Palestinians Under Siege: A Visit to the Occupied West Bank

Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
It's time for you and me to stand up for ourselves.
Welcome to Unwashed and Unruly, where we turn over stones and
see what crawls out. Today we're talking about
Israel's war of annihilation against Palestinians, not only
in Gaza, but through expulsion and terror in the West Bank.
I'm your host Lola Michaels, joined by Ezra Saeed.
Hi, Lola. Hi everyone.

(00:29):
And Cam Cruz. Hey, guys.
And today we have a special guest, a New York based
organizer who works with Palestinian women organizers in
the Northern West Bank, Simone Deckard.
Hi, Simone. Hi.
You can find all our episodes onour website unwashedun-ruly.com,
plus special content. You can also find us on YouTube,

(00:51):
Instagram, Tiktok and X. Please follow us and don't
forget to rate and review the show.
While we watch in horror the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the
Nakba has continued and intensified in the occupied West
Bank. Israel's occupation of the West
Bank is one of the longest military occupations in the

(01:12):
world today. We'll get an eyewitness account
from the ground. We'll talk about how Israel is
tightening its control of Palestinian towns and villages
through daily military raids, home demolitions, mass arrests,
torture, destruction of crops, constant settler violence and
surveillance. It all started when the Zionist
movement took over 80% of Palestine and forcibly displaced

(01:35):
hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians in 194748.
The Israeli state completed its takeover by seizing the Golan
Heights, Gaza, and the West Bankin 1967, and it continues with
the violent repression and dehumanization of millions under
Israeli rule. We're so deeply honored to have
our first guest on the show to share her observations of the

(01:56):
West Bank. Simone.
We'll be talking about the deepening despair under Zionist
rule since October 7th, the prison system, settler violence,
the myth of the two state solution, and what Palestinians
themselves see as a path forward.
Thank you so much for joining us, Simone.

(02:17):
Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here.
So let's just start with some ofthe fundamentals.
With the backing of the US, the Zionist state is trying to carry
out its long standing goal, outright annexation of the West
Bank. The complete colonization of the
West Bank and the genocide in Gaza are part of the Zionist
program of so-called Greater Israel.

(02:37):
Their desire is to seize all theland of historic Palestine with
as few Palestinians as possible.OK, so now a couple of specifics
on the West Bank. This is part of historic
Palestine, which was militarily seized by Israel in 67.
The major cities like Ramallah, Hebron, Nablis and Janine are
where millions of Palestinians live without basic political,

(02:59):
civil or human rights under an apartheid system of control that
touches every part of daily life.
It's where you have Jewish only settlements, concentrated and
strategic locations to militarily encircle the
Palestinians, as well as in the heart of Palestinian areas.
The Israeli army regularly entercities and refugee camps with
indiscriminate terror and deadlyforce.

(03:21):
The Palestinian Authority, whichhas partial civil control, is
widely viewed by Palestinians ascorrupt and complicit with the
occupation. Because it is.
OK, Simone. So tell us a little bit about
your recent trip and where you went in the West Bank.
Yeah. So I was in Palestine for about
a month this past summer, but middle of the summer, and I

(03:43):
mainly spent time in the northern West Bank.
It's where I do the majority of my work in the communities in
Janine, Nablus and Tolketa. These are kind of the three main
cities in the north as well as Tubas is another major city in
the north, mainly Nablus, but I did day trips to Bethlehem.

(04:05):
Ramallah. Ramallah is really the
administrative capital. A lot of organizations will have
an office, main office in Ramallah and the satellite
offices in Nablus. So sometimes you do have to go
to Ramallah to do business and EJerusalem for short periods of
time as well. So you've been traveling to the
West Bank regularly or or enoughso that you've been able to

(04:26):
notice some of the changes over the last two years, specifically
since October 7th. Can you talk a little bit about
those changes or how different it's been?
Yeah. So things are declining in the
West Bank economically, absolutely.
When October 7th happened, about250,000 Palestinians were West

(04:49):
Bank Palestinians were fired from their jobs in Occupied 48
Palestine or Israel. And many of these people were
low income workers, but this also included nurses, doctors,
some professional class people. Actually many of the refugee
camps, particularly in Janine, they're very close on the border

(05:09):
if you look at a map to quote Israel.
And so these communities did rely heavily on particularly low
income work in Israel. And so October 7th happened and
you know, you had mass, mass firings.
And so these communities, particularly the working class
communities, which already have very high levels of
unemployment, are now two years into many families having no one

(05:35):
working other than maybe odd jobs here and there, maybe some
assistance from some organizations.
That's a crisis. And two years in, people have
gone through their savings. For many families, things are
getting quite desperate. People are struggling to afford
food. People are struggling to afford

(05:55):
university fees. Because also particularly around
university fees, there were programs that wealthier
Palestinians in the West Bank would contribute to, for lower
income families to cover university tuition.
But these families no longer have that extra income to put
towards those. So a lot of those kind of really

(06:17):
100% community based initiativeshave not really been able to
continue post October 7th because you just generally have
such a decline in expendable income.
And so economically, definitely things are very bad, very bad in
the West Bank. And how do you see that playing
out in terms of just the generaloutlook and despair and overall

(06:42):
sense combined with what's happening in Gaza?
Something that I think is reallyimportant is that people, people
in the West Bank, they, they are, they're very aware of Gaza.
And as much as people talk abouthow the situation is that in the
West Bank, they always say, but Gaza is much worse and we are

(07:03):
not Gaza and, and they come first.
And so I think Gaza is also kindof a a warning in a way of what
what could happen as well. And people are very aware of
that. I think it's not as spoken
because that's a really scary thing to say outright, but
that's kind of a lot of the underlying feeling.

(07:24):
And this has played out in reality in the refugee camps in
the northern West Bank. So in the refugee camps of
Janine Tokatam and Nora Shams, which is a refugee camp in the
city of Tokatam. And among these three camps,
there are currently about 48,000people who are internally
displaced in the West Bank who were violently removed from

(07:48):
their homes. And the refugee camps right now
are closed military zones. The homes are being burned,
they're being demolished. The army is creating these large
kind of boulevards to ease theirmovements within the camps
because the camps, these neighborhoods are very, they're
very narrow streets. So they are difficult for
military operations. And so you know you see the Gaza

(08:12):
level destruction in the West Bank and you see displacement,
mass displacement already in theWest Bank in these refugee
camps. So, of course it is not to the
scale of Gaza, but they are implementing the same strategy
currently in the West Bank. One of the things I was curious

(08:33):
about it, if you had any insighton or gotten a chance to spoke
to people about while you were there, is like if you look at
the first intifada, which was obviously a product of decades
of simmering discontent, the spark at the end was a soldier
killing a young man in Gaza and that exploded throughout all of
Palestine. But Gaza, West Bank, and within

(08:55):
Israel itself. You look at the second intifada
again, years and years of mounting discontent.
And then Ariel Sharon goes to the Haram Sharif and it's seen
as such an affront. Today.
It's almost a weekly occurrence.But at the time, it was seen as
such an affront that it sparks awhole rebellion.
And now you're seeing this genocide happening in Gaza.

(09:21):
But the West Bank, well, I understand that there's been
sparks here and there by small militant groups.
Seems relatively quiescent. Is it fear?
Is it despair? Is it the sense that you spoke
of the the threat of what Gaza poses to the population of the
West Bank? Do people talk about it?

(09:42):
Is is there a sense of my God, almost half of our nation in or
good chunk of our nation is being annihilated and we can't
do anything about it? I think it's a combination of of
all of those things depending onwho you're who you're talking
to. I think there is a sentiment
among people who, you know, you have people who are more

(10:05):
politically aligned with the PA on the Palestinian Authority who
will say, look at what are the actions of Hamas has gotten us.
It's gotten us a genocide, it's gotten us a terrible economy.
Look at what's happened in the refugee camps.
This is what resistance gets us.So you do hear this from, from

(10:25):
people, you know, a lot of people have lost a lot to, to
Israel and, and by Israel. And there is definitely a lot of
anger and a lot of rage. But unfortunately the the PA is
a very powerful mechanism of counterinsurgency and I think it

(10:47):
cannot be understated kind of the the Vichy nature of of the
Pai personally think of it as a Vichy government essentially
because of the the role that they play, particularly in area
A or 100% Palestinian controlledareas.
The PA is just as much of A concern as as the Israelis in

(11:11):
many ways. Because when when people are
brought in for questioning in Nablus, most of the time the
first round is done by the PA, you know, or they're held in PA
prisons before going to a quote,Israeli prison.
Some context that I think is very important about the
northern West Bank. And I don't know Ezra, if you
are familiar with a group calledthe Lion's Den in Nablus, but

(11:35):
they were a popular supported resistance group, I guess
technically aligned somewhat with Hamas, but independent
brigade in many ways. And in in 2022 and into 2023,
their leaders were systematically murdered and
their families terrorized and imprisoned by the Israelis and

(12:00):
the Old City was put under undersiege.
And this was really impactful interms of, I think, quelling any
resistance over the last couple years, particularly in the
northern West Bank, because of both how violent the response
was, but also how effectively the Israelis murdered every

(12:23):
leader of the lion's den. And so I think that it's two
things. It's both that there's a lot of
oppression, there's a lot of fear of repression and of
particularly like economic, likeI, I need to support my family
so I can't go to prison and I don't want to get caught up in
something. But also the Lion's Den was

(12:44):
very, very, very serious, just destruction of a really pretty
popular resistance in the northern West Bank.
Didn't the Lion's Den subsequently also fall to some
repression at the hands of the PA as well?
Yes, yes. And we see this more recently
with incidents in Janine, in Janine camp and in Janine City

(13:07):
where the PA had snipers who were shooting Palestinians and
killing them in Janine in the the winter.
On behalf of Israel. Yep, on behalf of Israel.
Exactly. The Israelis didn't have to lift
a finger. So yes, a good amount of
operations are done by the PA against resistance actions.
Etcetera. And those who denounce Hamas or,

(13:28):
or you could say the same thing about the PFLP or others who
denounce resistance, look what resistance has gotten us.
Do they offer something in placeof that?
Do they have another leader or someone in mind or?
Yeah. Are they happy with the rule of
the PA? I have not heard a good
alternative from these. Oh, do they offer any
alternative, even if it's a bad alternative?

(13:49):
Not really, because the alternative is continuing to go
as is where you can. Maybe if you're a small business
owner or if you are a lawyer, a doctor, you can continue having
your, you know, you have a nice house and you have your little
piece that you're trying to protect.
But beyond that, no, they don't really offer another solution.

(14:11):
Yeah. One of the things I'm hearing,
and please correct me if I'm mistaken, is what the PA has as
a base now within Palestinian society.
Is that shrinking professional and middle class?
That feels like it would have something to lose.
If. Yes, if there's an uprising of
some kind. Yeah.
I mean, it's not frankly too dissimilar to the liberal

(14:31):
political establishment here, right?
It is serving a very specific class of professional and very
wealthy people in the United States.
And so the dynamics are not so dissimilar to what we experience
here, where it serves A shrinking few.
And then the actions of poor people who may be more involved

(14:56):
in more, quote, extremist parties are seen as kind of a a
shame or a moral failing. I mean, I would say the one
difference is the liberal establishment in the United
States at least plays a role in running the United States,
whereas the PA doesn't run Palestine.
It's simply is it? Well, one I was.

(15:17):
Going to say it's the it's the arm of Israel within Palestine.
Yes, but they employ a lot of. People.
Oh, I'm sure, because Israel lets them.
Because they and. The US and the.
US, but I think it's a but but, but it is important to recognize
that like the hospitals are socialized, city functions, city
cleaning, all of this stuff, that's all the PA.

(15:39):
So they employ a lot. They do play a very important
role in everyday life because they do employ a lot of people
and that does have an impact. They have not been able to pay
people their full salaries even before October 7th, which is a
very big issue that comes up a lot.
I understand, like one of the things that distinguished the

(16:00):
first intifada was a civil disobedience campaign.
We're not going to pay our taxes.
We're not going to cooperate with the ruling government in
the West Bank. We're not going to cooperate
with the administrations. And these were all directly run
by Israel at the time. What to me the PA now represents
is they've put a tattered Palestinian flag as a facade on

(16:24):
top of the Israeli occupation. And so if you imagine you're a
Palestinian who is basically continuing to suffer these
conditions, you now have to takeon both Israel and the PA.
Yeah. Like Ezra and I were talking
about this beforehand and tryingto come up with kind of how to
describe the Palestinian Authority.

(16:44):
And I thought that your analogy with the capo was, you know,
that these are the the traders who are maintaining their
position within the ghetto and they have something to gain in
maintaining that position. Yeah.
I do want to be careful though, because again, it is a difficult
situation. There are not a lot of choices

(17:05):
particularly right now economically.
And so I think that PA leadership and people who may be
affiliated with the PA who are workers, I do think it is
important to make that distinction though generally.
To me, the capo is not the guy who works at a hospital or the

(17:27):
teacher. I'm talking about the people who
run the PA. I'm talking about the people who
order the arrest and repression of Palestinian activists on
behalf of the US and Israel. There's an understanding to me
which is if they don't do that, they're no longer going to have
their position of power because the only reason the PA exists is

(17:47):
to basically run the West Bank and it used to be a Gaza to run
the Palestinian territories for Israel and the US as a
handmaiden to them. Otherwise there would have been
no Oslo Accords or any of that stuff.
It never was about a road to self determination.
It was basically about giving a fig leaf to creating these

(18:10):
little Bantu stands and giving these little chieftains A fig
leaf to basically Lord it over the Palestinian population and
dominate them. And that domination can be
repression, but it could also beeconomic.
And I think they kind of looked at the South African model and
said, oh, there's some lessons to be drawn here, chopping up

(18:30):
the body politic of the Palestinian nation. 100%.
Yeah. I want to go back Simone, to
some of the kind of the the daily existence in the West
Bank. And one of the things that we
talked about is that it's not just when there's a major event
or massacre where you can actually see the systemic

(18:51):
cruelty of the occupation and how it plays out.
But some of the most horrible things are just the daily
regime, the checkpoints, the Jewish only roads, how difficult
it is to get from point A to point B.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
And if you had any specific interactions or observations at
these at these checkpoints, if you feel comfortable talking

(19:12):
about that Or with settlers evenin the West Bank.
Movement within the West Bank, particularly in the last nine
months, has gotten dramatically more difficult, more dangerous,
more time consuming and more expensive.
So when I was in Palestine in last November, 1/3 taxi ride

(19:33):
from Nablus to Romola, which should take about 45 minutes,
cost 18 shekels. And then when I came back in
this past summer, it had gone upto 25 the shekels for the same
route. That is both.
That's a variety of factors. Some of it is fuel cost.
Some of it is also just that nowit usually takes a lot longer or

(19:56):
it has the higher chance of taking sometimes up to four or
five hours depending on checkpoint settlers, just
traffic, a lot of factors. And so just just that cost rise.
My colleague and I, we we went and I had a 50.
Shekel No, in the first time we got on the shared taxi, I put
it, I put it forward to the driver and we got nothing back.

(20:18):
And I was like, oh, and someone said, oh, it's 25 now.
That was definitely a shock for your average Palestinian right
now. It's a very big a big jump.
So just on a price point, thingshave gotten much more expensive
for for transportation on a safety point, it has gotten much
more dangerous because in addition to checkpoints, which

(20:41):
they have both permanent checkpoints and then what people
call flying checkpoints, which is where it can just kind of,
you know, you can have there's like a little booth that
sometimes is empty, sometimes isthere.
And then you also can sometimes just have soldiers who will make
a checkpoint on the road. In addition to checkpoints,
there have been about, I think as of yesterday, about 1000

(21:07):
gates that are these large yellow metal swing open close
gates that have been placed literally all over the West Bank
in front of most villages, in front of the entrances to major
cities such as Bethlehem. There was a gate that was placed
in the entrance to Bait Sahur and into Bethlehem yesterday.

(21:30):
And I read someone had done somemath that now your average
Palestinian only has to go about2.38 kilometers between these
gates where it's only about every 2.38 kilometers.
There's a gate now in the West Bank and so these can be closed,
opened at any time. Many villages, the gates will

(21:52):
get closed at 8:00 PM and if you're not back, you're you have
to figure out your evening. So this is just like that level
of uncertainty when you leave your village, when you leave
your city, you are opening yourself up to death.
Very much so. There are drive by shootings you
can be run into by a military vehicle.

(22:13):
This happens to shared taxis quite often as well, where a
military vehicle will kind of brush by the side, RIP off a
door just for terror and then time.
So we had a, another colleague from the, a remote office was
coming to Nabilis. It took her 45 minutes to come
because the roads are clear, thank God.
And then on her way back, it took four hours.

(22:36):
And there's no way to know. You just.
There's no way to know. Beyond the fact that when you're
traveling from point A to point B, you could get interrogated,
you could get arrested, you could get shot.
Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. And so it really, a lot of
people have stopped traveling todifferent places in the West
Bank. I have friends who haven't left
Nablus in nine months because it's just not worth.

(22:57):
They're just like, it's just notworth it.
It's scary. You know, you never know how
long it's going to take. And if they don't have to go
somewhere like for a visa appointment or something like
that, they're not going to be leaving Nablus.
And this has become pretty common.
And so the freedom of movement has been severely eroded in the

(23:18):
West Bank in the last couple of months.
Another piece is that my sister actually went to university in
Nablus for a year 10 years ago. She went to university, which is
a major university. People come from all over the
West Bank and actually also in Israel to come to.
So when my sister was 10 years ago and she and her friends

(23:40):
would travel to Ramallah for theday, they would drive back at
1:00 AM, no problems, no questions.
It wasn't a brave thing to do. They'd go to an event or a
concert in Ramallah and then come back that that same
evening. Now in the West Bank, if you are
traveling between cities, you want to be either in your final

(24:01):
destination or you are staying overnight somewhere once it's
sundown because the roads get very scary at night.
So it's effectively like a curfew, even if.
It is a it is not a curfew, but in effect it it is a curfew.
This past summer I had an incident where because of other

(24:21):
occupation related traffic, I was very late leaving Ramallah
and I couldn't leave until the last shared taxi.
That was about 7:50 PM, so it was late.
My colleague and I were a bit like, we were debating whether
to stay in Ramallah and leave the next day or leave.
But we had some stuff early and we were like, OK, we just have
to go back to Nablus. It was sundown and it got dark

(24:46):
and it ended up taking about 3 1/2 hours to get back to Nablus.
And part of why it took so long was because one of the main
highways, which is a shared highway between Palestinians and
settlers, had been kind of shut down by settlers.
We drove past a crowd of 250 settlers who were throwing quite

(25:11):
large rocks onto the roadway. And there were about 10 army
vehicles that were essentially escorting these settlers and
then stopping every Palestinian car and shared taxi and talking
to us with guns pointed into thevan.
And that's a bad drive back, butnot the worst case scenario,

(25:34):
right? No one, no one was hurt.
No one was killed. We did get back to Nablus
because there was a question of are we going to have to turn
around and go back to Ramallah? Because that's the other thing
that can happen when you're traveling is they can just say
this road is closed, you have togo back.
And so you either have to go through the villages and it is
very windy and adds a lot of time.
And also you're in more rural areas, which can be a little

(25:56):
frightening sometimes at the dark.
And so, yeah, it's become essentially a curve for you.
And what I think like in the US we kind of refer to as like sun
downtown that's. What I was thinking of as you
were describing it, the other thing too is again as you're
describing it is but if you havea medical emergency and you need
to get to a hospital in another city that you don't live in, and

(26:18):
maybe you'll get there and maybeyou won't.
And this is a big issue in the villages actually, because
particularly women giving birth,the hospital or birthing center
won't be in their village. You'll have to go to Tubas or
Janine or Nablus. And you know, if the gates
closed, the gates closed, or if there's settlers on the road or
there have been many deaths fromtraffic, traffic in general,

(26:43):
from checkpoints, But then also just the Israelis not letting
people pass through. It's someone giving birth,
someone having a heart attack. These are not resistance or
anything related injuries. These are just you.
You know, you have people, you have old people, you have young
people, someone falls on a skateboard and breaks their arm.
These are just what you have in a, in a society.
I think something that we shouldalso think about generally is we

(27:06):
have the death toll of the occupation.
But like everyone who dies of a heart attack because they
couldn't get to the hospital because of a checkpoint, that's
a death from the occupation. The murder woman who dies giving
birth. Right.
That that is a death from the occupation.
And of course, in the situation of Gaza, that is tenfold because
there are people with diabetes, there are people with kidney
issues who are dying every day. And so I think when we talk

(27:28):
about death tolls, we do need toadd in quite a few from these
daily medical things that are just not able to be taken care
of in a timely manner on purposeby the occupation because the
goal is extermination. I want to talk a little bit
about the settlers because you mentioned having this
confrontation with them and the increasing settlement growth and

(27:51):
settler violence, these fascistic settlers.
And I think that's not an overstatement at all.
There's more than 750,000, right?
Is that an accurate number? In both the West Bank and E
Jerusalem, they're continuing toexpand and they're backed by the
Israeli military. And these are extreme religious

(28:12):
nationalists settling the West Bank.
They call it Judea and Samaria. And they find that it's they
they say that it's their religious duty and necessity to
drive out the Palestinians. And in the history here, we've
seen that Israeli governments since the beginning have
supported and funded these settlements through
infrastructure and subsidies andmilitary protection.

(28:34):
So I just want to talk a little bit about this.
I've just watched a recent BBC documentary by Louis Theroux
called The Settlers and there's a lot of documentaries out there
about the West Bank and seeing some of this visually that you
talked about Simone, not just noother land that obviously a lot
of people are talking about that, but these documentaries

(28:55):
that show like the complete terror and the lack of rights
and apartheid conditions. In the Louis Ro BBC documentary
The Settlers, it showed DaniellaWeiss, who's considered the
godmother of the settlement. She's this raving lunatic
sociopath. And in the documentary she goes
on these numerous ethno nationalist rants about the plan
to make this a Jewish only statewith more Israeli outpost.

(29:19):
The thing that was really notable is that you also saw
them really wanting to settle Gaza.
And in one scene she goes with these rabbis to the border of
Gaza and there's smoke billowingfrom the extermination and the
bombing, and they're doing this prayer and they talk about
cleansing the land of camel riders.
So really gives you a real sense.

(29:41):
There's another part of the documentary where there's a
continually armed man from Texaswho says, I don't know what
you're talking about. Palestinians, they don't exist.
There's no such thing as Palestinians.
So yeah, tell me a little bit about what kind of changes
you've seen. Settlers have been around since

(30:01):
the beginning, since 6768. What have you seen in terms of
their proliferation and the rolethey're playing?
Really what we're seeing is justincreased settlements generally
and more settlers on the roads, the settlers also becoming more
violent, especially with Ben Gavir and his kind of

(30:25):
encouragement, both in terms of giving weapons to settlers, but
also in terms of his rhetoric and how he's been elevated in
the government. And so I think particularly
we've seen the very extreme and alarming examples in Khalil,
also known as Hebron or Hebron. And we saw the mosque.

(30:49):
It's both a Jewish and a Muslim site.
The Cave of the Patriarchs. Yes, The Cave of the Patriarchs
are the Abraham Mosque. And so this is a historic
Palestinian city. The majority of the residents
that are there are Palestinian. Recently, the Israeli government
decided that the mosque is no longer under the mosque control

(31:12):
and leadership and they have completely decided to take over
the site, which is a huge provocation.
And Salil is somewhere where yousee settlers rushing into a home
and taking it over. This is a city where you see
theft is done not in the kind ofusual legalistic area, ABC kind

(31:35):
of colonial law way. It's done in just the most kind
of extrajudicial. You get 20 guys who just
literally run into your house and stay and force you out with
guns. And so I think Khalil or Hebron
is somewhere that you've seen the most kind of extreme
examples of the urban settlementand then also obviously in East

(31:58):
Jerusalem where you have similartypes of settler actions for
land theft. Just in terms of a background,
correct me if I get the numbers wrong, but I believe Khalil
Hebron is about 280,000 or 250,000 Palestinians and about
1000 settlers. And for those 1000 settlers,

(32:19):
they control about half the cityand basically the whole of the
center of the city has been decimated of all the old
businesses and just become a ghost town.
It's also very naked there that there are roads that are only to
be allowed by Jews and roads that the Palestinians can travel
on. It's sort of Zionism taken to

(32:40):
its rawest form before you get to the genocide part.
There's another documentary about that called H2, the
Occupation Lab, where it's specifically about the history
of Hebron and how it's kind of the symbol of what is to come in
the West Bank. It's kind of a testing ground.
What they do in Hebron, they tryto execute and carry out in the

(33:01):
rest of the West Bank. The earliest settlers came in in
68, and the mosque that you're referring to is where they had
the massacre. 94 Baruch Goldstein, an American settler,
I believe it was 29 Palestinians, massacred, dozens
and dozens wounded as he walked into the mosque during prayer

(33:22):
and opened fire with his semi automatic gun, after which he
was killed by the surviving parishioners and is now a
lionized hero of the settler movement.
Yeah, and the the effect of thatmassacre afterwards was a
massive crackdown on the Palestinian residents of that
town, not on the settlement movement.
Yeah, as you mentioned he was anAmerican settler who lived and

(33:46):
worked in a settlement nearby Folio where he was a physician,
where he was famous for refusingto do any medical work or help
any non Jews. As a physician.
His extremism was in all aspectsof his life as well.

(34:06):
And I think there are many Baruch Goldsteins in the West
Bank and in Israel, frankly, probably more because there's
more people in Israel. So.
They're running the government. Yeah, so Bruce Budstein and the
Kahanas in general have become mainstream.
Something that has become very common to see on roads in the
West Bank are flags that portraythe Third Temple.

(34:31):
And I think a couple days ago, settlers also added some fake
Rd. signs underneath the signs that pointed to Jerusalem that
said essentially the Hebrew termfor the Third Temple and had the
little symbol. Can you describe what the third
temple is? So the Third Temple is what most
of these religious Zionist supporters and settlers, and I

(34:55):
think also evangelical Christians.
Yes, absolutely. I'm less of an expert on the
evangelicals, but what they dream of creating on top of what
is now the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Dome of the
Rock is and where the AL Aqsa Mosque is as well.
And so they want to rebuild fromthe ruins of what they claim,

(35:18):
which is a disputed archaeological fact, the ruins
of the quote Second Temple, which is what they say Alexa and
the Dome of the Rock are built on top of.
So that is a very extreme provocation in terms of the
symbolism of those flags. And I will say personally, it

(35:40):
was extremely distressing to seethem on the roads.
It seems like part of the increasing amount of settlements
is also that the Zionist regime has a green light to basically
take over. And that's what they've been
aiming for from the beginning, is to create the quote UN quote
facts on the ground. And part of their goal of taking

(36:02):
over the West Bank, which was a Zionist aim even before 48 and
part of the project. What do you think about the
possibility of these settlementsgoing into Gaza and the
likelihood that's going to take place?
I mean, unfortunately, I think it's fairly likely whether in a

(36:24):
official way or in an unofficialcapacity, because you have these
quote extremist illegal settlerswho even a lot of Zionist but
more mainstream Israelis will say, well, they're the problem.
They're the problem because theyare going into areas that are
technically not allowed, but they still are not removed by

(36:48):
the Israeli government. They are implicitly allowed.
So unfortunately, I think that there will be some settlement
whether officially sanctioned ornot, but implicitly sanctioned
and that this is the spoken and defined goals of the state.
Yeah, they've said they want to do it.
Whether they can or not, it's a different question.
And the American government has said they want them to do it.

(37:08):
I mean, the American government wants to turn it into Riviera,
as they say. Right.
I would maybe. I think the environmental and
health situation of making settlements in the north of Gaza
right now would be definitely a big concern.
But these settlers don't have a lot of concern for their
personal. But yeah, there's.
Sacrifices to be made to seize the.
Land, Exactly. Yeah, There are groups of

(37:32):
settlers right now who have set up in the in the north, I
believe near what is now the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
You know, they are ready with supplies to literally flood into
northern Gaza and set up camps, which is what they do in the
West Bank. They show up with trailers.
They show up with, I mean, some of the conditions, frankly, that
some of these settlers are living in the West Bank are, are

(37:55):
really the contrast between likehow some of the settlers are
living and then the village and the cities around them.
If they're living in like trailers with no indoor plumbing
and then around like very normaltowns, the contrast is always a
bit odd when you see the settlements.
But they are living a frontier fantasy.
They are living in their mind inthese Wilds where for

(38:18):
Palestinians novelist is one of the oldest cities in the world.
You know, Jericho, which is on by the Dead Sea is home to the
longest inhabited location in the world.
So, you know, it's also just completely a historical, the way
that these settlers view the land in and of itself, in terms
of even how it has been lived on.

(38:40):
They also view it as they're willing to make, quote, UN
quote, these self-imposed sacrifices so they can seize the
land. And if they grow any bigger than
they'll get more tax breaks and more everything from the Israeli
government. Eventually then you get the big
settlements that suck up all thewater and where you have
basically homes that are like villas.
Oh yeah, some of the settlements, the big ones, I
mean, they're like small cities.I've never been in any of them,

(39:03):
but I see them and I mean, it's incredible the luxury some of
these people are living in, in these settlements.
A kind of interesting contrast of the settlement, though, is
that one of these very big settlements that you pass by on
the way to Ramallah, it's a big established one, but they pump
their sewage directly into the stream that's below the

(39:24):
settlement by the road. I think this is to make that
area completely inhospitable, generally to Palestinians.
But it's also just they have no care for the land.
It also smells terrible. So you're driving by and you're
like, oh God, it's this olfactory landmark where you can
smell the shit in the stream that is just being piped down by

(39:47):
the settlement. It's so illustrative of how they
have no respect or relation to the land.
It is purely for exploitation. I agree.
I also think they will never miss an opportunity to make the
life of the Palestinians as miserable as possible in the
hopes that the Palestinians willjust go away.

(40:09):
Even if it affects them because they drive on these roads too.
This is a shared road and it's like you want to drive by the
shit stream. I don't I, I don't it's.
For the greater good to them, it's for the greater good.
Right. Some of these settlers have
Instagram accounts and you'll see them complaining about
checkpoint traffic because they want to go have a date night in
Jerusalem. And it's like, this is all you.

(40:29):
This checkpoint is for you. You know, it's all part of this
slow suffocation and just makingit so untenable to to live that
people leave. When you say make it the slow
suffocation to make people want to leave, are they, are you
seeing that in terms of the people that you've worked with

(40:51):
and interacted with and where are they going?
A lot of people are leaving. Even I think something like this
past summer, people who I never thought would want to leave.
We're talking to me about, oh, I'm trying to find an
internship, I'm trying to find ajob that maybe I can go to
Europe or something like that. Another thing that I heard a
couple times from people was that the violence, they're used

(41:14):
to the violence. That's not why they want to
leave. They want to leave because they
can't have a dignified life economically and they can't
provide for their family, and that's not tenable.
So people are wanting to leave. A lot of young men are leaving
particularly. And you know, you have people
going to Jordan, to the United States, to Europe, to the Gulf.

(41:36):
Are they able to come to the United States or isn't there a
ban on Palestinian visas? Yeah.
So there was that policy change.I don't know exactly how that
policy change has affected people, frankly, because I don't
know anyone who's traveled sincethen.
But the the reality is there area lot of Palestinians in the
United States. So a lot of people have extended
family in the United States. It also plays out differently if

(41:56):
you can get a Jordanian passport.
Right. So that's, that's the other
thing is a lot of Palestinians do have either a Jordanian
passport or a rate to a Jordanian passport, especially
Jerusalem Palestinians, because Jerusalem was under Jordanian
control for many years. There are a lot of different
people are in a lot of differentdocumentation situations in

(42:17):
Palestine. Some people have Israeli
citizenship and other people arePalestinian Authority ID
holders. It's another way in which Israel
slices and divides the Palestinian people through
different ID citizenships, different rights, different
economic opportunities, different travel opportunities.
It's a way for them to systematically divide and create

(42:40):
tensions between people. I'm glad you mentioned that
because this was one of the things I wanted to ask you
about. I'm going to preface this by
referring to a book that came out in 1988 that I read in 2005.
It's called My Enemy Myself. I don't know if you've ever
heard of it. It's by an Israeli author who
was inspired by the book Black Like Me, where a white

(43:00):
journalist dressed as though he were a black man to see the
experience of being a black man in the United States in the
1950s. So this was a an Israeli
journalist of Moroccan background, spoke perfect
Palestinian Arabic and wanted tosee for himself experience the
racism and discrimination and oppression that Palestinians
faced. When I read it in 2005, this

(43:22):
came out in 88, came out right as the first intifada was
breaking up. He's laying out the horrors that
Palestinians face. That's the point of his book.
I'm reading in 2005 and I'm thinking, Oh my God, things have
gotten so much worse than they were in 88.
The level of freedom of movementthat he had.
So he was pretending to be from Janine and every day he would

(43:45):
cross from Janine into Israel where he would do a day labor
job and he would go visit peoplein Gaza and he would cross back
into Israel and he would cross back into Jedin and into E
Jerusalem and he was basically moving around.
This is an 87. When he was doing this before
this massive amount of checkpoints went up.
One thing you had to do was be outside of Israel by the end of

(44:09):
the night. And often times he didn't obey
that rule. He made a rule for himself that
if he were asked for his ID by border police or something like
that, he would show the policeman his Israeli ID.
He would not pretend to the Israeli official that he was a
Palestinian. And the whole year where he did
this experiment, he was asked for an ID twice.

(44:30):
Only twice. Which is crazy now.
What you're describing is literally impossible now.
And it was impossible in 2005 when I read the book.
Yeah. So the reason I'm mentioning all
this is one of the things that Ithink Israel has succeeded in
doing, especially in the wake ofthe Oslo Accords, but it began

(44:51):
before that, is dividing up the national body politic of the
Palestinian people. You have the people in Gaza.
You have the people within Israel itself, you have the
people in East Jerusalem who have certain privileges but not
others. You have the people in the West
Bank areas, AB and C of the WestBank.

(45:12):
And you yourself mentioned if you are in Nablus for the last
nine months, you don't even travel outside of Nablus because
can you even get to your destination?
So you have the West Bank itselfchopped up into little bits and
pieces. You have Palestinians all over
the Middle East, with the partial exception of Jordan,
still not integrated into the various countries that they're
in, like Lebanon and Syria. You have a Palestinian diaspora

(45:35):
in the West, in Europe, the United States, and Latin
America. Let's not forget the massive
Palestinian diaspora and Chile and other countries.
This is a nation that's been divvied up.
And each of those groups of people have, in many ways, very
little interaction with one another.
They have some. I'm not saying none, but it's
limited and it's kind of at the privilege or mercy of the

(45:56):
Israelis or the Americans call out who's in charge here and
enjoy different levels of life, different levels of privileges,
like the ones in Israel have certain privileges of the ones
in the West Bank I don't have. And then obviously there's the
ones in Gaza who have been living in a concentration camp
for decades. And I'm just wondering if you
saw some sense of the effect of that dismemberment of the

(46:21):
Palestinians. And I think just before you
answered, I just want to say I think it is credit to the
national aspirations of the Palestinians that despite these
things, that sense of national identity is still very powerful
and strong. But I can't believe it's had no
impact. It must have impact on that
society. Yeah.
I mean, to your last point, there is still an understanding

(46:43):
of a Palestinian as a Palestinian, no matter whether
they're Israeli citizenship Holder, Jerusalem ID Holder or a
West Bank Palestinian Authority ID holder.
I think I'm not the best person to ask about this because I
frankly have mainly have interacted and spent time in
East Jerusalem and then in the West Bank.

(47:04):
So in terms of Israeli citizen Palestinians, I don't have too
much experience in that way, butthere is a, they have the
freedom of movement to come in and out of the West Bank.
And there are many Israeli citizenship holding Palestinians
who come to, for instance, Annabolis all the time.

(47:26):
They come to restaurants, they come out to eat.
Sometimes they come and get medical care because you can
imagine the medical racism that many Palestinians experience in
Israel, particularly around fertility.
And so you do have a lot more back and forth.
And I think a lot of people would think, but there is

(47:46):
definitely people go, oh, they're from 48.
Oh, those people over there, they're from 48.
They have they're, you know, seem to have more money and a
bit more privilege. But you'll be in a restaurant,
Annabolis, and they'll be someone leaving a Hebrew
WhatsApp voice note. And everyone's kind of like a

(48:06):
little around the little. There are looks, There are looks
that kind of go around. And everyone's like, OK,
interesting. But at the end of the day,
they're they're still Palestinian.
And, and everyone kind of understands that this is no
one's choice, you know? But they're definitely dynamic
in in between those. Yeah.
The reason I mentioned that bookis because the travel between

(48:29):
the West Bank and Gaza that the guy was doing as a Palestinian,
whereas if you can imagine someone, let's say, born in 2000
in Tokaram, would have probably never set eyes on somebody born
in 2000 in Gaza. Well, unless they were coming
for medical treatment on a permit.
Yeah, but as a norm, as a norm. Yes, in the street as a oh, I'm

(48:51):
coming to see my cousin. No.
And you have whole families thathave been divided up like this
for decades. Yes.
And it's it's devastating because when you think about
this is a single nation that's just been carved up like that.
I mean, Nablus, if you're up on the mountains.
Nablus is between two mountains.It's famous for its two
mountains. If you're up on one of those
mountains, you can you can see the sea.

(49:13):
But never go there. But never go there.
If you're under a certain age, it's even been a possibility to
go to the sea. But if you talk to older people,
they'll say, when I was a boy, my buddies and I, we'd drive at
night to the to the ocean, have a swim and come back to Nablus.
So I think it's also important to remember that the current

(49:33):
situation is very recent and that it is much more unnatural
than it is made to seem in a lotof media and a lot of the way in
which people talk about it. Oh, it's incredibly unnatural.
I think it really started with Oslo.
Oslo was that utter disaster andwhich is why I will never

(49:54):
forgive the Palestinian Authority and the PLO for what
they did. That's why to me, they are the
capos, or as you put at the Vichy regime, they handed the
Palestinians over to Israel so that they can get to wave a flag
and control them on behalf of Israel in the US.
It's incredibly unnatural, but it's frightening in its impact.
To your point about also I thinkwe talked about the kind of ABC

(50:18):
area distinction, right? This is a product of Oslo and
its purpose was to quote ease the PA into full governance.
This has not obviously functioned this way.
They have become essentially official colonial distinctions

(50:38):
that the Israelis use to furthertheir annexation and is a
permanent state of law now that is used to justify illegal
settlement. And that's why also I think when
we talk about Area ABC, we do need to be a bit critical of it
generally because it is a colonial framework.
This is all Palestinian, and these areas have no effect on

(51:02):
how Israelis operate within these areas.
And also in area A, even though it's 100% of Palestinian
control, there are settlers, there are army incursions all
the time. Palestinians are just as much
danger in those areas as they are in the other ones, and vice
versa for the Israelis. They operate the same way
whether they're in area ABC, right?

(51:22):
Maybe they file different paperwork.
I'm not exactly sure how it works on their end, but I think
sometimes when I talk with people in the US about the West
Bank, sometimes they get very caught up on which area is that.
And I always find it interestingbecause it's really giving a lot
of credence to this completely colonial framework that I think

(51:46):
we need to be very much more of a rejection of because in the
reality of it, it has no impact on how the Israelis operate.
If I can, just for listeners, the dividing up of the areas AB
and C Area A, which is like whatis a 20% of the West Bank
thereabouts, but where most Palestinians live, is supposedly
under full PA or Palestinian Authority governance.

(52:09):
But as Simone pointed out, the Israelis can go in there
whenever they want. Area B is supposedly shared
governance between the PA and Israel, which really means
Israel runs it. Area C is officially Israel runs
it however they want to. It is 62% of the West Bank.
So it's the biggest land. It has the fewest number of
Palestinians. And if you want to talk about

(52:29):
expulsions, since Oslo there hasbeen a substantial number of
expulsions of Palestinians out of Area C And this is the only
thing that's important about this stuff, to be perfectly
honest, Israel has use this division to expel Palestinians
out of Area C into mainly Area A, so they can basically get the
62% of the land without the people.

(52:50):
And one last thing, this whole thing that this was supposed to
ease the Palestinian Authority into governance, just the very
racist and colonial framework ofthat.
Like, these are the savages who don't know how to rule, and
we're going to teach them how torule.
At the time, people like Edward Saeed rightly understood this as

(53:11):
a betrayal. And if anything, he understated
how much of A betrayal it was. So we've been talking about
Oslo, and I wanted to use that to talk about the two state
solution, which is long been dead in practice and I think
completely exposed as a farce. Last night I was reading Ilan
Papaya, Israeli historian, and he has this line about the two

(53:32):
state solution being like a corpse taken out of the morgue
every now and then, dressed up nicely and presented as a living
thing. This is always been an Israeli
invention, a kind of a charade, and there was never any chance
that it would be more than a banto stand.
But it's also impossible, for somany reasons, that there would
ever be a Palestinian state under the current situation.

(53:54):
First of all, Israel's laws define the country As for Jews
only. It would not be contiguous even
if it were conditionally autonomous.
It would be 20% of the historic Palestinian homeland.
So very far from the idea of National Liberation.
You also have, of course, the settler question.
That's the facts on the ground. So the Israeli settlers are

(54:15):
never going to live under Palestinian rule, and Israel
will not expel them. So you're talking about the kind
of Swiss cheese scenario that looks like the West Bank right
now. There's also the right of
return, which is a key componentof National Liberation for the
Palestinians. There are millions of
Palestinian refugees. This would give up their
opportunity to even come back under this supposed 2 state

(54:39):
solution. There would be no proper
sovereignty, no means of Palestine protecting itself or
sustaining itself independently of Israel.
Those are just some of the components if you were to take
it at face value. But I think it has been so fully
exposed. So I'm curious, Simone, if this
is seen as a farce or anything more than that, what does it
look like on the ground? Yeah, I don't think I've ever

(55:00):
actually talked to anyone who's a Pro 2 state solution.
I'm trying to think. I don't think I have honestly.
Because what I hear the most is a full Palestine from top to
bottom, river to the sea and with right of return.
And frankly, the vast majority of people that I've talked to,

(55:21):
they say, and the Jews are welcome to stay.
They just have to put down theirweapons, put down their borders,
get rid of the checkpoints and let people return.
And if they're willing to live as Palestinians in a Palestinian
society. And, and that's really like, it
sounds kind of simple. I've heard this from people who

(55:44):
I've been surprised based on their life experience, in terms
of the really severe abuse they've had by the hands of the
Israelis. And would it learn more towards
than one state with equal rightskind of scenario?
Honestly, the situation right now and the last two years has
been so bad that we haven't. We don't get that far in the

(56:05):
conversation. It's just like, what?
What? How do we get to tomorrow?
Yeah. We're not talking about it.
And also, frankly, political discussion right now.
It happens in people's homes if they really trust you because
the level of repression is so high that people will post
something that's slightly critical of the PA on Facebook
and they'll get a knock on theirdoor.
Yeah. I think sometimes people on the

(56:26):
left may be surprised that everyone in Palestine isn't
having deep political discussions all the time.
People talk about the situation,but in a very like day-to-day
way. But in terms of having
conversations about like, would we have equal rights?
What would it look like? What about Haifa?
These are not is is not something that I think is.
Yeah, I don't know. That feels like it speaks a lot

(56:47):
to some of the points we were talking about before the
suffocation and the dismemberment too, because the
idea that there would be any sort of future.
How do you discuss the future? There were these discussions in
the past and there were resistance movements, and I
think if you were doing this trip in 2000, there would still
be these kinds of discussions. I'm sure, yeah.

(57:08):
And that's 100% true. And I think my point, yeah, is
the Israeli oppression is so intense that it is hard for
people, especially working classpeople and who've been displaced
from refugee camps, to have these kinds of political
discussions. That's the same for working
class people in this country where people don't have a lot of
time to think about politics andwhat a deal political system

(57:31):
they would want either. And that's part of why the
system wants to keep people economically really
disadvantaged. It it takes up a lot of time to
make sure you have food on the table and that becomes your main
priority. One of the things you said that
I found interesting about those discussions is this point about
in this ideal or idealize one state, Israeli Jews are welcome

(57:54):
to stay provided they're willingto live as equals as opposed to
it as a privileged population. And one of the things that's
interesting about that is you look at a lot of pseudo leftist
in the West and they'll talk about Israeli Jews as a foreign
implant and it can just go back to Europe or wherever it came
from. And I understand it is a settler

(58:15):
colonial society, but much like the US, within a generation or
two, you've settled and there's a certain recognition what
you're describing from what the Palestinians are saying of we're
kind of stuck with these people.Also, mass displacement.
No one wants to do mass displacement to anyone.
And that's what that would mean,you know what I mean?

(58:37):
And so that's the other thing. I imagine if something like this
were to happen, which it's hard to imagine at the moment, I
imagine there will be a certain layer of Israeli Jews that will
just leave a. 100% it'll be likeAlgeria.
But in the case of Algeria, theyall left.
But they were welcome to stay ifthey wanted to.
If they wanted to be part of theAlgerian national project, they
could have stayed. They did not want to.

(58:57):
But I also think in the case of Algeria, they saw themselves as
French. They had a mother country to go
to. I think for a lot of the Israeli
Jewish population, except for the more recent people who moved
there from Brooklyn or Europe, this is where they're going to
be. You're kind of stuck with them,
for better or worse. And I think there is a certain
recognition of that among the Palestinians, not as something

(59:20):
good or bad. It's just is, it's a reality.
And there's an element here. You're right.
On the one hand, no one wants todrive out several million
people. On the other hand, you also
can't. Right, exactly.
I think one of the things that I've noticed in the US is that
and ideological sense Israel hashas one in terms of depicting

(59:42):
any form of Palestinian resistance as motivated by hate
for Jews and not as opposition to the colonization of their
homeland. And that's where you get the
accusation of anti-Semitism as aweapon against anyone who sides
with the Palestinian people. I do think that's shifting a
little bit. I'm cautious to say that because

(01:00:04):
obviously it's not nearly enough.
So I don't want that to be portrayed as me saying like
that's not the primary narrative.
But I do find that in the US, I'm surprised more and more.
With the conversations I have with people, they, they're just
in shock about what's happening.And they say, you know, I would

(01:00:24):
never, I could never let that happen to my family.
I mean, in the US, we have the right to bear arms.
We have the right to defend ourselves.
We have stand Your Ground states.
But I'm talking about Israel winning in terms of the ruling
class, in terms of what it's able to carry out and the
dominant narrative. I do know that there's been a
growing number of people who areactually looking at the origins

(01:00:48):
of Israel and the Palestinian question and seeing what it
really is and not taking as goodcoin this idea that Israel's
only democracy or whatever, all the shit that they push.
Yeah, it's true on an institutional level.
I mean, disappointment of the decade.
Bernie Sanders, he, you know in his most recent statement that

(01:01:11):
he put out saying it is a genocide, but the first third of
it was saying how Hamas is a horrible terrorist organization
and started it all. Yeah, exactly that it it all
started on October 7th, Yeah. And reiterated that Israel has
the right to defend itself. I would put it a little
differently though. I wouldn't put it that Israel is
1 in terms of the establishment.I thought that the US has one

(01:01:33):
because yes, Israel is one in the sense that that's what
Israel wants. But I think this is what the US
wants. Every time I see American
politicians genuflecting before Israel, a lot of people
presented as Israel is controlling American politics.
Bunch of bullshit. No, they're not.
America controls its own politics.
Israel is important to America, and the US is making clear to

(01:01:56):
its population and to the world that it will defend its aircraft
carrier in the Middle East. I heard I heard about this in a
podcast. I think it was our episode 1.
And that is a hill I will die on, that this genocide is
America's genocide. That occupation is America's
occupation as much as Israel's, if not more.
And this whole sham of the two state solution, actually, you

(01:02:18):
want to know something? Israelis haven't been pushing
it. The only people have been
talking about it is that Americans.
U.S. politicians, yeah. The Israelis, Israeli
politicians have made it clear they don't want to see a
Palestinian state. There's going to be no
Palestinian state of any kind onany piece of.
Land. Yeah, they haven't.
Yeah, they haven't even like dangled it as a carrier.
The only people who talk about it are American politicians.

(01:02:41):
And it's a lie. And you know what?
I'm going to say one other thing, One other thing.
I'm sorry. The other people who despise the
Palestinians almost as much as the Americans and the Israelis
are the Arab rulers. And what a Palestinian state
would represent to the Arab rulers is a dumping ground where
they can dump all the Palestinian refugees in their
lands. That would be their version of

(01:03:01):
the right of return. Right.
I think also Biden said it very clearly.
If Israel didn't exist, we wouldhave to create it.
That was a concerning statement on many levels.
But I think it gets to your point about, I mean, he just, he
says it right out. It is a useful tool, a necessary

(01:03:22):
destabilizing force for Americanimperialist interests in the
Middle East, but also just around the.
World They've managed to bring every Middle Eastern country to
heel with the exception of Iran,and they're working on that.
Yes. The Houthis and and the Houthis.
Yeah. Well, but Yemen, they've yeah,
great cost in Yemen. Yemen has been paying for it

(01:03:42):
since 2015. Exactly, exactly.
And of course, the United Statesis very pro to state because we
have many two state solutions inthe United States with our own
indigenous nations. Reservations.
And we have refugee camps in theUnited States as well that are
not dissimilar from in many waysfrom the Palestinian refugee

(01:04:04):
camps that exist in Lebanon and in the West Bank and all over
many parts of the Levant. I think I've been doing some
thought experiments about to your point, Ezra, about that
This is an extension of the United States.
Colonialism is an expansionist ideology.
It needs to expand. Whether it's Palestinians,

(01:04:25):
Philippines, it doesn't matter. This is the newest frontier of
American colonialism, and we arerecreating the same systems that
were unfortunately very successful here in North America
when it comes to colonialism anddomination of indigenous peoples
for exploitation and for resource extraction.
It's interesting that you mentioned that because Ezra and

(01:04:46):
I were talking about how this happens where they stand up and
they say we are on stolen land. Does this kind of recognition we
are on stolen land. It's a way for liberals to feel
really good about themselves, but they can also do that
because it has no political impact or implications
whatsoever. Whereas if an Israeli were to
say that we are on stolen land it would be like OK well then

(01:05:09):
get the fuck. Out, you know or share?
It yeah, we're still here, you know.
Right. But I would say you could say
the same thing though about mostof the United States.
Except the difference is, in theUS, no one thinks of the Native
Americans as a threat anymore. They have been decimated.
Right, 100%. But I think whether they're a
threat or not, it remains the same.
I think in the United States we are taught that it is such a

(01:05:34):
kind of a impossibility to imagine a shared, even at a very
low level, maybe not full sovereignty of California to a
variety of indigenous nations, but a more shared society.
I think we're taught as such an impossibility.
But I, I don't know, I think that we should challenge

(01:05:54):
ourselves. I think all of us on the
American left are very quick to criticize the Israeli left,
which again, I'm not against by any means.
But I think we in many ways always need to put a lot of
those judgments back on ourselves as also people who
benefit from and live within a settler colony here.

(01:06:15):
The thing is that the US ruling class is never going to share
the land or anything like that with the survivors of the Native
American genocide. And I think the difference
between the US and Israel is thegenocide has been so successful
here that they feel no threat from and they see no threat from
the native population. So they can get up and wax

(01:06:37):
eloquent about how I stand on land that used to belong to this
or that tribe. And it means absolutely nothing
other than to make themselves feel better about themselves.
Whereas if you are in Israel, they do feel a threat.
The very existence of Palestinians are a threat.
If you do get up in Israel and say this, well, the Palestinian
can say I'm still right here, bud, you can share the land.

(01:06:57):
Well, I would say I think in Hawaii there's definitely still,
that's why I'm saying I think also we think of this issue in
the United States as a monolith,but the relationship, the
diplomatic and political relationship between the Mohawk
nation and the United States andthe Hawaiian monarchy in the
United States is very different.That's my point on this.
It is a more complicated situation even here on this

(01:07:18):
matter because Hawaii wasn't a quote state until 1950.
There are lots of sovereignty issues and land battles that
happen every day in Hawaii. And I reference why because I
think it's the most recent but also the clearest analogous
example in this situation. This is something that I'm kind
of been thinking very recently about.
I think this is a really centralkind of contradiction and issue

(01:07:43):
of the kind of American anti imperialist left.
Like, we do have to deal with this fact of our own existence
here regardless of our politics,right?
Like whether we think the good politics or the bad politics,
the facts remain about our positionality or how this
country exists here. You know, we're not exempt

(01:08:03):
because we're the good thinkers.So I wanted to talk a little bit
about some on your experience inthe West Bank.
And one of the things that I know is really impactful and
that you see visually is that any soldier in the IDF can just
completely ruin your life with full impunity if you're a

(01:08:23):
Palestinian. And the fact that we see of this
is in the prison situation. So there was a lot of talk about
the Israeli hostages in Gaza. And meanwhile, you have 10,000
Palestinians that we know of at least or being held hostage by
Israel in the Zionist prisons. And nearly half of them have
never been charged with a crime.There's been a massive uptick in

(01:08:46):
the prison population since October 7th.
And then you have a tremendous amount of evidence about
torture. And this is not something that
you have to dig for. You see evidence of torture,
punching and kicking and sticks and batons and explicit forced
nudity. And this has been accounted for

(01:09:07):
by prominent doctors who have been imprisoned as well.
So could you talk a little bit about the prison situation from
your observation or how it's affecting some of the families
that you work with? I tell you, the prison situation
in Palestine general, the situation inside the Israeli
prisons is one of the most underreported crimes of this

(01:09:27):
entire two years. The prison conditions were
always pretty harsh in Israel, in the Israeli prisons, but the
last two years they have gotten to death camp levels of abuse,
frankly, mainly in the way that this also both for people in
prison but also the loved ones of in prison people.

(01:09:49):
The Israelis have cut off all visitation.
They have cut off almost all communication between prisoners
and their families. And this is particularly hard
for people who had loved ones inprisons before October 7th
because many families haven't heard from their loved one in
almost two years. Plus, the Red Cross is not able
to visit the prisons. The Red Cross does not seem to

(01:10:12):
be working very hard to try and visit the prisons.
The Red Cross has also stopped communicating with Palestinian
family members of prisoners. And the main way people get
information about their loved ones is when people are released
from prison, they come out with names and numbers.
I saw your son, I saw your daughter.
This type of information. There are also methods about

(01:10:34):
getting other written information out with prisoners
as well. But another thing is that there
are over 400 and this is the reported.
Again, all of these numbers thatwe're using is the reported.
And it's under. Reported.
Yeah, and it's always under reported.
So there's also the situation ofchildren in prison.
There are over 400 children in Israeli prisons and they have

(01:10:58):
similar lack of communication with their families.
And many times also when prisoners are released, half the
time they're released directly into hospitals because they are
in such poor health. People come out with missing
limbs, people come out with severe brain damage, people come

(01:11:19):
out with severe malnutrition, other signs of obvious torture.
Scabies is a really big problem in the prisons right now.
Skin infections in general, but particularly bugs.
Huge, huge problem in the prisons.
I mean, these are death camps. We have reports of people coming

(01:11:43):
out of prison who were just taken, disappeared from a
checkpoint, who were in a cell with a dozen other guys who were
given basically one piece of bread that was so hard they had
to soak it in water, not just dip it, soak it in water to be
able to eat. And similarly, we've heard one

(01:12:04):
bowl of rice for 12 guys. These are the glimpses of what
we hear from people being released.
So the prison situation in the West Bank right now is really
extreme. I've had mothers come up to me
and say, can you please get me information on my son?
I don't know where he is. I haven't heard from him.
You're American. Can you go to the prison and

(01:12:26):
talk to them? And to be clear, these kids,
they can be taken away on mere suspicion.
They can be taken away from having any sort of association,
like a family member stepping out of bounds, quote UN quote,
can mean basically anything. A soldier just has to make it
up. We have one family who a family
member was taken because his brother was suspected to be

(01:12:49):
involved with some resistance stuff and he had given him a
sandwich and they considered that material support Jesus and
arrested him. Another thing to note about
these is the arrests are also extremely violent.
Many deaths happen much like in the US arrests can be just as

(01:13:10):
dangerous as being in prison. We've seen some really horrific
situations of people being beaten, basically lifeless as
they're being arrested. There was one case of a young
man who's this is I guess trigger warning for like extreme
violence, but there was a Israeli army talk dog that bit

(01:13:30):
his hand clean off in the process of arrest.
Also when they arrest in a home that they don't knock on the
door nicely and come in and readyour rights, they bust open,
they'll blindfold everyone, they'll put them in a room,
they'll handcuff children, they'll throw a tear ass
canister in the room. These are like some of the most
violent arrests I've ever heard of.

(01:13:50):
So the arrests are also extremely traumatizing to family
members, particularly children. I don't even know what to say.
It does feel so much like Nazi Germany.
So far as to arrest 7 year old boys.
It's a sociopathic society. One and Israel also believes and
practices collective punishment,so an entire family is targeted,

(01:14:13):
and that includes all the children, the grandmother,
everyone and just routinely terrorized.
Yeah. So if some young man carries out
an operation against soldiers orcivilians or whatever in or out
of Israel, not only is he targeted, basically anyone who
is a relative of his will be targeted, arrested, detained.

(01:14:36):
And their favorite practice is to destroy their homes.
Home demolitions. Yeah, and the other thing is
these families also become ostracized, in many cases within
their own communities because people are scared.
They don't want to be affiliated.
Right. They don't want to be targeted
as well. So it also causes issues within
communities as well. Yeah, and that's also a way of

(01:14:58):
quelling resistance too, becauseit's creating so much fear.
Exactly. It doesn't have to be an
operation against anything. It can be.
Oh yeah, no, they can just make up shit.
Yeah, I've seen interviews with soldiers who said I was bored
that day. Yeah, Also, it's just because
you're from the camp, that's it.You're from the camp, you're
guilty because the goal is extermination.

(01:15:18):
It's also to try and destroy theidentity and concept of the
refugee who has the right of return.
So these camps are also targetedbecause they don't want there to
be people to return and you know, people in the camps, these
are strong identities. This is also to try and force

(01:15:38):
people away from their claim andright to return.
You're absolutely right. This has been a favorite thing
of Netanyahu since October 7th, with basically wanting to
destroy the designation of refugees and descendants of
refugees for Palestinians in both the West Bank and those
still surviving Gaza. Yeah, because that is the real

(01:16:00):
threat to Israel in its current form, those millions of people
who have the right of return, who live very close, very close
to the places in which they are from.
And hold the keys and the deeds to the lands and homes from
which they were expelled. Exactly.

(01:16:20):
Exactly. Just as an illustration for
people who may not know, there is no such thing as civilian law
in the West Bank. The West Bank is governed under
Israeli military law. Supposing you actually reach the
point where you are accused of acrime, you do not appear before
a civilian judge. You appear before a military
judge. There's no obligation on the

(01:16:42):
part of the state to provide youany legal aid or anything like
that. Frankly, at this point, there's
no obligation on the part of thestate to feed you or anything.
But there's a story, and this isfrom 2016 that always struck me.
It's from a magazine. It's a literary magazine.
This author was just talking about the conditions of life for
Palestinians and Palestinian prisoners, and she or Rachel

(01:17:04):
Kushner tells the story. A child lucky enough to get a
lawyer from an NGO Israel provides no legal aid to.
West Bank residents will be mightily pressured to plead
guilty. There is no point in declaring
innocence since 99.47% of trialsresult in a guilty conviction.
An anecdote was supplied to us about a rare scene in which a

(01:17:28):
lawyer actually got an acquittal.
The translator stopped proceedings because he did not
know the Arabic word for acquitted.
What? Non guilty?
I don't know how to say that. Wow.
Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up,
because I was going to say that the other thing about these
military courts is that it's a 99% conviction rate.

(01:17:48):
I imagine they've rounded up since then, yeah?
Yeah, it's exactly. It's 100.
It's 100% and also 50% of that 10,000 number are held on what's
called administrative detention,which is the essentially
pretrial holding of someone in prison.
I would argue now because since COVID, Israel hasn't been

(01:18:11):
reporting the temporary arrests,probably more than half now.
They aren't even going through the motions of these fake
trials. They're just holding people on
administrative detention for years and years and years.
And there's also the suspicion that half of these prison
releases is just because they run out of room.
Yeah. And then aren't they released?

(01:18:32):
And then there's detained again like?
Yeah, the vast majority of people who are released in these
prisoner exchange are re arrested within a couple months
because the Israelis know that they're just releasing them into
a larger prison. And This is why the Israelis are
so actually against doing those kind of like negotiated
deportations of prisoners, because if they deport them to

(01:18:53):
Lebanon, if they deport them to Egypt, if they deport them to, I
know if someone who is deported to Venezuela because they were
half Venezuelan, it is door difficult to rearrest them.
But if they released them back to the West Bank, they could get
them tomorrow and no one would care.
I think this is also a really important thing about a lot of
those prisoner exchanges as those people, they either
rearrest them or they kill them or they just kill them once

(01:19:14):
they're out. The prison situation and the use
of prisons. Yes, many women are arrested as
well, but particularly for men. This is a this is a real crisis.
And the level of abuse of these prisoners is incredible.
The known number killed since October 7th, 23 is 75 or more

(01:19:36):
who died in prison. It's probably higher.
I'm sure it's higher, but that'swhat's known.
There's literally a video of prison guards raping a
Palestinian prisoner, followed by videos upon videos of
Israelis protesting to defend the rapist.
And in April 2024, a prominent surgeon from Gaza at Nana

(01:19:58):
Borscht, who had been arrested in December, died from wounds
sustained in a gang rape. This is the the, this is what
they run as prison. They're torture chambers and
death camps. As you, just as you.
I think the image of that mob that stormed the prison
defending the rape of a Palestinian prisoner and

(01:20:19):
defending the rapist, I think that was a real, I don't know if
it was a turning point, but I know that for a while Ezra and I
have spent time trying to look for fissures in Israeli society.
Since October 7th, whenever I hear about a protest in Tel
Aviv, I kind of look and see what are the main slogans.

(01:20:39):
And the slogans are almost always centered around bring our
boys home. Not that Palestinians are
humans. The main concern is over anyone
who's being held hostage right now in Gaza.
Poll after poll shows upwards of80% in Israel.
It's probably more than that. Support the genocide right now.

(01:21:00):
What is your measure of Israeli society and how it's changed
over the last two years, 10 years, 15 years?
It's gotten just more extreme. It's gotten more extreme, but
also the pressure to prove the worth of the project has become
much more extreme as well. What do you mean by that?
To prove that the cost of maintaining Israel is worth it

(01:21:25):
and is necessary has become moredifficult to justify.
When that happens, you can realize it's not worth it and
you can fight to dismantle it. Or you can become more extreme
and they have chosen to become much more extreme and you have
seen record people leaving Israel.
The economy is not doing well atall.

(01:21:48):
The major port of a lot in the South is essentially non
functional anymore because no one's shipping to it.
The port in Haifa in the north had to be shut down for a period
of time because Iran strikes were very effective in
destroying the major infrastructure.
Economically. Many people are leaving Israel

(01:22:10):
as well because it is not doing particularly well if we just
look at the numbers. So that is a positive sign.
Again, this is all coming at much too high a cost, but I do
think it is still important to note where there are these
places that have had impact on the longevity of the colonial

(01:22:32):
project. In Hebrew, they've had their
mask off forever, but in Englishin the last two years, they've
been fully translating themselves into English in the
last two years. It's a really sick, depraved
society. I don't know what you do with
that. I also have very little
interaction with Israelis myselfactually, so.
Is that because you're a self hating Jew?

(01:22:54):
Yeah, yeah. It's also because other than
going to East Jerusalem for veryshort periods of time, I do not
spend any time in 48 Palestine and I also do not use the
airport. We only enter Palestine through
the only border that Palestinians can enter through,
which is the Alan B King HusseinBridge from Jordan to the

(01:23:16):
Jericho area. So our interactions with
Israelis are essentially soldiers at checkpoints and then
settlers that we share the roadswith.
Cream of the crop. Yeah.
Which are often one and the samepeople, the soldiers and the
settlers. This is a really good point.
The vast majority of soldiers who serve in the West Bank are

(01:23:37):
from the settlements and are usually actually reservists who
volunteer to kind of do this as a side hustle, you know, civil
service. Yes.
So most of the sellers that you interact with in the West Bank
are from these insane settler communities, which is partially
why they are just so dangerous. One of the reasons I want to

(01:23:59):
raise this question is I think what we're seeing playing out is
the logic of Zionism. If you go back, this sort of
thing has always been there. It's been masked to some extent
in one way or another by this facade of liberal Zionism and at
times even socialist Zionism andthings like that.

(01:24:21):
But a Colonel has always been there.
There is a genocide, a logic to it, because it's premised on we
want the land, we don't want thepeople.
Well, there's really only a couple of ways of achieving
that. You expel the people, you're you
kill the people. And what has been clear in the
last, really, I keep going back to this, but really since Oslo

(01:24:42):
has been this incredible rightward shift of Israeli
society to the point that when you look at the founding of the
State of Israel, it was Labor Zionists who founded it.
It was the Ben Gurion types, theLabor Zionists.
Today there are more members of the Knesset that are Palestinian
than there are members of the Labor Party.

(01:25:03):
The Labor Zionists have become just unnecessary.
There's no point to them. There's no point to the facade.
They've become full mask off. That's where you get in the
1980's the Kahanis movement was illegal in Israel and today it's
running Israel. The other example is it used to
be that Israel denied the Nakba.It didn't happen.

(01:25:24):
It's a lie. They left voluntarily.
We didn't do it. Whereas today what they say is
we want a new Nakba, we need to do it better.
Or the problem with the knock bow was that it wasn't complete
enough. We went from a denial, which
within that denial is a sense ofshame.
There's something we need to deny.
There's something we need to pretend didn't happen even

(01:25:46):
though it happened to. Now we're going to embrace the
crime and say we needed to be worse and bigger and more deadly
than it used to be. An expulsion is not enough.
We need to kill them. And that has become basically
the defining marker of Israeli society to the point where on
the occasion that you see, remember a few months ago, an

(01:26:06):
Israeli teacher, all he did was say, you know, we should
remember the young children of Gaza who are killed.
He was gone after and fired fromhis job.
And who went after who started the witch hunt was the kids.
Yeah, the students in his classroom, they like basically
drove him out of the classroom. There's a video.
It's crazy. So.
That has become Israeli society and I'm trying to think of an

(01:26:29):
analogy and I don't know that this works as an analogy in
terms of a genocide will kill them all type of logic.
I'm thinking mid 19th century United States as it's expanding
to the West. You know the only good one is a
dead 1. Manifest Destiny.
If you want an analogy again, you can go back now in the
continental United States and say, oh wow, I feel bad about

(01:26:50):
it. OK, we'll remember it.
We'll have an Indigenous PeoplesDay and all that.
I will. After we've killed 90% of them,
sure. And the remaining that we forced
into boarding school and abuse. Exactly.
Yeah, but at the time when it was happening, the only good one
is a dead one. Well, we're at the only good one
is a dead one stage of Israel. I think also, if you go back to

(01:27:11):
looking at 1948, at the time a lot of the Israeli military and
politicians saw it 1948 as a missed opportunity that they
should have occupied all of historical Palestine.
And so they've been looking for this opportunity since then.
That's not a secret. Yeah, I think about this moment
often, but we had one mother andJanine tell us once before they

(01:27:36):
were displaced from the camp andshe said, you know, they used to
come to arrest. They used to come to the camp to
arrest. They come now to kill.
Yeah. There didn't used to be a thing
called the Gaza Strip. They created the Gaza Strip as a
dumping ground for Palestinian refugee.
Gaza used to be a town and a fewvillages and another town in the

(01:27:58):
South called Rafa. It used to be not very densely
populated, didn't used to be a strip, it just used to be there,
just part of Palestine. Yeah, 80% of those two
millionaire refugees. Right.
I listened someone the other dayand I can't remember who it was
because I do listen to a lot of interviews on this question.
But I was talking about Gaza anddescribed it as a Guinea pig.

(01:28:20):
And I was thinking about that a lot.
This idea that what the brutal rulers and imperialists can get
away in Gaza, they can get away with.
And that this kind of moment that we're in also where there
is a heightened level of understanding and visibility
about the colonial project and what Israel is all about and

(01:28:43):
Palestinian subjugation. But there's also a sense of it
is visible for everyone. And yet the rulers are more
emboldened to carry out this final solution.
So in that context, what is the message that you would send
Simone to political activists who really want to take a stand

(01:29:07):
against the genocide in Gaza andagainst the annexation of the
West Bank? One thing that I think is really
important is recognition that there is a big language divide
on this issue. There are conversations that are
happening in Arabic and there are conversations that happen in
English. And a lot of times they look a
little bit different and they'rebeing had by different people.
And something that I would encourage people who want to get

(01:29:31):
more involved, particularly wantto get more involved in material
ways in Palestine, in the West Bank, is to get more familiar
with Arabic. Whether it's just learning the
alphabet, learning how to read alittle bit, having some
elementary understanding, I think is actually a really,
really important thing because this is an Arabic struggle in

(01:29:54):
many ways. And also, you know, we, we do
have a lot of tools for translation now as well in terms
of written stuff and to follow West Bank news sources and
Arabic news sources. And Google Translate is actually
pretty good for reading. I would not use it to speak, but
if you're trying to translate a headline or an Instagram
caption, it's actually pretty good.

(01:30:15):
And I think I would just challenge people to challenge
themselves to go across that language, divide a little bit
more and demolarize themselves with Arabic.
I think that's my one big piece of advice, especially because if
you're coming at this from a more Marxist or political kind
of ideological position, the working class in Palestine

(01:30:37):
speaks Arabic. And so if you want to also
connect and be more active and aligned in that way, it is a
really important piece. And I don't say this lightly, I
am learning Arabic. I am not fluent in any way, but
I have just seen in my own work it is a little bit of a
handicap. And I think if we look also in
Israeli policy, Arabic in Israelis essentially be legally not

(01:31:03):
allowed in the schools. So the nation state law, this is
something in Israel that they essentially want to criminalize
and erase Arabic from the land. And so I do think that this is
something that is a big thing. The other piece of advice I have
is that if you are visiting Palestine to enter through Alan

(01:31:28):
B, the King Hussein Bridge via Jordan, it is to enter Palestine
via Jordan through the land border if you can.
It is, I think, really an important act of solidarity to
travel as Palestinians travel and to travel in that same
manner. Because if you are going to the
West Bank, the vast majority of people you interact with cannot

(01:31:51):
use the airport. And also the airport is you are
going to have to spend money. You are going in Israel and in
the Israeli airport and in Tel Aviv.
And people ask you, they say, how did you enter?
Did you come through the airport?
People a lot of times are surprised when foreigners come
through the land border, but they respect it a lot because
it's a really important act of solidarity because, yeah, it is

(01:32:14):
inconvenient. It takes a lot longer.
Sometimes they close the border at random times and you have to
come back the next day. But a lot of people interact
with don't have a choice and so it's important to experience
that. I also think it's a very eye
opening experience to go throughthe Palestinian border

(01:32:46):
solidarity in this moment. Look like we're all trying to do
something. But I do think you do have a
responsibility to not just do anything.
We actually owe Palestinians more than just uncritical
solidarity this far into both 77years but also two years into a
genocide. Just doing your best is not

(01:33:07):
enough anymore. Thanks for listening to Unwashed

(01:33:31):
and Unruly, and thank you to Simone for joining us and
sharing so many important insights and a very critical
moment in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Please follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
find us and make sure to rate and review and check out our
website, unwashedun-ruly.com.

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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

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All Episodes

Palestinians Under Siege: A Visit to the Occupied West Bank

Stuff You Should Know