This story originally appeared in Jacobin on June 30, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
Why has it been so difficult for students demanding divestment from Israel to catch their university administrations’ ears? Part of the answer is the specific content of the request: universities’ donors are more pro-Israel than their students. Schools hoping to both quell the protests and continue courting philanthropic support find themselves balancing competing and perhaps irreconcilable interests.
Equally important, however, is the nature of university investing itself, and the broader structural logic of university financialization. Over the last four decades, endowments have ballooned and become increasingly central to universities’ self-conception and function, with financial professionals proliferating throughout schools’ administrative ranks and assuming greater control of institutional priorities. For university administrators, the deeper and more existential risk emanating from the encampments is the breaching of the barrier that insulates investment decisions from the specter of politics, and the possible democratization of the financialized university itself.
Endowments are political objects, subject both to macrofinancial pressures and recurrent pressures from interested groups on campus. But they also represent a fantasy for universities looking to retreat from politics. This fantasy is both functional and formal.
Functionally, the endowment buffers the university from the political demands attached to other sources of funding, like taxpayers, students, and state legislators. So long as the principal isn’t spent down — which, by policy, it never is — then shrewd investment allows for a source of funding that seems to autogenerate, sustaining itself and by extension the university over time. Formally, meanwhile, the endowment is governed by a technocratic sensibility that treats divestment as an intolerable and exacting political threat but investment as an act somehow devoid of politics.
Insulating From Public Pressure, Opening Up to Private
In parsing the curious rise of university endowments, Henry Hansmann in 1990 argued that one of the early functions of turning to private funding streams at Harvard and Yale — both of which were initially funded heavily by their respective state legislatures — was to shield those schools from shifting political winds, ensuring more autonomy. “Private sources of funds were evidently successful in insulating both universities from serious public influence in their affairs for the remainder of the nineteenth century,” he writes. “On the other hand, both institutions fell under the strong influence of the groups that contributed to their endowments.”
Turning to the endowment does not allow the university to evade politics; it only reconfigures the relative power of the university’s inescapably political constituencies.
When financial markets began to liberalize in the 1970s and 1980s, the size and sophistication of university endowments also birthed a stratum of financial managers who came to wield enormous influence on their campuses. In Bankers in the Ivory Tower, sociologist Charlie Eaton traces the “social circuitry of finance,” the elite personal interconnections between Ivy League institutions and Wall Street in the 1980s that fed the growth of then new private equity and hedge funds being capitalized by endowment dollars. This investment philosophy, part of the “Yale Model” pioneered by David Swensen, led to the spectacular expansion of Ivy League endowments thanks to their privileged access to these burgeoning financial vehicles.
The apparent sophistication of this approach held special appeal for public institutions like the University of California (UC), where we study and work, as a model to be emulated amid broader state retrenchment and tax volatility beginning in the late 1970s. Here, it seemed, was a pool of money the university could nurture and grow without relying on state appropriations or the increasingly fickle and contentious tax revenues those appropriations required.
But turning to the endowment does not allow the university to evade politics; it only reconfigures the relative power of the university’s inescapably political constituencies. The same financial managers, consultants, and partners the university entrusts to grow the wealth in its endowment portfolios use the strength of those portfolios to assess the creditworthiness of the university and the terms on which it increasingly borrows. The effect is to remake university governance. Capital markets reward brand strength, endowment growth that outpaces operating expenses, a demonstrated ability to raise tuition, and the labor flexibility that comes from low rates of unionization and tenure on campus. In looking for a way to escape the whims of sometimes demanding campus constituencies, universities subject themselves to the whims of financial markets — which increasingly take on the appearance of natural laws.
Financial managers, with their unique technical expertise to interpret those laws, are granted sole authority to make investment decisions for the university. Any challenge to that authority is dismissed out of hand. A 2019 op-ed by University of California chief investments officer Jagdeep Bachher and chairman of the UC Board of Regents’ Investments Committee Richard Sherman illustrates the point. The UC’s announcement of its divestment from fossil fuels was hailed at the time by both student groups and in the national press as a win for the climate. Bachher and Sherman, though, wanted to be clear that student pressure was not to thank for their maneuver, asserting that it was simply good business sense. “While our rationale may not be the moral imperative that many activists embrace, our investment decision-making process leads us to the same result,” they wrote. “We believe there is money to be made. We have chosen to invest for a better planet, and reap the financial rewards for UC, rather than simply divest for a headline.” Here was a moment to extend an olive branch to student activists; instead, UC administrators had to deny such pressure amounted to anything in order to preserve the appearance of their sole discretion over investment decisions.
Divestment from South African apartheid, the paradigmatic case, offers an instructive historical parallel. The regents rejected calls for divestment through the 1970s, with UC treasurer Owsley Hammond telling the Oakland Tribune that “an extremely dangerous precedent would be set if the regents were forced to base their investment philosophy upon the political or moral beliefs of certain segments of the population.” But then, in 1985, responding to police crackdowns in South Africa, Berkeley students staged a weeklong sit-in that ended with police arresting 158 students. The repression helped to propel further action, and a year later — with political momentum finally building against apartheid South Africa both in California and nationally — the UC’s regents pulled $3.1 billion from companies doing business with the country.
In looking for a way to escape the whims of sometimes demanding campus constituencies, universities subject themselves to the whims of financial markets.
Years later, Nelson Mandela came to the UC and told students how instrumental their activism had been in bringing down the apartheid regime; alongside the Free Speech Movement, anti-apartheid organizing now forms an important moment in the university’s narration of its radical past. Yet even this easy victory was hard to stomach. In 1998, UC president David Gardner recalled that “we didn’t invest in South Africa because of apartheid; I thought we shouldn’t divest because of it. . . . We allowed the political rhetoric to dominate the debate, and the political rhetoric was, in effect, a bumper-sticker approach to the issue.”
The Threat of the Encampments
Asimilar outlook characterizes the university’s response to contemporary calls to divest. Two weeks after hundreds of police officers and sheriffs were mobilized to break up the Palestine solidarity encampment on our campus, the University of California, Los Angeles, with tear gas and rubber bullets, UC CIO Bachher went on the record to address just how much of the university’s money was connected to Israel. His answer, reported by Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times, was that of the UC’s $175 billion in assets under management, $32 billion would be affected by students’ divestment demands. This figure includes not just direct investments in firms and weapons manufacturers doing business in Israel, but also the university’s extensive investments in passive index funds like those offered by Blackrock and the nearly $12 billion it has parked in US treasury bonds.
On the one hand, Bachher’s inclusion of US treasury bonds indicates the real limits of “divestment” given the US government’s status as the world’s foremost supplier of arms to Israel. On the other, his comment drips with irony and condescension. Including treasury bonds in his accounting both inflates the appearance of the university’s financial connections to Israel and mocks student protesters’ inability to comprehend either the core geopolitical reality of the situation or the basic mechanics of the financial system. With protests still roiling the UC’s campuses and being met with extreme repressive force, Bachher demonstrated no interest in sincerely engaging with protestors, instead dismissing their grasp of the university’s finances as another “bumper-sticker approach.”
Such a characterization arrogates authority over university finances to a select few. That, after all, is the endowment’s structural function. The rapid growth of endowments both indexes and fuels the concentration of control of university life in the hands of a financial elite. That consolidation is part of the broader corporate turn within higher education, including increasing reliance on more precarious and low-paid non–tenure track academic workers; increasing tuition costs and consequent student debt; and the defunding of public education systems amid their turn to capital markets and the expansion of their investment portfolios.
To build systems of higher education that work in service of the public good will depend on clear-eyed organizing efforts able to challenge these longstanding structural transformations and allow input from on- and off-campus constituencies with whom universities interact. The wave of student protests demanding that their institutions divest from Israel’s war machine should properly be read as a crucial piece of the project to redemocratize the university.
On 20 June 2024 Swissinfo spoke with human rights defenders from Ukraine and Israel about how they operate in tough contexts. The main tasks of human rights defenders include investigating, collecting information about, and reporting rights violations. They raise public awareness to ensure that human rights are respected. But how do they work in a war zone or in an environment where a large part of public opinion is against them? SWI swissinfo met activists from Ukraine and Israel in Geneva’s Palais des Nations, where they had come to meet delegations and attend side-events during a session of the Human Rights CouncilExternal link .
“We are documenting testimonies from victims of the war in Ukraine,” says Lyubov Smachylo, an analyst with the Ukrainian organisation Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR).
MIHR’s main office is in Kyiv. It has direct access to victims and witnesses of rights violations, such as Ukrainians living in the north of the country – formerly under Russian occupation and now back under Ukrainian rule – or former prisoners in Russian jails. Smachylo, who lives between Kyiv and Paris, analyses documented testimonies of human rights violations committed by Russia. These include Russian armed forces acting with generalised impunity, the arbitrary detention of civilians – often accompanied by torture and ill-treatment – and in some cases enforced disappearances. Lyubov Smachylo from the Ukrainian Media Initiative for Human Rights. Courtesy of Lyubov Smachlyo
MIHR is one of the few NGOs able to gather information on the ground. Virtually no international organisation can go into the occupied Ukrainian regions, not even the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), for example, has only limited access to Ukrainian prisoners of war. This absence of accountability and the underreporting of abuses mean there is an increased risk of mistreatment and of perpetrators going unpunished.
Among other things, the MIHR deals with prisoners of war and civilians who have been arrested in the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine or who are being detained in unknown places. Beatings and torture are rife, and some have died because of the poor detention conditions, says Smachylo.
“We know of 55 places of detention in the occupied regions of Ukraine and 40 in Russia, where a total of at least 1,550 Ukrainian civilians are being held,” says Smachylo. Contacted by SWI, the ICRC did not comment on whether it has access to the occupied regions. More More Human Rights Council: Fundamental or fundamentally flawed?
This content was published on Jun 30, 2021 The Human Rights Council, convening in Geneva, is mired in US-China rivalry, while the Council also faces criticism from developing countries. Read more: Human Rights Council: Fundamental or fundamentally flawed Increasingly hostile environment
Tal Steiner is meanwhile a human rights lawyer and director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI). The NGO holds Israel accountable on its use of torture, which is not illegal in the country, although there is an absolute prohibition on torture enshrined in international human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Steiner says her NGO’s work has become particularly difficult since the Hamas attacks of October 7 and the Israeli-Palestinian war. Israel has restricted access to political prisoners, while rights defenders find themselves in an increasingly hostile environment where they are regularly branded as“defending terrorists”.
The political prisoners to which Steiner has access include Palestinians living in Israel and in the West Bank as well as Jewish Israeli citizens.
“Working on the issue of torture – or on any issue in Israel that affects human rights in terms of security – has never been easy,” she says. Tal Steiner, right, pictured with Miriam Azem, advocacy associate at the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (ADALAH). Keystone/AFP/Coffrini
Compassion for Palestinian prisoners and the view that human rights apply to everyone have been greatly diminished since the war, Steiner explains.“This means that the circle that supports our work has become smaller.”
According to her, many Israelis have opted for security above human rights. Many also harbour feelings of vengeance towards Palestinians.“We saw this, for example, at the Israeli Prison Service (IPS),” Steiner says. There, extreme overcrowding since October 7 has led to a severe deterioration in conditions, including limited access to basic needs like water, electricity, food, and medical care. Human rights groups have also noted cases of severe beating of detainees and prisoners, sexual harassment and intimidation.
Miriam Azem also took part in the SWI interview with Steiner. The international advocacy expert works for Palestinian organisation Adalah, which defends Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied territories in Israeli courts. “Since October 7, the attitude towards our lawyers has changed a lot,” she says. This has become apparent in disciplinary committees, which handle disputes in universities.“Since the beginning of the war, over 120 disciplinary proceedings have been initiated against Palestinian students – citizens of Israel – for statements made on their private social media accounts” she says.
She cites the example of Palestinian students with Israeli citizenship who have been accused of inciting terrorism on the basis of unfounded arguments. Adalah attorneys, who have represented 95 Palestinian students facing this charge,“were questioned regarding their loyalty to Israel”, Azem says.
According to Azem, there has been an increase in arrests and interrogations due to posts on social media. “The vast majority of these posts do not meet any criminal threshold. Nevertheless, the accusations against activists were grounded in Israel’s Counter-Terror Law, which carries severe imprisonment penalties,” she says. More More Is Geneva still the capital of peace?
In February, PCATI and Adalah, together with two other Israeli organisations, sent an urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards. They called on Edwards to intervene immediately to stop torture and the systematic mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention facilities. Apart from private lawyers, these are the only four organisations that can currently visit Israeli prisons – Israel has denied the ICRC access.
“We are therefore the only ones who can report what we have seen there,” says Steiner. Around 10,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently in Israeli custody, many of them detained without trial. However, no one is allowed to visit the Israeli military camps for prisoners from the Gaza Strip. PCATI fears a“new Guantanamo” is being established there, in reference to the US facility in Cuba where prisoners were held indefinitely without trial in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
In their appeal to the UN rapporteur, the four organisations also expressed concern about the dehumanising rhetoric being used by some members of the Israeli government. The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, in charge of the IPS, has repeatedly spoken out in favour of subjecting Palestinians to degrading and inhumane treatment.
In the meantime, UN rapporteur Edwards has called on Israel to investigate the numerous allegations of torture against detained Palestinians. Since the attacks of October 7, it is estimated that thousands of Palestinians including children have been detained, she has written. Edwards says she received allegations of individuals being beaten, kept blindfolded in cells, handcuffed for excessive periods, deprived of sleep, and threatened with physical and sexual violence. Burnouts and death threats
Burnout and death threats are also part of the job. Smachylo says the war which stretches through the whole of Ukraine is an added strain on a very stressful job. Activists and staff members of her organisation spend hours writing reports detailing torture and mistreatment of Ukrainian citizens by the Russian authorities. She particularly highlights the risk of burnout for those who regularly carry out missions in the field.
The Geneva-based World Organization against Torture (OMCT), which cooperates with the NGO, provides financial support for their psychological and therapeutic retreats.
Steiner, for her part, draws particular attention to the huge amount of work involved.“In view of the grief over the tragedies of October 7 and the war in the Gaza Strip, cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians is proving to be a challenge right now,” she says. For her, it is fundamental that every detainee has the right to defense.
Smear campaigns have also targeted her work. For example, the Israeli TV station Channel14, the equivalent of the rightwing US station Fox News, made a derogatory programme about PCATI and other organisations campaigning for Palestinian rights. The title:“Disgrace: the Israeli activists who take care of the treatment of Hamas terrorists”. The program led to harassment and threatening phone calls. Some of the emails Steiner received were about rape and death threats, others targeted her family.
“We are aware that we are operating in an environment that is very hostile to our work,” says Azem.“As an NGO registered in Israel, we are extremely cautious.” Steiner adds that the persecution of NGOs in Israel and Palestine has a long history. Six Palestinian human rights organisations have been classified as terrorist by Israel. And several bills currently envisage a higher taxation rate for Israeli NGOs in order to block their work.
Palestine Action targeted another link in Britain’s chain of complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as the Manchester offices of ‘CDW UK’ were forced to close by an activist blockade.
Palestine Action: CDW shut down
Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company, are facilitated in their British presence by support from CDW’s software and technology services.
So, as part of a nationwide campaign against complicity in Israeli atrocities, on Monday 1 July Palestine Action activists used a vehicle and lock-on device to blockade the back entrance:
Actionists are blockading the back and occupying the front of CDW’s Manchester offices.
By providing supply chain management and IT solutions to Israeli weapons maker Elbit Systems, the firm make arming genocide more efficient. pic.twitter.com/UWHV80vzJ1
Another one occupied the ledge at the building’s entry:
The Manchester building was also sprayed with blood-red paint – to serve as a reminder to CDW of the Palestinian bloodshed from which their firm profits:
CDW provide supply chain management, IT solutions, cyber security and eProcurement services to the British operations of the Elbit brand, part of the global Israeli arms firm.
CDW are contracted for IT services for ‘Elbit Systems UK Ltd’, headquartered in Bristol, from which Elbit oversees drone and arms production nation-wide. This is not the first time the company has been targeted, with activists spraying a site in Peterborough with red paint and shattering their windows.
This action in Manchester follows on the heels of others taken to target Elbit’s partners & suppliers.
This came after activists destroyed dozens of boxes of GRiD processors found inside Elbit’s Kent factory during an action, the total damage-caused estimated by police to be worth over £1m.
GRiD manufactures a range of military computers, processors, and similar electronic equipment, either for direct battlefield use or to be integrated into other systems.
Since 7 October, Israel has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, injured more than 86,000, and displaced the majority of people in Gaza. Elbit Systems supply the majority of Israel’s military drone fleet, land based equipment, bullets, munitions and missiles.
Their weaponry is often marketed as “battle-tested”, after deployment against the people of Gaza. The genocide of Gaza would not be possible without Elbit’s weaponry – and those firms, including CDW and GRiD, are made complicit by their facilitation of Elbit’s deadly business.
CDW is not the first to be targeted. After similar actions, five other companies have ended their association with Elbit’s deadly trade in the past two months. These include Elbit’s weapons transporters Kuehne+Nagel, recruiters iO associates, property managers Fisher German, website designers Naked Creativity, and legal firm MLL Legal.
Palestine Action says it will continue to target all those who allow Elbit to continue their business of genocide, until they declare they’ve cut all ties.
Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action
It feels like we are living at a turning point for humanity. We are watching live as Israel carries out the most brutal offensive on the Palestinian people imaginable. Palestinian resistance has spread across the world, and world public opinion overwhelmingly wants Israel to stop its assault, but Israel and its powerful allies are using censorship, force, and slander to crush dissent.
It was noon on June 26 when the residents of the al-Shuja’iyya neighborhood east of Gaza City — one of the largest neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip inhabited by over 300,000 people — were taken by surprise as Israeli tanks rolled into their neighborhood. Residents described chaotic scenes as tanks fired indiscriminately, unleashing a barrage of shells that ripped through the area.
On June 1, approximately 50 medical students from Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis University, and others interested in the topic gathered at a public library in St. Louis’s Central West End near both campuses to hear neonatal specialist Yassar Arain describe the medical apartheid he experienced while volunteering in a neonatal intensive care unit in Gaza this spring.
The Biden administration is releasing part of a shipment of bombs that was suspended due to supposed concerns over Israel’s invasion of Rafah — nearly two months into Israeli forces’ Rafah raid that U.S. officials once said they sought to prevent. Axios reported on Thursday, citing an Israeli official, that the administration is expected to deliver 1,700 500 pound-bombs to Israel in two weeks when…
Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of US congress, condemned an amendment that aims to conceal the Palestinian death toll by as “genocide denial” of Israel’s crimes.
The amendment later passed by 269-144 votes. If it’s signed into law, the bill would prohibit the state department from referencing figures from the Gaza Health Ministry. As part of a wider state department funding measure, the bill will now go to the senate.
Since 1948, Mr speaker, there has been a coordinated effort, especially in this chamber, to dehumanise Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence.
In 1948, Zionists established Israel through taking over 78% of Palestine, displacing 750,000 and massacring the native people. US President Harry S Truman was one of the first to recognise the colonial endeavour and its provisional government as the new state of Israel. The US has broadly supported Israel since, sending military aid that now stands at $3.8bn per year.
Israel has occupied the remaning Palestinian territory – the West Bank and Gaza since 1967. And it has been expanding settlements in Palestinian territory even further, killing over 500 Palestinians in the West Bank in 2023.
Where is our shared humanity in this chamber? There is so much anti-Palestinian racism in this chamber that my colleagues don’t even want to acknowledge that Palestinians exist at all. Not when they’re alive and now not even when they’re dead. It’s absolutely disgusting. This is genocide denial.
Propagandising the figures for Israel
Since 7 October, Israel has killed 38,271 Palestinian people including over 15,000 children. But now the US House of Representatives wants to officially hide the stats. The mainstream media has long been putting doubt on the figures through characterising the Gaza Health Ministry as ‘Hamas run’.
Take the BBC. During an escalation of the violence in 2014, the BBC simply referred to the ministry as the “health ministry in Gaza” or the “Palestinian health ministry”. But now the Palestinian death toll figures have skyrocketed, it’s difficult to propagandise them away. So the BBC now constantlycalls the health ministry ‘Hamas run’.
Joe Biden himself also cast doubt on the figures, saying in October that he has “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using”.
In response to the amendment, Tlaib brought a list of the names of the Palestinians Israel has killed:
I will submit for the inclusion into the congressional record the list of the Palestinians killed… the list is too long that I can’t even submit it because of the text limit. That’s how many have been killed.
Mohammed Khader, policy manager for the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, told the Intercept:
By preventing any recognition of the number of Palestinians killed since October, this amendment is a clear example of genocide denial and is no different from what was done towards victims of genocides in Rwanda and Armenia
One doesn’t need high expectations of humanity to expect a US (and UK) bipartisan-backed genocide not to fly in 2024. We must oppose it:
It’s disgusting that my colleagues would support legislation to prohibit U.S. officials from even citing the Palestinian death toll.
They want to erase the Palestinians who are living, and now they are trying to erase the Palestinians who are dead. This is genocide denial. pic.twitter.com/ZY3x0BIlQ0
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) June 27, 2024
When you’re in Gaza and see the destruction firsthand, the clearest conclusion is that Israel’s stated goals are an epic lie, on a par with “a people without a land for a land without a people,” packaged and sold to the world.
The Israelis are not targeting Hamas, nor are they interested in returning their captives, who pose tremendous liability upon their release, as they often have good things to say about their captors.
Math is useful to prove what I’m saying
So here are some numbers to start.
Destroyed buildings
• As of April 2024, approximately 360,000 buildings have been destroyed, of which are 405 schools and universities, 700 hospitals and health facilities, 290 mosques and three churches. Given the estimation by the United Nations monitoring group OCHA that 12 buildings are destroyed every hour in Gaza, the adjusted number to account for May and June is 377,280 buildings.
Death and injuries from direct fire
• The reported number of martyrs on Wednesday this week was 37,718. It’s important to note that this number only includes martyrs who have been identified by name and civil ID number through the beleaguered health ministry in Gaza. Given the breakdown of reporting systems due to heavy destruction of infrastructure and personnel, this number, even with its limited parameters, is a gross underestimation. Based on more accurate figures of approximately 370 people killed daily, multiplied by 264 days of genocide, the actual number is closer to 97,680 martyred. (Per OCHA estimate of 15 martyrs per hour: Over the course of 264 days, which amounts to 6,336 hours, this number would roughly be 95,040).
• The adjusted estimate of martyrs is 260 percent more than the stagnant reported number. It is reasonable to adjust the number of injured (currently 86,377) by the same percentage, bringing that value to 224,580. (Per OCHA estimate of 35 injured per hour, this number comes to 221,760).
Death from lack of medications and chronic conditions
• Importantly, the number above does not include the thousands of unidentified martyrs, some of whom were uncovered from mass graves; those who arrived headless or in impossible pieces; those who were buried by their loved ones without going through the hospital system; those who have died of starvation; those who have died from lack of access to critical medications; those who have died from infections or communicable diseases.
• Taking into account 1,100 dialysis patients, 2,000 cancer patients and 341,000 individuals who depend on medication to manage chronic illnesses (45,000 cardiovascular disease, 71,000 diabetes, 225,000 hypertension), the extreme shortage of life-saving medication has and will continue to lead to deaths from Israel’s withholding of supplies. If a very conservative estimate of 5 percent of these patients die as a result (if they have not already), that’s an additional 17,050 people.
• However, a more accurate all-cause mortality rate for unmanaged diabetes is 13.6 percent (putting mortality at 9,869 people); 37 percent for uncontrolled hypertension (translating to 83,250 people); untreated dialysis and cancer patients will have a high mortality rate. A conservative estimate for this group is 30 percent or 930 patients.
• Taken together, this is 94,049 people (I didn’t consider cardiovascular disease alone, since patients tend to have co-morbidities and there would be natural overlap in these numbers).
Dead or dying from starvation
• According to a recent UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, approximately 495,000 Palestinians in Gaza are facing “catastrophic” hunger, which means they suffer extreme lack of food leading to acute malnutrition in young children, imminent risk of starvation and death. If we make a conservative 5 percent estimate of death from starvation among this population, that’s 24,750 people dead or dying from starvation.
• Data-driven mortality for acute malnutrition is approximately 20 percent. However, the current classification has not yet reached full-blown famine levels, making the current estimate reasonable.
Missing, presumed dead or kidnapped
• Approximately 21,000 children are missing and unaccounted for. Some are trapped under the rubble, some have been kidnapped by Israeli soldiers, while others are simply lost in the chaos. Given the relative equal ratio of adults to children in Gaza, it is safe to assume the same number of adults are likewise unaccounted for, doubling this number to 42,000 people missing overall.
Death from disease
• Due to the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure, coupled with restrictions on aid entering Gaza, Israel’s assault has led to the spread of communicable and water-borne diseases such as acute jaundice (due mostly to hepatitis A), acute diarrhea (with bloody stool), scabies and lice, skin rashes, smallpox and acute respiratory infections, which totaled 1,440,805 cases as of 10 June. If only 1 percent of these patients succumb to these serious conditions, that’s 14,408 people likewise killed indirectly by Israel’s bombing and siege of Gaza.
• Mortality for acute jaundice or hepatitis A is low (2.5 percent in adults and less than 1 percent in children; thus a 1 percent mortality estimate is appropriate for this category, or 817 people); mortality for diarrhea ranges from 4.27 percent to 12 percent (20,722-58,238 people); smallpox mortality is 1-30 percent, depending on strain (854-2,561 people); mortality rates for acute respiratory disease range from 27 percent to 45 percent depending on severity (or 233,592-389,320 people). Taken together, adjusted for scientific data, the range for this category of martyrs is 255,985-450,936 people.
Estimate summaries
Based on these estimates, both conservative and data-driven, respectively, the actual figures are likely as follows:
•377,280 buildings destroyed completely or partially
•95,040-97,680 martyred
•221,760 injured
•24,750 dead or dying from starvation
•42,000 missing (presumed dead, kidnapped by Israel’s occupying forces or possibly trafficked).
The following ranges represent conservative estimate or lower range of data-driven population estimates:
•17,050-94,049 with chronic illnesses dead from lack of medication
•14,408-255,985 dead from epidemics resulting from Israel’s assault
This means the actual number of dead is closer to 194,768-511,824 people, with 221,760 injured. And counting.
This does not include the thousands who have been kidnapped and are being tortured in Israel’s gulags, at least three dozen of whom have been tortured to death or died from harsh conditions.
Some lives matter
The estimates here are reasonable but on-the-ground studies must be conducted immediately. International institutions must urgently assess the actual all-cause mortality resulting directly and indirectly from Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Thus far, of the 240 Israeli captives in Gaza, Israel has allegedly killed 50 of their own, both directly (shooting them) and indirectly (bombing the buildings they are in) and secured the release of 112 captives, 105 through negotiated agreements with Hamas, and seven via “rescue” missions.
The most recent direct “rescue” mission resulted in the release of four captives in Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza. A total of 274 Palestinians and several Israeli captives were killed in the same operation.
At least one US lawmaker believes sacrificing hundreds of Palestinians for four Israelis is worth it, because, it seems, only some lives matter.
I’ll leave it to readers to do the math to see the level of death and destruction inflicted on Gaza per captive or per Hamas fighter.
There can be only one of two conclusions. Either the Israeli military is the most incompetent force to ever walk this planet – and has no reliable intelligence gathering capability – or Israel is a sadistic nation intent on genocide of the indigenous population, much as all settler colonial projects have been throughout history.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s exchange on foreign policy in Thursday’s presidential debate revealed that “the two candidates are extreme militarists, and one of them, Donald Trump, is a proponent and expresser of fascistic politics,” says activist Norman Solomon. In the brief section on Gaza, Biden boasted of his support for Israel as it pummels the Gaza Strip, while Trump criticized Biden, saying Israel should be allowed to “finish the job,” and said Biden is “like a Palestinian.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Norway’s largest private pension fund has divested from Texas-based company Caterpillar, citing concerns about Israel’s use of Caterpillar bulldozers to commit war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. The group, KLP, sold shares and bonds worth $69 million this month, Bloomberg reports, as the company has moved to divest from companies that support the development of illegal Israeli settlements on…
The House overwhelmingly voted to bar the State Department from citing figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, including the death toll from Israel’s genocide, on Thursday in a move that Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) has criticized as an attempt by U.S. officials to hide the extent of the atrocities in Gaza perpetrated by Israel with U.S. support. The legislation passed 269 to 144…
New reporting finds that the U.S. has sent $6.5 billion in military assistance to Israel since October — an enormous, previously undisclosed sum underscoring how the U.S. is nearly single handedly allowing Israel to carry out its ongoing extermination campaign against Palestinians in Gaza. According to an anonymous senior Biden administration official, who spoke to The Washington Post, nearly $3…
Someone, whose cousin was friendly with White House (WH) correspondent, Helen Thomas, related to me the anguish that the dean of WH correspondents suffered after being accused of anti-Semitism. Helen was born in Lebanon and consistently favored the Palestinian cause. Having been the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club, the pro-Israel contingent found it difficult to silence her. When she was at the advanced age of 90, they leaped to the jugular. In an impromptu question concerning Israel, her reply that “Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go home to Poland, Germany, America, and everywhere else,” provoked the usual spurious charge of anti-Semitism against the American idol. Harassed and bothered, Helen Thomas quit her post with Hearst newspapers and died two years later.
Helen Thomas was decades ahead of her time. Today, her comment is prescient and is the best advice for the Jewish community that needs to shed the conditioned attachment to Zionism and the cruelty it has visited upon the peoples of the Middle East. Through clever manipulation of minds, the Zionists convinced Jews and many non-Jews that their victory in the 1967 six-day war established a nation of invincible and superior people. Jews, and only Jews, are welcome to join the unique assembly. After receiving a driver’s license, each new Israeli receives another license, a license to steal, kill, and plunder ─ whatever property a Palestinian owns is rightfully Israeli. Jews should recognize that their life in Israel depends upon the deaths of Palestinians. These Jews can find life without initiating deaths. These Jews should get out of Israel.
Part 1 of this two-part article delineated the reason Jews allied with a militarist, nationalist, xenophobic, racist, and apartheid nation ─ conditioning. The principle elements of the conditioning, repeatedly drilled into every Jewish person — Jews are a nation, they have a shared ancient history that claims biblical lands, they are subjected to harassment by an anti-Semitic world, and they are only safe in their own nation —were shown to be fabricated, hysterical, and not historical. No deep intellectual awareness is needed to prove the fallacies and historical nonsense perpetrated by the Zionists. Only those who are disoriented or gain something from subscribing to the distortions adhere to the Zionist philosophy. But many do, and not only Jews and the captured and raptured evangelists; government officials and every day streaming TV watchers eagerly swoon at the mention of Israel, as if their lives depended upon Israel’s success.
In dealing with Israel’s brutal invasion of Gaza, Joseph Biden, president of the United States of America (US), behaves as if the US is a partner in the invasion, coordinating its activities with those of Israel and obligingly supplying Israel with the necessities for accomplishing the horrifying task. Why is the US involved in Israel’s genocidal tactics? Of what benefit to the US people is aiding Israel in its destructive actions? Why did Joe Biden, the US president, read from script, and say that the October 7, 2023 attack “was the worst atrocity committed against the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust?”
The attack was only against Israelis, those who Hamas accuses of oppressing the Palestinians. It did not differentiate between Jews and others; Bedouins, Arabs, and many foreign workers were killed. Hearing Biden’s words showed the conditioned manner in which even the president of one of the world’s most significant nations follows the Zionist supremacist position, ignoring the deaths of others than Jews, making believe that this is one of continuous atrocities against Jews, and relating it to the Holocaust ─ when you can, mention the World War II Holocaust.
Texas Senator, Ted Cruz, is another Israel admirer, who goes ballistic, shouting and screaming at anyone who offends his beloved Israel. Why does a Texan, immersed in border politics, in immigration, and relations with the Mexican community get overly excited with a foreign nation that has no attachment to his duties for his constituents? Why do Americans care about Israel more than Armenia?
Does the Mossad have derogatory information on US representatives that sways congressional commitments to the American people and has them favor Israel? Could be. If so, then another good reason for Israeli Jews to leave the Levant and make Israel a democratic nation like other democratic nations. A nation built on White nationalism is not acceptable anywhere. Why is it acceptable in Israel?
Look at in another way. Many nations have committed atrocities against people in their midst but no citizens of these nations have seen the atrocities up close. Great Britain, in its days of glorious imperialism, ravaged the world, but the British, on their isolated island, did not observe the deadly occurrences. The Germans had their abhorrent ways but not at home, during a war that fogged the killings, and not yet in the era of the ubiquitous internet. Americans are aware of misbehavior of their armed forces, but the happenings are so far away they cannot emotionally connect with the oppressed. No Israeli is more than 20 miles from the repression, whether in Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza. They see it day after day after day. Maybe, they become inured to the oppression or just accept it as someone else’s problem. In either case, humanity has been lost, and when the environment degrades humanity and the environment cannot be changed, it’s time to leave the environment and regain humanity.
The inhumanity expressed by Israelis, who adore victimhood and challenging inhumane activities by others, is not a one-time thing of a small collection of the society, it is a continuous operation by almost every functioning and living person in the Israel community. I knew a Jewish refugee who had a home he left in a town in the Czech Republic, east of Brno. I visited the town and saw the home standing vacant at the corner of the Main Square, still empty and, at that time, legally owned by the heirs who were involved in litigation with the authorities concerning unpaid taxes. During the 1948-1949 war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from their homes and sought safety in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank. Some walked back after one week to find new locks on the doors and Iraqi and other Jews occupying their homes. Nobody let them in; none of the recent arrivals returned a stolen home to the legal towner. Two of thousands of heartbreaking stories.
Twenty years since I had seen Northern Galilee, I was finally given a permit by the Israeli military authorities to visit. I decided to take two of my daughters with me. It took less than three hours to reach Safed, renamed Tsvat by Israel after 1948. The van stopped in front of the white stone home that held childhood memories. I proceeded to the familiar metal door, where I knocked. A large eastern European woman opened the door. We argued. I returned to the van, my hardened face wet with tears. “She wouldn’t let me in! She still has the same curtains I made with my mother.”
We proceeded in silence, as I wept discretely, to lunch at a hotel on Lake Tiberias, where my youngest child grew hyper. Instead of imposing my usual military-style discipline on the child, I encouraged her “splatter water,” “make more noise” – a shock to the rest of the family. The Israeli waiter hurriedly came to the table demanding, in Hebrew, they stop the raucous behavior. It was then that my defiance exploded into cursing the waiter in Arabic. “We can do whatever we please! This is my father’s hotel!” Until that moment, my children had been sheltered from knowing anything about my dear loss. Rasmiya Barghout
We finally settled in Ramle, in a big stone house that had belonged to an Arab family…In the back of the house was a lemon tree, which almost collapsed each year under its fruit… One morning, right after the Six-Day War, an Arab man turned up at the front door. He said: ‘My name is Bashir el-Kheiri. This house belonged to my family.’
One day – I shall never forget it – Bashir’s brother came to Ramle with his father. The old man was blind. After entering the gate, he caressed the rugged stones of the house. Then he asked if the lemon tree was still there. He was led to the backyard. When he put his hands on the trunk of the tree he had planted, he did not utter a word. Tears rolled down his cheeks. My father then gave him a lemon. He was clutching it in his hands when he left. Bashir’s mother told me, years later, that when her husband couldn’t sleep, he used to pace up and down their apartment holding in his hand an old, shriveled lemon.
— Dalia Landau, The Lemon Tree
A controlled media daily demonstrates the twists and callous insensitivity and inattention to the tragedies and rights of others and gives aggravated consideration to tragedies inflicted upon Jews.
Grayson Beare, son of Julian Beare, chairperson of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation, stabbed Halima Hoosen-Preston, her husband Shaun Preston, and her son in their Durban, South African home. The mother died and the others are fighting for their lives. Grayson Beare has been charged with murder and attempted murder.
The Mail & Guardian, a South African weekly newspaper and website, headlined the attack as “Estranged son of SA Holocaust and Genocide Foundation chairperson in court for alleged Islamophobic murder.”
…the assault allegedly occurred after an altercation Beare had with Hoosen-Preston during which she laughed upon hearing that his cousins had been killed in Israel. He said this in a video that went viral on social media, in which he identified himself as a former Zionist who has rejected the Jewish religion. The Beare family has distanced itself from Grayson, who has previously been treated for psychological problems and substance abuse, saying they stand with Hoosen-Preston’s family.
I cannot find any coverage of this horrendous incident of Islamophobia in the American media, which usually reports significant happenings in South Africa. If anyone knows of a report, please let me know. Another bother — what is the purpose of these Holocaust and Genocide Foundations and Museums (There are three in South Africa.) if they have not prevented genocide, have the parties in the foundations attached to those committing genocide, have not rallied the world against other genocides, and have the son of the Holocaust and Genocide Foundations chairperson, who has been raised in the Holocaust and Genocide Foundation environment, apparently not learning about genocide, and involved in a violent racial act?
A shocking rape of a young girl in Paris, France, and the use of the victim’s tragedy to highlight an alleged and unproven anti-Semitic act shows the discrepancy in American media reporting. The Washington Post headline read: “Reported rape of Jewish girl linked to rising antisemitism in France.”
The reported rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a suburb of Paris has brought protesters into the streets and drawn condemnations from top politicians, who have linked the episode to rampant antisemitism. French authorities indicted two 13-year-old boys on charges of aggravated rape, making religious insults and death threats, and recording or sharing images of a sexual nature, among other crimes, prosecutors said in a Wednesday statement. A third boy, age 12, was charged with being an assisting witness to a rape, as well for making religious insults and death threats. According to the media, the girl’s ex-boyfriend was angry that the victim had not told him she was Jewish.
This gruesome act in a foreign nation received front-page attention from most American media while no American media reported the South African murder. The latter murder was due to hatred of Muslims while the former violation has a loose and unverified attachment to hatred of Jews.
No charge of anti-Semitism has been made by the victim or her family, and are only being made by the media, using a prosecutor statement of “religious insults” by juveniles as defining an anti-Semitic act. The Washington Post report completely ignores a description of the victim and her mental and physical state, identifying her only as a “Jewish girl,” and concentrates on the perpetration of an unproven and subordinate anti-Semitism. The perverted use of this vicious attack, which ignores the damage to the young girl and serves the anti-Semitic industry, whose purpose is to gain sympathy for the Zionist Jews, is an obscenity, as low as a human being can become.
As long as Israeli Jews control Palestinian life, there will be no meaningful life for anyone in the Middle East. They should either relinquish control or leave. Because the Israeli Jews cannot find existence without controlling the Palestinians, they must leave. What point is there in having endless strife that punishes everyone when all can live in peace and harmony by simply doing what is correct ─ Israeli Jews allowing Palestinians to live in peace and harmony by leaving Israel and finding peace and harmony with millions of other Jews in the Western world? With this remark, we can discern the reason for the contrived and false charges of anti-Semitism, which are mainly anti-Zionist demonstrations. The Zionists want everyone to believe that the Western world is a conspiracy of anti-Semites. They proclaim that only Israel, where Jews from one ethnicity despise Jews from other ethnicities, where all Jews are threatened daily, and where Jewish behavior manufactures antipathy toward Jews is the safest place for Jews to live.
Dual citizenship is a major stumbling block for Jews to permanently leave Israel. By allowing dual citizenship in Western nations, Israeli Jews maintain Israel citizenship and live in foreign nations. Through a network of contacts, Israelis gain employment and enjoy the more highly developed and interesting social and cultural life Europe and America. They reside in the West and have first allegiance to Israel, many serving in the Israel armed forces, few, if any, in their primary country. Their feet and body are in the West, their mind is in Israel. Although I have no documented proof, I suspect that many serve Israel as foreign agents.
Contemporary statistics on dual US/Israeli citizenship are not readily apparent. Some clues:
From 2009 to 2023 the United States’ population grew from 308.5M to 340M or 10.2%. Jewish population grew from 6.5M to 7.5M or 15.3%. The 50 percent faster growth rate of the Jewish population indicates an influx of Jews into the American mainland from the only ports these immigrants could have departed, those in Israel.
As long as these Israelis benefit from retaining their Israeli citizenship — vote in Israeli elections, gain protection from foreign legal action by returning to Israel, and add to Israeli population statistics, they will retain the Israel passport and Israel citizenship. Denying dual citizenship and penalizing those who surreptitiously practice dual citizenship (Israel will still allow the dual citizenship) is a top priority for inviting Israeli Jews to permanently leave Israel.
Much is written about the Middle East crisis, its past, its present, its future. The falsifications, obfuscations, miscalculations, misinterpretations, and calculations are difficult to answer and the reality difficult to present. Two renditions give a clue to the verisimilitude.
The Haram al-Sharif is one of the world’s treasures, a sanctity of peace, serenity, and replenishment, where people are able to wander free and enjoy splendid views of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. From observation, the Islamic Waqif has maintained the site in the tradition and atmosphere for which it was intended. Any changes in control, administration, operation, and present arrangements would be a catastrophe for Jerusalem and for all peoples of the world. Protecting the Haram al-Sharif against arbitrary intrusions should be high on the agenda of the world’s governments.
The Zionist portray themselves as turning a destitute and neglected area into a thriving and productive region. Survey the differences in countries between the year 1900 and year 2024 and you find almost all the world has changed in the same manner. No miracle by Zionism. Go to Chile and other places where Palestinians have settled and see what Palestinians have done and how they have achieved the highest education in the world. The Zionists have turned a peaceful area into a battleground. Protecting Palestine against the arbitrary intrusions by the Zionists should be high on the agenda of the world’s governments.
“For us, it’s a ‘never again’ war,” said Avner Golov, the vice president of research and alliances at the Tel Aviv-based think tank MIND Israel. “My generation now faces a question that I never thought I [would] face, and this is whether a Jewish state can exist in the hostile Middle East,” he added. “We need to make sure the answer is yes.”
After 75 years of establishment of the Zionist state, we still hear “war, war, war,” and never learn why it is necessary to have a Jewish state in the Middle East. Oh, yes, there are people in the Western nations who do not like Jews (the wealthiest community), Catholics (plenty), Asians, Mormons, Evangelists (plenty), Hispanics, Muslims (plenty), and almost everyone who walks.
So, we have yesterday repeated today and ready to repeat tomorrow, Israel is ready for ‘all-out war’ in Lebanon. The Israeli military says its Northern Command has approved operational plans for war with Lebanon.
Cops arrested four Palestine Action activists after they entered, occupied, and dismantled a key supplier of Elbit’s factory – and therefore, Israel’s war machine – on Thursday 27 June. However, the response from the cops was nothing short of militarised – and utterly over the top.
Palestine Action: mashing up the Israeli war machine
Activists from Palestine Action occupied ‘GRiD Defence Systems’, military computer and processor supplier for Israel’s war machine:
After breaking into the company premises on Holtspur Lane, High Wycombe, activists barricaded themselves inside, destroyed military hardware and unfurled banners calling out the little-known military electronics firm:
BREAKING: Actionists occupied Grid Defence Systems, military hardware suppliers for several arms companies including Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems.
From inside, parts for the zionist military supply chain have been destroyed. pic.twitter.com/xl4tOyb4QO
GRiD manufactures a range of military computers, processors, and similar electronic equipment, either for direct battlefield use or to be integrated into other systems. In this month’s raid on Elbit Systems’ ‘Instro Precision’ site in Sandwich, Kent, dozens of boxes of GRiD processors were trashed after being found inside. Their discovery confirmed what activists already knew about GRiD’s supplies to those arming Israel’s genocide.
That GRiD would do business with Instro Precision speaks volumes: Instro manufactures weapons sights, target acquisition, and electro-optics systems for the Israeli military, including the targeting systems for troop and vehicle ground operations in Gaza.
Their electro-optical equipment is an “important tool in the continuation of apartheid practices in Israel”. While GRiD brags that its products can bypass arms export regulations, by nature of using non-military-specific components, Instro has been granted over 50 export licenses for shipment of ‘ML5’ category arms (weapons sights and target acquisition systems) to Israel in just a five-year period.
On top of their dealings with Elbit and Instro, GRiD boasts that its clientele includes Lockheed Martin, lead manufacturers of the F-35 fighter jets terrorising Gaza, Leonardo, producers of Israel’s Apache military helicopters, and Israel-supplying missile manufacturer MBDA.
Shut it down
A spokesperson for Palestine Action said:
GRiD is just one of the companies we know to be supplying Elbit. From intel gleaned from actions, to information passed on by whistleblowers – we know who you are, and any firm doing business which enables genocide should not be surprised when they too are shut down.
Palestine Action will continue until every ounce of British complicity in the occupation of Palestine is undone.
Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action
Activists from Palestine Action targeted two banks in Leeds city centre overnight on Thursday 27 June, over their shareholdings in Israel’s biggest weapons firm Elbit Systems.
Palestine Action: who knew fire extinguishers had another use?
Using repurposed fire extinguishers, Barclays Leeds branch and the Pinnacle building, the base of JP Morgan’s offices, were covered in red paint – a symbol of both banks’ complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
This was the scene at Barclays after Palestine Action had finished with it:
And this was JP Morgan:
Both Barclays and JP Morgan holds shares in Elbit Systems, a key supplier for the Israeli military.
During the Gaza genocide, the Israeli weapons maker has “ramped up production” in order to meet the growing demand for more munitions and arms to decimate Palestinian lives in Gaza. In addition to providing the majority of Israel’s military drone fleet and land-based equipment, the company use Gaza as a testing ground for their new weaponry which is often marketed as “battle-tested”.
Barclays and JP Morgan: up to their grubby necks in genocide
Barclays has been repeatedly targeted in recent weeks by Palestine Action, with over 20 branches visited by the direct action network so far. Many of those branches remain shut.
It has caused outrage from the genocide apologists who somehow see Palestine Action’s mashing up of buildings as worse than tens of thousands of dead people. However, the group’s actions are getting results.
Last month, JP Morgan slashed their stake in Elbit by 70% – likely due to Elbit’s decreasing share price and the increased campaign pressure. However, Palestine Action activists have made it clear that “actions will continue until they fully divest from Elbit Systems”.
In recent weeks, JP Morgan has been targeted in Italy, Portugal, Manchester, Edinburgh, and now Leeds.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
Whilst the Gaza genocide rages on, our actions against the Zionist war machine and those who fund it will continue to intensify. There is no more time to waste on begging institutions to end their complicity. Ultimately, banks reduce Palestinian lives to profit on their accounts. As finance is the only language they understand, we will ensure they understand the full cost of investing in Israel’s weapons trade.
For months, Biden administration officials have deflected questions on the Israeli killing of 6-year-old Hind Rajab and her family members, saying that they are leaving the investigation of the incident to Israeli officials. But a Palestinian aid group has now refuted the claim that the Israeli military is investigating the incident at all, new reporting reveals. On Monday…
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) lost his primary on Tuesday after Israel’s largest U.S. lobbying group made his race the most expensive House primary in history, pouring nearly $15 million to oust one of the few progressive critics of Israel in Congress as the country carries out a horrific genocidal assault in Gaza. As of Wednesday morning, Bowman had garnered 42 percent of the vote…
Corporate media is still covering for Israel deliberately starving Palestinian people in Gaza. Rather than using the active voice, headlines from media outlets present Palestinians as simply dying of a natural disaster.
Take the BBC, which runs the headline “‘High risk’ of famine in Gaza persists, new UN-backed report says”. The BBC then admits in the piece that “humanitarian access is restricted”, but still does not name Israel.
Or there’s Reuters that goes with “Gaza faces the threat of famine. How children starve”. Another example is the Washington Post, which straight up takes Israel’s line on the matter: “Israel blames U.N. for Gaza aid crisis amid fresh reports of starvation”.
Israel: systematically starving Palestinians in Gaza
From corporate media coverage, the Israeli tactic of starving an entire population is reframed as only a humanitarian catastrophe:
Every day we wake up to cover the news, doctors wake up trying to help the injured, but our bodies are slowly collapsing from starvation. The lack of food is impacting every single one of us – journalists, doctors, infants, children. We are all enduring a slow and agonizing…
Israeli officials initially admitted that it’s policy. On 7 October, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant announced an intensification of Israel’s occupation of Gaza:
We are putting a complete siege on Gaza … No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed
Later in October, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said:
As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands – the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.
The policy has continued. In December, Human Rights Watch reported that Israel is using starvation as a “weapon of war”:
Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.
Then, in March, it blocked the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from delivering food aid to North Gaza, which remains highest at risk of Israel’s famine. This ban on aid has continued. Oxfam has reported that people in North Gaza are surviving on an average of 245 calories per day – less than a can of beans.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society has long been active across Gaza. They say Israel let more than 200 aid trucks per day into Gaza in May. But that’s still less than half of the more than 500 necessary, leading to the risk of famine now.
About 96 percent of the population in the Gaza Strip (2.15M people) face high levels of acute food insecurity through September 2024.
While the whole territory is classified in Emergency (IPC Phase 4), over 495,000 people (22 percent of the population) are still facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 5).
Israel has also assassinated food aid workers trying to help, terrorising people who try to stop the starvation. World Central Kitchen aid workers are among the many organisations Israel has targeted.
Like other aid organisations, the workers shared their location with Israel for safety, only for the state to then use that information to kill them.
Israel’s starvation of Palestinian people in Gaza is one part of the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing. Oppressed people facing colonial expansion deserve our solidarity.
The images from Gaza are painful beyond measure. (Hadi DaoudAPA images)
I scroll through news and photos and videos daily.
I check Whatsapp first thing in the morning for messages from friends in Gaza and send off a few to ask how they’re doing.
They tolerate my stupid question. I’m not really asking, though, because I know they’re not okay.
I just want to make sure they’re alive.
To send them love. To tell them I’m thinking of them.
I wonder if it’s for them or for me. I love and miss them and wish I never left Gaza because now I can’t get back since Israel is controlling the Egyptian border.
I also check the resistance Telegram channels daily to see if they have posted new videos. Their epic bravery renews my optimism and sense of revolutionary determination.
Most of the scenes on my scroll are painful beyond measure. The livestreamed atrocities I consume by day are processed in my dreams by night.
Gaza doesn’t leave me.
I’m not alone. Nearly all of my friends say the same and I see random people on social media losing their minds over what they’re witnessing.
Most of them are ordinary citizens who’ve never been political. Their initiation into geopolitical order is genocide – headless, limbless, faceless Palestinian babies and children, with Israeli soldiers and civilians cheering it all on.
Day in and day out.
I watched a British soldier today scream at the world on social media, unable to contain his pain and disbelief at the unimaginable cruelty.
The reel went on for several minutes. The soldier’s face turned red and his veins bulged and his eyes misted.
How long?
Gaza is changing all of us.
How long will this go on?
No protest, no resignation, no complaint to the International Court of Justice, no pressure seems to curtail Israel’s insatiable bloodlust and criminal war machine.
Now the Israelis want to bomb Lebanon, threatening to turn Beirut into Gaza.
If Israel were a person, they would be locked up in a maximum security prison for the world’s worst criminals.
The creation of this settler colony was the biggest geopolitical blunder in modern history, threatening to drag the whole world into an inferno. Palestinians are already there, in the pits of Israel’s depravity, burning and dying and screaming for help.
On my last trip to Gaza, I took over 60 pounds of food for just one family.
A friend’s mother knew a woman who knew another woman who had three kids with phenylketonuria (PKU), a hereditary condition that makes children unable to metabolize phenylalanine, an amino acid found in most foods. Without a special diet low in phenylalanine, PKU will lead to mental disabilities, seizure disorders and other neurological conditions.
Israel’s blockade of food to the strip made it impossible for the mother to find the food they needed, and giving her children regular bread was akin to slowly poisoning them. My friends in Egypt weren’t able to locate the special pasta and flour so I ordered it from a company in the US and hauled it in an overweight suitcase across the world, then across the border to Gaza.
There, I delivered the goods through a friend traveling to Nuseirat, the area in central Gaza where the family was at the time. Later that day, the mother sent photos and videos of her children eating the pasta, smiling, grateful and gleeful.
She had also baked them cookies from the special dough.
I think about them often, for the supply I brought has surely run out by now.
I wonder, too, if they survived the Nuseirat massacre on 8 June. Or were they among the 270 lives sacrificed to extract four Israeli captives?
I wonder how many other people with PKU have been forced daily to choose between hunger or neurological poison.
I think of little Zeina, a young friend I made.
I fell in love with her and her family – one brother and loving parents. All of them kind and smart and close knit.
But when it was time for me to leave, Zeina meekly took me aside when no one would notice. She was trembling slightly.
“Can I go with you when you leave?” she pleaded.
I don’t believe in lying to children, though the truth was hard to utter. The best I could do was promise to come back and assure her that this horror would end.
Eventually, it will end.
I don’t know how long she had waited for the right opportunity to take me aside, or if she had practiced how she would ask me. I think she believed there was a chance and I know she felt she was betraying her family because she later begged me not to tell her mom.
There are hundreds of thousands of children like Zeina, traumatized in ways none of us can truly comprehend. Their brains are rewiring and their childhood no longer resembles childhood.
Only the willfully ignorant and morally vacuous, which may well be one in the same, are untouched by this holocaust in real time.
The rest of us are awake and enraged and mobilizing.
Gaza has altered our collective DNA. We are united in our love and pain and resolve to resist and escalate until Palestine is liberated and these genocidal Zionists are held to account in the same manner Nazis were.
On Wednesday 26 June, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) published the first set of responses from political candidates to its “Vote Palestine 2024” initiative for the UK general election. So far, the results have thrown up some interesting results – including, apparently, Nigel Farage being afraid of being “branded an antisemite” if he condemns Israel.
PSC: ‘Vote Palestine’ on 4 July
PSC drafted six questions for all parliamentary candidates that constituents can send electronically to their local prospective candidates, as a set of concrete actions to commit to if elected.
They cover an immediate ceasefire, restoration of funding to UNRWA, an arms embargo, support for the ICJ and ICC to uphold international humanitarian law, suspending trade agreements with Israel, and protecting the right to protest, boycott, and divest from companies that are complicit in violations of international law.
Thousands of people have written to their local candidates to demand responses to these points and hundreds of them have responded. Their answers are published on the PSC website and are searchable by postcode. You can search here.
Farage: well, well, well…
Some of the responses were interesting. For example, in one constituency in South London – Penge and Beckenham – there were only the four main parties plus Reform standing. Of these, its candidate and the Green Party’s one were the only ones to respond.
The Reform candidate Edward Apostolides said:
I will do everything within my power, if I am elected as a MP, to bring Israel to account. I will table emergency debates and champion private member bills to that end. I know I enjoy the full support of our party leader, Nigel Farage, who privately deplores the actions of the current Israeli government, but dare not publicly denounce it for fear of being branded an antisemite.
Meanwhile, the Green Party candidate Ruth Fabricant said:
If elected I would call for an immediate ceasefire and instead a durable political solution that ensures security and equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians… Investigation of war crimes and an end to all UK arms exports to and military cooperation with Israel, which make the British government complicit in these war crimes.
Politicians cannot ignore Palestine
This General Election has been called at a moment when Palestinians are confronting the darkest moment in their struggle for liberation.
Over 37,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, including approximately 16,000 children, in what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has accepted as a plausible case of genocide.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister alongside Hamas leaders, for crimes against humanity, with the charges against Israeli leaders including using starvation as a weapon of war.
This current genocide is built on the foundations of decades of violations of Palestinian rights by Israel in which successive British governments have been complicit. These realities have made the issue of justice for Palestinians a core electoral issue for constituents across Britain.
Ben Jamal, PSC director, said:
In this election we won’t let politicians carry on as if Palestinian lives don’t matter. Our support for Palestinian rights is based on a progressive set of values that we want to help shape voters’ choices in the polling booth. We need to see politicians elected who embrace those values and will stand up for them in Parliament.
By sending our demands to candidates and making clear to them that their responses will affect how people vote, we are taking the issue of justice for the Palestinian people right to the heart of this general election.
A claim emerged in social media posts that U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller stated at a June 6 press conference that Israel “has a right” to target civilians, citing a short clip as evidence.
But the claim is misleading. Miller did mention such words, but it was later corrected by the State Department. The full context of the response makes it clear that Miller was referring to Hamas fighters when he mentioned civilians.
The claim was shared on the Weibo account of the Russian state-owned video news agency Ruptly on June 7.
“#US State Department said Israel has a right to attack civilians#,” the claim reads in part.
The post was shared alongside a 21-second clip that shows what appears to be Miller at a press briefing.
In the video, Miller can be heard saying: “Israel has a right to try and target those civilians but they also have the obligation to minimize civilian harm and take every step possible to minimize civilian harm.”
Several Weibo accounts reposted claims that a State Department spokesperson said Israel had the right to target civilians. (Screenshot/Weibo)
But the claim is misleading.
A keyword search found a full transcript of Miller’s statement published on the website of the State Department on June 6.
“Israel has a right to try and target those civilians[1] but they also have the obligation to minimize civilian harm and take every step possible to minimize civilian harm,” the transcript reads in part.
Miller’s statement was made as part of a longer response to a question about a recent Israeli strike against a school purportedly housing Hamas fighters in Gaza that reportedly resulted in the deaths of 14 children.
A review of the full context of the response shows that Miller meant to refer to Hamas fighters when he said “target those civilians”.
The State Department noted in an annotation, indicated by the number 1 in the quote above, that Miller’s phrase “target those civilians” was specifically referring to “Hamas fighters”.
The State Department annotated the transcript of its June 6 press conference to indicate that Miller was referring to Hamas militant fighters and not civilians. (Screenshot/U.S. Department State Department website)
A State Department spokesperson told AFCL: “Our State Department spokesperson clearly meant to say “Hamas”, and it was officially noted in the briefing transcript.”
Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke and Taejun Kang.
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Zhuang Jing for Asia Fact Check Lab.
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Jen Perelman challenged incumbent Debbie Wasserman Schultz once before for Florida’s 25th congressional seat in the 2022 Democratic primary. Now, Perelman is back, and this time her staunch anti-Zionism is front and center in her campaign to unseat Wasserman Schultz, one of the most dedicated Zionists in Congress. Perelman sits down with The Marc Steiner Show for a tell-all interview, covering everything from her personal journey out of Zionism, to her plans to be a loud and proud “outlier” in Congress if elected.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread 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. It’s great to have you all with us. Two years ago in the Democratic primary, Jen Perelman ran for Congress against sitting Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Florida’s 25th congressional district. She got 30% of the vote running as a progressive on domestic issues like healthcare for all, ending corporate welfare, environmental justice, and took on the power of APAC. She ran on her experience as a former Zionist, as someone who loved and spent time in Israel, but then the oppressive nature of the occupation got to her as to many other people, and she’s running again in a very different atmosphere. After October the seventh, after that attack by Hamas, 251 people taken hostage and then the war by Israel on Gaza where over 30,000 have been killed, over 80,000 wounded, tens of thousands missing, 80% of Gaza destroyed, and a growing percentage of the Jewish world opposing this war and others as well, obviously. So once again, we talked with Jen Perelman, an attorney, an activist running for Congress in Florida’s 25th district. And welcome Jen. Good to have you here.
Jen Perelman:
Thank you so much for having me on. It’s good to talk to you again.
Marc Steiner:
So this campaign, first of all, I do a series here on Rise of the Right, and I’m doing a series here that we’re in called, Not in Our Name.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
And this is like a conjunction of the two to me in a way.
Jen Perelman:
Right.
Marc Steiner:
Because you’re running for Congress, literally in the belly of the beast.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah, I mean, it feels like that. Some days definitely worse than others, but it does. I mean, and it’s kind of interesting. Florida, we’re now considered a red state. I want people to understand that about us. We’re really not, we’re really a purple state that’s been hijacked by a bunch of red people in our state capitol, but in my district we’re blue and is this anomaly and it’s the bluest district in the state. And so we are definitely in an unusual district, and I am definitely up against one of the most corporate Congress people, established entrenched corrupt Congress people that there are. So it’s definitely an unusual environment for sure.
Marc Steiner:
So when you’re running this campaign, clearly a campaign that is against what Israel is doing in a district with a large Jewish population,-
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
With a very pro Zionist congresswoman who in some sense is popular with some people in the district.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
I’m just curious about taking that on. What is different about this campaign from the last campaign you ran and how is it different in terms of your tactics and where you see people coming from in your district?
Jen Perelman:
Okay. So there’s a lot of different variables there. First of all, when I ran the first time, even back in yeah, in 2020, I was still under the delusion that there could maybe be a two state solution. So I have even in the past few years gone further to the left on that. I don’t know that I’d call it, further correct, further to the correct on that.
Marc Steiner:
Got you. Got you. Got you.
Jen Perelman:
Right. So that’s even shifted, but our district lines literally have shifted in a way that did cut out a very significant portion of our Jewish population. That’s coincidence. That happened in 22. As a result of the census and redistricting, we naturally got redistricted and the portion of our district, I don’t know if people are familiar with South Florida where I am, but in Broward County, we still had, even though it was just a sliver of Dade County was still in our district, but it was the affluent heart of the district that went all down the coastline into Dade County. And now that is no longer there.
And so our demographics have changed. A very large majority of the Zionists that are in my district are registered Republicans and we have closed primaries, so they don’t even vote in my primary. And my district is a fairly dominant blue district. So it’s not as much of an issue as people think. And yeah, there’s definitely going to be people that go with her on that issue. There is no doubt going to be some Democrats, secular Jews even that are going to, that’s their issue is Israel and they’re going to go with her. But I am finding so much more solidarity in so many other communities right now that are very motivated and organized as a result of October 7th.
Marc Steiner:
So you think, before we get into some of the issues, I really want to talk to you about it, and your sojourn in this.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
So you think in this race at this point, you really, you have a real shot at winning this primary more than you did before?
Jen Perelman:
I do. I do for a lot of reasons, and that’s not to say that it’s still not an uphill battle.
Marc Steiner:
Right. Right.
Jen Perelman:
But I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it were possible. And everything that I do is with this clear intention of propelling my movement, this mission further and further regardless of me winning or losing that seat. So everything that I do is very mindful in my campaign of my bigger mission, and that goes well beyond what happens in this race. You see what I’m, so nothing is wasted here.
Marc Steiner:
So let’s talk a bit just for people listening to us now, your sojourn from a younger Jewish woman who went to Israel, spent time in Israel, came up in Zionist home as I did, and things began to shift. And you wrote about that I saw in Common Dreams.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
So talk a bit about that sojourn for people listening to us.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah, so when I was in Israel was, I was 16, it was in 1987 and I was there. So this was actually the summer before the first intifada. Now I realize that. At the time I had no idea about any of that but. So when I was there in 87, there were no different highways, there were no walls, there was none of that stuff existed. So there were no visible signs of an apartheid state. So there was nothing at that point in time. So when I left and came back here and years go by and I’m watching and it starts looking very differently. So now I’m somewhere early in the 2000s around, I want to say the second intifada, and I’m seeing this and I’m like, what is going on? This is not what this looks like. So I started digging into that.
At the same time, the anti BDS legislations were popping up around the country here. And then I started digging into, well, what is BDS? Why are we anti BDS? What is BDS? And so I went down that rabbit hole and realized, oh, so it’s a nonviolent Palestinian resistance movement born out of oppression, and somehow I’m supposed to be against that. And being against that means that you are violating my first amendment rights in this country to be able to boycott, divest, or sanction as I see fit. I mean, that was the transition.
And then since then, and that of course was, I want to say 2005 ish, maybe 2006, and then it just was downhill from there, and then it just went, like then I just started noticing the more and more influence of the lobby and the Israeli lobby in Congress, and it just started seeming more and more sinister. And then it just all, like it was almost like a house of cards. It just completely started unraveling. And now I’m just beyond. Now I’m so furious about it. Now I don’t even consider Israel a real place anymore.
Marc Steiner:
Wow.
Jen Perelman:
It’s like Disney World. That’s Disney World. It’s like a fake ethnicity based on stolen ethnicity from other people of a language that had to be resurrected to pretend you’re an ethnicity and it’s infuriating.
Marc Steiner:
That’s really interesting. So what do you think this takes us? I mean, when you are on the campaigns trail and you’re talking about this issue, and we’ll try to get some of the other things that you stand for as well, but when you get to this issue and you make a statement like that, I mean, what happens? What do people talk about?
Jen Perelman:
Well, okay, first of all, that statement is not something I’m going to say while having a discussion with Zionists because that gets you nowhere. That’s a statement I’m saying to you and people, I mean, I have no problem with people knowing that’s what I believe, but that’s not the proper, like but at the end of the day, there are two groups of people right now, and actually I’ll say three. Let’s say three.
Marc Steiner:
Okay.
Jen Perelman:
There’s people that have gotten it since the day one. Okay. There’s people that are possible to come around and have come around, maybe they’re not raised that Zionist, like there’s sort of more, and then there’s the people that are just never going to get it. They’re just never going to get it. And those people are what I call too far gones, and there’s no point in engaging. You know what I’m saying? Once I establish that this person is not even dealing with my same reality, meaning they do not acknowledge the Nakba, they do not acknowledge that Israel is an occupation and they don’t acknowledge that the Palestinians have a right of return. If you don’t acknowledge the existence and some other basic tenets of this, right, like if you don’t acknowledge that, then we’re not going to have any sort of productive discussion. So for the most part, people that are too far gone are not people that I bother engaging with on this topic.
Marc Steiner:
So how does that play out in terms of the race you’re running?
Jen Perelman:
Yeah. Well, down here, for the most, honestly, I have yet to really, and like I said, the majority of our rabid Zionists are Republicans. So those are not even people that when we knock on doors, we’re only knocking on doors of registered Democrats. Right. So they’re just not people that are really engaged in this race because it’s just such a blue district. So that is that, and then of the people that are just Debbie people and just support her, and that’s it, it’s basically the same people that are the two far gones in the Zionism category. So at some point you accept that you work with people that you can, and there’s a lot of people that that isn’t their primary issue. And even though they disagree with me on that issue, they would still vote for me. Those are people that are in that middle category, and that’s fine, but it is what it is.
There’s nothing I can do to change that situation. Right. I’m not going to say anything else other than what I’m saying about it. I’m not going to believe anything unless somebody brings me new, further previously unknown information. Right. So there’s nothing to do. It is what it is. So I try to be as diplomatic as possible with people when I know that it’s a sensitive subject, but at the end of the day, there’s just no tolerance for this kind of nonsense like Zionism or any other kinds of bigotry. At some point, it’s like there is just zero tolerance.
Marc Steiner:
So I’m curious what you think, two things here. The first one is this particular war happening right now in Gaza is devastating.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
And it has shifted a lot of people’s opinion. Even when I look at some polls around, especially in the Jewish community and younger Jews in particular, things are really shifting profoundly. And I wonder you think this, where it takes both Israel and Palestine in that struggle and where it takes America, what happens to us in this process this process because this has the potential to kind of explode on many levels,-
Jen Perelman:
Oh, yeah.
Marc Steiner:
Politically.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah. Well, geopolitically, this is potentially World War III disaster level nuclear problem. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. I’m saying that seriously, because all it takes is for Iran, and let me tell you something, and people need to understand this. It is by the grace of Iran that Israel still is there without being bombed. Okay. That is what I think. It is by the grace of Iran. So as soon as they stop dealing with nonsense and actually want to say, all right, to hell with it, we’re retaliating. Okay, that’s one problem because they can bomb Tel Aviv if they want to. So now we’re talking about what? Then we’ll have to have boots on the ground. The next thing you know Turkey will get involved with their land army and then forget it. This is an untenable unwinnable situation. This is not going to work, and the whole world sees it except for Israel, and that’s the problem.
So I am hopeful based on what you were just saying about the changing mindset among especially younger Jews in this country. But at the end of the day, this is one of those things where there will be a group of people, angry, bitter, disgruntled Zionists that will die at the end of their life, not having their way on this. That will happen. There will be people that will just not get their way on this. That’s how progress works. There were people that fought for segregation till they’re dying breath.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
Jen Perelman:
So there will be people that will basically die not getting their way or as we see the end of this other form of racist nationalism. So it’s the same thing, but I feel that in terms of geopolitically, the only way this is ending is with the United Nations peacekeepers on the ground, creating an actual United Palestine state from the river to the sea where everybody has equal rights. And how that happens militarily, how that happens in terms of diplomatically, I really don’t know, but I know that Israel cannot continue to exist as this. This is not a tenable situation.
Marc Steiner:
So let’s say that when we wake up on election day, primary day,-
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
And you win,-
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
How do you see what happens to you and this issue in Congress?
Jen Perelman:
I see that I am very much outcasted. I see that I am a pariah. I’m probably like the Thomas Massie of Democrats. I don’t know. I’m not going to, look, it’s like how effective, and I’ve said this all along. I’ve been saying this for years. When you’re on the outside politically from the center where I am, like when you’re, and I’ll say left because fine, left of center. Okay. So when you’re on the outside of what is the bell curve, you’re always going to sort of be pulling people in your direction. And it’s always sort of an uphill battle until the curve shifts a little bit. And so I don’t anticipate it being any different for me in a congressional position than I’m in here. But yeah, legislatively, no, I don’t think I would get elected and be able to give everybody single payer healthcare tomorrow. I don’t think that legislatively, that’s necessarily where the people that are on the outliers are ever the most effective.
I think where the outliers are most effective is using their platform to pull people to the outlier. And I guess at the end of the day, it’s just going to be chipping away at enough of that on the outside, merging with labor, trying to connect all the different coalitions that are fighting against the same oppressor. Because that’s what I feel like one of my biggest purposes is and I felt like with my podcast, is really combining different movements because if all of these movements showed up for each other, that’s our general strike. And I feel like we need to get the labor movement, the environmental movement, the abolition movement, all of these groups are fighting the same oppressor. And so I just feel like that’s one of the things I would be most effective at, is using my platform to continue to shift that Overton window and get more and more people in because it’s not going to happen by me.
Marc Steiner:
Follow up on that for a moment here before we come back to Israel, Palestine.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
I mean, because in this country right now, we’re facing a huge divide.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
And it’s a real struggle for the future of democracy in our own country and where we might go. And in all the years I’ve been a political activist and doing work in journalism as well as an organizer, the last time I saw this divide this intense and this dangerous is when I was a civil rights worker on the Eastern shore in the Mississippi, is the last time I felt this.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
So I’m curious, your analysis about what is happening in our country now, and as a potential congresswoman, where do you think we’re going and how we organize around this?
Jen Perelman:
Yeah. So what you’re talking about, this sort of growing feeling of discomfort and just malcontent, it’s very, very pervasive. I feel it all over the place. It’s not just divisive, it’s just general, just unhappiness.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah.
Jen Perelman:
But where I really feel like as frustrating as that is, it’s such a good sign. It’s such a good sign because it’s a sign that we feel, it’s a sign that we’re noticing. It’s a sign that people are waking up and not wanting to take it anymore. And it’s almost like you’re watching the death throes of capital in that. And that’s I feel like one of my jobs, is to steward people from that feeling into, okay, what do we do with this next? Where can we go with this? What can we do with this? Make sure that people are punching up and not kicking down. And really just try to allocate and combine as many people to get as much progress as we can.
But yeah, no, there’s so much anger right now and it’s very valid. I am so angry right now. I have never been this angry in my whole life as I am right now. And it’s all I can do to just constantly be remembering where to aim it and how to use that energy. And unfortunately, a lot of people sort of defer to their basis selves and are very easy to sway into kicking down and punching sideways and going after others. And that’s the problem, is that desperate times allows for people like a Trump. And again, he is by no means the end of democracy to me. The fact that those are the choices already indicates we’ve reached the end of democracy.
But I think that the fact that we get people like him is because of how unhappy and how desperate people are. And they see him, he’s a snake oil salesman, but they see him as some sort of the answer and he teaches them to kick down. And that is the opposite of what we need. But there’s nobody on let’s say, for lack of a better word, the left like a Bernie at that point offering a direction otherwise. There’s nobody. The Democrats aren’t exactly saying, well, you need to punch up because they are the up.
Marc Steiner:
So I mean, the things you’re talking about, this moment are things I wrestle with all the time as well.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
I mean, because we are, I think as a nation and as a world, when I look at what’s happening in the Middle East especially, but what’s happening in our own country is that we really are on a precipice and kind of building a movement and electing certain political leaders to address that is really, I mean, it’s really critical. I mean it’s, I think about what our kids are going to inherit and where we’re going. So I’m curious what kind of, before we come back and conclude with looking at Palestine, Israel, talk about this coalition you’re trying to build in your district, which is really a pretty diverse district.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah. Well, when I talk about building coalition, I’m talking in a global sense, like what I’ve been doing for the past five years and just interconnecting so many different groups and different actions and different causes and linking people and really trying for people to see the intersectionality of all of it. But locally, I’m just a very on the ground in my community person. I mean, I knocked doors all the time. I was knocking doors even when I wasn’t running because I was canvassing to get no, I was either canvassing for my friend who’s now the mayor for that position, and I was also canvassing for a period of time to get our women’s reproductive rights on our ballot. We were able to get that on our November ballot.
So I’ve stayed very politically active and just meeting people. But the thing about me, and this is definitely a distinction between me and someone like my incumbent, is that I really do appeal to a wide range of people. Even on my podcast, I have a lot of Republicans, libertarians, I even have anarchists. I have have a wide range of people and I think that that is what we need. We need somebody that can understand different people, what they need, communicate to them in an effective manner, and stop pitting those groups against each other. And that is something that I actually do really well. And it’s something I think that often frustrates some of my comrades on the left, is that I am able to get along with the right.
And what bothers people is that in order to truly do that, you have to do it without judgment, you have to do it without judgment. So if I’m in Congress and I’m working on something, and let’s say somebody like Thomas Massie who I have great respect for, and he and I disagree on a ton of things, right, without a doubt, I disagree with him on a ton of things, but it’s like going into any sort of engagement with somebody with a holier than thou judgmental attitude will produce nothing. It’ll produce exactly the mess that we’re in right now, which is complete tribalism where they’re fighting each other, but yet they both stand for the same corporations. It’s like you’re literally watching a bird fight each wing with itself, and we’re not getting anywhere.
And so I think that what we need to do is stop worrying about labels and tribalism and just try to work to, I mean, it sounds cliche, but it really isn’t hard to work with people if you put the labels aside. If we didn’t have parties, if I could wave a magic wand and overnight there were no parties and no one knew what anyone’s team or anybody, any of that, do you know how much stuff we could get done? It would be amazing.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah, I understand. If you look at any of our neighborhoods we live in and you’re a part of a community organization, that’s what exists.
Jen Perelman:
Yeah, exactly.
Marc Steiner:
So as we close out here, coming back to where we began,-
Jen Perelman:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
Where do you think what’s happening now, where does it take us and how do we get out of it?
Jen Perelman:
Well, unfortunately, the problem we have, and this is something that I find to be this sort of level of Western entitlement that we have in this country, and it’s at an all time high. And I say this because people have very much conflated feeling uncomfortable with feeling unsafe. And I have a huge problem with this. And not only that, it’s impacting our constitutional rights is what we’re seeing right now left. And so where we need to be in this country is we need to be at a place where we all can feel comfortable with the discomfort. It’s very hard to deal with it. I had to go through it. You had to go through it. I’m not saying it’s easy to kind of come to terms with some of our not so pleasant past actions and deal with that, but people’s comfort level, particularly white privileged Jewish people’s level of comfort is just not something that we need to be prioritizing right now. Okay.
And I think that that’s the problem. People being unhappy with antisemitism words, people being not happy with the idea of antisemitism and the discomfort of that does not take precedence over human beings being genocided in real time. Okay. And until we sort of grasp that and the people realize that they’re going to just have to sit with their discomfort, that is how long this will keep going on. It’s really up to them. I always say the level of violence or the level of uprising in this case is determined by the oppressor, not the oppressed. So it’s really up to them at what point they want to see supporting a genocidal apartheid state or not, how far they want to go down that rabbit hole before we end up being at the basic on the other side of the whole world with Israel and just us. I’d like to not see that. I’m proposing a better situation. I think we can have a better situation, but it’s not going to be with the military industrial complex and APAC running Congress. That I know.
Marc Steiner:
And that is absolutely true. That is absolutely true. Those kind of voices of reason, like you’re talking about, are really critical in all these discussions.
Jen Perelman:
Exactly. And that’s not what we’re having. How can we have reasonable discussion when all of the people that need to have the discussion are on the payroll of the companies that are profiting from the situation that needs to be discussed? It is the most ridiculous, it’s like a candid camera situation. I don’t understand how anybody could take any of these people seriously that are getting paid by companies like Raytheon, or Boeing, or Northrop Grumman or any of that. I don’t understand. How are we even taking these people seriously?
Marc Steiner:
So you take no corporate money?
Jen Perelman:
No. First of all, and that’s so funny. And recently someone said, “Well, do you agree not to take APAC money?” And I just started cracking up and I’m like, “First of all, I have been harping about APAC and calling them out as foreign agents for at least like four years now. I don’t think they’re offering me any.”
Marc Steiner:
No, I don’t think so. No.
Jen Perelman:
Right. And nor would any corporations. Although what’s interesting though is that I kind of feel like if there were some corporation that like the anti-corporate sentiment and was happy with what I was saying and they properly treated their employees well, I don’t know. I don’t know. I might consider taking a few bucks, but it would have to be like a Ben & Jerry situation. You know what I mean? We’d have to have a meeting of the minds. But no, they’re not offering me anything. Are you kidding? I’m like, I’m calling for dollars people every day and scraping for $50 donations.
Marc Steiner:
Well, good luck in the primary, and we’ll look forward to talking to you once this is done and,-
Jen Perelman:
Thank you.
Marc Steiner:
And you clearly, I can hear from our conversation, you have a lot of depth of ideas and you’ve got a lot of fight in your heart.
Jen Perelman:
I do. I’m so angry right now. I got to tell you, I almost feel like, yeah, it would’ve been better off for people had I won in 20. Yeah, I feel so angry right now. Like hell hath no fury. You know what I mean? Than a woman used in ethnic cleansing.
Marc Steiner:
Right. Right.
Jen Perelman:
And angry about it. But can I just tell people to go to the campaign website?
Marc Steiner:
Absolutely. Go ahead.
Jen Perelman:
Okay. So guys, check out the campaign website. It’s Jen2024.org. And please, and anybody can volunteer. We need text people, phone banking people. We need all sorts of people, and we need money because I’m fighting a corporate monolith. So please help us out if you can and follow us on social media. And I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on.
Marc Steiner:
And Jen Perelman, thank you for joining us, and we’ll be looking towards election day and see what happens and be putting all your contact information on our site for this story. So thank you so much.
Jen Perelman:
Absolutely. Thank you.
Marc Steiner:
Once again. Thank you Jen Perelman for joining us today. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running this program and our audio editor, Alina Nelah and the tireless Kayla Rivara 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 thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll write you right back. And once again, thank you Jen Perelman for being our guest. And so for the crew here, The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
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