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tv   A Simple Question  PRESSTV  October 17, 2023 8:02am-8:31am IRST

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solutions have to be violated, how many more children have to be annihilated, this is not a war, it is systematic genocide, but whatever they pale, hello, i'm chris williamson, in this special edition of palestine declassified, we're going to examine the extraordinary armed uprising of the... palestinian people against the zionist
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entity, which has repeatedly and flagrantly spurned every single peaceful attempt to secure justice for palestine. first up is latiifa with a special report about this audacious military offensive by palestinian freedom fighters that began in the early hours of saturday morning on october the 7th. as fragile as a spiders web. the zionist entity is shaking with fear. in early morning shock. resistance factions from ghazza launched an unprecedented three-pronged attack on the entity. first, armed fighters sailed over the israeli fence to ghazza using hand gliders. simultaneously 5,000 rockets were launched into the zinist entity from the open air prison of ghazza, disabling that much vaunched iron dome system. at the same time, palestinians broke down the fence, which fighters had sailed over using bulldozers. what? ensued was the homecoming
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of at least 1,000 palestinians from the resistance factions into the fragile zionist entity. military bases were seized by the resistance and israel's markava tanks were captured and taken back to ghazza. settlements like steart, whose zionist guests had previously watched from hilltops while gazza was bombed were seized by the resistance. over 100 settlers have been taken of as prisoners of war by the resistance. vast majority are members of the occupation forces, some are extremely high-ranking figures like general nimoni, commander of the depth core and former commander of the 143rd ghaza division. he was unceremoniously marched from his bet in his underwear by the resistance forces. an area of occupied palestine larger than the ghaza strip was taken and held by the resistance factions who reached within a only 10 kilometers of the
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west bank city of al- khalil, known to settlers as hebron. it is documented that resistance factions were able to fashion weapons from unexploded munitions dropped on them by the israelis, but did weapons from nato escapades in afghanistan and ukraine really end up in gaza, time will tell. the fear of south lebanon is palpable among the satellites, so much so that an israeli occupation unit opened fire on an approaching truck. close to lebanon, they discovered that the vehicle carried seven israeli fighters, all had been killed by designers friendly fire. overall, in a space of 48 hours, at least 700 settlers were killed. the vast majority were part of the occupation forces. to put the figure into perspective, in proportion to the size of the population of the colony, that is the equivalent of over 20,000 people in the united states. in the midst of it all, russian hacker group killnet took. down the site of the israeli regime
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administration, further spreading panic and fear. nearly all major stocks in israel are in the red with the benchmark index recording the biggest loss for over year. poland and bulgaria have sent military planes to evacuate their citizens and bring them back home to europe. as always, we're joined by our residence expert david miller. david is academic and a former professor at bristol university, and he's now a non-resident senior research fellow at the... for islam and global affairs at istanbul zaium university. he's also a co-director of the lobbying watch dog spinwatch, and he's a leading british scholarly critic of israel. our guest today is samy alaryan who is a public affairs professor and a longstanding political activist whose roots are in palestine, and sammy has vigorously campaigned for palestinian liberation for many years and he was blacklisted in the united states because of his political views and he joins us today via skype from istanbul. welcome to the show. to could start
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with you, are we witnessing the death spasms of the zionist idea? do you think? well, we have to go back to the origins of of zionism, zionism was the political. movement of jewish lates at the end of the 19th century, and it was their response to europe's anti-semitism that existed at the time, particularly in russia, the programs and continued to what the experts would call the jewish question, and they tried to answer that by basically creating an exclusivist, sitler colonial, racist state that has been trying for over a century to approat the native people of palestine. from from their native land and try to replace them with jews around the world. this is what zionism is about, and i think it has failed, but it continues to be strong in terms of the state because of the support it has been receiving from mainly western governments, particularly the united
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states, but i think now it's it's becoming very clear that that kind of response would not be accepted in the 21st century, particularly with the state fastness of the palesti. and the resistance to this racist exclusivist movement and entity. yeah indeed. mean, do you think israel was caught completely unawares by this operation? it does seem so, mean there's been some reporting hasn't that the egyptian intelligence services said something was going to happen, but they were ignored, so i mean, i've seen the various other theories, let's not title them conspiracy theories that have said that this is false flag, that the the... the the designs let it happen, let all these hundreds of people be killed or they thought that maybe a lesser number be killed, but no, it's not, it's clear that that's not what's happened, what's happened clearly has been a an operation planned for many many months, in gaza and with the other resistance factions across the territories, and it's
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it's taken them entirely by surprise, but also more importantly, it's inflicted an extremely significant military intelligence and psychological defeat on this, they didn't. think that this could ever happen to them, and the fact that they have had to evacuate people, thousands and thousands of people from all the settlements around gaza, and indeed they're talking about evacuating all the settlements in near the northern border, should hezballah inter the conflict much more significantly than they have so far, so we're seeing defeat for zionism and a crisis for them really because they're they're they're facing a real difficulty now the possibility of the end of the zionist entity, indeed and people cuewing up at - the airport weren't they to to actually leave is evacuated, yes indeed some some prominent figures actually in this entity as well as i understand it, but samy what's the significance would you say of resistance factions capturing general nimrod alone? do you think? it's quite significant, we got to
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understand that this is the first time in over 50 years where a senior military leader is in the hands of the resistance movements in the hands of the palestinians, he would be huge bargaining chip. in order to get over 5000 palestinians who have been languishing in israeli jails for for years, over 200 of them have basically prison sentences up to life or life sentences, therefore he will be huge borningship against the the israeli government in trying to free and also to get much of the israeli plans and you would be certainly interrogated and much of what israel is planning for the palestinian. particularly in gaza will be getting, they will be able to get it out of it, yes indeed, david, i wonder if you could say a word or two as well about the the conditions that people in gaza have been living in over the over the years, well people know the phrase, don't they, this is an open air prison, and
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and of course it's been an attempt by the zionis in the last week or so, 10 days to say, oh no, it's not occupied, look, we we we left gaza in 2005, this is not an occupation, but of course. it's entirely surrounded, it's it's surveiled 24 hours a day, and you that underlines the scale of the achievement that that the the resistance could undermine all of that, but this is an open air prison, and they and the even uh in the last few days intensified the siege, no water, no electricity, nothing is going in or out, he've even closed the rafa cros crossing into egypt, despite saying to people in gaza, you must leave, the rather crossing is open, it's not. many more and they're talking about bombing that as well, so this is an open prison, has been for many years, most of the water in gaza is not drinkable, there are shortages of shortages of everything including medicines, there are food problems, it's it's been bombed so many times that there's so much rubble there that they've had
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to actually start to use the rubble in ingenious ways to build new buildings, so it's it's an appalling state, it's the worst place in the world uh on the constant military. supervision and yes occupation by the israelis, yes, i mean you say that obviously it's well known that it's an open air prison, and yet the corporate media, if you actually read the corporate media or listen to the broadcast channel, the corporate media that they don't really talk about it in those terms do they? well thankfully i don't depend on the corporate media from of course people still do yes that's true although of course many many mores in the last 20 years have turned off from that but yes the corporate media prev presents a systematically distorted discued view and version of what's happening although in the question on the question of occupation the the designers have been complaining in the last little while about cbc the canadian broadcasters uh saying that journalists should not use the word should use occupation because it still is occupation and and so that's even the mainstream media won't go as
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far to to to what should we call it kind of fantasy landers designers want them to no indeed indeed indeed but samy i mean in what way would you say is this war different from previous wars on gaza it's quite different i mean if you look at the previous four five wars started from 2008 2009 all of them were initiated by the design state. this time it was different, it was surprising, it was the uh, you know, you describing as an open air prison, it was basically a prison break where the palestinians themselves took the initiative and attacked and always you have that benefit of the surprise, and therefore what happened with ensued after that was huge success, huge victory for the resistance, they were able to actually dismantle this myth of the invincitability of the israeli army that this is not a invincible. army, but in fact it's an army that was caught flat-footed and they were shown by few
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fighters, mean these fighters were basically not a regular army, these are mostly volunteers, palestinian resistors, but they're determined and and they they have the will to fight until they gain their freedom and independence and liberation, and we've seen in the in the first 60 hours how they were going attacking the military bases, the settlers, the settlements, they were bringing back, all kinds of prisoners of war in order to force the exchange and free their comrades in prisons. yeah, i mean david has said that uh, i think it was 11 us citizens were killed in the in the operation. i mean, what do you think explains, so many foreign nationals, being present in in palestine? and there's been a british uh person being confirmed now, being killed, uh, over the weekend. well, what explains this of course is something quite different to... the explanation about civilians uh or american citizens or british citizens even being killed in ukraine because
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they are everybody understands they are mercenaries but here these people are either settlers or they're actually involved directly in in being enrolled in what's called the israel defense forces the israel uh occupation forces like the the the british guy for example 19 or 20 years old was actually in the idf now this this is about british citizens as foreign. if they were in syria or somewhere else, but we don't call them foreign fighters, in this case, of course when those people who regularly go from britain or from the us to join the oppressive forces of of israel come back, they're not interrogated as being terrorists, they're not interrogated and asked for why they've got involved in armed violence and killing of civilians and actually you know in the structural uh violations of international law which israel day by day is committing and so there's a real question here about how we actually change the way in which our society
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works so that people from the uk are not allowed to go to fight for uh for israel no indeed i mean the shadow uh foreign secretary david lamy was saying in our thoughts are with the british citizen who was who was killed but surely the question should be why are british citizen serving in the uh israeli occupation forces but we'll just pause there for moment uh because we've got another report now looking at the strategic implications for the united states and israel as a result of the military operation by the palestinian resistant factions. as the palestinian resistance factions prepared for their operation early on saturday morning, they must have known they were about to embark on what will surely be seen as the most historic mission of any palestinian resistance fighters. they broke out of the opener prison of gaza for the first time since gaza was occupied in 1960. sev. of course, the zionist regime has answered the challenge with a bloody onslaut on civilians,
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killing more than 100 children in little over a day. they deliberately and openly targeted civilian infrastructure in a frenzy of revenge that hides the strategic vacuum. they've diverted personnel from the west bank and have laid siege to gaza. nothing can go in or out, but the chess game can easily end an exatasy. never has the idea that israel is a temporary entity been so palpable. the united states has issued bellicos warnings and says it is moving forces closer to them. city, but this has drawn fiery repose from the resistance access from hizballah and from the iraqi resistance, making it plain that escalation means that us personnel will be legitimate targets across the whole region. president joe biden gave nod to the difficulties faced by the much vaunted us hejemon when he warned supporters of the palestinians not to take advantage of the
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circumstances. he didn't say it, but the circumstances are a... decline of us power, notable shortage of us weaponry which has been effectively destroyed in ukraine, a little-known us stock pile of ammunition held in israel has been depleted by supplies in ukraine, current pentagon plans to increase production will not even keep pace with the 6,000 shells expended each day by the ukrainians. the entry of hazbollah into conflict from the north is an indication of the strategic vice that israel finds itself in. by monday. design is radar station was decommissioned and the border fence at the northern border with lebanon was blown up. any ground war in gaza will face stiff resistance and there will be many more occupation force casualties. does the entity have the appetite for this? and will it mean the foundations of zionism begin to crumble? since the beginning, the security of the
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zionist entity has depended on having enough jewish citizens to win the demographic struggles. against the palestinians, with so many settlers fleeing from the airports and settlers from poland and bulgaria being evacuated, how long before the entity crumbles and the dismantling of zinism begins in earnest? if the special military operation in ukraine was the first act of the age of multipolarity, the prison bust from gaza is the opening of the second act. the future is unwritten. sammy, your family was expelled from palestine in 1948, wasn't it? i mean, can you tell us about how you responded to the gaz breakout over the weekend? i mean, generations of palestinians had their hope, the hope of the return to their ancestors lands, my grandfather and my father, both passed away years ago, had that hope, it was
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not fulfilled, i have that hope, which i hope that it would be fulfilled during my life. time, but if not certainly my children would have that hope. what we witnessed this weekend was that this is possible that this myth that the palestinians would forget over generations that the old would die and the new would forget is just the myth is not true. the fact of the matter is that millions of palestinians outside palestine, inside palestine, year to the time where we would enter palestine and and and and be in that land again, you know, the the this notion. of two state, one state solutions where it will basically exclude millions of palestinians from going back is not going to succeed. i think our our goal, our objective should be the dismantlement of design state because of its racist, exclusivist, colonial structure, that this is an apart system that cannot
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survive the change in this world, and therefore when this crumbles and we have seen a glimpse of how... could that be, when that happens then we could truly then talk about peace and talk about harmony and solve by the way the jewish problem, because zionism redefined judaism and i think we need to save judaism from the evil and from the ideology of cynism, indeed, indeed, david, i mean, would you say that this was an explosion of of ang anger from gaza in response to the endless provocations from the zienist entity, or or do you think something more? strategics going on here, well it would be no surprise to say that people in gaza are a little bit angry, indeed the zits, but this is not some spasm, some emotional outburst, this has been planned for a long long time, at least year, it seems that uh hamas and the other resistance factions who we don't talk about
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enough, people talk about this being hamas doing this, hamas doing that, it's hamas, yes, it's the palestinian islamic jihad. yes, it's the popular front for the liberation of palestine, the democratic front for the liberation of palestine were involved, and indeed, even armed groups, are the armed fata have been involved in some of these actions, not to mention the the various factions across the west bank, so this is a thing which has been in planning for at least year and is a strategic uh um strategic activity, so it's not as if that this is over, there are other sorts of things which are going to fall into place, we've seen already from the north. hizballah and to some extent other factions like palestinian islamic jihad in lebanon making a breach of the fence uh at the border, this is a strategic thing and there are there are all sorts of structure. questions in this chess game about who next comes into the into the frame, and that's what we have to see, that's what the the future uh tells us here, this is not going to be something where the designers can just
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crush the resistance because there are all sorts of consequences for their actions, yes, yes indeed, of course the focus just being on hammas by the corporate media is another example suppose of the misreporting by uh the mainstream press and broadcast media, but samy, what do you think the strategy of the... resistance factions is? well, i don't think there is any illusion among the resistance fighters that this was a war of liberation. i think they had several objectives in mind, five in particular, the first one would be to stop this daily encroachment, incursion, desecration of aqsa mask and the holy places that have been taken place throughout the year, particularly in the last three weeks. secondly, it was attempt also to stop the... persiansion and the daily attacks on palestinian youth in different west bank cities, killing them, imprising them, detaining them, kidnapping them, which has also claimed over 240 lives
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this year in the west bank alone, four of them are children, third, it was attempt also to, because israel has been refusing to to to exchange its prisoners for the few prisoners in gaza, so there was attempt to to be basically to get more prisoners of war to force israel to make that since 5500 palestinians including many women and children in prison and their lives have been even made much worse when bengafier became the the the the the person in charge of the prison system and fourth it is to lift the siege on the 16-year blocade and sie against gaza two million over two million people have been under siege now without the the word really care. or given much attention to this to this tragedy, to this genocidal policy, and fifth and last, which is very important is to show the world that the palestinians
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are determined, are determined and resolved to continue fighting and resisting the occupation, including fighting, but also including to show the world that they are capable of defeating an enemy on the ground, and i i call also that our fight is not just literally that we need to engage the zionist groups and zionist ideology and zionist supporters and governments, those support it, on in all fields, politically, economically, commercially, legally, human rights, artistically, media wise, in all in all spheres, in all geographies, yes indeed, but david, i mean, what do you make of the response of the the remainder of the resistance access, do you think that will deter the zionists? well, think people need to understand that the resistance. is an actual thing that the the resistance in in lebanon, the hisballah, in syria, in iraq, in yemen, the ansar in yemen, and of course the
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the islamic republic of iran, this is an actual functioning organiz set of organizations who work together, they don't plan each other's um activities, but they are coordinating each with each other, and that's the the key, the key to this is, if there is escalation from the americans, the the resistance in in in in in iraq have said that they will regard us targets across the region as legitimate. now that is a big question, what does that mean in terms of about confederation? it's also a question about about what happens if there is a ground invasion of gas, if there's a ground invasion, the the idf, the israeli occupation forces will take very very heavy casualties, and it will also mean a massive escalation, hiz b will almost certainly come in from the... and and that of course is something which will be concentrating the minds of netanyahu and his cabinet about what how far they can go to pursue their goals of
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eliminating and expelling all palestinians sure yeah well that's it i'm afraid for another show today so i'd like to thank our guest samy al ariyan and of course our residence expert professor david miller palestine declassified will be back next week with more forensic investigations and analysis in the meantime. can help us to spread the truth about the palestinian uprising by sharing today's program on your social media platforms and remember you can also follow the show on facebook, twitter and telegram where we post regular clips and updates, so until next time, this is chris williamson saying bye for now. the thought occurred to me one day, the idea that someone should be eternal enemy because
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they have... to be born 200 yards away from you or born on the other side of a street from is absolutely absurd, it's absurd, but that's a situation that we find herself in here, so i thought of that, and again, occasionally you see these little um inspirational quotes, which may or may not be true, there's one supposed to be from martin luther king, said that um hitting someone is like um drinking poison and hoping they'll die, i could hit michelle. all i want, you're not probably not even, but it's not going to affect your life, but it'll affect mine, and um, is it going to make me any happier? no, will it bring anyone back? no, is it going to make the future any better for people that are children now, are unborn? no.
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i'm calling on ford's chicago assembly plant to stand up and go on strike. the union has made it clear that one of its key demands is to end the two. this state is very expensive, i love ram from, i love my community, i love to be a part of this community, however, the going rate of a one bedroom is $2,200. i am hoping that everyone will come on board with us and stand against this.
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rest of the headlines, the world health organization warns of a real catastrophe in gaza as the israeli regime continues its bloody onslot against the besieg territory. iran warns of preemptive measures by the resistance front if israeli crimes in the gaza strip continue. and the mass resistance movement says it is not intimidated by israel's ground invasion threat, warning that gaza will turn into a graveyard for its invaders.