tv SPOTLIGHT PRESSTV February 9, 2024 10:00pm-10:31pm IRST
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hello and welcome to spotlight. more than four months is passed since israel started its onslot against the people of the gaza strip. nearly 28,00 palestinians have lost their lives and about 70,00 others have been injured. most of the population in the besieg territory have been forced to move to the southern city of rafa. now israel is preparing to invade the palestinians. last
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refuge in the gaza strip, the united nations has warned of a blood bath if israel invades the city, where else do the palestinians have to go, and will there ever be an end to the decades long western-backed occupation and genocide against the palestinian people. joining us on tonight spotlight, we have former cia analyst ray mcgovern, joining us from rawley north carolina. and also we have radio host and journalist cpr news, mr. don debar, joining us from aussening, new york. gentlemen, welcome to the program. let's start off with mr. mcgovern after 126 days of israeli barbarism and brutality, nearly 29,00 people have been killed in gaza, schools, mosks, churches, hospitals and even ambulances. have been frequent targets of the
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strikes, which have now left only few of the medical facilities partially operational in gaza. please share with us your perspective on this tragedy that is unfolding in gaza before our very eyes. well, the painful thing of course is that i'm an american citizen, and without the support of my government, israel could not do these things, not only. is arming and giving political support to israel, but it's also denying the the requisite funding for the only agency that can help, and that's unra, the un body that provides aid to the people in gaza and has for many, many years, they have decided to withhold funding on the pretext that some, well, first they said 12, "now it's down to
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six of the 26 th00 employees of unra and gaza were cooperating or somehow involved with hamas, they said that without providing any evidence, and our secretary of state bought it, saying you, i think this completely plausible, even though we don't have any confirmation, so what pains me is the fact that this could stop at which..." trying to uh exert pressure on our government to stop enabling this, so far we have not been successful. don debar, after over four months of lethal and deadly attacks, the resistance groups and gaz are fighting back strong, both inside and outside of the strip. iran's foreign ministers recently highlighted that israel has achieved none of its goals after four months of genocide in gaza, so what have the israelis achieved other than record
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holders for murdering children, well whatever political constituency existed in the world, whatever pockets in the world, some l in the united states and western europe of support for israel pretty much evaporated. it is very difficult to explain what people have been witnessing now for the last f months in any terms other than mass mur, look at the murder of thousands of civilians. including thousands of children and understand that that's wrong no matter what it's called. we're sitting in the united states, it's it's really um almost head splitting confusing. there was a trial that concluded yesterday in the midwestern part of the united states was
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michigan or ohio, of woman whose 15-year-old son had uh taken a gun to school and killed four fellow students, she was convicted also of like uh... homicide, um, involuntary manslaughter uh, based on criminal negligence, basically, that this, this is her child, her child did this, and so she's culpable basically for not educating him better, keeping better reign on him, and allowing him to have a gun. um, this is be, this case was being raised by people who in the united states who believe that guns kill people, not people kill people, and then we look a like israel or or ukraine uh where uh there are people that claim not to be the united states either making war on russia or gen committing genocide on the palestinians, the the the us claims that that's not them and they're not culpable for it, and the
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weapons sales, the united states has a 850 900 billion dollar a year budget basically uh producing things that murder people in large numbers so... uh, it's it's difficult to parse which is which uh, you know, rifles that kids can use to shoot 10 of their friends or bombs that blow up entire cities you in the course of a week or two, but we have people making money on both of them by the way, and both will continue until we stop it. raymond govern, the un chief antonio guteres says the ceasefire is needed before quote a gigantic tragedy develops in rafa, now israel as we mention. earlier's bombing areas of gaza, it had initially designated a safe, with it wiping out entire families, and it's now planning a ground assault in raffa. is israel using the excuse of eradicating hamas, something that it is failed to achieve to just to continue to kill palestinians. a
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senior hamas official says the israeli prime minister's insistence on continuing the onslot against gaza shows his goal is genocide against palestinians. "what the israeli defense minister said very early on in the first week of their retaliation uh was that we're dealing with human animals here, we have to pretty much exterminate them, as many other israeli leaders have said. now for genocide, you have to prove intent, and so it was no problem for..." the international court of justice to prove intent based on the the pronouncements of the israeli leaders themselves and this troops that followed their orders, so um, you know, it really
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needs to stop, and for the un secretary general to say, oh my, this will be a blood bath that we never seen before, might, that's not enough, okay? "now what's enough, he has to lean on the united states and great britain, us vessel, and get get the president to stop what he's doing, president biden, even in his old age, even though the department of justice here in the united states has called him feeble, memory deplived and all, they did that yesterday." um, he, they should wake him up and say, look, uh, we need you to stop this, because it's the us that needs to stop it. meanwhile, i have to say that the hooties, strangely enough, have
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a real partner in their struggle to stop the genocide, and who is that partner? happens to be a un body called the international court of justice. wow. where are the other arab leaders? where are the leaders of turkey? uh, they need to explicitly condemn all this and do more than condemn it. a gradual way, in other words, i'm not saying major offensive or major attack of any kind, but ape what vladimir putin is doing in ukraine, attrition, attrition, attrition, attrition, until the israelis are feeling so much economic damage from what the huches are doing the red sea that they'll realize that they have no future, they have no economic future unless they cease and assist. ton debar uh in his most... recent comments, us president joe biden said the israelis have gone quote unquote over the top regarding uh
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the assault on gaza, how far is too far uh in the support that washington is offering for the israelis and the massacre that they're committing. iran's foreign minister just recently said the us military, financial and diplomatic support for israel will have no result but defeat. well... actually, in his most recent remarks, president biden appointed uh president alsisi as president of mexico, that was i think his last public statement. um, too far was passed - within a day of the of october 7, maybe october 8th, too far really had been passed somewhere in 1947, 1948, the terrorist attacks that were made against the palestinian people, in the run up to the creation of what they call the... state of israel, um, the the have failures across the board by the us
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government and its actions along with the israelis, there's an ongoing set of violations of un security council resolutions that uh are supposed to be setting the borders of israel and palestine at 1967, they've been ignored pretty much 50 years now by the israelis, there have been various war crimes committed periodically by the israelis and by extension by the united states, that's just in that conflict, of course the united states has been committing them all over the planet, um, the bombing recently of yemen, of syria along with an illegal occupation of iraq along with an illegal occupation that still continues, even after it was officially discontinued several times now, this is this is in essence the standard operating procedure of the of the empire. i don't know how how you uh put a stop it using the architecture of imperialism that was
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constructed in the aftermath of world war ii uh but it has to be stopped by whatever means necessary and we're getting close to the point where it has to be stopped now. ray govern iranian foreign minister hussen amir abdul in his recent trip to beirot said that israel wants to drag the us alongside itself into the west. asia quagmer: do you believe the israelis are seeking to expand their onslot on gaza into a wider regional conflict so they can get the us directly involved and are those actions producing the results that the israelies are seeking? well i have to tell you that i've been around for a while and i know what quagmyers are, i've been, i've been through afghanistan, i've watched iraq, i've watched libya, you the us getting involved in? quagmys of course israel and its no conservative uh patriots there in in the
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us government would like nothing better than to get the us involved overtly in a war against iran. now that can only happen if iran rises to the bait so to speak. okay now iran in my view has played it very cautiously. "it knows, as most most educated observers know, that israel is its way out, this is never going to be the same for israel, the problem is, what to do for the next two weeks, what to do when the rest of those gazons are exterminated, a word used by the nazis, when i was a little boy, exterminated in and around rafa and south." what to do then? that's what my concern is, because i care about the children, and as
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roger waters puts it in his song, we have to ensure that no one kills the children anymore. don debar, yemed has pledged to continue its operations against uh israeli linked vessels until the regime stops its war on gaza, regardless of the attacks by the us set coalition, the red sea. uh, the leader of yemenzana movement says the us-side aggression against this country will not protect israeli linked ships. talk tous about the emmy response to the gaza onslot and this defiant. message that the yemenes are sending to the us and its allies? well, to a large degree, first of all, it's uh, returning fire that's been uh levied against yemen and gaza for years now by you know, yemen has been looking a uh quarantine in jfk's terminology
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a blockade, whatever, um, heavily sanctioned and and traffic heavily controlled by external. forces as has gaza since 2007 and they're returning fire now, they're basically saying really, well we're not allowing any traffic in to resupply you, under the present conditions, world opinion is with them, certainly people on the ground, there's a situation that exists in the immediate area that i think is now being replicated around the world, sympathies of the people, forgetting the governments, but the people throughout the muslim and arab worlds uh have always been with the palestinians even if the policies of their governments were not, the governments had to at least pay lip service and maintain a respectful quote unquote distance from the zionist state, and we're a point now where the situation for the
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palestinians is so desperate in front of all these other folks in the neighborhood. that these governments have had to uh bend a little more and still some of them are looking down the barrel of a gun that called revolution if they don't do something if the just stand by and allow this to continue to happen, i think that's also developing around the world to a degree, and so yemen suddenly getting involved like this rather than looking like extreme or terrorism or whatever uh looks appropriate to lot of people, they're trying to stop a slaughter of people so... "i i think that the israelis and and the us or whoever's really making policy did a serious overreach this time um and i think that on the ground the whole you know the whole game board basically is changing that being the you know the the mindset of the people. raymond govern, let's turn our attention uh to the uh a resistance outfits
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in iraq and syria, what do you think are the motives behind the united states's recent attack?" on those resistance groups in iraq and syria, very simple, to show how strong the united states is, we put these poor fellows in the line of fire as targets, and then when somebody shoots at them, we're real strong, will retaliate. one fact that needs to be mentioned in this discussion like this is that the huchis and iran are not alone here as most people. "don't know, a treaty between russia and iran is in its very final stages, and also china is desperately interested in making sure that things don't blow up in the persian gulf or the red sea because they depend so heavily on iranian oil. so what does that mean? that means that
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iran is not alone. this is very different constellation of forces than just two. three decades ago, and the problem is that our president doesn't seem to be able to understand that, and his advisers don't seem to be able to able to tell him that, this is different, we have to stop supporting israel 110%. don debar, iraq has condemned the latest us drone strike on the capital bagdat, calling it a breach of the country's sovereignty and iraqi resistance movement is called for submitting a request. to the un security council to demand the immediate withdraw of foreign forces, the iraqi prime minister has also stated that baghdad wants a quick withdrawal of the destabilizing us forces uh from iraq, so we see the pressure keeps piling and piling on uh the united states and deadline has not been set, but still at this point it seems iraqi
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politicians have this historic opportunity to expell the us from iraq, how close are we? in your opinion to seeing that day, that's the kind of thing that happens all of sudden, apparently all of sudden, it builds over a long period of time, and then there's just some catalyzing event that triggers series of events and rapid succession, i think we're looking at that now, mean i can't imagine the more catalyzing event than a genocide on television for four months, but this is occupation period with at least the sufferance of the united states government of the military occupying pieces of iraq by the
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way um and still operational obviously because they've conducted operations the both on the ground inside and from outside into iraq the people in iraq have had it um if everything this happened since 1991 or whatever wasn't sufficient. uh finally we're certainly there, and so whether the government wants to or not, they're going to have to pursue this line um of you know of antagonism and in essence kicking the united states out, or the people will do it for them and send them along with the uh us troops, i think that's pretty pretty much on the agenda now in a lot of lot of homes in iraq. raymond govern, uh, in reaction to the icj's ruling, which you also alluded to earlier. "the israeli prime minister benim now, he called the order a disgrace and vout to continue the onslot, that of course was to be expected because the israelis have been a rogue entity
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since day one, but does this expose the lack of a proper global mechanism to deal with such issues? the tribunals are powerless, the un security council has been nothing but a spectator for four months as hundreds of innocent people are dying daily in gaza. how can this status quo change?" " "we did things sensibly. i applaud the russians, the chinese, the iranians, now the syrian, now the irakis for using the un and
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the un security council, which does have some teeth in their best effort to to do the right thing. now, in the process, the us is completely, completely isolated, when it votes, it has maybe two allies at israel. and a obscure set of islands in the pacific ocean that is forced to vote with the united states, so it's maybe three to hundreds, so this is going to work its way out, i don't rule out the un, it's the only thing we have left, and as i say, several of the nations seem to realize that, and we need to give them a chance, the problem of course is what happens in the next two weeks, the next two. yeah, look, the un is not the answer to these
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problems, but um, in terms of ignoring it or walking away from it, that was tried at the very beginning of its life, at the beginning of what we call the korean war here, the soviet union rather than vetoing the war powers resolution or whatever the analog name is for that, walked out to boycott it and so there was a un force sent in on the side of the us, um, anywhere where people are sitting down talking, and particularly in in a public forum to vet to, vet vet these issues is a good thing, it's more than what we have, and so i don't, i wouldn't sit around and wait for it to work, but i wouldn't walk away from it either, it's got to be a part of the old effort, well last question uh, mr. dubar, while we're with you, in spite of all the efforts to weaken the resistance in the... and efforts by israel and co to demonize it, why do you think that the resistance front is still thriving? well, the more you oppress
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people, the more incentive they have to rise up, you actually force their hand, the star wars movie, the princess lee, whatever, the tighter you squeeze, the more worlds will slip through your fingers, that's how it works, we're human beings, we don't like to have somebody make us do stuff we don't want to do, we don't like to watch people kill our families, we don't like to starve when it's not necessary, we won't tolerate it at some point, and that's we're getting to that point around the world with this empire, this is one of the hot points where that's happening, mr.gover, same question to you, when osama bin laden and his lieutenant khalid sheikh muhammad, let's take khalid muhammad was asked why he was the mastermind of the 911. tax, he said, it was because of my deep hatred for us policy favoring israel against the rights of the other peoples, people have
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to... take that seriously, that was buried in page 148 of the 9/11 report and one sentence, but if you're asking why people do these things, they get to point where they seek vengeance for the for the clear affronts to their human nature that they have suffered. it's inevitable, and nobody's pointing that out that the more we do this stuff out there in the southwest asia so callalled now, the more... likely it is that we'll have another 9/11 or something like it. thanks lot, gentlemen. former cia analist raymond govern from rawley north carolina and also thanks to dabar radio host and journalist cpr news joining us from austin and new york and a special thanks to your viewers for staying with us on tonight spotlight. it's good night for now and see you next time.
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after the occupation of palestinian lands and creation of the israeli regime, both sides came to realize the power of cinema in getting their messages across. the israeli regime used cinema to show the territory it had occupied as heaven on earth in order to entice jews from all over. over the world to migrate to the occupied territories. on the other hand, although belatedly, palestinians also learn to use the power of media and cinema to make their voice heard across the world. there was a new battlefield for both sides.
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hello and welcome to our program, i'm your host ali, today we go face to face with the head of iran's atomic energy organization, mr. muhammad islami as we talk about. different fields where iran has made significant advancements in when it comes to nuclear science and technology and also talk about some of the double standards that the un nuclear watch dog has been using when it comes to its attitude towards the islamic republic of iran and see where it originates from, so stay tuned. mr. muhammad islami, thank you for joining the program. thank you very much, i'm delighted to be with you. we are as...
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