01/14/16 – Sarah Helm – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And I am belatedly, quickly hurrying to find a bio for my first guest on the show today.
And, well, it looks like I failed.
Well, I'll tell you this about her.
She wrote this great article, very important article.
I really hope you'll look at it.
It's in the New York Review of Books.
It's in Gaza.
And the author is Sarah Helm.
Welcome to the show.
How are you?
I'm very well.
Thank you.
Oh, hi.
Thank you very much for joining us.
I'm sorry.
I'm completely negligent.
I was sitting here rereading the first part of the article, and I forgot to get your bio up and going here.
But, oh, it says here that you wrote a book called, If This is a Woman, another called A Life in Secrets, and another called Loyalty.
Is that right?
That is right.
Although the third one was actually a play, but the first two were books, yeah.
Oh, there you go.
All right.
Well, so I mostly failed to introduce you properly, but at least I got that right.
No problem.
Anything else important we need to know?
Well, I guess I spent most of my working life as a journalist, working for British newspapers and some American newspapers from time to time, and quite a lot of the time abroad.
So then I turned to writing books, but I still work as a journalist as well.
I see.
And you write about quite a bit of your experience in the Gaza Strip in this article here.
That's right.
So that much is certainly established.
It's such an important tale that you tell here in this article.
I guess if it's okay with you, we'll just start the interview in the same place as the article with Sheikh Omar Homs.
Yes.
Can you please explain to us who he is and what is his importance?
Well, Sheikh Omar Homs is a Salafi sheikh in Gaza.
He's a very important one.
That means that he is a, you could call him an extremist Sunni religious figure.
He is, the Salafis are people who believe in returning to the very original message of Muhammad in absolute literal detail.
They follow his every word and his every deed.
So they are, in a way, we would call them today extremists, fundamentalists, fanatics.
But Omar Homs is really a peaceful man.
Some of these extreme Salafis believe in jihad, in violence and ISIS have grown out of the Salafi group or some of them have.
But they're also peaceful versions of this faith and he's one of them.
He runs an organization in Gaza called the Ibn Baz Institute which has a charitable arm.
It also teaches people and tries to persuade people to take up this fundamentalist version of Islam.
And he's a very influential voice, particularly in Rafah, which is a very, very poor and very badly damaged area right on the southern end of the Strip.
And he has increasingly had a following as have many other sheikhs of his ilk in Gaza in recent years as people have turned more and more to this extreme branch of the Muslim faith.
Alright now, well and of course as always happens, so there's a lot to discuss as far as this guy and the people like him and the groups like him and their relationship with Homs, but maybe now would be a good time to remind people a kind of thumbnail sketch of the situation in the Gaza Strip and why anybody there would be listening to anybody like this.
Well, Gaza is part of the Israeli occupied territories.
It is illegally occupied by Israel as set out in all international law and including the UN and the American position.
Gaza is the most extraordinary unique sort of land prison if you like.
It's often called an air prison.
It's got about 1.8 million people live there.
A very large percentage of those people are already refugees and have their families originally came there during the war of 1948.
The status of Gaza as the West Bank, the other occupied Palestinian territory has never been decided hence this ongoing conflict.
But Gaza has been particularly troubled of late because as the peace has remained increasingly elusive, people have become more and more desperate and they have turned to more and more sort of extreme forms of leadership and radical forms of leadership.
They chose Hamas as their leaders back in 2007.
Hamas are listed by the US and many other states as a terrorist organization themselves.
They are also an Islamic organization.
They follow extreme forms of Islam but they are nothing like as extreme as the Salafi religion which is now stepping in to make Hamas seem like moderates.
Now one of the reasons that this further extreme point of view has begun to take hold is that in order to punish the Gazans for choosing Hamas as their leaders back in 2007, the United States and many other countries including the Europeans have effectively helped Israel enforce a blockade on Gaza.
So it is literally ringed.
It's like 1.8 million people being locked up inside fences and walls.
Within that area they have a certain freedom of movement but of course they are watched all the time by drones overhead and they can't move in and out.
They have no passports and their entire economic activity is totally controlled by Israel and also by Egypt now at the southern end because Egypt now has a military government which also wants to enforce this blockade.
This is a situation which is like a sort of obvious ticking time bomb.
One can't choose cliches which have more meaning than that.
You have 1.8 million people who already have enormous grievances and sense of injustice are locked inside this hellhole.
They have been forced back into sort of living in virtual medieval times.
You cross over the gates at Eretz checkpoint from Israel into Gaza and you go from a super modern town like Ashkelon where there are brand new apartment blocks and factories and state of the art sort of Silicon Valley type areas and enormous car parts of shining spanking new cars waiting to be sold and you cross over the border into Gaza and there are Gazans driving around with horses and carts living in bombed out houses following last summer's war.
Not a single house has been reconstructed since that war in which more than 2,000 Gazans died, 500 of them children.
And so you begin to build up a picture of desperation.
Now one of the things that surprised me on my last visit to Gaza was that actually more people hadn't turned to these extremist solutions.
Gazans are the most wonderful and sort of patient and dignified people who really 99.9% of them want little more than a state and some safety in which to bring up their families and they resist this sort of extremism.
But obviously amongst the young in particular more are turning to this radical solution.
Well and as you say in the article what they share with those who are turning to radicalism is the very same hopelessness of their situation that they really just have no way out.
I was reminded in your article when you mentioned the drones and just now when you mentioned the drones of an article that ran I don't know four or five years ago in the Washington Post where the whole first half of course is poor little Israel has no choice but then the second half of the article is about what it's like to be a little kid growing up in Gaza and have these robot assassins in the air with their buzz in your ear all day every day and how terrifying it is to go down the street even.
It is terrifying but it's psychologically also very damaging.
This time I met a bunch of kids in their early 20s late teens early 20s a whole new generation has grown up they call themselves the drone generation.
You know they basically have only grown up under the period of siege.
They've never left Gaza.
The absolutely astonishing thing is these young women and these young men they've never left Gaza.
They've never even been to the West Bank.
They've never been to Jerusalem.
These places are a mystery to them as much as London or New York is a mystery to them.
I'm sorry to interrupt we got to hold it right here Sarah to take this break but hold it right there and everybody we'll be right back with Sarah Helms with this very important piece in the New York Review of Books ISIS in Gaza.
More in a minute.
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Head over to MPVEngineering.com Alright you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, Scott Horton Show, ScottHorton.org, Liberty Radio Network, etc, etc.
I'm talking with Sarah Helm.
You gotta read this piece.
It'll be maybe the spotlight.
Certainly we'll be running at the viewpoints tomorrow on AntiWar.com It's at the New York Review of Books ISIS in Gaza.
And I'm sorry we were interrupted by the break, Sarah.
We were talking about the self-identified drone generation in Gaza and the hopelessness that would open a youth's ears to the propaganda of the likes of ISIS, huh?
Yeah, absolutely.
But I just want to say before talking more about those that are drawn to ISIS, there are many, many, many, many who are drawn in a totally different direction of course.
And I mean, what's really striking is that to me for the first time really since the last war of summer 2014, these young people are trying to respond in new ways.
There are many, many just trying to get out.
They're desperate to get visas.
They're looking for jobs or internships, you know, abroad.
They're looking for people to sponsor them.
But they can't.
They cannot leave.
Very, very few of them can leave.
So that's one thing.
There's a sort of attempt at an exodus.
But for the majority who can't leave, they are sort of turning in on themselves.
They are resigned.
They don't want anything to do with all the old style kind of, you know, PLO, DFLP, PFLP factions.
They're bored with what their fathers and their fathers' fathers did and how they fought.
They're bored with the so-called third interfather.
They think that's a waste of time.
And, you know, some of them, masses of them are trying to be journalists.
They're looking at other ways of resisting by sort of getting the story out to the rest of the world that at least makes them feel that they're contributing somehow to their own future.
And, you know, I even came across quite a few who were sort of turning to atheism, which was the other end of the story, of course.
They're fed up with religion of all sorts, you know, and they want to be individuals and they want to get away from this sort of diktat.
So there's a whole, the only hope in a way, I mean, it's a desperate sort of hope, but nevertheless, they're very admirable, some of these kids, and they're making do with what they've got with very, very little resources.
And some of them are kind of going inside their own homes, closing the door and disavowing all forms of religion, which is a new thing for me.
I hadn't come across that before.
But, of course, on the other side of it, there are those who are drawn to the religious side, and that's where the danger lies.
Alright, now, so the thing about it is, and you write this up in the article, again, everybody, very important one, I really hope you'll look at it, that these groups at least, self-proclaimed ISIS affiliates have been committing attacks inside the Gaza Strip, is that right?
Yes, it is right.
Now, about it, there have always been groups way back, perhaps 20 years, these peaceful Salafist extremists were present in Gaza in very small numbers.
And then after, really, after 9-11 and Osama bin Laden sort of rose to prominence, he became a hero amongst some of these groups, and some of them began to turn to violence then, and small acts of violence were already being committed inside the Gaza Strip by small groups who followed Osama bin Laden and declared themselves, you know, declared their allegiance to Al-Qaeda.
Hamas, of course, then finds themselves in an incredibly difficult position, because they're running the Gaza Strip, and they are also Islamists, but they have to crack down on these people who are way, way further extreme than they are.
And they have largely successfully controlled these ultra-extremists, but since the war of 2014 and the rise of ISIS in 2014 in Iraq and in Syria, and then later just on Gaza's doorstep in Sinai, these groups have turned to ISIS because ISIS have declared that they've already got a caliphate, they've got this kind of state in heaven, this caliphate, this religious caliphate, and the Palestinians haven't even got a state, and they think that ISIS seem to be better at achieving their ends than any of their political leaders ever have.
So they've turned to that, and this is an extraordinary development for the Palestinians who have always disavowed this kind of extremism, because they do want a secular state, they want a country, and this was their main goal, their main purpose always, and it still is so for by far the majority of Palestinians, but amongst a small, and in my view growing minority, the situation has become so hopeless and so lacking in any sort of other alternative that they are turning to ISIS, and it gives them a certain glamour, a certain purpose, they can kind of link up with people on the internet, in Syria, in Iraq, and so they've been setting off small explosions, they've blown up Hamas cars and Hamas facilities because they think Hamas are too moderate and that they shouldn't be negotiating with Israel, and they've fired off rockets into Israel which is the real danger, because Hamas at the moment are trying to hold the ceasefire for fear of sparking another massive Israeli retaliation, but these ISIS groups, ISIS supporting groups, are breaking the ceasefire, they don't believe in the ceasefire, so the possibility of a major new conflagration is clear.
Well, we've seen in the past that the Israelis are perfectly willing to hold Hamas and all of Gaza responsible for groups outside of Hamas' control, getting a couple of rockets off before Hamas can catch them and kill them.
But, oh well, good enough as an excuse.
And then, so speaking of which, Benjamin Netanyahu says, well, Hamas is ISIS, there's no damn difference anyway.
Is that right?
Well, this is what he says, and this is what many on the right and further right of Netanyahu say, and this is the terrifying thing, because, I mean, if he wants to say that, we might as well say the extreme Jewish settlers, you know, are the same as the Likud.
I mean, the extreme Jewish settlers who, as a recent court case has revealed, are willing to burn alive a Palestinian, including a Palestinian baby, would not be associated with the mainstream Likud, but that's the kind of stupid and pointless and very destructive thinking.
Of course, Hamas now are distancing themselves as far as they can from ISIS.
They have offered to talk, they have offered to open new talks.
Now, of course, Hamas itself is riven with division, because there are groups within Hamas who, for whatever reason, either because they're disgruntled, because they haven't been promoted, or because they genuinely have the view that Hamas has become too moderate, are breaking away and supporting some of these ISIS groups.
So it's not all about religion.
A lot of it's about politics and political maneuvering.
So to that extent, Bibi has a point in that there are people within Hamas and within al-Qassam, the military brigades, who move away and support the ISIS groups, who they think are likely to have more effect.
But that is a very far cry from saying they're all the same thing.
They're not the mainstream, have no time for ISIS at all, and will openly disavow them and openly abhor their methods.
But I should just add, that's not to say that Hamas, of course, are the nice guys.
I mean, they're capable of vile acts.
They're capable of extreme cruelty.
They're capable of extreme cruelty against their own Palestinians, who they find are collaborating or not toeing the line in Gaza.
But they stand a very, very long way apart from the ISIS model.
And you write in the article about how back, I think it was in 2007, was the big battle where they killed 20-something of these guys and really shut them down.
And then, I think the article actually begins with you saying, in recent months, Hamas has been doing as much as they can to arrest these guys and or kill them.
Is that right?
Yeah.
I mean, they're absolutely terrified that ISIS might take hold.
I mean, if you think about how surprised the world was by the way ISIS suddenly kind of grew up and emerged as this monster in Iraq and then in Syria before the world had really had time to take note of the fact.
And then we find, of course, that it's there in the suburbs of every European capital, and not only European capital, but, you know, as events show all over the world.
So, but, of course, what the Gaza situation in many ways is unique because it is enclosed.
Therefore, if ISIS were to begin to achieve a significant amount of support and power and arms, and you don't need that many, as we all know, to have a...
Oh, no.
Skype problems.
Oh, no.
It's my computer is crashing.
Oh, man.
If that ain't the saddest thing.
What a horrible end to that interview.
I should have taken Discount Electronics up on that $150 special yesterday.
Damn.
Very sorry to Sarah and everybody that the interview ended that way, but anyway, that was Sarah Helm, ISIS in Gaza in the New York Review of Books.
Really good one.
Go and read it, please.
Thanks.
Hey, y'all.
Scott Horton here for Liberty.me, the Great Libertarian Social Network.
They've got all the news you need to know about the Great Libertarian Social Network.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'll see you next time.
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Transcription by CastingWords