AMY GOODMAN:
We’re also joined by Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for
Middle East Peace, former Foreign Service officer who served in
Jerusalem, Tunis and Beirut, has worked on Israel-Palestine and the
broader region for over 30 years, former director of policy and
government relations at Americans for Peace Now, Americans for Shalom
Achshav.
It’s great to have you with us, Lara. Can you talk about what’s
happening in the Congress now, and if you feel movement, a change in
Biden’s position from the beginning of the — after October 7th?
LARA FRIEDMAN: Sure. And thanks for having me.
I do think that we’re seeing, and in the piece that you had before we
came on here, we’re seeing real movement in the grassroots. There’s
really a surge in energy and a surge in support for Palestinian rights
that we haven’t — I think has never been seen before.
I think it still remains to be seen how that’s going to be reflected
in Congress. If we just go by the statements that are being made by
members of Congress, which, except for a small number — and
Congresswoman Ramirez is among them — except for a small number, are, at
best, very, very cautious about saying anything that would validate the
humanity and the rights of the Palestinian people. The narrative on
both sides of the aisle is mostly about the rights of Israel to defend
itself, and that is — to defend itself is defined basically to mean
Israel can do and should do whatever it wants to do, and it bears no
responsibility, has no agency, with respect to the results when it comes
to human casualties. Congress has bought, completely, the framing which
says that any Palestinian that dies in Gaza from an Israeli bomb or who
gets sick or starves or dehydrated or ill or dies in a hospital, that’s
all on Hamas. That is not Israel’s fault. Everything is Hamas’s fault,
which suggests a new ethos of war that really opens the door for
everyone to target civilians.
There’s also the framing of human shields, which basically says, you
know, it’s Hamas’s fault that we’re killing your civilians, that we’re
killing your children, which, I mean, there is truth to the argument
that Hamas has placed itself behind human beings. It raises the
question: You know, if bad guys invaded a school, would the United
States say, “Ah, for the sake of killing the bad guys, we need to bomb
the school. We’re going to kill all the children in the school, because
we have to, and it’s the bad guys’ fault”? The inhumanity of it is
stunning.
But what we’ve seen, really, since the beginning, since October 7th
— and I follow — I do a report every Friday covering every single thing
that happens in Congress related to the Middle East and Israel-Palestine
— is a deluge of new legislation, of resolutions and of letters, which,
by and large, either ignore or diminish the humanity of Palestinians,
which directly conflate criticism of what Israel is doing in Gaza or
assertions that there is any context, that there is history before
October 7th, conflate it with antisemitism, conflate it with support for
Hamas and terror. And we’ve seen that with the attacks on the members
of Congress, like Congresswoman Ramirez, who have dared to do something
like call for a ceasefire, with really despicable language used by
members of Congress against their own colleagues on both sides of the
aisle. This is coming at them, suggesting that daring to talk about
ceasefire is a betrayal of support for Israel and is a form of
antisemitism and support for terror.
AMY GOODMAN:
Earlier this month, you tweeted, quote, “Reminder: 6 mos before Israeli
elex that made Kahanists arguably most powerful political force in
Israel, the Biden Admin decided to do its part in normalizing Kahanism
by removing Kahanist groups from US list of foreign terrorist orgs,
where they’d been listed for decades.” For those who don’t understand
who Kahanists are, explain the significance of this tweet.
LARA FRIEDMAN:
Well, I mean, whole books have been written about the Kahanists. The
Kahanists — Rabbi Meir Kahane was an American citizen rabbi from the New
York area. He wrote many, many books. His basic philosophy was, you
know, all of the land of Israel — and that extends far beyond Israel’s
current borders — belongs to the Jews, because it was given to the Jews
by God. And he made clear that — I mean, you have to give him credit for
honesty — that this wasn’t — that this is not a conflict that was going
to be resolved in a way that would address everybody’s rights or needs,
that this was going to be a war and that the Arabs were going to have
to lose, and this meant removing Arabs. And he was very, very clear.
It’s a worldview that is openly racist, openly Islamophobic, almost
proudly so, and, in effect, suggests that people who think that there’s
some other solution are naive.
That strand of thinking was much, I would say, maligned and
disrespected for a very long time. The Kahanist party was outlawed in
Israel as a racist party during Rabbi Kahane’s lifetime. He was
eventually assassinated. But what’s happened since then is the
mainstreaming of his worldview in Israel and, I would say, in the United
States amongst many supporters of Israel — a lot of the financing for
his work and his thoughts comes from the United States still — and to
the point where today you have very powerful people in the Israeli
government, very powerful political strands in Israel, which are largely
identical, whose worldview is largely identical to that of the
Kahanists. The fact that the Biden administration elected to remove the
Kahanist parties from the terrorist list — and they were on the
terrorist list because of acts of terror committed by acolytes of this
movement against American citizens, you know, not in recent years, but
it was — I don’t know why they chose that moment to remove them, but it
certainly speaks to the mainstreaming and normalizing of this approach
to the Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN:
Lara Friedman, can you talk about the hostage negotiations? You have
Qatar and Egypt involved in those negotiations, mainly Qatar right now.
You have the hostage families, who are a powerful force. We hear their
stories repeatedly in the U.S. media, as we should. They should be a
model for also the coverage there should be of Palestinian suffering.
But those families are calling for this exchange of the hostages — it’s
believed there’s more than 220 or 230 of them that are being held by
Hamas and other groups in Gaza — and Palestinian political prisoners,
Palestinian prisoners, of which I think there are more than 6,600. I
think they’re calling it “everybody for everybody.” Can you talk about
this?
LARA FRIEDMAN:
Yeah. I mean, look, the taking of hostages, the taking of civilian
hostages by Hamas — I mean, the October 7th attack was heinous in every
aspect. The aspect of taking the hostages brought this home to Israelis
in a way that is just — I don’t think anyone who has not spent time in a
small country where everyone is — you know, there’s one degree of
separation. This is incredibly real and incredibly personal for everyone
in Israel.
What is notable is, in past experiences where there have been
hostages taken, Israel has sort of turned over every rock possible, done
everything possible to get them back. You have negotiations. You have
contacts. You have — think of Gilad Shalit. I mean, the entire country
mobilizes to get the hostage back — “hostage,” singular, “hostages,”
plural. In this context, after October 7th, the issue of hostages is
raised constantly by the Israeli government as a reason for why it has
to do what it’s doing in Gaza, notwithstanding the fact that carpet
bombing Gaza, using deep, deep penetrating bombs that are trying to get
at the tunnels, seems like a very likely way to kill your own hostages.
There has been a clear signal given — and if you listen to the — if you
look at the Israeli media, the contacts that the families of hostages
have had with the Netanyahu government, it is hard to avoid the
conclusion that there isn’t actually a lot of desire on the part of the
Israeli government to get the hostages back.
There have been numerous — and it’s been public — from other
governments, from negotiators, there have been numerous offers by Hamas
to exchange hostages, to release hostages in certain circumstances.
There was, you know, a 24 — for a brief ceasefire. And so far, the
argument seems to be, from the Israeli side, “We won’t do that, because
anything we do would be a victory for Hamas. And that is — that we can’t
let that happen, so releasing the hostages is simply not a priority.”
But talking about the hostages and accusing anyone who talks about
ceasefire as not caring about the hostages is a wonderful tactic. All of
us who are speaking out on this in social media, on media like this,
are accused constantly of, “Well, you don’t care about the hostages.”
The answer is, no, I care very much about the hostages. I don’t
understand why the Israeli government doesn’t care more about the
hostages. I would suggest that the Israeli government’s approach to the
hostages makes clear that their objectives in this war are not about
freeing the hostages. And that, I think, requires further thought.
AMY GOODMAN:
Lara Friedman, I want to thank you for being with us, president of the
Foundation for Middle East Peace, and Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Chicago for being with us, as well.
Next up, as the death toll in Gaza tops more than 8,000, as Israel
intensifies its ground and aerial attack, we’ll speak with a doctor in Cairo who’s been trying for two weeks to get back into Gaza. Stay with
us.
