 Hello, everyone, I'm Jim Garrison. I want to welcome you to this session of Humanity Rising as we convene the fourth of five programs on whistleblowers in partnership with Code Pink. Today we're going to be listening to whistleblowers from Palestine who have been tracking that issue. And I want to open our discussion by relaying something that I learned last night about the catastrophic carnage that is taking place in Gaza right now. It's been calculated that the Israelis have killed more civilians in Gaza in the last three weeks since their response began from the Hamas attack on October 7th, then civilians who have been killed in the entire two years of the Ukraine war. So that just gives you all of us a measure that what is taking place in Gaza as we speak is a massacre in violation of every humanitarian norm, in violation of international law, which forbids any nation engaging in collective punishment. If Israel wants to fight Hamas, that's one thing, but then they should be fighting Hamas. They should not be by any means, they should not be by any moral or legal reckoning committing massacres against the Palestinian people. I want to make two comments on this. And that is, first of all, a growing number of those who are protesting, and there have been protests now around the world in the Middle East, in Asia, in Europe, in the United States, in Latin America, there's been worldwide revulsion against what's taking place. And a growing number of those are Jews. So we're not dealing with a situation where the rest of the world is engaging in what is always called anti-Semitism when any criticism of Israel is made, but we're dealing with a revulsion that increasingly is coming from the Jewish community itself. I'm in Washington, D.C. And just last week, there was a protest inside the Capitol building that was led by a Jewish group. They did it again this last Saturday around a union station. And that's a very important data point for all of us to consider. This is a human tragedy that is unfolding. And it is something that we all rightly need to protest and bring to a stop as quickly as possible, which leads me to my second point. The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution only a few days ago, calling for a ceasefire, calling for a cessation of the bombings against civilians and opening up a humanitarian corridor. It is only the United States and Israel and a few selected allies like the United Kingdom that are opposing a ceasefire in this catastrophe that is unfolding. So we have an unprecedented really act of genocide that is unfolding against which the world is organizing and protest and it is the United States and Israel and a few allies that are refusing to engage even in discussions of a ceasefire. And so that's the situation as we open this program. I would now like to welcome Jodi Evans, the co-founder of Code Pink, who has been co-convening this week and other weeks with Humanity Rising on our network. So Jodi, thank you for everything that you've done. Welcome from China, as we know you are and I turn the program over to you. Thank you so much, Jim. And thanks for bringing up those facts. You know, we've been here day four of how we're kind of unpacking or disarming the disinformation and it couldn't be more clear how disinformation is used for violence and war than what's happening right now in the world. And before we kind of move in, I wanna share something that the co-founder of Code Pink, Medea Benjamin wrote this week because it really is a stark view of how, and I keep saying this every day, how our hearts and minds are weaponized for war, how the beauty of us is grabbed and used for violence. So while Palestinian officials have identified over 8,000 people killed in Gaza, which we watched President Biden deny, Israel officials has so far only identified 933 of the 1,400 people they say were killed in the Palestinian attack on October 7th. The Haaretz newspaper in Israel has a webpage with photos, names, ages and some personal details of the people killed who have been identified. At the prompting of the Israeli military, many Western politicians and media have painted the Palestinian attack as a mass of civilians. So it may come as a surprise to see that at least 361 of the 933 dead so far identified were in fact soldiers, police and security officers. But Hamas, Islamic Tihad and other Palestinian fighters also killed hundreds of civilians on October 7th as surely as Israel's airstrikes have killed thousands of civilians in Gaza. And some of the prisoners they took back to Gaza were also soldiers and included civilians. Haaretz's records also raise another question about the story that has been widely repeated by Western media and politicians again, including President Biden, which is that Israeli soldiers found 40 dead babies who had been decapitated by Hamas. But in Haaretz, there are seven children below the age of 10, among the 572 civilian dead identified in Haaretz. The oldest, sorry, they're under 10 and the youngest was four. Not a baby. So I just want everybody to feel into the news that they've been fed and what I just read you. And just think about how information weaponizes fear and hate and then this murderous, you know, some rational people thinking that it's okay to murder babies, murder children. So there couldn't be a more vivid description of what this week has been about. So we have a treat today because you're gonna get to meet the co-director of Code Pink, Danika Katowicz. She's graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor's degree in political science. And she's been working towards ending US participation in the war in Yemen and has also been building the Peace Collective at Code Pink, our youth cohort that focuses on anti-imperialist education and divestment. She's an amazing campaigner and we're so lucky to have her as the leadership at Code Pink. And then Noor is our Code Pink's Palestine and Iran campaigner, also a graduate of DePaul University, studied international studies and has been advocating for Palestinian liberation for over five years, organizing within her university. So I wanna start by just letting everybody know that this isn't a new issue for Code Pink. We've been working to end the occupation of Palestine since we began. We were returning from our first trip to Iraq after the US occupied it and the women for peace in Palestine asked us to join a march they had at the border and they were Palestinian-Israeli women. And so we joined them and we were all tear-gassed. It was quite violent and horrible and horrific. And so that was at the very beginning of Code Pink. When the BDS movement started, we joined and led two very successful campaigns, one against Ahava and so to stream. Both were being, the products developed in the occupied territories but calling it Israel and they have since moved out of the occupied territories. We've engaged in the halls of Congress for 20 years just as Medea and the team did this week with 25 people holding up their bloody hands and calling for a ceasefire. But we started during Operation Cast Lead at the end of 2008 and early 2009. This was during a lame duck period between Bush and Obama where Netanyahu began his intense bombing campaigns on Gaza and got away with them. In 2009, we led eight trips into Gaza bringing almost 1,000 people followed by organizing the Gaza Freedom March which was 1,400 people from 40 countries. Most of them were shut out by Egypt going to Gaza but we succeeded in getting about 100 in with two buses and truckloads of humanitarian aid. And every year since Code Pink activists have been part of the Gaza flotilla including the first year when some were killed on the first boat it was fired on by the Israeli IDF and people died. Hundreds of international laws have been broken. Hundreds of Palestinians killed with no global outrage or calls for justice. And the occupation of Palestine must end for peace. So I want to turn to Nora or Danica whichever wants to start to give us a little history of the occupation which has been denied to most people that read mainstream media. Yeah, I think one piece of misinformation people might be hearing that I think is it's important to understand the greater history of the occupation of Palestine to refute it is people will tell you I mean, I had this interaction a lot on campus when I was doing Palestine organizing is people would say to me that Palestine was never a country and forget that people born in Palestine before 1948 had Palestine on their passports had Palestine on their birth certificates any form of like documentation of their life said Palestine on it. So forget that part or just map saying Palestine and forget the fact that for hundreds of years Palestine was subject to colonization and continues to be people don't just belong to a place because there is a formal nation state called whatever their country's name is people belong to a place and call it home because they have lived there their entire lives their parents have lived there their entire lives their grandparents lived there their entire lives they love the land, their stewards of the land they farm there, they get their food there it's a deeper connection than whatever a nation a modern day nation state can represent and using that argument to support the ethnic cleansing project of Palestinians has been something very disgusting to watch. So just to get a little bit into the history of the occupation a lot of people will say it started in 1967 when Israel took parts of Egypt parts of Syria, the West Bank and Gaza but that's not when it started. In 1948, which is called the Nakba or the catastrophe about 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land hundreds of I think 500 villages were burned to the ground and before this, Jewish people did live in historic Palestine I think there's a good context for this if you all know Bella and Gigi Hadid their father, Muhammadah Hadid was born a few months before the Nakba happened in 1948 and he actually had a Jewish family living near him who fled anti-Semitism in Poland and moved to Palestine and they lived amongst each other until the British gave sort of the green light for the Zionist project known as modern day Israel where Zionist militias overtook Palestinian villages like I said slaughtered thousands of people and pushed a bunch of Palestinians, thousands of Palestinians created the largest refugee population in the world off their own land into refugee camps in their own land some into the West Bank, some into Gaza and some into the surrounding Arab nations. Thank you. So maybe you could tell I also wanted to check in on the creation of Israel the creation of Israel was a Zionist project which is different than being something rooted in the Jewish religion, it was actually a project of Zionists and what do we know about what was intended in the founding? Are there voices that had a plan? Yeah, for sure. And I think one thing to note is that the Zionist project was to establish a Jewish majority nation state. So in order to do this, there's been explicit documentation of doing population control on non-Jewish people that live there and that's exactly why you're seeing what's happening in Gaza happen right now and it's exactly why Palestinian citizens of Israel are effectively legally second-class citizens that don't have the same rights as Jewish Israelis. And so it's always been a core of the Zionist project that they needed to maintain a Jewish majority. So any sort of population control, there's been sterilization projects of women so that they cannot have children. There's been obviously an increase in encroachment on Palestinian land in the West Bank and I see Neuerson so I don't know if she wants to add anything here. Yeah, sorry. Sorry it's a bit dark right now but I just wanted to add that when the Zionist project that manifested into the state of Israel was actually being created, the founder of modern Zionism Theodore Herzl actually it's very well documented mentioned in all of his works that he was weaponizing anti-Semitism and racism in order to make the case for settling the Jewish state in Palestine. So not only did he play on the anti-Semitism of world leaders at the time, especially the British, Arthur Balfour who actually made the Balfour Declaration which is one paragraph that gave Zionists the green light to fully colonize Palestine in the violent way that they did. He was actually a huge anti-Semite. You can just from documentation in British Parliament he says very crazy things which is why he was so eager to establish a state that Jewish people can go to. Not only that but he Theodore Herzl was playing on racism against Arabs in order to make the case to settle in Palestine. He actually said that Israel would be like a vanguard like sort of a barrier against barbaric Asia like into Europe. So like the way that Palestine is, it's like next to Europe at the end of like the Middle East you know, next to Africa. So they were saying like this is a perfect position to like protect Europe from the barbarians that live here. So the founding altogether was extremely racist. And if we can like kind of connect that to the United States where we see such a racist foundation here we can see those problems still manifesting like hundreds of years later. So who's to say that 75 years after the occupation like somehow this racist foundation has like now disappeared. Clearly it's very deeply embedded into the founding of the country itself and will manifest into the way that country operates from 1948 until today. And I'll add one quote from David Ben-Gurion who the airport in Tel Aviv is named after. He literally said, we must expel Arabs and take their places. Thank you. I also wanted to play a couple of recent you know, to speak to the racism for sure. Two clips just to see you're talking about the past but to look at what's present. Jody, which clip would you like us to play? The first one, we are fighting that one. Okay, coming. Thank you. We are fighting that one. No doubt. No doubt. No water. No water. We are fighting that one. No doubt. No water. No water. No water. We are fighting human lives. And we are fighting for them. Thank you. And you want to play the other one while you're at it? The next one, the Lindsey Graham one. Thanks, Georg. We're in a religious war here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself, level the place. We're in a religious war here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself, level the place. Thank you. So it's not just the past, it's the present that we're dealing with. And we see that the racists also in the United States have been weaponized with this information. So we're done. Georg, if you want to take the screen back. Thank you. So maybe one of you could talk about the NACA. Like what was that and how do people who live in Palestine, you kind of spoke to it, Danica, but is there maybe nor if you can share what that is for you and growing up and how your life relates to that? Definitely. So I actually consider myself to be very lucky. The village that I'm from, both my parents are from there and it's in the West Bank and it hasn't been taken over necessarily. I mean, of course they still live under occupation in my village. And there's actually like two settlements right next to my village, which if you just know the nature of settlements, they just encroach closer and closer and closer until they eventually completely take over whatever village they're next to. But to just talk about the NACA in a greater sense, I mean, a lot of my friends are from places that they will never be able to visit or their parents will never be able to visit. They could have been born there. And we know that Palestinians don't have a right to return. So they can't return to their lands. I can give you a good example of this actually. There is this one village. It's near the border of Lebanon. It's called Ikretz. It was this like beautiful village where people like farmed like olive trees, figs. The land there is very fertile and it's such just amazing use of the land is to just farm there. And Ikretz was taken over during the Nakhba and it was turned into the largest military base in Israel. And it was actually all the farmland there was completely uprooted and destroyed and they planted pine trees which aren't native to Palestine and they actually erode the soil there. So this act of settler colonialism, it's not just like an attack on the people but it's also an attack on the land. And it proves how removing the indigenous people from a land will destroy, it's not even good for the environment. It will destroy the land because settlers are settlers. They don't have that generational knowledge and relationship to a land that they would be able to take care of it that way. And actually the people of Ikretz have resisted in many ways nonviolent resistance. They camped out in Ikretz trying to get their land back and the Israeli government actually has a document that says people in Ikretz have a right to return. They can actually return to their land but that documentation within the own Zionist government is not being honored. So this document actually exists within the Israeli government. Yeah, it's not being honored. So the Nekba is not something that started and ended in 1948. Like Danica mentioned, 67 when other lands were taken but it's actually something that's ongoing. When people don't have the right to return, the Nekba is still living, right? When Palestinians in the West Bank are still living under occupation, the Nekba is still alive and well, right? If Palestinians are constantly under threat of, their neighbors and settlements, neighbors, taking over their land, the Nekba is still alive and well. And when Palestinians can just be killed in the streets or detained for no reason other than being a Palestinian man or looking a little suspicious or no reason at all, that's the Nekba. So when we talk about the Nekba, it's important that we don't talk about it like it's something that happened in the past, kind of like what Jodi was saying about the racism. It's something that is still alive and ongoing. And we see it right now. When we see almost like 10,000 Palestinians being murdered in less than a month, that's the Nekba right there. 15,000 Palestinians were murdered in 1948. So when we're approaching that number, what else can we call it but the Nekba? Thank you. So let's keep talking about the misinformation because that was what this week is about. And as you're listening to these two women, just thinking about how your relationship to the information has been. So I wanna start first by asking, Danika, you first and then you Nor, what is the misinformation around this moment that most infuriates you where you just think my head's gonna explode? It is hard to choose. It is really hard to choose. I've felt a combination of insane and just had a loss for words over the last few weeks, but one that came to mind instantly, especially with the last two days, Israel committing massacres repeatedly on a refugee camp in Gaza. There's a talking point regurgitated by Zionists about Hamas using human shields. They say this whenever Israel attacks a hospital, a church, anytime Israel kills civilians in Gaza, which has been nonstop over the last three weeks. They say that Hamas is using human shields. They said this during the Great March of Return. They've been saying this for years and it makes me feel crazy because the occupation has shoved 2 million people on a very, very small plot of land built a fence around it, only has one exit controlled by the Israelis and the other ones controlled by Egypt, but only two exits, Palestinians can't even leave for medical care and they are saying that Hamas is using human shields. So they're saying that Hamas has tunnels under these hospitals, Hamas has, and one thing important, it is critically important to understand about Hamas is it's not just a military wing, it is the elected government of Gaza. So of course Hamas has government buildings that do things like healthcare services, social services and that sort of thing. So any government building in Gaza is technically Hamas. So they use this and they're just saying, Hamas is using human shields, who are babies and incubators, who are patients getting care from already getting attacked by Israeli bombardment in hospitals, these human shields are Muslims praying in mosques, they are Christians praying in churches, they are kids in schools, so it's just every single Palestinian in Gaza is being called a human shield and therefore is collateral damage for whatever Israel wants to do in Gaza. So I really encourage everyone to reject this idea of human shields, that the only people pushing the human shields talking point is the Israeli military. So that's one thing that's been making me a bit upset over the last few weeks. Thank you, Nora, what's yours? And you can share more than one, I know there's a list. I know, can I just pinpoint one, I'm not sure, but I think one thing that is really weaponized in order to justify all of this is the idea that this is some sort of religious war and that the reason that Israel was attacked on October 7th was because it was an attack on Judaism, not that it was within the framework of settler colonialism, and I think that is very important. It's true that the majority of people in Palestine are Muslim, but that's not the end, there are Christians in Palestine, there used to be Jews in Palestine, there's people who don't follow any religion in Palestine and Israel has declared war on all of these people. So to say that this is some sort of religious issue is completely false because some of these people being murdered are children who don't even have any concept or awareness, probably what religion is, who's to say that the tens of probably over a hundred children under one year old are assigned to some sort of religion, that doesn't even make sense. So this is not just also about what's happening right now, I think that's something that's also getting to me, like people keep talking about October 7th, since October 7th, since whatever, it's not since October 7th, it's since 1948, it's since the Sijan Raza, this isn't something that just started happening right now and I think by playing on the religious card allows for the fuel of saying that this is anti-Semitism and framing this as a religious war and then also by not acknowledging the history that happened before October 7th, it makes it a lot easier to peddle that lie because people aren't seeing this in the full context of what's been going on for 75 years. And I think if people had that knowledge, they would probably be able to navigate the media a little bit better and they would probably be able to put this in like a lot better context and it would definitely end with them having much more sympathy for Palestinians and much greater understanding of the suffering that they have been subjected to by Israel for the past 75 years. And I think that, you know, everybody would just have a much better understanding if they had those contexts. There's a lot more, but I'll say that. So one of the big issues I think in the misinformation circles around do Palestinians and Gaza have a right to defend themselves and that whole contortion of that, can you talk about that? Yeah, if we're talking like widely accepted, just like humanitarian law, yes, Palestinians have the right to defend themselves. I think what we're seeing right now is the extent that Palestinians are even able to defend themselves. I think if Palestinians really had like the ability to defend themselves probably like almost like 9,000 of them wouldn't be dead right now. So I think like the short answer is yes, Palestinians do have a right to defend themselves, but we kind of see what that looks like now and it doesn't, it's not really much, but. Yeah, maybe you could speak to that. No, no, no, I think you should speak to that because I think that's one of the also disinformation pieces of, first of all, even calling it a war because it's not a war because wars are between two armies and people not understanding an occupation, what an occupier is and what an occupied is. And maybe just the part about the disinformation that is always trying to get people to see this as two equals if you could speak to that. Yeah, so what is going on right now is not a war. It's a liberation movement against a settler colonial occupier that has backed Palestinians into a corner for 75 years, deprived them of their dignity, deprived them of their freedom of movement, deprived them of their access to water, deprived them of their opportunity to have a life that they lead, that a life that has taken it to their own hands, has subjected them to violence, has demolished their homes, murdered their families. Think about a Palestinian growing up in Gaza who has lived through at least a few wars, just to give on the shorter end of the example. This person who grew up in Gaza, was born in Gaza, maybe they've had a family member who was murdered. Maybe they've had somebody they know or themselves house being demolished by Israel or being air-striked or they weren't able to see their friends growing up because it was dangerous or it was at a time where Israel was bombarding Gaza. Try to put yourself in that mindset and think about what that child would be conditioned to think about Israel growing up. We cannot reasonably expect these people to have some sort of positive outlook on their occupier because that's not what this is. It's an occupier and an occupied people and that is not the same as two sovereign countries at war because Gaza, even if Hamas is in control, is not even sovereign, like clearly Israel can cut off the water, they can not allow food, they can destroy any electricity and internet and they can control who goes in and out. Tell me how that's a sovereign country. What other sovereign country in the world has this amount of restrictions placed on them by another entity? We would never call that a sovereign country, we would call that a colony or a country or a land under occupation and when people are occupied, they're going to have a desire to resist, to resist the violence that they've been subjected to for 75 years and we can't expect people to allow themselves to accept this life, like livelihood of being a victim and to just like be okay with that. That's just not even reasonable. Like if we just think about how people naturally are, if somebody is discriminated, like you're facing discrimination, you're never just gonna be like, okay, but I shouldn't, I should just accept this. That's just not how people work. Thank you. Danica, do you have anything to add there? Not much. I think nobody did a really good job and people will hear, you know, pundits or political elite in the US talking about how they would imply that they would do things differently than people in Gaza are doing them, but not one of them has lived under occupation like no one's talking about. Not one of them has grown up their entire life in Gaza and never been able to leave. Not one of them has experienced this degree of dignity and human dignity being stripped from them. And so they really can't talk about what they would do. They really can't, because sometimes like people have throughout history risked their lives for dignity. Sometimes we want dignity more than we wanna be alive. And so they really don't know what they would do. And I think if you hear someone saying that, you could just tell them, you live in the United States, you do not live under a military occupation. Well, I mean, we also saw this, you know, a few years ago with Black Lives Matter when everybody decided that how young black kids were protesting didn't fit their ideal of what that should look like. And it's the same thing. If you've been in a way, you know, your life has been not valued and you've been dehumanized, who can judge you for what that feels like and how you're gonna respond to it? So, yes, well said. I wanna say something else to that moment of like, how would you react? And just say, you know, at least for me growing up, it's like, how would I have been under slavery? Who would I have been when genocide was happening? How would I have been in Germany during the Holocaust? And for me, it feels right now that we are watching slavery because that is exactly what it's looking like. It's kind of you, these are the slaves are inside the, you know, the prison and they, you know, tried to do the break. And the same stories you hear that happen to slaves in the South of the United States. For some reason, I just like all those stories, it's exactly like this, that level of objectious violence, of murder, of like, just get rid of everyone and frighten everyone else. So they never think of doing it again and a genocide and, you know, in a way fascism. So here we are. And I just, you know, keep asking people like, here's your chance to show how you would have responded then. And the most important thing is that you cannot be silent and you cannot look at it and rationalize it because that's what happened in slavery. That's what happened with the genocide. And that's what happened with the Holocaust. So as you're reflecting on this information, it's like, how are you being visible in this moment? Knowing this information from these two courageous women. So how has Israel imposed collective punishment on Gaza, which is illegal under international law? Well, I think that the genocide happening right now is the most in your face example of collective punishment that Israel has imposed on Gaza. When you indiscriminately bomb hospitals, schools, residential buildings, when you completely level neighborhoods and you kill children, men, women, the elderly without a second thought, I think that in itself is probably the highest form of collective punishment. But I would argue that dozens kind of live under a sort of collective punishment in their day to day life when their water is being controlled, when their imports and exports are being controlled, when their movement is being controlled because Israel feels threatened by the power in that area, that is collective punishment. I think that is the textbook definition of collective punishment actually. Thank you. And some other information that we see that's triggering is that this is being reported as Israel's 9-11. How do you respond to that, Danica? Yeah, I mean, I think it's very clear if you're familiar with the propaganda that came about after actual 9-11. And it's being used for the same purpose because it worked back then. They said, we are under attack. Here's who's doing it. Here's a list of people who are doing it. They have to be killed no matter what the cost because they are only going to attack us again. And so Israel's just using the exact same playbook that the Bush administration used after 9-11 to justify the killing of as many civilians as it takes for them to feel like their political goals were accomplished. So they know, okay, if we use the 9-11 rhetoric, it worked back then on a lot of people, but hopefully we have learned our lesson and hopefully we as the people are able to call that misinformation out and we're able to course correct a little bit and be a bit smarter this time. So I've been hearing some things including from an IDF officer and this question's out there by many people. So I'm asking a question not as disinformation, but one that is being asked by people in Israel. And that is the same as the questions around 9-11 that we later learned that the president of the United States knew that there were pilots being trained. They knew the FBI had warned them about what was going to happen and the guy who warned was fired. So it wasn't, this information was available and not acted on. And so here we are again, where IDF officers are saying, I don't understand what happened, that how long it takes a helicopter to get somewhere, that this doesn't make sense. Also has a little bit of the same shadowy-ness of 9-11 and then that there's no lesson learned by Israel that the lesson they decided to learn was that they could be violent. And just to say that the war on terror has killed 4.5 to 6 million people with no accountability. So Netanyahu can look at that and go, people might think it's wrong, but hell they got away with it. And that's 6 million people. Nobody seems to care. Again, also racist that we saw with the beginning of the Ukraine war where everybody had sat by during the United States bombing a sovereign country and nobody said a word. So I just wanted to bring up those 9-11 pieces at the same time. How can this audience avoid misinformation on Palestine? I think there's a few things that you can do. I would say that even mainstream sources that have been reputable have been very unreliable on this issue. Like CNN is the outlet that started the false narrative about Hamas beheading babies that they later retracted but kept their original comments up online. So this story could be reproduced over and over again and Nurini and I even saw it being reproduced in our Chicago city council meetings. Weeks, I think a week and a half after CNN made the initial retraction. So don't share something online without fact checking it even if it's like reputable. See if there are other people posting about this. Is it only CNN? Is it only BBC and CNN? Who else has reported on it? Look for the sources that the outlets are citing. If they are citing something and they said it came from the IDF, maybe it's not so reliable. They bombed the hospital and said that they didn't do it. So the IDF is not a reliable source, I would say. And then I always ask the question of like what do you think the agenda is of this reporting? Is it supposed to evoke emotion in you? Who benefits from the story being true? And on whose behalf are your emotions being evoked for? And just sort of be careful about stories like that in the first place. And then I'll pass it to Nurini. Maybe you could share some good outlets to follow for Palestine too. Yeah, I'd say like a general rule, I think for news, just in general, is to like listen to the side of the people who are being oppressed, not the people who are doing the oppressing, not the people who are doing the bombing and funding the bombing. And there's a lot of people in Gaza on the ground that will show you firsthand what's going on. I will say like you need a strong stomach to watch it, but you can follow I on Palestine on Instagram. I think it's I, period on period Palestine. And then there's Mataz, Aziza on Instagram as well. And then you can also just check out the Electronic in Tifada and El Jazeera. Those are all, they do accurate reporting on what's happening in Palestine. I don't know if we can share like the sources that we have if I could drop them in the chat. I'll do that. No, it'd be great. Thank you. I'll do that now. And then, you know, Janika, how as a feminist and progressive leader, do you find your support in Palestine? Like, if someone's a feminist and a progressive, like how does that necessarily mean that you support Palestine? Yeah, of course. And I will say people who have argued with me about this are saying they say things about Hamas and they say things about Arab people generally and Muslims that they say things like culturally, like these cultures don't support women. I will say that is ignorant and mostly rooted in Islamophobia. So check yourself there. But also I support Palestine as a feminist because the Israeli occupation and the Zionist project is the greatest purveyor of violence against Palestinian women in the world. Occupation isn't feminist. Blockating Gaza isn't feminist. Carpe bomb and Gaza isn't feminist. You know, I think one thing that's stuck with me is like the feeling of, I'm not a mother. I don't have any children. But when I think about like the possibility of not being able to like protect my child, of not being able to shield their eyes from seeing their siblings under rubble or their father being killed. Because it's not just about like women in Palestine. It's about everyone that women love. It's about their husbands. It's about their sons. It's about their daughters, their sisters. And so that's why I'm a feminist and I support Palestine because occupation isn't feminist. There's no feminist argument for supporting Israel. Noor, do you wanna add anything to that? Yeah, just like maybe share something like a bit more personal. Like Danica was saying occupation, right, isn't feminist, any form of oppression is inherently going to affect the women that live there as well. And if you care about women, then you should care about women that are living under occupation in Palestine. But my sister's husband, his close friend, his family is in Gaza right now. And his like the mother and the family, she gave birth on October 6th. And so just like think about like what it would, like what that even means, like she cannot get the necessary care that she needs after giving birth. The baby itself is not going to get the care it needs. And the stress that she's under, like she cannot properly care for her child, like what Danica was saying. And then also this something that Israel does in the West Bank is they will impose, like this is not just about Gaza, like also just a side note, the occupation is happening all over Palestine. Like settler colonialism isn't just in Gaza, it's in the West Bank, it's everywhere in Palestine. So what they do this thing where they impose a curfew. And so you can't leave after a certain time of night. And the consequences of leaving are literally being killed, like by the IOF. It's not like, oh, like you just can't leave, you'll get a ticket, like you literally cannot leave or you will die. When my mom lived in the West Bank, this was when she was younger and her younger brother was young that he needed like a baby formula. Like that's what he could eat, right? And there was nothing, they had none in their house. And my mom told me the story of my grandma having to sneak around to go going through houses and like just to get some baby formula for my uncle. And that is a woman, right? Having to risk her life just to provide for her child, just to get what her child needs. She literally risks being murdered just so that she could feed her kid. In what world is that feminist? Like if we are going to be feminists, if we're going to stand up for women, we need to include all women in that, including women that live under occupation. Even if it's something that's difficult for us to grasp, when we see oppression, it's going to affect women and being a feminist means standing up against all forms of oppression because they will affect women. Thank you for that. So the last question that I want to bring up from the audience is how do we get to peace? Well, I think the most immediate thing that we need to do of course is ceasefire. We need to immediately stop Israel from dropping bombs on Gaza because this is not peaceful. This is not even close to peaceful. It's extremely violent and brutal and it's inhumane. But larger than that, we need to end to the occupation completely. And we need to lift the siege on Gaza and the total liberation of Palestine, like no Palestinian living under occupation. And we need also the right of return for all Palestinians who were exiled in 1948 and 1967 and anytime after that. We also need freedom for all of our political prisoners. We have over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners being detained by Israel. That number actually was 5,000 before October 7th and then it doubled. And those are people being taken again from the West Bank where there's no Hamas. Israel is still like attacking the West Bank. It's just not just about Gaza, like I said. So ceasefire immediately, lift the siege on Gaza and end to the occupation, right of return and freedom for all political prisoners. Anything you wanna add, Danika? Yeah, I'll just echo what Nur said. Peace can't be achieved without justice and what justice means for Palestinians is everything Nur said. And I would say facts instead of misinformation that weaponizes hearts and minds to become themselves monsters because that's really what happens is that we lose our humanity and then decide that it's okay to murder people, which it never is. So I really wanna thank our guests today. Danika and Nur, thank you so much for being with us and whether even you don't know electricity to be here. Thank you. And Jim, before they leave, was there a question that you wanted to ask? Well, first of all, I just wanted to appreciate both of you in terms of not only your passion, but the clarity with which you've spoken today. And if there's one kind of concluding point that I think is worth accentuating, which you touched on earlier, Jodi, but just so our audience takes in the enormity is the asymmetry between the players because in the public perception, Israel and the United States have managed to create Hamas as sort of Goliath and Israel is sort of David that it's this massive organization that is committed to killing every Jew when the reality is actually the reverse. The Hamas is an organization is extremely small, limited to an area of 20 miles by five miles, not that old, only 15, 20 years old actually get helped to be created by the Israelis in the United States as they were trying to compromise and destroy the effectiveness of the Palestinian liberation organization, the PLO. You know, Hamas does not have an air force. It does not have an army. It doesn't have tanks, doesn't have airplanes. It doesn't have warships that's basically mostly young people in the spirit of the young Jews in the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1942 that are using every instrument at their disposal with barely even a slingshot and maybe one or two stones because Israel is in fact the Goliath here. So that's part of the asymmetry between the colonizer and the colonized is the extraordinary disproportion of power, resources, infrastructure and capacity so that in some ways the miracle of Hamas is that like the miracle of the Warsaw ghetto uprising they were able even to endure. And I wanted to make another point and then have your comment. You know, people talk about these tunnels. Well, think about it everyone. You've got satellites up in the atmosphere that can read a postage stamp so that anybody or anything that moves in Gaza and the West Bank is immediately tabulated, processed by the American and Israeli intelligence and you know, a drone or whatever police force is deployed. And again, I would refer to the Warsaw ghetto. The Jews were able to take on the Nazis because they went into the sewers. They went into literally the sewers of human waste underneath the ghetto and Warsaw and they held off the Germans longer than any other group in the history of the Second World War because they used their inventiveness to be able to develop mobility beyond the German capacity of surveillance. So when we think of these tunnels under hospitals and we think of all this other stuff it's being done because there is no other option, right? The Israelis don't need tunnels because they can destroy anything that moves from the sky. So anyway, I just wanted to bring that in so people get some sense of proportion when they're thinking about Hamas and the Palestinians in what is literally the biggest open air prison in the world where 2.1 million people are squeezed in to an area literally 20 miles long and five miles wide with the Israelis on all four sides. That's what we're dealing with here. Thank you for that picture, Jim. Also, I've been posting in the chat ways that you can engage and I hope you'll all take the two links. One is to your member of Congress and Senator to say, this is indefensible and the other is more information on Palestine. We have an FAQ and also events where you can be engaging this weekend. There's over 100 marches scheduled around the world that we have in the United States, one in DC and one in the Bay Area. And if you can't get to one of those we are now launching Mothers Against Genocide so that everyone can be engaged locally together. And again, it's, you've heard this information you see how it's weaponized. Now is the time to be visible and vocal and there's lots of opportunities. You've got lots of links of people to follow and people to share, to educate your community because if we're all diseducated then start being someone who can be a good educator and a good share of information so other people can find their way to the truth. Danica and Nori. There's just a piece of news. The first senator has just called for a ceasefire. So only one senator has called for a ceasefire and it just happened a few minutes ago. And it was. Who was that senator? Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. Fantastic. I know. I don't know what his face. Fantastic. He's a Democrat. He's a powerful Democrat. Good for him. I bet you Jody had something to do with it. Well those cells are in Illinois, not me. Those two. It took him long enough, but I'm glad finally you said something. And hopefully this will encourage many more senators to speak up and feel like they have something, some support in doing that. Cool. All right. Well, thank you so much. And yes, we need humanity to rise right now and all of us can do that. So onward to peace. Thank you, Noor and Danica. And thank you, Jim and Stan and let's, tomorrow we have another amazing day that's gonna take us into a whole another trajectory into corporations that can put you in jail. What is like, we're living the life of the oppressed this week and it's dark. So thank you. Thank you, Jody. Thank you, Noor. Thank you, Danica. And that brings us to a close everyone. You're welcome to the after session chat. You'll see the link in the chat box. And then we'll see you again tomorrow for our final session on whistleblowers with Code Pink. Thanks everyone. Bye for now.