we are very lucky to have with us live in the studio this morning i mean a day and judith cole cough i mean a day was born in refugee camp near bethlehem in occupied palestine he was detained many times by the israeli army army and spent months i israeli military prisons after coming to the u s he continued to advocate on behalf of the palestinian people and in the year two thousand he and other palestinian activists and allies founded the group voices of palestine he also serves as the chairman for the arab american community coalition in seattle didn't call it off has been a human rights activist for peace and justice for sixty five years she was formally a regional director of the pacific northwest region of the american friends service committee she was instrumental in organizing jewish voice for peace seattle is a founding member of the national organization american jews for a just peace and has worked as tour coordinator for their refuse or solidarity network i mean and judith thank you very much for coming and spending time with us this some of these terms where it's in tens you know or calm or you know they use these terms where they some of the especially by the western media and it makes me it's just it upsets me makes me angry sometimes when i want to hear this because it's never has it been quiet in gaza for the past five years but our mainstream media choose to ignore this for the reasons that we all know that they can they don't want to confront six they they moved these others to the west bank so for us the palestinians we haven't gained anything from just from that standpoint of the the mood nine thousand settlers from gaza and they put them in new settlements in the west bank these or demand that these palestinians who need to go get treatment either they work for them to become a spy for the israeli government or have a family member who are in order to get a permit for treatment if somebody wants to leave gaza to poor to go to school that's the condition you have to work for us or a family that has to work for us in order for you to get for us to give you a permit this been this been going on since since two thousand and six thousand and seven so this is one aspect of it this is one part of the background they had to clarify so you have one point five to one point seven million palestinians living in this condition where they're being treated i mean this many people refer to this and many legal experts as the sub the biggest prison so so this is this is the background and on top of that they did not israel did not leave the palestinians alone i mean it wasn't like the they just put them in and walked away and said wild you take care of yourselves there were daily incursions there are almost daily assassinations by israel to anybody who they label as terrorist and they they make themselves the prosecutor and the judge and they go and the assassinate what they called you know  has been ignored by the media for those as i mentioned earlier they they don't want to confront you know they're afraid to confront israel because they don't to be labeled as anti israel actor jewish anti semitic everybody's afraid of that label  also there is the special interest groups the pressure of the media not to talk about this so usually these attacks these crimes are ignored by the media until the palestinians are out and the past five years you can see that the and this is  and if you look at every time it was broke it was broken by the israelis including this time including this time so they always go in and they claim that there's somebody got near this illegal buffer zone that they created between them between israel and there shooting is doing actually these are not people who are trying to sneak into israel to commit attacks these are farmers who are working their land near the borders these are fishermen who are trying to go to go to you know to work to feed their families these are not terrorists these are not people who are trying to bring in weapons these are people average palestinians trying to go to work so they assassinate them on daily basis and when a palestinian individual or a group reacts with a rocket homemade made in metal shop nothing to compare to the fired people ignore and the media ignores the background the history of work what led to this rocket i'm not justifying these rockets but people have to understand why these individuals these other individuals or groups  are firing these rockets i mean it's it's an act of desperation they have they they need the world to to see this and they also have to they need to find themselves it's self defense i would like to say something about that as well i  just recently brought me propellent here and i've learned a great deal from him about how to speak about this and how to understand it and particularly through his description of his sister and you retell it whose young daughter was killed the thirteen year old daughter was killed in jerusalem in one nine hundred ninety seven by a suicide bombing that took place she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and his mother her mother and your eight peleg who teaches at the university at haifa know at hebrew university and she and her husband have started to prove parents group that exists between parent palestinian parents and who've lost loved ones through israeli violence when they're the children of mattie poet who was a very famous general who was largely responsible for the attack in sixty seven a year earlier than the cabinet would have wanted it to come because he knew that the egyptian army was not ready and that israel could win and they did they conquered the whole area in six days they were very heavily armed and the strongest army certainly in that area but in your reach when she was approached at the funeral services there were people she would not let in including some of the leaders at that time the israeli government and when she came for a news conference after she finally finished the period of mourning she said this is the fault of my government if we had not created this horrendous occupation if we had not created the impossible circumstances under which young people grow up in palestine in g west bank and we where they live under occupation the anger that deprivation the horror the dehumanization all of the things that israel has done around palestinians we would not have bombs and rockets that are handmade as a way of having some retaliation and her father at the end of the sixty seven war had said we need to make peace now otherwise as occupiers we will create and he went down the list the conditions that will create that rockets from people who are oppressed who are there's no balance here israel is incredibly strong and and the palestinians don't have an army what they have is their ability to take themselves  bombs you might say or it are the rockets and nico says he lived in the south and he said you know when one of those rockets falls it may create maybe half a block wide hole they've killed very few people and any deaths are horrible i'm not suggesting that you know that deaths are not terrible he said but when you drop a one time bomb on a house in the most densely populated area in the world you create chaos and if you see pictures of the way in which buildings have been bombed into oblivion and children have been killed which is what happened one of the first victims here was a b b c reporter palestinian who lived in gaza had a four month old baby and there was no fighting going on in his area there it was in an area of homes and israel dropped a bomb into their house killing their four month old baby killing his sister in law wounding his brother and the house was destroyed and we see the rubble if you look at pictures which we don't see in this country but this happens all the time and i think the thing that needs to be remembered is that this is not new israel has been acting with impunity against how it's doing and since the establishment of the state of israel in one thousand forty eight before that in forty seven when eight hundred thousand people were made refugees by israel's desire to ethnic lands what was supposed to be the state of israel based on the partition that in itself was a little bit unfair to say the least so i think these are the things that create a context here that we never hear and which i think that has to simply be said this is not new and we support this and you ask about why well i mean mentioned arms testing  the money we give israel buys our arms and supports our armaments industry that's part of the contract which is what one of our interests has to be in all of this but we've managed to put in if you let the public opinion in a way that doesn't look at that piece of it that you know the anti semitic stuff is what really is the thing that is used as a weapon to stop real support and then you've got a pac and members of the right wing jewish community which so when you say we're  the scene is talks about the believe that there is because of his reelection he's he's having he doesn't have a strong coalition going into this new election even though he has most of the and he wants to be seen as this this strong leader of israel it's sickening that somebody would launch a war for these reasons and nobody knows why he decided to intensify this at the end of injured six or seven people so the day after this happened there was a rocket fired from gaza that landed into an empty area in on the israeli side on the fourth of november another incursion israel in assassinated a couple of more you know two more palestinians injured about thirty of them there was and the same day there was there was a rocket or two fired so if you look at the sequence of events and this has been verified always the claim by israel that they went after militants and it's false they they justify their attacks they bomb upon buildings and when they drop those one ton bombs on a prime buildings is reason they do this to get one going to go back to the sequence of events that started on october twenty ninth in the november fourth no amber eighth there was another attack where israel in another incursion and this one we believe that there was a plan by better than you have to provoke this reaction he wanted to build up for this there was another and other attack they killed a thirteen year old palestinian boy a thirteen year old playing soccer with his friends and it turns out there was no attacks no people firing rockets said day prior to them going in shooting indiscriminately killing a thirteen year old there was a rocket attack after that and it was it was very fired by independent sources you know in who are watching in the region and then there were there was more afterward there are more hat this is not going to serve his campaign so here sasa needed this hamas officer i mean they claim that he was the chief of the she military operations nobody knows i mean israel gives them the all friends whereas i'm working he was supposed to be the man who maintained security for israel they're around about the sequence of events that palestinians in gaza don't wake up every morning and say you know what we're going to go launch rockets on israel it doesn't work that way israel has this policy of judah said it's been going on for years and years even in the west bank settlers go into western back villages and shoot and kill pal simeon's almost every day when the palace ins and outs that's when you it's seen as a terrorist attack but by the by the western media and nobody talks about that's the subtotal walked in up to the trees burned trees killed their cattle killed the every time there's a possibility of a truth historically israel does something or says there is a provocation that results in the attack but there are people including people like me go who say israel does not want peace they have to keep this going because peace would mean they would have to do serious negotiation about the concept of giving up part of the land and that's not what they're about everything they do they're building eight hundred new settlements in east jerusalem and there is no intention i mean people talk about a two state solution that's dead because it's an apartheid one state and they're what they want it all they want it all and so this is a way of keeping it in such chaos that they can never truly come to the place where absolutely meaningful negotiations for justice for equality for sovereignty for palestinians if there were to be two states which on the ground is no longer a real possibility can happen and mico says i'm categorically israel does not want peace it is not in their interest so these provocations these attacks these horrible horrible whatever they're called i because they're not wars because you need two sides for a war they're mass occurs that's basically what they are happen in order to keep things relatively unstable and everything and they provoke that response that gives them the excuse to go in and that's been true historically from the beginning we don't know that history and it's unfortunate that we don't know it because we're victims of it as i was certainly the palestinian people and will be the world if this thing really explodes so we're hoping that the their mission those the reaction of the world to this and we're seeing masses of people i mean hundreds of thousands around the world are protesting this unfortunate i haven't seen any government in the so hoping that the american people will will see that this is none of their national interest is not in a whether it's from the political side or from security or from the human side i mean this is we're all connected i mean we israel's three to five billion dollars a year not to build hospitals or build you know build housing we are sending them this money to build to even buy arms to buy arms and also to build settlements so we are involved our tax money u s tax money is there funding or fourteen hundred people five hundred or six hundred children yeah i mean you have over thirty thousand injured twenty five thousand houses homes were destroyed in three weeks so this is expected to be repeated in even harder because this is and it's in  known to be a much more aggressive than former israeli prime minister is really there so and we're paying for this we're paying for this by myself but with our money we're paying for this by supporting president obama who is supporting this so we as americans are involved in this war involving these workarounds committed by our ally israel you want to hear something kind of funny it's not funny but it's funny the reason they're going to wait until after ship pot is because the israeli the f at this point is largely composed of many many many many ultra religious soldiers and they have to wait until their day of worship is over before they can go in and kill palestinians it's  but there have been a lot of really wonderful things written on the web hopefully people get their information oh this is richard silverstein in his blog he says not satisfied with pursuing war as a political objective to dominate the palestinians the i d f has invoked the torah in calling this operation pillar of cloud as in quote by day the lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way them i would think would make people and you know it richard says god doesn't walk with killers but obviously israel manages to manipulate even the bible to make this all ok and in fact rabbi ultra ultra orthodox and rab rabbis in israel have been known to say that it is really ok it is because correct to kill a cow is palestinian babies because they might grow up to kill jews so we have about two minutes left well we you know and it's sickening to hear this here really just because this is usually the accusation by the israeli side that it's the religious leaders on the palestinian side who go kill them even their babies because they'll grab and be and be terrorists or our enemy so to see this and to see this actually and i saw in writing i couldn't believe that you know iraqis would do this or to say this so it's been but it's been verified by the media it's a website that people can yes if you go to voices of past find dot org they would have information there they can also go to palestine information dot org soul voices of palestine dot org and palestine information dot org will have information about today's event and future events and i would suggest also the jewish voice for peace has some really wonderful stuff on their website in terms of resources even posters and petitions and explanations so there is a strong that think the only thing i'd like to end with is that there is a growing strong jewish voice that joins the palestinians in solidarity with the efforts to stop this horrendous horrendous massacre ethnic cleansing i mean you could call it i suppose the genocide it is it is i think so well with that we are unfortunately out of time i want to thank you both for are very lucky to have with us live in the studio this morning arun gupta arun gupta is co founder of the independent i n d y pendent and the occupied wall street journal and former international news editor of the guardian newsweekly he visited more than forty occupations in twenty seven states covering the occupy wall street movement nationwide for the guardian al jazeera salon truthout the progressive the nation and other publications and he is a regular commentator on democracy now and the c b c canadian broadcasting corporation and al jazeera so tell us how did you come about your covering of the occupy movement what motivated you to start that one simply it was in my backyard i live in manhattan downtown manhattan and so it's just a quick bike ride from where i live but more important i've been interested in covering social movements for a long time because i think a any analysis shows that's where change really comes from positive change in our society occurs from social movements and there's been a lot of unrest over the years in terms of globally and also somewhat in the united states in response to the political and social conditions and particularly what i'm talking about is the i cannot make depression where and by all standards we are in a depression the real unemployment rate is about fifteen to eighteen percent where actually this december will be the sixth year of this economic downturn there's absolutely no real hope in sight of ending it and it's probably just going to get worse given the policies that both parties are now acting and so i try to find and look for kind of those hints those stirrings of movements that are really bringing together a broad  people under one banner under an idea and can affect profound social change and in terms of the occupy movement in new york there's been a lot of ferment going on there had been a lot mass marches in the spring of two thousand and eleven there was one that was well over tens of well over ten thousand students labor community groups and they were trying to do something different this is back in may in terms of just having a march they were doing teach outs in the wall street area then in june there was this three week in camp and nair city hall called bloomberg ville that was inspired by students and community groups and they were basically going after the budget cuts there were also some other attempts to occupy over the summer so if we actually go back and look at the history of the occupy movement just in new york  city there was a lot going on in two thousand and eleven and of course finally this spark turned into really just a raging fire across the country i knew about the pretty organizing i demand so but in interesting lean now i cover a lot of economic issues and there's this website this financial news website called market watch that i read every day and i was seeing most of the coverage i was seeing outside of the alternative press was coming from this financial news website and it's actually owned by the news corp and they had some column this who were released speaking favorably of occupy wall street why it was needed why was important and it was actually really quite bizarre to be finding this on a financial news website whereas of course the corporate media otherwise the new york times washington post c n n whatever we're not touching it with a hundred foot pole and so i heard plenty about it and i decided to go down there on september seventeenth i was skeptical but at the same time over the years i've learned to be skeptical of my own skepticism partly because the seattle and the world trade organization ministerial in nine hundred ninety nine that completely came out of left field i knew about the organizing there as well i didn't come out for it but the fact that it turned into such a dramatic event and that the protests shut it down was it was really a remarkable breath of fresh air and so even though i was somewhat skeptical of the occupy wall street movement because the organizing to me from what i understood seemed the pretty organizing seemed really a more fierce decision making structure seem to be you know was it was kind of to lucy goosey still lives like you know let me go down there and see what happens and i went down there it felt different you know it felt like ok this is not the usual protest and and as it turned out it wasn't and i started going down almost every day and just watched it grow and develop the first day was very interesting because i did see a fair number of people i know who are politically active in in new york you know what i term the usual suspects but in a good way these are people who really spend their lives in the in the trenches doing the hard work of political organizing as i walked around zuccotti park that night i was just striking up random conversations and i was meeting people from across the country connecticut austin texas they the bay area portland and again one of the things that struck me was i actually met very few people from new york city at least new people and some of the people i talked to had come from across the country they couldn't even really explain why they were there and the closest analogy i could it's really struck me it was like close encounters of the third kind richard dreyfus is character and all those other characters who are just drawn to this mysterious force and they don't know what motivates them and then that's how people were talking they would get this wide eyed look and kind of you know turn their head and stare into the distance and just like i know i had to be hair you know and they couldn't articulate exactly why they were hair but nonetheless i was us like ok this is interesting that all these people from across the country have been attracted to it and so of course it just grew into something really amazing and profound over the few weeks and my partner michelle foster the and i thought like this is literally a once in a lifetime opportunity because by early october you know reports were that these encampments were just springing up across the country and even in our digital wired age i'm a big believer and you have to be on the ground and see how things are developing so we're like let's hit the road let's go and go from occupation occupation was so when the fall we basically drove across the country hit about thirty occupations during this period and while we're driving a car it took we're on the road for almost three months and we saw it rise and then started to see many of them fall because by november of course she started to get the whole  and to see just the phenomenal diversity of the movement this is i think really one of the most diverse movements in u s history in terms of the different classes it's  drawn from the different attitudes to different social groups racial groups ethnic groups you know people's position in society it really just motivated so many people throughout society and across the political spectrum also studied the tea party movement a good bit gone the tea party mean meetings and i think it's foolish to dismiss the tea party as a astroturf movement that's very much a real movement now of course they're they're just kind of doing the bidding of the corporate elite but nonetheless these people really believe it and the other part of it is it's why is it so hard to believe a lot of progressive's and left are always running around talking about how racist america is and so it's like ok you believe this country is totally racist but then why is it so hard to believe that you have this essential the racist movement the tea party movement that it is fundamentally racist it's a movement of older white conservative americans who want to essentially punish anyone they see as undeserving and they use coded language and that in terms  of immigrants in the you know which is refers to latino's people on welfare which is coding for african americans and yet they have absolutely no problem with the home interests mortgage deduction  which if you actually look at the subsidy there that is greater than all social programs combined apart from medicare or rather medicaid you know the the ability to deduct the interest from your taxes on on your mortgage and who's that betting benefiting it's largely benefiting the white middle class and so if you were really serious about cutting the budget deficit you would demand that this would be cut first of all but if we look at the i think recent history and by that i'm referring to post world war two u s history this is really the for first mass movement that puts class back on the agenda you know the we are the ninety nine percent the target of wall street the slogan the one percent which of course has been completely co opted by liberal groups and is kind of stealth the obama is using occupy language in trying to win reelection he would be having no traction against romney in terms of trying to paint him as this wealthy elitist who outsources jo is out of touch with average americans who's hiding all his wealth in overseas all of this comes from the occupy movement and the anger that it crystallize against the concentration of  economic and political power in this country now in terms of how occupy relates to other social movements like i said did the diversity i think is really remarkable the both ways right so i think you did get a lot of independents who were against the iraq war but really it was it was kind of the democrats and liberals who provided the bulk of people who would come out to the really big demonstrations like an east social movement of significance over the last fifty years it was organized by the left but the huge marches you know february fifteenth two thousand and three the one following cindy sheehan's encampment in september of two thousand and five all the various other demonstrations in the first part of two thousand and three you were only getting hundreds of thousands of people coming out if you were kind of getting liberals and independents coming out you know this was not something that was really opposed by republicans now the occupy movement as we went they're part of the movement everywhere tons of military veterans of course labor you would get a lot of ron paul types a lot of the and fed folks libertarians you know  it was really across the political spectrum and that's both great and problematic at the same time because it becomes very hard then to articulate a position beyond opposition you know how do you say what you're actually for if you have opinions ranging from conservative and libertarian to outer kissed and socialist you're going to get people at each other's throats the  cities and one of the interest things about it is it's very much an urban movement you know it's just like of course she would have occupy movements in small towns but it's not really a rural phenomenon but i think one of real things that deeply motivated it is it showed us that we lacked any sort of common public space any sort of democratic commons in this country and so it's been completely colonized by corporations you know you can go and then the city seattle is a perfect example you know why are you in downtown you're in downtown to consume it's not a space for actually vibrant public life if they're if there is any sort of public life it's come out of five it's a cultural festival it's a music festival and you have to pay admission and the thing about occupy i would stand on the steps of zuccotti park off and then it was kind of the eastern edge of it was elevated then you could stand up there and look down on everything below that would just really stand there and watch as hundreds of people would be in gauge in all these exchanges and they're exchanging bedding they're exchanging clothing there's food being given out there's a library health care counseling our music and just all this exchange and none of it was mediated by money of course you know the goods were donated so there's money at some point but in terms of that space itself there was no exchange of money whatsoever and it was just really stunning and really refreshing because you felt like you could breathe again it's like wow there is a different type of society that that is really possible that isn't just about like you know i want to buy this for that much you know and i think that's why it really captured people's imaginations that it showed them physically that we can live in a different world that we don't need corporations we don't need this state we don't need the mainstream media we certainly don't need the war on terror and the police state that we live under a rejection of everything in our governing apparatus and that really frightened the government and so you know this is i think a very different experience politically socially than  what we've been used to it in this country a very different type of movement and you know over time it started the contradictions started to really surface that that the occupations in a lot of cities became an end in and of themselves you know that is the decision making structure these general assemblies it's you know it's a nice ideal but how how functional is it to have a general assembly of five hundred people or even much less you know five thousand people or fifty thousand people there's no way that you're going to be able to come to any sort of agreement or real discussion because there's no way everyone can have their say beyond you know it may be if it's like you know fifty or one hundred people that's probably the outer limits where where you can have a genuine democratic form in terms of the way it's set up and so people were able to deal with the issue of representative democracy in any form and  because i think there's this kind of knee jerk hatred or at least contempt of it in our society because you know we have a representative democracy and look how disastrous it's turned  out but more i think the problem is you know do people really have control over this is the system in any case though i think it's really been remarkable for showing what are the possibilities that we can live in the very different type of society that isn't all about commodification commodifying our labor commodifying our housing our health care our education for the interests of private corporations but together people really can i think decide their lives a lot better than the supposedly experts we have to to listen well speaking of supposed representative democracy we have major presidential election coming up here we got our unceasing happening this next week one of the things in with rare exceptions that the occupy movement doesn't appear to have been engaged with is the electoral system see out here in seattle we have you know i think one candidate that's from occupy that's running at the state level do you see that is something that people should be getting engaged in and what do you see as the value of like third parties that are running in the  election i think you know martin luther king said that he was neither democrat or a republican and he said that for a very good reason that he was interested in changing something deeper rather than you know who's who's cast and in washington and it and here's the thing elections are about moving a candidate or at most a party movements move the whole system and occupy it really  it reshape the debate in a matter of weeks you know before occupy was anyone even talking about the one percent or than the ninety nine percent this wasn't even part of the political discourse and now it's become a standard part of political discourse and everybody knows what it is and obama is very much running an occupy wall street campaign even as the as they're using democrats you know are responsible because who's in charge of the cities it tends to be democratic mayors you know they're the ones who are attacking the occupy movement we know they've been coordinating with homeland security the f b i is ginning up these entrapment plots in cleveland  chicago and yet the way he's going after romney you know this guy is a wealthy elite is who wants to outsource jobs and doesn't care about average americans he's hiding all his money in the you know these shady overseas tax havens that he's basically saying everything but you know he is the one percent and then if you look at the groups who are doing the grunt work for the obama campaign  move on rebuild the dream organized labor they're constantly talking about this isn't about you know this is about the ninety nine percent versus the one percent they've been calling mitt romney mr one percent since last year they've been actually trying to co opt the occupy movement rebuild the dream move on and you essentially created this new movement called the ninety nine percent movement and to try and coast on the energy of the occupy movement and take it and turn it in to elections and i don't have a problem with with people you know if they want to go out and vote for obama you know this seems to be this is a debate every four years you know between like oh you know the democrats are so horrible and they of course they are horrible you know it's like we we are now in six or seven different wars because of this administration obama has done stuff bush and cheney never dreamed of this is he is asserting the right to extrajudicial and assassination of american citizens and then carrying it out the u s is still doing extraordinary rendition still still engaging in torture massive spying on the domestic front absolutely no progress an absolute mess of the mortgage crisis actually made it far worse with his policies they've basically kicked the labor right in the face attacking teacher genius and attacking the united auto auto workers doing absolutely nothing to get and even mildly reformist legislation passed to help labor labor organizing and you could go on and on and on and on and obama is really the third bush term but nonetheless the republicans are even scarier you know what i would argue is that we need to have a more sophisticated understanding what the democrats do is they take a right wing extremism and turn it in bipartisan consensus such as with the war on terror and then so what that means is the next iteration of the republican party gets more extreme and yeah you know romney and ryan would be really scary they will really try and do away with so security and medicare my opinion but of course obama has endorsed that for from day one a couple of weeks before his inauguration he called for entitlement reform which is nothing but code word for cuts so security and medicare you know and there's also this phenomenon of you know nixon going to china  the idea is like only this really gung ho warmonger could go to china only clinton could add and welfare you know the republicans can never end welfare could only take that economic standpoint where repeating the mistakes of the great depression all over again if you want a more recent example look at what's going on in europe but they're enforcing austerity policies and it's just been utter chaos and horrifying what's happening the countries like greece and spain and ireland and portugal and yet this is the policies that obama indoors so i think we do need more sophisticated understanding we need to put energy into independent movement building i'm not a big fan either of third parties because the field is just so tilted in favor of corporate interests i mean you know you can run third but the argument is well you run third party candidates for education to show people that there are different ideas and sure that's fine but in terms of actually trying to get people elected who are fundamentally different it  virtually never happens and secondly even if it does happens there are so constrained by other forces because the way that corporations control the media they control the lobbying process that once they get into power they become captive to all those interests the notion of pouring all this energy into elections is based on this false assumption that it's a level playing field when of course it's not well with that we are unfortunately out of time i want to thank you very much for coming and spending time with us this morning thank you