 Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink and Ariel Gold, who is the national co-director of Code Pink, also a coordinator of our Middle East campaign. We'll start with some updates, but coming up, we are really excited to feature Abby Martin, the documentarian citizen journalist who made Gaza Fights for Freedom directed that. And we will have a lively discussion and show some of her film clips as well and talk about that. And please stay with us for the Capitol Calling Party, which comes at the end. We'll be calling into Congress to cosponsor HR 2590, betting the Columns bill to condition USA to Israel, as well as send a message to the White House or the State Department. All right, Medea, you have an update for us? Well, I'm going to update a little on Latin America. We have a winner announced in the Peruvian election last night, the official announcement that Pedro Castillo had won. Of course, he won a long time ago, except that he was being challenged a la Trump. And those challenges have left the right wing in Peru quite divided. It actually turned out to be a good thing in the long run. And this very progressive, humble, high school teacher from the rural areas will become Peru's new president as of July 28th. And we're very excited about all the positive changes that can bring for Peru and for Latin America. And then there is the issue of Cuba. Since the protests there, the right wing, especially in the Cuban American community has gone crazy and said, this is our moment after 60 years to topple the Cuban government. Of course, they've been saying that all the time. And they have been pushing the Republicans and Democrats in Congress to get even tougher on Cuba, which is so sad because the reason people are on the streets is because of lack of food and medicine. A lot of that attributed to the blockade. And if Biden really cared about Cubans, he would lift the blockade, which is what we are calling for him to do. And we are going to welcome the Cuban Americans who want to lift the blockade and have been walking from Miami all the way to Washington, 1300 miles in the scorching sun of summertime. They will arrive on Saturday and Sunday. There is a welcoming for them in Lafayette Park in Washington DC. So any of you near here or know anybody near here, please get them out because the right wing is mobilizing a counter demonstration at the same time, same place. And then a couple of other updates around Cuba is that many of you have helped us to raise funds for buying syringes. And today we just held a press conference announcing that the first shipment of syringes, two containers full, totaling 1.6 million syringes, arrived in the port of Marielle in Cuba. And there are another 4.4 million that are on their way for a total of 6 million. We've raised over half a million dollars. And now we're going to keep raising funds for medical supplies. So you can go to the Code Pink website and donate to that. Now it would be wonderful. And one more announcement is that look out for the New York Times full-page ad that we will have on Friday, which is calling on Biden to lift the embargo with many notable people around the United States who signed on to that. So that's my update. Thank you. Thank you, Medea. That is really inspiring, all the money that was raised to send the syringes. Thank you. I'm going to give you an update on the War Powers Resolution that was introduced today. This is a new War Powers Resolution authored by Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, and Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. This is a bipartisan joint resolution to basically remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis in Yemen. The bill will force the first ever vote in the Senate to withdraw U.S. armed forces from an unauthorized war. As a result of the Saudi-led war, which the U.S. has funded, a child under the age of five in Yemen dies of preventable causes every 10 minutes. And now I want to share a David Swanson's analysis. He's our friend who heads World Beyond War. He sent out an email analyzing the New War Powers Resolution, and here's what he had to say. He said, it repeals the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and replaces it with a revised version that is better than the original. It repeals the AUMFs, the 2002 for Iraq, the 2001 AUMF that basically greenlights all of our wars and drone attacks. Very positive. It strengthens the means by which Congress could not just end the war, but also block a weapon sale and put an end to a declared state of emergency. The new legislation is longer. It's more detailed than the previous one, the previous War Powers Resolution. And this may make the biggest difference when it comes to the definition of what are hostilities. This new bill defines hostilities to include distant war by missiles and drones. So it's not just U.S. troops, which it had been previously. The new bill also introduces the need for a president to request an authorization from Congress when he or she has launched a war, but it doesn't make mention of what happens if the president doesn't ask for Congress's permission, as we've seen in the past, right? The legislation introduced in the past by Congresswoman Gabber, Tulsi Gabber, made presidential wars automatic impeachable offenses if they did not have the approval of Congress. So we look forward to seeing what happens with this resolution, but we are very glad to see that it has been introduced. And now I'm going to turn it over to our other co-host tonight, our national co-director Ariel Gold. And Ariel, when you're done, you can pass it back to me. Well, I want to begin by saying how excited I am by this new War Powers Act. I think many of us witnessed during the recent brutal assaults on Gaza that in the midst of that, the U.S. approved a $735 million munition sale to Israel. And they did so by informing Congress when it was pretty much too late for Congress to gather up a resolution of disapproval to block this. But this new War Powers Act, one of the things that it does is it changes who the onus is on. So instead of the executive branch approving an arms sale and then Congress having a very, very limited time with which to introduce legislation to block it, instead the executive branch, the president would have to seek congressional approval from Congress in order to put through any weapons deal over, I believe it's $14 million. So I'm really excited about this. If this had already been in place, we would not have this $735 million munition sale to Israel after they have just used up their munitions massacring Palestinians. Okay, so that said, there's a lot going on in Palestine and Israel right now. Last week, Israel blocked feminist activist and member of parliament, Khalida Jarar, from leaving prison to attend the funeral of her beloved daughter. Khalida Jarar spent over a year in administrative detention. Administrative detention is a part of Israel's military law where they arrest Palestinians and hold them without charge or trial. So she spent over a year in administrative detention, no charge, no trial. The evidence is secret. Before she finally took a two year deal with Israel, which will be completing in the fall. And in the meantime, her beloved daughter passed away. She wanted to attend the funeral. And as a basically as a show of cruelty, Israel did not allow that. Now, just this week as in just yesterday, there's a lot of news coming out of out of the area. And the first is quite horrific. It has been revealed that the Israeli cyber firm NSO has been selling its software, the software is called Pegasus to a number of authoritarian states, including Saudi Arabia, that the states have then used to spy specifically on journalists. We assume activists and others as well, activists and dissidents. But specifically 180 cases of spying on journalists. Now this is through their cell phones. This is called a no touch spyware technology, basically. It infects your phone, but you didn't click anything. You didn't do anything. And from there, it can gather any information from your phone. It can also video and audio record you know, one of the interesting things about this is that the countries that purchased this Pegasus software, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, the UAE, Rwanda, Morocco, India are all countries that the former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had just improved diplomatic relations with. So clearly this was used as a tool to normalize relations with Israel to whitewash Israel's crimes against Palestinians. Now in an incredible piece of uplifting news, and I imagine everybody saw this yesterday, the ice cream company Ben and Jerry's announced that it will no longer be selling its ice cream in illegal Israeli settlements. They have a contract within Israeli franchise and that contract expires in December 2022 and they have announced that they will not be renewing that contract. There's a little bit of back and forth here. The statement that was released by Ben and Jerry's says that they will continue to do business that they will find somebody new to do business with for doing business inside what's called the Green Line, the legal borders of Israel. However, Ben and Jerry's independent board who is in charge of its social responsibility and has to approve such new contracts said officially that they did not authorize that to be part of the statement. And so basically they've hinted that this is an embrace of the full boycott of Israel that it's likely that Ben and Jerry's will have no contracts inside any part of Israel from the Palestine from the river to the sea in accordance with the BDS movement. So I know that that gave me a lot of hope today and it really showed that the tides are turning, which we've seen in public opinion as well, including a new poll that showed that the majority of American Jews support conditioning military aid to Israel so that it does not go to the settlements. So with that exciting news, I'm going to pass it back to you, Marcy. Thank you, Ariel, for all those updates. Yeah, that's great. This is about Ben and Jerry's. I feel like a law. I can eat it again. I never knew ISIS was so political, but it is, it is. And I think this is a huge public relations win for the Palestinians. Cannot underestimate it. So I, at this point, would like to introduce our next guest, our featured guest tonight, Abby Martin, the documentarian. I'm going to introduce her, but then we're going to go to one of her cliffs, a little tease, and then bring on. All right. So Abby Martin is a U.S. journalist, a documentarian, a TV reporter, an activist. She is the founder of Media Roots for citizen journalism. She serves on the board of Media Freedom Foundation and manages projects censored. Abby hosted Breaking the Set on RT, Russia's RT network in America. Then she launched Empire Files, which was an internet series that played on TELASUR. In 2018, she released Gaza Fights for Freedom, a documentary that we will see parts of tonight that will be spliced in between her presentation and our Q&A with her. So let's see that clip, Mary, please. Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Hamas is calling for more bloodshed today on the Israel-Gaza border. Thousands of Palestinians expected to riot. To call this a protest is inaccurate. What actually happened is that Hamas engineered an event where they wanted thousands of people to swarm into Israel. Palestinians reportedly organized by the terror group Hamas are being encouraged to rush security barriers, putting them right in the range of live fire. They were warned to stay away from the border fence. They decided to show up with explosives. They're paying them to get shot. Believe it or not, they're paying them something like $500 per gunshot warrant. You know, Hamas sent a seven-year-old girl who was wearing a Minnie Mouse sweatsuit right up to the fence so that IDF troops would in their perverse, in the perverse mindset of Hamas would shoot her and kill her. It is reported that someone in a wheelchair was fatally shot, Mr. Ambassador. Hamas is always very good at trying to put out all sorts of propaganda and myths that's their experts. And they intentionally moved up the day so that it would coincide with the opening of embassy move so that we would all be disgusted and heartbroken when we saw this horrible split-screen of Ivanka Trump looking like she was at a country club next to a poor, desperate people dying in Gaza. I agree with you. They planned that, absolutely. Right. And I'm just saying let's not fall for a trap that is being set by a theocratic authoritarian group that is sending women and children to the human field. I couldn't agree more with all of that. I think it's terrible that Hamas is butchering its own children. Hamas is conducting massive self-genocide. They want to pile up as many civilian debt as they can because somebody said they use, I mean, it's gruesome, they use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the more dead the better. They're pushing civilians, women, children into the line of fire with the view of getting casualties. We try to minimize casualties. They're trying to incur casualties in order to put pressure on Israel, which is horrible. What they're deliberately doing is seeking to kill as many Palestinians as possible in order to yell to the world to help us. And much of the world is condemning us for war crimes. Basically, they're serving Hamas's goal. That's just what Hamas is about. Make no mistake, Hamas is pleased with the results from yesterday. No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has. And that said, Israel only targeted people who were actively engaged in violence. We only use live fire in a measured and surgical way. Why the Israeli forces were shooting dead protesters at the Gaza crossings? Well, we can't put all these people in jail. Chilling words. Gaza fights for freedom. Saw a clip from it. And now I'd like to introduce the documentarian who directed this. Abby Martin, welcome to Code Pink Congress. Thank you so much. It's an incredible honor to be a part of this great panel discussion so far. Thank you, Ariel, for all those incredibly positive updates. And I guess I should have warned you guys about a trigger warning before watching that. It is pretty harrowing to see what we wanted to do with the intent behind putting that montage together is to really just show what the Israeli spokespeople will say about Palestinians and this justification for the bloodletting that we saw during the Great March of Return, which of course was a mass peaceful action. There was absolutely had nothing to do with Hamas. It was all just people on their own accord going to this partition with beard chests, raising flags, and they were met with the same sort of brutality and violence that Palestinians are met with every time they resist, whether it's peacefully or with armed resistance. And so, you know, this really, really disturbing and kind of sadistic montage of Israeli spokespeople essentially speaking to Americans, right? I mean, this is why they have people out there that sound like you and me. I mean, this is supposed to be propaganda for the American audience to dehumanize and otherwise Palestinians to make it okay that this ongoing massacre continued for a year. But what was really incredible about the montage is that it's juxtaposed with the most incredible footage of Palestinians just speaking for themselves. I mean, that's what this film was, was really, you know, I directed it through, of course, the blockade. I'm banned for life. I can't get into Gaza. But it was an incredible thing to work with seven Palestinian photojournalists on the ground, producers who were able to film the interviews the way they wanted to get the footage and show it in the way that they wanted to depict themselves and really uplift those voices that are completely obfuscated from the U.S. own corporate media. I mean, from the corporate own U.S. media rather. And so, that montage is really the only time that you'll hear from Israeli spokespeople about what was going on from their perspective. So, you know, that's why we put it together because, you know, the film is obviously very one-sided. It's just showing what the Palestinians thought about the march and what they wanted to show about the march and this incredible mass movement. But we did want to show, you know, this is what the propaganda is. And this is what these are the words spoken about Palestinians and in this grotesque way about this mass march to completely justify these atrocities. And it's just absolutely beyond the pale. Abby, do you want to show the next clip? Yeah, I mean, yeah, we might as well. So this next clip, what you're going to see is actually the statistics, you know, after the march was said and done. This was what came out of it. This is this is how many people were shot and killed. And we wanted to put this together for the audience. So let's check it out. The evidence of numerous blatant war crimes and these regular massacres are there for all to see. Well, let's just take a look at what the United Nations found in their investigation. Facts that cannot be refuted. The UN report released February 28, 2019 documented the extensive human rights violations during the Great March of Return through 2018. Of the 183 fatalities caused by sniper fire investigated by the UN commission, 171 were clearly murdered, shot in the head or torso. Nearly 8,000 people were wounded by live ammunition. Over that eight month period, 21 were left permanently paralyzed. And 122 more required limb amputations, including 20 children. In stark contrast, the UN report found zero fatalities on the Israeli side. Not one Israeli soldier was killed or seriously wounded. Four claimed scratches from thrown rocks and could only sight property damage from kites and balloons as reason to continue the ongoing massacre. Throwing rocks cut to death sentence. You can see that Hashem Fayez Abu O'Kel is posing no threat to Israeli lives. He's not armed and he's not breaking through the border fence. When the shot rings out, it is he who is shot in the head. If you want to fast forward like 20 seconds, it's a tough clip right there. Yeah. Nipers started using live ammunition at 9am. Over the course of the day, the IDF shot and killed 18 unarmed marchers and wounded 765 others with live ammunition. Among the casualties the first day, 19 year old Bader Sabag was resting, smoking a cigarette 300 meters away when he was shot in the head and killed. 24 year old mechanic Najia Abu Johayir was standing wrapped in a Palestinian flag 300 meters away from the fence when he was shot in the abdomen. The youngest casualty was a two year old child. The oldest, a 71 year old woman. Six weeks later on May 14th, in one of the most egregious massacres of unarmed peoples in modern history, Israeli snipers killed 60 people on this day alone, including seven children. The death toll could have been far higher, considering the fact they shot and wounded 1,162 additional people with live ammunition. Just a sampling of these fatalities demonstrate their barbarity. 21 year old university student Ali Kafazha was on his cell phone about 150 meters away when he was shot in the head. 20 year old Mahmoud Jundia was filming the protest 50 meters away from the fence when he was shot. As he lay on the ground dying, Israeli snipers finished him off with a shot to the back. One international war correspondent interviewed for the UN report, recounted the scene. Every few minutes you would hear a shot ring out and you would see someone fall, and then another. It went on for hours. There was a constant stream of bloody bodies being carried back towards the ambulances. It was surreal and endless. And she goes on to say, you know, I've been in the middle of war zones in Yemen and Iraq and I've never seen anything like this. This slow, methodical shooting where Israeli snipers were perched behind sand dunes like cowards and literally taking out marching Palestinians like target practice. And it just flies in the face of all humanity. And we wanted to show through the base, through the lens of this UN report, because a lot of Americans do hold up the UN as a sacred institution and it does, you know, it's seen as this kind of body that administers international law and such. And even this report by the UN found these egregious war crimes were committed, these direct targeting and killings of journalists, elderly people, disabled people, children, children, and also medics. It's just unbelievably astounding when you actually look at the documentation from the UN report about these grave crimes that were committed in our names and continue to be committed in our names. And that's why we actually chose this framing of international law with this UN report and the Geneva Conventions, of course, talking about how, you know, even during an armed battle, like let's say Hamas was armed and was fighting the Israeli military, it would still be considered illegal. And it would still be considered a war crime to actually target these categories of people under the Geneva Conventions. And so that's why it's just so much more horrifying when you see that this was just a peaceful action and that these people were killed administering medical aid. Of course, the story of Rizan al-Najjar. Now those statistics, of course, you know, it's hard to actually kind of zero in on so many people and talk about their stories and dreams and aspirations. Of course, every single person who was killed has those. And that's why, you know, we start with the statistics, of course, and then we go into the story of Rizan al-Najjar, the heroic medic feminist who was the first female on the front lines of the march and how she was actually directly targeted and killed by Israeli snipers as well and talked to her friends and family and colleagues about who she was and what her true legacy was. Because as you'll see in this next clip, Israeli authorities actually not only justified her death by saying, you know, excusing a way that she was, oh no, she was just killed by shrapnel, oh no. She was actually a human shield, you know, releasing a propaganda video actually calling her a human shield and mincing her words, which you'll see in this next clip. But we wanted to give space to her family and friends to talk about who she really was. Because after she was killed, the New York Times, who had previously profiled her. In part, that's why I think that she was targeted, because she was getting all this press and changing society from within, you know. And the New York Times actually did a follow-up investigation where they gave an Israeli general just carte blanche, like a 10 minutes to just excuse away her death and maybe just 20 second sound bites from her mother and colleagues. And so we wanted to, you know, give due diligence and actually do justice for Rizan. And that's why we chose to highlight her mother, just such an incredible advocate for justice and who's fighting for justice for her daughter. And so let's hear from Sabrina. I want to stop in front of the entire international law in the international courts. I'm ready to stop in front of them and face them. And I'm asking from all over the world, from every mother, you see me. Her heart is on her daughter's side, like my heart is on my daughter's side. No one feels the fire that she's burning. My heart, every day, cuts on my daughter. People remember me. No, I'm not on my daughter's side. This is my first joy, my daughter. What's the burden that I've done? I was waiting for her to get married and be happy with her and give birth to her. What's your burden, Rizan? After international outcry over Rizan's death, the Israeli military responded by releasing this video. In the actual video that's not maliciously doctored, Rizan clearly explains how she shields the wounded and dying to save their lives, as any combat medic would say. It's a really powerful statement from her mother and she goes on to just say, we don't need sympathy, we need our rights. How long will the world sit back and watch these crimes be committed against the Palestinians? We've suffered, we've endured for decades. How many more children need to die? How many more people need to suffer? How long will this go on? This is just Gaza. Of course, as Ariel elucidated, the West Bank is under this brutal military dictatorship that Palestinians are suffering through on a daily basis, being imprisoned without trial or charges for years on end. This administrative detention, you can't hold up a Palestinian flag without being brutalized and subject to arrest potentially. It is an absolute atrocity and the most inspiring thing about it, though, as Rizan's father said, Israel is known to be a state above the law. Of course, they go on to advocate BDS and as allies in America, I think that that's our duty to take that call and run with it, which is exactly what people have been doing so diligently. Ben and Jerry's now coming out on the front lines and declaring that they are not going to support or sell their products in occupied territories and even beyond that, which is an incredible, incredible thing that's happened. My whole thing is that this is an optimistic time, because every time there's some horrific onslaught of violence in Gaza or something like a flashpoint like Sheikh Jarrah or Salwan, the world becomes a tenet. All of a sudden, people are ready to hear what they may have been lied about their entire lives. Of course, with the media hides this reality that's so stark and so obvious once you really do open your eyes to the other side. And this is a breaking point. This is something that I truly believe is the beginning of the end for the apartheid state, because once you have human rights watched, once you have Bet Salam, which is an organization that exists within Israeli society, once you have sitting Congresspeople declaring Israel is an apartheid state, the narrative now becomes, well, what can we do about apartheid? What can we do to administer equal rights for all? What can we do to condition aid to make sure Israel adheres to international law, ends the occupation, ends the illegal settlements? I mean, this is now going to be the conversation moving forward. It's not, you know, you're anti-Semitic if you criticize a government that's committing war crimes. No, now you're on the defense to explain why you support apartheid. You know, the narrative has completely flipped on its head. Not only are we seeing these dramatic poll shifts in public consciousness with Democrats and young Jewish Americans, but, you know, looking at Gallup polls, like for example, who interview American voters every year on the Israel-Palestine issue for the first time this year, those voters said that Israel needs to be pressured as opposed to Palestine. This is due to the advent of social media. I mean, Palestinians are able to film their own reality for the first time. They have forced the narrative shift. These historic protests, the uprisings that we saw, not only across Palestine, across party lines, but across the United States for the first time in the history of this country. I mean, these were the biggest pro-Palestine solidarity demonstrations that we have ever seen. And I think the swell and upsurge of Black Lives Matter and the consciousness shifting of police brutality really opens that international solidarity where people can say, look, Palestinians are actually suffering the same struggle, the same fight, linking these struggles together, whether it be Black Lives Matter, whether it be immigrant detention and using Israeli military technology. All of these things, I think, are contributing to this mass awakening. And the latest violent brutality that we saw issued on Gaza where 70 children were killed, Israel has completely lost its moral high ground. They cannot walk away from this with their normal PR. So they tried to deflect it and basically blame a rise in anti-Semitism to pro-Palestine solidarity activism. And that was a very, very disingenuous campaign that we saw running for three weeks after this latest massacre. But I think that it's also just that they cannot dictate the agenda anymore. And so they're desperate, right? They're desperate to conflate these issues when really, if there's a rise of anti-Semitism, it's obviously due to a rise of right wing extremism. This is coupled with all of these other horrific mentalities and ideologies that are on the rise worldwide. But it certainly has nothing to do with pro-Palestine solidarity activism. But unfortunately, that's what you saw the corporate media running with because they cannot defend Israel's actions anymore. They cannot defend Israel leveling giant apartment buildings using targeted munitions to target sleeping families in their homes, this collective punishment and torture on the residents of Gaza. And so the international community has woken up. They are looking in sheer horror at what's happening. And we all know that politics follows the cultural shift, right? And the consciousness has completely shifted in this country. And you see whether it's the Meteor Festival a couple of years ago during the Great March of Return where all of these artists were dropping like flies. They refused to play in Tel Aviv. They refused to play in Jerusalem because they were shamed from their audiences. Lana Del Rey, Demi Lovato, all of these people, right? This is a huge dramatic thing that they no longer have people like Natalie Portman, Seth Rogan to go out and walk, you know, basically run defense for Israel's war crimes anymore. Even Seth Rogan just went on the Mark Moran podcast and he said there's something deeply wrong with what we've been told about Israel and their, you know, this notion of eternal right to self-defense. I mean, he was one of their biggest advocates just a couple of years ago. So all of these things coupled together, Natalie Portman giving back this million dollar reward, you know, saying that she doesn't feel comfortable representing Israel anymore. It may seem small, but it's absolutely not because once you have no one that you can parade out there to defend these crimes, then you're just stuck with the politicians, right? And we all know where this is going. And we know that these anti-BDS laws that have been passed in 30 states in the U.S. are done to preemptively hold back that tide of justice. That is why they've been doing it. They know what's coming. Yeah, they know what's coming. Brought that up the BDS legislation because somebody posted in the chat to congratulations on winning your suit in Georgia. And before you share that, I just want to say that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has been working over time to try to push through these anti-BDS laws and basically apply duct tape to activists' mouth, calling them anti-Semitic if they criticize Israel. And in California, where I am, there was a year-long pushback on an effort to institute one of these anti-BDS laws that would have created actually an enemy's list and would have put people on the enemy's list if they were head of a corporation or a non-profit and had come out in support of BDS. And then they would be prohibited from receiving state contracts. We were able to water down this. And Esty Chandler, who's with us tonight, she's chair of Jewish Voice for Peace in Los Angeles, was part of this struggle. And we were able to basically water down that bill until it was nothing. It just says that it's basically duplicative of the existing law that people shouldn't be discriminating against others. So that was, you know, we saw that injury in California. Tell us about your victory in Georgia. Yeah, just really briefly. The law in Georgia, the anti-BDS law there, is now unenforceable due to my litigation. I worked with CARE in the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and we launched a lawsuit against the state of Georgia because they gave me such a contract. These contracts exist, as you mentioned, in states all across the country. I think they're in 30 states now, where if you are doing independent contracting work for a state institution, you are given a contract that says you cannot engage in a boycott against Israel. It's an open admission of foreign interference, the fact that not only organizations like what you're talking about, Marci, but also the Israeli government has bragged about this. You saw Netanyahu take to Twitter and say, we have worked very hard to advocate passing these bills across the US. I mean, it just flies in the face of any sort of comprehension that, you know, we constantly hear ad nauseum about Russia, about Putin interfering in our democracy. This is the directed mission from a foreign government of undermining our civil liberties and First Amendment. And it's just amazing that not more news covers this. I mean, this is the black hand of the state coming down and actually censoring and policing pro-Palestine speech. We hear constantly about cancel culture. We hear constantly about censorship when it comes to big tech, right? Fully so. But this is a huge issue. And I do think that pro-Palestine speech is the most criminalized and policed speech across the US. And you have to ask yourself, why? Why is that? Why are they working so hard to stimmy and stifle this kind of speech? Because they know what's coming. They know the tide of justice is nearing. And they know that BDS will inevitably bring down apartheid, just like it did Jim Crow apartheid here and South African apartheid. And that is why it is so crucial for allies in the United States to take heed of this call and act in concert with Palestinians, urging for the Boykeye Divestment Sanctions efforts. And we see it working, whether it's the Zimbot shipments being blocked in different ports, whether it's Ben and Jerry's. And also the cultural Boykeye, like I said before, Hollywood celebrities, musicians, that is a huge monumental thing because what it really is about is about isolation. We're not trying to cripple the Israeli economy. We're not trying to sanction food and medicine like the US does to Iranian and Venezuelan citizens. No, of course not. This is about the isolation, just like it was in apartheid South Africa. We need to put these people in the difference and basically have them explain in a way, why do you support apartheid? And if you do, you're not welcome in these spaces. Yes. Medea Ariel, feel free to jump in with the question if you have one. I wanted to know, somebody asked in the chat, is your film Gaza Fights for Freedom? Abby, is it playing in Europe? Is it playing in Israel? How wide is its view? So it has played a couple screens in Israel from my comrades who are anti-Zionists there and it got an interesting response. It definitely has played all of the world. Right now it has Arabic and Spanish subtitles as well as Polish, French. You can check it out on GazaFightsForFreedom.com. It's up for free on YouTube, but you have to go through several layers of like screening verifications and stuff. It's very weird. YouTube is definitely throttling the film, has made it very hard to watch, but it is available there if you go through the proper protocols to watch it. Have you been in contact with YouTube about it either? Yeah, when we first released it, we released it for free during the Sheikh Jarrah struggle because it was so important to get the information out there and YouTube immediately removed it from search results. And so you literally could not find it for the first week that it was up, which really, I mean, really, really undermined the effort to get it as viral as it could during that flashpoint of struggle a couple months ago. But YouTube responded very late and they were just like, oh, it looks like it's searchable for us now. And so something changed, but the share button is no longer there. Like I said, you have to actually prove your identity, put in like a credit card number, a passport number. I mean, it's crazy. It's something that I've actually never seen before in any YouTube video. So they did not respond about that, but they did respond about the search results. It's just very strange. You might have to add them to our Capitol film party. I had a question for Ariel to go back to the Ben & Jerry's victory because, you know, on the one hand, it seems like so minor. It's an ice cream company. There's other ice cream companies. Yet you see that the Prime Minister of Israel is talking about it, that it's created this backlash and the conservative Jewish community in the US calling for boycott of Ben & Jerry's. Why does this and the fact that Ben & Jerry are both Jewish is, you know, an interesting tidbit in all of this, but why do you think it's created such an uproar? So first of all, you're absolutely right, Medea. So the former Prime Minister Netanyahu called for a boycott. The current Prime Minister, Naphtali Bennett, has promised retribution and the foreign minister ridiculously called it anti-Semitic and has actually gone further along with the Israeli ambassador to the US. And they are calling on the US states, the 30 states that have passed anti-BDS laws to penalize Ben & Jerry's. And there is some analysis on what they can and can't do, like, you know, possibly some of the governors of these states were looking at, you know, Greg Abbott and the like can say that if there's a child's birthday party that's sponsored by the state that they can forbid Ben & Jerry's from being there and similar things, but absolutely. We saw Israeli politicians and the Israeli government having it all out temper tantrum, and I want to speak a little bit to the to the dangerousness of this, because anti-Semitism is on the rise right now as are other forms of hatred. And as a form of bigotry, it rises with Islamophobia and anti-Black racism and so on. And so when you have these incredibly false claims of anti-Semitism, you muddy the waters on what this type of bigotry is, but that's exactly what the Israeli government is doing there, you know, kind of in this in this act of desperation over this issue. And when when the same thing happened with Airbnb, we campaigned for a number of years in that case to have Airbnb stop listing vacation rentals in the settlements, and finally Airbnb came back and said, okay, we'll stop listing vacation rentals in this in the settlements, you know, will abide by international law. Well, Israel did this same hubbub and, you know, panic and threatened enormous lawsuits, and in that case, Airbnb capitulated. And they went back to listing vacation rentals in the in the settlements, but I don't think we're going to see that in any way, shape, perform this time because as Abby was saying, things have shifted, the tide has turned, our hard work, our hard advocacy is paying off. And Airbnb, Ben and Jerry's statement was much clearer than even Airbnb's was. It was very clear that this does not align with our values. And I think in this case, we're going to see what's really the first successful large scale boycott of Israel by by a company and one that it's the company is too big to be taken down with their frivolous lawsuits and these ridiculous false claims of anti semitism. Thank you, Ariel. Yeah, I didn't know that about Airbnb that they were versed themselves. All right. Question, Medea. Oh, we can't hear you. Do either of you have other examples of strategies that have been successful? And why is it so difficult if the tide has turned to get the Congress people to support just the simple conditioning aid to Israel? If it was up to us, I think we would say zero of our money. Give us our money back that we've given you. But to even get a significant number of members of Congress to say, yes, let's conditions made on some human rights issues. Why is it so hard? Well, I think that the Bernie Sanders campaign really paved a new foundation in terms of how so called progressive politicians should be talking about this, right? I mean, he went out there as a strong Jewish ally and just said, look, all aid needs to be conditioned under international law. And if you actually look at what international law says, it says that the occupation is illegal, that the settlements are illegal, and that apartheid is illegal. So it was a pretty radical statement that he was going out there and saying. And I think that that really did open a lot of space for people in the squad and things like that to then embrace the language, not tone it down like Bernie actually capitulated later on and said, okay, we need to tone down the language. No, ramp it up. You saw them unapologetically declaring Israel an apartheid state. Look, I have the same question, Medea, what the hell is going on in Congress? How is it so difficult to say something so clear? Again, how much more blood needs to be spilled for you to take the right sidedness to stand on the right side of history? It's not that hard, right? Especially now. It may have been controversial 15 years ago, but the strength and solidarity of the pro-Palestine movement, and again, opening this awareness and linking it with all of these struggles and putting it at the forefront of anti-imperialism has really shifted things so much. I'm sitting back and waiting, why are there not more people speaking out? Then again, I mean, a lot of the squad members have signed on to Betty McCollum's bill. And really, Betty McCollum keeps putting this bill out there year after year, and there haven't been that many coast inventories, but now there is. So that is a huge step. There is something to rally behind and advocate for in terms of your local representatives. But I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think that the stigma still holds strong, especially in the elite liberal establishment, especially when you're looking at politicians. It's a lot of access. It's a lot of power. A lot of these people don't really care about advocating social justice. If they did, they would try to be advocating lifting the sanctions in all of these countries. I mean, there's so many issues that are intertwined that I just sit back in complete shock that people who consider themselves progressives and tout themselves as liberals can just completely wave away the atrocities that are committed by US imperialism. And that includes the subsidization of apartheid. Well, there's a lot of fear, obviously, on the part of politicians, lawmakers who don't want to be targeted. For example, right now, honey, who's got Barnes, who often co-hosts the show with us. She's on the ground in Ohio campaigning for Nina Turner. Yeah, exactly. The campaign of ousting them from the opponents, I mean, to all the attack ads, all the lobbying and attack ads to try to get you out of the scene. The Democratic majority for Israel has almost a million dollars into defeating Nina and supporting another African-American woman. It's testimony to how important it is to have people power campaign and people funded campaigns. In Los Angeles, my own union, my teachers' union, United Teachers of Los Angeles, which represents 33,000 teachers, is slated to vote on a resolution in support of BDS in September after some of the regional areas voted to support this resolution. And we see the same forces, the Israel lobby coming in very strong, organizing against these teachers attacking them personally. And so it's a hard fight. They don't call it struggle for nothing, right? I think the Nina Turner campaign is incredibly important. If we really see Nina Turner take a strong win in this case, we've watched Democratic majority for Israel run an incredible, as you said, funneling up to a million dollars, and an incredible smear campaign. They sent out mailers basically saying false information about her that Nina Turner is against minimum wage and against worker rights. And I think if we see her really take this win as we saw Jamal Bowman do against Elliott Engel, then we really have this solidification and this next wave of comfort, where U.S. Congress members, where politicians begin to recognize that they can say things and that the Israel lobby, whether it's APAC or Democratic majority for Israel, doesn't have the power, they still have the money, but that they no longer have the power that they once had. Yes. And before we go, Abby, I wanted to ask you a question just about the logistics of setting up this film. How did you do it? Who did you contact? Did you have trouble getting into guys? You know, just the basics. Yeah. So Mike, my partner for Empire Files, we were in the West Bank in 2017, and we've done a whole series on our YouTube channel on the Empire Files about reporting from Palestine, everything from home demolitions to settler terrorism, very harrowing stuff. And of course, wanted to get into Gaza. So we had all the proper credentials and filled out all the paperwork. And I was told by the press ministry that I was a propagandist and that I was an Iranian spy and that I was banned for life from entering the territory. I was really appalled. I mean, I'm used to being called a Russian agent or a Venezuelan agent. So I didn't know where the Iranian spy allegation came from. But needless to say, I know that I can't get in there and I couldn't get in to do what I wanted to do in terms of documenting the Great March of Return because of just how egregious and one side of the corporate media was covering it. And the passive voice completely obfuscating the issue, not explaining that people were literally being sniped by Israeli snipers, children and such, as you saw in that horrific media montage. So I worked with my colleague Kareem, who runs the Council on International Relations. They asked me to do a presentation on Western media coverage about the Great March. And they just asked, they said, why don't we collaborate with Empire Files? It'd be really cool to document this and to do the story justice. And so I directed the interviews and we got the footage back, of course, through the blockade. It was quite dire. They only have electricity for two to three hours a day. So I was getting these files every couple weeks, these huge files, whenever they can send them to me. And once I saw how incredibly brilliant and cinematic the footage was, I was just like, you guys, we need to make a full documentary. Like this is not going to just be an Empire Files episode on YouTube. We need to make this into a movie because the videographers who risk their lives running towards the bullets at the Great March, Osma, Tia, Hamad, and Maz, Maz, and I mean, they are incredible, incredibly talented, brave heroes. And in any just world, they would be receiving, you know, Oscar nominations for how incredible their cinematography was. And so I just wanted to do that justice as best, the best of my abilities. And just a really quick side note, it's really interesting, you know, a film like this, of course, will never be seen outside of just grassroots events like this, what Code Pink is doing. But there are so many films about Palestine and Gaza being shown at, you know, these award ceremonies, like the Oscars, for example, last year, there was a film called Gaza. And of course, you wouldn't be included in these types of award ceremonies if you didn't have the right narrative, right. And so at the very beginning of the film, it's just quite funny, because the very beginning, it just has a splash screen that's like, Israel has had a blockade for the last 15 years. And that's literally the only time you hear Israel, the only time you hear about the blockade, why it's in place, there's no context whatsoever about why this area is besieged. And so it's just like, okay, just just filming Palestinians and Gaza, and, you know, how how lovely it is there. But also like creating some empathy with Oh, no, they're human beings who are suffering, but there's no actual context of why, who's the perpetrator, who's doing this to them. So it's just a fascinating, fascinating thing. There's so much out there about this subject, but so little that actually depicts the true story. So thank you so much, you guys, I encourage everyone to check out the film, Gaza Fights for Freedom.com. Thank you for hosting me. Thank you for showing the clips. And thank you for everything that Code Pink does. It's incredibly inspiring. And I'm honored to be on the front lines of this fight with all of you. Well, thank you, Abby. It's our honor to have you such an eloquent advocate. And we so appreciate your work, your film, and we'll get it out there. Right now. And thank you, Ariel, as well. I'd like everybody to unmute if you can to thank our speakers, Abby Martin and Ariel Gould.