There is so much out there to get mad about. Social injustices, class warfare, continued

colonization, the act of destruction of our planet by those focused on prophets and not

people. We can find it overwhelming at times. The good news is there are equally as many,

if not more, stories of people coming together and rising up against the forces at play. So

the creators of Blueprints of Disruption have added a new weekly segment, Ravel Rants, where

we will unpack the stories that have us most riled up, share calls to action, and most importantly,

celebrate resistance.

So we're back in the studio and normally we have a slew of stories that Santiago and I

pitch back and forth, things we want to talk about, things we're upset about. And this week

there is really only one thing on our mind and that is Palestine. So in this rabble rant,

we're going to give a few updates. You have to go back to our previous episode to get a

fuller perspective on the conflict itself, but it's the global reactions, the media reactions,

and the political reactions that we're really gonna respond to here as well as give an update

as best we can on the current situation. So right now Israel is herding Palestinians into

the south of Gaza. They've ordered the north to evacuate. Many, many, many people have attested

that this is absolutely unreasonable, unaccomplishable and not acceptable. While they're doing this,

they're continually bombarding the areas, both North and South Gaza. There is no ceasefire

in the South. They simply are preparing to move in with a ground force in the North that will

surely escalate the casualties that we've seen so far. And those are 2,670 Palestinians as

of about Monday morning Eastern time. Fifty-two percent of those are women and children. And

again, these numbers are going to rise because the hospitals that are there, that are running

at an extremely limited capacity, they are running low now on staff, supplies, water and fuel.

Right? This is just to keep the lights on because the electricity has been cut off and no humanitarian

aid is being allowed into the Gaza Strip. The normally apolitical Red Cross has even come

out with a pretty political statement for them. You know, they first state the obvious, that

life-saving aid must be allowed into Gaza and all parties must ensure the civilian population

has access to shelter, food, health, hygiene and safety. If the parties cannot meet these

obligations, they must allow and facilitate the passage of humanitarian relief. They say

parties, they mean Israel. Israel has controlled the conditions in Gaza for decades. It is them

that are withholding supplies and it is them that are preventing humanitarian aid. They

go on to say the Red Cross, the horrific attacks Israel suffered cannot in turn justify the

limitless destruction of Gaza. And I wish it was limited to Israel trying to make these

correlations that somehow the atrocities that happened upon them can now be revisited on

the people of Gaza and the amount of people backing them up. We'll go over that later when

we talk about global reactions. It's not everybody. They want to make it seem like it's everybody,

but surely we can still be disappointed in the amount of both the powerful and the grassroots

that seemingly have nothing to say on the genocide that's being a- visited upon Gazans. That isn't

to say there isn't violence in other places either. Israel has fired upon the airports

in Aleppo, as well as skirmishes along the Lebanese border. They also fired upon Damascus, I believe,

no? The airport in Damascus? Right, okay, so, yeah. Aleppo and Damascus both suffered missile

strikes from Israel and massive amount of ground troops are accumulating, Israeli ground troops

are accumulating at the Lebanon border in anticipation of, I imagine, Hezbollah's reaction.

Now. This evacuation is so disingenuous, to give 24 hours, which they have now extended,

for such a densely populated area steeped in poverty and destruction to evacuate essentially

to nowhere. None of the borders are open. At least Egypt says, Israel says Egypt's border

should be open, Egypt's border is not open. Who knows what's actually happening there?

The reality is people in Gaza cannot leave. And so now they're asking them to go to the

south of Gaza, where again, there has not been a ceasefire. So what you're seeing is Israel

is annexing the north of Gaza right before our eyes and quite legitimately according to most

world powers.

I think the pleas are pathetic to Israel to show mercy. The Red Cross statement is important,

but the reality is they want them to starve. They don't want aid, and this is a tactic of

war that has been normalized over and over again, the starving, the sanctioning of peoples until

the powers get the political allegiance that they need. They have been doing this to people

in Gaza for decades, albeit slowly. They control those conditions. They have been starving them.

We have all seen that shrinking map, right? That's lessening of space, of rights, of hope,

the exiling of families, the lack of clean drinking water. We've seen the stats on life expectancy.

There is nothing really new about this siege on Gaza except for the speed and the voraciousness

in which it's being done, and the fact that the world is actually paying attention right

now. When it happened slowly, I think people lost interest. And so we're not allowed to

bring that up when we're talking about the attacks by Hamas, because people, it blended in, it

was normal. It was part of the way of life for people in Palestine. Now, I think people are

starting to see just how heartless this Israeli regime is. And there's been several moments

from this evacuation that have really captured international attention. One of them being

that a convoy of three, I think it was three trucks carrying dozens of people along the

main highway from north to south was bombed in a in this airstrike as it was evacuating

people and tons of people were killed. And from what I'm hearing in reports, from news outlets

such as the BBC now are actually reporting this. It was then bombed the second time as the rescuers

were attempting to help people, as there was ambulances. There's been many recorded instances

so far of members of the Red Cross and paramedics and firefighters and people who are simply

there for rescuing, who have been killed in these strikes. These strikes have been quite

indiscriminate. And these are, these are of course, war crimes. What we're seeing at war

crimes unfolding. And all of this is now beginning to be verified by international media. It's

something that is quite undeniable. They're confirming these events in real time. It is

before last time we recorded, we, I mean, we knew, we knew because it's pretty easy to identify

that white phosphorus was being used in Gaza, but it hadn't been confirmed Now it's been

confirmed that white phosphorus is being used to target civilians. White phosphorus, for

those who don't know, it is combustible upon contact. It's flammable, so it burns the skin.

It burns people. It's essential. It's what it is, is a war crime. It's not allowed to be

used in civilian spaces. directly hitting buildings with white phosphorus, because their goal is

no survivors. And that's exactly what's happening. And sorry, I was just wanting to scream over

top of you. Like at the same time, the US Secretary of State statement is that Israel respects

international law. Like that is some real or willian shit. The amount of disinformation

and messed up narratives that are out there. To have like... The top people standing there

and just spouting pure garbage like that while we're watching the white phosphorus rain down

is absolutely unreal. But there are no survivors in some families. The Palestinian Health Ministry

has dozens and dozens, it was 45 I believe the last time I checked, families that had been

entirely removed from their civil registry. There are no next of kin. We had a guest on

two episodes ago. before this all unfolded and gotta. We're going to get into what Gada did

at the NDP convention. But we saw her tweet out, I believe just yesterday, that she had

lost over 40 members of her family recently in Gaza at the hands of Israeli missiles. This

is the case for so many people. We're seeing it. I see it all over the place. People talking

about the devastation. back in Gaza of friends of relatives being killed. It's, I don't think

anybody who lives in, I don't think there's any Palestinians out there who are untouched

by this at this point. It's, the scope of this is so massive. I don't know what the number

is now because a few days ago, it was 6,000 bombs that had been dropped. I am sure it's.

which is more than the US dropped in Afghanistan in a single year. I saw a number recently that

shows that actually more children have been killed now by Israeli bombings than apparently

than children have been killed in Ukraine in the entire war. We drew parallels to that conflict

last week when we were talking about this and the people that continue to be at seemingly

most vocal against Palestinian resistance are still flying Ukrainian flags in their bio.

And it serves to mention that there are reportedly over a hundred Israeli hostages still within

Gaza that the Israeli state doesn't seem to give a shit about either. I've seen testaments

from Israelis where the media are not emphasizing the hostages, that they have become almost

an acceptable tragedy in itself, collateral damage that they're willing to absorb in their

quest for revenge. One of the things... that really upset us last week and when it was really

raw, I think I've steeled myself against this at this point, is the...

amplified shock and horror and grief that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack

on Israel.

It is very typical on how we react to acts of terrorism visited upon Western nations, because

one just has to keep on top of the news, even just a little bit to know that these acts of

war, these acts of terror on civilians, because if you are a civilian, it doesn't matter the

political surroundings around you. If you were shot and killed, if you have a bomb dropped

on you, that is nothing but terror. However, it goes way beyond the borders of Palestine

and Gaza now. The hatred that has come from that knee-jerk reaction that was the same reaction

that we had to 9-11 that allowed us to have anti-Arab laws, that allowed us to have secret

courts to round up brown folks in Canada, spy on them without cause, the amount of rights

that we restricted specifically. to Arab people in response to that is exactly what we're seeing

unfold with Palestinian Canadians, Americans, and folks around the globe. And it's what we

warned against when you said we couldn't speak about Palestine in that wake, that we couldn't

advocate for free Palestine until we had fully recognized the grief of Israelis. And as a

result, in that time, the demonization that has occurred has held. There were horrible

stories that went around in the first bit that have not been verified, even according to the

IDF itself. I don't even want to repeat the words that were used. They're horrific and

they were used to absolutely inflame emotions. And the result has been not just the silencing

of voices that we really did get into last time, but actual violence being visited upon people

because they are Palestinian or because they're supporting Palestine. Right? So we have video

from St. John's Newfoundland of someone. Yelling, I stand with Israel as they swing a backpack

into the heads of protesters. That guy even went online, found these people, continues

to harass them, unabated. A Montreal woman, I'm sure folks have seen the footage of her

ramming the car of a Tunisian woman who was flying a Palestinian flag out of her car, yelling

at her that she should be assaulted sexually in front of her children. And then of course...

Just the other day, we hear about a six-year-old Palestinian boy in the United States stabbed

to death by their landlord while he screamed anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian statements

at him and his mother. Stabbed 29 times. that takes a level of hatred. that is so difficult

to imagine having against a child. That's in the US. That was in Illinois. I believe it

was in Chicago or a suburb of Chicago. Right? Which is not far from us. That is so unimaginable.

And this comes back to the anger we felt when we saw the initial reactions from politicians

in Canada, from media in Canada, who were like, we will not stand for any anti-Semitism. And,

you know, the police are monitoring this and that, like the statements from Olivia Chow.

Meanwhile, there was no mention of any potential Islamophobia, any potential consequence, any

hate crimes. been people have been defacing masks and this like this is the consequences

of that hatred going completely unchecked. I want to explain a little bit more why I draw

that correlation between those who wouldn't allow us to provide context for the Hamas attacks.

That meant we were celebrating, condoning every vicious act that may have or may not have been

committed by Hamas upon civilians. There was no even verification of details at that time.

But we weren't allowed to say, yeah, but the occupation causes this violence. This is inevitable

when you treat people this way. We weren't allowed to say that and because we weren't allowed

to say that, even though we were, Hamas, although what they did on paper is horrific to the families,

it's horrific. They're not monsters. You can't frame them as monsters without context. In

the same way we don't declare every soldier that fights for the United States, despite

their war crimes, despite their erasing a million Iraqi people as monsters, they are human beings.

All right. And they are in situations, much of them out of their control. And Hamas is

the only armed resistance that the people of Gaza have against a vicious, murderous occupation

that has been deemed illegal by Israel, that we have been told they have the right to armed

resistance. But now all of a sudden, that's being removed from us because we can't say

Hamas is good. I don't know if there is a power out there with arms that is genuinely good.

at this moment in time. I don't know what a revolution looks like for me. That is a struggle.

But they are all the people of Gaza have between them and the snipers on the wall and the embargoes

and the starvation and the missiles and the Iron Dome. That's it. That's all they have

because the world has turned their back on them. The world does not. They provide aid, but they

don't provide weapons. They don't provide the means to fight a traditional war whatsoever.

And they've trapped these people for 75 years. It's funny how the line we draw is state sponsored

military, like state militaries, right? Like we somehow understand that, right? Like I think

of like, you know, the criticisms of Russia. They're all thrown at Putin, right? Like they're

all thrown at those in power. But you don't hear people like attacking the Russian soldiers

in the same way as they attack Hamas, right? And I think that that's interesting, right?

Because there's some sort, like in our heads for some reason, if people are, if armies belong

to a nation, then we understand it. Why? Why is that where we draw the line? It makes no

sense to me. It's all brutality. Well, I think for us, it comes back. When I say us, I mean

people living in Canada that we are in a settler nation state. And we've spent our whole lives

under systems that only legitimize state violence. This is what police are, right? This is what

the celebration of military violence is all about. you need to legitimize that the state

has the only right to violence. It's pivotal in controlling your people and in existing

as a nation state, like that is essentially the definition of the nation state who holds

the legitimate use of force. But I have talked about this book before, but not in context

of this situation. There's a book by Chris Hedges called War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.

And it's not how it sounds, because it's not actually an argument for that in a positive

way. The book reads as a real internal struggle of Hedges himself, weighing pacifism versus

armed struggle and the pitfalls that come with both. You know? You ought to imagine you are

in a situation, generational situation, that your children are now growing up into, of unimaginable

violence and lack of hope being brought on you. And every peaceful avenue, we go into our last

episode of how many times, how many different tactics have been used to try to free Palestine

from the occupation, and all have failed. And the situation is now worsening. A far-right

government is enacted, their views on Palestinians are clear, they are there to wipe you out.

That is obvious now. We all know that now that Israel is completely willing to wipe out Gaza.

They always have been. But now the mask is completely off. We all know that to be true. So imagine

living, that is your enemy. That is the mentality that you've always known your enemy has had,

because that is how they've treated you from day one. And those are the stories that have

been passed down for generations. You have been born into this. You need to find a way out.

You have the right to arm resistance just as every other occupation has. And so you need

to find guns. You need to find people to use weapons who know how to fight. You need somebody

like that if that situation arises. And no, that's not advocating for violence. It's just

the reality.

they may not fully agree with. And this is what's born from it. Quite often that complicates

the matter afterwards. You are stuck with powers that don't respect human life. Sometimes the

act of war changes you in itself. How you value a single life isn't the same as when you entered

the war. But what happens if you're born into war? What if you're born into occupation and

your occupiers have never shown an ounce of value for your human life or those around you.

How do you see them then? We can stand back as settlers and be like, I would never do that.

What would you do then? What would you do? I don't wanna hear what you wouldn't do because

it's so easy to be like, oh, I would never shoot a civilian. It's funny though. It's funny because

people say all the things that they wouldn't do. Bullshit, bullshit because we're seeing

it play out in live time, right? I'm not going to mince my words here. Netanyahu is a fascist.

The government of Israel is a fascist government. What we're seeing now is one of the most clear

cut examples of fascism I have seen in modern times. The way that they do propaganda is fascist.

The narratives that they say is fascist. The fact that anybody, any Israeli citizens, who

harm national morale, they're saying that they will imprison them and possibly even seize

their property, is fascist. They have police going around and checking people's phones and

if you're posting in support of Palestine, they're arresting you. That's fascism. What we're seeing

in Israel is fascism. And people always talk about what they would have done in face of

fascism. What we're seeing in now. We're seeing it now. We're seeing what people would do.

So you don't have to ask yourself what you would or would not do right now. You're showing us

what you would or would not do. Absolutely. And fuck like it made like, I, I hate, I hate

violence personally. I, I come from my heritage is of two countries whose history has been

defined by violence, Colombia and Lebanon, you know, On the one hand, my dad grew up with

bombs dropping on his head. Well, my mom grew up with car bombs. She still talks to me about

seeing a mushroom cloud engulf Bogota from a bomb that was so powerful that it created a

mushroom cloud. I have heard the stories of all of the killings in Colombia, senseless.

All of the violence that came from that. I, this is not. I detest this. Am I going to go

say though that everybody in Colombia should have always been nonviolent? No, because you

know what? How many environmentalist activists in Colombia who very often are nonviolent,

because often environmentalists are nonviolent. There's long been a connection between the

environmentalist movement and nonviolent. Well, more environmentalist activists are killed

in Colombia than anywhere else. The current vice president of Colombia, an indigenous woman,

an Afro-indigenous woman who was and is an environmentalist activist, has had multiple assassination attempts

against This is the reality. And I actually, like I need to speak on this for a second too,

a connection there. And I'll elaborate later on in this episode a bit further. But there

is a connection between the IDF and Colombia that people don't really know about. But the

IDF has trained both paramilitaries and the actual army of Colombia. in tactics against

fighting revolutionaries. Paramilitaries that have gone and wiped out villages in Colombia,

paramilitaries that have committed all kinds of crimes against humanity. The most brutal

paramilitary forces.

They were trained by the IDF. They're armed by Israeli weapons. There has long been, during

uprisings in Colombia, like a couple of years ago. Israel was talking about the support and

talking about how they've trained the army to respond to this. And those tactics were used

in suppressing the population who were rising up against the conditions.

This is on the other side of the world from Israel. There's no real connection that there

should be between Colombia and Israel. So when I look at Colombia and I think of like nonviolence,

it's like, well, what are they supposed to do? Because nonviolence, what it does is it gives

a monopoly on violence to the state. It's allowing yourself to be brutalized, your people to be

brutalized. And until you've been in those conditions, until you've seen the hopelessness, you cannot

tell someone that they can't be violent because you know what the violence is? Poverty is violence.

Not having water, that's violent. Not having food to eat, that's violent. Having bombs rain

over your head and not knowing whether or not you're about to be buried by your own house,

if your own house is your coffin, that's violence. If people grew up under these conditions, they

live their whole life under these conditions. What do you expect them to think of violence?

You think that they're just going to sit here and turn the other cheek and just allow themselves

to be continuously wiped out and wiped out? Because you know what? You know what happens

in these situations is all of those people, all of the ones who attempt all the peaceful

ways, well, they get killed. Over. and over and over again. And it's almost like you're

creating the conditions that create a more almost natural selection towards violence, because

it's the violent ones that survive. So what are you left with? We can't, like we need to

have some perspective here because I don't believe there's ever a situation where it's justified

to be killing civilians. Absolutely not. But what are the conditions here that we are creating?

And we are complicit in this. We allow this. We've been celebrating this. The Nakba was

violent. Right? Like when Palestinian villages were erased from the map, that was violent.

How many of those people did not fight back? How many villages were just destroyed with

only one side of violence?

What it's crazy that sorry, but it's crazy that people frame this as a war as Though there

are two nation states here with equal forces fighting one another and we just both need

them to stop That perspective you're talking about or context. That's what was trying to

be erased Jerry Jeremy Appel wrote a great piece recently called eyeless in Gaza. Of course,

it's going to be linked here in the show notes. And I'm just gonna read a quote there from

the very beginning. You don't need to come, so although we've given you many updates, Jeremy

tells us that you don't need to keep up to date with every single alleged atrocity to know

one simple truth. The violence needs to end immediately and its root causes must be addressed.

We cannot let context become a casualty in the fog of war. Propaganda's purpose exasperated

by social media algorithms that promote the most inflammatory claims is to draw people

to the conclusion that the violence must escalate immediately. He's explaining why it's so important

there to provide the context to the violence that we're seeing and not simply just to react

to it. And that a cessation of This violence, like these missiles and these attacks, is not

an end to the violence itself. The violence is the occupation. This is part of that occupation,

part and parcel. So ending this doesn't really do anything except allow humanitarian aid into

whatever is left of Gaza. But that surely can't be the end of it.

un-interviolence need to start actually thinking about what does that look like? What does non-violence

look like here? If non-violence is the erasure of Gaza, if non-violence is the complete colonization

of Palestine, is that what we're willing to accept here? Is non-violence... Yes. But yeah,

I mean, because that's the most likely ask here. And I mean, people also need to like, this

also, this is not how like, we also need to understand the region a bit for a second, right?

Because what's going to happen if Israel launches a ground invasion on Gaza? Well, it's looking

like in all likelihood, Hezbollah will then launch an invasion of northern Israel. That's

what is from Lebanon.

Do we have any idea what that would look like? The violence that that'll bring? I mean, Hezbollah

is the most armed, trained and powerful militia anywhere in the world. Last time they went

to war against Israel, was it in 2008? My years, it's 2005, 2008, something like that. It landed

in a stalemate and Hezbollah was outnumbered 10 to 1. When Hezbollah went to war against

ISIS, They absolutely obliterated them. It wasn't even close, because Hezbollah is that much

more well-armed and well-trained. This is a militia that's more powerful than most countries'

militaries.

Do we understand what that would look like for them to go to war against the state of Israel?

And there's also context there because Israel had an 18-year occupation of the south of Lebanon.

Israel has gone to war against Lebanon in the past. This is, and I, sorry, there's a siren,

just gonna let that pass. I speak from a... Where I'm coming from here, like I acknowledged

last episode, my family are Maronite Christians who, during the 1985 war which led to the occupation,

it was Maronite Christians were on the side of the IDF. They sided with the IDF in that

war, just for some personal context here, which I condemn. And... So this is also not just

some, like people like to just say, ah, this is Iran's doing, they're a tool of Iran. No,

they're not. Hezbollah, and for the, like I have my criticisms of Hezbollah, as anyone

knows. Hezbollah is truthfully part of the Lebanese government. Until recently, they held a majority

in the Lebanese government. They... provide social services for the regions under their

control, mostly in the, I forget the name of the valley, but there's a fertile valley close

to the border of Syria and in the south of Lebanon.

This is pretty much a government is what they are. And so what we're looking at here... through

this escalation of violence, it's just more violence. And what that would look like, it

might bring in Western powers who will then provide backing and funds. And I don't know

if the West will actually invade. I don't know if Iran will then invade. I don't know how

far the escalation of this goes. But the question is, like, in the face of this, I mean, it feels

like I feel like we're looking at the Iraq War, like the days before the Iraq War, we're looking

at, you know, this has historical precedent. this moment has historical precedent. Do we

really? Is that the future we want? Is that what we want to allow? For what? For what?

I think that's why it's so important to continue the shift in narrative, right, to push through

because it will matter. If we allow them to manufacture consent around this type of response,

not only will it set a precedent for future actions of Israel and what other... state actors

might try. But like Santiago says, it's this powder keg of tension now in the Middle East

with a lot more players than simply Hamas and Israel. And we know Israel's perfectly aware

of that from the bombs that they've dropped on Lebanon and Syria.

There was a group of journalists reporting out of south of Lebanon who were targeted, one

of them killed. And one of the worst parts about that, that particular case that you're talking

about there is the agency's refusal to outright name Israel as the state who, the actor responsible

for the journalist's death. It was from a missile that came from the area of Israel. And there

is a lot of media responses that are playing into this manufactured consent that we're seeing

happen where, again, we know most people don't agree with. the act, most of the actions of

the state of Israel, they don't agree with the occupation. They understand its apartheid,

except it's, it, if one were to simply read the CBC or listen to Justin Trudeau or maybe

even sit down on an NDP convention would think that everybody thinks that this is fine, that

this is understandable. And I mean, even when you look at Justin Trudeau's statement, most

recent statement on Palestine, He mints his words, but we hear things like, I'm deeply

concerned about the humanitarian crisis. Like, refuses to name the perpetrators and refuses

to shame Israel for its actions. Biden has urged a little bit of caution, not publicly. Apparently

that's gone through the back channels and we're all supposed to know about it. So even Biden

is urging caution, although while arming them. Canada is just deeply concerned about the humanitarian

crisis. Like a lack of water, it already was a humanitarian crisis. This is now genocide.

And there's a real lack of willingness for folks to say that word and respond accordingly. Now

let's talk about that manufactured consent. Let's talk about that narrative for a second

because whenever we're approaching war, whenever, especially something on this scale. Well, the

media plays a huge role, a huge role in how the public responds to that. Now, myself being

in journalism school, one thing that you hear a lot being said over and over again is like,

we have to report neutrally. We have to report neutrally. We have to, and... I can't help

but have one quote play over and over again in my head from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the

South African anti-apartheid activist. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you

have chosen the side of the oppressor. because that's what neutrality is. It benefits the

oppressor. And that is what we have seen over and over again repeat during these times. And

worse, worse yet, is that oftentimes these media networks are actually not at all neutral. They

preach neutrality, but then you get every look at the Globe and Mail where every single opinion

article written has been on the side of Israel, every single one of them. Look at the headlines

running in the national post where, you know what, I need to pull this up because there

was a front page of the national post that was so egregious. that one second it won't take

me long to find it.

Unless it does take me long. I'm gonna just google that. I'm gonna search up national posts

on On twitter. Sorry. This is so important. I need to

It's okay.

So here was the headline, the front page of the National Post, a war of the entire civilized

world against savagery. Tell me that's not real.

Man, I had some really egregious examples in my notes and in my head, but that really fucking

takes the cake. And you know, we've seen like talking heads, like folks within their bio

bragging about working for the BBC, fucking doctors, openly calling for genocide.

So you're also not allowed to have counter voices at all. And we have historical precedent here.

We can see that over and over again, over the course of history, we've seen that every single

Canadian media network has been in the favor of war, has always sided with war. This is

irresponsible. This is so irresponsible. And so with them controlling this narrative, we've

also seen how politicians have been doing the same. Like everybody is united. And what happens

then is that if you're going and you're speaking to sources from Israel, who are sources from

the IDF, or who are Zionists hell-bent on genocide, well, they're saying the quiet part out loud,

and we're seeing it more and more. They're saying the quiet part out loud. They're calling for

genocide. in those words, in genocide.

And this is being broadcast live around the world. And more and more, because the reality

is, and Noam Chomsky speaks of this in Manufacturing Consent, the reality is that journalists are

not being pulled into back rooms and told, this is what you need to talk about. That's not

how it works. Sometimes it's how it works. Unless you're an NDP MPP and you get a fucking memo

from Merit Styles, just, you know, from her chief of staff telling you absolutely under

no circumstances can you attend a protest for this crisis or make any statements that aren't

approved by us. And we will not approve any statements that don't completely fit what the

leader has already said. And that's interesting. Yeah, like absolutely. The NDP. It's very close,

but in media it's not supposed to be. And it usually is, and occasionally it is, you know,

I've heard stories. But for the most part, what it is, is the selection of journalists. Like

if you say one thing and they like it, you get promotions. If you say the other thing, they

don't like it, you get pulled off air, you know? So what we're getting right now is a lot of

situations for journalists who actually haven't been dissonant in the past. When they hear,

because we do have an education system that teaches against fascism. You know, everybody

grew up learning about Nazi Germany. In an authoritarian institution, though. Yeah. So a lot of journalists

are now, they're talking to sources who are calling for genocide. And they're like, whoa,

wait a minute. You know, you're seeing it live around the world. Journalists being like, whoa,

hold on. Hold on. What are we talking about here? Yeah, there's some live interviews that

people need to watch where there's some BBC reporters really, they say the quiet part out

loud and the talking head that they're grilling just simply nods. Yep, that's exactly that's

war. And so it's interesting because that very institution isn't in a way it's unraveling.

We're seeing the harsh narratives of the first few days is beginning to unravel. Part of the

reason has been and has been that The sheer force of Palestinian advocacy has been beyond

what I would have expected. And I'm really enjoying watching it. And part of it has been on an

international level. there has been a show of solidarity for Palestine because this issue

is bigger than, it's reaching people beyond just the current moment. It is representative

of a struggle of oppression, oppressor versus oppressed around the world. And there's a lot

of people who can relate to it. I mentioned earlier, I mentioned earlier Colombia with

the paramilitary and the military being trained by the IDF. Well, One of those revolutionaries

in Colombia who were victimized by the paramilitaries is now president Gustavo Petro. And he put

forward one of the greatest possible statements. He's actually let me just pull this up because

I'm not going to paraphrase. If we have to suspend foreign relations with Israel, we will suspend

them. We do not support genocides. I call on Latin America to show real solidarity with

Colombia, and if they're not capable, it will be the development of history that will have

the last word.

He speaks on, he uses the word genocide. He talks about the history of oppression and the

solidarity that all Latin America should have because they have been constantly, every single

Latin American nation has been on the other side of this. And it's not just Gustavo Perto.

Lula has made similar comments. We've seen Ireland, of course, Ireland, who has who has always

been an ally to Palestine because they share that history of oppression has been standing

in favor. We've seen South Africa who themselves had an apartheid state. Will the president

of prime minister, I forget of South Africa is now coming out, condemning Israel calling

it an apartheid state and showing solidarity for Palestine. We're seeing around the world

this happened. And now I'm also seeing cases where. The Minister of Social Justice in Spain

is saying that the Spanish government should bring

members of the Israeli government before the International Criminal Court because of war

crimes. This is massive. And then as well, there's a Jewish organization, sorry, there's a...

a Palestinian organization in the UK that threatened to bring members of the UK government forward

for complicity in war crimes. And now what happened immediately is that they changed their messaging

and we're seeing the messaging changed. People who the first day were saying stuff like, we

support Israel's right to defend themselves are now condemning war crimes and now saying

that humanitarian aid must be allowed. It's working in real time. And I'm seeing people

who... never spoke up about these things, are speaking more and more. The narrative is switching.

Young people are, I'm seeing it all over the place. The Instagram stories are all speaking

on the war crimes. They're all speaking on the brutality. We're seeing it change. We're seeing

the media lose control of the narrative. Why? Because it's really fucking hard to defend

literal fascism that's not even pretending to be anything else. They're not being slick with

it. They're just saying the quiet part out loud, and people are saying, hey, that's horrible.

That's horrible. You cannot do that.

Let's talk a little more about the resistance to the initial narratives and that pushback,

that unrelenting Palestinian solidarity that we are rightfully seeing. So in Canada this

weekend and, you know, as soon as it happened, but in particular last weekend that just passed,

there were lots of solidarity rallies. Hamilton, Mississauga, Victoria, Edmonton, Ottawa had

an amazing showing. I was at a little rally in Barrie, Ontario, where a communist comrade

of mine runs the Communist Barrie Party, Michael Spears, and I think it just spoke to the need

for people to do something, say something, and keep making space for other people to continue

their fight against the occupation, because not just a cessation. of the violence that's

occurring now, but a complete end to the occupation and not ceding any ground in that regard. We

were told right at the beginning, context doesn't matter. You don't do an eye for an eye, even

though that's what's happening in response. You can't say that, you can't defend that.

But I think we spent a lot of time proving that context is important and that the Palestinian

diaspora who we've had. Members of it on the show before explained in great detail the efforts

that they've gone through to organize over the years, make connections, to mobilize, to tell

those stories over and over again so that although Palestine feels like on the other side of the

planet, there's so many of us that feel a kinship with the Palestinian story because of the work

those activists have done for so long. And when- They needed. That work has been difficult.

That's been hard, hard work. You need to listen to Gada and even the Palestinian youth movement

as they're on talking about the barriers that they face, the harassment, the attacks, demonization,

blacklisting, that exists but they never stopped. And so solidarity raps. rallies are happening

worldwide because of that work, not just because we can see what's happening and we know it's

bad, but also because of that kinship we feel. Because let's be honest, the Western world

doesn't often unite behind causes of racialized nations, right? That doesn't happen all that

often. I do think this is the work of all the Palestinians that we've met that have refused

to allow their story to be silent. And especially in the face of this particular round of silencing,

they push through. And one thing that needs to be mentioned that's such an accomplishment

is the real-time fact checking of Israeli propaganda has been... more effective than I've ever seen

anything of its kind be in the past. Right? When we're talking about like the beheaded

baby stories, when we're talking you know, there's been all kinds of false narratives being pushed

out. It gets fact-checked and then media networks who initially ran with it are now being forced

to... make retractions. One thing Biden, who was saying, Oh, yeah, I saw the pictures of

the beheaded babies and they had to say, No, actually, I didn't because there was no pictures.

So there's been no pisses me off, though, the retractions don't get the same airtime. No,

the first line, they walk them back, even the fact checkers, you know, we see them and we

feel justified and we can share them. But but that doesn't sensationalize the same way the

original story does, right? And so it doesn't have the traction, it doesn't blow up like

that. And so even at the NDP convention this weekend, Jagmeet Singh, Jagmeet Singh is still

repeating claims of widespread sexual assault by Hamas troops. And the IDF themselves have

said this has not been verified. They have not been able to verify it. Even after a week.

of talking to survivors, they have not been able to verify that, and still, the most progressive

leader that we've got in Canada is still repeating these lines. And it's the same way they still,

even when we finally get them to fucking seed ground on showing a little bit of concern for

Palestine, it's always hedged at the beginning with another condemnation of Hamas violence.

It's always couched in this language of justification, even as you're online and you're telling people

you know, this many Palestinian children died today. Yeah. Did you condemn Hamas? Like it's

still there. It's still within our world leaders. It's so ridiculous. They won't let go of that.

It's ridiculous that it took this level of asymmetry for that to become impactful. Right. Like it

took, it takes so many more Palestinian children for people to get as angry as they would about

one Israeli child. But that's the scales that we're seeing here. That's the reality that

we're seeing here. The brutality is so absolute. Nobody there's no way to spin it anymore. There's

no way to spin it anymore And so people are coming to the side and it has like we said

It's been fucking hard for people to be advocating for policy. This has been 75 years of oppression

75 years generations have passed and People it's been so difficult So difficult for people

to speak out and finally we're seeing It's becoming a bit easier today. It's becoming a bit easier

today because of that continued effort, because that effort paid off. That effort paid off.

And it wouldn't have been the case if no context had been created during the past 10 years.

But Palestinians activists have been committed, have been consistent. They've been there over

and over again. They've been advocating and that laid the groundworks so that today people

aren't learning everything from the start. They're not trying to inform themselves on 75 years

of history in one day. There are people here who had the context and who raised their voices

and that got across and the narrative is changing. And now it is going to be that much harder

if the West wants to launch a ground invasion, which they might and they've done before. I

remind you they did that in... No? It just was trying to leave people hopeful of like, no

go back. No, but that's what I'm saying It's gonna be hopeful they launched the ground invasion

in Lebanon They've launched ground invasions the past it's gonna be that much more difficult

because you need the public's support They had it in Iraq. They had it in Afghanistan because

the fourth branch of the government the media Was effective in getting people riled up getting

people angry getting people on the side, but now they're not now it's changing I don't believe

right now that it'll be as possible. And the international solidarity of all of these nations

who understand the history of oppression, that voice is incredibly loud right now. It is,

I want to give a special shout out to the people who have been relentless in pushing back and

trying to shift the narrative and every little bit counts. I'll tell you, even the smallest

notes of encouragement that I get in my private messages allow me to fuel my fire a little

bit longer to keep countering. that narrative that would allow for genocide and to keep speaking

for a free Palestine. But it's also the people tagging in for me when those folks come in

with the ridiculous arguments and you just don't have the energy to keep this up for so long.

And everyone, every time you do that and every time your followers see that, every time your

family sees your fearlessness in that regard, you give space to them to then do the same.

It's critical we all do that work and it is absolutely working. Again, I'm going to bring

up Gata, an absolute fearless, phenomenal advocate. She went to the NDP convention this week with

allies, with family, to push that party to make a statement. But also so that the delegates

inside who have been painfully silent. Right, we know that their caucus has been gagged,

their staffers have been gagged, and labor's been attacked for any support that they have

shown, but NDP members in that convention were painfully silent and undemanding of their leadership.

And their Palestinian supporters were determined to make some noise there. and not be relegated

to an emergency resolution on the last day of convention when everyone has gone home. And

I just want absolute solidarity with those people. The NDP ended up calling security, having the

venue push police on them, pulling them physically to the ground and shushing them down the stairs

so that the delegates could not hear them. Delegates who showed solidarity with them and who were

disruptive in their own right had their credentials removed unilaterally by the national director

who we've talked about on this show before. And so the resistance in those spaces, it matters

too, because at the very least you did force Jagmeet in his final speech to acknowledge

the fact that Palestinians are also suffering. Again, obviously, it's not a much, it's not

enough, but this works. This is happening everywhere. London, Baghdad. And on those protests internationally,

many of them were outlawed. Many of them, they said, you're not allowed to protest, you know.

Same thing, you know, they were saying that in Paris, they were saying that in the UK,

in Germany. What happened? People didn't listen. People came out en masse. En masse. Around

the world, we're seeing massive protests, massive shows of solidarity. And again, I don't think

anyone listening here needs a reminder that the cops are always, always standing against

the oppressed, standing on the side of the oppressors every single time, whether it's at the NDP

convention in Paris and UK. Even our little thing in Barry, there was a separate action

in support of Israel in Barry at the same time. that had a larger turnout than ours, unfortunately.

Either way, ours was policed. We even had a drone overhead of us. It was the resources

spent on a small gaggle of communists and folks from the local mosque waving a Palestinian

flag. They were ready for... It's funny though, because it shows you also, though, just...

I know you weren't number there, but like here in Toronto, it's interesting because there's

a certain amount of exposure of like how different the narrative is. Like one thing I've had to

do constantly since this has started is remind people Israel does not speak for Judaism. Just

like Saudi Arabia or Iran or any other Muslim nation does not speak for Islam. Just like

it's a case of, you know, Countries do not speak for all of the peoples of a religion. Right

now, Toronto has a huge Jewish population. Huge. If you listen to the narratives that they want

us to believe, they want us to believe that all Jewish people are standing on the side

of Israel. Bullshit. Because when there was the protests in Toronto, there were thousands

of Palestinian activists and I heard that there was less than a dozen pro-Israel activists.

less than a dozen.

And this has been, and I have seen countless Jewish voices condemning this and Jewish voices

in Israel. They also want you to believe that everyone in Israel supporting this. No, they're

getting oppressed by the Israeli government as well. Disincent voices are being oppressed.

But this is, I mean, nobody here needs to remind you this is not an issue of religion. This

is not a religious war. As much as they want you to believe it is, this is not a religious

war. This is a war of colonization.

And we have seen massive, massive shows of solidarity for Palestinian people from peoples of all

background. I got distracted. I was trying to find a rally that was specifically for Jews

in Toronto.

But I think maybe it's been a lot smaller, though, you know, like I don't buy the fucking narrative.

I don't buy the narrative. Like, I think.

I think like that and that's the thing is that we're not like, as a journalist, you know,

like the one thing that was kind of, you know, there was somebody who went and he covered

the Palestinian protests for Humber, right. And our the professor at the top of the chain

was saying, you know, okay, well, we need to go get a Jewish voice. And I was saying like,

okay, but like, you're saying like, okay, we need like a the other side. What is the other

side? Is it a Jewish voice? That seems wrong to me. That seems wrong because are you going

to go like that's acting like this is Islam versus Judaism, which it's not. It's acting

like Jewish people are on the side of Israel, which is not. And so it's like, okay, do we

go, do we talk to a pro-Zionist Jewish organization or we go talk to independent Jewish voices?

How do you decide that? How are you deciding? who to speak to because we know better, we

know that if we go to one, we're going to get one message and we go to the other, we're going

to get the other message. So how do you make that decision? How do you make the call of

who to talk to in this situation? And are Jewish voices who are speaking out against Netanyahu,

against the actions of the Israeli government, against the IDF, are those voices being platformed?

Do people know how prevalent those voices are? Are many of those voices there?

Can you imagine how uncomfortable it is for some of those Jewish activists? I mean, there

are many, many organizations that are dedicated to amplifying Jewish voices around this issue

simply because of the way that it's been framed. Otherwise, it would just be a regular... And

how do they get treated? They get called anti-Semitic themselves. They get called self-hating Jews.

The trope of the self-hating Jew. You hear it constantly. I remember one of my closest friends,

they shared a post, they shared a post, speaking about ending the oppression of Palestinians,

and they had people DMing them on Instagram calling them a self-hating Jew. Yeah, one just

needs to look at the replies that are in Sam Hirsch's feed, for example, we've had on the

show, or David Misovar, another outspoken Jewish rabbi activist in Ontario here and the backlash

has been incredible against them. But nothing had the level of vitriol, we didn't talk about

this earlier, that Sarah Jemma faced. I need to give her some space here. I quickly mentioned

her in the last episode as the only politician that came out in Canada with a statement that

resembled reasonableness. And her statement was simply acknowledging the devastation of

the occupation and calling for a ceasefire. What she didn't do was what everyone demands

of every person now trying to call for a free Palestine. She didn't explicitly. condemn Hamas.

And so you didn't get just people complaining that her position was weak or insufficient.

That happened. And that's an opinion, right? How you think a political statement should

shape up. That's your opinion if it's not strong enough or didn't acknowledge as many people,

whatever. But you had the Premier of Ontario release a statement that was just parroted

by every media news outlet without any contradiction whatsoever calling her statement anti-Semitic.

And there was nothing anti-Semitic in it. But the only reason Doug Ford was allowed to make

that statement was because Merritt

She first came out and condemned Sarah and told the media she was upset and that it had to

come down. I don't know the exact statement, but she made it clear they weren't going to

defend her, that they hung her out by herself and they all pounced. Doug Ford called for

her to resign her seat and explicitly called her statement anti-Semitic, and they all re-

they all printed it. They all printed that act of defamation and her party never, ever, ever

came out. The NDP, the Ontario NDP, not once came out and defended her against the overt

acts of racism that she faced, not just from trolls, from CBC reporters, from MPs, from

MPPs, the things that they said to her. Andrew Koch told her to go back to Somalia. And yes,

he lost his position as a freelancer for the CBC. but he was defiant and refused to take

it down and he didn't face nearly the amount of backlash that she faced for simply asking

for a ceasefire. And if that doesn't tell people that the NDP is not only a lost cause, it is

a detriment to all our movements, a detriment. It has taken Sarah in and it has gagged her

and it has punished her and it has removed her effectiveness as an organizer. And that is

horrific. And they are coming out with statements of condemnation for Hamas but cannot say a

word about the anti-Palestinian violence that's occurring even in our province right now. And

so, although There has been a shift in the narrative that I think eventually that they're going

to have to see too. It has not been without considerable effort on the behalf of progressive

institutions here in Canada to silence particularly racialized Palestinian activists, you know,

between shoving them to the ground at their convention, to censoring the only MPP that

had the nerve her truth to speak truth to power. And so someone tagged me into a tweet the other

day about a TikTok influencer interested in running for the NDP and it got a little bit

of traction. And my message was absolutely not. If you find any purpose in speaking your truth

to pushing back, do not get involved with the NDP. It is sucking up people's time and energy.

And in the end, that is the biggest floodgate to open. We know what the Israeli government's

capable of doing. We expect it. We know what the cons and the liberals will even say when

this shit erupts, right? But when the left seeds that ground and they just stand back and put

their hands up, when they acknowledge—no, when they just float with the rest of everybody

and they leave us— way open, right? Because even when your leaders won't defend you, then

you're indefensible. Yeah. Then it's so much harder to feel validated. It's so much harder

to make space for everybody when they're so confused because the people that should know

better, that should be on their side are failing us. And so I don't want anybody to look up

for guidance on this. Everybody should be looking at their Palestinian friends and comrades and

organizations and follow their lead. Fuck the NDP. and fuck Justin Trudeau.

Not only does our support come from the progressive community, so does our content. So reach out

to us and let us know what or who we should be amplifying. So until next time, keep disrupting.