Latest from The Intercept
The Intercept
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Israeli Parliament Votes for Making Apartheid Official. Fetterman: 'I Haven't Been Following It.'
When Israel's parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of dropping any pretense that it wasn't an apartheid state, some of the Jewish state's most ardent American defenders couldn't even be bothered to pay attention. 'I haven't been following it closely,' said Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who's made defending Israel a key part of his political career. The response was one of a mixed bag among both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill interviewed by The Intercept, but Fetterman's tone was the most strident in its lack of regard. Despite its most powerful ally and arms dealer's stated preference for a two-state solution, Israel's Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a symbolic measure to annex the occupied West Bank on Wednesday. The nonbinding resolution, which was advanced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition and passed 71-13 in the Knesset, won't legally change the reality in the West Bank — but it marks an escalation in the Israeli government's efforts to annex the territory. Four Democrats in the Senate and House who spoke to The Intercept condemned the Israeli government's vote. Others said they hadn't been following the issue. Fetterman was one of three senators who told The Intercept on Thursday they were unaware of the Knesset vote. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, declined to comment. The resolution in the Knesset, or Parliament, called to apply 'Israeli sovereignty, law, judgment and administration to all the areas of Jewish settlement of all kinds in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley' — which is how most Israelis refer to the West Bank. Currently, 3 million Palestinians reside in the West Bank, alongside over 500,000 Israeli settlers, who've established settlements in the occupied territory in violation of international law. Annexation of the West Bank would be at odds with the U.S. official policy goal for two states — one for Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and one state for Israel comprising its pre-1967 borders. The two-state solution has won official backing from successive presidents dating back to the late 1990s — except for Donald Trump — to assuage concerns over Israel having permanent control over millions of Palestinians without full civil rights. Though the conditions already exist — there is a growing consensus that Israel in an apartheid state — making this control officially permanent would make apartheid indisputable. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have repeatedly undermined the possibility of a two-state solution by arming Israel as it continues to attack Palestinian people and seize their territory, which lawmakers in Congress have made excuses for. As public sentiment turns against Israel, however, with voters increasingly opposing the Netanyahu government's genocide in Gaza, some members of Congress have been more willing to criticize the Israeli regime. Read our complete coverage Though President Joe Biden claimed to be interested in a two-state solution, his administration continued policies such as keeping the U.S. Embassy in occupied Jerusalem, which experts view as undermining the possibility of an independent Palestinian state that includes the West Bank. In his second term, Trump escalated his efforts to thwart the possibility of a sovereign Palestinian state. On Thursday, State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters during a press briefing that the U.S. would not be attending a United Nations conference on a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. And Trump has repeatedly called for Palestinians in Gaza to be relocated and for the region to be turned into a luxury resort. Fetterman's response to the vote stood in stark contrast to the four other Democratic members of Congress. 'The Knesset's vote to symbolically annex the West Bank is not just reckless — it's a betrayal of the values that have long underpinned America's support for Israel. I've visited the West Bank. I've spoken with people whose lives are shaped by fear and violence,' wrote Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., in a statement. 'A negotiated two‑state solution is the only path to lasting peace and true security for both Israelis and Palestinians. This vote rejects that path.' Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vt., on the other hand, told The Intercept that now is the time for the U.S. to push back on Netanyahu's government's 'racist, reactionary' policies. 'Israel is now run by right-wing extremists who are in Gaza starving children and shooting people lining up for food, and now in the West Bank, we've seen vigilantism,' said Sanders. 'I think the time is now for the United States government to make clear that we are not going to continue to support these racist, reactionary policies of the Netanyahu government.' Sen. Tim Kaine. D-Va., argued that this would harm peace talks and threaten long-term regional stability. 'It's going to hurt Israel in the long run,' said Kaine. 'You got a peace discussion that's going on right now where Arab nations are saying we want to be peaceful partners with our neighbor, Israel. But this also means that we need to have a future for Palestine as was promised to Palestinians in the U.N. resolution in 1947, and we're not willing to find this regional peace unless you agree to do that.' Kaine argued that the Knesset vote further isolates Israel in the region. 'It looks like the Knesset is just shutting the door in the face of Arab partners who want to try to work together to promote regional stability,' he said. 'There is a credible opportunity for Israel to be less isolated in the neighborhood, but a vote like this makes it harder, not easier.' Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., told The Intercept that the vote speaks to the broader 'endgame' for the Netanyahu administration. 'For Netanyahu and his administration, annexation and control have always been the endgame,' said Ramirez, in a statement. 'We must end the U.S.'s complicity in the Netanyahu Administration's regime of terror. Congress must do its oversight job, demand an end to the blockade and pass Block the Bombs.'
The Intercept
2 days ago
- General
- The Intercept
"Food Has Become a Memory": My Hunger Diary in Gaza
This is my attempt to document what it feels like when your stomach rumbles, becoming louder than your thoughts. Sara Awad is a freelance writer and English literature student with a passion for literature and everything related to it. Here in Gaza, we are enduring the suffocating siege imposed by the Israeli government in order to make us starve, in a deliberate attack against us Gazans. Today marks the 89th day of the starvation war. I woke up with a dizzy feeling in my head as I had not eaten anything since yesterday morning. My stomach needed its sense of normalcy. My family and I poured our energy into securing the only meal of the day. We often spend approximately half a day only thinking about what our meal will be. My family is making every possible effort to fill our hungry stomachs, but I can see their powerlessness on their faces. My thoughts go immediately to my youngest siblings Ahmed, 10, and Yame, just 4 years old. They cannot endure or understand that no food is available to eat, and I feel helpless when I do not have anything to offer them. I have always wondered why children must suffer! What do they do to deserve this denial? The only food for the day for a family of eight. Photo: Sara Awad My mom baked eight pieces of bread, one for each of our family members, and each one of us chooses the way to eat it. For me, I choose to separate it into two portions — the second is for dinner. Very small portions for a person who does not eat enough for months. And we do not know when the next bread will come along. After spending hours lost in thoughts and planning on what we will do for food, my family gave in to paying impossible prices. A single kilo of flour, if we are lucky to find it, now costs us nearly 90 shekels (around 25 U.S. dollars) when it used to be only 3 shekels ($1). This price doesn't stay stable; some days, it reaches more than $40 for a kilo. These are unthinkable prices for most Gazan families, already overwhelmed by the destroyed economy, living without livelihood for months. Just to secure our only meal of the day, we have to sacrifice more and more to get our basic needs met. Even if we can reach that one kilo of flour to fill our stomachs, reaching paper cash is an impossible task. ATM machines and bank branches have been mostly destroyed by Israeli bombs, and mobile payments are hardly used. So we have to exchange money, and are forced to pay the enormous commission fees, which nowadays reach up to 40 or 45 percent. Just to secure our only meal of the day, we have to sacrifice more and more to get our basic needs met. I hope our suffering ends with bread, yet even bread is no longer enough. Our bodies need more. The most luxurious food available in Gaza's markets come in just a few varieties. Eggplant, rice, unripe tomatoes and little else. All the items I mentioned are overpriced, and families who have the luxury of putting the food on tables are very rare and lucky. Food itself is now 'luxurious,' and most of it has vanished in Gaza: Milk, meat, vegetables, fruits have all become a daily dream, not a daily reality. Only some beans and lentils remain in Gaza's streets. They absolutely will run out at any given moment, just like everything else does. Read our complete coverage My Body Speaks From the body's perspective, we are all off-balance, dizzying, with foggy eyesight. Not from illness, but from the feeling of hunger. I am currently working as a freelance writer beside my studies at university, yet I cannot pour energy into fulfilling my duties. My brain is forgetting more than I remember; my body is constantly weak from the lack of essential nutrients and vitamins I have lost throughout this ongoing starvation. Studying and writing is costing me a lot of energy, and I'm trying my best to save my energies for studying and writing, but all my trying is just getting failed by hunger. I tend to be silent rather than talking, as talking requires power that I do not have these days. And that is about my body — just 21 years old — but what about the elderly people, the injured in hospitals, and the disabled people who are dying of this hunger? What is happening to their bodies? My thoughts are on those people starved by the hour. The daily bread, baked. Photo: Sara Awad My mother is one of the injured. She had spinal cord surgery back in February, and she is going through a physical therapy session, so she is in the most serious condition to require healthy food. The fact that I do not even have the option to provide her with food is killing me every single time I see her in her fragile body. Then there is my father. He has hypertension and he must balance his food, but he refuses to eat all his portions of bread; he sacrifices it to my mother. Even in war, love is stronger than suffering itself. Food has become a memory. I dream of a big family meal, multiple meals filled with meat and chicken, and I dream of cooking my favorite meal again. I am fed up with empty plates. I am tired, tired of looking at past meals on my photo albums. I long for my past days, when food was a routine, not a matter of bare survival.
The Intercept
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Is AIPAC Testing the Waters to Primary Rep. Summer Lee?
Pro-Israel groups are considering backing two potential primary challengers against progressive Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa. A survey sent earlier this month to people living in Pittsburgh and its suburbs asked for respondents' opinion on two possible candidates to challenge Lee. The survey included a question on people's opinions about the candidates being backed by 'a right-wing organization that supports Trump and is funded by MAGA millionaires and billionaires.' The survey question appears set up to test whether voters would oppose one of the candidates because of backing from groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — which is funded by billionaire donors to Donald Trump and, in 2020, endorsed more than 100 Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn the results of that year's presidential election. The wording was identical to another survey sent in May to constituents in the district of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., The Intercept reported. That survey was the first this year to indicate that AIPAC was considering a primary challenge against Omar. With the latest poll, it appears that AIPAC and possibly other pro-Israel groups are setting their sights on another challenge against Lee. 'As usual, AIPAC sees the Democratic electorate begging for more progressive leadership that takes on the corporate elite, and they are desperate to force corporate shills down our throats instead,' said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a group backing Lee. (AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment.) The survey in Lee's district also said both potential candidates, Pittsburgh City Controller Rachael Heisler and former Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, were backed by 'pro-Israel groups that lobby Congress to provide billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in aid and weapons to Israel each year.' Lee and Omar are two of a handful of progressive members of Congress who have drawn the ire of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups for calling to end U.S. military funding to Israel and criticizing Israel's genocide in Gaza. AIPAC spent more than $100 million on primaries last cycle, including more than $25 million to unseat Reps. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. Lee, Omar, and other progressives have also been vocal critics of AIPAC. Lee introduced a bill earlier this year to ban super PACs like AIPAC's United Democracy Project, which spent millions of dollars against her when she first ran for Congress in 2022. Lee won reelection last year against another Republican-backed pro-Israel primary challenger. In that race, The Intercept reported. AIPAC tried and failed to recruit two candidates to run against her. 'Every cycle, corporate lobbies, special interest groups and Trump megadonors look to buy this Congressional seat,' Lee said in a statement. 'My constituents want leaders who fight for their interests against the wealthy & well-connected, not politicians that can be bought with a corporate PAC check.' The survey asked a series of questions about positions taken by candidates that aligned more closely with Republicans than liberal Democrats. 'It's no mistake that they're polling the viability of candidates that evidently oppose the Affordable Care Act, Medicare for All, same-sex marriage, the Green New Deal, abortion rights, Medicare, and Social Security,' said Andrabi. 'AIPAC's favorite type of Democrat is one you can most easily mistake for a Republican and most easily.' The survey in Pittsburgh asked people to rate their level of concern in response to pro-Israel groups supporting both Heisler and DePasquale, and whether they would support either candidate in a Democratic primary election against Lee. 'Rachael Heisler is supported by pro-Israel groups that lobby Congress to provide billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in aid and weapons to Israel each year,' the survey said. 'Please indicate whether it raises very serious concerns, serious concerns, minor concerns, or no real concerns for you about Rachael Heisler.' The survey posed the same question about DePasquale. The poll also asked respondents to rate their level of concern about potential criticisms of Lee, DePasquale, and Heisler. Criticisms of Lee included her vote against former President Joe Biden's debt deal, her support for the Uncommitted movement in 2024, and the claim that 'Lee is more interested in dividing Democrats' than fighting Trump's agenda. 'Summer Lee is too extreme,' read another prompt. 'She has long associated herself with the Democratic Socialists of America which supports defunding the police, eliminating prisons and releasing all criminals, opening our borders, getting rid of individually-owned cars, abolishing U-S-A-I-D, and withdrawing from NATO. Summer Lee's radical positions do not reflect our community.' (Lee is no longer a member of DSA.) Respondents were asked to rate their concerns about the statement. In a section asking about possible criticism of DePasquale, the survey asked respondents how they felt about him taking corporate PAC money and opposing progressive policy efforts like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Read our complete coverage 'While progressive Democrats have called for getting corporate money out of politics, Eugene DePasquale has taken tens of thousands of dollars from corporate PACs, including from major corporations like AT&T, Comcast, Pfizer and PNC Bank,' the survey said. It added that DePasquale 'calls himself a progressive' but opposed Medicare for All, rejected the Green New Deal, opposed same sex marriage, praised parts of Trump's agenda, and supported expanding the state's natural gas industry. (DePasquale did not respond to a request for comment.) DePasquale has supported gay marriage publicly since at least 2012. In 2020, He said he did not support the Green New Deal or Medicare for All, and favored a public option and improvements to the Affordable Care Act. On the environment, DePasquale has a mixed record. During a race for Pennsylvania attorney general and as state auditor, he came down on the side with energy interests and climate activists, respectively. Posing potential criticisms of Heisler, the survey asked respondents how concerned they were about the claim that Heisler had 'a record of standing with the wealthy and powerful' and worked with groups advancing policies to benefit billionaires, including gutting Social Security and Medicare. The survey also asked respondents how they felt about Heisler donating to the 2018 campaign of anti-abortion Democrat Dan Lipinski in Illinois. It also asked them to rate their concerns about Heisler working for former Rep. Jason Altmire, a Pennsylvania Democrat who voted against the ACA in 2010. (Heisler did not respond to a request for comment.) Respondents were also asked to rate their opinion of other officials and groups including Altmire; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Democratic Socialists of America; Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato; Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro; and Sen. John Fetterman. Both Heisler and DePasquale have expressed support for Israel and efforts by pro-Israel groups to influence policy in Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania. DePasquale was endorsed last year by two groups that also backed Lee's primary challenger, Bhavini Patel. Earlier this year, Heisler fought a referendum petition organized by anti-genocide activists to push Pittsburgh to divest from governments engaged in genocide — namely Israel. (Not On Our Dime did not respond to a request for comment.) Last year, Heisler went on a $15,000 trip paid for by AIPAC's educational arm, which it uses to send politicians to Israel, a typical step in the group's efforts to recruit a candidate. George Latimer, the AIPAC-funded candidate who unseated Bowman, the New York representative, took a trip to Israel shortly before he announced his primary challenge. 'My constituents want leaders who fight for their interests against the wealthy and well-connected, not politicians that can be bought with a corporate PAC check,' Lee said. 'They can keep polling and we're going to keep fighting back against the Trump administration to protect and deliver for our constituents.'
The Intercept
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Starvation as a Weapon: Chris Hedges on Gaza
More than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food have been killed by Israeli forces in just the last few months, according to the United Nations. Israel's blockade on aid, ongoing bombardment, and the dismantling of independent relief efforts have pushed Gaza to the brink of mass famine. At least 600,000 people are suffering from severe malnutrition, and aid groups warn of a manufactured humanitarian catastrophe. 'It's not about the distribution of food, it's not about humanitarian aid. It's about creating — luring Palestinians who are desperate into the south, putting them into a closed military zone,' says Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times. This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks with Hedges about how we got here and what's at stake. Hedges spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and the Palestine, much of that time in Gaza. He's the author of 14 books, the most recent being 'The Greatest Evil Is War' and 'A Genocide Foretold.' Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. TRANSCRIPT Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I'm Jordan Uhl. More than 1,000 Palestinians seeking food have been killed by Israeli forces in just the last few months, according to the U.N. CBS: And as Israel's military operations ramp up, hunger is at an all time high. WTHR: At least 10 people have died from starvation in the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours. Al Jazeera: This is what death by forced starvation looks like. JU: Famine has persisted throughout the war. But in March, the crisis deepened as Israel imposed a blockade to aid, broke its ceasefire with Hamas, and resumed airstrikes on Gaza. By May, a newly formed U.S. contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, had taken over most aid distribution after Israel effectively banned independent and established relief groups, including the U.N. agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA. Gaza's 400 aid sites were reduced to just four. Recent Intercept reporting from inside Gaza observed 'a famine that is manufactured and an aid distribution system seemingly designed to cause more suffering and death.' António Guterres: We need look no further than the horror show in Gaza. With a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times. JU: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaking at the Security Council. AG: Malnourishment is soaring, starvation is knocking on every door, and now we are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles. Sky News: [Gunfire] This is what the head of the U.N. is talking about. [Gunfire] The abject chaos and danger Gazans face trying to get food. JU: In one of the strongest rebukes of Israel's actions to date, more than 100 aid and human rights groups issued a joint statement calling on world governments to intervene. DN!: The NGOs, including Amnesty, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders warned, 'Illnesses like acute watery diarrhea are spreading. Markets are empty. Waste is piling up. Adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.' unquote JU: Gaza is on the brink of mass famine. At least 600,000 people are suffering from severe malnutrition, according to staff at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza. This is not a tragedy of circumstance. It's a deliberate campaign of mass starvation, enforced through Israel's unrelenting bombing and continuous blockade on the flow of aid into Gaza, which is prohibited under international law. The death toll in Gaza has reached nearly 60,000, officially, but experts and relief workers on the ground expect the actual number of casualties to be significantly higher. To be clear: This is a genocide. And Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing wages on, as lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in the Knesset on Wednesday on a non-binding resolution demanding annexation of the West Bank. To understand how we got here and what this moment most demands, we turn to someone who has spent years reporting on the conflicts: Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times. He spent seven years covering the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, much of that time in Gaza. The author of 14 books, his most recent are 'The Greatest Evil Is War' and 'A Genocide Foretold.' He has taught at Columbia, NYU, Princeton, and the University of Toronto. Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, Chris. Chris Hedges: Thanks, Jordan. JU: We're speaking on Tuesday, July 22nd. I'm eager to talk about this book, I finished it recently. But I also want to just first say thank you. You are somebody who has had an outsized influence on my understanding and views on foreign policy. And I heard you speak at my undergraduate alma mater in Youngstown, Ohio, in the early 2010s, and you were talking about the death of a liberal class and what you said there stuck with me to this day. And I remember looking around the room and seeing other people being encouraged and stimulated by what you were saying. And I've always seen you as somebody who has been able to speak truth to power and distill societal and complex problems in a way that we can all comprehend. And just wanted to say thank you. I'm really excited about this. CH: Well thanks, that day Staughton Lynd came to that event with his wife Alice. He's a great hero of mine. JU: Yes, Staughton Lynd. He's the labor attorney who fought to stop steel-mill closures in Youngstown, Ohio, and ultimately the community's post-industrial decline. CH: I remember that event because I speak at places like Skidmore where the children of the one percent are forced to go. They actually have to carry slips that you sign, and most of them probably spent the whole talk on their phones. But that wasn't true at Youngstown because I remember they were seated down the aisles because the student body was older, their parents had been laid off. They had felt the effects of de-industrialization in Youngstown, where the closure of the steel mills, and of course they had the capacity because of that experience, to ask the kinds of questions the children of the privileged don't have to ask or don't want to ask. So I remember that event very well. JU: Let's get into this book. I wanna start though with your 2002 book, 'War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning.' In it, you talk about the use of myth to justify or perpetuate war. In one context, you talk about the creation myth of Israel and how Israelis are unwilling to question what they're conditioned to believe about the state of Israel. Then you also write about the myth of war and how through the filter of the press, the reality of war is misconstrued or even hidden. People are propagandized into believing the official narrative. In this case, in Gaza right now, it is a war for Israel's survival. It is one of self-defense and solely against Hamas. How else do you see the role of myth in Israel's genocide in Gaza? CH: Well every country, including our own, has a foundational myth, which is a narrative to essentially hold up national virtue, national courage. And we do it to this day. We've never really examined the two foundational institutions that created the United States, slavery and genocide against the Native Americans. Israel is the same. It has its own creation myth that somehow the Palestinians — who, let's be clear, had lived in historic Palestine for centuries — did not have an identity as a people, that the land was largely uninhabited. I mean, these were just completely false narratives still propagated by Zionists. And then the myth of war, which you mentioned, is another myth. And that is the myth of glory and honor, and courage and bravery and all the things that after about 30 seconds of combat you will realize are ridiculous. And it's very hard to fight that. But you know, speaking about myself, I spent 20 years overseas covering various conflicts, but also veterans who come back and attempt to be honest. You see it with groups like Veterans for Peace or Iraq Veterans Against the War. These people through overcoming a great deal of trauma and essentially being cast aside by the society and certainly their own comrades within the military have attempted to speak truth. But that truth is essentially deluged with the propaganda peddled by the news media, the entertainment industry, politicians. The tawdry reality of violence, the sickening reality of violence, the savagery of it, the indiscriminate killing that is emblematic with all kinds of industrial weapons is sanitized and rewritten and it's extremely hard to counter that myth. Just as it is extremely hard to counter the national creation myth, and we're watching the Trump administration roll back those efforts. So whether that's through teaching about slavery in school, they of course wanna restore the names of Confederate generals to US Army bases. The attack on DEI that perpetuates white supremacy and patriarchy is one that is challenged, I mean throughout our history, is challenged with great expense. And you see that in Israel, with these very courageous figures like Gideon Levy who writes for Haaretz and Amira Haas. You had the genocide scholar, Omer Bartov, who was a veteran from the 1973 war — he was a unit commander, he teaches at Brown — coming out and calling what's happening in Gaza genocide, I would argue it's a little late, but at least he's doing it. The great Israeli historian Ilan Pappé or Avi Shlaim. And these people have become pariahs in their own country because what they're attempting to do is puncture that myth. And people cling to that myth, because at its core it's really about self adulation. JU: I'm curious if you could elaborate on that. What makes this so enticing to people? Why is this type of myth-making so effective? In your books, you've talked about war specifically and the myth of war as an elixir. And you also point out how it's a deep level of introspection for anybody really to question their national myth because it's not just what you've learned, it's also how you identify and how you see yourself. So what makes it so complicated to challenge it and why is this messaging so effective? CH: Because to look honestly at who we are, where we come from, and what we've done is an existential crisis and it's extremely disconcerting and uncomfortable — as it should be. And so people prefer to have their egos and their national pride and their sense of self worth massaged and catered to even if that comes through lies. And that's why it creates both a societal and a personal crisis because one has to reckon with the darkness that is endemic within white supremacy and patriarchy and empire. And to confront that darkness is painful. It's hard. And so most people will not only flee from that confrontation, but gravitate towards figures, let's say like Trump, who essentially perpetuate or trumpet that myth because it's about feeling good about ourselves. I mean, James Baldwin writes about this quite eloquently, and he talks about the confusion of ignorance with innocence. That somehow Americans are innocent. Well, they're innocent in their own eyes because they're willfully ignorant. They willfully blind themselves to who they are, what they've done. Whether it's in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or Gaza, where this genocide would not be perpetuated but for the stockpiles of munitions that are sent to Israel. Israel blew through its stockpiles many months ago. I think up to 80 percent of all munitions that Israel uses come from the United States. And it's just easier not to look. It's the old story about the good German, the people who claim that they didn't know there were concentration camps and they didn't know that their Jewish neighbors were being disappeared and shoved into crematoriums. But that's true in every conflict I covered, including in Bosnia. The Serbs in Belgrade really did not want to know and did not know the genocidal campaigns that the Bosnian Serbs were carrying out in Bosnia against the Muslims. JU: Now this new book, 'A Genocide Foretold' is heavy. It's a depressing read, and at times it made me question humanity. How could so many people stand idly by? But in your conversations, your encounters and your experiences with Palestinians and Gaza, you found glimmers of hope. You witnessed real courage and an unwillingness to accept a terminal fate. Could you talk about some of the people you talked to for this book and maybe something one of them said or did that you still think about? CH: Yeah. I opened the book in Ramallah. I was visiting my friend Atef Abu Saif, the great Palestinian novelist. He's from Gaza. He and his teenage son were in Gaza on October 7. They were stuck in Gaza for 80 days. He wrote a memoir a kind of diary of that experience called 'Don't Look Left,' which I highly recommend. I think that this is true in all [war] — war brings out both the best and the worst in people. I mean, let's look at the gangs that steal food and sell it on the black market. If you wanted to leave Gaza — no one can leave Gaza now, by the way. But before you had to pay Hala, the Egyptian organization, $5,000 in U.S. cash per head to get out. So you have families who don't have many resources scrambling, contacting relatives and friends abroad to try and raise those funds to escape the hell that Gaza is. So you have those predators that arise in every war. I remember during the war in Bosnia, one of the most lucrative ways to earn money was — both on the Serb side and on the Bosnian side — when Serb soldiers would be killed, you would have a gang or a mafia that would hold the body and then the Serb Mafia would do the same with Muslim bodies. And at night, for huge sums of money, those bodies would be sold to their families across the river. So that's always true in war. It brings out these predators who see the vulnerability of others [as] a way for personal enrichment and empowerment. But war also brings out, among those who have a conscience and empathy, tremendous acts of self-sacrifice and courage. And when you confront the radical evil that is war, that self-sacrifice, that courage, that empathy can get you killed. It's subversive. And so you see these figures of the doctors and medical staff in Gaza, hundreds who've been killed. I think the number is 400 [medical staff], over 200 journalists have been murdered. And let's be clear — I just came back from Egypt where I've been interviewing Palestinians — these are targeted killings. They're not random killings. For instance, they usually will kill the doctors as they're either going to their shift at the hospital or returning. And they'll bring in a quadruped, one of these drones, and you'll have a multi-story apartment building and the apartment building of that doctor or that journalist often is just attacked and blown up. So it's clearly targeted or they're targeted as they're moving either to and from their work. For instance, I was in Qatar. I've been to Qatar twice to do broadcasting for Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English. And when you go into the foyer, it's quite chilling, that just including of course Shireen Abu Akleh who was murdered in the West Bank by an Israeli sniper. Just the number of photographs of the dead. And these people are not naive. They know what it means to be a doctor in Gaza. They know what it means to be a journalist in Gaza. And yet they do it anyway. So that's classic in terms of my experience in war. And on the one hand, of course, it shows the worst aspects of humanity — what human beings are, the atrocities human beings are capable of committing. But then it shows these remarkable figures, who at the risk of their own lives and many of them don't survive, stand up to do what's right. And let's be clear, they're not usually intellectuals, usually. The intellectual class collapses pretty quickly. Intellectualism is morally neutral and many times the intellectuals are the worst. And I think we see that here. I don't know of any head of any Holocaust studies department, there may be one, but I haven't seen one who's denounced the genocide. You have a handful of genocide scholars like Omer Bartov, for instance, who have. And I would suspect just about every university in this country has, if not a department, certainly a Holocaust studies program — they've said nothing. And that's to ignore the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which is that when you have the capacity to stop genocide and you do not, you're culpable. And we're all culpable for what's happening now in Gaza. [Break] JU: I want to pivot to Israel's pattern of lying, stalling, investigating, and then later, but only sometimes, quietly admitting wrongdoing. You write about the attempts to obfuscate the al-Ahli hospital explosion where a blast took the lives of a few hundred people. And that exact number varies from both al-Shifa Hospital and the Gaza Health Ministry, but it injured over 300 more people. Could you remind listeners of that tragedy, the spin in the aftermath, and how the response by Israel and its allies is part of a larger, deliberate effort to blur reality? CH: Well, you know, I spent seven years covering this conflict, and a lot of that time in Gaza, I lived in Gaza at a place called the Marna House, which of course doesn't exist anymore. And this is a pattern. So when Israel carries out an atrocity — when I was there they were bombing refugee camps, and they claim that these were, in their words, surgical strikes against a bomb making factory. Well, in fact, when you got to the dense overcrowded alleys, they were just rows of bodies, including children. Whole blocks had been destroyed. But Israel dominates the news cycle by perpetuating their version of events, which is almost uniformly untrue. The Israeli government lies like it breathes. For instance, with the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh, they claim that Hamas militants shot her. It turned out that there was footage and B'Tselem, this great Israeli human rights organization, they proved this to be false. But by the time the information comes out and weeks later, as is the pattern, Israel will concede that yes, maybe she was killed accidentally by — but it doesn't matter, the story is moved on. So in the case that you mentioned they claim that these were errant rockets. Actually, the New York Times noticed that the timestamp on the video that Israel released didn't correspond to, in any way, to when the explosions took place. So we knew it was false, but that's classic. Israel is very media savvy. When I covered Gaza for instance — and this didn't happen in any other conflict I covered — I would be interviewing eyewitnesses and victims, and then the Jerusalem Bureau would just be inserting almost every other paragraph statements from the IDF, from the Israeli Defense Forces, countering what these victims and eyewitnesses said. What it does is essentially neutralize the story and by the end of it, you can believe whatever you want to believe. But that's been exposed. There's only so many lies Israel can tell — that hospitals are command and control centers for Hamas, human shields. The irony is that Israel is the one that uses human shields on a regular basis and because Hamas, the resistance fighters, will booby trap buildings. They will take Palestinian prisoners, put them in Israeli army uniforms, not give them a weapon, and sometimes with their hands tied or their handcuffed, and then force them into tunnels or buildings that are potentially booby trapped ahead of Israeli troops. That's extremely common. But I sense that I —I think with almost two years of this live streamed genocide, I don't sense that Israel's capacity to fool the public is as deft or as effective as it was when a lot of people weren't paying close attention. For instance, a few years ago, there was this horrible scene at Netzarim where a father was sheltering his young son. The young son is killed. It's just the video footage — I can hardly look at the footage anymore from Gaza, it's just I've lost colleagues and friends. Actually, the — it's not so many, I mean, some of them we know have died, but it's more that we hear from them sporadically, and then we just stop hearing from them completely. And I assume they're buried under the rubble. The numbers of dead are far, far, far above the 50-some-thousand, what is it, 56,000 official death count. I would not be surprised if it's 100, 200,000. Atif's, my friend's sister-in-law or family were all killed. Most of them were niece survived, but lost both her legs and an arm. But they're not counted in the records because the numbers of death or the official statistics on death are accumulated either in morgues or in hospitals, which are no longer functioning. That is the way Israel operates. Here they imposed a blockade on food and humanitarian aid on March 2nd, increasing not only widespread malnutrition, but cases of starvation. Then they have destroyed UNRWA, the UN agency that once had 400 distribution points for food. And turned it over to this probably Mossad-created, but certainly Israeli-backed, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which only opens aid distribution points for an hour, and nobody argues they have anywhere near enough aid to feed a desperate population. But they've set these up in southern Gaza as kind of traps or bait to lure Palestinians in. And then when people can't get food and there's rioting and people will crawl, push their way into these centers desperate to get a food package. Most people are carrying knives either to protect themselves or to steal food packages from others. And then Israeli troops and US mercenaries hired by this agency have killed over 700 Palestinians and wounded thousands. But of course, it's not about the distribution of food, it's not about humanitarian aid. It's about creating — luring Palestinians who are desperate into the south, putting them into a closed military zone. They're talking about 600,000 to begin with, which is just a gigantic concentration camp. And that is the next step, of course, is expulsion. Israel is in conversation with countries like Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, and they don't really care where they go. I would not put it beyond Israel to breach the fence. There's a nine mile border between Egypt and Gaza. Parts of that border are literally just a fence. To breach the fence, despite Egyptian objections and pushing Palestinians out. But that's the next step. It is the complete ethnic cleansing, the complete depopulation of Gaza. And that's why if you look closely at footage, you'll see, especially in the north, these heavy bulldozers and excavators that are ripping down buildings that are in rubble. They're clearing it to essentially expand greater Israel, just as they have expanded greater Israel into Lebanon and into Damascus. JU: You also tackle one of the more challenging and nuanced aspects of this conflict, armed struggle and resistance. In 'War As A Force,' you talk about how you're not a pacifist. You write 'There are times when the force wielded by one immoral faction must be countered by a faction that while never moral is perhaps less immoral. We, in the industrialized world, bear responsibility for the world's genocides because we had the power to intervene and did not.' I raise this because I'm curious how you see this ending. If there's a pathway to avoid the total erasure and destruction of Gaza and driving out the Palestinians who remain there. Is there a diplomatic solution or is armed resistance or military intervention the only hope they have left? CH: No, I mean, Hamas has been pretty decimated. And let's be clear, the Palestinians under international law have a right to use armed force to resist what's happening to them. The only solution would be for the United States to suspend or cut all military aid to Israel or a coercive measure taken on the part of countries to create a no-fly zone over Gaza and use naval vessels to break the Israeli blockade to deliver humanitarian aid. I don't see any of that happening. Short of either of those two things happening, Israel will probably succeed and its demented vision of depopulating Gaza, driving people off land that they have lived in for centuries. And of course, they're turning with increasing ferocity on the West Bank. If they get away with Gaza, and I think they will, they'll try the same thing in the West Bank. So, as was true in the war in Bosnia, it was clear to — though I was in, based in Sarajevo during the war — it was clear that only a NATO bombing— So we were completely surrounded. Sarajevo was completely surrounded by Serb heavy artillery. They dug in tanks and these 90 millimeter tank rounds were just used as artillery shells. They were firing Katyusha rockets. Those are bursts of rockets that can take — I've seen it — take down a four story building in a matter of seconds killing everyone inside, usually. The only way it would stop would be to launch airstrikes. And of course, the Bosnian government didn't have any heavy weapons, much less air power. And when that was done, the Serbs were broken. And I supported that action and I support coercive measures to halt the genocide in Gaza. That's what the United States and NATO allies did in northern Iraq. And I was there when Saddam Hussein carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Kurds, and they were dying in the mountain passes. Well, they forced the Iraqis to withdraw below the 38th parallel of Iraq and created a no-fly zone. That's exactly what should be done in Gaza. That's the only way to halt it. JU: For years, you've talked about and written about how war is a stimulant, and it's used to divert people's attention away from societal collapse. What does that collapse look like now? How has the Trump administration's actions impacted your analysis of American decline? CH: Trump is, you know, he's the symptom. He is not the disease. American decline has been long in the making, decades long in the making. Our democratic institutions were eroded and corrupted, and neither of the political parties really function as real political parties. Even the Democratic voters didn't have a say in Kamala Harris's nomination. Ran this vapid issueless, celebrity driven campaign. Which of course failed spectacularly. You know, a figure like Trump arises out of this morass, out of this social decay. It's what I saw in Yugoslavia. So the war in Yugoslavia was not caused by ancient ethnic hatreds. It was caused by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia and also hyperinflation. And it vomited up these Trump-like figures, Radovan Karadžić and Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman. And these demagogues pedal a hyper-masculinity. They're cultish figures. They pedal magical thinking. They prey on the despair and desperation of a population that feels completely betrayed. As the working class in the United States has been betrayed in particular by the Democratic Party. Since Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA in 1994, we've had 30 million mass layoffs. And this has just destroyed— My mother's family all comes from Maine. The mills are all closed. I am intimately familiar with the psychological, economic, and physical toll that this has taken. And of course, in desperation, they have turned to a figure like Trump. I think Trump would have been destroyed by a figure, a candidate like Bernie Sanders who talked the language of the New Deal. I think that's why you're seeing so much support in the mayoral race in New York for Zohran Mamdani. But the Democrats, they betrayed their own base. And what Trump is doing, it's kind of the rule of idiots of late empire. He is accelerating the implosion of empire, the destruction of empire through willfully ignorant and self-serving and counterproductive measures. I'm no fan of the Voice of America. USAID, I watched it work. It was clearly used to manipulate governments. That's why Morales threw them out of Bolivia because if there's a government they don't like, they're running all these quote unquote democracy initiatives, which are really just funding and organizing the opposition. They use aid as a weapon. For instance, in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian government wanted a new airport. USAID was willing to give them money, but they said you always have to oppose Cuba's entry into the organization of American states. I mean, so there's always kind of this quid pro quo, but Trump doesn't even understand how the empire works. And that's characteristic of late empire. He's surrounded himself with sycophants and grifters and con-artists and imbeciles and buffoons. These people are however dangerous, but they don't have a clue as to what they're doing. They have the capacity to destroy, they're destroying the Department of Education, for instance, or the EPA, but they don't have the capacity to build anything. And so if you look at late empire— I studied classics. For instance, if you look at the end of the Athenian Empire or you look at the end of the Roman Empire, you had a very similar phenomenon where those people who manage the empire at the end accelerate the collapse. And that's precisely what Trump is doing. JU: We're also starting to see more elected officials, including a handful on the right, criticize the billions in foreign military aid we send to perpetuate and prolong wars and argue we have more pressing domestic needs that affect people's material conditions. Now, what do you make of this slowly but seemingly growing group of members of Congress? Is there a noticeable shift and what do you think the way forward is? CH: Well, they're responding to a widespread feeling among the population that while they're suffering and while they're distress is not being addressed, we're sending billions of dollars to Israel and Ukraine. But the only way to halt this is to severely cut back the one trillion dollars roughly we give to the Pentagon every year. And they're not going to do that because the military is a state within a state. It can't be defied in the same way that the CIA can't be defied. And that's why the socialist Karl Liebknecht on the eve of World War I called the German military, the enemy from within. And even Bernie Sanders, if you watch, was loathed to take on the military industrial complex. That was a battle he didn't wanna fight. They're not even audited, I don't think the pentagon's been audited for a decade. So you have half of all discretionary spending being poured down a rat hole. These debacles in the Middle East — Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Syria, Gaza — Ukraine, and it of course drives up the debt, which is dangerous. But it also diverts money or there is no money for the most basic social services, whether that's Meals on Wheels or anything else. So that is — Arnold Toynbee, the historian cites an out of control military, an unregulated, uncontrolled military machine as being the common characteristic of the decline of all empires. And I think that is precisely where we are. So yes, you're right. People will raise these issues, but unless they're willing to confront the war industry, and unless they're willing to seriously curtail the money that — we spend more money on the war industry than, I think it's the next eight countries combined, including like Russia and China and everywhere else. So that's how empires die. And I don't see many politicians willing to take on that battle because that would implode their political career. JU: I wanna thank you so much for joining me. 'A Genocide Foretold' is available wherever you get your books now. Do you have anything else you'd like to add and where can people find more of your work? I know I follow you on substack, I've been a day one subscriber. CH: Yeah, So that has everything. And the only thing I would add is just my deep admiration for the students at these universities who've stood up. They're the nation's conscience. For these groups, like Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace, I have unbounded admiration for them. As I do for these very lonely figures like Francesca Albanese, the U.N. repertoire. These are real heroes and when the history of this genocide is written, it will condemn most of us, but it won't condemn them. It's because of their work that people like myself who are outspoken about the genocide are able to continue. JU: Chris, thank you so much for joining us. CH: Thanks, Jordan. JU: That does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing. We want to hear from you. Share your story with us at 530-POD-CAST. That's 530-763-2278. You can also email us at podcasts@ This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow. And transcript by Anya Mehta. Slip Stream provided our theme music. You can support our work at Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven't already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And tell all of your friends about us, better yet, leave us a rating or a review to help other listeners find us. Until next time, I'm Jordan Uhl. Thanks for listening.
The Intercept
3 days ago
- The Intercept
Judge Swallows Prosecutors' Discredited Arguments to Keep Richard Glossip in Jail
In an order that reads like it was written two decades ago, an Oklahoma County judge on Wednesday denied bond for Richard Glossip, keeping him in jail while the state prepares to try him a third time for first-degree murder. In the 18-page document, District Judge Heather Coyle underplays the significance of the U.S. Supreme Court's February ruling that overturned Glossip's most recent conviction. The ruling instead largely adopts the state's theory of the crime that sent Glossip to death row — while ignoring volumes of evidence that have been discovered in the intervening years. 'Having considered the record, arguments of all parties, and the exhibits submitted by the parties, the court finds that the state has sufficiently shown by clear and convincing evidence that the presumption of the defendant's guilt of a capital offense is great,' Coyle wrote. 'Accordingly, the court finds Mr. Glossip's request for bond should be, and is hereby, denied.' The order comes despite last week's revelation that, in a 2023 email exchange, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond agreed to a tentative plea deal that would have allowed Glossip to walk free. The correspondence, first reported by The Intercept, is at the heart of a motion filed by Glossip's defense attorneys who have asked Coyle to enforce what they describe as a legally binding agreement. The state has responded by denying that the deal was ever reached, but the judge has yet to rule on the matter. Glossip was twice convicted of the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese inside room 102 of the rundown motel his family owned on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. A 19-year-old maintenance man named Justin Sneed admitted to bludgeoning Van Treese to death, but insisted Glossip put him up to it. Sneed, who is currently serving a life sentence, escaped the death penalty by becoming the star witness against Glossip. Read Our Complete Coverage Until recently, it was clear that Sneed had been discredited as a witness — including by Drummond. After taking office in 2023, Drummond ordered an independent investigation into Glossip's case, concluding that he had lost confidence in Glossip's conviction. Drummond took unprecedented steps to block Glossip's execution and to overturn his conviction, successfully arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that Sneed — the state's once 'indispensable witness' — had lied on the witness stand. Drummond now seems determined to go forward with trying Glossip for murder a third time using the same evidence previously used to convict him. During a June bond hearing, prosecutors offered nothing new, instead asking the judge to review the transcripts from Glossip's 1997 preliminary hearing and his 2004 trial. That appears to have been enough for Coyle. In her order denying Glossip bond, the judge relies heavily on Sneed's prior testimony while suggesting there are other witnesses who could bolster the state's case against Glossip. But for the most part, these other witnesses offered nothing more than circumstantial evidence that called into question Glossip's behavior after Van Treese's murder. Glossip was originally charged as an accessory after the fact for initially failing to give police information about the murder. The night Van Treese was killed, Glossip said, Sneed had woken him up around 4 a.m. by knocking on the wall of his apartment, which was adjacent to the motel's office. Standing outside with a black eye, Sneed told Glossip he had chased off some drunks who had broken a window in one of the motel rooms. According to Glossip, he asked Sneed about his black eye, and Sneed flippantly replied, 'I killed Barry.' It wasn't until the next morning, when no one could find Van Treese, that Glossip realized Sneed might have been serious. Still, Glossip didn't tell the cops right away; he said his girlfriend suggested waiting until they figured out what was going on. In her order, Coyle relies on witnesses who describe things Glossip did that suggest he covered up his knowledge of the crime — including that Glossip had helped Sneed put plexiglass over the broken window of the room where Van Treese was killed. Coyle cited in particular the notion that Glossip was trying to steer people away from Room 102, in an apparent attempt to ensure that Van Treese's body would not be discovered. 'Multiple witnesses support that Mr. Glossip followed through with this plan,' Coyle wrote, emphasizing her point in bold. The fact remains, however, that these accounts only look damning through the lens of Sneed's story about Glossip being in on the murder itself. Aside from Sneed's already discredited testimony, there is still no evidence to support this. While prosecutors have offered nothing new to support the position that Glossip is a murderer, his defense team has spent more than a decade uncovering new evidence and new witnesses that not only point to Sneed as the sole perpetrator of the crime, but also reveal that the state hid and destroyed evidence before Glossip's 2004 retrial. At the bond hearing and in court briefs, Glossip's attorneys tried to offer Coyle much of this evidence — including letters Sneed wrote expressing his desire to recant his testimony against Glossip. They also said several of the witnesses the state relied on have since died — meaning the defense would have no opportunity to cross-examine them about new and previously undisclosed evidence. While Coyle said she would consider some of the defense's new information, her ultimate order reflects that she didn't consider any of it — save for a single paragraph noting that the Supreme Court had overturned Glossip's conviction. As for the prosecution's star witness, 'if the state had wanted the court to actually consider the testimony of Mr. Sneed in making this bond determination, it could have called him as a witness at the hearing,' Glossip's lawyers wrote. 'Its failure to do [so], and to instead ask the court to rely on thoroughly discredited testimony, speaks volumes as to their confidence in Sneed's credibility today.'
