AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Israel is intensifying its bombardment of the Jabaliya refugee camp
in northern Gaza, destroying dozens of residential buildings in heavy
airstrikes overnight and pushing residents to flee to other parts of the
city. This comes as Israel is vowing to escalate its ground attack in
the southernmost city of Rafah, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant saying Thursday additional troops would enter Rafah and that
military operations will intensify in the city. Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu also said Thursday, quote, “The battle in Rafah is
critical,” unquote.
One-point-four million Palestinians — over half of Gaza’s population —
had been displaced to Rafah seeking shelter. Now more than 600,000 have
fled Rafah over the past week and a half since Israel launched its
ground offensive there. Since then, no food, fuel or other aid has
entered the two main border crossings in southern Gaza, further
exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. Some 1.1 million Palestinians are
on the brink of starvation, according to the U.N., while a full-blown
famine is taking place in the north, this confirmed by the World Food
Programme.
The developments come as the International Court of Justice has
wrapped up two days of hearings in The Hague after South Africa’s
request last week for emergency measures to halt Israel’s assault on
Rafah. It marked the third time the U.N.'s top court held hearings on
Gaza since South Africa filed a case in December accusing Israel of
committing genocide. On Thursday, South Africa's ambassador to the
Netherlands, Vusimuzi Madonsela, urged the court to order Israel to
“totally and unconditionally withdraw” from the Gaza Strip.
VUSIMUZI MADONSELA:
When we last appeared before this court to halt this genocidal process,
to preserve Palestine and its people, instead, Israel’s genocide has
continued apace and has just reached a new and horrific stage. Israel
has sought to hide its crimes through the weaponization of international
humanitarian law. It pretends that the civilians it ruthlessly kills,
through its 2,000-pound bombs, through its targeted airstrikes, through
its artificial intelligence systems, through its executions, are human
shields. This whitewashing of Israel’s genocide misses the key and
fundamental element, that of the massive and still mounting evidence of
Israel’s genocidal intent.
AMY GOODMAN:
Israel presented its defense at the World Court today and denied it’s
carrying out a genocide in Gaza. This is the head of the Israeli
delegation to the court, Gilad Noam.
GILAD NOAM:
South Africa presents the court yet again, for the fourth time within
the scope of less than five months, with a picture that is completely
divorced from the facts and circumstances. Israel is engaged in a
difficult and tragic armed conflict. South Africa ignores this factual
context, which is essential in order to comprehend the situation, and
also ignores the applicable legal framework of international
humanitarian law. It makes a mockery of the heinous charge of genocide.
AMY GOODMAN:
The International Court of Justice today ordered representatives for
Israel to submit more information about humanitarian conditions in its
so-called evacuation zones in Gaza. This comes as foreign ministers from
13 countries have signed onto a letter warning Israel to halt its
ground operations in Rafah and to get more aid to Palestinians. The
letter is signed by all G7 members minus the United States.
For more, we’re joined by longtime Israeli journalist Amira Hass.
Born in 1956 in Jerusalem, her parents Holocaust survivors, she’s the Haaretz
correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, based in
Ramallah. She’s the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30
years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. Her books
include Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege.
Amira Hass is the recipient of the 2024 Columbia Journalism Award. And
on Wednesday, she addressed the graduating class of the Columbia
Journalism School here in New York. She now joins us in our New York
studio.
Amira, welcome to Democracy Now!
AMIRA HASS: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN:
Congratulations on your award, but more importantly on your reporting.
You are so unusual in Israel as the only Israeli Jewish journalist who
lived in the Occupied Territories for the last 30 years. As you gave
your address to the Columbia Journalism School, a number of its students
threatened by New York police to even step outside the school when they
were trying to cover the Gaza Solidarity Encampment outside, as police
moved in, and, ultimately, I think, the number of arrests on campus
numbered more than 200. Can you talk about the coming together of the
issues that you cover, and what you feel it’s so important that
journalists should understand about their role in society?
AMIRA HASS:
As I said in my address to the students, it is — if I want to sum it up
not in a professional way or like a teacher-like way, is to resist the
normalization of evil and of injustice, because we are so used to so
— there is so much injustice in this world, not in — everywhere. And we
have to use our — the unwritten social contract between us and citizens
the world over to scrutinize, to monitor, to challenge power, centers of
power, the abusive power. Any power can be abusive or is abusive, only
we have the power to at least try and restrain it. I think this is
— this should be the role — not the only role, but this should be a main
role of journalists, to restrain power, wherever it is being
manifested.
AMY GOODMAN: Ever the journalist, in your J school address, you quoted a friend in Gaza. This is particularly important as —
AMIRA HASS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — what happened just feet from where the school is. If you can tell us who he is —
AMIRA HASS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — and what he said?
AMIRA HASS:
Yeah. Just a few — two weeks before the address, I received a WhatsApp
from a friend called Bassam Nasser. I met him in the early '90s when he
was still a student. And we haven't been in touch for many years. He’s a
father of four. He’s heading a aid institution or center in Gaza. He
was displaced, like so many others, from Gaza to Rafah to save his life.
His house, I know, is in ruins now in Gaza. And now he had to flee
again with his family from — and the institution, from Rafah to Deir
al-Balah in the center. And he sent me a very — he, from time to time,
writes something on WhatsApp in English, and I guess he shares it with
some others, and he shares his thoughts and feelings. And he shared with
me something concerning the demonstrations and protests in American
campuses. And I thought, of course, fit to bring it to the — to read it.
So I can read it now. Sorry. And this is from the talk and what I — the
quote that I brought on Wednesday to the students.
“A glimmer of hope emerges from university students demonstrating the
enduring presence of humanity. Panicked, hypocritical politicians
swiftly resort to force in order to quell the movement, fearing its
global expansion. Repression is enacted to stifle voices challenging the
status quo. Police and National Guards are deployed, arresting students
who were expelled just hours earlier for speaking out against the
violence in Palestine. From Gaza to New York and other major cities
worldwide, I want to express deep gratitude for these voices. While you
may not be able to save every child in Gaza or restore our shattered
lives and dreams, and your efforts won’t prevent the next devastating
airstrike that will wipe out our entire family, on behalf of every
Palestinian, I want to express heartfelt appreciation for raising
awareness to our plight.” And I know he’s not the only one. I mean, I
know that if there was some kind of, really, a ray of hope in people’s
life in — people’s hell — it’s not life — in the last month, are those
demonstrations and protests.
AMY GOODMAN:
Now, I wanted to go to someone else talking about those protests. You
gave your graduation address on Wednesday at the Columbia Journalism
School. The president, Minouche Shafik, had canceled the main graduation
ceremony because of the protests. But yesterday, faculty, to say the
least, completely exhausted, organized a People’s Graduation. Columbia
students and faculty celebrated an alternative People’s Graduation as
they gathered for a ceremony just nearby at the Cathedral of St. John
the Divine, with many students wearing their blue graduation gowns. On
the stage with the professors was the Reverend Herbert Daughtry, the New
York civil rights leader who was an early mentor to now-Mayor Eric
Adams, who’s claimed the protests at Columbia were, quote, “coopted by
professional outside agitators.” But among the speakers who addressed
the students was the poet Fady Joudah, who read his poem, “Dedication,”
about Palestinians killed by Israel; the Palestinian American lawyer and
human rights activist Noura Erakat; and the award-winning journalist
Mona Chalabi, who has rejected her 2023 Pulitzer Prize and has been
highly critical of Gaza coverage by mainstream U.S. media outlets. In
her address, she paid tribute to the student journalists in the audience
who covered the Gaza encampment, often while facing arrest themselves.
MONA CHALABI:
Hi, habibis. I’m just going to talk to you for two minutes, because I
have the huge honor of acknowledging my fellow journalists in the room.
So, as many of you know, our institutions have failed us these past
seven months, and long before that. Writers and editors at some of the
most respected newsrooms have told lies about what is happening in Gaza.
They have said that death threats falling from the skies are evacuation
orders. They have described forced displacement as migration. They have
issued warnings to their staff, telling them not to use words like
“ethnic cleansing” or “genocide.” In short, they’ve used their reporting
to minimize the suffering in Gaza and maintain a status quo. And
they’ve had that reporting honored by the Pulitzers. They’ve even sought
to —
AUDIENCE: Shame!
MONA CHALABI: They’ve even sought to discredit or ignore Palestinian journalists, like Hind, who face death every day.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard what happened last month. A reporter at The New York Times
was told that something seemed to be happening at Columbia University.
Students appeared to have claimed a lawn as theirs. So, like any
breaking news story, a select channel had been created for the
journalists to discuss details and assign stories. This is what they do
at The New York Times. When this reporter joined the select
channel, they were surprised to find that it had been titled
“Antisemitism on Campus.” They had decided what the story was before
they even took a train uptown.
AUDIENCE: Shame!
MONA CHALABI:
Meanwhile, journalists on campus have had a very different perspective.
You had begun reporting before a single tent was assembled. You have
not only witnessed the encampments, you listened to the chants, you read
the signs, and you spoke to the organizers. You did the work, and you
did it so well that journalists like me off campus turned to your words,
your Instagram accounts, and we listened to your radio stations if we
wanted the truth.
And you did that truth telling while cops harassed, assaulted and
arrested you and your fellow students. And you did it all while trying
to graduate and to grieve. That is true for anti-Zionist Jewish students
who were having their faith questioned by those who want them to fall
silent. It’s true for students whose parents look like the mothers and
fathers being killed every day. And it is especially true for the
Palestinian students who continue to report the facts while navigating
unbearable grief. I am so proud to call you my colleagues. Would the
journalists in the room please stand?
AMY GOODMAN:
That’s the award-winning journalist Mona Chalabi, who just won the 2023
Pulitzer Prize, though she rejected it. At the award ceremony, Mona
called out fellow journalists for their unwillingness to say the word
“Palestine.” She donated her $15,000 prize money to the Palestinian
Journalists Syndicate to help fight what she talked about as the
asymmetry of information that elevates Israeli voices over Palestinian
ones in the mainstream media. She was addressing the People’s Graduation
yesterday at St. John the Divine for the Columbia and Barnard students.
Amira Hass, as you listen to Mona and you think about also the
Palestinian journalists who have died in Gaza, the astounding number of
journalists who have died —
AMIRA HASS: Who have been killed.
AMY GOODMAN: Who have been killed.
AMIRA HASS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about that, then. And do you feel that they were directly targeted, so often wearing the press vests and the helmets?
AMIRA HASS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN:
I remember one Palestinian journalist, as he heard about his dear
friend just having been killed, ripped off his press and helmet and
said, “Why are we wearing these? They just make us a target.”
AMIRA HASS:
Yeah. I guess, you know, one part in me wants to think that this is not
true, I mean, that they were killed because they are in places which
are dangerous and because they circulate a lot, I mean, move around in
times when people try not to move around. I think there is what we call a
finger — I think, a fingerprint targeting or profiling, because anybody
who uses a drone, even for filming, for photographing, is considered by
the people behind the Israeli assaulting drones, or Predator drones, as
somebody who is part of the fighting units, so they kill them
automatically without checking if they are only taking photos. So, I
think there is a variety of excuses or explanation that Israel would
give. But certainly, in some cases, they were connecting journalists to
the 7th of October or to other activities completely not as journalists
and wanting to take revenge of them. But this has to be checked, and I
think it is being checked by several venues, each one case.
But certainly, when there are so many people, so many journalists
killed, it shows that there is a pattern. And our role is to discover
the pattern. But there are patterns of other things. There are patterns
of whole families who are being killed, so 40, 30, 35. So, you can say
that you are targeting one of the family, which means that you allow the
killing of — let’s say that this one person is very dangerous to the
security of Israel. Then it means that you allow yourself to kill 30
people, 40 people, 25 people, including children, including babies, for
one person. So this is a pattern. We can learn about it from the
reality. We don’t need to have secret documents for it. But it was so.
There is a very important investigation by Yuval Abraham of +972,
who did talk to intelligence, soldiers in the intelligence, and proved
that there is an Israeli OK to kill so-and-so many for one person.
AMY GOODMAN: And we interviewed Yuval —
AMIRA HASS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — on Democracy Now! talking about the AI programs Lavender and Where’s Daddy?
AMIRA HASS: Yes, yeah, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN:
So, you have the killing of journalists and then the banning of
journalists. And I wanted to go for a moment — I think it was two days
after World Press Freedom Day that Israel banned Al Jazeera inside —
AMIRA HASS: Israel.
AMY GOODMAN:
— the country, police officers raiding the network’s Jerusalem bureau,
seizing broadcast equipment. Over the past seven months, Al Jazeera, one
of the only international outlets with reporters on the ground inside
Gaza — a few of whom were killed. This is a prerecorded video message by
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan from East Jerusalem.
IMRAN KHAN:
If you’re watching this prerecorded report, then Al Jazeera has been
banned in the territory of Israel. On April the 1st, the Knesset, the
Israeli parliament, passed a law that allowed the prime minister to ban
Al Jazeera. He’s now enacted that law.
Let me just take you through some of the definitions within the law.
They’ve banned our website, including anything that has the option of
entering or accessing the website, even passwords that are needed,
whether they’re paid or not, and whether it’s stored on Israeli servers
or outside of Israel. The website is now inaccessible. They’re also
banning any device used for providing content. That includes my mobile
phone. If I use that to do any kind of news gathering, then the Israelis
can simply confiscate it. Our internet access provider, the guy that
simply hosts AlJazeera.net, is
also in danger of being fined if they host the website. The Al Jazeera
TV channel, completely banned. Transmission by any kind of content
provider is also banned, and holding offices or operating them in the
territory of Israel by the channel. Also, once again, any devices used
to provide content for the channel can be taken away by the Israelis.
It’s a wide-ranging ban. We don’t know how long it will be in place
for, but it does cover this territory of the state of Israel.
Imran Khan, Al Jazeera, occupied East Jerusalem.
AMY GOODMAN:
And that was his last report from occupied East Jerusalem. Now Al
Jazeera reporters say, when they’re reporting from, for example, Amman,
“We are banned from Israel.” But interestingly, Amira Hass, you don’t
have the same thing happening with CNN and MSNBC.
No, they’re not banned from reporting in Israel, but they are not
allowed by Israel to go into Gaza. And each time they have a report
outside of Gaza, they don’t say, “And we want to remind you, we are not
on the ground in Gaza because the Israeli government has prevented
that.”
AMIRA HASS:
I cannot — I don’t watch them when I’m in Ramallah. But I want to say
that when it comes to the Israeli public, it doesn’t matter if Al
Jazeera are inside Israel or not inside Israel. The general Israeli
public does not want to know about what’s happening in Gaza. And the
Israeli media does not show anything. I mean, they show very, very, very
few images of the destruction. They give very little information and
footage of the death, of the wounded people. I mean, there is no
relation between what is happening and what is shown on Al Jazeera and
what the Israeli media shows.
But it is not — it is not a dictate from above. It is not state
censorship, unlike with Al Jazeera. It is a decision of most of the
Israeli venues, most of the Israeli media venues, especially the TV, of
course, not to show those horrible scenes, that might give some sense to
some Israelis that this is, not morally, but this is — logically,
cannot produce — cannot produce a change in Palestinian attitudes or a
change for accepting Israel or accepting Israeli right to exist, etc.,
etc., for eight months it launches such an onslaught of revenge and
supremacy against them. But the Israeli public is not looking for it, is
not searching for it, in general. I mean, of course there are
exceptions, like the Israeli left wing, Israeli activists, Israeli human
rights activists, political leftist activists. Of course, there are
exceptions, so it’s not the entire society. And, of course, there are
the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. But the banning of Al Jazeera
is not the reason why Israelis do not see — do not see the reality in
Gaza. And this is not the reason. This is the choice not to know.
AMY GOODMAN:
Interestingly, hostage families — you don’t even see in the U.S. media
hostage families saying, “End this war.” You certainly see them talking
about the horror of —
AMIRA HASS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN:
— their loved ones being held in Gaza. But the second part of it, for a
number of these hostage families, are “End the war now.”
AMIRA HASS:
Yeah, number, not all, but number, yes, of course. But this is the
American media. I mean, it’s not — we do know that there are families
among the hostage families that do speak differently than the choir.
AMY GOODMAN:
I want to ask you about the Nakba, about what happened in 1948 and
what’s happening today, when we come back from break. We’re speaking
with longtime Israeli journalist Amira Hass, Haaretz
correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She’s based in
Ramallah. And she lived in Gaza for three years, wrote a book called Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege. She’s the only Israeli journalist to have lived in the Occupied Territories for decades. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN:
Composer and pianist Vijay Iyer performing “Kite” during the People’s
Graduation Thursday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He
dedicated the song to the Palestinian writer and poet Refaat Alareer,
who was killed in December by an Israeli airstrike along with his
brother, sister and four of his nieces, children.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation with the longtime Israeli journalist Amira Hass, the Haaretz
correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She’s now based
in Ramallah, the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30 years
in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. Among her books, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege, and editing her mother’s memoir from Bergen-Belsen, from the concentration camp. She is the daughter of Holocaust survivors.
Talk about what happened 76 years ago this week, May 15th, Amira, and talk about what’s happening today.
AMIRA HASS:
I’ll start from with today, because I think that we — look, there is a
country with two peoples, Palestinians and Jews. And we can have a long
discussion, historiographical discussion, and debate about how it came
about that there are two peoples in this country and why in 1948 there
was a state for Jews established, while the U.N. resolution about a
state for Palestinians — Arabs, as they were called — was not
established. It doesn’t change the fact that there are two peoples. And
it doesn’t change the fact that people want to live in their homeland.
It doesn’t change the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of
refugees, Palestinian refugees, who were — or hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians who were chased out of the country, of their homeland, in
1948, and that, by now, with their children and grandchildren, there are
several millions, and they see this country as their country, as their
homeland. And it doesn’t change the fact that there are Israeli Jews who
see Israel and the country as their country.
And there is a decision that has to be made. Do they want to live, do
they want their grandchildren to live, and live well, in that country,
in justice? Or do they want to send their grandchildren and children for
wars forever, that will force some people, who have the money, who have
the talents, who have the contacts, to emigrate, and for others to
remain and to live in destitute and in hunger and in ignorance for the
rest of their lives and their — I don’t know — for the end of the
generations, or until the world expires? So, this is why we feel that we
still live the Nakba and the outcomes of the Nakba, because there is no
—
AMY GOODMAN: The Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe.”
AMIRA HASS:
For “catastrophe” — because there is no acknowledgment that you cannot
live in this unbearable injustice, that one people has the rights and
one people controls and dictates the life of the other people in the
land. The thing is that we have to acknowledge there are two peoples in
the land, and peoples have rights. And right now we deprive the
Palestinians of their very basic rights, not only the basic right of
life, as we see going on in Gaza right now, but on the normal days of
occupation, we deprive them of water, freedom of movement, land, housing
rights, planning, travel, living with their families, choosing their
university, developing their economy, prospering, investing, all these
things. At any moment, Israeli soldiers can confiscate millions of
dollars from Palestinians for one pretext or another. Israeli settlers
carry out Israeli policies, but in much more zeal, and confiscate land,
take over land. I mean, Palestinians’ life is never — they are never
safe. They never live in security, for more than 75 years, in both sides
of the Green Line, both in Israel and the territory occupied in ’67.
So, there has to be a decision by Israeli people: Do we want to live
for — we came — Israel was established so that Jews will feel secure and
live normally. This is not normal life. They pretended that this is
normal life, that we can occupy another people and feel normal. No, on
the 7th of October, with all the atrocities and the enormous suffering
that families and the casualties and the victims on 7th of October are
living through, all this suffering and the, really, trauma, terrible
trauma and cruelty, but this was a kind of a very expected answer by
Hamas and by Palestinians to yearslong atrocities perpetuated by Israel
and perpetrated by Israel.
And the main thing is the refusal, refusal to accept and to
acknowledge the national rights of Palestinians for statehood. They were
ready for it in the '90s, I know. I know that the Israelis try to
switch everything around and say that they sabotaged the Oslo agreement.
Not correct. And this is one of the things that I followed very
closely, how Israel did everything, from the beginning, under the guise
of a peace process, did everything possible to thwart the establishment
of a Palestinian side alongside Israel. And there is a — you know, we go
back all the time to this, because all the time Israelis say that it's
the opposite. But they completely avoid all the evidence.
So, Israel did — what Israel did during the last 30 years is to prove
to the world and to the Palestinians that the Palestinians were right
from the beginning of the '30s and the ’40s, when they said that Israel
is a colonial entity or a settler-colonial entity. Israel had the chance
in 1993 to stop its settler-colonial activity in the West Bank and Gaza
and to say, “OK, we don't go back to '48. Let's start for now and build
a different, a new phase, a new historical phase.” It did the opposite.
It continued with its bans on Palestinian construction, on Palestinian
development. It disconnected Palestinians from each other, disconnected
Gaza from the West Bank, started to fragment more and more the West Bank
by roads that are meant only for Jews. And this is in the '90s. This is
in the ’90s. Rabin said himself he did not want — he was not opting for
a state. So this is the question of Israeli settler colonialism. It's
Israel that proved that it’s settler-colonial.
And we live with it now with all of this abnormalcy. Israeli Jews
wanted to live normally, happily. You go to Tel Aviv, you think you are
in New York or you’re in London — and 40, 50 kilometers away,
Palestinians live in cages, in cages disconnected from each other, and
everything is dictated by Israel — the quantity of water. In my place,
in my home in al-Bireh, in summer, we have — the water quantities are
rationed, because there is not enough water. But when you go to a nearby
settlement, it’s lush. It’s green in so much water they have. Israeli
ranchers take over by violence, take over hundreds of thousands or tens
of thousands of dunams, something that built settlements could not do.
And they do it by violence and by the assistance and silence or
indifference or encouragement of the Israeli authorities — the police,
the army, the prosecution, everybody.
So, this is — when Palestinians say that the Nakba is ongoing, they
don’t only mean — they mean Gaza, of course. And for many people, as I
know, they feel that what’s the carnage in Gaza now is much worse than
they experienced in 1948. But it’s also the — Israel took the
Palestinian life and liberty and freedom as hostage for the past 70
years, 75 years, all over, in many forms. Inside Israel, Palestinians do
not dare to speak out, because then they will be — if they just say a
word, like if they say the word ”shahid,” which is “martyr,” and
they mourn the deaths of so many Palestinians in Gaza, they might be
taken. They might be arrested for incitement. So —
AMY GOODMAN: If they use the word “martyr”?
AMIRA HASS:
Yeah, like on Facebook. I don’t — in Facebook, you see that they — or
“martyr” or something like this. I mean, it’s just an example of how
people are afraid to use words that are very normal. Even a sentence
from the Qur’an can be taken as a proof that they are — that they
support Hamas. So —
AMY GOODMAN:
As you talk about Gaza and the West Bank, let’s talk more about the
West Bank. Thousands of people have been arrested. Hundreds have been
killed since October 7th. You talk about what you call the Smotrich
plan. Bezalel Smotrich, now the minister of finance since 2022.
AMIRA HASS:
Yeah, and he is a minister also in the Ministry of Defense, and he’s
responsible on the settlements, actually, on the development of the
settlements of the West Bank.
AMY GOODMAN: Both he and Ben-Gvir are settlers.
AMIRA HASS:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He published in 2017 something called the
Decisive Plan, which actually says that the Palestinians have to accept
that they will never have a state, that we will never be equal citizens
in this country, and they can enjoy their individual rights. If they
don’t want, they can go, they can emigrate, which is, of course, the
preferable option for him. And then, if they refuse both and they resist
— sometimes he says “violently resist,” sometimes he says “resist” —
they will — the army will know, or the security apparatus will know how
to deal with it. And it was, in one way or the other, interpreted as,
“OK, they will be killed.” He rejected when people — people assumed that
he meant that civilians will be killed. He rejected this.
But anyway, we see now that what is happening is the implementation
of the Decisive Plan. But it shows that, all over, Palestinians are
targeted for any — as a message that if you want to live in peace, I
mean, normally, or seemingly or quasi-normally, you have to be silent.
You shouldn’t say anything. You certainly should not demonstrate. You
certainly shouldn’t take arms. You certainly shouldn’t convene, do
something to show support. Even defend yourself, protect yourself from
settlers’ violence can cause you an arrest.
So, this message — and Smotrich would not have succeeded to such an
extent if the state has not prepared the ground and has not really been
in the same position for the last 20 years at least. So, it’s not that
Smotrich is such a genius that he can — or so powerful that he can
impose his position on the rest of the government. In a way, he is,
because, I mean, he knows where Netanyahu is vulnerable. He knows how
much also the Orthodox Jews want this government to continue. But the
fact that, in practice, all Israeli authorities are part of the
repression of the Palestinians, in so many ways, and in such a way that
is so similar to Smotrich’s plans, shows that it has been in the DNA of the system of this deep state for so many years.
AMY GOODMAN:
As we wrap up this discussion, where do you see what’s happening right
now? Just as we sat down, Israel finished its defense for the emergency
appeal by South Africa to prevent it from a full-scale ground offensive
in Rafah, Israel insisting that aid is coming through with ease at all
the entry points, and South Africa saying they must be stopped. How do
you see this ending?
AMIRA HASS:
Right now I hope that the judges will move, because the way that Israel
has been able for almost six months to play and to drag it into — and
how the Western countries allow this to continue without putting
leverage, that they have, on Israel in order to stop the carnage and the
famine and the starvation, and the deliberate starvation, our hopes now
are with the judges, that they will see that Israel is lying.
AMY GOODMAN:
And what about with the United States? I mean, you have President Biden
now announcing $1 billion of military weapons in the pipeline for
Israel, including $700 million for tank ammunition, $500 million in
tactical vehicles, $60 million in mortar rounds. The significance of
what position the U.S. takes and what Biden is doing?
AMIRA HASS:
He supports Israel to continue the war. I mean, I see no other
explanation to this. I mean, all his words that he’s worried about Rafah
or famine or whatever, so it’s such hypocrisy that I feel almost
speechless. You think, on the one hand, they are sending aid, or they
say that they are sending aid, but it takes so long, and it is so
little. And on the other hand, they encourage Israel to continue with
the war against Gaza, where we see that already Israel is defeated. I
mean, it’s defeated. If such a huge military power is still fighting
Hamas after eight months, it doesn’t give anything good to the Israelis,
I mean, except of some groups that want it to continue. But —
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
AMIRA HASS:
Yeah. But for the majority of Israelis, it’s clear that the majority of
Israelis understand, even though they support the war, on the one hand,
they understand it’s against them, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Longtime Israeli journalist and author Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.
