Jeremy Scahill is on a tear

Jeremy Scahill was absolutely en fuego in this 90-minute interview. I’ve cleaned up the YouTube transcript—it gets most of the words, but includes verbal tics, has no punctuation, has a very cavalier attitude toward capitalization, and simply will not transcribe certain words correctly. Anyway, Jeremy and Briahna had a great conversation about terrible, terrible topics.

IDF Soldiers DESECRATE Gaza Cemetery and Other Israel BOMBSHELLS (w/ Jeremy Scahill) by Bad Faith (YouTube)

At around 24:00 they talk about the circumstances surrounding the recent defunding of UNRWA.

“Jeremy It’s hard to shock me. The Wall Street Journal on Monday—as all of this is happening—and the focus is on: there were 12 UNRWA employees that Israel…
Briahna Out of 30,000, by the way, we should say that it’s a huge agency. That represented 0.04% of all employees, but go ahead. I’m sorry.
Jeremy […] I mean it has this…has such whiffs of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, which was based on lies. But the Wall Street Journal puts on its main web page—right at the top—what purports to be an article based on what they call an intelligence dossier, that says that it’s a far greater a problem than just these 12 individuals. That, in fact, a full 10% of UNRWA employees are connected to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“And, when you read down…to: “intelligence dossier.” It’s like I was having flashbacks to the Christopher Steele, Russia-gate stuff. But also to Judith Miller mushroom-cloud stuff, because if you dig into the article, what they’re saying is that the Israeli government provided this information to the United States government and then the Wall Street Journal was able to review it.

“And, you know, it’s all basically guilt by innuendo. And, you know, it was devastating because then—you know, people don’t read, they don’t check facts—it just becomes—even in the liberal comment-sphere—it became like, ‘see! […] it’s not just a few bad apples! This is pervasive throughout the organization.‘

“The lead author of that Wall Street Journal piece is herself a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces, who has boasted that her closest friend basically created the social-media strategy of the IDF. So, it basically was laundering, on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, an insidious, violent, propaganda campaign being implemented by a government that just had a devastating set of rulings issued against it for plausible violations of the genocide convention, in service of trying to further starve the people of Gaza.

“And that narrative that was set last week and then doubled down on by The Wall Street Journal, is now becoming the dominant narrative and Anthony Blinken—on Tuesday, Bri!—was asked about the evidence and he said publicly that the United States had not done its own investigation, but that the allegations are very, very credible. I mean: think about that statement. For America’s top diplomat to admit to the world that we didn’t bother to actually do our own investigation before we cut off funding to the most vital humanitarian organization operating in a country that is now under the watch of the world court for a potential genocide. That is the top diplomat of the United States saying we didn’t bother to even look into this ourselves.

“We just believe notorious liars who have lied from the moment that this thing started, who have lied for decades about the Palestinians, whose entire worldview is: dehumanize Arabs, dehumanize Palestinians, treat them as human animals. The United States is taking the word of that government to cut off funding to basically the only force in Gaza able to provide any meaningful aid and medical care right now, to a people that could well be found to be victims of genocide. This is, on a moral level, … I find it difficult to imagine a more immoral stance than that which the United States is taking at this moment on this issue.”

At 33:00 Jeremy talks about how accusing people who live in Gaza—as so many employees of UNRWA do—of knowing people in Hamas is utter nonsense, Of course they know people in Hamas; Hamas is the local government.

“So when you say—as the Wall Street Journal is alleging, based on this laundering of Israeli so-called intelligence—that 10% of these people had connections to Hamas or Islamic Jihad, I’m sure the number is far greater than that. Because what do you mean by connection? Hamas is not just the Qassam Brigade. Hamas is the ruling authority, whether you like them or not. They pick up the trash. They provide civil services. The laziness is also part of the banality of evil. The laziness among the public, who don’t even bother to check—well, what does that even mean? When I read ‘people are connected to Hamas,’ it’s like, well, of course, they are. This isn’t some scary smoking gun that you’ve produced for us. Hamas is much more complicated than the Qassam brigades and October 7th. This is a long story.”

At 46:00 Jeremy cautions Briahna to be careful about dismissing all claims of rape on October 7th, Just because there are some spectacular lies going around doesn’t mean nothing happened. It warrants a sober and serious investigation. Soldiers rape. They generally do it once they’ve occupied an area, not when they’re flying by in jeeps in a four-hour sortie, but it’s still possible. So, we have to hear from the victims, not people who claim they saw victims. There have been too many of those that have been utterly refuted. But we have to continue to listen and not close off. Israelis can be and are victims, too. Don’t stoop to the level of the worst of their government’s speakers.

“I think, on the one hand, we have the propaganda campaign, which clearly is riddled with lies, exaggerations, and is aimed at enforcing a dehumanization narrative that Israel hopes will continue to justify by its mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. On the other hand, you have—I’m sure you have civil servants in Israel and and people who work with survivors and victims of sexual violence that really do actually want to solve alleged crimes. And all I’m cautioning is that we be careful with running away with our own narratives.”

At 52:00 Jeremy discusses how the Israeli government’s tactic of making it seem like Arabs are so barbarous that they would rape anything is backfiring on them, for exactly the reasons listed above. In fact, Briahna’s amount of sympathy is noticeably limited for exactly that reason.

“If you just look at this exclusively through the lens of justice for victims, this conduct is contaminating the investigation. On the other side of this is part of a campaign to dehumanize Arabs and particularly Arab men/ It is an attempt to portray the enemy as savage barbarians who murder, loot, rape, and pillage for the sake of those things rather than that they’re engaged in an attack that from their perspective is one battle in a 75-year war for liberation.

“People accuse me of being pro-Hamas. If you go back and look at everything I’ve ever said about Hamas, all I do is state factual information about Hamas and that somehow is being pro-Hamas. No. It’s journalistic malpractice not to explain the stated intent or the response to allegations by a party that we’re being told is tantamount to the Nazis and Isis. It’s journalistically responsible to say ‘hey, we’re being told these guys are the new Nazis. Let’s do some fact-checking. Why don’t we see if that’s actually true. This is basic journalism.”

At 01:01:00 Jeremy talks more about journalistic malpractice, about how deferential the US media is to Israel’s narrative,

“The dominant sort of tone is always—the number one rule is “deference to Israel’s narrative”. That is the number one rule of how to cover anything involving Israel. You must refer to the narrative of the Israeli State […] I think that large American news organizations have done an immense disservice to the public in the way that they’ve covered this war, in general. But also dozens upon dozens of our colleagues have been murdered and their family members have been killed. […] Our colleagues are being murdered in broad daylight.

“[…] there is good journalism that’s out there. I just think that that the drum-beat coverage that we see to facilitate wars, all the lies that were repeated early on, when independent journalists were questioning them—we’ve talked about a lot of them today—they were going along with it. CNN promoted many of the most outlandish, obscene lies that Israel was deploying immediately to try to justify the slaughter that Netanyahu always knew he wanted to unleash on Gaza.”

Finally, at 01:14:00 Jeremy talks about how offensive it is for Biden to even be running for president, and how hollow it is for flacks like AOC to be shilling for him.

“Make an argument why people whose families have been murdered with American bombs—with the full support of the American political establishment—why they should be voting for Joe Biden, the man who has single-handedly made this all possible for Israel to do. My answer to AOC is: don’t run around telling people like me why we should vote for Biden. Let’s hear you publicly make the case why a Palestinian voter in this country—whose loved ones have been murdered—why should they be voting for Joe Biden and why should they be declaring that support in January of 2024 when the election is 11 months away?”