In the early hours of Wednesday morning, drones attacked a fleet of small boats bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Global Sumud Flotilla, as it’s known, is the latest group attempting to break Israel’s siege on Gaza to deliver food and medical supplies.
This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks to Tommy Marcus, who goes by Quentin Quarantino on Instagram, about the convoy enduring attacks on international waters as volunteers remain resolved to continue their mission to deliver aid to Gaza.
“It’s pretty jarring. I’m not going to lie. I’d love to put on this really tough, confident face and say I’m totally fearless. But I’m just a normal guy, and I’d expect and hope to live past 30,” says Tommy Marcus, who is among the roughly 500 volunteers in the convoy from 45 different countries. He adds, “There is truly no way to deter us, I suppose, unless they kill us. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”
Diana Buttu, the former legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization and an analyst on issues related to Palestine and Israel, says Israel’s blockade of all entrances to the Gaza Strip is illegal and that “Israel’s attacks on these flotillas are similarly illegal.” Uhl spoke to the Palestinian human rights lawyer about Israel escalating strikes on Gaza as the U.N. met this week and more Western countries recognize the Palestinian state — a gesture she calls hollow.
“This is an American Israeli genocide,” says Buttu. Donald Trump “could have easily ended this, but he’s choosing not to.”
“Everyone joined this mission because they’re so horrified by the genocide unfolding in Gaza and also the inaction of all of our governments around the world,” says Marcus.
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Transcript
Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jordan Uhl. For this episode, I really wanted to talk to my friend Tommy Marcus, who is on a boat headed to Gaza. The boat, along with about 50 others, are part of the Global Sumud Flotilla. The coordinated fleet of small boats are trying to break Israel’s siege on Gaza to deliver food and medical supplies.
But as we were texting, drones attacked the convoy. He said there were explosions.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the group reported on social media, “Over the past few hours, more than 15 drones have hovered above the Alma boat at low altitudes, appearing roughly every 10 minutes.”
Under the hue of a red light, steering committee member Yasemin Acr took to her Instagram.
Yasemin Acr: We are currently on the Alma. And we have sighted 15-16 drones — big drones — right above our vessel. And we were alone. And now we are joining the fleet again. And we have been informed that one of the sailing boats has been attacked by a drone.
JU: Moments later, she was back with another update.
YA: We just heard another attack. Right now. We know of five vessels that have been attacked by a bomb. You can clearly hear it. And again, another bomb was released. We do not know which vessel it is at this very moment. Raise the alarm. We are in international water, carrying only humanitarian aid. We have no weapons. We pose no threat to anyone. It is Israel who is killing thousands of people. It is Israel starving a whole population.
JU: The fleet, which includes about 500 volunteers, was attacked as it was leaving Greece. Organizers say there were no serious injuries or fatalities, but at least 10 vessels were damaged.
Almost two years into Israel’s war on Gaza, more than 65,000 people have been killed, nearly 30 percent of them children. In August, famine conditions were confirmed, where more than half a million people are trapped. And as of late September, 440 people have died of starvation.
Tommy took to social media too.
Tommy Marcus: This flotilla has journalists, it has activists, it has politicians, it has all peaceful people on board who are now coming to terms with their mortality. [Voice cracks.] And the truth is, no matter how hard they threaten us, we will not stop.
JU: Despite the attacks, Tommy joins me now. Tommy is a content creator under the pseudonym Quentin Quarantino on Instagram, where he has raised over $30 million for various humanitarian causes over the last several years.
Now, just a note, we’re speaking on Wednesday, September 24.
Tommy, thank you so much for joining me.
Where are you now, and how are you holding up?
TM: Jordan, it’s a pleasure to be on. Thanks so much for inviting me. We’re currently southeast of Crete and north of Libya, I think something like that. Somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea on the way to Gaza.
JU: So you’re just surrounded by water?
TM: Yes.
JU: It is a, I am sure, scary and tumultuous journey. There are moments of fear. Last night, as you and I were talking, your boat and the other boats were subject to attacks. Could you tell us what happened and how you and your crewmates get through those moments?
TM: Sure. I mean, I think it’s important to note that while we didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, we were seeing the rhetoric that the government of Israel was starting to use about our flotilla, including and up to calling us terrorists — and insinuating, and also specifically saying, that we are somehow violent over the past 48 hours.
So leading into last night, I wouldn’t say we were expecting all of a sudden explosions to go off, but we have been diligently training every day for potential lethal force used on us and how to handle that situation, how to stay calm, and how to make sure everyone on board stays safe.
And we’re lucky that we were doing that because last night, I believe the number was 13 total explosions. One sailboat was damaged to the point that it can no longer sail, and sadly has to leave the flotilla. It’s a genuine miracle that there weren’t severe injuries. That’s the best way to describe it.
There were many opportunities for people to be hurt, and the strikes were not intended to not harm people, I would say.
JU: Right. Now I want to zero in on that terrorist label they are assigning to this flotilla. Now, what is on this boat? What is the mission here? I think the contrast between their label and your mission really highlights this sinister branding exercise by the Israeli government.
TM: Yeah. So, first aboard this boat are members of European Parliament, other politicians like the former mayor of Barcelona, members of the press, prominent activists, and notably no one who’s ever been involved in any sort of violence.
And what we’re carrying on this ship? Notably, no weapons, nothing that could incur any sort of violence or harm onto any person. What we’re carrying on this ship is food, baby formula, and medicine for the people of Gaza who are being forcibly starved by Israel. So when you think about those three types of items and then look at the rhetoric that’s being used to describe what this flotilla is, I guess it was a little funnier yesterday before they started bombing us, but, you know, it’s laughable that they are continuing to put out on social media that we are a terror boat — that we are the “Hamas Flotilla,” I think is their favorite term right now. So it’s really crazy. Even though I knew that we were going to be subject to crazy lies and hasbara, seeing it in person, seeing it being played out is shocking to say the least.
JU: Now, this isn’t the first time the flotilla has been subject to attacks. Earlier this month, a couple boats in the flotilla were attacked with incendiary devices. Now what happened and what was their response then? How did they try to spin it?
TM: So the boat that I’m sitting on currently, Familia, was the first boat that was hit by an incendiary object dropped by a drone.
There were multiple eyewitnesses. The device that was dropped has been forensically analyzed by groups such as Bellingcat. So, within 20 minutes of that first attack, there were news headlines from the Times of Israel and outlets like that — like the state-run-type propaganda machine — saying that it was from a lit cigarette.
We luckily had enough surveillance footage that you could then see, a few hours later once we went through the footage, you could see a fireball being dropped. In addition to the humanitarians who watched the drone hover over them and then drop it on them. So then the lie turned into “We shot a flare at ourselves,” I believe, is what they started to go with.
JU: Now, all of the freedom flotilla efforts have previously been intercepted. Volunteers have been detained, and in 2010 Israeli commandos raided one in international waters and killed 10 activists. Now, how are you and the crew thinking through and preparing for these risks?
TM: Well, every member of this flotilla went through a three day nonviolence training and also assigned a code of conduct that involves the promise that our actions will be completely nonviolent.
So, you know, we’re prepared in that sense. And we also studied that 2010 attack. Of course it was a horrific thing. I don’t want to think that that’s going to happen, but of course it’s something that we have to think about, being intercepted. We are preparing very diligently to adequately convey the lack of threat that is this group of roughly 30 people on my boat, and I can say the same for the other boats that comprise this flotilla. So everyone is preparing daily and being briefed daily by people on land as well: on how to best convey the fact that there is no violence unless they hurt us.
And just to clarify that statement, the only violence that could possibly happen is the IDF hurting us. We have no means of harm and no intention of violence, and no matter what, there will be no violence. You know, if we were intercepted and they punched me in the face, I would just sit there.
JU: You posted a video on Instagram yesterday, and you mentioned how the escalating threats and smear campaign from Israel has led to you and others to think through your own mortality. I can’t imagine that’s something that has probably come up in your life before. Maybe it has, but in this moment, what has that process been like for you as you see what you’re doing as noble — I think many of our listeners, if not all of our listeners would agree — is a noble effort. But still, you’re thinking through something that is heavy that is dark, what has that been like?
TM: It’s pretty jarring. I’m not going to lie. I’d love to put on this really tough, confident face and say I’m totally fearless. But I’m just a normal guy, and I’d expect and hope to live past 30.
I just turned 30 a few days ago. And when these tweets started coming out with the violence — insinuations of us being violent and us being a threat — like being familiar enough with the way that Israel prepares the people who listen to them for unnecessary violence and killing, it became very obvious very quickly that OK, wow, it’s, you know, I did know what I was signing up for. I did know that I was taking a big risk. But you know, yesterday, it kind of came into full view. We were all sitting with our lifejackets all night with our boat rumbling from loud explosions. And as an influencer who talks a lot about politics, I’ve been subject to plenty of death threats over my career, right? But that’s from individuals and almost always unsubstantiated. So the difference here is that, as a United States citizen, also someone who’s half Jewish, coming to terms with the fact that the government of Israel is essentially issuing lightly put death threats toward me and other Americans on board, the Europeans, everyone on board — it’s a lot to take in.
I have to give credit to the people that I’m on board with. Because of course I’m taking a risk — but the risk that I’m taking, in my opinion, is less than some of the other people on board.
We have multiple Palestinians on board. One that comes to mind is Rima Hassan, the European Parliament member in France, who was born in Syria and raised in a refugee camp. She was on the last mission and spent five days in Israeli prison. Another person that comes to mind is Kieran Andrieu. He is a journalist for Novara Media. He’s a Palestinian British citizen. But most of his family lives in the West Bank, and the sacrifice that he is making not only supersedes the risk of his own physical well-being just because of his skin and his heritage. But also, he made the decision weeks ago that it was worth it to join this flotilla while knowing that, in all likelihood, he will never be able to visit his family in the West Bank again in his life.
So for me as someone, you know, I’m not married, I don’t have children. A lot of people here have children. I just looked up, and I’m looking at an Al Jazeera journalist I know who has young children. There’s different levels of risk and, of course, we’re all in the same level of danger when a bomb drops. But ultimately, I get a little uneasy when people are telling me how brave I am, when I’m looking around at these other people who are, in my opinion, like the bravest people in the world.
And they’re handling it with such grace. I think if I was sitting alone on this boat last night, I would’ve had a complete panic attack, meltdown. But there was this moment about an hour or two into the bombs when it became clear it wasn’t letting up anytime soon. And there was this moment where I was sitting in the kitchen area. And Rima Hasan, the Palestinian Parliament member, started cooking pasta for she and I.
And I just found that to be one of the most badass things that I’ve ever witnessed in my life because I was terrified, but I was also very hungry to be honest, and she just was continuing — these bombs were getting closer to us — and just kept making pasta. It was really delicious and it reminded me, you know, I’ve made a lot of Palestinian friends over the past few years, and there’s a certain amount of courage that, unfortunately, Palestinians are kind of required to have instilled in them. And that’s just like the tiniest example, but it’s something that I genuinely think I’ll never forget: that moment of Rima cooking the pasta.
JU: Could you talk about the commitment that is shared across all of these boats and across every single crew member? Despite these attacks, you are still continuing your mission to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza. Could you talk a little bit more about that shared sense of commitment?
TM: I can tell you very honestly, there was not a peep out of any of the 30 people on board last night as we were listening to bombs closing in on us about, like, OK, maybe we should not do this there. All that we could think is, “Let’s get through this so we can get to Gaza.”
There is truly no way to deter us, I suppose, unless they kill us. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen. Everyone joined this mission because they’re so horrified by the genocide unfolding in Gaza and also the inaction of all of our governments around the world. That it’s depressing that we all have to be here, but we all feel that if not us, then who? And I think that’s a shared feeling among every single member of the entire flotilla.
I don’t necessarily want to be on this boat. I don’t love sharing — we’re down to one working bathroom. No showers. But that all just kind of goes to the wayside when you think about the suffering that’s happening. As we’re speaking, I’m sure a Palestinian child is being targeted by an Israeli quadcopter. So, you know, it all becomes like the moments of fear, and the moments of, like, holy shit, I’m really like on the Mediterranean Sea being targeted by a genocidal, scary empire regime. Those moments are very fleeting because we all have just never felt such a calling to do something than this. And we all know how righteous this mission is and how important it is.
And of course, we don’t have enough aid to feed all of Gaza. We don’t have enough aid to feed half of Gaza. But the goal is that if this is a success and we open this humanitarian corridor, then we set a precedent where cargo ships could start delivering the food that Israel will not give to the Palestinians in Gaza.
And to that note, as I’m sure you’ve seen, they’ve been telling us, “Well, if you really want to feed the Palestinians, meet us at this stock point in Israel, we’ll take the aid and give it to them,” which is for anyone who’s been paying any attention, that’s absurd in many ways.
The food that is given, I think over close to 3,000, I believe, aid-seekers just in line for food that Israel has distributed to Palestinians — civilian aid-seekers — have been murdered since October 2023. So even if they were being completely serious, “OK, we’ll take this aid and hand it all over,” that would probably also include a couple IDF sniper shots to innocent people who are just trying to feed their family.
So there’s no reality in which we would accept those demands and hand over aid to Israel because we know what they’re doing and the whole world at this point knows what Israel is doing. The gig is up.
JU: Now to wrap, let’s talk about why you joined as an American Jew, you had a certain perspective and it’s been interesting to watch you question your own views or beliefs or understandings or assumptions over the past several months. Could you talk about what that process has been like and why you are sitting on this boat now?
TM: Yeah, so with my page, Quentin Quarantino, I’ve spent nearly six years raising money to help people, whether it be in Afghanistan or Hawaii or Texas, after a school shooting, like all around the world, Ukraine.
My goal ever since the first time I did a fundraiser and it went viral overnight, and I realized the power that I could have financially affecting righteous causes and quite frankly saving lives, it’s been my mission to help people. So I was raised in a very Zionist centric community. I was raised thinking that Israel was a necessity.
I knew that occasionally bad things happened in that region, but I was told by people I thought were smart and kind, that it was just kind of something because of the Holocaust that just had to happen.
As someone who like really takes the news and storytelling aspect of my page and amplifying voices that need amplification amongst my audience, I slowly started to realize, as I watch the genocide day by day, that quite frankly, I think it is the largest moral crisis of my lifetime. I needed to do something. And worst of all, I realized that the way that I talked about it for a long — too long — I was referring to it as like a horrible war. I wasn’t supporting Israel, but I was kind of following what Bernie Sanders would say and like not going an inch further than that and being really scared because people would accuse me of antisemitism. Even two years ago when I was posting the type of content that now I look at and I’m like, man, that is like, if anything, hurtful and dangerous rhetoric.
And so as I started to unlearn and talk to more Palestinians — and like I do in many situations where I’m trying to help in a situation where I am transparently not an expert and not claiming to be an expert — I reached out for help. I think the most important thing that I learned was that what’s happening right now is not because of October 7, and it’s not because Benjamin Netanyahu is an evil man. He is an evil man, but he’s a symptom, not a cause. This has been unfolding since 1948, and that was something that was very hard to come to terms with and something that I don’t think I really wanted to know. I think I intentionally kind of ignored those aspects because it was always told to me that if there was no Israel, all Jews in the world would die.
And, you know, talking about my hometown that has a really decent percentage of Israelis who live there and loves Israel, knowing that there’s a lot of places like that, and especially living in New York City for 10 years and having mostly Jewish friends — like, it’s this crazy myth that the Jewish people need to occupy a land that was already taken and, you know, creating an apartheid system and essentially torture people in order to be safe. It’s a lie.
And once I realized this, that’s when I was like, OK, I need to use my fundraising power. I need to raise as much money as I can. I need to do the normal activism that I’ve been used to doing in other situations for years now. And so I started to open my mouth, and I think most importantly, imperative for me when I started doing this kind of announced many times like I was really wrong and what the things that I was saying — for example, I was reposted by the government of Israel on October 8, 2023 — were genuinely harmful.
So I hope, I don’t know if it’ll happen, but my hope is that other activists, especially in the kind of moderate Democrat world, who don’t open their mouth about the genocide get encouraged to do similar things.
JU: Well, Tommy, wishing you the absolute best, wishing you safety and security as you continue your mission and wanted to thank you for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.
TM: Thanks so much, Jordan.
JU: That was Tommy Marcus who is on the Global Sumud Flotilla, heading to Gaza with humanitarian aid. After we spoke, he started drone watch duty for the night.
After a quick break, we hear from Diana Buttu, the former legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, an analyst on issues related to Palestine and Israel, and a policy adviser to Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.
Break
JU: The attack on the latest convoy attempting to bring humanitarian aid, comes as Israel has escalated strikes on Gaza with the goal of emptying the city of civilians.
A growing number of Western countries have come out in support of a Palestinian state in recent days as the U.N. meets this week.
Joining me now to discuss the latest is Diana Buttu. She is the former legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, an analyst on issues related to Palestine and Israel, and a policy advisor to Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She was also recently a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Diana, welcome to the Intercept Briefing.
Diana Buttu: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
JU: Now we just heard from someone who is on the Global Sumud Flotilla. He told us about the drones circling overhead and their fleet being attacked. How does this reflect the ongoing challenges of delivering humanitarian aid? And could you tell us about the legality of Israel’s blockade?
DB: So, Israel’s blockade is illegal. It’s illegal under international law, but you don’t need to be an international lawyer to know that withholding baby formula, water, food, et cetera, is immoral, unjust, and illegal. I mean, you don’t need to be a legal scholar to know that, but that said, it is illegal.
And so Israel’s attacks on these flotillas are similarly illegal. What Israel has done and this is really important, is that it’s set up a system in which everything has to be checked by Israel — by the Israeli army. So there’s no way that anything can get into Gaza unless it is checked by the Israeli army.
And this has been going on now for decades, not just since 2023, but for decades. And this is why there have been chronic shortages within the Gaza Strip of everything from food supplies to medical supplies and so on. Now, since 2023, since October of 2023, what Israel has done is they took a policy, they decided, and they were very open about it, in saying that they weren’t going to let in any food, any fuel, any water, any electricity, nothing. Those were the exact words of the then-Minister of Defense, who, by the way, is now wanted for war crimes for starvation. And indeed, they have not allowed any of these supplies to come in en masse. What they are allowing in is just a trickle of supplies, but certainly not enough to be able to meet the needs of the entire Gaza Strip.
And the other thing that they’re doing is they’re only allowing enough to get into certain parts of the Gaza Strip. So they’re tying what aid is coming in to the areas that they want to be ethnically cleansed. So if they want an area to be ethnically cleansed, such as in the north, they’re not allowing any aid to come in there.
This is why these flotillas are trying to break that siege and trying to get aid in so that there isn’t the Israeli thumb on all of the goods that are coming in. And to be clear, Israel has blocked everything even before October of 2023.
I mean, they’ll put arbitrary rules on things that cannot come in. At one point in time, they had blocked coriander from coming in, and at other points in time, they had a specific caloric intake of what they deemed enough calories for humans. And so this is why the flotilla has been trying to break this blockade because the global community, the international community, the international diplomatic community as we know it has failed.
JU: Now the U.N. is meeting this week. But before we get to that, could you update us on Israel’s latest military escalation in Gaza?
DB: So what Israel has been doing is they have been nonstop bombing Gaza, with on average about 100 Palestinians being killed a day. In addition to killing 100 Palestinians a day, they’re also dropping leaflets now in places like Gaza City because their aim is to ethnically cleanse the entire north — northern part of the Gaza Strip — and that includes Gaza City. And so the Israeli army has been going around and demolishing — blowing up actually — high-rise buildings. And one night last week, because they blew up so many structures, they made 6,000 people who already had been homeless, they made 6,000 people homeless again. These were 6,000 people who had been sheltering in U.N. compounds, U.N. schools, et cetera.
So the Israelis are now systematically going around building by building in Gaza City and blowing up pretty much anything that they can, and they’ve made it clear that they’re going to continue to do this all throughout the north, that they’re going to continue to occupy the northern part of the Gaza strip and push people down to the south.
The fear is, of course, that in pushing people down to the south, that this is going to be a continuation of their ethnic cleansing policy. And to be clear, again, to be perfectly clear, when they tell people to move south, it’s not as though the south is safe either, because these are also areas that the Israelis are bombing.
So, as it stands now, more than 80 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip is confined to less than 18 percent of the land of the Gaza Strip. Before October 2023, it was already the most densely populated place on Earth, and now it’s just that much more.
JU: Now turning to the U.N., President Donald Trump spoke on Tuesday where he claimed that he is “deeply engaged in seeking a ceasefire in Gaza,” but that “Hamas has repeatedly rejected reasonable offers to make peace.”
What do you make of Trump’s remarks and the administration’s role in the conflict, especially considering Israel has repeatedly killed negotiators?
DB: So, you know, it’s exactly the opposite of what he said. One of the things that I found fascinating, he, in that same speech, he mentioned that he has stopped seven wars.
JU: OK.
DB: You know, I’m not so sure about that [laughs]. But there’s one more that he actually can stop, and that’s this. And the one that he can actually stop being this, is by simply stopping the flow of weapons to Israel, and by demanding that Israel stop its bombing campaign. It’s as simple as that.
But instead what he has done is, he’s now twice in a span of three months bombed the very people who are involved in the negotiations. He did it the first time in Iran, and the second time he bombed Qatar. The very people who’ve been serving as mediators, who’ve allowed the Israelis to come and come to Doha and have been sitting as mediators, as negotiators, as helping them.
And he goes ahead, and he allows the Israelis to bomb them. And so this is the one war that he has the ability to actually stop, and instead he has been the leader that has let it go on and on and on. And, you know, there’s a debate that goes on in Israel, and it’s gone on in Israel for a very, very, very long time about who is in charge.
Is it that the United States is in charge, or is it that Israel’s in charge? This is an internal Israeli debate of who’s the boss, who’s stronger, et cetera. What’s become very clear, at least amongst Israelis and the thinking that Israelis have is that Israel is in charge. I’m not so sure. I still think that America is in charge, and because it’s America that’s in charge, you know, this is an American-Israeli genocide. He could have easily ended this, but he’s choosing not to because America has put its hand in the hand of Israel and believes in genocide and continues to push for this genocide.
JU: This week, France became the latest country to formally recognize a Palestinian state after the U.K., Canada, and Australia did over the weekend.
The U.S. is the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to not recognize the Palestinian state.
DB: Yeah.
JU: How significant though, are these recognitions?
DB: You know, these are hollow. These are ringing hollow. I mean, they’re recognizing Palestine at the same time that Palestine and Palestinians are being erased. And there’s something so troubling about all of this. I can get into the significance of recognition, but I don’t think that’s as important as is the idea that these powers have failed Palestinians.
The ways in which they have failed Palestinians is just countless. There’s just so many ways they have in their toolbox the ability to end genocide and instead of ending genocide, they’re throwing this crumb our way of saying, “Oh, well, we recognize you” at a time when the Israelis are literally erasing us from the map. So instead of all of the fanfare that they think they should be getting for recognition, they should be looking at themselves very hard in the mirror and holding their heads in shame for the fact that they’ve let a genocide continue for two years.
You know, genocide is the highest crime that there is, and again, you don’t need to be an international lawyer to know this, you don’t need to sign up to the Genocide Convention. It demands that everybody do everything to stop genocide, and their response to stopping genocide is to stand before the U.N. and say that they recognize Palestine, it just rings so hollow. It rings so hollow, and it just shows how for decades, instead of these countries listening to Palestinians and recognizing the threat that Israel poses to us and to our lives. Instead, they coddled Israel, and that’s the part that is so deeply troubling to me.
JU: Could you explain a little bit more what these countries specifically could do? Like what could Mark Carney do? What could Keir Starmer do? We know the U.S. could withhold weapons and aid. As hollow as these gestures are, what more should they be doing?
DB: So there’s a few things. The first is that Europe is Israel’s largest trading partner. It’s not the United States, it’s Europe. So one of the things that they could be doing is to be cutting their trade ties with Israel.
A second thing that they could be doing is to be imposing sanctions on them. A third thing that they could be doing is to be making sure that Israel isn’t represented in any sporting events, in Eurovision, in any of the things where it’s appearing normal. A fourth thing that can be done — and these are all things, by the way, that were done in the case of South Africa — is that they could withdraw the credentials of the Israeli representative to the United Nations.
So these are things that can and should be done, but they’re not going to do that. Oh, and you know, and then there’s of course the number one thing is an arms embargo. When you think about the weapons that Israel’s getting, for example, the F-35 — one of the things with the F-35 is that different parts of it come from different countries. And just by imposing an arms embargo, it makes sure that Israel can’t get some of the most brutal weaponry.
And so all of this can be done, but it’s not going to be done because the point has always been to give Israel a little bit of a carrot and to kind of, you know, here’s a cookie. If you’re good, we’ll give you another cookie. With this theory that if they just do more for Israel, if they give more to Israel, then somehow Israel is going to listen to the world. Israel has never listened to the world. Israel doesn’t care. Israel doesn’t care about the international community, doesn’t care about any of this stuff.
So instead, these countries are going to say how much they appreciate us and how they recognize us. And they’ll change their address and they’ll change their logo, and they’ll change their letterhead. But beyond that they’re not going to do anything. And again, we’re going to see that they’re going to hold their heads in shame, years from now.
JU: Now on Tuesday, an inquiry from the U.N. said, “The Israeli government has demonstrated a clear and consistent intent to establish permanent control over the Gaza Strip while ensuring a Jewish majority in the occupied West Bank and inside Israel.” That is a very grim assessment. You were a negotiator during the Second Intifada; do you now believe that a two-state solution or peace are possible anymore? What are your hopes for the future of Palestine and the Palestinian people?
DB: You know, I didn’t think a two-state solution was possible even back then. I want to back up a little bit. People talk about the death of the two-state solution as though there was like some date and there was a date. And that date was 1967. And the reason that that date is 1967 was because that was when the first Israeli settlement went up. And when that first Israeli settlement went up, and there was never a challenging of this ideology of superiority, and challenging the ideology that Israel can take land — then that becomes the death of the two-state solution. And so that death happened long, long, long ago.
Now, there were attempts to mask that over the years. There was a push. We heard so many world leaders try to push Palestinians to say, “You have to recognize Israel, and there has to be a two-state solution.” And so they pushed Palestinians. And Palestinians recognized Israel, the Palestinian leadership, and they signed Oslo.
And you know what’s fascinating is that we’ve yet to hear an Israeli leader who talks about the two-state solution, or the Palestinian state. In fact, it’s the opposite. Each and every Israeli leader has made it clear that they will never give back all of the territory that they occupied in 1967, including Yitzhak Rabin. His last speech before the Knesset, before he was assassinated, he made very clear that they’re never going to give up all of the land and that they’re always going to have that permanent control. And so, you know, that ship sailed long, long, long ago.
For me as a Palestinian being involved in those talks and those negotiations, they call it negotiations in the sense of like peace negotiation. There was no peace that was being discussed. It was mostly about what life is going to be like in the future. And it was abundantly clear from the very first meeting that I ever had until the very last meeting that I ever attended, that it was always going to be about levels of control.
And what Israel was always seeking was a surrender agreement with Palestinian acceptance to that surrender agreement. And by surrender agreement, I’m not just talking about like, “Oh, we give up,” but this idea that they will forever rule over our lives and we have to accept it and we have to be grateful for it, and no matter what they do, we can’t complain about it. So like more and more and more and more.
And so when I look to the future, it’s grim. It’s very, very, very grim because that ideology has never been challenged. And today when I look around, I listen to my neighbors here in Haifa, and I see and read what is written, and I watch the news, it’s a horror show. It’s horrifying because again, instead of that ideology being challenged — this ideology that they can commit genocide — they feel very emboldened. They feel very, very, very emboldened.
JU: I want to thank you so much for your work, for your advocacy, for your insight, and thank you for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.
DB: My pleasure. It’s been my pleasure.
JU: That does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing.
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