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Report from Gaza: Israel Launches New Offensive on Besieged Palestinian Territory in Crisis
Violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories is escalating as Israel bombs the Gaza Strip and threatens a new full-scale assault. On Monday, the Israeli military announced "Operation Protective Edge," which it says aims to stop Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel. At least nine Palestinians were wounded in Israeli strikes on more than 50 targets in Gaza overnight. Six Hamas members were killed in Israeli strikes on Sunday, the deadliest by Israel since an eight-day assault in late 2012. Palestinian militants have fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel since the weekend, causing no casualties. To prepare for a potential attack, Israel has called up more than 1,500 troops to fortify a contingent already massed along the Gaza border. Hamas says the latest bombings "exceed all red lines" and has vowed to respond with broader rocket fire. If Israel invades Gaza, it would be the third major assault on the coastal territory in six years. The first invasion in 2008 left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead, most of them civilians. We go to Gaza to speak with Mohammed Omer, an award-winning Palestinian journalist who has been covering the Israeli offensive.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: Violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories is escalating as Israel bombs the Gaza Strip and threatens a new full-scale assault. On Monday, the Israeli military announced Operation Protective Edge, which it says aims to stop Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel. At least nine Palestinians were wounded in Israeli strikes on over 50 targets in Gaza overnight. Six Hamas members were killed in Israeli strikes on Sunday, the deadliest by Israel since an eight-day assault in late 2012. Palestinian militants have fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel since the weekend, causing no casualties. To prepare for a potential attack, Israel has called up over 1,500 troops to fortify a contingent already massed on the Gaza border. Israeli military spokesperson Peter Lerner said Israel is "prepared for an escalation."
LT. COL. PETER LERNER: Israel has witnessed a huge barrage of rockets being shot and launched from the Gaza Strip by Hamas. We are currently taking the necessary precautions to both be prepared for an escalation—we have forces on the ground. We have utilized all of our defensive mechanisms, Iron Dome and our air force, in order to protect and safeguard the civilians of the state of Israel. Today we have about a million Israelis that are under potential fire and have—and the alarms are ongoing even as we speak.
AARON MATÉ: Hamas says the bombings, quote, "exceed all red lines" and has vowed to respond with broader rocket fire. If Israel invades Gaza, it would be the third major assault on the coastal territory in six years. The first invasion in 2008 left over 1,400 Palestinians dead, most of them civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: The threat of an assault on Gaza comes amidst heavy unrest in the West Bank and in Arab towns inside Israel following the killings of a Palestinian teenager and three Israeli teenagers. The Israeli teens were abducted while hitchhiking near the West Bank settlement where they lived. Their bodies were found last week, after more than two weeks of Israeli raids throughout the West Bank that saw over 200 Palestinians arrested and over a dozen killed. A new report by the Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights says Israel conducted over 2,400 raids on Palestinian homes and businesses, seizing over $2.9 million worth of cash and property.
In an apparent act of revenge right after the teens’ bodies were found, a Palestinian teenager named Mohammed Abu Khdeir was abducted near his home in East Jerusalem. His dead body was found shortly after. The Palestinian Authority’s attorney general said an initial autopsy found burns on 90 percent of his body, suggesting he was burned alive.
MOHAMMED AL-A’WEWY: [translated] The results of the autopsy showed two things. The main cause of death is burning. There were fumes inside the airways. This shows for sure that he was burned while he was alive.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, Israel said it had arrested six suspects and that three have already confessed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile called Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s father to express, quote, "shock over the despicable murder" and pledged the suspects’ "prosecution to the full extent of the law," unquote. While Netanyahu and other top Israeli leaders have condemned the killing, Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s death followed calls for vengeance from Israeli political leaders as well as in marches and on social media. Netanyahu posted a tweet saying, quote, "Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created."
For more, we go to Gaza for the latest, where we’re joined on the phone by Mohammed Omer, award-winning Palestinian journalist who has been covering the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Mohammed. Can you tell us where you are and what you see right now?
MOHAMMED OMER: I’m in Gaza City at the moment. The situation is quite deteriorating this morning. Just about less than half an hour ago, the Israeli F-16s bombed one of the microbuses that was driving nearby in the center of Gaza City, and about four people were killed. That brings the number of people to about seven who were killed and about 55 injured across the Gaza Strip since the very early morning, when Israel announced a new war on the Gaza Strip.
Rocket fires from the Gaza Strip continue, as Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue the firing of rockets all the past few days. I believe this is going to—this is going to escalate even further.
We just also received the news that the Israeli military bombed the house for Kaware family in Khan Younis, and there are about 13 people who were injured and two are killed just four minutes ago. There is a military buildup around the border of the Gaza Strip, and I would expect the situation to get even much worse. This followed the worst outbreak of violence along the Gaza frontier since the eight-day war in 2012, if you remember, when the Israeli occupation started the ground invasion and 16—launching fires on the Gaza Strip.
The situation is going to, I believe, going to be deteriorating further, as we hear that one of the targets in the microbus is one of the leaders of the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing. And in this case, the Islamic movement of Hamas is likely to retaliate all the coming afternoon and tomorrow.
AARON MATÉ: And, Mohammed, what’s the mood amongst the residents that you’ve spoken to? Are people preparing for a ground invasion from Israel?
MOHAMMED OMER: Now, as far as the preparation, if you remember, in the previous wars, the people were going to the shops to stock food because then there is a war. But now we don’t see people rushing to the markets to buy food. And there is a reason for that. The banks are shut, so the salaries did not come through. The de facto government of Hamas, with 50,000 staff members, have not received their salaries, and that was a big, big issue for them. For the past few months, they haven’t been paid, and therefore they cannot go and shop. The same with the Palestinian Authority employees, who are still struggling to get payment. As I’ve said, the banks are shut this morning and yesterday. There are people who are trying to prepare themselves for what is coming worse. The streets are nearly empty on the roads. I expect there will be no cars driving in the Gaza Strip, since one of the targets was the microbus, which was driving on Salahuddin Road.
Let’s talk about the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. The Ministry of Health just announced that 70 percent of the ambulances are not going to be running anymore, and this is due to shortages of fuel. The case here is not because there is no fuel in Gaza, but because there is no cash to buy the fuel for the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Health used to receive funding from the Palestinian Authority, which they have not received in the last two months—or, to be precise, since the agreement of reconciliation was signed. And there is a blame on the Palestinian Authority that the fuel is not coming into the Gaza Strip, therefore it’s going to make it very difficult for the ambulances to run. There is already shortages of medical supplies, which was announced by the Ministry of Health. And in addition to that, all Gaza hospitals just announced a state of emergency.
We hear right now, as I speak to you, F-16s are firing rockets on the different sides of the Gaza Strip. One of the last was Khan Younis to the east, and also to the south in parts of the Gaza Strip in Rafah. The ruins or what’s remaining of the Gaza International Airport have been targeted four times in the last two hours and two times in the very early morning. A number of buildings and agricultural lands have been targeted. The Ministry of Agriculture estimated the damages that are caused to the agriculture sector about $2.5 million U.S. And there’s the shortages of electricity, which always happen during Israeli attacks.
This is one of the worst attacks. It’s certainly similar to the one in November 2012. The only thing which is different from this is that now the military leadership in Hamas seems to lose control. There is no way to control them, as the Hamas political leadership are in hiding, basically, which means the authorities, even if Egypt is trying to intervene to install truce, it will take some time before they start to have real talks with those who are firing the rockets in the Gaza Strip.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed Omer, we want to thank you very much for being with us, award-winning Palestinian journalist, has been covering the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza from Gaza. When we come back, we’ll be joined by the son of an Israeli general, Miko Peled, a peace activist and writer, and we’ll be joined by the aunt of Tariq Abu Khdeir, who was beaten by Israeli soldiers to unconsciousness. His cousin, Mohammed, who he had been with just before Mohammed was kidnapped, he ultimately was burned to death in East Jerusalem. This is Democracy Now! Stay with us.
"Incitement Starts at the Top": After Arab Teen's Murder, Israeli Gov't Accused of Fueling Hatred
The threat of an Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip comes amidst heavy unrest in the West Bank and in Arab towns inside Israel following the killings of a Palestinian teenager and three teenage Israelis. The Israeli teens were abducted while hitchhiking near the West Bank settlement where they lived. Their bodies were found last week, after more than two weeks of Israeli raids throughout the West Bank that saw more than 200 Palestinians arrested and more than a dozen killed. In an apparent act of revenge right after the Israeli teens’ bodies were found, a Palestinian teenager named Mohammed Abu Khdeir was abducted near his home in East Jerusalem. His dead body was found shortly after, showing signs he was burned live. On Monday, Israel said it had arrested six suspects and that three have already confessed. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli leaders have condemned the killing, Khdeir’s death followed calls for vengeance from Israeli political leaders as well as in marches and on social media. We are joined by two guests: Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of the new book, "The Battle for Justice in Palestine," and Miko Peled, a peace activist and author of "The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine." The book’s title refers to a unique family history: Miko’s father, "Matti" Peled, served as a general in the 1967 war and later became a peace activist, calling for Israel to withdraw from the territory he helped to capture.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Miko Peled is our guest, coming up. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. He’s an Israeli peace activist and writer. His father was an Israeli general. He’s the author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. His father was an Israeli general who ultimately became a peace activist, saying that Israel should give back the territories that he helped to capture in 1967. I’m Amy Goodman, with Aaron Maté. Miko is with us in Jerusalem.
Can you talk about the Israeli soldiers that are amassing along the Israeli border—the Gaza border?
MIKO PELED: Yeah, hi. You know, I have to say, hearing Mohammed Omer and his description from Gaza—you know, he’s only about 45 minutes away from me. I’m sitting here in Jerusalem in an air-conditioned room, plenty of light, plenty of water, no shortages of any kind. And this horrendous, horrendous reality that he’s describing, that is about to become worse as the result of an impending Israeli ground invasion, is a direct result of the criminal siege that Israel has been imposing on Gaza for years now, putting 1.6 million people in a cruel and inexcusable—under a cruel and inexcusable siege.
But I think it’s important to take a look at this in a larger context. I think one of the problems is people look at all these—at the current state of affairs as though it’s isolated. Israel has been bombing and killing people in Gaza since it created the Gaza Strip in the early 1950s. On a regular base, Israel goes in and kills civilians in Gaza. This has been going on for six decades. Of course, it’s getting worse. The technology is getting better. And the casualty count is getting worse. But this is part of a larger issue, a larger problem. And the problem is that people equate the Palestinian response to Israeli violence and to Israeli aggression as terrorism, instead of realizing that this is an act of resistance. The Palestinians have been the subject of oppression and violence by Israel from the very beginning that the state of Israel was established. This is why we have a Gaza Strip. This is why we have hundreds of thousands of refugees in the Gaza Strip and other places. These people were forced out of their home as a result of an act of terrorism, which created the state of Israel in 1948. These people have been resisting, and they’ve been resisting in other places, mostly by nonviolent means. Of course, the more violent, the more the armed struggle gets a lot more media, but mostly by nonviolent means. They have been part of a brutal oppression for six decades.
And what we see today is, of course, the result of one straw that literally broke the camel’s back, and we see uprising in places that we haven’t seen before, like, you know, inside Palestinian communities inside Israel. These are Israeli citizens. And Israel planning to go in and kill more Palestinians, knowing full well they’re going to be burning more Palestinian children, just like the one who was burned by these four or five individuals who were not soldiers, but Israeli military has been doing this for decades. This is nothing new. And I think it’s important to take a look at this not as an isolated issue, not as an isolated incident, but as part of a larger issue that has to be resolved, has to be resolved so that Israelis and Palestinians can move forward finally.
AARON MATÉ: Miko Peled, you were arrested recently at a protest in the West Bank, protesting the occupation. You’re one of a group of Israelis who regularly takes part in these kind of solidarity actions. Has the brutal killing of Mohammed Khdeir done anything to raise discussion about the settlements, about the fact that this occupation is continuing and Palestinians are subjected to these types of—this type of brutality every day?
MIKO PELED: I think it only has done so in that the foreign press is suddenly interested again. But in terms of the discussion on the Palestinian side, this is nothing new. This particular brutal case of murder is really nothing new. I mean, Israel—what do you think happens when Israel drops tons of bombs from the air on Gaza? Children get burned.
The issue of the settlement is also one of these absurd issues that people talk about, knowing full well there can be no change. Israel will never stop building cities and towns wherever it likes, everywhere in the Middle—everywhere in what Israel considers the land of Israel. And so, this whole debate of settlements and no settlements, again, has to be taken in a larger issue. Israel has been building settlements on occupied Palestinian land since 1948, since the state of Israel was established. You know, the entire country is occupied Palestine. And it’s time to wake up and talk about it like this. This whole debate about the occupied Palestinian territories being only part of the country and the settlement problem being only part of the country is absurd. Palestinian towns within Israel, Palestinian towns where Palestinians who are Israeli citizens reside, have settlements all around them, and all of these settlements are not considered settlements because they’re within what is considered proper Israel, but these are all built on Palestinian land. And Palestinian towns within Israel are shrinking and getting smaller, their resources are declining, and their landmass is disappearing. So we have a larger issue here.
And, you know, I protest, others protest. Of course, Bil’in, where I was arrested last time—quite brutally, I have to say—is, has become the Mecca of the nonviolent resistance, and people from all over the world come and visit there. Yet the Israeli army shows up. They shoot amounts of tear gas that are obscene. They shoot shot grenades at point blank, pointing them at people. And then, of course, I stood there, and I was talking, or at least trying to talk, to one of the commanders, and at one point he got angry, pushed me around and then proceeded to detain me and arrest me. But, you know, my story is nothing. I get to go home at the end of the day. We have thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, the vast majority of whom have never been charged with acts of violence, which of course represents the Palestinian resistance. And these are the people that we have to be talking about. These are the people who have to be released.
The siege on Gaza has to be lifted. If Israel doesn’t like the Qassam rockets coming out of Gaza, Israel knows what to do, because this is a response to the Israeli occupation. This is the response to the Israeli brutal oppression of Palestinians for almost seven decades. So, again, it’s important to put this in perspective and not to treat this like it’s an isolated issue. And again, Mohammed Omer is 45 minutes away from me, and he has no access to clean drinking water. Families don’t know what to do once the bombs start falling. They have no shelters. They can’t escape. Israel has locked them in this massive prison. And I don’t know what kind of expectation there is that the Palestinians would just sit there in Gaza and not respond, and not respond with any kind of violence. You know, being as ineffective as these Qassam rockets are, at least they’re some expression of anger and some desire to be noticed.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined in Los Angeles by Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, author of the new book, The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Ali, can you talk about the situation at this point—the soldiers amassed along the border of Gaza right now, the bombing that’s going on of Gaza, Israel setting up this operation—they call it Protective Edge, saying that they are responding to rocket fire coming from Gaza?
ALI ABUNIMAH: Good morning, Amy. I’m very happy to hear the context and analysis of both Mohammed Omer and Miko because this has been totally missing from the mainstream media in this country and even, sadly, from progressive media for so long. But I think it’s so important to respond to this Israeli claim, which we heard in the news at the beginning of the show from the Israeli spokesperson, Peter Lerner, that Israel is just responding. And this talking point is repeated ad nauseam by Israel and its apologists in the media. I mean, just look at the numbers from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on protection of civilians. The reason this is happening now, in addition to everything we heard, is that the number of Palestinians killed by Israel since the start of this year is about triple the number in the same period as 2013. And it’s grim to talk about human beings in terms of statistics, but just up to the end of June—so, not even including the horrifying slaughter that we just heard about from Mohammed and that has occurred in the past few days—until the end of June, Israel had killed 31 Palestinians since the beginning of the year. That compares with 11 in the same period last year, so three times as many Palestinians killed, 1,463 injured. Why do we never hear that? We only hear about the rockets coming, which Miko talked about.
And this is happening, Amy, at a time when there is unprecedented—and I would even say genocidal—incitement against Palestinians. For example, the statement from the up-and-coming political star in Israel, Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home party, which is in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, who actually issued a call for genocide of the Palestinian people on June 30th. She declared that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy. And she justifies their destruction, including, quote, "its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure." And she said that Israel would be justified to slaughter Palestinian mothers because they give birth to little snakes. I wish I could say that that was an extreme or outlying expression of opinion in Israel, but she got something like 5,000 likes for that statement on Facebook. And we’re hearing this kind of incitement from Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, from every—virtually every Cabinet minister, and of course the chief inciter, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now pretending to be against violence, pretending to console the family of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the latest lynching victim of Israel and its occupation.
AARON MATÉ: Well, Ali, I wanted to get your response to Netanyahu. Speaking over the weekend, he vowed to punish those responsible for Mohammed Abu Khdeir’s death.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: I know that in our society, the society of Israel, there is no place for such murderers. And that’s the difference between us and our neighbors. They consider murderers to be heroes. They name public squares after them. We don’t. We condemn them, and we put them on trial, and we’ll put them in prison.
AARON MATÉ: That’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to punish the killers of Mohammed Khdeir, but in doing so, also drawing, Ali, some sort of moral high ground. Your response?
ALI ABUNIMAH: Where does one begin with that? This is the leader of a government that has killed more than 1,400 Palestinian children, including this year seven, 1,400 just since 2000. And Israel sanctifies these murderers. It treats them as heroes. It incites them. Netanyahu is the chief inciter. And the notion that Israel brings them to justice is just absurd. There is no case, in practically in living memory, of an Israeli being brought to justice for the killing of any of these 1,400 children. On May 15th, two Palestinian children were shot dead by snipers, and it was caught on camera. Everyone saw it. They were hunted like animals. It’s almost two months later. Has anyone been arrested? Do we know the names of the killers? Well, I’ll tell you, Israel knows the names of the killers, but they’re not telling, because they’ve placed a gag order, a censorship order, on that case.
The only reason Netanyahu was forced to make that cynical statement is because of the media attention that the case of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was lynched to death, who was burned alive, got—and his cousin Tariq Abu Khdeir, a U.S. citizen, brutally tortured on television. I mean, a question for Netanyahu I wish somebody would ask—Tariq Abu Khdeir—and I understand we’re going to hear from his aunt in a minute—was tortured on camera. We saw it. He was tortured. He was fined and put under house arrest, the 15-year-old boy, never having been charged with anything and having been tortured. Have the torturers who beat him up been arrested? Has Israel even announced that they were suspended from their positions? Of course it hasn’t. Does Israel go and demolish the homes of Israeli soldiers or settlers who attack Palestinians? And the figures from the U.N., by the way, show that attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their properties have been going through the roof in recent years. And this is all unchecked violence.
Netanyahu incites. The incitement starts from the top. And it’s not just against Palestinians. It’s against Africans. It’s against what they call leftists, anyone who criticizes their government. The chant is—the chant in the streets of Israel, in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, in other places, is "death to the Arabs, death to leftists." And the incitement comes from Netanyahu.
AMY GOODMAN: Ali Abunimah, we want to thank you very much for being with us. Miko Peled is still with us in Jerusalem, the Israeli peace activist and writer whose father, Matti Peled, was an Israeli general, military governor of the Gaza Strip and member of Parliament. Miko Peled is the author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. Before we go to Tariq Abu Khdeir’s aunt in Tampa, Florida—Tariq, by the way, grew up in Tampa, born in Baltimore, the young man who was beaten by Israeli soldiers in East Jerusalem—I wanted to ask you, Miko Peled, about your own family’s journey. Your father, a famous Israeli general and considered Israeli war hero, ended up saying that Israel should withdraw from the territories back to the 1967 line. Why the change?
MIKO PELED: I think the change came as a result—and again, I tried to record it in the book, in The General’s Son—as a result of, first, his experience as military governor in Gaza in the mid-1950s, when Israel occupied Gaza, and then when he saw that by occupying the entire country, and Israel is—it will, in fact, become a binational state and will have to enforce a brutal military force and a brutal military occupation upon the people, who are inevitable to—who will inevitably resist, because we are going to be a foreign occupation. So he felt that the right thing to do—and he said this immediately after the 1967 war was over, in the very first meeting of the Israeli high command—that we now have an opportunity to solve the Palestinian problem peacefully by negotiating with the Palestinians based on what we know today is called the two-state solution—a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.
As he was saying these very words—this is the very last day, the very last moments of the 1967 Six Day War—the Israeli military was already forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of the West Bank, destroying cities and towns and villages in the West Bank, and building massively for Israeli Jews only in the West Bank, which is exactly what they did prior to 1967 in the rest of Palestine, which had become Israel. So, he retired from the military a year later, and he dedicated his life, or the remainder of his life, the second half of his life, I should say, to this idea of an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The problem was that nobody on the Israeli side was interested. In terms of Israeli thinking, in terms of the Zionist ideology, which is the foundation of the state of Israel, there cannot be any compromise on the land of Israel because it belongs to the Jewish people. You know, the law in Israel says that over 90 percent or 95 percent of the land in Israel is only—only Jews are permitted to purchase land on over 95 percent of the land here. So Palestinians, who are the indigenous people of the land here, are prohibited from buying, purchasing land here, if they like. So, this is a reality that he was trying to combat, but, of course, on the other side, there was nobody listening. In terms of Israeli thinking, Zionist thinking, the land is ours; the Palestinians are either going to have to live with Israeli domination, or they can leave.
And what, in essence, has happened is, Israel has given Palestinians two choices: either to completely surrender or to resist. And this has been going on for some almost seven decades. And now we see the results of that. But the things, the very things that he said in that very—on that very last day of the war in 1967, every single thing that he said actually came to be. Israel is a brutal occupying power. It is not a Jewish state. It is a binational state, because Israel governs the entire country, and there are two nations that live here, albeit in an apartheid regime where one nation has all the rights and the other nation is subservient and lives under a terrible, oppressive regime.
AMY GOODMAN: Miko—
MIKO PELED: And this is exactly what he was hoping to avoid.
AMY GOODMAN: Miko Peled is joining us from Jerusalem, again, an Israeli peace activist who was just arrested in the West Bank. His father, the famous Israeli war hero and general, Matti Peled, who ultimately called for the very land he had been responsible for capturing, among other Israeli military, saying that it should—Israel should withdraw.
"Absolutely Unjustifiable": Aunt of U.S. Teen Decries Brutal Beating by Israeli Forces Caught on Video
Over the weekend, video emerged of the beating of Tariq Abu Khdeir, the 15-year-old Palestinian-American cousin of murdered Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Footage shows him being severely beaten by Israeli officers after being detained during protests over his cousin’s murder. Tariq says he was watching demonstrations in East Jerusalem when he was seized. The video shows him lying on the ground as the officers repeatedly beat him with batons. Tariq has been placed under house arrest pending an investigation into potential charges of assaulting a police officer. He lives in Tampa, Florida, but is in East Jerusalem for the summer visiting his family. He was with his cousin Mohammed just moments before he was kidnapped and murdered last week. In a statement, the State Department said it was "profoundly troubled" by the assault, calling for a "speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for the apparent excessive use of force." We are joined from Tampa by Tariq’s aunt, Suhad Abukhdeir. "This is absolutely unjustifiable," she says of Tariq’s beating. "You have three uniformed men, in full combat gear, against a 15-year-old."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by Tariq Abu Khdeir’s aunt right now in Tampa. Now, Tariq is the 15-year-old Palestinian-American cousin of the murdered Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was killed in apparent retaliation for the murder of three Israeli teenagers. Video emerged over the weekend of Tariq being severely beaten by Israeli officers after being detained during protests over his cousin’s murder. Tariq said he was watching demonstrations in East Jerusalem when he was seized. The video shows him lying on the ground as the Israeli officers repeatedly beat him with batons. He was left with facial bruises, severely swollen eyes. Let’s turn to Tariq Abu Khdeir in his own words.
TARIQ ABU KHDEIR: I was actually brutally attacked from the side and heard somebody screaming. They came and attacked me, and I actually went unconscious, and I woke up in the hospital.
REPORTER 1: Why did they attack you?
TARIQ ABU KHDEIR: I don’t know. That’s why I ran.
REPORTER 2: They said that you were throwing stones, something like this.
TARIQ ABU KHDEIR: No, I jumped the fence, and I tried to run away, because I just saw somebody running at me, so I tried to run away.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Tariq Abu Khdeir, the young man you just heard—if you’re listening on the radio, he has two black eyes—has been [placed under house arrest pending an investigation into potential charges of assaulting a police officer] in East Jerusalem. He actually lives in Florida but is in East Jerusalem for the summer visiting his family. He was with his cousin Mohammed just moments before Mohammed was kidnapped and murdered last week. In a statement, the State Department said it was "profoundly troubled" by the assault, calling for a "speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for the apparent excessive use of force."
Joining us now from Tampa, Florida, from PBS studios WEDU, is Suhad Abukhdeir. She is Tariq’s aunt, as well as a relative of Tariq’s slain cousin, Mohammed.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you so much for joining us. Our condolences. Can you talk about what you now understand is happening with Tariq and what happened to Mohammed?
SUHAD ABUKHDEIR: Thank you for having me. What I understand now is, like you were saying, he’s on house arrest and has to pay a fine, which I think is very ridiculous, because after what he’s endured, we should be the ones compensated at this time. As far as Mohammed, we’re still in mourning. You know, the whole city of Shuafat is in mourning, because it’s such a close-knit family. Even the non-Abu Khdeirs in that village have grown up with the Abu Khdeir family for several generations. So everybody feels with us at this time, and we’re still in mourning.
AARON MATÉ: Suhad, I wanted to get your response to Micky Rosenfeld. He’s a spokesperson for the Israeli police. He said Tariq was one of six Palestinians arrested, three of them carrying knives, after a clash in which 15 Israeli officers were injured. And he said Tariq was part of this rally where hundreds of rioters, many of them masked, hurled at the Israeli forces pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, fireworks and stones. What’s your understanding of what Tariq was doing at this protest?
SUHAD ABUKHDEIR: First of all, when you’re inside your house and you’re 15 years old and you hear a commotion downstairs, it’s kind of hard to stay inside. So you go down and you look, and you wonder, "What’s going on here?" You know, and from a distance, he could see the protesting, but he was nowhere near it. If there was that many protesters around him, where were they when he was getting beat up? Wouldn’t they have intervened? Somebody would have intervened. And to have all these weapons that they’re claiming, somebody would have definitely intervened.
But as far as everybody’s claims that the six that were with him had all these weapons, all the weapons that they could have had in the world don’t even justify this brutal attack, with nobody around him. You can see in the video nobody is within the vicinity of Tariq. And this is absolutely unjustifiable. You have three uniformed men that are in full combat gear, weighing at least 200 pounds each, 150 pounds, against a 15-year-old who—
AMY GOODMAN: It looks like we lost, on the satellite feed, the aunt of Tariq Abu Khdeir. She was describing what happened to him at the hands of Israeli soldiers. The mother of one of the Israeli teenagers killed in the West Bank last month has spoken out against the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. This is Rachel Fraenkel, Naftali’s mother.
RACHEL FRAENKEL: Even in the depth of the mourning over our son, it’s hard for me to describe how distressed we were over the outrage that happened in Jerusalem. The shedding of innocent blood is against morality. It’s against the Torah and Judaism. It’s against the basis of our life in this country. The murderers of our children, whoever sent them, whoever helped them, whoever incited towards that murder, will all be brought to justice. But it will be them and no innocent people. And it will be done by the government, the police, the Justice Department, and not by vigilantes. No mother or father should go through what we are going now, and we share the pain of the parents of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. The legacy of the life and death of Naftali, Eyal and Gilad is a legacy of love, of humanity, of national unity.
AARON MATÉ: That was Rachel Fraenkel, the mother of Naftali, who was one of the Israeli teens who was murdered in the West Bank last month. We are joined still in Jerusalem by Miko Peled. Miko Peled, the mother here of a murdered settler emerging as a voice of peace, your comments on that?
MIKO PELED: Yeah, I don’t think she’s emerging as a voice of peace at all. I think if she wanted to be recognized as a voice of peace, she would condemn, completely condemn, all Israeli violence towards the Palestinians. Ever since these three boys went missing, the Israeli military has gone completely mad. The Israeli soldiers have been marching through Palestinian towns and villages like Roman legions, destroying everything in their path, destroying homes, beating children, arresting, torturing. Countless have been killed, of innocent civilians have been killed. This has been complete madness. And if these parents were really interested in calming things down, they would tell Netanyahu to pull back his troops, to stop bombing Gaza, to relieve the people of Gaza of this brutal and inexcusable siege. People living 45 minutes from me, and they don’t have—they can’t have water fit for drinking or the most basic medicines, not to mention any way to deal with the horrific attacks that they’re subjected to right now. So, if anybody is really interested in calming things down, this is where they need to point the finger. This is who they need to be talking to.
Just yesterday, I happened to be at the grave of one of the boys killed on the 15th of May, Nadim Nuwara. And to listen to his father, Siam, speak at the gravesite of this 17-year-old boy, all he asks for is justice. All he asks for is justice, you know? And to compare that, to juxtapose that with the madness going on in the streets here in Israel and the madness that the Israeli military has been subjecting the Palestinians is just unbelievable.
AMY GOODMAN: Miko Peled, we want to thank you for being with us, Israeli peace activist, writer. His father was the Israeli general, Matti Peled. Miko Peled is the author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. When we come back, we’ll be joined by Lisa Graves of The Progressive magazine on the Koch brothers. Stay with us.
The Kochs' Anti-Civil Rights Roots: New Docs Expose Charles Koch's Ties to John Birch Society
The Progressive magazine and Center for Media and Democracy have released new documents that show billionaire oil industrialist Charles Koch was an active member of the controversial right-wing John Birch Society during its campaigns against the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Charles Koch was following in the footsteps of his father, Fred Koch, a leader of the John Birch Society from its founding. We speak with The Progressive’s Lisa Graves about her new article, "The Koch Cartel: Their Reach, Their Reactionary Agenda, and Their Record." Graves details how the reactionary ideas absorbed during Charles Koch’s youth continue to animate many of his actions decades later. Charles and his brother, David Koch, have used their wealth to push a similar agenda into the mainstream through the tea party and "dark money" political coalitions that allow donors to shield their identity while funding attack ads against Democrats.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: We turn now to "The Koch Cartel: Their Reach, Their Reactionary Agenda, and Their Record," a scathing new look at the Koch family’s role in the ultraconservative John Birch Society. The story appears in the new issue of The Progressive magazine, "Attack of the Plutocrats: The Robber Barons Issue." It zeroes in on Charles Koch’s roots with the John Birch Society and how he has since used his wealth to push a similar agenda into the mainstream.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Washington, D.C. We’re joined by its author, Lisa Graves, president of The Progressive Inc., which includes the Center for Media and Democracy, also the publisher of The Progressive magazine.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Lisa. Can you lay out what these new revelations are that you have found out?
LISA GRAVES: Yes, well, thank you so much for having us on. And we’ve been doing research in archives across the country, and what we’ve discovered is not just that Fred Koch, Charles and David Koch’s father, was a member of the John Birch Society and in fact helped found it, but what we discovered in archives is that Charles Koch himself followed his father’s footsteps into the John Birch Society. And that society was a very extreme organization. It was an extreme right-wing organization that spent the '60s largely opposing the civil rights movement here in the United States. And so, these documents, some of the documents we're revealing today, talk about—are, in Charles Koch’s own words, funding for the John Birch Society, trying to support its mission. And what we’ve documented is what that means in context in the civil rights movement, how that organization was trying to stop the civil rights movement, trying to discredit it, opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, opposing other progress on integration of our society.
AARON MATÉ: And, Lisa Graves, why is this so significant? Obviously the Koch brothers, billionaires, have a lot of power in this country, but do you see that John Birch legacy still continuing today in the political activities that they fund?
LISA GRAVES: We do. So, even though Charles Koch resigned his life membership and stopped advertising in the John Birch Society publications and promoting its radio shows and fundraising for it in 1968, what we think has happened, based on our other research, is that he’s really advanced those ideas. He has learned to use other language than calling people communists. For example, in his op-ed in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year, he used the term "collectivists" to describe anyone who basically opposes his agenda. In many ways, what Charles Koch has done is put a more sophisticated gloss on the John Birch Society through the organizations that he and his brother have helped fund and fuel and, in fact, really proliferate across this country to try to push these ideas into the mainstream, these ideas that anything that is—anything other than free market fundamentalism is somehow communist or collectivism.
AMY GOODMAN: Lisa Graves, your report features many photos about the Kochs and the John Birch Society that you gathered from public archives in recent months, including one that shows a double billboard they ran in Birmingham, Alabama, in the aftermath of Bull Connor’s attacks on protesters.
LISA GRAVES: Yes, one of the shocking documents that we discovered was that the John Birch Society—the bookstore that Charles Koch was hanging out in Wichita and helping to promote was putting out these pamphlets attacking not just the civil rights movement, but attacking even key photos and moments in civil rights. And so, Joseph—pardon me, in the John Birch Society, the founder, Robert Welch, helped promote the idea that the infamous attack on civil rights activists in Birmingham, where activists were bitten by dogs and hosed by fire hoses, that the dog bite photo was a setup, it was a sham. And so, after the outcry in the nation over the brutality by Bull Connor in Birmingham, Alabama, against civil rights activists and protesters, the John Birch Society started pushing a movement to support your local police. So, in addition to calling for the impeachment of Earl Warren, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, in addition to attacking Martin Luther King as a communist, in addition to suggesting that Rosa Parks was a communist and trained by communists, they also promoted, in the immediate aftermath of those attacks on protesters, a movement to support your local police. Those are the types of materials that were promoted in the 60s, in '64, ’65, ’66, ’67, ’68, attacking the civil rights movement, in fact asking, "What's wrong with civil rights?" and claiming that basically civil rights in the United States were perfectly fine without federal intervention.
AARON MATÉ: Lisa, your piece details this little-known political operation that the Kochs ran in 1996 called Triad. Can you talk about this?
LISA GRAVES: Sure. So, after leaving the John Birch Society and funding a number of other organizations, Charles and David Koch appear to have been involved in an operation called the Triad entity, basically, that was investigated by Congress back before smartphones and Google, and so it’s a little bit of obscure history, but in fact it’s very revealing because the Triad operation in Kansas was designed to use shell corporations, shell entities, to run ads to influence the 1996 races, federal races in this country. It was investigated by Congress. There were efforts to subpoena the people involved in Triad. One of the Republicans shut down that investigation, and later it turned out that part of that operation was largely financed by the Koch family fortune.
And if you fast-forward to just 2012, what you see is that operation on steroids, basically, through the Koch operatives who are running what’s known as Freedom Partners, which is another of these entities that basically operates a bunch of shell organizations or fuels shell groups with pop-up names, basically, to transfer cash, big cash. What we and the American people didn’t discover until almost a year after the 2012 elections was that the Koch brothers and their billionaire buddies had managed to inject nearly a quarter-billion dollars of money into the election through a group called Freedom Partners that no one outside those operatives knew even existed.
AMY GOODMAN: And let’s talk more about Freedom Partners, the Koch-backed political coalition, The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics reporting in January on how it’s designed to shield donors through this labyrinth of 17 tax-exempt groups and limited-liability companies; in 2012 raising at least $407 million for voter mobilization and TV ads attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats. The Koch Industries spokesperson, Robert Tappan, told The Washington Post, "This type of activity is undertaken by individual donors and organizations on all ends of the political spectrum—on the left, the middle, and the right. In many situations, the law does not compel disclosure of donors to various causes and organizations," he said. Lisa Graves, your response?
LISA GRAVES: Well, this is one of the big issues of our time. In fact, it’s the biggest issue of our time, whether this sort of dark money can be injected into our elections, designed deliberately to influence the results of our elections, and that the American people are kept in the dark about who’s really funding it. We have a long set of campaign finance rules in this country that were designed to make those sorts of direct efforts to help candidates, to promote them, public so that people would know who’s really influencing their elected officials, who’s trying to buy influence with them. And what the Koch brothers and their billionaire buddies and their legal team have done is to try to obscure that information from the American people, to try to hide that information while putting millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars into our elections through these groups whose names change. They get fined, and then they pop up with another name, like Center to Protect Patient Rights, which is now American Encore. This is an operation to really hide from the American people the influence of these credibly super-rich people in this country who are trying to distort our policy and dramatically change our democracy for the worse.
AMY GOODMAN: So can you talk about the website that you’re releasing today, Lisa?
LISA GRAVES: Yes. So, we have created a clearinghouse called KochExposed.org that includes a number of profiles about the Koch family fortune, about some of their operations, about groups like this. This is a service, in essence, that we’re offering to the public to make sure that they can learn more about the Koch brothers. They can learn more about these groups that change their names or pop up here and there. And they can help trace the dark money that is being pushed into our elections. As was reported earlier this year, there has been an effort to increase the sophistication of that operation in the 2014 Senate races and governors’ races across the country. And so, we think it’s important for people to know who these Koch brothers are—
AMY GOODMAN: Lisa—
LISA GRAVES: —who these billionaires are.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Lisa Graves is president of The Progressive Inc.
And that does it for our broadcast. We have two job openings: administrative director, as well as a Linux administrator.
Headlines:
•Israel Strikes More Than 50 Sites in Gaza
Violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories is escalating as Israel bombs dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip and threatens a new full-scale assault. Gaza-based journalist Mohammed Omer reports four people were killed earlier today in an Israeli airstrike on a microbus. On Monday, the Israeli military mobilized 1,500 additional troops along the Gaza border and announced "Operation Protective Edge," which it says aims to stop Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel. Tensions have erupted in the region following the murders of three Israeli teenagers as well as a Palestinian teenager. We’ll have more on the situation, including a report from journalist Mohammed Omer in Gaza, after headlines.
•Afghanistan Faces Election Crisis; 16 Killed in Suicide Attack
Afghanistan is facing a crisis over its disputed presidential election. Preliminary results Monday showed former World Bank official Ashraf Ghani beating opponent Abdullah Abdullah by about a million votes. The results will not be finalized until later this month. Abdullah’s supporters have protested, calling the results a "coup" and claiming widespread fraud. In Washington, D.C., U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki called for a full review.
Jen Psaki: "There are serious allegations of fraud, which I think you referenced there, and they’ve been raised, and in our view they haven’t been sufficiently investigated. So, right now, our focus is on encouraging a full and thorough review of all reasonable allegations of irregularities. We think that’s essential to ensuring that the Afghan people have confidence in the integrity of the electoral process."
Earlier today in Afghanistan, at least 16 people — including four Czech soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians — were killed in a suicide bomb attack in the eastern province of Parwan.
•Nigeria: More Than 60 Girls, Women Escape Boko Haram
In Nigeria, more than 60 girls and women have reportedly escaped from the Islamist group Boko Haram after they were kidnapped two weeks ago in the northeastern state of Borno. More than 200 schoolgirls previously kidnapped by Boko Haram in April still remain missing.
•1 Dead as Typhoon Neoguri Hits Japan
In Japan, at least one person has died and half a million have been urged to evacuate amidst a powerful typhoon. Typhoon Neoguri brought wind gusts of more than 150 miles per hour and cut off power to tens of thousands of households in Okinawa.
•Earthquake Kills 3 in Mexico, Guatemala
In Mexico and Guatemala, at least three people are dead after a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake. The quake was centered in southern Mexico, where it sparked landslides and building collapses, killing at least two people in the state of Chiapas. A baby was killed in the hard-hit Guatemalan state of San Marcos when a piece of a hospital ceiling collapsed on him.
•Protest Held at White House over Obama’s Handling of Migrant Children
In the United States, immigrant advocates gathered at the White House to criticize the Obama administration’s treatment of immigrant children fleeing violence and poverty in Central America. More than 52,000 unaccompanied children from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have been seized at the U.S. border since October, about double the amount over the same period last year. Protesters say many of the children are trying to rejoin their families.
Cindy Monge, CASA in Action: "We’re going to take action on this. We want these kids to reunite with their parents, because that’s what they came here for. It’s not their fault. Some of them don’t even know what’s happening. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re just told, 'Go with so and so and get here.' Like, that’s what happened to me. They were just like, 'You go with these people, and we're going to see you back here.’"
The Obama administration is poised to ask Congress for $2 billion to pay for more detention centers and immigration judges to handle the influx. The White House said Monday most of the children are unlikely to qualify for humanitarian relief and would be deported. According to the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, 58 percent of unaccompanied children detained by the United States could be entitled to refugee protections under international law.
•Court Blocks Arizona Ban on Licenses for Young Immigrants
In a victory for young immigrants in Arizona, a federal appeals court has ordered the state to stop denying driver’s licenses to young people who came to the United States as children and are eligible to remain here. A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Arizona had violated the Constitution by denying the licenses to immigrants who qualify for the Obama administration’s deferred action program.
•Report: CIA Involved in Spy Operation That Led to German’s Arrest
Unnamed U.S. officials have confirmed the CIA was involved in a spying operation that led to the arrest of a German intelligence official accused of being a double agent. German politicians say the agent has admitted to providing a U.S. contact with details about a German parliamentary probe into U.S. spying efforts revealed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Reuters cites two unnamed officials who confirmed the CIA’s role. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to comment on the case.
Josh Earnest: "The reason I can’t comment on this particular matter is it involves two things. The first is a pending German law enforcement investigation. I would not want to get ahead of that or interfere in that investigation. In addition, it obviously goes to a purportedly direct intelligence matter as it relates to the United States. And that’s not something that I frequently comment from the podium here."
•Obama Signs New Intelligence Bill
President Obama has signed legislation authorizing more than $560 million in spending on U.S. intelligence efforts over the next five years. That figure does not include the vast array of U.S. spy programs that are kept secret. The law also expands whistleblower protections for employees who report concerns through authorized channels, but it does not extend protections to intelligence agency contractors, like Edward Snowden, who has said there were no adequate channels for him to raise concerns about National Security Agency spying.
•Bahrain Expels U.S. Diplomat over Meeting with Opposition Group
The Gulf nation of Bahrain has ordered a U.S. diplomat to leave the country after he met with a Shiite opposition group. Bahrain is a key U.S. ally that hosts the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The Sunni monarchy there has staged a brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests. Tom Malinowski, U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor — and former Washington director for Human Rights Watch — had planned to meet with both Bahraini officials and human rights activists, including Nabeel Rajab, but Bahrain objected to his meeting with the opposition group Al Wifaq. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the United States is "deeply concerned" about Bahrain’s decision to expel him.
•Hundreds Join "Moral Monday" Protest Against North Carolina Voter ID Law
In North Carolina, organizers say more than 1,000 people rallied in the latest "Moral Monday" action to denounce a voter ID law they say is the harshest since the Jim Crow era. The rally came as lawyers for the Justice Department and civil rights groups asked a federal court to block the law, which requires voters to show photo ID, curbs early voting and eliminates same-day voter registration. The North Carolina NAACP says the law is part of a long history of voter suppression aimed at people of color who disproportionately lack photo ID.
•Prosecutor: No Charges for Deputy Who Killed 8th Grader Holding Pellet Gun
In California, local prosecutors say they will not bring criminal charges against a sheriff’s deputy who shot and killed an eighth grader after mistaking his pellet gun for an assault rifle. The deputy, Erick Gelhaus, shot 13-year-old Andy Lopez seven times last year in Santa Rosa. The killing sparked mass protests. But the Sonoma County district attorney concluded Gelhaus believed he was in imminent danger. In a statement, an attorney representing the family in a civil suit said the decision "leaves the family feeling as though Andy had been killed again today. ... No reasonable officer in such circumstances could believe he was encountering anything but a teenager with a toy gun on a sunny afternoon in a residential area." The FBI is still reviewing the shooting.
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