Ramzy Baroud, Eva Bartlett, Bill Dienst - Moral Politics Compilation - Gaza

Bill Wolfport: Welcome to Moral Politics. I'm your host, Bill Wolfport. What is missing from U.S. news reports about Palestinians? The human context, according to my guest. Ramzi Baroud is an internationally syndicated columnist and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, Gaza's Untold Story. We discuss the not told story about Palestinians, especially the culture of resistance and the virtue of Palestinians' refusal to surrender. It is my pleasure to welcome Seattle resident, prolific writer, and dedicated peace and justice activist, Ramzi Baroud, to Moral Politics. Welcome.

Ramzy Baroud: Thank you for having me.

Bill Wolfport: Why do U.S. media reports dehumanize the clearly oppressed Palestinians?

Ramzy Baroud: I think partly it's ignorance, ignorance of the situation of who is the aggressor and who is the victim. But I also think that part of it is deliberate and has been taking place for a long, long time. The media is siding with Israel for self-serving reasons. Israel is benefiting and the media is benefiting as well. And as a result, the Palestinians are being shafted and they are being constantly dehumanized.

Bill Wolfport: Well, when you say Palestinians are being shafted, you know what you're talking about. You grew up in Gaza.

Ramzy Baroud: Exactly. I grew up in a refugee camp in Gaza. And I was bewildered when I first came to America about 17, 18 years ago to find out that it's me and my people living in more or less in concentration camps in the Gaza Strip are being seen as the aggressor. We are the enemy. And it took me a while to figure out how did this come about and why is this a reason.

Bill Wolfport: As a child growing up in Gaza, what was your view of the outside world and particularly the United States?

Ramzy Baroud: Well of course we knew that Israel was the enemy because Israel presented itself in terms of tanks and guns and missiles and bullets and tear gas and soldiers all around us. So Israel was clearly the enemy and for good reasons. But there was this distant enemy and that was America. And it was really difficult for us to understand exactly how is America positioned in this equation. As a child, my first experience with that America was in one of the hobbies we had in the refugee camp. For the lack of really other healthy hobbies was collecting empty bullet shells and tear canisters. And they were mostly made in Pennsylvania, USA.

Bill Wolfport: You grew up on al-Nakba stories, and for people who are not familiar, al-Nakba is the Palestinian catastrophe.

Ramzy Baroud: The ethnic cleansing of Palestine at the hands of Zionist gangs in 1947, 1948. We were the descendants of the first generation of the Nakba survivors. And in fact, we always not simply grew up listening to these stories. We defined ourselves based on these stories. I was not from a refugee camp in Gaza. I was from a village back in historic Palestine, today's Israel.

Bill Wolfport: But that village is now gone.

Ramzy Baroud: the village is now gone and the other 518 villages are also mostly gone but the fact is we always related to those villages and and we always fought with the idea that we are going to one day be allowed back to our homes now you mentioned the word ethnic cleansing and elon papay

Bill Wolfport: An Israeli writer, quite renowned, wrote The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Is there any doubt for our viewers that ethnic cleansing is taking place? in Palestine, in particular Gaza?

Ramzy Baroud: Ethnic cleansing took place in 1947-48 and never ceased ever since. In fact, what is happening right now in the West Bank are daily ethnic cleansing campaigns carried out by Israeli soldiers and by radical Jewish settlers with the hope of kicking the Palestinians out, confiscating their land, building settlements, building their wall on Palestinian land and so forth. So the episode of ethnic cleansing that started over 60 years ago continues until today.

Bill Wolfport: Before this ethnic cleansing in 47-48, what was the percentage of Jews in Palestine?

Ramzy Baroud: It was a very small percentage. It was less than 10% that owned approximately 5% of the land. And that is until a very recent date prior to the Palestinian catastrophe.

Bill Wolfport: uh in 48 however after 48 there was this kind of sudden change of fortunes if you will where the minority uh owned most of the land and the majority was made refugee i've heard that there is a state-sponsored policy of near starvation people are not dying of starvation exactly but they're dying of complications because they are so malnourished and i've heard that young children in gaza have red hair a sign of of food insufficiency. Is that true?

Ramzy Baroud: It's not the matter of my opinion or any other. These are well-recorded and conducted reports by the United Nations, by UNRWA, by the Red Cross, by the World Bank, that all indicate that in fact there is a humanitarian catastrophe and crises that are happening in Palestine, Gaza in particular.

Bill Wolfport: Israel has a state-sponsored policy of taking people right to the line of starving them.

Ramzy Baroud: It was an Israeli official. I think he was the political advisor of Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel, who said that we are not planning to starve Palestinians, but we are planning to send them on a diet. What he actually meant by that, we are going to starve them enough that they don't actually die, but they are indeed physically suffer. And all results are showing that Palestinians are in a very serious diet for the last five, six years.

Bill Wolfport: Could be defined as ethnic cleansing.

Ramzy Baroud: leave or die. In fact, it was Richard Falk, the UN repertoire in the occupied territories, who said in a recent interview with Press TV, he said that this is the ultimate goal of Israel, is they want to make the situation so very difficult for Palestinians, in Gaza in particular, so that they would actually drive them out. And without the people, you're not going to have resistance. Israel wants the land, doesn't want the people. This has been the case for the last 60 odd years. And this continues to be the case until today. So they want to drive the Palestinians out.

Bill Wolfport: And proof of that would be the flotillas. And by the way, there's another flotilla set to sail at the end of this month. Do you think they have any prospect of bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza, and more the symbolic hope that they bring.

Ramzy Baroud: Exactly. And that would be my emphasis, is that symbolic hope. Because Israel has driven us to believe that nobody really cares. Nobody cares for Palestinians at all. That Palestinians are so relegated and so discounted as human beings. But we are seeing the devaluation of the importance of Palestine to the international community. And I think this is happening in the case of these flotillas. The U.S. is sending a flotilla as well. The audacity of hope will be sailing to Gaza as well with numerous American peace activists who are going to Palestine, raising American and Palestinian flags. And I think this is a very, very important message to the Palestinian people.

Bill Wolfport: Our prayers are with him, and let's hope that no one is murdered like last time. Now, you wrote the book, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, Gaza's Untold Story. What motivated you to write the book and what were you trying to say?

Ramzy Baroud: What I was trying to say basically is that beyond the statistics, beyond the numbers and the maps and the charts and the arguments and counterarguments, there are human beings, there are people, of equally precious lives whose stories are important and has to be told. And without understanding and appreciating these people as they are, not as the way we think that they are ought to be, the way they are, we can never truly understand and appreciate the nature of this conflict. So I decided I'm going to go back to the basics. I'm going to tell the story of my family that was ethnically cleansed from Palestine in 1948, And what happened to that family once it ended up in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and it continues to be there. The story was told through the character of my father, who was a freedom fighter in the practical sense. But what I really meant by him being a freedom fighter is the same notion of freedom fighting throughout Palestine, the idea that no matter what, we are going to resist. No matter what, we are going to continue and we are not going to give up. And this is his legacy.

Bill Wolfport: So it's that virtue of the Palestinian refusal to surrender.

Ramzy Baroud: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Bill Wolfport: And your book really captured that in your father. Do you think that this is like father, like son, that you're carrying on today because of your father?

Ramzy Baroud: I would be honored to actually have that designation, very much so, because my dad, like most Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine, have lived a virtuous life in the sense that they did have their problems and their errors and their mistakes, but at the end of the day they made a very clear choice that they are either going to just vanish and to accept a life of certitude, or they are going to resist and he made the latter choice and this is the choice made by most Palestinians and that's why we continue to talk about a conflict and a Palestinian people and about resistance. It's because of these people.

Bill Wolfport: Would you mention that he voted enthusiastically for Hamas?

Ramzy Baroud: He did, oddly enough, despite the fact that my dad was not a very religious man, actually hardly religious at all. He comes from socialist, secularist backgrounds. But he felt that Hamas stood for something that he also has stood for all those years. That was the antithesis of the so-called peace process, which is basically giving Palestine away based on Israeli dictates. Hamas stood for resistance as far as most Palestinians are concerned. Hamas stood for ideals that were no longer championed by the current Palestinian leadership. And as a result, the majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas.

Bill Wolfport: Is there any analogy that we can draw between the resistance of Palestinians like your father, the current generation of Palestinians, and the uprising in Warsaw?

Ramzy Baroud: Well, of course, of course. I mean, the fact that Warsaw was a ghetto, it was a concentration camp more or less, and this is the situation and the reality in Gaza. uh people at the end of the day no matter what you do in order for you to dehumanize them they deep down never really lose sight of the fact that they are humans who are deserving of freedom and of dignity and at one point you are going to push them to the brink and they are going to revolt and they revolted in in in the ghettos in warsaw and they revolted in gaza and they continue to revolt there

Bill Wolfport: You mentioned that it's a concentration camp, but there was a quote by a UN ambassador that it's actually worse than the conditions of the Nazi concentration camps. Gaza is that bad.

Ramzy Baroud: We tried to create analogies between apartheid South Africa and Gaza between the concentration camps and Gaza. In reality the situation in Gaza is difficult but it's also because of the way that the media has portrayed Palestine and the Palestinians is very difficult to have Americans or Westerners or anyone in general really outside the facilities of that context to truly understand what the situation is like. But when South African anti-apartheid activists like Desmond Tutu, for example, or Rani Castrols came to Gaza and they looked at the situation, they thought, and they said very clearly, this is worse than the situation in South Africa during the apartheid. But we are compelled really to use these analogies in order for us to get people to try to imagine and visualize what the situation there is like.

Bill Wolfport: Well, despite his struggle, your father had a sad ending in a way. I guess a positive ending in the sense that he regained his self-assuredness, his struggle, his hope. But didn't he just die from lack of electricity?

Ramzy Baroud: He did. He did. In fact, my father died. And until now, we never really understood what was the ailment. because all the hospitals in Gaza were turned into surgery wards. So there was no place for an old man to go and to have a medical checkup, and he stayed at home at the neighbor's house for a few weeks until he passed away. So there was a sad ending, but the story doesn't end, of course, because the story is not my dad per se. The story is the Palestinian people as a whole. And they are still there. And when I went to Gaza two weeks ago, I was there. And I found my father's peers and friends and neighbors are still there and are still carrying on with that legacy.

Bill Wolfport: Ilya's niece, I think you had that in one of your recent blogs, the little five-year-old singing the songs of martyrdom.

Ramzy Baroud: The children of Gaza are just incredible, are absolutely incredible, because you go there with this kind of sense of pity to Gaza, and then you kind of find every reason for inspiration there. And the children in particular, they refuse to be anything but children. So when I went to Gaza, there were so many kids in the neighborhood. come and perform their songs and do their bits and she was one of them this little girl who came and she sang a song and she said that she sang it in a very cheerful way but it was very sad though that she was actually singing about heavens and and the martyrs and all of that and it just breaks your heart because you're thinking you shouldn't be singing this type of song but you know that she has no other option because this is the reality that she deals with. Her uncle was assassinated by Israel, her family's home was destroyed during the caste-led in 2008-2009 so you can't really blame her but at the same time you feel like you wish you could actually take her out of this context and place her somewhere entirely different.

Bill Wolfport: Well, this is the humanity that we mentioned in the beginning that is not in the US news about the Palestinians. That this five-year-old girl is singing these songs of martyrdom because most of her family has been wiped out. And isn't she a target for ethnic cleansing?

Ramzy Baroud: Of course she is. And unfortunately, sadly so, at one point she could be a victim herself or her children could be a victim. At the end of the day, they will be classified in American mainstream media as militants or as just another number to be added to the very large number of Palestinians who have been killed. That is opposed to the way that the Israeli story is being told. the Israeli soldier, even if he is a soldier there on a murderous mission in the Gaza Strip, when he is killed we tend to learn about his family, about his mom, about his hopes and dreams, and we meet his girlfriend or his fiancée and so forth and so on, which is a tragedy because this is a man with a gun in someone else's land and is there on a murderous mission while the Palestinian who is the victim is the one classified as a militant and as the enemy.

Bill Wolfport: It's rather odd that US media does have that skew that the ethnic cleansing of one people is not covered, but yet the so-called return home and I say so-called return home by another group, is covered. Now, you are also editor of PalestineChronicle.com. It's an interesting website. Can you tell our viewers about it?

Ramzy Baroud: PalestineChronicle.com started about 12 years ago, and continues until today. We are updated on a daily basis, and we are the outcome of the work and coordination of numerous people. authors, scholars, journalists from all over the world. Many of them come from the United States, but others in Europe and throughout the Middle East. What we try to do is to convey a different sense and a different narrative to what is happening in the Middle East that you do not see on CNN or you do not watch on Fox News.

Bill Wolfport: This is the untold story about the Palestinians here on PalestineChronicle.com. And again, you are the editor-in-chief.

Ramzy Baroud: I am, yes.

Bill Wolfport: It's very interesting. You also have your own website, ramsaybaroon.net, I believe.

Ramzy Baroud: That's right. And this is to promote particularly my thoughts, my ideas, my articles that are syndicated in many newspapers around the world. But this is a website where you can see and learn everything about me and my books.

Bill Wolfport: Basically split half your time in the U.S. and half your time in Europe. basically trying to tell the world about the human character of the Palestinian. How would you contrast Europe and the United States and its view of the Middle East?

Ramzy Baroud: It really starts and ends with the media. The media in Europe, despite the fact that it can at times be very problematic, unlike American media, mainstream media, I'm talking about corporate media in particular here, it tends to present a different side of the story. You could in fact watch the BBC and decide that you see eye to eye with Palestinian aspirations and demands. It's very difficult to actually get the gist of that conclusion watching Fox or CNBC, for example. As a result, you have a very thriving and strong civil society in Europe that is pro-Palestine, and it's very actively involved. We're not talking about people picketing around street corners. We're talking about people who are lobbying their governments to bring real and effective change in the Middle East.

Bill Wolfport: Is the factor that differentiates Europe from America lack of corporate-controlled media?

Ramzy Baroud: I think so, because Americans, you know, I've been in this country for 17 years, and I always come back to this country, and it's my home away from home. And I've met Americans, and I've talked to Americans, and I have numerous American friends, and what I see is that these are not ill-intended people. They are not out there to get us Palestinians. They are just misinformed. And where do we get our information? We get it from the media. So this is the problem. It's not with the American person. That is not the problem. The problem is with the media. And that's why we are actively trying to influence and change and shift the way that Palestinians are portrayed in the American media.

Bill Wolfport: and we say it's in the media it's the corporate media but ultimately we look at management executive management and ownership does that suggest a problem well of course it does because at the end of the day i mean if ramzi baroud decides to to start a tv station and hire a few hundred people

Ramzy Baroud: and broadcast to millions around the world, if he is going to be actively involved in getting his ideas and his political views and commentaries, well at the end of the day I am going to influence all these millions with what Ramzi Baroud thinks is right and wrong. So ownership is of tremendous influence on the way that people think in this country.

Bill Wolfport: So it's corporate but it's also skewed towards

Ramzy Baroud: Ideologically, Scoot. I mean, if you look at Robert Murdoch, for example, and his ownership, not just of Fox, but of other, numerous other media outlets, and the fact that he is very much pro-Israel. He speaks at their annual conferences, the lobby, AIPAC. He's a good friend of various Israeli politicians. And he tells it as it is. He says, Israel is my foremost cause. So how can we argue that Fox News is not pro-Israel, considering the ownership of Fox News?

Bill Wolfport: considering the the ownership control the controlling influences and the other major media outlets as well not just the tv outlets but the radio and publications we find that it is very Zionist I'm privy to a lot of material that comes to me because of covering the Middle East and it seems well sourced that we have a highly highly skewed set of owners and this is why it's very important Bill that as a civil society that we hold them to account because at the end of the day without their listeners and without their viewers they have no real value so we need to remind them

Ramzy Baroud: that we are aware of what is going on, and we are not happy with the way that the news is being reported.

Bill Wolfport: In the Arab Spring, we've seen a lot of uprising or shaking off in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen. Possibly it's coming to Saudi Arabia. What's your comment on the Arab Spring?

Ramzy Baroud: Arabs want to be free. They want to be sovereign. They want to have truly democratic societies that represent who they are as people on equal footing. And so this is a revolution for the Arab spirit, if you will. And it caught everyone by surprise, and it continues to be so.

Bill Wolfport: What is the likelihood that this will be reversed? you know there's some vulnerabilities to this Arab Spring.

Ramzy Baroud: Any revolution could possibly have a counter-revolution and this is where the strength of society comes at play and from what I know I was just in Egypt last week and I could tell that the Egyptian people have discovered their power and they're not afraid to use it And it's very difficult for me to imagine a situation in which we are going to revert back to the Hosni Mubarak era. I think there is going to be a new era in Egypt, and I think it's going to be a good one.

Bill Wolfport: The momentum from the Arab Spring is beyond anything that the Mossad of Israel can machinate.

Ramzy Baroud: We know that the Mossad is working very hard in order for them to sway the outcome of that revolution this way or that but we also know that this is where people power is of a great deal of relevance. We are talking about many millions of people all revolting and all chanting in one voice And I don't think neither the Mossad nor any other intelligence from the region or outside the region could possibly affect the outcome of that revolution in any way that could negate the will of the Egyptian people.

Bill Wolfport: You know, could Israel have peace if it wanted peace? Of course.

Ramzy Baroud: Peace is readily available for anyone who is genuinely seeking it. The question is Israel is not seeking peace because Israel and Israeli leaders are under the impression that they can, in fact, they have power, they have American support and conditional 100 percent support coming from Washington, therefore they need nobody. They can actually do anything in any way they please. But the fact is time is running out for Israel. the global community is waking up to the fact that this reality cannot continue for long. Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, just said a few days ago that Israel is risking losing out not just its democracy but its very existence because of the stubborn policies of their leadership. And unfortunately, it doesn't seem that the Israeli government is changing its mindset.

Bill Wolfport: Well, I've heard that a lot of the more enlightened Israelis are dual citizens and finding places to go. But that means that they're going to be leaving behind an even more radicalized and even more altered ultra-orthodox population.

Ramzy Baroud: That's right. Because now most of the immigration that's happening to Israel is happening around ideological and religious reasons. These are not people who are seeking salvation or jobs or better finances. They are there for ideological reasons. And these are the very ones with the machine guns and the Aussies around the West Bank chasing after children in Hebron and in Nablus. And these are the scariest and most dangerous bunch of them.

Bill Wolfport: These are the ones that were subscribed to comments by a rabbi that a million Arabs are not worth one Jewish fingernail. Exactly. That sort of thing. You mentioned that it's American support that enables Israel. We've seen recently the Judaization, and that's a term now that's being used a lot, the Judaization of Jerusalem. Jerusalem has had a large... Arab Palestinian population, but they're being booted out. So it's being Judaized.

Ramzy Baroud: comment on that? That's the slow ethnic cleansing I was speaking of because Jerusalem prior to 1947 was a Palestinian city in 1948 it was occupied and was divided half of it became Jewish the other half Arab in 1967 the rest of the Arab city was occupied as well and since then there has been this kind of decided Israeli policy to ethnically cleanse Jerusalem from its original Arab inhabitants. And they have done so with a great deal of success. Now the sad thing is much of that ethnic cleansing is happening with American financing, which goes against international law.

Bill Wolfport: Is that essential? Without it, it wouldn't happen?

Ramzy Baroud: No, of course not. Because they need billions and billions of dollars in order for them to achieve such an awesome feat. And the money are readily coming from the United States.

Bill Wolfport: So the Judaization of Jerusalem really results from a Judaization of America.

Ramzy Baroud: Of the great deal of Zionist influence on American foreign policy, I would argue.

Bill Wolfport: There's an argument that at some point there's a logic to violence. Apparently, your father found that logic to violence. Do you subscribe to a logic to violence?

Ramzy Baroud: You know, there's a very popular term in Palestinian folklore and Palestinian culture, and that is mukawama. Mukawama means resistance, and resistance is not resistance as in carrying a gun or a stick. Resistance is a concept, it's an idea, it's a culture. And this is the culture that pyramids and defines Palestine and the Palestinian people. This is the very culture that spawned my dad and his generation and my generation and the new generation coming out in Palestine as well. We resist because we have no other option but to resist, and you resist by all means that are available to you.

Bill Wolfport: You were also quoted as saying that we should all be proud anti-Zionist. I thought that was powerful. Can you explain?

Ramzy Baroud: Well, Zionism is not a religious concept. It's not an ethnic concept. Zionism is a racist concept that is based on one group being classified as chosen and the other not chosen and the result those who are not chosen like me for example we found ourselves in concentration camps and refugee camps and in exile all over the world and we need to challenge that because if you don't challenge this racist concept how can you possibly bring equality and justice back to the Palestinians?

Bill Wolfport: A wonderful note for our viewers to to really hold on to that we should all be proud anti-Zionists because Zionism is a racist concept and is creating ethnic cleansing and concentration camps.

Bill Dienst: Welcome to Moral Politics.

Bill Wolfport: I'm your host, Bill Alford. Gaza is a small strip of land home to 1.7 million Palestinians subject to dehumanizing abuse by Israelis. Corporate media takes little notice, yet Gaza is our shame. Conditions there are worse than apartheid of South Africa. It is a slow genocide that may rival Rwanda and Cambodian killing fields. Guest Eva Bartlett witnessed, while bombs were exploding, Israeli dark-hearted, unchecked violence. In our talks, Eva Bartlett situates one in the blood torment and the sewage heaped upon Palestinians by Israelis. Ms. Bartlett towers as a preeminent Mideast peace activist involved for years with the International Solidarity Movement. We probe why the civilized West continues to ignore the Palestinian bloodbath. It is my privilege to welcome role model Eva Bartlett to Moral Politics. Welcome.

Eva Bartlett: Thank you.

Bill Wolfport: Is it apt to describe Gaza as an Israeli killing field?

Eva Bartlett: I often describe Gaza as, as you mentioned in the introduction, in that it is a slow-motion genocide with surges of mass killings, as we've seen in the past four years, with attacks at the beginning of 2008, the end of 2008, and in between, and in 2012. Other than that, the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza and Israeli policies against Palestinians in Gaza would be aptly described as a genocide.

Bill Wolfport: I've seen a presentation of yours and I've listened to a radio interview of yours, and I was gripped by the blood. Is it as graphic as you portray in some of your talks?

Eva Bartlett: It's more graphic. I do show the reality of Palestinian suffering in all respects, whether it be due to the blockade or due to the Israeli attacks, whether bombing or the gunfire on Palestinian civilians. but it's certainly more graphic than i show i always tell my audience that i'm going to show some graphic photos because this is the reality and this is the reality that is largely censored in our media but nonetheless it's the reality that palestinians have to endure every day but certainly it is far more graphic than i have been able to convey well the farmers they're they're snipe they they can't even earn a limit without being shot dead on their own land

Bill Wolfport: Is this exaggerated?

Eva Bartlett: No, it's not. Again, in fact, when internationals are present with farmers, the attacks on farmers and thereby on us as well does occur, but certainly it occurs with more frequency and more lethality when internationals are not present with our cameras and video cameras. Farmers endure this on a daily basis. This is part of the Israeli policy against civilians in the border regions.

Bill Wolfport: I was struck by the fact that there are remote-controlled gun towers. I never imagined something like that. They can actually snipe without physically being there. They can do it from far away.

Eva Bartlett: It's one of the many sadistic policies. It's, in fact, an Israeli soldier, be they male or female, in a control room, which could be in Tel Aviv, for all I know. And as I've read in an article about this remotely-controlled tower, there actually manipulating the gun with something like a joystick, similar to what we would have used as children playing violent video games. And in fact, they're so distant from the reality of what they're doing, they see on a monitor, according to this report, they see on a monitor who they're targeting, and they see with precision, because we know that Israel has very high-tech surveillance equipment. So these soldiers see with precision exactly who they're targeting, children, elderly, young men or women, And they are able to, with precision, fire on these farmers or civilians in the border regions.

Bill Wolfport: Is there any doubt that the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, the soldiers on the ground there, armed to the teeth, is there any doubt that they're carrying out policies from higher up?

Eva Bartlett: There's no doubt. And just on a side note, I never call them the IDF because they're not in fact defending, they're oppressing. So I usually say Israeli army or Israeli occupation forces, but nonetheless, there's no doubt. And in fact, on many occasions, Israeli authorities have given orders to the Israeli army to drop leaflets into border regions. basically enforcing the so-called no-go zone or the buffer zone. And these leaflets depict the outline of Gaza with the borders and then roughly a 300-metre, what they say is a no-go zone. And the leaflets are written in Arabic and they basically say to Palestinians, you cannot be within 300 metres of the border or we will take... you know, so-called security policies against you, which include using heavy-duty machine gun fire, lethal machine gun fire, or shelling by tank or by drone, or even abducting Palestinians. There's no doubt whatsoever these are policies from high up.

Bill Wolfport: It's not limited to farmers. It's bad enough that farmers are sniped as they're just trying to plant their fields and have something to eat, but this continues with the fishermen.

Eva Bartlett: even before I speak of the fishermen also there are other people who are in the border regions not only farmers but there are children perhaps collecting rubble to be reused in construction or people in in fact even people who catch birds this is part of the Palestinian tradition is to catch birds and they happen to be doing this in border regions or people that have homes in the border regions and all these people come under Israeli attack well beyond 300 meters even up to two kilometers but yes Again, the sanctioned Israeli policy also applies to fishers or anybody in or near the water, really. I mean, people on the beach even come under Israeli Navy fire. But certainly with regard to the fishers, even though Palestinians were granted the right to be 20 nautical miles off their coast in Palestinian waters, the Israeli Navy unilaterally imposes a six-mile or a three-mile ban which waivers, limit on the Palestinians. And even this is not a set limit. Even then, Israeli gunboats will enter within whatever the so-called limit is at any given point, and they will attack and harass Palestinians.

Bill Wolfport: So farmers are robbed of their land and their livelihood. Fishermen are robbed of their fish and their livelihood. Is this economics, or is this torment?

Eva Bartlett: This is collective punishment. This is torment. Yes, of course it is. I mean, it's depriving people of access to land and water, which impacts, first of all, their culture. They have a culture of fishing. They have a culture of farming. They have an attachment to both land and sea. But aside from that, they're depriving people of their incomes, and they're depriving Palestinians in Gaza, which number 1.7 million, of an affordable and healthy source of food.

Bill Wolfport: Is this a way of depopulating

Eva Bartlett: It seems like with the different wars that Israel wages on Gaza and these policies, it certainly is a way of depopulating. Sure, I mean, whether people are dying because of the different attacks or through diseases they contract from poor water or malnutrition, I mean, people are not dying of starvation. And in fact, just on a side note, Israeli authorities actually outlined a document in which they calculated the minimum number of calories Palestinians needed in order to survive but not quite starve.

Bill Wolfport: That's gruesome.

Eva Bartlett: Gruesome and it's genocidal.

Bill Wolfport: mentioned a term, manufactured abject poverty, in one of your talks. Would you go into that just a little bit?

Eva Bartlett: The poverty is manufactured in that Palestinians used to have a very successful export, you know, trading exports. They used to send strawberries and other fruits and citrus to European markets and even to North American markets. They used to export furniture and clothing and textiles And even in the 90s, they used to be a major component of the workforce in Israel, working in construction and other menial jobs. The notable Israeli journalist Amira Haas has documented this, that even since Oslo in the mid-90s, Israeli authorities have steadily been closing the borders to Palestinians, thereby reducing their potential to work in Israel, thereby cutting a significant proportion of the workforce in Gaza off from labor. And aside from that, completely banning exports, obviously is impacting on their economy. So this all shows that in terms of their income, yes, their poverty rates now are manufactured. They could be very self-sufficient if farmed if they were allowed to farm and fish and export properly. But then you get into other aspects of life in Gaza, the manufactured health crisis right now.

Bill Wolfport: And you're talking about the water shortage, the wells that are demolished, you're talking about the sewage that because of lack of parts, lack of electricity, because of Israeli Sadism is really plaguing Gaza.

Eva Bartlett: Israel bombed Gaza's only power plant in 2006. It hasn't been fully rehabilitated since then. They haven't been allowed to bring in the replacement parts and the construction materials to do so. So Gaza has been suffering under power outages since then. So yes, when you have 18 hours a day of power cuts, this impacts on the sanitation. It means that sewage is now not able to be pumped into the sea, which is the only means they can dispense of sewage. Instead, it is overflowing into the streets and people are wading through sewage. And the pollution of the sea is impacting on the water aquifer and is seeping into the aquifer to the point where now only 5% of the water in Gaza is drinkable, according to WHO standards.

Bill Wolfport: Israel is willing to sell them some pricey water, but probably the economics won't allow most people to purchase that pricey clean water from Israel.

Eva Bartlett: 80% of the population is dependent on food aid for survival. They can't afford to buy water. The food aid itself isn't sufficient. They can't afford even to buy produce and proteins to supplement the flour, water, and oil they get from the UN and other agencies. So no, of course, they can't buy water. So many people end up drinking this water that is brackish and high in nitrates and other things that are obviously contaminants.

Bill Wolfport: Is this hygiene warfare?

Eva Bartlett: There's a warfare on many fronts. There's a warfare on the diet, on the hygiene, on the economy, on the psyche. There's a psychological warfare with the F-16s constantly in the skies, breaking the sound barrier, releasing sonic booms, which actually sound like real bombs, which further traumatize people, particularly children. And the constant presence of drones in the sky, which we all know are capable of precision bombing. And the constant presence of warships in the sea, which fire on the fishers. And the presence of tanks and jeeps on the borders, which can enter the borders as well. I mean, there's a psychological warfare for sure. And just the whole idea of being completely isolated from the rest of the world, cut off and at Israel's whim. And at any point, Israel decides they can bomb the Gaza Strip and nobody will stop them.

Bill Wolfport: So Gaza is a place to disappear the Arab.

Eva Bartlett: People in the Palestinians in Gaza feel like they've been disappeared. They feel isolated and that the world has forgotten them.

Bill Wolfport: Now, you mentioned F-16. We can mention work of attack. We can mention, you did mention drones, all the sophisticated weaponry imaginable. Does Palestine or Gaza have an army?

Eva Bartlett: That's the absurdity, the power imbalance. Not only does Palestine not have any of these things, no Apache helicopters or tanks or jeeps or planes, although they did at one point, by the way, have an airport, but it was of course bombed and destroyed by the Israelis. But not only do they not have these, nor the one-ton bombs that Israel drops regularly on Gaza, but they also don't have the millions and billions of dollars that America sends to Israel every year. They don't have the political support, the blind political support that America and Canada and UK and Europe give to Israel. It's a complete disproportionate power imbalance.

Bill Wolfport: You were there during what we know as Cast Lead in the United States, just the wilding that Israel did against the undefended and corralled Palestinians of Gaza in 2008, 2009. It went on for, I believe, 28 days or something like that. You were there, weren't you?

Eva Bartlett: I was, yeah. It was 23 days.

Bill Wolfport: Is it about security at all, or is it about something else?

Eva Bartlett: I'll mention a couple of things. One was that in June 2008, Hamas and Israel had signed a truce that was to last six months. And already from day one, Israel was violating the truce by again entering Gaza's airspace, by firing on farmers and fishers, et cetera, and by random bombings. In the lead up to the attacks in December, Israel had already been bombing Gaza. And Hamas, for its part, had actually respected the truce until November when several of its leaders were assassinated. Also, other documents were released that showed that, in fact, the planning for the December 27th attacks on Gaza, the planning had begun even before this truce was signed. It was just a matter of when it was convenient. And as it happened, bombing during the holiday season, when people are out of university, when families in the West are celebrating Christmas, was the perfect time to attack. And it had nothing to do with security at all.

Bill Wolfport: We just had a recent ru-ha-ha over the sarin gas used in Syria, a chemical weapon. But you've said in a previous talk that Israel used chemical weapons.

Eva Bartlett: I did see evidence of white phosphorus usage. And it's also been documented, obviously, by the UN and Amnesty International and Oxfam. But I personally saw victims of white phosphorus badly mutilated by the chemical agent, which basically keeps burning until it's deprived of oxygen. So you can imagine what it does to the human body. I met families where seven of the family members were deceased. They were killed by this brutal chemical weapon. And also in my investigations around Gaza, I saw areas throughout the whole Gaza Strip, not just in Gaza City, for example, but in the north, in the west, in the south, in the east, where there were clumps of the white phosphorus weapons that had perhaps been buried by sand or dirt. And once you poke at those clumps and introduce a little bit of oxygen, they reignite. So we saw this evidence in civilian areas throughout the Gaza Strip also in one of the main hospitals, the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, and also in a rehabilitation hospital where the 70 or so patients were actually invalids and could not flee on their own. So, I mean, the use of white phosphorus to begin with According to, apparently according to army regulations or international law, it's only to be used as a smoke screen and not in civilian areas. Israel did the exact opposite, shelling a school in which people were taking sanctuary and over 40 people were killed from that attack alone.

Bill Wolfport: And there was no really repercussions to Israel for use of a banned chemical weapon, yet all the boo-ha-ha against the Syrians for what they're alleging and not even proving, sarin gas. Now, I want to ask you a direct question. Are you ever accused of delegitimizing Israel?

Eva Bartlett: I mean, first of all, what does it mean to delegitimize? All we're doing is stating the facts. We're stating what Israel has done to Palestinians, what international norms and laws Israel has breached, what conventions Israel has breached. That is, I mean, those facts are legitimate. I mean, to claim that this is delegitimizing, no. The Israeli authorities do not like these things to be talked about, but these are facts and these are truths.

Bill Wolfport: Just a little background. You're a Canadian. You're a journalist. You lived in Palestine. You want to tell the viewers about your experiences in Palestine?

Eva Bartlett: I am an average person. Prior to this, I had really no awareness, to be honest, about Palestine. But when I was introduced through serendipity, through research in various media, to the issue of Palestine, to me it was crystal clear that this is a situation of a people who have been ethnically cleansed from their homeland and now who continue to be occupied, who've undergone several wars cleansing them further of their land, and an occupier that basically not only occupies militarily the Gaza Strip and part of Syria, the Golan Heights, but also occupies East Jerusalem and the West Bank and continues to expand their colonies. So in my experience there, I went as a witness. And by the way, I call myself, well, I'm not big for labels, but if anything, a justice activist, because in the end, that's what it comes down to. Without justice, there cannot be peace. And what I and others witnessed in, say, the occupied West Bank, regular attacks by the illegal colonists. We saw expanding colonies. I mean, one day there's a Palestinian family living in a home. The next day they're expelled by these gun-touting illegal colonists.

Bill Wolfport: And that's becoming a serious, radicalized problem, isn't it, in Israel today? the drift to the right-wing extreme of the illegal colonists.

Eva Bartlett: Israeli leadership have openly stated, with regards to Jerusalem specifically, that they want to Judaize Jerusalem. They want to change the demographics of the area, and they want to make it more Jewish. So this entails demolishing Palestinian homes on flimsy pretext, including homes that were there even before Israel was created. So in some instances, what will happen is the family will receive a notice saying, your home doesn't meet building requirements, even though the home existed prior to Israel's creation. In other cases, maybe the home was built in recent years, but the fact is, and this is documented very well by the Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions, which documents the over 25, 30,000 homes destroyed since 67 alone. And they document also that it is virtually impossible for a Palestinian to obtain a permit to build or expand on their home from the Israeli authorities. So they not only destroy the homes, but then these illegal colonists also occupy Palestinian homes. And so, I mean, and again, this is from the Israeli authorities themselves. They've said, we plan to make Jerusalem more Jewish.

Bill Wolfport: Now, I like what you said earlier. You said you're a normal person, but you informed yourself. You had firsthand experiences. And you got indignant. And I think that that's a really nice expression you made in one of your talks. A normal person, once informed about what's going on in Palestine, will be indignant. Is there any doubt?

Eva Bartlett: You would have to be soulless to not become indignant. I've met, I mean, for example, the first person I met that had gone to Palestine to witness was a Jewish woman in her 50s. And she was livid, she was indignant at what she had seen, at the way she saw her religion being used to oppress people. in the name of her religion. Aside from that, I've been in the West Bank and I've seen middle-aged American men going to nonviolent demonstrations in which the Palestinians are protesting the Israeli annexation of yet more of their land in the West Bank. And I've seen these middle-aged American people saying, I can't believe what my tax dollars are going to. This is atrocious. I can't believe these oppressive policies. I mean, if you go to Palestine and you see the separation wall, you see Palestinians being humiliated and aggressed at these military checkpoints, prevented from moving from point A to point B. You see them being nabbed by Israeli soldiers and whisked off to detention and perhaps being held for months on end without charge or years on end. If you see these things, and it's very easy to see these things, you would be indignant. And if you're not indignant, then You need to check and see if your soul is still in your body and if you still have a pulse.

Bill Wolfport: Is this a conflict over just land?

Eva Bartlett: I believe that it's not a conflict, first of all. It's the Zionist Project, which was established long before World War II. The Zionist Project had its eye on colonizing Palestine, and even early... explorers sent by the Zionist movement to Palestine came back and said you know it's already a land that's inhabited by people but nonetheless the project moved forward with support by you know the British and by Canada and by the US over the years so it's not a conflict it's again an ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people and a further continued colonization and genocide of the land and people so yes it is about land it's not about religion it's about land

Bill Wolfport: Why are world leaders so blind for so long?

Eva Bartlett: Some are not. I mean, you have Nelson Mandela, bless him, was obviously, he was, he recognized that Palestinians, you know, the time has come long ago for justice for Palestinians. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, although he's not necessarily a political leader, but he also stands in solidarity with Palestinians. And you've seen some American politicians like Jimmy Carter, ex-president, stand and say, I see apartheid. But then you have, for example, the prime minister of my own country, who is a a raving Christian Zionist and blindly supportive of Israel no matter what. Israel bombs Gaza and Lebanon in 2006, it's okay. Israel bombs Gaza in 2008 and 2009, Israel's defending itself. Israel bombs Gaza in 2012, way to go. Why they're so blindly supportive? I think that they have personal agendas, some are afraid, some are afraid of being ostracized or labeled anti this or that, and others maybe perhaps are Zionist, but for sure, and it's documented. Canada's own Eve Engler has a great book called Israel and Canada Building Apartheid. And this documents the variety of reasons for supporting Israel, among them political ideologies of Zionism, and among them fear and being bullied and harassed by the Zionist lobby.

Bill Wolfport: There is this powerful force, not represented by numbers of people, but by some force. It could be money with the Zionist project, as you brought up earlier. And it almost means that inevitably things are going to deteriorate in Gaza and Palestine before they ever get better.

Eva Bartlett: In all of Palestine, things are deteriorating. I mean, the UN itself issued a report saying by 2020, Gaza would not be a livable place. And by any normal person's standards, Gaza right now is not a livable place.

Bill Wolfport: When I heard your first talk, I kept yearning for some sort of salvation from the bloods, from the torment. from the sewage even. You're so graphic about putting me there and making me feel that. And you made me feel a little guilty. I'm a normal person too. I have to inform myself, and I have. And I feel some indignancy over what is happening to my country in support of the Zionist project, in support of Israel. But for the viewers who haven't informed themselves, tell them what exactly they can do.

Eva Bartlett: I think education is important, reaching out to your friends and loved ones, et cetera, and informing yourself, not just relying on the corporate media to tell you the facts, because more often than not, they will tell you the opposite of the truth. Empowering yourself and actually taking action on your own, whether it be by contacting your Congress or your Senate, or in Canada, your Parliament, et cetera, writing letters, challenging the dominant Zionist narratives.

Bill Wolfport: Speaking truth to this power, one-on-one, recruit another person.

Eva Bartlett: But also letting our politicians know that, yeah, the Zionist lobby is strong, but we also, we want, we have our own demands, and our demands are for justice and to hold you accountable. You're our political leaders, so you don't need to cater to the Zionist lobby. You need to listen to us, because in the end, we're paying taxes for you to represent us. We're not paying taxes for the money to be sent over to Israel to bomb and kill and oppress Palestinians.

Bill Wolfport: Do you think boycott that's targeted and implemented with some zeal is going to have an impact?

Eva Bartlett: Boycott in tandem with all sorts of campaigns, again, contacting politicians, letter writing. I think there's a variety of ways that we need to show Israel that actually the world is watching. It's no longer the 60s. The world is not so ignorant and naive as it used to be.

Bill Wolfport: And it's very important that this be Americanized, that all the viewers who haven't really gotten involved in the Mideast get involved, because you related beautifully in one of your talks about the traumatized children, how 90% of them have post-traumatic stress, and the drawings that they come up with are rather kind of psychotic. Young kids are, you know, vencing these emotions, dreadful emotions that most kids never experience. And coupled with that, the invading soldiers, when they leave, they leave behind hateful graffiti. It's really a call to action, isn't it, for the viewers?

Eva Bartlett: I've had people come up to me after and say, you know, I've considered myself very well informed on what is happening in Palestine, but I had no idea. And people tell me they're shocked to see somebody who could be my grandmother being shot at by an armed Israeli soldier, or they're shocked to see the trauma of these children who are, you know, very young, but they're like mature adults.

Bill Wolfport: Do you think it would be apt to say that Westerners, North Americans in particular, are under siege too?

Eva Bartlett: We are definitely under assault with a barrage of lies. I mean, there are numerous groups that have done studies on the accuracy of reporting regarding stories on Israeli issues and Palestinian issues, for example, Israeli deaths or Palestinian deaths. And more often than not, these studies find that, in fact, the reporting favors the Israeli narrative.

Bill Wolfport: Give us some hope.

Eva Bartlett: I would take hope in the fact that it seems like more people are becoming aware of what's going on, of the reality, and people who even call themselves apolitical are finding out from one way or another, whether it's through social media or random encounters. So that gives me hope to know that, I mean, somebody like myself, and, you know, like I said, I was just an average person, and I still am, but now I understand what's going on with Palestinians, and hopefully I can have some impact on people I meet, and then they in turn can have impact.

Bill Wolfport: I just want to say thank you very much. It's really appreciated having you as a guest.

Eva Bartlett: I consider myself fortunate to have seen the things I've seen. And above all, you know, the Palestinians have entrusted myself and other people with their message and to get that message out to the world. So I'm very grateful, you know, for any opportunity to share their realities and their love and their spirit with other people.

Bill Wolfport: It is a pleasure to welcome an honorable and courageous man, Dr. Deans, to Moral Politics. Thank you for appearing tonight, Dr. Deans. Thank you. It's good to be here. Now, you've been an activist for over 25 years. I'm curious, what made you aware of the Palestinian plight and got you involved?

Bill Dienst: well i was the son of an air force colonel who we were in nato in brussels in nineteen seventy two during the munich olympics and like others i was appalled at the attack on the israeli athletes but and my father said well you know there's another side of this story and he told me a little bit about the palestinians and A couple days later in the Stars and Stripes newspaper, I read in the back page about an attack in southern Lebanon by Israeli warplanes that killed over 50 Lebanese, and it was supposedly in retaliation to what happened in Munich. And I said to myself, I was like junior high at the time, wait a minute, these people in Lebanon really had nothing to do with what happened in Munich. Now we flash forward to medical school in the early 1980s when Israel invaded Lebanon and killed between 15 and 30,000 people in a month. That got my attention and I became an activist in the U District of Seattle at that time.

Bill Wolfport: Yeah, I noticed that recently you were part of the Free Gaza movement.

Bill Dienst: You were on the first boat sailing to Gaza. That's right. I was part of the maiden voyage where we sent two boats from Greece to Cyprus and directly into Gaza Strip. I was the medical officer, and we broke a 41-year-old maritime siege that has been in place over Gaza since 1967.

Bill Wolfport: Now, what was the intent of that Free Gaza Movement, the boat sailing to Gaza? You certainly couldn't have brought that many supplies to Gaza.

Bill Dienst: Sure. The amount of supplies we brought were limited to two small fishing vessels, but what we accomplished was we called attention to the world to the fact that Gaza has been under siege. And we were able to breach that siege five times between August of 2008 and December of 2008. Since that time, they've blockaded our boats. But we're raising awareness in the world community about this siege because this siege needs to end. The Gaza Strip is an enclave 24 miles long and anywhere between four and seven miles wide, and it has about one and a half million people that are crammed in there. It's surrounded by our Berlin Wall. The airway, the airs are patrolled by F-16s, Apache attack helicopters, and drones. And the sea is patrolled by Israeli warships. And so these people, and Israel is slowly turning the screws and cutting off supplies and putting people through a slow starvation process. And so we're calling world attention to this fact by our nonviolent direct action.

Bill Wolfport: I know you gave up your place on the return boat ride to a tragically wounded 15-year-old.

Bill Dienst: Our boats have taken several Palestinians out of Gaza who need to be outside, whether it be students that need to study or people with special medical needs. Yeah, so part of our mission has been to bring people out of Gaza as well. And they're not getting any kind of... basic medical care in Gaza? That's a big problem. The problem is not that Gaza doesn't have well-trained, educated healthcare professionals. It has many. The problem is that the infrastructure of the hospital facilities in Gaza are being bled into a dysfunctional delivery system, mainly because medical supplies such as repair equipment for dialysis machines, such as chemotherapeutic agents for oncology, limits the amount of advance care that can be given in Gaza. And at the same time, the Israeli authorities will not allow Gazans with special medical needs abroad out of Gaza. And something like when we were there, over 250 Palestinians had died awaiting endless bureaucratic delay to exit Gaza to get tertiary care in Egypt, in Israel, in the West Bank and in Jordan and places outside.

Bill Wolfport: Now you've articulated some really noble purposes behind the Free Gaza Movement, yet the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, has alleged that the Free Gaza Movement was just a leftist antique that's anti-Israel.

Bill Dienst: I don't think we're anti-anyone. We had members, we had Israelis on the boat with us, such as Dr. Jeff Halper, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. We're not anti-anyone, we're pro-human rights. But that goes for all people who live in the area, not just Jews. And so I don't think, and also the idea that we're leftist. Well, we had one woman, one of our main organizers works for the oil companies. We have a prominent attorney who was part of Portland, Oregon's largest law firm. We have engineers. We had medical people. We had nurses. So it's really easy to try to label people, but it's much more complicated than that. And yes, we do have human rights workers who have been shot at by the Israelis in the West Bank while they were trying to promote the human rights of Palestinians there.

Bill Wolfport: So this really brings us to the issue underlying the Free Gaza Movement itself, is that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Bill Dienst: Is there any doubt about that? Oh, absolutely it's a humanitarian crisis. I've been going to the Gaza Strip since 1985. In 1985, you used to be able to take a group taxi from Jerusalem, and in an hour and a half, you were in Gaza City. And you go through these barrels full of concrete, make a little S-turn, and you were in Gaza. And during those years, the people of Gaza were a source of cheap labor to the economy of Israel. Since that time, however, the Israelis have built a Berlin Wall around the entire perimeter of Gaza, and they've created what has been called the world's largest prison. And again, now since Hamas was free and democratically elected in Gaza, the Israelis have tried to punish the entire population by imposing a siege such that basic supplies, basic medical goods cannot get into Gaza.

Bill Wolfport: This is the allegation of collective punishment that's been heaped on Israel.

Bill Dienst: Yeah, it's more than an allegation. It's a total reality.

Bill Wolfport: So there is a bare subsistence policy being enacted by Israel upon the population. This is man, woman, and child, and grandmothers and grandfathers, right?

Bill Dienst: is there any doubt about uh... there's no doubt about it uh... i've seen the standard of living in gaza deteriorate since nineteen eighty five i've seen the quality of the water deteriorate i've seen children who are growth stunted red frizzy hair not due to their uh... genetics but due to protein malnutrition which is going on uh... so yes this is this is deliberately created this is a man-made humanitarian disaster that's unfolding in Gaza. This is part of the make them miserable, make them leave policy. Although it hasn't worked because the population of Gaza continues to grow in spite of all the killings, in spite of all the pressure to make people leave. Would you go so far as to even use the term ethnic cleansing? Oh, sure. The whole enterprise of creating a Jewish state in a land that has other people as well has been a slow ethnic cleansing of course with the creation of Israel in 1948 about three-quarters of a million Palestinians were pushed out of what became Israel and about of the Gaza population eighty percent of them are refugees and descendant of refugees who came from villages which now are in present-day Israel

Bill Wolfport: So there's this policy of make them miserable, make them leave and carried out with bare subsistence and you can attest to having seen that. Sure. Did you see some other horrific tragedy of the medical nature while you were there?

Bill Dienst: Sure, absolutely. I've been, again, in 1985, I was there 2003, 2006, and 2008. When I was there in 2006, I visited a town called Beit Hanun, which is right across from the Israeli town of Sidrat. And in response to one Israeli being killed by a missile, the Israeli military surrounded the town of Beit Hanun. killed 85 and wounded 300 over the course of a week. And then the day after they pulled out their tanks and their armored personnel vehicles, an apartment building was attacked by 10 missiles, which killed 19 members of one family and wounded over 50. This was all one member of one family in a 10-minute span.

Bill Wolfport: In an article you wrote, you even commented that Gaza fishermen are under attack.

Bill Dienst: Absolutely. It's estimated 14 Gaza fishermen have been killed while trying to fish Gaza waters. As part of our Free Gaza Movement, we had members of our delegation who have been going out to sea with the fishermen and documenting. If you look at MySpace or one of the video websites, you can see pictures of Israeli warships machine gunning the waters around Gazan fishing vessels. So there's that kind of endless harassment to deprive Gaza fishermen of their livelihood. We've got to talk about why there's a humanitarian crisis. America currently has a codependent relationship with Israel. We have become Israel's chief enabler. Let me say that you and I are friends and one of us drinks too much alcohol and over time it affects our families, it affects our colleagues. We start damaging the neighborhood with our reckless behavior. The more we don't come to terms with the person's alcoholism, the worse it gets. our relationship with Israel is similar when it comes to military aid Israel the Bush administration recently authorized thirty billion dollars to the Israeli government over the next 10 years in spite of the recent assault on Gaza in spite of the assault on southern Lebanon two years ago and so basically Israel's like a drunkard that's destroying the neighborhood all we hear about is the need for Israel security but it keeps coming to at the expense of everyone else in the region's security. Witness the Iraq war. What about those rockets that are raining down on southern Israel? Well, it's hard to expect the Palestinian population, who are being killed at a ratio of 100 to 1, to absolutely not respond violently at all 100% of the time.

Bill Wolfport: Is that hyperbole, though, that rockets are raining down on southern Israel?

Bill Dienst: When you look at how many people are killed by those rockets, it is hyperbole. It's estimated that around 20 Israelis have been killed by Qassam missiles in the last seven years. Okay, let's compare that to traffic fatalities in Israel. It's estimated that in the same time span, about 4,000 Israelis have died in motor vehicle accidents There was a ceasefire in place prior to this Israeli attack on Gaza that lasted about, it was supposed to be six months, and it lasted around five months. And during that time, no Israelis, zero Israelis were killed. from rockets that were greatly reduced coming from Gaza. In the same time span, approximately 134 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and Gaza by Israeli armed forces. And we don't hear about the provocations that Israel does to try to... They want the rockets because then they don't have to negotiate. It's a good stonewalling technique.

Bill Wolfport: Well, everybody witnessed just the terror bombing by Israel of Palestine recently. And it's just incredible. There was only one civilian fatality. Of course, any fatality is terrible, but only one. And it resulted in some 1380 Palestinian dead, half of them women and children and grandmothers. And at the end of the The conflict, it was only three, and then there were about 13 soldiers, nine of which were killed by their own side.

Bill Dienst: Well, I believe the total was 13, 10 of them soldiers, and there were three civilians that were killed after the attack started. And the Israelis killed four of their own through friendly fire. So the Israelis actually killed more Israelis than the Palestinians did.

Bill Wolfport: So it's very, very lopsided despite all of the rhetoric.

Bill Dienst: Very disproportionate. 100 dead Palestinians for every dead Israeli. And not to mention the scores of thousands that are wounded and the 50 to 100,000 people who have been made homeless by this recent carnage.

Bill Wolfport: So you see, basically using your analogy of Israel as the drunkard, you see America as basically a bartender giving more drinks to this obvious drunkard who's out of control.

Bill Dienst: And it affects, and pretty soon the bartender's going to lose his license as far as the moral authority in the world community goes. Which apparently we, the United States, have. Has. And I would argue that the war in Iraq was largely pushed by the neocons and the pro-Israeli forces within our government that allowed us to stumble into Iraq and the quagmire that we've created there when our media, our mainstream media, were not doing their job and questioning the real reasons behind that war, most of which turned out to be lies and deception. Let's hope that we're not adding Iran to that list.

Bill Wolfport: Hopefully we'll be smarter this time around. The phrase, never again. You hear that often from the Jewish community, the people that support, especially the people that support Israel blindly.

Bill Dienst: How does that settle with you? Well, when I was in Israel, I did visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, and it's reported there that six million Jews were killed out of maybe a population of nine million Jews in Europe. And so people like Elie Wiesel came up with the phrase, never again, never again will the Jewish population allow this to happen. but I think you have to extend that never again to other populations like Rwanda like the Congo and like in Palestine unlike in Iraq because it seems like we seem to let these these atrocities happen over and over again as long as it's not the Jewish people but never mind that the Palestinians had they had zero responsibility for what the Nazis did to Jews. So why is it that the Palestinians can be sacrificed? Is Israel unstoppable?

Bill Wolfport: If you look at the... the Jewish lobby in America. You look at what just happened recently with Chas Freeman, and there's some question whether the National Intelligence Director, Admiral Blair, can keep his job now because the lobby's after him.

Bill Dienst: It's a little frightening that these people are supposed to be representing the United States, and I think Chas Freeman is a very capable intelligence analyst, but he's willing to speak the truth rather than just go along with what is politically correct. It's a shame that we didn't have people like Chas Freeman in power in the CIA when we made the faulty decision to go into Iraq. And so, yes, those people are being blackballed. There is a powerful force known as the pro-Israeli lobby. It composes of very many groups. One is AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but there's the ADL and there's various other organizations. who tend to target anybody who has the gall to criticize Israeli atrocities and so there's a big blind spot in most American politicians because they know that if they dare to question Israel they will be attacked by the lobby and unfortunately Chas Freeman is the most recent example of many over the years.

Bill Wolfport: They've been so successful at it over and over and over again. Now speaking of these blind supporters Do you think that it's just that they cannot see anybody as a victim but the Jews?

Bill Dienst: well certainly there are people like that but i also want to point out that there's a growing number of uh... jews in america and perhaps twenty percent of the israeli population that realize that this is not in the best long-term interests of the israeli people to create a segregationist apartheid jewish supremacist fascist regime which is what it is now that's racist and we have in in that to be the flagship of the jewish people That's not in their best interest long term.

Bill Wolfport: It would be ironic for Obama to support a racist nation.

Bill Dienst: Well, yeah, it's a little ironic that we will not go to the Durban Conference in Geneva on World Conference on Racism, and the main reason is because things are going to be said there that are critical of this fascist regime. that's a democracy for Jewish people only that now exists in Israel.

Bill Wolfport: A number of writers and two famous ones, Mearsheimer and Wold, reported, they turned their report into a book.

Bill Dienst: It's the Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Bill Wolfport: I've read the book. And basically their allegation comes right up to the point of the fact that basically there are some people who are pretty un-American. They're Americans, but they're operating in an un-American way. It's harming all of us to support Israel.

Bill Dienst: And they're not just representing the Israeli body politic. They tend to represent the right-wing elements of the Israeli body politic, the ones that are intolerant of non-Jews who happen to live in the Holy Land.

Bill Wolfport: And we've seen Israel drift with the recent election further to the right, actually to the far right. It's shocking that there are no liberal or moderate candidates. All of the three major contenders were very radical and the most radical. had to make a pact with an even more radical pact to come to power. Is there any alarm that we should sense over that?

Bill Dienst: Well, when we should be confronting this, we keep giving Israel a gallon of Jack Daniels when we should be confronting them for their excesses. This last election, of course, some would argue that the attack on Gaza over the New Year's was largely a political ploy to try to make the so-called left candidates of Kadima by Tzipi Livni and Labor Party More more more militaristic and that that would help them in the election but now you have a choice between the present government in power, Lukud, headed by Netanyahu, who basically is not for any peace treaty with the Palestinians whatsoever. And you contrast that with Livni and Ehud Barak of the opposing parties, who give lip service to the two-state solution while they are increasing the amount of settlements in the West Bank, making a two-state solution impossible.

Bill Wolfport: And if people look at the background of Ms. Livni, to find that her father was involved in the King David bombing.

Bill Dienst: She was a Mossad agent herself.

Bill Wolfport: She was a Mossad agent herself. Israeli spy agency. Sure. It's just incredible what is running that country, and we're supporting it. Recently, our Secretary of State has demonstrated more of the past dishonest brokering that has taken place in basically alleging responsibility on Hamas.

Bill Dienst: is that appropriate uh... and i'm not let me say that i did vote for barack obama and i had limited garden hope that that we have a more just and fair policy with regard to israel palestine i can certainly say that barack obama is less bad than george for w bush was but what has happened is not good i was glad to see george mitchell appointed as the special liaison but when hillary went to her donor conference on Gaza When was this? This was about two weeks ago, and that would be late February. And she pledged $900 million to Gaza, but then this past week she put strings on it that none of it will go to Gaza unless the unity government recognizes Israel's right to exist. But let's analyze Israel's right to exist for a moment. That sounds good. but when has it been that nation states have an inherent right to exist the Jewish people have a right to exist Israeli Jews have a right to exist but so do Palestinian Arabs and Muslims and Christians and agnostics all people have a right to exist but nation states not necessarily when we started negotiations with the Soviet Union if the precondition was that the Soviet Union had an inherent right to exist the Cold War would still be going on. So we need to stop that precondition. Besides, nobody is demanding that Israel renounces violence and recognizes Palestine's right to exist or the Palestinian people's right to exist.

Bill Wolfport: It's pretty hard for a stateless people that have been so oppressed and so brutalized to recognize and acquiesce to their oppressor, basically.

Bill Dienst: And given that Israel has never declared their borders, when you ask the Palestinian people to recognize Israel's right to exist, what you are saying is that they need to deny their own right to exist. And that's one thing that the mainstream media won't explain and the American public are being deceived about. Is Hamas any worse than Likud? No, they're fairly harmless. I've met with the leadership of Hamas when I was there in Gaza, along with anybody else. Let me paraphrase, Free Gaza Movement does not take sides on internal Palestinian politics, but we will meet with all the leadership, no matter what their background. But when you look at lethality of killing innocent people, the Israeli government is way ahead to the degree of 100 to 1 in killing innocent Palestinians And people say, well, what about the Qassam missiles and the suicide bombing? And I said, I can put a stop to that right now if you want. And they say, how? Well, let's outfit the Palestinians with F-16s, helicopter gunships, tanks. They'll stop using suicide bombing and missiles and homemade missiles right away. Does that make it better? Then how is it morally justifiable for the Israelis to be outfitted with all these horrific weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, by the way? Yeah, people aren't mentioning that.

Bill Wolfport: Two to 400 nuclear weapons at least.

Bill Dienst: So there's this whole double standard.

Bill Wolfport: In the hands of a drunkard.

Bill Dienst: Right. And another way of looking at it is when you use the term terrorist, that's become a very loaded term. It's like saying the American Indian movement is a savage organization. There is a racist intonation in the way we use the term terrorist these days.

Bill Wolfport: Well, you win the battle halfway by just simply labeling. I notice our State Department and our Homeland Security are actually labeling organizations terrorists so that no one can have a different, no one can really analyze it or look at it

Bill Dienst: logically or morally. And according to the current skewed definition, anybody who exerts any sort of armed resistance against the Israeli regime is automatically terrorist.

Bill Wolfport: But if by any application of morality Israel were found to be the real source of terror, we could never come to that conclusion in a government.

Bill Dienst: Even though it's obvious that the birth of Israel was founded on terrorism, like the bombing of the King David Hotel, like the massacre in the village of Der Yassin, which wiped out, and countless other villages.

Bill Wolfport: And that's not just you saying that. The British were on record as saying that. Right. And most of the prime ministers of Israel have quite a checkered past. Let's conclude with what people who are watching this show can do.

Bill Dienst: well there's lots of uh... growing organizations in the united states they're taking on this uh... this cause and let me just mention a few one is called the u s campaign to end the occupation uh... phyllis dennis is a war who's an animal and now i was a lady and she's jewish by the way is is is one of the spearheaders of that organization again there's free gaza movement and Contributing, we continue to send boats because until we open up a free channel in and out of Gaza, if anyone is interested in contributing to our organization, it's www.freegaza.org and you can make tax-deductible contributions. We have to build confidence in our congressional delegation and in President Obama that they can take attack that's not a hundred percent pro right-wing Israel for Israel's own good to take the booze away from the drunkard pretty much pretty much is there any role for divestment boycott sanctions absolutely and they're starting to have some effects I think after this latest atrocity in Gaza Europe and actually england there's there's major movement going on now and now in our country hampshire college has recently uh... divested from israel uh... there are israeli ships that south african dock workers have refused to offload and so i think Just as in the situation in apartheid South Africa, it took many years, but boycotts, divestment, and sanctions were an effective, nonviolent means to try to change rogue governments' behavior.