Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-10-06 Monday

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Democracy Now! Monday, October 6, 2025

From New York, this is Democracy Now. Last night, a whole residential compound in Al-Tufer neighborhood, was subjected to a barbaric Israeli strike amid news of a possible deal and the agreement of Palestinian factions to the plan by the United States President Donald Trump to stop the war and free the Israeli hostages. Israeli strikes on Gaza continue to kill Palestinian children and people seeking food, even after Hamas and Israel agreed to parts of President Trump's 20-point plan for a Gaza ceasefire. Now in the second phase, Hamas will be a war.

be disarmed and the Gaza Strip will be militarized. This will happen either through diplomatic means, according to the Trump plan, or militarily by us. I said this in Washington as well. We'll get an update from the Gaza Relief Committee and speak with former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy about talk set to begin in Egypt. As the peace plan calls for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, we'll also speak with Alex Deval about his recent peace, the return of the starvation weapon, the collapse of global norms, fueling the catastrophes in Gaza and Sudan. Then, global outrage is mounting as Israel continues to jail hundreds of international activists days after its military captured dozens of boats on the global Sumud flotilla.

Many activists describe mistreatment in Israeli custody. They subjected some people to torture. One of my friends has just passed out, fainted on the plate because of the exhaustion that they subject to her too. This is how Israel behaves towards Europeans. You could only imagine how it treats Palestinians every single day. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Narmine Sheikh. Negotiations are set to begin in Egypt today after Hamas and Israel agreed to parts of President Trump's 20-point plan for a Gaza ceasefire. On Friday, Trump wrote on truth social, quote,

Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza so that we can get the hostages out safely and quickly. Trump made the comment after Hamas issued a response to Trump's plan without accepting all the conditions. The deal calls for a swap of all remaining hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, as well as an eventual Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza. But major questions remain over what both Israel and Hamas will agree to.

Despite Trump's call for Israel to stop bombing Gaza, the death toll continues to rise. On Sunday, Israeli forces killed at least 24 Palestinians. Another seven have been killed so far today. Displaced Palestinians in Gaza City expressed hope that a deal to end the two-year war could be reached. We urge the negotiators. We urge the United States President Donald Trump, even the state of Israel, the state of Palestine, all states of the world and the Arab states. to end this suffering we are living in completely and to start the reconstruction of the Gaza

strip. We are displaced in the streets. We are living in the streets. Women are humiliated, our children are humiliated. There are no schools. There is no life. In Israel, tens of thousands rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday to support a deal to free the hostages. On Sunday, hostage families set up a protest tent outside the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. For the second time in two days, a Trump appointed federal judge in Oregon has blocked the president from sending National Guard troops to the state, saying his claims about unrest in Portland were, quote, untethered to facts. In a ruling on Sunday night, Judge Karen Imbergut blocked Trump from sending the California National Guard to Portland. Oregon governor, Tina Kotech, praised the ruling saying, quote, this is not just about Oregon or a handful of states anymore.

It's about the integrity of our democracy. White House advisor Stephen Miller has accused the judge of engaging in a legal insurrection by blocking the deployment of the National Guard. Miller's comment comes as the White House considers a plan to send the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to Portland. New court filings show the Trump administration plans to send hundreds of National Guard troops from Illinois and Texas to Chicago. On Sunday, Governor J.B. Pritzker said, quote, we must now start calling this what it is, Trump's invasion. This comes as federal immigration agents expand their violent crackdown in Chicago amid growing protests. On Saturday, federal agents shot a woman in Chicago,

allegedly after a group of cars boxed in patrolling officers. The woman is now facing numerous charges. Chicago alderman Byron Sikcho Lopez denounced the federal response. In Brighton Park in Chicago, on 39th, and Ketze was a shooting earlier, a nice involved shooting. We went to demand an investigation, but there are escalating violence. They are escalating violence in the city. This is not making anyone safer. These raids, when you saw that the raids that just did a few days ago, there were innocent people.

They have not shown the need to go and terrorize families in the middle of the night, see-blocking kids, getting people naked in the middle of the street. Is that public safety? Is this public safety ended up with a shooting? Some being chased and out wrecked in a few blocks away from here? This is not keeping nobody safe. And they know that. The government shutdown has entered its sixth day.

President Trump is using the shutdown to withhold federal funding from Democratic-led cities and states. Russell Vaught, the White House budget director, announced that the administration would pause $2.1 billion in funding for Chicago's infrastructure projects, fighting on social media that the move is to, quote, ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting. It follows a similar announcement last week

when the administration halted $18 billion in infrastructure funding for New York. The Washington Post is reporting that the Trump administration is working on a plan to change age requirements for Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments by raising the qualifying age to 60 or eliminating, age as a factor entirely. The Post cited a paper showing that 750,000 fewer people would receive benefits in the next decade if the proposed rule change goes into effect. U.S. forces have bombed another boat off the coast of Venezuela, killing four people. Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth

claimed the boat was transporting drugs, but offered no evidence. President Trump recently declared the U.S. to be in an armed conflict with drug cartels in a move to give the president extraordinary power to launch attacks in Latin America. On Sunday, Trump spoke at a celebration of the Navy's 250th anniversary and threatened to begin launching attacks on land. Well, they're not coming in by sea anymore, so now we'll have to start looking about the land because they'll be forced to go by land. And let me tell you right now, that's not going to work out well for them either. Colombian president Gustavo Petro denounced the U.S. attacks in Latin America.

Why do they fire missiles? That's called murder. And it's the murder of young people who should have other opportunities, which we must give them. Ukraine says Russia fired more than 50 missiles and nearly 500 drones in an overnight attack on Sunday, killing five people, including a 15-year-old girl. The attacks also left tens of thousands of Ukrainians without power. Meanwhile, Poland deployed fighter jets to secure its airspace. France's prime minister, Sebastian Le Corneux, resigned on Monday less than a day after forming his cabinet and less than a month since being appointed as prime minister. That leaves French President Emmanuel Macron to decide on whether to dissolve Parliament and call another snap

election. It comes as tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in recent demonstrations led by trade unions denouncing budget cuts. Israel is facing accusations of mistreating international activists who were detained when Israeli forces raided a flotilla of Gaza-bound aid boats, detaining over 435 passengers last week. Several activists who've been deported say they witnessed Israeli officers mistreating the Swedish climate activist Greta Tunberg. One Turkish journalist who was deported from Israel said Israeli authorities, quote, dragged little Greta by her hair

before our eyes, beat her and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her as a warning to others. Tuneberg is expected to be deported today. On Sunday, the Spanish activist Rafael Borego spoke in Madrid after being deported from Israel. At any time that any of us

called a police officer in prison, we risk that seven or more fully armed people would enter our cell, as they did on mine, pointing us with weapons at our heads, with dogs ready to attack us, and being dragged on the floor. This happened on a daily basis. They didn't let us speak to our lawyers at any time. They impeded counsel or assistance. They didn't let us call our families. All of this under a very humiliating treatment. In other flotilla news, CBS is reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly approved military operations on two vessels from the flotilla while it was in Tunisia last month.

Two U.S. intelligence officials told CBS that Israeli forces launch drones from a submarine and dropped incendiary devices on the boats. Hundreds of thousands of protesters took part in pro-Palestinian rallies this weekend across the globe. In the Netherlands, about 250,000 marched in Amsterdam. Major protests were also held in Istanbul, Paris, Rabat and other cities. In London, police arrested over 440 protesters for supporting Palestine action, a group that was designated as a terror organization in July, making it illegal for anyone to show support for the group.

This is the longtime British peace activist Angie Zelter. I'm disgusted by the police. actually. They shouldn't be arresting a nonviolent protesters here. We have a right to protest and Palestine action is not a violent organization. It should never have been prescribed in the first place. They should be arresting the real criminals, okay, which is the people colluding with the genocide, which includes our government, unfortunately. Here in the United States, about 100 activists blocked the main entrance to Port Elizabeth in New Jersey to protest the shipment of weapons to Israel. This is Jim Keedy, Director of Educating for Justice.

As you can see, this is a peaceful, non-violent demonstration. Yes, it is inconvenient for the people that are in these trucks and in the cars they're in front of me here. But as you can see, there are people that are just exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech. This slaughter, this genocide needs to stop. Our elected officials have done nothing to stop the flow of weapons to Israel. In fact, they've increased the weapons flow over the course of two years. They have given Israel billions of dollars of our attack. money and they have given them the moral and political cover to commit a genocide that we are

seeing in high death on our phones every day. The New York Times is reporting that President Trump is expected to lower refugee admissions to 7,500 people, a sharp reduction from the cap of 125,000 set up by the Biden administration last year. The new limit would support mostly white South Africans. Speaking to the Times, Mark Hetfield, the president of Hayas, a Jewish resettlement agency, said, quote, such a low refugee ceiling would break America's promise to people who played by the rules. Trump isn't just putting the Afrikaners to the front of the line. He's kicking years-long waiting refugees out of the line. Journalist Mario Guevara was deported to El Salvador on Friday after being detained by ICE for over 100 days.

Guevara, who founded the outlet MG News, where he received awards for his coverage on immigration, has lived in the United States for nearly 20 years. He was arrested and jailed in June for live streaming an anti-Trump No King's demonstration near Atlanta. Guvara spoke to reporters in El Salvador. Maybe I made a mistake, but I did it for my family. I did it because I held on it, because I had.

I'd hope. I trusted in the United States justice system because it had always been fair to me. I trusted the United States, right? One of its slogans in the pledge to the flag is liberty and justice for all. That no longer exists. Liberty and justice is only for American citizens. Journalists who are American citizens can do the work, a journalist like me, who is an immigrant with a work permit, no. That's the new reality in the United States. And authorities in South Carolina have launched an investigation after the home of South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein was set on fire. The judge was not home at the time, but three members of her family have been hospitalized, including her husband, a former Democratic state senator. Judge Goodstein had received death threats recently after President

Trump's Assistant Attorney General, Harmeet Dillon, criticized the judge for temporarily blocking the state's election commission from releasing its voter files to the Department of Justice. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Narmine Sheikh in New York, joined by Amy Goodman in San Francisco. Hi, Amy. Hi, Nermine, and hello to all our viewers, listeners, and readers around the country and around the world. President Trump is calling on negotiators to move fast on Gaza ceasefire talks as delegations from Hamas and Israel convened today in Egypt for indirect talks on the 20-point plan announced last week by the White House.

On truth social, Trump wrote, quote, all hell like no one has ever seen before will break out against Thomas, unquote, if it does not agree to the plan by his deadline. Trump spoke to reporters on the White House law on Sunday. We don't need flexibility because everybody's. pretty much agreed to it, but there'll always be some changes. But the Hamas plan, I tell you, it's amazing. You're going to have peace, if you think about it, peace in the Middle East for the first time in, they say really, 3,000 years. So I'm very honored to be a big part of that. Look, they've been fighting for a plan for years. We get the hostages back almost immediately.

Negotiations are going on right now. We'll probably take a couple of days, and people are very happy about it. Gaza ceasefire negotiations on the Hamas side are led by Khalil Al-Haya, who Israel targeted in an assassination attempt in Qatar last month. The deal calls for Hamas to release all remaining hostages and to disarm and outlines a transitional governance structure. Hamas has agreed to the release of Israeli hostages, but hasn't accepted all the conditions. For more, we're joined by Daniel Levy, president of the U.S. Middle East project and a former

Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Minister's Ehud Barak and Itzak Rabin. His recent substact post is titled Interpreting the Trump Netanyahu Gaza Plan, reactions to it and what comes next. Welcome back to Democracy Now, Daniel Levy. So if you could give your initial response to Trump's 20-point peace plan, which indeed you say should not be referred to as a police plan. Well, it's not a peace plan. plan. It's many things, but not that. Look, the most important component is whether this can bring

an end to the Israeli assault, a ceasefire, the release of Israelis, the release of Palestinians held in Israel, the Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza, and the entry of massively needed humanitarian assistance, which Israel has been preventing in its starvation policy. and the entry of that on scale. Now, on those things, the 20 points are extremely light on detail, hence the need to flesh those out, to make sure that there will actually be a withdrawal, that there will actually be massive ramping up of assistance that's allowed in.

And those are the things that are being discussed now in Cairo one imagines. The pressure is on to simply and ridiculously say, you know what, trust America. All those good things will happen. The rest of what's in those 20 points, and in fact, more of those 20 points are devoted to the details of some kind of bizarre throwback to the Dutch East India Company, some kind of colonial administration, non-Palestinian, led by Trump, former Prime Minister here, Tony Blair and others. My assessment is that they would then try and impose such a model in the West Bank where you currently have nominal, if deeply unrepresentative and co-opted Palestinian authority leadership. And there is nothing

other than a few throw away words about what would happen eventually in terms of the decolonization, de-occupation of Palestinian land. There is no reference in the whole bloody thing, even to the words West Bank. So the idea that this is going to set aside three thousand years or whatever the president wants to call it, is patently absurd. But that's why when the leader of the state, which is the key enabler of a genocide, puts forward a plan, one still has to engage with it. But that is why one at least needs to see, can it deliver on the immediate urgent necessity of stopping the killing, starvation and displacement in Gaza, getting Israelis out,

winning Palestinians released from Israeli prisons. Daniel, I wanted to go to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a video statement on Saturday, saying that intensified military pressure is the reason why Hamas is forced to agree to the potential ceasefire. To bring back our remaining 48 hostages, I instructed the IDF a few weeks ago to enter Hamas' most important stronghold, Gaza City. At the same time, I coordinated with President Trump and his team, a diplomatic move that turned the tables in an instant.

Instead of Israel being isolated, Hamas is isolated. And as a result of the intensified military pressure, we applied. And the diplomatic pressure, Hamas was forced to agree to the plan we brought. So let's also go to senior Hamas official, Mosa Abu Mazuk, speaking on Al Jazeera, who said that he did not agree with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair being a governor in Gaza. We will never accept anyone out, not Palestinian, to control the Palestinian. This is, but this is not belong to Hamas only. This is building all of the Palestinian and the Palestinian authority and the BNO, they should say what their response about this. And we can't

bring someone like Tony Blair to be governor in Gaza. So Daniel Levy, if you can respond to both Hamas and to the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, again, as the Hamas and Israel delegations converge in Egypt, along with Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, as well as Steve Whitkoff, his envoy. describe the whole scene. It's a promising lineup, isn't it, Amy? So look, what you have is an attempt by the Israeli Prime Minister to assert a victory narrative.

If indeed he ends up in a ceasefire which he has resisted for an awfully long time. I think he's also trying to tee up already the premise for preventing a full withdrawal and for resuming military action, perhaps initially not at the intensity that it's currently being conducted. Natanyahu, of course, will want to assert that victory narrative. And the truth is, there are many things that one would imagine come from an Israeli pen, or at least in Israeli song sheet, that are in that US plan. What Hamas are saying is, I think, twofold. Number one, we need, and they know there's no ironclad guarantee, but they need, as they have asserted throughout, at least for the possibility of the Israeli withdrawal, the humanitarian

assistance and the desisting from the mass killing of Palestinians to be credible. Those are the details that are trying to be entered. The other thing that they are saying is that as one faction in an armed resistance, it is not for Hamas to make those decisions regarding either the long-term position of the Palestinian liberation struggle and what it can agree to, nor the immediate governance arrangements for Gaza. That is for the broad Palestinian national movement to decide. We won't talk about it, but is, of course, a movement that is more absent than present at the moment, given the parlous state of the Palestinian Authority and PLO.

The lie that we are being told is that such a deal has not been available until now and has only become available, according to Mr. Natanyahu, because of the enhanced military pressure that he has imposed on Gaza City, just like he did on Rafa. Natanyahu has stonewall talks, and the position has been largely consistent throughout. Hamas has never insisted on maintaining its governance. In fact, even before October 7, 2023, it was ready to hand that over to relevant Palestinian bodies.

Natanyahu, in terms of the change in his position, that largely comes because the American president seems to be more insistent now. But what he would like to do is maintain the ability to avoid the parts of this plan, which while they won't lead us to peace, could at least lead us to something less awful in Gaza, therefore he's keeping his options open. In the meantime, in the interim, even while they're in Cairo, Palestinian civilians continue to be killed, Palestinians going to seek desperate humanitarian assistance of being killed, and Israel continues to bomb in Lebanon, to mistreat, illegally detain those who are just on the Sumud flotilla to Gaza as well. what I think we're seeing is a convergence though now around a demand from Trump and you know let's at least acknowledge with all the faults in this plan and there are multiple as I said Biden never pushed this hard his administration didn't push this hard and we are seeing an attempt by the Arab and regional and Muslim majority state mediating parties to try and navigate this at least to a place where an end to the genocide is plausible. We're seeing Natanyahu

trying to create maximum room for maneuver on his part. And we're waiting to see where Trump comes down on this. What we shouldn't forget is those aren't the only actors. So the mass mobilizations that we've seen, also the flotilla, also on the streets of Europe, Italy, in multiple places, they have generated a pressure on Natanyahu. It was noticeable that he felt the need to claim Israel is not isolated. Hamas is isolated. It's a bit of a silly claim. But he is feeling the heat of the fact that public pressure is driving governments to act in ways that they do not want to act. They would be happy to desist from acting in terms of doing things that Israel doesn't want to see them doing. I can. So Daniel, if you could also, you know,

Today's negotiations are expected to focus on the hostage exchange, the remaining hostages in Gaza, with Palestinian prisoners. And reportedly, one of the Palestinian prisoners whose name is on the list is Marwan Barhouti. If you could talk about the significance of that and what it would mean for Palestinians if Barthi were released. Yeah, so let's be clear there will be a significant release of long-held Palestinian prisoners if indeed this goes forward. That's what we've seen in the last two rounds of exchange. What I want to suggest is that if the last holdout point is the names of some of those prisoners, and on the other side of that equation for the negotiating parties is the line,

of Israeli withdrawal is getting Israel out of the border with Egypt where assistance could come through. If those are the trade-offs at the end, we perhaps might not see all the names that are being talked about of Palestinian prisoners being what holds this up, including the name you asked me about Marwan Barguti. Marwan Barguti is significant because in the past he has been a unifying figure. He managed to reach a document during his time in prison early in this term of his prison. Between Fatah and Hamas, it was ultimately dismissed by the current PA-P-L-O-Fatach leadership, but he is seen as someone who has broader credibility, as noticed in polls with the Palestinian public than those who currently run the show and who have not put themselves up

for election amongst their own people. And the key point here about Marwan Baraguti is we should not consider it happenstance or coincidental, which Palestinian leaders are assassinated by Israel, which are imprisoned, which are perhaps blackmailed, and who is left in place in order to run an authority which most days of the week is busy coordinating security with Israel when it's not being attacked and undermined by the Israelis. So Marwan represents one of those Palestinian leaders who perhaps could develop a kind of alternative, a kind of strategy and set of tactics, which could actually challenge Israel. It's not just Israel who doesn't want to see him come out for those reasons.

I would argue there would be quite a few nervous people in Ramallah were Marwan to be released. Daniel Levy, thank you so much for joining us. We're going to have to leave it there. President of the U.S. Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime minister's Ehud Barak and its Akrabin. Coming up, global outrage is mounting as Israel continues to jail hundreds of international activists days after its military captured dozens of boats on the global Sumud flotilla. Back in a moment. I was so disposed

Toward a mission yet unclear Advancing pole by pole Pachin breathed into my ears Obey this simple code When Road was paved in gold when road was just a road Am I blaking, yeah Such a woeful schism

The pain in our existence Was not as I envisioned Outs that trammed boots that tramp from track to track worn down to the soul when road was paved in gold when road was chisd by Patty Smith performing in our Democracy Now studio

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Narmine Sheikh in New York with Amy Goodman in San Francisco. Condemnation is mounting as hundreds of international activists remain in Israeli prison, days after Israel's military raided and captured dozens of boats on the global smooth flotilla. The flotilla set sail in late August in an effort to break Israel's siege and starvation campaign in Gaza. Reuters reports at least 170 flotella activists of the more than 450 arrested have been deported from Israel. Many have described torture and mistreatment in Israeli custody. The Swedish activist, Greta Tunbari, who is reportedly being deported from Israel to Greece today,

told Swedish officials she was being held in a cell, infested with bedbugs, and deprived of food and water. The Turkish activist Ersin Chilik told Andolu agency, news agency, that Greta had been, quote, dragged by her hair before our eyes, beat her and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her as a warning to others, he said. This is Spanish activist, Nestor Preto, as he arrived back in Madrid Sunday with a group of activists deported from Israel. A 75-year-old colleague was asking for insulin for three days. An officer said they didn't have medicine for animals at jail. Another Mexican colleague was asking for medicines for a cardiac disease saying it was urgent. And they said it would only be urgent when her heart stopped.

The flotilla members were greeted with cheers at the Madrid airport. This is the Dutch Palestinian activist Marco Tesh, who was also deported to Spain over the weekend. They are not giving any medical support to the prisoners there. The people have been kidnapped from international water, and Israel is mistreating everyone, but especially the people with Arabic or Muslim background. Me, myself, I'm from Balasina origin. I was mistreated the first day. I was almost like I couldn't breathe anymore because they got something on my face,

and they tied my hand to the back. This comes as CBS News reports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly approved Israeli military strikes on at least two flotilla vessels last month, when, according to two U.S. intelligence officials speaking anonymously, Israeli forces launched drones from a submarine and dropped incendiary devices onto the boats that were anchored off Tunisia's port of Sidi Boussaid, prompting a fire. International experts have denounced Israel's attacks on the flotilla

and its civilian passengers as a war crime. For more, we go to London, where we're joined by Kieran Andrio, A British-Palestinian journalist with Navarra media who was on board the global Sumud flotilla to Gaza. He was live streaming on the sailing boat Adara when the Israeli military intercepted it. He was just released from Israeli prison and deported over the weekend. Kieran, welcome to Democracy Now. So explain what happened, your experience as joining the flotilla and then what happened subsequently. Well, thank you for having me.

me on. The flotilla experience itself was long and arduous. It went on more than twice as long than anybody had initially expected. But one thing really held us together and really drove us forward. However many logistical setbacks, logistical challenges, or drone attacks. Interesting to hear that Netanyahu is now admitted to the Tunisian drone attacks, by the way, that's the first time I'm hearing that. But through all of these trials and tribulations, the thing that really really held us together was our love for Palestine, for the people of Gaza, and the bonds of loyalty and solidarity that we developed among ourselves on the boats. So though the journey on the flotilla across the Mediterranean from Barcelona to Gaza was long and episodic, those things

drove us forward. Once we got there, everything changed. And I can talk you through my experience now. So initially, the interception of the IDF on the boats was what we would call a soft interception, which is to say they didn't use the violence that would have been available to them had they wanted to. They were all carrying machine guns and so on, but nobody was physically hurt, nobody's physical integrity was compromised on the boats, as far as I'm aware, at least, for the interception. Nonetheless, it's important to stress that even if it's a soft or light interception, it's still illegal. It's still illegal to kidnap us in international waters and take us to the port of Ashton in Israel, because we were 70 nautical miles, in my case, in international waters.

Nonetheless, when we got to Israel, when we got to Ashdod, that's when the violence really began. So I was dragged out of the boat by my collar and chucked on the floor, cut my knee open. And the first thing I saw, as we were dragged out, or I was dragged out, was 300 people kneeling with their hands behind their backs facing straight down at the concrete outside of the port of Ashdod. They were forced to stay there, in some cases, for six hours. I was forced to stay there for about two and a half hours on my knees with my hands behind my back before I was processed in the Ashdod Center and sent to the prison in the Negev Desert, which we can get onto the conditions of in a moment. At that point, Ben-Gavir, Itimar Ben-Gavir, was brought out so that he could parade in front of us. And I think the assumption, and I want to emphasise this, I think the assumption was that we would be cowed, that we would be fearful, that we would stay quiet. And actually, that's not what happened. And what happens sets the tone for what then carried on in the prison, which is that everybody, as soon as we saw Ben-Gavir, 300 people on their knees,

fear, no doubt, started shouting, free Palestine, free Palestine, calling him a genocide the air and a baby killer and so on. And he was really shocked. You could see that Ben Gavir was stunned by that. His people, the police, they were all stunned by it. They expected us to be cowed, and we weren't. Then I was processed through the centre. It took about three or four hours. And they said to me, no immediate deportation, even if you want to be immediately deported, you're going to prison. So they bound our hands with cable ties very tightly. In my case, not everybody had it as tight as me. In my case, I was genuinely concerned that my fingers were going to drop off after several hours of having my hands bound this tightly. And I was having to

maneuver them as carefully as I could try and get blood to my fingers over the three or four hours that I had this cable tie on my wrist. We were transported to a prison in the Negev desert. I only found out when I asked the British Consville General who came to visit us, where are we? He said, we're in the Negev Desert. I had no idea until that point. We were transferred in a police bus. They pumped freezing cold air onto the bus while our hands were tied. It took two hours to get to the Negev Desert. Then they transferred us to the prison. That's where I think this is where the really torturous conditions started to begin. We would tend to a cell.

We were in cells without drinking water. For the whole time that I was there, which was two days, we weren't given any drinking water whatsoever. We had to drink out of a tat that was producing brown water. There was one toilet between 10 people, not in a good condition, as you can imagine. No toilet paper initially. I had to beg after 24 hours with one guard who gave us toilet paper after my continuous interventions and attempts. The most egregious thing of all vote, Amy, is that they were throwing

people's medicine in the bin in front of them and laughing in their faces. And I'm not just talking about people who, like myself, need a medicine called propanola, which is just a beta blocker to regulate heart rate. I can live without that for a few days, and indeed I was forced to. We're talking about people who are HIV positive and need their meds for that. We're talking about 75-year-old men and women who need medicine for their heart conditions, who may drop dead at any moment if they don't have that medicine. We're talking about a good friend of mine who's still there, I believe, Tommy Marcus, he's still incarcerated, who needs his medicine to regulate potential seizures. And if he doesn't get his medicine, he could keel over and die at any moment.

we told them this over and over and over again we pleaded with them from ourselves because we didn't get yard time by the way we were kept in ourselves all the time that we were there except to be transferred to see the british share in my case the british consulate we told them people are going to die the individuals pleaded with them i need my medication for this it's my human right where are our lawyers etc etc they laughed in our faces they spat on the floor they did not care just a couple of other forest stories for you. The food we were given was infested with insects. I mean, it was almost inedible anyway, but it was also invested with insects for good measure. Several people saw women have their hijabs ripped off their heads violently by Israeli police officers and then forced to crawl without their hijabs on in front of other men, Israeli police officers. One of the women that I was deported with told me what was going on because men and women were were separated, by the way, what was going on in the women's quarters. One young woman has a problem where her blood doesn't clot and she was on her period. They refused her any sanitary

towels and any medication to handle her condition. And she's anemic. So she almost died bleeding out in her prison cell with her comrades around her, unable to do anything to help her because no matter what they said to the Israeli prison guards, women prison guards in this case, no matter how they pleaded with them, they were totally and utterly insensitive to the possibilities of any of us dying. Karen, I want to thank you for this very descriptive report. And Karen, Andrew, is a Palestinian British journalist for Navarra Media. He's been speaking to us from London. he was just deported to.

And this latest news, Reuters is reporting, that Swedish activist Greta Toonbeddy has been released from Israeli prison, will be deported to Greece, according to Israel's foreign minister. There was a tweet that just came in from the Smood Flotilla, and it said that well over 100 activists are being deported to both Greece and Slovak. Narmein? This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Nermine Sheikh in New York with Amy Goodman in San Francisco. Negotiations are set to begin in Egypt today after Hamas and Israel agreed to parts of President Trump's 20-point plan for a Gaza ceasefire. On Friday, Trump wrote on truth social, quote,

Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza so that we can get the hostages out safely and quickly. Trump made the comment after Hamas. issued a response to his plan but to not accept all the conditions. The deal calls for a swapable remaining hostages in Gaza for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, as well as an eventual Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and outlines a transitional governance structure. But major questions remain over what both Israel and Hamas will agree to. This comes as Israeli forces have continued indiscriminate bombardments across Gaza. Dozens of Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on Saturday.

This is Shaadi Mansour, burying the body of his son, Amir, in Gaza City. Last night, a whole residential compound in Al-Tufa neighborhood was subjected to a barbaric Israeli strike amid news of a possible deal

and the agreement of Palestinian factions to the plan by the United States President Donald Trump to stop the war and free the Israeli hostages. As you can see, the target of the Israeli army are not members of the resistance, or as it claims, armed people.

It is children. This is Amir, my son. I had him after 40 years. Is he a member of the resistance? Is he a fighter? All the targets of the Israeli army are children. In this area, in this residential compound, no less than 17 people were martyred, including, as you see, under the rubble.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Israeli forces killed at least 24 Palestinians. Another seven were killed so far today, including three people seeking food. For more, we begin our coverage in Gaza with Ayad Amawi, representative of the Gaza Relief Committee and a coordinator for local NGOs based in Daryl Bala in central Gaza. Welcome back to the show, Ayad. There is a long delay, audio delay, between Gaza and here, but it was very very important. important for us to hear directly from you. So just tell us what is the situation on the ground and what do you think of these negotiations

that are beginning today on Trump's 20-point plan? Yeah, thank you so much for hosting me again. The situation looks like stabilizing the current situation. I'm afraid it seems that we have lost audio with Ayyad. We'll just go to break now and hopefully the audio will be fixed and we will return to him. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. Well, I'm the first to say, we're all going to be all right. been feeling that away we're all going to be all right and it's always been this way we've always

have been all right there ain't no golden days we've always have been all right and we've always have been all right and Kulushita ma'am, we're all going to be all right. And Kulushita ma'am, as long as we try, we're all going to be all right. I'm I'm going to I'm I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm So, I'm going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. If we illuminate, I'm If we illuminate, I say, we'll overcome. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Nermin-sheikh in New York with Amy Goodman in San Francisco. We were unable to reach Ayad Amawi, representative of the Gaza Relief Committee, who we were speaking to earlier.

We sadly lost audio with him. We'll keep trying to reach him. And if we do, we'll go to him. Amy? We'll turn now to conditions on the ground in Gaza as ceasefire talks are underway this week. Among the points in President Trump's peace plan revealed last week is that humanitarian aid must enter Gaza as soon as Hamas accepts the proposal. But our next guest argues aid should not be conditional on a ceasefire. We go now to Alex Deval, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and the author of the book, Mass.

starvation, the history and future of famine. His recent piece for foreign affairs is headlined the return of the starvation weapon, the collapse of global norms, fueling the catastrophes in Gaza and Sudan. So, Alex, we'll begin with the situation in Gaza on the ground. If you could explain the argument that you make about how aid should not be contingent on an agreement to a ceasefire. So famine is one of the simplest problems in the world to resolve. Historically, famines have been caused by all sorts of things like drought, like and crop failure, economic failures, etc.

But all current famines, every famine, every episode of mass starvation in the last 30 years or so, has been manmade the results of political or military action. And a set of norms were adopted by, the international community, culminating in a Security Council resolution that was voted for was partly designed by the first Trump administration seven years ago that said, among other things, that starvation of civilians may be a war crime, that humanitarian aid should be provided to those who are facing starvation no matter what. And the UN Security Council should be notified and should act whenever this happens or whenever such eventuality threatens.

And Israel has repeatedly shown whenever it is put under serious pressure that it can respond. It can solve the starvation crisis or at least ameliorate starvation in Gaza in a matter of days should it want to do so. It is a choice that Israel has, whether to feed the people or whether to starve them. And there is under international law and under actual practice, absolutely no reason why humanitarian aid should wait until there is a ceasefire and the end to the fighting. Let me ask you, Alex, before we go to Sudan, in the event that a ceasefire is reached, what exactly needs to happen?

What would restorative justice entail? what is Israel and the rest of the world owed to the survivors of starvation and to the families of those who starve to death in Gaza? So starvation is both a biological phenomenon and the social phenomenon. So the biological impact on children of suffering starvation when they survive is lifelong. The children who have been through this will suffer physical. and cognitive harm for the rest of their lives. And there is an obligation on those who perpetrated the crime and indeed on the rest of us to give them the support. It is also a social experience. The humiliation, the tearing apart of those social ties is as profound as that physical damage.

And so there is also an obligation on Israel and on the rest of us. And I've actually publishing today an article in Jewish currents on this very topic, on the obligation on the Jewish community as a whole globally to repair that social damage that is done to the victims of this planned starvation. Well, Alex, we want to move on now to Sudan. You point out in your foreign affairs piece that Sudan's famine is the biggest and most intractable in the world. So if you could explain the origins of this crisis and what you think needs to be done. So Sudan's famine has many different layers going back many years, including ecological crisis, a very distorted,

malfunctional economy, especially a food economy. the legacy of past wars, which have left many people destitute, reliant on food relief, and most particularly the devastation, including the mass looting and the use of starvation as a weapon by both sides in the current war. So the immediate challenge is to get a ceasefire and to get humanitarian access, which, of course, doesn't require a ceasefire, but would be greatly facilitated by one. And there is a plan by the U.S. government, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates, who are the three Arab states being the ones who are backing the different sides in Sudan.

And on this occasion, I think the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is essentially doing the right thing in trying to get those states together to push a deal on the Sudanese belligerents. But even if that succeeds, and let's hope it does, there's – first of all, a huge challenge in turning that into a real peace process. But an immediate challenge, how are you going to get assistance? Over thousands of miles. This is not Gaza. This is not something that can be turned around in a day where you have UN agencies standing ready with the resources, literally a few miles away. These are places that are hundreds, sometimes a thousand miles away. And of course, humanitarian aid budgets have been slashed. USAID has been cut to the bone. European aid donors

are also cutting their assistance. The UN appeal is only 25% funded. So there is a, even in the best case scenario, it will take months and a huge commitment of resources and political will to turn this around. I wanted to bring in Dr. Tanya Hajjasan. Alex DeWall points out that in his piece, that the Sudan's famine is the biggest and most

intractable in the world. Dr. Tanya Hashan, a pediatric intensive care and humanitarian physician, is just back from Sudan. Nermaine? Tell us, Tanya, when you were there, you were in August and September, and what you witnessed in the health facilities where you worked. You were also there last year, but in a different area of Sudan. Hi, Amy and Nermine, thanks for having me on democracy now.

So, yeah, this past year, I was in Gaddaiv State, which is sort of in the southeast. Last year I was in West Darfur, so controlled by different parties of the conflict on both sides. And last year in West Darfur, I mean, the hospital where we were working was pretty dramatically destroyed. And the staff were in the process of trying to rehabilitate it. The town where I was working in felt like the ghost town, there were some people who had moved back. And the children that we were caring for in that hospital were suffering from preventable illness. And there was a large proportion of severe acute malnutrition, along with the complications that come with it that Professor Alex Duval was talking about. You know, children who are malnourished often have severe

immunocompromise. They're more likely to get disease. They suffer from diarrheal disease illnesses that sort of perpetuate the cycle of malnutrition. And then this past time, so August and September, I saw similar things on the other side of the country. You know, a lot of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition. And it's devastating to see because to get to the hospital where I was working, you drive through fields of agriculture and you think how in this modern world, because, you know, I remember growing up and thinking, you know, when I was very young, watching famine in Ethiopia, for example, and I remember thinking to myself, what, this is, this is something environmental. You know, this is, this is the climate, this is environmental.

And you grow up, you mature, and you realize these things are manmade. And I think that's the important point to make is that, you know, atrocities in Palestine, die and atrocities in Sudan that relate to malnutrition, that relate to famine, are a consequence of underlying structures that enable these things to happen. And you can't have any sort of functional humanitarianism without political systems that are driven by a set of values and principles and that we apply consistently across settings, not just when it's politically and economically convenient. There are obligations under international humanitarian law that ensure the safety of health care workers, the safety of unhindered humanitarian access, including the delivery of food.

But at the moment, over 8 million people in Sudan face emergency or famine level food insecurity according to the integrated food security phase classification, the IPA classification system. And Dr. Tanya Hajs-Hasson, I mean, you pointed out that in the place that you're in where you worked, that's actually the agricultural center, and yet children were so severely malnourished. We only have 20 seconds. Yeah, no, that's true and very shocking. And I think Professor Alec Duval sort of pointed to some of the structural reasons why that's the case. You know, people can be very poor with very little access to resources that are at, you know, arms reach,

as we've heard a lot over the last two years in conflicts throughout the world. And that's why humanitarianism. I'm so sorry, we're going to have to leave it there. Dr. Tanya Hajashan and Alex Deval, Executive Director of the World Peace Fund. Foundation. And that does it for today's show. I'm Nermin-sheikh with Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now.