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Breaking: In Latest Attack on Gaza Medical Site, IDF Shells al-Aqsa Hospital; 5 Dead, Dozens Hurt
In breaking news from the Gaza Strip, at least five people were killed today and dozens wounded when the Israeli military shelled the al-Aqsa Hospital. It is at least the third Israeli military attack on a Gaza hospital since the ground invasion on Thursday. Speaking from Gaza’s overrun al-Shifa Hospital, Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert accuses Israel of directly targeting medical facilities. Gilbert helped treat many of the victims of Israel’s attack on the Shejaiya neighborhood, where 72 people were killed. We also speak with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, reporting from Gaza City.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined, in addition to Sharif Abdel Kouddous in Gaza City, by Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor providing medical assistance in Gaza, recently submitted a report to the U.N. on the state of the Gaza health sector this year. Can you talk about what’s happening from where you are right now in Shifa? We didn’t want you to wait; we understand that there are many people waiting to see you.
DR. MADS GILBERT: Yes, I have unfortunate and breaking news to you in the United States. About 10 minutes ago, Israeli tanks shelled the hospital, al-Aqsa Hospital, in Deir al-Balah, which is in the middle zone of Gaza. Four were killed, mainly patients treated in the surgical department, and 15 are injured. This is not the first, unfortunately, attack on hospitals. The Israeli army is now directly shelling hospitals and killing patients and civilians. This, of course, is in violation of all international rules, and it is completely incomprehensible for me why the Israeli army is not stopped when they attack hospitals, ambulances and civilian populations. This has to stop, and Mr. Obama has to step up and say enough is enough now.
AARON MATÉ: Dr. Gilbert, the invasion—the ground invasion started on Thursday. What kinds of injuries have you been seeing since then?
DR. MADS GILBERT: Well, I’d just like to repeat that 10 minutes ago the Israeli army shelled the al-Aqsa Hospital. This is a very dramatic step up in the situation.
We have so far had 3,200 injured in Gaza. Among these, 1,000 are children, and 600 are women. That is far more than half. Five hundred and fifteen have been killed, among them 120 children and 50 women. The types of injuries that we’re seeing now—and the hospital is again being crowded in the emergency with new attacks—are shrapnels, blast injuries, burns and what you can see from artillery shell bombing. Lots of children still. I had a brief hope that it would be a quiet morning. That has not been fulfilled. It’s been very hectic. And the ambulances keep running in. However, the worst night so far was the Shejaiya night, the night before yesterday, when the hospital received at least 400 injured and 73 dead. This was truly a massacre, and the injuries were just horrible, as your correspondent just mentioned. Children came in without heads and totally dismantled by the shelling of the residential areas.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mads Gilbert, you came in from Norway to help the people of Gaza. Secretary of State John Kerry has just called on your foreign minister to help to negotiate a ceasefire. Apparently, he’s flying, I believe, to Egypt. Can you talk about the significance of this and Norway’s role, your country’s role?
DR. MADS GILBERT: The significance, from a medical point of view, there is one overwhelming need in Gaza now, and that is to stop the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. It is absolutely devastating. It is much harder than I have seen before in 2006, 2009 and 2012, the attacks then. It is targeting obviously residential areas and now also hospitals.
Of course, a ceasefire has to be brokered immediately, but it has, of course, to be done in a way that is safeguarding the interests of the Palestinian people and not only the interests of the superpowers and the occupant. The Palestinian people are not yielding. They are standing tall. And the staff in Shifa are who are the ones carrying the weight, like the other hospitals. I’m only a very, very small part of this. They are not intending to pull the white flag. There is no way Gaza will raise the white flag. These are people who are dignified. They know their rights. And they say, "This is our land. We’re going to live here. No power, even if they try to kill us all, we will not surrender." So, the ceasefire will save thousands of lives in Gaza. We have now half a thousand killed and 3,200 injured. This has to stop. We need a ceasefire. Israel has to stop the bombing. And the siege of Gaza must be lifted immediately. We don’t have supplies anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Gilbert, The Guardian newspaper is reporting that the Israeli military is using flechette shells in the offensive on Gaza, weapons described as illegal under rules of humanitarian law. The way they’re described is they explode in the air above a target, sending out a cone of thousands of tiny steel darts, small darts. Have you seen any of those wounds at Shifa?
DR. MADS GILBERT: Well, I have been suspecting the same, because many of the wounds we see are precisely small fragment wounds. And they are very hard to clean and to remove the small metal particles. If these are flechette bombs, I cannot confirm it 100 percent, but there is no doubt that a large number of injuries we’re getting now are fragmentation injuries from different sources of fragmentation. It could be an artillery shell, and it could well be flechette explosives.
AARON MATÉ: And Dr. Gilbert, the bombing of the hospital that you’ve just—this news that you’ve just broken here on the show—last week we spoke to the director at the al-Wafa Hospital. He received a phone call from the Israeli military telling him he was going to be targeted, suggesting, of course, then, as Juan González pointed out on the show, that the hospital was deliberately targeted. Any indication that now this hospital was deliberately attacked?
DR. MADS GILBERT: That’s a funny question. I mean, it’s a hospital. It’s well marked on the map. Everybody knows about it. The Israelis know every single building in Gaza. They know the mobile numbers to all the inhabitants. They know everything about Gaza. Of course they know that al-Aqsa is a hospital. There is absolutely no doubt. Of course they know that this is a hospital filled with patients. And to make this even worse, you know, the hospitals in the south of Gaza are overwhelmed by patients who are running in, because it’s impossible to distribute the patients between north and south because it’s so unsafe to travel in the ambulances. Of course they knew they were shelling a hospital. And it’s just reported now on the news that there are actually five killed in this shelling of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the midsection of Gaza. And, of course, shelling hospitals, shelling ambulances, shelling civilians all amount to war crimes, and this is a war crime in the making.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mads Gilbert, we want to thank you for being with us, again, a Norwegian doctor providing medical assistance in Gaza, as we turn back to Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who is in Gaza City right now. And I should say that Dr. Mads Gilbert submitted a report to the U.N. on the state of the Gaza health sector in 2014, even before the Israeli assault on Gaza began. Sharif, if you can talk about—among the civilians that have died, a paramedic has died, another journalist has died.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yes, Amy. As I said, it was very hard for ambulances to get into Shejaiya yesterday, but the paramedic drivers here are extremely brave, and many of them went into Shejaiya to try and retrieve people, to retrieve the wounded. And one of them was hit in a direct hit. The picture of the ambulance is of a charred, twisted hunk of metal. And so he was killed.
And a journalist, a Palestinian journalist, was also killed, as well, a photojournalist, I believe. And he was—you know, this came a day after the Government Press Office in Israel sent an email to foreign correspondents telling them that Hamas frequently exploits journalists as human shields and that the Israeli government will not be responsible for any damage or injury that journalists sustain while field reporting. And then the next day a journalist was killed.
Let me also say, Amy, that the number of displaced is really much higher than it was in 2008, 2009, in that Israeli operation. There’s just—there’s nowhere for people to go anymore. Before the Shejaiya attack, the UNRWA numbers was 60,000 displaced; at the end of the day, it was 80,000 displaced. The U.N. was opening up different schools for people to come. And they come with nothing. They come with maybe a blanket or a pillow, but usually nothing else. And they don’t know when they’ll go home. They don’t know if they have a home when they go back or whether it will be destroyed.
And, you know, we talk often about the dead, but the vast, vast numbers of wounded, 3,000 wounded, these are not minor injuries. We’re talking amputations. We’re talking deep shrapnel wounds. And, of course, the psychological terror that’s inflicted, especially on the children of Gaza, will have deep, lasting effects. By the U.N.'s own count, 60,000 children in Gaza are in need of some kind of psychological treatment. So, these are effects that will last for many generations, and it's not just something that will never end. And, you know, as I’m speaking to you, there’s been shelling behind me in eastern parts of Gaza City, missile strikes that are happening. I can hear drones over me right now as we speak. So, you know, this is something that the Gaza Strip is bracing for, for more bloodshed still.
AARON MATÉ: Sharif, the fighting in Shejaiya, that’s where 13 Israeli soldiers were killed. What do you understand about the battle that occurred between militants and the Israeli soldiers? It looks like they put up a considerable fight.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, it’s very hard to independently verify anything. What does appear to have occurred is that, according to different sources, is that either a tank or some kind of armored vehicle was attacked and destroyed by the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and that when the rescue team, the Israeli rescue team, went in, four of them were killed, as well.
So, it really looks—and speaking to different analysts here, political and military analysts, local ones, saying that al-Qassam is much more prepared militarily than it was in 2008 and '09, that it learned its lessons from 2008 and ’09, that there is a Gaza under Gaza, with tunnels and a network where they operate. And they seem to have—this seems to be true, that they fired many rockets into Israel, and the Israeli military doesn't seem to be able to kill the militants—they’re killing civilians and children.
And, you know, they’ve—there’s two very big bangs just happened behind me. They’re continuing. It sounds like naval artillery.
And, you know, they continue to pop up into Israel proper through these tunnels that cross the border, which Netanyahu says is the whole point of the ground invasion, to destroy them. So, it does seem to be that they almost want the Israelis to come in so they can be able to fight them.
If you just look over to the right here in the distance back there, I believe that is the Shejaiya in the back. You can see, on the horizon, massive strikes there, maybe two or three, and the smoke is just billowing up. And this is, I believe, still, yes, Shejaiya, where we had that massacre yesterday. So these are the sounds we’re hearing. And this is just a couple of kilometers from where we’re standing right now.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, thank you for being with us. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent, is filing reports for The Nation magazine, and we’ll link to those reports, speaking to us from Gaza City. When we come back from break, we’ll be joined by Raji Sourani, a Palestinian human rights leader, won the Robert F. Kennedy prize for human rights, as well as the Right Livelihood Award. He’ll speak to us from Gaza, as well. Stay with us.
Israeli Peace Demo Violently Disrupted, Dozens Injured as Counter-Protesters Yell "Death to Arabs"
We look at the increasingly dangerous political climate inside Israel where several peace protests have recently come under attack. On Saturday, right-wing activists burned a Palestinian flag, chanted racial slurs and threw stones at an antiwar protest in Haifa of Arabs and Israelis opposed to the bombardment of Gaza. Haifa’s deputy mayor, Dr. Suhail Assad, and his son were beaten. On Sunday, the captain of a youth soccer team in Be’er Sheva wrote on his Facebook page: "send left-wing voters to the gas chambers and clean this country of leftists." The week before the Gaza invasion began, gangs were reportedly seen roaming the streets of Jerusalem and other towns shouting, "Death to Arabs!" We go to Israel to speak with Rann Bar-On, an Israeli peace activist and Duke University mathematics lecturer, who took part in Saturday’s Haifa protest. And we are joined by Max Blumenthal, senior writer for AlterNet.org and best-selling author whose latest book, "Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel," documents the spread of right-wing Israeli extremism.Image Credit: Khulud Khamis
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: We look now at the political climate inside Israel in which the violence in Gaza has been escalating. Several peace protesters inside Israel have been attacked in recent demonstrations. On Saturday, Haifa’s deputy mayor, Dr. Suhail Assad, and his son were beaten when right-wing activists attacked antiwar demonstrators protesting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Right-wing activists burned a Palestinian flag and shouted "Death to Arabs!" On Sunday, the captain of a youth soccer team in Be’er Sheva wrote on his Facebook page, quote, "send left-wing voters to the gas chambers and clean this country of leftists." For the week before the Gaza invasion began, gangs of Israelis were reportedly roaming the streets of Jerusalem and other towns shouting "Death to Arabs!"
AMY GOODMAN: We go now to two guests. Rann Bar-On is an Israeli peace activist who participated in Saturday’s protest in Haifa. He is a lecturer in mathematics here in the United States at Duke University. He has been in Haifa visiting his parents for the last two weeks. And Max Blumenthal is with us, senior writer for AlterNet.org, best-selling author. His recent book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s start in Haifa. I want to start by asking you, Rann Bar-On, what happened in this peace demonstration?
RANN BAR-ON: Hi, Amy. We were about three or four hundred left-wing activists demonstrating against the war, for peace between Arabs and Jews, refusing to be enemies. As we arrived, my partner and I saw well over a thousand activists from—militant activists from the right, surrounded by police and others, screaming, "Death to Arabs! Death to leftists!" As we were protesting, they moved towards us. The police allowed them to move towards us. The police allowed them to attack us, to throw stones at us. Later on, as we were trying to leave, the police took—the police did not attempt to allow us to leave. They took over an hour to evacuate us while we were under heavy attack by stones and other missiles. Many were injured. We’ve had over 30 injured. Two women are still in hospital. There were gangs roaming the streets, beating up anyone they thought was an Arab or member of our demonstration. The police were—
AMY GOODMAN: Rann Bar-On, can you explain why you went out into the streets to protest?
RANN BAR-ON: Absolutely. I believe that what Israel is doing in Gaza is a racist attack. It is not self-defense in any way. And it is a continuation of Israeli policy that has always discriminated against the Arab population. What happened to us at the protest is not new. This is something that is a trend that has been continuing for many years. There has been much incitement from the political class that has allowed even so-called moderate right-wingers to join cries saying, "Death to Arabs! Death to leftists!" and attacking activists and Arabs in the street.
AARON MATÉ: Well, Rann, on that point, I want to turn to Max Blumenthal in D.C. Max, your book, Goliath, was pretty much a warning about this rise of a racist, fascist culture inside Israel. Put this incitement in that wider context.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, I guess I hate being vindicated for the facts that I produced in this book, that I described in this book, the facts on the ground inside Israeli society. And what we saw in Haifa, what I understand, is that these right-wingers who attacked Rann and other leftists, who are heavily demonized in Israeli society, incited against at the highest level by figures like the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, that these right-wingers arrived in buses, that this was a very organized attack. It’s apparent to me that extreme right-wing elements have infiltrated the police, which have allowed them to attack leftists across Israel, to attack antiwar protesters. They’ve infiltrated them much in the way that Golden Dawn has done in Greece.
The right wing, the current inception of the street-level right wing, which kind of acts as the street muscle for Netanyahu’s governing coalition, particularly the right-wing elements represented by Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party, they are not just settlers or religious nationalists. Many of them were army reservists, who came together as part of the orange cells that protested the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2006. They formed a group called Im Tirtzu, which intimidates leftists and Palestinians on college campuses across Israel. And they are still a major part of the army, including the army officer corps. So the violence that we’re seeing in Gaza is not just related to a particular military strategy; it’s also influenced by the ideology that has captured the hearts and minds of these young men who have learned to demonize the other and see Palestinians and antiwar and human rights elements as absolutely subhuman. It’s playing out unofficially through a vigilante campaign in Israel, but in Gaza what we’re witnessing is the official revenge campaign orchestrated by Netanyahu and the military.
Sharif Abdel Kouddous on Israel's Gaza Massacres: F-16 Kills 24 Relatives After 72 Die in Shejaiya
The Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip has seen its bloodiest day so far, bringing the Palestinian death toll to more than 500. More than 100 Palestinians were killed in a 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday nights. The dead include 72 residents of one of Gaza’s poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods. In the single worst attack to date, Israeli forces shelled homes and fought militants in Shejaiya, leaving behind a scene of carnage that survivors called a massacre. Frightened civilians fled along streets strewn with dead bodies. Wounded residents bled to death in their homes. An unconfirmed report said more than 20 children and 14 women were killed. Scores of homes were destroyed. Hundreds of people were wounded and taken to the overrun Shifa Hospital, which struggled to find room for the bodies. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the attack on Shejaiya as an "atrocious action." The fighting in Shejaiya killed 13 Israeli soldiers, bringing the Israeli military toll to 18 since the ground invasion began last week. Joining us from Gaza City, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous details the assault on Shejaiya and describes a new Israeli strike that killed 24 members of the Abu Jamaa family in Khan Younis. Kouddous documented their bodies collected together inside a local morgue.
Image Credit: Sharif Abdel Kouddous
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: The Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip has seen its bloodiest day so far, bringing the Palestinian death toll to over 500. Over 100 Palestinians were killed in a 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday nights. The dead include 72 residents of one of Gaza’s poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods. In the single worst attack so far, Israeli forces shelled homes and fought militants in Shejaiya, leaving behind a scene of carnage that survivors called a massacre. Frightened civilians fled along streets strewn with dead bodies. Wounded residents bled to the death in their homes. An unconfirmed report said more than 20 children and 14 women were killed. Scores of homes were destroyed. Hundreds of people were wounded and taken to the overrun Shifa Hospital, which struggled to find room for the bodies. At the hospital morgue, a survivor said residents were bombed as they slept.
SHEJAIYA RESIDENT 1: [translated] The shells were between the houses. They killed children, women! There is no one left! It is a massacre! There is a massacre in Shejaiya! Go and see!
SHEJAIYA RESIDENT 2: [translated] We are residents sleeping at home. We are at home, civilians. We are not pro-Hamas or pro-Fatah or pro-Israel. We are poor people sleeping at home with children, women and old people. All the shells were randomly fired. At least each house got 10 shells. More than a thousand shells were fired at Shejaiya.
AMY GOODMAN: In a statement, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel’s attack on Shejaiya as a, quote, "atrocious action." The mass killings there have helped push the Palestinian death toll to over 500 since the assault on Gaza began two weeks ago. The dead include more than a hundred children. Over 3,100 people have been wounded and more than 81,000 displaced. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has warned it’s running out of food and medicine at the schools housing over 50,000 people. The number seeking refuge has nearly tripled since the Israeli ground invasion began Thursday. At least 130 Palestinians have been killed during that time.
AARON MATÉ: The ground invasion has also caused Israel’s first military casualties. Eighteen soldiers have died in Gaza since Thursday, including 13 fighting militants in Shejaiya. On Sunday, Palestinian militants with the Qassam Brigades announced the capture of an Israeli soldier, but Israel denies the claim. Two Israeli civilians have been killed from rocket fire from Gaza. On Sunday, as Israeli forces carried out their deadliest attacks so far, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the assault on Gaza for as long as necessary.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Israel did not choose to enter this campaign. But from the moment it was forced on us, we will implement it until we achieve its result—restoring quiet for the Israeli people for an extended period while significantly damaging Hamas’s infrastructure and the rest of the terror organizations in Gaza. We are undeterred. We shall continue the operation as long as it is required.
AMY GOODMAN: In his remarks, Netanyahu cited the backing of foreign allies, saying he has, quote, "laid the diplomatic foundation that has given us international credit to operate," he said. The Obama administration has provided critical support, claiming Israel has acted in self-defense, blaming Hamas for the civilian toll. The White House now says it wants an immediate ceasefire, and Secretary of State John Kerry has been sent to join talks in Cairo.
For more, we go directly to Gaza City, where we’re joined by Democracy Now!’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
Sharif, you’ve just come from Khan Younis. We’re getting the latest news from there. Can you tell us what you saw?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Amy, I’ve come from the site of yet another massacre. Twenty-four members—at least 24 members of the same [Abu Jamaa] family were killed in their own home in an F-16 strike in Khan Younis. This happened last night at around Iftar, during the sunset call to prayer, the time that Muslims sit to break their fast. And an F-16 missile strike hit this family in their home as they were sitting down to eat. A grandmother, her three sons, their wives and all their children were killed. I went to the site where the house was. The house is completely gone. There’s only a crater left. The family says—the surviving family members said that they used two cranes and a bulldozer, working for 12 hours throughout the night, to retrieve all the bodies out.
At the hospital morgue, it was really a very difficult scene. One of the dead was less than one years old. She was still, you know, in her Pampers, dead. A father of one of the women killed said that the bodies were dispersed between two hospitals in Khan Younis—14 in one and 10 in the other. And the father had to go to two hospitals to pick up one of his daughters’ bodies, because half of her was in one hospital and half of her was in the other.
This is the kind of tragedies that we hear almost on a daily basis here in Gaza. Families are being wiped out in such massive numbers. There’s the al-Batsh family who lost 18 members in an airstrike last week. I went to near Beit Hanoun in the north the other day where a family—eight of them were killed while they were sitting, watching TV when a tank shell, an artillery shell, hit their home, so—while they were watching TV. So this is a very—this is a war on civilians. Civilians are paying the very highest of prices for this. And the killing doesn’t seem to stop.
AARON MATÉ: Sharif, the toll from Sunday, the highest figure I saw was 120, more than a third women and children. Of course, there was this mass killing in Shejaiya that we mentioned. You went to the hospital. You interviewed survivors. You interviewed victims. And you also went to the site of the attack. Can you tell us what you know about what happened in Shejaiya?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, from speaking to residents evacuating, it was very hard to get in. You know, this attack began, everyone says, at around sunset time, around Iftar time. And there was a barrage after barrage of tank shells that rained down on Shejaiya, which is one of Gaza’s poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods. People said that there was no help. They called for ambulances. Paramedic workers said that they couldn’t get in because of the amount of the shelling, and so people waited for hours. They were left alone. And they finally decided to escape on foot. And when we got there in the early morning Sunday morning, there was just families streaming out, many of them carrying nothing, some of them barefoot, many, many families, young women and children, in complete panic trying to hail cars or trucks to get on or take off. Many of them just walked out. And they spoke of bodies strewn in the streets of Shejaiya. It was very hard to get in to confirm, although some reporters did and confirmed those reports, and there was some footage of it.
And in the hospital, it was just very difficult scenes, again, scenes of such indescribable anguish and loss. In the morgue in Shifa, there was two children—one was nine years old and her brother seven years old next to her. And there was what appeared to be relatives arguing about the name of the seven-year-old brother, whether it was Hamza or whether it was Khalil. They couldn’t tell because his head had been completely shorn off in this attack. So, these are the kinds of scenes of horror that have become a daily occurrence in Gaza, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight to the bloodshed.
Palestinian Human Rights Lawyer Raji Sourani Likens Netanyahu to Bin Laden for Killing Civilians
The mass killings in Shejaiya have helped push the Palestinian death toll to more than 500 during the two-week Israeli assault on Gaza. The dead include more than 100 children. Some 3,100 people have been wounded and more than 81,000 displaced. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has warned it is running out of food and medicine at the schools housing more than 50,000 people. The number seeking refuge has nearly tripled since the ground invasion began on Thursday. At least 130 Palestinians have been killed during that time. We speak with Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza and human rights lawyer whose accolades include the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and the Right Livelihood Award.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. And we’re staying in Gaza right now in Gaza City, where we’re joined by Raji Sourani, who is an award-winning human rights lawyer, the director of the Palestine Center for Human Rights in Gaza. He’s on the board of the International Federation for Human Rights. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1991, twice named an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, in 2013 won the Right Livelihood Award, which is presented in the Swedish Parliament.
Raji, we welcome you to Democracy Now! and ask you to describe the situation, at this point, and what you feel needs to happen.
RAJI SOURANI: It doesn’t need really to describe, what you see here, what you see in Shejaiya area, where yesterday the Israelis committed a very real serious massacre against civilians. They killed tens of people; 75 has been counted, and tens under rubble yet. And almost 430 has been injured, many of them with very serious injuries. And 150,000 fled the area. Now they are doing, in Gaza, Gaza Doctrine, Shejaiya Doctrine, like Dahiya Doctrine in the past. They are razing the entire area in Gaza. That’s the Gaza Doctrine. That’s what the Israelis are doing. In the eye of the storm, civilians, civilian targets; they are doing war crimes, crimes against humanity. This is very outrage. This is unprecedented. This is what’s called, simply, state terrorism.
AARON MATÉ: Raji Sourani, so many have died since the Israeli ground invasion last week, and that was launched after Hamas rejected the ceasefire from Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used that as a pretext, saying that Hamas’s rejection gave him the legitimacy and the international backing. Hamas, of course, their position is clear: They want to return to the November 2012 ceasefire, which had some provisions about lifting the blockade of Gaza, easing it. Can you talk about why this is so important, the effects of the siege on Gaza?
RAJI SOURANI: First, Hamas resistance group, they are part of us, part of our chemistry. Two, we have this Israeli belligerent occupation sitting on our chest for the last 47 years. We have the siege, which is suffocating us, socioeconomically and otherwise, turning Gaza, with the two million people in the 300 square kilometers, to be like animal farm, suffocated socioeconomically and otherwise. That turned Gaza to be with 65 percent of unpaid or unemployed and 90 percent under poverty line and 85 percent dependent, counting on UNRWA rations and World Food Program. They shifted us to be a nation of beggars. We are not like that. We have one of the highest education percentage in the world and university graduates. We have no illiteracy. We have very skilled working class. We have one of the most wonderful business community. But they made in Gaza de-development. That’s what Israel did through eight years of criminal, inhuman, illegal siege. That’s at least what the ICRC and all the international human rights organizations. In five years, we are subjugated to three wars—in 2009, ’08, Pillar of Defense, and in 2012 November and this war.
We are not here in defense of Hamas or the resistance group. They are competent. They can defend themselves. And I think they are doing fantastic with the Israelis in Gaza. But we are in defense of Palestinian civilians, who are entitled to protection according to international law, international humanitarian law, and human rights, entitled to protection according to Geneva Convention. We are called in law the protected civilians, and what Israel is doing, we are in the eye of the storm: We are the target. We are in the head of the basket of targets, Israeli [inaudible]. Great Israel killed all these children and women. Do you know 86 percent of those so far has been killed and injured, which we documented as a human rights organization, are civilians. This morning, I have been to Shejaiya, Abu Jamaa family. Twenty-five members of family, three-stories building leveled, none of them do exist on life. Is that the heroic act? At al-Aqsa Hospital, subjugated to bombardment, 15 has been killed in the last hour. Now, a Shejaiya Doctrine, Gaza Doctrine, they’re razing the entire area. All these acts are against civilians. This is the fifth strongest army in the world, with the high tech, with the intelligence. They are targeting civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: Raji Sourani, I want to play for you a comment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recorded this message, he said, for the people of Gaza.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: I want to use this opportunity and speak to the people of Gaza: Heed the warnings of the IDF, of the Israeli army. Leave your homes to the places where you’re told to go. Leave. Don’t stay there, because Hamas wants you to die. And you shouldn’t die for Hamas. They don’t care about you. But we want you to be safe.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That is posted on the Israeli government page. Raji Sourani, your response?
RAJI SOURANI: A, Binyamin Netanyahu committed quite a lot of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and he is responsible about deaths and what’s going in this hour. And I can assure you one thing: We will hold accountable. We will hold him accountable one day. He will be brought to the court of law. This rule of jungle he and his government doing against civilians will pay dearly for it. He is the same like bin Laden and many others, the one who targets civilians, kills civilians, destroys civilians and innocent people. He is doing and committing war crime, and he is doing that deliberately.
Second, he just gave confession that he is doing war crime. He is asking people, almost one half-million people out of there, to warn they should leave their place and evacuate their houses because they are going to bomb and shell and kill Hamas people. Where to go? Is there a safe haven in Gaza? Is there a safe place in Gaza? No safe haven in Gaza. It’s 365 square kilometers, two million living in it. This is one of the most dense populated area on Earth. Sea, land, air and sea, nowhere to go. Even safe passage, usually provided during time of war, it’s not provided, I mean, to us. You cannot feel safe anyplace in Gaza.
His message is wrong. His message has been sent two weeks ago—through the F-16s, through the Apache, through the drones, through the gunships, through the artillery and tanks, which is bombarding every corner in Gaza and, in the eye of the storm, the civilians. Prime Minister, I think your message has been conveyed, conveyed very strongly, but we will tell you one thing: Never, ever we have the right to give up or to be victim for such criminals like you.
AMY GOODMAN: Raji Sourani, the Israeli government is saying they’re doing this because Hamas is firing rockets that terrorize the Israeli population from Gaza. Your response to that?
RAJI SOURANI: A, we are in defense of Palestinian blood and suffering and civilians. And the count here, terrible. We have already, by this minute—and this number candidate to be increased—536 has been killed. As I said, 86 percent of them are civilians, women and children, basically. And we have hundreds of those who has been injured candidates. Yesterday, only yesterday, we have in Shejaiya this massacre, which raised the number. At that day, only yesterday, up to 135 killed in one day, mostly and basically just civilians.
We have clear-cut and simple rules, which is the rule of law. There is no holy blood, unholy blood. There is no holy suffering, unholy suffering. There is no holy soil and unholy soil. Every human soul should be respected. But nobody is respecting the Palestinian blood. Does three, three Israeli settlers—settling in illegal settlements, consist war crime in the West Bank—deserve the cracking down on Hebron, Bethlehem, Jenin, arresting 2,000 people in the West Bank, killing 11 people in the West Bank, among them four teenagers? Nobody even mentioned their names. Is it worth launching all this war in Gaza and hold Gaza accountable for something that happened in the West Bank? That’s totally misleading and wrong.
Israel doing grave. Occupation, like somebody standing on quicksand, every move they are doing, they are sinking. And the worst, it’s the moral sinking. Israel doesn’t feel they are committing war crimes, crimes against humanity. That’s because of the entire American legal, political support. That’s because the entire support by U.K., France, Germany, Western Europe, to them. They feel immune. There is no accountability whatsoever. They have free hand. Our blood is so cheap, our suffering so cheap, our civilians are so cheap to kill and destroy.
AMY GOODMAN: Raji Sourani, thank you so much for joining us, joining us from Gaza City. In the background we hear the bombing and the attacks. Raji Sourani is an award-winning human rights lawyer, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, on the executive board of the International Federation for Human Rights, has received many awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and twice named Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, last year won the Right Livelihood Award. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Haifa to hear about an Israeli peace protest of hundreds. Stay with us.
Max Blumenthal: With "Hollow Diplomacy," U.S. Created Political Space for Israeli Assault on Gaza
As Israeli forces killed more than 100 Palestinians on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the assault on Gaza for "as long as is required," citing the backing of foreign allies that has "laid the diplomatic foundation that has given us international credit to operate." The Obama administration has provided critical support, claiming Israel has acted in self-defense and blaming Hamas for the civilian toll. But on the conflict’s bloodiest day, the White House began showing mild signs of apprehension. President Obama spoke to Netanyahu for the second time in three days and raised "serious concern about the growing number of casualties." Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry made the rounds of Sunday television talk shows to publicly defend Israel’s assault on Gaza. But in a private phone call caught on camera in between commercial breaks, Kerry appeared to speak sarcastically about the massive civilian toll in the attacks he was publicly defending. The White House says Kerry will travel to Cairo today to work an end to hostilities based on a return to the November 2012 ceasefire. Max Blumenthal, a best-selling author and senior writer for AlterNet, says the Obama administration has practiced "hollow diplomacy" in order to "legitimize Netanyahu’s ground operation and create political space for the kind of massacres that we have been witnessing. ... This is an absolute failure of U.S. diplomacy and an abdication of leadership by Barack Obama, who says that he is heartbroken by these images that he is witnessing from the Gaza Strip, as he oversees and authorizes the shipment of the very weapons that are used to bombard hospitals."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Max, I wanted to get your comment on what Secretary of State John Kerry was caught on tape saying. He appeared on a whole bunch of U.S. talk shows. While he was on camera and mic’d up for Fox News on Sunday, he had a phone conversation with an aide in which he sarcastically responded to news of an Israeli operation that was captured by the network. Host Chris Wallace played the clip for Kerry calling it an extraordinary moment of diplomacy and asked if Kerry thought Israel had gone too far.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation. It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation.
AIDE: Right, it’s escalating significantly, and it just underscores the need for a ceasefire.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: We’ve got to get over there.
AIDE: Yup, yup.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Thank you, John. I think, John, we ought to go tonight. I think it’s crazy to be sitting around.
CHRIS WALLACE: Secretary Kerry, when you said, "It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation," are you upset that the Israelis are going too far? And, in fact, do you intend to go back to the Middle East tonight, sir?
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: I think it’s very, very difficult in these situations, obviously very difficult, Chris. You have people who have come out of tunnels. You have a right to go in and take out those tunnels. We completely support that.
AMY GOODMAN: That was John Kerry on Fox. And again, you heard, in the conversation he had with his aide, questioning the pinpoint bombings, Max Blumenthal.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: I don’t know if this was an accident. This may have been staged by Kerry to save face for his bungled act of hollow diplomacy, which was actually a ruse to legitimize Netanyahu’s ground operation and create political space for the kind of massacres that we’ve been witnessing on this very broadcast. It was Kerry who helped draw up the sham ceasefire proposal, which was introduced by the coup regime of Egypt and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has jailed thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members who are political counterparts of Hamas, who hates Hamas, and who never presented this proposal to Hamas. Tony Blair served as the emissary between Sisi and Netanyahu. And the ceasefire was introduced to paint Hamas as rejectionists. Netanyahu openly declared that this ceasefire and Hamas’s rejection of it gave him all the political legitimacy he needed for the ground invasion.
And now Kerry is criticizing the outcome of the ceasefire proposal that he introduced—the inevitable outcome—and now claiming that he wants to be flown back to the Middle East to negotiate a new ceasefire on the taxpayers’ dime. I call on John Kerry to refund the American taxpayers for all the jet fuel he’s wasted. He can dip into the Heinz family fortune if he needs to do that. This is an absolute failure of U.S. diplomacy and an abdication of leadership by Barack Obama, who says that he’s heartbroken by these images that he’s witnessing from the Gaza Strip as he oversees and authorizes the shipment of the very weapons that are used to bombard hospitals. In Deir al-Balah, the al-Aqsa Hospital was just attacked, and five are dead. Four were in surgery when they were killed.
AARON MATÉ: Max, earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will never give up security control of the West Bank. Of course, the Israeli raids on the West Bank, that helped spark this crisis, followed the unity government between Hamas and Fatah. In agreeing to the government, Hamas obviously was moderating its position somewhat, tacitly endorsing negotiations. How much of this whole operation do you see as an Israeli attempt to cement the occupation, the settlements in the occupied West Bank?
MAX BLUMENTHAL: This is absolutely about cementing the occupation. And Netanyahu and his defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, have openly declared that their goal is to maintain the occupation perpetually, with full U.S. support. So what we saw after the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teens, when Israeli intelligence knew who the suspects were within 24 hours and within 24 hours knew that the teens were dead, was a cover-up. The entire Israeli media was placed under gag, and the Israeli public was convinced that the Israeli military, as it rampaged through the West Bank, was on a rescue operation. The point of this operation was to crush any resistance to the perpetuation of the occupation and to the government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has basically accepted the occupation as the head of the bantustan authority and accepted his role as a subcontractor of the occupation—
AMY GOODMAN: Max—
*MAX BLUMENTHAL: —by accepting security coordination with Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Max Blumenthal, senior writer for AlterNet.org, his latest book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. Also thank you very much to Rann Bar-On, Israeli peace activist, speaking to us from Haifa.
I’ll be speaking in Hartford tonight at 7:00.
Headlines:
•Palestinian Toll Tops 500 After Deadliest Day of Israeli Siege
The Israeli assault on Gaza has seen its bloodiest day so far, bringing the Palestinian death toll to more than 500. More than 100 Palestinians were killed in a 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday nights. The dead include 72 residents of Shejaiya, one of Gaza’s poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods, where Israeli forces carried out their single worst attack so far. Survivors called the carnage a "massacre," and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it an "atrocious action." Eighteen Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since Thursday, when Israel launched a ground invasion it said was aimed at cutting off tunnels used by Hamas. Thirteen of the soldiers died fighting militants in Shejaiya.
•Kerry Caught on Mic: "It’s a Hell of a Pinpoint Operation"
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is headed to Cairo today to back international efforts for a ceasefire. On Sunday, Kerry made the rounds of talk shows to defend Israel’s assault on Gaza. But in between appearances, cameras captured a private phone call with an aide, where Kerry appeared to criticize the massive Palestinian death toll.
John Kerry: "It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation. It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation."
Aide: "Right, it’s escalating significantly, and it just underscores the need for a ceasefire."
John Kerry: "We’ve got to get over there."
Aide: "Yup, yup."
John Kerry: "Thank you, John. I think, John, we ought to go tonight. I think it’s crazy to be sitting around."
•NBC Sends Correspondent Ayman Moyheldin Back to Gaza After Outcry
•Ukraine Launches Assault on Donetsk; U.N. to Vote on Access to Crash Site
Ukraine has launched an assault on the rebel-held city of Donetsk, about 50 miles from the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. All 298 people on board died when the plane was shot down last Thursday. Earlier today, Dutch investigators began inspecting the bodies, which were being stored at a railway station in refrigerated cars. The U.N. Security Council is expected to vote today on a resolution demanding international access to the crash site in Donetsk, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Alexander Borodai, head of the recently proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, has denied interfering with the crash probe and vowed to turn over the plane’s black box to investigators. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has threatened further sanctions against Russia, citing mounting evidence that rebels fired the missile which brought down the plane.
John Kerry: "We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar. We also know from voice identification that the separatists were bragging about shooting it down afterwards. So there’s a stacking up of evidence here which Russia needs to help account for."
•U.S. Drone Kills 15 amid Pakistani Assault on North Waziristan
In Pakistan, a U.S. drone strike killed up to 15 people Saturday in the village of Datta Khel in North Waziristan. It was the third U.S. strike in the region in less than two weeks. The New York Times, citing local residents and an anonymous official, said the dead were militants. On Sunday, the Pakistani military bombed the Shawal Valley in North Waziristan, killing 28 people it said were militants. According to Reuters, an earlier bombing Friday killed 17 civilians, including six children. The attacks are part of a Pakistani assault launched last month after repeated U.S. urging. The military ordered all of the population in North Waziristan to leave before the offensive, but some families are too poor or sick to go.
•Iranian Nuclear Talks Extended Until November
Iran, the United States and five other countries have agreed to extend talks on Iran’s nuclear program for another four months after failing to meet a Sunday deadline. Last week President Obama said Iran had met its commitments under an interim deal, but said "some significant gaps" still remained.
•Libya: 47 Killed in Fighting at Airport
In Libya, health officials say fighting between rival militias vying for control of the main airport has killed at least 47 people. The violence is among the worst since the U.S.-backed ouster of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
•Nicaragua: 5 Sandinista Gov’t Supporters Shot Dead
In Nicaragua, five people have been killed and two dozen wounded in the province of Matagalpa after gunmen opened fire on buses carrying supporters of the Sandinista government. The passengers were returning from Saturday’s gathering in the capital Managua to celebrate 35 years since the Sandinistas ousted the Somoza dictatorship. An anti-Sandinista group claimed responsibility on social media.
•Typhoon Rammasun Kills 26 in China, Vietnam; Philippines Toll Hits 95
In southern China, the strongest typhoon to hit the region in more than 40 years has killed at least 18 people and destroyed tens of thousands of homes. Typhoon Rammasun also killed eight people in Vietnam. Last week, the same typhoon blasted the Philippines, where the death toll has risen to 95.
•Australia Repeals Tax on Carbon Emissions
Australia has repealed laws aimed at curbing global warming by charging corporations for carbon emissions. The repeal of the carbon tax was a key promise of right-wing Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott. His critics say Australia has now become the first country in the world to undo progress on climate change. During the first year the tax was in place, emissions dropped by their largest amount in more than two decades. Last year was Australia’s hottest year on record.
•Smoker’s Widow Wins $23.6 Billion in Punitive Damages from R.J. Reynolds
A jury in Florida has ordered the second largest cigarette maker in the United States to pay $23.6 billion in punitive damages to the widow of a smoker who died from lung cancer. Cynthia Robinson’s husband died in 1996 at the age of 36. The jury found the firm R.J. Reynolds had concealed the harms of smoking. Willie Gary, an attorney for Cynthia Robinson, celebrated the verdict.
Willie Gary: "This verdict is clearly — it’s going to send a message to the big tobacco companies, and not only to the tobacco companies, but to all of those companies that feel that, for whatever reason, profits come before people and safety. And that’s just not the case."
R.J. Reynolds has vowed to appeal. Last week its parent company, Reynolds American, agreed to buy rival tobacco giant Lorillard in a $25 billion deal.
•More Than 1,000 Rally in Detroit to Protest Water Shutoffs
In Detroit, Michigan, more than 1,000 people from across the United States gathered Friday to protest the city’s mass shutoff of water to thousands of residents who are behind on payments. Nine people were arrested for blocking the departure of trucks from a private firm hired to conduct shutoffs. According to the water department, more than 15,000 households saw their taps cut from March through June, with more than 90,000 at risk after falling at least two months behind on their bills. A U.N. panel has called the shutoffs a "violation of the human right to water."
•NYC Residents Protest Death of Eric Garner After Police Chokehold
In New York City, residents rallied over the weekend to protest the death of Eric Garner, an African-American father of six who died after police placed him in a chokehold. Police had accused Garner of selling loose cigarettes. Graphic video of Thursday’s incident shows an officer pulling Garner to the ground by the neck and then holding his head against the pavement. As other officers crowd on top of Garner, he repeatedly says, "I can’t breathe." Garner soon stops moving. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The officer who used the chokehold, Daniel Pantaleo, has been moved to desk duty and ordered to turn in his badge and gun pending investigations. According to the Associated Press, three men have sued Pantaleo in the past two years for unlawful, racially motivated arrests.
•NYPD Cracking Down on Street Performers in Revival of "Broken Windows" Policy
Newly reinstated New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton is already facing criticism for reimplementing his policy of cracking down on low-level offenses. Bratton was criticized for his embrace of the so-called "broken windows" policy during his first stint as commissioner in the mid-1990s. As part of a revived crackdown this year, police have so far arrested more than 240 performers who dance and perform acrobatics in the city’s subway system, a sixfold increase over last year. Critics say the crackdown targets young men of color, who make up the majority of street performers. Two performers said they have recently been arrested.
Kalan Sherrard, BUSK-NY: "I was arrested a few months ago for doing — I was doing a puppet show underneath Times Square and was arrested. What they cite us for is for impeding pedestrian traffic, but it was a wrongful arrest, and it was dismissed before it went to court. And they know that it’s silly."
Besnkheru, subway performer: "There’s a detail undercover, and, you know, for the time I’ve been doing it, it hasn’t been a problem. There wasn’t a detail looking specifically for performers."
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