 Many governments of the global north have brought into an in fact endorsed Israel's justifications for its genocidal war. But Latin American governments have been a picture in contrast. What positions have countries taken on this? The House of Commons in the UK voted on an amendment to seek a ceasefire in Palestine. What were the positions taken by various parties? And Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden met on Wednesday on the sidelines of the APEC summit. What were the outcomes? This is the daily debrief. These are your stories for the day. And before we go any further, if you're watching this on YouTube, please don't forget to hit that subscribe button. The response of governments across the world to Israel's genocidal attack on Palestine has been revealing. Governments of the global north have strongly endorsed Israel's position. While across the global south, many have taken a strong stance against it. Latin American governments especially have been vociferous in opposing Israel's brutal war and calling for a ceasefire. To understand some of these regional dynamics, we go to Zoe Alexandra. Zoe, thank you so much for joining us. Like I said, quite a few interesting developments from Latin America when it comes to solidarity with Palestine governments taking a very powerful position. But let's first go to the single biggest player, the most significant player in the region, which is Brazil. And there's been a lot of fascination, a lot of interest in the stances Brazil has taken, especially President Lula, his recent comments really marking a very interesting shift. So let's first talk about Brazil and Lula's position on the Israeli attack on Gaza. Thank you so much for having me. So Brazil has been an interesting case in terms of its reaction to the situation in Gaza. For a while we saw a lot of quite reserved comments, some would say from Lula da Silva, whereas his counterparts in countries like Colombia, even in Chile, had much stronger criticisms of what Israel was doing and defending Palestine's right to resist. We saw Lula taking a more middle of the road lined, condemning Hamas and using that language, calling Hamas a terrorist group and saying, you know, expressing solidarity first with the people of Israel. And we've seen a really tremendous shift actually in what Lula has said regarding the situation, as I explained. He has in the last week really upped the ante and intensified his tone and his condemnations of Israel. And many believe this has to do with the fact that for a while Lula was negotiating, his government was negotiating with Israel for the evacuation of Brazilian citizens from the Gaza Strip. As we know, there were hundreds of foreign nationals that were in Gaza that were there during the genocide Obama carried out by Israel and that after several weeks, the border opened in Rafa and Israel allowed the exit of a couple hundred foreign nationals. But as many analysts have noted, a lot of these were from countries that, no surprise, Israel is aligned with such as the United States and European countries. And so actually the negotiation for Brazilians to be evacuated was quite arduous. And there were a lot of dead ends. And so many suspected that Lula was maintaining sort of a more moderate discourse regarding Israel's actions due to this negotiation not wanting to anger Israel anymore. And now that this past weekend the remaining Brazilians that were in Gaza and their family members were repatriated to Brazil, he received them in Brasilia. We've actually seen a significant change in this condemnatory tone of Israel. Lula has said that Israel is not killing soldiers. They're killing children. He's condemned this with the strongest terms possible. And I think that will be interesting to see over the next week is how does this change in his position being such an important country in the region, being one of the largest economies in the region, having a serious impact globally. How will Lula's government's position impact what happens at the UN, what happens in other international spaces. How will he, for example, put pressure on Joe Biden, understanding that it's really the US government that gives Israel the green light to commit all of these atrocities. As we know, just hours before the Ashifa hospital was raided by Israeli troops, the US spokesperson of the White House said that they had reason to believe that it was a Hamas headquarters. So we can see this direct connection between what the US says and what Israel feels it's able to do. So Lula, being another key player and putting pressure on not only Israel but also the United States, will be a fundamental factor, hopefully, in changing what's happening and bringing an end to this genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza. Right, but like you said, Lula has not been the, it's not just been about, you know, Brazil, because also various other Latin American countries taking very powerful positions. Maybe also do an overview of the region, what are the other governments and leaders saying and what is the kind of pressure they're applying, the diplomatic pressure they're applying at this point. Well, as we've covered on People's Dispatch, Latin America has been at the forefront of a lot of political and diplomatic actions to put pressure on Israel. We've seen leaders such as Gustavo Petro of Colombia, Gabriel Boric, Nicholas Maduro, Miguel Diaz-Canel of Venezuela and Cuba respectively, making very bold statements condemning what Israel is doing and, and importantly, affirming Palestine's right to resist and the historic nature of the oppression faced by Palestinians. I think this is really crucial because in the global north, we see a lot of condemnations of what is happening right now for the past month with the bombings, with the bombings of schools, with the bombings of hospitals, which many people are condemning, but without recognizing that this is part of 75 years of violence against the Palestinian people. This is part of a settler colonial plan to exterminate Palestinians and to take all of the land for Israel, design this project. So, Latin American leaders having this clarity, having this historic clarity has, has really introduced that as well on the international stage and forced other other leaders to to recognize this and to come to terms with this. In addition to these strong statements, several of these countries have either cut relations like we saw the case of Bolivia and most recently today Belize. And then we've seen countries like Chile, Colombia, Honduras that have withdrawn their ambassadors from the country for consultation. This is, this is not cutting relations but it's sending a strong message that we do not approve of what your government is doing and we don't even want our diplomatic staff in the country. So, this has been one move and then additionally this past week Gustavo Petro supported Algeria's case to the international criminal court charging Israel with genocide and this is a call that has been made by world leaders, social movements and human rights organizations from across the world, recognizing that throughout this month, this now five weeks. Israel has violated systematically international humanitarian law bombing hospitals bombing schools killing journalists killing medical workers killing children and discriminately killing civilians and not trying to spare them and so all of these are not just horrible things but they actually constitute a violation of international law and there are bodies that do try people and leaders for these types of crimes and that's international criminal court. As we know, Israel, there was a case brought before the ICC several years back, attempting to investigate Israel and the US essentially said they're not going to cooperate with this and this is ridiculous this is not a matter for the ICC. But I think that with the growing pressure diplomatically politically, socially against Israel. This sort of case will be crucial and many people have raised attention to the fact that the ICC prosecutor prosecutor has not taken enough initiative has not actually responded to the calls for this investigation even civil society groups brought a case to the ICC. This is going to continue to be a pressure point where global leaders were civil society, human rights organizations are going to continue to put pressure on trying to end this impunity that Israel enjoys for all of the different crimes that Israel has committed, not just in the last month, but historically for the past 75 years. And we know that the same time that Israel is indiscriminately bombing the Gaza Strip. There's also grave violations happening to Palestinians in the West Bank to Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons. We ran a piece on people's dispatch about the treatment of Palestinian prisoners within Israeli jails over the past month, having their rights completely violated their access to visits to seeing family members so lawyers has been completely cut off food and water withheld showers withheld outside time withheld all personal belonging seized. Again, these are also violations of people's fundamental human rights, even as incarcerated people. And of course we know that the majority of Palestinians are really held just for the simple facts of them being Palestinians and daring to resist so these are very key Columbia has supported this ICC plea, and we're going to see how that evolves again. It will be interesting to see what happens now that Lula, who again for many is not only a leader of one of the world's most important economies but in many senses a moral leader. He has intensified his criticisms. How will this play out whether their actions on the international stage could take place to continue to put even more pressure on Israel and its business of genocide. The House of Commons in the United Kingdom on Wednesday voted on an amendment which urged the country to join the international community in calling for a ceasefire in Palestine. Now this was an interesting vote mainly because of the question of what position Labour MPs would take. Labour leader Kerstama has been strongly on Israel's side and has been widely criticized for it even within his party. Ultimately, while the resolution was not passed, 56 of 198 Labour MPs voted in support of a ceasefire against the party leader's line. We go to Anish for details. Anish, thank you for joining us. An interesting vote in the House of Commons. The British government of course has taken a very problematic, regressive position as far as Israeli war is concerned. And we saw recently, Swela Brehman being sacked for what is really a view of a lot of conservatives. But all eyes were on Labour Party yesterday especially because of the stand surface leaders. So let's first talk about that. How do you see the vote? The vote is quite interesting. It actually shows the kind of divisions that have always existed within the Labour Party on various issues and it's not just Palestine. In this case, obviously what we have always expected, the left wing within the Labour Party, many of whom represent trade unions or other socialists, voted along with the Scottish Nationalists in favour of the amendment to the government's bill. Obviously the amendment was voted out with only 125 voting, if I'm not wrong, but most of Labour voting against it as well. But obviously what we're looking at is a division that came despite threats from the leadership that anybody who voted against the Labour Party's amendment or their leadership stand actually would be sacked from the party. Now they have more than a quarter of their MPs doing exactly that and it remains to be seen what kind of action they're willing to take at this point in time. Nevertheless, the fact that the left took the stand is quite significant. The fact that they are not going to go down that easy is something that was evident yesterday. But on top of that, there were others who were not part of the traditional left within the Labour and many who were part of the so-called moderate or soft left who supported the amendment, the SNP amendment as well. And so that clearly shows that there was a significant shift, not a shift but a divide, a rift of a sort within the Labour Party that cannot be done away with whatever explanation. Guy Stramel talks about when he talks about whatever terrorist attack or how he characterizes Palestine's resistance movement exactly. And it also clearly shows that much of the Labour leadership right now is completely cut off from much of Labour Party's own constituents, most of whom do support the Palestinian cause, most of whom see the Israeli occupation as an occupation, a colonial occupation as well. So there is significant damage that was done obviously to this sort of invincibility, this image of invincibility that Stammer had created around himself over the past few years, especially after his so-called purge of pro-corban groups within the rank and file very recently. Right Anish, in this context you mentioned Guy Stramel, that was something I wanted to talk about as well. This is not the first issue on which he has received vast amounts of criticism from the leftist sections or progressive sections in Labour. We know how it stands on trade unions for that matter. But what seems to be the case is this kind of consensus among the leaderships of the Conservative and Labour Party when it comes to an issue like this. And of course the Conservative government's position itself has been very, like I said earlier, very regressive as well. Maybe take us to what position the UK is taking on this issue. The UK has pretty much stood the United States line, which is that there cannot be a ceasefire. They think that a ceasefire is going to quote-unquote embolden Hamas, which they deem as a terrorist organisation. And they do not account for thousands of people who are killed, the fact that much of the people who have been killed so far, that 11,000 or so people of them, most of them were children, women and elderly, a bulk of them actually. And it's not just like even 50% it's a huge majority of them were unarmed, completely unarmed civilians. Most of them come from very weak sections of the Gaza population. So this lack of accounting for that aspect of the current conflict and only accounting for the number of deaths on the Israeli side clearly shows that they are trying to present an argument which pretty much the Israelis love right now, which is that the whole of Gaza is a terrorist organisation right now and needs to be done away with. And that is pretty much what you see in different versions from the Conservatives and even the Labour leadership right now. Obviously the Labour Party had to do away with some of the most unhinged kind of pro-Israeli statements and had to, at some level of acknowledgement that a disproportionate number of thousands have been killed, but they definitely stopped short of criticizing Israel for its occupation or the blockade or the fact that no aid has been allowed inside or the fact that they have been cut off from electricity and so on and so forth. The kind of atrocities that have happened over the past month or so. And this clearly shows that the sort of Blair right left has come back, the Labour has come back and they have really pretty much taken that same position 20 years ago and we are seeing that same thing right now. The Conservatives are nothing surprising actually, they have always taken that position. They have in fact used any kind of criticism against Israel to attack the left, especially Corbyn during Labour and we saw that happening, this whole allegation of anti-Semitism at the time disproportionately taken out of context. Nevertheless, this is pretty much showing the line and we see the same thing happening with several Western leadership who do not see ceasefire as anything, do not see ceasefire as anything preferable. They prefer pauses which might happen for ours, which might happen for maybe a day or two if Israel is generous and also they give Israel the complete control over how they want to continue the conflict even if it means thousands more are going to be killed in the coming days. Right Anish, thank you so much for that. We'll come back to you for our next story as well. And Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden met after nearly a year at San Francisco. The meeting produced several outcomes including a decision to resume military to military communications. We go back to Anish for more. Right Anish, we discussed the meeting before it happened as a run-up so to speak and of course much of what we talked about sort of actually taking place. Of course, there's a dictator comment at the end which we'll probably come to but first let's talk about the substantive outcomes of this summit in terms of what were the major agreements which is what I think everyone is looking forward to. Well, the biggest accomplishment of the meeting right now is that the military and military talks are going to resume which is pretty much a reset of relations between the US and China. If you actually think of it in the context of the past several years, this is not much of a major achievement. It is just that talks are going to happen and that's pretty much what they have achieved right now. On the other hand, they have agreed to cooperate on various issues including climate change which is significant considering the next COP26 meeting happening very shortly and the two countries are going to be the major players and the ones who would be setting the narrative. So if there is some level of cooperation which would be interesting to see because both countries have taken very drastically different stand when it comes to climate change, especially when it comes to who should feed the responsibility of climate change and the pollution for the past century or so. On the other hand, there are going to be some level of cooperation on AI, which is something that has been a matter of concern around the world. So these two, again, some of the leading powers right now in the technological advancements, so definitely there is going to be some significant movement on that matter. But nevertheless, the ultimate result of this meeting has been that they're going to keep talking and that is pretty much what has been achieved. And it is not, I mean, I would say like we have to vary because as I said, as you pointed out, there was this very random comment that happened that was in fact instigated by a journalist through Biden on calling Xi Jinping a dictator. But so that clearly shows that he can never really be very sure of how the US is going to take this matter forward, how far this sort of cooperation is going to continue. Because even when we talk about the post-meeting statements by the two countries, there has been a very significant divergence, especially when it came to Taiwan, where the US side kept saying that Biden insisted that Taiwan cannot be invaded or so on and so forth and that the US is going to take keen interest in how things move along in Taiwan. On the other hand, China says that it is very clearly insisted that Taiwan, the matter of Taiwan is between Taiwan and China, and that even though there will be no immediate invasion of the island, it is definitely going to be a matter of reunification for the Chinese side. So that sort of divergence also clearly shows that the US can obviously take this up in the future and rankle the tensions if it wants to. So that kind of thing is already there and that we see that weariness on the Chinese side, especially in the media reports and even how the governments have framed some of the statements. But I guess in the short term, in the absence of any major provocations, we might see meetings between top officials continue and the momentum of discussion, so to speak, which has been building up over the past few months might to some extent continue even if there are no substantial breakthroughs. Exactly, because this is something that is the most practical thing to do at this point. There was a couple of months ago, we were talking about how the US and its allies were talking about this, dealing with China and trying to isolate it economically, but that was not possible. On top of that, the fact that China was starting to impose some really dear sanctions on especially on the export of some of the rare earth minerals that really had its own impact in pushing the United States to come to this sort of practical terms rather than resort to war-mongering and tension-mongering in the region at this point. So definitely, we hope that this sort of practical foreign policy continues in the coming years even, but definitely there is some level of weariness, but that aside, it is some advancement, some progress that many have really looked forward to at this point in time. Thank you, Anish. So much for that analysis. We'll come back to you on some similar issues in future episodes as well. That's all we have time for in today's episode. Do come back for tomorrow's episode as well. In the meantime, visit our website peoplesdispatch.org. Follow us on all those social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, do hit that subscribe button.