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Gaza Debate: As Palestinian Deaths Top 100, Who's to Blame for Escalating Violence? What Can Be Done?
The death toll in the Gaza Strip continues to rise in the fourth day of Israel’s aerial offensive. Medical officials in Gaza estimate that at least 22 people were killed Thursday, bringing the number of Palestinian fatalities to 101, about half of them reportedly women and children. No deaths have been reported on the Israeli side. The Israeli military says it has dropped hundreds of tonnes of bombs on 1,000 targets throughout Gaza, more than during its eight-day assault in late 2012. The intensification of Israeli airstrikes has been met with a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. We host a debate between Palestinian human rights attorney Noura Erakat and Joshua Hantman, senior adviser to Israel’s ambassador to the United States. "Israel is currently under attack," Hantman says. "Since 2005, over 8,000 rockets, missiles and mortars have been indiscriminately fired at our civilians." But Erakat says Israel’s bombardment of Gaza "amounts to a massacre." "Israel has precise weaponry and is targeting homes," she says. "This is a disproportionate attack, by what we consider the only democracy in the Middle East, by the U.S.’s most unique ally, to whom we provide $3.1 billion a year."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The death toll in the Gaza Strip continues to rise in the fourth day of Israel’s aerial offensive. Medical officials in Gaza estimate more than 22 people were killed Thursday, bringing the number of Palestinian fatalities to at least 101 dead. More than 700 have been injured. Half of those killed were reportedly women and children. On Thursday, hundreds of Gazans attended a funeral procession for the victims of an Israeli strike that killed eight members of a single family, including five children. In another attack, an Israeli missile hit a small beach café on Wednesday where a group of young men were watching the World Cup semi-final between Netherlands and Argentina. The café was obliterated and is currently being combed for dead bodies.
The Israeli military says it has dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on a thousand targets throughout Gaza, more than during its eight-day assault in late 2012. The intensification of Israeli airstrikes has been met with a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. The Israeli military estimates that 442 projectiles have been fired since Tuesday, including nearly a hundred on Thursday. So far, there have been no reported Israeli deaths, but nine Israelis have been treated for injuries, dozens more for shock. Meanwhile, the Israeli military has mobilized some 20,000 reserve soldiers to bolster its regular forces for a possible ground invasion of Gaza. In a televised statement on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to fight on.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] So far the battle is progressing as planned, but we can expect further stages in the future. Up to now, we have hit Hamas and the terror organizations hard, and as the battle continues, we will increase strikes on them.
AMY GOODMAN: The Obama administration has backed the Israeli offensive on Gaza, saying the U.S. fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself. Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah denounced Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip, saying it violates the Geneva Convention.
PRIME MINISTER RAMI HAMDALLAH: [translated] What the government of the Israeli occupation is doing, air-striking civilians, children in their homes, is a war crime par excellence. This is a contravention of all laws and international regulations, most notably the Geneva Convention.
AMY GOODMAN: The crisis in Israel and the Occupied Territories follows months of growing tensions, and both sides debate when the latest flareup began. Three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped in the West Bank last month, their dead bodies found weeks later. During that time, Israel launched massive raids on the Occupied Territories, killing around a dozen people, arresting hundreds, seizing property. Israel particularly targeted Hamas, whom it blamed for the teens’ kidnapping. Rocket attacks on southern Israel from militants in Gaza followed, intensifying earlier this month. Israel has launched deadly raids on the Occupied Territories throughout the year, including the unpunished killings of two Palestinian children whose shootings were caught on video in May. Palestinian leaders have accused the Israeli government of exploiting the teens’ abduction to destroy the Palestinian Authority’s recent unity deal with Hamas and maintain the divide between Palestinian factions.
For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by two guests. Joshua Hantman is the senior adviser to Israel’s ambassador to the United States. He’s the former spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Defense. And we’re also joined by Noura Erakat, a Palestinian human rights attorney and legal scholar. She’s adjunct professor of Georgetown University and co-founder of Jadaliyya ezine.
Joshua Hantman and Noura Erakat, we want to welcome you to Democracy Now! Let us begin with Noura Erakat. Can you talk about what’s happening right now?
NOURA ERAKAT: Absolutely. What’s happening is an absolute atrocity. It’s absolutely cruel that we’re watching on as the death toll of Palestinian mounts. It’s now reached 100. And it’s crude to even count those numbers, because they remain nameless and faceless, when each of those lives affects an entire family. Approximately 300,000 Palestinians have been asked to move or be displaced in preparation for an imminent attack. What’s happening right now amounts to a massacre. It is not a war. And we should all be concerned.
Israel claimed that it has the right to self-defense, but an occupying power does not have the right to self-defense; it has an obligation and a duty to protect the civilians under its occupation. Even if it fails to meet that duty, it must abide by humanitarian law, principles of distinction, proportionality, of necessity. It has not abided by any of those. What’s happening in Gaza amounts to war crimes. It’s a repeat of what happened in 2008 and 2009. It’s a repeat of what happened in 2012.
Unfortunately, we can see this repeated again, unless Israel is held to account under international humanitarian law mechanisms, under international criminal law, under sanctions by other governments, in order to stop these massacres—not just now, but in the long run—and more importantly than that, to address the root causes of these flareups or symptoms of a much deeper problem, which is the structural violence of occupation, of apartheid and of settler colonialism.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Joshua Hantman, what about this issue of the disproportionate nature of the numbers of civilians that are being killed in these strikes?
JOSHUA HANTMAN: Well, let’s be clear: Israel is currently under attack. I mean, the professor talked about occupation right now. Let me remind you that Israel actually left the Gaza Strip in 2005. We removed all of our settlements. We removed the IDF forces. We took out 10,000 Jews from their houses as a step for peace, because Israel wants peace and it extended its hand for peace. That was in 2005. Since 2005, over 8,000 rockets, missiles and mortars have been indiscriminately fired at our civilians.
Now, the professor also talked about human rights and about international law. Hamas, the internationally recognized terrorist organization, controls the Gaza Strip. They are hiding behind civilians while firing at our civilians. Let me remind you that just yesterday the Hamas interior minister—the Hamas Interior Ministry, they called for their people, for their civilians, to act as human shields. Their spokesperson also came out and said, "Come and act as human shields," because while we mourn every civilian death on both sides, Hamas celebrates civilian deaths.
I blame Hamas for every civilian death, because while we send text messages and phone calls and even put warning shots in the areas where we’re going to try and take out the terrorist infrastructure and the particular terrorists, Hamas fire from mosques, they fire from next to houses, they fire from schools. They keep their missiles and their rockets in the basements of houses. This is a double war crime. They are firing at our civilians indiscriminately. I mean, they fired yesterday towards Jerusalem, OK. They’re firing at Jerusalem indiscriminately. What would happen if one of these rockets landed in an Arab area in Jerusalem? Or if, God forbid, it hit a holy site of the Muslims? It’s indiscriminate fire. It’s a war crime. I actually spoke to a lawyer yesterday who told me there are five or six war crimes that Hamas is guilty of. You cannot blame occupation because Israel left in 2005. And one more point—
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s put this point—
JOSHUA HANTMAN: One more point—one more point, ma’am.
AMY GOODMAN: Joshua Hantman, let me put your point to Noura Erakat. Your response?
NOURA ERAKAT: Absolutely not. It’s been well established that while Israel removed 8,000 of its settlers, which were already in Gaza illegally, and then replaced them in the West Bank, where the settler population continues to grow, in 2005, that it maintained control of the naval borders, of the land entries and exits, of the electromagnetic sphere, of the population registry of Gaza. It maintained the right to enter and continue its military occupations. Under international law, the occupation—Israel’s occupation of Gaza has never ended. It remains an occupying power.
JOSHUA HANTMAN: [inaudible].
NOURA ERAKAT: Israel can repeat its propaganda over and over, but on the ground, the occupation remains and is well and alive, unfortunately. That’s why Palestinians in Gaza cannot leave, even if they want to become refugees right now, they don’t even have the right to become refugees, because they are held captive in an open-air prison.
JOSHUA HANTMAN: Ma’am, you’re making interesting points.
NOURA ERAKAT: As for blaming Hamas for every civilian death, this is really crude. We should be alarmed that the fourth-largest nuclear power in the world—certainly the largest military power in the Middle East—is blaming the victims for their own deaths. Eleven homes have been targeted with Israeli rocket fire. Hamas has crude weaponry and is indiscriminately firing. I don’t dispute that. Israel has precise weaponry and is targeting homes where 11 families have been targeted, including the Hajj family, the Hamad family, the Kaware family. This is a disproportionate attack by what we consider the only democracy in the Middle East, by the U.S.’s most unique ally, to whom we provide $3.1 billion a year, and who U.S. taxpayers can hold to account.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Alright, Noura—Noura Erakat, let Joshua Hantman respond?
JOSHUA HANTMAN: Ma’am, you know, as an international lawyer, that as soon as you put munitions within a house or fire from within a house or fire from within a schoolyard, that becomes a military target. No country in the world would accept a situation whereby over three-quarters of their population are under direct rocket fire. Ma’am, just imagine—just imagine if the United States had over 200 million of its population under rocket fire from an internationally recognized terrorist organization, which, by the way, I’m sure you are not defending here, because Hamas, they wouldn’t allow a young, liberal, secular woman to express her views like you do, ma’am. They would not allow my gay friends to express their sexuality freely. They would not allow Jews to open synagogues or Christians to open churches. This is an Islamist, fundamentalist organization that you’re sitting here defending. And I also assume, ma’am, that you don’t justify their use of human shields, which they openly talk about. They’re proud about it, ma’am. They don’t hide the fact that they use human shields. I take it you would join me in condemning this.
AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat?
NOURA ERAKAT: First of all, let’s put this all in context. This is not Israel responding to rocket fire. Hamas has maintained the truce since November 2012. Israel broken this truce. Israel has blamed Hamas for the kidnapping of three settlers, and has yet, after killing 100 civilians in Gaza, after killing a dozen Palestinians during its Operation Brother’s Keeper, has yet to produce a shred of evidence that Hamas is behind this. This is not in response to rocket fire. Netanyahu is responding to domestic considerations and, unfortunately, is using Palestinians as cannon fodder. And because of the dehumanization of Palestinians globally, everybody is watching. Because a hundred Palestinian lives has become so normalized, has become so crudely and cruelly accepted, that there has not been condemnation of this.
As to the human shields, Israel continuously and repeatedly uses this mantra of Palestinians used as human shields. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Israeli Breaking the Silence, a group of former soldiers, have all testified to the same—
JOSHUA HANTMAN: Hamas admit to it. Hamas say they do it. They’re proud of it.
NOURA ERAKAT: —to the same allegation—reports about this same allegation—and I encourage listeners and viewers to look up those reports—and have disproved that Palestinians have been used as human shields. Hamas might ask Palestinians to be human shields, but are Palestinians robots? Do they not have minds and hearts, and care for their children? Why would they—why dehumanize them and accuse them of mindlessly listening to Hamas, to whom they protest against? This is a dehumanizing discourse, and we should reject it vehemently.
AMY GOODMAN: Joshua Hantman, I want to ask you about the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actual tweet, where he said, "Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created," "We mourn every child." Now, in this latest assault in Gaza, you have over a hundred Palestinians killed. It’s estimated at least 22 of them children. About a half of them are women and children. How do you square that with what your prime minister says? There have been no Israeli deaths in this.
JOSHUA HANTMAN: Let me actually correct you, because this escalation was started by Hamas. And if you look, what the professor said is completely incorrect. The truce was not held by Hamas. And every single month for the last decade, rockets have been fired into Israel. Even after November 2012, where we had this Operation Pillar of Defense, and we restored the deterrents, you know how many rockets were fired in 2013, the quietest year in a decade? There were still 76 rockets fired at Israel, 76 indiscriminate rockets fired at our kids, fired at our old people, fired at our women. This—
AMY GOODMAN: But could you respond to this issue of the deaths?
JOSHUA HANTMAN: Yes, ma’am. I’m going to get—I’m going to get to it, ma’am.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve got over a hundred Palestinians who have now been killed.
JOSHUA HANTMAN: I’m going to get—well, first of all, I’ve already said that for Israel, any civilian death is not only a tragedy, but it’s a failure, as well. And we review every single operation and every single strike to see how we can improve. We’ve hit over 800 targets to try and stop these rockets, to try and stop this indiscriminate missile fire against our civilians. Out of those 800 targets, I’ll be honest, the precision—the precision is quite outstanding. And there is no military in the history of the world that has actually used such precision targets. I mean, think about it from a military tactics point of view. We tell our enemies—we tell Hamas where we’re going to hit. We tell them with text messages, with phone calls, with leaflets. We tell them in order to get civilians out of harm’s way. But for them, civilian death is actually—it’s actually a success. This is what they want. And—
AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat, your response to Joshua Hantman?
JOSHUA HANTMAN: My counterpart—my counterpart would not condemn this use of human shields, which Hamas is proud about. They call it—they call for it on TV. They said it—their spokesperson said it yesterday. Their Interior Ministry put out a press release saying, "Palestinians, come to the roofs. Stay in the homes where we’re firing the rockets from." It’s disgusting. And I would like her to actually condemn it.
NOURA ERAKAT: I absolutely consider it reprehensible. What straight-minded person would actually accept that? That’s not the point. I’ve repeatedly explained that Palestinians are not robots who listen to Hamas. They care about their children and their families. This—
AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat, what do you think needs to happen, in this last minute that we have?
NOURA ERAKAT: You know, what really needs to happen is what has needed to happen for over 66 years of the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, over 47 years of military occupation and continuing colonial expansion, which is the lifting of the siege, the end of the occupation, equality for all in Palestine, without distinction—Palestine and Israel, without distinction to religion, as Israel would have us believe. The entirety of the Israeli state is built on the premise of a demographic equation that needs and necessitates a Jewish majority. That should make us all concerned and raise red flags for us and make us stop before we call it the only democracy the Middle East and continue to fund it another year with $3.1 billion without any accountability.
AMY GOODMAN: What would stop the Israeli assault on Gaza, Joshua Hantman?
JOSHUA HANTMAN: Ma’am, what would stop the Israeli assault on Gaza? A commitment for a long-term ceasefire. No more rocket fire. I’m talking about not the trickling in of more rockets and more missiles, but actually Hamas stopping the rocket fire. Let me remind you, ma’am, that the Palestinian Authority, who, by the way, controls Areas A and B in the West Bank and—
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
JOSHUA HANTMAN: —used to have control also in the Gaza Strip, they’ve just joined a unity government with Hamas—
AMY GOODMAN: We have to end it here.
JOSHUA HANTMAN: —this terrorist organization that’s been firing rockets at Israel. So we call on them to end this unity for terror and make peace.
AMY GOODMAN: Joshua Hantman, senior adviser to Israel’s ambassador to the United States, and Noura Erakat, a Palestinian human rights attorney, adjunct professor at Georgetown, we want to thank you for being with us.
"We Should Be Protecting Children": Rep. Gutiérrez Supports Funds for Humanitarian Crisis at Border
President Obama has called for close to $3.7 billion to address the humanitarian crisis unfolding at the United States-Mexico border where more than 52,000 unaccompanied children have been detained since October. Part of the money will be used to speed up deportations as Republicans say they will only support the plan if it puts more emphasis on immediate repatriation. They want to change a 2008 immigration law — which originally passed with bipartisan support — that would let the United States deport children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as fast as it does those from Mexico. "I think it is shameful that in the Congress of the U.S. we see members of Congress engendering and creating fear of children," says Democratic Rep. Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois, who supports Obama’s emergency supplemental bill. "We should be protecting children, not creating fear of them."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show looking at the humanitarian crisis unfolding at the U.S.-Mexico border. President Obama is calling on Congress to back his request for emergency funding to address the 52,000 unaccompanied migrant children who have flooded into the United States over the last eight months. The $3.7 billion would be used to speed up deportations as well as to improve care for thousands of kids being held in detention centers, holding pens and temporary housing facilities.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Right now, Congress has the capacity to work with us, work with state officials, local officials and faith-based groups and not-for-profits who are helping to care for these kids. Congress has the capacity to work with all parties concerned to directly address this situation. They’ve said they want to see a solution. The supplemental offers them the capacity to vote immediately to get it done.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Nearly half of the emergency funding would be used to deal with migrant children already in the country. But Republicans say they’ll only support the plan if it puts more emphasis on immediate deportation. They’ve called for changes to immigration law that would let the United States deport children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as quickly as it does those from Mexico.
AMY GOODMAN: A 2008 anti-trafficking law says children from countries that do not directly border the United States must be allowed to stay here while their cases are processed. Many Democrats have opposed changing the policy.
For more, we go to Washington, D.C., to the Cannon Rotunda in the House of Representatives to be joined by Congressmember Luis Gutiérrez. He’s the Democrat from Illinois, chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Last month he took to the House floor to declare comprehensive immigration reform dead.
Congressman Gutiérrez, welcome back to Democracy Now! What do you feel needs to be done right now?
REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Well, what needs to be done is, first and foremost, is to protect the children and to follow the law of the land. And the law the land, as you have established so clearly, in 2008, the Congress of the United States adopted, adopted a position, when children come to our country in seek of asylum, as the children are being all treated as asylum seekers, first and foremost, that when they come, that within 72 hours Border Patrol agents must cease to have them in their custody. They must be put over with the refugee department at the Department of Health and Human Services, and they must be put in the least restrictive setting. This is the law, the least restrictive setting. And if you have a family member, put them there. And what the law specifically says, there will be no expedited removal. That means you get your day in court before a judge to plead your case about why you should be able to stay in the United States. That’s the law.
And I just want to make clear, Amy, that that’s a law that Michele Bachmann voted for. You know, Congressman Gohmert from Texas, every time he speaks about immigrants, he says they’re always bringing diseases. And Mr. King from Iowa? He’s the one that thinks we should electrify a fence between the United States and Mexico. And he’s—every time, it never fails: "It’s criminals." But even King and Gohmert and Michele Bachmann, tea party queen of the Congress of the United States, all voted for the 2008 anti-human-trafficking law. We all voted. Why? Because cooler heads were prevailing at that moment. There wasn’t a humanitarian crisis at the border that you wanted to exploit for political purposes, and there just wasn’t a president that you didn’t like and an election around the corner. I think it is shameful that in the Congress of the United States we see members of Congress engendering and creating fear—fear of children—of children. We should be protecting children, not creating fear of them.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Congressman Gutiérrez, what do you say to those Republicans who say that it’s President Obama’s immigration policies that are to blame for the crisis at the border? This is Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama speaking Thursday.
SEN. RICHARD SHELBY: The result of President Obama’s failure, I believe, to enforce the immigration law currently on the books has been predictable, and that’s one of the reasons we’re here this afternoon. Now we’re being asked by President Obama to approve a $3.7 billion request to resolve the current crisis at our border. There are several questions that I think need to be answered. What exactly is the $3.7 billion going to address? Will this request be the end, or will it be the beginning of many new requests by the administration for emergency funding?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Senator Richard Shelby on Thursday. And many Republicans are saying that the surge is actually a reaction to the potential for young people to be kept in the United States as a result of President Obama’s previous DACA policy.
REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Well, first of all, let’s just look at the facts. The fact is that at the height of the George Bush administration, over a million people were crossing illegally into the United States between the Mexico-U.S. border. It is down to a little over 300,000, and that’s including the surge of children. So, that’s a pretty dramatic effect. We’ve put—we’ve tripled the Border Patrol agents. And as you know, Juan, we spend more money on immigration enforcement than we do on the DEA, the ATF, the FBI and all other law enforcement federal offices. What more would you want us to put on the border?
And this crisis that we’re looking at right now? If you put a National Guardsman every other foot across the border, the children would continue to come, fleeing the violence and the drug cartels, and they would continue to be exploited by those drug cartels, that have now created a human-smuggling operation, which they are exploiting. The financial gain of the drug cartels and the human smugglers is incredible, and how it is they use the violence in their own country and the fact that children want to escape it to charge them to come to the United States.
I just want to say this. Look, you’re right when you say that they want to expedite their deportation, but really, let’s understand something. All of the children are under removal proceedings as we speak. That’s what happens under our law. But they deserve their day in court to say why they shouldn’t ultimately be deported from the United States. So, I’m going to support the supplemental. I’m going to support the supplemental because I want to give the kids judges. I want to give the kids a trial. I want to expedite their day in court and their petition for justice. I think we should do it as quickly and as expeditiously as possible.
But one thing we should never do is undermine the law, a law created to protect children. I think they should have their day in court, and we shouldn’t, simply because we want to exploit it politically, undermine the rights of these children, rights that—it’s not only established in the—I just want everybody—I want your viewers and listeners to know that when Dick Armey in 2002 introduced the Homeland Security—by creating the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, he created—he included identical provisions to protect children. We had a vote in 2007 on the anti-trafficking law. It’s like five people voted against it. Five people voted against it. And then, in 2008, there was a voice vote. So on three different occasions, the Congress of the United States has voted to protect children. I don’t think we should undermine it.
Why did we do it? Because it was the right, sensible policy. And now people want to exploit children, so they want to reverse. And I think it’s just terrible. When I have friends of mine, like Raúl Labrador, tea party leader in the Congress of the United States, but a very good lawyer and an expert on immigration policy, just go on a news network, on a Sunday morning news network, and said, "Well, I know this is hard, and I know that it would be—it might even sound cruel, but the president should just deport the kids." No, it’s not cruel, Raúl. It’s not hard. It would be illegal for the president. And this, after the Republicans have said to us, "The reason we won’t do immigration reform is because we don’t trust the president to carry out the laws of the land." And when he does carry out the laws of the land, they want him to abridge the very rights that we have afforded children according to the laws of the land. Which one is it? You know, we have to fix our broken—
One last thing, I want—poorest country in Central America, going back to—is it DACA? Poorest country in Central America: Nicaragua. There are virtually no children coming from—no one’s coming from Nicaragua, virtually no one. They’re coming from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, 80 percent of them. You want to know why my suspicion is they’re not coming from Nicaragua, the poorest country in the world? Because we passed NACARA in 1997 and granted 100,000 Nicaraguans, that had fled, most of them—a lot of them Contras, that had fled the conflict in Nicaragua, were in the United States of America, and we granted them American citizenship. And they’ve had the last 14 years to legally bring their children, their spouses and their families to the United States. So, look, if it were NACARA, then why is the pull—why aren’t they coming from Belize? Why aren’t they coming from Costa Rica? Why aren’t they coming from Panama? Why are those countries receiving unprecedented numbers of refugees from the three countries? Look, Honduras is the murder capital of the world. We know that their—that the democratic fabric of Central American societies were broken down during the ’70s and ’80s during civil war conflicts. We put a lot of money in when it came to guns and when it came to bullets. It is time for us to help reconstruct civil society in those countries where children know that if they have to call upon the police, the police are there to protect them.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Congressman Gutiérrez, we know you have to rush to a press conference, but I just wanted to ask you what the impact of this current crisis over the massive surge of children, what impact and the debate on this additional money will have on the potential for President Obama to take some administrative action in terms of immigration?
REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Sure. As Amy alluded to earlier, I gave a red card. I want you to know I worked hard. When the Republicans said, "We can’t do the Senate bill in the House of Representatives," I said, "Good, let’s do a House bill." You know, when they said to me, "Oh, Luis, we can’t do this in a complete package," the president and I said, "Fine, let’s do it in parts." And when they said everybody can’t become a citizen right away, we didn’t walk away from the table. It’s just like they couldn’t take yes for an answer from the Democrats to get this done. So we had to move forward.
What’s the solution now? I think it’s for the president. And I would hope that the president of the United States would not allow this humanitarian crisis to continue to break down and destroy families already here in the United States of America. Here’s my hope, Juan. My hope is that as small and as mean-spirited as the Republicans have shown themselves to be with the border crisis that we have and the humanitarian crisis that we have and with immigration policy in totality, I hope the president will be as wide and as broad and as generous as they have been small and mean-spirited. And I hope that he takes the Senate bill and finds, through presidential decrees, ways to stop the deportation of all of those that could have benefited under the Senate bill. The Senate bill may not be the law of the land, but we all understand it is the will of the people of the United States of America. Barack Obama got 51 percent of the vote, five million more votes than Mitt Romney. He won the election. And you know? There was a referendum. And it was for immigration reform. Let’s do the right thing. The senators, 68 out of 100, voted for it. Let’s do the right thing. And let’s do what the American public—what a broad spectrum of the American public want us to do. And that is, number one, protect the children, and, number two, stop the deportations of vulnerable communities.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Gutiérrez, the call by the House speaker, Boehner, for—that he’s going to sue President Obama, and others, like Sarah Palin, saying that they want him impeached?
REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: I say, "Mr. President, do your job. We elected you." You know, Amy, I am tired that Democrats and that my party always brands itself as not being as bad as Republicans. That’s not our position when it comes to defending the gay community. That’s not our position when it comes to defending the environment. We don’t say, "We’re just not as bad as." We have a position in values. Let’s be a great party, a grand party, a party that has values and principles. And let the president of the United States, with the authority he already has under the law, to stop the deportation.
Five million American citizen children have undocumented parents. Let’s stop destroying the future of those American citizen children by taking away their moms and dads simply because 25 members of the tea party won’t allow a vote in the House of Representatives. You, on your broadcast, have seen dozens upon dozens upon dozens of Republican members of the House of Representatives echo the sentiments of broad-based communities across. They want to vote for immigration reform. Let us vote for it. Just let democracy flourish one day in the House of Representatives. Give us a vote. And you know what? Not one Republican will have to risk their re-election to get immigration reform. Only those that are happily, willingly and with a joyful heart, that want to vote for immigration reform—and guess what we got. We have an immigration reform bill that fixes our broken immigration system.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Luis Gutiérrez, we want to thank you very much for being with us—
REP. LUIS GUTIÉRREZ: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: —chair of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. We’re going to continue on the issue of immigration, then a debate on what’s happening in Israel, West Bank and Gaza. Stay with us.
"Worst of the American Spirit": Advocates Decry Anti-Immigrant Protests, Urge Asylum for Children
As thousands of migrants continue to arrive in the United States seeking escape from violence in Central America, this week the Texas town of League City passed a resolution banning undocumented children from entering its municipality. The move echoes sentiments that flared up just before July 4 in Murrieta, California, when police blocked three buses of migrants from reaching a federal immigration facility there. The buses carrying dozens of children flown in from an overcrowded detention center in Texas were then surrounded by demonstrators who chanted anti-immigrant slogans. "A society is judged on how we treat our children, and what we witnessed that day was the worst of the American spirit," says Enrique Morones, director of the group Border Angels. This comes as reports show Honduran children are increasingly being targeted by gang violence and Border Patrol statistics indicate a strong correlation between Central American cities with high homicide rates and waves of children who come to the United States. “What we need to do is give them, as we would refugees anywhere else in the world, access to territory and access to procedures in order to establish their status and care for them as people who need international protection," says Shelly Pitterman, head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Office in Washington, D.C. He represents the office to the United States and Caribbean governments.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We continue now to look at the humanitarian crisis unfolding with thousands of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. This week the Texas town of League City passed a resolution banning undocumented children from entering its municipality, and refusing to accept federal funds to operation detention centers in the city. The move echoes sentiments that flared up just before July 4th in Southern California, when right-wing demonstrators blocked three buses of migrants from reaching a federal immigration facility in the town of Murrieta. The buses were carrying dozens of children flown in from an overcrowded detention center in Texas. Demonstrators blocked the road and chanted anti-immigrant slogans.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, this week, immigrant supporters gathered in Murrieta to hold a vigil calling for compassion—among them, the parents of two detained minors, aged 10 and seven, who were taken into custody in Texas, are now being held in a shelter awaiting processing. This is their mother, Elva.
ELVA: [translated] At this moment, my only wish is to hug my children and to have them close and tell them I love them. I want to be able to recuperate all the missed time that has passed without them. But sometimes it’s not possible to make up that time. I just want to make sure that they are OK.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This family is from Guatemala, and they’re among thousands who are fleeing violence there as well as in Honduras and El Salvador. The New York Times reports Honduran children are increasingly being targeted by gang violence. In June, 32 children were murdered in Honduras, bringing the number of youths under 18 killed since January of last year to more than 400. Border Patrol statistics show a strong correlation between cities with high homicide rates and waves of young people who come to the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations refugee agency says it’s witnessing extreme violence on the ground in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. Asylum claims from those three countries have skyrocketed more than 700 percent in the last five years. This comes as the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have sued the U.S. government for its failure to provide legal representation to immigrant children in deportation proceedings. The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of eight immigrants aged 10 to 17 who the ACLU says have not been able to find a lawyer.
For more, we’re joined in San Diego by Enrique Morones, director of Border Angels.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Enrique. Can you tell us what happened in that confrontation with migrants, young migrants coming into town, and the police and the anti-immigrant activists who blocked them?
ENRIQUE MORONES: Sure, Amy. A pleasure to be with you and Juan. So, a couple of Tuesdays ago, I was here in San Diego, very busy with our work with Border Angels, when I got a call that maybe I should go up to Murrieta, because there were some protesters being very loud and chanting these anti-immigrant and racist slogans, and maybe I should go up there. It’s an hour north of San Diego. So I went up there. I went up there, I did a couple of interviews, and I went to observe.
And what I observed was the freedom of speech in action, which everybody supports. The protesters were on the sidewalk yelling their chants and so forth. I was just minding my own business. And then I saw the three buses coming in. And Juan mentioned the buses being turned back. I want to make it very clear that those three buses were turned back by the Murrieta police, not by the protesters, because as the buses were approaching, the Murrieta police stepped in front of the buses and blocked the buses, which made absolutely no sense, because they could have just kept on driving and gone into the Border Patrol facility. So I told one of the officers, "Why are you stopping the buses there?" And then a protester came out, and then other protesters came out, and of the 50 protesters that were there in total, about half of them eventually came out in front of the bus, as did about 25 or 30 media people. And they were banging—the protesters were banging the American flag against the bus, screaming these racist taunts.
And it was horrific to see, because the children inside the bus and their moms were crying. They don’t speak English, but they understand hate. And it brought tears to my eyes, and I even saw some media people with teary eyes, because we saw the worst of the American spirit. Regardless of how you feel about this issue, which side of the political aisle you’re on, these are children. These are children, and we need to embrace and love our children. And a society is judged on how we treat our children. And what we witnessed that day was the worst of the American spirit. And I really believe that that moment will live in infamy. And it can be the turning point, as it already has become a little bit, in this immigration issue. We really need to have humane immigration policies. They don’t exist in this country right now. And the whole world saw that hateful display of those 50 people, and the consciousness of this country is saying, "That is not who we are." That is not who we are. And I’m asking President Obama that when he tucks his two girls in, and they ask him, "Daddy, are you doing everything possible to help those children?" he can be honest and say, "Yes, I am," because he stated it’s a humanitarian crisis. And it is. We need a humanitarian solution, and we have not seen that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Enrique, when I interviewed you last week for my column in the Daily News on this subject, you told me that you recognized a lot of the most vocal of these anti-immigrant activists that day, the protesters, from other right-wing movements and causes in the—that you’ve witnessed in Southern California now over decades. Could you talk about that?
ENRIQUE MORONES: Sure, that’s right. Thank God, the Minuteman movement has pretty much shut down. This country would not tolerate that type of hate. But some of the individuals are still around, and some of those individuals were there in Murrieta that day. They’re not from Murrieta. Of the 50 people, I would say about half of them were from Murrieta, and the other half were these ex-Minuteman type of people—neo-Nazis, members of the Federation of American Immigration Reform—people that have been practicing hate for a long time. And they have gathered there, like they had gathered a week earlier in Escondido, when they said, "We don’t want the children in Escondido," and they were saying the same old things. They have the same signs, the exact same signs. And they have the same sayings about disease and criminals and so forth, the chants.
And it’s a very scary group, because it only takes one. And my example that I usually use is Shawna Forde, a member of the Federation of American Immigration Reform, a hate group, from Yakima, Washington, comes to San Diego, trains with the then-San Diego Minutemen, goes to Arizona and kills nine-year-old Brisenia Flores. Hate talk—people like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs, before he was fired—hate talk leads to hate actions. Shawna Forde is an example of that. What we saw there, what we saw there in Murrieta with those people, that was—they were motivated by hate talk from some of these right-wing nativists that promote these ideas and these messages that aren’t true, but get these people all riled up. And we saw what happened. That hate talk got them all fired up, and it was horrible.
AMY GOODMAN: Enrique, I wanted you to respond to the right-wing pundit Glenn Beck, who asked his supporters to donate money so he could bring food, water and teddy bears to the migrant children held in detention at the border. In the same show, he also said he would be going to the border to document immigrants being released from custody after they were caught.
GLENN BECK: Through no fault of their own, they are caught in political crossfire. And while we continue to put pressure on Washington and change its course of lawlessness, we must also help. It is not an either/or. It is both. We have to be active in the political game, and we must open our heart. I have never taken a position more deadly to my career than this, and I have never, ever taken a position that is more right than this. I’m going down on the border on July, I think it’s 18th—it’s a Saturday, 19th, and I’m going to bring my cameras down. And I’m trying to see if we can even maybe spend a night, that night, at the border with some night vision cameras to show you how bad it is. I don’t need to show you that. You know how bad it is. I’m going to show you the illegals who are being caught and released.
AMY GOODMAN: That is the right-wing pundit Glenn Beck. Enrique Morones, your response? And also, going back to the point of it not just being the activists, but the police, reminding us of, for example, Selma.
ENRIQUE MORONES: That’s right. I believe that that Murrieta moment, it brought me back to Selma, Alabama, and how people remember what was taking place in Selma. Now when people think about Murrieta, they don’t think about it in a positive manner. People didn’t used to think about Murrieta, but now when they see it, they’re thinking Selma, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; and that horrific treatment of our African-American brethren back then—and sadly, in part, still now.
But the Glenn Beck issue, the best thing that he could do, if he’s serious, because he’s a very dangerous person, is get off the air. He is partially responsible for what happened in Murrieta, with that hate talk that he preaches and his—you know, his using the term "illegal," for example, in that. There is no such thing as an illegal human being. He has been promoting hate and fear for a long time. He is somebody that should be off the air. If he’s serious about compassion and helping this issue, get off the air.
We, the Border Angels, started a campaign to help these children three weeks ago, when the flights were coming into Arizona. And then when they started coming into California a little over a week ago, and the Murrieta incident took place, now we received over 40 tons of food, clothing, toys. We started a project called Project Teddy Bear about 10 days ago, about eight days ago. Project Teddy Bear is collecting teddy bears and stuffed animals for the children. We have housed several of the families. We had three families yesterday right here in San Diego. We love these children, and not only in words, but in actions. And somebody like Glenn Beck is not somebody that we want in front of these children or observing the situation, because he has helped promote this hate and this fear, as have other right-wing pundits. And, Amy and Juan, your show and what you do is so important, because people need to know what is really taking place.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Enrique, I want to bring in Shelly Pitterman, the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Office in Washington, D.C. He represents the office to the United States and Caribbean governments. Shelly Pitterman, could you talk about what you believe needs to be done with the refugee situation and the children crossing into Texas now, 52,000 over the last several months?
SHELLY PITTERMAN: Thank you very much for having me. This is, as it’s already been said, a humanitarian situation. There’s a refugee dimension to this influx of individuals, children as well as families and adults. It’s been going on for some time, of course. It’s been framed as an immigration challenge, but we also know that there are refugees included in this mixed population. Some are coming for economic reasons, but there are children—and we know that from having interviewed several hundred of them last year, and we’ve issued a report to that effect. There are many who have also expressed, articulated very clearly, fears that have driven them to leave their families and their homes and to come to the United States, as well as to other countries in Central America. So what we need to do is give them, as we would refugees anywhere else in the world, access to territory and access to procedures in order to establish their status and to care for them as people who need protection, international protection.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Shelly Pitterman, that issue about other countries, that most people here are not aware of that, that there’s been a huge surge in asylum applications in Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico—not just the United States, right? So that would indicate that people are not just fleeing directly to the United States.
SHELLY PITTERMAN: That’s true. The numbers—the absolute numbers are of course much lower than in the United States, but as we heard also yesterday in the testimonies before the Senate Appropriations Committee, there has been a sevenfold increase over the last five years in the number of applications by individuals from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in neighboring countries—in Mexico, in Costa Rica, in Panama, in Nicaragua.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who told government officials from Guatemala and Mexico the Obama administration will seek to speed up deportations, and said children will not be exempt.
HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY JEH JOHNSON: We believe in the U.S. that it is important that we add additional resources to more efficient repatriations back to Central America, that occur quicker, more efficiently. And we’re building resources to accomplish that. That includes the children. But we are pledged to do so consistent with our laws and in a humanitarian fashion.
AMY GOODMAN: Shelly Pitterman, your response to the homeland security secretary?
SHELLY PITTERMAN: Well, the key is, of course, that it’s consistent with the laws. And in other statements, Secretary Johnson has also spoken to the moral values of Americans. And that’s clear and very—very welcome. We think that the Department of Justice needs more resources, as well, to deal with the backlog and to be able to prioritize the individuals that are coming now, especially the children, and to provide legal representation so that they’re able, before an authority—and not necessarily a judge, but an asylum officer, as well, of the Department of Homeland Security—to articulate their claim and to get protection, if they need it. There are mixed movements of population around the world. And there are conventions, international—there are national laws, as well—that guide states in providing protection to individuals who are afraid and have a well-justified fear of harm should they be returned to their home country.
AMY GOODMAN: Shelly Pitterman, we want to thank you for being with us, the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Office in Washington, D.C., representing the office to the United States and Caribbean governments. And we want to thank our previous guest, Enrique Morones, director of Border Angels. That does it for this segment, as we turn to the debate on Gaza. Stay with us.
Headlines:
•Gaza Death Toll from Israeli Strikes Tops 100
Israel is escalating its bombardment of the Gaza Strip, with at least eight Palestinians killed overnight, as the potential for a ground invasion looms. Palestinian health officials say about 100 people have been killed — up to half of them women and children — since Israel launched what it calls "Operation Protective Edge" in response to rockets fired by Hamas. On Thursday, hundreds of Gazans attended a funeral procession for the victims of an Israeli military strike that killed eight members of a single family, including five children. No deaths have been reported on the Israeli side. Earlier today, a rocket from Gaza hit a gas station in southern Israel, injuring one person. Three rockets were also fired at Israel from Lebanon, causing Israel to respond with artillery fire. We’ll host a debate about the conflict later in the broadcast.
•Germany Expels CIA Station Chief over U.S. Spying
Germany has ordered the top U.S. intelligence official in the country to leave amidst tensions over U.S. spying. Over the past several days, two German government workers have been accused of spying for the United States. The cases have renewed anger over leaks from Edward Snowden, which showed the United States was monitoring the communications of millions of Germans and tapping Chancellor Angela Markel’s cellphone. On Thursday, the German government announced it was expelling the CIA station chief in Berlin, citing both the recent allegations and "months of unsolved questions around the activities of U.S. intelligence agencies in Germany." German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said the move sends a message.
Ursula von der Leyen: "The German government has reacted and asked the U.S. intelligence service official responsible for Germany to leave the country. We thus made it clear that we do not tolerate this approach. But there is also a chance now, especially for the American side, to wipe the slate clean."
•Report: U.S. Knew in Advance About U.K. Plan to Destroy Snowden Hard Drives
Newly declassified documents show the Obama administration knew ahead of time about the British government’s plan to force The Guardian newspaper to destroy hard drives containing documents leaked by Edward Snowden. The Associated Press obtained the records, which show National Security Agency officials called the planned destruction "good new
•United Auto Workers Announces Local Union at Chattanooga Volkswagen Plant
The United Auto Workers has announced the formation of a local union at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which was the site of a major defeat for the union earlier this year. In February, workers at the Chattanooga plant voted against joining the UAW following intense opposition from Republican lawmakers, including threats that the plant might miss out on financial incentives for a planned expansion if the union won. UAW officials now say that following talks with Volkswagen, they are confident the company will recognize the local union if a "meaningful portion" of workers sign up.
•Child Laborers Found at Samsung Supplier in China
The electronics company Samsung is under fire over reports of child labor in its supply chain. The New York Times spoke to three teenage girls who work at a plant in China that makes cellphone parts for Samsung. The three workers are 14 and 15 years old.
•Detroit Residents Stage Civil Disobedience over Water Shutoffs; Activist Charity Hicks Dies
In Detroit, Michigan, at least eight people were arrested Thursday in an act of civil disobedience to stop the city’s shutoff of water to thousands of households. The group of clergy members and other residents blocked the entrance of a private corporation hired by Detroit to cut off the taps of residents who have fallen behind on their water bills by as little as two months. A U.N. panel has called the shutoffs a "violation of the human right to water." Demeeko Williams, coordinator of the Detroit Water Brigade, spoke to the Detroit Free Press at Thursday’s protest.
Demeeko Williams: "We are out here today stopping the trucks from shutting off people’s water. We are out here today to make a statement that the shutoffs must end, and we are also making a commitment to fight for Detroit."
One of the activists at the forefront of fighting the water shutoffs in Detroit was Charity Hicks, an environmental and food justice organizer. In May, Hicks was left in a coma after being struck by a car in New York City. She died on Tuesday.
•Saltwater from Oil Drilling Spills over 2-Mile Area in North Dakota
In North Dakota, more than a million gallons of saltwater from oil drilling operations has leaked from a pipeline on a Native American reservation, covering nearly two miles. Saltwater is a byproduct of oil and gas drilling. The leak by Crestwood Midstream Services has killed vegetation and may have reached a bay connected to a drinking water source for the Fort Berthold reservation. It could take weeks to clean up.
•Actress Laverne Cox Makes History as 1st Transgender Emmy Nominee
The actress Laverne Cox of the hit TV series "Orange is the New Black" has made history, becoming the first transgender person nominated for an Emmy Award. Cox was nominated for "Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series." Click here to watch our two-part interview with Laverne Cox from February.
•Grandmother Sentenced to 1 Year in Prison After Protest at U.S. Drone Base
In New York, a peace activist and grandmother has been sentenced to a year in prison for her role in peaceful protests at a base where U.S. drones are piloted remotely. Mary Anne Grady Flores had been issued an order of protection aimed at keeping her away from Hancock Field Air National Guard Base after she participated in an act of civil disobedience there in 2012. Last year, Grady Flores says she attended another peace action, but did not participate, instead photographing it from the roadway, beyond what she believed was the base’s boundary. She was later told the base’s property extended into the road. On Thursday, Judge David Gideon of the DeWitt Town Court sentenced her to the maximum sentence of a year in prison for violating the protection order and fined her $1,000. In a courtroom packed with about 150 supporters, Grady Flores spoke about what she called the four perversions of justice in her case.
Mary Anne Grady Flores: "The fourth perversion is the reversal of who is the real victim here: the commander of a military base involved in killing innocent people halfway around the world or those innocent people themselves, who are the real ones in need of orders of protection? So I, as a nonviolent grandmother and a caregiver to my own mother, as I prepare for jail, itself a perversion, I stand before you remorseful. I’m remorseful about my own country and its continued perpetuating of violence and injustice."
Mary Anne Grady Flores was taken into custody following the sentencing. She is appealing the verdict. Earlier in the day, her supporters marched six miles from the drone base to the courtroom carrying a coffin bearing the words "First Amendment."
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"Nomads of the Digital Age" by Amy Goodman
The freedom to communicate and to share has entered a new era. The power promised by this freedom, by the Internet, is immense, so much so that it frightens entrenched institutions. Governments, militaries, corporations, banks: They all stand to lose the control they exert over society when information they suppress runs free. Yet some of the most ardent advocates for the free Internet have become targets of these very institutions, forced to live on the run, in exile or, in some cases, in prison.
Julian Assange is perhaps one of the most recognized figures in the fight for transparency and open communication. He founded the website WikiLeaks in 2007 to provide a safe, secure means to leak electronic documents. In 2010, WikiLeaks released a shocking video taken from a U.S. military attack helicopter, in which at least 12 civilians are methodically machine-gunned to death in New Baghdad, a neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq. Two of those killed were Reuters journalists. Throughout the massacre, the Army radio transmissions are heard, a combination of grimly sterile orders to “engage” the victims and a string of mocking exchanges among the soldiers, belittling the victims and celebrating the slaughter.
On the heels of the video’s publication, WikiLeaks provided three more major document releases, with hundreds of thousands of classified documents, from official U.S. military communications about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which allowed direct research into, for example, the scale of civilian casualties in those wars. WikiLeaks also revealed hundreds of thousands of U.S. State Department cables, exposing dark, cynical realities of U.S. diplomacy. The secret cables are credited with fueling the Arab Spring, especially the overthrow of the corrupt, U.S.-supported regime in Tunisia.
While the WikiLeaks website managed to protect the identity of the source of these remarkable leaks, an FBI informant pointed the finger at a U.S. soldier, Pvt. Bradley Manning. Serving in U.S. military intelligence in Iraq, Manning was frustrated with U.S. military abuses. He allegedly copied the trove of files and delivered them to WikiLeaks. Manning was arrested and thrown into solitary confinement, in conditions the United Nations labeled “torture.” Manning was court-martialed. After conviction and sentencing to 35 years in an Army prison, Manning announced his intention to transition to a woman, and formally changed her name to Chelsea Manning. One month ago, Manning wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times, “I believe that the current limits on press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance.”
WikiLeaks investigations editor Sarah Harrison is British but now lives in Berlin. When Edward Snowden leaked his trove of National Security Agency documents in Hong Kong, Harrison flew there. She and WikiLeaks provided key assistance to Snowden as he made his way to political asylum in Russia. Harrison is concerned that if she returns to her native England, she will be arrested. I caught up with her in Bonn, Germany, where she told me: “Britain has a Terrorism Act, which has within it a portion called Schedule 7, which is quite unique ... it gives officials the ability to detain people at the border as they go in or out or even transit through the country. This allows them to question people on no more than a hunch, giving them no right to silence, no right to a lawyer.”
Also in Berlin is U.S. citizen Laura Poitras, the first journalist to respond to Snowden in his efforts to leak the NSA documents. She convinced Glenn Greenwald to travel with her to Hong Kong, launching the Snowden era in U.S. national-security reporting. Poitras had already been detained and aggressively questioned many times on entering the United States, very likely for her unflinching exposes on the U.S. national-security system.
Greenwald, a U.S. citizen, chooses to live in Brazil. Since the Snowden revelations, on advice of his lawyers, he avoided visiting his home country. Poitras and Greenwald finally did return to the U.S. to collect the prestigious George Polk Award for their journalism. Three days later, they were part of the teams at The Guardian and The Washington Post that won the Pulitzer Prize.
Then there is Edward Snowden. He has been charged with espionage for making one of the largest and most significant leaks in U.S. history, which has sparked a global debate around surveillance, privacy and the national-security state. This weekend, The Guardian published an interview with Hillary Clinton. She said Snowden should return to the United States, where he could mount a vigorous legal and public defense. The day after, I asked Julian Assange what he thought. He replied: “The U.S. government decided to smash Chelsea Manning—absolutely smash her—to send a signal to everyone: Don’t you ever think about telling people what’s really going on inside the U.S. military and its abuses. And they tried to smash also the next most visible person and visible organization, which was WikiLeaks, to get both ends - the source end and the publishing end.”
I interviewed Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been holed up for the past two years. Ecuador has granted him political asylum, but he fears that if he steps foot out of the embassy, he will ultimately be extradited to the United States, landing him in a U.S. prison for years to come for his work with WikiLeaks.
At the heart of his case, and of so many others, is the question of whether the Internet will remain a free and open platform for communication, or a commodity controlled by a few corporations, censored and surveilled by the U.S. national-security apparatus.Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2014 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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