Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts

Monday, August 14, 2023

Israel: Apartheid State


THE ABSURD TIMES 

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We needed to get this out and shared. We are still at work on our examination of the MAGA gang, but this is important and the MAGA idiocy is simply blotting it out. You will remember that this is most like the explanation that MAGA really meant Make America White Again, but the phrase has now been accepted in the corporate media. There will be more, but first you need to digest what is increasingly accepted by the majority of American Jews, Rabbis, Liberals, and voters, but staunchly referred to as "Anti-Semitic" to most lawmakers in our system. The force behind this is money. The fact that many MAGA types are genuinely anti-Semitic merely helps Zionist forces. Here it is:



Aparthied State – Israelis

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - The Israel Lobby's Useful Idiot

CHRIS HEDGES

AUG 12

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The Kennedy Promise - by Mr. Fish


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The long nightmare of oppression of Palestinians is not a tangential issue. It is a black and white issue of a settler-colonial state imposing a military occupation, horrific violence and apartheid, backed by billions of U.S. dollars, on the indigenous population of Palestine. It is the all powerful against the all powerless.


Israel uses its modern weaponry against a captive population that has no army, no navy, no air force, no mechanized military units, no command and control and no heavy artillery, while pretending intermittent acts of wholesale slaughter are wars. The crude rockets fired at Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations — a war crime because they target civilians — are not remotely comparable to the 2,000 pound "bunker-buster" Mark-84 bombs with a "kill radius" of over 32 yards and which "create a supersonic wave of pressure when they explode" that have been dropped by Israel on crowded Palestinian neighborhoods, the thousands of Palestinian killed and wounded and the targeted destruction of basic infrastructure, including electrical grids and water purification plants.


Palestinians in Gaza live in an open air prison that is one of the most densely populated spots on the planet. They are denied passports and travel documents.


Malnutrition is endemic in the Occupied Territories. "High proportions" of the Palestinian population are "deficient in vitamins A, D, and E, which play key roles in vision, bone health, and immune function," according to a 2022 World Bank report. The report also notes that over 50 percent of those aged six to 23 in Gaza and over half of its pregnant women are anemic and "more than a quarter of pregnant women and more than a quarter of children aged 6–23 months [in the West Bank are] anemic."


Eighty-eight percent of Gaza's children suffer from depression, following 15 years of the Israeli blockade, according to a 2022 report from Save the Children and over 51 percent of children were diagnosed with PTSD following the third major war on Gaza in 2014. Only 4.3 percent of the water in Gaza is considered fit for human consumption. Palestinians in Gaza are crammed into unsanitary and overcrowded hovels. They often lack basic medical care. Unemployment rates are among the highest in the world at 46.6 percent.


Zionism's goal, since before Israel's inception, has been to displace Palestinians from their land and reduce those who remain to a struggle for basic subsistence, as Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappe, notes:


10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches on a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That same evening, military orders were dispatched to units on the ground to prepare for the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from vast areas of the country. The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be used to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centers; setting fire to homes, properties, and goods; expelling residents; demolishing homes; and, finally, planting mines in the rubble to prevent the expelled inhabitants from returning. Each unit was issued its own list of villages and neighborhoods to target in keeping with the master plan. Code-named Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew)...


Once the plan was finalized, it took six months to complete the mission. When it was over, more than half of Palestine's native population, over 750,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and 11 urban neighborhoods had been emptied of their inhabitants.


These political and historical facts, which I reported on as an Arabic speaker for seven years, four of them as The Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, are hard to ignore. Even from a distance.


I watched Israeli soldiers taunt boys in Arabic over the loudspeakers of their armored jeep in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza. The boys, about 10 years old, then threw stones at an Israeli vehicle. The soldiers opened fire, killing some, wounding others. In the Israeli lexicon this becomes children caught in crossfire. I was in Gaza when F-16 attack jets dropped 1,000-pound iron fragmentation bombs on densely packed neighborhoods. I saw the corpses of the victims, including children, lined up in neat rows. This became a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. I watched Israel demolish homes and apartment blocks to create buffer zones between the Palestinians and Israeli troops. I interviewed destitute families camped in the rubble of their homes. The destruction becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists. I stood in the bombed remains of schools as well as medical clinics and mosques. I heard Israel claim that errant rockets or mortar fire from the Palestinians caused these and other deaths, or that the attacked spots were being used as arms depots or launching sites. I, along with every other reporter I know who has worked in Gaza, have never seen any evidence that Hamas uses civilians as "human shields." Ironically, there is evidence of the Israeli military using Palestinians as human shields, which Israel's High Court deemed illegal in 2005.


There is a perverted logic to Israel's use of the Big Lie — Große Lüge. The Big Lie feeds the two reactions Israel seeks to elicit — racism among its supporters and terror among its victims.


There is a heavy political price to pay for defying Israel, whose overt interference in our political process makes the most tepid protests about Israeli policy a political death wish. The Palestinians are poor, forgotten and alone. And this is why the defiance of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is the central issue facing any politician who claims to speak on behalf of the vulnerable and the marginalized. To stand up to Israel has a political cost few, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are willing to pay. But if you do stand up, it singles you out as someone who puts principles before expediency, who is willing to fight for the wretched of the earth and, if necessary, sacrifice your political future to retain your integrity. Kennedy fails this crucial test of political and moral courage.


Kennedy, instead, regurgitates every lie, every racist trope, every distortion of history and every demeaning comment about the backwardness of the Palestinian people peddled by the most retrograde and far-right elements of Israeli society. He peddles the myth of what Pappe calls "Fantasy Israel." This alone discredits him as a progressive candidate. It calls into question his judgment and sincerity. It makes him another Democratic Party hack who dances to the macabre tune the Israeli government plays.


Kennedy has vowed to make "the moral case for Israel," which is the equivalent of making the moral case for apartheid South Africa. He repeats, almost verbatim, talking points from the Israeli propaganda playbook put together by the Republican pollster and political strategist, Frank Luntz. The 112-page study, marked "not for distribution or publication," which was leaked to Newsweek, was commissioned by The Israel Project. It was written in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and January 2009 — when 1,387 Palestinians and nine Israelis were killed.


The strategy document is the blueprint for how Israeli politicians and lobbyists sell Israel. It exposes the wide gap between what Israeli politicians say and what they know to be the truth. It is tailored to tell the outside world, especially Americans, what they want to hear. The report is required reading for anyone attempting to deal with the Israeli propaganda machine.


The document, for example, suggests telling the outside world that Israel "has a right to defensible borders," but advises Israelis to refuse to define what the borders should be. It advises Israeli politicians to justify the refusal by Israel to allow 750,000 Palestinians and their descendants, who were expelled from their country during the 1948 war, to return home, although the right of return is guaranteed under international law, by referring to this right as a "demand." It also recommends arguing that Palestinians are seeking mass migrations to seize land inside Israel. It suggests mentioning the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Iraq, Syria and Egypt, who fled anti-Semitism and violence in the Arab world after the creation of the Jewish state. The document recommends saying these refugees also "left property behind," in essence justifying the Israeli pogrom by the pogrom Arab states carried out after 1948. It recommends blaming the poverty among Palestinians on "Arab nations" that have not provided "a better life for Palestinians."


What is most cynical about the report is the tactic of expressing a faux sympathy for the Palestinians, who are blamed for their own oppression.


"Show Empathy for BOTH sides!" the document reads. "The goal of pro-Israel communications is not simply to make people who already love Israel feel good about that decision. The goal is to win new hearts and minds for Israel without losing the support Israel already has." It says that this tactic will "disarm" audiences.


I doubt Kennedy has read or heard of Luntz's report. But he has been spoon-fed its talking points and naively spits them back. Israel only wants peace. Israel does not engage in torture. Israel is not an apartheid state. Israel gives Israeli Arabs political and civic rights they do not have in other parts of the Middle East. Palestinians are not deliberately targeted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Israel respects civil liberties and gender and marriage rights. Israel has "the best judiciary in the world."


Kennedy makes other claims, such as his bizarre statement that the Palestinian Authority pays Palestinians to kill Jews anywhere in the world along with falsifications of elemental Middle Eastern history, which are so absurd I will ignore them. But I list below examples from the volumes of evidence that implode the Luntz-inspired talking points Kennedy repeats on behalf of the Israel lobby, not that any evidence can probably puncture his self-serving attachment to "Fantasy Israel."


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Apartheid


The 2017 U.N. report: "Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid" concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole." Since 1967, Palestinians as a people have lived in what the report refers to as four "domains," in which the fragments of the Palestinian population are ostensibly treated differently but share in common the racial oppression that results from the apartheid regime.


Those domains are:


1. Civil law, with special restrictions, governing Palestinians who live as citizens of Israel;


2. Permanent residency law governing Palestinians living in the city of Jerusalem;


3. Military law governing Palestinians, including those in refugee camps, living since 1967 under conditions of belligerent occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip;


4. Policy to preclude the return of Palestinians, whether refugees or exiles, living outside territory under Israel's control.


On 19 July 2018, the Israeli Knesset voted "to approve the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, constitutionally enshrining Jewish supremacy and the identity of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people," the Haifa-based civil liberties group Adalah explained. It is the supreme law in Israel "capable of overriding any ordinary legislation."


In 2021 Israeli human rights group B'Tselem published its report "A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid."


The report reads:


In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group — Jews — over another — Palestinians. A key method in pursuing this goal is engineering space differently for each group.


Jewish citizens live as though the entire area were a single space (excluding the Gaza Strip). The Green Line means next to nothing for them: whether they live west of it, within Israel's sovereign territory, or east of it, in settlements not formally annexed to Israel, is irrelevant to their rights or status.


Where Palestinians live, on the other hand, is crucial. The Israeli regime has divided the area into several units that it defines and governs differently, according Palestinians different rights in each. This division is relevant to Palestinians only…Israel accords Palestinians a different package of rights in every one of these units — all of which are inferior compared to the rights afforded to Jewish citizens.


"Since 1948," the reports continues, "Israel has taken over 90% of land within its sovereign territory and built hundreds of Jewish communities, yet not one for Palestinians (with the exception of several communities built to concentrate the Bedouin population, after dispossessing them of most of their property rights)," the report reads.


"Since 1967, Israel has also enacted this policy in the Occupied Territories, dispossessing Palestinians of more than 2,000 km2 on various pretexts. In violation of international law, it has built over 280 settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) for more than 600,000 Jewish citizens. It has devised a separate planning system for Palestinians, designated primarily to prevent construction and development, and has not established a single new Palestinian community."


Targeting Civilians


Contrary to Kennedy's claims that "the policy of the Israeli military is to always only attack military targets," the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure by the Israeli military, and other branches of the Israeli security apparatus, has been extensively documented by Israeli and international organizations.


The 2010 Goldstone report, which is over 500 pages, investigated Israel's 22-day air and ground assault on Gaza that took place from Dec. 27, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009. The United Nations Human Rights Council and the European Parliament endorsed the report.


The Israeli attack killed 1,434 people, including 960 civilians, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. More than 6,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, leaving behind some $3 billion in destruction in one of the poorest areas on Earth. Three Israeli civilians were killed by rockets fired into Israel during the assault.


The report's key findings include that:


Numerous instances of Israeli lethal attacks on civilians and civilian objects were intentional, including with the aim of spreading terror, that Israeli forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields and that such tactics had no justifiable military objective.


Israeli forces engaged in the deliberate killing, torture and other inhuman treatment of civilians and deliberately caused extensive destruction of property, outside any military necessity, carried out wantonly and unlawfully.


Israel violated its duty to respect the right of Gaza's population to an adequate standard of living, including access to adequate food, water and housing.


On 14 June of this year, B'Tselem reported that "Top Israeli officials" are "criminally liable for knowingly" ordering airstrikes which were "expected to harm civilians, including children, in the Gaza Strip."


Contrary to the myth propagated by Kennedy, reports and investigations, both by the U.N. as well as by rights groups, domestic and international, routinely cover suspected or known violations by Palestinian militants when they investigate alleged war crimes. As B'Tselem noted in the same 2019 report, in total, four Israelis were killed and 123 wounded.


Last month, the U.N.'s expert on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Italian international lawyer and academic Francesca Albanese, presented her report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. It makes for very grim reading.


Deprivation of liberty has been a central element of Israel's occupation since its inception. Between 1967-2006 Israel has incarcerated over 800,000 Palestinians in the occupied territory. Although spiking during Palestinian uprisings, incarceration has become a quotidian reality. Over 100,000 Palestinians were detained during the First Intifada (1987-1993), 70,000 during the Second Intifada (2000-2006), and over 6,000 during the 'Unity Intifada' (2021). Approximately 7,000 Palestinians, including 882 children, were arrested in 2022. Currently, almost 5,000 Palestinians, including 155 children, are detained by Israel, 1,014 of them without charge or trial.


Torture


Around 1,200 complaints "alleging violence in Shin Bet [The Israeli Security Agency] interrogations" were filed between 2001 and 2019, according to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.


"Zero indictments have been brought," the committee reports. "This is yet another illustration of the complete systemic impunity enjoyed by the Shin Bet's interrogators."


Coercive methods include sexual harassment and humiliation, beatings, stress positions imposed for hours and interrogations that lasted as long as 19 hours as well as threats of violence against family members.


"They said they would kill my wife and children. They said they would cancel my mother's and sister's permits for medical treatments," one survivor said in 2016. "I couldn't sleep because even when I was in my cell, they would wake me up every 15 minutes… I couldn't tell the difference between day and night… I still scream in my sleep," another said in 2017.


The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, expressed "his utmost concern" after a December 2017 ruling by Israel's Supreme Court exempting security agents from criminal investigation despite their undisputed use of coercive "pressure techniques" against a Palestinian detainee, Assad Abu Gosh. He called the ruling a "license to torture."


Abu Gosh "was reportedly subjected to ill-treatment including beatings, being slammed against walls, having his body and fingers bent and tied into painful stress positions and sleep deprivation, as well as threats, verbal abuse, and humiliation. Medical examinations confirm that Mr. Abu Gosh suffers from various neurologic injuries resulting from the torture he suffered."


Civil Liberties

In the November 2022 elections in Israel, a far-right theocratic, nationalist and openly racist coalition took power. Itamar Ben-Gvir, from the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit, "Jewish Power," party, is the Minister of National Security. Otzma Yehudit is populated with former members of Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach party, which was banned from running for the Knesset in 1988 for espousing a "Nazi-like ideology" that included advocating the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as all Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. His appointment, along with that of other far-right ideologues, including Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance, effectively jettisons the old tropes liberal Zionists used to defend Israel — that it is the only democracy in the Middle East, that it seeks a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians in a two-state solution, that extremism and racism have no place in Israeli society and that Israel must impose draconian forms of control on the Palestinians to prevent terrorism.


The new coalition government is reportedly preparing legislation that would be used to disqualify almost all Palestinian/Arab Knesset members from serving in the Israeli parliament, as well as ban their parties from standing in elections. The recent judicial "reforms" gut the independence and oversight of the Israeli courts. The government has also proposed shutting down Kan, the public broadcasting network, although that has been amended to fixing its "flaws". Smotrich, who opposes LGBTQ rights and refers to himself as a "fascist homophobe," said on Tuesday he would freeze all funds to Israel's Palestinian communities and East Jerusalem.


Israel has promulgated a series of laws to curtail public freedoms, brand all forms of Palestinian resistance as terrorism, and label supporters of Palestinian rights, even if they are Jewish, as anti-Semites. The amendment of one of Israel's principle apartheid laws, the 2010 "Village Committees Law," grants neighborhoods with up to 700 households the right to reject people from moving in to "preserve the fabric" of the community. Israel has over 65 laws that are used to discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens of Israel and those in the Occupied Territories.


Israel's Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel from marrying Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.


Interreligious marriage in Israel is also prohibited.


As explained by Jacob N. Simon, who served as the President of the Jewish Legal Society at the Michigan State University College of Law:


The combination of the blood line related requirements to be considered Jewish by the Orthodox Rabbinical Court and the restriction of marriage requiring religious ceremonies shows an intent







to maintain race purity. At its core, this is no different than the desire for pure blooded Aryans in Nazi Germany or pure blooded whites in the Jim Crow Southern United States.


Those who support these discriminatory laws and embrace Israeli apartheid are blinded by willful ignorance, racism or cynicism. Their goal is to dehumanize Palestinians, champion an intolerant Jewish chauvinism and entice the naïve and the gullible into justifying the unjustifiable. Kennedy, bereft of a moral compass and a belief system rooted in verifiable fact, has not only failed the Palestinians, he has failed us.

Friday, June 16, 2023

Fwd: Murdering Journalists


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Murdering Journalists

Sorry, that's Classsified

Jun 16
 
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THE ABSURD TIMES

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Illustration: A warm and fuzzy guy (unrelated to the rest here)

Why is it Classified?

By

Honest Charlie

I probably shouldn't post this so soon after the last one, but this has been festering for a long time now. A foreign government has been killing our citizens who are journalists and we have done nothing about it. We get all bothered about the Baltic, but there is a Mideast, you know.

Well, I know it's classified, but couldn't somebody just think about it being de-classified and all would be well? And why the hell is it "classified"? What would we find out? What is this foreign government up to? What are they hiding? Why can they kill our journalists without any repercussions? Why do we give them trillions? It sounds a bit fishy to me.

Here is a very pertinent interview on that subject:

We speak with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland about his call for the U.S. State Department to declassify a report on the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank last year. The Al Jazeera reporter was covering an Israeli military raid just outside the Jenin refugee camp and was clearly marked as press. "It's my belief that the United States has an absolute obligation to get to the bottom of what happened, to hold the individuals accountable, or, in this case, potentially the IDF unit accountable," says Van Hollen. The report is by the U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.


Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.orgThe War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

The Biden administration is continuing to face criticism for its response to the killing last year of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier as she was reporting on an Israeli military raid just outside the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The Al Jazeera reporter was shot while wearing a blue helmet and blue flak jacket clearly emblazoned with the word "press." Shireen Abu Akleh was one of the most prominent TV journalists in the Arab world. She was also a U.S. citizen.

NBC News recently reported the FBI has not yet spoken to any key witnesses in the case. Israel has refused to cooperate with the probe, and Palestinian journalists who were with Shireen at the time of her death say the FBI has never contacted them. Many of the journalists who witnessed her death spoke to Al Jazeera correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous for the documentary The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, which just won a George Polk Award. This is Shireen's producer, Ali al-Samoudi, who was also shot that day.

ALI AL-SAMOUDI: [translated] When we made sure that there were no confrontations, we started walking slowly, with slow steps.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And about 25 seconds later, here they are walking with Shatha and Mujahid up the street, all in their press jackets, just past the spot where Salim had a view of the military.

ALI AL-SAMOUDI: [translated] Suddenly, a round of bullets was fired. I shouted, "Shireen, they're shooting at us. We have to get out of here." Just as I was saying, "We have to get out of here," my shoulder exploded. I shouted, "Shireen, I was shot," or I said, "Shireen, they shot me."

MUJAHED AL-SAADI: [translated] After the first bullet, I was able to jump behind a short wall to take shelter in. Shireen and Shatha reached me to jump and get out of the place, but they couldn't.

MAJDI BANNOURA: [translated] They started firing at us. I immediately pressed record. I saw Ali was wounded. He walked away. Shireen was behind the tree. I could still see her hiding behind the tree.

SHIREEN ABU AKLEH: [translated] Ali has been wounded!

ALI AL-SAMOUDI: [translated] The last words that Shireen said was, "Ali has been wounded," "Ali has been wounded." I mean, these ears, every day, all the time, Shireen's voice is repeating in my ears.

MAJDI BANNOURA: [translated] I stepped forward again, and they started saying, "Shireen, Shireen." But they shot at us again.

UNIDENTIFIED: Mujahed!

SHATHA HANAYSHA: [translated] I have a blank spot in my mind. I don't remember how I got behind the tree. I got behind the tree and turned around to see if Shireen could come to where I was. At that point, I saw Shireen falling to the ground. I didn't understand that she had been gravely wounded.

UNIDENTIFIED: Shireen! Shireen! [translated] Ambulance!

MAJDI BANNOURA: [translated] I stepped forward and saw Shireen on the ground. I'm holding the camera. I bend down. I want to walk, to walk toward Shireen.

UNIDENTIFIED: [translated] Stay! Stay! Stay where you are! Don't move! Mujahed, don't move!

UNIDENTIFIED: [translated] Who was shot?

UNIDENTIFIED: Shireen! Shireen!

UNIDENTIFIED: [translated] Ambulance!

UNIDENTIFIED: [translated] Ambulance!

SHATHA HANAYSHA: [translated] The whole time I wanted to shake her, to touch her, to move her, but I was also filled with fear because the tree was what was protecting us, and if I moved her, maybe she would be wounded again. I remember when I saw the blood on the ground, when the blood started coming out. That's when I realized she had taken a bullet to the head. And I started shouting, "It's her head! Her head!"

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh from Al Jazeera English's current affairs program Fault Lines. The documentary recently won a George Polk Award for Foreign Television Reporting, one of the highest awards in journalism. Investigations by Al Jazeera, The New York Times, CNN and other news outlets have challenged the official Israeli version of Shireen's killing.

We're joined now by Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who has called on the U.S. State Department to declassify a report on Shireen Abu Akleh's death on May 11th, 2022, conducted by the U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Senator Chris Van Hollen joins us now from Kensington, Maryland.

Thanks so much for being with us, Senator. Can you start off by explaining what this report is and what you're calling for?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, Amy, it's good to be with you.

This was a report conducted by General Fenzel and his team. He's the U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authorities. And he conducted an extensive review of what happened in the killing of Shireen.

I should emphasize that his report is not an independent investigation. And he was not able to conduct an independent investigation because, as you indicated, Israeli authorities have not cooperated with the government. That's information I've received from the State Department. In other words, requests to deny [sic] the soldier in question or other members of the IDF unit have been denied. So, it's not an independent investigation.

But it does shed very important light on the conduct of the IDF unit in question on the day of the shooting of Shireen, and also, more broadly, reaches conclusions about the conduct of other IDF units in the West Bank. And it's my view that the report should be declassified, because it is important to getting to accountability in the shooting death of Shireen Abu Akleh, and I believe its release will help save lives, going forward.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what has the Biden administration said about releasing this document? And what process does it have to go through?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, they have not yet responded to the request to release the document. I should say that in this particular case, the final classification process has not yet been completed. The overall report that I reviewed, after much insistence, has — is classified "top secret," but it has actually not gone through its final classification process.

So, we are very focused right now on making the case that it's important to release the findings of this document to ensure greater accountability in the shooting death of this American citizen and journalist — it includes important information on the killing of Shireen — and because I believe that it will reveal additional information that will — would, hopefully, result in more accountability for IDF units on the West Bank, something that President Biden has called for and something that Secretary Blinken has called for.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Van Hollen, how does this report differ from the U.S. security coordinator's report from last year, which you were very critical of?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, as it turns out, last year's report was not really a report. It was just a very cursory finding, a conclusion based on a very preliminary review, not of independent information, but information that had been provided by the Israeli government, by the Palestinian Authority. So, it turned out that there was no real report there when we asked for it.

So, now the USSC has conducted an extensive review of all the analyses that have been done, and reached certain judgments about what happened that day, and certain judgments, again, about the conduct of other IDF units. And I just think it's really important that this report, which is not a paragraph like the original, you know, findings, but an eight-page report — I believe it should be released.

AMY GOODMAN: And why is this report classified as "top secret" in the first place?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, that's a good question. And, you know, I think that the findings are clearly critical of the conduct of the IDF unit in question. And again, this is why Secretary Blinken has also called upon the government of Israel to review its rules of engagement on the West Bank. And he's been rebuffed. In other words, the government of Israel told him to go take a hike. And that's another reason it's really important that this report be released.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play for you Shireen Abu Akleh's niece. I interviewed her in December. This is Lina Abu Akleh.

LINA ABU AKLEH: We were actually very encouraged by the news that the FBI will be investigating. This is something we've been calling on from day one, since Shireen was a U.S. citizen, and it's the duty of the United States to investigate any crime carried out by a foreign army outside against a U.S. citizen. And we stand ready to support the U.S. in conducting this independent and thorough investigation, following all the evidence, where it leads up and down the chain of command. And we've seen how the Israeli army is unable and unwilling to investigate themselves. That's why it's really important for the FBI to be investigating. And we also hope that the United States, the FBI will employ all tools necessary to get the answers that we've been asking regarding the killing of Shireen, but also to lead to accountability and justice. That's what we want. We want there to be accountability. We want there to be justice.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that's Lina Abu Akleh, the niece of Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed on May 11, 2022, as she covered an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in occupied West Bank. Shireen is a U.S. citizen. Shireen is a Palestinian American journalist. Senator Chris Van Hollen, what obligation does the United States have when it believes another state — in this case, an ally, Israel — has killed a U.S. citizen?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, it's my belief that the United States has an absolute obligation to get to the bottom of what happened, to hold the individuals accountable, or, in this case, potentially, the IDF unit accountable. And that is something that we should do when you have the wrongful killing of a U.S. citizen.

Look, you know, President Biden has been eloquent about calling for the release of U.S. journalists who are currently detained around the world. He has been eloquent about trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Austin Tice, as have I in both those other cases, determined to try to make sure that American citizens and journalists are protected. That same protection needs to extend to American citizen and journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. And that is the obligation of the U.S. government, and it is a still-unfulfilled obligation.

AMY GOODMAN: The FBI has also opened an investigation into the case. Do you know anything about this investigation, Senator?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, my understanding is the FBI investigation is ongoing, although the FBI will not publicly confirm whether or not the investigation is ongoing. But my understanding is the FBI investigators have talked to some people. But you raised a very important point, which is that the FBI will also, ultimately, require the cooperation of the government of Israel to be able to make any final conclusions with respect to an independent investigation, right? The investigation done by the U.S. security coordinator was not an independent investigation because he was not allowed to interview witnesses, including members of the IDF unit in question. And the FBI, in my view, is going to have a very difficult time making independent judgments as to exactly what happened that day, without the cooperation of the government of Israel. And that is another reason it's important that the Biden administration press harder.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you going to demand that at least the FBI, even if they don't have access on Israel's side, to the Palestinian journalists who were there that day, one of whom was shot, who were not contacted for this report?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, the FBI certainly should be interviewing all the witnesses, including the witnesses that you just mentioned, the Al Jazeera journalists that were on the ground, and others. Yes, the FBI should be doing all of that.

AMY GOODMAN: And did the U.S. security coordinator's report shed any light on Israeli claims of crossfire, since video footage and eyewitnesses dispute this? And also, since you read it, did the report confirm whether or not there is more body-camera footage from the IDF unit from the moments around the shooting?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, I can't get into the details of the report, because it is still classified. But let me just say the conclusions of the report, I believe, if made public, would result in saving lives and, I do believe, would bring more accountability to this case, because that does shed very important light on the conduct and misconduct of the IDF unit in question. So, this is exactly why I think it's important that the report be declassified.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask a final question. The first USSC report found no reason to believe the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh was intentional. Does this new report come to a different conclusion?

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, this new report cannot shed any new light on the question of intentionality, because the USSC was denied access to the witnesses. You know, it's my view that you can only get to the state of mind of individuals by interviewing the individual who pulled the trigger, as well as those that were immediately around that soldier. And so long as that access is denied, you can't shed any more new light on that question.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Chris Van Hollen, I want to thank you for being with us, Democratic senator from Maryland, calling for the release of the U.S. government report on the shooting death of the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

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