palestinians in Gaza, reported a tragic milestone on Tuesday of Israel killing over 200 UNRWA employees in Gaza in the last 10 months. According to the agency, Israel has killed 202 UNRWA workers in Gaza since it embarked on its genocidal assault in October, some of them killed while…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli militants waged a violent riot on Monday, breaking into multiple facilities to support nine Israeli soldiers who were slated to appear in a military court for a hearing over allegations that they had raped a Palestinian man who they were imprisoning at a notorious Israeli torture camp. The groups of protesters pushed up against soldiers as they broke into the Sde Teiman camp…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel launched a strike on Beirut, Lebanon’s capital city, on Tuesday, in an escalation of Israel’s months of attacks on Hezbollah forces and civilian areas of Lebanon that have pushed the conflict to the brink of war. Several sources reported that the attack, which Israel took responsibility for, was carried out by a drone in a populous civilian area of a southern suburb of Beirut.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Indictment comes as nine other soldiers appear in Israeli military court over allegations of sexual abuse of detainee
Israel’s military has charged a reservist with aggravated abuse of Palestinian prisoners, a spokesperson said on Tuesday, as nine other soldiers appeared in military court for an initial hearing over allegations they had sexually abused a detainee from Gaza.
The new indictment alleges that the unnamed soldier, assigned to escort handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinians, used a baton and his assault rifle to attack prisoners on multiple occasions.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Ministers and mobs protesting at arrests for torture of Palestinians shows diminishing respect for rule of law and human dignity
The far-right mob attack on two Israel Defense Forces bases in support of soldiers accused of sexually torturing a detainee did not come out of the blue – the parallels to a 2016 incident were immediately obvious.
In March that year, Elor Azaria, an IDF soldier serving in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, calmly walked over to Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, an injured Palestinian knife attacker lying on the ground, and shot him in the head. A video of the killing released by a human rights group led to political uproar.
Both the political and military establishments in Israel have been willing to deny or turn a blind eye to the repeated allegations of torture at Sde Teiman
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
While the world has become transfixed by the unfolding political crisis in the U.S. presidential election, Israel continues to lay waste to Gaza, expand settlements in the West Bank and massacre Palestinians in skyrocketing numbers. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Eman Abdelhadi — an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
At the University of Toronto, students, faculty, and community members successfully staged one of the longest-standing encampments on any campus, holding out for a total of 63 days. While the People’s Circle for Palestine ultimately dismantled itself in response to a court injunction, the movement successfully brought the issue of divestment to the fore, and is far from over. Toronto itself has proven to be one of the most stalwart cities in North America’s Palestine solidarity movement, and, come fall, UofT is certain to emerge once again as a major battleground in the international struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Samira Mohyeddin returns to The Marc Steiner Show for a retrospective on the People’s Circle for Palestine, and how the pro-Palestinian movement is reshaping the politics of the US and Canada.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. An updated version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us. But once again, have a conversation with Samira Mohyeddin, who is an award-winning multi-platform, journalist, producer and broadcaster. Samira is an activist, Middle East scholar, Shakespearean actor who completed studies at the Zoryan Institute of Genocide and Human Rights. She’s joining here not from Toronto this time, but in studio in Baltimore. She’s here for the demonstrations taking place in Washington, D.C., as we face this moment in our country. And she’s an award-winning journalist and a restaurateur, Banu is her restaurant in Toronto, but that’s not her main gig. Well, it isn’t. It’s On The Line Media, her incredible podcast that is now in Patreon and Samira is with us here, studio award-winning journalist, restaurateur, Shakespearean scholar and activist and troublemaker. Good to see you.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Rabble-rouser in studio. How are you, Marc? It’s nice to be here.
Marc Steiner:
Good to have you. Good to have you here. So let’s talk first, obviously about what’s happening in Toronto. The last we talked there was the encampment and the protests that were taking place. You’re pretty intense, so give us a little background about where it’s been since then and what’s happening at this moment.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah, so the last time you and I spoke, the University of Toronto had asked the courts to get involved and to issue an injunction which would authorize the police to come in and dismantle the encampment. So that hearing played out. It was two days of hearings, and the judge gave his decision about a week after, and he did grant the injunction. And the students at the encampment, though, they didn’t wait for what they said was “for the police to come in and brutalize us.” They actually decamped a couple of hours before the deadline. And really, I mean, it was a very beautiful way of bringing down the people’s circle for Palestine because they didn’t allow the police to come in and to get physical with them.
And then what ended up happening that day, they gave a press conference, hundreds of people showed up, and a massive protest began on the streets of Toronto, which went around the university and then ended right in front of the Israeli Embassy in Toronto. So hundreds of people marched with the students down the streets. And then in front of the Israeli Embassy, again calling for an immediate ceasefire and still calling for the University of Toronto to divest and disclose.
Marc Steiner:
Let me take a couple steps backwards here just to folks who may be listening to us for the first time together. So let’s talk a bit about the People’s Circle, kind of identify what that is.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Sure. On May 2nd, about 50 students from the University of Toronto breached a fence around King’s College Circle, which is just this patch of grass, which the university had preemptively put up a fence around because of the encampments that were happening in the United States, they put this there to prevent students from going onto the lawn and making their own encampments. But what they actually did was provide fencing for the students who ended up breaching it anyways. And it started off with 50 students, it got up to 175. The students built this world where there was recycling, there were teach-ins happening every day. You had international people coming, like Naomi Klein came and spoke to the students. You had Fatima Hassan come who’s a South African activist, a health justice activist. And so there were all of these really amazing things happening. Kite flying, people’s children were down there all the time.
And so it was really a very beautiful environment. But when you stepped outside of the encampment right in the front, there were always these agitators showing up, calling the students all kinds of names, awful names like terrorists, rapists, supporters, all of these things, and really characterizing the students as being anti-sematic, as being hateful, etc. And the reason I bring this up and why I think it’s important is that the judge during those hearings, although he granted the injunction, said that the university’s claims that the encampment was anti-Semitic and hateful were completely unfounded and hearsay, and that they didn’t meet the bar of prima facie. So they didn’t make a case at all.
The judge really just went with the fact that these students were trespassing on private property and so the judge decided that the trespassing laws trumped the fundamental freedoms of these students of freedom of expression, assembly, etc. And so you had the sort of paradox world of what was happening inside the encampment, and then this hateful vitriolic behavior of what was really mostly pro-Israeli pensioners who were sort of parked outside.
Marc Steiner:
Pensioners?
Samira Mohyeddin:
They were mostly pensioners.
Marc Steiner:
Really?
Samira Mohyeddin:
These were not young people. These were not Jewish students.
Marc Steiner:
They were old people like me.
Samira Mohyeddin:
They were. I’m sorry to say, they were, who had time on their hands who could come down during the day and just stand there and scream and yell and say, “You’re excluding me from the lawn.” And actually, Naomi Klein who came down there made a speech one day and she said, “We really need to distinguish between being uncomfortable and being persecuted.” There is a big difference between that. And she talked about the Jewish community feeling very uncomfortable right now. And so that was really interesting, sort of documenting all of this happening.
Now, what has happened is the students are sort of reorganizing and trying to think, okay, what do we do when fall comes around? Because the governing council, which is the council that decides where the University of Toronto invests its money or decides on this machinations of what the university does, won’t meet again until the fall. So the students have told the university we’re coming back. They had written actually on the lawn, we will return really big on the grass. And the university’s response, the president’s response was that we’re glad that this ended peacefully. And the framing of this by the university, which is another thing that I found really interesting, was that they were saying the Israel-Palestine issue, we are neutral on this issue and that it’s an issue that’s up for debate, scholarly debate, blah, blah, blah. That’s how it’s-
Marc Steiner:
That’s a good university response.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yes. And that’s how it’s framed. Now, this got complicated when the ICJ report just came out, which clearly states that Israel is an illegal occupying force, and it must leave the occupied Palestinian territories because one of the things the students were asking for is for the university to cut all ties with universities that are on occupied Palestinian land. So Hebrew University, for instance, which the University of Toronto has ties with.
So this complicates things now for the University of Toronto. Are they going to be in breach of international law? Are they just going to pretend this didn’t happen? And there’s a history there with the University of Toronto. I mean, they went kicking and screaming towards divestment from South Africa. It took nine years of students agitating and protesting for the university to finally say, “You know what? Maybe apartheid isn’t a good thing.” They did the same thing with divesting from fossil fuels. That took another five to six years. So the students have said, “We’re not going to give up. This is just the beginning.”
Marc Steiner:
The camp is now closed as we speak?
Samira Mohyeddin:
So I’ll tell you what happened, which is hilarious in this theater of the absurd, is that they took the one fence down and they put another one back up and they said temporary closure for a month. So while they were arguing-
Marc Steiner:
The university put it up?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yes, the university did that. So while they were arguing that this is excluding the University of Toronto community from being able to use the lawn, they put up another fence, a plastic one saying that we have to restore the grass now. So it’s closed right now.
Marc Steiner:
Have to restore the grass.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Restoring the lawn.
Marc Steiner:
So in this complex moment we find ourselves in now, complex because this horrendous war that’s taking place in Gaza, in part on the West Bank as well but in Gaza, the tens of thousands of people have been killed, mostly women and children, western governments, the United States, Canada, supporting Israel in this war. And as we speak, Netanyahu is on his way to address the United States Congress, and we’re also facing a critical election in this country where you have a very powerful neo-fascist right who will actually win the election in America, in United States of America, and it’s happening across the globe. I like to hear your analysis of how these all feed into one another and the danger we face and how the struggle in Palestine now, the Palestinian-Israeli struggle feeds into all of this in a larger global sense.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah, I mean, pardon my French, it’s a clusterfuck. I’m not sure if you can-
Marc Steiner:
I like that French word.
Samira Mohyeddin:
There’s a lot of things coming together and impacting one another. So you have the American elections happening, but you cannot ignore what is happening in Palestine, in Gaza, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, et cetera. It’s a very difficult time, I think, for a lot of people, not just people who are being brutalized in Gaza and the West Bank, but also Americans who really, some of them I’ve spoken to don’t know what to do because a lot of people are saying, “I don’t want to vote for the Democrats because it feels like I am legitimizing their behavior of what they’ve done vis-a-vis Palestine.” But at the same time, there is this real threat of Trump and his followers coming to power. And it’s almost like people forget what Trump was like in 2018. The media is already falling into line, particularly with this attack on Trump saying, “Well, we all need to cool back. We’re all Americans after all, so it doesn’t matter. Let’s cool it with the criticism a little bit.”
Marc Steiner:
We don’t care if you’re in the clan or if you’re liberal or if you’re a communist. We’re all Americans.
Samira Mohyeddin:
We’re all Americans.
Marc Steiner:
We all just get along.
Samira Mohyeddin:
And that’s the most important thing. You can be hooded, but you’re still American. So that’s the difficulty here. And then you have Netanyahu come over in what many are calling this whitewashing tour. I’ll still be welcome to address Congress no matter what I do. I can kill 50, 60,000 Palestinians. But at the end of the day, our values are still similar. So I feel sorry for Americans who are trying to make a very difficult choice right now. And we’ve come down here, On The Line Media, we’ve come down here to cover the protests. There are supposed to be tens of thousands of people making their way from all over the US on buses to protest against Netanyahu and their own government, I think, and the complicity in what is happening in Palestine.
Marc Steiner:
So it is interesting, I mean, because you’re here in the States now to cover this protest. You had the protests going on in Toronto. They’re deeply connected, I think. You can talk a bit about that. And on the way there, one of the things I was reading this morning, I was surprised at the intensity of let’s say Senator Chuck Schumer, who is Zionist and has always supported Israel and as many of his generation do in the Jewish community, my community. But I’ve never heard him so critical, even from his perspective of Israel as he is at this moment. And there’s something bubbling, whether it’s in Toronto or in the United States, in the Jewish community, in the Muslim community, in the larger communities in our countries, something’s shifting here. And I think your encampment in Toronto, the demonstrations here in this country, what’s not being covered much in the American press, the massive protest taking place in Israel itself of Jews and Palestinians walking together saying no, something’s happening.
Samira Mohyeddin:
It’s solidarity.
Marc Steiner:
Oh, yes, it is called that. But I mean, talk a bit about your analysis of the moment you think we’re in and how this could be playing itself out.
Samira Mohyeddin:
I think we’re at a moment of no return. To me, it feels like nothing will ever be the same. And this is a flash point right now. I think a lot of people are making a decision about what type of world we want to live in past this point. It’s very tragic that so many Palestinians have had to die for people to wake up. And I’ve heard this from Palestinians who’ve said, “If this is what it takes, then we will be the sacrifices for it.”
Marc Steiner:
That’s a hell of a thing to say and to just sacrifice.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Because I spoke with actually Diana Buttu a couple of weeks ago.
Marc Steiner:
And for our listeners, she is?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Sorry. She’s a Palestinian Canadian lawyer and an international human rights lawyer and was former negotiator for the PLO. And she’s in Ramallah right now. And she was saying that when she saw these student encampments, there were 183 student encampments in universities around the world at one point, 183. She said it was the first time that Palestinians didn’t feel alone, that the world was seeing what was happening to them and reacting. And she said that, “We felt like other people were screaming for us when we didn’t have a voice anymore.” So there’s a lot going on, on a very personal level for a lot of people. My Jewish friends, for instance, who are anti-Zionists say for the first time, they feel empowered to say that they’re anti-Zionists in a way that they never felt before, and that their voices matter, even though they’re constantly being drowned out as, oh, you’re just the minority. For instance, what would happen there was the Jewish faculty network had a presence inside the University of Toronto encampments, but all of the mainstream media wasn’t really focusing on them.
Marc Steiner:
You mean the Jewish faculty members who were participating in the encampment?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yes, they were participating in the encampment, but there’s also an organization called the Jewish Faculty Network.
Marc Steiner:
Oh, I see. I’m sorry.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yes, it’s North American. And these are academics, professors, researchers who are all Jewish who are against the occupation. And so they’re sort of denied Jewish voices by other Jewish people who refer to them these awful names like Kapo and self-created Jew and all that stuff.
Marc Steiner:
I’ve experienced that myself. I understand, yeah.
Samira Mohyeddin:
I’m sure. And the anti-Semitism leveled against them is never talked about. So I think we’re at a place right now where a lot of people are having to make a decision not only about who to vote for, but what type of world we want to live in post-Gaza, whatever that looks like. And watching empire collapse is a little icky for a lot of people.
Marc Steiner:
That’s one way to put it.
Samira Mohyeddin:
It’s a little bit uncomfortable for a lot of people who are having to look at themselves in the mirror and say, “All of the things that I thought I was supporting all of these years, right, democratic values, Israel is a democracy.” A lot of people believe this, and I think they can’t believe it anymore. And it makes you very uncomfortable. I think it was Tolstoy who said the lies that people weave into the fabric of their everyday existence are very hard to let go of because you’re almost, it’s like you’re watching yourself crumble. And I put myself in that also.
Marc Steiner:
What do you mean?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Well, I mean, I went from a very corporate media structure that I worked in for nearly a decade and really took a look at myself and the work that I put out during that time and some of the complacency that I had in the way that I discussed this issue of what was happening in Israel-Palestine, fighting every step of the way, but still, I suffered for it. You suffer the moment you look at this issue as an issue that is extremely unbalanced and then purport or pretend as a journalist that this is somehow a balanced situation. What do you think about this? That’s what they think. What do you think about this?
And then you stand in the middle and just go, “Well, that’s what they think.” And I always look back and think, okay, how are people covering apartheid South Africa? And I realized, holy shit, they were covering it the same way. They would bring on the ambassador of apartheid, South Africa, and he would say, “Well, you know, we give them their own government and blah, blah, blah.” And I’m like, really?
Marc Steiner:
They have the Bantu stands. They’re happy.
Samira Mohyeddin:
They run their own Bantu stands.
Marc Steiner:
Right. So one of the things I want to get into before we have to break here, I’m curious what you think happens next, both in terms of the movement that is opposed to Israel and what they’re doing at this moment in this war and how it affects the larger body politic. I mean, I think we’re in a very critical juncture. I said that a minute ago as well, but I a very critical juncture on the planet. I mean, I thought about it. I was thinking about you last night. We were coming back from Seattle, and I was thinking about you as a woman of Iranian heritage who opposes what the Shah did, but opposes what the government is doing in Iran at the moment, that opposes this Israeli government, the things that can be a different world that helps organize these demonstrations in Toronto.
And here you are to witness Netanyahu speak in Congress and also demonstrations against that, that are going to be taking place in Washington DC, that we’ll be talking about as well at the end of this in an addendum. So I’m curious analytically where you think it goes from here, where the struggle takes us.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah. I mean it’s interesting because, and it’s difficult, I would say, because right now all I hear is bomb Iran. All I hear is Iran is the octopus with its tentacles everywhere.
Marc Steiner:
Iran is the devil. That’s the only-
Samira Mohyeddin:
Iran’s the devil-
Marc Steiner:
That runs with it-
Samira Mohyeddin:
That’s proxies, are doing everything from the Houthis to the Hezbollah to everything, Iran, Hamas. There were even right after October 7th, you were hearing, “Oh, Iran is behind this.” And then you had the bombings that happened between the drone attacks, the sloth like drones that slowly made their way to Tel Aviv. All of this is happening and it’s complicating a lot of Iranian people’s lives who don’t like their government, but certainly don’t want a bombing campaign unleashed. And I think it’s a very difficult time for every community right now, and everyone who is from the Middle East and everyone who is American, we are all feeling, I just think a weird being in this weird liminal state of not knowing what comes next. I really don’t know what comes next. I don’t, because even in my Canadian context, I am seeing the rise of right-wing politics in Canada.
Marc Steiner:
In the same way it is happening in America?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Oh, very much so. I mean, not to the degree. You have a much larger population, and we don’t have the MAGA movement, but we have our own progressive conservative party who really espouses that language-
Marc Steiner:
And is shifted right?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Absolutely. And the country has shifted right. And what is happening there is very much affecting Canada. And by there, I mean Israel-Palestine, their politics. Toronto specifically, we’ve had characters like Elon Levy, the former Israeli spokesperson, do these tours in Toronto. And so Toronto is a very important place geopolitically for Israel, for Palestine. Even the solidarity movement in Toronto for Palestinians is unlike any other around the world.
Marc Steiner:
What do you mean?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Our protests in Toronto, consistent protests, at least two a week, attended by thousands of people, have not stopped for 10 months. That’s unlike any other city.
Marc Steiner:
The encampment may be closed, but the protests are going on a massive ways.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Oh, absolutely.
Marc Steiner:
Let’s talk a bit about that.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Absolutely. They’ve been happening even before the encampment came about. The encampment was only there 63 days, but one of the largest protests held in Toronto’s history was for Palestinian solidarity. And so I’m talking tens of thousands of people, and you would’ve never had that before. And again, it comes back to the tragedy of so many people being killed. I mean, the sheer level of seeing corpses maimed, burned, children. I mean, I don’t think people have really understood how we’ve been affected by seeing these images on a daily basis. Yes, we’re not there, but we’re being affected in many, many ways. I mean, I know I am. My leg never did this before. When I watch images, my heart palpitates. I mean, I have to take breaks many times, but at the same time when I’m watching it, I feel guilty. So there’s a lot going on.
Marc Steiner:
Not to delve into this too deeply, but I understand that emotion completely. I mean, when I see innocent Palestinians, children maimed, crying, wandering alone, lost everything, don’t know where the people who protected them are, as a father and as a grandfather, it breaks my heart just. I can’t stand watching it. It makes me the same. I have the same visceral reactions as you do when I see it. And also as a Jew, as somebody who grew up with people with numbers on their arms in my living room, to think that we could do something, not the same, but similar enough to another people. I mean, it raises all kinds of questions, but I just think that this is, and there’s a massive growth. I think it’s happening in Canada as you’ve described. It’s happening here in the United States of younger Jews saying, no.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Not in Our Name.
Marc Steiner:
Which is why I produce a series here at Real News called Not in Our Name. So do you think that the Canadian protests in Toronto are going to rev up again, become a presence? What do you think this takes you and your work and what happens in Canada?
Samira Mohyeddin:
I mean, they haven’t stopped in Toronto. They really haven’t. There was a large protest even just yesterday that went through Niagara Falls. And so the Palestinian Youth Movement right now, which is actually their name, worldwide is unlike any other, I think, in the trajectory of the Palestinians’ Solidarity Movement. The youth right now are mobilized in a way that they’ve never been, both Jewish and Palestinians and they’re working together. And that I think scares a lot of people in the upper echelons, that scares the green Blats from the ADL, that scares a lot of people who want to get rid of this TikTok generation, who aren’t really buying the narrative. They’re not buying it. They’re not buying that Israel is a democracy. They’re not buying the David versus Goliath. They’re not buying the origin myth story of how Israel came together. They want to learn about the Nakba, they want to learn about it. They don’t want to deny it. And so these groups and everybody coming together, I use the word solidarity again, is something that scares a lot of people and they don’t want to see it happen.
Marc Steiner:
You have a quote, before we go, you have a quote in one of the pieces I read that you did, which is Hannah Arendt’s quote about Adolf Eichmann and the trial in Jerusalem when they captured Adolf Eichmann. And the quote is “It’s one thing to ferret out mass murderers and other criminals from, were hiding places and it is another thing to find them prominent and flourishing in the public realm.” And that’s where we are.
Samira Mohyeddin:
That’s exactly where we are. And that’s exactly what Netanyahu is doing right now. The fact that the US has invited him here and that he’s going to address the Congress, I’m very eager to see who shows up, who does that standing ovation and clap after clap. Because when he arrived, I was watching the video of him on the tarmac. There was no one to greet him. That is highly unusual, not to say no one. What I’m saying is I did not see noted US government officials on that tarmac. It was mostly people actually speaking Hebrew to him. And I think it was people from the embassy who had come to greet him. And some generals, some of them were speaking Hebrew, actually. But that’s a big shift.
Marc Steiner:
I mean, as much when you see a person like Kamala Harris who’s running for president now, whose husband is Jewish, not showing up at the tarmac, even making some critical statements about Israel and watching Schumer even making critical statements about Israel, what it says to me is not that they’re going to be leaping over to another side, but what it says is that this is having, this is causing a massive shift. Slowly a tectonic shift is going on, and I think people in power do not know how to put their hands around this and what to do with it, but something is shifting and it could shift the country or parts of the world, United States, Canada, frighteningly to the right, or it could blunt their power. And there’s no way to tell which way. And the Israel Palestine struggle is central to it.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Absolutely, right at the center of it.
Marc Steiner:
And then threading all through that is also, besides all that is the reality of how deep anti-Semitism goes too. So it’s a very complex moment that we’re facing.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Absolutely. Because we’re actually seeing an ignoring of the rise of the far right. We’re seeing an ignoring of that anti-Semitism which is very dangerous. Very dangerous.
Marc Steiner:
I know you’re not prescient, but you can tell us what you do next and where you think you’re moving to Canada goes next.
Samira Mohyeddin:
I mean, I’m not sure. I don’t know what the students are up to specifically day to day. I mean, I’ve tried to keep in touch with them because this was my alma mater. I was there in 2005 when students against Israeli apartheid launched Israeli Apartheid Week. I was in the Middle Eastern studies department. The encampment faced my college. So I do have some sympathy for what these students were trying to do and the way they were mischaracterized as they did it.
And that was the real reason I went down to that encampment was because I knew that this was going to happen and that they were going to be called all sorts of names because the students that fought against apartheid in South Africa were labeled just the same way. So these are tricks of the trade, I guess, for people who have a long view of history and see how these things play out. But it’s really just something to watch right now. I’m almost as perplexed as everyone else is. And I came down here really to see the pushback on Netanyahu and to sort of restore my own faith and humanity, to be honest, because let’s not forget, there was a massive movement, and there is still against Netanyahu in Israel, right. Before October 7th, hundreds of thousands of Israelis were on the streets asking him to resign.
Marc Steiner:
And demanding release and the demanding the end of the killing of Palestinians along the release of their own hostages. I mean, they tried to combine the two on the streets.
Samira Mohyeddin:
And we’ve seen how brutal the Israeli police have been towards those protesters, against the families of the hostages themselves. So your guess is as good as mine right now about where this goes next.
Marc Steiner:
What I do look forward to is a continuing conversation after Netanyahu speaks, having you either individually or with some others, talking about what they saw and where they think this takes us and where we go next. This is a very pivotal moment, I think, in US political history and the world, this very moment that we’re about to face.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah, pivotal is a great word because I think it’s also personally pivotal for a lot of people. I mean, I’ve watched people struggle personally with this, meaning having to take a real good look at themselves, their jobs, their careers, whether or not to speak up about what they know is right at the sacrifice of their careers and everything else. I’ve watched people go through this process and it’s a difficult time for many.
Marc Steiner:
Well, Samira Mohyeddin, it is really been a pleasure to have you back here in Baltimore, and I’m glad you’re in D.C. We can be fun to have you in studio here, which is great. And I look forward to talking to you in the next couple of days to see what you think about what just is about to occur in Washington and also what’s going to occur in this war and the continuing struggle in Canada. And maybe at the next Toronto protest, I’ll figure out a way to get my butt up to Canada.
Samira Mohyeddin:
That would be great to have you there. Why not?
Marc Steiner:
I’d love to be there.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
Samira, thank you so much. It’s been pleasure to see you.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Thank you so much, Marc. It’s my pleasure.
Marc Steiner:
Thank you for all the work you’re doing and for the struggle you’re making for a better world and for freeing Palestine and the rest.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Thank you very much, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
Thank you.
We are about to continue our conversation with Samira Mohyeddin after she has participated in the demonstrations in D.C. and all the goings-on around the war in Gaza and in Washington, D.C. Samira, good to see you again.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Hi. Nice to see you too, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
So let’s talk a bit about the demonstration. I think it was… Describe what was going on. What I could see was it was bigger than I thought it would be and pretty intense and creative. But talk a bit about that day.
Samira Mohyeddin:
It got bigger and bigger as the day went on. So the organizers, there were many different groups there. You had independent Jewish voices, you had a lot of different unions present and students and everybody. And it started at about 11:00 A.M. People met on Constitution Avenue. Now this is the street that runs right into Capitol Hill and police had completely closed it off. And there were about 200 New York City police officers also brought in to the Capitol to deal with the protests.
And there was a main stage set up there. And you had people like Susan Sarandon speaking, Dr. Jill Stein, some of the Jewish organizations. And as I said, more and more people started to come as the day went on. And at around two o’clock, this is just when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began speaking to Congress, people started marching and it looked like the protest had almost broken up because police had put up barricades all around and you weren’t sure where people were marching to. And so we walked towards Union Station, which is right at the corner of Columbus and Third.
And as we got there, all of a sudden within the distance, I saw what looked like tens of thousands, but it must have been thousands of people just streaming onto this massive square right in front of that train station, Union Station. And thousands of people were there yelling, “Free Gaza” and “Arrest him”, referring to Benjamin Netanyahu. And this is as Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing Congress. So it was around three o’clock, 3:15 in the afternoon, and protesters went up on these flagpoles and brought down the American flag and raised the Palestinian flag. And that’s when police came in. There were about four to five police officers who all of a sudden rushed into the crowd and started beating protesters. There was one gentleman whose face was quite bloodied up, and it was to protect that flag, they were going after the flag.
And so people started dispersing at that point, but then quickly came back because the police backed off at that point and really allowed the crowd to continue protesting and stuff. We left at about, I would say 5:30 in the afternoon. I’m not sure what happened after that point, but it was a real massive turnout, something that I wasn’t expecting to see that many people. What’s interesting is that inside Congress, as thousands of people were outside, Benjamin Netanyahu was saying there aren’t many people out there.
Marc Steiner:
Right. Right.
Samira Mohyeddin:
That was just one of many lies that he told while he was in Congress.
Marc Steiner:
So let me ask you this question. So I know you were out in the streets, you couldn’t watch it live, but I assume that you watched Netanyahu later.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Actually, I was tuned in as it was happening. So I was at the demonstration and I had his speech going live and watching it.
Marc Steiner:
So here you are out there in the demonstration fighting for the rights of Palestinians, listening to Benjamin Netanyahu in your ear.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah, listening to him in my ear, say, “There aren’t many people out there.” And then of course, calling everyone out there useful idiots. And it was the same, I mean, a couple of days ago, I said, “We don’t know what to expect, but we can for sure expect him to blame Iran for everything”, which he did. He said, “Iran is funding protesters. Iran is behind all of this.” And then the same statements that you expect to hear from him that he’s been saying for decades now, that Israeli values are Western values, that Israel is the fighting the good fight for all of democracies around the world in the Middle East, and that he went as far as to call the Middle East a place of barbarians. And to say that Israel is going to make it in Oasis.
So it’s disheartening to watch US lawmakers stand up and clap for such statements. But what I understood is that there were about, I think the number was 87 members of Congress did not even show up, and they had to fill those seats with fillers, just people to come in and make it look like there’s a lot of people there. So as much as it sort of was the same old, same old, there are a lot of significant changes that have happened, I think, and that needs to be acknowledged. Kamala Harris, for instance, was not in that session-
Marc Steiner:
Which was pretty glaring, actually, that she was not in that session.
Samira Mohyeddin:
No, she was not. She did meet with him the next day and she did come out and make a statement that again, is a bit of a break from what Biden has said before. She did talk about the oppression of Palestinians, the suffering of Palestinians. She did say that too many civilians have been killed, innocent civilians. So this gave a lot of hope to people that I was speaking to on the ground, that they’re hoping that there will be a change in the U.S response to what is happening. And I think Americans are looking for any speck of hope they can see right now.
Marc Steiner:
I think that’s true. And I also, I’m very curious as to where you think this may take us. We don’t know who’s going to win the election in November here in the United States, obviously, but this war, the deaths of all these Palestinians, the other destruction of Gaza, the growing resistance inside the Jewish world to what’s happening inside of Israel itself, it’s a major shift, is taking place. I think we’re witnessing something, and I’m curious what your analysis of that is and where you think it takes us and what do you think the possibilities may be?
Samira Mohyeddin:
I think we’re actually seeing a global shift and America and Americans who are fighting for that change are just a portion of that. I have to mention today, Marc, that yesterday the Canada Revenue Agency, which is similar to the IRS, the Canada Revenue Agency is revoking the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund here in Canada.
Marc Steiner:
Really?
Samira Mohyeddin:
This is very significant move on the part of the Canada Revenue Agency because the Jewish National Fund is one of the oldest organizations here in Canada, and it’s been used to dispossess Palestinians from land in Israel, and 25% of their funding comes from Canadian taxpayers getting charitable receipts.
Marc Steiner:
No, I grew up with J&F. Every Jewish store and synagogue had little blue cans that you supposed to put your money into.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Exactly.
Marc Steiner:
Yep.
Samira Mohyeddin:
And those little blue cans went to dispossessing Palestinians from their land specifically since 1967, but even before that, they control 13% of the land in Israel. They only allow Jewish people to live on it, to purchase it, to lease it. And so this is very significant. And the reason the Canadian government did this is because they said the revenue agency found that J&F was funding Israeli military outposts, and the money was going build things on for the military for the IDF. So this is quite a significant move because it’s something that independent Jewish voices Canada has been trying to push for for nearly more than a decade now.
Marc Steiner:
How do you think that happened though? What was the politics that allowed that to happen inside of Canada?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Well, the Canadian government has been under a lot of pressure. You see, Canada prides itself on the rule of law. We are rule keepers in the world. That’s sort of what we take pride in. And once the International Court of Justice, the ICJ ruled that what is happening in the occupied West Bank is illegal, countries that pride themselves on the rule of law can’t really justify anymore aiding and abetting what is happening in the occupied territories. So this is just the way of activists have really been pushing for every little bit they can find to say, “Look, you are now in contravention of international humanitarian law. You are complicit Canada in this.” And so Canada’s finding ways that it can remove itself from this complicity. And I think that the CRA, this is just one example of that. Of course, the Jewish National Fund has said they will appeal this decision, but I don’t think they’re going to win that appeal.
Marc Steiner:
That’s a significant shift for any Western government to do that.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Very much, yes.
Marc Steiner:
So none of us [inaudible 00:40:04], but I’m very curious. I mean, you clearly have been both as an activist and academic, you’ve been deeply involved in this struggle for a long time.
Samira Mohyeddin:
I’ve been very well aware of it and the machinery around it. You see, that’s why sometimes I have a difficult time, and I don’t know if you feel the same, but I have a difficult time debating with people about this issue because so many people don’t actually understand the machinery behind occupation, how it impacts the daily lives of Palestinians. I was speaking to Diana Buttu, and I think I brought this up to you last time. She really does a great job of talking about the laws behind occupation. It’s not like South African apartheid where you see this places is for Blacks only, this is for whites only, and it’s very stark, and you see it right in your face. It’s not how it works in Israel in the occupied territories. And so it’s difficult to talk to people who don’t at the first agree there’s an illegal occupation.
Once that is erased, then you can’t move any further to have a dialogue or a discussion about what’s going on. So if that denial is there, there’s nowhere to go from there. If you don’t believe that the International Court of Justice has jurisdiction, if you don’t believe that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is against the law, well, there’s nothing for us to talk about. So at that point, you just shut down. And so my education in this regard feeds my “what people may call activism.” I don’t feel that it’s activism. I’m covering a story that is very important right now to be covering. Unfortunately, people see that as activism, but journalism to me, particularly with this issue, is not a matter of balance. This is not a balanced situation at all. Balance is good if you’re covering a soccer match. So and so hit that goal and so and so blocked it. This is not a soccer match. This is an occupation. It’s legal, it’s brutal. And tens of thousands of people have been killed.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah, I mean, it is where we’re sitting now with all this. I mean, in my, good Lord, I’m getting old in my 30, 40 years of covering these, being part of this, I used to produce a series called Voices of the Holy Land. That was, you heard opinions from all sides, settlers, right-wingers, left-wing, revolutionary Israelis, Palestinians of all political stripes, not debating just hearing their voices, what they think and feel. But that for me now is even more difficult because I approach it as someone who is Jewish, as someone who grew up with people with numbers on their arms from concentration camps, who was an active Zionist until until I was 22, 21 years old. And it’s now why the whole movement of Not in Our Name is so important to me and to the struggle because I think now there’s a major shift happening in the Jewish world as well. And it’s a very tough time. I mean, because none of us know where this is going to end up. It’s really hard to see an end.
Samira Mohyeddin:
It’s true. And you don’t know what the end game is when you hear Benjamin Netanyahu come into the Congress and say, “Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job faster.” What does finish the job mean? What does that look like? It’s a scary time, but it’s also, and I have to say this, Marc, it’s also a very hopeful time. The solidarity that we’re seeing among Palestinians, among Jewish voices, among Jewish people has been unprecedented, I think.
Marc Steiner:
No, I agree. I agree. I agree. Well, I look forward to many more conversations together. We stay in touch and see where this goes and continue this conversation. I think that it’s one of the most critical struggles that faces the planet could destroy the planet. It’s much bigger than just there.
Samira Mohyeddin:
We haven’t even gotten into the environment what this war has done. That’s something else.
Marc Steiner:
Well, let’s do that. We should do that. We should have that conversation and bring some people along. I think that it’s been devastating, the annihilation taking place in Gaza and just the sheer devastation of the land as well on the West Bank. And I appreciate you taking all this time with us and for what you’ve been doing, and we’ll be linking to your work and Samira, once again, I want to thank you very much for being a guest here on the Mark Steiner Show and the Real News.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Thank you, Marc, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, thank you to Samira Mohyeddin for joining us today, and thanks to Cameron Grandino for running the program and our audio editor, Alena Welch and producer Rosette Sewali for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible.
Please let me know what you’ve thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@herealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Samira Mohyeddin for her work and joining us today, and we’ll bring you more stories and conversations about what’s happening between Palestine and Israel here on the Marc Steiner show. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Royal Academicians Jock McFadyen, Rana Begum, Vanessa Jackson, Oona Grimes and Helen Sear are among hundreds of arts professionals condemning the Royal Academy of Arts’ anti-Palestine censorship after it removed two artworks from its Young Artists’ Summer Show.
In an open letter published by Artists for Palestine UK, the signatories, including more than 100 Jewish creatives, decry as “shameful” the removal of a photograph of a protestor holding a placard that reads, “Jews Say Stop Genocide on Palestinians. Not In Our Name”.
Visual artists Rosalind Nashashibi, Adam Broomberg, curator David Campany, and writers Natasha Walter, Kamila Shamsie, Sabrina Mahfouz, Fatima Bhutto and Gillian Slovo are among those saying that The Royal Academy has “stigmatis[ed] the work of the young artists” and has “colluded with the erasure of Jewish contribution to solidarity with Palestinians.”
The Royal Academy removed the artworks after pressure from right-wing lobby group the British Board of Deputies.
A spokesperson for the Royal Academy told the Guardian that it apologised for “any hurt and distress” caused:
As an organisation committed to freedom of expression, works in the exhibition often reflect current societal and political topics that matter to young people, from women’s rights to global conflict.
We are aware of concerns about two artworks that relate to the Israel/Palestine conflict. We have discussed the matter thoroughly and have also received external guidance.
The artists and public figures who signed the open letter, including fashion designer Bella Freud, directors Mike Leigh, Peter Kosminsky and Farah Nabulsi, musicians Brian Eno, Ana Tijoux and Robert Wyatt, photographer Shahidul Alam and actors Juliet Stevenson, Alia Shawkat and Adam Bakri are joined by several Jewish organisations including the Jewish Socialists’ Group. They add:
Far from protecting Jewish people, the RA is lending support to a racist, anti-Palestinian campaign that aims to silence expressions of support for Palestinian people.
A spokesperson for Artists for Palestine UK commented:
By failing to stand up to deplorable bullying and ludicrous accusations against young artists, the Royal Academy is in breach of its ethical responsibilities and duty of care. This needs urgent repair.
Also, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) launched a new e-action which has been sent to its 300,000 supporters, asking them to send a letter via email to the chief executive of the Royal Academy.
The PSC letter states that “in silencing solidarity for Palestine, the Royal Academy is complicit in shielding the state of Israel from accountability for its actions” and added that it should not “be regarded as inherently illegitimate for artists to draw comparisons between one genocide and others in history.”
PSC tells the Royal Academy:
Your decision to remove these artworks violates your duty to uphold freedom of expression, and contributes to the dehumanisation of Palestinian people and the erasure of the facts of their history.
Featured image via the Royal Academy
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships.
— Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” 1970
It has been over two hundred fifty days since what is left of Palestine has turned into a legitimate concentration camp. Far from wanting to take any type of pain lightly, when I saw the world’s first reaction my first thought was how sad it always is to see most people’s emotional state synchronise with whatever mainstream media decides to give attention to, with whatever they decide to say about it, and with no interlink nor relation to what and those who are behind what is actually happening all over the world. Although it is not justified in this Information Age, this is how formal education and popular culture has been purposefully designed. In such a way that you don’t know what hurts the most, whether it is the reality, or the sickness behind, around, through, and beyond that twists it. Something that those at the far end of any oppression know very well from experience. The ongoing reality bursts into moments of global evidence getting a sudden reaction which fades until the next visible event, as if they were, when known, disconnected. We are the type of creatures who feel and empathise with what we can see, and that is well-known by those who control the public news stream.
In this so-called Age of Information where we can, even if for a high price, curate our own feed, there is also a type of unprecedented agency where education and information have left the neocolonial/politically-biased official curriculums and national broadcast channels. As events keep unfolding, in the most progressive circles we have seen the narrative change from genocide to globally silent genocides, from Zionism to the Suez Canal, and ultimately from Gaza’s gas to Sudan’s gold, Congo’s cobalt, Haiti’s limestone, Afghanistan’s copper, West Papua’s crude oil, and every other territory suffering from some form of genocide or intense suffering under the Western imperial machine of capitalism … On a global underground-made-mainstream level, we have also seen almost the entire world reaching the biggest protests of their history demanding a stop to the violence in Palestine, including the occupation in the best cases. The first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time hoping that the world might do something about it after all. We have seen Westerners astonished to find out that their taxes are funding the weapons and the complicity, not to say the origin of it all, in the Western elites, while reaching out to ‘their representatives’ begging for a ceasefire. We have seen many people mocking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We have watched the director of the United Nations in New York resigning from what he himself calls a failing lie. We have seen South Africa be the only country to bring a genocide case against Israel to the International Court of Justice, for which support has been led by ‘Global South’ countries (a list that would be longer were these countries not still overdependent on ‘former’ colonies), successfully killing the myth of the White saviour. Now a visibly fish eating its own tail. You could say that the world’s neocolonial blindfold is, at least in the ‘Global North’, starting to fall down.
While Israeli embassies abroad are closing their doors, Palestinians are sending goodbye letters to institutions on behalf of their entire ethnicity. While freedom of speech is openly forbidden and punished at the heart of Western ‘democracies’, people are having diverse trauma responses in the West known as fight or freeze. While some corporations are closing franchises due to a partial popular boycott, Congolese keep silently dying in astronomical numbers in comparison to furnish the world with technology on an ongoing basis. And while the number of bombs dropped in Palestine is greater than the entirety used in World War 2 to date … I can’t help but wondering, well against my wishes, when all of this will be collectively left behind as a surrealist blurred memory as it has already happened in the past, meanwhile Sundays in the West are spent back in malls under the illusion of freedom that four, or eight, if lucky, days a month concede. Even the so-called leftists will continue to vote the populist left of a bipartisan paradigm under the same capitalism just to avoid something worse if they don’t, while Palestine could quickly become well-edited remnant of a history book not to say one more social scapegoat, via a one more sponsored holocaust which has successfully increased anti-Semitism and Islamophobia by 1000%. Because for what it concerns the rest, it will not even get attention.
They are somewhat funny these moments of collective effervescence within a structure that only seems to get stronger until it collapses naturally, not what could be responses. We seem to be so vocal about far-away occupations, as if we were not letting our lives be occupied by the same power behind them all. As if there was a genuine interest in being invested in freeing the occupation of our minds despite the challenges of having to navigate that beyond what we are being offered, including the realm not only of education but also the one of health. Including understandable reactions in emergency situations, yet still not responses, such as demanding to defund the police in the context of Black Lives Matter for example. As if all these were things alien to the rest, to be begged to an ignorant and somewhat sane elite, or a well-rounded system just in need of reform.
In regular settings when planning how to build a life within this paradigm, considering it a matter of survival, is almost a human instinct wanting to opt for what feels like the safest option. But for most people, that means doing it thinking just of the short-term and their own lives, even if that entails assimilating and adapting to the most unsafe option in the present and the long-term future. Even when it refers to the past, it ironically feels almost immoral to constantly do your best to live against the machine when you have been raised by generations who did not really have a choice, being the first one to actually have one. Even if that is what would really pay everyone, not to say life, homage. Yet that is where the compromise goes through when willing to respect both yourself and everything else. You could say it is something similar to the theory of instant versus delayed gratification with a broad scope that also reverts in the present since, despite the challenges, nothing compares to the peace of living and building in accordance with your values as much as possible, at the same time that they have a multidirectional effect. Positive is that if dismantling neocoloniality is removing the mantle, we can not say that is not gradually happening, and that everything is a process. Yet, how far inwards and outwards are these social outbursts willing to go?
As the Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean anticolonial revolutionary Amilcar Cabral said, conscious of the links that go unseen to the majority due to our neocolonial indoctrination like other revolutionaries, there are two alternatives: ‘We either admit that there really is a struggle against imperialism which interests everybody, or we deny it. If it exists and is trying simultaneously to dominate everything from the working class upwards in all the so-called ‘advanced’ countries, while smothering the national liberation movements of the countries that the West underdeveloped, then there is only one enemy against whom we are fighting. If we are fighting together, then the main aspect of our united solidarity is extremely simple: it is to fight.’ If we understand coloniality and neocoloniality as anything alienating us from ourselves, then we can even bring it a level further.
Amongst all the narratives, I have failed yet to find a popular contemporary one with which to approach in depth this event specifically, or any other really, through the lens of trauma in a constructive way, other than ‘Israel, Palestine, and the doppelganger effect’ including the chapters ‘The Nazi in the Mirror’ and ‘The Unshakable Ethnic Double’ of the book Doppelganger by the Canadian author and activist of Jewish origin, Naomi Klein. At least one beyond the blame or intractable game. Any narrative genuinely appealing to everybody, through and beyond history, let alone beyond Western medicine. And after a historical global pandemic momentum relevant to decoloniality, these pieces written during another historical momentum, as sad as it sounds, will not expire any time soon. As she states, Israel-Palestine has been described by many as the ‘open wound’ of the modern world: never healed, never bandaged, now ripped open in ways we cannot yet begin to comprehend. Yet convinced that we can break out of our partitioned narratives, that we can look at and listen to and learn from our doubles, even the ones we most reject, because that may be our only hope. In my eyes, the Israel-Palestine case is such a textbook example of how oppression works applicable to any other, that when thinking bigger in these terms, specificities are, at that level, irrelevant.
It was Albert Memmi, Tunisian sociologist and writer of Jewish origins, who wrote in his book The Colonizer and The Colonized published in 1957, about the interdependent relationship of both groups, the relationship between oppressor and oppressed. In the analysis of the psychology of the oppressed on a personal and social level, both share the duality and dissociation of harbouring themselves in a distorted way, as well as the oppressor that inhabits them, through a process of demystification of the ego and its illusions. An alienated ego experiencing a one-sided world through the emotional projections of its own shadow / unconscious, whose dilemma is to find itself authentically, which applies to any kind of oppression equally. Otherwise, without that healing as later described by him in 1974, horizontal violence and projective identification occurs, where in the impossibility of detecting our internal oppressor, we end up oppressing our direct and indirect fellows. And in that projection, attacking indirectly the oppressor that inhabits us and others, we become oppressors ourselves. It is a phenomenon that even explains how narcissists, including the Western ones ruling the world, come to be.
Beyond the Eurocentric conception of mental health and through the lens of Indigenous cosmovisions around trauma with concepts such as soul wound, and blood memory, the approach is very different, but the consequence is the same. By this principle, not only Jews are just enacting and recreating their own generational trauma but – if not healed – Palestinian, Congolese, Sudanese, Ethiopian, Afghans, Haitians… alongside any survivors and any oppressed community/person in the oppression spectrum of what is just a chain effect, were, are, and will be, the next generation of oppressors-to-be.
One of the things that makes the approach of decolonial healers and scholars such as Renee Linklater, Frantz Fanon, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Eduardo Duran, Orkideh Behrouzan, Malidoma Somé, Aurora Levins Morales or Jennifer Mullan among others completely different, is that within this paradigm, people are not – originally speaking – the ones to be fixed, but the environment that they were/are in. People are not sick but sickened. The social system is the one sick. Nobody feeling truly safe needs to be violent, which makes the all psychological cycle-breaking work, inevitably political. It is indeed the approach of liberation psychology, first conceived by the Spanish/Salvadoran psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró and developed extensively in Latin America, which aims to actively understand the psychology of the oppressed by conceptually and practically addressing the oppressive sociopolitical structure in which they exist. An interdisciplinary approach that draws on liberation philosophy, Marxist and decolonial thought, critical theory, and critical pedagogy. Unfortunately, when it comes to personal and social healing, since they are two sides of the same liberation coin, people often just cope and fight in the wrong direction as a trauma response, often supported by their own personal and social oppressors.
Regardless of who you are thinking about, we can not shame ourselves/people at large into change, but only love ourselves and each other into evolution. Yet for that to happen we/people need to properly face the truth, not to mention the wound, to understand what we/people are dealing with, to be able to grow not only the vision but the compassion necessary to move us/ the world forward. That is to say that we need to understand the neocolonial/narcissistic disease in order for it not to have power over us personally, let alone to be able to dismantle it socially. And that is an ongoing process which requires a lot of consciousness, to witness the unconscious through everything we have been through and continue to be programmed to be and think like, if not paying attention. It is so insidious, that even when fighting it, if our consciousness falters, we risk becoming the very thing we are against. The identity, the choices, the activism, everything gets shaped by the same sickening pattern, as a mirroring reaction rather than a response defined by the very cause it is against, because it knows nothing else.
That is the reason why genuine liberation has always been focused in one way or another on the realm of the imagination. If we can’t see beyond, nor work out that muscle, we can’t go anywhere different. We all lack genuinely practical formal education to navigate this present realm of life, let alone education showing us other paths and other ways towards personal and social health. Iconic revolutionary teachers of many kinds, that the world has very much had, whose torches need to be handed over and refocused so that we can all become our own and others’ as our main responsibility if there is anything, past, present and future, we care about. As much as, deep down, this frightens us as beings mentally-wired towards what the brain understands as safety, which in neurological language is only the familiar however unsafe that is, that is how the highest form of capitalism also known as imperialism shaping our lives gets dismantled. And even if the ongoing process lasts over a lifetime, not underestimating the liberation work that others have done before, leading us to this point, that means also self-enquiring how ready we actually are to stop being complicit with capitalism through our most important vital choices, as challenging as that is while living in it. In the decolonial exercise of thinking beyond the binary of everything, we also need to cherish those who likewise can gracefully link everything. In this instance, liberation psychology with radical politics to be able to compassionately humanise and understand, which is not the same as justifying any side, including our own, even in the face of savage oppression. Generational trauma reenacts itself in different timelines and ways, but in a social context, it is knowing where it is rooted and embedded in – what is the real problem and not the people that needs to be resisted – the first step forward when thinking of a long-term solution instead of how to cope with the symptoms.
We will only decolonise the world when we unlearn how to be violent towards ourselves and others, very conscious of the relationship on both ends. Considering the past and present state of global affairs, something that has been taught to us all personally and socially, even if differently, through intergenerational trauma. Oppression, when ingrained and not healed, ends up based on the mythification of false beliefs that are only masking the pain within and released by recreating it, finding an external enemy who can personify it. Something that is reinforced by the visible and invisible oppression we all live under even if at different levels of it. Liberation is consciously choosing to transcend the myths we are fed, by facing our wounds to be able to holistically ground ourselves to see through and act with as much integrity as possible. In the middle of a genocide recreating a genocide that happened years earlier, while in the middle of an even sicker context responsible for the original and ongoing, the ones at the far end of incomparable terrorism obviously need emergency support. However no effort is going to ever change genocidal violence if not addressing the wound of the ones enacting it. And, most importantly, no effort is going to ever change any violence if we are all not addressing our own.
As the Brazilian critical pedagogue Paulo Freire, the Tunisian sociologist Albert Memmi, and the American writer and activist Audre Lorde, among other authors pointed out, in this complementary pair of opposites – oppressor and oppressed – one cannot exist without the other so the only possible liberation is to extinguish the oppression that would extinguish them both in a revolutionary way, but it is dehumanising, alienating, and self-destructive for both, which is why liberation is not a job to be carried out by one side alone. Needless to say, the consciously oppressed have always been, are, and will be the ones leading the way as the first attaining that consciousness making the unconsciously oppressed conscious of the fact that they were and are oppressed too so that liberation is actually possible.
It is only that day when our efforts will gather some coherence. The day when triggering events perceived as external will be both compassionately recognised – as a ripple effect literally linked to our everyday life, functioning whether we like it or not as a mirror of the violence we engage in in our cities, in our homes, in our relationships with ourselves and others- and constantly addressed. The day when the depth of our understanding will know that although not all forms of oppression were invented in the West, the entire world is currently shaped by its neocoloniality, and most importantly how, the link of all the personal and social struggles existing under the same power will become undeniable. When we unlock that what is really behind any oppressed-turned-oppressor in whichever – personal or social, visible or hidden, punished or accepted – manner and degree, is no different from what is really behind the heaviness and effervescence of today, we will, at our core, be free. And only then, the rest will follow.
The post The Oppressor Within first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Israeli forces killed at least 30 people and injured over 100 in an attack on a girls’ school in central Gaza on Saturday, potentially using what one expert said is a U.S. bomb. The strike on the Khadija School, near Deir al-Balah, killed at least fifteen fifteen children, officials reported. Their bodies were sent to al-Aqsa Hospital nearby, along with people who were injured in the attack.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Gaza Ministry of Health said on Monday that they now consider Gaza to be a polio epidemic area due to Israel’s relentless assault and deadly humanitarian blockade, portending yet more horrific circumstances being forced on Palestinians in coming months unless Israeli officials agree to a ceasefire soon. Health officials declared the epidemic in a post on Telegram and warned that it will…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Only about an eighth of the area of Gaza is not currently under forced evacuation orders from Israel, the UN reports, in a clear show of the ethnic cleansing campaign Israel is carrying out as it relentlessly massacres Palestinians in the region. UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Sunday that only 14 percent of Gaza isn’t…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Palestine Action has been back targetting Lib Dem-led Somerset Council over its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza – after it voted to take action, but since hasn’t.
On 29 July, activists from Palestine Action targeted Somerset Council’s county hall in Taunton. The building was sprayed in red paint and windows were shattered, symbolising the council’s complicity in Palestinian bloodshed by renting their Bristol premises to Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest weapons producer:
They also took aim at the council’s signage – mashing that up, too:
Somerset Council are the landlords of Aztec West 600, the headquarters of Elbit Systems UK.
As the Canary has documented, due to financial concerns, Somerset Council have made plans to sell Aztec West 600 as part of a wholesale move to dispose of their commercial investments. However, residents have repeatedly demanded the council follow their legal and moral obligations to immediately evict Elbit from the property before disposing of the site.
After several actions taken against the council, the full council voted to explore legal ways to evict Elbit before selling the premises on 23 April. Despite the democratic mandate and legal advice from Palestine Action’s lawyers which set out a route to evict Elbit, the council have taken no further steps to remove the Israeli weapons maker.
Elbit Systems is Israel’s biggest weapons manufacturer, who supply 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet and land-based equipment in addition to missiles, bombs and bullets. As part of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Elbit “ramped up production” for the Israeli military who use the company’s services “extensively”.
During a court case, Alan Wright, VP of Sales at Elbit Systems UK, revealed that the premises is used for “systems integration” of weaponry for their customers.
During Elbit’s annual investor conference 2024 in Israel, Elbit Systems CEO Bezhalel Machlis stated that all Elbit companies in the UK are a significant part of the Israeli weapons firm who frequently work with their counterparts in Israel and share technology.
In the same conference, a video was displayed of Elbit workers saying they feel like ‘civil soldiers’ and regularly engage in ongoing debriefs with the Israeli military during the use of their weapons in Gaza.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
Somerset Council have ignored their democratically passed motion and have taken no further steps to remove Elbit from their premises. By leasing to the Israeli weapons maker, they’ve made the whole county complicit in the ongoing Gaza genocide.
They may find our actions a rude awakening, but it pales in comparison to the bombs which are raining down on the Palestinian people every day – bombs made by the company leasing Somerset Council’s property.
Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
There’s no mention of their duty to the people in the oath of office that members of Congress take. It says they will support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Maybe, in some regard, defending the Constitution would mean doing their job: representing the people that elected them. But today, the architect of the genocide against the Palestinian people walked in and out of the “people’s house” to a standing ovation. He was given more time with our lawmakers than any of us will ever get in our lifetime and he used it to insist he was a good man that was commanding a moral army — insisting they have not killed anyone who did not deserve to have their life ended in the blink of an eye.
There are one thousand indications that our government has no obligation to us. This moment was just one — but it was one I will never let slip my mind. These people are no different than the settlers that gather in lawn chairs, eat popcorn, and cheer when the Israeli military drops bombs on apartment complexes in Gaza. For as long as they’ve been in office, they’ve had a front row seat to the carnage and all they do is gawk and cheer from the sidelines. Every once in a while, someone they are supposed to work for pesters them about their complacency and we are swatted away like flies.
The majority opinion in the United States is against continued support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Stories come out every week that push the needle further. Last week, the story of Muhammad Bhar surfaced and was circulated around the world. Muhammad was my age, 24, and had Down Syndrome. The Israeli military raided his home and let their dog attack him, tearing his arm to shreds. They separated him from his family, and left him in a room all by himself. They ordered his family to leave the house and left Muhammad to die — alone, bleeding, and scared. His family found Muhammad starting to decompose in the room the soldiers left him in. He still had a tourniquet on his arm from when theried to stop the bleeding. And they just left him there, like he was nothing.
The Israeli military confirmed this story days later and Netanyahu gets a round of applause for his courage and leadership. They don’t even feel the need to lie to the world about their atrocities anymore — letting babies suffocate to death in incubators months ago was the litmus test for what the United States would let slide. Ordering an attack dog on a man with Down Syndrome and locking him in a room to die without his loved ones there to console him wasn’t the red line — because there will never be one.
They gave a standing ovation.
If a man like Benjamin Netanyahu had walked through their home and mangled their children’s bodies so much that they could never forget the way they looked afterward — I wonder if they would still applaud. I wonder if the screams of their family members burning alive in tents would potentially interrupt the thought that told them to clap, the thought that told them to give the man a standing ovation for his perfectly executed slaughter of thousands of human beings.
Some part of me still wanted to believe that these people may still be completely misled — that perhaps they don’t know about the 15,000 children that have been killed. Maybe they haven’t seen what I’ve seen — the little girl with her face falling off, the boy with a missing head, the child with no legs, the mother unwilling to wash her children’s blood off her hands because it is all that is left of them. Maybe they haven’t seen it at all. As thunderous applause rang out for the murderer, there were thousands of people outside trying to signal to the millions of people in Palestine that their turmoil isn’t being ignored. They were pepper sprayed, beaten, and arrested by cops that were trained in Israel.
When I saw the video of the standing ovation, something sunk in me — this is where I was born. This is where both of my parents were born. I have no nation to be loyal to but a nation tripping over themselves to kill my friends’ families. There is bloodlust in the US Congress — and bloodlust seems like the only thing they are loyal to. If there are “enemies” foreign and domestic, I fear they view us as the latter.
I clap for my friends at their comedy shows. I clap for people after they finish a speech at a community event. I sometimes clap when the plane lands, if someone else does it first. To clap for an executioner of children, mothers, fathers and friends — how much did they sell their souls for?
[Muhammad Bhar |Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un]
• This article was originally published on Danaka’s Substack, Proof That I’m Alive. You can subscribe here!
The post A Standing Ovation first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
There’s no mention of their duty to the people in the oath of office that members of Congress take. It says they will support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Maybe, in some regard, defending the Constitution would mean doing their job: representing the people that elected them. But today, the architect of the genocide against the Palestinian people walked in and out of the “people’s house” to a standing ovation. He was given more time with our lawmakers than any of us will ever get in our lifetime and he used it to insist he was a good man that was commanding a moral army — insisting they have not killed anyone who did not deserve to have their life ended in the blink of an eye.
There are one thousand indications that our government has no obligation to us. This moment was just one — but it was one I will never let slip my mind. These people are no different than the settlers that gather in lawn chairs, eat popcorn, and cheer when the Israeli military drops bombs on apartment complexes in Gaza. For as long as they’ve been in office, they’ve had a front row seat to the carnage and all they do is gawk and cheer from the sidelines. Every once in a while, someone they are supposed to work for pesters them about their complacency and we are swatted away like flies.
The majority opinion in the United States is against continued support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Stories come out every week that push the needle further. Last week, the story of Muhammad Bhar surfaced and was circulated around the world. Muhammad was my age, 24, and had Down Syndrome. The Israeli military raided his home and let their dog attack him, tearing his arm to shreds. They separated him from his family, and left him in a room all by himself. They ordered his family to leave the house and left Muhammad to die — alone, bleeding, and scared. His family found Muhammad starting to decompose in the room the soldiers left him in. He still had a tourniquet on his arm from when theried to stop the bleeding. And they just left him there, like he was nothing.
The Israeli military confirmed this story days later and Netanyahu gets a round of applause for his courage and leadership. They don’t even feel the need to lie to the world about their atrocities anymore — letting babies suffocate to death in incubators months ago was the litmus test for what the United States would let slide. Ordering an attack dog on a man with Down Syndrome and locking him in a room to die without his loved ones there to console him wasn’t the red line — because there will never be one.
They gave a standing ovation.
If a man like Benjamin Netanyahu had walked through their home and mangled their children’s bodies so much that they could never forget the way they looked afterward — I wonder if they would still applaud. I wonder if the screams of their family members burning alive in tents would potentially interrupt the thought that told them to clap, the thought that told them to give the man a standing ovation for his perfectly executed slaughter of thousands of human beings.
Some part of me still wanted to believe that these people may still be completely misled — that perhaps they don’t know about the 15,000 children that have been killed. Maybe they haven’t seen what I’ve seen — the little girl with her face falling off, the boy with a missing head, the child with no legs, the mother unwilling to wash her children’s blood off her hands because it is all that is left of them. Maybe they haven’t seen it at all. As thunderous applause rang out for the murderer, there were thousands of people outside trying to signal to the millions of people in Palestine that their turmoil isn’t being ignored. They were pepper sprayed, beaten, and arrested by cops that were trained in Israel.
When I saw the video of the standing ovation, something sunk in me — this is where I was born. This is where both of my parents were born. I have no nation to be loyal to but a nation tripping over themselves to kill my friends’ families. There is bloodlust in the US Congress — and bloodlust seems like the only thing they are loyal to. If there are “enemies” foreign and domestic, I fear they view us as the latter.
I clap for my friends at their comedy shows. I clap for people after they finish a speech at a community event. I sometimes clap when the plane lands, if someone else does it first. To clap for an executioner of children, mothers, fathers and friends — how much did they sell their souls for?
[Muhammad Bhar |Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un]
• This article was originally published on Danaka’s Substack, Proof That I’m Alive. You can subscribe here!
The post A Standing Ovation first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
BBC coverage of the attack on a football pitch in the Golan Heights on Saturday has been intentionally misleading.
The BBC’s evening news entirely ignored the fact that those killed by the blast are a dozen Syrians, not Israeli citizens, and that for decades the surviving Syrian population in the Golan, most of them Druze, has been forced to live unwillingly under an Israeli military occupation.
I suppose mention of this context might complicate the story Israel and the BBC wish to tell – and risk reminding viewers that Israel is a belligerent state occupying not just Palestinian territory but Syrian territory too (not to mention nearby Lebanese territory).
It might suggest to audiences that these various permanent Israeli occupations have been contributing not only to large-scale human rights abuses but to regional tensions as well. That Israel’s acts of aggression against its neighbours might be the cause of “conflict”, rather than, as Israel and the BBC would have us believe, some kind of unusual, pre-emptive form of self-defence.
The BBC, of course, chose to uncritically air comments from a military spokesman for Israel, who blamed Hizbullah for the blast in the Golan.
Daniel Hagari tried to milk the incident for maximum propaganda value, arguing: “This attack shows the true face of Hizbullah, a terrorist organisation that targets and murders children playing soccer.”
Except, as the BBC failed to mention in its report, Israel infamously targeted and murdered four young children from the Bakr family playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.
Much more recently, video footage showed Israel striking yet more children playing football at a school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for families whose homes were destroyed by earlier Israeli bombs.
Doubtless other strikes in Gaza over the past 10 months, so many of them targeting school-shelters, have killed Palestinian children playing football – especially as it is one of the very few ways they can take their mind off the horror all around.
So, should we – and the BBC – not conclude that all these attacks on children playing football make the Israeli military even more of a terrorist organisation than Hizbullah?
Note too the way the western media are so ready to accept unquestioningly Israel’s claim that Hizbullah was responsible for the blast – and dismiss Hizbullah’s denials.
Viewers are discouraged from exercising their memories. Any who do may recall that those same media outlets were only too willing to take on faith Israeli disinformation suggesting that Hamas had hit Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital back in October, even when all the evidence showed it was an Israeli air strike.
(Israel soon went on to destroy all Gaza’s hospitals, effectively eradicating the enclave’s health sector, on the pretext that medical facilities there served as Hamas bases – another patently preposterous claim the western media treated with wide-eyed credulity.)
The BBC next went to Jerusalem to hear from diplomatic editor Paul Adams. He intoned gravely: “This is precisely what we have been worrying about for the past 10 months – that something of this magnitude would occur on the northern border, that would turn what has been a simmering conflict for all of these months into an all-out war.”
So there you have it. Paul Adams and the BBC concede they haven’t been worrying for the past 10 months about the genocide unfolding under their very noses in Gaza, or its consequences.
A genocide of Palestinians, apparently, is not something of significant “magnitude”.
Only now, when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians forced to live under its military rule as a pretext to expand its “war”, are we supposed to sit up and take notice. Or so the BBC tells us.
Update:
Facebook instantly removed a post linking to this article – and for reasons that are entirely opaque to me (apart from the fact that it is critical of the BBC and Israel).
Facebook’s warning, threatening that my account may face “more account restrictions”, suggests that I was misleading followers by taking them to a “landing page that impersonates another website”. That is patent nonsense. The link took them to my Substack page.
As I have been warning for some time, social media platforms have been tightening the noose around the necks of independent journalists like me, making our work all but impossible to find. It is only a matter of time before we are disappeared completely.
Substack has been a lifeline, because it connects readers to my work directly – either through email or via Substack’s app – bypassing, at least for the moment, the grip of the social-media billionaires.
If you wish to keep reading my articles, and haven’t already, please sign up to my Substack page.
The post More dead children: More BBC “news” channelling Israeli propaganda as its own first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.