Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-02-06 Friday

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Headlines for February 06, 2026; Juan González on Lasting Impact of 9/11 Toxic Exposure as NYC Faces Calls to Release Suppressed Files; “Journalism Deserves Better”: Ex-Washington Post Staffers Slam Billionaire Bezos for Gutting Paper; Can U.S. & Iran Lower Tensions? Officials Begin New Talks Amid Trump Threats of Military Strikes; Right of Return: Omar Shakir & Ken Roth Debate “Blocked” Human Rights Watch Report on Palestine

This is democracy now. We have a large armada, flotilla, go out whatever you want, heading toward Iran right now, even larger than what we had in Venezuela. After weeks of President Trump threatening to attack Iran, U.S. and Iranian officials are in Oman for talks today. We'll speak to a journalist covering Iran for the Washington Post on Wednesday. And 300 of her colleagues were laid off at the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos. And we'll speak with Karen Atia, a former post columnist and editor who was fired over social media posts following the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Plus, we talked to Omar Shakir, who's resigned as Human Rights Watches Israel and Palestine director, after HRW blocked the release of a report on the right of return for Palestinians. We'll also talk to the former head of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, about the controversy and Gaza overall. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Senate leaders said Thursday they expect funding for the Department of Homeland Security to lapse at the end of next week after Republican Majority Leader John Thune rejected demands by Democrats for new restrictions on federal immigration officers. He called them unrealistic. Democrats had proposed 10 so-called guardrails against abuses by federal agents. The list includes an end to racial

profiling, prohibiting agents from entering private property without a judicial warrant requirements, agents where body cameras and unique ID numbers, access to attorneys for those detained, and end to raids near medical centers, schools, churches, polling places, courts, and other sensitive sites. Without a deal by February 13th, immigration and customs enforcement and customs and border protection will no longer receive government funding, though officers will continue to work without pay since they're exempted from furloughs. Other agencies, including FEMA, the Coast Guard and the TSA, would also be affected. On Wednesday, the two Democratic lawmakers, House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer drew fire from their party's base,

when they appeared to backtrack on the demand that federal agents should not cover their faces to conceal their identities. Here in New York, a dozen Columbia University students and faculty members were arrested Thursday for blocking traffic on Broadway outside campus and protest of Trump's immigration crackdown and to demand Columbia enact stronger protections for its international students. Protesters wore matching shirts emblazing with the word sanctuary campus now. Line of defense against fear and repression, not a testing ground for it. If a campus cannot protest... In Italy, protests have continued opposing the deployment of ICE agents to join the U.S. delegation for the Winter Olympics in Milan,

where hundreds of protesters gathered for the opening ceremony today. They're murders, and they killed a very, a lot of people, innocent people, and they've done bad things. that I don't approve of and we don't approve of and we don't want them here even just for the Olympics. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Kier-Starmer faces a growing political storm over his decision in 2024 to appoint Peter Mandelson as U.S. ambassador, despite his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. In September, the tabloid newspaper, The Sun, published a trove of emails revealing Mandelson,

urged Epstein to fight for early release from prison after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution, writing your friends, stay with you and love you, unquote. Starmor was grilled by members of the House of Commons Wednesday, where he insisted Mandelson lied during the vetting process, implying he barely knew Epstein. Mandelson betrayed our country, our parliament, and my party. Mr. Speaker, he lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship with Epstein before and during his tenure as ambassador. I regret appointing him. If I knew then, what I know now, he would never have been anywhere near government.

The Prime Minister apologized to Epstein survivors. Opposition leaders in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have called for a no-confidence vote. vote for Prime Minister Starrmer. Here in New York, the chair of the White Shoe Law firm Paul Weiss has resigned after emails released by the Justice Department showed he'd been a guest at the mansion of the late sexual predator, Jeffrey Epstein, and exchange friendly emails with Epstein on a number of occasions. Bride Carp's sudden resignation Wednesday came after he spent 18 years as chairman of Paul

Weiss, which represents corporate giants, including Amazon, Exxon, Mobile, and the NFL. Last March, the law firm was widely criticized after a pledge $40 million in pro bono legal services to issues President Trump has championed while eliminating DEI programs, all in response to Trump's executive order threatening to block the firm from representing clients before the federal government. Brad Karp is also a board member at New York Presbyterian and Mount Sinai hospitals. In response, the New York State Nurses Association called for his removal, writing, quote, Can board members like this be trusted to protect health care for New Yorkers, unquote? Some 15,000 New York City nurses have been on strike since January 12th.

On Thursday, 13 members of the Nurses Association were arrested for refusing to leave the headquarters of a major hospital trade association in Manhattan. In South Africa, activists with the global Samud flotilla have announced plans for the largest ever direct action seeking to break Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip by bringing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory. Organizers said Thursday they hope to mobilize thousands of people from over 100 countries in a coordinated nonviolent response against, quote, genocide siege, mass starvation, and the destruction of civilian life in Gaza. We will sail with this time thousands of participants, including more than a thousand doctors, nurses, health professionals, over a hundred boats. Mandela Mandela is a member of South Africa's parliament, an organizer with the global smooth flotilla and the grandson of the late South African leader Nelson Mandela. He's planning to join the next flotilla when it sets sail in March last October, who was abducted at sea by Israeli forces. during a previous attempt to sail into Gaza, carrying urgently needed humanitarian aid.

As a collective across the globe, we can isolate apartheid Israel, collapse it and bring it to its knees, just as we did to apartheid South Africa. We therefore want to take this opportunity, comrades and friends, to call on the entire global community. Registration is now open.

for mission 2026. The United Nations is warned of a humanitarian collapse in Cuba. Due to Trump's oil blockade on the island, Venezuelan oil was a lifeline for Cuba, which has been devastated by decades of U.S. economic sanctions. Since the U.S. abduction of the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's oil exports to Cuba have run dry as the Trump administration seeks to control Venezuelan oil reserves,

Fuel shortages in Cuba have prompted longer hours of blackouts, including in Havana, while the cost of food and transportation skyrockets. Despite Trump's persistent threats, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Cannell said Thursday he remains open to talks with Washington. Cuba is willing to engage in dialogue with the United States, dialogue on any issue that needs to be discussed or debated, under what conditions without pressure. Dialogue cannot take place under pressure. This comes as Reuters reports the Mexican government's evaluating options to send fuel to Cuba to aid in the humanitarian crisis while attempting to avoid retaliatory tariffs from the Trump administration. In Sudan, the United Nations warns famine conditions are continuing to spread to more regions.

Experts warn the rate of acutely malnourous children under the age of five has nearly doubled in Umbaru located in Sudan's Darfur region. in another area of Western Darfur, nearly a third of children are now suffering from acute malnutrition. Elsewhere, the Sudan Doctors Network reports at least 22 people were killed Thursday when RSF paramilitaries bombed the Al-Quaq Hospital in South Kordafan State, among the reported victims of the hospital's medical director and at least three other health care workers. Nigeria's government has deployed military forces to the western state of Quara, after gunmen reportedly massacred at least 170 people in the village of Waro Tuesday. More than 20 others were killed in a separate attack in the city of Katsina in northern Nigeria as gunmen went home-to-home targeting civilians.

No groups claimed responsibility. This is a resident of the state of Kuala. As of now, nobody can locate their relatives. Right now, I am shedding tears because I can't find my children. And my eldest son came and informed me that he couldn't find his younger ones. He told me to run away for our safety, but I declined, telling him death is everywhere. In response to recent attacks, the U.S. Africa Command confirmed Tuesday the Trump administration had deployed a small number of military troops to Nigeria.

This comes as all 166 people abducted an attack last month on a village and churches in northern Nigeria's Kaduna state have been rescued, according to the Christian Association of Nigeria. In Pakistan, at least 31 people were killed and dozens left wounded after a powerful explosion ripped through a Shia mosque in Islamabad during Friday prayers earlier today. Video shared on social media showed bloodied bodies surrounded by broken glass and debris on the floor of the mosque. Officials say 169 people were transferred to area hospitals. There's been no claim of responsibility but rumors of a suicide bomber. And new data released Thursday show U.S. layoffs rose in January to their highest level since

the Great Recession of 2009. According to the firm Challenger Gray in Christmas, U.S. employers announced nearly 109,000 layoffs last month of 205 percent from the previous month. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York with Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

We're beginning today's show, looking at new calls for the city of New York to release all files related to toxins released in the air when the World Trade Center twin towers collapsed in the line 11 attack almost 25 years ago. The headline on Thursday's New York Daily News front page reads Ground Zero memo shocker. City lawyers worried about toxins just after attack, but still. silent. Today's cover of the Daily News reads, release all 9-11 docks. Well, our own Juan Gonzalez closely covered this issue for the Daily News and Democracy Now, beginning just after the 9-11 attacks and wrote about it in his book, Fallout, the environmental consequences of the World Trade Center collapse. One, as I read these stories and the uncovered memo, I could only think about your groundbreaking reporting from Ground Zero at the time when everyone from

the president to the New Jersey governor to the mayor at the time Giuliani said it's safe to go back to work. Yes, Amy. And it's really saddens me that 25 years later, what I tried to warn about in the series of articles that I wrote about the dangers, the health dangers in the future for people who were living in or working at Ground Zero have proven to be true. That period of time was one of the toughest in my career because there were so many people who were basically attacking my reporting. Christy Todd Whitman herself, then the EPA administrator, wrote an Abed piece in The Daily News blasting me.

Catherine Wilde, who was then the head of the partnership for New York City, the big business group of New York, accused me of engaging in Halloween pranks. And the city hall, the Giuliani administration, blasted me to my editors. And even my own editors then said, look, you got to take it easy. You can't back this stuff up. And I remember telling Ed Kozner, the editor-in-chief of the Daily News at that time, I said, Ed, I don't want 20 years later that thousands of people will be dying as a result of the fact that we didn't warn them about the dangers. And sure enough, there's now more people have died as a result of illnesses contracted after the collapse of the World Trade Center than died on that day.

And I just wanted to read a quickly, a little section that I wrote in the introduction to my book on this whole issue, which I think puts it in context. text on. I wrote back then the early blanket assurances that, and again, this was written within weeks of the collapse of the World Trade Center, the early blanket assurances that government officials issued were a grave mistake. And their continued defense of those assurances in the face of widespread public skepticism was inexcusable. Thousands of people may end up paying for that deception through unnecessary illness or premature death in the decades to come. In their rush to return New York City and Wall Street to business as usual, those short-sighted officials unwittingly paved the way for a second wave of victims from the World Trade Center tragedy. In scrutinizing the

government response to the collapse, I am not suggesting that there was some secret conspiracy to hide the facts, or that anyone intentionally set out to mislead the people of New York. But I have no doubt that some officials saw what they wanted to see and irresponsibly chose to minimize or dismiss any post-collapse environmental threat. They did so for any number of reasons or combination of them, out of ignorance, in response to political pressures from superiors, or because they under estimated environmental threats from toxic releases, something that is all too common in the history of such disasters. Once ordinary citizens questioned their assurances, however, those officials closed ranks, dissembled, hid important information, and refused to listen or

alter their policies. My aim here is to outline key lessons of this saga for the general public so that this kind of deception is not repeated should another catastrophe occur in the future. And now we are finding that they actually knew a lot more about the potential dangers than even I realized because their own lawyers were telling them, look, we could be facing an onslaught of lawsuits as a result of our failure to provide people adequate information about the dangers that they faced. So it's really a sad day in terms of New York City government to realize that it's taken this long to uncover the facts. You know, I said New Jersey Governor,

it was Christy Todd Whitman who had been New Jersey Governor, who, as you said, became EPA administrator and was assuring everyone, everything was safe. We're going to move on. But, Juan, you should have won a Pulitzer Prize for your reporting. The Daily News would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize, but your editor at the time was forced out because of what you were saying at that time.

I encourage people to check out this new document about democracy now, steal this story, please, because there's a whole section on Juan's reporting on the toxins at Ground Zero and what people faced. I'm headed to Santa Barbara today for the International Film Festival there, where Steele the story will play tonight and tomorrow and is just won the Social Justice Award there. Juan, congratulations on your reporting, although what you were reporting on is continuing to play out today. is truly an extremely sad story about local officials right up to the president not protecting their own citizens and residents. We're going to stay on the media right now. In what's been

described of Bloodbath, the Washington Post has laid off more than 300 journalists, about 30% of all its employees, dismantling its sports, local news and international coverage including all of the newspapers, Middle East correspondents and editors. The Post-Ukraine reporter Lizzie Johnson wrote on X, quote, I was just laid off by the Washington Post in the middle of a war zone, she wrote, from Ukraine. On Thursday, fired workers rallied outside the Washington Post Office. This is a reporter Ben Brash, who was fired Tuesday. These layoffs are shameful.

The fourth. richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post. He could run it. And instead, he's spending tens of the documentary from Melania Trump to curry Faye by stealing from us. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013. Last year, the paper lost over 250,000 digital subscribers after the paper announced it would not make an endorsement in the presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. as Amazon later donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund.

We're joined right now by two guests. Karen Atia, former Global Opinion Editor for the Washington Post, was fired last year over social media posts made after the killing of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. Neelu Tabrizi is an investigative reporter who closely covers Iran. She was just laid off from the Washington Post yesterday. Neelu, let's start with you. what's being termed a bloodbath, 300 employees of the Washington Post, third of the Washington Post.

You write about Iran. Talk about what happened in Iran. Talk about what happened with the Middle East coverage overall and what's happened with all of your colleagues. Yeah, thank you. I'm glad to be here to discuss what happened at the Post. So our entire Middle East staff was laid off. Most of the international desk was dismantled as well. And this is something that we heard was coming down in the newsroom a few weeks ago.

And we also heard that when this plan was presented to Peter Finn, who is the head of the international desk and mentor to many at the post, he said to them he would rather be laid off than deal with this horrible gutting and reconstruction as it was phrased. So it's been incredibly depressing. Everybody is grieving. And it's a loss for our readers. It's a loss for everyone. And the way the company is framing, you know, that we want to focus more on national security.

Well, international reporters and national security, I mean, these two deaths collaborate so much with each other. And so it's a deeply grim moment. And, you know, as a member of the Post Guild in the Union at the Washington Post, we're lucky to have the Guild fight for us. But international staff, they're not members of the Guild. And even worse, there are so many local workers that we work with at the Post. We have local drivers, translators, reporters that collaborate with our Bureau Chiefs and with our correspondence. those people are not protected in the same way that I am. And so it's incredibly awful. There's no words to describe the dismantling that's happening at the post.

And, Neil, I wanted to ask you, especially this whole issue of the international reporting, with so few U.S. media companies still having even a skeleton staff of reporters reporting on affairs outside the United States. what does that turn the Washington Post into? And also what does that say about the ability of the media in the U.S. to let people know in this country what's going on in the rest of the world? Right. I mean, it's a complete disservice. I mean, we do this job because we want to be in service to the public. This is the main intention for so many of us. And taking the ability away to do this type of reporting to communicate what's important. I mean, it's a disservice to our readership and to anyone who wants to engage in these issues. I mean, my last story that I did for The Post, which published on Monday the day before I got laid off, was about the buildup that we're seeing of vessels of U.S. military equipment in the Persian Gulf. And potentially there might be some type of strike. And now the Post is not well placed to cover that.

And it's incredibly heartbreaking. Yeah, I'd like to bring Karen Attia into the conversation as well. Karen, your response to these layoffs and Jeff Bezos was. while they were happening, was actually in Paris at an au-chature week? Yeah, I mean, I joined the post, and specifically the opinion section right after Bezos bought the paper, so in about 2014. And I was, you know, there when we were kind of writing high, basically, we had not only Bezos cash, right? but we had the permission in a lot of ways to be able to be creative in order to be able to be swash-buckling, provocative. And for most of my time, a good chunk of my time in the opinion section, I was the Global Opinions Editor.

And we had a direct mandate, basically, from Bezos saying that he wanted the Washington Post to be a global newspaper, that he wanted us to be the English-speaking newspaper that the rest of the world turned to. So that's why, you know, I got to work recruiting writers and building up that section of global writers, including Jamaka Shokchi, who was very brutally murdered in 2018. Jeff Bezos, we thought, shared the same values that we had, particularly when it came to international coverage and for standing up for journalists who weren't able to speak freely in their areas of the world. and now to see him butchering, the poster at least, at the very least, partying in Paris and in Europe, while so many of my colleagues are being unceremoniously kicked out of their job at a time when America desperately needs to know what's going on in its own neighborhood and in the world. It's just, it's unconscionable, frankly.

And Karen Atia, you were the former global opinion editor for The Washington Post. you platformed many courageous voices, including Kamal Khashoggi, who would be murdered in the embassy in Turkey. And all the intelligence reports from the agencies of the United States government pointed the finger at a dear ally of President Trump, Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Your thoughts on your ousting. Yeah, it was the time of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but what you represented at the Post. You know, what so much about this is, it breaks my heart still to this day.

What breaks my heart is, yes, having the ability to give writers a home in times where they couldn't. And now when they ask, well, where can we be heard, where can our voices go? And I can't in good conscious say that they have a safe place in the Washington Post anymore. You know, I think for me, you know, I was illegally, I will say, fired for posting very, you know, posting the facts about gun violence in this country, about race in this country. and basically, you know, fired for doing my job. But the signs are all there, the censoring of the opinion page, when Bezos said that opinions that were outside of his scope of free markets and personal liberties,

that was a red flashing sign that censorship and purging was going to come for the Washington Post. I tried to hold on for as long as I could and do the work that I've, was, you know, paid to do for as long as I could until I couldn't. I mean, I'm still continuing to fight that termination as well. So I think if anything showing that we need to stand up to this purging is even more important. So I'm definitely fighting back with the assistance, not just the assistants, but the guild has my back. So I'm grateful for that. But this is a bigger moment.

There's a reason why this is an international news story. I think the Washington Post stands for a lot more than just a media company. It stands for a lot more than even just journalism, I would say. For a lot of people around the world, they're looking at the Washington Post as a proxy and a bellwether for what's happening to America and democracy, right? And when we are not able to even be able to freely cover our own neighborhoods, be able to freely cover the world, be able to, you know, under D.C. being under military occupation, basically, with the National Guard, we can even retain a diverse journalist in a city that is very much immigrants, people of color. There are probably at this point less than maybe 30 black journalists left.

I was the last black columnist left at the Washington Post, full-time staff opinions columnists left at the Washington Post. So the brazenness with which the destruction of the line. of defense of journalism against oppression is just it's as shameless on their end as it is cruel and DC deserves better. This entire region deserves better. Journalism deserves better than a billionaire owner who decides that, you know, partying in Europe is more important than people's lives. The Washington Post deserves a better owner than this. I wanted to ask Nealton Breezy about this, this enormous change in direction that Bezos has gone in with the Washington Post versus how he started, then his muscling of the editorial page, and then his fawning after Trump with the financing of the Melania film.

What is your sense of the enormity of this change? It's almost like a 180 degree turn on his part from where he started. Absolutely. I mean, I can't say it better myself. It's a complete departure from the mission of the Post and democracy dies in darkness. Well, now it's completely dark. And what do we have left? That's the motto of the Washington Post.

Yes, that's the motto of the Washington Post. Exactly. And it's really, yeah, it's indescribable. And I really feel for my post colleagues who now have to show up and work. in a carcass of what this incredible institution was. The Post was such a special culture. It was different from any other newsroom I've worked in where it was deeply collaborative.

Desks were not competing for each other. Everyone was there for the same mission, which was to put out the best report. And they've completely dismantled that. And again, it's a deep disservice to any of our readers, to our public. And it shows the fragility of these institutions and how important it is to protect them

because with one fell swoop, in a horrific layoff 30-minute robotic, meeting in which our publisher was not even present. We saw that our publisher, Will Lewis, was at some Super Bowl-related event. They didn't have the dignity to look us in the eye. You know, people got these mass emails. Your job is eliminated. You were told not to come to work yesterday. We were all told not to come to work. We had an 8.30 a.m. Zoom, which in itself is incontrible. And then after that, employees who even had, you know, 27-plus years of service were told they lost their job in a one-line email where our publisher, again, was not present. This, again, really

shows the lack of leadership at the Post. Well, we're going to continue to cover the story and continue to cover the corporate media and remind people, democracy now is independent. Neelou Tabrizi, just laid up from the Washington Post, will stay with us as we talk about Iran next. And Karen Atia, we thank you so much for joining us, former global opinion editor for the Washington Post. This is Democracy Now. When we come back, the talks in Oman around Iran between the United States. States and Iran. And then we'll talk about Gaza. Stay with us.

You know, nobody dares to exist in a greeting a connecting glance. Life is just a jaded game to them. They will give it a chance. But you know, and I know that the galaxy is all as long as the grass grows in the water of a rejoice and it's worth. by Chicano by Chicano Batman. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We turn now to Iran.

After weeks of escalating tensions, U.S. and Iranian officials have begun talks over Iran's nuclear program in Muscat Oman today. Today's negotiations to stave off another conflict are the first between the two countries since President Trump ordered airstrikes against Iran's nuclear sites. during Israel's 12-day war with Iran last June. Middle East special envoy, Steve Whitkoff, and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are participating in the talks which are being mediated by Oman. The White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt told reporters Thursday that for President Trump, diplomacy is always his first option, whether dealing with allies or adversaries.

But over the past month, President Trump has also openly called for regime change in Iran and described sending an armada of U.S. warships to the Persian Gulf. At the height of Iran's crackdown on popular protests in January, he threatened to attack Iran to support the protests. On Wednesday, Trump renewed his threat speaking to NBC's Tom Yamis. Should the Supreme Leader in Iran be worried right now? I would say he should be very worried, yeah, he should be. For more on the prospects of these negotiations and the tense situation on the ground in Iran, we continue with Nilo-Tabrese. She was the investigative reporter covering Iran for the Washington Post.

They just later off yesterday in the mass layoff. We're also joined here in New York by Arang Keshavarzian, professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at New York University, award-winning author of the book's Bazaar and State in Iran and Making Space for the Gulf. Histories of Regionalism and the Middle East. We welcome you both to democracy now. We only have a few minutes at this moment, but we want to ask you about the significance of these talks of President Trump's threat to attack Iran.

and the possibility of diplomacy. Thank you for having me. Yes, as you explained, this is a very strange and contradictory situation. On the one hand, there are these negotiations first time in several months. It does seem both parties are interested. Donald Trump has repeated that he would like to have a negotiated settlement around the nuclear issue, but it comes right after seven months of where the United States engaged in military attack against Iran, as you mentioned, but maybe more importantly, it's after yet another cycle of

a brave Iranian protesters taking to the streets in late December and January. That was yet again brutally repressed with thousands killed, imprisoned, injured, and so on and so forth. So for both the Iranian state, but more importantly, for Iranian people, it's very unclear what all of this pretends, especially since it doesn't seem like these negotiations will go beyond the question of the nuclear program. And, Professor, I'm wondering, you're probably aware that DropSight News is reporting that senior U.S. military officials have informed the leadership of a key U.S. ally in the Middle East that the president could authorize a U.S. attack this weekend. Wondering, your assessment of this dual policy of Trump, on the one hand saying, let's talk on the other side, amassing this armada again and threatening a direct attack. Yeah, so there's echoes of obviously what happened in Venezuela these past few months.

So you have this talk of negotiations, but all of these threats. But I also want to point out that this is where a moment where there's a real deep information war, where there are many interested parties, governments, and opposition groups that are trying to feed information, misinformation. It's a very confusing part. And it should be noted that for people inside Iran who are under still a Internet blackout, it's very confusing. They don't know what pieces of information to believe, what not to believe. Is there a war on the horizon, or are these negotiations going to actually reach a sort of

a real meaningful conclusion? But we are in a information war as well as a threat of a real kinetic war. And Neil Tabrizio, I wanted to ask you as well, the recent protests, of course, the Iranian government has said that the unrest was being manipulated by Israel and that there have been some reports of Mossad infiltrating Iran. Could you, from what you saw on the ground, was there any indication that a lot of some of these protests may have been in one sense or another manipulated by outside powers? No, that is a refrain that we heard, you know, very often. I think it goes back to, you know, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo coming out. out and telling Iranian protesters, you know, happy New Year, Mossade is on the streets with you. That I don't, based on the visuals that we were investigating, there's no validity to that

statement. If only comments like that from Western leaders make it exceptionally more dangerous for protesters on the ground. When I spoke with people who were protesting on the streets, they said that security forces on, you know, big speakers would say anyone out on the street is a terrorist and we're going to respond to you as such. That helps us understand the brutality if the state is going to label civilians out on the streets fighting for a better future as terrorists and partially because the West is saying, hey, Mossad is there. We need to understand how dangerous that is for protesters. I wanted to ask you in the context of history, the Dulles brothers in 1953, John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, head of the CIA and Secretary of State sending in Teddy Roosevelt's grandson

and overthrowing the democratically elected leader, Mohamed Mossadegh, basically on behalf of BP. Right through tonight. now, what it would mean regime change? And Trump's saying, well, he said he was doing it for the protesters if he was to push and actually achieve regime change. Now it's talking about the nuclear program. But we talk to so many activists and academics who are saying, although they are very much against the regime, they don't want the U.S. involved in attacking and removing that regime, that they see this as a popular movement. This is absolutely a popular movement. I think That is really important. We need to give the agency to the Iranians who are on the streets fighting for a better future. This is absolutely a popular movement. And we can measure that based on the spread, you know, geographically, how many people were involved in, even with the mass arrest, if more than 50,000 people have been arrested, I mean, at this points to this being absolutely a grassroots movement.

How many people do you think have died? Well, these numbers are still in flux, but one of the best documentation groups, Hirona, human rights activist news agency, heron. They said that just about 7,000, they have confirmed deaths, and there are more than 11,000 under review. They update these tolls daily. And Professor Keshavarzian, your sense of what the peace movement and those who want to reduce conflict in the world should be doing at this time in terms of Iran? Yeah, I want to underline what Neelu just said. I mean, I think as progressives in the United States or in the broader outside of Iran, we should be able to do whole two truths at the same time.

Absolutely, war, U.S. intervention is destructive, it's counterproductive. It hurts actually the most vulnerable in Iran, protesters and others, just like the sanctions have. But at the same time, we have to acknowledge and listen to the large number of Iranians from all different segments and sectors of society that not only this past, few months, but for now over 10 years have been engaging in various forms of protest, whether it's economic issues, whether it's demanding accountability and responsiveness from their rulers. They have been making this demand. And the Islamic Republic's social base has been whittled away gradually, but systematically for over the past 15 years. It is vulnerable. But a U.S. intervention is

going to be counterproductive to all of this. I want to thank you so much for being with us, Professor of Middle Eastern Islamic Studies at New York University. We hope to have you on soon again. And Nilo-Tabrizi, investigative reporter covering Iran, just let go from the Washington Post as part of the massive layoff of more than 300 journalists, about a third of the Washington Post staff. You will both be speaking together on a panel at NYU Wednesday, February 11th. Coming up, we look at Hawaii. Human Rights Watch blocked a release of report on the right of return of Palestinians. And we look on the ground at what's happening in Gaza today. Stay with us. Because the ocean is all around the... And life will flow on as long as there are ripples in the waves and the sun rays from the sun. Freedom is free. Guns are upon display.

But you can't control while I feel a long way. Freedom is Free by Chicano Batman. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We end today's show with the discussion of Human Rights Watch on the Palestinian right of return. Earlier this week, the two-person Israel-Palestine team at Human Rights Watch announced they're resigning after HRW's new leadership blocked a report which called Israel's

denial of Palestinian refugees the right of return, a crime against humanity. The team had interviewed 53 refugees in camps across Jordan, Syrian, Lebanon for the stalled report connecting the expulsions of Palestinians in 1948 all the way to the present moment. Omar Shakir, who headed the team for nearly a decade, and assistant researcher Milena Ansari in separate resignation letters, suggested the decision to pull the report just before its scheduled publication came from a fear of political backlash. In an email to staff last week, Human Rights Watch's new executive director insisted that disagreement was not over the Palestinian right of return. In a statement sent to Jewish currents and the guardian,

Human Rights Watch said, quote, in our review process, we concluded aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet human rights watch's high standards. For that reason, the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research, unquote. For more, we're joined by two guests. Joining us from Amman Jordan, Omar Shakir, just resigned as the Israel-Palestine director of Human Rights Watch. And we're joined by Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch.

He's author of writing wrongs, three decades on the front lines battling abuse of governments. We welcome you both back to Democracy Now. We know you've worked together for a long time when Ken was head of Human Rights Watch and Omar, you were head of the Israel-Palestine division, but you differ on that report right now. Omar, I'd like you to start off by saying what you were presenting in this report and why you feel HRW blocked it. This report was assessing the Israeli government's denial of the right of return on Palestinian refugees. It was coming in the context, of course, of the mass ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of

Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The idea here was to connect the erasure of camps in Gaza with the emptying of camps in the West Bank, with the attacks on Onorwa and the longstanding denial of return, and to take stock at this moment, where many Palestinians speak of a second neck bet to understand the lessons of the first one, because the legal architecture of denial of return was not built in 1948. It was built in 1949 to 1952. So we wrote a report and went through the normal human rights watch process.

It was signed off by all the relevant departments, including the legal department. It was put on the website, back end of the website. It was translated to multiple languages. External partners were briefed. And on the eve of its release, our new executive director pulled the report. He provided nothing in writing to explain that decision. And to this date, nothing has been put in writing.

And I've done dozens of reports like this, and I've never seen anything like this in the organization's history. But my engagement with senior staffers made very clear that really the overriding concern here was the concern of being seen as challenging. a political preference with no basis in international law, the idea of maintaining the Jewishness of the Israeli state, one of course forged through ethnic cleansing and maintained through apartheid. And in this case, that concerned Trump to calling for the fundamental rights of Palestinians to return to their home. And ultimately, after giving a decade for this organization,

I did not feel I could continue to do so when I had lost faith in our new leadership's fidelity to the integrity of what we do best, which is to publish the facts that we document and consistently apply the law. So, Omar, what you're saying then is that what human rights watch is saying that, quote, various staff members expressed concern with the report during the review, but that it took the arrival of the new executive director to exert leadership. What were some, were there concerns expressed by other staff previous to your completion of the report? Look, any report that Human Rights Watch issues, there's going to be concerns raised by different people. But at Human Rights Watch, there's a deference to expertise. And in this case, the report spent seven months in review. It was signed off

on by the Middle East Division, by all experts in their expertise, the Women's Rights Division, the Children's Rights Division, the Refugee Rights Division, the Refugee Rights Division, the Refugee, the International Justice Division, and the legal office, and the program office, and it was set for release. And that was over a seven-month, you know, process. So were there concerns raised during this time? Yeah, I mean, the program reviewer, when he signed off on the report, said it's a fantastic report, the law's clear, that works well in this format, has one concern. was how we can better prepare ourselves to address detractors saying that we're calling to end the Jewish state. And when it went through legal review again, they said this is the correct law. We've applied it

before, including in the context of the Chegos Islands in 2023. And the report was signed off on and was slated for release and we briefed external partners until new leadership came in. And of course, these other concerns bubbled to the surface. And the report was pulled without anything being put in writing. And I should note again that that happened in late November for the next six weeks. tried very much to engage. And they eventually later said, well, we have some concern about the legal framing. So we offered numerous ways forward that would address the stated legal concerns, including to base the finding on a different crime against humanity, which is transparently clear. And they said, no, that this did not address the concern around advocacy, which had

been communicated to me by the chief advocacy officer before as being about the Jewish state. And therefore, they wouldn't even allow edits to be made for the report and to be put back in review. I was told you either narrow the determination in a way that has no basis in fact or law or the report's not coming out. So I tendered my resignation. I want to bring Ken Roth into this conversation. Omar, your resignation comes as HRW's new executive director, Philippe Lopjean, begins his tenure. Well, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, has rejected your claims of

politically motivated censorship. He's been quoted in The Guardian in the New York Times. and Jewish currents. He said, quote, that you tried to fast talk through the review system at a time of leadership transition and extreme interpretation of the law that was indefensible. But Ken Roth, you've just arrived in Pakistan right now. Can you explain why you are critical of the report? You who have approved so many of Omar Shakir's reports. Yes, Amy, good to be here. You know, and it's odd being here, because you're usually I'm lambasted for being too critical of Israel.

But my first principle in dealing with issues of Israel and Palestine is to be scrupulously accurate in applying the facts in the law. And to be honest, if I were still executive director, this report would never have gotten past me. You know, I was always an integral part of the review process. I worked with Omar extensively. The apartheid report that Omar initially drafted, you know, when it came to me, it was utterly unpublishable. And I had to go through three detailed edits before we put out a report

that was very strong and that was unimpeachable. The Israeli government didn't know what to do with it. We strengthened the report by making sure that we accurately applied the law and the facts. And that's just not the case here. I mean, the issue here is actually not the right to return. Human Rights Watch has endorsed the right to return for three decades. The issue is whether you call the denial of the right to return a crime against humanity. And that's, a brand new theory, there is one case on this point vaguely by the International Criminal Court in the case of the Rohingya. And it said two things of note. I mean, one is that they can return to their country. It didn't even specify an area. And so it's unclear in the report,

I don't think even addresses this, you know, what is the relevant country here as a Palestine or Israel? But more to the point, in the case of the Rohingya, there was extreme suffering. They are not recognized as refugees. They're denied the right to formally work. They can't educate their children in the Bangladeshi system. So this is severe. And the court said in that context, you might rise to the great suffering requirement before you can call a right to return a crime against humanity. Now, can you say that here for the six million Palestinian refugees? I mean, you know, many are our citizens in Jordan, their living ordinary lives.

You know, some are in the United States as somebody in Detroit, you know, still suffering so greatly that it's a crime against humanity not to let them return. I mean, I happen to be in Lahore, Pakistan, right now. You know, at the same time as the knockback took place of the Palestinians in 1948, here, there were 400,000 Hindus and Sikhs

who were forcibly expelled. I mean, people would laugh at me if they said it was a crime against humanity, that Pakistan is not letting them return now, you know, 70-some years later. So, you know, this is a complicated issue. So when Felipe, B'Oppignon came in, I mean, Omar did benefit from this leadership gap. When he came in and played the role that I would have played, he said, this can't go forward.

He can't possibly put forward a report like this, which is just so shoddy in terms of applying the complicated sets of facts to this brand-new legal theory. It's got to go back to the drawing board and be approved, which is exactly what I would have done. So, you know, to say that this is, you know, some big censorship thing is crazy. I mean, it would have been a non-issue if I was there because I would still be part of the review process. When Philippe arrives and does the same thing, suddenly Omar, you know, wants to fall on his sword and pretend that this is like some great censorship disaster. It isn't.

The aim here is to put out a report that is defensible. You're both lawyers. Omar Shakir, your response. Look, I mean, Ken is overlooking the fact that human rights watch in the context of the Chegos Islands in 2020, set out very clearly that denial of return amounts to a crime against humanity. So if what Ken is saying is accurate that the legal theory is unsupported and untested, human rights watch should do something it's never done in its history, which is to retract that report.

It's a matter of consistency for us. If in that report we laid out a legal theory, it has to be applied here. The points that Ken make are actually not the arguments that human rights watch has made. They have made arguments saying, well, you know, the factual research could be much stronger because everything that Ken laid out regarding the harm of the Rohingya and Myanmar, more you have with Palestinians. Let's remember you have generations of refugees, you know, fathers and grandfathers that live their life as refugees that don't have the right to work, that don't have citizenship, that face restrictions on all aspects of their everyday life. And it stems

at root from the fact that the Israeli government denies them the right to return to their homeland, disconnects them, severes them, the anguish of being disconnected from your land. And by the way, we heard these testimonies from Palestinians in Gaza who are now in Egypt, who want to wanted to return amid a genocide to their land, to their streets, to their neighborhoods. Imagine that pain over the course of many, many generations, that anguish clearly meets the threshold of a crime against humanity. And let's remember, I mean, Ken hasn't read the report. We wouldn't even cite Ken's testimony in a report because it's all secondhand, and it's not

based on having seen the report directly. Here, the difference between Ken was executive director is he would read a report, he would make comments, we would have a back and forth like we had here, and we would arrive at a good place. In this particular case, you know, Philippe came in, he made a decision, nothing was put in writing, there was no chance to directly engage. We offered to make edits to address any concerns, including to base it on a separate crime against humanity of persecution, which is straightforward. Severe abuse of fundamental rights with a discriminatory intent. Righter return is fundamental. It's severe. It's multiple generations. And it's discriminatory.

Jewish citizens of other countries can go to Israel and become citizens. And we were told nothing about the law at that point. The only argument was the advocacy concerns, and that's really the key point here. Amy, Human Rights Watch's credibility is we release our reports no matter what they are. We did it on October 7th, even though there wasn't a really good advocacy strategy because the leaders that carried out those attacks, the crimes against humanity, were being killed. We released a report at La Hale Hospital in November 2023 where there was no advocacy strategy, and it wasn't determinative.

We released my report on the Raba Massacre in Egypt, even though it shut our office down in Egypt, because the principal thing to do is you publish the research when it's ready, but in this case, Human Rights Watch was unwilling to do so, and it comes at its core because the right of return remains this third rail, even among progressive human rights institutions. This was the first report in Human Rights Watch's history that looks holistically at the plight of Palestinian refugees, and it's the first time that a decision like this is made to shelve a report on its eve

because of concerns about pragmatism, and simply I couldn't continue when I felt these decisions were not, being rooted in our normal methodology, and we're letting certain voices in certain political preference trump fundamental rights. Ken Roth, I'm wondering if you could respond, but also if you could talk about what kind of pressure human rights watches has been under from Israel in prior reports that you've produced? Yeah, well, I mean, I should say that, I mean, you know, human rights rights, which is always under pressure, whatever we say in Israel, that's just part for the course. I mean, I have an entire

chapter on my book on this. You just live with it. It doesn't really noter. You know, Human Rights question, as I noted, has always endorsed the right to return. So, you know, there's no greater, you know, pressure on us. Now, I don't think anybody even knew this report was coming. So there was zero pressure on this report. You know, what Omar is outlining, that was precisely why Philippe was right to send this back to the drawing board, because, you know, some Palestinian refugees may indeed have this great suffering required for it to be a crime against humanity, but a lot of them clearly don't. And that's, from my understanding, is not the nuance that the report introduced to suggest that all six million Palestinian refugees get to go back to

Israel, that, you know, that they're all suffering so severely that this is a crime against humanity if they don't. Or separately, you know, could the crime against humanity be satisfied by going to Palestine, you know, the West Bank or Gaza rather than Israel? I mean, I don't know, but these are the kinds of complexities that need to be addressed rather than just rush through a 33-page report, just is not long enough, it's not detailed enough, doesn't have enough research to get into these complexities to make a compelling case. That's why I never would have allowed this report to get through the review process. We just have, we just have 20 seconds, Omar Shakir from Amman, your final comment. Look, I think it says something very clear that two former human rights

watch staffers are having a discussion about the integrity of the work and the future of the organization. Where is Philippe Lupion? MoMA Shakir, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Omar has just resigned as Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch after HRW blocked a report which called Israel's denial of the right of return for Palestinians, a crime against humanity. And Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch. That does it for our show. On Monday, February 23rd, Democracy Now, we'll be celebrating our 30th anniversary at Riverside Church with Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Maria Ressa, Michael Steipp, and many others. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We hope to see you there. Go to

Democracy Now.org for information.