Gaza, One Year Later

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Posted on Oct 2, 2024

On top of a black and white photo of ruins in Gaza, red and white text reads “Gaza one year later.” Background image by Hosny Salah (hosnysalah) via Pixabay. Digitally altered by Lucy Kang.

It’s been one year since October 7th, 2023 and the start of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. On today’s show, we hear from journalist Rami Almeghari and other Palestinians about their experiences living through the war. Then, we dive into a conversation with Norman Solomon, author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine, about what mainstream coverage of the war is leaving out.

TRANSCRIPT

Lucy Kang: You’re listening to Making Contact. I’m Lucy Kang. 

Monday marks one year since October 7th, 2023. On that day, over 1,000 people were killed, and more than 200 were taken hostage when Hamas-led fighters broke out of the border wall surrounding Gaza. Israel responded with a brutal and disproportionate assault on Gaza that has displaced nearly 2 million people, in what many are calling a genocide. One study suggested that as of July, nearly 200,000 Palestinians had been killed. And of course, all of this is in the larger historical context of Israel imposing decades of crushing apartheid conditions on Gaza.

In the first half of the show, we’re going to hear from some of those surviving the conflict. And I want to just warn you that some of this might be hard to listen to. But we thought it was important to bring you the voices of Palestinians in Gaza who have lived through the horrors of this war.

So now we wanted to bring you an update from someone you’ve heard on our show before: long-time journalist Rami Almeghari. He’s been reporting on the ground since the start of the genocide.

Rami Almeghari: The scale, the large scale of the Israeli army’s actions is not perceived well by the international media coverage. What needs to be understood is the hardships that the people of Gaza are living, in terms of this Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

Lucy Kang: Rami and I have kept in touch sporadically since October 7th. In May 2024, he recorded an audio diary about his daily life. Here’s an excerpt.

Rami Almeghari: Maybe you hear the sound of the buzzing of an Israeli drone that has gone nonstop over the past eight months since October 7th. Surveillance cameras, surveillance drones that buzz around the clock, adding to that, to the disturbance by an Israeli warplane, sound of Israeli tanks, especially on the eastern parts of the region. 

I don’t go far from my town of Maghazi to other towns. Maybe, especially in the southern region, Rafah, Khan Yunis, Deir al Balah. Only when I have some work. I can’t go further because of the fear that has ripping through me and the majority of the population here, that when you walk down the street, when you use a public transport, moving from a place to another, you might be vulnerable to any kind of harm because you don’t know what is the next target for Israeli war planes.

Lucy Kang: Throughout the Israeli aggression, Rami’s family has tried to comply with the evacuation orders. So when they were first told to go to the south of the Gaza Strip, they left.

Rami Almeghari: In the beginning of the war in October, I think October 14, my children and their mom were moving along with their uncle, on the car of their uncle. And during that day, they were driving on the Salah al Din main road.

Lucy Kang: Salah al Din is the central highway of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army told people heading south that they could only use that road. Rami’s family was on a crowded stretch south of Gaza City when the army opened fire.

Rami Almeghari: Israeli tanks bombarded the convoy of people displacing to the southern region of the Gaza Strip, and the car was there. The Israeli tanks hit the cars. One of the shells hit the car of their uncle. And their uncle was fatally injured and killed while my children and their mother were saved. My little children, boy and girl, three years and five years old, were miraculously survived from that strike.  

Lucy Kang: Salah al Din became a notoriously deadly road, with travel allowed in only one direction: south, away from Gaza City. At first, the Israeli army just set up a checkpoint. But then they set up a military installation called the Netzarim Corridor, which was built over a protected wetland area. The army has used this corridor to further divide Gaza.

Rami Almeghari: Gaza is now being dismembered into three or four parts: the southern Gaza, middle Gaza, Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, and the places, all these places are dismembered now. 

The space in Gaza is very limited for the time being because of the large numbers of displaced people concentrated or concentrating now in central Gaza Strip and some parts of the southern Gaza Strip like Deir al Balah and Khan Yunis.

Lucy Kang: Gaza is divided into five governorates. North Gaza and Gaza City are above the Netzarim Corridor. Several Israeli ministers have called for the expulsion of Palestinains living in those areas to make way for Israeli resettlement. 

Rami lives in Deir al Balah, the middle region of Gaza Strip. Below this is the second-largest population center, Khan Younis. And in the very south is Rafah, which borders Egypt.

You may remember Rafah as the Biden administration’s “red line.” Since October, Israel had been forcing Palestinians south, into Rafah, which they told people was a safe zone. But in the spring, they began threatening a ground invasion. And President Biden said that if the army crossed that border, he would  withhold some military shipments to Israel. 

But when the Israeli army invaded the city in May, U.S. military support for Israel didn’t change. So Palestinians were pushed north again. Khan Younis had been destroyed during a previous ground invasion, so many people continued onward to Deir al Balah.

By late August, the UN estimated that Israel had forced over 1.8 million people into 11 percent of Gaza’s territory – just 40 square miles. That’s like if the entire population of Philadelphia was forced to live in the Houston Airport.

Rami and his family were displaced twice from their home. The first time was in January 2024, when the Israeli military ordered the residents of Maghazi to leave before they carried out a ground invasion. Rami and his family left for Rafah.

Rami Almeghari: I was able to contact a truck load or a truck driver to come over to my place in Maghazi. In about less than one hour he came. And I had to stuff all the things or belongings, some important belongings and luggages, into the truckload. And we all went right away to Rafah when there was no Israeli actions in Rafah, and Rafah was the place where all the people forced to displace went to during these times.

Lucy Kang: Many Gazans say that displacement is one of the worst parts of the conflict. It’s also one of the most complicated and expensive, starting with transportation. That can be anything from a private car to a large truck or even a donkey cart.

Rami Almeghari: When you call on a driver or a vehicle to take you, you have to pay lots of money because this is a high time for these people to make business apparently. So you, you, you, you call it very costly.​​This is my experience. Others had experience with paying for the, for the carrying of their luggages and paying for tents and erecting tents and being exhausted at many ways, stressful, psychologically, mentally, financially, and others.

Lucy Kang: In the winter and spring, many people were in the same place for months at a time. When people are pushed out of where they’ve been staying, they’re not just losing a shelter. They’re losing community.

Rami Almeghari: In January, I myself had some people displaced into my home. So, can you imagine, you and the displaced people in your home are now forced to leave? This was a very stressful moment for me. I couldn’t help myself to help the displaced people. All the people left, they left for nowhere. They left for unknown.

Lucy Kang: Many of the people who were displaced have moved into tents. But some Palestinians are scouting ahead for commercial spaces or garages, often paying high rent prices so that when there’s an evacuation, they’ll have someplace to go. That was the case for Rami as well.

Rami Almeghari: Last time, I already thought about the coastal area of the central Gaza Strip. I went myself. I took a taxi cab and went to the coastal area to find a space for me and my kids – my own family, Rami’s family, I mean, not the families of my brothers. I had to ask about the coffee shop. I asked coffee shops over there to rent me a space for whatever price. But unfortunately, I didn’t find a single space for me and my family on the coastal area of Nuseirat town where I decided to displace. 

Lucy Kang: After both their displacements, Rami and his family have gone back to Maghazi. But for other Palestinians, Rafah was their final destination before leaving for Egypt.

We have a few excerpts from the series from the series Great Love: The Gaza Monologues from ASHTAR Theatre Revisited on The Heart podcast. We’ll hear from three siblings who traveled from their home in northern Gaza into Egypt.

Tarneem Jaber: My name is Tarneem Jaber. I am 19 years old.

Lucy Kang: Tarneem describes what it was like crossing the Netzarim Corridor into the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

Tarneem Jaber: There was a border between the north and the south. And for us, it’s the first time that we will see the soldiers in front of us. And people told us that they may take or they may kill any man they can see. If this happens, don’t look at them. It’s not acceptable to look or to turn your head. So I really, like, before I reach this point, I start crying. I was too afraid. It was terrible. The street was empty. And only you can see a quadcopter and helicopter and hearing that it’s looking at you and following you in the sky. We left my mother and my old brother there, in the north, suffering without food, without water, without electricity, without anything. Just they have the soldiers and the rocket.

Lucy Kang: Many, if not most, families in Gaza are divided now. In some cases people are in different parts of the Strip; some have left Gaza entirely. Before Israel closed the border in May, a company called Hala with ties to the Egyptian government controlled the Rafah crossing. Prior to October 7th, it cost about US$350 to leave Gaza for Egypt. But by spring 2024 the cost of crossing had soared, ranging from $2,500 for a child up to $15,000 for adults. In April, Hala made $2.3 million in a single day. After paying, your name went onto a waitlist, where it could stay for up to two months. Many Palestinians had paid and were waiting their turn to leave when the border closed. The Jaber siblings were able to get out before then.

Ahmad Jaber: My name is Ahmad Jaber. I am 21 years old. I am a dental student in the third year before the war. But out of nowhere, 7th of October, everything destroyed. Everything gone. We lost everything.

Lucy Kang: Across the Gaza Strip, Israel has shut down access to food, water, electricity, telecommunications, medical supplies, and many other necessities of life. The blockade has fallen most heavily in the north. Ahmad describes waiting for aid at one of the roundabouts in Gaza City. Israeli troops have repeatedly attacked aid distribution centers, killing people as they waited for bags of food.

Ahmad Jaber: There is no food in the north of Gaza, so you have to go to Al-Rashid Street, waiting there till they get food from Israeli side. My brothers were with me there, sleeping there, waiting all the night. And once they come, the soldiers started shooting people there.

We can’t see people on the ground. I just locked in my place, seeing people falling down. I don’t know, like, you just, you just wait him to shoot you. I swear, they just, they just shoot. Like, they don’t feel that, they don’t feel that we are people. They just kill us. No one cares. No one stops them.

Lucy Kang: The three siblings made it to Egypt. But they can’t leave behind what they experienced.

Ahmad Jaber: I am here in Cairo right now. And once I hear the plane, I feel like I’m still in Gaza. I feel like it’s going to bomb somewhere. This is a moment that we will never forget. It’s hard to forget.

Salima Hamirani: I’m jumping in to remind you that you are listening to Making Contact. If you like today’s show and you want more information, or if you’d like to leave us a comment, visit us at our new website, focmedia.org. There you can access today’s show and all of our prior episodes. Okay, now back to the show.

Lucy Kang: Welcome back to the show. 

In the first half, we heard firsthand descriptions of the war in Gaza. We thought it was important as journalists to honestly portray what is happening because corporate and legacy media hasn’t necessarily been giving the full picture. So in the second half of the show, we’re going to look at the biases of mainstream coverage in the United States – and what it leaves out.

Norman Solomon: If we rely on mainstream U.S. media and the utterances of U.S. politicians, we have a very distorted view of what has happened.

Lucy Kang: That’s author and activist Norman Solomon whose most recent book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine. His book looks at media portrayals of warfare, particularly during the so-called War on Terror after 9/11. The book actually came out before the start of the genocidal war in Palestine, but Norman wrote an afterword about how the ideas apply in today’s media coverage of Gaza. Like the one-sided approach.

Norman Solomon: Any historical context that is seen through or understood via the lives of Palestinian people has gotten really short shrift in U.S. media. There are occasional exceptions. But in general, the window on the world is tinted red, white and blue and tinted through the eyes of the Israeli government. After all, in 1948, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people were killed. violently uprooted from their historic homes and kicked out of their own lands.

Lucy Kang: This ethnic cleansing is what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “the Catastrophe.” Like many scholars, Norman argues that the Nakba is ongoing.

Norman Solomon: There had been a dominant cliche, which still lingers, that somehow Israel was created for people without land, moving into a land without people, but that was a complete lie. So here you have the absurd, the ludicrous, the arrogant, and in many ways, the genocidal attitude that Palestinians have no right to live in Palestine, and if they interfere with what is called the Jewish state, which continues to import Jewish people from elsewhere in the world, that Palestinians must either be kicked out of Palestine, Palestine entirely, or that they must be exterminated.

Lucy Kang: So you have talked about how the Israeli military is part of the U.S. war machine. Can you explain what you mean by that?  

Norman Solomon: It’s a very important point that while they have separate command structures, the Israeli military is to a large extent functioning as an adjunct, as an extension of the Pentagon and U.S. armed forces in general. And so even though there might be differences of opinion as to how to proceed, in a sense Israel is a sort of a military aircraft carrier in the Middle East, sharing of intelligence in both directions, testing out of weapons, sales and revolving door of giving money to Israel and then Israel, quote, unquote, “buys” weapons back from the United States, weapons contractors usually based in the USA. 

The fact is it would be impossible for the Israeli war in Gaza to continue if the United States were not constantly shipping vast quantities of weapons and ammunition to the so-called Israeli defense forces. And that is a fact that is not talked about very much in U.S. media.

Lucy Kang: So what is your take on how the media coverage of October 7th compares to the coverage of 9/11, and do you see any similarities between how the media has covered the Gaza war and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? 

Norman Solomon: The Israeli government immediately said, “This is our 9/11.” And it was a very useful turn of phrase because it made Israel into the perennial victim, what I call in the book “preemptive absolution.” The Israeli government proceeded as though whatever it would do, no matter how many Palestinians it slaughtered, that was, we were told, implicitly justified because of what happened on October 7th. 

The real parallel is that those who had crimes committed against them proceeded to commit crimes against others, displaced rage on a much more massive scale, to put it mildly. As a matter of fact, the Brown University Costs of War Project said when you include the indirect victims of the U.S.-led War on Terror, as it’s been called, there have been 4.5 million of those deaths since 2001, and most of them are civilians.

Lucy Kang: So one of the issues that you and others have pointed out is how outlets will tend to use a lot of passive voice when talking about Palestinian deaths. So things like, you know, these are from the New York Times: “Lives ended in Gaza” or “Strike on area where displaced Gazans were camped kills up to 25.” And, as you mentioned before, Israel is very rarely mentioned as the antagonist. So I’m wondering, by letting Israel off the hook in this way, how does media coverage frame the public’s understanding of what’s actually happening in Gaza?  

Norman Solomon: It’s a kind of a motif of victims without victimizers. And so there’ll be heart-rending news accounts of the suffering of Palestinian people who are malnourished, sometimes starving, without health care, hospitals destroyed, bombs falling, being killed into the hundreds every day. 

And yet no reference to the fact that those victims have victimizers, and those victimizers are in the Israeli government and in the U.S. government. Because there’s no way this would be happening if the weapons weren’t flowing from the United States to Israel. In fact, upwards of 80 percent of all the weapons imports for Israel come from the United States. And I think journalists appropriately should express horror when there is slaughter of civilians, when it is government policy, and the problem is when it’s very selective. 

And so in the afterword to War Remain Invisible, I cite a couple of studies. One was done by The Intercept news outlet, and it found, and I’m quoting here, “a consistent bias against Palestinians.” And the numbers are really striking in the first six weeks after October 7th, and I’m quoting here, “the term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killings of Israelis versus Palestinians, 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians, 36 to 4.”

So when we step back and we think, well, how could it be that when civilians are killed by Hamas, it’s slaughter, it’s massacre, it’s horrific. But when civilians are killed by Israel, it’s unfortunate, it’s a tragedy, and rarely described with words like massacre or horrific. 

Lucy Kang: And the things that Palestinians are experiencing are truly horrific. I want to turn to Hamza, the third Jaber sibling who left Gaza. You heard his brother and sister in the first half of the show, from the series Great Love: The Gaza Monologues from ASHTAR Theatre Revisited on The Heart podcast. Quick warning that this clip includes some description of dead bodies.

Hamza Jaber: Yeah, I am Hamza Jaber. 24 years old. I have been a volunteer in Shifa Hospital. I am a 6th year medical student, by the way. And this is the condition on Gaza.

People there faced  hundreds type of deaths. They hits a house in our neighbors. So I go to help and going there to see if there is anybody who is alive. So when I going there, I found a body without a head hugging a child. Just a body and a child hugging each other. And both of them are dead. 

They die from lack of food, water, lack of medical treatment, medical care. The soldiers opened their fire randomly on them, so they got injured in critical areas, in the head, in the chest, the abdomen. And also, you know, the drones, the F-16, F-35, the snipers fire, the artillery fire. 

So multiple, multiple type of death, hundreds type of death. We may die in parts and they may collect us in a bucket. We don’t have the chance to die in a peaceful way.  Sometimes you feel that humanity is a big lie. 

Lucy Kang: I asked Norman about that idea, that in the eyes of the Western media, not all deaths matter equally.

One of the ideas in your book that I really found fascinating was this idea of the politicization of grief, or, you know, basically how American lives are valued, but the lives of those we kill are devalued. And you talk about how this creates two tiers of grief in a zero sum game. And then you also use this term in the book, “psychological apartheid.” Could you give some examples on how that’s shown up over the course of Israel’s war on Gaza?  

Norman Solomon: The reality of two tiers of grief is that, is so routine that we’re encouraged not to notice it. Human beings are often very empathetic and our empathy is channeled by the cues, by the messaging, by the absence of messaging about whose lives matter and whose lives don’t. 

And so it does convey that there are two levels of grief. The kind of grief that is all consuming, that is terrible, that is racking of our souls, that very legitimate focus from news media is elevated in certain cases. And in other cases, when equally horrific killing takes place in a war context, it’s a very downplayed reality. It’s very flat. We rarely even see pictures. We don’t hear names. So that’s the other level of grief that we’re encouraged to believe is not really very important. What we need is media that’s honest about war and conveys that war is horrible everywhere. 

Lucy Kang: Israel has restricted almost all external media access to Palestine. No foreign journalists have been allowed into Gaza. Several prominent Palestinian journalists have been assassinated there. And as of this recording, Israel had shut down multiple Al Jazeera offices in the occupied West Bank after journalists reported on human rights abuses by the military.

But in Gaza, something is different this time. The current aggression is being called the first live-streamed genocide. And we’re witnessing it through a Palestinian lens. Legacy media might not be sharing images and stories and names – but Palestinians are. They’re broadcasting a picture of life in Gaza, not just during the war, but before. In fact, there are some Palestinian journalists who have almost as many – or more – Instagram followers than the official Israeli government account.

That represents a seismic shift in the world’s knowledge of what’s happening in Palestine. It’s resulted in unprecedented activism, calls for institutional divestment, and a new understanding of Palestinian history. We’ve covered all of that on the show in the past year. Journalist Rami Almeghari says that Israel’s attempt to stifle media coverage has placed a new imperative on Palestinians telling their own stories.

Rami Almeghari: There is a need for some kind of a truth to go out to the world from the territory.

Lucy Kang: And that does it for today’s show. For more information, head over to focmedia.org. There we’ll have links to the Gofundme campaigns for Rami and the Jaber siblings. You can also listen to our past coverage about Palestine.

For now, I’m Lucy Kang. Thanks for listening to Making Contact.

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