This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Israel has renewed its attacks on southern Lebanon, killing at least 12 people, threatening to further unravel Israel’s truce with Hezbollah. With the latest attacks, the U.N. says Israel has committed more than 100 ceasefire violations since agreeing to a ceasefire last week.
Meanwhile, Israel has continued its unrelenting assault on Gaza, with attacks on the northern town of Beit Lahia today that killed at least eight people. Twenty others are wounded. In Gaza City, dozens of civilians are feared trapped under the rubble of a four-story building leveled by an Israeli airstrike. On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the situation in Gaza “appalling and apocalyptic” and said Israel may be guilty of the “gravest international crimes.”
We’re joined now by the Israeli journalist and activist Haggai Matar. He’s an executive director of +972 Magazine and conscientious objector who refused to serve in the Israeli army. He has a new piece in The Nation out today, “For Those Who Know They Have Not Done Enough to Stop Israel’s War on Gaza.”
It’s nice to have you in studio. We usually speak to you in Tel Aviv, Haggai.
HAGGAI MATAR: It’s good to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: So, elaborate on that title in The Nation, the piece that you just wrote, for those who do not feel they’ve done enough.
HAGGAI MATAR: Sure, Amy. So, first, it started from a Yom Kippur reflection on myself of why have I not done enough. I’ve been running +972, co-directing Local Call in Hebrew, trying to fight for the rights of Palestinians and push back against the horrific acts of massacre and ethnic cleansing my country has been committing in Gaza. And yet it feels like it’s just not enough. And why have we not done enough? What could we possibly do more? So it started with a very personal reflection, trying to analyze the reasons of not doing enough, and then saying, “Well, we have to commit. We have to double down.”
And especially now with the upcoming Trump presidency, I think this is also a call to Americans saying your government is clearly not going to get any better at this in the near future. We need people on the ground mobilizing and taking action, supporting medias, trying to move the needle and pressuring Israel into ending these atrocities.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Haggai, I wanted to ask you about the International Criminal Court’s historic decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. In a statement, the ICC said that the Israeli leaders had, quote, “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival.” And how was this news received within Israel? And do you think it will have, in the long term, a major impact on Netanyahu and the policies of his government?
HAGGAI MATAR: Well, thank you, Juan. One of the most heartbreaking realities of the situation is that Israelis don’t get the news that everyone else in the world is getting, the images from Beit Lahia and from Jabaliya, the just atrocities that we’re seeing there, the death, the destruction, the starvation. That is not being shown on Israeli television, in Israeli newspapers.
And therefore, when something like this comes out, a decision from the ICC, basically, the response, from wall to wall — we’re talking about the entire Zionist politics, so that’s about 110 out of 120 members of the Knesset are just saying this is an antisemitic court, this is antisemitic media, like everyone is antisemitic, and, of course, you know, just offering complete support to Netanyahu, even the people who hate him the most.
An exception to that has been, in recent days, Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, a former chief of staff, was actually the chief of staff that sent me to two years in prison for his war crimes, now saying, “Yes, these warrants are justified.” The prime minister —
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to that —
HAGGAI MATAR: Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure.
AMY GOODMAN: — for one minute, the clip of the former defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and committing war crimes in Gaza. Again, served as the defense minister of Netanyahu from 2013 to ’16, made the accusations over the weekend in main television interviews on Channel 12, for example, one of Israel’s biggest TV channels.
MOSHE YA’ALON: [translated] To occupy, to annex, to cleanse, ethnic cleansing, look at the northern Gaza Strip and settle a Jewish settlement. That’s the point. … There is no Beit Lahia. There is no Beit Hanoun. They are operating in Jabaliya and are essentially clearing the area of Arabs.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s a main Israeli channel, not actually Channel 12, Israel’s former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Haggai Matar, does he speak to the Israeli public? And explain more the significance of who he is.
HAGGAI MATAR: So, Ya’alon was the chief of staff in the Second Intifada. That’s when I refused the draft because of his war crimes. We were at the time chanting at him, “One day we’ll see you at The Hague.” We never imagined it would be as a witness for the prosecution. To suddenly see him talking about the same sort of actions that he was doing, but clearly much, much worse right now, the ethnic cleansings, the starvation that he’s enforcing, is absolutely incredible.
He’s doing it as part of his attempt to fight against the Netanyahu drive for authoritarianism, so he’s been very active in the kind of so-called Israeli protests for democracy even before the war in Gaza. That has been his policy. I think he connects the dots, as one should, between the attack on democratic institutions inside of Israel and the ethnic cleansing and massacre and war crimes against Palestinians.
However, unfortunately, in interviews where he’s been going on Israeli television, basically, from wall to wall, journalists have been saying, “Are you mad? You are just endangering our soldiers. What are you talking about? There’s no war crimes.” So, because viewers don’t have the context of what has actually been happening, he just sounds like a madman to many people. But I do think it does cause some people pause to think, “Why would someone with his credentials make such serious accusations?”
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