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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show in Paris, where, just hours before the 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, a series of apparently coordinated arson and vandalism attacks were reported on France’s high-speed rail network, on the Eurostar, impacting hundreds of thousands of passengers. Tens of thousands are expected to stream into the heart of Paris today for the opening ceremony this evening, when about close to 7,000 athletes from around the world are set to sail on boats down a four-mile stretch of the Seine.

Meanwhile, protests against the Olympics have taken place in Paris ahead of the games, condemning the displacement of thousands of migrants, unhoused people and other vulnerable communities in a monthslong campaign by French authorities that activists have denounced as a “social cleansing.” Just yesterday, another group of hundreds of mostly African migrants sleeping on the streets of Paris were rounded up by armed police, forced onto buses, driven out of Paris. Displaced migrants have spoken out against the violence.

NICLETTE: [translated] The NGOs who take care of us, give us a place to bathe, food to eat, will shut down soon. And we don’t know what will become of us and where we will go during the period of the Olympic Games.

JOCELYNE: [translated] I have two children. And because we’re living on the streets, one fell ill with asthma. So it’s very difficult for me with the Olympic Games. We do all of our activities in Paris. What will become of us now? Can anybody find a solution for us?

KEMOKO SOW: [translated] Go to the train stations. You see, everywhere you go, there are policemen. Fine, they are here for security. But, for us, they are here to catch us. We’re afraid to leave our homes during these Olympic Games. You see, there are millions of undocumented migrants who are in France.

AMY GOODMAN: A migrant from Mali and voices of two Congolese migrant mothers. Hundreds of people also have marched on Paris over the weekend to protest the participation of the Israeli delegation to the Summer Olympics amid Israel’s relentless war on Gaza.

MARTINE: [translated] Israeli athletes’ participation in the Olympics is very shocking, very shocking, especially when we know what has been happening for eight months in Gaza. There are dozens and dozens of young Palestinian athletes who will never be able to participate in the Olympic Games. And they can say “thank you” to Israel for that, and the international community, because I think that Israel allows itself to behave like this because the international community has only been giving it little slaps on the wrist for decades.

AMY GOODMAN: More than 400 Palestinian athletes and coaches in Gaza have been killed or wounded by Israeli attacks since October 7th. Eight Palestinian athletes are competing in the Paris Summer Olympics this year, the most in history, including 18-year-old tae kwon do fighter Omar Ismail. Meanwhile, Amnesty International slammed French authorities over a policy banning France’s Muslim athletes from wearing headscarves.

For more, we go to Paris, where we’re joined by two guests. Jules Boykoff is the author of five books on the Olympics, former professional athlete. His latest piece for the Scientific American is headlined “The Paris Olympics Are a Lesson in Greenwashing.” He’s co-written several pieces on the Paris Olympics alongside sports editor at The Nation Dave Zirin, including their latest, “The Appalling Social Cleansing of Olympic Paris.” And Paul Alauzy is a Paris-based activist with the medical NGO Doctors of the World and an organizer with Other Side of the Medal.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! I’m so glad you could both join us in a Paris studio, considering what has taken place today. Paul Alauzy, if you can explain what French authorities are calling sabotage of the high-speed rails? Almost a million people are affected. But then talk about what you’re calling “social cleansing” in preparation for these Summer Olympics.

PAUL ALAUZY: Yeah. Hi. Thank you so much for having us.

Well, I don’t have much to say about the sabotage this morning, because, obviously, we’re not meddled in this.

But our collective, more than a hundred NGOs, community association, we really lived through violent social cleansing for the whole year. So, in just a year, we had more than 12,500 people, homeless people, refugees, homeless, sex workers, drug users, people from Eastern Europe, who were expelled from tent cities, from slums, from squats. And it is a rise of 40% comparing to two years ago. And in just the past week, 300 people were moved yesterday. Five hundred people were moved from tent cities just last week. The numbers of expulsion towards the most marginalized population of Paris has exploded, and it’s because of the organization of the Olympics.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Jules Boykoff, if you can describe, set the scene for us, how Paris has planned for these Olympics and how extensive this is kind of, what you’re calling, really, ethnic cleansing is?

JULES BOYKOFF: Well, back in 2017, when Paris was bidding on the Olympics, they promised that their Olympics would be different. And I think the subtext there was they were going to try to avoid the problems that have become endemic downsides of the Olympics, and that is overspending, militarization of public space, the displacement of marginalized populations, greenwashing and corruption.

And unfortunately, seven years later, they’ve totally conformed to the plan. They’re 115% on costs overrun. They have militarized public space. I feel like I’m attending a policing convention here. It’s intense, I’m telling you. They also instituted a AI-powered video surveillance, that will be legal and used throughout the games. Paul just talked eloquently about the displacement that has been happening here. This has been a thorough greenwash. We can maybe talk more about that. And there’s numerous open investigations into corruption here in Paris related to bribery around the games. And so, they said they would be different, but how different are they, really?

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what you’re describing as the greenwashing. I mean, we’re talking about a week that has seen not two, but three of the hottest days on record in the world. If you can talk about what this greenwashing is about?

JULES BOYKOFF: Absolutely. Well, since the 1990s, the International Olympic Committee has really talked a lot about sustainability and trying to embed it in the Olympic Games. But a recent academic study found that some of those most recent installations of the Olympics, like Tokyo, like Sochi in 2014, like Rio in 2016, are some of the most egregious greenwashers around.

Now, in that context, Paris arrived. And to be sure, they’ve sort of tiptoed over that very low bar. They have limited the amount of fresh construction that they’re doing. They’re reusing materials, so a lot of the seats in the venues will be made out of recycled plastic. They’re leaning on wood. They have more vegan options in the cafeteria. But the problem is, this event is fundamentally unsustainable.

Let’s look at what’s happening in terms of Tahiti. They’re hosting the surfing competition way away in Tahiti. It’s 9,735 miles away from here. So we’re racking up lots of carbon miles to do that. Even worse, Amy, when they were creating the tower to allow NBC and other big broadcasters to transmit the best pictures of the surfers to the world, they brought a barge in that ran over the top of a delicate coral reef. And you can watch the videos online of locals in Teahupoʻo , Tahiti, just screaming out in agony and pain. I don’t know how that conforms to green promises around the Olympics.

And so, basically, what I’m saying to you is, in Paris, we’re seeing a sort of pale green form of pale green capitalism, if you will, when what in reality is required is a systematic transformation in resplendent Technicolor.

AMY GOODMAN: And let me ask you something, Jules. You’re an Olympic soccer player yourself formerly. I’m looking at an article right now about the 2024 Olympics, likely the hottest ever. Are athletes themselves prepared, dealing with the heat as they compete?

JULES BOYKOFF: Well, you’re right. I had the good fortune of representing the United States at the under-23 level.

And I’m concerned about athletes. Like you mentioned, these are some of the hottest days in the history of the world that we’re living. And if you want to understand why we’re having the Olympics in July and August, which are the hottest months of the year, it makes sense to think about the big contract that NBC signed with the International Olympic Committee. They paid some $7.75 billion for the rights to run the games through 2032. And guess what: NBC does not want to have the Olympics interfering with U.S. American football, which starts in September, basically. And so, that’s why they’re plopping athletes into this intense heat.

Last Olympics, we learned that athletes were forced to sign waivers that said that if they died of coronavirus or from heat exhaustion, that they couldn’t sue the International Olympic Committee. That’s the kind of situation that athletes have to deal with if they want to compete in the Olympics in the modern era.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at some facts and figures. Twenty percent of Olympic nations face extinction from sea level rise and extreme weather by 2030. Also, if you could talk about air travel, international travel, huge contributor to the impact of carbon — to the carbon impact on the games?

JULES BOYKOFF: That’s absolutely correct. Some 85% of the pollution and carbon associated with sports mega events comes from the travel. And that’s really not being sufficiently dealt with here in Paris.

If the Olympics or other big sporting events like the World Cup actually want to be green, there are a number of things they can do. One, they can make the games smaller. They suffer from something that some people call gigantism. Two, they can figure out ways of instituting measures that are more transparent for all of us to be able to see, like, what they’re doing. It’s quite untransparent right now in terms of what Paris is actually doing. There’s lots of things that could be done right, but we really need to scale back the size of these events, if we actually want to make them green.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Alauzy, I wanted to continue talking to you about the level of protest around Paris right now. I mean, there was a counter opening ceremony. If you could describe that for us?

PAUL ALAUZY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And also talk about the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, who is a socialist. And the swimming in the Seine of politicians to show that it is clean enough. Macron, the French president, wanted to swim in it, but people — well, you can describe what people threatened to do if he swam in the Seine.

PAUL ALAUZY: Yeah, sure. So, to talk about the organization around and against the games, it’s really tricky to organize against the games, because it’s a big propaganda machine, it’s very strong, and they have an insane security system around it. Of course they need to prevent any risk of terrorism. Nobody wants that. But for protesters and activists, it’s really tricky to do something.

So, during a year, we organized a lot of, you know, direct action to just pop up when the flame arrived in Paris, pop up in front of ministries, in front of touristic places. And we managed to do so and to have the images of the protests go around the world, which is good. But none of our asks to the Olympic Games, to city hall and to the state were really done, you know? The social cleansing continued and continued.

So, I spent I don’t know how many days being in tent cities and in leaving, expulsions along the Seine. And then we have politicians taking a bath in the Seine and making it the big society of spectacle, that, yeah, it’s amazing to swim in the Seine. So, a lot of French people threatened to — pardon me the expression — but to take a [bleep] in the Seine in order to prevent that and to maybe, you know, disturb the bath of our politicians. And, you know, they used $1.4 billion to clean up the Seine. We just ask for $10 million, $10 million, so not even 01% of that budget, to put an emergency plan in order to help the homeless and the refugees and all the population depending on Paris’s public space. And they even didn’t accept that. So, we can really see where the political priorities are.

AMY GOODMAN: And if you can talk about your organization, the Other Side of the Coin [sic], Revers de la Médaille? What does that mean?

PAUL ALAUZY: Well, it means that us, Le Revers de la Médaille —

AMY GOODMAN: The Other Side of the Medal, I should say.

PAUL ALAUZY: Yeah, exactly, the Other Side of the Medal. It means that we are not anti-Olympics. You know, I have a lot of friends. I come from a small village. They love the Olympics. They don’t know what’s happening in the streets of Paris. And they can cheer for it. That’s no problem. It doesn’t make them being people who are anti-migrants, anti-solidarity, anti-poverty. So we wanted to showcase to the people and spread the word around that you can support the games, but you need to know that they have a big social impact, and they come with a cost.

And they come with a cost of the lives of hundreds, thousands of people being mistreated, you know, people that go through migration. They went through Libya. They went through the Mediterranean Sea. They arrive here, and what they have is a police response. It is so violent to live through that. And the games, you know, they were so different 130 years ago. They were only for male. They were only for white people. They were even organized with the Nazis. So, even now after a year of protesting the games, I’m deeply convinced that if we continue to do so all around the world, we can still transform them for the better.

AMY GOODMAN: Jules Boykoff, if you can talk about the calls for Israel not to be included in the Olympics? Eight Palestinian athletes are competing in this year’s Olympics. Your co-writer at The Nation wrote in The Nation last year, quote, “Seven of them have secured what are called ‘universality places,’ which permit athletes from nations that have underdeveloped sports programs to take part in the games even if they come up short of formally qualifying.” Jules?

JULES BOYKOFF: Absolutely. So, first of all, at the protest, the protest that Paul organized last night, there was a huge pro-Palestinian rights presence there. I’ve seen it on the streets all around this city.

Now, if you want to understand the inclusion of Israel in the Paris 2024 Olympics, it does us well to slow down and compare it to Russia. In Russia, you have a country that will only bring about 12 athletes to these Olympic Games. Normally they bring upwards of 300. And that’s because of two reasons that the International Olympic Committee gave. One is that Russia violated the Olympic truce when it invaded Ukraine right after the Beijing Olympics and before the Paralympics, and, two, that they had violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine and, in doing so, took over four areas that encompass sports clubs from Ukraine, and the Russian Olympic Committee took over those sports clubs.

Now, in comparing it to Israel, I want to make it clear: History does not give us crisp facsimiles, identical twins, if you will. But there are very similar elements here. For starters, as you’ve been reporting today, the atrocities continue apace in Gaza, and we’re in the Olympic truce period right now. So, that’s one. And, two, you know, if you look at the stadiums in Gaza, nearly every soccer stadium has been totally decimated. The fields are unplayable. And moreover, probably the most storied football stadium in Gaza — it’s called Yarmouk Stadium — was taken over by Israeli Defense Forces and used to detain Palestinians and to interrogate them. Now, that sure sounds a lot like taking over the territorial integrity of Gaza.

And so, people are wondering, out loud here and around the world: Why is Israel not treated like Russians? Now, Russia are sending about 12 athletes here, and they will not participate under their flag. They’ll participate as what are called individual neutral athletes. And a lot of people have been raising the question: Why is Israel not also being asked to participate as individual neutral athletes? The International Olympic Committee has shown zero interest whatsoever in entertaining this totally reasonable question. And that’s why you’re seeing Israeli athletes participating under their flag and with their national anthem here in Paris.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Jules, you have been writing about AI and the use of it at the Olympics. We just have 30 seconds, but if you can explain?

JULES BOYKOFF: Sure. So, in March 2023, the French National Assembly passed a law legalizing AI-powered video surveillance to police the Olympic Games. The law is supposed to sunset in March 2025 after the Olympics, but, hey, it doesn’t take the imagination of an avant-garde poet to come up with scenarios by which the French government insists upon keeping that law in place. And this is in keeping with what we’ve seen with previous Olympics, where they use the Olympics as a pretext to get all the special weapons and laws that they’d never be able to get during normal political times, and all too often those special weapons and laws stay on the book and become part of normalized policing in the wake of the games. And I must say, Amy, normalized policing in too many places is also racialized policing, so you could argue that AI is actually increasing the racialized policing in a society.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both so much for being with us. Jules Boykoff, five books on the Olympics, a former Olympic soccer player, we’ll link to your pieces in The Nation. Paul Alauzy, a Paris-based activist with Doctors of the World and Other Side of the Medal. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

AMY GOODMAN: As Israel carries out new airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, known as UNRWA, is reporting nine in every 10 Palestinians in Gaza have been forcibly displaced. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme is warning Israel continues to block delivery of aid, and says it’s been forced to reduce food rations, quote, “to ensure broader coverage for newly displaced people,” unquote. U.N. experts are blaming Israel for the onset of famine in Gaza, accusing it of carrying out a targeted starvation campaign.

Here in the United States, days after launching her White House presidential campaign and skipping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress, vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris met privately Thursday afternoon with Netanyahu, who also met with President Biden. Harris spoke afterwards.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time, we cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb
to the suffering. And I will not be silent.

AMY GOODMAN: Harris described her private meeting with Netanyahu as “frank and constructive.” She said nothing about cutting U.S. military assistance for Israel, even as she reiterated calls to finalize a ceasefire deal.

This comes as a group of 45 U.S. doctors, surgeons, nurses who have volunteered in Gaza since October 7th have written an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, demanding an immediate ceasefire and an international arms embargo against Israel. The group of health workers include evidence of a much higher — they say there’s evidence of a much higher death toll than is usually cited: more than 92,000 people, which represents over 4% of Gaza’s population.

Two of the doctors join us now. In South Bend, Indiana, we’re joined by Thalia Pachiyannakis. She’s an obstetrician-gynecologist who returned from Gaza earlier this month after having worked at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis. And joining us from Stockton, California, is Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who volunteered at European Hospital in Khan Younis in the early spring. He worked with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization. He recently co-wrote the recent Politico article, “We Volunteered at a Gaza Hospital. What We Saw Was Unspeakable.”

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, if you can start off by talking about the conditions and what you are calling on President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to do right now?

DR. THALIA PACHIYANNAKIS: The conditions in Gaza were unacceptable and really difficult. We had no soap to wash our hands in the hospital, no drapes, no sterile gowns. You know, we would go to work, and the nurses would say, “We don’t even have water to drink.” So you can imagine the situation for the patients who would walk an hour to the hospital. Pregnant patients, patients with suspected cancer would be walking to the hospital or taking three hours to get there because of transportation issues. There’s no sanitation. It’s unbelievable, the situation over there.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk specifically about what women face. You are an obstetrician-gynecologist.

DR. THALIA PACHIYANNAKIS: Yes. The pregnant women do not — we’ve had, you know, four — when I was there, in just a week, we had four deaths, fetal deaths, because we were unable to monitor the babies. They didn’t have any monitors to monitor women in labor. And so, you know, we had fetal deaths. We also had women coming to the hospital delayed with abruption placenta and babies dying, women experiencing severe wound infections and going to the ICU and being reoperated because, you know, of the sanitation and lack of sterility.

AMY GOODMAN: You addressed this letter not only to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, but also to Dr. Jill Biden — right? — the first lady, a doctor of education. Why did you add her, as well?

DR. THALIA PACHIYANNAKIS: I added her because, you know, the whole infrastructure in Gaza is destroyed. We have, you know, children not being in school for nine months. We have medical students not being able to complete their studies. You know, the universities have been bombed. So, with education being important to Dr. Biden, you know, I think this is why we addressed her.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me bring Dr. Feroze Sidhwa into this conversation. Thanks for joining us once again. We spoke to you right after you had been at European Hospital in Khan Younis. Talk about the organizing of this letter and the significance of what happened this week, right? You have President Biden stepping aside in the presidential race, Kamala Harris being the presumptive nominee. And yesterday, if you can respond to what she said, and if you feel that there’s a difference in Kamala Harris’s approach to what’s happening in Gaza? She skipped Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress. She would have presided over it. But she wasn’t alone. She joined about a hundred congressmembers and senators in skipping that event. Do you feel a different message is being sent?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah. Thanks for having me again.

So, the organizing of the letter — excuse me — the organizing of the letter, you know, a lot of American physicians have been to Gaza since October 7th, and plenty before that, too, but we wanted to focus on the conditions since October 7th. And we basically all saw the same thing. You know, the medical community isn’t that big. We all talk to each other. Actually, I met Thalia just because she randomly happens to be married to a buddy of mine from high school, so, you know, there’s kind of — these connections just blossomed. And it was very clear to us that we all basically saw the same thing.

We all saw evidence of a death toll that is certainly much higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is not unusual in wartime at all, but for unusual reasons here. We all saw the targeting of our own healthcare worker colleagues, which really struck us as being unconscionable and just utterly unacceptable. And we all saw the violence directed against children specifically and the way that the violence impacts women, especially pregnant women, like Thalia was saying.

So, we decided to just get together and write a letter. You know, we certainly could have — we probably could have written a 30-page letter, but we tried to limit it to four pages so that it was readable. There is an appendix to the letter that we put together that is — it’s more data-driven than our personal observations, if people are interested.

But, yeah, regarding Vice President Harris, you know, I was actually listening to the words that you were playing from her, which is that something — it’s not the exact words, something like: “What has happened is terrible. People are being displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We can’t look away. We can’t allow ourselves to be numb. And I will not be silent.” Those are all very nice sentiments, but Israel has made very clear what it’s planning on doing to Gaza. It’s destroying the entire — it actually has destroyed the entire place. That’s already done. Oxfam put out a report recently called “Water War Crimes,” if I’m remembering correctly, that points out that if Israel actually concentrates all of Gaza’s population in the Mawasi area, like it’s trying to, the so-called safe zone, that Palestinians there will have 2.5 liters of water per person per day while they’re there. Then, there will be one toilet for, I think, every 4,500 people. That’s just totally outrageous. I mean, there’s nothing to talk about. There’s nothing to not be silent about. If she becomes the president of the United States, she should stop arms transfers to Israel. And not just to Israel, but she should lead, I would hope, the United States would lead an arms embargo against both Palestinians and Israelis.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let me go back to Kamala Harris. Netanyahu did not mention a ceasefire in his joint address. This is what Kamala Harris said after meeting with him privately, after President Biden did yesterday. So that you can hear it from the top, again, this is Kamala Harris speaking after her meeting with Netanyahu.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: The first phase of the deal would bring about a full ceasefire, including a withdrawal of the Israeli military from population centers in Gaza. In the second phase, the Israeli military would withdraw from Gaza entirely, and it would lead to a permanent end to the hostilities. It is time for this war to end.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Sidhwa, do you see a difference? Is there daylight between President Biden and Vice President Harris in dealing with Netanyahu and Israel?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Honestly, it’s hard to know. It’d be hard to be worse. So, I’ll say that. But the real question is — so, this is a political question, not a medical one. But with the end of any war, the question is: What’s going to change? Or any conflict, I guess, the question is: What’s going to change? Well, if the war ends but Israel goes right back to the blockade of Gaza that it’s been instituting since from, if my memory is right, 2005 to October 6th of 2023, then nothing is going to change. It’s not just this war that needs to end. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to end. And the U.S. is fueling it with constant arms transfers to Israel and not participating in a global blockade of arms to the region, like Amnesty International called for, I think, more than 10 years ago now.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, as you return to the United States, having been to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, the message that you’re putting out to your medical counterparts, and what you want people to do in this country at a time when people are particularly galvanized around this issue? We’ve seen protest across the week in Washington, D.C., around the issue of Gaza, leading up to the Democratic convention in Chicago.

DR. THALIA PACHIYANNAKIS: I want everybody to speak up. I want voices. You know, people know this is wrong, but nobody’s speaking up. You know, women are having surgeries without anesthesia and pain medicine. They have major surgeries and only have Tylenol. Imagine that. You know, you have sisters, you have wives, you have mothers. Imagine that. So I want everybody to speak up. And there needs to be a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, we want to thank you for being with us, obstetrician-gynecologist, volunteered at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, trauma surgeon at European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, where he volunteered, now back in Stockton, where he works, part of a group of 45 U.S. doctors, surgeons and nurses who volunteered in Gaza since October 7th, who wrote an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, demanding an immediate ceasefire and an international arms embargo against Israel.

Next up, the opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympics happens today. We’ll speak with a Lebanese photojournalist who carried the Olympic torch in Paris Sunday to honor journalists wounded or killed on the job. She herself lost her own leg when Israel struck an area of southern Lebanon. She also mourns her Reuters colleague who was killed. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Don’t Drink the Water” by Dave Matthews Band. Dave Matthews joined the thousands in Washington, D.C., to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress. Dave Matthews said he’s “ashamed,” calling it “disgusting.” He also spoke out in solidarity with Gaza from the stage during recent concerts.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We’re continuing to look at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the U.S. Congress and the protest outside the Capitol. We’re joined by two peace activists — one Israeli, one Palestinian — who are working together to end the war in Gaza and build a lasting peace.

Maoz Inon’s parents were killed during the Hamas attack on October 7th. Aziz Abu Sarah’s 19-year-old brother died in 1991 after being tortured in an Israeli prison. At the time, Aziz was just 9 years old.

Inon and Abu Sarah recently organized what’s been described as the biggest peace conference in Israel in 30 years. They also recently met Pope Francis.

On Wednesday, they took part in an event in Washington titled “Peace Is Possible: An Alternative Vision for Israel and Palestine.” Other speakers included Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who boycotted Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: Speaking for myself only, the deep horrors of what is happening on the ground are not external to us, because the United States does remain the largest backer of military assistance to Israel, assistance that has been used to perpetrate these offensive attacks on a civilian population that’s been denied even the most basic of humanitarian assistance.

AMY GOODMAN: Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah join us now in Washington, D.C. Maoz, if you can start off by talking about what happened to your parents?

MAOZ INON: Hi, Amy. Good morning from D.C.

I was born in about a mile away from Gaza. And when I was 14, we moved to even nearest community to the Gaza border. And we lost contact with my parents on October the 7th, early morning. And in the afternoon, we learned from one of the neighbors that their house was burned into ashes, and he found two bodies inside. And on that day, I lost many of my childhood friends, their parents, their children, and it was the most dark time in my life.

And two days after, my young brother asked the family to send a universal message from our own tragedy, and he wanted this message to be that we are seeking no revenge. And in the same day, Aziz contacted me on Facebook. And I lost my parents, but I won a friend, I won a partner, and I won a brother, a brother to peace. And since that day, we’ve been working very hard to create and bring a new vision, a vision of hope, a vision of reconciliation, a vision of peace. And this is what we came here to do and say in D.C., that the future cannot and should not look like the present. The future must be a better future, and we are ready and eager to make it this way.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Aziz, could you explain what happened to your brother when you were 9 years old and why you reached out to Maoz after October 7th?

AZIZ ABU SARAH: Sure. Thank you, Amy, and good morning.

Yeah, my brother was arrested from home. We lived in the same — actually slept in the same room, me and him. He’s the one just older than me, Tayseer. And he was taken, on suspicion of throwing rocks, to detention. He refused to confess to the charges, and he was beaten up, tortured, until he eventually did. And by the time he was released from prison, he had internal injuries, and, soon after, he ended up dying from those injuries.

And unlike Maoz, I actually didn’t believe in peace right away. It took me quite a while to come to that conclusion, took me eight years, where I was very active, I was very angry, was very bitter, and I thought vengeance is the only way. I thought I had no choice. Honestly, only when I realized that regardless of what others do to you, you always have the agency and the ability to make your own choices. I was being a slave to the person who killed my brother. He killed my brother first and ruined my life second, because hate is very destructive, destructive thing.

And so, when Maoz’s parents were killed, I understood the pain he was going through. I understood that loss. I understood what it feels like to be subjected to this crazy reality that we live in, where death and killing is a reality. And I reached out and just told him that I care and love him and stand with him and that we are together into this, that it’s not Israelis versus Palestinians, that we are on the same side for justice, for equality, for dignity, and we shouldn’t be seeing it only as Israelis versus Palestinians. It’s those of us who fight for a future that is better, for a future that guarantees equality, ends the occupation, and those who don’t yet. And our message is trying to make sure that others can join us.

AMY GOODMAN: Maoz, if you can talk about what Netanyahu didn’t talk about? Yes, he brought with him, sitting next to his wife Sara, one of the hostages who the Israeli military freed. But he didn’t call for a hostage deal, as so many thousands in Israel have demanded, as hostage families demanded in the streets of Washington, D.C., this week in protest of Netanyahu’s address. Talk about what you feel needs to happen right now and how unusual or not unusual you are in this demand that the war end, that Israel’s assault on Gaza end now, as an Israeli hostage family member.

MAOZ INON: Yeah, I can definitely tell you what he has never done. He never called any of the bereaved families of October 7th, not him or not anyone from his government or his coalition. They didn’t come the shiva, the Jewish way of mourning. They didn’t send us a condolence letter or a call. They didn’t come. They didn’t show, like they didn’t show on October 7th.

Netanyahu and his government are accountable and responsible to my parents’ death. They are responsible and accountable to October 7th. And he never accepted this and took this accountability. And I was surprised and shocked from the members of the Congress that they are not forcing him to take responsibility and accountability to his failure leadership.

And this is what we came here to offer, a new vision. And Netanyahu lost the people of Israel. Before October 7th, the protests were: Should Netanyahu resign or not? But now there is a growing protest that Netanyahu — should Netanyahu resign before the war ends or after the war ends? And Netanyahu thrives and prospers on war, on bloodshed, on revenge. And we are here to say to the representatives and to the American people that Netanyahu lost the people of Israel. Seventy-two percent of the Jewish Israelis want Netanyahu to resign. Sixty-four percent of the Jewish Israelis believe in a conflict resolution that will be supported and championed by the U.S., a resolution that would lead to establishment of a Palestinian state and a normalization with the Arab world. And this is where the people of Israel are.

And we are here to say and to represent a growing movement, a peace movement, Palestinian-Israeli movement, that believes the war must end and conflict resolution must start now. We cannot wait, because the sorrow, the pain, the casualties, it’s — we cannot take it anymore. We cannot suffer more. And we deserve a better life, a normal life and a better future.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Aziz, if you could speak a little bit more about what you think could bring about this kind of peace, how at least to grow this peace movement, Israeli and Palestinian? And describe the day, which you’ve spoken about, in Jerusalem when suddenly you saw that everybody was standing still and you were the only person moving, and what that explained to you, what you saw in that moment.

AZIZ ABU SARAH: Right, yeah. So, I grew up, lived in Jerusalem all my life. And I want to just say it’s amazing how little we know about each other. I mean, I lived in East Jerusalem. Walking distance from my house is West Jerusalem. And Palestinians and Israelis really never get to meet, never get to talk to each other. And when I went to study Hebrew, I studied in West Jerusalem. It was my first interaction with Israelis and Jews who are not soldiers and who are not settlers.

And going to that classroom, there was a siren, and everybody just stood still, and I was the only person moving. Cars had stopped. People got out of the cars and just stood literally still with the siren going on. And I honestly thought this was like a sci-fi movie, a sci-fi book, like it’s just aliens controlling humans. And I ran away, because nobody would talk to me. And later, my teacher, my Hebrew teacher, explained to me that was the memorial for the Holocaust. That’s how people remember those who were killed in the Holocaust. I had no idea what she was talking about. And that’s how little we know about each other.

And honestly, this is how little we know about each other even now. I talk to people in Israel who have no idea what’s going on in Gaza, despite all the images and all the stuff on social media, actually not being able to see it. We don’t know the suffering. We don’t know the pain that is happening. And that is a key element of what keeps wars, what keeps conflicts, what keeps killing going on, because if you cannot humanize who’s on the other side, if you do not see them as normal people, you don’t see them as people with dreams, you don’t see them as people who want to live, then you don’t care if they’re alive or not. You don’t care what’s going on with them. And that’s — Martin Luther King had a saying where he says people hate each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each other because they are separated, because they don’t communicate.

And that’s an important element of what Maoz and I are trying to do, is saying: Don’t hear what corrupt leaders, who want to sell us this language of only through bombs, only through killing — as Netanyahu said yesterday, “If I only have a little bit more weapons, I’ll finish the job.” Don’t believe that. Instead, talk to us. He also said, “Oh, we’ll need a new generation of peaceful Palestinians.” Guess what: We are here. Peaceful Palestinians do exist. I’m here with Maoz because we are working together. We are showing what Netanyahu says is impossible. We are showing that there is an alternative to the language of bombs and to the language of killing. We are showing that we are not doomed to live in this cycle where we keep losing our loved ones. And our existence, in itself, the fact that Maoz and I together, is an answer to those who say, “Only through killing, we can achieve peace.” Well, no, that doesn’t happen. And we can see in reality where we are today, a century later, that we haven’t achieved peace through that. Israel hasn’t achieved peace with any country through war. It hasn’t achieved peace through bombs. The only peace it actually has achieved, by sitting down and saying, “OK, I’m willing to negotiate.” And that’s what Netanyahu doesn’t offer.

So, Maoz and I are showing that an alternative exists. The event you mentioned earlier, where thousands of people, Palestinians and Israelis, gathered together in Tel Aviv, saying it is time now to make a difference — we are telling people we can’t remain indifferent. We can’t remain silent. We have to come together. We have to build coalition together. We have to have values that we agree on, that equality and dignity is the most important. Safety and security for both Palestinians and Israelis is essential. We cannot leave that out ’til later, and that we can’t wait anymore. It is now that peace is needed. It is now that the occupation needs to end. It’s not in 20 years. It’s not in the next generation. It must happen now.

And we need to organize. We need to organize in Israel and Palestine, and we need to organize here in the United States. As we heard before, Americans are very involved in this. They are very much part of this. And we need Americans’ not only thoughts and prayers, not only saying, “Oh, we’re not happy with Congress doing this and doing that,” and sending us tools of destruction and war machines instead of ways to come together and have peace. We need Americans to join this, because you are, Americans, we are a part of this, of what’s happening, and we are responsible and should be accountable.

AMY GOODMAN: Maoz Inon, you have said we have to go back to the overall deal that was on the table. Prisoners can play a significant role in reconciliation and peacemaking. If you can address the issue. I mean, you lost your parents in the Hamas attack on October 7th. Since that time, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, and thousands of Palestinians imprisoned, like Aziz’s brother decades ago, but those thousands of Palestinians. Explain what you mean by “all for all.”

MAOZ INON: All for all, it’s the deal that was on the table already on October 7th evening: all the Palestinian prisoners kept in the Israeli jails in return to the all hostages that are kept by the hands of Hamas. So, this deal was on the table from day one.

And I also said earlier — I think it was in October — that the difference between Benjamin Netanyahu and his brother, Yoni, is that Yoni sacrificed his life to save the hostages in Entebbe, while Benjamin Netanyahu is sacrificing the hostages in order to save his position as the prime minister. And we must stop it. And it’s already too late for too many Palestinians, for too many Israelis.

And we are calling that, again, the only answer is peace. And the only way to bring security and safety, like Aziz said, is through equality. And those who believe that bombs will bring safety and war will bring security, they are naive, because it failed again and again. Again and again, it just brings more bloodshed, more revenge and more hate. And —

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli peace activist — we have to end now — Maoz Inon, who lost his parents on October 7th, and Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah, who lost his brother decades ago in an Israeli prison. He came out after being tortured and died of his internal injuries. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Thanks so much for joining us.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I’d like to bring in Noura Erakat. Noura, if you could also respond to Netanyahu’s speech? And what was most striking to you? I mean, the number of times the audience broke into this enthusiastic applause.

NOURA ERAKAT: I think that that was probably the most disturbing, because for those of us who have followed this for 292 days now, we have understood the blatant lies that Israel has said, that all of its apologists have made, but to watch U.S. Congress jubilantly, jubilantly cheer on, scramble over one another in order to cheer for, essentially, what is a war on children. When Netanyahu says they want to finish the job, the job is annihilation. It is extermination. It is genocide. They have flattened all of Gaza. It is reported that it will take 10 to 15 years just to clean up the rubble. There are no hospitals. Children cannot be treated. There is now a spread of polio. And U.S. Congress is applauding for this jubilantly, at one point breaking out into a chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

And so, as I watch that, one of the things that occurs to me is how the debate within the United States approaching the election in November has taken on the stance that there is a demarcation or a distinction between foreign policy and domestic policy, what happens over there and what happens at home, as if those things are not entwined and imbricated. Right now those chants at home echo an entitlement to kill, echo an entitlement to plunder, to destroy lives that are not seen or deemed worthy, and where racism and colonialism is not a dog whistle but is on full display.

So, for those who are concerned about saving their democracy at home, I want to tell them that there is no democracy to save that manifests itself in ongoing genocide in this way. Consider that your fellow Palestinian Americans, Arab Americans, American Muslims have been subject to a fascist regime at home already, not only in being forced to watch a genocide for which we are punished for naming, but also to have Antiterrorism Act being leveled against those of us who are protesting U.S. policy, who are entreating the United States to follow its own law, the National Security Memorandum number 20, the Arms Export Control Act, the Leahy Amendment, insisting that the U.S. cannot continue, even at the bare minimum, to transfer arms to a belligerent state that is violating U.S. and international law. Palestinian, Arab American, American Muslims have been attacked, have been stabbed, have been run over. And yet you are telling us that we have to save a democracy at home? We are not living in a democracy, and the worst is yet to come.

And for those who are watching helplessly because they think Congress is beyond reach and out of hand, this is local, as well. This extends down to your community and your university, where university administrators have called on cops in order to punish students, who are excellent students, who, contrary to what Netanyahu, a foreign agent, is telling the United States — don’t know what the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea is — have studied it meticulously because of Palestine studies in the United States and the centers for Middle East studies, who understand ethnic studies, who understand global politics, who understand international law. Because they are meticulous students and who are acting upon their agency, they, too, are being punished by university administrators. This is a problem from the top to the root. If you want to save a democracy, you must enforce a ceasefire now. You must end a transfer — U.S. transfer of weapons now.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Erakat, I wanted to go to Netanyahu’s speech where he praises President Biden for providing military support for Israel after October 7th.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: I thank President Biden for his heartfelt support for Israel after the savage attack on October 7th. He rightly called Hamas “sheer evil.” He dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Middle East to deter a wider war. And he came to Israel to stand with us during our darkest hour, a visit that will never be forgotten. President Biden and I have known each other for over 40 years. I want to thank him for half a century of friendship to Israel and for being, as he says, a proud Zionist. Actually, he says a proud Irish American Zionist.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is the Israeli prime minister addressing Congress about the protesters outside.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Well, I have a message for these protesters: When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising, promoting and funding you, you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.

AMY GOODMAN: “Useful idiots.” Noura Erakat, Palestinian American attorney, if you could comment on his comments? And also, you know, it’s not just Fox — it’s MSNBC, it’s CNN — when castigating the protesters outside. There was also — I was watching a debate between a Democratic representative and a Republican representative on CNN, talking about why Kamala Harris wasn’t there. While the Republican said it was unforgivable, the Democratic representative didn’t say, “Well, she was taking a stand and didn’t want to preside over Netanyahu addressing Congress.” He said, “She simply had another engagement. Don’t worry. She’s meeting with him today.” Your overall response?

NOURA ERAKAT: I have two overall responses. The first is shame. Shame, shame, shame on the Democratic Party for allowing a president, that they didn’t trust to enter into a debate or to make a comment without misnaming world leaders, to make policy on the lives of Palestinians and their futures for 292 days. They are more worried about the optics in this election than they are about the lives of Palestinians, which indicates very well that they are deriving their power from the slaughter of Palestinians, that this machine is functioning on those campaign donations, on those weapons manufacturers, on those Islamophobic institutions who are fomenting this, so that 67% of the Democratic base cannot be represented adequately by their leadership.

My second reaction to that is salute, salute to the protesters who continue to risk their bodies, who risk their reputation, who risked time and being attacked by police and police brutality. They are the kernels. They are the seed now that can grow, that can ripen into something worth living for in the future. This does not bode well for our future. This is what’s on offer for the rest of the world as we see climate catastrophe being imposed upon us, where the only thing on offer is that only a few shall live. And the model that Israel is creating here is that the racist supremacists, that the colonialists, that they will live and that others must die. And we see in these protesters an alternate future, one that screams we have safety in solidarity, one that says that it is all of us or none of us.

Enough with the Islamophobic tropes. Netanyahu does not care about homosexual communities, about LGBTQIA communities. Many of them live in Gaza. Those bombs have not spared them. Those buildings have fallen upon them. There is no concern for those lives. And yet Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism is so endemic that it can be passed along and even echoed by so-called liberal media in this moment.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Noura, you’ve said — you know, we are in this election year. You said that by not distinguishing themselves from Republicans, by not making Gaza a partisan issue, the Democratic Party is basically delivering Trump to the White House. Now, there are people in the Biden administration who resigned in protest against Biden’s Gaza policy, who have suggested that they’re cautiously optimistic that Harris might take a different position. Your response?

NOURA ERAKAT: Look, I’m with the uncommitted campaign that is asking the Democrats to impose an embargo on arms transfer and that is asking them to impose a permanent ceasefire right now. They have a chance. They, at the 11th hour, replaced the presidential candidate. Surely they have the agency to make this shift, too. Although, that said, I want to point out to listeners that when Biden came into office, he had the opportunity to reverse Trump’s disastrous policies, that were very explicitly racist, from the apartheid plan, which he called “the deal of the century,” to the annexation of the Golan Heights, sovereignty over all of Jerusalem in contravention of the U.N. Charter, of occupation law. The ICJ decision just confirmed that this is all illegal, that Israel’s presence is unlawful. And yet the Democrats did not reverse any of those policies, but to reinstate UNRWA funding.

Netanyahu, in this moment, was the lowest-hanging fruit for the Democrats. He has been, since — since his ascendancy, made his primary goal in office the torpedoing of a Palestinian state, which the United States says is a policy priority for it. What are they doing? What are they doing? He has made clear that there will never be a Palestinian state. We protested him 24 years ago in Berkeley and prevented him from speaking then. And that continues today. One has to ask: Is it that Americans aren’t learning, or is it that it just doesn’t matter, that they are going to support Netanyahu, whatever he does?

Recall also that in 2012 it was Netanyahu that oversaw a commission that resulted in the Levy Report, that said that, in fact, there was no occupation, and they retroactively legalized outposts. In 2017, they passed the Regularization Law, which allowed Israel an order to retroactively legalize the confiscation of private Palestinian land. These are very — you know, the nuances within Israeli law. But they have basically paved that path. More recently, in 2018, they passed the Nation-State Law, which says that only Jewish Zionists have the right to sovereignty in historic Palestine, which was a nail in the coffin that said there was no Palestinian state. And if there was any confusion, just last week the Knesset passed a law that said that there would be no Palestinian state. You are literally hosting a man that is the lowest-hanging fruit that you could have plucked to continue to speak out of both sides of your mouth, and failed to do even that.

So, I am putting a challenge to all those who are worried about our democracy, who are pointing fingers worriedly about the Palestinians, who have not had time to mourn the dead, that the responsibility is on you. The DNC has agency. They are meeting. They can impose an arms embargo. They can impose and call for a permanent ceasefire now.

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we’re going to go to an Israeli and Palestinian peacemaker who addressed a session of a number of the congressmembers who refused to attend Netanyahu’s address. But I just wanted to end by quoting Congressmember Mark Pocan of Wisconsin. He said, “I won’t be attending Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. I only regret that an arrest warrant for his war crimes has not yet been issued by the ICC, as I would have gladly served it to him on the House floor.” The significance of this, Noura Erakat, that the ICC has said it’s going to be issuing an arrest warrant for the prime minister of Israel?

NOURA ERAKAT: I think there’s two things here. One is the broader significance of the fact that everything that Netanyahu was saying was contravening and challenging and upending a very tenuous world order, one where ICJ decisions on plausible genocide, on the route of the apartheid wall, on the unlawful occupation are dismissed as being — as the threat to the so-called peace process, where even the ICC is being dismissed and being called — he basically called the International Criminal Court liars that we can’t trust. He contravened the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force as he celebrated the annexation of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem to a jubilant Congress, which is basically telling the world that the United States also doesn’t believe in this international order. And so, this is what is of primary concern.

The second thing is, I would have loved to see allies alongside Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian in Congress, who basically stood up there in the middle of what felt like a mob, to protect her, to stand by her side, to shut it down as activists have shut it down, to make it clear that there is dissent, not only through boycott, but through an explicit message. The problem in doing that is precisely that this is a U.S. war led by the Democratic Party. This is the U.S.’s genocide. And now the Democrats are finding themselves in a place where they want to be able to protest and also take the reins of power in November. They can resolve that by demanding a permanent ceasefire now, by suspending arm transfers now.

AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian American human rights attorney, professor at Rutgers University, author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Thanks also to Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, international adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, an Israeli and Palestinian peacemaker respond to what Netanyahu said, and what they’re trying to build for a lasting peace. The Israeli’s parents were killed on October 7th. The Palestinian activist’s 19-year-old brother died after being tortured in an Israeli prison years ago. Stay with us.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Washington, D.C., Wednesday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress. Netanyahu had been invited by Republican and Democratic congressional leaders.

The speech came two months after Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced he was seeking an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for committing war crimes in Gaza. During his speech, Netanyahu thanked the U.S. for its support and defended Israel’s actions in Gaza.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has shamefully accused Israel of deliberately starving the people of Gaza. This is utter, complete nonsense! It’s a complete fabrication. Israel has enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza. That’s half a million tons of food! And that’s more than for 3,000 calories for every man, woman and child in Gaza. If there are Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t getting enough food, it’s not because Israel is blocking it. It’s because Hamas is stealing it! So much for that lie.

But here’s another. The ICC prosecutor accuses Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. What in God’s green Earth is he talking about? The IDF has dropped millions of flyers, sent millions of text messages, made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to get Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way. But at the same time, Hamas — Hamas does everything in its power to put Palestinian civilians in harm’s way.

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking Wednesday in his fourth address to a joint session of Congress. During the speech, he made no mention of the more than 16,000 Palestinian children killed by Israel since October 7th. Netanyahu’s critics said he repeatedly distorted the true picture of what’s happening in Gaza. The U.N. says 500 aid trucks are needed every day as Gaza faces famine. On an average day, Israel allows in just over a quarter of the trucks needed. Netanyahu also never mentioned the word “ceasefire” during his speech.

More than a hundred lawmakers, mostly Democrats, skipped Netanyahu’s address, including Senators Dick Durbin, majority whip; Chris Van Hollen; Jeff Merkley; Patty Murray; Elizabeth Warren; and Bernie Sanders. Vice President Kamala Harris declined to preside over the Senate chamber during his address. She instead was in Indianapolis.

Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, opted to attend, but protested Netanyahu by holding up a sign that read “guilty of genocide” on one side and “war criminal” on the other.

Ahead of Netanyahu’s address, Democratic Congressmember Cori Bush discussed why she was boycotting the speech.

REP. CORI BUSH: It’s absolutely shameful that after the murder of over 39,000 Palestinians, human beings, after the repeated bombing of hospitals, after witnessing the bombing of religious institutions, schools, humanitarian convoys, refugee camps, and fathers collecting their children’s remains in plastic bags, holding their beheaded children, that my colleagues in Congress choose to celebrate Prime Minister Netanyahu, a whole war criminal, by bestowing him the honor of addressing Congress. Because standing up for human rights is more than a talking point to me, I’m boycotting his address.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Outside the Capitol, thousands took part in protests calling for Netanyahu’s arrest and for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel. Emerson Wolfe came to the protest from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

EMERSON WOLFE: We believe we should stop aiding Israel in their genocide against Palestinians and that they need to lift the siege on Gaza. So we’re here to protest Netanyahu, but we’re also here to encourage people to come out to the first day of the Democratic National Convention to keep the pressure up on the Democrats, to let them know that we want a pro-Palestinian candidate, that the people demand change and that we will not suffer this genocide anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress and the protests, we’re joined by two guests. Noura Erakat is a Palestinian American human rights attorney, professor at Rutgers University, author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Phyllis Bennis also joins us, a fellow at the Institute for Policy studies. She serves as an international adviser to Jewish Voice for Peace. Phyllis has written a number of books, including Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.

Phyllis, you are in Washington. You were out at the protest yesterday. Can you talk about what Netanyahu said, and what he didn’t say, and the significance of him addressing, as a foreign leader, a joint session of Congress, more than any foreign leader ever? I think Winston Churchill came in second with three addresses. This was Netanyahu’s fourth.

PHYLLIS BENNIS: It was a horrifying thing to see, Amy — I’m glad to be back with Democracy Now! today — seeing the standing ovations. By my estimate, it seemed to be about every 30 seconds you saw members of Congress on their feet applauding and applauding and applauding.

But I think that we saw two things yesterday, aside from the host of lies. Even CNN, New York Times, everybody was tracking the lies that Netanyahu was saying. I think there’s two sets of things we need to notice.

Inside, what this showed was the degree to which the support for Israel has become a thoroughly partisan issue, despite the fact that some Democrats supported and signed off on the invitation. The fact that more than a hundred Democratic lawmakers skipped the speech, refused to participate, is a real statement of how this has become — supporting the prime minister of Israel has become a political liability in a very public way for public figures across the U.S. That has not always been the case.

The other thing is that this is different than what happened in 2015, when about 60 members of Congress skipped the speech. They were overwhelmingly from the Congressional Black Caucus, and they were focused not so much on the question of the denial of Palestinian rights, what had happened just months before that visit in the attack on Gaza at that time, that had gone on for 55 days, left 2,200 Palestinian civilians killed, but they recognized the incredible racism, the disdain with which the prime minister of Israel treated President Barack Obama. And it was in response to that direct racism that led to this massive refusal to participate. This time around, it was straight up about the refusal to call for a ceasefire, and it was about genocide.

Outside, there were two very important lessons, I think, as well. One is that our movement, the broadly defined movement, not only the self-defined Palestinian rights movement that has been around for so many decades in this country, but the broad, spontaneous movement that has risen up in the last 10 months in direct response to the horrific level of genocide that Israel has been carrying out in Gaza, that broad movement has really normalized the whole question of ending — not only cutting or conditioning, but ending — U.S. military support to [Israel]. It’s no longer a challenging position. Sixty-two percent of adults in this country, of all parties, voting and nonvoting, say that we should stop — they oppose sending weapons and sending material support to Israel.

The second thing is that our movement has redefined the demand for a ceasefire. It has stuck to a kind of message discipline where immediate ceasefire now is the call, but what that ceasefire means is very different than what it meant nine or 10 months ago. It now means three things. The first is stop the firing, stop the bombing, stop the tank fire, stop the ground assaults, stop killing people. But it also includes two other key points. One is the need for massive humanitarian escalation, humanitarian aid at scale of what’s required, meaning start refunding UNRWA. The U.S. is now the only country that is still refusing to support the most important U.N. agency, the only one capable of providing Palestinians with the very basics of life, water, medical care, food. And the third thing that’s part of a ceasefire now is to stop sending the weapons that enable the genocide. And until all three are met, this will not be the ceasefire that people are demanding.

And that’s the message that is being sent both to President Biden, who will be president for another six months, presiding over the support for this genocide, and to Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the likely nominee of the Democratic Party to be the next president, telling her what ceasefire now really means. So, that was, I think, the messages that we took yesterday. It was an extraordinary mobilization in the streets of Washington.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Phyllis Bennis, could you talk about what the significance is of Kamala Harris not being present when Netanyahu spoke?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: Well, again, this was a reflection of the degree to which there’s recognition that showing support for the prime minister of Israel has become a political liability. And Kamala Harris wanted no part of it.

She also has expressed a very different tone, a very different kind of language than President Biden, so that it’s quite clear that whatever policy positions she’s been willing to take that differ from his — and that has meant, essentially, her willingness, way before Biden did, to call for an immediate ceasefire. And the fact that she called for it on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, that was so famous — infamous in this country’s history, of beating and attacking Black protesters that were being denied the right to vote, that was an extraordinarily powerful moment to use that day and that place to call for an immediate ceasefire, something that her president had so far refused to do. So we know that her position is somewhat different.

How much she’s going to be willing to break with Biden’s position, we still don’t know. What is clear is that for her to take a different position will be a whole lot easier than it will be for President Biden. President Biden has responded to some of the protests, particularly that of the “uncommitted” movement, as well as the massive numbers of people on staff of the administration and of Congress demanding — demanding of the president that he stop supporting this, saying they can’t do their jobs to represent this country as long as he’s maintaining that position. For a President Harris in the future, she would not have to be denying decades of uncritical massive support for Israel that have been reflected by Joe Biden.

And in that context, I think there is some hope. I think that’s part of the reason that so many young people, people of color — particularly we’re seeing it among people who supported the uncommitted movement. People in the Palestinian and Arab communities in this country are saying, “Well, maybe there’s a chance here. Maybe there’s a way that she could do something that would make it possible to vote for her.” That’s not clear yet. She has not earned that vote yet. But it does look like she’s taking a very different position than the person that she has served as — essentially, as his deputy.

So I think it was very, very important that she refused to participate and that she refused to have her photograph central, right above this man who was taking on a speech in the People’s House, as people like to call it here in Washington, in the Capitol, our Capitol, using it as if — as CNN said, as The New York Times said, as all the mainstream media is acknowledging, treating it as if he were giving a State of the Union address, inviting his own guests to sit in the balcony, and addressing them, making them the subject of it, speaking for an entire hour, with ovation after ovation. And apparently, Kamala Harris wanted no part of that. So, there’s a different — there’s a significance in that different approach that she has taken.

AMY GOODMAN: Ben Crump, before you go, we wanted to follow up on another case you’re involved in: in Milwaukee, D’Vontaye Mitchell, the 43-year-old Black father who died last month after he was violently pinned to the ground by four security guards outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel, just a few minutes where thousands of Republicans would then gather for the Republican National Convention, footage showing security guards pressing him on his stomach with their hands and knees as he’s heard crying out for help. The incident came after Mitchell was pushed out of the hotel. A witness reported seeing one of the guards also striking him on the head with an object. The Medical Examiner’s Office determining the preliminary cause of death as homicide, but the investigation is ongoing.

Last week, when we were in Milwaukee covering the RNC, I spoke to a man who witnessed Mitchell’s killing. Milwaukee artist and photographer Nick Hansen said he was sitting in his car parked near the Hyatt when he started to hear people shouting, listed for 10 to 15 minutes, then drove closer.

NICK HANSEN: At that moment, I saw at least three security guards from the Hyatt Regency on top of D’Vontaye Mitchell. I could barely see D’Vontaye Mitchell because of the men that were standing on top. As I pull up, as I’m sitting in my car, seeing these men on top of this victim —

AMY GOODMAN: They were kneeling on him?

NICK HANSEN: Yes. There was an older, silver-haired man that was screaming, “That’s what you get for being in the women’s room!” And I was like — and I’m thinking to myself, “What is going on?” in the quick moments that I’m observing this. They were kneeling and pushing him down. He was — the victim was lying on his belly, and the security were either kneeling like on his back or holding his neck down, and then there were a couple maybe holding his legs down or his lower back down.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was witness Nick Hansen. We only have a minute, Ben Crump. You’re representing D’Vontaye’s family, as well. Talk about your demands. Last week, there was a major protest right up to the Hyatt Regency demanding justice in this case.

BENJAMIN CRUMP: Yeah, Amy, it’s just inexplicable to us. You have a video of a man being killed. You have witnesses who have given statements. But yet you’re saying you still have to investigate? Why is it different when it’s a Black victim laying dead on the ground? You know, if the roles were reversed and D’Vontaye Mitchell allegedly did something like this and you had video and statements, he would have been arrested day one, charged and sitting in a jail cell, probably being held without bail. So, why is it different when it’s a Black victim? I mean, how much longer do we have to take to finish the investigation? Justice delayed is justice denied. Justice for D’Vontaye Mitchell. Justice for Sonya Massey.

AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of Kamala Harris weighing in with a letter, Ben Crump? We have 20 seconds.

BENJAMIN CRUMP: Yeah. She is the presumptive nominee from the Democratic Party. I think it’s huge, her voice as vice president to say justice for Sonya Massey, justice for D’Vontaye Mitchell. It matters.

AMY GOODMAN: Ben Crump, civil rights attorney representing the families of D’Vontaye Mitchell and Sonya Massey.

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! is currently accepting applications for director of development to lead our fundraising team. Learn more and apply at democracynow.org. Democracy Now! is produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Hana Elias. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

A warning to our listeners and viewers: We’re about to discuss graphic details of police violence.

The family of Sonya Massey is demanding justice after the unarmed 36-year-old Black woman was shot dead in her own home in Illinois when she called 911 for help. Police initially claimed she died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but police bodycam footage has just been released and has proved that all to be a lie.

Former Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson, who’s white, has been fired and charged with first-degree murder for fatally shooting Sonya Massey. Grayson did not activate his bodycam until after he killed her, but the other officer’s body camera was activated when they arrived at her house. It shows the two men speaking with Sonya before one notes her stove is on and says, “We don’t need a fire while we’re here.” When Massey goes to turn off the stove, where a pot of water is boiling, a deputy tells her to “step away from your hot steaming water.” Massey can be heard saying, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” and Grayson takes his gun out and responds, quote, “You better f—ing not, or I swear to God I’ll f—ing shoot you in the f—ing face.” As Sonya Massey appears to duck and twice says, “I’m sorry,” the video shows Grayson moving toward her and fire three times, ultimately shooting her in the face. This is a clip of the exchange leading up to the shooting.

SEAN GRAYSON: What is your last name? [inaudible] What’s your last name? You’re not in trouble. I just need to ask —

SONYA MASSEY: Massey.

SEAN GRAYSON: Huh?

SONYA MASSEY: Massey.

SEAN GRAYSON: What — do you have an ID? That would make things so much easier.

SONYA MASSEY: Jesus.

SEAN GRAYSON: I just need to get — just a driver’s license will do, and then I’ll get out of your hair.

SONYA MASSEY: I’m going to show y’all my paperwork.

DEPUTY: What —

SEAN GRAYSON: I will read your paperwork.

DEPUTY: What paperwork?

SONYA MASSEY: OK. I’ve got some paperwork from —

SEAN GRAYSON: We’ll just get your ID real quick.

DEPUTY: Well, let’s get your ID first. And then —

SEAN GRAYSON: One task at a time here.

SONYA MASSEY: OK. Let me find it.

SEAN GRAYSON: Here, grab your ID for me.

SONYA MASSEY: Uh-huh, OK.

SEAN GRAYSON: Your ID. One task at a time. So, let’s do an ID, and then you can dig around for your paperwork.

SONYA MASSEY: I don’t know where my ID is.

DEPUTY: Is it in that stack right there maybe?

SONYA MASSEY: One second.

SEAN GRAYSON: Just check on the burner.

SONYA MASSEY: Underneath this.

SEAN GRAYSON: We don’t need a fire while we’re here.

SONYA MASSEY: All right. [inaudible] OK?

SEAN GRAYSON: OK.

SONYA MASSEY: Where are you moving?

SEAN GRAYSON: Huh?

SONYA MASSEY: Where are you going?

SEAN GRAYSON: Away from your hot, steaming water.

SONYA MASSEY: Huh? Away from my hot, steaming water?

SEAN GRAYSON: Yeah.

SONYA MASSEY: Oh, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.

SEAN GRAYSON: Huh?

SONYA MASSEY: Rebuke you in the name of Jesus.

AMY GOODMAN: So, after that, Sean Grayson shoots Sonya Massey. Bodycam footage later records him telling his partner not to render aid to her. Records show Grayson has worked at six different law enforcement agencies in Illinois since 2020. All of this comes as Massey’s family says police first tried to cover up her killing. The Guardian newspaper obtained audio of a call from the scene in which a deputy told the dispatcher Massey’s wound was self-inflicted. The family said it was also given misleading information, given by police, that she was shot by a neighbor. This is Massey’s father, James Wilburn, at a news conference.

JAMES WILBURN: I was under the impression that a prowler had broke in and killed my baby. Never did they say that it was a deputy-involved shooting, until my brother read it on the internet. And he shared with me, he said, “Brother, what was Sonya’s address?” And I told him, and he said to me, “This says this was a deputy-involved shooting.” I said, “Deputy-involved shooting? What are you talking about?”

AMY GOODMAN: Sonya Massey was the mother of two, a 15-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old son. Her killing by police has prompted protests, and both President Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris issued statements saying Massey’s family deserves justice. Vice President Harris said, quote, “Sonya Massey deserved to be safe … Doug and I send strength and prayers to Sonya’s family and friends, and we join them in grieving her senseless death,” unquote. Harris also called for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

For more, we’re joined by Ben Crump, civil rights attorney representing the family of Sonya Massey.

Can you explain exactly what took place? You’ve been out there, Ben. You’re representing the family at this point. And talk about the cover-up, as well.

BENJAMIN CRUMP: Well, obviously, it’s tragic beyond proportions, Amy. This is the worst police shooting video that I’ve seen. I mean, it is so senseless. And the video is disturbing, but the audio is equally disturbing. When you look at that video and you see him move around the counter, even though he’s trying to allege the reason he shot her was because he feared that she was going to throw hot water in his face from the pot — the very pot that he sent her to get — and then he moves around the counter, I think, from an objective observation, looks like to get a better shot. And then he has no remorse, no remorse whatsoever. When his partner says, “I’m going to go get my CPR kit,” he says, “No, it’s a headshot. Don’t worry about that. It’s not going to make a difference. She’s gone.” And then, at one point in the video, he says, “Just let her f—ing” — and he doesn’t finish his statement, but a logical person can conclude he said, “Just let her die.” And so, it’s troubling on every level. She needed a helping hand, Amy. She did not need a bullet to the face.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ben Crump, equally disturbing is the fact that the authorities had first even withheld the actual information of what happened here. Could you talk about that and how you were able to uncover what really occurred?

BENJAMIN CRUMP: Well, the family said when they initially got to her home, they kept asking, “What happened? Who did this?” And they asked questions, saying, “Well, did she have a history with the neighbor? We’re trying to find out.” You know, the family is saying they told them it’s under investigation, never told them that it was a police-involved shooting. In fact, one of the relatives said that a nurse at the hospital said they said this was self-inflicted. We saw some radio scanner back-and-forth where they talked about whether it was self-inflicted or not.

So, we don’t know what the narrative was initially, but we’ve asked for a thorough investigation of that, as well, what led up to the killing, the killing itself, and then the aftermath of the killing with the sheriff’s department, because we don’t believe Deputy Grayson should have never been hired in the first place. He was convicted of two DUIs. We understand that he was discharged from the Army. And he had six jobs in four-year span, different law enforcement agencies. We have reason to believe that he may have been terminated from some of those law enforcement agency jobs. And so, the question is: Why did he even have a job as a sheriff’s deputy? The judge said at the bond hearing, after watching the video that was released yesterday, that he believed Officer Grayson was a threat to public safety.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. This is “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

In Washington, D.C., thousands of protesters are planning to march on Capitol Hill today, busing in from around the country, to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress. There were a number of protests on Tuesday. On Capitol Hill, 400 Jewish activists, including over a dozen rabbis, were arrested during a sit-in inside the Capitol to protest Netanyahu’s visit and to demand an immediate U.S. weapons embargo on Israel. The protest was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace.

PROTESTERS: Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live!

TAL FRIENDEN: I’m a Jewish American. My grandparents survived the Holocaust. And growing up, I was always told that we should never let anything like the Holocaust happen again. That’s why I’m here today protesting the genocide of the Palestinian people and calling on our government to enact an arms embargo on Israel and send no more weapons to the Israeli military.

TALIA ERAESTER: We’re here to say that we don’t want our tax dollars funding genocide. We are willing to put our bodies on the line to say that our Jewish values and our values as people mean that we cannot be funding this.

AMY GOODMAN: Voices from the Jewish Voice for Peace sit-in inside the Capitol Tuesday. Palestinians in Gaza have also criticized U.S. lawmakers for inviting Netanyahu to address Congress. Kazem Abu Taha is a displaced Palestinian from Rafah.

KAZEM ABU TAHA: [translated] Netanyahu is embraced by the Americans. He is being provided with meals, food and drinks. He is being hosted in Congress while we are being killed and slaughtered. …. We are being slaughtered by American planes, American ships, American tanks and American troops. Everything that we are killed with is American. Biden blesses any operation and any killing and any massacre. The U.S. blesses it, Congress blesses it, Biden blesses it, and the White House blesses it. So the United States is not a partner. It is the reason for the war.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by three guests taking part in this week’s protests. Noa Grayevsky is an Israeli-born member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Linda Sarsour is a Palestinian American Muslim organizer attending today’s mass protest. And Beth Miller is the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action.

Beth, let’s begin with you. Describe what you did yesterday and what your demands are. Now dozens of congressmembers and senators, not to mention Kamala Harris herself, who is the person who would be presiding over this joint session of Congress, but because Netanyahu is addressing, will not be there.

BETH MILLER: Yes. Thank you so much for having me on, Amy.

Yesterday, Jewish Voice for Peace organized a sit-in at the Capitol to make it very clear that we, as American Jews, think it is absolutely shameful that congressional leadership has invited a war criminal, who is currently leading a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, to address a joint session of Congress. It is an affront to the ideals of human rights and of freedom and of democracy.

And in this moment, in this week, we felt it was absolutely critical Jewish Voice for Peace organize this protest to make clear that we, as Jewish Americans, are speaking out and saying that this cannot happen in our name, and, more specifically, to make clear that we need to keep the focus on what our government is doing. We are not simply watching something terrible unfold in Gaza. The Biden administration and Congress have sent weapons and billions of dollars in military funding to the Israeli government, that is using those weapons and using that funding to carry out a slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, almost 40,000 people killed, including 15,000 children, starvation. We’re on the brink of famine in Gaza.

And so, the message of this protest was to say we are calling for an arms embargo now. We, our government, the United States government, has to end its complicity in this genocide. And if we want to reach a desperately needed ceasefire, that means we need to pressure the Israeli government, pressure the Netanyahu regime, and say, “Enough. We are not sending any more weapons. We’re enacting an arms embargo now.” And that was the clear message of this protest.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Beth Miller, in previous years there’s been basically complete unanimity in Congress in support of Israeli actions. How do you assess what is happening this time, especially in terms of members of Congress either staying away or voicing their displeasure and their opposition to Netanyahu’s speech?

BETH MILLER: Yes. For so many years, there has been wall-to-wall, bipartisan, unquestioning complicity in Israel’s atrocities and human rights abuses against Palestinians. And right now I think what we’re seeing is that more and more Democrats in Congress are starting to catch up to where the Democratic voting base is. Most Democrats do not want to see our tax dollars funding human rights abuses, apartheid, and now genocide in Gaza. And so, you see — what we’re seeing now is more and more Democrats who are seeing that, actually, Americans and the Democratic voting base is done with this. We are fed up, and we are taking action, and we are demanding an end to this complicity. And for that reason, we’re seeing more and more Democrats start to take a stand.

And so, right now, today, that means people who are going to be boycotting or protesting that speech. And we applaud all of the members of Congress who are protesting and boycotting this speech. That is absolutely what needs to happen. And there are other things, as well, members of Congress who, for example, chose to vote no on the additional military supplemental bill that passed in April, members of Congress who are speaking out and calling for a ceasefire and calling for an end to this, the complicity of our government.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring in Linda Sarsour, as well. Linda, could you talk about your reaction especially to the decision of Vice President Kamala Harris to be absent in Congress from this speech by Netanyahu?

LINDA SARSOUR: Thank you, Juan.

I want to send a message to our movements. We have created the political circumstances to make standing behind Benjamin Netanyahu, a war criminal, untenable. Kamala Harris and her team knew, from the months of mass mobilizations, mass organizing and the immense support for ceasefire and for the Palestinian people coming out of the Democratic base, that there was no way that she could be in the same room with Netanyahu and engage in any ovations or any applause. So, that is a reason from our movements. We are the ones that created the space for Kamala Harris to decline to preside over the speech.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the organizing, Linda, that is going on today, as we hear about busloads of people coming in from around the country; yesterday, 400 Jewish activists, including a dozen rabbis, arrested in the Cannon Rotunda; today, thousands.

LINDA SARSOUR: This is the result of our young people, young people across this country, who have been leading mass mobilizations in every corner in every city, including here in Washington, D.C. This protest is not just about Benjamin Netanyahu specifically. And the demand is to the United States government: Arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. He is a war criminal, and the International Criminal Court is seeking to issue an arrest warrant. And there is leadership across the world that has said, “If Benjamin Netanyahu who sets foot in our country, we will arrest him.” Both Democrats and Republicans literally have invited and rolled out a blood-soaked red carpet for a war criminal. And we are here to send a message to the rest of the world that while our leadership cowers to a war criminal, we say Benjamin Netanyahu is unwelcomed here in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Noa Grayevsky into this conversation, Israeli-born member of Jewish Voice for Peace. She was there yesterday in the Cannon Rotunda as hundreds of people got arrested on the eve of Netanyahu’s address. Can you talk about also the hostage family protest outside? They, too, were calling for Netanyahu and for the U.S. to immediately sign off on this ceasefire deal and to bring the hostages home. You yourself know one of the hostages in Gaza right now.

NOA GRAYEVSKY: I do. Thank you so much for having me, Amy.

So, my cousin’s very close friend, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was 23 years old when he was taken hostage from a dance and music festival on October 7th. We don’t know if he is currently alive.

And while I can’t speak for the immediate families of the hostages, what I can say is that it is clear that while this genocidal war campaign is waged against Gazans and against Palestinians and has killed over 39,100 people, probably many more, our hostages are being held in Gaza, as well, and their lives are in danger, both in terms of how they’re being treated as hostages and because they are in a war zone where there are an extraordinary number of bombs dropping and an incredible amount of violence.

We don’t know if our family’s friend Hersh is alive. We pray that he is. But ending this genocidal war campaign, while it will most, of course, positively affect Gazans, Palestinians in the West Bank, as well, Palestinians in the Palestinian diaspora, will also protect Israelis, both Israeli hostages and Israeli citizens.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Noa, could you talk to us about your own family’s history? You’re a Palestinian Jew, multiple generations in Palestine?

NOA GRAYEVSKY: Yes, of course. Thank you. So, the phrase “Palestinian Jew” is not one that is widely known and used, to my knowledge, but it is used to describe the small percentage, probably around 1 to 2%, of Jewish people and Jewish community that lived in the region of Palestine long before the state of Israel was established. My family has been in the region of Palestine for hundreds of years before the state of Israel was established, for most of those generations in the city of Jerusalem. My Jewish family members spoke Arabic, lived in integrated communities with Palestinians who are both Muslims and Christians.

And so, something that I think about often is how in 1948, during the establishment of the state of Israel, many people that my grandmother, great-grandfather, great-grandmother were friends with, were colleagues with, worked with, people who worked for them, you know, were displaced from their homes, their neighbors, their dear friends. In fact, my grandmother has told me that my great-grandfather worked tirelessly to try to bring people who were close to their family who were Palestinian Christians and Muslims back, back into Jerusalem, after 1948, unsuccessfully.

And so, when I see ceaseless bombs dropping, famine escalating, viruses spreading among refugees in Gaza and violence against refugees in the West Bank, I feel personally both responsible and implicated, because the same Palestinian Arab Muslim and Christian families and their descendants who protected my Jewish family for generations, and who were good neighbors to my Jewish family for generations, I imagine are those who are being slaughtered. And while they were my grandmother’s and great-grandfather’s and great-grandmother’s friends and neighbors, and while they were at times protected by their friends and neighbors and allowed to gain economic security and a fair and equal standing within society, I feel that it is my responsibility as the descendant of my lineage to make sure to be vocal and take risks to protect their safety.

AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, said in a statement, quote, “Netanyahu is a war criminal committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is utterly disgraceful that leaders from both parties have invited him to address Congress. He should be arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court. Make no mistake: this event is a celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It is a sad day for our democracy when my colleagues will smile for a photo op with a man who is actively committing genocide,” Congressmember Rashida Tlaib said. Linda Sarsour, we’re going to end with you. While Kamala Harris is not there today, not presiding over this joint session of Congress, and many dozens of congressmembers and senators are boycotting, she will meet with him tomorrow, as will President Biden. Your final thoughts? What do you want her to say?

LINDA SARSOUR: I just want to make sure that we put this on the record that Joe Biden is also a war criminal. So I was not even surprised to see that there was an invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress.

And yes, Kamala Harris will be meeting privately with Benjamin Netanyahu, and we want her to say the things that need to be said. Kamala understands what is needed. And if she wants to become the next president of the United States of America, she has to demonstrate to our base, to Arab and Muslim and Palestinian American voters, to pro-ceasefire voters across the country, that she is going to disassociate from the policies of Joe Biden.

She has to demand a permanent ceasefire, no temporary ceases, no — we want a permanent ceasefire. We also want the release of hostages, including Palestinian hostages. That is a very important demand that Kamala Harris needs to present to Benjamin Netanyahu. And she also needs to support an increased aid to the Palestinian people. There is famine. There is disease that is outbreaked all across the Gaza Strip. So we need to make sure that all routes are open. And Kamala has to reaffirm her commitment to the self-determination of the Palestinian people. We will not take anything less.

And we will continue to push her on an arms embargo. We have had support from members of Congress in ways we’ve never seen before. We need to stop all military aid to Israel, and we know that we have the support of the American people in this. The people in this country are suffering economically. Instead of sending billions of our taxpayer dollars to bomb and kill Palestinian men, women and children, let’s keep that money at home and help alleviate the suffering of the American people.

So, we’re watching Kamala Harris. We want to see what she’s going to do. We want to see if she’s different than Joe Biden, because I will tell you this much: The Democratic Party knew that it was untenable to keep Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, that they were going to lose key states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Georgia and Arizona and Pennsylvania because our communities were not going to vote for a war criminal. And so, our movements right now are wait and see with Kamala Harris over the next few weeks to see how she is going to be different than Joe Biden on Gaza. The killing continues. Over 90 people in Khan Younis just in the last 24 hours were slaughtered. And we want this to end now.

AMY GOODMAN: Linda Sarsour, Palestinian American organizer; Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action; and Noa Grayevsky, Israeli-born member of JVP, we thank you all for being with us.

Next up, we speak with attorney Ben Crump about a police killing of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman shot dead by police in her own home in her face when she called 911 for help. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Cheikhna Demba” by Toumani Diabeté and Ballaké Sissoko. Mali’s “King of Kora,” Diabaté, died last week at the age of 58.

AMY GOODMAN: In Washington, D.C., thousands of protesters are planning to march on Capitol Hill today as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress as the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza tops 39,100 — and expected to be much higher.

On Tuesday, 400 Jewish activists, including over a dozen rabbis, were arrested during a sit-in inside the Capitol to protest Netanyahu’s visit and to demand an immediate U.S. weapons embargo on the Israeli government.

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are boycotting Netanyahu’s speech, including Senators Dick Durbin, who is the majority whip, Chris Van Hollen, Jeff Merkley, Patty Murray, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who spoke Tuesday.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Netanyahu is a right-wing extremist and a war criminal who has devoted his career to killing the prospects of a two-state solution and lasting peace in the region. He should not be welcomed to the United States Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: Maryland Senator Ben Cardin will preside over the Senate during Netanyahu’s speech, after vice president, presidential candidate Kamala Harris declined to go.

In the House, Democratic Congressmember Rashida Tlaib called for Netanyahu to be arrested and sent to the International Criminal Court. In a statement, she said, quote, “Netanyahu is a war criminal committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” unquote.

New York Congressmember Jerry Nadler, the most senior Jewish member of the House, said he’ll attend Netanyahu’s speech out of respect for the state of Israel, but Nadler said, quote, “Benjamin Netanyahu is the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2,100 years ago,” Nadler said.

A number of prominent Israelis have also criticized congressional leaders for inviting Netanyahu. Last month, The New York Times published an essay headlined “We Are Israelis Calling on Congress to Disinvite Netanyahu.” The essay was co-authored by six prominent Israelis, including former Israeli President Ehud Barak and former Mossad Director Tamir Pardo.

Another one of the co-authors joins us now. David Harel is the president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He’s joining us from Rehovot, Israel.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Harel. Why do you think it’s wrong for Netanyahu, your prime minister, to address this joint session of Congress?

DAVID HAREL: Good afternoon here. Good morning over there.

I think Congress has made a terrible mistake in inviting Netanyahu. First of all, he does not represent the majority of Israelis. He clings to power because of a coalition which includes some very, very extreme people. We feel deeply, and many, many Israelis feel, that the actions of this government are bringing Israel downhill to the point that we may be losing our country. It’s not just a crisis. It’s not just some things that are happening that we are not happy with. We actually feel that the existence of the country, that we so love and all six of us have served for many, many decades in various capacities, is at a grave risk of collapsing the country down, down to nothing.

At the very, very least, we feel that such an invitation to Netanyahu should be — should have been contingent on his doing essentially three things. Returning the 120 hostages home, there was a way to do that six, seven, eight months ago. There’s a way to do it right now, which he seems to be pushing off, time after time. The second thing is to stop the war in Gaza. We here in Israel are bleeding daily, with members of the military getting killed almost daily. And I don’t even want to mention the scores of civilians in Gaza that have died and keep on dying. This war has to stop immediately. It should have stopped a long time ago. And the third thing, he should have called for elections. There is a clear majority of around 60, 70% of Israeli citizens who want elections to be called. I mean, if these three things were to take place, I would understand an invitation for Netanyahu to speak at Congress.

But right now the citizenship at large has lost faith in him and his government and their actions. And we feel — in fact, let me quote you a father of one of the hostages, I think it was yesterday or today in Washington, who said — and this is a very nice term — he said what Netanyahu is going to be doing in Congress is a political theater. He has really one main goal, and that is to speak before Congress to get the ovations — that always come with the act — and to strengthen his base in Israel. And by the way, strengthening the base in Israel might, sadly and terrifyingly, have the consequence of the war being prolonged even further and the return of the hostages being delayed even further, and that includes, of course, some of the hostages who are U.S. citizens. So, in any case, it’s not only kind of a farce or a political theater, as this person said, but it’s also something that might have very bad additional consequences on the situation here rather than making things even better.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Harel, what has been the reaction within Israeli society to your letter, especially in light of the fact that just last week the Knesset overwhelmingly voted to reject a two-state solution and Palestinian statehood?

DAVID HAREL: Yes. Well, first of all, to your last point, what I failed to mention, and I’ll mention now, is that there’s really two things on the table right now that Netanyahu has to decide upon. One, of course, is the deal, that is very, very similar to the one he himself put forward some weeks ago, for returning the hostages. And the other is that would come together with some kind of normalization of the relationship with Saudi Arabia, letting a Palestinian setup rule Gaza and — this comes to the point that you just made — making the possibility of moves toward a two-state solution much more viable than they seem now. So, it’s not just a one act or one war or one hostage problem. This thing touches upon a much more global and significant issue of perhaps moving towards the so badly needed steps to peace in the Middle East.

As to the reactions here, well, of course, we got some flak from people who thought that — not only people who disagree with the contents of our essay in The New York Times, but people who say, “Even if you are right, you should not be washing your dirty laundry outside of the country.” Some people said, “These problems should have been solved within the country. You can raise your alarm and your voice here, but not outside.” And to that, I have two things to say. One is, Netanyahu himself goes abroad to voice his opinions, to put forward what he believes in, often to put forward things that are incorrect, in order to garner support. And if he and his government can take their laundry outside of the country and show what they want, then there’s no reason why ordinary citizens like ourselves should not be able to do so.

We’ve also, however, got a lot of support. I mean, I have hundreds of mails and WhatsApps and telephone calls following that New York Times guest essay that we wrote which support us, and some people even saying that the courage needed to do that is tremendous. I don’t know about courage. What I can say is that out of the six people who authored this essay, I’m the only one who holds a position and gets paid by the government, as president of our academy. And in that sense, I do want to say that it wasn’t easy for me to decide to join this effort and actually to lead the writing, in a sense. I could have said, you know, “No, I have this role, and I shouldn’t be doing this.” But I think the situation is just so terrible and a danger to the state of Israel, and therefore also to the Jewish people at large, is so devastatingly alarming that I would be willing to give up anything, including my post at the Israel Academy, in order to voice what I think is the absolute truth outside. And in terms of laundering dirty laundry outside, you know, this is not just dirty laundry. The situation is terrible. And, you know, sometimes you need a foreign-made washing machine to help clean your laundry. And I’m not saying this as a joke. And this is one of the reasons that we decided to do this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor, you mentioned that you’re president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, which has urged academic institutions around the world to resist calls to boycott research institutions and scientists in Israel. Could you explain why?

DAVID HAREL: Yes. Well, it was actually — let me say, there are three narratives that I identify when I try to listen to the music that you hear on campuses in the United States and also in some places in Europe, you know, the riots, the slogans. And if we want to bring this down to the real essence, there are three things that you can hear people chanting or saying or shouting. One is antisemitism, which, very simply put, is, you know, let the Jews disappear somehow, to put very mildly. The other is anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism, which is almost the same thing, which is that the state of Israel disappear somehow. And I’m putting this mildly, too. And the third is anti what Israel is doing or what the Israeli government is doing. And I go around, at the top of my voice, in Israel and abroad, fighting against the first two of these. Whatever Israel is doing, and however much I disagree with what is happening in Gaza and the way our government is carrying itself, including internally, the judicial reform, the attacks on academia and on cultural institutions, that is no reason at all to call for antisemitism or even to call for the Israeli state to disappear. So I will fight with all my might against those two things, antisemitism and anti-Israelism. But I will also do whatever I think I should do personally as an Israeli citizen to bring about a better government around here with better things.

As to boycotts on science, science is universal. It’s borderless. I do not collaborate with a colleague in Britain or United States or France or Germany because I am a mediocre scientist and the person over there is a better scientist. We collaborate because collaboration, international collaboration, is the essence of science, especially in the natural and exact sciences. And boycotting Israeli science is really damaging science in general.

You know, just to give an example which I like to give, recently, Ada Yonath, a Nobel Prize chemist at our institute, Weizmann Institute, who deciphered the structure of the ribosome, she did not do her work alone in her attic. She collaborated with several collaborators in Europe. She did her work using international grants from international bodies that grant research money. And what’s even more important, the results of her research are not just going to bring about improvements locally. I mean, her work is poised to help medicine in general. It’s going to help not only me, but also you and people everywhere around the world.

Boycotting science has the opposite effect, because scientists and humanity experts and intellectuals, they very, very often lead the battle against fascism, against fake news, for reasonable and logical thinking, for critical thinking. And if you weaken science, you not only weaken — if you weaken science in Israel, you not only weaken science in general, but you weaken the kind of logic and critical thinking that is needed in order to counter the bad trends that one sees not only in Israel these days, but throughout the world. So, the other thing I go around asking for is to stop these boycotts. There’s no need for them. There’s no point in them. They’ll only do harm globally.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Harel, do you agree that the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, is correct in not presiding over today’s joint session of Congress that Netanyahu will be addressing?

DAVID HAREL: Definitely. She’s definitely right. In fact, I don’t want to take any credit whatsoever, but our essay appeared a month ago, and since then, there have been a lot of follow-ups by Israelis calling for members of Congress not to appear, you know, to kind of boycott, if I may use the same word that we just used a few minutes ago, to boycott his speech in Congress.

I’m very happy that Kamala Harris will not be sitting behind him and having to clap every time he says something for which he will get some kind of ovation. I’m very happy that something, I presume, between 50 and 100 members will not show up. And I am happy that there will be protests outside the Capitol to protest his invitation and to protest his speech. And if we have made a minor, modest contribution to that by voicing our opinion a month ago, then I’m very happy about that.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor David Harel, we want to thank you for being with us, president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, professor of computer science and applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, speaking to us from Rehovot, Israel. We’ll link the New York Times article you recently co-authored, “We Are Israelis Calling on Congress to Disinvite Netanyahu.” Co-authors of the essay include the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the former Mossad Director Tamir Pardo.

Coming up, on Tuesday, 400 Jewish activists, including a dozen rabbis, were arrested at a sit-in at the Capitol to protest Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Back in 20 seconds.