June 9, 2025 • 41 mins
James talks with Charles McBryde about his recent trip to the West Bank, the disastrous Gaza Humanitarian Fund, and the ongoing Gaza blockade.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
It's me James today and I'm joined by my friend
and yours, Charles McBride, documentary filmmaker, humanitarian activist, writer. And
you've just been in Palestine, is that right, Charles, Yeah,
just got back like a week and a half ago. Nice, welcome,
Welcome to America and the Free Damn, that's a rough transition. Actually,
(00:28):
thank you for thank you for joining us so soon
after you got back. So there's a lot to talk about, right,
Like I feel as if in like legacy media, when
there is less discussion of Palestine recently, maybe just because
I'm seeing so much domestic US coverage like twenty four
to seven, right, we're in another like Trump news cycle,
(00:48):
but especially with reference to the West Bank. Actually, like
can you look update people on the last maybe you know,
maybe in the time you were there, and then what's
especially what's happening in the West Bank, Cause I think
that's going to even less coverage.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Sure, So I've taken two trips for the West Bank
in the past year. Yeah, So August of last year
May of this year. I noticed a rapid deterioration just
between those two time periods. So, I mean, it was
bad last year when we went. That was right when
I was when my team went there to begin our documentary,
(01:21):
they had just launched this new operation in the West Bank,
which was pretty much the largest ground operation they'd launched
the Israelis had launched since the Second Antipada, and it
was targeted at the northern refugee camps of Tolkom, Nurse Shams,
and Jeanine. A lot of people know Janine, they've heard
that in the news. You know, it's relatively familiar. Not
a lot of people realize that the situation in Tolkoom
(01:43):
and in Norsham's is quite similar, and those three camps
in particular were targeted by the IDF operation. On the
second trip, we couldn't even we couldn't even get to
those places, not with the UNREP personnel that we were
supposed to go with our documentaries on unrout the United
Nation Relief Works Agency for Palestigne Refugees. And last time
(02:04):
we were there, they were able to bring us to
the camp. They showed us where the Israelis had you know,
bulldozed their facilities and done various air strikes in the camp.
This time they couldn't even take us there. So we
went to other camps and said camp, everyone's spirits were low.
Lots of people were talking about West Bank annexation as
if it seemed like an inevitability.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Yeah, And I actually spent some time inside forty eight
on this trip, and I went down to Yafa and
to Tel Aviv and interviewed some long time kind of
liberal journalists from Aritz, and they were just talking about
how the shift in Israeli society over the last year
has been quite marked as well, particularly around the question
of just generally ethnically cleansing Gaza, which was something that was,
(02:49):
according to his telling, like really only heard in very
right wing circles like Connie circles over the past a
couple of decades and is now just pretty routinely heard
across the spectrum Israeli society that the best solution to
this is to just deport everyone from Gaza.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, that's pretty bleak, Like, I mean, I guess the
process of manufacturing consent has been pretty pretty successful and
pretty complete in that sense, Like just the dehumanization of
Palestinian people has been pretty successful at least there. I
guess if people aren't familiar. We should just like explain
that Palestine is well. The areas which are now like
(03:30):
legally allotted to Palestinians, I guess, are not contiguous, right,
Gaza in the West Bank at different areas separated by Israel,
and like the bulk of what you have seen in
the last two years has been Israel's war on the
people of Gaza, but the West Bank is a different
and larger area which has also seen significant is really
(03:51):
like military aggression and violence from settlers, right, like a
paramilitary aggression, I guess you could call it. People I
think maybe have heard of ANRA or maybe will at
least be familiar with seeing it. Can you explain what
the agency does? It's a unique agency, right, Like it
doesn't work anywhere else in the world. It's quite a
(04:12):
unique thing to this Israel Palestine context.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
So ANRO is probably the most controversial UN agency, and
that has everything to do with the context in which
it was founded. It was explicitly set up in coordination
between the United States, the newly founded State of Israel,
and the Arab League, coming to the United Nations and
presenting a plan to deal with the displacement of seven
(04:36):
hundred thousand Palestinians from their home as a result of
Nakba in nineteen forty eight. So out of that context,
it's designed as a temporary aid refugee organization. Yeah, it
actually it's it's set up before un HCR, so it's
mandated specifically for the Palestinians, and the Palestinians don't end
up falling under UNHDR when it's established. So a lot
(05:00):
of particularities about UNRA that make it different from other
UN agencies, which is also something that the Israelis like
to highlight because they're engaged in a multi decade credibility
campaign against UNRA.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
But to the extent that it is.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Almost entirely staffed by Palestinians, it is quite different than
other UN agencies, which typically involve multinationals international personnel. Now,
a lot of the higher leadership at UNRA is still
kind of your same international diplomats, but in the words
of the Zionist academic that I interviewed for this documentary,
(05:38):
most of those have quote unquote gone native. So most
of the international diplomats do tend to, you know, obviously
be quite sympathetic to the conditions which the Palestinian staff
are working under. So my documentary is a it's an
investigative documentary to some extent, and it uses the frame
(05:59):
narrative the Israeli allegations that UNRA had been infiltrated by
Hamas and that unrepersonnel had taken place in the October
seventh massacres. Yeah, it uses that as a hook and
a frame narrative to talk about what is this organization?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Why did it go from something that was set up
as a temporary relief organization to seventy seven years later
it is responsible for maintaining the livelihood and well being
of five point nine million registered Palastinian refugees, not only
in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but also
in Syria, in Lebanon, and in Jordan. So the politics
(06:35):
of it get very hazy, very quickly. But it's kind
of an inconvenient thing for everyone because the organization was
explicitly designed to end after a few years, but the
assumption was after a few years there would have been
a political resolution to the Israeli Palacinian conflict. There has
not been, and here we are seventy six, seventy seven
years later, and we're still at that point, so UNRA
(06:56):
still exists. One of the ironic things we found when
filming documentary is that everyone involved in this process wants
this organization to go away. Yeah, Israel Is, the Palestinians,
the staff themselves. The only thing they disagree on is
when and under what conditions? Why?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, I think it's Yeah, it's very interesting, like as
refuge agencies go. Because like just I was recently reading
Sally Hayden's or rereading Sally Hayden's book about refugees in Libya. Right,
it's called My Fourth Time We Drowned. It's an excellent book.
If people haven't read it, that you read it, very
good audiobook as well that they incorporated some of the
voice notes you got from the refugees, which I think
(07:34):
is good. And as it's typical of United Nations refugee
workers in many areas, the bulk of them end up
living or spending a lot of time in Tunisia, right,
like not in Libya and coming in like in you know,
the typical image that you see of the United Nations
is like a bunch of people in white land cruisers, right,
and they pull up and they do their thing and
they leave they're not either part of the population or
(07:57):
even with the population, and they often criticize for this
around the world, right, And they're very susceptible to like
state narratives, right, Like in Libya there's there's all kinds
of evacuations of corruption or like sort of state capture.
I guess, so an agency that is supposed to be
international and supposed to be impartial, and they're supposed to,
above all things, advocate for refugees, right, And sometimes you
(08:18):
can see at tension between the IOM and the UNHCR
of this kind of shit. It's different with UNRA, right, Like,
like they are from what I've heard from Palestinian friends,
like more respected by Palestinian people because of the work
that they do and the value that they provide.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Yeah, I mean, I would say like trust in UNRA
is probably higher than in the Palestinian authority. The PA
is largely seen as a contractor or subcontractor for Israel, right,
and UNRA is seen, you know, as flawed. I mean,
there are a lot of Palestinians who are deeply critical
of UNRA, particularly the constant efforts it takes to sort
(08:56):
of remain neutral on all of these political questions. Yeah,
and you know, inefficiencies that are going to come with
any multinational institution in Goo. Yeah, of course, but in
general they seem to I mean, at this point, we've
interviewed dozens of people who had various relationship whether they
had gone to unreschools or they had taken you know,
they had been to unrehealth clinics, and by and large
(09:18):
they preferred these and they saw the value in UNRA.
They liked the unreschools, they liked the unrahealth clinics. UNRA
is largely responsible for the fact that Palestinians are one
of the most literate populations in the Middle East, and
many of them speak English incredibly well. I mean, like, yeah,
it's wild talking to an eight or nine year old
(09:39):
girl who grew up in a refugee camp and she's
speaking to me in perfect English talking about how she
wants to move to Los Angeles and become an actress,
and it's just it's wild. And that's kind of a
testament to what UNDRA has done. And that's very inconvenient
for Israel because when you educate a lot of refugees
who can then learn English and turn around and speak
to the world very eloquent ways about the nature of
(10:01):
their oppression and their suffering. It becomes an ideological barrier
to your particular political project.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Right, And this is one of the things that has
distinguished the genocide in Gaza in terms of like how
it's been perceived in the US at least, right, is that, like,
you have a very literate population that is able to
articulate what is happening directly via social media and to
traditional media, right, like to people like yourself making documentaries
(10:31):
like this is distinct from populations like I think of
the Rahinga right, Like, you know, I speak to Rahinga
people pretty often, but I don't think most Americans see
Rahingah folks if they go on TikTok or or Instagram,
and you know, as a result, I think people would
have cared as deeply. You know, people would have been
(10:51):
in the streets for that, but that communication wasn't that
And yeah, it is extremely inconvenient if your project isn't
an ethno state, right, and you're willing to cleanse areas
of other ethnicities to build your ethno state in it,
which is what's happening, then it's very convenient if there's
people you're trying to cleanse can talk to the world,
(11:11):
you know, in a language of the world understands and
very eloquently and make their case for not being ethnically cleansed.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
No, it is tribute to the work that ANRA has done.
You know what, I guess we should do. I guess
we should take an advertising break right now. So let's
do that.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
We'll come back.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
All right, we are back. Let's talk about the alternative
to UNRA. Alternative is a wrong word. Let's talk about
the attempt to make an end run around unrous existence
by installing this fascical NGO.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
I guess you could call it an d O or
like AID Provider.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
This is a gaza humanitarian fund people who aren't familiars
synthetic GENRA alternatives. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's unstitute, like the
zine of UNRA. You know. Okay, so what what's going
on with the guy? Let's talk about what it is
and what it claims to do first, and then we'll
talk about how it's not doing it very well or
at all, Like people are fucking dying in droves.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah, Mile High View.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
UNRA maintains most of the aid going in and out
of Gaza. Everyone I know in the humanitarian world has
had to interface at least to some degree with UNRA
during the aid process, and that's difficult because it has
been essentially been declared a terrorist entity by the Israeli
(12:40):
government and has been banned from operating inside what Israel
considers to be its territory, including occupied East Jerusalem and
increasingly in the West Bank. They're trying to limit its
operations and in Gaza they say they can't work with
them because they're Hamas. So it's the UNER people are
quite confused because they they've had to deconflict with the
Israelis for this entire time, and recently as a result
(13:02):
of this law, it's actually become illegal under Israeli law
for the Israelis to like coordinate with UNRA, and so
the UNRA of people don't have been Actually they don't
really understand what's going to happen. There's been some limited coordination,
but still we talk to people who are very high
up in the organization and they essentially had no idea
what the Israelis were planning to do to replace NRA
(13:23):
or to coordinate with them in Gaza, and so They
just kept kind of doing their thing until the Israelis
literally made them stop in certain instances. Right. Yeah. My
documentary is called the War on UNRA, and part of
this war has been the propaganda efforts and the Israelis
going after this organization and everyone in the humanitarian aid
world has sort of been asking the question, well, what
(13:43):
are you going to do to replace it? This is
an organization that deals with like two million people in
Gaza and like three million in the West Bank. Not
all of those are registered with UNRAP, but it's dealing
with all of the refugee camps there in Gaza itself
is a refugee camp, like it only exists as such
as a result of the AKA, because it's where they
put all of the displaced people who weren't in Jordan.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
And so the Israelis basically.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Had their backskins wall and they're like, Okay, well we
have to come up with some alternative to this because
we can't come out and say, actually, our main goal
is to depopulate Gaza and settle it. Yeah. Yeah, and
so they cooked up this idea of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund,
which was kind of this public private partnership backed by
the Israelis and the Americans, and the intention was to
(14:30):
entirely subvert not only UNRU, but the entire UN infrastructure
that goes into the Gaza strip. For instance, every UN
agency in the world actually piggybacks off of the World
Food Program because they're always the first ones in. So
it's WFP infrastructure, trucks, you know, vehicles, everything like that
that goes in first, and then UNHCR, UNISEF all this
(14:53):
thing they're piggybacking, coordinating with WFP. In this instance, WFP
is coordinating with UNRA.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
The Israelis.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
One did not only buy RA, they wanted to just
put the entire UN system out of that. So to
do that, they formed this sort of collaborative partnership under
the management of the Israelis, which was supposed to be
kind of an amalgam of all of these different private NGOs.
And I don't want to get too much into the
specifics of like who sort of was involved in that,
(15:20):
but a lot of people kind of took them at
face value. They wanted this to be a real solution,
and so they offered to help and kind of set
up this system which was supposed to be overseen entirely
by the Israelis and the Americans from a security perspective.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
One of those was Jake woodho was the founder of
Team Rubicon, which is an organization that does a fair
amount of excellent work all around the world. He resigned
from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund a day before it launched
and went on record saying we cannot actually do this
while keeping to humanitarian principles of humanity and neutrality, which
was a signal to the world that this was a
(15:57):
highly politicized project, which is precisely what the World Food
Program under the leadership of radical leftist activist Cindy McCain
has been saying about this from the start. And you know, UNROE,
Felipe Lazarini, the head of UNRA, said this is this
is a clearly political sized event on the only the
un system is the only one capable of actually dealing
(16:17):
with this in a humanitarian way. All those concerns were
brushed aside. American contractors were brought in. Yeah, and the
results were relatively predictable. We've seen at this point two
pseudo massacres, I mean the first one with that four
Palestinians were killed in just this morning twenty seven Palestinians
were killed at a GHF distribution after gunfire was opened
(16:39):
up on them.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah, we're recording on the third gene, so that was
when this this second massacre occurred. And yeah, like, I
mean just today as we're recording this, I've seen that
Boston Consulting Group again, like not exactly, like a bastion
of wokeness has terminated this relationship with the Gods Humanitarian Foundation, right, Like,
the kind of see that this is a replacement for
(17:02):
UNRA to begin with was somewhat fascical, right, But people
who were prepared to go along with that, either because
they can make money doing it or because they thought
this was the only way to stop people starving, are
still deciding that, having seen the way that this is run,
it's not worth it, right, right, And.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
There's also some political heavy handedness going on with this,
one of the most obvious features being specific aid distribution
points in the south of Gaza, which are designed to
bring you know, whereas UNRA and WFP were going to people,
they were trying to get food through as much of
the Gaza strip as possible, including people who wanted to
return to their homes in the North, the GHF is like, nope,
(17:43):
you starving population will need to make the journey to
this distribution point and this distribution point only, which you
know has the political effect of depopulating these areas that
you know, Israel is operating in. Yeah, which of course
is also met criticism. There are some videos going around
so impalston In celebrating yeah, you know, the relief efforts
of the of the JHEF. I think some of them
(18:03):
have been like verified by Reuters. You know, Israeli media
is making hay of that. You know, people praising Trump
in Gaza, right, which you know, these people are starving
and they're very happy to get aid.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
That doesn't mean that like everything is above board and cool, right.
It means that like the people who need a food
got food.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
Yeah, I mean, and that's the political complexity. The situation
is that the people of Gaza have just been abandoned
by everyone, right, I mean, there's there's there's a lot
of criticism to be a haad of how Hamas has
handled this. There's a lot of criticism to be had
of obviously the way in which Israel has behaved and
the UN system and the international system. So I mean,
I'm glad that like some of them are getting food. Yeah,
(18:42):
that is that is an improvement of none of them
getting food. But everyone in the AID world is starting
to go on record saying the main problem is Israel
preventing AID from going into the Gaza strip. And actually
I want to harp on that a little bit because
the reason that has been given primarily for that is
that Hamas is stealing the AID. Every time they're asked
about this, they go back to, well, we want to
(19:03):
get into people gaza. Unfortunately Hamas keeps stealing the aid
and so we can't allow it. We need to allow
us to trickle in. Yeah, that's interesting for two reasons.
First of all, the yet to provide any evidence that
that's actually occurring, and second because all humanitarian experts agree
that even if that was the case, say everything is
real said about Hamas was true, and they were stealing
you know, ninety ninety five percent of the eight that's
(19:24):
coming in and selling it back, the humanitarian solution to
that would be to flood the strip with so much
AID that it would literally be impossible for them to
like to stop that, which we can't do, Like, yeah,
it would be possible for us to flood the Gaza
strip with so much aid that it would be like
an abundance of food. So the decision not to do
that is a political one.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Yes, definitely, Like I was going to say, on the
face of it, it doesn't matter. There are lots of situations,
to be clear, where people steal aid. It's undesirable, of
course it is. But yeah, the solution is more aid,
not like unfortunately the aid has been stolen, so now
they children must have. Yeah, that only works if you're
prepared to accept the outcome in which little children die
(20:03):
of starvasues.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Which the Israelis are. They're perfectly I mean this near
was a University of Pennsylvania poll. I'm not saying eighty
four percent of Israelis are in favor of the idea
of just simply either killing or displacing everyone in the
gardsa eighty four percent.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, it's wild to see.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Like it's been such a strange couple of years in
that sense, right, because more people in this country are
aware of the plight of the people of Palestine than
ever have been, and more people are engaged with it.
That is mostly good. Some people have been gaged to
it in a way which is far from good. Right, Like,
I don't think there's really very much be gained. Fucking
(20:44):
throwing molotov cocktails people in Boulder is not making anything
better for anyone. It's just making everything danger more dangerous
for everyone. And it's fucking stupid.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
And I would extend that to gunning down yes, so
would I. Yeah, Israeli a couples outside the Jewish music
in DC. I don't think that's necessarily the best way
to help people in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
No, Like, yeah, standing outside the ventf Jewish people in
fucking shooting random people.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
It's not that.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Again, it doesn't make anyone safer. It makes all of
us left safe, And like it does nothing to stop
people dying and starving in Gaza, and like that's it's
not the crux of the problem, I guess, But like
that is a problem, right, that people are engaging with Gaza,
but nothing is helping people here. Know how bad it
is that children are starving in Gaza, but that hasn't
(21:29):
changed the fact that children are starving in Gaza. In fact,
like you know, I've said it's a lot of times
that I moved her in two thousand and eight, and
I had engaged with the movement before that in the
UK right and the situation passed time to be was
very different then, but like it wasn't something that people
had heard of here for the most part, unless you
were within like certain leftist or sort of people have
(21:52):
maybe they're like Middle East an extraction would know about it.
Of course, now people do know, and all over the
world people know, and we've seen huge marches. Right, Like,
the situation is worse than it's ever been, I mean,
not ever being the knuck boll is pretty fucked too.
But as the world looks on, right, like, the gender
side continues and people continue dying, and seemingly the acceptance
of the Guard of Humanitarian Foundation by states of the
(22:16):
world is really troubling, right, Like we're concentrating this starving
population in a small area. It's contrary to everything that
humanitarian principles stand for. And oh no, we don't see
I mean, there is a very ready alternative. It's whether
anyone is willing to step up and tell Araee to
stop stopping aid entering the Guard like this could end
(22:41):
in my estimation, like very quickly. Right, we have enough
aid and even aid in the regent to feed all
those people right now if we needed to.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's there's tens of millions of pounds
of food rotting and warehouses and Jordan and Egypt right
now just waiting to go across the border.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, and people dying.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
It's the lack of political will, mostly on behalf of
the United States, you know, but also I think the
members of the Abraham Accords and the EU. Yeah, it's
a devastating indictment. And I think the interesting thing about
it is it truly pulls the mask off of the
quote unquote rules based world order. Yeah, the US led
(23:18):
rules based world order, because you just I mean, it's
just so obvious that no matter how many people want
this terrible thing to end, that we're saying this very
obvious genocide is being livestream to our phones, the powers
that be are too invested to to let it stop.
You know, they're they're into the hill. We've already seen
the degree to which the United States is compromised in
(23:42):
its in its media and and government storytelling in relation
to Israel Palestine. Did the long unwillingness of people to
speak up about this followed by the very rapid turnaround
of people who are now rats fleeing the ship. Yeah,
seeing the unmistakable reality of this genocide. And you know
(24:05):
it's like everyone says, once this is done, everyone will
pretend they were against it from the start. And you're
now starting to see that, right, you know with like
the former White House Press secretary.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Yeah, yeah Miller, Right yeah, Miller.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Was like, yeah, they've been committing war crimes than they
were doing it while I was there, But I didn't
speak on my behalf. I was speaking on behalf of
the United States.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Government, right, yeah, the old the old Neumberg defense. M Yeah,
they like I was just doing my job thing, which
like is not actually don't actually excuse for participating in
war crimes, and like should have been an excuse for
apologizing or excusing them, might there.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Right, It's I know that you guys have talked about
and that Wi'll have spoilers for this, but I know
you guys have recently had a series Unpacking and Or,
which is my favorite TV show. Yeah, and I was
just so happy that they snuck that one line in
about when Cyril asks what they're doing here and she
just says following orders.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Yeah, how often we can I hear that in the
next few years, I guess.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Yeah, it's so predictable, right like, every time this happens,
right like, And this isn't the first time the United
Nations has basically allowed it. Genocide tappened right under its nose. No,
and it probably won't be the last, because, as you said,
right like, the idea that we have a rules based
world order, it's a lie. It's a myth that exists
(25:26):
to make people feel better and feel like this stuff
couldn't happen again. But like you know, we have ICC
warrants for people who are traveling freely around the world.
It doesn't matter that the ICC can't enforce its own warrants,
right like you can say something for war crime, it
doesn't matter, Like, no one's the war police aren't going
(25:48):
to go and arrest all the people doing it.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Yeah, it's mostly just kind of a Yeah, it's kind
of a placebo, and I'm not really sure what the
function it serves. I mean, I'm not a big international
institutions enjoyer. Like, I'm deeply skeptical of the United Nations
in almost every one of its aspects. My team and
I've taught several times about the point that this documentary
has that weirdly, like it's improved our trust in international
(26:15):
and geos just because we're seeing like the degree to
which UNRA is operating on increasingly less budget every year
and still managing to be effective.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
I think a huge part of that is again, it
is staffed by the local population who are from these areas,
and they have a duty and a commitment to care
to their people.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
But in general, no, I mean, I don't understand what
the point of the UN is if you don't give
it the US military, Like I mean, if as an anarchist,
I don't believe that this is a great solution to things.
But like, if you wanted to enforce the U in
you would need the World Police, Like you would need
to just use the United States to like hunt down
these people, Yeah, and utilize it's eight hundred military bases
(26:52):
in every country to enforce these rules.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
And we don't really yet we allow these things to happen.
But yeah, I'm the biggest national institutions enjoy either, Like
I've seen the UN be fugging useless in most continents
that people live on. I would really like it though,
if they would do something to stop the suffering of
the people of Palestine. Like, it doesn't mean I wouldn't
be happy. It doesn't mean I'm not happy when I
speak to guys from PK, guys that we've had on
(27:15):
our show several times, right, Like when they talk to
us about like where should we send money, They'll be like, oh,
Unerawa able to get my family some food this week
or whatever. Like I'm happy to hear that, and I'm
glad that they're there, Glad that they were there at
that time. I guess. So, like, what does the future
(27:44):
hold for the guys of Humanitarian Foundation? Seems to be
falling apart within a very short period of this whole
thing being stood up, which is unsurprising, Right, can you explain,
like what does it take for a that lives up
to basic humanitarians to get in there?
Speaker 4 (28:01):
I think that's a really difficult question to answer because
we have bribed so many options. Yeah, I mean truly,
I mean the last time I think I was on
this podcast, it was to talk about my colleagues at
the World Central Kitchen who got killed in Gaza. That
was an attempt to try and alleviate the suffering of the
Palace sitting people and it had predictable results. You know.
(28:23):
There's all these groups have been operating in there to
the extent that they can and the result has been
too little, too late. And everyone is saying, from Sydney
McCain at the World Through Program, to Philippe Lazarreni, to
you know, Lese andres like from the private sector, everyone
is saying, the reason this is a problem has nothing
to do with the moths. It has everything to do
(28:44):
with about that Israel is restricting the amount of aid
going to the Gaza Strip. And now everyone's waking up
and asking the obvious question of like, well, why are
they actually doing that? And in the answer corresponds to
those polls we see that indicate that, you know, yeah,
fifty percent of Israeli society is open to killing everyone
in the Gaza Strip. Any four percent are open to
displacing them all. This is just what Israel wants. And
(29:06):
I think the humanitarian world is slowly swallowing that very
difficult pill. And I don't I can't really tell you
what comes next outside of a political resolution.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, which seems higher and how to come by in
the current international climate, Like certainly it's not coming from
the US, right, Like.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Yeah, I mean like something to watch would be that
Senator Welch from Vermont introduced a bill to immediately refund UNRA. Okay, yeah,
and it has it has a house a correl it
with I think, yeah, Congresswoman Jayapaul and a few others
who are trying to kind of push that through. I mean,
the United States funds three hundred million dollars, which is
(29:45):
about over a third of un annual budget, and we've
restricted that funding for the past year and a half. Yeah,
so if we restore that, I think that would be
a big signal to Israel that like, we're not playing
ball anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
I just think when you have a rubber stamp Congress
and a fascist president that's probably unlikely to pass.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
That's a big reach. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I actually think this is an area where elected officials
are to the right of Trump supporters on this one.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I think, like, you.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Know, I spend a lot of time in rural East
County San Diego, right, Like, I talk to people who
have very different politics to my own. Yeah, it's a
nice way of saying that, but like I've had people
who straight up I'm sure voted for Trump. Be like, man,
they're letting little children staff, Like what the fuck is
wrong with you know? Like like I think it's an
area where a more sensible politics would be able to
(30:35):
build consensus.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
But here we are, right, yeah, I mean, and there
is no opposition, Like the Democrats are not an opposition party.
They're just happy being like the junior partners in fascism.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Yeah, they're having a little party today where they're giving
out tacos because they're trying to somehow encourage Trump to
go ahead with more sanctions and tariffs and more genocides.
I guess, like I don't quite know what the Trump
always chickens out, like, well, I'm glad you stick it
out with the tariffs, isn't isn't that a good thing?
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Like yeah, like what are you trying to what are
you trying to say here? I think maybe I don't
want to confront what they're trying to say. But this
is a thing that like at the current time, like
it needs state action to stop it. Yeah, we do
not have an organization which which is able to mobilize
people in such a way that they can stop it.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Like and that is it's really desperate.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
If you care right, because the states of the world
very clearly for decades and decades and decades have been
unconcerned with Palestinian people and their wellbeing, and they're not
doing shit about it now. I think there are still
people who are able to make a meaningful benefit to
the lives of people in the West Bank. Right. I
understand why people are hopeless when they when they look
(31:45):
at what's happening to you guys, and I understand why
it seems bleak and it seems like there's nothing you
can do. Are there things that like concrete actions, organizations,
groups that you think people can engage with and we've
heard from some them on the show before, right to
be in a sort of dearity way or to help people.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
In the West Bank.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Yeah, you know, I think, like I honestly, I think
there are people who could probably better answer this question
for me who've actually gone and done protected presence operations
in the West Bank. I know that they're like the
people in Massafayatta are often asking for foreigners to come
and do that, and a lot of people will go
through like Jordan Valley Solidarity or ism or something like that.
(32:26):
I'm usually one to discourage foreigners from jumping feet first
into a HoriZone with great intentions and no knowledge of
the language or everything that's going on. Yeah, but there
does seem to be a genuine call from amongst the
Palestinian community in the West Bank to have people who
are willing to physically get in between you know, Alistinian
villages and settlers and the IDF. Yeah, so that is
(32:49):
a concrete thing you can do. That's a dangerous thing
to ask somebody to do.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, I don't think it's something people should rush into, right,
Like we've interviewed people who have been shot.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Doing Yeah, exactly. A young woman was killed doing that, Yeah,
a shunar Agi. She was shot feet away from my
friend who was just in the West Bank and he
just got banned from the entire territory for ninety nine years.
And I was talking to him about that because I
wonder about, like, you know, my work, and sometimes I
feel like I'm not going far enough of my solidarity
(33:20):
because I'm doing this investigative documentary and I'm not physically
putting my body on the line. Yeah. Sure, but I
can still go to the country, Like my support for
the Palestinians is still ongoing. So I think people need
to ask themselves, do I want to take one drastic
measure to like show this is my solidarity with Ausiginn
in an instant. Yeah, whether it's joining like a flotilla
(33:41):
that might get airstrikes, or you know, setting yourself on
fire outside the Israeli embassy, or do I want to
like contribute in the ways that I can as best
I can. I mean, I'm a storyteller, right, so I said,
I need to find a story that I can tell
about the Palestinian that will humanize them. Yeah, in the
eyes of people who are not naturally sympathetic. And I
(34:02):
think a lot of people think that they need to
be putting their body on the line. Or it's like
I talk about this with disaster relief all the time,
Like disaster happens and people see you on the TV,
They're like, I need to be wearing a high viz
best and distributing a box of aid to someone. Yeah,
It's like, no, you probably don't. Actually, Like the thing
that you can best do to help people is probably
the skill that you've been perfecting in your own career
(34:23):
as well as like, yeah, in your own life, right,
if you're good at spreadsheets, you can help people get
access to housing.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, one hundred percent. You know, if you're good, if
you're good at.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Lifting things, then maybe you should be lifting boxes. But like,
I have a friend who's the Emmy Award winning director
of photography, and he's like, I have a truck and
I can lift everything's and like show me where to go.
And he was hitting me up the entire like first
two weeks of the LA fires, being like where should
I go? And I was like me, you're an Emmy
Award winning videography. Tell the story of the fires, find
(34:53):
the survivors, like bring their stories to life and let
the world see what our community looks like. And he
did that and it went amazing. Yeah, So, like I
think people should think about when they want to help.
You know, if you are a seramicist or you sew,
or you're a musician write a song about gods. Like,
there's so many ways to help that don't involve physically
(35:14):
putting yourself in between a settler and they're in for
and a Palestinian family whose language you can't speak.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Like there's and we see that with border stuff, right,
Like everyone wants to do hike out to the border
and drug water, or you know, everyone wanted to in
Cumber right, Like a lot of people wanted to help us,
and people did help us, and it was amazing, it
was really beautiful. But like people were also able to
help the skills they had, like making jewelry and selling
it or baby doing a benefit gig. Right, there's a
(35:41):
long tradition of anna kiss benefit gigs, like it's a
thing that we do do a zine, yeah, like you
a punk concert, you know, yeah, yeah, many many such
cases like within doing that, there's the intangible benefit of
showing people that people care about them, like all around
the world.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I remember, you know.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Just recently, I saw people from the Karini Nationalities Defense Force, right,
so one of the revolutionary organizations in Miamma making a
statement about solidarity to people of Palestine and to their children.
And you know that they too have experienced their children
being killed, they too have experienced these bombing runs and
state oppression, and that like they see them and they
care about them, and even in their own time of war,
(36:23):
like the front in Karini state is hot right now,
that they are still thinking of the people of Palestine.
I saw Palestinian people were very touched by this, right,
Like it does Obviously you can't eat someone's good thoughts,
but like there are things you can do, like because yeah,
you can't be down there right now giving people a
sandwich as much as you'd like to, and for some
people that's either not possible or maybe just not the
(36:45):
best use of their time. And like, I think it's
a really good message. Everyone's good as something do, like,
find the thing that you're good at and use that
to help people. I think is really valuable. Is there
anything else you'd like to share with people before you
finish up here?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, I just think I would.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
This was a dark conversation because I don't really see
a way out of this humanitarian situation. But I think
there's a degree to which that's been the case from
the start. Right. The real trick of the imperial thought
machine is that the pace of oppression outstrips our ability
to understand it. Yeah, to quote theory Twink charisenemic. But
(37:21):
don't lose hope, right, because the world does care about
Palestine more than it ever has. Yeah, they feel that
the people there feel our love, they feel our solidarity,
and that is not valueless right, Like, ye, no human
is useless. Who lightens the burden of another. I was
(37:42):
depressed as hell coming back from this recent drip to
Palaestigne and I went to the mountains and mets. We
met with a bunch of people who were just really
energetic about like Kalesidian solidarity and really cared about it,
and it was like, yeah, it was so nice to
go from that and just be able to tell my
Palestinian fans like, hey, by the way, we just spent
an entire week talk about what we can do to
alleviate to some small degree the suffering that your people
(38:04):
are going through. That matters. Yeah, Like every small act,
every little thing, right, the small deeds of ordinary folk.
That's what keeps the darkness is bay.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Yeah, and that's really deprescient. Often, like refugees will say
to me, scientias will say to me, in the last
six months, now, I guess that I think Americans don't
care about them anymore, and that really fucking breaks my heart,
like more than I can express with words, because I
care about those people so much.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And like it does.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Make a difference when they see people doing things, and
they can be small things, but like I know how
much set lifts up somebody in dark times, Like, yeah,
because I've been with them in pretty dark times. So yeah,
it does make a difference. And like if that's what
you can do, then then people shouldn't think is valueless.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
Yeah, and also UNI pressure people, you know, continue to
make people embarrassed for the Yeah, for believing in genocide.
Call your congressmen and remind them that they are their
shills and cowards. I think a lot about you know,
you mentioned like nineteen you mentioned World War two earlier.
I mean, if we had had TikTok in the age
of Dacau and Treblinka and Oschwitz, I think about like
(39:15):
the American government knew about the final solution, We knew
that the box cars were going to these extermination camps,
and we refuse to bomb them. Yeah, we focused on
military targets. If we've been able to live stream, you know,
some from inside Auschwitz, and we were also able, because
of pro public or whatever, to find out that FDR
was choosing not to bomb the concentration camps, there would
(39:39):
have been outrage. There would have been a huge amount
of outrage I think in the American population as there
is in Gaza and that's an important thing. It's something
we have access to. Now we can put that external
pressure onto people and make them uncomfortable. That's what brought
down South African apartheid. The like it's the BCGS pulling
(39:59):
out of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund. Yeah, basically British companies
just got so embarrassed to work with South Africa that
they just eventually stopped. And that's what brought down.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Right, Yeah, because people wouldn't shut the fuck up about it, right,
and they wouldn't let them do other stuff and be like,
we're not talking about that today, And like people in
the case of South Africa wouldn't play sports with South
Africa until it fucking stopped doing its apartheid. Right. Like
I was gonna say it was global and a boycott,
It wasn't quite global. It's Rael was not boycotting apartheid
(40:29):
South Africa. But yeah, that stuff does make a different Charles,
when's your documentary coming out?
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Where could people find it? What can they view it on?
Speaker 4 (40:39):
I'm still in the editing space, so I think give
me two months and I'll have a better idea when
it's coming out. I'm hoping like before autumn. Damn twenty
twenty five. It is a time only piece, right, it
has some relevance that's time sensitive, but you can follow
it on Instagram. It's just at the war on enra
you n rwa. Yeah, and my personal account also posts
(41:02):
a lot about it. That's Charles McBride with a y.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
And it's the same on substack TikTok YouTube.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Like child said, you don't have to be there getting
an in full pointed at you to make a difference,
and so like, yeah, I would encourage people to do
the little things too. They're not that's small legedly, but
just yeah, the things that aren't going to Palestine necessarily.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Absolutely, Yeah, and like take heart, you know, don't despair.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah, yeah, find some joy.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here.
Listened directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
It's me James today and I'm joined by my friend
and yours, Charles McBride, documentary filmmaker, humanitarian activist, writer. And
you've just been in Palestine, is that right, Charles, Yeah,
just got back like a week and a half ago. Nice, welcome,
Welcome to America and the Free Damn, that's a rough transition. Actually,
(00:28):
thank you for thank you for joining us so soon
after you got back. So there's a lot to talk about, right,
Like I feel as if in like legacy media, when
there is less discussion of Palestine recently, maybe just because
I'm seeing so much domestic US coverage like twenty four
to seven, right, we're in another like Trump news cycle,
(00:48):
but especially with reference to the West Bank. Actually, like
can you look update people on the last maybe you know,
maybe in the time you were there, and then what's
especially what's happening in the West Bank, Cause I think
that's going to even less coverage.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Sure, So I've taken two trips for the West Bank
in the past year. Yeah, So August of last year
May of this year. I noticed a rapid deterioration just
between those two time periods. So, I mean, it was
bad last year when we went. That was right when
I was when my team went there to begin our documentary,
(01:21):
they had just launched this new operation in the West Bank,
which was pretty much the largest ground operation they'd launched
the Israelis had launched since the Second Antipada, and it
was targeted at the northern refugee camps of Tolkom, Nurse Shams,
and Jeanine. A lot of people know Janine, they've heard
that in the news. You know, it's relatively familiar. Not
a lot of people realize that the situation in Tolkoom
(01:43):
and in Norsham's is quite similar, and those three camps
in particular were targeted by the IDF operation. On the
second trip, we couldn't even we couldn't even get to
those places, not with the UNREP personnel that we were
supposed to go with our documentaries on unrout the United
Nation Relief Works Agency for Palestigne Refugees. And last time
(02:04):
we were there, they were able to bring us to
the camp. They showed us where the Israelis had you know,
bulldozed their facilities and done various air strikes in the camp.
This time they couldn't even take us there. So we
went to other camps and said camp, everyone's spirits were low.
Lots of people were talking about West Bank annexation as
if it seemed like an inevitability.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Yeah, And I actually spent some time inside forty eight
on this trip, and I went down to Yafa and
to Tel Aviv and interviewed some long time kind of
liberal journalists from Aritz, and they were just talking about
how the shift in Israeli society over the last year
has been quite marked as well, particularly around the question
of just generally ethnically cleansing Gaza, which was something that was,
(02:49):
according to his telling, like really only heard in very
right wing circles like Connie circles over the past a
couple of decades and is now just pretty routinely heard
across the spectrum Israeli society that the best solution to
this is to just deport everyone from Gaza.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, that's pretty bleak, Like, I mean, I guess the
process of manufacturing consent has been pretty pretty successful and
pretty complete in that sense, Like just the dehumanization of
Palestinian people has been pretty successful at least there. I
guess if people aren't familiar. We should just like explain
that Palestine is well. The areas which are now like
(03:30):
legally allotted to Palestinians, I guess, are not contiguous, right,
Gaza in the West Bank at different areas separated by Israel,
and like the bulk of what you have seen in
the last two years has been Israel's war on the
people of Gaza, but the West Bank is a different
and larger area which has also seen significant is really
(03:51):
like military aggression and violence from settlers, right, like a
paramilitary aggression, I guess you could call it. People I
think maybe have heard of ANRA or maybe will at
least be familiar with seeing it. Can you explain what
the agency does? It's a unique agency, right, Like it
doesn't work anywhere else in the world. It's quite a
(04:12):
unique thing to this Israel Palestine context.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
So ANRO is probably the most controversial UN agency, and
that has everything to do with the context in which
it was founded. It was explicitly set up in coordination
between the United States, the newly founded State of Israel,
and the Arab League, coming to the United Nations and
presenting a plan to deal with the displacement of seven
(04:36):
hundred thousand Palestinians from their home as a result of
Nakba in nineteen forty eight. So out of that context,
it's designed as a temporary aid refugee organization. Yeah, it
actually it's it's set up before un HCR, so it's
mandated specifically for the Palestinians, and the Palestinians don't end
up falling under UNHDR when it's established. So a lot
(05:00):
of particularities about UNRA that make it different from other
UN agencies, which is also something that the Israelis like
to highlight because they're engaged in a multi decade credibility
campaign against UNRA.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
But to the extent that it is.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
Almost entirely staffed by Palestinians, it is quite different than
other UN agencies, which typically involve multinationals international personnel. Now,
a lot of the higher leadership at UNRA is still
kind of your same international diplomats, but in the words
of the Zionist academic that I interviewed for this documentary,
(05:38):
most of those have quote unquote gone native. So most
of the international diplomats do tend to, you know, obviously
be quite sympathetic to the conditions which the Palestinian staff
are working under. So my documentary is a it's an
investigative documentary to some extent, and it uses the frame
(05:59):
narrative the Israeli allegations that UNRA had been infiltrated by
Hamas and that unrepersonnel had taken place in the October
seventh massacres. Yeah, it uses that as a hook and
a frame narrative to talk about what is this organization?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Why did it go from something that was set up
as a temporary relief organization to seventy seven years later
it is responsible for maintaining the livelihood and well being
of five point nine million registered Palastinian refugees, not only
in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but also
in Syria, in Lebanon, and in Jordan. So the politics
(06:35):
of it get very hazy, very quickly. But it's kind
of an inconvenient thing for everyone because the organization was
explicitly designed to end after a few years, but the
assumption was after a few years there would have been
a political resolution to the Israeli Palacinian conflict. There has
not been, and here we are seventy six, seventy seven
years later, and we're still at that point, so UNRA
(06:56):
still exists. One of the ironic things we found when
filming documentary is that everyone involved in this process wants
this organization to go away. Yeah, Israel Is, the Palestinians,
the staff themselves. The only thing they disagree on is
when and under what conditions? Why?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, I think it's Yeah, it's very interesting, like as
refuge agencies go. Because like just I was recently reading
Sally Hayden's or rereading Sally Hayden's book about refugees in Libya. Right,
it's called My Fourth Time We Drowned. It's an excellent book.
If people haven't read it, that you read it, very
good audiobook as well that they incorporated some of the
voice notes you got from the refugees, which I think
(07:34):
is good. And as it's typical of United Nations refugee
workers in many areas, the bulk of them end up
living or spending a lot of time in Tunisia, right,
like not in Libya and coming in like in you know,
the typical image that you see of the United Nations
is like a bunch of people in white land cruisers, right,
and they pull up and they do their thing and
they leave they're not either part of the population or
(07:57):
even with the population, and they often criticize for this
around the world, right, And they're very susceptible to like
state narratives, right, Like in Libya there's there's all kinds
of evacuations of corruption or like sort of state capture.
I guess, so an agency that is supposed to be
international and supposed to be impartial, and they're supposed to,
above all things, advocate for refugees, right, And sometimes you
(08:18):
can see at tension between the IOM and the UNHCR
of this kind of shit. It's different with UNRA, right, Like,
like they are from what I've heard from Palestinian friends,
like more respected by Palestinian people because of the work
that they do and the value that they provide.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Yeah, I mean, I would say like trust in UNRA
is probably higher than in the Palestinian authority. The PA
is largely seen as a contractor or subcontractor for Israel, right,
and UNRA is seen, you know, as flawed. I mean,
there are a lot of Palestinians who are deeply critical
of UNRA, particularly the constant efforts it takes to sort
(08:56):
of remain neutral on all of these political questions. Yeah,
and you know, inefficiencies that are going to come with
any multinational institution in Goo. Yeah, of course, but in
general they seem to I mean, at this point, we've
interviewed dozens of people who had various relationship whether they
had gone to unreschools or they had taken you know,
they had been to unrehealth clinics, and by and large
(09:18):
they preferred these and they saw the value in UNRA.
They liked the unreschools, they liked the unrahealth clinics. UNRA
is largely responsible for the fact that Palestinians are one
of the most literate populations in the Middle East, and
many of them speak English incredibly well. I mean, like, yeah,
it's wild talking to an eight or nine year old
(09:39):
girl who grew up in a refugee camp and she's
speaking to me in perfect English talking about how she
wants to move to Los Angeles and become an actress,
and it's just it's wild. And that's kind of a
testament to what UNDRA has done. And that's very inconvenient
for Israel because when you educate a lot of refugees
who can then learn English and turn around and speak
to the world very eloquent ways about the nature of
(10:01):
their oppression and their suffering. It becomes an ideological barrier
to your particular political project.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Right, And this is one of the things that has
distinguished the genocide in Gaza in terms of like how
it's been perceived in the US at least, right, is that, like,
you have a very literate population that is able to
articulate what is happening directly via social media and to
traditional media, right, like to people like yourself making documentaries
(10:31):
like this is distinct from populations like I think of
the Rahinga right, Like, you know, I speak to Rahinga
people pretty often, but I don't think most Americans see
Rahingah folks if they go on TikTok or or Instagram,
and you know, as a result, I think people would
have cared as deeply. You know, people would have been
(10:51):
in the streets for that, but that communication wasn't that
And yeah, it is extremely inconvenient if your project isn't
an ethno state, right, and you're willing to cleanse areas
of other ethnicities to build your ethno state in it,
which is what's happening, then it's very convenient if there's
people you're trying to cleanse can talk to the world,
(11:11):
you know, in a language of the world understands and
very eloquently and make their case for not being ethnically cleansed.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
No, it is tribute to the work that ANRA has done.
You know what, I guess we should do. I guess
we should take an advertising break right now. So let's
do that.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
We'll come back.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
All right, we are back. Let's talk about the alternative
to UNRA. Alternative is a wrong word. Let's talk about
the attempt to make an end run around unrous existence
by installing this fascical NGO.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
I guess you could call it an d O or
like AID Provider.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
This is a gaza humanitarian fund people who aren't familiars
synthetic GENRA alternatives. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's unstitute, like the
zine of UNRA. You know. Okay, so what what's going
on with the guy? Let's talk about what it is
and what it claims to do first, and then we'll
talk about how it's not doing it very well or
at all, Like people are fucking dying in droves.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah, Mile High View.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
UNRA maintains most of the aid going in and out
of Gaza. Everyone I know in the humanitarian world has
had to interface at least to some degree with UNRA
during the aid process, and that's difficult because it has
been essentially been declared a terrorist entity by the Israeli
(12:40):
government and has been banned from operating inside what Israel
considers to be its territory, including occupied East Jerusalem and
increasingly in the West Bank. They're trying to limit its
operations and in Gaza they say they can't work with
them because they're Hamas. So it's the UNER people are
quite confused because they they've had to deconflict with the
Israelis for this entire time, and recently as a result
(13:02):
of this law, it's actually become illegal under Israeli law
for the Israelis to like coordinate with UNRA, and so
the UNRA of people don't have been Actually they don't
really understand what's going to happen. There's been some limited coordination,
but still we talk to people who are very high
up in the organization and they essentially had no idea
what the Israelis were planning to do to replace NRA
(13:23):
or to coordinate with them in Gaza, and so They
just kept kind of doing their thing until the Israelis
literally made them stop in certain instances. Right. Yeah. My
documentary is called the War on UNRA, and part of
this war has been the propaganda efforts and the Israelis
going after this organization and everyone in the humanitarian aid
world has sort of been asking the question, well, what
(13:43):
are you going to do to replace it? This is
an organization that deals with like two million people in
Gaza and like three million in the West Bank. Not
all of those are registered with UNRAP, but it's dealing
with all of the refugee camps there in Gaza itself
is a refugee camp, like it only exists as such
as a result of the AKA, because it's where they
put all of the displaced people who weren't in Jordan.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
And so the Israelis basically.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Had their backskins wall and they're like, Okay, well we
have to come up with some alternative to this because
we can't come out and say, actually, our main goal
is to depopulate Gaza and settle it. Yeah. Yeah, and
so they cooked up this idea of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund,
which was kind of this public private partnership backed by
the Israelis and the Americans, and the intention was to
(14:30):
entirely subvert not only UNRU, but the entire UN infrastructure
that goes into the Gaza strip. For instance, every UN
agency in the world actually piggybacks off of the World
Food Program because they're always the first ones in. So
it's WFP infrastructure, trucks, you know, vehicles, everything like that
that goes in first, and then UNHCR, UNISEF all this
(14:53):
thing they're piggybacking, coordinating with WFP. In this instance, WFP
is coordinating with UNRA.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
The Israelis.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
One did not only buy RA, they wanted to just
put the entire UN system out of that. So to
do that, they formed this sort of collaborative partnership under
the management of the Israelis, which was supposed to be
kind of an amalgam of all of these different private NGOs.
And I don't want to get too much into the
specifics of like who sort of was involved in that,
(15:20):
but a lot of people kind of took them at
face value. They wanted this to be a real solution,
and so they offered to help and kind of set
up this system which was supposed to be overseen entirely
by the Israelis and the Americans from a security perspective.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
One of those was Jake woodho was the founder of
Team Rubicon, which is an organization that does a fair
amount of excellent work all around the world. He resigned
from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund a day before it launched
and went on record saying we cannot actually do this
while keeping to humanitarian principles of humanity and neutrality, which
was a signal to the world that this was a
(15:57):
highly politicized project, which is precisely what the World Food
Program under the leadership of radical leftist activist Cindy McCain
has been saying about this from the start. And you know, UNROE,
Felipe Lazarini, the head of UNRA, said this is this
is a clearly political sized event on the only the
un system is the only one capable of actually dealing
(16:17):
with this in a humanitarian way. All those concerns were
brushed aside. American contractors were brought in. Yeah, and the
results were relatively predictable. We've seen at this point two
pseudo massacres, I mean the first one with that four
Palestinians were killed in just this morning twenty seven Palestinians
were killed at a GHF distribution after gunfire was opened
(16:39):
up on them.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah, we're recording on the third gene, so that was
when this this second massacre occurred. And yeah, like, I
mean just today as we're recording this, I've seen that
Boston Consulting Group again, like not exactly, like a bastion
of wokeness has terminated this relationship with the Gods Humanitarian Foundation, right, Like,
the kind of see that this is a replacement for
(17:02):
UNRA to begin with was somewhat fascical, right, But people
who were prepared to go along with that, either because
they can make money doing it or because they thought
this was the only way to stop people starving, are
still deciding that, having seen the way that this is run,
it's not worth it, right, right, And.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
There's also some political heavy handedness going on with this,
one of the most obvious features being specific aid distribution
points in the south of Gaza, which are designed to
bring you know, whereas UNRA and WFP were going to people,
they were trying to get food through as much of
the Gaza strip as possible, including people who wanted to
return to their homes in the North, the GHF is like, nope,
(17:43):
you starving population will need to make the journey to
this distribution point and this distribution point only, which you
know has the political effect of depopulating these areas that
you know, Israel is operating in. Yeah, which of course
is also met criticism. There are some videos going around
so impalston In celebrating yeah, you know, the relief efforts
of the of the JHEF. I think some of them
(18:03):
have been like verified by Reuters. You know, Israeli media
is making hay of that. You know, people praising Trump
in Gaza, right, which you know, these people are starving
and they're very happy to get aid.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
That doesn't mean that like everything is above board and cool, right.
It means that like the people who need a food
got food.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
Yeah, I mean, and that's the political complexity. The situation
is that the people of Gaza have just been abandoned
by everyone, right, I mean, there's there's there's a lot
of criticism to be a haad of how Hamas has
handled this. There's a lot of criticism to be had
of obviously the way in which Israel has behaved and
the UN system and the international system. So I mean,
I'm glad that like some of them are getting food. Yeah,
(18:42):
that is that is an improvement of none of them
getting food. But everyone in the AID world is starting
to go on record saying the main problem is Israel
preventing AID from going into the Gaza strip. And actually
I want to harp on that a little bit because
the reason that has been given primarily for that is
that Hamas is stealing the AID. Every time they're asked
about this, they go back to, well, we want to
(19:03):
get into people gaza. Unfortunately Hamas keeps stealing the aid
and so we can't allow it. We need to allow
us to trickle in. Yeah, that's interesting for two reasons.
First of all, the yet to provide any evidence that
that's actually occurring, and second because all humanitarian experts agree
that even if that was the case, say everything is
real said about Hamas was true, and they were stealing
you know, ninety ninety five percent of the eight that's
(19:24):
coming in and selling it back, the humanitarian solution to
that would be to flood the strip with so much
AID that it would literally be impossible for them to
like to stop that, which we can't do, Like, yeah,
it would be possible for us to flood the Gaza
strip with so much aid that it would be like
an abundance of food. So the decision not to do
that is a political one.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Yes, definitely, Like I was going to say, on the
face of it, it doesn't matter. There are lots of situations,
to be clear, where people steal aid. It's undesirable, of
course it is. But yeah, the solution is more aid,
not like unfortunately the aid has been stolen, so now
they children must have. Yeah, that only works if you're
prepared to accept the outcome in which little children die
(20:03):
of starvasues.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Which the Israelis are. They're perfectly I mean this near
was a University of Pennsylvania poll. I'm not saying eighty
four percent of Israelis are in favor of the idea
of just simply either killing or displacing everyone in the
gardsa eighty four percent.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, it's wild to see.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Like it's been such a strange couple of years in
that sense, right, because more people in this country are
aware of the plight of the people of Palestine than
ever have been, and more people are engaged with it.
That is mostly good. Some people have been gaged to
it in a way which is far from good. Right, Like,
I don't think there's really very much be gained. Fucking
(20:44):
throwing molotov cocktails people in Boulder is not making anything
better for anyone. It's just making everything danger more dangerous
for everyone. And it's fucking stupid.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
And I would extend that to gunning down yes, so
would I. Yeah, Israeli a couples outside the Jewish music
in DC. I don't think that's necessarily the best way
to help people in Gaza.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
No, Like, yeah, standing outside the ventf Jewish people in
fucking shooting random people.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
It's not that.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Again, it doesn't make anyone safer. It makes all of
us left safe, And like it does nothing to stop
people dying and starving in Gaza, and like that's it's
not the crux of the problem, I guess, But like
that is a problem, right, that people are engaging with Gaza,
but nothing is helping people here. Know how bad it
is that children are starving in Gaza, but that hasn't
(21:29):
changed the fact that children are starving in Gaza. In fact,
like you know, I've said it's a lot of times
that I moved her in two thousand and eight, and
I had engaged with the movement before that in the
UK right and the situation passed time to be was
very different then, but like it wasn't something that people
had heard of here for the most part, unless you
were within like certain leftist or sort of people have
(21:52):
maybe they're like Middle East an extraction would know about it.
Of course, now people do know, and all over the
world people know, and we've seen huge marches. Right, Like,
the situation is worse than it's ever been, I mean,
not ever being the knuck boll is pretty fucked too.
But as the world looks on, right, like, the gender
side continues and people continue dying, and seemingly the acceptance
of the Guard of Humanitarian Foundation by states of the
(22:16):
world is really troubling, right, Like we're concentrating this starving
population in a small area. It's contrary to everything that
humanitarian principles stand for. And oh no, we don't see
I mean, there is a very ready alternative. It's whether
anyone is willing to step up and tell Araee to
stop stopping aid entering the Guard like this could end
(22:41):
in my estimation, like very quickly. Right, we have enough
aid and even aid in the regent to feed all
those people right now if we needed to.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's there's tens of millions of pounds
of food rotting and warehouses and Jordan and Egypt right
now just waiting to go across the border.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, and people dying.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
It's the lack of political will, mostly on behalf of
the United States, you know, but also I think the
members of the Abraham Accords and the EU. Yeah, it's
a devastating indictment. And I think the interesting thing about
it is it truly pulls the mask off of the
quote unquote rules based world order. Yeah, the US led
(23:18):
rules based world order, because you just I mean, it's
just so obvious that no matter how many people want
this terrible thing to end, that we're saying this very
obvious genocide is being livestream to our phones, the powers
that be are too invested to to let it stop.
You know, they're they're into the hill. We've already seen
the degree to which the United States is compromised in
(23:42):
its in its media and and government storytelling in relation
to Israel Palestine. Did the long unwillingness of people to
speak up about this followed by the very rapid turnaround
of people who are now rats fleeing the ship. Yeah,
seeing the unmistakable reality of this genocide. And you know
(24:05):
it's like everyone says, once this is done, everyone will
pretend they were against it from the start. And you're
now starting to see that, right, you know with like
the former White House Press secretary.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Yeah, yeah Miller, Right yeah, Miller.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Was like, yeah, they've been committing war crimes than they
were doing it while I was there, But I didn't
speak on my behalf. I was speaking on behalf of
the United States.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Government, right, yeah, the old the old Neumberg defense. M Yeah,
they like I was just doing my job thing, which
like is not actually don't actually excuse for participating in
war crimes, and like should have been an excuse for
apologizing or excusing them, might there.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Right, It's I know that you guys have talked about
and that Wi'll have spoilers for this, but I know
you guys have recently had a series Unpacking and Or,
which is my favorite TV show. Yeah, and I was
just so happy that they snuck that one line in
about when Cyril asks what they're doing here and she
just says following orders.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Yeah, how often we can I hear that in the
next few years, I guess.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Yeah, it's so predictable, right like, every time this happens,
right like, And this isn't the first time the United
Nations has basically allowed it. Genocide tappened right under its nose. No,
and it probably won't be the last, because, as you said,
right like, the idea that we have a rules based
world order, it's a lie. It's a myth that exists
(25:26):
to make people feel better and feel like this stuff
couldn't happen again. But like you know, we have ICC
warrants for people who are traveling freely around the world.
It doesn't matter that the ICC can't enforce its own warrants,
right like you can say something for war crime, it
doesn't matter, Like, no one's the war police aren't going
(25:48):
to go and arrest all the people doing it.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Yeah, it's mostly just kind of a Yeah, it's kind
of a placebo, and I'm not really sure what the
function it serves. I mean, I'm not a big international
institutions enjoyer. Like, I'm deeply skeptical of the United Nations
in almost every one of its aspects. My team and
I've taught several times about the point that this documentary
has that weirdly, like it's improved our trust in international
(26:15):
and geos just because we're seeing like the degree to
which UNRA is operating on increasingly less budget every year
and still managing to be effective.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
I think a huge part of that is again, it
is staffed by the local population who are from these areas,
and they have a duty and a commitment to care
to their people.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
But in general, no, I mean, I don't understand what
the point of the UN is if you don't give
it the US military, Like I mean, if as an anarchist,
I don't believe that this is a great solution to things.
But like, if you wanted to enforce the U in
you would need the World Police, Like you would need
to just use the United States to like hunt down
these people, Yeah, and utilize it's eight hundred military bases
(26:52):
in every country to enforce these rules.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
And we don't really yet we allow these things to happen.
But yeah, I'm the biggest national institutions enjoy either, Like
I've seen the UN be fugging useless in most continents
that people live on. I would really like it though,
if they would do something to stop the suffering of
the people of Palestine. Like, it doesn't mean I wouldn't
be happy. It doesn't mean I'm not happy when I
speak to guys from PK, guys that we've had on
(27:15):
our show several times, right, Like when they talk to
us about like where should we send money, They'll be like, oh,
Unerawa able to get my family some food this week
or whatever. Like I'm happy to hear that, and I'm
glad that they're there, Glad that they were there at
that time. I guess. So, like, what does the future
(27:44):
hold for the guys of Humanitarian Foundation? Seems to be
falling apart within a very short period of this whole
thing being stood up, which is unsurprising, Right, can you explain,
like what does it take for a that lives up
to basic humanitarians to get in there?
Speaker 4 (28:01):
I think that's a really difficult question to answer because
we have bribed so many options. Yeah, I mean truly,
I mean the last time I think I was on
this podcast, it was to talk about my colleagues at
the World Central Kitchen who got killed in Gaza. That
was an attempt to try and alleviate the suffering of the
Palace sitting people and it had predictable results. You know.
(28:23):
There's all these groups have been operating in there to
the extent that they can and the result has been
too little, too late. And everyone is saying, from Sydney
McCain at the World Through Program, to Philippe Lazarreni, to
you know, Lese andres like from the private sector, everyone
is saying, the reason this is a problem has nothing
to do with the moths. It has everything to do
(28:44):
with about that Israel is restricting the amount of aid
going to the Gaza Strip. And now everyone's waking up
and asking the obvious question of like, well, why are
they actually doing that? And in the answer corresponds to
those polls we see that indicate that, you know, yeah,
fifty percent of Israeli society is open to killing everyone
in the Gaza Strip. Any four percent are open to
displacing them all. This is just what Israel wants. And
(29:06):
I think the humanitarian world is slowly swallowing that very
difficult pill. And I don't I can't really tell you
what comes next outside of a political resolution.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, which seems higher and how to come by in
the current international climate, Like certainly it's not coming from
the US, right, Like.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Yeah, I mean like something to watch would be that
Senator Welch from Vermont introduced a bill to immediately refund UNRA. Okay, yeah,
and it has it has a house a correl it
with I think, yeah, Congresswoman Jayapaul and a few others
who are trying to kind of push that through. I mean,
the United States funds three hundred million dollars, which is
(29:45):
about over a third of un annual budget, and we've
restricted that funding for the past year and a half. Yeah,
so if we restore that, I think that would be
a big signal to Israel that like, we're not playing
ball anymore.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
I just think when you have a rubber stamp Congress
and a fascist president that's probably unlikely to pass.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
That's a big reach. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I actually think this is an area where elected officials
are to the right of Trump supporters on this one.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I think, like, you.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Know, I spend a lot of time in rural East
County San Diego, right, Like, I talk to people who
have very different politics to my own. Yeah, it's a
nice way of saying that, but like I've had people
who straight up I'm sure voted for Trump. Be like, man,
they're letting little children staff, Like what the fuck is
wrong with you know? Like like I think it's an
area where a more sensible politics would be able to
(30:35):
build consensus.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
But here we are, right, yeah, I mean, and there
is no opposition, Like the Democrats are not an opposition party.
They're just happy being like the junior partners in fascism.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Yeah, they're having a little party today where they're giving
out tacos because they're trying to somehow encourage Trump to
go ahead with more sanctions and tariffs and more genocides.
I guess, like I don't quite know what the Trump
always chickens out, like, well, I'm glad you stick it
out with the tariffs, isn't isn't that a good thing?
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Like yeah, like what are you trying to what are
you trying to say here? I think maybe I don't
want to confront what they're trying to say. But this
is a thing that like at the current time, like
it needs state action to stop it. Yeah, we do
not have an organization which which is able to mobilize
people in such a way that they can stop it.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Like and that is it's really desperate.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
If you care right, because the states of the world
very clearly for decades and decades and decades have been
unconcerned with Palestinian people and their wellbeing, and they're not
doing shit about it now. I think there are still
people who are able to make a meaningful benefit to
the lives of people in the West Bank. Right. I
understand why people are hopeless when they when they look
(31:45):
at what's happening to you guys, and I understand why
it seems bleak and it seems like there's nothing you
can do. Are there things that like concrete actions, organizations,
groups that you think people can engage with and we've
heard from some them on the show before, right to
be in a sort of dearity way or to help people.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
In the West Bank.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Yeah, you know, I think, like I honestly, I think
there are people who could probably better answer this question
for me who've actually gone and done protected presence operations
in the West Bank. I know that they're like the
people in Massafayatta are often asking for foreigners to come
and do that, and a lot of people will go
through like Jordan Valley Solidarity or ism or something like that.
(32:26):
I'm usually one to discourage foreigners from jumping feet first
into a HoriZone with great intentions and no knowledge of
the language or everything that's going on. Yeah, but there
does seem to be a genuine call from amongst the
Palestinian community in the West Bank to have people who
are willing to physically get in between you know, Alistinian
villages and settlers and the IDF. Yeah, so that is
(32:49):
a concrete thing you can do. That's a dangerous thing
to ask somebody to do.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, I don't think it's something people should rush into, right,
Like we've interviewed people who have been shot.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Doing Yeah, exactly. A young woman was killed doing that, Yeah,
a shunar Agi. She was shot feet away from my
friend who was just in the West Bank and he
just got banned from the entire territory for ninety nine years.
And I was talking to him about that because I
wonder about, like, you know, my work, and sometimes I
feel like I'm not going far enough of my solidarity
(33:20):
because I'm doing this investigative documentary and I'm not physically
putting my body on the line. Yeah. Sure, but I
can still go to the country, Like my support for
the Palestinians is still ongoing. So I think people need
to ask themselves, do I want to take one drastic
measure to like show this is my solidarity with Ausiginn
in an instant. Yeah, whether it's joining like a flotilla
(33:41):
that might get airstrikes, or you know, setting yourself on
fire outside the Israeli embassy, or do I want to
like contribute in the ways that I can as best
I can. I mean, I'm a storyteller, right, so I said,
I need to find a story that I can tell
about the Palestinian that will humanize them. Yeah, in the
eyes of people who are not naturally sympathetic. And I
(34:02):
think a lot of people think that they need to
be putting their body on the line. Or it's like
I talk about this with disaster relief all the time,
Like disaster happens and people see you on the TV,
They're like, I need to be wearing a high viz
best and distributing a box of aid to someone. Yeah,
It's like, no, you probably don't. Actually, Like the thing
that you can best do to help people is probably
the skill that you've been perfecting in your own career
(34:23):
as well as like, yeah, in your own life, right,
if you're good at spreadsheets, you can help people get
access to housing.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, one hundred percent. You know, if you're good, if
you're good at.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Lifting things, then maybe you should be lifting boxes. But like,
I have a friend who's the Emmy Award winning director
of photography, and he's like, I have a truck and
I can lift everything's and like show me where to go.
And he was hitting me up the entire like first
two weeks of the LA fires, being like where should
I go? And I was like me, you're an Emmy
Award winning videography. Tell the story of the fires, find
(34:53):
the survivors, like bring their stories to life and let
the world see what our community looks like. And he
did that and it went amazing. Yeah, So, like I
think people should think about when they want to help.
You know, if you are a seramicist or you sew,
or you're a musician write a song about gods. Like,
there's so many ways to help that don't involve physically
(35:14):
putting yourself in between a settler and they're in for
and a Palestinian family whose language you can't speak.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Like there's and we see that with border stuff, right,
Like everyone wants to do hike out to the border
and drug water, or you know, everyone wanted to in
Cumber right, Like a lot of people wanted to help us,
and people did help us, and it was amazing, it
was really beautiful. But like people were also able to
help the skills they had, like making jewelry and selling
it or baby doing a benefit gig. Right, there's a
(35:41):
long tradition of anna kiss benefit gigs, like it's a
thing that we do do a zine, yeah, like you
a punk concert, you know, yeah, yeah, many many such
cases like within doing that, there's the intangible benefit of
showing people that people care about them, like all around
the world.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I remember, you know.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Just recently, I saw people from the Karini Nationalities Defense Force, right,
so one of the revolutionary organizations in Miamma making a
statement about solidarity to people of Palestine and to their children.
And you know that they too have experienced their children
being killed, they too have experienced these bombing runs and
state oppression, and that like they see them and they
care about them, and even in their own time of war,
(36:23):
like the front in Karini state is hot right now,
that they are still thinking of the people of Palestine.
I saw Palestinian people were very touched by this, right,
Like it does Obviously you can't eat someone's good thoughts,
but like there are things you can do, like because yeah,
you can't be down there right now giving people a
sandwich as much as you'd like to, and for some
people that's either not possible or maybe just not the
(36:45):
best use of their time. And like, I think it's
a really good message. Everyone's good as something do, like,
find the thing that you're good at and use that
to help people. I think is really valuable. Is there
anything else you'd like to share with people before you
finish up here?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, I just think I would.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
This was a dark conversation because I don't really see
a way out of this humanitarian situation. But I think
there's a degree to which that's been the case from
the start. Right. The real trick of the imperial thought
machine is that the pace of oppression outstrips our ability
to understand it. Yeah, to quote theory Twink charisenemic. But
(37:21):
don't lose hope, right, because the world does care about
Palestine more than it ever has. Yeah, they feel that
the people there feel our love, they feel our solidarity,
and that is not valueless right, Like, ye, no human
is useless. Who lightens the burden of another. I was
(37:42):
depressed as hell coming back from this recent drip to
Palaestigne and I went to the mountains and mets. We
met with a bunch of people who were just really
energetic about like Kalesidian solidarity and really cared about it,
and it was like, yeah, it was so nice to
go from that and just be able to tell my
Palestinian fans like, hey, by the way, we just spent
an entire week talk about what we can do to
alleviate to some small degree the suffering that your people
(38:04):
are going through. That matters. Yeah, Like every small act,
every little thing, right, the small deeds of ordinary folk.
That's what keeps the darkness is bay.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Yeah, and that's really deprescient. Often, like refugees will say
to me, scientias will say to me, in the last
six months, now, I guess that I think Americans don't
care about them anymore, and that really fucking breaks my heart,
like more than I can express with words, because I
care about those people so much.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And like it does.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Make a difference when they see people doing things, and
they can be small things, but like I know how
much set lifts up somebody in dark times, Like, yeah,
because I've been with them in pretty dark times. So yeah,
it does make a difference. And like if that's what
you can do, then then people shouldn't think is valueless.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
Yeah, and also UNI pressure people, you know, continue to
make people embarrassed for the Yeah, for believing in genocide.
Call your congressmen and remind them that they are their
shills and cowards. I think a lot about you know,
you mentioned like nineteen you mentioned World War two earlier.
I mean, if we had had TikTok in the age
of Dacau and Treblinka and Oschwitz, I think about like
(39:15):
the American government knew about the final solution, We knew
that the box cars were going to these extermination camps,
and we refuse to bomb them. Yeah, we focused on
military targets. If we've been able to live stream, you know,
some from inside Auschwitz, and we were also able, because
of pro public or whatever, to find out that FDR
was choosing not to bomb the concentration camps, there would
(39:39):
have been outrage. There would have been a huge amount
of outrage I think in the American population as there
is in Gaza and that's an important thing. It's something
we have access to. Now we can put that external
pressure onto people and make them uncomfortable. That's what brought
down South African apartheid. The like it's the BCGS pulling
(39:59):
out of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund. Yeah, basically British companies
just got so embarrassed to work with South Africa that
they just eventually stopped. And that's what brought down.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
Right, Yeah, because people wouldn't shut the fuck up about it, right,
and they wouldn't let them do other stuff and be like,
we're not talking about that today, And like people in
the case of South Africa wouldn't play sports with South
Africa until it fucking stopped doing its apartheid. Right. Like
I was gonna say it was global and a boycott,
It wasn't quite global. It's Rael was not boycotting apartheid
(40:29):
South Africa. But yeah, that stuff does make a different Charles,
when's your documentary coming out?
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Where could people find it? What can they view it on?
Speaker 4 (40:39):
I'm still in the editing space, so I think give
me two months and I'll have a better idea when
it's coming out. I'm hoping like before autumn. Damn twenty
twenty five. It is a time only piece, right, it
has some relevance that's time sensitive, but you can follow
it on Instagram. It's just at the war on enra
you n rwa. Yeah, and my personal account also posts
(41:02):
a lot about it. That's Charles McBride with a y.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
And it's the same on substack TikTok YouTube.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Like child said, you don't have to be there getting
an in full pointed at you to make a difference,
and so like, yeah, I would encourage people to do
the little things too. They're not that's small legedly, but
just yeah, the things that aren't going to Palestine necessarily.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Absolutely, Yeah, and like take heart, you know, don't despair.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah, yeah, find some joy.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Robert Evans
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James Stout
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