The Electronic Intifada Podcast 5 September 2024
In the US, Vice President Kamala Harris was anointed the Democratic presidential candidate during the party’s convention in Chicago amid protests by tens of thousands of people from around the country uniting under the Palestine solidarity banner.
Hours-long pauses in the fighting to administer polio vaccines to some 640,000 children in Gaza is little relief to Palestinians who have endured 11 months of unimaginable violence, constant displacement and grief.
Israel has escalated its repression in the West Bank in the past week, besieging towns and refugee camps and implementing collective punishment measures familiar to Palestinians in Gaza, including the wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure and indiscriminate killing.
All of this begs the question: What comes next? That theme ran throughout this week’s Electronic Intifada livestream, which can be watched in the video above.
“I’m not going to lose hope”
The livestream team were joined by guests Abubaker Abed and Hatem Abudayyeh for lively discussions about various forms of resistance – in Gaza, Palestine more broadly and from the international movement in support of Palestine.
Abubaker Abed, a frequent livestream correspondent and contributor to The Electronic Intifada, described the current situation in his hometown of Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
Abed was skeptical of the vaccination campaign taking place in Gaza after a 10-month-old child who now is paralyzed in one of his legs was confirmed to be the first case of polio in the territory in 25 years.
Children are malnourished and surrounded by sewage and pollution and Abed is hearing from people that they want an ease of the pressure arising from the catastrophic conditions that are giving rise to the spread of diseases like polio.
Palestinians in Gaza “want better living circumstances and to return to their houses,” Abed said. “We need an end to this war.”
He said that the dark joke in Gaza, where buying a bar of soap is now out of reach for most people, is that “they want our children to be vaccinated and then to be killed.”
But Abed said that despite all that he and everyone else in Gaza have endured, “I’m not going to lose hope.”
“Hope is everything. And yes, I keep smiling. I keep looking at beautiful things around [me], seeking out the beauty is a matter of life … which is why we are on this earth,” he added.
Liberation “in my lifetime”
It’s a message to hold onto as people outside of Palestine push back against their governments that are complicit in Israel’s genocide and work to build a better world for all.
Returning guest Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair of the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), discussed what this looked like during the historic March on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month.
Nearly 40,000 people were in the streets over several days of protests during the convention, according to Abudayyeh. More than 270 organizations representing a wide range of social justice issues – including Black liberation, immigrant rights, reproductive and women’s rights, LGBTQ rights and environmental justice – joined the coalition to demand an end to the genocide in Gaza and an end to US aid to Israel.
Protesters participate in the March on the DNC on 19 August.
Organizers and marchers ensured that Palestine was front and center in media coverage of the convention.
“We walked away at the end of the week incredibly, incredibly proud of the work of the coalition, incredibly proud, proud of the Palestinian and Arab community that led the mobilizations,” Abudayyeh said.
Coalition-building and unity, in Palestine and in the diaspora, is necessary to win.
Even as recently as a few years ago, Abudayyeh didn’t think that the liberation of Palestine was going to happen in his lifetime.
“And to be honest with you, I feel differently now,” he said. “I think it is going to happen in my lifetime, and I’m going to be able to celebrate at some time in Gaza with Abubaker.”
“This is a US war”
According to Abudayyeh, the fight to end the genocide in Gaza “is the Vietnam War of our era.”
“This is a US war. And the people that are out there that are fighting for Palestinian justice and rights and liberation are also fighting to stop a US war,” he added.
On the question of Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump, Abudayyeh said, “there is no lesser of two evils when it comes to Palestine, when it comes to the Arab world, when it comes to foreign policy, generally, they are in absolute lockstep.”
“The Democrats are responsible” for the genocide in Gaza, Abudayyeh added. “The Democrats are the party in power. Biden is the president. Harris is the vice president. They should be and are legitimate targets of our protests.”
“We should shut them down, and we should disrupt them wherever they go, anywhere in the country.”
Also during this week’s livestream, host Nora Barrows-Friedman delivered her regular roundup of the top headlines from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and contributing editor Jon Elmer presented the latest battlefield developments in both territories.
Elmer discussed Netanyahu’s choice of maintaining Israeli control over the so-called Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border versus securing the freedom of the captives held in Gaza since 7 October – six of whom were found dead over the weekend, with Hamas’ armed wing hinting that its guards had executed them.
During the discussion towards the end of the show, livestream host Asa Winstanley provided a critical assessment of the UK’s announcement that it was suspending less than 10 percent of its arm licenses to Israel. He also provided an update about two cases of severe state repression of an activist and journalist who are outspoken in support of the Palestinian people.
The Electronic Intifada’s Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program and this author contributed writing and production. Eli Gerzon contributed post-production assistance.
Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada livestream can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
Add new comment