Special Memorial Episode: the Martyrdom of Refaat Alareer

Speaker 1: In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander. The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths permitted as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage, said one source. Nothing happens by accident, said another source. When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it's because someone in the army decided it wasn't a big deal for her to be killed, that it was a price worth paying in order to hit another target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home. According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza is the widespread use of a system called Habsara, the Gospel, which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can generate targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a mass assassination factory. According to sources who spoke to 972 and Local Call, the targets in Gaza that have been struck by Israeli aircraft can be divided roughly into 4 categories. The first is tactical targets, which include The first is standard military targets, such as armed militant cells, weapon warehouses, rocket launchers, anti-tank missile launchers, launch pits, mortar bombs, military headquarters, observation posts, and so on. The second is underground targets, mainly tunnels that Hamas has dug under Gaza's neighborhoods, including under civilian homes. Aerial strikes on these targets could lead to the collapse of the homes above or near the tunnels. The third is power targets, which includes high-rises and residential towers. in the heart of cities and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices. The idea behind hitting such targets, say 3 intelligence sources who were involved in planning or conducting strikes on power targets in the past, is that a deliberate attack on Palestinian society will exert civil pressure on Hamas. The final category consists of family homes or operatives' homes. The stated purpose of these attacks is to destroy private residences in order to assassinate a single resident suspected of being a Hamas or Islamic Jihad operative. However, in the current war, Palestinian testimonies assert that some of the families that were killed did not include any operatives from these organizations. We are asked to look for high-rise buildings with half a floor that can be attributed to Hamas, said one source who took part in the previous Israeli offensives in Gaza. Sometimes it is a militant group spokesperson's office or a point where operatives meet. I understood They understood that the floor is an excuse that allows the army to cause a lot of destruction in Gaza. That is what they told us. If they would tell the whole world that the Islamic Jihad offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it, the source added. The chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force, The IDF spokesperson for the Gaza Strip Defense Force, Omer Tischler, told military reporters that all of these attacks had a legitimate military target, but also that entire neighborhoods were attacked on a large scale and not in a surgical manner, noting that half of military targets up until October 11th were power targets. The IDF spokesperson said that neighborhoods that serve as terrorist nests for Hamas were attacked, and that damage was caused to operational headquarters, operational assets, and assets used by terrorist organizations inside residential buildings. On October 12th, the Israeli army announced it had killed 3 senior Hamas members, 2 of whom were part of the group's political wing. Yet despite the unbridled Israeli bombardment, the damage to Hamas's military infrastructure in northern Gaza during the first days of the war appears to have been very minimal. Indeed, intelligence sources told 972 and Local Call that military targets that were part of power targets Have previously been used many times as a fig leaf for harming innocent civilian population. Hamas is everywhere in Gaza. There is no building that does not have something of Hamas to it. So, if you want to find a way to turn a high-rise into a target, you will be able to do so, said one former intelligence official. They will never just hit a high-rise that does not have something we can define as a military target, said another intelligence source who carried out previous strikes against power targets. There will always be a floor in the high-rise associated with Hamas. But for the most part, when it comes to power targets, it is clear that the target doesn't have military value that justifies an attack that would bring down the entire empty building in the middle of a city with the help of 6 planes and bombs weighing several tons. Sources who have previously worked on power targets said that the brazen strategy of the current war could be a dangerous development, explaining that attacking power targets was originally intended to shock Gaza, but not necessarily to kill large numbers of civilians. The targets were designed with the assumption that high-rises would be evacuated of all people. So when we were working on compiling targets, there was no concern whatsoever regarding how many civilians would be harmed. The assumption was that the number would always be zero, said one source with a deep knowledge of the tactic. Intelligence sources who Served in the previous operations, also told 972 and Local Call that for 10 days in 2021 and 3 weeks in 2014, an attack rate of 100 to 200 targets per day led to a situation in which the Israeli Air Force had no targets of military value left. Why, then, after nearly 2 months, has the Israeli Army not yet run out of targets in the current war? The answer may lie in a statement from the IDF spokesperson on November 2nd, According to which it is using the AI system Habsora, a gospel, which the spokesperson says enables the use of automatic tools to produce targets at a fast pace and works by improving accurate and high-quality intelligence material according to operational needs. One former intelligence officer explained that the Habsora system enables the Army to run a mass assassination factory, in which the emphasis is on quantity and not quality. It will go over the targets before each attack, but it need not spend a lot of time on them. Since Israel estimates that there are approximately 30,000 members of Hamas in Gaza, they are all marked for death. The number of potential targets is enormous. In 2002, for example, the Israeli Air Force bombed the home of Salah Mustafa Mohammed Shahad, then the head of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing. The bomb killed him, his wife Iman, his 14-year-old son, 13-year-old daughter Leila and 14 other civilians, including 11 children. The killing caused a public uproar in both Israel and the world, and Israel was accused of committing war crimes. That criticism led to a decision by the Israeli army in 2003 to drop a smaller quarter-ton bomb on a meeting of top Hamas officials, including the elusive leader of al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif, taking place in a residential building in Gaza. Despite the fear that it would not be powerful enough to kill them, the attack failed, and the senior military wing officers fled the scene. After 2014's Protective Edge, during which Israel began to systematically strike family homes from the air, human rights groups like B'Tselem collected testimonies from Palestinians who survived these attacks. The survivors said the homes collapsed in on themselves. Glass shards cut the bodies of those inside. The debris Smells of blood. People were buried alive. This deadly policy continues to this day, thanks in part to the use of destructive weaponry and sophisticated technology like Habsora.

Refaat Alareer: Hello, everyone. Today my speech is going to be about storytelling. I'm not a great storyteller to the masses, but probably I try with my kids. I brought Omar. He's my eldest son. I always spend most of my time with them telling them stories either about them when they were kids, myself, my mother, my grandmother, and sometimes we make up stories. And I invite them to tell the story and retell the story. Sometimes on purpose I start a story when one of the of my kids is absent so that I can watch them retell the story to each other. And the results are always amazing. The topic of storytelling is something I am interested in as a Palestinian average man and as an academic at the Islamic University. Something that happened to me last month when I went with my friends to Gaza seaport to buy fish. Of all the types we had, we have very limited types of fish, but there were still a few. I liked one particular fish. It's the swordfish. I don't know why. I went to that particular fish. I took pictures and took more pictures, and I almost carried it and asked my friends to take pictures of me and of that particular fish. One of my friends said, why this? Why this particular fish? I didn't answer. I didn't know why. But I felt this bond, this strong connection between me and between this type of fish. When I went back home that day, I started thinking of why I did that, when all of a sudden— What was that? I remembered something my mom told me as a kid, a story about a swordfish in which a group of fish were caught by a fisherman and it was the heroic, the brave swordfish that managed to free them, set them free. Apparently, my mom was teaching me patriotism, bravery, to stand for one's friends, to stand Yes. To stand for one's family, to stand for one's homeland, to stand for— to struggle for rights, to struggle for my— the people around me, the ones I love and the ones I know and the ones I don't know. And so many other stories also rushed to my mind. One of them is the story of the cat, about a lazy boy whose mom asked him to go out and check if it was raining. He was too lazy to stand up, probably watching TV, and he said, Mom, let's wait for the cat. When it comes back, we can feel the cat. If it is wet, then it must be raining. She told the story to me again and again and again. Probably she wanted me not to be lazy. Maybe I am not lazy, or I'm not very, very lazy.

Speaker 3: I'm sorry.

Refaat Alareer: Thank God my wife is not here to tell you. But I also remembered stories that, other than the fictional stories my mom told me, real stories about me. And that's me when I was a kid. One of my friends was joking that if the people are not going to laugh at your jokes or your stories, they're going to laugh at your pictures. I don't know. My mom told me so many stories. When Israel invaded Gaza, of herself going to school despite the fact that the bombs, the shells were raining all over the place. And one particular experience still makes my hair stand on end. She told me how she narrowly escaped death Yes. When she was going to school one day. And the other day, she woke up, she took her bag, and she went to school. Nothing stopped my mom from going to school. And probably for that reason, I have never, ever in my life missed a class or skipped a class. Unless Dr. Ayman Hallag is here, then maybe I skipped one class. And I started thinking of these stories. And I realized that I am the person I am today because of these stories, because of my mom, because my mom was teaching me values, was teaching me etiquette, was teaching me to love people, to love my life. She was teaching me to love my country at the same time. I started also thinking of my early memories, and I went to my mom that day and started telling her, particular experiences that keep flashing into my mind when I realize something that I haven't paid attention to before in my life. She told me, Refaat, it's impossible for you to remember this because you were 1 or 2 years old. And then I realized I must have lived these stories despite the fact that I can't— I can vividly describe these stories. I must have lived I lived them through my mom's stories. So her experiences, her life became my life. And that's how my life was shaped. Stories are also important in our lives as Palestinians, as people under occupation, as native peoples on this land, not only because they make us, they shape us, they make us the people we are, but also because they connect us with our past. They connect us with our present and they prepare us to the future. I also remember my grandmother, bless her. Every day when we were kids during the First Intifada, every day for years and years, we would spend the evening at our grandparents'. My grandpa would be ready making the best tea ever. Tea. And the best thing about him was he would always add as much sugar as we wanted. That was the best thing in our lives. But when we finished the tea, when we finished the sugar, we would leave our grandpa and turn to our grandmother for her stories, because that is what we always waited for, our grandmother's stories. And no matter how much more sugar our grandfather added, What did you do? We never left her side. We never left her side because that was the best day of our day. My grandmother was clearly exercising power over us, was clearly competing with the fact that our grandfather always wanted us around him, and she always won. Our grandmother always won. Now, the serious question here is when our grandmothers tell us stories, they tend to inject these stories with values, with meanings. Sometimes we do this, we inject things, but our grandmothers, our moms, they speak spontaneously. They speak from personal experience. They tell us stories about their own lives. They describe life beyond the armistice line, for example. For example, my grandmother told us stories when she was a kid, when she was a newly married wife who would spend months plowing her land, harvesting the crops, the land that now we don't own because it was occupied. Although the land is physically occupied, it still lives in our memories. It still lives in our hearts. Because we can easily visualize this. And this makes me always think of Suad Amiri, the wonderful Palestinian writer. She said when she went back to Jaffa— she has never been to Jaffa before— when she went back to Jaffa, when she went to Jaffa, she said, I could tell whose house was that and whose shop was that, and I could tell what happened to my mom here and what happened to my dad there.

Speaker 3: Because...

Refaat Alareer: Because I lived these experiences in my own mother's stories. However, some of these stories are dying out because the old are dying and also because we stopped caring about these stories. That is unfortunate, but it is true. We spend too much time on TV.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Refaat Alareer: And we spend too much time gazing at our smartphones. Even when we go visit our grandparents or our parents, we're usually busy gazing at our websites, at our smartphones. We don't care as much as we used to care in the past, and that is very dangerous. Now Edward Said warns of this. If we stop caring about stories, if we stop telling our stories, if we stop listening to our parents, we create space, we create vacuum for others to occupy this virtual space in our past, in our heart. Edward Said says, history is made by men and women. And I love the fact that he refers to this, the fact that this is something made by women and men, not leaders, not politicians, not the elite, because the history, the oral history for us Palestinians belongs to you, to me, to our mom, to our dad, to our grandparents, to your parents and to your grandparents, because the oral history should always belong to the people, should shape politics, not the other way around. History is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and unwritten in case we just leave it and keep silent. And this also takes me to an amazing story of a Native Canadian. When the colonizers took over North America and they wanted to divide the land among themselves, one of the eldest approached He asked, what are you doing? He said, we own the land. We are dividing the land among ourselves. He said, if this is your land, tell me your stories. If this is indeed your land, tell me your stories. And of course the answer is silence because they had no stories. And they don't own the land. And it also takes me to Africa. And I love how talking about oral history and storytelling connects indigenous native people from all over the world. Chenua Chebe teaches us something. This is a lesson for us all. If the lions do not have their own historians, The history of the hunt will always glorify the hunters, will always glorify the occupier, will always glorify the colonizer rather than the colonized, the oppressed, the indigenous, the rightful people of the land. And believe me, people out there are looking forward to our stories. They want our stories. They seek our stories. And this is the very amazing success story of Gaza Writes Back, which is a book. Gaza Writes Back is a book of 23 stories written in English by young Palestinian men and women between the age of 17 and 25. 13 of those— 13 of the 15 writers are female.

Speaker 5: 13.

Refaat Alareer: 13 of the 15 writers are women, are young women. And this again takes me back to the fact that my mom made me, my mom made me the man I am because of her stories. And my grandmother made me love my country, my homeland. And we have more women telling stories than men nowadays. Gaza Writes Back. Was translated into 6 languages, was published in America, and it's being— it is all over the world because— not because of the book, but because of the stories that the young people managed to write. We have been contacted from people around the world as far as Japan, Brazil, people in Italy, in South Africa, people in Malaysia, in America, in Canada, We've been contacted by those people and we spoke about our experience as Palestinians because of the power of the story. Let's tell more stories. And sometimes when we tell stories, sometimes when we tell stories about our homeland, we love the story because it is about our homeland and we love our homeland even more because What now? What should we do? What should be done? Let's go back home. And when we go back home, let's talk to our parents, to our grandparents. Let's approach them. Let's seek their stories. Let's beg them to tell us stories and to tell us more. And when they tell us stories, let's carry these stories and tell them to our little ones, to our kids. To our boys, to our girls, because if we don't do that, if the story stops there, we're betraying ourselves. We're betraying the story. We're betraying our parents and grandparents. And we are betraying our homeland.

Speaker 5: 2 steps. 1, 2. Look in the mirror. The horror! The horror! The butt of your M16 on my cheekbone. The yellow patch it left behind, the bullet-shaped scar expanding like a swastika, snaking across my face, the haptic flowing out of my eyes, dripping out of my nostrils piercing— out of my nostril piercing, my ears flooding the place like it did to you 70 years ago or so.

Speaker 6: I am—

Speaker 5: I am just you. I am your past haunting your future and your present. I strive like you did. I fight like you did. I resist like you resisted. And for a moment, I will take your resistance as a model. Were you not holding the barrel of the gun between my bleeding eyes? 1, 2. The very same bullet, the very same gun. The gun that have killed your mom and killed your dad is being used against me by you. Mark this bullet and mark in your gun. If you sniff it, it has your and my blood. It has my present and your past. It has my present and your future. That's why we are twins. Same life track. Same weapon, same suffering, same facial expressions drawn in the face of the killer, same everything, except that in your case, the victim have evolved backwards into the victimizer. I do not hate you. I want to help you stop hating and killing me. I tell you, the sounds of your machine gun renders you deaf. The smell of powder beats out of my blood. The sparks disfigure my facial expressions. Would you stop shooting for a moment?

Speaker 7: Would you?

Speaker 5: All you have to do is close your eyes. Close your eyes tightly so that you can see in your mind's eye the look in the mirror. 1, 2, look in the mirror. I am you. I am your past. And killing me, you kill you.

Speaker 7: What Israel is doing is nonstop campaigns of mowing the lawn, killing as many Palestinians and putting us in a place, in a corner, where we can't do anything to defend ourselves and our rights. When Israel started bombing my little Ahmad, About whom I wrote in the article for The Atlantic, asked her mother if there is going to be another war. And it was really hard on me as a father, as a parent, a little kid, 5, 6 years old, preparing in 3 weeks to go to school, to start school. And she's asking about another war happening in her short life.

Refaat Alareer: Right.

Speaker 7: And that was the spark of the article. But this is what the kids in Gaza go through every year, every 2 years maximum. Again, in between these huge, massive campaigns, Israel also never stops bombing Palestinians. So it's very traumatic. It's like a nightmare that you never wake from, a nightmare that leads to a nightmare and leads to a nightmare, like a Pandora's Pandora's box. As a father, as a parent, we are helpless. We don't know what to do. We can't find a solution for this.

Nora: Tell us a little bit about what it's been like in the aftermath of those 3 days and how your daughter's Did they eventually, you know, go to school? I mean, what is it like trying to kind of, you know, live your normal life after so much destruction and so much terror and the nightmares that you just mentioned?

Speaker 7: Usually there is no— like I said, there is no normal in Gaza. We never have normal days, because even when we go back, we go back to the siege, to the occupation, to dying slowly, to lacking electricity, lacking power, lacking even sometimes basics for food, for books sometimes, and school materials. Sometimes closed with Israel, sometimes tightening the noose and closing the borders and not allowing Palestinian cancer patients and others to go to seek treatment. The aftermath is usually no bombs, but a lot of talks about about what happened and how things happened. And you are always forced to listen to the little ones talking about the bombs and what happened and who was afraid, who wasn't afraid. You know, sometimes kids try to prove that they were, you know, heroes despite what happens during the bombings. Usually there are screams, there are tears. You know, You can imagine how kids react when there is a bombing nearby. After war, after the aftermath, it's usually kids talking about wars, like sometimes like politicians speaking about the missiles and the bombings. Or it would usually be very devastating when they realize that a friend of them was killed, or a little one that went to nursery with them was killed, or that—

Speaker 6: Right.

Speaker 7: The family house of relatives, like what happened to my relatives last year. My in-laws' house was destroyed, and the little ones no longer had a home. And my kids, Lina and Amal, were talking about— because their mother was saying something about them losing everything, their clothes and toys. And then the little ones were saying that— Telling their mom if they can give some of their clothes and some of their toys. So there is usually after the wars, after the Israeli attacks and onslaughts, there is a lot of pain and a lot of trauma. And there is a lot of this, you know, I would say this poetic reaction from kids. You don't want them to be— you want your kids to be generous. You want them—

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Speaker 7: to be selfless. But you don't want them to be talking about war in the context of war. You love your kids when they share their sweets or their clothes or their toys with other kids when they hang around. But when this happens, it's so sweet, so beautiful, but at the same time, it's that kind of sweetness and beauty you don't want.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely.

Asa: So, Refaat, you wrote in your piece that, saying, Palestinians have become accustomed to Israel's carnage when elections approach. Israeli leaders know the best way to win votes is to flex their muscles. And I think that is, it was particularly clear in this round of violence, this Israeli assault, this particular Israeli assault against Gaza, because there was no pretext, you know, there was no, there was nothing that they could say that, oh, well, you know, the Palestinian fighters started firing at us first. You know, even though that's always bogus anyway, just because of the very nature of Israel. But in this state, you know, it was, it was, they called it, I think they called it a preemptive action, preemptive strike kind of thing. So there was no, you know, it just seemed particularly acute that it was just particularly cynical, and it was particularly, you know, premised on the upcoming Israeli elections. So there's that factor, as you put in your piece. But you also say it's wrong to assume that Israel only kills when elections are on the horizon, and that these regular killings are part of a 100-year strategy to eliminate Palestinians despite political theater. So could you talk about that a little?

Speaker 7: The Israeli society is a highly militarized society, maybe more than American society. In 2014, I remember, you know, more than 2,400 people were massacred. And, you know, many Israelis were on top of certain hills around Gaza looking at the bombs falling, like a theater described by American correspondents. There was a poll, I think the article was published on Vice, talking about more, I think, 94% of Israeli Jews supporting the ongoing massacres and destruction of Gaza. So the Israeli politicians and leaders, they know this, they know this very well. They know how to win votes. They know how to win seats. They know how to do it, by killing Palestinians, by making our life miserable, by proving that— it was Bennett who said, I killed Arabs, I'm proud of it. Because he knows Despite, you know, this could resonate horribly around globally, but they don't care about the public opinion. They don't care about— because there will not be punishment, there will not be consequences for what they do. And I remember when this campaign started, I was one of the people who posted that, yeah, there is an Israeli election coming. And, you know, people want to show to you know, flex their muscles by killing Palestinians. And then there were so many people talking about this, Israeli journalists, even non-Palestinians, pro-Palestinians and others. But for Palestinians, we've been suffering for decades under this military, brutal military regime, military rule. Whether there are elections or not, we're exposed to Israeli killing machines. We're killed day and night. We're being suffocated. And even if Israel is not killing us, shedding our blood, we're being suffocated. When you can't travel, when somebody— I know people in Gaza who— people who die because they can't go to the West Bank or to Jerusalem because they will get arrested at Erez because 30 years ago they threw stones at Israeli military jeeps, or because a family member member was a freedom fighter. So the reality on the ground that sadly not many people see is that they're 24/7, Israel is killing us, suffocating us, shedding our blood. And for many people, this slow death that happens is even worse in so many ways. At least when Israel starts a war, many people start paying attention. And even when we talk about truce or Allah or ceasefire, it never stops. Because like Nora said, in less than a day after that truce, Israel killed 3 Palestinians and injured many. I think 2 of them succumbed to their wounds, one of them today. So the reality is that Israel kills more when there are elections on the horizon. But Israel is always killing Palestinians and suffocating them.

Nora: Yeah. And part of that suffocation is the siege, the blockade, you know, 15-year-old blockade. Can you talk about how that kind of punctuates— you know, you were talking earlier about there is no semblance of normalcy in the Gaza Strip when every you know, everything is under blockade, when there are no medications, when there are extensive barriers to freedom of movement, and imports and exports. And, you know, I mean, it just, it permeates every single molecule of life in Gaza. And, you know, once the bombs stop, the media leaves, and no one talks about you know, the ongoing violence of the blockade itself. Can you talk a little bit about that and how the siege is operating now, you know, 15, 16 years later?

Speaker 7: I usually like to talk about the siege being tightened in 2006. Because there has always been a siege. When the occupation starts, when colonization starts, it besieges the people at the same time, controls the movement, restricts the movement, people who want to travel, people who want to seek medical treatment, who want to just want to travel for fun, for business, for studies, etc. So we have always— I remember in I was in grade— probably I was in grade 7, and the teacher asked a question. There was a passage in the book that counts Arab countries, and there was a blank space in the— very strange— in the middle. And he said, can somebody— can anybody guess what's going on here? And we didn't know. We were little kids. Like, I think I was in grade 6 or 7.

Asa: Right.

Speaker 7: And he said the space was the word Palestine in Arabic, and it was erased because the Israeli military controls the books that come to Gaza, what we read, even the word Palestine. And the other day I was reading about one Israeli Zionist troll. She was angry about the Palestinian Torah, I think. It's a term in Judaism and how Zionism is Like, you shouldn't use the word Palestine. And I remembered an article from Haaretz, I think 5 years ago, when an Israeli zoo was categorizing a gazelle as a Palestinian gazelle, giving it the scientific name, and there was an uproar. Many Israelis protested, like, why are you using the word? You should be sued for this. There should be— you shouldn't say Palestinian at all. So this is the state of siege Israel wants to control Again, its people and also wants control as more, the way even the West Palestine. And I remember friends who spent 6, in the First Intifada, 6 months in prison for raising the Palestinian flag or for having the picture of a small tiny picture of Yasser Arafat or for sometimes wearing a t-shirt with a kufiya or something. So the siege has always been there. What sometimes what, and what, what to wear, what to do, what to say, where to go, where not to go. But 15 years ago, it was tightened to the extent of suffocation, when literally the Israelis were counting the calories entering Gaza. It's a little bit better now. I mean, things improved a little bit. But it's improved because it's part of this political game. Gaza is being used as a lab. They test everything. They see, they want to starve us, to starve Palestinians. I think that Unemployment rate reached 45-50% sometime in Gaza. They want to starve Palestinians. They want to control our movements. They want to control what we eat. We've seen reports sometimes, what is not allowing box, not allowing chocolate sometimes. It's like, because they want to tell the world, to tell us that we are going to control you no matter what. What you do. And this is what we refuse as Palestinians. We reject Israeli rule. We don't want to submit to Israeli rule. And the more barbaric, the more brutal Israel grows, the more resilient and the more determined Palestinians become. I think I mentioned this in the article, can't remember whether I took that paragraph out, that Israel has been killing us, has been bombing us for— No, I think the paragraph was edited out. There was a paragraph about the leaders of today being the very little kids 20 years ago seeing other people killed by Israel. And the Israeli terror, the Israeli massacres did not terrorize those people to become cowards, to give up, to say, oh my God, we can't fight back, we can't. No, they grew up to be leaders. And, and there is, if you follow this from a military point of view, like the more, like when Israel kills military leaders, the ones that come are more determined and more ferocious in a sense, more, you know, to fight back, to create new ways to hopefully contribute to ending Israeli occupation.

Asa: Yeah, these stories about Israel even trying to ban and eradicate the word Palestine. That's really interesting about the animals as well. I remember so many different stories about this, like the word Palestine is just such a threat to them, like they consider it to be such a threat to them. And it's like, I don't know, it's bizarre, like to even remove it from textbooks like this. You know, this is the actions of a dictatorship, like this is actions of a cult, really. I mean, I saw this Netflix documentary. I was watching this Netflix documentary recently about a cult in America, the fundamentalist Mormons. And, you know, as it became more and more extreme, they began sort of— their leader began sort of trying to eradicate scientific learning. And they would go through and they would cut out the pages of, of books that, you know, when it basically anything that went against his teachings. And, you know, here's Israel doing the same thing to Palestinians to try and eradicate Palestine.

Nora: Yeah.

Asa: It shows what I mean. Yeah.

Nora: Well, it shows how threatened they are. And they know, you know, like, there's a whole, I mean, you can get into the psychology of Zionism.

Speaker 7: Even the stories in Sheikh Jarrah with the balloons and Israeli soldiers, to bring down a bunch of balloons, it's like, what the hell are you doing? I think there was, like, speaking about how Israel— trying to understand this, there was, I think, a military attack by Palestinian resistance on Gaza's fence, when they put a Palestinian flag and it was booby-trapped.

Nora: Right.

Speaker 7: And then the soldier, like, you know, nonchalantly took it and he wanted to throw away. And I was, oh my God. And sometimes it's like it backfires. If you hate the flag this much, like, okay, you need to pay the price sometimes.

Nora: Amazing. And yeah, I mean, you, you know, you're an educator, you're a professor at the university, and, you know, you do a lot of literature, but you also do media criticism, at least, you know, at least on Twitter. The, you know, not only is the establishment media ignoring the siege, the blockade, but it doesn't retract or issue corrections when information comes out about Israel's obvious culpability in certain attacks. You know, for example, the Israeli military admitted it killed 5 Palestinian children in Gaza in one of the many attacks after initially lying that the atrocity was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket that fell short. The explosion took place on August 7th at the Afalujah Cemetery west of Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. You know, these children were apparently visiting the grave of their grandfather, and Israel dropped a missile.

Speaker 7: Can you talk about the impunity of Israel and the so-called international community's absolute silence and complicity with this kind of violence and, you know, really how the media kind of absolves I think when it comes to Palestinians, we have long given up on the international community, on America or Europe, because these are the very people protecting Israel and sending Israel the weapons. In 2014, when Israel ran out of some kind of shells, I think they totally just opened the doors to American store warehouses inside occupied Palestine, and they took as many as they wanted, because America is here to protect Israel. And we see how Israel is even interfering in American politics, but no one wants to talk about that either. So on the Palestinian public opinion is that there is no way that officially America is going to do anything, or Europe is going to interfere. All they can do is just lip service. And the media is complicit, sadly. The media is complicit. We've seen how even trying, attempting to support Palestine, like, we've seen what happened with Ilhan Omar, for example, Rashida Tlaib, how they are viciously attacked by American pundits on CNN and everywhere, accused of being antisemitic. The Palestinians have realized this long ago. And we have said that the Palestinian official representatives still try to find a way among these supporters to find help, and help is not going to come. The only help that comes is the one that wants the Palestinian Authority to control us by proxy, Israel.

Asa: Right.

Speaker 7: can no longer be inside Gaza or cannot be inside the West Bank 24/7, especially in areas where there are, you know, resistance growing every day. So we get the money, you carry the weapons, you protect us. So when it comes to the official, again, media, this is how people, most people feel. But we are— Very hopeful that— on the, you know, the grassroots, the organizations, the, you know, the unions, the people who vote can say something. We've seen this in 2014, and even in 2021 during the COVID pandemic, people went, took to the street. The more people take to the street, the more hope we have that this is going to impact because this, you know, even with politicians who go to Congress or anywhere else, they still give us, you know, limited sometimes. But at least when people are talking about how, like, when Rashida Tlaib describes Israel as apartheid or accuses Netanyahu or the Israeli government of being racist, of being brutal, of being war criminals, this is This is good. At least people, more and more people are paying attention to this. And one of the worst things about the media, the official media, is that I think sometimes they are more, like, more military, more anti-Palestinian than Israel itself, because Israel does this, because there will always be accountability, this limited accountability inside the colony. Israel said, no, we didn't kill these kids. And now everybody is, no, Israel didn't kill itself, Palestinians killed themselves. And then a couple of days later, they said, oops, we did it. It was, you know, a mistake, we're going to investigate. But nobody else, not Even on the personal level, like in the West, what is going to be willing to say? Sorry, there is a correction about something we did here. We've seen how even other massacres. We've seen how Israelis on social media. There are so many Israeli accounts and creating these fake organizations like Middle East Intelligence or. I don't know, Palestine Gaza News, run by Israelis who get, I think, money from Israel. There was this guy who celebrated this, celebrated the attack, was saying like Israel liquidated 5 Palestinian freedom fighters in Jabalia. And then it turned out that this is actually a massacre. 5 or 6 kids were were killed. And then he deleted his tweet. And there was also a video, I'm not sure if you saw this, a video the Israeli army posted saying that, we wanted to hit this house because there are missiles inside, but we didn't because there was a passerby. And the video cut at the soldier saying, stop, abort.

Speaker 6: Right.

Speaker 7: And then there was another Israeli official Twitter account that posted the whole video. And actually, like a moment after the video posted by the first account was cut, there was another car coming to the place and the place was hit. So in reality, Israel fakes this, fabricates many things. And the world, many news, the media, in America especially, they copy-paste the Israeli press releases, the Israeli military press releases, word for word. What Israel says is usually the fact. What Palestinians say is usually doubtful, according to Palestinian sources. Palestinians say allegedly, but Palestinian-Israeli Report facts. This, this is very unprofessional. This is going to be, uh, hopefully the change is going to come soon, but many people should be ashamed of, of doing this because this is not journalism.

Nora: Exactly.

Asa: Yeah, it's similar to, um, it makes me think of what happened with, uh, Shireen Abu Akleh because, um, I don't know, I reached the point where I don't read all these investigations anymore. Because, you know, it's like, why do we need however many it was, like, 7 or 8 different investigations into who killed Shireen Abu Akleh? Like, there were, you know, there were all these journalists who witnessed it. And that, you know, that it was a deliberate killing of a Palestinian journalist. By Israeli soldiers, you know. It was very clear there was no crossfire happening. There was no, you know, gun battle happening. It was a completely unprovoked killing. And yet the Western media just, and the American government needs all these investigations, which then when they do happen, end up, the American so-called investigation ended up being inconclusive, very conveniently.

Speaker 7: Yeah.

Nora: Yeah, they say we're still— we're still waiting for more evidence to surface, or, you know, it's inconclusive, or, you know, we're waiting for Israel's, you know, further investigation on this, because it can investigate itself fairly, apparently.

Asa: Yeah.

Nora: It's amazing.

Asa: It's very frustrating.

Nora: Yeah. And meanwhile, we have the attacks on You know, human rights organizations that are documenting these war crimes and have forensic evidence and all the reports, you know, that that would be needed, you know, to to prove Israel's responsibility and culpability in these kinds of attacks. Michael Svart, an Israeli lawyer representing some of the designated group, you know, the groups that. That the Israeli government designated as terrorists, said that the attacks on the organizations last week was motivated out of, quote, desire to frustrate the International Criminal Court investigations. And Benny Gantz, as we've reported many, many times, the Israeli defense minister who imposed the designations, is a person of interest in the court's probe over his role in Israel's targeting of civilians During its attacks on Gaza. So there is a direct link between, you know, what the Israeli government wants to cover up and what these organizations are trying to reveal and prove to the international court where Israel could be held accountable. Can you talk about what— I know this happened in the West Bank and you're in Gaza, but But there are field offices in Gaza that are, you know, affiliated with these organizations. Can you talk about some of the reverberations that have happened since those attacks?

Asa: And this really— sorry to butt in, but this relates to what you wrote in your piece that we mentioned earlier as well, Refaat, about the Israeli leaders knowing about the best way to win votes is to flex their muscle and flex their muscles, Right. Because Benny Gantz, the very same guy who, you know, has outlawed these organizations as human rights organizations documenting war crimes, as terror designations, is basically trying to protect himself.

Nora: Absolutely.

Asa: Because he was the very same guy who had an election advert in one of the last few elections threatening to send Gaza back to the Stone Age. So, you know, it's, it all ties up.

Speaker 7: Exactly. This is, in many ways, like, I don't know, sometimes it's frustrating talking about this. Because it doesn't matter sometimes what we say. It doesn't matter what Palestinians say. It's, we keep shouting and screaming and And then, you know, reporting and all over social media, there are hundreds of Palestinians and pro-Palestinians, thousands of them out there exposing Israel. And Israel knows that no matter how many of its crimes and massacres we see, we've been, you know, recently we've seen many of the Israeli crimes committed in the late '40s, early '50s against Palestinians in Tantura here and there.

Speaker 3: Israel doesn't care.

Speaker 7: So that is very interesting, because there is a lot of immunity. Israel kills with immunity. Israel knows it's not going to be held to account by anybody. No ICC, not even, you know, like 20 years ago, there were reports about how America should, you know, slap Israel on the wrist like a little kid. It, you know. But even now, it doesn't matter because Israel is growing more ferocious. Israel is influencing American politics. AIPAC was bragging yesterday that 98, I think 98% of the people they supported won the primaries. And this is incredible, spending over $20 million so that the right, even choosing people like supporting people who, you know, endorsed the attack against the Congress in Washington, you know, after the election when Trump lost, and people who refused to verify the elections that Biden won. So people who are bad to America, but because they are good to Israel, are going to do this. In Gaza, when we talk about this, about these organizations, it brings back what Israel was doing here when it was in Gaza. Universities, schools, organizations, all banned, all closed. You can't— the university where I studied, and where I work, I teach now, was closed for years in the late '80s and early '90s, like for 2 or 3 years. It's just a university, classes teaching people English, Arabic, chemistry, and other— because Israel want, like I said in the beginning, Israel wants to control every tiny little aspect of our lives, whether this harms Israel or not, whether this exposes Israel Or not. Recently, we've seen how many Israeli— I'm reading a report on, I think, on 972 Magazine, the report that was published soon after the latest attacks, that says, we killed a little kid, but it was within the rules. So former IDF soldiers reveal how the army authorizes strikes in Gaza, knowing civilians will be killed. Killed, so long as the number is deemed low, low enough. So Israel doesn't care. Israel is not going— Israel knows it's not going to be impacted by those organizations documenting and reporting and exposing its war crimes and massacres. Never. It could impact, you know, they reach out to people who are on the fence, who don't know what Israel is doing. But Israel doesn't care about those people because, in a way, they have, you know, usually Biden's ear or Trump's ear influencing him. Sometimes there were reports about Trump okaying annexing the West Bank to Netanyahu just a couple of weeks ago. So the impact Israel has and the immunity Israel Israel has makes these, you know, attacks against these organizations, or puts these attacks in the context that Israel has always been doing, controlling us, controlling our lives, controlling— because when you close these organizations, you also look at how many jobs you're going to lose when the people lose funds. I know Some of the branches these organizations have, they employ like hundreds of people sometimes, like Israel again does when it attacks Gaza. Why would Israel bomb a high-rise building that has 50 small businesses, 50 small businesses that employ, you know, hundreds of people with thousands of family members?

Speaker 3: So it comes in this context.

Speaker 7: Israel doesn't care. About what these people, what these organizations do. Because very now, we have Israeli organizations, again, which Israel tries to ban and boycott, like B'Tselem and others, despite the little work they do to us Palestinians. We don't think they're doing enough to, again, to bring Israeli leaders to account. So when when the very same thing that Palestinians are saying and doing and documenting and exposing is being documented and exposed by Israeli organizations. It means no matter how many organizations Israel closes, the truth is going to come out because of the social media, because of the videos, because of the citizen journalists reporting 24/7. So why close these organizations? Because Israel wants to be the boss. Israel wants to control our lives.

Nora: How do— finally, how do you talk about this with your young kids? How do you kind of repair, over and over again, these wounds? And, you know, and the children, the other children in your family, in your neighborhood, I mean, how do you keep moving forward under these conditions?

Speaker 7: I don't know if we try even to move from these attacks, but you can't escape them. They are inescapable. They are all over the place. Every time buildings are destroyed, kids lose loved ones, parents lose kids. And if you don't talk to your kids about them, they will know because they know that— I can't remember which one of my daughters was asking my wife why Hamza doesn't have a father. Where is his father? I mean, how are you going to tell her that Israel killed him in 2014? And what does it mean? What does it mean? How are you going to work? this. And then sometimes you, like I just said, you listen to the kids talking to each other, talking about somebody's father being killed by Israel, Israel killing this person or killing that, killing that person. It's the most difficult thing is trying to go on in life, lead a normal life, knowing, like Like sometimes what happened is something that happened, it's in the past. It's never in the past, of course, but knowing pretty well that this is going to happen soon. And sometimes you could predict it, but this time it was like Israel said, it's preemptive because some Palestinian was thinking of one day trying maybe to harm Israel.

Nora: Right.

Speaker 7: Everybody in Gaza wants to harm Israel, the occupation. We all want so, because we want an end to the Israeli occupation. Is this harming anybody working for Palestine, anybody supporting Palestine, doing activism for Palestine? Is very quickly accused of being antisemitic, even a Nazi, even every horrible thing. So what I'm saying is that. Like, again, many people spoke about this and wrote about this. There are no post— there is no post-war trauma in Gaza because the war never ends and the trauma never ends. And again, we have to go through this very difficult mission of trying to make the kids understand. Sometimes we do, sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. And in the article I said, because the lies are no longer Believed by the kids. They grow up and they listen to older kids talking about missiles and wars and assassinations and killings. And then you have to go through it every couple of years, sometimes every year. I think I can't find the words to describe this feeling. And there is also, when we talk about the kids, there's also the adults that kids But your kid— your children who are now 15 or 16 or 17, it's also very difficult. Those who are, who were born, for example, my— I have 2 kids who finished high school, and they went through like 5 wars now, 4 wars. And many occasions they lost friends, they lost family members, they lost cousins and relatives. Right. Sometimes you don't just want to talk about it because nothing makes sense, because you know it's going to happen again. But we keep hoping. There is always this thing about Palestinians in Gaza. We keep hoping. We keep believing in the fact that no occupation will live forever. No colonial project like Israel will remain forever. Look what happened to the British Empire. what happened to many other occupations around the world. If it's not in our lifetimes, hopefully it will be in the lifetimes of our kids. But there is one thing that is very certain: we can't remain silent. We know Israel is so powerful. We know Israel has all it wants to control and to impose its horrible military rule on us. But we can't just stand or remain silent, because we know in the future people will look back and say, thank you for doing what you could. And let's continue the struggle until Palestine is free.

Nora: That's Refaat Alareer. He is an educator and a writer in Gaza. His Twitter is His Twitter handle is @itranslate123. And his most recent article on The Electronic Intifada is Without Consequences, Israel Will Continue to Murder Palestinians. We'll have a link to that, and to your work on the blog post that accompanies this episode. Refaat, as always, thank you so much for what you do and for being a contributor to EI and for Thank you very much, Nora.

Speaker 7: And thank you, Asa.

Speaker 4: We begin today's show in Gaza, where we're joined by Refaat Alareer. He's a Palestinian academic and activist, the editor of the book Gaza Writes Back, co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced. In 2021, he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times headlined, My Child Asks, Can Israel Destroy Our Buildings? That was 2 years ago, Refaat. Describe what's happening right now in Gaza.

Speaker 3: Thank you, Amy, for having me, and thank you for this coverage. What's happening is what Israel has always worked to achieve. Israeli leaders and officials are speaking about sending Gaza to the Stone Ages. Israeli officials are speaking about destroying Gaza. They are focusing on damage and destruction rather than precision. We speak about whole blocks destroyed, all government buildings, 20 UN facilities, including schools and clinics, all the roads, all the infrastructures, all the roads leading to the major hospitals, especially the one in the heart of Gaza.

Refaat Alareer: Right. Gaza City were destroyed.

Speaker 3: So Israel bombs Palestinian families as they sleep, as they stay in the safety, so to speak, of their home, and then bombs the ways that lead help and aid and ambulances to these areas, and then bombs the ambulances that try to help those people. That's why we have about 800 Palestinian casualties.

Refaat Alareer: Right.

Speaker 3: We speak about more than 400 children, women and elderly people. Most of them were killed in the safety of their homes, without any prior warning— not that any warning would justify this Israeli brutality. Israeli war criminals are speaking about Second World War level of destruction against the Gaza Strip. What is happening in Gaza? Is complete and utter extermination of the non-Jewish population in occupied Palestine. As you mentioned, Israel ordered a medieval hermetic siege from air and sea. Israel has also just bombed the only way out through Egypt, the Rafah crossing. The only way out is for— what's happening, what we are foreseeing, is slow starvation, Slow genocide. Maybe Israel is going to push us all into the sea. And I think what is making it even more difficult than before is that the whole world, not even lip service, all American and European countries and politicians are rushing to pledge allegiance to Israel and to Netanyahu. Israeli— American politicians? American presidential hopefuls are literally calling for genocide. American mainstream media is not pushing back against Israeli officials calling for the collateral damage of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. Why is this happening? Because we refuse to live under occupation. We refuse to live We don't want to live in total submission. We want freedom. We want this occupation to end. This is not a state of war, as one of your guests just mentioned. This is a state of occupation that started over 75 years, that started with the British Empire giving Palestine to the Zionist movement in 1917.

Speaker 7: And, Adnan?

Speaker 3: And, Refaat, you mentioned Gaza's border with Egypt. What has been the response of the Egyptian government to that border crossing, which, as we understand, was also bombed by Israel, as well? I'm not following closely, because we barely have any electricity or internet. But what I heard is that the Rafah border is now closed, so people cannot cross. And also, when we talk about people leaving, very few people in Gaza have visas or passports that would allow them to leave. I'm reading a report just now that Israel is even warning to strike any aid coming from the Egyptian side into Gaza. So, with no food, no electricity, and no water, we can only expect what Israel has been working to achieve. Israel and Israeli officials and politicians are promising now. Some are calling for striking Gaza with a nuclear bomb. Can you imagine that? And many other Israeli officials are using Nazi discourse and Nazi language, talking about Palestinians as savages and animals that need to be exterminated, and that Gaza needs to be turned into a parking lot. This is what we are dealing with. We're dealing with a systematic Systematic, structural, colonial attempts to annihilate and exterminate the Palestinians with the aid and support of the West and American tax money. America is sending $8 billion. This is really insane. America is also sending warships, and bombs, and bullets for Israel to kill more and more Palestinians.

Speaker 7: Right.

Speaker 3: And what are you asking for people in other parts of the world and other governments to do? I think the governments are not only complicit or giving the green light, they are participating actively. The shameful statement from France, Italy, U.K., and Germany, and America, the other was a hideous attempt to justify Israeli massacres and genocide taking place in Gaza. We have no hope in these countries. We have no hope in these governments. At least now, the only hope we have is in the growing popular support in America, in the movements, the human rights and the rights movements in in America and across Europe to take to the streets, to pressure their politicians into putting an end to this dark, dark episode of not only the history of the Middle East, but also the history of humanity. If people are asking, how was the Holocaust allowed, and other genocides in Africa and across the world, now you can see this live. We saw live on TV, live on social media, Palestinians' whole blocks destroyed, hospitals, schools, businesses. We are speaking about thousands and thousands of housing units destroyed by Israel. So, my message to the free people of the world is to move to pressure, to mobilize and to take to the streets.

Speaker 4: Refaat Alareer, you are the father of 6. How old are your children? And can you describe what it's like to live there right now? Now, Israel says that it has 1,500 dead Hamas fighters. That's outside of Gaza. The number inside Gaza is nearing 800. Describe the bombing strikes now. This is before Israel does what —what it's threatening to do, which is lay complete siege. They've said they've cut off electricity, they've cut off gas, food, etc., but actually ground troops moving in?

Speaker 3: Like I said, this has been systematically happening for over 7 decades. It was— the noose around Gaza's neck was tightened 15 years ago, and it's being tightened even further The situation is unspeakable. You can't describe what's happening in words. We speak about thousands, hundreds and thousands of Israeli bombs and shells targeting all areas of the Gaza Strip. The kids can't sleep. The kids can't eat. The kids can't even speak. Most of the time, they're just mute, silent, shaking out of fear. Sometimes— whimpering because of how close the bombs are wherever you are in Gaza. And again, how the houses shake every time there is a bomb around. And this is happening again all over Gaza Strip. Israel is telling people, is pushing people forcibly to leave out of their homes and asking, urging them to go to certain places, like the city center. Or the U.N. places shelters, and then Israel bombs the roads leading to these areas and bombs these crowded areas. Yesterday, there was a massacre. Israel killed about 60 Palestinians in Jabalia refugee camp, in a local market, where there is a U.N. school, people taking shelter there. So, whether it is my kids or any Palestinian kid or any Palestinian No one is safe. No place is safe. Israel is bombing everywhere. Israel is lying. And that's something— thank you for highlighting this, that Israel sometimes, once every 100 times, 1,000 times, it sends a message warning 10 minutes before and asks, for example, a huge building of 50 housing units to leave, and you can't take anything with you if you have only the And when people leave, wherever they go, they will be chased and hunted down by the bombs. These are, again, barbaric. And these are an extension to Israeli attempts to exterminate Palestinians, whether in Gaza, in Jerusalem or in the West Bank.

Speaker 4: Refaat, let me ask you about that. You say Israel gives a warning. Hamas is saying if they don't get that warning before a building is bombed, they will kill one hostage for each one of those bombings. Can you talk about how much support there is for Hamas within Gaza, the government of Gaza?

Speaker 3: Amy, I'm sorry, who translated that message for you? The message was clear. It was a threat. They stated, with the bare minimum of humanity, that Israel sends a warning before it bombs a family home. And when we speak about homes in Gaza, and in Palestine, in Gaza, we speak about houses that have like 5 or 6 or even 7 housing units, flats, where 3 generations live in the same place. That's why Israel exterminated more than 30 families. Right. Most of their family members were killed, because it bombs without sending a message. The message from Hamas was clear: send a warning before you bomb, meaning don't bomb Palestinian homes with the kids and the women and the elderly and the young people inside. So, this is what's going on. And people in Gaza want to be safe, that we don't want to be killed. And it seems that this is a desperate attempt. Call for mediators to interfere, stop this. And it's already— it already happened that Israel— and I was saying this the other day, that Israel seems to be bent to kill Israeli captives, Israeli soldiers held in Gaza, more than they are interested in killing Palestinian fighters and Palestinian children, because Israel does not want to negotiate, does not want to release There are almost 5,000 Palestinian— political Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. So the idea about the framing of this is incorrect, is inaccurate. And at the same time—

Speaker 4: But, Refaat, I do want to clarify what you said. You said that Hamas has threatened to kill a hostage if Israel doesn't warn that it is going to bomb a residential home.

Speaker 3: Exactly. I don't think this is much to ask. And I think this is more of a desperate call to save both Palestinian children and families, and at the same time, the Israeli soldiers kept in Gaza. Now, what's happening here is that Israel is sending disinformation and fabrication all over the internet, on social media, and many mainstream media. Media agencies and outlets are swallowing and repeating these military lies against Palestinians to demonize the Palestinians. And that's why we see so many Americans, sadly, especially officials and politicians, presidential hopefuls, calling for genocide against Palestinians, because there is misinformation, but at the same time, they think that if they do this, if they say this, It's going to bring them more money from the Israeli lobby in Washington, D.C. And, Refaat, you've told the BBC recently that the scenes right now in Gaza are, quote, exactly like the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Could you elaborate on that? Exactly. If you have seen the pictures from Gaza, we speak about complete devastation and destruction to universities, to schools, to mosques, to businesses, to clinics, to roads, infrastructure, to water lines. I Googled this morning Warsaw ghetto pictures, and I got pictures I couldn't differentiate. Somebody tweeted 4 pictures and asked to tell which one is from Gaza and which one is from the Warsaw ghetto. They are remarkably the same, because the perpetrator is almost using the same strategies again against a minority, against the oppressed people, the battered people, the besieged people, whether it was in Warsaw Ghetto, the Jews in Warsaw Ghetto in the past, or Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the Gaza Strip. So, the similarity is uncanny. Israel, Israeli officials using Nazi language discourse to— even there was a tweet from the Jewish Congress that says the number of Jews that died on Saturday is more than the number of Jews that died on any given day during the Holocaust. And this is not Holocaust revisionism. It's Holocaust denial, because this is objectively and statistically incorrect, completely and utterly. The Israelis, the Zionist movement, the Israeli government is willing to abuse and engage in Holocaust denialism in order to justify what's going to happen, what is happening and what's going to happen in Gaza in the coming hours and days. I think this is dangerous, and this has to be stopped. The similarities between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto should be a waking-up call to all free people around the world.

Nora: And I want to bring in Refaat Alareer. Refaat Alareer. He is a contributor to The Electronic Intifada. He's in Gaza right now. Refaat, thank you so much for finding one bar of cell service and a little bit of battery to join us. Can you please update us on what the current situation is right now in Gaza?

Refaat Alareer: Thank you, Nora. Ali, Jon, and Asa, unspeakable brutalities.

Speaker 6: What we're seeing is unbelievable. It's unbearable for us watching it from the safety of where we are, and it's impossible to imagine.

Refaat Alareer: Right. Every couple of minutes, whole buildings are being destroyed. The roads to Al-Shifa Hospital, I just tweeted that almost all the roads to Al-Shifa Hospital were destroyed. So many families, no matter how many tweets you see or how many livestreams you watch, the reality on the ground is a lot, a lot more terrible than it is on social media. And if not sure, this is the whole room is filled with gunpowder, cement, with galvanized cement. My hair is filled with dust and cement. And the little kids behind me are terrified, in fear, the little ones. And we can see the pictures that follow quickly. And this is the aftermath. Whole buildings, residential buildings, businesses, Palestinian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, ambulances, medical centers. You don't know whether this is it. We're not, we're not, we don't deserve this. We're not animals like the Israelis think. Our kids deserve better. Israel knows that. They want to punish the kids, the civilians, like Ali suggested. And I have always said this even before, even from the '90s when young Palestinians, Ali said, praised those valiant fighters. They are to be praised. But if you know them in real life, when you see the pictures of those fighters, they're very simple people. They're lightly armed, modestly trained, but they have a weapon that Israel does not have, the weapon of the belief, the faith that this is your land, that you're fighting a brutal European colonial enterprise that has been brutalizing Palestinians for over 7 decades. Palestinians are fighting those people even from the '90s and later on in the Second Intifada. They always, always came victorious when they came face to face with the Israelis. Always. Cost them loss in so many operations. And look at what happened. It's a miracle, actually 100 million miracles that took place. But it's all well planned, meticulously planned by people who have almost nothing except their faith. And those people believe that they're not only fighting for Palestine, they're fighting for the Ummah, they're fighting for a cause that is just, a cause that should not and cannot be forsaken. We believe that if we give up, then everybody is going to say, look at the Palestinians, they gave up. Why don't you behave like the Palestinians? Why don't you bow down? And Israel knows this, and Israel is punishing not, by the way, the Palestinian fighters. They are inside. They are occupied land. And many of those people from Shujaiya, from Jabalia, from Khan Yunis and Rafah and everywhere, they have their parents and grandparents who have land behind the armistice line. My grandmother used to point over there saying that when Palestine is free, you will be rich because we have a lot of land that we can use to farm, to sell, but it's not ours because of the Israeli brutal occupation. What I'm saying here briefly is that it's extremely horrible, the infrastructure. It's unprecedented. I'm not exaggerating, again, if I'm saying that this is the Blitz again all over, like what happened in London by the Nazis. Unfortunately, by the The Israeli Zionists who claim to be the descendants of the victims of the Holocaust are inflicting yet a similar plight, similar catastrophes against the Palestinians. We know that it's very bleak, it's very dark. There's no way out. If there's no water, there is no way out of Gaza. What should we do? To drown, commit mass suicide? Is this what Israel wants? And we're not going to do that. And I was telling somebody, some friend the other day that I am an academic. Probably the toughest thing I have at home is an Expo marker. But if the Israelis invade, if the fighter jets charge at us, open door to door to massacre us, I'm going to use that marker, throw it at the Israeli soldiers, even if that is the last thing that I would be able to do. And this is the feeling of everybody. We are helpless. We have nothing to lose.

Speaker 6: Refaat, you're an academic and you are a teacher and You have inspired and taught and mentored many of the writers who contribute to the Electronic Intifada. Are you in touch with some of your students and colleagues? Are you able to stay in touch with people around you and to—

Refaat Alareer: I just ventured out to to the pharmacy to bring some medicine. Otherwise, my car was almost bombed 5 times. Just— just driving for 5 minutes to the pharmacy to bring medicine to the little ones, painkillers and stuff. And can can only imagine how horrible it is. I I took some videos, and these are if you're counting, it's like every couple of minutes. These are just the ones around where I live in the Gaza City in Talil Hawa, and you can multiply this by a hundred times all across the Gaza Strip in Rafah. And I it's It's not easy to call people. It's not easy to contact people, especially family members in Shujaiya, most of whom had to leave their homes. Israel has just destroyed the Palestinian telecommunications company. With no internet, no electricity, there will be barely any internet or access or signal to call people. Sometimes I was just calling my daughter. And you were able to do that? And it took me like 5 tries just to get her to answer me. I am in touch with the people, with some of my friends, my students. I try, but I'm helpless. Like my students, I'm teaching English poetry this term. I was teaching them your poem, Ali, and they always love it. Thank you. And I always tell them that how poetry can be your weapon. It's your strongest weapon. It's what you need to do, to carry, to do this. But I'm lying to them. I think I'm lying if I'm telling them that this is your strongest weapon and Israel is pouring tons and tons of dynamite of US-made missiles upon our heads. I posted, I keep posting messages trying to reassure them, sending prayers to the students and their families and loved ones, knowing pretty well that many of them will not be back and some of their family members, their homes. And I just, I'm getting a tweet just now, a message is that the Islamic University was targeted. I'm praying that this is not true. If that's true, that's like almost 1,500 people without jobs and 20,000 students without classes, without benches, without university degrees. So Israel, it's an open war against Everything. There is nothing that Israel did not hit. And there's just one message. It's a message of hate, of death and destruction. That's it. There's no message because— and I don't like to say this because I don't want to be using the Israeli captives as a way to dissuade the Israelis, so to speak, from bombing. But these bombs will definitely harm and the Israeli civilians, so to speak, and soldiers captured in Gaza Strip, in the Gaza Strip. But maybe Israel is bombing this hard so that they can kill those people, those Israelis, before they kill the Palestinians so they don't have to free the Palestinian political prisoners. We are dealing with people that are extremely horrible. They are literally inciting genocide and taking words from the Nazi language and Nazi discourse, what else do you expect? I mean, the least you could expect— there was this, I think, was it the Jewish Congress that tweeted something about the Holocaust, that the number of Jews killed by the attacks from Gaza exceeds any number, any day of Jews killed during the Holocaust. And this is categorically, mathematically, statistically, it's wrong. And it's a minimization, trivialization of the Holocaust. But look to what extent they are willing to go. This is Holocaust denial, not only revisionism, because statistically it's not even close. Of course. But they are willing to exonerate Hitler and the Nazis in order to demonize the Palestinians and justify the upcoming genocide. It's going to be ethnic cleansing. We don't know, in a week we're going to be in the sea, buried under the rubble, or buried in graveyards if there is space or in Sinai pushed out to die in the desert.

Nora: Refaat, we've, you know, over the many years of these types of assaults on Gaza, you've regularly talked about how you discuss this with your children, with your young kids. So what are those conversations like right now as, you know, it's evening, they're getting ready for bed, and, you know, we all hear what's going on outside?

Refaat Alareer: We're trying to huddle in the place, in the narrowest possible place that is least likely to be hit. That was like in the past. And again, we don't talk a lot, sadly. I know that in the past I would spend time telling stories, but with the systematic attacks against Palestinian— sleeping Palestinians in their homes and the extermination of more than 20 families so far, at least this was— I read this number 10 hours ago, maybe it's now double. The number. We talk less. The kids don't have— we eat less, we drink less, everything is less because of the, again, what Israel is putting us into the situation. I try to hug them, but again, it's very conflicting, very difficult. You don't want to hug them so they don't feel that This could be the last one. And you want to hug them so at least there is a hug there. And you want to pat on their head. It's very, very difficult being a father here. Even the expressions of intimacy and love are very difficult because they could be interpreted in too many different ways. And the kids know, they feel. Right. All the lies we tell them that it's going to be okay, that the bombing is far away, they're not working. Now, even the first day, the first 24 hours, there were screams and shrieks all over the area every time there's a bomb. But now everybody is calm. This is the worst kind of trauma, the internal kind of fear and terror that they the kids have to go through. I took a picture yesterday of my little Amal over here opening her little notebook and reading her lessons. Interestingly, Amal developed the habit of not liking school, not wanting to do her homework recently, but all of a sudden, change happens. Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, she was reading stories for my wife. Nusayba tells me that she's an excellent reader. She's second grader, but she reads well from from books. Hopefully, she grows despite Israeli death and destruction and genocide and become an amazing storyteller.

Asa: Refaat, we've heard these genocide. There's been several threats from Israeli ministers to cut Gaza off completely from water, electricity, and everything else. What are the current conditions like in Gaza in terms of electricity holding up and things like that?

Refaat Alareer: Since Saturday, we had around Around 3, 4 hours of electricity. Some places where Israel hits very hard, they lose any access to electricity. And if there is no electricity, there's no water because we have to use a water pump to bring the water because it comes naturally. We have water every couple of days, sometimes more, sometimes once a week, twice a week. Yeah. And then we fill the tanks, we fill the tanks, you know, until the next time. So no electricity, it means there's no water. But where I live, we have a generator that could generate like up to 3 to 5 hours every day. But we're using it as backup. Mainly now, the instructions from the management of the building is conserve everything. Drink less, eat less, don't use water, don't take showers unless it's extremely necessary. And yeah, this is— not sure if this is only a slow genocide. Is doing. These are not empty threats. This is an Israeli prime minister. And they know this is going to cause uproar. But yes, the international community is complicit. They no longer care, not even paying lip service to us. It's going to cause a tiny little embarrassment to Israel because, again, also using this threat and likening Palestinians to animals, to treat us like animals. It's what's going on in the ground. Many areas don't have water or electricity. Those who have are extremely lucky and they barely can. I'm not sure how many, how long this can be the same. And clearly it's not going to stay the same. It's aggravating. It's worsening on all levels. Even the intensity of the bombings, they don't stop. In 2021, it would only mostly be the days, but now it's around the clock. In this talk, probably less than 30 minutes, we have heard the bombs around like 20, 30 times.

Speaker 6: And this is Refaat, one of the things that Israel and its supporters always say is that they're not at war with the Palestinian people in Gaza, they're at war with Hamas, and the Palestinian people in Gaza are suffering because of Hamas. And the resistance groups, and that one of their goals through these repeated massacres and bombing campaigns that we've seen now with accelerating frequency— 2008, 2012, 2014, and then accelerating now multiple times a year— the goal is to, in their mind, to force the— to turn the Palestinian people against the resistance groups by making them suffer, so that people in Gaza will say to Hamas leadership, you did this to us, you brought these massacres upon us. From your perspective and from the perspective of people around you, is that Israeli strategy likely Are people in Gaza going to blame the resistance for the horrifying situation that people are in?

Refaat Alareer: There are 2 points here. Hamas is 30 years old, I think. And this started well before Hamas, decades before Hamas, not only in the years leading leading to the Nakba, the disaster, 1948. But even when the British mandate enabled and empowered and opened the doors for the Jewish Zionists to immigrate to Palestine, empowered them, gave them weapons, weakened the Palestinians, destroyed the Palestinian resistance, so to speak, So it's a lie. It's a fabrication that this is only because of Hamas. Hamas and other Palestinian factions and groups are a reaction to the Israeli occupation and brutality. The framing that Hamas is bringing harm is also insulting to Palestinians because it negates decades of Israeli terror. And I always say that even look at the West Bank, look at the Palestinians in the 1948 areas. There is racism against them and apartheid. Look at the people in Jenin and Hebron and Nablus and Al-Aqsa al-Quds, Jerusalem. They're being brutalized every day. The The settlements are expanding and Hamas barely functions in the West Bank. So this is completely and utterly untrue. Israel is using Hamas as a lie to try to deflect some of the blame, or all the blame, that if Hamas stops, if Hamas is not in Gaza, We're not going to be doing this, and it's a lie. The second thing, Palestinians have learned a hard lesson that Israel is going to kill them no matter what. In 19— in 2014, when Israel wanted to eradicate Hamas, they killed people from the Islamic Jihad and from Fatah, and they killed 551 Palestinian kids and like 200 women and 150 elderly people or so. So Israel does not differentiate. Israel kills all. The same thing happened again and again later in later Israeli attacks. And so many Palestinians realize that if Israel starts a war, it's going to kill anybody. And this is one. The second thing is that if you've seen the videos of people storming. It started by Hamas. The whole attack was planned, executed, started by Hamas. And then every Palestinian faction, even poorly armed factions with a couple of clashing corps, participated in the attacks against the Israeli military posts. What these issues about putting and framing this as it is because of Hamas, the framing is completely unacceptable. It's wrong. And the Palestinians find themselves cornered after being rejected every means of resistance. BDS, antisemitism. Greater Return March, violence and snipers are sent. By the way, there was a report that the very snipers who killed and injured Palestinians, like hundreds and thousands of them, were either captured or killed in the attacks. So the Palestinians find themselves in a corner where they can either submit, kneel, and even that is not going to be allowed in dignity. You've seen the pictures, I think, of Israel capturing some of the Palestinians, and mostly they are not fighters because they could have shown us the weapons. There were no weapons. Many Palestinian civilians entered there because they wanted to see Palestine, their villages and their towns. And those people were arrested and they were humiliated. So even if Palestinians choose to submit, to surrender, Israel is going to humiliate them. So for that, and for our belief in our right to defend ourselves and the dignity of the free world, all Palestinians are in this together.

Speaker 3: What's happening in Gaza is a total massacre, a total onslaught. What's happening in Gaza is not self-defense. Israel is not defending itself. Israel does not have the right to defend itself, Because it's an occupying power. What's happening is complete death and destruction. We speak about more than 1,200 Palestinians killed, mostly civilians, young men, children, and women. There are 350 children that Israel killed and massacred. This is not self-defense. Israel has destroyed or damaged more than 20,000 housing units. Israel has imposed A medieval, a horrible, horrible siege on Gaza with no food, no electricity, and no water. Yes, we are running out of everything in Gaza. There will be no food, not enough water in a couple of weeks maximum, hopefully a little bit more. But what's going on here is that Israel, you can see the pictures here, Israel is systematically hitting and bombing Palestinians in their homes. And in, as in the culture here of Palestine, in one home sometimes there are 50 people, because Israel asked people to move from certain areas to go to safer areas, shelters. And then Israel targeted those people in these shelters. So people go to their families to spend the night there.

Refaat Alareer: Right.

Speaker 3: To stay safe there. And Israel chooses this time to kill those people. Israel is an occupying power. It has no right to defend itself. It never defended itself. It has always been in a state of aggression to kill Palestinians, to displace Palestinians. This is what's happening in Gaza.

Speaker 7: Professor Alareer, the sense certainly is that Israel is preparing for an on-ground onslaught. And of course, there are challenges Is there a sense of fear and panic there?

Speaker 3: We have lived under Israeli occupation for more than 7 decades. Israel is the longest occupation in modern history. Yes, there is always a sense of fear because Palestinians have been killed and massacred for more than 7 decades. This is not something new. But this current campaign of Israeli death and destruction is unprecedented. The destruction is intense. It's genocidal because Israelis on social media or on mainstream media in America, in the UK, they are calling for wiping Gaza out, turning Gaza into a city of tents. Is this self-defense? Is this how you defend yourself if you have the right to defend yourself, which Israel never has because it's an occupying power? What is going on, whether it Whether it is from the sky, from the warplanes, or whether Israel starts a land invasion, which is very likely. Maybe it's not a full invasion of Gaza, maybe partially. Israel is going to kill thousands and thousands of Palestinians. And that is the endgame. The endgame is not to deter Hamas, because if Hamas goes right now, vanishes, Palestinians will Palestinians will keep resisting the occupation. The problem is the occupation. You get rid— you get out of Palestine, you end this occupation, and there will no longer be reactions from Palestinians. So Israel's thinking—

Speaker 7: Professor Alareer, I want to understand the bread-and-butter issue in terms of what's happening, because, you know, as we have been saying, that Gaza perhaps is preparing for worst. Gaza has seen worse in the past, as well.

Speaker 5: So, in terms of people there, are they, you know, gathering in a particular house, trying to protect themselves?

Speaker 7: Are bunkers being built? What is the preparation that is going on?

Speaker 3: No place is safe in Gaza. Yes, people try to move from particular areas to safer ones. But even these areas are bombed. The UN complained that Israel damaged several of its buildings. Israel targeted Palestinians who took shelter in UN schools. There are injuries, and people are critically injured. But many people leave to stay with their family members, with their parents or children, which means that there are more and more civilians, more and more children in the home. And then Israel, at night, especially at night, When everybody is inside, makes sure to drop 2 or 3 or 5 bombs at this particular house. We speak about more than 50 Palestinian families completely erased. The fathers, the mothers, the daughters, the sons, the children. There are massacres with at least 3 generations of Palestinians erased from the civil record.

Speaker 6: Right.

Speaker 3: What Israel is doing currently is intense, barbaric, and depending— and based on what Israelis themselves say, this is ethnic cleansing and even genocidal.

Nora: If I must die, you must live to tell my story, to sell my things, to buy a piece of cloth and some strings. Make it white with a long tail, so that a child somewhere in Gaza, while looking heaven in the eye, Awaiting his dad who left in a blaze and bid no farewell, not even to his flesh, not even to himself, sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above, and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love. If I must die, let it bring hope. Let it be a tale.