All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
Now to our next guest, it's Jesse Rosenfeld.
He's a Canadian journalist based in Ramallah and Tel Aviv since 2007.
He's published in The Nation, Le Monde, Diplomatique, Al Jazeera English, The Irish Times, The National, The Guardian, ForeignPolicy.com, The Daily Star, Hotter Rats English, and The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Holy moly, the new one is in alternate.
It's called Israeli Security Shifts Focus from Armed Palestinian Resistance to Suppressing Nonviolent Activists.
Welcome to the show.
Hey, how's it going?
It's going good.
I'm very happy to have you here.
Very interesting article here.
I've kind of thought for a long time that the Palestinians, even, I guess, especially during the second Intifada, I thought, you know, if you guys, instead of doing suicide bombings, would all just go out there and hold hands and sing Kumbaya and whatever, Americans will eat that up.
You know, that's how to get people on your side.
I mean, hell, the American people think that the Palestinians are occupying Israel.
You know, you can't come off as a suicide bomber.
They'll think that, you know, you're the devil come from outer space to kill us all.
Well, I mean, the Palestinian population has been occupied and displaced for over 60 years, and they have a history of both exercising their right to armed resistance, as well as the fact that now they're exploring a mass approach to popular resistance that's been built also out of a tradition of Intifadas that have been also ignored by Israel and by the international community.
Really, the Palestinians are in a situation where if they resist with violence, they're condemned.
If they resist with popular action, they're still repressed and often have a history of being ignored as well.
Yeah.
Well, have there been, you know, real MLK-scale, giant, nonviolent protest movements in Palestine in the past?
I mean, I've heard reports here and there, but then again, I guess that could be that they just suppress them and ignore them.
Well, I mean, you know, you have a long history.
For example, in the first Intifada in 1987, it was a mass popular unarmed uprising.
At the beginning of the second Intifada, it actually also began as a massive series of protests that happened at checkpoints until it was brutally repressed by Israeli military, and it was at that point that it took up an armed component.
But now what you see is a new emerging Palestinian struggle, both on the international scale.
You've had grassroots Palestinian civil society call for a global boycott and divestment and sanctions movement to pressure Israel to grant Palestinians equal rights to end its occupation of Palestinian territory, as well.
At the same time, you have a building popular resistance demonstration movement on the ground.
Now, it's happened sort of twofold.
On the one hand, you've had demonstrations in the border villages of the West Bank, usually around the Green Line, where Israel's wall has been annexing Palestinian farmland.
And those struggles have been spreading somewhat slowly over the past few years.
And now, just recently, you've had an explosion of popular protests in the cities.
They're starting to call for both national unity and redefining national identity and further pushing an anti-occupation struggle from the grassroots at this point, rather than a leadership that many Palestinians feel is out of touch.
Yeah, well, I saw one headline last night, I forget, it was Netanyahu himself, I think, said that, oh, if they want a unity government, well, that's just proof how they're not serious about peace, because we cannot deal with anything that has anything to do with Hamas.
Well, it's a pretty interesting point, it's very telling of the position of Israel.
What they're basically saying is the only time we're willing to talk to Palestinians is when there's an internal division that we can play for our own political ends.
What's interesting also about this calls for unity in the unity demonstrations is it's not so much about factional unity as it is about a push from the grassroots of Palestinian society saying we have to get together as a society and figure out how it is we're going to create a liberated future for ourselves.
And that's what's really at the heart of scaring Israel in the same way that their crackdown and targeting of the boycott movement on the ground and targeting activists who are talking to the international community about the idea of a broad grassroots struggle around the world to pressure Israel is also really scaring them in terms of their foreign policy, because it effectively creates unity, which Israel doesn't want to deal with.
Well, I guess, you know, you talked about the kind of the way the intifada started as these giant protests.
I guess the thing that makes these things successful, unfortunately, is, you know, like in the case of the Indians and the British, being willing to take that club on the head and not fight back.
And then the next guy stands up club me to kind of thing and just keep going, refute, you know, the sit downs, that kind of thing.
But it's got to last just for years and years.
It's got to be absolutely unavoidable for an extended period of time, which means a lot of people have to get hurt and, and, you know, restrain themselves from, as you said, exercising their right to defend themselves.
Well, you know, most Palestinians I talk to say, you know, we're used to the violence, we're used to the repression, what we're calling on now is the international community, if they're serious about seeing justice and peace in the Middle East to get behind those making popular expression of resistance, those that are demanding a Middle East based on equal democratic rights, get behind them and support them.
And possibly it's through their pressure on Israel, that they can help create the conditions on the ground that will lead to that actual change.
Yeah, well, I mean, what it comes down to is public opinion in the United States, that's where they get their money and their weapons.
Well, that's, and that's a major part of it.
This is why the, you know, for example, there's now the, there's also an Israeli component of the international boycott movement called Boycott From Within.
And they've just kicked off a campaign that's called Refuse.
And basically, the idea is pointing the finger at the United States and the European Union for funding of Israel unconditionally while it engages in these kinds of policies.
And it's Israelis that are saying, put an end to aid to Israel, put an end to the basically blank check on occupation.
Well, and you know what, as long as we've got some Americans listening, why don't you tell them a little bit about what the Gaza Strip is like?
I'd like to know.
I actually haven't been able to visit Gaza since I got here in 2007, because of the siege.
Yeah, because of the way the siege is carried on.
It's incredibly difficult.
And, you know, there are some journalists that get access and there are others that haven't.
And basically, reporting from the West Bank and looking at that dimension of occupation, as well as covering the situation in Israeli centers like Tel Aviv and also the experience of Palestinians.
So in four years, you haven't been able to go to Gaza?
I haven't been able to go to Gaza, yeah.
It's an incredibly difficult situation these days.
I mean, I've also chosen, as a result of those difficulties, to focus a lot of my coverage on the situation of expanding occupation in the West Bank and the treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, tell us about the West Bank, then.
Well, the West Bank these days, I mean, it's a very interesting time to actually be there now that you have these revolutions going on across the Arab world, because they've completely influenced Palestinian society as well.
And they've seen a new opportunity to really start to launch a push for popular struggle and, you know, the idea of a new democratic Middle East.
So while that's been going on, you've also had a drastic increase in Israeli repression on those popular movements, especially in the border villages.
For example, you know, not only was Abdullah Barak, who I wrote about in my piece, in jail for 16 months as a result of his leadership in organizing popular protests in the West Bank village of Berlin, but they've been going village by village, arresting leadership, arresting the youth in the town, and trying to break popular struggles that way.
Most recently, in the village of Nabi Saleh, who I talk about in my recent piece in Le Monde Diplomatique that I wrote with Joseph Dana, about how the leadership has now basically had to go into hiding.
They've been targeted and arrested after arresting most of the youth of that village.
And they're basically opposing the system of occupation that allows settlers to, you know, roam across their land freely and push them off of it, especially if spring is on the edge of the village.
A lot of these other villages are fighting against the expansion of the wall.
All right, well, hold it right there.
We're going to pick that up with water and the barrier wall in the West Bank with Jesse Rosenfeld.
The new piece at Alternet is called Israeli Security Shifts Focus and Armed Palestinian Resistance to Suppressing Nonviolent Activists.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Jesse Rosenfeld.
He's got a piece at Alternet, Israeli Security Shifts Focus from Armed Palestinian Resistance to Suppressing Nonviolent Activists.
And I actually want to get back to that angle of the story here in a minute.
But when we had to go out to that commercial break, Jesse, you were talking about disputes over water and over the separation wall there in the West Bank and describing the Israeli occupation of that land.
Well, yeah, water is definitely one of the central issues.
Also, it's about the control of land and resources effectively, where in the West Bank, you've got a situation where over the vast majority of Israeli settlers and soldiers are able to control whatever territory they so feel fit.
And Palestinians are in a situation where they're constantly marginalized on their land, having it confiscated and being pushed off of it as per the whim of what settlers want or what the army wants.
And so that's very much the backbone of what's created the center for struggle in the West Bank and also the basic justification for Israeli repression.
The Israelis have felt that any Palestinian contestation of their loss of land of their loss of rights is effectively a situation where they're justified and just coming in and repressing it doesn't matter what form that resistance takes.
Is there anything in history like this?
It's so funny to me, like, or not funny, funny, but the other kind of funny, this kind of this policy where we're taking the West Bank, and eventually all the Arabs that live in the West Bank, Christian or Muslim will live in Jordan or they'll be dead, they'll go somewhere, but it belongs to Israel.
We're keeping it and it's going to take what for the next, you know, 40, 50, 60 years, we're going to steal it plot by plot in slow motion and build these ridiculous walls and all these things.
I would expect for there to just be a war and then to just finish taking it.
Well, I mean, this is, I mean, sadly, this isn't unique in Western or human history.
I mean, in fact, it's not even unique in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The whole basis of the Zionist movement was a slow expansion of land and territorial taking for Jewish citizen-exclusive use.
And this goes back to the movement's first settlements that excluded Palestinians to its creation, its displacement of, you know, nearly a million Palestinians.
And then after 67, its seizure of the occupied territories was simply an expansion and continuation of that same process.
There have been numerous wars fought over this.
Yeah, but I mean, you know, the space between 45 and 48 is only three years.
And yet the space between 67 and now is we're going on decades of this slow motion occupation.
But then again, settlement began at the turn of the 19th century.
But in terms of looking at other places...
Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying.
I guess I was thinking, you know, after World War II is when it really heated up, but I see what you mean.
Right.
And it has to do with the way that settlers related to the land and to the indigenous population.
There are histories of this in North America and Canada and the United States and Australia of, you know, similar desires to create similar kinds of exclusive societies that have pushed the indigenous population off their land.
It's also not unlike the French colonization of Algeria, either.
I mean, sadly, this is kind of the basis and traditional practice of settler colonialism from Europe and from the left.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it can be compared to the conquest of the Indians in North America as well.
But seemed like there were more just pitched battles.
Not like I'm encouraging it.
It just seems like, you know, from Netanyahu's point of view, if I can just pretend, you know, the way he would prefer it is that West Bank and the Gaza Strip would just belong to Israel and it'd be populated by Jews only.
And all those people go somewhere else at gunpoint at some point.
Well, I mean, that's part of the idea.
It's his idea of solidifying and expanding a Jewish only Israel.
One citizen's rights above the rest of the population.
He's a little more nuanced than that in the sense that his strategy towards Gaza right now, like the previous government, is seal off Gaza, cut it off from the rest of the world and besiege it while taking as much land as you can right now in the West Bank.
And it's very much that kind of divide and rule that he is very, very acutely paying strong attention to and trying to enhance, why he's especially so nervous now about unity demonstrations.
Mm hmm.
Well, yeah.
And let's get back to that.
There was an article which I kind of expected to see this footnote in it, but I guess this is getting in your piece, but it's getting more and more attention in different places, I guess.
And that was how the Shin Bet is really worried about nonviolent resistance is sort of the chink in their armor.
If only you'll pick up a rock and throw it at our tank, then we can call it self-defense or something somehow.
But massive, peaceful protests are something that are really hard for security services to get around, I guess.
Oh, completely.
I mean, the it's not only the Shin Bet that's identified, but Netanyahu has said, you know, this campaign that he labels to delegitimize Israel or, in other words, to call it on its human rights violation is the biggest existential threat that the state is facing, because what it's forcing is an honest discussion about what the reality on the ground here looks like.
And they've gone after the boycott movement.
They've gone after grassroots peaceful protest on the ground just as forcefully.
And it's now as much of a central target as the way that they were looking at the situation in dispelling and breaking and fracturing Palestinian armed resistance.
And they're taking it incredibly seriously.
All right.
So I'd like to give you a chance, if we could, here in the last minute or so.
Could you tell us real quick about this guy, Marwan Barghouti, who you wrote about in your piece here?
Are you referring?
I mentioned Marwan Barghouti, but are you referring to Abdullah Barakhmet, the guy who was just released from prison?
Oh, yeah, I guess so.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I was looking at the wrong paragraph here.
Oh, no, don't worry about it.
So basically, Abdullah Barakhmet is one of the main leaders of the Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee, it's the organization or coordination group of villages across the West Bank that have been leading popular protests against the wall and against Israeli land annexation.
They've been the latest center point and focus of international pressure and building international links to pressure Israel to cease its occupation and gotten an incredible amount of attention because they've used popular grassroots struggle rather than an armed struggle.
As a result, you know, Abdullah Barakhmet is very much the symbol of what Israel has tried to do to that movement.
They first arrested a whole lot of youth in the town of Bilin, you know, beat them, scared them, coerced confessions, which were then used in Israeli military court to indict Abdullah Barakhmet and put him away for a year and a half and take him out of a organizing capacity for Palestinian grassroots resistance.
The system is now replicating itself in villages across the West Bank and symbolic of the Israeli strategy to try and silence this growing Palestinian movement.
All right.
Well, I strongly encourage everybody to read this article.
It's called Israeli Security Shifts Focus from Armed Palestinian Resistance to Suppressing Nonviolent Activists.
It's a really good piece.
And it's at Alternet dot org by Jesse Rosenfeld.
Thanks very much for your time on the show today.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks so much for having me.
