Tag: Democracy Now

Emily Henochowicz speaks out: art student shot with tear gas canister interviewed on Democracy Now!

6 August 2010 | Democracy Now!

Emily Henochowicz speaks out: art student who lost her eye after being shot by Israeli tear gas canister in West Bank protest discusses her life, her art, and why she plans to return

JUAN GONZALEZ: Today, a Democracy Now! global broadcast exclusive interview with Emily Henochowicz, who—you may remember her name. She’s the twenty-one-year-old American art student who lost her eye in May after being shot in the face by an Israeli tear gas canister.

Emily is entering her senior year at Cooper Union’s prestigious art program here in New York City. This past spring, she chose to study abroad in Israel at a leading art school in Jerusalem. Emily holds Israeli citizenship. Her father was born in Israel, and her grandparents are Holocaust survivors. Soon after she arrived in Israel, Emily began spending time in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. And many of her drawings began to reflect the harsh realities of Palestinian life in the Occupied Territories.

AMY GOODMAN: On May 31st, news broke that Israeli commandoes had attacked a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in the Mediterranean and killed nine activists onboard. Emily decided to take part in a protest against the Israeli assault, and she joined demonstrators at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the West Bank. Israeli border police began firing tear gas canisters at the protesters. One of them hit Emily in the face and blasted her left eye out of her head. Several bones in her face were crushed. She was rushed to the hospital, but her eye could not be saved.

The Israeli Defense Ministry said, well, according to preliminary checks, the border police dealt lawfully with the protest and that the firing of tear gas was justified. But witnesses and a Ha’aretz journalist who was there said Israeli forces fired directly at the demonstrators, rather than into the air in accordance with regulations. The Israeli police have begun a criminal investigation.

Meanwhile, Emily is back here in the United States recovering from her injuries, but her left eye is gone forever. Last week, Israel refused to pay her medical bills of $3,700 for the treatment she received at the hospital in Jerusalem. The government claims she was not intentionally shot and said she had endangered herself by participating in the demonstration.

Well, Emily Henochowicz is now here in New York getting ready to enter her senior year at Cooper Union, not far from our studios, and she joins us here in our studio for her first broadcast interview.

Welcome, Emily, to Democracy Now!

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Hi.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back in time. How you ended up in Israel?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Well, you know, I was just like any junior in college wanting to go on an exchange program, and I really liked the program that Bezalel had, and I went for that reason. It really wasn’t for any kind of political reason that I ended up there.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what happened when you got to school there?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Well, the problem is, they gave us three weeks off for Pesach, which was just enough time to really go around and not just read about what’s going on with the settlers and the wall and all these things, but to actually go out there and see it. And I just opened my eyes and started getting involved.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And you started getting involved in protest movements or in support movements for the Palestinians? Exactly how did you get involved?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah, so, it’s sort of a mixture. I mean, I had gone to a number of demonstrations at places where—like at Nabi Salah, where they were trying to get their water supply back, and every week they have a demonstration where they try to go to their well. And then there’s, you know, Bil’in, with the wall. And I spent a lot of time in Sheikh Jarrah, because I’ve joined the ISM and they have a tent there that they the keep someone in the tent twenty-four hours a day to kind of check to make sure that the settlers at the outpost don’t do anything crazy, and if they do, that there’s international witnesses there to document, at least.

AMY GOODMAN: Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You were drawing pictures there?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: I mean, I guess—I mean, I draw pictures kind of everywhere. I don’t know. I definitely sketched a lot when I was there.

AMY GOODMAN: By the way, we’re going to show some of your pictures, and we’re going to post them on our website at democracynow.org.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: OK, great.

AMY GOODMAN: By the way, “Thirsty Pixels,” your blog—

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you call it “Thirsty Pixels”?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Because what kills computers keeps us alive.

AMY GOODMAN: And how do thirsty pixels kill computers?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Because water kills a computer. That’s—but these pixels, they want water. That’s why.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about your evolution then. You’re in Sheikh Jarrah. You’re seeing things.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, where you come from, your parents are—your grandparents were Holocaust survivors?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: And your father, an Israeli citizen?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: They went from—where were they in the concentration—did they—were they in concentration camps?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: No, they weren’t in concentration camps. My grandparents, they’re from Poland. And they—I don’t know the full story, but I do know that they were all around Europe trying to find a place where they could just live and that there was no place where they could really be. And they were really ardent Zionists, and they came to Israel, lived there for ten years.

AMY GOODMAN: And your dad, born there?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Mm-hmm.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of your transformation, as your father was here in the United States—was he aware? Were you communicating with him, while you were there, of how you were changing your perspective or viewpoints on what was going on in Israel and the Occupied Territories?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: You know, I found it very difficult at first to tell my parents that I had been to the West Bank and that, you know, that I’m drinking tea with Palestinians. But, of course, I had to tell them. But it took me like a month to really get to it. My dad reacted, you know, like a concerned father, but also felt that somehow I was personally attacking him by, you know, going to all these things. But he came around, really, so…

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to break and then come back and find out how he came around. And also, here you are protesting at checkpoints, and your grandfather actually was a border guard many years ago. But we’ll ask you about that after break.

This is Democracy Now! We’re talking to Emily Henochowicz, twenty-one-year-old art student here in New York, Cooper Union, lost her eye in May when she was in the West Bank protesting the Israeli commando attack on the Gaza aid flotilla. Back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our exclusive this hour, our broadcast exclusive, is an interview today with Emily Henochowicz, twenty-one-year-old art student here in New York at the prestigious Cooper Union. She lost her eye in May after being shot in the face by an Israeli tear gas canister.

Emily, before we go to that moment, your grandfather was a border guard?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah. I don’t know very much more about that, but I do know that he was a border policeman when he was in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: So talk about May 31st, 2010. Where were you?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: I had stayed at the ISM apartment in Ramallah. And—

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the International Solidarity Movement.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah, the International Solidary Movement. And I got a call that morning. And, of course, the numbers were completely inflated that morning, like twenty-one people were killed on a flotilla or whatever. But basically, there was going to be a demonstration starting in Ramallah, and we were all going to hold all these flags from all the different countries that people had represented from the flotilla. And so, I went out to that demonstration.

AMY GOODMAN: And this was the Gaza aid flotilla—

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —of ships that were coming to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah. And, well, the PA kind of closed the demonstration down from Ramallah, but we continued it at the Qalandiya checkpoint, which is between Jerusalem and Ramallah, so—and from there, I guess I had this notion that because we were protesting deaths, that somehow it—that tear gas wouldn’t be used in that kind of manner. I thought maybe it would be more of a, quote-unquote, “Israel proper” kind of demonstration, where they don’t use the same kind of violence against demonstrators. But I was mistaken.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Give us a sense of what actually happened, in terms of how many people were there at the protest. What—was it largely of Israelis or ISM folks, or was it Palestinians? And then what transpired, in other words, from the beginning of the protest to the time that they began firing the tear gas canisters?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Well, of course, it was a Palestinian-organized demonstration. There were mostly Palestinians there. There weren’t—there wasn’t that large of a group when I was there, because it had kind of—we had packed up and moved from before, where there were more people. And there were a few Israeli peace activists. And I was there with a friend from ISM, and I think there were two other people who I had just met, who had just joined ISM, who were also there that morning.

And what was it that you wanted to—

JUAN GONZALEZ: And then, what happened just in the period before the Israeli soldiers began firing their tear gas canisters?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Well, Jonathan Pollak like climbed up on this fence and put a Palestinian and Turkish flag up at the checkpoint.

AMY GOODMAN: And he is another ISM member?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: No, he’s an Israeli peace activist.

AMY GOODMAN: Oh, the Israeli peace activist.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: And after they had put the flags up, the border policemen came, and they took the flags down. And at one point, a few Palestinian boys by the wall started throwing just trash from the ground. And at that point, the border policemen started firing tear gas.

AMY GOODMAN: And where were you?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: I was—this kind of area where there were a few barricades. It’s hard—I don’t know—hard to say without a map. But, you know, here’s the wall right here. Here’s Qalandiya checkpoint. I’m somewhere over here.

AMY GOODMAN: You were standing in a group of people. And you saw them starting to fire?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: You know, I didn’t see them firing. I saw it starting to land. And so, I was trying to find out where it was coming from so that I could get away from it. But it must have been very close, because I just—it just felt like there was no time between it landing—between seeing it and it landing for you to actually find out where it was coming from.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I think one of the articles that was written afterwards quoted you as saying to a friend, “I didn’t expect to have this kind of trouble. Maybe I should move away from here,” or something like that.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Well, I—you know, I noticed that it was starting to get dangerous. And I had just, you know, started talking to my parents, and really, they were just saying, “You know, Emily, just please don’t do anything dangerous.” And there I am. And I’m like, “This is getting dangerous. I told my parents I wouldn’t do this. Oh, gosh!” So, it was one of those kinds of moments. So, a little kind of crunch, and then, that was it, so…

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, a “kind of crunch”?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: I don’t know. It was just sort of a bizarre sensation when it hit me in the face.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you understand what had happened?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah. I mean, I didn’t lose consciousness.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened then?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Well, at that point, I was—I think this is who had done this. This woman, Nariman Tamimi—I think that’s her name—and she came and ran into the—ran into the gas and the firing and grabbed me before I could reach the ground. And she—and put—she has this little magical backpack with all these medical supplies, and she put gauze on my face, and she got all these other people there around me. And they brought me on a—they brought me on a truck, and they rushed into the Ramallah hospital. And, you know, from there, I guess, yeah, the rest is history.

AMY GOODMAN: So you were brought first into a Palestinian hospital?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Right, in Ramallah, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And then?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: And then I was transferred to Hadassah hospital. And I went on an ambulance. And then, of course, I had to go on another ambulance, because we had to go through the checkpoint.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Well, because a Palestinian ambulance can’t pass through the border, because Palestinians from the West Bank aren’t allowed into Israel. So they took me out of that ambulance, put me in another amulance, and then continued the journey to Hadassah.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And the treatment that—once you got to the Hadassah hospital, did any Israeli officials try to question you or try to detain you at all?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: No. I mean, try to detain me? I mean, I don’t think that I had done anything criminal by being injured, but—

AMY GOODMAN: Your dad came?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: My dad did come.

AMY GOODMAN: He’s a doctor here in the United States?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah. And he spent the whole week there with me in the hospital. And a lot of people came to visit. I know that Nariman wanted to visit me, but she couldn’t, of course, because she—

AMY GOODMAN: The woman who had first—

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yeah, I think that she—

AMY GOODMAN: —helped you.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: —is such a—I mean, she’s a real hero. And she—you know, she’s from Nabi Salah, and because it’s Area C, and they don’t allow a lot of the building permits in that area, there’s a demolition order on her house. And she has to go through all this stuff, where she is constantly fighting this and not getting—you know, and like so many Palestinians, not really getting a voice about it. And I was there in the hospital, and so many people just came and showed me so much love. Some of the people from Sheikh Jarrah came, and just a bunch of my friends and everything. And it was great, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What kind of response have you gotten from the Israeli Jewish community and the Jewish community here at home?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: I guess it’s mixed. I did anger a rabbi, I suppose. But I think that—like, some of the—I mean, the people that I’ve talked to understand that I’m coming to this from a humanitarian standpoint, and that because the Holocaust memory is third generation for me, I can distance myself from that urgent need for a Jewish homeland and that kind of feeling of insecurity, and I can look at—and I can look at the situation and see that there are some basic inequalities going on.

AMY GOODMAN: Emily, you’re an artist.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Since as long as you can remember—

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Basically.

AMY GOODMAN: —you have been drawing. What does it mean to lose your eye?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: I don’t know. It’s hard to pinpoint it. I always—I had always been so fussy about my eyes. You know, I always wanted my prescription to be perfect, and I was scared of getting Lasik surgery, because I didn’t want anything to happen to my eyes. Because I really—I am a visual artist, I really—I’m always, like, observing things and drawing about what I’m observing. But I’ve realized that you only really need one eye. And it hasn’t stopped me from being able to do my work, from walking around, and just being a normal person. In a way, I have this kind of new appreciation for depth, because everything is a little bit—because now that my depth perception kind of is weakened, it means that when I’m looking at something two-dimensional, I don’t have that stereo cue to tell me that it’s actually two-dimensional. I can kind of—I can appreciate it more for its three-dimensional quality. So that’s kind of nice, but…

AMY GOODMAN: Today you’re not wearing glasses.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: No.

AMY GOODMAN: But you have painted over your glasses on the—where your left eye was.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Describe your glasses to us.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: You know, it’s really—there’s not much. It’s just really that I had gone to the surgeon, and I was asking him, you know, “Do I need an eye patch? What should I do?” And he put tape over my glasses. And when the tape started to peel, and I tried to put it back on, I just-–I just said, “Eh, whatever.” And I took out some markers and just started doodling on them. It was really nothing more than that, just a kind of very quick decision.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And you’ve had some differences with your surgeon in terms of long-term treatment, in terms of how you’re going to deal with the loss of your eye in the future?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: I don’t know. I mean, I guess, for me, like I understand that a prosthetic is only for cosmetic reasons. And I might still want to have one, but I guess I just feel like I am not—that this is who I am, that I don’t have two eyes. And I feel strange having the idea of people looking at me, looking deeply into my eyes, and me knowing that they’re looking at a piece of plastic or glass, you know? But he’s been a great surgeon. He did really, really good work on me, and he’s given me really great care. So it’s just more on a philosophical basis, maybe, that we disagree.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to say, we did call the Israeli embassy, and we asked them to join us. They declined an interview, but they did send us a statement that said, quote, “We express our deepest sympathy with Emily Henochowicz on her injury. Ambassador Oren and embassy officials have met privately with Emily and her family. We wish to stress that this unfortunate incident is currently undergoing investigation. This investigation will be thorough and transparent. It should be noted that the demonstration began as an illegal protest, which turned violent and had to be dispersed with anti-demonstration means. Emily retains her full right to legal remedy, as well as any claims with her insurance company.” That’s the statement of the Israeli embassy.

What do they mean, your insurance company? Who’s paying for what happened to you?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Well, I mean, the hospital bill, we haven’t actually signed the check yet, because we’re still hoping that we can get Israel to pay for what had happened to me. But everything I’ve been getting in America has, of course, been under my insurance and out of pocket.

AMY GOODMAN: But so far, they will not pay?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: No, no. So far, no.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And when they say that there’s an investigation, has anyone interviewed you or talked to you about what happened that day from the Israeli government?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: I did—I had this investigation, this—I’m forgetting the word. Like a week ago, they talked to me. But I don’t know. It didn’t seem very thorough to me, because I was expecting, you know, “Where were you standing? Where were they standing? You know, how far were the border policemen from you?” I thought those would be the kinds of criteria for the questions. But it seemed—they seem to be much more interested in why I came to Israel and how my time at Hadassah was. So, I don’t know. We’ll see.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you plan to return to Israel or the West Bank?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Definitely, definitely.

AMY GOODMAN: You also have Israeli citizenship?

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: I do. They haven’t taken that, so… You know, my heart has been there, and now that I have been changed physically for my whole entire life, I have to go back there. It is part of me, you know? And those people—I must say that one reason that I’ve felt so strongly about supporting the Palestinians is that they’ve been so incredibly friendly and open to me and other internationals—just really warm people. And I really just—I want to give them my love, you know? So I have to go back.

AMY GOODMAN: Emily Henochowicz, I want to thank you very much for being with us.

EMILY HENOCHOWICZ: Thanks.

AMY GOODMAN: Twenty-one-year-old student here in New York, Cooper Union, going into her senior year, lost her eye in May after being shot in the face by an Israeli tear gas canister. She was protesting in the West Bank on the day that the Israeli commandos killed members of the Gaza aid flotilla onboard those ships headed to Gaza. That does it for our show. Her art can be seen at thirstypixels.blogspot.com, and we’ll link to them at democracynow.org.

Emily Henochowicz Speaks Out: Art Student Who Lost Her Eye After Being Shot by Israeli Tear Gas Canister in West Bank Protest Discusses Her Life, Her Art, and Why She Plans to Return

No celebration of occupation: 1,500 artists and writers sign letter protesting Toronto Film Festival decision to spotlight Tel Aviv

Democracy Now

14 September 2009

A protest at the Toronto International Film Festival has taken center stage after a group of artists and writers signed a letter of protest against the festival’s decision to spotlight the city of Tel Aviv. Activists say the TIFF spotlight plays into Israel’s attempt to improve its global image in the wake of the assault on the Gaza Strip and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian land. Over 1,500 people have signed the letter, called “The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation,” including Jane Fonda, Viggo Mortensen, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte. We speak with journalist and author Naomi Klein, who helped draft the letter.

AMY GOODMAN: The Toronto International Film Festival is renowned as one of the world’s top cinematic events, the staging ground for the top films in any given year. But since the festival’s opening last week, a protest over the Israel-Palestine conflict has taken center stage. At issue is the festival’s decision to host a showcase on Israeli films from Tel Aviv for its inaugural City-to-City program. Palestinian activists say the TIFF spotlight plays into Israel’s attempt to improve its global image in the wake of the assault on the Gaza Strip and the ongoing occupation of Palestinian land.

In the weeks before the festival, a group of artists and writers drafted a letter of protest against the Tel Aviv spotlight. The letter is called “The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation.” It says, in part, quote, “Whether intentionally or not, [TIFF] has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine…We do not protest the individual Israeli filmmakers…nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF. However, especially in the wake of this year’s brutal assault on Gaza, we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of…an apartheid regime,” unquote.

The declaration has attracted over 1,500 signatories, including actors Jane Fonda, Viggo Mortensen and Danny Glover, musician David Byrne, and the actor and musician Harry Belafonte. But it’s been met with scathing criticism and accusations of anti-Semitism. Supporters of the Israeli government have accused the Toronto Declaration members of a slew of false charges, including that they want to boycott Israeli films and even the entire festival itself.

Well, the journalist Naomi Klein was one the original authors of the Toronto Declaration. She joins us now in our firehouse studio.
Naomi, just lay out the whole conflict and how you got involved and what this declaration is.

NAOMI KLEIN: Absolutely, and I’ll just—thanks for having me back, Amy. I just want to make one tiny correction, which is that the letter doesn’t call Israel an apartheid state. It says that this is a state that many respected people have described as an apartheid state, like Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu. So it invokes them, and it quotes them.

And I think that’s an important distinction, because what we’re trying to pull out in this letter is that this is a controversial decision, and the people who have signed it are saying exactly what the declaration is called, that they don’t believe this is a time of celebration, that the forty-two-year occupation continues. But moreover, this is the year that began, in January, with bombs and missiles falling on Gaza, leading to the deaths of an estimated 1,400 people, many of them children. There’s been no accountability for those crimes. Israel continues to refuse to cooperate even with a basic UN fact-finding mission led by the respected South African judge Richard Goldstone.

So, we’re very clear: this is not about whether or not there are Israeli films at the Toronto International Film Festival. Every year there are. Of course there should be. They’re welcome. If the films are wonderful, they should win honors. What’s happening at the Toronto International Film Festival this year is that not films, but a city is being honored, the city of Tel Aviv. The mayor of Tel Aviv is in Toronto being feted, because this is seen as something that’s really good for Israeli tourism. So this is really departing from the realm of arts and entering the realm of politics and industry in this decision to grant this honor and this privilege to the city of Tel Aviv, so that’s what people started objecting to it. And it wasn’t us who started it; it was Palestinians who rejected to the granting of this special status, this honored status, for the state of Israel in this year’s festival.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain why the Toronto International Film Festival is celebrating Tel Aviv.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, this is a very—this is a controversial question. Cameron Bailey, the co-director of the festival, says that it was entirely his decision, that there was no political interference, and we take him at his word. He’s very respected in the film community. But what we are saying is that, whether knowingly or not, this decision fits in with a campaign, a very aggressive campaign, that has been launched by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to use culture really as a weapon to distract attention from the occupation and from the allegations of war crimes in Gaza, but even before the Gaza attack.

And what’s interesting is that in—Toronto has been selected to test market something that is called “Brand Israel,” the rebranding of Israel. And this is because Toronto has really been a kind of a battleground. It has a very strong Palestinian community and solidarity community. It also has a very large and active Jewish community. And it’s been a battle zone. So, actually, Canada has more Israeli diplomats than any other country in the world, because this—including the United States, despite our relatively small population, because the Israeli government sees Canada as a very important battleground, as a very important testing ground. So Toronto has been selected to sort of test-drive this rebranding campaign for Israel.

And, you know, it’s not our imagination; it’s not a quiet conspiracy. We’ve read about this in the New York Times and Reuters reports. And I’ll just give you one example. A couple of months after the attack on Gaza, as we remember, this was really a turning point in terms of world opinion with regards to Israel. There were protests around the world. In London, there were an estimated 100,000 people in the streets condemning Israel’s actions. Opinion polls were showing a plummeting of support. And more and more people were starting to talk about using tactics like the tactics that were used against South Africa during the apartheid years, saying that there has to be strategies beyond just talk. And so, it was in this context that a top official in Israel’s Foreign Ministry said—and this was quoted in the New York Times—“We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater company exhibits. This way, you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.”

And so, this has been playing out at a lot of cultural festivals, and you’ve covered this on the show before. The Paris Book Fair, which is an enormously important book festival, had a special spotlight on Israel for its sixtieth birthday a couple of years ago. The Turin Book Fair also did. But this—and there were protests, but they were much quieter than what’s happened now in Toronto, and that’s because of Gaza, I would say. It’s because now, because of the year that we’re in, because of the continued impunity for Israeli war crimes, people are drawing a line and saying this is no time to celebrate.

AMY GOODMAN: Respond to Ivan Reitman, the film director, who said, “Film is essentially about telling global stories, of exploring the complexities and contradictions of the human condition. Any attempt to silence that conversation, to hijack the festival for any political agenda in the end, only serves to silence artistic voices.”

NAOMI KLEIN: You know, I would actually agree with that statement, but it isn’t us who did that. We didn’t politicize the festival. We objected to the politicization of the festival. We’re not trying to silence anyone, but simply voicing our opposition to the festival’s decision to grant Israel this special status.

You know, when—we looked into this whole rebranding strategy. Jewish Voices for Peace, the terrific anti-occupation, San Francisco-based organization, jvp.org, they’ve done a—produced this great document, a fact check of all the lies that are being spread about our campaign that I really urge people to look up. But they talk about—they have some documents talking about this rebranding campaign and the goals of it. And they quote a top PR official in Israel, saying that the real goal is to create “a narrative of normalcy”—that’s a quote—“a narrative of normalcy around Israel.” So, you can have a tiny little compartment where you can criticize Israel’s actions in Gaza or the expansion of settlements, but when it comes to every other part of Israeli society, we have to act like nothing is going on; we should, of course, celebrate Tel Aviv in a film festival and at book festivals, and so on, and promote Israeli tourism.

So what has happened with TIFF is that—TIFF is the film festival—that—

AMY GOODMAN: Toronto International Film—

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah—is that they convinced themselves that it was normal just to have a celebration for the city of Tel Aviv in this of all years. And when people objected to that, led by Palestinians, they turned around and said, “You’re politicizing the film festival,” because I think they have really convinced themselves that there is nothing abnormal about this decision. And we’re saying, if this were any other country, it would be so obvious that this was a political decision that amounts to taking sides in a conflict.

And to just give you one example, imagine that this year the Toronto International Film Festival had decided to have a cinematic spotlight, a cinematic homage, as Ha’aretz described this program, on the city of Colombo, with the full blessing of the Sri Lankan government, overwhelmingly Sinhalese-dominated, not a single Tamil director, just as there’s not a single Palestinian director in this spotlight. Now, Toronto has a huge population—a huge Tamil population, very active. They would have been protesting outside, because it would have been perceived as a sort of a whitewash in a year that the Sri Lankan government rightly stands accused of war crimes.

For some reason, Israel is supposed to be the exception, and we are accused of singling out Israel. But, in fact, what we’re doing—and when you look at the people who have signed our letter, like Howard Zinn, Harry Belafonte, Eve Ensler, these are people who have devoted their lives to applying human rights standards across the board. They’re not singling out Israel. What they’re saying is, we insist on applying the same standards that we apply to every other country to Israel, as well. And just as we wouldn’t celebrate another country that stands accused of war crimes, we don’t believe it’s apolitical to celebrate Israel.

And there’s been this insistence—and I don’t think it’s a misunderstanding; I think it’s a strategy—to turn this into a debate over censorship, because everybody hates censors. You know, everybody wants to celebrate world cinema and so on. Nobody is calling for the boycott of TIFF. Nobody is trying to silence any films. But it’s much easier to sort of try to derail the conversation and turn it into a censorship battle, and that’s what the quote you just read is trying to do very deliberately.

AMY GOODMAN: So you have these quotes. You have one of the signers of the Toronto Declaration, Viggo Mortensen, who says—let’s see if I can find the quote—“The statement does not promote the boycotting or censorship of any artist or movie from Israel or anywhere else. Those who have attacked the statement with that accusation are simply spreading misinformation and, unfortunately, continuing the ongoing successful distraction from the issue at hand: the Israeli government’s whitewashing of their illegal and inhumane actions inside and outside their legal national borders.”

And then you have the award-winning filmmaker Robert Lantos, who says, “We are not talking about the West Bank or the Golan Heights here[, but] the biggest population centre in the heart of Israel, where the first neighborhood was built in 1887. If that is…‘disputed’ territory, then Ms. Klein and her armchair storm troopers are clamouring for nothing short of the annihilation of the Jewish State. They are effectively Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s local fifth column.”

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, it’s been a fun week, I have to say. Yeah, that’s actually the most powerful man in Canadian film and media saying that. And it’s an extraordinary lie, on every level. I mean, there are so many lies in that statement.
The reason why we are—we’re not singling out Tel Aviv; the festival singled out Tel Aviv, and it’s acting as if this is an apolitical decision. When you read the program, it says Tel Aviv is the economic and cultural center of Israel and doesn’t mention occupation once, actually doesn’t mention Palestinians once. It’s just this sort of light, frothy, breezy discussion of a city filled with cafes. And it even says—there’s an interview with one of the filmmakers, who talks about Tel Aviv is a place where you can go when you don’t want to think about the conflict twenty-four/seven. So it’s really this idea that you can not—you can sort of lift Tel Aviv out of the context of Israel, out of the context of the conflict, and just turn it into this apolitical space. The Defense Ministry is located in Tel Aviv. Fighter jets, during the bombing of Gaza, departed from the air force, very close to Tel Aviv. And people protested, Israeli peace activists protested, at the airbase to try to reach the pilots and tell them, you know, “What you’re going—about to do is commit war crimes.” You can’t lift Tel Aviv out of Israel. And the idea that by objecting to the spotlight we’re objecting to the existence of Tel Aviv, which is what he’s saying, is just diversion on a mass scale.

And it’s very, very unfortunate, because, as you said, you know, people like Jane Fonda have signed the letter, and the most dishonest smear campaign has been launched, directed at them. There was a headline on a bunch of gossip sites, like TMZ and Perez Hilton, last week that literally said Jane Fonda calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, which is so absurd. This is somebody who’s supported a two-state solution her whole life. And this is not a misunderstanding, once again. This is about discrediting everyone who dares to speak out on Israel, who dares to reject this narrative of normalcy. And the truth really appears not to matter.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, we’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Naomi Klein, journalist, author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo. She helped launch the “No Celebration of Occupation” protest at the Toronto International Film Festival that’s taking place as we speak. This is Democracy Now! Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: We are joined by Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo. She has a cover story of Harper’s Magazine, as well as a big piece in The Guardian in Britain.

Naomi, you went to Gaza earlier this summer to witness the aftermath of the Israeli attack on Gaza. I wanted to play the comments of Jessica Montell, executive director of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Last week the group released a report on the toll from the Gaza assault. The report backs Palestinian findings that over half the 1,400 Palestinian victims were civilians, including 240 children.

JESSICA MONTELL: The discrepancy between what the Israeli army has reported and what B’Tselem’s research has revealed is quite disturbing. The most blatant example, regarding children under the age of sixteen, the Israeli military has claimed that eighty-nine Palestinian children under sixteen were killed in Operation Cast Lead. B’Tselem visited families, took death certificates, testimonies, other information from the families on 240 Palestinian children under sixteen killed.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Jessica Montell of B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group. Naomi, you recently came back from Gaza, and just before we go to your piece on Jews, blacks, and the, quote, “post-racial” presidency in Harper’s, I want to ask you about that trip.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, in many ways, this—for me, this is why I’m involved in this whole mess around the Toronto International Film Festival, because when I was in Gaza, I was so—I was so struck by the fact that Gazans felt that people had forgotten them.
And I was told something that really stayed with me. I was working with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. They were taking me around, and we had a discussion with a group of NGO leaders, women’s rights leaders. And one of the things that was said to me was that there was actually more hope during the attack, which seemed—than there was now, than there was in the aftermath, which just blindsided me. I mean, how could you say that? How could you say that there was more hope while bombs and missiles were falling, when those children were being killed, than there is now?

And the answer was that when Gazans turned on their televisions—you know, in any kind of war, people who can are watching television to try to get any kind of information they can, or listen to the radio—and in addition to the carnage that they were hearing about, there were also hearing reports of a world enraged. They were hearing about those protesters in London, in cities around the world, just rejecting Israel’s actions, not buying that this was a defensive war. They heard reports of women in my city, in Toronto, occupying the consul general’s office. Jewish women did this and stayed, and it was an incredible action. And so, what I was told by people who I spoke to in Gaza was that there was a feeling that if they could survive these horrific attacks, this would be the turning point, that people were seeing the lawlessness, the brutality of the occupation, and there would be a demand for a new era, that the siege on Gaza, for instance, would have to be lifted.

Here they were, six months later, now eight months later, and the illegal siege on Gaza continued. There was no justice on the way. I mean, Gaza was—it felt to me like a massive crime scene, but that was being tampered with because the police hadn’t shown up. And just the outrage that such brutality, such open brutality, hadn’t led to any kind of justice. And that’s really what struck with me.

So when I got back to the city where I live, Toronto, and found out that we were planning to throw a big party for the state of Israel at our premier cultural event, the Toronto International Film Festival, that’s what prompted me to get involved in this protest, not that I enjoy being called Ahmadinejad’s fifth column—I really don’t—but, you know, I feel a sort of moral responsibility, having witnessed this sense from so many people in Gaza that these terrible crimes that we just heard about from B’Tselem had been forgotten and that there was no justice.

And when governments fail, you know, when the international community fails, when the UN fails to bring justice, then people have to step in and fill that vacuum. And that’s happened in the past, and it’s going to happen again. And this is, I think, why there is such an incredible fear and backlash against attempts to put other kinds of pressure on the state of Israel, not to just leave it up to Obama to talk to Netanyahu and hope that it works out. You know, people are seeing the failure of just high-level moral suasion.
And we know that there are other tools in the diplomatic arsenal, besides just talk, you know, besides just Obama suggesting to Netanyahu that maybe he shouldn’t build more settlements and Netanyahu proceeding to ignore him. There’s billions in military aid. There are all of these honors that are given to countries and all of these relationships, and all of them are treated as—when it comes to Israel, as completely untouchable. And there is an international movement that’s growing that is saying, actually, they’re not untouchable. We need to use all of these levers in the case of Israel, just as we have the right to use them in the case of any other country that refuses to abide by international law.

Fmr. Congressmember Cynthia McKinney back in U.S. after being detained and deported from Israel

Democracy Now

8 July 2009

Guests:

Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman and the 2008 Green Party presidential candidate.

Adam Shapiro, documentary filmmaker, human rights activist and Palestinian rights activist. Adam was a co-founder of the ISM in Palestine. He was filming the voyage of the Arion for the Free Gaza Movement last week.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member Cynthia McKinney arrived back in the United States Tuesday following her deportation from Israel. McKinney was one of 21 activists seized by the Israeli military in international waters last week as they tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. Also aboard the Free Gaza boat was Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire. Last week’s trip was the Free Gaza movement’s first since it aborted an attempt in January after the Israeli navy threatened to shoot the civilian passengers on board. That sailing had come just weeks after an Israeli Navy vessel deliberately rammed another of its boats, almost forcing it to sink. Cynthia McKinney joins us now in Washington D.C. We are joined here at the Firehouse by Adam Shapiro. He was filming the Free Gaza trip last week. He is a Palestinian human rights activist and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. Both former Congress member McKinney and Adam were detained for the past week and just deported back to the United States.

Cynthia McKinney why did you go? What happened to you in the Israeli jail?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I went because there’s a gross injustice being carried out everyday. This is my second attempt to get into Gaza with the Free Gaza organization. And for the two times I attempted to get in, two times I have been thwarted by the Israeli military. The cause is the human rights of the Palestinian people. The world saw the operation Cast Lead where the United States supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, DIME weapons, were rained down on the defenseless people of Gaza. Of course, we desperately wanted to get in to take humanitarian relief supplies. And both times I have tried to go with Free Gaza, they’ve been thwarted—we have been supported thwarted by the Israeli military.

AMY GOODMAN: Now were you on one of the boats that was rammed?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I was on the Dignity. And yes it was rammed in international waters…

AMY GOODMAN: When was this?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: ..This was in December, just a day or so after the outbreak of Operation Cast Lead. I was contacted by Free Gaza and asked to go within 24 hours and I said, yes, I would go.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a comment made last week by Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev who dismissed the humanitarian mission of the Free Gaza Movement.

MARK REGEV: Israel every day is allowing humanitarian support to reach the people of Gaza. Food stuffs, medicines, energy and so forth. This boat was not about that. This boat was about political activists who have been apologists for the Hamas regime who have nothing whatsoever to say about Hamas’s brutal treatment of the people of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member McKinney, your response?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, clearly, we just had a visit to Gaza by President Carter, Former President Carter. Basically, he acknowledged that with the complete and utter devastation that the people of Gaza experienced at the hands of weapons that were supplied to Israel by the United States, he said that unfortunately the Palestinians are treated worse than human beings. I challenge the Israelis to respond to what President Carter had to say.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member McKinney, tell us about the jail. Were you able to reach the Obama administration while you were there?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, the jail was very interesting. In fact, the first most interesting thing I witnessed was the seemingly endless stream of people of color who are being processed as we were being processed. And on my cell block, there were women from Africa and Asia who thought they were going to Israel because Israel was the Holy Land. And many of them, not all of them, but many of them had United Nations refugee status. They have been certified by UNHCR as refugees, but what they were told as they faced the threats and intimidation from the police is that the United Nations is not in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Shapiro, you are Palestinian rights activist long known for this. You were on the boat. You were roughed up, you were filming when the Israeli military came on board. Describe what happened.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, they boarded us, four zodiac ships as well as eight naval warships, they surrounded our boat and can immediately towards the wheel house where I was along with the captain and one other crew member. I was documenting the whole trip and filming as they boarded the ship. Two soldiers came after me immediately, recognizing I think that they don’t want any footage of what was happening and they don’t want the world to know how they behave. I tried to keep the camera as long as I could. But I was pummeled repeatedly in the back and arms and choked and eventually they got the camera out of my hands. They have since taken all of our tapes, all of our flashcards and all of that, so we don’t have a record to show the world of what happened on board. The rest of the time we were detained in one room of the ship as we spent the better part of six hours navigating back to an Israeli port where we were processed and ultimately jailed.

AMY GOODMAN: There was another Al-Jazeera reporter on board as well ?

ADAM SHAPIRO: There was an Al-Jazeera reporter and cameramen. They lost all of their footage and camera as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Their computer was taken?

ADAM SHAPIRO: Yes, it was taken, completely reformatted and erased. And so again, we don’t seem to have a record to show the world what happened.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response to Israeli Spokesperson Regev?

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well Mark Regev is known for his colorful descriptions of how great life is in Gaza as far as Israel is concerned. However, all of the reporting, including the most recent International Committee for the Red Cross, shows the number of trucks Israel is allowing into Gaza is completely insufficient for what is needed. And so yes, it is true, he can say Israel allows foodstuffs and medicines to get in, but two trucks a day or 20 trucks a day is far inferior to what is needed. And we have seen, since the international outcry following January’s attack has subsided the number of trucks Israel has allowed in has decreased. And so, what we are saying, Free Gaza is a humanitarian effort to bring in the kinds of medicines and foods that are needed. But the Free Gaza movement is also a political organization in the sense we are human rights organization, And human rights for Palestinians is inherently political. And we are challenging Israel politically too, and this week I think has been a success for those of us who are fighting for Palestinian rights. We were not able to get into Gaza but we have shown the world the true colors of the Israeli occupation, and the double standard by which the United States and other countries are dealing with Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member McKinney, we only have ten seconds. But, you’ve just been deported. What are your plans right now?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, I would like to see the children of Gaza have the coloring books and crayons that we had on board with us. I would like to see the houses that have been destroyed rebuilt. I would like to see the lives rebuilt for the people of Gaza and I would like to see the people of Palestine have, and enjoy their human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think president Obama is headed in that direction?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I think you can probably answer that as well as we can, because while we were in detention, the Foreign Ministry of Ireland made protests and asked the government of Israel to release its nationals, several Members of Parliament

AMY GOODMAN: …We have 5 seconds….

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: from the United Kingdom…

AMY GOODMAN: … 5 seconds….

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: …also wanted to censure Israel. Nothing from the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Cynthia McKinney, Adam Shapiro, Thank you so much. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire speaks from Israeli jail cell after arrest on boat delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza

Democracy Now

2 July 2009

Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire speaks to us from her jail cell in Israel. She was taken into custody along with twenty others, including former US Congress member Cynthia McKinney, when the Israeli military boarded their ship in international waters as it tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We begin today with the latest news of the ship that was seized by the Israeli military Tuesday as it tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. Israeli forces boarded the ship and towed it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The twenty-one activists on board include former Congress member and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney and the Irish peace activist and Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire. Huwaida Arraf and Lubna Masarwa were released, while the other nineteen remain in detention.

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida Arraf is the founder of the Free Gaza movement. She joins us now on the phone from Israel.

Huwaida, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain why you took this boat trying to get to Gaza and then what happened to you on board.

HUWAIDA ARRAF: [inaudible] Hello to you all.

The purpose of our mission was to highlight to the international community that what Israel is doing to Gaza is blatantly illegal, and our government isn’t doing anything about it. Israel constantly claims that their policies are based on security, but what they’re doing—imposing collective punishment on an entire civilian population.

We were carrying on our very, very small boat some medical aid, some rebuilding supplies, because after the January—December-January assault on Gaza, thousands of homes have been destroyed, tens of hospitals and schools all demolished. And, you know, the donor community supposedly pledged [inaudible] Gaza, but no one is saying anything. Not one country is saying anything about the fact [inaudible] the entire Gaza Strip, and not one bag of cement [inaudible]—

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida, we’re going to interrupt for a minute, because, Juan, it sounds like we have someone else from a jail cell in Israel.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, it sounds like we have Mairead Maguire, the Nobel Prize winner, on the phone from her jail cell.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Thank you very much, indeed. Thank you.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you tell us what is going on right now with you and the others who are being detained?

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Yes. We have just been locked into our cells now for a couple of hours. We are currently going through their process. We are being charged with entering illegally into Israeli—near Israeli shores. We are going, it looks like, to be deported from Israel. We did not choose to come to Israel. Our little boat was boarded by the navy combat soldiers, and they came in in full riot gear onto our boat when we were just twenty-five miles off the shore of Gaza. We were under gunpoint, forcibly taken to Ashdod, held in the detention center overnight. And then I was removed from Ashdod detention center, handcuffed in a military vehicle, and brought here to the prison, where we’re currently being held. All of us, all nineteen—there were twenty-one, but Huwaida and Lubna are out—but the rest of us are being held here in detention in this prison.

AMY GOODMAN: What is your response, Mairead Maguire, to Mark Regev, the Israeli spokesperson, who said aid is free to pass into Gaza?

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: No, that is wrong. I mean, we know it is not free. I mean, Gaza is like a huge prison, but—because its borders are closed. The sea pass into Gaza, which has been closed for over forty years by the Israeli government—we are only the seventh ship to get in to the port of Gaza that tried to break the siege.

And as we do that, it’s very interesting, we pass the gas fields of Gaza. You know, Gaza has huge gas deposits, which Israel is now beginning to use. So it’s very important that there is the issue of who owns the gas in the Gazan Strip. And also farmers—fishermen, who try to go out without—in about twelve miles to fish for their families, are shot up and have been killed by the Israeli navy in that area.

So, Gaza is a huge occupied territory of one-and-a-half million people who have been subjected to collective punishment by the Israeli government. That breaks the Geneva Convention, every international law in the book. And the tragedy is that the American government, the UN and Europe, they remain silent in the face of the abuse of Palestinian human rights, like the freedom, and it’s really tragic.

And it is also tragic that out of ten million Palestinians of a population, almost seven million are currently refugees out in other countries or displaced within their own country, particularly after the horrific massacre by Israeli jet fighters after just earlier this year. Twenty-two days Israel bombarded Gaza, Gazan people, civilians. And we’re not sure what kind of weapons were dropped. We need the scientists. We need people to go in to see: is it depleted uranium in the very soil of the Gazan fields now? Unfortunately, Israel does not want human rights activists in there to see what they’ve done and what they’re doing. Even the representative of [inaudible]—

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mairead Maguire—

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: —is not allowed in.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Mairead Maguire, I’d like to ask you, to your knowledge, has your government or the government of the United States, in the case of Cynthia McKinney or some of the others, attempted to visit with the detainees or to lodge protest with the Israeli government?

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Yes, we have had [inaudible] our consulates in the different governments come here to see us. And we are concerned about the five people who came from Bahrain, and—because they don’t have—their government doesn’t have the same links with Israel, and we are concerned for their safety. We have asked that all those who were—who were hijacked—we were hijacked on the seas of Gaza—that they be all given freedom and their goods returned, because we have got to look out for each other.

AMY GOODMAN: Mairead Maguire, what will happen now? And we understand that some people were injured.

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Yes, indeed. I mean, when as were the combat troops in masks and fully armed came on board our small boat, some people were injured. And even during—that happened during the day. But our life was put at risk even more, because the previous night, during the night, when we were in international waters, we were—a couple of Israeli naval ships came up around us. Over the radio, they told us if we did not turn back into Cyprus, they would shoot at our boat. They cut off our communications, including our satellite communications. So we were in grave danger of actually being killed at that point.

The second thing was, when actually the navy combat forces came on board our boat, they wouldn’t allow the captain to take the boat to Ashdod; instead, they took over. And, you know, I really thought that we were all going to drown, because when we got near, when we were sailing to Ashdod, there was heavy winds, there was water coming in, and it was—really we were in a very, very dangerous position. So we were literally hijacked, taken at gunpoint by the Israeli military. And now we are here in prison, and they are threatening to deport us. We were brought here against our will. We didn’t come here by choice, and we are not here by choice.

AMY GOODMAN: Mairead Maguire, what jail cell are—what jail are you in now?

MAIREAD MAGUIRE: We’re in Giv’on Prison, and we’re—the women here are on one side, and the men are on the other side.

AMY GOODMAN: Mairead Maguire, I want to thank you for being with us, Irish peace activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, speaking to us from her jail cell, redefining the cell phone. Huwaida Arraf before her, founder of the Free Gaza movement. Mairead is one of nineteen people who remain in jail. Huwaida just got out.