Chapo Trap House - UNLOCKED: 805 - My First Genocide feat. Ali Abunimah (2/8/24)

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Today, executive director of the Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah joins us to discuss the war in Palestine. We cover recent attempts to delegitimize and destroy UNRWA, atrocity propaganda, evolving capabilities of Palestinian resistance, changing attitudes towards Israel in the U.S., and the life, career and death of Palestinian author Refaat Alareer. Find the Electronic Intifada here: https://electronicintifada.net/ And on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheElectronicIntifada You can find Gaza Writes Back, the short story collection edited by Refaat Alareer, here: https://justworldbooks.com/books-by-title/gaza-writes-back/

I Hello everybody, it's Thursday, February 8th and Chappo is back with you. So basically since this show has started, but certainly since October 7th, you know, we've tried to do our best to speak our minds about what Israel is and what the situation is there is like for the people of Palestine. And I've tried to do, we've tried to do our best with that, but joining us today is someone who's been working and covering this issue and living it for a much longer time than this show has been around. And as someone who's writing up and following for a long time, it's my pleasure to have joined us on the

show today. Ali Abunima, the executive director of the Electronic Intifada. Ali, welcome to the show. Thank you, Will. Ali, like I said, like we've been, we've been, since October 7th, we've obviously had to focus on little, little else but the situation in Gaza. And I guess I just want to open things up by asking you as someone who's covered this for a long time. Because at the same time right now, we are seeing horrors that can really only be likened to how on earth unfolding in front of our very eyes. But at the same time, we're seeing many individual and collective acts of bravery

and resistance to design this project and like a sort of a breaking of the dam in public opinion that we have not seen Certainly in my lifetime. So Ali is someone who's Observed this and lived this for a long time. Like how do you hold those two? I don't know contradictory ideas in your head when discussing or when just like when thinking about what's going on in Gaza and Palestine right now Well, the first thing I want to say is that you guys have actually been doing an incredible job in your coverage. It's very different to the kind of coverage we do. How can I put this?

I think if you, as reflecting that broader change, and it's very refreshing and it's very heartening, just to hear you speaking your minds and to hear that when you speak your minds it very much feels like exactly what should be said. So I just want to say that, to say thank you for that and thank you for giving that to us and to your audience. I guess what you have, the question you posed to me is one that I've noticed for some years, that it seems that the question of Palestine and the understanding of the struggle of Palestinians, the resistance of Palestinians has been growing around the world and particularly in the United States, yet at the same time, things always seem to get worse. And now we have this situation where support for the Palestinian people, you could say,

feels like it's at historic highs in the United States. And there is some evidence for that when you look at things like opinion polls and just kind of the general cultural developments. And yet at the same time, we're living in a genocide of just unprecedented horrors. It's very hard to reconcile those things. And I think that our challenge is how to turn that growing support into real political pressure and action to stop the genocide and to finally bring liberation to Palestine. And I don't know that I have the answer to that, but we're at a starting point for that at least. Yeah. And I mean, I think like a starting point for a lot of this, obviously, I mean,

like history didn't start there, but like this escalated dramatically on October 7th. And I want to talk about like basically from that day onward to be in good standing in the American media and a member of the Zionist project, you have to believe and parrot a number of like an increasingly insane series of lies that, I mean, you have been basically documenting in real time. I mean, there's too many dimension. We can talk about the, you know, terror command center under Al-Shifa Hospital,

but I want to talk about the latest one which regards this dossier of accusations against the UNRWA or UNRWA. Because you talk about the nature of those allegations, the timing of them, and like, and then it's subsequent like it falling apart upon a further media scrutiny. And just what these allegations mean in the context of a situation that the International Court of Justice has deemed plausibly a genocide. Okay. So, UNRA is the UN agency for Palestine refugees.

It was set up in 1950 with a mandate to care for Palestinian refugees. It was set up in 1950 with a mandate to care for Palestinian refugees. It works in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. And I visited various refugee camps where UNRES services exist in Jordan and Lebanon. And it runs health clinics, it runs schools, it provides emergency housing and shelter. And the important thing to know, what does UNRES stand for? United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency. So one of the basic ideas built into this agency was that it wasn't just going to hand out Aid to Palestinians. It wasn't just going to hand out bags of flour and sugar. It was going to employ Palestinians

so the vast majority of the tens of thousands of employees of Unra are Palestinian refugees. They're the people who live in the refugee camps where they provide the services. So they are part of the community that they serve, even though the UNRWA leadership is usually, you know, foreigners, Europeans or typically Europeans, there have been a few Americans. Europeans, there have been a few Americans. The vast majority are Palestinians. So at the end of January, the United States, which is one of the biggest donors to UNRWA, announced that it was cutting off or freezing its contributions to UNRWA and quickly about 15 other countries followed suit. And no surprise, it was all Europeans and settler colonies, Canada, Australia, all the usual suspects. And this was based on accusations from Israel that 12 UNRWA employees, 12 of the 13,000 in Gaza had somehow taken part in the events of October 7th. The Israelis

did not provide any evidence for this and subsequently their so-called dossier which has been seen by a number of media organizations found that there really isn't anything there. It's the usual bullshit. But let's suppose it was true. Let's suppose it was true that these 12 people, which incidentally unrefired them without any investigation, no due process, the leadership fired them in an attempt, of course, futile attempt to appease Israel because all of this is in bad faith to begin with. But let's suppose it was true that these 12 out of 13,000 employees had somehow taken part in this. Obviously, cutting off funding that

is providing a lifeline of survival to people in the middle of a genocide is never going to be the correct response. You're collectively punishing millions of people for the alleged actions of 12. But what we have to understand here is that this is part of Israel's long-time agenda to destroy UNRWA. Benjamin Netanyahu has said it repeatedly. He said it in 2017. He said it in 2018 that UNRWA has to go, that UNRWA should pass from this earth. Why does Israel hate UNRWA? It's because they hate Palestinian refugees. For them, the idea of Palestinian refugees represents

an existential threat to the state of Israel because Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. It's a Jewish supremacist state. And the only reason that there is a Jewish demographic majority in Israel is because Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948 and they and their descendants were never allowed to return home solely and exclusively Because they are not Jewish a fundamentally racist Situation so for Israel and its supporters particularly in Congress

They think oh Unra perpetuates this idea of Palestinian refugees So if we get rid of UNRWA, the Palestinian refugees will disappear. This is just like saying hospitals are full of sick people. So if we destroy all the hospitals, then we will solve the problem of sickness. I'm using that as an analogy, but it's it's disturbingly close to the reality in Gaza. I mean, Ali, I saw someone arguing against UNRWA saying that like, yeah, they perpetuate a state of they want to keep people in poverty and in a state of they basically said UNRWA is the reason

that Palestinians live in a refugee status because they keep them in a state of perpetual victimhood that and that's why they don't have, instance their own state is because of UNRWA and not Israel. Yeah. Yeah, that's just the usual deranged talking point. But as I said, if you visit the refugee camps where UNRWA services are provided, you'll find that these are providing basic healthcare to people, young and old They're providing immunizations for children. They're providing shelter and Food aid to those who are impoverished. I mean take Gaza for example in 2000 in the year 2000 there was something like 50 or 60 thousand people in Gaza who received like 50 or 60,000 people in Gaza who received emergency food rations from UNRWA. It was a very small number. By today, and I'm talking about before the genocide that began in October,

it was something like 60 or 70% of the population. That impoverishment is not due to UNRWA. That impoverishment is due to Israel. And UNRWA is the lifeline. And by the way, why does the United States government and the European Union fund UNRWA in the first place? It's not because they love Palestinians. We know that they hate Palestinians. It's because keeping Palestinians from abject poverty and starvation is seen by them as helpful to Israel, because this also relieves Israel of the burden of caring for and providing for the basic needs of these millions of Palestinians who are refugees solely and exclusively because Israel doesn't allow them to return home for the crime of not being Jews.

Ali, we have to talk about the timing of the freezing of these funds as well because many people have pointed out that this happened basically on the same, no, it happened literally on the same weekend that the ICJ announced that their decision to move forward with pursuing a, you know, determining whether Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza. with pursuing a determining whether Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza. Absolutely. And some people even said, you know, you'd have to go back and look at the exact timing. But it was significant that in the International Court of Justice ruling, which was given on January 26th, the judges gave great credence to the statements of various UN humanitarian officials, including in particular the leaders of UNRWA. They cited statements from UNRWA leadership describing the catastrophic situation in Gaza caused by the Israeli attack and deliberate

starvation of the population there. So some people even said it's retaliation for the fact that the ICJ judges cited and took seriously the statements from UNRWA. I don't know if that's the case, but it was clearly a vindictive and unjustified move that could not be justified even if these 12 people were actually involved in the events of October 7th. actually involved in the events of October 7th. And of course, it's typical Israeli playbook of distraction, of changing the subject. And our entire semi-official media ran with it, as usual, parroted all the Israeli claims as if they were true.

And there's a precedent to this. I mean, there's many, but just one recent precedent is, back in October 2021, Israel did exactly the same thing when it announced that six highly respected Palestinian human rights groups were actually terrorist organizations. And what a coincidence that several of these organizations had been compiling dossiers of evidence to forward to the International Criminal Court in its investigation of war crimes in Palestine. It also said, oh, we have this big dossier of evidence.

The EU countries that fund these organizations suspended their funding and they said, oh, we have to have an investigation. The investigation went on for, I don't know how long, more than a year. And at the end of it, they said, there's nothing to it. The Israeli allegations are totally bullshit. But by that time, the damage is done to the reputation of these organizations and to their functioning. And that's always the Israeli goal. I mean, along those lines in terms of Seeing our as you put it our semi official media

You know basically Cosign this bullshit over and over again and then I was gonna say at the electronic interfahta You've been doing a great job of basically kind of debunking these claims in real time What is it likely to cover these these claims and then see belatedly two to three months later these same outlets that Mindlessly parroted them eventually kind of have to come around and walk it back and I'm thinking in particular about the New York Times and the kind of all of the how far how far out ahead they got of these Kind of October 7th mass rape stories that were widely promulgated and then the problems that they're having now The backstopping any credible journalism on this subject. Yeah, basically what happened on October 7th is that the Palestinian resistance carried out a carefully planned and coordinated attack

primarily against Israeli military bases and settlements along the border and they completely destroyed the Gaza Brigade of the Israeli army. We saw the videos of them dragging the soldiers out of their barracks, of them taking soldiers as prisoners of war. And what we know from what resistance leaders have said is that they were far more successful than they expected to be. They didn't expect this immediate collapse of the vaunted Israeli army. And what happened then is that when people in Gaza heard that there were dozens of breaches in the ghetto fence, which is basically what it is, people rushed across into the lands which their families were ethnically cleansed from in 1948.

And there was chaos. And some of the Israeli civilians who were taken back into Gaza were not taken by Hamas. They were taken by some of these civilians or other groups that came through in the chaos. So there was some of that that went on. But what Israel claimed is that there was a systematic campaign of murder targeting civilians. Netanyahu himself and many other Israeli officials claimed things like children being tied up and set on fire, children being tied up and set on fire, children being tied up and shot. There was stories of a pregnant woman

having her belly sliced open and then the fetus being stabbed or beheaded. There were stories of, of course, you remember the infamous fake story which Joe Biden claimed he actually saw photos. The White House had to walk that back of dozens of beheaded Jewish babies and so on. And all this was screamed out from every news outlet

in the United States and in the in the in the so-called West and including this story of mass rapes. They claimed that there was systematic rape of Israeli women by the Palestinian fighters, which on its face didn't make any sense because yes, we know that sexual violence exists in wartime and is even common in wartime, but not in the case of an operation that's lost a few hours. And the Israeli soldiers, I mean, the Hamas fighters expected the Israeli army to arrive on mass any second. The idea that they were going to like take time out for a campaign of mass rape didn't make sense on its face. And it turns out there's no evidence for it. None. Even though there's story after story after story in the Washington Post, CNN, Jake Tapper, Haaretz,

the Israeli paper, The Times of Israel, countless others making these claims. They all, when you examine them, it all falls apart. There's nothing there. And yet these stories have been used to justify an incite genocide. And the New York Times is the most egregious because their Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Jeffrey Gettleman, did this big story at the end of December. He claimed it was a two-month investigation. He spoke to 150 people. And he claimed that there was a broad pattern of sexual assault.

And the sort of headline victim was this woman called Gal Abducian, Israeli woman who was killed on October 7th. And he claimed that she was raped. But when the story came out, members of her family repudiated this. They said, there's no evidence she was raped. We've never been given any evidence she was raped. And we didn't even know that the New York Times

was planning to claim she was raped. It was absolutely outrageous. And he also relied on this organization called Zaka, this Jewish extremist group, who's found ironically committed suicide after he was accused of dozens of rapes over the years. But that's another story. But Zaka was responsible for many of these fabrications, which even now the Israeli press has admitted to fabrications like the pregnant woman having her belly sliced open and the children being tied up and burned.

But this is still published in the New York Times as if it's all real. Yeah, something I've noticed the longer this has gone on that in the first month or two after the seventh the centerpiece of you know Western and Israeli friendly coverage was you know this idea that Cassandra Gates, you know beheaded 40 babies and You know those those pictures of those people

that were burned in that car. The idea that Hamas was responsible for that. And of course, in retrospect, it's equally ridiculous because for the burned bodies to say nothing of like the beheaded baby story that's completely made up, they wouldn't even have time to do that unless they had a fucking helicopter or a tank. But you know who does have helicopters and tanks?

Yeah, I was going to say. Right. Right. And of course, it turned out that... I was at the Music Festival, that photo of hundreds and hundreds of burned cars. And I was like, well, if the Cassamburgates had military hardware capable of doing that, I think they would have gotten out a lot sooner than October 7th. Right. And here's the thing.

You know, these pictures of the hundreds of burned cars and then the, like, Kibbutz-Bairi, you have all these photos of just entire streets of houses completely leveled. And these appeared all over our media. They were in the Washington Post, in the New York Times, on CNN. And all these Western politicians being taken there and toured around.

And they all look very somber. And their brows furrowed and all of this stuff. And nobody asked the question, wait, how did Hamas do this with AK-47s? Like, I don't know an AK-47 can level a house. Of course, it turns out, and this came from, you know, what we did at the electronic intifada, I would say the first big debunking we did

was we translated this interview from this Israeli woman called Yasmine Parat, who was at Kibbutz Berry, one of these settlements, these colonial settlements near Gaza. And she gave this long interview on Khan, which is the Israeli state radio. This was on October 15th or 16th, so just a week after the events. She basically said the Israeli forces who came in, they're the ones who killed everyone. They're the ones who killed everyone, and they killed her partner Tal Katz. There's another woman who survived this particular massacre by the Israeli army, a woman called Hadas Dagan, who came out later on. And we also translated her interview.

And she said, yes, this is what happened. They killed my husband, her husband, Adi Dagan. And we've had Israeli rescuers say that they were going into Kibbutz, while Israeli Apache helicopters were firing missiles indiscriminately into the Kibbutz. And so all of this is in the Israeli media. So a lot of what we do is translating what is in Israeli media, mainstream Israeli sources, Haaretz, Yadiot, Aharonot, Israeli Channel 12, television and so on. This is all there in Israel, but it's not in the New York Times,

it's not in the Washington Post. And if you publish this stuff in English in the United States, you will be called a conspiracy theorist for publishing the stuff that's in the Israeli media. That's how crazy it is. Well, Ali, I mean, almost from day one, right? I mean, like, remember when the New York Times removed the second part of

the quote, in which the Israeli general referred to, we're fighting human animals, they removed that from their coverage of his comments. But like, along those lines, and back to the like, the New York Times and their particular emphasis on the on the these accounts of mass rape. And taking in what we all know about armed conflict and sexual violence, I really think that for the average times reader and to the liberal media consuming audience,

people were so ready to accept the most extreme version of these events because they've been steeped for years in a birth of a nation style racism about Arab and Muslim men in particular. But like it's it's the most effective because this comes from like the liberal media, right? Like an outlet like the New York Times. Like how do you view what's regarded in America as like the liberal media, like at the particularly useful role that they play in laundering a lot of this propaganda to their audience? the particularly useful role that they play in laundering a lot of this propaganda to their audience. Yeah, I mean, this is so important to look at the kind of cultural environment that makes

this possible. One thing is that this idea of Arab men, Muslim men, and black men as rapists is very old. It's a very old colonial trope. Of course, what was the accusation that got Emmett Till murdered? That he had touched or looked at or whistled at a white woman. And this also goes back to the American, the European, I should say, conquest of this continent, when the notion that native indigenous men or enslaved black men are brutes who are a danger to white women or settler women. This is a very deep old racist trope. It existed in South Africa and across the colonized world. And it is fundamental also to Israeli racism and to these accusations. And then

you marry that to the kind of, you know, me too and believe women era of liberal thinking. Of course we should take seriously what women say. But the irony here is there are no women to believe because not a single living victim, actually not even a single dead victim of sexual violence, has been specifically identified. So they're all going around saying, oh, believe Israeli women. If you don't believe these allegations, you're a monster who supports rape and hates Jews. That's the subtext of this. But of course, it wasn't about believe Israeli women. It's believe the Israeli government, believe

Israeli atrocity propaganda. And of course, it's no coincidence that they trotted out Hillary Clinton to back up these allegations. And she actually put out a video, I think it was back in December, where she says, you know, we have to believe all the Israeli women and girls who come forward and talked about what they witnessed and suffered. And whoever prepared that text for her was careless because at that time and until now, not a single Israeli woman or girl has come forward and said, I experienced this myself. That hasn't happened. And yet she's holding a whole conference tomorrow, as we're speaking. I'm not sure exactly what day this goes out, but on February 9th, she's holding this whole conference at Columbia University to again spew this atrocity propaganda

and guess who else will be there, Jeffrey Gettelman of the New York Times. Right. I mean, it's just like the way I've considered it from the beginning is that like Israel knew what they were going to do, what they always wanted to do, they knew what it was going to look like on TV, even in a heavily sanitized context. And what would justify that? It's like, if you're going to do something unspeakably evil, you have to come up with an accusation that the people you're doing it to have done something even more unspeakably evil so that when you see those images on the news, they want you in your head to just immediately think, oh, that's what's preventing the next rape and torture from happening, the next atrocity from happening to you or us, broadly defined. Yeah, and of course, atrocity propaganda of this kind is always used. People say, well, oh, yes, sexual violence is very common in wartime. And that may be true. But so is war propaganda common in wartime and atrocity propaganda. And we have to be careful about that. I mean, remember

that it was Hillary Clinton State Department in 2011 that disseminated the atrocity propaganda that turned out surprise, surprise to be a lie that Libyan forces were being given Viagra and told to go out and rape people as a weapon of war. That was not true. And yet it was used to incite Americans to support Barack Obama's war to overthrow the government of Libya and turn it, in fact, into a place where now migrants and refugees suffer the most horrific abuses, including systematic human trafficking and sexual trafficking and torture. That's the result of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton saving the world and using this kind of a trusty propaganda.

All right, two more. I wanna let Felix get in here because I know he has some questions for you about the evolving capabilities of Palestinian resistance. Yeah, this was something I've been interested in. I mean, really since the seventh, but even more so, you know, since we've seen these incredible GoPro videos. I was wondering, like, if you had any insights on how Hamas

and Kasamburghe in particular, how their capabilities in combat have improved so vastly in the last decade. Because I mean, you mentioned that October 7th, it was, you know, everyone was surprised by the success that they had. But even after that, I mean, I don't think we're going to be able to get any official numbers for a while, but they've destroyed an incredible amount of Israeli armor and just taken out a lot of very highly vaunted units. They've just torn through Golanai Brigade, which was at one point sort of the marquee unit of IDF light infantry? Yeah, I mean, I'm observing this like everyone else.

Of course, the Cassandra Gates do not give me any particular insight into what they're doing, just to make that clear. But I think that it's very clear, and this is not uncommon in colonial situations like this, is that the underdog, as the Palestinians are, study their oppressor extremely carefully. And whereas the oppressor with their vast strengths becomes very complacent, which I think the Israelis did become complacent. And in their racism, they also underestimate the capabilities of those they oppress.

They think of Palestinians as human animals. And so they don't think these human animals are capable of these pretty incredible feats of resistance. And the military planners and thinkers of the Qassam Brigades and the other resistance factions, I think, have really tried to maximize their advantages and understand the situation they're in. They're never going to have tanks and helicopters. What they have is manpower and what they have is the ability to manufacture and produce light weapons, including these RPGs, these anti-tank weapons that are very light, very cheap, that they can either somehow smuggle into Gaza or manufacture locally, which they do, and to be very well trained and to be very ingenious in how they use the geography and the resources they have. So the underground tunnel network, which nobody knows the scale of it, but I will tell you a story. I visited Gaza in 2013

So just over 10 years ago This was in the final months of the presidency of Muhammad Morsi who was then overthrown by an American backed coup and the current leadership in Egypt is in place and I had the opportunity to visit a tunnel that was on the border between Gaza and Egypt, so in the Rafah. And this was not a military tunnel. This was a tunnel to bring supplies into Gaza to circumvent the Israeli siege,

which is, of course, absolutely what Palestinians should be doing. They have every right to to circumvent the siege and by any means necessary. And so just to describe the experience, we went, I was with a couple of other journalists. And so imagine you're you go, you're standing on a circular platform that is big enough to park two SUVs. And this circular platform then goes down, you know, it moves, so it's like a giant elevator. It goes down a vertical shaft. We weren't explicitly not allowed to take any photos, so I can't tell you how deep we went, but I can tell you that when I looked up to the sky,

the opening that we had come down looked very small. So we must have been about 50, 60 meters underground, at least, and then you get to the bottom. And by the way, there's guys with hard hats, and when they press the button for the elevator to go down a warning horn sound so that everyone is make sure that they're you know being safe and everything. It was incredibly sophisticated. Then you get to the bottom and then there's a tunnel

that goes horizontally and that tunnel that went towards Egypt had electric lighting and it was big enough to drive a car through. So that was a commercial tunnel that I saw. Now you have to imagine the military tunnels are deeper, potentially bigger. They are all over Gaza. And the resistance is able to use them in a way where they are digging attack tunnels just for a single use. When you see in these videos that you're talking about Felix, that's freshly dug earth. They're

digging like moles and coming up right next to a tank and then a guy is jumping out and attaching a mine right onto the tank. This is incredible stuff, but the elements here are that they are working with what they have and maximizing it. They are understanding the weaknesses of the Israelis that the Israelis don't like to get out of the tanks because they're afraid to. And the tanks are not designed for this environment. The tanks have the so-called trophy system that can detect missiles from a distance, but it doesn't work in an urban environment and it doesn't work if you get right up close to the tank. But they weren't designed with this amount of courage in mind. The Israelis never expected people to run up to their tanks from this close

So this is how the Palestinians are able to inflict such heavy losses on the Israelis Yeah, going to what you said about how the Israelis just like they would never account for like the Bravery or the ingenuity of Palestinian forces. I think that's pretty crucial because one of the things I really hate in the last few months is people, people who I broadly agree with try to make it seem that like everything that happened on October 7th is real new in advance and let it happen. you know, that it was sort of like a halfway false flag. And I really don't agree with that because it seems more than anything, like

they did have intelligence that there might be an attack, but more than anything, I don't think that they ever expected that Hamas would be able to inflict that much damage and to be that successful. They just don't believe that Palestinian forces can, you know, think on their feet in a battle situation, can outsmart them. They think it's impossible. I mean, they still think it's impossible, even though they're getting shredded in Gaza. No, I agree with that completely. I don't, you know, this idea that it's a, that it was a false flag or that Israel let it happen is a way of, of taking away the achievement, the military achievement of Palestinians and the ingenuity. And this ingenuity is really incredible if you think about it. I mean Gaza is completely besieged, it's been besieged under a tight siege for 15 years or so, and yet they're able to manufacture these weapons locally. I mean, they are copies or enhancements of existing weapons,

of the Soviet RPGs and various other weapons that have proven to be very effective and hardy in these kinds of situations in guerrilla wars for years. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but it's clear enough to me that the doctrine Hamas has, you know, they have sort of about five or six core weapons

that they use. There's AK-47s, there's the Al Ghul sniper rifle, there's three different kinds of RPG warhead, and there are these hand-delivered mines. They have them in large quantities. They have their fighters trained to use them. Another essential element of this that they have really perfected is that they work in teams.

The teams include camera men. And this is a very important element because the reason we can see all this is because they are filming it and they are disseminating the videos in almost real time. That, you know, within a day or two days, we are getting videos of these operations that they're carrying out. And the other really important thing is that the Israeli army gets very jealous of these videos. So they put out videos of their own. And it's always, I think you guys have even talked about this. It's always like Israeli soldiers shooting down

empty alleyways, shooting at empty classrooms, just like shooting at nothing. You never see Palestinian fighters in their videos, whereas you see Israelis in every single Qassam video. And what that tells you is that it is the Palestinian fighters who are taking the initiative. They are deciding the time and place of the engagement and Confrontation and the Israelis have no idea where they are And there have even been quotes from Israeli soldiers in the Israeli media saying things like we don't know where they are

We can't see them. We're fighting ghosts and so this shows you that the Palestinians actually have the initiative and the momentum on the ground. And the only thing the Israelis are really great at, that the world champions at is murdering children and elderly people, bombing hospitals and destroying homes and infrastructure. They excel at that. But that's not the same thing as fighting a war. And I wanted to touch on that because like you know as this grinds on into the into the fifth month now and they haven't rescued a single hostage if they ever were even trying to do that Which is open to debate. They're trying to kill them. Yeah, they're trying to get their gas well

They shot them on gas them a couple of them, but yeah But like but but as but as they're millet like they've actually like, they're losing soldiers, losing officers, they didn't expect it to be this hard. Do you think that like, it's hard to imagine that they would have any extra sadism, but like, do you feel that they're meeting out their frustration even more on a captive civilian population as their, you know, as their, as their comrades fall in front of them as they say are fighting ghosts unable to actually strike back at the people who like they're supposed to be fighting i.e. Hamas. But I mean, or has this put a lot of the fact that they were never really there to fight them in the first place? I mean, the sadism is clear. They don't hide that. You see that in all the TikTok videos when they're dynamiting entire neighborhoods out of revenge and saying,

we're doing this, you know, in revenge for this or that person who was killed. Their sadism is very, very clear and they're proud of it. But I also don't think they expected it to be this difficult. They didn't expect, you know, there was so much hubris. I think they really thought that they would go in and they would knock out Hamas and achieve all their goals, including by the way, the ethnic cleansing of all or at least a large part of the population in Gaza within a couple of weeks at most. They didn't expect this to be now, we're more than four months into it, and they have achieved literally none of their stated military objectives, not one. Like you know, on the note of the gleeful sadism that is freely advertised by Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians on TikTok and social media. Look, obviously, the state of Israel,

as it regards public opinion in the United States, is heavily dependent on a rigorously maintained propaganda apparatus. But I think that's breaking down now, because you can't sell the open racism that is so endemic in Israeli culture. Once you see it, it is very hard to continue the kind of liberal Zionist line about what Israeli culture really is and

When I see this Ali a question I've had from the beginning of this conflict is that like have they just become so hermetically sealed that they just are completely Not self-aware about how they look like to the normal people or are they so costed by unlimited u.s. Support that they just they know how they appear and they just don't care because they know The United States will back them up no matter what I think a large number of them have no no idea how Like insane and offensive they are to the rest of the world I really truly believe that because I think they believe their own propaganda that that we we are just like you, we're like the West. We represent Western civilization against these animals. And they think that that's common currency in

the West. And it is in particular quarters in the West. Which you have to keep it, you have to keep it within certain guardrails, you know, you have to tamp it down to like be accepted in kind of like a broad stream But the mainstream liberal culture like they're fine with racism within certain boundaries Yeah, they're wildly transgressed by Israel. Yeah, you know, let's go back to before this genocide They they were always trying to straddle that line, you know, so in the mid 2000s so around 2010 Yeah, they have all these these think tanks and all these strategic groups. There's one in particular, we don't need to go into too much detail, called the Reut Institute.

They produced this report, I think it was in 2010, and they said, you know, we have a problem. We are losing the progressives in the West, and particularly in the United States, because we appear to religious, to aggressive, to just too horrible. And so we need to win back the progressives. And so we need to have a strategy to appeal to them. And that strategy was basically to try to market Israel strategy was basically to try to market Israel as this haven of women's rights, of gay rights, of environmentalism, of Israel as the best country in the world at conserving water,

that Tel Aviv is just one big gay dance party. And I mean, this was a government-backed strategy to market Israel this way. But the problem is, at the very same time, you're also marketing Israel to evangelical Christians who stand against all these things and who are probably the largest and most significant pro-Israel constituency in the United States. So a certain element of them have recognized that they have this problem, this PR problem. And that's the way they always think of it. They think that the problem is not us. The problem is not that we are violent colonial settlers and racial supremacists. The problem is our PR is not very good.

And the Palestinians have this great PR. And so we need to do better PR and we need to like have, you know, a, all this, this pink washing and greenwashing propaganda to appeal to the Libs and progressives in the United States. But I think in the context of this genocide and the continued rise of the Qahanists in Israel from the relative fringe to the center of power, they just don't care anymore. I mean, the Basel al-Smartritches and the Itamar Ben Qivir genuinely don't care and they're just willing to say and do whatever they want to do.

I mean, I'm thinking about the recent news reports and footage of Israeli youth camping out and dancing as they protest and block the delivery of aid of food and medicine to civilians in Gaza. I mean, like, once you see that, it's really hard to continue that this narrative that Israel is a nice country, like you and I, full of nice people. And it's also impossible to imagine ever going back to that heyday of bipartisan support for Israel that existed in the United States, where, you know, it was just common currency that everyone supported Israel. It really is like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. I just don't see it happening. There will never be a time when a large percentage of young people in America think Israel is great.

a large percentage of young people in America think Israel is great. And so I think it's done in that sense. And like when you look at the breakdown, particularly by age of public opinion on Israel, Palestine, like in the stark, stark drop off in support, once you get below the age of 40 and certainly 30. To what extent does that represent an existential threat to like the future, you know, purchase of the Zionist project, at least in America? I mean, that's a question I struggle with because on the one hand, this generational shift is very important and welcome. And it's something we've been seeing for a number of years. You know, the numbers have just been getting worse and worse for Israel, particularly in those younger demographics and among black people, people of color, what you could call the Democratic Party

Coalition. And you see that reflected in the polling that people who vote Democrat are becoming predominantly pro-Palestinian. Of course, I'm saying people who vote Democrat. I'm not saying the Democratic Party. We have to make a huge distinction between. We can make a huge distinction about that and a lot of issues, but this one perhaps most savagely. Yeah, exactly. And yet we're in the middle of a genocide. So I mean, none of that has translated into us being able to stop a genocide under a democratic president. So, you know, there's part of me that says, yes, things are changing

and eventually all this support will translate into political results. But we know that we live in a country where what people think about anything just doesn't matter. So I'm cautious about it. I think all these changes are important and welcome. The question then is how do we change this into actual political power and results? And that's true on a whole number of issues, but it's particularly acute in the middle of a genocide. I want to ask you now about, really like for me, and I think a lot of our listeners, a man who became kind of the face of this ongoing genocide. And that is, I want to ask you about

the life and career of Rafat Al-Ariir. He was a guy who I was introduced to through your live streams when like as October 7th happened, and then as subsequent events happened who I was introduced to through your live streams when like as October 7th happened And then as like subsequent events happen I was through your live streams of him in Gaza that I began to follow him and then follow him on Twitter and it was someone who Like I don't have any personal connection to Israel or Palestine but he was like rendered a human face in real time someone experiencing this and When I learned of his death killed by Israeli forces, I felt like, you know, grief-stricken in a strange way, despite the fact that I only

knew him through his posts. So I was just hoping you could share a little about how you came to know and work with him and just like what he was like as a person and how his work continues to has become like really a global call, you know, a global rallying cry for the Palestinian people. I think what often happens after someone dies, and in this case was murdered, Rifat Al-Arair was murdered on December 6, 2023 in a targeted missile attack on his sister's home in Gaza, killing him and several members of his family, though not his wife and children, they were in a separate location. And this was after a campaign of incitement by among others Barry Weiss over a post he had made, one of his typical funny ironic posts. You would have enjoyed very much having him on this on this show. I wish you could have done

Yeah, he's an incredibly funny person and he made a joke about the fake atrocity story of a Jewish baby being cooked in an oven by Hamas on October 7th. And so Barry Weiss stirred up all this fake outrage and how look how he's talking gleefully about cooking a Jewish baby. He was making a joke about an atrocity story that never happened. And he was murdered in part for that, I'm sure. I want to say, and I take responsibility for saying it, that I believe that Barry Weiss, not alone, but Barry Weiss has some of Rifat Al-Aryr's blood on her hands. But he was a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, which has now been completely destroyed like all the

other universities in Gaza by the Israeli army. He was a writer, he was a poet, he was a mentor to hundreds if not thousands of young people in Gaza who he really believed had the power to tell their stories and tell the stories of the Palestinian people to the world. And so he almost single-handedly brought the idea of English, learning English as a tool for Palestinians to communicate with the world to Gaza in a way that was incredibly effective. So I'll give you an example. Probably if you go to our publication, the Electronic Edifada, on any day you will see

on the front page stories written by young writers in Gaza. Most of them were Afghats students. And on social media, it's the same. Most of those you see tweeting in English on from Gaza were very likely Rifad students. He had an incredible impact. And throughout this war, from when it started, we were in close touch.

We were on WhatsApp all day, every day, except when there were cutoffs. And he kept me sane. I mean, it's funny to say that because he was relating being in the most horrifying circumstances. His home was bombed, and they narrowly escaped death when they evacuated their home for the first time. Several of his neighbors were killed in that attack. That was in mid-October. And then they escaped to another location in Gaza City and then another one, then another one, till finally the Israelis caught him and killed him. But throughout that he kept his humor, he kept his strength. You saw his posts how how even when he knew the Israelis would likely kill him,

he never backed down. He never backed down. He decided that it was more important for him to tell the tale and to speak out than to preserve his own life. He didn't want to die. He wasn't reckless. I know he was as careful as he could be. But that's how committed he was to this mission. And in 2014, he came to the United States

as part of a tour, to do a tour with a book that he edited. I have it on my desk here. It's called Gaza Rights Back, Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine. And it was published in English by Just World Books. And he came to the United States with two other writers, Yusuf el Jamal and one of the other writers in the book. And I had the opportunity to do a number of events with them in different cities in the United States and spend time with Rufat.

And he was just hilarious. He was a riot. I mean, he just had fun with everything and he had a wicked sense of humor. And I was very lucky to become friends with him. And what you learn after someone dies often, you find out so much more about them. And so many people wrote and spoke about the impact he had on them.

And I'd say he was one of these rare people. I've known one, I'd say one other person like this, but he was one of these rare people that when you were with him, I've known one, I'd say one other person like this, but he was one of these rare people that when you were with him or when he was speaking to you, you felt like you were the only person in the world. And he had the ability to be present for people like that

for hundreds of people, if not thousands, including during this genocide. He was an incredible person and we miss him every day. I mean, I remember being so taken with this idea that you just rendered for us of the use of English as a means of resistance. Because if you were under the age of 18, born in Gaza, and you've lived in this concentration camp your entire life, in which Israel basically controls every calorie that you consume, restricts your movement, surveils you every single day.

The idea that like through learning English and learning to tell your story in the global language that that is a means of escape through which like that your oppressors have no control over. Like once you start speaking in a language that people understand that they can connect outside of the bounds of your prison. And not only that, but to do it with such humor, as you just mentioned with the Rafaad, literally facing death, he was getting off hilarious posts, which is like, I mean, if I could think of what is true bravery to me, it's like maintaining a sense of humor, facing certain death. Yeah, he was very funny.

And I think he also saw humor as a form of resistance. And frankly, it's a form of coping. He, even now, like our friends and colleagues in Gaza, who were in touch with mostly it's by WhatsApp, they're still cracking jokes. They're still making jokes. Because again, it's still cracking jokes. They're still making jokes because again, it's a coping mechanism. But Rifat took it to another level.

I just wanted to say that the third person who was on that tour, one of the contributors to Gaza writes back is Rauan Yahi. I just wanted to mention her name as well. And I want to say also to pay tribute to, Rifat was also a major contributor to the electronic intifada, our publication in a number of ways.

He was a writer and you can still read his stories at the electronic intifada, as well as watch his appearances on our live streams, which we've done since October, and his last appearance was a week before he was murdered. And his appearances were always very, very moving and just incredible. But he is one of four of our contributors

who have been murdered in this genocide. So, Rifat Al-Arair, Huda Al-Sousi, Ra'id Qaddura, and Muhammad Hammu, who were also all students of Rifat, and they've all been murdered during this genocide. I mean, yeah, it's hard for me to even talk about this on a show that isn't exclusively dedicated to the Palestinian cause. So I mean, it's just like, today, and I feel it's like, this is something I hear from people all the time, like people who don't have a personal connection to Gaza or Palestine. Over the last five months, it's just like waking up every day and seeing some new thing

that is like the most evil thing you've ever seen in your life and then having to wake up the next day and see another one, even worse than that. And it just, it really demoralizes you to such a degree. I don't know, I'm just wondering, for someone who covers this on a much closer level, how do you maintain a fortitude or just an ability to Keep covering this to keep looking at this to keep talking about what's going on in Gaza and about the plate of the Palestinian people you know The one message that our friends and colleagues and loved ones in Gaza tell us is don't stop talking about us

don't forget about us and Gaza tell us is don't stop talking about us, don't forget about us. And that gives us a mission. And there are times when it is extremely difficult and you feel anguish and despair, I think, for the first week, you know, and I heard this, first week, you know, and I heard this, no one wanted to talk about it, who was outside Gaza. Just how difficult it was for us all personally. But no one wanted to talk about that because it's like, who are we to complain because, I mean, how can we compare our situation living in safety in the United States or Europe or wherever it may be with people who are literally facing genocide. But at the same time we have to understand and I say this, I think it's important

for us to understand that this does take a toll on us personally. And the only way to get through it is in community. And so I'm very fortunate that I work with incredible people, all my colleagues at the electronic intifada, and we support each other, and our friends and family, we support each other. And it's particularly difficult for those Palestinians who have family in Gaza and who are outside Gaza. They have it even worse in a way, because they're often out of touch with their family for days or weeks at a time, not knowing if they're dead or alive.

So, you know, one of the jokes I crack, I say this is my first genocide. So I don't know. I don't know how you I don't know how you cope with. I mean, we get back gets back to humor. Yeah, exactly. But that's to say the serious point that is we don't know how we've never done this before. I mean, we've lived through the horror of what Israel has been doing for all our lives, but this is something else. And so we don't know how we there's no self-help book which tells you how do you get through a genocide. And so we're learning every day what it takes to to survive it mentally so that we can stay focused on doing this work for as long as we have to do it. Felix, do you have anything before we wrap up?

I guess I wanted to just get your take on, did you see that Canadian minister that was forced out recently. Felix, you may be more up on your Canadian ministers than I am. Remind me of that. Did she say something nice about Palestinians? Was that what it was? No, it was the opposite, actually. She was trying to defend Israel and said, you know, she repeated like the old Hezbollah line of like, you know, they made the desert bloom and she she Said that is real is fighting for a worthless patch of land Well, yes, I did see that. Yeah. Yeah, I did see that. Yeah

I think she was in in Was it a canadian minister or a? British columbia minister now we're going to get really deep down into canadian in, was it a Canadian minister or a British Columbia minister? Now we're going to get really deep down into Canadian politics. Yeah, it's, I think it just goes to show how pervasive these racist ideas are that Palestine didn't exist or that there was nothing there until the colonial settlers came along When the the opposite is the case Zionism has destroyed Palestine's land and people for more than a century and and what it has built there is just ugly beyond belief ugly physically and ugly

Morally yeah, and just the making the desert bloom line has always been so fucking stupid. I mean, the first time I heard that, I realized that they were trying to make it sound like Israeli's invented irrigation, which was it was around for a little bit before that. Well, you know, my family, my father comes from a village called Batir, which is south of Jerusalem. It's just west of Bethlehem. And UNESCO a couple of years ago declared it a World Heritage Site, and particularly for its terrorist irrigation that goes back more than 2000 years. The people of Batir have been tending these irrigated terraces for 2000 years continuously, their own indigenous water system.

And that's just an example of what's existed all over Palestine. I mean, I'm not saying that to say, oh no, look, how we shouldn't, we should never have to say, oh look, even if it was a patch of desert, it was our patch of desert. You know, it wasn't a patch of desert. And if this land is so and you know, for the designers out

there, if this land is so shitty, can I interest you and maybe some acreage in New York or Florida? It's a lot, it's a lot nicer. You should check it out. Or Germany. I believe I believe that Germany should fulfill its historic responsibility to the Jewish people with a two state solution in Germany. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess as long as you brought up Germany, the Germans, they must be loving this right now. They must be like, like their cultural memory is getting off so much on finding a way to carry out a genocide,

but like, but do it for Jewish people and then not just and also brutally punish any descent on their awful violent state, but in the name of protecting Jews rather than killing them. Well, you know, the police in Berlin regularly beat up Jews who are rallying in support of Palestinians. So you have the Berlin police, the jackbooted thugs of the Berlin police accusing Jews of being anti-Semites. I mean, the layers of just perversity and depravity and irony in terms of what Germany is doing. And Germany is arming literal goose-stepping, Sikh-hiling Nazis in Ukraine, and at the same time they are arming Israel to commit a genocide in Gaza, the world's first live stream genocide. And they are just telling us what good people they are.

You know, they are the righteous people on this planet. And it is just, I can't even begin to unravel and unpack the levels of depravity that exist in Germany. But I will say this, that I believe, I'm gonna take the opportunity of being on your esteemed podcast to say that I strongly support the right to exist of the German Democratic Republic. The only German state that actually learned the lessons of history because what did the German what did the German Democratic Republic do to atone for the crimes of Germany over time. The German Democratic Republic actually armed and trained anti-colonial freedom fighters all over the world, particularly in South Africa. The German Democratic Republic stood with

the Palestinian people and the people around the world who were fighting for liberation from European colonialism while West Germany was actually the more the more time goes by the more we realize it was the reincarnation of the Nazi state. You know, there have been these studies done in recent years. People can look this up that until the 1970s, there were more members of the Nazi party but by that point former members of the Nazi party working in the West German federal justice ministry, then had been the case under Adolf Hitler. This is, and then of course, you will find almost no modern German institution whose founder was not a Nazi. The intelligence services, the Bundeswehr, the Luftwaffe, the know, the first president of the European Commission,

the EU, was a former Nazi. I mean, it's just they had one of their chancellors in the 1960s or 70s, Kurt Schlesinger, was an actual Nazi. And there was that famous incident where I think it was was it Beata Klotz Klausfeld who went up and slapped him in Public and said you're a Nazi. So this is the state that Exists today and that is preaching to us about how righteous it is while supporting Nazis in Ukraine and genocide in Palestine I mean one incredible statistic. I saw that well I think, put a bow on this is, obviously, the current Jewish population of the state of Germany, 1% for obvious reasons, but then

of the number of, like, the people charged under the current laws prosecuting Palestinian solidarity, 33% of them are Jewish Germans out of a 1% of the overall population. So they've just found a way to do it again, folks the Germany stuff is like It's like if Japan could reoccupy Korea now and Could yell at everyone if they were like stop on stop occupying Korea. They must be so pissed They're like Germany has to do this and they can't bring back like the Empire of the Rising Sun. Yeah.

Kurt Kiesinger was the Nazi Chancellor just just for the record. I'm not saying he was the only Nazi Chancellor since World War Two, but he was definitely a Nazi Chancellor. But he was definitely a Nazi Chancellor. Right. Well, let's let's leave it there for today. Ali Abnanima, the website is the Electronic Interfata. And you began the show by sharing some very kind words about our show. I would like to end the show by saying that I've been following the electronic into FATA since before Shapo started. It is a great resource. Like I said, if you want real journalism and just like like a like the true perspective on Palestinian Palestine as a Political struggle, but also as a people

I really cannot highly recommend the work being done by Ali and everyone at the electronic into FATA enough We'll include a link to the website and a link to buy Rafat's book Gaza writes back in the show description Once again, Ali abunim. I want to thank you so much for your time joining us today. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ali. Alright, till next time everybody. Bye-bye. Alarir, November the 1st, 2023. If I must die, you must live to tell my story, to sell my things, to buy a piece of cloth, and some strings.

Make it white with a long tail, so that a child somewhere in Gaza, while looking heaven in the eye, awaiting his dad who left in a blaze and bid no one farewell, not even to his flesh, not even to himself, sees the kite, my kite you made flying up above, and thinks for a moment an angel is there, bringing back love. If I must die, let it bring hope. Let it be a tale.