Israel and Palestine: A Political Solution
Speak, even when your voice shakes, and you feel like rage crying. This special episode provides greater historical context to Israel and Palestine, elevates voices on the frontlines of the humanitarian crisis, demands an immediate ceasefire and a united global democratic alliance to end the genocide of Palestinians, and amplifies the calls for a political solution.
The crisis cannot be solved militarily. The bombs raining down on the open air prison of Gaza is a genocide–another Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe”–which in 1948 saw the brutal mass forced displacement of around a million Palestinians with the founding of Israel. We’re witnessing the long awaited war by indicted corrupt criminal and Putin ally Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, desperate to cling to power, even if that means turning Israel into another theocratic dictatorship in the region. The racist, genocidal movement that assassinated former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for signing the Oslo Accords, a path towards peace and potentially a two-state solution, brought Netanyahu to power. And now his government of Stephen Millers is determined to finish off Palestinians, mass-murdering several thousands, including a significant number of children.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken published a call for a cease fire on Twitter, only to delete it after Republicans protested. That and more of the US response, what it means for the civilians on both sides of the conflict, the US election and more are discussed in this extra furious episode. This week’s bonus episode will include answers to questions submitted by listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher, and a special on-the-ground look at the upcoming Virginia state elections and the recent voter-purge by Governor Glenn Youngkin.
Thank you to everyone who supports the show–we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!
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Audio Clips:
Ali Velshi on Israel’s apartheid of Palestinians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKkjPtleWEU
Israeli settler steals the home of a Palestinian woman in East Jerusalem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzO9KhXhiik
Doctors without Borders: A doctor in Gaza https://twitter.com/MSF_USA/status/1713396854711296310
Watch Sands of Sorrow featuring Dorothy Thompson (1950) https://www.un.org/en/exhibits/page/watch-video-%E2%80%93-long-journey
Former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger says that there is no military solution to Israel/Palestine: https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1712482696700842096?t=eJ1GfsWrLzCoNDfj9o-tAg&s=19
A 19 year old survivor of the Hamas massacre blamed Netanyahu, demands a political solution: https://twitter.com/BenzionSanders/status/1713255988608848069
Israel’s Ambassador to the UK denies there’s a humanitarian crisis in Gaza: https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1713811260662255910?t=R8v3bQH4QwP7K5Udf7ivgQ&s=19
Israeli journalist harassed in Tel Aviv for calling for peace: https://twitter.com/orlybarlev/status/1713323223218082255
Peaceful Israeli protest broken up by police: https://twitter.com/NTarnopolsky/status/1713311362242216151?t=qB2TwZzYQJ6IU4VdKQpQWg&s=19
Yuval Noah Harari on Christiane Amanpour https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1712538821923885287?t=GgwX7j8W-Q09JJ7P3ZuZzA&s=19
Closing clip: An Israeli who lost his parents calls for an end to the war: https://twitter.com/helenachumphrey/status/1713747777195307130?t=tmxkpSAsINT2F5nEkRalzQ&s=19
The Middle East Crisis Factory: The Iyad El-Baghdadi Interview https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2021/4/8/the-middle-east-crisis-factory-the-iyad-el-baghdadi-interview
Indicted Criminal Netanyahu Starts a War to Cling to Power https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2021/5/19/indicted-criminal-netanyahu-starts-a-war-to-cling-to-power
Peter Beinart, NYT: “Most of Gaza’s residents aren’t from Gaza. They’re the descendants of refugees who were expelled, or fled in fear, during Israel’s war of independence in 1948. They live in what Human Rights Watch has called an “open-air prison,” penned in by an Israeli state that — with help from Egypt — rations everything that goes in and out, from tomatoes to the travel documents children need to get lifesaving medical care. From this overcrowded cage, which the United Nations in 2017 declared “unlivable” for many residents in part because it lacks electricity and clean water, many Palestinians in Gaza can see the land that their parents and grandparents called home, though most may never step foot in it.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/palestinian-ethical-resistance-answers-grief-and-rage.html
Netanyahu Is Losing the War at Home Incompetence against Hamas and indifference to Israeli suffering has the public boiling over. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/10/in-the-israel-hamas-war-netanyahu-is-losing-at-home.html
The Real Dividing Line in Israel-Palestine https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/israel-palestine-hamas-and-hardliners-against-peace-by-slavoj-zizek-2023-10?barrier=accesspaylog
Israel is ordering Gazans to flee south. But they’re bombing us here too. Refugees from the north are already arriving in Khan Younis, where the missiles never stop and we’re running out of food, water, and power. https://www.972mag.com/gaza-flee-south-khan-younis/
Ukraine and Israel both must face a Russian foe https://www.nydailynews.com/2023/10/16/ukraine-and-israel-both-must-face-a-russian-foe/
The Massacre in Israel and the Need for a Decent Left https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/opinion/columnists/israel-gaza-massacre-left.html
The Secrets Hamas Knew About Israel’s Military: Hamas gunmen surged into Israel in a highly organized and meticulously planned operation that suggested a deep understanding of Israel’s weaknesses. Here is how the attacks unfolded. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-attack-gaza.html
Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza conflict https://cpj.org/2023/10/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/
Israeli journalist Israel Frey attacked by far-right Israeli extremists in Tel Aviv for calling for an end to the war https://twitter.com/Ha_Matar/status/1713476098976047267?t=qmoRLraXDE8Ynm7OeSDVuw&s=19
6 Year Old Palestinian-American Boy Stabbed 26 Times by White Landlord https://abc7chicago.com/joseph-czuba-will-county-news-plainfield-murder-boy-stabbed/13921802/
2022 Saw Highest Number of Palestinians Killed in West Bank by Israeli Forces Since Second Intifada https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-01-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/2022-saw-highest-number-of-palestinians-killed-by-israeli-forces-since-second-intifada/00000185-7cf9-d464-a197-fefb0f290000
Hamas starting to 'understand the severity of their situation,' says negotiator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg6LzfDHg3U
How False Testimony and a Massive U.S. Propaganda Machine Bolstered George H.W. Bush’s War on Iraq https://www.democracynow.org/2018/12/5/how_false_testimony_and_a_massive
Channel 4 News: "Where is people's humanity?" Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf has shared his mother-in-law’s “last video” from Gaza, as Israel warns Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza ahead of an anticipated ground offensive. https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1712791120357236821?t=4_iUv0ESF6AFKB7TMQQrTg&s=19
Daniel Adamson @danielsilas Some of the most measured voices I’m hearing on here, the ones who seem most serious about ending this agony, seem to come from Israelis whose loved ones have just been murdered or abducted by Hamas. Some examples… https://twitter.com/danielsilas/status/1712601486935421077?t=1hPscVI9w--Vc4VdX7YytQ&s=19
FIGHT DISINFORMATION: Comprehensive ongoing list of the most prevalent viral imagery of Syria falsely attributed to the Israel-Gaza war. This image is of child victims of the Assad regime's gas attack against Eastern Ghouta a decade ago, not Israeli or Gazan victims of war. https://twitter.com/KareemRifai/status/1712934425489534989
Israeli settler’s attempt to justify forcible takeover of a Palestinian home sparks online anger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9q9PDBsDe8
From 2003: U.S. stays steadfast in support of Abbas https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/09/IHT-us-stays-steadfast-in-support-of-abbas.html
CIP Calls for Truce in Israel-Hamas Fighting to Allow for Humanitarian Relief. See our full statement below: https://twitter.com/CIPolicy/status/1713594164183486549/photo/1
Iyad El Baghdadi on Twitter: This message was written by a Palestinian to a Jewish friend. Then that Jewish friend passed it on to Palestinians friends. I don't know the person who originally wrote it. And now I'm passing it on to you. As the rhetoric becomes genocidal, root yourself in humanity. Pass it on. https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/1713236580914041300
In 1996, Netanyahu became Israel’s youngest prime minister, running on a platform against flailing peace attempts, especially the Oslo accords that gave some limited autonomy to the Palestinians. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/20/benjamin-netanyahu-becomes-longest-serving-israeli-pm
Explainers:
The origins of the Hamas-Israel war explained | ABC News Australia https://youtu.be/zsNj8DiJv-A?si=JowVDyLzjmzU9xIy
Let’s Talk About the Israel-Palestine Conflict | The Daily Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeZ4yXyzUG0
Revealing the history behind Hamas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUtYF0V0reg
From 2017: Mapping Middle East Peace Possibilities https://www.wsj.com/graphics/twostate/
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Ali Velshi:
Let's make one thing clear: Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. That is an indisputable fact. But so do Palestinians, and that's a fact that's often ignored. Palestinians are, at best, third class citizens in the nation of their birth. The idea that it's even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable.
Ali Velshi:
One look at a current map of Israel, Gaza and the occupied territories conjures up only one other example: apartheid-era South Africa. The Israeli government on an ongoing basis declares parcels of land on which Palestinians live to be either of military or archeological importance, causing residents to be evicted. Sometimes there's a court case and almost always the Palestinians lose. Yet months or weeks later, that same important land suddenly becomes home to a brand new Israeli settlement. As more and more Jewish settlers take over land on which Arabs live, the occupied West Bank becomes de facto more Israeli and, in the explicit hopes of the Israeli government, more Jewish. This is a longstanding attempt and a deliberate attempt to force Arabs who have lived in that land sometimes for hundreds of years out. It's an attempt to dilute their presence because to have Arabs as full participants is in the opinion of the Israeli government and their courts diluting Israel.
Ali Velshi (00:01:50):
Just prior to the pandemic, I toured many of the contested areas and homes from which Arabs are being pushed out, both in Israel proper and in the occupied territories. Palestinians don't control the important parts of their lives. Palestinian families are refused permits to build or renovate their homes. When they connect their homes to the municipal water supply, Israeli soldiers sometimes cut the pipes. When they attempt to harness solar energy because their homes are not on the grid, Israeli soldiers literally come and remove solar panels from their homes. I spent an hour and a half traveling alongside an elderly Palestinian woman who was being transferred between three ambulances from Gaza, to the no man's land in between, and then into Israel to get cancer treatment. Three ambulances over the course of one mile, more than an hour to cross the border—that's how Gazans live; without medical treatment because Israel prevents it; without electricity much of the time because Israel prevents it; without the ability to fish in the Mediterranean Ocean because Israel prevents it; without an airport or a seaport because Israel prevents it.
Ali Velshi (00:02:53):
Like Israelis, Palestinians also have a right to exist and to defend themselves, but there is no one willing to help them do that; not the Israeli courts and not the US government. What the US also shares with Israel is the belief that Hamas (the political party that governs Gaza) is a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel. Hamas is supported by the majority of Palestinians in Gaza. Hamas may not be in the best long-term interests of the Gazans, but peace hasn't really worked out for them. Faced with an Israeli government which pens them into what has been called “the world's largest open-air prison,” they have chosen a government that most of us wouldn't prefer; one that is not given to negotiation and moderation and respect for its neighbor. Israel needs a new approach to the Palestinians and America needs a new approach to Israel. After more than seven decades of not just being deprived of land from which they were evicted, Palestinian frustration runs deep. It may be worth going deeper than what you may hear inside your bubble and understanding the depth to which the Palestinian people are subject to apartheid in their own land, deprived of basic necessities, and subject to relentless civil rights violations.
[end opening clip, transition music up and under)
Andrea Chalupa (00:04:05):
Welcome to the most fucked up episode of Gaslit Nation ever. If you feel that you're out of tears because you've been crying so much, if you're having nightmares, this is the place for you. We're going to sort through everything and we're going to try to assure our shared safety as much as possible because there is so much disinformation out there and it's being compounded by a trauma response from people from all sides. I want to state up front what my position is so there's no moral ambiguity or whatever, and I understand that a lot of my listeners—Jewish, Palestinian—you are living right now wherever you are in the world feeling that you have a target on you. We saw that with a landlord having so much hate and ignorance in him that he stabbed a child dozens of times. Then we have the terrorist attacks.
Andrea Chalupa (00:04:59):
That was a terrorist attack, what happened in Illinois. And then you have other terrorist attacks, what happened in Europe. Then you have coalitions of people fighting for human rights and democracy in Ukraine who now feel torn apart by this crisis and growing war and genocide. You have coalitions of people who normally work together side by side who need to fight Trump, who are the front lines of American human rights, who feel torn apart because of this US taxpayer-funded genocide in Israel against Gaza. So how do we stay grounded? How do we stay united? We hold space for each other. We allow each other to grieve. We try to be patient with ourselves and others. And we give each other time to build nuance in the conversation and hear the different voices we should be listening to right now and getting moral leadership from right now because we're sure as hell not getting it from our elected officials.
Andrea Chalupa (00:05:58):
So please understand this is an episode of me not only working through my own grief alongside with you. I'm going to be amplifying the voices of Palestinians. I'm going to be amplifying the voices of Israelis, including those who were directly victimized by what Hamas did. And I want to say upfront, as somebody who has based my entire life, my career off of Ukraine's own resistance for freedom and resistance movements—and I understand this isn't apples and oranges, right? I understand—but as somebody who is trying to survive right now in this moment of history and raise children in this moment of history, I want to be very clear on where I stand. And it's consistent. It's very consistent, since the very start of the show and throughout my entire upbringing, being raised with anti-war protests as a child against the first Iraq war and immediately making a career decision to become a community organizer straight out of college to protest the second Iraq war.
Andrea Chalupa (00:06:54):
So my position is very, very clear, and it's for all to see and it's always been there. And very strong points of views are going to come together in this episode and it's all going to come back to the one whole truth, which is nonviolent resistance is badass. It's tough, it's strong, it's fearless, and it works. And it is why we open the Gaslit Nation Action Guide at gaslitnationpod.com with the memoir of Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom. Stay with this show. Listen to the voices amplified in this episode because they're the ones who are leading the way right now who we have to pay attention to. They're begging us not to have their loved ones being killed in vain. They need to be heard. We need to hear these people. So that is what this episode is about today. And as always, if I get anything wrong, if I need added context to anything I'm saying, please, please continue civilly commenting on this.
Andrea Chalupa (00:07:53):
You can find us on Patreon, on Mastodon, on Spoutible, on BlueSky, on Threads, on Instagram. I know I'm spending a lot of time right now on Twitter and I'm trying to wean myself off, but that's because the voices of Gaza—or close to Gaza—are there, right? So that's why I'm really pulled back in there at the moment. But if you're trying to get off Twitter, I bless you for that. Keep staying off and I will find you there. So wherever you're most comfortable, that's where you can comment and you can also email gaslitnation@gmail.com. I'm reading everything that you're sending me in regards to this crisis. It's a moral crisis for the world. It is a nightmare. It is a nightmare, what we're going through. Obviously it's a nightmare for the people… I mean the helplessness that we feel, right? Why can't this fucking be stopped right now?
Andrea Chalupa (00:08:44):
So we're going to go through all of that. So just give me time to make the points that need to be made. This is a nuanced zone. It's a nuanced zone and if I make a mistake given the fog of war, the disinformation out there, if I make a mistake, look to the show notes. Look to the show notes. They are on the Patreon page for this week's episode or on the website for the show, gaslitnationpod.com. If there's a correction or needed context there, I'll put it there for every episode. [deep breath] So let's get through this together. So our opening clip, of course, was MSNBC News anchor Ali Velshi, who has long done some of the best reporting on both the crisis in Ukraine and now Gaza in Israel. Ali Velshi was raised by Indian parents who escaped apartheid South Africa due to its oppression.
Andrea Chalupa (00:09:36):
I did not know that until this crisis. This episode will focus on the genocide and Gaza, the chaos in Israel, and the much-needed historical context to the crisis that cannot be solved militarily. This crisis cannot be solved militarily. And how do we build a meaningful path to a political solution? That's what we're going to be looking at through amplifying these different voices from the Palestinian side and the Israeli side in this episode. And again, listeners' comments I welcome and encourage and will be reading the other comments that come in. I want to go back to Ali Velshi. There were reports that Velshi and other Muslim anchors that MSNBC had been sidelined. MSNBC denied those reports and the Muslim journalists continue to appear on air. No doubt, there must be some truth in those rumors. Perhaps they were told to tone it down.
Andrea Chalupa (00:10:31):
I have heard from an insider at MSNBC that the network has become more conservative lately, and we've certainly seen that with the firing of some of their most essential journalists who happen to be Black. We lost Zerlina Maxwell from MSNBC. She's amazing. She gave me a platform during the very early hours of Russia's total war genocide against Ukraine. It was on Zerlina Maxwell's platform that I came out and told everyone, “This is genocide.” And I amplified the voices of my friends, Ukrainian journalists on the ground. Zerlina Maxwell gave me the power to do that, and now she's gone from MSNBC when we need her most. We need her most because she's somebody that amplified the early warning systems, the marginalized voices. And Ukrainians for so long had been misunderstood and erased through the Moscow lens that dominates the think tank world, the academic world and so on.
Andrea Chalupa (00:11:29):
We also lost Tiffany Cross, another essential journalist who happens to be Black. She used to have her own show. She'd have Sarah on quite often. That is a danger to all of us that we have lost these extraordinary journalists from MSNBC who happen to be Black at a time of rising fascism in America when our history is built on non-white voices being brutally scapegoated and genocided, right? And so now here we are. So I do trust the rumors that the Muslim journalists of MSNBC had some pressure put on them because they've been doing some honest, extraordinary reporting that is bringing greater healing and much-needed historical context that if more people were aware of the true history of what the Palestinians have been through, maybe that would've led to an actual ceasefire and saved lives. That is why understanding history is so important, and I firmly stand on that.
Andrea Chalupa (00:12:27):
There have been reports of analysts and activists highlighting the genocide of Palestinians by Israel and providing much-needed historical record, historical context have been shadow banned from social media platforms like Instagram. They lost invitations. Their invitations to speak at events and to media have been rescinded. There is an overall feeling of a blackout, a media blackout of many of these experts. And of course we're seeing protests supporting Palestinian liberation being brutally confronted by police in Europe and elsewhere. And I want to make very clear to my Israeli listeners, to the Jewish community: I do not think what Hamas did—and I'm going to go into why, because I know I got heat from this from some of our listeners—I do not believe that Hamas is justified. I do not believe Hamas is justified at all. I don't believe terror. I don't believe the murder…
Andrea Chalupa (00:13:19):
What Hamas did to those Israeli civilians is what Russia, what Russian soldiers do to Ukrainian civilians. What Israel is doing to civilians in Gaza is what the Russian military does to Mariupol. Just levels it. It's Russia versus Russia. It's genocide versus genocide right now and it needs to stop. The world needs to raise up your voice and demand a cease fire now, demand accountability now. Demand that the Palestinians that were forced from their homes in Gaza are allowed to come back and are given resources from the world to rebuild their homes and live safely. And we have to demand that we amplify the voices on both sides that want to work together to create a peaceful solution because they are there. They're made invisible by the hysteria, by the extremes, by the United States not investing in them and so on. So we're going to go through all this. I have so much to say. I want to just pour it all out right now, but I have structured this so we get to the voices who matter most, and those are the people in Gaza… [gets choked up]
Andrea Chalupa (00:14:25):
Those are the people in Gaza right now because of what they're going through, and that is [inaudible]. I want to speak specifically about the children of Gaza because half of Gaza are children. Children matter very much in the context of genocide, as Jews and Ukrainians know very well. The mothers and fathers of Gaza today are the grandchildren of the Palestinians brutally displaced in 1948 with the founding of Israel. It was an ethnic cleansing that displaced around half of the population, sending around 700,000+ people into exile where they were forced to live in underserved refugee camps. This is known as the Nakba, which means “the catastrophe” in Arabic. To have children or not have children is anyone's right to decide for themselves. For those undergoing genocide or are descended from groups that survive genocide, having children feels especially important. Among Ukrainians today, I see Ukrainian friends saying that they decided to have a child.
Andrea Chalupa (00:15:32):
They thought they were done having children or they never imagined themselves becoming parents, but they decided to have a child because Russia is carrying out a genocide in Ukraine, killing people just for being Ukrainian. That's something that people from groups targeted for genocide understand. “They want to erase us. Well, here we are. We live. We defy death. We live.” Living, staying alive is its own act of resistance when you come from a group targeted for genocide. So those children in Gaza represent hope and the righting of a historical wrong, and now they're being slaughtered because Israel sees them as terrorist children. They're children. Today, there is a new Nakba. Israel is doing to Gaza again what Russia did to Mariupol: leveling it to the ground with bombs. It doesn't matter who the people of Gaza voted for or how they feel about Hamas, just like it didn't matter that so many Ukrainians across Donbas in Ukraine's East supported Russia before the war, or only spoke Russian, or felt more Russian culturally.
Andrea Chalupa (00:16:43):
People are without food, water, electricity, medicine. The cruel joke that they were given 24 hours to evacuate only worsened the humanitarian crisis. Imagine your grandmother or your mother is on oxygen 24 hours a day. They went through covid. Their lungs are fucked. They need to be on a machine to breathe. They're strapped to machines getting cancer treatment and they're told they need to evacuate. To where? How? The roads are bombed. Entire neighborhoods are bombed to rubble. Generations of families killed. No fuel for ambulances. People call for ambulances, but the ambulances cannot come. There are no ambulances, okay? And if you're thinking this is some Hamas propaganda, listen to the words later in this episode from Israelis themselves, including those who survived Hamas' terrorist attack. And I want to emphasize again, this has been going on for years, including Israelis being incentivized by the state to literally steal the houses of Palestinians while they're still living in them. That is something that Russians are currently doing to Ukrainians. The Russian military literally put out a recruitment video calling for Russians to sign up to fight in the genocide of Ukraine so that they can steal the homes and land of Ukrainians. Here's a clip of this happening a few years ago in occupied East Jerusalem of a Jewish settler—who sounds pretty American—stealing the home of a Palestinian.
Palestinian Woman (00:18:16):
You are stealing my house.
Jewish Settler:
And if I don't steal it, someone else is going to steal it.
Palestinian Woman:
No. No one is allowed to steal it. Jacob, you know this is not your house.
Jewish Settler:
Yes, but if I go, you don't go back. So what's the problem? What are you yelling at me? I didn't do this. I didn't do this.
Palestinian Woman:
But you—
Jewish Settler:
It's easy to yell at me, but I didn't do this.
[end clip]
Andrea Chalupa (00:18:37):
Who is going to stand up to this? The most heroic people right now are the doctors in Gaza who refuse to leave their patients, who tend to newborn babies. They are the ones who should win… [pauses to collect self]. They are the ones who should win the Nobel Peace Prize. They are the ones who carry out their duties as doctors to heal the injured, to try to heal the shock—patients coming in with injuries, including shock—while their own families are dying. There are so many videos online of doctors in the chaos of the hospitals in Gaza learning that their loved ones have been killed. That's Gaza right now. I'm going to play a clip of Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a doctor with the emergency humanitarian group, Doctors Without Borders.
Dr. Abu-Sitta (00:19:26):
It's absolutely horrendous. The bodies are stacked up. People are too afraid to bury their dead. I had to evacuate [inaudible] hospital yesterday when the Israeli army warned that it was going to target the hospital and the hospital had two hours to evacuate. We made sure that the patients were in ambulances and then we left. When you drive by one of the targeted buildings, there's this stench of decaying bodies. They're no longer able to take the bodies out from underneath the rubble. We drove past the Indonesian hospital, and as you pass by the morgue, there are piles of bodies just wrapped in shrouds and put against the corner because the morgue is overflowing. And the same in the morgue here at Shifa Hospital. Pending public health catastrophe at Shifa Hospital, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of people who have flocked to the hospital. They're sleeping in the grounds. They're sleeping on the corridors, between the patient beds, in the wards. People are absolutely terrified. And so they think this is the safest place. One of our plastic surgery colleagues, a lovely man whom I'd worked with since the 2009 war, just went to escort his sister to his house where 30 of his family members had stayed. He decided to stay with them overnight, and at one o'clock he was killed with all of his family.
[end clip]
Andrea Chalupa (00:20:55):
Ceasefire now. Ceasefire now. What is the point of a humanitarian corridor without a ceasefire? Ceasefire now. You cannot put a bandaid on a genocide. Ceasefire now. Like Russia is its own worst enemy, Israel is its own worst enemy. Like the US unites the world in standing up to Russian fascism, the US must unite the world in stopping Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Instead, we're funding it. We're going to go into the chaos of Israel, the US response later. First, I want to look at the history of the Nakba, and for that I'm going to bring in a story of someone you've often heard about on this show over many years, including recently, and that is my historical mentor, Dorothy Thompson, the journalist who took on Hitler. She was an original Nazi hunter. If you want to know how I get out of bed in the morning, how I make it through the day, where I find the courage and inner strength to continue doing the show instead of curling up in a ball, it's because I cling to the hand of my historical mentor, Dorothy Thompson.
Andrea Chalupa (00:22:02):
Dorothy Thompson was the first woman to run a major international press bureau in the world. And she was based initially in Vienna. She covered the rise of Hitler. She interviewed Hitler. She wrote a profile of him for Cosmopolitan Magazine, laughing at him. And when he came to power, he never forgot it. One of the first things he did was he expelled her from the country. This was a huge shocking event. Hitler, Goebbels, they were so obsessed with her, they were so afraid of her that they had their own unit dedicated to her; tracking her, creating propaganda against her. She regroups, goes to New York City and gets a column, gets a radio show, and she uses that platform relentlessly to fight the Nazis, not only in Europe, but on the home front. She takes on Charles Lindbergh. She takes on the isolationist Republican Party. She takes on America's own apathy and pocketbook issues in the elections at a time when most Americans polled are blaming the Jews for what the Nazis are doing to them, at a time where Jewish refugees are being turned away and sent back to their deaths.
Andrea Chalupa (00:23:14):
So she was writing articles humanizing Jewish people for the average American and fighting for them. She stayed on air for weeks covering the Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland. When a young Jewish kid dared to walk into the German embassy in Paris and shoot and kill a Nazi official, and then he was arrested and disappeared, she rallied to his aid, raising money and used that shock moment to, again, humanize people who were trapped in a genocide. And part of the cage of the genocide they're in, it wasn't just the bars of the concentration camps or the trains or the gas chambers. They were barred in, they were locked in through the world’s silence, the heaviness of the world's silence. And that's what she fought against. And she became so effective that she became an advisor to FDR, to Churchill, she met with the Queen.
Andrea Chalupa (00:24:10):
She also brought world powers together who did not want these Jewish refugees. They were openly anti-Semitic against them, but she made the case that they had to do something for all of the countless displaced people; that they had to build structures, they had to get ready now, they had to win a just peace now. She did that. She fought for refugees. She turned her farm in Vermont into a refugee camp. And she was married to the great American author, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, Sinclair Lewis who wrote, of course, the classic, It Can't Happen Here, about the rise of an American Hitler, the early Trump. And where did he get the idea for that book? From his wife, Dorothy Thompson. And so she was very at first pro Israel. She believed this idea that there had to be a state for the Jews, that they had to have a place for self-defense, to protect themselves, because she saw firsthand how no one wanted them.
Andrea Chalupa (00:25:08):
She saw firsthand. She fought against all that. And so she was first in favor of this. And then she visited Palestine. And what happened was she saw that around half the population of Palestinians who had been living there had been brutally, brutally displaced, had been ethnically cleansed, pushed out of the country. And that is a horrible, horrible genocide known among Palestinians as the Nakba, which is the Arabic word for catastrophe. And she was part of a documentary. Dorothy Thompson appears in a documentary. It's only 12 minutes. The UN has it on its website. I’ll link to it in the notes. You could watch it. It was made in 1950, so the sound is not great. I apologize for that. But here you can hear Dorothy Thompson's own voice in this trailer for a documentary called Sands of Sorrow, all about the displacement, the mass displacement and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This was filmed in Gaza, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Jordan. And again, I apologize for the sound. It's from 1950. We'll play the trailer now where you can hear Dorothy Thompson herself.
Dorothy Thompson (00:26:12):
I'm Dorothy Thompson and I have been asked to introduce Sands of Sorrow. No film can convey the icy winds from Mount Hermon as they blow upon [inaudible], or the rains that turn dwellings into mud holes in the rainy season in Lebanon.
Voiceover (00:26:47):
The Palestine Arab refugees are struggling for survival. Three quarters of a million displaced human beings are dependent upon charity for their very existence. This is an open-air distribution conducted by the Egyptian army, which now controls and administers the territory south of Palestine known as the Gaza Strip. In this narrow area of sand along the Mediterranean, there are 250,000 refugees herded into a space only 22 miles long and five miles wide. Whatever they draw, they take back to their families; a blanket, soap, a little rice, the means to keep warm, wash and ward off disease. In the two years before the United Nations solely assumed the task of caring for these displaced people, relief distribution was organized and administered by such world famed organizations as the International Red Cross and the American Friends Service Committee. Many refugees like the dignified man in the black jacket are college educated graduates of American and Arab universities in Cairo and Beirut.
Voiceover (00:27:51):
The population of the little town of Bethlehem has been swollen by 43,000 refugees who formerly lived in Jaffa, Haifa and other cities to the north. The Church of the Nativity is but a short distance from two large refugee camps whose occupants are as poverty stricken and helpless as those in desert camps. This is the Church of All Nations. Not far from it is an outstanding example that the spirit of charity still lives. This building is the Dar el Tifl orphanage for homeless Arab refugee children. For 300 years it had been the ancestral home of Ms. Hind Husseni. She converted her home into a temporary sanctuary for 125 boys and girls, both Muslim and Christian. And to them all, she's mother, father, teacher, and provide. On past the Mount of Temptation from 45,000 of them stopping exhausted to remain on until this day in camps near the Jordan River. This is a problem which cries out to the civilized world for a quick, a humanitarian, a permanent solution.
Dorothy Thompson (00:29:03):
These refugees who today number not for 750,000 mentioned in the film but fully a million are a proper charge upon the United Nations and upon ourselves who helped create them. Relief in itself is of course no solution, but without relief there will be only one solution. Starvation. And without more than mere starvation, there are likely to be ugly political consequences.
[end audio clip]
Andrea Chalupa (00:29:34):
Dorothy Thompson is vindicated—painfully vindicated—by history. And one thing that to her is she went from being a superstar. She was on par with Eleanor Roosevelt. She was on the cover of Time. She was praised by all sorts of world leaders and what happened to her was that she was sidelined. Her career went away because of how outspoken she was for the Palestinian people. People even slandered her and called her anti-Semitic, which obviously could not be further from the truth. And again, history vindicated her because here we are with a second Nakba happening. And it's dangerous to us here at home. So if you're somebody that is so tired of hearing about this issue, I cannot relate to that at all. But if you're somebody that is purely motivated through self-interest, and let's say you are an American and you want to live in democracy; you don't ever want to experience what it's like firsthand to live in a dictatorship.
Andrea Chalupa (00:30:30):
I'm telling you: it is in your own pure selfish interest to demand a ceasefire, that Israel stops all hostilities and not just minimizes civilian casualties but just stop, ceasefire of the people of Gaza, and that a political solution is prioritized and that voices from both sides who are calling for that are amplified and are invested in and are protected, including giving security guarantees by a democratic alliance, right? Biden did this before with Ukraine. He could do it now to end the genocide of Palestinians and to get people on a path back to dignity. Okay? And again, we're going to go through a solution portion of this discussion later, but in your own self-interest, this is important because what is happening is, as I warned a couple weeks ago, I said, “Look at Cop City.” There's a big grassroots movement trying to stop Cop City in Georgia.
Andrea Chlaupa (00:31:24):
It is going to be the Standing Rock. Remember what Standing Rock did in 2016. It demoralized a lot of would-be Clinton voters in those very… That was a big issue. Standing Rock hung over everything in 2016. And now in 2024, yes, we have Cop City, but now we have on top of that the genocide of Palestinians and people are going to stay home when they should be voting in states that are going to be so close in the electoral college. So if you do not want Trump to win—wherever you stand on this issue, if you do not want Trump to win, because he right now is barreling to be the Republican candidate, if you want to make sure we can protect democracy in 2024 and keep the Republicans from winning the electoral college, understand that if the United States doesn't form a democratic alliance to stop ethnic cleansing, stop a genocide by Israel against Palestinians like they were able to do to protect Ukraine, to give Ukraine a fighting chance, if we don't have that same level of international organization and unity and moral clarity, then you're going to see a lot of people staying home.
Andrea Chalupa (00:32:29):
And we cannot blame them for that because what is happening here hurts the soul. It's a living nightmare. The solution to a living nightmare like this is to stop further casualties, further mass murder. And we can do that. We've seen the President of the United States give Ukraine a fighting chance and Ukraine is kicking ass now. I know there's a lot going on in the world, but Ukraine is demolishing Russia on so many levels. There's a lot of good news on the Ukrainian front that I haven't even had time to update you on, but unity, unity driven by the President of the United States works. And to those who are staunchly in the Jewish camp who think that I sound like… I don't know, whatever you think I sound like, I promise you this is in your own best interest. There's a far-right government that has taken control of Israel that has driven it deliberately to war.
Andrea Chalupa (00:33:18):
It's a backlash government. Within a few years—just a few years after the Oslo accords—the Israeli prime minister who risked his life to give us the Oslo Accords who was assassinated. Just a few years after that, Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister. Netanyahu came to power. Just like the first Black president in the United States faced birtherism and that put a target on his family's head, and you had that white rage backlash against him with Trump coming to power in a very close election 2016 with the help of a mass murdering xenophobic regime, that is how Netanyahu came to power. It was a racist backlash reactionist election, and he's entrenched himself in power through all the dark arts of trying to become a strong man since, including aligning himself with Putin. You see a lot of world leaders right now including a Romanian leader flocking to Israel.
Andrea Chalupa (00:34:11):
That's what leaders of state do. Zelensky wanted to come. Zelensky is the only Jewish head of state outside of Israel, and Netanyahu told him not to come. After getting off the phone with Putin, Netanyahu told him not to come. For now, all you need to know about the US response is that Blinken did tweet a statement about a ceasefire, got a bunch of Republican Party blowback, and then deleted it. And while the US has been swarming Israel and Blinken did a whole whirlwind Middle East tour, the US response is still to let Israel go forward with lobbying 6,000 bombs in an area twice the size of Washington, DC. 6,000 is an astounding number by any standard. 6,000 in a week. And this bullshit about humanitarian corridors and so and so on, people might hope that there's stuff happening behind the scenes but it has to happen front and center for there to be any meaningful ceasefire. If the President of the United States calls for a ceasefire, that will build to a ceasefire. And to the people who lean more towards Israel on this, I want to play a clip for you to show why it's in your own self-interest that Israel stops this because it's playing into a trap set by Hamas. And you're going to hear a clip now from the former MI6 chief, Sir Alex Younger, talking to BBC Radio 4 today.
Sir Alex Younger (00:35:31):
It's really obvious now that Hamas is essentially laying a trap for Israel and will be well pleased if Israel commits itself to an open-ended, full scale ground invasion of Gaza because of the scale and intensity of conflict that that would entail and the loss of innocent life that would inevitably follow, and the radicalization that would engender and the extent to which it would put Israel's allies and partners in the region in an impossible position. These are all things that basically Hamas wants. It's about reactions. Israel's going to have to do strikes into Gaza to demonstrate its intent to assuage the expectations of the Israeli people. But there is not, fundamentally, at the end of this, a military solution to this problem. You cannot kill all the terrorists without creating more terrorists. And military operations of this kind very, very rarely succeed outside some kind of political strategy.
[end audio clip]
Andrea Chalupa (00:36:37):
The other thing that I want to point out, I know that people who support Israel, they may be Israeli, they may have some sort of cultural personal tie to the country. I know it might scare you seeing these protests in solidarity with Palestinians saying that Israel has to go, that all of Israel has to be abolished. I want to say to that and to everyone, land matters. History matters. I know I'm going to lose people on this, but the reality is that the Jews were there first. They were there first and they got pushed out. And if you think that doesn't matter, it matters. Because if you look at Ukraine's own defiance, Ukraine's own confidence, when the whole world thought that Ukraine was going to get slaughtered by Russia, and SNLl had that big tribute to Kyiv with all those lights and candles and people were like, “Wow, Ukraine's fighting back.”
Andrea Chalupa (00:37:25):
Where did that confidence come from? Because Ukraine is centuries older than Russia. Ukraine actually helped build Russia by sending over its priests, its scholars, its other intellectuals when Russia was just like a far out outpost. So Ukrainians grow up understanding that they have this ancient identity that ties them to the land. And those deep ancient roots is what gave Ukraine that fighting confidence in that moment of darkness and ultimately its survival. So we have to honor the fact that both Israelis and Palestinians have that to this land. I know people use the word apartheid because the racist structure that the state of Israel built is apartheid. It is very much structurally that. It is built to harass, torment, humiliate and ultimately push people out. It's a genocidal system of dehumanization and it's evil. But understand that the apartheid of South Africa, you know, those white people arrived there.
Andrea Chalupa (00:38:26):
Those white people, they had no tie to that land. They just showed up. Israelis have a deep tie to that land. And as a Ukrainian, I understand that and I want to tell you that, that I understand that and I see that. So the best compromise here for everyone is the two-state solution. And I know that sounds so far off given the trauma response we're seeing right now and given that people right now as we're speaking are dying in Gaza, but the best path forward is a political solution. It's the two-state solution. And as I've always said on the show, grassroots power is the most reliable power we have left. There are grassroots groups bringing together Israelis and Palestinians that are actively advocating for this, that are actively advocating for peaceful resistance, for political solutions, that power sharing among Palestinians and Israelis, including who controls the resources so they can't be destroyed and turned off by Israelis against Palestinians.
Andrea Chalupa (00:39:27):
We need to move in that direction. Back to my mentor, Dorothy Thompson. As President Obama has said, quoting her: In the words of the American foreign correspondent Dorothy Thompson, “It is not the fact of liberty, but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.” In other words, peace is in the process. This week's episode can be summed up with the words of a former Gaslit Nation guest, the Palestinian writer and human rights activist, Iyad el-Baghdadi, co-author of the book, The Middle East Crisis Factory: Tyranny, Resilience and Resistance, and co-host of the podcast Arab Tyrant Manual. He shared this quote on Twitter, and I'm going to read from it now. “This message was written by a Palestinian to a Jewish friend, then that Jewish friend passed it on to Palestinian friends. I don't know the person who originally wrote it and now I'm passing it on to you.”
Andrea Chalupa (00:40:25):
“As the rhetoric becomes genocidal, root yourself in humanity. Pass it on.” And he quotes, “At these times, I imagine that mainly people are frightened, that we are looking for safety. I have this need to communicate that despite everything that is happening, I love you. And I love you even more and forever I will. I open my heart, my mind, my soul to grasp you, to dedicate my life, to create a safe place for all of us, for all of you, for me. I am here. I see you. I feel you. And I love you. And nothing that ever happens will erase my compassion I have for you and us, or would fog my vision of each of our pure essence.” That's it. That's the solution. That's where we start. That peace is in the process. [deep breath]
Andrea Chalupa (00:41:17):
Now I'm going to share a clip that I have to translate. This is a 19-year-old Israeli woman, a survivor of the Hamas terrorist attack. She has the solution and what you hear in this clip, she's not alone. All across Israel, people of all ages blame Netanyahu's government as they should, and they demand a political solution. There's no military solution here. There needs to be a political solution. I will translate the clip as we play it. You can find the original, the source in the show notes for this week's episode.
[begin audio clip with Andrea translating]
19-year-old Hamas attack survivor:
Citizens of Israel, politicians, residents of Israel and abroad, I don't care who hears this. Listen to me carefully. How am I supposed to get up in the morning knowing that 4.5 kilometers from Kibbutz Be’eri, in Gaza, there are people from whom this event has not ended. For me, it was over after 12 hours because there was a place to be evacuated to. I'm at the Dead Sea. Those speaking of revenge should be ashamed. There's a lot of pain. That is true. I myself, after everything that I've been through, keep losing so much energy every time I hear the word revenge. For people to go through what I went through and not have anyone to extract them, it cannot be.
19-year-old Hamas attack survivor: (00:42:32):
It cannot be. And no, there can be no more. They ask this all the time: “Do you think you'll go back to the Kibbutz after this to live there without added protection, without additional soldiers?” Don't offer up soldiers or protection. Talk to me about a political solution. For years we've been asking for a political solution. I'm 19 years old. I have friends who have fallen on the battlefield as soldiers over the past few years. When they were in kindergarten, they knew what they wanted to do in the military. Am I to raise my own children like this? Shameful, disgraceful. Am I to raise my own children and ask them when they are five years old, “Sweetheart, what do you want to do in the military?” How much? How much loss, how much can one endure? We, those of us who survived, are living and walking proof. And believe me, if you are hearing this, that it can be a whole lot worse. It can. In my perspective—and this is the most important thing for me to say right now, and it's been this way for years—when we are bombarded with rocket missiles, it goes over our heads. It's out of our control.
19-year-old Hamas attack survivor (00:43:42):
Not the rocket missiles. They don't go over our heads. The missiles hit just fine. Believe me. The decision to launch missiles, that's over my head, out of my control. Bibi, Hamas, I don't care who is launching. What I do know is that Be’eri suffers, Nahal Oz suffers, Kfar Aza, Sderot, and Gaza suffer. Believe me, every missile launch with only 4.5 kilometers between Gaza and Be’eri causes the ground to shake the exact same way in both places. The exact same way. This is impossible. Impossible. Now, I know there's much anger towards Bibi because I feel it. I feel it very strongly in the moments I'm able to feel anything at all because, as of late, that is not easy. I feel the anger because how many people—how many must die for him? How many people must die for his ego and his personal interests? I don't know if I already said this, but the missiles, particularly in this latest attack, even before the terrorists infiltrated, I heard more missiles than I had heard in all my 19 years of life all at once. All at once. A lot. A whole lot. And we immediately knew that this was war before the terrorists, before everything. We were always the first to know, always the first to hear. We can hear it from where we are.
19-year-old Hamas attack survivor:
The missiles, the ones that hit us, feel like missiles launched by my own government because this is the government that has abandoned me my entire life—my entire life—and now we are experiencing the worst of all. And if this isn't the worst of all, only God knows what is in store for us. Now, it is true that Bibi this and Bibi that, and truly I blame him 100% for everything. That is true. He chose to have us live this way. He chose to toss the iron dome at us instead of reaching a political solution. They chose a lot of other things as well. Our blood is on his hands, but it's not just him. He is the root of a much deeper problem, but it is not just him. If my words are heard by anyone, take a good look at yourselves. Look deep inside. Ask yourselves, What are your values? Ask yourselves in light of everything you see around you, How do your values—the ones you know you hold—fit in with what you see?
19-year-old Hamas attack survivor:
Ask yourselves that question. Really ask yourself. Ask yourselves, Who is it you vote for? Ask yourselves what is it that you are demanding of them. I know what I am demanding. I'm demanding a just peace. I’m demanding that Bedouins in the Negev receive the same support as Kibbutz Be’eri has. And we too did not receive sufficient support. Civilians came to our rescue. Civilians. The government was nowhere to be found. And I'm filled with gratitude for being at this hotel at the Dead Sea, but in a heartbeat, every person here would give this up to get those held hostage back. By the way, twice I heard the government barely even acknowledge the mere existence of hostages. They're acting as though they do not exist. They drop bombs knowing that those bombs will cost the hostages their lives too. The return of hostages, peace, fairness, and decency. If you are not interested in hearing the things I just said, then there is no hope.
19-year-old Hamas attack survivor:
Take a moment. Weigh my words carefully. Listen. Perhaps some of my words will be difficult to hear. It is hard for me to speak, you see, after what I went through in Be’eri. You owe me this much. You owe me this. Not in a sense of guilt. We are all dealing with a lot. Take some time, take a break. Take care of yourselves, take care of your families. But you owe me this. Ask yourselves who it is you vote for. Ask yourselves what you demand of them, and do not compromise. If you let hope die, you're letting the residents of the town surrounding Gods that die all over again. I have nothing more to say.
[end audio clip]
Andrea Chalupa (00:47:35):
And that is why we do not cheer what Hamas did. We do not cheer a life for a life. We do not cheer terror, whether it's Bibi’s terror or Hamas' terror, because what Hamas did was they massacred people like that. We almost lost that 19-year-old woman. We need people like that to live, survive, and work against their government so they can usher in a new piece, which isn't going to happen overnight. But Israel is a democracy for the Israelis. It's not a democracy for the Palestinians, clearly, because it's an apartheid system for them. And there's occupation of Palestinian land. But we cannot kill, massacre, torture, kidnap the peacemakers. That's why terrorism is nonsense. And I understand that riots are the language of the unheard. I understand that Palestinians have tried for so long to do boycotts. They've tried so long to get their voices heard, and they're up against the most powerful forces in the world.
Andrea Chalupa (00:48:39):
I understand that. I understand the asymmetrical warfare here. And I know it's apples and oranges. It's not a perfect comparison. You can make your voices heard on that civilly, of course, towards me. But please know that a lot of what I've studied in resistance movements, if Ukrainians did all these years, what Hamas did, where they went inside and just terrorized, ambushed Russians, just Russian civilians deliberately, just went in and kidnapped their children and so on, the money tap for Ukraine to survive a genocide would be turned off so fast. There'd be no excuse for it. If Ukraine leveled a city in Russia—like Netanyahu, like the Israelis are doing, same thing. What's the solution? What do I think every single person needs to hold the Palestinians to in terms of their response, and the Israelis, to the Ukrainians? How Ukrainians are held to such a high standard, how they have to show restraint, how they can only go after military targets.
Andrea Chalupa (00:49:39):
And that's what they do. That's what they do. And they're winning the war doing that. And they're winning hearts and minds, even in the face of extraordinary Russian-backed disinformation warfare. And that's why I'm against fully… I'm somebody that fully stands with the two-state solution, with the end of the Palestinian genocide, with healing and investment; real financial investment and healing into the Palestinian future and a two-state solution; a meaningful, real two-state solution, which has been sabotaged especially by the Israeli side. The Israeli side literally killed this two-stage solution when they assassinated Rabin and brought that assassin's movement to power through Netanyahu. So this is on the Israelis to show their restraint. I do not in any fiber of my being celebrate at all what Hamas did, as though that was some glorified armed resistance.
Andrea Chalupa (00:50:37):
That's bullshit. That's evil. Anybody who's doing that, that's wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong and you're inciting more violence against Jewish people around the world, just like those idiots on the far right, like that man who stabbed that child is being incited by Fox News and others against Palestinians. It works both ways. [deep breath]
Andrea Chalupa (00:50:56)
So now we're going to look at what we're up against. Here is a tone deaf official in Netanyahu's government, the ambassador to the United Kingdom. What you're about to hear is common. I'm hearing this pop up in interviews with Israeli officials who represent Netanyahu's Israel. And they deflect. They blame. They’re combative. They're awful, awful. Stephen Miller is basically running Israel right now and lobbying thousands of bombs, 6,000 bombs, into Gaza. The head of Israel's own defense, who's supposed to be one of the more moderate guys in the Western view, he's using genocidal language, calling the people of Gaza animals. That's genocidal language. That's how genocides start. That's how genocides are justified, and that's how genocides continue is through that genocidal language where you dehumanize the other. And so this is a perfect example of what people like that young woman we just heard from are up against in Israel and why this isn't going… We have a long road ahead of us, obviously. So here we'll play the clip.
Interviewer (00:52:02):
What's the view on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza this morning?
Tzipi Hotovely (00:52:05):
There is no humanitarian crisis because—
Interviewer:
There isn't?
Tzipi Hotovely:
No. Israel is in charge of the safety of the Israelis. Hamas is in charge of the safety of the Palestinians.
Interviewer (00:52:19):
We’re been showing pictures this morning that would illustrate that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Tzipi Hotovely (00:52:24):
Can I ask you something?
Interviewer (00:52:25):
Yeah.
Tzipi Hotovely (00:52:26):
Are you a mother?
Interviewer (00:52:27):
Yes.
Tzipi Hotovely (00:52:28):
What would you think if your children would've been executed in front of your eyes? Would you expect your government to think about those Nazis committing those crimes and to say, ‘Wait a second. First of all, we need to protect the enemy. And then to protect my children.’ Your children come as priority to your prime minister. Do you know that?
Interviewer (00:52:49):
We have been showing images this morning that illustrate that there is the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Tzipi Hotovely (00:52:54):
So blame Hamas and ask Hamas why they started those atrocities, walking away—
Interviewer (00:53:01):
So you acknowledge that there is a humanitarian crisis?
Tzipi Hotovely (00:53:02):
I’m saying there is no. Israelis working—
Interviewer (00:53:05):
So what do you think is happening?
Tzipi Hotovely (00:53:06):
What is happening? There is a war in Gaza; a war that Hamas started by committing a horrible massacre on innocent Israelis. The world have seen that—
Interviewer (00:53:17):
What about the collateral damage—
Tzipi Hotovely:
Wait a second.
Interviewer:
—of innocent civilians?
Tzipi Hotovely (00:53:17):
I just want to say and give a little bit of context… Those people created crimes that are worse than Isis. When the Americans started this fight of Isis together with the coalition forces, over 100,000 civilians got caught in a crossfire. Israel is trying to prevent that. Israel is better than any other army in the world. We are alerting, we're giving them the opportunity to have a shelter, we are doing things that no other Western army did in the past.
[end audio clip]
Andrea Chalupa (00:53:47):
And so I want to also highlight that there's this Trumpy extremist violence. Here's how the Israeli journalist Israel Fre was treated in Tel Aviv by a mob outside his home, gathered there, harassing him just for calling for peace.
Andrea Chalupa:
There was a quiet, thoughtful protest outside the home of Israel's Minister of Economy. People gathered to say the names of those killed in Hamas' massacre and police brutally broke up their gathering. We'll play a clip of that.
Andrea Chalupa:
I'm going to stop here and read some of the feedback from last week's episode from our listeners. So one person wrote in, “I was raised Jewish and I've always thought that Israel is an object lesson in what can happen when people with massive untreated PTSD are suddenly in charge of a country. While most with PTSD don't become abusers themselves, it only takes a few at the top to go bad. It's very sad to see that a country that was supposed to be a safe haven for Holocaust survivors has wandered so far astray.”
Andrea Chalupa (00:55:12):
Yeah, I mean, it was there from the start. Dorothy Thompson saw that from the very start that this was ethnic cleansing. Victims themselves can be perpetrators. And so that's what we need to see here clearly with our own eyes. And then another comment came in in response to last week's show: “I agree with you that we don't want people to die. No one does. But to connect Ukraine and Trump and Netanyahu and posit that a more moderate force in government is needed is completely off base. Israel was founded on terrorism, the Nakba and excluding Palestinians. No Israeli leader ever came close to wanting equality for everyone. On the contrary, they considered that an existential threat. This isn't a case of lack of balance or bad apples.”
Andrea Chalupa (00:56:02):
“That whole barrel is rotten. Palestinians’ mere existence and procreation is called a demographic threat. Maybe a moderate wouldn't call Palestinians human animals but we don't need a more moderate force administering ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid, the continued ‘mowing the grass’ (per Israeli government)type bombings, dispositioned by legal and state sponsored settlers. We need an end to US funding Israel, end to occupation and dismantling of its apartheid system. All the lessons white people learned about Black liberation, they're completely forgotten and are going full on anti Palestinian. Please wait before you object to the characterization. I'm only saying how it sounds and feels to someone with Palestinian family. Much like in police murders of Black people, if you say you don't want to take a side or all lives matter, you've sided with white supremacy. US Rep. Rashida Tlaib is about the only one who made a decent statement in the US.”
Andrea Chalupa (00:57:01):
“She even uses ‘cycle of violence’ and still doesn't fuck it up like everyone else. Grieving lives lost, necessary. Emphasizing shared humanity, check. Occupation and apartheid are to blame, facts. And it offers hope or gives actions to take to fix it. One, end US aid for apartheid government—I would argue defund the Pentagon, a US War machine too. Two, end the occupation and dismantle apartheid system.” Yeah. I mean there’s… Okay, listen: the two-state solution laid out, like, here's the Palestinian state, here's the Israeli state, and instead the Israelis occupied the Palestinian state. So yes, and the occupation and the apartheid system. I agree with that, and I agree with it in the context of the two-state solution. Let the Palestinians live with dignity, live with control over their resources, of their lives, in Palestinian territory and keep the settlers out. Keep the settlers out. And have a two-state solution. That should not be radical, but it is currently radical.
Andrea Chalupa (00:58:03):
There's such an extremist government that has the support of the core of both parties—the Centrist Democrats and Republicans—that they've normalized and justified genocide, and it needs to stop. It's going to have such dire consequences. I'm speaking simply to those who are self-interested. It should stop for the sake of the genocide itself. It should stop for the sake of saving those children right now. It should stop for the sake of that. That's enough. End there, that's enough. But for those who are self-interested, my God, this is going to fucking bite you in the ass so hard in 2024 when people stay home in Michigan, which has a big Palestinian… And you think, Oh, they're going to be shooting themselves in the foot if they do that, they're going to be hurting themselves If they don't vote against Trump in 2024. You don't understand what genocide does to a person.
Andrea Chalupa (00:58:52):
The grief, okay? The grief. I do not blame them for doing that. And that is why Biden needs to do now for the Palestinians what he did for Ukraine. There needs to be a democratic alliance. There needs to be rehabilitation. There needs to be a right of return for Palestinians. There needs to be dignity in the process. There needs to be equality and balance in the process because so much of the American establishment has contributed to the utter collapse of all peace efforts by weighing the Israeli side far greater than the Palestinian side and just patronizing the Palestinian side. There needs to be an amplification and greater visibility and security protection and resources invested into the grassroots movements that are bringing together both sides to build a lasting peace and a political solution. That is done for human rights groups, for civil society, for countries like Ukraine and Russia.
Andrea Chalupa (00:59:48):
So more of that needs to be done for Palestine and the Israeli human rights movement that is desperately begging, as we just heard that 19 year old woman, for a political solution. There's no military solution here. The former head of MI6 just told us that because it’s obvious for all to see. The only way forward is a political solution and Biden has to be front and center in building that. And he can. And not only the fate of innocent lives hangs in the balance, but the fate of our own democracy here in America because this will really… People will stay home because they’re so demoralized and beaten down by what they're witnessing with their own eyes. It's inescapable. It's inescapable to see what's happening now. The truth is coming out despite any sort of media, social media blackout. It's Israel itself through its own barbaric genocide that has blown the lid off of this.
Andrea Chalupa (01:00:43):
It's Israel itself that made the history of the Palestinian people finally visible to more people. Okay? Now, someone on Instagram wrote, “Attempting to ignore and brush off efforts to understand why there was a lapse in intelligence, saying it doesn't matter how it happened, that they now have to focus on fighting the war, it seems as though they knew they let it happen and used it to fuel the war. They wanted to distract the Israeli people and the world from what is going on, corruption in their government and the dismantling of the judiciary to further utilize it, to continue efforts to eradicate Palestinians. Maybe I'm wrong, but the math ain't mathin’.” You are right. The government is in chaos. And that whole, everyone's saying, “The government caused this. The government escalated this. The government won this war, this government amplified Hamas, invested in Hamas and sidelined other Palestinian leaders.”
Andrea Chalupa (01:01:36):
They wanted this war so as an excuse to finally push out the Palestinians and create another Nakba, they're getting what they wanted now with this genocide. This wasn't like a fluke. They were building to this because they are a genocidal government. They are a Stephen Miller government. And so hearing again and again, these Israeli officials say, “Oh, we're not going to deal with the corruption. We're not going to deal with the blame game.” The same people that drove you into war aren't going to be held accountable? No, you hold 'em accountable now or you're only going to get more war. This is a war of choice. I want to be very, very clear because the US officials—Blinken, all of them in the Middle East now—used that same language when it came to Russia and Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. They kept calling it “Russia's war of choice.”
Andrea Chalupa (01:02:19):
What we are seeing now against Gaza, that's a war of choice. They did not have to go into that war. They really did not need to. What they could have done is they could have used their forces to secure their borders, made sure there wasn't another front opening with Hezbollah in Lebanon. They could have just secured their borders and they could have just… They did not have to do this. This was a war of choice. They chose this. And then Netanyahu on top of that has the nerve to say it's going to be a long war. He's warning the Americans. He's telling the Americans, the public, this is going to be a long war. So yes, that's why we have to demand accountability now because we have to flush these assholes out of power. And funding for Israel, there needs to be a carrot and the stick. Get rid of these assholes.
Andrea Chalupa (01:03:01):
Find the voices of peace. Amplify those voices of peace because you're going to get a prolonged chaotic black hole of a war that's going to spread terrorist attacks around the world, targeting/killing Muslims and Jews and all sorts of people caught in the middle. So this cannot be a long war, this war of choice that Israel led its people into, okay? This cannot be a war of choice. It has to end. And the way you end it is you flush out the Stephen Millers. That's what Biden and Blinken have to call for. And the Republicans… Don't listen to them on Israel. Don't be cowed under by them. But I don't think they are. I think the Democratic Party establishment has its own incentives of supporting Israel. We've covered that many times on the show, including Nancy Pelosi's deep, long lasting ties to Israel. I’ll link to some of those old Gaslit Nation episodes.
The Middle East Crisis Factory: The Iyad El-Baghdadi Interview https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2021/4/8/the-middle-east-crisis-factory-the-iyad-el-baghdadi-interview
Indicted Criminal Netanyahu Starts a War to Cling to Power https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2021/5/19/indicted-criminal-netanyahu-starts-a-war-to-cling-to-power
Andrea Chalupa (01:03:49):
You can dig deeper into that. So yeah, there's staunch support for Israel from both parties. That gives me very little hope. But I'm doing this episode to call them out and to warn the Democrats, warn Biden what the stakes are. Okay, your reelection is on the line. Our democracy is on the line if you don't do the right thing of calling a ceasefire and calling for a real unity movement of the grassroots power that wants to build peace, that wants to end the apartheid, end the occupation and build a meaningful, dignified two-state solution and bring historical healing to the Palestinian people. And a safe place, of course, for Jews to live as well. They can share the land. Rabin gave his life for a roadmap on how they can work towards sharing the land. And then another person wrote to Gaslit Nation: “If we do not excise our own antisemitism and the impulse to kill one another based on a construct, hatred because of race, bigotry and conspiracy theories, humanity will not survive.”
Andrea Chalupa (01:04:48):
“How long does anyone think you'll be until the extremists obtain nuclear weapons? Other WMDs? The murder of Jews or Palestinians is the murder of innocent human beings. It should not matter what tribe they belong to. These are the human tribe. Netanyahu is directly implicated. The rights and the humanity of the Palestinians must be respected and recognized. This will never be achieved through the murder of innocents, babies or the elderly or families. That's not how peace begins. Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Al-Qaeda are exploiting civilians because they're terrorists. They are no more concerned about human rights than Netanyahu is.” Yeah. And now I'm going to play a clip of Yuval Noah Harari on Christiane Amanpour. This is something that people should listen to.
Yuval Noah Harari (01:05:34):
Hopefully we can sow seeds that will not give any fruit right now, but may give fruit in decades and make it possible to reconcile, starting with the release of all the hostages. And it is possible for these reconciliations to happen in history. We remember only the atrocities. I just heard you talking about the Balkans and the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Everybody remembers the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. They don't remember the wars between Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine in the 1990s. Why not? Because it didn't happen. The history of relations between Poles and Lithuanians and Ukrainians was as bad as between Serbs and Croats and Bosnians previously. During the 1940s, there were slaughters and deportations of hundreds of thousands on both sides. And what happened at the same time of the wars in Yugoslavia is that the Polish government… Poland has a historical claim to Vilnius, which was a Polish city. Now, the capital of Lithuania. To Lviv, now in Ukraine, previously an important Polish city in Poland. And there was a conscious decision of the Poles in the early 1990s that history is history. We looked at the future and they told, “We don't want this back. We want to build the future together.”
Christiane Amanpour (01:07:07):
And now Ukraine and Poland and Lithuania are fighting for the survival of democracy for Ukraine and for everyone.
Yuval Noah Harari:
Exactly
[end audio clip]
Andrea Chalupa (01:07:14):
So what he's saying is the example of the Poles and the Ukrainians, Lithuanians, everyone united, that works if Palestinians and Israelis have a common enemy, because a common enemy that brings together all those Eastern European countries is Russia. Those countries have their differences, but Russia gets them together right quick. And so what is the common enemy for Palestinians and Israelis? And I'm going to offer—and I know this isn't universally true right now—but the common enemy should be those rich Middle East countries like Qatar that are trying to profit off of this war, that are trying to use the Palestinian cause as a tool. So the common enemy should be fighting against this horrible quality of life that further breeds terrorism. And Hamas is… You know, yes, there was an election 17 years ago, but Hamas is awful. Hamas lowered the quality of life in Gaza. Yeah, there's going to be Palestinians that support Hamas because they feel they have no choice.
Andrea Chalupa (01:08:13):
But the reality is that Hamas sucks. They've ruined Gaza. They've ruined the quality of life and then Israel finished it off. Like I said, it's Russia versus Russia, genocide versus genocide. So the common enemy is that no more being used by Qatar and these other terrorist-harboring super rich Gulf states and work together to create a two-state solution, which becomes a hotbed for the Arab Spring, to gather, for the democratic activists of the region to gather, a safe place where they can incubate ideas and incubate their shared vision of a livable future. Ukraine was a hotbed for the Russian resistance. So many Russian dissidents fled to Kyiv so they can continue their work. And activists there would say, “We're keeping the flame of a Russian Revolution ready for when the time comes.” That's what a two-state solution could be for Palestinians and Israelis living side by side in democracies.
Andrea Chalupa (01:09:09):
I know it sounds very naive, but there are people that want a political solution. In order to bring people together, you do need a shared enemy. And that shared enemy, again, could be those cynical, hypocritical, rich, terrorist-funding Gulf states. That's what could bring them together to improve quality of life for both Palestinians and Israelis in a two-state solution. I want to also just point out that the recent election, the victory of Poland, which was a huge deal. I've watched my friends in Poland be heartbroken over years since 2015, eight years ago, living under a Trumpian government in Poland that captured the courts, that captured the state media, that banned abortion, leading to at least one death and mass protests, and creating a toxic environment for migrants, for refugees and LGBTQ+ people. They had LGBTQ+-free zones in Poland. It was like a DeSantis nightmare in Poland for eight horrific years.
Andrea Chalupa (01:10:15):
And the way the Poles finally broke out of that is that they built a coalition. They built a coalition. There's not going to be peace, there's not going to be an end to Netanyahu’s terror or Hamas’ terror unless there is a coalition for peace, a political solution for peace. That can be built. It's not going to happen overnight. The seeds can be planted and the US must visibly amplify and invest financially in those seeds, including providing security guarantees because we're up against actual terrorists on both sides. And I want to end finally with a reading from, yes, you guessed it: The Martin Luther King Jr. memoir that opens the Gaslit Nation Action Guide on gaslitnationpod.com, Stride Toward Freedom, on how he, as a young man, organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott that changed the world and put him on the map internationally for the first time.
Andrea Chalupa (01:11:11):
And in this memoir, the reason why it opens the Gaslit Nation Action Guide is because it shows you the intellectual journey, the spiritual journey that a young Martin Luther King Jr. went on, where he read some of the leading thinkers throughout history, on how he finally built his own internal fight for nonviolent resistance. It's so bold, it's so captivating, and you can get this book on Audible or wherever. You have to get it. Everyone should own a copy of this book. When I thought I was going to run out of tears this weekend, I got a hold of this book and I read it, and I pulled myself up. And now here I am and I'm going to read from it for you because this is what we all need to hear. And this is again from Stride Toward Freedom: Pilgrimage to Nonviolence.
Andrea Chalupa (01:12:00):
“To the final analysis. Agape, which means love, means a recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated, all humanity is involved in a single process, and all men are brothers. To the degree that I harm my brother, no matter what he's doing to me, to that extent I'm harming myself. For example, white men often refuse federal aid to education in order to avoid giving the Negro his rights. But because all men are brothers, they cannot deny Negro children without harming their own. They end all efforts to the contrary by hurting themselves. Why is this? Because men are brothers. If you harm me, you harm yourself. Love, agape, is the only cement that can hold this broken community together. When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers. A sixth basic fact about nonviolent resistance is that it is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice.”
Andrea Chalupa (01:12:59):
“Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation, for he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. It is true that there are devout believers in nonviolence who find it difficult to believe in a personal God, but even these persons believe in the existence of some creative force that works for universal wholeness. Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a personal being of matchless power and infinite love, there's a creative force in this universe that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole.” [deep breath] And now we're going to close with a clip of an Israeli man who lost his parents calling for an end to this war. Ceasefire now.
Helena Humphrey (01:13:55):
As you know, we've got a situation in which Israel is preparing for a ground defensive going into Gaza. What are your thoughts on the military response that we've seen from Israel this past week?
Maoz Inon (01:14:09):
Helena, I must tell you that I'm not crying for my parents. I'm crying for those who are going to lose their life in this war. We must stop the war. The war is not the answer. And I beg you, I beg all the viewers and listeners to do everything in your power to put pressure on everyone that is relevant to stop the war immediately, to freeze the situation. In our family, we are not seeking revenge. Revenge will just lead to more suffering and to more casualties. And even though it's the most horrible day, it was the most horrible loss in lives in Israel since the foundation of the country, I'm afraid that the numbers can be much bigger, an enormous number, and we must do everything to stop the war. And I'm afraid for the soldiers, for the civilians, from both sides in Gaza, from Gaza, and in Israel, that will pay in their life. And this is why I'm crying. And this is why it was so important to me in this very hard time to go on this interview and to cry to the war. Stop the war. Please just stop the war.
[end audio clip]
[outro theme music, roll credits]
Andrea Chalupa (01:15:52):
Our discussion continues, and you can get access to that by signing up on our Patreon at the Truth-teller level and higher.
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