At the 2025 National Membership Meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace in Baltimore, thousands of anti-Zionist Jews gathered to reaffirm their opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians—and to reject the antisemitic notion that the political ideology of Zionism represents all Jews. In this vital and wide-ranging discussion recorded during the JVP gathering in Baltimore, TRNN’s Marc Steiner sits down with self-identified Palestinian Jews Esther Farmer and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay to discuss the complexities of Jewish identity and belonging today, the historical origins of Israel, and “the way that Zionism destroyed both Palestine and the diverse modes of Jewish life” that predate and reject the Zionist project.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is a Palestinian Jew of African origins, film essayist, curator, and professor of modern culture and comparative literature at Brown University. She is the author of numerous books, including: Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism; The Civil Contract of Photography; and From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950. 

Esther Farmer is a Palestinian Jew and native Brooklynite passionate about using theater as a tool for community development. She is former Ombudsman and Manager for the New York City Housing Authority, former United Nations representative for the International Association for Community Development and was an original founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. She is also a Jewish Voice for Peace NYC chapter leader and the director and playwright of “Wrestling with Zionism.”

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, it’s good to have you all with us.

Jewish Voice for Peace is having their national convention right here in Baltimore, and The Real News is there to bring you the story. Two of the leading participants in JVP are joining me in studio here at The Real News, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is professor of modern culture and media and comparative literature, and a film essayist and curator of archives and exhibitions. Her books include Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism; Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography; The Civil Contract of Photography; and From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950. Among her films: Un-Documented — Unlearning Imperial Plunder, and Civil Alliance, Palestine, 47-48. Among her exhibitions: “Errata” in Barcelona, “HKW” in Berlin; “Enough! The Natural Violence of the New World Order” that was done in Leipzig.

And we’re also joined by Esther Farmer, who is a Palestinian Jew, a native Brooklynite whose passion is using theater as a tool for community development. She’s the director of “Wrestling with Zionism,” a reader’s theater project in New York City, as well as the author of several published articles on theater and community development. Esther is an active member and part of the leadership team of Jewish Voice for Peace in New York City. And they join us here in studio.

So welcome both of you. It’s good to have you here. I’m really happy you could take the time from the conference to join us here for a little bit. One of the things that fascinated me about the two of you as I was going through all of your work — Not all of it, but going through your work, is that you both identify as Palestinian Jews. Can we talk about what that means? You never hear that. Maybe in certain circles you do, but in the rest of the world you don’t hear that notion, idea of Palestinian Jew and what that means and why that’s the way you identify.

Esther Farmer:  So my father was born in Hebron, Palestine. My grandfather was a Turkish Jew who went to Palestine pretty much to avoid the draft from World War I [Steiner laughs]. He was a draft dodger.

Marc Steiner:  Didn’t want to fight for the Turkish army.

Esther Farmer:  He was a progressive Jew, didn’t believe in war. I found out much later that the penalty for avoiding the draft was to be hung. So several Jews actually left. But he did not realize that since Palestine was a Turkish protectorate, he was drafted anyway, and that’s why they came to the United States. They came to New York.

So this was way before the Nakba and way before 1948. My family lived on the Lower East Side, they were very poor, and they were very anti-Zionist. So my family’s existence gives the lie to all Jews loved Israel, and certainly Ariella’s work really ties into that, that before the Holocaust, most Jews were not Zionists. So what does it mean to be a Palestinian Jew is that there was a country called Palestine, and it was Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. It was very diverse, and the vast majority at that time, 80%, were not Jewish, they were Muslim. So Israel was a creation of people who did not live there for their own interest.

Marc Steiner:  I want to get to that point because that’s really a critical point people don’t get about it, what Israel is and why it is. Ariella?

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Yeah. So I think that first of all, we have to be reminded that the category of identity is a colonial category. And I was born into the Zionist colony in Palestine, and an identity was imposed on me at birth called Israeli identity. And this identity was fabricated 14 years before I was born, which means a synthetic identity that was meant to cultivate or to create a factory of Israeli babies, that their identity is predicated on their opposition to others who lived in this country, who lived in this place, which were defined Palestinians.

So when I’m speaking about these kind of human factories in the Zionist colony in Palestine, I’m speaking about the way that Zionism destroyed both Palestine and the diverse modes of Jewish life. Part of them took place in Palestine. My family moved to Palestine, my maternal side, they were expelled together with Muslims when the first white Christian state was created in Spain, when Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain. So they moved from Spain to Portugal, France, Austria, Bulgaria, and then Palestine, way before the Zionist movement started to colonize or to aspire to colonize Palestine.

So they were Palestinian Jews in the very factual way. They were part of Palestine. And this is not a colonial identity, this is a form of belonging. And when I’m saying that I’m a Palestinian Jew, it is a way of undoing, first of all, the identity that was imposed on me at birth, that I’m not recognizing myself in it, and all the other colonial identities that await for me like American or like French. So claiming that I am a Palestinian Jew is claiming a form of belonging that was the form of belonging of my maternal ancestors. From my paternal side, we were Algerian Jews. And both identities were destroyed. Both forms of belonging, sorry, not identities were destroyed through two colonial projects: the French colonization of Algeria on the one hand, and the Zionist colonization of Palestine. So being an Algerian Jew, a Palestinian Jew, a Muslim Jew is a mode of reclaiming my ancestral modes of belonging.

Marc Steiner:  I love that. Both of you have really interesting stories, very powerful stories. I want to dive back into that. But I was thinking as you were talking that, and I’ve wrestled this a lot and I’ve written about this, which is that if there had been no Holocaust there’d be no Israel. I mean, that’s the fundamental… Most Jews were not interested in being Zionists. They were in the socialist movements here. They were doing whatever they were doing, whatever we were.

Esther Farmer:  I don’t know about that.

Marc Steiner:  OK, please go ahead.

Esther Farmer:  I mean, I don’t know how we could know that, but there’s an assumption there that the imperialist powers at that time wouldn’t have… I mean, they certainly used the Holocaust and the sympathy of the world, or the Zionists claimed that they absolutely had to have Israel, and it was seen as some kind of reparation or something. But as my father used to say — Also, I love Ariella’s work because it puts a context to things that my family would say is that the Zionists love Israel and they hate Jews. And I think that says a lot. So I don’t know that the imperialists wouldn’t have created Israel one way or another. I don’t know. I just think it’s an assumption.

Marc Steiner:  Good.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Maybe I can complete it from a different perspective.

Marc Steiner:  Yeah, please.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  I think that we cannot say that if there [were] not the Holocaust there won’t be the state of Israel. We have to ask ourself what is the continuity between the Holocaust and the state of Israel? In order to reply that we have to go back in time because the Holocaust didn’t arrive from nowhere.

OK, if it didn’t arrive from nowhere, we have to ask ourself what did Europe want from the Jews in order to have the Holocaust and then to force on the Jews all over the world to be represented by the Zionists that destroyed Palestine and created the state of Israel as the destiny of the Jewish people. For that, I invite in my book, The Jewelers of the Ummah, have it here with me, A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World. What I invite people to look at is in the wake of the French Revolution, when the modern citizenship was invented, Jews who lived in France were not part of the citizenship. They were “given” this citizenship a few years after the French Revolution.

But what interests me is not the fact that the Jews were naturalized in the wake of the French Revolution. What interests me is the price that they had to pay in order to become citizens. They had to forget that they were Jews. And forgetting that they were Jews, this was a European project. So eliminating the Jews either by assimilating them into the Christian world or assimilating them into what the Euro American powers invented in the wake of World War II as the Judeo Christian tradition, or eliminating the Jews through extermination, all these are part of the same project: what to do with the Jews. Europe invented the Jews as a question, as a problem. And at the same time that Europe invented the Jews as a problem, they also invented the “solution” to make out of diverse Jewish communities a Jewish people with a destiny.

This brings us to the beginning of the 19th century. [At] the beginning of the 19th century, they invent Palestine as a question, and they invent the Jews as a question, and they merge both questions. Napoleon, Napoleonic Wars already saw the possibility of transferring the Jews to Palestine. So this connection between Palestine and the Jews is something that Europe invented way before the Nakba.

And the last point in time that I would like to bring to our conversation is in the wake of World War II. After the Holocaust, Euro American powers imposed what they called [the] new world order. They created the UN as the organ to facilitate their solutions to different people. The Jews were in displaced person camps in Europe from ’45 to ’48. The Zionist movement was a marginal movement in the life of Jews, worldwide, marginalized movement. In the Jewish Muslim world, it has almost no presence.

And Europe, that was responsible for the extermination of the Jews, had to innocent itself, making Europe innocent, making Europe one of the liberating powers, had to what was relied on the exceptional of the Nazi, which legitimized all the European colonies and the exceptionalization of the Jewish suffering. This double exceptionalization and the recognition of the Zionist as representative of the Jews, which means those who were mandated to destroy a diverse Jewish life all over the world in Asia, in North Africa, in many other places. And the Zionists were mandated to destroy Palestine. This was part of Europe and Euro American powers, part of their response to what to do with the Jews.

So if we speak about the final solution by the Nazis as an extermination, the final final solution or the post final solution was to impose on the Jews a state that will be, for them, at the price of Palestine, at the price of the destruction of diverse Jewish communities.

Esther Farmer:  Which is fascinating to me because it’s the way that Zionism is so deeply antisemitic.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  It is antisemitic, obviously.

Esther Farmer:  By homogenizing.

Marc Steiner:  Let’s jump into that. Please go ahead.

Esther Farmer:  Well, just by homogenizing, and now it’s being used [crosstalk] —

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  [Inaudible] form of Jewish life, except the Zionist one.

Esther Farmer:  Right. And it’s this way of Jews being used. That was something that my family taught me very deeply in my DNA, that Jews are used by imperialists for their own interests. And the creation of Israel was so much about that. And yet, we’re all supposed to say that, as Jews, we all love Israel, which is the most antisemitic thing possible. And of course for me, as someone who comes from a very strong leftist Jewish background, what Israel is doing is a travesty.

And back to that question of the Zionists, love Israel and hate Jews, that incident that happened when there was a boatload of refugees and they were coming to the United States and they were turned away. They weren’t interested in going to Israel. They wanted to come to the United States. And the United States turned them away, and the Zionists were fine with that as long as the United States supported Israel.

So it’s just a perfect example in your face of how Jews and Israel are not the same thing, but we have been inundated with propaganda to make our identities. Ariella’s work is so fascinating to me because they’ve literally erased our memories and have changed the narrative and the dialogue to the point where it’s unrecognizable as to who people are. And now Christian nationalists are telling us what it is to be a Jew, which the IHRA definition says that you’re only a Jew if you support Zionism. So they’re literally erasing our memories and history.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Yeah, no, this goes back to Napoleonic Wars and Napoleon, who codified what is Judaism, who invented the Jewish [inaudible] story, who created Jewish life as a pyramidal modes of being, who are entangled being Jewish with the state in a way that the state, the states, different states can tell us today, what does it mean to be a Jew? And there are bad Jews and good Jews, and the anti-Zionists are being considered the bad Jews. And those are Christians who never reckoned with their antisemitism or anti Judaism with their racism toward many groups that are telling us what does it mean to be a Jew?

And I would like just to add that Europe, in order to innocent itself from its crimes against the Jews, first of all, imposed the state of Israel or imposed the Zionists as representative of the Jews, but also exchanged with the enemy of the Jews and created Palestinians, Arab, and Muslims as the enemies of the Jews.

And these were never our enemies. If the Jews had a systematic enemy, this was Europe. For centuries, Jews were expelled from one place to another in Europe. And it ended up with a project that is being called, as a euphemistic term to describe it, was called the emancipation of the Jews in the 18th century and the 19th century. What is this emancipation? This emancipation meant to kill the Jew within the Jew.

I think that here in the US, we have to think about it as similar to the project of killing the Indigenous within the Indigenous. It’s like the boarding schools. So on a global scale, Europe killed the Jew within the Jew, and many of the members of what is being called here in a way that always surprises me, American Jewry, many of the members of this community don’t even remember that they belong to other communities that were destroyed by Europe. American Jewry is an invention, is an amalgamation, is another amalgamation that is built on the European amalgamation of the Jewish people in the 19th century. So we have to be reminded also that Zionism started as a Christian movement. The colonization of Palestine was a Christian ideology before it became a Jewish Zionist ideology.

Esther Farmer:  It’s interesting that I remember when Biden said, if we didn’t have Israel, we would have to invent it. Which is, again, the most antisemitic thing in the world —

Marc Steiner:  Very telling.

Esther Farmer:  — Are you saying that Jews are not safe where they are? So we’re not safe here, so we have to create Israel, and you support that. You can’t get more antisemitic than that. But where are the Zionists? Where’s the outrage from the Zionist around that statement?

Marc Steiner:  You both have just said so much [laughs] that we can stay here for hours just pulling it all apart and really taking a deep dive here into all of it that you’ve said. What both of you have pointed out on one level, a number of levels, you have on one level is how antisemitism drove Zionism, in many ways, to create Israel for the power of the West, as I put it once a long time ago, is to force refugees, to create refugees.

And what you’ve all described, how do you take that and make it understood both politically and socially in this country? So some of the Zionist leaders will immediately call you and me self hating Jews. That’s the first thing they’ll say. But how do you take what you’ve just described and get people to really understand and put their hands around what it really means, how Israel was really created, what it stands for, and what it’s done to us?

Esther Farmer:  Well, we are doing this conference now where we have 2,000 anti-Zionist Jews in a room. 15 years ago, be lucky if you got 15 [Steiner laughs] anti-Zionist Jews in a room. So this is happening right now because the impact of what Zionism has done is war, militarism, and imperialism. And that’s being seen now throughout the whole world. So our job in JVP is to move Jews, and everyone, away from Zionism, and that’s happening.

The issue is that the narrative, I mean, I’ve been doing this work for 50 years, and I have never seen the narrative the way it is right now. It has substantially changed, and that took a tremendous amount of work, and we’re proud of that work. So that’s happening. And yet the policies of the United States are still the same. So that says a lot about what so-called democracy is, when the majority of the country is with us, poll after poll is saying they are not supporting what Israel is doing, but yet that’s still the policy.

So I think these issues of identity and the relentless propaganda that has gone on since this Zionist, I dunno what you want to call it, experiment, has been both so destructive to Palestinians and to Jews, really, really destructive. And that’s why it’s so important for us to have this, as Naomi Klein says it, exodus away from Zionism.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  No, I think that just maybe we have to remind ourselves that there is genocide going on. It’s almost two years, and there are some common ways to understand what is genocide, which is related to what was done by Lemkin and the UN the convention against genocide.

But I think that we have to maybe ask other questions about genocide. Rather than defining what is genocide, understanding that settler colonial regimes are genocidal regimes, and the state of Israel is a genocidal regime that serves the West, serves the West to “solve” the Jewish question another time in its history, and serves the West to have its mercenaries in the form of Israelis.

And I think that it became very clear that since October 2023, without the arms and the money and the propaganda machine all over the world, in the Western world, in what you call policies, and state apparatuses, the persecution of voices that are denouncing the genocide, without all these Western powers, the genocide will not last more than 1, 2, 3 weeks.

Israel does not have the power to have a genocide. Israel itself would not survive in ’48 without the destruction of Jewish diverse communities without forcing the Jews in Europe, the survivors to go to Palestine rather than to rebuild their communities in Europe, without inciting violence in the Jewish Muslim world and making the life of Jews in the Jewish Muslim world impossible in a way that they slowly, slowly, this world was dismantled and Jews had to leave. Most of them did not want to go to Palestine. The case of Algeria in ’62, at the moment of the end of the War of Independence —

Marc Steiner:  For Algeria.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  — In Algeria, only 20% of the Jews were forced to leave Algeria because two colonial projects forced them to leave Algeria. Only 20% went to the Zionist colony in Palestine. The rest of them went to Canada and France.

So they were not Zionists. So we have to understand that the state of Israel was sustained with Western power. It was not an expression of a Jewish liberation project. It was a European project, Euro American project to reorganize the entire world to create what they called the Jewish Judeo Christian tradition, which never existed, to remove the Jews from the Jewish Muslim world —

Marc Steiner:  Which did exist.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Yeah — To create Palestine as, allegedly, a state for the Jews, and to turn Palestinians into an exterminable group. So when I relate to the term genocide, when I wrote several texts since the beginning of the genocide, I put aside the legal definition of genocide, and I am trying to reconstruct how the genocide against Palestinians started. And it started in the wake of World War II when Western power, through the mediation of the UN, decided that Palestinians are exterminable for the sake of Zionists, for the sake of creating a Zionist state.

So rather than speaking about genocide as an event, I speak about genocidal regime, I speak about genocidal technologies. And when you understand the genocidal regime, you understand that already the Nakba was the beginning of the genocide because Palestinians were exterminable. They had to pay the price, they could be exterminated because their presence there was an obstacle for the imposition of the “new world order”, which was a Euro American project of innocenting Europe of its crimes against the Jews and of its crimes against other colonies.

We have to be reminded that in 45 European powers — And we’re speaking about the British, the French, Spanish, they still had colonies in different places in the world. So by exceptionalizing the Nazi, by exceptionalizing the suffering of the Jews, they actually continued to run the world and not to reckon with their crimes against the Jews and against other racialized communities.

Esther Farmer:  One of the things that gets me always is when people say, well, Israel has a right to exist, as if the country was established by God. Countries are created by the powers that be for their own interests. When I was growing up, there was no Bosnia. This was created, generally not created by the people that live in these places, it’s created, as Ariella was saying, by the Western world for their imperialist interest. So I don’t know why this country of Israel has any more right to exist than anybody else.

And I think there’s a difference between these countries and the people that live in them. But this idea that countries, that Israel has a right to exist, it’s just so interesting. It’s an example of how the assumptions and how we’ve been trained to think in these ways around nation states and the creation of these things that just has nothing to do with our actual lived experience and history.

Marc Steiner:  So you both have said so much and given such deep analysis about where this is, in some ways, I think, that is not heard very often and really original. It’s not the way people describe what is being faced at this moment. And as you were speaking, 10 things were going through my head. One was, how do you take the analytical description that you both have given us and popularize that message so people understand it, so people can grasp it? Because the way you describe it, it’s very simple, very clear about what created this — I’m sorry, go ahead.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  No, no. It just occurred to me to think about it not as we would do this work — JVP does an incredible work, but it is not only about people doing this work, the genocide made it clear to millions that this is a genocide and Israel is a genocidal regime. I can write this book and this book and you can do your work, et cetera. But people are not stupid. And there is a moment when people understand they cannot do accelerated lessons that you take with someone who already did the work. But with the beginning of the genocide, millions went to the street, took it to the street to say, this is a genocide, and they’re being persecuted constantly. All these draconian laws, all these draconian policies of the Trump administration is because there are millions who are saying that this is a genocidal regime.

So the question is not how you bring these ideas. The question is maybe how we exit, as Naomi Klein said, Zionism, but how we exit the structures that imperial powers created as benign structures: Museums, archives, nation states, borders, naturalization, all these structures are against people.

So the questions are much bigger than how you transmit the lies of Zionism to other people. For me, the main question is outcome. That all the crimes that were committed against the Jews as if they never existed because the Jews were “received” a state, or the Jews received a citizenship. The question is how to bring the Jews to participate in the anti-colonial, general global anti-colonial struggle to decolonize this world. So it’s not only how you convince your parents or your siblings, it’s about how we exit from those institutions that were normalized as benign institutions, but actually they are reproducing the destruction of the world.

Marc Steiner:  So one of the things I think about as you all describe where we are and why we’re here, I think about historically here in this country that 70% of all the civil rights workers in the South when I was a civil rights worker in the South as a young man were Jews. 70% of all the white civil rights workers, civil rights workers in the South were Jews. And that we were the heart of the labor movement. We were the heart of the revolutionary movements in Europe. There’s a different spirit, I think, that has to be grasped and put out there, a different heritage and tradition of who we are, as opposed to having it being defined by this Zionist domination that was pushed and created by the imperial powers, as you were talking about, so they have a beachhead in the Middle East and they figured out what to do with the Jews.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  But the example that you bring is very interesting because Jews participated in the Civil Rights Movement. They were in solidarity with the Black. They didn’t fight their own struggle as part of it. And I think that what JVP maybe today offers is how to think about the liberation aspirations of the Jews together with the liberation aspirations of other groups.

And I think that what happened with the US, what happened with this kind of erasure of what Europe did to us, what Euro American did to us, is the removal of the Jews from the history of colonization in a way that the Jews from a long time did not have a project of decolonization while they were still colonized. To act only as a blank American citizen in the movement for the Civil Rights Movement means not understanding how much Jews were still colonized. So they could act as blank citizens, but not as Jews who are affirming this as their own struggle. They struggle for Black Americans.

And I think that here there is a very interesting thing for Jews to do in the US, is to reclaim their histories. How come they became American Jews? How come their history is a very short history, the history of their life in America? Where is their history in Europe? What was taken from them? There are traditions, there are beliefs, there are many things [that] were taken from them. There are possibilities to live their life there. So I’m not speaking about in terms of returning to Europe, but I’m speaking about reclaiming their histories. If the Jews will reclaim their histories, they will not be blank citizens in empire, only joining other struggles.

And I think the JVPs, that maybe the first time that there is a broad Jewish movement in the US where Jews are speaking about what was taken from them. And cementing Zionism as their identity is part of what was taken from them. But there is much more to that.

Esther Farmer:  I feel very personally angry at Zionism from my experience as a leftist Jew. My father was a union organizer, and I grew up with that history of, as you say, in the labor movement and Jews. And I have always felt, and I have seen this with my own eyes, how this Zionist project has moved Jews to the right in the way that you are describing, has moved Jews in the direction where it’s unrecognizable to me. That’s the other way in which I see Zionism as so antisemitic. The whole history of Jews being for justice, even in the biblical text and stuff, it’s just completely thrown away by only us.

My mother used to say, we are Jews for justice, not just us [Steiner laughs]. That was the history, what it meant to me to be a Jew. And in Ariella’s work, it’s like a deliberate attempt to erase an understanding of Jews as standing with the oppressed in the world. That’s interesting what you said about… From my family, I did experience that connection between what happened to the Jews and other people, that solidarity. I did feel that, and I think that there were other people who did feel that. But I also think that there was a deliberate attempt to break that memory in some ways, though I think that’s what’s so interesting about what we’re talking about.

Marc Steiner:  I think the reason… I’m not usually at a loss for words because that’s how I make my living, but one of the things that really struck me about this conversation we’ve had so far is that it’s one that doesn’t take place in very many places, where there’s an introspection about Jewish history and Jewish life and what it means in what we face today and how we’ve become sucked into this imperial world oppressing Palestinians. And when I was a kid, it was the fight against Jewish store owners in inner city neighborhoods that we used to boycott and go after because of what they were doing. But now becomes a prominent aspect of American Jewry at this moment. And I think the way you two describe this, the depth of which you describe this is something I think that people need to wrestle with. Beyond JVP.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  There are many initiatives. If we see millions in the street protesting against the genocide, many of them are organized in different collectives. Strike MoMA, making munches, Beit Kohenet, so many collectives, small, middle size that are reclaiming their Jewish heritage. And reclaiming their Jewish heritage is saying, we are not white. Try to whiten us, this is what they’re saying, but Jews were never white.

So while accepting as part of the Jewish identity in the US, it’s something that always strikes me, accepting this category that the Jews are white is accepting to erase their history. They were first racialized, their histories were destroyed in order to tell them, we give you the passage to pass as white, but Jews are not white. So I think that we cannot see the millions in the street protesting against the genocide and believe that there is only JVP. JVP is very powerful, very broad because you have branches in different cities, but there are many, many initiatives all over to reclaim what was taken from the Jews.

And what was taken from the Jews, part of it is, major part of it today, their history as victims of genocide, and now the Zionists are perpetrating genocide that implicate the entire Jewish community because of a long history of conflating between Zionists and Jews. Because when the West recognized the Zionists as representing the Jewish people with no reason to recognize them, but it served the interest of the West, it created a conflation. And this conflation took from the Jews many things that people are struggling to today to introduce a distance from them and from this identification or this false mode of being represented by the state of Israel and the Zionist without renouncing the responsibility to continue the struggle against the genocidal regime.

Marc Steiner:  So as we conclude here, I was thinking about this neofascist regime that exists in Israel and this neofascist regime that’s taking over the country that we live in here, and all the experience the two of you have had and the creative work you’ve done and the political work you’ve done, and where you see the hope and where we’re going, where you see the struggle going, and what we face right now. Seeing JVP grow as it has is amazing, and other groups are there, but the right is really on the rise. And in many ways, as you were alluding to, the right often uses Jews, and people get sucked into the right. So where do you both think this takes us all, after all your years of struggle and being parts of movements in your work?

Esther Farmer:  Hits the horror and the hope every second. Across the street you’ve got 2,000 anti-Zionist Jews, that’s the hope. And we have this fascistic thing, is this really happening right now? Again, I think it’s a really interesting moment when the majority of the country is with us, and yet we still have these policies now. That contradiction is only going to grow.

I think there’s so much grassroots organizing going on, not just from JVP, in so many areas, and it’s really important, I think, this concept of intersectionality and solidarity is extremely important. And that’s the hope is the solidarity and the intersectionality of our movements.

And as Ariella was saying, it’s a worldwide thing. It’s not only about Israel, it’s not only about Palestine. It’s this whole way of understanding even how nation states are organized. I struggle with that myself because I come from a time when national liberation struggles were a very progressive thing and people wanted independence. And then there are these states that exist, and have they helped the world? Have they not helped the world? What does that mean to have the world organized by these nation states? Is there a difference between anti-colonial and decolonial? These are interesting questions that are coming up right now, for me, anyway. So yeah, I think there is hope. There is organizing going on. People are moving, and both sides are moving very fast.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, they are.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  So if I may just pick on something that you said right now, I don’t think that these were a national liberation movement. These were anti-colonial movements that were intercepted by the colonizers to become national liberation movements. All the process of decolonization of Africa was intercepted by the West through the creation of the UN. We have to be reminded that in 45, there were several 40, 45 states in the world. Today we have 200 states, which means that the decolonization of Africa, decolonization of Asia, rather than being decolonized from the imperial powers, the imperial powers created [an] international organization that imposed that the only way to decolonize a place would be to create a nation state.

Esther Farmer:  That’s very interesting.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  So I don’t think that these were national liberation struggles. These were anticolonial liberation struggles that were intercepted by the West. In Algeria, it’s very typical. It was an anticolonial struggle and it ended up with an independent state from where the Jews, Algerian Jews, had to leave because this was the model that is built on the purification of the body politic from elements that do not fit there. So the Jews didn’t fit here, and the Jews didn’t fit there, and the Jews didn’t fit there, and others didn’t fit there, and we got the new world order.

One comment about what you said, I don’t think that in Israel it is a neofascist regime. Israel is, as I said earlier, a genocidal regime to begin with. The fact that Netanyahu ran this genocide cannot make us forget that the genocide against Palestinians started in ’48. The destruction of Palestine, the destruction of the Palestinian society didn’t start with Netanyahu. And this phase of the genocide is horrible and is the highest in terms of casualties, but it is not the highest in terms of the destruction of the Palestinian society.

And when you ask about hope, if there is hope, it is in a global decolonial transformation of the world. Because all these structures that enabled 45 [states] to impose another settler colonial state as a liberation project for the Jews while it was a project of liberation of Europe from its crimes to appear in the world as the liberator. So I think that the fact that those organs continue to exist as benign organs, museums, for example, that looted so much of ancestral worlds of Black, of Jews, of Muslims, and impose themselves as the guardians of this culture while they participated in the decimation of the material culture of so many people.

So I think that there is a lot of work to be done in order to undo imperial plunder, to undo the imperial organization of the world, and not only to speak about throwing away this or that government. It’s about stopping the genocidal regimes that are still being recognized as [a] benign democratic regime with an accident, with [a] side project that should be reformed. Israel cannot be reformed. Israel is a genocidal regime. And Israeli state apparatuses should be dismantled in order to allow the return of Palestine in which Jews will also be part of it as one of the minority groups and not as the governor, the masters of the land.

Marc Steiner:  I want to say that this has been one of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time, and mostly because I didn’t do much talking at all, which is great. I think you both brought a very profound and different analysis to this conversation that’s not often heard, and I wish we could sit here for the next three hours, but we can’t. And I just want to say thank you to Ariella Azoulay, and to you both, Esther Farmer, for being here today and being part of this conversation.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Thank you for inviting us. It was a pleasure.

Esther Farmer:  Yes. Thank you so much for having us [crosstalk].

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Pleasure to share the floor with you.

Marc Steiner:  I deeply appreciate it, really. The joke from my friends that were listening, Marc, you didn’t say anything. It’s OK because what came out of this, I think, was something that people have to really wrestle with about where our future is going, not just as Jews, not just as Israel Palestine, but in terms of where the world is going and why this is so central to all of that.

Esther Farmer:  And there’s something very liberating about thinking about the world without nation states or thinking about the world without borders. Can we have those imaginations? Can we think beyond what they’ve given us, that we have to think that way? Can we think beyond that? And now maybe is a moment, the horror and the hope, where we can think in different ways.

Marc Steiner:  We have to. Thank you both so much for taking all this time.

Esther Farmer:  Thank you.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  See you back at the JVP conference.

Once again, thank you to Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and Esther Farmer for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebden and Cameron Granadino for running the program, and audio editor Alina Nehlich, and producer Rosette Sewali for always working her magic behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today and what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and Esther Farmer for being our guests today here on The Marc Steiner Show at The Real News. And remember, we can’t do this without you, so please share, join our community by clicking on the subscribe button right below here and support The Real News Network. Do it now. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Antisemitism is a real, violent, and pervasive scourge that spans the globe, but as anti-Zionist Jews like Molly Kraft argue, conflating opposition to Israel with antisemitism will make Jewish people less safe, not more. “Any systematic review of antisemitism must separate antisemitism from the Israeli state’s claims to represent all Jewish people, or more precisely, all Jewish safety,” Kraft writes in The Grind. “This is both because no colonial state can provide safety as it destroys and expels Indigenous populations, but also because Jewish safety will only come through the destruction of all oppressive systems.” In the latest installment of “Not in Our Name,” a Marc Steiner Show series bringing together voices across the Jewish world speaking out against Israel’s Occupation and destruction of Palestine, Marc Steiner speaks with Kraft about the need to accurately identify and fight antisemitism while forcefully rejecting Zionists’ attempts to weaponize antisemitism to perpetuate genocidal violence and justify repressive censorship.

Molly Kraft is a Canadian labor and community organizer, writer, a founding member of the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition, and co-founder of Standing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) – Toronto.

Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show, here at the Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. And this is another edition of Not in Our name, and today we’re talking to Molly Kraft, who’s in Canada. She’s a union and grassroots organizer over 20 years experience organizing and she is motivated to support movements to win by building collective power to tear down all kinds of oppressive systems of showing up for racial justice. Toronto Jews say No to genocide, their national coalition in Canada of anti-Zionist groups. She’s been works at this intensely. She lives in Toronto, as I said with her partner. They have two children. She fights for justice, that’s her life’s work and also organizes with the nurses union. So she’s a busy woman and takes time out for us today. Welcome. Good to see you, Molly. Good to have you here.

Molly Kraft:

Thanks, Marc. You

Marc Steiner:

Wrote this article that I thought was really, really well done and powerful and it’s called, and we’re going to link to this here so you all can read it yourselves. It’s in a magazine called The Grind To Fight Antisemitism, we need to accurately identify it. Too often we’re failing. So one of the things that really struck me about the piece that you wrote is this, the difficulty of really getting to the heart of both antisemitism, the death of its history for thousands of years, people trying to wipe us off the face of the earth, but then in comes the state of Israel, which intensifies antisemitism while it oppresses Palestinians and forgets our own struggles for survival and fighting for justice. So talk about how you put that together and your theory of all that.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it’s important to position myself so that people understand why I would make this claim. So I’m the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and they fled and lost their whole families and ended up in displaced persons camps and are highly traumatized from the Holocaust. And even my aunt, so I’m not even really technically a full third generation. My mom’s sister died in a concentration camp. So my mom was lucky enough to be born in the United States. My mom met my dad in Canada, and I grew up with a very clear understanding that it was only because of people who fought for justice, that my grandparents were saved and brought over to the United States by being sponsored by friends of friends coming to Peoria, Illinois and being able to start their life. So my understanding of why oppression is able to lead to the mass murder of people is through the funding by state apparatus that allow those things to happen.

And so when I look at the history and the trajectory of antisemitism, which allowed the killing of my family, I see exactly to your point, the creation of Israel and the massive amount of funding backed by both Britain and then the US and now really global superpowers everywhere. To say that this is a state that is to do absolutely anything that it wants in the name of Jewish safety or fighting antisemitism, that actually that just replicates the kind of violence that we all fled from. And so the connection that I see is that Ashkenazi Jews, specifically in the West we’re able to come into whiteness, be welcomed into whiteness, be closer to power, to get to what they thought was safety, what we thought was safety, right? We’re going to become more like white people. We’re going to become more normal. We’re going to assimilated into American society, and that’s going to be our ticket away from these violent histories.

And Israel is going to be the primary place that makes this happen. We’re going to get away from the vision of that really weak Yiddish Jew, and we’re going to become this masculinized Israeli white like big buff, modern man Jew, and no one’s ever going to do that to us again. And that cozying up to whiteness, that closeness to whiteness, that closeness to empire, to imperial power then allows a state funding of a kind of impunity that we’ve really rarely seen before. And I think it’s important that we actually debunk it, pull it apart, say that this doesn’t actually, most of this doesn’t have to do with antisemitism anymore. It’s an imperial project. And that Jews have to identify the difference between real antisemitism, like you said, that has historical and painful roots, deeply connected to white supremacy and then criticism of the state of Israel and their absolute death cults, destruction of Palestine and the Palestinian people. And so it felt very important to me personally to say I have a stake in that as well because my own history is tied up in that narrative.

Marc Steiner:

Lemme tell you something, Lord, I have mercy. You laid out so much here. I got to figure out how to parse this out.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, sorry. We’ll just slow

Marc Steiner:

Down. No, no, it’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s great because you gave us a kind of analytical history of why we’re here and who we are.

Molly Kraft:

I

Marc Steiner:

Think it’s really important. Lemme ask you a quick personal question.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, absolutely.

Marc Steiner:

And then jump into this. So did you know your grandparents with numbers on their arms?

Molly Kraft:

No. So my grandparents were both very lucky. They survived through not being in camps. So they were actually communists and they were imprisoned because they were communist and because they were Polish, Russian polish, as soon as they got out of jail, their communist friends said, you’ve got to get out of here because you’re communist. They’re coming for you. So they left their daughter and one of them went and fought on the eastern front, and he actually survived the war through fighting the Nazis on the other side. So he was a survivor through never being in a camp. My bubba hid and snuck around and made it all the way again to a displaced person’s camp in Stuttgart, Germany. And they were reunited in that displaced person’s camp. So they are lucky enough to have never been in a concentration camp, but they did live for three years in a displaced person’s camp. And that’s where they had my second aunt. But the family members that I grew up with had numbers on their arms. So when I would go to Peac or any other family holiday in Fort Lauderdale, which is where they all ended up after living in New York,

Marc Steiner:

Where else would they go?

Molly Kraft:

Where would they go after living in New York City for many years. So at payback, people would show us these were the numbers on their arms, and it was very strict in our family. There was not going to be any tattoos on any part of our arms. We have tattoos elsewhere. But as Jews who were supposed to be respecting these elders, we were not supposed to do that. And we grew up with stories of this is part of you, it’s part of our blood, it’s part of our very much present in everything we do. It’s a joke, but it isn’t, I’m sure people have said this to you, but which Christian friends going to hide you? What will you do when the day comes that this inevitably returns? What will you do to survive? And that was very much a part of our identity growing up.

Marc Steiner:

That’s a very interesting story in itself. I mean, just growing up in a left Jewish family that survived the war, that could be a movie on its own.

Molly Kraft:

Yes, exactly.

Marc Steiner:

It could. So I really want to explore your thoughts on antisemitism and how that plays into what’s happening now in Israel Palestine, and also how this struggle against Palestinian oppression can also bubble up the antisemitism because of what Israel is doing. Not blaming Jews for antisemitism, but just saying because it’s there. So talk a bit about your analysis that you wrote about that incredible

Molly Kraft:

Article. Yeah, so that’s such a brilliant question, and if we can’t actually have this conversation, I don’t believe that we will ever be able to come to justice because I think that if the left does not have a sharp analysis of antisemitism, we will never be able to bring Jews over from Zionism. And I think what I mean by that is that antisemitism is so prevalent within our societies because we live in Christian dominant societies. Antisemitism is part of Christian dominant societies, just the same way patriarchy is. It’s the soil, it’s the air. So to imagine ourselves on the left as somehow outside of that is an error because it leaves Jews saying, wait a minute, I don’t want to be in this group because they don’t acknowledge it. I actually believe that the primary backlash to DEI comes from, at least in Canada, there’s a huge movement of white Jews who said, wait a minute.

I was forced to go into the white group with all the Christians to caucus and talk about whiteness, but nobody’s talking about antisemitism. And to give them credit where credit is due until the left is able to say antisemitism is a unique and specific form of discrimination that changes. And it is about the being cast out and being brought back in. And so what do we mean by that? Ashkenazi Jews have been sent out othered, and then in times when it’s convenient brought back in, when do we see that close? Clearly Donald Trump, anti-Semitic, literal Nazis in his circles would’ve cast out Jews when it was convenient. And now the bringing back in unquote of Jews, even though actually the neo-Nazis all are still in his inner circles, but using Jews very much as a scapegoat to do his own fascist state repression of free speech on campuses and education policies and funding of universities.

This is how antisemitism operates. That’s different than, for example, anti-black racism. Anti-black racism is a permanent pushing down, a permanent casting out. You are different because of blackness. You are far from whiteness. So we have to have an analysis on the left. That’s the first thing to understand how to have multiracial movements. Because if we don’t know what antisemitism is, we actually can’t include left Jews in these movements. So when we look at things like how we talk about Israel Palestine, what we so often miss is an analysis that says Israel by cozying up to imperial powers, by becoming best friends with the United States, this is not a coincidence. The money to mass murder children in Gaza, the money to occupy the West Bank, the direct movement of Michael from Brooklyn into a house, someone’s Palestinian’s house in the West Bank, these are not accidents. The United States imperial project of overtaking land in a very, very special place in this earth is intended to maintain white colonial power. And the Jews, I actually believe are a bit of a scapegoat in this. Unfortunately, this is a historical and biblical connection for Jews. We can debate how much or how little, that’s a whole other podcast,

But it’s not an accident that the United States is this invested in this genocide or in the displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank. And what happens is we don’t have an analysis of the fact that Christian Zionism, so there are more Christian Zionists in the world than there are Jews there absolutely believe more Christian Zionists even in the United States than there are Jews in the

Marc Steiner:

United States. Correct.

Molly Kraft:

So what we have to be able to say is that confluence of things, it doesn’t make antisemitism go away. It also doesn’t make it the biggest oppression of all time. There are bigger oppressions, especially because most Jews, it’s hard to say exactly how many, but most Jews globally are probably more like Ashkenazi, probably present more like white in societies where whiteness is the norm, that means that they are closer to power, which means that, for example, I do have the ability to not face discrimination all the time because most people probably don’t know that I’m Jewish. Again,

Marc Steiner:

To

Molly Kraft:

Distinguish from anti-black racism, it’s not the same form of discrimination. White Jews coming to America, I’m bouncing around here, but white Jews coming to America and cosing up to whiteness to try to escape those lineages of violence and try to get to safety have traded in saying that we have to fight all oppressions at the same time. And if we believed that we had to fight all oppressions at the same time, then we would’ve never displaced anyone from the West Bank. We would’ve never stolen occupied lands in Israel. Whatever land had been given, we would’ve co occupied because if we believed that all oppressions were interlinked, if we believed that our survival was bound up in the success of the Palestinians that already existed on that land, then we would be fighting that as co-conspirators. And so for me, it’s very obvious that Israel is a settler colonial project with an imperial power backing it.

And what I believe is so important for the left to be able to name is that that settler power backing it is the United States. It is Christian hegemony, it is imperial power that cares about gas and oil. These things matter because otherwise we get into, oh, the Jews in Israel have so much power. Oh, the reason the world is letting this happen is because it’s the Jews. And then you get into global conspiracy theories which are antisemitic in nature. And so as long as we can say Israel doesn’t have more power because of being Jewish, Israel has more power because Christian Zionism is invested in Israeli Jewish Zionism to flourish. That is an important piece of this story,

Marc Steiner:

Right? It is. And preach this to preach.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

Right. So two quick questions in the time we have here.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

So given the analysis you just laid out in the table for everybody to ponder, how does that affect the ability to organize in the Jewish world? Let’s start there in the Jewish world to move people over. I mean, you can see generationally now that more and more younger Jews, your generation and younger are moving over saying something’s wrong. What Israel is doing is not right. This is not who we are. We can’t be the oppressor. So talk about your experience in that kind of organizing and where you think that’s going.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, I think it’s such a good point. And even just your own framing of that reminds us why it’s like if you tap into the humanity of most Jewish folks’ story, if you can get a little bit of distance from that trauma. That’s why I believe it is generational. I believe that my mom’s generation, the older generations are a little bit too close and there is a genuine traumatic response that does not tell people to say, I’m looking at other human beings. There is a full transference. I mean, Naomi Klein talks way better about this than I can, but a full transference of Nazis to Palestinians like the Palestinians have become the people that they did nothing to us, but instead we will avenge all of our trauma on them. So that space into this next generation. Exactly. To your point, I think that if you can tap into the humanity of what is happening to say there is absolutely no justification for the mass slaughter of innocent children, men, women, elders, hospitals, community clinics, places where people eat playgrounds.

Like most young Jewish people, if they are not being fed absolute propaganda and lies about their own safety, I think can see that if the reverse, if this was our story and we were talking about fighting Nazis that no one would, there would be no question. And so I think that you go into the place of what safety will come from this, where will you get, we do not end up in a safer place if every single one of these people is slaughtered. We end up in a place where there will be many more people who hate Jews. I personally believe that the rise of actual antisemitism is far worse because of the situation that we find ourselves in. And I believe that the Trump administration is key in this because of scapegoating. Now, Jews, and I’ve been listening to American news in the last couple of days, and I think Jewish Americans are starting to say the repression of Palestinian pro-Palestinian protestors in the states will only lead to more antisemitism because it looks like a Jewish conspiracy. It looks like the Jews in power are saying you don’t talk like that. You don’t get to say that you don’t get funding like global Jewish conspiracy much. It’s very playing into classic antisemitic tropes,

Marc Steiner:

Right?

Molly Kraft:

So I think when we speak to Jews in North America, white Jews about organizing, it has to be collective humanity, our own histories. How is our own liberation tied up in this? And where will you actually find safety in this? You will never, ever get safe through mass murdering children. It’s just not possible. And I think young people know that.

Marc Steiner:

Again, you’ve said so much here, and I think that there is this generational trauma. I mean, I spent a long time in the Zionist movement as a young person, Haman and the Marxist Zionist after, because we all grew up with those stories. I mean, in my family, my bubby, my grandmother who’s also Ashkenazi, and folks who are listening, Ashkenazi means Eastern European Jews. If you don’t know that, we grew up with those stories because there were people in our living room with numbers in their arms growing up. And my grandmother, my bubby, her story was chilling. When the cossacks attacked her, she told the Jewish ghetto she ran from them holding her little sister’s hand, and the cossack rode up next to them and lopped off her little sister’s head while she was holding her hand. So we grew up with these stories, and I think that in some ways what you’re saying is that we have to make other Jews understand other people as well. But other Jews understand that what is being done in our name in Palestine and Israel against Palestinians is no different than what happened to my bubby.

Molly Kraft:

Exactly, exactly.

Marc Steiner:

To bring people over emotionally to see this is not us. This is not who we should be.

Molly Kraft:

Exactly.

Marc Steiner:

And I think that your work and your words are just really profound. I want to tell you that I think they are, because analytically and dialectically kind of put these ideas together both in your article and the way you describe it. So I’m curious where you think as we conclude, we can stay for the next two hours. I know we can’t. Where do you think the struggle goes from here, given everything that’s going on right now with Gaza in Israel, with this rightwing government in the United States with right wing growing across the globe as well? Tell me your own analysis, where you think it goes and where historical goes now, especially when it comes to Israel Palestine.

Molly Kraft:

Well also thank you for sharing that story because I think it’s so telling of why you have the politics that you do, which is that if you really embody what that means to a human being’s life, you carry that. And it means that you look at every Palestinian child and you think of your bubby sister and you know that you are responsible. We always say there’s that amazing quote of, I want you to look at every child like they’re your child.

Marc Steiner:

Yes, my bubby used to wear her little sister’s necklace around her neck until the day she died.

Molly Kraft:

That’s so beautiful. And you carry the hope of fighting for that whoever that new little sister is each day. And we’ve heard too many countless stories of those little sisters in Gaza, and we are not doing enough to save them. So I believe the way we make those connections is through saying that the actual root of all of this is white supremacist colonial violence, and if we cannot tie all of our struggles together, then we’ll get nowhere. So for example, the reason the Democratic party has crashed and burned so hard is because those struggles have been separated. And the working classes of America are saying, actually, you don’t represent me anymore because you’re so fixated on only fighting for the elite, right? We have to say as white Jews that we are invested in fighting anti-black racism, anti Palestinian racism, fighting for indigenous sovereignty. And the reason that must be part of our struggle is because if we don’t make those connections, governments will take over and manipulate our, that is what is happening.

They will manipulate our struggles. So right now, antisemitism is being used to enact some of the most violent state sanctioned policies of fascist repression that we’ve probably seen since the McCarthy era, both in Canada and the United States. If you so much as say that you support Palestine, you have a chance of being deported, losing your job, we’re doxed a lot up here. I’m sure you guys are as well, where our public information is shared online, we’re threatened, our children are threatened, our jobs are threatened. That is happening because actually the people who are in power are white supremacists, neo-Nazis. They’re not invested in my safety. And it’s my job to say I know that because I understand. I have a clear seeing of the whole operation of power. I know that you don’t actually care about the safety of my neighbors, of my black neighbors, of my undocumented neighbors, of my native neighbors, of my disabled neighbors.

We must make cross intersectional analysis for our fights for justice in order to tie our struggles to others. I think that the question for Jews right now is very complicated, and I think it still remains to be seen where we are best positioned at the beginning of all of this. At the beginning of the genocide, it was so powerful to hear us say, not in our name, this will not happen. And now we’re being manipulated in that. And so I think we will have to continue to put our heads together to say, how can we support our Palestinian families across both North America and in Palestine by dismantling empire? And that is a bigger question because I actually think we’ll need our Christians in that, right? This isn’t going to go anywhere until we have mass public pressure saying that your tax dollars, my tax dollars are not going to pay for weapons. I read that ridiculous statistic at the beginning of the genocide, that it was only three days that if America cut off the supply of weapons, there was only a three day weapons supply because that’s how many weapons are using. So

If all taxpayers were invested in saying that needs to end now, maybe that’s our way through. I’m not so sure where Jews fit into that, but I do know that it comes from building coalition. We must build coalition, and we must be clear that these values are not Jewish. These values are not in leftist. They’re not in any tradition of a radical anti-oppressive fighting to say that we allow this kind of behavior and anyone who tells us that is manipulating us and is using Jews, I believe as scapegoat in order to do their bidding.

Marc Steiner:

Monica, I want to thank you so much for being here today. I mean, I just think that your analysis is really sharp and intense with its depth, and I really appreciate you taking the time here for the Marc Steiner show and not in our name. And we’re going to link to your article. People need to read it so well written. You’ll just sit and go through it. And I look forward to other conversations and staying in touch. Thank you so much for your work and putting everything on the line, and I appreciate you joining us today.

Molly Kraft:

Thank you so much, Marc, for having me. It was a real pleasure.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Molly Kraft for joining us today with her brilliant and coaching analysis and ideas, and we’ll link to her work and her article from The Grind. It’s called To Fight Antisemitism. We need to accurately identify it. Too often we are failing. It’s brilliantly written, so I encourage you all to go there and read it. And thanks to Cameron Grino for running the program today and audio editor Alina Nek, who working her magic Roset Ali for producing the Marc Steiner show and the titleless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you Molly Craft for joining us today. It was a great conversation. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Mark Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.

World-renowned political cartoonist Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of the new McCarthyist assault on free expression and higher education. While employed as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Booth became a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics, and his work became a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing in March. Facing charges that certain cartoons contained anti-Semitic tropes, J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as “reprehensible.”

In a statement about his firing, Booth writes: “The reality – and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn – is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with the largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans/black/immigrant, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research – speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.”

In this special edition of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc sits down with Booth in the TRNN studio in Baltimore to discuss the events that led to his firing, the purpose and effects of political art, and how to respond to the repressive crackdown on art and dissent as genocide is unfolding and fascism is rising.

Producer: Rosette Sewali

Studio Production / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us.

A wave of authoritarian oppression has gripped colleges and universities. Life on campus looks in some ways similar but in other ways very intensely different than it did when I was a young man in the 1960s. International students like Mahmoud, Khalil are being abducted on the street and disappeared by ICE agents in broad daylight, and hundreds of student visas have been abruptly revoked. Faculty and graduate students are being fired, expelled, and doxxed online. From Columbia University to Harvard, Northwestern to Cornell, the Trump administration is holding billions of dollars of federal grants and contracts hostage in order to bend universities to Trump’s will and to squash our constitutional protected rights to free speech and free assembly.

Now, while the administration has justified these unprecedented attacks as necessary to root out so-called woke scours like diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and trans athletes playing college sports, the primary justification they’ve cited is combating antisemitism on campuses, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism, opposition to Israel, its political ideolog, Zionism, and Israel’s US-backed obliteration of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Now, our guest today is Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of this top-down political battle to reshape higher education in our country. Booth is a world-renowned political cartoonist based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in venues like Harvard’s Magazine, The Nation, The Village Voice, The Atlantic. Until recently, he was a lecturer at the Annenberg School [for] Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. And just days after the Trump administration announced it was freezing $175 million in federal funds depend, Booth was fired.

Booth’s work has become a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing, facing charges that certain cartoons he made contained antisemitic tropes. J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as reprehensible.

In a statement about his firing posted on his Patreon page on March 20, Booth wrote this: “The reality and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans, Black, immigrants, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research, speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.

Today we’re going straight to the heart of the matter, and we’re speaking with Mr. Fish himself right here in The Real News Studio. Welcome. Good to have you with us.

Dwayne Booth:

Great to be here.

Marc Steiner:

So I gotta ask you this question first. Just get it out of the way. So where did the fish come from?

Dwayne Booth:

Oh my gosh. Well, that’s a long tale. I attempted to name my mother, had gotten my stepfather a new bird for Father’s Day. And this was right after I dropped out of college and was living in the back of my parents’ house and fulfilling the dream of every parent to have their son return. I’m not getting a job, I’m going to draw cartoons, and my real name is Dwayne Booth, and I wasn’t going to start. I started to draw cartoons just as a side, and I couldn’t sign it “Booth” because George Booth was the main cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, and I couldn’t just write “Dwayne” because it was too Cher or Madonna, I wasn’t going to go for just this straight first name.

So I attempted to name this new bird that came into the house. My mother asked for names and I said, Mr. Fish is the best name for a pet bird, and she rejected it. So I said, I’ll use it. And I signed all my cartoons “Mr. Fish”, and I immediately got published. And one of the editors, in fact, who published me immediately had pretended to follow me for 30 years. Mr. Fish, I can’t believe Mr. Fish finally sent us. Oh, it was locked in. I had to be Mr. Fish.

Marc Steiner:

I love it. I love it. So the work you’ve been doing, first of all, it’s amazing that a person without artistic training creates these incredible, complicated, intricate cartoons. Clearly it’s just innate inside of you.

You have this piece you did, I dunno why this one keeps sticking in my head, but the “Guernica” piece, which takes on the Trump administration and puts their figures in the place of the original work, to talk about that for a minute, how you came to create that, and why you use “Guernica”?

Dwayne Booth:

Well, it’s called “Eternal Damn Nation”. And one of the things that we should be responsible and how we communicate our dismay to other people. Now, what we attempt to do as artists is figure out the quickest path to make your point. So we tend to utilize various iconic images or things from history that will get the viewer to a certain emotional state and then piggyback the modern version on top of it, and also challenge the whole notion that these kinds of injustices have been happening over and over and over again. Because the Picasso piece is about fascism. Guess what? Guess what’s happening now? So you want to use those things to say that this might refer to a historical truism from the past, but it has application now, and it speaks to people, as you said, it resonated. Why did it resonate? Because it seems like a blunt version of truth that we have to contend with.

Marc Steiner:

So when you draw your pieces, before we go to Israel Palestine, I want to talk about Trump for a moment. Trump has been a target of your cartoons from the beginning. And the way he’s portrayed eating feces — Can I say the other word? Eating shit and just having shit all over him, a big fat slob and a beast of a fascist. Talk about your own image of this man, why you portray him this way. What do you think he represents here at this moment?

Dwayne Booth:

Well, it’s interesting because, in many ways, what I try to do with the images, the cartoons that you’re referring to, is, yes, I try to make it as obscene as I possibly can because the reality is also obscene. So I always want to challenge somebody who might look at something like that and say, oh my gosh, I don’t want to look at it. It’s important to look at these things.

The reality is, yes, I create these metaphors, eating shit and being a very lethal buffoon and clown. Those, to me, are the metaphors for something that is actually more dangerous. He’s being enabled by a power structure and being legitimized by these power brokers that surround him to enact real misery in America and the rest of the world, so you don’t want to treat somebody respectfully who is doing that. You want to say, this is shit. This is bullshit. This is an obscenity that we have to not shy away from and face it.

And if it is that ugly, if the metaphor is that ugly, again, challenge me to say that I should be respecting this person in a different way, should be pulling my punches. No, no. We should be going full-throated dissent against this kind of person and this kind of movement because it is an obscenity and we have to do something about it.

Marc Steiner:

The way you portray what’s happening in this country at this moment in many of your cartoons, in many of your works, Trump next door with Hitler, Trump as a figure with his middle finger to the air, all of that, when you do these things. How do you think about transient that into political action?

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s one of the tricks with satire, and I think that satire, I don’t think people know how to read satire anymore. What stands —

Marc Steiner:

It’s a lost art.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s a lost art. People think that Saturday Night Live is satire, and it’s not. It’s comedy, it’s burlesque is what it is.

Marc Steiner:

It’s burlesque.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s burlesque, it’s parody —

Marc Steiner:

It’s burlesque.

Dwayne Booth:

And what it does is it allows people to address politics in a way that ends with laughter and ridicule, which is the physiological reaction. And when you laugh at something, you’re telling your body, in a way, that it’s going to be okay. We can now congregate around our disdain and minimize the monstrosity by turning Trump into a clown or a buffoon. Only then we can say we’ve done our work. Look at how ridiculous he is. Now we can rely on other people, then, to do something about it.

Satire is supposed to, from my understanding through history, is supposed to have some humor in it. A lot of the humor is just speaking the blatant truth about something, and it’s supposed to reveal social injustices and political villainy in such a way that when you’re finished with it, you’re still upset and you do want to do something about it. Again, if we have to start worrying about how we are communicating our disdain about something that is deserving of disdain, Lenny Bruce quote, something that always has moved me and is the reason I do what I do. When he said, “Take away the right to say fuck, and you take away the right to say fuck the government.”

Marc Steiner:

Yes, I saw that in one of your pieces.

Dwayne Booth:

We need that tool. So when I am addressing something that I find upsetting, I lead with my heart because it is a visceral reaction. It’s very, very upsetting. I pour that into the artwork that I’m rendering, and then I share with other people because people are suffering. I know what suffering feels like. So the emotional component is really, really important to me.

And if you notice, looking at the cartooning that I do about Trump, is those are very involved, most often, fine art pieces. They’re not the whimsy of a cartoon because it’s more serious than that. I want to communicate through the craft that I bring to the piece that I’m willing to spend. Some of those things take me days to complete.

Marc Steiner:

I’m sure.

Dwayne Booth:

This is so important to me, and you’re going to see my dedication to, A, giving a shit and wanting to do something about it. If I can keep you in front of that piece of art longer than if it was just a zippy cartoon, it might seep into your understanding, your soul, and your enthusiasm to also join some sort of movement to change things.

Marc Steiner:

What popped in my head when I first started looking into the piece was the use of humor and satire in attacking fascism, attacking the growth of fascism. Maybe think of Charlie Chaplin.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, The Great Dictator

Marc Steiner:

That was so effective. But the buffoonery that he characterized Hitler with is the same with Trump. It is frightening and close.

Dwayne Booth:

It is. And I would say, again, one thing I just want to be clear about is that there can be elements of parody and burlesque in there, because what that does is that that invites the viewer into the conversation. It says that this is not so dangerous that you should cower. This person is a fool — A fool who is capable of great catastrophic actions, but he’s an idiot. He’s an idiot. You’re allowed to be smarter than an idiot, and you’re allowed to lose patience with an idiot.

So the second question. So, OK, if you can inspire somebody to be upset and recognize that they are somewhere in this strategy coming from an authoritarian of I will devour you at some point, and maybe this is where… I don’t know if you want to get into the college experience necessarily right now, but that was one of the things that’s interesting about being a professor for. I taught there for 11 years, and it’s always been in my mind. I love teaching, but I was hired as a professional because I was a professional cartoonist. I’m actually a college dropout, and so I bring the practice of what I do into the classroom.

One of the things that was very interesting is, as the world blows up, colleges and universities are institutions of privilege. There’s no way around it. There’s students, yes, that might be there with a great deal of financial aid or some part of a program that gets them in, but by and large, these are communities of privilege. So it was very interesting to see when the society was falling apart, when there was an obvious threat before it was exactly demonstrated about academic freedom and so forth, the strategy from many colleagues that I spoke to was, all right, if we hold our breaths and maybe get to the midterms, we’ll be okay. If we can hold our breaths and just keep our heads down for four years, maybe things will be better. And my reaction was just, do you realize that that’s a privileged position? There’s people who are really suffering. If that is what your strategy is moving forward, then we are doomed because there’s no reason to be brave and stick your neck out.

Marc Steiner:

A number of the things running through my head as you were just describing this, before we go back to your cartoons, which I want to get right back to, which is I was part of the student movement into the 1960s. We took over places, we fought police, we got arrested and expelled from schools. I was thrown out of University of Maryland after three semesters and got drafted. Don’t have to go into that story now, but that happened. So I’m saying there’ve always been places of radical disruption and anger and fighting for justice.

How do you see that different now? I mean, look, in terms of the work you do and what happened to you at Annenberg, tossing you out.

Dwayne Booth:

Well, that’s a two-part question, and we can get to the second part of that in a second. But when it comes to that question of what has happened to college campuses, essentially, is look around. The commodification of everything has reduced the call for speaking your mind, for free speech. Because if you’re going to be indoctrinated into thinking that the commodification of everything is what’s calling you to a successful life, then colleges and universities become indoctrination centers for job placement, way more than even… When I was in college, it was different. You were there to explore, to figure out who you were, what you wanted to do, literally, with the rest of your life. It wasn’t about like, OK, this is how you play the game and keep your mouth shut if you want to succeed. That is the new paradigm that is now framing the kinds of conversations and the pressures inside the classroom to “succeed”.

But my thing with my classes, I would always tell my class a version of the very first day is, what you’re going to learn in this class is not going to help you get a job [Steiner laughs]. What it’s going to do, if I’m successful, and I hope I will be, is it will allow you the potentiality to keep a white-knuckled grip on your soul. Because the stuff we’re looking at is how did the arts community communicate what the humanitarian approach to life should be? That’s not a moneymaking scenario. In fact, there’s examples all through history where you’re penalized for that kind of thinking.

But what is revealed to students is that this is a glimpse into what makes a meaningful life. It’s not surrendering to bureaucracy and hierarchy. It’s about pushing back against that.

Marc Steiner:

Right. And the most important thing in an institution can do — And I don’t want to dive too deep into this now — But is make you question and make you probe and uncover. If you’re not doing that, then you’re not teaching, and you’re not learning.

Dwayne Booth:

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s where we are now. Just even asking the question has become a huge problem. Even when everything started to happen with Gaza and with Israel, we had some conversations in class, without even getting, I wasn’t even trying to start conversations about which side are you going to be on? This is why you should be on this side and abhor the other side. It wasn’t even questions like that. The conversations we ended up having was the terror on the campus to even broach the subject.

My classes where we spoke very frankly about, I can’t even say the word “Israel”, I can’t say it. And it was also among the faculty. And I don’t know if you’ve spoken to other faculty members at other universities, and this shouldn’t be shocking, but at some point, a year ago, we were told, and we all agreed unanimously, not to use school email. They’re listening. We were going to communicate with WhatsApp or try to have personal conversations off campus because we do not trust the administration not to surrender all of our personal correspondence with these congressional committees attempting to blow up universities.

And they did that with me. There was some communication about Congress wants all of your communication with colleagues and students.

Marc Steiner:

That literally happened.

Dwayne Booth:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

They wanted all your communication?

Dwayne Booth:

Yes. And I wasn’t alone. This is what’s going on on college campuses. So A, it’s a really interesting thing to ask because I don’t own the correspondence I have on the servers at school. I don’t. So it’s not even up to me. I can say no, but they’re still going to do it. So that kind of question, what that does is say, you are under our boot. We want to make sure that you understand that you are under our boot and that you’re going to cooperate.

So what was my answer to that? My answer was, fuck you. Because this is coming after a semester where a couple of times I had to teach remotely because not only there were death threats on me, but being the professor in front of this class, there were death threats on my students. So knowing that and really being angry at the main administration and the interim president Jameson for surrendering to this kind of McCarthyism. Again, that’s an easy equation to make, but it’s accurate. It’s a hundred percent accurate.

Marc Steiner:

I’m really curious. Let’s stay with this for a moment before we leap into some other areas here, that when did you become first aware that they were coming after you? And B, how did they do it? What did they literally do to push you out?

Dwayne Booth:

Me being pushed out, it’s an interesting question to ask because Annenberg actually protected me. Jameson wanted me out when The Washington Free Beacon article came out in February of last year.

Marc Steiner:

The one that accused you of being an antisemite?

Dwayne Booth:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Dwayne Booth:

So again, what do we do with that? We clean house. We don’t look at the truth of the matter. We don’t look at the specifics. We don’t push back, we surrender. That’s the stance of the administration. So he wanted me fired, but the Dean of Annenberg was just like, no. So they protected me. It’s the School for Communication. It has a history of…

Marc Steiner:

It’s a school where you’re trained journalists and other people to tell the truth and tell the stories and dig deep and put it out there.

Dwayne Booth:

And to say no when you need to say no.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Dwayne Booth:

Right. So that happened. So they protected me. I was there because Annenburg protected me. It didn’t stop the administration, as you said at the beginning of the segment, Jameson then makes a public statement that basically says I’m an antisemite and that I’m reprehensible.

So that went on for all of last year, not so much the beginning of this semester because everybody was very focused on what the election was going to reveal.

So I was given the opportunity to develop a new class for this coming fall. So I took off the semester, was paid to develop this new course for, actually, about the alternative press and the underground comics movement of the ’60s and ’70s.

Marc Steiner:

I remember it well [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Very good. And so that’s considered the golden age for opinion journalism, which is lacking now. So I’m like, this is a great opportunity to, again, expose what our responsibility is as a free and open society. Let’s really talk about it. I even was going to start a newspaper as part of the class that students were going to contribute to. It was going to be a very big to-do.

Trump won. The newspaper was the first thing to be canceled. We don’t want to invite too much attention from this new regime on the campus. Again, it’s this cowardice that has real ramifications, as you were saying. These funds, as soon as there’s money involved, the strategy for moving forward becomes an economic decision and not one that has to do with people and their lives.

So me being let go, I was part of a number of adjuncts and lecturers who were also let go. So it’s not an easy connection to say that I was specifically targeted as somebody who should be fired. But that said, you could feel some relief. And as a matter of fact, being let go and then being, again, the attacks from the right-wing press increased, and all of a sudden we’re like, finally UPenn has gotten rid of the antisemite. And then we’re back in this old ridiculous argument.

And luckily, I’m not alone. I’m not so much in the spotlight because many people are stepping forward and, again, trying to promote the right kind of conversation about this.

Marc Steiner:

One of the things, a bunch of things that went through my head as you were talking, I was thinking about the course you wanted to teach on alternative press. I you ever get to teach that course again, I have tons of files for you to have, to go through.

Dwayne Booth:

[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was writing the textbook.

Marc Steiner:

Textbook. Oh, were you? OK.

Dwayne Booth:

I’m going to France, actually, and I’m going to interview Robert Crumb. I’m staying over his house. Oh, that’s great.

Marc Steiner:

Oh, that’s great. He must be really old now.

Dwayne Booth:

Yes. I’m really looking forward to it.

Marc Steiner:

[Laughs] I was there at the very [beginning]. I helped found Liberation News Service.

Dwayne Booth:

Oh, see.

Marc Steiner:

And I was at Washington Free Press back in the ’60s.

Dwayne Booth:

See? So you know. I curated an exhibit on the alternative press for the University of Connecticut a couple years ago. Hugely popular. They have an archive that is dizzying. It might be the biggest in the country. And so when I was curating and putting together that exhibit, I would go in and I would be, all day, I wouldn’t even eat, and I would pore through these newspapers and magazines at the time. And I would leave, and I would actually have this real sense of woe because looking at what that kind of journalism was attempting and accomplishing made me feel like we have lost.

Marc Steiner:

Every city and community had an underground paper across the country, and Liberation newspapers were there to service all those papers and bring them together. The power of the media in that era was very different and very strong.

Dwayne Booth:

Well, the work that I do as a cartoonist and somebody who uses visuals to communicate this stuff, that was all through these newspapers, all through this movement. The idea being is the arts community is there — Well, let’s do it this way. The job of journalism, one could say, is that it provides us with the first draft of history, which we’ve heard.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly.

Dwayne Booth:

So the idea as a journalist, what you’re supposed to be asking yourself is what is the real story here? And I’m going to approach it and try to be objective about it, but what is the real story here? The job of an artist in the arts community is to ask the very same question. What is this story really about? What does this feel like? But rather than searching for the objective version of that, it’s about looking for the subjective. This is how I feel about it. And that invites people in to share their own stories. Because really we’re just stories. We’re really just stories.

Marc Steiner:

Storytellers.

Dwayne Booth:

Exactly. So if you can have a form of journalism that not only draws on straight journalism but also can bring in Allen Ginsburg to write a poem that will then explore what does it mean to be a human being? Why are we vulnerable and why do we deserve protection? Until you have that inside of a conversation, why argue in favor of protecting, say, the people of Gaza?

Marc Steiner:

Let’s talk a bit about that. Now, look, this is what got you fired [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Well, I don’t… Well, again.

Marc Steiner:

It’s part of what got you fired.

Dwayne Booth:

It created a lot of heat for me last year, we can say.

Marc Steiner:

It is a very difficult question on many levels, being accused of being an antisemite or a self-hating Jew. If you criticize Israel, whether you use the word genocide or slaughter, whatever word you use has infected the entire country at this moment. Campuses, newspapers, everywhere, magazines. And in itself, it seems to me, also creates antisemitism. It makes it bubble up. Because it’s always there, it’s just below the surface. It doesn’t take much to unleash it. So I think we’re in this very dangerous moment.

Dwayne Booth:

We are. But I would say that, with that broad description, if people only approach the question with that broad of an approach, I think we’re in trouble.

Marc Steiner:

What do you mean by that?

Dwayne Booth:

I think the question of attempting to criticize Israel and then being called an antisemite is conflating politics with religion, nationalism with religion. Because really, again, look at it. Just look at all of the conversations that people have been having. To criticize the state of Israel is criticizing the state of Israel. It has really nothing to do with criticizing Judaism at all. Now, if somebody is Jewish and supporting Israel, OK, they’ve made that connection for themselves. So therefore, you can’t have an argument that says, you’re hurting my Jewishness, my Jewish identity by attacking a nation state, because they’re two different things. And if you’re protecting the virtue of a nation state, that is nationalism.

Marc Steiner:

It is. I don’t want to digress on this too deeply, but I think that when you are part of a minority that has been persecuted — My grandfather fought the czars, people in the streets of Warsaw, in the pogroms. My dad fought the Nazis. When you know that they just hate you because of who you are, which is the excuse they used to create Israel out of Palestine, which makes it a very complex matter. It was FDR who would not let Jews here and said, you have to go. You want to get out of those camps? You’re going there.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. There is that. Yep.

Marc Steiner:

So what I’m saying to all that, I’m saying it’s a very complicated matter.

Dwayne Booth:

And so the argument, though, and I totally agree with you. So what is important for that, the fact that it is a complicated matter, then you need to create space for the conversation to happen, and you have to create the space to be large enough to accommodate all of the emotion, the emotional component that is part of this, because that’s also very, very real. And then the less emotional stuff, like what is the intellectual argument piece of this? So yes, it is all completely knotted up, but the solution is to recognize how complicated it is and then create the space for people then to untangle it.

Because again, that’s why I said about the broad approach. The broad approach is not going to help us. The broad approach is going to actually disenfranchise people from wanting to enter into the conversation. Because you don’t want to say, and as you can see it happening over and over again, anybody who says, I’m against Israel, what Israel is doing, immediately they’re called, they’re shut down by people who don’t want to have that conversation, as being antisemitic. And nobody wants to feel like they could be called an antisemitic, especially if they are not one. Remember, people who are antisemitic, they tend to be proud of the fact that they are antisemitic.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, I know. But there are a lot of antisemites out there, a lot of racists who don’t admit that they’re antisemitic or racist.

Dwayne Booth:

Again, and the question, they don’t admit it. So again, so that’s where you need that kind of conversation to turn the light on in that darkness and give them the opportunity to either defend their antisemitism, have their antisemitism revealed so that they can then self-assess who they are. Because a lot of prejudices people have, they don’t know that they have them, and they have not been challenged.

So much of what we think and feel is reflexive thinking and feeling. You can’t burn that flag. I’m an American, it’s hurting my heart. Let’s look at the issue. What is trying to be communicated by the burning of the flag? It’s not shitting on your grandfather for fighting in the Second World War. But again, if somebody is going to have all that knotted up into this emotional cluster, it’s up to us as sane human beings who are seeking understanding and also empathy with each other to be able to enter in those things assuming, until it’s disproven, that we actually have the potential for empathy and understanding among each other. But you need to create the space and the conversation for that to happen.

Marc Steiner:

What was the specific work that had them attack you as an antisemite at Annenberg? What did they pull out?

Dwayne Booth:

They pulled out some cartoons that I had. It was interesting because they pulled out mostly illustrations that I had done for Chris Hedges. I’ve been Chris Hedges’s illustrator for a very long time.

Marc Steiner:

He used to work out of this building [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Yes, exactly. And so what they did was they pulled out these illustrations completely out of context from the article that I was illustrating, had them as standalone pieces, which again, if you’re doing cartoons or you’re doing any illustrations, what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to be provocative and communicate with a very short form. If it’s something as fiery as this issue, then you need, potentially, more information to know what my intent is as an artist. Those were connected to Chris Hedges’s articles that had them make absolute sense. So those were shown without the context of Chris Hedges’s articles.

They showed a couple cartoons that also were just standalone cartoons that had been published and posted for four months without anything except great adulation from readers, because I also work for Scheer Post, which is Robert Scheer’s publication. And I’ve known Bob for decades. And if you don’t know who Bob is, you should know who Bob is. He was the editor of Ramparts and has a very long history of attempting independent journalism.

Marc Steiner:

I can’t believe he’s still rolling.

Dwayne Booth:

He is. He’s 89.

Marc Steiner:

I know [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

It’s amazing. And so he was running my cartoons. He lost more than half of his family in the Holocaust. He knows what antisemitism looks like. And so these cartoons that were pulled, again, I had nothing but people understanding what I was trying to say. But taken, again, out of context, shown to an audience that is looking for any excuse to call somebody an antisemite, which is the Washington Free Beacon, who has called everybody an antisemite: Obama, Bernie Sanders, just everybody. And framing the parameters of that slander, presenting it to their audience who blew up, again, then started writing me: I want to rape your wife and murder your children. I know where you live. All of those sorts of things all of a sudden come out. So that happened.

And so again, there I am — And I’ve had hate mail. I’ve had death threats before. I’ve never been part of an institution where the strategy for moving forward is being part of a community was… All right. I was told to just not say anything at first. We’ll see if we can weather this. And then when the Jameson statement came out, I wrote to my dean and I said, I have to say something now. I can’t sit back and just let these people frame the argument because it’s not accurate.

Marc Steiner:

Right, right.

Dwayne Booth:

Then I started to talk to the press, and again, started to say, we need to understand that there is intent and context for all of these things, and I cannot allow the truncation of communication to happen to the degree where people are silenced and then people are encouraged to self-censor.

Marc Steiner:

So I’ll ask you a question. I’ve been wrestling with this question I wanted to ask you about one of your cartoons. It’s the cartoon where Netanyahu [inaudible] are drinking blood.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s not Netanyahu. I know which… Is it with the dove?

Marc Steiner:

Yeah.

Dwayne Booth:

OK. Yeah. Netanyahu is not in there.

Marc Steiner:

That’s right, I’m sorry. So the first thing that popped in my head when I saw that picture was the blood libel against the Jews by the Christians that took place. My father told me stories about when he was a kid how Christian kids across from Patterson, the other side of the park, would chase him. You killed, you drank Jesus’s blood, you killed Jesus, the major fights that they had. So talk a bit about that. That’s not the reaction you want us to have.

Dwayne Booth:

No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. It is interesting because I think that’s probably the leading one that people — And now when all this started up, again, they don’t even show it, they just describe it, and they describe it so inaccurately [Steiner laughs] that it just makes me crazy.

Marc Steiner:

You’re not shocked, are you [both laugh]?

Dwayne Booth:

No, no. But in the cartoon, it’s actually, it’s power brokers. These guys look like they’re power brokers from the 1950s. I like to draw that style of… And if you want to look at these guys, they look completely not Jewish. I pulled them from, like I said, they’re basically clip art from the 1950s. So they’re power brokers at a cocktail party. It’s playing off of the New Yorker style of the cocktail party with the upper class.

So they’re upper crust power brokers. Behind them is a hybrid flag that is half the American flag and half the Israeli flag. And they are drinking blood from glasses that says “Gaza”. And there is a peace dove that is walking into the room and somebody says, who invited that lousy antisemite.

As a cartoonist, understand that when it comes to, as I said earlier, trying to figure out how to make the point as quickly as you can and as eye catching as you can. If you look through the history of the genre, drinking blood is what monsters do. They do it all of the time in their criticism of people who are powerful and who are called monsters. I, frankly, when I was drawing it, I [wasn’t] like, well, this might be misinterpreted as blood libel. I didn’t know what blood libel was.

Marc Steiner:

I’m sure you didn’t.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. And again, and it was posted for a long time and nobody’s said anything about it. But then when it was called that, it became a very interesting conversation because it was like, oh, OK. So now I can see how that would flood the interpretation of the cartoon. And again, this is what happens in regular conversation. And particularly if you’re communicating as somebody who uses the visuals as your form of communication, there’s a thousand ways to interpret a visual.

Marc Steiner:

There are.

Dwayne Booth:

There are. And as the artist, you have to understand that you’re going to do the best that you can and hope that the majority of people are going to get what you’re trying to do. Which brings us, again, back to that second question or that point that I was making earlier, which is let’s have the conversation afterwards. If you understand that my intent was playing off of not a Jewish trope but a trope of criticizing power — Which, actually, out of curiosity, I went through the internet and I all of a sudden started to assemble, through time, using people are drinking blood constantly who are evil. So it’s used and so forth.

And so the challenge with something like that was to then try to communicate that that was not my intent. I know a communications, a free speech expert, in fact. She and I had a really interesting conversation about it because she is such a radical, she’s been more radical than I am. She wanted me to know that it was blood libel, and she wanted to hear me say, yes, I knew it was blood libel, but I’m going to use that to force the conversation and reclaim what that blood libel was supposed to be as, A, this ridiculous thing that actually is being applied as a truism in this circumstance.

But all of a sudden it became this academic conversation and I was just like, whoa, I don’t need it to be that, because you don’t want to upset everybody and confuse what your communication is, obviously. So I said, it wasn’t that. She goes, you sure [Steiner laughs]? Are you sure you weren’t trying to do that? I’m like, no, I wasn’t trying to do that. So that’s what that one was.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m glad we talked about this because I think that… I’m not going to dwell on this cartoon, but when I first showed this to some of my friends —

Dwayne Booth:

You’re not alone [crosstalk]. I get it. I totally get it.

Marc Steiner:

As I was preparing for our conversation, that was their first reaction as well.

Dwayne Booth:

Right. Right.

Marc Steiner:

Because your cartoons, they’re really powerful, and they get under an issue, and it glares in front of your eyes like a bright light. And they’re very to hard look at sometimes, whether it’s Trump eating shit, literally [both laugh], and the other images you give us. It’s like you can’t allow us to look away. You want us to ingest them.

Dwayne Booth:

I want you to ingest them and then have an honest reaction. And then, again, it doesn’t have to be in a conversation with me, have a conversation with somebody else. Because that cartoon that you were talking about, it started a bunch of debates.

Marc Steiner:

The Trump one?

Dwayne Booth:

No, no, no.

Marc Steiner:

Oh, the blood libel.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah — Don’t call it the blood libel one. See what I mean, man [both laugh]? So it started, what I would say is necessary debate to really get to the bottom of issues. Again, that’s really what we should be doing. We should be encouraging more and more difficult conversations. Because we’re not, and look at where we are. People are uncomfortable to even go into the streets. You don’t have to shout. You don’t have to carry a sign. People are being conditioned to be uncomfortable with making a statement in the name of humanity, even though humanity is suffering in real time in front of us. Look at Gaza. For me, there’s no way to frame the argument that can justify that. There’s just no way. There’s too many bodies, there’s too many dead people. There’s too much evidence that the human suffering that is happening over there right now in front of the world needs not to be happening.

Marc Steiner:

It needs not to be happening. [I’ll] tell [you] what just popped through my head as you were saying that, a couple things. One was the Vietnam War where millions of Vietnamese were slaughtered, North, South, all over. And we didn’t call that a genocide. We called that a slaughter. And then I was thinking as you were speaking about… I speak at synagogues sometimes about why we as Jews have to oppose what Israel’s doing to Gaza.

Dwayne Booth:

And I’ve gone to synagogues and seen those talks. That’s also what I’m [crosstalk] —

Marc Steiner:

They’re very difficult talks to have people just…

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

Because it’s an emotional issue as much as it’s a —

Dwayne Booth:

Exactly.

Marc Steiner:

— Logical and political issue. And so, when I look at your work, again, it engenders conversation. It makes you think it’s not just his little typical political cartoon. It’s like you sink yourself into your cartoons like an actor sinks himself into a part. That’s what I felt looking at your work.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny because just hearing you say that, it’s true that quite often I forget about my cartoons soon after I do them because I’m already onto the next one. And I’ve done searches for things and found my cartoons that I’ve forgotten. I have no memory of doing them [Steiner laughs]. Some of them I don’t even get, and I literally have to call my older brother and say, what was I trying to say with this? He’s very good at remembering what I was trying to say and can decipher my cartoons for me.

But yeah, it is a form of meditation. If you look at the work that I do, again, if you’re going to stick with a piece of art for hours, you have to be able to sustain your focus on it. So I meditate while I’m doing it and see if it feels true to my emotional reaction to what’s going on, then I post it.

Marc Steiner:

So lemme ask you this question. So think of one of your most recent cartoons, I dunno which one, I’ll let you think of it since I don’t know what your most recent cartoon is, and it’s about Gaza and Israel and this moment. Describe it and what you went through to create it.

Dwayne Booth:

One of the most recent ones that I did was, as the death toll continued to climb, and I think it was right after Trump started to talk about how beautiful he’s going to make Gaza once we take over. The normalizing of that, and even the attempts to make it a sexy strategy, hit me so hard that my approach to that was, OK, well what would that look like? What would the attempt to normalize that amount of human suffering, what would that look like?

Well, it sounds like a travel poster that is going to invite people to the new Gaza. So I decided to do a travel poster riffing off of an old Italian vintage come to Italy poster, just like a Vespa. Let’s get a Vespa in there and a sexy couple. Now, I don’t want to render something that has Gaza completely Trumpified already. We’ve seen what that looks like. Let’s, OK, satire. But let’s talk about, let’s visualize what that would look like right now moving towards that. So I have this young couple on a Vespa coming down a giant mountain of skulls, heading to the beach. And out in the beach there’s some Israeli warships. And it’s rendered, at a glance, to be very gleeful, but then you start to notice the details of it and the attempt to normalize, again, an ocean of skulls, [and] nobody’s recognizing the fact that these are a slaughtered population. So that’s what I thought.

And so, again, sometimes what you want to do is you want to say, alright, this is an ugly truth that’s being promoted as something that is beautiful, I’m going to show you what that looks like as something that’s been beautified. And the reaction, of course, is just like, oh my God, this hits harder than if I showed the gore, in the same way that if you go back to Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”, right? He published that anonymously. And he also, it’s very interesting because it’s about what do we do with the poor, bedraggled Irish people? We make them refuse for the needs of the British. We will cook the children, kill some of the grownups, make belts, make wallets, all of these things to feed the gentry of the British.

What’s very interesting about that is he sustained the irony of that all the way through. You don’t have the sense, he did not turn it into parody or burlesque or wild craziness. He presented it as a solution to the problem. Now, if you look at that, it actually makes business sense. It would actually solve the problem — Minus all the horror of killing babies and killing a bunch of people. It makes good business sense.

Now, if you look at that and you see that as a parallel to what is justified by big business and corporations now, it happens every single day. It’s been completely normalized. Look what’s going on with the environment. Look at the Rust Belt across this country. All of that stuff is rendered in service of profit and economics the same way that “Modest Proposal” was, and people have been conditioned to see it as normal and ignore the human suffering.

Marc Steiner:

I’m curious. The first one is, where’s that latest cartoon published?

Dwayne Booth:

I actually gave it to Hedges for one of his columns, and then I posted it and people wanted prints. I’ve sold prints of it. And it was also in the paper that comes out of Washington that Ralph Nader does… Gosh, what’s it called? The Capitol…

Marc Steiner:

I should know this

Dwayne Booth:

Myself. I should know this too, because I’ve been doing cartoons for them for a few years now.

Marc Steiner:

Capitol Hill Citizen.

Dwayne Booth:

That’s it. See, I missed the word “hill”. Thank God.

Marc Steiner:

Capitol Hill Citizen.

Dwayne Booth:

Which is a great newspaper. And it gives me the opportunity to see my stuff on physical paper again, which looks gorgeous to me. I’d rather —

Marc Steiner:

Now that you’ve described the cartoon, I saw it this morning as I was getting ready for this conversation. I didn’t know whether it was the latest one you’ve done.

Now that you were facing what we face here, both in Gaza and with Trump and these neofascists in charge of the country, your brain must be full of how you portray this. I just want you to talk a bit about, both creatively and substantively, how you approach this moment when we are literally facing down a neofascist power taking over our country and about to destroy our democracy. People think that’s hyperbole, you’re being crazy. But we’re not.

Dwayne Booth:

No, it’s happening.

Marc Steiner:

And if you, as I was, a civil rights worker in the South, you saw what it was like to live under tyranny, under an authoritarian dictatorship if you were not white. I can feel the entire country tumbling in at this moment. So tell me how you think about that and how you approach it with your work.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s an interesting time because, in many ways, my work is quadrupled. Partly because it’s just what I’ve always done, but the other part is I don’t see this profession stepping up to the challenge at all. I don’t see any single-panel cartoonists who are hitting the Israel Gaza issue nearly as hard as I am.

Marc Steiner:

No, they’re not.

Dwayne Booth:

No. And I see a lot also, of the attacks on Trump. And again, it always strikes me as, how would the Democratic Party render a cartoon? That’s what I see out there. And it’s too soft. It is just way too soft. So as I increase my output, I feel the light getting brighter and brighter on me, which makes me feel more and more unsafe inside this society because yes, they’re targeting people who are not citizens, but what’s next? We all know the poem.

But at the same time, I feel like it’s a responsibility that I have, and I’m sure that you probably have this same sense of responsibility. Speaking up, talking out loud, even though it’s on my nervous system, it is grinding me down in a way that is new.

But that said, my numbers of people who are coming to me are increasing. I’m actually starting a substack so I can have my own conversations with people and so forth, because we have got to increase this megaphone. We just have to.

In fact, one thing that was interesting is just this last October I was invited to speak at a cartooning conference in Montreal. And the whole reason to have me up there and to talk about it was was from the perspective of the people, the organizers, I was the only American cartoonist who was cartooning about Gaza.

Marc Steiner:

Really?

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. And I’d had conversations, remember, that there’s some cartoonists who are doing some things that, again, are just a little bit too polite. Because if we’re looking at this thing and we do think that this is a genocide, you can’t pull your punches. And so, in fact, when this stuff had happened with me initially with the Washington Free Beacon, I reached out.

There’s another colleague I have who’s a cartoonist, whose name is Andy Singer, and he and I have been in communication over the years, and he’s somewhat fearless on this issue. He and I were talking, and we came up with this idea, let’s publish a book that has cartoonists who, over the last many decades, have had a problem criticizing Israel for fear of being called anti-Semitic.

We sent it out to our colleagues and other international cartoonists and so forth. We found two, Matt Wuerker and Ted Rall, who were willing to participate in this project. I had a number of conversations with others who just contacted me privately and said, I can’t do it because I’ll lose my job. I can’t do it because I’ll be targeted and I’m too afraid. I can’t get close to this subject, my editor won’t let me do it, so I can’t do it. International cartoonists, different idea, a whole different approach, sending me stuff. I can tell my story. I’ve been jailed. I’ve been beaten up for this kind of work. And so it became a very interesting thing.

Again, the United States is, by and large, it’s an extremely privileged society. And yet, when it comes to issues like this, it demonstrates the most cowardice because we’ve been made to be way too sensitive about our own discomfort to advance the cause of humanity and justice, love, all of those things because we’ve seen that there is a penalty for doing that, and we do not want to give up certain creature comforts. We don’t want to be called something that we are not, and we need to be uncomfortable. In many ways we have to break soft rules. We have to chain ourself to fences and then make it an inconvenience to be pulled from those fences.

Marc Steiner:

This has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate you being here today and for all the work that you do. And I think that we’re at this moment where the reason that many of us who are part of Jewish Voices for Peace and other organizations is to say those voices are critical in saying this is wrong and has to end now. And I appreciate the power of the work you do. It’s just amazing. And we encourage everybody, we’ll be linking to your work so people can see it and consume it. And I hope we have a conversation together in the future.

Dwayne Booth:

Thanks. I agree. Thanks a lot, Marc.

Marc Steiner:

Good to have you sliding through Baltimore.

Dwayne Booth:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Dwayne Booth, also known as Mr. Fish, for joining us today here for this powerful and honest conversation. We will link to his work when we post this episode. You want to check that out.

And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for working on her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Even before the end of the ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli attacks on the West Bank were escalating in 2025. By Feb. 5, 70 Palestinians were reported killed this year alone. Anna Lippman, a member of Independent Jewish Voices, has traveled on numerous occasions to the West Bank from her home in Toronto, Canada, to stand with Palestinians defending their land from attacks by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers.

Most recently, Lippman was in the Masafer Yatta community in the occupied West Bank as Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning Palestinian director of the film No Other Land, was detained by Israeli forces after being attacked by armed Israeli settlers in that same community. Lippman joins The Marc Steiner Show for an in-depth discussion on her experiences on the ground in the West Bank, where attempted land grabs and expulsions of Palestinians are growing by the day.

Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. It’s good to have you all with us as we continue to cover Palestine and Israel and hear from people throughout that struggle, and continue our series Not in Our Name — Jewish voices that oppose the occupation of Palestine and the oppression and repression of Palestinians by Israelis.

On March 24, co-director of the film No Other Land, Hamdan Bilal, was attacked by Israeli settlers and was badly injured — And while in the ambulance, he was attacked again. The Israeli police took him to an unknown location and, following an international outcry, he was released the next day.

Toronto resident Anna Lippman was in the area known as Masafer Yatta on the West Bank. While she was providing protective presence to Palestinians, Lippman, whois Jewish, was also attacked — Though not as severely — By Israeli settlers, and also was not arrested. Lippman spoke afterwards to the online media where she said what brings you back here is the people, meeting the people here, the children, the elders, the activists, the mothers, all of them, seeing the way that they continue to resist — Not just writing articles, but sharing their story through their everyday acts of resistance, continuing to be on their land, continuing their careers, their family lives, and the joy they find on their land and with their families, with their communities. It’s so beautiful. The hospitality they gave me as a Jewish person whose taxes and identity are used to kill their cousins, they welcome me into their home and feed me even though they have almost nothing.

Today we are joined by Anna Lippman. She’s a Toronto member of Independent Jewish Voices, and has long been showing up in solidarity with Palestinian people in opposition to Israel’s campaign of violence and displacement. And she opposes deeply, which we’ll talk about today, the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Now, she went to the West Bank to protect Palestinians and showed huge heart and courage in her time there. She’s the daughter of a Holocaust surviving family and takes that into her heart as well when it comes to fighting and supporting liberation of Palestinian people.

Anna, welcome. It’s good to have you with us.

Anna Lippman:  Thanks for having me.

Marc Steiner:  So many places to start, but let me just begin, if you could just talk a bit about your time on the West Bank: A, was that the first time you’ve been there? And B, how did that affect you? You went there already opposed to the occupation, but I’m very curious how that affected you when you were there.

Anna Lippman:  Yeah, so I’m actually currently in the West Bank.

Marc Steiner:  At this moment?

Anna Lippman:  At this moment, which is why my internet is still terrible. So I’ve been here for two months, and I’ll be here for another month. It’s actually my fourth time here doing protective presence work, using both my international and my Jewish privilege to try to mitigate the violence and the ethnic cleansing.

As a kid, I went to Israel a lot of times, but I had never been to the occupied Palestinian territories, the West Bank. And so going for my first time and seeing it, even though I had been doing this work for so long, it really made my resolve so much stronger because the things that you see here, it’s impossible to imagine. And the relationships that you make with the people here and then the violence that you witness upon them, it just breaks your heart.

Marc Steiner:  So let me jump into some things you just said because I think it’s important. For people listening to us today, where are you on the West Bank? Who are you staying with?

Anna Lippman:  I am in the region of Masafer Yatta, the South Hebron Hills, and I’m in the village of Susya, most famous for being the home of Academy Award-winning director Hamdan Bilal.

Marc Steiner:  So I assume then, if you’re there, you’re staying with Palestinian families?

Anna Lippman:  They’re hosting us in the village. They have basically a guest house in the middle of the village where we sleep and where basically, when we’re not sleeping, children either are playing with us [Steiner laughs] or people are coming to get us to respond to attacks.

Marc Steiner:  And who is the “we”?

Anna Lippman:  So I’m actually here with seven other Jewish activists. We’re part of the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. There’s also several other non-Jewish activists. But for myself and for the people in this group, it’s really important for us to show up as Jews because, not [inaudible] show the world what it means to oppose the state and Zionism, but also so many Palestinians here have never met a Jew that doesn’t want to harm them. And so this, in many ways, is the work of doing that cultural exchange and helping people understand that this is a terrible thing that is happening, but it doesn’t represent all Jews.

Marc Steiner:  One thing you said, just to explore briefly for a moment together about the pain and terror the Jews and Israelis are foisting on Palestinians in this occupation and more. And I was reading about your work and who you are, and the idea that Jews, who suffered so much over thousands of years, who survived — And my family survived the Holocaust, the Cossack repressions in Eastern Poland, the inquisitions that took place. Everything that has happened to us as a people over the millennia, that we could then turn and do what we’re doing in Israel.

Anna Lippman:  Yes, I agree with you. And on the inside, I wonder the same way. Especially, like you, I’m the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. She was in Auschwitz. To understand the way that that which happened before I was born impacts my life, I could never want to do this to someone else. But also, it’s the plain and sad truth that hurt people hurt people. And if Jews, we don’t deal with our trauma, if we’re able to let others exploit it for their imperial goals, then of course we’re seeing what’s happening in Israel.

Marc Steiner:  So I’m very curious what the response has been to you, first from the Israelis, but then the Palestinians. What has been your experience in what we might call Israel proper, for the moment, in terms of what you experience when people know who you are and why you’re there?

Anna Lippman:  To be honest, I don’t tell people within Israel proper who I am and why I’m there [Steiner laughs].

Marc Steiner:  I get it.

Anna Lippman:  [Crosstalk] I fear for my life.

Marc Steiner:  Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.

Anna Lippman:  And even in the West Bank, we have to be a little careful who we talk to about what we’re doing because there are many ways that these names get back to the Israeli government. It’s despicably easy for me to get away with this within Israel because I look very Ashkenazi. I look like everyone else. No one looks at me and blinks twice. And that’s why the Jews come to do this work is because we have these privileges and we might as well exploit them for something good.

Marc Steiner:  So let’s explore for a moment what that work is. When you say, we’ve said a number of times, you’re there doing this work, talk to people listening to us today about what this work is that you’re doing.

Anna Lippman:  So a lot of what we’re doing is documentation and accompaniment work. So, especially in Masafer Yatta, most of the people here are farmers and shepherds. They very much rely on the land. And so a key way for them to be able to remain here is to be able to take their flocks out, is to be able to harvest their crops. And so we literally just accompany them on their shepherding shifts, as they go to the grocery store, what have you, not only because Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals understand that you don’t want to act the same towards Palestinians in private that you do in front of an international. Because I’m getting this interview and Palestinians are not, so they don’t want us to tell the world what they’re doing to the Palestinians, what’s happening. And this is what we do when we bring our privilege here is we’re able to share it back out.

Marc Steiner:  In the process of your work over there, what has been your interaction with Israelis, with Jewish Israelis, about what you’re doing?

Anna Lippman:  Yeah, it’s been terrible. When the army comes, they give us quite a hard time despite us being Jewish. They call us anarchists. They say we are making chaos. A soldier told me the other day that I was here to make problems for the Jewish. And the settlers themselves, they’re even worse. The army will call us traitors, self-hating Jews, but the settlers will yell all kinds of profanities at us. They’ll chase us. I’ve been in multiple rock attacks.

Marc Steiner:  What does that mean?

Anna Lippman:  Groups of young settlers coming to throw rocks at the villages, the Palestinians, basically a stoning.

Marc Steiner:  In their minds a biblical stoning.

Anna Lippman:  Yes, of course.

Marc Steiner:  The vast majority of settlers in the West Bank are right-wing extremist, Orthodox Jews, is that right?

Anna Lippman:  Yeah. And the thing is that on the front lines of these more extremist settlements are mostly young men, like 15- to 20-year-olds that are sometimes called the Hilltop Youth, who are taken from bad homes, off the street, and brought to these settlements that are run by really right-wing fascist people that tell them, this is your land. You must protect it. You must shepherd. And if you see Palestinians, attack them before they attack you. And so who we mostly see is teenage boys, and that makes it a difficult dynamic to hate them.

Marc Steiner:  I understand. Let me take a step backwards here with you for just a minute because this is literally, I’ve been involved in this, in covering this, my entire life, almost. But what you’re describing now, what you just said about Israeli boys on these settlements attacking you and the Palestinians were brought there, were in trouble and brought to these… Talk a bit about that. Who are these kids? Where do they come from? What do you mean they were in trouble? It sounds like what — And I hate saying this — It sounds like what fascists did in Germany and Italy, taking youths off the street and turning them into stormtroopers.

Anna Lippman:  Yes, exactly. And it’s very similar here. Sometimes it’s rabbis, sometimes it’s just agricultural entrepreneurs. And they’ll go to places like Tel Aviv, like Jerusalem, like Be’er Sheva, places within 48, and they’ll tout their programs as helping at-risk youth and providing rehabilitation centers for at-risk youth. So these previously street youths are now productive members of society. They’re learning how to farm, they’re going to school.

And actually, because they’re touted this way, they get a lot of funding from places like the JNF that funds social service projects, from places like the Israeli government that funds rehabilitation for at-risk youth. But at the same time, there’s enough of a distance that the Israeli government can blame these youth for an attack. And then, through keeping an arm’s distance to them, they’re both supporting the youth to be there to do this ethnic cleansing, and they can blame the youth and say it’s not part of the state, it’s extrastate actors.

Marc Steiner:  So would it be fair to say, just to explore this for a moment — Then we can go on something else — But is it fair to say that these kids that are taken to these settlements, who are in trouble from the stuff they did in the streets, are kids who are what we call Mizrahim, that there are kids who are from Arab African descent in Israel. Would that be about right?

Anna Lippman:  Mostly not. Mostly they’re Ashkenazi. Sometimes they’re Mizrahi, but the vast majority of them are Ashkenazi. A lot of them are from places like Europe and Ukraine. A lot of them are just born and raised in Israel.

Marc Steiner:  That’s a pretty horrendous description. I think the world is not aware of what you’re describing at this moment. I think most people, I wasn’t, are not aware, and I stay on top of this. It’s something that is almost, it’s a frightening Orwellian step.

Anna Lippman:  It definitely is. And it’s been happening for quite a while. And not only is it terrible for the Palestinians, but it’s so exploitative [of] these young men.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, absolutely. I’m also curious, I’ve not been to the West Bank, but as a young person — I was a very young person — I was a Freedom Rider, and I was [on the] Eastern Shore, Maryland, Mississippi, Alabama. And it was terrifying. But you did it because it had to be done.

Anna Lippman:  Exactly.

Marc Steiner:  So I want to talk about you in that regard, what it’s like for you to live on the edge of that violence, protecting the human rights and liberation of Palestinians as a Jewish woman?

Anna Lippman:  It’s a lot. It’s very scary, and it’s not comfortable. I think a lot of times I feel like I’m on a three-month firefighting shift. You can never really put your guard completely down because things could go off at any minute and you’ll have to run out of the house and go stop this fire. And it really impacts the activists here because it’s a lot on your body, on your mind.

And then I see the Palestinians who live this every day, and I remember that I will go home to Netflix and Uber Eats, and they will not. This is where they live. And so I think, just like you said, this is what has to be done, even though it’s not my favorite thing to do, for sure.

Marc Steiner:  All right. So I guess you’ve been aware of all the crackdowns taking place in Canada, in Germany, across the globe, against Palestinians.

Anna Lippman:  Absolutely.

Marc Steiner:  So just to hear your thoughts and analysis of what all that means, this literally international crackdown, and it’s going to begin to happen in larger ways here in the United States as well with Donald Trump back in the White House.

Anna Lippman:  Absolutely, yeah. No, I totally agree. And Canada is not that far off from Trump. We don’t know who’s going to win this next election, and Canada is going quite right itself. And I think one thing I’ve always learned about Palestine is it’s sort of the moral center of the world. Everything that Israel does in Palestine, their militarization, their technology, their AI, they export it to the rest of the world. Police, [armies] from all over the world, go train with the IDF.

And so to me, [it’s] surprising to see the ways that this extreme crackdown is going global and is starting to impact people that perhaps thought they were a bit more safe. And I think that’s why everyone who feels strongly about this, who feels strongly about the right to speak up for what you believe in, needs to be saying no, needs to be standing up. Because if we don’t say this is too much, what student are they going to snatch off the streets next?

Marc Steiner:  And it sounds like, what I’ve seen written before and what you’re describing, people don’t realize this Western American and Israeli cooperation in testing out weaponry and more is a test run for oppression universally.

Anna Lippman:  Exactly, yes. And Israel does it very well. And other imperial settler colonial countries like Canada, they pay attention. They want to do it well too.

Marc Steiner:  So tell me a bit, for people listening to us in the time we have left, a bit about what your daily life and work is like there, what you’re experiencing firsthand as a young Jewish woman in the West Bank living with Palestinians and staring down right-wing settlers and the Israeli army.

Anna Lippman:  I think what, to me, is most noticeable about my day-to-day experience here is it’s so unpredictable that it’s impossible to plan a month ahead, and very difficult to plan two days ahead.

Marc Steiner:  Wow.

Anna Lippman:  We’ll wake up, we’ll go shepherding, we’ll be having a lovely time, and then suddenly a settler will come in their truck, try to run us over, and we’re taking footage of this, talking to lawyers, taking people to the police station to give testimony. And that’s your whole day. And sometimes we can be very lucky and we’ll just have a morning where things are great and we’ll get to hang out with the families and just chill. But even in those quiet times, there’s still tension because it’s so unpredictable that you never know what is coming or when. And every time that you continue to stay in your land, that you continue to call settlers out, they seek revenge. So just like the Palestinians here, I can’t really give you a day-to-day because the settlers don’t let us have that regularity and schedule.

Marc Steiner:  What do you mean by that?

Anna Lippman:  They keep us on our toes by intentionally being unpredictable, by telling us they’ll come back tonight, then not, but coming to attack three days later. So it’s very hard.

Marc Steiner:  As an activist in the midst of this, and more in the middle of it than most people are who might oppose what’s happening, because you’re there, physically there, putting your life on the line, how do you see it unfolding in the future? And where are the possibilities that we can actually find a road to peace where Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews live in that place together? Because in the end, for me, I have this poster on my wall — I’ve said this before on other shows — I have this poster on my wall that I got in Cuba in 1968, and it’s a map of all of Palestine, and it has a Palestinian flag on one side and an Israeli flag on the other side, and it says “One state, two people, three faiths”. And that’s kind of been my mantra for a long time. So I’m asking you that question in that spirit because it almost feels impossible to attain.

Anna Lippman:  Yeah, I think that it has been really grim for the last two or so years, and it’s been really difficult to find hope. I think where I find hope is the fact that so many more people know about Palestine than they did in 2014, than they did in 2021. So for me, this gives me hope when I see a random person that’s not Jewish, that’s not Arab, who knows about Palestine and cares about the injustice there. I think the more we speak up, the more we ask our governments to hold the Israeli government accountable, the more that we will find actual peace.

But it’s also important to recognize that peace, true peace, means equality, humanity, and dignity for everyone from the river to the sea. And so we cannot have a state, two states, 12 states, I don’t care [Steiner laughs]. But if Palestinians don’t have the right to live in their land, to return to their ancestral land, to be as much of a society as an Israeli citizen is, there will never be peace because peace is not built on oppression.

Marc Steiner:  Anna Lippman, a couple of things here. First of all, I do want to say this to you, and I want everyone listening to us here at The Real News to know it, what you and others like you are doing at this moment takes, and the Yiddish word is chutzpah, takes a lot of heart and strength and bravery to stand up for what you’re doing. It’s not just carrying a placard around an embassy. You’re in the midst of it, saying, no, not in our name, this has to end.

And I do want to thank you for what you’re doing. I think your voice and the voices of others around you, along with Palestinians, is what we want to continue to hear more [of] on this program. And for one, I want to stay in touch, and I want to help work to bring more voices like yours on, but also to expand those voices and give people the opportunity and chance to do exactly what you are doing.

Anna Lippman:  Yes, I love that.

Marc Steiner:  That will change it.

Anna Lippman:  I think so. We gotta have hope, right?

Marc Steiner:  Yes, we do. Look, I’ll say this one last thing. I say this often. One of the scariest things for people in the South during Civil Rights, which you see all the white freedom workers, and among those, the majority of the white people who put their lives on the line in Civil Rights were Jews.

Anna Lippman:  Yes. This is our history, right?

Marc Steiner:  Yes. Right. So you’re carrying on a tradition, and you’re a brave human being, a brave woman. Let’s do stay in touch, and whatever stories we can tell together about your experience and others’ experiences and the experiences of the Palestinian lives that you touch and live with, we want to put on the air and do that.

Anna Lippman:  Yeah. That’s so great. Thank you so much for having me, and, really, for everything.

Marc Steiner:  Please stay safe and stay strong. Thank you.

Anna Lippman:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  Thank you once again to Anna Lippman for joining us today. And I want to reiterate what I said during our conversation. The bravery she and other young Jews are showing in Israel Palestine, living with Palestinians to say, we, as Jews, say not in our name, is literally putting their lives on the line, just as people did to end racial segregation in America. We will, I will, continue to highlight their work, and we’ll be hearing more from Anna Lippman, and other Anna Lippmans as well, as the voices of the Palestinians they work with put their lives on the line, and they’re there to stand with them.

Once again, thank you to Anna Lippman for joining us today. Thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, our audio editor, Alina Nehlich, and producer, Rosette Sewali, for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you, Anna Lippman, for all the work you do and for joining us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Birju Dattani’s tenure as Canada’s chief human rights commissioner was short-lived. After holding the post for less than a year, Dattani was forced to resign by a smear campaign targeting him for his social media posts criticizing Israel. Now, Dattani is suing his critics, and joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss his case and the wider implications for human rights and free speech in countries backing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.

Links:

• Read the Statement of Claim: https://www.stlbarristers.ca/for-media
• Support Birju Dattani’s legal fund: https://gogetfunding.com/help-birju-dattani-put-cija-lantsmann-and-levant-on-trial/

Production: David Hebden, Rosette Sewali
Post-production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have y’all with us, and we continue covering issues around the globe with people under attack from the right, and there’s a war going on. We know that war is happening in this country, United States, in Canada, across the globe, where the right is seizing power in one country after the other. And we are all here in that battle for the future. And we’re talking today to Birju Dattani. He was the executive director of the Yukon Human Rights Commission that’s in Canada, but for a very short while. That’s what we’re going to talk about. And he works as Director of Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Centennial College, assistant regional director of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and has been an activist and a lawyer and keeps on fighting despite the fact that he was pushed out by right male elements in the Jewish community and in the parliament that went after him and forced him to resign, which he did. The battle continues in court in other places. And vi welcome. Good to have you with us.

Birju Dattani:

Thank you, Marc. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Marc Steiner:

Let me just, for folks who don’t know Canada that well, our American listeners or European listeners may not know a lot about what’s going on. What is the climate, the political climate that allowed you to be pushed out of a human rights commission to be attacked? What is the politics going on there?

Birju Dattani:

Well, I think the climate here in some ways is from where I sit worse than it is, or was, I should say, worse than it was in the United States. I think with this current regime that you have in the United States, all bets are off, of course. But I think that in a lot of ways historically and in a post October 7th world, the environment in Canada did not admit and has not admitted a diversity of voices on this issue or a diversity of perspectives on this issue. So in that sense, the space for discussion of things such as Israeli policy has been extraordinarily narrow, narrowly narrow. And that I think in the months following October 7th became narrower still. So for instance, and some of this you may have heard, but for the benefit of your audience, university students who would sign open letters in support or in solidarity with Palestinians would be boycotted from the legal profession if they were law students. Not only the students signing those letters, but the entirety of law schools would be boycotted by prominent law firms, thereby barring the participation to the legal profession, often from law students who are from historically marginalized backgrounds.

Marc Steiner:

That’s what’s happening at this moment.

Birju Dattani:

So in the aftermath of October 7th, so I’m going back to

November, December, 2023 letters were issued, the healthcare workers, educators who had shared a critical perspective would be canceled, many of them fired, run out of employment broadcasters, same thing and very little politically. I know that in the United States, you have voices like Rashida tb, you have Ellan Omar, you have a larger aggregate of voices, I think, on the left than we do in Canada. I mean, we do have some voices. Heather McPherson, for instance, of the NDP has been quite good on this issue. Nikki Ashton, Charlie Angus, but I think smaller country, those voices are in the aggregate, smaller and power is often concentrated in the hands of people who are a lot more, not only to the right, but even the center. And the center left positions on this issue are indistinguishable in some cases.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah. Quick digression, then jump right back in. I mean, you mentioned a new Democratic party, the left party in Canada. I remember when we all were excited at one point that they were actually potentially had some power, but I mean, it says a lot about where our two countries are. So let’s really step back for a moment and really explore what happened to you in the first place as a Muslim, the first Muslim in that kind of position and the battles it took place and the attack the place as soon as you got this job, as soon as you were being appointed to this commission, the attacks came from people in Parliament and other folks in Canada accusing you of being pro Hamas, being a terrorist, hating Jews being an antisemite. Tell us a bit about how that unfurled.

Birju Dattani:

Well, I think that the way that it unfurled is something that was never a secret in an employment situation. I mean, I have a resume like anybody else does. And when I was a PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, I was a member of the Center for Palestine Studies among other academic institutions based out of that university. That was of course, on my resume, not a secret, certainly not a secret that I’ve kept. Some of my scholarship is available publicly, some of it isn’t. And just the way that it works. I’ve been on so many panels on international law, much of it on Israel Palestine, some of it not, some of it being on other issues that was being dredged up, and it was a lot of innuendos. So it would be something along the lines of you lectured during Israel apartheid week. That’s it. No one really knew what I had said.

So oftentimes it would be a guilt by association, paint by numbers type of a thing. So for instance, I shared a podium with Ben White who’s authored a number of books, who’s a journalist. His articles have appeared in the Independent, the Guardian, et cetera. So someone would go searching through Ben White’s books to find something that looked objectionable from a certain standpoint. And I thought, okay, well those are Ben White’s views and Ben White is entitled to his views. Being on a panel is not a team sport. I mean, my views are my views, but a lot of what I was doing during Israel Apartheid week was to explain what apartheid is, an international law, for example, or having shared a panel with Moba who was a Guantanamo Bay detainee, the same sort of horror stories. At some point he’s released from Guantanamo Bay, he’s given a settlement by the British government.

It was omitted that while I did share a panel with him, and I’ve always been against torture. I also, on that panel, I shared a platform with someone from Breitbart News. Of course, they put the thumbs over the words that would indicate that the person sitting right next to me was from Breitbart News or number of panels where I shared a platform with someone who was aboard the Mafia Marmara, which I didn’t know at the time, and it doesn’t really matter to me that he was aboard the Mafia Marmara. But at a lot of these panels, there’d be also members of the Zionist Federation of the United Kingdom, members of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain who were also on that panel. So there was in omission or selective rendering of this in a way that you would have to go out of your way to omit those facts.

And so this started to take on a life of its own in some ways. But I sat there thinking, at any point is someone going to attribute a view to me that they find objectionable? Which eventually did come in, again, a sentence taken out of context from part of my dissertation, which talked about or aligned, that suggested that terrorism as a strategy can be rational. And of course that isn’t a controversial proposition in the academic literature, but that was used to make it seem as though I was someone who glorified terrorism, the bad faith illusion that was taking place. I think that prompted almost a dozen academics in Canada to then speak publicly to the fact that number one, I wasn’t justifying terrorism number two, that’s basic international relations 1 0 1 stuff. And lastly that this seemed to be a bad faith smear job because they weren’t actually checking in with experts in the field.

Marc Steiner:

So I want to talk a bit about what the political dynamics are right now in Canada that even allowed this attack on you personally to take place. And the present conflict with Israel and Gaza. Israel and Palestinians has really gripped the world and people are really divided over it in deep ways. And I just want to know what the dynamic is in Canada and around you that allowed this to happen. Why did it happen?

Birju Dattani:

Sure. So I think that activism from pro-Israel law groups, I think around me and around this issue and related issues have focused really on two things. The first is to push to adopt the highly controversial IRA definition or our IHRA definition on antisemitism IRA standing for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,

Which conflates criticism of Israel in a lot of cases with antisemitism. And second, this attempt to suppress any concept of anti Palestinian racism as being recognized as a bonafide and legitimate type of racism. So adding to that context, there was a proposed piece of legislation called Bill C 63, also known as the Online Harms bill, where the liberal government was seeking to reintroduce a provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which would prescribe hate speech among other things. So there are criminal law dimensions to that, which would have nothing to do with the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the Canadian Human Rights Act, but there was a provision which would resurrect something that existed in that act before, which is to make hate speech actionable under Canadian human rights legislation. So a lot of these groups likely looked at the fact that given those twin efforts, calling on the adoption of the IRA definition of antisemitism on the one hand, and trying to suppress any notion of anti Palestinian racism as a legitimate racism on the other, I’m sure that if the person proposed for my position was a technocrat that really didn’t know very much about these issues, it’s easier than to direct your lobbying efforts in a way that that person might take your position.

I think that that would be harder with me given my academic background on these issues, but also and don’t want to lose sight of the fact that the conniption over my personal identity as someone who identifies as a Muslim who’s a person of color, those two things or those consolation of factors led to these efforts and the alacrity with which they were pursued.

Marc Steiner:

So in Canada at this moment, I mean Jews are minority in Canada. I have cousins in Canada, they all flipped from Poland. They came here, they went to Canada, they went to Palestine, they went all over Uruguay. But so I have cousins from Montreal and Toronto, and they are a minority community. And so what I was shocked about when I read what happened to you was that that was allowed to happen in terms of using antisemitism. The more they use and abuse antisemitism, the more it loses its meaning because it has lots of depth. It’s all over the place. So I’m very curious about the political dynamic in Canada at this moment that allows you and people like you to be attacked and where that comes from and what kind of movement is growing to fight it.

Birju Dattani:

And that’s a really interesting question mark. So I think what this looks like is, in some respects, Canada isn’t all that different in terms of the approaches and the views on this from the United States, from Europe, from the Anglosphere in terms of Jewish communities and in particular Jewish institutions as distinct from Jewish communities. So whether or not the institutions are an accurate reflection of the constituencies that they represent, I think is very much being called into question. But again, that doesn’t always play out in a way that’s reflective. So you’ve probably often heard it said, particularly in the American context, that most members of Jewish communities favor a two state solution. They are against the increase of settlements. They are typically voters. They vote for the Democratic party.

But that doesn’t come out when you look at the institutions that purport to speak to their names. So you wouldn’t know that by seeing what organizations like APAC or the A DL are doing or saying relative to those positions. So I’m reminded of Ron Dermer when he was the ambassador to Israel in the last Trump administration. He very famously said, we should stop dedicating our attentions on American Jews who are disproportionately among our critics. Let’s focus instead on evangelical Christians implying that there are more reliable ally. I think those dynamics play out in a similar way in Canada where the views of Jewish communities are not always reflected in the institutions that purport to speak out in their name. So there’s been wider efforts on those members of the Jewish community who do see this as problematic and who have been more vocal in speaking out. So the group independent Jewish voices, for instance, has been among my most strident supporters. I think they’ve issued multiple statements. They join me at the Deus during my press conference. They have posted a lot of my story on social media. I I actually attended a Shabbat dinner on Purim with members of the United Jewish People’s Order of Canada, independent Jewish voices and other members of the progressive Jewish community who have been very vocal. So

Marc Steiner:

In terms of what’s happening to you right now, you attacked online in a pretty vicious manner by Bene Brith and this woman, doya Kurtz, who refers to you as Ew hater, talking about how you were a terrorist supporter. I’ve looked at, I spent some time looking at what you write, looking at things you put out, nothing I saw in any of that that can be construed as antisemitic, as hating Jews. So what is the political dynamic in Canada that allows that to happen now? And what about the movement building to defend you? It seems like a lot of places that you would think but naturally come around and say, this is outrageous. We can’t let this happen. It’s not happening. So I want to hear about those two things. If you could lay those out for us.

Birju Dattani:

Yeah. I think that to put it this way, the way that these attacks took place has less to do with what I’ve actually said or written. And again, as I’ve mentioned before, part of the frustrating things was there have been very few opinions or positions attributed to me, it’s almost, there is the plugging in of buzzwords, right? So when you plug in words like apartheid, when you plug in words like occupation, that seems to elicit an emotive response, not a rational one. And again, political Zionism is a type of nationalism. Nationalism is emotional. So there’s an emotive response that doesn’t focus on what I’ve actually said. But then when you combine that with the fact that I’m Muslim and have three names biju, so again, the scrutiny of my middle name and what it could mean, the harnessing of fear did a really effective job. And so it becomes more what I’m capable of. So it’s basically suggesting that here is a person who’s a Muslim who has written about not just Israel-Palestine, but who’s written a lot about critically about terrorism, those national security type discussions.

What is he capable of? It really didn’t matter what I said at that point. It’s harnessing the imagination for people to really think or let their imaginations run wild in terms of, well, what is he capable of? Do you trust him to be in this sort of position? And again, as Churchill has said, I’m not in the habit of quoting him. I’m going to make an exception here, but a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has had an opportunity to put its pants on. And so I think the efforts then to come to my defense, the Yukon Human Rights Commission was one of the first out of the gate, and they made two public statements, which I’m very grateful for, and which were really powerful to say that in the time that he served as our executive director, we’ve known him to be intelligent, thoughtful, innovative, fair, and he has never been biased. He believes in human rights for all people. And we are all too familiar with the sorts of attacks that target human rights defenders. I’m paraphrasing that, but it is really rare for your former employer in that climate to put their necks out on the line publicly unless they’re very sure that this is just all a big smear campaign.

Some other organizations did defend me. Some of the defenses were run the spectrum of conservative tepid defenses to a lot more strident and fiery ones. But you are right to the extent that your question implies that there hasn’t been the same level of defense from the places that you’d typically expect it from, or at least to match the volume and the strided of the attacks, your guess is as good as mine. Although I would imagine that whenever one throws out the term or the smear where it’s false, antisemitism is something that sticks and it’s something that people are terrified about. So to even attempt a defense, if you’re an institution or a public body, you run the risk of conscripting yourself into that smear. And I think that the fear that comes with that is very hard to underestimate sometimes.

Marc Steiner:

It seems what’s happening to you at this moment being pushed out of a very prestigious, important position is the tip of the iceberg of what’s happening. It means there’s a dynamic happening at this moment here in the United States and in Canada and happening across the globe that centers so many things. One of those centers is the struggle inside of Israel Palestine right now. And if you don’t take the establishment position, you can have your career damaged. And so it seems to me that what happened to you in Canada could just be the beginning of something much larger,

Birju Dattani:

Perhaps. And I think that, and I should point out here, that there are some independent journalists that have kept a running tally of all of the people that have lost their jobs, right? From jobs that are prominent in the public eye to those which are maybe more, for lack of a better way of putting it, garden variety. For example, mark Haven, professor Mark Haven writing in Canadian Dimension has maintained a tally in every sector of people that have lost their jobs. And it’s staggering that list. I would imagine at this point, and this is just an estimate, but it’s probably approaching 55 0 documented cases. So in some ways, mine is one of the more public stories. It was a role that is a very important public office. But there are a number of doctors, educators, lawyers, et cetera, public servants that have lost their jobs or who have been investigated, and it’s found that these smears are actually

Marc Steiner:

Lost their jobs because of what,

Birju Dattani:

So let me clarify that for speaking about Israel Palestine. So for posts that they’re making on social media for conversations that they’re having around this, and so their social media posts will be highlighted where it’s in solidarity with Palestinians, or that’s critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Marc Steiner:

And you’re saying that Pia can use that to fire somebody to move them from their jobs?

Birju Dattani:

Oh, yeah. It is been attempted. So what they’ll do is they’ll use this provision of bringing the employer into disrepute. So there’s a lawyer, brilliant lawyer here, Jackie Mond, at a firm called Cavazos who’s talked about this, about how employers will use certain vague social media policies in the workplace to fire people in unionized environments. It’s harder to do, and there’s a lot of times where those investigations discover that the allegations don’t have any merit. So that also does happen. But in places where there are no union protections, for example, that is a lot easier to do and has happened

Marc Steiner:

In other conversations with some of the people you mentioned. We should have those to show the extent of how this is happening in Canada and where it’s going. I think it’s important for all of us to understand that this is a very dangerous trend, a frightening trend, actually. And so in your particular case at this moment, talk a bit about where, I know you can’t get into specifics. You are suing the Canadian government?

Birju Dattani:

No. So I’m suing certain groups and personalities. So for example, Ben Iri, the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Marc Steiner:

That’s right, I’m sorry. Yeah, yeah,

Birju Dattani:

Yeah. Ezra Event, who is the founder of Rebel Media, which is sort of our version of Alex Jones, to put it that way.

Marc Steiner:

No, I watched him and I watched him attack you. And he is, I mean, he very typical of the very right wing hosts that you become your raw meat for them.

Birju Dattani:

And of course, I’ve never been particularly interested in this show, so I steer clear of that. But yeah, he’s something akin to an Alex Jones here in Canada. That’s sort of how he’s regarded. Dalia Kurtz, whom you mentioned, who’s something of a social media influencer. I, again, don’t really know all that much more about her. And Melissa Lansman, who’s a conservative member of parliament here, who I think, again, just in terms of sheer volume, there’s a lot that’s come from her in terms of attacks. So that’s who we are pursuing in this litigation.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, yeah, she literally came out and said that you were a supporter of terrorism.

Birju Dattani:

Yes, that’s correct.

Marc Steiner:

So talk a bit about before we have to leave the movement growing around this and the support you’re getting and where that’s coming from.

Birju Dattani:

So I think that the movement around me is growing. I think one of the things that I did do is it’s easier now for me to talk about this than I was at the height of this. So before I stepped down, I was walking on eggshells. And so now not being encumbered in the same way, I am able to speak more about my experiences, what happened, the fact that I’m launching a lawsuit. And I think a lot of people are looking at that and saying it’s about time. It is high time that people who smear other people falsely as being antisemitic when there’s no basis in fact of that, of being terrorism, adjacent terrorism, glor supporter, et cetera, that a lot of people are rallying around this because a lot of people are exhausted and tired and fed up by all of this, especially what’s happened in the last 18 months and how frequent and shameless a lot of this was and has been for other people. And a lot of these people are members of the Jewish community who are rallying around me, which to a certain extent, I mean Jewish communities, like any community are non monolithic. But I think there have been so many members of the Jewish community and Israelis as well who have rallied to this because I think there’s also a struggle for who defines identity. And we’re sort of in this bizarre place where parliamentarians, those that are not Jewish, are dictating to members of the Jewish community, their Jewish identity,

That this is what it means to be Jewish in our eyes. And I think that they look at that with anger, with frustration, and to say, no, no one has bequeathed unto you the ability to tell us as those who identify as Jewish, that we are Jewish any more than. And again, some of these institutions, it’s the same thing. So in terms of the suppression of dissent among their ranks. And so there has been a movement that believes that to combat racism, you have to do that in solidarity with marginalized groups that face discrimination rather than treating these things as discreet disparate phenomenon. Really that’s what this is beginning to represent from what I can see. So that movement is growing, it is encompassing and countenance saying increasingly prominent figures. To give you an example, there is a member of Montreal City Council who has now publicly come out with his own lawsuit against the mayor of a town in Ontario, Hampton, Ontario, who was attacking him as an antisemite in ways that are very reminiscent of what happened to me. And so I reposted his statement that he’s suing Mayor Jeremy Levy on my LinkedIn. And this city councilor Alex Norris, publicly supported my lawsuit and I amplified his. So we may have led a spark. And so more of this may happen. And so now the courts become a forum potentially to conduct this struggle. And it looks like more people may be doing that.

Marc Steiner:

I think what’s happening to you is a critical story because it’s one of those things that happens. It’s a tip of an iceberg. It’s the beginning of something that could become an avalanche. You just said 50 more people are facing these kinds of discrimination and attacks throughout Canada. And so I think that we want to stay in touch with you as this fight unfolds, and also talk to some of the other folks in Canada who are also fighting and what that portends for Canadian democracy and the battle around for people who really believe that peace has to come to Israel Palestine. And I think what’s happening to you is nothing short of obscenity. And so we want to give you all the room you need here to get that story out and keep it out to make people understand what’s going on around us.

Birju Dattani:

Thank you so much, mark. I’m so grateful for that. And

Marc Steiner:

I appreciate you standing up, Biju, Biju, Ani. We’re going to link to all the stuff here on our site about the struggle he’s going through. You can read it yourself from different publications, see what he’s doing, and we will stay on top of this so that we can expose the power of the right here in this country and across the globe, taking away our rights to speak as we wish. And good luck and let’s stay in touch.

Birju Dattani:

Absolutely, mark and such a pleasure. And thank you for everything you’re doing to highlight some of these stories that are not getting airing in a more mainstream or wide stream forum. So thank you so much for everything you’re doing in terms of highlighting these stories.

Marc Steiner:

We won’t let them win.

Birju Dattani:

Absolutely hear here.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Birju Dattani for joining us today, and thanks to David Hebden for running the program today and audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her audio magic Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner show and the Titleless Taylor rra for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at marc@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

The ceasefire in Gaza has shattered, and Israel’s military has resumed the genocide. Simultaneously, organizations and activists in the US are sounding the alarm over Trump’s persecution of Mahmoud Khalil and other student activists. Palestinian American lawyer and activist Huwaida Arraf joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the situation in Gaza, and the urgency of ramping up the solidarity movement with Palestine to combat genocide and the rise of fascism.

Production: David Hebden, Rosette Sewali
Post-production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. We’re talking today with Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian woman, a lawyer born in Israel, an international renowned human rights lawyer, trilingual and English, Arabic, and Hebrew. A nonviolent activist who co-founded International Solidarity Network fighting for Palestinian rights and nationhood. She ran for Congress in Michigan’s 10th congressional district writes extensively and which her mind, body, literally, and spirit on the line for Palestinian freedom and Hu to welcome. Good to have you with us.

Huwaida Arraf:

It’s good to be with you, Marc. Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

You have been, I mean, doing this for a while.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yeah, I had hoped it wouldn’t be this long, but the fight goes on.

Marc Steiner:

As we had this conversation today, I was looking at the news before I walked into the studio and Israel has resumed their operations in central and South Gaza. They’ve started their airstrikes, 20 Palestinians were killed. Almost all of them health workers for a hundred Palestinians were killed in airstrikes. Since the beginning is conflict. I mean, what’s happening in Gaza is almost unbelievable. I think it’s hard for people to fathom the extent of death and destruction that’s taking place. This is not simply a war.

Huwaida Arraf:

Absolutely. I don’t like to use that term at all because war implies you have two equal sites and that’s absolutely not what you have here. Have a population that has been oppressed and colonized for nearly eight decades and for the past almost two decades in Gaza specifically really has been caged and cut off from essentials. And you take that and over the years also every few years Israel bombs decimate the society, the infrastructure. You have a medieval siege that’s imposed on the entire civilian population that really leaves people not able to control even their daily lives. I mean, forget about just being able to leave the Gaza Strip to go get what you need to go to school, to visit family, to get the medical attention that you need, what you might be able to find food that day is completely determined by what Israel allows in and what doesn’t allow in.

And for the past two and a half weeks before it restarted, this barbaric bombardment of Gaza has been cutting off all food and medical aid and then just cut off also electricity, which means they can’t desalinate water. I mean people have nothing. It is truly a caged, beleaguered star population that Israel has also restarted viciously bombing from the air. So just in the past couple of days, nearly 500 killed so many children. At least the last number, and I don’t even like to say numbers because it changes by the minute, but over 180 children, babies, infants, and no one seems to be able to stop Israel. No one is willing to do it. And the reports are that the United States, the White House has given the green light. They were briefed on it, and the slaughter continues. It really, I am unable to find words these days to describe to the evil that we went missing.

Marc Steiner:

And you mentioned the United States. I mean the kind of lack of political will in the Biden administration to intervene and stop it. And now we’re faced with a government in this country which actively supports Israel in its destruction of Palestinians and the murder of Palestinians. It is really time for, I think those of us in America to step up and really heighten the protests and the confrontations with our own government to say, no, this can’t take place. So I’m curious as an activist here, where you see that going, where you see what our role is here in the United States to stop this kind of genocide taking place in Gaza.

Huwaida Arraf:

Absolutely, and that is the question, right? Because I worked for a long time volunteering in the occupied Palestinian territory and welcoming people from around the world to come see what’s actually happening in Palestine. And Palestinians would be so grateful for the international solidarity and for people leaving the comforts of their own home to travel to stand with them. But what we would hear over and over again from Palestinians is just please go back to your countries, especially the United States, and change the policies there because it is the policies of especially the Western countries led by the United States that’s enabling Israel. And so what we do here in the United States really, really matters. I mean, it’s not adequate to just say it’s not our problem, it’s not happening here. It’s thousands of miles away because we are so actively involved and complicit. It’s our tax dollars.

It is our elected representatives that are making these choices to continuously fund Israel’s genocide. So it comes down to us to create that political will to change policy. Now, how do we do that? It seems to be really overwhelming. A lot of it really comes down to educating people because for decades we have been programmed here in the United States by the mainstream media, by popular culture to dehumanize Palestinians and to think that Israel is the victim here. So there’s a lot of education that goes into it, opening people’s eyes in terms of what has really been happening and then changing that act or moving that education into mobilization and really pushing our elected representatives to make the right choices to stop funding genocide and colonialism and apartheid. And so that requires us making our voices heard, whether in the streets, in protests, to going to town halls, making appointments with our elected representatives, calling them, writing to them every day and letting them know that this is an issue that matters, that we care about, that we will vote on.

Yes, there are other issues that affect our daily lives, but this is also an issue that affects life, that affects life, and it affects our daily lives because it is not just about being what happens in Palestine. Yes, that’s horrible, but I have other concerns. What happens in Palestine and the extent in which the United States is funding and enabling what Israel is doing comes back here to affect us. If we look at the billions and billions of dollars that this government and the previous government and for decades, the United States has been giving of our tax dollars to Israel, that money can be spent in our own communities. I mean, $3.8 billion, that’s just yearly without all of the extra packages that Israel has gotten, which is now in the last 16, 17 months, has topped I think 30 billion. Billion. So yearly is 3.8 billion of our tax dollars.

And on top of that, the United States has authorized more and more money and weapon shipments to Israel that can be used in our own communities. Then when we talk about our own civil liberties here, the extent to which there is a crackdown on freedom of speech and on education, and that people are being doxed and fired from their jobs and silenced if they dare to criticize Israel. That affects our own civil liberties here. And I am involved in cases to defend students’ rights who have been persecuted, who have been kicked out of school. Their organizations suspended because they advocate for Palestinian rights. So if it’s not our tax dollars in our own communities and life in Palestine, it is our own ability to speak out and to exercise our freedom of speech that is being curtailed and actually really threatened all to protect a country that is committing a genocide.

It is really shameful. And I think that when we look back at this time, and I firmly believe there will come a time where we will look back and truly feel ashamed that we allowed this to happen. Those who were silent or those who advocated for this policy of supporting this genocide, it will be seen as a stain on US history. And I think what I keep saying is to everyone around me, this is happening in our lifetime on our watch. What are we going to say we did to stop it? And if we think about that every day, we will find our place what we can do. It could be joining a protest. I’m heading to a protest today, but it could be talking to your neighbor. It could be picking up the phone to talk to your member of Congress. Each one of us have a role to play.

And I think that if we understand that we can’t always be the top, we can’t always be at the front of those demonstrations, but if you do what you can from where you are and we each do that, it will build up. It will create that critical mass that we need to change policy. And I do believe that things have, in all of the years that you mentioned, I have been doing this, but we need to keep pushing. We need to keep pushing until we reach that tipping point. And I just seeing all the carnage, you just have to wonder how many more lives destroyed until we get to that tipping point where policy has changed. I mean, that motivates me every single day, and I hope we can all find it in ourselves to realize that there is something we can do about it.

Marc Steiner:

I hope so too. And I think that from your work, from helping to found a free gaze in 2006 with your co-founding international solidarity, the non-violent movement to fight for Palestinian rights, that we seem to be an precipice of the moment though, given what’s happening in Gaza, given the crackdown in this country on Palestinians who are standing up and given the crackdowns taking place inside Israel at this moment, people I’ve talked to who are both Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis are talking about the intense pressure that they’re under every day. Some even being arrested because they’re standing up to the government saying, no, I don’t think people just really get and understand the depth of the repression that’s taking place on the West Bank in Gaza and in Israel itself.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yep, absolutely. I have family. So my family is partially from the West Bank and the other part is from inside 48, what is now Israel. And so,

Marc Steiner:

And you’re an Israeli citizen as well, or was were right,

Huwaida Arraf:

An Israeli citizen. Yes, of course. I mean, I always say I’m not the kind of citizen that Israel wants. Unfortunately, I’m considered a demographic threat because of, again, Israel’s project of really colonization. And when we call it apartheid, it’s not just throwing out words. It really is a government and a regime that wants to create a society and the state with specific rights for certain people based on your religion. So even though my village and my family was there before the state of Israel was created, we are not equal citizens. And the last time I talked to my family, I mean, they’re terrified. They can’t say anything in their place of work. If they like a Facebook post, they could be arrested, right? And they have Israeli citizens that are walking around armed, coming into their place of business, whether it is their clinics or their shops.

And you don’t know if what you’re going to say is going to get you injured, killed, arrested. And those are Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, who Israel likes to say are equal or have more rights than they would have anywhere else, which is just not true at all. And then when you talk about Israeli citizens, I mean, yeah, there are protests. People are not happy with Netanyahu, and there is, especially the families of the hostages and other people who are worried about the hostages are protesting and are getting arrested for these protests. And there is a crackdown. I wish I had something a little bit better or more hopeful to say about Israeli society because I spent so many years in the occupied territories and worked with some wonderful Israelis, Israelis who put their safety and their lives on the line and firmly believe in true equality and spend their time in Palestinian villages and standing up to their own soldiers.

But those numbers are so, so few, the polls are showing that a vast majority of Israelis support what their government has been doing in Gaza. If they didn’t have hostages in Gaza, they wouldn’t care at all about the Palestinian civilians there and what’s happening to them. And that’s really frightening. I mean, that’s frightening, just from a humanitarian perspective, that’s frightening when you think about any society to be supportive of such ruthless violence. And if it wasn’t for having some of your own people there wouldn’t care at all what happens to the population that your government is occupying, oppressing and killing. And so that is scary. And what we have been seeing in Israeli society is this decline, this decline towards more isolationism, fascism, violence. And it’s not good for anybody, certainly not good for Israeli society. And even the future where I say, I’ve always said that we need to live together in what we’re working to create.

We’re working to end Israeli colonialism and apartheid so that there can be a future where anybody and everybody who wants to live in historic Palestine in this land can do so as equals. Right. And what we have been seeing, again on the enormous violence unleashed on Palestinians and the almost complete disregard by Israelis except for where it concerns their own population, it means that it’s going to be very, very, very difficult to rebuild a lot of that. And this is, we’re talking about it because we don’t have too much time, but we shouldn’t just gloss over the amount of violence being used. And that’s not just in Gaza, that’s not just when we come to the death and dismemberment and amputations and the starvations, but the torture, the deliberate killings, the humiliation, the people, children who have seen their parents killed dismembered, the humiliated, what kind of psychological effect this has on people is really hard, really hard to fathom.

And especially when we’re looking at Gaza, but also the West Bank, this is all Palestinians have known most Palestinians for their entire lives is this kind of violence, is this kind of complete disregard by the international community and the rest of the world. And just this overwhelming oppression and this attempt really to get rid of you. You’re an undesirable, your life doesn’t matter. That’s all Palestinians have known. And despite this, they try to continue, they try to insist on, but what kind of psychological effect this has on people is really hard to know as of like 20 years ago, 20 years ago, before these massive bombing started in Gaza, there’s, it’s a Gaza community mental health program that was saying over 90% of Gaza’s children are traumatized. And that is back in 2006, you have seen at least five massive bombing campaigns since then and now an act of full-blown genocide if over 90% of Gaza’s children were traumatized before all this, what do we say now? So it is really, really dismal. But that doesn’t mean we give up. We have no choice but to keep going and fighting because we are fighting for the rights of people to live.

Marc Steiner:

It’s true. And those children now you talk about are now in their twenties and thirties and trying to survive.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yeah, trying to survive, probably trying to keep their children alive, probably trying to find a way to keep their children safe to find food. And these are children that have been traumatized themselves. In 2009, after Israel’s first major bombing campaign operation cast led on Gaza, this was 2008, 2009, I went in with a delegation of US attorneys to try to document and report on US weapons that were used in Operation Castlight to commit war crimes. And we did produce a report after that, but some of the stories that we heard, I mean one home that was bombed and Israel did not allow the Red Crescent or any rescue services to get to the home for three days. And when they got to the home, found a number, most of the adults in that home killed

And number of children who were still alive, injured, and forced to stay with the relatives, with the bodies of their dead parents for three days without food or water. Those children, that was 2008, 2009, if those children even survived, what they’re trying to do now in keeping their, they probably hope that their children wouldn’t have to endure the same. But not only are they doing the same, it’s so much worse now. It’s as bad as it has ever been. And that doesn’t even come remotely close to describing it. There’s a report that just came out from the un, and I’m almost, I’ve read the bullet points, but I can’t even bring myself to read it because even though the summary is so bad, it is so bad about the kind of torture, what people have been subjected to things that humans should never, ever do to each other. I can’t, as a human rights attorney, I’m almost embarrassed to admit I just can’t even bring myself to read it.

Marc Steiner:

What’s the name of the report?

Huwaida Arraf:

It was done by the, there’s a un fact finding patient. It’s an independent commission that is investigating what Israel is doing in the occupied policy and territory and in Gaza. And they came out, I’d have to pull up the report, but one of their findings is that Israel is committing genocidal acts. Israel has deliberately targeted the maternal wards, the ability of Palestinian, Palestinian women to reproduce in various ways. But part of that also covers the torture that Palestinian hostages also have endured in Israeli captivity and some of the torture tactics and the rape that is described is just horrific. And that’s just the summary. So I can pull the exact name of the report for you, but it was done by an independent fact finding commission.

Marc Steiner:

Well, we’ll add that just so people can access that, because I think that’s important. I mean, as you describe the reality that Palestinians face, and I mean, just think about you personally. I’ve been reading all the things you’ve been writing and I’ve been reading about you and the bravery you showed on the Flotillas and other, the places in the face of Israeli violence standing up to it, putting your life on the line. And you’re married to a Jewish man who’s thrown out of Israel because he stood up. I mean, this is something people have to understand. I think for us to get beyond this and to find this path to peace, and there are over one and a half to 2 billion Israelis who no longer live in Israel and live in Europe and live in the United States. Most of ’em would be the people who oppose this government that’s taking place in Israel at this moment.

Huwaida Arraf:

I mean, that’s what we’re hearing. And then the large number of Israelis who are leaving would be the more moderate ones, leaving the Israelis, more the ideological. This land was given to us by God. It’s only our land and everybody else needs to be kicked out, are the ones that are remaining. And we see the government that is now in power is a right wing fascist government. And that is the, as I said earlier, that the Israeli society where it has going and the fact that it’s become so extreme, it doesn’t bode well for anyone. But how do we break that? And for a lot of the work that I’ve done originally when I went over to Palestine in shortly after college, it was in the year 2000, it was to work for a conflict resolution organization that was bringing Palestinian and Israeli youth together.

Marc Steiner:

Seeds of peace.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yes, yes.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Huwaida Arraf:

And I quickly realized the problem with these organizations, because they don’t actually get to the heart of the matter, they don’t do the work that needs to be done to dismantle the racist structures or the structures of oppression that tear people apart. And it’s more about getting to know each other and doing these normalization projects. Becoming friends is great. Obviously we lifelong friends, but when you don’t actually, or when you avoid the work that needs to be done to dismantle the structures of oppression, then you are just normalizing oppression, right? So I don’t necessarily support these organizations, but I went on, even in founding the International Solidarity Movement, it was bringing internationals, but also bringing Israelis and bringing everybody irrespective of religion, of ethnicity, of nationality. I mean, we are all humans and we are all standing for freedom and for equality and for dignity, for everybody.

And there is this attempt to also reach Israelis with the actions that we were doing. A lot of the protests I was face to face with Israeli soldiers and trying to say, look, what are you doing? You are here shooting at children. You are invading these people’s villages, maybe getting them to think about what role they’re playing in this violence. And then I think that we are so far from that right now. People just have been so siloed, I feel, and so hard. There’s those that are hardened and just don’t want to hear anything that has to do with Palestinian humanity. And then there are those, the ideological Israelis that are bent on having this Jewish state that was promised to them by God. And everybody else needs to either agree to be subservient or they can be killed or they can get out. And that is really what we are fighting here. We are fighting this idea that there can be any kind of religious or ethno religious supremacy for anybody. And we are fighting for a world, a region, a country, I mean everywhere, certainly in Israel, Palestine, but around the world where everyone is respected in everyone is equal. And we seem to be so far away from that. But I say this because there is this idea, and you probably know well, anytime that we in the United States or in other places speak up for Palestinian rights, we are automatically labeled as antisemites

Marc Steiner:

Or self-hating Jews

Huwaida Arraf:

Or yourself Jews, my husband celebrating Jews all the time. And we seem to just lost this ability to look at each other as humans. And it doesn’t bode well for where we are in this moment in time. It is very dangerous what is happening, certainly in the region. But then what is happening here, and I mentioned, we started talking also about the restrictions on our civil liberties here.

We know that we are creating certainly Trump’s policy, cracking down even more on those who speak up for Palestinian rights. But one thing that I want to say there is that it didn’t start with Trump, right? It has been US policy. And certainly I blame the previous administration, the Biden administration, for laying the groundwork for where we are now. For 15 months we were protesting trying to get the Biden Harris administration to put an arms embargo on Israel to stop the genocide. And they gaslit the American people in that Israel has a right to defend itself. That’s what we always hear. But Israel is not defending itself. Israel is fighting for a land that is free of the indigenous Palestinian population. And the United States has been supporting that. But what is positive, I don’t want to be all negative. What is positive is that so many people like yourself, mark, but so many also younger American Jews, and even when we started the International Solidarity Movement, so many of those who came to join us were young American or European Jews.

We look at the protests on college campuses, so many of them Jewish students who reject this notion that what Israel is doing and what the US is doing in cracking down on protesters in any way serves Jewish safety. Certainly not Jewish Americans. And where I am in Michigan, the University of Michigan, we have 12 protesters that are being prosecuted actually by the Attorney General in a shameful, really prosecution. But about half of those protesters being prosecuted for protesting in the encampments and for Palestinian rights are Jewish. So on one hand, there are those who are really pushing really hard to label all advocates of Palestinian rights as antisemitic and supporting this kind of crackdown, whether what Israel’s doing or what this administration is doing as fighting antisemitism or protecting the Jewish people when it’s just the opposite. And it’s heartening to see that so many young Jews, but also of all ages that are, I have a good friend who is well into her eighties Jewish activist, and she’s just so feisty and that I really consider my family, my family, and these are the kind of people that I always want to stand side by side with and fighting for everybody’s rights.

Marc Steiner:

So before we end, a couple of things. One is I’m curious, in your life now, you’ve been through a lot facing violence in the Israeli Army, Navy violence, dealing on flotillas, the work you’ve done over there, the work you’re doing here, educating your life to this, what are you in the midst of now? Where is the struggle taking you? Now,

Huwaida Arraf:

That is a good question because I feel like I’m torn in so many different ways because there’s so much work to be done, and I want to always do as much as I can. One of my most important roles right now, although my kids would probably beg to differ, is raising the next generation. But I frequently hear from them that I’m always busy and I’m always doing something for Palestine or some other social justice issues. So I might be not doing as well as I should be in that arena, but raising the next generation, my kids are 10 and 11, and if I impart anything on them, I want it to be a strong belief in their ability and their obligation to do something when they see that something is wrong, whether it is in their elementary classroom, if somebody is being racist or somebody is being bullied to stand up to, if it’s the president of the United States, you can get out and protest when something’s happening that is not right.

You are able to, and you should do something about it. If I impart anything on them, I want it to be that. So that is one of my most important jobs. But I am also an attorney and I’m also working with other attorneys both to defensive liberties here at home. So I am one helping with the defense of students who are being persecuted for standing up for Palestinian rights and also suing the University of Michigan for violating the constitutional rights of these students by treating them differently, by curtailing the First Amendment rights. Because these institutions and these state power that is cracking down on our students, on protestors, on citizens should not be allowed to get away with this. So it’s defense and offense there and activism. We are still trying to support people to go to the occupied Palestinian territory, to volunteer with the international Solidarity movement if they are able to.

And if somebody can, unfortunately we cannot get into Gaza, but people are still able to get into Jerusalem and the West Bank and the international solidarity movement there is trying as much as possible to be a presence, to witness, to document, to stand in solidarity with the people there who are being terrorized by settlers and soldiers. Just in the past month, over 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their refugee camps in and in Janine. So in these Palestinian cities, Israeli soldiers would come through and literally blow up their homes or demolish their homes. And those that are still in their villages are being attacked by settlers, supported by soldiers. So having people there to witness to try to deter some of the violence by saying to the state of Israel, like, Hey, we’re here and we see what we’re doing can help deter violence sometimes and can help let Palestinians know that they’re not alone.

So I encourage anyone who is able to travel to look up the international solidarity movement and see about volunteering there. At the same time, we are trying to stop the atrocities in Gaza in a variety of ways. I am still involved with the Freedom Flotilla and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and that we have been trying for years to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza. We started, as you mentioned, I mean the first time we got into Gaza with two small fishing boats in 2008. And that was a deliberate action to challenge, to confront, to try to break Israel’s stranglehold and its naval blockade on Gaza. We were able to get through a few times, but then Israel started lethally attacking our ships, but we did not give up. And we, as of last year also, were pulling together if flotilla, unfortunately, some states sabotaged our mission, but again, we are not giving up.

We are readying ships to try to sail again. And we are encouraging these organizations that are being blocked from entering Gaza and from rendering aid to people to join us, to put their aid on these ships and directly confront Israel’s policy. Because Israel’s policy is illegal. A siege on an entire civilian population is illegal, and it is part of a larger genocide, a crime against humanity. But what is infuriating is that these organizations and world governments only talk, they do not do anything to actively confront Israel’s policy. So effectively, you have every single government in the world that is respecting Israel’s control over Gaza. They are complicit. They are complicit in the starvation and the genocide of the Palestinian people. I mean, the government of Turkey held back three of our ships that were supposed to sail to confront Israel’s blockade. Why isn’t Turkey itself sailing?

Why isn’t Greece sailing? Why aren’t these Arab countries sailing and daring Israel to confront them and to insist that we are getting to the people that you are trying to annihilate in Gaza. So we are still trying to do that as a civilian initiative and hopefully within the next few weeks or months, I hope it’s not longer, your listeners will hear about and are able to support the Freedom Flotilla coalition and try to break through this blockade. And here at home. Aside from the legal front, there’s also the political front and continuing to push our elected representatives and continuing to encourage people that really represent our ideals and our principles, our vision of human rights and inequality for everybody to run for office. I am trying to encourage young people, the Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, to actually get involved. And so our voices are represented and we are heard. So it’s a lot of work on a lot of different friends. Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to be in too many spaces and not doing anything particularly relevant. Well, we continue to try to do what we can. I think that that’s important just as continue to do what we can and there’s a space for everyone.

Marc Steiner:

I want to first say thank you, hued our off. You’re doing amazing work. I want to stay in touch with you to see how this Portilla gathering is growing and what the next moves are, so we can then support to that and bring those voices to the people in this country and across the globe. So I appreciate the work you’re doing, and thank you so much for being here today.

Huwaida Arraf:

Thank you for having me, and please continue to speak out because as we know, our freedom of speech is really being threatened right now. And I encourage your listeners to really follow the case of il, who is the government is trying to set an example by deporting him illegally for speaking out for Palestinian rights. And they’re again, trying to not only make an example of him, but silence speech by sending this chill through the communities, the pro-Palestinian community or anyone would dare to speak out. And it is, like I say again, the extent to which our own civil liberties, our right to the first amendment, our right to due process are really at stake right now is really hard to overemphasize. We need everybody to be watching, to be speaking out, and to be letting our elected representatives know that we will not stand for this and that they need to fight. So thank you for doing your part in continuing to speak out and bring voices of protests, of dissent to your listeners, and I would love to stay in touch.

Marc Steiner:

We will stay in touch. Thank you very much.

Huwaida Arraf:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, thank you to Huda Araf for joining us today. And thanks for David Hebdon for running the program and audio editor Alina Neek and producer Roset Sole for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Huwaida Arraf for joining us today and for the work that she does. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist at Columbia University, is currently in ICE detention facing deportation proceedings—and the future of free speech in America hangs on the outcome of his case. Khalil, who has permanent resident status, was illegally abducted by ICE agents in front of his pregnant wife on March 8, sparking national and international outrage and raising alarms about what his extrajudicial abduction and imprisonment means for the present and future of civil liberties in Trump’s America. Michael Arria, a reporter with Mondoweiss, joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the current status of Khalil’s case and the rapid escalation of Trump’s crackdown on political dissent and the movement for Palestine.

Production: David Hebden, Rosette Sewali
Post-production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, it’s great to have you all with us.

Mahmoud Khalil is in the news. 11 days ago, this father-to-be was a student, a leading voice at Columbia University to end the war on Gaza, and for the rights of Palestinian people. He’s Palestinian. Then all of a sudden, 11 days ago, federal agents burst into his apartment, taking him away, threatening him with deportation. His wife is about to give birth to their first child.

Other Palestinian students have been targeted by the federal government, and Trump has told Columbia he’ll withdraw $400 million of federal support if you don’t ban masks, empower campus cops, and put the school’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies under academic receivership, which would mean they’re no longer controlled by the university or the faculty, among other things.

Mahmoud Khalil languishes now in a federal lockup in Louisiana. We’re about to have a conversation with a man who’s been covering this. Michael Arria has been covering this from Mondoweiss, where he’s a US correspondent. And he’s the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC.

Michael, welcome, good to have you with us.

Michael Arria:  Thanks for having me.

Marc Steiner:  So this story, I remember when I first watched this happening, saw this happening, I was just incredulous. Let me just take a step backwards with you for a moment for a broader overview before we jump into this specific story and what this is emblematic of, what’s happening to our country at this moment, colleges around the country being threatened, Palestinian people — I have Palestinian friends who feel now that they’re under threat of deportation. Talk a bit about your analysis of where you think we are and what’s happening to us right now.

Michael Arria:  It’s an interesting question. I think, obviously, these things don’t occur in a vacuum. Unfortunately, Khalil’s detention, it was not altogether shocking. I think we all expected the Trump administration to act in some capacity. He’s been very upfront, even dating back to the campaign trail. The Washington Post reported last May that he had told a group of pro-Israel donors that if they helped elect him, he would crack down on the Palestine movement and set it back decades.

And he specifically outlined how he would do that, which is to deport students. He repeated that line throughout the campaign, as did members of the new administration upon arriving at the White House. We saw executive orders shortly after he arrived at the White House, obviously also targeting student protesters.

But I think you bring up an interesting point because some of these college investigations actually began under the Biden administration. And something we cover at the site every week, especially me as the US correspondent, is this war that’s been waged against the US Palestine movement domestically, particularly strengthened and amplified, I think, in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, but really was going on long before that through legal means, in the courts, pro-Israel organizations, pro-Israel lawmakers criminalizing BDS, attempting to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which essentially classifies some criticisms of Israel as antisemitic. So this has been a real push.

And it has to be said, although Trump is amping it up to a level we have yet to see, it has largely been a bipartisan affair. We have seen these kinds of attacks on the Palestine movement in the US for quite some time, and this is, I think, in many ways, a culmination of these kinds of actions that we’ve seen over the past decade, really since BDS emerged as a force. We’ve really seen this attempt to criminalize dissent.

A lot of these pro-Israel groups see the campus as the terrain where that battle is going to be fought. And they’ve really fought to blur the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. They’ve really fought for pro-Israel students to be regarded as a civil rights classification unto themself. You see this a lot with ALEC, where they find somebody who claims that the fact they had to join a union infringes upon their freedom of speech or something, and then you see these big right-wing right-to-work groups support them.

And that’s happened in this situation too. You’ve seen some of these pro-Israel groups like the Brandeis Center back these pro-Israel students and try to get this stuff on the books and change the legal definition for what you can and can’t do as it relates to Palestine protests.

So that’s a little backstory, I’d say, in terms of what leads up to this arrest that we saw on March 8.

Marc Steiner:  If the United States government uses the leverage that it’s using against Columbia now, saying, we’re going to take away $400 million from the university if you don’t do what we tell you, if you don’t stop these anti-Israel protests, and more, they could do this across the country. This signals, this is a bellwether for real dangerous, almost neofascistic policies being instituted by Trump against higher education.

Michael Arria:  Yeah, I completely agree with that. And it’s interesting. Obviously there’s some big-picture stories here, like a big-picture story is obviously Trump’s deportation plans and anti-immigrant designs are not limited to student protesters or Palestinians. So that’s one big-picture story. I think another big-picture story is what we just discussed. This is a long time coming in terms of this blurring of what is considered antisemitism versus what is considered legitimate pro-Palestine protest.

But I think the third issue is the one you bring up, which is this issue of what do the institutions of higher education, what do they stand for in the United States in the year 2025?

Shortly before the election, I interviewed Mara Finkelstein, who I think you’ve had on your show.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, yes.

Michael Arria:  She was the first tenured professor to lose her job over pro-Palestine speech. She had an Instagram post where she criticized Zionism and lost her job.

And she said something very interesting to me when we spoke last October, where she connected this to the decades of policies that we’ve seen, education policy that we’ve seen in the United States, this neoliberal model that we’ve seen emerge where we’ve seen the rolling back of federal funding of higher education — And this is another thing Trump has amped up, obviously, as we’ve seen in recent weeks — And we have seen that replaced with a donor model, schools essentially becoming a marketplace in that regard.

And I think you tap into this. Trump sent this letter to Columbia University saying that $400 million is potentially on the line; we might revisit this and give it back to you if you do the following things, and basically laid out a crackdown on pro-Palestine protesters.

And one of those demands was also, it’s everything you mentioned, but in addition to that was the Trump administration calling for the suspension of a number of student activists who were involved in the occupation of Hamilton Hall last April. This is a hall at Columbia that was occupied by a number of students drawing attention to what was happening, the genocidal assault.

Marc Steiner:  And was occupied during the anti-war demonstrations in Vietnam as well [laughs].

Michael Arria:  Exactly

Marc Steiner:  Right, right.

Michael Arria:  And it should be pointed out, Columbia — We’ve seen so much news in the last week, it’s hard to keep up, I realize. But something that happened is that, the other day, Columbia announced that they were suspending, expelling, and potentially taking degrees away from a number of the people who were connected to that protest.

So I think part of the story here is, obviously, the Trump administration. The other part is how these universities have either complied or just been straight up complicit in the designs of the Trump administration, presumably because they do not want to see their endowments threatened in any capacity.

And now you have an announcement from Linda McMahon, the new head of Department of Education, sending out this announcement that 60 schools which have been investigated for alleged antisemitism are potentially on the verge of facing disciplinary action, presumably similar to what happened with Columbia, where they’ll have their federal contracts and grants pulled and are put in a position where they’re really between a rock and a hard place, so to speak, and what they want to do.

And I think when it comes down to it, that’s what Mara Finkelstein told me. She said, I don’t have to have sympathy for the people who fired me to acknowledge the fact that my school was put in this position where they could either get rid of an anthropology professor or have their endowment threatened, and to them it probably wasn’t a big decision [Steiner laughs].

So I think that’s something that we have to keep in mind here. This isn’t only a story about immigration or Trump or McCarthyism. It also is a story about what the face of higher education looks like in the United States — Especially a place like Columbia, which is a private university and therefore, technically, isn’t beholden by the First Amendment in the same way that other places are. There’s legitimate questions here: What kind of responsibility do they have to their faculty? What kind of responsibility do they have to their students? And it’s all this stuff about freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry, all this kind of stuff that you see in the mission statements of universities like Columbia and like Harvard. Does that mean anything, or do these actions prove that it’s all just words that they don’t really take seriously?

Marc Steiner:  What happened at Columbia, as I said earlier, I think, is just the tip of the iceberg. This was, I think, in some ways, a test for the Trump administration and the right wing to see how far they could go, where they could begin this process, how they could clamp down on protest. And I think that this whole issue of antisemitism…

Let me take a step back for a second. I’m Jewish. I grew up in a family of pogrom and Holocaust survivors, and I’ve been involved in the movement against the occupation since the late ’60s, and I think they used this bogus move to call protests against the occupation antisemitic. I think antisemitism is there, antisemites are everywhere, but the protest movements and the movement itself is not antisemitic. I think this is an excuse they use also to divide America and to be able to justify their clamping down on campuses, and Columbia was the place they started.

Before we jump back into that, let me ask you a bit more about Mahmoud Khalil and what you know now, what you know about what his situation is, what is happening legally, and where he is.

Michael Arria:  Sure. So as we mentioned at the top, Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE agents on March 8. These are ICE agents that were plainclothes agents who followed him into his home alongside his wife — Who, as you mentioned, is eight months pregnant — They did not initially produce a warrant. There had been reporting initially that the ICE agents themselves were a little confused because, we should point out, Mahmoud is a permanent resident with an active green card.

So when his wife produced the green card, reportedly, the ICE agents had called, presumably their supervisor or the office, and had basically said this might be some sort of mistake, he has a green card, and were told that the state department had revoked the green card as well as his student visa.

So he is taken into custody by the ICE agents. There was a period of about 24 hours where nobody, including his attorneys, were able to figure out where he was. I should point out that, sadly, that is not altogether shocking when you look at ICE, how they operate, and the history of our immigration detention system. But it is, nonetheless, very concerning. They couldn’t get in touch with him.

We eventually figured out that he was in a detention facility in Louisiana. So he’s moved thousands of miles away from his family to this detention facility. A judge in New York blocks the deportation order that was issued by the Trump administration and calls everybody into court. This is last Wednesday. And the Trump administration, the Trump lawyers were trying to get this thrown out of the New York court. They’re essentially arguing that it has no jurisdiction, that everything should go to Louisiana, where Mahmoud is being held. At that hearing, we found out that his lawyers still had no communication with him. They had no way to get in touch with him. So the judge actually, some news shortly before we got on this call today, the judge ruled that the proceedings will happen, will occur in New Jersey.

Marc Steiner:  And that hasn’t happened yet.

Michael Arria:  That hasn’t happened yet. It was just announced. And the lawyers, some of his attorneys, put out statements that basically said, this isn’t necessarily a cause to celebrate, but it is something of a small victory because it is a setback for the Trump administration, which is trying to have this moved.

So that’s where we’re at now. And as you point out, this is just the first. Trump has said, as soon as it happened, he celebrated on social media and said that there were many more to come. There have since been additional Columbia students that have been, one who was detained who we know very little about, detained in a similar [way] in Newark and is currently at a facility in Texas, a detention facility.

And then there’s another Indian student, a doctoral student architect from India who is actually set to finish a doctoral program in urban planning this May at Columbia, and learned that she was being targeted by the Department of Homeland Security, so actually fled the country trying to escape this targeting by the Trump administration.

So his arrest has really kicked off, I think, further arrests. We’ve seen it at Columbia, but, unfortunately, I have no reason to believe we won’t start seeing it at other places. And the administration’s being very explicit about the fact that these will continue, that this is not an isolated incident.

Marc Steiner:  You mentioned, just to put their names out there, Leqaa Kordia is the Palestinian student, the woman who was from the West Bank, and the other is Ranjani Srinivasan, the Indian national who was targeted. And you’re right, because Trump now has this rhetoric and history of ignoring the courts, saying he can do what he wants to do.

Michael Arria:  Yes.

Marc Steiner:  It’s almost difficult to put your hands around this in terms of what the potential is for the strengthening of this neofascist regime in Washington, because if they win this battle, they don’t stop there. They’ll continue.

Michael Arria:  Right, that’s absolutely true. When Mahmoud was first detained, I think there was a belief from many people that the Trump administration would be relying on some of the anti-terrorism measures that came out of the Bush administration. For those of us who remember the immediate aftermath after 9/11, things like the Patriot Act, like many situations — I just talked about how Biden paved the way — A lot of the war on terror legislation, some of the groundwork had really been done in previous administrations.

So the anti-terrorism bill that Bill Clinton passed in 1995 had a provision in it about material support for terrorist groups. It’s interesting, that legislation came in response to the Oklahoma City bombing, and he was pressured by pro-Israel groups to include this provision in it in order to go after Palestinian organizations.

I think a lot of people, when Mahmoud was originally arrested, a lot of people assumed this was going to be the root of the Trump administration. They were going to try to prove, in some capacity, although it still seemed like a legally shaky argument, that student protesters had somehow supported Hamas. Hamas is, of course, regarded as a terrorist group by the United States government.

What we learned pretty quickly through the court documents and some people connected to this case that had spoken to places like The New York Times is that they are not relying on that type of framework. They’re relying on a provision from the Immigration and Nationality Act from back in 1952. The dark irony of this is, as you say, they’re invoking this issue of antisemitism. The last time this provision was wielded was the height of the Red Scare, and it was used to target Holocaust survivors who were suspected of being Soviet agents. So it was actually used to go to target Jewish people in the United States.

And there’s a provision in there that basically says if you’re an alien whose presence or activities create reasonable grounds to believe that they would potentially seriously impact the foreign policy objectives of the United States, then you can be deported. And that is very troubling.

I think this is potentially a scary thing, I think, that even goes beyond some of the stuff we saw in the war on terror. Because in the war on terror, we saw these esteemed legal minds in the Bush administration pore over the Constitution and try to find these little loopholes or reinterpret it in a way where they could justify all these draconian measures or unconstitutional measures. In this case, the Trump administration is not even pretending that Mahmoud committed a crime. They’re not pointing to anything. We had this one comment from the White House press secretary where she said she had some photos in her office that showed he had handed out literature that was pro-Hamas. They’ve never returned to this, which makes me think it doesn’t exist.

Marc Steiner:  It doesn’t exist.

Michael Arria:  It doesn’t exist. And even if it did, we should point out that it is not illegal. Mahmoud still has protections of the First Amendment regardless of whether or not he had the green card.

So we’ve seen nothing in terms of the administration coming out and claiming that he actually committed a crime. And that’s very, I think, terrifying for people who are looking at this case because it basically sets up a situation where people can be targeted and deported much in a similar way that they were during periods of time like the Red Scare, without having to prove that they committed any sort of crime whatsoever. It really opens up, as you say, a very dangerous can of worms going forward, and I think what happens here will potentially have massive repercussions for the next three years.

Marc Steiner:  You quote a friend of mine who I’ve done work in media with before, Jelani Cobb, who’s now the dean of journalism at Columbia, saying, nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times. When I read that, knowing Jelani Cobb, who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, who’s not easily intimidated, who’s got great analysis, to say something like that is something that America should listen to to understand what it is we face.

Michael Arria:  Yeah, absolutely. That is a quote from a New York Times article that ran about a week and a half ago. It was in response to the fact that another professor, an adjunct professor, Stuart Carl, had basically told a group of students, stop posting on your social media about the Middle East. If you have a social media page, make sure it doesn’t have commentary about the Middle East. And a Palestinian student had basically objected to that and brought up the fact that the school was promoting censorship and bowing to the Trump administration. And that’s when Cobb made the statement that you said allegedly, or was reported to The Times, nobody can protect you. He said, these are dangerous times. So yeah, I think it’s very ominous to hear this kind of stuff from this institution.

I think it’s worth pointing out also, shortly before Mahmoud was apprehended by ICE agents, the administration of Columbia sent out a statement to faculty and staff notifying them that their protocol as it relates to ICE had shifted. Prior to that point, they had been regarded as what’s [called] a sanctuary university, which is similar to a sanctuary city. Basically, it said, if ICE shows up on campus, we’re not going to assist them. They had modified that to basically say, in some circumstances we have to let ICE on campus without a warrant.

So we see that. We see, as I mentioned before, the suspensions of the students. Again, this is not happening in a vacuum. We’re seeing it across the university in many ways. We’re seeing this inability to, not just an inability to stand up to the Trump administration, but also we see them aligned with them when it comes to this type of behavior. The interim president, Katrina Armstrong, had sent out an email when ICE agents showed up at campus the other day saying she was heartbroken that this had occurred, but she wanted to inform everybody.

I think it’s really hard for students, probably, who are engaged in these protests, to take those sentiments seriously when they look at the sequence of events here and they look at how Columbia and other higher education institutions have acted over the past few months.

Marc Steiner:  I’m going to read another quote here and come back to Mahmoud before we have to go. You have a quote here from Helyeh Doutaghi’s attorney, who was a scholar of international law at Yale, was placed on administrative leave. And the quote is this from Eric Lee, his attorney, “Future historians will treat the role of American universities as an example of collaborationism, like we view the Vichy government today. The role played by the vast majority of professors is absolutely shameful.”

I want to talk about that for a minute before we go back to Mahmoud because I think we’re on a very dangerous precipice. If this is allowed to happen, if they’re allowed to go into universities, arrest Palestinian students, arrest students who are protesting anything, threatening universities with taking away their federal dollars. Either universities find a backbone and join the fight or they actually get what they want — I’m talking about the Trump government.

Michael Arria:  Yeah, it’s a very scary situation. The lawyer that you quote there, Eric Lee, he’s actually the attorney for a student at Yale Law School who is also caught up in a similar situation where she was placed on administrative leave following an AI generated article falsely accusing her of terrorist connections. Rubio had announced this was going to happen —

Marc Steiner:  Which is insane, describing that for that moment. Alleged, not even proven.

Michael Arria:  Yeah, we are in a real dystopian, I think, with some of the stuff, situation. This announcement from the Trump administration that they’re going to use AI in order to determine whether or not students support Hamas. It’s really incredible.

But to your point, we’re seeing this across all kinds of universities, not just Columbia. I think all eyes are on Columbia for very obvious reasons, but I think I mentioned in that piece, Swarthmore College just suspended students for their involvement in the Gaza protest. They handed out 25 violations of code of conduct as a result of those protests. The student who got suspended was suspended for using a bullhorn indoors, which is the first time somebody has ever been suspended for this nationally. So we’re seeing schools crack down on this dissent and stifle criticism of Israel, support of Gaza, alongside this push for the Trump administration, as you say.

Before we get off this topic, I should quickly mention there are a couple lawsuits. One is a couple graduate students and a Cornell professor are actually suing the Trump administration over its push to deport students. One of those students was actually almost deported last year after he was suspended for participating in a pro-Palestine protest.

The other lawsuit I think is important here is Khalil and seven other current Columbia students are suing the school and a Republican out of Michigan, Rep. Tim Wahlberg, to prevent their private disciplinary records from being handed over to the House Committee on Education and Workforce. And people probably remember this is the committee that has consistently tried to bring university presidents before Congress and grill them on their alleged inability to crack down on antisemitism. This is an important part of this.

I think it’s hard to know where one group begins and the other ends, but there is definitely this, you see this collaboration that is precisely Eric Lee’s point in your quote, this collaboration with the government, pro-Israel lawmakers, and these schools. And I think it’s a really important point. We’re going to learn a lot, I think, in the coming weeks and months about how that breaks down and how people are going to be able to battle against it and fight against it.

Marc Steiner:  So let me ask you this: What have you learned since your article about Mahmoud Khalil and his legal situation, where he is? I know you’ll probably stay on top of this, I just want to get an update from you on what’s happening to him, to Mahmoud.

Michael Arria:  As I mentioned, he’s hypothetically supposed to be heading back to the East Coast. I think today was, obviously, as I said, something of a victory for his legal team and for him. His wife put out a statement today basically saying this is a good first step, but we need to continue to demand justice for Mahmoud because he was unlawfully and unjustly detained. And she basically said, we’re not going to stop fighting until he is home.

Your listeners have probably seen there’s been protests all across the United States in regards to this. There’s actually been a number of, I’d say, pro-Israel voices, even, who have come out and said, this violates the First Amendment. Whether or not you agree with the Palestine protesters, this should still be opposed.

I think it’s a very dire situation for everyone in this country who cares about the First Amendment or anyone who wants to exercise their right to free speech. I think his current situation, we’ll see what happens, but as it stands, this is going to continue to progress in court. Now it’s supposed to take place on the East Coast, and we’ll be able to see how that goes.

Yesterday, we saw the first statement from him. His lawyers released a statement from him where he basically explained his situation and provided some disturbing details. He wasn’t given a blanket, for instance, the first night he spent sleeping on the cold ground, and his ordeal, and it detailed what he’s thinking. But it also highlighted the fact that he’s committed to the liberation of the Palestinian people, as many people are, and they’re going to continue to fight. And Columbia has targeted him for his views. And really, when you read his statement — Which I encourage people to check out, they can check it out on CCR’s website —

Marc Steiner:  And we will link to it.

Michael Arria:  We actually ran it on our site as well. When you read this, you really start thinking of Dr. Martin Luther King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail. This is a political prisoner. This man is being held with no charges, no crime has been identified by the administration. I think, quite obviously, for the simple reason that he has advocated for Gaza and he has advocated for Palestine, and he has consistently criticized the genocidal assault that has been unleashed on those people by Israel with the support of the United States the entire way through. So that’s the situation we’re in right now, I’d say.

Marc Steiner:  You took the words out of my brain as I read it just a little bit ago, thinking about King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail, that I think that he’s this eloquent spokesman, stuck in jail, wife about to give birth. And we’re going to stay on top of what happens to Mahmoud Khalil, and we’ll stay on top of that and keep abreast of what’s happening to him, and what you can do to support his release and his freedom and to keep that going. This is a very dangerous moment we’re living in, and we have to be really aware, careful, and on top of these issues. So we fight for our democracy and keep this alive.

And Michael, I want to thank you so much for your work and your writing, and we’re going to link to your article and your other work as well. Thank you so much for joining us today, and let’s keep in contact and keep this conversation going and free Mahmoud.

Michael Arria:  Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Marc Steiner:  Thank you. Once again, thank you to Michael Arria for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebden for the program, and audio editor Alina Nehlich, and producer Rosette Sewali for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Michael Arria for joining us today. And so for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

While teaching at Muhlenberg College, Maura Finkelstein made no secret of her support for Palestinian liberation. Even before receiving tenure, Finkelstein taught courses on Palestine and made her views publicly known. Then, in May of 2024, she was unceremoniously fired for sharing pro-Palestine content on her personal social media account. Finkelstein joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss her journey as an anti-Zionist Jewish American, and why she’s willing to stand by her principles despite the consequences.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have you all with us.

In January of this year, Dr. Maura Finkelstein, who is a tenured professor at Muhlenberg College, temporarily posted on Instagram a statement from a Palestinian American poet. Let me read you the statement: “Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. Do not welcome them into your space. Do not make them feel comfortable. Why should those genocide-loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat-out racist? Don’t normalize Zionism. Don’t normalize Zionists taking up space.”

And when that was posted, she began to be harassed by her college, going after her for all kinds of reasons. And she ended up being terminated, a tenured professor from Muhlenberg College, and now works at American Anthropologist. It’s really almost unheard of for a professor to be shown the door, especially a tenured professor, because they disagreed with some policy the government supports.

She joins us today. And welcome, Maura. Good to have you with us.

Maura Finkelstein:  Thank you so much for having me.

Marc Steiner:  So let me just, I’d like to take a step backwards for a moment in time, in your time. And I’m very curious about your own sojourn as a Jewish woman, as a professor, and how you came to this position, this understanding of what’s happening in Israel-Palestine and the oppression of Palestinians, and why that’s become so central to the work you do.

Maura Finkelstein:  Yeah, thanks for that question. I’ve been asked that question a lot lately, not surprisingly. And up until today, a lot of the ways that I have answered that is through the lens of how did you not get indoctrinated into Zionism or how did you escape being a Zionist, as though that’s the expected political position of Jews in America, because we have that narrative.

And now, more and more, I’m thinking, how does anyone buy into Zionism? It should be a surprising commitment to an ideology that is, essentially, a settler colonial ideology. And it should be, in my mind, more common for people to not buy into that. But I understand the context in which we enter the story.

And I think for me, I grew up in a Jewish community in Washington, DC. I went to Hebrew school, I got bat mitzvahed. And I think that, from an early age, I was one of those kids who wouldn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in elementary school.

Marc Steiner:  You too?

Maura Finkelstein:  This goes [laughs] —

Marc Steiner:  Me too [laughs].

Maura Finkelstein:  Yeah, you as well?

Marc Steiner:  Yes [laughs].

Maura Finkelstein:  Yeah, I didn’t like nationalism, and I didn’t like the idea of pledging anything to anything. And so, Zionism was given to me as a child as a double nationalism: You’re committed to the United States, you’re committed to Israel. To me, as someone who, even as a child was wary of nationalism and not interested in that, it didn’t make sense for me to also feel some kind of national affinity to a country across the world that I had never been to and didn’t have any connection to.

And I think, for me, as an anti-Zionist, it was the opportunity in high school to actually read about Palestine from the perspective of Palestinians for the first time in my life when I was a senior in high school. I came across a copy of Edward Said’s The Question of Palestine. I don’t think I understood most of what I was reading, but I did read it. Palestinians had never been part of the story before to me, and all of a sudden I was reading a very different history of what I had been given growing up. And that made a lot more sense to me than what I was learning in Hebrew school and what was being circulated throughout my Jewish community.

Marc Steiner:  So I don’t want to belabor this. I want to get to where we are now and where you are now. But what you just said, I’m very curious about how did people around you respond to that when you were young and taking this position, which is not common for younger people to take?

Maura Finkelstein:  I also was lucky in the sense that my parents were not Zionists. I think we’re pretty much on the same page now — It’s kind of hard not to be after 14 months of genocide being live-streamed to us every day.

But for most of my life, my parents weren’t necessarily politically aligned with me, but they weren’t Zionists and they didn’t feel a connection to Israel. And my father, who was a lawyer — He’s retired now — His parenting strategy, which was applied to everything from when I became a vegetarian and vegan as a kid to when I started reading about Palestine to when I started going to protest at Lockheed Martin when I was in high school, his approach was, argue with me. Make your case. Make your point. And so I was raised to go and do my research and come to the table, even as a child, with an argument.

And I think that that was a really incredible skill for me to have. Because especially in the ’90s and early 2000s, it wasn’t a common position for a Jewish person to be an anti-Zionist — And I will say I didn’t come into the term anti-Zionist until the early 2000s when I was a master’s student at Columbia University and witnessing a lot of the same repression there that we’re seeing now in which a Palestinian professor, Joseph Massad, was the victim of a harassment and targeting campaign to get him fired, and I was radicalized.

Marc Steiner:  And where was that?

Maura Finkelstein:  As an anti-Zionist then. That was at Columbia University in 2004. Yeah, 2004, 2005. And that’s where I encountered the term anti-Zionist and felt like it really fit. But I think before that, I just felt quite alienated from my Jewish community and really couldn’t see a space for myself in that community with the politics that I had. So it was hard, but I do think that I was, at least in my family of origin, I was encouraged to read and to think and to argue, as is a Jewish practice [laughs].

Marc Steiner:  Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I was reading some of the articles you wrote. You talk about your journey to Israel and tell the story of Mahmoud and others that deeply affected you. Could you share that a bit?

Maura Finkelstein:  Yeah, and I will say, when I talk about that trip, I say that I went to Palestine because I went to Palestine.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, yes. Yes, got you.

Maura Finkelstein:  I had often felt ambivalent about whether I wanted to go to Palestine, especially because so many of my Palestinian friends in the United States did not have the opportunity or the option to go to Palestine, to the villages where their family was displaced from. And I think for a long time as a young person, it felt like an ethical commitment to not go to Palestine until Palestinians could return.

But as I progressed in my career as a teacher and was teaching about Palestine, I felt that it was hard for me as an anthropologist — So much about being an anthropologist, being in a place, and sort of thinking from the perspective of that place. It became harder and harder for me to teach about Palestine without going to Palestine. And so I was lucky enough to go the summer of, I think, 2018. I’m now forgetting dates.

Marc Steiner:  It’s OK [laughs].

Maura Finkelstein:  I think it was 2018. And every day we were staying in occupied East Jerusalem, the Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem that’s increasingly being taken over by settlers. And we were moving back and forth into the occupied West Bank and going to various cities and towns to visit historical places, but also to visit Palestinian universities and meet Palestinian faculty members to make connections, share each other’s work. It helped me learn about the scholarship that was being produced in Palestine that I could then teach my students.

And just the opportunity to experience checkpoints. The opportunity to experience settler violence, to see Hebron and see the violence of the area, the way in which Palestinians were trying to protect themselves from the violence of the Israeli military and of encroaching settlers. I think it gave me a grounding that has been really life-changing, and just thinking about how I knew from reading Palestinian writers the reality of occupation. And this allowed me, as a Jewish American, to be as close to that as possible and see the violence of everyday life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

Marc Steiner:  One of the things I thought about, but I really, it struck me as I was reading what you wrote about that journey. I’ll just read this for people listening to us. You wrote that “Palestinians in East Jerusalem like Mahmoud are not citizens, but immigrants with permanent resident status. And this status is contingent upon living in Jerusalem.

“Mahmoud’s wife lives in the West Bank. She cannot come to Jerusalem. And if Mahmoud leaves to live with her, he’ll not be able to return to the city where he grew up, the city where his family lives. Mahmoud and his wife have different identity cards. His allows him to live in East Jerusalem. Hers restricts her to living in the West Bank. And according to the Israeli State, Mahmoud is part of a mixed marriage. He and his wife live 15 miles from each other. They’re not allowed to live together unless he forfeits his Jerusalem residence.”

And when I read that passage last night, it reminded me both of legal Apartheid in South Africa, which I’ve covered, and what happened to enslaved Black people in this country.

Maura Finkelstein:  Absolutely.

Marc Steiner:  Even when they jumped the broom they were forced to live apart, could be sold. I thought about this before, but something about what you wrote about that really struck me deeply in terms of the significance in what it really means, and that’s A. And the B part was… Well, I’ll start with the A. I’ll get to the B after we deal with the A. It really just struck me that way reading what you wrote.

Maura Finkelstein:  Yeah. I think destroying families, breaking up families is always a tool of both genocide and also structural violence. So I think the comparisons to enslavement in the United States and Apartheid South Africa are good as ways for us to… Obviously there are different cases and each one is incomparable in its own way. But I think it’s really important that we can now look back at South African Apartheid and we can look back on the political economy of slavery in the United States and without a doubt say these were monstrous ways of controlling and doing so many different levels of violence to a group of people. There’s no question about that.

And the way in which these forms of control in Palestine are normalized in the name of Israeli security makes it so that Palestinians are constantly dehumanized. The Israeli line, we have to treat them this way because they are a danger to us, they’re a threat to us, et cetera, et cetera. And living in that kind of violent infrastructure and control is unbearable. I mean, people find a way. People always find a way. But it’s horrifying.

Marc Steiner:  So I’m curious, one of the things I was wrestling with is, in reading all your articles, and I at least get to know you intellectually and what you think and your activism just by reading everything you’ve written. One of the questions that always pops up is, how do the oppressed become the oppressor?

And this is a real, I mean, it’s just so vivid to me. If you grew up Jewish, at least in my generation, in my house, you grew up with stories of my grandmother, in Yiddish called Bubbe, my grandmother, who the Cossacks, when they attacked her ghetto, she ran down the street holding her baby sister’s hand, and a Cossack leaned over the saddle, chopped off her baby sister’s head while she was holding her hand. So we grew up with these stories about what happened to us. How did that process happen, do you think, where the people who have lived through so much oppression allow themselves to become the oppressor?

Maura Finkelstein:  It’s such a good and hard question, and I’ve been having conversations with people lately in which some conclusions have been there’s no way to understand this without thinking about it psychoanalytically, which is not something that I have the skills to do [Steiner laughs].

But I do think that there’s something deep in the psyche of a particular kind of Jewish Zionist Israeli, and I mean those three different ways of being together, identity, where I think identity comes with a certain form of ambivalence because it’s really desirable to understand oneself through who we are, being part of a group. I am Jewish, I’m a woman, I’m American, I’m queer, I’m an anti-Zionist. All of these things are ways that I might talk about myself. And each of those categories comes with an ambivalence of not quite being exactly what it is that I want it to be for me. And I think that struggle with ambivalence is generative and important and also deeply uncomfortable.

And I think about Israeli identity as being invested both in being the victim and being the strong one. And how do you resolve that where there’s a commitment? And you see this in American Jews as well where our origin story, regardless of the fact that my family has been here since the turn of the 20th century, our origin story is always the Holocaust these days.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, right.

Maura Finkelstein:  Right? And so what does it mean to have this — And Israel does of course as well — To have the Holocaust as an origin story? We come from genocide. We are an oppressed people. We don’t have a homeland, et cetera, et cetera. We need this place to feel safe.

And at the same time, grappling with that identity of victimhood through this militarized strongman identity. There’s this tension there that doesn’t really make any sense. It can do nothing but create violence. And I think that there’s something so devastating about an unwillingness to reckon with the fact that Jewish people, historically, throughout time, have experienced a lot of oppression, as have most groups. It’s not unique. It’s not special in a particular kind of way.

I think the way that the Holocaust becomes such an origin story in terms of the most extreme form of genocide, the most extreme form of violence is because it happened in Europe to people who are now in many, many spaces seen as white or proximate to white. If we’re thinking about origin stories through settler colonial violence, genocide, enslavement, et cetera, et cetera, we can think about a history of genocide all over the world. It’s actually quite a common story, but it’s usually not happening to white-adjacent people in Europe.

And I think that that commitment to this exceptionalism in which the Holocaust is this origin story, and never really reckoning with what that means, creates the need to be both the victim and the oppressor at the same time. And I think until that’s collapsed, until that’s challenged, then this violence is going to continue. And I also think that as soon as Israelis actually reckon with the ambivalence of that identity, then Israel itself — And I hope that Israel as a nation state this soon happens — Israel will collapse. What is sustaining it other than this tension between victim and perpetrator?

Marc Steiner:  So in the little bit of time you have left, two things I’m very curious about. A is, as someone who has been really delving into this deeply, both intellectually and as an activist and went there… It’s almost a ridiculous question [laughs]. But how do you see it resolved? Having spent many years in dialogue and working together with Palestinians and Israelis and Jews and Muslims and Christians, exploring ways to come together as opposed to killing each other and oppressing Palestinians, I don’t have the answer, I’m not sure what it is. But I’m very curious, given what you’ve been doing in your work and life, how are you see it changing? What does the struggle look like to make a change?

Maura Finkelstein:  Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s such a hard question. And I will say that I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things, and a lot of them are informed.

Marc Steiner:  Really [laughs]?

Maura Finkelstein:  I know it’s shocking. But I do think that the question of the future of Palestine is entirely up to Palestinians, both those who are still there and those who dream of the right to return. But I do think that what we are watching right now is the absolute collapse of Israel and Zionism, and that is going to be a very drawn out, even more violent than we’ve already seen, process.

And when I imagine a future that feels more just, that feels rooted in liberation, I don’t imagine it through the nation state. I think the nation state is one of the most violent and devastating features of modernity, the nation state and capitalism. I would like to abolish them both [Steiner laughs], so I don’t imagine a utopian future with national borders. But I do think that Israel cannot continue to exist if there will be any just future for the region.

And the problem with being a genocidal state is that there’s only the projection of genocide. So I think the way that I hear Zionists talk about the future is, we can’t integrate this region because they will do to us what we have done to them, which is a genocidal ideology, and it’s not at all reflective of what most Palestinians are hoping to have happen in the future.

But I do think that the only possible movement in the direction of liberation for everyone and freedom for everyone is the complete dismantling of Israel and the creation of a free and democratic country from the river to the sea. And that would be giving rights to everyone.

And I think that most people want to live peacefully and see their children grow up and have opportunities and have access to food and water and safety and freedom and all of these things. And none of that is possible for anyone in the region unless Israel ceases to exist. And I don’t mean Israelis, I don’t mean any people ceasing to exist. I mean the nation state of Israel. There’s no peace. There’s no liberation. There’s no freedom in the region as long as Israel continues to exist. Israel is making that quite clear. I mean, this genocide in Gaza has spread to Lebanon and Syria, the expansionism of the Israeli nation state is a danger to the world. It’s a threat to the world.

Marc Steiner:  It is a threat to the world. Absolutely.

Maura Finkelstein:  Yeah.

Marc Steiner:  I think that what you’re describing, before we conclude, I have a poster that I’ve had since 1968 given to me by Palestinian friends. And it’s a map of all of Palestine, the whole Holy Land. And it reads across the top, “One state, two people, three faiths.” And that has kind of been, at least for me personally, politically been my mantra for all those years. That there’s got to be a way through the wilderness to find that.

Maura Finkelstein:  And I think that that’s the only next step. It’s not the last step, but it’s the only next step that will allow for the most amount of people to live a kind and just life. After that, we can talk about abolishing the nation state and abolishing capitalism [Steiner laughs] and working towards the utopia in which there’s actually liberation and freedom, and not just peace. But I’ll go step by step.

Marc Steiner:  So as we conclude, what about you and where you are? You were absolutely unfairly pushed out of your tenured position at Muhlenberg College, harassed. I read the story about what happened, you’re fighting it, and the literal lies they told about how you were teaching and being pushed out. Now you’re working for the American Anthropological Association.

Maura Finkelstein:  I will say, so there’s a little misconception. Nobody gets paid in academia for editing work. It’s a completely volunteer gig that I’ve actually been neglecting because I’m going through an appeals process now, so it’s not a job.

Marc Steiner:  Oh, it’s not a job, OK.

Maura Finkelstein:  It’s just a… No.

Marc Steiner:  I’m sorry.

Maura Finkelstein:  Nobody’s paying me. But it is a way for me to stay connected to the discipline and be in conversation with really smart scholars who are also editing the journal for free.

Marc Steiner:  Got you.

Maura Finkelstein:  So it’s not a job.

Marc Steiner:  Got you.

Maura Finkelstein:  But it is something to do. But yeah, I’m in an appeals process. I’m really hoping that there will be a different outcome. I am, to my detriment, an optimist. It’s the only way I can get out of bed in the morning.

Marc Steiner:  Important.

Maura Finkelstein:  But yeah, I’m writing, I’m editing. I am working with students who are doing really important anti-Zionist work across the country, and it’s my honor to witness the work that they’re doing. And yeah, I don’t know what’s next in terms of a paycheck and health insurance, but I think that the work that I’ve always been doing will continue, even if it’s not in the classroom.

Marc Steiner:  We will publish this. And what I will do is push this out there and push your story out there as well, because —

Maura Finkelstein:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  …I think what you’ve done takes a lot of courage to stand up to that and to be pushed out of your life’s work as well, for standing up for what you believe and standing for what’s right.

Maura Finkelstein:  Thank you. It doesn’t seem like a huge loss when we’re witnessing the worst atrocities that we’ve ever seen on a daily basis. And I think that there are a lot of really brave people across the country and across the world who are doing incredible things at incredible cost. And I’m grateful that my story has circulated because I think it’s allowing for important conversations to be happening. But this is happening on all of our campuses across the United States —

Marc Steiner:  It is.

Maura Finkelstein:  …And Canada and Europe right now. It’s a really, really, really scary time.

Marc Steiner:  It is a frightening time. Dr. Mara Finkelstein, appreciate the time you’ve taken and we’ll stay in touch.

Maura Finkelstein:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  And —

Maura Finkelstein:  Definitely.

Marc Steiner:  …I look forward to more conversations. Stay strong and —

Maura Finkelstein:  Yeah. Thank you for your work.

Marc Steiner:  And thank you for your work.

Once again, let me thank Dr. Mara Finkelstein for joining us today and having the courage to stand up to the forces that want to silence her. We will link to her work. You can Google www.marafenkelstein.org to read her articles and more. That’s spelled M-A-U-R-A F-I-N-K-L-E-S-T-E-I-N.

And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for working on her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible. Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you.

And once again, thank you to Dr. Mara Finkelstein for being our guest today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

It’s no secret that Israel has sought to annex the West Bank for decades—and now, many believe the time may be near. For Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the struggle to defend Palestinians in the West Bank from settler attacks has become his life’s work. But it’s a task that is only becoming more difficult with time, as the extreme dehumanization of Palestinians becomes all-the-more normalized by the genocide in Gaza. Ascherman returns to the Marc Steiner Show to discuss the brutal violence unfolding in the West Bank, and what, if anything, can be done to address Israel’s anti-Palestinian racism.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Good to have you with us. And this is another episode of Not In Our Name, as we continue to look at what’s happening in Israel-Palestine and the devastation taking place in Gaza, and what we do about it.

And the person I’m talking to today is somebody I’ve known for a while, I’ve interviewed before. Rabbi Arik Ascherman first came on my radio program in public radio on April 5, 2002, and we’ve been in touch ever since. He is an American Israeli, a Reform rabbi who puts his life on the line to defend Palestinian rights, to end the occupation, to stop settlers from destroying people’s homes and villages and taking their sheep.

He has been executive director of the Israeli Human Rights Association called Torat Tzedek (Torah of Justice) for 29 years. He served as co-director and executive director and director of special projects, and president and senior rabbi for Rabbis for Human Rights. He’s been beaten, arrested, threatened with death for defending Palestinian farmers, for working to find a way for Israelis and Palestinians, for Christians, Jews, and Muslims to live in the Holy Land together and share that space.

He’s back here in the United States to raise funds for his work and the work going on in Israel-Palestine and to talk about the reality of what’s going on there now in the Gaza War, where 45,000 Palestinians have been killed, along with over 1,700 Israelis.

He joins us in studio now, and Arik, welcome back. Good to see you.

Arik Ascherman:  Okay, thank you. Thank you for having me again.

Marc Steiner:  So let me ask you, I want you to describe, for people listening to us, what it’s like for you and the Palestinians you stand with when you’re attacked. When you go in there to defend Palestinian shepherds, defend them on their land, that right-wing Israeli settlers want to take from them with the backing of the government and the army. Talk a bit about that, about what you experience, and what that’s like, and what actually happens.

Arik Ascherman:  It could be anything. I mean, you can Google “Ascherman knife” and see me being attacked by a masked knife-wielding settler. If I’d —

Marc Steiner:  Well, you have been beaten, you’ve been stabbed, you’ve been thrown in jail.

Arik Ascherman:  I’ve been all that, and of course, what I’ve suffered is so minuscule compared to what Palestinians suffer. But the fact is that sometimes I just look these settlers in the eyes and I stare them down and they back down, and sometimes we get beat up or worse. But of course, it’s not just the settlers.

One of the greatest successes we’ve had in my career was the Morar High Court decision, which mandates how Israeli security forces must protect Palestinian farmers. And at least until Oct. 7, you really literally could see Israeli soldiers protecting Palestinian farmers to harvest their olives — We’re right now toward the end of the olive harvest season — Next to settlements or inside settlements.

But one of the other… We just had a harvest, for example, in a place called Deyr Jarir —

Marc Steiner:  Palestinian olive harvest.

Arik Ascherman:  …And the settlers came and attacked us, and the Palestinians, of course. The army came and they did what the High Court decision explicitly said they cannot do. It says explicitly, the Israeli High Court — And the Israeli High Court is often the flak jacket for the occupation, but sometimes they do the right thing — They said, if Israelis attack Palestinians, the army must not close the area without an order, and throw everybody out to protect the Palestinians. You must do everything possible, all the means at your disposal, to let the Palestinians continue their harvest, unless there really and truly is no other way of preventing bloodshed. And that certainly was not the case, but that’s what they did. They issued an order, and I explained to the officer on the ground what he was doing was illegal. Of course, it wasn’t his decision either. It was made by the brigade commander.

And then I spoke with the legal advisor for the occupied territories, or one of his officers, and once he agreed that he would start looking into this, I asked all of our human rights defenders that were there accompanying for the harvest, I said, we will move out of this area for now even though this was an illegal order. And I’m on tape saying, and the soldiers and the police are not our enemies. But I soon realized, if I hadn’t realized it previously, that if I don’t see them as our enemies, they see us, and me in particular, as their enemies.

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Arik Ascherman:  So, we go outside, and then after an hour of waiting, they arrest me and two others for having taken too much time to leave the closed area. And then what I often do — The point is to give us a ban, to give us a 15… Because they want us out of the picture. Just as we’ve got a high court case coming up in another week for one of the most violently expelled, separated communities, Wadi al-Siq, where literally at gunpoint they would say, you’re out of here in an hour or you die. And again, I was in jail because I was accused of having, two days earlier in Wadi al-Siq, attacking soldiers.

But I refuse to agree to the ban, and then you spend a night in jail, you go before the judge. And in the past the judges would cancel these requirements. No longer. And the words that came out of the mouth of the police officer that was there to defend the police decision were anarchists — I don’t even think they know what anarchists are — We are provocateurs. To work for justice, for work for decency, for work for Jewish values, as I see it, for basic human rights, is a provocation in their eyes.

A couple days later, the same thing. We’re with a farmer who I’ve worked with for 20 years, and after trying to go through all the rules and regulations to be able to get to his… We just went to his trees, and you hear the soldiers: [inaudible] the provocateurs are here. And again, I have some reticence to talk about what happens to us when it’s so minuscule, as I said, compared to what happens to Palestinians, but it’s indicative. It’s indicative of what’s happening to our society that anybody today who tries in any way to stand for Palestinian human rights is a traitor, a fifth golem, as I’ve been called, and a provocateur.

Marc Steiner:  And even though you could be killed in the process of defending Palestinian rights in Palestine at this moment, they, if they wanted to, could just throw you in jail for 20 years, if they wanted to. And you are, in many ways, isolated inside of Israel. The group of Israelis, as a friend of mine said, who now lives in Vietnam, who’s Israeli: we’re all gone, the left in Israel. The Jews who are on the left in Israel left. They’re here, they’re in Vietnam. They’re in France, they’re in Britain, they’re somewhere else. But you continue to do it, put your life on the line to say, no, this is not what we should do, knows who we are.

A, the question is, how long can you do that? And B, this could also end up in the complete destruction of the Jewish people inside of Israel, and Palestinians as well.

Arik Ascherman:  There’s all real possibilities. Once, even when I was only 60, and now I’m 65, my partner says to me, as I’m getting up at 4:00 in the morning to go wherever I was going, you know, you’re not that young anymore. Why do you do this [Steiner laughs]? And I say, I will continue to do it as long as I’m able and as long as it’s necessary. Unfortunately it’s still necessary, and thank God I’m still able.

But already, before Oct. 7, back just when this government was elected in January of 2023, when they took office, I wrote in the Haaretz newspaper what our [inaudible] has to be, and I said, part of it may be our blood. People have become so desensitized to Palestinian blood, but there are still some Israelis who maybe are shocked a bit by Israeli blood. And it’s not that I have a death wish, and again, it’s to make something of our risks, which are so, again, minuscule compared to what Palestinians go through, but the fact is that one of the few tools we have left in the toolbox is to put ourselves on the line and put ourselves in danger.

I was thinking, an outrageous situation: a family from the village of Deyr Dibwan, an outpost, on June 18, was set up 200 meters from their home. And they fled also with soldiers coming and firing guns in the air. And then the soldiers, who maybe realized at some level, said, well, come back and live in your home, and call us if there’s a problem. Really? Before they’re injured or dead?

And we got a court order that they couldn’t touch the home. The home’s been destroyed by the settlers. Part of the family are US citizens. We begged that the United States would do something to defend their citizens. Nada.

And sometimes I think, well, maybe we have to go and put up some tents where that demolished home was, if the court won’t agree to order that outpost removed. And what might happen to us if we do that? I’m not sure it would be very pretty. But sometimes I don’t see what else we have left to do.

And again, we’re going to have to weather the storm, do whatever we can to protect whoever we can protect, at least that Palestinians should know that they are not alone. Find ways of getting out of our echo chamber to try to really understand what makes our fellow Israelis tick, the ones that you keep on saying, how can they do these things? And also be in courts as one of our last best hopes. Try to educate. But it really is just doing whatever little we can do until this too shall pass.

Marc Steiner:  In all the years we’ve been talking together now, it’s been longer than I realized, 22 years of conversations.

Arik Ascherman:  Yes, it’s been a while.

Marc Steiner:  There was a time when, in our early years of talking together, that you actually thought, we actually thought, we could see maybe a peace blooming. There was a possibility of Palestinians and Israelis coming together. We could build a future somehow, whether it was two states or one state or some cooperative arrangement, that there was hope. But it seems to have gone in the other direction. Give us your analysis. All these years, you’ve been fighting for this. Where you think we’re going, and why are we here?

Arik Ascherman:  I think you’re absolutely right. I think, for so many years, there was some kind of feeling that we were moving in the right direction, and that’s gone, certainly since our current government was elected, certainly after Oct. 7, certainly with the election results here.

But you know, just before leaving home in Jerusalem, last Shabbat that I was in synagogue, and we had a d’var Torah, a sermon, and then breakout groups talking about how we deal with the trauma of the situation that we’re in. And everybody, no matter what your political beliefs, is traumatized. There’s no way of overestimating the depth of the fear, anger, fury, trauma that Israelis are feeling after Oct. 7, which is one of the reasons that Israelis are just so incapable right now, for the most part, of having any empathy for what we’ve been doing to Palestinians.

But the theme was particularly i vadaut, uncertainty, and the trauma caused by uncertainty. In the breakout groups, I said, I embrace uncertainty right now, because if I think of what is certain, it’s awful, it’s terrible. And the one thing that gives me some hope is that there’s that joker in the deck of uncertainty. Maybe Trump’s unpredictability, all these things, what the late Rabbi Michael Lerner spoke about, the God of The Exodus as the God that makes possible what seems impossible. But you are absolutely right, that hopefulness.

And people used to laugh at me for being one of the last optimists standing, and I don’t like to say it about myself. I’m still an optimist in the long run as a person of faith, but in the short term, I

‘m not. I’m not really optimistic right now, and I think right now we are heading into darkness.

We’ve just started the Jewish month of Kislev, at the end of which we’ll celebrate Hanukkah. We need that Hanukkah light, we need that Hanukkah miracle, but we’re also taught in the Jewish tradition le somchim al hans, you don’t count on miracles.

And when we look honestly at our situation, whether we talk about our government in Israel, the fact that for so many Israelis that maybe in the past had some kind of sympathy for Palestinian human rights, today, West Bank Palestinians are like Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. Nobody is standing with them. The international courts have no teeth. Certainly, we can’t expect very much from the international community right now. And that means that Palestinians are simply unprotected.

And things aren’t great either for the Israeli Jews and other Israelis living in poverty whom we also try to protect. We had a meeting just before I left our coalition to work on public housing for Israelis, and nobody has any bandwidth to think about people living in poverty who are also the hardest hit by the realities of war.

Marc Steiner:  There’s so much in what you said that raises so many questions. And I understand the pain Israelis are going through, the attack on Oct. 7, and the kibbutzim attack, Mefalsim, Kissufim were kibbutzim where my family lived, and relatives I didn’t even know were killed in those attacks. And some I know that I’ve been in communication with from Uruguay and Mexico City, which is where many of them came from, were on the left in Israel, so I understand that pain completely.

But why do you think there’s such a detachment, then, from the mass murder of Palestinians by Israelis now? At least 45,000 people have been killed. More have been injured and wounded, entire communities leveled, people under the rubble, we don’t know how many. And how do you read that as somebody who’s been so active in trying to stem Israeli violence and to protect Palestinian lives and to build a different world, how do you begin to address what you just described?

Arik Ascherman:  Well, first of all, again, I say you cannot overestimate the depth of the trauma that people… And I would hope that what we’ve suffered should sensitize us to the suffering of others. But today, even Israelis who were, in the past, more progressive simply see Palestinians as demons, as Amalek, as people that there’s no way of making peace for. There is simply a total collapse.

And it’s also, Israelis could surf the net and see what you see, but they usually don’t. They don’t see the exploded body parts. They don’t see the hand of the child sticking out of the rubble in Gaza. What we hear 24/7 is about our pain. We hear the radio waves and television are filled day after day, hour after hour with the stories of the murdered and raped Israelis, the fallen soldiers, the kidnapped, the people who have had to have been evacuated from their homes because they’re on the border. And it’s just like never the twain shall meet. We are simply living in different realities, and there may be some other factors as well, but let’s start with those.

Marc Steiner:  In all the years — I’m going to come back to exactly what you said, let me start here — That in all the years that I’ve been covering this with some intensity, since 1993, in all the years that I’ve been involved in Israel and in Palestinian affairs, which has been since 1968, and before that when I was younger, I’ve never experienced a darker time that I can remember in my life. I understand the pain of what occurred on Oct. 7. In my mind, you can’t question that. As I just said, part of my family was gone in that attack.

At the same time, one of my closest friends here in Baltimore, who’s Palestinian, his nephew was shot and killed by rampaging settlers in Ramallah. 14 years old, doing nothing. Maybe threw a stone.

And one of the things that you know from the history of Jewish people is that beneath much of the work, secular and religious, is a humanitarianism, is a kind of wanting to reach out to the person who is being persecuted like you’ve been persecuted. So, how does that turn around? I mean, you live there. You’re in it.

Arik Ascherman:  Well, first of all, as you alluded to, and I think we’ve spoken about in the past, Israelis or Jews are arguably strong candidates for the dubious title of most oppressed people in human history, and that leaves scars on our souls. Again, I would hope… When I speak with Palestinians or when I speak with anybody, I think about the fact that we, who, for centuries, so much wished that somebody was standing with us, was in some form of solidarity when the knock came on our doors in the middle of the night, our homes, our doors were burst open in the middle of the night.

And often when I’m speaking with the Palestinians, where given the dire situation and the very limited ability that we have right now to do much other than batten down the hatches, [Hebrew] until there will be better times, to protect, to preserve whatever we can in any ways that we can, I say to people, I can’t promise much except for that you won’t be alone. You will not be alone.

But for you and I and so many others for whom the lesson of Jewish history is that never again means never again for anybody. And I remember back when I was an undergraduate, and the issue was Apartheid in South Africa, and bringing my rabbi to speak at one of the rallies, the late Ben-Zion Gold, zchrono levarka, and he said, when I left the gates of Auschwitz and left my family in the ashes, I made two promises to myself: one to dedicate my life to the well-being of the Jewish people, and that’s why I’m a rabbi today; and that this should never happen again to anybody, and that’s why I’m here at this rally today. And that just seems so obvious to you and I, but for many people, they go the opposite direction.

And we’ve talked before about Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who back several decades before Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, said the Torah is saying that to’ava shel metzrim, the abomination of Egypt, is simply this: that they believe that might makes right, and therefore they had absolute power over us. They could do with us what they want, enslave us, embitter our lives. And he predicted, several decades before Herzl, someday we’re going to have a state, and the Torah’s warning us, when you have the power, as you will, do not use it as Egyptians use it against us. Even though that’s maybe the natural human thing to do, to repeat learned behaviors, but we do.

And so many Israelis are motivated by the weight of Jewish oppression over the centuries, the feeling that there’s an antisemitic world out there who is looking for any way possible to destroy us. And your incredulity is just an indicator of how we are in such different worlds from so many of these people. But I think, whether it’s the same way that so many of us maybe are incredulous about what motivated people to vote for Donald Trump. And I think at some point we’re going to have to get out of our echo chambers and into theirs, which isn’t an easy thing to do, and somehow really listen to what some of these people are saying. But I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s the reality.

Marc Steiner:  So look, you spend your time in Israel-Palestine defending Palestinian farmers and Palestinians, standing between them and settlers and them and the army, who want to evict them from their lands, push their sheep and them off their lands, and you’re sitting with part of the minority now, a small minority of Israelis, who are saying, not in our name. This shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

Arik Ascherman:  I never felt marginalized for all the over 29 years I’ve been doing this, and now I feel so marginalized. We are such a small group.

Marc Steiner:  Yeah. So, I want to talk about what you think the future holds. When Ruwaida Amer was on our program here the other week, a Palestinian woman in Gaza who lost her family, her home destroyed, blown up, people under the rubble, people she loves, what do Israelis think if they’re going to go in and destroy people’s lives like this, that’s the end of it? They’re just going to give up and go away? If people talk about the pain of Oct. 7, or the pain of the Holocaust — Which is painful. I grew up with people with numbers on their arms in my home. I know what antisemitism is. I know how deep it runs. But if we think that destroying Palestinian lives is somehow going to bring us peace, is going to create something… We’re destroying an entire world.

Arik Ascherman:  That’s the ultimate tragedy, because even if you don’t give a fig about Palestinian human rights, even if you don’t see them as human beings, even if you can’t see a foot from the Jewish people, what we are doing, in addition to the abominable injustice that we are doing to other human beings, is not going to bring us the peace and security that we deserve. Our sages taught us [Hebrew] the sword comes into the world because of justice delayed and justice denied and the improper teaching of Torah. And our sages were not in favor of the sword, but they were realists. They knew the world they were living in.

And with all the caution I have to take not to justify the unjustifiable, you can’t justify what was done. As someone who’s fought all my working career against the occupation, you can’t justify it in the name of the evils of the occupation what was done on Oct. 7. But if you really want to understand it, injustice brings about the sword.

There are hardcore Hamas leadership that, even if we were to have a just peace tomorrow, they would still be dedicated to destroying Israel. But what drives the masses into their arms is what we’re doing to Palestinians. And even if we were to entirely destroy Hamas tomorrow, there’d be something more, because you can’t kill the desire of a people. There’s been a few cases in human history where brute force has quashed entirely resistance, but generally that’s not what happens.

And it’s like there’s another image in the Talmud in Ta’anit of someone who has become ritually impure because they’ve touched a dead lizard, and they go into the ritual bath, the mikvah, to purify themselves, but they can’t purify themselves because they’re still holding onto the lizard. And the reality is, which, sadly, again, even if you don’t care about other human beings other than Jews, as long as they’re holding on to the lizard of the occupation, as long as we are oppressing Palestinians, as long as we are taking their land and acting with violence and uprooting their trees and everything else, we’re not going to have, as Israelis, any kind of peace and security.

And when I talked before about the moral imperative that I feel not to leave people alone, to at least stand with them, and probably stand maybe between people and the people that are coming to burst down their door, frankly, there’s also some self-interest there as well, because that’s what you said: What do we think… Let’s say that someday this will end, as, you know, King Solomon’s ring, the round ring that said, “This too shall pass.” When we come out of that ark and see all the destruction surrounding us, but now we’re ready to make peace, will Palestinians who have seen all their loved ones wiped out, will they have any interest in making peace with us? Again…

Marc Steiner:  So, let me, in the time we have here, there’s two kind of final thoughts. One’s political and one’s about the future, which is also political, I suppose, and it comes also down to your personal work is what I want to get to. But very quickly, before I get there, do you see a difference between the Ben-Gvirs and Hamas?

Arik Ascherman:  Sometimes I think they all get together at night to plan how to just make the rest of our lives miserable with the sick idea that they benefit from ongoing conflict and bloodshed. And of course, it is… People reminded me that when the racist Rabbi Kahane, Meir Kahane, who was the one person whose party was ever banned from the Knesset because of racism, when he would walk into the Knesset to speak, everybody would leave, including the Likud, including the other right-wing politicians.

Marc Steiner:  The right wing, right.

Arik Ascherman:  And today, Ben-Gvir, a Kahane supporter all his life, now he tries to paper that over a bit, who until he realized it wasn’t going to help him get elected, had a picture of the murderer Baruch Goldstein, who went in and shot people up and murdered people in the Hebron mosques, Tomb of the Patriarchs and mosques —

Marc Steiner:  When the right-wing Israelis attacked the mosque and killed all those people, yeah.

Arik Ascherman:  And he’s in the Knesset and now a minister. I mean, you really do have to ask, what has happened to us that that could be acceptable?

Marc Steiner:  Arik Ascherman, let me first say, thank you for coming to the studio today and being here, but I also thank you for putting your life on the line for Palestinians and for an equitable Holy Land that very few were willing to do, especially fewer and fewer people are willing to do. And I think that’s one of the things that maybe we should work on in the future conversations here is to bring you and others and Palestinians we’ve had on together to talk about what the future might be and how to get there. Because right now, to me, it’s a very dark future and a very frightening place.

Arik Ascherman:  Very dark.

Marc Steiner:  Talking to Palestinians —

Arik Ascherman:  And maybe there’ll be some Hanukkah lights.

Marc Steiner:  It’s very scary.

Arik Ascherman:  Yeah.

Marc Steiner:  Their lives are on the line, just like your life’s on the line for saying no to what’s happening to them. So again, Arik Ascherman, thanks so much for the work you do. I appreciate you joining us in studio, and we will link to all the work you’re doing so people can see exactly what takes place, and we will stay in touch. Thank you so much for being here.

Arik Ascherman:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank Rabbi Arik Arscherman for joining us today, and we’ll link to his work and videos about his work on our website. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible.

Once again, let me thank Rabbi Arik Ascherman for being here today, and more importantly for putting his life on the line for fighting for ending the oppression of Palestinians and working for an Israel-Palestine where all can live together in peace.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you, Rabbi Ascherman, for joining us today. Take care.

Hunger. Cold. Thirst. Disease. These are the daily realities of life in Gaza, where for the past 423 days, Israel has unleashed a genocide that will come to define our contemporary era. As Palestinians struggle to meet their daily needs, they are also faced with a battle to preserve their memories and dignity. Over the past year, journalist and filmmaker Ruwaida Amer has produced numerous powerful, heart-wrenching documentary reports for TRNN from the rubble and ruins of Gaza, shining a light on the darkest realities of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, even as she herself suffers from—and struggles to survive—the onslaught. Calling in from Gaza, Amer joins The Marc Steiner Show to share an honest portrait of her life and the lives of her fellow Palestinians in the midst of genocide.

Please watch and share Ruwaida Amer’s on-the-ground reports from Gaza for TRNN, including…

• “Gaza’s orphans speak: ‘I found [my family] in pieces. in pieces’“
• “Palestinians pray in the ruins of Gaza’s bombed mosques“
• “‘Look at our suffering!’: Gaza’s message to the world after a year of genocide“
• “Life for Gaza’s children during Israel’s genocide“
• “Gaza’s survivors cling to life in Khan Yunis refugee camps“

Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with us.

The war on Gaza since Oct. 23 has killed at least 45,000 people. No less than 10,000 have been children. Most of the hospitals have been destroyed. Patients are dying, children are dying. The infrastructure has been obliterated. 90% of the 1.2 million Gazans have been displaced. There’s been no food, people living on one meal a day — If they’re lucky. And still it goes on, as I’ve said for decades, not in our name. This must end, and we must help to end it.

Israel just appointed Yechiel Leiter, who was part of the fascist Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League, as ambassador to the United States with Trump’s approval.

Now here, the war rages on. And many of you have seen the documentaries we’ve published by the amazing and brave Ruwaida Amer, who lives in Gaza, whose home and family have been torn apart. Ruwaida is a video and documentary filmmaker, writer, and producer. You’ve seen her brave and brilliant work here at Real News, as I’ve said, and also appeared on Al Jazeera, BBC, ABC, CNN, Euronews, among others. And written for The Nation and Slate, among others.

And Ruwaida, welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. It’s good to have you with us.

Ruwaida Amer:  Hi.

Marc Steiner:  Thank you so much for taking the time and being with us today. Can you just tell us where you are at this moment?

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah, as you know, I’m in Gaza. And I’m in [the] South of Gaza because I live in [the] South of Gaza. It’s my home there. Also, there’s no difference between North and South Gaza, anywhere there’s a very hard situation. And everywhere, the bombing… Maybe in the beginning of the war, if you were in the South, you weren’t safe. No. I’m in the South, but I live in a very hard situation. Every time I hear the bombing, before a few minutes, I was very scared because I had a very strong bomb around my area. So the situation here is not good and not safe. It’s not better than anywhere in Gaza. All the areas are under hard bombing, the worst war in the world. So no one is safe.

Marc Steiner:  And you’ve lost friends and family personally in this war.

Ruwaida Amer:  I have many stories about the losing of people in my life. In general, I don’t like to talk about this because I like to keep my work private. Or if I’m working as [a] journalist, so the people know that I’m a journalist. But I have [other] work, I’m a teacher. So as a teacher, I lost my students. My students, they are in fifth grade and sixth grade, that means they’re aged nine years and 10 years.

And recently I know I lost more than two or three or four students. I lost more than them. And my student told me we have another one, we lost them. In the beginning, in the war, he was killed by a very hard bombing in the North. And all the building, a huge building structure, [collapsed] on his head, with his family. So I lost my student, I lost my friends, I lost my close friend. Also, I lost my cousin.

Also, maybe I want to be more negative, but I want to tell you, anyone we lose in Gaza, I consider him or her like one of my family, one of my society, one of my people. Because all the people we lose during the war, they have a great story. They have dreams. They were planning the future for their families, their children. And we lose very close people in our life. We know them in our normal life, we meet them every day. Now we don’t have them.

Maybe it affected my feelings, my mind. When I write my articles or when I produce my stories, I feel very sad about the people in Gaza. To be more clear, I don’t like to talk about my experience because I don’t like the wars. And usually I told my friends, after the war ended, I said for my friends, I think anyone [who] died in the war, he won his life.

Because when you are alive and you remember your family, your friends, your studies, you will lose your mind when you think, how’s my life without them? How can I go to my school without my students? How can I go to the restaurant without my friends? How can I go to my work without my friend, also? How can I be strong when I see my auntie, when she comes back from Egypt, and she will come back to Gaza when the Rafah Crossing opens, and she will not find her son because he [was] killed by bombing Israel in the beginning of this war?

Maybe the best thing for me, during this war, I’m writing everything I live [through] in this war, I like to document it. Everything, every situation, anything [that’s] happened with me, I wrote about it in my articles, also in my documentaries. Like what I worked for Real News.

When you lose anyone from your people, you will feel like you’ve [lost] your life. It’s not easy. You will not be sad for your friend just, or one of your family, no. For example, I used to go to a restaurant, very, very famous restaurant in Gaza. So I have very beautiful moments and memories there. All the people working in this restaurant, they were killed by Israel. Who will open the restaurant again after the war?

Last two days or three days, I saw a post on this restaurant’s page. They posted in memory for the owners of this restaurant, because all of them were killed by the Israeli bombing. And all the comments asking who will reopen this restaurant, if we will see this restaurant again after the war. It’s not just people or persons, no. The places, the streets.

I live in Khan Younis city. If you will come to this city, you will just see destruction. Everything is destroyed. You will not find any building good. All of them [were] destroyed by the bulldozing of them and the bombing of them.

We have memories with the places, the streets, the sea. I feel like our sea is very sad because there are, near the sea, tents for the people. All the people put their tents near or on the beach of the sea. They used to just visit the sea to relax, now they are living near the sea. And the water attacks them because we are in the winter season. Maybe you’ve seen some news about many tents destroyed by the water, sea, and the raining.

It’s so sad. Just the situation in Gaza, it’s hard to express about it in words, or sentences, or paragraphs, or articles, or by documentaries. We need a lot of documentaries to show the situation in Gaza. Sorry, I’m not speaking the answer about the question [crosstalk] —

Marc Steiner:  No, that’s fine. It’s fine.

Ruwaida Amer:  About all the question. Sorry about that. Really, the loss is not just a person, the loss is also places, also streets, sea, our safety, our peace. We lost everything, by the way.

Marc Steiner:  It’s hard, watching all of your documentaries, reading what you’ve written, following it every day, it’s hard to imagine, for you to be able to keep up your creative spirit and work in the midst of the madness that surrounds you. Living in that death and destruction, maybe lucky if you have a meal a day, and be able to produce what you produce. I’m sorry.

Ruwaida Amer:  I will tell you something. Every day I say [to] myself, I will not work. I will stop my work. Because the war, it’s not just one day or two days, or one month or two months, we are under this war [for] more than one year. So every day I say, no, I will not work. I will not send ideas. I will not discuss with my friends about the ideas, if I can do that or not. But at the same time I would say, no, I will keep working, continue.

I will cover the stories because we need to show the world the situation in Gaza. I want to show for the world, or the people [outside] Gaza, we are human. We deserve to live in a good situation. We deserve to find food, water, electricity. Our children deserve to go to their schools. Our children deserve to live with their parents. I worked [on a] story about children [who] lost their parents. Maybe you watched this video. And I saw that there are many tens of thousands of views on this story. It was a very sad story to hear children talk about their family and their parents, and they will not see their parents again. It’s very sad.

Also, if I have patience to work, and complete my work, when I go to film the work or the story, I [go] back to my family, my home, [in a] very bad mood, sad. And I [go] to sleep, and think, I say [to] myself, when will this war finish? I ask my friends, is there any hope to finish this madness or this crazy war? It’s not easy to go to the people and talk with them about their situation, because you know their situation. You live in this situation. You are not different [from] them.

By the way, I live in the same situation with these people. And many times, the people don’t like to talk with me. They say, sorry, Ruwaida, because there are no people [who] hear us. I respect them, by the way. I respect them because they told me there are no people [who] hear us. If there are people [who] hear us, there are people [who] consider the people in Gaza as human like them, and deserve life, like them, the war [would have] stopped a long time [ago]. But we are more than one year in the same situation.

And I will tell you something, the war, it’s not different in the beginning and the middle. The situation, it’s not different. Because I will be not honest when I say, no, now the situation is better than the last two months or three months — No, no, no, it’s the same thing. Now we don’t have food. I live with very hard hunger. So I don’t know what I can eat every day, my family eat every day. There is no food, there is no water, there is no electricity. So the war is, every day, worse than before. So there is no change in the situation in Gaza.

So when you go to the people to make interviews or to film them, many people don’t like to do that. I’m one of them. I respect them. A lot of time I leave them and say sorry, and go back again, call them. I support them. I give them positive energy. I told them this is our right to talk about our situation. We need the world to know what we are living. So some people say, okay, and complete the story with me. Some people told me no, and I respect them, and I stopped the filming with them, and looked for another family like this.

So the people in Gaza live with very bad psychology, feelings. They are very nervous. They are very sad. They don’t have hope for tomorrow. Today the war in Lebanon stopped, they have [a] ceasefire. But Gaza, no. All the people in Gaza are very sad about it, because why are we allowed? Why don’t people care, the world doesn’t care about Gaza, to stop the war in Gaza? Why will we live in Gaza, live in this world, many days or many months? We don’t know what will happen tomorrow.

So when you work as a journalist in Gaza, during the war, you will live with a very hard challenge to complete your work, to continue your work. And also, as [a] filmmaker or producer, before the war, it’s totally different during the war. My work, it was totally different. Because before the war, I filmed very hopeful and happy stories. And the communities, I was so happy when I would film with a music group, and when I film with the sport, the groups or teams. Now I film with the people to talk about hunger, about bombing, about losing, about no schools, about no education, about no health, about no life. So it’s totally different. So it’s not easy for me to work like this, but I do it.

And when I finish any work, I feel happy. When I see a good reaction from the people [outside of] Gaza about their feelings, their support, I feel like I rushed the letter from Gaza, or the message from Gaza, and I told them what’s happening in Gaza. And because there is thankfulness for the journalists in Gaza, photographers in Gaza, because they are working very hard to send the real stories in Gaza, about the real happenings in Gaza, for more than one year. And they are under the bombing.

The journalists are also targeted by Israel. So we are not safe, but —

Marc Steiner:  Including you?

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah. But we are working, still working.

Marc Steiner:  It’s amazing to me that you can continue to produce and write just amazing, creative, brilliant work. You’re telling the story the world has to see. No one else is telling it like you’re telling it, because you’re telling it from the perspective, in the eyes of the people of Gaza, what they’re seeing and feeling. It’s not a detached person. And after watching your films and reading your articles, I just was amazed about how you can continue to do it in the midst of the destruction around you. Almost all the Gazans now are homeless. It’s been destroyed.

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah. Yeah. Also, I displaced my home last August.

Marc Steiner:  August?

Ruwaida Amer:  Not August, no… July. And when I displaced my home, I went to my sister’s home. Also, my sister’s home was destroyed. But we live in straight rooms. We bought plastic paper to close the walls, because we [can] see the street from the rooms. Her home is not good. You can’t live in it, but we don’t have a place to go there.

Also, my mother, she’s not good. Her health, not good. So we can’t go anywhere with her because she has problems with her walking. So we talked about a good place to go there. So it was just my sister’s home, destroyed. But there’s just one room. It’s good. But we can see the streets, the people on the road, because it was bombed [so much]. And her living room and kitchen don’t have windows and doors. And also the bathroom is like this. And her home, not just destroyed, [inaudible], so you can see plaque everywhere.

That’s affected my feeling so sad. I couldn’t still be there, because I know my sister’s home, it was very beautiful. We had very beautiful [inaudible] when [we] visited her. And she also didn’t have internet. And I wanted to work, I wanted to complete my work, So I would write an article and go to the hospital to send my work. Under very hard situations, I’m challenged, I worked. I want to work, I want to write because it makes me feel better. When I write what I feel, what I think, it will be good.

Also, when I produce videos like this, when I send it in, she left a refugee camp, by the way. And I saw this refuge is totally destroyed. Maybe you can find some articles about this thing. So I want to work, and I complete that. I complete my work, and I’m still working until now. Many challenges. If I want to tell you about the challenges I live in, I will not finish, because every second, I have a challenge. Every second living in Gaza, you are challenged. Challenge, the situation, how you want to complete your day, how you want to work, how you want to contact your friends, or your people you work with. It’s not easy to live in this war — I used to live in wars, by the way. I’m not very young. I lived in three wars before, or maybe four wars before. But it’s not like this war. No, this is not war. This is a very, very bad thing. It’s not normal war, no, it’s very hard war.

Marc Steiner:  People have called it genocide.

Ruwaida Amer:  Yes, maybe it’s more genocide, by the way. I haven’t eaten very well for two months. Also, we have people [who] need to take their medicine, to be good, they need to eat very well because their health is not good. There is no food. I don’t know why there is no food in Gaza. I don’t know, really. I want to tell you something. I told my family — All the time, by the way — I told my family, and gave them advice — It’s not advice. It’s crazy advice, by the way — I told them, live without thinking. Stop your mind and live. If you will think about the situation, you will be crazy — I do that, by the way [both laugh]. I’m trying to be good like this. I don’t like to think about my situation around me. If I will think, I will be crazy, I will not be Ruwaida. No, I’ll be crazy again. So I stop thinking [Steiner laughs].

Marc Steiner:  I was wondering, as you’re speaking, how you have remained so calm, and sound so calm, in the midst of all you have to live in the war, people dying and places have been destroyed. And you tell the story so vividly. The way you tell the story, you almost feel like you’re there, you’re in the middle of it. But somehow you manage to keep yourself calm. I can imagine you as a teacher in school, you were probably a great teacher for the kids, to be this calm [laughs].

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah, yeah. I’m still teaching them. I stopped contact with them for a long time, but before one month, I restarted contact with them, because a lot of them [are] in Egypt. So I’m teaching them every Saturday, teaching them science. So I’m [a] clever girl, but in this war, I’m not sure [I’m] still clever. It makes me crazy. When I teach them science, I tell them, oh, I’m very happy because I’ve still saved the information [about] science in my mind. I thought I lost all the information, all my study, all my culture and science, but Alhamdulillah, I’ve still saved a lot of information, and I can think, and I can teach them.

So really, really, maybe it’s crazy words, but this is the real life in Gaza. If you think about what you are living, you will be crazy. Because it’s not normal, it’s abnormal. If you don’t have a problem today, if you don’t have [a] problem with the food, you will have a problem with the water. If you don’t have a problem with the water, you have a problem with the food. Maybe one of your family is sick, you need medicine, and there’s no medicine. And the pharmacies are in the hospitals. We were very sick the last three weeks, and I didn’t find any medicine on how I can be good, because there is not any medicine supplies coming to Gaza. So I feel like I will die [from the] flu. But I’m still stronger, Alhamdulillah.

And also, every time I tell my friends, I’m trying to be strong until the war finishes. I am not sure if I will be strong until the… I don’t know if I can keep my energy until the war finishes or not, but [I’m] still trying to be strong. Trying to save my mind, at least.

Marc Steiner:  It seems, just seeing you and listening to you, that you’re tapping into some internal strength that you probably didn’t even know you had. To see what you’ve been able to do, to make the films you’re making. I can say here that, at Real News, we, and I personally, will do everything possible for the world to see your work. Because you tell the story that is real that nobody else is telling in the way you’re telling it. Especially when you hear the voices of the children in your documentaries.

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah, it’s so hard.

Marc Steiner:  It’s hard. It must be hard for you. It’s hard living through what you’re living through, but to have to embrace the pain of the stories of the children and families every day in your work, because you clearly are a person who, you take that in. It’s not like a —

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah —

Marc Steiner:  Go ahead.

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah, when I see the children. So if I want to help any family, I help them because they have children. Because the children don’t deserve to live in this world. We’ve lost many thousands of children, babies. Babies, just two days, three days, or a month, two months, their age.

So when I say I meet the children… My sister has two children, five years and three years, and they lost their home. Every day they are telling me about their memories of their home. Five years and three years. I think they don’t have big memories in their home because they are very [young], but they do. Her son thought Spiderman could come to Gaza and rebuild their home. He wants Spiderman to come to Gaza and rebuild their home. Can you imagine how the children in Gaza think because they lost their childhood?

There are a lot of children who have responsibility, their home, their families. So if you want to go to the market, you will see children selling in the market. Simple things. They sell simple things for $1, $2, $3, $5, and they go back to their family to buy food for them. The children live in very hard situations. Our children, their place is in the schools, not in the markets, not in the streets, not in bad tents, not crying about their parents or their families. So they lose their childhood.

Many times when I film the children, they are crying. And I hug them and say, you are heroes. You will be good in the future. And it will end very soon, and you will go back to your home in the North. And your mother and father [will] see you in paradise. They are in paradise, and they see us in Gaza, and they are very proud of us because we are very strong and still alive in Gaza. And you will complete your family life. But they are children, and very clever. They know the reality story in Gaza. You can support them, but they know the real story. They know they will not see their parents again. So it’s very hard for them. So you can’t say anything. For a child who says, I hope to hug my mother again. How can you pray [for] her mother to hug her? How can you?

When you work as journalists, or especially filmmakers, or produce long video stories like my works, you will spend more time with the children. Every place or every family in Gaza has children, and you will take your time for them and listen to their words and support them. You don’t know you need to support your family, yourself, your family, or the people in your work, or the people you filmed, you don’t know. So as I told you, I’m trying to not think about my life during the war. Because if I will think, I’ll lose my mind and go crazy.

Marc Steiner:  Which is why I am deeply thankful and grateful that you agreed to this today, because I know, as calm as your demeanor is, this is very difficult.

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah, so hard. It’s not difficult. Difficult is [a] simple word to describe the situation here. No, it’s not easy. You feel like you want to cry every step you walk in the street, every second you meet the people outside. Really, many times I don’t like to call and ask about my friends, because I know the situations. My situation, it’s not good. And their situation, it’s not good, but maybe worse than me, because they are in tents, and they are out [of] their cities. We are living [in the] Gaza Strip, there is Gaza City. So they are out of their cities, Gaza, and the cities in the North, for more than one year, it’s a long time. So no one can bear to be away from their place [a] long time, like one year. And we live in the situation our grandfather, grandmother lived in ’48.

Marc Steiner:  ’48, yeah.

Ruwaida Amer:  1948. We live in this situation. I remembered when I wrote [an] article about [the] Nakba, I asked my grandmother about how the experience was. He died two years [ago]. It’s [a] good thing to die, [the] last two years, because he didn’t like the wars. And I will tell you, they destroyed his grave, by the way, also, earlier.

Marc Steiner:  Really?

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah. They destroyed his grave. And if we want to visit his grave, we will not find it, because they destroyed it as well.

Marc Steiner:  I don’t think, in many ways, that the world, this country especially, really understands the devastation that’s taking place in Gaza. That’s part of the reason that your documentaries and your writing are so, so important. And I would encourage the world to watch everything you do, if you want to feel and understand what is going on. Because you do it from the heart and you do it from the head, and you bring that story to all of us. I think it’s unfathomable. Most people can’t even begin to understand what it’s like to have to live in this dystopian hell that you have to survive in.

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah. Many times I feel like we live… The people outside Gaza, or anyone supporting the war in Gaza to continue, they consider the people in Gaza not to be human. But we are human. We are doctors, teachers, journalists, and very important people. We are people [who] have dreams, we have plans for our future. We deserve to live, and we deserve to stop this war very soon, like Lebanon. So I hope to wake up to good news like this, stop this war in Gaza. I will be so happy, so very happy. Because we don’t have energy to complete or to live for more days in this war. Not just the young people or the men or the women, no, the children.

Also, always I said, please, stop the war, not just for the people in Gaza, just for the children, because they need to sleep. They need to be in their homes. They deserve to [go] back to their schools. This is the second year without schools. It’s too much. They will lose their education. The schools are their place, it’s not the road or the markets or the tents.

So I hope the people outside Gaza can know more about the situation in Gaza, and support [a] ceasefire in Gaza. Stop the war. And anyone can work to stop this war. Don’t be slow. Work very hard to stop this war, because the situation is very hard. And day by day, and second by second, we lose a lot of people, a lot of places, a lot of safety, a lot of peace. Peace is the best solution for everything. The war is not [a] good thing, by the way, because we lost everything.

So I hope my documentaries, my articles, my works, can wish for a lot of people, and very important people in the governments, countries, and they can work hard to stop the war in Gaza. I hope that. Because the war is not [a] good solution, just peace.

And all the people deserve to live in peace. Especially the Gazan people, because they’ve lived in siege [for] more than 20 years maybe, and they haven’t [had] any good day. So a solution for the life in Gaza. The people in Gaza want to complete their life without wars. So enough. I posted [a] story on Instagram. I said, Gaza wants to stop the war. Ceasefire now. And enough. Really, enough.

Marc Steiner:  Enough.

Ruwaida Amer:  It’s too much.

Marc Steiner:  Enough. I know. And you’re doing it now, in terms of talking to our audience. And we can just maybe close with this, to continue what you’re saying about this and why it’s so important to watch your work, for people to understand what is going on, to see and feel what Palestinians are going through, and what we can do to stop it, that’s why your work is so critical.

Ruwaida Amer:  I show the humanity sides of the people in Gaza. Because all the stories in Gaza now about the human people, they lose their lives, their safety, their very important things like food and water. Imagine you live without food for just one day. How will you feel? Imagine to try all your day to look for water. Measure your life, your children’s lives without schools. Measure your life without home. Measure your life to live and sleep in the roads, in the streets, without blankets, without good clothes, without good water. Imagine your life without medicine, without good health or good hospitals.

Imagine to spend just one day, anyone, feel sick and go to hospital, and sleep in the hospital just one night. He will be very nervous, and, I want to [go] back to my home. But the people in Gaza live more than one year in the hospitals, and they made tents in the hospitals, and see the suffering of people in the hospitals.

And it’s very important to look to Gaza, because when you see or watch the stories from Gaza, you will see there is no humanity in the world, because they accepted the war [for] more than one year. And the people live in that situation [for] more than one year.

I was very positive in the beginning of the war, and supportive of my family. And for my family, I told them, no, no, no, this war will be just one week, two weeks, three weeks. But it’s more than one year. I’m very surprised, because we are in this war [for] more than one year. It’s too much, too much. So it’s very important to follow the situation in Gaza. And Gaza needs the world. Don’t leave us alone, because we need the people’s support outside Gaza. Maybe their support will stop this war. Maybe. I hope that.

And if I receive any support message from my friends outside Gaza, I feel like I am not alone. There are people [who] feel about my situation, and don’t leave me alone. Also, I’m teaching Arabic language to non-speakers. I have students from America, Australia, Holland, and France, and many European countries. And they supported me, and still support me, so I feel I’m good. There are people thinking about Gaza. There are people supporting me. Sometimes they send me photos: We are with Gaza. We are in the roads and streets, we call it to stop the war in Gaza. So it’s good.

So I’m working to show the people what’s happening in Gaza. So I hope they are supporting us and working to stop the war in Gaza. I hope that maybe one day we will be free. I hope that.

Marc Steiner:  Ruwaida Amer, we here at Real News, will be standing by you and with you as much as we can, and help bring your voice and your work out to the world. You need to be heard. And I want to thank you for everything you’ve done, the work you’ve done as a filmmaker, as a teacher, as a human being.

Ruwaida Amer:  Yes. Also, I want to say I’m not working for me. I’m working for the world to see Gaza, to watch what’s happening in Gaza.

Marc Steiner:  Yes.

Ruwaida Amer:  I’m working every day to be the people following what’s happening in Gaza. If you want to come for me, many times in depression, many times in bad moods, many times very bad psychology, my feelings [are] very bad, but I’m working hard to show the situation in Gaza so the people know what’s happening in Gaza. My work is not for me, it’s for the world [to] see Gaza, to watch what’s happening in Gaza, to know what the people, how they live in Gaza during the war. What is the situation in Gaza? How they get the water, the food. How is the life for the children in Gaza, also?

So I hope my work reaches the people, and they see it, and they watch it, and they work hard to believe the people in Gaza have [the] right to still [be] alive, and have [the] right to be free, and live in freedom and live in safety and peace, and move in their countries and around the world, as any person in the world. Because we don’t have rights as normal people. No, the Palestinians [are] living under [a] bad situation in the world. So maybe the Palestinians come to live, and [be] safe, come to take their rights because we are under occupation.

So I know many people know more about the Palestinian case during this war. So that means our work [has] reached the world. So maybe it’s good [a] point for the journalists in Gaza, they show the real case of Palestine for the world. Maybe the people now, they have more information about the situation in Palestine, in general, especially in Gaza. So I hope that, if you like my work, I think the people also like my work.

Marc Steiner:  [Laughs] People love your work.

Ruwaida Amer:  Yeah, thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:  You’re telling the story that has to be told, and we are here for you as much as we can be. And you, Ruwaida Amer, I want to thank you for telling the story of the Gazans, of the Palestinians, that needs to be told, and working with us here at Real News. And we’ll be linking to all of your work. And I promise you that I will do everything I can to spread that work so people see the real story through your eyes, through the eyes of the Palestinian people in Gaza. And —

Ruwaida Amer:  Thanks.

Marc Steiner:  Please stay safe. And we’ll stay in touch.

Ruwaida Amer:  I will try, I hope to succeed to be safe. Inshallah.

Marc Steiner:  Inshallah.

Once again, let me thank Ruwaida Amer for joining us today. She joins us in the midst of a war that has taken the lives of people she loves, of her students and her friends. Through it all, she keeps writing and making her documentaries that bring into stark reality what Palestinians face every day in Gaza. I have seen few do it as well. I encourage all of you listening to go to our website, type in her name: Ruwaida Amer, R-U-W-A-I-D-A A-M-E-R, and experience the reality of what Gazans face every day. We must do what we can to end the carnage in Gaza.

And thanks to David Hebden and Cameron Granadino for running the program today, and audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News, for making this show possible.

Please, let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. And once again, thank you to Ruwaida Amer for your work, for your bravery, for telling the story of the Palestinians in Gaza, and for joining us today in the midst of all of it.

Not even a month has passed since the presidential election, and the incoming slate of Trump cabinet nominees is already beset with controversy and scandal. But the litany of sex crimes and other misdeeds Trump’s appointees are accused of is just the tip of the iceberg—what’s even more threatening is the agenda they represent. Journalists and returning guests Steven Monacelli and Jeff Sharlet join The Marc Steiner Show for a breakdown of the incoming cabinet.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.

While it feels like a lifetime has passed, it’s only been a few weeks since the election. And since then, Democrats have been busy looking for scapegoats to blame for their losses. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is busy making cabinet and administrative appointments at a dizzying speed. Trump has sent shock waves throughout the political world with his jaw-dropping picks, from Fox News personalities, fellow billionaires, and figures from across the far right.

Trump has tapped Thomas Homan, an Obama-era appointee to ICE, who is one of the architects of Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, for border czar. He tapped Florida senator and foreign policy hawk Marco Rubio as secretary of state. He’s appointed the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and multimillionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head the new — Get this — Department of Government Efficiency.

Trump also named Florida congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general, but that pick was blown up spectacularly last week. As The Guardian reported on Thursday, “Donald Trump announced that he would nominate for attorney general Pam Bondi, the former Florida state attorney general, hours after the former congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew in the face of opposition from Senate Republicans who had balked over a series of sexual misconduct allegations.”

A similar fate may be in store for Trump’s extremely controversial pick of Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard officer and Fox News commentator, to lead the Department of Defense.

The Daily Beast reported, “Pete Hegseth’s chances of being confirmed to lead the Defense Department have sharply declined on Polymarket. The plunge, from an 89% chance at his announcement to a low of 47 on Thursday afternoon, came shortly after Donald Trump’s other controversial cabinet appointment, Matt Gaetz, pulled himself from the running. Complicating things for the 44-year-old Hegseth is the recent release of a police report that contains graphic sexual assault allegations against him from 2017.”

So it’s very possible that circumstances will change by the time you hear this episode, but this is par for the course for Trump. In the last administration, it was a burning down clown car of frightening, weird, and dangerous political appointees coming in as fast as they were going out, and we’re already taking the plunge back into that administrative chaos that characterizes Trump’s style of operating. That’s what he does. But Trump is still revealing a lot about his far-right, even downright fascistic political designs and desires with these cabinet and administrative appointments.

So what do we know about these figures who are beginning to fill out the Trump administration roster? How far right are their politics? In this crucial installment of Rise of the Right, I’m honored to be joined once again by two past guests whose expertise and insight we really need at this moment.

Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times bestselling author and editor of eight books, including The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. It was adapted into a Netflix documentary series, and his most recent work, which we discussed on The Marc Steiner Show, is The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.

Also joining us is Steve Monacelli. Steve is the Texas Observer‘s special investigative correspondent, based in Dallas, and a columnist for the digital publication The Barbed Wire. His reporting has been featured in Rolling Stone, Daily Beast, The Real News, Dallas Observer, Dallas Weekly, and many more. He’s also the publisher of Protean Magazine, which is a non-profit literary journal.

Gentlemen, welcome. Good to have you both with us.

Jeff Sharlet:  Hi, Marc. Good to be with you.

Steven Monacelli:  Thanks for having us.

Marc Steiner:  Oh, it’s great to have you both. I really can’t wait to get started with this. To even know where to begin, when you look at the nominations that Trump has picked out to lead the most critical agencies in the government, what were your first thoughts? Jeff?

Jeff Sharlet:  The turning point for me wasn’t Tom Homan or Kristi Noem, as horrifying as those appointments were, but was Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, who I was familiar with in his capacity as a Fox News host and as the leading advocate for murdering prisoners and unarmed civilians. He’s an advocate for that. He was the man who led the crusade for the defense of convicted war criminals and got them pardoned. So once I saw that, I realized it was very much all bets off, and every appointment since then has kind of confirmed that.

I should emphasize — And I’m curious to hear what Steve thinks about this — Because one thing that’s frustrating to me as a person on this beat, and I think Steve, I know from your work too, there can be all this attention on Matt Gaetz or Hegseth, and not as much attention on what’s Linda McMahon going to do at education? The assumption that these folks, that those are the adults in the room, when, in fact ,they’re very much a part of the program as well.

Steven Monacelli:  I agree with what you’ve said, Jeff. And for me, it was a combination of Pete Hegseth, which, ridiculous decision to run the largest bureaucracy in the world, for a TV host with no real experience in this executive position. Setting aside all of the other things that you’ve just said, Jeff, in addition —

Jeff Sharlet:  The murder part [laughs].

Steven Monacelli:  Yeah. And then the reporting that we’ve since seen about him, he has tattoos that indicate he’s well steeped in this Christian nationalist type ideology. And the suggestion of what he may or may not do as the head of DOD during a time in which a Christian Zionist, Mike Huckabee, has also been nominated to a key position as it relates to Israel as a US envoy to Israel.

The other one that really threw me for a loop was someone you already mentioned, Jeff, Matt Gaetz, for the top law position, effectively, attorney general of the United States. No longer in the running, spectacularly blew up. It was insane to begin with, someone who had been begging for a pardon from the president to then be suggested as the top law enforcement official in this country. And the person who’s since been named to replace him, I think, is, it’s not as controversial on its face or not as explosive in terms of an ethics probe around alleged sex trafficking.

But Pam Bondi from Florida, former attorney general of Florida was donated, she received over $20,000 from Trump, and then chose to not pursue a case against Trump University. So there’s this perception created that she may or may not have, effectively, been bribed.

And so I think that is an equally mind-boggling choice. In addition to, yeah, Linda McMahon. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, given what has come out about her connections to some other unsavory regimes globally. So we could really talk a lot about this, probably more than we have time for today.

Marc Steiner:  Yeah. And there’s a lot. Kristi Noem has run of the border and what that means. And so I’m curious though, given the nature of these appointments, we can go through some of them as well as you just started doing, and the fact that both houses of Congress, Supreme Court, these cabinet picks, A, what do you think that portends, and B, where’s the fight back going to come from? How do you resist this? How do you oppose it? How do you address it?

Jeff Sharlet:  Well, look, those of us out there have been arguing that this is a fascist movement. And people would say, this isn’t like Germany in 1936, which was a statement of the obvious, it being United States in 2024. Of course it’s not like Germany. But also that it was a movement, not a regime. Now it’s a regime. And it is announcing itself very vigorously with the furthest right, most corrupt, and most hostile and aggressive elements of its own movement.

And we’re seeing, actually, a tension. Look, we’re in terrible trouble when John Thune is maybe our best hope. And I say that people like John Thune is the Senate majority leader. He’s going to cave. He’s going to cave again and again and again. We also know that he hates Trump and that he comes from a far right movement that wants a right-wing state. Trump wants a right -wing regime, they’re different things.

Marc Steiner:  Let me stop you for a second. Parse that out for a moment, for people listening to us.

Jeff Sharlet:  So Mitch McConnell, John Thune, that kind of right-wing establishment, their differences with Trump are often chalked up to style, how you tweet and so on. There’s that, but it has more to do with exercise of power. And particularly, senators have power in a state in which the vast administrative state is at their beck and call, the millions of federal civil servants. Trump, with each one of these appointments, is signaling his absolute disregard for the administrative state and, rather, his interest in ruling from above.

So you go back to Hegseth, who has conveniently laid out his vision for the Pentagon in a book he just published called The War on Warriors, and the first step is fire all the generals. And here’s the key thing, because people say, well then how will it run? He says, and we’re not going to replace them. The idea is that a military, a branch of the government, should be an extension of the strongman’s will.

And so you can see where Mitch McConnell and John Thune and those characters are like, well, we’d like a piece of that power too. But this is no hope. If our hope is in John Thune, we’re doomed.

And I’ll just say, where is the pushback going to come from? The one thing that shocked me, because I think, like a lot of us on this beat, we’re like, yeah, Trump can come back. I think Jan. 6, 2021 was, wow, look at that campaign launch. That guy is building something. The thing that has astonished me is the rapidity and the fullness across the left liberal political spectrum of the acquiescence. And of course we can point to people who aren’t doing that, and we can point to activists and organizers who are doing good work, but they are, at this point, the exceptions to the rule.

And particularly the mainstream media. And I know, again, the left likes to say, well, who cares? They’re in the bag anyways. It’s pretty hard to resist fascism. The New York Times and The Washington Post, for all their failings and their weaknesses, they also have some strengths, and they also have some resources. And, look, me and Steve and you on Bluesky, we’re not going to be able to do it. We need a bigger popular front, and it’s not showing up right now.

Marc Steiner:  Yeah. Steve?

Steven Monacelli:  I generally agree with everything Jeff has said, and just building on the point around it’s not just Pete Hegseth’s vision to gut the entire administrative state. That’s the premise of Project 2025, or at least one of the key premises.

And so the resistance that we saw coming from the federal administrative state, the guide rails that were put in place by longer institutionally-minded servants may not be there anymore. There may not be that inherent [inaudible]. And Mitch McConnell and Thune, those folks, they may have more of an interest in preserving some of that institutional power that is already established, and so we might see a little bit of jockeying there. But I agree, I don’t think that is going to be a key source of any resistance to Trump’s agenda.

And I also agree that, currently, there is not a big enough popular front established to resist this. But we are at least seeing some suggestions of approaches which mirror some things that have already been done in the past around sanctuary cities. Not to say that that actually really panned out. When I lived in San Francisco and Trump was in the presidency at the time, ICE was still coming into San Francisco and conducting raids on immigration.

So the point is that this is the headline that I’m thinking of: “Denver Mayor suggests using Denver police to block mass deportations under Trump.” Now, I don’t want to blow up that particular —

Marc Steiner:  Where was that headline?

Steven Monacelli:  This is in local Denver news. In the past 24 to 48 hours, this has become a thing, and it’s already blown up on right-wing news, which is where I actually really first saw it, because they’re holding this up as a sign of liberal resistance, and to try to make points around hypocrisy, I’m sure, as well.

But I think this is an example of federalism and the opportunities that federalism provides for some sort of resistance from the local or the state level in a way that, somewhat ironically, you could say the conservative movement has had a much better handle on over the past many decades.

And so I’m not necessarily saying that this is the way, or I’m not endorsing this as an approach, but I am pointing to it as something that we’re already starting to see bubble up. And other mayors in blue-dominated cities, which are pretty much almost every major city, they may consider following suit to some extent, but to have a standoff between local and federal law enforcement, that’s pretty serious, to say the least.

Marc Steiner:  So I don’t make an equivalency between 1930s Germany and where we are now, but one of the things that allowed the National Socialist Party, the Nazis, Adolf Hitler, to take power was that the opposition was not united. The opposition was disparate, it was all over. And I look at where we are right now, and the right has been building this before Trump. The right has been building this since the ’70s. They’ve been trying to rebuild power, and they’ve been doing a good job of it across the country.

And this particular moment we’re in, it requires an opposition. The question is, before we go back to the cabinet picks, where does that come from? How does that get organized? How do people pull that together? Because without that, over half the country doesn’t want this to happen.

Jeff Sharlet:  I disagree with that.

Marc Steiner:  OK, go ahead.

Jeff Sharlet:  I disagree with that.

Marc Steiner:  Start right there. Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeff Sharlet:  Over half the country didn’t vote for it. A good part of that was like, well, I didn’t vote for it, but OK. And some [crosstalk] consciously saying, I’m going to tune out, and some saying, well gosh, I was wrong. This idea M. Gessen writing in The New York Times today saying, this idea, this debate, and Democrats, wait a minute, maybe we should back off on trans rights so much, and Gessen makes the point you can’t back off on something that you haven’t been there for. And even the term trans rights is misleading. We’re talking about human rights, we’re talking about rights of, leaving aside undocumented folks, US citizens. Maybe we should abandon the rights of some citizens.

So look, I’m not a doomsayer, but I do think that we need a hard-headed assessment of where it is because I think we got here by just a lot of fooling ourselves and telling ourselves, for instance, to me this idea half the country or majority of the country doesn’t want this. Look, majority of the country isn’t paying attention, and I think —

Steven Monacelli:  It also doesn’t matter whether a majority or lack of a majority exists when it comes to issues that people view as moral issues. People didn’t organize around civil rights in the past because they were organizing from a majority. They organized because they believed it was right. And you don’t achieve a majority by not organizing. You achieve and you build ground by organizing, particularly whenever you’re coming from a position of not inherently having a majority of people with you.

And I think it goes without saying that it doesn’t actually require a majority of people to have an impact on an issue. Small, dedicated groups of people can have great impact in their communities if they choose to organize. But it will be challenging. I don’t think anybody should discount how challenging it could be in the next four years if people choose to try and organize any sort of resistance to mass deportation, for example.

Marc Steiner:  Right. Mass deportation, all the appointees he’s made right now have been very clear they support mass deportation. Anybody who’s involved in that. And what that will look like, physically look like, on the TV news, in the press, rounding up masses of people and shipping them across the border to Mexico. You’ve got Zeldin who wants to tear apart every environmental protection law that exists in this country. That’s there. This is a rabid right radical group of cabinet officers who are prepared to change everything.

So coming back to where we just left off, I’m really curious how both of you watching this see that resistance starting. You’re right, what you were just saying, I’m of the civil rights generation. I was one of those folks down South when I was a teenager in the civil rights movement. And we were a minority, but we changed things. We changed things, we changed laws, civil rights bill and all the rest. But it was a battle. People died, people got hurt, people went to jail. So do we have that now? Do we have something that can be built similarly to that, to resist what is in our face, to resist for our sakes, for our children’s sakes, for our grandchildren’s sakes, do you think we have it?

Steven Monacelli:  I don’t want to delude us into thinking that we have exactly what we need right now, but I do think there’s clearly motivation, and if people do focus where they can have an impact locally and perhaps at the state level, they may be able to do something. But as I said, it’s going to be challenging, and people usually lose before they win.

But I would like to add that on the issue of mass deportation, the federal government, it has a lot of resources, but it can’t necessarily conduct that scale of operation on its own unless it somehow is able to use the entire capacity of the Department of Defense. At some level, they’re still going to require assistance from states like Texas. They’re going to need land, they’re going to need, potentially, local law enforcement to support their activities as well.

And so people, if they focus, they may be able to organize some resistance to some of those things happening in their own backyards, but exactly what that looks like is going to vary depending on the context.

Jeff Sharlet:  Let me be the voice of… It is a popular thing now to say let’s not be doomsayers, and I agree. But let us look at the converging forest fire and hurricane that’s coming. And I think one of the things, Steve, I would disagree with you there a little bit, this is from my own reporting, but looking around, I would recommend, actually, This American Life has got a good episode with an Obama era ICE official who has been gaming this out and lays out, says, look, yeah, you could do about a million in about six weeks. And here is… This was a man who knows.

Marc Steiner:  Take a million people in six weeks.

Jeff Sharlet:  Yeah. And so I feel like there’s a little bit of a reassurance narrative of well, they’re incompetent, the reassurance narrative of, these things aren’t real. You can’t do them in this order, which is why we need to pay attention to what is a revolutionary declaration. And I don’t mean revolutionary as any virtue, but they’re declaring a revolutionary regime.

And look, let’s not sleep on Elon Musk and Vivek with the declaration to cut the government by a third. And that seems absurd. There’s no way to do that unless you really don’t care and you use a wrecking ball. You cut the government by a third, we are talking massive collapse.

I think a resistance is going to come. Look, I’m not a doomsayer, because I think we’re going to get through this, or some of us are going to get through it. But that means us recognizing… Steve, I agree with you, but I feel like right now the left and liberals are leaning on, if we were to organize, we could stop mass deportations. And I’m like, well, we know where the land in Texas is, how come there aren’t 10,000 people there right now saying, sitting in. That “if” is doing a lot of work.

Steven Monacelli:  To be clear, I don’t want to be considered as saying we can stop [crosstalk].

Jeff Sharlet:  Right, right. Yeah.

Steven Monacelli:  …We can do it. If you look at Stop Cop City for example, they’re working —

Jeff Sharlet:  They did not.

Steven Monacelli:  They did not succeed. What did they do? They slowed the gears of a larger operation.

Jeff Sharlet:  Which is important. We can’t overlook the value of slow losing, right?

Steven Monacelli:  So the point is this, they have a certain number of years before Trump can no longer be the president.

Jeff Sharlet:  I don’t know about that.

Steven Monacelli:  Or hypothetically the Constitution would change and he becomes a dictator forever. There’s tons of hypotheticals. But there could be value in slowing down something. If the idea is it can happen in six weeks, what if it takes six months? What if it takes six years? Well, those are the sorts of equations that I think, unfortunately, some people would have to think about because I don’t think anyone is in a position to convincingly argue that if they choose to try and do this with the full force of the federal government that it can be stopped.

Jeff Sharlet:  So it’s a big organizing challenge, come join our losing fight. And I do mean that, actually, look, the last chapter in my last book is “The Good Fight is the One You Lose”. That is where we’re at now. And I don’t know how to do that organizing, but it has to happen.

Marc Steiner:  So let me ask in the time we have here, this clearly has to be a fight. Even though in blue cities you have police departments that, where many of the officers, not all of them, are on the right. And you’ve got these people in the cabinet controlling different parts of the government who are very right wing. I think you’re going to see environmental laws torn asunder. You’re going to see industries run roughshod over the country and the environment. You’re going to see that taking place. You’re going to see these mass deportations.

And so I’m going to go back to what I originally asked here. I think people can resist. We can stand between ICE and the immigrants. We can hide people out. We can do all kinds of things. In my generation, we foolishly started blowing stuff up, took us nowhere.

And so the question is, I’m very curious about how it gets pulled together, how a resistance to this is pulled together. But it just feels like politically, for me, that we’re entering a very dark moment, and how do you think we get through that? How do you think that gets organized, from your observations and the stuff that you both do so well?

Jeff, you want to start?

Jeff Sharlet:  I think we press the fault lines. That’s sort of what I understand —

Marc Steiner:  What did you say?

Jeff Sharlet:  We press the fault lines. And the good news is, as fractured as the left and liberalism is now, the right is always that fractured. I think one of the mistakes that has enabled the right to advance is secular liberalism and a lot of the left failing to distinguish between factions of the right, failing to look at… There’s a fallout now between, what are they, the Catholic new traditionalists and the integralists. And the integralists are the Catholics. And these intellectual leaders — And they are intellectuals, let’s pay attention, those guys are thinking — Are fighting viciously over territory in this new regime.

So I think, as a journalist, my idea is like let’s bring light to that, let’s make that possible. But I also think, and I would say let’s do what we can to start pivoting. So Gaetz was brought down by three things. Gaetz was brought down by three things, or really the main thing was that all his colleagues hate him. But he was brought down by the persuasive allegation that he had sex with a 17-year-old, statutory rape. But it was also that he went to a sex party and that he paid for sex. Two of those three things…

The problem with Gaetz is the fascism. Hegseth, sounds like there’s serious allegations of rape, but that’s the only thing the media’s talking about. The problem is the fascism. We need to start saying, look at what the plan, look at this man’s explicit, laid out plan for bringing troops into US cities, which he identifies as like Samarra in Iraq. He says they are Indigenous-held territory, and he doesn’t mean Indigenous. To him, that’s a good thing. He’s calling them Indian country, as in an old Western. Until we can get to that point, we’re quibbling over scandals, which is the politics of the pre-Trump era.

Marc Steiner:  Yeah, what were we going to say, Steve?

Steven Monacelli:  So I think from a perspective of accountability, what Jeff is saying is right. We have to highlight these fault lines and press on them as investigative journalists and reporters. But from a positivist, organizing perspective, which I can’t claim to speak from a position of expertise, I’m not an activist organizer on a day-to-day basis, but what I am seeing is people talking about a few things. I’m seeing people talk about the labor movement isn’t necessarily building ground, but there is a strategy that at least Shawn Fain has laid out about a longer-term perspective of trying to align their bargaining for the future so that they can coalesce around certain things and build power and collectivize their power in that way. But that’s 2028, is what he’s saying. That’s not now. So that’s a long bridge into the future, which is important to have.

In the short term, I’ve heard people talk about, OK, well how do we become more community focused? So building on something Jeff was talking about, secularized America and liberalism. They’ve allowed their civil society to basically decay, at least relative to conservatives. 

Everybody’s civil society has largely decayed, but churches still exist. And the role of churches and politics and centers of organizing and community is really significant, and religion is one of the biggest aspects of our political story right now.

So if the Democratic Party or liberal and progressive organizers want to work on something to reorient their party and reorient their thinking, they need to figure out how to create community civil institutions that actually bring people together. It doesn’t have to be a union hall, but that would be nice. Something that can actually serve as a connective node for a variety of local struggles that can then build coalitions together. Because it has to be a popular front, and it has to be a large coalition in order to overcome the strength of the right-wing coalition.

But then also the burden of apathy and disconnectedness from day-to-day politics that a lot of Americans, they inhabit that space. And political education is a hugely important project that we’re going to have to figure out how to get the messages out as well.

So for the state, journalism and communicating messages, that has to be a component of the strategy as well because it does feel like sort of mainstream news, that organ is, it still plays a role, but it is increasingly waning in influence, and progressives and liberals need to figure out how to really use the current tools to the best of their ability.

Marc Steiner:  Before I came here today, I was at a friend’s funeral who was a labor leader, organizer. And majority of the audience, not all of them, but majority of the audience was African-American. And part of the scuttlebutt in the room before services began was people talking about what we face and how you’ll pull people together nationally, regionally, and locally to resist what’s happening. Now it’s like building a broader coalition.

If something like that’s not built, it has to be very consciously built to confront what we’re about to face. In your observation of society and where we are, the complexity of the society, the complexity of the opposition to what we’re facing, how do you see that getting organized? It’s got to be more than us producing stories and you writing articles for it to stop them. It’s very clear they have an agenda.

And when I watch this, I realize they’ve been waiting for a Trump to come along, this kind of antisocial figure that can spit in their eye. And they’ve got him now. And they’ve got his boy wonder next to him ready to take over. So I’m just curious, looking at where we are, how you see the possibility of something larger being built from the ground up to say no and stop it and to resist it. Or is that just pie in the sky?

Steven Monacelli:  The last big thing that I think a lot of people on the left saw that gave us hope for something like that was the Sanders campaign. And there’s a lot to learn from that. Obviously, it didn’t succeed. But having a positive message that resounds with people’s real experiences and needs is clearly important. But also people are disaffected with our current system. It’s clear that they are disaffected with our current system and they view Trump as an avatar of change regardless of what he really stands for. We’ve seen interesting examples where people voted in a trans representative, but then a lot of people also voted for Trump.

And so squaring those two things is really key. We need to figure out why were people motivated so much to vote for Trump? Was it his outsider message? Was it that they were upset with the collapse of the COVID safety net? Was it purely just the price of groceries? Or was it a combination of all these things? So we have to understand truly what’s motivating people to even make these choices, and then we need to give them a movement that addresses their concerns and speaks to their anxieties.

And the Democratic Party is clearly not in a position to do that. They spent so much time basically defending the status quo that they allowed Trump to become like punk rock.

Marc Steiner:  [Laughs]. Right. I got that. What were you going to say, Jeff?

Jeff Sharlet:  I don’t know if I have anything hopeful to add. I think, look, I’ll just say, and maybe by being this dark lets other people come and bring the light. I don’t see it. And I’m sitting here at a college campus which is not organizing, where Trump’s vote increased four or five fold. He still didn’t win it from last time. There were no protests after.

One of the failures, I think, is you look, is again, it’s like The New York Times, colleges and so on, they’re very inadequate, frustrating, liberal status quo institutions [Steiner laughs]. And so the left, very understandably, can’t stand them.

And the right says like, uh-huh (affirmative), that’s great that the left doesn’t like them because we know… We know from Heritage Foundation, we know from Fox News — I’m at Dartmouth College, Fox News has name checked my college three times [Steiner laughs] since the election and saying, all the professors need to be fired, not because of any leftism on campus or anything. They don’t care because they understand that this is an institution that’s not theirs. And meanwhile, the institution is torn between saying, well, we’re above it, we’re neutral. There are no neutrals here, to quote the old labor song.

And frankly, the campus left sees the enemy as that administration as opposed to understanding they’re coming for us all. They’re not making the distinction between, oh great, you’re teaching a radical class and you’re teaching boring economics. They don’t care.

And I think maybe I would say this: the movement, this most positive thing I can say. Right now, we have been captured by altruism. Liberalism traditionally thrives in altruism. The left has gone over to a [inaudible] well, I am just so upset about what’s going to happen to those other people. This is ahistorical, misunderstanding of fascism and a way of turning away from how the right is organizing because they don’t care.

They’re not working by the categories that we work by. They’re not saying first we come for X group. They’ll come for the undocumented. They’ll also come for people who are American citizens. And if you happen to get in the way, they’ll be glad to arrest you too. And the local town councilman, Marc, who hates you because your tree leans over to his yard, he’ll come for you. With Marc Steiner on the top of the list, suddenly now you are.

So then that tells us how do we fight that? Solidarity. Altruism is concern for what’s going to happen to others. Solidarity says, hey, what’s going to happen to you is going to happen to me. What’s going to happen to me is what’s going to happen to you. My body is on the line. This is not us protecting others. This is if we stand in the way of mass deportations, it’s not protecting people, it’s protecting yourself. You put your body on the line. So that, I hope, is coming. It’s not here yet.

Marc Steiner:  It’s not here yet. And as we close out, I have to harken back to my early days as a community organizer in a neighborhood that was a white working-class George Wallace city neighborhood. And we turned it into a McGovern neighborhood. We turned it on its head. And people did that by organizing, going door to door, fighting bad landlords, bringing people together who never talked to each other, crossing the line and bringing Black and white working-class people together to fight their common enemy.

And it might seem pie in the sky, but it’s not. It takes organizing and it takes work, and I think that’s what I think a broad coalition of people has to be brought together, to stand up and be able to build something and opposition because we’re going to need it. We don’t know what we’re going to face. We’re about to find out. But I think that bringing voices together in places like Real News so they interact with each other, going out into the community, helping to organize is the only way that this is going to be stopped. I think we have to realize that this is not 1933 Germany, it’s 2024 United States of America, and it could be just as bad.

Steven Monacelli:  The contexts are different. You might have some strange bedfellows, like what would organizing in Texas around mass deportation look like? Or even in Florida. Might you end up trying to convince some suburban single-family homeowners who might be inclined to vote for Republicans that they’re going to be harmed if a bunch of people who they rely on for their yard work, as a statistical reality, are they going to be opposed to that? Or are they going to wait until they face the impact of that instead of standing up to say, hey, maybe this is a bad idea. There are contradictions that can be exploited is, I guess, what I’m trying to say. And the coalitions may end up being strange because —

Marc Steiner:  They will be strange.

Steven Monacelli:  …Who is going to be impacted by this. And a lot of these people may not realize that they, too, are going to face some sort of consequence. Not to compare their consequence to far worse —

Jeff Sharlet:  Steve, I’m going to disagree with you, because some of them are going to get killed too. That’s what I’m talking about. We can’t do the ranking. You don’t know. Fascism doesn’t have a list and saying, oh, you’re on this. If you have troops marching through a city, rounding up people, and maybe they’re rounding up someone, but this guy comes out and says, hey, what are you doing on my lawn, and some 19-year-old national guardsmen shoots him, it doesn’t do him any good that he voted for Trump.

And I think that’s why… Talking about strange bedfellows, we got Rand Paul out there saying, hey, wait a minute. No, no. Using troops on American soil, that’s a problem. I don’t want to have any kind of solidarity with Rand Paul, but if he will help [others laugh] fight troops. Yes. Yes. I don’t know.

Steven Monacelli:  Right. That is the nature of a “popular front”. You suspend certain disagreements in the process of fighting a much larger threat.

Marc Steiner:  And I think that the role that you two play, that we play, is really important in building that and pulling that together, pulling voices together, bringing stories together to help fight this resistance that has to take place.

So this is just the beginning. I’m going to look forward to having both of you all back to really push this because we have to push it because we have no choice. We have no choice. We have to stand up to it.

And so I want to thank both of you for the work you do and for being here. Jeff Sharlet, Steve Monacelli, great to see you both again, and we’ll be linking to all your work that people can just look at and see what you’re doing and hit the magic thing and read and see what you’re doing. So I really appreciate you both taking the time today. We have a lot more to talk about. We have a lot more fight to do, and I appreciate your voices and you being here today.

Jeff Sharlet:  Thanks, Marc. Thanks Steve.

Steven Monacelli:  Thank you both.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank my guests today, Jeff Sharlet and Steve Monacelli, for joining us, and we’ll be linking to their work here on The Marc Steiner Show site at The Real News. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for directing and running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for her work and her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at Real News for making this show possible.

Let me just say that we’ll be covering this with some intensity. It’s no longer just about the rise of the right, but how to resist a neo-fascist takeover of our world. So we’ll be bringing you voices and stories from across the country and around the globe of people who are resisting and working to build a more equitable future for all of us.

So please, let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover, what’s happening in your community, and your story ideas. Please just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. And once again, thank you to Jeff Sharlet and Steve Monacelli for joining us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner, stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

The future of Jewish identity is at a crossroads thanks to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. The question facing millions of people is whether to take the path of solidarity with Palestine or the road of Jewish supremacy trodden by the leadership of major Jewish institutions and by the Israeli government itself. Rabbi Cat Davis of Beyt Tikkun joins The Marc Steiner Show for a discussion on how the best of the Jewish tradition equips progressive Jews to opt for solidarity over supremacy.

Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News, and to another episode of Not in Our Name.

Since Oct. 7, this war is still going on, and we see maybe 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza alone, and the entire place being destroyed, and many Jews across the globe standing up saying “not in our name”.

And today we speak with Rabbi Cat Zavis, who is a spiritual leader at Beyt Tikkun. She’s an innovator in Jewish rituals and has deep connections in spiritual, personal, and political activism over the years. She’s also a lawyer, co-editor of Tikkun magazine, in which she’s written many articles, shaped the magazine that we’ve just lost. Executive director of the National Network of Spiritual Progressives and has trained over a thousand people in prophetic empathy and revolutionary love, and joins us today to share some of that with us.

And welcome, good to have you with us.

Cat Zavis:  Thank you for having me. It’s lovely to be with you.

Marc Steiner:  When I read your bio and… The concept of revolutionary love is a good one.

Cat Zavis:  Yeah, we need some radical, revolutionary love in our world. We seem to have a lot of Hallmark love.

Marc Steiner:  Yes.

Cat Zavis:  But not a lot of what love is really about, which is moving the needle toward a more loving and just world. It’s not just the personal interactions between people, but it’s really about how do we… For me, obviously, it’s about interpersonal love, but also how do we manifest collective love?

Marc Steiner:  How do we raise it, and how do we do that at this moment? I’m very curious after having read what you’ve written, some of the interviews you’ve done before, the work you’ve done, is the moment that we face as Jews, and Palestinians face, that Israelis face, that the world faces in this vicious, horrendous war that’s taking place in Gaza and Palestine and Israel. Just for you personally, I’m just curious, what does it do to you? What do you see it doing to other people around you?

Cat Zavis:  What does it do to me? It knocks me out. It knocks me out on the ground a lot. So, I had set aside some days to write my sermons, or drasha, for high holidays, and I joked with the community — It wasn’t such a joke — That I woke up that morning of one of those days and I mistakenly read the news in which another Palestinian journalist was… In this case, he wasn’t killed. He was stolen, kidnapped from his home by Israeli soldiers and beaten in front of his wife and children. His wife was also beaten, at the time, trying to hand him shoes so he could take [them] with him. And then he was sent to one of the… We’ll call them concentration camp prisons, where we know that they’re torturing and killing Palestinians. And I read that, and I literally collapsed on the floor and just screamed and cried for a while, until I could pick myself up and write, or try to write, a sermon.

And I know I’m not alone. And maybe that’s the saving grace in all of this, but it’s a horrible thing to have as a saving grace, that the blessing, of course, is there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of Jews around the world who are standing up and saying, not in our name, never again for anyone, never again now. And unfortunately, the Jewish establishment and the Jewish leadership, both here, around the world, and in Israel, are choosing a path of domination and power over and militarization and war. And it’s not making anyone safer here in Israel, certainly not in Palestine, and certainly not Jews anywhere in the world.

And this is the moment in Judaism where we have a choice. We can choose to be a blessing or we can choose to be a curse. That’s all in the Torah. I’m not pulling this out of thin air. And the way I read this in the Torah, it says, if you choose to be a curse, there’s all these negative consequences that happen. You eventually get kicked off the land. If you choose to be a blessing, then you get all these positive consequences.

But what exactly is the curse and the blessing? The curse is losing your moral center. The curse is forgetting to love the stranger and care for the needy and the vulnerable and building a loving and just society. The curse is not living a moral life. The consequences of being kicked off the land isn’t the curse. That’s the consequence. The blessing is to live a moral life, to choose to be a nation unlike all other nations, to choose to be a people that doesn’t embrace militarization, that doesn’t embrace imperialism and empire, that embraces love and kindness and generosity. Stay on the moral path, walk in God’s way, if you will. That’s the blessing. Then from the blessing, turns out, you get to stay on the land. You get all these beautiful things. You flourish.

And we could debate what it means to be on the land, of course, but that’s the choice we have right now. Will we uplift Jewish supremacy, or will we uplift solidarity and the dignity and humanity of all? That’s the choice in Judaism right now. And unfortunately, I think the ones with power are making a choice to lose our moral center as a people.

And so it’s really important to me as a rabbi and a Jewish spiritual leader to stand in the voice of Judaism of love and liberation, of a Judaism that stands in solidarity with the most vulnerable and most needy and oppressed in our society. That is Judaism. What Israel is doing is what empires do. What the United States is doing is what empires do. Our Torah is all about what empires do and how we critique and stand up to empire, and they’re choosing empire. They’re choosing imperialism. They’re choosing domination. That is not Judaism.

And it’s really important, I think, for Jews who believe in a Judaism of love and liberation to distinguish between Judaism as a religious, spiritual tradition, and practice that’s thousands of years old and nation state imperialism and oppression and domination and power over.

And Israel is a nation state. Has a lot of Jews. It’s not a state embodying Jewish values. It’s not a Jewish state.

Marc Steiner:  It makes me think about a lot of things, but I’m curious how you think we got there. There’s a poem I wrote, I guess, 54 years ago [both laugh] called “Growing up Jewish”. And one of the lines I used in that poem was, “We, the oppressed, have become the oppressor.” Talking about what’s been going on in the earlier days of the occupation. And I think about that and reflect on the fact that when I was very young and I was a civil rights worker, 70% of all the white civil rights workers in the South were Jews.

And I know as a person who reflects deeply on things, as a rabbi and a leader, a spiritual leader, how do we get to this place? How do you go from being one of the oppressed for thousands of years that the world tried to annihilate, and they could not annihilate us, to a place where we’ve become the oppressor?

Cat Zavis:  Right. It’s a great question that I actually posed in one of my teachings during the high holidays. How did we go from being a people of the book? Jews are like the people of the Torah. That’s what we value and do is we read this book and we are starting again this Shabbat to read Bereshit. And every year we read the book, and we read all the books. And how do we go from being a people that value the book to people that value machinery and mechanization and war? And I have my story or my thoughts about that, that is informed by writings and teachings from many, many other people.

So, when the Jews led by Bar Kokhba, right, the Bar Kokhba Revolution. I’m sure you’re familiar with that, right?

Marc Steiner:  Yes.

Cat Zavis:  In 131 to 135 of the Common Era, they stood up and fought Roman imperialism and oppression. As a result, they were tortured and killed. There were others who counseled surrender, who did not want Jews to stand up, because they knew the consequence would be not only would the leaders be tortured and killed, but, as it turned out, something like 500,000 to 600,000 Jewish people were killed, and then many were expelled, and it was a tragic, tragic loss. We can see it unfolding, [the] tables are turned. And it is those that counseled surrender that became the spiritual heirs, if you will, of the rabbinic tradition.

So, the rabbinic tradition became one that wanted to ensure the longevity and survival of the Jewish people, and that meant getting along with the empire, the ruling elite. And Jews have played that middleman role for centuries. It was often because it was the only role we were allowed to play.

But organized Jewish community became part of the establishment that wanted to get along to stay alive. You can see this in immigrant communities. This is not something particularly unique to the Jewish community. We want to pass, if you will.

And then in Nazi Germany, there were, of course, Jewish leaders that worked with the Nazis to try to save themselves and some Jews. The Jewish shame story is that we walk like sheep to our own slaughter. And there was the Warsaw ghetto uprising. There wasn’t a massive amount of uprising. And we could hold — As we look back on that time, I can certainly hold — A lot of understanding and compassion for that. What else were people going to do in that situation?

But there’s a lot of shame about that. And so in response to this shame, part of the story is never again for us. That’s the first place that started, was we’ll never walk like sheep to the slaughter again. So, how do we do that? We become a nation state. We get arms. We become powerful, just like all other nations, because nobody protected us — Which was true. We tried to go to America, we tried to go here and there, and they all sent us back to be killed, to be slaughtered.

So, that’s my perspective of how did we go from a people of the book to a people of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. One step is we will never ever walk like sheep to our slaughter.

Then Oct. 7 comes. Hamas through its horrific act and killings and murders and slaughters, they essentially made Israel realize that they don’t have all the power they think they have. This amazing might of the state of Israel could not stop Hamas from breaking down a fence and slaughtering their people. Now, we can understand that, actually, Israel had been warned by soldiers and women soldiers that they ignored. But that’s what the state of Israel, Netanyahu and other leaders, are now drawing on to whip up people’s trauma and fear and to whip up, like, we will never walk like sheep to slaughter again. We will never do that, right? And this is what’s happening as a result of that.

Of course, that denies the fact, or minimizes the fact, that, of course, ethnic cleansing, Nakba, slow wiping off of Palestinian people off of the land and denying people in Gaza enough nutrition to actually live and thrive has been going on for decades and decades. So, Netanyahu and his gang have utilized this moment, have manipulated this moment to carry out what they’ve always wanted to carry out, which was to have an Israel from the river to the sea, which is literally in Likud’s platform. That’s where that phrase comes from.

Marc Steiner:  Right. Likud being the very right-wing party in Israel that —

Cat Zavis:  That’s ruling right now.

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Cat Zavis:  Right.

So, the other thing that I think happens psychologically and spiritually to Israelis and Jews is that in the face of the Palestinian, we see two things: We see the Nazis. We see those who slaughtered us because the story was that they’re antisemitic and want to wipe out all Jews, as opposed to the story that they’re resisting imperial empire and oppression. Palestinians stood up to the Ottomans, they stood up to the British, and now they’re standing up to Israel. It’s not antisemitic. It’s Algerians standing up to the French. It’s Palestinians standing up to their oppressors. But if we frame it as antisemitism, then Oct. 7 becomes the most violent act against Jews since the Holocaust — And it was against Jews. It wasn’t against Israelis. That’s the discourse we’re hearing.

So, in the face of Palestinians, we see the Nazis who are trying to wipe us off the face of the earth, and all Arabs have become part of the discourse. And we also see in the face of the Palestinians, I think, potentially, ourselves, and what do we see in ourselves? We see the parts of ourselves that did not stand up and fight, that did not resist in Nazi Germany and throughout history, and the Palestinians are standing up and resisting. And so we see in that face the shame of ourselves, and the only way to get rid of our shame is to kill off that other that we see as ourselves.

Marc Steiner:  So, that’s very powerfully said. I can see why your congregants like to hear you speak [laughs].

Cat Zavis:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  I wonder, in all these conversations I’ve had, and I have been at this antioccupation struggle for a long, long, long time. In ’67, I wanted to go fight in Israel against… I wanted to go join the Israeli army in ’67.

Cat Zavis:  Wow. Wow. I was three years old.

Marc Steiner:  I was a little bit older [both laugh].

Cat Zavis:  That’s amazing.

Marc Steiner:  Then I met left-wing Israelis and Palestinians, and I began to shift. I’m only saying that to say that this has been a long time now, since this oppression has existed. Also, having kind of grown up with the ethos of a tough Jew, which was in our family, that you don’t stand down. One of the books I was given at my bar mitzvah was They Fought Back, about the Jews who fought back against the Nazis. And so that becomes a tradition in many ways, not to allow yourself to be taken away. That you’re going to fight, you’re not going to allow them to attack us, not without a fight.

Cat Zavis:  Right. Right.

Marc Steiner:  But now it’s become what you’ve described. So, how do we, as a minority of Jews who say no — A growing minority, but minority of Jews — Really affect this and begin to make the change that has to happen that stops what’s happening in Israel?

Cat Zavis:  How do we walk us back from this cliff?

Marc Steiner:  Yes. Yes. You said it better than I in fewer words. Thank you. Yes [laughs].

Cat Zavis:  How do we walk ourselves back from this cliff? I’m going to reluctantly say I don’t know that we can —

Marc Steiner:  Whew.

Cat Zavis:  — And I think we have to try. This cliff that we’re at isn’t just the Jewish cliff. It’s not just the Jewish people’s cliff. It’s the empire cliff. It is the cliff of imperialism. It’s, like, when empire and imperialism are challenged, what do they do? They grip harder. They become more oppressive. They’re afraid of losing their power, and so they hold onto it more firmly, more violently, more insistently.

And I think it’s really important to say this isn’t just a Jewish cliff, because if we say it’s just a Jewish cliff, then it’s really easy to slip into antisemitism, that Jews are causing all these problems, and this is all a Jewish thing. Western imperial powers want Israel in the Middle East. They supported the establishment of the state of Israel for their own interests, and the US still wants Israel doing its bidding.

Marc Steiner:  They wanted us to go there. They didn’t want us to come here or anywhere else. They wanted us there.

Cat Zavis:  Exactly, right? That’s the solution to the “Jewish problem”. I mean, Biden just said, how many months ago, Jews are safest in Israel. It’s the only place you’re safe. I’m like, are you kidding me? You’re the leader of the United States. I live here. Are you kidding me? You’ve got to be kidding me.

That should have been… Everyone in Jewish power, in Jewish establishment should have just completely had a field day with that. They should have been outraged. It was as if it didn’t happen. It’s horrific to say that. I don’t live in Israel. I’m not moving to Israel. I would never move to Israel. I’m not taking land from Palestinians. That’s happened enough. I live here. And, yes, people have said to me in critiquing me, well, what about the fact that you live on stolen land here? True. I do. I live on stolen land here. I give money to taxes to support the rematriation and reclamation of that land for Native American peoples, and I do what I can here. So, both are true. And I live here.

The President of the United States should say, Jews are safe here, and you’re safe here not because we love Israel, but because we care about our citizens. Jewish Muslim, Christian Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, whatever gender, whatever skin color, you’re our citizens. You make up the beauty and diversity of this land. But the United States and Western countries have a great interest in having Israel be the face of imperial power in the Middle East. And that’s what we are.

So, that’s why when I said, I don’t know how we can walk back from that cliff because it’s not a cliff of Jewish establishment or the Jewish world. It’s a cliff of geopolitical power of empire and imperialism and capitalism.

So, that on one hand. On the other hand, I’m not just going to crawl under my covers and pretend that a genocide is not being perpetuated in my name and walk away from it. So, what can we do? We can do things like I said: we can make it very clear that there is a distinction between Judaism and the nation state of Israel, and we can show what we believe Judaism really stands for and looks like. What does it stand for and look like? Many, many beautiful exquisite things. Speak truth, challenge injustice, stand up for the vulnerable.

These are core teachings in Judaism that those of us who are Jewish, we know them. Even if we didn’t know that they were Jewish teachings. For years, I had no idea these were Jewish teachings, and yet they were in my cells. They were in my bones. I’ve been an activist and involved in this work all my life, and until my much older years, I didn’t even know it was Jewish.

So, we know this. This is why, like you said, the huge percentage of people who went down to the South during the Civil Rights Movements were Jews. I bet a lot of them didn’t identify as religious Jews.

Marc Steiner:  No.

Cat Zavis:  But their Jewish teachings, their Jewish traditions, were instilled within them. And that’s the beautiful thing about our tradition, and all other spiritual traditions and religious traditions also have beautiful teachings in them. We’re not unique in that way.

So, that’s, to me, one of the things that we can do, is we can continue to stand up and speak truth to power, challenge injustice. One of the things that I’ve been teaching lately is there’s a teaching in Pirkei Avot, the teachings of the fathers, the ancestors, that says that the foundation of the world rests on three principles: truth, justice, and peace. And so when I originally thought about that, I was like, all right, there are like three pillars.

But actually, I think that they matter in order. In other words, you can’t get to peace without justice, and you can’t have justice unless you understand the truth. Because justice requires that you repair the harm and injustice from the past. And you can only do that if you are willing to really look at and understand the truths.

And this is what’s so painful right now, is we are taught — And Zechariah teaches us [to] speak truth. Onkelos, an Aramaic translator of the Torah, translates, [foreign language], which is translated in Hebrew as “Justice, justice you shall pursue”. He actually translates it as “Truth, truth you shall pursue,” which is very interesting. And Zechariah teaches us to speak truth. And those of us who are trying to speak truth right now are being dismissed and called antisemitic and not Jewish. And all sorts of…

Marc Steiner:  Self-hating Jews.

Cat Zavis:  …Self-hating Jews. Ways to dismiss us, because the truth is so painful. And I want to also hold compassion for that. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to challenge it. But let’s think about times in our personal lives where we’ve been confronted with truths. Maybe our child challenges us on something. Maybe a good friend does, maybe a partner does, and we protect ourselves. We don’t want to hear it because we feel shame and embarrassment.

And unfortunately, most of us, when we feel shame and embarrassment, we hide, we run away from it because we don’t have a way of integrating that and processing it in a way that’s kind and loving and self-caring. So, I could hear something that’s hurtful or painful about something I did, and I could, instead of going to shame, I could go to, oh, thank you for this opportunity for me to look more deeply at how I’m behaving in the world and act more in alignment with my desires and values. But that’s not what we do in our society. We point fingers at people and tell them how awful they are, and usually we shame children. So, I want to have compassion for the fact that it’s hard to hear these truths.

And it’s particularly hard when you’ve been raised with a particular story of you and your people. And we can see this in white nationalists. They don’t want to look at the history of the birth and creation of this country, both the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of the African-Americans, and the racism and sexism and classism that has been the very foundation of this country. Rather than hear that, they want to still believe that they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and that we live in meritocracy and they will be successful, and yahoo. That’s easier. That fallacy and lie is easier to embrace than looking at the truth of the foundation of this country.

So too in the Jewish world. It is very hard for us to look at the lies that we’ve been told and be willing to jump off the cliff, if you will, into an unknown abyss and start to hear the truth.

So, this is back to your comment about revolutionary loves. The training I’ve done has been in prophetic empathy and revolutionary love, and the prophetic empathy — Well, both parts of it, but, in particular, the empathic side of it, is to recognize that if we are asking people to reevaluate the histories they’ve been told — Now, think about this. This is the history they’ve been told since they were born. It’s the way that they are embraced and loved in their family — Or, at least, think that they’re embraced and loved in their family, in their community, and who they identify themselves as. That’s a big lift to ask people to reevaluate all that.

So, if we’re going to ask them to do a big lift, if we’re going to invite them on this journey, then I believe it behooves us, it’s important to us, to our success and also to our love of other people, to our seeing the divine in the other, to treating people with dignity and respect and care, is to do it with love and compassion. To hold them compassionately as we invite them to embark on this journey with us. To acknowledge that when we embarked on this journey, it was hard.

When I first started to unpack the lies I had been told, it wasn’t like it was a joyful journey. It was hard, but I had inner resources. I knew that, no matter what, my parents would still love me even though we don’t always agree on these issues. I knew that I had people I could turn to and build new community if that was necessary. I wasn’t as steeped in a Jewish world at that point, so it also probably was easier because of that.

But we can’t just expect people to jump off into this new world view if we don’t offer them a ramp and a safe landing, because it’s scary.

Marc Steiner:  It is.

Cat Zavis:  And it’s unknown and it’s hard.

And so, to me, that’s the work. The work is to engage in this work, invite people into conversation with compassion. That doesn’t mean you hide the truth or you pretend it’s not a genocide or not an ethnic cleansing. It just means that you hold people with compassion along the journey. And some will come and some won’t. And all we can do is keep trying to push that envelope, but we have to do it with softened hearts. I always say our hearts are tender. If you’ve ever had your heart broken or hurt, like, you know it’s tender. You kind of end up in a ball for a while. So, our hearts are tender, so let’s hold our hearts with tenderness and kindness as best as we can. And speak truth and bring in that prophetic voice.

Marc Steiner:  And our work is tikkun olam.

Cat Zavis:  Tikkun olam. Amen. Yes. Healing and repairing of ourselves in the world.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, exactly.

Cat Zavis:  And you can’t do one without the other. We can’t heal ourselves in a broken world, and we can’t heal the world if we’re broken. So, that’s why our movements have to be places that allow for healing and compassion as we work to heal the world.

Marc Steiner:  I deeply appreciate the conversation we’ve had, and it’s clear the work you’re doing, and the passion and intellect and fearlessness that you bring to the work that you do.

Cat Zavis:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  It means a great deal.

Cat Zavis:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  Yeah, I look forward to coming up there and seeing just how you run your service as well [both laugh].

Cat Zavis:  You can actually join us online.

Marc Steiner:  I’ll try that.

Cat Zavis:  We do hybrid still. So, yeah, come any Shabbat you’d like, we’d love to have you.

Marc Steiner:  Thank you, Rabbi Cat Zavis. It was a pleasure to have you with us.

Cat Zavis:  Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Marc Steiner:  Look forward to staying in touch. Thank you so much.

Cat Zavis:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank Rabbi Cat Zavis for joining us today, and we’ll be linking to her work and writing so you can all enjoy and read what she’s doing.

And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program, producer Rosette Sewali for making it all happen, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please, let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thank you Rabbi Cat Zavis for joining us today and for doing the work that you do. So, for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Not many people today know about the radical history of the Jewish Labor Bund, the Jewish socialist party founded within the Russian Empire in 1897—but they should. Understanding the Bund is essential for understanding the long and critically relevant tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism. “From the Bund’s very earliest days,” artist and author Molly Crabapple says, members “saw that if there was an attempt to create a Jewish ethno-state in Palestine, it would mean a state of eternal war with both the neighboring countries [and] the Palestinians… inside that country.”

In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Crabapple about what the history of the Bund can teach us today in the midst of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine, and about how anti-Zionist Jews, including Crabapple herself, continue to fight for a socialist alternative to Zionism.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

What you just heard is Di Shvue, the anthem of the Jewish Labor Bund. It’s appropriate for our guest. This is Marc Steiner. Welcome to the Marc Steiner show here at The Real News, and I’m about to talk to Molly Crabapple. She joins us once again. Artist, activist, writer, co-author of Brothers of the Gun, which is an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, which was a New York Times notable book and listed for 2018 National Book Award, and her memoir, Drawing Blood, which received global praise and attention. Her animated films have been nominated for three Emmys and won an Edward R. Murrow Award, Disappearing Rooms. Crapapple’s reportage has been published in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, vanity Fair, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and right here on The Real News.

So Molly, welcome. Good to have you back with us.

Molly Crabapple:

Thank you so much for having me, Marc. And thank you so much for starting with Di Shvue, the Bund’s anthem.

Marc Steiner:

Tell me, before we get into what’s happened to you recently, getting arrested and what you were protesting, let’s talk a bit about the Bund. I really want to understand how you get into them, and for our listeners, let’s stop here. For our listeners right now, let’s talk about what is the Jewish Bund and then how did Molly jump into it?

Molly Crabapple:

What was the Jewish Bund? The Jewish Bund was a Jewish socialist, secular, and defiantly anti-Zionist revolutionary party that started in 1897 in the Tzarist Empire and became one of the most popular Jewish movements in Poland and the former Pale of Settlement until it was destroyed by the Holocaust and then by Stalin. And the Bund was a movement that was based on this idea that they called hereness, doykayt in Yiddish, that said that Jews had the right to live in the countries where they were born, where their fathers and mothers were born in the Eastern Europe that had rejected and brutalized them, but was still their home. It was a philosophy that said, “Here where we live now is our country. We don’t have to go to the there of Palestine and colonize it in order to have lives of freedom and of safety. We can do it here and we fight for it here.”

Marc Steiner:

That whole argument, that discussion has been lost since the founding of Israel, and especially during these wars with, A, the passions about Zionism even if you’re not a Zionist, and B, because Jews always feel preyed upon and the other. But the struggle inside that world, inside the Jewish world, over Zionism and things like the Bund have been around for the last 150 years.

Molly Crabapple:

As soon as Zionism, political Zionism was created, there was anti-Zionism.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly. So talk a bit about what you think the Bund’s legacy is now for us, because you’re working on that at this moment. There’s a book coming out, so talk a bit about what their relevancy is for what we’re facing now and what they say to us in this age.

Molly Crabapple:

Sure. So I spent the last five years working on a book about the Jewish Labor Bund. It’s called Here Where We Live is Our Country, and I think it’s the first full history of the group that’s written for a popular audience. It’s not an academic book. It’s a book that is written in a way that’s as exciting and vivid and funny, where characters talk. That’s something that you could give to a 25-year-old and say, “This is your history.”

Now, why did I choose to write a book about the Bund and why does it say something that’s so relevant and so vital for us now? To me, what their legacy is, it’s threefold. The first is that they were humane democratic socialists. They were people whose philosophy was in line with the DSA here. They were people who did not go over to Stalinism, but who nonetheless were a party that fought with their fists and in electoral politics and in the streets for the rights of workers. So that’s the first thing. They were socialists in the best way.

They were also people who said that the answer for Jews was not to go and colonize and ethnically cleanse another country in order to make a sort of ersatz homeland, but instead that Jews had the right to live where they were and that this was something worth fighting for, that your home now where you were, was worth defending and could be defended in solidarity with other people. Bernard Goldstein, who was a fighter for the Bund who ran their militia, he compared their philosophy in interwar Poland to that of Black people in America. And Bernard said that from knowledge he spent the last years of his life in the Bronx.

The third reason that I have been obsessed with them is that they were so, so prescient about what Zionism would become. From the Bund’s very earliest days, they saw that if there was an attempt to create a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine, it would mean a state of eternal war with both the neighboring countries, but also with the Palestinians that were inside that country, and that it would mean also an eternal state of war with the Jews that were taken into this project to get rid of their previous cultures, whether it was the Arabic culture of a Jew from Baghdad or the Yiddish culture of a Jew from Vilnius to create them as these new Israelis. And they saw that eventually this violence that Israel would need to inflict from its very first moments would turn inward and create a state that was based on racism and religious fundamentalism. They literally have letters and articles where they’re writing this in the 1920s and the 1930s.

Marc Steiner:

And here we find ourselves in this moment. This is probably, I think in my lifetime, one of the most dangerous moments we face, not just in Israel, in this country, across the globe, for the rise of neo-fascism. And Israel is at the heart of that. It’s painful and difficult to fathom that Jews could end up running a neo-fascist state. There have always been fascists among the Jews as well as communists and liberals and everybody else, but the idea that a neo-fascist state has taken hold, and that we are, the larger we, are pressing on other people at this moment and also could cause that we bring the Masada to ourselves again. That’s where I think we find ourselves.

Molly Crabapple:

We find ourselves where a self-declared Jewish state with a big old Star of David on the flag is doing a genocide in Gaza and is involved in an evil, unspeakable invasion of Lebanon, and that’s creating hell every day on the West Bank for Palestinians. That’s where we find ourselves. It’s one of the most shameful and heartbreaking moments that I can think of. On one hand, I’ve always rejected this idea that because a people has been oppressed, that it makes them good people. I don’t actually think oppression, let alone going through a genocide like Jews did, makes anyone better.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Molly Crabapple:

In fact, I think it makes you worse. I think that in fact, the role that the Holocaust has played in cultural and ethical life has in some ways blinded people to the fact that suffering makes no one into saints. I often think about the people of the Soviet Union who had 20 million people were murdered, 20 million who had their cities destroyed, who suffered ungodly amounts under the Nazis, and who pretty soon afterwards killed millions of people in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and no one would look and say, “How could the people of the Soviet Union after suffering so much inflict suffering on others?”

Marc Steiner:

Right. Right.

Molly Crabapple:

It wouldn’t even cross people’s mind. But I think because the Holocaust is this event that’s almost put apart from history, this basic truth about humans has been forgotten, that enduring a genocide just means that you’re a people that endured a genocide. It does not mean that you are destined by history never to inflict one on others.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly. To me, it’s the contradiction that exists when you look at the fact that in the sixties, 70% of all the white freedom fighters were Jews. At the same time, I had cousins who I loved dearly I would sit with, but they were slumlords, and they owned corner stores that ripped off the people in poor neighborhoods where they lived and worked. And the contradictions just abound. And that’s just human existence, I think. I think in the Jewish world, we could use some kind of internal discussion about who we are and let’s deal with reality.

Molly Crabapple:

Exactly, that we have the same flaws and contradictions and idiocies and heroisms as any other group.

Marc Steiner:

Let’s talk a bit about your recent arrest.

Molly Crabapple:

My recent arrest.

Marc Steiner:

With Nan Goldin and others at Wall Street.

Molly Crabapple:

Yes. So I was arrested trying to block the stock market from opening with… How many people were we? I think several hundred people organized by Jewish Voices for Peace, which is, speaking of things that give me hope in our people, I love JVP. What a profoundly ethical and brave and amazing group. We were trying to blockade the stock market to protest the full-throated material support that American corporations were giving to the genocide and Gaza, to protest the bombs and bullets that companies like Lockheed Martin, for instance, are sending to tear apart Gazan children. That’s why we were there. And there was a small, pathetic little band of Zionist counter-protesters that threw eggs at us, tried to yell at the meathead cops to be allowed in to scream in our faces, but in general, we were all arrested. And I was very proud to do that. And I think that, honestly, it feels like the least I could do.

Marc Steiner:

And that’s been happening across the country too and across the globe. And I think it’s really important that, as you were describing, that Jews come out as activists saying, “Not in our name. This is not going to happen. We don’t stand with this.”

Molly Crabapple:

Oh my God, it’s the most important thing in the world. You have this state that claims us, it claims that it’s acting on behalf of Jews. It perverts our history. It blasphemes our symbols by carving them into the literal earth of Gaza and into Palestinian faces, and it says, “This is Jews. This is Jews doing it. We are Jews and we are inflicting this horror.” And every bit, every particle of my being is like, “Fuck you. No. How dare you?” And for me, I think it is so essential that Jewish people are screaming with their full chests that, “No, this genocidal Israeli state does not represent us. It has no right to excuse its atrocities with our history, with our identity, with our religion, with our pain. It has no right at all, and no, not in our name.”

Marc Steiner:

So you’re a woman who’s been an artist and a writer and an activist, and you have taken yourself into war zones.

Molly Crabapple:

I have, yeah.

Marc Steiner:

To Ukraine and other places.

Molly Crabapple:

Yeah. I was in Ukraine in 2022. Yes. Oh, man, you’re making me do math. Yeah, 2022.

Marc Steiner:

It all melds, I know, I understand.

Molly Crabapple:

Yeah, I know.

Marc Steiner:

And your writing out of that was very powerful and very painful. That war is going on and has not ended. And it’s also where that borderline between Ukraine and Poland is where my family came from originally. And so we got a lot of back and forth about that. But I’m curious, looking at what’s happening in Ukraine and looking at what’s now happening in Palestine-Israel, where do you think after all this work you’ve done, the kind of visionary kind of thinking you’ve been involved in, where do you think this is taking us? None of us are prescient, but your analysis about where this is taking us and how this happened to us.

Molly Crabapple:

In terms of particularly the war against the people of Gaza, it’s part of this cheapening of human life. It is part of this, how do I put this? Willingness by governments around the world to countenance people literally being thrown into a meat grinder and mass murdered. This is the worst, what’s happening in Gaza is the worst thing that I have ever witnessed, even though I obviously was not reporting from Gaza, just communicating with my friends inside, but it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I’m not saying that there aren’t worst things going on. It’s not like a hierarchy of suffering, but it’s certainly the worst thing that I’ve ever been aware of in the sense of people who are literally trapped and totally cut off who are being bombed and murdered from the sky, from the ground, from the sea, and who are basically without defense.

To me, that element of people being without defense and also totally cut off and unable to escape is what makes this so, it makes it different than Ukraine. Despite the horrific and obscene atrocities that Russia has visited on Ukraine, at least Ukrainians have an open border to Poland, and at least they are being armed by America. They have some ability to defend themselves, inadequate though it is. It’s also what makes it different from Syria, because in Syria, people could still, they could flee to Turkey or to Lebanon, and also they were getting arms, inadequate and often used in bad ways, but still they weren’t defenseless like people are in Gaza. I just think that this phenomenon where we are all watching literal babies having their limbs blown off, and girls with half their skull sheared off on our smartphones every day, while those in power continue to arm and fund it, is something that is like a wound in all of our moral fabric.

Marc Steiner:

I was thinking about the work you’re doing now in the Bund and JVP now. There’s an arc here to me, a historical political arc, but I’ve never seen before the numbers. Since the Bund was very powerful in Poland and Russia, but looking now at JVP and the anti-war groups, the anti-Zionist and non-Zionist groups of young Jews especially, the movements have similarities. And the power, though, this time seems to be not winding down, and it seems it’s going to have an effect on this country, maybe Israel-Palestine, including inside the Jewish community, and you are in the middle of it.

Molly Crabapple:

Yeah. Every day, I am in awe of these Jewish kids in JVP, if not now, in just countless, countless groups, some of which aren’t specifically Jewish. A lot of the people who organized the Columbia encampment were Jewish kids. I am in awe of their courage, of their willingness to face a lot of rejection, often from their families, to get arrested, to affect their job prospects, to risk their university educations because of just their profound moral need to protest this genocide. And it is something that’s growing, right?

I think that a lot of older people, like people of my mother’s generation, who are American Jews, they had this very delusional view of Israel that was not actually based on even having visited Israel. Or even there were people who didn’t know Hebrew who couldn’t name an Israeli political party, but they had seen the movie Exodus, and they maybe once had visited a kibbutz when they were young for three weeks or so. And they had this very strong emotional attachment, and this emotional attachment utterly blinded them to the horrific crimes that Israel, since its foundation, was inflicting on Palestinian people. I think that the difference with younger Jews is they don’t have that, right? They’re not people who remember a Israel that claimed to be socialist, right?

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Molly Crabapple:

They’re people who probably weren’t, they probably never in their lives saw an Israel that wasn’t being governed by Netanyahu. I mean, Netanyahu has basically been in power on and off since he incited Rabin’s murder, I think.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly, yes. When I look at that, we all have our journeys. In ’67, I tried to join the Israeli Army to fight because of the war.

Molly Crabapple:

You did?

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Molly Crabapple:

Zion rejected you, man. [inaudible 00:18:36] Jesus.

Marc Steiner:

That was in the midst of being an anti-Vietnam war activist and organizer in the underground media as well.

Molly Crabapple:

So why? Why did you-

Marc Steiner:

Because it was that war that changed a lot of us. It was that war, meeting left-wing Israelis, meeting Palestinians, that changed everything, that went from being a member of Hashomer Hatzair to saying, “No, this is wrong. This is not us. We can’t do this.” That’s where the switch came.

Molly Crabapple:

Right. Right.

Marc Steiner:

I’m glad the war was over in seven days. I didn’t join the IDF. But I think that there was a profound switch then, and it’s happening now. When I think about your work on the Bund, and people really need to know this, I can’t wait for it to come out so we really can dive into it deeply together to understand what that history means for us now, and that war in ’67, and where we find ourselves today with this war in Gaza, where we are slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians, to destroying the entire strip of Gaza. One of my closest friends is Palestinian Ali Zageb, his nephews, two of them were shot and killed by settlers outside of Ramallah.

Molly Crabapple:

[inaudible 00:19:58].

Marc Steiner:

In this madness now.

Molly Crabapple:

Yes, yes.

Marc Steiner:

And I’m in touch with a guy I’m going to get on the air with again, Mohammed Rah, who is in Gaza trying to take care of his people. People don’t fathom how horrendous this war is for the people in Gaza, what it’s doing to them.

Molly Crabapple:

Every single bit of life is being destroyed. Every university, every library, every hospital, every restaurant, everything that people built against such odds, right? Because these people were building these things under blockade, under extreme limits on construction materials, under poverty. They’re building them while being bombed every two years. People in Gaza still built so much beauty in spite of everything. And all of that has been systematically block-by-block destroyed and turned into blood-soaked dust by this genocidal invasion.

I also, I reported from Gaza in 2015, and I had this amazing translator I work with, Mohammed Rajab, and right now he’s a driver for UNICEF, and he is living in a tent with four little boys and his wife and his elderly parents. His father-in-law died because Israel sadistically keeps medicine out of the Gaza Strip. And so he died in pain because of this sadistic Israeli blockade that they’ve done at the same time as they’re doing this genocidal invasion. And I just think about that.

One moment you have a home, you have things that you’ve built, you have beauty that you’ve made, you have a family, and then the next moment you’re living in a fucking tent surrounded by just the absolute destruction of everything you’ve ever known. And right now at this moment, where Israel is essentially liquidating Northern Gaza, where they’re rounding up men and forcing them to strip and writing numbers on their foreheads and taking them to God knows what torture camp, my heart wants to leap out of my chest from rage at this.

Marc Steiner:

Yes, I understand completely. Before we’ll let you go, I want to go back to this arc and also where you think this takes us now. I mean, the Bund that you wrote about was a very powerful movement, a non-Zionist Jewish movement.

Molly Crabapple:

Anti-Zionist Jewish movement.

Marc Steiner:

Anti-Zionist, excuse me, crystal clear, anti is the right word, not non, anti-Zionist.

Molly Crabapple:

They literally had mass meetings where the banner was “Liquidate Zionism,” and they passed resolutions that, this is in Warsaw in the twenties. They passed resolutions that were like, “It is the duty of every worker to struggle with all his might against Zionism and national chauvinism.”

Marc Steiner:

So do you think there is actually a hope that we can build a really strong, not Bund, because that’s another century, but a movement that really takes hold inside the Jewish world that speaks to the rest world saying no, and we can actually do something to stop this, that we have a voice, and it’s not just up to the folks that have all the money in all the kind of major Jewish organizations?

Molly Crabapple:

I absolutely think that a movement is being built and not just in America. There’s networks of Jews in Europe that are standing against this, in Argentina, in Australia. In places around the world that have Jewish communities, Jews are absolutely rejecting this. And they’re organizing both just as people in general political things like how I’m in the Democratic socialists, but also they’re organizing as Jews. And I think it’s something that is scaring the shit out of the people that are the donors to these major Jewish orgs.

There was an interesting article. Who wrote it? It was basically labor reporting about how Jewish organizations around the country, from Jewish day schools to synagogues to just like lefty Jewish cultural groups, have been purging anti-Zionist employees, especially young people, who are people who don’t necessarily have a big platform and a lot of means to fight back. They’ve been firing people over being in a keffiyeh in a Facebook photo or liking an Instagram post. And I think the reason that there’s this huge, huge institutional backlash against young anti-Zionist Jews is because these donors are scared shitless because they know that they’re losing an entire generation.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly. I agree. As we close out today, I want to come back to that day where you all went to Wall Street, you and Nan Goldin and the others, and the effect that had, and those demonstrations are not stopping.

Molly Crabapple:

Absolutely not, no. JVP has been doing these demonstrations that involve civil disobedience and mass arrests. They have a long history of doing that. But specifically, they’ve been doing that since very, very soon after the genocide began in Gaza. They took over Grand Central Station, hundreds of people were arrested. I was also part of a demonstration where we took over the Statue of Liberty. Over and over and over again, whether in the Capitol or at sites in New York, they have been doing these mass demonstrations, where hundreds of people are getting arrested in order to show that they utterly reject this war. Obviously, I don’t think that we alone can stop the bombs. We’re a very small group, despite how big our mouths are. I mean, Jews in general. But I think that the moral power of Jews utterly rejecting this genocide and utterly rejecting this apartheid being carried out in our name is crucial. And I think it’s terrifying to the Zionist establishment. And it’s not going away. It’s only growing.

Marc Steiner:

Molly Crabapple, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you’re an extremely busy human being. I appreciate your work, your creativity, your strength to stand up to all this that’s happening and what you paint, draw, and write. And I look forward to talking when the Bund comes out, your book on the Bund. And thank you so much for everything and taking time out of your valuable work to join us today.

Molly Crabapple:

Thank you so much. My pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

I want to thank Molly Crabapple once again for joining us and bringing her creative genius to bear on so many issues we’re confronting, especially Israel-Palestine. We’ll link to all of her written and artistic work. It’s well worth the exploration. And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for all of her magic in audio producing, Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner Show and the tireless Killer Ravala for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thanks to Molly Crabapple for joining us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Donald J. Trump is headed back to the White House for a second term, Republicans will control the Senate, and if they win a majority in the House of Representatives, they will control all three branches of government: the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary. In the 2024 presidential race, the support holding up Democrats’ “blue wall” in 2020 crumbled, and a MAGA-led “red wave” swept large portions of the electoral map. What the hell happened? And what happens now? How did Democrats lose so soundly, how did Republicans pull off such sizable wins? In this urgent episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat representing Maryland’s 8th District, about how Kamala Harris and the Democrats lost to MAGA, how to address the dangerous political divides in the US today, and what we need to be prepared for with a second Trump administration.

Studio: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s wonderful to have you all with us.

My guest this hour is Congressman Jamie Raskin, who represents Maryland’s 8th District. He’s been in Congress for four terms now. He was chosen by the Democratic caucus to be the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and has been a fighter for justice his whole life. And before he was a congressman, he was a three-term state senator — And I won’t tell you how old he was when I first met him.

Jamie, good to see you [laughs].

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  It’s great to be with you, Marc. It really is,

Marc Steiner:  I wish this was a way we were talking about something more upbeat, but given the election that we’ve just gone through, just on a personal note, how shocked and taken aback for you that Trump won, and it was such a loss?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  Well, I’d been to 27 states in the campaign, and I suppose it gives you a little bit of a distorted view, because I was appearing at Democratic Party county dinners and state dinners and canvass kickoffs, rallies, and so on. And I saw such exuberance and such energy and such determination and fight that I was taken aback by what happened.

It’s obviously going to take us a while to sort through everything to figure out exactly why it happened, but obviously the country is deeply divided. We beat them by 7 million votes in 2020, and here it looks like we’ll lose by a few million votes and in the electoral college. But we have to figure out a way to get through all of the bad vibes and the deadlock in the country, and I’m committed to do that.

I was thinking about a letter, a favorite letter, that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend of his named John Taylor during the time of the Alien and Sedition Acts. He said, “A little patience, [and we shall see] the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore [their] government to its true principles.” We must have patience when the game runs against us sometimes, because this is a game where principles are at stake, and that’s the way I feel.

The human inclination is to feel intense frustration and anguish about a loss like this. And we gotta analyze it. But in the sweep of history, this too shall pass, and we just gotta keep moving forward.

Marc Steiner:  Before I come back to the questions about the deadlock and what the future might bring, immediately we are faced with an incoming government that will have J.D. Vance, R.F.K. Jr., Vivek Ramaswami in critical leadership roles, people who are on the edge, people who have an extremely conservative and right-wing bent. For all my time covering Donald Trump and the right in this country, which I’ve done for years, Donald Trump is like the madman figurehead, but it’s these people around him that are actually the ones who are going to begin to create the policies that change the nature of the country.

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  Yeah, it’s like a bunch of Batman villains. It’s like the Joker and the Riddler and the Penguin [Marc chuckles], and they all have their particular specialties they work on. Stephen Miller is all about immigrant bashing and doing a roundup of undocumented people and deporting them from the country. J.D. Vance, I dunno, he’s a chameleon figure, but it’s some kind of culture war I think he’s fighting. Others are in it for the plunder and the grift of the whole thing, but there’s not much of a program for the common good, and that’s what we’re all about.

We’ve got to continue to uphold the public interest and try to defend everything that our grandparents and our parents have built in America like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. We are going to be the real conservatives here, trying to conserve the legacy of more than a half century of social struggle in the country.

Marc Steiner:  The election itself. I’m really curious, you’ve been through this a long time. You’ve been in politics a long time, you’ve been state senator, US congressman. Why do you think the Democrats fell apart?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  Well, I don’t know that the Democrats fell apart. That’s not quite the way I see it.

Marc Steiner:  How do you see it?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  I feel like it was not enough to be defending freedom, like women’s freedom, and it was not enough to be defending democracy, the constitutional system. The showdown struggle is going to be between progressive economic populism and right-wing authoritarian populism.

And on that front, we obviously didn’t show up with a program that could appeal to a lot of working-class guys who didn’t quite see what was in it for them. I’ve seen some stuff that Bernie Sanders has been saying, and Bernie, to his credit, was really out there in the campaign and campaigning. But he has, since the campaign, been saying that there was not a strong progressive working-class program, and we did not campaign on increasing the minimum wage and the right to organize and the right to strike and so on.

I don’t think that’s any kind of magical cure to what ails us, but I do think that that is the entree into lots of young men who may have become the pivot, the lever in the end of the campaign for the Republicans. And they were running a very macho-oriented campaign to turn out the young male vote —

Marc Steiner:  Which they did.

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  And they succeeded in doing that, yeah.

Marc Steiner:  So I am curious, you’ve been at this a while, and on the progressive end of the spectrum inside the Democratic Party. What is it going to take to bring that party around? As I was watching all the ads and listening to the radio ads around the country and watching how was all presented, A, it didn’t feel like there was a lot of fight inside those ads, and B, they didn’t at all begin to describe what you’re talking about at this moment, which is appealing to the working class of America, appealing for racial unity, to really being out there as the fighters for a more just economic world in our country. That, in some ways, was flagrantly missing.

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  Well, here’s the big problem — And there’s nothing more tempting after an election than to criticize [Steiner laughs] what other people did. And these are my people. I wasn’t running the campaign. I was a foot soldier out there.

But if I could go back and change one thing, it would be this: We, as The Economist magazine put it, our economy right now is the envy of the world. The lowest inflation rate of the Western industrialized countries. We’ve had 50 straight months of under 4% unemployment. Biden was handed a debacle by Donald Trump when he came in, and the Biden-Harris administration did a great job.

Now here’s the problem: The inflation that we had coming out of COVID with the supply chain breakdowns and also with the multi-trillion dollar aid packages that both Democrats and Republicans voted for, there was an inflation. And I think that Biden did a good job and the Fed did a good job of managing the inflation, but people still, in an existential way, felt the inflation. And that was an important part of what was going on out there.

Here’s the way I see what the response was by our forces and what it should have been: The response was, well, we can’t tell people how great the economy is because they don’t feel it. It looks like we’re out of touch if we do that. And therefore we just have to say yes, we have to continue to wrestle inflation to the ground and so on.

You know that’s not what the Republicans would’ve done in that exact situation. What they would’ve done is partly what we should have done. We should have taken credit for the fact that the economy is roaring and that we have a great economy — But then we should have gotten to the point you and I were just discussing a moment ago to say but there’s way too much inequality in this society and the benefits and the gains of this roaring economy are overwhelmingly going to the billionaires, and that’s not right. And so we need to increase the minimum wage. We need to make sure that unions can collectively bargain. We’ve got to strengthen labor laws. We need to make an investment, as Kamala was saying, in young people and their ability to purchase a house for the first time and so on.

But in other words, don’t run away from our success. And that was the part that was bumming me out about that. People were saying, well, we don’t want to be celebrating or gloating about an economy that hasn’t filtered through to so many people. I think the answer to that is we’ve done a great job on macro economics, but the Republicans have been fighting us every step along the way in terms of making sure that we’ve got greater economic equality in the country. So instead, we get the Republicans blaming us for the failures of their own policies and for all the inequality that they insist upon, and us not being able to take credit for the huge economic achievements that were actually made.

Marc Steiner:  That’s what I was talking about earlier. That’s what I meant. For a moment, just speaking about that strategically, I kept looking at these commercials going, looking at the literature coming out, where’s the fight? Why aren’t you saying the things you just said? And organizing on the ground.

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  Look, I’ll tell you what my rhetoric was out there about democracy, because that was obviously a critical component of the campaign. And in fact, it was the lead issue invoked by voters at the polls when they asked, what is your number one issue? Democracy was the lead issue. And it was invoked by huge numbers of Democrats, but even some people on the Trump side because Trump, in his inimitable way, just mimicked us to try to pull the rug out from under what we were saying.

But here’s the thing about democracy. Democracy is not just a static collection of institutions and practices. It’s partly that. It is the right to vote and it is representative institutions and so on. But democracy is always an unfinished project. It’s something that’s in motion. Tocqueville understood this. In Democracy in America, he said that democracy is either growing and expanding or it’s contracting and subsiding. We’ve been in this terrible contractionary mode with all the voter suppression tactics and the gerrymandering of our congressional districts and right-wing judicial activism.

So on the democracy point, I think we needed to say we are going to defend everybody’s right to vote. We are going to defend our political institutions. But we are also going to keep the project of democracy moving forward.

The whole thing about the anti-Puerto Rican racist joke, that would’ve been the perfect moment to say, now is the time to admit Puerto Rico as a state into the Union. We got three-and-a-half million disenfranchised Americans. We got 713,000 tax-paying, draftable Americans in Washington DC, the only residents of a national capital on earth who are not represented in their own legislature. It’s time for DC statehood. That’s a genuine, bonafide political grievance. And they didn’t come down to the Capitol and beat the hell out of our police officers and put people in the hospital and drive the members of the House and Senate out of their chambers. They petitioned for statehood, and we should admit them. So the pro-democracy message has got to be forward-looking as well as defensive in nature.

Marc Steiner:  So in the little time we have left here, talk about your thoughts and analysis about what you think is going to happen in this moment? You have J.D. Vance and Elon Musk, R.F.K. Jr., all of them bright men, but really right wing, Vivek Ramaswami. So what do you think is going to happen in the next six months to a year? You have Donald Trump and these really far-right people managing the government taking over, and I’m just curious how you see, A, the fight going on against that, and B, what do you think is going to happen?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  Well, Project 2025 lays out, I think, their big wish program, even though Trump repeatedly tried to disavow it and distance himself from it. If they could do everything, they would do all of that. I’m concerned about the proposal of sacking 50,000 federal workers and replacing them with Trump sycophants. A lot of those people live in Maryland and work for the Department of Energy and NASA and NOAA and NIH, and they want to gut the government functions they don’t agree with. They want to abolish the Department of Education and Head Start. So that’s going to be one front in their war.

I think if Stephen Miller has his way, they’ll start the way they did last time, which is with a war on immigrants because they think that scapegoat politics is the most successful form of right-wing authoritarian politics. So they will try their roundups and their deportations to create a climate of fear and intimidation in this society.

And if R.F. Kennedy Jr. goes in there — And Trump said he would let him run wild when it comes to health and food —

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  — Drugs. Could be a war on fluoride in the water. Who knows where he takes it. So we’re going to have to defend science and reason along with democracy and the rule of law.

Marc Steiner:  So I’m curious how you think we fight that, and how that is fought. The roots of the part of the Democratic Party, part of the roots of the party, is unions and union organizing, is the Civil Rights Movement, is people fighting for civil liberties. It’s people trying to debunk the 1950s myth about fluoride in the water. So how do you organize the battle to save the country?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  Well, look, we’ve been through this before. We are veterans and battle-hardened champions of the Constitution and enlightenment and the democracy. And I think our main job is we’re going to have to be recruiting whole new generations of young people to get in the fight and to be ready to participate in it. Obviously, this is going to be a long-term struggle against these people.

The good news is that if you look at the unfolding of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, you look at the unfolding of social legislation like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, there’s a logic to all of it. There’s a reason to it.

They’re coming in with a program which is a collection of conspiracy theory-driven, ideological pet agendas, like Bobby Kennedy, like the antivaccine thing, or deporting immigrants, or build the wall. It’s a chaotic agenda. There’s no real reason to it. And each one of those things is so extreme and so outlandish. It could take all of the energy of their forces to try to get behind to do it, but they’re going to be trying to do all of them.

And there’s going to be a succession struggle taking place. All of these people want to be the next whatever, GOP nominee, running mate. They’re already talking about Donald Trump like he’s yesterday’s news, and they’re all rivals to take over the MAGA movement.

And one thing that we’ve seen in the information we’ve gotten about how it operated before was that it was totally divisive and [inaudible] and warfare kind of stuff, because they’re not unified around a program for the common good. It’s all just a collection of people who have their own ambitions and agendas, whether it’s to make money off of the government, to plunder the government, to change the system of politics in America, to move away from democracy. There’s a lot of different forces contending over there.

And we’re able to stand strong for the American democratic experiment and for American freedom, which a lot of them have abandoned. So we’ve been through it, and we are ready to organize to stop them.

My campaign program, Marc, as you know, is the Democracy Summer Project. I spend no money on pollsters, polling, TV, radio, direct mail, any of that stuff. It all goes into a school for young people. And the Democracy Summer Project, which started here in Maryland, is now nationwide. We were in 46 states in the 2020 election. We had more than 1,500 young people spend the summer with us organizing, studying the history of social movements and change in America, and then working on today’s problems like gerrymandering, like voter suppression, and then being involved in getting out the vote, canvassing, digital organizing, and so on. And I think that’s where the action is politically.

Marc Steiner:  So in the midst of what we face at the moment, you seem to come out on a very positive note. But it seems to me what it takes is, is what I said a moment ago: organizing. People going out and building some force to say we are here and not going to let this happen.

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  And we are not without resources. We have tremendous resources intellectually, politically, socially, organizationally across the country. We have tens of millions of people, nearly half the people in the country voted with us, and we’ve just got to expand that coalition. But we really have to invest in new generations of organizers and leaders.

Marc Steiner:  Jamie, I know you have to run, and I appreciate this conversation. And in a couple of weeks we’ll rejoin Congressman Jamie Raskin. Thanks for your work, thanks for being here today, and good luck to us all.

Rep. Jamie Raskin:  Thank you so much, Marc. Thank you. And I appreciate so much everything you do. Hang tough.

Marc Steiner:  You too.

Once again, I want to thank Congressman Jamie Raskin for taking time out of his day to join us here at The Real News. And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for all of her magic in audio producing, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Congressman Jamie Raskin for being our guest today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Voting day has arrived. As millions around the country head to the polls with a clear candidate in mind, millions of others are wondering if voting still means anything. In a special address for The Marc Steiner Show, our host addresses this question with the benefit of more than 60 years of experience in activist struggle.

Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Hey Folks … this is Marc Steiner, host of The Marc Steiner Show here at the Real News … We won’t be publishing a regular episode of the show today, because today, November 5, is election day. Today, Americans decide the future of our country … There has never been a more important election in my lifetime, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot of elections …

The Real News is a 501c3 news organization, so we’re not here to tell anyone how to vote. But as someone who has fought for civil rights my entire life AND as someone who is painfully aware of how broken and cruel and corrupt our political system is, because I’ve been reporting on it for decades, I want to tell you why it’s still vital that you make your voice heard and vote today. 

I have been involved one way or another since I was a kid who volunteered for Nixon in 1960  because as a young civil rights worker I despised the Southern Democrats who were known as the DixieCrats …. And looked at LBJ as one of them … then in 64 I was 18 year old chairman for DeBerry and Shaw, the Socialist Workers Party Candidates, at the same time working with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.. and in 68 our motto was “vote with your feet fight in the street” … then 72 as a young community organizer we turned George Wallace precincts into McGovern precincts … sort of sordid history I understand ..

But this election will decide the future for some time to come. Not just at the presidential level, but at the local and state level. Up and down the ballot, there are issues at stake that will impact all of our lives and shape our immediate future and our children’s futures. We have to get out and vote .. make a stand..

As I have said for years, in the summer of 64 at least dozen civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi, along with the infamous torture and murder of Schwerner Goodman and Chaney. I knew these people. I organized in the same movement. This is not ancient history, this was real. I lived it …. People sacrificed everything 60 years ago to ensure that every American would have the right to vote and Black people will not be denied the right to vote

Some are trying to take that away across this nation .. we cannot let that happen … 

So if I get tired and fed up with the same political hacks, and both parties… I just remind myself of the summer of 64 and the fight for the right to vote … Take elections seriously, even if the people in power don’t take you seriously. Take them as seriously as the civil rights activists who fought and died for that right. 

Join me .. get out there and vote, and then keep organizing, keep fighting. Because the struggle continues.  

The MAGA movement didn’t disappear after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. If anything, Republicans and extremists outside the party have learned how to effectively organize and seize power in the intervening years. We can look to Florida and Texas, and even to smaller-scale examples like Shasta County to glean what could come from a Trump victory next Tuesday. The Marc Steiner Show looks back on the past two years of key interviews with journalists, scholars, and activists who’ve been fighting the rising threat first-hand.

Listen to the full stories here:

J.D. Vance is a creature of Silicon Valley, not Appalachia (August 2024) with David Corn, DC Bureau Chief of Mother Jones

Trump, Project 2025, and the plan to bring autocracy to the US (November 2023) with Paris Marx, tech writer and host of Tech Won’t Save Us

Democrats need to ‘stop talking bullshit and do something’ (November 2023) with Jim Hightower, former Texas State Agricultural Commissioner

Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: David Hebden, Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to this special edition of The Marc Steiner Show, here on The Real News.

I’ve been covering the rise of the right for some time now. At times, it’s unnerving to witness the power of the right, but we have to know what’s in front of us, how to confront it, and how to stop it.

As someone who was part of the Civil Rights Movement in the early ’60s, it seems like segregationists and John Birchers who we once defeated have been reborn out of the ashes into the MAGA we face today. So as we face this election with the power of the right wing looming, we bring you these conversations, this story that comes out of the conversations we’ve had over the last few years with activists around the country.

Back in August, I spoke with Paris Marx, who wrote the book Tech Won’t Save Us, so we could delve into the power of the right wing in Silicon Valley, the environment that spawned and brought us J.D. Vance.

Paris Marx:  A lot of these people in Silicon Valley, a lot of these investors, billionaires, CEOs saying, we back Donald Trump. We’re backing the Republican Party. We want them to win, but we know that there has been a much longer campaign happening, more in the shadows, more behind the scenes, especially when you think of how someone like Peter Thiel and his network operates.

Peter Thiel is not often… 2016 was the exception. He’s not often the person who is out front, who you’re seeing doing all these interviews, who you’re seeing tweeting a lot or something like that. He is someone who operates in the background. He is someone who moves money around and who gets his network to do the same thing in order to serve these broader goals that people like him have.

And as you’re saying, that’s exactly what you see with J.D. Vance. Vance is someone who first ran into Peter Thiel in 2011 when Thiel was speaking at Yale Law School and felt really inspired by what he was saying. In 2016 when he published Hillbilly Elegy, his bestselling book, was when he really officially entered Thiel’s network, working at Mithril Capital first, and then founding his own venture capital firm later called Narya Capital, which was funded by $100 million from Thiel and his network to get it started.

And then of course, when Vance ran for Senate, he received $15 million from Peter Thiel, which was most of the funding he needed for his campaign. So you can see very clearly how there is this linkage there.

And there are reports that, apparently, when Donald Trump was at a fundraiser in San Francisco before he had chosen his vice presidential candidate, it was co-hosted by David Sacks. He was sitting down with a bunch of these tech figures, very rich people, and basically saying, who should I choose as my vice presidential candidate?

And they were all saying J.D. Vance because they wanted him in that position because he is very much a product of their network. And they know that if he is in the White House, if he is the vice president, they will have a lot of influence over the policy direction that the Trump administration or a second theoretical Trump administration will take.

Marc Steiner:  Last November, I spoke with David Corn, who is the DC Bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine. He’s been covering Capitol Hill for almost 40 years. He knows the ins and outs and does not give in to hyperbole, but is clear-eyed about the workings of the Hill and the White House.

Marc Steiner: Let’s talk a bit about what you see as the clear and pressing danger here that we face in the coming years, if, in fact, they win the next election?

David Corn:  The ultimate danger is that they will continue to rig the political system so that they retain power. And this can be done with more gerrymandering. It can be done with trying to pass legislation in the states or win court battles that allow state legislatures to decide who wins in a presidential election in a state and not stick to what the voters want. So ultimately, the threat is that they basically blow up or pervert parts of our democratic system.

I know there are lots of problems with American democracy, so don’t come at me for that, but that they make it harder for anyone other than them to win elections and make it more harder than it might already be. And so that way, they retain power and we move much further from being a democracy.

And then under that, there’s all the things that could be done in terms of whether overturning important aspects of foreign policy, trying to leverage the power, because if you can control who gets into Congress, then you can control whether or not there’s a national ban on abortion.

I think whether he’s imposing an authoritarian regime or not, one of the other most important things about the election is that he will reverse all climate change action that Joe Biden has with Democrats in the Congress has been able to implement.

And it’s been just a pioneering policy that no one has… Not much further than Barack Obama, anyone else has. And we obviously all know that it’s not sufficient, but it’s further than what any other politician has achieved in America, and that certainly, we need to do more. And certainly, going backwards, as Trump would do, would further imperil the planet and its inhabitants, meaning us and others.

And creating a regime in which political opponents are explicitly targeted by the president for criminal prosecution. I know Republicans claim that’s what’s happening to Donald Trump, but we can run through that over and over again. And it’s clear that the Biden Justice Department has been trying to use special councils and do it the right way. Trump wants to be able to snap his fingers and explicitly say, Marc Steiner should be investigated, and poof, it happens.

Marc Steiner:  Last November, I traveled to Texas with my colleagues Max Alvarez and Kayla Rivara to meet those who are organizing workers and in communities to fight for a just future in the midst of a deep red world of the right that is Texas.

One of the people we sat down with was a legendary author, organizer, commentator, and former Texas State Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower. We talked about how they won before and how the movement is working to reclaim the future.

Marc Steiner: You have this great quote that you said that, “The delusional is no longer marginal. It’s come in from the fringe to sit in the seat of power, and that’s where we find ourselves.”

And my thought when I read that quote, thinking about coming here today, was that you’ve spent your life fighting for the kind of world that is economically, racially, politically, environmentally just, even as Agricultural Commissioner. You fought hard as agricultural commissioner to make that a reality in Texas.

And now, well, here we’re sitting on your porch. You’re 80, I’m 77, and you watch this go on around you. So what are your thoughts about that and the struggle that has been fought from the populist party on to this moment, to see that happen and how we work together to influence other people to fight back and make that change?

Jim Hightower:  Well, the struggle is what matters. And we’ve been through this in Texas, the populist movement, as we indicated, 1870s, basically was crushed by the banks and the railroad corporations and others by 1900.

But then came the progressive movement out of that, Fighting Bob La Follette out of Wisconsin, a terrific movement. The labor movement then rose up, Civil Rights movement came forward. The women’s movement came forward, environmental movement came forward. So we’ve always had the struggle. And bringing that to fore, we’ve had times when I ran in 1980 to be the Agriculture Commissioner, ’82 —

Marc Steiner:  And you won.

Jim Hightower:  Yeah. Yes, I won. Ann Richards ran as treasurer. She won. Jimmy Mattox, attorney general. He won. Gary Morrow, land commissioner. He won. We were all young people with our own individual constituencies to add to the mix.

And then we ran together. We campaigned saying, it’s not just elect me, elect a government, and we’ll put this government on your side, and we did that. And then again, the money came in in the late 1980s, and the corporate money began to dominate all of our politics. So grassroots organizing went aside.

Now, the good news is that organizing continues. The most encouraging thing to me in America and my travels around the country and here in Texas are the grassroots progressive movements. The environmental justice movement, for example.

A woman named Diane Wilson down on the Gulf Coast, shrimper, fourth-generation fisherwoman, fought this huge plastics conglomerate out of Taiwan for 40 years, 40 years. She battled and battled and battled, losing, and even progressives gave up on her, some of them, environmental groups, and said, well, maybe she’s too loopy. She just keeps fighting.

And then suddenly she won. Two years ago, she won a court case that she had filed that brought this Formosa Plastics Corporation to their knees. And they had to give in to the demands of the fisher community down there, and they began to make change. And the judge put the compliance focus not on some government, but on the local grassroots people. And so they were in a position to enforce it and make it happen. That’s a tremendous victory.

Family farmers are doing the same thing right now, reviving, revitalizing, and we’re electing people. Greg Casar got elected here in the Austin, San Antonio District, a young Latino worker advocate, major, major change, who’s become a force already in his first term in Congress, or become a force within the Democratic caucus saying, stop talking bullshit. Start doing something.

And that is change. That is what produces the change, when the people get riled up and then begin to organize and create their own networks of power, and that is what is happening.

Marc Steiner:  I’ve been producing and hosting this series, The Rise of the Right, so we can all clearly see and understand what we’re up against. This is not an anomaly. It’s nothing new in American history. When we fought a Civil War that ended African enslavement and attempted to create a true interracial democracy in the South, it was ultimately defeated by the political resurrection of the Confederacy and their Northern allies that brought us legal racial segregation, and gave birth to the Ku Klux Klan to maintain racist domination and control through terrorism.

We’re now facing a 21st century redux of that moment. After the Civil Rights union movements gave us a more equitable America who had struggles in organizing, we’re here once again. We at Real News will keep covering this, bringing you stories with people who are standing up to the racist right, and exposing what we face as we fight for our future.

Please write to me at mss@therealnews.com and let me know what you thought about this broadcast, and share with me your ideas about what you think we should be covering.

So for Kayla Rivara, Cameron Grandino, Rosette Sewali, Max Alvarez, and the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Thanks for joining us. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

We are now just days away from the 2024 presidential election, and the outcome remains uncertain. With the possibility of a new Trump administration around the corner, the question of how we got here is more pressing than ever. Rick Perlstein and Bill Fletcher Jr. join The Marc Steiner Show for a look back on the mistakes of liberals and leftists that helped nurture the MAGA movement, and what the path to progressive victory in the long-term might look like.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.

This election is almost upon us. It finds us at a moment when the nation is deeply divided, more pronounced than at any time, perhaps, since the Civil War. Elements of the right wing have proven themselves to be highly organized and prepared for the moment, and for the arrival of Donald Trump. The mainstream Democrats and Republicans were not, are not prepared, and we find ourselves on a precipice, even though they brought us to this moment.

Our country, the planet, and those living on it are facing a real danger. How did we get here? Capitalism and our system have failed us, and the Grim Reaper is waiting in the wings. How should we respond to it? What could the future hold? If the right wing seizes power, taking control of the White House, perhaps one or both houses of Congress, it could alter our very existence.

As we approach this election, I asked two colleagues whose ideas, activism, and writing I respect deeply. Those voices have been heard here before numerous times on The Real News. Bill Fletcher Jr., former union leader, scholar, author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, and those examining the heart of our political society.

And Rick Perlstein, the author of a four-volume series on history of America’s political and cultural divisions, and the rise of conservatism from the 1950s to Ronald Reagan.

Gentleman, welcome. Good to see you both. Good to have you here.

Rick Perlstein:  It’s good to be here, Marc. Why can’t it be better circumstances?

Marc Steiner:  [Laughs] Well, we are on the cusp of this election. Obviously nobody knows what’s about to happen. I’m going to take a step backwards, and really am interested in hearing from both of you about why we’re here, and how we got here, and how you bring that analysis to the fore of how these last 40 and 50 years bring us to this point.

Bill, can I start with you?

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  You know, Marc, part of the answer, to me, is that periodically in US history, the ruling class’s consensus breaks down. Whether you’re looking at what led up to the Civil War, the breakdown at the end of Reconstruction, or the breakdown in 1932 and the emergence of Roosevelt and the pushback from the far right, including the coup attempt when they tried to enlist Smedley Butler, the ruling class after World War II, in part because of the Cold War that it initiated, was able to build a unity that held very disparate segments together.

In the absence of the Cold War, or the end of the Cold War, much of what justified keeping these segments together evaporated. But then you add onto that the shifting economy, the growth of neoliberal globalization, the victory of the various progressive social movements, and an orchestrated effort beginning in the late ’60s to build what has now resulted in MAGA. It started as being called a New Right. So all of these factors contributed to this.

But then there’s one other factor, which is that, among liberal and progressive forces, there was a linear view of history, summarized to a great extent in a peculiar way by the intent of Martin Luther King’s famous statement, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” And that’s beautiful, except it’s wrong. The arc of history is long, that’s true. It doesn’t bend in any particular way. The way it bends depends on us.

But many of us thought that, for example, Roe v. Wade, it would never get overturned. There might be this or that battle. It would not get overturned. Most of us didn’t think there’d be a fascist that’d be running for president. Many of us thought there might be a military coup at some point, but not a fascist.

And I think this linear sense of time has undone us, and that’s what we’re up against.

Marc Steiner:  A linear sense of time. I’m going to come back to that. Rick?

Rick Perlstein:  Yeah, there’s nothing Bill said I disagree with. I’ll just propose a separate framework for my own way of thinking about these enormous questions that, of course, will only really become clear to us in the fullness of time, but here we are now.

I refer to the infernal triangle as the matrix that creates this mess we’re in now. The three corners of the triangle are the increasingly authoritarian Republican right, which, of course, I’ve written the history of. We saw a lot of its incipients in McCarthy, and Goldwater, and the new right of the 1970s, and aspects of Reaganism and Newt Gingrich, all the same, all that stuff.

The second part is the inadequacy of the Democratic Party to come up with a persuasive alternative. Its complicity with meeting the Republicans halfway out of the trauma of Reagan’s two landslides.

And yes, also a linear sense of history. I really think that there’s a lot to that, this idea as expressed in the idea that the rise of a majority of Americans being nonwhite would somehow, like magic, deliver us to the new Jerusalem and defeat conservatism forever.

But the last corner of the triangle is the fecklessness, and failure, and institutional calamity that is the elite media that provides us about as good a picture of the reality we’re living through as Pravda did in the Soviet Union back in the day, and can only see the world according to these rigid genre conventions. We refer to it sometimes by the shorthand “both sides journalism”.

Which really was, and again Bill gets at it, kind of a product of the Cold War in which the idea that America was united and at peace with itself was just a profound ideological imperative to express, and didn’t prepare us for these periodic outbreaks of rage, which can always exist just below the surface.

During the Cold War, the high Cold War of the ’50s and the ’60s, to talk about this, again, linear idea of history, the South, and what was going on in the South, and the violent terrorism and anti-democratic authoritarianism there, was seen as a vestige. It was going to go away.

Instead, the kind of politics that marked the South, one-party politics, first from the Democrats and then from the Republicans, conspiratorial thinking, fetishization of violence, extreme embrace of hierarchy, all kinds of conning of economic elites, of working-class people, was nationalized.

The most profound prediction of the future, the one in which I use to just explain what’s happened to the right, came during the 1964 convention when one of the Southern delegates told a reporter, when Goldwater was nominated, “We’ve taken the Mason-Dixon line and we’ve moved it up to Canada.”

So that was the part of America that won, or is winning. It’s up to us whether the final victory happens. And we find ourselves, like you say, at a precipice.

Marc Steiner:  So there are a bunch of things both of you said I want to pull out here. When we see this moment when America is deeply divided politically, that there is no really organized opposition on the left in any way to confront this, except maybe in some of the union work and some of the stuff going on on the progressive side of the Democratic Party, there’s not a lot else, at least that I see, that’s really standing up to it. Bill’s going to disagree, which is good [laughs].

I think that we’re seeing this weird, strange dynamic where race and racism in America is fueling a lot of this, even though it’s not spoken about enough, and B, how much of the white working class in America has ended up on the right and been seduced by it.

Bill, what were you about to say?

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  Well, one thing, Marc, is that the white working class’s gravitation to MAGA has been actually exaggerated. The MAGA is a white movement overall. It is deeply rooted, as was the Tea Party, in the middle strata, and that includes kind of the upper element of the working class. But it’s not like the white working class is disproportionately pro-MAGA compared to other segments of white folks.

I think that that’s important because, if you don’t get that, you can end up coming up with the wrong strategy about how to deal with this, as well as who are potential enemies and friends that we’re dealing with.

The other thing is that there is opposition all over the country, but it’s largely in small groups. There are groups ranging from at the national level, the Working Families Party, to the local level, groups like New Virginia Majority or Florida Rising. So there are these groups that are there. They are, unfortunately, less than the sum of their parts.

And what we have not been able to accumulate is something that I’ve dreamed about for years, which is a new Rainbow Coalition that was thinking at the national level, and that also was aiming to build power at the state levels.

Now, some of the groups I mentioned are trying. New Virginia Majority and Florida Rising, I know that they’re trying. They’re trying to build this work, and I’m not here to criticize them. But I think it’s important, as the man said, “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories,” we have to be clear that we are not where we should be. That’s all. And I think that we have failed to understand that the right wing, the extreme right, or elements within it, developed a multi-decades plan to win.

And our movement, the left and progressive folks, have really vacillated on the issue of fighting for power. When we often think about and have thought, particularly since the ’70s, about fighting for power, it’s either utopian in a sense of the only thing we can do is fight for socialism, that there’s no intermediate thing, or you get this variations of abstentionism, or what the Green Party is doing, with all due respect to them.

So I think that’s what infuriates me, that we’ve wasted an immense amount of time because we don’t pay attention as a movement to strategy and organization.

Marc Steiner:  Rick, do you want to jump in? I’m going to expand on what you just said there, Bill. But what were you about to say, Rick?

Rick Perlstein:  Why don’t you take the lead there, Marc, and I’ll go where you go.

Marc Steiner:  Okay, fine. So the question is then, what can and should be the response at the moment? If we see in the next few days that the MAGA right has seized political power in Washington, or even if they don’t and the Democrats should win, the struggle is still going to be really intense, and probably more intense. Whichever way it goes, it will take different forms.

What were you about to say, Rick?

Rick Perlstein:  So you know I do this weekly column in The American Prospect.

Marc Steiner:  Yes.

Rick Perlstein:  My one that I just filed for Wednesday, it’s called, “What Will You Do?” It’s a series of questions about what all sorts of people will do. I didn’t really get into this, should either Trump win or some kind of low-grade Civil War happen in the next few months.

The questions I ask are existentialist ones, the kind of thing a Camus or Sartre might come up with in a movement of resistance that many of us may face choices that may be life-changing.

If you are a government bureaucrat and you’re asked to sign off on some deportation order. If you find yourself on a jury and one of these abortion trafficking laws passes, like the one that’s pending in Tennessee, which makes it illegal to drive someone over the border to get an abortion, and some grandma’s arrested driving her granddaughter, and she goes to court, and she’s nailed dead to rights, are you going to be a jury nullifier? If you’re a cop, if you’re a National Guard member, if you are a bureaucrat at the NSA, and you’re asked to spy on one of Donald Trump’s opponents.

So the organizational questions are profound and probably above my pay grade, but a lot of what will happen next is the questions that all citizens face under situations of authoritarianism. And as far as I can tell, this is the first time people have started asking these questions. There was one piece by Bob Kuttner in The American Prospect that said, what about civil disobedience?

So what happens when all these things that we know can happen because the Trump people say they’re going to happen, what if they begin to mobilize the military to deport millions of people? They can’t do that without complicity.

And you start to think about that movie about Auschwitz, about the family that lives next… The people who are just living their lives over the other side of the fence. And I think everyone listening to this has to ask what risks they’re going to be willing to take. These are very hard questions, and they suddenly seem to be dropping from the sky with no warning.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  I want to build on that. You mentioned a movie. One of my favorite all-time films is Seven Days in May with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner. For your listeners or viewers that may not be aware of this, the screenplay was Rod Serling from The Twilight Zone, 1963.

It was interesting because it turns out that they were able to get access to The White House because Kennedy thought that the idea of a military coup was not beyond belief. He thought that conditions were such that there could be a coup.

But I mention it in part because of what you’re saying, Rick, that what’s interesting in the film is the role of individuals that make certain choices. An admiral, for example, that decides, I’m not going along with this coup. The director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played by Kirk Douglas, basically agrees with his boss, Burt Lancaster, but is absolutely opposed to violating the Constitution.

So a lot will come down to, as you’re saying, what individuals will do. But I would add this: in the absence of organization, it becomes much easier for individuals to collapse and to feel isolated.

That’s why — And Marc, you and I have been talking about this for years — We need organization. Not small sectarian organizations, but we need organization. We need a broad front that people can identify with and look to because there will be…

Like you mentioned about immigrants. One thing that was raised with me a few months ago was, if there was an attempt to deport, what if there was a repetition of May Day 2006, a day without immigrants, when you had this massive stay away? But that takes organization. So we’ve got to be thinking about organization in order to give people the backbone to take the stands that they need to take.

Rick Perlstein:  People do [inaudible], spontaneously they can do a lot. If you’ll recall one of these evanescent moments of the early Trump administration when he did announce the Muslim ban, and here in Chicago, people filled O’Hare Airport and said, do it past our bodies.

And it happened, but, yes, where did it go after that? Was anyone collecting the emails? Was anyone [inaudible]?

Marc Steiner:  It seems to me, depending on who wins this election, what you just raised, Bill, could take different forms. But what’s clear is that there is a very powerful, manipulated right-wing movement in this country that is prepared to move. Let’s explore from them what their response can be, and what it might be, depending on who wins this election.

50 years ago, whenever that was, 60 years ago maybe, a long time ago, when I was part of the underground smuggling people out of this country during the Vietnam War, there was an organization that they didn’t crack, and we were able to get people out. It was a fairly… Disorganized is not the word. It was not centrally organized.

I think about that, and I think about my cousins who talked about being in the resistance during World War II in Poland. And those things are coming back to me because I think that’s a moment we could be facing.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  Yes.

Marc Steiner:  That’s a moment that could be upon us. What were you about to say, Bill? Let me stop.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  No, I’m agreeing with you. See, I think one thing that we’re up against, Marc, is that too many people still have the pendulum view of history. The pendulum has gone to the right, it will inevitably go back to the left. Yes, there’s extremes now, but people will get over that. And that’s not the way things operate. So I think you’re right to be posing those questions.

There’s getting people out of the country, there’s things like that. I would say, though, the immediate thing is that we need to have local and state coalitions that actually are doing a lot of coordination and communication. One of the important things is going to be networks and narratives.

Marc Steiner:  Narrative? Is that what you said?

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  Narrative. Narrative, yeah. Because the right wing, just like they’re doing with Fox News, they’re going to spin stuff. We have to have a counter to that that explains to people what the hell is going on. We have to keep people abreast of various forms of repression that are taking place.

Then there are practical decisions that are going to need to be made about what forms of resistance to undertake. There will be, inevitably, ultra-left people that will think that you just get out there and start throwing rocks or something. And we’ve got to be thinking about what’s the tactical menu that we look at?

Then the other part is something programmatic. What exactly are our demands, and how do we muck up the system so that it can’t implement some of the things that they’re proposing?

That’s one of the reasons that, like with Project 2025, they clearly want to purge the civil service system so that they have more people, more operatives that can move things quickly.

Marc Steiner:  And if they win, they could begin implementing that.

Rick Perlstein:  Yeah.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  Yes.

Rick Perlstein:  Well, and the word “win” is actually kind of —

Marc Steiner:  I mean win the election.

Rick Perlstein:  Right. Because, as I point out, anyone who’s thinking about this election only in terms of votes is not doing their job. We already, as I pointed out to you off mic, Marc, in both Washington state and Oregon, people have started burning ballot drop boxes. The narrative that they’ve primed their followers to follow, believe in, with a religious fervor, for decades, has been that the Democrats can’t win an honest election so they always cheat. I’ve said, I might write something about this if I’m not a Civil War correspondent.

There’s millions of Americans who do not believe that it’s actually possible for Kamala Harris to win the most electoral votes. And as I pointed out, you can’t have your horse race journalism if the MAGA boys burn down the track.

So one thing we have to be prepared for is the confusion that they’re going to try and sow in the event they don’t get the most electoral votes. And one of the kinds of complicity that they’re hoping for is that the elites basically give up in the interest of order, an 1876 situation when basically the electoral college was tied, and the Democrats who were a Southern reactionary party said, okay, we’ll let a Republican be president, but he’s got to take the military out of the South.

All these things require… First, I like that Bill mentioned narrative because it has a role for us people who sit on our couches and type, like me. I’m not an organizer. People have to be very… There’s a lot of waking up that has to happen. People who should know better are not accepting what’s happening.

I’m seeing a lot of discourse about this fascist rally that happened at Madison Square Garden last night and saying it devolved into a racist thing, as if somehow there’s some kind of… I read someone who said Trump was supposed to make his closing argument, but it devolved into a bunch of racist rants. So people are in denial that it’s this kind of American exceptionalism, it can’t happen here, of what we’re facing.

Marc Steiner:  I watched what happened over at Madison Square Garden, watching pieces of Trump and that rally, and then I was watching the rally that took place when the Nazis held their rally at Madison Square Garden. The similarities were pretty glaring and frightening, other than the uniforms.

You mentioned, Bill, when we talked about what happened in the 19th century in 1876, launched into almost 100 years of racial segregation and terror against the Black world in this country. So people always say these things can’t happen here, but they can happen here.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  They already did.

Marc Steiner:  They already did, exactly. I’m not a pessimist by nature, but I’m very clear-eyed about the forces arraigned against the future and against us, and they’re very powerful and they’re much more organized.

So, there’s no telling what’s going to happen after Election Day. But I wonder, Bill, you talked about some strategies, and given the lack of unity, let’s say, between moderates, and liberals, and progressive Democrats, and people organizing on the outside, there’s nothing that brings them together in opposition to what we face. Maybe I’m being a bit hysterical. So, speak to that.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  It’s not that there’s nothing. I think that to gel a real broad front, you have to have the right collection of people that are convening something, or you have to have a strong organization that is setting the pace.

So one of the things that we’re up against is that centrist Democrats fear both the right and the left, and they are desperately hoping for a return to normality. They see us on the left — I mean the real left. I’m not talking about people like Bill Clinton or something like that, but the real left. They look at us as the disruptors, so there’s this reluctance to reach out to forces on the left on their part.

Within the left, part of the problem that we’re up against is purism, and organizations and individuals, as we’ve discussed, that don’t want to entertain the idea that a broad front needs to be larger than a VW bug [Steiner laughs].

Rick Perlstein:  Yeah, I think about this a lot. Since the Republicans are such inveterate norm breakers, the story a lot of mainstream Democrats say in return is that we have to uphold norms. If something bad is happening, you do the opposite of that bad thing.

There was a wonderful piece in New Republic by the Pulitzer Prize winning historian Jefferson Cowie who’s… If you haven’t read his Freedom’s Dominion about how the word “freedom” became an alibi for coercion in American history through the experience of a single Alabama county, he pointed out that every time democracy truly won a structural victory against the forces of reaction or stagnation, it was through a brazen act of norm breaking.

If you think about the fact that the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the military reconstruction of the South, the laws that enabled that passed before any Southerners were let back into Congress. Can you imagine how the Obamas and Clintons would freak out if you said, oh, well, we need to defeat fascism by ignoring the votes of the states that have become fascist?

If you look at something like Roosevelt’s court-packing plan, nothing in the New Deal would’ve happened unless he had threatened, basically, the existing Supreme Court, the incumbent Supreme Court, with political dissolution, unless they allowed something like the Social Security Act to be declared constitutional.

Then finally… This is a very obscure thing in history. Most people don’t know about this, but it’s probably one of the most fascinating things that ever happened. In 1961, JFK realized that no liberal legislation would ever pass because the Rules Committee and the House of Representatives was ruled with an iron fist by a guy, you might remember this name, Judge Howard Smith, a very reactionary Virginia conservative, and a coalition he had of Democrats and Republicans who just turned it into a graveyard for every liberal legislation.

So he arranged for the size of the Rules Committee to expand and added three members, without which the Civil Rights Act never would’ve passed, the voting rights never would’ve passed, Medicare never would’ve passed, Medicaid never would’ve passed, any liberals’ legislation would’ve passed, and it was just by cheating, really.

So unless we figure out this… Within the realm of under the Capitol dome, top-down institutional Democratic Party stuff, unless they get over their Boy Scout attitude and realize some judicious norm breaking might be required, we might be stuck in this miasma for all of our lifetimes.

Marc Steiner:  Were you going to say something, Bill?

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  Let me just say this, Marc. Another way of putting what Rick just said is that when Michelle Obama said, “When they go low, we go high,” that was wrong [Steiner laughs]. When they go low, we snap the rug from under them and let them collapse.

Rick Perlstein:  Right. When you meet them halfway, that makes it easier for them to spit at you.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  That’s right. I think that the problem, Rick, you just summed it up so well, this assumption of normality, the assumption that we have to be the adults in the room. You remember the example I gave to you once, Marc, about the Battle of the Crater, Petersburg, Virginia?

Marc Steiner:  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  You remember that?

Marc Steiner:  Yes.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  I don’t know if you ever heard this story, Rick. Have you ever heard about the Battle of the Crater?

Marc Steiner:  It’s worth telling. Go ahead.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  So what happened is, 1864, Union troops surrounded Petersburg and the Confederate defenses were very formidable. So the Union troops developed a brilliant idea of building this tunnel underneath the Confederate defenses, loading it up with high explosives. And the idea was you’d set those off and blow the Confederate line. In the explosion we saw massive… It would not only kill, but it would throw the Confederates into disarray.

So they do this, and the explosion was massive, and it created this crater. The Confederate forces that survived were running chaotically back towards Petersburg as a result of this.

The Union troops went into the crater and stopped, and they sat there and they looked around in marvel at the extent of this devastation, body parts and everything else. And at a certain point, the Confederates realized they weren’t being chased. They reorganized, came back, and massacred the Union soldiers.

The Obama administration blew a giant hole in the Confederate line, the Republicans. And instead of us going through and chasing these guys to extinction, we sat in the hole marveling over this great historical event, the election of the first Black president, and him playing the role of the braided belt in the living room. We missed the moment and allowed the Confederates to reorganize, and they came back as the Tea Party. And we’ve been paying the price ever since.

Rick Perlstein:  When your opponent is drowning, throw them an anvil.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  Right. Right.

Marc Steiner:  So in the time we have here, I’m going to go backwards for a minute, and then I’m going to go forwards. I’m going to go backwards to have both of you give us an analysis of how we got here. Why are we facing this right now? What brought us to this moment? It’s not the first time in America, we all know, where right-wing racists have taken power, that their forces were very strong and organized. But, how did we get here? Why are we here right now?

Rick Perlstein:  Well, you got to wait for my book in 2026.

Marc Steiner:  I can’t wait that long, man [laughs].

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  I think we gave the answer actually, Marc, in the beginning. I think that we laid out a summation, a kind of convergence of forces on the other side, plus our own misreading of the situation, and a series of very, very big mistakes on a part of progressive forces have gotten us to this.

But even the level of denial that exists among liberals, I think, exists within large segments of the left. This will go nameless, but when I hear people saying, well, I’m going to vote for Cornel West, or, I’m going to vote for Jill Stein, and I’m going to be making a statement, and you say, well, what do you think about Project 2025? Oh, it’s never going to happen.

And when you have that, in this moment in 2024, that tells you something about why we’re where we are.

Rick Perlstein:  I think that it’s really important to be gracious in this moment of defeat and realize that everyone is at fault. The left is at fault. The Democratic center is at fault. The establishment of the Republican Party is at fault. The media is at fault. These are massive, roiling and overlapping institutional failures. In response, they require an openness, and a creativity, and of backbone, and a valor of the sort we haven’t seen since these great moments in history. Hopefully we’re up to the task.

Marc Steiner:  So let me ask this final piece here about where you think we go from here. I love the analogy that you gave us just now, Bill. If the Democrats win, how do you not just sit in the bloody hole? How is that pushed, and pushed so that movements build and change begins to happen, and you’re confronting the power on the other side, and people sitting in the crater?

And B, if Trump and the right wing should win, this has to be a really strong response. You can’t just sit there and go, oh no, this is terrible. What am I going to do? So what do you think about the day after?

Rick Perlstein:  Maybe Bill can speak to the bottom-up grassroots piece, and I can talk about the Washington top-down piece.

Marc Steiner:  All right. So just talking, Rick, why don’t you start with top-down, and then we’ll go to the bottom-up. However you want to do it. Go ahead.

Rick Perlstein:  The Democratic Party and the people in charge of the Democratic Party, they need to do what Obama didn’t do and call for an accounting. Famously, Obama, after the George W. Bush administration, said, we don’t look backward. We have to look forward — We have to look backward.

The original sin in this case was the Ford partner, Richard Nixon, when elites realized that they were too big to fail and they wouldn’t have to pay for their sins. The next thing you know, these bankers are crashing the economy and getting away with it. There has to be a reckoning. There has to be some truth and some reconciliation. And the Democratic Party cannot go back to, oh, we won and now we can go back to normalcy.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  I agree 150%. I would say that one of the things that became very obvious in the Obama presidency was the failure of most social justice movements to really attempt to pressure the administration. LGBTQ folks and immigrants, immigrant rights movement, to a great extent did pressure, and that was very, very important. The Black Freedom Movement did not. The organized labor basically did not. In the Black Freedom Movement, you had to take a blood test before you could criticize Obama.

So the problem is that the failure to actually put pressure on these people was based on this illusion, this idea that the only kind of pressure would be coming from us, as opposed to understanding that these individuals, whether it was Obama then or Harris next week, will not be under pressure from other forces. Harris is going to be under pressure from the Republicans who have aligned with her. Don’t deceive yourself. These people are not disappearing on Nov. 6, 7, 8.

Rick Perlstein:  Yep. It’s hard.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  I think they correctly are uniting with her, and I think she was right to bring them on board. But you have to understand, they are not disappearing.

These other forces, the people in Silicon Valley who are reluctantly supporting her, they could go any number of ways. So if we are not creating pressure at the base — Which, again, necessitates new forms of organization and pressure on existing groups, we’re going to find ourselves in two years and in four years in exactly the same situation.

Now, I actually happen to be optimistic. I think that Harris is going to win. I do think that there’s going to be a violent response, I don’t know on what scale. But, I think she’s going to win. And I think that there’s many forces that have learned from the last number of years, but there’s going to be this incredible undertow that’s there to try to pull us away from the beach, and to pull us back into deep water.

It’s going to basically be saying that we need to give the administration more time. We need to not put a lot of pressure on. That we need to be more understanding. This is the first woman president. This is an Afro Asian president. Why are you all beating her up? She’s got to have space, and we need to say, no. We’re going to give her plenty of support. We’re going to be one nose length away from her so that she can never turn around.

Marc Steiner:  I think that’s a very powerful way to end this conversation. To close this conversation, I think that it would be really important, in the coming weeks, is for us and others to come together about where we go and how we pull people together to build a different world. We’re still going to be confronting…

As you said, the right’s going to be there, and who knows what they’re going to do in response if Harris should win. And there’s a huge tendency for those Democrats that go, okay, we won. We’ll just sit here for a while and do nothing. So I think that we need a chapter two, and we’ll take a chapter two after we see what happens on this Election Day coming up.

I want to thank both of you, Bill Fletcher, Rick Perlstein, for the work you do, willing to come on here, the show on The Real News and Marc Steiner Show. It’s always great to talk to you both, and we’ll continue this conversation.

Bill Fletcher Jr.:  Same here. Thanks very much for inviting us.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank Bill Fletcher Jr. and Rick Perlstein for joining us today. We will link to their work so you can hear and see more of what they’ve been working on.

Thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, and audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her audio magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, keeping me on task, and the tireless Kayla Rivera for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thank you to Bill Fletcher Jr. and Rick Perlstein for joining us today. We’ll look at what happened on Election Day with them and others in the coming weeks. We’ll see what happens. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

The movement in solidarity with Palestine has a sizable presence of progressive Jewish Americans. As an anti-Zionist rabbi, Brant Rosen has made it his life’s work to build religious and cultural community for other likeminded Jews whose solidarity with Palestine runs deep. The Marc Steiner Show returns with another edition of ‘Not in Our Name.’

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with us as always. And this is another part of our episode of our series, Not in Our Name. We’re talking to the rabbi, Brant Rosen. He’s a rabbi at Tzedek Chicago, a consciously anti-Zionist congregation, founded in 2015. He’s a former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, co-founder and co-chair of Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council. He’s written in many journals. His newest book is Wrestling in the Daylight, a Rabbi’s Path to Palestinian Solidarity, and we’ll be linking some of his articles in Tikkun and Truthout and the Jewish Forward that you’ll see on this site and can read for yourself. Brant, welcome. Good to have you with us.

Brant Rosen:

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Marc Steiner:

When I read the pieces you’ve written, one of the things that really came out to me is the pain of what you write about. It’s not like, oh me, oh woe is me. The kind of pain I’m talking about is the pain of watching Israel do what it’s doing at this moment in terms of the occupation of the war and the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I think that that’s something that many people don’t really get when it comes to especially Jews who say, no, not in our name.

Brant Rosen:

Yeah, I would say that the pain, there’s primary pain and secondary pain I suppose. I think the primary pain is the pain that I feel for the Palestinian people and what they’re going through and what is being inflicted on them with and has been for decades, but I think in the past year plus now, just to unbearable, genocidal levels. I follow the news very, very carefully and I read every day about mass murder that’s going on in Gaza, in the West Bank, now in Lebanon, and that is a deep source of pain just as a human being, as a human being of conscience. I’m sure there are many who feel the same way, probably not enough, but there is a growth of solidarity of Palestinians around the world.

I think secondarily as a Jew, not just as a human being, but as a Jew, I feel pain because a spiritual tradition that I cherish very deeply is being used as the pretense for this genocide and for this oppression and has been for many, many decades. And I mourn what is being done in my name as you put it, and also what is being done to a centuries-old, very venerable spiritual tradition that stands for ethical behavior and for promoting justice.

Marc Steiner:

I was going to wait until later to ask this, but since you said what you said, I’m going to talk about this now. A long time ago, in 1971, I wrote a poem called Growing Up Jewish. And in that poem there was a line that I wrote that said, how does the oppressed become the oppressor? And it’s something I’ve been wrestling with a long time, given kind of the very nationalistic and racist attitudes within my own family, other people I know, Israelis, other people in the Holy Land itself. And I’m just curious reflecting on that because it goes beyond just being Jews. It can be for any culture and how the oppressed end up being an oppressor as we have become in the Holy Land.

Brant Rosen:

Yeah, I mean, I think there are many ways to understand this. I think we know that on an individual level, people who suffer abuse will often become abusers themselves. That’s certainly true on the interpersonal level. And I think on some level, I think it works in the collective as well, a community that has gone through the trauma of oppression, especially the Jewish community that has lived through centuries of anti-Semitic oppression and violence, primarily in Europe at the hands of Christendom, and then later culminating in the Nazi’s genocide against them during World War II. I think you can understand that one mindset that can emerge from this experience is a never again to us, that we must do whatever we can to survive because we were almost wiped out, and that is a recipe for oppression.

This attitude I think stems from trauma and is handed down generationally, generational trauma is something that’s very real, can turn people who have a legacy, a historical experience of oppression into oppressors themselves, especially when state violence becomes part of the mix. Right? Jews were a stateless people for most of our history, and once we had a nation and an army and the support of the international community behind us, much of that trauma, unfortunately tragically can be kind of metabolized into the kinds of things that were done to us we now do to others, namely the Palestinian people.

Marc Steiner:

I didn’t ask that question obviously, and you didn’t respond to the question that way either as an excuse or as a justification.

Brant Rosen:

No, it’s an explanation.

Marc Steiner:

Yes, an explanation of what we’re facing and why. And so I wonder, as a leader of part of the Jewish community, what you think we can do? How do you change hearts and minds, not just in Israel, but in the Jewish community about this war? I mean, on Yom Kippur, I spoke at a synagogue about what we’re talking about now. Response was mixed to say the least. But when you see the masses of younger Jews saying, no, this is not right. This is not who we are, not in our name. We can’t tolerate this. How does that organize and take place inside the Jewish community, and how is it approached to begin to change hearts and minds and the understanding in our own country?

Brant Rosen:

I’m not in the changing hearts and minds business. I’m not interested, I mean, I know that sounds harsh, I’m not interested in changing hearts and minds. I think it’s fruitless in my experience, and I’ve been doing this a long time on this particular issue, especially in the Jewish community. If we’re talking about changing individual hearts and minds, people are not ready to change until they’re ready to change, and nothing, I can continue to do what I do and others like the young people who you were referring to who are mobilizing in increasing numbers and massive numbers as part of the Palestine Solidarity movement. I think all of us are exemplars. We’re not doing this to change hearts and minds in the Jewish community, but we’re well aware that the Jewish community is watching us, and often they’re watching us in fury. They’re sickened by us. But I think in other cases it’s planting a little bit of a seed.

They know we exist. They know what our message is. Maybe they might pay attention to parts of that message and park it away for the time being. But actively trying to change people’s minds who aren’t prepared to be changed I think is fruitless and a waste of energy and a waste of time and a waste of resources. I think we need to build a movement. We need to participate in the up building of the Palestine Solidarity movement and be a real Jewish presence in that movement, which we are doing. And that’s really the first order of business. If and when others in the Jewish community are ready to join us, hem muzmanim le’ashot et ze, as my grandfather used to say, they’re welcome to do it. But in the meantime, I’m not going to spend my time trying to convince parts and minds to think a way that they’re not prepared to think. They have to do it in their own time if they’re going to do it at all. But in the meantime, we can provide role models for them for a different Jewish way.

Marc Steiner:

So one more question in that realm. As somebody who’s spent a lot of time in his life as an organizer, community, union organizing, issue organizing over the years, does that have a role in organizing something within to say no about what’s going on in Palestine Israel?

Brant Rosen:

I think it’s a little different than union organizing. I think when we talk about building movements for, mass movements for communal justice, I mean I would compare it more to the Civil Rights movement perhaps, or the anti-Apartheid movement. In those cases, they weren’t going individual by individual as you would if you’re doing union organizing where you’re really building individual relationships through one-on-one. Let’s look at Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. If you read Letter From a Birmingham Jail, he was responding to liberal clergy in the South who were doing that kind of engagement. Those liberal clergy were trying to change hearts and minds in the South. These were white liberal clergy, and they had written a public letter and said, we are trying to address this through relationship building and engagement with these white supremacists, and please don’t come to Birmingham. We don’t need any outside agitators. We’ve got this. That’s who he was addressing in his letter.

King had a different approach to organizing, and I think rightly so. He was saying that when it comes to transformative change, societal change, it’s not about trying to change individual hearts and minds. It’s about creating tension. It’s about going in the streets and saying, no, this is wrong. And that power, as Douglas said, power concedes nothing without a demand, and King said something similar in the letter. I think the kind of organizing we’re talking about, about building mass movement for transformative change in a real way is just a different model of organizing. I just don’t think it’s going to happen if we try to convince one person at a time.

Marc Steiner:

As somebody who is in the middle of all that, and demonstrations are taking place by Jews and others in this country against what’s happening at this moment to stop the slaughter, in terms of the work you’re doing in similar work, how do you see it taking effect in whole? How do you see it grabbing not just hearts and minds, but also for serious political change that turns this around, that stops the ability of the United States from continuing to arm Israel and allow them to destroy the Palestinian people? How do you think that happens?

Brant Rosen:

Well, historically it’s happened. It’s not happening the way we would hope it would happen right now after over a year of protest. But historically, I’m going to use another example, use the anti-Apartheid movement against the South African apartheid. That was a similar kind of popular grassroots movement that was very much a coalition of forces, and there was a palpable Jewish presence in that coalition. It was just the constant application of pressure and to build popular support until politically, the political elites could not ignore it, and it became a liability to continue that political support until that tipping point is reached, and that tipping point was reached. I remember it well, I’m sure you do too, that the United States was a strong ally of apartheid South Africa, and then the Black Congressional Caucus under the Reagan Administration introduced an anti-apartheid bill and Reagan vetoed it, and they overrode the veto, and then dominoes began to fall.

It wasn’t only United States. United States was a prominent ally, but political support began to fall all around the world as a result of the boycotts, the protests, the economic pressure, the popular pressure. And that is, I think, the same playbook that we are hoping for this time around. I think it’s just a much, it’s been a much harder prospect. We have the popular support. I mean, if you look around the world, popular support for the Palestinian people is rising rapidly, and it’s happening in the international community too. Countries like Ireland and other European countries, certainly countries that you expect to support Israel, but now some of the Western countries as well. But the popular support is not really translating into that political tipping point. The United States support for Israel is still rock solid. Republican, Democrat, it doesn’t seem to matter. I think a lot of this has to do with commercial interests. I think the weapons industries are supporting the Democratic Party as much as the Republican Party.

Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, they’re basically funding this genocide, but profiting from it, I should say rather. United States is funding it. So it’s a daunting, daunting foe to be going up against and after over a year of doing this, we’re no closer to a ceasefire. In fact, we seem to be more closer to a larger regional war. So it’s been, I think it’s, within the movement, it’s raised lots of questions about tactics and about strategy and about why isn’t what we’ve been doing working and how do we need to shift. But in terms of raising awareness and popular support, I think Israel is about as isolated in the world as it’s ever been.

Marc Steiner:

You spent time going back and forth to Israel, and there’s always been, and it was different 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but there’s always been a movement within Israel against the occupation and the persecution and oppression of Palestinians. It’s always been there. Where do you see the state of that now? When you look at, I remember in some of the articles I’ve been reading that you wrote and also articles you refer to that I read, Israel has gone so far right. The kind of neo-fascist parties in Israel have gained so much strength, and what is it, almost 2 million Israelis, many of whom were on the left, have left Israel. They’re gone. So you’re left with this vacuum and this power of the right. So I’m curious, from your journeys inside, how do you think a movement develops that changes that from the inside?

Brant Rosen:

I don’t think the movement can change itself from the inside. I think it can only change because of external pressure applied from the outside. Israel is not going to save itself. I think right now, the left in Israel is a shambles.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah.

Brant Rosen:

What left there is is basically protesting for the return of the hostages, but not really actively protesting the genocide that Israel is committing. I think these are still Zionists. In other words, they consider themselves left liberal, but they’re still promoting a Jewish apartheid regime, a democracy for Jews, but not for non-Jews. The number of Israelis who are genuinely standing in solidarity with Palestinians is very, very minuscule. I know many of them well, in fact, and they are, what they’re up against is just hard to even fathom. Many of them are just indefatigable. They’re constantly going out to the West Bank to do productive presence in villages when settlers are attacking. They’re forming deep important relationships with Palestinians and Palestinian movements. But their numbers are just so minuscule and they’re up against it in a major way.

As you say, many of them are leaving the country, and that’s increasing the rightward, the far rightward trend. But there are others who aren’t. I have a good friend, a very dear friend who is an Israeli member of the Palestine Solidarity movement, and she says, I don’t have a second passport. I can’t go anywhere. This is my home. And what they’re stuck with is really, is very, very hard. It doesn’t look good. Their crackdown on them is fierce.

Marc Steiner:

What do you mean? Talk a bit about that crackdown when you say it’s fierce.

Brant Rosen:

Well when they protest, the police come down hard on them violently. Many of them are jailed. I mean, look, I need to put it in perspective. It’s nothing compared to what Israel is doing to Palestinians, and it’s also nothing compared to what Israel is doing to Palestinian citizens of Israel either. There are examples that have been documented of Palestinian citizens of Israel just being jailed indefinitely for posting a Facebook post. So I want to keep perspective here that Israelis, while they are being violently treated by the authorities, whether it’s by the police or the border police or the Secret Service of Israel, it’s nothing like what they’re doing to Palestinians. But it means taking their physical safety in their own hands whenever they go out to protest or when they go out to work in protected presence in the West Bank. I know many of them who have broken bones and they’ve been knocked out and shot at. It’s not easy to be a Palestine Solidarity activist within Israel these days if it ever was.

Marc Steiner:

As the leader of an anti-Zionist synagogue, as someone who’s deeply involved in the movement, a huge part of your existence is inside that movement. So I’m curious where you think this movement goes in this country? Where does it go and what strategically can be done and are people doing to end the support of this kind of apartheid regime in Israel and its oppression of Palestinians, and where do you see it going?

Brant Rosen:

So are you referring to the Jewish movement specifically or the movement writ large?

Marc Steiner:

Well, the entire movement, yeah. Yeah.

Brant Rosen:

I hesitate to speak too much for the movement itself because I think Palestinians really need to speak for themselves, the ones who are leading the movement. I think there’s a sizable Jewish part of this coalition, Jewish Voice for Peace, of which I’m a member and very active as a part of that, but it’s ultimately not up to me to dictate or to prognosticate what the tactics and the strategies should be for the movement going forward. That’s really for the Palestinian leaders themselves. As I said before, I think there is probably some reassessment going on given that so much effort has been put into protests, both the outside game and the inside game, I should say. I think what happened to the DNC and the inside game and the undecided movement being shut out of the DNC, I think was a huge wake-up call that many people who were working the inside game just had doors slammed in their face in a way that was something of a rude awakening.

I don’t think we should stop trying to change things politically within the Democratic Party, but I think there may be some strategizing about how to work politically to recruit new candidates in different kinds of ways. I am not the best person to ask. There are other people like Beth Miller, who’s the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace, who might have more to say on that particular subject. But something needs to shift and something needs to change, and I think much of it will be continuing to hammer our message home that we can’t stop and we can’t let up if for any other reason, but for the moral importance of it, that we’re living in a time of genocide. In a time of genocide you don’t stay silent. If there’s anything that we know as Jews and as people of conscience is that you don’t stay silent. When history judges us, we don’t want to be judged as ones who didn’t speak out when this happened.

Marc Steiner:

I agree completely. I mean, that is an important statement to make towards the end of the conversation together, at least this one today, because we do have to stand up. I’ve been inside the anti-occupation movement since 1968 and after trying to enlist in the Israeli army, and I didn’t get in there, thank God. Then you meet Palestinians and left-wing Israelis and the world shifted. But it seems in many ways that we are at a critical juncture more than I’ve ever seen before, just in terms of this war. The outright oppression of Palestinians on the West Bank being shot and put in prison. The 50,000 plus people who have been killed, maybe more, because of the ones who are stuck under the rubble, who aren’t being counted, and this very right-wing, Israeli government that’s also deeply imbued with the fundamentalist leadership, religiously fundamentalist leadership.

It’s as if Jerry Falwell took over the United States of America. We are at a very critical place, and as someone who is really helping lead some of this, running a congregation in the middle of this movement, it seems to me, when I said organizing earlier, I was talking about how you take it beyond Palestinian Americans or Jewish Americans and get a larger population to understand what is being faced, what it’s doing to the Holy Land, what it’s doing to us. This has to be a much kind of larger movement to say, no, this has to stop.

Brant Rosen:

Yeah, I think that’s another piece of it too, I agree with this, what you’re saying, and I think another piece of it too is that the way people get their news, and thus the way they construct their narratives is very limited, especially around Israel. If you look at the mainstream media narrative on Israel, it’s just unbelievable to me that when I read the New York Times and the Washington Post and Watch, which I try not to do that often, but enough just to know what’s being said and the major networks, it’s the Israeli narrative right down the line. Just every single day there has been an article on the front page of the New York Times about the assassination of Sinwar from Hamas, but nothing about the fact that Israel has been massacring Palestinians in North Gaza and literally starving them to death according to a plan that was made public by the Israeli press.

The killing of this one Palestinian person, but nothing about the mass murder that Israel is carrying out every single day. We need to lift that narrative up. We need to do a better job of letting people know what is going on because that media does exist. It exists on social media. All you have to do is listen to Democracy Now every morning. It will ruin your day. But I think we need to help people shift the narrative, or at least round out the very, very tiny, narrow narrative, corporate narrative that they’re being given through the mainstream media and that’s up to us.

Marc Steiner:

That is up to us. And I think in many ways, it’s up to people in the Jewish community like you, like me, like others, to lead that, to be at the forefront saying no, and putting it out there in the media, putting it out there in massive forums so people, because it could also be very easy for this movement to fall into anti-Semitism, which is always lurking below the surface of humanity. It doesn’t take much for it to bubble up. And that’s why even though we could be attacked as Judean Rats or whatever other people want to call us, that it’s time for us to be able to build something that really stands in the way.

Brant Rosen:

Yeah, and I think anti-Semitism is already starting to bubble up, but it’s not the anti-Semitism that Israel advocates and the state of Israel would have us believe. It’s not people standing in solidarity with the Palestinians. It’s MAGA anti-Semitism, it’s fascist anti-Semitism, it’s white supremacist anti-Semitism, and we’re seeing evidence of it all over the place. I mean, it’s coming right out of Trump’s mouth directly. That should also be a impetus for us to start to create real coalitions because there are lots of people who are being targeted by fascism in this MAGA moment, and we need to stand with one another. We need one another more than ever, and by being able to identify who is the common enemy and who is not is going to be really, really critical.

Marc Steiner:

No, we have to wind down. But that’s the point where I think that when we spoke earlier about organizing, that kind of organizing has to take place internally in the United States to pull that together, to pull people at that together, to show that there’s this movement that says, we’re not naive. We know what’s happening, and it has to stop.

Brant Rosen:

Yeah, absolutely.

Marc Steiner:

Well, I tell you, I do really look forward to staying in touch and putting together many more programs with you and really getting this to the fore because it has to come out there. We have to really, this is, as I said, after all these 50 plus years of fighting against the occupation, this is the direst moment I’ve ever seen.

Brant Rosen:

Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. What we’re reading about is just utterly horrific. I will tell you, it’s resembling the Holocaust more and more, and I don’t say that lightly, but what’s going on in North Gaza right now is we need to shine the brightest light possible on what Israel is doing.

Marc Steiner:

It does. I’ll just say that when we say, when we make the Holocaust comparison, I always add, I’m not talking about the camps. I’m talking about 1933, 1935, this is how it begins.

Brant Rosen:

Right, and also to remind people that when we talk about genocide, the Holocaust is not the only model for genocide. There are many different forms of genocide. If you look at international law, it happens in many different ways through many different categories. And so just because something does not identically resemble the Holocaust does not mean it’s not a genocide, and it doesn’t mean it doesn’t share certain aspects with the Holocaust, mainly the dehumanization of another people and the attempt to rid one society of them because they’re seen as less than human.

Marc Steiner:

Well, let me say, I really appreciate you taking the time, and I do look forward to staying in touch. Thank you for taking the time with us today, Rabbi Brant Rosen. This has really been important, and I look forward to other conversations and building this conversation out and bringing more people in to see where we can take it across the country and across the globe. So thank you so much for the work you do. I appreciate it.

Brant Rosen:

Thank you, Marc. No, it’s my pleasure and my honor.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, thank you to Rabbi Brant Rosen for joining us today. Thanks to Cameron Grandino for running the program and our audio editor, Alina Nelich and producer Rosette Suwali for making it all work behind the scenes and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Ideas, we’d love to hear them. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Rabbi Brant Rosen for joining us today and for the work that he does. And we’ll be bringing you more people like Brant Rosen and others together on this program to talk about what we can do collectively to stop the slaughter in Gaza. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Young Jewish Americans are playing an outsized role in the movement for Palestine—but not without facing consequences. In a recent article for In These Times, Shane Burley investigates the ways anti-Zionist Jews are facing persecution from community institutions they once called home. Burley joins The Marc Steiner Show for a discussion on the growing divide over Zionism in Jewish communities, and the role of youth in this process.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you with us. And this is another show in our series Not in Our Name.

Once again, we’re going to talk to Shane Burley, who’s joined us before. He’s an activist and is co-author of numerous books: Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism; Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse; and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It. His work has appeared in NBC, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, Daily Beast, In These Times, Jacobin, Jewish Currents, MSNBC, YES!, and many more places. And his recent article in In These Times, “US Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists”, was an amazing article, really powerful. And he joins us now.

Shane, good to see you again.

Shane Burley:  Hey, thanks for having me back, Marc.

Marc Steiner:  Always. It’s always good to talk to you. We find ourselves in a really strange time, especially in the Jewish world, it seems to me. There’s this gigantic split, which you really focused on in your piece here, that’s taking place. It’s generational, but it’s also political. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the divide inside the Jewish world to be so deep and so profound as it is at this moment.

Shane Burley:  Yeah, I mean, this is about as difficult… It’s certainly as difficult as it’s been in my lifetime. I can’t think of a moment of Israeli aggression that really split people this profoundly. [Inaudible] led in 2009, there’s really no other moment.

And frankly, it’s because it’s so severe, as we have a sort of consensus that what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide and the unwillingness of a lot of mainstream Jewish institutions to even say that word or acknowledge the reality.

This is something that’s going to break apart communities. And as I talked about in the article, oftentimes it’s breaking apart progressive Jewish communities where young people and folks who are involved in Israel-Palestine solidarity organizing simply can’t sit by while their leadership either ignores or actively aids Israel’s project.

Marc Steiner:  So what you covered in this piece literally was major Jewish institutions and the number of people being pushed out of those institutions because of their activities against the war in Gaza, because of their activities around Zionism or not being Zionists.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before where people… I mean, I go back a long way, so I remember in the ’60s the Jewish institutions were at the forefront of civil rights. The majority of white civil rights workers in the South were Jews. And there’s a contradiction that has erupted that this article really touches on deeply, about the divide inside the Jewish world. Talk a bit about what you discovered in that realm in terms of what you wrote here.

Shane Burley:  Yeah, so I think these lines existed around Zionism for a while, and I talk about that a bit in the book. For example, the Hillel standards of partnership created during the Second Intifada became the standard for most Jewish organizations. And those standards of partnership included you cannot partner with an anti-Zionist organization. And they define it in a little bit more verbose language, but that’s essentially what it’s saying, and that’s become more ubiquitous.

The difference, I think, now is how serious they are about this, how uncompromising they’ll end up being and how deep they go into people’s personal lives. It’s not just like, for example, if you work at Hillel you can’t just partner with Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist Jewish organization, in your job, you may not be able to do it in your personal life either.

And so it’s essentially drawing these hard lines. And it’s also part of, I think, how a lot of Jewish organizations are reunderstanding anti-Zionism as beyond the pale, basically that an anti-Zionist or a non-Zionist position is actively hostile to Jewish lives, which I don’t think is always how it has been framed. It is in certain parts of the Jewish right, but now that seems to be where a lot of these mainstream institutions are going to draw their lines and they’re going to cut out large portions of the Jewish left.

Because we’re not just talking about people who are engaging in BDS organizing and stuff, we’re talking about really, in a critical voice, it feels like their position in these communities or in these jobs is now becoming vulnerable.

Marc Steiner:  There’s an interesting line here I want to explore with you. You wrote that the interviews you collected with Jewish professionals and other reporting information collected by In These Times illustrates what appears to be a radical rightward turn in mainstream Jewish organizational life over the past year. Talk a bit about that. You literally put it down to this past year. Talk about that right wing turn, why you see it developing, and what it has meant.

Shane Burley:  I mean, there’s a number of reasons for this. There is the conservatization of these large Jewish organizations which has happened over decades, Israel playing a main role in it, but also just their entrenchment in US politics and how they build their economic base from wealthy donors, things like that.

Kind of like what we’ve seen in a lot of nonprofit spaces that become more conservative over time. But also the Jewish electorate, still leaning way to the left, also has gotten more conservative over that time. It’s where we get the phrase, “Progressive except for Palestine,” Where there might be progressive positions across the Jewish world except when it comes to Palestine, which, oftentimes, you take a much, much more right-wing turn.

But what’s happening here, I think, is that the left is now seen as actively hostile in a lot of these mainstream Jewish organizations because they didn’t just line up in support of Israel after Oct. 7. So a lot of organizations that straddle the line, maybe they were leftist Jewish organizations but they still had a good relationship with the larger federations or Jewish organization network, now they are starting to be treated the way Jewish Voice for Peace was or other openly anti-Zionist organizations were in the past.

So we’re seeing that in basically every one of these relationships. We’re seeing people get kicked out of their local Jewish council. Some congregants and donors are leaving or being kicked out of other places. It’s basically a shift that’s happening. And it’s not just in civic organizations, it’s not just in synagogues, it’s not just in day schools. It’s happening across all of them, as the politics of Israel-Palestine become more entrenched, and more defining, and also slowly shift to the right.

So much so that all of what Israel’s done in the last year has been reduced simply to whether or not you support Israel’s right to exist in the shadow of Oct. 7. So I think that is now becoming the defining point.

And so in that way, dissent is not just seen as part of the various constellations of Jewish thought, it’s seen as undermining the very basis of Jewish identity and safety. And so I don’t know that that is going to shift back. This is a really profound change, and it’s defining out huge portions of the young Jewish community.

Marc Steiner:  So I’m going to read this one other piece from your article here and just explore it a bit more. This is Lizzie Burdock, which is a pseudonym, correct?

Shane Burley:  It’s a pseudonym, yeah.

Marc Steiner:  Which I want to talk about that too, the fear that this person had to have not to use their own name. And what this person said to you was, “We are all working in the Jewish community because of how much we care about the Jewish people,” Lizzie Burdock, a former school director at a synagogue in New England who asked to use a pseudonym. Then says, “This is one of the key issues that our generation is navigating, and one that keeps so many Jews away from Judaism and out of the shul.”

So I mean, the fact that this woman had to use a pseudonym, was frightened to use our own name, says a great deal. And this shift is profound. If you look at the polling even, the growing numbers of younger Jews in this country who just, whether they call themselves non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, but oppose what Israel is doing with the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Let me ask you this, as you’re an observer of all this: how profound is the shift? How deep does it go? What does it portend for the future?

Shane Burley:  This is a situation when the rank and file and the leadership of organizations are going in exact opposite directions. So when you talk about someone like the person you mentioned, this is a working Jewish professional who got into participating in Jewish professional life, they became a Jewish professional directly because they care so profoundly about this. They want to be a part of the next generation of Jewish life.

And that commitment also comes from their politics too, like the reclamation of ancestral traditions, fighting against assimilation, really creating a multicultural society by maintaining Jewish traditions and customs. So in doing so, they’ve really invested their whole life in this and now find themselves basically at odds with the political ideas that are happening at the top or from certain congregants, things like that.

And so now the question is, is this committed person, well-educated, really invested in the community, are they now not allowed to be here because they were litmus tested about this one political issue that frankly, doesn’t actually play out in their position all that often?

And this is happening across the Jewish world at the same time that there’s a leadership vacuum, or people are retiring from these jobs and they can’t get them refilled. It’s harder to hire rabbis, less people are becoming rabbis. It’s harder to hire Jewish educators. It’s harder to hire these people. And so at the same time as they’re having trouble reproducing these organizations, they’re kicking out the people that are often the most tied in, the people that are most involved in it.

And when you look at the polling, like you mentioned, where an increasing number of young Jews are either non-Zionist or anti-Zionist or just very critical of the status quo in Israel, those are exactly the people that they need to take over these organizations. So kicking out this educated and committed class of folks is one that creates this really dialectical problem in the organizations. And I don’t know how they’re going to start filling those roles if they make this the new standard.

Marc Steiner:  One of the things I was thinking about as I was reading your piece for In These Times was, historically, how these contradictions have been created and what they mean for the future of the Jewish people, but for the future beyond that.

Because what’s happening in Israel-Palestine at the moment affects the entire globe. It’s very explosive, obviously. We’ve seen now well over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed. The attack on those two kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip were actually, as a point of digression, was where my family lives. Part of my family lives on those kibbutzim. And they were left-wing kibbutzim. That’s part of the contradiction. Some of these people who were attacked in those kibbutzim were people who were working for Israeli-Palestinian peace, and those are the places that were attacked as well. This is loaded with contradictions from the very beginning.

And you’re seeing, I think, a paranoia inside the Jewish world of people hating Jews, that plays a role in this. But also the oppression that’s been created by the right wing in Israel has heightened those contradictions. I think we’re in a very dangerous and complex moment.

Shane Burley:  The image of Israel as a national home that everyone can take pride in, that has not just eroded, but it’s completely unfamiliar, I think, to young generations of folks. We’ve had right-wing entrenchment in Israel that’s only gotten more severe in the last 40 years.

Marc Steiner:  Yeah, yes.

Shane Burley:  We’re talking about a state that is so overwhelmingly to the right. When you compare, for example, the number of far-right parties in Israel to Europe, Israel is much larger, but also that doesn’t even factor in Likud, which has become this sort of radical far-right ethno-nationalist party itself. And so you’re looking at, basically, this large right-wing base there that’s so much further to the right than you’re actually going to encounter in most countries.

So what connection do people have to that? Can they actually see themselves in that? Is this a force for Jewish protection and safety? And I don’t think that intuitively makes sense to young folks. Sometimes with older folks that maybe had a different image of growing up, maybe it’s harder to lose that image. But young folks never really started with that perception.

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Shane Burley:  Particularly if they come from the left. So we end up with a situation where the protection of Israel feels so far from their normal sense of how you would create safety or how you create political progress, things like that.

But one thing I think that’s also important is that a lot of these people also talked about their politics in Israel-Palestine, where it’s also about caring about Jewish safety and Israeli Jewish safety. The situation is untenable for Israeli Jews, like you’re talking about. You have the kibbutzim with left-wing Israelis, they get attacked by Hamas Oct. 7. This is coming from a long, long history of the dispossession of Palestinians, it’s creating a volatile, violent situation.

I don’t look at Israel and think to myself, oh, what a tremendously safe place for Jews. And so if that was the part of your concern, this is obviously not working out the way that you thought it would.

So all these people are coming in with these complex ideas because of their feelings about Jewish safety, because of their commitment to the continuation of the Jewish people. Those are the motivating issues. And so they’re getting litmus tested on these politics, but not really understanding that their values actually are there. They’re coming in because they care about those things that these organizations claim to care about as well.

Marc Steiner:  So what did you learn from all these younger Jews who have been kicked out of organizations for merely saying something that’s anti-Zionist, for merely standing up for Palestinian people? Literally being thrown out of these organizations in huge confrontations. What happens to them, and what do you think that portends for the future?

Shane Burley:  Well, one of the things, I think, that was really important is that, particularly if people went to school specifically to do this kind of work, say they became a rabbi or something, this is really frightening. Because if you have, let’s say, hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans, which sometimes people will to become a rabbi, a five, six year graduate program, and then all of a sudden you’re fired because of these commitments you’ve had and maybe public statements you’ve made, or maybe even the organizations are public about it, that could mean that that degree or that history is now null and void and your employment. And that’s really frightening to people.

People invested lots of their lives, sometimes their whole career in this. And if all of a sudden 95% of the places you’re going to work won’t have you, that puts you into a really crisis situation.

I think also for folks who have what are, frankly, really common left-wing politics on Israel-Palestine, you often have to build your own organizations, and that is not financially stable enough to actually pay a career salary. You can’t really pay the bills creating a small synagogue where you’re the anti-Zionist rabbi, it’s really tough.

So all of the economic factors are against you speaking out on Israel-Palestine. It’s really, really a high cost here. That’s part of what I learned about it.

Another thing too is that a lot of people felt like they had good relationships with the people at work, and that sometimes those people knew about their politics, and it was fine until Oct. 7. Sometimes they did the didn’t ask, didn’t tell. But it was really frightening to people how quickly that relationship dissolved when their opinions about what Israel’s doing in Gaza became public. And that was something I think some people would’ve guessed, but other people were really surprised that that’s what ended up happening.

I think also the low level of offense that a lot of these situations happen. So for example, one person fired from a Hillel chapter for, ultimately, liking Instagram posts from Jewish Voice for Peace. They weren’t accused of being a member, they weren’t really accused of even public activism. Liking the posts. And those posts were then printed out and handed to them when they’re being terminated.

So we’re not talking about people being disciplined for going above and beyond, doing something really profound or loud. It’s often very quiet things.

I think another thing is that a number of these people aren’t going to go back. They don’t want to work in Jewish life anymore. And that’s really sad. And it’s sad for them because this was such an important part of their lives and it provides a lot of meaning.

And I think also a lot of these people liked the organizations they worked with. A number of people talked about, hey, I really liked this place. There’s things about it that were really fantastic, congregants are great, students are great, whatever it is. And so that’s being taken away from them too, even though it was so symbiotic, they worked so well with those people.

Marc Steiner:  Maybe the example you just brought up was Atlas Kluse? Klus, Kluse?

Shane Burley:  Yeah, Atlas Klus.

Marc Steiner:  Who’s a social justice fellow at Chicago Hillel. And then in the article about him, it said that Klus shared with you that he received a document that he must agree to not to be any of these three things: a Nazi, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and part of an anti-Zionist group or effort. When I read that, it was like, what? What? How do you put those things together? How do you say, if you’re supporting Palestinian life, you’re somehow allied or like a Ku Klux Klanner. What? That blew me away.

Shane Burley:  Yes. Yes. So this is part of their hiring process, and something they were reminded of several times is that they couldn’t be a member of these various organizations understood to be threats to Jews. So a Nazi, a Klansman, and then anything that supports this organized anti-Zionist movement, or even a movement that’s critical of Israel, say BDS, something like that. Those are sort of assumed to be, by this phrasing, it’s assumed to have some relationship to one another.

And this gets back to how a lot of large organizations like the Anti-Defamation League define things like antisemitism and threats to Jews. They assume that there’s a shared understanding of Jewish flourishing we all have; of course, it’s Israel. Whether or not Jews are safe and successful depends on how successful and safe Israel is. And so anything that’s a threat to that is a threat to Jews and therefore de facto antisemitism.

So they’re operating on this framework that when you see this language in support of Palestinian liberation, it must be understood as a continuity of threat to Jewish safety. It can only be understood in that framework. And so that ends up being this line that, in this era of such Jewish unsafety, anything that comes even close to that now becomes verboten. It’s too much.

And so when they look at this connection, they see something where it was specifically about a ceasefire resolution in Chicago from the mayor’s office, it was like Jewish Voice for Peace celebrating that and Atlas Klus liking that, that was seen then thrown into this larger continuity of the increase of antisemitism, the threatening fear of Jewish students, all these things that feel to us so bizarrely different, but they’re always relegated down to this: anything that’s a threat to Israel is a de facto threat to Jews.

Marc Steiner:  When you raised Chicago in the article, if I remember correctly from the article, the vote to call for a ceasefire in Chicago was a 24-24 split down the middle, and then the mayor was the deciding vote?

Shane Burley:  Yeah, something like that, yeah. And this is something that the local federation and JUF and large organizations played a big role in pushing back on that. They understood a lot of these statements as antisemitic if they were too supportive of Palestine in it, and they played a political role in trying to push on these ceasefire resolutions.

That’s part of what ends up happening here, is that a lot of these organizations are political organizations, they have a political agenda. So speaking out in favor of a ceasefire resolution may be speaking out against the political orientation of the people employing you.

Marc Steiner:  This whole situation that we’re facing right now with the slaughtering of Palestinians in Gaza, the utter destruction of everything in Gaza, leveling it, people being killed in the West Bank as well, the deepening divide inside the Jewish community as well as America.

I think I said this earlier, but it makes me think of the biblical story of Masada, where we as Jews committed suicide because we were under attack and we destroyed ourselves. And we seem to be doing it again in this divide around Israel-Palestine. And plus, I do think it allows antisemitism to erupt, at the same time the struggle is correct to fight for the rights of Palestinians. There’s so many contradictions in this.

Shane Burley:  I think history is very clear that Jewish life flourishes when Jewish diversity and Jewish freedom of conscience flourishes as well. And also in a cosmopolitan, multicultural society where difference is respected and all communities are protected. Historically, Jewish communities are often safest when partnering with other communities who have been threatened by the far right or by the state or things like that.

So we’re undermining exactly that history with this very isolationist, nationalist narrative. And we’re cutting out the very forces, activists, community organizers, anti-fascists, that have protected us in the past. So we’re breaking that continuity really distinctly.

And then shifting us into this basically understanding our protection only in this ethnocratic model, and one that sees itself very far away from other communities, that has a political agenda alone that focuses on insularity.

All of those elements do not have a history of keeping Jews safe, and instead far-right movements, wherever they happen, tend to have antisemitic areas, which is, for example, all across Europe the same parties that Likud are partnering with in a lot of cases often holds huge numbers of antisemitic activists. So this is not exactly a very safe way of dealing with the problem of antisemitism.

Marc Steiner:  Yes.

Shane Burley:  And like you said, antisemitism has increased really dramatically in the last year. There’s no other way to understand that. It’s just not happening on college campuses, really. It’s happening across the returning growth of the neo-Nazi movement. It’s happening in the GOP, where antisemitic conspiracy theories have become so endemic that it’s part of how they actually speak to the working class now. It’s like part of how they take their working-class anxieties and give it a narrative that’s friendly to them.

All of these things are true. And then we have this crisis in Israel-Palestine, the genocide in Gaza, that increases tensions even more and gives people a lot of ammo when you have these antisemitic actors trying to pull people or recruits over. None of this is helpful. None of this is actually a helpful situation for Jewish safety. And entrenching these ideas further, kicking people out, creating more division only weakens our hand on this.

Marc Steiner:  I think we’re at a very critical juncture on a number of levels here, whether it’s how this affects this election in the United States where the neofascist right could seize power in America completely.

And you mentioned earlier, just for our people listening, Likud, which is the right-wing political party in Israel that has now taken over with all its allies in that country and in Israel.

So I mean, when you see the masses of young Jews who are in the streets saying, no, not in our name, when you see this huge split, I think, both in terms of domestic politics and what’s happening in Israel-Palestine at the moment, I think we’re at a fundamentally deep contradiction, a fundamental deep contradiction that could really explode, and it could hurt Jews, it could hurt the entire world.

I’m not explaining as well as I want to. What I’m saying is I think what’s happening at this moment in Israel-Palestine, and the movements in this country backing Palestinian liberation and freedom go way beyond Jews, go way beyond Israel-Palestine. I think we’re seeing a massive contradiction coming to the fore here, and it could spill over into many directions beyond just that one struggle. That’s what I’m saying.

Shane Burley:  I think, obviously, the international solidarity movement with Palestine is probably the biggest social movement of the last year. It is overwhelmingly numerically, but also the level of participation on campuses, things like that.

So it actually puts us in relationship with Black Lives Matter, anti-fascist movements, the Occupy movement, basically movements of the last 15 years that had a really big groundswell that were bigger than the organizations that were involved in organizing them. It’s a mass participation.

And all of those movements also signify a break between young people and status quo establishment politics, whether it’s the politics of the right or the Democratic Party, whatever it is. But these are revolutionary movements. They have a revolutionary core to them. And so this is true here as well.

And you have Jewish communities, young Jewish communities participating at a much, much higher rate than the general public. And there’s a certain element where they’re saying, yeah, these Israel politics have actually been… They’re not just status quo of the country, but they’re status quo of my home, of my synagogue, of the places I was educated.

So there’s a revolutionary sort of rebellion happening there, and I don’t think it’s just about Israel-Palestine. I think a revolutionary movement, whether they focus on one topic or another, there’s a whole complex of ideas that are underneath that. Because I think people’s experiences fighting against police violence or fighting against the effects of colonialism in other places, all that influences why they’re here now. This is not happening in isolation.

As much as a lot of organizations like the ADL try to paint Palestine organizing as being sort of in isolation, people don’t know what they’re talking about, they’re doing it because it’s trendy, that’s actually not really true. It is very, very connected to other social movements.

So all of this, I think, shows a big generational shift on these politics. I think, at the same time, that what only will make that more intense is this dialectic of them becoming more repressive on the organizational side. The more right-leaning these organizations become, the more rebellious the young, revolutionary spirit will likewise respond as. And then that creates the real break.

I think it’s also important though to note that this is not actually particularly new. It’s particularly severe in this situation, but it’s not new in Jewish life. The Jewish new left of the ’60s, ’70s rebelled specifically against these established organizations. Sometimes it was on Israel, sometimes it was not funding Jewish education or prioritizing rich Jewish communities, but they went after them the same way. The Jewish Renewal movement, in a lot of ways, was the rebellion against that. And you have earlier generations, Bundist, socialist, Communist Party —

Marc Steiner:  Bundists versus the Zionists. Exactly.

Shane Burley:  Right, yeah. So there were always the rebellious elements that come around generationally, where young Jews are basically looking at the leadership and saying, hey, you betrayed what I understand to be the mission of the Jewish people. So that’s a pretty standard part of it.

I think the question now is whether or not that young group of people will take over these organizations and move them in that direction, or they will abandon them. And I think what’s happening is that they’re actually not given the choice because they’re being abandoned by the leadership.

Marc Steiner:  Well, I think that the voices that you allowed us to hear in your article are the voices that need to be heard.

Shane Burley:  Oh, absolutely.

Marc Steiner:  Because their stories are important for the world to hear. And I really do look forward to more conversations with you, but also with some of the folks that you interviewed in your article that we can do together to bring their voices out because they need to be heard. They’re the ones who were attacked. They’re the ones who are fighting for their beliefs. They’re the ones who are going to be the engine that pushes the revolution of change inside the Jewish world, I think.

Shane Burley:  Yeah, I think them speaking out and having their perspectives heard is part of what will shift this. By other people hearing, okay, I’m hearing a critical voice from a rabbi or from a Jewish communal leader that’s been fired, I share that with them, that makes it easier for somebody else to speak out.

And when you have the density of folks — And this is actually part of how I got plugged into the article, is that people were connecting people who had been fired or had been pushed out or being threatened to be fired because they needed that solidarity because it was happening in isolation.

But when people speak out like this, you end up basically echoing that solidarity across the entire country or across the world because more people are able to see that there are strong voices speaking out. They hear stuff that reflects their values, that kind of thing.

So I think the more that we can highlight that it actually makes folks safer when these things happen. And it also signifies the size of the critical community, whether they’re anti-Zionist or non-Zionist or however they define it. The size of it then makes the case that we need organizations of our own or that we’re actually a sizable constituency of these organizations. It counters the idea coming from these major organizations that these are marginal and threatening voices.

Marc Steiner:  Shane Burley, A, I want to thank you for doing this conversation with us today and for the work that you do. And remind people listening today to check the link below and read the article, “US Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists”. It’s a month-long investigation, found even the smallest sense of dissent is often met with unemployment. It’s well worth the read, really wrestle with and look at, and we’ll be examining this a great deal more in the coming weeks together.

And Shane, once again I want to thank you so much for the work you do and for always being willing to come on and talk. Always good to see you.

Shane Burley:  Yeah, I’m always glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank Shane Burley for joining us today. And we’ll link to his article from In These Times, “US Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists”. Well worth the read.

And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, and audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible.

Let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Shane Burley for joining us today.

So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza has now surpassed a year, and is quickly spiraling into a regional war that now includes a ground front in Lebanon. As the world reels from the horrors witnessed in the past year alone, how are members of Israeli society justifying those horrors to themselves? In part two of this two-part episode commemorating the solemn anniversary of Oct. 7, Canada-based Israeli filmmaker and journalist Lia Tarachansky joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the dark psychological forces shaping Israelis’ support for the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: David Hebden

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.

And we are once again going to look at what’s happening in the war in Gaza, where we see now, how many people have been killed? Over 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza. 96,000 people have been wounded or hurt. At least 10,000 are missing. In Israel, 1,200 people have been killed. At least 8,700 are injured. And it’s escalating into Lebanon, and we don’t know where this is going to take us.

But for many of us, it’s deeply personal, and it’s also a war that we have to work to end. I’m talking today with Lia Tarachansky, who has worked here at The Real News. She’s been a colleague for a long time, an incredible journalist and filmmaker, multimedia artist, born in the Soviet Union, lived in Israel, now lives in Canada. She produced this incredible film On The Side of the Road, among others, and joins us now.

Lia, welcome. Good to have you with us.

Lia Tarachansky:  Thanks, Marc. Thanks for having me back.

Marc Steiner:  It’s always good to talk to you, always. I want to start with this quote that I found on your webpage, and it was written before, but it just spoke to me so deeply about where we are now. And I just want to start there before we get into any political social analysis of where we’re going because it’s so deeply personal and upsetting, watching what’s going on.

As I said to you before we went on the air, the kibbutzim that were attacked is where my family lives. Some are dead, some are hostages, from what I understand, people I don’t know. My best friend in the Palestinian world had his nephew shot and killed by settlers in the West Bank.

And this is what you wrote: “My rage is sadness. My rage is fear. My rage is fire. My rage is silence. I am so much rage. I don’t know what to do with the rage. I turn it into sadness, but the sadness feels endless. Bottomless. They can’t even call. They can’t even text their loved ones to tell them they’re still alive.”

There’s something, just for me, and I know it must be for you because you lived it, deeply troubling and emotional about this war. There’s something really different here.

Lia Tarachansky:  Yeah. We’ve never lived through anything like this.

Marc Steiner:  Just talk for a moment just about you. All the stuff you’ve been through, the work you’ve done, standing up and saying what has to be said, living and growing up in Israel. Can you talk just for a moment about Lia Tarachansky and where you are at this moment?

Lia Tarachansky:  Well, I was a correspondent for The Real News for many years in Israel and Palestine. It was an experience that formed my understanding to a very deep level by being in the West Bank several times a week and then going home to Israel and back and forth over years, over many wars.

And then I started to work on a documentary that investigated a group of Israeli and American rabbis that were trying to bring back biblical Judaism and transform the political conflict into a religious conflict.

And it was part of an ongoing investigation, including a murder investigation I was covering for another film of seeing this rise of extreme ideas in Israel, what we nicknamed the Jewish ISIS, this group of people that are pushing towards regional war, pushing towards the return of a very kind of ancient, biblical, and very repressive understanding of Jewishness.

And I remember thinking, wow, this is so crazy. These people are growing, but we are… There’s no way we’re going to go through what they’re advocating for.

But the confluence of the increase in the movement from a few little groups of people who even the Israeli police, at some point, sent to jail for their extreme views and for their attacks on Palestinians, some of them killed Palestinians. They had long track records with the police. Today, they’re a third of the Israeli Parliament.

The confluence of those ideologies becoming so mainstream that they entered the Parliament to such an extent with our prime minister’s absolute dedication to not go to jail for his corruption means that there’s a lot of very powerful people whose interest is to go deeper into war. And it’s not just on the Israeli side.

The last year has been shocking, unbelievable. The level of mourning that we are constantly in is unparalleled in our history, with the exception of, I think, maybe for Israelis, the time before the state was created.

As a human being, I’m speechless. The idea that after a year of almost constant bombardment and attack on Gaza, the Israeli government is now escalating into Lebanon, and escalating the very fragile stalemate with Ira is horrifying. It’s terrifying. There’s no other words for it.

Marc Steiner:  I understand what you said completely. I am not Israeli, but I feel the same. Watching this is just emotionally overwhelming.

And politically, the question, where do you think this goes? Where do you think this takes us? You have this very right-wing Israeli government with a huge religious fundamentalist faction in the government pushing these words you were just describing. It’s not so different, in some ways, on the Palestinian side with Hamas.

When you grew up Jewish, Masada is one of the things you talk about, when the Jews all committed suicide and the war that killed the Jews. And it feels like we are collectively, in Israel, committing that same suicide while we’re destroying everything around us.

Lia Tarachansky:  I don’t know what happened in Masada. I only know the story of the people who got to tell the story, but we don’t know what happened there.

Marc Steiner:  No, not really. Right.

Lia Tarachansky:  I can tell you Israelis don’t want to commit suicide. The vast majority of Israelis don’t want what is happening, but they perceive this as the way to survive. Oct. 7 was a shocking event for Israelis. And while you’re reading the American and European news, we’re reading the Hebrew news. And at every war, Israelis don’t have coverage of what’s going on in Gaza, and they don’t really know.

And you can argue, well, they should know. But unfortunately, these kind of echo chambers that we are siloed in mean that we don’t listen across ethnicities, across nations, across political ideas, and certainly not across war.

And so, as shocking as it is, the vast majority of Israelis don’t know what’s going on in Gaza, don’t understand, exactly, the impact of what is going on in Lebanon, a country that was already devastated by so many challenges, to now drag the country into this. Just like the hundreds of thousands of fleeing Lebanese, the average Israeli doesn’t want war, but there are political forces a lot stronger than us.

And with an entire country built on military service and on very censored media coverage and a very censored education in schools, this is what you get.

Marc Steiner:  Is it censorship? Is it the government? The military says, no, you can’t print this? Is it that the Israeli press doesn’t want to print it? I mean, why is that happening?

Lia Tarachansky:  Well, certainly the Israeli government is very deeply involved in what is covered in the Israeli press through a network of gag orders. There’s very little that is allowed to be printed in the Israeli press about how the war is actually going on.

The truth is that the Israeli war in Gaza has been a failure for the Israeli military, which is shocking considering how powerful the Israeli military is, how many weapons it has, and how much surveillance it has of Gaza. It’s still not succeeding because the objective that is stated to the Israeli public is an unachievable objective.

And so there is no way to destroy Hamas. There’s no way to destroy a political party. The only thing that brutality is going to cause is more brutality. And so the war as presented to the Israeli public is very curated. The Israeli public very rarely looks at international press.

And anyway, the international press is not really covering what’s going on in Gaza anymore. They talk about casualties and they talk about access to water and food, but they don’t have people on the ground. And Palestinian journalists, so many of them have been killed that there’s very little accurate information coming out.

So yeah, there’s a lot of official censorship on behalf of the Israeli government, both through the military censor and through the gag orders. There’s even more self-censorship on behalf of Israeli journalists that are, at the end of the day, Israelis, and are keenly aware of the fact that their future as journalists is dependent on them not covering certain things.

The vast majority of Israeli journalists don’t speak Arabic, don’t have contacts in Gaza. Khalil Abu Yahia who was a person who spoke quite a bit and was interviewed quite a bit was killed very shortly after Oct. 7. So many journalists have been killed that even if you had contacts, which most journalists don’t, there’s a good chance that they didn’t make it.

So it’s a mess. There’s no other way of putting it. It’s a complete mess, and it’s a train wreck that’s being driven by drunk and self-obsessed narcissists. And we are being dragged into this train wreck with them.

Marc Steiner:  We, being the entire world, or we being… Who’s the we?

Lia Tarachansky:  I mean, obviously, I’m looking at my community.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, right, right.

Lia Tarachansky:  But it’s not just Israelis and Palestinians, and Lebanese and Iranians, it’s also now the entire region. The whole world is involved in arming and profiting from this fight. So you can say you as Americans are, I would say, even more implicated than Israelis and what’s going on. And if you were to stand up to your government, this war would end tomorrow. But when you have these kinds of periodic genocides, you lose your motivation for political action, and this is the result of it.

Marc Steiner:  What you just said I think is really critical, which is that the American government is key to this. It’s probably the only force on the earth at this moment that can stop the war.

Lia Tarachansky:  Yes. Well, the American government has always been lukewarm on stopping Israeli wars.

Marc Steiner:  It’s true. Now, we’re in the midst of an election, which makes it even more difficult because people are afraid to take a position because they’re afraid to lose the election. So all that is complicating what’s happening at the moment.

Lia Tarachansky:  Completely, yes.

Marc Steiner:  The reason I was looking forward to talking to you is because I know all the things you’ve written, all the things that you’ve produced, this film, you have a deep sense of the place and what’s going on. And I think that what you’re saying now is that what we’re witnessing now in Gaza, in Israel, the attack in Lebanon, this could really affect the entire planet very shortly if it’s not stopped.

Lia Tarachansky:  It is affecting the entire planet right now. But I think that when you become complacent, maybe you need a gun in your face until you actually open your eyes.

Marc Steiner:  Yes. I mean, it’s true. People don’t feel that yet.

Lia Tarachansky:  Oct. 7 was a wake-up call. An act of such brutality has a way of clarifying things. Gaza has been an open-air prison for many, many years. And in the minds of most Israelis, it is someplace over there where we don’t talk about it. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a bunch of terrorists. Out of sight, out of mind.

When Oct. 7 happened, the brutality of Oct. 7 breached those mechanisms of denial in a way that I don’t know if anything else could have. So call this our wake-up call. And when you have a system that is so brutal like the Israeli occupation, that’s what you get. This is what you get.

Marc Steiner:  Is there any light? Is there any hope? Is there any way this ends? I mean, it seems to me that the United States has to step in on some level to make it happen. The last, but I don’t know how that… Go ahead. I’m sorry.

Lia Tarachansky:  And Kamala Harris will not get involved. She can’t afford in her first months and years of leadership to get involved. It’s not going to happen. Not with your American current political system.

Marc Steiner:  I mean, it just seems to me that however this ends in the next six months to a year, however long it is, that this is a critical turning point for the Middle East, for Europe, for the United States.

Lia Tarachansky:  The only way this can end is if through, even pure lies, you can convince Israelis that they have won and that they are safe. Like any small country, especially a country that’s been through so many wars and that has a self-narrative of being a victim of history, you have to act in extremely brutal ways in order to fight overwhelming enemies. We know this from basic military strategy.

Why does Daesh or ISIS, as you call it, why do they behead people? Because you have to appear to your enemy to be completely crazy and brutal to a point that they will not screw with you because you are actually much more powerless than you portray yourself.

Israeli military, the Israeli policy towards Palestinians has always been to appear as brutal and insane and genocidal as you can so that everyone assumes that you’ll do whatever it takes to the end. That’s the military strategy if you are surrounded by Lebanon, and Syria, and Jordan, and Egypt, and we’ve had wars with all of them. And of course, Oct. 7 is just the latest in many, many, many decades of Palestinian resistance, or what Israelis would call attacks on civilians.

And in that kind of environment, your only option is to appear more crazy, more brutal, more willing to kill than the next guy. If you make Israelis feel or appear as though they have somehow succeeded in achieving some sense of safety, you can end this war tomorrow. But I think that the vast majority of people are either busy in reactionist condemnation that may be justified, but doesn’t lead to much on the ground. No real change on the ground or with the program.

So we’re seeing little bits here and there. In Canada, we did a little bit of an arms embargo, but it’s only partial, and it’s not a real arms embargo. The contemporary arms market is incredibly complex and decentralized, and so you would have to get basically the entire world on board to end it.

Marc Steiner:  Hearing both your deep understanding of the situation politically and historically, and also the pain I hear in your voice at the same time talking about where we are. I had a conversation the other day with a Palestinian who said in our conversation, all the Israelis have to leave for this to be over.

Lia Tarachansky:  Yeah. There’s a very messy understanding of decolonization and anti-colonialism, in a lot of the pro-Palestinian left, unfortunately. There’s a very thin understanding of Israel and Israeli society. Where are the Israelis going to go?

Half the Israelis are descendants of refugees from the Arab world and the Muslim world. I don’t see Algerians and Egyptians and Iraqis offering the descendants of Jewish refugees their properties back. I don’t see the Moroccan government offering citizenship to Moroccan Jews. Not that they would go back at this point. A third of us, or sorry, excuse me, 20% of Israeli Jews are Soviet refugees, soviet immigrants.

Marc Steiner:  Like your family.

Lia Tarachansky:  Yeah. We came to Israel, we didn’t even have status because we fled the Soviet Union. We have nowhere to go back to. What, am I going to go back to the middle of another war in Ukraine?

The vast majority of us have nowhere else to go. And when you corner someone, they fight by any means necessary. The Ashkenazi elites that have roots in the founding fathers and all that shit, they have another citizenship. They could go to Germany. They could go to Portugal. They could go elsewhere. I got very lucky. I ended up in Canada and I have options. But the vast majority of Jews in Israel don’t have those options, don’t have another home to go to.

The history of decolonization has to do with a metropole, a European country that goes into another country, colonizes, and sends its settlers to that country to take over.

This is a different story with Israel. I’m not saying settler colonialism is not a major part of what led to the current fight. Absolutely it is. But there’s many different things as well. There is no metropole. The people that founded the state may have had some colonial ideas, but the people who made up the bulk of the state are refugees.

This is the reality. We are not going to solve this by living in the what-if world of 1947 of what if we abandon Zionism? What if we think about decolonization? Okay, Israel exists. This is where we are. Israel exists. Israel has existed for four generations. There is now an Israeli culture, a Hebrew language that’s spoken. There’s a way of life. It is. Deal with the reality as is.

You want all the Israelis to go somewhere else? [Inaudible], give them a piece of whatever other place, and then we can do the intellectual and cultural and psychological war of convincing them. That’s not going to happen. So in the reality of today, what do we do to end this? This is the only question we should be thinking about.

Marc Steiner:  So before we close out here, what you just said, just to ponder what you just said, how do we end this? It makes me think of what happened that I covered intensely in South Africa. At the end of Apartheid, everybody stayed in South Africa. Very few people left.

Lia Tarachansky:  As they succeeded to convince the white people that the end of Apartheid will not bring about their media death, [inaudible] did in other parts of Africa. In Zimbabwe, after the revolution, there was a systemic killing of white settlers. We can sit here and debate the morality of decolonization until the cows come home but you’re not going to create change until you make people feel safe, until you make them understand. You are in the Middle East, Israelis. Be part of the Middle East.

Marc Steiner:  It feels intractable, but I can’t believe it is intractable, that there’s got to be…

Lia Tarachansky:  Well, people like us, Marc, don’t have the luxury of hopelessness.

Marc Steiner:  [Laughs] it’s true. It’s true. But people like us, even inside the Jewish world, that group is growing.

Lia Tarachansky:  Sure. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, we’re the only ones who are going to be able to convince the Israelis that they are safe.

Marc Steiner:  To me, it’s always deeply important to talk with you about these things because you have a deep analysis laced with serious passion about what’s going on at the moment. And I think it needs to be heard, which is one of the reasons I called you and said, would you come on today? Because I think you need to be heard.

Lia Tarachansky:  I feel like I have nothing to say anymore. Those words that I wrote a year ago when we still thought that Vivian Silver was alive, and before I knew the Hayim Katsman was dead, and before we knew that Haya Bokchev was dead, and before Khalil Abu Yahia was dead, those words, I have nothing left to say. There’s nothing to be said. It is so big. The level of destruction and violence and brutality and cruelty is so enormous.

The fact that tens of thousands of Israelis in the middle of a war are still protesting this corrupt government is a miracle. The fact that people still go out on the streets in Germany where it’s essentially illegal to be pro-Palestinian at this point, it’s… You’re seeing bravery in moments like these, and we need to hold each other up in these moments of uncertainty because people like us don’t have the luxury of hopelessness.

But if you want a kernel of hope, and I’m very cautious of optimism. As a political journalist, I think optimism is a very dangerous thing to have. Optimism is an emotion. Optimism is a feeling. Optimism is an outlook on life. And it’s destructive in situations like these where we are struggling so hard to see the reality.

Because let’s not fool ourselves, this war is going on because we are not seeing reality, because we are not tackling our denials and because we are not allowing ourselves to see. So hope, to me, is a different animal. Hope is a set of actions. You don’t hope out of optimism, you hope out of necessity.

And there’s this incredible Ugandan scholar, world-class scholar, Mahmood Mamdani. And he’s a scholar also, amongst other things, of colonialism. He wrote a remarkable book called Neither [Settler nor Native].

Marc Steiner:  Called what?

Lia Tarachansky:  Neither [Settler nor Native]. And this is the latest book in many, many, many years. He was in Rwanda and he was in South Africa in 1984. And he was covering and looking at all these peace initiatives in Rwanda about reconciliation in 1984. And in 1984, it looked like South Africa was going to descend into total civil war and chaos, and it looked like Rwanda was moving towards [crosstalk].

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Lia Tarachansky:  And as we know, 10 years later in 1994, there was a genocidal civil war in Rwanda that had colonial roots that left so many people dead, and South Africa ended Apartheid.

So the way things look does not often have bearing on the future. Many, many, many people have tried to predict what’s going to go on in Israel and Palestine, and then something happens and it all goes sideways. All of us were saying the escalation with Iran is going to lead to a nuclear war, nuclear winter. And then when it actually led to escalation to the point where Iran and Israel were lobbing weapons at each other, it led to nothing because there are other factors at play, and we as outsiders to those factors can only see a small fraction of the surface.

So you don’t know what the impact of your work is, you don’t know how you are connected to other people, and you don’t know what is actually happening on the ground unless you’re fighting it on the ground.

So considering our limited access, I think, just do what you can do that you can live with. I can’t ignore what’s going on. I feel a deep responsibility to be involved, to be informed, to sponsor refugees to Canada out of this place, to do anything that is going to make this even a tiny little fraction better. And I know that you do the same, and I hope that your audience does too.

Marc Steiner:  Lia Tarachansky, A, let me just, again, thank you for everything you do, and I appreciate you taking the time today. I really thought this was a very important conversation, and a very difficult one. And I want to thank you for being willing to take the time and joining us here today at The Real News on The Marc Steiner Show. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you.

Lia Tarachansky:  Thanks, Marc.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, thank you to Lia Tarachansky for joining us today. And thank you to all of you for listening. And thanks to Dave Hebden for running and editing the program, our producer, Rosette Sewali, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

After a year of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza, and after more than 75 years of Israeli occupation, Palestinians like Ashira Prem Rachana Darwish still believe in the hope of a free Palestine. In its murderous rush to flatten Gaza and embroil the Middle East in a large-scale war, “Zionism is breathing its last breath,” Darwish says. In Part 1 of this two-part episode of The Marc Steiner Show commemorating the solemn anniversary of Oct. 7, Marc speaks with Darwish, a journalist and trauma specialist, about the ongoing genocide, the future of Palestine, and about her own experiences of torture under Israeli occupation.

Watch Ashira in the feature documentary Where the Olive Trees Weep.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, it’s great to have you all with us once again.

And today, we’re going to have another session talking about this incredible film that has been made called Where Olive Trees Weep. We’re talking to Ashira Darwish. She’s a centerpiece in the film, and before she got into her trauma healing work, she was recognized for her investigative journalist work for Internews, the BBC, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International. She was given an award as one of the most inspirational women in Palestine by the BuildPalestine organization, many other awards.

She suffered trauma of imprisonment and torture for fighting for the liberation of her people in Palestine, and she works at healing trauma with other people. And we are honored to have her with us.

Ashira Darwish, welcome. Good to have you on The Marc Steiner Show.

Ashira Darwish:  Good to be here, thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:  So I have to ask this question first before we even begin. So are you related to Mahmoud Darwish, the poet?

Ashira Darwish:  No. So Mahmoud is from Al-Birwa, which is a village in the north of Palestine. And my mother’s family, Darwish, they come from the old city of Jerusalem, Bab Hutta.

Marc Steiner:  Gotcha.

Ashira Darwish:  So right next to Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Marc Steiner:  As someone else who has the last name, Darwish told me once when I asked that question, he said, Darwish is like Smith in Palestine [laughs].

Ashira Darwish:  Exactly. But my mom was friends with Mahmoud Darwish when they were together in Lebanon, so…

Marc Steiner:  Aha, there you go. Okay.

Ashira Darwish:  There’s still a connection [laughs].

Marc Steiner:  So one of the things that came through in this film and your conversations in the film was, I think, both the power of your resistance and internal strength, imbued with all the negative repression and the occupation, what’s happened to you. One of the questions is, in the midst of struggle against oppression, and in Palestine against the occupation, how one keeps their energy up, how one keeps their life up, their ability to resist?

Ashira Darwish:  It’s not an option or a choice, it’s a survival mechanism. In order for us to be able to survive the occupation and to survive living under apartheid in the situation of genocide currently, we need to keep going, and we need to find ways to survive.

And I think one thing that is wonderful about the Palestinian society is that we are still a community of… We haven’t been individualized. The globalization and very much capitalist universe did not really dissect us or go into us as much as the rest of the world.

So if you look at places, in cities in Palestine, you will see that there’s much more individualism. And this was created through the creation of the Palestinian Authority, and bringing in the money, and trying to create, to separate from the tribal, communal life that we normally have.

If you look at the rest of Palestine, the refugee camps, and you look at the villages, you still have the tribe, you still have the community, and you still have the concept of sumud. We withhold, we withstand, and we are resilient together in community.

And I think part of what Israel does and part of what most of colonization around the world fights is this community and tribe, because if they divide us, then it’s much easier to control us. And if they divide us and turn us into consumer slaves, well, they get the money out of us and they also get to control us, and it’s much easier to annihilate us as well, if we don’t think about the other rather than thinking about ourselves.

So part of the sumud that is built within the Palestinian society is the caring of each other, is the taking care of the community. It is not about one person, it is about Palestine. It’s not about one person. Even if you get imprisoned, even if you lose someone from your family, there’s a bigger picture. And the bigger picture is the survival of the tribe, it’s the survival of the land, it’s the survival of Palestine, and giving it, inheriting that to the generations that come after.

And that’s I think what makes us kind of stronger, what makes us still stick together, and withhold, and withstand during this genocide. But it’s very difficult for people who live in the cities, for people who have been sucked in by the machine of capitalism and consumerism, because then they’re still operating.

I can tell you about Ramallah, where I was staying for most of the part, and it’s as if there is no genocide happening in Gaza a few kilometers away. People work, people go to schools, everything is happening. Normally, the soldiers come, invade, they take people out, and everything operates as if it’s a normal situation. You see the Palestinian police, and it’s far more traumatizing to be there. It’s much, much, much harder to survive if you don’t have the community and your people to hold you together.

Whereas, if you look at the villages, if you look at the refugee camps, they know the suffering, and they can be together, and they grieve together. Whereas the rest of us are now already dissected and living very individualized lives and pretending that nothing is happening. And it’s the worst thing, because it’s depressing all the normal emotions that you have to go through when you’re living under a genocide.

Marc Steiner:  So how do you think that affects the ongoing struggle for the liberation of Palestine, the ongoing struggle of people to have a nation of their own, to fight the occupation? How does that affect that?

Ashira Darwish:  That’s why they created the Palestinian Authority, so that you will have a weaker fight within the cities. This is why, if you look at where the fighting happens, where the Palestinian resistance is the strongest, it’s in the refugee camps. It’s not in the cities, and it’s not where the Palestinian Authority has its strongholds, because people are tied to cars, people are tied to loans in the banks. It’s either you get your paycheck from the Palestinian Authority or you get it from the Europeans, who are feeding the occupation by maintaining all these NGOs and creating this donor-dependent culture and economy.

So it’s trying to get people more into making money and living individually than thinking about the rest of us, thinking about the rest of Palestine, thinking about what’s happening in Gaza, and rising, and paying the price for whatever happens, and resisting. So this is why they created them, so that you don’t have as much resistance.

And it, of course, weakens the resistance. The first day that people started marching in protest against what is happening in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority went very hard, also, militarily. They ran over a Palestinian protester and killed him immediately. And then, the first few minutes of the protest, they used unbelievable amounts of tear gas to try and stop people from protesting.

So they’re using all their force in order to make sure that the West Bank is still under the boot of the Palestinian military and the Palestinian and the Israeli authorities.

Marc Steiner:  This is a bit of a digression here. This wasn’t in the film, what you’re describing now, but I think it’s an important thing, and I may probe this a little bit more. Because I think it’s the contradictions inside of struggles for liberation across the globe, but it really does play out in Palestine, between the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority’s cooperation with the government of Israel to oppress people who, as you just described, who had massive demonstrations, as you were in them, the Israelis attacked you, and you’re describing demonstrations where Palestinians were protesting, and they were attacked by the Palestinian Authority.

Ashira Darwish:  Yeah.

Marc Steiner:  So there’s this double jeopardy happening that I think most people don’t even realize is going on.

Ashira Darwish:  Yeah, I think the lens isn’t really put on what happens with the Palestinian Authority, because the Palestinian Authority is maintained by the funding of the USAID, the Americans and the Europeans. So they don’t let their media cover what they do.

They don’t cover what atrocities are done by the Palestinian Authority and what is done in terms of imprisonment, in terms of control, in terms of also coordinating, collaborating with the Israelis, so that there isn’t resistance in the West Bank, and trying to kill any movement or any resistance that is sparked in the West Bank.

Marc Steiner:  So going back to what we learned about you in the struggle in the film, you yourself were in the midst of the struggle. You were arrested, you were tortured, you went through a horrendous kind of imprisonment by the Israeli police. And that’s not uncommon from people I talk to in Palestine, this happens to so many.

Ashira Darwish:  What happened to me is nothing. What is described in the film is nothing in comparison. I was never charged, I never actually made it to the real prison. I was only held for a few days, and my first detention was a few hours, and it had this life-changing impact on me.

And people don’t understand that I’m a very privileged Palestinian. I come from East Jerusalem, I have an Israeli passport. I come with all these privileges that even protect me from even further kind of torture.

But the reality of it is we have 10,000 Palestinians inside Israeli prisons. They get kept and tortured for months. The regulations for torturing Palestinians from 48 or Jerusalem, there’s a little bit more restriction on how they torture them versus how the Palestinians from the West Bank and Palestinians from Gaza, oh, my God.

The stories, the horror that we are hearing right now, from sodomy to rape. Rape was always used as a weapon by the Israelis. And it’s the systematic weapon of war, and torture, and sexual harassment for the Palestinian female prisoners and the Palestinian male prisoners. This has been used by Israel historically.

But the level, the amount of use right now indiscriminately, systematically, just if you raise your voice against the prison guard, you get sodomized and killed, like one of the cases that was so well documented. And the people who perpetrated it, the soldiers, were defended by the Israeli society, and by the Israeli ministers, and by the Israeli government, and they didn’t have to pay the price for it.

And you have Israeli journalists calling for it to become a legal policy. It is already a policy. They don’t need to write it down. This is what they have been doing historically.

So the types of torture that we have have always been there and they’ve always been horrific, but we’ve never seen them being used at such a high level, and it’s become much more consistent. You can’t get in and not be tortured.

And the torture, not only there’s the mass… The level of sodomy, and sexual harassment, and rape, and then you have the barring of food. People are starving inside the Palestinian prisons. The prisoners are coming out with horrendous trauma, nothing that we have seen before, because they’re also separated, the prisoners, and they’re not allowing them… Usually, you have the first stage of torture, and then once they finish with torturing you and they charge you, you are taken to the prison itself, which I never made it to.

And there, at least, you’re welcomed by the rest of the prisoners. There we had the system of operation where you make your own food, where you have the community to take care of you. And it’s the first place where you process your torture, where you process your detention, where you process what you’ve gone through.

What Israel has done is now they have separated people to the point that you’re not allowed to speak to anyone. Every prisoner is in an individual solitary confinement. You’re not allowed to have community anymore inside prison, so you get to spend all of the time being tortured on your own. And then, the prison sentence, you’re spending it on your own, and you come out after that in a horrific state of trauma.

Marc Steiner:  What you just described raises so many questions here. It raises a lot. I mean, I’ve seen pictures of Palestinian prisoners being released who were skin and bones.

Ashira Darwish:  [Inaudible], who was in the film Where Olive Trees Weep, he was only detained for six months, and he came out, and he lost half of his body weight. He didn’t know how to walk, he couldn’t remember how to shave his face. He was destroyed in the detention.

Marc Steiner:  So as a Palestinian woman who has been in the midst of the struggle, as someone who has suffered themselves, and also as a healer and a therapist, which is what you also are, it makes me think about… Well, let me step back for a second. Many, many, many decades back, I wrote this poem called “Growing Up Jewish”, one of the poems I wrote. And in the poem, I have this line that says, “How the tortured become torturers themselves.”

And when I see what’s happening inside of Israel-Palestine at the moment, and watch what happens to people who come out of concentration camps like my family did, to be able to do this in return.

And then I watch you in this film, and one of the things that you say later in the film is talking about how you have this hope in the future and believe that healing can take place. How do you see that? How does that take place? When you say that, what’s behind those words, and where do you see it going?

Ashira Darwish:  I think healing is possible, because, well, first, we’ve been seeing healing happening with the Jewish community by rising up against this genocide. And I think one thing where you’ve said about the torture becoming the person who tortures, the Jews never had a chance to heal.

And I think the main reason why they continue the cycle is because they’ve never been given a chance. The antisemites, the real, [true white antisemites], the white supremacists, kicked them out of Germany, and from the concentration camps, and from Europe, and instead of repatriating them, instead of giving them back their land and taking them back to what they’ve lost in Europe, and giving them their houses, and their lands, and everything, they shipped them to a war, they gave them guns and sent them to another war.

They’ve occupied them with a whole other war, with not giving them a single moment to breathe, to heal, to understand who did what to them. And I think the fear of the Europeans and the Americans was that the Jews will sit and have a moment to breathe and realize who did what to them. Instead of that, they created immediately another enemy for the Jews, they created the Palestinians.

Marc Steiner: Yes.

Ashira Darwish:  And they sent them there to serve their interests. If the Israelis are not serving the interests of the Americans, the Americans would not be paying a penny.

Marc Steiner:  Forcing refugees to create refugees.

Ashira Darwish:  Exactly. And they put them in that place, and they kept them in a state of fear, they kept them in a state of fight, and they never had the chance to heal. So of course the trauma is going to continue.

If you look at the Jews that are coming, that are outside, like you, that are people who… The Jewish voices for peace, the young activists that are marching now, protesting in Congress, they’ve had a chance to process, and that is the difference. They’ve had a chance to process the trauma.

Many refused, many until today are connected directly with Israel, and their existence is directed towards Israel. And they never looked within at what they went through, and they refused to do any therapy or anything, and they continue to support the Zionist entity.

But many woke up, and they’ve done the work. And being able to stand up now as a Jew and say “not in my name” is their trauma therapy, because they didn’t get the chance. You didn’t get the chance to stand up and say anything when the genocide was happening to your grandparents. You didn’t have the chance to stand up for your family, but now you get the chance to vocalize it.

And this, I do somatic therapy, and the chance to be able to stand and say, verbally say “no, not in my name,” and to try and actively act in order to end this genocide, it’s as if you’re standing up for yourself, for your family, and you’re healing your intergenerational trauma. So the Jews are healing their intergenerational trauma through this genocide that the Israelis are perpetrating through standing up for the Palestinians, and many other people who are oppressed who are able to rise for the Palestinians. So I see that the healing happening in this cycle.

And I know that for us as Palestinians, the only way we are going to heal, and I say the main way we heal is collective healing. We’ve gone through this trauma collectively, as collective bodies. And the collective body, for us, the collective healing is the liberation of Palestine. When Palestine is liberated, immediately there would be healing within us, because all of our sacrifices did not go in vain.

All the children we have seen, all the people who have lost their families will know that every drop of blood that was spilled was to the path so that their kids and their grandkids will have a liberated Palestine, and they will have freedom, and one of them will get to experience joy and to live in their land.

So collective healing is our way to healing, and the liberation of Palestine is the first step into the healing. And having the Jews also being in this process of fighting against Zionism and standing up against genocide means that the cycle will not continue afterwards. That we know very well that it’s not the Jews, we know very well that it’s the Zionists, we know very well that it’s the instruments of the Americans that are operating, and we will be able to heal the wounds. We will be able to forgive, at one point, when Palestine is liberated.

Marc Steiner:  So you have been through so much, as a woman, as someone who stands up to the oppression of Palestinians in your homeland. I have a semipersonal question, if it’s… So how did you leave? Why did you leave? What pushed you out of Palestine to here?

Ashira Darwish:  So the only reason I’m here is so that this film can be seen. So most of my work in Palestine, I used to do it without any noise. So the first time that it came to the public that I’m working with former child prisoners and women prisoners is through this film. So there was a danger that I would get detained for the work that I’ve been doing.

And also, because they arrest anybody for speaking, singing, writing, anything that you do, you can get arrested and tortured for. So I decided to take my kids out and to come out so that people can see the film. I didn’t want to bury the film, because I was [crosstalk] —

Marc Steiner:  No, right.

Ashira Darwish:  At some point, I was like, if it’s either between leaving the country or the film getting buried, I would feel guilty for the rest of my life if I didn’t allow for the film to be seen.

And I also know very well that I’m leaving for the short term. I know that I will go back to Palestine, and I have a feeling that I will go back to a liberated Palestine. People might think it’s a bit crazy, but I think with everything that’s happening now, each and every movement that is happening is showing us that, actually, Palestine is going to be free very, very soon.

Marc Steiner:  Let me explore that a minute with you, that whole idea. Let me start this way, A, it pains me to watch what’s happening in Israel, as a Jew, as a person that has family in Israel, seeing what we have become in that place.

And I also think about the years that many of us demonstrated to fight to end Apartheid in South Africa, and it happened. So I’d really like to get your perspective on how you see that developing, where you think the struggle goes, how what happens in South Africa, something similar, not the same, but something similar can happen in Israel-Palestine, inside the Holy Land. How do you see that happening?

Ashira Darwish:  We’re seeing it, it’s happening. It’s already happening. We have never seen so many people awaken to what is happening in Palestine. The veil has been removed over the Zionist entity. They can no longer pretend to be a democracy while they’re protesting for sodomy. I don’t know if you’ve watched the film Holy Redemption?

Marc Steiner:  No, I’ve not seen that. No.

Ashira Darwish:  Oh, you should see that one. It shows you the reality of what Zionists are, the way they approach, the way they look at the Palestinians, the way they think that we are mice and they’re ready to crush us, the way that they watch over the bombs dropping on Gaza, the dancing and rejoicing, and thinking about where they’re going to settle, and how they’re going to take over.

And the Zionist dream, saying it very strongly, that this is not about just Palestine. We wanted what God gave us in the Bible, from the Euphrates to the Nile, having that so much… This is what the Palestinians have been saying for years, that this is not only about Palestine, they’re coming after all of us. The Zionists are coming after all of us.

And now, with Lebanon also being targeted in such a horrific way that is… Well, it’s horrific, but at the same time, it’s exactly the expected thing from Israel, and they’re blowing up the last bullet in themselves.

What I think Israel has done — And I used to tell Israelis, liberal Israelis who I used to know, I was like, so you’re killing the chance of a two-state solution. You don’t want to live with us, it’s very clear. And the more you do it, you’re only leaving one chance, which is a one-state solution, where we will all live together.

Obviously, you don’t even want us in this one-state solution [Steiner laughs]. You want us completely ridden, and packed into trucks, either dead or in the sea. So how do you envision that this is going to sustain itself when you have millions of us still here? So if you’re not… They’re trying to eradicate us, but the reality is they cannot eradicate all of the Palestinians. It’s not going to be very easy to kill all of us.

And the reality of what is happening now is the whole world sees them. This genocide is the most documented genocide in the history of mankind. Dropping people from houses in the West Bank two days ago, bodies, using Palestinians as human shields and putting them on Jeeps, burning the kids in the West Bank and dancing over it, dropping bombs in schools, and dancing, and celebrating, the world has seen them.

They basically committed suicide with this genocide in Gaza. Israel as a state committed its final stage of suicide. And now, with targeting Lebanon?

And let me tell you, I had a dream when I was living in Tarshiha. That was in 2020, when I had my daughter. And so, I am a spiritual person, I have visions, and a lot of them come true.

And I had this vision of Hezbollah being in the north of Palestine, liberating Palestine till Jabal al-Tur. And I saw them all the way through, and I was like, oh, my God, this is impossible, Ashira. This is just a dream. It’s not a vision. And then, I would keep seeing it. And then, I went to the Jabal al-Tur, and I meditated there in the church, and I saw the same vision again. And it was very clear with also all the imagery on the wall that it’s a very important church, and a place of ascension of Jesus Christ. And I saw it again and I was like, but it’s impossible. They’re so strong, how could this possibly be?

And here we are today. I can see it more clearly than ever, more clearly than ever that Israel is in its last days. Hezbollah will liberate the first until the Galilee, the Syrian army will take over the [inaudible] and slowly and surely, the Palestinians in the West Bank will join the Liberation Army, and Egypt as well, and this is it. And there’s no other way.

Marc Steiner:  There’s no other way.

Ashira Darwish:  There’s no other way. Having to think about the Israelis coming to a peace agreement and saying, we know they don’t want us. We know that they don’t want to live with us. This is the only way that Israel is going to end.

And there’s no other… Again, I would love to say for any Israelis, I would love to see them. My vision, my recreation, my addition to the vision would be that all the Jews get to leave peacefully out of the airports, and out of Jordan, and to be sent back to where they came from, to their original countries in Europe, so that they can have their houses, whatever their grandparents, every inch of land that was taken away from them, they can go back to in Europe.

And those born in Palestine who don’t have Europe, they can come out, and then they will be welcomed back into Palestine as Jews living in Palestine under the peace which will be mandated by the Palestinians.

But the Zionists as they are, Zionism is breathing its last breath. And if it doesn’t happen through that, it will happen through the protests, the mass… It’s just a matter of time for the ICJ to come out with a declaration, with a decision about the genocide. No one can deny what Israel is doing.

Marc Steiner:  They cannot, they cannot. When I think of where we are now, most of the family I have in Israel were born in Israel. They weren’t born in Poland, they weren’t born in the United States —

Ashira Darwish:  Tell them to come out for a little bit, and inshallah, they’ll come back when the land is liberated [Steiner laughs].

Marc Steiner:  There’s a poster that I’ve had since 1968, and I got it in Cuba in 1968. And the poster shows a map of Palestine, and it has a crescent cross Star of David down the middle, and across it, it says, “One state, two people, three faiths.”

Now, that might sound naïve. That’s kind of been my mantra since 1968, of what a world should look like and how you struggle to get to that place.

Ashira Darwish:  We get there with the liberation of Palestine, because this is what we want. We have no issue with Jews living in the land. The problem was never with the Jews being in Palestine, and especially [inaudible], if you come from a Muslim background or [inaudible], I think more Muslim, there’s a connection to Judaism that no one can deny. There’s a connection to language that no one can deny. We are the Semites, we are the cousins.

Marc Steiner:  Yeah, absolutely we are. Yeah.

Ashira Darwish:  The issue is with one Zionist entity that wants to wipe out the rest, doesn’t want the Christian Palestinians, doesn’t want the Muslim Palestinian, and doesn’t want even the ultra-Orthodox Jews, if you come to it. They don’t want the African-American Jews as well, they don’t want the Ethiopians. They don’t want anyone who is not white, and who is not a settler, and does not follow the exact same sect of settler mentality. So they won’t be able to sustain so much hate.

Marc Steiner:  So one last thing before we go. Everything you’ve just described, and your belief in how things are and should be, in your work as someone who heals and works with trauma, as a Palestinian woman who wants liberation, who’s been through her own tortures, do you have hope that actually peace can come, that there’ll be a different way, that it can actually happen?

Ashira Darwish:  Yes, yes. I really see it. I see that we will tell the Jews to come out, the anti-Zionists and whoever wants to come, so that the Palestinians can have a right of return, and the Jews will eventually have a right of return. So those, like for example, your family, if they want to come back and live in a liberated Palestine where everyone is treated equally, of course.

And there will be peace on that land, there will be peace on that land. It’s the most beautiful place on Earth. It is the garden of Eden. People will get to enjoy and live in Palestine, in a free, liberated land where everyone is treated equally, where everyone is treated as a human, and the hate will be eradicated. There’s no place on that land for any more hate, and it has already endured so much hate, so much anger, and it will not endure any more.

Marc Steiner:  Well, let me just say this has been a fascinating conversation for me, and to meet you as well. I think you’re the heart of this film, and I share a wish. I really appreciate the time you’ve taken with us today, and look forward to showing this film around, and I hope you stay well and strong, and I hope one day we actually meet. Thank you for being with us.

Ashira Darwish:  Thank you so much. Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  After recording the powerful conversation with Ashira that you just heard, I admit I found myself wrestling with some of what she said about the future she envisions for Palestine and the people living there, both Palestinians and Israelis. And I knew that many of you, our listeners, might be wrestling with it as well. It was hard to hear, important but hard.

And I personally and politically disagreed with what she said, but I wanted to listen and understand as best as I could. And I wanted to have the chance to follow up with Ashira and ask if she could unpack further what we discussed, and to address the questions that were on my mind, and that may be on the minds of many of you listening.

She graciously agreed, and what you’re about to hear is a short follow-up discussion we recorded a few days after our initial interview. I asked Ashira about the vision she laid out in part one of our conversation, a vision in which Israeli Jews living in historic Palestine would need to leave, at least for a time. And those who had no ancestral homelands to return to would be, as Ashira said, “Welcomed back to Palestine as Jews living in Palestine, under the peace which will be mandated by the Palestinians.”

How would that work? Where will the Jews go? Is there any other way for the Palestinians and Israelis to live together in peace? I posed these questions to Ashira, and here’s her response.

Ashira Darwish:  Yeah, it’s beautiful that, it’s beautifully said, and how and where do they go? The reality is this question wasn’t asked of my grandparent, was it?

Marc Steiner:  It was not.

Ashira Darwish:  No. When my family was kicked out of Palestine, nobody cared, did they?

Marc Steiner:  They did not.

Ashira Darwish:  Nobody cared about my grandparents. Nobody cares about my uncles who haven’t been able to visit us since 1967. No one cares that there’s over two million Palestinian refugees currently living around the world. Egypt didn’t want them, Lebanon didn’t want them, Jordan didn’t want them, but they were forced to take them. And until today, the Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon have no basic rights of working, studying inside Lebanon, or citizenship.

So it’s the same. I think with left Israelis, it’s all nice and dandy if they think about giving Palestinians some rights but not retribution, not if they recognize what happened to us in ’48 and our expulsion, then they should understand the need for us to be going back to our country and going back to our homes.

And the fact that Israelis came as refugees, it wasn’t my problem. We didn’t make them refugees, we didn’t do the Holocaust. The Palestinians were not the ones who annihilated and killed the Israeli Jews, and we accepted Jewish refugees, and they came, and they survived, and they lived in Palestine before the Zionist entity was created, and they were living happily and peacefully with their neighbors. We married each other. There wasn’t a problem with Palestinians ever accepting refugees and giving them a home, and a house, and a warm welcome in our communities. It was a problem when the Israeli Zionists started kicking us out.

And those who arrived as refugees, they didn’t arrive as refugees in 1948. They had guns in their arms. They went into each and every Palestinian village and they killed Palestinians and they kicked them out of their land. It wasn’t peaceful refugees coming to seek sanctuary in Palestine.

They need to choose: was it a war of independence when they kicked us out, or was it refugees coming for safety and sanctuary? Because refugees don’t usually arrive into your land with guns. Had they been refugees, they would have been welcomed. They came with their arms and their guns, and they kicked out our families and our people from their land.

They massacred people wherever they stepped foot. They massacred Palestinians in Tantura and buried them in mass graves for fun. They raped our women when they walked in as refugees. They were not refugees when they came in in ’48. Any Jews that arrived before ’48 were refugees, and they were welcomed, and they were safe.

So to come and ask us now to think about the Jews who need to leave Palestine, because they’ve been massacring us now again, and trying to ethnically wipe us from the land since 1948, I don’t see the sanity in that. I don’t see the sanity in asking the people who have been victimized, who have been trying to survive under the worst, most fascist government on Earth to think about where the Israelis should go.

Had they arrived as refugees without guns raised, they would’ve been welcomed, and they would’ve lived with us, and more than happily, we would still want them to stay there. As people who lived as refugees around the world, we don’t want anyone to suffer the same fate. But the reality is, until today we are being slaughtered.

Yesterday, they dropped airstrikes in Tulkarem. Children were wiped and killed in Tulkarem, in the heart of the West Bank. Why should we accept this to continue? Why should we be the ones to think and consider what is the situation of the Israelis who are trying to wipe us out completely?

And we have to be the considerate ones right now, when we are collecting the remains of our infants in body bags, in rice bags, while our friends and families are starving, while our men are being, and friends and family are being tortured inside prison chambers, being sodomized? We need to think right now about how to please the Israelis when there’s a resolution, when there’s an end to our bloodshed?

It’s very gracious of us to even think about allowing them to leave peacefully. They’ve been murdering us since 1948. Until now, even with all the fighting, the Palestinians are trying to avoid civilians with our resistance while Israel wipes us out. What are we supposed to do?

And coming to say about the Arab countries accepting refugees, there’s Jews living in Iran, there’s Jews living in Jordan, there’s Jews living in Morocco, there’s Jews living in Tunis until now, and they’re safe and they’re unharmed.

And I am sure that when there’s a resolution coming that the Arab countries will tell them, as long as you stop the murder of the Palestinians, you can come and live peacefully if you don’t try to occupy our land, if you don’t try to do what’s happening in Lebanon, if they can live peacefully with their neighbors.

At the end of the day, we didn’t create the genocide, we didn’t create the ethnic cleansing, we didn’t create the 9 million Palestinian refugees around the world. If somebody has to think about where they want to go, they should have been very gracious refugees when they arrived and not wiped us out. If they don’t want to be refugees around the world right now, then they should stop the killing and the murder of Palestinians. They should stop the genocide right now, and try and beg for justice and retribution. They haven’t stopped.

And not only in Palestine, now Lebanon is bleeding. They’re bombing Yemen. And we are supposed to think about allowing them, where they’re going to go after they finish killing us, if we are lucky enough to survive this genocide, if any of us are allowed to survive after this?

Marc Steiner:  Yeah, I remember in ’67, ’68, I was a very young man, I think 21, 22 years old, and I volunteered to go fight in the Israeli Army right after the war started in ’67. And then, I began meeting left-wing Israelis, and I began meeting lots of Palestinians as well, and something shifted. And what could have been a moment of liberation for Israelis and Palestinians became a moment of occupation. So —

Ashira Darwish:  Exactly. And Oslo was another chance where the Palestinians gave to the Israelis to tell them, let’s put everything behind, even the murder of all of our people, even even the massacres you’ve perpetrated in ’48 and ’67, we are willing to forgive. Even the expulsion of millions of Palestinian refugees, we were willing to forgive, and we were willing to let go of [inaudible], the heartland of Palestine, we were willing to give up so that we can have peace, and coexist, and live next to them as neighbors, and claim peace.

We changed our curriculum, we changed the way we teach our children, and we started talking about peace. And what were we offered? Too much has been asked of us as indigenous people who are being wiped out.

I think for any left-wing Israelis right now existing, any Jews who are abroad, they’re the ones who should try to think about what happens to their people afterwards, if we are allowed to even live and survive through this genocide.

They should think about a plan. Where will these people be located? Who is willing to accept people with so much blood on their hands to live with them as neighbors? Who’s willing to take the murderers of our children to live with them, and next to them, and bring them into their homes?

If you’re willing to take somebody who’s been killing children, let me know. Those dancing as they bombed the schools and pulling the triggers, those dancing in the middle… To songs, young Jews dancing to songs of burn their villages and kill them. If you’re willing to have them in your house, maybe that’s the solution for the diaspora and for the Jews who have been living outside, to see if they have open hearts to accept the murderers into their houses.

Marc Steiner:  So if we move on from this moment, is it possible for the Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Christians to actually find a way to live in that land together in the future? Is it too late? Is it done? Is it finished?

Ashira Darwish:  I think Israel is killing any chance of that. I think Israel, with the genocide in Gaza, has killed any chance of that. Before that, maybe there was a chance that people were willing to pay another price for peace.

But right now, we know they’re very outspoken about what they want to do with us. They have no problem saying that they want to annihilate us. They have no problem in actually actively going and wiping us out.

How am I, as a Palestinian right now, experiencing the genocide of my people, expected to think about surviving and shaking the hand of people who have been tearing my friends into bits and pieces, and tearing their children into little smithereens? How am I supposed to think about living next to somebody who’s sodomized my friends in prison for pleasure? How am I expected to live with people who are starving my friends, my family? It’s gone beyond anything that we were ever willing to accept and forgive.

There’s so much that has been destroyed right now in our hearts that it’s unbearable to even think about the idea of being close to them and forgiving. I know that forgiveness is the first step to trauma, and I have done my share of that, but I cannot ask the orphan children of Gaza to forgive.

Do you know how many orphans we have? We have over 200,000. How are they supposed to forgive? I don’t see a reality on the ground where we can sit and coexist until the blood is wiped out of our streets to begin with. There needs to be time for us to be able to heal, to carry our wounds.

Even before we even were asked to think about forgiveness, we need this bloodshed to stop. We need them to stop murdering us so that we can have a breath and a break to even digest the idea of living next to them. As I speak to you right now, they’re still bombing, the bombs are being dropped. How are we even mentally supposed to think about coexistence?

Israel is the prime evil. I don’t like to use the analogies that they use of the… What does he say, Netanyahu, in his speeches, and what do they call us? But if there’s evil in this world, it lies there. And good is always better, and good is always forgiving. And I have faith in my people that we will always accept the light and always search for the light. And always, because of our religion, because of our faith, that also forces us to forgive in times that we don’t wish to forgive, we will have to come to that point.

But not now, not until the last drop of blood is wiped. Not until we count our dead and we know who’s missing, who’s dead, who’s massacred. There’s people who don’t… Israel isn’t even giving us the ability to know who has been killed. They just dropped 80 bodies in Gaza without any name. They’ve been decomposed. They’re just killing people and dropping them off, and we don’t have the capabilities of DNA testing. We don’t have anything.

So people are being buried in mass graves, and forever, mothers, and children, and daughters will be thinking, is my dad alive? Is my mother alive or not? This answer will never be given to them. Even if the bodies are under the ground in mass graves, they will never know. They will never have closure. And we have mass graves all over Gaza. Don’t ask us to forgive or coexist until we know how big our wound is, and see if we can begin to heal.

Marc Steiner:  Ashira, thank you for your willingness to have this conversation, and your openness, both in your mind, heart, and spirit to say what you said.

Ashira Darwish:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  I want to once again thank Ashira Darwish for joining us today. Her voice and commentary in the film Where Olive Trees Weep was profound and deeply moving. I knew we needed to have a conversation together. And I appreciate her willingness to lay bare the reality of what she and Palestinians face in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, in Palestine, and to be so willing to share that reality, the one she lived and suffered through with all of us, and her hope for the future.

Once again, thank you, Ashira Darwish, and thank you all for listening. And thanks to David Hebden for running this program, and our audio editor, Alina Nehlich, our producer, Rosette Sewali, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today and what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therrealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

For Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, land and livelihood are deeply intertwined concerns—and the only way to defend them is through organization. Faced with a hostile legal apparatus, a military occupation, and attacks from violent settlers, Palestinian farmers have banded together under the umbrella of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union. The union’s executive director, Abbas Milhem, joins The Marc Steiner Show for an explanation of the work of his organization and the land struggle in the West Bank.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.

And we continue looking at what came out of the movie Where Olive Trees Weep. Today, we’re going to talk with Abbas Milhem, who is the Palestinian Farmers Union executive director. He’s been so since 2014. We’ll talk a bit about what that means, and more about that, and what’s going on in the West Bank and Gaza with him today.

Abbas, welcome. Good to have you with us.

Abbas Milhem:  Thank you, Marc, for having me. Good afternoon for everybody.

Marc Steiner:  I’ve been looking forward to this.

Abbas Milhem:  Or good morning maybe. It’s almost good afternoon in our language [both laugh].

Marc Steiner:  Well, for you it’s good evening, right?

Abbas Milhem:  Yeah. On our side, good evening. But after evening, even [both laugh].

Marc Steiner:  It’s almost hard to figure out where to begin. But let me take a step back before we jump into what’s happening at this moment, and what has happened over the last 40 years to the West Bank, to Palestinian land. But talk a bit about the Palestinian Farmers Union. For 17 years, you’ve been doing this work, and you’re a farmer.

Abbas Milhem:  Yes.

Marc Steiner:  Talk about that history a little bit so our listeners can understand who you are and where you come from.

Abbas Milhem:  Yes. Thank you, Marc. Palestinian Farmers Union is the umbrella of Palestinian farmers, and that union was established in 1993. Actually, a few months before the Oslo Peace Agreement was signed between Israelis and the Palestinians, at that time in 1994.

And from the time of establishment, this union was dedicated first to act as the voice of farmers. And we call them the vulnerable farmers, the small-scale farmers in Palestine, acting as the umbrella of them, defending their rights, representing their voices, and trying to provide all the resources needed in order to enhance their agriculture and support the food security of all farmers across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

To do so, in terms of structure, Palestinian Farmers Union is started by organizing farmers on the district level first, where in each district — For example, Jenin District, Tulkarm District, Nablus District, Ramallah District, Jericho, Gaza District, and so on — In each district, the Palestinian Farmers Union established Palestinian Farmers Association of each district.

For example, in Jenin, we have Palestinian Farmers Association of Jenin Governorate or Jenin District. And that association acts, on the district level, as the umbrella of the smaller union of farmers in that district, where the special needs and rights of farmers in that district can be addressed and tackled by the Farmers Association. This was repeated across all West Bank areas, from the north to the south, and then expanded to Gaza.

We ended up now as a structure of the union having 16 farmers associations in 16 different districts. We are a grass-rooted union, with almost 20 members of farmers joining the union through its Farmers Association.

The focus of our work is advocacy and lobbying for the rights of farmers. We lobby the government to ensure that the policies, legislations, and laws that regulate the agricultural sector are better responsive for farmers’ rights, and help our farmers encounter and face the challenges they are living through and going through because of the Israeli army invasions and the Israeli settlers’ increased violence against farmers.

And these attacks are aiming at emptying the Palestinian farmlands of farmers so, these lands can become an easy hunt for settlement expansion, annexation, and confiscation. To do so, we try to provide the minimum resilient interventions that enable farmers to stay in their farms.

Marc Steiner:  So, given the present situation, what I’ve read that you’ve written, and what I understand, is that the amount of land that Palestinians own on the West Bank, and in Gaza itself, but the West Bank, has diminished extensively. I mean, it exists, but barely.

So, talk about that and how that has diminished, what happened to the land, and what’s happened to the people on the land.

Abbas Milhem:  Now, the current situation, Marc, is unprecedented. It’s speechless. It has never happened in the history of the Palestinian… What you call Israeli [inaudible]. From 1967 until 1993, there was a stage, and after 1994 when the Oslo Agreement was signed is a different stage, and Oct. 7 until now is a totally, completely, terrifying, and tragic stage.

Israel occupying power has shifted from the level of land grabbing, which means confiscating a small piece of land here and there to establish small settlements or settlement outposts, between 1967 until 1993. After Palestinians signed the peace agreement with Israel, Israel felt relaxed because the international pressure weakened and almost disappeared.

This gave the time for the Israeli government to expand settlements. The number of settlements that was established from the time when Palestinians and Israelis signed the peace agreement in 1994 until Oct. 6, one day before this aggression war against Gaza, has jumped from almost 150,000 settlers to 750,000 settlers.

And this expansion in settlers in the West Bank was on the account of Palestinian farmers, by confiscating their land, imposing control on their access to their land, in order to allow more settlers to be deployed, and the expansions of the already-existing settlements, and the establishment of the new settlements from the south of the West Bank in Hebron to the north part in Jenin.

And this, as I said, was on the account of the farmland area that is owned by Palestinian farmers but now controlled and under the control of the Israeli army for the sake and for the benefit of serving Israeli settlers who were brought up from different parts of the world to this area.

Marc Steiner: So, just so people listening to this understand, and we all understand, what was the process? How did Israel… We know after the ’67 war, Israel occupied the West Bank, it occupied Gaza, and went north as well. But what was the process? What was the process that happened? How did Palestinian farmers lose their land? What was the number of the percentage of farms, and where they are today?

Abbas Milhem:  Look, Israeli occupation is a very smart occupation, to be honest. They try to apply all the laws that were in Palestine from different mandates all over history, from the Ottoman Empire date, through British mandate time, through Jordanian era, until the military occupation of the West Bank.

For example, if they want to confiscate a piece of land, they try to look into the Ottoman Empire era laws. If there is a law that would justify the military, the Israeli army control of that land, they apply that plan, that law, on Palestinians.

For example, during the Ottoman Empire period, there was a very great policy by Ottoman Empire stating that, to encourage people to cultivate their land, they did a special policy saying, if you as a farmer do not cultivate your land for continuously three years, your land will be taken and given to another farmer, maybe your neighbor, who will cultivate that land, and you will take a rent, a price for that rent.

This was a very good policy because the Ottoman people at that time, they wanted to encourage the expansion of the green area in Palestine to ensure all lands were cultivated.

Now, Israel is benefiting. For example, one of the ways they apply these techniques, they come to a land in Jordan Valley that is classified as Area C according to the Oslo Agreement. Area C means the land is under the control of the Israeli military forces. And because they impose restrictions on farmers to access their farmland, and they control the water resources, a large part of this land is not cultivated because farmers are unable to go there, because the military would kick them out and force them to leave.

So, if a farmer does not use his land or cultivate the land for three years, they apply the Ottoman Empire period law on that land. But they take it from Abbas as a farmer, and they give it to Shlomo as a settler. They don’t give it to Abbas’s nephew or Abbas’s cousin as a Palestinian farmer. No. They take it, they give it to Shlomo as a settler.

Marc Steiner:  But you’re saying they started this by using laws from the early 20th century, from the Ottoman Empire?

Abbas Milhem:  This is one, yeah. This is one. This is one mechanism.

A second mechanism, if they don’t find an excuse from the Ottoman Empire period law, they try to find any laws or policies that were adopted and endorsed by the British government mandate era. If they don’t find it, they try the Jordanian era. If they don’t find it, they issue a military order by saying, for security reasons, this piece of land is confiscated.

Marc Steiner:  So, in brief, how much land did Palestinian farmers have, and how much have they lost?

Abbas Milhem:  Ah. Now, because the situation now is different, now 60%.

According to the Oslo Agreement, the land was categorized in into three different categories: Area A, which are the housing area in the cities under the full control by the Palestinian government; Area B are the housing areas of villages and towns; Area C are the rest part of Palestinian land, which forms 60% of the entire Palestinian land is categorized as Area C, and under the control of the Israeli military occupation.

In that land, most settlements had been established, and had been expanded and established. Now, Palestinians in Area C almost have no access to almost 85% of this land in Area C. Almost 85% had been under the full control of the Israeli army, who transferred that control to the settler leaders and settlements in the different locations.

This is what we have lost due to this military occupation of Palestine. They are a military occupation, and most of the land was confiscated or annexed based on the military issuing military orders for this land.

Marc Steiner:  So now, your family have been farmers for generations, correct?

Abbas Milhem:  Yeah. Yes.

Marc Steiner:  And you said you’re living around the town of Ramallah?

Abbas Milhem:  Yes.

Marc Steiner:  All right. What has happened to your land, your olive groves, your trees, your farm? What’s happened to you?

Abbas Milhem:  Yeah. I told you I’m in Ramallah, but I’m not from Ramallah. I work in Ramallah. And because of my work, I’ve been living here, but I go regularly to the Jenin area. I’m from a small town in the Jenin District called Kafr Ra’i. I am a farmer who is a son of a farmer who was a son of a farmer who was the son of a farmer, and for the past 500 years, actually, we were farmers only.

And the main agriculture sector in my town are olive trees, because we have no water for irrigation, because the control over water resources are in the hands of the Israeli occupation, and we are not allowed to get access to our natural water resources. That’s why we depend on the rainfall.

Because of that, most of the trees we are planting in our areas, with the absence of water, are our olive trees. I have three olive farms in my town, in my village. All of them are located in the so-called Area B. It’s supposed to be safe, not a risky area, under the control of Palestinian authority.

Since this aggression war against Gaza erupted Oct. 7 until now, settlers benefited from this emergency situation and expanded their attacks and their violence against Palestinian farmers by attacking most of the lands around — Including my farmland — Categorized as Area B.

And for a year until now, I have been unable to visit or access my farmland. Even the families who tried to go to these lands were beaten by settlers, arrested by settlers, harassed by settlers, and all their agricultural tools and equipment were stolen. So, this is the case of my farm. And I’m only one example of hundreds of thousands of examples of other farmers in the West Bank.

Marc Steiner:  So, have the Israelis passed new rules or laws that say you cannot go to your farm, that you’re not allowed into your farm? Or is this part of settler attacks blocking you from your farm?

Abbas Milhem:  It’s the attacks that are blocking me. It’s the settler violence that is blocking me. And those settlers, when they conduct their attacks and their violence against us as farmers, they come with the full protection from the Israeli army, where you can do nothing. And if you even shout or cry or protest, they accuse you of being violent and a terrorist. They either shoot you, the Israeli army, or arrest you.

So, the Israeli army is providing full security, backing up settler attacks, preventing Palestinians from doing anything to resist the prisons or to defend their right of ownership of that land. And in many cases, on many occasions, the harassment was done jointly by settlers and the army against our farmers and against our land.

Now, the number of olive trees that have been cut off or burned from Oct. 7 until now, Marc, exceeds 10,000 olive trees so far. The number of trees that were uprooted from the time of occupation in 1967 until now, 2.5 — Again, I repeat — It’s 2.5 million trees that have been uprooted, destroyed, cut off, or burned, by the army and the settlers from 1967 until now.

We at the union, along with other organizations working on supporting farmers to cultivate their land, have succeeded in planting 3 million trees. But 2.5 million of which were, of course, destroyed, and we still have another half million trees. Not only olive trees. Olive trees, almond, and fruit trees, different types of trees. And the battle is still there.

So, the message of Palestinian farmers is we are resisting the occupation by cultivating our land. We are resisting your harassment by insisting to cultivate our land, because it is the land that we own, and the land we inherited from our fathers, who inherited from their fathers and their grandfathers, and so on.

Now, to respond to these challenges, farmers are using Palestinian Farmers Union, in cooperation with Freedom Farm. Lately, recently, since a year until now, we have cooperated in launching this campaign that is called Freedom Farm, led by the Freedom Farm Campaign in the US. That is calling people to donate and support to help farmers cultivate their farmland with olive trees, providing them with internal irrigation networks that would help supplementary irrigation during the dry season and summertime, and protect that land by providing steel fences that will protect the farmland from wild animals and from settlers’ attacks.

The first, we call it Freedom Farm, the first Freedom Farm that was established in 2018 was Mu’taz Bisharat Farm in the Jordan Valley. And he’s one of the very unique and special farmers there. He was the first one who cooperated with us to establish a Freedom Farm in an area that had been never accessible in the past [inaudible], until now. But because he was insisting, we supported him and established the first farm in that area.

And luckily, we succeeded, and we were very proud to see that these trees we planted survived and were not cut off by settlers. Although the farm is only 50 meters from a nearby settlement in that area called Ru’ei Settlement. Despite that, we succeeded in making that farm survive with the steel fence we provided to that farm, which helped minimize the settler attacks against that one.

And once this Where Olive Trees Weep movie was launched, and there were many viewers in the world viewing that movie — And I would like to seize the moment from your program and thank all the viewers who watched Where Olive Trees Weep, and thanks all who worked to produce that movie. These viewers, with the money they contributed, helped us to establish four Freedom Farms, two of them for two women farmers and two for male farmers in Palestine, from the money that came from the viewers who viewed this movie.

That’s why we’re calling upon more viewers to watch that video, and more contributions and funds to come, in order to be able to establish as many Freedom Farms as possible. Because by doing Freedom Farms, Marc, is very important here to notice that establishing a Freedom Farm has two goals, two objectives.

The first one, protect that land from being confiscated. As I said in the beginning, the cultivated land is protected, almost. And second, we help farmers generate income for their livelihoods. And those are the two main goals of doing that.

But to make it difficult for confiscation or for settler violence, we provide the fencing and the internal irrigation network that supports and helps the trees to naturally grow and give fruits faster.

Marc Steiner:  So, a couple of quick questions about that. I mean, A, how long does it take an olive tree to grow before you can harvest?

Abbas Milhem:  Yes.

Marc Steiner:  How long?

Abbas Milhem:  Without irrigation, it will need five years. With irrigation, in the second year of plantation, that tree will start fruiting. So, we are buying almost two to three years of time to allow that tree to give fruits because of the irrigation system.

That’s why we insisted with Freedom, together we agreed to allow natural and faster growth of the trees to fruit and generate income for farmers. We provide these Freedom Farms with an internal irrigation system. And this irrigation system would be only used during the dry season and the hot summer. So, we adapt what we call supplementary irrigation.

Because if the tree gets thirsty because of this climate change in Palestine, water is scarce in climate change, rain water is getting lower and lower, so we need to compensate the tree by irrigating that tree. If you irrigate a tree and perform environmentally friendly farming practices, that tree will fruit in two years from the time of plantation.

And by doing this, we are really buying time for farmers. Instead of waiting five years, he waits only two years. And our system, our Freedom Farm, is smart in a way that even farmers do not need to wait two years to generate income. Because of the internal irrigation system we provide in these Freedom Farms, Marc, farmers can cultivate what we call in-between farming, like vegetable production, like field crops that generate seasonal income every year. And from this income, farmers can use that income to look after their Freedom Farms and to secure some money for their livelihood, food security needs.

Marc Steiner:  So, a couple of questions here. And I know that we’ve been talking to Cyrus Copeland, who you’re talking about, who helped create this in Palestine, but it raises some questions.

The first one is, so what is to stop the Israeli government, and/or settlers, from tearing down the fences? From destroying the farms that Freedom Farms build, to put Palestinian farmers back to work? Because I can see just listening to you and seeing your ebullience, your joy in what the work is, in resisting and also being a farmer creating these farms. But what’s to stop the Israelis from tearing them down?

Abbas Milhem:  There is nothing guaranteed as long as the occupation is there. 100% there is no guarantee. But we, out of experience, for the past 30 years, from [inaudible] until now, we know which areas are riskier than other areas.

Although, Area C, that 60% of the entire Palestinian land categorized as Area C, but the level of risk is different even within that area. There is what we call — And maybe Cyrus, I told him about this. There is a red area. Red area for us means that accessibility is almost 90% risky. If you cultivate there, most likely what you cultivate will be destroyed by a percentage of almost more than 80%.

Another area is categorized, in our experience, as yellow areas. It is risky, 50-50. But if you do something on the ground, it might stay with a percentage of 50-50. It’s risky, but doable.

And there are areas within Area C that are far enough from settlements, and less risky, and categorized or colored as light yellow areas.

We in Freedom Farm, Treedom and PFU, started with the light yellow colored and less risky areas. Why? Because we want to build a successful model where all these olive farms can stay. And once they stay, survive — And they are surviving until now. We have, so far, planted 10 Freedom Farms in Palestine, four of which were, as I told you, from the Where Olive Trees Weep video and the viewers of that video.

So far, we established 10 farms from them, and we are, inshallah, eager, and looking for another set of Freedom Farms to be established from the Where Olive Trees Weep near to Mu’taz Bisharat Farm in the Jordan Valley, which is a less risky area.

Once these Freedom Farms survive, and they are surviving — And they will continue to survive, inshallah, because they are in a less risky area — This will create a pact on the ground, and even the army and the settlers will see that there are trees surrounded and cultivated in that area. So, if you expand with another set of farms there, that will not be noticed that much.

Marc Steiner:  So, to conclude here with this, given the political situation at the moment, with the war on Gaza, which is also the war in the West Bank, that Palestinians are being killed and jailed in the West Bank as well, in the midst of this, there’s these Treedom Farms growing, and you’re trying to push back by building a community and building agriculture and building work.

I’m curious, politically, what do you think happens next, then? Because you’re building, and other farmers are trying to build a world out of the rubble that Israel created by destroying the farms in the beginning, and now there’s this war going on where close to 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza alone.

So, talk to us about where you think the next steps are for you, and everybody else in the West Bank. Where do you see how the war will affect all the work you’re doing and where it goes next?

Abbas Milhem:  For Palestinian farmers, it’s different from the outside world vision and view. For us, we have no option except to continue going to our farms every day despite the harassment we are subject to.

In my farm, the one I told you about before, for example, all my family members and farmers, they go there every day. They get harassed, they get beaten, they get out, they come back the second day, and so on. There are farmers who lost their lives on their farm. Like what happened with Bilal Saleh, for example, from a Saudi town last year. Olive harvest season, while he was harvesting his crops, he was shot to death by settlers in front of his wife and children.

But none of the farmers of that town stopped going back to their farms. This is the way we are resisting. And maybe it looks like a Hollywood movie? It is a Hollywood movie [Steiner laughs]. It is Hollywood. Farmers are going there. And this is… For a farmer, it’s very difficult to lose your olive farm.

Marc Steiner:  Yes.

Abbas Milhem:  Olive farm, and olives in general, and the olive tree, symbolizes identity. Symbolizes life and the source of life for the largest farming community in Palestine. It is religious. The olive tree is mentioned in the Holy Quran. For most Palestinians, who are Muslims, there is a special verse in the Holy Quran about the olive tree and the symbols, what that olive tree symbolizes. It’s religious, it’s peaceful, it is patriotic, it is identity, it is a source of life.

So, for Palestinians, an olive tree is their life. The way they sacrifice their life, would sacrifice their life to defend that olive tree. And we are succeeding. Despite all the attacks, we are still going to our land.

Now, with the Freedom Farms, as I said from the beginning, the mechanism we are using is way different because of the Oct. 7 [attack] until now. We are in the level of going to the less risky areas that are at least 300 meters in the radar far from settlements, and Palestinians can access and can protect it.

It’s not that easy for settlers to come that far to attack these farms, unless they come in groups and with the Israeli army all the time. But they don’t come on a daily basis. It’s tiring, even for the army, because there are so many settlements, and so many Palestinian citizen villages. They need triple the number of the Israeli army to provide security for all settlers attacking these farms.

But all communities, local villages and towns are there to protect their land, and they go and they cultivate and they practice their farming.

And the slogan we have in the union, we have a list where you can read that slogan, “If you uproot one tree, we will cultivate ten.” [Steiner laughs]. This is the slogan across the Farmers Union, and the members across the West Bank and Gaza.

And now in Gaza, Marc, the situation is different. The entire agriculture sector had been —

Marc Steiner:  Destroyed.

Abbas Milhem:  …Completely, entirely destroyed. All animals, livestock sector in Gaza, is 100% demolished and destroyed, while vegetable production is 85% destroyed. There are still some number of greenhouses that are still producing vegetables there.

And we purchase this produce from farmers, our farmers in Gaza, and we make food parcels that are distributed for internally displaced people in Gaza. But of course, the amount of production, it’s only 15%. And the need there for food aid in Gaza is at its maximum.

So, we are trying to do something, building models here and there, and inshallah, this war will be over one day, hopefully, and we will build back again the agriculture sector in Gaza, and Gaza will be nicer and prettier than before.

Marc Steiner:  I want to say one thing as we close here. Abbas Milhem, this has been a pleasure to talk with you, and to see somebody who is a farmer who is fighting for the future, fighting for the freedom of Palestinian people as well, to build a future, and you do it with such joy and effervescence. It is a pleasure to see and a pleasure to experience. So, I thank you so much for taking your time with us today.

Abbas Milhem:  Thank you, Marc. And just to end up here by saying, we have belief deep in our hearts as farmers the future is ours. Occupiers and settlers will be part of the past. Believe me, this will happen. And we will serve together. If not us, then our children, and maybe sons, and so on in the future.

Marc Steiner:  The long view. Thank you so much.

Abbas Milhem:  Thank you. Thank you, Marc. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank Abbas Milhem for joining us today from Ramallah in Palestine, and Cyrus Copeland, who produced the film Where Olive Trees Weep, for introducing us to Abbas Milhem.

And thanks to Cameron Grandino for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich, Producer Rosette Sewali, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please, let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therrealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thank you Abbas Milhem for joining us today and for the joy he brings to his work. And as he said, if settlers tear down an olive tree, they will grow 10. So, for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Israel’s almost year-long genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has brought many long-simmering questions of politics and identity within the international Jewish community to the fore. What does it mean to be Jewish? Is ‘never again’ a statement primarily based in nationalism or in an ethic of universal justice? Speaking from his experience organizing Canada’s Jewish community against Israel’s genocide, Corey Balsam of Independent Jewish Voices of Canada joins The Marc Steiner Show for an extensive discussion on what it means to be an anti-Zionist Jew today.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.

Today, there’s massive demonstrations going on in Israel against the war in Gaza to bring the hostages home, as well as ending the slaughter in Gaza. But the worldwide tide is turning against Israel. This Israeli illegal murderous occupation of the West Bank and the slaughter and devastation taking place in Gaza allows the rise of antisemitism in the world, antisemitism, which always lurks just below the surface. It’s always here. Neo-fascism is on the rise in the world and is in control of the government of Israel, and we face a very dangerous, complex, uncertain future.

My guest today is Corey Balsam. He’s coordinator of the Independent Jewish Voices of Canada, to bring his experienced analysis about this war in Gaza and the growing movement against it in Canada, in the world, and Jewish community. And he’s worked for Oxfam. He lived in Palestine for three-and-a-half years, and we really do welcome him to the show.

Good to have you here, Corey.

Corey Balsam:  Pleasure to be with you.

Marc Steiner:  There’s so many places to start this, but in all my experience in years of working around this issue, being part of the anti-occupation movement since the late ’60s, there’s something about this particular moment that is really treacherous and dangerous, that we’re on some kind of precipice. This is a bit different with this far-right government in Israel and the slaughter taking place in Gaza. I’d like to hear your analysis of where we are and why you think we’re at this place, and where you think this takes us?

Corey Balsam:  Yeah, really good question. I completely agree with you that we’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve been involved for quite a long time. I never imagined it would get this bad. It’s a genocide, what’s happening in Gaza.

And I think with the fog of “war”, we’re seeing the Israeli government move on a lot of their objectives with respect to the West Bank as well. So we’re really at… Yeah, a precipice is a good way to put it.

We’ve also never seen such a movement in response. I think, in terms of anti-war movements, this is definitely a historic one where, obviously, the campus protests and the weekly demonstrations with tens, hundreds of thousands of people around the world protesting, and we’re seeing some movement there. And I think in Canada, I can talk about some of the developments here.

But I think Israel has been so emboldened over the years. They know that they have the US veto. They’ve tested the waters for quite a long time and have seen that there’s really been no response or very little response, mostly just words. So they’re just continuing.

I think those who were in the leadership there, unfortunately, are quite frankly genocidal. We’ve known about them for a long time, and I lived in the West Bank for quite a while, and I saw the settlers, and I saw the stars of David on Palestinian homes and things like that, which really was something that shocked me in those days. And now we’re just seeing them able to enact what it is that, at one point, radical fringe in Israeli society has wanted to do.

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Corey Balsam:  And what scares me, really, I don’t know if some of your readers or you, Marc, saw, there was a podcast in Israel, an English language podcast called Two Nice Jewish Boys.

Marc Steiner:  Oh, yeah.

Corey Balsam:  And there’s clips of that podcast that have gone viral where they say, basically, we talk to everyday Israelis. Basically, the street is saying, if you gave us a red button to wipe out all the Palestinians, we would do it in an instant without thinking.

So what’s really scaring me is the mainstreaming of the genocidal thinking, and, to some extent, connections with that in the Jewish community here and elsewhere, not just the Jewish community. I think broader Zionist audiences are latching onto that. I’m not saying that’s everyone or even represents the majority, but I am quite concerned about the level of complacency and support despite, of course, the mass movements, which, again, we can talk about.

And so yeah, it paints a pretty dark picture for the future. I am inspired by the movements. I don’t think this can go on forever. I don’t think the occupation, the apartheid, all of that can go on forever. Like they say, it usually gets worse before it gets better. So hopefully soon we’ll be on the track for it getting better.

Marc Steiner:  So I’m really curious, two things, semi-connected here, is your own sojourn as a Jewish man into opposing the occupation and opposing what’s happening in Israel, and where that came from for you? Let’s just start there and stop, and I’ll do the second part after that.

Corey Balsam:  It’s a big question, Marc. I’ve been asked this a number of times.

Marc Steiner:  I’m sure you have. I have too. I understand completely.

Corey Balsam:  Yeah. Where did it start? I went to a very multicultural, multi-ethnic school. I had a Palestinian friend from the age of… What was it? Maybe seven or something like that. So that helped. The politics weren’t there to help break down some possible ideas that I might have about Palestinians wanting to kill Jews, me in particular.

I later got in, in part because I… Actually, so I was telling Marc before the show that I practice Capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian art form, which is very much rooted in resistance and struggle against racism and slavery and things like that. And through starting that, I connected with a lot of people that were very open to the world and had, I think, some quite progressive politics. So that, I think, helped me think about things in a different way.

And eventually, again, it’s a long story, there’s a lot that went into it, but I ended up taking a position to come out and say, as a Jewish person, I’m going to use what I know. I’m going to use the platform that’s given to me to speak out and to try to push the power that has the ability to make the change, the Israeli government, and by extension, Jewish communities around the world to take action.

Marc Steiner:  As I was thinking about the work that you all do in Canada and reading about it, and also the struggle going on across the planet and what’s happening in Israel-Palestine right now. As I said at the beginning of the program, antsemitism is always lurking below the surface. It runs deep in human society. People love to hate Jews. That’s a reality.

And what I often say sometimes, people in conversations, I speak, is that, but for the first time in our history as Jews, we’re the ones unleashing it, hard as that is to say, because of what’s happening in Israel and Palestine.

And I find that sometimes it’s something you really have to wrestle with, with family, with friends, with people you know. Why are you taking this position? How could you be against Israel” Right? I’m sure you experienced that.

So I’m curious, for you, how those two things interact, opposing this occupation and this slaughtering in Gaza, and also realizing that antisemitism runs deep and how we wind ourselves through that murky water?

Corey Balsam:  So a big part of what we do with Independent Jewish Voices is make the case that you can stand up for Palestinian liberation and you can also be staunchly against and actively oppose antisemitism. So we lead workshops with a lot of movement allies and unions and other groups to really help people understand the history of antisemitism, what it looks like, what it looked like in the past, what it looks like today, and also what is not antisemitism.

Because so much of what the movement faces and those who speak out for Palestinian human rights or liberation are accusations of antisemitism to shut them down.

We’ve, in many ways, taken a leadership role globally in the fight against the IHRA definition, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, which has been a core part of the global strategy with involving the Israeli government and pro-Israel lobby groups to shut down and silence the criticism of Israel and movements in support of Palestine. So I think it’s really important to understand those distinctions.

And yeah, a lot of people will say, oh, we’re Validating the antisemites or that sort of thing. I think we’re doing actually so much just being at the protest and having a Jewish voice that’s like, we’re Jews, we’re proud Jews, and we’re standing up for Palestine. I think that does so much to oppose antisemitism and to allow people to go in that direction.

Because antisemitism is about conspiracy theories for the most part, right? Jews controlling the world and controlling our politicians and this and that. And I think what we need to continue to explain to people and to show is that Israel is not Jews. Zionism is not Jews. These things are distinct.

Obviously, many Jews are Zionists, unfortunately, today, and hopefully less and less as they see what’s unfolding as a result in Palestine. But these things are different and it’s not, again, because of Jews. So yeah, that’s, I think, what we need to continue saying.

And these things really undermine movements. I’m reading a book now called Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism.

Marc Steiner:  Shane Burley’s book?

Corey Balsam:

Yeah, Shane Burley.

Marc Steiner:  We’ll be interviewing him with that book in about a week. Yeah.

Corey Balsam:  Oh, amazing. Yeah, I know. It’s great. Great. It’s a really important [inaudible]. Also to think about how to oppose antisemitism in a time of Israeli genocide.

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Corey Balsam:  What does that mean? How to negotiate those conversations. Obviously we should be prioritizing, in my view, the genocide. That is the big issue right now. Are some Jews facing antisemitism? For sure. Is it, in many cases, like on campus, for instance, are those accusations weaponized to shut down protesters? Yes. So it takes a lot of nuance to be able to navigate this terrain. That’s something that we’re forced to reckon with and to deal with. And it does take up a lot of our time, but I think it’s important work.

Marc Steiner:  It is important. I also wrestle with how we as Jews, how the oppressed can so easily become the oppressor.

Corey Balsam:  I think our most famous member, probably, is Gabor Maté.

Marc Steiner:  Oh, yeah, sure.

Corey Balsam:  He speaks a lot about these types of things. And for me, when I see what’s happening, in no way do I want to absolve the Israeli government, Israelis participating in this, of responsibility, but I think, how did we get to this? Where did this mentality come from? It came from the Holocaust and from years of Jews being oppressed, that whole idea of cycle of violence.

Gabor says when people ask, Jews, of all people, how could they do this? How could they be doing this to the Palestinian people? And his response is like, how could they not, given the history, in many ways? It’s very explainable, I think, from a psychological perspective.

And so our job also as Jews engaged in this is to really try to undo some of that. One thing that I really resented growing up and learning about the Holocaust and antisemitism was that the way it’s so often taught is not to heal, not to heal and move on and focus on never again for anyone.

In most institutions, at least from my experience, it’s mostly about never again for us, and another Holocaust could be around the corner at any moment, be on guard, be afraid, be afraid. Rather than, again, about healing and trying to think about tikkun olam and how to make sure these things don’t happen again to anyone.

And we’re seeing that play out today. In Toronto, we’re now seeing these armed or security groups that are popping up, and even the Jewish Federation is announcing all these measures for security. And it really just, I think, keeps people in the state of perpetual fear. And when you’re in that state of perpetual fear, all alleys lead to Zionism and supporting Israel as our savior.

When in fact, and I agree with you, that’s what’s contributing to the anger, obviously. I don’t think, for the most part, it’s anger against Jews. I think it’s anger against Israel. There are people that do not make that distinction, unfortunately.

Marc Steiner:  Unfortunately. There are many of them, as well. So what do you think, in terms of being an organizer in the Jewish world and large world around Israel-Palestine, and we’re watching what’s taking place now, where do you politically see the path forward? And your role as well, and the role of Jews to help stop the slaughter?

Corey Balsam:  Yeah, I wish I had the answer for you, Marc, in terms of —

Marc Steiner:  You don’t have an answer? No, I’m just kidding [both laugh].

Corey Balsam:  The political path forward. We said immediately after Oct. 7, there’s no way of resolving this militarily. Oct. 7 came out of a context in which Palestinians were pushed to desperation, they, especially in Gaza, were kept in an open air prison, denied access to the world and basics. So it’s no surprise that there would’ve been an explosion like that.

So what is the response? One thing not to do, like the Canadian government, is tell Israel, well, they have the right to defend themselves. That’s basically giving them carte blanche to do what they did, and now we’re almost a year later.

The way forward is actually having the world say, you know what? We need to actually address the core issues here that led to Oct. 7 and have led to all this anger, and pursue justice. Justice, justice, we shall pursue. I think that’s really the only path.

And I don’t have a particular agenda as to one state, two state, red state, blue state [Steiner laughs]. I think any system, any state needs to be one that is, or any system of states, where there’s no group that’s oppressed, there’s no group that’s dominating, or a state is not geared around dominating the other group, which is the case right now.

So I think that’s really the only way, and there has to be pressure. Obviously, we’ve now seen international court decisions. We’ve seen movement in the General Assembly, but nothing really binding and nothing really threatening the Israeli government. So they know that. They know that they can get out of it.

And in terms of reputation, I think they’ve sacrificed that. For a long time, I think Israel was much more worried about their reputation. At this point, I think they’ve sacrificed their reputation, in many ways, because they know that there won’t be consequences anyway.

So there needs to be consequence. There needs to be sanctions, and we need to push towards some sort of resolution, or else this is just going to continue.

Marc Steiner:  As one of the leaders and founders of the Independent Jewish Voices in Canada, how do you see that movement growing, and do you see it growing?

Corey Balsam:  Oh, yeah. So before Oct. 7, IJV was, arguably, the biggest grassroots Palestine solidarity organization in the country. Now, I think it’s still probably the case as a national organization, but the level of mobilization at the local level across the country, it’s totally unprecedented. We’re seeing this all around the world. So many different organizations, so many different people that are engaging.

Just on the Jewish side, we’ve almost doubled in numbers. We had 13 local chapters active on Oct. 6. I think we have 23 or 24 now.

Marc Steiner:  Really?

Corey Balsam:  We have a chapter on Cape Breton Island.

Marc Steiner:  Really?

Corey Balsam:  With a rabbi.

Marc Steiner:  With a rabbi [laughs].

Corey Balsam:  I didn’t even know there were Jews there [Steiner laughs]. So really, it’s incredible to see. And obviously the pros or lobby groups are trying to downplay our numbers and our role, but I think it is just growing. We’re hiring right now. We have a few staff. Our organization is mostly volunteers. We hired for this job last year in September, I think we got six applicants. This year, we got 36 applicants.

Marc Steiner:  Wow.

Corey Balsam:  Extremely strong candidates. So I think there’s a lot of interest. There’s a lot of engagement, especially amongst the younger generations, university students. So that bodes well for the future, to some extent. That’s one thing that we can be optimistic about in this very dismal reality that we’re living.

Marc Steiner:  And it is. I don’t know how this ends either in Israel-Palestine, this moment without a US government or other entities, Canadian government stepping in saying, no, no more guns, no more arms, bringing you to the table. Come to Camp David. We’re going to stop it. We have to figure out a future.

That is something I think, in some ways, for people like you and me, like us, to come up and say, this is what we have to do. This is what the next step has to be. Is it a bi-national state? Is it a Commonwealth? Is it one state? We have to have a solution. It has to end. We cannot become this murderous people slaughtering innocent Palestinians. We can’t be that.

Corey Balsam:  I don’t like to associate with that. People, obviously, there’s a big tradition of Jews [inaudible], but I agree with you that we need to push towards a resolution. It’s almost a year. We need to turn the tide on this and push towards justice.

In the US, there’s a very strong campaign to cut or to make weapons conditional. We have a campaign in Canada called Arms Embargo Now.

Marc Steiner:  Called What?

Corey Balsam:  Arms Embargo Now is our —

Marc Steiner:  Arms Embargo Now. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Corey Balsam:  Yeah. It’s a Canadian coalition that’s pushing similar demands. Obviously, we don’t have anywhere near the same amount of backing, financial or military backing of Israel as the US does.

But we’ve actually seen some movement on that, and that’s really promising. Just yesterday actually, the Foreign Minister announced that they’ve suspended 30 existing arms permits to Israel and are opposing — We’ll see what actually happens with this — But they’re opposing a shipment of arms from a Quebec company through the US that’s destined for Israel. And that’s the result of the organizing that’s happening right now.

It’s also the result, I think, of, actually, in my riding or electoral district, there’s a by-election now, and the NDP, a center-left Party has a candidate who’s saying vote for him to stop the genocide in Gaza. And that’s actually something that’s quite in play politically. So I think they’re realizing that this is an election issue, that this is something that interests a lot of people, and they don’t want to be complicit.

There’s also a legal case against the Canadian government regarding their sale of weapons to Israel and then violating their own laws. So I think that’s a good avenue to take. I think there are various avenues to take.

Another thing that we’ve really been focusing on are the charities, and we actually just had maybe our biggest victory ever over the summer in the revocation of the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund of Canada. And the JNF is really, at the core, I’m sure, Marc, you’re familiar with the JNF.

Marc Steiner:  I was shocked when I read in preparing for our conversation today that that actually happened.

Corey Balsam:  It actually happened. Now they’re appealing it. They released about 360 pages of documents going back decades, actually, discussing possible revocation or issues with the JNF and the government.

And the final document doesn’t really get into some of the issues that we were raising around their support for the IDF and for the settlements and things like that, but that’s all in there. And I think it played a big role in getting to that place now.

So of course, we hope that sticks, but that’s a big blow to, I think, the Zionist movement globally. There are about 40-something fundraising branches of the JNF around the world.

And for those listeners who don’t know, maybe just to give you a sense of what that is, the JNF was established in the beginning of the 1900s to fundraise to colonize Palestine and establish Jewish settlements. They went on to become the caretakers of the forest where they actually covered up something like 90 Palestinian villages with forests so the villagers couldn’t return. And they’ve continued in that same vein in the West Bank, helping the settler movement and helping the IDF and things like that.

So it goes back quite a long way, and it’s really a core organization to the whole Zionist idea and the idea of a Jewish-dominant apartheid state, essentially.

So we’re quite happy with that. And we’re pushing on other charities now too, that are funding extreme right organizations in Israel that are supporting settlements and the IDF. Obviously, in the US, you have a lot of that as well. Getting all sorts of calls from organizations and activists in the US and around the world saying, how did you do it with the JNF [Steiner laughs]? We want to do it here too. So I think that’s an angle, as well, that’s really important to be pushing on.

Marc Steiner:  That was a huge victory. And I’m glad we have this connection. And I’m also looking forward to many more conversations and getting you together with other activists around the country, this country, your country, the world, to continue this conversation, and in Palestine-Israel as well. Because it’s critical to the future of the world, I think, the danger of conflagration emanating from that, that could affect the entire planet. It’s huge and really important.

And so I appreciate you and the courage you have for standing up in the face of serious opposition for members of our community. And so Corey Balsam, thanks for joining us, and thank you so much for the work that you do.

Corey Balsam:  My pleasure, Marc.

Marc Steiner:  Oh, before we let you go, let folks know how to get in touch with you and how to get in touch with your organization in Canada?

Corey Balsam:  Sure. So it’s Independent Jewish Voices Canada. You can find us on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook. Our website is ijvcanada.org. So yeah, feel free to reach out. And of course, if you’re here and you want to get involved or join, you’ll find all that information on the website.

Marc Steiner:  And I would just say as we go, we’re actually taping this on the 11th of September, which is a significant date in its own right. And so thank you so much, Corey, for the work you do and for joining us here today.

Corey Balsam:  My pleasure. Thanks, Marc.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank Corey Balsam for joining us today. His perspectives are always enlightening, and it’s critically important to hear the voices of Jewish resistance to the occupation of the West Bank and the strangulation and slaughter now taking place in Gaza.

And here in the studio, let me thank Cameron Granadino for running the program, audio editor, Alina Nehlich, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therrealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thank you to Corey Balsam for joining us today and all the work that he does. And please keep listening to all the reporting and stories we’re producing here at The Real News about the struggle in the Holy Land. So from the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

France was the birthplace of modern democracy, and it may well be the start of its end. After the surprise victory of the left New Popular Front in this year’s elections, President Macron has betrayed democracy in a deal with the right to make Michel Barnier Prime Minister. Axel Persson, General Secretary of France’s CGT Railroad Union, joins The Marc Steiner Show for a post-mortem of the election, its aftermath, and how the deterioration of French politics reflects global trends in the rise of the right and the erosion of democracy.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us.

Once again, welcome to another episode of The Rise of the Right, and we go back to France, and we go back to a conversation with Axel Persson, who was a train driver in France, general secretary of the CGT Railroad Union in Trappes, and joins us once again.

Axel, good to see you. Welcome.

Axel Persson:  Thank you, great to see you again. Thank you for having me.

Marc Steiner:  It’s always great to talk to you. I was really happy when I heard we were going to do this again. I promise, the next time we’ll do it, I’m going to fly into Paris to do it [laughs].

Axel Persson:  Yes, with pleasure.

Marc Steiner:  Let me just begin with a broad question here. What is the political dynamic in France at this moment that is allowing for the rise of the right, and to the leader of the country, Macron, to fall in line with them? What is going on, and what is that dynamic?

Axel Persson:  Well, the current dynamic is, unfortunately, one that is being observed in many industrial countries in Europe, and including in the United States, as has been manifested, for example, by the first presidency of Trump, or his attempt to gain another term for the upcoming elections, which is actually a reflection of the rise and strengthening of the far right in the political landscape, but also within the very deep fabrics of French society.

This dynamic, of course, it didn’t start with the last elections. It has been a long-going process for the past 20, 30 years, perhaps, in France. One could argue exactly when this dynamic really started.

The rise of the far right in France is the result of growing disgust amongst the general population, and particularly within the working class, of the disgust over the two main political blocs, the traditional left, the traditional right, that has been basically taking turns at managing the system and implementing policies that are hostile towards working people — And, as far as the left is concerned, regular betrayals of the promises they have been making to their electorate.

Which has led to the rise of the far right, which is also a consequence of the weakening of the traditional labor movement, which has not disappeared, by any means, but that has been weakened by these past experiences of left-wing governments in power that have betrayed its electorate.

This has led to the rise of the far right, and, of course, that has been fueled by an ongoing orchestrated political campaign that has been funded by very powerful forces in French society, including some of the richest people, billionaires like Vincent Bolloré, who is one of the major CEOs of the country, who have been methodically funding, for example, media empires in France to promote a racist agenda, and have been using the media part they’ve been basically building for the past decade now to instill racist, xenophobic ideas in the general population in order to convince a large swath of the population that all the issues — And I mean really all the issues, whether it be housing, whether it be unemployment, whether it be even job precarity, insufficient wages, dysfunctional public services, or even, in some aspects, insecurity in some neighborhoods, all of it is pinned not on the capitalist system, but on immigration. Everything is linked to immigration and foreigners.

If your housing is bad, if your social housing is bad, it’s because an immigrant has taken it. If your wage is insufficient, it’s because there are illegal aliens, as they say, who are doing the job for less, or foreigners in other countries who are competing against you. If there’s insecurity, of course it’s because it’s immigrants. If you just feel bad in general, they’ve managed to all link it to immigration somehow. It’s basically just racism.

Of course, this racism is not new in France. France is a historical colonial power, so it didn’t start 20 years ago. But they have been able to strengthen themselves also because of the weakening of the historical labor movement, which has historically been very strong in France.

It’s still strong by many aspects, if you compare it to other countries, but the counter society, the French labor movement that has historically been able to build in the working-class neighborhoods, in the workplaces, has been weakened, and its capacity to produce a counter society, a counter discourse in order to maintain working-class political ideology alive against that has been weakened, and the far right has managed to take the offensive and drive a wedge into society.

That’s the situation right now. And Emmanuel Macron is, of course, being heavily influenced by that, and is leaning more and more towards the right. That is just the general political situation in France.

Marc Steiner:  Let me put some of the things you said together here and explore them in a little bit more depth. One of the things that I think is a dynamic across the globe is the weakening of working-class movements, and the element of racism that also takes place in countries. It seems to me, the way you described this, that this is a huge dynamic in Paris.

This maybe is a completely ridiculous digression, but when I was young, Paris was always this place, France was a place that exiles from Africa and Asia could come and feel freer, and be part of a different kind of society. But now, with this immigration from northern Africa and other places around the globe, former colonies, the racism has come bubbling up.

Talk a bit about how you see that synergy between the disappointment about how the left has responded to this, and the depth of racism you find in France itself.

Axel Persson:  Well, the immigration, of course, is not new in France, as I said, especially given the fact that France is a historical colonial power. It has built its economic power, like for example, Great Britain did, it was built on a colonial empire. After the colonialism more or less ended — And more or less because neocolonialism, of course, succeeded it — Much of the French workforce has been, especially the big industrial cities like Paris or Marseille, or the big major industrial areas in France have been relying heavily on what they call workforce originating from immigration, which is basically just immigrant workers, but that’s just a fancy French term for it. French capitalism has relied heavily on it to build its factories, to build the public transport system, to build the roads.

They have always been part of French society, but they were organized at the time when they arrived massively. It was also the time where the French labor movement was massively organized within the CGT, my trade union, which it still is to some extent. Most importantly — Well, not most importantly, but also as importantly I would say, the influence of the French Communist Party was massive at the time, because it was a mass party with millions of members at the peak of its strength, running and controlling municipalities, more than 10,000 cities in France. It was, at one point actually, the biggest single party in Parliament.

But not just an electoral force. What is really important to comprehend is that it built a counter society in the areas it controlled. Whether it be in the workplaces where it controlled the unions, whether it be in the working -class neighborhoods where the party controlled even your local soccer club, the collective of people who would help children to do their homework at work were run by communist militants.

If you had a problem in your social housing, there would be a communist cell that would help you take care of the problem, and you would even go to holidays, if you couldn’t afford them, through the means the Communist Party had implemented through the mayors, through the municipalities it controlled, or through the funds the union had secured at the workplace specifically for these aspects, which meant that there was this complete counter society with its own media, its own structures that could implement these ideas of solidarity and anti-racism, basically.

It doesn’t mean that everything was perfect, because there were many contradictions in these areas, but it meant that there was this identity and very strong class consciousness that kept the far right not nonexistent, but much more marginal than it was today, and quite marginal within the working class especially. It doesn’t mean that the entire working class, of course, were like pure idealists. That doesn’t exist, of course. The far right, at least politically, was completely marginalized within the working class.

And that is what has changed since then. It’s not immigration. Actually, there are less people coming in and immigrating in France nowadays than, for example, 60 or 70 years ago. There’s much less, actually. What has changed now, though, is that given the weakening of this historical Communist Party — Which is, in many aspects, its own fault — The far right has basically managed to drive a wedge into the working class without finding this counter organized society.

Many of the areas where the far right makes its highest scores are the former strongholds of the Communist Party, especially in northern France. It’s not the only thing, but that’s one of the most significant manifestations of how these dynamics have changed.

This is basically what the working class is facing now. It’s the weakening of the class consciousness, that is basically the whole gist of it. It’s the weakening of the class consciousness and the organizations that kept it alive. It doesn’t mean it has disappeared. It means that the organizations implementing it in a concrete manner have been weakened severely, and it has given the far right, basically, a boulevard which to develop itself.

Marc Steiner:  It’s a very complex situation, and we only have so much time. I think we’re going to have to do a whole series here to really bear down into what’s going on. France, in many ways, to me is emblematic of the rise of the right, and the dangers that the entire planet is facing.

As you just described, the communist movements, the Communist Party and the left of the Socialist Party in France were the bulwark in the underground that fought the Nazis, organizing workers and standing up to them. There would’ve been no resistance without the communists and the socialists in World War II, of any significance.

I’m wondering, what’s your analysis about why it fell apart? As you’ve said before, the left movement in France is not living up to its potential with Mélenchon, the new leader of this united left. The Communist Party has dwindled, and the right has really risen around Le Pen and others. It just skyrocketed.

Give us your analysis of why that’s happened. Let me stop here, and I’ll have a closing question, but let me just let you explore that for a moment.

Axel Persson:  This development started in the ’80s, actually, quite specifically. The beginning of the decline was in the ’80s. Of course, it was a quite long process, but it started in the ’80s, specifically with the Mitterrand governments, with François Mitterrand, who got elected in 1981, and who actually got elected for another term. He was president between 1981 and 1995.

Marc Steiner:  Who was a socialist.

Axel Persson:  Yeah, a socialist, a social democrat.

Marc Steiner:  Right, social democrat.

Axel Persson:  A social democrat. And the first three years of his mandate for his first period actually quite lived up to the promises they had made to the electorate. Starting in 1983 — And this is important in the fact that the Communist Party was associated with the government, not only did it participate and give it support in Parliament, but its ministers took part in the government, and then were associated with all the decisions, and defended them, even the unpopular ones.

In 1983, there was what they called the tournant de la rigueur in French, which we could translate into the austerity update. They’re saying basically, what we have been doing has been way too generous towards the workers, and we are not in line with the demands of the financial institutions of the French corporate world, and the public finances of the state are being under attack, basically. We need to re-evaluate our policies in order to satisfy the demands of the European Union institutions, of the international financial institutions, and also, and most importantly, the French corporations.

They basically made a U-turn, and all that they had done was basically dismantled, in many aspects, by themselves. And then, when the right took a turn and won the next elections, they continued it. But when they came back to power, it continued as well.

That was the start of the decline of the French labor movement. It hasn’t disappeared, by any means, but that was when it declined.

Marc Steiner:  Let me ask you this piece in the time we have left here. What’s the political reality that has Macron uniting with the right wing, the far right, to create a government, and probably having new elections, and not with this massive left-wing presence in the Parliament? Why did he unite right instead of left?

Axel Persson:  Well, because what’s interesting, though, that’s why I’m insisting that it’s not dead by any means. The last election, the snap elections that were organized because Macron had decided it, he was the one who dissolved Parliament, we could say were won by the Popular Front, the new Popular Front that is a coalition of the working-class historical parties, but also an alliance with trade unions such as myself and many other associations like anti-Zionist Jewish organizations, feminist organizations, associations invested against the police violence, for example.

It was a broad Popular Front that won the elections but did not secure an own majority of seats. It secured the most seats in Parliament as a coalition, but not its own majority, which gave the possibility to Macron, of course, to see who can build the coalition to have a majority within Parliament.

It was quite clear that, given the demands of the Popular Front, which was to abolish the pension reform he had implemented last year, which was to raise significantly the minimum wage, and which was to invest significant amounts in public services, that it was out of the question for Emmanuel Macron, and that he would, by any means necessary, to paraphrase Malcolm X, but was on our side, to prevent our coalition from even having the possibility of trying to build a coalition in Parliament, even if meant compromise on the program. For him, it was unimaginable to even give a chance to that.

In that aspect, he united, and he saw that, despite the dynamics of the French election, [inaudible], despite the rise of the far right, you could see that there had been a massive reflex of voting against the far right to prevent it from seizing state power. People voted majority for the Popular Front, but some even voted for right-wing candidates against the far right. The major dynamics, despite our disagreements, was that the majority of the electorate wanted to prevent the far right from getting power.

What he chose to see now was to see, in Parliament, how can we build a coalition that is at least accepted by the far right, and that is what happened. Because the Popular Front doesn’t have its own majority, basically, he called on his own troops that have stayed in Parliament, even though a small minority now, to seek an alliance with the historical weakened, traditional right, and then sought the far right to see that in order to prevent the Popular Front from happening and seizing power, can we at least all agree on not overthrowing a government together in order to prevent the Popular Front from even having the slightest chance of exerting state power and abolishing the reforms I’ve made?

The far right, despite all their rhetoric of being anti-system, basically struck a deal with Macron and said, we will not join your government, but we will not overthrow him with a no-confidence vote in Parliament, and that is what just happened.

As history has shown on what happened in the ’20s, all proportions, of course, I don’t want to make a simple Godwin point [Steiner laughs], but history shows that, once again, the centrist bloc, the right bloc, the traditional right bloc is faced by the threat of a renewed strength in the working class movement, they’re gaining [inaudible] again, allies with the far right, and even is basically paving the way for them to seize power at next elections. Because now he has basically struck a deal with the far right in order to maintain his capacity to control the Parliament.

Marc Steiner:  In many ways, you paint this very Orwellian picture. You paint a very Orwellian picture, as in George Orwell, of what’s taking place.

Finally, from your perspective as a union leader, as an organizer, as part of the left in France, how do you see what happens with the resistance and the ability of the left, the people’s movement, to actually take power in the face of this right-centrist, right-wing power? Where do you see it going from here?

Axel Persson:  Where I see it going from here is that whatever happens, this government is… Well, the government hasn’t been formed yet. He has just nominated a prime minister that is actually a traditional known figure in France from the traditional right. The government hasn’t been composed yet, and the National Assembly hasn’t been called to session yet. That will be in October, so then, we will see. Whatever happens, this is going to be a very weak government, and it’s going to be a very unstable political situation.

What things have shown also, these past weeks and past months, is that contrary to what the dominant media have been saying, which presented, basically, the ascension of the far right to state power in France as something that would inevitably happen, things have shown that when we intervene, have a coherent tactic and strategy, we can prevent them from happening by building the Popular Front, by organizing in the workplaces, because we campaigned actively all across the country, in the workplaces, in the working-class neighborhoods all across the country.

We showed that, actually, we’re not just commentators of what’s happening, we actually influenced the course of history. What has been underestimated, also, is the fact that despite, yes, it’s undeniable, the far right is [much stronger] than it was, for now, the majority of French society clearly rejects the far right. It doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, the far right, but the majority still has these anti-fascist reflexes that still work.

Marc Steiner:  That’s a good thing [laughs].

Axel Persson:  We’re going to need to build on that. We’re going to need to build on that in order to transform this anti-fascist reflex into a political movement that is not only built on the rejection of this fascist program, but on the idea that we can have a better society, we can have a better future, but we’re going to have to organize.

So what we’re going to do very concretely is on the 1st of October, we’re going to call for mass demonstrations to demand the annulment of the pension reform for all workers, the raising of the minimum wages, the investment in public services. It’s important because we as trade unions are probably the only force in French society that is actually able to, at some point, unite the entire working class, including those that either vote for the far right or are influenced by their ideas.

The only situation I’ve seen in France the past years where we actually put in movement, the entire working class, despite the political differences, are on issues, for example, such as the pension issues. Then, when we go on strike and society is massively paralyzed, even workers who were influenced by the far right join our movements.

These are actually the periods where the far right, in terms of media, are completely silent. They disappear because it’s not their terrain, it’s not their political terrain. They don’t talk in these periods because they feel very uncomfortable about it, because they cannot distance themselves from workers who are struggling. At the same time, they don’t want to appear towards the system as anything else than the guardian of their interests.

It puts them in a very uncomfortable position, and it’s a terrain into which we can advance, also, our political ideas, and our vision of society. Not only on the specific issues of wages, and, for example, pensions, but also this idea that we need to fight together against the real enemy, and not the one they are designating, this poison they’re sowing into their ranks.

That is why the strategy we’re going to try to build on is mass movements, because it’s in the mass movements that at least our political ideology can actually really gain a foothold in society, and it’s actually the only means. That is what we’re going to do now.

But France is full of surprises [Steiner laughs]. We’re going to see what’s going to happen this year, but everybody knows, actually, that this is going to be a very unstable, critical year in France for the coming year.

Marc Steiner:  Well, Axel Persson, first, let me thank you for always joining us, and for your really deep perspective on what’s happening in France. It’s important for the entire world, given that France is one of the largest militaries around, and it’s a powerful country, and the battle against the right is significant.

I’m going to stay in touch, write back and forth, and after the demonstration in October, let’s reconvene, and see where we are.

Axel Persson:  Yes, we’ll see what we start there.

Marc Steiner:  As they say in Cuba, [Spanish].

Axel Persson:  [Spanish].

Marc Steiner:  [Spanish]. Thank you so much, Axel, it’s always good to talk to you.

Axel Persson:  Thank you for having me and see you soon. Bye.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank Axel Persson for joining us today and giving the perspective from France of the struggle for a just society that is powerful in pushing, and it’s always enlightening to talk with him.

Thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program, audio editor Alina Nehlich, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the fabulous Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible.

Please, let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thanks Axel Persson for joining us today, and please stay with us as we cover the rise of the right here and across the globe, and talk to those who are fighting for a just world. For the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Israel’s war on Palestine has now decisively expanded to the West Bank, where the most aggressive IDF military campaign in decades is now underway. Yet not all was well in the West Bank before this most recent invasion. Palestinians in the West Bank have dealt with a protracted war waged by Zionist settlers and the IDF for decades. One method of resistance has been through agriculture, which for many generations in Palestine has revolved around the cultivation of olives. Cyrus Copeland of the organization Treedom for Palestine joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss how the Palestinian Farmers’ Union uses “freedom farms” to sustain the livelihoods of Palestinians and resist the Israeli onslaught.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Hi. I’m Marc Steiner, host of The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. If you’re watching or listening to this now, we know you appreciate the stories we bring to you. We need your support to continue producing uncompromising, movement-building journalism that reaches ordinary people. We don’t accept advertising, sponsorships, or use paywalls. We rely entirely on supporters like you.

This is a critical year and a pivotal moment in history. From Paris to Gaza to Baltimore, we’re covering it all, but we cannot do it without you. If you feel the urgency of the moment and believe in the importance of independent journalism like TRNN, please donate today at therealnews.com/donate. Thank you for your support. Solidarity forever.

Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.

And in our continuing look at what is happening in Palestine-Israel, this horrendous war that is taking place, we are going to cover it in a different way today. The other day, I looked at a film called Where Olive Trees Weep, and I was really taken by that film. This series of conversations are borne of that film, and you will hear many people from that film as well as the directors.

And today we’re talking with Cyrus Copeland, who is executive director of Treedom, T-R-E-E-D-O-M, it’s not me slurring, For Palestine. And Treedom for Palestine is a nonprofit that works in the West Bank and works in collaboration with the Palestinian Farmers’ Union — We’ll be talking to one of the leaders of that union coming up soon — And Treedom wants to cultivate 1,000 Freedom Farms all through the West Bank, and we’ll talk more about that in a moment. And it is part of their struggle. It is going on there now, and even though it sounds like a wonderful, nice project, nothing is easy in Palestine.

Cyrus Copeland, welcome. Good to have you with us.

Cyrus Copeland:  Marc, awfully good to be with you. Thank you, sir.

Marc Steiner:  So, let’s begin. Tell me a bit about the history of this, first, Treedom, and how that came to be, and what it is.

Cyrus Copeland:  So I didn’t start as a nonprofit pioneer. I began and still am a writer, and the subject of the book that I’m working on right now took me to Jerusalem in exploration of this idea of tikkun olam, which, I don’t know, do you know what that means?

Marc Steiner:  Tikkun olam, yes, repair —

Cyrus Copeland:  Tikkun olam, it’s this idea of repairing the earth or healing the earth. I’m fascinated by it. I love it for all the obvious reasons. But I had precious little experience with it and with olive trees in general. I had planted one tree over the span of my life, in memory of my dad. When he passed away, we planted an oak tree in Valley Forge for him.

Marc Steiner:  Huh.

Cyrus Copeland:  After doing that, I would go back to the tree to see how it’s doing and how tall it had grown, what its leafage was looking like, and realized that, for better or for worse, I was now in a relationship with a tree [Steiner laughs]. It struck me as an odd and simple and beautiful thing.

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Cyrus Copeland:  But it wasn’t until I got to Palestine, and specifically the West Bank, and I looked around and realized how deeply multidimensional the Palestinian relationship is to their beloved olive trees, and I was very humbled by that and very touched by it. It’s legal, it’s environmental, it’s economic, it’s religious, it’s spiritual, it’s communal, all these ways that a tree influences a society and culture. And I was very impressed by that.

But it wasn’t until I landed on a small farm in the middle of the West Bank that was started by a gentleman, Motaz, who was the very first Treedom Farmer, that I looked around and realized the simple enormity of what he had managed to do on this small tract of land in the middle of all the complications that come of being a farmer in Palestine. And I was really touched by it, Marc, touched in a very profound way.

As a writer, I’m kind of used to using how I feel about stuff to navigate what a good narrative is, and I know when I’ve landed in the middle of a good story, I kind of get that goose bumpy feeling. As soon as I set foot on that Freedom Farm, I knew that I had found it, and it, in some way, had found me.

When I went there, I didn’t intend to start this foundation, Treedom For Palestine, which plants sustainable olive tree farms in the West Bank, but the seed of that idea was born on that day, on that little tract of land, and so that was how this all began.

Marc Steiner:  I was interested as I was looking at this, because olive trees are kind of the center of the Palestinian world in many ways, and I also happen to love Palestinian olive oil that I get regularly from my friends [laughs].

Cyrus Copeland:  It’s awesome. It’s so good, isn’t it?

Marc Steiner:  It’s really good.

Cyrus Copeland:  It’s got a just nice kicky organic earthy flavor to it.

Marc Steiner:  It’s the best I’ve ever had. But having said that, I’m just curious, how long this has been going on, and what is the political effect? Right now we’re facing something that is as bad, if not worse, than what happened in 1967 and what happened in 1948. They’re akin, in terms of the expulsion of Palestinians in the war in ’67, and then the colonization that began to take place in Gaza and in the West Bank. And you’re out trying to help farmers create this economy to build olive oil in the midst of that.

So, talk a bit about that struggle to do that, what you face, and the tensions that must arise in even trying to do that.

Cyrus Copeland:  There are immense, diverse, and deep challenges that come from being a farmer in the West Bank. Those challenges are manyfold, and I’ll just give you a few examples of what that looks like.

Marc Steiner:  Please, yeah.

Cyrus Copeland:  They pay exorbitant prices for water, up to 30 times what an Israeli settler who is farming will pay for water. 30 times. They’re not allowed to use electricity or to build shelters for shade on their land. Their access, you may know that their access to the land is often restricted.

Settler violence is a really big thing. On a good year, before this war began, settlers would routinely uproot or destroy 2,000 olive trees every year. Since the war began, settler violence is up 400%.

All of these challenges add up to a situation which is quite purposeful in that, policy-wise, the occupation has made it very difficult for farmers to do what they do. There are some reasons behind that. We can get into those reasons in a bit if you like.

So what we’ve done, Treedom, along with the Palestinian Farmers’ Union — And the Palestinian Farmers’ Union actually designed the prototype for a Treedom Farm. They came up with a prototype that is specifically designed to address the challenges of what it means to farm under the occupation. That prototype is basically we will plant 250 olive trees on a two-and-a-half acre tract of land. They will be irrigated during the dry summer months, at least, we’ll lay down an irrigation system for them. And, importantly, every single Treedom Farm that we plant is surrounded by steel fencing for the protection of both the farmers and the trees.

So, is it a very difficult situation to plant nowadays? Yes, it is, but our partner on the ground, the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, is exceedingly good at what they do. And the structure that we are working with, this idea of a Freedom Farm, is a workable one right now. It is scalable. Right now, there are a little more than 70 Freedom Farms that have been planted across the West Bank. Every single one of those Freedom Farms is still standing.

Marc Steiner:  It seems, when you mention the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, as I’ve seen, it was written, have 20,000 small-scale farmers who are farming around the West Bank for the most part. But given the politics of this moment, A, restricting water, the ability to water, the ability to really irrigate the way that things have to be irrigated on a farm, this war itself — One of my dearest friends, Ali Zarrab, who is from Ramallah, his nephew, walking down the street during the midst of this war, shot in the back by settlers.

Cyrus Copeland:  Oh [inaudible].

Marc Steiner:  And so, how does this function in the midst of all this?

Cyrus Copeland:  Yeah. Yup. Yeah, sorry to hear about that. There is another story which really hit me hard, which was another farmer, his name was Bilal Saleh. You may have heard about him, if you do, he would’ve been on your radar last October. An olive tree farmer who was shot and killed in cold blood by Israeli settlers as he was harvesting the olives on his farm. That story got a fair amount of play in the media for all the obvious reasons.

But it really took the wind out of my sail, Marc, and it landed very personally with me. And Abbas, the president of the PFU, the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, and I spoke a little bit about what we would like to do in response to that to help ensure that this kind of stuff doesn’t happen over and over and over again.

And so, we ended up planting a Freedom Farm for his widow, Ikhlas, who was now left without somebody who provided for their family and left without a father for her children. So, she was now thrust into the dual role of doing that. We actually, just two months ago, planted a Freedom Farm for her, ensuring that she would be able to carry on the good work that her husband did. Bilal, he loved olive trees. He loved what he did. He loved what he did. But again, we provided her with a safe environment in which to still be able to do the thing that her husband did by fencing in that structure.

How does this happen? How do we continue to do this in spite of what’s going on? That is really testament to the resilience and the strategic creativity that the Farmers’ Union brings to bear in their day-to-day activities. They know where it’s safe to plant. They know how far they can push the envelope. They know the intersection of what it means to plant for people who are in great need, where food insecurity is also high, but to do so in a region which is sufficiently distanced from whatever settlements might be, as to make sure that this is not just a statement that we’re making, but a really sustainable farm that we’re beginning here.

Does that answer your question? I feel like that went off on a little tangent.

Marc Steiner:  It does, but it leads to a couple of other questions for me. One is about you and one’s about the Palestinian farmers at this moment. How many times have you been back and forth to Palestine?

Cyrus Copeland:  One.

Marc Steiner:  One?

Cyrus Copeland:  Just one. I was there several years ago, and it was when, as I mentioned, I went there to explore this ideology for a book that I’m working on right now. My life went off in an entirely different direction. But that one time that I was there was enough to plant the seed of Treedom for Palestine.

Marc Steiner:  No pun intended.

Cyrus Copeland:  Not at all, but thank you for noticing it [Steiner laughs]. As writers, I love wordplay, and so the idea of Treedom, I don’t know. I like the name of our organization so much.

So I’ve been there once. I’ve obviously been in continual contact with our partners on the ground there. He and I speak several times a week, at least. So, while my heart and head is here in Philadelphia, my soul is also bifurcated and is in the very difficult territory of what it means to do what they’re doing in the West Bank right now.

One other thing, I wanted to mention this. You talked about Philadelphia, and I was walking around Jerusalem one day, and I came across a carbon copy of the Liberty Bell in a park in Jerusalem. And it was just the oddest thing, Marc, because as a Philadelphian, I know what the Liberty Bell looks like. It’s very iconic. And they had taken and literally done a carbon copy of this bell.

And so at the time, the war hadn’t broken out, and the issues that you and I are talking about, they were still front and center for all the obvious reasons. But this idea of what real personal liberty means, whether that’s economic, geopolitical, cultural, land-based, it just got amped up for me an additional degree. And to know that there is this other thing, another copy of the Liberty Bell very near many of the farms that we are planting, just makes it an even more, I don’t know, what’s the word, symbolic, I guess.

Marc Steiner:  I’m curious. In your conversations with Abbas and others since this war began in Gaza, how has that changed and altered the dynamic? It was already difficult because Israel has put restrictions on what Palestinian farmers can do, how much water they can get, has made it very difficult for people to survive on the West Bank doing the work they’ve done for generations and generations and generations. So, I’m curious how all the work you all are doing, how has it been affected by this war?

Cyrus Copeland:  We do what we do strategically and with great consideration to what the risks are. And when I say that the PFU is exceedingly good at assessing those risks and operating in spite of them, it’s not an exaggeration. They’re really good at what they do. And so the work of planting goes on, war or no war. We are still planting for the future.

Marc Steiner:  As I watched the documentary, which we’ll be covering, Where Olive Trees Weep —

Cyrus Copeland:  Yeah, Marc, just one little thing. We have planted, over the past two-and-a-half months, 10 Freedom Farms. Each one of those farms is 250 trees that have to be sourced, planted, planned. So many things need to come together to do this. The irrigation system needs to be brought there. There are roadblocks that the IDF puts up daily, and so there are so many factors in play that go into planting a farm, but we still do it. This is what they do.

And they’re used to operating under challenges and obstacles, because this is the Palestinian experience. It’s been the experience for decades now, it’s just been amped up considerably.

Marc Steiner:  So the question is, given the occupation, given this war, given all the obstacles to any farmer who’s Palestinian at the moment to survive, A, how do they survive in this program? And B, how do you get the olive oil out?

Cyrus Copeland:  These are thoughtful questions. Olive trees, it takes a while for them to fruit. The trees that we plant are between two and three years old. It’s going to take them two to three more years for their first harvest. So what we’ll do to make sure that the farmer has sustainable income is use the irrigation systems that we lay down by planting vegetables or herbs in the middle of the tracts of trees that we plant.

So for example, if we plant za’atar, or thyme, for a farmer, that is an herb that can be harvested four times a year, so that farmer can take za’atar to the market and sell it and make sure that they have an income until the point where their olive trees start to fruit. That’s what it means to do this in the short term.

In the long term, when the trees start to fruit and the farm becomes a mature farm, a mature farm will generate, I think it’s 36… $34,000 or $36,000 of olive oil every year. That’s a lifeline for a farmer and for their community. If you actually multiply that out over the 500-year lifespan of an olive tree — Because I don’t know if you knew this, I didn’t realize this until I realized that an olive tree’s natural lifespan is 500 years or more.

Marc Steiner:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cyrus Copeland:  If you multiply that out over their 500-year lifespan from that single two and a half acre tract of land, you are generating $18 million of olive oil that will feed 15 generations of farmers and their families, bring that many communities together, and also has a really cool environmental impact, because olive trees are also really good for the environment, so that also becomes a form of climate action. The trees on a Freedom Farm will collectively synthesize, I think it’s 9 million pounds of carbon, also, over their natural lifespan.

So the short-term benefits and the short-term challenges, because one day this war will be over, but those trees will still be in the ground and doing the work of what it means to be an olive tree for the farmer who chooses to farm them. And the benefits of that will carry long past the immediate challenges of what it means to be a farmer in this day, in this climate and environment.

Marc Steiner:  And I think another point here to talk a bit about is important, which has been happening a lot in parts of the developing world, but it’s really important here in Palestine at the moment, is that a lot of these farmers and the people involved who are actually doing this are women.

Cyrus Copeland:  Yeah, so that’s the other thing that we do is we do the work of supporting, along with the PFU, gender equality in the West Bank. And 50% of the Freedom Farms that Treedom for Palestine plants are planted for female farmers. And in doing so, we’re strengthening their roles, not just in their families, but also in their communities, and eventually in local government as well.

So the act of planting, just planting a tree, the intention that you bring to it has so much delightful carryover into so many different arenas, and gender equality is just one of those arenas.

Marc Steiner:  One of the things that strikes me as I was reading about this and watching the film is that both Israelis and Palestinians love their olive oil, and the olive tree, the olive branch, has been a tree and branch of peace.

Cyrus Copeland:  Mm (affirmative). Yeah.

Marc Steiner:  And a uniting force, and symbolically even, it’s important. To see when you talk about the future, that if something like this, these trees and the movement around these trees and working with Palestinian farmers can help generate the peace across these lines, it’s turning a symbolic victory into a material victory.

Cyrus Copeland:  Isn’t that lovely? One loves the olive tree for so many different reasons, but amongst those reasons, at the forefront for me, is what they represent in the form of an olive branch, and what it means to extend an olive branch across the world to the West Bank in the act of planting.

The way I think about it, Marc, is that by doing what we’re doing, we’re actually putting the building blocks for a longer term peaceful coexistence into the earth itself. The way I think about it is that we’re taking a polarized holy land and turning it into a thriving and prosperous heartland.

And if we can’t learn to be in this together, do this together, coexist together, looking to the olive tree, which has been on this contentious land that’s been fought over for thousands of years, it doesn’t know geographical boundary. It doesn’t know religious identity or cultural identity. And as trees, they communicate with each other invisibly under the ground. In so many ways, these trees are examples of who we might yet be and become.

Marc Steiner:  That’s a beautiful thought, and I think we’ll be talking very shortly with Abbas Melhem, who is executive director of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union. Thank you, Cyrus, for making the introductions and hearing more about that. Because I’m also very curious about what these farmers are facing now in the midst of this war, 50,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, and what the obstacles that people who are even working with you are facing in harvesting, selling their food, staying alive to do the work. Imagine doing all this in the midst of this war.

Cyrus Copeland:  It’s astonishing. He will be an exquisite spokesperson to talk a little bit more about that in greater depth and dimension than I could ever muster, Marc.

Marc Steiner:  Well, I’m really glad we made this connection. And Cyrus Copeland, I really do appreciate the work you’re doing. It’s really critically important. And people might say, he’s only planting olive trees. What do you mean, only planting olive trees? He’s building a world, helping to build a world, a sustainable world for farmers and for peace in the future. It’s a really critical point.

And before I conclude here, I want you, if you could, and we’ll put this on the screen — Not screen, we’re audio — But we’ll put this down online, how people can be in touch with you and how they can help.

Cyrus Copeland:  They can connect with us on our website, treedomforpalestine.org, read a little bit more about what they do, and if they decide that they would like to join this “tree-volution” and be a force of planting instead of fighting for change, we would welcome that assistance and their donations with great gratitude.

Marc Steiner:  And I’m sure you’re saying Treedom, T-R-E-E-D-O-M.

Cyrus Copeland:  Treedomforpalestine.org.

Marc Steiner:  Yes. Right, right. So don’t look up F, it’s T. But this has been one of the… Cyrus Copeland, thank you so much. We’re looking forward to our conversation with Abbas Melhem and the people who are in the movie itself, Where Olive Trees Weep. And it’s been an important conversation, and we’ll stay in touch. Thank you so much for your introductions. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Cyrus Copeland:  Oh, it’s been a delight. Thank you, Marc.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank Cyrus Copeland for joining us today. You can be in touch with his organization, Treedom, that’s T-R-E-E-D-O-M for Palestine at treedomforpalestine.org.

And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for doing all the work she does to make us sound good, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thank you to Cyrus Copeland for joining us today and the work that he does. And keep listening as we explore the lives of people resisting the occupation, Palestinians and Israelis, who are featured in the film documentary Where Olive Trees Weep. We’ll be talking with Abbas Melhem, executive director of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, in the coming week, the gentleman we talked about on this program today. So, for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.