Sunday, June 30, 2024

Idiot of the week

First up, BURN IT DOWN WITH KIM BROWN.



Second, Idiot of the Week.


The media and the dumb bitches that enable it.


What am I talking about?  Joe Biden might or might not drop out of the race.  If he doesn't drop out, a large number of you spent Friday, Saturday and today trying to elect Donald Trump.  


Your garbage is not welcome.


Hey, Owen Jones, I'm looking at you.  Shut your f**king pie hole.  You're not an American, you don't live in this country.  The only reason I've listened to you in the past is because of the plight of the Palestinians.  I don't need you -- foreigner -- doing a segment with your 'thoughts' on the debate.  Nor do I see how your attacks on Joe -- which pimp Donald Trump -- help Palestinians.  Joe's not the one who moved the Embassy in Israel, for example.  Joe's not the one in the debate Thursday night who made vile comments about Palestinians.


I need you to shut your damn mouth, that's what I need from you.


And that goes for so many.  


Instead of addressing reality -- all the lies Donald told in the debate, all the things Project 2025 hopes to destroy -- you made the debate into a gossip game that hurt the country's chances in November.


I'm not in the mood for you.


I'm not in the mood for gleeful Glynneth Greenwald who took time out from douching his bussy to trash Joe Biden.  Glynneth, no one ever needed you and that's only more true today.  Good luck cruising but grasp that you got so lucky with David and no one else will ever love you again.  Just look in the mirror and see how hideous you are.  I read this to my brother (I have three brothers and four sisters and I'm referring to my brother who is gay) and he wanted to add something:


Glynneth Greenwald, you're old and wrinkled, you look like a hag, you've got a non-existent bony ass with no junk in the trunk despite your increasingly pendulous boobs.  All the while you're using box coloring from a supermarket on your ugly hair.  There is no one else for you.  Prepare to pay for it -- more likely, prepare to continue paying for it the rest of your life.  Your outsides have become as ugly as your insides and no man's ever going to love you again.  Especially when they grasp that while David was dying in a hospital,  you were abandoning him to create your crap-ass podcast.


Well said.  And remember that Glynneth lives in Brazil.  But apparently Brazil's not important enough for him to do his show on.  Not enough grift in it for him so he focuses on the US.   


I'm sick of all of them.  In a class I took in poli sci, they talked about media moments that really weren't and how they effected elections.   One example was George H.W. Bush in the 1992 election suppoosedly not understanding technology:


The "supermarket scanner moment", that Bush had been too out-of-touch with common people to understand a quotidian supermarket scanner, became an enduring American political myth, still alive after many years despite widespread refutation.[5][7] One version of the myth places Bush in a supermarket rather than at a convention.[5] The Washington Post credits the myth's persistence to human psychological propensity to remember stories that feel plausible and to not forget debunked stories.[7] Retrospectively analyzed, the myth had exacerbated negative impressions of Bush while he was already blamed for the country's handling of the early 1990s recession and defending against an election primary opponent.[2][1] As the public already suspected that he did not do his own shopping, wrote Snopes, the situation was a ready recipe for portraying Bush as unfamiliar with both managing the economy and how people bought groceries.[1] Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg described the incident as "politically devastating" for the president,[8] whose popularity declined in public polls in the lead-up to the general election he would lose that year.[9][1] Bush's press secretary Marlin Fitzwater dedicated four pages of his memoir to lambasting the media coverage of the event.[2]


The after the debate coverage should have been about all the lies that Donald Trump made.  They were aired.  They needed to be fact checked.


But that requires work and doesn't involve created drama.  So instead we got three days of Joe Biden maybe should step down.


I think he won the debate and I'm not the only one who feels that way.  But let's say he lost: One debate.  That's all it would have been.  So can we focus on all the lies Donald Trump spewed.  Or do we just let lies go unchallenged and become 'facts' because the media is too stupid and lazy to do their damn job?


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Friday, June 28, 2024.  Trump lies, democracy dies.



Last night, US President Joe Biden and Convicted Felon Donald Trump took the stage for a debate.  The media's reaction is fear and glee.  Some are in panic over Donald Trump's nonsense.  You've got conventional wisdom Thomas Friedman calling for Joe to step down from the pages of THE NEW YORK TIMES.  You've got Glynneth Greenwald grunting away as he tries to ride El Torro to orgasm -- little Glynneth, don't you know you can't orgasm while wearing a cage?  And the whorish Megyn promotes her debate special via a photo of her with her legs spread.


These are the whores of our political culture.



If Donald Trump had faced a halfway plausible and competent adversary, tonight’s debate would have marked the death of the former president’s hopes for returning to the White House. Simply put, Trump gave the second-worst debate performance of any major candidate for president, but… He repeatedly made outrageous and offensive lies, such as his claim that overturning Roe v. Wade was “something everybody wanted.” (In point of fact, polls show 65 percent of Americans opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion.)


Is that what we're dealing with?

A gross stupidity on the part of the pundits?  We knew both men going in.  We saw what we expected.  Two elderly men.  One a lot kinder and one was a raving lunatic who should never again be given nuclear codes.

This is not a defense of Joe Biden as a candidate.  If the party decides to replace him, go for it.  Gavin Newsom would get my vote absolutely.  Robin Eply (SACRAMENTO BEE) makes the case for him here.   David Sirota's choice of Josh Shapiro?  Yes,  Whomever is at the top of the Democratic ticket has my vote in 2024.  I said that in 2023 to disclose it so anyone reading here knew where I was coming from.  And I've said that since the race was supposedly over because it's not over. 

I'll vote for whomever is at the top of the ticket on the Democratic Party side in 2024.  That's not something I've ever said before in any other election.  I hope I never have to say it again in my life.  But, for me, there is no choice in this election. 

And if people want a stronger candidate for this fall, I hear you.  Get it together, make it happen.  Joe was not my choice in the 2020 field.  

But it looks like the issue isn't Joe, it looks like the issue is unrealistic expectations.

Ava and my "And the winner was . . . Joe Biden (Ava and C.I.)" went up an hour after the debate ended -- would've been sooner were it not for FLICKR issues -- the screen snaps wouldn't show, we had to sign up for five different photo sharing apps before we found one that actually worked and I can't tell you what it is because I can't remember -- at one point we were trying DEVIANT ART because I'd heard such good things about it from friends who are photographers -- I don't know what they're judging on, as soon as we were registered and ready to upload, we realized that service wasn't going to work.  We tried IMAGESHACK as well.  I can't tell you which one finally worked.  Elaine says it was POST IMAGE.  I'm sure she's right.

I don't get what you think was going to happen other than what happened.

He's an elderly man.  Did you think he was coming out hopped up on drugs?  What did you think was going to happen?

Joe did a solid job for Joe Biden.  He wasn't going to transform into the 2008 Barack Obama.  If you thought that, you were very wrong.

He struggled in the beginning (and I would note we saw the worst microphone issues since MOTOWN 25) and he got better as it went along.  As he was talking America, it got better and better.

And, no, Donald did not win.

You don't win a debate in the US by insulting the US.  He said vile and disgusting things about this country and he bragged about himself -- Donald was Donald.

Joe was Joe.

And Joe's responsible for his performance.

Jeet's upset with CNN's moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper.  

Don't know why.  Is he using 2012 as his bar?  

That's the year heavyweight Candy Crowley injected herself into the debate.  She felt the need to fact check Mitt Romney, she felt the need to fact check his statements, she felt the need to stop him before he finished a sentence and fact check where she suspected he was going to go with his sentence had she let him speak.

That was appalling and I said that in real time.

Was I supporting Mitt?  No.  

I'm not going to lie about my opinion.

I'm not Katha Pollitt on a list serv in 2008 fretting over how good I think Sarah Palin's doing and then, days later, showing up at THE NATION with a column about how bad Sarah did.  

Now my opinion can be wrong, I can be wrong, but I'm not spinning here.

Roseanne Barr's spinning on Twitter and getting attention with her I-take-no-joy-in-saying.  Liar, you take every bit of joy in saying that.  Maybe you can fool other people, but I know you bitch and I know what you think about Joe. 

Roseanne's spinning and knows the best way to make her choice (Donald) come off the winner is for people like her to say how sad they feel for Joe.

Where I'm confused is what the others are doing?

One person, a Democrat, who is being quoted in the media for her Tweet called me last night about thirty minutes after Ava and my piece went up to ask if I was serious?  She had Tweeted about the debate being a disaster.

Yes, I was and am serious.

You saw Joe off at the start.  You saw him get stronger throughout the debate and you saw that largely in response to Donald's continued insulting of America.  

I'm struggling to understand how the Democrats have spent the hours since the debate and how they're going to spend them this morning.

Donald's ego was on display, his paranoia was on display, his lies were on display and his glum nature and lack of belief in America was on display.

Sleepy Joe?

Sure, I'll take that over a man broadcasting that he is a menace.

I don't understand what the goal here is.

The woman who called, I asked her what she'd Tweeted and then asked her, "Are you trying to get Joe replaced?"

Because we've known each other long enough -- and because she knows I can always spot her in a lie, she admitted that, yes, she thought this was the way to get Joe off the ticket (in her Tweet she was sure to cite what a kind man he was and blah blah).

And I'm thinking outloud and saying, "So this is an actual game plan.  A little over four months before the election, you're going to pull this play to attempt to replace him?"

And, yes, that is what's going on.

And she's influential (due to her family) and plugged in so for some of the reactors you're reading, grasp that they are spinning you.

Some are not, some are genuinely distressed (I would consider Jeet to be genuine).

I just don't understand why they're willing to risk the election like this.

By replacing Joe?

No, replace him, I could care less.  If you know Joe, you know he would do what he thought was best for the party.  

Ask him to step down.  Say, "We need better."

Make your case.

You can even do it publicly.  I don't care.

I do care that there's dishonesty at play.  

Ava and I wrote "TV: The fiction-driven documentary" at THIRD this week and some love it and some hate it -- I'm referring to friends in the entertainment industry, not readers of the site.  Why, oh, why, asked a closeted lesbian actress, did we have to come down so hard on Robin Tyler?

Because she lied.

That point is made in the opening paragraph: "Truth.  Does it matter?"  That's followed by "We think it does."

We're so cruel to poor Robin, Ava and I were told.  She has done so much for same sex marriage!  She has done this and she has done that and she has --

She's lied.  We note in there that she's done many things to be proud of and good for her.

However, she's lying when she says she lost her "series" because ABC was offended by a joke she told on air in a special.

That's not reality.  

It's a lie and in a documentary to lie like that?

We did the research, we were making calls to anyone we knew who was at ABC from 1975 to 1979.  

We also read seventy-two news articles to find where she ever made that claim before that ABC dropped her "series" because of a joke she made about Anita Bryant.

Never.  Not even two months after the incident supposedly took place, did she make that claim.  Not even two months after the incident took place and she was getting publicity for going to Boston to protest Anita Bryant.  

That would have been the time for Robin to make that claim, wouldn't it?  ABC dropped you two months ago in shock over an Anita Bryant joke and now you're going to protest Anita promoting a political candidate so that would be the time to share what happened.

But she never did.

Here's reality, Robin wasn't and isn't that funny.  She's a sad sack.  She had partner (comedic partner, but, yes, they were also lovers) at the time who balanced her out a little.  They took their act off the road in early 1976 because ABC was interested in doing a series with them.  

It did not work out.  

Not in 1976, not in 1977.  It didn't work because Robin had no chemistry.  That's the same reason that, in 1982, when she recorded her own comedy act -- knowing she could do what Richard Pryor had done with concert films -- no one was interested.  It wasn't because she was a lesbian.  It was because she was a sad sack.  She was dull.  

So for two years, ABC poured money into various attempts to make her happen as a variety show headliner -- and, for about two months as a possible sitcom lead.  

But she fizzled on camera.  

In 1978, after a lot of money had been wasted, it was decided she and her partner would host a special.  ABC was getting rid of everyone that hadn't paid off and cramming them into that special.  Redd Foxx had bombed in his variety show and that's why he was on the special, to run out his contract with the network.

It was a one-time special.  That was noted in the advertising.  It bombed.  It was the only new program on broadcast television that Saturday night.  THE BIONIC WOMAN was doing a repeat -- all the shows were repeat -- about Jamie and the pyramid, titled THE PYRAMID -- and that got better ratings.  (I'm not insulting THE BIONIC WOMAN, I am noting that on NBC where it struggled with its ratings and had already been cancelled  a six month old episode of THE BIONIC WOMAN beat this brand new variety special.  I have tremendous respect for what Lindsay Wagner did with THE BIONIC WOMAN -- in terms of acting, in terms of conflict resolution, in terms of how Jamie took on the baddies.)

In that special, Robin Tyler made her joke about Anita Bryant being loathed by music lovers (the joke is in the documentary).  First off, not that funny.  Robin destroys it by delivering it in some sort of spacy, hesitant reading while also popping her eyes to ask/declare "Ain't I funny?"  

No, not when you have to ask.

The special was taped.  ABC knew the joke. before it aired  Standards and Practices had signed off on it.  It created no public furor because pretty much no one saw it.  The special was rejected by viewers across the country -- it lost to everything on CBS, NBC and PBS.  

But she's claiming that the joke cost her a series.  She never had a series.  From 1976 through 1977, ABC repeatedly wasted money trying to develop a series for her.  But not only did she lack appeal, she also wanted a variety show and variety was dead by 1978.


The pushback from friends in the entertainment industry was: Why does it matter?

Because it's presented as fact and it's a lie.  That's why it matters.

People really suffered -- a lot of them -- who were gay and lesbian during that time. And since.  It cheapens their accomplishments to pretend that a so-so comic had her TV series cancelled -- there was no TV series! -- because she took on Anita Bryant.

And it exasperates me when people use a lie to garner sympathy or to pretend that they were so brave doing something when they didn't do it.  (I love Lily Tomlin, she's a wonderful person but as we note -- Ava and I from time to time-- being honest about what she had to endure while in the closet would be so much more inspiring than the constant lie that she was out all along.)

So if you want Joe out?  I'm not going to stop you.  I'm voting for whomever.

But if you want Joe out, stop lying to the American people and own what you want.  Stop trying to manipulate them.

The real harm here is lying.

Because Joe did as expected and was better than Donald.  And if you're not able to get him off the ticket, you and your lies may have just elected Donald Trump.

The media needs some drama.  There's very little for them with two elderly men in the race, both of whom have had one term as president.  It's one of the least exciting races the country has ever seen.  

And your push to replace him gives the media something to talk about.  

If Joe's on the ticket and loses in November, I don't think many of us will have found your game and manipulation funny or worthwhile and there will be hell to pay.


Trump claimed that Biden created the COVID-era lockdown policies that actually began under Trump, blamed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for causing the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots, repeated old conspiracy theories about Biden’s son’s dealings with Ukraine, claimed that Biden referred to Black Americans as “super predators,” claimed that Biden allowed Russia to invade Ukraine, said that he himself lowered the cost of insulin and that he fought to protect the environment during his presidency — all of these claims are untrue.

Trump repeatedly said that immigrants from prisons and mental asylums are crossing the border to rape and kill Americans, that “every” legal scholar wanted to get rid of a federal right to an abortion, and also claimed that he would accept the results of the upcoming election as long as it is “fair” — a promise he won’t likely keep.

Despite this, during the debate, Trump referred to Biden as a liar, though Biden repeatedly tried to point out Trump’s falsehoods.


And we'll note Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse's analysis.



That's what the post-debate should be about.  I don't see how the country is helped by this manufactured drama.




The fact check is traditionally done the morning after the debate.  Will that happen or will we just see the gossip and the spin? 




Donald lied repeatedly but thanks to a master manipulation plan, the media will be focusing on Joe instead of the lies that Donald told.  There's no drama or conflict in Donald's lies.  But covering the-party-turns-on-Joe allows for hours and hours of gas baggery -- the cheap programming passed off as 'public affairs' programming that's harmed democracy for several decades now.

  

Israeli soldiers have destroyed 11 homes and other structures in an isolated community in the occupied West Bank, leaving 50 people homeless, amid a reported uptick in house demolitions and spiralling violence in the Palestinian territory.

Contractors with bulldozers accompanied by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops arrived in Umm al-Kheir, a village mostly home to shepherds, on Wednesday morning and demolished six houses, tent residences, an electricity generator, solar cells and water tanks, according to residents and Israeli activists who documented the proceedings. Agricultural land and fences were also damaged and trees uprooted.

The demolition has destroyed about a third of the village’s infrastructure.



Let's note this from yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!



AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Gaza is the deadliest place on Earth for journalists, by far. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, over a hundred Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since October. The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate puts the figure even higher at 140 journalists and media workers killed since the start of the war. According to the group, the deaths represent 10% of all journalists in Gaza.

Now a new collaborative investigation called the Gaza Project, by the nonprofit group Forbidden Stories, brings together 50 journalists from 13 different news organizations to investigate the targeting of journalists in Gaza and the West Bank.

AMY GOODMAN: According to the findings of the Gaza Project, at least 40 journalists and media workers in Gaza were killed while at home. At least 14 journalists were wearing press vests at the moment they were killed, injured or allegedly targeted. At least 18 journalists were killed, injured or allegedly targeted by drones, and six buildings housing media offices were completely or partially destroyed.

For more, we’re joined by Hoda Osman. She is the executive editor for Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, which was a partner organization in the Gaza Project. Hoda Osman is also the president of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association. She’s based in New York but today is joining us from Amman, Jordan.

We thank you so much for being with us. We know that there is a delay in this broadcast. Can you start off by talking about the scope of the project and your major findings, Hoda?

HODA OSMAN: Thank you very much for having me here today to speak about this important project.

We started the project — we started talking about this months ago. It was a shock to all of us that — just like the pure numbers. The scale of the killings of the journalists in Gaza was beyond any imagination. And by any standard, it’s unprecedented. World War II, Vietnam, the Iraq War, nothing like this had ever happened to journalists before. It’s a crisis is not just for Palestinian journalists or Arab journalists, but it should be a crisis for journalists worldwide, the journalists’ community. And to be honest, we weren’t seeing the outcry, the sort of the reaction that this crisis deserves.

So, I have to give credit to Forbidden Stories, the nonprofit based in Paris, whose mission is to complete stories for journalists who can’t complete them, either because they’ve been killed or censorship or detained. They brought us together to work on this project, as you mentioned, 50 journalists, 13 organizations.

And in the beginning, when we started, really all we had was this, like, huge and tragic number, over a hundred journalists killed. And we started from there. We wanted to investigate these killings. We started off by actually dividing the cases amongst us to look into every case and look into which investigations could come out of this project.

And I can speak about some of the main findings, which included — I feel like maybe one of the main results is just like collectively, by having worked on this for so many months, and all of us together, to sort of push back against the claim, the Israeli claim, that journalists have not been targeted, and to show, through the different investigations that we’ve produced — I think over 20 articles and reports have been published by the different organizations — that there is a systematic attack on journalists in Gaza and the West Bank, too. We actually have two stories out of the West Bank, including a story about a specific attack on a TV crew in the West Bank. So, collectively, just by looking at all the investigations together, you can clearly see that this is not just random, or the notion that because of the scale of the destruction and the war in Gaza, that this is just a natural result. And when you look at these investigations, you will come to this conclusion.

But also, I’m happy to speak about some of the specific findings and some of the specific stories that we’ve worked on, if you’d like me to.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Yes, Hoda, we would like you to speak about some of the specific stories. Maybe you could begin with the directed attacks against the AFP office, which you wrote about at length. And also explain how all of these different — because you have some of the leading media organizations in the world who were involved in this, from Le Monde to Der Spiegel, etc. How did you all coordinate your work together? And then speak about what happened at the AFP office.

HODA OSMAN: So, let me start by how we all worked together. Forbidden Stories was critical in managing this project. You can imagine 50 journalists in several different countries. So, coordinating this project is definitely a challenge. But we all worked on all the stories. So, once we’ve determined — after the initial stage of doing some research about the different cases, once we’ve identified certain leads that we were going to follow, we created these subgroups, and anybody who’s interested in one of these leads would join this group. And then we all — we did what we refer to as radical sharing. Everybody was just radically sharing whatever they were doing. I was doing interviews. Somebody else was doing, like, forensic visual analysis. Someone else had access to documents. And everybody shared everything. And that’s how — it’s the power, really, of this investigation. I wouldn’t have been able to do it alone. ARIJ, my organization, wouldn’t have been able to do it alone. And none of the other organizations would have been able to do it by themselves, as well.

Let me speak about, like, one of our major findings. On November 2nd, the AFP offices in Gaza, there was an explosion there. And the result was a huge gaping hole that you can see from the outside, but also on the inside a lot of damage. AFP regularly, as a common practice for foreign offices in Gaza, send their map coordinates, their location, to the Israeli military to tell them that this is a media office and it’s not to be targeted. So, when asked about what had happened, initially the Israeli army said that — you know, they didn’t recognize that anything had happened. Then they said maybe there were clashes, and this was like as a result of the debris. And there were the condemnations and, you know, requests for investigations, but then nothing really happened.

And then we started looking into this. What we had, really, to work on this was the live footage from the camera that was stationed in the AFP offices. When the staff left in October after the Israeli evacuation orders, they left an unmanned camera that was connected to solar power. And these explosions were caught on camera on the live feed. And we were able to identify four strikes. And through analysis that was done by both Le Monde and Paper Trail Media, an organization in Germany that was part of this collaboration, and which was confirmed by an audio analysis done by an organization specializing in audio investigations and by six weapons experts, we were able to determine that this was actually direct firing by an Israeli tank from around three kilometers away. We’ve identified the specific area that the firing happened from. And we were able to get satellite imagery that showed that two days before and the day after, there were tanks in this area.

And then, while we were looking at all of this, I came across a story of a journalist who had been injured, and I noticed that he was injured on November 2nd in an attack on a local media company called the Palestine Media Group, PMG. And then we found out that they were actually on the same street, just a few hundred meters away, in this tall building, the tallest building in Gaza, on the 16th floor. So, we found out what time this other attack had happened, and it turned out it had happened about an hour before the AFP attacks. And actually, I remember this moment. We were in a meeting, a virtual meeting, with the AFP, who — the AFP team was working with us on this particular story. And we were, like, you know, checking the — kind of the range of time. Let’s check the live feed around this time. And we found that it was caught live on camera.

So, there were two attacks on two buildings: four strikes on AFP, at least one strike that we know of on the offices of PMG in this other building. The difference between the two is that at the PMG offices, there were four people, including two journalists, and one of them got badly injured in his leg.

So, this was one of our main findings. The Israeli military, in its — we, of course, approached the military for a response before we published. And in its response, it still insisted that there was no targeting of the office.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Hoda, could you also speak — two of the other critical stories you covered were the attacks on the Press House, Press House-Palestine. Explain what Press House did, the services it provided to journalists in Gaza, and what happened.

HODA OSMAN: So, one of our other major stories, and this one we worked closely with The Guardian on, was about Press House. It’s this very unique and special organization in Gaza, that was considered by many as a second home to journalists. It provided a lot of training and workshops to journalists and a lot of services. It was created by a man called Bilal Jadallah in 2013, so last year would have been the 10-year anniversary. And journalists would go there to attend workshops, to attend discussions. It was also considered a place — like, any foreign dignitary that would visit Gaza would definitely go to visit Press House and to visit Bilal Jadallah. And we heard a lot about the breakfasts that they held in their garden. The pictures from before, really, when you see them and when you look at them, it’s quite disheartening to see what’s happened to Press House since then.

So, after the war — Press House had actually secured 84 flak jackets and press helmets before the war. So, when the war started, they sent out a message to the journalists, saying, “We have this protective gear. You can come to Press House, and you can start getting it.” And they started giving the journalists this protective gear. They also opened up their offices. They had strong internet. They were connected to solar power. And journalists started working from Press House for the first few days. And then the evacuation orders happened in October, on October 13th. Some of the journalists left to the south, and some journalists stayed in Gaza City, including Bilal Jadallah, who didn’t want to close Press House and wanted to be there to continue serving the journalists.

Within two weeks, from November 6th until November 13th, three Press House staff, journalists, were killed. On November 6th, Mohamed Al Jaja was killed in his home with his family. On November 13th, Ahmed Fatima was in the home of his in-laws. A missile hit the building. His son was injured. He took his son outside to — ran to take him to the hospital, and then Ahmed himself was killed with — supposedly with a drone. And then, on November 19th, Bilal Jadallah, who had insisted until this moment to stay in Gaza City, decided that he was going to go south and meet up with his family, who had already left Gaza City. He took a route that was designated clearly by the Israeli military as a safe route to head south. There’s these maps that were being distributed and posted on Facebook, and they had this route in yellow, clearly saying you can take this route to go south. And he was in the car, and he was killed with — there was an explosion. We think it was a tank shell. And Bilal Jadallah was killed that day.

In addition to that, to the three — of course, a big, huge loss. You speak to anyone in Gaza and you mention Bilal Jadallah and you mention Press House — and the day that Bilal was killed, you know, you can — I remember speaking to several journalists on that day in November, and just, like, the shock was beyond — the loss is really insurmountable.

We also managed to speak to a witness who stayed in Press House. He’s the former financial director and a good friend of Bilal Jadallah. And at some point he had to flee his home, and he went and he stayed in the building that housed Press House, for a few weeks. And during his stay, an Israeli tank came and stood directly in front of Press House and fired at Press House. They were fortunately not harmed, this person and his family. But then, the following day, they left. And a few days later, Press House was completely demolished. And you can see the pictures. And it’s quite sad to see the pictures of this lively, like, you know, buzzing place with the journalists in it, and then you see it now, and it’s just like rubble.

AMY GOODMAN: Hoda Osman, we only have a minute to go, but I wanted to ask you about this other crucial story that appeared in The Guardian that was headlined “'The grey zone': how IDF views some journalists in Gaza as legitimate targets.” If you can explain very briefly?

HODA OSMAN: So, the news organization that lost — the media organization that lost the most journalists was Al-Aqsa, which is considered to be affiliated with Hamas. And Harry Davies, who’s the reporter on the story, looked into this and spoke to a spokesperson from the Israeli military, who said, “Yes, we consider people who work for this media organization as terrorists and legitimate targets.” But then, after the publication of the story, the Israeli military kind of retracted and said that this spokesperson does not represent our views, and that’s not our view. But the fact is that the majority of the journalists who had been killed are journalists who had worked for this media organization that is affiliated with Hamas.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And towards the end of your report, Hoda, you talk about the journalists who have survived so far and what their conditions are. If you could explain what you found out from them, the people they’ve lost, the number of times they’ve been displaced?

HODA OSMAN: Thank you, Nermeen, because a lot of the time the attention is, of course, on this, like, huge number, but it’s important to pay attention also to the journalists who are still there. We did a survey. Over 200 journalists responded. And it’s just like — it’s tragic. Ninety-eight percent had been displaced. Many, many have lost family members. Around 50 had lost immediate family members, including, tragically, 11 journalists who lost one or more of their children. In addition to that, their homes have been destroyed. They’ve lost — half of them had lost their jobs. A lot of them lose their jobs because they lose the equipment that they use to report. So, it’s really, really bad for the journalists who are there right now, especially when no foreign journalists are being allowed into Gaza to assist and to help with the reporting. We depend fully on these journalists, who are reporting the story, but they are the story themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: You write at the end of your article in The Intercept, quote, “Roshdi al-Sarraj, a journalist who ran an independent media company that did work for the BBC and Le Monde, wrote on October 13 on Facebook that he intended to defy an Israeli army order to evacuate Gaza City.” He said, “'We will not leave … and if we leave, we will go to the sky, and only to the sky,' he wrote in his post. Nine days later, al-Sarraj was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his home in the Gaza City neighborhood of Tal al-Hawa.”

I want thank you so much, Hoda Osman, for joining us, executive editor of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, a partner organization in the Gaza Project, also president of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association, joining us from Amman, Jordan. But we’re going to turn right now to our next guest in Gaza.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue to look at the targeting of journalists in Gaza, the deadliest place on Earth for journalists, we go now directly to Gaza to speak with a Palestinian journalist who’s at the heart of this story. Shrouq Aila is an independent journalist and producer in Gaza. Her husband, Roshdi Sarraj, was also a journalist who founded the local production company Ain Media.

AMY GOODMAN: On the morning of October 22nd, Shrouq and Roshdi were at their home in Gaza City with their 11-month-old baby girl when an Israeli airstrike hit their building. Roshdi was killed in the attack. In the months since, Shrouq has continued to work as a journalist and runs Ain Media herself. Like so many other families in Gaza, she has also been forcibly displaced several times. Shrouq is joining us from outside Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Hoda quotes your husband and what he said, the head of Ain Media, which you have now taken over after his death. Can you talk about what happened to your him and what you’re doing on the ground there in Gaza as you try to continue his work? And explain what’s happening there every day.

I think we may have lost — we are just seeing an image of Shrouq, but she seems to have lost our signal. We’re going to go to a break, and then hopefully we’ll have her back when we come back. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, committed to bringing you voices not just about Gaza, but from Gaza, and sometimes we have difficulty connecting. Stay with us.




Gaza remains under assault. Day 265 of  the assault in the wave that began in October.  Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence."   CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund."  ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them."  NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza."  The slaughter continues.  It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service.  Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide."   The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher.  United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse."  THE NATIONAL notes, "At least 37,765 Palestinians have been killed and 86,429 injured in Israel's war on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Thursday. Over the past 24 hours, 47 people were killed and 52 injured, the ministry added."    Months ago,  AP  noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing."  February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home."  February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

  



April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons.  In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."
 

As for the area itself?  Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells."  Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."



Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expects the issuance of arrest warrants by the International Court of Justice (ICC) for him and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant by July 24, according to Israeli media on Wednesday.

On May 20, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

“Netanyahu convened a high-stakes discussion on Tuesday evening about the looming possibility that the ICC might heed the request of its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, and soon issue arrest warrants against him and Gallant,” Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said.

The meeting was attended by Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.

“Netanyahu anticipates the court will act on the prosecutor’s request and issue the warrants soon, potentially even before his upcoming speech in front of the US Congress on July 24,” the daily said.

 


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