Palestinian Human Rights Lawyer Slams Lawmakers Who Cheered Netanyahu’s Speech

We speak with Palestinian human rights lawyer Noura Erakat about Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, in which he defended Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, lied repeatedly about the dire humanitarian conditions on the ground and refused to talk about how to reach a ceasefire to end the bloodshed. Although more than 100 Democrats skipped the speech, Erakat says the jubilant reaction from lawmakers in attendance showed U.S. leaders cheering “for what is essentially a war on children.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I’d like to bring in Noura Erakat. Noura, if you could also respond to Netanyahu’s speech? And what was most striking to you? I mean, the number of times the audience broke into this enthusiastic applause.

NOURA ERAKAT: I think that that was probably the most disturbing, because for those of us who have followed this for 292 days now, we have understood the blatant lies that Israel has said, that all of its apologists have made, but to watch U.S. Congress jubilantly, jubilantly cheer on, scramble over one another in order to cheer for, essentially, what is a war on children. When Netanyahu says they want to finish the job, the job is annihilation. It is extermination. It is genocide. They have flattened all of Gaza. It is reported that it will take 10 to 15 years just to clean up the rubble. There are no hospitals. Children cannot be treated. There is now a spread of polio. And U.S. Congress is applauding for this jubilantly, at one point breaking out into a chant of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

And so, as I watch that, one of the things that occurs to me is how the debate within the United States approaching the election in November has taken on the stance that there is a demarcation or a distinction between foreign policy and domestic policy, what happens over there and what happens at home, as if those things are not entwined and imbricated. Right now those chants at home echo an entitlement to kill, echo an entitlement to plunder, to destroy lives that are not seen or deemed worthy, and where racism and colonialism is not a dog whistle but is on full display.

So, for those who are concerned about saving their democracy at home, I want to tell them that there is no democracy to save that manifests itself in ongoing genocide in this way. Consider that your fellow Palestinian Americans, Arab Americans, American Muslims have been subject to a fascist regime at home already, not only in being forced to watch a genocide for which we are punished for naming, but also to have Antiterrorism Act being leveled against those of us who are protesting U.S. policy, who are entreating the United States to follow its own law, the National Security Memorandum number 20, the Arms Export Control Act, the Leahy Amendment, insisting that the U.S. cannot continue, even at the bare minimum, to transfer arms to a belligerent state that is violating U.S. and international law. Palestinian, Arab American, American Muslims have been attacked, have been stabbed, have been run over. And yet you are telling us that we have to save a democracy at home? We are not living in a democracy, and the worst is yet to come.

And for those who are watching helplessly because they think Congress is beyond reach and out of hand, this is local, as well. This extends down to your community and your university, where university administrators have called on cops in order to punish students, who are excellent students, who, contrary to what Netanyahu, a foreign agent, is telling the United States — don’t know what the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea is — have studied it meticulously because of Palestine studies in the United States and the centers for Middle East studies, who understand ethnic studies, who understand global politics, who understand international law. Because they are meticulous students and who are acting upon their agency, they, too, are being punished by university administrators. This is a problem from the top to the root. If you want to save a democracy, you must enforce a ceasefire now. You must end a transfer — U.S. transfer of weapons now.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Erakat, I wanted to go to Netanyahu’s speech where he praises President Biden for providing military support for Israel after October 7th.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: I thank President Biden for his heartfelt support for Israel after the savage attack on October 7th. He rightly called Hamas “sheer evil.” He dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Middle East to deter a wider war. And he came to Israel to stand with us during our darkest hour, a visit that will never be forgotten. President Biden and I have known each other for over 40 years. I want to thank him for half a century of friendship to Israel and for being, as he says, a proud Zionist. Actually, he says a proud Irish American Zionist.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is the Israeli prime minister addressing Congress about the protesters outside.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Well, I have a message for these protesters: When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising, promoting and funding you, you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.

AMY GOODMAN: “Useful idiots.” Noura Erakat, Palestinian American attorney, if you could comment on his comments? And also, you know, it’s not just Fox — it’s MSNBC, it’s CNN — when castigating the protesters outside. There was also — I was watching a debate between a Democratic representative and a Republican representative on CNN, talking about why Kamala Harris wasn’t there. While the Republican said it was unforgivable, the Democratic representative didn’t say, “Well, she was taking a stand and didn’t want to preside over Netanyahu addressing Congress.” He said, “She simply had another engagement. Don’t worry. She’s meeting with him today.” Your overall response?

NOURA ERAKAT: I have two overall responses. The first is shame. Shame, shame, shame on the Democratic Party for allowing a president, that they didn’t trust to enter into a debate or to make a comment without misnaming world leaders, to make policy on the lives of Palestinians and their futures for 292 days. They are more worried about the optics in this election than they are about the lives of Palestinians, which indicates very well that they are deriving their power from the slaughter of Palestinians, that this machine is functioning on those campaign donations, on those weapons manufacturers, on those Islamophobic institutions who are fomenting this, so that 67% of the Democratic base cannot be represented adequately by their leadership.

My second reaction to that is salute, salute to the protesters who continue to risk their bodies, who risk their reputation, who risked time and being attacked by police and police brutality. They are the kernels. They are the seed now that can grow, that can ripen into something worth living for in the future. This does not bode well for our future. This is what’s on offer for the rest of the world as we see climate catastrophe being imposed upon us, where the only thing on offer is that only a few shall live. And the model that Israel is creating here is that the racist supremacists, that the colonialists, that they will live and that others must die. And we see in these protesters an alternate future, one that screams we have safety in solidarity, one that says that it is all of us or none of us.

Enough with the Islamophobic tropes. Netanyahu does not care about homosexual communities, about LGBTQIA communities. Many of them live in Gaza. Those bombs have not spared them. Those buildings have fallen upon them. There is no concern for those lives. And yet Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism is so endemic that it can be passed along and even echoed by so-called liberal media in this moment.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Noura, you’ve said — you know, we are in this election year. You said that by not distinguishing themselves from Republicans, by not making Gaza a partisan issue, the Democratic Party is basically delivering Trump to the White House. Now, there are people in the Biden administration who resigned in protest against Biden’s Gaza policy, who have suggested that they’re cautiously optimistic that Harris might take a different position. Your response?

NOURA ERAKAT: Look, I’m with the uncommitted campaign that is asking the Democrats to impose an embargo on arms transfer and that is asking them to impose a permanent ceasefire right now. They have a chance. They, at the 11th hour, replaced the presidential candidate. Surely they have the agency to make this shift, too. Although, that said, I want to point out to listeners that when Biden came into office, he had the opportunity to reverse Trump’s disastrous policies, that were very explicitly racist, from the apartheid plan, which he called “the deal of the century,” to the annexation of the Golan Heights, sovereignty over all of Jerusalem in contravention of the U.N. Charter, of occupation law. The ICJ decision just confirmed that this is all illegal, that Israel’s presence is unlawful. And yet the Democrats did not reverse any of those policies, but to reinstate UNRWA funding.

Netanyahu, in this moment, was the lowest-hanging fruit for the Democrats. He has been, since — since his ascendancy, made his primary goal in office the torpedoing of a Palestinian state, which the United States says is a policy priority for it. What are they doing? What are they doing? He has made clear that there will never be a Palestinian state. We protested him 24 years ago in Berkeley and prevented him from speaking then. And that continues today. One has to ask: Is it that Americans aren’t learning, or is it that it just doesn’t matter, that they are going to support Netanyahu, whatever he does?

Recall also that in 2012 it was Netanyahu that oversaw a commission that resulted in the Levy Report, that said that, in fact, there was no occupation, and they retroactively legalized outposts. In 2017, they passed the Regularization Law, which allowed Israel an order to retroactively legalize the confiscation of private Palestinian land. These are very — you know, the nuances within Israeli law. But they have basically paved that path. More recently, in 2018, they passed the Nation-State Law, which says that only Jewish Zionists have the right to sovereignty in historic Palestine, which was a nail in the coffin that said there was no Palestinian state. And if there was any confusion, just last week the Knesset passed a law that said that there would be no Palestinian state. You are literally hosting a man that is the lowest-hanging fruit that you could have plucked to continue to speak out of both sides of your mouth, and failed to do even that.

So, I am putting a challenge to all those who are worried about our democracy, who are pointing fingers worriedly about the Palestinians, who have not had time to mourn the dead, that the responsibility is on you. The DNC has agency. They are meeting. They can impose an arms embargo. They can impose and call for a permanent ceasefire now.

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we’re going to go to an Israeli and Palestinian peacemaker who addressed a session of a number of the congressmembers who refused to attend Netanyahu’s address. But I just wanted to end by quoting Congressmember Mark Pocan of Wisconsin. He said, “I won’t be attending Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. I only regret that an arrest warrant for his war crimes has not yet been issued by the ICC, as I would have gladly served it to him on the House floor.” The significance of this, Noura Erakat, that the ICC has said it’s going to be issuing an arrest warrant for the prime minister of Israel?

NOURA ERAKAT: I think there’s two things here. One is the broader significance of the fact that everything that Netanyahu was saying was contravening and challenging and upending a very tenuous world order, one where ICJ decisions on plausible genocide, on the route of the apartheid wall, on the unlawful occupation are dismissed as being — as the threat to the so-called peace process, where even the ICC is being dismissed and being called — he basically called the International Criminal Court liars that we can’t trust. He contravened the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force as he celebrated the annexation of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem to a jubilant Congress, which is basically telling the world that the United States also doesn’t believe in this international order. And so, this is what is of primary concern.

The second thing is, I would have loved to see allies alongside Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian in Congress, who basically stood up there in the middle of what felt like a mob, to protect her, to stand by her side, to shut it down as activists have shut it down, to make it clear that there is dissent, not only through boycott, but through an explicit message. The problem in doing that is precisely that this is a U.S. war led by the Democratic Party. This is the U.S.’s genocide. And now the Democrats are finding themselves in a place where they want to be able to protest and also take the reins of power in November. They can resolve that by demanding a permanent ceasefire now, by suspending arm transfers now.

AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian American human rights attorney, professor at Rutgers University, author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Thanks also to Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, international adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, an Israeli and Palestinian peacemaker respond to what Netanyahu said, and what they’re trying to build for a lasting peace. The Israeli’s parents were killed on October 7th. The Palestinian activist’s 19-year-old brother died after being tortured in an Israeli prison years ago. Stay with us.