The Attacks on Jenin & Media Bias

Shereen and James discuss recent IDF attacks on Jenin and why new resistance groups are appearing in Palestine.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, Welcome to the podcast. It could happen here. It's
me James and Scharene today. Hi Serene, Hi James, Hi Sarene. Yeah,
it's it's lovely to have you. Thanks for introducing yourself.
I'm a little confused, but he was talking to you.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
I've done podcasts for a long time and I never
actually know how to introduce myself. But I'm really happy
to be doing this episode with you because you're a
very good episode partner.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Thank you, Sreen. I am also happy to be doing
this episode with you. I think you're an excellent episode partner.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
What are we talking about that just because I said it?

Speaker 1 (00:38):
No, I like him. It's good. It's good. We help
people learn things.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, today you're going to learn some more things about Palestine.
It's been a minute since we had an update, and
I mean, surprise, surprise, things aren't good. So we're going
to talk about some recent stuff that's been happening. There's
we mentioned some stuff that we've mentioned before in other episodes,
like the Nekaba or just the ethnic cleansing that happened

(01:06):
in nineteen forty eight. Also some politics stuff. So if
you are interested in getting more detail and you haven't
listened to those. I would recommend listening to those, just
for more context if you desire.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
But yeah, yeah, I think you're diving in probably at
the deep end if you start here. But we're going
to dive in at the deep end. So earlier this month,
Omar Katten twenty seven, a father of two children who
worked as an electrician for the local municipality, was killed
when about four hundred Israeli settlers marched down Thaumasaya's main road,
selling cars, homes, crops and trees ablaze as they went.

(01:41):
It's not clear if you're shot by IDF troops or
settlers of both stormed the village carrying weapons. Under international law,
Israeli settlement to illegal, however, it's really Prime Minister of
Benjamin Netan Yahoo announced plans to build a thousand new
housing units in the settlement of Eli in response to
the deadly shooting of Forestraelis by two Estinian government on Tuesday,

(02:01):
the twentieth of June. The suspected assailants were later killed.
One of them was quote unquote neutralized by civilian the
other by the IDEF. But it appears the plan is
to punish the whole nation again. Our antswer to terror
is to strike it hard and to build our country.
Net Yeah, who said his right wing government is dominated
by settler leaders and supporters. But his statements came just

(02:24):
days after the government gave far right finance minister there's
a little smotorridge sweeping powers to exploit the construction of
legal settlements by passing messes that have been in place
for almost twenty seven years. The violence in thaumas ayah
Am I saying that, right.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I just looked it up. Yeah, totmos Aya is it's
a town in the West Bank for context people that
don't know, so, yeah, it's it's in the Ramola and
LBI the governor in the West Bank.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, I'm going to get a little bit more into
it of why this is all happening. We just wanted
to kind of pain the paint the picture for you
first of all of the bigger events that have happened.
I guess. So this violence against the people of this
town and the shooting of for Israelis followed an incursion
by the IDF and Israeli border forces into the Genine
refugee camp. It was an operational scale not seen for decades.

(03:15):
So did you tear gas, stun grenades, and an attack helicopter.
Seven Palestinians were killed, nearly one hundred were wounded.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
And I feel like this is not the first time.
If you've been following any Palestinian news that you've heard
of Janine the refugee camp, or that it's being attacked,
it might sound familiar. I'll get into it more later,
but Sharen abu Ocle was actually killed while reporting there.
So I want to get into just why exactly Israel
keeps raiding the Janine refugee camp in particular, and I

(03:45):
want to talk about the camp's history, why it's getting targeted,
and why the latest raid was different than the ones
before it. Janine is slowly becoming a symbol of Palestinian resistance.
It was originally established in nineteen fifty three to house
Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed during the Nekaba of nineteen
forty eight, which forced some seven hundred and fifty thousand

(04:06):
people from their homes in order to make way for
the establishment of Israel. And again we've talked about this
in other episodes. You want to revisit those, but essentially,
he was just a very perfect example of ethnic cleansing
and massacres in genocide and displacement. So the camp has
seen much unrest over the decades, and it was nearly
destroyed in two thousand and two when Israeli soldiers ambushed

(04:29):
it during the Second Antifada. According to a Human Rights
Watch investigation, at least fifty two Palestinians, including women and children,
were killed during this period of time. In two thousand
and two, during the Second anthli Fada, there were also
at least twenty three Israeli soldiers killed and several others
injured that were reported. And since then, Janine has recently

(04:51):
seen intensifying attacks by Israeli forces, especially since twenty twenty one,
and it has slowly, along with Gaza, become a major
symbol of Palestinian resistance. At this point, Palestinians are really
fed up with the enaction of the Palestinian Authority the PA,
which is the government entity meant to oversee and quote

(05:12):
unquote protect the Palestinians within its governance. The Palestine Authority
was formed in nineteen ninety four following the Gaza Jericho
Agreement between the PLO and the Government of Israel, and
it was only intended to be a five year interim body.
Further negotiations were then meant to take place between the
two parties regarding its final status. According to the Oslo Accords,

(05:34):
the Palestinian Authority was designated to have exclusive control over
both security related and civilian issues in the Palestinian urban areas,
which are referred to as Area A, and only Palestinian
control over Palestinian rural areas, which is called Area B.
The remainder of the territories, including Israeli settlement, the Jordan

(05:55):
Valley region and bypass roads between Palestinian communities, were remain
under Israeli control aka Area C. East Jerusalem was excluded
from the accords. Negotiations with several Israeli governments had resulted
in the Authority gaining further control in some areas, but
that control was then lost in some areas when Israel

(06:16):
retook several strategic positions during the Second Antifaba. At this point,
the Palestine Authority is an authoritarian regime that has not
held elections in over fifteen years, and it doesn't really
stand in the way of the Israeli government and the
crimes they commit. So what concerns Israel Is that in
Janine and elsewhere, young Palestinians are increasingly taking up arms

(06:41):
because they see no other way out of the pressure
of occupation and they're very disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of
the Palestinian authority.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, I think that's a really important way too, Like
when we talk about like especially Palestinian people taking up arms,
right or expecting these new groups which come in the
last couple of years, Right, there's that Lions Day group.
I think they're more from nables. Janine Brigades is another one.
It's in the context of like government failure or state

(07:12):
failure in I guess when we look at like the
formation of states, right, when there's it's called social contracts
the area, right, the idea that when we go and consent,
which we don't do, but we don't ever, like we
don't have a chance to consent to being in a state, right,
like very obviously if you're from Palestine, you're aware of this,

(07:33):
Like we were supposed to give up some of our
freedom and get some security. But the Palestinian authority has
repeatedly failed to protect people in Geneine, right, and in
lots of other places too, and so like this response,
like this response is taking up aren't is in the
context of state failure, right, Like people are trying to

(07:53):
protect their own communities when there's been a complete failure
by the people who are supposed to protect them, the
people who is and that's both the PA and then
like the broader the international community is kind of a
pointless phrase. It doesn't really mean anything. But like international
law is also a pointless phrase. It doesn't really mean anything,
which I'm getting too far afield here, but like the

(08:18):
amount of times people in my replies on Twitter will
be like this is against international law, and like are
you going to go and fucking enforce it? Then?

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Like guess if that matter is at that point?

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, it's just like good, it doesn't matter, like what
we know it's bad. I don't like, that's not what's
up for debate? What's for debates? What the fuck are
you going to do about it? How are you going
to stop it? And like these people have decided that
the way they're going to stop it is by taking
up arms, and like evidently Israel sees them as terrorists.
Evidently there are some groups inside Palestine who have killed

(08:50):
civilians and done ship which is is, you know, like,
it's not very nice. Also, the idea of killed civilians
all the time, right, one of them is funded and
armed by your taxes, and so like, yeah, it's an
understandable response. And the response of the IDF is to

(09:13):
sort of paint the whole of Janine as harboring quote
unquoite terrorists, right, which which is, and then to do
these attacks which often cause civilian casualties, which is not
that distinct from suggesting that Israel is a terrorist state, right,
and then attacking Israel, which like, but one of these

(09:34):
things is more broadly condemned is terrorism, and one is
not as broadly condemned as terrorism. When then they're not,
to my eye, that morally different. I guess, yeah, that
makes sense.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
I agree, and I also think, no, it makes a
lot of sense. I think remembering the imbalance that it
starts at is so important because Palestine has no army,
it's not backed by any rich ass nation, it's not
trained by anything, and it's an extremely unbalanced quote unquote battle.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
No one's deploying an Apache helicopter when when the idea
of killers journalist.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Right, like exactly, and yeah, like Sharenabut Ockley was a
US citizen. Not that it matters, but it should matter
just in the idea of what the US can do
or like the outrage it can have, but it doesn't
do anything.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
As a journalist who goes to dangerous places and is
a US citizen. Now, like it's fucking infuriating and obviously
like and particularly thing that like, you know, like daddy
government is coming to save me. I'm not like you know,
if you if you're laboring under that illusion, you're probably
a little bit naive. But it is just incredibly frustrating

(10:48):
to see the value of some quote unquote American lives,
like it's it's it's always wrong to shoot journalists, of course,
but like it's just in the US basically condoning that. Yes, again,
this isn't the first fucking like Arab journalist that the

(11:09):
US who is a US citizen who has been killed
by an authoritarian regime that the US had done fuck
all about.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, No, I think it's just a slap in the
face for her family and just the entire community of
like both Arabs and journalists and that crossover there. But
I did want to mention just the terrorism acts on
both sides are obviously terrible. I always think you have
to remember where they started and the imbalance that is there,

(11:37):
especially if the entity that is supposed to protect the
Palestinians isn't doing shit and the only way Palestinians can
fight back or defend themselves is with violence.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
It's just frustrating when people point out the violence on
just the Palestinian side, and we'll get into the news
version of what that means and then biases of what
that means it a little bit, but yeah, I just
that's just explaining exactly why these groups have risen.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah, there's just to be an absolute fuckingd weep for
a second. The introduction to Wretched of the Earth that
Johann Paul Starts wrote, it's a France fann On book,
is fantastic when talking about violence and violence in the
dicolonial process, and like how it's very nice that these
colonial states, apartheid states like Israel speak in the language

(12:31):
of rights. Yeah, and they encourage to colonize people to
make their claims in the language of rights. But every
time they fucking do, they get met with violence, right,
And it is entirely understandable that when the state speaks
you only in violence, you will reply using the same
language that is spoken to you with right, Like that,
that is how decolonial struggles have been, right from Algeria

(12:56):
to Vietnam to Palestine. And like this isn't a particularly
like under theorized concept. It's there and fanol in the
nineteen sixties. That's always something I like to suggest people read.
I think it's a very good kind of distillation of
what's occurring.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, no, I like that you mentioned that because it
does seem like that this is like a Palestinian problem
that they have, that they are violent and that they
hate the other side, and it is just another good
example of the effects of colonialism and like that's the
occupied people and their only choice of like retaliation. Anyway,

(13:35):
I don't want to get into that too much, but
I do want to emphasize why exactly that they were disillusioned,
the Palestinian youth, especially during this time, because the IDEF
has been extremely violent and the PA still is really
inactive and doesn't do anything. So that's kind of the

(13:57):
reason why there.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah, yeah, we have a little more in Shrina Buaclavionna.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Oh yeah, we have an episode about her, I believe,
and I'm going to mention her a little bit here.
The Genin refugee camp houses armed fighters and they are
from several factions, but this means Israeli's They consider it
a hub for what they call terrorist activity rather than resistance,
so the entire camp is then dubbed a terrorist site.

(14:26):
But most of the people that the IDEF has killed
are not engaging in any sort of violent activity, and
in some cases they are clearly marked as press wearing
a bulletproof vest and a helmet, like El Jazeera journalist
Sharinabu Akle, for one, she was shot dead by an
Israeli sniper in May twenty twenty two, and in her case,
the IDF said they were aiming at armed Palestinians who

(14:48):
were shooting at them and responding with fire, and after
I don't know a lot of inconclusive proof in the
IDF sticking to that story. A ballistics analysis proved that
that's story wasn't true and there was no fire coming
from the other side, But regardless, no one cares about that.
And this happened all in Janine, So I think it's

(15:11):
very clear why this camp has become a symbol of
resistance simply because the atrocities that have happened there are
tremendous and they keep fighting back. And I think it's
an example of how exactly a Palestinian symbol comes to be,
like gaza, like this, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
I wanted to include a coat from the Israeli military
spokesman Ran Kochov, and he told Army Radio, which I
guess is not exactly a kind of neutral arbititter here,
that she was filming and working for a media outlet
amidst arm Palestinians. They were armed with cameras if you
will permit me to say so, which like no, like

(15:51):
we should not really not fucking permit someone because like
you know, I'll go to all kinds of dangerous spots
with a camera. Like I've never fucking shot someone with
a camera, because it's a fucking camera, right, Like it doesn't,
it doesn't, that's not what cameras do. They take videos.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
That is the most Like I can't believe that's an
actual quote that's someone said and got away with.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, what the fuck is wrong? Like what And it's
just incorrect operation of the human brain to use the
fucking phrase arm with camera, Like, what is wrong with you?
It's I know, people get really people got really mad
briefly when Russians were shooting journalists in Ukraine in the
start of the conflict, and like I guess they were
kind of as a mask off about it, but like, yeah,

(16:37):
it's a fucking camera. If if your security is threatened
by someone filming the ship that you do, it's because
you shouldn't be doing it, and you know you shouldn't
be doing it right, like and again, like I've experienced that,
like people people, you know, doing stuff they don't want
to be filmed and getting mad that I'm filming it.
But like maybe if you're not prepared to defend what

(16:57):
you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it. You don't, you know,
you don't suggest that the camera is the camera? Is
it's a neutral object here, it's it's not the camera
and shot a woman in the head.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, I mean that sentence is infuriating the fact that
literally it says they were amidst armed Palestinians and then
you could you could stop there and people can just
like click out and read and like move on their
day thinking that they had fucking guns. And the next
sentence is literally they're armed with cameras, Like are you

(17:29):
I don't know. That's just so infuriating to me that
that's like a real thing that was said and accepted.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
It seems to be like almost deliberately insulting or I
don't know, like it's definitely an attack on Like I
don't know. If you're a journalist and you don't see
that of an attack on all of us, then you know,
made me examine your biases, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
And then the ballistics analysis that I mentioned earlier where
she was it showed that where she was shot there
were several targeted shots, one of which hit her head
because there were shots in the tree that was behind her,
so she was clearly targeted.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, because she was shot by a sniper at the
back of one of their APC's right, they have a
little little like murder hole, and she was shot from
two hundred meters to which is not very far with
a magnified signe and like, yeah, you don't just it
wouldn't look like that, I guess, Like three little holes
behind where her head was suggest that someone fired like

(18:21):
a single shots targeted, not just like spraying it sprain
bullets around. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
I don't want to talk about it too much because
there it is, that's on the topic of this episode.
But I do want to just say that I think
it's so ironic that the idea is supposed to be
this most advanced military body, this highly trained thing, and
then at the same breath their defenses sometimes they made
a mistake. Oops, you know what I mean, Like they
made this grave mistake. They thought she was carrying a

(18:47):
gun or she was around people with guns. I just
think that's a very silly I don't know.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, I'm being shure. It's true, I suppose, and you can.
You can make mistakes. But if you make mistakes, you
own them. You could still be like, oh, yeah, we
we one hundred percent fucked up, and like we need
to examine how we fucked up.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
You know, that's just their defense. So many times it
gets really fucking old. But Okay, before we continue and
talk about the recent attack in Janine, let's take our
first break and we'll be right back. And we're back.

(19:28):
Let's go back to talk about the latest raid on
the Janine refugee camp. The Israeli Army launched its latest
raid on the Janine refugee camp in the early hours
of Monday, June nineteenth. Five people, including a fifteen year old,
were dead by the time it withdrew its forces in
the afternoon. Others died the following day because of their injuries.

(19:51):
Several journalists were shot at and they were surrounded and
one was injured. This raid ironically took place near the
location where Shari Abulakhlei was killed. Several ambulances were also
fired upon with live ammunition, and at first they were
denied access to the injured, which is nothing new to
the IDF. They do this consistently with the block a

(20:12):
medical aid to reach the people that are injured. The
Israeli armies said the raid was to arrest two suspects,
one of whom was a former Palestinian prisoner, as Sem
Abu ad Haija, who was the son of an imprisoned
Hamas leader. I just want a quick reminder of refresh.
I know I say this in most of the episodes
about Palestine, especially the ones I've done in the beginning

(20:35):
of this year, but in twenty twenty two, Israeli forces
killed more than one hundred and seventy Palestinians, including at
least thirty children in occupied East Jerusalem and in the
West Bank, and this is described as the deadliest year
for Palestinians and those living in those areas since two
thousand and six. Since the start of twenty twenty three,
Israeli forces have killed at least one hundred and sixty Palestinians,

(20:59):
including twenty six children, and it's June. The death toll
includes thirty six Palestinians killed by the Israeli army during
a four day assault on the besieged Gaza strip between
May ninth and May thirteenth of this year. I just
want to put that into context because if twenty twenty
two was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the last

(21:20):
twenty years and we're essentially already there by six months
into this new year, it's just it's really disturbing and
it's really heartbreaking that it's truly there's no slowing down.
And this raid is a great example of them just
like upping the ante. And what was different about this raid.
Israeli offenses into Janine are nothing new, but it appeared

(21:43):
that the raiding soldiers were caught off guard this time.
Shortly after the raid began, videos showed an Israeli military
panther APC being hit with a roadside improvised explosive device,
and there is a video of this. I haven't seen
it because I just personally don't want to, but asadare
if you choose to see it. Military helicopters then began

(22:05):
shooting and launching rockets and flares while surveillance aircraft hovered above.
It was the first time in twenty years that Israel
deployed helicopter gunships in the West Bank. By the end
of the raid, reports suggested that at least five Israeli
military vehicles had been damaged by explosive devices and bullets
deployed by armed Palestinians. This was the first time the

(22:27):
IDF was met with this understandable degree of resistance and
defense in Nganine, and their response was overwhelming in return.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Hi everyone, it's James and Train again and we're here
today for a little update. It's the third of July
as we're recording this. Just because there's been a significantly
larger IDF incursion into a Genine refugee camp, and because
we know this is coming out at the end of
the week, we wanted to make sure you had a
little bit more update to date information, so as best

(22:57):
I can kind of beez it together. What happened is
that some mis military vehicles were hit with an ied
A bomb right roadside bomb and provides explosive device, and
Israel responded by going fully ham on a scale that
we haven't really seen since the second in Defider. So
there's air attacks, droned helicopters, armored vehicles. I saw them

(23:22):
using like an anti tank missile against a house. Saw
videos of armored bulldozers tearing up roads in the camp,
and preps sreen you could kind of give a scale
of what this has done, not just to roads obviously,
but to the people who live there.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah, like James was saying, they're continuing to attack with
drones and rockets, and the Janine refugee camp is very
densely populated. It has about twenty thousand people, and they
are targeting infrastructure like homes and roads and the mirror
of Janine. Nidhal Obaidi, he said the attack was a
real massacre and an attempt to wipe out all aspects

(24:00):
of life inside the city and the camp. Those being
targeted now are not just the resistance fighters, but civilians
are being killed and wounded as well, and water and
electricity services have also been cut off from the camp
since the attack has started, and the Palestine Recrescent said
that at least three thousand people were evacuated from the camp.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yeah, and then as far as we like at time
of recording, which is Monday afternoon, eight people have been killed.
One more person was called in Romala. The two youngest
victims were identified as Nordin Hassam Yusuf Marshud who is fifteen,
and seventeen year old Majdi Johannis Saud Ararawi. So both

(24:47):
of them under eighteen, but the oldest person was twenty three,
so these are all very young people. Salia dead now,
and then they estimate that Palestinia request estimates at three
thousand people have left the camp, which I think paints
a picture of like emptying or cleaning or whatever colonial

(25:08):
sort of word you want to use to make it
seem less brutal than it is, but like emptying the
space of human being so that it can be colonized
or that other folks can move there.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Right, yeah, Yeah. In addition to some places are saying
eight have died some people some places are saying nine,
but regardless, there are over one hundred people that are injured.
And so I don't know, the fact that the oldest
person was only twenty three years old should really paint
the picture of like who exactly is being targeted and killed,

(25:39):
because there's no way their defense of targeting terrorists can
play here, even though it probably does in the long run.
But I just I think it's really fucked up and unfair.
The White House meanwhile, so the United States quote supports
israel security and right to defend its people against Hamas,
Palestinian is Jihad and other terrorist groups, and they also

(26:03):
highlighted the need to product noncombatants, which hasn't happened, and
none of those people are actually being targeted or there's
nothing to defend at this point, I really don't.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
I don't know. It's also weird that I don't know,
Like it just seems such a knee jerk response. So
maybe this is just me being being a dweeb or whatever.
But like, at least one of the IDs was was
like claimed by Janine Brigades, I think the one earlier
last week to call out groups by name like and

(26:37):
then not call out the group who are claiming responsibility
for at least one of these attacks. It just seems
so like okay, like press play on the tape.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, they're also naming things that people are probably more
familiar with, like almost to like justify or like entice
fear of being like, oh my god, yeah Hamas attack
Hamas or whatever they think will happen with that response.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Ian.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
The international response, Yeah, the international response has also been
dog shit surprise, surprise. It's because this will always just
talk and nothing really happens. Turkey's Foreign Ministry voice is
deep concern over the attack. They warned that it can
trigger a new spiral of violence it already has, and
they called the Israeli encourasion a heinous crime. Cut Her

(27:21):
stress that the need for international community to move urgently
to protect the Palestinian people was very necessary. And then
Jordan condemned the escalation as a violation of international humanitarian law,
which Israel has been breaking for years, so nothing has happened.
And then Egypt, on the other hand, it warned of

(27:42):
serious repercussions and it called on other international people to intervene.
And then the UN said the situation is very dangerous
like all these things I think have already been said
every time. That's why I just think it's so empty.
And I don't know, I nothing if it's just words

(28:02):
and no actions, Like, how are we supposed to even
take anything seriously? I guess I don't know.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, it's the it's the thoughts and prayers of the
h executive national like the UN is always deeply concerned,
but it never does fuck all right, So yeah, I
guess to wrap up, we should talk about like what
this means for Janine as a place or like as
a community.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah, we mentioned this in our previous recording last week.
But Israel's attacks on Janine are part of an effort
to crush resistance with the young Palestinians that are increasingly
taking up arms because their disillusioned with the PA, and
according to analysts, Israel's hard right government is likely to
continue with heavy handed approach toward Palestinians in the West Bank.

(28:49):
Palestinian lawyer and analyst Deanna Buttou said Israel wants to
do whatever it can to crush Janine in any other
form of resistance. Israel has made it clear that there
are three options available for Palestinians. Option one is to leave.
Option two is to remain as residents, but not as
citizens of any state. And option three is if you resist,

(29:11):
we are going to crush you. This is what they
are implementing.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's well said.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah. Hassan Ayub, who is a Palestinian political science professor
at n Naja National University in Nablus, he agreed with
the lawyer's statement, and he said the end game is
to make Palestinians give up any hope of achieving self
determination or being recognized as a people. Janine has a
long history of resistance. It is a model for the

(29:39):
masses that Israel wants to eliminate. But for Palestinians, the
question is a matter of principle, and their endgame is
to end this occupation. And essentially Israel intends to crush
what I you refer to as quote the Janine phenomenon
or any form of Palestinian resistance. Yeah, the Israeli aggression.

(30:00):
Fears of an escalation that continues to happen in areas
such as the Gaza Strip because that's another symbolic place
of resistance for Palestinians. And yeah, that's where we are now.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
That's pretty much it will I reach out to some
people I know, but people generally don't like to be
on their phones when this stuff is happening. So maybe
we'll update you with some more information.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah, hopefully. I mean updates like this are always kind
of like unfortunate because I don't think we want to
update that more shitty things are happening, but especially with
stuff like this, it doesn't seem like Israel is going
to back down anytime soon. So yeah, that's that's the update.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
Okay, Yeah, so I wanted to talk about some of
the people who were killed. One of the people who
was killed was I'm dadf al Jas. He was forty
eight done age twenty two. Was killed in the Guinane
masacre that occurred in January this year. So it kind
of gives you a sense of like the risk that
I guess one incurs unwillingly by existing in what is

(31:12):
a fucking refugee camp. His son wasn't the only young
person killed. Another person who's killed was a Sadil Naja Nachia.
She was fifteen, and a few days later her classmates
attended her funeral, all in their school uniforms. It's pretty sad.
There are obviously images of it if you want to

(31:32):
go like the up but you can see lots of
little school girls burying their friend in a town which
is covered in burned detritus. No one should have to
bury their kids. It's a horrible kid shouldn't have to
deal with this shit. But there are plenty of pictures
of little school girls standing by her grave. It's a

(31:53):
it's awful, so horrible. Yeah. The other victims were identified
as Ahmed Soaker, Ahmed Da Rachma, Colored Darwish Kassam Pais Labusilia.
They were fifteen, nineteen, twenty one, nineteen and twenty nine respectively.

(32:15):
They after this occurred, the aforementioned attack on settlers in
Eli took place. Two gunman shown to a gas station
or restaurant. One was killed on the scene and one
was killed later. It was a response to the master
of attack on Tumasaiah that occurred a few days before.
And I want to highlight how the NYT covered this
because I think it's important to like dissect how Palestine

(32:37):
is covered by the US right because obviously the US
is one of the biggest state supporters of Israel, and
specifically one of the people who continues to equip the
IDF to do this stuff. Right, So I'm quoting here directly.
Last week, two Palestinians called for Israelis and injured four
others near the Eli Settlement, escalating monthlung violence between Palestinians

(33:00):
and Israelis in the West Bank. The next day, some
four hundred settlers descended on several Palestinian villages, including Tulmasayah,
a prosperous town near Ramala, where reportedly they torched cars
and homes. That I want to I want to stop
right there, because it is not reportedly right, Like we

(33:21):
do not have to qualify this with like maybe or
like we've just seen this on Twitter dot com. Like
you could probably see this shit on Google Maps, right,
Like they torched a town. There's massive damage done. Even
the New York Times itself didn't qualify it as a
reported incident in its own reporting. And this isn't we

(33:46):
don't hear the same thing with the two Palestinian gunmen, right,
Just to read the first opening sentence again, last week,
two Palestinian carriers killed for Israelis. It's just stated as
a fact, right, And these just within those couple of sentences.
You can see so much of the bias in the

(34:07):
way this is reported, so much of the different perspectives
through which state violence. I would encourage people not to
use terrorism. I would encourage them to see things, especially
in this context, in terms of political violence. Right, there
is political violence done by both sides. One of those
sides is a state actor, the other side is a
non state actor. But qualifying one and making it distinct

(34:30):
from the other, I think is shoddy journalism, and I
don't think it really helps us understand this situation. So
what happened, right, Like, fifteen homes were burned, sixty vehicles
were burned, and the writer's sort of quote unquote sort
of saying this is reportedly. It's not true. It's a
thing that really happened. Another kind of phrasing that I've

(34:54):
found really objectionable in this instance is clashes, right, Like
often you'll see clashes engine uh, and like that casts
a lens of parity, or like it looks at these
things through a lens of parity, which I don't think
is real on the ground. Like, it's not a clash
when a helicopter is firing rockets, even if it is

(35:15):
firing rockets at people with kalashnikovs, right like that it's
not a clash. There's not really a parity there, right like,
And it's it also kind of downplays a violence of
what's happening, right, it's an attack, it's an assault. I
think the constant use of clashes, right it's nearly always.
You don't really see it used anywhere else, or if

(35:38):
you do, it's for it's for much less severe violence,
like like clashes between an arrival football fans, not that
that can't be very violent, care, but you don't really
see this word used to characterize like state violence on
this scale anywhere else. And so I would really encourage
people when they're reading, especially coverage of this, right, which

(36:00):
is an issue that the US cannot get its head
out of it to us about uh, to look for
this bias language. And if you're reading coverage or anything else, right,
if you're reading coverage something and you start to notice that,
like I would perhaps question where you're getting your coverage from.
And I know you had some shit to say about
the New York Times sharing.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
I mean, yeah, I one really liked what you said
about referring to it as state violence versus terrorism, because
I think it's a huge point that I also want
to adopt, because I didn't even really transfer that over
until just now when you said it, and I think
it's a really important distinction. So thank you for that.
But yeah, the New York Times, as well as many,

(36:39):
if not most news organizations, they're incredibly biased when it
comes to Palestine is real reporting, and The New York
Times in particular has been absolute dog shit and their
coverage of Palestine for quite a while now. There has
been a persistent pattern of bias when it comes to
Israel and Palestine. I'm going to go in chronological order,
and then James will jump back in with the recent

(37:02):
article about the New York Times and this terrible thing
that it has within it that I'm not going to
give away right now. But let's go back in time
to February twenty eleven, when The New York Times published
a piece on JVP activism in the Bay Area. JVP
stands for Jewish Voices for Peace, and this article said,
the activists say they are not working against Israel, but

(37:22):
against the Israeli government policies they believe are a discriminatory
which is yes, correct, But in the editor's note. The
Times later wrote that one of the articles two authors
was a pro Palestinian advocate and that he should not
have written the article and should not have been allowed
to write it. So it initially seems like good reporting

(37:44):
because it's true you're protesting against the Israeli government. But
then to say that a Palestinian advocate can't write it
is ridiculous, So fuck you New York Times. And then
in twenty fifteen, a study was done analyzing the New
York Times publications during the period of September tenth and
October fourteenth and twenty fifteen. At the time of the

(38:07):
study in twenty fifteen, two thousand Palestinians had been injured
while eighty three Israelis were injured, just for context of
what the reporting was about, and the study analyzed thirty
six articles. In these articles, the New York Times talked
about Palestinian quote unquote violence thirty six times and Israeli

(38:27):
violence two times. The word attack was used to describe
Palestinian actions one hundred and ten times, in Israeli actions
seventeen times. They used the word terrorist forty two times
to refer to Palestinian violence, and one time one time
to refer to Israeli violence. More than half of the

(38:47):
New York Times headlines during that whole year depicted Palestinians
as the instigators of violence. Zero headlines depicted the Israelis
as aggressors. None and nothing has changed. I know that's
from a period in twenty fifteen, but that's basically consistent,
if not more so prevalent. Now. It just seems like
the New York Times editorial board refuses to incorporate Palestine

(39:11):
perspective into its editorials, even though there have been many
calls to do so, and this leads it to fundamentally
misread the reality on the ground in Palestine. And it
clearly shows the newspaper's bias when it comes to what
it chooses to include about Palestine and from whom. Of
the two thy four hundred and ninety opinion pieces about Palestinians,

(39:31):
but the New York Times published between nineteen seventy in
twenty nineteen, only forty six written by actual Palestinians, which
is an average of less than two percent. With the
lack of Palestinian and Arab columnists that are even employed
by New York Times, a kind of group think has
inevitably emerged there, and this group think consistently places Israel,

(39:55):
Israeli framings and Israeli perspectives above those of Palestinians. A
keyword search of the Times editorials that discuss Palestinians is
like this. Between nineteen seventy and twenty nineteen, the word
peace appeared one thousand and one hundred and twelve times,
but justice only appeared eighty six times. Terror was mentioned

(40:16):
six hundred and forty nine times, but occupation was only
mentioned two hundred and nineteen times, two hundred and nineteen times.
I want to also remind you this is from starting
from nineteen seventy. Israel's security quote unquote was written ninety times,
but Palestinian freedom was mentioned just three times. While keyboard

(40:37):
searches alone do not tell the whole story, they do
help us get a sense of the overall tenor of
the Times coverage, and over the last five decades, Israel
has been unquestioningly presented by Times editors as a close ally,
while the Palestinians have been consistently framed as a problem.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
So I want to talk about this. That was an
excellent piece that came out in Study Hole. I believe
it's based on some reporting in a Canadian outlet called
Passage and Study. Hall is a freelance journalists like group
Localists serve, but they also do some editorial work. But
it's talking about this this Israeli nonprofit or it's really

(41:18):
funded nonprofits based in the US and also in Israel
called Honest Reporting. What it is is a five oh
one c. Three And essentially what they've done is is
what Sharen describes right where they've they've found not I
believe mostly Palestinian reporters, perhaps also non Palestinian reporters who

(41:39):
are reporting from this. I guess from what I would
described as the facts based approach to this, which is
describing what's happening as an apartheid And they've dived into
these people's background, their previous tweets, their previous writing, their
other work to describe them as by and get their

(42:00):
articles taken down. And they've done this to some very
like this has happened at the Times, and this is
at a time like I know Sharin mentioned something that
happened in twenty eleven, but I know that in twenty ten,
the Jerusalem bureau chief of the Times had a child
serving in the idf Right. So like, you know, if

(42:22):
if I had a you know, if I was a
journalist and I said, yeah, you know, I actually have
a son who's in the Alexa Martis Brigade, like then
they're not going to not going to commission my piece.
But they've for instance, Hosam Salem. Have you seen Sam's work?

Speaker 2 (42:39):
I don't know. My brain doesn't create.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
I've worked with a sum before. It's a friend of mine.
He's an incredibly gifted photojournalists. People should follow him on
the places where they see photographs. He's blacklisted by the
Times based on an honest reporting probe into his quote
unquote bias, which his photos of Gaza are some of
the most emotive photographs of Gaza like I've ever seen.

(43:04):
And I work with him on a piece that will
one day become a podcast about Parkour in the Gaza Strip.
But also, yeah, Hosam is a fantastic photojournalist and absolutely
like it is. It's utterly ridiculous to have like have
him blacklisted by a major news organization, which, like, whether
we like it or not, that is where a lot

(43:25):
of Americans get their news. In one instance, this organization
managed to get the Toronto start to scrub all uses
of Palestine from their stories, like to include shit like
yeah like that, like they were profiling a DJ who
was Palestinian. Wow, like which I think is like incredibly illustrative,

(43:47):
right that, Like this is organization presents itself as fighting
anti Israeli bias, which I'm sure that is a thing
that exists. It fucking does not exist in the US media.
Like I'm I'm not a Palestinian person, by speak as
a person who has pitched articles about conflict in various
parts of the world, and they can tell you that

(44:08):
that is not a bias that I have come across,
having worked with almost every big outlet that it is
possible to work for in the US. It's not doing that.
It's trying to raise Palestine and Palestinian people, not only
their perspectives but their whole existence. Right, And this is
something that I hap on a lot, But I think

(44:28):
we should do more conflict reporting that's about people, unless
it is about numbers and battles and such like. That's
why I want to write about little girls who's surfing
Gaza and young men who do parkour, because like when
Israel bombs Gaza. It doesn't just bomb people who are
part of fatal or harmas or whatever they want to say.

(44:50):
They're targeting, right like the lions den or ginnymbryas whatever.
When they're bombing these places, they're also bombing children. They're
also bombing places where little kids want to go and
play football. They're bombing towns where little boys want to
I mean them, hospitals and schools and yeah, like the
this is where people just like you live. It's not

(45:13):
like there's a very clear desire to kind of erase
Palestinian civilians, I guess from my narrative, and it's really
important that we as journalist and as people don't allow
that to happen. I guess you can. We'll link to
this in our sources at the end of the month.
But I think it's an excellent piece. It's worth reading.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Thank you parentialing that before we continue with some really
excellent new things. Let's take our second break and we'll
be right back, yes.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Way back, And I want to talk a little bit
more about like the I guess these really political context
behind the increasing aggression towards Janina and Palestini general. So
of the one hundred and sixty five Palestinian deaths. About
eighty six were in the North and West Bank, mostly
in the areas of Janine and Nubbles, which cannot come incidentally,

(46:13):
are the areas where we're seeing new armed groups emerging.
Despite this, israelis ready to massively step up settlement in
the West Bank. Earlier in June, Prime Minister Benjamin then
and Yahoo ratified a policy allowing pro settler finance Minister
There's Alliell Smotridge to bypass the six dage process for
building settlements, effectively giving him the ability to make settlement

(46:33):
decisions on his own. In recent years, Israeli politicians as
settlers have become more and more open about their goals
annexing most, if not all, of the West Bank. So
March of this year, Smotridge claimed that Palestinian people were
an invention of the last century. It's probably worth taking
a moment to point out that all national identities are

(46:53):
inherently constructed, Like humanity did not come to earth with flags.
Those are things that came to exist in the nineteenth
and twentieth century. It's like, so is Israel right, We
can kind of put a date on that one.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
So that's just so, that's like literally projecting an invention
of the last century is literally Israel whatever, Yes, the
state of Israel.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, I mean nations calling other nations constructed. Is the
kind of the pot calling the cow blackleg Yeah, but
insomuch as if we're going to do that, I think
is rarely throwing stones from a glasshouse.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
It's like it doesn't really fucking matter either, right, Like
it doesn't matter how long the one group of people
has had one flag, you still shouldn't fucking kill children,
which applies to anyone involved in the killing of children.
So Matrich said that there was no such thing as
a Palestinian because there is no such thing as a
Palestinian people in a speech in Paris and a memorial

(47:54):
for Jack Koppa an activity it's else right wing liqud party.
Do you know who are the Palestine? He said, I'm
a Palestinian, going on to describe his late grandfather, who
he said was a thirteenth generation Jerusalem might as a
true Palestinian, which is somewhat Look, these people are supposed

(48:15):
to be contradictory, Like it's not really worth sucking pointing
this out, But like you can't simultaneously say there are
a Palestinians, Palestine doesn't exist. Also, I'm a Palestinian. Again
not the point. I guess he was a resident. He
is a resident one of the settlements himself. He's an
advocate for theocratic law, the segregation of maternity warts. So

(48:36):
he doesn't want Arab and Israeli women to give birth
in the same ridiculous Yeah, it's his justification for it
is like even worse, but I won't bother with that.
He's also openly homophobic, and he supports the conspiracy theory
that Yitzak Rabine was killed by Israel security agencies. All around,

(48:57):
top guy the Coud, Benjamin and Yahi party likes to
use names for the West Bank that you might find
in the Bible, and it's made accelerating a legal settlement
there a priority. Since it took office that Yahoo coalition
has approved seven thousand new housing units, many in the
occupied West Bank. The government also amended law to clear
the way for settlers to return to four settlements that

(49:18):
have previously been evacuated. Within a week of having power
to make these decisions, Motrich approved five thousand new units.
This is a great time to draw attention to one
of the most fucking infuriating paragraphs that have ever been written,
which I found in a New York Times article that

(49:41):
I can't believe this is real.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
James said it to me before this, and it is crazy.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
I like the century and stuff I know will make
her angry. Of course, not all West Bank settlers are
alter nationalists who believe that living in the land of
the Bible is a religious edict. Most settlers, in fact,
including hundreds of thousands of Oltra Orthodox use, move there
seeking a portable housing. I am fucking like I cannot
last it. When I got yeah, I checked out mentally.

(50:10):
I catapoled myself into outer space. I don't want to
be here anymore. That's ridiculous. I have decided to curl
up into a ball and no longer exist. Like this
is from the newspaper as well, that like Whent so
fucking ham on people in twenty twenty, like taking milk
from a target, you know, like like when you like
seeking affordable dairy products. I guess could have been an

(50:32):
alternative frameing of that that they didn't. They didn't go
for it. It just fucking unbelievable, Like they like the
ship that freakonomics has done to people's brains is it's
really next level. But people more people listen to our
podcasts in their podcast because we're winning in the marketplace
of ideas and so all in seven hundred and fifty

(50:52):
thousand people live in these settlements. But being a legal
under international law doesn't really mean anything unless that law
is enforced, and it really is. We spoke earlier before, right,
just like the US, which frequently violates Domesican international law
on its own border, Israel is simply not held to
account for its crimes. United Nations Special Reporteur and Palestine
Francisco Albernesi told Al Jazeera international law has a quote

(51:16):
unquote problem of enforcement. There is a problem of double
standards because clearly when it comes to Palestine, there is
a cognitive disson especially among Western countries, and reticence in
applying these coercive measures and all the prohibitions international law
efforts are Benici.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Said, yeah, we already mentioned how just even the phrase
international laws just make believe like you always hear about Israel,
even like committing crimes against humanity, None of that even
seems to matter when it comes to Israel because there's
never a repercussion.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah, it doesn't matter anywhere that there is no direct
interest to capital to enforcing that law. Right, it doesn't
matter when young women in memm are get raped by soldiers.
It doesn't matter when Villa Juice get burned down there,
it doesn't matter. And to grie in Ethiopian Eritrea because
there's no interest to finance capital of solving that problem.

(52:10):
It's not just a a Palestine things. It's the thing
all over the world. And laws are fundamentally backed up
by violence. Right, Like in America, if you get a
parking ticket and you don't pay your parking ticket and
you have to go to court, and you don't go
to court, eventually someone with a gun will come and
kick down your door. And like all laws are based

(52:31):
in violence. And there ain't no one kicking down Israel's door, right,
and no one will. And so it doesn't matter. International
law doesn't matter. It's nice and it's there. We can
point to it and say, look, we've all agreed this
is bad, but we all know it's bad. Like we
don't really need a bunch of like old men suits
to tell us it's bad. We knew it was bad.
What we needed to fucking make it stop, and that's

(52:53):
not happening.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Yeah. I think it's also interesting to mention that internationally,
even when you get better quote unquote reporting about Palestine,
it still is not enough because it's usually about peace
and both sides or a conflict or whatever. So I
just think, I mean that also goes back to news
and how it's reported. But this stubborn insistence on blaming

(53:17):
both sides is reflective of a deeply flawed quote unquote
peace framework, and it has dominated the international understanding of
the Israel Palestine quote unquote conflict for decades. The framework
of peace centers on identity politics and ignores the structural
violence that the state perpetuates against oppressed groups and instead

(53:38):
focuses on acts of spectacular violence committed by those groups
in response to the oppression they face. And it also
blames them for escalating conflict and then uses it to
justify the repressive violence by the more powerful forces. To
go back to New York Times briefly, many of the
Times editorials over the last thirty years since the advent

(54:01):
of the Oslo Accords have been steeped in the peace framework.
They treat Israelis and Palestinians as having equal power when
they clearly don't. They praise Israel for minor adjustments to
its daily structural violence against Palestinians, but in the same
breath they scold Palestinian leaders and society for acts of

(54:21):
violence done in turn. And the word conflict is also
problematic in and of itself, because Palestine isn't some conflict
or problem for Israel to sort out. It's a cause
for everyone to fight for. Since nineteen forty eight, the
Israeli state has prevented Palestinians from living in their homeland
with freedom and dignity, whether it's by banning refugees from

(54:43):
returning to their homes, or discriminating against Palestinian citizens inside Israel,
or keeping millions of Palestinians under military occupation. If there
is a problem to be solved, that problem is the
regime itself. But this fact of bias and shitty reporting

(55:04):
and the fact that the truth is not out there,
that fact seems to have eluded the Times editorial board
because rather than recognize the systemic violence, discrimination, and colonization
perpetuated by Israel against Palestinians, the board blames quote unquote
both sides for a vastly asymmetric situation. This both sides

(55:24):
ism may give the appearance of balance, but it does
not reflect the reality in which Israel holds almost total political, economic,
and military power over the lives of every Palestinian in
a system that growing numbers of scholars, human rights groups,
and legal experts are defining as apartheid. But I do

(55:45):
hope some of this was at least helpful, and I
mean will probably be back to do the same kind
of thing soon because Israel is relentless and stupid and
I hate it. So until then, fuck the IDF and
have a nice day.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at
coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.