Susan Abulhawa - Edward Said Memorial Lecture (2021)

Mohammed Mohammed: Thank you all for joining us today. Good afternoon. My name is Mohammed Mohammed. I'm the executive director here at the Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center. As always, it's a pleasure to welcome you all here, especially for today's particular event, which is our 2021 Edward Said Memorial Lecture. Again, thank you all for being here, whether you're on Zoom, on YouTube, on Facebook. We appreciate you being here and tuning in. Before we begin, I just wanted to mention a couple of things, please. Two weeks from today, on November 5th, we'll be holding our annual conference. We have a great lineup of speakers from the U.S. to Palestine. So please check out our website for more information, and we hope that you can tune in in two weeks as well. Another thing, as you all know, we are a nonprofit organization and these events that we host they take a lot of hard work from our staff and, of course, our speakers. And quite a bit of resources, so if you enjoy our events, please consider supporting us whether it's through a donation and or by spreading the word about us and our events to your family and friends, we would really appreciate that, so thank you. Today we are very honored to host and welcome Suzanne Abulhawa who will offer a fantastic presentation that will provide valuable insight into Israel's global arms trade and exports and how this ties into Israeli settler colonialism and the oppression of Palestinians. So a little bit about Suzanne. She is a novelist, poet, essayist, scientist, mother, and activist. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2010 and translated into 30 languages, is considered a classic in Anglophile Palestinian literature. Its reach and sales has made Abul Hawa the most widely read Palestinian author. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water, also published by Bloomsbury in 2015, was likewise an international bestseller. Her third novel, Against the Loveless World, was published by Simon & Schuster in August of 2020. She is also the author of a poetry collection, My Voice Sought the Wind, published by Just World Books in 2013. She's also a contributor to several anthologies. She's a political commentator and frequent speaker. She is also the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, which is a children's organization that builds playgrounds and other recreational spaces for Palestinian children in Palestine, as well as refugee camps elsewhere. Playgrounds for Palestine is an all volunteer organization that sustains itself by selling delicious Palestinian organic fair trade extra virgin olive oil. So you can check them out and support them by visiting playgroundsforpalestine.org, where you can also get the oil. After this presentation, we will have a Q&A session. For our audience directly on Zoom, you can do so by clicking on the Ask a Question button. For those of you on YouTube or Facebook, you can ask a question in the corresponding chat boxes over there. And you can also tweet your questions to at Palestine Center. So without further ado, I will hand it over briefly to Saeed and then, of course, to Suzanne.

Susan Abulhawa: Let me first start by acknowledging that I'm speaking from Lenape lands, the original nation in this region that was comprised of many tribes who spoke various languages and dialects and who were displaced or genocided off the map by Quakers in the 18th century. It is an honor to give the Jerusalem Fund's annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture. I think I might be the first person giving this lecture who didn't know Professor Said personally. I did meet him once, though briefly in 2000, but his impact on my life, like most of us, has been profound indeed. For one, as a young activist, I internalized his lament on the lack of Palestinian presence in English fiction. And it is one of the reasons that propelled me, then a scientist working as a researcher for a pharmaceutical company, to try my hand at literature. My only regret is that I didn't finish my first novel in time for him to read it. I'd like to believe that he would have championed my work because that's the kind of thing he did. He used his brilliance and his stature and his name to uplift Palestinian talent wherever he found it. My lecture today, however, is not about literature, though it does have to do with narrative and perception. For this talk, I put on my scientist and researcher hat. Let me start to see if I can share my screen. Sorry. Did you enable it? Oh, there it is.

Speaker 3: Okay.

Susan Abulhawa: Can everyone see my screen? Yeah. So the spark for this research actually started about a decade ago. I saw a random statistic that showed Israel among the top exporters of arms in the world and it piqued my curiosity because it was It was listed with countries that had exceedingly larger populations and larger GDPs. So I did some digging to find out what the rankings would be per capita or per GDP. But with the exception of one or two anecdotal articles, there was really nothing. And certainly there was nothing systematic. I did a limited set of calculations years ago and ended up including those as a small piece of a larger talk that I gave four years ago. But I remained curious and I continued to read and research and when the invitation for this lecture came, I knew I wanted to focus entirely on Israel's global arms industry. But I ended up adding others because, as I learned, it is impossible to separate Israel's arms industry from their surveillance, their diamond and military or police training industries. So before I get into the data, let me just briefly touch on some of the methodology. There's an organization called CIPRI. It's the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute that collects data on arms transfers around the world. CIPRI uses a common unit called TIV or the Trend Indicator Value. that reflects arms deals across different geographic areas, different currencies, time periods, et cetera. And so based on that TIV data from SIPRI, in order to obtain arms transfers per capita, I used population databases from the World Bank match those up per country per year and then use simple arithmetic to calculate arms transfers per country per year normalized to population size. The resulting database was huge and with hundreds of thousands of data points. So I solicited the help of Ajit Narayanan to help me QA the work and also help me create some of the graphs that you're going to see. I also want to thank Andrew Feinstein for giving me a deeper insight into the arms industry. Andrew is the author of a most informative book on the topic called Shadow World and he produced an eye-opening documentary by the same name, which I also recommend. Linda Hanna also helped me dig up some archives for this research. But first, it's really important to note that the data from SIPRI that I'm going to present are very limited and surely represent a gross underestimation of actual arms deals, especially with countries like Israel, which is notoriously secretive about their arms trades. Another major limitation of the SIPRI data is the fact that SIPRI only catalogs conventional weapons and components. It does not include small arms, trucks, ammunition, and most lightweight weapons and components. And importantly, They do not include illegal or banned weaponry, which we know Israel uses, especially against Gazans, including white phosphorus, the dime ammunition called dense inert metal explosives, and also bunker busting bombs, which they use against Palestinian homes. And the most relevant exclusion in the SIPRI databases are drones. None of the registries on their website, as far as I could tell, include drones, which is a major weapons niche for Israel. So just keep these data limitations in mind when you see what is known and recorded. um so i actually have to switch to another application because i wasn't able to embed these files um muhammad can you see this on your screen just nod the gap minder okay good So first, I just this is the original data that I mentioned that sparked my interest. So this shows basically the rankings over time of various countries. And you can see this is absolute exports. You can see Israel starts to climb in the 70s and then from the 90s onward. It's it's totally in the top 15. uh ranking among you know countries with again far bigger economies and bigger populations but then look what happens when we look at these exports per capita um again you know in the 60s israel wasn't a huge exporter but by the late 60s they start ranking in the top 10 and then um they you know continue to move up from around 2000 onward you can see that they they rarely leave the number one position and if they do it's either number two or number three So basically, Israel is the greatest arms exporter in the world per capita. And if we look at specific years, like here, for example, like 2016, these are I mean, if you look at just the difference between the number one position and the second position, I mean, it's many times more per capita. And these years actually reflect the years when Israel launched major offensive offensives against either Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank or their neighbors. And so what this means basically is that Israel, every time it's basically war is big business for Israel. It's a huge boost to their economy. You see the biggest jumps here. This is the 2014 attack on Gaza and then the 2008, 2009 attack on Gaza. And it just, you know, it goes on. Let me go back to this. Yeah. So, most of the major arms traders are either top exporters of weapons or top importers. For example, countries like Saudi Arabia and India are top importers, but they're not major exporters. And rarely are countries ranked as both top importers and top exporters. um sorry um some countries do make the cut for both uh both categories but only at certain times in history so for example Libya between the years 78 and 82 was importing a lot of weapons and then exporting them to leftist guerrilla liberation movements throughout Africa and Asia so they show up in the top rankings for both but only in that short period on the other hand Israel has consistently been one of the top state importers throughout their history. Even though their have waned over time and given way to 2020, Israel is way ahead of any other country in the world. So if we look actually in terms of absolute numbers, there's only three countries that are top importers and exporters. And they are, as you can see, Israel, Germany, and China. And this is pretty extraordinary when you consider the difference in their population. 9 million versus 83 million in Germany and 1.3 billion in China. And likewise, their GDP Vikings are hugely different. Israel is a fraction, obviously, of both countries. But yet it's playing in the same league in terms of arms, imports, and exports. But then when we look at the per capita numbers, Germany and China fall off. And there's two countries left, Israel and Norway. These are the only two countries in the world since 1960 to 2020 that have ranked as top importers and exporters. And a closer look at these, I'm going to bring up the Gapminder again. Mohammad Nad, if this is showing. Yeah, OK, good. So basically what you see here on the y-axis are exports per capita and then on the x-axis are imports per capita. And this is, let me just speed this up a little. So basically, let me just stop this here. You can see here, you know, until the early 80s, Israel was a huge. This was actually the greatest importer per capita of weapons in the world. You see, they were mostly importing weapons. And then from the 70s, but actually after the. the Yom Kippur War, they start, they begin to export more weapons. And then a major shift happens here in 1982 when they attacked Lebanon. And then again here you can see this is during the Sabra and Shatila massacres. And then everything sort of shifts leftward and goes up as they begin to export more and more weapons. And so you can see here, even though Norway and Israel are together in that category of the only two top ranking importers and exporters, when you look at them together, you can see that there is no comparison even. Israel is in a league of its own in both imports and exports over time. And again, these peaks, again, this is that 2006 major export. If you look at different time points, you can see here's the Gaza assault, the Lebanon assault, and here's another Gaza assault. The major imports you can see also represent earlier on before they became a major exporter, they were importing a lot. Again, Israel is really in a league of its own. So finally, in this section, I want to look at military spending per capita. These data are from SIPRI. And what you can see here from for the past five years, from 2015 to 2020, Israel spends the most money, has the greatest military expenditures per capita than any country in the world. um i think this one here is united states singapore's i can't remember what they are but these are countries in the rest of the world so the message that emerges from these publicly available data on arms transfers is that from the period of 16 1960 to 2020 israel has been the biggest per capita hustler of weapons in the world What's more is that so much of Israeli arms deals occur with countries where genocide and other war crimes have taken place. or are taking place and where arms embargoes have been imposed by the United Nations. This map shows the countries that Israel has sold arms to based on the SIPRI data. But what stands out are actually the omissions, the grayed out areas, because most of these countries have actually received military wares from Israel. And we know of these from other sources, for example, In 2013, a British government report detailed weapons sales to Pakistan, although Pakistan denies it, to Egypt, Algeria, the UAE, Morocco. Others show weapons exports to Ethiopia, Sudan, Republic, the DRC, Kenya, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, So, I mean, that's just, you know, making the point that the SIPRI data are woefully incomplete. So this area ended up, this section of the talk, I'm going to have to skip through most of it, but I'm happy to answer questions on anything that I've skipped through if you have any, just, you know, for the sake of time. One of them has been in situations of genocide, of fueling civil wars, bolstering racist colonial regimes, support of right wing coups, governments and dictators, or facilitating systematic plunder by multinational corporations. Much of the knowledge that I'm going to show in these specific.

Speaker 3: They come from leaks or specific. Professor Iran. Let's start with Serbia.

Susan Abulhawa: In between 91 and 95, long after the UN embargo was declared, Israel trained Serbian forces and armed them. At the time, Serbian forces were erecting concentration camps and committing massacres against the Bosnian Muslims, which led to the murder of quarter of a million people. The diary of Vratko Mladic, a war criminal who oversaw the Serbian genocide of Bosnians in Srebrenica, made it clear that Israel had armed and trained them. Ite Mak petitioned Israel's High Court to declassify documents pertaining to the extent of Israel's role in the Bosnian genocide, but the court rejected the petition, arguing that making that information public would harm Israeli interests. In addition to subordinating the truth to political or economic expediency, Israel engaged in revisionist history, sending top Israeli Holocaust scholars to work hand in hand with Serbian government officials to reverse world consensus that genocide had actually taken place. Israel supplied weapons and training to perpetrators of genocide, while it was globally known that at least ethnic cleansing and or serious human rights abuses were taking place, and during an explicit UN arms embargo. Then Israel's High Court ensured their role would remain secret, and then they helped rewrite history in favor of those who committed crimes against humanity. In Rwanda, where an estimated 1 million men, women, and children were massacred, which is said to be the fastest pace of genocide in human history, with 10,000 people murdered each day for more than three months in 1994. Israel provided the rifles, ammunition, and grenades that made it all possible. Literally, an arms transfer was made two weeks into the bloodletting. Ite Mack said these weapons deals can be compared to a country arming Nazi Germany with full knowledge of their death camps and extermination goals. Ite Mack petitioned the Israeli High Court for declassification of Israel's role in that genocide. In his petition, he quoted one of the Israeli arms dealers who expressed pride in his work saying, I am actually a doctor because, he said, the weapons he provided helped the victims die quickly. And like all other attempts to appeal to the court, Israel's highest judicial arm refused the petition, once again providing legal cover to war crimes. Also, as with the Bosnian War, Israel backed Rwanda's efforts to rewrite history to ignore the tens of thousands of Hutus who were also killed and displaced. And this was part of a quid pro quo agreement with Paul Kagame so that Rwanda would take some of the African asylum seekers that Israel was trying to get rid of. In Myanmar, likewise, Israel sold arms to Myanmar's military junta, even as the world understood it was committing genocide against the Rohingya minority. Following the military coup earlier this year in Myanmar, Amnesty International issued a report suggesting that Israel was continuing to supply the military junta at least with surveillance equipment. Again, Ite Mak, petitioned Israel's high court to stop the arms sales to Myanmar, but his petition was rejected and a gag order was imposed on the full ruling. So again, Israel supplied arms to a country that was known to be committing genocidal ethnic cleansing and at a time when a UN embargo, arms embargo was in place and Israel's high court helped to enable it and cover it up. Likewise, they have refueled civil wars. South Sudan is an example. The civil wars had left over half a million people dead and four million displaced in just a few years. Through it all, Israel continued to supply the South Sudanese regime with weapons, even after a worldwide UN arms embargo. Although Israel claimed to have halted weapons sales to South Sudan, a UN report documented otherwise, and they noted in the report that the Israeli weapons continued to pour into South Sudan even after it was made clear that brave human rights violations were taking place, including the drafting of child soldiers, burning of villages, systematic rape, indiscriminate killing, pillaging, and destruction of infrastructure. This guy, Israel Zev, who is a retired Israeli general, was actually sanctioned by the US Treasury Department after it was uncovered that he was using a fake agricultural charity to sell over $150 million worth of weapons to the South Sudanese. activists led again by E.T. Mac petitioned the high court to have the weapon sales disclosed to the public, but of course the court once again rejected their petition. And in fact, a recent ruling by Israel's high court has made it, they basically shut the door on any future petitions. Just basically saying it's, you know, that's not their purview. And also in Syria, where I'm just going to fly through these, if you don't mind, but basically Israel all along was denying any involvement in the Syrian civil war. They claimed neutrality, but then reports were leaking, activists uncovering and taking photos, and then they claimed to only be giving humanitarian aid. But thanks to the persistent work of activists and their documenting of Israeli weapons flowing in, Israel finally admitted that they had been arming in Nusra all along. And Nusra is an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, so they have taken part in fueling the bloodletting in Syria. Likewise, they did the same in Angola's civil war over about four decades, giving arms mostly to prop up the repressive white minority government. but they later switched sides when UNITA, the side that was backed by the CIA and the white South African government to the government. And Israel, of course, I think, you know, I see Zionism as another face of white supremacy and Israel has throughout its history propped up white colonial regimes, the most notable of which is South Africa. Israel was open in its support of apartheid South Africa, but it was secretive about the extent and the depth of the connection between the two nations. It was only after apartheid fell that the ANC declassified a lot of the documents and we know what we know because of that. This is the cover of an explosive book when it was published in 2010 by Sasha Polykal-Saransky that detailed the never before known extent of cooperation between Israel and the apartheid government of South Africa. The coordination between the two nations was unprecedented. Their relationship was actually much deeper than mere trade, military, and intelligence coordination. Israel had a spiritual and moral affinity for apartheid South Africa, which was articulated in the 1980s by Chief of Staff Raphael Etan, who said, referring to indigenous Black South Africans, that they want to gain control over the white minority, just like the Arabs here want to gain control over us, and we too, like the white minority in South Africa, must act to prevent them from taking us over. In 1976, a mere two months after Israel rolled out the red carpet for the South African president, Vorster, schoolchildren in Soweto took to the streets to demonstrate against an imposed racist curriculum. The South African police mowed them down with guns and bullets that had been supplied by Israel. Even after the Soweto massacre shot the world and a UN arms embargo was placed on South Africa, Israel continued to arm and train them, share intelligence and advocate for them. This is a New York Times article from 1982, six years after this iconic photo of Hector Peterson was taken during the Soweto Massacre. Israel was trying to convince the world to send weapons to South Africa and complained that the UN embargo had created a shortage of spare parts for their friends. And what shocked the world even more was to finally learn that Israel had shared nuclear bomb technology with the apartheid government, a cooperation that went as far back as 1975. One more thing that's worth noting here, in 2007, the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that his country could one day face a South African style struggle for equal voting rights. And as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished, he said. And I think this quote is interesting because it reveals how Israeli leaders view their state. And in this instance, Omer clearly understands the apartheid nature of Israel. There there's so many other I'm going to just have to skip through these, honestly, for the sake of time, but Israel has been supplying arms to repressive colonial regimes, to dictators. They have supplied weapons to death squads like in Guatemala and El Salvador and Honduras. Israel has also worked to collude, they've colluded with multinational corporations to basically facilitate the looting of African nations. And I put this example here of Equatorial Guinea, where they worked with ExxonMobil and the horrible Teodoro Obiang Nguema to basically siphon oil from that country while their people live in abject poverty. And there's a lot of other examples, of course. They do the same thing with Chevron in Nigeria and other places. So Israel's arms exports that bolster repression and fighting have several goals, the most important of which is profit, especially when it comes to entrenching the exploitive and bloody mining industries, especially diamonds. I felt it was important to have this section on diamonds because this industry has actually been the biggest part of Israel's economy since its inception. Besides the windfall of taking a whole country that was already built up with infrastructure and factories, buildings, banks, roads, and cultivated fields, in its early days, diamonds accounted for roughly 40% of exports. Basically, when Israel was first established, the country was almost bankrupt. They didn't have reserves of currencies. Their only real exports were diamonds that they got from South Africa, and I'll get into that, and Jaffa oranges that they sold from Palestinians. It's also, I wanted, the proportion of diamonds exports in their economy has given way to arms exports, but it remains a huge part of their economy. And I'll touch on that very briefly in a bit. But basically it's impossible to separate the diamond industry from their armament industry. But first, historically, I want you to see what the diamond industry looks like. The term blood diamonds emerged because diamonds came to the market through the murder, maiming, and anguish of millions of Africans. The extraction and sale of diamonds was linked to the arming and financing of civil wars, internecine fighting, human trafficking, child labor, child soldiers, and systematic mutilations. So while one pillar of Israel's wealth was built on the bodies and blood of Palestinians, the other pillar was built on the bodies and blood of Africans. So following years of organizing and awareness campaigns by activists and human rights organizers, companies and governments involved in the diamond trade created what's called the Kimberley Process in the year 2000. And the purpose of this was to offer some oversight over so-called conflict diamonds to prevent them from being sold. The Kimberley process was basically a way for industry giants to end public campaigns against diamonds and to keep the money flowing by introducing measures for self-regulation. Although some improvements were made, as you can imagine, the Kimberley process is deeply flawed and the abuses I mentioned remain rampant. But the activism of organizers succeeded in exposing this industry, which caused De Beers. De Beers is the behemoth diamond conglomerate that controlled over 90% of all world diamonds. It made them withdraw from some parts, some areas of Africa. De Beers, just taking a step back, is majority owned by the Oppenheimer family, which is a white South African family who built their empire on the backs of cheap black labor and who were responsible for shaping the apartheid structures and laws in South Africa. De Beers and the Oppenheimer family also contributed significantly to Israel throughout its short history. After the Kimberley process, seizing the opportunity to move in where De Beers was forced out, a network of Israelis established themselves in key conflict areas, and they made billions exchanging blood diamonds for weapons, military training, and money. The main poles of this network were Dan Gertler in the DRC, Lev Leviv in Angola, and Shmuel Schnitzer in Sierra Leone. The exchanged blood diamonds would be flown out of these countries by former Israeli Air Force pilots. And throughout this network were former Israeli generals and Mossad agents who handled the arming and training and intelligence gathering for militias and dictators. I want to take a quick look at these three, the harm they did in Africa, the billions they made, and how they turned around and used that money to fund oppression of Palestinians and theft of our land and our resources. So Dan Gertler is the grandson of Moshe Schnitzer, who established Israel's diamond exchange in Palestine in 1947. He made billions by looting the Congo. He went there in the midst of the Civil War in the 90s, and he got cozy with Laurent and Joseph Kabila. His purpose was to exploit ethnic division and instability to his advantage. Laurent Kabila, who the father at the time was facing an insurgency and with the UN sanctions, he needed money. And Gertler used his political and military connections in Israel to get him the money he needed and the military wares and training that Kabila needed. First, he did that for the father and then he did it for the son, Joseph. In exchange for weapons and a few million dollars, Gertler got exclusive rights to diamonds and other precious mineral mining rights. He had no previous mining experience, but got some of Congo's richest copper, cobalt and diamond assets. Global Witness, a human rights NGO, said, quote, Dan Gertler is essentially looting Congo at the expense of its people. And Dan Gertler is also behind the financing of massive settlements in the West Bank. The destruction and theft of Palestinian property and Palestinian life that he financed is massive. And it is a continuation of the destruction and theft of the Congolese people, of their properties, their resources, and their labor. And though this is perhaps irrelevant to this talk, I was struck by the way that Gertler spoke of Kabila and other Black leaders who were ostensibly his friends. In a leaked transcript with one of his former Israeli partners, Gertler refers to them in a Hebrew word equivalent to the N-word, and he bragged about his talent for cutting deals with the Congolese by saying, quote, Yossi, you don't get it. I understand the politics of the Negroes, unquote. Lev Leviv is an Israeli born in Uzbekistan. He made his fortune in Angola, exploiting the civil war to loot that country. Toward the ends of the civil war, like I said earlier, when UNITA, the side that was backed by South Africa and the CIA was losing, Israel switched sides. provided the government with intelligence and more, L'viv used his vast connections in Israel's military and political elites, including his chums Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu, and Avigdor Lieberman, to trade arms, training, and cash for rough diamonds in Angola. Together with corrupt Angolan generals, L'viv ran Angola's diamond mines like his own fiefdom mimicking at times the enslavement and mutilations of King Leopold long before him, whose reign of terror in Congo was worse than anything Hitler did or dreamed of doing. L'viv has fallen from his perch since he became mired in a diamond smuggling scandal and he was eventually also sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for money laundering. And I should also mention that he had close ties with Jared Kushner and was heavily involved in building illegal Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land. In fact, UNICEF cut ties with him over the matter of settlements in 2008. And then Shmuel Schnitzer is Dan Gertler's uncle. and the former head of Israel's diamond exchange who dealt in blood diamonds his entire professional life. The role of Israel and Israeli mercenaries, diamond and mineral tycoons in the horrors perpetrated in Sierra Leone were brought to light in part due to the war crimes accusations and evidence and trial against Charles Taylor, who was the former president of Liberia, who during his rule turned Liberia into his own personal cash cow. with the help of diamond smugglers, illegal arms deals, corruption, bribery, military training, all of which Israel played a significant role. There are other Israelis in this network like Benny Steinmetz in Guinea who've done similar dirty dealings meant to extract African wealth, while the people of these various resource rich nations languish in abject poverty and lack of basic necessities. But what separates these Israeli criminals from their counterparts in other states is that these guys enjoy the secret backing of the state. Whether it's with access to arms and military wares, access to planes, the discretion of the state, the turning of a blind eye at the highest levels, the political influence, and even as we see with Israel's high court, judicial cover for this. Now, I mentioned earlier Israel's economy is heavily dependent on diamonds. It has given way to arms exports, and so this is a snapshot of what Israel reported to the UN in terms of total exports in 2019, totaling $56 billion. You can see diamonds are roughly a fifth of their export economy. This is what they reported for military wares exports and it's a bunch of crap because they only have 320 million here, which we know is not true because even by their internal reporting, their defense ministry reported 7.3 billion in 2019. so if we use that number we can see that arms exports account um for in 2019 accounted for roughly 13 of their total exports for that year and if you combine that with the diamond exports um you can we can infer that 30 to 40 percent of israel's export economy and perhaps its overall economy are predicated on the industries of arms and gems both of which in turn are predicated on extraordinary human rights abuses, death, misery, oppression, and environmental degradation. I want to move briefly to touch on militarized police training because that is directly relevant to citizens in the United States. In addition to arming some of the worst elements of humanity, Israel also provides countries and corporations with wares and training for domestic policing and suppression of dissent. In places like Brazil, Israel plays a huge role in their domestic surveillance, prisons, militarized borders, and internal policing and suppression. They are heavily involved in border surveillance, especially now, and patrol training along the US and European borders to suppress refugees fleeing wars that they fueled in the first place. It's quite a racket. In the United States, there is widespread training of US police departments. The export of Israel's brutal tactics to the United States has been so alarming that Jewish Voice for Peace launched a dedicated campaign called Deadly Exchange to fight against it. Hundreds of police and security agencies across the United States have gone on these training junkets to Israel, where they're both brainwashed about Israel and instructed in the ruthless military tactics. In 2016, Amnesty International published a report raising alarm about US police forces being trained by one of the world's worst human rights violators. And they noted, as other human rights organizations have noted, as well as US State Department, that examples of Israel's systematic and routine police and military abuses like extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, routine harassments, torture, including against children, suppression of expression, of association, of movement. of night raids, systematic intimidation, the bolstering of paramilitary settler attacks, and more. And on these training junkets, Israel uses Palestinian neighborhoods to suppress, basically to stage live demonstrations of repressive violence in real time, whether in protests across the West Bank, in harassment in East Jerusalem, or shooting of Gazans along the border that Israel has imposed on them. Jennifer L. So basically like this intercept title headline. Jennifer L. suggests Israel has found a way to commodify 70 years of oppression and dispossession of indigenous Palestinians by marketing colonialism as model policing. And of course, surveillance. It is well known in the financial world and cyber espionage or cybersecurity world that Israel is the leading player. Even the most conservative estimates indicate that Israel produces and manages at least 20% of cyber surveillance around the world. And with less than 0.1% of the world's population, this makes Israel the highest exporter of surveillance per capita. There was a recent scandal involving an Israeli company called NSO, which ran a consortium of cyber espionage called Pegasus. It broke out on the world stage after documents were leaked revealing over 50,000 names of politicians, human rights activists, journalists, and even heads of state who were being spied on by Israeli software. One of the people on that list was Emmanuel Macron, which infuriated France, and it's one of the reasons that the story blew up the way it did. And also what became obvious is that Pegasus played a key role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington reporter who was murdered and dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Turkey. Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, investigated the cybersecurity world and they used over 100 sources and they showed that Israel has knowingly been selling spying technology to some of the worst dictators and human rights abusers to monitor human rights activists, queer and trans communities, political dissidents, Jennifer L. journalists and more so, this here is just a sampling of some of the countries who purchased Israeli spyware to were trained to use it to target specific groups. Jennifer L. In in Azerbaijan, for example, apparent systems were used to arrest gay men and transgender women. In Indonesia, the same system was used to create a database of LGBT rights activists. In the UAE, NSO spyware was used to hack the phones of human rights activists like Ahmed Mansour, who had published Post-Critical of the Regime, for which he is serving a 10-year sentence. I already mentioned Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia, but Saudi Arabia used Israeli surveillance to monitor other human rights activists like Omar Abdelaziz, a Saudi dissident who's living in Canada. Spyware systems were used by the repressive regime of Bahrain, especially during the Arab Spring, to track down human rights activists and political dissidents like Nabil Rajab, who is currently imprisoned for tweets. And then just as Israel's judicial system gives cover to the exports of military hardware used in genocide and oppression, they do the same thing for the cyber surveillance exports. The tireless ITAMAC petitioned Israel's high court as early as 2016 to suspend NSO's export permit. However, at the request of the state, the deliberations were held in secret and a gag order was placed on the ruling. The Supreme Court Chief Justice summed up the reason for the gag and secrecy by saying, our economy, as it happens, rests not a little on that export. So basically, Israel's Supreme Court Chief Justice subordinated criminal activity to state and economic benefit. In other words, as far as their high court is concerned, money flowing to Israel is what matters most, not the truth, not accountability for human rights abuses, assassinations, massacres, etc. And of course, all of these wares, like their weapons, are tested on Palestinians, who are probably the most surveilled society in the whole world. I want to try, although the next two sections are complete, the scope is beyond this talk, but I do think it's important to touch on how Israel has such a massive reach. And then after that, why is there so much silence around this? For one thing, Israel is a highly militarized society. Everybody, almost everybody in Israeli society has to serve in the military. And many of them are just career military folks. But Israel also requires that they retire at a relatively early age. I think it's like 40 something, 45 maybe So these folks who are still in the prime of their life, they know nothing but weapons and fighting and war. And so they become arms dealers. Israel has, I mean, they process like 40,000 arms export applications per year, I think. So there's a massive number of arms dealers coming out of Israel. So there's that sort of militarized basis, but also, Israelis, Israel is a colonial society and their citizens come from other countries. So they all have, most of them have dual citizenship, one in Israel and the other in their homeland, wherever that is. And so these folks have access to other countries. They have legal access by dual citizenship. They have linguistic access, they have cultural access, and many of them still have families there. So that also facilitates the, you know just brokering arms deals and things like that but really the biggest attraction to israeli weapons is the fact that they market them as being field tested and and that means that uh and that's the reason why we see these big booms every time after each time they attack gaza because that's where they test their new weapons so basically you know palestinian neighborhoods, especially in Gaza, are laboratories and live showrooms. I want to show you this very brief clip from a documentary called The Lab. It was made by Yotam Feldman. It's an excellent documentary about Israel's arms industry, and I recommend you watch it if you can.

Speaker 4: If you didn't read that, this is an Israeli,

Susan Abulhawa: a military guy who's decrying the hypocrisy of the world because they say one thing in public and then they go to them and ask them, what is your trick? How do you turn blood into money? This is really the crux of it. This is the why. Because Israel has created this business model of turning blood into money. Lastly, I'm just going to touch on the extraordinary silence. So I already explained how there's basically no transparency when it comes to Israeli arms exports. And the diamond industry functions more or less as a state within a state with very little to no oversight from the government. And I mentioned previously that there have been vigorous campaigns within Israel, mostly led by Itay Mack to force the declassification of arms sales. And it has been to no avail. And I also mentioned, I think, that the Israeli court has closed the doors even on trying to petition the courts. So there's no recourse to obtain information. And their highest court decidedly will not concern itself with Israel fueling genocide in other parts of the world. So the department that handles exports within the Ministry of Defense is quite small and decisions are made just by a handful of people and sometimes it goes to the highest level. But this department is virtually unconstrained in how it functions. Now, so that's in Israel. On the other hand, in the West and especially in the United States, there is this incredible and just kind of mind blowing reluctancy to name Israel, no matter what. One example that came my way just a couple of weeks ago by my friend Rachel Holmes, the brilliant biographer of Eleanor Marx and Sylvia Pankhurst, among others. She sent me this article on cybersecurity and cyber warfare that was in Wired magazine. The article named several countries, the US, Russia, China, but Israel, which is the leading industry, it was the leading industry, is nowhere in the article. Like this might seem like a small thing, but it's actually a monumental omission, precisely because it's part of a much larger pattern in Western media that seems to shield Israel. And it's not just the media, of course. Washington is constantly giving political cover to Israel. I want to just give you this example that happened a few decades ago. It was during the Iran-Contra affair. For those of you who aren't old enough to remember that scandal, very briefly, the Reagan administration went behind Congress's back in order to circumvent restrictions on giving aid to the Contras. The Contras are a militia that was trying to unseat the democratically elected government, the Sandinistas, in Nicaragua. So Congress had banned aid to the Contras, and so Reagan enlisted third parties to supply weapons as needed to them in exchange for US favors. And Israel got a ton of favors. It was a windfall for them. And Israel was at the top of that list, and they played a central role in supplying weapons to the Contras. The FBI knew it. Everybody knew it. It was part of the state's memorandum of facts during the trial of Oliver North. Oliver North was a US Lieutenant Colonel who was at the center of that scandal. That trial actually played out on television screens all over the country, much like the OJ trial. And remarkably, when Congress issued its 700 page report on the investigation into the affair, there was hardly any mention of Israel. In fact, in the few sentences where it is mentioned, there's at least one attempt to try and absolve them and suggest that they wanted no part in the scheme. And the US media barely covered it. The Sunday Telegraph in the UK was one of the very few, if not only, media outlets to pick up on this. And they quoted a White House official who said, quote, the American public never knew it was a cover up. We see this behavior to shield Israel from criticism at every level, whether it's the media, branches of government, academia, or otherwise. There are some explanations for this, but it's beyond the scope of the talk, but I'm happy to recommend books to those who are interested. This headline is an example, this is the most recent one, where an Israeli diplomat met with the president of University of North Carolina, to pressure them to fire a faculty member who's critical of Israel. Now, this is actually quite common and a lot of people have lost their jobs in academia for criticism of Israel. But again, there's a massive structure in the West to silence criticism of Israel and to punish people who don't remain silent. I'm way out of time, I think, so I'm going to stop there and just take questions. You're muted.

Speaker 5: Thank you very much, Susan. What a fascinating lecture. It really exposes in details how Israel, basically since its founding, has been on the side of all the repressive movements and so on, on the side of colonialism, on the side of genocide, on the side of arming, you know, brutal groups and so on, whether in Africa or South America. You reminded me, I mean, the Iran-Contra thing is something that I remember so vividly. And in fact, I reported on and so on. And that's just an example. And then it is really striking to see or to listen how, in many ways, the US political systems and structures, including the US Congress, are basically complicit by trying to whitewash whatever Israel does and so on and not to put the blame where it ought to go they are complicit in many ways as was clearly uh shown in the iran contract but even today i mean you know whether it's in myanmar or elsewhere you know we don't know the involvement of uh or the how vast this involvement is i mean sure there are mentions of uh israel is you know, aiding the Nusra and others and so on. But we don't know how vast it is. Israel may be involved in weapons laundering. I mean, they have received weapons and then they have like a way station and they move it on. And aside from you know, manufacturing weapons for the purpose of export and so on. And this is a lot, a lot of that is basically subsidized by US taxpayers. I'd like you to talk about this a little bit if you can, but also I wanted to go to a very, you know, very, profound point that you made and your and discord it about the training of the police training the police you know american police training and we remember what happened in phiggerson and other places you know these uh choke holds or these you know where you place your knee like we've seen with george floyd and so on this is a classic israeli um conduct and behavior that is every day so i wonder if in your research if you have come across where uh actual you know u.s or american law enforcement personnel were actually involved in sort of on-the-job training when the israelis have um conducted their you know their daily depression i mean they don't have to go out of the way they do it daily the other oppression of the palestinians thank you

Susan Abulhawa: So yeah, that's a good question. Actually, some of these training junkets actually do take them to, they were taking them to the border with Gaza during the March of Return. And so they got to see live, basically shooting at Palestinians. And they do, some of the, for example, I'm sure you know, in Jerusalem, Jerusalem is highly surveilled, like, you know, used to be like everybody's kind of outside within the old city used to be like everybody's extended living room. It was a community space. But Israel has cameras almost every few feet within within the Muslim and Christian quarters, especially. And so people don't hardly go out anymore as they used to in those communal spaces. But the surveillance of Jerusalem is actually one of the apparently it's one of the showrooms in Jerusalem. In the police training and at least one police chief the Atlanta police chief when they went back in his team. That was on one of these training jackets when they went back when they came back to us they started they implemented the surveillance and so now Atlanta Georgia has. a massive surveillance system that includes over 11,000 public and private cameras throughout the city. And ostensibly these are to reduce crime, but that really hasn't happened. So there's no evidence that crime has actually been reduced. In fact, crime in Atlanta has gone up as it has throughout the country, but yeah.

Speaker 5: Very, very, very interesting. And I bet you it still goes on today. I mean, there are definitely training. I know from my time as a United Nations spokesman in Iraq for a long time, I know Israel was involved with all the mercenary groups. You know, they call them contractors, but it's actually mercenary groups within training or weapons supplies and so on. They're always there. You spoke about, you know, Pegasus and its role, you know, current role and what it's doing today in terms of, you know, the cyber kind of weaponizing of repressive regimes and so on and harming them. But I have a couple of questions on, you know, the issue of normalization. normalization that we have seen in the last year or so. And it's amazing because almost all these agreements were arms related. I mean, you know, we see where, you know, the United Arab Emirates received in return for normalizing relations with Israel, the so-called, it's a fake term, the Abraham Accords, you know, it's a bogus term, but the normalization, they basically got their F-35s, you know, there are other things, that were, you know, sort of like Sudan was rewarded by being taken off the terror list and so on. And that is always Israeli related. So I think that we see that perhaps as part of this normalization, we are likely to see weapons cooperations and so on between the oppressive regimes of the Arab world like UAE and others in Israel. How have you come across your research on this issue where, you know, with the sort of solid kind of relationship between these normalization agreements and the weapons industry applied.

Susan Abulhawa: Actually, yes. So in the past, the past year or two, the Gulf nations, with the exception of Kuwait, have purchased a huge amount of weapons from Israel since normalization. But not just weapons, but diamonds. Cut and polished diamond exports to Dubai, I think, I can't remember the exact number, but it was pretty massive. And if I recall, there was like an $800 million deal or multiple deals or something for weapons going to that part of the world. So definitely, and even before these normalization, the explicit normalization, we always knew there was a sub rosa cooperation going on between them. And of course, I gave you examples of the surveillance that's been exported to those repressive Arab regimes.

Speaker 5: I would be remiss to say that. They're giving you a write-off. There you go. I would be remiss if I did not mention or at least during your presentation, it struck me when you talked about the relationship with South Africa. And Israel, of course, helped the South African nuclear weapons program. know a great deal because there was a great deal of cooperation in fact testing you know i don't have solid data but you probably uh do i mean there's so much of this that should be discussed today because because the iran nuclear deal and going back to it and how israel is being bribed with so many different ways i mean you know one of the ways that they were bribed and in my view most recently with weapons, which is an additional billion dollars in arms. The U.S. already gives Israel four billion dollars worth of arms every year. They gave them an additional billion a couple of weeks ago for the Iron Dome. All this seems to be related. More and more, as you mentioned, Israel is becoming a you know a system or an economic system that is dependent on the arms export i'm struck by the figure that you said about 45 000 applications were sub were submitted this year or in a 12-month period for arms exports licenses or whatever so i have so many other uh questions if you could touch on some of these points and then i have of course i have to give some some space for the audience. I have a couple of questions. Let me just read them to you, and then we will go and discuss the point that I made. There's one that says, you mentioned that De Beers established an apartheid in South Africa, and also that they contributed significantly to Israel. Can you expand on that? How did De Beers do both of those things, and what are the links?

Susan Abulhawa: So again, this is a really long story, but I'll try and summarize. De Beers, as I said, is this behemoth sort of diamond mining conglomerate. It was started by Cecil Rhodes with funding from the Rothschild family. And so One of the challenges that Rhodes had initially was the lack of labor, the lack of people wanting to work in the mines because they were dangerous. South Africans were traditionally farmers and lived more or less an agrarian lifestyle. So they started changing the laws to basically force indigenous Black South Africans into indentured slavery. to work in the mines and those mines were basically you know massive concentration camps people they were very dangerous people were not allowed to leave they were at the end of their so-called contract they were kept in like isolation for a week and you know forced to undergo like humiliating and degrading treatments to ensure that they hadn't taken any rough diamonds with them. But so gradually they kept creating these laws to force people into serving the diamond industry. And then when too many people were dying and they weren't able to get more labor, they implemented, the words financed private prisons so that they would basically pick up people on petty crimes or something and then force them to slave labor as inmates. So it's like the beginnings of the prison industrial complex here. And And so that formed the basis of the apartheid laws. And also, with help from the Rothschilds, Rhodes tried expanding. He did expand this sort of diamond mining empire into Zimbabwe, which he renamed as Rhodesia. And when he died in the early 1900s, De Beers was taken over by the Oppenheimer family, which was a Zionist family. It was a German Jewish family that settled in South Africa and they, you know, they were Zionist and so they they contributed heavily to Israel and they were supplying Israel with rough diamonds, rough blood diamonds, basically. So, and they, you know, De Beers is still chummy with Israel. Yeah.

Speaker 5: So despite all the new, I guess, new laws or regulations that one would imagine,

Susan Abulhawa: that there are new laws and regulations that govern mining and govern you know the working conditions and so on but this still goes on because yeah so the kimberly so that yeah i mentioned the kimberly process and it's um it was ostensibly meant to sort of end blood diamonds but the definitions of blood diamonds in the kimberly process is really narrow and it only accounts for um for rough diamonds that are um that are in the hands of militias, not governments. So for example, Cecil Rhodes concentration camps and those mining concentration camps would not be considered blood diamonds, even though they were blood diamonds. So the Kimberley process is deeply flawed. And not to mention the fact that And it only also accounts for, like I said, rough diamonds. They don't count blood diamonds that are cut and polished. For example, the diamond industry contributes billions of dollars to Israel's military. And we know Israel is... is a massive human rights abuser. Those are blood diamonds by virtue of the fact that they are financing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Speaker 5: I have another question from one of our viewers. It says, you mentioned Israel's involvement in Syria. Can you expand on that? How extensive was Israel's uh arming of rebels and terrorist groups was it was it consistent support with you know ongoing support so um

Susan Abulhawa: So in the very beginning, if you recall, Israel basically said that they were neutral, they weren't getting into it. And then some photos started leaking of Nusra fighters in the Jolan. Or as English say, in English, the Golan Heights. So then they changed their story and said that they're just giving humanitarian and medical aid. In 2014, they invited Vice News to the Golan to do a fluff piece on Israeli benevolence and how they're treating the wounded in Syria, etc. But actually, Vice News did the work and they reported that the only people they were treating were fighters from al-Nusra. It was a stunning revelation that at the time, but there wasn't a single other Western media publication that picked up on it. And the real investigations, however, were done by a Syrian Druze in the Jalan. He was a former political prisoner who spent his time after his release from Israeli prison. He was documenting Israeli alliance with Syrian militias. And finally, the Jerusalem Post confirmed that Israel had been supplying weapons and ammunition to the Al-Qaeda affiliate. and Nusra, and then, you know, after that, the Wall Street Journal and Foreign Policy finally published exposés on these weapons trades. And Israel couldn't deny it anymore. And so, you know, it came out and it's documented now that Israel coordinated with Nusra. They provided intelligence gathering and communication gear. They built camps inside the occupied Jalan. uh for militants and their families um they they gave them actually monthly salaries to some of the fighters um they and they flew hundreds of like sorties um back and forth in syria attacking their air bases and targeting hezbollah and um iranian weapons convoys and um as well as assassinating syrian iranian and lebanese um military commanders

Speaker 5: I have so many questions. I mean, how much time we have on the Zoom?

Susan Abulhawa: Can we take questions from the audience?

Speaker 5: Oh, yeah. We will take questions from the audience because I have a bunch of questions. He says, will the US, I have a question. Will the US allow Israel to continue sharing military technology with China? The deep state seems to be divided on this. I don't know what that means, but please, go ahead.

Susan Abulhawa: Um, well, you know, Israel, that was, you know, every once in a while, um, you know, the, the U S sort of, you know, smacks them on the hand and says, you know, you can't do that, but Israel basically does what it wants and, and, um, they, uh, The US military isn't happy about the fact that Israel will take US technology and then turn around and sell it to China. They promised not to do that, but they have done it. Um, but one of the things that they do is that they, they get us technology. Um, like most of their weapons don't run without components from us, um, us technology, but they they'll take that and they'll sort of reverse engineer it and they'll make it Israeli. You know, they just, they cut, they copy it and then they make it Israeli. And so then they're there and then they say they're selling Israeli technology, but it's not really.

Speaker 5: So it gets recycled actually. Okay, I have a question. It says, you mentioned that Israel trains U.S. police. It can be difficult to convince people in the labor movement here, part of the national labor, you know, aristocracy, whatever that means, to take international politics seriously because it does not affect them. Do you have other examples of Israel's foreign policy or internal activities affecting the U.S. working class?

Susan Abulhawa: Um, gosh, absolutely. I mean, you know, you mentioned how much money we give to Israel. I mean, that that's, that's, I mean, it's an indirect effect on the working class, but, um, you know, that's a tremendous amount of money that's taken away from, uh, from social institutions like, you know, education and healthcare and whatnot. Um, and, but absolutely. So, um, I'm a member of, of workers world. It's, it's a, it's a Marxist organization and, um, That's one of the questions that we always talk about, how to help workers connect the dots between oppression at home and oppression abroad. Israel's training of the police force is a really good example because they're taking repression and death machines and tactics of occupation and ethnic cleansing, and they're exporting them to a racist institution in the United States that consistently targets black and brown and poor and working class communities. I gave you the example about the surveillance and the ways that those tactics are exported. But I should also say that US police uh have have been oppressing uh especially black people in this country long before israel ever existed so i don't want to say that you know without israel they would be they would be lovely because that's just not true but it is true that um a lot you know it's two two racist um institutions are exchanging um intelligence and tactics. And that's and that's never a good mixture, especially in this country where we are really trying to overcome that and find a solution to to protect black and brown communities from over policing and and the prison industrial complex and what's more. So we don't need to to to be adding fuel to the fire, basically, and sort of training them in even more brutal tactics, which is what's happening. And that's exactly the opposite of what needs to be happening in this country.

Speaker 5: There is a very interesting question from one of the viewers. And it relates to the spike in crime in Arab towns and villages and so on among Israeli Arabs and the rule of Israel weapons industry and that spike. So the Israeli agents have been also instrumental in supplying weapons to Palestinians living in Israel to further acts of killing among Palestinians. Any information about this very important matter?

Susan Abulhawa: So I don't have a huge amount of information on that, but I am aware of that. And I've read some articles that sort of discussed internal Israeli discussions about, you know, sort of flooding Palestinian neighborhoods with weapons in the same way basically that you know the CIA I'm sorry the FBI flooded black neighborhoods back in the 60s and 70s with heroin and guns um it's this it's the same principle you know you you kind of you you disenfranchise whole communities you push them to the margins of society you ensure that they um that they don't get a piece of the pie and then you throw in drugs and guns and uh and see what happens you know and then and um yeah i think there's been yeah there's been at least a conversation on the role of israel's weapons

Speaker 5: and weapons industry and basically aiding and abetting this spike in crime. I have a question for you. You mentioned some books. That is not funny from one of the listeners or viewers. He says, I would love to hear from Susan about the list of books she mentioned that talk about why such facts get covered up.

Susan Abulhawa: um so one of uh so there's i'll start you off with one really good book it's called the lobby um and it's written by um uh walt and meersheimer stephen walt and john meersheimer both are professors um and they it's a thick book with lots of with a huge bibliography for other sources but it details how the israeli lobby in this country functions to suppress to suppress criticism of israel other examples Robin Wagner- Since the lobby was published is, for example, the new definition of anti semitism which the Israeli lobby got the State Department to adopt so now officially in the definition of anti semitism anti semitism criticism of Israel is considered anti semitism. according to this new definition. So basically, you know, criticizing a sovereign state, I mean, a foreign state is anti-Semitic. So that's another way of silencing is this weaponizing of anti-Semitism. Nobody wants to be called a racist or an anti-Semite. And so there's that also sort of you know, psychological and social pressure to to just stay quiet. I mentioned also that the, you know, the efforts to against the boycott and divestment and sanctions campaign BDS to basically make BDS illegal in this country, which, you know, political expression is a constitutionally protected right and it's been upheld, boycott has been upheld by the Supreme Court, but the Israeli lobby has pressured and you know, bribed probably, political campaign money, to lawmakers in nearly every state to pass laws that criminalize BDS. For example, in Texas, when they had that big flooding a few years ago, a lot of homeowners were not able to get FEMA benefits to remedy the flooding in their homes unless they signed a document promising not to reject BDS and not to engage in any boycotts against Israel. I mean, imagine. getting, you know, benefits from your own government. But you have to pledge allegiance to a foreign government first in order to get those benefits. So, you know, there's just there's so many of that. And a lot of that is covered in the lobby. So I would just I would start there.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. And this is ongoing. I mean, it's not only in Texas, but in other states as well. And with contractors, I mean, you know, even the not only those who work for state governments, but the contractors, other companies, and so on. I have a point from someone. I'm going to mention her name. mentioned names of that. And because and she says, Susan, I was really touched by how you described the location from where you are dialed in. Thank you for acknowledging the native people. This was really informative lecture. This level of data analysis and correlation to the other genocide committed and Israel's role in those events and the complicit behavior of the superpower countries should be taught in universities. How can everyone or how can everyday people like us educate others on the factual, unbiased historical events that you described in this presentation?

Speaker 3: I mean, yeah.

Susan Abulhawa: I mean, I don't really have an answer to that. There's no sort of single answer. I mean, we all talk to our friends, we talk to our family. And I think the first place to start is by educating ourselves and by attending this talk. And so, I mean, I'm always... There's always something to learn and be aware of. And I think it's important to not just concentrate on our own predicament because it is connected. It's connected to the oppression throughout Africa and throughout Asia. And it's connected to the Cuban Revolution. It's connected to the Bolivarian Revolution throughout South America. It's all connected. The people who are who are funding our oppression are the same people who are funding the oppression of others. So I think making these connections is really important, connecting these dots, especially for the working class is really important. And to have a, you know, I think having this class consciousness is one way, instead of a national consciousness, is one way that helps us connect the dots better. You know, I remember one time years ago, Edward Said was asked that question. I think he always got asked that question, you know, what do we do? And he said, he goes, talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors, like have conversations. And that's how, you know, I mean, that's how awareness spreads. Contribute, if you can, financially to organizations that are doing the work. Show up for them. Volunteer for them. Write to your lawmakers. I mean, there's endless ways to be active within one's own capacity.

Speaker 5: by the way there are a lot of questions or you know about how we can uh widespread this presentation that is really in a very profound very compelling presentation whether on youtube and so on many of our uh listeners and audience just created this point if you have any ideas if you have that, you know, we will, of course, the Palestine Center will do its own work in this round. But if you have also ideas and so on, by all means, please submit them. I have a question for you. It says, thank you for your presentation. It reinstates very much with the book by Haim Breshit, an army like no other. The question is that if all this information is out, How come Israel is not under more scrutiny? And what does it take to make it held accountable?

Susan Abulhawa: Yeah, again, I think read that book, The Lobby, to understand why Israel isn't held accountable. And it's largely because of the political cover that the United States gives it. I mean, that's the biggest reason. The other thing is that, you know, Like Duterte in the Philippines, for example, once said that he prefers to buy weapons from Israel because there's no restrictions on the weapons. He doesn't care what they're used for. They don't ask questions. So countries also secretly, they might publicly criticize them after Israel has slaughtered a few thousand Palestinians, but there's money in it. And again, it's that business model of turning blood into money.

Speaker 5: We went way over our time, but I have to ask you this question. despite the fact that Israel is a major exporter, it seems to be dependent on US military aid. They get $4 billion worth of aid. There are constantly things that are tied to other bills and other projects and so on in Congress where they get even more aid, as we saw just a couple of weeks ago with an additional $1 billion. Is this money, is it actually in weapons that Israel keeps, or is it weapons that Israel can turn around somehow maybe the restructure and resell it elsewhere, or is it for research? What is it in your view? Where does it go in terms of your presentation, the topic that you tackle?

Susan Abulhawa: Where are the weapons that we send them?

Speaker 5: No, not the weapons that we send them, the weapons. The question is multi-pronged because And on the one hand you have like $4 billion worth of military aid. Okay. And it goes out and I don't know what the details or how the details are for this aid, but much of it is weapons in a good airplane, but whatever weapons that Israel may not be able to resell to someone else. But there are portions and aspects of that amount of money that is subsidized by the US taxpayer that actually Israel ends up selling and making more money. Would you agree?

Susan Abulhawa: Yeah, well, I mean, I thought I kind of covered that, but, you know, Israel also sell, like, for example, they make money. So they'll use a lot of the exports are actually secondhand weapons. So they don't, you know, they'll use, you know, they'll use whatever, you know, the weapons and then they'll sell them when they're done with them and they're replacing them. They also sell weapons that they seize, for example, like, Some of the weapons that went to the Contras were actually weapons that were seized from from Lebanon when the PLO was forced out, when they attacked. So they seized a lot of the PLO and then they turned around and sold it. They did the same thing for weapons they seized in 73 from Egypt. Yeah, but I don't, I mean, I have no way of, you know, there's no audit that's publicly available for, you know, specific weapons and, you know, the transition from, you know, where it goes and stuff. So I don't have that information.

Speaker 5: Well, most fascinating. We have come to the end and past the end of your presentation today. You answered many of the questions. Your presentation raises a lot more questions. So I thank you on behalf of our listeners and viewers. And I will turn you over to Mohamed.

Susan Abulhawa: Thank you.

Mohammed Mohammed: Suzanne, thank you so much for such a rich and factual presentation. It's very insightful and there's a lot of information to digest here and we really thank you for that. If we could please, I don't know if you have a plan for this, but a lot of people have been asking if they can see either the video or slides later. So if you could just let us know how you plan to do that so that we can let everybody know, because again, it's a very informative presentation. And I know a lot of people are going to want to see this.

Susan Abulhawa: I think for now, I think what we decided is that it's going to be publicly available with a, with a password, but, um, uh, and the, and everyone that was at my request, because I was thinking of actually publishing this, but maybe we'll just, we'll just put this out, you know?

Mohammed Mohammed: Okay. All right. Sounds good. Uh, So thank you Suzanne, of course, thank you so much for a great presentation, thank you, everybody who has been online and for all of the interaction. We really appreciate it. And Suzanne, I hope we can have you again in the future. Thank you so much.

Susan Abulhawa: Thank you. Thank you. And thanks to everyone who came. And I want to just acknowledge that a couple of people that came, the amazing Richard Falk, the incredible poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Shaljah Patel. and many others, and also the amazing Rachel Holmes that I mentioned in the talk. It's an honor that they all showed up here. So thank you to everyone and to