Posts
THE ABSURD TIMES
Illustration: For those who use the term so ridiculously loosely, this is what a coup is like. The "Impeachment Hearings" and not a coup.
WHAT WE MISSED
BY
CZAR DONIC
We have seen a great deal of the so-called "Impeachment Hearings," it is easy to speculate that they are simply designed to force attention away from what we are doing around the world.
Yemen, Gaza, Korea, Libya, France, Hong Kong, etc.
The Trump approach has the effect of forcing network and media attention to a long process (long over due) while it also has the affect of forcing it away from what is going on in the rest of the world.
Right now, our Israel, his Israel, rather, has defied, not for the first time, basic tenets of international law. Israel has now declared all settlements as theirs and, of course, renamed the Golan Heights as Trump Heights! Can you imagine anything more ludicrous? Well, the neo-fascist approach manages to prolong the time of the Presidency, in both countries, to beyond the statute of limitations. One caveat, Netanyahu has been indicted, while Trump has appointed William BArr who hopes not to indict, ever.
In Bolivia, we have taken away the country. We do this with any country in our hemisphere that dares nationalize its own natural resources. This is why we keep attacking Cuba and Argentina (which remains under siege, but still in the people's control) but give Brazil now a pat on the back. In Syria, the only thing we defend is the oil as is the case in Iraq.
At any rate, in no particular order, here are some interviews that are designed to correct this self-centered attention to our own game with Trump:
In Colombia, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets Thursday in the largest national strike the country has seen in years. Labor unions, students, teachers, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian activists joined in peaceful marches across urban and rural Colombia as anger mounts against right-wing President Iván Duque and his cabinet. The protests were triggered by Duque's proposed labor reforms and cuts to the pension system, as well as a recent military airstrike against a camp of alleged dissident rebel drug traffickers, which killed eight children. Police responded to the movements with repressive tactics and tear gas in the cities of Bogotá, Cali and Medellín. Colombia's borders with Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil and Perú were shut down in response to the national strike. Indignation against Duque's government has brewed since the U.S.-backed president took office in August 2018 and social activists have continuously denounced Duque's sabotage of Colombia's historic peace accords, which were signed in 2016 after half a century of war. We speak with long-time activist Manuel Rozental, who joins us from Cali, Colombia. He has been involved with grassroots political organizing with youth, Indigenous communities, and urban and rural social movements for four decades.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We begin today's show in Colombia, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets Thursday in the largest national strike Colombia has seen in years. Labor unions, students, teachers, indigenous and Afro-Colombian activists joined in peaceful marches across urban and rural Colombia as anger mounts against right-wing President Iván Duque and his cabinet. Their peaceful movement was met with police repression and tear gas in Bogotá, Cali and Medellín. In Bogotá, riot police fired tear gas at protesters who blocked major transportation routes. Others gathered in Bogotá's historic Simón Bolívar Plaza, singing the national anthem in unison, where they were also met by police forces shooting tear gas.
A government-imposed curfew was reported in the city of Cali, the capital of the Cauca region. The Colombian borders with Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil and Peru were shut down in response to the national strike. The protests were triggered by Duque's proposed labor reforms and cuts to the pension system as well as a recent military airstrike against a camp of alleged dissident rebel drug traffickers which left eight children dead. This is one of the protesters in Bogota.
PROTESTER: [translated] This is the sentiment of the people. The people are bored of social injustice. They are killing our social leaders, our cultural identity. Our indigenous communities are in danger. And the economic, political and labor reforms do not benefit the Colombian people.
AMY GOODMAN: Indignation against Duque's government has brewed since the U.S.-backed president took office in August of 2018. Social activists have continuously denounced Duque's sabotage of Colombia's historic peace accords, which were signed in 2016 after half a century of war, as well as the endemic of killings of indigenous, Afro-Colombian and other social leaders under his administration. Since the signing of the peace accords, at least 700 social leaders have been murdered in Colombia.
For more, we go to the city of Cali, Colombia, where we're joined by long-time Colombian activist Manuel Rozental. He has been involved with grassroots political organizing with youth, indigenous communities and urban and rural social movements for four decades. Exiled several times to Canada for political activities. Manuel, welcome back to Democracy Now! I hope we can keep you on the line. I know that the line is a little tricky right now, the internet, but if you can talk about what happened across Colombia yesterday?
MANUEL ROZENTAL: It's unprecedented, without any doubt. There were millions–not thousands—millions of Colombians marching yesterday. We were at three different marches in the city of Cali yesterday and I had never seen anything like this before. I have to clarify several things. One is this march and this national strike was not convened by any single organization. It's the entire people of this country who are fed up and we just gave ourselves a date and convened ourselves to the street. So nobody, no political party, no social movement, no group, no structure controls this strike. It's a sentiment we all have against a government.
Number two is the mobilization was wonderful. Everybody was out. And their reasons were all the reasons. You have seen the uprising in Chile. You've seen them in Ecuador, everywhere else in Latin America. Everything that has been done wrongly to all the people everywhere has been done against us in Colombia for many, many years.
And not—18 children that were killed recently in Caqueta by the armed forces of Colombia, forcing the resignation of the minister of defense. But according to Gustavo Petro, former presidential candidate and member of the senate, more than 300 children have been killed by the Colombian army in eight years. Close to 800 indigenous and popular social leaders have been murdered since the peace agreements in November 2016. Labor reforms [inaudible] all the [inaudible] policies linked to drug trafficking, murdering everywhere and we are fed up.
So we marched, we mobilized and we expressed our anger. I can tell you clearly, today President Duque and President Uribe who is behind him, they have nothing to do in power in Colombia. Nobody in Colombia of the people who marched yesterday like him. He has [inaudible]
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play Colombian President Iván Duque speaking about the role of the military in anticipation of yesterday's national strike.
PRESIDENT IVÁN DUQUE: [translated] It is these military forces which have always guaranteed the implementation of democracy, the ones that have always guaranteed freedom of speech in our territory. I also take this as the opportunity to say that it is the military forces which should guarantee peaceful protests as an expression of democracy, but they are also the same forces that should protect our citizens so that there is no vandalism or aggressions, nor allow that anyone shall pretend to usurp the functions of the military forces.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond, Manuel Rozental, to what President Duque said about the military ensuring freedom of speech and peace. [pause] Manuel, we can't hear you. We are going to try to reconnect with him in a moment. But I wanted to also ask about earlier this month, five indigenous leaders massacred in the semiautonomous indigenous reservation of Nasa Tacueyó. Among those murdered was Cristina Bautista, the chief of the area. President Iván Duque vowed to deploy 2,500 military troops to the region. He blamed dissidents of the FARC guerrilla rebel group who opposed the country's peace accords, but police still haven't made any arrests and no suspects have been named in the massacre.
Since the signing of the accords in 2016, at least 700 social leaders have been murdered in Colombia, according to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies, with Afro-Colombian and indigenous activists at the forefront of the violent targeting. Earlier this month, Democracy Now! spoke with your partner, Manuel, Vilma Alemndra, a Nasa-Misak woman and indigenous leader, this in a Skype interview about that massacre, and asked her what her message was to the American audience about the ongoing violence in Colombia. The U.S. government has for decades funded the war on drugs in Colombia and currently backs the government of the right-wing President Iván Duque. This was her response.
VILMA ALMENDRA: [translated] As a woman Nasa-Misak, I would ask the people, the processes and the movements to understand that what is happening in Colombia, the war they are inflicting upon us, is precisely to guarantee the reproduction of the patriarchal, colonial and capitalist system to accumulate wealth there in the United States. Who is profiting with this blood, with death, with displacement, with the destruction of our autonomy here?
Understand that we are being subjected to war to guarantee the preservation of a system that not only exists in Colombia but in different parts of the world and that the challenge we have as peoples and movements is to try to see beyond this state that inflicts war. We need to self-organize, defend ourselves autonomously and have autonomous resistance be on the institution which is the one that is killing us.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Vilma Almendra. We are speaking to her partner Manuel Rozental, both Colombian activists with decades of experience in grassroots political organizing with youth, indigenous communities, urban and rural social movements. We will continue to cover the mass protests in Colombia again yesterday with well over a million people in the streets of the country, the largest mass protest Colombia has seen in years. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we will talk about the defense of Julian Assange. Stay with us.
[MUSIC BREAK]
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
In Iran, Amnesty International reports over 100 protesters have been killed in 21 cities by security forces during ongoing nationwide demonstrations sparked by a sudden hike in fuel prices last week. The death count may be much higher, the report warns, with some suggesting as many as 200 have been killed. According to Iranian state media, over 1,000 people have been arrested. On Thursday, Iran announced a rise in the cost of gas ranging from 50% to 300%. Soon after protests broke out on Sunday, Iran imposed an almost complete internet blackout, making it nearly impossible for protesters use social media to share images or information. From Washington, D.C., we speak with Negar Mortazavi, an Iranian-American journalist and the diplomatic correspondent for The Independent (U.K.).
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Iran, where Amnesty International says security forces have killed at least 100 protesters during nationwide demonstrations sparked by a sudden hike in fuel prices last week. On Thursday, Iran announced a rise in the cost of gas ranging from 50% to 300%. Iranian state media says an additional 1,000 people have been arrested amid the protests. The Amnesty report also warns the death count may be much higher, with some suggesting as many as 200 have been killed.
AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, soon after the protests broke out, Iran imposed an almost complete internet blackout, making it nearly impossible for protesters to use social media to share images or information about the bloody crackdown. The civil society group NetBlocks, which monitors internet access worldwide, said Iran's usage had decreased to 4% of its normal level.
For more, we go directly to Washington, D.C., to speak with the Iranian-American journalist Negar Mortazavi. She is the diplomatic correspondent for The Independent, her most recent piece headlined "As US weighs in on Iran protests, critics highlight American culpability for economic crisis."
Welcome to Democracy Now! It's great to have you with us, Negar. Can you explain how these protests broke out and also how you're learning about what's happening, with an almost complete internet shutdown?
NEGAR MORTAZAVI: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
So, as you said, the sudden increase in gas prices on Thursday night basically ignited the protests on Friday. We have to remember that fuel prices are heavily subsidized, have been heavily subsidized in Iran. And still, with the almost 300% increase, it's much lower, relatively lower, compared to world prices. And this has been an economic problem for the government, the high amount of money that they've been spending on subsidies. And the government has been struggling to somehow manage this. But it seems like they basically rolled it out or mismanaged it in the worst way possible and ignited these nationwide protests, in almost a hundred cities across the country.
The protests got pretty violent soon, and the crackdown. From the very few images that are coming out that we see, there's a very brutal crackdown happening from security forces. There are videos of security forces directly shooting at protesters, severely beating protesters and just pushing back. And the government is also complaining that dozens of banks and properties, gas stations have been vandalized, set on fire, and that there are leaders and coordinators that are being basically inspired and this is ignited by the enemies from the outside.
But basically what this comes down to is a grievance, an ongoing grievance, a not just economic grievance, but also a political grievance, that Iranians have had. These protests are not new. We saw very similar protests, widespread protests, at the end of 2017, beginning of 2018, also in dozens of cities across the country. And this is just, in a way, a continuation of that. And it is combined with the fact that there's high levels of corruption in different factions of the Iranian political system and a lot of mismanagement of the resources. It's a, basically, rich country when it comes to oil and gas and natural resources, and people just don't feel like that that is trickling down to the economy to the ordinary and average person. And then, combine that also with crippling economic sanctions from the United States, and it just creates an economic crisis that is hurting average Iranians, especially working and middle classes, the most vulnerable segments of the society. And especially when they see that high corruption within government officials and feel like the ordinary people are the ones who are taking the pressure of sanctions, of the mismanagement, of this corruption, that just adds to the anger and makes this — basically turns this into a political fight, and not just economic.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what's been the impact of this internet shutdown on the ability of people to communicate and to organize their protests? We're seeing increasingly governments resort to this. We saw India do it in Kashmir. Egypt has tried it against its protesters. What's the impact from what you can tell?
NEGAR MORTAZAVI: Well, it's extraordinary. I mean, people still organize. People still gather on the street. Let's not forget, in 1979, Iranians launched a revolution without any internet or anything back then. So, it's not difficult for people to organize, to, you know, just tell each other where to meet at what time and things. And also remember that phone lines are still open, so people can communicate over the phone. So, as far as organizing, I don't think it's had a tremendous effect, although it's easier to organize over social media, and that's what the young people had been using over recent years. So, that's definitely one of the reasons the internet is shut down.
But the other reason, or maybe the more important reason, is for the images and the videos and the photos to not get out or not be published on social media, because that's how foreign-based media, basically, and reporters are going to see exactly what's happening on the ground, the brutality, the severeness of the violence. And some images have made their way out. They're pretty brutal, as I said. But we are not really getting a full picture, at least a visual picture, of what's happening on the ground because of this almost total internet shutdown.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the places in Iran where the protest is most intense and why it's happening there, even more so than in Tehran.
NEGAR MORTAZAVI: Well, Tehran — I speak to mostly people in Tehran. In many neighborhoods in Tehran, it's fairly common. Also, there's a very heavy security atmosphere. Major cities, other cities, like Mashhad, I've heard the same thing, that most neighborhoods are quiet but very securitized. It seems like the unrest is more in the suburbs, in the lower-income suburbs of Tehran, in southern Tehran. In some other major cities like Shiraz, Shiraz had seen a lot of unrest and also casualties. The number of people killed and injured in Shiraz, and arrested also, seems to be high. And then, smaller cities and towns across the country, also two provinces, I have to mention, in the south and southwest, the province of Khuzestan and the province of Kurdistan, both border areas — both have a high number of religious minorities, ethnic minorities, that have long been, you know, subject of discrimination and also economic disadvantage when it comes to the central government. So, there's a lot of different layers of grievances in these areas.
And also, Khuzestan, one of the two provinces where it's the center of the unrest and repression, Khuzestan is actually the province where all the oil sits. So it's an oil-rich province. It's basically where the country gets all of its resources or main source of income from. But ironically, the population that lives in that province doesn't see much of the economic benefit of what — basically, the natural resources they're sitting on, so it adds to the anger and to the grievance, combined with that ethnic and religious and, basically, minority discrimination that they have been facing for years.
AMY GOODMAN: Immediately, we see Trump weighing in, supporting the protesters. If you could talk about the significance of that? Of course, you compare it to what's happening on Hong Kong, whatever deal he made with the Chinese leader not to criticize Chinese response to the Hong Kong protesters, of course, very different in Iran right now.
NEGAR MORTAZAVI: Honestly, I don't know why President Trump hasn't tweeted about Iran. He's been usually very quick to tweet about anything happening in Iran and protests. In a way, I think it just shows that this has no significance to him, especially now that he has all his attention on the impeachment hearing. Nothing has came from President Trump, not even a simple statement. The only statement we've heard was a short one from the White House press secretary, and also, of course, Secretary Pompeo has weighed in multiple times, and some U.S. ambassadors have also weighed in.
But then, at the same time, like I argued in my piece — and I've spoken to critics, even senior aides in Congress on the Democratic side — it's just not seen as a very genuine message of support or sympathy when it comes from the Trump administration, because this administration is basically part of the reason of the economic misery. The pullout from the Iran deal, basically, President Trump's unilateral exit from the nuclear deal, while Iran was committed to the agreement, and then the reimposition of these economic sanctions on Iran are one of the reasons that Iranians are suffering economically, of course, combined with their own government's mismanagement and corruption, everything that I mentioned. But it's just that U.S. officials have actually acknowledged, and sometimes even proudly boasted about, how U.S. sanctions are hurting Iran economically. So, coming out and basically showing this message of support and sympathy for the people of Iran, who are basically suffering economically, doesn't seem very genuine.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, an unprecedented leak of secret intelligence documents from inside the Iranian government has shed new light on how Iran has taken control of much of the Iraqi government in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion. The leak to The Intercept includes 700 pages of intelligence documents from 2014, 2015. In one document, Iraq's current Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi is described as having a, quote, "special relationship with Iran." The documents also reveal a number of Iraqis who once worked with the CIA and went on to work with Iranian intelligence and expose detailed information about the CIA's activity in Iraq. I'm wondering your response.
NEGAR MORTAZAVI: It's incredible. I mean, the details of the report are very incredible. But it's not news that Iran has had and has been building all this influence and networks in Iraq. A big portion of that is actually public and very out there. And it just shows part of the grand strategy, or maybe the lack, of U.S. government in the region following the invasion of Iraq, and basically trying for all these years to add to influence or control parts of the power structure there, while Iran, right — the next-door neighbor right there, has been basically doing the same thing, even more successfully. And it's not just in Iraq. Iran's network of influence, of proxies is basically across the region, in multiple countries across the region. And it has given Iran an advantage, in some ways, when it comes to any kind of confrontation, which I think, again, goes back to the issue of President Trump basically unraveling this only diplomatic channel that was open with Iran, and basically bringing us to the brink of a conflict or this impasse of a situation where there's no path open for diplomacy. Iran's influence in the region has not decreased, if not increased. And it seems like Iran's, as they call, malign behavior and adventures in the region have not changed. So, I'm not sure what the goal is here for the U.S. administration and for the president, for President Trump, but it just doesn't seem like they're moving towards a very positive destination, basically.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will certainly continue to follow these issues in Iran. And for people to see our interview with Murtaza Hussain, one of the authors of the report in The Intercept, in this massive, unprecedented leak of Iranian documents, you can go to democracynow.org. Negar Mortazavi, we want to thank you so much or being with us, Iranian-American journalist, diplomatic correspondent for The Independent, based in Washington, D.C. Of course, we'll continue to follow developments in Iran.
The Trump administration has announced it no longer views Israel settlements in the occupied West Bank to be a violation of international law, in another blow to possible Israel-Palestine peace negotiations. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a reversal to the U.S. position, putting the U.S. at odds with the international community. A U.N. resolution in 2016 declared the settlements a "flagrant violation" of international law. Israel's embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Pompeo's announcement as a historic day for Israel, but Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the U.S. decision. Soon after Mike Pompeo announced the new U.S. policy, the U.S. Embassy in Israel issued a travel warning to Americans in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. From Washington, D.C., we speak with Noura Erakat, a Palestinian human rights attorney and legal scholar. She is an assistant professor at Rutgers University and the author of "Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine."
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In a sharp reversal to more than 40 years of U.S. policy, the Trump administration has announced it no longer views Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank to be a violation of international law. In 1978, the State Department issued a legal opinion stating that settlements were, quote, "inconsistent with international law," and every administration, Democratic and Republican, has upheld that. On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a reversal to the U.S. position.
SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO: The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law.
AMY GOODMAN: This announcement puts the U.S. at odds with the international community. In 2016, a U.N. resolution declared the settlements a "flagrant violation" of international law. Israel's embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Pompeo's announcement as a historic day for Israel, but Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the U.S. decision.
SAEB EREKAT: Israeli colonial settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, are not only illegal under international law, they are war crimes. And the statement of Mr. Pompeo, the secretary of state of the United States, is absolutely rejected and must be condemned.
AMY GOODMAN: Soon after Mike Pompeo announced the new U.S. policy, the U.S. Embassy in Israel issued a travel warning to Americans in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
We're joined now by Noura Erakat, Palestinian human rights attorney and legal scholar, assistant professor at Rutgers University. Her latest book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.
This is an abrupt reversal, Noura Erakat. Can you talk about the significance of it?
NOURA ERAKAT: I would actually temper that a little bit: This is not necessarily a reversal in U.S. policy, only in its stated policy. For 50 — for more than five decades, since 1967, all U.S. administrations have talked out of both sides of their mouth. On the one hand, they have condemned settlements as counterproductive to peace and as a contravention of international law, and, on the other hand, have provided Israel with the unequivocal diplomatic, military and financial aid in order to entrench their settlements.
Even the Obama administration, as it was abstaining on U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning the settlements as a flagrant violation, has been part of the problem. They issued that abstention only two weeks before they left office. Simultaneously, the Obama administration increased aid from $3 billion to $3.8 billion a year. And in 2012, that same administration used its first veto at the Security Council to condemn a resolution, a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning settlements using exact U.S. foreign policy language on settlements.
So, what we're seeing now is not a sharp reversal of U.S. foreign policy on the question of settlements and Palestine, but instead the culmination of it. For us to blame this on Trump is basically to exculpate ourselves and to create a revisionist history. Instead, we should be accountable and actually take responsibility for how we have been part of this problem.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about the timing of this announcement in the midst of an essential stalemate in Israel in terms of a new government, and Benny Gantz has a deadline this week of forming a new government, or there may — or Israel may be forced to a third election?
NOURA ERAKAT: Yeah. This is what's so tragic about all of this. What we're talking about right now, in the West Bank is about 700,000 settlers living in the midst of a population of 3 million Palestinians, who, because of those 700,000 settlers, who are living in exclusive colonial settlements, surrounded by military and civilian Israeli infrastructure — cuts up Palestinian life into 20 noncontiguous Bantustans, where they can't reach one another. We're talking about the subjugation of a Palestinian population at the whim of these illegal colonial settlements.
And now we're seeing this discussion — we're seeing the U.S. recognize this as not a violation of international law, which actually has no basis because they can't change that status; they can only be in violation of it. But the tragic part is that the U.S. administration is doing this in order to support Netanyahu in his own bid to consolidate power in Israel. Palestinians are pawns, are pawns to be moved around in order to shape U.S. domestic policy.
And the other thing that should be highlighted is, although Netanyahu, who represents the right, is celebrating this as a culmination of his own vision, Benny Gantz and the Blue and White party supports it and welcomes the Trump administration announcement, as well. There is no daylight between the so-called Israeli left and the so-called Israeli right. What we're seeing is a consolidation of their settler-colonial takings.
We want to frame this as a contravention of the peace process and not acknowledging the fact that what's ongoing is a violation of human rights, the entrenchment of an apartheid regime, and that the reversion to the peace process is precisely the problem. It was the Oslo Accords that put settlements on the back burner and made it part of the final status negotiations that we're not getting to, and so that what we're seeing now in terms of what the U.S. administration is doing is forcing Palestinians to accept every new incremental territorial taking as new facts on the ground, that are then presented to Palestinian negotiators, who have to accept those facts on the ground, which are war crimes, as previously stated, and when the Palestinians protest, they are told that they are the obstacle to peace.
So, the reversion to the peace process here, the reversion to the U.S. status quo ante on how to handle the situation, is the reversion into a straight dead end and back to where we are. We have to think about this radically anew about how to transcend the situation. This isn't about the peace process. This isn't about two states. These are about flagrant human rights violations. We are witnessing the entrenchment of an apartheid regime and the U.S. at the helm of that process.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about this move coming right after the European Union's top court ruled that European Union countries must identify products made in Israeli settlements on their labels, in a decision that was welcomed by rights groups, sparking anger in Israel. I'm reading from a Chicago Tribune piece: "The European Court of Justice said that when products come from an Israeli settlement, their labels must provide an 'indication of that provenance' so that consumers can make 'informed choices' when they shop." How do these two issues relate?
NOURA ERAKAT: I lost sound.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you hear me now, Noura Erakat? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me?
NOURA ERAKAT: I lost sound. Should I answer this question?
AMY GOODMAN: OK. We're not —
NOURA ERAKAT: Hi.
AMY GOODMAN: Hi. Can you hear me?
NOURA ERAKAT: Hello. Yes, I can. Now I can hear you.
AMY GOODMAN: OK, perfect. I'm asking you about the —
NOURA ERAKAT: The European Court of Justice decision.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, yes.
NOURA ERAKAT: Yes. So, that decision is, at the very least — all that decision is doing is providing consumers with the ability to make their own choices about where they want to purchase their products. It is not banning Israeli settlement projects, despite the fact that they are a flagrant violation. It is not imposing sanctions on Israel, which is actually the obligation of third parties in relation to what's happening in the West Bank. All they are doing is labeling products. This is about a business and human rights framework. And Israel is saying that this is discriminatory and targeting Israel. And yet it's the very least the European Court of — European Union should do.
And this points us to the other problem. Despite the fact that the Trump administration has removed the emperor's clothes and made very clear that the U.S. is part of the problem and not an honest broker, no other state has rushed to fill the vacuum that the U.S. has left behind. Even the European Union is willing to throw money at the Palestinians in order to make their situation more tolerable, but is not interested in actually applying the pressure and the coercion upon Israel in order to change this status quo and to deliver an actual viable future. And so, what they're doing right now is the very least of labeling products, when instead they should be boycotting those products altogether, applying the sanctions. And here, because Israel gets to control this conversation about this being targeted, rather than it be a conversation where Israel has to defend itself, we're seeing this as somehow radical.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And speaking of pressure on Israel, the BDS movement, the enormous effort that Israel is expending all around the world to try to —
NOURA ERAKAT: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — to silence BDS supporters — could you talk about the impact of that movement on Israeli policy?
NOURA ERAKAT: So, the BDS movement now is more relevant than ever, precisely because it's been made clear. The U.S. is not an honest broker but is a pillar of the problem. The European Union has no intention of resolving the conflict, but only of containing the conflict. There are no other diplomatic alternatives. And instead, Palestinians are expected to be held in the status quo. We have eight Palestinians who were killed in an aerial strike in Gaza last week in the middle of the night, and yet are not asking questions about that. There was a Palestinian journalist who was shot by a sniper. His eye was shot out as he was reporting what was happening in Gaza. We still are not talking about that. And so, instead, we remain in this discourse of a diplomatic intransigence and a nonsensical and farcical peace process that is actually a central part of the problem.
And so, what the BDS movement represents is a grassroots alternative. It is people power demonstrating their conscience and their solidarity. And for Americans and people in the United States, it is more critical than ever, precisely because we are not witnesses to what is happening to Palestinians. We are part of the problem. We are a central pillar of the problem, because we provide Israel with the impunity it needs to continue its war crimes, with the funding it needs to build those settlements, and with the cover that it receives here in our political parlance. And so, when we're talking about Palestine, we are not talking about a foreign policy issue. We are talking about a pillar of what the U.S. is doing. We are part of this problem, the same way that we are part of separating families at the borders, the same way that we are denying access to asylum seekers, the same way that we are overseeing a mass incarceration problem that overrepresents black bodies. We are also overseeing the subjugation of Palestinians as part of our policy.
AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat, we want to thank you so much for being with us. And, of course, last year, the Trump administration dropped the use of the word "occupied," speaking of parlance. Noura Erakat is a Palestinian human rights attorney and legal scholar, assistant professor at Rutgers University. Her latest book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
