What It’s Like on the Gaza-Bound Flotilla Attacked by Drones

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 healthcare 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 supporters 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 says Tommy Marcus who is among the roughly helpers in the convoy from 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 longed to talk to my friend Tommy Marcus who is on a boat headed to Gaza The boat along with about 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 curative supplies But as we were texting drones attacked the convoy He disclosed there were explosions In the early hours of Wednesday morning the group informed on social media Over the past meager hours more than drones have hovered above the Alma boat at low altitudes appearing roughly every minutes Under the hue of a red light steering committee member Yasemin Acr took to her Instagram Yasemin Acr We are right now on the Alma And we have sighted - 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 disclosed 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 helpers was attacked as it was leaving Greece Organizers say there were no serious injuries or fatalities but at least vessels were damaged Almost two years into Israel s war on Gaza more than people have been killed nearly percent of them children In August famine conditions were approved where more than half a million people are trapped And as of late September 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 million for various humanitarian causes over the last several years Now just a note we re speaking on Wednesday September 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 at this time 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 central to note that while we didn t know exactly what was going to happen we were seeing the rhetoric that the governing body 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 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 expected 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 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 multiple 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 ruling body 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 Related A Purely Manmade Famine How Israel Is Starving Gaza 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 the day before today 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 now 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 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 scarce 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 Supporters have been detained and in Israeli commandos raided one in international waters and killed 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 comprehensively nonviolent The only violence that could possibly happen is the IDF hurting us So you know we re prepared in that sense And we also studied that attack Of curriculum it was a horrific thing I don t want to think that that s going to happen but of program 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 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 report 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 the previous 24 hours 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 presumably 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 various 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 I just turned a sparse 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 swiftly 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 danger But you know the day before 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 consistently 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 governing body 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 The hazard that I m taking in my opinion is less than chosen of the other people on board I have to give credit to the people that I m on board with Because of syllabus I m taking a vulnerability but the jeopardy that I m taking in my opinion is less than particular 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 of his family lives in the West Bank and the sacrifice that he is making not only supersedes the pitfall 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 menace and of subject 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 There s a certain amount of courage that unfortunately Palestinians are kind of required to have instilled in them And I just located that to be one of the majority of 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 scant 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 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 critical it is Related Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Head Boasts Success as Palestinians Starve And of subject 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 several approaches The food that is given I think over close to I believe aid-seekers just in line for food that Israel has distributed to Palestinians civilian aid-seekers have been murdered since October So even if they were being fully serious OK we ll take this aid and hand it all over that would seemingly 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 stimulating 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 Related The Jewish Public Rupture Over Israel Palestine My goal ever since the first time I did a fundraising event 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 neighborhood I was raised thinking that Israel was a necessity I knew that occasionally bad things happened in that region but I was communicated 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 problem 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 plenty of 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 of fundamental thing that I learned was that what s happening right now is not because of October 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 and that was something that was very hard to come to terms with and something that I don t think I really desired to know I think I intentionally kind of ignored those aspects because it was perpetually communicated to me that if there was no Israel all Jews in the world would die Related Birthright Is Booming This Year Here s How the Israeli Propaganda Trip Works 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 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 bulk importantly imperative for me when I started doing this kind of communicated multiple times like I was really wrong and what the things that I was saying for example I was reposted by the establishment of Israel on October 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 guard as you continue your mission and demanded 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 approach adviser to Al-Shabaka The Palestinian Protocol System 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 advocacy of a Palestinian state in latest 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 guidelines advisor to Al-Shabaka The Palestinian Guidelines Structure She was also of late a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard s Kennedy School of Authorities 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 described 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 mentioned it is illegal You don t need to be an international lawyer to know that withholding baby formula water food et cetera is immoral unjust and illegal And so Israel s attacks on these flotillas are similarly illegal What Israel has done and this is really critical 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 but for decades And this is why there have been chronic shortages within the Gaza Strip of everything from food supplies to diagnostic supplies and so on Now since since October of what Israel has done is they took a plan 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 desired 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 demands 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 If they want an area to be ethnically cleansed such as in the north they re not allowing any aid to come in there 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 society the international region the international diplomatic district 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 Palestinians being killed a day In addition to killing 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 certainly high-rise buildings And one night last week because they blew up so various structures they made people who already had been homeless they made people homeless again These were people who had been sheltering in U N compounds U N schools et cetera Related Israel Just Bombed the Building Next Door Will We Be Next 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 lesson that in pushing people down to the south that this is going to be a continuation of their ethnic cleansing procedures 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 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip is confined to less than percent of the land of the Gaza Strip Before October it was already the majority of densely populated place on Earth and now it s just that much more More than percent of the population of the Gaza Strip is confined to less than percent of the land of the Gaza Strip 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 reported One of the things that I detected 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 truly can stop and that s this And the one that he can in fact stop being this is by exclusively 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 in fact 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 Related Trump Sanctions Palestinian Human Rights Groups for Doing Their Job Anybody Could Be Next 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 Shield Council to not recognize the Palestinian state DB Yeah JU How critical 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 crucial as is the idea that these powers have failed Palestinians Related These Countries Recognized Palestine but Still Send Arms to Israel The tactics in which they have failed Palestinians is just countless There s just so countless avenues 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 minimal 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 pact ties with Israel Related EU Leader Calls to Sanction Israel as U S Progressives Push to End Arms Sales 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 occurrence 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 syllabus the number one thing is an arms embargo When you think about the weapons that Israel s getting for example the F- one of the things with the F- 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 various of the the majority brutal weaponry And so all of this can be done but it s not going to be done because the point has unfailingly 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 public 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 reported The Israeli ruling body 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 response or peace are workable anymore What are your hopes for the future of Palestine and the Palestinian people DB You know I didn t think a two-state fix was feasible even back then I want to back up a little bit People talk about the death of the two-state explanation as though there was like chosen date and there was a date And that date was And the reason that that date is 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 cure 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 a large number of world leaders try to push Palestinians to say You have to recognize Israel and there has to be a two-state key And so they pushed Palestinians And Palestinians recognized Israel the Palestinian leadership and they signed Oslo Related All the Times Israel Has Rejected Peace With Palestinians And you know what s fascinating is that we ve yet to hear an Israeli leader who talks about the two-state approach 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 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 inevitably 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 consistently going to be about levels of control 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 what Israel was unfailingly 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 in the present day 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 Instead of that ideology being challenged this ideology that they can commit genocide they feel 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 We want to hear from you Share your story with us at -POD-CAST That s - - You can also email us at podcasts theintercept com This episode was produced by Laura Flynn Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief Chelsey B Coombs is our social and video producer Fei Liu is our product and design manager Nara Shin is our copy editor Will Stanton mixed our show Legal review by Shawn Musgrave Slip Stream provided our theme music You can endorsement our work at theintercept com join Your donation no matter the amount makes a real difference If you haven t already please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts And tell all of your friends about us and better yet leave us a rating or a review to help other listeners find us Until next time I m Jordan Uhl Thanks for listening The post What It s Like on the Gaza-Bound Flotilla Attacked by Drones appeared first on The Intercept