welcome to sad podcast, i'm your host sabrina salvati, my special guest today is katie hauper, she's the host of the katie hawper show, and she's also a co-host of useful idiots. thank you so much for coming on, katie, thanks for having me, so uh, you actually have done extensive coverage in reference to israel and palestine, you've been talking about this issue for quite some time, and and you yourself, you are jewish. i want to start off with this because there's something i have been noting since we been covering uh this particular war, i'm starting to notice that some pe some people have this idea that the jewish faith and zionism is the same thing, so i want to start with that, if you could explain the difference between practicing the jewish faith and zionism, sure, so that's a really important question, and it's actually even more complicated than than the one you just asked, or not more complicated, i shouldn't say that, it's it's more multifaceted, because i'm jewish and i identify as jewish, but i don't practice judaism, so i so the jewish faith isn't

something that i have, let's say, um, there are a lot of secular jews who identify as jewish, and it's almost like when you're a catholic protest, an irish catholic or irish protestant, it's almost like that, it's more kind of ethnic, which i know gets into a weird kind of uh area, but jews um, some jews are are jewish because they're religious, i'm not that, but there's a whole like jewish tradition of kind of... radical leftism, there's even this term, tikunalam, which is hebrew for repair the world, um, and that i think speaks to kind of why you do have this tradition of um, progressives among some jews, but you also obviously have conservative jews, both politically conservative and religiously conservative, but someone like bernie sanders, for instance, i don't think he he, he's jewish, right, but i don't think he celebrates, i don't think he does shabat every friday, i don't know. if he identifies, but what's

interesting is like it, it it kind of didn't for hitler and for and for the rest of the world, like it didn't really matter what whether you were practicing or not, right? for hitler, his definition was you had one jewish grandparent, and i'm not trying to like use hitler's definition to describe jews, but i'm using, i'm bringing that up because the world definitely treated you as a jew regardless of religion, that makes sense, it's a little bit, but but what what i will say is that being jewish, having a jewish identity does not make you a zionist, and what's ironic is that the idea that you have to support israel blindly because you're jewish, is actually an anti-semitic trope in itself, so there's that stereotype of dual loyalty where jews aren't really loyal to their the country that they're living in, they're going to be loyal to uh israel, the home of jews, um, people who use the term jew and this interchangeably, often antites will do that, they'll talk about... design is

this, the jewish that, and then people like apec and the anti-defamation league or organizations like that, or lobbies like that, should say, people with their politics pretend that you have to be a zionist, you have to be zionist if you're jewish, and they do that because they want to present anti-zionism or even non-zionism as an anti-semitic, and the truth is there is a long history of jews and zionism used to be unpopular among jews, it's getting less popular again, but um, there's lot of different historical reasons that zionism happened the way it happened, um, a large one being, but the other thing was that it's very much a part of imperialism, at first it was part of uh england's plan to have kind of a foothold in the middle east and then was a an american plan, depending on which time you're talking about. i made this documentary called komi camp about the summer camp that i worked at, my mom worked at, my grandma worked at, and it was founded in the 20s by yitish speaking, secular, socialist. communist jews

and uh people like paulson would visit and uh pete seeger would visit uh the rosenbergs ethel and julius rosenberg their sons sent their kids to the camp and that there is a real rich tradition of radical jewish radicalism. do you consider this conflict to be a religious conflict and why are we not? so it's interesting because it gets back to kind of what we were saying at the beginning. i think that religion for some people it is for religious. it is just conflict and they think that this is where jews are supposed to be, but mo and israel is weird because it's secular kind of but also not secular, you have to get married with a like you have to have a conservative rabbi marry, you can't even, i think orthodox, you can't even have like a reform rabbi, marry you, but um, and things like shut down on fridays, but zionits were mix and like theodorell who's considered the father of zism wasn't religious. uh for

lots of people has nothing to do with religion, it it's for some people was having a safe place for jews uh because of the programs and persecution and of course the holocaust and for lot of people who came out to it was necessarily an ideological thing, they just literally needed somewhere to go, um, but i think it's important to note that lot of jews ofzionism, they wanted to jews to be safe where they were, they thought that that was the answer to to improve their where they were, not just leave and find place where they'd be safe, and the problem is that whether or not you think that jews deserve safe place, israel was founded, and you can you read this in the zionist text and in the letters and in their diaries. um, it was an imperial project that was kind of dovtail between what the zionist jews wanted and what the british wanted, because the british were anti-semites, they wanted jews out, but they also the christian zionism i thought was more recent than it is, but it's it's quite old

and christians wanted you to go back to israel also to fulfill a religious purpose uh, so the what's interesting is that most zionis in america um... are actually christian zionists just because their numbers are so big, so much bigger than jewish numbers, but it isn't, it's a power, it's about rights and power, i would say, um, it's there people who again, like i don't think netan yahoo is particularly religious, but and lot of the founders of israel weren't religious, so i don't think it's a religious conflict, i think a lot of people who don't want to look at the historical material context, want to pretend, oh this is just a this is just thing and and they've been fighting for thousands of years and no, it's not that and jews and muslims have coexisted in many instances. um, this is not about incompatible religions, this is about uh, people being expelled from where they are, they were, it's about ethnic cleansing, and

it's about webonizing what really was a tragedy and really was a horror, which is the holocaust, and before that the pograms, what's so sad is is that it weaponizes those things. to ethnic lens other people, that's what's so upsetting, and i think what we're seeing are lots of jews saying not in my name, and our our jewish identity says out against this, never again is now, i went to a protest on friday, um, arranged by jewish voice for peace and and if not now, and it was really moving, and there are a bunch of jews were saying, never again is now, seasfire, now um, they see this as part of their of their jewish identity speaking out precisely because of what happened to their family. yeah, yeah, i've seen some of the videos chuck moodi has, um, this actually acts that congress, right, today, right, yeah, exactly, and um, you know, uh, norman finkel is another example, his parents were holocast survivor, they survived uh

concentrations during the holocaust, and he for him, you know, he he thinks that he he says that god is a concentration camp, gabormate is a holocaust survivor and he sees, he told me during an interview, never again is isn't a tribal slogan, it means never again for anyone, not just for jews. um, migo peled is a jewish israel, son of a high-ranking general, grandson on his mom side of one of the signatories to israeli independence, his niece was tragically killed in the bombing, and after she was killed, he was kind of like, what would make young palestinian guys kill themselves and kill other people, why would they do this, and he started to kind of dig into the history. and the reality of palestine and that turned him into an activist for peace, not a radicalt on revenge, what's the other thing is that this none of this is making jews safer, none of israel does makes you safer, about this, but

yeah, i would say not a religious conflict, it's a political conflict, it's an occupation, it's a you know ethnic cleansing, it's and you read the the people that doing they knew what they were doing and they knew there had to be transference as they called it of people living there cuuse they wanted to be a jewish majority and they didn't have the numbers so they had to get rid of the people there they had this this fake claim a land without a a land without people for people without a land that's what they call palestine implying that there were no people there what a great combination a land without a people for people without a land being the jews but of course it was a land with people yeah yeah, yeah, i want to show you this from loki, uh, but loki's been pretty pretty good on this issue as well, i think, um, so loki tweeted this, he said, at the un human rights committee, huge number of the participants turned their backs on us ambassador michelle

taylor and protest against israel's bombing of gaza, and so i just want to show this here, i'll just keep the volume down because um, it's kind of loud, but you'll see people here. start to stand up and to turn their backs towards her, and i thought that like this was really moving to see, and it's of course all different people, different races. uh understanding like what's really happening over there, so i thought that that was that's important for people to see, and i bring this up because it was brought to my attention uh, i believe about two years ago that human rights watch, they actually identified israel as an apart state, they accused israel of crimes against humanity, but one of the things i noticed is most people i talk to us are not aware of this, not even familiar with the human rights watch, and also i've noticed that... lot of our political officials, our government in general, i feel that they don't even address that issue that the human rights

organization has brought, why do you feel that is? yeah, mean it's crazy, so palestines have of course been saying and south africans have been saying um for decades that israel's an apartaid state, and that's the video that made when i was at the hill, like me removed from the hill was the video basically defending rashed slab for saying that it was an apart state, and i went through why it's an apartied state and i quote. addition to human rights watch and amnesty internationalum which is this israeli human rights organization um and members of uh and and what's interesting is i quoted former israeli prime ministers who said that either was a partide or is going to be apartide soon um yeah but as we're seeing from this the us stands by israel unwavoringly no matter what it stands by them as they bomb civilian targets uh it stands by them and joe biden lies about having seen photos of beheaded babies. israel is ally. joe biden himself

said in 80s, if israel didn't exist we'd have to invent one to protect our interests, protect america's interests. so israel is really seen as this foothold in middle east for the united states. there is huge lobby, there's apach, there's christian zistts um, which is very powerful lobby. then you also have um selling um nano. technology for surveillance and weaponry, so the united states is very inbed with them on that, so these are reason various reasons, nothing to do with human rights, obviously, it's not like people anyone whose urious about human rights knows that they're it's an apart state, but the united states gives it a blind check, which is why so furious that people who are condemning hamas aren't also condemning us government, because that actually is where we have power, hamas is not going to listen to. american seaming least hostages, the american government may with enough of us, feel political pressure to not

fund, arm, support, legitimize what israel is doing, this mass um collective punishment, this genocide, this ethnic cleansing that that israel's engaging in right now as we speak, what's really interesting to is the issue with nahu, so he's right-wing extremist, i would say that netanyahu, i think is is more right-wing than'. trump is based on some of the things i've seen him say um he's also caught in multiple lies uh in reference to uh the behavior that's happening in the state of israel and it seems like lot of people also are not calling out the fact that we have democrats we have like people like joe biden who they're standing hand in hand and like you know shoulder to shoulder with netan yahoo who is right-wing who does have these far right views and at the same time they are calling out far right in the united states but they're working together with far right abroad and i don't understand why more people don't see the hypocrisy there

and like this type contradiction like why aren't more people calling that out like you are supporting someone who is far right or not in the united states but you're still doing that yeah it's interesting because uh there is this historian tony jutt who uh was who died if uh but he was a brilliant historian and he said that i remember reading a piece in of his predicting that israel american sport of israel was going to end because yahoo was so overtly right wing that it was and fascistic that it was american jews liberal zionist would be too embarrassed to stand by israel, but they kind of did, and we're seeing a shift now, but that more has more to do with demographics and and age, um, i think maybe helps open some people's up, maybe not, i don't think to the extent that you think, and that's because i think for some people, there actually progressive except for palestine, and there's some people who are that, and of course i don't think you can really be progressive. or that, but you know, i mean, they identify as as progressive or liberal, let's say, um, but whatever

israel does, it has the right to defend itself, and what's weird is that i don't you've been seeing this response, but people are like, well, what the us would respond if we were attack, it's like, yeah, i be on the streets protesting what the us would do, and i was on the streets protesting what the us did, not just with iraq, i was, but also in afghanistan, so people pointing to afghanistan and iraq, one war, the iraq war being totally illegal, based on lies, and the afghanistan war being, i think unjust, and obviously a disaster uh, which didn't just kill hundreds of thousands of people, these two wars, but they also created much more terrorism and made america much less safe, um, so i think... that now i do think that some people, i think abby martin has spoken about this, i think it's her, i'm thinking off, that some people became uncomfortable because biden because trump and bb were so close, i think some liberals found that a little bit hard to square, yeah i can see that makes sense, yeah that makes sense, but that's other thing i want people to understand that even if biden wasn't in office and trump was in office, donald trump

would still stand beside, he moved the he he did something that um that byden, i don't think would have done, he moves the embassies from tel aviv to jerusalem, yeah, i remember, i remember that, one of the things i, i often wonder about people like yourself, aaron, norm finkelsteen, were very vocal about this particular issue, do you ever face any type of criticism from within your own community, from the jewish community, and do you feel like more people in the united states actually understand or more jewish people in the us? understand what's actually happening over there, it's funny, yeah, sometimes people will call me kapo, ka po which is like guess, the jewish inmates who were standing for guards, so it means like sell out, um, so i get that, i do get that, but i also have been, it's been i've gotten messages from other jews or non-jews and and from

palestinians, which is very youce to hear, not that they owe it to me, but like that, some people have thanked me for speaking out. um, because i think that it's so important given how so many people like cynically weaponize anti-semitism to justify cleansing, i think it's really important to to show people you can be a jew who's critical of israel, and in fact for some of us, it's like part of our jewish identity, i kind of alluded to earlier on. max blumentals another one, very critical of israel, jewish, um, so i feel pretty, and and i also mentioned i i found israel so... uh, which which is doesn't complicate it though, makes it in other words, i morned for the victims of ham attack, and nothing that happened that day makes me want collectivement for people of ghaza, which isn't that hard to reconcile those two things, mean i'm the country that the side of the conflict and it's not a conflict, it's an occupation, so the power

that is being back by united states is obviously israel, that's the one that i'm speaking. out against like speaking out against funding because the us has all blood its hands now um and it's really you know as we speak like children are being killed civilians are being killed uh i think now it's probably even more but a thousand kids were killed and i don't get how people can just turn away from this pain and suffering like i don't know if they've just been conditioned that we need to do this to to be safe that there's all this propaganda you know the idea that these these people just want to kill all the jews as opposed to people being angry with the people who took their land, yep, um, and they say these people, they don't mean hamas, they mean palestinians and we've seen israeli officials make it clear that they don't see a difference, the israel president actually said that they aren't, this rhetoric of civilians doesn't make sense because they voted for hamas, first of all the last

election was 2006, but even so i mean, okay, children are are. what about children? not that i think voting for ham should be deathsens either, but let's just say, okay, according to your argument, had you sure that with the children, and you've seen israeli officials, like one of them a member of parliament called for another nakba, the nakba is the is the the disaster in arabic, and it's when the palestinians were pushed out and killed in 1948 and ethnically cleansed, and and israeli official said it was time for another na, um, you saw benjamin netan yahoo tweeted this really scary. racist thing about like children of the light versus children of the dark, um, they're not hiding their intenstions, that's what makes it so scary is that they're saying these things out loud, and then if they're asked by civilians, like natalie bennet, is the uh previous, the last prime minister of israel was saying, was asked about civilians, are you really asking me about palestinians, shame on you, shame on

you, and then they what if it was your family, and then they compare them to nazis, there are a couple of things that they're. i saw another woman like an ambassador being asked by a british journalist what about the humanitarian disaster she went from saying there is no humanitarian disaster to saying what tamas is fall to saying these are nazis and what would you do if your children were were um kidnapped or killed it's just awful and you have i mean israel has historically bombed hospitals it has history of bombing hospitals it bombs ambulance that come to pick up people who have been injured it bombs uh you know un sites it's bombed hospitals with doctors that border. in it today bomb or today or yesterday, this is not surgical precision, or it's surgical precision, it's surgical precision to uh kill indiscriminately, that's what it's been used for. it's such a mess, i have to say i was very proud of all the young people that i saw like protesting because that that gives me a lot of hope that they're the ones, they're

the future and they really understand what's happening, so i've been really like proud of them even though some of them, some of the students at har university that wrote that letter, they've had their future careers threatened because they wrote that letter, it's just it's a very scary thing that you can't even just speak up, well it shows you how much they're losing the war of public opinion that they have to try to make protest like they're doing this in europe too, you can't have palestinian flag, you can't have a protest, it shows what a weak spot they're in in some ways, they being the the lot lobby, um, but they still have lot of power, political control, well funded, but we have the the people, so we just have to make sure that we leverage that. all right, katie, well, thank you so much for coming on, yeah, thanks for having me.

the brain operation for all of its importance in terms of its was part of a campaign, we believe that the only way to get the brits to negotiating table was for sustained campaign, not one operation no matter how significant could achieve that, it was about get long term, in england, and eventually we did that, there are a lot of stops and starts, i wasn't part of that, i was in jail by that, we have operated in england withdrew because of logistics involved and and come back to it, that wasn't a plan sort of pressure was going to be needed, it took us a long time, a long time for movement to gigan what was needed, eventually he did,

the zien enemy decided to conduct a grand operation in gaza under us protection, but it's still hesitant implement it as the resistance awaits him underground and above it. the existing coordination between the forces of the axis of resistance witnessed an expansion in the activities of popular support for the resistance in palestine, and that seems to have become an upward path

accompanied by increase in the level of field support for gaza from inside and outside the historic palestinian map. al-tenf base, koniko base, ain asad base and al-harir base were all under iraqi and syrian resistance fire, while yemani ballistic missiles at the israeli occupation were intercepted by the us navy this time. west headed for. war this week on the medida stream. that lines, day 21 of the israeli war on gaza, some 7300 palestinians have lost their lives, more than 3,0 of them children. amos

once again fires, vony rockets to targets in tel aviv, some 1400 as have been killed since october 7. and also on our headlines united nations is warning that israel's total blockage of the gas strip could clean more line. hello and welcome everybody, it's 5:30 p.m. here in the iranion watching press tv's world news our top store for this half hour, death destruction and suffering in every corner of gaz as israel keeps pounding the beseed strip incessantly.