Upstream - Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad

Starting point is 00:00:00 The last 10 days in particular are so important because it actually doesn't matter what you think about 75 years ago right now. You don't need to have an opinion formed on how Israel established itself as a state and what massacre did or did not happen. on the fact that a nuclear state that has some of the most sophisticated military technology in the world is dropping 6,000 plus bombs over the course of the last 10 days on 2.2 million people who are encaged. They cannot leave. They have no supplies. They have no fuel. They have no water. They have no electricity. Many have said that they might die of dehydration, if not from the bombs. This collective punishment against 2.2 million people, 50% of them children. There's no justification for this, no matter what you think about Israel's history. This is such clear brutality and the idea that people still want to debate. I think it's just, it's such a harrowing reflection of our humanity or lack of it.

Starting point is 00:01:27 You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. Before 1948, the land of Palestine was dotted with olive groves along rolling hills between mountains and the Mediterranean Sea.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Jews, and Christians all lived alongside one another in relative harmony, practicing agriculture and embroidery, or working in factories or along the coast in thriving port villages. Not to romanticize it too much, but in comparison to what was to come, this region was thriving. If you've been paying any attention to the news lately, you know that this image of harmony is no longer the case in this region. In 1948, the State of Israel was founded, and the campaign leading up to, during, and following the founding of this ethno-state threw this region into turmoil.

Starting point is 00:02:34 A turmoil which has produced one of the most subjugated and immiserated populations in the world. A population which has been subjected to ongoing ethnic cleansing and a campaign of genocide aimed at replacing Palestinians and their towns, villages, and cities with Israeli settlements. In this episode, we've brought on Sumeya Awad, a Palestinian writer, analyst, and socialist organizer to talk about this history, drawing a line from the Nakba of 1948 all the way to the present carpet bombing campaign on Gaza. Sumeya is a contributor to and co-editor,

Starting point is 00:03:14 along with Brian Bean, of Palestine, a Socialist Perspective, published by Haymarket Books. In this conversation, we explore the history of the political ideology of Zionism, how imperialism and colonialism shaped the state of Israel, the ethnic cleansing campaign known to the Palestinians as the Nakba, the global propaganda campaign led by Israel aimed at covering up this history, the West's complicity in war crimes and genocide, what a principled socialist perspective on Palestine looks like, and much more. In fact, there's so much more from

Starting point is 00:03:53 Palestine, a socialist perspective that we didn't get to, that we're going to have Sumeya back for a part two coming soon. We're really excited to share this conversation with you, but before we do, really quickly, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has responded to our call for help after we lost our grant funding this year. It really means the world to us to know that you're out there and that you have our backs. So many of you shared our call for help on social media, reached out to us personally, and became monthly donors, and we truly felt the love, and we are so grateful to all of you for your support. Now that we are entirely listener-funded, it's not hyperbole to say that we truly could not do

Starting point is 00:04:36 this without you. And if you haven't yet, and if you can, if you're in a place where you could afford to do so, and if it's important for you to keep Upstream sustainable, please consider going to upstreampodcast.org forward slash support to make a one-time or recurring donation. Also, if you can, please go to Apple Podcasts and rate, subscribe, and leave us a review there. You can also go to Spotify now and leave us a review there too. This really helps get Upstream in front of more eyes and into more ears. We don't have a marketing budget or anything like that for Upstream, so we really do rely on listeners like you to help grow our audience and spread the word. Thank you. And finally, after much thought and discussion, Robert and I have decided that

Starting point is 00:05:20 starting in 2024, we are finally going to start a Patreon for Upstream. You probably noticed that this episode is being released on one of our off weeks, and that's because it's a bonus episode. In 2024, we will continue to offer our bi-weekly episodes for free, but we'll also be releasing at least one, if not two, extra episodes every month. Episodes just like this one, but which will be available exclusively for our Patreon subscribers. If you're already a recurring donor, we will make it as easy as possible for you to simply switch over to our Patreon.

Starting point is 00:05:54 No need to worry about this yet. You don't have to do anything for now. We will make another announcement at the end of the year and we'll be sending out some emails to let you know how you can easily transfer your current subscription to Patreon. Okay, thank you for bearing with us for these announcements. And now here's Robert in conversation with Sumeya Awad.

Starting point is 00:06:28 Sumea, it is great to have you on Upstream. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show, and especially on such short notice. I'm wondering to start if you could maybe introduce yourself and share a little bit about the work that you do for our listeners. Sure. Thanks for having me on, Robert. So, yeah, my name is Sumea Awad. work that you do for our listeners. Sure. Thanks for having me on, Robert. So yeah, my name is Sumayya Awad. I'm Palestinian. I currently am based in New York City and have been a long time Palestine and immigrant rights activist. And a lot of my work revolves around

Starting point is 00:07:02 writing about Palestine, about socialism, about how it intersects with so many of the movements in the U.S. past and present. So many social justice movements that Palestine has long been a part of. called the Adala Justice Project, which is based here in the U.S. and works on connecting Palestine to movements in the U.S. like the Movement for Black Lives, the Climate Justice Movement, the Indigenous Rights Movement, Indigenous Liberation Movement here in the U.S., among many, many others. Got it. Yeah. Thank you so much. And I guess just before we jump into a little bit of the history and what's going on right now in Palestine and Gaza, I'm wondering if you'd want to describe a little bit about what your experience was like when all of this most recent escalation began and with the initial raid by Hamas. I'm wondering what your experience was then and what it's been like since.

Starting point is 00:08:06 Yeah, I, you know, it feels like years have passed since that day. I think the initial reaction was, you know, shock at what had happened. And, you know, very quickly that was, I guess, complemented by, not really replaced, but complemented by the realization that Israel is going to commit really horrific war crimes and retaliation. I don't think I ever imagined what has taken place in the last 10 days happening. That scale, it's a completely new scale of horror, both in terms of just the sheer brutality of this collective punishment that Israel is enacting on Palestinians in Gaza, and also the sheer brutality and inhumanity of how the world is responding, and certainly how

Starting point is 00:08:59 not just the U.S. government is responding, but so many institutions in the U.S., including much of the press, especially in those first few days after October 7th. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of folks, including myself, have said that it does really feel like a post 9-11 lead up to the Iraq war in terms of this sort of chauvinism and jingoism and this, like, there's no space for dissent. And there's even a lot of criminalization of pro-Palestinian protests. And even people simply, you know, speaking Arabic or carrying a Palestinian flag have been subjected to criminalization or at least, you know, harassment by police. And I'm going to ask you a little bit more about that as we move forward.

Starting point is 00:09:52 But I think I'd love to start with your excellent book that you co-edited and contributed as well, some pieces too with Brian Bean. And I think that you both did just a really, really fantastic job of describing the deeper history and the forces and ideologies that came to shape and ultimately found the state of Israel. And I'm familiar with a lot of this history sort of a little bit more superficially. I've been following this for years now, but really reading those opening paragraphs of your book was just a really harsh reminder of just the utter brutality, the blood-soaked history of that region. And so I'm wondering if you can talk us through maybe, you know, and take as much time as you need on this because, you know, it's a pretty huge question. need on this? Because it's a pretty huge question. Entire volumes have been written about this, but I'm wondering if you can start by giving us a bit of a background and history of Zionism,

Starting point is 00:10:58 particularly, and how it was entangled with European imperialism and colonialism, both materially and ideologically. And then, talking a little bit about political events and different battles and the ethnic cleansing campaigns, particularly the Nakba, and eventually bringing us up into the current state of Israel and the occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people as we know it today. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think the only way to really understand, like you just said, how we got to the moment we are in today with what's happening in Gaza and Israel as this settler colonial state, as this nation state project is to go back to Zionism and the establishment of Zionism as a political ideology, which Israel just uses as cover for its ongoing occupation of Palestine. I think it's really important to start by saying that the founders of Zionism, many of whom later

Starting point is 00:11:54 became some of like the leading figures to establish Israel, or the idea of Israel, they were very clear from the outset about what their project was going to, what it sought to accomplish. Vladimir Jabotinsky, who's seen as sort of one of the founding fathers of Zionism, he said, this is in the early 1900s, Zionism is a colonizing adventure. Very clear. They were under no illusions about what they were doing. about what they were doing. And actually, yeah, just because I have it in front of me from the book, and I was literally reading this last night, I'm going to read a quote from Vladimir Jabotinsky, a quote from 1993, which like really encapsulates what you're describing. The quote goes, Thus, we conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence, those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism, we can now say no and depart from Zionism.

Starting point is 00:12:58 Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population, an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is our policy towards the Arabs. So yeah, I just wanted to read that full quote because I think it's so telling and so ominous. But yeah, please, please go on. It's important to name Zionism because it helps dispel the myths about Palestine being, you know, a chosen land, or many of the claims we hear about the Palestinian struggle being a religious struggle between Jews and Muslims, that the reality is actually far from

Starting point is 00:13:52 that. That Zionism was a political ideology from the very beginning, and that Palestine was not even the number one on the list for where they wanted to establish the state of Israel. There were other contenders on the list, including Uganda, for example. Yeah. And as you write in the book to the parts of the Midwest of the United States. Yeah, exactly. And Palestine ended up being chosen partly because it was easier to make an argument around it, and also because of its geopolitical location, especially at that time in the early 1900s. And so for that reason, Zionism has always faced opposition from Jewish anti-Zionists, right?

Starting point is 00:14:35 We're talking like far before Israel even came to exist as a nation state. And many refused to take part in this colonizing project. And they were shunned for it. And there's like a lot of really interesting sort of back and forth that you can read through from that time. And many believed in the project of Zionism. And then as they saw it implemented, as they saw the brutality and the violence and the blatant racism that came with it, right? Like we're talking like in the 1920s, when there were calls among the Zionists in Palestine at the time, you know, not to buy from Palestinian stores, not to work with Palestinian workers, to boycott all of their anything that is Palestinian or Arab. And at the time, you know, people started to ask questions, obviously, because this went against the way Zionism was being sold to so many people, right? It's this like liberation project, when in fact, in practice, it was doing the opposite.

Starting point is 00:15:37 And so I think understanding that is key. And that, establishing that over the course of 20 to 30 years, leading up to the that over the course of 20 to 30 years leading up to the establishment of the state of Israel and at the time working with the British getting trained by the British who were as we know also colonizing in the Middle East and being armed by different imperial states at the time as well, and then colluding with them. I mean, Theodor Herzl and co, they wanted to establish a state because they wanted to be seen as level with the other imperial and colonial states that existed at the time. And Theodor Herzl being the, basically like the founder of Zionism, right? Right, exactly. Yeah, he wrote one of the basic doctrines of Zionism.

Starting point is 00:16:27 And yeah, they wanted to sort of compete and be seen as equals with the colonial powers at the time. And what's really absurd about this is that, you know, the idea that Zionism was founded in order to combat anti-Semitism, when Herzl and then those who came after him actually like worked closely with many of these states in which anti-Semitism was rampant. And I feel like that's an understatement. And they had no problem with that. They had no problem negotiating, colluding with these states. Their writing says it all, right? This is not like hearsay. There are documents and documents of letters between these individuals, between these political figures, sort of debating, well, you know, what do we do with the poorer Jews who are not going

Starting point is 00:17:18 to help us build the land or build what we want on Palestinian land and fight and take up arms because they're too weak, because they're too poor. And it was a very clear, like, don't bring them here. Keep them in Europe. Let them face the horrors of Europe and don't bring them here because we cannot use them to build this settler colonial state. And then you get into like a really dark part of that during the Holocaust as well, which, you know, we don't necessarily have to get into that. But just suffice to say, there was quite a bit of collaboration between Zionists and literal Nazis and the Nazi state of Germany. And if you want to talk about that at all, but also folks can check out the book if they want to really get a little bit more into that. Yeah, I think I would urge people to read that first chapter of the book to sort of get that particular incident or incidents, and then other examples as well.

Starting point is 00:18:11 But yeah, sorry, you were talking about the collaboration with the Tsar in Russia and the Kaiser in Germany. And these were empires which were well known for oppressing and murdering and doing the pogroms and horrible things like that. And so, yeah, I'm sorry to sort of interject with that Holocaust piece, but yeah, I'd love it if you could sort of continue on with that history. Yeah. Yeah. So there is a lot of examples of this. And, you know, meanwhile, in Palestine, as Zionism was sort of establishing itself as this project on Palestinian land, they were being, and I think this is a particular thing that I think people don't really understand,ilitary Zionist groups that carried out a lot of the massacres, a lot of the ethnic cleansing campaigns, not just in 1948, but in the decade leading up to that, they were trained and largely armed by the British. And they had a very meticulously planned ethnic cleansing campaign. It was not like an ad hoc, you know, five-day quote-unquote war,

Starting point is 00:19:28 as it's often talked about in some history books. It was actually a years-long plan to remove Palestinians from their land and to take it over. And of course, that involved massacres, many, many massacres of Palestinians, of entire families, entire villages wiped off the map and replaced with Jewish settler colonies, many of them now cities in Israel, that are built on the ruins of Palestinian towns and cities and villages and then renamed. And the stories of these villages just erased. The brutality of it, to think that it was happening at around the time that so many countries, so much of the global south was involved in like really beautiful, inspiring revolutionary movements against colonialism. And at the same time, Israel was establishing itself as a settler colonial state. You mean like Jordan, Syria, all of these states were in the process of ridding themselves of their colonial rulers, and Israel is doing the exact opposite and establishing itself. And I think that one of

Starting point is 00:20:43 the most important things that we wanted to bring out in that first chapter is that you cannot distinguish between Zionism as a political ideology and what took place in 1948. You cannot talk about the establishment of the state of Israel without talking about the Nekba, the catastrophe. And the only way to talk about the Nekba is to talk about Zionism. And I think that's foundational to anyone trying to understand everything unfolding today. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I've thought about how, you know, the ideology of Zionism is sort of in parallel with sort of the ideology of manifest destiny in the United States. They both served as the ideological function for the material conquest and colonization and subjugation of land and

Starting point is 00:21:34 people. I'm wondering, well, first of all, you mentioned that all of the Israeli towns and villages and settlements are literally built on the graves almost many times of Palestinian people and villages. There's a quote in the book from an ex-Israeli defense minister where he literally says, quote, there is not a single Jewish settlement not established in the place of a former Arab village. And I'm thinking if you could maybe recount the story of, and correct me if I'm pronouncing this wrong, but Tantura and what happened there, but also definitely want to know what happened there, but also maybe how that story was uncovered and then the reaction by Israel in terms of how they responded to the revealing of the story of Tantura by the, I believe it was like

Starting point is 00:22:24 a PhD student who was working on their dissertation when they discovered the sort of the story of Tantura by the, I believe it was like a PhD student who was working on their dissertation when they discovered the sort of horrific story of this village. Yeah, teddy cats. Yeah. Yeah. So Tantura was a Palestinian village town that was also like a port hub. And it was like a very lively important economic small but important economic hub near some of the larger cities uh like Haifa and others and it was also a place where it wasn't just it was Palestinian Muslims and Christians and there were also. And it was not to like romanticize, but it was harmonious, right? Like it wasn't a, oftentimes when people talk about Palestine pre-Israel, it's sort of painted as like this really hostile place towards Jews. And it was like, actually,

Starting point is 00:23:20 no, there are Arab Jews and everyone was just living together. Again, not to overly romanticize it, but Tantura was one of those places. And that's important, and I'll get to why in a bit. But what happened in Tantura is, in 1948, as the Haganah and Irgun were attacking villages, taking them over, there were skirmishes with Palestinians resisting the takeover of their land and the massacres. And this was also the case with Tantura. And what happened was when there was an attempt to save the village from Zionist militia, but it failed. And there was a really brutal massacre in which very few survived. We're talking hundreds of Palestinians killed men, women, and children. And there are many accounts that came out from soldiers who had taken part

Starting point is 00:24:15 in the massacre, came out later, you know, stories like the Palestinian men were lined up in order to dig. It essentially was like a mass grave, and then they were all shot and put in it. The brutality that the Palestinian women faced at the hands of the soldiers. And there was an attempt by the Jews that lived right, like right on the outskirts of the village to help to shelter Palestinians who were fleeing from the massacre

Starting point is 00:24:42 to resist the Zionist militia coming in. Fortunately, it was not successful. But the Tuntura massacre was similar to Deryasin, which was another really brutal massacre. But what happened to the Tuntura massacre is that the brutality of it, the inhumanity of it, was covered up, as was the case with many of the massacres in 1948. covered up, as was the case with many of the massacres in 1948. And if you fast forward nearly 50 years, and Teddy Katz, this PhD student in Israel, who didn't necessarily have like any agenda of uncovering, you know, a massacre, or thinking that he was going to end up essentially going up against the Israeli state machine and propaganda. But he wrote about the massacre,

Starting point is 00:25:23 against the Israeli state machine and propaganda. But he wrote about the massacre, and he interviewed some of the soldiers that were in the Haganah and Irgun at the time and was able to document the events of the massacre and how it unfolded and the indiscriminate killing that took place. And in response, he was working with Ilan Pape, who's a brilliant Israeli historian who has left Israel because of the repression and the fact that he no longer sees Israel as anything that will ever reflect him and does not want to live in a state that is committing these war crimes day in, day out. Yeah, so Teddy was essentially put on trial.

Starting point is 00:26:05 And all of the people that spoke with him, these soldiers that spoke with him, retracted their statements. They said that they had never said that. It was a long, arduous trial. And I won't go into detail. But in the end, Teddy Katz was forced to retract his dissertation and the conclusions he came to about the Tontura Massacre. And I think Israel was using it as sort of like a precedent to ward off any attempt at rewriting the history of the Nakba and its truth, as opposed to the Israeli state propaganda of, you know, a two-sided war, two-sided conflict. Yeah, absolutely. And again, a couple quotes from the book to rewind just a minute to our conversation a few minutes ago, a quote from

Starting point is 00:26:52 your book, quote, Zionism is not a historic yearning to return to Zion, but a modern movement that was born in the last quarter of the 19th century. The development of Zionism as a political movement was entirely a product of European society in the age of imperialism, and it is impossible to understand outside of that context." And then another quote from the book regarding the Nakba, quote, 247 villages in Southern Palestine were ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948. And the refugees from those villages were then forced into a concentration camp that came to be known as the Gaza Strip. And I think it's really important for us to always remember that's what the Gaza Strip is. It's refugees who escaped or were forced out of their homes in Palestine in 1948 and since. And I also

Starting point is 00:27:49 think it's really important to use the language of a concentration camp. We hear open air prison as well. I think these are really important terms to use because they really go against what you were alluding to and sort of the story that came out with Teddy Katz's, the sort of repression that he experienced after he wrote his master's thesis. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about Israel's long campaign to erase Palestinian history and culture. And like, you know, you talked about how their work has been suppressed, information has been suppressed about the true history of their settler colonial project, just like we do here in the United States, how we suppress that history. We don't want to talk about it.

Starting point is 00:28:53 You know, many cases, people even up until today, even just wearing a Palestinian flag around your neck at a protest or waving one or speaking Arabic, like I mentioned earlier, like this stuff is becoming criminalized. So I'm wondering if you can talk about that propaganda campaign by Israel a little bit more. I'll start by saying that Teddy Katz faced this like war against him by the Israeli state for this PhD dissertation. And Teddy Katz is Israeli, right? He's Jewish-Israeli and he faced this. And I say that because it means that a Palestinian could never even think to do what Teddy Katz did in Israel, right? Like he could not even get that far. think to do what Teddy Katz did in Israel, right? Like he could not even get that far. In fact, a lot of the archives are not even open to Palestinians, even Palestinian citizens of Israel are not allowed access to them, are not allowed to ask these questions, are not allowed

Starting point is 00:29:36 to look through historical documents. And that's not just in Israel, like even in the United States. And you mentioned examples that I'll get to in a second. But Israel has actually attempted to, since the Nakba and then formally sort of codified it in 2011, to forbid anyone from talking about the Nakba as the Nakba, to use the word Nakba, to talk about the establishment of the state of Israel as it was, like the reality of it, the massacres, the ethnic cleansing. And in 2011, Israel officially introduced a law called the Nakba Law. And what it does is it penalizes anyone who talks about the Nakba, talks about the founding of the state of Israel,

Starting point is 00:30:20 warrants that day as the catastrophe that it was, or denies the existence of Israel as a quote-unquote democratic state, you will be penalized if you do that. You are not allowed to commemorate the Nakba in Israel. It is against the law. And that can mean many different things, but one of the things that that means is that if you're an institution, if you're an organization, if you're a school and you do that, or someone in that institution does that, they will not receive funding, they will be penalized by the state, etc. And that law passed in 2011. And when you take that type of repression,

Starting point is 00:30:58 you would think like, oh, that, you know, that can't happen in the US.S., but it does in really horrific ways. It does in the U.S. as well. The clampdown on Palestine activism on college campuses, in workplaces, in people's homes, like by landlords. There have been instances of employment, of course, and not getting a job, not getting into grad school, not getting an apartment. There was an instance in New York where someone was refused by their landlord because of their history of Palestine activism. The blacklists that exist, smearing Palestine activists, smearing them as terrorist sympathizers, etc. And a lot of this, this has existed for decades. But of course, a lot of this was really amped up in the aftermath of 9-11, when I think Israel took the opportunity post 9-11 to just smear all Palestinians, all those who were calling for an end to the occupation, an end to the apartheid that was establishing itself, and anyone that was against what was happening in Gaza at the time. The siege hadn't started yet, you know, in 2001, but the groundwork for what would later

Starting point is 00:32:12 become Israel's blockade on Gaza was in the works and just smearing Palestinians as terrorists. And it's not just about like the repression, right? It's not just about I didn't get this job. I didn't get into the school. As horrible as those things are, but it also meant like people were imprisoned, right? People were sent to Guantanamo. All of these things are connected. They're not siloed. They're very much interconnected.

Starting point is 00:32:47 And I think what we've seen in the last two weeks is this resurgence of that type of repression, that chilling effect, or what Palestine Legal has referred to as like the free speech except for Palestine, that no, you no longer have a right to speak when it comes to Palestine, right? Your First Amendment right is not there anymore. And people feel like they have the power to attack you. And I think just like in the aftermath of 9-11, we've seen the press really play into this as well. And the spread of disinformation in order to bolster these smears has been really concerning, to say the least. And it's already cost us a lot. The six-year-old in Chicago, Wadi al-Fayyum, a six year old Palestinian boy who was stabbed 26 times by his landlord. And that was instigated by all the disinformation spreading, all the smearing of Palestinians and Muslims. And that's what led to that little boy being murdered in front of his mom.

Starting point is 00:33:40 And I would say it can even start with things that seem as subtle as, you know, language and the terms that are referred to, you know, like Palestinian terrorists, barbaric attacks, that kind of language, which is really coded. And that's, you know, the starting point for a lot of this. And, you know, when you hear that enough through the media and policymakers and leaders of institutions. the media and policymakers and leaders of institutions. And I think that the language is also a really important thing and it's part of this propaganda campaign. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how Zionism is sort of codified into Israeli law and how it's been used to justify colonialism, imperialism, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. to justify colonialism, imperialism, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing? And maybe also to like, yeah, just if you could get into what makes Israel an actual ethno or apartheid state? Yeah. I mean, when you look at Israel today, it's in three parts, right? There's the occupied West Bank, where Israel's rule has meant these small Palestinian enclaves just sprinkled across

Starting point is 00:34:49 the occupied West Bank. And with checkpoints, hundreds of flying checkpoints, a flying checkpoint just means a checkpoint that is on this road today. And then two days from now moves to another road and you have no idea where to expect them and when. And checkpoints, in order to get between Palestinian cities, you need to go through these checkpoints. It can take hours. They can close down suddenly, and you're just cut off from family, from access to hospitals, from schools, from your work, and settlements that are also sprinkled across the occupied West Bank. And these settlements, they don't have to go through the same checkpoints.

Starting point is 00:35:30 If you live in one of these settlements, you can travel freely. You can access all the resources that are afforded to you by the state of Israel that are not afforded to you as a Palestinian. So your identity determines your accessibility to things like water, to things like electricity, to things like food, to things like healthcare. All of that is determined by your identity. And you have an identity card, like an ID card, and that determines where you can and cannot go. There are literally Jewish-only roads and Palestinian-only roads. And the same applies to schools. And in Israel, not all of this is codified, though it may as well be. There are schools, there are kindergartens where you can

Starting point is 00:36:13 only go to them if you're Jewish-Israeli. You can't if you're Palestinian, even if you're a Palestinian citizen of Israel. One example also that I think is really powerful is the Histadrut, which is the union, the largest union in Israel. You cannot join it if you're Palestinian. There are no Palestinian workers represented by the union. And I'd love to talk about the Histadrut another time, maybe not on this episode, and the history of it and how implicated it is in the founding of the Israeli state, how implicated it is in all the massacres. But I won't go on that tangent right now. So you have this system of apartheid rule because your identity determines your life. When you wake up

Starting point is 00:36:51 and you go to school, if you're Palestinian, it's going to look one way. And if you're Jewish, it's going to look another way. And then there's all sorts of like family separation laws as well that are a part of this. And I'll actually talk about this one example because it relates to what's happening today in Gaza, the 2003 family separation law, Israeli family separation law, which basically was Israel's way of isolating and alienating Gaza from the rest of historic Palestine. And what the law, the law did many things, but I think two important things that it stipulated. One is that if you were a resident of Gaza and you lived in the occupied West Bank because you worked there, because you had family there, because you had a home there, you were forced to go back to Gaza. You were not allowed to stay in the occupied West Bank. If you were a resident of the Occupied West Bank, but you lived in Gaza, or you married into a family that lives in Gaza, or your children are Gaza residents, but you aren't, or vice versa, you had to make a choice. You either stay in the Occupied West Bank, but the rest of your family who's from Gaza has to go back, or you move with them to Gaza, and you sign off your rights to return to the Occupied West Bank,

Starting point is 00:38:06 to be a resident of the Occupied West Bank. And this tore apart, separated does not feel like strong enough of a word, you know, hundreds of families, many of whom have never reunited since then because the siege on Gaza began just three years later, the blockade. And it forced people, it forced people to separate. And this is, this is actually such an intrinsic part of Israel's project, the separation, the material, physical, you know, geographic separation, and then the identities, right? The separation of Palestinians into identities, so that we're not, we're not seen as as one we're not seen as like a monolith palestinians

Starting point is 00:38:46 no there's the palestinians of jerusalem with they have a specific id card the palestinians of the occupied west bank they have a specific id card the palestinians in gaza which is you know just a whole other level of of oppression and occupation and then the palestinian citizens of israel who are not afforded the same rights as Jewish Israeli citizens. It's so blatant. And of course, Israel controls all of these populations that I just named, right? The Palestinian Authority does not have authority. That's a misnomer. It essentially now acts as the security arm of the Israeli state in the occupied West Bank, carrying out the repression, carrying out the rounding up and imprisonment of Palestinians that are protesting,

Starting point is 00:39:31 not just in the last two weeks, but for many, many years. It is not acting in the service of Palestinians. And we've known that for a long time now. This idea of the Oslo Peace Accords, another misnomer, being sort of like the peace negotiations of the century. The diplomatic bridge to ending the occupation. All of that failed. It only exacerbated the situation. It only entrenched apartheid and occupation. So Israel has control over all of these populations of Palestinians. And through this fragmentation, through the fragmentation and control, it's been

Starting point is 00:40:05 able to justify what it's been doing for a number of reasons. I think one is just the dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims that is so rampant and that is so normalized that people are able to say, oh, well, you know, I'm sure Israel had to do this. I'm sure Israel is defending itself. And that's that dehumanization is before 9-11. You know, that goes back to the 70s. But that is so rampant and so deep. And we've seen the proof of that in the last two weeks, right? The bombing of Gaza in the last two weeks,

Starting point is 00:40:37 the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of civilians, the bombing of hospitals, a bakery was bombed, a bakery that distributes 100,000 to 100,000 bombing of hospitals, a bakery was bombed, a bakery that distributes 100,000 to 100,000 people, sorry, bread when there are no food supplies coming in. That was bombed. The day before that, a hospital was bombed, the Ahli Hospital, where in an instant, a thousand people were killed. In an instant, a thousand people were killed. The death toll from that is climbing. And still, and still, people are saying, well, what about Hamas? And it's the dehumanization is so deep. And of course, you know, the highest rungs of power in our country, the president, his cabinet, many members

Starting point is 00:41:19 of Congress are standing by their full support for Israel, that they have Israel's back no matter what. And that no matter what is right now turning into a genocide, a genocide that we're funding, a genocide that is being funded by our tax dollars here in the U.S., the bombs raining down on Gaza, the missiles. Many of those are U.S.-funded. Many of them actually come from U.S. arms manufacturers. And it's been really, you know, it's hard to put into words what it's been like to watch this unfold

Starting point is 00:41:53 and watch people doubling down on the dehumanization. The idea that 2.2 million people, a million of them children, right? And 43% of Gaza's population is under the age of 14. 50% is under the age of 18 children. It means they've lived nearly their whole lives under Israel's blockade. They were born into Israel's blockade. And they have been bombarded by Israel's bombs every year with a large scale assault every couple of years, right? 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2018. And they've tried to protest it, you know? They've tried everything, let's just say. And in 2018, in particular, I think is an important year because that was the year that 40,000 Palestinians

Starting point is 00:42:41 in Gaza marched to the militarized barrier between Gaza and Israel. There's actually no border. There's no like official border between the two. And sort of set up camp there, demanding an end to the blockade, demanding an end to the suffocating blockade of like the air, the land, the sea. Like you said, a concentration camp. And they were met with snipers. They were met with snipers and bullets and medics were shot and killed. And journalists were shot and killed. And so it's, it's, what happened last Saturday was horrific. Yes. But even before that, Palestinians were always considered the aggressors, no matter what they did. Whether they marched

Starting point is 00:43:25 peacefully to the border, whether they engaged in boycotts of Israel, whether they spoke out at college campuses, the finger was always pointing at them as the aggressors and never as the victims of this 70 plus year project of colonization and occupation. But I'll also just add that I think the last 10 days in particular are so important because it actually doesn't matter what you think about 75 years ago right now. You don't need to have an opinion formed on how Israel established itself as a state and what massacre did or did

Starting point is 00:44:07 not happen. You don't need to have an opinion on this to have a stance on the fact that a nuclear state that has some of the most sophisticated military technology in the world is dropping 6,000 plus bombs over the course of the last 10 days on 2.2 million people who are encaged. They cannot leave. They have no supplies. They have no fuel. They have no water. They have no electricity. Many have said that they might die of dehydration if not from the bombs. This collective punishment against 2.2 million people, 50% of them children. There's no justification for this, no matter what you think about Israel's history. This is such a clear brutality. And the idea that people still want to debate, I think it's such a harrowing reflection of

Starting point is 00:45:00 our humanity or lack of it. Yeah. Just some thoughts as you talk about the conditions in Gaza and we're seeing an escalation, what I believe IDF generals have referred to really just gruesomely as mowing the lawn, this every few years they They sort of have to maintain the Palestinian population through carpet bombing them or else they might rise up. The conditions in the Gaza Strip, it's one of the most immiserated places on earth. They live in utter impoverishment. Water, medicine, healthcare are often inaccessible, not just now, but always. This is a constant state of affairs. Not now, but just generally they get just a few hours of electricity per day. Of course, now there's none. Two-thirds are unemployed. And of course, across the wall, across the border, the situation is

Starting point is 00:46:00 quite different for Israelis living in relative opulence compared to those in the Gaza Strip. I also wanted to comment on, you mentioned the Great March of Return, is one example of why this bullshit about violence and quote-unquote Palestinian terror is such bullshit. Palestinians have tried, like you said, everything, including peaceful marches to the border. And Israel has always responded with disproportionate amounts of violence, gruesomely setting up snipers along this border to actually shoot for the ankles and the knees of Palestinians peacefully marching towards the wall, towards the fence, creating what I've heard is like an entire generation

Starting point is 00:46:45 of amputees in the Gaza Strip. So I'm wondering, we only have a few minutes left and I definitely want to get into sort of your thoughts on socialism and how it relates to this, the Palestinian conflict, of course, conflict being like a highly euphemistic term for what's actually going on. But yeah, did you want to add anything to sort of Israel's monopoly on quote, legitimate violence and that? Or would you like to sort of move on to exploring sort of these questions of what might look like a solution and the role that socialism could play in that? Well, I want to add one thing to what you were saying, and then always happy to talk about socialism.

Starting point is 00:47:31 Two things, actually. The first, you know, you mentioned how Palestinians in Gaza are living under suffocating blockade. And then, you know, nearby, there are these settlements and towns where almost everything is afforded to them. What I want to add to this is that, you know, the majority of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees, right? They were not originally from Gaza. is that the majority of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees. They were not originally from Gaza. And many of them live within walking distance, within walking distance of their original homes and land. And of course, it's completely inaccessible to them.

Starting point is 00:47:58 But just the thought that you are walking distance from where your grandparents or your parents or you are from, but there is a full blockade you are unable to access it you cannot even walk to visit it and i think that's that's like the brutality the heart-wrenching gut-wrenching brutality of what it means to be living under this blockade and what it means to be born into this blockade and the other thing I wanted to mention, you said that during the Great March of Return, true Israeli snipers would target the ankles of the Palestinian marchers. And this was because they were getting a lot of heat for killing the peaceful protesters, you know, the encampments that were there. And so instead, they went to the let's make it so they can't walk. Let's make it so that they lose limbs. And this is not just 2018. This has always been part of the Israeli military strategy. Going back decades, during the first Intifada, the first uprising in the 1990s, there was a broken bones policy. That's what they called it. Because the Intifada was receiving so much positive international attention,

Starting point is 00:49:05 you know, like Palestinians resisting the occupation, resisting the oppression of Israel. And Israel was, of course, responding with brute force, killing, just killing Palestinians, men, women, and children. And so then they resorted to the broken bones policy in order to help reverse the international image. The order was, don't kill them. And I believe this was Ariel Sharon who said this.

Starting point is 00:49:29 Don't kill them. This is not an exact quote. Don't kill them. Break their bones. And they did. That was what they did. When they would catch children throwing rocks, the soldiers, and there are videos of this, the soldiers would quite literally break their boats,

Starting point is 00:49:45 break their arms using rocks, using their rifles. And they did this to hundreds, hundreds of Palestinians. And so I just wanted to point that out because this is part of the Israel playbook. This is part of the Israel playbook. And none of it is by accident. None of it is sort of like this ad hoc strategy. It's all part of these 70 years of attempting and failing to erase Palestinians, to remove us all

Starting point is 00:50:14 from our land. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for adding those really crucial points. So the book that you co-edited and contributed to is called Palestine, a Socialist Introduction. And so I'm wondering if you can talk about the connection that socialism and Palestine and other Arab liberation movements have never intertwined, that it's like this, a new thing that they're coming together and sort of in conversation with one another. And the reality is there's a long and beautiful history of Arab socialism. And I won't get into details today, but I think it's important to say that because this is not, you know, something that we're just bringing over from the West to these different liberation struggles, but is in fact one that has a rooted history in them and

Starting point is 00:51:16 an important one. And that's the case for Palestine as well. And part of what the book tries to do is to begin to go into that history between Palestine and socialism and the different socialist and communist parties that existed in Palestine and that were part of the liberation struggle. And talking through what were the pitfalls of that? What were the strengths of that? How did that fit into the historical context of the time, the 60s and the 70s, part of the 80s? And that was really, really important to sort of revive that for this burgeoning socialist movement that we're seeing here in the U.S. And we wanted to begin that conversation. that I hope to accomplish through the book was to bring this the Palestine liberation struggle and its connection to other liberation struggles in the Middle East from Syria to Lebanon to Egypt feels weird to see the say the legacy of the Arab Spring because it never fully ended but I'll say the legacy of the Arab Spring in conversation with the socialism that was on the rise in the U.S., you know, 2016, around the time of Bernie Sanders, and to make sure that that was

Starting point is 00:52:32 part of how we conceive of a socialist movement in the U.S., right? That it's not just about a, like, national socialist perspective, but that it is understood as intricately tied to the struggles internationally, and that Palestine in particular should have, and I think increasingly does, have a big role in what it means to build a socialist movement in the US and to fight against the US war machine, of course, but also the many number of things that I think have been taken up in the US by different socialist organizations and certainly by the largest one, the Democratic Socialists of America, which is like when we're fighting for climate justice, when we're fighting for fair housing,

Starting point is 00:53:14 when we're fighting for debt relief, student debt relief, when we're saying we want to tax the rich, when we're saying we want to fix public infrastructure, that actually part of that conversation is what our government is doing abroad. And certainly what our government is doing abroad when it's funding in the billions of dollars, a military occupation, military occupation with financial and political backing of one of the world's superpowers for now, I guess. And so tying those together was really, really important. That you cannot, you know, you cannot be a socialist. You cannot say that you are with the oppressed,

Starting point is 00:53:53 that you are with workers, against their bosses, against the rich, without understanding that that needs to extend beyond our borders, beyond borders that have only existed for a couple of hundred years. And in fact, we have more in common with Palestinians fighting against their oppressors than we do with the ruling class in our country, than we do with those oppressing us, whether it's in the workplace or on the streets. Yeah, thank you so much. And I know you only have a couple minutes, so I'm not going to ask you my final question, which was, what does a solution look like to you? That would be cruel with just a couple minutes to go into that. So maybe, who knows, maybe we could do a part two at some point. But I'd love to maybe close out by just asking if there's any final thoughts or what folks can do

Starting point is 00:54:42 if they want to get involved, if they want to support the struggle for Palestinian liberation from here in the West? Yeah, I will give a short answer to the solution question. I think that is a much larger question and would love to talk about it in a dedicated session. But I think the first step, and this ties to what can people do, I think the first step in this particular moment that we're in is to demand a ceasefire and to demand an end to the blockade on Gaza. And I think the second step from that is to demand that our government end all U.S. funding to Israel, that we should not be funding a state that has been charged with a crime of apartheid. state that has been charged with a crime of apartheid. We should not be funding a state that is being investigated in the International Criminal Court for war crimes and for crimes

Starting point is 00:55:29 against humanity. That that is the bare minimum we can do. That our tax dollars, our hard-earned tax dollars, are going to fund apartheid. You know, what would we say 30 years ago? You know, what would we say 30 years ago? And I think that that is the first step towards anything. I think people often want to debate all these different state solutions, but I think the first step is let's end the funding that is helping this apartheid state, this military occupation prop itself up. And I think that also includes like different states that are helping to fund settlements. In New York City, we just launched a campaign,

Starting point is 00:56:12 Not on Our Dime, to end the fuddling of money to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and in Jerusalem. You know, many settlement organizations, they masquerade as charities in the U.S. and they register here as 501c3s, as charities, and they're able to take millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, tax-exempt donations, and send them to establish these settlements on Palestinian land. And I'm talking like this is happening in real time, like Khan al-Ahmad and other towns in the occupied West Bank that are being ethnically cleansed now. And construction is beginning for settlements that are Jewish-only settlements, exclusivist Jewish-only settlements. And that's being funded through these charities that just operate in

Starting point is 00:57:05 cities across the country. Yeah. Well, I know you have to go. So thank you so much. And yeah, I had no idea about what you just said. So that's incredibly alarming. And thank you for bringing that up. And yeah, appreciate your time so much. Maybe we can do a part two and get more into the socialism and the solutions in terms of, you know, the broader solutions, but we'll have to end it there. So Sumeya, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate your time and the wisdom and perspective that you provided for us today. Thanks so much for having me, Robert. I really look forward to the part two. You've been listening to an Upstream Conversation with Sumeya Awad, a Palestinian writer, analyst, and socialist organizer based in New York City. Sumeya is a contributor to and co-editor,

Starting point is 00:58:06 along with Brian Bean, of Palestine, A Socialist Perspective, published by Haymarket Books. Stay tuned for part two of this conversation, which will be out soon. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, including ways that you can support Palestine. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is a labor of love. We distribute all of our content for free and couldn't keep things going without the support of you, our listeners and fans. Please visit upstreampodcast.org forward slash support to donate and because we're fiscally sponsored by the non-profit independent arts and media any donations you make from the u.s

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Upstream - Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad

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