Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-05-14 Thursday

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Headlines for May 14, 2026; Xi Warns Trump of Potential “Conflict” over Taiwan in Beijing Summit on Iran, Trade, Tech & More; “Here Where We Live Is Our Country”: Molly Crabapple on Resurfacing the Jewish History of Anti-Zionism

From New York, this is Democracy Now. We're going to have a fantastic future together. Such respect for China, the job you've done, you're a great leader. A stable China-U.S. relationship benefits the entire world. When we cooperate, both sides benefit. When we confront each other, both sides suffer. President Trump and China, President Xi Jinping are meeting in Beijing for a high-stakes summit, focused on the war in Iran, trade, technology, Taiwan, and more. We'll get the latest.

Then to the artist and writer Molly Crabapple, author of the new best-selling book, Here Where We Live is Our Country, the story of the Jewish bun. The Jewish labor boomed was a secular socialist revolutionary party that fought for Jews' rights to live in freedom and dignity in Europe, as opposed to having to flee to an ethno state in Palestine. As the world faces the genocide in Gaza and rising fascism around the globe, their message is more important than ever. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Chinese President Xi Jinping has warned of the potential for conflict between the U.S. and China over the status of Taiwan. President Xi's warning came after he hosted President Donald Trump at the Great Hole of the People in Beijing Thursday,

where the two spoke for about two hours and 15 minutes. Trump had arrived in Beijing a day earlier aboard Air Force One flanked by his son, Eric Trump, Cabinet members, Scott Besant, Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth, and billionaires Elon Musk and Jensen Huang, the CEO of the chipmaker in Vidia. After Trump's talks with Xi, China's state broadcasters, said the status of Taiwan remains the most important issue in China-U.S. relations. If handled well, the overall stability of bilateral relations can be maintained. If handled poorly, the two countries will collide, or even come into conflict,

pushing the entire U.S.-China relationship into an extremely dangerous situation. Taiwan independence and peace in the Taiwan Strait are fundamentally incompatible. Ahead of Trump's visit, U.S. lawmakers in both parties press the White House to move forward with the delivery of more than $11 billion in weapon sales to Taiwan, approved by Congress in December. Lawmakers are also pressing Trump to approve an additional $14 billion. dollar arms sale, including Patriot missiles and anti-drone hardware. President Trump and Xi also reportedly discussed topics ranging from trade to artificial intelligence to the U.S. Israeli war in Iran. Speaking at a banquet following the talks, President Trump invited

she to the White House for a visit September 24th. We'll have more on President Trump's visit to China after headlines. The U.S. Senate has once again voted down a war power's resolution seeking to rein in President Trump's power to attack Iran. On Wednesday, three Republican senators broke from their party and voted to discharge the Iran War Powers Resolution from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But the motion failed in a vote of 49 to 50 after Pennsylvania's Democratic Senator John Federman voted against it. It's the seventh time the Senate's blocked a war powers resolution on Iran since Trump began air strikes on February 28th. Israel's military targeted multiple locations across southern Lebanon overnight following

another day of deadly attacks that came despite the U.S. broker at April ceasefire. On Wednesday, Israeli strikes killed at least 12 people, including two children, according to Lebanon's health ministry. Today, the Trump administration's hosting Israeli and Lebanese diplomats for a third round of peace talks. Once again, Hezbollah is not a party to the negotiations. Palestinian officials say Israeli police shot and killed a Palestinian man as he tried to scale the concrete barrier separating the occupied West Bank from Jerusalem. According to his brother, 44-year-old Zakaria Katusa had been attempting to cross into Israel to find work. He leaves behind four children. Elsewhere, Israeli settlers killed a 16-year-old

Palestinian teen in the town of Sindhiel north of Ramallah. Health officials say Yusuf Ali Yusuf Khabna died from a gunshot wound to the chest. The killing came as Israeli settlers backed by soldiers assaulted shepherds and stole large numbers of their sheep. Meanwhile, a new study finds a dramatic increase in Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip in the five weeks since it halted its airstrikes on Iran. The conflict monitor. Aikled found Israel carried out 35 percent more attacks on Gaza in April than it did in March. All the attacks came despite a U.S. brokered ceasefire that was supposed to have taken effect in October. This is Faisa al-Ajrami, a displaced Palestinian intent in Gaza City.

The war has not stopped yet. The war has not stopped in order for me to worry that it will return. The war is ongoing. The bombing continues, and every day we hear that there are martyrs here and there. There is grave danger everywhere. Every moment we are expecting a missile to fall on us on my son or daughter. We are scared. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from sanctioning Francesca Avenisi,

the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupy Palestinian territories. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled the Trump administration likely violated Albanese's free speech rights when it bartered from traveling to the U.S., froze her assets, and prohibited banks and other companies from doing business with her. The sanctions came after she recommended the International Criminal Court, pursue war crimes, prosecutions against Israeli and U.S. officials. To see our interviews with Albanese, visit our website at Democracy. Now.org.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he made a secret visit to the United Arab Emirates while the U.S. and Israel were bombing Iran earlier this year. On Wednesday, Netanyahu's office said the visit, quote, marked a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, unquote. Coming after Israel and the UAE agreed to normalize relations in 2020 under the Abraham Accords, Emirati officials later issued a statement denying Netanyahu's claims, calling them entirely unfounded. The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to confirm Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve.

He was approved on a vote of 54 to 45 after Pennsylvania Democrat Senator John Federman joined all 53 Republican senators voting in favor of his confirmation. Warsh replaces outgoing Fed chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump nominated to the position in 2017. Trump later turned on Powell and, attempted to force him out of his role after the Fed resisted Trump's demands to lower interest rates. Following Wednesday's confirmation vote, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said, quote, Trump wants to control interest rates, and he nominated Kevin Warsh to be his sock puppet. Warsh's confirmation is another step in Trump's attempt to take over the Fed, she said.

The Trump administration's withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid-rerereepard. reimbursement payments from California. After top officials accused California of failing to adequately address fraud in its Medi-Cal program, it's the latest in a string of similar actions targeting states run by Democrats. Vice President J.D. Vance announced the sanctions at a White House event Wednesday. This does not have to be a red state or a blue state issue. This is just basic good government. However, states like California, States like Hawaii, states like New York, have completely not taken the fraud issue seriously in the Medicaid program. California officials condemn the Trump administration's actions.

Governor Gavin Newsom said the growth of home health care placements in California was due to, quote, keeping more people out of far more expensive nursing homes, unquote. Senator Alex Padilla wrote, quote, let's be real. This isn't about fraud. It's about punishing a state that. that didn't vote for him. Political retribution, plain and simple, Senator Padilla said. A former private prison officials expected to be named acting director of ICE. David Venturella is the former senior vice president of the private for-profit prison company

Geo Group, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts to run ICE jails and track immigrants through GPS ankle monitors. Meanwhile, the DHS and General's investigating a $38 billion warehouse purchasing program touted by former Homeland Security Secretary Christy Nome to set up ICE jails. This comes as public citizen released a report detailing that half of immigrants who are detained for more than a few days and up in the government's so-called voluntary work program earning just $1 per day, about $12.5 per hour, more than 60,000 immigrants are currently held in ICE jails across the U.S. Louisiana state police and a local sheriff's department will pay more than $4.8 million

to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the daughter of a black motorist who was beaten, dragged, and electrocuted to death during a 2019 traffic stop in the city of Monroe. Family members said police originally told them Ronald Green died in a car accident, but the Associated Press obtained video showing Louisiana state troopers, tasing, beating and taunting Green, leaving him unattended face down on the pavement for more than nine minutes as officers refused to render aid, instead washing blood off their own hands and faces. Green died before reaching the hospital. In 2022, four Louisiana state troopers and a union parish sheriff's deputy were indicted on state felony charges, including negligent

homicide. But most of those prosecutions failed, with just two of the officers pleading no contest to misdemean or battery charges. The Justice Department said in January last year, it would not pursue federal charges against the officers. To see our coverage of Ronald Green's killing, go to our website, Democracy Now.org. Two weeks of clashes in the south of Sudan have killed 61 people, including nine children, according to the Sudan Doctors Network. The fighting started earlier this month between forces linked to the rebel group Sudan People's

Liberation Movement, North, and the Otoro, Trump. tribe and South Cortefatine. This comes as the UN Human Rights Chief Warren's drones caused more than 80 percent of civilian deaths in Sudan during the first four months of this year. The conflict now in its fourth year has killed at least 59,000 people displaced about 13 million and push much of Sudan into famine. Mexican President Claudia Shanebaum on Wednesday denied reports CIA operatives have carried out targeted killings of cartel members inside Mexico. The denials As CNN reported this week, CIA officers have directly participated in assassinations of cartel members, including a car bombing on a busy highway outside Mexico City.

This is Mexican President, Claudia Shanebaum. CNN, which is supposedly an internationally respected media outlet, published a truly sensationalist report. And what was it saying? To say, just imagine that CIA agents. agents are operating on national territory, even to kill someone. Just imagine how big a fabricated lie a story like that is. It even surprised me, because even the CIA spokesperson came out and said it was false. And Israel qualified for the Eurovision Song Contest Final in Wednesday

amidst massive protests and calls for boycott over its inclusion. Pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide chance from the audience were reportedly censored during the semifinal broadcast. Over a thousand artists signed an open letter under the No Music for Genocide banner demanding the European Broadcasting Union, EBU, ban Israel from the contest. Amnesty International says the EBU quote, betrayed humanity by allowing Israel to compete. This is a protester on the sidelines of the Eurovision semifinals. It is simply hypocritical to claim that the Eurovision Song Contest is meant to be a celebration of peace. Whilst Israel has been committing what amounts to genocide in Palestine for nearly three years,

I believe this is a gross injustice, and that is why we are protesting here. And those are some of the headlines. This is DemocracyNow, DemocracyNow.org. Coming up, President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are meeting in Beijing for a high-stakes summit focused on. the war in Iran, trade, technology, Taiwan, and more. We'll go to Beijing. Stay with us. What's bugging you, baby? How come you hum like you do?

Why must you raise a stone and get your grew in a stew? What's bugging you, baby? You mean and you quick on the bit Don't make wind gone maybe Don't miss when you ought to hit Every time I flips a dime You start blowing your top There must be big cost as you're awake

all over the light. What's bugging you, baby, by the late folk singer Michael Hurley performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Narmine Sheikh. Welcome to our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. We begin today's show in Beijing, where Chinese President Xi Jinping and, and U.S. President Donald Trump are holding a two-day summit focused on the war on Iran, trade, technology, and Taiwan. The meeting comes two and a half months after the U.S. and Israel

launched an unprovoked war on Iran, triggering what's been described as the worst energy crisis in history, according to the International Energy Agency. Last week, Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Arakshi, visited Beijing to meet with his Chinese counterpart. China has repeatedly called for the war in Iran to end and for the strait of Hormuz to reopen. During their meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly warned Trump, U.S. support of Taiwan could lead to conflict between China and the U.S. China's condemned a proposed U.S. plan to send Taiwan a new arms package worth around $14 billion.

Congress approved the arms deal, but Trump has not yet formally moved ahead with it. In public remarks, Xi Jinping called for great. greater China-US cooperation. The common interests between China and the United States outweigh our differences and each country's success represents an opportunity for the other. A stable China-U.S. relationship benefits the entire world. When we cooperate, both sides benefit. When we confront each other, both sides suffer.

We should be partners rather than. adversaries, achieving mutual success and common prosperity, thereby forging a correct path for major powers to coexist in the new error. In his remarks, President Trump praised the Chinese President Xi Jinping. You and I have known each other now for a long time. In fact, the longest relationship of our two countries that any president and president has had. And that's to me an honor. We've had a fantastic relationship. We've gotten along when there were difficulties.

We worked it out. I would call you and you would call me. And whenever we had a problem, people don't know. Whenever we had a problem, we worked out very quickly. We're going to have a fantastic future together. Such respect for China, the job you've done, you're a great leader. I say it to everybody. You're a great leader.

Sometimes people don't like me saying it, but I say it anyway because it's true. I only say the truth. President Trump traveled to China with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Heseth, and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, along with the delegation of top U.S. executives, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Elon Musk of Tesla, and Jensen Huang,

the CEO of the chipmaker Navidia. Forbes reports the billionaires in President Trump's entourage have a combined net worth of $870 billion. We're joined right now by two. two guests. Jake Werner, historian of modern China, director of the East Asian program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new piece for Quincy is headlined an opening for a new U.S.-China economic relationship. Zhao Hai is director of international political studies at the Institute of World Economics and Politics in Beijing, China, opinion writer for the

China Daily, frequent commentator for the China Global Television Network, CGTN. and China Radio International. We welcome you both to Democracy Now. Let's begin with Zhao Hai. You're right there in China's capital in Beijing, where President Trump and President Xi Jinping have just had their state dinner. Can you talk about the significance of this meeting,

the first of an American president in nine years, when President Trump last went there in his first term? Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me. I've been a follower of your program. Really appreciate this. And secondly, to answer, question, I think this is a very important bilateral summit, because we've all seen what happened in last year and also the first Trump administration. China and the United States have been going through

trade war, terror, all kinds of technology disputes, and also going to a geopolitical confrontation. So now, I think both sides realized things last year, the Busan summit, that we need to pursue a stability and stable relationship. And this summit is the confirmation of that pursuit. So President Trump was scheduled to visit China at the end of March, early April, and because of the war in Iran, he delayed his trip, and China still welcomed him. So this is a sort of a long time coming, and we have put in a lot of preparation for President Trump's visit. And we all see that today the visit was quite successful, and both sides have reached agreement that looking forward, looking into the future, both sides will build a constructive

strategic stability relationship. And that is very much a paradigm shift from a unilateral defined strategic competition relationship between U.S. and China by the U.S. side. So I think this is a very critical historical moment as a crossroad, and both sides now are working together to establish a stable relationship. That will have a global ramification. Well, Zheye, could you also speak about the significance of the Trump delegation including 17 CEOs of the U.S.'s most powerful companies

and the fact, as we mentioned earlier, that the head of Navidia, Jensen Huang, did join the delegation, though initially he was not expected to. If you could respond to that. Yeah. You mentioned that the combined worth of those CEOs is like 870 billion U.S. dollars. If you plus Jensen Huang who dropped on the plane in the last minute, the top of the capitalization of those people probably even higher.

And if you look at these companies, these companies have deep interest in China. They want market access, they want to sell products, agricultural products, airplanes, and also chips to China. And also they want other financial operations, for instance, Mastars, Visa Card, and also Blackstone BlackRock, both are all in the team. So all together, you can see a landscape in which all this multinational companies have vested interests and want to maintain and expand their interest in China. That's why they're coming to China with President Trump. And the summit will send a very strong signal

of the future direction of where the two countries are going. And I think those top leaders, the CEOs, wanted to know that firsthand. And we can see that Elon Musk was quite relaxed and also, Jason Huang would be happy because now he can sell to 10 Chinese companies with the chips that, you know, particularly modified for Chinese market. But for China, also, we want something in return, which is a U.S. to open its market for Chinese access and investment. And hopefully, I think down the road, two sides will negotiate and try to open up more markets, provide more opportunities, and in particular, create more jobs for, you know,

for workers in both countries. And Zhao, in fact, Xi Jinping said that China would only make its economy, open its economy, wider and wider. And just to go back to Jensen Huang, Nevidia is the largest company, not only in the U.S., but in the world, by market capitalization. Why would he, Jensen Huang is, of course, raised in Taiwan and Taiwanese-American, why wouldn't he have been automatically included in this delegation? Well, because we all know what happened before.

There's back and forth between U.S. and China. On the one hand, U.S. wanted to impose more stricter export control, particularly during the Biden administration, and Trump wants to change that policy somewhat and sell some of the modified chips to China. So on the one hand, they can maintain a certain advantage over China, but at the same time, also making money. But it's very hard to, you know, get both.

Because in the United States, on the issue of national security, there's a lot of people opposed the exports of Nvidia chips, even though it's sort of a watered-down version of those chips sold to China. Within China, there's also a very strong advocacy for using domestic chips instead of using Americans because they suspect there is backdoor of those chips. So the last minute of Zhenso-Huan on the airplane means that finally both sides find some kind of pragmatic solutions that China will import some of those chips. At the same time, the U.S. will open up doors for those exports.

So let's go to Jake Werner, joining us from Quincy Institute. Jake, can you talk about the significance of this meeting in the midst of the U.S. Israeli war on Iran? You'd hardly know that that was happening if you just watched the toasts at the state dinner. We understand that China's most concerned about what they call the three T's. Trade technology, Taiwan is major. And Xi Jinping at this point, Trump needs him. You had the Iranian foreign minister just going to China last week. What does President Trump need from China around the U.S. Iran war He put off that first meeting because it was happening. It's still happening.

Yeah, it's a big question what he can get. And I think it might be different what he needs from what he wants. Trump has asked publicly that China join other countries in helping him open the street in the past, has sort of stepped back off of that request. And I don't think China has any interest in involving itself. deeply in security matters in the region. But what China has done is it has backed up some of the negotiations that have been happening, has supported Pakistan has had the prime mediating role. And China can give Iran a sense that its interests might be respected through the negotiation process,

because China has a relationship with all actors in the region. So as much as the China-Iran relationship is highlighted in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, China's relationships with other regional countries like Saudi Arabia or United Arab Emirates are at least as important. In terms of the economic relationship, they're significantly more important than those with Iran. So China has ties to all the countries in the region. It has acted in the past to help broker the normalizations of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. So it has some experience in this realm, sort of acting as a broker towards peace. And we, I think we can hope for China to bolster that role. What we're not going to get, I think, from China is a sort of one-sided backing of the U.S.

position that asks for complete capitulation on the Iranian side. So I think what we need the U.S. to understand is that it needs to come up with a way to achieve stability in the region. And China can be a part of that if the U.S. can get to that kind of a settlement. And Jake, what about the fact, I mean, according to the White House, the two sides, that is to say, China and the U.S., agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open to support the free flow of energy, and at the same time, China said that it's interested in increasing its oil imports from the U.S.? Yeah, China's energy policy has been to diversify its import sources for. security reasons. So it still relies significantly on exports through the Strait of Hormuz, and so it does have a very real interest in maintaining the openness of the strait. At the same time, it has sourced oil and other energy imports from an increasing range of places from Africa,

Latin America, increasingly from Russia, as Russia's markets have closed after it invaded Ukraine. And so China is looking to diversify, and if there is a stable relationship with the United States, then it feels like it can draw on American energy. And that would give us a stake on the part of the United States in maintaining that stability in the relationship. Ultimately, the overriding concern on the Chinese side is whether there can be a stability in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship. And if the United States is economically invested in that relationship, it becomes more likely. Let's talk more about Taiwan. This is Guo Jiangkun, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry speaking today. In his talks with U.S. President Donald Trump, President Xi Jinping pointed out that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations.

If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great job. Taiwan independence and cross-strait peace are as irreconcilable as fire and water. Maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait represents the greatest common ground between China and the U.S. The U.S. side must handle the Taiwan issue with the utmost prudence. So, Jake Warner, your perspective now on Taiwan, that's the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson. You have Republicans and Democrats calling on President Trump again to move. forward with the multi-billion dollar, $14 billion and more, a trade deal with Taiwan. You have the

U.S., though, wanting Iran to, in a sense, mediate between the U.S. and Iran, wanting Xi Jinping to do that. Talk about what happens with Taiwan right now. The question is whether the status quo can be maintained in a stable fashion. And in recent years, as the U.S. China, relationship has deteriorated, both sides have started to doubt whether they can trust the other side on this question, whether the other side respects the status quo and basically wants to maintain this kind of ambiguity over the status of Taiwan. The question is whether as we stabilize the bilateral relationship, can we get back to a sense that both sides are invested in maintaining that form of stability or not? And so the big question for Trump really is how to manage that.

I don't expect the Trump administration to kind of push towards increasing independence on the part of Taiwan. It seems like the China-Taiwan relationship is going in a more stable direction over the course of recent months. As the opposition lawmaker, Chagni-won, the Taiwan opposition leader came to Beijing and visited with Xi Jinping. So I think Beijing has some confidence that things are. are moving in a stabilizing direction. And so then the question is, can the improving relationship between the U.S. and China bolster that and give a sense that the ambiguous status quo is not further eroding?

And Zheyeh, to go back to you just earlier today a few hours ago, the Kremlin announced that Putin, Russian President Vladimir Putin, would be visiting China very soon. If you could comment on the timing of that announcement and when this summit is expected to take place? Well, first of all, President Putin is a regular visitor to China. He visits China every year once or twice or even more. And he has much more face-to-face talking with President Xi than President Xi with President Trump. It's been 30 some times.

So there's a close tie between the two sides, and I think this time around President Putin is coming right after President Trump's visit. There is some strategic intentions here. I think other than what we've been talking about, the Iran issue, the Ukraine issue will also be in focus. Because I think right now, both sides needs to come back to the negotiation table and trying to find more common ground. And for that particular matter, I think President Putin needs to talk with presidency and also get a picture of how China-U.S. relationship is moving forward. And I think in this triangle, you can see that previously some of the American thinkers thinking that they can drive a wedge between China and Russia. And so far, that hasn't been realized. China has stand firm with Russia on its normal economic relationship, its strategic relationship.

corporations. So I think for both sides, that's still a very much important by-up relationship. I want to add something to what Jake just said about energy. I think China has a policy of diversifying its energy needs and also accelerating its transition toward green energy. And from phase one trade deal, China has already agreed to purchase more energy from the United States, not starting from the straight of formulas incident. And China will continue to purchase American energy if the energy is at a normal price and without the, you know, the barrier of more and more, you know, trade disputes and added tariff. So I think that's an area in the future should be promising for both sides.

Joe, hi, we want to thank you for being with us from Beijing, Director of International Political Studies at the Institute of World Economics. and politics in China's capital. And we want to thank Jake Warner, director of the East Asia program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Talking about this, China-U.S. Summit taking place in Beijing.

President Trump just announced that he's invited Xi Jinping to Washington, D.C., September 24th, for a state visit. Coming up, artist and writer, Molly Crabapple, author of the new best-selling book, Here where we live is our country, the story of the Jewish boon. Stay with us. Spring of hope by Ahmed Seputra. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report.

I'm Amy Goodman with Nirmin-Sheikh. A new study finds a dramatic increase in Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip in the five weeks since it halted its airstrikes on Iran. According to the Conflict Monitoring Group, Atlead, that is, armed conflict location and event data, Israel carried out 35% more attacks on Gaza in April than it did in March. According to the Gaza's health ministry, 120 Palestinians, including 13 children, have been killed since April 8th.

All the attacks came despite a U.S. broke at ceasefire agreement that was supposed to have taken effect in October. This is Faiza al-Ajami, a displaced Palestinian living in a tent in Gaza City. The war has not stopped yet. The war has not stopped in order for me to worry that it will return. The war is ongoing. The bombing continues, and every day we hear that there are martyrs here and there. There is grave danger everywhere.

Every moment we are expecting a missile to fall on us on my son or daughter, we are scared. Israeli forces continue to occupy more than half of Gaza, forcing over two million people to crowd into a thinner sliver of land along the coast. More than a million people are living in makeshift tents, most others in damaged structures. On Friday, Palestinians across the occupied territories planned to mark Nekba Day, the day that marks the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes during Israel's founding in 1948. Well, today we spend the rest of the hour looking at an often forgotten piece of history about Jewish anti-Zionist activists in Eastern Europe, who opposed calls in the early 20th century to form a Jewish ethno state in Palestine. We're joined by the award-winning artist and author Molly Crabapple.

Her new book is titled, Here Where We Live is Our Country, the Story of the Jewish Bund. The Guardian praised the book saying the relevance of her material for our own. our present moment is impossible to ignore. Molly Crabapple is an award-winning artist and author. Thank you, Molly, so much for coming into the studio to talk to us. First of all, congratulations on the spectacular book. If you could just begin by explaining the title of the book, Here Where We Live is Our Country, The Story of the Jewish Bund. I'm so honored to be here and to be talking with you guys about my new book. Here where we live as our country is a slow from a Bundist campaign poster in 1918,

and I chose it because it encompasses this value that the Boond was held, the value of Dockite, Heerness. Born in probably the most anti-Semitic place on Earth in 1897, the Boond built their philosophy on the defiant insistence that Eastern Europe was their home, and they had a right to live in freedom,

in dignity, and have a beautiful, flourishing life there, there, and they also rejected, from the very start, calls to create a Jewish ethno state in Palestine. Why? The reasons they evolved, as Zionism evolved, but there were two major ones. The first was that they felt that Zionism was a capitulation to the same bigots that wanted to kick Jews out of Europe. At a time when all of these governments were saying that Jews were swarthy oriental foreigners that ought to get the hell out to somewhere else. For Bundists, Zionists seem to agree. But after the Balfour Declaration gave Zionism the backing of the British Empire and the British Empire's bayonets,

the Bundists opposed Zionism for another reason. They thought it was the handmaiden of imperialism. And Bundists scrupulously reported the brutality that has always marked Zionism. the expropriation of Palestinian land, the brutal evictions of Palestinian farmers, and the collaboration hand in hand with the British occupation. And, Molly, as you just mentioned that Zaris, Russia was perhaps the least welcoming place for the Jews of Eastern Europe. And that's the year that the Bund was, the year, it was the location where the Bund was created. And it was the year 1897, which is the same. year that Theodore Herzl launched the World Zionist organization. So if you talk about this,

the coincidence of these two organizations and also what gave rise to the two in that historical moment and place. It is a great irony of history that 1897, the same year as 13 young Marxist troublemakers were gathering in a safe house attic in Vilna, Theodore Herzl was in Vilna, Lithuania, then part of the Tsarist Empire. That same year, Theodore Herzl was launching the Zionist Congress at a Ritzikas, at a Ritzie casino in Switzerland. And the two groups hated each other from the start. But let's talk about Herzl. Hurtzl came from a very different background than the Bundes did. he was not a citizen of the decrepit Tsarist empire. Instead, he was a citizen of the Habsburg Empire, which was much more liberal. He came from Vienna, and he loved Vienna. All he actually wanted to do was assimilate, and in fact, he even joked that maybe Jews should just convert to Christianity. But it was covering the Dreyfus trial in France when an obviously innocent French military officer named Alfred Dreyfus was banged up on fake charge. of spying and then shipped off to Devil's Island. And then there were huge anti-Jewish riots all

over France. This experience of covering the Dreyfus trial as a journalist marked Herzl profoundly. And it convinced him that Europe was just racist at its core and that as long as Jews didn't have a state of their own, they would always be at the mercy of European racism. And he would spend the next years of his life meeting with every single single. despot and autocrat that he could to try to acquire some land in order to create this Jewish state. I went to Vilna with my mother and my brother, and a partisan took us into the woods, a woman partisan. And I'm wondering if you can talk about who the Jewish partisans were. It's a story that's not very well known, how they were connected to the Bund, and what the Bund at the time, since they

weren't supporting the State of Israel, was calling for. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the Bund was the most popular Jewish political party in the country. They had swept the Polish elections. They were the majority of Jewish seats in basically every major city in the country. and they were able to keep their underground going throughout the Nazi occupation. And the underground meant many things. On one hand, it meant partisans, but it also meant saving kids, having underground soup kitchens, smuggling newspapers all over the country. A young bundist named Salman Friedrich actually went undercover as a Polish railway worker and exposed the truth of the Treblinka death camp to the world.

Now, who are the partisans? The partisans, the partisans. were young Jews, usually either bundists, left-wing Zionists or communists, who were able to escape to the woods, get weapons somehow, often from like the black market, occasionally from Red Army detachments, and to fight until the end of the war. And it was actually Jewish partisans who worked with the Red Army to liberate Vilna from the Nazis. Well, let's just go to some context. As you point out in the book, this history, the history of the has been almost entirely erased. How did you unearth this history and speak specifically about your great-grandfather? Well, I grew up obsessed with my great-grandfather, Sam Rothbord.

First off, my mom taught me how to paint, and Sam taught my mom how to paint. And so my whole life, I've always viewed the fact that I was an artist as a sort of gift that I had gotten from him through time. But he was also, he was a character, right? I grew up with his paintings all around me, his sculptures, photographs of him hanging from a chin-up bar by his ankles into his 80s, eating fire, playing a violin he made out of Venetian blinds. And he had this one body of work that I really loved. It was over 600 watercolors that he did of Volkovisk, his hometown in Belarus, a hometown he had left in 1904. And they were, for every aspect of life from him praying on Yom Kippur to him being a bad kid drawing mean

character chores of his rabbi in religious school. And he had one painting that I always loved. And it was a young woman and she had the long skirt and the hair and an updo. And she was standing on a dirt road at twilight. And she was throwing a rock through a window. And next to her is her boyfriend with more rocks. Because chivalry is not dead, right? lady should not be carrying her own rocks.

And it was titled Itka the Bundest. And this drawing was so different that how I imagined a young Jewish woman would live in turn of the centuries, Tsarist Russia, that I thought the key to why it Go was so different had to be in that word, Bundist. And that was how I came across the Bund through my great-grandfather's drawings. And I explored the Bund more in 20th. when I wrote an article for the New York Review of Books, which has been the most viral article I've ever written in my life, that told the Boone's story from its birth in the Tsarist Empire through its role in the Russian Revolution, into war Poland, to its ultimate destruction in the Holocaust. And after I wrote this article, these amazing older people got in touch with me, people like the pioneering lesbian poet Irena Klepich, whose father, Mikhail was the bombmaker.

the ghetto. People like the great union leader Mark Erlich, whose grandfather, Henrik Erlich, ran the Bund in Poland. And when I started hearing these stories from these amazing people about their families, I knew I was not finished with this. This was not going to be just like one article. This was going to me my life for quite some time. And so that's how I made the decision that I was going to write this book. And talk more about going from the Bund and its role in the Warsaw Uprising, which is so often ignored, to the anti-Zionist movement in the United States. I mean, you are telling a story, you're uncovering a story through your own family that leads right to, to say the least, marvelous illustrations.

You've won two Emmys for your illustrations and your writing and how your grandfather and great-grandfather influenced you, both in your politics and your artistry? Thank you. I mean, even though Sam died before I was born, I feel like he's someone who shaped my entire life, not just the fact that he was a painter, not just the fact that being surrounded by paintings

gave me permission to dream of being an artist. It was that Sam was a non-conformist in his bones, and he was a leftist. He was someone at a time when he was, intermarriage was kind of taboo who welcomed my Puerto Rican father. He was someone who believed that everyone was created equal, even if he thought that artists were a little bit above. And I feel myself shaped by him. Now, in terms of the anti-Zionist movement and the Boond and the Warsaw Ghetto, the Warsaw Ghetto revolt was the work of a group,

primarily called the Jewish Combat Organization, which was left-wing Zionists, Bundists, and Communists. There were other people in the ghetto that fought, but that was the main group. And these were very young people. The youngest fighter was 13 years old, who's a bundist named a Luciac Blondis. They had 50 guns from the Polish Home Army, and one machine gun, and homemade Molotov cocktails and light bulbs filled with battery acid. And with that, they launched the first urban revolt in Nazi-occupied Europe, and they held off the Nazis longer than the entire country of France. But as we know, courage cannot ultimately compete with airplanes and fire bombs, and the Nazis annihilated 90% of Poland's Jews. After the war,

there were pogroms in Poland that led to the majority of the Jewish community fleeing to displaced persons camps in American occupied Germany. And these Jews spent years applying for visas to Western democracies that refuse to accept them. Meanwhile, in the camps, Zionist groups quickly seized control of the camp administrations. And they use this power, which is, again, the power to distribute rations, the power to give people jobs and housing to coerce people to join the Haganah and eventually to take part in the Nakhba and the creation of Israel. And despite this intense pressure, despite the unspeakable horrors that Bundas had went through, they held firm to their belief in internationalist solidarity and their opposition to a Jewish state. And there's a line that I think of from the great Bundes pedagogue Shloyme Mendelsohn. It was in the last article he wrote before his death in 1948,

where he said that it was shocking that Jews who had been the primary victims of fascism were now adopting its methods to suppress dissent in the Jewish community. And he wrote, it's as if the slaughterer has infected the victim with his germs during the slaughter. So, Molly, I want to talk about one of the very interesting. parts or let's say form of the book is the perspective from which you write. Your work, it seems to me, follows in the tradition of people who write a history from below, representing the voices of those who are oppressed, the subaltern outsiders. And you've said explicitly that you came to see you were writing not just about the Bund, but also, quote, a history of the 20th century

from the point of view of the defeated. So if you could elaborate, on that and then the case you make again and again that the Bund was in fact not a failure, it was defeated, and that's a very different thing. The Boone's story from 1897 to 1945 is the story of the 20th century in Europe. It is the story of World War I, of the collapse of the old multi-ethnic empires and the creation of new violently nationalist ethnostates. the story of the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War. It's the story of independent Poland and the story of the Holocaust. And one of the sort of guiding quotes that I had in my mind when I

was writing this book was by Mahmoud Darwish. It's the quote that I start the book with where he says, let's read it. Soon we will search on the margins of your history in distant countries for what was once our history. That's Mahmoud Darwish, 11 stars over Andalusia. And this quote was a guiding thing for me because the boon, they never took state power, right? They were picked out of Russia by the Bolsheviks. They fought a valiant fight and became the most powerful Jewish party in Poland between the wars, but ultimately, you know, Poland was run by nationalists, Polish nationalists, and they were murdered during the Holocaust, and then the remnants of them were suppressed by the Soviet-backed dictatorship afterwards. And so there aren't

the resources about the Boon that there would be about the people who won, right? Like, there is not the things that you'd read about George Washington or Vladimir Lenin, for that matter. So instead, writing about the Boond, it was a project of searching in the margins of other histories, of reading other people's memoirs, of going to countries like I went to Ukraine during the Russian invasion, I went to Lithuania, I went to Poland, and looking at the margins. And then also the Boond wrote in Yiddish, which is the language of the Jewish working class of Eastern Europe. This is not a largely spoken language today. Yiddish never had state power. It never had the resources to have an academy francs, you know? And in order to write about the Bund, I had to

learn Yiddish. And so much of this process was about going through these archives, looking at pages that were printed with hectorgraph, that were so faded and crumbled that I can barely make out those letters. It was like an act of necromancy and an act of reclamation. Also, you quote at the beginning of your book, Molly, tradition is not the worship of ashes, it's the preservation of fire, Gustav Mahler. If you can talk about what that means to you, and also the researching, writing, traveling for this book in the midst of what Israel was doing in Gaza. I use that quote because for me, this book is not just taking some dinosaur bones, right, and putting them in a glass case at a museum. This is the preservation of our leftist past.

I mean, the boon does a Jewish story, but it is not for Jews alone. This is a history that belongs to all rebels. It belongs to everyone who believes in the necessity of human solidarity. And I viewed this book as my contribution towards the preservation of that fire. I mean, the research I did for this book is a bit lunatic, I would say. I think because I don't have a college degree, I came in with a sense of inferiority. I was like I was like I must learn everything. I read every single book I could in English, Spanish, French, and then eventually Yiddish as well.

I had Polish and Russian research assistants who showed me perspectives like that of the great Polish socialist, Zygman Zaremba, a comrade of the Bundists. I translated endless Yiddish pamphlets, including many pamphlets that have never been digitized before, especially anti-Zionist, Yiddish literature from the Bund. I translated the work of their enemies as well of Bolsheviks, of Zionists. I traveled to countries where the very urban grid had been erased in the streets of the Boond walked. Warsaw was systematically destroyed by the Nazis during the war. The streets that the Boond lived on, that they had their battles on, largely aren't there. But I wanted to see what the sunlight was like, and I wanted to see what wild flowers grew there. And I went to the grave of Patty Kremlin.

who was one of the pioneers of the boon, her grave was outside Vilnius in Ponar Forest, and I played the song that she sang with the women before she was murdered, which is Dishvua, the oath. And, I mean, how did this feel to write the majority of this during the Israeli genocide of Gaza? I mean, I think it broke me in probably ways that I have difficulty expressing. I mean, to forensically reconstruct the genocide of the Jews of Warsaw, while a country that claims the Holocaust as some sort of sick justification for its crimes does a genocide in Gaza, as it segments and liquidates Gaza block by block,

as Israeli bulldozers and bombs efface Gaza, like Nazi bombs effaced Warsaw. You know, there were often protests for Palestine, downstairs, at the library where I worked and I would go down and join them. Molly Crabapple, author of the new bestselling book, Here Where We Live is Our Country, The Story of the Jewish Bund. It became a New York Times bestseller

before it was even published. That does it for our show. I'll be in Atlanta, Georgia. On Friday night, we'll be celebrating WRFG. also showing the film about democracy now. It'll be screening. That screening will take place in Atlanta. On Saturday, we'll be in Austin, Texas, and will also be in Houston, Texas this weekend, celebrating KPFK as well as Co-op Radio in Austin. you can check our website, KPFT, in Houston, which was blown up by the Ku Klux Klan when it first was founded in 1970. To see the travel plan for this weekend and the showing of Steelers Story, please go to DemocracyNow.org.

I'm Amy Goodman with Nirmine Scheher.