Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3: It's me James today and I'm joined by my friend
Speaker 3: and yours, Charles McBride, documentary filmmaker, humanitarian activist, writer. And
Speaker 3: you've just been in Palestine, is that right, Charles, Yeah,
Speaker 3: just got back like a week and a half ago. Nice, welcome,
Speaker 3: Welcome to America and the Free Damn, that's a rough transition. Actually,
Speaker 3: thank you for thank you for joining us so soon
Speaker 3: after you got back. So there's a lot to talk about, right,
Speaker 3: Like I feel as if in like legacy media, when
Speaker 3: there is less discussion of Palestine recently, maybe just because
Speaker 3: I'm seeing so much domestic US coverage like twenty four
Speaker 3: to seven, right, we're in another like Trump news cycle,
Speaker 3: but especially with reference to the West Bank. Actually, like
Speaker 3: can you look update people on the last maybe you know,
Speaker 3: maybe in the time you were there, and then what's
Speaker 3: especially what's happening in the West Bank, Cause I think
Speaker 3: that's going to even less coverage.
Speaker 4: Sure, So I've taken two trips for the West Bank
Speaker 4: in the past year. Yeah, So August of last year
Speaker 4: May of this year. I noticed a rapid deterioration just
Speaker 4: between those two time periods. So, I mean, it was
Speaker 4: bad last year when we went. That was right when
Speaker 4: I was when my team went there to begin our documentary,
Speaker 4: they had just launched this new operation in the West Bank,
Speaker 4: which was pretty much the largest ground operation they'd launched
Speaker 4: the Israelis had launched since the Second Antipada, and it
Speaker 4: was targeted at the northern refugee camps of Tolkom, Nurse Shams,
Speaker 4: and Jeanine. A lot of people know Janine, they've heard
Speaker 4: that in the news. You know, it's relatively familiar. Not
Speaker 4: a lot of people realize that the situation in Tolkoom
Speaker 4: and in Norsham's is quite similar, and those three camps
Speaker 4: in particular were targeted by the IDF operation. On the
Speaker 4: second trip, we couldn't even we couldn't even get to
Speaker 4: those places, not with the UNREP personnel that we were
Speaker 4: supposed to go with our documentaries on unrout the United
Speaker 4: Nation Relief Works Agency for Palestigne Refugees. And last time
Speaker 4: we were there, they were able to bring us to
Speaker 4: the camp. They showed us where the Israelis had you know,
Speaker 4: bulldozed their facilities and done various air strikes in the camp.
Speaker 4: This time they couldn't even take us there. So we
Speaker 4: went to other camps and said camp, everyone's spirits were low.
Speaker 4: Lots of people were talking about West Bank annexation as
Speaker 4: if it seemed like an inevitability.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I actually spent some time inside forty eight
Speaker 4: on this trip, and I went down to Yafa and
Speaker 4: to Tel Aviv and interviewed some long time kind of
Speaker 4: liberal journalists from Aritz, and they were just talking about
Speaker 4: how the shift in Israeli society over the last year
Speaker 4: has been quite marked as well, particularly around the question
Speaker 4: of just generally ethnically cleansing Gaza, which was something that was,
Speaker 4: according to his telling, like really only heard in very
Speaker 4: right wing circles like Connie circles over the past a
Speaker 4: couple of decades and is now just pretty routinely heard
Speaker 4: across the spectrum Israeli society that the best solution to
Speaker 4: this is to just deport everyone from Gaza.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty bleak, Like, I mean, I guess the
Speaker 3: process of manufacturing consent has been pretty pretty successful and
Speaker 3: pretty complete in that sense, Like just the dehumanization of
Speaker 3: Palestinian people has been pretty successful at least there. I
Speaker 3: guess if people aren't familiar. We should just like explain
Speaker 3: that Palestine is well. The areas which are now like
Speaker 3: legally allotted to Palestinians, I guess, are not contiguous, right,
Speaker 3: Gaza in the West Bank at different areas separated by Israel,
Speaker 3: and like the bulk of what you have seen in
Speaker 3: the last two years has been Israel's war on the
Speaker 3: people of Gaza, but the West Bank is a different
Speaker 3: and larger area which has also seen significant is really
Speaker 3: like military aggression and violence from settlers, right, like a
Speaker 3: paramilitary aggression, I guess you could call it. People I
Speaker 3: think maybe have heard of ANRA or maybe will at
Speaker 3: least be familiar with seeing it. Can you explain what
Speaker 3: the agency does? It's a unique agency, right, Like it
Speaker 3: doesn't work anywhere else in the world. It's quite a
Speaker 3: unique thing to this Israel Palestine context.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So ANRO is probably the most controversial UN agency, and
Speaker 4: that has everything to do with the context in which
Speaker 4: it was founded. It was explicitly set up in coordination
Speaker 4: between the United States, the newly founded State of Israel,
Speaker 4: and the Arab League, coming to the United Nations and
Speaker 4: presenting a plan to deal with the displacement of seven
Speaker 4: hundred thousand Palestinians from their home as a result of
Speaker 4: Nakba in nineteen forty eight. So out of that context,
Speaker 4: it's designed as a temporary aid refugee organization. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: actually it's it's set up before un HCR, so it's
Speaker 4: mandated specifically for the Palestinians, and the Palestinians don't end
Speaker 4: up falling under UNHDR when it's established. So a lot
Speaker 4: of particularities about UNRA that make it different from other
Speaker 4: UN agencies, which is also something that the Israelis like
Speaker 4: to highlight because they're engaged in a multi decade credibility
Speaker 4: campaign against UNRA.
Speaker 2: But to the extent that it is.
Speaker 4: Almost entirely staffed by Palestinians, it is quite different than
Speaker 4: other UN agencies, which typically involve multinationals international personnel. Now,
Speaker 4: a lot of the higher leadership at UNRA is still
Speaker 4: kind of your same international diplomats, but in the words
Speaker 4: of the Zionist academic that I interviewed for this documentary,
Speaker 4: most of those have quote unquote gone native. So most
Speaker 4: of the international diplomats do tend to, you know, obviously
Speaker 4: be quite sympathetic to the conditions which the Palestinian staff
Speaker 4: are working under. So my documentary is a it's an
Speaker 4: investigative documentary to some extent, and it uses the frame
Speaker 4: narrative the Israeli allegations that UNRA had been infiltrated by
Speaker 4: Hamas and that unrepersonnel had taken place in the October
Speaker 4: seventh massacres. Yeah, it uses that as a hook and
Speaker 4: a frame narrative to talk about what is this organization?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Why did it go from something that was set up
Speaker 4: as a temporary relief organization to seventy seven years later
Speaker 4: it is responsible for maintaining the livelihood and well being
Speaker 4: of five point nine million registered Palastinian refugees, not only
Speaker 4: in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but also
Speaker 4: in Syria, in Lebanon, and in Jordan. So the politics
Speaker 4: of it get very hazy, very quickly. But it's kind
Speaker 4: of an inconvenient thing for everyone because the organization was
Speaker 4: explicitly designed to end after a few years, but the
Speaker 4: assumption was after a few years there would have been
Speaker 4: a political resolution to the Israeli Palacinian conflict. There has
Speaker 4: not been, and here we are seventy six, seventy seven
Speaker 4: years later, and we're still at that point, so UNRA
Speaker 4: still exists. One of the ironic things we found when
Speaker 4: filming documentary is that everyone involved in this process wants
Speaker 4: this organization to go away. Yeah, Israel Is, the Palestinians,
Speaker 4: the staff themselves. The only thing they disagree on is
Speaker 4: when and under what conditions? Why?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's Yeah, it's very interesting, like as
Speaker 3: refuge agencies go. Because like just I was recently reading
Speaker 3: Sally Hayden's or rereading Sally Hayden's book about refugees in Libya. Right,
Speaker 3: it's called My Fourth Time We Drowned. It's an excellent book.
Speaker 3: If people haven't read it, that you read it, very
Speaker 3: good audiobook as well that they incorporated some of the
Speaker 3: voice notes you got from the refugees, which I think
Speaker 3: is good. And as it's typical of United Nations refugee
Speaker 3: workers in many areas, the bulk of them end up
Speaker 3: living or spending a lot of time in Tunisia, right,
Speaker 3: like not in Libya and coming in like in you know,
Speaker 3: the typical image that you see of the United Nations
Speaker 3: is like a bunch of people in white land cruisers, right,
Speaker 3: and they pull up and they do their thing and
Speaker 3: they leave they're not either part of the population or
Speaker 3: even with the population, and they often criticize for this
Speaker 3: around the world, right, And they're very susceptible to like
Speaker 3: state narratives, right, Like in Libya there's there's all kinds
Speaker 3: of evacuations of corruption or like sort of state capture.
Speaker 3: I guess, so an agency that is supposed to be
Speaker 3: international and supposed to be impartial, and they're supposed to,
Speaker 3: above all things, advocate for refugees, right, And sometimes you
Speaker 3: can see at tension between the IOM and the UNHCR
Speaker 3: of this kind of shit. It's different with UNRA, right, Like,
Speaker 3: like they are from what I've heard from Palestinian friends,
Speaker 3: like more respected by Palestinian people because of the work
Speaker 3: that they do and the value that they provide.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I would say like trust in UNRA
Speaker 4: is probably higher than in the Palestinian authority. The PA
Speaker 4: is largely seen as a contractor or subcontractor for Israel, right,
Speaker 4: and UNRA is seen, you know, as flawed. I mean,
Speaker 4: there are a lot of Palestinians who are deeply critical
Speaker 4: of UNRA, particularly the constant efforts it takes to sort
Speaker 4: of remain neutral on all of these political questions. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and you know, inefficiencies that are going to come with
Speaker 4: any multinational institution in Goo. Yeah, of course, but in
Speaker 4: general they seem to I mean, at this point, we've
Speaker 4: interviewed dozens of people who had various relationship whether they
Speaker 4: had gone to unreschools or they had taken you know,
Speaker 4: they had been to unrehealth clinics, and by and large
Speaker 4: they preferred these and they saw the value in UNRA.
Speaker 4: They liked the unreschools, they liked the unrahealth clinics. UNRA
Speaker 4: is largely responsible for the fact that Palestinians are one
Speaker 4: of the most literate populations in the Middle East, and
Speaker 4: many of them speak English incredibly well. I mean, like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's wild talking to an eight or nine year old
Speaker 4: girl who grew up in a refugee camp and she's
Speaker 4: speaking to me in perfect English talking about how she
Speaker 4: wants to move to Los Angeles and become an actress,
Speaker 4: and it's just it's wild. And that's kind of a
Speaker 4: testament to what UNDRA has done. And that's very inconvenient
Speaker 4: for Israel because when you educate a lot of refugees
Speaker 4: who can then learn English and turn around and speak
Speaker 4: to the world very eloquent ways about the nature of
Speaker 4: their oppression and their suffering. It becomes an ideological barrier
Speaker 4: to your particular political project.
Speaker 3: Right, And this is one of the things that has
Speaker 3: distinguished the genocide in Gaza in terms of like how
Speaker 3: it's been perceived in the US at least, right, is that, like,
Speaker 3: you have a very literate population that is able to
Speaker 3: articulate what is happening directly via social media and to
Speaker 3: traditional media, right, like to people like yourself making documentaries
Speaker 3: like this is distinct from populations like I think of
Speaker 3: the Rahinga right, Like, you know, I speak to Rahinga
Speaker 3: people pretty often, but I don't think most Americans see
Speaker 3: Rahingah folks if they go on TikTok or or Instagram,
Speaker 3: and you know, as a result, I think people would
Speaker 3: have cared as deeply. You know, people would have been
Speaker 3: in the streets for that, but that communication wasn't that
Speaker 3: And yeah, it is extremely inconvenient if your project isn't
Speaker 3: an ethno state, right, and you're willing to cleanse areas
Speaker 3: of other ethnicities to build your ethno state in it,
Speaker 3: which is what's happening, then it's very convenient if there's
Speaker 3: people you're trying to cleanse can talk to the world,
Speaker 3: you know, in a language of the world understands and
Speaker 3: very eloquently and make their case for not being ethnically cleansed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, it is tribute to the work that ANRA has done.
Speaker 3: You know what, I guess we should do. I guess
Speaker 3: we should take an advertising break right now. So let's
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: We'll come back.
Speaker 3: All right, we are back. Let's talk about the alternative
Speaker 3: to UNRA. Alternative is a wrong word. Let's talk about
Speaker 3: the attempt to make an end run around unrous existence
Speaker 3: by installing this fascical NGO.
Speaker 2: I guess you could call it an d O or
Speaker 2: like AID Provider.
Speaker 3: This is a gaza humanitarian fund people who aren't familiars
Speaker 3: synthetic GENRA alternatives. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's unstitute, like the
Speaker 3: zine of UNRA. You know. Okay, so what what's going
Speaker 3: on with the guy? Let's talk about what it is
Speaker 3: and what it claims to do first, and then we'll
Speaker 3: talk about how it's not doing it very well or
Speaker 3: at all, Like people are fucking dying in droves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mile High View.
Speaker 4: UNRA maintains most of the aid going in and out
Speaker 4: of Gaza. Everyone I know in the humanitarian world has
Speaker 4: had to interface at least to some degree with UNRA
Speaker 4: during the aid process, and that's difficult because it has
Speaker 4: been essentially been declared a terrorist entity by the Israeli
Speaker 4: government and has been banned from operating inside what Israel
Speaker 4: considers to be its territory, including occupied East Jerusalem and
Speaker 4: increasingly in the West Bank. They're trying to limit its
Speaker 4: operations and in Gaza they say they can't work with
Speaker 4: them because they're Hamas. So it's the UNER people are
Speaker 4: quite confused because they they've had to deconflict with the
Speaker 4: Israelis for this entire time, and recently as a result
Speaker 4: of this law, it's actually become illegal under Israeli law
Speaker 4: for the Israelis to like coordinate with UNRA, and so
Speaker 4: the UNRA of people don't have been Actually they don't
Speaker 4: really understand what's going to happen. There's been some limited coordination,
Speaker 4: but still we talk to people who are very high
Speaker 4: up in the organization and they essentially had no idea
Speaker 4: what the Israelis were planning to do to replace NRA
Speaker 4: or to coordinate with them in Gaza, and so They
Speaker 4: just kept kind of doing their thing until the Israelis
Speaker 4: literally made them stop in certain instances. Right. Yeah. My
Speaker 4: documentary is called the War on UNRA, and part of
Speaker 4: this war has been the propaganda efforts and the Israelis
Speaker 4: going after this organization and everyone in the humanitarian aid
Speaker 4: world has sort of been asking the question, well, what
Speaker 4: are you going to do to replace it? This is
Speaker 4: an organization that deals with like two million people in
Speaker 4: Gaza and like three million in the West Bank. Not
Speaker 4: all of those are registered with UNRAP, but it's dealing
Speaker 4: with all of the refugee camps there in Gaza itself
Speaker 4: is a refugee camp, like it only exists as such
Speaker 4: as a result of the AKA, because it's where they
Speaker 4: put all of the displaced people who weren't in Jordan.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so the Israelis basically.
Speaker 4: Had their backskins wall and they're like, Okay, well we
Speaker 4: have to come up with some alternative to this because
Speaker 4: we can't come out and say, actually, our main goal
Speaker 4: is to depopulate Gaza and settle it. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: so they cooked up this idea of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund,
Speaker 4: which was kind of this public private partnership backed by
Speaker 4: the Israelis and the Americans, and the intention was to
Speaker 4: entirely subvert not only UNRU, but the entire UN infrastructure
Speaker 4: that goes into the Gaza strip. For instance, every UN
Speaker 4: agency in the world actually piggybacks off of the World
Speaker 4: Food Program because they're always the first ones in. So
Speaker 4: it's WFP infrastructure, trucks, you know, vehicles, everything like that
Speaker 4: that goes in first, and then UNHCR, UNISEF all this
Speaker 4: thing they're piggybacking, coordinating with WFP. In this instance, WFP
Speaker 4: is coordinating with UNRA.
Speaker 2: The Israelis.
Speaker 4: One did not only buy RA, they wanted to just
Speaker 4: put the entire UN system out of that. So to
Speaker 4: do that, they formed this sort of collaborative partnership under
Speaker 4: the management of the Israelis, which was supposed to be
Speaker 4: kind of an amalgam of all of these different private NGOs.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to get too much into the
Speaker 4: specifics of like who sort of was involved in that,
Speaker 4: but a lot of people kind of took them at
Speaker 4: face value. They wanted this to be a real solution,
Speaker 4: and so they offered to help and kind of set
Speaker 4: up this system which was supposed to be overseen entirely
Speaker 4: by the Israelis and the Americans from a security perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: One of those was Jake woodho was the founder of
Speaker 4: Team Rubicon, which is an organization that does a fair
Speaker 4: amount of excellent work all around the world. He resigned
Speaker 4: from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund a day before it launched
Speaker 4: and went on record saying we cannot actually do this
Speaker 4: while keeping to humanitarian principles of humanity and neutrality, which
Speaker 4: was a signal to the world that this was a
Speaker 4: highly politicized project, which is precisely what the World Food
Speaker 4: Program under the leadership of radical leftist activist Cindy McCain
Speaker 4: has been saying about this from the start. And you know, UNROE,
Speaker 4: Felipe Lazarini, the head of UNRA, said this is this
Speaker 4: is a clearly political sized event on the only the
Speaker 4: un system is the only one capable of actually dealing
Speaker 4: with this in a humanitarian way. All those concerns were
Speaker 4: brushed aside. American contractors were brought in. Yeah, and the
Speaker 4: results were relatively predictable. We've seen at this point two
Speaker 4: pseudo massacres, I mean the first one with that four
Speaker 4: Palestinians were killed in just this morning twenty seven Palestinians
Speaker 4: were killed at a GHF distribution after gunfire was opened
Speaker 4: up on them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're recording on the third gene, so that was
Speaker 3: when this this second massacre occurred. And yeah, like, I
Speaker 3: mean just today as we're recording this, I've seen that
Speaker 3: Boston Consulting Group again, like not exactly, like a bastion
Speaker 3: of wokeness has terminated this relationship with the Gods Humanitarian Foundation, right, Like,
Speaker 3: the kind of see that this is a replacement for
Speaker 3: UNRA to begin with was somewhat fascical, right, But people
Speaker 3: who were prepared to go along with that, either because
Speaker 3: they can make money doing it or because they thought
Speaker 3: this was the only way to stop people starving, are
Speaker 3: still deciding that, having seen the way that this is run,
Speaker 3: it's not worth it, right, right, And.
Speaker 4: There's also some political heavy handedness going on with this,
Speaker 4: one of the most obvious features being specific aid distribution
Speaker 4: points in the south of Gaza, which are designed to
Speaker 4: bring you know, whereas UNRA and WFP were going to people,
Speaker 4: they were trying to get food through as much of
Speaker 4: the Gaza strip as possible, including people who wanted to
Speaker 4: return to their homes in the North, the GHF is like, nope,
Speaker 4: you starving population will need to make the journey to
Speaker 4: this distribution point and this distribution point only, which you
Speaker 4: know has the political effect of depopulating these areas that
Speaker 4: you know, Israel is operating in. Yeah, which of course
Speaker 4: is also met criticism. There are some videos going around
Speaker 4: so impalston In celebrating yeah, you know, the relief efforts
Speaker 4: of the of the JHEF. I think some of them
Speaker 4: have been like verified by Reuters. You know, Israeli media
Speaker 4: is making hay of that. You know, people praising Trump
Speaker 4: in Gaza, right, which you know, these people are starving
Speaker 4: and they're very happy to get aid.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean that like everything is above board and cool, right.
Speaker 3: It means that like the people who need a food
Speaker 3: got food.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and that's the political complexity. The situation
Speaker 4: is that the people of Gaza have just been abandoned
Speaker 4: by everyone, right, I mean, there's there's there's a lot
Speaker 4: of criticism to be a haad of how Hamas has
Speaker 4: handled this. There's a lot of criticism to be had
Speaker 4: of obviously the way in which Israel has behaved and
Speaker 4: the UN system and the international system. So I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm glad that like some of them are getting food. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that is that is an improvement of none of them
Speaker 4: getting food. But everyone in the AID world is starting
Speaker 4: to go on record saying the main problem is Israel
Speaker 4: preventing AID from going into the Gaza strip. And actually
Speaker 4: I want to harp on that a little bit because
Speaker 4: the reason that has been given primarily for that is
Speaker 4: that Hamas is stealing the AID. Every time they're asked
Speaker 4: about this, they go back to, well, we want to
Speaker 4: get into people gaza. Unfortunately Hamas keeps stealing the aid
Speaker 4: and so we can't allow it. We need to allow
Speaker 4: us to trickle in. Yeah, that's interesting for two reasons.
Speaker 4: First of all, the yet to provide any evidence that
Speaker 4: that's actually occurring, and second because all humanitarian experts agree
Speaker 4: that even if that was the case, say everything is
Speaker 4: real said about Hamas was true, and they were stealing
Speaker 4: you know, ninety ninety five percent of the eight that's
Speaker 4: coming in and selling it back, the humanitarian solution to
Speaker 4: that would be to flood the strip with so much
Speaker 4: AID that it would literally be impossible for them to
Speaker 4: like to stop that, which we can't do, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it would be possible for us to flood the Gaza
Speaker 4: strip with so much aid that it would be like
Speaker 4: an abundance of food. So the decision not to do
Speaker 4: that is a political one.
Speaker 3: Yes, definitely, Like I was going to say, on the
Speaker 3: face of it, it doesn't matter. There are lots of situations,
Speaker 3: to be clear, where people steal aid. It's undesirable, of
Speaker 3: course it is. But yeah, the solution is more aid,
Speaker 3: not like unfortunately the aid has been stolen, so now
Speaker 3: they children must have. Yeah, that only works if you're
Speaker 3: prepared to accept the outcome in which little children die
Speaker 3: of starvasues.
Speaker 4: Which the Israelis are. They're perfectly I mean this near
Speaker 4: was a University of Pennsylvania poll. I'm not saying eighty
Speaker 4: four percent of Israelis are in favor of the idea
Speaker 4: of just simply either killing or displacing everyone in the
Speaker 4: gardsa eighty four percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's wild to see.
Speaker 3: Like it's been such a strange couple of years in
Speaker 3: that sense, right, because more people in this country are
Speaker 3: aware of the plight of the people of Palestine than
Speaker 3: ever have been, and more people are engaged with it.
Speaker 3: That is mostly good. Some people have been gaged to
Speaker 3: it in a way which is far from good. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: I don't think there's really very much be gained. Fucking
Speaker 3: throwing molotov cocktails people in Boulder is not making anything
Speaker 3: better for anyone. It's just making everything danger more dangerous
Speaker 3: for everyone. And it's fucking stupid.
Speaker 4: And I would extend that to gunning down yes, so
Speaker 4: would I. Yeah, Israeli a couples outside the Jewish music
Speaker 4: in DC. I don't think that's necessarily the best way
Speaker 4: to help people in Gaza.
Speaker 3: No, Like, yeah, standing outside the ventf Jewish people in
Speaker 3: fucking shooting random people.
Speaker 2: It's not that.
Speaker 3: Again, it doesn't make anyone safer. It makes all of
Speaker 3: us left safe, And like it does nothing to stop
Speaker 3: people dying and starving in Gaza, and like that's it's
Speaker 3: not the crux of the problem, I guess, But like
Speaker 3: that is a problem, right, that people are engaging with Gaza,
Speaker 3: but nothing is helping people here. Know how bad it
Speaker 3: is that children are starving in Gaza, but that hasn't
Speaker 3: changed the fact that children are starving in Gaza. In fact,
Speaker 3: like you know, I've said it's a lot of times
Speaker 3: that I moved her in two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 3: I had engaged with the movement before that in the
Speaker 3: UK right and the situation passed time to be was
Speaker 3: very different then, but like it wasn't something that people
Speaker 3: had heard of here for the most part, unless you
Speaker 3: were within like certain leftist or sort of people have
Speaker 3: maybe they're like Middle East an extraction would know about it.
Speaker 3: Of course, now people do know, and all over the
Speaker 3: world people know, and we've seen huge marches. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: the situation is worse than it's ever been, I mean,
Speaker 3: not ever being the knuck boll is pretty fucked too.
Speaker 3: But as the world looks on, right, like, the gender
Speaker 3: side continues and people continue dying, and seemingly the acceptance
Speaker 3: of the Guard of Humanitarian Foundation by states of the
Speaker 3: world is really troubling, right, Like we're concentrating this starving
Speaker 3: population in a small area. It's contrary to everything that
Speaker 3: humanitarian principles stand for. And oh no, we don't see
Speaker 3: I mean, there is a very ready alternative. It's whether
Speaker 3: anyone is willing to step up and tell Araee to
Speaker 3: stop stopping aid entering the Guard like this could end
Speaker 3: in my estimation, like very quickly. Right, we have enough
Speaker 3: aid and even aid in the regent to feed all
Speaker 3: those people right now if we needed to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's there's tens of millions of pounds
Speaker 4: of food rotting and warehouses and Jordan and Egypt right
Speaker 4: now just waiting to go across the border.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people dying.
Speaker 4: It's the lack of political will, mostly on behalf of
Speaker 4: the United States, you know, but also I think the
Speaker 4: members of the Abraham Accords and the EU. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: a devastating indictment. And I think the interesting thing about
Speaker 4: it is it truly pulls the mask off of the
Speaker 4: quote unquote rules based world order. Yeah, the US led
Speaker 4: rules based world order, because you just I mean, it's
Speaker 4: just so obvious that no matter how many people want
Speaker 4: this terrible thing to end, that we're saying this very
Speaker 4: obvious genocide is being livestream to our phones, the powers
Speaker 4: that be are too invested to to let it stop.
Speaker 4: You know, they're they're into the hill. We've already seen
Speaker 4: the degree to which the United States is compromised in
Speaker 4: its in its media and and government storytelling in relation
Speaker 4: to Israel Palestine. Did the long unwillingness of people to
Speaker 4: speak up about this followed by the very rapid turnaround
Speaker 4: of people who are now rats fleeing the ship. Yeah,
Speaker 4: seeing the unmistakable reality of this genocide. And you know
Speaker 4: it's like everyone says, once this is done, everyone will
Speaker 4: pretend they were against it from the start. And you're
Speaker 4: now starting to see that, right, you know with like
Speaker 4: the former White House Press secretary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah Miller, Right yeah, Miller.
Speaker 4: Was like, yeah, they've been committing war crimes than they
Speaker 4: were doing it while I was there, But I didn't
Speaker 4: speak on my behalf. I was speaking on behalf of
Speaker 4: the United States.
Speaker 3: Government, right, yeah, the old the old Neumberg defense. M Yeah,
Speaker 3: they like I was just doing my job thing, which
Speaker 3: like is not actually don't actually excuse for participating in
Speaker 3: war crimes, and like should have been an excuse for
Speaker 3: apologizing or excusing them, might there.
Speaker 4: Right, It's I know that you guys have talked about
Speaker 4: and that Wi'll have spoilers for this, but I know
Speaker 4: you guys have recently had a series Unpacking and Or,
Speaker 4: which is my favorite TV show. Yeah, and I was
Speaker 4: just so happy that they snuck that one line in
Speaker 4: about when Cyril asks what they're doing here and she
Speaker 4: just says following orders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how often we can I hear that in the
Speaker 3: next few years, I guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so predictable, right like, every time this happens,
Speaker 3: right like, And this isn't the first time the United
Speaker 3: Nations has basically allowed it. Genocide tappened right under its nose. No,
Speaker 3: and it probably won't be the last, because, as you said,
Speaker 3: right like, the idea that we have a rules based
Speaker 3: world order, it's a lie. It's a myth that exists
Speaker 3: to make people feel better and feel like this stuff
Speaker 3: couldn't happen again. But like you know, we have ICC
Speaker 3: warrants for people who are traveling freely around the world.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter that the ICC can't enforce its own warrants,
Speaker 3: right like you can say something for war crime, it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter, Like, no one's the war police aren't going
Speaker 3: to go and arrest all the people doing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's mostly just kind of a Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 4: of a placebo, and I'm not really sure what the
Speaker 4: function it serves. I mean, I'm not a big international
Speaker 4: institutions enjoyer. Like, I'm deeply skeptical of the United Nations
Speaker 4: in almost every one of its aspects. My team and
Speaker 4: I've taught several times about the point that this documentary
Speaker 4: has that weirdly, like it's improved our trust in international
Speaker 4: and geos just because we're seeing like the degree to
Speaker 4: which UNRA is operating on increasingly less budget every year
Speaker 4: and still managing to be effective.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think a huge part of that is again, it
Speaker 4: is staffed by the local population who are from these areas,
Speaker 4: and they have a duty and a commitment to care
Speaker 4: to their people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But in general, no, I mean, I don't understand what
Speaker 4: the point of the UN is if you don't give
Speaker 4: it the US military, Like I mean, if as an anarchist,
Speaker 4: I don't believe that this is a great solution to things.
Speaker 4: But like, if you wanted to enforce the U in
Speaker 4: you would need the World Police, Like you would need
Speaker 4: to just use the United States to like hunt down
Speaker 4: these people, Yeah, and utilize it's eight hundred military bases
Speaker 4: in every country to enforce these rules.
Speaker 3: And we don't really yet we allow these things to happen.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I'm the biggest national institutions enjoy either, Like
Speaker 3: I've seen the UN be fugging useless in most continents
Speaker 3: that people live on. I would really like it though,
Speaker 3: if they would do something to stop the suffering of
Speaker 3: the people of Palestine. Like, it doesn't mean I wouldn't
Speaker 3: be happy. It doesn't mean I'm not happy when I
Speaker 3: speak to guys from PK, guys that we've had on
Speaker 3: our show several times, right, Like when they talk to
Speaker 3: us about like where should we send money, They'll be like, oh,
Speaker 3: Unerawa able to get my family some food this week
Speaker 3: or whatever. Like I'm happy to hear that, and I'm
Speaker 3: glad that they're there, Glad that they were there at
Speaker 3: that time. I guess. So, like, what does the future
Speaker 3: hold for the guys of Humanitarian Foundation? Seems to be
Speaker 3: falling apart within a very short period of this whole
Speaker 3: thing being stood up, which is unsurprising, Right, can you explain,
Speaker 3: like what does it take for a that lives up
Speaker 3: to basic humanitarians to get in there?
Speaker 4: I think that's a really difficult question to answer because
Speaker 4: we have bribed so many options. Yeah, I mean truly,
Speaker 4: I mean the last time I think I was on
Speaker 4: this podcast, it was to talk about my colleagues at
Speaker 4: the World Central Kitchen who got killed in Gaza. That
Speaker 4: was an attempt to try and alleviate the suffering of the
Speaker 4: Palace sitting people and it had predictable results. You know.
Speaker 4: There's all these groups have been operating in there to
Speaker 4: the extent that they can and the result has been
Speaker 4: too little, too late. And everyone is saying, from Sydney
Speaker 4: McCain at the World Through Program, to Philippe Lazarreni, to
Speaker 4: you know, Lese andres like from the private sector, everyone
Speaker 4: is saying, the reason this is a problem has nothing
Speaker 4: to do with the moths. It has everything to do
Speaker 4: with about that Israel is restricting the amount of aid
Speaker 4: going to the Gaza Strip. And now everyone's waking up
Speaker 4: and asking the obvious question of like, well, why are
Speaker 4: they actually doing that? And in the answer corresponds to
Speaker 4: those polls we see that indicate that, you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: fifty percent of Israeli society is open to killing everyone
Speaker 4: in the Gaza Strip. Any four percent are open to
Speaker 4: displacing them all. This is just what Israel wants. And
Speaker 4: I think the humanitarian world is slowly swallowing that very
Speaker 4: difficult pill. And I don't I can't really tell you
Speaker 4: what comes next outside of a political resolution.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which seems higher and how to come by in
Speaker 3: the current international climate, Like certainly it's not coming from
Speaker 3: the US, right, Like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean like something to watch would be that
Speaker 4: Senator Welch from Vermont introduced a bill to immediately refund UNRA. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: and it has it has a house a correl it
Speaker 4: with I think, yeah, Congresswoman Jayapaul and a few others
Speaker 4: who are trying to kind of push that through. I mean,
Speaker 4: the United States funds three hundred million dollars, which is
Speaker 4: about over a third of un annual budget, and we've
Speaker 4: restricted that funding for the past year and a half. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so if we restore that, I think that would be
Speaker 4: a big signal to Israel that like, we're not playing
Speaker 4: ball anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I just think when you have a rubber stamp Congress
Speaker 4: and a fascist president that's probably unlikely to pass.
Speaker 2: That's a big reach. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I actually think this is an area where elected officials
Speaker 3: are to the right of Trump supporters on this one.
Speaker 2: I think, like, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I spend a lot of time in rural East
Speaker 3: County San Diego, right, Like, I talk to people who
Speaker 3: have very different politics to my own. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: nice way of saying that, but like I've had people
Speaker 3: who straight up I'm sure voted for Trump. Be like, man,
Speaker 3: they're letting little children staff, Like what the fuck is
Speaker 3: wrong with you know? Like like I think it's an
Speaker 3: area where a more sensible politics would be able to
Speaker 3: build consensus.
Speaker 4: But here we are, right, yeah, I mean, and there
Speaker 4: is no opposition, Like the Democrats are not an opposition party.
Speaker 4: They're just happy being like the junior partners in fascism.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're having a little party today where they're giving
Speaker 3: out tacos because they're trying to somehow encourage Trump to
Speaker 3: go ahead with more sanctions and tariffs and more genocides.
Speaker 3: I guess, like I don't quite know what the Trump
Speaker 3: always chickens out, like, well, I'm glad you stick it
Speaker 3: out with the tariffs, isn't isn't that a good thing?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like yeah, like what are you trying to what are
Speaker 3: you trying to say here? I think maybe I don't
Speaker 3: want to confront what they're trying to say. But this
Speaker 3: is a thing that like at the current time, like
Speaker 3: it needs state action to stop it. Yeah, we do
Speaker 3: not have an organization which which is able to mobilize
Speaker 3: people in such a way that they can stop it.
Speaker 2: Like and that is it's really desperate.
Speaker 3: If you care right, because the states of the world
Speaker 3: very clearly for decades and decades and decades have been
Speaker 3: unconcerned with Palestinian people and their wellbeing, and they're not
Speaker 3: doing shit about it now. I think there are still
Speaker 3: people who are able to make a meaningful benefit to
Speaker 3: the lives of people in the West Bank. Right. I
Speaker 3: understand why people are hopeless when they when they look
Speaker 3: at what's happening to you guys, and I understand why
Speaker 3: it seems bleak and it seems like there's nothing you
Speaker 3: can do. Are there things that like concrete actions, organizations,
Speaker 3: groups that you think people can engage with and we've
Speaker 3: heard from some them on the show before, right to
Speaker 3: be in a sort of dearity way or to help people.
Speaker 2: In the West Bank.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I think, like I honestly, I think
Speaker 4: there are people who could probably better answer this question
Speaker 4: for me who've actually gone and done protected presence operations
Speaker 4: in the West Bank. I know that they're like the
Speaker 4: people in Massafayatta are often asking for foreigners to come
Speaker 4: and do that, and a lot of people will go
Speaker 4: through like Jordan Valley Solidarity or ism or something like that.
Speaker 4: I'm usually one to discourage foreigners from jumping feet first
Speaker 4: into a HoriZone with great intentions and no knowledge of
Speaker 4: the language or everything that's going on. Yeah, but there
Speaker 4: does seem to be a genuine call from amongst the
Speaker 4: Palestinian community in the West Bank to have people who
Speaker 4: are willing to physically get in between you know, Alistinian
Speaker 4: villages and settlers and the IDF. Yeah, so that is
Speaker 4: a concrete thing you can do. That's a dangerous thing
Speaker 4: to ask somebody to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it's something people should rush into, right,
Speaker 3: Like we've interviewed people who have been shot.
Speaker 4: Doing Yeah, exactly. A young woman was killed doing that, Yeah,
Speaker 4: a shunar Agi. She was shot feet away from my
Speaker 4: friend who was just in the West Bank and he
Speaker 4: just got banned from the entire territory for ninety nine years.
Speaker 4: And I was talking to him about that because I
Speaker 4: wonder about, like, you know, my work, and sometimes I
Speaker 4: feel like I'm not going far enough of my solidarity
Speaker 4: because I'm doing this investigative documentary and I'm not physically
Speaker 4: putting my body on the line. Yeah. Sure, but I
Speaker 4: can still go to the country, Like my support for
Speaker 4: the Palestinians is still ongoing. So I think people need
Speaker 4: to ask themselves, do I want to take one drastic
Speaker 4: measure to like show this is my solidarity with Ausiginn
Speaker 4: in an instant. Yeah, whether it's joining like a flotilla
Speaker 4: that might get airstrikes, or you know, setting yourself on
Speaker 4: fire outside the Israeli embassy, or do I want to
Speaker 4: like contribute in the ways that I can as best
Speaker 4: I can. I mean, I'm a storyteller, right, so I said,
Speaker 4: I need to find a story that I can tell
Speaker 4: about the Palestinian that will humanize them. Yeah, in the
Speaker 4: eyes of people who are not naturally sympathetic. And I
Speaker 4: think a lot of people think that they need to
Speaker 4: be putting their body on the line. Or it's like
Speaker 4: I talk about this with disaster relief all the time,
Speaker 4: Like disaster happens and people see you on the TV,
Speaker 4: They're like, I need to be wearing a high viz
Speaker 4: best and distributing a box of aid to someone. Yeah,
Speaker 4: It's like, no, you probably don't. Actually, Like the thing
Speaker 4: that you can best do to help people is probably
Speaker 4: the skill that you've been perfecting in your own career
Speaker 4: as well as like, yeah, in your own life, right,
Speaker 4: if you're good at spreadsheets, you can help people get
Speaker 4: access to housing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. You know, if you're good, if
Speaker 2: you're good at.
Speaker 4: Lifting things, then maybe you should be lifting boxes. But like,
Speaker 4: I have a friend who's the Emmy Award winning director
Speaker 4: of photography, and he's like, I have a truck and
Speaker 4: I can lift everything's and like show me where to go.
Speaker 4: And he was hitting me up the entire like first
Speaker 4: two weeks of the LA fires, being like where should
Speaker 4: I go? And I was like me, you're an Emmy
Speaker 4: Award winning videography. Tell the story of the fires, find
Speaker 4: the survivors, like bring their stories to life and let
Speaker 4: the world see what our community looks like. And he
Speaker 4: did that and it went amazing. Yeah, So, like I
Speaker 4: think people should think about when they want to help.
Speaker 4: You know, if you are a seramicist or you sew,
Speaker 4: or you're a musician write a song about gods. Like,
Speaker 4: there's so many ways to help that don't involve physically
Speaker 4: putting yourself in between a settler and they're in for
Speaker 4: and a Palestinian family whose language you can't speak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 3: Like there's and we see that with border stuff, right,
Speaker 3: Like everyone wants to do hike out to the border
Speaker 3: and drug water, or you know, everyone wanted to in
Speaker 3: Cumber right, Like a lot of people wanted to help us,
Speaker 3: and people did help us, and it was amazing, it
Speaker 3: was really beautiful. But like people were also able to
Speaker 3: help the skills they had, like making jewelry and selling
Speaker 3: it or baby doing a benefit gig. Right, there's a
Speaker 3: long tradition of anna kiss benefit gigs, like it's a
Speaker 3: thing that we do do a zine, yeah, like you
Speaker 3: a punk concert, you know, yeah, yeah, many many such
Speaker 3: cases like within doing that, there's the intangible benefit of
Speaker 3: showing people that people care about them, like all around
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: I remember, you know.
Speaker 3: Just recently, I saw people from the Karini Nationalities Defense Force, right,
Speaker 3: so one of the revolutionary organizations in Miamma making a
Speaker 3: statement about solidarity to people of Palestine and to their children.
Speaker 3: And you know that they too have experienced their children
Speaker 3: being killed, they too have experienced these bombing runs and
Speaker 3: state oppression, and that like they see them and they
Speaker 3: care about them, and even in their own time of war,
Speaker 3: like the front in Karini state is hot right now,
Speaker 3: that they are still thinking of the people of Palestine.
Speaker 3: I saw Palestinian people were very touched by this, right,
Speaker 3: Like it does Obviously you can't eat someone's good thoughts,
Speaker 3: but like there are things you can do, like because yeah,
Speaker 3: you can't be down there right now giving people a
Speaker 3: sandwich as much as you'd like to, and for some
Speaker 3: people that's either not possible or maybe just not the
Speaker 3: best use of their time. And like, I think it's
Speaker 3: a really good message. Everyone's good as something do, like,
Speaker 3: find the thing that you're good at and use that
Speaker 3: to help people. I think is really valuable. Is there
Speaker 3: anything else you'd like to share with people before you
Speaker 3: finish up here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just think I would.
Speaker 4: This was a dark conversation because I don't really see
Speaker 4: a way out of this humanitarian situation. But I think
Speaker 4: there's a degree to which that's been the case from
Speaker 4: the start. Right. The real trick of the imperial thought
Speaker 4: machine is that the pace of oppression outstrips our ability
Speaker 4: to understand it. Yeah, to quote theory Twink charisenemic. But
Speaker 4: don't lose hope, right, because the world does care about
Speaker 4: Palestine more than it ever has. Yeah, they feel that
Speaker 4: the people there feel our love, they feel our solidarity,
Speaker 4: and that is not valueless right, Like, ye, no human
Speaker 4: is useless. Who lightens the burden of another. I was
Speaker 4: depressed as hell coming back from this recent drip to
Speaker 4: Palaestigne and I went to the mountains and mets. We
Speaker 4: met with a bunch of people who were just really
Speaker 4: energetic about like Kalesidian solidarity and really cared about it,
Speaker 4: and it was like, yeah, it was so nice to
Speaker 4: go from that and just be able to tell my
Speaker 4: Palestinian fans like, hey, by the way, we just spent
Speaker 4: an entire week talk about what we can do to
Speaker 4: alleviate to some small degree the suffering that your people
Speaker 4: are going through. That matters. Yeah, Like every small act,
Speaker 4: every little thing, right, the small deeds of ordinary folk.
Speaker 4: That's what keeps the darkness is bay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's really deprescient. Often, like refugees will say
Speaker 3: to me, scientias will say to me, in the last
Speaker 3: six months, now, I guess that I think Americans don't
Speaker 3: care about them anymore, and that really fucking breaks my heart,
Speaker 3: like more than I can express with words, because I
Speaker 3: care about those people so much.
Speaker 2: And like it does.
Speaker 3: Make a difference when they see people doing things, and
Speaker 3: they can be small things, but like I know how
Speaker 3: much set lifts up somebody in dark times, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: because I've been with them in pretty dark times. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it does make a difference. And like if that's what
Speaker 3: you can do, then then people shouldn't think is valueless.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and also UNI pressure people, you know, continue to
Speaker 4: make people embarrassed for the Yeah, for believing in genocide.
Speaker 4: Call your congressmen and remind them that they are their
Speaker 4: shills and cowards. I think a lot about you know,
Speaker 4: you mentioned like nineteen you mentioned World War two earlier.
Speaker 4: I mean, if we had had TikTok in the age
Speaker 4: of Dacau and Treblinka and Oschwitz, I think about like
Speaker 4: the American government knew about the final solution, We knew
Speaker 4: that the box cars were going to these extermination camps,
Speaker 4: and we refuse to bomb them. Yeah, we focused on
Speaker 4: military targets. If we've been able to live stream, you know,
Speaker 4: some from inside Auschwitz, and we were also able, because
Speaker 4: of pro public or whatever, to find out that FDR
Speaker 4: was choosing not to bomb the concentration camps, there would
Speaker 4: have been outrage. There would have been a huge amount
Speaker 4: of outrage I think in the American population as there
Speaker 4: is in Gaza and that's an important thing. It's something
Speaker 4: we have access to. Now we can put that external
Speaker 4: pressure onto people and make them uncomfortable. That's what brought
Speaker 4: down South African apartheid. The like it's the BCGS pulling
Speaker 4: out of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund. Yeah, basically British companies
Speaker 4: just got so embarrassed to work with South Africa that
Speaker 4: they just eventually stopped. And that's what brought down.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, because people wouldn't shut the fuck up about it, right,
Speaker 3: and they wouldn't let them do other stuff and be like,
Speaker 3: we're not talking about that today, And like people in
Speaker 3: the case of South Africa wouldn't play sports with South
Speaker 3: Africa until it fucking stopped doing its apartheid. Right. Like
Speaker 3: I was gonna say it was global and a boycott,
Speaker 3: It wasn't quite global. It's Rael was not boycotting apartheid
Speaker 3: South Africa. But yeah, that stuff does make a different Charles,
Speaker 3: when's your documentary coming out?
Speaker 2: Where could people find it? What can they view it on?
Speaker 4: I'm still in the editing space, so I think give
Speaker 4: me two months and I'll have a better idea when
Speaker 4: it's coming out. I'm hoping like before autumn. Damn twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five. It is a time only piece, right, it
Speaker 4: has some relevance that's time sensitive, but you can follow
Speaker 4: it on Instagram. It's just at the war on enra
Speaker 4: you n rwa. Yeah, and my personal account also posts
Speaker 4: a lot about it. That's Charles McBride with a y.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And it's the same on substack TikTok YouTube.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like child said, you don't have to be there getting
Speaker 3: an in full pointed at you to make a difference,
Speaker 3: and so like, yeah, I would encourage people to do
Speaker 3: the little things too. They're not that's small legedly, but
Speaker 3: just yeah, the things that aren't going to Palestine necessarily.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Yeah, and like take heart, you know, don't despair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, find some joy.
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