Chapo Trap House - 844 - Journey to the End of the Night feat. Kavitha Chekuru & Sharif Abdel Kouddous (6/24/24)

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

We’re joined by journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous and filmmaker Kavitha Chekuru to discuss their new film The Night Won’t End: Biden’s War on Gaza. The film examines the lives of three families as they try to survive the continued assault on Gaza. Will and Felix discuss the film, the civilian toll of the war, the U.S. state departments continued obfuscation around civilian casualties, and the complete breakdown of international human rights law around the war. The film is available in its entirety on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECFpW5zoFXA&ab_channel=AlJazeeraEnglish

All I wanna do is hit the drum. All I wanna do is hit the drum. Hello, everybody. It's Monday, June 24. And today on the show, Felix and I are joined by journalist Sharif Abdul-Qadus and the filmmaker Kavitha Chekuru, who are behind a new documentary produced by the Al Jazeera Fault Lines program titled The Night Won't End. This is a documentary that examines Israeli war crimes against Palestinian civilians through the lens of three families in Gaza, and of course also looks at the US's role in this conflict. Sharif and Kavitha, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us. Kavitha, I want to start with you as the director of this film because I've said before on this show that the experience of witnessing this war, and to call it a war, sticks in my throat. It really doesn't do justice to what we've been seeing over the last nine months. But like, it has, if you wake up every day and look at your phone and see images of unspeakable human suffering and cruelty, even if, you know, no matter what you feel about it, I

think human beings have like a natural, like defense mechanism against it where you become numb to it, and after a while it just just seems sort of it can become commonplace. It just becomes a kind of kaleidoscope of horror. Kavitha, for you, like as the director of this movie, how do you feel about like take what this movie does is that when examining these three families, it takes them out of like your cell phone screen or an immediate video. And it gives images and voice to Palestinians in

Gaza that sort of like through film breaks out of the cell phone camera documentary footage. Could you talk about like why you think that's important and also just the practicality of producing this film, obtaining these interviews and obtaining the footage that you have in this film? Yeah, definitely. I mean, the first thing I want to say is that we couldn't have done any of this without these amazing journalists and filmmakers in Gaza, who did the filming and a lot of the reporting as well. And we're just really honored that we were able to work with them on this. And, you know, yeah, I think there is this risk that people kind of you know in like in doom scrolling that will just get numb to these yeah what we're seeing and i think that was kind of what the goals you know even with them you know we're approaching it.

It's a massive task to figure out how are we going to do this and you know within jazira there's obviously jazira is covering you know what's happening in gaza. Obviously, Jazeera is covering what's happening in Gaza completely, 24 hours a day. But for us, our kind of job within the network is to look at the US role in a story, which obviously in this case is incredibly clear. And so one of the things we wanted was kind of picking essentially parts of this war and families that have experienced those specific things to show, you know, as the, and, you know, tracing them alongside the Biden response. So one of those obviously was the massive bombing campaign. So we wanted to have, you know, focus on one airstrike and how it happened and what it did to that family. And then the next part of it was, you know, going through the war was when, you know,

the quote unquote safe zones, such a ridiculous ridiculous term when those happened and the fact that those safe zones were then and continued to still be attacked. So that was the Algoff family in Homs-Unis. And then the next part of it was you know one of when we were really starting to kind of figure out how we were going to do this film one of the things you know in December is when we started to get a lot of the allegations about extrajudicial or summary executions, right, by ground troops, because the ground troops by that point had a really firm hold of the North. And so we decided that we wanted to investigate a ground attack, if at all possible. So we kind of had those three things as what we were going to do.

And as we were working on it, the attack on Hind Rajab and her family happened, and we decided that we had to include that as well. And in terms of working with the journalists, the way we coordinated it was a lot of… It was difficult, I mean, because they don't have… even on the ground with each other and with the interviewees that they were filming, they don't have steady cell phone access. And a lot of times, a lot of the interviewees didn't have cell phone access. So the team on the ground, they couldn't just call Hinn Rajab's mother, Wasam, to say, hey, can we come meet you tomorrow? They actually had to go walk to her place, took a couple of hours and go ask her if she, one, would do the interview and two, when she

could do it. And they filmed with her twice actually so even just like those logistics were a huge part of it and You know the other part of it It's in terms of sending the footage that probably sounds like it's a small thing But it's not they had to getting internet access isn't steady and even getting to a place where you could connect to the internet Mint going up high. And so which wasn't always safe. So yeah, it was kind of a for you know, for them a massive undertaking.

And they, you know, they, they did. That's what all these journalists in Gaza are having to do, just to show everyone what's happening. I saw Kavitha I saw an interview with you did on Democracy Now. Yeah, you talked about how your colleagues in Gaza had to like go to rooftops to get signal to upload this footage. And this is in the context of something that the movie discusses quite a bit, which is the use of quad copters that are just these roaming sniper drones that just shoot anyone,

seemingly shoot anyone that they find on the street. So I mean, it's really not an exaggeration to say that your Palestinian colleagues in Gaza risked their lives and some of them even lost their lives delivering this footage. No one that worked on the documentary was killed. I'm very thankful to say. However, Hussein, who was the producer in the North in December, his four-year-old daughter Salma was killed by ground troops. She was shot by ground troops right in front of Hussein.

Now of the three families profiled in this documentary, probably the most well-known of them will be Hindra Jobs' family because her name has become something of a global rallying cry. I watched your film today and as soon as I got done watching it, I went on social media and I saw this exchange which took place today between State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller and a journalist and it references directly the forensic investigation of this killing that you reference in the movie. And I would just like to play this for you and get both of your thoughts. A UK-based research group concluded Israeli tank likely killed six-year-old Palestinian

child Heng Rajab. Investigation revealed that Rajab's car was hit with 355 bullets, and it's not plausible that Israeli tank couldn't see children inside the car. Have you seen the reports and do you have any updates on the investigation? It's been more than four months and a lot of my colleagues have been asking about that. Yeah so we have seen the reports and I will tell you what our latest interaction with the government of Israel is about this. So we went to the government of Israel and pressed them for information and they told us that there were no IDF tanks operating in the area, no IDF forces operating in the area at the time

of that attack, which I believe is something they've also said publicly. After further reporting, we went back to them and pressed them again. And so what they told us is that they went to the UN organizations, they went to the Palestinian Red Crescent, they asked for information, because you've seen all those organizations quoted in stories, they asked for information that they could use to further an investigation and no one provided them with any information. That's the latest that we have on the ground. So who shot the 355 tank bullets?

I'm not able to, look I'm not on the ground, I can't offer any kind of assessment about this. That's why we've called for an independent, we've called for the government of Israel to conduct an investigation. I can't speak to what their internal processes look like, all I can tell you is what they've told us and what they've said is they went to the UN and the Palestinian Red Crescent and asked them to supply information that would help them and what they claim is that they were were given none. But it's not concluded yet the investigation or is it

I would refer you to the government of Israel for that I can I can only tell you what we what they have told us. Okay Sharif what I mean in light of this documentary what what do you make of the Israeli claim given voice by the US State Department that there were quote, no tanks in the area? I can say it was a lot of confidence that this is a lie. We have different kinds of evidence to belie that claim. Firstly, there's satellite imagery taken that day that shows Israeli tanks up the road from where the car that Hind was in with her relatives was parked at the gas station. There's a satellite image that shows the tanks. Secondly, we have two recordings of Leanne, 15 years old, telling the Red Crescent that there's a tank right next to her and it's shooting, and then you hear the shooting.

And thirdly, you hear Hind also, six-year-old, saying there's a tank right next to the car. So that's also testimony that is evidence. And finally, through the analysis that we worked with, with Forensic Architecture and Earshot, they analyzed the phone call with Leanne, where you hear 64 gunshots. Those gunshots are all similar in characteristics, similar in loudness, and they happen at a

speed of about 900 grams per minute, which is an excess of what an AK-47 rifle could fire and is consistent with the machine gun that's mounted on a Mercado tank. So all of this evidence belies these claims and Matt Miller and the State Department have been asked about this investigation, so-called investigation by the Israeli government, time and time again, ever since Hind was killed at the end of January. And clearly nothing's happening. These Israeli investigations are used as a smoke screen to delay any accountability forever, basically, to the extent that the leading human rights group in Israel, B'Tselem, has

refused to cooperate with the Israeli military on any investigations because they're basically what's been called a legal iron dome. They just say they're investigating, but they don't actually investigate. And there's very rarely, hardly ever any accountability. I don't know if you caught it there, but Miller almost said we're supporting an independent investigation before catching himself. But that the killing of a hind and her cousin is but merely like one facet of this atrocity. Could you talk about the Palestinian Red Crescent?

And now the thing is, this is the most well known atrocity in this documentation, the one I was aware of. But to anyone to our listeners, you do not really understand what happened here until you listen to the what are essentially the 911 calls to the Palestinian Red Crescent. Could you render for our listeners what happened and who they were talking to on the phone and what happened when help was dispatched? So in a nutshell, basically, I mean, the story of this family is actually quite common in Gaza, unfortunately, with Sam Hamada, whose Hinn's mother, fled her home in Gaza City in the north on orders from the Israeli military to go south. They went south.

The south continued to be bombed. So they made the decision to go back north. They go back north. They again can't find safety there. There's very heavy bombing on January 28th in the evening in the neighborhood of where they were seeking shelter. They decide the next day they have to leave. So, with Sam's uncle Bashar leaves with the wife, his wife and children, including Hind, six-year-old Hind and his own daughter, 15-year-old Layen. They get in a car and the idea was he's going

to go take them to another area, come back, get Hind's mother and leave. As soon as they leave, like two blocks away, Hind's mother hears shooting. They hear people calling for an ambulance. So Hind's mother flees on foot. She immediately starts calling her uncle who was driving the car. No one picks up. No one picks up. Finally, his daughter picks up 15 year old Layen.

She says, everyone in the car is dead, except for me and Hind. We've both been shot, we're bleeding, and everyone else is dead. So Hind's mother then and the family start calling the red crescent in Ramallah to try and find a way to get them rescued in Gaza got the right question dispatches and got the right person from a call that same number and picks up. I'm the answer is the tank is right next to us screaming sing the tank is right next to us and then you hear. 64 shots in quick succession and they end screaming and then essentially is killed. The line cuts, they call back, the red crescent calls back and rings, it rings, it rings.

Who picks up this time? Hind, six years old. They asked her, where was the girl we were just talking to? She said, she's dead. So you have the six year old girl now on the phone, surrounded by her dead relatives in a car. She says, there's a tank right next to me. Please come rescue me.

Please come rescue me. In Gaza, the Red Crescent and emergency workers have to seek approval from the Israeli military, and they coordinate this through the Red Cross, which then coordinates through COGAT, which is the wing of the Israeli military that deals with the occupied territories, to get approval.

It takes three hours for the Israeli military to finally grant approval. During this time, the emergency workers are on the phone with him. They have this entire recording speaking with her. She's scared. She's injured. She's bleeding. She continually asks for help. She says injured. She's bleeding. She continually asks for help. She says, please come rescue me.

The Israeli military sends a map with an approved route that the red Crescent provided to us and that we show in the film for the ambulance workers to go. They're then immediately dispatched. We have the recording of the red Crescent and Amala speaking to the drivers as they're going. He said, are you working? Is your siren on? Are your lights on? He says, the lights are on, but my siren isn't on.

And then you hear a loud bang. And what that was essentially was they got hit with a direct hit from a tank shell. So despite getting approval from the Israeli military, after three hours they go to the area and they're hit. And it wasn't until 12 days later when the Israeli forces withdrew from the area that civil defense workers could go in, that they found out, they confirmed what everyone had suspected. Hind had died.

And Hind, by the way, was on the phone during this whole time. Her voice continually gets fainter and fainter. Her last words were, she said, I'm bleeding from my mouth. So they told her, okay, just use your dress and wipe your mouth with the sleeve of your dress. And she says, I don't want to upset my mother and get the dress dirty.

They had patched her mother in. Her mother says, don't worry, my love, just do that and I will clean the dress for you. And that was the last we ever heard of him. And when they arrived 12 days later, they found the entire family dead. They found just a couple of a few dozen meters away, the ambulance completely destroyed what looked like a direct hit. And we do an investigation with forensic architecture that shows the entry and exit of the munition. And this case subverted around the world because we have this recording of Hind

that was then broadcast and she became an icon of both Palestinian suffering and Palestinian resilience. Sharif, the moment you talk about at the end of the call where she she says she doesn't want to get her dress dirty, absolutely destroyed me. And just like speaking personally, I don't have kids, but I can for anyone who does, especially small children, watching this documentary will be almost unbearable. And it's made even more so by the fact that this is a daily reality for like two million people in Gaza right now.

And then, speaking of the Red Crescent Ambulance, I mean, just the sentence alone, the ambulance was hit with an anti-tank shell, should tell you everything. These are munitions that are used to fight armor in a war that's being used to obliterate an ambulance. And then you, I mean like, and then your colleagues in Gaza have, you know, footage of the gas station where this occurred. The remnants of the ambulance is still there, as are the spent rounds on the floor.

And the Heinz case is the most well-known one, but like the thing about this movie is in the three cases that you examine, these are really each of them stand-ins for so many other stories in Gaza. These are just but a keyhole glimpse. Could you talk about how each one of these stories, Sharif, sort of explicates a different horror or aspect of this war and the American hypocrisy and lies to justify it. Like for instance, how about, could we talk a little bit about the Salem family? Yeah, the Salem family undergo two massacres actually and they feature in the beginning and the end of the film. So early on in the war their neighborhood in Gaza City was bombed and they were forced to flee their home to search for safety. Again, this is a very typical story for so many hundreds of thousands in Gaza. They went to stay with relatives in

a building not too far from their home. On the morning of December 11th, a massive airstrike hits their building. Over 100 people are killed. Nearly all of them are from their family, their extended family. We worked with a nonprofit group, Air Wars, who investigated the strike and documented as close as possible all the names of the people who were killed in that strike. They estimate about 50 children were killed in that strike alone. And so this is a pattern of wiping out families across generations. So that's an airstrike. And that has been many human rights groups and the UN as well has said the level of bombing, 6,000 munitions in the first week alone. And there hasn't been this type of bombing campaign since World War II, essentially,

and has been such a feature of this war. This family, the survivors, Heba Salem and her children, they moved to another building after this strike. And by then, Israeli troops have moved into the north and encircled it. The family ends up trapped inside a building with Israeli tanks and troops outside who are attacking the building, shelling and shooting at it for a few days. There's no one firing back. It's clear it's civilians inside.

On the afternoon of December 19th, the Israeli troops enter the building, storm several apartments. They separate the men from the women. They beat and abuse the men and boys. They strip search the women and verbally abuse them and beat them as well. And then they strip the men down to their underwear, make them lie face down on the floor,

and summarily execute them. At least 11 men were executed, according to multiple eyewitnesses. The soldiers then left, but continued attacking the building with what eyewitnesses describe as shelling and shooting from a quadcopter. Heba Salem's four-year-old daughter, Nada, is hidden in the eye. She's also killed. And we can talk about how we verified all of this, but this incident is specifically cited in South Africa's application to the International Court of Justice to institute proceedings against Israel accusing it of acts of genocide. So just in this family alone, we examine both airstrikes and arbitrary executions.

The theme throughout the film is about the search for safety and the possibility of it and US complicity. You have the Al-Ghaf family, which we've talked about. They fled from the north to Hanunus, to so-called safe zone, only to be bombed there by the Israeli military anyway. Now that scene, the father, Abdullah Al-Ghaf, his youngest son, two-year-old Firas, asks him to get biscuits with dates that he likes. So his father goes to the market and that's when the Israeli military attacks the building where they're staying. Abdullah's wife, Maryann, is killed and his two-year-old Firas

is killed. The video of him coming back and putting the biscuits in the hand of his dead two-year-old son who's covered in a shroud and he's sobbing and saying, you know, his son didn't even have a mouth. The line that get another just absolutely gut wrenching moment is when the father says, Imagine giving your son a biscuit, and knowing that your son doesn't even have a mouth. It's yeah, and this video at the time, you know, as so much of this is live stream, it didn't go viral. But what most people don't know, is that not only was Abdullah's son killed, his two-year-old son Farid was

also killed, but Abdullah's other son, eight-year-old Mohammed, was badly injured. This shows another aspect of the war, the lack of medical attention and the complete attack on the healthcare system in Gaza. The hospitals at this time, and this is in December, they're barely functioning because of the Israeli assault and blockade and going into the new year in January. And Mohammed can't get the care he needs.

He suffers, this child, a two-year-old child, for 25 days without proper medicine, without proper painkillers, they finally get permission for him to be evacuated to Egypt for medical attention. Another aspect of this war that people are trapped, even if they want to leave Gaza, it's very, very difficult to leave. But it's too late. And you see Abdullah saying this tearful goodbye to his eight-year-old son who's begging him to come with him. And he says, says I can't come but I'll try and meet you there. He's transferred to Egypt and he dies the next day because of his injuries. Abdullah ends up moving with his

surviving children, his two daughters were dead in Nagham to a tent in Rafah. This is where we met with them and now but we're not sure but I very much doubt they're still in Rafah. A million people have fled Rafah since Israel invaded in May, and most likely they're back somewhere in Chanyounas or Deir Ebbalah. So this, the story of continual displacement, of forcible displacement and the impossible search for safety is another feature of what we investigate. Kavitha, I want to ask you, like, you know, speaking with Sharif just relayed and the survivors of these massacres that are interviewed who say what has happened to them or a loved

one, whether it's Heinz's mother or the young man who survived the summary execution in that apartment block who survived because he got hit in the arm a few times and he just went unconscious. So presumably he was able to appear dead. When you receive this kind of testimony, both as a journalist, as a filmmaker, how do you feel or how do you approach these stories in terms of giving voice to the unspeakable? Is this a difficulty for you as a filmmaker? How do you use these kind of testimony

when you edit together or make this film? I mean I think the main thing that we always want to do, the hardest thing honestly is not including everything, right? Like Hinn's mother, Wasam, she said so many things. Honestly I wish we could just put her whole interview out there. Maybe we will to be honest because there's so many poignant and heartbreaking things she said. So actually, the hardest thing is, clipping thing is not including everything. That's actually the always the hardest part. You know, and you know, it's kind of starting from the point, I always

try to start from the point of, all right, what are like the kind of cold hard facts of a case? We put those in. And then we find, you know, then we start layering it with different, you know, other aspects of the story and, you know, usually also, you know, I think one of the most important things we try to do is also, you know, include things about the family members they lost, who they were, right? So, Wissam talks about how Leanne wanted to be a surgeon and Hind wanted to be a dentist and, you know, they said, we? So, wasam talks about how Leanne wanted to be a surgeon and Hind wanted to be a dentist and you know they said we'll have a clinic together, these like these small things so that they're not just you know that people know them because they were

killed but they had a life and they should have had a longer life than they did so we wanted to include you know pieces of that. Or in the case of the executions, Yahya, he lost 10 members of his family, including his brother. And so we wanted to make sure at the end of that, that the viewer has to see photos of every single person that was killed, so that they aren't just a number. So I think that's kind of the way that, yeah, our approach. And just to give a just a quick thing on Yahya, if I may. Yes, please. You see in, I translated part of his interview, and you see this is included in the film,

when he's talking about how this was the worst day of his life, and he's describing it at the end, he puts his hand up towards the camera as if to stop filming, grabs his stomach, and then doubles over and puts his hands on his knees. That there's a physical reaction of him just recounting watching his family be executed in front of it. It's it's it floored me, to be honest, the first time I watched it, it's even hard to talk about it now. I was going to say, Kavitha, I mean, I opened the conversation talking about, you know, like the difficulty or challenge in breaking this story out of cell phones, of, you know, real life, like even if they are how powerful these images and videos are. But another interesting thing this documentary does is that the cell phone and the images and recordings of these people and their lives are seen through your lens, through the lens

of the cameras of the filmmakers in Gaza, standing not as a testament to their death, but now still the only, like, or like one of the last remaining testimonies to their life. And I don't like, do you have any feelings about the mix of the like, the two different screens that we're which we're seeing both the life and death of the people that you're the subjects that you're rendering their story? Um, I mean, I guess, you know, it's interesting. At the beginning, the first thing image you see is one of it's a video of Hibis of her children playing in the ocean. And one of the, with all of the families, there are moments, yeah, where they're looking at their cell phones of the children

that they've lost, and in Hibah's case her husband, that was killed. And it's, I mean, one of the things I know that the families, they talked about that they don't actually have a lot of their photos anymore. Or like, you know, what they have left is on their phone because when they had to leave their home behind. And so all of their memories are have been stolen, taken, destroyed. And so those phone, their phones are there's just so you know, they contain so much of their, their lives just right there. I don you know they contain so much of their their lives just right there um don't know if that makes any sense yeah no I think

that that makes a lot of sense it's um it's one of those um I don't want to say smaller but you don't think about it as much in the face of you know entire families being annihilated and targeted and people seeking refuge hit with precision munitions and tanks but it's just one of those smaller things that you know a lot of us over here thankfully will probably never have to think about the idea of all of this happening to you and then just your all documentation of your life and all traces of normalcy and just your relationships before all this just evaporating in the same way. Yeah, I mean, Odehi, Hibisun, he says something at the very beginning of the film where he talks about how they had a routine.

It was just, you know, a normal life. Their dad would go to work. He would come home and help, you know, him and his mom would make, his parents would make dinner together. And it's, you know, all of that's gone now. They don't have that. Um, when Hiba talks, when she talked about, you know, her, how the sea was her favorite place, and how it was peaceful. They don't have that anymore, right? I mean, it's just these different layers of the things that we get to take, we take for granted. You know, one of the reasons we ask the crew in Gaza for each of the families to ask them about what night meant to them, because, you know, night is supposed to be the time when we sleep and have peace and can rest and when children should be able to just dream and that's gone, right?

They'll never have that. Like imagine trying to sleep and it's just a drone, constant drone or airstrikes all the time. So yeah, it's just these different pieces of life that are just completely have been stolen. It reminded me of, I mean, another horrible instance of, you know, America's imperial wars. But there was a similar thing that happened with children in Pakistan who, after the drone campaigns of the late 2000s and early 2010s,

they grew to be just terrified of clear skies and would be happy every time it was overcast because that meant there was less of a chance of like an MQ-9 flying overhead and killing someone they knew or destroying some place that they used to go to. It's just obviously like you want as many people to survive as possible. And you know, whether it's a war, just an outright genocide like this, but I feel like it gets overlooked.

Just what that what that actually means to survive this, what your life is after that, how different everything is and how just how much is taken from you. Going off that, Sharif, I'd like to return to something you said where it was like basically the thread that connects this movie is the impossibility of survival in Gaza and one element about that that I think really brings into focus the like absurdity and cruelty of America and Israel's policy is this idea of safe zones. And you've already talked a little bit about the use of these safe zones, but I want to talk about one clip in the film where you show a clip of John Kirby talking at a press

conference and he is using the example of these safe zones and he has this grin on his face when he does this like this rictus grin on his face as he says it. And he goes, it's like telegraphing your punches. I don't know of any modern army in the world that would do that. I mean, we wouldn't even do that. And like I was struck by certain things like watching this film. It's very hard to conclude that the purpose of these safe zones is anything other than to like concentrate to concentrate people into an area

that you know they're going to be in and then kill them. And I don't know, maybe the US actually hasn't done anything like that, at least that I can think of. But how is the example of safe zones and how they're used as a cudgel to shield from the public the true face of what's happening here? Well, this is a long standing Israeli talking points in the military. If you look at previous wars on Gaza in 2014, in 2012, in 2008, and nine, they always say that, you know, this

is where they're aligned the most moral army in the world, that they issue warnings before they attack. They would sometimes fire a missile without a warhead on a building, uh, which is called a knock on the roof. That indicates to the family inside that they have a few minutes to evacuate before they destroy the building. Um, but this is all, I mean, at the end of the day, they kill massive numbers of civilians and either they have precision targeting and they're intending

to kill massive numbers of civilians, or they don't have precision targeting and they're firing on one of the most densely populated places on earth and are just killing civilians. What we do know from reporting from 972 and elsewhere is that they're relying on an AI algorithm for targeting purposes, and they're willing to fire on a building and kill a hundred people to get a single low-level Hamas commander, if that. Most of the time they just hit civilians anyway. And as we've seen in this war on Gaza, they are firing in these safe zones repeatedly, repeatedly.

We did an interview with Air Wars who document this, but just even recently, they keep telling people to go to Moasi. And in the beginning, most Palestinians in Gaza did not want to go to Moasi. This is just sand. It's an area that is just a sandy beach. There's nothing. There's no water. There's no infrastructure there. But a lot of them did end up going there. They've bombed it several times. It's just tents on a beach and they've bombed it. The so-called red line of Rafah with the Biden administration repeatedly saying, you need a so-called plan to protect civilians before invading Rafah. We've seen a massive invasion of Rafah. The Israelis have gone in and they're completely destroying it now

in this systematic way. When we're talking about memories and going back and what's left, there is nothing left in Gaza. It destroyed Gaza City. They've destroyed Khamunist. They're destroying Rafah. I think Deir el-Balakh is maybe the only place that is somewhat still intact, but there's no, it's become uninhabitable completely. And this is systemic.

This is intentional. I have no idea what the future will hold for Palestinians in Gaza. Another major element of this film is examining what what I guess what currently stands for like the edifice of international law. And you mentioned earlier that like you have not seen bombing campaigns like this since World War Two and like sort of the idea was that out of the horrors of World War two that something called international law was created to prevent the wholesale massacre of civilians that happened from air on land whatever in World War two from ever happening again you talked to representatives of groups like embassy international who are supposed to represent international law and what we're seeing, what we've all been seeing for the past eight months

and what your film puts a very fine point on, is that not only is the United States willing to ignore all of it, but we are actively trashing, we're actively getting rid of all of this. Just like to return to the idea that international law and international humanitarian law and the prevention of war crimes is really like what the United States holds for itself as the reason that we are like the moral leaders of the world, the reason that it justifies being an empire, a global superpower. That's what makes us different from all the other countries of the world. What did you find like speaking to like former members of the US government or the woman from Anamacy International about like the state of international law and what the United States is doing to even the idea of such right now? Well, one of my, I think, favorite soundbites, because I think it gets to it, is from Akbar from HuffPost. And he says that it's hard to overstate the extent to which international law gets thrown out the window in Washington.

And he's right. You know, it's, you know, the US, the administration, according to Biden's own conventional arms transfer policy, is supposed to make sure that US weapons that are sent to other governments are used under, in accordance with international law. They haven't been doing that and you know, something this I don't this was on the quote-unquote cutting room floor, I guess, but Josh Paul, the former State Department official who resigned 10 days into the war. He said it, he one of the things he brought up is that you don't ask the questions when you already know you don't want the answer.

And so yeah, they're just like not asking the questions because they know there is no way that you can look at what's been happening in Gaza and say that international law hasn't been broken. It's just a question of if they care. And I think the reality is that they don't. Right. And no one's going to stop them. That's the other part of it.

Josh Baller, she says that they know that they will never be held accountable. So it's disgusting, to say the least. And I would just add briefly that I think we all understand that international law wasn't some perfect system beforehand that protected against war crimes and people were held to account. This was always a system that protected the powerful. And that was very, very problematic. I mean, and especially since 9-11 has been chipped away

increasingly, especially by the United States. You had Guantanamo, you had invasions, you had torture, you had rendition, all of these things. No one in the U.S. was being hauled before any international court. But I think what's different this time, and there was at least a kind of system that you could work within. Even if we knew it was a broken system, you could push in different ways and pressure. And there was at least the rhetoric of some sort of international order and

something to be held to account and it did hold possibly the very worst which is genocide at bay and what the head of Amnesty International says and what others say is that yeah we've essentially the gloves have been off for a long time but now the mask is off and that they are completely just shredding any semblance of international law. What does a group like Amnesty International do now when the most powerful countries in the world, the United States and Europe, are actively backing and apologizing for this brutality? are actively backing and apologizing for this brutality.

That now anyone can say anything and no one, I mean, the system is completely kind of in shreds right now. And, you know, maybe that's what it always was and it's just being laid bare, but it is, we are in some kind of new phase, I think. Kavitha, you talked about a, like a sort of a culture of impunity in Washington, because they know that, like, no matter what they do, like, they're not going to be at the dock at the ICC. Probably not. Like, I mean, they they know that this is all just words.

But I want to talk about something that the former State Department official, Josh Paul, mentioned. He mentioned in passing, it's not really delved into in the documentary, but like, there is also like this also inculcates a culture of total impunity in Israel itself. And one of the things he mentions as evidence of that is Israeli soldiers posting on TikTok, gleeful advertisements of their own war crimes. Like, Sharif, like, if you must have encountered this kind of thing before.

But what do we make of a genocide that's unfolding? That's probably one of the most documented in history as it's happening. But it's being documented by the people doing it who are showing the world, for instance, the trophies they've won in battle of women's underwear or a wheelchair or children's toys. I think it's a clear indication that they're acting with a very confident sense of impunity, that they will not be held accountable for these actions. By some accounts, in 972 and Haaretz have reported on this, that their commanders actively

tell them that it's okay to do these things. The Israeli military has claimed at times that they've held a couple of soldiers to account and there's been some sort of recriminations, but it's clear that there's going to be no justice for this. And so they're very proudly showing off dynamiting universities and burning down hospitals and raiding homes and flaunting women's underwear and these kinds of things. Just the most absurdly grotesque war crimes that in the past had to be exposed and this time are just being broadcast openly. And so it just speaks to, yeah, the sense of impunity that

that they have and for good reason. They're backed by the most powerful countries in the world and no one is going to hold them accountable for these actions. You also speak in the movie to Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen who has, you know, made statements about, hey, we need to follow the Leahy law. Could you explain a little bit about not just international law, but how we're trashing the US's own domestic laws in regards to the export of weapons to foreign militaries. And like, when we're also what do you make of Lahey's statements, it with regards to what what the US should follow our own laws?

So yeah, so the Lahey law, I mean, it was named after, it was proposed by former Senator Patrick Leahy. The whole idea behind it is that the US, before they send any kind of assistance to a foreign military, they need to vet that unit and make sure that there aren't any credible allegations of gross violations of human rights. But the thing is that for Israel as well as Ukraine and Egypt, these three countries, they have a different system when it comes to the Leahy Law. Instead of doing that, they will give the assistance first, and then as Josh Paul puts it, keep an eye out or an ear out to see if they hear anything. But in the case of Israel, it's never been enforced. And practically, he himself has actually

said this. He started to talk about it towards the end of his time in the Senate, which was, I believe, the end of 2022. But even, you know, it was only because he was retiring. I don't think he would have ever said that before, because you are not supposed to criticize Israel in Washington. This is like a well-known fact, and if you do, you will suffer politically. But he even started to bring it up towards the end of his time. Actually, he was specifically in relation to the killing of Shireen Abouakle.. But you know, when you don't enforce, when your top arm supplier is not enforcing the law, they're basically saying, you know, okay, yeah, you did do these horrible things. You have killed people, you have raped children, but we are

actually going to continue letting you, giving you weapons and aid. When you've got that level of impunity, you have completely just said, tell with human rights. Sharif, I want to return to the the executions of the family in that families in that apartment complex, because I picked up on something that one of the survivors said when he was recounting what happened to them. And he said that the soldiers who were abusing and eventually executing them were speaking in both Hebrew and some were speaking in English.

And I guess that just made me wonder, like, is there any, do we have any evidence that any of the soldiers responsible or in these specific massacres are US passport holders or potentially even active duty in the US military? We don't have any evidence of that. It's very hard to verify something like that. We do know that Israeli soldiers, we can say a very high degree of confidence that they executed these 11 people in this way. And we do know that US citizens have joined the Israeli military and have been deployed in Gaza. But no, we don't have any direct evidence to tie them to this execution.

So I'd like to turn now to the media. And this documentary has now been out. It's available on YouTube now for anyone who wants to watch it. we will have a link in the show description. But have you have either of you I mean, has has any of the work that you've done in this in this film? Have you seen any pickup from the American media? Any mention? I mean, there was example of that question asked at the Matthew Miller Press Conference today. But like, have you received any pickup from the American media? Kavisa, do you know? No, I don't think so. I would be quite shocked if any

mainstream U.S. media did pick it up. Yeah. I mean, once again, I mean, you mentioned that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in any other conflict in decades. And it's just like it really I mean, I don't even have a question here, but I just think it really brings into sharp focus

all of the stated reasons that our media loves to advertise about itself, which is basically like basically to stop something like this from ever happening. And the complete, complete refusal to acknowledge their own colleagues being massacred by the Israeli military with the full support of the US government, really, I mean, it really puts into stark relief just what the US media is. And I guess I'm wondering, like, throughout your career is like, I mean, how do you see the role of Western journalism as being like, just as complicit as the US government in what is happening in Gaza right now?

I was just going to say that on Palestine, legacy corporate media in this country has long been an enabler of Israeli occupation, of Israeli apartheid, and now an enabler of Israeli genocide. The coverage from major outlets, especially in the first few months, was atrocious. Atrocious. And I'm not even talking on the, on the level of, we can forget politics. We can forget how we think about settler colonialism. We can forget how we think about Zionism, all of these things.

I'm talking on a pure level of just pure journalism. The rhetorical acrobatics that these papers had to go through to avoid saying something like Israel bombs refugee camp in Gaza. The headline would be explosion, Gazans say kills many in neighborhood, something like that. So that's one thing. And the other point is that, yes, I think it's shameful. The lack of acknowledgement of these journalists being killed in Gaza. So many journalists in this country have spoken out, have put on their Twitter

or their social media profiles photos of Evan Gershkovich. And rightly so, he should be freed. He's unjustly imprisoned. He's a political prisoner in Russia. But when you have a record number, as many as 150 Palestinian journalists in Gaza being killed, and all these award shows speaking to the courage of the media and so forth, and not mentioning these journalists, it is an utter failure. And the journalists who have survived, as we've discussed, have lost so much.

Almost all of them have lost some family member. They've lost their homes. They're hungry. They're displaced. And there's just no coverage of this. I mean, CPJ even recently said that they're still trying to verify the deaths of four journalists in Shifa Hospital. So this is another thing.

They destroyed the largest hospital in Palestine. It was accounted for 30% of all medical care in Gaza alone in April. And when the Israelis finally withdrew, we have stories of mass graves, hundreds of bodies being found outside, arbitrary executions, doctors being tortured. This did not get a lake of coverage that it should have. It got some coverage, but not what it deserved. And part of the problem that CPJ is, they're still trying to verify the killings of four journalists at Schiffa is because so many journalists have been killed and

they don't have enough people on the ground to verify information. So you have this terrible cycle. They keep killing journalists, and so there's less information coming out and the cycle continues. The fact that it's not being covered properly in this country by large media outlets is enabling it to happen and continue to happen. One thing that I've always found particularly, well, not shocking, but telling with Western journalism and coverage of Israel is just the extent to which they allow conflicts of

interest that they just would not allow anywhere else. Like, I mean, the contemporary example everyone always uses now is Barack Ravid, the Axios reporter who's, you know, if I don't believe he's still in, but was very recently in the IDF reserve. But before that, there was the New York Times bureau chief for, I think, all of Israel, Judy Ruerden, where, you know, they were either in the IDF or they were, you know, members of their families were settlers or they were settlers. It was just a total lack of propriety that they would, you know, with anything else, they would pride themselves on stamping out. This was in 2021, but I don't know if you recall that the woman who was fired from the

AP for belonging to SJP in college, compare and contrast that to probably the, you know, dozens if not hundreds of people in people, bureau chiefs and reporters who have been members of Hallel or similar organizations. I mean, yeah, I think it's pretty clear that I mean, like all these rules are there because we're we're journalism to seek out engage with or even be allowed into Gaza. It's simply we simply could not countenance what they would have to say. So they don't get to say it. And like, Felix, you're exactly right. Like, you know, someone with even like a Middle Eastern sounding last name gets spiked

off of stories because of some appearance of impropriety. And then like, yeah, many people at the New York Times, yeah, like either have family members who are active duty in the IDF or are living in homes that were seized from Palestinians in East Jerusalem in 1948. Yeah. Sharif, Kavitha, I really, I don't really have any more questions for you. I just want to say thank you for your work here. It is a truly, like it is a devastating, but also very meticulous construction of what represents a keyhole glimpse into like

the horrors going on right now unabated with the full support of the US government. As professionals, like I know it must seem hopeless sometimes, but like it is very clear that you still like the importance and necessity of a documentary work like this. It comes through in your work. And I really, I really thank you both for putting for just assembling this really essential piece of journalism. Thank you. Thank you so much. I guess we will leave it there for today. I want to thank our guests, Sharif Abdul-Khadoos and Kavitha Chakura for and the film is The Night Won't End from Al Jazeera English Fault

Lines. We'll have links to watch in the show description. Aum