 This is People's Dispatch with Zoe Alexandra. I'm Vijay Prashad, our third live on the appalling situation in Palestine in Gaza, where over the course of three weeks, the enclave of Gaza, 2.3 million people pummeled by the very advanced Israeli armed forces, advanced in terms of their heavy weaponry, including their air force and missile capability, and so on. Extraordinary night of fighting in Palestine in Gaza. The first thing to say, of course, which Zoe is going to pick up on in a little bit, is that all communications with Gaza were wiped out when the Israelis knocked down the towers. We're going to come back to that. This is the fourth incursion in these three weeks by the Israeli army into Gaza. The first three, one by a naval troop, was just entering, testing, and withdrawing. This time, in fact, the tanks entered Gaza. They encountered fierce resistance. This is very interesting. Very little mentioned in most of the news reporting. When they entered in Hanun, they encountered resistance. There was fighting, blocking the way of the tanks, advance, eventually aerial footage shows that the Israelis reached Bet Lahiya outside Jabalia refugee camp, stuck there, not able to advance as quickly as possible. I think they didn't anticipate this level of resistance, or in fact, they might have, and which is the reason why they basically didn't enter into Gaza all these weeks, even though they had, in fact, been warning that this is what they were going to do. There's going to be a lot of terrible fighting. In the last time we were together, I mentioned the United States government has sent people who were experts in the US operation in Mosul, in Raqqa, where the United States fought against ISIS. There's a view that somehow the experience in Mosul and Raqqa is going to help the Israelis in Gaza. Some reports did come out of US troops on the ground. Those are unconfirmed reports. I just want to say before we go ahead that in Mosul, the civilian casualties was 11,000 and that's only because a large number of civilians were able to run away from the city and go into the surrounding countryside. Well, remember watching trucks do that, carrying large numbers of people out of the city into the countryside. In the case of Gaza, there is no countryside for people to run into. In fact, as an episode, one more episode of rather a poorly done propaganda, the Israeli military's spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, released a statement on Twitter in which he called upon the people of Gaza, the Palestinians to go to the south. He said, this is your final warning. It's a strange statement because it was made in English. Firstly, most people in Gaza speak Arabic. Secondly, Mr. Hagari made the statement on Twitter after the Israelis had knocked down communications networks inside Gaza. And of course, this statement, as we know, is not made for the Palestinians. This is made for the complicitous Western liberals who want to feel like the Israelis are doing everything possible to prevent casualties when in fact, that is not the case. Let's get right into that, Zoe, this knocking down of communications networks seems to have been part of the master plan of the Israeli invasion into the occupied territory of Gaza. What was that all about? Yeah, well, I think that this is, as we've said, a seriously worrying development. And it was reported as communications have been cut, but I think that also kind of obscures what happened, which is that these towers were knocked out in bombings. And effectively people in Gaza with those SIM cards from the region have been completely taken out of communication, landline, cell-yo service and internet service. There's some limited communication from people within Gaza. This is if they have satellite phones or if they have SIM cards from other operators, maybe Turkish or Egyptian or other foreign operators. So this is extremely, extremely, extremely limited. And as you said, yeah, the fact that something could be transmitted to the population of Gaza via internet is really a sick joke. And I think that additionally, it has, I mean, it has so many impacts on really what's unfolding on one hand, people are not able to transmit what's happening on the ground. As we wrote in our piece at Counterpunch, it has been the brave journalism of people within Gaza, these Palestinian journalists who are using their phones, who are using all tools at their disposal to share images of what's happening, to share reports, whether it be short text messages, et cetera, and basically cutting off internet means that all of these sources, all of these journalists are unable to communicate what's happening. And there are some exceptions of people who do have other forms of accessing internet, but they're very far in few between. And we've seen a lot of these local Gaza journalists essentially rendered without communication. And I've seen on multiple platforms, for example, this is their friend tweeting. I have just lost, I'm about to lose communication. You probably, this might be my last tweet. I mean, this is again, I mean, we're violating so many, so many levels of people's human rights, of the right to communication, right to press freedom. It's, I mean, it's uncalculable the amount of international humanitarian law that has really been trampled on in these days. But the other impact is not only this right to communicate to people outside of Gaza, but also what does that mean about people inside of Gaza who have to communicate, this has been bombed, we need an ambulance here. We've already seen the impacts of this. People resorting to private cars, they're screaming for help because they don't have a way to alert people. This is, I mean, people are going, ambulances are traveling to places where they think that have been bombed. They think there might be people who need rescuing, who need to be picked up by ambulances. This is extremely concerning. This is threatening, again, people's ability to access life-saving help. Not only is the health system completely collapsed because of the lack of fuel, sorry, because fuel has been cut off, it is not a lack of fuel, it's that fuel is not being allowed in to Gaza. Important clarification, we're not gonna talk in the passive tense here. Not only are hospitals unable to function, not only is the number of people who are going into these hospitals drastically increased, but now people, the treatment that people who had severe injuries were even getting, which again was already limited without anesthesia, but now people who are injured in these bombings might not even get that treatment. So what does that say about people, about the death toll, about so many other elements? This is extremely, extremely concerning. So I think that the phrase communications were cut is such a simple phrase, but it really carries with it so many impacts on what does it mean to be in a war zone? What does it mean to be under siege when you can't communicate with anyone about what's happening? And I think the right to communication is something, especially as journalists that we must defend. I mean, that's why we've been consistently speaking out about the assassination, the killing of journalists within this atrocious and genocidal war. And we stand with those who continue to defy all efforts and all attempts to snuff out their communication, to silence them, because we know that, of course, it is not an accident that people are not able to communicate. And as we've highlighted, it is the work of these journalists on the ground communicating these atrocious and horrifying scenes that has moved the world community. And that's why Israel is finding itself more and more isolated on the international stage. Well, one of the journalists that was able to get out a short video was Noor Harazin of Tel Aviv. But look at this, Noor Harazin went to the border. The perimeter of France stood there at great risk to her own life, spoke into her phone and uploaded it hastily. Other journalists are trying to get onto Egyptian networks, whatever networks are available, closer below Khan Yunus, closer to Rafa city, people are going to the perimeter of France, again at great risk to their own lives. Noor, for instance, said in the video, I can hear the Israeli tanks coming. I mean, this is not easy. Not easy for journalists, but not easy as well for the Gaza Ministry of Health. I mean, without communications, without ambulances traveling about very hard to find and have an accurate count of the dead at this time. The number right now is sitting at 7,650, but this is not an up-to-date number. The dead are under rubble. I mean, the experience, enormous bombardment last night, enormous bombardment, unrelenting bombardment in entire neighborhoods wiped out. We will not know the number of dead for a very long time. In fact, Mayor Al Kalia, the Palestinian Minister of Health, she herself is a doctor, a respectable person. She said something very powerful, just a short while ago to Wafa, the Palestinian news network. She told Wafa, this is killing any hope of survival. That was her phrase. The rate of fire on the people is killing any hope of survival. The UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Tuch, said that the bombardment is having catastrophic consequences. I mean, it's pretty extraordinary, Zoe, when we think about it. It's a powerful ability the Israelis have to bomb from the air to fire missiles and so on. It's also true, and I don't want to underestimate this. It's also true that when the tanks entered, they face ground resistance. I mean, this is precisely what the United States faced in Iraq. It was easy to bomb infrastructure. It was easy to bomb civilian neighborhoods. When you enter the country, people are going to rise up and defend their neighborhoods. I interviewed a US Marine who had been in Iraq, and he said to me, look, if somebody comes in and invades San Diego where he's from, I'm gonna pick up my gun and go and defend my country. That's precisely what's going to happen. There's a lot of talk now. In fact, the adjective terrorist is used to describe Hamas terrorists, Hamas terrorists, Hezbollah terrorists and so on. There's a kind of forgetting, a lack of understanding that Hamas is just one more of the Palestinian armed factions that is part of their movement of liberation, which is going to defend their neighborhoods. And so, I mean, the Israelis have entered now into northern Gaza, but they're going to face a lot of ground fighting. They haven't faced ground fighting like this in a long time. Yes, indeed, we're going to see a lot of bombardment from the air and the Palestinians of Gaza don't have an iron dome. They don't have Patriot missile batteries. They can't protect themselves when the bombs fall from the sky. But when the tanks enter, they will fight street by street. And I think that's the reason why this is going to be protracted, ugly, enormous loss of life. So the fact that the Gaza ministry of health has effectively gone offline because of the lack of communications, the lack of electricity, the fact that the Palestinian minister of health in Ramallah is saying that this is killing any hope of survival. This is the mood, but I also want to say there's a lot of fight back happening and we are not getting enough reporting on that because the journalists are not there. All we're going to get is the Israeli side in this period, which is why you and I are going to continue to do these in order to try our best to try to say that there are multiple sides to this story. We don't want that to be forgotten. Meanwhile, up in New York, there was a meeting of the UN General Assembly, very interesting vote, Zoe. 120 countries voted essentially for the humanitarian rights of the Palestinians. That's all very well. I haven't seen these 120 countries expel the Israeli ambassadors, but many countries voted against that. They said Palestinians shouldn't have humanitarian rights. Tell us about that vote. Yeah, I mean, it was an interesting vote, I think, because again, the UNGA and its resolutions, a lot of them are extremely powerful, but I think the Palestinian case is a perfect example of the fact that if they're not implemented and they're not taken seriously, there are more or less words on paper. And I think that, again, in this moment, 120 countries approving this resolution is still an important symbolic victory and a show of strength and support behind Palestine and also this clear show that actually the majority of humanity wants a humanitarian truce, wants it and to the violence against the Palestinian people. And importantly, Canada attempted to introduce an amendment that specifically targeted and called out Hamas and said that October 7th was, quote, the worst terrorist attack that has, I think one of the worst terrorist attacks that has taken place in recent history and in the history of Israel. And this was actually rejected. And the Pakistani representative to the UN said that the resolution that was introduced by Jordan, which was eventually passed, does not specifically call out by name Israel. So why are you going to single out Hamas? And I think also what's interesting that people said after the vote is that you can't pretend that history started on October 7th. I mean, the UN Secretary General said it himself, the actions on October 7th did not happen in a vacuum. And it is truly a historical to even try to say that. And I think without a doubt the violence inflicted against the Palestinian people for the 75 years of the Nakva of the ongoing occupation of their lands cannot be forgotten in this moment. So I think, again, this resolution extremely important. I mean, we definitely saw some interesting abstentions. I think the voting against we can more or less expect that. The US and Israel said it was an abomination. I think the Israeli ambassador said it was a day that will go down in history. But again, some of the abstentions I think caused a bit of surprise. We saw there India abstaining. I don't know. Historically, what does this mean for India to abstain on this kind of vote Vijay? Well, you know, it's interesting. India is one of the startling abstentions here. Typically from 1947, 48, you know, when Israel was established, India has taken a position on behalf of the Palestinians. You know, the right of the Palestinians for their national self-determination and so on. And has kept quite a balanced position, albeit favoring the Palestinians. Delhi was one of the first offices for the PLO. Yasar Arafat, very close friend of Indira Gandhi and so on. This particular government of the right, on the other hand, has a curious amalgam of pro-Israel for reasons, you know, perhaps anti-Muslim reasons, but also weirdly, this same trajectory of the Hindu right is anti-Semitic because they say what the Germans did to the Jews, the Hindus should do to the Muslims. Weirdly anti-Semitic, at the same time, you know, pro-Israeli, very similar to the Christian right in the United States. The other extraordinary abstention Zoe was from Iraq. Iraq in recent period has experienced the worst bombardment and the destruction of human life. You know, we don't, it's incalculable. We don't have the numbers of people who are killed in Iraq. Incalculable. And yet Iraq abstained on this. Sweden. Okay. I know that the Nobel Peace Prize is given by the Norwegian Peace Committee, not by Sweden. But Sweden is where the ceremonies take place in the Swedish industrialist album. Sweden, you know, these countries that pretend to be for human rights, Canada abstained. Okay, you know, we know that the United States is going to vote against it, you know, we know that. I mean, but interestingly, the United Kingdom didn't vote against it. They also abstained. I mean, abstention on a vote like this is an act of cowardice. If you mean to say, we are as James Kirby, the, you know, from the United States said, there are no red lines. The US is not drawing any red lines for Israel. It can do whatever it wants, you know, whatever it wants in Gaza. That's what the United States said. Okay, that's interesting. So those countries that abstained should have the guts, the courage to be as brutal as James Kirby and the Biden administration. Why did they abstain from this vote? Extraordinary. I mean, that itself to me is a real issue. Well, that's the vote, Zoe, at the UN General Assembly. I was very interested just down the street from the UN General Assembly. Surprisingly, the Grand Central Station, one of the most beautiful buildings in New York City taken over by Jewish boys for peace, one of many, many demonstrations across the planet. Tell us what's been happening these protests where people are standing with Palestine saying, no more war, no more death against the Palestinians. In fact, they are saying with, you know, in the spirit of my Al-Khalia, instead of the killing any hope of survival, hope of survival must be maintained. What are these protests all about? Well, I think the fact that at this same moment that the UNGA is voting on this resolution that Israel is heavily bombarding Gaza and then just down the street in New York City, the entire Grand Central Terminal was occupied by protesters demanding a ceasefire is just a testament to this moment, which is filled with, I mean, these realities existing at the same time you can have world leaders saying, this is to protect the Jews. And then just, you know, several blocks down, hundreds of Jews saying, no more, no, we need a ceasefire, we need a free Palestine. Actually, the banners said free Palestine. And so I think we can see that this, you know, once maybe mass support for the Zionist project is crumbling, people are not gonna sit by and watch an entire population being bombed in a genocidal way and to see these images of children and families being destroyed and then continue to say that this is somehow in protection of some other people who don't even live there. So the outpouring of support and in this moment where you can have world leaders saying such contradictory things, but really the world's population is saying something quite different. And so yeah, there were hundreds of people chanting in unison, demanding that there be a ceasefire, demanding that Israel and its violence and demanding that this, that again, never again, this is a slogan that really came out after the Holocaust to say never again will this be able to happen and people are taking that and saying, never again means now. And so I think this is an extremely important action. Again, the idea that, and we've seen this in, for example, in the Senate resolution that was passed by Republican senators to criminalize essentially solidarity to Palestinians, he said, this is in order to protect the Jewish American population. And I think these are such empty words because actually more and more the majority of American Jews, and I dare to say this because I actually think that there is the majority of the US population and a growing majority of US Jews are saying, this is no more in our name, you can't really use this excuse anymore because this is not actually related to reality. What's happening right now is a genocide of the Palestinians and that needs to stop. And so yes, this was a super powerful protest and this morning we've seen amazing images from London, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands in the streets once again demanding the ceasefire, demanding that Israel stop its bombardment, that this atrocious cut in communications be reversed, that people are able to communicate, that humanitarian aid be able to enter. It's hard to say that the world really stands with the actions of Israel. And I think more and more it's gonna be impossible for world leaders to turn their backs on the people of their country. And again, we've mentioned this before, but on November 4th, there is a national march planned in Washington. I think it would safe to say that again, hundreds of thousands of people are set to attend. People are gonna be busing in from cities across the US to say that once again, not in our names, US can no longer fund this genocidal war against the Palestinian people. And that this is not acceptable and that people are going to make sure that the leaders know this. So these actions I think are so crucial because before I think there was this certain silence, this complicity and silence from the United States, from the population, maybe some just lack of engagement with what was really happening. But again, thanks to social media, thanks to the work of the journalists with Incaza and across Palestine and outlets that have actually dared to speak the truth in defiance of censorship, in defiance of legal ramifications, people are not able to turn their backs. And I think more these protests continue to grow. The solidarity continues to grow from football stadiums to town squares. I mean, really everywhere, there are just outpouring of solidarity, outpouring of this condemnation of what's happening. Well, it's in football stadiums, as you say, it's in town halls, but it's also in parliaments. We saw a French delegate from France in Somie make a very strong statement in the French parliament. She also said, look, there are people across the channel in London protesting Emmanuel Macron, not permitting protests on behalf of the Palestinians in France. We saw a French politician, Iona Belara making a call for Mr. Netanyahu to be investigated by the International Criminal Court. Some courageous politicians in Western countries. Meanwhile, of course, in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a mass rally where he spoke about how Israel is committing war crimes. And interestingly, he pushed back, you gotta remember now, Mr. Erdogan's peace and justice project effectively is a project of the Muslim Brotherhood. They have a very, very close relationship with various Muslim Brotherhood outputs, including Hamas, which comes out of that tradition. So Mr. Erdogan in this mass rally said, look, Hamas is not a terrorist organization. It's an interesting statement. On Turkish TV Zoe, a man from Palestine called in, this was before comms were closed. And he said, tell Muslim countries not to offer funeral prayers for us. We are alive and you are dead. Very powerful statement. In fact, just a few hours ago, Iran's president, Ibrahim Raisi had a phone call with Qatar's Amir, Tameem bin Haddad Al-Fani. And he said to him that there's got to be a unified response from all the countries with Muslim majority populations. I thought this was an interesting statement. He said that he feels that the Palestinian people are not going to bow down and just surrender. He said that this war in Gaza is going to be Israel's graveyard. The very strong statement coming from the Iranians. We've seen the United States bombing in Syria, caches of what they call Iranian-backed militias, ordinance, logistical things, weaponry and so on. I'm not sure if Iran is directly going to enter this conflict. Right now it appears Iran is spending more time shoring up the diplomatic relations with other Muslim majority countries. As I said, with the Amir of Qatar, previously with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and with Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, that is what the Iranians are doing. What we're still in a sense waiting for is the statement from Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah in Lebanon, because that is going to set the tone for what happens in the north of Israel. Whether Hezbollah is going to enter the conflict on behalf of Hamas, on behalf of the Palestinians, whether the factions in Syria will enter the conflict and so on. That is still to be seen. This is a conflict that's going to go on for a long time. You're with Zoe and I'm Vijay. We're from People's Dispatch for you. This is our third live. Zoe, I think we're going to have to come back to do more of these, to try to put things in perspective, neither grieve nor be angry. Try our best to be as sober as possible, trying to understand the great process of Palestinian emancipation of the repression that they faced, all of that before us. Thanks a lot.