Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-08-04 Monday

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

Headlines for August 04, 2025; Prof. Rashid Khalidi Slams “Crushing Repression” at Columbia, Cancels Course over Trump Settlement; “It Is Our War”: Palestinian American Scholar Rashid Khalidi on U.S. Complicity in Gaza Genocide; Torture at CECOT: Venezuelan Men Freed from Salvadoran Mega-Prison Describe Brutal Beatings, Humiliation

From New York, this is Democracy Now! Students at campuses across this country and across the world who opposed and oppose genocide in Palestine were on the right side of history. They still are. We still are. History will judge the war criminals who have slaughtered tens and tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza, starving them, letting them die of thirst of their wounds, funding, arming this genocide. Rashid Khalidi, the renowned Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia

University, says he's withdrawing from teaching his fall course due to the school's major new deal with Trump. He says, quote, the university's draconian policies and new definition of anti-Semitism make much teaching impossible. We'll speak with Rashid Khalidi, author of, among other books, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine. Then, a ProPublica investigation reveals how hundreds of Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador, then released to Venezuela by the Trump administration, say they endured

months of physical and mental abuse inside the Salvadoran prison, Secat. The United States sent us to El Salvador so that El Salvador could do the dirty work that the U.S. could. And justice will only come through the truths and testimonies of each of us. All that and more coming up. Coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. At least six more Palestinians in Gaza have starved to death in the past 24 hours, as famine spreads across the besieged strip.

At least 181 Palestinians, including 94 children, have now died from hunger-related causes in Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli forces killed at least 92 Palestinians Sunday, including 56 who died while seeking food and aid. Another 34 Palestinians have been killed so far today. On Sunday, an Israeli strike hit the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Chanyunas. One staff member was killed.

Meanwhile, Israel has asked the Red Cross to intervene and help provide food and medical treatment for Israeli hostages in Gaza. The call came after Hamas and Islamic Jihad released videos showing two emaciated hostages. The Palestinian groups denied the hostages were being intentionally starved, but a spokesperson for Islamic Jihad said, quote, they will not receive any special privilege amidst the crime of starvation and siege, unquote. The broadcast of the hostage videos prompted a new wave of protests in Israel, calling for an end to the war and the release of all the hostages.

Tens of thousands of protesters were in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. This comes as the Israeli military is threatening to expand its war on Gaza. A group of 600 retired Israeli security officials have written a letter to President Trump to urge him to pressure Israel to end the war. Signatories include three former heads of Mossad. In Gaza, a grieving mother shared this message for President Trump after Israeli forces fatally shot her 16-year-old son while he was seeking aid. TRUMP WANTS US TO SEND A THANK YOU LETTER.

WHAT THANK YOU LETTER DOES HE WANT US TO SEND HIM? LET HIM COME AND SEE MY LITTLE SON, A CHILD. THIS IS MY THIRD SON. A MONTH AGO, ONE KILLED, AND THIS THIRD ONE KILLED TODAY. HE WENT TO GET FOOD AND DRINK SOAKED IN BLOOD. A month ago, one killed, and this third one killed today. He went to get food and drink, soaked in blood. Go see the flower thrown and filled with the blood of people who were killed and the martyrs lying there." Israeli authorities are continuing to refuse to release the body of the Palestinian activist

Oda Havelin, who was fatally shot by an Israeli settler last Monday in the occupied West Bank. Israel is also still detaining seven members of his family. Sixty Palestinian women from the village of Um Achair began a hunger strike Thursday to demand justice. On Sunday, Israelis also held demonstrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to protest the killing of Hadaline, who worked on the Oscar-winning film No Other Land. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have released the settler accused of killing Hadaline, Yannon Levy.

He'd been under house arrest. Earlier this year, the Trump administration lifted the Biden-era sanctions on Yannon Levy. Meanwhile, Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, has sparked outrage after he led a large group to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. Jordan decried Ben-Gavir's visit, calling it a flagrant violation of international law." Mass protests against Israel's war on Gaza continue around the world. In Australia, as many as 300,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbor Bridge in one of Sydney's largest protests ever.

Participants included the formerly imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Here in New York, about 50 Jewish activists and their allies were arrested Friday while protesting at the offices of New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to denounce their votes against halting arms shipments to Israel. The bill was sponsored by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. In Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott is threatening to arrest and expel Democratic state legislators from office if they don't return to the state Capitol by this afternoon. More than 50 Democrats left Texas to block the passage of a new congressional map, which was gerrymandered

to give Republicans five extra seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Governor Abbott was reportedly hesitant about redrawing the state's congressional map until Trump called the governor and pushed for it. This is Democratic state Representative Ron Reynolds. And today, in the spirit of John Lewis, I decided to make some good and necessary trouble by breaking quorum, because the Abbott-Trump takeover is not acceptable on my watch. I am here today to stand up for our democracy, stand up for black and brown Texas that will be disenfranchised by this hostile racial

gerrymandering. President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday hours after the agency released a weaker-than-expected jobs report. Trump wrote on social media the numbers were, quote, "'rigged' in order to make the Republicans and me look bad," he wrote. Trump presented no evidence suggesting the numbers were rigged. Trump's firing of Erika McInterfer was widely criticized. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers spoke to ABC Friday.

This is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism. Firing statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers. It goes with launching assaults on universities. It goes with launching assaults on law firms. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has announced it's shutting down. After President Trump signed a law clawing back $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting, most staff positions are set to end next month, and a small transition team will stay until January to close out any remaining work.

The CPB was founded in 1967, helps pay for PBS, NPR and 1,500 local radio and television stations across the United States. Stations in rural and poorer areas of the country rely heavily on the CPB's grants to operate. Many are expected to close. In international news, the U.N.'s Migration Agency says at least 68 Ethiopian migrants have died and 74 others are missing after a boat capsized off the coast of Yemen. There were only 12 survivors. In recent months, hundreds of migrants from Africa fleeing poverty and conflict have died

or gone missing in shipwrecks as they attempt to reach wealthy Gulf Arab countries through Yemen. Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has been sentenced to 12 years of house arrest after being found guilty of witness tampering and bribery. Uribe was convicted of bribing imprisoned members of paramilitary groups to coax them into retracting damaging testimony, exposing his ties to right-wing paramilitary groups. Udibe was a close U.S. ally who ruled Colombia from 2002 to 2010. In news from Washington, D.C., the Office of Special Counsel says it's probing Jack Smith, the former Justice Department

official who led the investigation to President Trump's efforts to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. Smith's being investigated for potentially violating the Hatch Act, which prevents federal officials from participating in political activity. The Office of Special Counsel opened its investigation at the urging of Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who claims Smith was trying to influence the 2024 election. The federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from quickly deporting immigrants who are granted parole to live and work in the United States.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, the Undocu Black Network and CASA, challenged the Department of Homeland Security's policies in court, which enabled ICE officers to arrest immigrants who were offered temporary protective status at the ports of entry in the U.S. The Biden administration had allowed Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans a legal pathway to immigrate to the United States, but in March the Trump administration revoked parole for those groups. More than a dozen states filed a lawsuit Friday to block the Trump administration from investigating hospitals and doctors who provide gender-affirming care to children.

The complaint argues, in attempting to prosecute medical providers, the Trump administration is trying to put in place a national ban on puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries for transgender children. Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order banning federal funds from going to medical schools and hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for minors. Currently, more than half of all states have laws that restrict or outright ban transition care for children. Elaine Maxwell has been moved from Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas just days after she met with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanch, formerly President Trump's

personal attorney. This comes as pressure grows on President Trump to release files about Maxwell's longtime associate, the serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse and traffic young girls. And more than 3,000 union members who assembled Boeing's fighter jets in Missouri and Illinois went on strike today after contract negotiations failed. The International Association of Machinists and Arisbeck Workers, District 837, the union

that represents the workers, says the strike is, quote, about respect, dignity, not empty promises," unquote. The work stoppage comes after the union rejected a contract offered by Boeing. According to the union, the workers assemble and maintain weapons systems, missile and defense technology and aircraft, including F-15 and F-18 fighter jets. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, Rashid Khalidi, the renowned Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab

Studies at Columbia University, is withdrawing from teaching his fall course due to the school's new deal with President Trump. He says the university's draconian policies and new definition of anti-Semitism make much teaching impossible. Stay with us. I'm going to boy. God, do you know that you get better? And I'm a very fun. Yeah. You call her a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,

very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, Something to Say, by Fatoumata Jawara, performing in our Democracy Now! studio. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. One by one, major universities have been making deals with the Trump administration. In the most comprehensive of all the deals with schools so far. Columbia University recently agreed to pay a $200 million settlement to the Trump administration after it accused the university of failing to protect Jewish students during campus protests

against Israel's assault on Gaza. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC, by agreeing to end the consideration of race and admissions and hiring. The settlements will restore hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of canceled or frozen grants from National Institutes of Health and Department of Health and Human Services. As part of the deal, Colombia also agreed to appoint a senior provost to oversee the Middle East Studies Department, will further crack down on campus protests and will appoint three dozen new security officers with arrest powers.

The agreement includes a little reported provision that commits Colombia to, quote, "'examine its business model and take steps to decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment.'" For more on this major settlement, we're joined by Rashid Khalidi. He's the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and author of several books, including The Hundred Years' War on Palestine. He has a new essay in The Guardian. It's headlined, I spent decades at Columbia.

I'm withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump. The university's draconian policies and new definition of anti-Semitism make much teaching impossible, he wrote. In the piece, Khalidi explains why he now finds it impossible to teach at Columbia, given its adoption of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or AIHRA's definition of anti-Semitism, and cites parts of his lecture that would run afoul of it. Khalidi writes, quote, The AIHRA definition deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with

Israel so that any criticism of Israel or indeed description of Israeli policies becomes a criticism of Jews." Citing its potential chilling effect, a co-author of the IHRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, has repudiated its current uses, yet Columbia has announced that it will serve as a guide in disciplinary proceedings." Hality also writes in the piece, quote, "...it's not only faculty members' academic freedom and freedom of speech that's infringed upon by Colombia's capitulation to Trump's

diktat. Teaching assistants would be seriously constrained in leading discussion sections, as would students in their questions and discussions by the constant fear that informers would snitch on them to the fearsome apparatus that Colombia has erected to punish speech critical of Israel and to crack down on alleged discrimination." Unquote. Professor Rashid Khalidi joins us now from France. Professor Khalidi, welcome back to Democracy Now!

We've read some of your rationale. I'm sure there are hundreds of students who are extremely disappointed to hear that you're not going to be teaching this course, though you did retire. You are continuing with this course. Can you more fully explain why you've said no to Colombia? Well, you already laid out—thanks for having me, Amy. Again, I'm sorry that for 22 months you and I have been talking about the same genocide. And that's the background to my decision.

You've already mentioned a couple of the reasons that I gave. Colombia has agreed to a number of conditions that the Trump administration wanted to impose. You mentioned some of them. Another of them is the imposition of an outside monitor, so-called, who will have access to absolutely everything, including classrooms, meetings, and so forth, to ensure compliance with the various dictates of the Trump administration. Basically, it's going to be impossible to teach a whole range of topics, not just including modern Middle East history or the history of Palestine or Israel, but things like genocide,

things like settler colonialism, things like the Holocaust. One of my distinguished colleagues, a Holocaust scholar, Maryann Hirsch, has just mentioned in an interview that she's not going to be able to teach. She's also retired, but like me was also teaching a course. In fact, I believe on the Holocaust. And she said, I cannot teach this course under the Ira definition because it makes it almost impossible to say certain things

which are critical of either Zionism or Israel. She said, how can I teach Hannah Arendt? Hannah Arendt, one of the great figures of the 20th century was an anti-Zionist. She's also one of the great commentators and writers about the Holocaust. She said, I can't teach Hannah Arendt. Somebody is going to come and lodge one of these spurious complaints under this new dispensation.

And I'm going to be brought up before a kangaroo court. And that's essentially what Colombia has agreed with the Trump administration to establish, as has already happened to her and as has happened to a number of my colleagues. And so I figured I had to take a stand. I mean, they have been, they have been already happened to her and has happened to a number of my colleagues. I figured I had to take a stand.

They have been putting pressure on faculty and students really since the war began to shut down any advocacy for Palestine, any opposition to this horrific genocide. You ran a piece at the very beginning of this segment where you quoted a speech that I gave a year ago talking about how the students are on the right side of history. They are. A year later, it's even more true. The starvation, the mass death, the extraordinary callousness that Israel has shown, have been exposed to the world. You don't have 300,000 people crossing Sydney Bridge in Australia,

unless they realize that something horrific is happening at the hands of Israel. I realize that I simply cannot teach under these circumstances in this institution. The last thing I want to say is this is not just a capitulation to the Trump administration. This was an inside job. There was a fifth column, members of the Board of Trustees,

senior members of the faculty of some of the professional schools, and a clutch of donors who have been beating the drums for years and more than a decade, to the effect that Columbia is deeply profoundly anti-Semitic. This is a despicable lie. It simply means that their sensibilities and their unbounded support for Israel are offended by the fact that some people are sticking up for Palestinian rights. This is not a new phenomenon at Columbia. This fifth column, working from within, within the board of trustees, among a minority of the faculty, and a few students, have been trying to get Columbia to do these things.

In fact, one of them admitted it. She said, I'm glad we've been forced to do this. These are things we wanted to do all along. I wanted to go back to your essay, where you said, citing its potential chilling effect, a co-author of the IRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, has repudiated its current uses. Talk more about that. Well, Kenneth Stern was one of the people who helped to write this, and he intended it for an entirely different purpose, not to be used to punish speech in support of Palestine,

not to be used to punish people who say certain things about Zionism, things that have been said by leading Jewish intellectuals for over 100 years. He never, never intended that the definition that he helped to co-author would be used for these purposes to discipline and punish academics and students and others. And that is the way it has been weaponized as a tool to protect Israel from criticism,

as a tool to perfect this political ideology of Zionism from criticism, by arguing that any criticism of Israel or virtually any criticism of Israel and virtually any criticism of Zionism are anti-Semitic, that they are directed at the entirety of the Jewish people, which is of course nonsense because the majority of the Jewish people didn't even support Zionism until about 100 years ago or less than 100 years ago. Majorities of them were opposed to Zionism.

Most anti-Zionists were Jewish up through the middle of the 20th century. But this definition has been concocted by the International Holocaust Remembers Association, not in order to remember the Holocaust, to prevent any criticism or many criticisms of Israel and of Zionism. And that is what Ken Stern was objecting to. And he's been objecting to it quite vigorously. I understand that he spoke to the board of trustees at their invitation to try and persuade

them not to take this step. And, of course, that had no impact on them. And, of course, many of the protesters across the country and at Columbia are Jewish. I wanted to get your response to the acting Columbia president, Claire Shipman, speaking to the Columbia Daily Spectator, the student newspaper. She defended the deal with the Trump administration, saying, quote, "'I think we were able to craft an agreement that's in line with our values and doesn't cross any of the red lines we articulated.

So I understand that narrative. And as a former journalist, I understand the power of narrative, and I understand the power of simple narrative. But this is a very complex situation. I think that the process we move through is actually the right one for this institution. Professor Khalidi, can you respond to Colombia's acting president, Claire Shipman? I think she's acting as a mouthpiece for what I call this fifth column within the board of trustees, within the donor community, among a few senior faculty in the professional schools,

for whom any critique of Israel is unacceptable. Certainly, many critiques of Israel are unacceptable, and any or many critiques of Zionism are unacceptable. I don't think that the values of Colombia include a government appointed monitor from a company that in June celebrated Israel's independence or celebrated Israel. To be able to go into classrooms, to be able to go into meetings, to be able to harvest our data. If that's the value that Columbia stands for, it's a stasi value. It's a dictatorial

value where the government appoints a monitor to check on what is happening inside an independent private university. What values are protected by the IHRA definition? The only value that's being protected is Israel's impunity as it commits genocide. There are many other there are many other aspects of the settlement of the appointment of a special provost, a vice provost. Why? Why does Middle East studies require scrutiny? What's wrong with what's being taught at Columbia? These are enormously popular courses.

They represent the scholarship of a vast array of people, not just the people teaching at Columbia. They represent basically the most respected scholarship in the field. There's no need for a vice provost to supervise Middle East studies at Columbia, any more than there for a vice provost to supervise Middle East studies at Columbia any more than there's a need for it to supervise. This is intended, by the way, to go further and to cover other areas studies. And undoubtedly, as the Trump administration squeezes and squeezes,

we'll be talking about race, we'll be talking about gender, we'll be talking about Columbia's expansion into Harlem at the expense of the local community. Those things are going to be vepulten. You're not going to be allowed to speak about race. You're not going to be allowed to speak about gender, just as you're soon not going to be allowed to speak about—you're now not allowed, under these rules, to speak about certain aspects of Israel and Zionism. I wanted to compare Colombia's response to Harvard.

This is in the Harvard Crimson. Harvard president Alan Garber has told faculty a deal with the Trump administration is not imminent, denied the universities considering a $500 million settlement, according to three faculty members familiar with the matter, universities seriously considering resolving its dispute with the White House through the courts rather than a negotiated settlement, Garber said, according to these three faculty members. Your response, Rashid Khalidi? Like Colombia, Harvard practiced anticipatory obedience, closing down an exchange program

with Birzeit University. This happened months ago. Firing the two people who had the Middle East Center, shutting down a program at the Divinity School related to Palestine. They have already kowtowed. They have already done what was asked of them. They've already accepted IHRA. The same draconian strictures on speaking about Israel and on speaking about Zionism are already adopted by Harvard,

even before Columbia adopted them. So Garber's tough talk relates basically to money, which incidentally is the value that these universities cherish above all else. Their contempt for their students, their contempt for their faculty is unbounded. Their attention to the bottom line is unlimited. And that's the reason I decided

to retire several years ago, long before the war in Gaza, long before any of this happened. I saw an institution that was not driven by pedagogical and educational values, an institute that had contempt for its community, that had contempt for its students, that had contempt for its faculty, and was led by people, none of whom in the board of trustees with one or two possible exceptions, knows anything about education. There are a bunch of hedge fund managers, government bureaucrats, and lawyers. With all respect to those three categories, they don't know squat about education. And those are the people who are leading Columbia and most other private universities, politicians, ex-politicians, government bureaucrats, lawyers, hedge fund

managers, and so forth. And those are the people who have decided for whatever reason, because they sympathize with an attempt to shut down any kind of protest against Israel's genocide, or whether they really don't want the faculty. I mean, one of the things that they have promised the Trump administration here at Columbia is to restructure governance so the faculty. I mean, one of the things that they have promised the Trump administration here at Columbia is to re-restructure governance so the faculty and the Senate are excluded from any aspect of governance. They've already been excluded from the disciplinary process. You have a bunch of kangaroo courts led by faceless, nameless bureaucrats, investigators who know nothing about education, who have condemned student after student, faculty member after faculty member,

on ridiculous, spurious grounds. In some cases, kicking them out of the university. In the case of one of my colleagues, she was forced to leave her position at the law school. In the case of students withdrawing or preventing them from getting their degrees or suspending them for two years, including suspension of their funding. So we are talking about a situation in which really,

Columbia University has accepted a set of values that have nothing to do with the values that Chipman talked about. There are values that are dear to a dictatorship, there are values that are dear to censors, there are values that are that are that are dear to censors. There are values that are dear to people who want to protect Israel from criticism at all costs while it slaughters people by the hundreds daily in Gaza. One child every day over more than 600.

I mean, it's extraordinary. The largest number of children killed in a conflict, the largest number of medical workers killed in a conflict, the largest number of journalists killed in a conflict in the 21st century. And they want to protect that with IHRA, with their monitor, with their vice provost, with their kangaroo court disciplinary procedures. I don't see how people can, in good conscience conscience continue as before inside these universities. People really have to do something. It was easy for me, I'm retired.

I simply decided not to teach a course that I didn't have to teach in any case. But it'll be harder, obviously, for people who depend on their salaries, for people whose careers would be affected. But I really do think that things have gotten to the point where people have to stand up and do more than any of us have done.

I mean, people have tried to stop this genocide. The students were enormously heroic. Hundreds of them have paid very high prices in terms of expulsion, suspension, traumatic disciplinary procedures. Many of the students I know have been very severely psychologically harmed by the brutality of Colombia's crushing repression. They've sacrificed. I think it's time for other people to sacrifice.

And by that, I don't just mean people in academia. I mean everybody. People in the complicit news media, the mainstream news media, are complicit in genocide by, for example, publishing anything that the Israeli military spokesman says. They're inveterate liars. They should be called out for that when it is proven that what they're saying is an absolute

lie. The media should be saying that. On the contrary, the reverence for anything an Israeli official says is nauseating. These people are committing genocide. You would not have reverence for the government of Myanmar or for the rapid support forces in Sudan as they slaughter people. Why are we reverently repeating in the media the lying statements of Israeli officials? There's a lot more that needs to be done by everybody.

I wanted to get your response. I've seen this going around online, that there's going to be a spontaneous memorial for the first concrete academic casualty, post-deal, in parentheses, holidays class outside the campus on Broadway north of 116th at noon today. Your thoughts on this? I hadn't heard about that. One of the things that I mentioned in the article that I wrote for the Guardian was that I will be teaching a free hybrid short course on Palestine, which

will summarize a chunk, but not all, of what I was going to teach in this course at Columbia. I'll be doing that in New York at the People's Forum, time and date and details yet to be arranged. So I will be teaching this fall, but not at Columbia. And I will continue to teach elsewhere, maybe not in the halls of corrupt academia, maybe elsewhere. So, I think it's a little early for a post-mortem. Professor Khalidi, I want to get your response to the latest developments in Gaza. At least six more Palestinians have starved to death there in the past 24 hours.

As famine spreads, at least 181 Palestinians, including 94 kids, have now died from hunger-related causes in Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli forces killed at least 92 Palestinians Sunday, including 56 who died seeking food. Another 34 Palestinians have been killed so far today. And yesterday, on Sunday, an Israeli strike hit the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Khan Yunis, destroying the facilities one staff member killed. Can you respond, Professor Haladi, to what's happening there now, the emaciated video of

hostages coming out, yet 10,000 Israelis protesting in Tel Aviv, demanding a ceasefire, demanding an end to Israel's war on Gaza? I wish nobody were starving in Gaza. But the cause of that is Israel's war on Gaza, including the starvation of the hostages, if in fact they're starving. And that's enabled by the United States. The United States put up the money for these killing fields called an international humanitarian, whatever they call it, where hundreds of people are killed every single day. And only people who are young and able, and there are not that many left in Gaza,

are even able to access these sites. The United States is responsible for this. We Americans should be protesting this. The bombs that they dropped on the Red Crescent headquarters in which one staffer was killed are American bombs. They have bombed every single hospital in Gaza at least once, and some of them have been completely destroyed. They've destroyed every single university in Gaza. They've destroyed water treatment plants. They've destroyed sewage treatment plants. This is genocide, and this is American facilitated, supported, financed genocide. The Israelis should stop the war. The Israeli people should rise up.

But it is Americans who have to rise up. It is our war. It is our money. These are our bombs. These are our bullets. Every single warplane in the Israeli arsenal is American. F-35, F-15, F-16. Every single combat helicopter is American.

They do not do what they're doing without the United States holding them up. And we must stop this. The specifics of the massacres of people at these so-called humanitarian aid centers are an American initiative. The United States is enabling Israel to slaughter people seeking food in a situation where Israel is systematically starving. I think that, I mean, my reaction is we have to do more. We are responsible. The United States government and people are responsible and to their credit, most Americans have now woken up. Support for Israel is at

the lowest point that it's ever been in the entire history of the Zionist project or of the state of Israel. More than, more, a majority of Americans oppose Israel's war on Gaza, including growing numbers even of Republicans. It's time for Americans to stand up and force the Trump administration and force the craven cowards in our Congress

to do something to stop this. To their credit, 27 Democratic senators voted to stop arms aides to Israel. Much, much more has to be done by all of us. Professor Haladi, the Haldis are one of the most prominent families on the West Bank. I wanted to ask you about what's going on there. Israeli authorities are continuing to refuse to release the body of the Palestinian activist Oda Havalin, who was fatally shot by an Israeli settler last Monday in the occupied West Bank. Israel is also still detaining seven members of his family, 60 Palestinian women from the village of Om Al-Khair began a hunger strike Thursday

to demand justice. On Sunday, Israelis held demonstrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to protest Oda's killing and also the withholding of his body, the young man who worked on the Oscar-winning film No Other Land. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have released the settler accused of killing Havalin, Enon Levi. He had been under house arrest earlier this year. The Trump administration lifted the Biden era sanctions on him.

Your response? All of this is par for the course. The Israelis have imposed conditions for this poor man's family to hold a funeral. They're not allowed to bury him in his home village. They're not allowed to have a public mourning for him. And this is what they do all the time. They're holding the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians, whom they've refused to return to their families,

alleged quote unquote terrorists, people who have been engaged in resistance, and others who've done nothing. And so this is par for the course. There is a jackboot military dictatorship in a country that claims that half the population under its control have no rights, but claims that it's a democracy.

What kind of democracy is it when half of its subjects have absolutely no rights but claims that it's a democracy. What kind of democracy is it when half of its subjects have absolutely no rights, are subject to this kind of treatment murdered by settlers. The settler who murders them goes free. The body of the victim is held in a refrigerator somewhere. It's typical of the way in which this institution operates. You have ministers.

Our family is actually from Jerusalem. And you had a senior minister go up to the hadamah sharif and lead public prayers of several, apparently he was with several thousand other Israeli extremists, leading public prayers in an area which never, in which that was never, never allowed under any regime, including Israeli military occupation previously this was never never acceptable imagine people going into a synagogue or a church and having Muslim prayers imagine

and this is what this is what Ben Gver, senior minister in this government in fact one of the most important figures in the whole Israeli government did the other day on the Tisha'baab, the date on which Herod's temple was destroyed by the Romans. So this is typical of the absolute trampling on Palestinian rights all over Palestine, whether we're talking about people actually being subject to starvation and death in Gaza, or whether we'd be talking about people driven out of their homes in Janine refugee camps in the southern part of the West Bank or in Jerusalem. Or we're talking about this kind of ridiculous arbitrary detention. Imagine a man is killed, they won't let the family hold a funeral,

and they arrest members of his family, and the perpetrator goes free. Because he's a distinguished figure in the settler movement, which dominates this government. I mean, it's time for people to wake up and realize that this crystal ideal vision of Israel is a lie. It is a systematically developed, systematically built up lie. This is a state that has deprived an entire people of its national rights for generations. This is a state that is built on theft of other people's property, their land, their property, their books, books of everybody in the cities that were conquered in 1948 were taken and are now in the Israeli National Library. We're talking about theft on a scale, on a vast scale, going back decades and

decades and decades. And you can see videos of Israeli soldiers, posts of them stealing things from Palestinian homes in Gaza to this day. So I think it's time for people to wake up. I think it's time for this idealized vision of Israel to shatter and for people to come to terms with the fact that we are funding and financing this ethnic cleansing, this genocide, this theft, day by day by day, of people's land in the West Bank. Professor Haladi, I wanted to get your response to this protest that took place on Friday. Democracy Now! was there. I'm Amy Goodman.

This is Democracy Now! We're standing outside the offices of New York Senators Kristen Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer. Jewish Voice for Peace has shut down this office building. A number of people are getting arrested. Inside, others are about to be arrested, among them New York State Assemblymember Claire Valdez of Queens and New York City Councilmember Tiffany Caban. Tiffany Kaban also protesting are the actor Sara Ramirez of Sex in the City and other TV shows, as well as well over 100 people, Jews and their supporters, where T-shirts

say, stop arming Israel and stop starving Gaza. What are we going to do? We're going to leave the country now. We want more people to get out. We're going to leave the country now. Are you getting the last minute? We're going to stay here until they take us out. Why? Because we have to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Are you getting the last minute? We're going to stay here until they take us out.

Why? Because we have to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Right now. It hasn't been two weeks, two months. It has been far, far too long. And our government is funding this genocide. What can you do as a New York City council member? Stand with my constituents who are demanding an end to the siege in Gaza,

who are demanding aid to be lightened to help to feed the folks who are starving in Gaza right now. Say your name and your position. Sure, my name is Tiffany Caban. I'm Council Member of the 22nd District of it Gaza! Go for it Gaza! I'm here because it's unconscionable for anyone to stand by while a genocide is perpetrated on innocent people. We're seeing a human-made famine unfold in Gaza that we've been warning about for years and months now. We need to let aid in as soon as possible. We need to stop funding a government that is trying to gaza the sinners in New York state are complicit in that. They do not stand up against it.

That's why I'm here. So, that was New York State Assemblymember Claire Valdez and New York City Councilmember Tiffany Caban. Kaban. They both were arrested, with around 50 other Jewish protesters and their allies in a event that was—a protest that was sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace. Among the people who were protesting were Sex and the City's Sarah Ramirez and many others. As we wrap up, Professor Holliday, your response to the response, as you just talked about the polls lowest ever in support of Israel, what needs to happen here in the U.S.?

American politicians need to realize that the people oppose their policies of unlimited support for Israel. It's about time that the people who are elected by the people respond to the demand that's coming up from almost every sector of American society, stop this blind support for Israel and this genocide. The United States can end it, and it is their responsibility to do it, or they will face a reckoning, because people are not going to support representatives who simply do not represent them on this issue that everybody realizes is of enormous moral significance.

They should wake up and do the right thing for a change. I'm happy to see that some of them have done that. A couple of them were at this protest. Some senators did the right thing the other day. Many, many more need to do the right thing, or they will be tossed out of office and will deserve to be tossed out of office by angry constituents, not physically voted out at the polls. RACHEL HALADY, EDWARD SAEED, PROFESSOR, AMERITIS OF MODERN ARAB STUDIES, AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AUTHOR OF A NUMBER OF BOOKS, INCLUDING THE HUNDRED YEARS'

WAR ON PALESTINE. WE'LL LINK TO YOUR PIECE IN THE GARDIAN. I SPENT DECADES AT COLUMBIA. I'M WETDRAWING MY FALL COURSE DUE TO ITS DEAL WITH TRUMP. He was speaking to us from France. to your peace and the Guardian. I spent decades at Columbia on withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump." He was speaking to us from France. When we come back, a ProPublica investigation reveals how hundreds of Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador from the U.S., then released to Venezuela by the Trump administration, say they endured months of physical and mental abuse inside Secat. Back in 20 seconds. naturaleza robada

soy pensamiento indebido grito de voz silenciada soy el dolor que no siente soy la memoria olvidada Contra Todo by Ile, performed in our Democracy Now! studio. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman. Now That They're Free, that's the headline of a new joint investigation that reveals

how the hundreds of Venezuelan men, deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador, then sent to Venezuela, say they endured months of physical and mental abuse inside the Salvadoran mega prison SeECAT. Though happy to be home in Venezuela, they say the fact that they were released is proof of how senseless their detentions were. The report is the work of reporters from ProPublica, the Texas Tribune, and a team of Venezuelan journalists from Rebel Alliance Investigates and fake news hunters. In a minute, we'll be joined by one of the reporters, but first we turn to their video

of three Venezuelan men who were held in El Salvador, now home in Venezuela. My name is Andre Omar Blanco Bonilla. My name is Wilmer Jose Vega Sandia. My name is Juan Jose Ramos Ramos. In their own words, the nightmare at Seacat. When we landed in El Salvador, I was by a window and I saw thousands, thousands of officers around the planes. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, terror.

An officer from El Salvador got on board and he said, either you get off the easy way or the hard way. How will you get off? We're not getting off. Oh, the hard way then. And they started hitting us with batons. The prison director told us, welcome to hell where you enter alive and leave dead.

They forced us to kneel against our will, beating us. There were many people screaming, asking for help, for mercy. The shackles were so tight and they injured our ankles. Many were even bleeding because we were cutting ourselves with the shackles. They would say to us crudely, walk you piece of ****. I remember telling an officer, I can't walk. If you loosen the shackles, I can cooperate, but I can't walk. I have a medical condition. I'm hypertensive.

I was beaten to the point of fainting. They dragged me until we got to the cell block. Then they threw me down. My head hit the floor. I woke up and asked God, why am I here? I felt like my world had collapsed. They started putting 10 to 15 people in each cell. I believe the Seco prison is not a prison meant to hold inmates.

There, I feel like we were treated like animals. I believe the Seco prison is not a prison meant to hold inmates. There, I feel like we were treated like animals. Food tastes like soap. It was shocking. The bathrooms were disgusting. They used the water we had to use the shower. Sewage black water pipes ran through the cells. Some people developed respiratory illnesses because of that. The walls were full of mold. Sleeping on metal because the beds were iron, I said, how long are we going to survive this?

How long are we going to endure it? Fifteen minutes for ten people to shower. Some didn't get to shower because time ran out. The price of good hygiene was a beating. I tried to bathe secretly and they saw me. They dragged me to the wall, the island, and started beating me. And one officer kept hitting me on the ears as if to disorient me. And then on the temple, right here, they beat me for nearly

two hours. Every guard on duty would take turns hitting you. Even the prison director hit us many times. I couldn't see well out of one eye because the beatings to the head. They took us to solitary confinement. They called it the hole. I got hit in my private parts, you could say. From a kick I received, I am still suffering from it. On April 5th, there was a major beating where they beat one of our fellow inmates who was a kid. They pepper sprayed into his mouth and he started convulsing on the floor. He was foaming at the mouth. They told us he had died.

But thank God he is alive. He came back to us. When the Red Cross came for the first time, we spoke out. But speaking out cost us a brutal beating. They used weapons firing rubber and plastic pellets and many were injured. Injuries to the head, forehead, legs, back, chest. Many of us tried to take our own lives in there. We said, I'd rather die or kill myself and keep living through this experience. Waking every day at 4 a.m. to insults and beatings, listening to the clanging of metal bars, hearing your brothers

get beaten, crying for help. They'd plead, please stop hitting me. I'd rather you kill me. I don't deny that I used to support President Nayib Bukele's policies to fight crime. I never imagined that I would one day experience this injustice myself. It has been a dirty policy. The United States sent us to El Salvador so that El Salvador could do the dirty work that the U.S. could, and justice will only come through the truths and testimonies of each of us. Part of the video report that accompanies a new investigation headline now, they're

free. For more, we're joined by one of the lead reporters, Perla Treviso. She's with ProPublica, Texas Tribune Investigative Unit, joining us from Philadelphia. Perla, welcome back to Democracy Now! As we just listened to these three men, their horrifying stories, you write about another man, Leonardo Jose Colmenares Solorzano, a 31-year-old Venezuelan, who told you that now that he's free, he wants the world to know he was tortured over four months in a Salvadoran prison.

He said guards stomped on his hands, poured filthy water into his ears and threatened to beat him if he didn't kneel alongside other inmates and lick their backs. Tell us more about this investigation, how you reached these men in Venezuela and what they're saying today and what this says about what the U.S. did, arresting well over 200 Venezuelans, sending them to Salvador to be put in Secat, and then making a deal with a so-called prisoner swap and then just releasing them to Venezuela. Yes, well, first of all, thank you for having me. These men were sent to El Salvador on March 15. From that day on, we started gathering as much information as we could about them.

We started reaching out to families. Then when CBS News published a list of the names, we started compiling this database. We wanted to know who these men are. The administration was portraying them as the worst of the worst, violent criminals who deserve to be there, and we wanted to learn a little bit more about them. In total, we reached out to more than 100 family members and lawyers for this man. We combed records in the U.S., in Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Colombia. And the men that you just saw right now, you know, we had been in touch with their families for months at this point, and the conversations were very much about the void

that they had left behind. You know, they were wondering, were they alive? One mom was telling me, you know, when I asked her, what do you think about it? It's like, you know, is he eating? Is he sleeping? Is he alive? Because the administration at that point had not confirmed—and even up to this point, they had not—you know, they had not provided an official list of who was sent to El Salvador. So by the time that they were released, that they were free, we had been building relationships

with these moms. And, you know, there's dozens, hundreds of stories that we could have told, and these are just three of the examples that we thought, you know, provided—exemplified what the broader group had lived through. Of the more than 230 men who were sent to Venezuela, you discovered at least 197 had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S. and that the Trump administration was aware of this, as President Trump was saying, were going after the worst of the worst, the rapists and the murderers. Perla?

Yes. So, we obtained, you know, in addition to the background information that I described, we also obtained internal government record that showed how the government itself was labeling them, whether they had criminal convictions in the U.S., whether they had pending charges, or they were deemed immigration violators, meaning they had only violated immigration laws. And so not only does this match what others had reported, but it shows that the administration itself knew, even when they were portraying them as the violent criminals that deserve

to be sent to a prison in a country that was not their own, potentially indefinitely, they actually knew that the vast majority did not have convictions in the U.S. And we found that, you know, from those six, you know, half a dozen of them had convictions for what would be deemed violent crimes. You also write that the State Department said it's not responsible for the conditions of the place where the U.S. sent the men to. You had Bukele saying the U.S. is in charge, and, of course, you had President Trump saying that Bukele was in charge. Parala, your final comment.

You know, I think this is part of the issue that experts, advocates, lawyers point out to you. When you push a border enforcement detention out, who is responsible at the end for what happens to the, in this case, this man who were detained? I think everyone by the US pushed into El Salvador. It says whatever happens in El Salvador is not our issue. El Salvador is saying, well, you know, it's still under the jurisdiction of the US.

So at the end, who is accountable for any human rights violations that the men that alleged occurred while they were in detention for months? Perla Trevizo, we're going to link to the ProPublica Texas Tribune Report at democracynow.org. We're going to also do an interview with you in Spanish, posted online. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.