U$A
How a pro-Palestinian campus group became a national lightning rod

The national wing of Students for Justice in Palestine has drawn fierce criticism for appearing to endorse the Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel. But some students and their legal advocates argue that a wave of crackdowns on SJP chapters is misguided.

Students protest in support of Palestinians and free speech outside Columbia University in New York on Nov. 15.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Nov. 24, 2023,
By Daniel Arkin
NBC

Sophie Levitt, a Jewish student at Arizona State University in Tempe, joined the campus chapter of Students for Justice for Palestine when she was a freshman, eager to broaden her worldview after what she describes as a sheltered upbringing in suburban Illinois.

“I learned more about Palestine and how the movement for Palestinian freedom goes along with my own values,” said Levitt, 21, who is now a junior majoring in justice studies and one of the chapter’s key organizers.

In recent weeks, Levitt watched as people across the country — advocacy groups and politicians and fellow student activists — excoriated Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a network of campus groups that are affiliated with a national wing but operate autonomously. In a court filing, the American Civil Liberties Union described the national wing as a “coalition and networking group for SJPs and other like-minded groups on college campuses across the nation.”

The criticism has been vehement. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis accused SJP activists of being in league with Hamas, and a state official ordered the “deactivation” of chapters at two state schools. Two leading Jewish advocacy organizations lambasted SJP’s national steering committee for appearing to commend the Oct. 7 terror attacks. At least three colleges have restricted their local chapters’ activities.

University of Central Florida students rally in support of Palestine

Students at the University of Central Florida hold a rally and march in support of Palestinians in Orlando on Oct. 13.Paul Hennesy / Anadolu via Getty Images

The backlash to those moves has also been intense. Free speech advocates and civil liberties organizations argue that the crackdowns on SJP chapters in Florida amount to unconstitutional infringements on the First Amendment. Meanwhile, some rank-and-file SJP members say their activism has been wrongly punished and incorrectly conflated with the national committee’s rhetoric.

“We don’t meet with them, we don’t really communicate with them, we don’t get funds from them,” said Malak Abuhashim, 21, a senior at Cornell University who has family in Gaza and is active in the campus SJP. “It’s not really that close of a relationship.”

“It’s really concerning to see things like this happening,” Abuhashim added, referring to the recent restrictions. “We are simply asking for the liberation of all people in the land of Palestine.”

The national committee did not respond to an email from NBC News with a list of questions. The committee’s members are anonymous, and the coalition’s website directs members of the news media to a generic form for questions.

Heated rhetoric

In the days after the Oct. 7 terror attack, the national wing of SJP came under fierce scrutiny for a five-page “toolkit” document distributed to campus chapters. The document referred to the deadly assault as a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance.” The “toolkit” also suggested talking points for SJP chapters, such as: “We as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”

The Anti-Defamation League, one of the most prominent Jewish advocacy groups in the U.S., lambasted SJP for having “explicitly endorsed the actions of Hamas.” The ADL and another Jewish rights group, the Brandeis Center, later called on nearly 200 college presidents to investigate their chapters.

DeSantis ordered Florida education officials to “deactivate” SJP chapters at the University of Florida and the University of South Florida, arguing that the “toolkit” constituted material support for a foreign terrorist organization — a felony. Brandeis University, which is not affiliated with the Brandeis Center, banned its chapter because, in its view, the national SJP “openly supports Hamas, a terrorist organization.”

Columbia University and George Washington University, meanwhile, suspended their chapters for the rest of the fall term because they purportedly broke campus policies around holding public events and demonstrations. (GWU’s branch of SJP came under the spotlight after students projected slogans critical of the Israeli government on the wall of a library, such as “Divestment From Zionist Genocide Now.”)

The debate around SJP has grown heated partly because of concerns about antisemitism and Islamophobia on campuses. In interviews, Jewish and Muslim students have described a growing sense of fear and anxiety. The ADL and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have both documented spikes in hate incidents targeting Jews and Muslims across the U.S.

Students For Justice In Palestine Holds Day Of Resistance Across The Nation

 A student from Hunter College in New York leads a chant during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the entrance to campus on Oct. 12. Michaal Nigro / Sipa USA via AP file

The efforts to curb SJP’s activities appear to have added to the firestorm. Columbia students protested over university administrators’ decision, which also put prohibitions on another group, Jewish Voice for Peace. The American Civil Liberties Union and the civil rights organization Palestine Legal filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of students at the University of Florida, alleging that the state’s “deactivation” order violated the U.S. Constitution.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU argues that Florida officials have not provided evidence or a basis for the “material support” for terrorism allegation. The civil liberties group states that the Supreme Court, in the 2010 decision Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, found that “independent political advocacy” does not equal support of a terror group.

“Independent political advocacy is not a fungible ‘service’ akin to financial contributions,” the ACLU wrote in the suit. “It does not impart a skill that terrorist organizations may use to their benefit, and it does not directly displace costs so as to effectively subsidize a terrorist organization’s illegal efforts.”

Jonathan Friedman, a director at PEN America, a group that advocates for free expression, blasted the DeSantis order as “part of a pattern from the Florida government,” which he said is “ready to cast aside free speech to silence students and censor campuses.”

Friedman said he believes the “SJP toolkit in question included abhorrent sentiments, but when university administrators or government officials believe students have made offensive statements or even supported hateful ideologies, it does not give them free license to abridge First Amendment rights.”

Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for DeSantis, did not immediately reply to two emails seeking comment on the lawsuit.

Guilt by association?

The ACLU argues that SJP members at the University of Florida are effectively being penalized because of the national steering committee’s rhetoric about Oct. 7 — a sentiment echoed by students in other states.

“We are not directly related to the national organization. We have our own missions and our own demands,” said Levitt, the ASU student. “We share the same name, but we don’t necessarily endorse everything the national SJP puts out.”

“I think grouping every individual chapter with what the national organization has said does a disservice,” Levitt added.

The first chapter of SJP was founded at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1990s, and associated groups have since spread across the country. SJP chapters are not uniform in their tactics, and some are more confrontational than others. The typical chapter holds protests, rallies and other campus events that are meant to raise awareness about the plight of the Palestinian people.

Pro-Palestinian Rally Held On Columbia University Campus

Students protest in support of Palestinians at Columbia University on Nov. 14.Spencer Platt / Getty Images

However, a member of SJP at the University Florida who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were concerned about digital harassment said that many ground-level chapter members nonetheless agree with the national wing’s rhetoric and political goals. “I don’t think it’s accurate to say everyone involved in the SJP is denouncing” the national coalition’s language, the student said.

Indeed, the ADL has highlighted various “radical comments” from SJP chapters that echo the rhetoric used in the national “toolkit,” such as a statement from students at Hunter College that calls on institutions to “stand up against the occupation and actively support the Al-Aqsa Flood initiative,” the Arabic name for the Oct. 7 attack.

Gali Polichuk, 22, a senior studying sustainability at the University of Florida, said she is feeling increasingly “on edge” about rising antisemitism on campuses nationwide. She believes the local SJP has a right to protest the war, but she is “frustrated” that the group’s rhetoric has fostered what she characterized as a “hateful environment.”

She was particularly disturbed when she heard a group of pro-Palestinian activists chanting “resistance is justified,” which she interpreted as a reference to Oct. 7. “At the end of the day, it’s free speech,” Polichuk said.

Brandeis University’s decision to ban SJP is not unprecedented. Fordham University barred students from starting an SJP chapter in part because administrators believed the club would create “polarization” on campus and “run contrary to the mission and values” of the school, according to Palestine Legal.

The SJP restrictions at Columbia and George Washington University are more limited in scope: Columbia’s chapter is suspended for the rest of the fall term; GWU’s chapter is suspended for three months.

Of course, not every SJP chapter clashes with educational administrators. The relationship between SJP members and university leaders at the University of Oregon, for example, “has been fairly smooth, with no reported issues,” said Maxwell Gullickson, a student at the Eugene campus who is involved in the group, which held a rally on the campus this month that drew little pushback.

“It is noteworthy that, as of now, there haven’t been any indications from the university administration about attempts to shut down our chapter,” Gullickson said in an email. “In the event that such a situation arises, we are prepared to assess the circumstances and determine an appropriate course of action.”

Sophie Levitt, a Jewish student at Arizona State University in Tempe, joined the campus chapter of Students for Justice for Palestine when she was a freshman, eager to broaden her worldview after what she describes as a sheltered upbringing in suburban Illinois.

“I learned more about Palestine and how the movement for Palestinian freedom goes along with my own values,” said Levitt, 21, who is now a junior majoring in justice studies and one of the chapter’s key organizers.

In recent weeks, Levitt watched as people across the country — advocacy groups and politicians and fellow student activists — excoriated Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a network of campus groups that are affiliated with a national wing but operate autonomously. In a court filing, the American Civil Liberties Union described the national wing as a “coalition and networking group for SJPs and other like-minded groups on college campuses across the nation.”

The criticism has been vehement. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis accused SJP activists of being in league with Hamas, and a state official ordered the “deactivation” of chapters at two state schools. Two leading Jewish advocacy organizations lambasted SJP’s national steering committee for appearing to commend the Oct. 7 terror attacks. At least three colleges have restricted their local chapters’ activities.

Students at the University of Central Florida hold a rally and march in support of Palestinians in Orlando on Oct. 13.

Paul Hennesy / Anadolu via Getty Images

The backlash to those moves has also been intense. Free speech advocates and civil liberties organizations argue that the crackdowns on SJP chapters in Florida amount to unconstitutional infringements on the First Amendment. Meanwhile, some rank-and-file SJP members say their activism has been wrongly punished and incorrectly conflated with the national committee’s rhetoric.

“We don’t meet with them, we don’t really communicate with them, we don’t get funds from them,” said Malak Abuhashim, 21, a senior at Cornell University who has family in Gaza and is active in the campus SJP. “It’s not really that close of a relationship.”

“It’s really concerning to see things like this happening,” Abuhashim added, referring to the recent restrictions. “We are simply asking for the liberation of all people in the land of Palestine.”

The national committee did not respond to an email from NBC News with a list of questions. The committee’s members are anonymous, and the coalition’s website directs members of the news media to a generic form for questions.
Heated rhetoric

In the days after the Oct. 7 terror attack, the national wing of SJP came under fierce scrutiny for a five-page “toolkit” document distributed to campus chapters. The document referred to the deadly assault as a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance.” The “toolkit” also suggested talking points for SJP chapters, such as: “We as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”

The Anti-Defamation League, one of the most prominent Jewish advocacy groups in the U.S., lambasted SJP for having “explicitly endorsed the actions of Hamas.” The ADL and another Jewish rights group, the Brandeis Center, later called on nearly 200 college presidents to investigate their chapters.

DeSantis ordered Florida education officials to “deactivate” SJP chapters at the University of Florida and the University of South Florida, arguing that the “toolkit” constituted material support for a foreign terrorist organization — a felony. Brandeis University, which is not affiliated with the Brandeis Center, banned its chapter because, in its view, the national SJP “openly supports Hamas, a terrorist organization.”

Columbia University and George Washington University, meanwhile, suspended their chapters for the rest of the fall term because they purportedly broke campus policies around holding public events and demonstrations. (GWU’s branch of SJP came under the spotlight after students projected slogans critical of the Israeli government on the wall of a library, such as “Divestment From Zionist Genocide Now.”)

The debate around SJP has grown heated partly because of concerns about antisemitism and Islamophobia on campuses. In interviews, Jewish and Muslim students have described a growing sense of fear and anxiety. The ADL and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have both documented spikes in hate incidents targeting Jews and Muslims across the U.S

. 

A student from Hunter College in New York leads a chant during a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the entrance to campus on Oct. 12. 

Michaal Nigro / Sipa USA via AP file

The efforts to curb SJP’s activities appear to have added to the firestorm. Columbia students protested over university administrators’ decision, which also put prohibitions on another group, Jewish Voice for Peace. The American Civil Liberties Union and the civil rights organization Palestine Legal filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of students at the University of Florida, alleging that the state’s “deactivation” order violated the U.S. Constitution.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU argues that Florida officials have not provided evidence or a basis for the “material support” for terrorism allegation. The civil liberties group states that the Supreme Court, in the 2010 decision Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, found that “independent political advocacy” does not equal support of a terror group.

“Independent political advocacy is not a fungible ‘service’ akin to financial contributions,” the ACLU wrote in the suit. “It does not impart a skill that terrorist organizations may use to their benefit, and it does not directly displace costs so as to effectively subsidize a terrorist organization’s illegal efforts.”

Jonathan Friedman, a director at PEN America, a group that advocates for free expression, blasted the DeSantis order as “part of a pattern from the Florida government,” which he said is “ready to cast aside free speech to silence students and censor campuses.”

Friedman said he believes the “SJP toolkit in question included abhorrent sentiments, but when university administrators or government officials believe students have made offensive statements or even supported hateful ideologies, it does not give them free license to abridge First Amendment rights.”

Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for DeSantis, did not immediately reply to two emails seeking comment on the lawsuit.

Guilt by association?

The ACLU argues that SJP members at the University of Florida are effectively being penalized because of the national steering committee’s rhetoric about Oct. 7 — a sentiment echoed by students in other states.

“We are not directly related to the national organization. We have our own missions and our own demands,” said Levitt, the ASU student. “We share the same name, but we don’t necessarily endorse everything the national SJP puts out.”

“I think grouping every individual chapter with what the national organization has said does a disservice,” Levitt added.

The first chapter of SJP was founded at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1990s, and associated groups have since spread across the country. SJP chapters are not uniform in their tactics, and some are more confrontational than others. The typical chapter holds protests, rallies and other campus events that are meant to raise awareness about the plight of the Palestinian people.

Students protest in support of Palestinians at Columbia University on Nov. 14.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

However, a member of SJP at the University Florida who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were concerned about digital harassment said that many ground-level chapter members nonetheless agree with the national wing’s rhetoric and political goals. “I don’t think it’s accurate to say everyone involved in the SJP is denouncing” the national coalition’s language, the student said.

Indeed, the ADL has highlighted various “radical comments” from SJP chapters that echo the rhetoric used in the national “toolkit,” such as a statement from students at Hunter College that calls on institutions to “stand up against the occupation and actively support the Al-Aqsa Flood initiative,” the Arabic name for the Oct. 7 attack.

Gali Polichuk, 22, a senior studying sustainability at the University of Florida, said she is feeling increasingly “on edge” about rising antisemitism on campuses nationwide. She believes the local SJP has a right to protest the war, but she is “frustrated” that the group’s rhetoric has fostered what she characterized as a “hateful environment.”

She was particularly disturbed when she heard a group of pro-Palestinian activists chanting “resistance is justified,” which she interpreted as a reference to Oct. 7. “At the end of the day, it’s free speech,” Polichuk said.

Brandeis University’s decision to ban SJP is not unprecedented. Fordham University barred students from starting an SJP chapter in part because administrators believed the club would create “polarization” on campus and “run contrary to the mission and values” of the school, according to Palestine Legal.

The SJP restrictions at Columbia and George Washington University are more limited in scope: Columbia’s chapter is suspended for the rest of the fall term; GWU’s chapter is suspended for three months.

Of course, not every SJP chapter clashes with educational administrators. The relationship between SJP members and university leaders at the University of Oregon, for example, “has been fairly smooth, with no reported issues,” said Maxwell Gullickson, a student at the Eugene campus who is involved in the group, which held a rally on the campus this month that drew little pushback.

“It is noteworthy that, as of now, there haven’t been any indications from the university administration about attempts to shut down our chapter,” Gullickson said in an email. “In the event that such a situation arises, we are prepared to assess the circumstances and determine an appropriate course of action.”

"Powerful influence of wealthy lobbyists": Right-wing group pressures lawmakers on pro-Israel bills

ALEC, the group behind a wave of bills to crack down on Israel boycotts, urges states to unconditionally back war

By AREEBA SHAH

Staff Writer
SALON
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 24, 2023

US and Israeli flags fill the field at Statler Park in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 18, 2023. 

(JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)


The American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing lobbying group, is securing commitments of unconditional support for Israel's attack on Gaza from state legislatures across the country, The Guardian reported Monday.

The group, which spearheads many conservative state legislative efforts, is now promoting a model resolution that declares “support for Israel’s right to pursue without interference or condemnation the elimination of Hamas,” the outlet reported. This resolution has been adopted by legislatures in at least eight states, including Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and North Dakota.

The resolution claims that Hamas receives “support and funding from foreign state sponsors of terror, namely Iran” and uses civilians as “human shields.”

ALEC has played a crucial role in mobilizing political influence by advocating for local legislation and resolutions endorsing the Jewish state. This includes the enactment of laws aimed at hindering and penalizing support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which pressures Israel to stop its abuses against Palestinians.

“The efforts by the ALEC to influence state legislatures to pass resolutions to support the policies of a foreign country are an example of the powerful influence of wealthy lobbyists in our political system,” Michael Bradley, coordinator for the Arizona Palestine Network, told Salon. “We oppose any laws that attempt to block or punish American citizens or legislators from exercising their long-standing legal right to boycott, divest, or sanction any entity or country.”

The efforts of ALEC “to disempower” U.S. citizens should be “vigorously opposed,” he said. It is crucial for citizens to stay informed about their attempts to undermine their BDS rights and to actively strive to prevent ALEC's initiatives from succeeding, he added.

Related

"Chilling": Maryland lawmakers threaten to cut aid to immigrants because group criticized Israel

Since 2015, 36 states have passed laws with the aim of suppressing boycotts against Israel. These anti-boycott measures eliminate the longstanding legal protection afforded to boycotts, providing governments with the authority to tie employment opportunities to political views. In recent years, lawmakers have increasingly relied on these laws to restrict how Americans use boycotts as a tool for social and political change.

The right to boycott has been practiced in America for centuries and has achieved positive results, Bradley said, pointing to how British colonists boycotted British Tea in the 1760s because they didn't approve of the British government's monopoly of the tea trade. He also noted the example of the Montgomery bus boycott led by Martin Luther King Jr. in the mid-1950s, which “proved to be a very effective way to advocate for civil rights for African Americans.”

ALEC advocated for the model resolution in state legislatures following an urgent meeting two weeks ago, according to the Guardian. The group is backed by corporate funding but has strong connections to pro-Israel Christian evangelicals.

Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone, who has close ties to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, presented the case for supporting Israel, according to an agenda obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy. Lightstone previously served as a senior adviser to Donald Trump's Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

Others who spoke during the meeting included Texas state Sen. Phil King, a member of the group’s board of directors and lead sponsor of a bill in support of Israel’s attack on Gaza passed by the Texas senate two days after Hamas' deadly attack on Oct 7.

King has played a leading role in advocating for additional pro-Israel legislation in Texas, co-authoring a law opposing boycotts of Israel and helping Texas become the first state to establish a commission responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. Critics argue that this definition has, at times, been employed to suppress criticism of the Jewish state and has led to widespread restrictions of the right to free speech.

He introduced his bill after the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission submitted its first study on antisemitism in Texas to the Legislature in December. The study proposed eight recommendations to increase awareness and combat hate against Jewish people in Texas, including asking the Legislature to consider a ban on academic boycotts, The Austin American-Statesman reported.

Texas has had other instances of restricting virtually any criticism of Israel. In 2018, a school district refused to renew the contract of a Palestinian-American school speech pathologist who refused to sign an anti-boycott pledge.

The Nebraska legislature incorporated ALEC’s language, asserting that Hamas uses Palestinians as "human shields" and expressing unequivocal support for Israel's attacks in Gaza. Meanwhile, North Dakota passed a resolution that also echoed claims made by ALEC that Hamas was in “receipt of support and funding from foreign state sponsors of terror, namely Iran” and that Israel has the right to continue its war in Gaza “without interference or condemnation,” The Guardian reported.

In Pennsylvania, a version introduced by politicians affiliated with ALEC stated that "Israel has every right to defend itself with all due and overwhelming force." In Wyoming, a resolution supported by a third of the legislature asserted that Israel is engaged in a "battle over good over evil" and opposed calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, according to the Guardian.

ALEC pushed out a modified version of a resolution previously adopted by multiple states. This resolution included a statement asserting that "Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others," seemingly endorsing the claim by the Israeli right-wing that Palestinian territories belong to the Jewish state. Earlier iterations of the resolution explicitly endorsed "the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in the historical region of the Land of Israel," encompassing the occupied West Bank, the news outlet reported.

The Unexpected, Radical Roots of ‘Redneck’

The term is known best as an insult for backwoods hillbillies, but in one chapter of Appalachian history “redneck” was also used to spread fear of communist militants and oppress organized mine workers.


Illustration by Kelsey King.

by Lonnie Lee Hood

 Daily Yonder

September 5, 2022

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2021. It has been republished with an updated dateline for 2022’s Labor Day holiday.

There’s a certain set of descriptors we often hear in conjunction with the word “redneck:” drunk, wild, backwoods, hick, hillbilly. Communist generally isn’t one of them. But that’s the association coal barons tried to draw in the early 20th century to discredit their striking workers.

Just take the example of Police Chief Sid Hatfield of Matewan, West Virginia, who helped defend local miners during the bloody, decades-long West Virginia Mine Wars. He was a member of the Hatfield clan, which had a fierce rivalry with the local McCoy family. In August 1921, he was gunned down on the steps of a West Virginia courthouse by armed detectives hired by the coal operators. At the time, historians say he was portrayed as a wild hillbilly who got what was coming to him. The only problem is the infamous Hatfield and McCoy feud had been quiet for two decades by then, and Hatfield was a caring policeman who walked drunk coal miners in the area home instead of arresting them.

At the same time that the coal operators were trying to frame Hatfield as a “redneck,” they were also trying to paint striking coal miners as “reds” — highly organized communist instigators, says Wilma Steele, historian and board member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. Somehow, coal companies in West Virginia wanted folks around the country to believe rednecks could be both unmanageable and primitive as well as foreign militants coming to overthrow the U.S. government. Sometimes, the words were even used interchangeably.

“They shot one of those Bolsheviks up in Knox County this morning,” a local coal baron said of a Young Communist League organizer, according to a 1932 New Republic piece later republished in Patrick Huber’s journal article “Red Necks and Red Bandanas.” “He didn’t give the redneck a chance to talk.”

Huber says in his text that seeing the word Bolshevik — the leftist organization founded by Vladimir Lenin that eventually became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union — might surprise readers. But the contempt behind the word, he writes, is hardly new. It’s unclear whether Harry Sims, the 19-year-old “redneck” fatally shot in Knox County, actually considered himself a Bolshevik, but historians said miners who held communist sentiments weren’t connected to foreign governments — they simply didn’t like capitalism.

“Redneck in Our Own Way:” Labor Conflict and Union Solidarity

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed labor uprising in U.S. history. At the time, miners were fed up with low wages, dangerous jobs and endless debt to their employers. They were also furious about the murder of their friend Sid Hatfield. After his assassination, pent-up rage boiled over and the miners formed an army of about 10,000 to fight the coal companies. They finally surrendered after federal troops were called in. But during the battle, coal operators tried to make miners seem like a menacing threat. Lon Savage’s Thunder in the Mountains mentions a telegram that Walter R. Thurmond, president of the Logan Coal Operators Association, sent to a congressman.

“Unless troops sent by midnight tonight, the Town of Logan will be attacked by an army of from four to eight thousand reds,” it warned.

The first time I saw that telegram, I assumed “reds” was short for redneck, a term that Steele says union miners reclaimed as a badge of honor after coal operators tried to use it to disparage and insult them. During the Battle of Blair Mountain, striking miners wore red bandanas in a display of solidarity, and the nickname “redneck” stuck. According to Huber’s history of the Battle of Blair Mountain, redneck was always used as a pejorative, although in the century before the Mine Wars it referred to racist, poor, white Southerners. Huber writes that during the 1920s and 1930s, it also came to mean “a Communist” and was used by coal operators to denigrate miners in the Appalachian coalfields. After the Mine Wars, the meaning changed once again.

“During the last four decades of the twentieth century, redneck also referred to a miner who was a member of a labor union, particularly one who was on strike,” Huber wrote. “This last, now-obsolete meaning… provides insight into how… the United Mine Workers used language and symbols to foster union solidarity among racially and ethnically divided miners.”

… Striking coal miners wore red bandanas in a display of solidarity, and the nickname “redneck” stuck.

While Huber writes that meaning is obsolete, historians like Steele are enthusiastically bringing it back, handing out red bandanas to anyone who will listen. Steele says “reds” is actually a reference to communist and socialist activity, not an abbreviation for redneck. Invoking that term was intended to imply that the miners were secretly foreign agents.

“Coal operators chose that term to scare people with,” Steele explains. “Associating them with the communist reds in other parts of the world coming to overthrow the government. They used it on people of lower class, especially Black people [and] immigrants. We accepted that identity of solidarity. We were the only group that used [redneck] in our own way.”

“Our own way” was a pro-union, pro-labor identity — not an anti-American one. And historians have said that while some miners weren’t capitalists, it’s hard to know how many identified as communist or socialist because many kept their views quiet. Still, they weren’t infiltrated by foreign agents; these beliefs were their own. The idea of a union miner might not quite line up with the idea of a militant communist. But fear, not logic, was always the coal operators’ goal.

Lasting Stereotypes and Harm, from Hillbillies to Pillbillies

Unfortunately, the Mine Wars weren’t the last time Appalachians would be painted as backwoods, primitive, and worthy of fear or contempt. Elizabeth Catte, author of What You’re Getting Wrong About Appalachia — and the editor of my own forthcoming book about rednecks — has covered the forced sterilization of Appalachian people. Catte says Charles Davenport, the director of the Eugenics Record Office, once said Virginia’s mountains were full of “mongrels,” and called hillfolk “a badly put together people.” In her book, Catte notes that individuals were sterilized if they were deemed unfit.

“Eugenicists of the past were preoccupied with the fiction that people they perceived as socially undesirable would outpopulate [them],’” Catte said via email. “All non-white people were socially undesirable (keeping in mind that who counts as “white” shifts over time), as were disabled people, immigrants, and poor white people.”

Forced sterilization ended — in most states — by mid-century. But ideas about poverty, who deserves help and who is unsalvageable remain. Catte says modern writers like JD Vance still use eugenicist principles and ideas to advance their conclusions. Vance, who recently announced a bid for the U.S. Senate, wrote the now-infamous “Hillbilly Elegy,” published in 2016. The memoir follows his Ohio family through drug addiction, poverty, and his eventual way out by becoming a Yale-educated military veteran — leaving out his current success as a venture capitalist. The problem is, according to Catte’s book, Vance’s memoir forces illogical conclusions on Appalachians, and some eugenicists even mentored him.

“He cites Razib Khan and Charles Murray…who earned their reputations writing very contested theories about race and genetics,” Catte says of Vance’s inspirations. “One obvious goal…is to make an argument that some people are beyond ‘saving.’ They become very unsympathetic.”

As an example, Catte says Vance found inspiration in a 2012 Discover magazine article by Khan, titled “The Scots-Irish as Indigenous People.” Certainly no Scots-Irishman was ever indigenous in the U.S., yet Khan wrote in the since-deleted article that “in traveling across America, the Scots Irish have consistently blown my mind as far and away the most persistent and unchanging regional subculture in the country.” He also called these families “clan-like.” Vance continued Khan’s conclusions and writes that Appalachian people have unique genetic characteristics with innate traits, positing that “the culture of Greater Appalachia is remarkably cohesive.” If the culture is cohesive, then it could be assumed that everyone fits the Amy Adams depiction of Vance’s mom—a hopeless drug addict who only causes pain and doesn’t want to accept help. Catte wrote that it’s not only an inaccurate depiction of a racially diverse region, but those ideas find a lot of sympathy with eugenicists.

“It turns out that if you create and sell a version of Appalachia as a place filled with defective people, eugenicists start paying attention to your work,” Catte wrote.

These kinds of harmful stereotypes about Appalachian people can have real costs. In May, news broke that pharmaceutical reps mocked the same communities they pumped full of opioids. Emails with Beverly Hillbillies parodies and jokes about “pillbillies” were circulated between top executives at AmerisourceBergen, one of the largest drug distributors in the country, according to The Guardian. Jayne Conroy, one of the country’s most prominent attorneys working to address the opioid epidemic, says it was shocking to see “pillbillies” and other slurs used against the victims of this crisis.

“​​It’s one thing to uncover documents showing that Big Pharma companies put profits over safety — we see that all the time,” Conroy says. “But to mock the people who were among the most deeply affected by…oxycontin and other prescription opioids, I just cannot understand that. It’s reprehensible.”

An AmerisourceBergen spokesperson said via email that some of the jokes and content were created outside the company and forwarded via email internally, and that the company operates as a wholesale distributor in an environment that at times lacked clear regulatory guidance.

“It is important to note that when these emails were sent, unfortunate terms like ‘pillbillies’ frequently appeared in news coverage surrounding the opioid epidemic,” a company spokesperson said via email.

Reclaiming the Radical Roots of Redneck

From “reds” to “redneck” and “hillbilly” to “pillbilly,” giant corporations across industries have used unflattering terms to demean, belittle and undermine the people of Appalachia for decades. These evolving slurs have contributed to violence and oppression against poor and working class people in the region for more than 100 years now — including Appalachia’s immigrant and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities whose stories are often neglected relative to those of their white neighbors.

Those who want to reclaim these words and fight back against whatever iteration of insult comes next can look to historians like Steele, who say we should take lessons from the past. Steele believes returning to the radical roots of the term redneck is incredibly important, and that a modern redneck believes in union solidarity, accepting people who might be different than us, and listening to everybody while sharing power and respect.

“My goal is to prove who you are is more important than [stereotypes],” Steele says. “The story of the redneck is all of us. We’re all important in that story.”

GO DEEPER: MORE GREAT DAILY YONDER STORIES

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Review: New Book on Appalachia Takes J.D. Vance Behind the Woodshed
Elizabeth Catte’s “What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia” rebuts the “tired ideas about race and culture” that J.D. Vance peddles in the bestselling “Hillbilly Elegy.”
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Mountain Talk
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by Betty Dotson-Lewis

The Steady Drip, Drip, Drip of American Fascism

How the ‘normalization’ of paranoia, rage, and social atrocities is turning us into heartless fascists

November 24, 2023 by Richard Lowenthal 

 

I remember the time, back in the 80s, when I first started hearing the conservative trope that Social Security is an (undeserved) ‘entitlement program.’ Even then, before the rise of right-wing ‘win at any cost’ politics, I knew there was something dangerously wrong with that idea.

After all, Americans pay into Social Security all their working lives — specifically so they’ll have post-retirement income to help them out during their later years. So why was it being denigrated as an ‘entitlement’ program?

Similarly, around that time Reagan and many Republicans began pushing the idea that the Federal government is ‘the enemy.’ Reagan famously half-joked that “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” By the mid-80s Grover Norquist and other anti-tax Republicans had started a movement with the ultimate goal, as he later described it, of reducing the Federal government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

Not exactly a positive or peaceful message, is it?

All progressive ideas and social programs must GO

Scarily, the common goal linking these so-called ‘conservative’ ideas is to stir up deep fear and even loathing in Americans: fear and loathing of the government, government programs, elderly American ‘parasites,’ and social programs in general. The goal has been to stir up deep paranoia about our federal government and our society, and undermine ALL the progressive ideas behind FDR’s ‘New Deal’ and Pres. Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programs.

Fast forward to today — forty years later — and we see the U.S.A. embracing authoritarianism and teetering on the brink of out-and-out fascism. Forty years later, many of the most radical ideas and antisocial themes promoted by the far right have become an accepted ‘normal’ aspect of our politics. But the truth is, these ideas and memes aren’t ‘normal’… or accurate … or compassionate … or helpful.

They are all designed with one thing in mind: to scare and oppress people, and to scare Americans into revoking many of the rights and benefits associated with ‘modern’ America. And these persistent right-wing efforts have been SO successful that now Americans should be very scared — of all the antisocial horrors the right wing is spawning. And of all the new horrors that will be spawned if Trump ever gets anywhere near the oval office again.

Due to the rise and dominance of extreme right-wing ideologies, many state governments and even our Supreme Court have become ‘enemies of the people’ and of democracy. What awful, horrific irony! Under the aegis of these pervasive and destructive ideologies, many rights and freedoms of women, liberals, minorities, and LGBTQ+ folks are now being stripped away. That’s … fascism in action.

Right-wing messaging now dominates America

How has all this happened? Just HOW did right wing messaging come to so thoroughly dominate American political discourse and ‘ideals.’ I think there’s no better explanation or imagery for this than the slow, steady ‘drip, drip, drip’ of water gradually eroding and wearing down solid rock … or the endless, maddening ‘drip, drip, drip’ utilized in ancient Chinese water torture.

In both cases, seemingly solid rock — and peoples’ formerly reliable minds — have been worn down and worn away to the point of total disintegration. Peoples’ inner moral compass, empathy, and sense of social responsibility has been deliberately attacked and worn down — over several decades. Their inner mental ‘picture’ of our reality has been profoundly and deeply altered.

On one level, it’s all merely a cynical ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. But this right-wing strategy has taken it so far, for so long, that it’s now deeply ingrained in most Americans’ minds — and our nation and our society are at grave risk of total failure and collapse. All along, we’ve been subjected to one ‘small’ shift, one new ‘tiny’ change, or one more ‘little’ shattered norm at a time — so things never seemed completely out of control.

But then multiply these ‘little’ repressive, regressive changes by … a million. Persistent attacks on our government, immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ+ folks, and our social services gradually became normalized.

Drip, drip.

And this all occurred before the rise of Trump, MAGA, and so-called ‘Trumpism’ (which I think is a total absurdity, since Trump has no platform except his own self-aggrandizement). The dismaying ascent of right-wing ideology over the past forty years did, however, pave the way for Trump to emerge and also to fully dominate the Republican party.

The steady right-wing ‘drip, drip, drip’ was SO successful that now, with the rise of Trump, it’s turned into a raging torrent. It’s turned into a massive torrent of lies, paranoia, bullying, racism, and overt anti-democratic actions and laws. Even anti-women actions and laws.

Our nation is now in deep, deep shit.

False equivalency, ‘both-sides-ism,’ and other media failures

Sadly, our American media have been way behind the eight ball in terms of identifying, explaining, and ‘outing’ what the right and far-right have been doing to undermine the U.S. and transform America into their preferred Christian-fascist nation.

In general, our media and Internet outlets have been far too polite and accepting, and have also engaged in continual ‘both-sides-ism’ — meaning that pro-democratic and pro-repression forces are given equal weight and equal time.

While I understand media’s desire to be ‘fair’ and ‘objective,’ the truth is that pro-fascist ideas and repressive actions and laws are extremely dangerous. They promote racism, hate, and rage, and often incite various forms of violence. The same can’t be said for pro-democracy ideas, actions, and laws, which tend to promote fairness, equality, social justice, and other social advancements.

Overall, the violence encouraged and perpetrated by the far right eclipses any violence perpetrated by leftists.

So rationally speaking, there is NO equivalence between right-wing and left-wing positions and policies. The first is turning out to be quite oppressive — and very bad for our nation as a whole — while the second believes in and supports the original ‘American dream’ enshrined in our Constitution. Our media’s failure to detail and fully expose pro-fascist ideas and actions, it turns out, is actually a deep failure to be an objective, reliable source of crucial information.

What a weird paradox: their desire to be totally ‘objective’ has kept them from being accurate and objective! Plus, false equivalency has created a skewed and objectively dangerous misunderstanding in many Americans’ minds.

The result? Over the past forty years, right-wing ideas and beliefs have slowly seeped into our minds and warped our thinking and our compassion — and American media are largely to blame (especially Fox ‘News’). Things have gotten SO out of hand, now — since Trump burst on our political scene — that fascism-friendly ‘conservatives’ all across the U.S. feel emboldened, and are constantly screaming about being ‘censored’ or ‘canceled’ by American media and internet giants. They are trying hard to bully us into submission.

The real truth, however, is much more the opposite. Leftist and progressive ideas and discourse have been gradually disappearing from our airwaves, TV, and the internet, while right-wing ‘talking points’ and even far-right fascism have been growing and flourishing all across our nation. In fact, the current ratio of right-wing media outlets to left-wing ones is outrageously tilted towards the right — with the ratio being about four or five to one.

The far right wants to remake America in its own fascist, racist image

The vast chasm between our ascendant right-wing and our shrinking, ineffectual left-wing is an observable, documented fact — yet the steady ‘drip, drip, drip’ of right-wing ideologies has shifted Americans’ mental ‘picture’ of our society so much that most Republicans believe that ‘socialists’ are controlling America … and conservatives ARE being oppressed, ‘canceled,’ etc.

However, these ‘canceled’ conservatives are largely controlling the narrative, and are also successfully enacting many, many oppressive, anti-democratic (small ‘d’) laws — yet they still keep moaning about how ‘censored’ and ‘disempowered’ they are.

This frightening fiasco shows the accuracy of that old saying ‘give ’em an inch, and they’ll take a mile.’ Except with rising American fascism, it’s more like ‘give ’em an inch, and they’ll take a million miles.’ Today’s ascendant far right has made it perfectly clear that they want total control, and they’re not going to be satisfied until they’ve remade America in their own fascist, racist image.

These folks, who think they’re ‘patriots,’ of course are nothing of the sort. They are only too happy to lie, cheat, bully, attack minorities, attack immigrants, and take away vital human rights from women, LGBTQ+ folks, and any remaining progressives.

These American fascists are still controlling the narrative in this country — very much so — and they’re still supporting Donald ‘Cruel Fascist Bully’ Trump to run for and be our next president. Our hapless media have proven to be totally inadequate and impotent, and in no way up to our present challenge(s). And our slow-as-molasses court systems are not faring much better.

What could possibly go wrong?

Drip, drip, drip.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

Majority of Canadians want ‘neutral’ or no role in Israel-Hamas conflict: Ipsos

By Saba Aziz Global News
Posted November 24, 2023 

During question period on Thursday, Mike Morrice, the Member of Parliament for Kitchener Centre, criticized the Liberal government for not doing enough to ensure the release of hostages during the delay of the Israel-Hamas deal. “They can't even seem to bring themselves to say the words cease-fire,” Morrice told the house. “We welcome humanitarian pause that will be happening starting tomorrow,” Joly said, and added, “We'll continue to support the fact that Canadians need to get out of Gaza.”

Most Canadians believe that Canada should play a neutral role or completely stay out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, now in its second month, new polling suggests.

Four in 10 (41 per cent) of Canadians said in an Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News and released Friday that the country should be a “neutral mediator” in the conflict. Almost a quarter (23 per cent) said that Canada should not be involved at all.

While 18 per cent said Canada should support Israel, a smaller proportion at nine percent said the country should support the Palestinians.

The polling was done between Nov. 14 and 16, before the announcement of a temporary ceasefire agreed upon by Israel and Hamas and which is expected to take effect Friday. Under the terms of the deal, both sides have agreed to a four-day halt in hostilities and for Hamas to release 50 Israeli hostages taken in the deadly Oct. 7 attack in exchange for prisoners held in Israel.

Darrell Bricker, global CEO of Ipsos public affairs, said the polling indicates “a lot of sympathy” for the hostages and for the people who are suffering because of the conflict.

4 days is a Band-Aid on a huge gaping open wound’: temporary Israel-Hamas ceasefire sparks anger

“I think Canadians are not looking at this through the lens of geopolitics,” Bricker said in an interview with Global News.

“They’re looking at this through the lens of a humanitarian crisis and regardless of how we got here, there’s a lot of suffering that’s going on and that’s what really has caught Canadians’ attention.”

Israeli officials say the Oct. 7 attack killed 1,200 people in Israel. The Hamas-run Gaza health authorities say 13,300 people have been killed in Gaza from retaliatory Israeli airstrikes.

There are growing concerns over the humanitarian situation in Gaza as well as the fate of the roughly 250 hostages taken from Israel by Hamas.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has repeatedly been calling for a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting, urged the Israeli government last week to exercise “maximum restraint” in its military operations in Gaza and around the territory’s largest hospital.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying that Israel works to minimize civilian casualties but Hamas embeds itself in the civilian population.

Ottawa has stopped short of calling for a ceasefire, though, which a majority of Canadians (81 per cent) in the Ipsos poll said should be implemented immediately.

Netanyahu sharply responds to Trudeau over Israel comments ahead of APEC

Almost 70 per cent of the respondents believed there should be a ceasefire but with the caveat that Hamas releases the hostages.

Most Canadians (87 per cent) also ssaid civilians in Gaza should be allowed to flee to a safe country.

“(Canadians) want people to be able to get out of danger, they want those hostages to be released and they want peace to resume,” Bricker said.

A majority of the population (84 per cent) is concerned that the conflict could escalate more broadly in the region, the Ipsos poll showed.

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between Nov. 14 and 16, 2023, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,000 Canadians aged 18-plus was interviewed. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18-plus been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to, coverage error and measurement error.

— with files from The Associated Press

Illegal Entries at US-Canada Border Surge 550 Percent


By Solange Reyner | Thursday, 23 November 2023 
Newsmax 

Illegal entries at the U.S.-Canada border continue to surge, with Border Patrol agents reporting a 550 percent increase in apprehensions last fiscal year, according to Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia.

"Swanton Sector Border Patrol Agents have seen an astonishing 550% increase compared to last year by recording 6,925 apprehensions from 79 different countries between 10/01/2022 to 9/30/2023," Garcia said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The sector covers nearly 300 miles across northern New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont with Canada. Just 1,000 migrants were apprehended in all of fiscal year 2022 and just 365 in fiscal year 2021.

Federal authorities in March added more border patrol agents at a section of the northeastern U.S. border with Quebec in response to a spike in illegal crossings.

"Government immigration policies do not change the need or reasoning of people who decide to cross in one direction or another. Sometimes, all they do is make it riskier to do so. These are people who are fleeing and seeking protection, and sometimes they have to make these impossible and dangerous decisions," Shauna Labman, director of the Human Rights Program at the University of Winnipeg, Canada, told Noticias Telemundo.

"We are seeing high levels of migration around the world, the highest since World War II," added Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to improve immigration and integration policies.

"People are moving at a faster rate than in the past, and that is also seen in the north. There have been increases in migrants at that border, which differs by nationality."

Piecing Together the Evidence: Open-Source Intelligence in Israel’s Gaza War

Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins breaks down his pioneering investigative toolkit

HENRY CARNELL

Mother Jones


Open one social media platform and you’re hit with a fake video; open another and you’re hit with bigotry. Open a news article, and you’ll find some victims “killed” but others “dying.” Each account of events in Israel and Palestine seems to rely on different facts. What’s clear is that misinformation, hate speech, and factual distortions are running rampant.

How do we vet what we see in such a landscape? I spoke to experts across the field of media, politics, tech, and communications about information networks around Israel’s war in Gaza. This interview, with Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, is the fourth in a five-part series that also includes computer scientist Megan Squire, journalist and news analyst Dina Ibrahim, communications and policy scholar Ayse Lokmanoglu, and media researcher Tamara Kharroub.

Open-source investigator Eliot Higgins is the founder and creative director of Bellingcat, an independent collective of researchers, investigators, and citizen journalists with a reputation for breaking investigative stories before mainstream competitors. Entirely self-taught, and widely considered a pioneer in open-source intelligence (OSINT), Higgins has transformed the field. An early arms-monitoring collaboration led Human Rights Watch to deem Higgins “among the best out there”; now, more than a decade later, he helps lead some 30 Bellingcat colleagues. We spoke about what open-source intelligence brings to the table, the dangers of rising misinformation, and the October 17 bombing of Gaza’s Al-Ahli Hospital, where rapidly shifting narratives led to widespread confusion about who was culpable.


What’s the significance of OSINT for information being shared about Israel and Palestine?

Over the last few years, there’s been a big shift in the availability of satellite imagery. A few years ago, the quickest people could get it was months out of date. Now, because of services like Planet and Umbra, we can get satellite imagery the next day. We can see an incident being reported, and then have a look at it.

For example, there was the bombing of a large apartment building [in Gaza]. We now have satellite imagery of that same area available, so we can see it remotely. We use it, for example, in Ukraine, where Russia tends to lie a lot about what’s happening.

But Israel is quite open about its bombing campaign. There is not really much debate about if stuff is being bombed. It’s more who’s blowing stuff up and who isn’t. There are very few examples where Israel is saying “We didn’t do that.” Like with the apartment building, they’re saying they blew up the anti-tank rocket commander of Hamas, along with lots of other people.“A lot of people expect solid answers very, very quickly. Realistically, that’s not possible.”

It only really becomes a point of debate around things like the hospital bombing. That’s more about looking at all the open-source material—the various photographs and videos that have been shared from the scene, and other evidence—and piecing together as much understanding as we can.

The problem has been that a lot of people expect solid answers very, very quickly. Realistically, that’s not possible. This isn’t the kind of conflict where people are happy with uncertainty.

What are the potential dangers of this technology, especially around disinformation? Has it changed from previous conflicts?

When we’ve investigated things like the downing of [civilian flight] MH17 in eastern Ukraine [or] chemical weapons attacks in Syria, you tend to have two different communities that emerge: one side says, “Assad did it,” the other says he didn’t. Communities emerge online and social media discourse develops—some more fact-based, and some more about feelings.

With this conflict, there have been decades of pre-established feelings, understanding, and knowledge. So straight away, with Israel and Palestine, because there’s such heavy engagement, people already have their sights established. They find stuff on social media that supports their viewpoint and re-share it.

What guidance would you give readers who are being flooded with this type of information? What does a well-investigated piece look like?

One issue over the last few weeks is, a lot of organizations that usually produce quite high-quality work on other issues have kind of tried to find answers where there may not be answers available. With the [Al-Ahli] hospital bombing, there are different versions of events, depending on which quite reputable organization you ask, and that’s a problem.

We’ve seen, for example, an analysis by one news organization that pointed towards the rocket being launched from Gaza. Another news organization analyzed the same videos and pointed to it being from Israel. Even good-quality news organizations are producing contradictory statements about the same footage. It’s not even an issue of disinformation around trolls and grifters. It’s a much bigger issue.

You’ve explained that it takes a while to get to the truth. What goes into a Bellingcat investigation?

If we’re talking about conflict incidents, like an airstrike that blows up a building, the first thing we’re trying to do is gather as much of the digital evidence that’s out there, like videos and photographs shared from the scene. Ideally, we try to find them from the original sources where they’re shared, but that’s sometimes not possible.

Once we have all that visual information, we do a process called geolocation, which confirms exactly where these images were taken. You can’t really trust an image from an incident unless you know exactly where it took place. Once you have that, you have a catalog of content of the incident. Then you put that into a timeline.

When you look at footage, you find other images of the same scene, and you start thinking, “What has changed?” You may start looking for munition debris, the shape of a crater, shrapnel spray, and other details like that. Establishing a link between that rocket fire and [an] explosion in the hospital is very important to do.“News organizations are producing contradictory statements about the same footage. It’s not even an issue of…trolls and grifters.”

We also look at media reports and social media posts of witnesses talking about the incident—not to take them at face value, but to look at them and say, “What is consistent with what we’re seeing? What adds bits of information we can explore using visual evidence?” If someone says there was a rocket at the scene, or the remains of a rocket, then we’ll hunt for that through the imagery.

Using that process, [we’re] going back in time to the moment of the event to establish what happened—and, ideally, moments leading up to the event as well. And sometimes that’s possible. For example, we had one investigation into a supermarket hit by a missile in Ukraine. The actual missile in flight was caught by a CCTV camera just outside the building [in] two frames. From that, we’re able to identify the type of missile that was used. It’s piecing together all that evidence, understanding where it is in time and space, and using that nexus of information to start establishing facts and eliminating scenarios.

That’s not to say that if a claim is wrong, the opposite is true. That’s just to say that [the] scenario has been eliminated and we can move to looking at other potential scenarios, hoping that through that process of elimination, you come to one likely scenario—which isn’t always possible.

With the hospital bombing, there was a claim [that] it was a large Israeli bomb. The crater that was left was not from one of those kinds of bombs; it was from a different kind of smaller munition. I personally still don’t know if it was an Israeli missile or rocket or a misfired rocket from Gaza. But I can at least eliminate some of the scenarios. And as more information emerges, you can integrate that into your understanding of the events.

After the investigation, where do you go next?

We use a process that’s focused on legal accountability. That’s the level of analysis that you need of these kinds of conflicts, especially when the mainstream discourse is dominated by people bashing each other over their heads with each other’s claims—where it’s not really about getting to the truth, just making a political point

There need to be more organizations that are equipped to do this kind of investigative work. We’re doing work on Israel ourselves, but it’s a big, big topic [and] a very rapidly developing situation.

One thing that’s frustrating is that when we’re doing our work in Ukraine, there is, at the end of that, the International Criminal Court and other legal processes that it’s actually moving towards. With Israel, what legal process is it moving towards? Because the US is going to block any UN Security Council resolutions. Israel is not part of the International Criminal Court. There’s nothing that can be done there.

So even if you’re doing good-quality investigations, rather than moving towards legal accountability, it’s just moving back into the same discourse. That is an unfortunate aspect of how the US has approached Israel in the past.

That is not to minimize the damage done by Hamas. You know what they did on October 7.

When you’re dealing with legal accountability, like we do often in our work, there has to be something at the end of that process. And currently, there really isn’t anything present.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

The world has a responsibility to protect the people of Gaza. Will it rise to the occasion?

You don't need to be a legal expert to know that Israel is committing war crimes against the people of the occupied Palestinian territory.

Maria Kari 

PRISM/DAWN

Published November 22, 2023 

We are approaching the seventh week of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Our screens are still littered with mutilated bodies and murdered children and there is little hope for a total ceasefire, even as Israel has finally agreed to a brief humanitarian pause.

With almost 20,000 dead, one must ask when, or if at all, the UN or any Western and Muslim world leaders will rise up to hold Israel accountable for its deliberate and wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.

To be sure, we have international law and other legal mechanisms in place since the end of World War II to prevent the very type of mass murder we are witnessing in Gaza today. One such tool, which has the potential to provide much needed relief in the present conflict, is a doctrine called the Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

Who bears the responsibility?

The R2P is not law — it is a principle rooted in existing international humanitarian laws relating to sovereignty and armed conflict. Since Gaza is an occupied territory without recognised statehood or governance, the responsibility for its population’s well-being falls on the occupying power, Israel.

In its simplest form, the R2P says that if a state — in this case, Israel — fails to protect its people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the international community has a responsibility to intervene. This intervention can be carried out in different ways — from political and economic sanctions to international criminal prosecutions or even, as a last resort, military force — the latter, with the permission of the UN Security Council.

Over the years, the UN Security Council has invoked the R2P in over 80 UN Security Council resolutions, including for crises in the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It was, however, fully implemented only once during the Libyan civil war.

In 2011, in response to growing civil unrest, Muammar Gaddafi called for his supporters to “cleanse Libya house by house”. By invoking the R2P, the UN Security Council was able to authorise Nato to use military force to prevent mass murder in Benghazi. While the first phase of the intervention did save lives, R2P’s implementation in Libya was deemed a failure in the long run because the international community did not stay in the country long enough to rebuild the political and economic infrastructure.

Unfortunately, Libya left the doctrine of R2P with a bad rap. Even since, the preferred approach by the UN and superpowers such as the US is to “wait-and-see” — a decision that has led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in countries like Syria and Myanmar and has forced the doctrine of R2P onto the UN’s top shelf, where unused international laws and doctrines gather to die.

But the current conflict in Gaza has revived calls for the R2P.

You need not be a legal expert to know that Israel is committing war crimes against the people of the occupied Palestinian territory. Indeed, since its creation, the state of Israel has routinely flouted numerous international humanitarian laws.


But this time feels different, more dire. Perhaps because almost half of the dead are children? Or maybe because the world is watching a genocide on their smartphones in real time?

Over the last few days, Arab states, Russia, China and several other countries have lobbied for a ceasefire. It is unlikely that, individually, these countries’ lobbying efforts hold much sway at the UN Security Council — particularly in light of the waning influence of Arab nations at the world body in recent years. Over the next few days or perhaps weeks, it will become clearer whether powerful Muslim nations like Saudi Arabia are going to be able to pressure the United States and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council to join in efforts to condemn Israel.

Either way, public support for and perception of Israel is at an all-time low. And with the American presidential election looming large and ever-increasing pressure on Muslim leaders to do more than share thoughts and prayers, the question is surely on the top of the mind for members of the UN Security Council — what, if anything, is it going to do about Israel’s collective punishment of 2.3 million people?

Romeo Dallaire, a lieutenant-general with the Canadian Armed Forces who was on the ground during the Rwandan genocide, once said: “How do we pick and choose where to get involved? [Countries] have become accustomed to acting if, and only if, international public opinion will support them — a dangerous path that leads to a moral relativism in which a country risks losing sight of the difference between good and evil …”

Modern history tells us that the international community can reach consensus to stand up against aggressor states. Take the Russia-Ukraine war, for example. When Russia invaded Ukraine last February, within days the US, UK and EU unequivocally condemned its actions and imposed harsh economic and political sanctions.

Many of these nations continue to send millions in military and financial aid to Ukraine. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding Russia immediately withdraw its military forces and abide by international law and, earlier this year, the International Criminal Court also rose to the occasion by issuing an arrest warrant for Vladmir Putin.

We need to demand our elected leaders to adopt a similar, principled approach against Israel. For far too long, countries like the US, UK and even Saudi Arabia have let Israel off with a get-out-of-jail-free card. This time, the indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombings, the mounting death toll of civilians, the blanket denial of food, water and other necessities, and the bombing of facilities such as mosques, churches, schools and hospitals — places unequivocally protected by international law — is both morally and legally too egregious to ignore.

In 1948, when the UN passed the Genocide Convention, we agreed “never again”. Yet, in Palestine, we can’t risk normalising “again and again”.

Header image: A Palestinian man reacts as he carries the body of his niece, Hanan Kaloob, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip November 22, 2023. — Reuters