 It is five o'clock, Pacific Time, eight o'clock Eastern. I'm Marcy Winnigrad, coordinator for Code Pink Congress. Welcome to an exciting evening on Palestine resistance, well, repression and resistance. And we've got a terrific lineup and this is being hosted by Code Pink as well as the Massachusetts Peace Action staff. Cole Harrison is with us as is Abbe Yanno. And we are gonna go right into our program with some updates. Medea, why don't we go to you first? Yes, well, as you know, the war in Ukraine rages on. We're coming up in February to the one year anniversary. There is a protest in New York City being planned for January 14th around Martin Luther King Day with a week of actions and a protest in Washington DC being planned for February 19th, both of them calling for negotiations and a ceasefire and you can see more details on the piece in Ukraine.org coalition which are all invited to join as well. We have meetings once every two weeks. I am continuing on the book tour after a nice break for the holidays. Next thing's coming up are North Carolina which is Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Asheville. Looks like another trip to Seattle and maybe San Francisco, Virginia, North Vogue, Wesleyan University in Virginia, Atlanta. A number of online things, including with our friends in the UK, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the New Jersey Coalition Against Endless War, Brooklyn for Peace. And then with Anne Wright as organizer, I think it's 10 day book tour to all the islands in Hawaii. So that should be lovely. Working hard there. Yeah, that's a tough one. That's a tough one. I just am putting in the chat my latest article with my co-author, Nicholas Davies. It is about the small clues that we're getting that the officials in the U.S. and the West of Europe are starting to change their tune a bit about calling for negotiations. We quote Anthony Blinken having said in a new article in the Wall Street Journal that the goal of this war is to take back the territory seized since February 20th. Which is a different line from the territory seized since 2014. We also quote the new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, as having called on his defense minister to talk to his counterpart in Russia about de-escalation, which is a very different tune than when prime minister Boris Johnson was there or Liz Truss, who was there briefly after him. And we give a lot of other examples of what looks like a bit of a softening of a position coming from the NATO countries, as well as a very dire warning from the hawkish head of NATO, Jen Stoltenberg, saying that his biggest fear for the winter is that things will spin out of control. And if they go wrong, they can go terribly wrong. They can go terribly wrong. So take a look at that piece. Perhaps we're looking at the glass half full and trying to find signs that there is movement towards negotiations, but indeed, these are some of the signs that we have found. Well, that's heartening to hear and hopeful and we need all the hope we can get. So thank you for that report, Nadia. And I do want to invite everybody on the call to join us tomorrow for our piece in Ukraine Coalition Call. That's at 1230 Pacific, 330 Eastern. It's about an hour call and we'll be talking about our weeks of action. We're, that's January 13th through the 27th. It's timed around Martin Luther King's remembrance, his birthday, his legacy of peace. We'll be visiting Congress members protesting outside their offices, this endless stream of money for weapons, fueling a fiction that this war can be resolved on the battlefield. We're urging people to get out in the street, conduct street vigils and all of that. So if you want to be on that call, do contact Maha, M-A-H-A at CodePink.org and she can give you the link for the call. Terrific, okay. Now is Vincent de Stepano on with us tonight? He is a national organizer with the Julian Assange Defense Committee. And if he's not with us yet, maybe he'll join a little later. He was gonna give us an update. I don't know how many of you saw that ABC was reporting that Julian Assange will be given an unconditional release of live in March from the Belmarsh Prison where he's been held for a long time in solitary while the US presses extradition orders. So this is good news and we wanna know more about it and hopefully this will join us later on. I don't think that is confirmed, Martin. Okay, well, ABC, I don't know, I believe them, but yeah, let's wait for the details. Okay. And also people are introducing themselves in the chat. It's very exciting coming from not only all over the United States, but places around the world. So introduce yourselves. Yes. Okay, and with that, we're gonna get started with our program. We have three speakers. The first is Mazen Houssia, who is the director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity. I'll give you more details on him in a minute. We have Anat Belitsky, former board chair of Bitselam, a human rights organization in Israel. And later we will have a video with Hassan El-Ta'ib. A lot of you have met him before on Code Pink Congress. He's the legislative director for Middle East Affairs for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. We will have a Q&A. We will have two actions we can take while we're on the call and Cole Harrison, the executive director of Massachusetts Peace Action, Moppa will be leading us in those actions. So let's begin with a video from Palestine. This is a video of Mazen Houssia. He's an activist, environmentalist, and an author. He is the founder and director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University. He served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke University, and Yale University, and now researches and teaches at Bethlehem University. He's the author of 100 articles, rather hundreds of articles and several books, including Sharing the Land of Canaan and Popular Resistance in Palestine. So with that, Maha, who is navigating the tech for us tonight, thank you, Maha, she's gonna run the video. Greetings, everybody. Thank you very much to Mapa and Code Pink for inviting me to speak to you. I'm sorry I'm not there live with you, as it would be like three or so in the morning here, and I'm getting to be an old man, so I need my sleep. I wanna just tell you briefly about what's going on on the ground here at the end of 2022, beginning 2023, we are, of course, I'm speaking from Bethlehem. Bethlehem is the birthplace of Jesus, and it's a very special place to be in at this point, of course, at the holidays. My family is Palestinian Christian family, and it's always interesting because my father is Greek Orthodox, my mother is Lutheran, so we actually got two Christmases December 25th and January 7th, where different members of the extended family celebrate Christmas in different times. The area that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, of course, and 2,000 years ago, was a place which was under occupation, at the time it was the Roman occupation. But this is a different kind of occupation, of course. The Romans occupied this country like they occupied many other countries, but they didn't colonize it in the sense that colonization is well understood. Palestine was colonized, and before 1948, Palestine had the majority of Palestinians who owned most of the land, and 75% of Palestinians were subsistence farmers living in almost 2,000 villages and communities throughout the country. Their access to the land was 97% or so, and even the areas that were Jewish, 3% at the time were native Palestinian Jews, many of them rejected Zionism and were just like my family, native Christian family, they were native Jewish families. This was the case, you know, after 1948, things have dramatically changed. Today, less than 4% or so Palestinians are subsistence farmers, and the majority of Palestinians are actually refugees or displaced people, 8 million or 14 million Palestinians. Here in Bethlehem, we have three refugee camps, Aida'a's and Heisha refugee camps. The Bethlehem district itself has lost a lot of its land over the last, since 1967 when Israel occupied this area, they took over much of the land of the Bethlehem district, and now there are over 130,000 Jewish settlers living in the district of Bethlehem, which was occupied, as I said, in 1967, there was the second stage of expansion of the Zionist project in Palestine. The situation of Bethlehem, of course, like many other Palestinian ghettos or bantustans, is that not only were the Palestinians in Bethlehem restricted the small area of their land, in our case, the Bethlehem district, it's only 15% of the land of Bethlehem that we are allowed to live in. 85% is for the use of the settlers and open areas that Israel maintains as military or as open areas that refuse to allow development of Palestinian ghettos. And then increasingly, Bethlehem is surrounded by a wall like many other Palestinian communities. So this has been the situation. Now, what has changed in the last few months? Well, to sum it up, 2020, 2022 was a bad year. We've had many bad years in the past, but 2022, we had 235 Palestinians killed so far. Over 3,000 have been injured, many are children, of course. And there has been over 6,000 who have been imprisoned throughout the West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli occupation army. So it is a bad year, but we expect 2023 to be worse because the Israeli, new Israeli government was just sworn in. It's a government of fascists and racists, basically, who advocate ethnic cleansing openly instead of under the table, so to speak. Now, the Israeli governments have engaged, every Israeli government has engaged in ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, but they always, some of them at least, have coached it in more diplomatic terms and more circumspect language, if you want, but the action was still there, which is ethnic cleansing, killing of Palestinians, removing them from their land. As I said that today means that eight or 14 million Palestinians are refugees or displaced people. Now, why do I expect things to change under the new government because I openly say so. The new government, in his first tweet after swearing in the government, Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of the government, stated openly that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and Jews will settle throughout the land and he named actually the Galilee, the Negev and what he called Judea and Samaria as areas of settlement. These are the remaining areas in historic Palestine that still have Palestinians in large numbers outside of Gaza, of course, which is an open air prison where 2.2 million Palestinians live squeezed into this tiny arid ghetto. So anyways, the new government says basically we will settle those areas that still have Arabs and we will remove Arabs. This is openly stated. It says that they will limit Palestinians from the land and that the land belongs to the Jewish people. This racist government will implement a new racist law that was passed a couple of years ago that defines the state of Israel as the basically state, not of its citizens, but state of the Jewish people by the Jewish people and that only the Jewish people have a right to self-determination and sovereignty over what they call Erich Israel, which is actually the historic land of Palestine. So we expect things to get much, much worse. What does that mean for us? Of course, we Palestinians continue to resist and this will happen and we've had 14 uprisings. I wrote a book about this. These 14 uprisings from 1888 to one, basically until today over 140 years. This means on average an uprising every 10 years and this new pressure will be like pressure cooker that causes another uprising to happen. And we need support internationally so that we like South Africa and the apartheid had the Soweto uprising, which was number 14 or 15 in South Africa. In our case, the same thing. We expect some day we will have the last uprising and we will have freedom. And when we have freedom, of course, as Palestinians, the Israeli Jewish individuals will also be free because they'll stop being oppressors and have the freedom and stop having psychological problems of superiority, inferiority, so to speak. We ask you to join us because like in South Africa, boycott, divestment, sanctions, media work, pressure on the governments all help. And of course, we invite you to come visit us here in Palestine. If you are here, you're welcome to come visit me and our institute here, which is an institute whose mission is sustainable human and natural communities. So you would be more than welcome to come visit us. You can write me at info at valestinenature.org or at my name, Mazen, at kumseya.org. Thank you very much for listening. And again, I'm sorry, it's virtual, but you can also email me as I said, that we can talk some more. Thank you. Right, that was Mazen Kumseya. He is the director of the Institute for Biodiversity in Bethlehem and teaches at Bethlehem University. Now we're going to go to Abby Yano of Massachusetts Peace Action, organization who will introduce our next guest. Thanks, Marcy. Good evening, everyone. I'm delighted to introduce Annette Baletsky, who was the, she was born in Jerusalem. She was the chair of Bethlehem, the Israeli human rights organization after serving on the board for several years. Actually, she was a chair from 2001 to 2006. She is the professor, a professor of philosophy at Quinnipiac University and previously professor at Tel Aviv University. She's a steering committee member of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies. She also serves as vice chair of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and is the co-founder and co-director of the program for human rights and technology at MIT. Her most recent book is Philosophy of Human Rights, a Systematic Introduction. Annette, we're delighted to have you. Thank you so much, Abby, for that and thanks to Code Pink and MAPPA. I don't even know if we should shorten it to MAPPA. I call it MAPPA for inviting me to speak and to give quote, this is in the invitation an Israeli perspective on settler violence, state violence, the impact or consequences or influence of the Israeli elections on these. Let me say and emphasize however, that all I can talk about is the Israeli perspective and obviously my own perspective, even though I am an Israeli is not the Israeli perspective if you can even call something the Israeli perspective. I've always remember how in 2015, I wrote a New York Times op-ed piece and I called it making it explicit. And I said then after the results of the elections in 2015 that those elections had made explicit what it seemed until then implicit, the bald unadorned Zionist norms of exclusive Jewish rights and exclusion of Arab citizens. So what can I say now, making it more explicit? What has really changed now? I waver between saying nothing and saying everything. So one obvious point that seems to get some traction and that we feel we need to address is the rise in violence. And for years we all spoke about settler violence. In the more recent years, we've become alerted factually and structurally to the rise in government or other official, mostly military but not only violence, formal violence. And I really remember the years when we used to childlessly complain that the army protects the settlers more than it does Palestinians. Well, that has moved now since it's not the army protecting the settlers, it's the settler army, it's an army of settlers. We now know that the army is also a religious army. We might and should also say that the country has become a religious country. And that has to lead to an analysis of the new government announced last week and to its purport and move both towards religiosity and towards extreme militarism. Both of those, of course, are the obvious antithesis of democracy, but I want to open that up a bit. So in order to look at this new government, we can make up lists. We can look at the government, what we call an Israel government, Mimshallah, the administration that has now been appointed or agreed to by Netanyahu and all the parties who make up the majority coalition that'll rule over Israel or the makeup of the legislature that will pass the laws and keeping with that government. The coalition is made up of Likud, that's Beebe's party, of course, it's the largest one. Shas, which is Mizrachi Orthodox. Aguda, which is Ashkenazi Orthodox. And three far-right fundamentalist factions, they're both religious and far-right. Smartrich's religious Zionism, Jewish power, which is Benphir and Noam. All together they called themselves a religious Zionism and they got into Knesset with an amazing number of seats, 14 seats. Beyond that, when I make up these lists, there are 31 ministers, only five of which are women. There are newly created ministries, for instance, the Ministry of National Missions. There are new jobs within old ministries. There are programs for external education. So there's the Ministry of Education, but there's somebody else, a minister in charge of external education, Jewish identity, Jewish culture. In other words, if you look at the people and their jobs, you get quite a different structure and factual content of what one calls an America government at large. The people themselves are frightening. Some of them we know well from other places, others from previous governments. Smartrich from religious Zionism is called another minister in the defense ministry except for being minister of finance. Benphir is a terrorist, an acknowledged terrorist from Jewish power and he's now minister of national security. I don't know if one can be even cynical about that. He's the person who went up to Temple Mount this morning, this Israeli morning. Remember Arik Sharon and the Second Intifada started that way. Ron Dürmer is minister of strategic affairs. Itzhak Veselaouf is minister of the periphery, Negev and Galilee. Two additional people are ministers in the prime minister's office, but they don't have any exact definition. If we're looking at lists, we can also look at the laws that have already been passed for the purpose of appointing that above list but also to placate the members of this crazy coalition. So for instance, they've already passed the law that anyone convicted of offenses without custodial sentence can be minister. That's for Arya Derry. Two ministers can serve in the same office. They had to do that to put all of these terrorists or extreme rightists in. There has been an expansion of the powers of the national security minister. That's for Benphir. And the laws that they have already proposed we've never seen such speed. Law weakening the Supreme court saying that parliament can overturn basic laws with a simple majority. Political appointments for two out of the three rules of attorney general, changing education regulations completely. I can just go on and on. It's amazing if you've been reading Haaretz or any of the other newspapers over the past few weeks, you just can't get used to can't at all ingest that kind of speed of changing the country. But what I wanna add some words about are the deep political and I dare say cultural implications of all of this. So here's what people in Israel and abroad have been saying. People are calling this religion versus secularism. Some are calling it Jews versus Palestinians. Some are saying this is a destruction of a state of law. Some call it fascism. Mazin just said racism. Some are calling it authoritarianism. Everybody is noticing that this is a reactionary change. It's gonna be against gay rights, refusal of service and businesses and officers based on religious grounds is going to be passed as a law. Of course, Orthodox men don't have to serve in the military. Not that I would make that the main thing. Many call it the right versus the left but it is finally somehow coalescing in some minds into Jewish versus Palestinian. And that is arising now after hardly having been a part of the political or election discourse in Israel for years. So here's where I'd like to present my own perhaps irreverent reading of the new panic. I can only speak of and about Jewish Israelis. I don't pretend to speak for Palestinians and I shouldn't speak for Palestinians. But I would in fact like to debunk some of these current mantras because one must look at the current hysteria among many leftist, so to speak leftist Israelis and many liberal, so to speak liberal Jews here in the US in more critical fashion. Who is it that is suddenly so worried? It's Jews worried about their own woes, not about the Palestinian tragedy, their own dreams, their own illusions, their own misrepresentation of Israel as a Jewish state, the state of the Jews, or a supposedly Jewish democratic state. We must never forget that this is a story of oppression and there is a clear oppressor and an obvious group that is oppressed. This has been going on since the beginning of the colonial project of Zionism. Note that Mazen himself didn't speak of a sea change happening now. Things had been, have been getting worse and now they'll get even worse, he said. They might become unbearable. Still, this is not necessarily a transformative shift but merely a continuation and making things explicit, really explicit. Explicit is the colonial states that's always been there, always based on Jewish supremacy which has been the lodestone of Zionism. And that's why it's Israeli Jews rather than Palestinians and the whole democratic or supposedly democratic world are in a panic. Not really because the country has become fascist and the occupation has become legalized. It's because these phenomena have now been exposed as the very essence of Zionism. Israelis are saying, what have we come to? And someone very appropriately answered just recently exactly where we were going. So what is to be done? What can be done by Jewish Israelis or by Americans, Jewish or not by others in the so-called democratic world? First and foremost, practically exactly what Mazen was talking about, BDS, media, government pressure, that's what activists do. But this must come from an acknowledgement of the illegitimacy of a Jewish state that has led to an essential existential situation of oppression. This new Israeli government has made that situation explicit and it must be explicitly outed. So yes, we must do all those things mentioned, BDS, et cetera, but we must also change the terms of the conversation. We must change the language being used by all and be more critical, including of ourselves. For instance, divestment. Look at that and look at it as a problematic issue. I mentioned Code Pink here, but that's for another conversation. Instead of talking about settler violence, which makes it seem like the settlers are outliers, we must talk about state violence, now official. Instead of talking about the occupation, which sounds like a temporary condition, we must talk about annexation, now legalized. Instead of talking about discrimination, we must talk about apartheid. Instead of dealing in diplomacy, one state, two state, et cetera, we must go the legal or illegal route, that is to say international criminalization of Israel. We must fight oppression in Israel from within and from without. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Nipoletsky, former board chair, Betselam and Israeli human rights organization, now a professor of philosophy. I agree, we have to be explicit. We can't sugarcoat any of this. And I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a friend from South Africa. And when I was talking about this was years ago, she said, well, the only answer is equal rights for all in Palestine. This idea that there can be two states and one will be an apartheid state based on Jewish identity, ethnocentrism, just that is not, is not just. And we have to recognize that and talk about it. Maria is gonna use our next guest. And then afterward, I saw the SD Chandler who's on the board of Jewish Voice for Peace is with us. And maybe SD can say a few words. And we also invited people from Americans, American Muslims from Palestine. So if there's anyone on the call from that organization who would like to say a few words, by all means as well. Medea. Yes, thank you and not for that great discussion of the present day situation. Now we're gonna hear from Hassan Al-Tahib who is the Friends Committee on National Legislations Director for Middle East Policy. Some of you might have heard him on past Codepin Congresses when he has talked to us about the work he has done to get the war powers resolution introduced to try to end US military participation in the Saudi-led coalition war and blockade on Yemen. He prior to joining FCNL, he was co-director of the National Advocacy Group Just Foreign Policy where he worked on their foreign policy for the Middle East. So he's been doing this work for a long time but he is also one of our favorite musician activists and he is at a practice tonight. So he has sent this into us and sends his best wishes to everybody on the call, which is almost 400 people. So it's a huge audience tonight. Thank you. And Hassan recorded this video earlier today talking about the focus of his organization. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for your sustained advocacy and a whole bunch of issues, including peace in the Middle East. I'm Hassan Al-Tahib, FCNL's Legislative Director for Middle East Policy living here in Washington DC. I can't be there today in person but I'm so glad to be able to address you on this pre-recorded video. I know you probably heard a whole bunch of information and I hope none of this is a repeat but I wanna give some thoughts on a recent trip I had to the region, what I think is possible in the 118th Congress and maybe some thoughts on effective activism strategies. This, as you know, is a very hard time for Palestinians living under occupation. There's an extremely hawkish right wing Israeli government that just took power and the chances for peace in the short term and medium term are looking worse than ever almost. You know, in the spring of last year, I spent almost a month in Israel and Palestine. I went out there in hopes of deepening my understanding of the conflict and hopes to gain new connections with people that are working for peace on both the Israeli side and the Palestinian side. I had conversations with cooks, taxi drivers, NGOs, diplomats and literally everybody in between. I toured the West Bank with Breaking the Silence and got a first-hand look at the horrors of the occupation, extremely disturbing on many levels. I think the most impactful experience I had while I was there, though, was definitely at the Ramallah Friend School. This is a 150-year-old Quaker school. It is just a fantastic place of higher learning and I stayed with them for about a week. I went from class to class, you know, talking to students about their life under the occupation and the things that they were really concerned about. To say that these students had to grow up too fast under the occupation is definitely an understatement. You know, during our time together, they talked about these restrictive checkpoints, you know, other forms of control and repression and it just broke my heart, you know, and it gave me a lot of food for thought about what we need to do here in the United States to turn the situation around. On the last day of my trip, I actually woke up to the horrible news that Shireen Abu-Aqla, the dual Palestinian-American citizen and journalist at Al Jazeera, had been killed while reporting on an Israeli military raid in Genine. And after landing back in Washington, D.C., I watched, really, in horror as there was footage of Israeli soldiers beating Paul Bearers and just horrors that were ensuing as a result. And despite numerous media investigations and firsthand accounts by eyewitnesses on the ground, we have continued to see a denial of responsibility by the Israeli government. They've gone as far as to say, you know, it may have happened, but we don't know for sure and we're certainly not going to be changing our practices. So this is, I think, something that I wanted to bring up in particular because I see that as an opportunity for progress. After six months of advocacy, you know, from May, when Shireen was horribly murdered to, you know, all through the 2022, we saw members of Congress like Andre Carson lead a 58-member letter to the Biden administration calling for an investigation. We also saw Senator Van Hollen lead a whole bunch of members of Congress, you know, on supporting an FBI and State Department investigation. We saw, you know, several bills and amendments. We also saw folks like Mitt Romney speak out. And I bring this up because, you know, on this particular issue, Israel Palestine, I mean, there's obviously, you know, a lot of politics working against us, but I see this Shireen situation as a perfect storm of things that it's just gone beyond the pale and it's something where I see us having a real potential in the 118th Congress. The Biden administration has already started an FBI investigation into this murder. And we need to support that investigation and make sure it's as robust and as transparent and thorough as possible. So that's why in the 118th Congress, I'll be working with Reps Carson, other reps in the House, who also Senator Rand Holland and as many people as I can get on board to publicly support this FBI investigation so we can finally get accountability and try to prevent things like this from happening again. It'll also tell us whether or not US weapons were used in the assassination of Shireen Abu-Waqla. And that opens up the door to a lot of other, you know, avenues for advocacy and legislation to hold folks accountable. So that's one major issue I'm working on. I also wanted to give folks a quick, quick update on some of the things I've been working on around the Gaza blockade. Obviously the humanitarian crisis that's been ensuing due to the collective punishment of millions of Palestinians essentially living in an open air prison breaks my heart and we have to do something about this issue. I worked with Reps Barber Lee and Reps Pokan on a government accountability or a GAO letter on the humanitarian impact of the Gaza blockade. That letter was sent in the fall of 2022. And I'm hoping that we actually get a full, you know, transparent reporting about the humanitarian impact of the Gaza blockade sometime in 2023. And when that comes out, I would love to reconnect with everybody here and work on new legislation, you know, based on that reporting and the recommendations from GAO that we can get folks on the hill to say enough is enough it's time to end these, you know, inhumane restrictions on movement and access that are making so many Palestinians suffer. I could say really so much more but I think that's probably a good place to leave it. Sorry, I couldn't be there in person but I hope to connect again really soon and thank you all so much for your great advocacy. Thank you so much. That was Hassan al-Tayyib of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. And before we go to our Q&A, I wanted to bring in a couple of other people. Vince DiStefano. And Marcy, I think we're going to go to the action. Cole is going to do it. One minute. I just want to hear from a couple of people before. And one is Vince DiStefano, who is a national organizer on the Assange Defense Committee. And we know that Julian Assange published thousands of documents that detailed U.S. war crimes and also the crimes of the Israeli government. So with that, Vince, can you just update us a little bit on the news today? Yes, I can. There's a couple of things that have occurred in the last two weeks, literally. I've been doing this in detail for four years and quite frankly, like the situation in Palestine, I've been ready to stick my head in the oven because it seems there is no hope on the horizon but there was a tremendous amount of hope. First, there was a joint letter by five publishers, New York Times, El Pais, Le Monde, The Guardian, all calling for Julian to be released. That was incredible. That came on the tails of Jamie Raskin introducing the Press Act. And that is the protect reporters from exploitive state spying, the kind of exploitive state spying that they have done on Julian. But most importantly what Marcia is referring to is Anthony Alvarez made a statement about two weeks ago saying that Chelsea Manning, the heroic Chelsea Manning. Let's face it, she broke the law but she did so for moral and courageous purposes. She's been let free and yet Julian whose only crime is publishing the truth has been languishing in solitary confinement for seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy and then in another almost four years in Balmash prison the British equivalent of Guantanamo. But the backdoor work they've done mean that there is every possibility that Julian may be released as soon as March. This is epic news. Now there is one thing just to throw some water on this. Julian's mother has said that he has a special case no matter what they do, no matter what reasons you have no matter what rules of law you have they seem to turn them on their head. But I think with the press act the by administration has painted itself into a corner. If they really wish to protect freedom of the press they need to do several things. The name of Sharina Achila was mentioned that's an American citizen who was murdered, assassinated by the IDF forces. They need to step up and speak for her and they need to free Julian I'm happy to report that we are closer to this than we have been since his ordeal began. It's a lot to cover. I thank you very much. And Marcy sorry about that. I came in first as Nathan because I'm using my Assange account. Okay, thank you. Vince de Stefano, national organizer with Assange defense. And again, you know, Julian Assange a lot of us think when we think about Julian Assange we think about the collateral murder video that killings in Iraq. But he also released a lot of cables on Israel and Palestine and how Israel wanted to make sure that Gaza suffered just so much that, you know it was on the verge of collapse that it wouldn't totally collapse but people would really suffer. So thank you very much. I, we hope for Julian's release and we're just gonna hear a few words from Estie Chandler and then go to our actions. Estie Chandler, a board chair a board member of Jewish voice for peace. Thank you Marcy. Thank you everybody. Thank you Code Pink Congress. This is such an amazing meeting. And you notice that when Israel Palestine is the topic people turn out and Israel Palestine just like Julian Assange the thing that we need to make things move is action from the people. There's a lot going on right now and not did a great job of talking about this radical new government pay attention to the press releases that they're putting out. There are people on the ground who are telling us that things are moving and that we all need to be on the ready so that we can have a response. I highly recommend paying attention to any emails that you get from Code Pink from Jewish voice for peace, Jewish voice for peace action. If not now, Bet Selam is a great place to look for updates because we are gonna be needed on the streets and on the streets soon. They Masum Kumsir or no, it was Hassan that mentioned the friend school. A 15, 16 year old from a prominent Palestinian family was recently beaten and arrested in his home and held. He's now home on house arrest. I interviewed his mother on Middle Eastern focus last week but things are changing. They are going after people and we can see that the effects of this new right-wing wave are happening. And the only thing that has the power to push against it is us. We have to be pressing our elected officials, our congressional reps, our senators, pay attention to the news. And I believe I will see you all out in the streets very soon here in Los Angeles. Thank you for the two minutes, Marcy. Thank you, Estie Chandler, board member of Jewish voice for peace. With that, we're gonna go to Cole Harrison, the executive director of Massachusetts Peace Action for actions tonight. Let's take some actions. Thank you, Marcy. We've got two actions for people to take tonight. In Code Pink Congress, we don't just give you information, we also take action. We have 385 people on this call and we want 385 people to do two things. Number one, and as Ma has just put in, Justice for Shireen Abu Akla, the voice of Palestine. This is what Hassan was talking about. She's a Palestinian-American journalist. She was a 25-year correspondent for Al Jazeera. She was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in May. She's a US citizen. And after great delay, the Justice Department has opened up an investigation but only onto whether US weapons were used to kill her. But nevertheless, that's action. And so we wanna support that. There is a bill, as Hassan mentioned, the Justice for Shireen Act, which would have the US government push for accountability and an independent investigation. So please go to that page right now and fill in that form and send it to your members of Congress. And again, I would appreciate if we could get all 385 people to take that action. And then the second one is to condition US military aid to Israel. Every year, the US taxpayers buy the Israeli government $3.8 billion in military equipment while their military and settlers continue to harass, kill, and expel Palestinians from their land. So we wanna call on Congress to stop rewarding and enabling these crimes until the US government grants equal rights to everyone living under its control. So that's our second action. And please go ahead and take that action now. And while you're all taking that action, we'll go back to Q&A. Marci. Thanks so much, Cole, for leading us in those actions. And if you haven't already taken the actions, you still have time and do share them, please with your allies and on social networks. Okay. Remember, we also have Anne Wright to give a quick update on the Gaza flotilla. Oh, great. Yeah, let's hear what's going on. Yes, thank you all for hosting everything. We will have a flotilla in 2023. The last one was in 2018, but COVID and everything else came up. This is a little different. We're going to have the flotilla first up in Northern Europe and that'll be in the summer of 2023. And then in 2024, we'll actually sail down into the Mediterranean. All of this is to create educational opportunities for ports that we go into. And while we're focusing on Europe, because that's where the boat is, this is a wonderful opportunity for us in the United States, Canada, the Western Hemisphere to use the issue of a flotilla and the blockade, the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza. So I put in the chat how you can be in touch with us. And if you want speakers and things like that, please just let us know. Thank you. Thank you for your leadership and right. Okay, let's go to a Q and A. I believe Hassan was on video as was Mazin. However, Anat is with us. So if you have a question for Anat, now would be the time to post it in the chat. Abby, I think if you're still with us and Medea, Cole, you're all invited to ask questions of Anat. I'll start with the question. Anat, do you see, you know, you have a lot of connections with the human rights advocates in Israel, Palestine. What evidence is there that those in Israel are seriously pushing back on this government and the treatment of Palestinians and the governments, the platform they ran on, which was annexation of the West Bank? Thanks, that's a wonderful question because I always say, on the one hand, on the other hand, simply because I love paradoxes, but I really think there's a problem here. When you talk about people who are active, let's call them leftists for a minute. Let's use that terrible catalog sort of thing being a leftist in the elections of 2015 or 17. I can't remember, no, 2019 actually. So all of three years ago, the first of the last set of five elections or whatever, people were asked if they considered themselves leftists and 20% of Israelis of just regular voters said yes. Some said they were moderately left or extremely left, but it was 20% who said about themselves I'm a leftist. And these elections about three months ago, the same poll came out and 3% said they were leftists. Now, this is crazy and I don't, I don't know how to analyze things like that and questionnaires and what it says about public opinion or public identity or what people think of themselves, but to go from 20%, which was not great. If you think of the original Israel, so to speak, it was half labor, half Likud and we all thought half of Israel was normal, so to speak. Half of Israel thought we should give back the territory, sort of mantras like that. 3% are now willing to say about themselves that they're leftist, that's devastating. It's really devastating. Now think of those 3%, how many are really active or really doing something? And that leads me to the beginning of your question, people working in human rights, real activists, even professional activists, the organizations are amazingly active, they're doing things, but there are terrible risks. Israel, what was it a year and a half ago? I think it was September of 21. Israel criminalized six, now it's already seven organizations, Palestinian human rights organizations, made them criminal. They haven't done that yet to the organizations in Israel, but it's absolutely frightening and I'm close to many of them, very close to many of them. So the headquarters are being burnt every other day. There's torch, nobody reports on it. Nobody reports on the fact that they're being harassed all the time. So when you ask about activism in Israel, I'm a Pollyanna, so I just show or talk about what the organizations are doing. But when you look at Israel in a more global, not global, Scotry, local, but general fashion, there's very little to be done, there's very little to do. All of us, I'm sure everybody here, we are all on these lists, these mailing lists. So come here and come there and go to this demonstration or that demonstration. We think our bubble is the world, but no, it's a bubble and it's a very, very tiny bubble. So in that sense, I'm not only not Pollyanna, I hold on not to land in deep despair. So now when I hear you, I'm thinking, it's really up to us. We're in the midst of our own government to cut off the funds, to really investigate the killing outside the Genine refugee camp. It really is in our lab. So at some point, I'd like to bring in Esti to this Q&A and to talk about what JVP is doing, but Medina, perhaps you have a question. Well, there's a question in the chat, Anat, for you about what is the situation with the young people who refuse to serve in the IDF, what organizations can people go to if they want to support them? They're the old five organizations, I don't even remember their names, but there's the Refusenik net, there's Ms. Arvott, which is nice. It's the grammar is feminine rather than masculine, the Ms. Arvott is we refuse, but we women refuse. The numbers haven't grown at all. I mean, if you look at when the first 12th graders, it's not the first, the first one was when kids who were in school with me wrote that first letter and what was it, 1972, I think, but the big rush of Refuseniks since the 90s, since a little after Oslo, it hasn't grown at all. It's there, it's active, it's in the same way, but we see the numbers and we know the people and it's in the tens at most at any given time. So it's worth, again, it's worth supporting because you never know what the spark, what will bring the real spark, but it's the same people, I don't want to sound so defeatist, but it's the same people doing these same things. The nice part of it is that there are new generations all the time. I mean, if you just looked at us as a bunch of grandparents standing there, no, there's new ones all the time, new 12th graders, but it's not something that's taken off that's become an end thing in Israel. Let's refuse, let's refuse for political reasons. There's refusal for rational reasons. People want to go get a job rather than go to the army, but that's a different thing. All right, and if we could just bring it. Yes? I have a question for Anand. Are you good? Anand, there was, so three or four days ago, the UN voted on getting the ICJ to pass some resolution about Israel, but there was something today that Israel Moll's cooperation with the ICJ. I didn't see that and that sounds crazy. So I don't know, I'll look at that, thanks. But that decision to go to the ICJ is really interesting. There's the whole issue of the UN, what's it called, her name, her Francesca, who she has been under attack and there has been a wave of defense, but the ICJ is a different group altogether. It has nothing to do with the Rapporteurs. It's another group that was appointed by the UN. They came to Boston on November 1st, I think it was October 31st, a bunch of us met them and they said they would dare to do this, to somehow get this to the General Assembly, to get the UN to go to the ICJ for that opinion and they've done it. And of course, it was interesting today to see who voted for, who against and who abstained and it's changing. There were many, well, maybe not many, but there were several European countries that voted for and many abstained. Many of those who had traditionally been on Israel's side have abstained. So I find that that most, most, most optimistic. And one more thing about, Marcy, what you said about America, we've always said, I don't know if it's true, we've always said that the solution, not the solution, but somehow the answer will come from the United States. The pressure, American pressure is something that has to do something. And that has changed too, it's changing slowly, but look at 27 people in Congress in a certain group saying something, whether it's about Shireen Abakla or other issues, people are speaking up, it's just taking a long, long, long time. Yes, and I remember during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the bombing, I remember a reporter asking a general in Israel, how long is this gonna come on? This is horrific. And his response was, as long as the world will tolerate it, we're image sensitive. So that's something to keep in mind. And before we bring Estie, and I just wanted to also share that here in the United States, the focus also has to be on our school boards on supporting ethnic studies, because this is under attack by Zionists throughout the country. My own teachers union in Los Angeles is being sued for wanting to teach about Palestine and Palestinian human rights. So please find out what's going on with your schools and ethnic studies and the attacks on ethnic studies. Estie, just maybe you can share a little bit with us about the makeup of the Jewish population in the United States, who's affiliated, who's not, JVP, what you've done, whatever you wanna share. Well, I wanna hop onto what you were saying about the ethnic studies. And if there are people who are interested in the education system, there is a working group. There's an organization that has been formed. I don't have that information in front of me, but if you write to Marcia Coppink or write to me, Los Angeles at Jewishvoiceforpeace.org, I can connect you with that working group. Obviously, if you have a background in education, if you have kids in school, that's all great, but this group has been fighting back and winning and they're working on this lawsuit to defend the wonderful teachers of UTLA. So that's a great thing that is in our grasp. The other thing that was mentioned is BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Look, there aren't that many things that are within our grasp, but choosing not to buy products made in Israel is one thing that we can do every day. We can look at the stuff we buy. We can say, oh, look, also Trader Joe's carries several items from Israel. I don't think they know, but I hear that they are very, very persuaded by customer input. So if you pick up one of those items and see, choose a different one and go to the manager and say something, go to their website and send a note. These are the ways that we can make a difference as Marcy was saying, as long as they will let it go on. When our elected officials understand that we are not going to be able to support them if they continue to fund the oppression, the apartheid rule over Palestinians, the disgusting inhumane blockade of Gaza, that we simply are not going to be able to support them, that we are withdrawing our support from and do not want to be represented. When that price goes too high for them, that's when we're going to see them making change. That's when we're going to see these younger, in the last cycle, there were candidates who were openly speaking about it. And that's when we're going to see them rising and taking office. As I said, there's a lot of moving parts right now. So please pay attention to your emails and great reporting in places like Bitzelam that are on the ground. Also support local Palestinian organizations. Palestinian youth movement is doing great work. They're on the ground. They're organizing actions. If you can support them and keep tuning into Code Pink Pombris because they will always, always be having guests on and be telling us about great new actions that we can take place. Don't pay attention to the reporting by the ADL. If there's actually a campaign to drop the ADL. If you want to know why, Google ADL Los Angeles and you'll see an oil splurge of information about the horrible, horrible things that they've done to minority populations in the United States, including acts that I'm sure were not legal. Let me just add to that. There was a wonderful article in Jewish currents about ADL, really to the point. I've sent it to MSNBC. They should be aware of that because they're constantly interviewing ADL people. And I'm not sure that people know what ADL is. Anti-difamation league. And they're deep into the schools. They do training on tolerance, but few realize that their agenda is to carry water for Israel as a Zionist state. These lawsuits, some of the assertions they make are that Zionism is integral to Judaism. So that if you criticize Zionism, the idea that there should be an ethno-state, a Jewish state, you are anti-Semitic. And that's where we're at today. So support your local school board that's promoting ethnic studies and legislating for ethnic studies. It's really important. We are at the top of the hour. We've been here an hour. And so I just want to bring this to a close. I don't know, Anad, if you want to say anything before you leave, and then maybe we have a few announcements and we'll say good night. So Anad, if there's anything else you want to add, now would be the time. I've just talked too much. I'm just sending, somebody asked for the link. Did somebody already send it? She was curious, is there already? Great, all right, John did, wonderful. No, I just want to say that I've tried to not pass on my deep, deep, deep despair. I always say despair rather than desperation. Desperation gets you to. Well, you know that. It's always darkest before the dawn. So, yeah. I mean, for me, my feeling is it's so explicit now, the apartheid, that it will be very hard for people to deny this, to talk about Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East and so forth. So we'll see. Okay, Medea or Cole, Abby, any announcements you want to make? Well, I want to make an announcement that, while many of us are not happy that the Republicans control the House if they can figure out who their speaker is going to be, a new phenomena happened today, which is that the House side is now open to the public. It has been closed for almost three years because of excuses like COVID and the January 6th uprising. And when we kept asking the Congress people, when will it be opened again? The Republican said, when we take over the House and sure enough, today it was open to the public. The Senate side, which is still controlled by the Democrats is not open. So go figure. But in any case, my point is to say, we can now go into Congress again. We can go into public hearings again. And we need people to come back to Washington DC or if you live in the DC area to join us. We were in there today. We're going to go in with all kinds of actions. So email me. I'll put my email there, medeaatcodepink.org. If you're interested in joining us in Congress anytime in the next couple of weeks or the next couple of months. And I hear somebody's going to Capitol Hill tomorrow. Yes. Thank you, Medea, for being there for all of us, for being our voice. OK, Cole, anything, Abby, you want to add? Yeah, I just put in the chat there. As Medea, I think, or Marcy mentioned, at the top of the hour, there's a protest in New York City on the 14th honor MLK's legacy rally for peace in Ukraine. Say no to the US $858 billion war budget, money for housing, health care, jobs, and justice, not war. Say yes to peace in Ukraine. That's Saturday in Times Square, not this coming Saturday, but the following Saturday, the 14th at noon. So please be there if you're on the East Coast. Thank you, Cole. And yes, please do join us if you're interested in pursuing the call for a ceasefire in Ukraine and more weapons to fuel the fiction that there's a military solution. Join us at thepeaceinukraine.org website. You can sign up there. You can email mahamaha at Kurdpink.org to get the Zoom link for our call tomorrow, which, again, will be at 1230 Pacific Time, 330 Eastern, to plan for our weeks of action, January 13th through the 27th. And with that, I just want to thank everybody, all of you, for showing up tonight for the work that you're doing on the ground to highlight the crimes of the Israeli government, the settlers, of the military, and to educate people in this country to push back and be at the doorstep of their congressional offices to demand an end to the funding of this horror. So we can do it. It's up to us. Let's go. And thank you so much, all of you, for joining us. Good night. That was great. Thank you.