02/07/24 02/07/24 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] nermeen: from new york, this is democracy now! >> hamas responded tonight. we are reviewing that response now and i will be discussing it with the government of israel tomorrow. there is still a lot of work to be done but we continue to believe that an agreement is possible and essential. nermeen: hamas puts forward end

a deal to end this all gaza in response to a deal with the u.s. and israel for to percy's five -- ceasefire. "netanyahu's war on truth." >> from the immediate moment after the october 7 attacks, israel has unleashed a sustained information warfare campaign to dehumanize palestinians. this campaign has included lies, misinformation. israel has gotten the white house to launder these lies and the purpose was to justify the unjustifiable, scorched-earth campaign against the population of gaza. nermeen: we will speak with investigative journalist jeremy scahill about israel's propaganda campaign to dehumanize palestinians. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report.

i'm nermeen shaikh. a federal appeals court has unanimously rejected donald trump's claim he is immune from federal prosecution for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. in its ruling, the three-judge panel of the u.s. court of appeals for the d.c. circuit wrote -- "we cannot accept former president trump's claim that a president has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power -- the recognition and implementation of election results." the judges went on to write -- "nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count." trump has vowed to appeal the ruling, possibly to the supreme court. during oral arguments last month, trump's legal team claimed the former president should have full immunity to do anything, even assassinate political opponents. in a chaotic day on capitol hill, the republican effort to

impeach homeland security secretary alejandro mayorkas failed after republicans fell one vote short. democratic congressmember al green cast the deciding vote while wearing a hospital gown. green came to the capitol directly from a hospital where he was recovering from a recent surgery. republicans are vowing to hold another impeachment vote on mayorkas, who they accuse of failing to uphold immigration laws at the u.s.-mexico border. in a second setback for house speaker mike johnson, republicans also failed to pass a standalone bill to send $17.6 billion in military assistance to israel. meanwhile, in the senate, a bipartisan $118 billion immigration and foreign aid bill appears to be dead after republican lawmakers revolted against the very bill they had been pushing for. on tuesday, president biden accused donald trump of blowing up the plan which included harsh new border measures as well as new military aid for ukraine,

israel, and allies in the pacific. pres. biden: all indications are this bill won't even move forward to the senate floor. why? a simple reason. donald trump. donald trump thinks it is bad for him politically, therefore he is not for it. he would rather weaponize this issue than solve it. nermeen: the aclu has warned the bipartisan deal would have eviscerated long-standing asylum protections and forced the government to summarily expel people from the border without due process. u.s. secretary of state antony blinken has arrived in israel as negotiations continue over a possible truce and hostage deal that could end israel's assault on gaza, at least temporarily. on tuesday, qatar said hamas had given a "positive" response to a proposed deal but president biden described hamas's response as "over the top." in its counteroffer, hamas proposed a three-phased

ceasefire over 135 days where hamas would release all hostages in exchange for palestinian prisoners. hamas is also calling for a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of israeli forces from gaza, demands israel has so far opposed. as the negotiations continue, "the new york times" is reporting israel now believes a fifth of the hostages held in gaza may already be dead. the paper cited a confidential israeli assessment that estimated at least 30 of the remaining 136 hostages captured on october 7 have died. meanwhile, the united nations is urging israel to halt plans for a ground invasion of the southern gaza city of rafah, warning it will lead to a "large scale" loss of life. some displaced palestinians are living in cemeteries in rafah. >> people were forced to come here to the safe lace, which is

the cemetery among the dead, which is better than living in residential areas where the houses could collapse over our heads. we come here to live among the dead because of fear and horror. i envy the dead people for the current situation. they are dead but alive with god. will provided for. i envy them because they are better than us now. we live every second in horror. pain, torture, suffering, confusion because we don't know when the war will end. it is a very painful situation. nermeen: the israeli newspaper "haaretz" has revealed the israeli military has begun investigating the actions of its own forces during the october 7 hamas attack. part of the probe is focused on kibbutz be'eri, where an israeli brigadier general has admitted that he ordered an israeli tank commander to fire on a home where hamas fighters were holding israelis hostage. brigadier general barak hiram told "the new york times" that he had ordered the tank commander to "break in, even at the cost of civilian casualties."

only two of the 15 israeli hostages survived. we'll have more on this story later in the show. the u.s. department of education has opened an investigation into harvard university after a group of muslim and palestinian students filed a federal civil rights complaint alleging the school had failed to protect them from harassment and intimidation. in other education news, two students at northwestern university in illinois have been criminally charged after they published a mock version of the school's newspaper. the mock paper included a front page article accusing northwestern's administration of being complicit in the genocide of palestinians. the intercept reports that the students, who are both black, are being charged under a little known statute written to prevent the ku klux klan from distributing recruitment materials in newspapers. the students face up to a year in prison and a $2500 fine. in election news, nikki haley

lost the non-binding republican presidential primary in nevada tuesday even though donald trump was not on the ballot. over 60% of republican primary voters in nevada selected a box that said "none of these candidates." about 30% of voters picked haley, the former south carolina governor who served as trump's u.n. ambassador. on thursday, republicans in nevada will also hold a caucus. trump is competing in the caucus but haley is not. meanwhile, joe biden easily won the nevada primary with about 89% of the vote. in other political news, the chair of the republican national committee ronna mcdaniel has reportedly agreed to resign after coming under intense pressure from donald trump. mcdaniel plans to step down after the south carolina primary. trump is reportedly pushing for michael whatley, the chair of the north carolina republican party, to become the new head of the rnc. whatley is a prominent election denier who endorsed trump's false claims about the 2020

election being stolen. in california, at least nine people have died after the state was pummeled with record breaking rainfall from a deadly atmospheric river storm. some areas of southern california recorded over 13 inches of rain in recent days, triggering mass flooding and hundreds of mudslides. this is the actor and filmmaker deborah puette speaking in studio city as a river of water flowed down the street. >> we are having these rivers highs in the summer times and incredible storms we have never had before that they are calling once every 100 year storms and we have had two of them since august. my believe is of course it is climate change. nermeen: in michigan, a jury has convicted jennifer crumbley of four counts of involuntary manslaughter for a deadly school shooting carried out by her 15-year-old son at oxford high

school in 2021. prosecutors had argued crumbley had a duty to prevent her son from going on the rampage which killed four students in what was michigan's deadliest school shooting. this is marc keast, assistant prosecuting attorney in oakland county, speaking during the trial. >> jennifer crumbley did not pull the trigger that day but she is responsible for those deaths. these kids were gunned down inside oxford high school with this gun, nine millimeter handgun purchased four days before the shooting by james crumbley. jennifer crumbley's husband and father of the school shooter. this was a purchase celebrated by jennifer on instagram. nermeen: jennifer crumbley's husband is scheduled to go on trial in march.

in pakistan, at least 26 people have died after a pair of bombings in the province of balochistan ahead of thursday's general election. both blasts targeted the electoral offices of candidates. in senegal more than 200 opposition politicians and protesters have been arrested in recent days after senegalese president macky sall postponed this month's election. at least one private television channel has had their broadcasting license revoked after they aired footage of protests on sunday. the government also shut down internet access via mobile data. opposition protesters have accused sall of attempting to stage a coup by extending his term in office. earlier this week, lawmakers voted to postpone the elections until december. back in the united states, the former head of honduras' national police pleaded guilty tuesday to cocaine trafficking charges. juan carlos "el tigre" bonilla appeared in a new york city court just days before he was scheduled to go on trial with former honduran president juan orlando hernández next week.

speculation is growing that bonilla will now testify against hernandez. the two were extradited to the united states in 2022. hernández was arrested in february 2022, less than a month after his presidential term ended. he was a longtime u.s. ally, who received backing during his entire eight-year term despite mounting reports of serious human rights violations and accusations of corruption and involvement with drug smuggling. his brother juan antonio "tony" hernández is currently serving a life prison sentence in the u.s. after being convicted in 2019 of smuggling cocaine. in chile, the death toll from devastating wildfires has increased to over 120 while hundreds of people are still missing. thousands of homes were charred and entire neighborhoods decimated after the blazes broke out last week in chile's central coastal hills. the seaside cities of viña del mar and valparaíso have been engulfed with smoke for days and volunteers continue to search

for survivors. these are the deadliest-ever wildfires to hit chile due to record heat. in more news from chile, former president sebastián piñera died tuesday in a helicopter crash. he first served from 2010 to 2014 and again from 2018 to 2022. massive protests broke out against piñera's government in 2019 due to rising inequality, high cost of living, and privatization. he responded by unleashing chile's police force and military, both of which were accused of severe human rights violations, including beating and torturing demonstrators. funeral arrangements are being planned for namibian president hage geingob who died on sunday at the age of 82. geingob was a prominent anti-apartheid activist who became namibia's first prime minister when the former german colony gained independence from apartheid south africa in 1990. south african president cyril ramaphosa described geingob as

"a towering veteran of namibia's liberation from colonialism and apartheid." and in new york, beloved transgender advocate, author, and actor cecilia gentili has died. gentili migrated from argentina years ago and dedicated her life fighting for the rights of sex workers, lgbtq+, and immigrant communities. gentili starred as miss orlando in the acclaimed television series "pose." her debut memoir "faltas: letters to everyone in my hometown who isn't my rapist" was released in 2022, detailing her life before leaving argentina. last year, she began performing in her autobiographical off-broadway show called "red ink." gentili was also the founder of trans equity consulting, an organization that supports trans women of color, sex workers, immigrants, and incarcerated people. a post on her instagram said tuesday -- "our beloved cecilia gentili passed away this morning to

continue watching over us in spirit. please be gentle with each other and love one another with ferocity." gentili was 52 years old. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. when we come back, negotiations are underway as hamas puts 40 counterproposal to end the assault on gaza. we will speak with daniel levy. stay with us. ♪ [music break]

nermeen: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm nermeen shaikh in new york, joined by amy goodman. hi, amy. amy: hi, nermeen. welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. nermeen: hamas has put forward a detailed plan for a new ceasefire deal aimed at ending israel's assault on gaza. the plan is a response to a proposal drawn up two weeks ago by the u.s., israel, qatar, and

egypt. the hamas counterproposal, which was introduced late tuesday night, envisions three phases of 45 days each. in the first phase, hamas would release all female israeli hostages, males under 19, and elderly and sick people in exchange for palestinian women and children held in israeli jails. israel would also withdraw from populated areas in gaza, cease aerial operations, allow far more aid to enter, and permit palestinians to return to their homes, including in northern gaza. the second 45-day phase, to be negotiated during the first, would include the release of all remaining hostages, mostly soldiers, in exchange for more palestinian prisoners and israel would complete its withdrawal from gaza. in the third phase, the sides would exchange the remains of hostages and prisoners. president biden commented on hamas's counter-proposal on tuesday, calling it "a little over the top." pres. biden: there is some

movement, and i don't want -- let me choose my words. there is some movement. there has been a response from -- there has been a response from the opposition, but -- yes, i'm sorry. from hamas. but it seems to be a little over the top. we're not sure -- continue negotiation right now. nermeen: secretary of state antony blinken arrived in israel overnight after meetings on tuesday in egypt and qatar. he will meet with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu and president isaac herzog, among others, to discuss hamas's response to the proposed deal. blinken will also meet palestinian authority president mahmoud abbas later today. as the negotiations continue, israel's assault on gaza is entering its fifth month.

over 27,500 palestinians have been killed and nearly 67,000 wowoded since october 7, while the vast majority y gaza's population have been driven from their homes, much of t t rritity has been desesoyed or serelylyamaged, and d quarter off the e polation i is fang starvation. for more on the ceasefire negotiations, we are joined by daniel levy, president of the u.s./middle east project and a former israeli peace negotiator under prime ministers ehud barak and yitzhak rabin. welcome to democracy now! if we could just begin with your assessment of the negotiations, how they have been proceeding so far, and what anticipate israel 's response might be to the counterproposal offered by hamas . >> we do have a detailed position that has been put out in the public domain. you referenced that.

a crucial thing to say about this is that what hamas has said is it is not we could do phase one, move on to phase ii and phase three, but there has to be an agreement upfront that this is going to deliver a final ceasefire. we heard, not detailed proposals from the israeli side, but prime minister netanyahu making clear he will not accept a permanent cease fire, will not redeploy his troops out of gaza, and has been circumspect on what kind of israeli prisoner exchange would be on the table. that suggests the parties are still really quite some distance apart, that there is an element of blame game not being attributed with blame, and there is an element of where more one could take the negotiations. i think that will be partly dependent on three factors -- firstly, the balance of forces

on the battlefield. this is not gone as israel had hoped. israel is, yes, operating gaza. we have seen the terrible destruction. you have gone to the level of death, disease, starvation. but we are not seeing hamas's resilience. so on the battlefield, that is still something of a stalemate. the second factor is internal pressure. there is internal pressure from the families, sub inside the war cabinet who says this is to change direction. the third factor is the external dynamics of pressure. south africa at the international court of justice, which i think was very significant -- what we do not have is an american secretary of state empowered to use leverage

to put on the table a disincentive, a cost structure for israel to continue this and therefore i think we are stuck. what we have, curiously perhaps, an attempt thomas and and run -- almost in and run anti-and postwar plans with the ceasefire. that could be a good thing. there are root causes that absolutely need to be addressed. blinken seems to be putting on the table some magical thinking which is partly set out in articles by tom friedman and david ignatius and will cause more problems and maybe that is something we can touch on. amy: daniel levy, if you can talk about the role of qatar, egypt in these negotiations. right now blinken is meeting with netanyahu. and what ideally -- you as a

negotiator know the significance of negotiations, blinken needs to say to netanyahu, well blinken has said he is heartbroken and got ranged over the fatalities in gaza, what he has continued to do is provide weapons to israel, in and run around congress twice, so whatever he feels or says he is feeling, the significance of what the u.s. is doing in shoring up netanyahu? >> that is crucial, amy. some of her the president say seems like hamas position is a little too much. 2000 pound bombs by the u.s. to israel after everything we have seen, little too much. some may consider when there's a plausible case for genocide at the international court of

justice and you are ignoring this provisional measures, a too much. what we have is an qatari and egyptian -- you have the mediators from the region who are talking to hamas. they can try and lean on hamas. if hamas does not feel it has to concede further, it will not. will the u.s. lean on israel? it seems rather than coming and saying there is a cost for you to do this, what secretary blinken is attempting to do his saying, you know what? i am going to reward you. you know what i've got my back pocket? saudi normalization. thes have -- the saudis have thrown some cold water on this. i think this demonstrates first

naivety. it is layers of maple it, the idu can a western appointed palestinian technocratic leaders somehow run the palestinian side with no credibility on their own people. these limited measures against israeli settlers when the administration took when the problem is the state structure of occupation and oppression. it seems there is another effort here by the administration to say, we can stop ethnic cleansing, we can stop this displacement but -- and here's one of the big problems i think -- what is offered is not anyone is saying israel will withdraw, the army will be out, will have recognition of a viable state that is actually going to exist with jerusalem as its ca

pital. what is offered is a little verbiage in exchange for saudi normalization. what this is really is an attempt to re-entrench, to re-freeze the existence of the use of partition as a tool of violence in ensuring future -- i think that is a pernicious thing to offer palestinians. you can either have ethnic cleansing or apartheid. what is not offered is just ice and genuine peace. if the administration wants to make a deal with the saudis, geopolitical move to try and slow down, don't believe this is a piece move because this is a geopolitical move or not a genocidal avoidance.

amy: what about the role of qatar and egypt in this? and how you feel this is going to play out? in the midst of the so-called negotiations that are coming close to yet another --blinken what use the word "ceasefire" he talks about cause. the threat of a ground invasion of rafah where hundreds of thousands of palestinians have fled, something like 2 million palestinians are there just on the tip of gaza, on the egyptian border. >> as you say, palestinians have been moved to one location to the other, and then every time the area there told to move to, that becomes bombed. that is the story with khan younis today and the story with rafah tomorrow. qatar can and has come and we saw the first pulse is all releases comes of this magical thinking there is a negotiation

path to release hostages -- unfortunately, the numbers are smaller. there is a negotiated path but qatar and egypt can only work with what they have from the israeli side. if they have something woefully falling short of what is needed because on the israeli side there is division, and unwillingness to make those hard decisions, they are not going to be able to deliver on the back of that. egypt has another concern, which is that israel still holds a plan for the mass displacement of palestinians in gaza into egypt. given the horrendous conditions there. if israel takes over the rafah border crossing with egypt, that exacerbates the issue, the effect of that not being something that can happen as far as they are concerned. so you have the role of the mediators. perhaps what netanyahu is hoping

his that he can get some of the hostages out -- because there is pressure without having to concede on the other issues. perhaps there hoping phase one happens. i don't think it is going to happen at that low-cost. what the americans seem to hope is they can drive a wedge between netanyahu, smoked rich, and ben-gvir --smorttrich and ben-gvir. i think this is more american naïveté, americans failure to learn the lessons of history. i think netanyahu will say, i can get a better deal, maybe not now, not with this president, but look, i got the abraham corgi's while giving nothing and i will get something this time -- a core deals while giving nothing and i will get something this time. this will stand to whether this

administration, this president actually wants to create circumstances in which israel has hard choices to make in which jane went american leverage is on the table. if not, will continue to depend on the battlefield dynamics, which are not going well on the israeli internal pressure, and risk for the regional escalation which has gone up again in the last weeks. america's willing to risk being further entangled yet again because it is unwilling to stand down an israeli leader who has his own political survival at stake and who is insistent on maintaining is a part-time regime. nermeen: daniel levy, i want to go back took, she made about saudi arabia that normalization of ties between saudi arabia and israel being one of the principal incentives being offered. but there also questions being raised that the u.s. promises to

saudi arabia are not likely to be accepted by congress, even if this goes i had come including a defense pact as well as technical support to saudi arabia to develop nuclear power industry. it also is unclear that netanyahu sees saudi normalization and the continuation of u.s. support as essential to survival. i don't know if you agree with that. do you think that is true since it seems clear his principal objective, netanyahu's, his principal aim is to remain in power? >> prime minister netanyahu is a leader who now has a legacy of october 7 hanging over him. in court, facing criminal

charges. can you still hear me? nermeen: go ahead, daniel. >> thank you. he is therefore making a daily calculation of how does he keep this going. now, right now it is more important for him to maintain his coalition rather than to go on the strength to saudi normalization. he can turn around to the israeli public and say, don't worry, the americans want me to give up things which are too much for israel to give up. my parliamentary opponents are willing to give them up but not me. i will get a better deal. so that is on the netanyahu side of things. he does not feel he is in a corner yet. on the saudi side of things, the

saudis, why not? if you're in their position, say, let's see what americans will put on the table, baby circumstances under which we will do this and if not, at least we have got an american offer we can use in the future to see where else this can go. what you have is an israeli site effective at playing the administration, saudi side quite effective at playing the administration. but a very weak, very ineffective, self harming government in washington, d.c. amy: i want to go back to something you said. you referred to in apartheid regime being the israeli government. he also talked about -- this is very significant given who you

are, former israeli peace negotiator under prime minister barak and rabin who was killed by a jewish extremist, was assassinated. explain what you mean. then talk about where you see this going and how painful it was to see president biden say he could not remember the name hamas cognitively stumbling, but then saying hamas's proposal is over the top. >> look, on that latter point, i can't comment -- well, i can comment but i have no special insight into the decision-making that has a reality in this country where that is the nature of the candidate being put forward.

i imagine in -- and my assessment would be that community of people, sizable community who see a significant, massive importance in an outcome in the election which donald trump does not return to the white house, i imagine they would see it as crucial that everything be done so that the alternative to trump is a president is someone as broad a coalition as possible can vote for. certainly, amongst those who previously voted for him. therefore, i hope those other groups who have such strong interest in that trump outcome not materializing would be pressuring the administration to change its policy on aiding, abetting, and arming the highest

court in the world come international court of justice has plausibly said, is a genocide. rather than beating up on people in michigan and elsewhere who say, i can't, cannot vote for this man. that is on the american side. in terms of what i have witnessed previously as a negotiator and the assessment i made with regard to the apartheid reality and the offer -- there was a two state option, which was an incredibly good deal for israel. not the partition plan the u.n. voted on in 1947 to allow this jewish state entity to come into existence. that partition plan, voted on by a u.n. with virtually none of the d colonized states. he did not have an african, asian, global south presence at

the u.n. that you create the jewish state. they gave israel about 53%. that was the basis on which the two state negotiation took place. rather than grabbing this with both arms and saying, my goodness, how do we go the extra mile so we can get this remarkable deal? rather than going -- i don't know what would've happened had rabin not been assassinated. at the negotiating on the israeli side when the palestinian leadership, the plo was ready to accept that, was to keep draining this palestinian state, not only would there be nothing on the refugees, not only would there be no truth and reconciliation, there would have to be demilitarization, there would be islands of israeli settlements. those islands kept getting bigger with every and

d iteration on the map. what we are left with a quarter of a century after the deadline for completing those negotiations, is something that factually, legally, accurately resembles what existed under that apartheid regime. there's no perfect symmetry but the legal definition of apartheid i think has strongly been proven by the human rights organizations. i think this is the difference between biden and bebe. bebe says i am offering them -- biden is saying, damage, can't you just call it estate? we know it is not a state. what you have is partition being used to create these tiny islands of palestinian limited

self-governance so the envelope of controlled is an israeli regime which makes sure the palestinians cannot have equal rights, cannot have security, cannot have a future, and that is always going to be a recipe for insecurity and an explosion, whether that is one that impacts israelis or palestinians. and to try and come out of this crisis inside the solution is to go back to squeezing things into that box, i think that is criminal. nermeen: daniel levy, if you could say what you think the significance of that she mentioned it earlier -- dissent within the israeli war cabinet, however minor, popular opposition to the war continuing, to what extent that might make a difference with respect to the negotiation and what israel is willing to concede? >> you have a camp that is an tight apartheid, anti-occupation

amongst jewish israelis who do see a different future and israelis who ultimately need a landing place in which they have a future and a home, just not at the expense of palestinians. you have a different camp, a much larger cap which was against netanyahu and the huge protest movement before october 7, which continues not to trust netanyahu, which believes the release of the hostages should be a priority and which, as was expressed by one of the ministers who lost his son and this war, believes the goal you can totally decimate hamas is not realizable. and that israel, he did not use this line which and i will, should cut its losses. it is not enough yet to drive an end to this war and not being matched by the external pressure we should see from the u.s. administration. nermeen: thank you so much, daniel levy, president of the u.s./middle east project and a former israeli peace negotiator

under prime ministers ehud barak and yitzhak rabin. when we come back, journalist jeremy scahill on "netanyahu's war on truth." stay with us. ♪ [music break]

nermeen: "drink before war" by sinead o'connor. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm nermeen shaikh with amy goodman. a key israeli intelligence document used by over a dozen countries, including the united states, to justify defunding unrwa, the primary aid group for palestinian refugees, contains no evidence to back up israel's claims according to several news reports. the allegations made in the israeli document includes accusations that several unrwa employees participated in the hamas attack on october 7. britain's channel 4 obtained the document and found that it "provides no evidence to support its explosive new claim that unrwa staff were involved with terror attacks on israel."

"the financial times," which also reviewed the materials, came to the same conclusion as did sky news. now the aid agency, which is critical to providing humanitarian support in gaza, says it will run out of funds by march as a result of the funding cuts. the allegations made by israel are just the latest in what journalist jeremy scahill calls "israel's information warfare campaign" which is aimed at "flood the public discourse with a stream of false, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable allegations." in his latest article, published today in the intercept, scahill writes -- "nearly every week, sometimes every day, the israeli government and military have unloaded a fresh barrage of allegations intended to justify the ongoing slaughter." he adds -- "the tactic is effective, particularly because the u.s. and other major allies have consistently laundered israel's unverified allegations as evidence of the righteousness of the cause." jeremy scahill is a senior

reporter and correspondent at "the intercept." his latest article is headlined "netanyahu's war on truth: israel's ruthless propaganda campaign to dehumanize palestinians." he joins us now from germany. jeremy, welcome back to democracy now! if you can begin by laying out the case you make in your latest piece. >> in the early morning hours of october 7, members of hamas, special forces members of palestinian islamic jihad, led a multipronged attack in israel. everyone is friendly with this. initial target they had constituted almost the entirety of israel's infrastructure and what tel aviv called the gaza envelope and they were able to quite swiftly overpower the gaza division come the main entity of the israeli state responsible for enforcing the prison,

conditions of the people of gaza come for caring out drone strikes, waging war, for conducting all manner of warfare against the people of gaza. then the militant palestinian fighters made their way into a series of settlements in the area and the intent was clear. there were trying to take hostages captive so they could negotiate the release of their own prisoners. what they did was nothing short of shattering the paradigm of sending a message that the big lie that is promoted by israel, not just under netanyahu but certainly under netanyahu, that israelis could have been piece of stone's throw away from what is effectively a concentration camp filled with 2.3 william people that are deprived of anything vaguely resembling a human existence, that that is tenable. israel was by all accounts caught off guard despite the fact its own intelligence

analyst had been warning it appeared hamas was preparing and training for something that was quite spectacular and not simply some small one-off attempt to fire rockets were even do a minor incursion into israeli territory. i'll accounts, those were overlooked and dismissed. what we saw happen as the palestinian fighters made their way across these various israeli communities and overtook the gaza division and took many military personnel prisoner and brought them back to gaza was the israeli government engaged in sustained counteraction, including with apache attack helicopters, drones. when the military did finally arrived and some of these communities -- mind you, was hours and hours before any official israeli security forces were responding to some of the civilian areas. they engaged in widespread firefight. in kibbutz be'eri israel forces

shelled a house, likely killing at least a dozen israelis who are being held captive by palestinian fighters. the israeli government was reeling from the shock of having these crucial military bases overrun, communities being flooded with palestinian fighters. and within hours of these attacks happening, the netanyahu government began to craft a deliberate propaganda campaign to sell the united states, other western leaders, and the global public on a scorched-earth war of annihilation against gaza. his campaign kicked into such high gear immediately. what they did central to this is the israelis began showing president biden, secretary of state blinken, the heads of state of nato countries and other western nations images and videos that they then proceeded

to tell an unverified story about what they depicted. the characterization from netanyahu and the defense minister gallant was that this was the greatest act of violence against jewish people since the holocaust, that the tactics hamas used included rape, beheading of babies, mutilation of bodies, torture of families, abounding of children in groups including in a nursery and one of the kibbutzes, engaging in mass execution small children, setting children on fire, and president biden, secretary blinken, and many western leaders then started to repeat these claims. what happened is when israeli social security agency began to actually document the deaths on october 11, they documented 1139 deaths, 695 of them were civilians. we started reviewing the public

documentation of the deaths and turns out there was only one infant that was killed in all of the attacks combined on october 7, nine-month-old baby. she was hit by a bullet during gunfire while she was in her mother's arms. i think there were 36 children under the age of 19 that died that day. 14 of them were killed in hamas rocket attacks. when journalists started looking at the official death toll -- the israelis have published the stories, the photos of many, many, many of the victims. you realize these were all lies. it was a massive fraud perpetrated on the world, particularly this business about mass decapitation of babies. joe biden on numerous occasions said he saw actual photographic evidence of the beheading of babies and abounding in burning alive with kerosene whole

families. what i discovered in my research was that these stories appeared to have ended up in the heads of biden and blinken and others based on the totally fraudulent version of events on october 7 that was offered by private orthodox rescue operations, the most famous of them, telling stories about a pregnant woman who had her fetus cut out of her body and the fetus was decapitated in front of the woman and her two children. there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that happen. there is no documentation that any pregnant woman died on october 7. there was one pregnant woman who was shot while in her car on the way to deliver her baby. the doctors were able to save her life. they tried to deliver the baby. the baby died some hours later. but that was not hamas cutting a

baby out of the stomach, yet these lies were sold. some of the most obscene things that israel said that we now know are false were repeated by antony blinken in testimony in front of the senate, by joe biden himself. this has gone on and on. i have just given you a couple of the most graphic examples. what is clear is the israeli government understood they needed to sell this as the worst crime against humanity in modern times in order to justify a long planned siege of gaza that benjamin netanyahu -- he represents the most extreme and violent version of the israeli state project. and it is very clear that they sold this fraud in the white house laundered it and that is why we have seen -- i think 27,000 people killed in gaza is a conservative estimate. i think it is much greater than that because there is an

estimated 7000 or 8000 palestinians missing, many in graves that are the rubble of their former homes. this is one of the most epic frauds in modern history reminiscent of the lies told to justify the invasion and occupation of iraq. amy: i am wondering if we can jump for a moment to the beginning of this segment. from october 7 to the unrwa story. that something like the israeli government was alleging 12 and number got larger members of unrwa, which has something like 13,000 workers in gaza, were involved with the october 7 attack. talk about come if you will, the way you do in your piece, take apart as china 4 did come as a number of news organizations have, the evidence for this that has been used by now almost 20

countries to defund this essential organization that supports the hospitals and the schools of gaza for over 2 million people. >> unrwa is nothing short of the most important humanitarian organization operating in gaza. it was explicitly established in 1949 during the nakba were 750,000 plus palestinians were forced from their homes in an extermination, annihilation campaign that then paved the way for the establishment of the state of israel in the aftermath of world war ii. in the mandate of unrwa was to care for those palestinians and ensure the right of return to their homes and land was going to be protected. the israeli government, certainly under netanyahu but other heads of state as well come has always wanted unrwa eliminated because this represents a very serious problem for the israeli agenda

of eliminating palestinian territory in its entirety. to give back context. then the israelis decide immediately after the international court of justice rules in favor of south africa and orders provisional measures that include the prevention of genocidal acts, the stopping of killing palestinians that the court recognized as a protected group, and to allow with immediate effect the entry of aid sufficient to confront the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the israeli war on gaza, the israelis choose to open a new front and just blast the public and the ears of western leaders with a propaganda campaign aimed at trying to get them to join the crusade to unrwa eliminate unrwa. israel prepared what it called an intelligence dossier alleging 12 employees of unrwa -- it has

13,000 employees or r in gaza, 30,000 across the middle east were palestinian displaced -- displaced palestinians reside. the response from the biden administration was to immediately announce it was suspending all funding to unrwa. secretary of state blinken admitted publicly that the united states had not even done its own review or investigation of these assertions that 12 members of a 30,000 member organization had some link to the october 7 attacks. this is so reminiscent of judy miller, "the new york times," the mushroom cloud, dick cheney build up to the war in iraq, they go to "the wall street journal" and israelis provide them with what "the journal" advertises as an intelligence dossier. they go further than the 12 and say the full 10% of unrwa's staff are connected to hamas and

palestinian islamic jihad and say this is not just a few bad apples. well, this laundering of israeli propaganda in the form of an article for a major american newspaper was the lead author of that article was a new contributor to "the wall street journal." i started digging into her because she did not have a full bio on the website. it turns out that she is a veteran of the israeli defense forces. she was a militant opponent of the boycott, divestment sanctions movement when she was at university and the united dates. her close friend who she did a joint interview with for an organization that takes an grad students to israel, she credits her with during the 2009 gaza war, creating the social media strategy for the israeli defense forces. this is the reporter that was the lead journalist writing this

unrwa story for "the wall street journal." once we started drawing attention to that and talking about her ties to someone she said helped create social media strategy for the idf during the previous war in gaza, then these organizations she was affiliated with scrubbed all of these articles and photos from the internet. "the journal" has blocked her twitter account. but this was clearly a sophisticated propaganda campaign where they knew which journalist to go to, which governments would buy into it, and what they got was the biden administration now being actively complicit in violating the orders of the international court of justice which has israel under watch for potential plausible genocidal actions in gaza. amy: jeremy, do you think on the october 7 investigation that it wasn't simply enough for israel to say over 1000 israelis and other people, majority of them

civilian, were killed in the hamas attack, was not enough of justification to go into israel and then multiply that over 27,000 times -- 27 times to more than 27,000 dead today? >> the israeli's, particularly the civilians killed that day, deserve the truth about what happened. the israeli government spotted with heavy firepower. there are indications the directive may have been invoked which says it is better to injure and possibly kill israelis then let them be taken hostage. they also made sweeping allegations about sexual violence being systematically committed by hamas. that they provided no proof that such a systematic campaign took place. the victims in israel deserve the truth and the 30,000 plus palestinians who have been murdered with american bombs,

whose deaths have been justified by the killing of those israelis possibly including by their own government, they also -- nermeen: we have to leave it there. jeremy scahill, senior reporter and correspondent at the intercept. his latest piece published today is titled "netanyahu's war on truth."