marc – Radio Free https://www.radiofree.org Independent Media for People, Not Profits. Tue, 29 Jul 2025 18:22:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.radiofree.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/cropped-Radio-Free-Social-Icon-2-32x32.png marc – Radio Free https://www.radiofree.org 32 32 141331581 Latinos in Baltimore are living in fear: ‘I can be stopped just because of my accent’ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/29/latinos-in-baltimore-are-living-in-fear-i-can-be-stopped-just-because-of-my-accent/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/29/latinos-in-baltimore-are-living-in-fear-i-can-be-stopped-just-because-of-my-accent/#respond Tue, 29 Jul 2025 18:22:17 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=335863 “People are not going out. We're going back to the pandemic time… when you were afraid to go out, but instead of getting sick, you're afraid of being caught. People cannot go to work, but at the same time they cannot go get food.”]]>

As the Trump administration ramps up its violent immigration raids around the country, increasingly targeting immigrants with no criminal record, and racially profiling Latinos to meet arrest quotas, immigrant communities in Baltimore and beyond are living in terror. In this urgent episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with two immigrant justice organizers in Baltimore—whose identities are being protected to ensure their safety—about the horrifying reality that immigrant families, particularly Latino families, are experiencing right now. “If you don’t look Latino, do you tell your child to carry around their passport or their birth certificate?… US citizens are being detained only because they look Latino, because they are Latino.”

Additional resources:

Credits:

  • Producer: Rosette Sewali
  • Studio Production: David Hebden
  • Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with us. Now, as I was coming into the studio to tape this conversation with two Latina activists here in our community, people who live in Baltimore, my wife called me and said that ICE was all over a neighborhood called Canton, which is on the east side of Baltimore. And we’re rounding people up, arresting people on the street, stopping everybody, which shows you the level of danger and harassment that’s taking place in our city and our society as a whole. People who are in the Latino communities in this country are terrified. And lemme just say before we start that when I was a little boy, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents who were Jewish and from Poland. They had a hard time coming to America back in 1905, but all that meant is they stopped at the Port of Baltimore.

They were given a health check. The door opened, even though people hated them, the door opened. And now with Latinos coming from all Latin America, the issue of race and racism and our exploitation come all to a disgusting hit right here in this country. Today we talk with two women who are from that community, who are active in the defense of their community, who fled to this country from authoritarian brutality and oppression, live a life of freedom or so they thought, given that we are witnessing the neofascist takeover of our country, I won’t use our names today. It’s good to have you both here.

Guest 2:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, the fact that you have to sit here in this studio and be anonymous, but you also consider yourself an American. Talk about that contradiction for a second. What you feel, what happens to you and other people like you in the community.

Guest 1:

Yeah. First I wanted to say thank you for your introduction. It was great. It was really great. That’s the way that it should be. That’s the way that we should feel when we come here to this country. I would like to say that it is very, very sad. It’s so sad to be anonymous or not to say whatever you want to say because if you do something wrong or you say something that you think it is the correct thing to do, somebody is going to say, oh, you know what? Against. Or she doesn’t want to follow the rules. That’s not true. We really love this country. We really want to be here. We really want to work. We do work.

Marc Steiner:

You do work,

Guest 1:

We do work. And it is hard, but this is the way that it has to be right now. We want to help. We want to do a lot of things, but sometimes you cannot do it in front of everyone. You just do it behind or just that’s how it is right now.

Guest 2:

And so we’re not also just here taking, a lot of us are here, and I say us as a generalization, we are here and we help society, we contribute, we volunteer. But it is a sad state of affairs that we have to do a lot of it now in hiding. But we’re here and we’re not going to go away. Our children are born here. Our children will stay here. They will have other children and we just, there’s just nowhere else for us to go. Many of us have come because not because we wanted to was out of necessity. We stayed in our countries, we would have been killed, our families would have been killed. So there’s also no jobs. People are dying of hunger and they need to find, they want to work and they just want to be able to earn a living. And usually there is work for them in the fields and they’re willing to do that. They put their children to work in the fields, sometimes earning less than minimum wage, but they will still do it because even in those grueling conditions, they’re still better off than what it would be where they’re coming from. So some people walk here days, some people get raped. Why would people go through all of that? Just because they want to come and take it. It’s because they’re really, really afraid of the situation. Where do they come from?

Marc Steiner:

I want to explore that more. I mean, you two came in studio here with us today. I remember years back when I was on the radio, I had a couple of whom were not documented as they say. And I got something in my ear saying the police were at the door and I shut down the mic. I got those people out the back door into my trunk and drove off. That’s the kind of world we live in. I felt like I was in. What happens when I see what happens to us today that I’m in Nazi Germany. As I said, when we started this program, my wife called from saying that ice was in Canton, just harassing people, locking people up, dragging people away. As we began this conversation

Guest 2:

And we were also getting the same notices and we were also sharing with the people that we know because we needed to protect them. And at the same time, people that when we hear something like that is happening, we share with the people that we know and we say, memorize our phone numbers. Call us if something happens. There might not be too much that we can do, but at least we know to look them. And then we try to give them instructions. Don’t sign anything, don’t speak. There’s not much for us to do other than just say, memorize our numbers, call us or memorize somebody’s number,

Marc Steiner:

Memorize our numbers.

Guest 2:

Why we can say, and then from there we will try and think about the next step. But we’re preparing people for the next step.

Guest 1:

And she’s correct because people are being raped. Some people, they don’t even know where is her husband or son. So it is very important to someone to be there. At least take a picture who is being taken so at least they know where they are. Can you imagine that they don’t know where their family is? That’s too sad. That’s very sad.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, it’s hard to imagine that in this country we call a democracy that this is actually happening. That the two of you and people in your community and your families have to live in this daily fear.

Guest 2:

Yes. And it’s a reality. A young lady, they deported her father. She’s a senior in high school. There’s nobody else for her right now for her father. They took him to another state, he cannot see him. So what can we do? We come in and figure out how to help the young lady that’s still here. But can you imagine? And young children, again, they pick up their parents and they don’t have a parent to go home to. Nobody thinks about that.

Guest 1:

Right. And then at the beginning you asked me, why don’t say your name? I don’t want to say my name because where I work, we help the immigrants. We do. And the government is taking that money, but I’m like, they are taking the money. It’s money from the immigrants that they work and they pay the taxes. That is something that the Americans, they don’t know that people, if they have a legal status or not, they pay taxes. Why they taking, taking the money from all the organization that they are working for the immigrants. Why? That’s one of the reasons when we cannot say the name because then they’re going to take everything.

Marc Steiner:

And what you’re describing here is, I think it’s people listening to understand is that the federal government under this government is taking money out of organizations who are helping immigrants in this country.

Guest 2:

Not only we helping immigrants, organizations that are oversights to make sure that other agencies are following the law. So they’re taking funding from oversights committees, agencies and things like that. And then going back to the taxes, people pay into the social security Medicare and it’s money that they will never see because they don’t have a status where they will be able to claim social security and all of that. But all of that money is going into the social security

Marc Steiner:

In their name and they can’t use it.

Guest 2:

They will not be able to claim it. So that money is being used right now to help those that are in receiving social security. That money is going towards that is millions of dollars. And if you’re taking all these people, not the ability for them to work and then that they’re putting in the money into social security, that’s also something that that’s going to be a deficit. And people don’t think about that. People think, oh, they’re taking us, they’re taking our taxes. No, they don’t qualify for anything. They don’t qualify for.

Marc Steiner:

What do you mean by that?

Guest 2:

So people think that if you are undocumented, you can still go apply for food stamps and medical assistance. You cannot qualify for that. You don’t get any of that at all. You cannot apply for, even though you were working and you were paying into the system, if you get fired, you don’t qualify for unemployment insurance. And even somebody that has a green card that is here with a legal status, they have to be here for five years before they can even qualify for food stamps or public benefits.

Marc Steiner:

So

Just to take me, take one piece here, what you just said. So what happens if someone in your family, one of you, it’s sick, what do you do?

Guest 2:

You keep on going, you keep on going, keep on going and until you’re dying. And then you end up going to the emergency room. And then so this for the system is where you could have gone to preventive visits. You end up going to where you are. It’s a life or death situation. I know of a young lady, she needed a feeding tube. The mom ran out of the food, the liquid food, she was watering it down. The young lady was malnutrition. She was doing so bad. She ended up having to go to the hospital to the emergency room. And only because I told her, go to the emergency room and she would’ve died had she not taken her to the emergency room. But again, if she would’ve had, because she needed a prescription, the mom was willing to pay for the food, but she needed a prescription for the food and she couldn’t go to a doctor to write up a prescription. So people die.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, people die.

Guest 1:

Yeah. I’m going to give you two examples. I have one example that one kid, he came here when he was five years old with his mom. And the mother never took him to the doctor because she was told that if she takes her son to the doctor, the police will be there. Most of the people that they come here, they don’t go to the hospital because they think that over there, there is police or immigration that they will take them. And I’m not talking about right now, I’m talking about years ago. So she never took his kid and he lost his urine because she never took his kid. Another example that I can give you, and this is general

People immigrant, that they don’t have a little status, legal status. They will never go to the hospital until they die. Why? Because first they are afraid. Second, they know that they not apply for, they’re not going to be able to be attended. That’s what they think. And then the third thing is that they were working years and years and years that when they go to the hospital, it’s too late. So what’s going to happen? The community is going to help this family to take back the body. Can you imagine 30, 40 years working here and they never go to the doctor? Never. Never

Marc Steiner:

Out of fear.

Guest 1:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

When we were talking before we went in here, you were both talking about the overarching sense of fear that’s taking place inside the Latino communities

In Baltimore and what it’s like to live through that every day.

Guest 2:

Yes. It’s traumatic. So people are really afraid of what, even if they have children that are born here, me, myself included, where you have to talk to your children and you have to prepare them what to do if they are detained. And if you don’t look Latino, do you tell your child carry around your passport or your birth certificate in case that you are getting detained and now it’s worse and worse because you’re hearing that actual, you would think that having your passport or your id, that’s a real ID would be enough. But you’re hearing that US citizens are being detained only because they look

Latino. Because they are Latino. They are Latino. I can be stopped just because of my accent. Then that gives them probable cause to think that I am undocumented. So what do I carry that is going to be now with me, I am in their system. They have my fingerprints, and if they run my fingerprints, I will show up. My children are not in the system. They don’t have their fingerprint. They never been fingerprinted. And if for some reason, let’s say they were out with their friends and they didn’t have any idea, my children disappear. I don’t know. I will not know where to find them because they were taken. How would I know? Because they just grabbed them and take them and they’re not allowed to. So what do you do? There’s a registry that you can look them up, but they don’t show up right away. It takes a couple of days. So that’s one fear. The other fear is people are not going out. We’re going back to the pandemic time where people are scared to think about it. When you were afraid to go out, but instead of getting afraid of getting sick, you’re afraid of being caught. People cannot go to work, but at the same time they cannot go get food. So it’s really scary.

Guest 1:

Another thing that we can think about, it’s like if we are going to talk about mental health, okay, could you imagine if you are living in a country that you don’t have opportunities, that you don’t have rights. They come here, you have no idea. Everything that they have to go through months, years, they got stuck in Mexico, they have to live there for one or two years waiting. Come here. Then they come here and they say, this is the American dream, which I believe we can still say in that I pray God that it’s going to continue. So they got here and then somebody told them, yes, you are welcome, but then you are not, you’re going back. If we talk about mental health, could you imagine how these kids, they already went through a lot of things and then they got here and now they’re saying you’re going back because you are a criminal. I don’t understand that. I don’t understand that. I know that they don’t have to love us, but they have to have some kind of empathy with the people. That’s more dangerous than even if somebody doesn’t have food to eat, that’s okay. You can be like that one to three days. But talking about mental health, they are putting in dangers. The community, they are doing something very, very bad.

Marc Steiner:

So can we talk a bit here before we conclude just about in part how you fight back against this, what you see going on in terms of the fight back, there was just a huge demonstration. We can talk about that. That took place and I spoke well, what is it, I mean, among inside the Latino community and also the larger community that unites with the Latino community, how to begin the resistance to stop what’s going on? What do you see and how do you see that happening?

Guest 2:

So I personally, well, I’m not quite there on the organizing, the resistance and all that.

My own personal knowledge and how I work is sharing information because I think that part of anxiety is not knowing and not having control. So I think sharing information of what is understanding your rights, and I understand that right now people feel like that we don’t have no rights, but we do. We just have to make sure that people know that to follow the script basically. And if they hang in there, then they will eventually be able to find a resolution. So sharing information by either attending or organizing workshops where people can understand. The other thing is helping parents fill out the standby guardianship because in the case, the worst case scenario, then there’s something in place if you get picked up while your kids are in school, who’s going to be that?

Marc Steiner:

Let me stop a second.

Guest 2:

Oh,

Marc Steiner:

Sorry. I want you to jump into this too, but what you just said that you have a family and they have to have a legal document about guardianship for their children because you live in fear that you’re going to be picked up and deported or put in camps and your children will have nobody. Yes. That’s what you’re

Guest 2:

Saying? Yes. And because that’s the reality. Again, what if you get picked up while your child is in school? So that is where I am. Where we are in the helping process is getting ready for the worst case scenario.

Guest 1:

And we have a lot of community organizations, even mema, and I want to highlight that because they are providing those,

Marc Steiner:

Who’s that?

Guest 1:

MIMA, mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs for Baltimore City. They are providing those workshops. San Streets, they are doing that Latino, they are providing that. So there is a lot of organization that they are doing the workshops,

Guest 2:

Latino Providers Network. They also are doing, they provided a training for people to help fill out the standby guardianship, which is, so there’s a tricky part in Maryland because a lot of people think that if they get a power of attorney that will let them do it. But in Maryland you need a standby guardianship. However, people are charging a lot of money to fill this document that the court has made available and it’s free to print and it’s free. It is very easy to fill out, but people don’t understand. So just having that paper ready and the documents and understanding what documents to help, it eases people’s fears a little bit. Again, what we are suffering from is anxiety and having control over the situation helps with anxiety.

Guest 1:

And right now it’s not just like job food, it’s more education. We have to educate the community. What are the steps that they have, they have to do in order to be prepared for whatever is going to happen. That doesn’t mean that all the immigrants, they don’t have a legal status. But yes, even if your children were born here, they can take them because they look Latinos. I mean they are Latinos. So we cannot be just like, this is not going to happen to me. They have to be prepared.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, mental health and keeping your lives in balance is almost impossible with what you face every day as you never know. As we said, we started this program, ICE was all over one neighborhood, rounding up, who knows who and how many people were just taken away in the city. I would like to ask you too, this one question in time that we have, and we can spend more time over the period of days and months talking about more stories that people need to hear. But what drove you here? What were the reason that you left to come to the United States? What happened?

Guest 1:

For me, I would say I came here because I wanted to have a better life,

Marc Steiner:

Which is why most people come here.

Guest 1:

That’s what I want to say. I think everybody came here because we need to have a better life. Everyone has a different situation, but that’s the only reason. I don’t think somebody came here because they want to be criminals here. I don’t think so. But that’s what people,

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Guest 2:

So I came here in the eighties when in Guatemala there was the Civil War.

Marc Steiner:

Oh yeah, right.

Guest 2:

And my father was a witness of a lot of the things that the army did,

What they consider gorillas. But again, looking back, and as I was saying, at that time, the government had control of the television. So when I was 10, I really did feel like the army was the heroes and the gorillas were the bad people. Come to find out that massive genocides happened in the eighties in Guatemala, and people can look it up, but it was basically, we were really well off in Guatemala. We had two chauffeurs, we had a nanny, we had two people, housekeepers, we were incredibly well off, but none of that was worth my father’s life. And we would stayed, my father would have been killed because even after we came here, our neighbors reported that somebody would park in front of our house for a long time, for at least two, three months. They were basically surveilling our house. So it hasn’t been easy when we came here, it wasn’t easy, but it was worth my father’s life. And I don’t think, and how things were, maybe they would have killed us too.

Marc Steiner:

One of the things that people don’t realize, I think, is that a lot of people from certain countries south of the border, Mexico, through Latin America, bled because of dictatorships that this country sponsored, that the United States sponsored and

Guest 2:

Supported. Yes. And you remember the Iran Contra thing, all of that. It was all

Marc Steiner:

Killing indigenous people in Guatemala and all the rest,

Guest 2:

I mean in Guatemala still up to this day, people have not recovered because even they would work the land. So even though they weren’t wealthy, people could work the land, but then the army came and they would even burn out their crops. So they were dying of hunger. And still to this day, there’s a famine in Guatemala, there’s a hospital that serves I think two or 300 children a day because they’re malnourished when people are used to working the land, but there’s just no land for them because it was all taken away.

Guest 1:

And I think that there is a different stories that you can hear from all the community, but everyone has something that they left behind. And it’s something sad,

Marc Steiner:

Right?

Guest 2:

And people don’t come here just because there’s a reason why they’re here.

Marc Steiner:

There’s a reason why, as I said, going back to my grandparents’ generation,

And my mother was not from this country either, that

People left because they were terrified and there was oppression and they couldn’t survive. So they came here. The place that has a Statue of Liberty, this is not a new story, but what’s happening now I think is one of the worst situations in our history when it comes to immigrants. It’s been bad. 19th century is bad. The Irish were killed, were imprisoned when they came here in the 1840s and fifties. But this is, we’re watching a repression that is on the part of the federal government that is just, it’s almost unfathomable.

Guest 2:

And it also has given permission for people to think that it’s okay to say things or to think things about immigrants in general. And I think it’s, what do you call it, a mob mentality that, oh, and they think because he says it’s bad, we’re all bad. But we do not all fall under one category. There’s so many of us, so many different things.

Marc Steiner:

And I just one last thought from the two of you here. What gives you hope, both politically in terms of your organizing, the movements and where you think the fight is for your rights? How do you see where we are and where do you see it going?

Guest 1:

I think we’re lucky that we live here in Maryland because

Marc Steiner:

In Maryland?

Guest 1:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah,

Guest 1:

Because everybody, if we are talking political, everybody’s supporting us. So that’s for sure.

Marc Steiner:

Right?

Guest 1:

So we don’t have the situation in Texas or in la, but even though we know that they are behind us or they are supporting us, people still living with fear. But I think at least we can breathe like, okay, if we need something, we know that they will help us. That’s the only thing that I can say that. And I can name people that they help us a lot. Like Mayor Sitco, like Mark Parker, like Catalina Rodriguez,

Guest 2:

Joceline Pena,

Guest 1:

Joceline Pena. They are with us and they are doing their best in the best way that they can do it. But there’s a lot of people that helping us,

Guest 2:

Some of the things, again, even when he started running the second time, we’re talking about July before there was a lot of organizations and a lot of

Marc Steiner:

You about Trump.

Guest 2:

Yeah, I cannot pronounce the name. I’m sorry. We don’t say the name. Honestly, I cannot say the name. So a lot of organizations and a lot of, they started to propose laws and that would protect us because we kind of had an idea of what was coming because we had seen it four years or eight years before. So there’s a lot of laws that Maryland and Baltimore City specifically started to make sure that they would pass so that they would be protected when the Office of Civil Rights would go away because it’s basically gone away.

So there’s a lot of, in January, a lot of laws passed that were put in place to protect us to the extent that they could and to the extent that the budget could afford to do it. So I think some states, again, people can find and figure out those politicians that are not beneficial and that are willing to work with the other side and that are willing to, even if they’re, so we need to put those people in place that they will start working because it might not be able to happen in the federal level. But there’s a lot of things that people or states can do at the local level, even not even states, cities, that they can do it at the local level to protect people in general. Let’s not even think about immigrants because let’s think about all the other things that are happening. Medicaid is being taken away. The Department of Education is being dismantled. So we have to realize that he’s making a lot of noise with the immigrants. But a lot of things are happening that people are not realizing that is happening. And I am aware of a lot of things that are happening that are affecting a lot of other people, and we are just paying a lot of attention with immigrants. But there’s so many other things or so many other people being affected.

Guest 1:

Even with our clients, they are Americans and they are about to lose benefits. So this is not just for the immigrants, this is for everyone. And people, they don’t realize that this is going to affect everyone.

Marc Steiner:

I think it’s important that these final messages, you both are giving of unity in this country and how it’s about all of us,

Yes,

To fight for a different world and a better world. And I will say that we will list a bunch of organizations on our page, people who can identify who to go to and where they can get involved. And I want to thank both of you both for being in the studio today, but also for being brave enough to stand up and speak despite what could happen. So we’ll use no names. I want to thank you both of your work. You do. And thank you so much for being in the studio today, and we will stand with you always.

Guest 2:

Thank you so much.

Guest 1:

Thank you. And I just want to say my last message is for everyone that is listening this is that please just think that like I said, no, everyone is a criminal. And also people that are here, they are working and now they are professionals. They are contributing a lot of things here in this country. We have kids, wonderful kids that they are doing their best. And another thing that we do, we educate the community. So now communities learning the rules, communities is trying to learn, speak English. So if they don’t know how to recycle, they are learning. This is the big difference that they don’t believe that we really want to learn. So that’s something that they have to know. And right now they are losing money because nobody wants to go any place who is buying now. Nobody.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you both so much.

Guest 1:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:

Appreciate you both.

Once again, I want to thank these two women, our guests today for joining us and for their bravery and what they face under the threat of this 21st century Gestapo called ICE. I want to thank producer Rosette Sewali for creating the power of the show behind the scenes. Our audio editor, Stephen Frank, working his audio magic, David Hebden, who run the program and making me sound good and Kayla Rivara for making it all happen behind the scenes. And everyone here through our news for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you and we’ll be linking to all the organizations mentioned to you today. You too can help and support the struggle of freedom in America. Once again, thank you to our guests for joining us and for the work they do. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Be involved. Keep listening and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/29/latinos-in-baltimore-are-living-in-fear-i-can-be-stopped-just-because-of-my-accent/feed/ 0 546740 Yes, goddamnit, it’s genocide!: A conversation with Norman Solomon https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/23/yes-goddamnit-its-genocide-a-conversation-with-norman-solomon/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/23/yes-goddamnit-its-genocide-a-conversation-with-norman-solomon/#respond Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:03:11 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=335704 Palestinians carrying pans, gather to receive hot meals, distributed by a charity organization in Gaza City, where residents are struggling to access food due to the ongoing Israeli blockade and attacks in Gaza City, Gaza on July 23, 2025. Photo by Saeed M. M. T. Jaras/Anadolu via Getty ImagesPundits like Bret Stephens continue to deny the reality of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza even as that genocide is unfolding in front of our eyes and on our screens.]]> Palestinians carrying pans, gather to receive hot meals, distributed by a charity organization in Gaza City, where residents are struggling to access food due to the ongoing Israeli blockade and attacks in Gaza City, Gaza on July 23, 2025. Photo by Saeed M. M. T. Jaras/Anadolu via Getty Images

“With only rare exceptions,” Norman Solomon writes, “US news media and members of Congress continue to dodge the reality of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, normalizing atrocities on a mass scale.” How did we end up in this Orwellian situation, where the reality of genocide is so thoroughly denied by pundits and politicians even as that genocide is unfolding in front of our eyes? How do we combat this level of inhumane violence and propaganda? Solomon, co-founder of Roots Action, joins The Marc Steiner Show for an urgent discussion about Israel’s manufactured genocide of Palestinians and how the media manufactures consent to, at best, hide and, at worst, justify Israel’s heinous actions.

Guests:

Additional resources:

Credits:

  • Producer: Rosette Sewali
  • Studio Production: David Hebden
  • Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us again.

As we begin this conversation, let me give you the grim reality of what’s happening in Gaza as we tape this conversation. Over 58,000 Gazans, the vast majority of whom are non-combatants, women, and children, have been killed, 140,000 wounded, 370,000 buildings severely damaged, 79,000 destroyed altogether. And Gazans are being pushed into smaller and smaller corners of an already small land, no running water, illness spreading, and there’s mass starvation. As someone who over the last 57 years has been working for peace and a two-state solution or some form of dwelling together, this is absolutely devastating.

And as we see the right rising in the Holy Land, in Israel, it’s also taking hold here in the United States, and we’re on a precipice here in the good old United States of America where neofascism is rising. And our guest covers that deeply. He quotes Congressman Ro Khanna, who said, “What’s going on is chilling. They’re banning all international students from coming to Harvard. Think about that. All foreign students banned. They could do this in other universities. They have fired seven of the 18 directors of the NIH, totally dismantling future medical research in our country. It dismantled the FDA, firing people who approve new drugs. They’re systematically firing people at the FAA, the Arab Administration. They’re openly talking about defying the United States Supreme Court orders. J.D. Vance just said, justify the orders they’re calling the universities the enemy. This is very chilling.” That was Ro Khanna’s quote.

So today, we talk with Norman Solomon. Norman Solomon is the co-founder of rootsaction.org. He’s the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and the author of numerous books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning us to Death, and War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of the Military Machine. His website is www.normansolomon.com — That’s Solomon with all Os — And he has incredibly detailed well-written articles, and joins us now.

So great, Norman, it’s good to see you. Glad you’re here. Welcome.

Norman Solomon:

Thanks a lot, Marc.

Marc Steiner:

You’ve been doing — That’s what you do, you write. But you’ve been doing a lot of writing both about Israel-Palestine and about what’s going on with the Democrats, and it really feels as if, on both fronts, the state of the Democratic Party and the horrendous slaughter taking place in Gaza, that we are on a precipice, I think, in some ways deeper and more dangerous than ones that I’ve noticed in a long time.

Norman Solomon:

It’s hard to fathom. There are so many layers of it, to be in a country, the United States, that literally makes possible an ongoing genocide. It’s not a metaphor, it’s not an exaggeration. This is genocide going on. And yet, we’re living in that country that, under President Biden and now under President Trump, is literally enabling it, giving the weapons to make it all possible, and really the political support to enable it as well.

And then we have the domestic repression that, really, I’m in my mid-70s now, I can’t remember it ever being this bad, even in the depths of the Nixon administration and the crackdowns, the class war, the repression, the disappearances, the troops, I want to say, often with their faces covered, their identities. This is the kind of authoritarian regime that we would have nightmares for. It can’t happen here, but it is happening. So in terms of foreign policy, in terms of what’s happening in this country, it certainly is very upsetting if we’re paying attention. And at the same time, we know we can never give up. We have to organize and turn this around.

Marc Steiner:

So one of the things you just said, it took me back to my youth when I was a teenager as a civil rights worker in the South 16, 17, 18 years old. What we’re seeing now, to me, is akin to that, the terror that civil rights workers, the terror the Black community was under in the South is growing here in this country now, but in Israel it is a fact of life every day. 60,000 Palestinians killed so far in that teeny strip of land.

And I wonder how you begin to approach a couple of things, lemme just start here. We both come from the Jewish community. We both come from that world, and I grew up with people with numbers on their arms in my house. So how do we become those who oppressed us? It’s like the shift is turned. We’re doing exactly what was done to us. I guess that’s what I’ve been wrestling with and arguing, I spoke about it at a synagogue just the other week, for us to pay attention. How do we make us pay attention to that?

Norman Solomon:

This is so fundamental. What does “never again” mean?

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Norman Solomon:

Does it mean never again for all, any people or does it mean for our clan, our tribe, our self-identified ethnocentric group? And it’s a really basic question. And there’s also the matter of who we are and where the allegiances are tos so to speak, humanitys or some sort of self-identity.

It’s really stunning to me that so many progressives, whether Jewish or not, who were involved in supporting the Civil Rights Movement that took off in the ’60s, as you refer to, Marc, are now, unfortunately, in so many cases, winking, nodding, being silent about, or even supporting what, essentially, in the West Bank, for instance, is the Klan running everything, that is a clear parallel of people being terrorized, killed by extrajudicial means. And there’s no protection being provided, in that case, by the government, as a matter of fact, the Israeli government’s part of it.

And then as, you refer to, the horrendous slaughter going on daily in Gaza, and pretty soon it’s going to be the two-year mark, while there are some really terrible things going on in many parts of the world, the reality is that genocide is a very clearly internationally defined definition. So many people grew up with the belief, the understanding that that’s actually the worst possible thing that could go on, and yet it is going on. So that’s one just beyond upsetting reality.

And parallel to that and intertwined is that it is the United States of America that makes it all possible. And so, when you live in that United States of America, that constantly gives us the question: who the hell are we? And I know as somebody growing up in the United States in the ’50s and ’60s, I was very frightened by watching The Diary of Anne Frank. And that whole question really hovered, and sometimes it was explicit in the ’50s, in the ’60s and beyond: How could the German people stand by and allow that to happen?

And I got more than a glimmer of that during the escalation of the Vietnam War because there was so much acceptance, support, or just looking the other way, and more than 3 million people died in Vietnam as a result of that active and passive support. And so that question is still with us here in the summer of 2025: How could people allow genocide to happen when “their own government” is doing it?

Marc Steiner:

I want to jump on this one thing I think it’s important to talk about for a moment, because there’s a lot of pushback on the use of the word “genocide” when it comes to what’s going on in Gaza at the moment. Let’s talk about how we, how you define that word and why it’s being used in Gaza. People could say genocide is the Holocaust, genocide was what happened in Cambodia, genocide is what this country did to the Indigenous people. Talk about the use of that word in terms of Gaza, because there’s a lot of confusion and anger around the use of that word.

Norman Solomon:

There is, and I find it notable that a lot of politicians and others and activists who routinely, over the years and decades, have cited reports from Amnesty International, from Human Rights Watch, as authoritative, as telling us what was going on in Africa or elsewhere in the world, and citing, yeah, Amnesty International has said this or that, or Human Rights Watch. last December, both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued hundreds of pages reports definitively, unequivocally saying that what Israel was doing in Gaza, and now is continuing to do, is genocide. There was no watering it down, there was no equivocation. So we have these gold standard human rights global organizations saying it without question. And part of, as I read about it and read the scholars part of it is the intent are the forces, the governments, the authorities intentionally trying to make it, for instance, very difficult or impossible for new births to take place, which is certainly the case in Gaza.

The destruction of all the hospitals, the filtering out and blocking of humanitarian aid, medicine, food, nutrition, water and so forth. And also polar in part, trying to destroy the culture and ethnic reality of a particular group. All of that falls directly in line with what Israel’s been doing. There are so many smoking guns in terms of what has been said by Israeli officials for almost two years now. This is what they’re doing. And unfortunately, Israeli society is mostly there. Hebrew University last month released the results of a poll among Jewish Israelis and found that upwards of 60%, almost two thirds said that they believe there are no innocence in Gaza. There are no innocent people in Gaza whatsoever. And I had to think of some interviews that were done, some of the most heinous, top Nazi criminals who were part of inflicting the Holocaust on Jews, on gays, on gypsies,

Marc Steiner:

Gypsies.

Norman Solomon:

And they were asked there children, you were sentencing to death in those camps. And some of the response was, yeah, but they would’ve grown up to be adult Jews or gypsies or homosexuals or communists, and we couldn’t have that. There’s a lot of resonance and echoing of that attitude among not just the right wing leadership of the Israeli government, but among the majority of the population. And one thing I’ve been thinking about Mark, is that at this point, Israeli society is a genocidal society, and the United States in terms of polling is not in favor of that genocide, but for almost two years now and up through the present moment, the US government is a genocidal government because it’s making all this possible.

Marc Steiner:

So there may not be a connection to what I’m saying with there may be, I’m curious, your thoughts. You’re seeing an impotent democratic party with no sea muscle or strength intellectually or politically just stand up to this or anything else and kind of going along with it all and not the entire group. I mean, there’s a growing strong progressive wing inside the Democratic party that are standing up. So how does that political dynamic play into this moment

Norman Solomon:

Really important? Because for one thing, if the Democratic party had been truly lowercase d Democratic and had responded to the viewpoints about Gaza during the first months of the war on Gaza, back when Biden was still running for president and then Kamala Harris, then the position at the top of the Democratic Party would’ve been for a cutoff of military aid. As long as the slaughter continued in Gaza, they would’ve said no, an arms embargo on Israel. The polling was clear by early of last year, but because the party is under a hammerlock of the pro-Israel, right or wrong forces, corporate forces and so forth, it basically countermanded and ignored what the public wanted, including the total US public, but certainly even more so among Democrats. So when you have a party that doesn’t even pay attention to its base, is afraid of its base, which cares more about the big donors, not the small donors, but the big ones, and also the punditocracy, which has been callous and with few exceptions willing to ratify or at least accept this genocide going on in Gaza, then you have a party that’s an elitist party at the top.

Marc Steiner:

As you were saying that, one of the things I thought about because as a bumper sticker I made some 40, 50 years ago when I used to make them called existence is contradiction. And I raise that because when we say the power of the Israeli lobby, the pro Zionist world, while it’s real, it also raises the spec of antisemitism, which is always bubbling below the surface just like racism. It’s always bubbling below the surface. So I’m curious in the midst of our struggles, I mean there was just a huge convention here in Baltimore with a lot of young Jewish people who were standing up to this, which was really heartening. But the question is how do you respond to that? How do you respond to the danger of antisemitism that could kind of leap out at any moment and what we’re facing and how to say we have to stop Israel from committing the slaughter against Palestinians.

Norman Solomon:

The strongest force for antisemitism is the Israeli government, and specifically in the last year and three quarters, the Israeli war on people in Gaza. And so there’s this ultimate, in many ways, big life scam that Zionism has more intensely propagated in the world. And that is the scam, is that the Israeli government equals Judaism. And once you buy that absurdity, then as Volter says, when you buy into an absurdity, any atrocity becomes possible because opposition to the Israeli government gets equated with antisemitism. And we’ve seen that with a vengeance in the last more than a year, the attacks on universities, the attacks on basically free speech where you criticize Israel, you do it fundamentally. You dare to say that the Israeli project has been suppressing the rights of Palestinian people, which is clearly true since the late 1940s. And then you get branded as antisemitic. And I think you’re referring to what I read about was a wonderful conference in Baltimore not long ago of a Jewish voice for peace.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Norman Solomon:

And here’s thousands and thousands of Jewish activists who’ve been doing civil disobedience and protesting the war on Gaza for almost two years now, and they’re accused of being anti-Semitic. And that really takes the mask off of the propaganda process that the Israeli government and its allies have been relying on for decades. The reality is that all sorts of bigotry is deadly against Jews, against Muslims, against all sorts of people around the world. So it’s really all of one cloth in a sense. We fight against that kind of

Marc Steiner:

Bigotry. One of the pieces I was reading today that you wrote, you’ve written so much really good stuff that we’ll be linking to here on the page. You can just go through it all. It’s worth taking time with it. But you’re right about Congressman Connor and about the neo fascism bubbling up right here and how it’s really connected, I think, to what’s happening in Israel. And you wrote, they’re banning all international students from coming to Harvard. Seven of the 18 directors of the NIH have been fired, dismantling medical research, dismantling the FDA, firing people to approve new drugs, firing people in the FAA, and then you have a right wing supreme court. And so moving to the states for a moment, that analysis is you, right? Where does that lead us? Where does that take us? What do you think we’re facing?

Norman Solomon:

We’re facing tremendous repression and an effort to stamp out the opposition to the bigotry, to the rule of the billionaires. And we’re facing autocracy. It’s a cult led by Trump. The stakes could not be higher in terms of what has survived and been incubated as democratic processes in this country. We have structures that, it may sound like a cliche, but it’s true. People died for the right to vote. People died for some ways that the voices and opinions and desires of people at the grassroots could overwhelm the power of the elites. I ran across a quote from the first chief justice of the US Supreme Court, John Jay, who said that people who own the country should run it. And that’s what we’re seeing in New York City right now. The rage ha hath no fury, like the corporate power scorned. I

Speaker 3:

Like that

Norman Solomon:

We have people like Michael Bloomberg and other gazillionaires, and they can’t fathom the idea that Ani who would challenge the power of the big banks and the real estate interests and so forth to run the city that they largely own. It’s just unfathomable to those who are in power that you could actually have democratic socialism. And on the one hand, we can say, well, as is true with foreign policy, there’s a ruling class and they’ve always, they’re the descendants of a long centuries long process of imperial adventure and enforced by military and economic power. So that’s who they are. At the same time, there’s a huge split in the ruling class, especially domestically. And while the Democratic and Republican parties are so often just in lockstep in foreign policy, when you get to domestic policy now more than ever, it is a huge difference. And there’s a sort of a fringe demagoguery that we hear sometimes on the left that there’s no significant difference between the Democratic and Republican party.

So tell that to a young woman in Texas who wants to get an abortion, tell it to people who are being disappeared. Just look at the dozens of Supreme Court decisions just in the last few months. And you see that the justices who have been appointed by Republicans are bringing the hammer down on the most basic aspects of civil liberties. So there is a huge, huge difference. And I think part of our challenge is to recognize, and you referred to this I think a few minutes earlier with different words, but it’s too bad. It sounds sort of stodgy and stuffy and academic, but dialectics that truths exist in contradiction to each other. And it’s our challenge to understand in this moment what those contradictions portend not only for the future that we can anticipate, but what the hell we should do. So while we fight against the US militarism that has so many terrible results overseas, and of course it rebounds here as Martin Luther King Jr.

Said what he called the demonic destructive suction tube. A military spending destroys lives here at home by diverting resources. The fact is that here in the United States, we have a fascistic party. It’s called the Republican Party, and we have the imperative to defeat it. And while ultimately electoral work is a subset of social movements, it really is crucial who is sitting in the White House, who is running the Congress, whose speaker of the house, who’s majority leader in the Senate. And it’s ironic when we hear people who are into protesting who say, it doesn’t really matter, or we don’t want to put energy into electoral results when everything we are demanding ultimately has to be implemented through government action or is being set aside and destroyed through government inaction. So it’s like walking on both legs. We have to fight for a strong social movement and build it. And at the same time, we need this electoral work. And concretely, that means we need to take control of the Congress away from Republicans next year.

Marc Steiner:

I can hear a lot of people listening to our conversation groaning when they hear that because of the lack of faith in Democrats. And I think about historically where we are now on two levels. If you look at what happened in Germany and Italy in the 1930s and how the neo fascists who were a minority in both countries, the fascists took over, they won the election, they took over the country, and they turned everything around, which is in some ways what’s happening before our eyes. And we’re not making that comparison just like the fascists because of the colonial heritage have taken over what’s called Israel. I mean, and that dynamic is at play. So where do you see the forces coming together to counter that?

Norman Solomon:

I think, yeah, we needed a united front. We needed a united front against the Republican party in terms of not only these terrible things being done daily that we see in the news from the Trump regime and from the Republican Congress, but also united front to defeat them in elections. And I think in terms of literature, magical thinking can be wonderful, but in politics, we should be really against magical thinking.

Speaker 3:

We

Norman Solomon:

Should really have our feet on the ground. And there is no way to take the Congress away from Republicans next year except through Democratic party candidates. That is just the reality, the idea that Democrats are inherently the epitome of evil. Well tell it to Ilhan Omar, tell it to Rashida Lib. These are wonderful people who would not be in Congress if they had run on any line other than the Democratic party line. So we have this challenge to keep fighting.

Marc Steiner:

I was thinking about what’s happening Israel Palestine and the fact that during the sixties in the Civil Rights Movement, which I was a part of, 60 to 70% of all the white people in the movement and giving their lives sometimes were Jews down south. And I think that we have to harken in some ways back to our labor and civil rights roots to make a battle, to save the future. I think we are on that precipice.

Norman Solomon:

We’re on a precipice that many people have already been pulled over and have been thrown over and are being destroyed as we speak. And it goes to so many questions of identity and what we believe in and what kind of society we can create. One of the notable things to me, which gets very little publicity is that, okay, you have what, 7 million Jews in this country, increasingly, especially the younger ones, identify as anti Zionist, right? A large proportion of Jews in this country surveyed are saying that they believe the Israeli government is committing genocide. And then the largest Christian Zionist organization in this country has 10 million members, way larger. So there’s this terrible bargain that has been struck because many of those Christian Zionists don’t like Jews. Some of them are virulently antisemitic, but they have a biblical narrative that says, well, the Jews in Israel and what’s called Israel is sort of a stepping stone to where they’re headed in terms of their holy journey.

Marc Steiner:

They want us dead so they can take over. Yeah,

Norman Solomon:

It’s very cynical, but very sincere. And that kind of alliance reminds me of what happened took shape 20 and 30 years ago where you had corporate power, which going way back to the 1970s, the infamous Lewis Powell memo that said, Hey, we have to really organize as right wingers to crush progressives to make sure that the rich and the corporate people keep running the country. Don’t let these black people have more power. And so that was really a blueprint that was effectively followed. And then you had the rise of the so-called moral majority. You had Jerry Falwell and people who were evangelical right-wing Christians. They opposed women’s rights, they opposed abortion rights. And those two tendencies that became so strong during the 1970s and eighties, they struck a bargain. And I think that the Wall Street people, the corporate forces, they didn’t particularly care about abortion rights one way or the other, or women’s rights.

What they cared about is maximizing profits, which is what they always care about, and not have labor unions or others get in the way. And then meanwhile, I think a lot of the hardcore evangelical Christians, they didn’t really care about Wall Street one way or the other, but they struck this tremendously powerful deal. And we’ve seen the results. Now we have this reality that a new configuration of alliances is in place. The Republican Party has its own splits, but there we are. And that’s I think we come back to again and again, the need for front, and this is I think, a form of dialectics. There are some people in that necessarily united front that I hope will gain more and more power and defeat Republicans next year. Some of we’re going to find odious and we need to keep fighting their militarism and their class war from the top down because the only antidote to that, so to speak, is class war that would be more effective from the bottom up for working people, for wannabe working people, for children, for the elderly. That’s the battle that needs to be joined. One of the first steps is you defeat the neo fascists that are already in power. I’ve heard of a parable attributed to Malcolm X that if you’re facing somebody who’s pointing a gun at you and you’re also facing somebody who’s trying to poison you, the first step is to knock the gun out of the hand. Who’s pointing the gun at you? We’re facing a gun right now, and it’s the fascistic Republican party.

Marc Steiner:

We have to have many more conversations. I think what you just outlined on both fronts, what’s happening in Israel Palestine at this moment and the rise of neo fascism here are really important. And I think you eloquently put it in a lot of your writing that we’ll be linking to, so people who can check out what you’re saying, because I think they need to read it. And I think that you raise the issue here, which we can come back to at another time, which is part of the root of this, which is the Powell memo that people have forgotten about. And I remember doing shows about that years back. And I think it’s important to understand this history, to understand what we face and how we organized the fight against it. And so I just want to thank you, Norman, for being here today, but also for all the work you’ve done and the writing you’ve done and the analysis you give us, it’s really important. I look forward to wrestling with more ideas with you very soon.

Norman Solomon:

Hey, thanks a lot, mark. And thanks for the Mark Steiner show and the Real News Network.

Marc Steiner:

We’re all in this together.

Norman Solomon:

Yeah,

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Norman Solomon for joining us today, and we’ll link to his work. You can Google it at www.norissmonsolmon.com. And that’s Solomon with o’s. And thanks to David Hebdon for running the program today, and our audio editor Steven Frank for working his magic Roset Ali for producing the Mark Steiner show and the tireless Keller Ra for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here through Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at m ss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Norman Solomon for joining us today. But for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Dan Val, keep listening and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/23/yes-goddamnit-its-genocide-a-conversation-with-norman-solomon/feed/ 0 545847 Thes vets swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies—including Donald Trump https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/08/thes-vets-swore-to-defend-the-constitution-against-all-enemies-including-donald-trump/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/08/thes-vets-swore-to-defend-the-constitution-against-all-enemies-including-donald-trump/#respond Tue, 08 Jul 2025 18:18:36 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=335320 Protestors including veterans and military families gather at the U.S. Supreme Court to protest the upcoming parade for the Army’s 250th anniversary, which falls on President Donald Trump's birthday, on June 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for About Face: Veterans Against the War“We need to unite across the spectrum to push back. Veterans like us need to continue to speak out, so that we can motivate other veterans to speak out, and also show them the hypocrisy of this administration.”]]> Protestors including veterans and military families gather at the U.S. Supreme Court to protest the upcoming parade for the Army’s 250th anniversary, which falls on President Donald Trump's birthday, on June 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for About Face: Veterans Against the War

On June 13, military veterans and their families and supporters protested in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, demanding that taxpayer dollars for Donald Trump’s ill-fated military parade and decision to send troops to Los Angeles should be used for housing, healthcare, food, and taking care of veterans. Around 60 demonstrators were arrested by Capitol police. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with veterans Michael T. McPhearson, Kevin Benderman, and Amber Mathwig, two of whom were arrested on June 13, about the duty they feel to oppose the Trump admistration’s actions and the vital role veterans have to play in the larger fight against the Trump agenda.

Guests:

  • Michael T. McPhearson enlisted in the US Army Reserve while in high school at age 17 in 1981. A distinguished military graduate, McPhearson received an ROTC commission from Campbell University. He served five years on active duty as a field artillery officer in the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division during Operation Desert Shield/Storm (the Gulf War). McPhearson separated from the US Army as a Captain in 1992. He is a member and the Executive Director of Veterans for Peace. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
  • Kevin Benderman served in the US Army for ten years of active duty, eventually reaching the rank of E-5. He deployed to Iraq in 2003. He became opposed to the continued occupation of Iraq after his initial deployment, and he filed for conscientious objector status and was eventually court-martialed. He is a disabled veteran and lives in Augusta, Georgia. Kevin is a longtime member of About Face: Veterans Against the War.
  • Amber Mathwig enlisted in the US Navy in 2002, serving 10 years in various duty stations, including a deployment to Baghdad, Iraq, in 2008-2009 and a deployment to the Middle East in 2010-2011 on a ship that participated in the bombing of Libya.
  • These experiences, combined with what she witnessed in regards to the culture of sexism and sexual assault in the military, sparked her journey to understanding the stranglehold the military-industrial complex has on our country. In addition to being a longtime member of About Face: Veterans Against the War, she is a member of Teamsters Local 638, and an organizer who focuses on the intersection of labor and the military-industrial complex.

Additional resources:

Credits:

  • Producer: Rosette Sewali
  • Studio Production: David Hebden
  • Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. Back in the 1960s, the war in Vietnam created serious resistance among those who served over 25,000 men and women who served in numb came back to lead the end the war movement creating Vietnam veterans against the war. And today, men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are standing up to end these endless wars and to stand up for the future. So today we talk with members of about face veterans against the war. Michael T. McPherson enlisted in the US Army while he was in high school at 17 years old in 1981, he served five years on active duty as a field artillery officer. He fought during the Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf War. He left the army as a captain in 1992 and is now executive director of Veterans for Peace.

Kevin Benjamin was a sergeant in the US Army. He served for 10 years and was deployed to Iraq in 2003, his service in Iraq and the continued occupation of that nation moved him to file for conscious objector and eventually he was court-martialed. He’s a disabled veteran, a longtime member of about face veterans against the war. Amber Mathwig served 10 years in the United States Navy. She deployed to Iraq in 2008, 2009, and then in 2010, 2011, it was on a ship that participated in the bombing of Libya. Those experiences and the culture of sexism and sexual assault in the military sparked our journey to understand the stranglehold of the military industrial complex on our country as a longtime member of about faced veterans against war. And she’s a member of Teamster’s, local 6 38 organizing on the axis of labor and the military industrial complex. A new generation of veterans stand up for justice in our future. Well then welcome. It’s good to have the three of you with us. It really is.

Amber Mathwig:

Thank you, Marc.

Michael T. McPhearson:

Thank you.

Kevin Benderman:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

So tell us a bit about what happened at the last event you did. The two of you got arrested, right? You got arrested. Amber, am I correct? And Michael?

Amber Mathwig:

Yes,

Michael T. McPhearson:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

Lemme start with you then, Amber, and just let’s go around the room here and talk about that event and why you were arrested. What was the purpose? What was going on?

Amber Mathwig:

Yeah. As many folks know on June 14th, there was an Army birthday parade, also billed as Trump’s birthday parade. That costs estimated somewhere between 90 to a hundred million of our taxpayer dollars. And at the same time, we were seeing lifesaving benefits being cut, social programs for veterans, military families. We’re hearing about how PCS or permit change of station changes are being impacted, all those sorts of things. And we’re also seeing a lot of our veterans who work in government services losing their jobs because supposedly there’s no money for this. And we’re also looking at a $1.01 trillion 20, 25, 26 fiscal year budget for the Department of Defense, but they don’t have money for us. And so about face Veterans for Peace joined forces, cross generational impact. It was actually really amazing. We had folks going from 17 to 87 years old. I love it. Involved in I know, right? Just so impressive. But yeah, so we went to DC to call attention to what was going on, why we at about face and Veterans for Peace, take the stances and the actions that we do. We held a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court and then we walked over to the Capitol and sat down on the steps. There was about 67 of us who sat down calling for benefits, not bullshit.

Marc Steiner:

I like that line. Is that going to be one of your lines?

Amber Mathwig:

That is literally one of our lines. That was one of our chants. I believe it’s going on some gear. I love it. That great. For upcoming campaign, the response from Capitol Police was almost instantaneous arresting us, throwing people to the ground. One of our members barely made it, I think five feet and got his face flooded by the force that was presented against him. And just really, really kind of amazing to see how they responded. Not just that they responded, that can be expected, but how fiercely they responded to veterans, essentially walking and sitting down.

Marc Steiner:

And Michael, you were there as well.

Michael T. McPhearson:

Yes, yes, I was. So the reason I went, I’m the executive director of Veterans for Peace, so I wanted to be there with my people and I helped organize ’em there. But when you look at the person who’s president of the United States today, there’s such a hypocrisy and lawlessness and this person wants to use any opportunity that they can to uplift their profile and to try to feed his bait, their base. And I saw this parade as another one of those times where this person is using people, but this time it’s veterans, or I should say the US military and veterans by extension for some legitimacy. And he has none whatsoever. And he doesn’t care about us. He doesn’t care about the US military, he doesn’t care about veterans. So if we had decided to do an action or not, I had decided I was going to Washington DC to be visible as a person who wasn’t going to stand by and just let this guy pretend like he has some moral standing to pretend like he cares about us. I just couldn’t do that. It was just one of those moments where I had to be seen and heard.

Marc Steiner:

What were you about to say?

Kevin Benderman:

Oh, well, I was there with him in a support role. I didn’t get arrested, but I wanted to be there. And along the lines of what Michael and Amber both have said this time in our country, we need to stand together like we are as a multi-generational, multi background unified front to prevent all of this militarization of this country. I mean, we do not need to have big parades wasting millions of dollars when the points they both brought up veterans are going without education could be paid for with some of that money. I mean some housing could be paid for with some of that money. There’s plenty of things that we could use that money for other than self-gratifying or self-aggrandizing parade for a opposer.

Marc Steiner:

I want to explore something about what pushed you all to this place. As we talked about, we went on the air together, the war of my generation was Vietnam. During that period, most people were drafted, they didn’t join. Your ass has to come, is gone. But in today’s military, you all volunteered. You wanted to be in the military, you went, you wanted to serve. This country made no bones about having to face whether you faced to join the military and be in whatever war was being fought. So what switched, what changed for you all?

Kevin Benderman:

Firstly, it was my 2003 deployment to Iraq and I saw what we were doing and what they were saying on the news and telling everybody back home about how great we were and how we were helping defend democracy and protecting everyone’s rights. That’s not true. And the big turning point for me was getting over there and learning that hey, these are just normal everyday people that are trying to get by in a situation that they had nothing to do with creating. And they were really, I believe they were tired of the Saddam Hussein and the US too, playing tug of war with their country and their lives. So meeting some of the people that I did when I was there, Mr. Sad Doula was a school teacher of a girl school. And there was this young kid that lived in that town called Conan where we were set for a while. And I met him when we were in the town once and he came up to me wanting to sell us sodas and bring his cookies and stuff like that. And just realizing that most of the people there were just normal everyday human beings trying to earn a living and take care of their families the best way they could. And I realized that what we were doing was not helping them in the least. And so I couldn’t continue to take part in that after my first deployment to Iraq in 2003.

Marc Steiner:

So to go co, which is conscious of objector while you’re in the military, really sets you up for some attacks. I mean, it’s not something that they take lightly.

Kevin Benderman:

Well, yeah, I mean they really put me through the wringer over it because I mean, I was a NCO and I was a little bit older than most of the people that I was 40 years old at the time when I filed for CEO. And that was one of their sticking points being an NCO. They were like, we can’t let him do this. We have to set the example for everybody else who may be thinking of doing this. I heard that said, but it wasn’t in the official paperwork, but that was the tone they set when I decided to file for CO so I wouldn’t have to go back over there and continue to destroy and hurt people that had nothing to do with hurting us.

Marc Steiner:

That’s amazing. That’s a story in itself, Amber. And what was your turning point?

Amber Mathwig:

I grew up in rural Minnesota, very small town just quintessentially small town USA where honoring veterans and their sacrifices is pretty normal. While people are also either ignoring or being ignorant of what US policy overseas, what the military has actually done, that’s just kind of the norm. And so I was compelled to join the military by September 11th, 2001. And I say that I was compelled by the rhetoric of we have to protect ourselves. It always feels weird to me because I definitely didn’t have a hatred of Muslims. I had a weird little bit more understanding of some of the history, but apparently not enough because I chose to join the military and I joined in 2002 and it was just an absolutely hellacious 10 years. When I deployed to beg that Iraq for an administrative position in 2008, 2009, I was seeing the stuff on paper that Kevin’s talking about and I’m just like, what is our purpose here? And that would’ve been at six years, six and seven years at that point. And then in 2011 I was on a ship deployment, my ship aided in bombing Libya. And at the same time on that deployment, I was just seeing an intense amount of sexism, the way that people talked about sexual assault, people who had been victimized by gender discrimination and all those sorts of things. And that was actually kind of my impetus to start understanding the military.

Why can’t women succeed in the military? Why is sexual assault misogyny, all of that so rampant? And if you just read far enough that that is all essential to the military industrial complex itself, you have to be able to dehumanize and hold this hierarchy over the people right next to you because it then makes it easier to do it to people who have already been demonized as the other and our enemy. Once I started really exploring that as a way to heal myself, it just quickly became the next step of we actually have to address the military industrial complex as a whole.

Marc Steiner:

Michael?

Michael T. McPhearson:

Yeah, I grew up in a family that has a long history of service in the military and I grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina where Fort Bragg is located. And while I was well aware, I know black history, my mother’s a school teacher, so she taught us quite a bit about our history. So it wasn’t like I didn’t understand that the US was problematic at home. I didn’t fully understand our foreign policy. I knew a little bit about Vietnam, but I used to think that war was a necessary evil and that going in the military was something that you did growing up in Fayetteville.

Marc Steiner:

It’s a military town, right?

Michael T. McPhearson:

Yeah, it’s a military town. So it’s super normalized and I decided that I was going to get out. I didn’t like why we were in Iraq at the time. I was married to a woman who grew up in Kuwait and her mother was there when Saddam invaded. So I had this weird kind of relationship with Saddam, but I decided I was going to get out and just doing more research and looking at the things that were happening here at home as it related to what was happening abroad, it pushed me to realize the war is more of a choice, not a necessary evil, especially US foreign policy. And after September 11, knowing that we were going to go to war in a big way, I started getting involved in the anti-war movement and I found veterans for peace.

Marc Steiner:

From your perspectives, as people who served, I think it’s important for people to hear from you what you think we’re facing right now. This parade that was thrown out to all of us, the military parade by a guy who doesn’t even know what the military is and the dangers we face in terms of pushing the wars that we’re pushing at this moment for the future of our country and for the future of the world. So what role do you all play as veterans in that? Do you fight against that and what do you have to say to the people of America about that?

Kevin Benderman:

Okay. I would say that based on our experiences, I mean 10 years, Michael was in for a while and I believe, how many years were you in Michael?

Michael T. McPhearson:

I’m active duty and reserve 11,

Kevin Benderman:

11 years. So you’re looking at 30 years of experience, both in combat time and peace time.

You cannot discount what we can tell the young people that are facing these issues that we see today and how it affects them and that peace would be a much better way for them to live their lives and not bring violence and destruction to other people who are just trying to live their lives and make a living. So I believe that we have valuable insights that they can listen to. And if they have a moral conflict, there are resources that we have available that we will put out so they can reach out to the people. And if they are morally conflicted about any illegal orders or any orders at all, that conflict with their conscience, we want to be able to help them achieve their goals and not be living the same nightmare that we all live when we know that all those resources can be better used for education, housing, food, anything but more destruction and harm to other people.

Marc Steiner:

Michael, where do you then take this struggle? Where does it go? How do you make this fight?

Michael T. McPhearson:

Well, let me say in 2003, I went back to Iraq as part of a peace delegation. Yeah, it was late 2003. So we had just really invaded a rock. And what Kevin was saying earlier about people being regular people, not that different from us. I mean they speak a different language and they might eat different foods pretty much other than that, they’re the same. And I really saw that because they were so kind to me. They asked me to come into their homes and give me tea and fed me while we were invading. And I say we as I’m a US citizen, so our country was invading their country and they were treating me well. Yes, they were treating me very well. So the reason I bring that up is because I want to help people understand that the interests that they claim that we’re defending is not for regular people and that the wars that we’re conducting we’re killing people who are just like us, who don’t have much choice in the matter, and we shouldn’t participate in that. We need to figure out ways to build peace rather than war. And then you asked about this moment here at home.

Yes. We have a person who’s basically authoritarian, who only uses the law when it’s works for him and his people. And then when it doesn’t, he ignores it. He took the same oath that we took to defend the constitution. This is where the veteran part gets in and he’s not alright. He’s abusing the constitution. So I just ask service members and regular citizens to think about what does that mean? We don’t have to agree politically, but at the same time we understand that the constitution has meaning. It has lot to do with the condemn of nation that we are. So if we really believe in those things, we have to look at what’s happening in our country today and push back on that. There’s nothing about us than any more special than anybody if we can’t adhere to those basic principles. The only thing that makes us different than any other place is those basic principles.

Marc Steiner:

So as veterans, as people who serve in the militaries for this country, it’s all wars. How do you see the struggle for change really happening and the role that you have to play? I’m going to let you go, Embry. You got it. I don’t have to say more.

Amber Mathwig:

Speaking of sometimes we disagree, I’m going to disagree with just one teeny thing that Kevin said, which is that we have not had any peace time before the Civil War, the United States Army was being utilized to commit genocide against the indigenous people of this land that continued after the civil War. And then, let’s see, I believe 1898 is when we started our wars of imperialism against other countries. Even when we’re not in an active world war, we are engaging in destruction of other people’s countries in land in order to get profit. We don’t get that education in our schools. And so I know we were going to mention our campaign coming up, but some of the apparatus of the campaign will be engaging our communities in this education about what were some of these wars or invasions or conquests or we need to go defend women and L-G-B-T-Q people in another country. And it really comes down to how are we defending them if we are taking away everything that is available to them to organize and fight against the systems themselves. If they don’t have food and water, they can’t spend their time worrying about the safety of a queer person in their community because they are struggling to have their most basic needs met. And I think that is one of the things that I really, really want service members to be aware of when you’re thinking about, oh, I’m joining to go bring democracy abroad. We don’t even have democracy here.

And that the other thing is that when we as military members and veterans are out fighting for our benefits, we have to understand that those benefits were only guaranteed to us if we took a little part of ourselves away that pulled us to act humane and with empathy towards other people. And so getting housing, healthcare, we shouldn’t have to kill in order to get those, those should just be guaranteed as part of our society. So you see, Kevin has the feed, the people, not the war machine. I have healthcare, not warfare. Michael’s calling for a ceasefire now because these are all things that we care about well beyond our own VA and military benefit.

Marc Steiner:

So as we kind of wind down, I want to see where three of you think as veterans where historical goes. Now two of you who have been arrested on the last action and you got more things coming up. So talk a bit about what your next steps are, where you take this struggle, where you take this battle and where do you see it going?

Kevin Benderman:

I see it as getting information out to a new generation of service members, whether they be active duty, national guard or reserves, that there are things available to them if they feel that their moral conscience being, they are violating that conscience. And so there are things available to them where they can use in a legal manner in order to not have to participate in the destruction of innocent people. And I can’t emphasize that enough. I mean the people that I met in Iraq, the majority of them, the feeling that I got from them is like they were tired of Saddam Hussein, that they were tired of the United States playing tug of war with them and their lives and their country because we had been involved in them since at least 1983. They were sick of it. And I think we need to look at the human aspect of it. Everybody’s over there, they have a family, they’re trying to make a living and they want to live in peace just like you and I do right here at home. And I think we should be able to respect that and not force any other actions on people that they don’t want to participate in.

Marc Steiner:

Well said. What are your closing thoughts on this, Michael?

Michael T. McPhearson:

Ask Google, how many years has the US been at peace? And it says 17 out of 17 out of 204 9.

Marc Steiner:

That is a perspective. I mean, think about that.

Michael T. McPhearson:

Yeah, so if you believe there’s no years or only 17 years that both of them say a lot, either 249 years, 17 years that the US has not been at war. So just take that as you will. So there’s at least two things happening, at least from my perspective, that need to be dealt with. There’s peace being anti-war, but there’s also what’s happening here in this country right now when it comes to this authoritarian surge and movement towards fascism. Okay, I’m concerned about both of them. So here at home, people on the so-called left, whatever it is,

Marc Steiner:

Whatever that is

Michael T. McPhearson:

Yeah, whatever that is, I need to unite across that spectrum because the right whatever that is has united and they’re not distinguishing between any of us. So we need to unite across the spectrum to push back. Veterans like us need to continue to speak out so that we can motivate other veterans to speak out and also show them the hypocrisy of this administration. And then particularly white people need to be reaching out to the right to that side because white people overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Many people of color did. Black people overwhelmingly did not vote for him because we understood that this is white supremacy rising using fascism and authoritarianism. So if we want to really break what is happening here in the United States of America at this moment, then white people have to talk to other white people and help them figure out how to change so that we can deal with the issues many of them are upset about when it comes to not having a job, when it comes to opioids, when it comes to all the things that impact their life. But they got to let go of this white supremacy idea in order for us really to be able to change that. Then the other thing is war itself. How are people going to think about peace abroad when in their own communities they’re not seeing peace? So we have to work here at home to help people find peaceful ways to solve problems here at home, and then people might be able to have a better vision of peace abroad.

Marc Steiner:

A closing thought from you in a few minutes. We have,

Amber Mathwig:

Yeah, I am white people. I come from a community that at one point in my lifetime was almost 100% white rural, voted 70% for Trump in this last election, and even with a lockdown two weekends ago because a political assassin could not be found and was somewhere in the neighborhood of my hometown.

People are not talking about the violent rhetoric that is always on display either through signs or just through the belief systems that people have. It is a very strong Trump community as most of Minnesota is. I live in the suburbs where we’re pretty heavy blue transitioning into purple about where I’m at. But I think that you brought up the arrest. I have no fear of being arrested if I get charges. Yeah, it really sucked. Don’t get that twisted. It really sucked and we were absolutely treated harshly on purpose, but it is a tool of the state to try to instill fear into the people, to not stand up for what we need and deserve from our communities and from our government. So I have no fears of getting arrested. I’m union, so I can’t get fired for being arrested for stuff that I did off duty or off work off duty.

See how militarized I get sometimes the second I get with my people and that, yeah, Michael is absolutely right. White people have just such a tremendous role to play in continuing to be around and talk with fellow white people into, I don’t want to say necessarily meet them where they’re at because that can be really frustrating, but just to be direct, why do you believe that way? How do you think this is making things better? One thing I’m rolling over in my brain a lot lately is like, oh, you don’t pay attention to politics or what’s going on, but then you go vote and you don’t pay attention to your impact. How can you go out and vote for Trump and not have any clue what the impact on other people like the people that you work next to, live next to are? And I don’t want to say that I’m a pariah in my hometown because a lot of people are actually really supportive of how I speak out, but it’s just the fact that that support is still kind of quiet

Is part of the problem, is that they have a legitimate fear around how they will be treated in the communities. And I think white people just, you need to give that up. You have no fear in being racist or misogynistic. Why are you afraid to speak up in support of others? And so that’s where I’m at, just when folks are really trying to figure out what to do when service members, active duty National Guard are trying to figure out, can I disobey this order? Can I refuse to do X? And we have resources for that by the way, just go with the fear. Because once you get over that fear, you’re going to feel so much better about it in the end. You may also need some therapy, but you will be better off once you confront those fears.

Marc Steiner:

So this has been a great conversation and I want to thank you all as well for standing up and doing what you’ve done in your lives and standing up to expose what’s going on to really fight for the kind of freedom and democracy we deserve. So thank all three of you so much. It’s been really great to have you here. Michael May Ferrison and Kevin Benjamin Amber Wig. Thank you all so much. Let’s stay in touch. I want to hear more about what veterans are doing and as they struggles unfold, I want to hear more about what you all are doing for standing up for democracy in a different way. So thank you all so much.

Amber Mathwig:

Yeah, thank you, Marc. We’d love to come back on and talk more about our campaign after it launches on July 4th.

Marc Steiner:

July 4th is the date. Alright, thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Once again, thank you to Michael T. McPherson, Amber Math Week, and Kevin Beman for joining us today. And thanks for David Hebdon for running and editing our program and producer Tali for making it all happen behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at MS s@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to our guests for joining us today. We’ll be linking to Veterans for Peace. You can check out all their work at veteransforpeace.org. So for the crew here at the Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/08/thes-vets-swore-to-defend-the-constitution-against-all-enemies-including-donald-trump/feed/ 0 543442 ‘There were massive revolts’: The history of the 1970 Kent State massacre you haven’t heard https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/02/there-were-massive-revolts-the-history-of-the-1970-kent-state-massacre-you-havent-heard/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/02/there-were-massive-revolts-the-history-of-the-1970-kent-state-massacre-you-havent-heard/#respond Wed, 02 Jul 2025 17:29:22 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=335195 View, from behind, of Ohio National Guardsmen in gas masks and with rifles as they advance up Blanket Hill to back Kent State University students during an antiwar demonstration on the university's campus, Kent, Ohio, May 4, 1970. Photo by Howard Ruffner/Getty Images“The whole history of the massacre was suppressed… And then they suppressed the whole history of the anti-war movement at Kent. They've tried to erase the history.”]]> View, from behind, of Ohio National Guardsmen in gas masks and with rifles as they advance up Blanket Hill to back Kent State University students during an antiwar demonstration on the university's campus, Kent, Ohio, May 4, 1970. Photo by Howard Ruffner/Getty Images

It’s been 55 years since the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students at Kent State University who were protesting the US war in Vietnam. Four students were murdered at the Kent State Massacre: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Schroeder. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Mike Alewitz, who was a student at Kent State in 1970, about what it was like to witness the massacre firsthand, and about how the true history of this critical moment in US history has been whitewashed ever since.

Guest:

  • Mike Alewitz is an internationally renowned muralist and Professor Emeritus of censorship, art, and politics at Central Connecticut State University. Alewitz was the founder and chairman of the Kent Student Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam and an eyewitness to the May 4, 1970, Kent State massacre.

Credits:

  • Producer: Rosette Sewali
  • Studio Production: David Hebden
  • Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.

Many people remember or know about the moment when the National Guard opened fire on students at Kent State University when they were protesting against the war in Vietnam. Four students were killed that day: Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, Jeffrey Miller, and William Schroeder, and nine others were wounded. And just 11 days after that, at the predominantly African American University Jackson State in Mississippi, two students, Philip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green were killed while 12 others were wounded. And earlier in Augusta, Georgia, many people were killed when the Black community erupted over the killing of a 12-year-old boy by police. These are moments that many of us lived through, ones we’ll never forget. They’re indelible in our minds.

Mike Alewitz was a student at Kent State on that day when four unarmed students were gunned down by the National Guard. Mike is professor emeritus of censorship, art, and politics at Central Connecticut State University. Now, when he was a student at Kent State, he was chairman of the Student Mobilization [Committee] against the war in Vietnam. He’s now a world-renowned muralist whose work crosses the nation and the world. Actor Martin Sheen said about him, Mike’s work provides an important example of how an individual, by basing their art on the creative power of the working class, can create a body of work which helps to educate, organize, and agitate for a better world.

So Mike, welcome. Good to have you with us.

Mike Alewitz:  Thank you for having me.

Marc Steiner:  So here we are at this time, these anniversaries of Kent State, Jackson State. You were in the middle of Kent State. Could you, for people who maybe read the history, don’t even really know what happened, talk about that moment, where you were as a student, and exactly how you felt and what you saw?

Mike Alewitz:  Well, the massacre took place on May 4 of 1970, and I was a student activist at Kent. I was chair of the Student Mobilization Committee against the war, which sponsored demonstrations of several thousand students on campus. And we had been organizing, I started at Kent in ’68, and we were organizing against the war, and the anti-war movement nationally was becoming a majority movement.

And what happened was that Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, which was basically a major escalation of the war in Southeast Asia. And that began a national student strike. And what happened was that, three days later, the shootings took place, and that was like a spark, and that just threw gasoline on it.

And so, the strike became this massive event. 4 million students were on strike. Over 900 campuses had protests and demonstrations, including high schools, many high schools, and 400 universities were occupied. It began to be a major national student strike. Some of us socialists who were involved were basically trying to follow the example of the students in France in May/June of 1968 who marched to the factory gates and called out the workers, 10 million workers joined, and it became a revolutionary situation in France. They used the base of the university to organize from, they called it the red university, the concept of the university.

Well, we didn’t have a red university. We were organized, an anti-war university, and that’s what we began to do. We tried to pull together a national coalition as the strike was spread, and it just became this massive, organic, national movement, the largest protest that had ever taken place in the United States up to that time.

As you mentioned, there was, after Kent, there was the massacre at Jackson. Two students killed — Actually an unknown number. Generally people use 12. But the fact was that Black students understood that they were going to get different treatment than the students at Kent State. And so, we know that some didn’t go to seek medical help because they felt they would’ve been charged and thrown in jail, which is quite probable.

In between these two student massacres was the massacre in Augusta, Georgia, where six Black men were killed, shot in the back, and 60 wounded, mostly shot in the back. So that was fresh in their minds at Jackson State.

But these events, the use of the National Guard — At Jackson, it was the cops, it wasn’t the National Guard — But the use of the National Guard had a profound effect on a lot of people because, basically, what they were seeing was the US military now turned its guns on its own people.

And a lot of the impact was in the armed forces. I had actually ended up in Texas after the strike, and I was helping to organize GIs against the war, and the shootings at Kent marked, and the national student strike, for a lot of active duty GIs, was a turning point, and the anti-war movement in the armed forces became a mass movement. That was a majority movement that began to spread. It spread into Southeast Asia.

A lot of this history has been suppressed, but there were massive revolts. There were 600,000 men deserted over the course of the war. In Southeast Asia, soldiers were fragging their officers. They were killing officers. There were ships that were taken over. There was major rebellions on an aircraft carrier. The Army was lost to the ruling [inaudible] on the war, and that totally transformed American politics. It totally transformed world politics. The United States has never been able to win a war since that time, and has to fight its wars without involving the American people, to a large extent, because people are totally anti-war. The American people are anti-war.

Marc Steiner:  Couple of things. First I’m going to come back to what you said about the American people being anti-war. Of course, we now have an all-volunteer Army, which is very different than having a mass-based Army that was drafted into the service when we were young. I do want to come back to that.

But I want to take this back to Kent State for a minute. I want you to help paint a picture of that moment and what actually happened and what you felt at that moment. There were demonstrations taking place all across the country, but this changed everything because there were soldiers who actually fired on students, who were their age, and gunned people down. And it led to a whole subculture with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and other songs being written about Kent State. It gripped the nation. So take us back to that moment when you were a young student at Kent State.

Mike Alewitz:  Well, what happened was the invasion of Cambodia was announced on a Friday, I think it was on Friday. And so, we had the initial activities that you would expect. The Black students held a demonstration, the history students buried a Constitution as a symbolic act. There were some things like that. There was unrest in downtown Kent.

And then, in what seemed to be, to me, to be the work of agent provocateurs, the ROTC building was burned down. Now, the ROTC was the military presence on campus. Actually, over the course of the anti-war movement, there were a number of ROTC buildings that were burned down. The one at Kent was actually an old wooden structure from World War II that was scheduled to be destroyed anyway.

That was used as a pretext. And we’re going to see the same thing with what’s unfolding in Los Angeles. What they do is they use these events, whether it’s agent provocateurs or just [inaudible] or well-meaning people engaging in provocative activities, it will be used as an excuse for military action. And that’s what happened at Kent.

So using the destruction of the ROTC building, Nixon in cahoots, Nixon came out and famously called the students bums, the student protestors. And then Gov. Rhodes of Ohio echoed that. He came to Kent, there was this choreographing where he stood over some burned weapons that were actually never weapons, they were just used for exercising, marching around campus and stuff. But the implication was, oh my God, there’s this thing taking place, just like they’re trying to do right now in Los Angeles. And so they laid the political framework for the massacre.

Now, on May 4, we assembled on the Commons, which was a traditional free speech area, because there’d been protests for many years. The Commons had been designated as a place you could hold an activity. You didn’t have to get permission ahead of time or anything, you just go use it. And we formed up, there were a couple thousand students. It was largely unorganized and just spontaneous, organic. And we formed up on the Commons. The guard was on the other side of the Commons —

Marc Steiner:  The National Guard, right?

Mike Alewitz:  Yeah. Our gathering was very peaceful. It was a sunny, warm spring day. People were very relaxed despite the fact that there was this military presence.

And what happened was that General Del Corso of the Ohio National Guard rode over in a Jeep and said, you have no right to assemble, you have to disperse. People yelled and didn’t disperse, at which point the guard formed at the other end of the Commons and began a barrage of tear gas that, if you see the photos of this, is just like you’re in an enormous cloud of tear gas. And for those of you who’ve never had the pleasure of being tear gassed, at that point, the protest was over. It had been broken up.

We ran over, we were in front of a hill. We ran over a hill, Blanket Hill to the other side to get away from the gas, and this line of guardsmen who started marching towards us. On the other side of the hill, there was a practice field, a playing field. And by this time, we had been largely dispersed. We were all over the place. The guard marched to the middle of the practice field, crouched, aimed their weapons, but got up, turned around, and started marching back to the Commons where they had started from.

At the top of the hill, with no students threatening them or anything, and when you see the students, most of the students were hundreds of feet away [who were] shot, they turned and shot, fired into the crowd. And it left four dead and nine wounded.

Now, most of them did not shoot at students, or there would’ve been a lot worse carnage. As you were pointing out before, these were young people. A lot of people in the guard were there to avoid going to Vietnam because for somebody my age, that was the question. When I was in high school, when you were graduating high school, the question was, what are you going to do to avoid Vietnam? I had a brother who went to Canada. There were people who shot their toes off. People had all kinds of ways. And then a lot of people would join the Guard or the Coast Guard or whatever would keep ’em out of Vietnam.

And there was a lot of fraternization between the Guardsmen and the students. Allison Krause, who was an anti-war protester, famously put a flower in the barrel of one of the Guardsmen’s guns and said, flowers are better than bullets, which inspired the great poet Yevtushenko to write a wonderful poem.

Marc Steiner:  Right. That moment, people don’t realize that that changed. When she did that, it became this symbolic, this powerful, symbolic moment that affected the entire anti-war movement.

Mike Alewitz:  Yes.

Marc Steiner:  It was iconic.

Mike Alewitz:  Yeah. And now, Sandy Scheuer, who was my friend, I don’t know if you would call her an activist, but she would always take flyers from me and hand them out and stuff. I guess she was a borderline activist. And Allison certainly took great pride in her activity. She had marched on demonstrations before and was very proud of that. The whole history of the massacre was suppressed. And one of the things they did is they tried to depoliticize this, particularly Allison and Sandy, as though they were just victims, that they weren’t out there protesting the war. And then they suppressed the whole history of the anti-war movement at Kent. They’ve tried to erase the history. They created a fictional history, which has happened in a lot of places, that SDS was the radical group on campus — Which there was an SDS. But SDS after it called the first March on Washington didn’t officially sponsor any of the anti-war actions after that.

It got to the point around the 50th commemoration five years ago. They named Stephanie Danes Smith as head of organizing the commemoration. Smith was a top official in the Central Intelligence Agency. She worked directly with Condoleezza Rice and these other scumbags to organize terror sites that were being used. And she was in charge of the commemoration. And they’ve tried to just totally depoliticize it and take the mass movement away. So it becomes, oh, this unfortunate misunderstanding.

But the fact is they can try to change these histories, they can try to airbrush history. They’ve tried to do that with the whole anti-war movement. You don’t hear about what was going on and stuff. But they can’t erase the collective consciousness of the working class. And that became deeply embedded. The soldiers who fought in Vietnam were profoundly affected, and to the point where the anti-war movement had such an effect that the US can no longer use troops in the same way. They can bomb people from the air. That’s what they do. They bomb. They can go into Afghanistan, they go to Iraq, bomb people from the air. But they run into big problems when they try to occupy because then it’s human beings facing human beings.

And it’s true that it’s a volunteer Army now, but really it’s an economic draft. A lot of these kids are Black and Latino kids who have no other options so they join the service. They want to get a skill, sometimes they just need a job. And so they have a problem sending Black and Brown soldiers into countries where it’s people of color.

So everything has been changed in that way. And they can send the guard into Los Angeles. But who are the guard? Again, it’s largely African American, Latino, a lot of women now, and suddenly they’re facing their neighbors, their families, their friends.

Marc Steiner:  It’ll be interesting to see if that actually happens. This will be a real moment to see if that has an effect. I want to focus a little bit on, given what we’re facing today, what you think that legacy of Kent State and Jackson State and those moments in our history that those of us who are getting long in the tooth experienced [laughs], what do they say about what we’re facing today? Because we’re in a similar place, maybe an even more dangerous place, internally in this country than we were even then, what could be coming. So what does that moment say for you in your analysis of what we face at this time?

Mike Alewitz:  Well, I think it’s very right when you say that there’s a lot more at stake at this point in history. This is not 1970. We were fighting to end the war. It was the women’s movement was emerging, the gay rights movement began —

Marc Steiner:  The Black liberation movement.

Mike Alewitz:  All these social movements began to emerge, and it was a very optimistic time for socialists and activists. We saw these great movements developing. They had a tremendous effect on American culture. For somebody like myself who grew up in a semi-rural housing project in the 1950s, the ’70s was amazing, and it totally transformed American society.

Now though, we’re fighting for the very, in my opinion, we’re fighting for the very existence of the species because capitalism is dying. The US empire is dying, and it’s not pretty. It’s a very ugly thing. And these people who are responsible for this, and the government officials, not just of this country, but of a number of countries, they’re perfectly willing to let the whole planet go down the crapper in their incredible quest for profits. All they know is how to steal money. So we are faced with the possibility of nuclear annihilation or the global change that will fundamentally destroy many species. So the stakes are pretty big in this.

Marc Steiner:  In terms of what happened with the student movement in the late ’60s and early ’70s, we’re seeing at this moment this assault against universities by the right wing, by the people in the Trump administration, to decimate universities and to push them back into the dark ages of the ’30s. That’s a piece of this. I was thinking about Kent State, other things that happened around the country, the organizing that took place on campuses, and it’s very different right now. In many ways, it pushes back everything people fought for in the ’60s and ’70s, from civil rights to anti-war stuff, to community organizing, it’s changed the entire paradigm of the nation.

Mike Alewitz:  Well, they’re trying to, they’re trying to. They want to go back to the ’50s, make America great again. They want to go back to the 1950s when women were in the kitchen, when gays were in the closet. When it was this incredibly oppressive society, and workers dutifully went about their jobs and weren’t protesting, they’d like to go back to that. And it’s not going to happen. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

Now what’s happened is they’ve tapped into some of the anger that exists and they’ve redirected it. That’s what the basis of this right wing… I don’t even like to call it right-wing support to Trump. These are people who are very angry, as they should be. Unfortunately, their anger is misdirected. But over time, the promises that have been made to people, they keep promising that things are going to be so much better. The fact of the matter is capitalism cannot solve these problems, and people are very angry, and it’s all going to explode.

I think that’s what we’re seeing the beginnings of in Los Angeles. Right now, it’s centered around immigrant workers and protests by immigrant workers, but that’s always been who has led social change in this country. When we look back at the 1930s and we look at the sit-down strikes and stuff, and you look in, you see those white workers, you don’t think, oh, immigrant workers, but they were immigrant workers. They were from the Baltics, they were from Eastern Europe, they were from Scandinavia. And they were brutally mistreated, and they organized industrial unions. They led the organization of industrial unions. That’s how change happens.

And we’re seeing the beginnings of this. It’s going to be, unfortunately, we are saddled with union, with a union bureaucracy that is totally abstaining, is just sitting by the sidelines. The American working class, which has such a proud and militant history, being led by these millionaire bureaucrats, basically. The head of the California SEIU gets arrested and the AFL-CIO doesn’t do anything. It’s astounding.

Marc Steiner:  That was pretty astounding, yes.

Mike Alewitz:  And largely, these college administrators are toeing the line. Like bureaucrats, they have to keep the host alive. So when Harvard is being threatened with being destroyed, then they make a few timid comments and they file lawsuits. They all file lawsuits as though that somehow resolves anything. Filing a lawsuit is meaningless. First of all, they don’t pay any attention to the results of these things. And the other thing they do is you got Sanders and AOC going around the country saying, you got to fight oligarchy, and they’re just trying to promote the Democratic Party and their own careers, and they’re trying to channel the anger —

Marc Steiner:  You think that’s all they’re doing?

Mike Alewitz:  — Back into the Democratic Party.

Marc Steiner:  Do you think that what they’re doing is that narrow?

Mike Alewitz:  Oh yeah.

Marc Steiner:  I mean, I’m not saying that they are the end-all-be-all.

Mike Alewitz:  I think they’re trying to save the Democratic Party. People are so sick of the Democratic Party, as they should be, which has done nothing to meet their needs, and they’re facing more disasters in elections, and, yeah, AOC and Bernie Sanders and some of these other jokers, they want to save the Democratic Party. They say, we can have a different kind of party, you just got to get back in line. You got to come to our thing. You got to give us money, and we’re going to solve this problem. Well, that’s not going to happen. That’s not how change happens. So it’s an attempt to divert it.

Now, what happens is 10, 20,000 people show up to these things, and they’re not there to save the Democratic Party, they’re there to oppose the government. So, in a sense, that part of it is progressive. They’re going to, it unleashes. Anytime you’re with thousands of people chanting against the government, people get a sense of their own power.

There was a very telling incident at one of Sanders’s things where people held up a Palestine banner behind where he was speaking.

Marc Steiner:  Right. I saw that.

Mike Alewitz:  Activists held up a “Free Palestine” banner, and he had them arrested, and the people were chanting “Free Palestine.” And that right there just shows exactly what the dynamic is in these gatherings. The problem is the working class doesn’t have a political party of its own. It doesn’t have a labor party. It has these ossified bureaucrats at the head of our trade unions. There’s no civil rights group or women’s group taking the stage in order to help organize. This stuff in Los Angeles is totally organized from the ground up by young people. Good on them. It’s wonderful to see.

But unfortunately, anger and protest is not enough. You have to organize a movement that challenges the ruling class. My hope is that that emerges from all this. I’m sure there’s a lot of political discussion going on that we’re not getting reports on. They just take a few incidents and show those. They don’t show the process that’s going on. Fortunately, there’s alternative media like yourself and other people who bring some of this stuff out.

Marc Steiner:  In the time we have left before we close out, so there’s all the stuff you’ve described. Is there a new mural in your head that you need to get out?

Mike Alewitz:  Well [both laugh], I am actually painting a thing about Kent. I’m doing it in the studio, but I am. It’s on my bucket list before I drop dead [Steiner laughs]. I feel like, Jesus, it’s been 54 years, never painted a thing. No, actually, on the 40th commemoration, a fellow faculty member, I was teaching mural painting at Central Connecticut State —

Marc Steiner:  The 40th commemoration of what?

Mike Alewitz:  Of the massacre.

Marc Steiner:  OK, gotcha. Right, right, right.

Mike Alewitz:  On the 40th anniversary, so 15 years ago, myself and Jerry Butler, who came from Jackson, Mississippi, we painted a 40-foot commemorative banner, and the banner and dedication is available if anyone wants to watch. If you go to Red Square, the Red Square, Red Square is our little, [inaudible] mural museum in New London, Connecticut.

Marc Steiner:  We will link to that, yes.

Mike Alewitz:  If they go to Red Square, redsq.org, our website, you can find links to all of this stuff, all this stuff about Kent, the mural, the dedication. Students at Kent have gone back, a lot of students have gone back every year, and it’s this nostalgic affair, and it’s important to commemorate what happened there. I’ve always felt that the commemoration should be out [inaudible], so I’ve always used May 4 as a chance to give slideshows, to show what happened, to talk about the anti-war movement, to build opposition to the US wars and occupations abroad. That’s the real commemoration. That’s the real, living memorial to the students of Kent.

We are going to go through some very hard times. There’s going to be very hard times ahead. But after the last weeks and months, getting up this morning looking at all the demonstrations, young people pouring into the streets and fighting as best they can, it warms my heart. It really does. It gives you hope for the future. One of the slogans from the major events in France was “Our hope comes from the hopeless,” and I think that’s very true. It’s those who’ve been marginalized, who’ve been ridiculed, who’ve been subjected to the worst forms of oppression who are going to inspire us to build new movements for social change.

Marc Steiner:  And in that way, what happened at Kent State, and people need to know the story because it’s that kind of movement, it’s that kind of power that inspires the rest.

Mike Alewitz:  The shootings at Kent was a spark. It was the mass anger that went on for many years of being lied to about the war in Vietnam. It would’ve happened from some other event if it hadn’t happened at Kent.

We’ve been watching as these sociopaths in Washington have been waging these assaults on working people over the last years, and now suddenly there’s a spark, and that spark is in LA, and it’s going to be emulated. There’s going to be demonstrations all over the country. There’s going to be protests against ICE. We’re going to demand that ICE be abolished. We’re going to defend as best we can those who are being victimized.

And in the process, we’re exposing the true nature of this government, just like we’re exposing the true nature of Israel. We’re out there. This started by opposing a genocide. That’s what led to this. Just as it wasn’t violent student protests that leads to the implementation of military assault on the city, it was the fact that we are opposing the genocide of the people in Gaza, and that is something that the US does not want to allow, that the ruling class of this country does not want to allow. But Israel is exposed to the entire world. The US is exposed to the entire world.

Never in my lifetime has it been so clear the nature of capitalism and its bloody hands than what’s going on today. I think more people are more aware that capitalism must die than at any time in my life.

Marc Steiner:  Michael, this has been an interesting conversation, and we are going to link to your work as well because people need to see it.

Mike Alewitz:  Well, I thank you. I wish we had more time. I think I could chat with you for a long time.

Marc Steiner:  We can come back maybe and just focus in on your murals, which would be great.

Mike Alewitz:  I would love that. I would love that. Well, I have to thank you all for inviting me to say these few words. It’s much appreciated.

Marc Steiner:  Keep your brush at the ready.

Mike Alewitz:  And go to our website, redsq.org and check out other stuff that we have.

Marc Steiner:  Absolutely. It’s well worth it. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Mike Alewitz:  Alright, thank you, Marc.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, thank you to Mike Alewitz for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebden for running our program, and our audio editor, Alina Nehlich, and producer Rosette Sewali for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

And please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thank you Mike Alewitz for your brilliant work and for being part of our program today. And so for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/07/02/there-were-massive-revolts-the-history-of-the-1970-kent-state-massacre-you-havent-heard/feed/ 0 542510 There’s resistance happening all around us, we’re just not seeing it https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/24/theres-resistance-happening-all-around-us-were-just-not-seeing-it/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/24/theres-resistance-happening-all-around-us-were-just-not-seeing-it/#respond Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:51:03 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=335013 Protesters march to downtown with the Poor People's Army as the Republican National Convention (RNC) began on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.“I think we are seeing, in this moment, this emergent struggle—this survival struggle that's happening across the country,” Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back tell us. “The question is: How do we bring greater organization and coordination to it?”]]> Protesters march to downtown with the Poor People's Army as the Republican National Convention (RNC) began on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The world-destabilizing horrors we see on the news today (and the many forms of resistance we don’t see) can easily make us feel overwhelmed and hopeless about the state of the world. But as Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back have seen firsthand organizing with poor and working-class communities around the US, “there’s amazing grassroots organizing led by poor and dispossessed people that’s happening right now… there’s kind of an awakening happening, but I think instead of looking to our political leaders or looking to some of the more established folks out there.” In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Theoharis and Sandweiss-Back about their new book, You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons From the Movement to End Poverty.
Guests:

Credits:

  • Producer: Rosette Sewali
  • Studio Production: David Hebden
  • Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us today. We’re talking with a Reverend, Dr. Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back. They co-authored the book, You Only get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty. I’ve known Liz Theoharis for a long, long time now. She’s a leading voice and activist in the Fight to End Poverty and for a just society. She’s a theologian pastor, author, executive director of the Kairos Center for Religious Rights and Social Justice and co-chair of The Poor People’s Campaign, a National Call for Moral Revival. Dr. Theoharis has been organizing in poor and low-income communities for 30 years. Noam Sandweiss-Back is an organizer and writer born in Jerusalem and raised in New Jersey. He spent a decade working among the poor, that dispossessed and low-income communities and working with the Kairos Center for Religious Rights and Social Justice and the Poor People’s Campaign. And they both joined us today to talk about their book, their work, and the Future of Our Country. Well Liz, Noam, welcome. Good to have you both with us.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

Really good to be here. Thanks so much for having us.

Marc Steiner:

Good to meet you, Noam, and good to see you again, Liz.

Noam Sandweiss-Back:

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Marc Steiner:

I was thinking about, this is an amazing book by the way. You two did a fantastic job of outlining the history of the struggle we’ve had in this modern era and where we are now because so many people feel so desperate and frightened of this moment. I mean, it’s like, and may take myself back to the early sixties again, it’s like defeating the racists and the clan passing the civil rights bill, really changing the nature of our country to what it should have been meant to be and seeing it all being taken away and pushed back. And so you give us that history, but you also seem to have a light, a belief that something is changing and a movement can be built. Is that fair, Liz?

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

I think that’s exactly fair. I mean, I think where hope comes from isn’t that good things are happening and they’re going to keep on happening. It’s that it shows up in the hardest of places. It shows up when everything feels like it’s lost, but people keep on fighting. And I think what we’re able to talk about from our own experiences and from what people are continuing to do today is to see actually that up raid with so many odds against us being on the verge of both a civil war in this country and World War II on a global level,

But who we can look to for hope and for vision and for a way forward are actually grassroots communities, poor and impacted folks, dispossessed people who have had to be pushing, have had to be making a way out of no way compelled to organize and mobilize and hold out that this is not as good as it gets. It doesn’t have to be this way. I think we have been on this organizing tour connected to putting this book out as an excuse to listen to people share some of these lessons. And I have to say I feel more hopeful than I have in years despite how bad things are because people are doing beautiful, not even small things, big things in communities across the country in northern Mississippi, in Columbus, or in Lillis, Pennsylvania, where actually the new Apostolic Reformation, like one of these branches of Christian nationalism almost has its headquarters.

There’s amazing grassroots organizing led by poor and dispossessed people that’s happening right now, and faith leaders are coming into the ring and people from many walks of life are there. And I think there’s kind of an awakening happening, but I think instead of looking to our political leaders or looking to some of the more established folks out there, for us to be paying attention to what folks are compelled to do in this moment, whether it’s folks coming around immigrant justice issues and making sure to defend against deportations and the harassment, or whether it’s folks figuring out what to do in the face of attacks on healthcare or housing or encampments or the kind of drying up of resources for food, whether it’s around gender affirming healthcare or reproductive justice, people are doing beautiful organizing and resisting and visioning towards a new world and not just staying in this horrible one because it’s not serving anyone

Marc Steiner:

Serving a few.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

That’s right. That’s right. It’s serving and that’s why we have it right. That’s a good point.

Marc Steiner:

Noam?

Noam Sandweiss-Back:

In our work we talk about two conceptions of time and it’s reflecting on the way the ancient Greeks and just time. They talked about Kronos, which was chronological time, and they talked about kairos, which described a particular moment in time when the old ways of ordering society were crumbling and new awakenings, new understandings, new structures were struggling to emerge. And the ancient Greeks talked about in that kind of transitional moment, in that interstitial time, there was a question of opportune action, decisive action who was organized to take decisive action in that intergen, in that transitional time. And it just seems so clear, we’re living in a kairos moment today. It just feels abundantly obvious when we’re facing unprecedented economic inequality, when we’re facing profound political and partisan shifts in this country and the ways the Democratic party, the ways the Republican party have been organized in this last era are really shifting.

We’re seeing enormous transformations to the economy, technological advancements, climate change of course, and the climate crisis. So all of these profound shifts. And so the tectonic traits of our society are just really shifting. And within that, I think we have felt both that our opposition has up until now been better organized than us and has been able to take advantage of these shifts in significant ways. And as Liz was just saying, even though that’s true, we also see that in a kairos moment, the conditions are really ripe for organizing actually perhaps more ripe than they have been in previous years. And just as we’ve been doing this organizing tour, as Liz was narrating, I think what we have been confronted by over and over and over again is just the readiness, the hunger that people from all walks of life have to be a part of, something to be joining in movements that are declaring a better vision, a more just vision, more humane vision for this world. And just how many folks are clear that the way society is organized is not working. Folks are clear about that in their pocketbooks and their bank accounts and their debt statements. People are clear about that in the vitriol and the rhetoric and the political violence that’s sweeping across the country. And so that readiness, that hunger has, I think been really galvanizing for us. And then the question, which is the title of this book is how we Get Organized enough to take the kinds of decisive action that this moment requires.

Marc Steiner:

Lemme pick up on that point because I think that one of the things that you two embody at this moment in our conversation and that what you wrote about is a hope and a vision that it can be stopped and we can win and build a different society. We need that and we need to understand how that’s going to happen because you have this juxtaposition of how the Democrats are really failing in terms of building a strategy and organizing around the country. And as you wrote about the struggles of the past and how during the civil rights movement and labor movements, people stood up to the Klan, they stood up to the right, they built a poor people’s campaign, they changed things in America, you see in that a way out in terms of organizing and fighting for a different world and building this mass movement. I really want to get to that because I think that’s really important. I think many people are just really, they don’t know what to do. They don’t dunno where to turn. They just see this rightwing mania controlling our nation, our future. But you see light in that. So I really want you to talk about where you see it and how we get there. And Liz look like you’re ready to jump in, so please, lead the way…

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

I think for one, I think people do see this right-wing mania as you’re talking about, but people don’t agree with it. There’s this navigator poll that came out.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, that you write about in the book, right?

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

Yeah. There’s ones that we write about the book and they keep on coming out. This is what’s kind of amazing, right? The vast majority, 70 to 75% of people in this country still believe in universal healthcare and decent housing and a fair taxation system that taxes the rich and wealthy corporations folks believe in expanding our democracy and protecting it with voting rights. Folks believe in actually gender affirming care and immigrant justice. I mean, there’s so many things that are happening. All of those pieces that are in Project 2025, for instance, folks wildly push back against it and not just in the big cities. We’ve been spending most of our time and many of the stories from the book are from these smaller towns, these rural areas, these smaller cities, as well as the really major metropolitan areas that folks might already think are for those issues.

And what we’re finding is that across the board, people do not agree with how things are. So then the question becomes, well, how do you amass people and organize people in a way to build power to change things if people are upset and if there’s the vast majority of people, how do you turn that discontent, that kind of anger into a compelling force for change? And that’s where organizing and organization comes in and organization and organizing across these different divides. And again, it’s happening. I mean, part of the reason we try to tell some of these historical examples of people building movements and winning is to also tell the example that it can be done. It has happened, it can happen again, but also it is happening again. It just isn’t necessarily what people have paid attention to. I mean, we travel around and we ask people who were active in the eighties and nineties and still are active today, including around housing justice. Have you heard of the National Union of Homeless? And across the board, people haven’t, right?

Marc Steiner:

You said haven’t have not

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

Have not,

Marc Steiner:

Right? Right.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

But here you have an example of 25, 30,000 people who won the right for unhoused people to vote that built all kinds of new housing programs that developed a power and a force that then was taken down, but not after some significant victories and some significant lessons. Or we travel around and we talk about the National Welfare Rights organization and some of the leaders, especially of poor black women, folks like Johnny Tillman and BEUs Sanders. And we say, how many people in a group of even organizers and activists have heard of these amazing leaders and very few people have. And so if we’re not telling the histories and the lessons from very significant organizing victories and campaigns, we are going into a fight.

And so then fast forward to today, there is beautiful organizing happening in so many places. It needs to be pulled together more. It needs to be, what we talk about is organized and politicized, not politicized in a partisan kind of way, but in a way that it goes away from individual people’s problems. Having individual people solutions to larger societal solutions, to the problems that are facing 140 million poor and low income people, 80 plus million folks without healthcare, with adding tens of millions more that are going to lose their Medicaid. These huge groups of people that actually are right now organized in their own communities, but could be pulled into a compelling force. And I think some of why we’re trying to tell these stories of what’s happening today and what has happened before is because if we don’t pay attention to where actual change is happening, we might miss an opportunity for real transformative change.

Marc Steiner:

Go ahead. Now,

Noam Sandweiss-Back:

Liz mentioned the National Welfare Rights Organization

In its time in the mid to late sixties and the early seventies, probably the largest poor people’s organization in the country, right. And certainly one of the most significant organizations at the lead of the black power struggle and black freedom struggle. And the National Welfare Rights Organization for those who are unfamiliar emerged at this time when the welfare system numbers of folks on welfare were growing and folks were also then really encountering the moral rot that really undergirded the welfare system as a whole. And the way in which the welfare system from the very beginning was organized and structured to compel people back into the economy, to take jobs at any pay and at any level of abuse and discrimination rather than actually undercut the structural causes of poverty. So poor women were starting to self-organize in that time across the country. And there were these kind of spontaneously emerging welfare rights associations and local organizations that are Coalescent and Moms on Welfare were really trying to figure out how to band together to fight for the benefits that they needed to fight for better treatment within the system.

And at a certain point, these mothers decided that it would be strategic decision to band together into a larger formation. And so they formed a national welfare rights organization, which was this federation of local welfare rights organizations. And at its height, it had something like 25 to 30,000 dues paying members. These were women on welfare paying dues. This was a kind of newly emerging mass membership organization. These were women at the very bottom of the economy trying to figure out new models of self-organization amongst workers, unemployed workers, and the like. National Welfare Rights Organization had a really interesting kind of internal debate throughout its lifetime. On one hand, there were some folks in the national welfare rights organization, mostly more middle class to upper income organizers and intellectuals, academics who were supportive of the work. It actually played really important instrumental roles within the organization, but didn’t really believe that mass organization, mass membership organizations were the right way to organize folks on welfare.

And that actually the moms on welfare, they argued would be most effective as spontaneous disruptors sort of argued that there was a need for militant activism and mobilization and that if they could disrupt the welfare system to the greatest extent, they could win some concessions. And on the other hand, there were leaders within the National Welfare Rights Organization, moms and Welfare, including Johnny Toman, who at one point was the executive director of the organization who argued that mass membership organizations were really necessary to weather the storms and the wins and losses. And that within those mass membership organizations, the leaders of the National Welfare Arts organization needed to attend to the spiritual material, emotional and political needs of their members. Now, that kind of internal debate was never really resolved within the National Wealth of Rights organization. But I bring it up because I think that debate actually is still one that still is being debated within movement circles and organizing circles today.

I mean, we came out of the 2000 tens with the greatest mass mobilizations and world history, and so many of those mobilizations within the US and in this moment we’re seeing really significant mobilizations, whether it’s the hands off mobilization or last week the no kings mobilization. And in the moment of rising authoritarianism and extreme political repression and state violence, these kinds of mass mobilizations, Liz and I believe are just vitally necessary. There needs to be a visible and strong and diverse expression of discontent in this moment. And at the same time, I think there’s a question of how we move from mobilization to organization and what it will take to build the kinds of mass organizations we need in this moment that can build a kind of long-term power. And so I think that debate that was carried out in the National Welfare Rights Organization now almost 50 years ago is one that we still need to kind of figure out today, is this question of is the agency of poor and possess people in the leadership of porn just possess people?

Can that actually be a rallying point for society as a whole and can or disposed people really take leadership within organizations, the movement, or are they just going to be relegated to kind of disruptors and agitators and we believe that, or dispossess working class folks in this country are the leaders that we need and that can take leadership in this moment and can build organizations that can become a political, spiritual, and emotional home to folks that can attend to people’s needs for belonging and the connection and community, and also offer folks a vision for the kind of political transformation that we need.

Marc Steiner:

So I want to pick up on what you both just said, and you talk in the book about some people who I know really well, Annie Chambers, who was a dear friend, and we struggled together a lot here in the city. Sherry Hunkle, the Hunkler sisters and Marion Kramer. I mean, these are all people who are all in the movement together for a long time. So I raised that because at this moment, in terms of what we face, how do you see us building a movement? How does that come together? I mean, you had some national organizations that police activists were from different parts of the country together, but they were united in an effort. It was powerful when it existed. It didn’t sustain itself over the long haul for lots of complex reasons. So how do you see that movement being built now? I mean, you’ve traversed the nation, you’re in the midst of the struggle, and you’ve interviewed the people to help put this book together. So where do you see that coming from? How do you see that opposition being built and forming into a movement that really significantly stopped what’s happening to us now and built something different?

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

I think we have a kind of formula that has emerged out of this genealogy of organizing, including my own experiences over the last 30 years with all of these different organizations and leaders and efforts,

Marc Steiner:

And yes, yes, you’ve had them and you’ve done some incredible work. Lemme just add that.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

No, and part of that formula is that transformation and change and movement building comes out of changing conditions and changing consciousness. We can’t have a huge impact on conditions, but the conditions right now are ripe. It didn’t take having to go and start something in Los Angeles for thousands of people, people of faith, people across many different lines to be out there as the National Guard is cracking down on neighbors. We don’t have to stand up the biggest things right now because people are being compelled into that. Whether it was students organizing Gaza, solidarity encampments last spring, but into this fall, into this spring, or whether it’s folks coming out to fight for the life of their labor union and their ability to organize and make a good life. I mean, people right now are under attack and what people do are standing up and fighting back and fighting forward.

But what we can have an on is how people fight and how we know how to fight and fight to win. And I think that’s where this combination of people being compelled to organize in lots of very local areas, it’s really a lot more distributed the way that organizing is happening right now. And there’s amazing local work that is happening that I think has changed in its character. When I look into different communities, I mean the already kind of self-organization there, the connections and the alliances that people are making, the beginnings of an infrastructure or a vehicle in a bunch of these local struggles is emerging because so many people are being thrown into motion. And because there have been amazing leaders and organizing experiences that have happened before and those that have especially developed other leaders and a perspective of the vision of what we could be in versus what we are in, we see having to have those efforts led by those that are most impacted, having to have those on a mass scale all over the place. You need lots of leaders. You need lots of places starting with meeting people’s immediate needs, like Noel was talking about this kind of both this sense of belonging, but also actually addressing whether it’s the healthcare needs or the immigration justice needs or whether it’s the food, all the things, and then helping to hold out a larger vision and the need and ability to build power. And so I think that what we’re seeing is something at a scale on a local level that in all of my 30 years I have not seen before.

And I think it is this combination of shifting conditions, but then also people ready to make change. And I think it takes a different model of organizing, and I think it’s part of the reason we think it’s so important to have put this book out in this moment because I think we haven’t learned so many of the lessons of very grassroots folks that are compelled in the words of Howard Thurman, whose backs are against the wall and can do nothing but push. I think we’ve been looking to the politicians, we’ve been looking to the big national organizations, we’ve been looking to everything other than actually what people are already doing and then helping to bring that to a scale and a reach that has the power to be a transformative movement. Like abolition was, like women’s suffrage was like black freedom was. These are movement times and I think folks are moving in movement ways.

Marc Steiner:

So the question is, I have from reading the book, and I really do encourage people to read this book. It’s an amazing work that brings the history and the resident struggle right to our doorsteps and for us to wrestle with and think about how we stop what we were facing and build something very different. Having said that, the question is, and I’m picking up on what you just said, Liz, is how, in other words, the abolition movement came together in the 1840s, fifties, and it was diverse all over the country, and it came together as one in many ways, I mean diverse one, but it came together to make the fight, as did the struggles in the South SNCC core, the NAACP all coming together, even though there were tensions between those groups, they came together to fight segregation and end it stand up to the slaughter of black people in the south. And so it takes some kind of cohesiveness to bring things together. How do you see that happening? That’s one thing I did as I finished the book I thought about. You really touched on all that, but how do you see that happening? How do you see that movement being built to both resist and to take power to stop them from destroying our future? No, I’ll let you start since you say something last time. Go right ahead. You

Noam Sandweiss-Back:

Give me, you’ll give me the easy question.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, sure, of course. Why not?

Noam Sandweiss-Back:

I know you read the book, so you know the story now, but I wanted to tell your listeners about a place called Aberdeen Washington.

Marc Steiner:

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yes,

Noam Sandweiss-Back:

Yes. Which was once the timber export capital of the world. It was once a massive site for the flow in and out of capital workers from around the world flocked to Aberdeen, which is on the coast of Washington state in the Pacific Northwest. That economy was decimated in the seventies and eighties, hollowed out the floor of the economy, dropped the timber industry was exported to the global south, and in its wake was a city and a county without a really functioning economy. And the primary then means of making money for many folks in the area was an emerging illegal drug market. And the city and county there over the last few decades as its primary investment has been the expansion of the sprawling web of jails and prisons as both a means of disciplining poor and working class people in the area who have really no legal method of surviving, economically speaking, and also as a means of economic development. The construction of those prisons and jails, that area voted blue for a century. And the first time that county flipped to red was 2016 when Trump ran for the first time.

We have some friends who are from the area had been organizing there for about a decade leading up to 2016. And through the first Trump administration, there are two chaplains, two folks connected originally to the Episcopal church. They were street chaplains and street ministers and street organizers for a number of years in the area. At a certain point in the mid two thousands, the Episcopal Church gave them an old vacant church that was sitting empty in the county in Grace’s harbor where Aberdeen is the capital of. And that church became a site of organizing in an area that up until that point, had very to little progressive organizing infrastructure, had almost no church activity that wasn’t dominated by the far right, the Christian, right, this emergent Christian nationalist movement, which at that point had this network of churches and schools and food banks in the area that had gone largely uncontested.

So there was this kind of way in which that area had gone largely uncontested by organizers, by progressive folks generally. And there was also in way, a way in which that area had gone uncontested politically in so far as a Democrats had ignored it for the better part of a decade, plus had done no campaigning there very little. And so that flip in 2016, which was surprising to some folks from outside the area, was not surprising at all to our friends in the area, they saw it coming for a while. The organization that they founded is called Chaplains on the Harbor, and they were committed to organizing the poorest, most dispossessed, most stigmatized members of that community in a town of 16,000 people. There were about a thousand people living on the streets before the county destroyed, demolished, swept away this homeless encampment. There were a thousand folks living along the banks of the local river and chaplains on the harbor was committed to organizing in that encampment. They were committed to organizing within the jails and prisons where there were just tons of young white folks in particular who were being swept up by the police and jail, they were being incarcerated and while they were being incarcerated, were then being recruited by militia groups, by white power gangs. And so chaplains on the harbor was counter recruiting

In the jails and prisons. The reason I’m sharing the story is there was, I think a number of lessons we learned from following their work and from visiting there, but one was this was a place that for so long had been uncontested and unorganized. And within that vacuum, the Christian right had just swept it and really taken over in a place that had been economically de-industrialized, a place in which public services and public space had been privatized and sold to the highest bidder. And the presence of even just a small group of chaplains organizing on the streets, they made an outsized impact in this place because they were able to attract just like a whole host of poor and unhoused folks who were just so ready to be a part of an organization that was not only answering their questions and speaking to the problems that they had in their life, but actually really offering a deeper understanding of why they were poor, why they were unhoused, and then offering them leadership that wasn’t couched in a kind of toxic theology or wasn’t blaming them for their poverty.

There are thousands of communities like Aberdeen across the country. There are just thousands of communities across the country that are uncontested and unorganized. I mean, we need to be organizing everywhere and certainly in the big cities, but there are just these communities all over that, some of which we visited on this organizing tour. And when we’re there, I was saying earlier, we just experience over and over again the hunger people have and the searching for where do we transform that hunger for change into something politically viable. And so I think one answer to your question of what do we need to do in this moment is we do need to contest those geographies. We need to go to those places, those kind of abandoned and forgotten corners of this country. And as Liz was saying, in so many of those places, there already is kind of nascent activity.

It’s isolated activity, it’s not big enough activity. But almost anywhere we’ve been traveling, there are mutual aid associations. There are churches and other houses of worship that are doing their best to fill the gap of services that have been stripped away from the traditional functions of the government under neoliberalism. So there are folks just doing brave significant work. I mean in small towns like folks gathering around immigrant communities that are being attacked, detained and deported in this moment in small towns, not just in rural counties and in red counties, not just city of and urban areas. And so I think there’s a question for us in this moment of how we give greater organization and consciousness to these already existing activities across the country in these what we call largely uncontested geographies and how we network those struggles into something that’s bigger than the sum of its parts.

We’ve been talking in this moment about the need for what we’re kind of calling a survival revival, which is how do we actually bring together these various nodes of activity, which we could almost understand as a kind of modern day underground railroad. The Underground Railroad, which was the kind of spine, the backbone of the abolitionist movement was not organized by abolitionists. It was first the activity of enslaved workers who seize their own freedom. It wasn’t like the Underground Railroad was dreamed up at a strategy session by a bunch of northern white abolitionists. These were enslaved workers who were just seizing their freedom with their own hands. And the Underground Railroad in its early days was just this kind of distributed network of safe houses and leaders who were willing to put their bodies on the line and risk something. And over time, the Underground Railroad took on greater organization, took on a political character, and really helped to propel the abolitionist movement into a new face, into a political struggle, which as you were saying, the 1840s and fifties ultimately led to the formation of a new party, the Republican party, and the contesting at the greatest levels of power with the question of the future of slavery.

So I think we are seeing in this moment, there’s this emergent struggle, this survival struggle that’s happening across the country. And again, that question is how do we bring greater organization and coordination to it? And we don’t have the exact answer for how that’s done, but I think those are the questions we’re asking in this moment and we’re hearing other organizers ask as well.

Marc Steiner:

So Liz, as we kind of close out, I want you to jump in here and pick up and also to describe in some senses from when left off about the organization has to be building and that the important part here is in this book is that the power of the involved and radical church in spiritual world in this movement is something that you touch on a lot in this book and it’s your life as well. So let me let you kind of close this out with all of that.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

Yeah, I mean, so I think we have some very concrete suggestions

About how to shift the whole organizing infrastructure in terrain. What kind of both philosophical and practical shifts have to happen for us to be able to really be prepared for the development of a bigger movement. And faith plays a huge role in there. I mean really for decades now, for 50 years, we have completely conceded faith over to a bunch of extremists that actually believe to their core the exact opposite. The teachings and practice of not just Christianity, I’m Christian, so I know this to be true there, but of many of the world’s faith traditions, right? So we can’t continue to concede, we have to contest and then we have to invest real time and real talent in organizing so many places. I think for the same decades that we’ve been conceding faith over to extremists, there’s been a model of organizing that just does not work anymore in a neoliberal and post neoliberal political and economic moment.

And especially as this rise of authoritarianism really hits the scene. And so instead of just organizing at points of production, we have to be organizing at points of distribution, whether it’s where people are getting their housing, whether it’s where people are getting their food. And I think we’re seeing this especially around many of these what we call projects of survival, what many folks are talking about in terms of survival strategies or mutual aid or places where people are getting their needs met and what does it look like to not just organize one of ’em, but to actually see and seed leaders at so many places that then can be nationalizing these local struggles that they’re waging. So much of organizing right now is about localizing a national vision. But the way a movement is built, and this is true in history, is when you nationalize local struggles and there are beautiful local struggles happening right now that can be rallying points and can inspire other people, but also can build a compelling power in those areas.

And so we have to contest for a theological and moral vision. We have to invest in actual organizing from the ground up. We have to shift the way we organize and who we’re organizing. I mean, again, some of the most powerful stuff we’ve been seeing is in places that have been as no was just talking about completely uncontested, completely forgotten and left out, that has led again, not just to this political moment, but is about the complicity of both parties in this society. And then we have to know that as we focus on leadership development and organizing, as we try to politicize and organize these very grassroots efforts, we have to know that bigger crises are on the horizon and we have to be prepared for those and be prepared for those in a way that we can actually build real power. Again, our opponents have been planting the seeds of all the things that are coming into fruition for a very long time.

I’m not sure it’s going to have to take as long for us, and we surely do not have as much time as they had just in terms of all of the democratic decline, but also just the lives and livelihoods of people that are at stake. And so I think we can indeed actually do some fast organizing in this moment. We can turn some of the massive that people are doing into building real local compelling power that pushes these politicians, not because they want to go in this direction, but because they have no choice. But, and I think that that means using the role of faith, it means going to places that people aren’t going, and it means really seeding lots and lots and lots of leaders who can indeed nationalize then these local struggles that are breaking out. And we have to pay real attention to what’s happening. And when we do, we can see actually that we’re in a lot better shape and that these are the pains of a system that actually is dying and the signs of something that is to come.

Marc Steiner:

I think that’s a good way to close this out for this moment. But I also think that what the book has done for me, and I’m encouraged folks to really kind of grab a hold of this book and wrestle with it with your friends and have your little groups coming together and read it, you only get what you organized to take by Lizio Harris and Adam Sandis Buck Back, excuse me, lessons from the Movement to end poverty. I think that what it could also mean here is that the voices you talk about and you met and are in the struggle around the country to come together here at The Real News and on the Steiner Show to talk about the struggles together around this country to show the world what is happening, and we have to build the movement to take back the future and not let it be lost. So I won’t go around preaching, I just want to say that,

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

And that taking back the future is going to be taken back by those who have no choice but to push and to fight and to then bring a whole lot of others into the struggle. Absolutely.

Marc Steiner:

Yes. So this is the beginning of our conversation. Bring other voices into this and talk about how this can be built and for the people you’ve met and contacted and more. And I want to thank you both for the work you do and for taking your time here and for writing this book. As we said back in the sixties, a Luta ua, it’s not over. We’re going to keep rolling and thank you both for the work you do and for the book you just put out.

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis :

Well, thank you, mark, for having us, but also for the work you do and for the ideas and work you put out.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you. Thanks, mark. Give for the pleasure. Thank you both.

Once again, thank you to Dr. Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back for joining us today. And for this book, You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty is well worth a read, is inspirational and full of what we need to know of fighting what we face today. And we’ll be linking to the work and bringing their stories and voices of those organizing and working for a justice society here to the Marc Steiner show as we fight for a better future together. The Marc Steiner Show is produced by Rosette Sewali, engineered by David Hebden. Our audio editor is Stephen Frank. Please let me know what you’ve thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to MSS at therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back for joining us and for the work that you do. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/24/theres-resistance-happening-all-around-us-were-just-not-seeing-it/feed/ 0 540899 As Israel starves Gaza, Chicago Jewish activists starve themselves to force leaders to take action https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/20/as-israel-starves-gaza-chicago-jewish-activists-starve-themselves-to-force-leaders-to-take-action/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/20/as-israel-starves-gaza-chicago-jewish-activists-starve-themselves-to-force-leaders-to-take-action/#respond Fri, 20 Jun 2025 20:42:01 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=334953 Palestinians line up with their containers in hand to receive hot meals distributed by aid organizations in Mewasi, as the food crisis deepens due to Israel's ongoing attacks in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on June 15, 2025.“What wouldn’t you do to stop the slaughter of two million people?... In the face of atrocity, the lesson I have learned from my people is we cannot do nothing.”]]> Palestinians line up with their containers in hand to receive hot meals distributed by aid organizations in Mewasi, as the food crisis deepens due to Israel's ongoing attacks in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on June 15, 2025.

On June 16, six members of Jewish Voice for Peace in Chicago—Ash Bohrer, Becca Lubow, Avey Rips, Seph Mozes, Audrey Gladson, and Benjamin Teller—began an indefinite hunger strike to demand an end to the genocide in Gaza, unconditional military aid for Israel, and the blockade of food and medical aid to the 2.3 million Palestinians now living amongst the rubble. In this urgent episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with two of the Chicago hunger strikers, Ash Bohrer and Avey Rips, about their act of protest and how far they’re willing to go to stop Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians.


Guests:

  • Ash Bohrer is a scholar-activist based in Chicago. Professionally, Bohrer is currently Assistant Professor of Gender and Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to their academic work, Ash is deeply involved in social movements for intersectional and anti-capitalist liberation; at the moment, most of that work is centered at Jewish Voice for Peace.
  • Avey Rips is a graduate student in English at Northwestern University, where they were arrested for protecting students from the police last spring. They are the child of refugees who fled sectarian violence in Azerbaijan.

Additional resources:

Credits:

  • Producer: Rosette Sewali
  • Studio Production/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. One of the most time honored traditions and struggles for a just world has been activists going on hunger strikes to end depression. On June the 16th, Jewish activists in Chicago—Ash Bohrer, Becca Lubow, Avey Rips, Seph Mozes, Audrey Gladson, and Benjamin Teller—members of Jewish Voices for Peace ,began a hunger strike to end the United States support for genocide and slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. And today we’re joined by two of those hunger strikers, Avey Rips and Ash Bohrer. Ash Bohrer was raised in a religious family. They were indoctrinated into supporting the Israeli military and considered joining. They’re now a scholar of peace studies at Notre Dame University and longtime activists for peace and justice. They have traveled to the West Bank over six times, who worked towards peace and justice alongside Palestinians.

They have family members living in Israel. Avey Rips is a graduate student in English at Northwestern, where they were arrested for protecting students from police last spring. The child of refugees who fled sectarian violence and Azerbaijan, their family has migrated five times in seven generations. Avey has had family members targeted by the Nazis and Stalins purges. This family history has inspired their commitment to Jewish diaspora and safety and freedom for all. And as you’ll begin this conversation, the Israeli blockade has stopped all food, fuel, and medical aid from entering Gaza for the last three months. Half a million Gazans are in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition and starvation. And over 1 million people are in an emergency hunger situation. And the entire population of 2.1 million people are facing a high levels of acute food insecurity, which means they’re experiencing the worst levels of hunger possible. So today we are joined by Ash Bohrer and Avey Rips two of the Jewish Voices for peace activists in Chicago on a hunger strike to end this genocide. So Ash and Avey, welcome. It’s good to have you here on the Marc Steiner show. Appreciate you taking the time with us today.

Ash Bohrer:

Thanks for having us.

Avey Rips:

Thanks so much.

Marc Steiner:

Well, I mean, when I heard what was going on, we knew we had to do something because you all are now putting your lives on the line. I mean literally by not eating. And I’m just really, let me just start with both of you. What brought you to this point that made you want to fast until this war was over and the slaughter of Goins was done? How did that begin for you all? Ash, you want to start?

Ash Bohrer:

Sure. Well, I mean, we’ve seen just unspeakable devastation in Gaza these last 20 months. And even after the kind of ceasefire that was signed, the death and the destruction did not end. I am seeing images every single day of human beings being forcibly starved to death and denied basic necessities like medical care and water. And these images are seared into my mind. These are things that I never thought I would see again in my lifetime, and I’m watching them every day on social media. And so for me, as a Jewish person who grew up in Jewish schools and synagogues and summer camps and all the rest in which the sanctity of human life is such a core Jewish value, it felt impossible for me to watch that and to not respond to this call, to not put my body as far as I can in between the people of Gaza and the US government, which is sending weapons and bombs and enforcing this horrifying starvation. And so for us, when we were a few months, about a month ago, several of our Palestinian partners really approached us in JVP and said that what they really needed for us was to amplify how brutal the starvation campaign of Gaza has been and how the meager attempts at letting some aid in have been fundamentally a sham done by us contractors who are murdering people, lining up for aid administered by an organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that has been roundly condemned by every organization of conscience in the world. And our Palestinian comrades are watching their family, their friends, their community members die every day either directly by shooting or in a slightly slower pace by starvation.

And they said, we need your voice to do something to intervene in this slightly slower slaughter. And so we took this idea back to back to the Chicago chapter, and it really seemed like in order to show and demand from our representatives that they take every available avenue, that they do everything in their power to stop this atrocity, that a hunger strike was a potential tactic. We’ve been in the streets, we’ve called a representatives, we’ve emailed them, we’ve had meetings with them, we’ve been arrested, we’ve shut down intersections. And the American people overall are quite united on the idea that the displacement, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians is at atrocity. And the piece that is left now is for the United States government to stop enabling it. That’s sort of how I came to this tactic and why I’m continuing to not eat while Goins can’t eat.

Marc Steiner:

How about you, Avey? What would you like to add to that for yourself?

Avey Rips:

Yeah, Ash truly covered a lot of the bases. I mean, when we see the genocide and starvation use as a weapon of war, when we see it escalating rather than lessening, right? We are called to take on more escalated tactics. We’re called to do anything in our power and what we can. And on the one hand, this is an escalated tactic on it is putting our lives in danger, but it is nothing compared to what is happening to gams under full Israeli military blockade for over three months. So this felt like the right step for us to take as American Jews in solidarity with Gaza, with Palestine.

Marc Steiner:

I was thinking about you all on this hunger strike, and I remember years back I interviewed people in Northern Ireland who were on a hunger strike when they were battling the British. And I’d just like to see from you all the power of your act and why you think this symbolic act of solidarity with Palestinians going on an in depth and ness strike is important. What does it say to the rest of the world? And talk a bit about what you think the significance of this is and how far you can take it.

Avey Rips:

So I think that what the power behind this tactic is specifically that we are able to show our neighbors, our representatives, people all over the country and all over the world, how important the issue of Gaza and Palestine is for American Jews of conscience. And that there is no consensus in the Jewish community. There is no consensus in America that we should be arming Israel and that we should be slaughtering and starving gams. And we have inherited this tactic, as you said, from a long, long history, both Irish, Palestinian, black American. There’s a long history of hunger strikes. And while we are not currently incarcerated, it has been used as a tactic outside of the context of incarceration very much. For instance, Chicago has a very rich history of hunger strikes. We have the diet hunger strike that reopened a high school in 2015. We have the general Iron, iron strike, general iron hunger strike that prevented metal processing, polluting metal processing facility for being reopened on the southwest side. So we’re following in footsteps of people who have used this tactic to show their commitment and to raise the stakes for everyone. I think people who encounter this as a tactic are faced with the fact that there are people who are willing to go to this length and I think it calls on them to take a side if they haven’t yet or commit themselves more strongly to the side of justice and the side of righteous history.

Marc Steiner:

Ash?

Ash Bohrer:

Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything that Avey said, and then one of the things that I’ll add is that what is happening in Palestine right now is the result of simultaneously Zionism as a political ideology and American imperialism. And what unites Zionism and American imperialism is the idea that some lives, Jewish lives, American lives, white people’s lives are worth more than other people’s lives. And that’s part of the political backdrop that allows these atrocities to continue. And so by engaging in this tactic, I think we’re hoping to highlight and show how this differential valuation of human life is wrong. It’s morally bankrupt, and also it’s false that there are people who are valued by society who are taking real, measurable and risky action in order to highlight the total devastation of human life that’s happening in Palestine right now.

Marc Steiner:

I’m curious, how far will you take this? How far are you willing to take this?

Avey Rips:

We are willing to stay on hunger strike until either America stops arming Israel and Israel lifts the blockade on Gaza or until our bodies give out.

Marc Steiner:

So what you’re doing to stop the slaughter on Gaza to stop this insane war, to stop the oppression Palestinians is literally putting your lives on the line?

Ash Bohrer:

Yes, and I’ve spent a lot of time in Palestine. I have put my body in between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians before, and I am doing it now. Again, this feels like there is nothing in my life that I feel more clear about than that this is my moral and political and religious obligation.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m curious just personally, because I think people hear about people going in hunger strikes, been part of struggles as we’ve just talked about a moment ago across history and across the globe. What does it take for the two of you to do what you’re doing and how you made the decision to do this? I mean, this is not easy. It’s one thing to get in the street and say no, and even get into a physical battle with police or Zionists or whatever happens in the street. That’s one thing. But what you’re doing now is literally saying, I’m putting everything I have in life here to say, “No.” I mean, I’m really just to talk to people about what that meant and how you both came to that point and shall begin with you this time.

Ash Bohrer:

I mean, I think honestly, part of my, there’s sort of two parts of the motivation here. One is this deep moral political and religious conviction that I have about how necessary this is amidst the backdrop of just how brutal the devastation in Gaza is, and especially for me, given that the Israeli government continuously purports to be doing this in my name, can Cravenly mobilizing the discourse of antisemitism in order to tamp down any sort of critique of these heinous policies. And then on the other side, I’ll say quite candidly, part of the thing that brought me to this tactic is desperation. We have done all the other things. This was not the first thing that we chose to do. We

Tried to move through the other available channels to pressure the government to respond to the will of the people. And time and time again, I mean this administration, but also the previous one, this is not only a Trump problem, this is a horrible US imperialism consensus between both parties that have enabled this genocide and who have refused repeatedly to listen to the voices of Americans and Jews of conscience in stopping the genocide that is unfolding and in stopping actually materially sending the bombs, the guns that enabled this to happen. And so for me, if there was something easier that I thought would work, we would’ve tried that. We’ve already tried all of the things that we thought were less dangerous in order to achieve this necessary necessary goal. And so for me it’s sort of this combination of political conviction and desperation.

Marc Steiner:

What’s your take, Avey?

Avey Rips:

Yeah, similar to everything. I agree with everything Ash said. We’ve been doing a lot of things over the past few years and obviously many years before that as well. And 2 million people are being starved to death as a weapon of war with the explicit purpose of ethnic cleansing. And we see the most craven attitudes towards this of repopulating Gaza with Jewish sais of building resorts in the Gaza trip, just unimaginable heinous attitudes towards life. And when we have 16,000 dead children, it’s hard to figure out what you wouldn’t do to stop this. And once again, if this was not, Ash said this was not our first tactic, but if we need to call for justice in a million ways, then that’s what we need to do, that we need to simply figure out more and new ways to call for justice.

Ash Bohrer:

Yeah, I think this thing that Avey just said is like sometimes we’ve said apartheid occupation genocide so many times that we maybe are not really thinking about what this means. This means the slaughter of 2 million people. What wouldn’t you do to stop the slaughter of 2 million people? For me, that list is very small. I would do anything I really mean that I would do anything that I can to stop an actual literal genocide. I grew up in a family and at schools and synagogues that said, never again. Never again, never again. The lesson from the Holocaust is this should never ever happen again. And we know that part of the reason that that was able to happen is that people stood by and did nothing and said nothing as it happened. And my whole Jewish education was all about how that should never be us. We should never be people who see injustice unfold and say nothing and do nothing. And so here I am, the product of Jewish values and Jewish schools and Jewish summer camps and synagogues, and I feel like I really learned and internalized this lesson that in the face of atrocity, the lesson I have learned from my people is we cannot do nothing.

Marc Steiner:

I just want to explore something. This was not of my notes to think, but what you just said made me think of something. 50 years ago I wrote a poem called Growing Up Jewish. It was a 25 page poem. And in that poem I was asking a question of how can we become the mere image of those who have oppressed us for generations and in your fight to end the occupation? And you’re putting your lives literally on the line now because even young, strong people will have a, can only survive so long not eating. Where does you think your action takes you and where do you see, well let go to that first, but then when I want to talk about where you see the changes inside the Jewish world, people saying no to this, not in my name, but talk about, I mean where you see your hunger rate going. What effect do you think it could have? Do you think it can expand to other people following your example?

Avey Rips:

Yes. I think that first of all, hunger strikes are effective tactics. They often succeed at least some of their goals. And we are hopeful that the pressure we’re putting on our representatives, we are already seeing conversations in which we will hopefully start to be in the rooms that we’re asking to be in. And we have received such an outcry of support for this. There have been people from all over the country who have been messaging all of us and messaging the chapter and have been connecting to us and just want to know how they want to support. We are calling for solidarity fasts on this coming Sunday the 22nd, and then next Sunday the 29th, we have, this is slightly more local, but we have 22 events over the course of three weeks planned that are all about public education. We have teach-ins, we have vigils, we have conversations about divestment, we have conversations about Israeli bonds.

So we really see this as a rounded sort of approach to what this tactic could hold, right? So we’re playing the high game directly towards our representatives and we’re also playing the local game to our communities right here on the ground in Chicago as well as to, frankly, as you were saying to Jews who find themselves aghast at what is happening, at what are being done in our names, but maybe have yet for some reason not taken the step to denounce it, not taken the step to denounce sign as I’m not taking the step to denounce what’s happening in Gaza and hoping that this action motivates them, that they see that there are others like them who are determined to stop this and join us.

Ash Bohrer:

And I think we all feel really aligned that going on a hunger strike is not something that everyone can do, and it’s not something that we’re asking everyone to do, but we are hoping that this does is galvanize people into action in whatever way makes the most sense for you and your community. What does it mean to put this back on the top of your agenda and bring this to your school, your community organization, your synagogue, your church? It doesn’t have to be the same thing that we’re doing, but I think one of the things that we are hoping is that the hunger strike will remind people of how desperate things are in Gaza and how much we all have an obligation to do everything in our power, whatever that is in order to end it.

Marc Steiner:

A couple of things here in the time we have left, you talked about Sunday, which I did not know about till you raised it. So let’s talk about that. What are you expecting and asking people to do on Sunday in solidarity with your hunger strike and in solidarity with Palestinian people fighting for their survival? What are you asking people to do?

Ash Bohrer:

Yeah, so in solidarity with the people of Gaza, we are asking people who are medically physically able to do so to join us in a 24 hour fast on Sunday, June 22nd and Sunday June 29th. And to post about it on social media, to tag us, we’re at JVP Chicago, literally on every social media one could think about except the one owned by a fascist. And to think about how you can use this opportunity to be in community and to organize your people. So if that means you want to fast with your community in a location and do a fundraiser for the Middle Eastern Children’s Alliance, for example, who are also raising money for over the course of this strike, or if you think that your greatest power is social media, making a post about the solidarity fast and about how children and women and men and others in Gaza have not had any consistent access to food for months and months and months on end, that is what we’re asking folks to do.

Marc Steiner:

When you talk about how this can kind of expand into a much more mass movement to stop the slaughter in Gaza and the way you describe it is very powerful, I think. I mean, if it spreads on Sunday, you’re asking the mouth of my head as you were talking about. It was, it’s like a yum kippur for peace, don’t eat, stop fast, say no to injustice, which I think is a very powerful moment. And what kind of response have you been getting for that around the country? Because JVP nationally, Avey must be supporting what you’re doing and are they moving nationally to make these actions take place?

Avey Rips:

Yes, definitely. We do have support from JBP National. They’ve been very generous and also very excited about that. We’ve taken this on. And I just wanted to really quickly say something that you mentioned like a Yo Kippur. There is a Jewish tradition of fasting in times of calamity and catastrophe and injustice. So a hunger strike is always a controversial tactic. There are always people who find it a little bit controversial, but there’s also good precedent, there’s also deep precedent in the Jewish community and in our history, in our shared history that this is something that we turn to when other means fail.

Marc Steiner:

I’m curious where you both think we all go from here. I mean here we have, you’re taking a very powerful, symbolic, meaningful action to say no to the genocide and slaughter it’s taking place in Gaza. We have a right wing government here in the United States that could care less. You have a neo-fascist government in Israel this moment, but talk about, I’d like to hear what you both think about where we go from here. I mean, we’re in a place of action and organizing and really trying to fight back this right wing power or fighting for something larger as you are doing here right now. So where do you all think we go from here? Where do you think the next steps are?

Ash Bohrer:

Well, in my day job, I’m a professor of peace studies, and so I study and teach how people have responded to fascist governments in the past and how they have successfully organized in order to overcome them. And one of the key lessons from this is people need to be standing up and standing in solidarity with each other that the only way that fascism can be overcome is if there is broad base mass movements that see how deeply interconnected the issues that we are facing actually are. Even when the powers that be try very much to divide and pit us against each other, that is their most successful and consistent tactic. And so for example, as I am watching the horrifying neo brown shirt abductions that ICE is doing of our undocumented community members, what I’m reminded of and why I think this is also connected to the struggle in Palestine is that ice agents and customs and border patrol agents and police departments and sheriffs all around the United States have trained with the Israeli military.

They go on these reciprocal trips, they share surveillance technology, they share crowd control techniques that Israeli weapons manufacturers and data surveillance companies tout on the international stage as battle tested because they have used them to do violence on Palestinians. And that’s a marketing tactic that the police and law enforcement here in the US think of as a good thing. And so there are these very material interconnections between standing up against the abduction of our neighbors and standing up against the genocide and Gaza. And that’s just one example of a hundred, all of these issues, right? The rising fascism, misogyny, transphobia, the lack of adequate healthcare and education and transit, the grotesque immigration policing that we’re seeing. All of these things are deeply connected. And the way that we fight fascism is by moving and mobilizing from those interconnections. So the place that you are and the issue that is the closest to you, seeing that issue as deeply intertwined with all of these other ones is our best bet. And that also means showing up to defend each other, showing up in solidarity and putting our bodies on the line for each other so that we can actually come together and overthrow and prevent further deterioration to fascism.

Marc Steiner:

It’s hard to go beyond that, I think. So do both of you before we have to go. Do you see in the work ahead of us, the hope that we can change it, the hope we can change the hearts and minds inside the Jewish world, the hope that we can change the political dynamic that is murdering thousands and thousands of Palestinians starving them to death. And talk a bit about where you see the struggle going and where you see the hope for change and where that lives.

Avey Rips:

Look, if we can’t change everyone’s mind all at once, then we need to change people’s minds one at a time. If this is just a drop, if this action will be just a drop in the bucket, then that’s fine. That bucket will be filled eventually full of drops, right? So I think that putting into, I always think about the Civil rights movement in America. I think about how long it took, I think about how long defeating Apartheid took

Marc Steiner:

Long time…

Avey Rips:

How long it took. So I really ground myself in that where I’m like, this is a long struggle. I dearly hope that I will one day see a free Palestine, and I’m also an educator. And frankly, if I don’t, I hope my students are the ones who then take up the mantle. So I think that first of all, perseverance, it’s going to take a lot more people taking action, taking a stand, doing what is right for them in their community, in their particular intersection of politics and their body and their position. And it’s also going to take a lot of solidarity. I think the way that we move forward is by continuously building communities with each other across racial, ethnic, religious class divides, and finding a way to fight this injustice as a whole, kind of as Ash was saying.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m curious as we close out, how do people support what you’re doing in your hunger strike to end the madness that’s happening in Palestine at the moment? How do people connect and how do people support what you’re doing?

Ash Bohrer:

Great. Yeah. So there are a few ways that people can support us, but most importantly, to do meaningful action to end the genocide in Gaza. That is what’s most important, not supporting us. So the first thing is that please call on all of your elected members of government to do everything in their power to stop arming Israel and to stop the starvation of Gaza. There is currently a bill in the house called the Block, the Bombs bill that would force the United States to comply with its own domestic laws and international law in not sending weapons to a power that is committing confirmed war crimes. Call your representative and see if thank them if they already are a co-sponsor on it, and ask them why not if they are not yet. We’re also raising money for the Middle East Children’s Alliance, which is an organization staffed and run by Goins.

We want to be fully resourced to meet the devastating need of Goins if and when we are able to lift the brutal blockade that is currently being imposed on Gaza. And then if you want to join in a solidarity fast, either Sunday, June 22nd or Sunday June 29th to raise awareness and galvanize your community, please do that. And then the last thing is, if you want to amplify the current hunger strike and the situation in Gaza, please follow us on social media. We’re at JVP Chicago on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Blue Sky, and send us updates about what you are doing in your community, like seeing people come together, come together and oppose the genocide and the starvation is really the thing that we need over here, and it’s the thing that we all need in order to birth the world that we want to live in one full of justice and liberation. So please do.

Marc Steiner:

Well, I just want to thank you both for putting your lives on the line. You literally are putting your health on the line in the madness that’s taking place in Gaza. And I think that that takes a huge amount of courage and people need to support your work and the work in a VP and what other people are doing to say, no, not in our name. No, we cannot allow this to happen. I really, as an old guy who’s been in the struggle for a long time, I’m really, it makes I light up inside watching the two of you and knowing that this generation is taking on this fight in a much larger way. So thank you both so much. I really mean that we’ve been talking here with Ash, Bre and Avi Rip AV rips, excuse me. And it’s great to have you both here, and we’ll stay in touch. I want to stay in touch with you all and see how this progresses, both of you, hunger strike and the struggle to change what’s going on. So thank you both so much for everything you do.

Avey Rips:

Thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:

And once again, let me thank Ash Barrera and AV rips for joining us today, and thank along with them, Becca Lebo, Seth Moses, Audrey Gladson, and Benjamin Teller for putting their lives on the line to end the slaughtering Gaza and for acting in solidarity with a long tradition of Jews standing up for human rights and for social and economic justice in this world. And I want to thank our colleague, Shane Burley for his article in these times, Chicago activists embark on an indefinite hunger strike over Gaza that brought this to our attention and to which we’ll be linking. And thanks to Cameron Grino for running the program today, our audio editor, Stephen Frank and producer Rosette sole for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at the Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today and what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at MS s@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you Ash, Bre, and Navy rips for joining us today and for putting your lives on the line. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Mark Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/20/as-israel-starves-gaza-chicago-jewish-activists-starve-themselves-to-force-leaders-to-take-action/feed/ 0 540237 Why Abby Stein—a transgender rabbi raised ultra-orthodox—stands up for Palestine https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/17/why-abby-stein-a-transgender-rabbi-raised-ultra-orthodox-stands-up-for-palestine/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/17/why-abby-stein-a-transgender-rabbi-raised-ultra-orthodox-stands-up-for-palestine/#respond Tue, 17 Jun 2025 19:21:33 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=334893 Rabbi Abby Stein talks through a loudspeaker as North American rabbis, led by Rabbis for Ceasefire, hold a Passover protest at the Erez Crossing, Israel, on April 26, 2024 to demand increased humanitarian aid for Gaza. Photo by JACOB LAZARUS/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images“Queer people know what it means to struggle against the government, know what it means to struggle against the status quo. And, most importantly, we're not as easily controlled…”]]> Rabbi Abby Stein talks through a loudspeaker as North American rabbis, led by Rabbis for Ceasefire, hold a Passover protest at the Erez Crossing, Israel, on April 26, 2024 to demand increased humanitarian aid for Gaza. Photo by JACOB LAZARUS/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Raised in an ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, Rabbi Abby Stein has had a long, painful, beautiful journey to coming out as a transgender woman and becoming a fierce opponent of Zionism and Israel’s Occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Rabbi Stein about her journey, and about the need to simultaneously fight Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the right’s fascist assault on the rights of LGBTQ+ people here in the US.

Guest:

  • Rabbi Abby Stein is the tenth-generation descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement. Raised in an ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, Stein came out as a woman in 2015 and now serves as a rabbi for Congregation Kolot Chayeinu, a progressive synagogue. In 2019, she served on the steering committee for the Women’s March in Washington, DC, and she was named by the Jewish Week as one of the “36 Under 36” Jews who are affecting change in the world. She is the author of Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman.

Additional resources:

Credits:

  • Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
  • Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. Now my guest today is Rabbi Abby Stein. She was born and grew up in Williamsburg in Brooklyn to an ultra orthodox Hasidic Jewish world to a family that lived in Israel for generations from about the age five. She knew she was a girl, but she was stuck as a 10th generation descendant of Basov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism. But in 2015, rabbi Stein came out as trans, and after being raised as a boy in Aida community, she went through an extremely difficult and powerful struggle to define herself and become who she is. She, as she says, was groomed to become a rabbi and community leader and she is, but not in the way her ultra orthodox community expected. Many ultra Orthodox Jews are anti Zionists, in part because they’re waiting for the Messiah to come to save them.

But for Rabbi Stein, it was an underpinning for her solidarity with the Palestinian people. She became an outspoken leader in the fight to end the occupation to free Palestinians and Palestine to tie the struggle of trans and queer communities to the struggle for Palestinian people. She lives the mantra of not in our name. She’s a tireless fighter to end the slaughter in Gaza and is a founding member and organizer with Rabbis for a ceasefire and she’s the author of the book Becoming Eve, my Journey from Ultra Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman and welcome to the program.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Thank you, Marc. It’s really great to be here. I will say, just to start, in case you end up cutting out our pre-show part that I already love being here because we had a great conversation about the tallis—my tallis and your tallis, and that’s a great start to a conversation.

Marc Steiner:

We could just talk about the tallis and be done with it.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Well, I do feel that a tallis incorporates a lot specifically my, I’m very proud of my tallis, but let’s talk about other stuff as well.

Marc Steiner:

Yes. So there’s some things here I think that are really important for people to understand from the very top, and one has to do, and I’m going to start in a political way if you don’t mind.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Please. Life is political, specifically when you’re trans and Jewish

Marc Steiner:

Can’t get away from

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Reality. You can then you shouldn’t try to, I think in my opinion.

Marc Steiner:

I agree completely. I’ve been that way since I was a kid, so I understand, yes, but I want to talk about you as a Jewish woman and as a rabbi, as an activist. And so I really want to explore your journey as a Jewish person to stand up for Palestinian rights, which in many ways is very hard. I mean, I can remember decades back, it was very hard to do that. I mean, physical fights broke out sometimes in meetings around this. So I’m going to hear about your journey that opened you up to the very difficult subject as a Jew to say, Israel is in the wrong here and what we’re doing is wrong.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Well, here’s what I need to start just to place this for a second. So I will say over the past years I’ve been involved in this work even way before October 7th. First time I did a tour of the West Bank was back in 2017 already at the time Breaking the Silence, which are Israeli soldiers or former Israeli soldiers who are literally breaking the silence on a lot of the violations that come with occupations specifically in the West Bank. So obviously I’ve been doing this for a while, but over the past few years and I think it has gotten even more intense. So over the past 19, 20 months, I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who are trying in their own wards to deconstruct or undo the Zionist upbringing that they grow up with the way way they were taught about Israel. Usually not in a one most American Jews at least. I think that is changing a lot, but I don’t say most, A lot of American Jews didn’t necessarily grow up with anti Palestinian hatred so much. I apologize for the sirens. It is New York City.

Marc Steiner:

That’s okay

Rabbi Abby Stein:

A lot. Even people who didn’t necessarily grow up in a lot of them coming from families, which used to be, I don’t know, I haven’t seen any recent studies, but used to be the majority opinion of American Jews with dislike, quote unquote two state solution and so on. Even so, they grew up with this really utopian version of Israel, this a lot of Zionism, a lot of Israel is always right and we should never bash Israel. A lot of those ideas. There’s literally a film now called Israelism, which has a lot. I know Simone is a good friend who is the protagonist of the film, and then Aaron who was one of the producers, but also a good friend and another fellow queer Jew. So I have a lot of conversations with people around that. And one of the things that’s very interesting, because I think for the first time in my life there is suddenly something that I was told as a child that I am really happy about.

I never had to do that because I wasn’t raised Zionist quite the opposite. I was raised extremely anti-Zionist. If I go back into my ancestors and something that I guess now I can say with pride, neither one of my parents, neither any four of my great grandparents or any eight of my great great grandparents, and I can keep going though. I will say by the time I get to my great great grandparents, I don’t have 16, I have less because my family loves marrying cousins. But that’s a separate conversation. But the point being, as far as I know, I have no direct ancestors at any point that were ever Zionists and quite the opposite. Specifically a lot of people who were part of the religious anti-Zionist community, I wouldn’t even say a lot. Basically everyone who’s part of the religious anti-Zionist community in the US knows my grandfather.

That’s my father’s father’s father who was kind of the lead speaker at anti-Israel protests going back to the early 1950s. So I was raised in a religious anti-Zionist community. Now I have to say a few things, religious antis, Zionism is very different than kind of what I call social justice and but they are not unrelated, but specifically the parts that I’m so grateful for as much as I with a lot of the reasoning and a lot of the other ideas that I grew up with generally and including around Israel and Zionism. One admittedly really easy part was that I just was never Zionist. Israel was never great. Israel was always a horrible, and I was told stuff that I wouldn’t repeat to this day negative stuff about Israel and about Zionists that I wouldn’t repeat and I’m not going to repeat stuff that involved the Holocaust

Marc Steiner:

Can I ask you a question? I’m not going to ask you to tell me what it is. What do you mean you wouldn’t repeat it? I mean, what’s

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Meaning some things… like, I was told to blame Zionism for certain atrocities that I don’t want to even want to do to this day.

Things that happened to the Jewish people and things, I think people might figure out what I’m talking about. And people who know religious anti Zionists, at least the ones that I grew up with in Williamsburg could have a sense of that. But at the core, what is so important, because you asked me to talk about how I got to this journey in some ways I had a leg up. I was never indoctrinated. I think specifically after watching Israelism, I feel very comfortable saying I was never brainwashed into liking Zionism, into liking Israel in any way or form. The reasoning might’ve been different than where I am today, even though it has similarities, but I just was never there. It was a very brief second, I would say between 2012 to 2014, where as part of my rejection of what I was told growing up and part of leaving the Hasidic community, I kind of was like, okay, I guess now I have to be a Zionist, which is something that happens to a lot of people who leave an anti-Zionist religious community because such a big part of your identity.

So if you reject, you reject everything. But then as soon as I got to know what secular religion, what Zionism really is, it never worked for me. I never bought into. And I would say for me, the final breaking point of my very short attempt to be like, oh, maybe design thing is interesting, was ironically going on a birthright trip, which I feel very complicated about and I don’t think people should go on that trip, but that’s a separate conversation, which I didn’t know much at the time coming directly out of the Hasidic community. But that was kind of the end of it, kind of seeing the really unrealistic version of the land that they were given. But I will say though the core of religious anti-Zionism, there’s two main parts to it. Almost all Hasidic communities, maybe Haba notwithstanding though, even though Haba is very nationalist, they’re rather Jewish nationalists and they are Zionists, they don’t fully adhere to what we call today modern political Zionism either, but I’m not going to talk about Habad.

But outside of Habad, the vast majority of Hasidic communities are at least nominally anti-Zionist or non Zionist, and most of them don’t support the Israeli government. My government, I don’t just mean the current government, any government and Israeli government of everything. And there’s two parts to it. There’s the fact that Israel is not a religious state and Hebrew does a term for that which is called Medina, which means a state that fully follows Jewish law. We’re talking to an extreme where people break Shabbat are punished, where all the laws are basically they have an issue with Israel not being a theocracy. That is a problem that exists basically for all Hasidic and most Haredi, most ultra orthodox people across the board. But then there’s an additional part which is a belief that again, most Hasidic communities have, which is that the state or the idea of what we have been praying for the ion Zion that we have been praying for three times a day, this idea of a Jewish state of redemption of what’s called the gula that we have been waited for, this is not it.

And more importantly, they believe that that is something that will become directly from heaven as opposed to something that we will fight for. And this is actually something very interesting because in many ways when people bring up this, how can you not be Zionist and bring up this, we pray about it three times a day and bring up this consistent Jewish yearning and I’m like, are you out of your mind? This is what we’ve been waiting for. I grew up with a very exotic version of the temple, like the times when the temple existed and this yearning for a better word, I was told that when the Messiah is going to come or they have a term La Lavo and the world to come, not necessarily in heaven the way a lot of Christianity thinks about it, but just like in a world to come on earth, even like in a perfect utopia, there will be no wars, there will be no violence.

Everything that we want will grow on trees. There will be an economy that it’s very much not capitalist and so many ideals in this yearning that we have persona to come and tell me that modern Zionism and Israel, this is what we have been waiting for. It is emotionally extremely disappointing and unacceptable, but also I think it says something really bad. You think this is what we’ve been waiting for D. But that is the part where I think religious anti Zionism has something to tell any person who thinks about Z Zionism in Israel on an emotional level, but their biggest concern is religion. The biggest concern is that Jews are not allowed the very short version. Jews are not allowed to have a state until it’s given by God usually through a messiah that’s going to come riding on a donkey from heaven. I’m not sugarcoating or anything. I do not believe that there is going to be a messiah coming riding on a donkey from heaven.

Marc Steiner:

Wait, wait, wait, many of you don’t believe Messiah is coming.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

I said, I do not believe in a messiah that’s going to come riding on a donkey. I think that as a human part, I think Messiah to a lot of people throughout history for 2000 years has been a wish that was more abstract than specific. It was more this idea of an idealistic time, which you already be seen in the prophets where everyone sits in their vineyards and under their F vines and there’s no war and so on. All of those beautiful things which are beautiful ideals, but to me that’s not a belief. I think it’s a world that I want to work towards and a world that we should work towards. But again, this is another part where I think it’s very easy and people love to take religious anti Zionists and be like, they’re different. Some of it is different, but some of it is actually ideas that we can relate to it.

But I want to say another part to it. My grandmother was born in Jerusalem, raised in Jerusalem pre state, my grandmother’s family, basically all of her siblings, she has I know eight to 10 siblings, I’ll have to count, but they all live there. She comes from a family that is part of what’s called the old issue. They’re part of this core religious community that predates not just the state, they predate modern Zionism. You’re usually defined as communities that have been there since before 1880, which is when the first modern political Zionism began and the first organized what they call aliya going up to the land began. And they have a very strong connection to the land. Give you an example. My grandmother has a brother who tries never to sleep outside of Jerusalem and never to leave the holy land. And to him that means he wouldn’t even go to yah because that’s not considered a holy land.

These people who are very attached to the land have been for a very long time, but their attachment to the land to me sounds a lot more to when I talk to Palestinians and here dare attachment to the land then Zionism. And to give an example two, actually two of my grandmother’s siblings are currently judges and one of them is part of the chief kind of high court of what’s called, which is the flagship anti-Zionist institution in Jerusalem. So there are these people who have a very strong relationship to what it means to be attached to the land or what it means to have a big part of it, both as Jews for 2000 years and as people who have literally been there their entire lives while at the same time a very clear and I would say a moral clarity and opposition to any form of political Zionism and to the state. And there is a part in that that is just political. It’s not just religious. My grandmother more than once would say stuff like Zionism destroyed my country.

And I will be honest and say that every time my grandmother said that as a child, we all made fun of her and we would be like, come on Bobby, what really we did grow up the Hasidic community is unfortunately quite racist. And we’re like, yeah, really you want the Arabs to be in charge? And I’m not going to go into that whole thing. I was definitely, I was not a well-behaved child and teenager. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but the point being, the point I’m trying to get to, and I think for me it allowed me to have both a strong relationship to what it means to be related to this land, both from a historical perspective and from a very little like my dad was born in Jerusalem. My grandmother’s great-grandmother is buried on the Mount of olives. I can go back to any point basically since the 16th century and I will have a direct ancestor that is buried somewhere either around Jerusalem or earlier they lived up north around fer.

The point is there’s this very strong connection. There’s very strong boat, religious, spiritual, and just human connection with a very strong understanding that the state of Israel is just not it. And as a result, I will say, and people always like to tell me that most religious anti Zionists outside of the Tura character, which is T character, is the kind of people that you will see showing up at a lot of pro-Palestinian protests and so on. I will say it very clearly, I do not like them. Their motivations are far from good and I have a lot of opinions about them, but outside of them and I did not grow up with them. I grew up just in general. I knew a lot of them, A lot of them live in Williamsburg, but it’s not what I was raised with. But just general anti-Zionism, it’s very easy to write it off.

That has nothing to do with kind of caring for Palestinian based anti-Zionism and it doesn’t fully because those are they religious people whose religious beliefs don’t really let them care for anyone who isn’t them, which is unrelated. I will say a lot of Hasidic people unfortunately are equal opportunity haters. They’re not necessarily racist, they’re just everyone who isn’t them in a both spiritual and human way. But we’re not going to talk about that. But there are parts of it. For example, even this religious anti-Zionist rabbinical cord that I mentioned that I have two great uncles who are judges on it and so on, and I disagree with 99% of what those people stand for and what they do. But one of the things for example that I saw after about a few weeks after October 7th, which is a letter that they released and to them because Israel they believe has religiously no right to exist.

The actions that Israel is taking like killing Palestinians is unjustifiable because who gave you the right to kill people? And that is a part that is very relatable. So I wanted to just put that out there. So for me, as much as I had to redefine and rethink a lot of my ideas and I would say my anti-Zionism and the way I approach Israel today has a lot more to do with the fact that I have gotten to know how Palestinians are treated and I’ve gotten to see really what’s going on on the ground in the West Bank in Gaza and I’ve gotten to most importantly actually make friends. I’m not talking people acquaintance, I’m talking really close friends who are Palestinian. It was definitely easier to get to that point when I never had to deconstruct Zionism. I wasn’t raised with Zionism, I never had to get rid of it, so to speak. What I will say is that for me really getting to know what’s going on on the ground it’s about has really galvanized me to fight for it. There is a world in which if Zionists love to say that it was like a land with no people for people with no land, which obviously we all know was never accurate,

But in a hypothetically if that was the case, if really if Zionism was founded on an actually actual empty land, which it wasn’t, and if the state of Israel existed on a land that really didn’t have any other occupants, which very importantly again that was never the case, it’s still very possible that I wouldn’t be a huge supporter with the way I grew up and I probably would’ve still grown up with an opposition to it, but there wouldn’t be anything pushing me to fight it. It sounds really cool, even emotional, I admit to this day, every time I go visit even now I spend a month in Palestine with rabbis for ceasefire in a lot of other groups on a tour that was organized by a Palestinian group underground and I still get emotional. I grew up only with the Hebrew alphabet speaking Yiddish and Hebrew, and it is emotional to see people who think that they have accomplished what they have yearned through for 2000 years, which again, I think it’s very sad that that’s what you were yearning for. I think we were yearning for something way better and more important, but there is a lot of emotions to it. So what really has galvanized me, what keeps me going to keep fighting is Palestinians is the plight of Palestinians, is the fact of people being kept under occupation, under siege and now genocide for so long. So that is kind of my own personal journey, which is constantly evolving

Marc Steiner:

What you concluded with at this moment. Before we jump into the other part of this conversation, I want to explore a minute because it goes to the heart. I think of the dilemma for a lot of Jewish people when it comes to Israel and Palestine, which what you described is your emotional attachment to a place, and I relate to that completely. I mean you grow up with a prayer next year in Jerusalem, it’s always in your head, even if you’re not a Zionist, it’s in your head.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

I would say I want to you mention next year in Jerusalem. There’s something very interesting that I love to tell people about it because people always try to use that against anti-Zionist Jews and I’m like, I don’t know what you’re talking about because I have been holidays in Jerusalem with my family. I’ve been both in religious context for holidays in Jerusalem and in after leaving the community, and we still say next year in Jerusalem while being in Jerusalem, which makes it very clear and obvious that the Jerusalem that exists now, that the state that exists now is not what we have ever meant when we sat next year in Jerusalem.

Marc Steiner:

I like that

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Analysis. The prayer of Hanah Ian is an anti ionist prayer because we are saying it right now and it’s said for people who live in Jerusalem and the old city and in the new city to this day as they are dear, which makes it very clear that we’re not talking about the current state of Israel. We’re not talking about current Zionism, we’re not talking about current Jerusalem, we’re talking about something different.

Marc Steiner:

I have to digression, which is not unusual for this kind conversation. But so what you just said, have you ever used that in shul in a sermon in synagogue talking

Rabbi Abby Stein:

About I have. I have, yes,

Marc Steiner:

I’m sure you have.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Yes,

Marc Steiner:

Because I’ve never really heard it expressed that way.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

I mean, it’s everything about it. It’s like every prayer, the fact that religious and even not just, I’m not talking about religious ISTs. I’m talking rated people, even religious people are not outside and religious Zionists and conservative Jews and reform Jews, everyone you say all of these prayer, I mean there are some people, very hardcore religious Zionists, usually the same people who are pushing to go up to the temple mountain and so on, but they are a tiny, tiny, they make up probably 1% of 1%. They’re very small. They maybe have changed some of the things, but for most people, I mean there’s the reform movement which had originally removed all of it because they didn’t believe in an attachment to a land, which is a whole other conversation. But people who do say those prayers say it even on the ground, they pray about it right now, which makes it very clear that they have that they know and believe that we haven’t gotten to any of this yet, that whatever this modern state is is not what we have been praying for.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m going to come back to what you just said, but I want to talk a bit about your own journey and struggle

Inside the Jewish world. Inside the Orthodox world as a young transgender woman and the pain of that struggle, but also the journey you took. It was pretty amazing. I mean for you to have done what you’ve done and to stand out and affirm who you are as a woman and stand up to the power of this super orthodox, Hasidic Jewish world and losing so much of those around you who loved you because you stood up. Describe that journey for us so people can really understand who you are and what you went through to get to the place that you are.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

How much time do you have? We

Marc Steiner:

Got about 10.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

You got about 10 minutes. You were going to say 10 minutes.

Marc Steiner:

I was going to say the thing with smart ass, but I decided not to

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Because obviously this is a long story. I wrote a book about it you did called Becoming Eve, which came out in 2019. I have a second book coming out in September and I’m working on a few other ones. My book Becoming Eve was just a play also named Becoming Eve that just ran off Broadway through the New York Theater Workshop. The point that I’m trying to get at, I’ve been telling this story for 10 years and still haven’t told everything.

Obviously there’s a lot and I think that’s the case for everyone. I think, and I want to say this, I think every human being has an interesting story. I do admit that I tell people a lot that my before and after pictures tend to be a lot more eye catching than a lot of other ones, but that is to no credit of my own. It’s just by chance of where I was born into and so on. So I want to put that out there. What was it? I want to try a very basic, let’s see, maybe I can get it down to a few minutes of what it was to grow up and the struggle around that. So I think one of the things I like to say a lot is that a lot of L-G-B-T-Q people, I think that is true for gay lesbian and bisexual pansexual people and so on.

And even more so for people who try to figure out their gender and deal with their gender. A lot of people identify a moment, an aha moment, a light switch moment, whatever you want to call it, where they’re like, oh, okay, this is not who I am. And what’s interesting to me is that I tried and I tried a lot, including in therapy, which I’m a huge fan of to sometimes I go back to was there a moment in my life where I ever internally identified or was a boy? And there the first earliest memories that I have are me thinking why does everyone think I’m a boy? Which again, everyone has their own story, but that was for me, the case. It was a struggle. People tell me a lot, oh, you must’ve been struggling with your gender. And I’m like, my sexuality took me a while to figure out exactly my gender. I never struggled with, I think people were struggling with my gender and I struggled on how to express that and how to live

With that gender, but to me, there was never a time where I was like, okay, I’m a boy. Fine. And then something happened and I’m no longer fine with that. I just was, it never made any sense to me. And there’s this conscious memory that I have when I was four of this very strong realization that, oh, everyone thinks that I’m a boy and now how do I deal with this? Because I don’t think that’s true. And there was a lot of different stages throughout my life. There’s a prayer that’s also in my book, something I wrote when I was six years old of I want to wake up as a girl growing up with this very strong religious belief that God can do everything, which is what I was told as a child. And I was like, okay, so why can’t I just be a girl?

Then at some point it involved my own, I was eight or nine years old at the time, but this idea that I can do a full body transplant, which is one of those things that I was thinking about at some point, and then all of those ideas struggling at least consciously for a good nine years. And I remember then when I was 12 and I remember the moment that it happened because that I guess was light bulb going off moment where I was just like, when you grow up in such a gender segregated community that in just the segregated community as a whole, I would say there were two segregations in the community I grew up in, I grew up in Williamsburg in New York City, but everything and everyone around me was specific. So the Hasid community as much as I can specifically for children and for teens, they keep you segregated from the outside world.

And there’s some people who go their entire lives like that. Both of my parents don’t have a single friend that isn’t part of the community. And I mean, I’m not saying there are some adults in the community that work outside the community and maybe do have friends, but at least the ideal is to just be on their own. So there’s that segregation of we are Jewish, we do talk a lot about us being Hasidic Jews, but we don’t necessarily separate ourselves from other Orthodox Jews are nots. So there’s this Jewish identity that’s very big part of who we are. And then within the community there is this really intense gender segregation. I’m talking like at every community gathering a literal wall at weddings, there is a wall, men and women.

So there’s this two parts. There’s like you are a Jew, you are a boy. And I would say for me in that moment, the closest thing that I can identify to an aha moment was when I was 12 and I remember very clearly it was the first time I got kicked out of classroom because of questions that I asked that resulted from this idea of I can no longer trust anyone because I have this very strong, supposedly I’m a boy, I’m going to an all boy school, I am in synagogue, I’m on the men’s side at weddings, I’m on the men’s side. I always belong to one side and that is 100% wrong. I never really struggled with that that much. It was just like everyone is wrong and that’s it. Why would I trust and accept anything else that I’m told around religion?

That was a really big moment because here’s what I’m going to say. By the time I left eight years later when I was 20, it wasn’t just because of my gender and sexuality. It was almost, it was a religious decision, it was a theological decision. But what put me down that kind of track of to start asking a lot of those questions was that moment. And then I remember it was in eighth grade and I asked a question about something in the Talmud that we were studying, if it’s real, basically questioning the validity of something that Talmud says, which again, I’m not going to say there are no other specific people who question it, but I will say there aren’t many 12 year olds who do. I think a lot of people who do question, which for me later ended up leading down to questioning everything, the validity of the Bible.

Does God exist as Judaism? Right? All of those questions, I think a lot of people get to that, but usually it takes a bit longer. It would’ve taken me a lot longer if I didn’t have that moment of realizing that I just can’t trust what I’m being told. I will say there’s a lot of traumatic moments. There’s a moment when I was writing my book for example, I had a vague memory of something that happened when I was four that involved me trying to take matters into my own hand, more details in the book, but we’re going to keep it PG 13 on here. And I had this memory and I remember that my mom caught me and to this day, and I’ve tried by myself, I’ve tried exposure therapy, I’ve tried talk which tried different ways of trying to uncover that memory and I start shaking physically if I try to do that, there’s a lot of trauma attached to it.

And throughout my life there was because gender plays such a strong role of who you are, it was very traumatic. My entire wedding is a blurb. I got married when I was 18, arranged marriage, and it was a blurb because I was feeling, for lack of a better word, traumatized by the fact that this is not who it’s supposed to be. I’m on the wrong side of this literal wall separating men and women. It was constantly there. But those were those from when I was 12 to 20. There were those two parts that went together. I tried to find different ways of dealing or praying or I am wearing the shirt that says Gay the pray away. I dunno if you can read that.

Marc Steiner:

It’s “Gay the pray away.”

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Yeah, it’s a twist on pray the gay away. This is gay. The pray away. I would say for a very long time I tried to pray the trans away, literally trying or just trying to figure out different ways of how can I deal with this reality? And obviously there was no way in the Hasidic community, the Hasid community is, I used to joke when I started doing my activist work that I want the Hasidic community to become transphobic and what do I mean by that? I don’t want anyone to be transphobic. But growing up in the Hasidic community, I didn’t know that trans people exist. I didn’t know that there were other trans people until I was 20. When I went on the internet for the first time, there was no conversation. No one said anything negative. No one even said anything homophobic to be honest, really, but homophobic.

Marc Steiner:

How old were you then?

Rabbi Abby Stein:

I was 20. I was married and I have a son. Yes. I was 20 when I first got on the internet. Yeah,

Marc Steiner:

So you were 20 years old before you even understood,

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Before I even have words for it before I knew there were other people like me. And I will say the closest that I got when I was 16, I got very into Kabbalah. I got very into Jewish mysticism and I was reading and specifically there’s a book called The Doors to Reincarnation, and I have that text, it’s going to be actually my book coming out in September, this actual text that talks about how sometimes there’s a mismatch between someone’s body and someone’s soul, which to me was very easy to just be like the soul is identity. It very much is the soul, is basically the kaist idea to talk about who you are beyond your flesh and blood. And that had a very positive impact on me because it was, and I think it’s part of the reason why even stayed in the community for an extra few years between 16 and 20, was the fact that I started finding some texts that started making sense to me.

I still didn’t know that there are trans people out, so it wasn’t like I knew that if I leave the community I will find more support and those texts talk about what made a bit sense to me. But other than that, I had, I didn’t know the word trans. I didn’t know there’s other people. I really objectively had no idea that it exists and a big part of the work that I’ve been doing, including sometimes making noise, which some people are like, oh, you’re just trying to make trouble. And I’m like maybe a bit. But the bigger part of it is that I want Hasidic people to know that trans people exist and that has been accomplished. Probably one of my biggest accomplishment accomplishments, I would say it out loud very clearly that I consider is the fact that Hasidic people, kids and adults right now know that trans people exist.

It comes with a lot of hate. It doesn’t come with a lot of acceptance. It’s not in any way in a positive way, but just to look on the fact that I was the first person has been raised Hasidic as far as I know, and I think I would know. I don’t think there’s any other person who has been raised Hasid who came out before I came out. There was a lot of trans people in the closet, but one who came out publicly and since there have been more than a dozen, so it’s very obviously changed something and I’m very proud of that.

Marc Steiner:

It should be.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

But the struggle in the community wasn’t as much a struggle with transphobia than a struggle for I exist.

Marc Steiner:

I mean because what you’re describing for people who don’t know it, I mean the hasta communities, the super Orthodox communities are like these isolated medieval worlds.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Yeah, well, I would say by now, not as isolated as the community leaders want because of the internet,

But still very, I would still say that I don’t know, this is I would say an educated guess, but I would imagine that about 50% of the community have no internet access whatsoever, and the other 50% have versions of a lot of people just have what they call the kosher filtered internet, and then there’s a lot of people who secretly and publicly have full internet access. I’d say as far for the community leaders, the fact that 50% do have internet access is a huge problem. They have literally, you can look that up in 2012, which was actually the first time I ever went to a stadium. The first time I was ever at a stadium was to protest the internet. I’m not kidding. Look up the city field anti internet gathering in 2012, which is almost ironic. It’s a fair nory stating of the protests, the internet. Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

So your transformation out of a deeply religious Hasidic and non Zionist world as a Jew…

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Not just “non,” an anti-Zionist world,

Marc Steiner:

Yes, anti, and your transition and the struggle you went through to transform into who you are as a woman. And when you see the struggle of Palestinians today, to me there’s kind of a thread here that ties them together.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

There is

Marc Steiner:

Because I can remember,

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Can I add some more to maybe it’s me adding words into your mind. I think for me, a big part of what I’m seeing as the struggle is the struggle to get people to listen to your struggle and to believe you.

So much of the conversation in the US, at least around trans people and so much about the conversation about Palestinians revives around people not believing the struggles and or blaming you for your struggles saying that it’s your fault you did something wrong. And that’s why I occupy that kind of like this old abuser note of, look what you made me do. The amount of time, the amount of people that I hear saying that the reason there is all these pushback against trans people coming from the person who shall not be named running this country and all of this hateful, racist, and harmful people. The amount of times they say, oh, all of this pushback comes because you asked for it because you started talking publicly about who you are because you did something wrong. And that’s why we need to discriminate against you is so similar to what the same kind of talk around Palestinians, you are occupied because you did something wrong, because you refused. That’s me saying it. It’s not exactly how they say it, but ultimately they’re saying you refuse to let your land get taken away peacefully or get split up peacefully. You refused to. The rule of this country that we have decided to support and so much is what we would call blaming the victim. And that is one of the ways where I see it so aligned. But ultimately I think the very short version to, I spent a lot of time out in college and after to study the history of empires and the history of power and imperialism generally, and I know the US is not technically an imperialist power because we don’t have a kink even though it looks like we’re about to have one.

So there’s all the way they only survive on creating very specific in and out groups and by having people behave a certain way. And in that way, both every minority, every group that dissents from the consensus is a threat. It’s why authoritarian societies are almost exclusively homophobic and transphobic because it tends to be that people who fight for their identities and fight for their own lives are not controlled that easily. To give you an example, something that hit me yesterday, I was at a big ice rally yesterday, marched for four hours, not fully squared. Then we went to the federal building all the way ended up in Washington Square Park and I was out and looking around. It was massive, thousands if not tens of thousands of people out. And I’m looking around and I tell my friend, this feels halfway like pride.

There were rainbow flags just looking around. There’s so many queer people. I would gander to say, and I don’t think it would be a lie, that maybe as much as at least a third, maybe even half of the people there were queer. And it wasn’t an L-G-B-T-Q rally in any way, a form, I mean obviously it’s attached in the homophobia and transphobia of this administration and their anti-immigrant rhetoric goes hand in hand. But this was a rally about ice and we were all there for that reason. But it ends up being so many queer people, and I don’t think that’s by chance throughout history, civil rights movements and people that movements that have fought for justice has had a lot of queer people. And the reason for that is because queer people know what it means to struggle against the government, know what it means to struggle against the status quo.

Well, and most importantly, we’re not as easily controlled. Similar to what I mentioned earlier, how in school I started questioning religion because of my identity being like, I can’t trust you. L-G-B-T-Q people and queer people have a very similar distrust of power, distrust of government, rightfully, and as a result, we’re not easily controlled. A big reason why authoritarians hate L-G-B-T-Q people is exactly that in part, sometimes it also has a religious part to it and just bigotry generally and hating of the other. And sometimes they don’t actually care about queer people. They just use queer people as a wedge issue and so on. All of those are real facts, but the reality is that we understand the struggles of minorities. We understand the struggles of the oppressed people. That’s why the fight for immigrants and the fight for Palestinians and the fight against occupation all over the world, whether it is in Palestine or in Ukraine or in Sudan or in Haiti and so many against imperial power in West Africa and so on. All of those things are intertwined both in the sense of we understand, which is something very interesting because it’s also very biblical. It’s very Jewish.

We’re told to use an example. There’s literally in the Torah when we’re told that we have to be nice to the stranger. There’s one of the commandments that is repeated the most in the Torah. The first five books of the Bible is a version of you should love the Stranger. And one of the times the reasoning given for that is, is because you understand the soul of the stranger for you strangers in Egypt. And I think that goes beyond just that one historical memory of something that let’s beyond a theater didn’t happen, which is beside the conversation, but it’s part of identity, but it’s also a general, something that is true for Jews. There is a reason why throughout history, at least since emancipation Jews were generally more liberal, more progressive. Why the bun? You have something like the bun. It’s like Jewish socialist, progressive, why

Progressive politics have always had so many Jews, everyone from Bernie Sanders to down on the ground in New York City and so on. Because we really understand these are all intertwined, not just as a moral issue when we say no one is free until everyone is free. It’s not just a moral statement, it’s a reality. So yes, we know that the same people who want to oppress Palestinians are also transphobic and homophobic are also are also sexist and misogynistic and so on. Yes, there are some people maybe who only carry some of those prejudices and not all, but as a bigger picture. They are all related. And I will dare to say that it’s also related to antisemitism

Marc Steiner:

So much there. The time we have left, I want to pick on something you said and please kind of tie some of these things together. I mean, I was thinking as you were throwing your stats out as well, that people don’t realize that 70% of all the white civil rights workers in the South were Jews.

I mean, there’s a reason those things happen. Course. So the question is, given everything you’ve just said and that reality, what does it take to touch that root of Jewish life of being Jewish to come to the understanding that we have to end the oppression of Palestinians and unite to build a different place where we all live together. I have this poster that I got in Cuba in 1968 and still sits on my wall on my study. It’s a map of the entire holy land. It’s got a Palestinian flag on one side and an Israeli flag on the other. And it says one state, two people’s, three faiths, which has kind of been my mantra since then. What does it take to turn around the division and the hatred that allows us to see what we’re seeing now inside of Israel Palestine and how do we turn the Jewish community into understanding who we are and how we have to embrace a different future?

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Well, I don’t think there’s one answer of what it takes. I do think there are a few things that can be said. I mean, first and foremost, I need to say that there are some amazing groups that are doing this work very successfully.

Those people love to talk about how we’re still a minority, how anti-Zionists or even non Zionists or even anti well anti occupation is actually probably a majority opinion, at least according to the latest pose. I think anti is a majority opinion amongst American Jews. Not talking about Israel, that’s a whole other conversation. But even the other parts, we have grown extremely fast. If the trend in the growth of percent, the percentage growth of anti-Zionist Jews or just non Zionist Jews involved with groups like JVP and if not now, and Jewish racial economic justice and so on, EAPs going the trend in percent and how fast we have grown. We’re going to be the majority of at least non-Orthodox Jews in the US fairly quickly, a lot sooner than the establishment would want to admit. The reality is that a lot of the work that has to be done is being done very successfully.

Groups like JVP and if not now, and JF Fresh have more than doubled just in the last two years and they’re growing extremely fast. The amount of Jews are becoming more and more open to something fundamental needs to change. And I’m talking beyond just, oh, the government needs to change. The majority of American Jews are Antibi B and anti-car, Israeli government. Every study shows that, again, American Jews. But to go even deeper than that, to the fundamental problems, a lot of the work that’s already being done is being done well. And those include education. Those include providing people with resources, providing people with a solid alternative, which again, I wasn’t raised like that, but there are most American Jews my age were raised with a very strong Zionism. So really to show Jewish community. And I have these conversations with people daily who are part of those communities and I see that people who are becoming more open.

So I want to say education is a very strong part, providing an alternative of a Judaism. That to me is so interesting because I grew up being told that Zionism is the antis of Judaism. That’s where I was raised being told in the Hasidic community, obviously it exists, but even on a progressive Judaism, not just a religious Judaism that is anti-Zionist, but a progressive Judaism that is anti-Zionist, that is growing extremely fast and it’s truly beautiful. And I’m not just talking beautiful on that, but I’m talking like events that I do. I’ve hosted meals for every holiday. I have been with people singing together. To use a random example, we had a group of people who wanted to celebrate Shabbat at the JVP national meeting that had over 2000 people this year. And the conversation sometimes got down to the nitty gritty of how to practice and how to observe for ourselves that had nothing to do with outsiders, just like there’s a rich Judaism.

And the final thing that I would say about them that I think would be the most helpful is the same thing that I say about L-G-B-T-Q people and about trans people. It’s sharing personal stories and actually getting to know people. Every study has shown that people who know trans people in real life actually know them as friends are way more likely, I don’t know the exact numbers, but by a long shot to be accepting and to be welcoming. And I found the same to be when it comes to Israel, when it comes to Palestine, when it comes to the occupation, when it comes to so on, people who actually know Palestinians. And I’m talking beyond just knowing, for example, in Israel, most people, the Palestinians they know are the service workers and so on, which is a whole other conversation to talk about. I’m talking really getting to know, because I know for me that was a huge change.

And it is. I constantly see it. It’s like I want to use one of my friends just because every few months someone else decides that they’re going to get me. We’re talking about the fact that I’m friends with Linda Sarsour. I don’t know if you know who she is, but someone who I got to know really well as a friend. And I keep getting, literally yesterday someone said that I support Zoran for mayor in New York because of my support for Linda. A very weird statement to make. But for me, it’s like you can’t come and tell me that she’s a hateful person because I know her. We have had real conversations, not in public, just actual conversations and so many others. You cannot tell me that all Palestinians, hey Jews, when I know dozens, if not hundreds of Palestinians, and I’ve met counts of Palestinians, who are some of the most amazing people that I know.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, me too.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

So really I think building those bridges. And I want to say I don’t think that that’s what’s needed. Sorry, I don’t think that’s what should be needed. We shouldn’t need, we should listen to people who are being oppressed. And as I said earlier with trans people, so much of the struggle here is that people refuse to listen to us and to believe us. But if we’re asking just realistically, what I think would be very helpful is to actually build those connections. I have friends, well, I’m trying to think if I still have friends who are hardcore Zionists. I feel like most of those people either stopped talking to me or I stopped talking to them per se. But people who would still say they are vaguely supportive of Israel’s existence are supportive of versions of Zionism. Those who know Palestinians are extremely ANC occupation, extremely opposed to the war, extremely are a lot more people that we can work with. So I think that is the other big thing that we need to focus on.

Marc Steiner:

Well, I think it’s incredible how you weave together the parts of your life that are also parts of the struggle.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

They are, I want to say I didn’t even have to weave them together. They have always been related. We just need to realize it.

Marc Steiner:

To say that what I meant was that the struggle for Palestinian rights, the struggle and the oppression of Palestinians, the struggle of trans and queer people in this country and the world, and to do it while maintaining and bringing the soul of Judaism through all of that and tying it together

Rabbi Abby Stein:

And rainbow colors. But

Marc Steiner:

Yes, and you tell us so about then. So I just want to thank you so much, rabbi ab Stein for being here today. It’s been really a pleasure to talk to you and hearing your ideas and thoughts. I look forward to staying in touch and thanks for all that you’re doing.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Thank you, Marc, so much. It was an honor to talk to you and I’m looking forward to yes, to seeing you more.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Rabbi Abby Stein:

Thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you. Once again, thank you to Rabbi Abby Stein for joining us today and for all the work that she does. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program, our audio editor Alina Nelich, and producer Rosette Sewali for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News, we’re making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at s the real news.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you Rabbi Abby Stein for all you’ve done for being with us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/17/why-abby-stein-a-transgender-rabbi-raised-ultra-orthodox-stands-up-for-palestine/feed/ 0 539463 ‘We’re holding those dead babies with our hands’: Doctors returning from Gaza beg humanity to stop the carnage https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/10/were-holding-those-dead-babies-with-our-hands-doctors-returning-from-gaza-beg-humanity-to-stop-the-carnage/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/10/were-holding-those-dead-babies-with-our-hands-doctors-returning-from-gaza-beg-humanity-to-stop-the-carnage/#respond Tue, 10 Jun 2025 18:58:11 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=334675 Palestinian parents Muna Al-Aydi and Abdullah Abu Dakka stand beside their 2-year-old daughter Maryam Abu Dakka, who suffers from undiagnosed health conditions and is receiving treatment at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on June 8, 2025. Photo by Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images“This is a genocide happening, live streamed. And yes, you can see it online, you can see dead babies online, but we are actually holding those dead babies with our hands”]]> Palestinian parents Muna Al-Aydi and Abdullah Abu Dakka stand beside their 2-year-old daughter Maryam Abu Dakka, who suffers from undiagnosed health conditions and is receiving treatment at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on June 8, 2025. Photo by Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images

Doctors Sarah Lalonde, Rizwan Minhas, and Yipeng Ge have all recently returned to Canada from volunteer medical delegations in Gaza with a harrowing message for the rest of the world. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with all three doctors about what they saw and experienced attempting to provide medical care for patients in the midst of Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians.

Content Warning: This episode contains vivid descriptions of wartime conditions, genocide, violent physical injuries, and death.

Guest(s):

  • Dr. Sarah LaLonde is an emergency and family physician specializing in community, rural, and remote emergency medicine, with a particular focus on Indigenous communities
  • Dr. Rizwan Minhas is a Toronto-based physician specializing in sports and regenerative pain medicine, with extensive experience in emergency medicine.
  • Dr. Yipeng Ge is a primary care physician and public health practitioner based on the traditional, unceded, and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg in Ottawa, Canada.

Additional resources:

Credits:

  • Studio Production: David Hebden
  • Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. Today we’re going to talk with three physicians who’ve just returned from Gaza as we speak. The Israel’s war in Gaza is killed. At least 55,000. Palestinians wounded over 125,000 more. This war began when 1,130 Israelis were killed, who were held hostage. But now this war is out of control. Every day, hundreds and hundreds of people are being decimated, and as we begin this conversation, 36 more people, non-combatants were killed in Gaza. Our guests today have vast experience in war zones and in disasters. Dr. Rizwan Minhas is a Toronto-based physician. He specializes in sports and regenerative pain medicine, but his extensive experience across the globe and is deeply committed to global humanitarian medical efforts. Dr. Sarah LaLonde as an emergency and family physician who specializes in community, rural and remote emergency medicine, especially in indigenous communities. She’s worked in Albania, Togo, Chad, and fights against human trafficking in Quebec in Canada, and of course most recently came back from Gaza. Yipeng Ge is a primary care physician and public health practitioner based in Ottawa, Canada. He currently works and lives on the traditional Unseeded and Unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin on shop bag. He practices family medicine and refugee health and community health centers there and across the country.

So just once again, it’s a pleasure to have you all with us here. It’s also an honor for me to talk to the three of you who sacrificed so much to be on the front lines in Gaza to save lives. I mean, as we begin to record today, I was just getting texts from another friend in Gaza who just said another 50 people, mostly women and children have been killed as we were beginning this conversation right now. That’s just so important people to realize that. I’d like to just kind of step back for a minute, all three of you, and just, I’m really personally curious how and why you all ended up doing what you do, because it’s not as if you’re going into Gaza to come home and make thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars as a physician and you’re going into a war zone, you’re going into a place where you may not come back from. So I’m very curious about all of you, what motivated you, what happened to put you into gaze, into those front lines? And we can start with you, Sarah, please.

Dr. Sarah LaLonde:

Yeah, so my journey started in medical school. I had a lot of friends who were Jewish and I became quite interested in the country of Israel because they were talking about their experiences living there, and many had been or were going, and that got me thinking about Israel. At the end of my medical training, I decided to go to Israel. So I was there for about two weeks, and as the two weeks was finishing up, I had a really strong gut feeling that I should go on this tour that takes place in Hebron. So for those of us who are religious, that’s a place where Abraham, who’s the father of Islam, Christianity and Judaism buried his wife Sarah. And that town is in the West Bank and has a very specific history. And basically in Hebron at that time when I visited, there was I think a few hundred or a few thousand settlers.

There was I think about 3000 soldiers to guard the settlers. And there was about 200,000 Palestinians. And the settlers and the Palestinians are living quite closely, some even literally on top of each other in apartment buildings, et cetera. And while I was there, I was leaving the mosque, which is called the Ibrahim Mosque, and I saw that the border police was angry, so I decided to hide. And while I was hiding the Israeli border police killed a girl, a girl who was 17. She’s actually the same age as my brother, and that in Canada we’re not very accustomed to gun violence. So that really shook me up to be so close to a shooting. And then afterwards, because they closed the checkpoint, we were kind of stuck on the Palestinian side of Hebron and we went into a woman’s house and she was supposed to be feeding us lunch, but she was very shook up because there had just been a person killed outside her house.

And she was trying to manage her children who were behaving like normal children, playing with their bikes inside the house. And she was trying to feed us lunch, our guide saw the girl get shot, and he was also very shaken up. So when I had that experience, it helped me understand the type of fear that someone might have when they live under occupation. And that got me interested in thinking about what it might be like to live or to experience occupation living in the West Bank. And then that got me thinking about how I could contribute in the future as a physician. And one of those ways was by going to Gaza. So I was thinking of going to Gaza from 2016 until this year when I was honored to be able to go

Marc Steiner:

Yipeng?

Dr. Yipeng Ge:

Similar to Sarah, actually, I visited that mosque in Hebron, Abraham Mosque. I visited it back in March, 2023. I was with many other Harvard graduate and undergraduate students who were visiting Palestine to understand the context of historical and political context of Palestine. It was during that master’s that I was studying colonialism as a structural determinant of health. That’s actually been my own entry point into medicine and public health, learning about settler colonialism as it affects indigenous first nations, Inuit, Metis peoples in Canada or so-called Canada as a settler colonial state that has committed genocide of indigenous peoples on this land. And I didn’t choose to grow up in Canada. I came to Canada when I was four years old and learning about the history of indigenous peoples and the genocide of indigenous peoples on this land, I felt very compelled to do what I can to understand that more and to think about what does it look like to decolonize and to dismantle these systems of oppression here.

And that really led me to the field of study and learning about colonialism in other contexts and how it is so interconnected in how people experience health or poor health. And to understand that was actually just part of my public health studies. And during my own public health and preventive medicine training, I finished my family medicine training just two years ago, and it was during my public health and preventative medicine training that this increased violence in Gaza took place about 20 months ago. And my university that I was training at actually suspended me for social media posts related to Palestine. And it was actually just also photos from my own travels in Palestine just a few months before in that very year. And they later rescinded that suspension and then didn’t offer an apology. And I’ve been continuously thinking about ways to put my energy and put my time to places and spaces that deserve it, including going to Gaza and offering what I could to be a witness to genocide as a family doctor.

Marc Steiner:

That was ama.

Dr. Rizwan Minhas:

So you know what? I wish I studied this beforehand, but I’m talking about the conflict beforehand. Before I knew there was a conflict, I wasn’t aware how the conflict was, what phase it was taking, but the reason I went there was because from the fellow physicians that went there before me, they came back and they informed me of the stories that they were seeing, what they were seeing on the ground, that they were handing children with bullet wounds, they were handing children who needed amputations. There was no medical supply. But when I’m hearing these stories and when I was looking at the news, I was hearing something completely different. So then as a fellow colleague to these physicians who did go there prior to my travel in April of 2024, I said, this is true. I want to go see for myself and I want to be able to provide at least some aid because there’s no independent journalism there.

So I was trusting my fellow physicians. And when I got there, and I was shocked to see they were absolutely correct. So I went there just specifically to bring in some aid because at that time no aid was being allowed. And while traveling, I took a flight from here to Egypt, Cairo, and then I took a bus from Egypt, Rafa, and we crossed to the Palestinian side, to the Rafa Palestinian side. And when I was crossing, I saw exactly what they said was true. There were thousands of trucks lined up and not one was being allowed through. So then we and my fellow colleagues, we had about close to I think about a hundred thousand dollars of medications that we took along. So I went there just to provide some relief in regards to medical supplies and to provide relief to the doctors who are working tirelessly 24 7 and to give them a break. That was my main motivation for going there.

Marc Steiner:

I really want to give people a sense of what you all experienced, the things that I’ve watched you talk about and read about that you did. I mean, it has to be one of the most profoundly difficult things to do to be a physician, do the work you’re doing and working in a place that is just being slaughtered and destroyed. And you’re in the middle of all this trying to heal it and save as many lives as you can. And as I was reading about what you all did, it was almost difficult for me to comprehend in terms of what you experienced. I just would like you to all give a message to this world to make them really understand and hear and see how horrendous it is, what Godin’s lived through and what people are experiencing every day and the slaughter that is taking place. It’s almost unfathomable for me. I mean, it’s like a war beyond most wars that I’ve ever read about or experienced. And I know that it was all very emotional for all of you as well, despite the work you do. And I just like, let’s just rattle forth wan, you want to just begin?

Dr. Rizwan Minhas:

Absolutely. It is tough talking about it, especially when you see it. You can’t unsee it. I want the world to know that. Trust me when I say this, we want independent journalism to be there because now it’s our word against what the Israeli media or the army is trying to tell you. And trust me, the two opposite statements can’t be correct. I want them to know that all the doctors who’ve been there are seeing and are on the same page. This is a genocide happening, live streamed. And yes, you can see it online, you can see dead babies online, but we actually are holding those dead babies with our hands. We’re actually treating those babies with bullet wounds. We’re actually treating older folks who are dying because of a lack of medication that could easily be treated. I want them to know that this is not a battle of two religious sides or anything.

This is just a battle of humanity. I had a fellow physician, Dr. Mark Palmiter, who is, I believe he’s of Jewish faith, and he was working alongside with me over there, and our main focus was to save as many lives as you can. The thing is with doctors, we can’t stop a genocide. The political leaders around the world can. And I want the world to understand that yes, we may be able to provide aid, but you have to step up yourself and put pressure on your government and stand together with humanity and help stop this genocide. This is happening during our lifetime,

Marc Steiner:

What you just said, you can jump in here. It is our job at this moment, your job to tell your stories. Our job is to get your stories told so that we shine light into this darkness so we can do something to stop it. I mean, that’s part of what has to happen here.

Dr. Sarah LaLonde:

Yeah, there’s so much that we can say that people should know about it. I think that it’s important to know for people to understand the kind of visceral feeling that you have when you go into Gaza. Gaza is a post apocalyptic world. When you go into Gaza, you feel like you’re in some type of a post apocalyptic film. And I think that when we think about Gaza, we need to think about would we accept any of the things that we’re asking people in Gaza to accept. Like last week for example, we went to the Canadian parliament and there was a journalist there who asked us about tunnels being under the hospital.

Now, this is a question that’s been repeated to many physicians. You can watch many, many, many interviews on YouTube where they asked physicians if they saw tunnels underneath the hospital and we did not see tunnels. However, even if there were tunnels, does that justify the bombing of hospitals? Would we accept, let’s say my nephew was in the hospital and I find out my nephew was killed while he was in the hospital by a bomb, and someone said, oh, there was a tunnel underneath the hospital, so that’s why we bombed the hospital. Would we accept that? Would we accept that for our own children? Would we accept that for our indigenous people that we would bomb? I work up north in Cree nation and with the Inuit that we would accept that we would bomb the Cree Regional Hospital. And ironically, after we had that conversation, we discovered that there were tunnels underneath the building where we did the press conference.

We walked through them as we were going to another building. But do you think that as Canadians, we would accept that someone would bomb our parliament because there were tunnels underneath it? So I think that a lot of what we’re asking, what the world is asking Gaza to accept is not something we would accept for ourselves or our children. We have access to direct news because we’ve been to Gaza, we know people there, and a few times a week I receive videos of people being burnt alive more than once a week. Would we accept that our children in Canada would be burnt alive on a regular basis? I don’t think we would accept that. And I think when it comes to the land piece of it, after the world decided to create Israel, it was created after the Arab Israeli war, there was 22% of the land that was given to the Palestinian people.

And that’s the land where these crimes are being committed. And when we talk about forcible displacement, they’re asking those people to move off of their land. That would be like if Canada said to the Inuit people, oh, we don’t like having you here in Northern Quebec, so we’re going to put you on a train and we’re going to send you to America. Well, I don’t think there’s very many Canadians that would find that to be acceptable. So we have to think about, I mean, first of all, there’s international law and we can talk about what is okay and what is not okay according to law. But on a more visceral and gut and human feeling, we have to think about whether we would accept any of that for someone that we love.

Marc Steiner:

Yipeng?

Dr. Yipeng Ge:

I mean, reflecting on Sarah’s words, I think it’s really important that I think about the context and framework of settler colonialism because I agree with Sarah in all of these really important questions. And how has this happened to this extent? And to be able to see settler colonialism in its brutal, vicious, overt form of genocide is only possible because of this really pervasive dehumanization, not only through politic and rhetoric, but through very real actions on the Palestinian indigenous land and body. And we’ve seen that too in the context of Canada, right? That indigenous children have been starved in Canada by policies set by the first prime minister of this country, sir John A. McDonald, to be able to displace indigenous peoples off of their land into reservations. But I think it’s, at least for me, it’s different because I’ve learned about settler colonialism in almost this sterile academic environment.

And the ways in which it feels and acts in Canada and the US is still very pervasive, but is not this overt violence and brutality on a body. And we see it in resource grabs in decimating the land here, but to see it also for firsthand in Palestine, I’ve also seen it in the West Bank, the demolitions of homes and the displacement of people from their villages that they’ve lived for generations. But to see it in Gaza, it helps a sliver to understand that this is settler colonialism. But it does something I think to my soul, to our souls of seeing this, that this is what humans are capable of. And unfortunately, it’s a reminder of what humans have been capable of since time existed, perhaps because these atrocities in the form of holocaust and genocides have happened in the past and are actually happening in other parts of the world.

But I think the tagline for me is to know that Canada is so heavily complicit in what’s happening, and that’s what we tried to highlight last week. And it’s also something that a lot of parliamentarians and policymakers they don’t even think is true because they are being fed inaccurate information from the Minister of Foreign Affairs or minister of Industry now about how Canada is still heavily complicit. They canceled 30 permits for military technology that goes to Israel last year, but there’s still around 88% of existing permits of these technologies that go to Israel, including technology that goes from Canada to the us, such as engine sensors built in Ottawa, built in Ottawa, the only engine sensors that fit the F 35 fighter jets that are built in the US by Lockheed Martin. Those engine sensors are made by a company called Gas Stops in Ottawa. And those F 30 fives are the same fighter jets drop 2000 pound bombs on Palestinian children, women, men, and families, and they’re the ones that come into the hospitals sometimes dead on arrival. So to understand that complicity, I think it’s really compelling for us to know what is our responsibility, for example, as a Canadian, to push for ending this kind of complicity.

Marc Steiner:

I think that the work you’ve done, what you’ve written, what you have been interviewed about, what you’ve told people you’ve seen should be opening doors to just that idea at this moment. And all of you having grown up in a medical world, I know what you see every day is seeing people in deep pain lives in trouble, and you do your best to put your knowledge to work, to save lives. But I don’t think people really understand or get what the three of you saw, what the three of you experienced in Gaza, no matter what you’ve done before. I mean, when I interview people in Gaza, there’s one interviewee I’ve been desperately trying to get back to. I don’t know what happened to him, but we tried to follow his life. And to people that don’t really understand the depth of destruction and depravity that’s taking in places that you all just came back from, how do we begin to relate that to people in terms of your experiences?

Dr. Yipeng Ge:

I mean, I think it’s just so indescribable. I think we can sit here all day to kind of go through all the ways in which life has been completely and utterly decimated. If we think about all the conditions of life that are needed to sustain life in Gaza being targeted and destroyed, it becomes really, really hard for someone living on this side of the world to fully grasp that and understand that. I don’t think I can even grasp it in this moment because I go to work here and then I go home and I have food on the table. I can go buy stuff from the grocery store. All of those things have been fully broken and the ways in which people live their lives have been fully broken. I just want to share the things that I learned in medical school. I was hoping to use even a little bit in the clinics that I worked at in Rafah, but it was really incomparable to what was absolutely needed. What was needed was food. What was needed was water. What was needed was medicines. These were things that were not even available. And to be faced with starving children on the brink of death, severe malnutrition, we didn’t even learn about things in a comprehensive way in medical school about severe malnutrition or something like rickets disease where your bones don’t even develop properly because you have vitamin D deficiency. But these were the things that we were already seeing. And that was like a year ago in Gaza.

Marc Steiner:

Rizwan, you’re about to jump in. Please do.

Dr. Rizwan Minhas:

Yeah. You know what Dr. Yipeng said, it’s hard to put into words what you see that you can’t unsee, and it’s hard to even to put into words, but just for example, so I went to the European Gaza Hospital, and this is only one side of the story because then you have the rest of the population. There is some population that’s even more north. There’s some population that was in Rafah, and there’s some population that was around the European Gaza Hospital. Once you enter the hospital, people are trying to crowd themselves around the hospital just for safety because they think that they’ll be safe around the hospital setting, which has now found to be not true because they can target hospitals anytime they want to. When I was entering, actually what happened was there was the World Central Aid Kitchen trucks that were with us at the border, and they were a few minutes ahead of us while we were entering, and they were the first to be targeted.

And one of our fellow Canadian, Jacob Flickinger was in that van working with World Central Aid Kitchen. And when we found out about it, then we’re like, okay, so we’re entering now. Could be this could be us as well. So right from the start, you realize that your life is in their hands with the press of a button. When you enter the hospital setting, you realize this is a population with a 90% literacy rate, and now they’re out looking for food for their children. Every person that I saw, every third person I saw had yellow eyes that showed that they had jaundice, likely from a in contaminated hepatitis water. There’s no water, there’s no food, and there’s no aid. There’s nothing getting through to the borders. In regards to the medical side of things, there is a lack of supplies. We had to choose who we would give oxygen to, who we would give the last few IV antibiotics to.

We had two people, I wasn’t working in the ICU, but I would go to the ICU transfer patients to the ICU. There was a girl, there was a girl, which we did a newspaper on over there, and she was in the ICU and she was intubated, but because of the lack of pain medication, she was always in pain. She was just hurling around in bed all day for 24 hours and we had no IV set of antibodies, but we just didn’t want to lose hope. And then every day we used to go and check up on her, and she was always in pain, and you could tell she was in pain because she would try to extubate herself at the same time. She would be screaming in pain all night, and we had to make a decision, should we give her a chance? Should we wait?

Maybe some supplies might enter, maybe there’s the news that Israel is allowing aid to get through medical supplies, at least to get through. But that news never came. And the day I was leaving, it was also the last day that she actually, they could not survive without the pain medication or medical lack of medical supplies. And it hurts because in a situation like in Canada, that 4-year-old girl’s life could have been easily saved. And listen, there’s so many kids over there with no surviving family. So the only people that have is the nurses and the medical people around, and maybe they might be lucky to find a family friend that’s around them as well. So it’s a tough situation, hard to describe, and it’s not like it’s not known, and now it’s everywhere on the internet. But the problem, the thing with us is we’ve seen it firsthand.

Marc Steiner:

So I want you to jump in here, please. I just might just give a thought. It was hard to listen to that. People have to hear it. I think that the three of you are physicians who have seen some horrendous things in your lives working with patients, but they experienced the horror of that little girl you were just talking about, and that’s expanded 10, 20,000 times inside Gaza. I think people need to hear and understand the depth of that pain and what we’re allowing to happen. I didn’t mean to sit there and preach, just it grabbed me very deeply what you said, Sarah. I’ve seen doctors work on people who come out of accidents that happened in communities like ours where we all live, but what you all experienced and have seen is something way beyond that. And so it’s just your own kind of personal journey through that and what you came away with and how you survived it, how you survived it.

Dr. Sarah LaLonde:

Yeah. Well, of course, I could talk about many things. I was working at European Gaza Hospital when we received the Palestinian prisoners that were given in exchange during the month of February during the so-called ceasefire. And I could talk about the state of the prisoners. I could talk about all the patients that we saw who were affected by quadcopters or snipers or unexploded ordinances or missiles. I could also talk about the colleagues. But part of the conversation that I think is often missing is our experiences as international doctors in the hospital. And I think what really changed me when I went to Gaza was my experience of the kindness and the welcoming by the national staff. I remember that I was sad one day I went outside and I was standing, it was raining and I had eaten with most of the people in the department.

They all knew me. So the security guards or the people who do the welcoming of the patients and triaged, they saw me. They looked out the window and they saw me and they said, Dr. Sarah, are you okay? Are you okay? Let us pass you a chair. So they passed me a chair through the window. So then I sat on the chair. So then they said, are you okay? Are you okay? Can we give you some tea? So I said, okay, thanks for the tea. So they gave me tea. So then after that they said, well, if you’re having tea, you need to have some kind of chocolate with your tea. Can we give you a chocolate? So then they gave me a chocolate through the window. And I think that the profound kindness and welcoming and the treatment of guests was something that I was so touched by.

And as I think about what we’re often taught as children, I guess teaching in every family is different, but in my family, it was like that love is about putting the other person before yourself or that thinking about the good of the other or being attentive to what they might want or need in that moment. And that’s something that I experienced all the time there I was so touched at the end of my time there, I offered to extend, and I spoke with my boss about that. And you have to keep in mind that my boss was the only physician there during the mass casualty events last year. He was there with a bunch of medical students. He lived in the hospital and he sought every mass casualty event. So I asked him, do you need some help? Do you want me to stay longer? And he answered my question in a very polite but roundabout way. He said that he had experienced romantic love in his life, but that the romantic love that he experienced will never ever compare to the love that he has for his daughter. And then he said to me, your dad’s worried about you. You should go home.

So to think that my boss was caring about the feelings of another man that he’s never met while undergoing a genocide and being afraid for his children’s lives, having lost everything, displaced multiple times, huge financial loss, huge personal loss. The healthcare workers in Gaza, they’re experiencing the genocide on two levels. They go to work, they try to manage the mass casualty events. They try to save as many people. Some of my male colleagues admitted to me that they felt so hopeless after the mass casualty events that they were crying. And after all that, they go home and they experience the genocide in their own lives. They’re living, most of them are living in tents. They don’t have electricity, they don’t have access to water. They’ve experienced, they’ve lost friends, they’ve lost family members. And despite all of that, they’re coming to work and they’re taking great care of patients, and they’re treating us like guests, even though our country is directly involved in killing their friends. And I think that that’s something that really changed me.

Marc Steiner:

Before we become around this up a bit, I want closing thought from each one of you, but Yipeng, let me just ask, I understand you’re going back to Gaza soon, is that right?

Dr. Yipeng Ge:

The intention is not to go into Gaza. I’ll be with a global march to Gaza. So we have, I believe, over 50 country delegations now, and we are expecting thousands of people arriving in Egypt to go from Cairo to Alish, which is a few kilometers away from the Rafa border between Egypt and Gaza Palestine. And the goal will be to march and to protest at the Rafa border crossing to demand that the thousands of trucks that are still waiting at that border to be let in with food, water, fuel, medical aid, and supplies, that that needs to enter to end the genocide, to end the famine and the starvation. And I think we are at this pivotal moment where hundreds of thousands, if not the majority of the population facing extermination because of this months long blockade on top of an existing 18 year blockade of essential foods and supplies and medicines.

So people are on a razor thin thread of survival at this moment. And I think citizens and people of conscience around the world are really unsure what else there is to do, right? We have organized as best as we could in different parts of the world, especially the countries that are most complicit, like the uk, France, Canada, Australia, the us, and we’ve done our press conferences, we’ve done our letters, we’ve done our petitions, we’ve done it, and we’ve done direct actions, we’ve done it all. And I think this feels like a very pivotal moment where people are descending on the rough of border to say, enough is enough. We haven’t seen meaningful action from these most complicit parties to prevent and end this genocide and end this famine. And as people, we are going to try to do this on our own in the same way that the freedom Flotilla has tried multiple times, and now they are, I think, very close to reaching the beaches of Gaza. So I think it’s a reflection of nothing in this world, whether it be civil rights or equal human rights, if we can even call it that on this side of the world, nothing has been just granted to people. It has always been fought for by the people. And this is another example of that,

Marc Steiner:

Just when is that taking place?

Dr. Yipeng Ge:

The goal is to march the Rafah border crossing June 15th.

Marc Steiner:

So as we conclude this and let you all go back to your day, I know you’re busy. One of the things you said, Sarah, I was curious about, we hear about the resilience of the Palestinian people, and I wonder when you are there and reflect on it now, where you see the hope, where you see the possibility of this ending and how we end it and how we build something new and how not to give up hope.

Dr. Sarah LaLonde:

Well, first I’ll talk about resilience, then I’ll talk about hope. So I don’t think that we should be talking about resilience. While there are ongoing atrocities, I don’t think that resilience, I have a lot of resistance to the use of the word resilience when we’re talking about something that’s manmade

Because it takes the responsibility off of the perpetrator and puts it onto the victim. And this is not what the insurance companies call an act of God, right? This is a choice. We saw all the trucks outside of Gaza as we went in. It’s very easy to get water and food into Gaza. It’s easy. Like many of these problems could be solved within a few hours if there was the political will to do that. So I don’t want to focus on the Palestinian resilience. I want to focus on what we can do to come alongside people in need and to do that in a way that respects their sovereignty to say, how can we come along you? What do you want us to do for you or with you? And how can we help? And I think that that’s how we need to be responding.

When it comes to hope, I think that hope is a choice. So love is a choice, and hope is a choice. So as I come alongside my Palestinian colleagues, my patients, the nurses, and all the people of Palestine and of Gaza, I’ve taken a decision to clinging to hope, even at the darkest moments when I am receiving those videos of people being burnt alive. This week, I found out that one of my colleagues had his leg blown off at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution that happened. I found out that another friend of a friend was killed by missile when he went to go pick up his food at the Gaza, at the GHF distribution. And that type of grieving is hard for me, and I’m only experiencing 1000000th of what my Palestinian friends, colleagues, patients are experiencing. So to summarize, I am willing to choose hope. Even at times when hope is not saying that there is a probability that everything is going to go amazing, but for me, hope is a choice.

Marc Steiner:

There’s one you want to,

Dr. Rizwan Minhas:

Yeah, you know what? Yes. I would like to comment on two things Sarah mentioned about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation known as the GHF, and understand that this was backed by US and Israel only to distribute aid in to Gaza. It was a failed operation, which was marred by violence and mismanagement. And not many other humanitarian organizations even want to deal with them or collaborate with them because they knew it would fail. And it did fail. Not only did it fail, it actually led into violence and killing of more Palestinians who were just there to grab aid for their families. So it’s just tough to talk about this. Anyways, it was a failed operation. In regards to blockade. I know we kept talking about blockade of supplies, but there’s a blockade of medical personnel getting in. There’s a blockade of journalism getting in and the medical, we had three rejections by the head of Galia just informed us, who was Dr.

Dort. She had three rejections. And before that, there was another organization that had nine out of 10 people rejected from doctors coming into Gaza to provide medical relief in regards to hope. I don’t want to talk about the Palestine home like Sarah said, because they are a resilient group. That’s their faith. Their faith tells them that despair is a sign of disbelief and that hope is a hallmark of faith. So they’re never going to give up hope. And so for such people, you can never defeat them. In regards to from our standpoint, there’s always hope. Because if you don’t have hope, then you let injustice win. And what you see, what we’ve seen, you can never let that happen. There’s hope whenever they pull a child out of the rubble and he smiles back at you. Those images are tough to look at, but they’re there. And without hope, we let injustice one. So there will be hope until we succeed in having a free Palestinian state.

Marc Steiner:

I want to thank the three of you deeply for what you’ve done, what you’re doing, and for joining us today, and the stories and wisdom that you all have shared in this conversation. I hope we can all just stay in touch. I’m serious about that because this is something that we have to be unified together to stop. And I just really do want to thank you for the sacrifices you’ve made, putting your lives a line in danger and bringing back the stories that we need to hear and healing the people in the process. So thank you all very much for being here.

Dr. Sarah LaLonde:

It was an honor. Thank you for having us.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you once again. Let me thank our guests, doctors Sarah LaLonde, Yipeng Ge, and Rizwan Minhas for joining us and for all the work they do, putting their lives on the line, literally putting their lives on the line in Gaza to save people’s lives. And here in Baltimore, let’s say thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, our audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner show, and putting up with me and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to the three physicians that work for joining us here today on the Marc Steiner Show. So the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/10/were-holding-those-dead-babies-with-our-hands-doctors-returning-from-gaza-beg-humanity-to-stop-the-carnage/feed/ 0 537806 Toronto just caved to Zionist attacks on the right to protest https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/03/toronto-just-caved-to-zionist-attacks-on-the-right-to-protest/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/03/toronto-just-caved-to-zionist-attacks-on-the-right-to-protest/#respond Tue, 03 Jun 2025 17:40:36 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=334511 Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protesters gather outside Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue hosting 'Israeli Real Estate Event' in Thornhill, north of Toronto, Ontario on March 7, 2024. Photo by Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu via Getty Images“We had this legislation come about because people were selling stolen Palestinian land inside synagogues… when you [turn] your synagogue into a place of crime, well then, people are going to protest in front of it."]]> Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protesters gather outside Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue hosting 'Israeli Real Estate Event' in Thornhill, north of Toronto, Ontario on March 7, 2024. Photo by Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu via Getty Images

Caving to pressure from Zionist groups, Toronto’s City Council just passed a controversial new bylaw that will severely limit Canadians’ right to peacefully protest. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Toronto-based, award-winning journalist Samira Mohyeddin about the origins and effects of Toronto’s “bubble zone” bylaw and how it will provide a template for other jurisdictions across North America to undermine political dissent.

Guest(s):

  • Samira Mohyeddin is an award winning producer and broadcaster based in Toronto. For nearly a decade she was a producer and host at Canada’s National Broadcaster, CBC Radio. She is the founder of On The Line Media and the 2024 / 2025 journalism fellow at the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto

Additional resources:

Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner and it’s good to have you all with us. And we once again, go to Israel Palestine, to Palestine, Israel and talk about what’s going on and the horrendous war and slaughter taking place in Gaza at this moment. And we’re once again joined by Samira Mohyeddin, who hosts From the Desk, which is an incredible program and welcome. Good to have you with us.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Always a pleasure to speak with you, Marc.

Marc Steiner:

And Samira is an award-winning producer and broadcaster for nearly a decade. She was producer and host of Canada’s National Broadcaster, CPC Radio. She’s the founder of the online media and a 20 24, 20 25 Journalism Fellow at the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. And Samir’s, always good to have you with us. And I really big sign. I mean, when we talked last, we focused on Palestine, Israel, but there’s something about this particular moment that is one of the worst in my 30, 40 years, 50 years. One of that’s been being involved in this from my time as a young Zionist to now. And one of the things I posited to a congregation, a synagogue a few weeks back was how can we be doing this after all that’s been done to us? And I just feel that we’re in a very dangerous moment worldwide because of all this. Well, let me let you jump in.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Yeah. The images that have been coming out, particularly in the last two weeks, children burned beyond recognition, sinned and charred bodies. We saw that young girl walking through a fiery inferno survival itself as a form of punishment. There’s 24,000 orphans now in Gaza, and it just keeps getting worse. And I’m sorry to have laughed at the start of the program, but when these images came out a couple of days ago of this Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and you saw Palestinians lined up in these cages, I mean, it’s just horrendous what we’re seeing. And yet you have these governments, the US government, Canada, uk, Germany, just not acting. It just begs the question, where is the red line? Is there even a red line for Israel?

Marc Steiner:

That’s an important question. One of the things, I had a conversation the other day with some friends from Israel, one of whom lives in Canada, another one family who lives here in the states, old friends who were part of the world of maam, which was the Marx Zionist party back in the day in Israel, and the left in Israel itself has gone. They’re in Germany, they’re in Canada, they’re in the United States, they’re in Mexico, they’re in Argentina, they’re not there. And you’re seeing this kind of really brutal Neofascist government.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Well, they’re under attack. They’re under attack in Israel, right? I mean, they are being brutalized, they’re being imprisoned, they’re being silenced, they’re being censored. So a Netanyahu Smote Rich and Ben Gere talk about Israel being on a fight on eight different fronts. And one of those fronts is the enemy from within. And that enemy for them is anyone who is speaking out, anyone who’s even saying ceasefire is being seen as an enemy.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m just curious, in your analysis, you’ve been doing this for so long and it’s so deep in your consciousness and your work, as I alluded to earlier, what’s happening this moment in Gaza is different than I’ve seen in a long time. And I wonder where you think this is taking us.

Samira Mohyeddin:

I mean, there are a couple of things. I think one of them is that I don’t think people were paying attention when October 7th first happened, and then October 8th and ninth came, this government particularly, I’m speaking about the Netanyahu government, was very clear about what they intended to do, right? They said, we’re going to cut off all food, cut off all water, cut off all electricity, and get rid of the seed of Amalek so that there was this sort of invoking of biblical stories, biblical language. And to kill the seed of Amalek means to kill the women. And children just wipe out the entire group. And that’s what we’re seeing happen.

Norman Finkelstein refers to the mowing of the lawn that Israel says it does once in a while in Gaza. This is the entire burning of the entire fields happening. I was talking to a friend about this. There are no battlefields that you can really speak of in Gaza, the UN report that came out six months ago noted that more than 80% of people killed in Gaza were killed inside their homes. So what does that tell you? That means that people are just being targeted in the middle of the night while they’re sleeping. Entire families have been wiped off the registry. So yeah, you’re very right, mark, when you say that we’ve never seen anything like this. And I just feel like Israel is at a point where Netanyahu and its government, smote, rich, Ben Vere, they know that this is the moment that if they don’t wipe out Gaza now, they’ll never get another chance. And also, this is something else that I keep impressing upon people, and it also gives me a little bit of hope when I think about the history. So this isn’t the first time that Israel has wanted to get rid of Palestinians in Gaza, Israel first invaded Gaza back in 1956.

And in 1976, Israel wanted to remove all Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai and put them on basically reservations. They built all these homes and they wanted to move them in there. So I get a little bit of hope from that knowing that they’ve tried to do it before and it didn’t work. And I’m hoping that it won’t work this time either. But they have made the entire landscape uninhabitable. That’s the difference

Marc Steiner:

They have. I think that we’re seeing, I think to the last, as we started this conversation, I maybe even under not seeing the right number, but I was reading 56,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Those are the ones that are confirmed,

Marc Steiner:

Right?

Samira Mohyeddin:

And when I spoke with doctors, I realized what that means. That means that a doctor saw you in a hospital and that you died before their eyes. And so they mark that down. But you and I both know there are tens of thousands of people under the rubble that we actually have seen Israeli bulldozers going in and leveling entire towns. All of Rafa has been leveled. There are people under that rubble,

Marc Steiner:

Which you said earlier when you raise the name Amalek from the Old Testament, the heightened danger here for me is watching fundamentalists in Israel, religious fundamentalists, taking over the country, taking over the argument, taking over the language being used, and the imagery, which says a lot about the destruction of your enemy, whoever they are. That’s why I think this moment is so dangerous.

Samira Mohyeddin:

I mean, mark, just to pick up on what you’re saying, just look at the way the star of David has been used, the way it’s been desecrated, the way it’s been spray painted on people’s homes that have been destroyed and occupied in Gaza. It’s so dangerous for Judaism. Really, this Israeli government has ruined Judaism is causing antisemitism a very real scourge in our society. Not only have they hollowed out the definition of antisemitism, because anyone who’s criticizing Israel now is antisemitic, but they are also desecrating the very iconography of the religion for nefarious purposes.

Marc Steiner:

I agree. I think that when you look at how Judaism is being used at this moment, antisemitism has always been there. It lurks beneath the surface all the time. People have hated Jews forever. And what this does is unleash it. You can see it all across America. You can see it across Europe. You can see it across everywhere. I had this argument the other day where I said, no, I’m not saying that Jews are causing that. We’re causing antisemitism. I’m saying the actions of Israel are unleashing the forces of antisemitism and I that those contradictions are just abound. Let’s take it back home for a moment. I’m going to talk a bit about where you live in Canada,

Samira Mohyeddin:

Toronto. Yeah,

Marc Steiner:

Toronto. And many of our listeners here who don’t live in Canada, have no idea what this whole bubble thing’s about. So tell us exactly what’s happening in Toronto with quashing down any anti-ISIS Israeli protests at the moment.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Yeah, so we just recently, when I say we, I mean the Toronto City Council just passed what’s called a bubble zone bylaw. And in order to explain this to you, I need to take you back to March, 2024. So in March, 2024, there were real estate blitzes throughout North America, including in the us. One of them was in Teaneck, New Jersey. And so inside synagogues, they were selling stolen Palestinian land. These are settlements. So settlement properties were being sold in synagogues. And so inside those synagogues were real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and lawyers ready to sell you homes within illegally occupied.

Marc Steiner:

It happened here in Baltimore,

Samira Mohyeddin:

Palestine. Oh, it did? I didn’t know that. Everywhere.

Marc Steiner:

Everywhere.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Okay. Yeah. So here in Canada, we had one in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and I’m not sure if there was one in Vancouver. But anyways, as a result of this, people went and were protesting outside of that, of those synagogues. And as a result of this, a lot of the pro-Israeli organizations here in Toronto and in Canada, were calling for what they’re calling bubble zone bylaws, which means if you can classify your place as a vulnerable institution, which the city of Toronto has, so places of worship are considered vulnerable institutions, schools, recreational areas like art galleries and blah, blah, blah, these places can be excluded from people protesting in front of them. And so in March of 24, people had these real estate blitzers here in Toronto, people had gone and protested. And in December of 2024, after so much pressure being put on the Toronto City Council, the solicitor, so city solicitor was tasked with coming up for a plan for a bylaw, which would protect these institutions and create these areas. So that’s 3000 places where in Toronto, where you potentially cannot protest any

Marc Steiner:

3000 places, you can’t set up a pig line.

Samira Mohyeddin:

3000 places. Yes. So what ended up happening was that the city started public consultations about this bylaw. Now, they had three public consultations, and the report that came out of those public consultations was that 77% of the public were against this bylaw. They did not want it. However, they still went ahead with a vote in Toronto City Council. So last week they had a vote, 16 of the counselors passed, the bylaw nine were against it. So ultimately it passed. Now, what was interesting in the back and forth on this bylaw was that there were motions that were introduced. So 20 meters, 50 meters, 100 meters. How far away do you have to be from one of these institutions to be able to protest? And so initially the bylaw had said 20 meters, but they passed a motion so that now it’s 50 meters, you have to be 50 meters away from a synagogue or wherever else that something is going on that you want to protest about. And so I made this joke to my friend. I said, if a protest happens in the forest and no one is around to hear it, is that even a protest? The whole point of a protest is to be disruptive.

So this is what we’re seeing. We’re seeing this throughout North America, in particular, old laws being broken, new laws being enacted also that people who want to support Israel during this genocide can do so comfortably.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, people look at Canada in places like Toronto as being politically progressive. So what’s the political dynamic that allows us to happen in Toronto that allows us 16 people to vote for this line to oppose it on the city council? What is a dynamic politically in Canada that’s allowing this to happen?

Samira Mohyeddin:

I have to be honest, the Israeli lobby is very strong here. They put a lot of pressure on our lawmakers to act, and if they don’t, the accusations of antisemitism are sky high. And there is a real fear of being branded as antisemitic. And that’s really what it boils down to, because there is no reason why our lawmakers would sacrifice our charter of rights and freedoms, particularly the freedom of assembly, the freedom of expression, all of these freedoms in order to not allow people to protest in certain areas. Now, I will say for all the hoop law that this bylaw has caught, I was at a protest yesterday.

The former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations was being hosted here in Toronto by a pro-Israel organization inside one of Toronto’s landmarks. This is a public institution. And as you recall, GLA Adon, the former ambassador on his last day, said that he thinks the UN headquarters should be wiped off the face of the earth. So this is a man who was being hosted, and now people did go and protest and they didn’t care if there was a bylaw or no bylaw or so. People are really going to let bylaws be bylaws. I mean, no one’s going to care about this. They’re going to go protest. The only thing that this might do, and by the way, it’s cost taxpayers in this city, $2 million for this

Marc Steiner:

Bylaw. What do you mean cost $2 million?

Samira Mohyeddin:

It’s going to cost $2 million. The new bylaw officers, all the paperwork, all the bureaucracy that’s going to go into enforcing this thing, which is really unenforceable

Because what’s going to happen is it’s going to clog up our courts. People are going to bring so many charter rights infringements against this bylaw constitutional infringements. So it’s an absurd thing, but again, it’s an absurdity that goes to the times that we are living in right now, whereas it’s also a tragedy. There’s a lot of comedy involved in what you and I are seeing right now, mark, because we have the weight of history on our side. We’ve been here before, we’ve seen fascism before, and this is just another manifestation of it. And I really feel like people need to wake up and understand what’s happening around them.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m curious to pick up from the particular point about the growth of neo fascism all around us. We’re seeing in this country, in United States, Trump attacking Harvard and other universities threatening to take away their money, calling them Antisemites, which is just total bs. I mean, Harvard antisemitic. I mean, the percentage of Jewish kids at Harvard and the faculty. Give me a break. Anyway, so that’s happening and it’s also happening in Canada.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

I’m curious about from your perspective, what is the political power and dynamic that’s pushing that it, it’s not just the Jewish community. I mean, it’s something beyond that. Something is happening here that’s pushing a very powerful Neofascist agenda across the globe.

Samira Mohyeddin:

I mean, it also has to do with money, right? It’s capitalism. Also, the University of Toronto, for instance, where I was a journalism fellow this year at the Women and Gender Studies Institute, you are seeing our professors at the University of Toronto being persecuted also, they’re being brought in to speak to the vice provost, the dean, et cetera, for things for, for social media posts, for literally just saying ceasefire or asking why their institutions aren’t divesting from Israeli genocide, asking why their pensions are going towards arms manufacturers. I mean, these are the basic things that people are being persecuted for, that they’re having their livelihoods put on the line. This is what we’re seeing. It’s not just in the us. I mean, it’s not to the extent that you’re seeing it in the United States, but there’s a lot of professors that are under a lot of threat here throughout Canada.

Marc Steiner:

So what is resistance to that? What’s the political dynamic taking place in Canada, let’s say, since we’re talking about your country at this moment, that resists that and builds a movement to stop it?

Samira Mohyeddin:

I mean, I can tell you one of the things that was a big victory at the University of Toronto is that the Professors Pension Federation Union voted to divest from weapons manufacturers. This was a big two.

Marc Steiner:

This is across Canada?

Samira Mohyeddin:

No, this is the University of Toronto.

Marc Steiner:

Toronto, okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Samira Mohyeddin:

So the University of Toronto did this, and then the week after Toronto Metropolitan University did the same. So you’re seeing this happen, and another big thing that happened was that yesterday the Toronto District School Board finally recognized that anti Palestinian racism is a thing because they had been denying it for years. And there are teachers now who are pushing to have the nakba taught in the school system. Now, there is a lot of pushback on this from pro-Israeli groups here, but they are slowly trying to get this within the curriculum. And I always say, if history, if you are afraid of history or history is not your friend, there’s something going on there. So they are saying that some of the students would feel uncomfortable with teaching about Palestinian history. Who would feel uncomfortable about that?

Marc Steiner:

Right. It’s like saying in Canada, United States, no, we are not going to teach you about what happened to indigenous people in America. It might make you uncomfortable that your ancestors wiped out entire people. Right,

Samira Mohyeddin:

Exactly. I mean, when I went to school here in Canada in the eighties, we never learned about what this government and what this country did to the indigenous population. It’s only in the last, oh, I would say decade or so that students are wearing orange shirts, that there’s the truth and reconciliation that people are learning.

Marc Steiner:

What’s an orange shirt mean?

Samira Mohyeddin:

Oh, sorry. Orange shirt day is for the marking, the indigenous indigenous day here, and what happened to young people that were stolen from their parents and taken to residential schools, and we know what happened inside those schools. So that’s only been happening in the last decade. So that’s really what teachers now here are pushing for, but there is a real pushback on it.

Marc Steiner:

So taking a step back to where we are with Israel Palestine and what’s happening, and we’re watching what’s happening in Gaza, I think that this is a very pivotal moment. It’s a piece I’m working on now that says it’s not since 1948 that the power of this moment, and we are in a very dangerous place. I think you’re seeing antisemitism rise up. You’re seeing Israel just mass murdering Palestinian children and families all across Kaza, more land being taken in what’s called the West Bank and New Israeli and the right winging just taking power there and across the globe. So I’m curious, you are in the midst of this all the time. You speak about this, you fight about it, you’re on the front line, and I’m curious where you think this takes the organizing and fight against both what’s happening in Israel at this moment with Palestinians and the larger question of the rise of this kind of neofascist movement and how you stop it.

Samira Mohyeddin:

One of the things I’ve noticed, and I’m sure you have also, is that within the last two weeks, there seems to be a bit of a shift, particularly in mainstream media. You’re seeing journalists start to do their jobs, which means when an IDF spokesperson comes on the air and says, there are no starving people in Gaza, there are no starving Palestinians. In Gaza, you’re seeing journalists actually say, well, wait a minute. We just saw this 9-year-old die. I saw the bodies. I’ve seen the bones. So there’s a lot of that happening right now. There’s a bit of a turn happening. Everyone is starting to do their jobs, what they’re supposed to do. There are also backtracks from institutions, writers, artists, people who did not feel comfortable speaking out a year ago are starting to speak out now. And I have to say to all those people, bless you. Try and encourage others to do it. I really think that having the courage to speak out right now is contagious. And so come out, come out wherever you are. That to me is the first thing. It’s not too late. Remember, the screenshots are not going to be kind. This stuff wasn’t around during apartheid South Africa. We know who spoke out

Now and who didn’t, and so it’s never too late to do that. The other thing that I’m seeing is that there are some murmurings within even governments like Germany’s saying, maybe our full support for Israel isn’t such a great thing. I mean, Canada, the UK and France put out a statement last week saying they might be moving towards sanctions or an arms embargo if Israel doesn’t curb its military activities. We didn’t see statements like this last year. So there is some movement happening, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough. And I really see Israel’s spiraling right now. I mean, there are a lot of people within Israel right now protesting on the streets too. Let’s not discount these people in Israel who are getting arrested. And I’m speaking about Israelis, Jewish Israelis,

Marc Steiner:

Right? Yes, right.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Who are being arrested. All of these people, they are on the streets and they’re calling it what it is. It’s a genocide. And that takes a lot of guts, and I think we need to encourage those people. Also,

Marc Steiner:

There’s stuff going on inside of Israel now among Jews and others, but among Jews in Israel at this moment who were protesting, it reminds me of what they’re facing, the danger they’re facing physically for saying, no, reminds me a great deal of what I experienced as a civil rights worker in the South. The absolute fear that you’re going to die from standing up to say, we have to end segregation. The same thing is happening, and I think it’s not being reported or talked about enough, which I’m going to try to do much more of, is getting those Jewish voices on from Israel, talking about why they’re standing up, and actually the huge numbers of people who are saying no. That’s really kind of an undercover story. I think.

Samira Mohyeddin:

I agree with you. I think we need to highlight the Jewish voices in particular who go to places like Mata and provide, put their bodies on the line that get in between these settlers, these rab settlers that are completely unhinged and have the support of the army at every turn. They’re putting their bodies on the line. There was actually a woman here in Canada, Anna Lipman, who just returned last week. She was doing what’s called protective presence within the occupied West Bank. She was there for months, has been arrested numerous times by the Israeli army. So I think it’s important to highlight those people also.

Marc Steiner:

So just as we wrap up, I’m going to come back to Canada here at the Bubble Law and talk a bit more about, so we can conclude with that, where this is going, who’s standing up to it, and where do you think what effect this is going to have?

Samira Mohyeddin:

The thing is that Toronto was one of the last areas to invoke this bubble legislation. So there was a suburb called Vaughn, which had it first. Then we have another sort of area called Brampton, which had it also, what was really interesting during the debates around this bubble legislation was that the counselors, the city counselors that were for it, were making comparisons to abortion clinics. So Canada had enacted bubble legislation for women’s reproductive health clinics so that women who were going in to have abortions wouldn’t need to look at fetuses torn up and all that stuff. And doctors who were performing these surgeries wouldn’t have people surround their homes and all this stuff. And so I think it’s a very churlish comparison because one act is against domestic and international law, the sale of occupied Palestinian lands. The other is about women’s reproductive health. But they sort of jumped on this and said, we’ve had bubble legislation before.

We need to have it for this. Now, there was a one particular counselor, her name was Diana Sacks, who was the only one that spoke the truth. Because what is really interesting about this mark is that no one ever talks about the root causes of why we even had this legislation come about. We had this legislation come about because people were selling stolen Palestinian land inside synagogues. People weren’t ever protesting in front of synagogues willy-nilly. There was no reason to. But when you make your synagogue into a place of crime, well then people are going to protest in front of it. So that is the real problem that I have, that the root causes are never talked about. But I really firmly believe that this bylaw is not going to stop anyone from protesting. It really won’t.

Marc Steiner:

So you’ll be out there.

Samira Mohyeddin:

I’ll be out there covering it. I mean, this was the 85th protest held in Toronto since October 8th.

Marc Steiner:

Around is Israel Palestine, you mean around boron? Gaza,

Samira Mohyeddin:

Yes. Toronto has had more protests than any other city in the whole of North America.

Marc Steiner:

Interesting.

Samira Mohyeddin:

And it really is, in a lot of ways, I think people need to pay more attention to this city. It is ground zero for what is going on in Israel Palestine.

Marc Steiner:

So what we’re going to do is pay more attention to you. So we can talk more about this since it’s ground zero and you’re in ground zero, so there’s so much more to talk about. But we’re going to link to your broadcast where you really, so people can hear what you have to say and what you’re saying. It’s called From the Desk, Samira Mohyeddin. It’s just an amazing, great program, very animated, very deep. You’ll enjoy it. And Samira, I want to thank you once again for joining us. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you despite the heaviness of what we have to face in our conversations. So we’ll keep up the fight and we’ll stay in touch.

Samira Mohyeddin:

Thank you so much, mark. It’s really great speaking with you all. Take care.

Marc Steiner:

And once again, I want to thank Samira Mohyeddin for joining us today. And we’ll be linking to her work so you can see it for yourself. It’s really intense and deeply intellectual and dives deep into subjects. Be a well worth a watch for you. And we’re going to bring you more updates from Samira, and we’re going to be talking to her again, as we said during the end of our conversation. And thanks to David Hebdon for running the program today, and Alina Nek for working her magic and editing and the titleless killer of our for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to our guests, mayor. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/06/03/toronto-just-caved-to-zionist-attacks-on-the-right-to-protest/feed/ 0 536374 ‘Israel is the religion’: Zionism, genocide, and the generational divide in the Jewish world https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/20/israel-is-the-religion-zionism-genocide-and-the-generational-divide-in-the-jewish-world/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/20/israel-is-the-religion-zionism-genocide-and-the-generational-divide-in-the-jewish-world/#respond Tue, 20 May 2025 17:31:57 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=334233 Pro-Palestine protesters, including American Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews, demonstrate in front of the White House as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump met inside on February 4, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images“If you look at the underlying goal of Zionism and Jewish supremacy, it is to get rid of the Palestinians… and to take as much land as possible. So, as horrible as [the war on Gaza] is, we are just [seeing] the fruition of all the dreams of… creating a state for Jews only.”]]> Pro-Palestine protesters, including American Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews, demonstrate in front of the White House as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump met inside on February 4, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images

Alice Rothchild’s path to becoming an anti-Zionist Jew took many years, many hard conversations, and required a lot of critical self-reflection. But she is part of a growing, powerful chorus of Jewish voices around the world speaking out against Israel’s Occupation of Palestine and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians—and she is urging others to join that chorus. “The time is long overdue for liberal Zionists to find the courage to take a long hard look at their uncritical support for the actions of the Israeli state as it becomes increasingly indefensible and destabilizing, a pariah state that has lost its claim to be a so-called democracy (however flawed) that is endangering Jews in the country and abroad as well as Palestinians everywhere,” Rothchild writes in Common Dreams. In the latest installment of The Marc Steiner Show’s ongoing series “Not in Our Name,” Marc speaks with Rothchild about her path to anti-Zionism, the endgame of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, and the need to liberate Jewish identity from Zionist state of Israel.

Alice Rothchild is a physician, author, and filmmaker with an interest in human rights and social justice. She practiced ob-gyn for almost 40 years and served as Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of numerous books, including: Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience; Condition Critical: Life and Death in Israel/Palestine; Old Enough to Know, a 2024 Arab American Book Award winner; and Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician. Rothchild is a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council and a mentor-liaison for We Are Not Numbers.

Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. And today we’re going to talk with Dr. Alice Rothchild. She’s a physician and author of filmmaker, an activist for the rights of Palestinians. She was an OB GYN for almost 40 years and served as assistant professor of Obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School. She directed this incredibly amazing documentary called Voices Across the Divide. It’s about the struggles in Israel Palestine, and her books include a young adult novel finding Melody Sullivan, old enough to know broken promises, broken dreams, stories of Jewish and Palestinian trauma and resilience on the brink about her experiences in Gaza and the West Bank, and most recently inspired and outraged the making of a feminist physician. And Alice, welcome. It’s good to have you with us here on the Marc Steiner Show and our name. It’s really great to have you here. Thank you for joining us.

Alice Rothchild:

Well, Marc, it’s really great to be here.

Marc Steiner:

So let’s take a step backwards a bit. I’m always fascinated by the journey people take, growing up Jewish and then having this, it’s not to say a moment, but having a series of things happen that shift feeling inside. I can remember in the late sixties trying to volunteer for the Israeli army in 67 and then meeting Palestinians and left winged Israelis and things began to shift, I mean, dramatically shift and it was hard and painful. But tell us about your own story there.

Alice Rothchild:

Okay, so I am a second generation from Eastern European Jews that came over and lived in Brooklyn and worked in sweatshops in that whole era. So I grew up in a small New England town called Sharon, Massachusetts. My family went to a conservative temple. My parents were not orthodox like their parents, but moving outside of that, but not far enough for me. So I went to Hebrew school three days a week. I had a bat mitzvah. I went to Israel with my family when I was 14. It was like this magical trip. I have my diary, so I actually know how I felt

And I had, despite the fact that I had very liberal parents who were supporting the civil rights movement and all that kind of stuff, we actually had very racist attitudes towards Arabs. And I had no idea that we were racist towards Arabs. And so I was going along on that journey. And then I’m also a child of the sixties. So in college I got to be acquainted with political movements and fighting the Vietnam War, and then went to medical school and got more radicalized when I hit up against all the sexism and racism in the healthcare system. And so I was moving left, but I didn’t have the energy and insight to know what to do with my love of Israel. I was a big fan of Israeli dancing, that kind of thing. And so this continued, and then I was an obstetrician gynecologist, so I was a little busy and I had two children and all that was going on. And then in 1997 as a member of what was then called Workman’s Circle, that’s now called Workers Circle, which was a secular Jewish group. It was national, a hundred years old, was originally for immigrants, founded by people from the bun. Complicated but interesting. And we had created a school there for our kids so they would have a sense of Jewish identity but not have God and religion. So it was a complicated thing we were doing. And so we did these secular holidays. So after the Yom Kipper holiday, we were sitting by Jamaica Pond throwing in bread for the ducks and to get rid of whatever we were getting rid of. And we realized we needed to have a political focus for the year, and it was going to be the Israel 50th anniversary, and there was going to be a massive celebration in Boston with Israeli bands and face painting and fireworks. And we thought, well, we have, we’ll submit a suggestion to the Jewish Community Relations Council about having a peace forum, and they’ll say no, and then we’ll have a protest. And that was the total extent of our knowledge. So we put together this thing, and much to their credit, they said yes. But then we were stuck because we didn’t know anything. So we immediately went into high gear and started inviting Palestinians from the Boston area as well as lefty Israelis to come and just talk with us. And we had a very rapid education. And as I learned more and more, all the pieces of the puzzle began to fit together. I knew about colonialism and imperialism, I knew those concepts, but I had never applied it to Israel. So we actually pulled this off. 200 people came, Barney Frank was the speaker. I mean, it was just an amazing empowering experience. We had a children’s section with kids doing the flags for both

Countries, and we were so excited. We thought we need to have a grassroots organization to learn more and to teach our community. So we did that and we started having events and with the public library and an adult education and that kind of stuff. And within a couple of years, we were totally blacklisted. And so we were kind of frustrated and we thought, well, a bunch of us are doctors. Maybe we could approach this through health and human rights. So we started organizing health and human rights delegations to the region, first one mine in 2003. And so I went almost annually until Covid originally. There were about 15 years of doing this delegation. I went on a whole bunch of other delegations. My commitment, my understanding, my experience really deepened. I’ve been to Gaza four times. I was in Gaza in August of 2023. So siege, occupation, racism, Islamophobia are not theoretical concepts for me. And as we went through this journey, we really started struggling with the whole question of Zionism because we started out as nice two-state people, which was a very radical idea at the time

Marc Steiner:

It was.

Alice Rothchild:

And then I gradually began to understand that Zionism as a political ideology is actually based in British colonialism and imperialism concepts. And also that Zionism, the privileging of Jews over other folks in historic Palestine requires harm to Palestinians. And I’m into mutual liberation. And so Jewish supremacy didn’t kind of fit with that ideology. So really, I gradually became an anti Zionist. I began to understand the power of the boycott, divestment, sanction movement. All those things fell into place and it’s become an increasing commitment for me. And so I’ve always, my mother was a writer, and I always would never be a writer. So of course, I wrote a book in two, let’s see, was it 2013, broken Promises, broken Dreams, which really gave me a taste of the power of writing about my experiences. And I figured out that a lot of people couldn’t handle politics, but they could handle, I went here and I talked to this person, and guess what? I learned sort of the personal. And that was a way to get under people’s defenses. So that led to more books and a documentary film and a greater commitment to working on these issues.

Marc Steiner:

One of the things I’ve wrestled with a lot, and I’ve talked to some other people about this as well, is how the oppress can become the oppressor,

Alice Rothchild:

Right? It’s painful.

Marc Steiner:

It is painful. I mean, you grow up knowing that there’s a whole body of people who do not like you and hate you because you’re a Jew. And I experienced that a lot when I was young. But then what we in turn have done to the Palestinians, and I always use the word we because I can’t separate myself from it.

Alice Rothchild:

These are our people, right?

Marc Steiner:

Right. It’s my cousins, he’s my family. They’re there, em Jerusalem, they’re there. So the question, I mean, when you wrestle with this, and I know you’ve been wrestling with this a lot over your life, is how does that happen? How do we as a people who were oppressed, who identified, but where 70% of all the white civil rights workers in the Southwest were Jews that we’ve been fighting for human rights across the globe and against our own oppression. How do the oppress become the oppressor?

Alice Rothchild:

That’s like one of the core questions. So I think that first of all, Jews as a sort of community have psychopathology that we have not seriously dealt with around the issue of trauma and the Nazi Holocaust. And what happened was that this traumatic experience in our community after years of antisemitism has became kind of almost a religion. It became, “We are the supreme victims of the world, and our victimization gives us the right to do anything in order to survive.” And you see that happening, particularly in Israel where originally the Holocaust survivors were looked down upon. They were the weak need survivors. Who knows what they did, who knows how they cooperated, all sorts of horrific things. They did not do well in Israel, and they were not well funded and taken care of. So Israel was very into creating the new Jew, the muscular bronze tanned fighter, Jew and Holocaust survivors didn’t fit with that. But then it became useful to the Israeli propaganda machine to embrace the Holocaust as the reason why we can do whatever we want to do. And I think that’s what we’re seeing now, and it’s a real abuse of Holocaust memory. And people have written endless books and papers on this, but

I think it is a pathology in us as a community and something that until we work it out, we’re going to keep doing horrific things to people. And it’s almost like the abusive parent abuses the child. I mean, it’s all that kind of stuff, but it’s also sort of an othering. So everybody else is out to get us. Everybody else is demonizing us, and we are not responsible for what we’re doing to provoke that. And that’s a huge problem within the Jewish community. And more mainstream Jews don’t want to hear that because I grew up, the Jews are the good people. We are the people we’re chosen. My mother didn’t think we were religiously chosen, but we’re chosen to make the world a better place. So if you buy that and then we go do something, it really is not making the world a better place. It’s very hard to square that. And so that’s the struggle that’s going on. I think in one of the many struggles going on in the Jewish community, both in Israel and here and all over the world,

Marc Steiner:

I’ve been really shocked and happy to see the number of Jews who coming out to say no to what’s happening in Gaza. The demonstration has been huge and mostly Jewish. It’s been here in the city in New York, Baltimore, around, there’s a shift taking place. This internal battle is taking place. Increasingly, this means that Israel becomes a pariah over what’s happening in Gaza.

Alice Rothchild:

The other thing I’ve seen over the decades is that originally when I started doing this work, there were very few Palestinians out in the open,

And I think particularly Palestinians in the United States were mostly people who came here. They were anxious about being accepted in the United States. They were worried about being targeted or deported, and they kept their heads down. Their kids and their grandchildren aren’t doing that. They are out there on the front lines. And so what a lot of young Jews are doing is standing in solidarity with Palestinians and understanding that this is actually a Palestinian led liberation movement, and we need to embrace it as a liberation movement also for ourselves because we’re all trapped in the ways of our parents and our grandparents

Marc Steiner:

As we see all this unfolding around us. One of the things you wrote about I found really interesting that’s not getting a lot of press, is the number of people who wrote about, who have stopped serving in the Israeli army who refuse to go to Gaza. I’ve talked a bit about that because I really think it’s not covered in the times. It’s not covered in major papers. Nobody’s really talking about a hundred thousand Israel Jews saying, no, we’re not going.

Alice Rothchild:

So I mean, this is an interesting development. I think we need to understand. I mean, there are obviously Israeli Jews who are aware of the genocide and Gaza and are horrified. Most Israeli Jews who are against the war, are against the war because they want the hostages back and they want their soldiers to stop dying. Israeli Jews tend not to be that sympathetic to the fact that they’re committing genocide. That’s not what the headlines are about. The headlines are about we want our hostages back. And that’s fine. I mean, if we could stop the war, that would be great, and if enough refusers refuse, that will be more pressure on the government. But I don’t think we should delude ourselves into thinking that after decades and decades of incredible assaults and occupation and harm to Palestinians, that Israeli Jews of a progressive nature are suddenly waking up to this, they’re much more aware of their own pain, which is losing their sons and not having their hostages back.

Marc Steiner:

So your perspective and your analysis is that the majority of these Israeli Jews are saying, no, I’m not serving. They’re more concerned about the hostages coming back home Absolutely. Than they are about taking Palestinian lives or

Alice Rothchild:

Absolutely. And it’s also, it’s not good for the Israeli economy to have all these young men in combat. They’re pulled from their jobs and their tech and industries are also leaving like tech industries are leaving. So I think that there’s a lot of economic things going on as well that Israelis object to. But I don’t delude myself into thinking that there’s sudden awareness and consciousness of the horrible harms to Palestinians. That’s not part of the deal as far as I can

Marc Steiner:

Tell. I think what you’re describing is really important because when people hear people refusing to serve, it’s like for me, it was like going back to Vietnam going, no, I’m not going. I’m not going. Yeah,

Alice Rothchild:

It’s not a Vietnam situation.

Marc Steiner:

So this is a very different kind of dynamic, but a dynamic that could lead to things.

Alice Rothchild:

And I mean, Netanyahu and his right wing henchmen are a segment of the population that doesn’t represent the secular liberal Tel Aviv Jews who don’t espouse his right wing politics. So there’s a huge crisis going on in Israel right now politically.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m really curious to see your thoughts and analysis about where this takes us. I mean, we have this right wing government here in the United States. Trump a little madman at the helm who doesn’t really care about Jews that much, but loves the idea of Israel doing what it’s doing.

Alice Rothchild:

If Trump really cared about Jews, he wouldn’t have forgiven all the crazies who attacked at the time of the election. Those people are fanatical. He wouldn’t get rid of gun control. I mean, he’s unleashing all these forces that are intensely antisemitic. So it’s not that he doesn’t care much about Jews, he does not care about Jews. He cares about Trump. Just to clarify that,

Marc Steiner:

An important clarification.

Alice Rothchild:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

In that and what we face here and the right wing government in Israel, I worry about several things. A, I worry about the future of the Palestinian people, what’s going to happen to them? We’re slaughtering people all through Gaza. I’m in touch with people in the West Bank more than I am in Gaza who are telling me these horrendous stories that are taking place. You have it also unleashes and antisemitic fervor that’s always bubbling below the surface. Not that antisemitism is our fault, but this is unleashing it. And the right is in control in many sectors of this country and across the globe. And I’m not a negative person by nature, but I’m looking at this and going, okay, so where do you think this takes us? Where does your organizing have to take place to turn this around?

Alice Rothchild:

So first of all, I don’t know where this takes us, but I am completely terrified early on in this war, I would say the goal of the Israeli government is to depopulate Gaza. And everybody go, oh, that’s too extreme. But the way it looks to me right now is that their goal is to completely devastate the Gaza Strip to push everybody south to starve people to death if they don’t kill them with bombs. And then at some point to open the gates and to have voluntary migration. And I think that’s the plan. And then the settlers will move in and they’ll clear everything up and they’ll get billions of dollars from US Jewish organizations. And it will continue the dispossession expulsion of Palestinians, which started way before 48. And then I think they’re going to do it in the West Bank. I mean, we talk about the gasification of the West Bank.

They’re bombing refugee camps. They’re displacing people. They’re killing people. I mean, they bombed hospitals. This is not new. This is like a continuation. And I really also am not shocked by this because if you look at the underlying goals of Zionism and Jewish supremacy, it is to get rid of the Palestinians as much as possible and to take as much land as possible. So in some ways, as horrible as this is, we are just having the fruition of all the dreams from founding the state and creating a state for Jews only. So I am completely terrified that that’s the direction we’re going in. And the United States in all of its mishegas is going to support this. I think that the Trump type people don’t like Jews, but they like strong governments. They like dictators and things like that. They hate Iran. They are Islamophobic. So here’s this little country that is doing the job for them.

And so it fits with this MAGA universe and the kind of things that they espouse. And it’s sort of ironic to me that it’s all being done in the name of protecting the Jews. It’s like, oh my God, because this is going to be really dangerous. And when it’s all done, said and done, people are going to blame the Jews. And we have seen this before. And so this is dangerous for Palestinians, and then it’s going to be dangerous for Jews, and it’s just a terrible, terrible idea. So in terms of trying to organize, I think I take a lot of hope from the organizing the Jewish Voice for Peace is doing, because it is the most rapidly growing Jewish organization in the country. It is anti-Zionist. It is pro boycott, divestment, sanction. It is big tent. Everybody’s invited. You don’t have to be a particular kind of person.

And they’re really being very thoughtful about the kinds of messaging that they give. And there’s a lot more visibility from Palestinians, which is really, really important because one of the things that helps people be less terrified and racist and all the things that people are is to meet a Palestinian and find out, oh, they’re human. How do you like that? They value education. They want to be doctors. Their children are growing up and are nice people. But that’s on the one-to-one basis really, really important. And then I think the other thing is that a lot of the catastrophes that have happened in the past were before social media. And because we have social media now for all of its bad things, it provides us with an unfiltered opportunity to hear the voices from the region. And that makes a real big difference because much of what Israeli military did for decades was just completely hidden unless you were looking for it from the public. And now it’s not hidden anymore. I work with, we Are Not Numbers, and we’re publishing two stories a day from young writers who are in Gaza writing about their experiences. So

It’s on social media, it’s on a website, it’s all out there. You just have to read it, which is very

Marc Steiner:

Different. What was the name of the group? Just

Alice Rothchild:

We Are Not Numbers.

Marc Steiner:

We Are Not Numbers.

Alice Rothchild:

You know that group?

Marc Steiner:

Yes, yes, yes. I didn’t hear. Yeah.

Alice Rothchild:

So I’m the mentor Liaison. So I’m the person who gets the writer’s essay after, goes through some stuff, and then finds a published English speaking writer and matches them, and then they work together on the essay. So there’s so much out there that wasn’t out there 20 years ago.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, that’s really critically important. I feel like in some ways, historically we’re at this very strange moment, but when I saw the picture of the Israeli soldier holding the a Palestinian kid who had a cast in his arm and the fear in the little boy’s eyes, and then I thought about that famous picture from the Warsaw ghetto of the Nazi and this little 12-year-old boy and the terror in his eyes.

Alice Rothchild:

It’s not subtle.

Marc Steiner:

It’s not, and it’s not subtle at all. And you look at that, and I think about in some ways, when I look at JVP, the struggle inside the Jewish world now, I think of the struggle in the early part of the 20th century between the Zionists and the Bunes between the revolutionary Jews who were Bunes and the Zionists, many whom were willing to sell out their own people to get what they wanted, right?

Alice Rothchild:

And there were the Buber Zionists who wanted to buy national state. I mean, Zionism was highly controversial basically until the 67 War when it was propagandized that this was an existential struggle. And so Jews just got in line, and I had this famous conversation that a friend of mine was having with one of the Jewish in Boston, one of the Jewish leaders, and she was saying, why do you have to be a Zionist to be a Jew? And he said, you don’t understand Israel is the religion. And I think that that’s really the turning point in 67 is when that became the test and you had to be a Zionist to be a good Jew. And that’s when more reformed Jews got on the wagon. It just was a major turning point.

Marc Steiner:

I think that’s true. I think that I’m curious as to your analysis about the shift you’re seeing inside the Jewish.

Alice Rothchild:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think what we’re seeing now in the United States at least, is that Jews are traditionally progressive people. They raise their children to think about civil rights and equality and blah, blah, blah. And then the kids look at what’s going on in Israel and they go, I can’t buy that. So I think this generation is really questioning the things that their parents and grandparents just accepted as the Bible, basically. And the younger generations don’t have Holocaust memory, don’t have the upswing of the 67 War and blah, blah, blah. So it’s like a fresh batch, and they’re really having trouble standing with Israel. I mean, they’re certainly ones that do. But as a group, it’s a whole different ballgame. And the majority of people in the United States support an arms embargo against Israel. That’s like revolutionary. I mean, it hasn’t penetrated to the people who sell the arms, but that’s a major, major shift.

Marc Steiner:

So in all the years that I’m trying to figure out for myself as well, talking to other people in our generation where the hope lives

That this ends, and how you organize the story and where you take it, when I see the kind of growth inside the Jewish world of alternative synagogues, it’s see the growth, even though I’m not a religious person when I see that, look at that, or when you watch what JVP is going and the eruption saying, no, not in our name taking over. And then you see this right wing surge as well. I mean, we are on this, it seems to be a political precipice at the moment, and it takes voices organizing to really shift it. And I was just curious in your own work, I mean, we’ve written these books, a physician, an activist, where you see the optimism, where you see the fight going at this moment.

Alice Rothchild:

So first of all, it is very hard for me to remain optimistic, but I’m really trying. I’m not a naturally optimistic person. I always say I’m pessimistically optimistic.

Marc Steiner:

I understand.

Alice Rothchild:

And I also feel like particularly having become a part of the feminist movement, you take two steps forward, one step back, then you get knocked on the head, then you get up again. So I’m not like starry-eyed about this. I am incredibly impressed right now with the assault on universities and the pushback from university students and their professors. This very much reminds me of the Vietnam War

Because there is this massive assault, both not only on Palestine, but on DEI and all the things that you know, and more and more universities, their students are getting out in those encampments. They’re putting up their protests, they’re organizing in their communities, they’re doing alternative conferences, they’re doing fasting for Gaza. I mean, there’s all sorts of things that young people are doing. And that for me is the most hopeful place. It is also the most dangerous place because the pushback against them is very powerful, very well funded. I mean, we should know who all the donors universities are who are pulling all these strings. And the right wing has been planning for this for decades. And if the right wing wins, they’re going to destroy universities as we know it, and they’re going to destroy a generation of young people, researchers, thinkers, professors, educated people, and that will be catastrophic. So my hope is with the younger generation and what they’re doing now, but also I see a tremendous amount of support from older people as well. And also that it’s intersectional, which is a new thing. When we started, we were like, will anyone actually be interested in this besides Jews and Palestinians? How could

Will anyone come to our meetings? And now people understand this is much more than the actual topic. This is about the remnants of colonialism. This is about fighting racism. This is about police brutality, this is about the military industrial complex, all the big things that run the universe. This is what this is about, and this is the test case. And I think we have to be clear on that and clear on how big the struggle is because the opposition is very, very well organized and has been planning this for decades.

Marc Steiner:

Well, I think the work you’ve been doing, the books you’ve written and your film, which we’ll be linking to so people can actually watch it, which your film is amazing.

Alice Rothchild:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

We can spend an hour just talking about the film itself, which we may do, because I think it’s a powerful piece, and I want to thank you for your work and not stopping the fight and the struggle both in terms of Palestinian rights and for a better society here. And I really appreciate taking the time out. It’s been really a great conversation.

Alice Rothchild:

Well, it’s been a pleasure, mark. Thank you so much.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, I want to thank Dr. Alice Rothchild for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebden for running the program and our audio editor, Alina Nelich, producer Rosette, for making it all happen behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me ats@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. And once again, thank you to Dr. Alice Rothchild for joining us today and for the incredible work she does. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/20/israel-is-the-religion-zionism-genocide-and-the-generational-divide-in-the-jewish-world/feed/ 0 533985 ‘What does it mean to be a Palestinian Jew’ today? https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/13/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-palestinian-jew-today/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/13/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-palestinian-jew-today/#respond Tue, 13 May 2025 19:55:42 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=334070 Members of the anti-Zionist Hassidic Jews group, Neturei Karta, carry signs during a rally against the creation of the state of Israel in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighbourhood on May 14, 2024. Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images“I was born into the Zionist colony in Palestine, and an identity was imposed on me at birth, called Israeli identity. And this identity was fabricated… 14 years before I was born.”]]> Members of the anti-Zionist Hassidic Jews group, Neturei Karta, carry signs during a rally against the creation of the state of Israel in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighbourhood on May 14, 2024. Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images

At the 2025 National Membership Meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace in Baltimore, thousands of anti-Zionist Jews gathered to reaffirm their opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians—and to reject the antisemitic notion that the political ideology of Zionism represents all Jews. In this vital and wide-ranging discussion recorded during the JVP gathering in Baltimore, TRNN’s Marc Steiner sits down with self-identified Palestinian Jews Esther Farmer and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay to discuss the complexities of Jewish identity and belonging today, the historical origins of Israel, and “the way that Zionism destroyed both Palestine and the diverse modes of Jewish life” that predate and reject the Zionist project.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is a Palestinian Jew of African origins, film essayist, curator, and professor of modern culture and comparative literature at Brown University. She is the author of numerous books, including: Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism; The Civil Contract of Photography; and From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950. Esther Farmer is a Palestinian Jew and native Brooklynite passionate about using theater as a tool for community development. She is former Ombudsman and Manager for the New York City Housing Authority, former United Nations representative for the International Association for Community Development and was an original founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. She is also a Jewish Voice for Peace NYC chapter leader and the director and playwright of “Wrestling with Zionism.”

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with this. Jewish Voice for Peace is having their national convention right here in Baltimore, and the real news is there to bring you the story. Two of the leading participants in JVP are joining me in studio here at The Real News, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is Professor of modern culture and media and comparative literature, and a film essayist and curator of archives and exhibitions. Her books include Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism; Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography; The Civil Contract of Photography; and From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950. Among her films: Un-Documented: Unlearning Imperial Plunder, and Civil Alliance: Palestine 47-48. Among her exhibitions: “Errata” in Barcelona and HKW in Berlin; “Enough! The Natural Violence of the New World Order” that was done in Leipzig.

And we’re also joined by Esther Farmer, who is a Palestinian Jew, a native Brooklynite whose passion is using theater as a tool for community development. She’s the director of “Wrestling with Zionism,” a reader’s theater project in New York City, as well as the author of several published articles on theater and community development. Esther is an active member and part of the leadership team of Jewish Voice for Peace in New York City. And they join us here in studio. So welcome both of you. It’s good to have you here. I’m really happy you could take the time from the conference to join us here for a little bit. One of the things that fascinated me about the two of you as I was going through all of your work, not all of it, but going through your work, is that you both identify as Palestinian Jews. Can we talk about what that means? That’s a word You never hear that maybe in certain circles you do, but in the rest of the world you don’t hear that notion idea of Palestinian Jew and what that means and why. That’s the way you identify.

Esther Farmer:

So my father was born in Hebron, Palestine. My grandfather was a Turkish Jew who went to Palestine pretty much to avoid the draft from World War I. He was a draft dodger,

Marc Steiner:

Didn’t want to fight for the Turkish army.

Esther Farmer:

He was a progressive Jew, didn’t believe in war. I found out much later that the penalty for avoiding the draft was to be hung. So several Jews actually left, but he did not realize that since Palestine was a Turkish protector, he was drafted anyway, and that’s why they came to the United States. They came to New York. So this was way before the Nakba and way before 1948, my family was, they lived on the Lower East Side. They were very poor and they were very anti-Zionist. So my family’s existence gives the lie to all Jews loved Israel, and certainly Ariella’s work really ties into that, that before the Holocaust, most Jews were not Zionists. So what does it mean to be a Palestinian Jew is that there was a country called Palestine, and it was Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. It was very diverse, and the vast majority at that time, 80% were not Jewish. They were Muslim. So Israel was a creation of people who did not live there for their own interest.

Marc Steiner:

I want to get to that point because that’s really a critical point. People don’t get about it, what Israel is and why it is. Ariella?

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

Yeah. So I think that first of all, we have to be reminded that the category of identity is a colonial category. And I was born into the Zionist colony in Palestine, and an identity was imposed on me at birth called Israeli identity. And this identity was fabricated in 14 years since, I mean 14 years before I was born, which means synthetic identity that was meant to cultivate or to create a factory of Israeli babies, that their identity is predicated on their opposition to other who lived in this country, who lived in this place, which were defined Palestinians. So when I’m speaking about these kind of human factories in the Zionist colony in Palestine, I’m speaking about the way that Zionism destroyed both Palestine and the diverse modes of Jewish life. Part of them took place in Palestine. My family moved to Palestine, my maternal from maternal side, they were expelled together with Muslims when the first white Christian state was created in Spain, when Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain. So they moved from Spain to Portugal, France, Austria, Bulgaria, and then Palestine, way before the Zionist movement started to colonize or to aspire to colonize Palestine. So they were Palestinian Jews in the very factual way. They were part of Palestine. And this is not a colonial identity, this is a form of belonging. And when I’m saying that I’m a Palestinian Jew, it is a way of undoing, first of all, the identity that was imposed on me at birth, that I’m not recognizing myself in it, and all the other colonial identities that await for me like American or like French. So claiming that I am a Palestinian Jew is claiming a form of belonging. That was the form of belonging of my maternal ancestors. From my paternal side, we were Algerian Jews and both identities were destroyed. Both forms of belonging, sorry, not identities were destroyed through two colonial project, the French colonization of Algeria on the one hand and the Zionist colonization of Palestine. So being an Algerian Jew, a Palestinian Jew, a Muslim Jew is a mode of reclaiming my ancestral modes of belonging.

Marc Steiner:

I love that. Both of you really interesting stories, very powerful stories, and I want to dive back into that. But I was thinking as you were talking that, and I’ve wrestled this a lot and I’ve written about this, which is that if there had been no Holocaust there, there’d be no Israel. I mean, that’s the fundamental, most Jews were not interested in being Zionists. They were in this socialist movements here. They were doing whatever they were doing, whatever we were.

Esther Farmer:

I don’t know about that.

Marc Steiner:

Okay, please go ahead.

Esther Farmer:

I mean, I don’t know how we could know that, but there’s an assumption there that the imperialist powers at that time wouldn’t have. I mean, they certainly used the Holocaust and the sympathy of the world, or the Zionist claimed that they absolutely had to have Israel to, and it was seen as some kind of reparation or something. But as my father used to say, also, I love Avila’s work because it kind of puts a context to things that my family would say is that the Zionists love Israel and they hate Jews. And I think that says a lot. So I don’t know that the imperialists wouldn’t have created Israel one way or another. I don’t know. I just think it’s an assumption.

Marc Steiner:

Good.

Esther Farmer:

Yeah,

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

Maybe I can complete it from a different perspective. Yeah, please. I think that we cannot say that if there will not, Holocaust won’t be the state of Israel. We have to ask ourself what is the continuity between the Holocaust and the state of Israel in order to reply that we have to go back in time because the Holocaust didn’t arrive from nowhere.

Okay, if it didn’t arrive from nowhere, we have to ask ourself what did Europe wanted from the Jews in order to have the Holocaust and then to force on the Jews all over the world to be represented by the Zionists that destroyed Palestine and created the state of Israel as the destiny of the Jewish people. For that, I invite in my book, the Jewelers of the Umai, have it here with me, a potential history of the Jewish Muslim world. What I invite people to look at is in the wake of the French Revolution, when the modern citizenship was invented, Jews who lived in France were not part of the citizenship they were given with this citizenship a few years after the French Revolution. But what interests me is not the fact that the Jews were naturalized in the wake of the French Revolution. What interests me is the price that they had to pay in order to become citizens.

They had to forget that they were Jews and forgetting that they were Jews. This was a European project. So eliminating the Jews either by assimilating them into the Christian world or assimilating them into what the Euro-American powers invented in the wake of World War II as the Judeo-Christian tradition, or eliminating the Jews through extermination. All these are part of the same project, what to do with the Jews. Europe invented the Jews as a question, as a problem. And at the same time that Europe invented the Jews as a problem, they also invented the solution with quotation mark to make out of diverse Jewish communities, a Jewish people with a destiny. This brings us to the beginning of the 19th century, the beginning of the 19th century. They invent Palestine as a question, and they invent the Jews as a question, and they merge both questions. Napoleon, Napoleonic Wars already saw the possibility of transferring the Jews to Palestine.

So this connection between Palestine and the Jews is something that Europe invented way before the Nakba. And the last point in time that I would like to bring to our conversation is in the wake of World War ii, after the Holocaust, Euro-American powers imposed what they called New World Order. They created the UN as the organ to facilitate their solutions to different people. The Jews were in displaced person camps in Europe from 45 to 48. The Zionist movement was a marginal movement in the life of Jews, worldwide marginalized movement. In the Jewish Muslim world, it has almost no presence. And Europe that was responsible for the extermination of the Jews add to innocent itself, making Europe innocent, making Europe, one of the liberating powers add to what was relied on the exceptional of the Nazi, which legitimized all the European colonies and the exceptional of the Jewish suffering, this double exceptional and the recognition of the Zionist as representative of the Jews, which means those who were mandated to destroy Jewish, a diverse Jewish life all over the world in Asia, in North Africa, in many other places. And the Zionists were mandated to destroy Palestine. This was part of Europe and your American powers part of their response, what to do with the Jews. So if we speak about the final solution by the Nazi as an extermination, the final, final solution or the post final solution was to impose on the Jews a state that will be for them at the price of Palestine, at the price of the destruction of diverse Jewish communities,

Esther Farmer:

Which is fascinating to me because it’s like it’s the way that Zionism is so deeply antisemitic. It is antisemitic, obviously by

Marc Steiner:

Homogenizing. Jump to that. Please go ahead.

Esther Farmer:

Well, just by homogenizing, and now it’s being used tangible form of Jewish life except the Zionist one, right? And it’s like this way of Jews being used. I mean, that was something that my family taught me very deeply in my DNA, that Jews are used by the imperialists for their own interests. And the creation of Israel was so much about that. And yet, we’re all supposed to say that as Jews, we all love Israel, which is the most antisemitic thing possible. And of course for me, as someone who comes from a very strong leftist Jewish background, what Israel is doing is a travesty. And back to that question of the Jews love the Zionists, love Israel and hate Jews. That incident that happened when it was a boatload of refugees and they were coming to the United States and they were turned away.

They weren’t interested in going to Israel. They wanted to come to the United States. And the United States turned them away, and the Zionists were fine with that as long as the United States supported Israel. So it’s just a perfect example in your face of how Jews in Israel is not the same thing, but we have been inundated with propaganda to make our identities. And I mean, Ella’s work is so fascinating to me because they’ve literally erased our memories and have just changed the narrative and the dialogue to the point where it’s unrecognizable as to who people are. And now Christian nationalists are telling us what it is to be a Jew, which the IRA definition says that you’re only a Jew if you support Zionism. So they’re literally erasing our memories and history.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

Yeah, no, this goes back to Napoleonic Wars Napoleon, who codified what is Judaism, who invented the Jewish consi story, who created Jewish life as a pyramidal modes of being who are entangled being Jew with the state in a way that the state, the states, different states can tell us today, what does it mean to be Jew? And there are bad Jews, and good Jews and the anti-Zionists are being considered the bad Jews. And those are Christians who never reckoned with their antisemitism or anti Judaism with their racism toward many groups that are telling us what does it mean to be Jew? And I would like just to add that Europe, in order to innocent itself from its crimes against the Jews, first of all, imposed the state of Israel or imposed the Zionist as representative of the Jews, but also exchanged with the enemy of the Jews and created Palestinians, Arab and Muslims as the enemies of the Jews.

And these were never our enemies. If the Jews added systematic enemy, this was Europe. For centuries, Jews were expelled from one place to another in Europe. And it ended up with a project that is being called as a euphemistic term to describe. It was called the emancipation of the Jews in the 18th century, in the 19th century. What is this emancipation? This emancipation meant to kill the Jew within the Jew. I think that here in the us, we have to think about it as similar to the project of killing the indigenous within the indigenous, right? It’s like the boarding schools. So on a global scale, Europe killed the Jew within the Jew, and many of the members of what is being called here in a way that always surprise me, American Jewry, many of the members of this community don’t even remember that they belong to other communities that were destroyed by Europe, right? American Jewry is an invention, is an amalgamation, is another amalgamation that is built on the European amalgamation of the Jewish people in the 19th century. So we have to be reminded also that Zionism started as a Christian movement. The colonization of Palestine was a Christian ideology before it became a Zionist, a Jewish Zionist ideology.

Esther Farmer:

It’s interesting that I remember when Biden said, if we didn’t have Israel, we would have to invent

Marc Steiner:

It,

Esther Farmer:

Which is again, the most antisemitic thing in the world telling are you saying that Jews are not safe where they are? So we’re not safe here. So we have to create Israel. And you support that. I mean, you can’t get more antisemitic than that, but where are the Zionists? Where’s the outrage from the Zionist around that statement?

Marc Steiner:

You both have just said so much that we can stay here for hours, just pulling it all apart and really taking a deep dive here into all of it that you’ve said. I mean, what both of you have pointed out on one level, a number of levels you have on one level is how antisemitism drove Zionism in many ways to create Israel for the power of the West, as I put it once a long time ago, is to force refugees, to create refugees. And what you’ve all described, how do you take that and make it understood both politically and socially in this country? So some of the Zionist leaders will immediately call you and me self hating Jews. That’s the first thing they’ll say. But how do you take what you’ve just described and get people to really understand and put their hands around what it really means, how Israel, Israel created, what it stands for and what it’s done to us?

Esther Farmer:

Well, we are doing this conference now where we have 2000 anti-Zionist Jews in a womb 15 years ago. Be lucky if you got 15 anti-Zionist Jews in the room. So this is happening right now because the impact of what Zionism has done is war militarism and imperialism. And that’s being seen now throughout the whole world. So our job in JVP is to move Jews and everyone away from Zionism, and that’s happening. The issue is that the narrative, I mean, I’ve been doing this work for 50 years, and I have never seen the narrative the way it is right now. It has substantially changed, and that took a tremendous amount of work, and we’re proud of that work. So that’s happening. And yet the policies of the United States are still the same. So that says a lot about what so-called democracy is, when the majority of the country is with us pole after pole is saying they are not supporting what Israel is doing, but yet that’s still the policy. So I think these issues of identity and the relentless propaganda that has gone on since this Zionist, I dunno what you want to call it, experiment, has been both so destructive to Palestinians and to Jews, really, really destructive. And that’s why it’s so important for us to have this as Naomi Klein says it, Exodus away from Zionism.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah,

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

No, I think that just maybe we have to remind ourselves that there is genocide going on. It’s almost two years, and there are some common ways to understand what is genocide, which is related to what was done by Lemkin and the convention against genocide. But I think that we have to maybe ask other questions about genocide rather than defining what is genocide. Understanding that settler colonial regimes are genocidal regimes, and the state of Israel is a genocidal regime that serve the west, serve the West to solve with quotation mark the Jewish question another time in its history and serve the West to have its mercenaries in the form of Israelis. And I think that it became very clear that since October, 2023, without the arms and the money and the propaganda machine all over the world, in the western world in what you called policies in state apparatuses, the persecution of voices that are denouncing the genocide without all these western power,

The genocide will not last more than 1, 2, 3 weeks. Israel does not have the power to have a genocide. Israel itself would not survive in 48 without the destruction of Jewish diverse communities without forcing the Jews in Europe, the survivors to go to Palestine rather than to rebuild their communities in Europe without inciting violence in the Jewish Muslim world and making the life of Jews in the Jewish Muslim world impossible in a way that they slowly, slowly, this world was dismantled and Jews had to leave. Most of them did not want to go to Palestine. The case of Algeria in 62, at the moment of the end of the War of Independence

Marc Steiner:

For Algeria

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

Only 20% in Algeria, only 20% of the Jews were forced to leave Algeria because two colonial projects forced them to leave Algeria, only 20% went to the Zionist colony in Palestine. The rest of them went to Canada and France. So they were not Zionists. So we have to understand that the state of Israel was sustained with Western power. It was not an expression of a Jewish liberation project. It was a European project, Euro-American project to reorganize the entire world to create what they called the Jewish Judo Christian tradition, which never existed to remove the Jews from the Jewish Muslim world,

Marc Steiner:

Which did exist

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

To create Palestine as allegedly a state for the Jews and to turn Palestinians into exterminate group. So when I relate to the term genocide, when I wrote several texts during the beginning of the genocide, I put aside the legal definition of genocide. And I am trying to reconstruct how the genocide against Palestinians started. And it started in the wake of World War ii when Western power through the mediation of the UN, decided that Palestinians are experiment for the sake of Zionist, for the sake of creating a Zionist state. So rather than speaking about genocide as an event, I speak about genocidal regime, I speak about genocidal technologies, and when you understand the genocidal regime, you understand that already the nakba was the beginning of the genocide because Palestinians were exter amenable. They had to pay the price, they could be exterminated because their presence, there was an obstacle for the imposition of the new world order with quota mark, which was a Euro-American project of enting Europe of its crimes against the Jews and of its crimes against other colonies. We have to be reminded that in 45 European powers, and we’re speaking about the British, the French, Spanish, they still had colonies in different places in the world. So by exceptionalizing, the Nazi, by exceptionalizing the suffering of the Jews, they actually continue to run the world and not to reckon with their crimes against the Jews and against other racialized communities.

Esther Farmer:

One of the things that gets me always is when people say, well, Israel has a right to exist as if the country was established by God. I mean countries are created by the that be for their own interests. When I was growing up, there was no Bosnia.

This was created generally not created by the people that live in these places. It’s created as Ariela was saying, by the western world for their imperialist interest. So I don’t know why this country of Israel has any more right to exist than anybody else. And I think there’s a difference between these countries and the people that live in them, but this idea that countries, that Israel has a right to exist, it’s just so interesting. It’s an example of how the assumptions and how we’ve been trained to think in these ways around nation states and the creation of these things that just has nothing to do with our actual lived experience and history.

Marc Steiner:

So you both have said so much and given such deep analysis about where this is in some ways, I think that is not heard very often and really original. I mean, it’s not the way people describe what is being faced at this moment. And as you were speaking, 10 things were going through my head. One was, how do you take the analytical description that you both have given us and popularize that message so people understand it so people can grasp it? Because the way you describe, it’s very simple, very clear about what created this, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

No, no. It just occurred to me to think about it not as we would do this work. JVP does an incredible work, but it is not only about people doing this work, the genocide made it clear to millions

That this is a genocide and Israel is a genocidal regime. I can write this book and this book and you can do your work, et cetera. But people are not stupid. And there is a moment when people understand they cannot do an accelerated lessons that you take with someone who already did the work, but with the beginning of the genocide, millions went to the street, right, took it to the street to say, this is a genocide and they’re being persecuted constantly. All these draconian laws, all these draconian policies of the Trump administration is because there are millions who are saying that this is a genocidal regime. So the question is not how you bring these ideas. The question is maybe how we exit, as Nole said Zionism, but how we exit the structures that imperial powers created as benign structures. Museums, archives, nation, states, borders, naturalization, all these structures are against people.

So the questions are much bigger than how you transmit the lies of Zionism to other people. For me, the main question is outcome. That all the crimes that were committed against the Jews as if they never existed because the Jews were received with quota state or the Jews received a citizenship. The question is how to bring the Jews to participate in the anti-colonial, general global anti-colonial struggle to decolonize this world. So it’s not only how you convince your parents or your siblings, it’s about how we exit from those institutions that were normalized as benign institutions, but actually they are reproducing the destruction of the world.

Marc Steiner:

So one of the things I think about as you all describe where we are and why we’re here, I think about historically here in this country that 70% of all the civil rights workers in the South when I was a civil rights worker in the South as a young man were Jews. 70% of all the whites civil rights workers, civil rights workers in the south were Jews. And that we were the heart of the labor movement. We were the heart of the revolutionary movements. In Europe, there’s a different spirit I think that has to be grasped and put out there a different heritage and tradition of who we are as opposed to having it being defined by this kind of Zionist domination that was pushed and created by the imperial powers as you were talking about. So they have a beachhead in the Middle East and they figured out what to do with the Jews.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

But the example that you bring is very interesting because Jews participated in the civil rights movement. They were in solidarity with the black.

They didn’t fight their own struggle as part of it. And I think that what JVP maybe today offer is how to think about the liberation aspirations of the Jews together with the liberation aspirations of other groups. And I think that what happened with the us, what happened with this kind of erasure of what Europe did to us, what Euro-American did to us is the removal of the Jews from the history of colonization in a way that the Jews from a long time did not have a project of decolonization while they were still colonized. To act only as a blank American citizen in the movement for the civil rights movement means not understanding how much Jews were still colonized. So they could act as blank citizens, but not as Jews who are affirming this as their own struggle. They struggle for black Americans. And I think that here there is a very interesting things for Jews to do in the US is to reclaim their histories outcome that they became American Jews outcome, that their history is a very short history, the history of their life in America.

Where is their history in Europe, what was taken from them? There are traditions, there are beliefs, there are many things were taken from them. There are possibility to live their life there. So I’m not speaking about in terms of returning to Europe, but I’m speaking about reclaiming their histories. If the Jews will reclaim their histories, they will not be blank citizens in empire only joining others struggles. And I think the JVPs that maybe the first time that there is a kind of broad Jewish movement in the US where Jews are speaking about what was taken from them and cementing Zionism as their identity is part of what was taken from them. But there is much more to that.

Esther Farmer:

I mean, I feel very personally angry at Zionism from my experience as a leftist Jew. My father was a union organizer, and I grew up with that history of, as you say, in the labor movement. And Jews and I have always felt, and I have seen this with my own eyes, how this Zionist project has moved Jews to the right in the way that you are describing has moved Jews in the direction where it’s unrecognizable. To me, that’s the other way in which I see Zionism as so antisemitic. The whole history of Jews being for justice, even in the biblical text and stuff, it’s just completely thrown away by only us only. My mother used to say, we are Jews for justice, not just us.

Marc Steiner:

And

Esther Farmer:

That was the history, what it meant to me to be a Jew. So I feel like Zionism was, and in Ella’s work, it’s like a deliberate attempt to erase an understanding of Jews as standing with the oppressed in the world. That’s interesting what you said about from my family, I did experience that connection between what happened to the Jews and other people, that solidarity. I did feel that, and I think that there were other people who did feel that, but I also think that there was a deliberate attempt to break that memory in some ways though I think that’s what’s so interesting about what we’re talking about.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, I think the reason, I’m not usually at a loss for words how I make my living, but one of the things that really struck me about this conversation we’ve had so far is that it’s one that doesn’t take place in very many places where there’s an introspection about Jewish history and Jewish life and what it means in what we face today and how we’ve become sucked into this imperial world oppressing Palestinians. And when I was a kid, it was the fight against Jewish store owners in inner city neighborhoods that we used to boycott and go after because of what they were doing. But now that becomes, it becomes a prominent aspect of American jewelry at this moment. And I think the way you two describe this, the depth of which you describe, this is something I think that people need to wrestle with. Beyond JVP.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

There are many initiatives. If we see millions in the street protesting against the genocide, many of them are organized in different collectives. Strike MoMA, making, munches, kohenet, so many collectives, smalls middle size that are reclaiming, they are Jewish heritage and reclaiming. They are Jewish heritage is saying, we are not white try to whiten us. This is what they’re saying. But Jews were never white. So while accepting as part of the Jewish identity in the us, it’s something that always strike me accepting this category that the Jews are white is accepting to erase their history. They were first racialized, their histories were destroyed in order to tell them, we give you the passage to passage white, but Jews are not white. So I think that we cannot see the millions in the street protesting against the genocide and believe that there is only JVP. JVP is very powerful, very broad because you have branches in different cities, but there are many, many initiatives all over to reclaim what was taken from the Jews and what was taken from the Jews.

Part of it is major part of it today. There are history as victims of genocide, and now the Zionists are perpetrating genocide that implicate the entire Jewish community because of a long history of conflating between Zionists and Jews. Because when the West recognized the Zionist as representing the Jewish people with no reason to recognize them, but it served the interest of the West, it created a kind of conflation. And this conflation took from the Jews many things that people are struggling to today to introduce a distance from them and from this identification or this false mode of being represented by the state of Israel and the Zionist without announcing the responsibility to continue the struggle against the genocidal regime.

Marc Steiner:

So as we conclude here, I was thinking about this kind of neofascist regime that exists in Israel and this neofascist regime that’s taking over the country that we live in here, and all the experience the two of you have had and the creative work you’ve done and the political work you’ve done, and where you see the hope and where we’re going, where you see the struggle going and what we face right now. I mean, seeing JVP grow as it has is amazing, and other groups are there, but the right is really on the rise. And in many ways, as almost as you were alluding to the right, often uses Jews and people get sucked into the right. So where do you both think this takes us all, after all your years of struggle and being parts of movements in your work,

Esther Farmer:

I mean, hits the horror and the hope every second.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah,

Esther Farmer:

Right. I mean, across the street you’ve got 2000 anti-Zionist. That’s the hope. And we have this fascistic things. Is this really happening right now? Again, I think it’s a really interesting moment when the majority of the country is with us, and yet we still have these policies now that contradiction is only going to grow. I think there’s so much grassroots organizing going on, not just from JVP in so many areas, and it’s really important. I think this concept of intersectionality and solidarity is extremely important. And that’s the hope is the solidarity and the intersectionality of our movements. And as Ariella was saying, it’s a worldwide thing. It’s not only about Israel, it’s not only about Palestine. It’s this whole way of understanding even how nation states are organized. I struggle with that myself because I come from a time when national liberation struggles were a very progressive thing and people wanted independence. And then there are these states that exist and have they helped the world? Have they not helped the world? What does that mean to have the world organized by these nation states? Is there a difference between anti-colonial and decolonial? These are interesting questions that are coming up right now for me anyway. So yeah, I think there is hope. There is organizing going on. People are moving and both sides are moving very fast. They are,

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

Yeah. So if I may just pick on something that you said right now, I don’t think that these were a national liberation movement. These were anti-colonial movements that were intercepted by the colonizers to become national liberation movements. All the process of decolonization of Africa was intercepted by the West through the creation of the un. We have to be reminded that in 45 there were several 40, 45 states in the world. Today we have 200 states, which means that the decolonization of Africa, decolonization of Asia, rather than being decolonized from the imperial powers, the imperial powers created international organization that imposed that the only way to decolonize a place would be to create a nation state.

Esther Farmer:

That’s very interesting.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

So I don’t think that these were national liberation struggles. These were anticolonial liberation struggle that were intercepted by the West in Algeria. It’s very typical. It was an anticolonial struggle and it ended up with an independent state from where the Jews, Algerian Jews had to live because this was the model that is built on the purification of the body politic from elements that do not fit there. So the Jews didn’t fit here, and the Jews didn’t fit there, and the Jews didn’t fit there and others didn’t fit there. And we got the new World order. One comment about what you said, I don’t think that in Israel it is a neo fascist regime. Israel is, as I said earlier, a genocidal regime to begin with. The fact that Netanya ran this genocide cannot make us forget that the genocide against Palestinians started in 48. The destruction of Palestine, the destruction of the Palestinian society didn’t start with Netanya.

And this phase of the genocide is horrible and is the highest in terms of casualties, but it is not the highest in terms of the destruction of the Palestinian society. And when you ask about hope, if there is hope is in a global decolonial transformation of the world, because all these structures that enabled in 45 to impose another settler colonial state as a liberation project for the Jews, while it was a project of liberation of Europe from its crimes to appear in the world as the liberator. So I think that the fact that those organs continue to exist as benign organs, museums, for example, that looted so much of ancestral worlds of black, of Jews, of Muslims, and impose themselves as the guardians of this culture while they participated in the decimation of the material culture of so many people. So I think that there is a lot of work to be done in order to undo imperial planter, to undo the imperial organization of the world, and not only to speak about throwing away this or that government, it’s about stopping the genocidal regimes that are still being recognized as benign democratic regime with an accident with side project that should be reformed.

Israel cannot be reformed. Israel is a genocidal regime and Israeli state apparatuses should be dismantled in order to allow the return of Palestine in which Jews will also be part of it as one of the minority groups and not as the governor, the masters of the land.

Marc Steiner:

I want to say that this has been one of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time, and mostly because I didn’t do much talking at all, but which is great. I think you both brought a very profound and different analysis to this conversation that’s not often heard, and I wish we could sit here for the next three hours, but we can’t. And I just want to say thank you to Ariel Zuli and to you both farmer for being here today and being part of this conversation.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

Thank you for inviting us. It was a pleasure. Yes. Thank you so much for having us to share the flow with you.

Marc Steiner:

I deeply appreciate it. Really the joke from my friends that were listening, mark, you didn’t say anything. It’s okay. Because what came out of this, I think was something that people have to really wrestle with about where our future is going, not just as Jews, not just as Israel Palestine, but in terms of where the world is going and why this is so central to all of that.

Esther Farmer:

And there’s something very liberating about thinking about the world without nation states or thinking about the world without borders. Can we have those imaginations? Can we think beyond what they’ve given us, that we have to think that way? Can we think beyond that? And now maybe is a moment the horror and the hope where we can think in different ways.

Marc Steiner:

We have to thank you both so much for taking all this time.

Esther Farmer:

Thank you. Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

See you back at the JVP conference. Once again, thank you to Ariella, Aisha Azule and Esther Farmer for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebdon and Cameron Grino for running the program and audio editor, Alida Nek and producer for always working for Magic behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today and what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Ella Aisha Azule and Esther Farmer for being our guest today here on the Mark Steiner Show on the Real News. And remember, we can’t do this without you, so please share, join our community by clicking on the subscribe button right below here and support the Real News Network. Do it now. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Mark Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/13/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-palestinian-jew-today/feed/ 0 532773 Israel: How oppressed Jews became the oppressors w/ Molly Kraft | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/12/israel-how-oppressed-jews-became-the-oppressors-w-molly-kraft-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/12/israel-how-oppressed-jews-became-the-oppressors-w-molly-kraft-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Mon, 12 May 2025 18:04:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=4f1cfcf8c5b7f32c2057d3449341b9cb
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/12/israel-how-oppressed-jews-became-the-oppressors-w-molly-kraft-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 532545 Fired after Zionist uproar, artist Mr. Fish won’t stop drawing the truth https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/06/fired-after-zionist-uproar-artist-mr-fish-wont-stop-drawing-the-truth/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/06/fired-after-zionist-uproar-artist-mr-fish-wont-stop-drawing-the-truth/#respond Tue, 06 May 2025 21:08:55 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=333938 "Eternal Damn Nation 2021," original artwork by Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth). Art used with permission from the original artist.After becoming a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics for his political cartoons, Dwayne Booth (“Mr. Fish”) was fired from the University of Pennsylvania in March. Marc Steiner speaks with Booth about his firing and how to combat the current repressive crackdown on art and dissent.]]> "Eternal Damn Nation 2021," original artwork by Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth). Art used with permission from the original artist.

World-renowned political cartoonist Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of the new McCarthyist assault on free expression and higher education. While employed as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Booth became a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics, and his work became a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing in March. Facing charges that certain cartoons contained anti-Semitic tropes, J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as “reprehensible.”

In a statement about his firing, Booth writes: “The reality – and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn – is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with the largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans/black/immigrant, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research – speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.”

In this special edition of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc sits down with Booth in the TRNN studio in Baltimore to discuss the events that led to his firing, the purpose and effects of political art, and how to respond to the repressive crackdown on art and dissent as genocide is unfolding and fascism is rising.

Producer: Rosette Sewali

Studio Production / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us.

A wave of authoritarian oppression has gripped colleges and universities. Life on campus looks in some ways similar but in other ways very intensely different than it did when I was a young man in the 1960s. International students like Mahmoud, Khalil are being abducted on the street and disappeared by ICE agents in broad daylight, and hundreds of student visas have been abruptly revoked. Faculty and graduate students are being fired, expelled, and doxxed online. From Columbia University to Harvard, Northwestern to Cornell, the Trump administration is holding billions of dollars of federal grants and contracts hostage in order to bend universities to Trump’s will and to squash our constitutional protected rights to free speech and free assembly.

Now, while the administration has justified these unprecedented attacks as necessary to root out so-called woke scours like diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and trans athletes playing college sports, the primary justification they’ve cited is combating antisemitism on campuses, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism, opposition to Israel, its political ideolog, Zionism, and Israel’s US-backed obliteration of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Now, our guest today is Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of this top-down political battle to reshape higher education in our country. Booth is a world-renowned political cartoonist based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in venues like Harvard’s Magazine, The Nation, The Village Voice, The Atlantic. Until recently, he was a lecturer at the Annenberg School [for] Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. And just days after the Trump administration announced it was freezing $175 million in federal funds depend, Booth was fired.

Booth’s work has become a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing, facing charges that certain cartoons he made contained antisemitic tropes. J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as reprehensible.

In a statement about his firing posted on his Patreon page on March 20, Booth wrote this: “The reality and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans, Black, immigrants, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research, speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.

Today we’re going straight to the heart of the matter, and we’re speaking with Mr. Fish himself right here in The Real News Studio. Welcome. Good to have you with us.

Dwayne Booth:

Great to be here.

Marc Steiner:

So I gotta ask you this question first. Just get it out of the way. So where did the fish come from?

Dwayne Booth:

Oh my gosh. Well, that’s a long tale. I attempted to name my mother, had gotten my stepfather a new bird for Father’s Day. And this was right after I dropped out of college and was living in the back of my parents’ house and fulfilling the dream of every parent to have their son return. I’m not getting a job, I’m going to draw cartoons, and my real name is Dwayne Booth, and I wasn’t going to start. I started to draw cartoons just as a side, and I couldn’t sign it “Booth” because George Booth was the main cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, and I couldn’t just write “Dwayne” because it was too Cher or Madonna, I wasn’t going to go for just this straight first name.

So I attempted to name this new bird that came into the house. My mother asked for names and I said, Mr. Fish is the best name for a pet bird, and she rejected it. So I said, I’ll use it. And I signed all my cartoons “Mr. Fish”, and I immediately got published. And one of the editors, in fact, who published me immediately had pretended to follow me for 30 years. Mr. Fish, I can’t believe Mr. Fish finally sent us. Oh, it was locked in. I had to be Mr. Fish.

Marc Steiner:

I love it. I love it. So the work you’ve been doing, first of all, it’s amazing that a person without artistic training creates these incredible, complicated, intricate cartoons. Clearly it’s just innate inside of you.

You have this piece you did, I dunno why this one keeps sticking in my head, but the “Guernica” piece, which takes on the Trump administration and puts their figures in the place of the original work, to talk about that for a minute, how you came to create that, and why you use “Guernica”?

Dwayne Booth:

Well, it’s called “Eternal Damn Nation”. And one of the things that we should be responsible and how we communicate our dismay to other people. Now, what we attempt to do as artists is figure out the quickest path to make your point. So we tend to utilize various iconic images or things from history that will get the viewer to a certain emotional state and then piggyback the modern version on top of it, and also challenge the whole notion that these kinds of injustices have been happening over and over and over again. Because the Picasso piece is about fascism. Guess what? Guess what’s happening now? So you want to use those things to say that this might refer to a historical truism from the past, but it has application now, and it speaks to people, as you said, it resonated. Why did it resonate? Because it seems like a blunt version of truth that we have to contend with.

Marc Steiner:

So when you draw your pieces, before we go to Israel Palestine, I want to talk about Trump for a moment. Trump has been a target of your cartoons from the beginning. And the way he’s portrayed eating feces — Can I say the other word? Eating shit and just having shit all over him, a big fat slob and a beast of a fascist. Talk about your own image of this man, why you portray him this way. What do you think he represents here at this moment?

Dwayne Booth:

Well, it’s interesting because, in many ways, what I try to do with the images, the cartoons that you’re referring to, is, yes, I try to make it as obscene as I possibly can because the reality is also obscene. So I always want to challenge somebody who might look at something like that and say, oh my gosh, I don’t want to look at it. It’s important to look at these things.

The reality is, yes, I create these metaphors, eating shit and being a very lethal buffoon and clown. Those, to me, are the metaphors for something that is actually more dangerous. He’s being enabled by a power structure and being legitimized by these power brokers that surround him to enact real misery in America and the rest of the world, so you don’t want to treat somebody respectfully who is doing that. You want to say, this is shit. This is bullshit. This is an obscenity that we have to not shy away from and face it.

And if it is that ugly, if the metaphor is that ugly, again, challenge me to say that I should be respecting this person in a different way, should be pulling my punches. No, no. We should be going full-throated dissent against this kind of person and this kind of movement because it is an obscenity and we have to do something about it.

Marc Steiner:

The way you portray what’s happening in this country at this moment in many of your cartoons, in many of your works, Trump next door with Hitler, Trump as a figure with his middle finger to the air, all of that, when you do these things. How do you think about transient that into political action?

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s one of the tricks with satire, and I think that satire, I don’t think people know how to read satire anymore. What stands —

Marc Steiner:

It’s a lost art.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s a lost art. People think that Saturday Night Live is satire, and it’s not. It’s comedy, it’s burlesque is what it is.

Marc Steiner:

It’s burlesque.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s burlesque, it’s parody —

Marc Steiner:

It’s burlesque.

Dwayne Booth:

And what it does is it allows people to address politics in a way that ends with laughter and ridicule, which is the physiological reaction. And when you laugh at something, you’re telling your body, in a way, that it’s going to be okay. We can now congregate around our disdain and minimize the monstrosity by turning Trump into a clown or a buffoon. Only then we can say we’ve done our work. Look at how ridiculous he is. Now we can rely on other people, then, to do something about it.

Satire is supposed to, from my understanding through history, is supposed to have some humor in it. A lot of the humor is just speaking the blatant truth about something, and it’s supposed to reveal social injustices and political villainy in such a way that when you’re finished with it, you’re still upset and you do want to do something about it. Again, if we have to start worrying about how we are communicating our disdain about something that is deserving of disdain, Lenny Bruce quote, something that always has moved me and is the reason I do what I do. When he said, “Take away the right to say fuck, and you take away the right to say fuck the government.”

Marc Steiner:

Yes, I saw that in one of your pieces.

Dwayne Booth:

We need that tool. So when I am addressing something that I find upsetting, I lead with my heart because it is a visceral reaction. It’s very, very upsetting. I pour that into the artwork that I’m rendering, and then I share with other people because people are suffering. I know what suffering feels like. So the emotional component is really, really important to me.

And if you notice, looking at the cartooning that I do about Trump, is those are very involved, most often, fine art pieces. They’re not the whimsy of a cartoon because it’s more serious than that. I want to communicate through the craft that I bring to the piece that I’m willing to spend. Some of those things take me days to complete.

Marc Steiner:

I’m sure.

Dwayne Booth:

This is so important to me, and you’re going to see my dedication to, A, giving a shit and wanting to do something about it. If I can keep you in front of that piece of art longer than if it was just a zippy cartoon, it might seep into your understanding, your soul, and your enthusiasm to also join some sort of movement to change things.

Marc Steiner:

What popped in my head when I first started looking into the piece was the use of humor and satire in attacking fascism, attacking the growth of fascism. Maybe think of Charlie Chaplin.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, The Great Dictator

Marc Steiner:

That was so effective. But the buffoonery that he characterized Hitler with is the same with Trump. It is frightening and close.

Dwayne Booth:

It is. And I would say, again, one thing I just want to be clear about is that there can be elements of parody and burlesque in there, because what that does is that that invites the viewer into the conversation. It says that this is not so dangerous that you should cower. This person is a fool — A fool who is capable of great catastrophic actions, but he’s an idiot. He’s an idiot. You’re allowed to be smarter than an idiot, and you’re allowed to lose patience with an idiot.

So the second question. So, OK, if you can inspire somebody to be upset and recognize that they are somewhere in this strategy coming from an authoritarian of I will devour you at some point, and maybe this is where… I don’t know if you want to get into the college experience necessarily right now, but that was one of the things that’s interesting about being a professor for. I taught there for 11 years, and it’s always been in my mind. I love teaching, but I was hired as a professional because I was a professional cartoonist. I’m actually a college dropout, and so I bring the practice of what I do into the classroom.

One of the things that was very interesting is, as the world blows up, colleges and universities are institutions of privilege. There’s no way around it. There’s students, yes, that might be there with a great deal of financial aid or some part of a program that gets them in, but by and large, these are communities of privilege. So it was very interesting to see when the society was falling apart, when there was an obvious threat before it was exactly demonstrated about academic freedom and so forth, the strategy from many colleagues that I spoke to was, all right, if we hold our breaths and maybe get to the midterms, we’ll be okay. If we can hold our breaths and just keep our heads down for four years, maybe things will be better. And my reaction was just, do you realize that that’s a privileged position? There’s people who are really suffering. If that is what your strategy is moving forward, then we are doomed because there’s no reason to be brave and stick your neck out.

Marc Steiner:

A number of the things running through my head as you were just describing this, before we go back to your cartoons, which I want to get right back to, which is I was part of the student movement into the 1960s. We took over places, we fought police, we got arrested and expelled from schools. I was thrown out of University of Maryland after three semesters and got drafted. Don’t have to go into that story now, but that happened. So I’m saying there’ve always been places of radical disruption and anger and fighting for justice.

How do you see that different now? I mean, look, in terms of the work you do and what happened to you at Annenberg, tossing you out.

Dwayne Booth:

Well, that’s a two-part question, and we can get to the second part of that in a second. But when it comes to that question of what has happened to college campuses, essentially, is look around. The commodification of everything has reduced the call for speaking your mind, for free speech. Because if you’re going to be indoctrinated into thinking that the commodification of everything is what’s calling you to a successful life, then colleges and universities become indoctrination centers for job placement, way more than even… When I was in college, it was different. You were there to explore, to figure out who you were, what you wanted to do, literally, with the rest of your life. It wasn’t about like, OK, this is how you play the game and keep your mouth shut if you want to succeed. That is the new paradigm that is now framing the kinds of conversations and the pressures inside the classroom to “succeed”.

But my thing with my classes, I would always tell my class a version of the very first day is, what you’re going to learn in this class is not going to help you get a job [Steiner laughs]. What it’s going to do, if I’m successful, and I hope I will be, is it will allow you the potentiality to keep a white-knuckled grip on your soul. Because the stuff we’re looking at is how did the arts community communicate what the humanitarian approach to life should be? That’s not a moneymaking scenario. In fact, there’s examples all through history where you’re penalized for that kind of thinking.

But what is revealed to students is that this is a glimpse into what makes a meaningful life. It’s not surrendering to bureaucracy and hierarchy. It’s about pushing back against that.

Marc Steiner:

Right. And the most important thing in an institution can do — And I don’t want to dive too deep into this now — But is make you question and make you probe and uncover. If you’re not doing that, then you’re not teaching, and you’re not learning.

Dwayne Booth:

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s where we are now. Just even asking the question has become a huge problem. Even when everything started to happen with Gaza and with Israel, we had some conversations in class, without even getting, I wasn’t even trying to start conversations about which side are you going to be on? This is why you should be on this side and abhor the other side. It wasn’t even questions like that. The conversations we ended up having was the terror on the campus to even broach the subject.

My classes where we spoke very frankly about, I can’t even say the word “Israel”, I can’t say it. And it was also among the faculty. And I don’t know if you’ve spoken to other faculty members at other universities, and this shouldn’t be shocking, but at some point, a year ago, we were told, and we all agreed unanimously, not to use school email. They’re listening. We were going to communicate with WhatsApp or try to have personal conversations off campus because we do not trust the administration not to surrender all of our personal correspondence with these congressional committees attempting to blow up universities.

And they did that with me. There was some communication about Congress wants all of your communication with colleagues and students.

Marc Steiner:

That literally happened.

Dwayne Booth:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

They wanted all your communication?

Dwayne Booth:

Yes. And I wasn’t alone. This is what’s going on on college campuses. So A, it’s a really interesting thing to ask because I don’t own the correspondence I have on the servers at school. I don’t. So it’s not even up to me. I can say no, but they’re still going to do it. So that kind of question, what that does is say, you are under our boot. We want to make sure that you understand that you are under our boot and that you’re going to cooperate.

So what was my answer to that? My answer was, fuck you. Because this is coming after a semester where a couple of times I had to teach remotely because not only there were death threats on me, but being the professor in front of this class, there were death threats on my students. So knowing that and really being angry at the main administration and the interim president Jameson for surrendering to this kind of McCarthyism. Again, that’s an easy equation to make, but it’s accurate. It’s a hundred percent accurate.

Marc Steiner:

I’m really curious. Let’s stay with this for a moment before we leap into some other areas here, that when did you become first aware that they were coming after you? And B, how did they do it? What did they literally do to push you out?

Dwayne Booth:

Me being pushed out, it’s an interesting question to ask because Annenberg actually protected me. Jameson wanted me out when The Washington Free Beacon article came out in February of last year.

Marc Steiner:

The one that accused you of being an antisemite?

Dwayne Booth:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Dwayne Booth:

So again, what do we do with that? We clean house. We don’t look at the truth of the matter. We don’t look at the specifics. We don’t push back, we surrender. That’s the stance of the administration. So he wanted me fired, but the Dean of Annenberg was just like, no. So they protected me. It’s the School for Communication. It has a history of…

Marc Steiner:

It’s a school where you’re trained journalists and other people to tell the truth and tell the stories and dig deep and put it out there.

Dwayne Booth:

And to say no when you need to say no.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Dwayne Booth:

Right. So that happened. So they protected me. I was there because Annenburg protected me. It didn’t stop the administration, as you said at the beginning of the segment, Jameson then makes a public statement that basically says I’m an antisemite and that I’m reprehensible.

So that went on for all of last year, not so much the beginning of this semester because everybody was very focused on what the election was going to reveal.

So I was given the opportunity to develop a new class for this coming fall. So I took off the semester, was paid to develop this new course for, actually, about the alternative press and the underground comics movement of the ’60s and ’70s.

Marc Steiner:

I remember it well [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Very good. And so that’s considered the golden age for opinion journalism, which is lacking now. So I’m like, this is a great opportunity to, again, expose what our responsibility is as a free and open society. Let’s really talk about it. I even was going to start a newspaper as part of the class that students were going to contribute to. It was going to be a very big to-do.

Trump won. The newspaper was the first thing to be canceled. We don’t want to invite too much attention from this new regime on the campus. Again, it’s this cowardice that has real ramifications, as you were saying. These funds, as soon as there’s money involved, the strategy for moving forward becomes an economic decision and not one that has to do with people and their lives.

So me being let go, I was part of a number of adjuncts and lecturers who were also let go. So it’s not an easy connection to say that I was specifically targeted as somebody who should be fired. But that said, you could feel some relief. And as a matter of fact, being let go and then being, again, the attacks from the right-wing press increased, and all of a sudden we’re like, finally UPenn has gotten rid of the antisemite. And then we’re back in this old ridiculous argument.

And luckily, I’m not alone. I’m not so much in the spotlight because many people are stepping forward and, again, trying to promote the right kind of conversation about this.

Marc Steiner:

One of the things, a bunch of things that went through my head as you were talking, I was thinking about the course you wanted to teach on alternative press. I you ever get to teach that course again, I have tons of files for you to have, to go through.

Dwayne Booth:

[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was writing the textbook.

Marc Steiner:

Textbook. Oh, were you? OK.

Dwayne Booth:

I’m going to France, actually, and I’m going to interview Robert Crumb. I’m staying over his house. Oh, that’s great.

Marc Steiner:

Oh, that’s great. He must be really old now.

Dwayne Booth:

Yes. I’m really looking forward to it.

Marc Steiner:

[Laughs] I was there at the very [beginning]. I helped found Liberation News Service.

Dwayne Booth:

Oh, see.

Marc Steiner:

And I was at Washington Free Press back in the ’60s.

Dwayne Booth:

See? So you know. I curated an exhibit on the alternative press for the University of Connecticut a couple years ago. Hugely popular. They have an archive that is dizzying. It might be the biggest in the country. And so when I was curating and putting together that exhibit, I would go in and I would be, all day, I wouldn’t even eat, and I would pore through these newspapers and magazines at the time. And I would leave, and I would actually have this real sense of woe because looking at what that kind of journalism was attempting and accomplishing made me feel like we have lost.

Marc Steiner:

Every city and community had an underground paper across the country, and Liberation newspapers were there to service all those papers and bring them together. The power of the media in that era was very different and very strong.

Dwayne Booth:

Well, the work that I do as a cartoonist and somebody who uses visuals to communicate this stuff, that was all through these newspapers, all through this movement. The idea being is the arts community is there — Well, let’s do it this way. The job of journalism, one could say, is that it provides us with the first draft of history, which we’ve heard.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly.

Dwayne Booth:

So the idea as a journalist, what you’re supposed to be asking yourself is what is the real story here? And I’m going to approach it and try to be objective about it, but what is the real story here? The job of an artist in the arts community is to ask the very same question. What is this story really about? What does this feel like? But rather than searching for the objective version of that, it’s about looking for the subjective. This is how I feel about it. And that invites people in to share their own stories. Because really we’re just stories. We’re really just stories.

Marc Steiner:

Storytellers.

Dwayne Booth:

Exactly. So if you can have a form of journalism that not only draws on straight journalism but also can bring in Allen Ginsburg to write a poem that will then explore what does it mean to be a human being? Why are we vulnerable and why do we deserve protection? Until you have that inside of a conversation, why argue in favor of protecting, say, the people of Gaza?

Marc Steiner:

Let’s talk a bit about that. Now, look, this is what got you fired [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Well, I don’t… Well, again.

Marc Steiner:

It’s part of what got you fired.

Dwayne Booth:

It created a lot of heat for me last year, we can say.

Marc Steiner:

It is a very difficult question on many levels, being accused of being an antisemite or a self-hating Jew. If you criticize Israel, whether you use the word genocide or slaughter, whatever word you use has infected the entire country at this moment. Campuses, newspapers, everywhere, magazines. And in itself, it seems to me, also creates antisemitism. It makes it bubble up. Because it’s always there, it’s just below the surface. It doesn’t take much to unleash it. So I think we’re in this very dangerous moment.

Dwayne Booth:

We are. But I would say that, with that broad description, if people only approach the question with that broad of an approach, I think we’re in trouble.

Marc Steiner:

What do you mean by that?

Dwayne Booth:

I think the question of attempting to criticize Israel and then being called an antisemite is conflating politics with religion, nationalism with religion. Because really, again, look at it. Just look at all of the conversations that people have been having. To criticize the state of Israel is criticizing the state of Israel. It has really nothing to do with criticizing Judaism at all. Now, if somebody is Jewish and supporting Israel, OK, they’ve made that connection for themselves. So therefore, you can’t have an argument that says, you’re hurting my Jewishness, my Jewish identity by attacking a nation state, because they’re two different things. And if you’re protecting the virtue of a nation state, that is nationalism.

Marc Steiner:

It is. I don’t want to digress on this too deeply, but I think that when you are part of a minority that has been persecuted — My grandfather fought the czars, people in the streets of Warsaw, in the pogroms. My dad fought the Nazis. When you know that they just hate you because of who you are, which is the excuse they used to create Israel out of Palestine, which makes it a very complex matter. It was FDR who would not let Jews here and said, you have to go. You want to get out of those camps? You’re going there.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. There is that. Yep.

Marc Steiner:

So what I’m saying to all that, I’m saying it’s a very complicated matter.

Dwayne Booth:

And so the argument, though, and I totally agree with you. So what is important for that, the fact that it is a complicated matter, then you need to create space for the conversation to happen, and you have to create the space to be large enough to accommodate all of the emotion, the emotional component that is part of this, because that’s also very, very real. And then the less emotional stuff, like what is the intellectual argument piece of this? So yes, it is all completely knotted up, but the solution is to recognize how complicated it is and then create the space for people then to untangle it.

Because again, that’s why I said about the broad approach. The broad approach is not going to help us. The broad approach is going to actually disenfranchise people from wanting to enter into the conversation. Because you don’t want to say, and as you can see it happening over and over again, anybody who says, I’m against Israel, what Israel is doing, immediately they’re called, they’re shut down by people who don’t want to have that conversation, as being antisemitic. And nobody wants to feel like they could be called an antisemitic, especially if they are not one. Remember, people who are antisemitic, they tend to be proud of the fact that they are antisemitic.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, I know. But there are a lot of antisemites out there, a lot of racists who don’t admit that they’re antisemitic or racist.

Dwayne Booth:

Again, and the question, they don’t admit it. So again, so that’s where you need that kind of conversation to turn the light on in that darkness and give them the opportunity to either defend their antisemitism, have their antisemitism revealed so that they can then self-assess who they are. Because a lot of prejudices people have, they don’t know that they have them, and they have not been challenged.

So much of what we think and feel is reflexive thinking and feeling. You can’t burn that flag. I’m an American, it’s hurting my heart. Let’s look at the issue. What is trying to be communicated by the burning of the flag? It’s not shitting on your grandfather for fighting in the Second World War. But again, if somebody is going to have all that knotted up into this emotional cluster, it’s up to us as sane human beings who are seeking understanding and also empathy with each other to be able to enter in those things assuming, until it’s disproven, that we actually have the potential for empathy and understanding among each other. But you need to create the space and the conversation for that to happen.

Marc Steiner:

What was the specific work that had them attack you as an antisemite at Annenberg? What did they pull out?

Dwayne Booth:

They pulled out some cartoons that I had. It was interesting because they pulled out mostly illustrations that I had done for Chris Hedges. I’ve been Chris Hedges’s illustrator for a very long time.

Marc Steiner:

He used to work out of this building [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Yes, exactly. And so what they did was they pulled out these illustrations completely out of context from the article that I was illustrating, had them as standalone pieces, which again, if you’re doing cartoons or you’re doing any illustrations, what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to be provocative and communicate with a very short form. If it’s something as fiery as this issue, then you need, potentially, more information to know what my intent is as an artist. Those were connected to Chris Hedges’s articles that had them make absolute sense. So those were shown without the context of Chris Hedges’s articles.

They showed a couple cartoons that also were just standalone cartoons that had been published and posted for four months without anything except great adulation from readers, because I also work for Scheer Post, which is Robert Scheer’s publication. And I’ve known Bob for decades. And if you don’t know who Bob is, you should know who Bob is. He was the editor of Ramparts and has a very long history of attempting independent journalism.

Marc Steiner:

I can’t believe he’s still rolling.

Dwayne Booth:

He is. He’s 89.

Marc Steiner:

I know [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

It’s amazing. And so he was running my cartoons. He lost more than half of his family in the Holocaust. He knows what antisemitism looks like. And so these cartoons that were pulled, again, I had nothing but people understanding what I was trying to say. But taken, again, out of context, shown to an audience that is looking for any excuse to call somebody an antisemite, which is the Washington Free Beacon, who has called everybody an antisemite: Obama, Bernie Sanders, just everybody. And framing the parameters of that slander, presenting it to their audience who blew up, again, then started writing me: I want to rape your wife and murder your children. I know where you live. All of those sorts of things all of a sudden come out. So that happened.

And so again, there I am — And I’ve had hate mail. I’ve had death threats before. I’ve never been part of an institution where the strategy for moving forward is being part of a community was… All right. I was told to just not say anything at first. We’ll see if we can weather this. And then when the Jameson statement came out, I wrote to my dean and I said, I have to say something now. I can’t sit back and just let these people frame the argument because it’s not accurate.

Marc Steiner:

Right, right.

Dwayne Booth:

Then I started to talk to the press, and again, started to say, we need to understand that there is intent and context for all of these things, and I cannot allow the truncation of communication to happen to the degree where people are silenced and then people are encouraged to self-censor.

Marc Steiner:

So I’ll ask you a question. I’ve been wrestling with this question I wanted to ask you about one of your cartoons. It’s the cartoon where Netanyahu [inaudible] are drinking blood.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s not Netanyahu. I know which… Is it with the dove?

Marc Steiner:

Yeah.

Dwayne Booth:

OK. Yeah. Netanyahu is not in there.

Marc Steiner:

That’s right, I’m sorry. So the first thing that popped in my head when I saw that picture was the blood libel against the Jews by the Christians that took place. My father told me stories about when he was a kid how Christian kids across from Patterson, the other side of the park, would chase him. You killed, you drank Jesus’s blood, you killed Jesus, the major fights that they had. So talk a bit about that. That’s not the reaction you want us to have.

Dwayne Booth:

No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. It is interesting because I think that’s probably the leading one that people — And now when all this started up, again, they don’t even show it, they just describe it, and they describe it so inaccurately [Steiner laughs] that it just makes me crazy.

Marc Steiner:

You’re not shocked, are you [both laugh]?

Dwayne Booth:

No, no. But in the cartoon, it’s actually, it’s power brokers. These guys look like they’re power brokers from the 1950s. I like to draw that style of… And if you want to look at these guys, they look completely not Jewish. I pulled them from, like I said, they’re basically clip art from the 1950s. So they’re power brokers at a cocktail party. It’s playing off of the New Yorker style of the cocktail party with the upper class.

So they’re upper crust power brokers. Behind them is a hybrid flag that is half the American flag and half the Israeli flag. And they are drinking blood from glasses that says “Gaza”. And there is a peace dove that is walking into the room and somebody says, who invited that lousy antisemite.

As a cartoonist, understand that when it comes to, as I said earlier, trying to figure out how to make the point as quickly as you can and as eye catching as you can. If you look through the history of the genre, drinking blood is what monsters do. They do it all of the time in their criticism of people who are powerful and who are called monsters. I, frankly, when I was drawing it, I [wasn’t] like, well, this might be misinterpreted as blood libel. I didn’t know what blood libel was.

Marc Steiner:

I’m sure you didn’t.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. And again, and it was posted for a long time and nobody’s said anything about it. But then when it was called that, it became a very interesting conversation because it was like, oh, OK. So now I can see how that would flood the interpretation of the cartoon. And again, this is what happens in regular conversation. And particularly if you’re communicating as somebody who uses the visuals as your form of communication, there’s a thousand ways to interpret a visual.

Marc Steiner:

There are.

Dwayne Booth:

There are. And as the artist, you have to understand that you’re going to do the best that you can and hope that the majority of people are going to get what you’re trying to do. Which brings us, again, back to that second question or that point that I was making earlier, which is let’s have the conversation afterwards. If you understand that my intent was playing off of not a Jewish trope but a trope of criticizing power — Which, actually, out of curiosity, I went through the internet and I all of a sudden started to assemble, through time, using people are drinking blood constantly who are evil. So it’s used and so forth.

And so the challenge with something like that was to then try to communicate that that was not my intent. I know a communications, a free speech expert, in fact. She and I had a really interesting conversation about it because she is such a radical, she’s been more radical than I am. She wanted me to know that it was blood libel, and she wanted to hear me say, yes, I knew it was blood libel, but I’m going to use that to force the conversation and reclaim what that blood libel was supposed to be as, A, this ridiculous thing that actually is being applied as a truism in this circumstance.

But all of a sudden it became this academic conversation and I was just like, whoa, I don’t need it to be that, because you don’t want to upset everybody and confuse what your communication is, obviously. So I said, it wasn’t that. She goes, you sure [Steiner laughs]? Are you sure you weren’t trying to do that? I’m like, no, I wasn’t trying to do that. So that’s what that one was.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m glad we talked about this because I think that… I’m not going to dwell on this cartoon, but when I first showed this to some of my friends —

Dwayne Booth:

You’re not alone [crosstalk]. I get it. I totally get it.

Marc Steiner:

As I was preparing for our conversation, that was their first reaction as well.

Dwayne Booth:

Right. Right.

Marc Steiner:

Because your cartoons, they’re really powerful, and they get under an issue, and it glares in front of your eyes like a bright light. And they’re very to hard look at sometimes, whether it’s Trump eating shit, literally [both laugh], and the other images you give us. It’s like you can’t allow us to look away. You want us to ingest them.

Dwayne Booth:

I want you to ingest them and then have an honest reaction. And then, again, it doesn’t have to be in a conversation with me, have a conversation with somebody else. Because that cartoon that you were talking about, it started a bunch of debates.

Marc Steiner:

The Trump one?

Dwayne Booth:

No, no, no.

Marc Steiner:

Oh, the blood libel.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah — Don’t call it the blood libel one. See what I mean, man [both laugh]? So it started, what I would say is necessary debate to really get to the bottom of issues. Again, that’s really what we should be doing. We should be encouraging more and more difficult conversations. Because we’re not, and look at where we are. People are uncomfortable to even go into the streets. You don’t have to shout. You don’t have to carry a sign. People are being conditioned to be uncomfortable with making a statement in the name of humanity, even though humanity is suffering in real time in front of us. Look at Gaza. For me, there’s no way to frame the argument that can justify that. There’s just no way. There’s too many bodies, there’s too many dead people. There’s too much evidence that the human suffering that is happening over there right now in front of the world needs not to be happening.

Marc Steiner:

It needs not to be happening. [I’ll] tell [you] what just popped through my head as you were saying that, a couple things. One was the Vietnam War where millions of Vietnamese were slaughtered, North, South, all over. And we didn’t call that a genocide. We called that a slaughter. And then I was thinking as you were speaking about… I speak at synagogues sometimes about why we as Jews have to oppose what Israel’s doing to Gaza.

Dwayne Booth:

And I’ve gone to synagogues and seen those talks. That’s also what I’m [crosstalk] —

Marc Steiner:

They’re very difficult talks to have people just…

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

Because it’s an emotional issue as much as it’s a —

Dwayne Booth:

Exactly.

Marc Steiner:

— Logical and political issue. And so, when I look at your work, again, it engenders conversation. It makes you think it’s not just his little typical political cartoon. It’s like you sink yourself into your cartoons like an actor sinks himself into a part. That’s what I felt looking at your work.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny because just hearing you say that, it’s true that quite often I forget about my cartoons soon after I do them because I’m already onto the next one. And I’ve done searches for things and found my cartoons that I’ve forgotten. I have no memory of doing them [Steiner laughs]. Some of them I don’t even get, and I literally have to call my older brother and say, what was I trying to say with this? He’s very good at remembering what I was trying to say and can decipher my cartoons for me.

But yeah, it is a form of meditation. If you look at the work that I do, again, if you’re going to stick with a piece of art for hours, you have to be able to sustain your focus on it. So I meditate while I’m doing it and see if it feels true to my emotional reaction to what’s going on, then I post it.

Marc Steiner:

So lemme ask you this question. So think of one of your most recent cartoons, I dunno which one, I’ll let you think of it since I don’t know what your most recent cartoon is, and it’s about Gaza and Israel and this moment. Describe it and what you went through to create it.

Dwayne Booth:

One of the most recent ones that I did was, as the death toll continued to climb, and I think it was right after Trump started to talk about how beautiful he’s going to make Gaza once we take over. The normalizing of that, and even the attempts to make it a sexy strategy, hit me so hard that my approach to that was, OK, well what would that look like? What would the attempt to normalize that amount of human suffering, what would that look like?

Well, it sounds like a travel poster that is going to invite people to the new Gaza. So I decided to do a travel poster riffing off of an old Italian vintage come to Italy poster, just like a Vespa. Let’s get a Vespa in there and a sexy couple. Now, I don’t want to render something that has Gaza completely Trumpified already. We’ve seen what that looks like. Let’s, OK, satire. But let’s talk about, let’s visualize what that would look like right now moving towards that. So I have this young couple on a Vespa coming down a giant mountain of skulls, heading to the beach. And out in the beach there’s some Israeli warships. And it’s rendered, at a glance, to be very gleeful, but then you start to notice the details of it and the attempt to normalize, again, an ocean of skulls, [and] nobody’s recognizing the fact that these are a slaughtered population. So that’s what I thought.

And so, again, sometimes what you want to do is you want to say, alright, this is an ugly truth that’s being promoted as something that is beautiful, I’m going to show you what that looks like as something that’s been beautified. And the reaction, of course, is just like, oh my God, this hits harder than if I showed the gore, in the same way that if you go back to Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”, right? He published that anonymously. And he also, it’s very interesting because it’s about what do we do with the poor, bedraggled Irish people? We make them refuse for the needs of the British. We will cook the children, kill some of the grownups, make belts, make wallets, all of these things to feed the gentry of the British.

What’s very interesting about that is he sustained the irony of that all the way through. You don’t have the sense, he did not turn it into parody or burlesque or wild craziness. He presented it as a solution to the problem. Now, if you look at that, it actually makes business sense. It would actually solve the problem — Minus all the horror of killing babies and killing a bunch of people. It makes good business sense.

Now, if you look at that and you see that as a parallel to what is justified by big business and corporations now, it happens every single day. It’s been completely normalized. Look what’s going on with the environment. Look at the Rust Belt across this country. All of that stuff is rendered in service of profit and economics the same way that “Modest Proposal” was, and people have been conditioned to see it as normal and ignore the human suffering.

Marc Steiner:

I’m curious. The first one is, where’s that latest cartoon published?

Dwayne Booth:

I actually gave it to Hedges for one of his columns, and then I posted it and people wanted prints. I’ve sold prints of it. And it was also in the paper that comes out of Washington that Ralph Nader does… Gosh, what’s it called? The Capitol…

Marc Steiner:

I should know this

Dwayne Booth:

Myself. I should know this too, because I’ve been doing cartoons for them for a few years now.

Marc Steiner:

Capitol Hill Citizen.

Dwayne Booth:

That’s it. See, I missed the word “hill”. Thank God.

Marc Steiner:

Capitol Hill Citizen.

Dwayne Booth:

Which is a great newspaper. And it gives me the opportunity to see my stuff on physical paper again, which looks gorgeous to me. I’d rather —

Marc Steiner:

Now that you’ve described the cartoon, I saw it this morning as I was getting ready for this conversation. I didn’t know whether it was the latest one you’ve done.

Now that you were facing what we face here, both in Gaza and with Trump and these neofascists in charge of the country, your brain must be full of how you portray this. I just want you to talk a bit about, both creatively and substantively, how you approach this moment when we are literally facing down a neofascist power taking over our country and about to destroy our democracy. People think that’s hyperbole, you’re being crazy. But we’re not.

Dwayne Booth:

No, it’s happening.

Marc Steiner:

And if you, as I was, a civil rights worker in the South, you saw what it was like to live under tyranny, under an authoritarian dictatorship if you were not white. I can feel the entire country tumbling in at this moment. So tell me how you think about that and how you approach it with your work.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s an interesting time because, in many ways, my work is quadrupled. Partly because it’s just what I’ve always done, but the other part is I don’t see this profession stepping up to the challenge at all. I don’t see any single-panel cartoonists who are hitting the Israel Gaza issue nearly as hard as I am.

Marc Steiner:

No, they’re not.

Dwayne Booth:

No. And I see a lot also, of the attacks on Trump. And again, it always strikes me as, how would the Democratic Party render a cartoon? That’s what I see out there. And it’s too soft. It is just way too soft. So as I increase my output, I feel the light getting brighter and brighter on me, which makes me feel more and more unsafe inside this society because yes, they’re targeting people who are not citizens, but what’s next? We all know the poem.

But at the same time, I feel like it’s a responsibility that I have, and I’m sure that you probably have this same sense of responsibility. Speaking up, talking out loud, even though it’s on my nervous system, it is grinding me down in a way that is new.

But that said, my numbers of people who are coming to me are increasing. I’m actually starting a substack so I can have my own conversations with people and so forth, because we have got to increase this megaphone. We just have to.

In fact, one thing that was interesting is just this last October I was invited to speak at a cartooning conference in Montreal. And the whole reason to have me up there and to talk about it was was from the perspective of the people, the organizers, I was the only American cartoonist who was cartooning about Gaza.

Marc Steiner:

Really?

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. And I’d had conversations, remember, that there’s some cartoonists who are doing some things that, again, are just a little bit too polite. Because if we’re looking at this thing and we do think that this is a genocide, you can’t pull your punches. And so, in fact, when this stuff had happened with me initially with the Washington Free Beacon, I reached out.

There’s another colleague I have who’s a cartoonist, whose name is Andy Singer, and he and I have been in communication over the years, and he’s somewhat fearless on this issue. He and I were talking, and we came up with this idea, let’s publish a book that has cartoonists who, over the last many decades, have had a problem criticizing Israel for fear of being called anti-Semitic.

We sent it out to our colleagues and other international cartoonists and so forth. We found two, Matt Wuerker and Ted Rall, who were willing to participate in this project. I had a number of conversations with others who just contacted me privately and said, I can’t do it because I’ll lose my job. I can’t do it because I’ll be targeted and I’m too afraid. I can’t get close to this subject, my editor won’t let me do it, so I can’t do it. International cartoonists, different idea, a whole different approach, sending me stuff. I can tell my story. I’ve been jailed. I’ve been beaten up for this kind of work. And so it became a very interesting thing.

Again, the United States is, by and large, it’s an extremely privileged society. And yet, when it comes to issues like this, it demonstrates the most cowardice because we’ve been made to be way too sensitive about our own discomfort to advance the cause of humanity and justice, love, all of those things because we’ve seen that there is a penalty for doing that, and we do not want to give up certain creature comforts. We don’t want to be called something that we are not, and we need to be uncomfortable. In many ways we have to break soft rules. We have to chain ourself to fences and then make it an inconvenience to be pulled from those fences.

Marc Steiner:

This has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate you being here today and for all the work that you do. And I think that we’re at this moment where the reason that many of us who are part of Jewish Voices for Peace and other organizations is to say those voices are critical in saying this is wrong and has to end now. And I appreciate the power of the work you do. It’s just amazing. And we encourage everybody, we’ll be linking to your work so people can see it and consume it. And I hope we have a conversation together in the future.

Dwayne Booth:

Thanks. I agree. Thanks a lot, Marc.

Marc Steiner:

Good to have you sliding through Baltimore.

Dwayne Booth:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Dwayne Booth, also known as Mr. Fish, for joining us today here for this powerful and honest conversation. We will link to his work when we post this episode. You want to check that out.

And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for working on her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/06/fired-after-zionist-uproar-artist-mr-fish-wont-stop-drawing-the-truth/feed/ 0 531411 Fired after Zionist uproar, artist Mr. Fish won’t stop drawing the truth | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/06/fired-after-zionist-uproar-artist-mr-fish-wont-stop-drawing-the-truth-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/06/fired-after-zionist-uproar-artist-mr-fish-wont-stop-drawing-the-truth-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 06 May 2025 20:23:26 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=be100ce8043f65ca0ac2607637e42d67
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/05/06/fired-after-zionist-uproar-artist-mr-fish-wont-stop-drawing-the-truth-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 531396 How settlers, Israel, and diaspora Zionists are fragmenting the West Bank | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/24/how-settlers-israel-and-diaspora-zionists-are-fragmenting-the-west-bank-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/24/how-settlers-israel-and-diaspora-zionists-are-fragmenting-the-west-bank-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Thu, 24 Apr 2025 16:45:37 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=6c5d0b79ae9d8a4f0fdb319122d7abc8
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/24/how-settlers-israel-and-diaspora-zionists-are-fragmenting-the-west-bank-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 529226 International observers are defending Palestinians in the West Bank with their own bodies https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/22/international-observers-are-defending-palestinians-in-the-west-bank-with-their-own-bodies/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/22/international-observers-are-defending-palestinians-in-the-west-bank-with-their-own-bodies/#respond Tue, 22 Apr 2025 18:44:25 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=333676 Israeli soldiers stand armed and ready as they watch over West Bank Palestinian residents with conditional permits, cross into a checkpoint to enter Jerusalem to pray at the Al-Aqsa in the Old City for Ramadan, in Qalandia, Occupied West Bank , Friday, March 29, 2024. MARCUS YAM / LOS ANGELES TIMESAnna Lippman of Independent Jewish Voices recounts her experiences traveling to the West Bank to defend Palestinian land and people from settler attacks.]]> Israeli soldiers stand armed and ready as they watch over West Bank Palestinian residents with conditional permits, cross into a checkpoint to enter Jerusalem to pray at the Al-Aqsa in the Old City for Ramadan, in Qalandia, Occupied West Bank , Friday, March 29, 2024. MARCUS YAM / LOS ANGELES TIMES

Even before the end of the ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli attacks on the West Bank were escalating in 2025. By Feb. 5, 70 Palestinians were reported killed this year alone. Anna Lippman, a member of Independent Jewish Voices, has traveled on numerous occasions to the West Bank from her home in Toronto, Canada, to stand with Palestinians defending their land from attacks by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers.

Most recently, Lippman was in the Masafer Yatta community in the occupied West Bank as Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning Palestinian director of the film No Other Land, was detained by Israeli forces after being attacked by armed Israeli settlers in that same community. Lippman joins The Marc Steiner Show for an in-depth discussion on her experiences on the ground in the West Bank, where attempted land grabs and expulsions of Palestinians are growing by the day.

Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. It’s good to have you all with us as we continue to cover Palestine and Israel and hear from people throughout that struggle, and continue our series Not in Our Name — Jewish voices that oppose the occupation of Palestine and the oppression and repression of Palestinians by Israelis.

On March 24, co-director of the film No Other Land, Hamdan Ballal, was attacked by Israeli settlers and was badly injured — And while in the ambulance, he was attacked again. The Israeli police took him to an unknown location and, following an international outcry, he was released the next day.

Toronto resident Anna Lippman was in the area known as Masafer Yatta on the West Bank. While she was providing protective presence to Palestinians, Lippman, whois Jewish, was also attacked — Though not as severely — By Israeli settlers, and also was not arrested. Lippman spoke afterwards to the online media where she said what brings you back here is the people, meeting the people here, the children, the elders, the activists, the mothers, all of them, seeing the way that they continue to resist — Not just writing articles, but sharing their story through their everyday acts of resistance, continuing to be on their land, continuing their careers, their family lives, and the joy they find on their land and with their families, with their communities. It’s so beautiful. The hospitality they gave me as a Jewish person whose taxes and identity are used to kill their cousins, they welcome me into their home and feed me even though they have almost nothing.

Today we are joined by Anna Lippman. She’s a Toronto member of Independent Jewish Voices, and has long been showing up in solidarity with Palestinian people in opposition to Israel’s campaign of violence and displacement. And she opposes deeply, which we’ll talk about today, the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Now, she went to the West Bank to protect Palestinians and showed huge heart and courage in her time there. She’s the daughter of a Holocaust surviving family and takes that into her heart as well when it comes to fighting and supporting liberation of Palestinian people.

Anna, welcome. It’s good to have you with us.

Anna Lippman:

Thanks for having me.

Marc Steiner:

So many places to start, but let me just begin, if you could just talk a bit about your time on the West Bank: A, was that the first time you’ve been there? And B, how did that affect you? You went there already opposed to the occupation, but I’m very curious how that affected you when you were there.

Anna Lippman:

Yeah, so I’m actually currently in the West Bank.

Marc Steiner:

At this moment?

Anna Lippman:

At this moment, which is why my internet is still terrible. So I’ve been here for two months, and I’ll be here for another month. It’s actually my fourth time here doing protective presence work, using both my international and my Jewish privilege to try to mitigate the violence and the ethnic cleansing.

As a kid, I went to Israel a lot of times, but I had never been to the occupied Palestinian territories, the West Bank. And so going for my first time and seeing it, even though I had been doing this work for so long, it really made my resolve so much stronger because the things that you see here, it’s impossible to imagine. And the relationships that you make with the people here and then the violence that you witness upon them, it just breaks your heart.

Marc Steiner:

So let me jump into some things you just said because I think it’s important. For people listening to us today, where are you on the West Bank? Who are you staying with?

Anna Lippman:

I am in the region of Masafer Yatta, the South Hebron Hills, and I’m in the village of Susya, most famous for being the home of Academy Award-winning director Hamdan Bilal.

Marc Steiner:

So I assume then, if you’re there, you’re staying with Palestinian families?

Anna Lippman:

They’re hosting us in the village. They have basically a guest house in the middle of the village where we sleep and where basically, when we’re not sleeping, children either are playing with us [Steiner laughs] or people are coming to get us to respond to attacks.

Marc Steiner:

And who is the we?

Anna Lippman:

So I’m actually here with seven other Jewish activists. We’re part of the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. There’s also several other non-Jewish activists. But for myself and for the people in this group, it’s really important for us to show up as Jews because, not [inaudible] show the world what it means to oppose the state and Zionism, but also so many Palestinians here have never met a Jew that doesn’t want to harm them. And so this, in many ways, is the work of doing that cultural exchange and helping people understand that this is a terrible thing that is happening, but it doesn’t represent all Jews.

Marc Steiner:

One thing you said, just to explore briefly for a moment together about the pain and terror the Jews and Israelis are foisting on Palestinians in this occupation and more. And I was reading about your work and who you are, and the idea that Jews, who suffered so much over thousands of years, who survived — And my family survived the Holocaust, the Cossack repressions in Eastern Poland, the inquisitions that took place. Everything that has happened to us as a people over the millennia, that we could then turn and do what we’re doing in Israel.

Anna Lippman:

Yes, I agree with you. And on the inside, I wonder the same way. Especially, like you, I’m the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. She was in Auschwitz. To understand the way that that which happened before I was born impacts my life, I could never want to do this to someone else. But also, it’s the plain and sad truth that hurt people hurt people. And if Jews, we don’t deal with our trauma, if we’re able to let others exploit it for their imperial goals, then of course we’re seeing what’s happening in Israel.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m very curious what the response has been to you, first from the Israelis, but then the Palestinians. What has been your experience in what we might call Israel proper, for the moment, in terms of what you experience when people know who you are and why you’re there?

Anna Lippman:

To be honest, I don’t tell people within Israel proper who I am and why I’m there [Steiner laughs].

Marc Steiner:

I get it.

Anna Lippman:

[Crosstalk] I fear for my life.

Marc Steiner:

Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.

Anna Lippman:

And even in the West Bank, we have to be a little careful who we talk to about what we’re doing because there are many ways that these names get back to the Israeli government. It’s despicably easy for me to get away with this within Israel because I look very Ashkenazi. I look like everyone else. No one looks at me and blinks twice. And that’s why the Jews come to do this work is because we have these privileges and we might as well exploit them for something good.

Marc Steiner:

So let’s explore for a moment what that work is. When you say, we’ve said a number of times, you’re there doing this work, talk to people listening to us today about what this work is that you’re doing.

Anna Lippman:

So a lot of what we’re doing is documentation and accompaniment work. So, especially in Masafer Yatta, most of the people here are farmers and shepherds. They very much rely on the land. And so a key way for them to be able to remain here is to be able to take their flocks out, is to be able to harvest their crops. And so we literally just accompany them on their shepherding shifts, as they go to the grocery store, what have you, not only because Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals understand that you don’t want to act the same towards Palestinians in private that you do in front of an international. Because I’m getting this interview and Palestinians are not, so they don’t want us to tell the world what they’re doing to the Palestinians, what’s happening. And this is what we do when we bring our privilege here is we’re able to share it back out.

Marc Steiner:

In the process of your work over there, what has been your interaction with Israelis, with Jewish Israelis, about what you’re doing?

Anna Lippman:

Yeah, it’s been terrible. When the army comes, they give us quite a hard time despite us being Jewish. They call us anarchists. They say we are making chaos. A soldier told me the other day that I was here to make problems for the Jewish. And the settlers themselves, they’re even worse. The army will call us traitors, self-hating Jews, but the settlers will yell all kinds of profanities at us. They’ll chase us. I’ve been in multiple rock attacks.

Marc Steiner:

What does that mean?

Anna Lippman:

Groups of young settlers coming to throw rocks at the villages, the Palestinians, basically a stoning.

Marc Steiner:

In their minds a biblical stoning.

Anna Lippman:

Yes, of course.

Marc Steiner:

The vast majority of settlers in the West Bank are right-wing extremist, Orthodox Jews, is that right?

Anna Lippman:

Yeah. And the thing is that on the front lines of these more extremist settlements are mostly young men, like 15- to 20-year-olds that are sometimes called the Hilltop Youth, who are taken from bad homes, off the street, and brought to these settlements that are run by really right-wing fascist people that tell them, this is your land. You must protect it. You must shepherd. And if you see Palestinians, attack them before they attack you. And so who we mostly see is teenage boys, and that makes it a difficult dynamic to hate them.

Marc Steiner:

I understand. Let me take a step backwards here with you for just a minute because this is literally, I’ve been involved in this, in covering this, my entire life, almost. But what you’re describing now, what you just said about Israeli boys on these settlements attacking you and the Palestinians were brought there, were in trouble and brought to these… Talk a bit about that. Who are these kids? Where they come from? What do you mean they were in trouble? It sounds like what — And I hate saying this — It sounds like what fascists did in Germany and Italy, taking youths off the street and turning them into stormtroopers.

Anna Lippman:

Yes, exactly. And it’s very similar here. Sometimes it’s rabbis, sometimes it’s just agricultural entrepreneurs. And they’ll go to places like Tel Aviv, like Jerusalem, like Be’er Sheva, places within 48, and they’ll tout their programs as helping at-risk youth and providing rehabilitation centers for at-risk youth. So these previously street youth are now productive members of society. They’re learning how to farm, they’re going to school.

And actually, because they’re touted this way, they get a lot of funding from places like the JNF that funds social service projects, from places like the Israeli government that funds rehabilitation for at-risk youth. But at the same time, there’s enough of a distance that the Israeli government can blame these youth for an attack. And then, through keeping an arm’s distance to them, they’re both supporting the youth to be there to do this ethnic cleansing, and they can blame the youth and say it’s not part of the state, it’s extrastate actors.

Marc Steiner:

So would it be fair to say, just to explore this for a moment — Then we can go on something else — But is it fair to say that these kids that are taken to these settlements, who are in trouble from the stuff they did in the streets, are kids who are what we call Mizrahim, that there are kids who are from Arab African descent in Israel. Would that be about right?

Anna Lippman:

Mostly not. Mostly they’re Ashkenazi. Sometimes they’re Mizrahi, but the vast majority of them are Ashkenazi. A lot of them are from places like Europe and Ukraine. A lot of them are just born and raised in Israel.

Marc Steiner:

That’s a pretty horrendous description. I think the world is not aware of what you’re describing at this moment. I think most people, I wasn’t, are not aware, and I stay on top of this. It’s something that is almost, it’s a frightening Orwellian step.

Anna Lippman:

It definitely is. And it’s been happening for quite a while. And not only is it terrible for the Palestinians, but it’s so exploitative [of] these young men.

Marc Steiner:

Yes, absolutely. I’m also curious, I’ve not been to the West Bank, but as a young person — I was a very young person — I was a Freedom Rider, and I was [on the] Eastern shore Maryland, Mississippi, Alabama. And it was terrifying. But you did it because it had to be done.

Anna Lippman:

Exactly.

Marc Steiner:

So I want to talk about you in that regard. What it’s like for you to live on the edge of that violence, protecting the human rights and liberation of Palestinians as a Jewish woman?

Anna Lippman:

It’s a lot. It’s very scary, and it’s not comfortable. I think a lot of times I feel like I’m on a three-month firefighting shift. You can never really put your guard completely down because things could go off at any minute and you’ll have to run out of the house and go stop this fire. And it really impacts the activists here because it’s a lot on your body, on your mind.

And then I see the Palestinians who live this every day, and I remember that I will go home to Netflix and Uber Eats, and they will not. This is where they live. And so I think, just like you said, this is what has to be done, even though it’s not my favorite thing to do, for sure.

Marc Steiner:

All right. So I guess you’ve been aware of all the crackdowns taking place in Canada, in Germany, across the globe, against Palestinians.

Anna Lippman:

Absolutely.

Marc Steiner:

So just to hear your thoughts and analysis of what all that means, this literally international crackdown, and it’s going to begin to happen in larger ways here in the United States as well with Donald Trump back in the White House.

Anna Lippman:

Absolutely, yeah. No, I totally agree. And Canada is not that far off from Trump. We don’t know who’s going to win this next election, and Canada is going quite right itself. And I think one thing I’ve always learned about Palestine is it’s sort of the moral center of the world. Everything that Israel does in Palestine, their militarization, their technology, their AI, they export it to the rest of the world. Police, [armies] from all over the world, go train with the IDF.

And so to me, [it’s] surprising to see the ways that this extreme crackdown is going global and is starting to impact people that perhaps thought they were a bit more safe. And I think that’s why everyone who feels strongly about this, who feels strongly about the right to speak up for what you believe in, needs to be saying no, needs to be standing up. Because if we don’t say this is too much, what student are they going to snatch off the streets next?

Marc Steiner:

And it sounds like, what I’ve seen written before and what you’re describing, people don’t realize this Western American and Israeli cooperation in testing out weaponry and more is a test run for oppression universally.

Anna Lippman:

Exactly, yes. And Israel does it very well. And other imperial settler colonial countries like Canada, they pay attention. They want to do it well too.

Marc Steiner:

So tell me a bit, for people listening to us in the time we have left, a bit about what your daily life and work is like there, what you’re experiencing firsthand as a young Jewish woman in the West Bank living with Palestinians and staring down right-wing settlers and the Israeli army.

Anna Lippman:

I think what, to me, is most noticeable about my day-to-day experience here is it’s so unpredictable that it’s impossible to plan a month ahead, and very difficult to plan two days ahead.

Marc Steiner:

Wow.

Anna Lippman:

We’ll wake up, we’ll go shepherding, we’ll be having a lovely time, and then suddenly a settler will come in their truck, try to run us over, and we’re taking footage of this, talking to lawyers, taking people to the police station to give testimony. And that’s your whole day. And sometimes we can be very lucky and we’ll just have a morning where things are great and we’ll get to hang out with the families and just chill. But even in those quiet times, there’s still tension because it’s so unpredictable that you never know what is coming or when. And every time that you continue to stay in your land, that you continue to call settlers out, they seek revenge. So just like the Palestinians here, I can’t really give you a day-to-day because the settlers don’t let us have that regularity and schedule.

Marc Steiner:

What do you mean by that?

Anna Lippman:

They keep us on our toes by intentionally being unpredictable, by telling us they’ll come back tonight, then not, but coming to attack three days later. So it’s very hard.

Marc Steiner:

As an activist in the midst of this, and more in the middle of it than most people are who might oppose what’s happening, becausre you’re there, physically there, putting your life on the line, how do you see it unfolding in the future? And where are the possibilities that we can actually find a road to peace where Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews live in that place together? Because in the end, for me, I have this poster on my wall — I’ve said this before on other shows — I have this poster on my wall that I got in Cuba in 1968, and it’s a map of all of Palestine, and it has a Palestinian flag on one side and an Israeli flag on the other side, and it says “One state, two people, three faiths”. And that’s kind of been my mantra for a long time. So I’m asking you that question in that spirit because it almost feels impossible to attain.

Anna Lippman:

Yeah, I think that it has been really grim for the last two or so years, and it’s been really difficult to find hope. I think where I find hope is the fact that so many more people know about Palestine than they did in 2014, than they did in 2021. So for me, this gives me hope when I see a random person that’s not Jewish, that’s not Arab, who knows about Palestine and cares about the injustice there. I think the more we speak up, the more we ask our governments to hold the Israeli government accountable, the more that we will find actual peace.

But it’s also important to recognize that peace, true peace, means equality, humanity, and dignity for everyone from the river to the sea. And so we cannot have a state, two states, 12 states, I don’t care [Steiner laughs]. But if Palestinians don’t have the right to live in their land, to return to their ancestral land, to be as much of a society as an Israeli citizen is, there will never be peace because peace is not built on oppression.

Marc Steiner:

Anna Lippman, a couple of things here. First of all, I do want to say this to you, and I want everyone listening to us here at The Real News to know it, what you and others like you are doing at this moment takes, and the Yiddish word is chutzpah, takes a lot of heart and strength and bravery to stand up for what you’re doing. It’s not just carrying a placard around an embassy. You’re in the midst of it, saying, no, not in our name, this has to end.

And I do want to thank you for what you’re doing. I think your voice and the voices of others around you, along with Palestinians, is what we want to continue to hear more [of] on this program. And for one, I want to stay in touch, and I want to help work to bring more voices like yours on, but also to expand those voices and give people the opportunity and chance to do exactly what you are doing.

Anna Lippman:

Yes, I love that.

Marc Steiner:

That will change it.

Anna Lippman:

I think so. We gotta have hope, right?

Marc Steiner:

Yes, we do. Look, I’ll say this one last thing. I say this often. One of the scariest things for people in the South during Civil Rights, which you see all the white freedom workers, and among those, the majority of the white people who put their lives on the line in Civil Rights were Jews.

Anna Lippman:

Yes. This is our history, right?

Marc Steiner:

Yes. Right. So you’re carrying on a tradition, and you’re a brave human being, a brave woman. Let’s do stay in touch, and whatever stories we can tell together about your experience and others’ experiences and the experiences of the Palestinian lives that you touch and live with, we want to put on the air and do that.

Anna Lippman:

Yeah. That’s so great. Thank you so much for having me, and, really, for everything.

Marc Steiner:

Please stay safe and stay strong. Thank you.

Anna Lippman:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you once again to Anna Lippman for joining us today. And I want to reiterate what I said during our conversation. The bravery she and other young Jews are showing in Israel Palestine, living with Palestinians to say, we, as Jews, say not in our name, is literally putting their lives on the line, just as people did to end racial segregation in America. We will, I will, continue to highlight their work, and we’ll be hearing more from Anna Lippman, and other Anna Lippmans as well, as the voices of the Palestinians they work with put their lives on the line, and they’re there to stand with them.

Once again, thank you to Anna Lippman for joining us today. Thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, our audio editor, Alina Nehlich, and producer, Rosette Sewali, for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you, Anna Lippman, for all the work you do and for joining us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/22/international-observers-are-defending-palestinians-in-the-west-bank-with-their-own-bodies/feed/ 0 528342 Birju Dattani lost his job for criticizing Israel—but he’s fighting back https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/09/birju-dattani-lost-his-job-for-criticizing-israel-but-hes-fighting-back/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/09/birju-dattani-lost-his-job-for-criticizing-israel-but-hes-fighting-back/#respond Wed, 09 Apr 2025 17:11:44 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=333245 Former Canadian Human Rights Commissioner Birju DattaniThe former Canadian human rights commissioner was forced to resign by a firestorm of controversy surrounding his support for Palestinian rights. Now he's suing his critics.]]> Former Canadian Human Rights Commissioner Birju Dattani

Birju Dattani’s tenure as Canada’s chief human rights commissioner was short-lived. After holding the post for less than a year, Dattani was forced to resign by a smear campaign targeting him for his social media posts criticizing Israel. Now, Dattani is suing his critics, and joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss his case and the wider implications for human rights and free speech in countries backing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.

Links:

Production: David Hebden, Rosette Sewali
Post-production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have y’all with us, and we continue covering issues around the globe with people under attack from the right, and there’s a war going on. We know that war is happening in this country, United States, in Canada, across the globe, where the right is seizing power in one country after the other. And we are all here in that battle for the future. And we’re talking today to Birju Dattani. He was the executive director of the Yukon Human Rights Commission that’s in Canada, but for a very short while. That’s what we’re going to talk about. And he works as Director of Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Centennial College, assistant regional director of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and has been an activist and a lawyer and keeps on fighting despite the fact that he was pushed out by right male elements in the Jewish community and in the parliament that went after him and forced him to resign, which he did. The battle continues in court in other places. And vi welcome. Good to have you with us.

Birju Dattani:

Thank you, Marc. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Marc Steiner:

Let me just, for folks who don’t know Canada that well, our American listeners or European listeners may not know a lot about what’s going on. What is the climate, the political climate that allowed you to be pushed out of a human rights commission to be attacked? What is the politics going on there?

Birju Dattani:

Well, I think the climate here in some ways is from where I sit worse than it is, or was, I should say, worse than it was in the United States. I think with this current regime that you have in the United States, all bets are off, of course. But I think that in a lot of ways historically and in a post October 7th world, the environment in Canada did not admit and has not admitted a diversity of voices on this issue or a diversity of perspectives on this issue. So in that sense, the space for discussion of things such as Israeli policy has been extraordinarily narrow, narrowly narrow. And that I think in the months following October 7th became narrower still. So for instance, and some of this you may have heard, but for the benefit of your audience, university students who would sign open letters in support or in solidarity with Palestinians would be boycotted from the legal profession if they were law students. Not only the students signing those letters, but the entirety of law schools would be boycotted by prominent law firms, thereby barring the participation to the legal profession, often from law students who are from historically marginalized backgrounds.

Marc Steiner:

That’s what’s happening at this moment.

Birju Dattani:

So in the aftermath of October 7th, so I’m going back to

November, December, 2023 letters were issued, the healthcare workers, educators who had shared a critical perspective would be canceled, many of them fired, run out of employment broadcasters, same thing and very little politically. I know that in the United States, you have voices like Rashida tb, you have Ellan Omar, you have a larger aggregate of voices, I think, on the left than we do in Canada. I mean, we do have some voices. Heather McPherson, for instance, of the NDP has been quite good on this issue. Nikki Ashton, Charlie Angus, but I think smaller country, those voices are in the aggregate, smaller and power is often concentrated in the hands of people who are a lot more, not only to the right, but even the center. And the center left positions on this issue are indistinguishable in some cases.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah. Quick digression, then jump right back in. I mean, you mentioned a new Democratic party, the left party in Canada. I remember when we all were excited at one point that they were actually potentially had some power, but I mean, it says a lot about where our two countries are. So let’s really step back for a moment and really explore what happened to you in the first place as a Muslim, the first Muslim in that kind of position and the battles it took place and the attack the place as soon as you got this job, as soon as you were being appointed to this commission, the attacks came from people in Parliament and other folks in Canada accusing you of being pro Hamas, being a terrorist, hating Jews being an antisemite. Tell us a bit about how that unfurled.

Birju Dattani:

Well, I think that the way that it unfurled is something that was never a secret in an employment situation. I mean, I have a resume like anybody else does. And when I was a PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, I was a member of the Center for Palestine Studies among other academic institutions based out of that university. That was of course, on my resume, not a secret, certainly not a secret that I’ve kept. Some of my scholarship is available publicly, some of it isn’t. And just the way that it works. I’ve been on so many panels on international law, much of it on Israel Palestine, some of it not, some of it being on other issues that was being dredged up, and it was a lot of innuendos. So it would be something along the lines of you lectured during Israel apartheid week. That’s it. No one really knew what I had said.

So oftentimes it would be a guilt by association, paint by numbers type of a thing. So for instance, I shared a podium with Ben White who’s authored a number of books, who’s a journalist. His articles have appeared in the Independent, the Guardian, et cetera. So someone would go searching through Ben White’s books to find something that looked objectionable from a certain standpoint. And I thought, okay, well those are Ben White’s views and Ben White is entitled to his views. Being on a panel is not a team sport. I mean, my views are my views, but a lot of what I was doing during Israel Apartheid week was to explain what apartheid is, an international law, for example, or having shared a panel with Moba who was a Guantanamo Bay detainee, the same sort of horror stories. At some point he’s released from Guantanamo Bay, he’s given a settlement by the British government.

It was omitted that while I did share a panel with him, and I’ve always been against torture. I also, on that panel, I shared a platform with someone from Breitbart News. Of course, they put the thumbs over the words that would indicate that the person sitting right next to me was from Breitbart News or number of panels where I shared a platform with someone who was aboard the Mafia Marmara, which I didn’t know at the time, and it doesn’t really matter to me that he was aboard the Mafia Marmara. But at a lot of these panels, there’d be also members of the Zionist Federation of the United Kingdom, members of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain who were also on that panel. So there was in omission or selective rendering of this in a way that you would have to go out of your way to omit those facts.

And so this started to take on a life of its own in some ways. But I sat there thinking, at any point is someone going to attribute a view to me that they find objectionable? Which eventually did come in, again, a sentence taken out of context from part of my dissertation, which talked about or aligned, that suggested that terrorism as a strategy can be rational. And of course that isn’t a controversial proposition in the academic literature, but that was used to make it seem as though I was someone who glorified terrorism, the bad faith illusion that was taking place. I think that prompted almost a dozen academics in Canada to then speak publicly to the fact that number one, I wasn’t justifying terrorism number two, that’s basic international relations 1 0 1 stuff. And lastly that this seemed to be a bad faith smear job because they weren’t actually checking in with experts in the field.

Marc Steiner:

So I want to talk a bit about what the political dynamics are right now in Canada that even allowed this attack on you personally to take place. And the present conflict with Israel and Gaza. Israel and Palestinians has really gripped the world and people are really divided over it in deep ways. And I just want to know what the dynamic is in Canada and around you that allowed this to happen. Why did it happen?

Birju Dattani:

Sure. So I think that activism from pro-Israel law groups, I think around me and around this issue and related issues have focused really on two things. The first is to push to adopt the highly controversial IRA definition or our IHRA definition on antisemitism IRA standing for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,

Which conflates criticism of Israel in a lot of cases with antisemitism. And second, this attempt to suppress any concept of anti Palestinian racism as being recognized as a bonafide and legitimate type of racism. So adding to that context, there was a proposed piece of legislation called Bill C 63, also known as the Online Harms bill, where the liberal government was seeking to reintroduce a provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which would prescribe hate speech among other things. So there are criminal law dimensions to that, which would have nothing to do with the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the Canadian Human Rights Act, but there was a provision which would resurrect something that existed in that act before, which is to make hate speech actionable under Canadian human rights legislation. So a lot of these groups likely looked at the fact that given those twin efforts, calling on the adoption of the IRA definition of antisemitism on the one hand, and trying to suppress any notion of anti Palestinian racism as a legitimate racism on the other, I’m sure that if the person proposed for my position was a technocrat that really didn’t know very much about these issues, it’s easier than to direct your lobbying efforts in a way that that person might take your position.

I think that that would be harder with me given my academic background on these issues, but also and don’t want to lose sight of the fact that the conniption over my personal identity as someone who identifies as a Muslim who’s a person of color, those two things or those consolation of factors led to these efforts and the alacrity with which they were pursued.

Marc Steiner:

So in Canada at this moment, I mean Jews are minority in Canada. I have cousins in Canada, they all flipped from Poland. They came here, they went to Canada, they went to Palestine, they went all over Uruguay. But so I have cousins from Montreal and Toronto, and they are a minority community. And so what I was shocked about when I read what happened to you was that that was allowed to happen in terms of using antisemitism. The more they use and abuse antisemitism, the more it loses its meaning because it has lots of depth. It’s all over the place. So I’m very curious about the political dynamic in Canada at this moment that allows you and people like you to be attacked and where that comes from and what kind of movement is growing to fight it.

Birju Dattani:

And that’s a really interesting question mark. So I think what this looks like is, in some respects, Canada isn’t all that different in terms of the approaches and the views on this from the United States, from Europe, from the Anglosphere in terms of Jewish communities and in particular Jewish institutions as distinct from Jewish communities. So whether or not the institutions are an accurate reflection of the constituencies that they represent, I think is very much being called into question. But again, that doesn’t always play out in a way that’s reflective. So you’ve probably often heard it said, particularly in the American context, that most members of Jewish communities favor a two state solution. They are against the increase of settlements. They are typically voters. They vote for the Democratic party.

But that doesn’t come out when you look at the institutions that purport to speak to their names. So you wouldn’t know that by seeing what organizations like APAC or the A DL are doing or saying relative to those positions. So I’m reminded of Ron Dermer when he was the ambassador to Israel in the last Trump administration. He very famously said, we should stop dedicating our attentions on American Jews who are disproportionately among our critics. Let’s focus instead on evangelical Christians implying that there are more reliable ally. I think those dynamics play out in a similar way in Canada where the views of Jewish communities are not always reflected in the institutions that purport to speak out in their name. So there’s been wider efforts on those members of the Jewish community who do see this as problematic and who have been more vocal in speaking out. So the group independent Jewish voices, for instance, has been among my most strident supporters. I think they’ve issued multiple statements. They join me at the Deus during my press conference. They have posted a lot of my story on social media. I I actually attended a Shabbat dinner on Purim with members of the United Jewish People’s Order of Canada, independent Jewish voices and other members of the progressive Jewish community who have been very vocal. So

Marc Steiner:

In terms of what’s happening to you right now, you attacked online in a pretty vicious manner by Bene Brith and this woman, doya Kurtz, who refers to you as Ew hater, talking about how you were a terrorist supporter. I’ve looked at, I spent some time looking at what you write, looking at things you put out, nothing I saw in any of that that can be construed as antisemitic, as hating Jews. So what is the political dynamic in Canada that allows that to happen now? And what about the movement building to defend you? It seems like a lot of places that you would think but naturally come around and say, this is outrageous. We can’t let this happen. It’s not happening. So I want to hear about those two things. If you could lay those out for us.

Birju Dattani:

Yeah. I think that to put it this way, the way that these attacks took place has less to do with what I’ve actually said or written. And again, as I’ve mentioned before, part of the frustrating things was there have been very few opinions or positions attributed to me, it’s almost, there is the plugging in of buzzwords, right? So when you plug in words like apartheid, when you plug in words like occupation, that seems to elicit an emotive response, not a rational one. And again, political Zionism is a type of nationalism. Nationalism is emotional. So there’s an emotive response that doesn’t focus on what I’ve actually said. But then when you combine that with the fact that I’m Muslim and have three names biju, so again, the scrutiny of my middle name and what it could mean, the harnessing of fear did a really effective job. And so it becomes more what I’m capable of. So it’s basically suggesting that here is a person who’s a Muslim who has written about not just Israel-Palestine, but who’s written a lot about critically about terrorism, those national security type discussions.

What is he capable of? It really didn’t matter what I said at that point. It’s harnessing the imagination for people to really think or let their imaginations run wild in terms of, well, what is he capable of? Do you trust him to be in this sort of position? And again, as Churchill has said, I’m not in the habit of quoting him. I’m going to make an exception here, but a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has had an opportunity to put its pants on. And so I think the efforts then to come to my defense, the Yukon Human Rights Commission was one of the first out of the gate, and they made two public statements, which I’m very grateful for, and which were really powerful to say that in the time that he served as our executive director, we’ve known him to be intelligent, thoughtful, innovative, fair, and he has never been biased. He believes in human rights for all people. And we are all too familiar with the sorts of attacks that target human rights defenders. I’m paraphrasing that, but it is really rare for your former employer in that climate to put their necks out on the line publicly unless they’re very sure that this is just all a big smear campaign.

Some other organizations did defend me. Some of the defenses were run the spectrum of conservative tepid defenses to a lot more strident and fiery ones. But you are right to the extent that your question implies that there hasn’t been the same level of defense from the places that you’d typically expect it from, or at least to match the volume and the strided of the attacks, your guess is as good as mine. Although I would imagine that whenever one throws out the term or the smear where it’s false, antisemitism is something that sticks and it’s something that people are terrified about. So to even attempt a defense, if you’re an institution or a public body, you run the risk of conscripting yourself into that smear. And I think that the fear that comes with that is very hard to underestimate sometimes.

Marc Steiner:

It seems what’s happening to you at this moment being pushed out of a very prestigious, important position is the tip of the iceberg of what’s happening. It means there’s a dynamic happening at this moment here in the United States and in Canada and happening across the globe that centers so many things. One of those centers is the struggle inside of Israel Palestine right now. And if you don’t take the establishment position, you can have your career damaged. And so it seems to me that what happened to you in Canada could just be the beginning of something much larger,

Birju Dattani:

Perhaps. And I think that, and I should point out here, that there are some independent journalists that have kept a running tally of all of the people that have lost their jobs, right? From jobs that are prominent in the public eye to those which are maybe more, for lack of a better way of putting it, garden variety. For example, mark Haven, professor Mark Haven writing in Canadian Dimension has maintained a tally in every sector of people that have lost their jobs. And it’s staggering that list. I would imagine at this point, and this is just an estimate, but it’s probably approaching 55 0 documented cases. So in some ways, mine is one of the more public stories. It was a role that is a very important public office. But there are a number of doctors, educators, lawyers, et cetera, public servants that have lost their jobs or who have been investigated, and it’s found that these smears are actually

Marc Steiner:

Lost their jobs because of what,

Birju Dattani:

So let me clarify that for speaking about Israel Palestine. So for posts that they’re making on social media for conversations that they’re having around this, and so their social media posts will be highlighted where it’s in solidarity with Palestinians, or that’s critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Marc Steiner:

And you’re saying that Pia can use that to fire somebody to move them from their jobs?

Birju Dattani:

Oh, yeah. It is been attempted. So what they’ll do is they’ll use this provision of bringing the employer into disrepute. So there’s a lawyer, brilliant lawyer here, Jackie Mond, at a firm called Cavazos who’s talked about this, about how employers will use certain vague social media policies in the workplace to fire people in unionized environments. It’s harder to do, and there’s a lot of times where those investigations discover that the allegations don’t have any merit. So that also does happen. But in places where there are no union protections, for example, that is a lot easier to do and has happened

Marc Steiner:

In other conversations with some of the people you mentioned. We should have those to show the extent of how this is happening in Canada and where it’s going. I think it’s important for all of us to understand that this is a very dangerous trend, a frightening trend, actually. And so in your particular case at this moment, talk a bit about where, I know you can’t get into specifics. You are suing the Canadian government?

Birju Dattani:

No. So I’m suing certain groups and personalities. So for example, Ben Iri, the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Marc Steiner:

That’s right, I’m sorry. Yeah, yeah,

Birju Dattani:

Yeah. Ezra Event, who is the founder of Rebel Media, which is sort of our version of Alex Jones, to put it that way.

Marc Steiner:

No, I watched him and I watched him attack you. And he is, I mean, he very typical of the very right wing hosts that you become your raw meat for them.

Birju Dattani:

And of course, I’ve never been particularly interested in this show, so I steer clear of that. But yeah, he’s something akin to an Alex Jones here in Canada. That’s sort of how he’s regarded. Dalia Kurtz, whom you mentioned, who’s something of a social media influencer. I, again, don’t really know all that much more about her. And Melissa Lansman, who’s a conservative member of parliament here, who I think, again, just in terms of sheer volume, there’s a lot that’s come from her in terms of attacks. So that’s who we are pursuing in this litigation.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, yeah, she literally came out and said that you were a supporter of terrorism.

Birju Dattani:

Yes, that’s correct.

Marc Steiner:

So talk a bit about before we have to leave the movement growing around this and the support you’re getting and where that’s coming from.

Birju Dattani:

So I think that the movement around me is growing. I think one of the things that I did do is it’s easier now for me to talk about this than I was at the height of this. So before I stepped down, I was walking on eggshells. And so now not being encumbered in the same way, I am able to speak more about my experiences, what happened, the fact that I’m launching a lawsuit. And I think a lot of people are looking at that and saying it’s about time. It is high time that people who smear other people falsely as being antisemitic when there’s no basis in fact of that, of being terrorism, adjacent terrorism, glor supporter, et cetera, that a lot of people are rallying around this because a lot of people are exhausted and tired and fed up by all of this, especially what’s happened in the last 18 months and how frequent and shameless a lot of this was and has been for other people. And a lot of these people are members of the Jewish community who are rallying around me, which to a certain extent, I mean Jewish communities, like any community are non monolithic. But I think there have been so many members of the Jewish community and Israelis as well who have rallied to this because I think there’s also a struggle for who defines identity. And we’re sort of in this bizarre place where parliamentarians, those that are not Jewish, are dictating to members of the Jewish community, their Jewish identity,

That this is what it means to be Jewish in our eyes. And I think that they look at that with anger, with frustration, and to say, no, no one has bequeathed unto you the ability to tell us as those who identify as Jewish, that we are Jewish any more than. And again, some of these institutions, it’s the same thing. So in terms of the suppression of dissent among their ranks. And so there has been a movement that believes that to combat racism, you have to do that in solidarity with marginalized groups that face discrimination rather than treating these things as discreet disparate phenomenon. Really that’s what this is beginning to represent from what I can see. So that movement is growing, it is encompassing and countenance saying increasingly prominent figures. To give you an example, there is a member of Montreal City Council who has now publicly come out with his own lawsuit against the mayor of a town in Ontario, Hampton, Ontario, who was attacking him as an antisemite in ways that are very reminiscent of what happened to me. And so I reposted his statement that he’s suing Mayor Jeremy Levy on my LinkedIn. And this city councilor Alex Norris, publicly supported my lawsuit and I amplified his. So we may have led a spark. And so more of this may happen. And so now the courts become a forum potentially to conduct this struggle. And it looks like more people may be doing that.

Marc Steiner:

I think what’s happening to you is a critical story because it’s one of those things that happens. It’s a tip of an iceberg. It’s the beginning of something that could become an avalanche. You just said 50 more people are facing these kinds of discrimination and attacks throughout Canada. And so I think that we want to stay in touch with you as this fight unfolds, and also talk to some of the other folks in Canada who are also fighting and what that portends for Canadian democracy and the battle around for people who really believe that peace has to come to Israel Palestine. And I think what’s happening to you is nothing short of obscenity. And so we want to give you all the room you need here to get that story out and keep it out to make people understand what’s going on around us.

Birju Dattani:

Thank you so much, mark. I’m so grateful for that. And

Marc Steiner:

I appreciate you standing up, Biju, Biju, Ani. We’re going to link to all the stuff here on our site about the struggle he’s going through. You can read it yourself from different publications, see what he’s doing, and we will stay on top of this so that we can expose the power of the right here in this country and across the globe, taking away our rights to speak as we wish. And good luck and let’s stay in touch.

Birju Dattani:

Absolutely, mark and such a pleasure. And thank you for everything you’re doing to highlight some of these stories that are not getting airing in a more mainstream or wide stream forum. So thank you so much for everything you’re doing in terms of highlighting these stories.

Marc Steiner:

We won’t let them win.

Birju Dattani:

Absolutely hear here.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Birju Dattani for joining us today, and thanks to David Hebden for running the program today and audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her audio magic Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner show and the Titleless Taylor rra for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at marc@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/09/birju-dattani-lost-his-job-for-criticizing-israel-but-hes-fighting-back/feed/ 0 524736 Huwaida Arraf on Gaza: ‘We will look back and truly feel ashamed’ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/03/huwaida-arraf-on-gaza-we-will-look-back-and-truly-feel-ashamed/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/03/huwaida-arraf-on-gaza-we-will-look-back-and-truly-feel-ashamed/#respond Thu, 03 Apr 2025 15:25:59 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=332806 KHAN YUNIS, GAZA - APRIL 01: A woman is seen sitting among the rubble as Palestinians inspect a building destroyed in an Israeli army attack on a settlement on the third day of Eid al-Fitr in Khan Yunis, Gaza on April 01, 2025. Palestinian journalist Mohammed Saleh al-Bardawil, his wife and children lost their lives in the attack. Photo by Abdallah F.s. Alattar/Anadolu via Getty ImagesThe Palestinian American lawyer and activist explains why the fight for our civil liberties and Gaza go hand in hand.]]> KHAN YUNIS, GAZA - APRIL 01: A woman is seen sitting among the rubble as Palestinians inspect a building destroyed in an Israeli army attack on a settlement on the third day of Eid al-Fitr in Khan Yunis, Gaza on April 01, 2025. Palestinian journalist Mohammed Saleh al-Bardawil, his wife and children lost their lives in the attack. Photo by Abdallah F.s. Alattar/Anadolu via Getty Images

The ceasefire in Gaza has shattered, and Israel’s military has resumed the genocide. Simultaneously, organizations and activists in the US are sounding the alarm over Trump’s persecution of Mahmoud Khalil and other student activists. Palestinian American lawyer and activist Huwaida Arraf joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the situation in Gaza, and the urgency of ramping up the solidarity movement with Palestine to combat genocide and the rise of fascism.

Production: David Hebden, Rosette Sewali
Post-production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. We’re talking today with Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian woman, a lawyer born in Israel, an international renowned human rights lawyer, trilingual and English, Arabic, and Hebrew. A nonviolent activist who co-founded International Solidarity Network fighting for Palestinian rights and nationhood. She ran for Congress in Michigan’s 10th congressional district writes extensively and which her mind, body, literally, and spirit on the line for Palestinian freedom and Hu to welcome. Good to have you with us.

Huwaida Arraf:

It’s good to be with you, Marc. Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

You have been, I mean, doing this for a while.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yeah, I had hoped it wouldn’t be this long, but the fight goes on.

Marc Steiner:

As we had this conversation today, I was looking at the news before I walked into the studio and Israel has resumed their operations in central and South Gaza. They’ve started their airstrikes, 20 Palestinians were killed. Almost all of them health workers for a hundred Palestinians were killed in airstrikes. Since the beginning is conflict. I mean, what’s happening in Gaza is almost unbelievable. I think it’s hard for people to fathom the extent of death and destruction that’s taking place. This is not simply a war.

Huwaida Arraf:

Absolutely. I don’t like to use that term at all because war implies you have two equal sites and that’s absolutely not what you have here. Have a population that has been oppressed and colonized for nearly eight decades and for the past almost two decades in Gaza specifically really has been caged and cut off from essentials. And you take that and over the years also every few years Israel bombs decimate the society, the infrastructure. You have a medieval siege that’s imposed on the entire civilian population that really leaves people not able to control even their daily lives. I mean, forget about just being able to leave the Gaza Strip to go get what you need to go to school, to visit family, to get the medical attention that you need, what you might be able to find food that day is completely determined by what Israel allows in and what doesn’t allow in.

And for the past two and a half weeks before it restarted, this barbaric bombardment of Gaza has been cutting off all food and medical aid and then just cut off also electricity, which means they can’t desalinate water. I mean people have nothing. It is truly a caged, beleaguered star population that Israel has also restarted viciously bombing from the air. So just in the past couple of days, nearly 500 killed so many children. At least the last number, and I don’t even like to say numbers because it changes by the minute, but over 180 children, babies, infants, and no one seems to be able to stop Israel. No one is willing to do it. And the reports are that the United States, the White House has given the green light. They were briefed on it, and the slaughter continues. It really, I am unable to find words these days to describe to the evil that we went missing.

Marc Steiner:

And you mentioned the United States. I mean the kind of lack of political will in the Biden administration to intervene and stop it. And now we’re faced with a government in this country which actively supports Israel in its destruction of Palestinians and the murder of Palestinians. It is really time for, I think those of us in America to step up and really heighten the protests and the confrontations with our own government to say, no, this can’t take place. So I’m curious as an activist here, where you see that going, where you see what our role is here in the United States to stop this kind of genocide taking place in Gaza.

Huwaida Arraf:

Absolutely, and that is the question, right? Because I worked for a long time volunteering in the occupied Palestinian territory and welcoming people from around the world to come see what’s actually happening in Palestine. And Palestinians would be so grateful for the international solidarity and for people leaving the comforts of their own home to travel to stand with them. But what we would hear over and over again from Palestinians is just please go back to your countries, especially the United States, and change the policies there because it is the policies of especially the Western countries led by the United States that’s enabling Israel. And so what we do here in the United States really, really matters. I mean, it’s not adequate to just say it’s not our problem, it’s not happening here. It’s thousands of miles away because we are so actively involved and complicit. It’s our tax dollars.

It is our elected representatives that are making these choices to continuously fund Israel’s genocide. So it comes down to us to create that political will to change policy. Now, how do we do that? It seems to be really overwhelming. A lot of it really comes down to educating people because for decades we have been programmed here in the United States by the mainstream media, by popular culture to dehumanize Palestinians and to think that Israel is the victim here. So there’s a lot of education that goes into it, opening people’s eyes in terms of what has really been happening and then changing that act or moving that education into mobilization and really pushing our elected representatives to make the right choices to stop funding genocide and colonialism and apartheid. And so that requires us making our voices heard, whether in the streets, in protests, to going to town halls, making appointments with our elected representatives, calling them, writing to them every day and letting them know that this is an issue that matters, that we care about, that we will vote on.

Yes, there are other issues that affect our daily lives, but this is also an issue that affects life, that affects life, and it affects our daily lives because it is not just about being what happens in Palestine. Yes, that’s horrible, but I have other concerns. What happens in Palestine and the extent in which the United States is funding and enabling what Israel is doing comes back here to affect us. If we look at the billions and billions of dollars that this government and the previous government and for decades, the United States has been giving of our tax dollars to Israel, that money can be spent in our own communities. I mean, $3.8 billion, that’s just yearly without all of the extra packages that Israel has gotten, which is now in the last 16, 17 months, has topped I think 30 billion. Billion. So yearly is 3.8 billion of our tax dollars.

And on top of that, the United States has authorized more and more money and weapon shipments to Israel that can be used in our own communities. Then when we talk about our own civil liberties here, the extent to which there is a crackdown on freedom of speech and on education, and that people are being doxed and fired from their jobs and silenced if they dare to criticize Israel. That affects our own civil liberties here. And I am involved in cases to defend students’ rights who have been persecuted, who have been kicked out of school. Their organizations suspended because they advocate for Palestinian rights. So if it’s not our tax dollars in our own communities and life in Palestine, it is our own ability to speak out and to exercise our freedom of speech that is being curtailed and actually really threatened all to protect a country that is committing a genocide.

It is really shameful. And I think that when we look back at this time, and I firmly believe there will come a time where we will look back and truly feel ashamed that we allowed this to happen. Those who were silent or those who advocated for this policy of supporting this genocide, it will be seen as a stain on US history. And I think what I keep saying is to everyone around me, this is happening in our lifetime on our watch. What are we going to say we did to stop it? And if we think about that every day, we will find our place what we can do. It could be joining a protest. I’m heading to a protest today, but it could be talking to your neighbor. It could be picking up the phone to talk to your member of Congress. Each one of us have a role to play.

And I think that if we understand that we can’t always be the top, we can’t always be at the front of those demonstrations, but if you do what you can from where you are and we each do that, it will build up. It will create that critical mass that we need to change policy. And I do believe that things have, in all of the years that you mentioned, I have been doing this, but we need to keep pushing. We need to keep pushing until we reach that tipping point. And I just seeing all the carnage, you just have to wonder how many more lives destroyed until we get to that tipping point where policy has changed. I mean, that motivates me every single day, and I hope we can all find it in ourselves to realize that there is something we can do about it.

Marc Steiner:

I hope so too. And I think that from your work, from helping to found a free gaze in 2006 with your co-founding international solidarity, the non-violent movement to fight for Palestinian rights, that we seem to be an precipice of the moment though, given what’s happening in Gaza, given the crackdown in this country on Palestinians who are standing up and given the crackdowns taking place inside Israel at this moment, people I’ve talked to who are both Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis are talking about the intense pressure that they’re under every day. Some even being arrested because they’re standing up to the government saying, no, I don’t think people just really get and understand the depth of the repression that’s taking place on the West Bank in Gaza and in Israel itself.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yep, absolutely. I have family. So my family is partially from the West Bank and the other part is from inside 48, what is now Israel. And so,

Marc Steiner:

And you’re an Israeli citizen as well, or was were right,

Huwaida Arraf:

An Israeli citizen. Yes, of course. I mean, I always say I’m not the kind of citizen that Israel wants. Unfortunately, I’m considered a demographic threat because of, again, Israel’s project of really colonization. And when we call it apartheid, it’s not just throwing out words. It really is a government and a regime that wants to create a society and the state with specific rights for certain people based on your religion. So even though my village and my family was there before the state of Israel was created, we are not equal citizens. And the last time I talked to my family, I mean, they’re terrified. They can’t say anything in their place of work. If they like a Facebook post, they could be arrested, right? And they have Israeli citizens that are walking around armed, coming into their place of business, whether it is their clinics or their shops.

And you don’t know if what you’re going to say is going to get you injured, killed, arrested. And those are Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, who Israel likes to say are equal or have more rights than they would have anywhere else, which is just not true at all. And then when you talk about Israeli citizens, I mean, yeah, there are protests. People are not happy with Netanyahu, and there is, especially the families of the hostages and other people who are worried about the hostages are protesting and are getting arrested for these protests. And there is a crackdown. I wish I had something a little bit better or more hopeful to say about Israeli society because I spent so many years in the occupied territories and worked with some wonderful Israelis, Israelis who put their safety and their lives on the line and firmly believe in true equality and spend their time in Palestinian villages and standing up to their own soldiers.

But those numbers are so, so few, the polls are showing that a vast majority of Israelis support what their government has been doing in Gaza. If they didn’t have hostages in Gaza, they wouldn’t care at all about the Palestinian civilians there and what’s happening to them. And that’s really frightening. I mean, that’s frightening, just from a humanitarian perspective, that’s frightening when you think about any society to be supportive of such ruthless violence. And if it wasn’t for having some of your own people there wouldn’t care at all what happens to the population that your government is occupying, oppressing and killing. And so that is scary. And what we have been seeing in Israeli society is this decline, this decline towards more isolationism, fascism, violence. And it’s not good for anybody, certainly not good for Israeli society. And even the future where I say, I’ve always said that we need to live together in what we’re working to create.

We’re working to end Israeli colonialism and apartheid so that there can be a future where anybody and everybody who wants to live in historic Palestine in this land can do so as equals. Right. And what we have been seeing, again on the enormous violence unleashed on Palestinians and the almost complete disregard by Israelis except for where it concerns their own population, it means that it’s going to be very, very, very difficult to rebuild a lot of that. And this is, we’re talking about it because we don’t have too much time, but we shouldn’t just gloss over the amount of violence being used. And that’s not just in Gaza, that’s not just when we come to the death and dismemberment and amputations and the starvations, but the torture, the deliberate killings, the humiliation, the people, children who have seen their parents killed dismembered, the humiliated, what kind of psychological effect this has on people is really hard, really hard to fathom.

And especially when we’re looking at Gaza, but also the West Bank, this is all Palestinians have known most Palestinians for their entire lives is this kind of violence, is this kind of complete disregard by the international community and the rest of the world. And just this overwhelming oppression and this attempt really to get rid of you. You’re an undesirable, your life doesn’t matter. That’s all Palestinians have known. And despite this, they try to continue, they try to insist on, but what kind of psychological effect this has on people is really hard to know as of like 20 years ago, 20 years ago, before these massive bombing started in Gaza, there’s, it’s a Gaza community mental health program that was saying over 90% of Gaza’s children are traumatized. And that is back in 2006, you have seen at least five massive bombing campaigns since then and now an act of full-blown genocide if over 90% of Gaza’s children were traumatized before all this, what do we say now? So it is really, really dismal. But that doesn’t mean we give up. We have no choice but to keep going and fighting because we are fighting for the rights of people to live.

Marc Steiner:

It’s true. And those children now you talk about are now in their twenties and thirties and trying to survive.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yeah, trying to survive, probably trying to keep their children alive, probably trying to find a way to keep their children safe to find food. And these are children that have been traumatized themselves. In 2009, after Israel’s first major bombing campaign operation cast led on Gaza, this was 2008, 2009, I went in with a delegation of US attorneys to try to document and report on US weapons that were used in Operation Castlight to commit war crimes. And we did produce a report after that, but some of the stories that we heard, I mean one home that was bombed and Israel did not allow the Red Crescent or any rescue services to get to the home for three days. And when they got to the home, found a number, most of the adults in that home killed

And number of children who were still alive, injured, and forced to stay with the relatives, with the bodies of their dead parents for three days without food or water. Those children, that was 2008, 2009, if those children even survived, what they’re trying to do now in keeping their, they probably hope that their children wouldn’t have to endure the same. But not only are they doing the same, it’s so much worse now. It’s as bad as it has ever been. And that doesn’t even come remotely close to describing it. There’s a report that just came out from the un, and I’m almost, I’ve read the bullet points, but I can’t even bring myself to read it because even though the summary is so bad, it is so bad about the kind of torture, what people have been subjected to things that humans should never, ever do to each other. I can’t, as a human rights attorney, I’m almost embarrassed to admit I just can’t even bring myself to read it.

Marc Steiner:

What’s the name of the report?

Huwaida Arraf:

It was done by the, there’s a un fact finding patient. It’s an independent commission that is investigating what Israel is doing in the occupied policy and territory and in Gaza. And they came out, I’d have to pull up the report, but one of their findings is that Israel is committing genocidal acts. Israel has deliberately targeted the maternal wards, the ability of Palestinian, Palestinian women to reproduce in various ways. But part of that also covers the torture that Palestinian hostages also have endured in Israeli captivity and some of the torture tactics and the rape that is described is just horrific. And that’s just the summary. So I can pull the exact name of the report for you, but it was done by an independent fact finding commission.

Marc Steiner:

Well, we’ll add that just so people can access that, because I think that’s important. I mean, as you describe the reality that Palestinians face, and I mean, just think about you personally. I’ve been reading all the things you’ve been writing and I’ve been reading about you and the bravery you showed on the Flotillas and other, the places in the face of Israeli violence standing up to it, putting your life on the line. And you’re married to a Jewish man who’s thrown out of Israel because he stood up. I mean, this is something people have to understand. I think for us to get beyond this and to find this path to peace, and there are over one and a half to 2 billion Israelis who no longer live in Israel and live in Europe and live in the United States. Most of ’em would be the people who oppose this government that’s taking place in Israel at this moment.

Huwaida Arraf:

I mean, that’s what we’re hearing. And then the large number of Israelis who are leaving would be the more moderate ones, leaving the Israelis, more the ideological. This land was given to us by God. It’s only our land and everybody else needs to be kicked out, are the ones that are remaining. And we see the government that is now in power is a right wing fascist government. And that is the, as I said earlier, that the Israeli society where it has going and the fact that it’s become so extreme, it doesn’t bode well for anyone. But how do we break that? And for a lot of the work that I’ve done originally when I went over to Palestine in shortly after college, it was in the year 2000, it was to work for a conflict resolution organization that was bringing Palestinian and Israeli youth together.

Marc Steiner:

Seeds of peace.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yes, yes.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Huwaida Arraf:

And I quickly realized the problem with these organizations, because they don’t actually get to the heart of the matter, they don’t do the work that needs to be done to dismantle the racist structures or the structures of oppression that tear people apart. And it’s more about getting to know each other and doing these normalization projects. Becoming friends is great. Obviously we lifelong friends, but when you don’t actually, or when you avoid the work that needs to be done to dismantle the structures of oppression, then you are just normalizing oppression, right? So I don’t necessarily support these organizations, but I went on, even in founding the International Solidarity Movement, it was bringing internationals, but also bringing Israelis and bringing everybody irrespective of religion, of ethnicity, of nationality. I mean, we are all humans and we are all standing for freedom and for equality and for dignity, for everybody.

And there is this attempt to also reach Israelis with the actions that we were doing. A lot of the protests I was face to face with Israeli soldiers and trying to say, look, what are you doing? You are here shooting at children. You are invading these people’s villages, maybe getting them to think about what role they’re playing in this violence. And then I think that we are so far from that right now. People just have been so siloed, I feel, and so hard. There’s those that are hardened and just don’t want to hear anything that has to do with Palestinian humanity. And then there are those, the ideological Israelis that are bent on having this Jewish state that was promised to them by God. And everybody else needs to either agree to be subservient or they can be killed or they can get out. And that is really what we are fighting here. We are fighting this idea that there can be any kind of religious or ethno religious supremacy for anybody. And we are fighting for a world, a region, a country, I mean everywhere, certainly in Israel, Palestine, but around the world where everyone is respected in everyone is equal. And we seem to be so far away from that. But I say this because there is this idea, and you probably know well, anytime that we in the United States or in other places speak up for Palestinian rights, we are automatically labeled as antisemites

Marc Steiner:

Or self-hating Jews

Huwaida Arraf:

Or yourself Jews, my husband celebrating Jews all the time. And we seem to just lost this ability to look at each other as humans. And it doesn’t bode well for where we are in this moment in time. It is very dangerous what is happening, certainly in the region. But then what is happening here, and I mentioned, we started talking also about the restrictions on our civil liberties here.

We know that we are creating certainly Trump’s policy, cracking down even more on those who speak up for Palestinian rights. But one thing that I want to say there is that it didn’t start with Trump, right? It has been US policy. And certainly I blame the previous administration, the Biden administration, for laying the groundwork for where we are now. For 15 months we were protesting trying to get the Biden Harris administration to put an arms embargo on Israel to stop the genocide. And they gaslit the American people in that Israel has a right to defend itself. That’s what we always hear. But Israel is not defending itself. Israel is fighting for a land that is free of the indigenous Palestinian population. And the United States has been supporting that. But what is positive, I don’t want to be all negative. What is positive is that so many people like yourself, mark, but so many also younger American Jews, and even when we started the International Solidarity Movement, so many of those who came to join us were young American or European Jews.

We look at the protests on college campuses, so many of them Jewish students who reject this notion that what Israel is doing and what the US is doing in cracking down on protesters in any way serves Jewish safety. Certainly not Jewish Americans. And where I am in Michigan, the University of Michigan, we have 12 protesters that are being prosecuted actually by the Attorney General in a shameful, really prosecution. But about half of those protesters being prosecuted for protesting in the encampments and for Palestinian rights are Jewish. So on one hand, there are those who are really pushing really hard to label all advocates of Palestinian rights as antisemitic and supporting this kind of crackdown, whether what Israel’s doing or what this administration is doing as fighting antisemitism or protecting the Jewish people when it’s just the opposite. And it’s heartening to see that so many young Jews, but also of all ages that are, I have a good friend who is well into her eighties Jewish activist, and she’s just so feisty and that I really consider my family, my family, and these are the kind of people that I always want to stand side by side with and fighting for everybody’s rights.

Marc Steiner:

So before we end, a couple of things. One is I’m curious, in your life now, you’ve been through a lot facing violence in the Israeli Army, Navy violence, dealing on flotillas, the work you’ve done over there, the work you’re doing here, educating your life to this, what are you in the midst of now? Where is the struggle taking you? Now,

Huwaida Arraf:

That is a good question because I feel like I’m torn in so many different ways because there’s so much work to be done, and I want to always do as much as I can. One of my most important roles right now, although my kids would probably beg to differ, is raising the next generation. But I frequently hear from them that I’m always busy and I’m always doing something for Palestine or some other social justice issues. So I might be not doing as well as I should be in that arena, but raising the next generation, my kids are 10 and 11, and if I impart anything on them, I want it to be a strong belief in their ability and their obligation to do something when they see that something is wrong, whether it is in their elementary classroom, if somebody is being racist or somebody is being bullied to stand up to, if it’s the president of the United States, you can get out and protest when something’s happening that is not right.

You are able to, and you should do something about it. If I impart anything on them, I want it to be that. So that is one of my most important jobs. But I am also an attorney and I’m also working with other attorneys both to defensive liberties here at home. So I am one helping with the defense of students who are being persecuted for standing up for Palestinian rights and also suing the University of Michigan for violating the constitutional rights of these students by treating them differently, by curtailing the First Amendment rights. Because these institutions and these state power that is cracking down on our students, on protestors, on citizens should not be allowed to get away with this. So it’s defense and offense there and activism. We are still trying to support people to go to the occupied Palestinian territory, to volunteer with the international Solidarity movement if they are able to.

And if somebody can, unfortunately we cannot get into Gaza, but people are still able to get into Jerusalem and the West Bank and the international solidarity movement there is trying as much as possible to be a presence, to witness, to document, to stand in solidarity with the people there who are being terrorized by settlers and soldiers. Just in the past month, over 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their refugee camps in and in Janine. So in these Palestinian cities, Israeli soldiers would come through and literally blow up their homes or demolish their homes. And those that are still in their villages are being attacked by settlers, supported by soldiers. So having people there to witness to try to deter some of the violence by saying to the state of Israel, like, Hey, we’re here and we see what we’re doing can help deter violence sometimes and can help let Palestinians know that they’re not alone.

So I encourage anyone who is able to travel to look up the international solidarity movement and see about volunteering there. At the same time, we are trying to stop the atrocities in Gaza in a variety of ways. I am still involved with the Freedom Flotilla and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and that we have been trying for years to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza. We started, as you mentioned, I mean the first time we got into Gaza with two small fishing boats in 2008. And that was a deliberate action to challenge, to confront, to try to break Israel’s stranglehold and its naval blockade on Gaza. We were able to get through a few times, but then Israel started lethally attacking our ships, but we did not give up. And we, as of last year also, were pulling together if flotilla, unfortunately, some states sabotaged our mission, but again, we are not giving up.

We are readying ships to try to sail again. And we are encouraging these organizations that are being blocked from entering Gaza and from rendering aid to people to join us, to put their aid on these ships and directly confront Israel’s policy. Because Israel’s policy is illegal. A siege on an entire civilian population is illegal, and it is part of a larger genocide, a crime against humanity. But what is infuriating is that these organizations and world governments only talk, they do not do anything to actively confront Israel’s policy. So effectively, you have every single government in the world that is respecting Israel’s control over Gaza. They are complicit. They are complicit in the starvation and the genocide of the Palestinian people. I mean, the government of Turkey held back three of our ships that were supposed to sail to confront Israel’s blockade. Why isn’t Turkey itself sailing?

Why isn’t Greece sailing? Why aren’t these Arab countries sailing and daring Israel to confront them and to insist that we are getting to the people that you are trying to annihilate in Gaza. So we are still trying to do that as a civilian initiative and hopefully within the next few weeks or months, I hope it’s not longer, your listeners will hear about and are able to support the Freedom Flotilla coalition and try to break through this blockade. And here at home. Aside from the legal front, there’s also the political front and continuing to push our elected representatives and continuing to encourage people that really represent our ideals and our principles, our vision of human rights and inequality for everybody to run for office. I am trying to encourage young people, the Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, to actually get involved. And so our voices are represented and we are heard. So it’s a lot of work on a lot of different friends. Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to be in too many spaces and not doing anything particularly relevant. Well, we continue to try to do what we can. I think that that’s important just as continue to do what we can and there’s a space for everyone.

Marc Steiner:

I want to first say thank you, hued our off. You’re doing amazing work. I want to stay in touch with you to see how this Portilla gathering is growing and what the next moves are, so we can then support to that and bring those voices to the people in this country and across the globe. So I appreciate the work you’re doing, and thank you so much for being here today.

Huwaida Arraf:

Thank you for having me, and please continue to speak out because as we know, our freedom of speech is really being threatened right now. And I encourage your listeners to really follow the case of il, who is the government is trying to set an example by deporting him illegally for speaking out for Palestinian rights. And they’re again, trying to not only make an example of him, but silence speech by sending this chill through the communities, the pro-Palestinian community or anyone would dare to speak out. And it is, like I say again, the extent to which our own civil liberties, our right to the first amendment, our right to due process are really at stake right now is really hard to overemphasize. We need everybody to be watching, to be speaking out, and to be letting our elected representatives know that we will not stand for this and that they need to fight. So thank you for doing your part in continuing to speak out and bring voices of protests, of dissent to your listeners, and I would love to stay in touch.

Marc Steiner:

We will stay in touch. Thank you very much.

Huwaida Arraf:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, thank you to Huda Araf for joining us today. And thanks for David Hebdon for running the program and audio editor Alina Neek and producer Roset Sole for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Huwaida Arraf for joining us today and for the work that she does. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/03/huwaida-arraf-on-gaza-we-will-look-back-and-truly-feel-ashamed/feed/ 0 523495 Marc Bamuthi Joseph on Trump’s takeover of Kennedy Center https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/marc-bamuthi-joseph-on-trumps-takeover-of-kennedy-center/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/marc-bamuthi-joseph-on-trumps-takeover-of-kennedy-center/#respond Mon, 31 Mar 2025 23:00:43 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=615edd5b1c47e0b326088f202fc0aed2
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/marc-bamuthi-joseph-on-trumps-takeover-of-kennedy-center/feed/ 0 522793 “Taking Down Everything Black”: Fired Kennedy Center VP Marc Bamuthi Joseph on Trump’s Takeover https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/taking-down-everything-black-fired-kennedy-center-vp-marc-bamuthi-joseph-on-trumps-takeover-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/taking-down-everything-black-fired-kennedy-center-vp-marc-bamuthi-joseph-on-trumps-takeover-2/#respond Mon, 31 Mar 2025 14:14:09 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=7c39c565cbaa667e80723828d9e1c23a
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/taking-down-everything-black-fired-kennedy-center-vp-marc-bamuthi-joseph-on-trumps-takeover-2/feed/ 0 522697 “Taking Down Everything Black”: Fired Kennedy Center VP Marc Bamuthi Joseph on Trump’s Takeover https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/taking-down-everything-black-fired-kennedy-center-vp-marc-bamuthi-joseph-on-trumps-takeover/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/taking-down-everything-black-fired-kennedy-center-vp-marc-bamuthi-joseph-on-trumps-takeover/#respond Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:30:53 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=01ac0d298b02eb93a3fbb41d523e59b1 Seg2 marc kennedy center 2

President Donald Trump’s efforts to take over cultural institutions and attack diversity, equity and inclusion programs has centered on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the venerable arts institution in Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center was established by Congress and has been run by a bipartisan board since it opened in 1971, but Trump upended that in February when he moved to install his loyalists in key positions and make himself chair. Last week, the Kennedy Center’s new leadership fired at least seven members of its social impact team that worked to reach more diverse audiences and artists, including vice president and artistic director of social impact Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The acclaimed artist and playwright joins Democracy Now! to discuss Trump’s changes at the Kennedy Center, which he criticizes for destroying a “sanctuary for freedom of thought and freedom of creative expression.” Joseph notes that while the Kennedy Center has not yet made drastic programming changes, the rhetoric from Trump and others “severely restricts and almost criminalizes demographic realities outside of white, straight, male Christianity.”


This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/31/taking-down-everything-black-fired-kennedy-center-vp-marc-bamuthi-joseph-on-trumps-takeover/feed/ 0 522675 Renowned Black artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph fired from Kennedy Center after Trump takeover https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/27/renowned-black-artist-marc-bamuthi-joseph-fired-from-kennedy-center-after-trump-takeover/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/27/renowned-black-artist-marc-bamuthi-joseph-fired-from-kennedy-center-after-trump-takeover/#respond Thu, 27 Mar 2025 20:26:20 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=1571a0d7fa6a996625c9e767735180b0
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/27/renowned-black-artist-marc-bamuthi-joseph-fired-from-kennedy-center-after-trump-takeover/feed/ 0 521983 Fired Kennedy Center VP Marc Bamuthi Joseph Speaks Out After Trump Guts Social Impact Team https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/27/fired-kennedy-center-vp-marc-bamuthi-joseph-speaks-out-after-trump-guts-social-impact-team/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/27/fired-kennedy-center-vp-marc-bamuthi-joseph-speaks-out-after-trump-guts-social-impact-team/#respond Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:15:31 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=662368dc7786fa2640cbb930a0e43086 Bamuthi 1

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has fired at least five members of its social impact team, including its artistic director, the renowned artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The team aimed to expand the art center’s reach to diverse audiences and to commission new works by Black composers.


This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/27/fired-kennedy-center-vp-marc-bamuthi-joseph-speaks-out-after-trump-guts-social-impact-team/feed/ 0 521927 Mahmoud Khalil’s abduction and Trump’s escalating war on the Palestine movement https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/25/mahmoud-khalils-abduction-and-trumps-escalating-war-on-the-palestine-movement/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/25/mahmoud-khalils-abduction-and-trumps-escalating-war-on-the-palestine-movement/#respond Tue, 25 Mar 2025 17:07:43 +0000 https://therealnews.com/?p=332646 Protestors gather to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil at Foley Square on March 10, 2025 in New York City. Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty ImagesIt’s been two weeks since ICE illegally abducted and jailed Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University—and the future of free speech in America hangs on the outcome of his case.]]> Protestors gather to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil at Foley Square on March 10, 2025 in New York City. Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist at Columbia University, is currently in ICE detention facing deportation proceedings—and the future of free speech in America hangs on the outcome of his case. Khalil, who has permanent resident status, was illegally abducted by ICE agents in front of his pregnant wife on March 8, sparking national and international outrage and raising alarms about what his extrajudicial abduction and imprisonment means for the present and future of civil liberties in Trump’s America. Michael Arria, a reporter with Mondoweiss, joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the current status of Khalil’s case and the rapid escalation of Trump’s crackdown on political dissent and the movement for Palestine.

Production: David Hebden, Rosette Sewali
Post-production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have y’all with us. Mahmoud Khalil is in the news. 11 days ago, this father to Tobe was a student, a leading voice at Columbia University to end the war on Gaza and for the rights of Palestinian people. He’s Palestinian. Then all of a sudden, 11 days ago, federal agents burst into his apartment, taking him away, threatening him with deportation. His wife is about to give birth to their first child. Other Palestinian students have been targeted by the federal government and Trump has told Columbia he’ll withdraw $400 million of federal support. If you don’t ban masks, empower campus cops and put the school department of Middle East, south Asian, and African studies under academic receivership, which would mean they’re no longer controlled by the university or the faculty among other things. And Mahmoud Khalil languishes now in a federal lockup in Louisiana. And we’re about to have a conversation with a man who’s been covering this. Michael Arria has been covering this from Mondoweiss where he’s a US correspondent and he’s the author of Medium Blue, the Politics of MSNBC. And Michael, welcome, good to have you with us.

Michael Arria:

Thanks for having me.

Marc Steiner:

So this story, I remember when I first watched this happening, saw this happening. I was just incredulous. Lemme just take a step backwards with you for a moment and for a broader overview before we jump into this specific story and what this is emblematic for, what’s happening to our country at this moment, colleges around the country being threatened, Palestinian people, I have Palestinian friends who feel now that they’re under threat of deportation. Talk a bit about your analysis of where we think we are and what’s happening to us right now.

Michael Arria:

It’s an interesting question. I think obviously these things don’t occur in a vacuum. Unfortunately, Khalil’s detention, it was not altogether shocking. I think we all expected the Trump administration to act in some capacity. He’s been very upfront, even dating back to the campaign trail, the Washington Post reported last May that he had told a group of pro-Israel donors that if they helped elect him, he would crack down on the Palestine movement and set it back decades.

And he specifically outlined how he would do that, which is to deport students. He repeated that line throughout the campaign as did members of the new administration. Upon arriving at the White House, we saw executive orders shortly after he arrived at the White House, obviously also targeting student protestors. But I think you bring up an interesting point because some of these college investigations actually began under the Biden administration and something we cover at the site every week, especially me as the US correspondent, is this kind of war that’s been waged against the US Palestine movement domestically particularly strengthened and amplified I think in the wake of the October 7th attack, but really was going on long before that through legal means in the courts, pro-Israel organizations, pro-Israel, lawmakers criminalizing BDS attempting to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which essentially classifies some criticisms of Israel as antisemitic.

So this has been a real push and it has to be said, although Trump is kind of amping it up to a level we have yet to see, it has largely been a bipartisan affair. We have seen these kind of attacks on the Palestine movement in the US for quite some time, and this is kind of, I think in many ways a culmination of these kind of actions that we’ve seen kind of over the past decade really since BDS emerged as a forest, we’ve really seen this attempt to criminalize descent and a lot of these Israel groups really see the campus as the terrain where that battle is going to be fought. And they’ve really fought to kind of blur the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. They’ve really fought for pro-Israel students to kind of be regarded as a civil right classification unto themself. You see this a lot with Alec where they find somebody who claims that the fact they had to join a union and fringes upon their freedom of speech or something, and then you see these big right-wing right to work groups kind of support them. And that’s kind of happened in this situation too. You’ve seen some of these pro-ISIS Israel groups like the Brandeis Center back, these pro-Israel students and try to get this stuff on the books and change the legal definition for what you can and can’t do as it relates to Palestine protests. So that’s kind of a little backstory I’d say in terms of what leads up to this arrest that we saw on March 8th.

Marc Steiner:

If the United States government uses a leverage that is using against Columbia now saying, we’re going to take away $400 million from the university if you don’t do what we tell you, if you don’t stop these anti-Israeli protests and more, I mean they could do this across the country. I mean this signals, this is kind of a bellwether for a real kind of dangerous, almost fascistic policies being instituted by Trump against higher education.

Michael Arria:

Yeah, I completely agree with that. And it’s interesting, this is obviously there’s some big picture stories here, like a big picture stories obviously Trump’s deportation plans as anti-immigrant designs are not limited to student protestors or Palestinians. So that’s one big picture story. I think another big picture story is what we just discussed. This is a long time coming in terms of this blurring of what is considered antisemitism versus what is considered legitimate pro-Palestine protest. But I think the third issue is the one you bring up, which is this issue of what does the institutions of higher education, what do they stand for in the United States in the year 2025? I think shortly before the election I interviewed Mara Finkelstein, who I think you’ve had on your show. She was

The first tenured professor to lose her job over pro-Palestine speech. It had an Instagram post where she criticized Zionism and lost her job. And she said something very interesting to me when we spoke last October where she really connected this to the decades of policies that we’ve seen, education policy that we’ve seen in the United States, this neoliberal model that we’ve seen kind of emerge where we’ve seen the rolling back of federal funding of higher education. And this is another thing Trump has amped up obviously as we’ve seen in recent weeks, and we kind of have seen that replaced with a donor model, right? Schools essentially a marketplace in that regard. And I think you tap into this, Trump sent this letter to Columbia University saying that $400 million is potentially on the line. We might revisit this and give it back to you if you do the following things. And basically laid out a kind of crackdown on pro-Palestine protestors. And one of those demands was also, it’s everything you mentioned, but in addition to that was Trump administration was calling for the suspension of a number of student activists who were involved in the occupation of Hamilton Hall last April. This is a hall at Columbia that was occupied by a number of students drawing attention to what was happening, the genocidal assault

Marc Steiner:

And was occupied during the anti-war demonstrations in Vietnam as well. Exactly right.

Michael Arria:

And it should be pointed out, Columbia, we’ve seen so much news in the last week, it’s hard to keep up I realize. But something that happened is that the other day Columbia announced that they were suspending expelling and potentially taking degrees away from a number of the people who were connected to that protest. So I think part of the story here is obviously the Trump administration. The other part is how these universities have kind of either complied or just been straight up complicit in the designs of the Trump administration, presumably because they do not want to see their endowments threatened in any capacity. And now you have an announcement from Linda McMahon, the new head of Department of Education, sending out this announcement that 60 schools which have been investigated for alleged antisemitism are potentially on the verge of facing disciplinary action. Presumably similar to what happened with Columbia, where they’ll have their federal contracts and grants pulled and are put in a position where they’re really between a rock and a hard place, so to speak, and what they want to do.

And I think when it comes down to it, I mean that’s what Mara Finkelstein told me. She said, I don’t have to have sympathy for the people who fired me to acknowledge the fact that my school was put in this position where they could either get rid of an anthropology professor or have their endowment threatened. And to them it probably wasn’t a big decision. So I think that’s something that we have to keep in mind here. This isn’t only a story about immigration or Trump or McCarthyism. It also is a story about kind of what the face of higher education looks like in the United States, especially a place like Columbia, which is a private university and therefore technically isn’t beholden by the First Amendment in the same way that other places are. There’s legitimate questions here. What kind of responsibility do they have to their faculty? What kind of responsibility do they have to their students? And it’s all this stuff about freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry, all this kind of stuff that you see in the mission statements of universities like Columbia and Harvard. Does that mean anything or do these actions just kind of prove that it’s all just words that they don’t really take seriously?

Marc Steiner:

I mean this is what happened. Columbia, as I said earlier, I think is just a tip of the iceberg. This was, I think in some ways attest for the Trump administration and the right wing to see how far they could go, where they could begin this process, how they could clamp down on protest. And I think that this whole issue of antisemitism, lemme take a step back for a second. I’m Jewish. I grew up in a family of pogrom and Holocaust survivors and I’ve been involved in the movement against the occupation since the late sixties, and I think they used this bogus move to call protests against the occupation as antisemitic. I mean, I think antisemitic is there, antisemites are everywhere, but the protest movements and the movement itself is not antisemitic. And I think this is an excuse they use also to divide America and to be able to justify their clamping down on campuses and Columbia was a place they started. Before we jump back into that, let me ask you a bit more about Mahmoud, Khalil and what you know now, what you know about what his situation is, what is happening legally and where he is.

Michael Arria:

Sure. So as we mentioned at the top, Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ice agents on March 8th. These are ice agents that were in plain clothes agents who followed him into his home alongside his wife, who as you mentioned is eight months pregnant. They did not initially produce a warrant. There had been reporting initially that the ice agents themselves were a little confused because we should point out Mahmoud A is a permanent resident with a active green card. So

When his wife produced the green card, reportedly the ICE agents had called presumably their supervisor or the office and had basically said this might be some sort of mistake. He has a green card and were told that the state department had revoked the green card as well as his student visa. So he is taken into custody by the ICE agents. There was a period of about 24 hours where nobody including his attorneys were able to figure out where he was. I should point out that sadly that is not altogether shocking when you look at ice, how they operate in the history of our immigration detention system, but it is nonetheless very concerning. They couldn’t get in touch with him. A judge in New York, we eventually figured out that he was in a detention facility in Louisiana. So he’s moved thousands of miles away from his family to this detention facility.

A judge in New York blocks the deportation order that was issued by the Trump administration and calls everybody into court. This is last Wednesday. And the Trump administration, the Trump lawyers were trying to get this thrown out of the New York court. They’re essentially arguing that it has no jurisdiction, that everything should go to Louisiana where Mahmoud is being held. At that hearing, we found out that his lawyers had still had no communication with him. They had no way to get in touch with him. So the judge actually some news shortly before we got on this call today, the judge ruled that the proceedings continue, will happen, will occur in New Jersey.

Marc Steiner:

And that hasn’t happened yet.

Michael Arria:

That hasn’t happened yet. It was just announced. And the lawyers, some of his attorneys put out statements that basically said, this isn’t necessarily a cause to celebrate, but it is something of a small victory because it is a setback for the Trump administration, which is trying to have this moved. So that’s kind of where we’re at now. And as you point out, this is just the first, I mean Trump has said as soon as it happened, he celebrated on social media and said that there were many more to come. There has since been more than one Columbia, additional Columbia students that have been one who was detained, who we know very little about detained in, similar in Newark and ended up in, is currently at a facility in Texas, a detention facility. And then there’s another Indian student who actually a doctoral student architect from India who is actually set to finish a doctoral program in urban planning this May of Columbia and learned that she was being targeted by the Department of Homeland Security, so actually fled the country trying to escape this targeting by the Trump administration. So his arrest has really kicked off, I think further arrest. We’ve seen it at Columbia, but unfortunately I have no reason to believe he won’t start seeing it at other places and the administration’s being very explicit about the fact that these will continue, that this is not an isolated incident.

Marc Steiner:

You mentioned, just to put their names out there, Leqaa Kordia is the Palestinian student, the woman who was from the West Bank, and the other is Ranjani Srinivasan, the Indian National who was targeted. And you’re right, I mean because Trump now has this kind of rhetoric and history of ignoring the courts saying he can do what he wants to do.

Michael Arria:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

It’s almost difficult to kind of put your hands around this in terms of what the potential is for the strengthening of this neofascist kind of regime in Washington, because if they win this battle, they don’t stop there, they’ll continue.

Michael Arria:

Right, that’s absolutely true. I think when Mahmoud was first attained, I think there was a belief from many people that the Trump administration would be relying on some of the anti-terrorism measures that came out of the Bush administration. For those of us who remember the immediate aftermath after nine 11, things like the Patriot Act, like many situations, and I just talked about how Biden kind of paved the way a lot of the war on terror legislation, some of the groundwork had really been done in previous administration. So the anti-terrorism bill that Bill Clinton passed in 1995 had a provision in it about material support for terrorist groups. It’s interesting that legislation came in response to the Oklahoma City bombing, and he was pressured by pro-Israel groups to really include this provision in it in order to go after Palestinian organizations. I think a lot of people, when Mahmoud was originally arrested, a lot of people assumed this was going to be the root of the Trump administration. They were going to try to prove in some capacity, although it still seemed like a legally shaky argument that student protestors had somehow supported Hamas. Hamas is of course regarded as a terrorist group by the United States government.

What we learned pretty quickly through the court documents and some people connected to this case that had spoken to places like the New York Times is that they are not relying on that type of framework. They’re relying on a provision from the Immigration and Nationality Act from back in 1952. The dark irony of this is, as you say, they’re invoking this issue of antisemitism. The last time this provision was wielded was the height of the red scare, and it was used to target Holocaust survivors who were suspected of being Soviet agents.

So it was actually used to go to target Jewish people in the United States, and there’s a provision in there that basically says if you’re an alien whose presence or activities create reasonable grounds to believe that they would potentially seriously impact the foreign policy objectives of the United States, then you can be deported. And that is very troubling. I think this is potentially a scary thing. I think that even goes beyond some of the stuff we saw on the War on Terror because in the War on Terror, we really saw these esteemed legal minds in the Bush administration kind of pour over the Constitution and try to find these little loopholes or reinterpret it in a way where they could justify all these kind of draconian measures or unconstitutional measures. In this case, the Trump administration is not even pretending that Mahmoud committed a crime. They’re not pointing to anything. We had this one comment from the White House press Atory where she said she had some photos in her office that showed he had handed out literature that was Pearl Hamas. They’ve never returned to this, which makes me think it doesn’t exist.

Marc Steiner:

Doesn’t exist.

Michael Arria:

It doesn’t exist. And even if it did, we should point out that is not illegal. It’s not grounds for Mahmoud still has protections of the First Amendment regardless of whether or not he had the green card. So we’ve seen nothing in terms of the administration coming out and claiming that he actually committed a crime. And that’s very, I think, terrifying for people who are looking at this case because it basically sets up a situation where people can be targeted and deported much in a similar way that they were during periods of time like the red scare, without having to prove that they committed any sort of crime whatsoever. It really opens up, as you say, a very dangerous can of worms going forward, and I think what happens here will potentially have massive repercussions for the next three years.

Marc Steiner:

You quote a friend of mine who I’ve done work in the media with before Jelani Cobb, who’s now the dean of journalism at Columbia saying, nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times. I mean, when I read that knowing Jelani Cobb, who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, who’s not easily intimidated, who’s got great analysis to say something like that is something that America should listen to understand what it is we face.

Michael Arria:

Yeah, absolutely. That is a quote from a New York Times article that ran about a week and a half ago.

It was in response to the fact that another professor, an adjunct professor, Stuart Carl, had basically told a group of students, stop posting on your social media about the Middle East. If you have a social media page, make sure it doesn’t have commentary about the Middle East. And a Palestinian student had basically objected to that and brought up the fact that the school was promoting censorship and kind of bowing to the Trump administration. And that’s when Cobb made the statement that you said allegedly or was reported to the times, nobody can protect you. He said, these are dangerous times. So yeah, I think it’s very ominous. I mean, to hear this kind of stuff from this institution, I think it’s worth pointing out. Also, shortly before Mahmoud was apprehended by ICE agents, the administration of Columbia sent out a statement to faculty and staff notifying them that their protocol as it relates to ICE had shifted.

And prior to that point, they had been regarded as what’s a sanctuary university, which is similar to a sanctuary city. Basically it said, ICE shows up on campus, we’re not going to assist them. They had modified that to basically say, in some circumstances we have to let ice on campus without a warrant. So we see that. We see, as I mentioned before, the suspensions of the students. Again, this is not happening in a vacuum. We’re seeing it across the university in many ways. We’re seeing this inability to, not just inability to stand up to the Trump administration, but also we see them aligned with them when it comes to this type of behavior. The in interim president Trina Armstrong had sent out an email when ICE agents showed up at campus the other day saying she was heartbroken that this had occurred, but she wanted to inform everybody. I think it’s really hard for students probably who are engaged in these protests to take those sentiments seriously when they look at the sequence of events here and they look at how Columbia and other higher education institutions have acted over the past few months.

Marc Steiner:

I’m going to read another quote here and come back to Mahmoud before we have to go. You have a quote here from Halal D’S attorney who was a scholar, international law at Yale, was placed administrative leave. And the quote is this from Eric Lee, his attorney, future Historians will treat the role of American universities as an example of collaboration, like we review the Vichy government today, the role played by the vast majority of professors is absolutely shameful. I mean, I want to talk about that for a minute before we go back to Mahmoud because I think we’re on a very dangerous precipice if this is allowed to happen. If they’re allowed to go into universities, arrest Palestinian students, arrest students who are protesting anything threatening universities with lack of taking away their federal dollars. I mean either universities find backbone and join the fight or they actually get what they want. I mean, I’m talking about the Trump government.

Michael Arria:

Yeah, it’s a very scary situation. The lawyer that you quote there, Eric Lee, he’s actually the attorney for a student at Yale Law School who has also caught up in a similar situation where she was placed on administrative leave following an AI generated article, falsely accusing her of terrorist connections. Rubio had kind of announced this was going to happen,

Marc Steiner:

Which is insane describing that for that moment. I mean, alleged not even proven.

Michael Arria:

Yeah, we are in a real dystopian, I think with some of the stuff situation, this announcement from the Trump administration that they’re going to use AI in order to determine whether or not students support Hamas. It’s really incredible. But to your point, we’re seeing this across all kinds of universities, not just Columbia. I think all eyes are on Columbia for very obvious reasons, but I think I mentioned that piece. Swarthmore College just suspended student for their involvement in the Gaza protest. They handed out 25 violations of code conduct as a result of those protests. The student who got suspended was suspended for using a bullhorn indoors, which is the first time somebody has ever been suspended for this nationally. So we’re seeing schools cracked down on this kind of dissent and stifle criticism of Israel supportive Gaza alongside this push for the Trump administration. As you say.

Before we get off this topic, I should quickly mention there are a couple lawsuits. One is a couple graduate students and a Cornell professor are actually suing the Trump administration over its push to deport students. One of those students was actually almost deported last year after he was suspended for participating in a pro-Palestine protest. The other lawsuit I think is important here is Khalil and seven other current Columbia students are suing the school and Republican out of Michigan, representative Tim Wahlberg to prevent their private disciplinary records from being handed over to the House Committee on Education and Workforce. And people probably remember this is the committee that has consistently tried to bring university presidents before Congress and really grill them on their alleged inability to crack down on antisemitism. And this’s an important part of this. I think it’s hard to know where one group begins in the other ends, but there is definitely this, you see this collaboration that precisely Eric Lee’s point in your quote, this kind of collaboration with the government pro-Israel lawmakers and these schools. And I think it’s a really important point. We’re really going to learn a lot I think, in the coming weeks and months about how that breaks down and how people are going to be able to battle against it and fight against it.

Marc Steiner:

So lemme ask you this. What have you learned since your article about Mahmoud kil and his legal situation where he is? I know you’ll probably stay on top of this. I just want to get an update from you on what’s happening to him, to Mahmoud.

Michael Arria:

Yeah, as I mentioned, so he’s hypothetically supposed to be heading back to the East Coast. I think today was obviously, as I said, something of a victory for his legal team and for him, I mean, his wife put out a statement today basically saying First step, we need to, this is a good first step, but we need to continue to demand justice from a mood. Because he was unlawfully and unjustly detained and she basically said, we’re not going to stop fighting until he is home. Your listeners have probably seen there’s been protests all across the United States in regards to this. There’s actually been a number of, I’d say pro-Israel voices even who have come out and kind of said, this violates the First Amendment. Whether or not you agree with the Palestine protestors, this should still be opposed. I think it’s a very dire situation for everyone in this country who cares about the First Amendment or anyone who wants to exercise their right to free speech.

And I think his current situation, we’ll see what happens, but as it stands, this is going to continue to progress in court. Now it’s supposed to take place in the East coast and we’ll kind of be able to see how that goes. Yesterday we saw the first statement from him. His lawyers released a statement from him where he basically explained his situation and provided some disturbing details. He wasn’t given a blanket, for instance, the first night he spent on sleeping on the cold ground and just kind of his ordeal and it detailed what he’s thinking, but it also kind of highlighted the fact that he’s committed to liberation of the Palestinian people as many people are, and they’re going to continue to fight. And Columbia has targeted him for his views. And really when you read his statement, which I encouraged people to check out, they can check it out on ccrs website

Marc Steiner:

And we will link to it

Michael Arria:

And we actually ran it on our site as well. When you read this, you really start thinking of Dr. Martin Luther King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail. This is a political prisoner. This man is being held with no charges, no crime has been identified by the administration. I think quite obviously for the simple reason that he has advocated for Gaza and he has advocated for Palestine, and he has consistently criticized the genocidal assault that has been unleashed on those people by Israel with the support of the United States the entire way through. So that’s kind of the situation we’re in right now. I’d say

Marc Steiner:

You took the words out of my brain as I read it just a little bit ago, thinking about King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail that I think that he’s this eloquent spokesman, stuck in jail wife about to give birth, and we’re going to stay on top of what happened to Mahmoud Khalil and we’ll stay on top of that and keep abreast of what’s happened to him and what you can do to support his release and his freedom and to keep that going. This is a very dangerous moment we’re living in and we have to be really aware, careful, and on top of these issues. So we fight for our democracy and keep this alive. And Michael, want to thank you so much for your work and your writing, and we’re going to link to your article and your other work as well. Thank you so much for joining us today and let’s keep in contact and keep this conversation going and free Mahmoud.

Michael Arria:

Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you. Once again, thank you to Michael Arria for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebden for the program and audio editor, Alina Nehlich and producer Rosette Sewali for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Michael Arria for joining us today. And so for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/25/mahmoud-khalils-abduction-and-trumps-escalating-war-on-the-palestine-movement/feed/ 0 521415 Vanuatu mourns loss of iconic Pacific media pioneer Marc Neil-Jones https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/11/vanuatu-mourns-loss-of-iconic-pacific-media-pioneer-marc-neil-jones/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/11/vanuatu-mourns-loss-of-iconic-pacific-media-pioneer-marc-neil-jones/#respond Tue, 11 Mar 2025 09:57:41 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=111982 OBITUARY: By Terence Malapa in Port Vila

Vanuatu’s media community was in mourning today following the death on Monday of Marc Neil-Jones, founder of the Trading Post Vanuatu, which later became the Vanuatu Daily Post, and also radio 96BuzzFM. He was 67.

His fearless pursuit of press freedom and dedication to truth have left an indelible mark on the country’s media landscape.

Neil-Jones’s journey began in 1989 when he arrived in Vanuatu from the United Kingdom with just $8000, an early Macintosh computer, and an Apple laser printer.

It was only four years after Cyclone Uma had ravaged the country, and he was determined to create something that would stand the test of time — a voice for independent journalism.

In 1993, Neil-Jones succeeded in convincing then Prime Minister Maxime Carlot Korman to grant permission to launch the Trading Post, the country’s first independent newspaper. Prior to this, the media was under tight government control, and there had been no platform for critical or independent reporting.

The Trading Post was a bold step toward change. Neil-Jones’s decision to start the newspaper, with its unapologetically independent voice, was driven by his desire to provide the people of Vanuatu with the truth, no matter how difficult or controversial.

This was a turning point for the country’s media, and his dedication to fairness and transparency quickly made his newspaper a staple in the community.

Blend of passion, wit and commitment
Marc Neil-Jones’s blend of passion, wit, and unyielding commitment to press freedom became the foundation upon which the Vanuatu Trading Post evolved. The paper grew, expanded, and ultimately rebranded as the Vanuatu Daily Post, but Marc’s vision remained constant — to provide a platform for honest journalism and to hold power to account.

His ability to navigate the challenges that came with being an independent voice in a country where media freedom was still in its infancy is a testament to his resilience and determination.

Marc Neil-Jones faced numerous hurdles throughout his career
Marc Neil-Jones faced numerous hurdles throughout his career — imprisonment, deportation, threats, and physical attacks — but he never wavered. Image: Del Abcede/Asia Pacific Report

Neil-Jones faced numerous hurdles throughout his career — imprisonment, deportation, threats, and physical attacks — but he never wavered. His sense of fairness and his commitment to truth were unwavering, even when the challenges seemed insurmountable.

His personal integrity and passion for his work left a lasting impact on the development of independent journalism in Vanuatu, ensuring that the country’s media continued to evolve and grow despite the odds.

Marc Neil-Jones’ legacy is immeasurable. He not only created a platform for independent news in Vanuatu, but he also became a symbol of resilience and a staunch defender of press freedom.


Marc Neil-Jones explaining how he used his radio journalism as a “guide” in the Secret Garden in 2016. Video: David Robie

His work has influenced generations of journalists, and his fight for the truth has shaped the media landscape in the Pacific.

As we remember Marc Neil-Jones, we also remember the Trading Post — the paper that started it all and grew into an institution that continues to uphold the values of fairness, integrity, and transparency.

Marc Neil-Jones’s work has changed the course of Vanuatu’s media history, and his contributions will continue to inspire those who fight for the freedom of the press in the Pacific and beyond.

Rest in peace, Marc Neil-Jones. Your legacy will live on in every headline, every report, and every story told with truth and integrity.

Terence Malapa is publisher of Vanuatu Politics and Home News.

Photojournalist Ben Bohane’s tribute
Vale Marc Neil-Jones, media pioneer and kava enthusiast who passed away last night. He fought for and normalised media freedom in Vanuatu through his Daily Post newspaper with business partner Gene Wong and a great bunch of local journalists.

Reporting the Pacific can sometimes be a body contact sport and Marc had the lumps to prove it. It was Marc who brought me to Vanuatu to work as founding editor for the regional Pacific Weekly Review in 2002 and I never left.

The newspaper didn’t last but our friendship did.

He was a humane and eccentric character who loved journalism and the botanical garden he ran with long time partner Jenny.

Rest easy mate, there will be many shells of kava raised in your honour today.


This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/11/vanuatu-mourns-loss-of-iconic-pacific-media-pioneer-marc-neil-jones/feed/ 0 518008 China’s AI “Embracing Open Source” Offers Insights to the World https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/14/chinas-ai-embracing-open-source-offers-insights-to-the-world/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/14/chinas-ai-embracing-open-source-offers-insights-to-the-world/#respond Fri, 14 Feb 2025 17:04:58 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=155963 The breakthroughs in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology have sparked ongoing reverberations internationally. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, publicly praised DeepSeek in recent days, saying it did some “nice work.” In a surprising 180-degree shift, he also expressed a desire to “work with China.” At the recently concluded Paris AI Action Summit, the French […]

The post China’s AI “Embracing Open Source” Offers Insights to the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The breakthroughs in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology have sparked ongoing reverberations internationally. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, publicly praised DeepSeek in recent days, saying it did some “nice work.” In a surprising 180-degree shift, he also expressed a desire to “work with China.” At the recently concluded Paris AI Action Summit, the French startup Mistral, also using an open-source model, was placed under high expectations. Moreover, when news broke of Apple collaborating with Alibaba to develop localized AI functions, both companies experienced a surge in their stock prices.

The fact is, China’s AI companies’ “embrace of open source” has not only paved new paths for their own growth but has also spurred demand for cross-border AI collaborations among enterprises. It is driving the global AI ecosystem to transform toward “open-source inclusivity.”

By offering some of its models for free, DeepSeek has ensured that the digital dividends of the AI era are shared equitably among all internet users. This decentralized, open-source strategy stands in stark contrast to the closed ecosystems, high resource barriers, and monopolization by a few players that have characterized AI technology in Western countries. It aligns with the global process of technological democratization. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote on social media platform X that as open-source, DeepSeek R1 is “a profound gift to the world.”

In recent years, China has been actively developing multiple national-level AI open innovation platforms, providing open access and shared computing resources. It can be said that the success of “open-source” large models is deeply rooted in the rich soil of “open source.” We observe that the development of AI technology follows a spiral progression of “open source-innovation-iteration,” a logic that also underpins global technological and economic development.

Today, from DeepSeek’s open-source ecosystem to Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving open platform, from cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the pharmaceutical industry to collaborative innovation among multinational enterprises, these practices collectively illustrate a fundamental truth: The future of AI belongs to openness and sharing. Open source and inclusivity can certainly become a model for collaborative win-win scenarios in the global AI field, empowering and promoting sustainable development in the era of intelligence.

On February 12, The Conversation, a news website based in Australia, published an article stating that Chinese enterprises’ embrace of open-source AI “promises to reshape the AI landscape almost overnight.” The key drivers behind China’s rise in AI, in addition to being “fast” and “collaborative,” also include being “market-driven.” Thanks to China’s robust industrial supply chain, AI technology is being implemented at an astonishing pace. This is evident in the recent wave of adoption sparked by DeepSeek in China: Over a dozen local cloud-based AI chip manufacturers have announced compatibility or launched DeepSeek model services, several cloud computing giants have pledged support for DeepSeek, and industries such as telecommunications, automotive, brokerage, and education are rapidly integrating DeepSeek. This signifies that AI will play a leading role in driving the development of new quality productive forces, acting as a catalyst for broader innovation and overall economic quality improvement in China. It will also create new opportunities and possibilities for international cooperation.

At the recent Paris AI Action Summit, representatives from over 60 signatories, including China, jointly released a document titled “Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet.” Notably, only the representatives from the US and the UK did not sign. This indicates that the self-centered, exclusive and hegemonic logic of AI development has little market appeal internationally, while China’s advocated concept of open, inclusive, mutually beneficial and equal AI governance is recognized and accepted by the vast majority of global members.

Isolating oneself to pursue development without an environment for communication and competition risks being replaced by entirely new pathways, regardless of how high computational power is amassed. Only through open collaboration can we address global issues such as the distribution of computational power and the establishment of ethical standards. Attempting to maintain a competitive advantage in the AI era by digging “moats” is akin to dreaming, let alone opening the “interstellar gate.”

Moreover, closing the door on China means losing opportunities for exchanges involving advanced technologies. Some media outlets have pointed out that American companies’ further utilization of China’s open-source technology potential may be constrained by domestic political barriers.

Currently, the global development of AI is at a crossroads. Should we continue to rely on the hegemony of computing power to build technological barriers, or should we strive for common prosperity through inclusive cooperation? China’s answer is to promote innovation through open-source initiatives and seek development through inclusivity. As China integrates into the global technology network with a humble and open attitude, the world becomes more vibrant due to the convergence of diverse forces. The future of AI development may be defined by “symbiosis in competition.” The dawn of technological equality is beginning to emerge, and China looks forward to joining hands with the world to create a more inclusive era of intelligence.

The post China’s AI “Embracing Open Source” Offers Insights to the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Global Times.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/14/chinas-ai-embracing-open-source-offers-insights-to-the-world/feed/ 0 514030 Marc Andreessen | Shane Smith Has Questions | Vice News https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/05/marc-andreessen-shane-smith-has-questions/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/05/marc-andreessen-shane-smith-has-questions/#respond Wed, 05 Feb 2025 17:00:14 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=9ae59f004b2d30b7ecdbe45e6d170c18
This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/05/marc-andreessen-shane-smith-has-questions/feed/ 0 512492 LI-CHIN LI + MARC VILAJUANA (La Symphonie de Ségriès, 2024) https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/22/li-chin-li-marc-vilajuana-la-symphonie-de-segries-2024/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/22/li-chin-li-marc-vilajuana-la-symphonie-de-segries-2024/#respond Sun, 22 Dec 2024 17:00:06 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=2dade2cc66fd785c454666a073b81da6
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/22/li-chin-li-marc-vilajuana-la-symphonie-de-segries-2024/feed/ 0 507119 ‘We are such a small group’: The Israelis who defend Palestinians | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/11/we-are-such-a-small-group-the-israelis-who-defend-palestinians-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/11/we-are-such-a-small-group-the-israelis-who-defend-palestinians-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Wed, 11 Dec 2024 13:00:13 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=f8afbc286f3603b1cd7130ebe0ae0953
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/11/we-are-such-a-small-group-the-israelis-who-defend-palestinians-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 505593 Trump’s cabinet from Hell w/Steven Monacelli & Jeff Sharlet | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/27/trumps-cabinet-from-hell-w-steven-monacelli-jeff-sharlet-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/27/trumps-cabinet-from-hell-w-steven-monacelli-jeff-sharlet-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Wed, 27 Nov 2024 18:48:50 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=13817f551f73b16fbdf34e80a2f22b13
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/27/trumps-cabinet-from-hell-w-steven-monacelli-jeff-sharlet-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 503801 Trump’s cabinet from Hell w/Steven Monacelli & Jeff Sharlet | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/27/trumps-cabinet-from-hell-w-steven-monacelli-jeff-sharlet-the-marc-steiner-show-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/27/trumps-cabinet-from-hell-w-steven-monacelli-jeff-sharlet-the-marc-steiner-show-2/#respond Wed, 27 Nov 2024 18:48:50 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=13817f551f73b16fbdf34e80a2f22b13
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/27/trumps-cabinet-from-hell-w-steven-monacelli-jeff-sharlet-the-marc-steiner-show-2/feed/ 0 503802 Solidarity or Jewish supremacy? Judaism at a crossroads w/Rabbi Cat Zavis | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/20/solidarity-or-jewish-supremacy-judaism-at-a-crossroads-w-rabbi-cat-zavis-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/20/solidarity-or-jewish-supremacy-judaism-at-a-crossroads-w-rabbi-cat-zavis-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:52:54 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=a7bc12006c996ad4ada2b42045f79c44
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/20/solidarity-or-jewish-supremacy-judaism-at-a-crossroads-w-rabbi-cat-zavis-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 502817 MARC VILAJUANA (Barcelona, 2024) https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/09/marc-vilajuana-barcelona-2024/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/09/marc-vilajuana-barcelona-2024/#respond Sat, 09 Nov 2024 18:00:06 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=d494c7832627a57d9e10623167227c80
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/09/marc-vilajuana-barcelona-2024/feed/ 0 501237 MAGA’s plan for America. Will Trump kill democracy? | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/01/magas-plan-for-america-will-trump-kill-democracy-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/01/magas-plan-for-america-will-trump-kill-democracy-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Fri, 01 Nov 2024 14:13:47 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=c15bbca8c2e8af5178129d71672786b0
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/01/magas-plan-for-america-will-trump-kill-democracy-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 499975 Can MAGA be stopped? Liberals and leftists are failing | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/30/can-maga-be-stopped-liberals-and-leftists-are-failing-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/30/can-maga-be-stopped-liberals-and-leftists-are-failing-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Wed, 30 Oct 2024 20:00:55 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=ca232a0a61591c03936e98e4b9f3312f
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/30/can-maga-be-stopped-liberals-and-leftists-are-failing-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 499718 Report from Pennsylvania: Marc Lamont Hill on Harris’s Closing Speech & Dangers of a Trump Victory https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/30/report-from-pennsylvania-marc-lamont-hill-on-harriss-closing-speech-dangers-of-a-trump-victory/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/30/report-from-pennsylvania-marc-lamont-hill-on-harriss-closing-speech-dangers-of-a-trump-victory/#respond Wed, 30 Oct 2024 14:10:18 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=ac3ca2a090d337081b41ba8b64a3c2c7
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/30/report-from-pennsylvania-marc-lamont-hill-on-harriss-closing-speech-dangers-of-a-trump-victory/feed/ 0 499653 Report from Pennsylvania: Marc Lamont Hill on Harris’s Closing Speech & Dangers of a Trump Victory https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/30/report-from-pennsylvania-marc-lamont-hill-on-harriss-closing-speech-dangers-of-a-trump-victory-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/30/report-from-pennsylvania-marc-lamont-hill-on-harriss-closing-speech-dangers-of-a-trump-victory-2/#respond Wed, 30 Oct 2024 12:18:06 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=2ae870c7bf3667f68679ce0d9a53b8f8 Seg1 marc kamala

Vice President Kamala Harris made her closing argument Tuesday in a major speech at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., scene of the Trump rally in 2021 that led to the Capitol riot. Harris described Trump as a tyrant who would shred the rule of law if given another four years in office. The Republican campaign, meanwhile, is still dealing with fallout from Sunday’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, where speakers made a series of racist and dehumanizing remarks about Puerto Ricans, Black people, Palestinians and more. For more on the state of the race with less than a week to go before Election Day, we speak with journalist, author and academic Marc Lamont Hill, who says despite Kamala Harris’s flaws, her message to voters is clear: “Donald Trump is worse.” Hill also discusses President Joe Biden’s role in the Democratic campaign, the exaggerated migration of Black men to the Republican camp and the threat of violence if Trump loses again. “No one is safe in a Trump presidency. No one is safe the day after a Trump loss,” says Hill.


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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/30/report-from-pennsylvania-marc-lamont-hill-on-harriss-closing-speech-dangers-of-a-trump-victory-2/feed/ 0 499657 Anti-Zionist rabbi: ‘Don’t stay silent’ w/Brant Rosen | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/29/anti-zionist-rabbi-dont-stay-silent-w-brant-rosen-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/29/anti-zionist-rabbi-dont-stay-silent-w-brant-rosen-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 29 Oct 2024 15:01:19 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=b6f4b5eabd2585cdda68659a90ac83b0
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/29/anti-zionist-rabbi-dont-stay-silent-w-brant-rosen-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 499511 Anti-Zionist Jews face persecution from Jewish institutions w/Shane Burley | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/24/anti-zionist-jews-face-persecution-from-jewish-institutions-w-shane-burley-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/24/anti-zionist-jews-face-persecution-from-jewish-institutions-w-shane-burley-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Thu, 24 Oct 2024 13:00:15 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=cd1f6d711896d1fdc27ba1cecd3d51ef
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/24/anti-zionist-jews-face-persecution-from-jewish-institutions-w-shane-burley-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 498874 How Israelis justify genocide to themselves | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/11/how-israelis-justify-genocide-to-themselves-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/11/how-israelis-justify-genocide-to-themselves-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Fri, 11 Oct 2024 13:00:16 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=a693df4c1c0d77db4f7774a567883f38
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/11/how-israelis-justify-genocide-to-themselves-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 497229 ‘Israel is in its last days’: A survivor of Israeli torture speaks out | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/08/israel-is-in-its-last-days-a-survivor-of-israeli-torture-speaks-out-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/08/israel-is-in-its-last-days-a-survivor-of-israeli-torture-speaks-out-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 08 Oct 2024 15:15:17 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=b8d717fe61a517c20294028d4a1b27c8
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/08/israel-is-in-its-last-days-a-survivor-of-israeli-torture-speaks-out-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 496815 Farmers defend Palestinian land from West Bank settlers w/ Abbas Milhem | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/02/farmers-defend-palestinian-land-from-west-bank-settlers-w-abbas-milhem-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/02/farmers-defend-palestinian-land-from-west-bank-settlers-w-abbas-milhem-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Wed, 02 Oct 2024 17:16:27 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=cb291606fadeff06872fea598c109465
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/02/farmers-defend-palestinian-land-from-west-bank-settlers-w-abbas-milhem-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 496031 Anti-Zionist Canadian Jews fight for Palestinian liberation w/Corey Balsam | The Marc Steiner Report https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/24/anti-zionist-canadian-jews-fight-for-palestinian-liberation-w-corey-balsam-the-marc-steiner-report/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/24/anti-zionist-canadian-jews-fight-for-palestinian-liberation-w-corey-balsam-the-marc-steiner-report/#respond Tue, 24 Sep 2024 16:02:31 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=249df2437df7874ff5206b15624acacc
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/24/anti-zionist-canadian-jews-fight-for-palestinian-liberation-w-corey-balsam-the-marc-steiner-report/feed/ 0 494882 Has French democracy died? Macron betrays the left for Barnier | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/17/has-french-democracy-died-macron-betrays-the-left-for-barnier-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/17/has-french-democracy-died-macron-betrays-the-left-for-barnier-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 17 Sep 2024 17:40:08 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=9986a0cbd9df87c66aa879d73fd731c3
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/17/has-french-democracy-died-macron-betrays-the-left-for-barnier-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 493816 Palestinian olive farmers resist West Bank settlers w/Cyrus Copeland | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/10/palestinian-olive-farmers-resist-west-bank-settlers-w-cyrus-copeland-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/10/palestinian-olive-farmers-resist-west-bank-settlers-w-cyrus-copeland-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 10 Sep 2024 18:50:21 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=afde30007c45cf675254f13c55ab5331
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/10/palestinian-olive-farmers-resist-west-bank-settlers-w-cyrus-copeland-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 492673 What the Chicano Movement can teach us about organizing Latinos today | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/04/what-the-chicano-movement-can-teach-us-about-organizing-latinos-today-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/04/what-the-chicano-movement-can-teach-us-about-organizing-latinos-today-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Wed, 04 Sep 2024 15:20:53 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=61334229b1ae81484c063b6969acb1ee
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/04/what-the-chicano-movement-can-teach-us-about-organizing-latinos-today-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 491831 The Chicano Moratorium: When Chicanos stood up against the Vietnam War | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/27/the-chicano-moratorium-when-chicanos-stood-up-against-the-vietnam-war-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/27/the-chicano-moratorium-when-chicanos-stood-up-against-the-vietnam-war-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 27 Aug 2024 17:24:47 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=a3d35171ef277e401c80edc38db0f9c4
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/27/the-chicano-moratorium-when-chicanos-stood-up-against-the-vietnam-war-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 490712 Bill Ayers on the Chicago DNC | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/20/bill-ayers-on-the-chicago-dnc-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/20/bill-ayers-on-the-chicago-dnc-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 20 Aug 2024 16:00:35 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=fa597e927873083d0635c1c9a57d588e
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/20/bill-ayers-on-the-chicago-dnc-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 489627 J.D. Vance, MAGA don’t represent Appalachia w/Beth Howard & Hy Thurman | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/13/j-d-vance-maga-dont-represent-appalachia-w-beth-howard-hy-thurman-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/13/j-d-vance-maga-dont-represent-appalachia-w-beth-howard-hy-thurman-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 13 Aug 2024 18:13:28 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=7795011ad6221518a026eaba8592272d
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/13/j-d-vance-maga-dont-represent-appalachia-w-beth-howard-hy-thurman-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 488470 A Palestinian and an Israeli fight together—for peace | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/06/a-palestinian-and-an-israeli-fight-together-for-peace-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/06/a-palestinian-and-an-israeli-fight-together-for-peace-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:14:13 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=9f70e6cb75e22e7baf57459f844ba93a
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/06/a-palestinian-and-an-israeli-fight-together-for-peace-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 487366 "Simply Lying": Marc Lamont Hill Slams Trump NABJ Interview, Attacks on VP Harris’s Racial Identity https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/simply-lying-marc-lamont-hill-slams-trump-nabj-interview-attacks-on-vp-harriss-racial-identity/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/simply-lying-marc-lamont-hill-slams-trump-nabj-interview-attacks-on-vp-harriss-racial-identity/#respond Fri, 02 Aug 2024 13:47:02 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=c0532c61244b9431adb2a43d5541c31c
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/simply-lying-marc-lamont-hill-slams-trump-nabj-interview-attacks-on-vp-harriss-racial-identity/feed/ 0 486913 Picking Shapiro for VP Would Remind Voters Harris Is Liberal, Not Progressive: Marc Lamont Hill https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/picking-shapiro-for-vp-would-remind-voters-harris-is-liberal-not-progressive-marc-lamont-hill/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/picking-shapiro-for-vp-would-remind-voters-harris-is-liberal-not-progressive-marc-lamont-hill/#respond Fri, 02 Aug 2024 13:47:02 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=00e499a649ef813f6b25b0278ca2b1fa
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/picking-shapiro-for-vp-would-remind-voters-harris-is-liberal-not-progressive-marc-lamont-hill/feed/ 0 486969 Picking Shapiro as VP Would Remind Voters Kamala Harris Is Liberal, Not Progressive: Marc Lamont Hill https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/picking-shapiro-as-vp-would-remind-voters-kamala-harris-is-liberal-not-progressive-marc-lamont-hill/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/picking-shapiro-as-vp-would-remind-voters-kamala-harris-is-liberal-not-progressive-marc-lamont-hill/#respond Fri, 02 Aug 2024 12:33:30 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=4374aa97da0ec24837f30daaed8a4145 Seg2 shapiroandharris

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is reportedly at the top of the list of potential running mates for Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the White House. But many progressives have raised alarm about Shapiro’s record, including his support for corporate tax breaks and school vouchers, his relationship with oil and gas companies, and his demonization of pro-Palestinian protesters. “He’s been actively and vocally supportive of Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7 and prior,” says journalist Marc Lamont Hill in Philadelphia. “In every conceivable way, Josh Shapiro is not a progressive candidate.” He adds that while Shapiro’s choice as running mate would be “very frustrating,” it would also clarify the choices in the election and prevent people from projecting false hope onto Harris as many did with Barack Obama. “She very clearly is a liberal, but certainly not a progressive or a radical.”


This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/picking-shapiro-as-vp-would-remind-voters-kamala-harris-is-liberal-not-progressive-marc-lamont-hill/feed/ 0 486941 “Simply Lying”: Marc Lamont Hill Slams Trump’s NABJ Interview, Attacks on VP Harris’s Racial Identity https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/simply-lying-marc-lamont-hill-slams-trumps-nabj-interview-attacks-on-vp-harriss-racial-identity/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/simply-lying-marc-lamont-hill-slams-trumps-nabj-interview-attacks-on-vp-harriss-racial-identity/#respond Fri, 02 Aug 2024 12:15:38 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=3aaa6d882a3abcd7d7475a3ef69efd12 Seg1 mlhandtrump

We speak with journalist Marc Lamont Hill amid Donald Trump’s ongoing attacks on the racial identity of Vice President Kamala Harris. The Republican presidential nominee was interviewed this week at the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, where he claimed Harris “happened to turn Black” for political expediency, even though she has always been open about her Jamaican and Indian American parents and identifies as both Black and South Asian. Following backlash to his comments, Trump dug in and continued to attack Harris on social media for supposedly obscuring her heritage, while Trump’s running mate JD Vance, whose wife Usha is Indian American, defended the remarks. “I wish I could say I was shocked or disappointed. This is exactly what Donald Trump does,” says Hill, who is a member of the NABJ. “He demonstrated all the misogynistic and racist and patriarchal sensibilities that we would expect from Donald Trump. And, of course, he spent a lot of that time simply lying.”


This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/simply-lying-marc-lamont-hill-slams-trumps-nabj-interview-attacks-on-vp-harriss-racial-identity/feed/ 0 486959 Toronto’s growing pro-Palestine movement w/Samira Mohyeddin | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/30/torontos-growing-pro-palestine-movement-w-samira-mohyeddin-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/30/torontos-growing-pro-palestine-movement-w-samira-mohyeddin-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 30 Jul 2024 16:47:02 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=c0b789e9812ff3ce413642fd04e93c85
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/30/torontos-growing-pro-palestine-movement-w-samira-mohyeddin-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 486405 ‘They will attack us all’: A French unionist’s warning about the far right | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/18/how-the-french-left-found-unity-to-oppose-fascism-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/18/how-the-french-left-found-unity-to-oppose-fascism-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Thu, 18 Jul 2024 13:43:46 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=6672f512f841572c77d7823647702290
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/18/how-the-french-left-found-unity-to-oppose-fascism-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 484499 The Trump assassination attempt changes everything | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/16/the-trump-assassination-attempt-changes-everything-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/16/the-trump-assassination-attempt-changes-everything-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 16 Jul 2024 20:22:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=c40f6610c53a2f9ee1d794b531dbdc20
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/16/the-trump-assassination-attempt-changes-everything-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 484216 Who are France’s new left coalition, the NFP? | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/10/who-are-frances-new-left-coalition-the-nfp-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/10/who-are-frances-new-left-coalition-the-nfp-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Wed, 10 Jul 2024 17:02:40 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=f4747b8b3016171924018410aea2438a
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/10/who-are-frances-new-left-coalition-the-nfp-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 483223 France’s elections: Can the NFP hold its ground against the right? | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/09/frances-elections-can-the-nfp-hold-its-ground-against-the-right-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/09/frances-elections-can-the-nfp-hold-its-ground-against-the-right-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 09 Jul 2024 16:13:57 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=eca56e4773cb6fcc248cf4f3538f0d89
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/09/frances-elections-can-the-nfp-hold-its-ground-against-the-right-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 483067 Israel is ‘fake,’ ‘like Disney World’—Jen Perelman’s run for Congress | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/04/israel-is-fake-like-disney-world-jen-perelmans-run-for-congress-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/04/israel-is-fake-like-disney-world-jen-perelmans-run-for-congress-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Thu, 04 Jul 2024 18:51:39 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=c5bb8bf5834b508f6c1d9a1e5a058f85
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/04/israel-is-fake-like-disney-world-jen-perelmans-run-for-congress-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 482524 The Biden-Trump presidential debate train wreck w/Adam H. Johnson and Marc Steiner https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/28/the-biden-trump-presidential-debate-train-wreck-w-adam-h-johnson-and-marc-steiner/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/28/the-biden-trump-presidential-debate-train-wreck-w-adam-h-johnson-and-marc-steiner/#respond Fri, 28 Jun 2024 20:56:05 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=ebe3e00fa59d02f070d08739d4afdc94
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/28/the-biden-trump-presidential-debate-train-wreck-w-adam-h-johnson-and-marc-steiner/feed/ 0 481697 Black Alliance for Peace Condemns US Black (Mis)Leaders for their Support of US Military Intervention and Occupation of Haiti https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/22/black-alliance-for-peace-condemns-us-black-misleaders-for-their-support-of-us-military-intervention-and-occupation-of-haiti/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/22/black-alliance-for-peace-condemns-us-black-misleaders-for-their-support-of-us-military-intervention-and-occupation-of-haiti/#respond Sat, 22 Jun 2024 01:27:58 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=151369 The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace rebukes the US Black “misleadership” class for its support of the latest US invasion and occupation of Haiti. We condemn the participation of this class in discussions with the US security state and its promotion of imperialist foreign policy objectives aimed at undermining Haitian sovereignty and […]

The post Black Alliance for Peace Condemns US Black (Mis)Leaders for their Support of US Military Intervention and Occupation of Haiti first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace rebukes the US Black “misleadership” class for its support of the latest US invasion and occupation of Haiti. We condemn the participation of this class in discussions with the US security state and its promotion of imperialist foreign policy objectives aimed at undermining Haitian sovereignty and dignity.

On March 29, 2024, US Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer led a meeting on Haiti policy with a selected group of “leaders of U.S.-based Black civil rights groups.” The White House’s Readout lists the participants as Reverend Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, Ron Daniels of the Institute of the Black World (IBW21), Marc Morial, President of the National Urban League, Derrick Johnson, President of the NAACP, and Jocelyn McCalla, Senior Policy Advisor for the Haitian-American Foundation for Democracy. Why would the U.S. National Security office sponsor a meeting about Haiti with these groups? The readout claims the U.S. is committed to “ensuring a better future for Haiti.” But the most significant aspect of the meeting was the need, according to the White House, to rally support for “the UN-authorized Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti and lifting up Haitian-led solutions to the political impasse.”

It seems that these Black misleaders huddling around the latrine of white power were given their marching orders to manufacture Black consent for continued US occupation and oppression of Haiti. Since that meeting, there has been a ramping up of US Black voices supposedly speaking on behalf of Haiti and Haitians. From Jesse Jackson to Al Sharpton, the main goal seems to be to rally the US Black community to support US foreign policy objectives, using Haiti as staging ground.

Ron Daniels of IBW21 has been the most egregious, using the crisis in Haiti to raise funds for his organization, while propagating vile stereotypes about Haitian society and supporting US imperialism. In his recent “Haiti on Fire” articles, Daniels describes the country as a “virtual failed state” and a “narco-state” controlled by “vicious gangs,” calling for the Core Group to take the lead in Haiti, and claiming that only a US-ordered, Kenya-led mercenary mission can solve Haiti’s problems.

By intent or ignorance, Daniels does not once mention the role of the US, France, and Canada in fomenting the crisis in Haiti, portraying it instead as a recent, self-inflicted problem caused by gangs and a few elites. Daniels does not acknowledge that this latest racist western media fascination with “gangs” only began in 2022 as the US was trying to keep its puppet Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, in power. What is most disturbing is that Daniels accepts that the Core Group, the foreign occupying force in Haiti, has legitimacy and has the right to take rule over Haiti. Never mind that Haitian people see the Core Group as a criminal, colonial entity. Daniels also celebrates the US-installed “Presidential Council” in Haiti, stating that this will lead to a “people-based democracy.” Someone should remind Daniels that there is no democracy under occupation.

But we know that it was the US and Core Group – under the cover of pliant misleaders of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) – that handpicked the Haitian participants in the Presidential Council. We also know that all participants in this Council had to first agree to this illegal foreign military invasion of Haiti. In effect, Daniels is not only calling on the same white supremacist arsonists to put out the fire that they themselves lit in Haiti, he also supports another US-led military invasion and occupation of Haiti!

BAP calls on those who support Haiti to not fall for the language of “solidarity” with Haiti when these Black hucksters of hegemony are using their platform and the language of “brotherhood” and “sisterhood, and a cynical co-optation of “Pan-Africanism” to help US imperialism snuff out Haitian sovereignty. We must remember that the crisis in Haiti is a crisis of imperialism.

Ron Daniels and the IBW21, as well as these other Black misleaders, should be condemned for supporting US imperial policy against the First Black Republic in the modern world. These selected “Leaders of Civil Rights Groups” would do well to know that they are just the third group of Black faces that the US is instrumentalizing,  to invade Haiti, following the pattern set by the CARICOM countries and Kenya (which the U.S. is bribing with $300,000 to pretend to lead this disastrous mission). Are they wondering why the US, France, or Canada are refusing to lead the mission, or why they are only now involving them in the discussion? As we have said of the Kenyan government and the CARICOM governments providing armed mercenaries to kill Haitian people, this is Blackface imperialism.

We would also like to point out to these Black “leaders” that this planned invasion of Haiti, though heralded as a “UN” mission, is actually not. It has the sanction of the UN Security Council, but the UN did not want to take responsibility for the mission because it would need to apply too much “robust use of force” on Haitian people.

The Black Alliance for Peace continues to denounce US imperialism. But we especially condemn the Black faces of imperialism. We call on all those committed to a world without colonies to reject the Black faces of empire and their lies. Disband the Core Group! End the BINUH occupation! Stop all efforts to impose a new invasion on Haiti!

Dump the Imperialists in Blackface! Solidarity with the resistance! Long live a free Haiti!

The post Black Alliance for Peace Condemns US Black (Mis)Leaders for their Support of US Military Intervention and Occupation of Haiti first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/22/black-alliance-for-peace-condemns-us-black-misleaders-for-their-support-of-us-military-intervention-and-occupation-of-haiti/feed/ 0 480701 AMLO, Sheinbaum, and the legacy and future of Mexico’s Morena | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/11/amlo-sheinbaum-and-the-legacy-and-future-of-mexicos-morena-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/11/amlo-sheinbaum-and-the-legacy-and-future-of-mexicos-morena-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:15:27 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=1b3f5315de83b3204e11fc8c37eb271e
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/11/amlo-sheinbaum-and-the-legacy-and-future-of-mexicos-morena-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 479072 Toronto stands up to defend People’s Circle for Palestine w/Samira Mohyeddin | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/04/toronto-stands-up-to-defend-peoples-circle-for-palestine-w-samira-mohyeddin-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/04/toronto-stands-up-to-defend-peoples-circle-for-palestine-w-samira-mohyeddin-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 04 Jun 2024 16:01:13 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=d788e9eb6dfff51a00d6cae371376251
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/04/toronto-stands-up-to-defend-peoples-circle-for-palestine-w-samira-mohyeddin-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 477898 Vote Uncommitted’s plan to push Biden on Gaza ceasefire | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/05/09/vote-uncommitteds-plan-to-push-biden-on-gaza-ceasefire-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/05/09/vote-uncommitteds-plan-to-push-biden-on-gaza-ceasefire-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Thu, 09 May 2024 18:40:45 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=698de23e848a2adff53455bffcb67c40
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/05/09/vote-uncommitteds-plan-to-push-biden-on-gaza-ceasefire-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 473794 The surgeons who remotely assisted Gaza’s doctors | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/04/30/the-surgeons-who-remotely-assisted-gazas-doctors-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/04/30/the-surgeons-who-remotely-assisted-gazas-doctors-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 30 Apr 2024 19:17:44 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=1c87e1dd2bb333906de18034e0c2ad0c
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/04/30/the-surgeons-who-remotely-assisted-gazas-doctors-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 472342 Activists dirsupt illegal sale of Palestinian land w/Eleanor Goldfield | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/04/09/activists-dirsupt-illegal-sale-of-palestinian-land-w-eleanor-goldfield-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/04/09/activists-dirsupt-illegal-sale-of-palestinian-land-w-eleanor-goldfield-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 09 Apr 2024 17:38:09 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=93089595a8d67af9f529e58f0c10dc0e
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/04/09/activists-dirsupt-illegal-sale-of-palestinian-land-w-eleanor-goldfield-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 469012 Haitian journalist Lucien Jura kidnapped as violence escalates in capital https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/20/haitian-journalist-lucien-jura-kidnapped-as-violence-escalates-in-capital/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/20/haitian-journalist-lucien-jura-kidnapped-as-violence-escalates-in-capital/#respond Wed, 20 Mar 2024 20:47:09 +0000 https://cpj.org/?p=368424 Miami, March 20, 2024—The kidnappers of journalist Lucien Jura should release him immediately and not hold journalists as pawns, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.

Jura was abducted from his home in Pétion-Ville on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, on Monday, March 18, according to news reports. That same day, gangs attacked several homes in the area, leaving at least 10 dead.

On Tuesday, Jura confirmed his kidnapping in a brief phone call with the secretary-general of the Haitian group SOS Journalists, Guy Delva. Delva told CPJ that he called Jura’s cellphone, and one of the kidnappers answered.

“I asked to speak to Jura, and he said ‘Okay’ and passed the phone to him,” Delva told CPJ. “He spoke in a calm and serious tone.” The journalist told Delva he was doing well and taking steps to get out of the situation.

The kidnappers also contacted Jura’s family, according to a post by Jean Peguy, a lawyer and former presenter of the “Moment of Truth” program on Radio Signal FM, which cited a relative of the journalist. CPJ was unable to confirm further details about the kidnapping, and messages to Peguy did not receive an immediate response.  

“We are very concerned by the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Haiti and its impact on everyone in the country, including the journalists trying to keep the public informed,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Those holding journalist Lucien Jura must release him immediately. Journalists should not be used as pawns.”

Jura is an independent commentator on current events and is considered to be one of the country’s most prominent journalists. CPJ was not able to confirm whether his work was related to his kidnapping.

Jura began his journalism career at the prominent television station Télémax and Radio Signal FM, according to Peguy’s post. Jura later served as presidential spokesman during the administration of Michel Martelly and Jovenel Moïse. Jura also published a book in 2000 about his experience in public service.

The kidnapping came amid weeks of chaos and violence in Haiti as police clashed with armed gangs seeking to consolidate their power, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry earlier this month. Haiti has not had a president since the assassination of Moïse in 2021.

Several reporters have been injured while reporting on the latest violence, including freelancer Jean Marc Jean, who lost an eye when he was struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by police.

At least six Haitian journalists have been murdered in direct reprisal for their work since Moise’s assassination. CPJ has also documented half a dozen kidnappings of journalists in recent months. Haiti was ranked as the world’s third-worst nation in CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index, which measures where killers of journalists are most likely to go unpunished.


This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/20/haitian-journalist-lucien-jura-kidnapped-as-violence-escalates-in-capital/feed/ 0 465249 Imran Khan and Pakistan’s political crisis w/Raza Rumi | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/19/imran-khan-and-pakistans-political-crisis-w-raza-rumi-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/19/imran-khan-and-pakistans-political-crisis-w-raza-rumi-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 19 Mar 2024 16:04:55 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=5e74ea85f7cb28d84b40532a76be0f8e
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/03/19/imran-khan-and-pakistans-political-crisis-w-raza-rumi-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 465007 ER doctor describes what he’s seen in Gaza | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/27/er-doctor-describes-what-hes-seen-in-gaza/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/27/er-doctor-describes-what-hes-seen-in-gaza/#respond Tue, 27 Feb 2024 17:00:43 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=e4bab4a6f154234fd91fdb67a722d9dc
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/27/er-doctor-describes-what-hes-seen-in-gaza/feed/ 0 460909 Gov. Abbott’s border stunts have a real human cost | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/20/gov-abbotts-border-stunts-have-a-real-human-cost-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/20/gov-abbotts-border-stunts-have-a-real-human-cost-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:02:32 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=1ca3f3d274f79aa288dc88beca765b6e
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/20/gov-abbotts-border-stunts-have-a-real-human-cost-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 459619 At least 5 journalists injured during anti-government protests in Haiti https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/09/at-least-5-journalists-injured-during-anti-government-protests-in-haiti/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/09/at-least-5-journalists-injured-during-anti-government-protests-in-haiti/#respond Fri, 09 Feb 2024 20:50:09 +0000 https://cpj.org/?p=355266 Miami, February 9, 2024—Haitian authorities should investigate the recent injuries of least five journalists who were covering anti-government protests and ensure that the media can cover matters of public interest without fear of injury, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Friday.

On Thursday, freelance journalist Jean Marc Jean was struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by an officer with the national police’s anti-riot squad in the capital, Port-au-Prince, according to media reports, as violent protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry rocked Haiti during the week.

On Wednesday, at least three reporters—Wilborde Ymozan, Lemy Brutus, and Stanley Belford—were injured when police used tear gas to disperse about 1,000 anti-government demonstrators in the southwestern coastal city of Jérémie, according to local media reports.

Tensions had been rising in Haiti ahead of February 7, the day that new presidents are traditionally sworn in. Elections that Henry promised would take place in 2023 were not held. Haiti has not had a president since Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021.

Between January 20 and February 7, at least 16 people were killed and 29 injured, mainly during confrontations between protesters and police, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement on Friday

On January 29, Charlemagne Exavier, a reporter with Radio Tele Lambi, was shot in the left leg by an unknown assailant while covering an anti-government protest in Jérémie, local media reported and the radio station’s owner, Michel Clérié, told CPJ.

CPJ has received reports from local media organizations — the Association of Haitian Journalists and the Online Media Collective — of as many as 11 journalists injured in protests across the country but has not been able to independently confirm the other six cases.

“We are very concerned about the wave of violent protests sweeping across Haiti and the impact they will have on journalists attempting to cover unfolding events,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator. “It is incumbent upon Haitian authorities to ensure that the media can safely report on such matters of public interest.”   

In Port-au-Prince, Jean was taken to a local hospital on Thursday evening, according to Pierre Lamartinière, a video journalist who visited him.

“He was struck in the face and has a deep wound next to his nose. I am not a doctor, but I fear that he may have lost an eye,” Lamartinière told CPJ.

In Jérémie, Ymozan, who works for the online video outlet Tande Koze was hit in the leg by a projectile; Brutus, manager of local online video outlet Grandans Bèl Depatman, received stitches in his head after he was beaten and had his equipment stolen; and Belford, a reporter with Florida-based Island TV, sustained a hand injury, according to two local radio station owners, whose outlets covered the protests, and who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

The three journalists were treated in local hospitals for minor injuries, the news reports stated.

A photograph posted on X, formerly Twitter, by a local radio station on January 29 showed Exavier sitting in a hospital with a bandage on his leg. He was discharged later that day, Clérié told CPJ.

Haiti’s Inspector General of Police, Fritz Saint Fort, told CPJ that his office was looking into the five incidents but could not comment at this stage.

In a statement, Haiti’s national ombudsman, Renan Hedouville, who heads the Office for the Protection of the Citizen, called the incidents “a serious attack on press freedom.”

At least six Haitian journalists have been murdered in direct reprisal for their work since Moise’s assassination and the country. Haiti was ranked as the world’s third-worst nation in CPJ’s 2023 Global Impunity Index, which measures where killers of journalists are most likely to go unpunished.   


This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/09/at-least-5-journalists-injured-during-anti-government-protests-in-haiti/feed/ 0 457872 How Israel’s supporters use Islamophobia to silence critics | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/06/how-israels-supporters-use-islamophobia-to-silence-critics-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/06/how-israels-supporters-use-islamophobia-to-silence-critics-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 06 Feb 2024 17:00:38 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=3a2bc53d6233fd88646a59ca03a4eff0
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/06/how-israels-supporters-use-islamophobia-to-silence-critics-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 457162 America’s political crisis and ‘The Infernal Triangle’ w/Rick Perlstein | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/30/americas-political-crisis-and-the-infernal-triangle-w-rick-perlstein-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/30/americas-political-crisis-and-the-infernal-triangle-w-rick-perlstein-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 30 Jan 2024 17:00:18 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=70d9e4157e5c90f42d6503ee9451d880
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/30/americas-political-crisis-and-the-infernal-triangle-w-rick-perlstein-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 455781 Jim Hightower: How far-right nuts & corporate money hijacked Texas politics | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/28/jim-hightower-how-far-right-nuts-corporate-money-hijacked-texas-politics-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/28/jim-hightower-how-far-right-nuts-corporate-money-hijacked-texas-politics-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 28 Nov 2023 17:00:10 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=5e9ba34517cb98741314cbbe7c613a61
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/28/jim-hightower-how-far-right-nuts-corporate-money-hijacked-texas-politics-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 442259 Trump, Project 2025, and American autocracy | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/21/trump-project-2025-and-american-autocracy-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/21/trump-project-2025-and-american-autocracy-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 21 Nov 2023 17:00:11 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=274349528ab5fd86a8e9c8542c150e92
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/21/trump-project-2025-and-american-autocracy-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 440636 ‘The fear is everywhere’: Israel’s fascist internal crackdown | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/14/the-fear-is-everywhere-israels-fascist-internal-crackdown-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/14/the-fear-is-everywhere-israels-fascist-internal-crackdown-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 14 Nov 2023 17:00:44 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=35648bed73c2806b79bfda851eae7f9b
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/14/the-fear-is-everywhere-israels-fascist-internal-crackdown-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 438242 Chris Hedges: Israel’s endgame in Palestine is genocide | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/07/chris-hedges-israels-endgame-in-palestine-is-genocide-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/07/chris-hedges-israels-endgame-in-palestine-is-genocide-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 07 Nov 2023 17:00:09 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=0a6984c030d5b30a63df99221a787445
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/07/chris-hedges-israels-endgame-in-palestine-is-genocide-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 438714 No apartheid ethno-state has a ‘right to exist,’ including Israel | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/31/we-need-a-ceasefire-in-gaza-now-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/31/we-need-a-ceasefire-in-gaza-now-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 31 Oct 2023 16:00:25 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=09b6eef3d6e66a7f76f61ebe79950c4e
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/31/we-need-a-ceasefire-in-gaza-now-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 437752 The war in Gaza and Israel’s descent into fascism | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/24/the-war-in-gaza-and-israels-descent-into-fascism-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/24/the-war-in-gaza-and-israels-descent-into-fascism-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 24 Oct 2023 16:01:06 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=2983d6dadb1b2a4756ed17f5cca268b0
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/24/the-war-in-gaza-and-israels-descent-into-fascism-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 436356 Israelis "have no choice but to find a solution with the Palestinians” | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/17/israelis-have-no-choice-but-to-find-a-solution-with-the-palestinians-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/17/israelis-have-no-choice-but-to-find-a-solution-with-the-palestinians-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:00:38 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=8f7f7d4f38325aa5b8dfd88709e2a8ca
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/17/israelis-have-no-choice-but-to-find-a-solution-with-the-palestinians-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 434950 Between Israel and Palestine, "Things are going to get a lot worse" | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/12/between-israel-and-palestine-things-are-going-to-get-a-lot-worse-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/12/between-israel-and-palestine-things-are-going-to-get-a-lot-worse-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Thu, 12 Oct 2023 13:07:49 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=ce0219baa2cf317d17e3dd57b23a7f3d
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/12/between-israel-and-palestine-things-are-going-to-get-a-lot-worse-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 433757 Former Israeli soldier exposes IDF war crimes | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/10/former-israeli-soldier-exposes-idf-war-crimes-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/10/former-israeli-soldier-exposes-idf-war-crimes-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 10 Oct 2023 16:00:51 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=af8d2e8f7893f4d02c37c9776bcf270d
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/10/former-israeli-soldier-exposes-idf-war-crimes-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 433215 What the hell happened in Spain’s elections? | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/03/what-the-hell-happened-in-spains-elections-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/03/what-the-hell-happened-in-spains-elections-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 03 Oct 2023 17:00:03 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=b8cf7e208aacc68895dc08194ac83346
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/03/what-the-hell-happened-in-spains-elections-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 431658 Rebecca Gould, Jewish author accused of antisemitism for criticizing Israel | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/26/rebecca-gould-jewish-author-accused-of-antisemitism-for-criticizing-israel-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/26/rebecca-gould-jewish-author-accused-of-antisemitism-for-criticizing-israel-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 26 Sep 2023 16:00:36 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=c109e968649dfedd24ccaf3b1a7261a7
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/26/rebecca-gould-jewish-author-accused-of-antisemitism-for-criticizing-israel-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 429882 These real life Texas cowboys were socialists | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/19/these-real-life-texas-cowboys-were-socialists-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/19/these-real-life-texas-cowboys-were-socialists-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 19 Sep 2023 16:00:11 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=e8e647dc3ece66b4e00c4313de17ae8d
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/19/these-real-life-texas-cowboys-were-socialists-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 428223 America’s secret wars w/Norman Solomon | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/12/americas-secret-wars-w-norman-solomon-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/12/americas-secret-wars-w-norman-solomon-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 12 Sep 2023 16:00:29 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=35cc3950275d6961bc9f2482c4a1c121
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/12/americas-secret-wars-w-norman-solomon-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 426610 The true story of the March on Washington w/Larry Gibson | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/28/the-true-story-of-the-march-on-washington-w-larry-gibson-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/28/the-true-story-of-the-march-on-washington-w-larry-gibson-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Mon, 28 Aug 2023 13:00:12 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=a77f8b2405ecfea6fa82a91912eef916
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/28/the-true-story-of-the-march-on-washington-w-larry-gibson-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 423163 Why do India’s Hindutva fascists love Israel? | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/22/why-do-indias-hindutva-fascists-love-israel-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/22/why-do-indias-hindutva-fascists-love-israel-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 22 Aug 2023 16:00:37 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=8582a88660fff02b4491de481d9d6ae7
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/22/why-do-indias-hindutva-fascists-love-israel-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 420928 The days of ‘unwavering support’ for Israel are over | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/15/the-days-of-unwavering-support-for-israel-are-over-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/15/the-days-of-unwavering-support-for-israel-are-over-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:00:19 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=63f6930e5d4b23bd9a237fe7668b23d0
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/15/the-days-of-unwavering-support-for-israel-are-over-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 419350 Mainstream Democrats’ complacency will doom us all | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/08/mainstream-democrats-complacency-will-doom-us-all-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/08/mainstream-democrats-complacency-will-doom-us-all-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 08 Aug 2023 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=961817be826434c2e49b7b7399b7d8bc
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/08/mainstream-democrats-complacency-will-doom-us-all-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 417744 Should Cornel West run as a Democrat? w/Bhaskar Sunkara, D.D. Guttenplan | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/01/should-cornel-west-run-as-a-democrat-w-bhaskar-sunkara-d-d-guttenplan-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/01/should-cornel-west-run-as-a-democrat-w-bhaskar-sunkara-d-d-guttenplan-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 01 Aug 2023 16:00:32 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=324adebe22d60f179bbd9e7bd3b249b0
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/01/should-cornel-west-run-as-a-democrat-w-bhaskar-sunkara-d-d-guttenplan-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 416131 FEMA’s failures are fueling far right climate organizing | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/25/femas-failures-are-fueling-far-right-climate-organizing-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/25/femas-failures-are-fueling-far-right-climate-organizing-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 25 Jul 2023 16:00:19 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=f73087fb63cf8cf3db246eccdb82bc50
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/25/femas-failures-are-fueling-far-right-climate-organizing-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 414410 Israel’s war on Jenin | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/18/israels-war-on-jenin-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/18/israels-war-on-jenin-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 18 Jul 2023 16:00:41 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=6478c152a18624480dee64b37faf3bf0
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/18/israels-war-on-jenin-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 412608 What happened to Americans’ economic rights? w/Mark Paul | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/11/what-happened-to-americans-economic-rights-w-mark-paul-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/11/what-happened-to-americans-economic-rights-w-mark-paul-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 11 Jul 2023 16:00:13 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=b9985e956bcdf789b75ad9880a84d941
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/07/11/what-happened-to-americans-economic-rights-w-mark-paul-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 410956 LGBTQ history and the current backlash | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/27/lgbtq-history-and-the-current-backlash-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/27/lgbtq-history-and-the-current-backlash-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 27 Jun 2023 16:00:02 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=d9ad81d39a902c932b4d84203c0ad829
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/27/lgbtq-history-and-the-current-backlash-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 407513 Neo-fascists have taken over Shasta County—is your hometown next? | The Marc Steiner Report https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/20/neo-fascists-have-taken-over-shasta-county-is-your-hometown-next-the-marc-steiner-report/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/20/neo-fascists-have-taken-over-shasta-county-is-your-hometown-next-the-marc-steiner-report/#respond Tue, 20 Jun 2023 16:00:41 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=c19ed38626321475b5d2728f0650644b
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/20/neo-fascists-have-taken-over-shasta-county-is-your-hometown-next-the-marc-steiner-report/feed/ 0 405422 Why the far-right loves racist vigilantes w/Spencer Ackerman | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/13/why-the-far-right-loves-racist-vigilantes-w-spencer-ackerman-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/13/why-the-far-right-loves-racist-vigilantes-w-spencer-ackerman-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 13 Jun 2023 16:00:10 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=89fa4ca1f4edb8dfc8dedb95868f2e4a
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/13/why-the-far-right-loves-racist-vigilantes-w-spencer-ackerman-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 403409 My life in the Civil Rights Movement | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/06/my-life-in-the-civil-rights-movement-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/06/my-life-in-the-civil-rights-movement-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 06 Jun 2023 16:00:03 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=6789ed951f83406fa4013055d58d6f04
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/06/my-life-in-the-civil-rights-movement-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 401281 America is in the middle of a ‘slow civil war’ | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/30/america-is-in-the-middle-of-a-slow-civil-war-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/30/america-is-in-the-middle-of-a-slow-civil-war-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 30 May 2023 16:00:24 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=1cc22d0b0e19c5e806efae9e58249ac5
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/30/america-is-in-the-middle-of-a-slow-civil-war-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 399446 Luddite, or Cantankerous, or Naysayer, or Devil’s Advocate, Backward, or … https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/27/luddite-or-cantankerous-or-naysayer-or-devils-advocate-backward-or/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/27/luddite-or-cantankerous-or-naysayer-or-devils-advocate-backward-or/#respond Sat, 27 May 2023 14:27:14 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=140558

King Ludd

Photo: Ludd, drawn here in 1812, was the fictitious leader of numerous real protests. Granger Collection, New York.

The question is, To be or not to be or not to be …

(from Hamlet, spoken by Hamlet)

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

Rolling out Smart Phone City, our 51st state’s govenor, Zelensky: Here, highlights from Lily Lynch’s recent blog: Ukraine’s ‘state in a smartphone’.

  • Notice the language — run like an IT company, Smart Phone city, exporting digitalization, you only need two seconds to become an entrepreneur’ and ‘30 minutes to found a limited liability company;
  • to ensure widespread adoption of the app, the government produced a miniseries with well-known Ukrainian film stars – creating what Fedorov calls ‘the Netflix of education’, particularly for those in rural areas and the elderly;
  • Diia eVorog (‘eEnemy’), civilians can use a chatbot to report the names of Russian collaborators, Russian troop movements, the location of enemy equipment and even Russian war crimes. Such reports are processed through support services at Diia; if deemed legitimate, they are submitted to the headquarters of the Ukrainian armed forces. At first glance, the interface looks like a video game;
  • that positions Ukraine as a technological powerhouse forged in war;
  • it was announced that by 2030, Ukraine intends to have become the first country to go entirely cashless and have a court system governed by AI;
  • As Zelensky noted at a recent Diia Summit, ‘A computer has no friends or godfathers, and doesn’t take bribes’;
  • Residents of Diia City will also benefit from a ‘flexible employment model’, including the introduction of precarious ‘gig contracts’, hitherto nonexistent in Ukraine;
  • Power announced that an additional $650,000 would be provided to ‘jumpstart’ the creation of Diia-ready infrastructure in other countries. On Tuesday, Power said these would include Colombia, Kosovo and Zambia;
  • When the Clinton State Department introduced the notion of ‘digital diplomacy’ – with one senior advisor telling NATO that ‘the Che Guevara of the 21st century is the Network’ – it already rang hollow;
  • It reflects the impoverishment of the Western liberal-democratic imagination, unable to deliver a convincing or desirable vision of the future, on- or offline;
  • IT is about freedom’, the narrator says. ‘All you need is a computer to invent a great variety of things.’

Watch Diia in DC online! - USAID

Lynch: “Wearing the Silicon Valley uniform of blue jeans, a T-shirt and a headset mic, strutting the stage like he was delivering an impassioned TED talk, Ukraine’s 31-year-old Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov explained the many features of the country’s pioneering mobile application. Thanks to Diia, he said, Ukraine would be run less like a country and more like an IT company, soon becoming ‘the most convenient state in the world’. USAID Administrator Samantha Power echoed this aspiration, noting that Ukraine – long known as the breadbasket of the world – was now ‘becoming famous for a new product … an open source, digital public good that it will give to other countries’. This would be achieved through the transatlantic partnership between the two nations. ‘The US has always exported democracy’, Fedorov said, ‘now it exports digitalization.’

When Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president in 2019, he promised to transform Ukraine into a ‘state in a smartphone’, making most public services available online. A digitalization agenda of this kind was virtually unprecedented, dwarfing ‘e-Estonia’ in both the speed of its rollout and the scale of its ambition. The programme’s crown jewel was Diia, launched in February 2020 with ample support from USAID. US funds reportedly amounted to $25 million for ‘the infrastructure underpinning Diia’ alone. Additional grants have come from the UK, Switzerland, the Eurasia Foundation, Visa and Google. The app is now used by some 19 million Ukrainians, about 46% of the country’s prewar population.”

*****

The question is: Our we all part of this conspiracy? We use this fucking electronic computerized typewriter with millions of gigs of storage, and tied to the fiber optics, trolling the vast world wide net of information, so are we too the enemy? We communicate with cellular phones, so are we feeding the monster, the ghosts in machnines, the ghosts of the CIA and Mossad and MI6 who want us all handcuffed and monitored? We have our medical information Zoomed at home, and we bank on line, take Snap Shots of old fashioned checks to deposit, so are we responsible for our imprisonment?

The Panopticon,' by Jenni Fagan - The New York Times

We laugh at the Chromebook jokes our k12 students make. We love Hobbits in the next and next Lord of the Rings, and drool over Cruise and his CGI pecs in Mission Impossible streamed on our tiny black mirror at bedtime while asking Alexa the best place to get Civet feces washed coffee. Are we the enemy?

From Dung to Coffee Brew With No Aftertaste - The New York Times

We all pay for this gulag creation, from IRS chasing small potatoes like me, to the big bad killers of Julian Assange. We all have our nano-breaths fogging up our black mirrors that are now part of the Zelensky’s wet dreams of tracking us ALL. First, try it in Estonia, Moldovia, Ukraine, then, the world!

Here’s a hell of a deal for USA taxpayer LLC, CIA: For $1 put in, $15 coming back.

It’s open, in the air, Wiki-CIA-Pedia: “In-Q-Tel (IQT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in high-tech companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability. The name “In-Q-Tel” is an intentional reference to Q, the fictional inventor who supplies technology to James Bond.

In-Q-Tel has stated that the average dollar invested by In-Q-Tel in 2016 attracts fifteen dollars from other investors.”

It is a fascist’s, oligarch’s, racist’s wet dream:

I just do not think most radicals and revolutionaries and anti-imperialists and those for Russia’s right to defense, peace, accords, treaties, independence, get it, get how overarching these madmen and madwomen are, with their armies of nerds, eggheads and academics and STEM gurus. Watch this shit storm:

These are the end times, for sure, for guys like me, using this shit storm computer, doing my snap-shot deposits, who pays for IRS interest fines on old unaccounted for 1099s which one of my Gig employers failed to send me. Deplorable, man, not me, not them, but those are the facts, ma’am, just the facts:

For ZioAzovUkrainians, this is reality: eVorog (‘eEnemy’), i.e. RUSSIANS (or anyone looking beyond the dirty tricks of Mossad and DARPA and Blackrock and Tel Aviv, London, Brussels, DC) are THE enemy, and will be blasted on a computer video game app that ties into the security-finance-survelliance state actors, including Google-JP Chase Morgan-BlackRock-Blackstone-Vanguard!!!

Then after the app IDs us, well, then, send in the cocaine cowboy clown’s assassin drones, or just old fashioned black-booted SS or IDF or SBU kicking in the door and targeting with the latest Israeli-made sniper weapon.

From Lynch:

When Russian forces destroyed numerous TV towers, Diia launched broadcasting services to ensure an uninterrupted stream of Ukrainian news sources. Ukrainians can also register destruction to property from Russian military strikes, which the government says will guide the country’s post-war reconstruction. Beyond the introduction of these useful wartime services, Diia has rolled out an array of ‘civil intelligence’ features. With Diia eVorog (‘eEnemy’), civilians can use a chatbot to report the names of Russian collaborators, Russian troop movements, the location of enemy equipment and even Russian war crimes. Such reports are processed through support services at Diia; if deemed legitimate, they are submitted to the headquarters of the Ukrainian armed forces. At first glance, the interface looks like a video game. Icons are illustrated as targets and army helmets. After users submit a report about the location of Russian troops, a muscle-flexing emoji pops up. When they submit documentation of war crimes, they click an icon of a drop of blood.

Drop Of Blood Clipart PNG Images, Drop Of Blood Icon, Drop Icons, Blood Icons, Drop PNG Image For Free Download

You have to take a short leap from Ukraine to the WEF, Fourth Industrial Revolutionaries, Transumanism Backers, and understand how the Power of AI to Control Us all is their goal, but we have to leap backward in order to look at why leadership is so disconnected, so transhumanist, so censorious, so Farenheit 451, so Brave New World, so Lord of the Flies, so 1984, so eugenics drenched. These people are in their own world, but their polarized colored glasses and Stem cell smoothies are killing us, even those of us who believe in full stop/time out/precautionary limits on their machinations, on their scientific disgust, on their world of more and smaller and quantumized this and nano-tech that, CRISPR-flogging us all into oblivion.

These people, the policymakers, CEOs, politicians, lobbyists, they live in their own smeared up bubble of hubris and hasbara. They are the Frankenstein masters.

And that propensity is particularly dangerous when leadership groups have become both selfish and short-termist. There really was once upon a time some people who went into government service for the service part, and not for the revolving door and networking. There was also a time, before the rise of global elites, where the powerful had ties to particular physical communities and some took interest in their betterment. In other words, while there were plenty of self-promoting and mediocre people at the helm, there were often enough in the room who were concerned about long-term risks to put a check on the worst behavior. (“US Geopolitics: Believing Impossible Things”)

There are no ethics, really, when the stage is set at places like CIA-DARPA-DoD-FinTech Stanford, or name the one of a thousand universities, even community colleges:

(Introductions by Professor Rob Reich, President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, and grad student Margaret Guo end at 13:52.) Twin revolutions at the start of the 21st century are shaking up the very idea of what it means to be human. Computer vision and image recognition are at the heart of the AI revolution. And CRISPR is a powerful new technique for genetic editing that allows humans to intervene in evolution. Jennifer Doudna and Fei-Fei Li, pioneering scientists in the fields of gene editing and artificial intelligence, respectively, discuss the ethics of scientific discovery. Russ Altman moderated the conversation.

Stanford’s Fei-Fei Li and Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley will discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence and CRISPR technology. (Image credit: Getty Images)

This corrupt Big Time Stanford U, and the rottenness of the Prez: Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne is in hot water.

These high-tech, anything goes in science corrupt folks:

Photo illustration with Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne in the middle, flanked by solid-color silhouettes of the middle image

Since last fall, allegations of image manipulation in scientific papers for which Tessier-Lavigne is listed as an author have spurred questions about his decades-long scientific career. While members of Stanford’s Board of Trustees and several outside legal and scientific experts review the claims of scientific misconduct, Tessier-Lavigne has remained at the helm of one of the world’s premier research institutions.

His unusual position as president-under-investigation mirrors an unusual public-relations approach. Instead of staying silent, as many embattled leaders do during an investigation, Tessier-Lavigne has vocally defended his actions, criticized the student newspaper in harsh terms, and cast himself as a faculty member first and president second.

Some experts in higher ed and science have raised their eyebrows at the president’s tack. In embracing a defensive posture, critics say, he may have compromised his role as a community leader.

So, some egghead with the all that AI love and the other egghead with all the valorizing of CRISPR, they have zero weight in a discussion on the ethics of their Frankensteins, their creations, but in the world of controlled oppositions, controlled MSM, the media spinners in Academia who never scratch truth or rebelliousness, with of all of those secret private security bullet proof legions protecting bankers, millionaires, billionaires, the lot of them at Davos or Aspen, we will never get what we need — real debates with real revolutionaires, whether the beautiful people do or do not call us all Luddites.

Here, from the Stanford student newspaper, god love them:

Meanwhile, Tessier-Lavigne continues to evade questions. After a recent event with Colombian president Gustavo Petro, Tessier-Lavigne was approached by a Daily reporter about his research. To two questions, Tessier-Lavigne responded with silence: “Why did you publish Alzheimer’s research you knew wasn’t reproducible?” and “What was the decision-making process behind not retracting that paper?” To a third question, “What do you have to say to people who are wondering why there are so many allegations of research misconduct from your lab?” Tessier-Lavigne told the reporter, “very nice to see you and look forward to corresponding.” (source)

Stanford's president Marc Tessier Lavigne speaks to a sherif

There are so many studies on this fact, how research is not reproducible. And, the solution to this? Yep, AI: Currently, researchers that have the most-cited or most popular studies in “high-impact” journals get rewarded — even though the methods may not be reproducible. In a recent piece in Issues in Science and Medicine, former Lown Institute VP Shannon Brownlee and National Institutes of Health researcher Bibiana Bielekova propose using machine learning algorithms to identify articles by their rigor, reproducibility, and societal impact, rather than their popularity or number of citations. This could incentivize better research methods while illuminating future research paths that are most likely to bear fruit.

Science as ideology. We think we follow science, but we are following blind ideology. Academic research has many problems. One is the replication crisis starting around 2005. In medical and biological sciences, 85 percent of research papers are not replicable/reproducible.

Did we overreact to “the virus” in 2020? Did we march out mRNA too quickly? Or, were those mRNA “things” way advanced in the pipeline? Well, it was in the plan. And if you put “it” (“Event 201” … or … “Moderna as already working on mRNA corona before 2019”) in a search box in Pharma-CIA-FinTech-DARPA Google, you will get pure deniability:

In October, 2019 Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who, together with his wife (now ex-wife), runs the richest and most powerful foundation in the world, co-organized a simulation exercise on a worldwide corona epidemic. Videos were posted documenting the exercise. Find them. Gates now denies such an exercise ever took place.

Why? On April 12, 2020, Bill Gates said in an interview to the BBC, “Now here we are. We didn’t simulate this, we didn’t practice, so both the health policies and economic policies, we find ourselves in uncharted territory.”

This is the same person who, just six months before the outbreak of the pandemic, organised a series of four role-playing simulations of a corona pandemic with very high-ranking participants. Event 201 was a simulation of a corona pandemic conducted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and Johns Hopkins University in October 2019.

Participants from the private and public sectors were presented with a scenario, not unlike the one that has unfolded in reality, and discussed what needed to be done. There are official videos of the four meetings and a best-of-video scenario presentation and discussion by the participants, who are members of a pandemic control council in the role play.

It is true that if a little less emphasis had been placed on opinion manipulation, more attention could have been paid to health and economic policy. One of the four meetings was entirely devoted to this. But health and economic policies did get discussed. Gates can hardly have forgotten that.

The video on control of public opinion is the most interesting one, as it helps to put in perspective the efforts in this regard, which we are currently experiencing. One participant tells us that Bill Gates is financing work on algorithms which comb through the information on social media platforms to make sure that people can trust the information that they find there.

And the Chinese participant, the head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control muses about ways to counter rumours that the virus is man-made. Remember, this exercise took place in October 2019, before the current pandemic broke out. (source)

So are we “anti-science” and “anti-knowledge” and “anti-civilization” if we QUESTION from the bottom of our intellects? Luddites? Am I blind?

Am I a Luddite: According to an article by Richard Conniff:

As the Industrial Revolution began, workers naturally worried about being displaced by increasingly efficient machines. But the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines,” says Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites. They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices. “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods,” says Binfield, “and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.”

The original Luddites lived in an era of “reassuringly clear-cut targets—machines one could still destroy with a sledgehammer,” Loyola’s Jones writes in his 2006 book Against Technology, making them easy to romanticize. By contrast, our technology is as nebulous as “the cloud,” that Web-based limbo where our digital thoughts increasingly go to spend eternity. It’s as liquid as the chemical contaminants our infants suck down with their mothers’ milk and as ubiquitous as the genetically modified crops in our gas tanks and on our dinner plates. Technology is everywhere, knows all our thoughts and, in the words of the technology utopian Kevin Kelly, is even “a divine phenomenon that is a reflection of God.” Who are we to resist?

“The original Luddites would answer that we are human. Getting past the myth and seeing their protest more clearly is a reminder that it’s possible to live well with technology—but only if we continually question the ways it shapes our lives.” (source)

Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.
— Thomas Carlyle (source)

Thomas Carlyle - Wikipedia


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/27/luddite-or-cantankerous-or-naysayer-or-devils-advocate-backward-or/feed/ 0 398930 The ongoing colonial violence of resource extraction in Latin America | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/23/the-ongoing-colonial-violence-of-resource-extraction-in-latin-america/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/23/the-ongoing-colonial-violence-of-resource-extraction-in-latin-america/#respond Tue, 23 May 2023 16:13:32 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=3d8e435eb2ca136c9fb3ffe2f31a2c7b
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/23/the-ongoing-colonial-violence-of-resource-extraction-in-latin-america/feed/ 0 397054 Visual artist Marc Horowitz on making a living and making a life https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/11/visual-artist-marc-horowitz-on-making-a-living-and-making-a-life/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/11/visual-artist-marc-horowitz-on-making-a-living-and-making-a-life/#respond Thu, 11 May 2023 07:00:00 +0000 https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/visual-artist-marc-horowitz-on-making-a-living-and-making-a-life

Difficulty and leaves, 2015. Oil stick, charcoal, oil, crayon, pencil. 65 x 45 inches.

What’s the first thing you do when you enter your studio? How do you approach a new project?

The first thing I do is turn on my espresso maker. It’s a Rancilio Silvia that I’ve taken apart and reassembled so many times. I’m in love with it. After making coffee, I turn on the computer and horse around with whatever tabs I have open from the day before. My friend turned me onto One Tab, an extension that compiles and exports tabs as a list of URLs. I’ve been saving a bunch of research threads that I hope to return to at some point. I get pulled in a million different directions every day and this helps me keep track.

I also go through my notebook to review the things I’ve been writing about and working on lately, which helps me ground myself. I’ll bounce around in an artist book for a few minutes. I’ll meditate on the couch to clear my head. I’ll bring pastries for my collaborators in the studio, and then we discuss whatever’s on our minds.

Recently, we’ve been exploring the meaning of “worst” as a concept. We’re asking ourselves questions like: Instead of aiming to be the best, what would it look like if our ambition was to be the worst? It’s a pretty freeing idea, creatively. It takes the pressure off making something perfect and gives us a playground for debate, creating things, and just having fun.

The secrets of happiness, death, love, 2017. Oil, oil stick. 60 x 84 inches.

How do those ideas relate to the way you think about your own practice? As far as your creative work is concerned, how do you define success versus failure?

I spent a lot of my early career obsessed with that question, and have come to the conclusion that I’ll never be a complete “success” or “failure” as an artist. I can be either, both, or somewhere in between, depending on the circumstances. I started to feel better when I stopped treating my art practice like a competition and instead shifted into spending more time teaching, mentoring, and supporting other artists. It’s mutually beneficial, of course; we all help each other in different ways.

What does it look like when you offer support to other artists?

I’m often on the phone with artists and former students, talking through different ideas and offering advice. I like doing studio visits. I write letters of recommendation. I attend gallery openings. I do my best to show up for people whenever I can.

There was a distinct moment in my career when I decided to balance my personal ambitions with support for others. Once I started doing that, I became much more accepting and free within my own work. It’s a beautiful thing.

What is something you wish someone told you when you began to make art?

People told me a lot of things, but I assumed I knew better and didn’t listen to them. I fell into a destructive, self-pitying cycle that landed me in some dark places. Looking back, I can see that I got stuck because I was comparing my creative work to others and living in constant fear that I wasn’t good enough. I’ve been in recovery for about four years now, and it’s made me a much happier person and a better artist as a result.

disposable simulacra, 2017. Plaster, epoxy, resin, various porcelain figurines, plastic, spray paint, fake fruits. 29 x 18.50 x 17 inches. How was your journey?, 2017. Resin, epoxy, spray paint, oil, felt baubles, various fake fruits, fake birds, fake fern. 34 x 17 x 17 inches.

Congratulations on your sobriety; that’s a huge accomplishment. What advice would you have for other artists who are in a similar position right now?

There’s a whole narrative that glamorizes the “crazy” artist. Once I broke out of that mindset, I found that prioritizing deep relationships with friends and family better served my mental health.

My advice to others would be to seek out self-love first, and then find the communities that offer genuine support. I had to figure out how to let go of the things that weren’t working, slow down, meditate, and clear my mind.

When you’re creating work now, does your mind need to be quiet or activated?

I need to feel quiet internally, and have chaos surrounding me. Lately, I’ve been playing loud music, constructing a physical painting, digitally photographing it, and then manipulating that with found and classical imagery. I’ll print that image then paint over it. The final piece is a composite of traditional artwork and contemporary digital painting. I’m enjoying playing with old and new mediums interchangeably, and pulling the best qualities from each.

How do you know when a project is done?

It feels most natural to have a lot of projects in motion simultaneously. I need the freedom to initiate and abandon a variety of works, be it a painting, performance, video, or even a book project. If I come back to a piece that doesn’t resonate anymore, I might toss it out completely or turn it into “studio mud,” where it gets broken down and becomes material for something else. I know when something’s done because it clicks and just feels right.

(from top left to bottom right) don’t start with me, discrepancy is the better part of valor, curiosity killed the cat, the happy wanderer, Digital C-Prints. 48 x 72 inches. 2014.

Aside from money, what are the rewards of your creative practice? What do you get out of this work and what has it taught you about yourself?

People used to tell me, “Just be yourself!” It was so frustrating because I had no idea what that meant—and that was the biggest problem. When I look back at my early performance works, especially the ones where I carried out directions from massive audiences, I can see that I was attempting to crowdsource an understanding of myself. I was deeply conflicted for a long time. It took growing up, and eventually starting a family, to accept my uncertainties as part of who I am.

I’ve realized that I can control what I create, how I interact with people, and the ideas I choose to pursue, but I don’t have any control over their outcome.

Do you treat your art practice like a business? How did you figure out how to make a living through your creative work?

I started out in business school, where I got a taste for capitalism during the first .com boom in the late 90s. When I realized I wanted to shift into art, I went to a lecture by Christo and Jeanne-Claude at the San José Museum of Art. After they presented, there was an opportunity for audience members to ask questions, so I got on the mic and said: “I’m just getting started as an artist, and I have to ask you: how did you find the funds to be able to cover islands with fabric?” Christo leaned into the mic and said, “We sell our drawings.” Then they took the mic away from me, and moved onto the next question. I stood there completely dumbfounded.

No one gives you a playbook for how to make a living as an artist. If they do, you’ll have to shred it and write your own version, anyway.

National Dinner Tour, 2004 - 2005. Multimedia. Media Performance. Note: This was a pivotal project for me. While on a photoset working for Crate & Barrel, I wrote ‘dinner w/ marc 510-872-7326’ on a dry-erase board featured in a desk product shot. The catalog containing my dinner invitation was printed and sent to millions of people. The project became a viral media sensation and I received tens of thousands of calls from people wanting to dine with me. I traveled the US for a year having dinner with strangers.

What skills did you learn in business school that you apply to your art practice?

Pay your taxes on time. Find an accountant. Keep on top of your bills. Get credit cards, put $20 on each one, and pay them off every month. Build your credit so that when you go to apply for an artist studio and apartment, you have something to show for yourself.

The most important thing is to make sure that things are sized correctly. Don’t overextend. It might look like other artists have bigger studios, bigger galleries, and all of that, but it has nothing to do with their bank account and everything to do with internal politics and personal connections. Always keep a financial cushion for yourself, whether that’s $50 or $5,000.

What brings you the most joy in your creative practice?

I feel grateful that I get to wake up every morning, turn on my espresso machine inside of a studio space that I built with a few friends, and make art. I feel blessed to be able to go back and forth between creating art and supporting my wife and son throughout the day.

Everything else is a bonus. I make videos and paintings. I test out ideas and collaborate with people who are just as weird as I am. Of course, I also have bad days—if you would’ve asked me this question yesterday, I might have complained about how everything feels like a grind because my son didn’t sleep well, my cluster headaches are back, and I had some issues in the studio. I am often genuinely overwhelmed, but I find my way through it by choosing gratitude.

Marc Horowitz Recommends:

Clown Core

Altadena’s Unincorporated Quiet Prophet Espresso

Gelitin

Vintage digital cameras: coolpix s1000pj, Canon powershot S400 & SD600, Canon G12, Sony VX2100, canon XL2

Montana

He sees a picture on the floor, 2015. Acrylic spray paint, oil stick, oil. 60 x 84 inches.


This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Lindsay Howard.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/11/visual-artist-marc-horowitz-on-making-a-living-and-making-a-life/feed/ 0 393993 Why a ‘Two-State Solution’ in Israel/Palestine doesn’t work | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/09/why-a-two-state-solution-in-israel-palestine-doesnt-work-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/09/why-a-two-state-solution-in-israel-palestine-doesnt-work-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 09 May 2023 16:00:01 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=7251e88164df95d7db8a2bd4a7cd7dae
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/09/why-a-two-state-solution-in-israel-palestine-doesnt-work-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 393552 Here’s why the GOP debt ceiling plan will cost you money | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/03/heres-why-the-gop-debt-ceiling-plan-will-cost-you-money-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/03/heres-why-the-gop-debt-ceiling-plan-will-cost-you-money-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Wed, 03 May 2023 16:00:22 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=dcb3cfa2a4bb882668748ef996b09c79
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/03/heres-why-the-gop-debt-ceiling-plan-will-cost-you-money-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 392214 Texas is the future neofascists want | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/18/texas-is-the-future-neofascists-want-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/18/texas-is-the-future-neofascists-want-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 18 Apr 2023 16:03:33 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=c117d4c8abef463c2710b41a8a5e0d31
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/18/texas-is-the-future-neofascists-want-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 388554 Is DeSantis America’s future? w/Anna Eskamani & Dream Defenders | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/11/is-desantis-americas-future-w-anna-eskamani-dream-defenders-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/11/is-desantis-americas-future-w-anna-eskamani-dream-defenders-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 11 Apr 2023 16:00:22 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=44a5336ef4eee2d6db0a5ff754698582
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/11/is-desantis-americas-future-w-anna-eskamani-dream-defenders-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 386912 Israel can never be a democracy while occupying Palestine | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/04/israel-can-never-be-a-democracy-while-occupying-palestine-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/04/israel-can-never-be-a-democracy-while-occupying-palestine-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 04 Apr 2023 20:06:52 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=2fd08bb7be2b6fac779b0da31f1d1606
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/04/israel-can-never-be-a-democracy-while-occupying-palestine-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 385107 New Watchdog Project Targets Neoliberal ‘Hacks’ Posing as Economic Prophets https://www.radiofree.org/2023/03/22/new-watchdog-project-targets-neoliberal-hacks-posing-as-economic-prophets/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/03/22/new-watchdog-project-targets-neoliberal-hacks-posing-as-economic-prophets/#respond Wed, 22 Mar 2023 17:08:21 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/news/revolving-door-project-hack-watch

Taking aim at "conflicts of interest and flat-out falsehoods in economics reporting and the so-called experts who perpetuate them," the Revolving Door Project on Wednesday launched a new website, Hack Watch, to name and shame Wall Street-friendly experts pushing often harmful neoliberal financial theories as absolute truths.

"Anyone who claims they have the absolute answer to every economic question isn't being honest with you. They're being a hack, and they shouldn't be considered serious sources," Max Moran, the personnel team director at Revolving Door Project (RDP), said in a statement introducing the new site.

"Economists like to sound certain, and they like to ridicule anyone who disagrees with them."

A follow-up to RDP's wildly successful Hack Watchnewsletter—which began by scrutinizing former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, often called "Wall Street's favorite economist," and his cryptocurrency partnerships—the website features an FAQ section on the federal debt as well as a "Trope Tracker" meant to dispel "common fallacies, falsehoods, and framing mistakes in economics coverage."

"Economists like to sound certain, and they like to ridicule anyone who disagrees with them," said Moran. "This can incline reporters, especially reporters who worry that they don't understand economics very well, to defer to economists unquestioningly."

Moran continued:

In the neoliberal age, economic analysis (from the right kind of neoclassical economists) was considered scientific truth. This is nonsense. Economics isn't a hard science, it's a method of analysis—a set of tools that help us to understand a few particular ways of how the economy works. Deciding what's actually right or wrong for the economy is always, ultimately, a matter of values and philosophy, which we express through politics.

"Top hacks" who already have bios on the new site include Summers, 2009 auto industry bailout architect Steven Rattner, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget president Maya McGuineas, and senior vice president Marc Goldwein.

"Economics isn't a hard science, it's a method of analysis—a set of tools that help us to understand a few particular ways of how the economy works."

"When these hacks receive air time, they often present the existing socio-economic order as a natural phenomenon, softly echoing Margaret Thatcher's famous 'no alternative' declaration," said Dylan Gyauch-Lewis,who co-leads the Hack Watch project, in a reference to the former right-wing British prime minister's infamous neoliberal slogan.

"In a time of crisis after crisis, we cannot afford to restrict the public's imagination to the world as it was in 1992," Gyauch-Lewis asserted. "The staid old guard not only restricts the public conception of what economic policy can be, it misleads about what that view already is."

"To allow the same few Clintonian New-Democrats to monopolize discourse does viewers, policymakers, and the world a great disservice," he added.


This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/03/22/new-watchdog-project-targets-neoliberal-hacks-posing-as-economic-prophets/feed/ 0 381473 A deeply personal struggle for Black liberation | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/03/14/a-deeply-personal-struggle-for-black-liberation-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/03/14/a-deeply-personal-struggle-for-black-liberation-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 14 Mar 2023 23:13:52 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=85b8008f84ec30d68baf4fc1641978bd
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/03/14/a-deeply-personal-struggle-for-black-liberation-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 379410 Harvard almost rejected me for my views on Israel w/Ken Roth | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/03/07/harvard-almost-rejected-me-for-my-views-on-israel-w-ken-roth-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/03/07/harvard-almost-rejected-me-for-my-views-on-israel-w-ken-roth-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 07 Mar 2023 14:37:01 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=90e736995d7326f31527665f84f8d925
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/03/07/harvard-almost-rejected-me-for-my-views-on-israel-w-ken-roth-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 377642 How the Mexican Revolution shaped world politics w/Christina Heatherton | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/28/how-the-mexican-revolution-shaped-world-politics-w-christina-heatherton-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/28/how-the-mexican-revolution-shaped-world-politics-w-christina-heatherton-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 28 Feb 2023 17:13:56 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=2169ba4ea641a50692c9b668404be5d6
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/28/how-the-mexican-revolution-shaped-world-politics-w-christina-heatherton-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 376008 Antifascism beyond Antifa w/Shane Burley and Maximillian Alvarez | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/14/antifascism-beyond-antifa-w-shane-burley-and-maximillian-alvarez-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/14/antifascism-beyond-antifa-w-shane-burley-and-maximillian-alvarez-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Tue, 14 Feb 2023 18:52:02 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=cf18e7c5b745cf79a5f19127e70e95b2
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/14/antifascism-beyond-antifa-w-shane-burley-and-maximillian-alvarez-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 372608 From Brazil to Peru, the far right is on the move in Latin America | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/08/from-brazil-to-peru-the-far-right-is-on-the-move-in-latin-america-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/08/from-brazil-to-peru-the-far-right-is-on-the-move-in-latin-america-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Wed, 08 Feb 2023 19:16:35 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=ee7c401a7d7f75ae6f1410c7d8a7c3c4
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/08/from-brazil-to-peru-the-far-right-is-on-the-move-in-latin-america-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 370933 The real story of Rosa Parks | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/02/the-real-story-of-rosa-parks-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/02/the-real-story-of-rosa-parks-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Thu, 02 Feb 2023 16:04:54 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=4c114fd557da0535e88795ddf2c2050d
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/02/02/the-real-story-of-rosa-parks-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 369283 Democrats failed Florida’s progressives | The Marc Steiner Show https://www.radiofree.org/2022/12/02/democrats-failed-floridas-progressives-the-marc-steiner-show/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/12/02/democrats-failed-floridas-progressives-the-marc-steiner-show/#respond Fri, 02 Dec 2022 15:16:26 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=053e4201b780f488870e0bdf87b8aa27
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/12/02/democrats-failed-floridas-progressives-the-marc-steiner-show/feed/ 0 354994 Africa Does Not Want to Be a Breeding Ground for the New Cold War https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/05/africa-does-not-want-to-be-a-breeding-ground-for-the-new-cold-war/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/05/africa-does-not-want-to-be-a-breeding-ground-for-the-new-cold-war/#respond Sat, 05 Nov 2022 14:32:02 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=135168 Chaïbia Talal (Morocco), Mon Village, Chtouka, 1990. On 17 October, the head of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), US Marine Corps General Michael Langley visited Morocco. Langley met with senior Moroccan military leaders, including Inspector General of the Moroccan Armed Forces Belkhir El Farouk. Since 2004, AFRICOM has held its ‘largest and premier annual exercise’, African […]

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Chaïbia Talal (Morocco), Mon Village, Chtouka, 1990.

On 17 October, the head of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), US Marine Corps General Michael Langley visited Morocco. Langley met with senior Moroccan military leaders, including Inspector General of the Moroccan Armed Forces Belkhir El Farouk. Since 2004, AFRICOM has held its ‘largest and premier annual exercise’, African Lion, partly on Moroccan soil. This past June, ten countries participated in the African Lion 2022, with observers from Israel (for the first time) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Salah Elmur (Sudan), The Green Room, 2019.

Langley’s visit is part of a broader US push onto the African continent, which we documented in our dossier no. 42 (July 2021), Defending Our Sovereignty: US Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity, a joint publication with The Socialist Movement of Ghana’s Research Group. In that text, we wrote that the two important principles of Pan-Africanism are political unity and territorial sovereignty and argued that ‘[t]he enduring presence of foreign military bases not only symbolises the lack of unity and sovereignty; it also equally enforces the fragmentation and subordination of the continent’s peoples and governments’. In August, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield travelled to Ghana, Uganda, and Cape Verde. ‘We’re not asking Africans to make any choices between the United States and Russia’, she said ahead of her visit, but, she added, ‘for me, that choice would be simple’. That choice is nonetheless being impelled by the US Congress as it deliberates the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, a bill that would sanction African states if they do business with Russia (and could possibly extend to China in the future).

To understand this unfolding situation, our friends at No Cold War have prepared their briefing no. 5, NATO Claims Africa as Its ‘Southern Neighbourhood’, which looks at how NATO has begun to develop a proprietary view of Africa and how the US government considers Africa to be a frontline in its Global Monroe Doctrine. That briefing can be read in full below and downloaded here:

In August 2022, the United States published a new foreign policy strategy aimed at Africa. The 17-page document featured 10 mentions of China and Russia combined, including a pledge to ‘counter harmful activities by the [People’s Republic of China], Russia, and other foreign actors’ on the continent, but did not once mention the term ‘sovereignty’. Although US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated that Washington ‘will not dictate Africa’s choices’, African governments have reported facing ‘patronising bullying’ from NATO member states to take their side in the war in Ukraine. As global tensions rise, the US and its allies have signalled that they view the continent as a battleground to wage their New Cold War against China and Russia.

Richard Mudariki (Zimbabwe), The Passover, 2011.

Richard Mudariki (Zimbabwe), The Passover, 2011.

A New Monroe Doctrine?

At its annual summit in June, NATO named Africa along with the Middle East ‘NATO’s southern neighbourhood’. On top of this, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ominously referred to ‘Russia and China’s increasing influence in our southern neighbourhood’ as a ‘challenge’. The following month, the outgoing commander of AFRICOM, General Stephen J Townsend, referred to Africa as ‘NATO’s southern flank’. These comments are disturbingly reminiscent of the neocolonial attitude espoused by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, in which the US claimed Latin America as its ‘backyard’.

This paternalistic view of Africa appears to be widely held in Washington. In April, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Countering Malign Russian Influence Activities in Africa Act by a vote of 415-9. The bill, which aims to punish African governments for not aligning with US foreign policy on Russia, has been widely condemned across the continent for disrespecting the sovereignty of African nations, with South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor calling it ‘absolutely disgraceful’.

The efforts by the US and Western countries to draw Africa into their geopolitical conflicts raise serious concerns: namely, will the US and NATO weaponise their vast military presence on the continent to achieve their aims?

Amani Bodo (DRC), Masque à gaz (‘Gas Mask’), 2020.

AFRICOM: Protecting US and NATO’s Hegemony

In 2007, the United States established its Africa Command (AFRICOM) ‘in response to our expanding partnerships and interests in Africa’. In just 15 years, AFRICOM has established at least 29 military bases on the continent as part of an extensive network which includes more than 60 outposts and access points in at least 34 countries – over 60 percent of the nations on the continent.

Despite Washington’s rhetoric of promoting democracy and human rights in Africa, in reality, AFRICOM aims to secure US hegemony over the continent. AFRICOM’s stated objectives include ‘protecting US interests’ and ‘maintaining superiority over competitors’ in Africa. In fact, the creation of AFRICOM was motivated by the concerns of ‘those alarmed by China’s expanding presence and influence in the region’.

From the outset, NATO was involved in the endeavour, with the original proposal put forward by then Supreme Allied Commander of NATO James L Jones, Jr. On an annual basis, AFRICOM conducts training exercises focused on enhancing the ‘interoperability’ between African militaries and ‘US and NATO special operations forces’.

The destructive nature of the US and NATO’s military presence in Africa was exemplified in 2011 when – ignoring the African Union’s opposition – the US and NATO launched their catastrophic military intervention in Libya to remove the government of Muammar Gaddafi. This regime change war destroyed the country, which had previously scored the highest among African nations on the UN Human Development Index. Over a decade later, the principal achievements of the intervention in Libya have been the return of slave markets to the country, the entry of thousands of foreign fighters, and unending violence.

In the future, will the US and NATO invoke the ‘malign influence’ of China and Russia as a justification for military interventions and regime change in Africa?

Zemba Luzamba (DRC), Parlementaires debout (‘Parliamentarians Standing’), 2019.

Zemba Luzamba (DRC), Parlementaires debout (‘Parliamentarians Standing’), 2019.

Africa Rejects a New Cold War

At this year’s UN General Assembly, the African Union firmly rejected the coercive efforts of the US and Western countries to use the continent as a pawn in their geopolitical agenda. ‘Africa has suffered enough of the burden of history’, stated Chairman of the African Union and President of Senegal Macky Sall; ‘it does not want to be the breeding ground of a new Cold War, but rather a pole of stability and opportunity open to all its partners, on a mutually beneficial basis’. Indeed, the drive for war offers nothing to the peoples of Africa in their pursuit of peace, climate change adaptation, and development.

“Europe is a garden. The rest of the world is a jungle. And the jungle could invade the garden.”

“Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us.”

– Shocking comments from EU foreign policy head @JosepBorrellF pic.twitter.com/eFbbb9LxGl

— No Cold War (@NoColdWar) October 15, 2022

At the inauguration of the European Diplomatic Academy on 13 October, the European Union’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, said, ‘Europe is a garden… The rest of the world… is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden’. As if the metaphor were not clear enough, he added, ‘Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us’. Borrell’s racist comments were pilloried on social media and eviscerated in the European Parliament by Marc Botenga of the Belgian Workers’ Party, and a petition by the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) calling for Borrell’s resignation has received over 10,000 signatures. Borrell’s lack of historical knowledge is significant: it is Europe and North America that continue to invade the African continent, and it is those military and economic invasions that cause African people migrate. As President Sall said, Africa does not want to be a ‘breeding ground of a new Cold War’, but a sovereign place of dignity.

The post Africa Does Not Want to Be a Breeding Ground for the New Cold War first appeared on Dissident Voice.


This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/05/africa-does-not-want-to-be-a-breeding-ground-for-the-new-cold-war/feed/ 0 348261 The Marc Steiner Show: These US states are billionaire tax havens https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/13/the-marc-steiner-show-these-us-states-are-billionaire-tax-havens/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/13/the-marc-steiner-show-these-us-states-are-billionaire-tax-havens/#respond Thu, 13 Oct 2022 22:10:27 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=286bc5c961347aa127f8446550d61584
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/13/the-marc-steiner-show-these-us-states-are-billionaire-tax-havens-2/feed/ 0 341828 The Marc Steiner Show: ‘Working 9 to 5’ with Ellen Cassedy https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/07/the-marc-steiner-show-working-9-to-5-with-ellen-cassedy/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/07/the-marc-steiner-show-working-9-to-5-with-ellen-cassedy/#respond Fri, 07 Oct 2022 14:07:34 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=ad2aa1946fa69119e272008134152164
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/07/the-marc-steiner-show-working-9-to-5-with-ellen-cassedy/feed/ 0 339848 The Marc Steiner Show: Israel’s August raid on Palestinian NGOs, w/Sahar Francis https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/29/the-marc-steiner-show-israels-august-raid-on-palestinian-ngos-w-sahar-francis/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/29/the-marc-steiner-show-israels-august-raid-on-palestinian-ngos-w-sahar-francis/#respond Thu, 29 Sep 2022 15:35:57 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=ec019f0c13cfd7a8f26e82ab7e71f048
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/29/the-marc-steiner-show-israels-august-raid-on-palestinian-ngos-w-sahar-francis/feed/ 0 337253 The Marc Steiner Show: Environmental racism from Jackson to Flint https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/22/the-marc-steiner-show-environmental-racism-from-jackson-to-flint/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/22/the-marc-steiner-show-environmental-racism-from-jackson-to-flint/#respond Thu, 22 Sep 2022 17:53:27 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=e19752af103f5a3cae5bab92fe0a11da
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/22/the-marc-steiner-show-environmental-racism-from-jackson-to-flint/feed/ 0 335486 The Marc Steiner Show: Kali Akuno on Jackson’s water crisis https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/15/the-marc-steiner-show-kali-akuno-on-jacksons-water-crisis/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/15/the-marc-steiner-show-kali-akuno-on-jacksons-water-crisis/#respond Thu, 15 Sep 2022 17:01:29 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=0c1ffaedb7fde6dda33f02eeab3f47e0
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/15/the-marc-steiner-show-kali-akuno-on-jacksons-water-crisis/feed/ 0 333468 The Marc Steiner Show: Canada’s trucker ‘Freedom Convoy’ goes Christian nationalist https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/08/the-marc-steiner-show-canadas-trucker-freedom-convoy-goes-christian-nationalist/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/08/the-marc-steiner-show-canadas-trucker-freedom-convoy-goes-christian-nationalist/#respond Thu, 08 Sep 2022 20:25:42 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=2c9c6b07bc6244e584b24ce4b3930596
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/09/08/the-marc-steiner-show-canadas-trucker-freedom-convoy-goes-christian-nationalist/feed/ 0 331216 The Marc Steiner Show: Trump Republicans’ return to power in 2022, 2024 elections https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/25/the-marc-steiner-show-trump-republicans-return-to-power-in-2022-2024-elections/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/25/the-marc-steiner-show-trump-republicans-return-to-power-in-2022-2024-elections/#respond Thu, 25 Aug 2022 16:14:20 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=412c6eae712366eea9b90703335f1393
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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/25/the-marc-steiner-show-trump-republicans-return-to-power-in-2022-2024-elections/feed/ 0 326449 The Marc Steiner Show: ‘Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness’ by author Baynard Woods https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/18/the-marc-steiner-show-inheritance-an-autobiography-of-whiteness-by-author-baynard-woods/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/08/18/the-marc-steiner-show-inheritance-an-autobiography-of-whiteness-by-author-baynard-woods/#respond Thu, 18 Aug 2022 21:29:26 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=5e83629ef7dbca8ae17381424177b787
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