i'm not going to speak to you about a very amusing topic tonight i'm going to talk to you about my book the fifty one day war which i wrote in about fifty one days under extreme pressure from a publisher who thought it was important to get this story out i wrote it after being in israel palestine for over a month during the fifty one day war about a month and getting two weeks in the gaza strip which is a very difficult environment  to work in not just for safety reasons but for so many other logistical reasons and you know of course it's most difficult for the people who are like me can't leave the walled in get the walled off ghetto i wrote this book  to remember those who'd died during the war all twenty two hundred of them not just those who we think of as civilians i wrote this book to honor the resistance of those who fought to defend their homes inside the gaza strip and i wrote this book to expose the criminals who destroyed gaza and who killed over five hundred children mostly killed in their homes in their bedrooms and night and i wrote this book to put on the record the true story of the war when did this war start how did it begin did it earnest when seven hundred fifty thousand indigenous palestinians were forced out of their homes off their land and a large percentage were pushed into the gaza strip which is now today a warehouse for surplus the surplus humanity who are not welcome because they are considered a demographic threat a threat to the ethnic purity of the jewish state in israel and the live on and so that is really the backdrop to this war to every war that's been fought in and around israel palestine did this war begin in two thousand and five when israel began to withdraw its settlers from the gaza strip and then promptly laid siege to gaza after unknowing elections in which hamas was democratically elected that is another piece of the piece of understanding that is another piece of context that we need to understand a this disengagement which was celebrated by liberals in the us we saw war after war using disproportionate force in the gaza strip using two thousand pound fragmentation bombs against the gaza strip one tank shells one hundred  fifty five millimeter howitzer shells against civilian homes and a doctrine that israel called the he had doctrine named after a neighborhood it destroyed in south beirut in the two thousand and six assault on lebanon a doctrine which aims to punish the civilian population in order to turn them against their political leadership as gutty eyes and cut who is now the chief of staff of the israeli army said to the israeli newspaper yet  everyone in south lebanon is hossam nasrallah and who is the spiritual leader of hezbollah and everyone in the gaza strip is khaled mashal who is the head of the hamas politburo in other words there is no distinction between civilians and political leadership or armed or armed factions and so that is the open stated doctrine of the israeli military going into this conflict in the gaza strip last summer and it was a war was but it was a war between very very two very unbalanced with the extreme power imbalance and i want to emphasize the backdrop to the war the war did not begin in the gaza strip it began about ten kilometers from hebron a intersection where three jewish israelis in the occupied west bank were hitchhiking they were kidnapped by two hamas operatives two figures operating without orders from hamas on their own in order at after the collapse of the peace process in which israel refused to release a final batch of palestinian prisoners in order to continue the peace process apparently they were kidnapped in order to spur a prisoner release by other means of some one thousand palestinian prisoners the kidnapping attempt failed immediately when one of the israeli teens attempted to phone the police got on the phone with the police the police had a recording the police heard gunshots the police heard celebrate tory singers singing from the two killers and the police less than twenty four hours later found the burning car with blood a and bullets inside but they didn't do after telling netanyahu after bringing the shin bet israel's general security service into the investigation was informed the israeli public instead the israeli military issued a gag order on all journalists which forbid journalists from even reporting the existence of a gag order which prevented them from describing the from detailing the investigation all jewish israelis and the rest of the world knew including in jewish communities in the us which were compelled to participate in the solidarity displays for the three missing supposedly missing teens was that the was responsible and that they could be anywhere which led to operation brothers keeper a massive military invasion of the west bank including west bank cities that had not been invaded since the second intifada hundreds of hamas members and leaders political leadership were arrested palestinian prisoners who had been released under the prisoner swap were rearrested and this was all a pretext for dismantling whatever infrastructure of hamas and opposition to the palestinian authority which went along with this entire operation and assisted it with its u s trained security services was remaining so you have israeli troops rampaging through the west bank in the gaza strip where hamas maintains power there were looking at this as an act of war as their leadership is being arrested without charges on administrative detention thrown in jail discovered an israeli public which had thought that they were missing learns that they were dead they were found in a shallow grave on the property of the suspects whose families had been interrogated twenty four hours after the kidnapping how did they not find how did israel not find these teens who were in a shallow grave on this property with all their advanced satellite systems all of their monitoring capabilities in the west bank in their collaborator networks they were found by volunteer jewish israeli hitch hiker's very confusing it's almost like a deception was under way they were found and jewett the jewish israeli public erupted  outrage and anger and indignation netanyahu appears before his cabin he declares vengeance for the blood of a small child even satan has not yet created he explicitly calls for blood settlement or my family comes from so he's telling the jewish israeli public that they are victims of a program committed by palestinians who are no different from the rampaging anti semites of europe within less than twenty four hours mobs erupt in jerusalem in central jerusalem declaring death to arabs that was their chance of a v m that was the cry that netanyahu inspired and he inspired the killing of mohammed  dare a fifteen year old palestinian boy from the occupied neighborhood of shoes in east jerusalem kidnapped by jewish israeli fanatics on his own property forced to drink gasoline and burned alive this was the response this was a warning to the israeli government it was a signal to the israeli government that you either act or the situation will intensify and grow out of control so netanyahu redirects the situation to gaza after declaring all of hamas as responsible when in fact there were no orders from hamas for this kidnapping the war that we're going to hear about is said to have begun on july eighth it actually began on july seventh so it's a fifty one day war not a fifty day wars on july seventh that netanyahu and his defen keeper go down in the west bank then after these assassinations mosse decides to go to war and authorizes launches of long range rockets which carry very little explosive capacity but do psychological damage my colleague and friend allison dager who was in the night of july eighth remembers m m seventy five rocket sailing overhead from gaza as air raid sirens went off she stood with the cousins of mohammed abu who their the boy who was burned alive one of them held her hand and said that rockets from mohammed and that's how it was understood as an act of resistance and an act vengeance and so the war began within days on july twelfth the israeli forces authorized a ground invasion of the gaza strip troops rolled rumbled into the neighborhood  f the city of which is a neighborhood east of gaza city which lays hard against israel's border areas these troops were unprepared for any confrontation that some of them entered in armored personnel carriers which were actually one nine hundred sixty s era american vietnam war relics what they didn't know was that the gaza strip and the gates the military wing of hamas was undergoing a process of military advancement for decades for years this faction had been identified with suicide bombing and attacks on israeli civilians and that was us sim that was an example of their weakness their military weakness they didn't possess guns they didn't possess the kind of weaponry that could compete with the israeli military and so the choice was to respond by attacking soft targets israeli civilians that strategy changed under the leadership of mohammed day who is the fifth leader of the brigades all of his part of predecessors have been assassinated and he has nearly been killed four times is severely handicapped from the four assassination attempts his partner in the military is ation process was killed in operation pillar of cloud and twenty twelve by in an assassination what they did was transform create a network of tunnels underneath the gaza strip largely for defensive purposes and plan to fight the israeli military head on as hezbollah did in south lebanon the israeli military failed to take a signal and fit and failed to understand that the brigades could compete with it even after a frogman team from the brigade swam into the ocean into israeli territory stormed into an israeli military base and actually laid explosive charges on an israeli tank this was that sikkim which is a key boots they could have easily entered the cuba and killed scores of civilians but they chose to attack military targets then as they attempted to get back to the sea they were killed by drones it was basically a suicide mission the israeli military covered up what happened there and it was only leaked later on the israeli military failed these armored personnel carriers came under attack by sapper teams who often ran up to them and planted explosive charges on the armored vehicles by hand one was completely destroyed an israeli soldier was taken alive some seven or eight were killed and the israeli military went bizerk meanwhile its soldiers came under attack from snipers came on came under attack from infantry and matt and just a general sense of panic fell through the ranks of the israeli military back in tel aviv central command ordered all troops to retreat into heavily armored israel modern israeli armored personnel carriers pulled back and the entire area of shit was blanketed with one hundred fifty five millimeter howitzer shells two thousand pound fragmentation bombs and within some twenty four hours an entire city was completely gone this was israel's response to losing a battle so at this point and then this was ignored i mean i really want to emphasize that the gates of hamas was fighting under a different doctrine than the israeli military mohammad day and his spokesman went on into international was never relayed to the american public and mocked the israeli military for attacking civilians and said we won't attack civilians our fight is with your soldiers which is why seventy some seventy five israeli soldiers were killed during this conflict five israeli civilians were killed including one child daniel triggermen and everyone knows daniel triggerman name but nobody can name one of the over five hundred children in gaza who were killed  during a seven day cease fire i met the family which was lucky enough to have lived through a night of hell a massacre which left over one hundred fifty people dead they lived because the one thousand pound mark eighty two dum bomb which was lodged into their ceiling failed to explode and the day before i met them it was disarmed by a bomb disposal expert i met the family of  i the same day in gaza city their home was completely destroyed much of their family was killed including several members in execution style killings who i met in the ruins of their home and i met this family because their son solemn had gone looking for them one thousand year old solemn with a group from the international solidarity movement saddam was wearing a green shirt and jeans and he wandered into a street where his family lived and called out for them and suddenly fell to the ground he was shot once and the international solidarity movement volunteers who were within filmed him then he was he he called out again and he was shot again in crumpled to the ground and then finally an israeli sniper finished him off on camera many of you saw this killing or heard about it it was actually reported by my friend iman mila dean from n b c before he was strangely i found a map in the rubble of should j a which is reproduced in my book i was an israeli military map that i found in an empty ammunition box and this map contained markings in hebrew that i didn't fully understand until i went to thousand and eight two thousand and nine and i pointed to him a line which was labeled in hebrew hard to feed him and he said hard to fim means dead people and it's what is traditionally called out on israeli military radios when there's an israeli casualties so that could be for evacuating casualties but it's also what we were given the command we were given in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine when a free fire zone was created and we could open fire on civilians yvonne had actually interviewed three soldiers who participated in the battle of shoot j a and who had direct knowledge of the killing of salim shomali and they said that a red line was a stablished and they were told that if anyone crosses open fire policy so these killings were no accident these were were crimes that deserve to be punished and they happened across the gaza strip in which is a farming village again in the buffers in the on the border with israel you know they live in a very tough neighborhood in gaza because they're next to israel i met survivors of nine days their dead comrades where the main water tower had been destroyed where almost every single house was either badly damaged or completely destroyed and where people were walking around like ghosts still in trauma during the war it was there that i walked into the home of honey on the jar who was a nurse in the nearby city of honey eunice he took me into his bathroom and it was attempting to explain to me why he wanted to destroy his own home which was still intact in his bathroom i found walls caked with human flesh hair and blood and on the floor i saw grenade pins and bullets six men had been found and executed in his bathroom and one in his child's room many of his family members were currently being held in israeli prisons they have been taken for interrogations which often lead to torture just look around the street i met the family who had lived all except for one they told me about their daughter dheeraj ala one thousand year old severely disabled girl who could only move in a wheelchair they attempted to escape from the town which was surrounded by an israeli tank division and when the israelis began firing on them they fled and realized they had left their daughter dear she was found feet in front of her wheelchair obeid a week later badly decomposed the international committee of the red cross was unable to retrieve her at any point or even enter the town and in many ways they were unwilling to attempt to do so and they may deserve to be exposed as well i later met two paramedics from the international red crescent meadow odd and who had gone into close during the time that it was under siege by the israeli military who did so out of conviction as palestinians in gaza but also because they were asked to retrieve a man who had been lashed to a tree by israeli soldiers and was apparently bleeding to death he had been shot in his leg they arrived the israeli soldiers told their colleague mohammed to get out of the ambulance they told him to walk a few steps forward hold up a lighter over his head and then they shot him in the chest and so these two men described to me watching their colleagues executed in front of them i couldn't believe it but recently i spoke at princeton university and whole heard about this from someone in the audience and i said what is your name he said my my family is a and i keep having this story confirmed time and time again another story of a crime that's going on punished in jose i found stars of david spray painted on the walls of a school for women that was funded by usa id and in the principal's office i found weapons i found weapons being stored in the principal's office these were weapons produced by narrow arms a norwegian owned arms company which produces them out of phoenix arizona they are anti tank light anti tank weapons which were used by the israeli military against civilian targets in hosea so these were the weapons i found being stored in civilian areas along with the abuse of the symbol of the jewish religion  projected to the people of the gaza strip as a symbol of hate as a symbol of of death as a symbol of everything that's the opposite of what i know it as and i saw it again and again and again and destroyed homes and schools hanoun another area on the border of israel to the north which was destroyed without reason after most of its residents are not if not all evacuated  fled israeli the israeli soldiers sorted them out they divided them between the men who were of military age took them in armored personnel carriers to israeli prisons for interrogation and possible torture and kept everyone from two year old to her grandparents in the house a week later there when it appeared that a ceasefire was underway the israeli soldiers erd ordered them to remain in the house then called in an airstrike called in artillery strikes on the entire neighborhood and within one hour the entire neighborhood was destroyed there's video of it as i spoke to a men were in the rubble of the one who had done family home looking for the remaining body parts of two year old and her aunt fifty two year old baghdad but the rest of the family had been found well parts of them at least and as a woman told me how israeli soldiers and the israeli military had destroyed his olive trees they destroyed his home his a p area his business and destroyed his neighbor's home a man approached me with a bunch of grapes and a bottle of cold water character of the people i met in the gaza strip was impeccable and if i ever faced any threat as a jewish journalist it was from eating too much sugar the threat of tooth decay as people handed me candy and sweets everywhere i went in the rubble in the destroyed homes that they used to live in at every step of the way obstructed diplomacy we have to remember that at the onset of the war the conditions that hamas offered for a ten year truce with israel were entirely humanitarian in nature they wanted a seaport they wanted an airport they wanted to be able to rebuild the airport that had been destroyed they wanted permits for people to be able to go pray during ramadan they wanted based to a basic standard of living that we all take for granted that's what they went to war for and john kerry rejected all of these terms aligning himself with the military junta in egypt which rose to power through a coup and a sham election which is currently holding some forty thousand people in prison aligning himself with them the palestinian authority and the israelis to hold gaza in a vise this extended the war to fifty one days and right after the assault on of mortars and howitzer rounds what were they going to do with that except destroying more civilian homes on august first during what appeared to be the beginning of a humanitarian cease fire  john kerry oversaw a deal that hamas didn't participate in so they were unaware that israel thought that it was able to continue operating in gaza in the gaza strip while the humanitarian ceasefire was taking place a unit from israel the israeli army's givati brigade entered the eastern region of the southern town of ruffa in the gaza strip and took over a home they were attacked by a unit from the  g rounds and light weapons this unit emerged from the tunnel two soldiers were killed and one golden who happens to be the second cousin once removed of the israeli defense minister one of the golden sons of israel was taken through the tunnel shaft the brigade's goal was to kidnap soldiers in order to spur prisoner swaps they take him barack obama appears on national v and blames hamas for breaking the cease fire when in fact israel was operating militarily still inside the gaza strip in an offensive capacity giving israel all of the political space it needed to invoke the hanibal directive what is the hannibal directive it's a chilling name for a military doctrine it's a semi secret military doctrine adopted in one thousand nine hundred six by the israeli military after the jabril agreement in which israel traded released over one thousand palestinian prisoners to get two of its own back i think it was big the point of the hannibal directive is to prevent prisoner swaps by allowing the israeli military to attack kidnapping teams and to kill any israeli who might be kidnapped in places like the gaza strip so it's a it's a doctrine that allows the israeli army to kill israelis when of course the parents of those soldiers or those israelis would want them alive they would want the prisoner swap as parents did when the hannibal directive was enacted in iraq it led to the destruction of entire neighborhoods i visited this area and found shards of m a d m k t to dumb bombs shards of drone missiles artillery and broken pieces of mortars were simply in the street you couldn't walk down the street without noticing them over one hundred people were killed maybe over one hundred twenty when the givati brigade and acted the hannibal directive it was use not just to attack the ambush team but as a mechanism for revenge against the entire area of eastern rafa families like the donna family which i interviewed fled to the only what seemed like the only safe place in the jar hospital which was the only functioning hospital in russia at the time and as soon as they arrived the israeli military phoned in their intention to bomb the hospital and so all of the dead the wounded the doctors the medical staff came pouring out of the hospital and the dead and the wounded had to be transferred to a tiny dental clinic in the center of rafa called al kuwaiti hospital which was run by a single doctor who i interviewed samir holmes who was used to  tending to older women it was a gynecological and dental clinic or giving kids their dental checkup he found himself performing emergency amputations on bodies on the floors in dental chairs he found his nurse one of his nurses come in in a body bag with her body separated from itself and he had to revive his staff when they fainted after seeing one of their colleagues bisected in such a way the carnage became so bad that holmes had to call local shops and bring in ice cream coolers in order to store the bodies of infants this was i think the image of the war group of five or six infants in death shrouds stored in an ice cream cooler they should have been eating ice cream overwinter was the commander of the givati brigade that oversaw hannibal directive overwinter as one of the most popular figures in israeli society and he exemplifies the new breed of religious nationalist soldiers who are moving into the israeli officer believed and he told in an april in a aug fifteenth interview with the audio at our note the israeli newspaper he said that we were protected by clouds of divine honor when we were attacking rafa and then he boasted we shredded them he declared in almost every home there is a son or other relative that is a partner in terror and so he it mid that he drew no distinction between and military personnel overwinter was expressing the sensibility that was also expressed at the time by knesset member islet shock it who said that palestinian mothers had to be killed before they gave birth to in her words little snakes the mentality of natalee bennet then the economics minister declared that the people of gaza were committing self genocide in the current government islet shock it is the minister of justice bennett is the education minister in charge of designing educational curriculum for students what kind of mentality will they breed these young popular religious nationalist leaders by august fourteenth after the israeli military pulled out of gaza by its own estimate it fired three million bullets which is about almost two for every one living in the gaza strip over three thousand tons of ammunition were deployed in this tiny area which is one of the three most densely populated areas on earth twenty five thousand tank shells were fired into  strip eighteen thousand homes had been destroyed over four hundred businesses and factories had been destroyed at this point over one hundred thousand people were homeless and scabies was spreading actually eighteen thousand tons of explosives were used against the gaza strip which is five thousand more tons than were contained in one of the bombs the united states dropped on hiroshima in world war two eighty nine families were wiped from the civil record in the gaza strip eighty nine families an associated press investigation found that of the twenty two hundred people who were killed nearly nine hundred were killed at home at night in their own homes by precision guided israeli weapons that's eighty nine percent of them were civilians so if you think about the eight hundred thousand or so olive trees which have been uprooted by the israeli military since one thousand nine hundred sixty seven think of the family trees that were uprooted in this attack on the gaza strip last summer think about that  think about what kind of crime that is i want to take you to the end of the war the war transformed into a kind of air war with the israeli air force its hermes four fifty and hermes nine hundred weaponized drones bombarding the gaza strip every night and you know to withstand those bombardments for me for just a few nights was nearly impossible i barely i mean even no matter how much ambien i took i couldn't sleep it was just simply terrifying to hear the jarring sound of explosives crashing into a house and wonder who had died i was sitting  a cafe interviewing the camp breakers who were the first crew of break dancers in the gaza strip and they were telling me how they brought breakdancing to gaza i hear a massive airstrike nearby not directly nearby but in an  buster bombs which were given to israel stance ability to attack iranian nuclear facilities or heavily fortified areas but instead to attack the home of the military leader of hamas who survived underground how did they know it's because every neighborhood in the gaza strip is honeycombed with collaborators or informants for the israeli military why are they informing the israeli military why are they committing an act of treason which we consider tre n to be something that so rare because they're desperate and because they're constantly preyed upon by unit eighty two hundred which is israel's version of the n s a is actually the largest unit within the israeli military it consists of the best and brightest of israeli society its most educated members and their job or one of their jobs is to find collaborators by listening to cell phone calls identifying who's weak identifying those who need medical treatment identifying those who are having an affair identifying those who are homosexual listen to the words of one of the refusers from eighty two hundred who protested the war crimes that he had participated in after the war and w summarily punished by his government if you're homo sexual and know someone who knows a wanted person israel will make your life miserable if you need emergency medical treatment in israel the west bank or abroad we searched for you if you interest eighty two hundred and don't have anything to do with any hostile activity you're still an objective so tell that to mayor ed murray the next time he goes on a pink washing tor the israeli military targets homosexuals and destroys their lives and these people who are induced into collaborating against their neighbors some of them were caught and after these assassinations some of those who were caught or accused were brought into a public yard in gaza city in the gaza strip and executed a scene that benjamin netanyahu is used to conflate hamas with isis but we need to understand the background of this ghastly display and the tragedy behind it the tragedy that lurks in almost every home in the gaza strip and the paranoia that consumes gaza society gaza and society the war ended with israel deliberately targeting a series of civilian residential towers and a shopping mall with airstrikes first bringing down south for four which is a residential tower in the center of gaza city that's home to the elite of gaza the middle class the engineers the doctors the athletes those who have nothing to do with the conflict that was why it was targeted and so some forty families were left homeless after being evacuated and watching their building and their lives destroyed by israeli f sixteen years later a few hours later the italian compound another large residential tower built by an italian businessman in the  gaza's middle class its professional class was brought down by israeli f sixteen s and over fifty families saw their livelihoods their homes their memories eradicated the tower which is home to all of the media offices of the gaza strip including the office that bloomberg news uses to when it when it works in the gaza strip was brought down in the same fashion by israeli f sixteen zits as if the c n n tower in atlanta were brought down or the thomson reuters building in new york were brought down it's as if it's it's as if a media outlet in paris were attacked by terrorists for no reason at all but unlike that attack no one said this week gaza in fact they listened to netanyahu our government when he said that he was attacking terror towers in fact he was  the doctrine of attacking civilians to turn them against their government attacking the soft heart of gaza that had never faced this attack before and these were many of my friends lived i mean i can't describe to you the we should have solidarity with those who lose their towers but i guess some people don't fit into our frame with the war over and a ceasefire that guaranteed nothing to the gaza strip and which left the status quo in place the civilian population in the gaza strip was left to wonder whether it was worth it while the israeli public turned further to the right wing as figures like natalee bennett promised that in the next war he would lead israeli troops into the heart of gaza city and would overthrow hamas and reinstitute a direct occupation and my book ends and you know this talk is going to end here with a portrait of a teacher who's a friend of mine named rere i spoke at bellingham last year and raef spoke there  actually managed to get a permit for once a week after me when i spoke there at western washington university the students a lot of them had never heard about israel palestine before especially presented in this way and they approached me with curiosity clipping a young jewish student who was asking me just bombarding you with questions when we fought spoke a week later along with two other writers from the gaza strip that jewish student who is just starting to unpack this for the first time cried openly throughout the entire talk and now i've been told he's a leader in the burgeoning palestine solidarity movement on that campus but had told me that he had never leader and founder of hamas that he had his malcolm x moment like malcolm x who in prison was asked by a member of the nation and of islam think about all of the white people you've ever met in your life how many of them if you had positive experiences with and malcolm x then malcolm little thought well all of them have abused me or harmed me in one way or another and refight had had that experience with jews that he had never met a jew who had done anything to him but harm that is the experience of so many young people in the gaza strip growing up under siege who don't even meet israelis unless those israelis come to them as faceless killers either in drones or tanks or pointing guns at them it was already finding his way out of what many americans would consider to be an anti semitic mentality when he came to the us but it was his ability to live with jews and to meet them here to meet people like those who are who hosted his tour from jewish voice for peace that he was able to formulate a clear narrative and distance anti zionism to end distance judaism from zionism when he returned to the gaza strip he attempted to inculcate his students in this mentality to help them understand that there was a life beyond this by unary this this polarized world that they've been trapped in he started to teach them about the poetry of the hebrew poet and writer who is an israeli and he began teaching them the merchant of venice about a jew placed into impossible conditions  by an apartheid like regime and at the end of his class he asked his students who do you identify with more othello the venetian general of arab origin or shylock the jew and each one of them every single one of them declared that they identified with shylock he said it was his proudest day as a teacher unfortunately those papers that his students turned in on the merchant of venice were burned when the israeli military bombed islam ik university and bombed refits office on august second and his students joke that they were guilty of producing pm deeds or poems of mass destruction something an excerpt from one of those students papers in which she paraphrase shylocks famous screed occurrence famous a liquid half not a palestinian eyes have not a palestinian hands organs dimensions senses of factions passions fed with the same food hurt with the same weapons subject the same diseases healed by the same means warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a christian or jew is if you prick us do we not bleed if you tickle us do we not laugh if you poison us do we not die and if you wrong us shall we not revenge like the medieval european ghetto masters our government has decided that the lives of this racial outclass warehouse in gaza do not matter that they have not  hands and that they do not believe as we do otherwise the policy would not be to resupply the state that's destroying them occupying them and besieging them otherwise there would not be a initiative in congress to increase israel's annual aid from three billion a year to four point five billion a year otherwise at least one home out of the eight hundred thousand that were destroyed would have been rebuilt but a year later gaza still lies in ruins this isn't a complicated situation don't let anyone complicated for you it's about and it's not about good and evil there's good and evil on both sides sabbat justice versus injustice it's about basic fairness it's about basic human decency that's all this is about and so it's not enough for me as a journalist to bear witness it's not enough for me to simply tell you the facts on the ground it's not enough for you to simply buy this book and it's not enough to give gaza your charity i'll end it with the words of red bachar who is the captain of a fishing boat in g and and his answer to my question what can we americans do our message is simple he said we don't need any aid or anything just put pressure on the israelis so they get out of the sea and let us fish and bring a livelihood to our families again thanks we depend on you know who are you knowing what the situation is and how it's changing how would you could trash what you reported him to go live with the situation in gaza and in the west bank i would exist no thanks i think the situation is even worse than it was when i finished writing goliath but goliath explains the political  psychological foundation of this war which brought to bear the full malevolent fury of israel in its violent capacity against the civilian population in gaza and my book explains how that was possible and how a population like jewish israeli society could support the war at a level of ninety five percent at its height with over forty five percent declaring that israel had the israeli army had not used enough force it is a portrait of an active settler colonial society entering into a terminal phase in which it's unable to vanquish the indigenous population or obliterate it through genocide as the united states did and it's simply acting out in frustration without any clear solution or strategy meanwhile you have young people jewish israeli youth who are being heavily indoctrinated into a calm the most comprehensively militarized society on earth they're told the whole world is against them they're told the second holocaust could happen at any time and they're told that the base is the base of evil is in the gaza strip and that they embody the spirit of hitler and i'm not exaggerating netanyahu told the entire faculty and and all the classes at bar ilan university in october twenty third teen that the palestinian national movement embodies the spirit of the third reich and that's his language and so you're growing up learning that you're being sent into the military at age eighteen and you have to interact with palestinians on this basis where the only way you can interact with them is as an occupier what does that do to your mentality what kind of society is that producing it produces a society that's capable of doing what it did in gaza and i think i've said it a million times but i'll say it again because i think there's victims on both sides zionism is a prison for palestinian bodies and jewish mines and these are the jewish mines who need to be liberated and j v p is on i think a rescue mission for these jewish mines so i'm proud to be involved in this event with them so as part of the american voting public how can we use the electoral process to i have more voice with our  presidential candidates i mean it seems like now is the time to speak to the candidates that will be willing to listen what can you say to us about that you can't there absolutely nothing you can do to affect the political class in washington to affect congress at this point unless you are a billionaire but there is a lot you can do to affect change including at a local level and there are already there are people here who can tell you exactly what to do i don't think that you should focus your energy the way that you would on another issue like climate change or gay rights or civil liberties thirds no one in washington who will listen to you and make a public statement or take a public stand at this point just look at the most progressive candidate who's running for president bernie sanders he was a vocal backer of the assault on the gaza strip someone who you know delivered a tirade against his critics and public i know he's kind of clammed up about it and that's because of the amount of pressure he's getting from people who are organizing at a local grassroots level so i think there's there are ways to affect things at the top but it has to start at the grassroots level and it starts to the boycott divestment and sanctions movement which n what captain ryan bucker is asking you to do when he says put pressure on the israelis so we can fish again and feed our families he's asking you to participate in the b d s movement and so there are people here who can tell you what to do locally how to get involved i mean the olympia co op was a seminal action and the israeli government has been directly involved in a slap suit to prevent the lawsuit from from to prevent the vote the democratic vote of the olympia co op from taking place they're actually trying to stop democracy in our communities so more the more democracy the better to more points about that i really enjoyed the spectacle at the two thousand and twelve democratic convention when there was a voice vote on whether to declare within the democratic party platform that jerusalem is the undivided capital of israel which means you know there is no occupation in east jerusalem and the nays had it by two to one i mean there was a sound analysis that proved that the nays had it but antonio who is the mayor of los angeles and the d n c chair who is completely bought off by the pro israel lobby by the jewish federations i mean this is a mayor who goes out and declares his support for israel's wars if it pertains to the way he banged the gavel and said the gays have it and that was a visible display of the lack of democracy within the democratic party on this issue i think we have to bring that crisis deeper into the democratic party because if you look at pew polls of democrats you know those of us who believe in equality for palestinians there's a lot of sympathy within the democratic party's rank and file in fact the last pew poll i saw showed that most democrats do not favor israel over palestinians and the more educated they are the more sympathetic they are to the palestinians so and then you look at the republican party i mean who knows where was jeb bush's first campaign stop he is first campaign stop was to auschwitz it's not even in the united states he's appealing to sheldon adelson who dominates the republican party right now with his money and with his influence and also happens to be such an influence on benjamin netanyahu that he's a dick he's dictating energy policy within israel so the republican primaries are going to explain this issue so far into the public in such an ugly way with such a slum a phobia anti palestinian tirades during the debates because they're all competing for the money of these figures who i mean pope sheldon adelson has called for the u s to drop a nuclear bomb on iran so that's who they're appealing to so i think it's there's a normal amount of momentum right now with israel is israel having elected the most right wing government in its history and this this issue becoming a partisan wedge issue i mean the gay marriage issue the