The shaky ceasefire in Gaza is entering the final days of its first phase, but the genocide of the Palestinian people has not been paused. On Feb. 25, Israeli tanks stormed Jenin, the heart of the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank, for the first time since the Second Intifada. From Donald Trump’s declarations that the US should “own” Gaza to promises to deport pro-Palestine student activists, the new administration’s intentions to accelerate the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and criminalize solidarity with Palestinians have been made clear. Abby Martin, independent journalist and host of Empire Files, joins The Real News to help analyze how war on Palestine is expanding and evolving.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome to the Real News Network and welcome back to our weekly live stream Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Fear that Israel is preparing to unleash the same people destroying population, displacing civilization, erasing force that it unleashed on Gaza for 15 months, beginning just days after Israel and Hamas began Phase one of last month’s fragile ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli military has sent troops, bulldozers, drones, helicopters, and heavy battle tanks into the Northern West Bank, United Nations. Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez said on Monday that he was gravely concerned by the rising violence in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and other violations. Palestinian writer and journalist, Miriam Bardi told democracy now this week that what we are seeing in fact is a green light of annexation. What is happening right now, she said in the West Bank is defacto annexation of lands. This Israeli offensive, the so-called Operation Iron Wall, is one of the most intense military operations in the West Bank since the height of the second Infa Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation.
Just over two decades ago, Israel’s defense minister Israel Kaz, said this week that 40,000 Palestinians have been forced out of the refugee camps in Janine Tu and Hams. All activity by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in those areas has also been stopped. Now, Katz made it clear that this is not a short-term operation. In a written statement, Katz said, I instructed the IDF to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared for the coming year, and to not allow residents to return and the terror to return and grow, we will not return to the reality that was in the past. He said, we will continue to clear refugee camps and other terror centers to dismantle the battalions and terror infrastructure of extreme Islam that was built, armed, funded, and supported by the Iranian evil axis he claimed in an attempt to establish an Eastern terror front. Now, I want you to keep those statements from Israel’s defense minister in your head as you watch this next clip. This is actually from an incredible documentary report that we filmed in the now empty Janine Refugee Camp in July of 20 23, 3 months before October 7th. The report was shot produced by shot and produced by Ross Domini, Nadia Per Do and Ahad Elbaz. Take a look.
Nadia Péridot:
The Real News Network spoke to Haniya Salameh whose son Farouk was killed by the Israeli army just days before he was due to be married.
Speaker 3:
Far
Nadia Péridot:
Like many of Janine’s residents is a refugee of the 1948 Zionist expulsion of people from across Palestine. Today, these depopulated villages either remain empty or have been raised to the ground to make way for Israel’s settlements. Palestinians are banned from returning to these
Speaker 3:
Homes
Maximillian Alvarez:
With these tanks and bulldozers rolling through the occupied West Bank right now with Israel launching new attacks in southern Syria this week with the ceasefire in Gaza, still very much in danger of collapsing before phase one of the deal is set to end on Saturday and with Donald Trump still joking that it would be best if the US took over Gaza. The bubble has officially burst on any pre inauguration hopes that people had that Trump’s presidency would somehow usher in peace in the Middle East and an end to the humanitarian horror of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from what remains of occupied historic Palestine and the United States’ support for it. Quite the opposite in fact. And not only that, but here in the so-called West the United States, Canada, Europe, we’re seeing a corresponding surge in state and institutional repression of free speech, the free press and the independent and corporate media sides speaking the truth about Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and our government’s complicity in it.
We are also seeing a surge in the criminalization of Palestine solidarity protests and attempts to classify solidarity with Palestine as support for terrorism. So listen, we need to get real about where we are right now, what we are facing, and how we can keep forging forward, fighting for what’s right and good and beautiful in times of great darkness and great danger, like the time we’re in now, fighting for peace in a world of war, fighting for life in a culture of mass death. And that is why I could not be more grateful that we’ve got the great Abby Martin on the live stream today to help us do just that. You all should know Abby by now, but in case you don’t for some reason and you’ve been living under a rock, Abby Martin is an independent journalist and host of the Empire Files, an interview and documentary series that everyone needs to watch and support.
She’s the director of the 2019 documentary, Gaza Fights for Freedom and is also directing a new documentary called Earth’s Greatest Enemy, which examines how the United States Empire is not only a primary contributor to climate change, but the central entity that imperils life on earth. Abby, thank you so much for joining us again. It’s always so great to have you back on the Real News. I want to start with the latest horrifying developments in Israel’s war on Palestine. Can you walk us through what we’re seeing and perhaps what we’re not seeing in the West Bank right now?
Abby Martin:
I mean, I think your intro did a really great job at laying out the current situation Max, and thank you for the intro. To me, that was wonderful. Look, it’s very clear that whatever ceasefire deal was negotiated, that the annexation and the green lighting of the further annexation of the West Bank was part of the sweetheart edition to that ceasefire deal. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen, just completely transition from Gaza to the West Bank where extremist settlers in tandem with Israeli soldiers are clearing out entire refugee camps and villages and at an expulsion rate that we have never frankly seen before. I mean, 40,000 Palestinians being expelled just over 35 days is just extraordinary. And this is happening almost on a daily basis. We’re at the barrel of a gun. Dozens of Palestinians are being forced and rejected from their homes. We’ve seen 60 Palestinians be killed in this timeframe.
Several children, just over the last week, we saw two Palestinian children being gunned down. This just is happening at such a rapid pace. It’s very dizzying, and it just seems like there are no measures in place whatsoever to stop this rapid annexation and this whole operation Iron Wall. It’s very clear that the ultimate goal is to clear out as much as possible and just have the plausible deniability, oh, it’s settlers. Oh, it’s Hamas fighters. Oh, well, we have to do it because of the violence that’s happening. I mean, again, if you don’t get to the root of the violence, it’s just going to erupt. It’s a tinderbox and it’s a pressure cooker. So all of the things that are happening as a result of the clearing out of these villages and refugee camps, it’s an inevitability. So you’re going to see waves of attacks, whether they be knife attacks or suicide bombings or like the inert bombs that didn’t explode and actually kill people on those buses. I mean, all of these things are inevitabilities. Once you engage on a full scale invasion and war to the native population, that’s already under a very extremely repressive police state dictatorship that prevents them from doing anything at all.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Could you say just a little more on that last point you filmed there in the West Bank, you’ve been there, you’ve reported on it many, many times. I guess for folks who maybe haven’t looked into the West Bank as much as they’ve learned about Gaza over the past two years, could you just say a little more for folks who are watching this about the state of life as such in the West Bank before this operation Iron Wall began?
Abby Martin:
Yeah, and a perfect example of that is this current ceasefire deal, phase one where people may be asking themselves how is it possible that hundreds of Palestinian prisoners really their hostages in their own right? How is it possible that there’s so many hundreds of Palestinians being held and being released at the behest of Hamas’ demands? It may be confusing to some to see just a couple dozen hostages from the Israeli side being released for hundreds of Palestinians. Well, the answer is basically the fact that there’s this repressive police state style dictatorship that wantonly just arrests hundreds of people, detains them, arbitrarily, keeps them without charges or trial, and that’s precisely what we’ve seen, ramp up and escalate in the aftermath of October 7th, hundreds and hundreds of Palestinians, including dozens of children and women, not to take away the revolutionary agency or political agency of women, but it is just unbelievable how many people have been detained arbitrarily and held.
Why aren’t they called hostages? I have no idea. But it just again, just kind of paints the picture of what Palestinians are living under. They cannot raise a Palestinian flag. They cannot practice any political activity. It is crazy. I mean, they can set up arbitrary checkpoints, resort these people’s lives to a living. Hell set up just random blockades that can reroute people just take hours out of their day just to make their lives extremely uncomfortable. But it just goes far beyond that. I mean, raiding killing Palestinians arbitrarily having no recourse whatsoever. You certainly cannot have armed resistance. I mean, anything that can be construed as a weapon in these people’s homes or cars can just subject you to not only humiliating tactics, but also just being thrown in prison. I mean, we’re talking about such a crazy level of control that simply the David versus Goliath, just symbolism of throwing a rock at a tank. There’s a law on the books that can put a Palestinian child in prison for 20 years for simply throwing a rock at an armed tank. So these are the kind of measures that have been in place since 1967 when this military dictatorship was imposed illegally. And ever since then, we’ve been placated as Westerners with this promise of a two states solution, which has just been a cover for the continued annexation of the West Bank and under Trump, we’ve seen just a complete rapid green lighting of just continuing that policy.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, man. I mean, I did not want to incorporate it as a visual element in this live stream because frankly, it’s too ghoulish and horrifying to give any more airtime to. But I would point folks, if you haven’t already seen it, to an AI generated video that our president shared on his truth social account, promoting the transformation of Gaza into a luxury beach front destination filled with skyscrapers, condos, bearded belly dancers like Monde Weiss reported the video shows Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing together in Gaza, Elon Musk eating hummus, the area being converted into resort called Trump, Gaza, a golden Trump statue and children running from rubble into picturesque beaches. What the hell, man? I mean, I guess where do you even find your center of humanity in such an inhumane timeline?
Abby Martin:
I mean, that’s what’s so creepy about it. It’s the dizzying spectacle of it all. And I feel like Trump, I feel like he was much more dialed in 2016 personally because he was less senile and whatever. He was younger and more astute. But now it does seem like he’s kind of, he doesn’t give a shit. I mean, he is just going for it and letting all of these crazy outliers just take the government for a ride. I mean, Elon Musk, this AI stuff, it’s like by the time that you’re trying to unpack this press conference where he is sitting next to this grinning genocide fugitive talking about how Gaza is a hellhole and how you’re going to get, why would you want to go back to Gaza? You’re just going to get shot and killed next to the grinning genocide fugitive, who did it. I mean, once you unpack that, he’s already signed another thousand executive orders once you try to make sense of this AI generated video of Trump’s golden head on a balloon, and kids running out of the rubble into a more attractive version of Elon Musk eating hummus and peta.
I mean, they’ve already done this, that and the other. So again, it’s the spectacle. It’s like no response is the good response. It’s so difficult to even maneuver this new political landscape even for us who follow it for a job. I mean, a perfect example is the sig. He twice the Nazi salute from Elon. I mean, it’s like, what is the appropriate response to this? Because they will just gaslight you and say what you see isn’t reality. And so by the time you’re like, no, no, no, that’s a Nazi salute. No, no, no, it’s like they’ve already done this, that and the other thing. So it’s such an insane time to be living and to navigate this political space, and I just keep comparing it to the mass hallucinations. Everyone’s relegated to their own framework of reality. The algorithm boosts whatever it is that you want to justify as that reality, and that’s kind of our respective mass hallucinations that we’re wading through. I mean, I feel like I’m living in reality, and that’s why I’m so aghast and horrified by everything. But
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, that’s why I wake up screaming every night. And in fact, so much of our politics is a war on the means of perceiving reality. It is a war over the narrative of what we’re actually seeing. And from everyone’s watching a plane crash down the road in Washington DC and it’s immediately a battle over is this DEI or is this something else? Is the fires in my home state of California? Is this A DEI thing? Is this climate change? The war over the means of perception, I think is really the terrain upon which so many of us are fighting or forced to fight in the 21st century. And I definitely want to circle back to Trump Musk and how we navigate all of this here at home in the second half of the discussion. But I guess before we move on, I wanted to bring us back to the West Bank.
You mentioned the gaslighting, right? You mentioned the ways that that war on perception, the top down narratives handed to us by the very villains who are committing genocide and destroying our government and so on and so forth. I am not drawing an equivalence between our situation and that of the occupied Palestinian. But I think in your amazing conversation and interview with the great Muhammad Al Kurd about his new book, I was learning so many lessons from him that feel very relevant to us today, particularly the gaslighting and the sort of top down effort to turn the victim into the terrorist. I wanted to play that clip really quick from Muhammad El Kurd. This is a clip from Abby show, the Empire Files, which she interviewed Muhammad on recently. So let’s play that clip and let’s talk about what this can tell us about how to navigate what we’re up against now.
Mohammed el-Kurd:
Yeah, and I think the average person, anybody with common sense would understand that defending yourself against intruders, against colonizers, against thiefs, against burglars, against murderous regimes is a fundamental right that you are entitled to defend yourself and your family. And actually across history, people who have done so have been hailed as heroes. But violence itself is essentially a mutating concept. It’s something to celebrate when it’s sanctioned by the empire, and it’s something to pearl clutch out when it’s done by natives, by these young men in tracksuits. But again, this is, it’s not like a fundamental western opposition to violence or militias or whatever. It’s a rejection of any kind of political prospect for the Palestinian, because anytime the Palestinian has engaged in armed resistance or has engaged in kinds of resistance that have extended beyond the bounds of what is acceptable to a liberal society, that those are some of the only times we have been heard.
So what does that say about the world and what does that say to the Palestinian? When we are told time and time again, the only time people are going to listen to us and talk about us and put us in their headlines is when we engage in violent resistance. But ultimately, this is about the rejection of Palestinian. Armed resistance is about a rejection of a Palestinian national project is about a rejection of actually ending the occupation. Everybody can sing every day about ending the occupation, but when it becomes real, we are terrified of it. We lose our compass. We refuse, we refuse to even entertain it. For years, maybe all of my life, I’ve been hearing about a two-state solution while Israeli bulldozers eat away at our land in areas that are supposedly under Palestinian authority control. It’s like a circus where they’re just telling us these narratives to buy time while they’re creating facts on the ground, while they’re setting greedy the terms of engagement and creating the roadmap for the future while robbing us of any kind of future.
And while sanctioning even our ambitions, even our intentions, even our hopes and dreams. You know what I mean? There’s also a hyper, when we say defanging of Palestinians, it’s not just taking our rifles and vilifying our freedom fighters, but there’s also an interrogation of our thoughts. They ask us, do you condemn this and do you condemn that and do you want to do this, and do you want to throw Israelis into the sea? And what’s your issue with those people? And it’s never about actually engaging with you in a certain political uplifted discourse, but it’s about making sure you concede to the liberal world order before you are even allowed entry to the conversation. And that needs to be,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Everyone should go watch that full interview first thing. Second thing, everyone should go read Muhammad l Kurds book by Haymarket Books. Perfect victim. Third thing, Abby, I’ve got just some questions I want to throw at you really quick. Can you talk about that clip, what Muhammad’s saying there and how this applies to what we’re seeing in the West Bank? A lot of these refugee camps, yes, they’re where freedom fighters lived, but also a bunch of regular people who have nowhere else to go. So can you help folks apply what Muhammad’s saying there to what we’re seeing unfold in the West Bank, but also how this applies to us here? It does feel eerily reminiscent of the right wing in this country, condemning violence of Black Lives Matter protesters while celebrating Kyle Rittenhouse shooting them. Right? That double standard does seem to be very much at play here. So I wanted to ask if we could talk about it in the context of the West Bank first and then bring it back home after that.
Abby Martin:
Absolutely. I think, look, it’s really, really clear to understand that the West Bank is under a legal occupation and under international law, Palestinians as well as other people under occupying forces have the legal right to armed resistance that is enshrined in law. And so when you’re looking at a place like the West Bank that hosts houses 3 million Palestinians, and a lot of people are resisting naturally, so of course, I mean, that’s going to be an inevitability you’re going to resist if you’re denied basic human rights, denied clean water, denied mobility. I mean, when you’re living under this harsh repression where you can’t even celebrate the hostages coming home, you can’t grieve, you can’t publicly mourn. You can’t erect a flag. I mean, it’s absolutely insane what these people are subjected to on a day-to-day basis. And given the genocide that we’ve seen erupt in Gaza, the unending slaughter of children, I mean, obviously Palestinians are united front despite the political schisms and divisions.
And so you’re going to see resistance in the West Bank, especially when you see full scale mobilizations to invade and annex your land illegally. And so it’s actually a legal right to see resistance mobilized against Israeli invaders. So first and foremost, we need to zoom out and realize not only is this an egregious and flagrant violation of just the ceasefire, the idea of a ceasefire that Israel considers a ceasefire, just no one reacting to them constantly violating the ceasefire, whether it be in Lebanon or Gaza or in the West Bank. They can just go on and do whatever they want with complete impunity. And the second that a Palestinian fights back, oh, they’ve broken the ceasefire. Oh, the deal’s off the table. It is so disgustingly. But when you zoom out from that, I mean, yeah, Palestinians have the right to resist. So what you’re seeing in refugee camps, what you’re seeing in places like Janine is resistance, legal resistance actually.
So when Israel uses that as a precursor to then further colonize, it’s just absolutely dumbfounding because it’s just completely violating every single law in the books, and this is what they’ve done for decades. And they’re ramping it up under the cover of the ceasefire of the genocides saying that Hamas fighters are on the ground. Oh, well, they did this. So of course we need to go and eject thousands of people from their homes say that they can never return. And it’s gaslighting upon gaslighting, but it’s also just a refusal of just basic reality and the facts that we know to be true Max. When you apply that to the United States, it is just such a double sighted. I mean, it just a completely absurd notion that we worship. We’re a culture of violence. We worship war. I mean militarism and war is so ingrained in the psyche of American citizens, especially in the wake of nine 11.
It’s just a constant thing. But it’s only the good arbiters of violence. I mean, of course, the US military can do whatever it wants around the world as long as it’s doing it in the name of democracy and human rights. If Ukrainians resist against evil Russia, give them all the weapons in the world, turn it into a proxy war where we’re throwing Ukrainians into just making them cannon fodder. I mean, it’s absolutely insane. But when you’re looking at just the basic tenets of what would you do if someone came to your home and said, get out, this is my home now because the Bible says that it is from thousands of years ago, get the hell out at the barrel of a gun. What would you do? What would your family do? Obviously you would band together and resist like anyone would, especially Americans. I mean, we’re talking about a country that has stand your ground laws that if you just go up and knock on the wrong door, you could get shot and killed legally.
So it is just the paradoxical nature of propaganda. It does not make sense and it does not equate, and it’s only because of the deep, deep embedded dehumanization of Arabs and specifically Palestinians. And this has been part and parcel with the war on terror propaganda, the deep dehumanization of just Arabs and Muslims in general, and Palestinians are just, I mean, it’s absolutely absurd how much they’ve been dehumanized where people, even my fellow colleagues as journalists don’t even consider Palestinian journalists, journalists. So it’s a disgrace upon disgrace. But I think what Muhammad’s talking about is so many salient points there of just the utter hypocrisy of the way that we perceive violence. And when it comes to actual decolonization and liberation, which are concepts that make liberals feel uncomfortable, they’d rather keep Palestinians in a perpetual victimhood and treat them as if they just need aid instead of need freedom. Because when you talk about what that actually means, it means fighting back. It means resisting this unending violence and slaughter. What do these people think it means? So what does that actually look like? How does that play out and how is it successful? And that’s why history is so sanitized, and these things are just rewritten by the victors because they don’t want to teach us the hard lessons of how entire countries and peoples have been victorious and have been liberated from empires and from their colonizers in the past.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, man, I think that’s powerfully put. And I just wanted to emphasize for folks, when Abby was asking us like, what would you do if someone came in and pointed a gun at you and said, get out of your home. That happened to Muhammad, that happened to him and his family. He became a very prominent international voice, like while settlers were taking over their home from the states. So we’re not asking a rhetorical question here. This is a real question. What would you do in that situation? And in terms of how those rules of engagement he talked about are set by this by definition, hypocritical by definition, like Ill intended entity that does not want us to win, that does not want us to have a leg to stand on. We’re seeing that being baked into this kind of repressive apparatus that is spreading out across the so-called west here to make an example, claiming that Palestine solidarity encampments on a college campus are a threat to the safety of Jewish students while Zionists beating the shit out of student encampment.
Students who are encamping on campus is not categorized in the same violent way. So keep that in mind because I want to kind of focus in here on this sort of the state of repression back here at home as the war across over Palestine. The war on Palestine intensifies because over the past two years, even with the ruling elites in government and this whole imperialist capitalist warmaking establishment doing everything that they could to maintain the longstanding, unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal occupation, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while all of that has been going on, we have seen a sea change at the base of societies around the globe, and especially here in the United States, the explosion of the Palestine solidarity movement, mass protests in DC and around the country, the student encampment movement that I mentioned, but the empire is striking back. As you know, Abby, the reactionary ruling class answer to all of this grassroots opposition to Israel’s war on Palestine has been to criminalize the methods of that opposition and to even criminalize and legally recategorize solidarity with Palestinians itself as anti-Semitic, anti-American, and even supportive of terrorism like here in the United States.
For folks who may have forgotten in the first weeks in office of his new administration, president Trump signed an executive order to deport foreign university students who participate in Gaza solidarity protests in a chilling quote fact sheet that accompanied the executive ordered the White House said quote to all the resident aliens who joined in the pro jihadist protests. We put you on notice, come 2025, we will find you and we will deport you and quote, but this is not just happening in the us. Our colleague, Ali Abu Nima, Palestinian American journalist and executive director of the online publication, the Electronic Intifada, traveled to Switzerland last month to give a speech in Zurich. And after being allowed to enter the country, Abu Nima was arrested by plainclothes officers, forced into an unmarked vehicle, held incommunicado in jail for two nights, and then he was deported from the country.
And in Canada, things were getting very dark very quickly. pro-Palestinian Canadian author and activist, Eves Engler was jailed this week for criticizing Zionist influencer Dalia Kurtz on the social media platform, X Kurtz accused angler and his posts of harassment. And he was jailed by Montreal Police for five days. And all of this is happening back in Toronto. The largest school board in Canada has taken steps to adopt the institutional recategorize of Zionists as a protected class and anti-Zionism as antisemitism. And we actually asked our friend and colleague, the brilliant Toronto-based journalist and founder of On the Line Media, Samira Moine to give us a little update on that story. So let’s play that really quick, and then we’re going to go back to Abby.
Samira Mohyeddin:
The decision by the Toronto District School Board to receive this report on antisemitism is dangerous for a number of reasons. The most important being is that the report conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and moves to make Zionist a protected class of people under the anti-racism policy. So basically a political ideology such as Zionism will now be protected as anything else, will be like race, religion, gender, sexuality. It will fall under that realm, which means that to criticize a political ideology such as Zionism will mean that you will be falling under someone who I don’t know, is critical of someone’s religion, critical of their sexuality. It will actually make it so that this is a weaponization of people who criticize the actions of Israel, which is a state. So this is very dangerous, and we don’t know what sort of effects this will have, what effect will it have on teachers who are teaching history, who are teaching social studies? Does this mean that they can’t criticize Israel? What does this mean for Jewish students who are critical of Israeli actions? Will they be penalized? So there’s a whole realm of things that the Toronto District School Board really doesn’t have answers for yet, and we’re really waiting to see how receiving this report or what even receiving of the report means, what impact it will have, both on parents, on students, and most importantly on teachers who really don’t know how to navigate such a thing. And so this is very, very dangerous.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Okay. Abby Martin, what the hell is going on with all of this? How are you seeing, I guess, the broad sweep of all this repression?
Abby Martin:
I mean, even before the genocide in Gaza, I foresaw the writing on the wall because I myself was engaged in this litigation against the state of Georgia for their anti BDS law. So I knew that states were taking measures to preempt the wave of Palestine solidarity that they inevitably knew would come. And that’s why we’ve seen consulate officials and the Israeli lobby officials going and essentially seeking to undermine our first amendment rights, the constitutionally protected right to boycott a country that was enshrined during the Montgomery Bus boycotts during the civil rights movement. So I knew that pro-Palestine speech was among the most repressed, among the most criminalized because of these laws. And we’ve seen attacks on college campuses even though there’s this kind of notion that right wing speech is what’s heckled and suppressed and repressed on college campuses. I think it’s very clear as day, especially in the wake of the Gaza genocide, that pro-Palestine speech is the most repressed and criminalized speech in the country, even though we have the sacred First Amendment, which unfortunately places like the UK doesn’t.
So you’re seeing raids and arrests of journalists like Aza Wi Stanley from the electronic ADA as well, who was also his electronic communications were seized. I mean, people like Richard Medhurst, they are being arrested and detained with their communications seized and their devices seized under these absurd counter terror powers. I mean, usually the charges don’t stick at the end of the day, but it’s just meant to create a chilling effect and to cement that repressive state where you feel like you can’t even do your job as a journalist. So even though we have the First Amendment, it is not doing much to protect us, especially with what’s happening on college campuses. I mean, the threats even from Israeli government officials saying, you’re never going to have a job again. I mean, it’s just absolutely insane. I don’t even know the words to describe this political climate because like Muhammad articulated so well, it is living in someone else’s hallucination.
It’s like living in a fever dream imposed by someone. It’s just like, what are we even talking about here? You’re telling me that saying from the river to the sea is a terrorist incitement to genocide. While I’m seeing genocide, I’m logging onto my device and seeing a genocide. But you’re saying that people’s words for liberation is the threat. So it’s just this topsy-turvy reality that we’re trying to wade through. Meanwhile, people’s lives are being ruined and destroyed. People are being suspended, expelled. I mean, their jobs are being taken away from them for just speaking facts and just trying to stand in solidarity with people who are being repressed and occupied and killed, and what’s happening to journalists. I mean, the fact that Western powers, European powers are more concerned with criminalizing pro-Palestine journalism and speech, and they are stopping a genocide, really just says it all, doesn’t it?
These institutions, these global bodies that have been in place for the last 70 years to try to prevent the never again to try to stop genocide, at least in the era or the auspices of, and these same institutions have just been made a mockery of by the same states that have created them. I mean, I think we know at this point the rules-based order in these international bodies. It was never designed to really have egalitarianism or to protect all peoples who are oppressed. No, it was to protect and shroud the west with impunity. And when it’s a western ally that’s committing genocide in plain day, well, we see exactly what these institutions are designed to do. And we’ve seen the threats, the ICC sanctions against the members of the court, their families, what’s happening in South Africa from the Trump administration. It is an upside down world where drone bombings are not terrorism because that’s just seen as normal day-to-day operations of the empire, and its junior collaborators and its colonial outposts.
But words and incitement, all of these things are unacceptable. And so that’s what you’re seeing. You’re seeing an extreme policing of our language and intent, intent. Meanwhile, the people who are ruling the world, the global elite, can do whatever they want out of the shadows, plain as day, commit genocide and ethnic cleansing and boast about it and make all of us just scurry like mice trying to catch up. Meanwhile, we can’t say shit. And so it’s a war on the mind. It’s a war on our thoughts. It is beyond even an information war. I mean, it is a war on reality itself,
Maximillian Alvarez:
And those of us who are trying to report on it mean we didn’t even mention it, but there’s on top of everything, there’s the nonprofit killer Bill HR 9 4 9 5 or the stop terror financing and tax penalties on American Hostages Act that already passed the House of Representatives going to pass the Senate at some point. But that’s another thing that I think about daily because I am the co-executive director and editor in chief of a nonprofit journalism outlet. And this bill if passed, would effectively give the Trump administration the ability to unilaterally declare that orgs like ours are terrorist supporting, not because we’re providing material support for Hamas or anything like that, but because our speech, the way we report honestly about the genocide in Palestine is being re-categorized as support for terrorism. And so we could lose our nonprofit status that’s going to kill most nonprofits that get targeted.
It won’t kill all of them, but it’ll be a massive financial hit. But also the leaders of those orgs could be held personally liable. They could be attacked, like this is something that I have to think about and talk to my family about all the time. I mean this plus the firings of tenured professors at universities threats to deport foreign students who are participating in protests, locking up journalists for social media posts. This is a really intense and dark time. And while all of this is happening, Elon Musk and is leading a techno fascist coup in our government, and I want to end there in a second, but by way of getting there, since we’ve got you on, and since you mentioned it, Abby, of course, you, Abby Martin, were famously at the center of this critical free speech battle against Georgia Southern University when the university rescinded the offer to have you deliver a keynote speech because you refuse to sign a BS contract that illegally stipulated speakers were forbidden from openly supporting any boycott of Israel. So I wanted to ask if, just by way of getting us to the final turn, if there are any lessons that you learned even from just the decision to fight that we could really internalize and need to internalize to face what we’re facing today?
Abby Martin:
Yes, I think it’s a multi-pronged battle, and we have to utilize every arm of the fight. I mean, the courts are absolutely one important facet that we need to utilize. I think if there were plaintiffs in every state taking on these BDS laws, then hopefully it will go to the Supreme Court, even though they said that they didn’t want to hear it. Right Now, there are enough mixed verdicts that would bring this to the attention of the Supreme Court, and I think if anyone is trained in constitutional law, well, we don’t know about these Trump appointees, but I mean anyone who knows the Constitution would say it’s very clear these are flagrantly unconstitutional laws, and hopefully we would put an end to it. But I think that they’re just so desperate and they know that it’s going to take, it’s a long slog to challenge all these laws, but we absolutely have to have in every single state.
And that’s just one part of it, max. I mean, the media, obviously, the fact that Elon Musk has taken over our town hall, he is, I mean, on one hand what Trump and Elon Musk are doing is kind of exposing the incestuous relationship with the so-called legacy media and the way that the political establishment operates within it. But on the other hand, it’s very scary because they’re maneuvering it all to consolidate it with the right wings, sphere of influence, and using this kind of populist fake news rhetoric to do that. And that’s very disturbing and damaging because as leftists and people who are trying to do citizen journalism for grassroots organizing and things like that, we are in for a very tough road ahead because we don’t have billionaire funding like they do. But I would say my biggest lesson learned is that we have to take on every part of the battle they have. I mean, they’ve planned for 50 years taking over the institutions, taking over the media and taking over the courts, and we are 10 steps behind and we have to do everything in our power. And that means day in and day out. It’s not pulling the lever every two to four years. It’s being a part of this active struggle to maintain democratic rights, human rights, and try to have some sort of international solidarity with the people living under the boot of our policies.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Let’s keep talking about that in this last 15 minutes that we’ve got here. One of the many folks that I’ve been thinking about a lot since Trump was inaugurated, really wondering what your analysis of all of this is. And so many of us are trying to figure out and articulate what is actually happening. I just interviewed three federal workers, two of whom were illegally fired for the podcast working people. We published it yesterday. Folks should go listen to what they have to say. It’s really important. But even there, we’re talking about battling the narrative that Musk himself and Trump and the whole administration and Fox News and these rejiggered algorithms on social media that are platforming and pushing more right-wing narratives. All of that is saying that this is all done in the name of efficiency that Trump and Musk are out there cutting government waste, attacking the corrupt deep state that’s getting in the way of the will of the American people. But if you talk to federal workers, they’re like, no, that’s not what they’re doing at all. They are slashing the hell out of it. They are just non-surgically destroying government agencies, laying groups of people off and throwing the government into disarray. None of this is done in the name of efficiency, and we shouldn’t even be taking that at face value when the guy who’s telling us that it’s being done in the name of efficiency is giving Ziggy salutes on public stages. So maybe we should stop assuming as the great
Abby Martin:
Adam Johnson said, it’s a stiff, armed, awkward gesture,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Stiff arm, Roman stiff
Abby Martin:
Arm, Roman salute in an awkward gesture.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It is nuts, but it’s just like, maybe the point being is, hey, maybe this guy is acting ideologically, maybe he’s acting self interestedly. Why do we keep buying the narrative that he’s acting uninterested in just the name of efficiency? That’s insane. It requires us to ignore the reality in front of our faces. But again, I wanted to bring us back to this point because everything we’ve been talking about now from tanks in the West Bank, the potential of the Gaza ceasefire falling apart, criminalization and crackdown on free speech and protest across the west, all of that is happening while like Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the unelected destroyer of government agencies is literally and figuratively like on a maniacal chainsaw, wielding rampage through the institutional guts of what remains of liberal democracy and the administrative state. And so this all feels so overwhelming, and I think most folks, because they know what you just said is right, that we’re playing so far behind and they have seemingly all the control, the impulse is going to be to close off to protect what’s ours, to hide, to silence ourselves. So I wanted to ask you, with those last few minutes we’ve got, what is your analysis of what’s happening in our government right now and what does this all mean for how do we move forward and keep fighting for what’s right and good, even though it’s getting really perilous and really dangerous out there? Oh
Abby Martin:
My God. I mean, it’s really difficult. And looking at the lessons gleaned from the Iraq war era when I was radicalized and activated to do media work and activism, what was different about that time was the fact that there was a more multi-pronged kind of united front with a lot of libertarians who were disaffected, a lot more like right wingers who hated the Bush administration. There seems to be a cult-like emergence of the sycophant, worshiping of a figure like Donald Trump. And that’s what’s so disturbing about MAGA in general and by proxy, someone like Elon Musk, a South African oligarch as well as the whole PayPal Mafia, all these oligarchs from South Africa coming over here and just seizing government control, which is completely illegal. I mean, that doesn’t even really need to be said, all the unconstitutional nature of what they’re doing, but it’s just so perplexing because of the way that he’s been able to siphon support from people who historically would not necessarily just worship a billionaire.
I mean, back decades ago it was the Republican party was kind of cartoonishly, just so detached from the working class because it was just so clearly just a party for billionaires and tax breaks for the wealthy. But because of the abject failure of the Democrats to form any sort of opposition, I mean, what is their project 2025? There is no goal. There’s no vision. They’re scrambling to figure out how could they even stand in opposition to what’s going on their 10 steps behind, but because of their failure and their ineptitude and the lies and the propaganda and the media manipulation and the war, the war on terror, because they’ve failed so horribly and mirrored Republicans on so much naturally, you’ve seen this kind of faux populism reroute a lot of disaffected people into the Republican party. And for the first time we saw people who were under a hundred thousand dollars or less actually vote en mass for Trump.
This is an unprecedented shift, a tectonic shift in how these parties have really played out. So I would argue the failure of the Democrats have driven people into the hands of Trump, and it doesn’t matter if it’s fake or not, they want someone to blame for their problems. And they look at Trump and they say, yeah, immigrants, trans people, sure, whatever will help solve my basically buffer my reality. They want people to say what is wrong and who’s doing it. That’s why Bernie resonated so much. I mean, he pointed to the oligarchic class, he pointed to the people, the actual robber barons who consolidated all of the wealth during the Covid era, but now we’re in this really bizarre, weirdly entrenched new Trump regime where he’s folded in all of the tech overlords, who, by the way, all the DEI rhetoric and all the people who are like corporations are woke, woke and liberalism have taken over and dominated our culture.
Actually, it was just the notion that women should have rights and gay people should be out because you saw the virtue signaling completely go by the wayside. The second that everyone resigned to the fact that Trump was going to be president again, what happened with Google, don’t be evil. All of these people who were actually protesting the Muslim ban and had really strong rhetoric against Trump back in 2016, they’re completely folded in just seamlessly because it never was about that. It was all virtue signaling. They were always right wing. They always didn’t care that Trump was who he is. I mean, it really is just so obvious. The ruling class never really cared about Trump or his policies or the threat of fascism or the erosion of democracy. They just cared that he was a bull in a China shop. He was just unpredictable. He was uncouth, and all they care about is that peaceful transition of power, and the system just keeps going, and the status quo just keeps churning on.
And that’s why January 6th was such an abomination for them. It wasn’t because of anything else. And so now I think everything’s been exposed. Everything is clear as day. That’s why we don’t see anything. There’s no actual opposition forming. And when you look at the grassroots and all the mobilized efforts, I mean, I think there’s such a fatigue with activism because for the last 15 months, people have been out in the streets opposing biden’s subsidization and oversight of genocide. So now we’re supposed to go and fight tooth and nail against the fascist takeover of the government. It’s like, God damn, for the last 15 months we’ve been out in the streets and no one’s been listening to us about stopping genocide. So I mean, it’s such a dizzying, disorienting time intentionally, the shock and awe of this mass firings of federal workers, the thousands and thousands of federal workers, it’s so clear as day what they’re doing.
They’re just gutting in the interim. They’re trying to do as much damage as they can because they know that the time that the courts basically do their jobs, it’s going to be too late. Trump has stacked enough courts at the end of the day, and Republicans have that. Even if there’s a million challenges legally, the damage is going to be done. You can’t pick up the pieces and just go back to the way things were. And that’s the intent. For all intents and purposes, they’re trying to gut any sort of semblance of institutions that care for people. Cruelty is the point. Poor people, elderly people, disabled people, those are who are going to be the brunt of these services that are being cut. The veterans affairs, I mean, all these people from the crisis hotline, all these veterans who are calling with suicidal ideation, those people are being cut Medicaid.
I mean, the statistic flying around 880 billion, that’s the entirety of Medicaid. So when they’re talking about, oh, these budget cuts are going to cut 880 billion from this one committee, yeah, that’s the entirety of Medicaid. Who is that going to affect 73 million Americans? I mean, the shortsightedness of all of this is just astonishing, but that’s not the point. They know how much damage it’s going to do. They don’t care. They want to gut everything and privatize everything, the post office, the va, every last bastion of government services that work that are good and healthy for a democratic society, and it’s going to do so much damage. I mean, just the environmental damage, the environmental damage. And what’s so funny, all of the discussions, people like to take everything that Trump says at face value. They’re like, oh, well, he says he wants to cut the Pentagon budget in half.
Oh, well, really, because on the other side of his mouth, he’s saying the exact opposite, that he wants to increase the Pentagon budget for this, that and the other. And when you look at what Hegseth is saying about what they’re actually cutting, it’s all the climate change initiatives that they were all the cursory attempts to try to placate environmentalists like, no, no, no. We’re greening this global military empire. So it’s just all, it’s so bad in every way, but I would just urge people to just not feel overwhelmed with the barrage of news, the rapid fire nature of the algorithm. Our brains are not meant to digest news in this way or information in this way. Let max and I do it. Let us do it. Don’t get overwhelmed by the day to day just paralysis of the shock and awe of what they’re doing because that’s the intent. You cannot get paralyzed. You cannot just detach yourself from this. We have to be plugged in to the capacity that you can. We have to all be plugged into how we can all make a dent in our lives and let Max and I do the dirty work of sorting through the propaganda on the day to day. But it’s going to be a really tough road ahead, max.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It is, and I appreciate everything that you said, and I just kind of had a final tiny question. I know we got a wrap, but on that last point, because Abby and I, our whole team here at the Real News, everyone you see on screen and also everyone, you don’t who makes everything that we produce possible. We’re going to keep manning our posts. We’re going to keep doing our work. We’re going to keep speaking the truth. But as you have learned from this conversation, there may be a great cost to pay for that. And I think that’s also something that we all need to sit with and think about because people don’t ask to be kind of in the moments in history they find theirselves in, but how we respond to those moments defines who we are as people, as generations and as movements. And so Abby, I didn’t go to journalism school.
I don’t know if you did. I never set out to be a journalist. I never thought I would find myself sitting in this chair as the executive director, co-executive director and editor in chief of a nonprofit journalism outlet. But if I can think back to even my early days, the through line from then to here, I was raised by great people who taught me to stand up for what’s right and speak my truth, especially speak it unwaveringly in the face of those who want to shut me up. And I’m not someone who shuts up easily. That’s probably why I’m here. That’s why Abby’s doing what she does. If you try to shut her up, she’ll file a lawsuit against your ass and win it, right? I mean, but there’s a non-zero chance that being who we are, doing what we do, because we’re going to do it.
We’re going to do it for you. We’re going to do it because it’s right. There’s a non-zero chance we could end up in prison for it or have our outlet shut down, but that just is what it is. And so Abby, with that kind of on the table, I just wanted to ask if you had any kind of parting words to folks out there who depend on our journalism, folks out there who do journalism, any final notes about the real state that we’re in, what we’re facing, but also how we need to be kind of stealing our hearts to keep fighting for what’s right and not allowing ourselves to be silenced, even though they’re going to try really hard to do so?
Abby Martin:
Absolutely. I mean, it’s going to be so hard for just average Americans and workers who are suffering the brunt of these policies. Obviously it’s going to be really hard for them to engage in the struggle because they’re worried about how they’re going to survive day to day. They have no savings and their living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s just going to get worse. I mean, look, I became a journalist out of necessity because I saw the failure of the institutional media and the legacy media and the drive to the Iraq war, and I realized that it didn’t matter if I was standing in a street corner with a sign. I mean, no one’s going to hear what you have to say unless you advocate through a media avenue. I mean, you have to utilize the tools that we have available to speak these truths, to speak powers truth to power, to hold, power to account.
And we’re in a very dystopian era where again, words are considered terrorist incitement, especially when it comes to pro-Palestine advocacy. I run a nonprofit as well. Empire Files is a nonprofit, and it’s this paradox where you have our job revenues and our ability to tell this information potentially being threatened with shut down. Meanwhile, you have charities very active and lucrative, being able to fund people from America to go over and take over a Palestinian family’s home, like literally, nonprofit charities can go fund a genocidal army to kill Palestinians for sport. So that’s the world that we’re living in. It’s a very topsy turvy world set by actually a crime syndicate and a global mafia. And the enforcer is the US military. I am in a place of privilege to the point where I can at least speak these facts. We’re not living under a totalitarian dictatorship yet where our First Amendment is completely gone.
So I will continue to speak out and speak these facts and hold power to account and speak the truth as I see it and not be played or propagandized by the billionaire class. I am happy that at least we can rise above this deep seated propaganda where they’re telling us black is white and saying, no, this multi-billion dollar propaganda apparatus does not work on me. And we’re able to see things clearly, and we’re going to speak those truths clearly no matter where they take us, because Max, I think you and I both know that even though it’s a dangerous road ahead, we’re not going to stop doing our jobs. We’re going to speak truth to power, and we see what’s happening to our colleagues. But you know what? I’m going to keep speaking truth to power because my colleagues are being gunned down, mowed down systematically.
And so until that threat is on my doorstep, you’re not going to be able to shut me up, man. You’re not going to be able to shut me up because my friends are being killed. And I take that very seriously because a threat to justice anywhere means that injustice is still rooted everywhere. So we have to keep fighting because we can’t stop. We’re going to let these criminals win. We’re going to let them destroy the planet and kill off the sake of any viable habitat for our children. We’re going to let that happen. No. Yes, the odds are stacked against us. Yes, the institutions have completely been hijacked by these maniacs, these genocidal maniacs and sociopaths. But that’s not enough to stop us. We have to keep fighting. We have no other choice. And even if we lose, well, we sure as hell tried. We sure as hell tried, and we owe it to every person on this planet that is living under the boot of our policies that doesn’t have the privilege of being an American citizen.
That’s just dealing with the brunt of the effects of sanctions, of war, of bombings, of this economic terrorism. We owe it to them and we owe it to the kids that we’ve brought into this world. We cannot stop, max. We cannot stop. And history has been stacked before. Yes, the crisis is more existential with the environmental calamities that we’re facing, but we’ve been in deep crises before slavery, the civil rights, I mean, not people literally living in abject slavery. We have to continue to fight for the better future that we know is possible. I would not be able to live with myself if I gave up. It’s not an option. It’s not an option.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Wholeheartedly agree sis. And I love you, and I’m in solidarity with you, and I’m as scared as I think I’ll ever be, but I’m not going to stop either. So it’s an honor to be in this struggle with you and to all of you watching again, we will continue to speak truth to power, and we will continue fighting for the truth and speaking that truth to empower you because that is also why we do what we do. Because when working people have the truth, the powerful cannot take that away from us. And it is the truth that we need to know how to act because we are ultimately the ones who are going to decide how this history is written. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years, but I know what will happen if we regular people, people of conscious do nothing.
If we do nothing, I can tell you what’s going to happen. But what happens next is up to us and Abby, the Real News, all of our colleagues who are out there fighting for the truth. We’ll keep doing that as long as we possibly can to empower you to be the change that we need to see in this world because this world is worth fighting for and the future is worth fighting for, and it’s not gone yet. So thank you all for fighting. Thank you for caring. Abby Martin, thank you so much for coming on The Real News yet again, thank you for all the invaluable work that you do. Can you please just tell folks one more time where they can find you, how they can support your work? And then I promise we’ll let you go.
Abby Martin:
Max, thank you so much. I couldn’t agree more. I mean, the love and the family are in the struggle. And for people who may be feeling really isolated out in the middle of nowhere and feel, what can I do? I’m totally just immobilized from all of this. The paralysis from our political state of affairs, I mean, reach out. It is literally the most important thing you could do is reach out to your like-minded people in your area, go on meetup groups, figure out what people are doing to just generate activism with whatever issue because that is where the love and the family and the friendships are is the struggle and getting involved, and that’s going to take you out of this kind of atomization that the system imposes on us. I love Real News Network. I’m so honored to be on Anytime Max, I’m honored to call you a friend in a comrade. People can find my work at Empire Files, the Empire Files tv, and also our new documentary is going to come out this year. I’m really excited about it. Earth’s greatest enemy.com. Thank you so much again.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh yeah, thank you sis. And all you watching that is the great Abby Martin, if you are not already, please, please, please go subscribe to her channel. The Empire Files support the work that she’s doing, and please support the work that we’re doing here at The Real News. We cannot keep doing it without you, and we do it for you. So please, before you go subscribe to this channel, become a member of our YouTube community, please donate to The Real News by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more conversations like this and more coverage from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world. And for all of us here at the Real News Network, this is Maximilian Alvarez signing off. Please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever. Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most, and we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity forever.
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