Transcription
Let's talk about Israel, Ryan. A new video from October 7th, including uh, this Ben Gvir, right?
Right. Ben Gvir showing up in this video, and we'll, um, we'll kind of read some of the, because it's, it's in Hebrew. So, there's a documentary crew, who's, or news crew who's in there filming on the morning of October 7th, as the army is putting together its its plan for a counterattack and for a defense and then a, and then a counterattack. So, let's, let's roll this and then we can kind of read it for you right now.
One person says, "I would bomb the entire Gaza border. Hit them with a blow." Uh, so they'd have a real problem. It looks like they're on it. Somebody else says, "I wrote this to Amir. They're not even getting fighter helicopters." He said, "No, on Gaza, break it all apart along with the soldiers who were abducted."
Yeah. Like that, that, and the helicopters were then, were, were dispatched. And you see a lot of the result, um, of what those helicopters did. Uh, and then Ben Gvir comes in and says, "Wait, wait. Um, are you filming me? You could film when I give you permission. Please take this out."
So they, that's, that's when they, they shut that down. We, we know we have other evidence of there being hostage situations in a kibbutz where they, they just with a tank shell, everyone in there.
Yeah. Killing, killing the Israelis inside as well. There's all these, you know, infamous uh photos of cars that have uh that were fleeing the, um, the Nova rave, just completely burnt to a crisp.
Yeah. And we also know that the Palestinian fighters came across the border with, you know, AK-47s.
The Hamas. Yeah. They, not the kind of thing that could torch like an entire row of cars.
Like there was shelling in the morning. Some shelling from Gaza could, could, if you, if a, a shell directly hits a car. Okay. But an entire highway filled with cars.
Um, and there has been some footage of from the from the Apaches of them hitting, hitting cars, unsure, unsure whether or not there were hostages inside.
I thought the government actually admitted or conceded that in a small way that didn't happen.
In a small way. Now we have this footage of of them basically saying, "Just do it." And if you, and if you hit the people who, the Israelis who were abducted, that's part of it. This is the so-called Hannibal doctrine, which says that it's better.
Explain that, because that's what's.
Yeah, the Hannibal doctrine. It says that if there is a potential of a hostage situation or a prisoner of war situation, that it is better to kill all the Palestinians and the Israeli they're trying to take hostage, then get into a place where you're negotiating a prisoner exchange. So it is more important, on according to this doctrine, for the Israeli, the Israelis to continue to hold men, women, and children in administrative detention in torturous conditions, than it is to let an Israeli live and then enter into negotiations in which some of those people that you're holding without charge and torturing on a daily basis are released. And this is, of course, as Israeli elections are huge.
Yeah. And in 2016, they said they were no longer, um, that the Hannibal doctrine, it's too, it's bad. We're not doing that. It's terrible.
Clearly, they're still doing it. And again, we're coming up on three years since October 7th, and now that there's an election around the corner in Israel, I don't think it's, I would be surprised if it was coincidence this was dropping at that this time, because I mean, Netanyahu's coalition is that including Ben Gvir and Smotrich and the like, is one of the biggest complaints about Netanyahu. And so it seems like that would be timed in a particular way to hurt the election.
Yeah, I, I don't, I would imagine it, this will problem. You would hope. There are people on the Israeli right who support this policy. Certainly. Uh, yeah. But I mean, Netanyahu has a lot to answer for on October 7th.
Right? Yes. Focus on his October 7th is not great for him, period.
No, not, not whatsoever. And meanwhile, Ryan, I'm eager to get your take on this, because the publisher over at, uh, Drop Site has been informed she's no longer a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists. So we can put the, uh, next element up on the screen. And a lot of this is going once again right back to Israel, Palestine. What the heck is happening here?
So the, the CPJ is under, has been under a lot of pressure, to, um, redo the way that it counts journalists, um, who've been killed in in Gaza by Israel. Um, and so they, there was this internal debate over, over how they're going to do this. And at the core of the, the core of the debate is, what about a journalist? Forever. The way that CPJ has done it, and they're more restrictive than other organizations, has been to say, what you do is what matters. If you are performing journalism, you're not fighting.
Right? You have a video camera, you have pen and paper, observer, you're writing and or producing video, uh, for a news outlet or for freelance. You, you're a journalist. And if, and we are the Committee to Protect Journalists, and we are here to protect you.
What Israel has been arguing is that there are certain news organizations that are linked to what they say are terror groups, and what the US and Israel designate as terror groups. So pretty much every, pretty much every political faction in Gaza, uh, is designated as a terror group by either Israel or the United States or both. And pretty much every party has a news affiliate, just like Israel has state media, Israel has, um, Israeli army radio, which is has employs a lot of journalists. Uh, the BBC is, you know, owned by the UK. There's NPR and PBS, but I guess that's, there's state money going. Maybe the federal government doesn't fund them as much as they did, but you get the idea. There's RT, for instance, Russia Today funded.
There's Turkish state media. Like the idea of, of state media or affiliated media is a, is a very common thing. And so, organizations like CPJ have always drawn a very bright line that have said, just because you have a problem with Turkey or with Britain or with the United States or with Israel, does not mean you have license to kill a journalist who works for an affiliate of the of the British government or the American government, the Israeli government, or or Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or PFLP, like Palestine Today, like if, just because you write for a news organization that is affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad or in southern Lebanon, you recently had, um, several journalists that were killed because they said, "Well, you, you're working with, you're working for a news organization that's affiliated with Hezbollah or has sympathies with Hezbollah."
Terrorists, right?
Yeah. And the, the distinction has always been, no. If you're a journalist, y, doesn't matter if you work for RT. Like Ukraine, for instance, would not be, uh, allowed to kill a journalist for RT.
Right? Simply because they work for RT. You can disagree with that, and Ukraine might try to kill them, right? But if you're the Committee to Protect Journalists, your job is to protect the journalists, not to defend what they say, who they say it on behalf of, whether or not their their columns that they write are are good or fair or even accurate. Like that's, it's not for CPJ to determine. It's like, it was that the Voltaire quote. You know, I don't agree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it. But applied to journalists. I don't. And so what they're, what, what Israel is saying, no, no, if they're affiliated with any of these terrorist organizations that we call terrorist organizations.
Non-state. That's what they would say. It's different than Russia or Ukraine. It's a non-state terrorist group.
Well, I think Ukraine would say it's not, they they consider Russia to be terrorist.
Right? So why should then Russian journalists be. Which is what's hairy about CPJ then? And the other Nika made the point, um, in, um, internally, uh, uh, that the ANC was considered, considered a terror group. The African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's group, was designated a terrorist group until like 2008 or something like that.
And, and of course, they had, a journalist, they had a media wing. So if the, you know, white South Africans consider Nelson Mandela's organization to be a non-state terror group, should they then be able to kill journalists? Like bomb a journalist tent, um, and kill everyone in it because there's one person that writes for the ANC linked, uh, organization. The civilized world has settled this question with a resounding no. No, we're not doing this. And so now there's real pressure on CPJ. Um, Nika asked for a vote on this internally. That's, uh, and then they responded by saying, "Oh, by the way, we have your term is up."
And she's like, "Well, I resigned in protest anyway."
Convenience. You can't, can't fire me. I quit.
Right. Right. Um, so, you know, and good for Nika for, you know, standing up for the kind of essence of what CPJ is supposed to do. Protect. It's in the name. It's a committee to protect journalists.
Um, and as we can put what Middle East Monitor is reporting here, this is going to be, uh, yeah, D3. Uh, this comes obviously as they report, Israel has killed more journalists than in any other modern conflict. And I think that is a reference to CPJ's numbers. I think that's per CPJ's prior reporting. They have actually lower numbers than some of some other organizations because they have a tighter, um, they have a tighter definition.
You've also now, if now if somebody wants to say this particular journalist was actually a fighter, right? And they want to present evidence to that. Okay, fine. Like present.
Which they have in certain cases.
Yeah. And then go ahead and present that. Go ahead and present that evidence. That's different than saying all journalists who work for any news organization that's affiliated with somebody you don't like are fair game to be killed. Somebody, some people have, um, responded by posting, uh, photos of Israeli journalists sitting on tanks, wearing, uh, military uniforms, holding weapons, because, you know, almost every Israeli journalist has served in the IDF at some point.
Mhm. Um, some are in, in the reserves as they're doing it, and others have on air participated in firing weapons and detonating civilian homes. Like they'll, they'll film themselves like pressing the button.
And the contrast between that and what they, what they then accuse the Palestinians of is so stark. There's also something about, there's also a dehumanizing element to it. Like one of the journalists that they killed, who was a legendary journalist for 20 plus years, um, he visited a, a, I think it was a Hamas kind of training camp, and with a bunch of other journalists, reported on it, and while there, took some photographs like with a bazooka. That's the kind of thing that every American journalist when they go to visit a military base, they do that. Go look at any American journalist, like Twitter is like, they'll, like sit on a tank. They'll, like pose with the soldiers. Like it's almost childish. Like they think it's kind of cute and cool to like get these little souvenir photos of themselves like sitting on a tank.
Yeah. But we understand because we understand that they're human, that that's, that's just what it was. They were in their journalistic capacity. They were visiting an American military base, took a picture on a tank. That does, that does not make them a tank commander. But because we don't see Palestinians as fully human, we just see this flat portrait. If we see a Palestinian on a tank, or we see a Palestinian holding a weapon, um, we say, "Oh, terrorist." Obviously terrorist. Doesn't matter when they held it, why they held it, what's going on, because there's no full portrait of the person as a person.
Right. Right. It's just, oh, Palestinian, probably a terrorist. Oh, now we have a picture of them with a gun.
Right? And then you'll have these like Eton Fishberger and others like will post that picture of the person.
On Twitter. Until they are hunted and killed, with, you know, just completely decontextualized. And then when they're hunted and killed, they'll repost that photo and be like, "Look, we got, we got another terrorist." It's like, "No, you didn't. You killed an unarmed civilian journalist, who at one point in his life was near a weapon."
That's all. Of course, it's been hard for us to even know what's happening in Gaza because the journalists that are there, the people are observing it there.
Yeah. Of course. Of course. And, and it's the goal is for us to not know what's what's being done.
Yeah. I mean, at this point, unfathomable, uh, lack of access. That's also inexplicable from just a, you really cared about people having the ability to document and observe and see what's happening on the ground, because you think it suits your purposes, you think it makes your argument look correct, then this decision makes no sense.
Right? Uh, well, let's move to Colombia, Ryan, where Wid Roas is reporting.
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