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THE ABSURD TIMES
Latuff again. He was once voted the 3rd most anti-Semitic person(s) in the world. This is quite an achievement as 4th place was occupied by European Soccer (Football) fans and there are millions of them. After we pointed this out, it seems that the list is no longer published. At least, we have not seen any mention of it.
GAZA
The term "anti-Semitic" no longer has any meaning or value. It may have been of use when it was developed in the 19th Century, and certainly in the mid-20th, but since the 60s with the attack on the Liberty and then subsequent actions, the term is meaningless. The slogan NEVER AGAIN is also meaningless. There will never be another holocaust and everyone knows it. Even AIPAC knows it. It is simply a tool to attack critics of Israel and has less value in that respect every day. There are still Jewish voices that crusade for peace, but the power and force is against them. [Ed. Note: actually, the "romance" between American Jews and Israel is declining to a great degree and many Jewish anti-Israel groups have and are forming. In addition, as individuals, attitudes towards Israel have become increasingly negative. More on this is the next edition.]
RECENT ACTIONS should have buried the term forever. Tens of thousands, unarmed, Palestinians were maimed or wounded, at least 60 killed, also unarmed, while the wussy Kushner and Donald secret love Ivanka spoke of opening the Amerikan embassy in Jerusalem and the fascist and racist Netenyahu spoke of this as a step towards. A New York Newspaper, incidentally, ran the headline over a photo of her that read DADDY'S LITTLE GOUHL. When a New York newspaper is getting on your case over Israel, you are in trouble.
No, the closest thing to a Nazi concentration camp today is Gaza. Israel even rations the number of calories per day that are allowed into Gaza. It has been called the worlds largest open air prison.
The Palestinian ambassador to the United States recently said that the future of Palestine is Multi-Nationalism, meaning that the United States has finally and officially lost its facade as an honest broker in the area. There is little more to say.
Here is a full report:
Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 2,700 more for protesting Monday's opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the Israeli occupation. It was the deadliest day for Palestinian protesters since they launched the nonviolent Great March of Return on March 30. Palestinian leaders are accusing the Israeli military of carrying out war crimes during Monday's crackdown. More protests and a general strike across the Palestinian territories are planned for today. We get an update from Gaza with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Funerals are being held across Gaza today, after Israeli forces killed at least 61 unarmed protesters Monday in the deadliest day since residents of Gaza began a series of nonviolent protests six weeks ago at the Gaza border. Twenty-seven hundred Palestinian protesters were also injured. Monday's massacre came on the same day as the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Today, Palestinians across the Occupied Territories have launched a general strike to mark 70 years since the Nakba, or Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes after the state of Israel was formed.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, the Palestinian permanent observer to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, condemned Israel's actions.
RIYAD MANSOUR: Of course, this massacre is taking place at the same time when the United States of America, illegally and unilaterally and in a provocative way, is opening its embassy. It is very, very tragic that they're celebrating an illegal action while Israel is killing and injuring thousands of Palestinian civilians. This is the life of the Palestinian people. And those who think that opening the embassy open doors to peace, let them look at what is really happening in the Gaza Strip. Is killing 45 civilians and injuring 2,000 would be helpful to open doors for peace, or is it deepening the resentment and atmosphere of hatred between people, instead of moving in the direction of peace?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Meanwhile, in Washington, White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah called the deaths of the Palestinians propaganda. He made the comment in response to a question from a reporter.
JESSICA STONE: Jared Kushner, in his speech, pointed a finger at the Palestinians, saying they were responsible for provoking violence. But given the fact that it's only Palestinians who are being killed, should Israel not shoulder some of the blame?
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY RAJ SHAH: Well, as I said earlier, we believe Hamas bears the responsibility. But this is a propaganda attempt. I mean, this is a gruesome and unfortunate propaganda attempt. I think the Israeli government has spent weeks trying to handle this without violence. And we find it very unfortunate.
JESSICA STONE: But people were throwing rocks 50 meters from the wall and were faced with sniper attack. I mean, is the White House in denial of the split-screen reality that's occurring?
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY RAJ SHAH: Again, we believe that Hamas is responsible for this.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today's show in Gaza, where we're joined by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. He's a Puffin fellow at The Nation Institute.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Sharif, you are right there on the front line in Gaza, where the—in front of the border between Israel and Gaza. Sixty-one people, the Israeli military killed yesterday. Describe what happened. Twenty-seven hundred others injured?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: That's right, Amy. I mean, we're on the spot, just east of Gaza City, where the most casualties took place. Twenty-seven people were killed here, according to the Ministry of Health. And it was a scene of chaos, in many ways, with burning tires, tear gas, young men throwing rocks and these kites flying over. But you have to understand that the sniper bullets don't come in quick succession. It's not a barrage of fire. It's methodical. It's patient. It's precise. You hear a shot, and someone falls down. Then his bloodied body is carried away. You wait a few minutes, you hear another shot, and another body falls. And that's how 1,350 people were shot yesterday—slowly, by Israel. And the death toll now has gone to over 60. The number of injured is 2,700, over 2,700. And there was funerals, of course, yesterday and today. Today I went to the house of Laila al-Ghandour, who is an [8-month-old] baby.
You have to understand also, you know, this is a very large space. And there's the front line, and you can just see kind of behind me—I'll just point. In the background now, there's some youth burning tires. And just on your left, you'll see some mounds. And those sand mounds are where Israeli sniper nests are. I don't know if you can see the canopies or not. There's a much, much smaller turnout today. Very few people have actually come today. And we can talk about that in a little bit. But so, that's where a lot of the people were shot, kind of closer to the border area. But many people were shot not close, and many people were killed far away, as well. So, where I am standing, people were shot and killed.
And Laila al-Ghandour, an [8-month-old] child, was probably around where I was, according to her family. Her uncle was holding her in his arms. They were watching from far away what was going on. And an Israeli drone came above them and dropped tear gas in the area where they were. And she eventually died of suffocation. She turned blue. They took her to the children's hospital initially, and then she died there. They took her to Shifa Hospital but couldn't revive her. And, of course, there was wails of grief today in the house as her small body was wrapped in a Palestinian flag and taken out of the house to the graveyard.
There's also Yazan al-Tobasi, a 24-year-old young man, like so many young men here, who couldn't find work, was unemployed, came every week, every Friday, to the protests here, to—his family says, to express his rights and to make—to send his message to the world that Gaza needs to be free. He was shot, they said, about a hundred yards away from the border fence. And the shot hit him in the right eye, and he died on the spot.
And there's also Alaa Asawafiri, who is 25 years old. She was actually shot the day before, very far away, you know, near one of the main tents. She was hit in the stomach. And she's now fighting for her life. And she actually has a speech impediment, the result of her mother, when she was pregnant with her, inhaling a lot of tear gas 25 years ago here in Gaza, which caused complications with the pregnancy. So, she was injured, you know, in the womb, and now she's fighting for her life 25 years later after being struck with a bullet.
We went to Shifa Hospital later in the day, when the crowds started to leave, and it was just a scene of utter chaos. The hospital itself was just bursting at the seams. This is the largest hospital in Gaza. And there was blood—you know, the floor was slippery with blood. There was just dozens and dozens of men and boys shot, many of them in their legs, wincing and screaming in pain. I spoke to a doctor who had worked there for 17 years, and he said he had never seen a day like this. The Palestinian Red Crescent had deployed 58 ambulances yesterday in Gaza, and it wasn't enough to carry the wounded. They started using their administrative cars to ferry people back and forth to hospitals and try and give them care.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sharif—
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: So, it was really a devastating day. Go ahead.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sharif, I wanted to ask you: In terms of the distance between the line of Israeli soldiers and the actual protesters, could you give us a sense of how far apart they are? Because, obviously, Israel is claiming that their soldiers are in danger. They're also claiming that Hamas is using the protest to insert armed fighters into Israeli territory. Could you respond to those claims, as well, from what you can tell?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, let me just—let me just show you what it looks like. So, just over here to my right, you can see these—the border is right there. And I don't know if you can see this mound. The cameraman should be focusing on one of them. And that's where the snipers are. So there's three sets of fences. There's three sets of fences, barbed wire, that's set up, and then two more, and then the main fence. And then you have these snipers there. So, many of the people who are approaching and getting close, they'll get really close to the first piece of barbed wire. A lot of them try and put hooks on it and pull it away. They fling, using slings and slingshots. They try and fire on the soldiers. But I would say most of those people are more than, you know, 50 yards away. And they're throwing rocks at these soldiers. Some people do manage to cross. They cross in. But even then, no one has any guns. They have either a Molotov cocktail or a rock. And really, it's very hard to imagine how any of them pose an imminent threat to life to any soldier. And the evidence of this is that not a single soldier has been injured. So, and, honestly, you know, a lot of these people who were shot, as I mentioned before, weren't shot up at the fence. A large number were. I, myself, saw, when I approached near the first set of barbed wire, people being shot just standing there. Someone was shot where I'm standing right now, who was just facing and looking. So, you know, there's a lot of talk of this being clashes and so forth, but there wasn't really clashes. There was no real threat to the other side, as far as I could see.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Sharif, can you talk about this coming together of today, the 70th anniversary of what's known as the Nakba—and if you can explain that word in Arabic for "Catastrophe"—and the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, sort of ceremonial because, in fact, it's not opening there right now, it remains in Tel Aviv as they build it?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. Today is the 70th anniversary to what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba. "Nakba," in Arabic, means "Catastrophe." And it marked the moment when, you know, something like 720,000 or 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes to Gaza, to here, to the West Bank and to countries like Lebanon and Jordan and Syria. And for 70 years, they have called for the right to return. There's a U.N. resolution that ensures the right to return. And for 70 years they've been denied that right. There is 1.9 million Palestinians living in Gaza right now; 1.3 [million] of them are refugees. They're recognized as refugees by the United Nations. There are eight sprawling refugee camps here, which have been here for decades. And, you know, so the right to return is something that is at the very core of the Palestinian issue, of the Palestinian national project, of the Palestinian cause. And that's why they call these marches the Great March of Return.
And the idea was to do a protest where they walk up to the border, and they said, "We will implement our right ourselves. We will cut the wires, and we will cross." Some people did, in fact, try and cut the wires, and they did cross, and they would quickly go back. A lot of them were shot when they did. But this was an attempt, because after decades of negotiations, negotiations have brought them nothing, except bigger prisons and a more—just something of a garrison state that they're living under, not even a state. So, this was a key issue, why this began on—this all began on March 30th, which is Land Day in Palestine, and it has continued every week.
And a lot of these issues are coming together here. It's the 70th anniversary of what they call the Nakba, calling for the right of return. It's the transfer of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and the feeling that Jerusalem becoming the capital of Israel is trying to be forcefully implemented. And, of course, it's about the siege in Gaza, which has gone on for 11 years and has made life utterly intolerable here. And, I mean, Jerusalem is very important to people here. Many of them have never been to Jerusalem. They can't go. They can't really go anywhere. Many of them have never left Gaza, because the borders are closed to them. And so, many of them were walking to these borders in this kind of protest. But also the siege has affected every aspect of life. And it's all of these things coming together—the right of return, the siege, the regional politics—that have given birth to this movement, which is not just Hamas. It includes Hamas. It includes Fatah. It includes PFLP, the main political parties. And it includes broad swaths of civil society. It's an idea that's been brewing for quite some time now. And they were hoping that it would bring some kind of result and some kind of change.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Sharif, the plans for today, the general strike that has been called, the protests across now not only Gaza but also throughout the West Bank, are they affected also by what took place yesterday, the Israeli military killing 61 people, it looks like is the total at this point, again, as you said, shooting over a thousand others, injuring 2,700 people?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: You're right. I mean, there was a strike also yesterday, and the strike is continuing today. But like I said, the numbers today are much, much smaller. I mean, it's actually the lowest turnout I've seen. We didn't see buses bringing in people, being organized and bringing in people, as we saw yesterday. We didn't hear on loudspeakers out of mosques and cars that drive around on the streets calling for people to come out. So there hasn't been the same kind of mobilization effort.
It's unclear at this point why exactly, if negotiations are happening. Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, went to Egypt, and apparently there's negotiations about the opening of the Rafah border, the only border crossing in Gaza that's not controlled by Israel.
It also may be the level of violence has quelled the numbers here somewhat—61 people, as I said, shot in this kind of slow and methodical way, and so many more injured. And when we're talking about the injured, you have to understand, as I mentioned yesterday, these are high-velocity bullets that really cause terrible damage to the body. Bones are pulverized. There's massive tissue damage, these massive gaping wounds. And many of these people are going to suffer long-term consequences. Many of these people are going to be disabled for the rest of their lives. So it really had a devastating effect.
And again, people here insist that this was peaceful. You know, people did use rocks. They did try and fly these kites with these makeshift burning items on the bottom. Some of them fell—I mean, some of them fell on this side of the border. It really wasn't a very effective technique. But they insisted this is peaceful resistance, because there are a lot of weapons in Gaza. Hamas and other groups do have rockets that they can fire, but the decision was made by this combined leadership not to use any weapons, not to fly any flags other than the Palestinian flag, not to have any military uniforms. And that was adhered to 100 percent. And so, this was supposed to be a different kind of struggle in Gaza than ones we've seen in the past.
AMY GOODMAN: We're speaking to Sharif Abdel Kouddous, a Democracy Now! correspondent, Puffin fellow at The Nation Institute, speaking to us from the front lines in Gaza. When we come back, we will broaden this discussion—we'll be going to Jerusalem, we'll be going to Sweden, we'll be speaking here in New York—about this 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic word for "Catastrophe," the expulsion or forcing to flee hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and the opening, the ceremonial opening, of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem yesterday. This is Democracy Now! Back with you in a moment.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Theme of Ali" from The Battle of Algiers, here on Democracy Now! I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn now to Jerusalem. Budour Hassan is with us, a Palestinian writer, project coordinator for the Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights. We want to first go to what happened yesterday in Jerusalem, not far from where Budour is right now. We want to turn to Jared Kushner, the senior adviser to his father-in-law, the president of the United States, Donald Trump. He represented Trump at Monday's opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. During his remarks, he described the protesters in Gaza as "part of the problem."
JARED KUSHNER: As we have seen from the protests of the last month and even today, those provoking violence are part of the problem and not part of the solution.
AMY GOODMAN: But those remarks were later excised from the official version of events.
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.
Funerals are being held across Gaza today for the 61 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, which opened fire into crowds of unarmed demonstrators protesting the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the ongoing Israeli occupation. Among the victims shot dead by an Israeli sniper was 30-year-old Fadi Abu Salmi, who used a wheelchair and had both his legs amputated. Another victim was 8-month-old Laila al-Ghandour, who died early this morning after inhaling tear gas fired by the Israeli military, including tear gas dropped by Israeli drones. For more, we speak with Muhammad Shehada, writer and activist from Gaza and a student of development studies at Lund University, Sweden. He writes for Haaretz, The Forward and other publications. His latest article for The Forward is titled "All We in Gaza Want Is That Israel Recognize Our Humanity."
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to move from Jerusalem, where we've just lost our satellite feed, to Sweden, to Muhammad Shehada, writer and activist from the Gaza Strip and student of development studies at Lund University in Sweden, writing for Haaretz, The Forward and other publications. His latest piece for The Forward is headlined "All We in Gaza Want Is That Israel Recognize Our Humanity."
If you could, Muhammad, talk about what is taking place right now? Your brother is on the front lines in Gaza of the protests?
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: He actually was. He recently managed to get out of Gaza, after two years of waiting on Rafah border crossing, which was a miraculous divine intervention.
But speaking of the Gazan protest, virtually everybody I know in Gaza, almost all my friends, are going there to the front lines. And the problem that pushes them to the wall is that life at the refugee camps, they experience death thousands of times a day, while at the borders they either break free or they die for once. The point is that people are trying to undertake a mass jailbreak out of what David Cameron, the prime minister of—the former prime minister of Britain, called an "open-air prison," what a Haaretz editorial calls a "Palestinian ghetto," and what Israeli distinguished scholar Baruch Kimmerling calls "the largest concentration camp ever to exist."
Then you have the call for return, which is the main theme of the protest. And that represents even deeper and deeper desperation amongst the masses. The call for return does not constitute, what Israel claims, an attempt to destroy the state of Israel, but it rather shows that Gazans have given up about the place where they are caged. They are trying to right the only wrong in their life, that causes all their misery—namely, being born on the wrong side of the fence. And that separation fence is what separates between life and death, future and going nowhere.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Muhammad, I wanted to ask you about this issue of the open-air prison. Most people around the world do not understand the—how contained the residents of Gaza are. Can you talk about how difficult it is even to get in or out of Gaza, for either Palestinians or even other international visitors?
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, for the Gaza Strip, what you have is, as Harvard scholar Sara Roy calls, 2 million people, most of whom who are children, are being slowly poisoned by the water they drink and the soil on which they plant. Moreover, those 2 million people are not allowed—virtually, not allowed to leave at all. Gaza is completely sealed from sea, air and land.
There are two border crossings that are almost virtually permanently closed. The Israeli border crossing, only about 500 people could manage to leave Gaza annually. If you put that into numbers, that's absolutely nothing of the population. The Egyptian border crossing is far more disappointing and disheartening. It opens three days a month, at most. That's the best of it. Last year, it opened about 14 days in the entire year. And when it opens, Palestinians experience endless waiting, suffocating heat, blackmail, and detention in rottening cells. What you have on the Rafah border crossing, from my own experience, is waiting for at least 18 months to come out of it. Then you are brought to this room of the Egyptian side of the border. You sleep there the whole night. Every 10 minutes, an Egyptian officer would come out and announce another name, and that name would be thrown back to Gaza without further explanation. And you absolutely don't want to be the next one. So you would do anything at all not to be sent back into prison.
And the easiest way to get out is paying a bribe between $2,000 to $10,000. If you put that in proportion with the Palestinian GDP in Gaza per capita, it's completely unaffordable. People, absolutely—70 percent of the population are unemployable—not only unemployed, there are no opportunities. You have an economy that is completely compromised and destroyed. You don't have any person who could afford that amount of money, except for very few exceptions. This is called the coordinated passages. If you pay that amount, you could easily come out of Gaza. Otherwise, you would sleep there at least for one or two days in that room, detained, until you get your name sent back to Gaza.
And then, if you, by divine intervention, manage to break out of the siege and your name is accepted for departure, you will be sent in transit, in buses shuttled to the borders, to the airport directly, the Cairo International Airport, like a detainee or prisoner. On the way, you have at least tens, if not hundreds, of checkpoints, military checkpoints, in the Sinai Peninsula. And at each one of them, you are stopped, inspected, kicked out of the bus. Your bags are emptied, looted. Whatever they please, they could take. And then you proceed to the next one. And they are highly specialized at each checkpoint. At the airport, you are deposited in what is called the transit room, which is basically an underground prison cell. It has a door handle from the outside, not from the inside. When you go inside it, you will have absolutely nothing. They take all your electronic devices. They take your bags. They just send you in to sleep on rottening mattresses, until your flight is due.
And for people to come in, basically, Israel denies entry for virtually any person who's trying to come to Gaza, with very limited exceptions of press personnel with press credentials, international NGOs, high officials, etc., etc. But there has been many cases where Israel denied entry for even the highest ranks in the United Nations. If you take, for instance, the high commissioner of human rights, Zeid bin Ra'ad, he was denied entry into Gaza several times. If you take the diplomatic missions in the West Bank, the European diplomatic missions, I know many of the representatives there who were never allowed to Gaza except once in their entire servitude.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, we just spoke to two leading lawyers: Vince Warren, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Katherine Franke, a Columbia law professor. They went to Israel. They were deported right back to the United States. Muhammad, you have written many pieces, for The Forward, for Haaretz, the newspaper in Israel. Among the pieces, "What If It Were Your Child Killed in Gaza?" And you start it off by saying, "My mother started to scream on Friday, when she learned [that] my 18-year-old brother went to [the] Gaza border protests without telling her. She cried on and off all day [long], in a state of hysterical panic until he returned back home safely [late] at night." And you wrote an opinion piece for Haaretz, "Marching in Gaza, My Brother Risks Death—to Feel Free," and "We Must Speak Up Against Israel's Slaughter in Gaza," another piece you did for Vice. Muhammad, talk about the organizing of these mass protests that have been going on since March 30th, supposedly culminating today.
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: For the mass protest, the main target or goal is basically finding life. People's livelihood has been completely destroyed behind the fence. Their future is glittering, literally, after the fence, if they manage to break out of Gaza. Although, virtually, these are waiting, they are no longer prisoners. And that's exactly what they want. The separation fence is a window for the people of Gaza to always stare at Israelis on the other side leading a normal and organized life. This window does not awaken only jealousy, but also extreme anger and outrage. For how come on Earth that the entire world is watching 2 million people chained to the ground, dying slowly, and doing absolutely nothing?
And then you have the Israeli response to the nonviolent protesters. The logic behind it is basically best captured in recent footage released by the Israeli NGO B'Tselem, where one Israeli soldier in the West Bank advises his fellow soldier not to shoot at people from a distance, but to actually wait until they come closer, and then turn one of them into a cautionary tale, because the soldier believes that this will prevent the rest from throwing rocks on the soldiers, when one of them is put on a wheelchair for the rest of his life. This is exactly the same scenario repeating itself in Gaza. Israel is determined to teach Gazans a lesson: that nonviolence is not the way forward. Nonviolence cannot get you anywhere.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Muhammad, I wanted to ask you—
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: And for the people—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the visit of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the daughter and son-in-law of the president, to Jerusalem yesterday, because the White House talks about a propaganda effort, but, really, this visit, in some degree, was a propaganda effort, because there is no embassy. This is just—
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Exactly.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This was just to announce the beginning of creating the embassy there, moving it, but there's no embassy there. Could you talk about the impact on you and other Palestinians of this decision of the Trump administration?
MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, the decision of the Trump administration represents, for most young people in Gaza, one extreme indication. The world is moving on. The status quo will not only be perpetuated, but is going to be worse. In Gaza, yesterday is remembered with such fondness. Today is insufferable misery, unbearable, slow death. And tomorrow will be worse. That's the rule. And if you're sick of your life, two shekels, half a dollar, will take you to the borders. This is the pattern of life that we have here.
The visit of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to Jerusalem yesterday was disappointing, in the sense that the people of Gaza are relatively resilient to what they have endured and experienced. The tribulations, unspeakable tribulations of life, they pass through it alive. But the thing that kills their hopes the most is seeing that the world is standing ignorant and turning a blind eye to what is happening. And while at least 60 people in Gaza were killed and massacred in a bloodbath, Jared Kushner was making an optimistic and happy speech about the success of Israel and the strong American-Israel relationships that are based on democracy. And then, what was the most extreme about it is, I think, what you mentioned already: when Jared was saying that the people in Gaza who are marching and risking their lives and walking towards death bare-chested are part of the problem, not the solution. Then what's the solution, in his head? Just exterminating the entire population.
AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad Shehada, we want to thank you for being with us, writer and activist from the Gaza Strip, a student of development studies at Lund University.
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.
The Israeli military's massacre of Palestinians Monday has sparked widespread international condemnation. South Africa has recalled its ambassador to Israel. Turkey has recalled both its ambassadors to Israel and the United States and has declared three days of mourning starting on Friday. Palestinian leaders have accused the Israeli military of committing war crimes, but the United States has blocked a U.N. Security Council statement calling for an independent investigation into the killings. Meanwhile, Israeli officials have tried to claim Hamas is behind the protests in efforts to justify the killings. For more, we speak with Tareq Baconi, author of the book "Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance." He is a policy member at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network and a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. Our guest is Tareq Baconi, author of the book Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Tareq, I wanted to ask you, in the few minutes we've got left, in terms of what could potentially—who might be able to hold Israel responsible for this latest carnage that's been occurring now for weeks, really? And what, under international law, might be possible in terms of the international community demanding accountability?
TAREQ BACONI: I think it's really important in the context of everything we've seen today, from Sharif and Muhammad and others, to stress that the Gaza Strip isn't a separate border or entity that's bordering Israel. Gaza is under occupation. It continues to be under Israel's military control. Israel controls the population registry. It controls all entry and exit of goods, of people. It even controls the number of calories that go into the Gaza Strip to avoid mass starvation. So, what that means is that this idea of infiltration is just misrepresenting reality on the ground. These people aren't infiltrating. They are people under occupation. And Israel has the responsibility, under international law, to protect civilians under its occupation. Instead of that, we see Israel presenting Gazans as people who are looking to swarm into Israel and break this border, which is patently false.
So, the Palestinians have a number of options in front of them. They are able to take this to international courts. The efforts by the international—by the Palestinian leadership to take Palestinian concerns to the International Criminal Court have often been suspended because of the belief in the peace process, because, under President Obama, they were asked to stop from taking measures to the international court because they were promised that the peace process would lead to an outcome. Those promises are clearly unmet, and there's clearly no belief anymore in the possibility of a peace process, certainly not under American mediation. So, in the absence of that, Palestinians have to push forward on international measures with the international community and break away from America's hold on this idea of negotiations, of mediating between the parties.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Tareq, as we wrap up this show, the final figures—we've been talking about 61 people killed in one day, the deadliest day of the Palestinian protests, Israeli military killing them, gassing them yesterday in Gaza. But the total figure since just March 30th, the six weeks of protest?
TAREQ BACONI: Yes. So, over the past six weeks, we've had around 110—109 are the latest numbers—of people who have been killed. Those are—the vast majority of them are unarmed civilians. And more than 12,000 injured. Yesterday was worse than the combined six weeks leading up to yesterday. And this is the biggest killing since 2014, when Israel launched its largest military assault on the Gaza Strip to date, killing 2,500 people.
AMY GOODMAN: Tareq Baconi, we want to thank you for being with us. His book, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance.
And that does it for our show. Special thanks to Democracy Now!correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous in the field in Gaza.
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While the Israeli military was carrying out a massacre against Palestinian protesters in Gaza, senior members of the Trump administration gathered in Jerusalem for the opening of the U.S. Embassy. Among those who attended were President Trump's daughter, White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump; her husband, senior adviser Jared Kushner; and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. The Trump administration's decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem has sparked widespread condemnation, including in the city of Jerusalem itself, where demonstrators gathered Monday to protest the ceremony. For more, we speak with Budour Hassan, a Palestinian writer and project coordinator for the Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Stay with us, as we turn now to Budour Hassan. We've lost her on satellite in Jerusalem, but I think we have her on the phone, Palestinian writer and project coordinator for the Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights.
You were right there in Jerusalem, not far from the embassy office, I guess you could call it. Again, most of the work will continue for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. But your thoughts on the opening yesterday? How many people turned out in Jerusalem to protest it? Who went in?
BUDOUR HASSAN: There were hundreds of Palestinians in Jerusalem, both Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who came to protest the opening of the embassy. But to be honest, the protest wasn't just against the opening of the embassy. The protest was against the massacre that was taking place in Gaza, against Israeli impunity. And yesterday was a crowning moment of this impunity, because while Israelis and U.S. officials were celebrating the opening of the embassy, Palestinians in Gaza were being massacred.
And it was mainly—lots of the chants that were raised and chanted during the protest were to stress the right of return, because, as you know, we are marking the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. While we are credibly angry about the moving of the embassy, we know that this is one of the details, one of the manifestations of the ongoing U.S. support for Israel. But we're also aware that the root cause of what's going on right now is that has happened 70 years ago, is the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. And this ethnic cleansing is still ongoing, in Jerusalem, in the West Bank, in the—well, against Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab. And this is why we were protesting yesterday. We were protesting against the opening of the embassy, which symbolizes this long-standing U.S. support for Israel, but which is just one of many, many details of Israel's everyday oppression of Palestinians.
Obviously, many Palestinians who tried to make it to the embassy were prevented from arriving, were blocked. Some buses were blocked. There were also protests in the West Bank, which were crushed. But yesterday kind of exemplified how Israel uses different systems of oppression against Palestinians pertaining to where they are. So, Palestinians in Jerusalem, because Israel wants to convey an image of sovereignty over Jerusalem, so it uses different forms of oppression. It uses control, it uses [inaudible], it uses residency verification. While against Palestinians in the West Bank, it uses tear gas, it uses rubber bullets. While against the Palestinians in Gaza, it uses live bullets and fires and massacres people with sniper shots and bullets. But regardless of the position of Palestinians—and even also Palestinian citizens of Israel all also face daily oppression, racist laws and discrimination and exclusion, and their very existence is threatened.
But regardless of where we are as Palestinians, we feel that all of us are being targeted with different means, different [inaudible]. But to Israel, all of us are disposable. But there is a hierarchy of disposability. And the people of Gaza are treated as the most disposable. And this is why we also took to the streets yesterday, even though we were not many. But we wanted to show the people of Gaza that, for us, at least, they are not disposable, that we care for what's going on in Gaza, that we are part of the same people, and we share the same yearning for the right of return and for the liberation of all of Palestine.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to bring in Tareq Baconi, who's here with us in studio and a member of the Palestinian Policy Network and a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Your assessment of what this—what this latest carnage means in terms of the rest of the world reacting to having to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
TAREQ BACONI: I think this—what's happening on the ground now is a clear indication of the fact that there's a recalibration that's happening in the Palestinian national struggle. The Palestinian liberation project of the Palestinian Authority or of Hamas have both failed to provide Palestinians with rights. So what we're seeing is Palestinians taking measures into their own hands. We're seeing people starting to call for rights, going back to the roots of their struggle. Now, with Jerusalem off the table, we have Palestinians calling for the right of return, going back to demands that are rooted in 1948, not in 1967. And we're seeing Palestinians start to embrace mass mobilization, civil protest, nonviolent protest, which have always formed part of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, since 1948, but have often been hijacked by peace processes and negotiations that have gone nowhere. So what we're seeing on the ground now is a disintegration of this idea of diplomacy as a means for achieving Palestinian rights, and really going back to the roots, going back to the roots where people are marching out in numbers, demanding equality, demanding freedom, being fed up and disenchanted with their political leaders, and deciding to take measures into their own hands.
And I think Muhammad and Budour spoke very eloquently about how this really represents a coming together of Palestinians in their different cages, whether they're in the West Bank or East Jerusalem or Gaza, all protesting for the one thing that unites them, which is the right of return, which is equality, which is freedom. So, really, this is a position where Palestinians are at a moment of transition, where it's very clear that the political leadership has failed, where it's very clear that the Americans are completely behind Israel's expansionist policies, and where it's clear that Israel's right wing is becoming more brazen. They now speak openly of annexation. They now are able to call nonviolent protest "Hamas propaganda." And they get away with it with impunity in the international community. And so, what we're seeing now is a reassertion of those Palestinian rights that form the core of Palestinian nationalism.
AMY GOODMAN: Tareq Baconi is author of a new book that's just out called Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance. We'll be back with him in a moment.
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.
