It Could Happen Here Weekly 90

an app being a problem inherently. So perhaps we could start with I know, Jake, you mentioned you wanted to talk a little bit about the design of the app. So in the process of sort of commissioning it and making it, should we start there?

older app called CBP Rome. That app was used just for people boating on the Great Lakes because technically, if you go like voting on Lake Michigan, you will leave the United States if you chase a fish over the boundary to Canada. Yeah, and CBP felt that it was very important the people who did that reported leaving and

coming back into the United States. Yeah, right, questionable, but they built an app to let people do that, and the framework for that app used a GPS ping to verify when you're back in the US.

So if you're importing goods into the country, you can do some of that reporting through CBP one and also use it to apply for the and obtain the I ninety four Travel form, which is the forum that like most folks coming to the United States are going to need and then critically for our uses, is that if you are applying for asylum, you can use it to schedule an appointment.

they've done. I think, to Jake's point, it is quite interesting that they produce something for the public It's not unusual, of course for large agencies to have teams in house that deal with all of the general technology call challenges that that every agency in twenty twenty three faces, you know, databases, you know, keeping government cell phones working and secure and

all of that, all of that kind of thing. But a lot of the things that are public facing from federal agencies tend to be contracted out to a private vendor in some way. So this is it's quite unique, and but I don't think we have a false scope of what they what they are aren't producing in house.

Lots of lots of it can be seen. Having talked about they sort of unique approach to design, it's probably a good idea to then talk about the implementation of zapp and it's kind of lacklusters and understandment it just fucking sucks. It's terrible. So like, in what many ways has it been unfit for the purpose that it's supposed

to do. So I guess first we can talk about technological and inadequacies, and then more broadly about why this isn't a problem you can really solve with an app on a telephone that needs to broadband and Wi Fi.

phones are they using? Basically like, if you're someone on the southern border with very little money and probably an outdated phone, yes, are you going to be able to use this app?

I know you've already covered James. You know, over the past three years, the dominant border control policy was titled forty two, a COVID era policy that was purportedly motivated by concerns about public health. This is where title forty two comes from. Title forty two of the US Code pertains to issues of questions of public health. It's not

an immigration policy. It was a public health policy, although detailed reporting has I think pretty well established that it was more of a political moment of political opportunism rather

than a legitimate public health concern. But regardless, that policy allowed Customs and Border Protection to effectively turn back anyone who arrived at the border, whether they attempted to cross unlawfully or not, and the primary human rights concern here was people who were seeking asylum, which is their right to do. One of the aspects of Title forty two was that there was a rare exemption clause built in that allowed people who were particularly vulnerable a.

of entry. CBP one effectively replaced that system in January, which meant that instead of migrants going through the NGOs, they would have to download this app, fill out the information and send it in. This is really important to mention because the groundwork was actually laid by a tremendous amount of effectively unpaid labor on the backs of NGOs

on the southern side of the border. And you know, is it is fair and accurate to say that this was an extremely imperfect system and that there were absolutely, you know, significant issues with this. But one of the interesting things is that the role that NGO's played meant that people coming and seeking asylum would then in some ways be potentially connected with a broader network of NGOs

support services, advocacy and so forth. So the introduction of CBP one purportedly bypassed the work of NGOs in screening people for the exemption process. However, NGOs still ended up performing all this kind of invisible labor because they're the ones who effectively were working with migrants to make Wi Fi available. And it's not just Wi Fi, it's actually

charging your phone. When I visited shelters and camps on the southern side of the border at the end of twenty twenty two, a big part of their having camps and shelters was actually providing electricity, you know, when I was there, and I know others have reported on this, James, I'm sure you've seen this too. You know, people would be huddled around the outlets because they needed to charge their phone, if their phone didn't work, if their phone

wasn't charged, they didn't have access. Prior to CBP one, this was already a challenge because the primary form of communication with CBP was phone calls. They would individuals would get phone calls. In fact, I interviewed the Russian family on the Mexican side of the border and Matamotos in last November and a family now they and many of the other migrants I spoke with, and this was also

true for many migrants. By the way, the families, typically the wife and children, if there were a family unit, would stay either in a hotel or a shelter or someplace that was more safe, and then the men would effectively have the nights on the street where they could actually get cell phone coverage and things like that. So CBP one introduced all of these kind of technological demands.

It's not that they weren't there before, but I think it's a different matter when you go from interacting with a network of NGOs to say saying, now you're actually interacting with the US government and this is the only way that you're going to be able to enter the country. I think those demands were quite high. They've clearly had some tremendously negative impacts from migrants trying.

But it's certainly when CBP were detaining people in places where you didn't have power and then expecting them to also communicate using their telephones, that became a particularly sort of ridiculous issue, very upsetting to see it like done like that. So, yeah, this app really isn't a solution for the problem we're facing, which is, as you said, like a three year backlug on people who have legitimate

sign claims being able to make those asylum claims. And I guess can we talk about who it favors in, you know, implementing this system as a catchule, right, not an option, but the option Who does that favor and who does it not?

although they may have added a new language recently. You find the right place on the app, not always super clear, to submit your asylum application and try and schedule an appointment. And then you're going to have to fill out a ton of information. You're giving CBP, your name, addresses, people you know in the US, big form to fill out, including often information on like how vulnerable you are, so like are you pregnant, are you disabled? Have you been

threatened in Mexico? Information that they want to use to prioritize you hopefully, and then you're going to need to take a facial photo that's going to go into CBP and Department Homeland Securities databases. It will be run against facial recognition searches that they populate with, like this massive facial recognition system, the Traveler Verification Service that can flag people who are on CBP's target list TSA's target list.

different technology and it is untested. There's been no government agency that has evaluated facial liveness for bias, and that basically is trying to figure out are you a real person or are you like a picture of James that you're holding up because you're trying to get James an appointment and then sell it to them later or something. Do the facial liveness scan. That's been the sticking point where folks with darker skin and indigenous folks have not

been able to get through it. We can talk about that a little later. Yeah, you're also going to do a GPS pain so your phone, pulling from both cell towers and GPS data, is going to try and establish your location and send it to CBP. That can create problems if you're pinging off a US cell tower, Suddenly it's less reliable, might look like you're in the US.

the exercise I llegal right to claim asylum. So let's talk about that that technology and how it's not working.

ground in some of these places. But you know, again, just a historical thing I think will be pretty non controversial. Anti black racism is something that's existed for a very long time. It's not just in the United States. It's around the world obviously, yeah, not everywhere, but but you know, obviously through colonialism, through settler colonialism, and so forth. It's really shaped not just anti black racism, but anti black racism itself has produced many of the geographies that we have,

from redlining, segregation, educational acts, all kinds of things. The way that the social world looks today is already shaped by these issues of racism. What that then means is questions like who has access to cell phone towers and fast Wi Fi, and who can afford up to date smartphones that can meet all of the threshold of require the technological requirements to this to use this apvenues of software is already distributed and fractured by questions of race

and identity. What that means is, even if the facial liveness test worked perfectly and there were no issues with the software, which is not true, but let's even just assume that it is still true that acts to that

technology and software is already structured by race. So one of the things I noticed, you know, having spent time along the border, was just how much even in some of the shelters and where black and African migrants had access to shelter, was itself much tended to be more pushed to the out outside of the where you're less likely to get good cell phone coverage, less likely to have electricity, much more likely that the roads even where

I visited, were not paved. And I was there when it was raining in Reynosa one day, and you know, some of the places where African migrants and African families were staying, and black migrants, by the way from Latin America. Let's just remind everyone that there are black Latinos living in Latin America, right, were also pushed you know, more to the outskirts, and as a result of that, those factors contributed to access. So it wasn't just issues with

theware itself, which may be there. It's hard for me to evaluate. It's not, you know, because it's not like we've done our own evaluation of that. But it's also all of those contextual factors. And I just want to make a fine point on this. We know that already. CBP should understand that already and understand the various social

factors that impact access. So simply saying, for instance, if one wanted to take a defensive position and say, well, look, we ran the test, the software works as intended, there's no racial bias in the software. That doesn't get CBP out of the responsibility of saying yes, but you absolutely had all the information and a reasonable person should have known that this access to this app or had these kind of technological requirements and that access was not evenly distributed.

very difficult situation that lots of African people face. And you know that their isolation and the relative lack of resources even in what's a pretty resource spar setting for everyone, and Haitian people, I've spoken to a lot of Haitian people. Plus then you add that, like if I think about last month, the languages which I was able with through friends, through translation to speak to people with you know, Vietnamese command you is a dialect of Kurdish, French, right, Swahili, Spanish,

evidently Dutch aside from Spanish, those are not covered. Maybe if you're French you can, I think it would be still hard to work in Haitian creole of you if you spoke sort of more mainland French, those are not covered by that, right, so you have to find a way to access that with via translation, And then it's very the information makes you incredibly vulnerable to whomever of you if you're asking someone to share. Right, It's imperfect.

It's not a sufficient way to describe it, but it extremely flawed system.

to do it. I mean, imagine if like your new policy for like healthcare for some you know, particular healthcare you know, thing was like, we have to go through this route, and we know that eighty percent of people aren't going to be able to use this, but now this is the only treatment you have an.

to detention? Why would one be detained if you haven't in theory, done anything wrong, well, in many people's perspective, have done anything wrong, I guess. And then what does ATD mean? And then we can get into some of the privacy issues and the way that it affects not just migrants but also everyone.

the privileged spectrum. That's an element of how these systems are designed, right, It's they get fed a lot of images of white men and fewer images of other folks. That's fixable, right, like you can provide a training database that is a whole, you know, a good spread of people. It seems to not necessarily have been done with the facial liveness for CBP one, in part because the British company that designed it probably did not have access to a lot of images of the type of people who

would be on the southern border. You're talking about like Indigenous Mexican folks v. Shield folks, just a very large number of different ethnicities. But any bias like that is, as Austin said, sitting on top of a series of other biases, right of structural biases. And so the result we see with a lot of facial recognition systems, and this facial ibness system is ceb going is no different. Is that a little bit of even to a little bit of bias in how the facial recognition works gets amplified,

and it's amplified by social biases. It's amplified by the biases of people who run the system and people who interact with it every day, and then it's amplified by institutional blindness as well, failure to recognize a problem. We had facial recognition systems rolled out since on some levels since like the early to mid two thousands, and we didn't even know that facial that bias was a problem

in any facial recognition system until twenty eighteen. So when you're thinking about and you're hearing about like bias testing and the fact that it's been bias tested. Those tests are never incredibly reliable because they're not done in the real world, they're not done with the people actually using the technology.

United States to get Again, what's that right? Often to just be safe, right, like some people, especially the less advantage you are sort of on a global scale, the likely the less safe you are waiting in Mexico to make an appointment for your asylum. Right, Like, if you can't get into a shelter, or you're from a group where you don't have community to look out for you, you're just that bit more likely to be taken advantage of

or have something bad happen to you or your family. So, yeah, it'll stacks up, I guess, to make for a very unfortunate situation for people. Yeah, which means the consequence of having a glitch happen is way higher.

it's it's a whole it's a whole mess. And I know I'm trying to speak more to some of the folks who work with African migrants because I think that often, yeah, their stories just don't get told, especially at our southern border, where like I think obviously there's this like a lot of people like to report on the border but not leave New York or DC or wherever they have their

studio or newspaper or what have you. And I think it's easy to miss that if you haven't, like Gosud said, been around a lot and seen all these things to stack up on top of one another. But yeah, it's an important topic that we don't especially as like I know, it doesn't get reported on because everyone likes to report on Ukraine and only Ukraine, Like there's more wars in Africa or wars in you know, certain people from Myanmar, it's very hard for them to get to the southern border.

Actually from hearing from thousands maybe different cases where people can't leave Thailand. But again, the system you know, when you have a whole other alphabet that you're trying to access the system in and it doesn't work for you then and that makes it incredibly difficult for those people. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call a

cliffhanger in the podcasting industry. Because we will be back tomorrow with more on how ICE tracks migrants and how that tracking of migrants can impact other people, people who live with them, people in their communities. I hope you're joined us then, thanks by hi everyone to James, and I am back with Austin and Jake to discuss ICE's

Alternatives to two tent program today. If you didn't listened to yesterday's episode on CBP one and a little bit of at D, then I suggest starting there because there's a lot of context that you might be missing in today's episode. Let's talk about alternatives to detention a bit that's this is a this is a once inside the US system, right, so it's a little different. It's people who've managed to get through the significant hurdles post by CBP one. What happened to them? Then?

come into the United States. They have not made an asylum application yet, so they still have to do that. And the United States has two options at this point. There's two agencies that can make decisions, can receive asylum applications and make decisions. USCIS, which is historically the primary one US Citizenship and Immigration Services. They have what are called asylum officers whose job it is to adjudicate assylum applications,

interview people and so forth. Or people the United States can file removal proceedings deportation cases effectively against these individuals and put them into immigration court, where an immigration judge can accept an assiled application and adjudicate the assigled application. The major difference here is that in the court room in the immigration court system, that individual is going in front of a judge and has an ICE officer, an

enforcement related kind of attorney effectively arguing against them in court. Technically, they're not supposed to be arguing against them per se. They're supposed to be finding the right outcome, but effectively they're arguing against them, almost like they're, you know, trying to apply for asylum and immigration court or in like a criminal court setting. Almost not really, but almost right.

So here's the two main differences when those individuals. You know, historically, when people have been put into the immigration court system, ICE does have the option of detaining them, or at least detaining them for an early part of that process until they meet some certain tolds. The Biden administration has decided largely at this point not to go that route. That has not been true in the past. The Trump administration's detention numbers were up well over sixty thousand people

detained the day at one point. Right now, it's about half that it's up from the beginning of the year. But it's about almost thirty thousand people are in detention now, and people seem to be moving through even when they are detained, relatively quickly. This is where alternatives to detention come in. We should not think of alternatives to detention as alternatives detention. In fact, ICE itself has said on their website and in testimony before Congress, alternatives to detention

is not an alternative to detention. It is an alternative to unsupervised release. So it's what it really is is an electronic monitoring program that allows the agency to effectively keep track of everyone that they want to keep track of. Now, the number of people in this alternatives to detention program is an extremely small fraction of the number of asylum systems in court. It is nowhere near, you know, saturating

the total number of people that they could be. One wonders whether they consider five percent monitoring some kind of massive success when you know, when most people are actually not monitored. But one major change has happened, which is in addition to the smartphone app that migrants use to even try to seek asylum, now migrants also have to download an app called smart Link. That is now this

one is not built in house. This is contracted out from an organization called BI that effectively mostly contracts with the fminal Justice system, but they also contract with ICE. So they have to download an app on their phone and they have to check in regularly using a similar

but different kind of facial technology. They can communicate with deportation officers, they can get alerts about their immigration court here, all this stuff, but the crucial part of that is under threat of detention or redetention, redetaining migrants have to

check in on their smartphone. So it means that that same phone that one you know, struggled with on the periphery of Vernosa trying to just even get into the United States to pursue what is their legal right to pursue asylum, now they're glued to their smartphone, worried that if they don't respond to, you know, a text message or an alert or a ping on their phone, they could be redetained and you know, potentially deported in some way. So that that's currently how the system. So it's not

for everyone. It's not as if everyone follows this exact same path, but it is true, and I think this is the big takeaway. It is true that asylum seekers today will start interacting with the US government, may start interacting with the US government on their smartphone as far south as Mexico City, and then continue to have their primary contact and interaction with the US government on their smartphone all the way through the border and to Columbus, Ohio,

New York City, Seattle, Washington. So the smartphone has become effectively this kind of what I am trying to think of and conceptualize as a kind of mobile border. They never where, migrants never really arrive, and they never really leave.

to my understanding, entered the United States. I'm doing heavy air quotes between ports of entry under Title forty two, but then were detained. That it is fairly obvious they thought they were being detained. It looked very much like

they were being detained. They weren't allowed to leave. CBP apparently would argue that they were not detained because the conditions were wofully inadequate by their own detention policies, which don't exactly provide for luxurious conditions to begin with, And so what would the situation be for those people because they haven't They were trying, at least some people I spoke to to make CBP one appointments from a place

of detention, which I don't think one can do. Maybe one can if one's not on a list or something, but you still have to get there right and you can't leave south or north to access.

phone contract. I had been in Mexico like some days, but they had all just think, oh, you're pinging Mexican celtoer. Yeah what I was on a bike ride, like in East County, San Diego. I wasn't in Mexico, but my phone thought, I was, so, yeah, the same thing can happen in reverse, right, You're your phone can pink American cell towers when you're in Mexico. So those people might appear to be in the US when they're not. But in that situation, they couldn't make a cbp U apployment.

So I guess they're assumed to have. It's the same as if they crossed the fence somewhere else and been detained ten miles inside the United States, right, what would their process be?

two in place. The same states, mind you, who were very critical of COVID protections, were extremely worried about lifting the ban on people in the southern border coming in

because of COVID concerns. Part of what that rulemaking did was it worked a fundamental change in the way that asylum seevers work and so like just context asylum claiming asylum is a human right, is a right guaranteed by international law, is the right guaranteed by US law that you can show up and say, hey, I am not safe in the country that I'm coming from and I need asylum in the States, and you have a right to do that, and for the US or whatever country

you arrive in to process your claim and decide if it's valid or not. So one of the changes in this rule making was that they are applying what's called the government is applying a presumption of ineligibility to people seeking asylum, which means that if you did not show up in the proper manner the United States. That means if you did not use the CBP one app to claim asylum before you got to the border, and if you did not apply for asylum in every country that

you traveled through along the way. If you traveled from Guatemala and you did not pay for apply for asylum in Mexico before you got to the border, you are automatically deemed ineligible and your asylum claim will be denied with no hearing, with no opportunity to say, hi, I'm here because like my husband is a police officer somewhere in Guatemala and he's trying to kill me, and I can't stay in the country, right And so that is

a fundamental change in the way the law works. And that's the starting point of someone who has frost illegally not used CBP one and then is picked up's and that's new in the law in twenty twenty three.

there is virtually no guidance on how to implement those exemptions, right. Like, one thing you can claim is that you cross without a CVP one appointment because you couldn't use the app The idea of trying to prove to someone at the Customs of Border Protection that you were technologically enabled to use an app seems basically impossible, given that the only proof that you have is that you didn't get the appointment, right,

that you weren't able to submit it. That's not a strong record that a lawyer would like to argue on, I will tell you.

were being detained unless they paid a bribe. And then then if those people had crossed like legally in between ports of entry, that would be very harder than to prove that they could that that had happened at all, right, like what had caused him to do that? So those people are in an even more difficult scenario. If people then, through any of these processes, find themselves in a ATD alternative to detention, there are numerous ways it could be surveyed.

Alston mentioned that the phone app which I think is the perhaps the most recent and most common one. Another one is ankor monitors. Right, you can get like a parole kind of ank style of ankor monitor And I know that, Jake, you've written a little bit about some of the consequences of those. Do you want to talk about that?

movements are potentially tracked. But you are still in many ways as vulnerable as you would be if you're actually in a jail or a prison, and so ICE has the option to decide at their discretion which level of

monitoring you get. The levels of monitoring, the highest level is an ankle bracelet or an ankle shackle, that is a GPS device that is battery power, has potentially only a few hours of charge on it, you might get a day of charge off of it, and is constantly monitoring your location and sending that location back to both

ICE and to the contracting staff of BI Industries. This prison technology company, who ICE has hired as case managers, basically people who are providing support for ICE on keeping track of the usually eight to ten thousand people who are on the ankle monitor system.

point two billion dollars. And that smart link app is either going to be loaded on your smartphone if you have a smartphone that can handle it, or you'll be given a smartphone buy ICE and told to use that smartphone to check in. You will be required to check in on a sort of regular schedule. I don't have a strong sense for how often that is. Could be daily,

could be less. To check in, you're going to open the app up, it's going to ping your GPS location, send a dice, and then you're going to take official recognition photograph. That photograph will be compared to make sure that you're actually you. That photograph is also potentially capturing your surroundings, the people you live with, whoever's like in the frame, and then you can communicate with your case manager.

On the app, you can potentially find information on when your immigration court hearings are.

is it only when they have the app open? Is everything on their phone now subject to a review by ICE and potentially also by this third party contractor? Right? So, how are those contractors vetting their person now? How are they're making sure that these this very sensitive information is secure in private like it should be.

have your last GPS ping. They have your historical movements, which means if you're on an ankle monitor, they have a record of every single place you went for the entirety of the time since you've been on an ankle monitor, and they also know where you are right now a little more limited on a smartphone, but that's information that's

highly sensitive. You're location and especially your historical location information and tell you all kinds of things like what church this person goes to, have they been to Planned parenthood or recently?

exposing someone who's undocumented to ICE surveillance? Am I exposing myself, you know, to just like tagging somewhere that ICE doesn't want me to be and maybe an officer is going to show up for a check Because of that, it is creating a ton of insecurity and a system that is already very insecure, and the like psychological harms of

that are manifest. You know, there's good studies like internationally that your risk of suicide and depression goes way up you're on electronic monitoring, that your access to jobs goes wait out. You you know, there's stigma with wearing an ankle brace also concerns that if you take a job you won't be able to check in at your home

at the appropriate time. It looks like you're absconding, right, So this level of monitoring is messing with people's lives and really fundamental and deeply cruel ways.

all times. And like you said, it's not just where you where you are, but where you've been and ice if I'm right, like they they they keep that data, right, That data isn't anonymized or sort of like destroyed. They can keep that data forever if they want to.

own databases. Those databases are very often linked or accessible, which means that monitoring. You know, your local police department has a log of everyone and they arrest very often that log is sent to ICE and vice versa.

I need you to run this search into your system, which is theoretically only for federal use, but suddenly it's getting used for state law enforcement and vice versa. One of the biggest problems with this is that cities that want to be sanctuary cities that don't want their police departments reporting and handing people over to ICE when they arrest undocumented folks, city government is unable to control their local police departments and the information that is sent to ICE.

So even a sensible sanctuary cities where the city says we're not going to report this information, the way that these databases are tied together, especially license plate reader databases, but as well as arrest databases, all sorts of stuff means that the city government functionally cannot create a sanctuary city.

it open. So like the Yeah, the exposure for people who in the US who are not citizens of the US is very high with these things. The last thing about these databases I wanted to talk about was those aren't the only databases that ICE has access to, right, can you explain how they've they've managed to acquire some data about other people and whether or not that is strictly speaking legal.

Credit reporting agencies, the people who like give you your credit score, are also data brokers. They're pulling in all this information so that they can assign you your credit which is like where your credit cards are, how much money you have. All this information is super valuable, right, and it's valuable to advertisers. It's valuable, yeah, like for marketing, but it's also really valuable for law enforcement because you have everything from like addresses where people are spending money.

Often you can pull from advertising like phone advertising data, people's GPS location, and a number of these services have sold access to ICE, both like Thompson, Ridge Is Clear Lexis Nexus has several products that they sell to ICE, as well as locate x which is now Babble Street,

which is specifically a GPS location company. And ICE has basically managed to obtain through contracts information that they could not legally obtain through a warrant, right, which is to say that if you a police officer and ICE officer want to get information on a single person, you know you want their GPS location off their phone, you need to go to a court and say, hey, I'm looking for James Stout and I think that he committed a

crime or an immigration he brook immigration law. Here's my evidence. I need a warrant. You cannot get a warrant for mass monitoring. That's like a fundamental part of how the Fourth Amendment US Constitution works is that it has to be individualized or very close to individualized. But there is currently no law that says that ICE can't just go buy the information on the open market and completely evade

the warrant requirement. So that's what's going on with Lexus and Nexus, with locate Acts as well as some social media surveillance companies.

various different asylum processes. Can Austin, can you give us a very broad overview of like the likelihood of success and maybe a couple of I know you're very good at monitoring the factors that determine the likelihood of success in an asylum application through TRACK. This is a great place to plug track if you want to. Can you talk about like how likely folks are to be successful in that asylum application process?

but they published decent amount of data. We would certainly like to get more, but it's the immigration courts that we have focused very heavily on for the last decade, I would say. And so we get very detailed, granular data from the immigration courts on a monthly basis that

allows us to see exactly what's happening. I would say currently the success rate denial rate, however you want to put it in immigration court for asylum seekers is about fifty two or fifty three percent get denied, about forty seven to forty eight percent are granted asylum, but that

varies widely by immigration court and by nationality. So migrants from Central America, El Salvadorjundara, Squatemala tend to have much higher denial rates seventy eighty percent, ninety percent, where as nationals from let's say Ukraine, China, some other countries, Cuba

have very high success rates. Haiti actually is a good example of a country that has very low grant rates, very high denial rates, even though much like northern Mexico, where we actually send people that we deport very often, there are all kinds of travel warnings.

certainly much better under the Biden administration. I do want to say though, that in addition to sort of policy related issues that may drive this factor, geographic concerns, people are much more successful in New York City than say Houston or Atlanta, Georgia.

for people who file in the sylum application. We're not seeing, you know, the people who don't even who aren't even able to file in the silum application in the first place. And one of the most concerning things recent developments is that the Biden administration, I think not for no reason at all. I mean, there's two point two million pending cases in the immigration course right now. The Biden administration

is trying to push cases too faster. This is something the Obama Innistry administration tried Trump administration tried it, Biden administration tried it, and every single time the cases get accelerated, including a large number of family cases. Unfortunately, they simply don't have time to get an attorney and file a good stylent application. So what we're seeing as an addition to like geography, nationality, does someone get an attorney. It's

also speed, just how fast the cases go through. And the reality is if you try to force an asylum case through the immigration courts or frankly even through USAIS in a matter of weeks, people are just not going to win. You can't speed things up and maintain a fair system.

And then the people who are doing it sort of I guess sort of in for nonprofits are just overwhelmed by the amount of demand. So yeah, those people are in a really tough situation.

attorney is the strongest indicator of a good result. So that's like how likely peopot people are to know about their appointments. It's actually extremely hard if you are someone who does not speak English and has limited money and limited access to the system. And frankly does not understand how the American immigration law system works, which is reasonable

because virtually no one understands how it works. It's really difficult to know, Like when you have a court take much less to show up and to understand what kind of information that you need to collect and present to a judge that will be convincing to this person, who again is not an Article three judge that's been appointed by Congress, not the type of judges that you or I would have our cases heard by if we were

arrested or if we just like file the lawsuit. And so access to a judge is like the number one best indicator for whether your asylum claim is going to be be successful or not, or any kind of claim and the immigration system, frankly, and we do not provide that to people who don't have the money to hire a lawyer.

that's where it's out right now. I guess I think most people probably aren't aware of much of that, so it's good to explain how fundamentally and jest it is. So if people want to learn more about this, if people want to follow along, I know you both do some writing online. Where can they find you and where can they find more of your writing about this?

I'm on Twitter at ac Coker, so a c k O c h e R. And I also write pretty regularly on substack, and that's like a weird thing to say. I'm slightly embarrassed to mention it, except that I'm not because this academic article emerged actually out of stuff that I was initially exploring on substack. So I really loved that format for writing because it's given me a chance to work out concepts and ideas before they even go

into like pure ifew print. So if people want to get ahead of the curve on what I'm thinking, go check that out too. Nice and don't forget to visit track t R A C dot, s y R dot ed U to get all kinds of data on immigration courts, alternatives to detention, detention statistics and so forth.

in nineteen forty eight. Also some politics stuff. So if you are interested in getting more detail and you haven't listened to those, I would recommend listening to those just for more context if you desire.

carrying weapons. Under international law, Israeli settlement to illegal, however, it's really Prime Minister of Benjamin net and Yahoo announced plans to build a thousand new housing units in the settlement of Eli in response to the deadly shooting of for Israelis by two Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday, the twentieth of June. The suspected assailants were late killed. One of them was quote unquote neutralized by civilian the other by the IDEF. But it appears the plan is to place

the whole nation again. Our auntwer to terror is, to strike it hard and to build our country. Net Yeah, who said his right wing government is dominated by settler leaders and supporters. But his statements came just days after the government gave far right finance minister there's a little smotorridge sweeping powers to exploit the construction of legal settlements by passing masses that have been in place for almost twenty seven years. The violence in thaumas ayah Am I saying that, right.

Seven Palestinians were killed, nearly one hundred were wounded.

So I want to get into just why exactly Israel keeps raiding the Janine refugee camp in particular, and I want to talk about the camp's history, why it's getting targeted, and why the latest raid was different than the ones before it. Janine is slowly becoming a symbol of Palestinian resistance.

It was originally established in nineteen fifty three to house Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed during the Nekaba of nineteen forty eight, which force seven hundred and fifty thousand people from their homes in order to make way for the establishment of Israel. And again we've talked about this in other episode. You want to revisit those but essentially he was just a very perfect example of ethnic cleansing and massacres,

in genocide and displacement. So the camp has seen much unrest over the decades, and it was nearly destroyed in two thousand and two when Israeli soldiers ambushed it during the Second Antifada. According to a Human Rights Watch investigation, at least fifty two Palestinians, including women and children, were killed during this period of time. In two thousand and two, during the Second Anthi Fada, there were also at least twenty three Israeli soldiers killed and several others injured that

were reported. And since then, Janine has recently seen intensifying attacks by Israeli forces, especially since twenty twenty one, and it has slowly, along with Gaza, become a major symbol of Palestinian resistance. At this point, Palestinians are really fed up up with the enaction of the Palestinian Authority the PA, which is the government entity meant to oversee and quote

unquote protect the Palestinians within its governance. The Palistine Authority was formed in nineteen ninety four following the Gaza Jericho Agreement between the PLO and the Government of Israel, and it was only intended to be a five year interim body. Further negotiations were then meant to take place between the

two parties regarding its final status. According to the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority was designated to have exclusive control over both security related and civilian issues in the Palestinian urban areas, which are referred to as Area A, and only Palestinian control over Palestinian rural areas, which is called Area B. The remainder of the territories, including Israeli settlement, the Jordan Valley region and bypass roads between Palestinian communities, were to

remain under Israeli control aka Area C. East Jerusalem was excluded from the accords. Negotiations with several Israeli governments had resulted in the Authority gaining further control in some areas, but that control was then lost in some areas when

Israel retook several strategic positions during the Second Antifaba. At this point, the Palestine Authority is an authoritarian regime that has not held elections in over fifteen years, and it doesn't really stand in the way of the Israeli government and the crimes they commit. So what concerns Israel is

that in Janine and elsewhere. Young Palestinians are increasingly taking up arms because they see no other way out of the pressure of occupation, and they're very disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of the Palestinian authority.

It's in the context of like government failure or state failure in I guess when we look at like the formation of states, right, when there's the it's called social contracts, the area, right, the idea that when we go and consent, which we don't do, but we don't ever, like we don't have a chance to consent to being in a state, right, like very obviously if you're from Palestine, you're aware of this, Like we were supposed to give up some of our

freedom and get some security, but the Palestinian authority has repeatedly failed to protect people in Geneine right and in lots of other places too, and so like this response, like this response is taking up aren't is in the context of state failure, right, Like people are trying to protect their own communities when there's been a complete failure by the people who are supposed to protect them, the people who is and that's both the PA and then

like the broader the international community is kind of a pointless phrase. It doesn't really mean anything. But like international law is also a pointless phrase. It doesn't really mean anything, which I'm getting too far afield here, but like the amount of times people in my replies on Twitter will be like, this is against international law, and like are you going to go and fucking enforce it? Then? Good?

which is is you know, like, it's not very nice. Also, the idea of killed civilians all the time, right, one of them is funded and armed by your taxes, and

so like, yeah, it's it's an understandable response. And the response of the IDF is to sort of paint the whole of Janine as harboring quote unquoite terrorists, right, which which is, and then to do these attacks which often cause civilian casualties, which is not that distinct from suggesting that Israel is a terrorist state, right, and then attacking Israel, which like, but one of these things is more broadly condemned is terrorism, and one is not as broadly condemned

as terrorism. When then they're not, to my eye, that morally different. I guess, yeah, that makes sense.

you're probably a little bit naive. But it is just incredibly frustrating to see the value of some quote unquote American lives, like it's it's it's always wrong to shoot journalists, of course, but like it's just in the US basically condoning that. It's yes, as again, this isn't first if I can get like Arab journalist that the US who is a US citizen who has been killed by an authoritarian regime, that the US had done fuck all about.

to make their claims in the language of rights. But every time they fucking do, they get met with violence, right, And it is entirely understandable that when the state speaks you only in violence, you will reply using the same language that is spoken to you with right, Like that that is how decolonial struggles have been, right from Algeria to Vietnam to Palestine. And like this isn't a particularly

like under theorized concept. It's there and Pano in the nineteen sixty that's always something I like to suggest people read. I think it's a very good kind of distillation of what's occurring.

occupied people and their only choice of like retaliation. Anyway, I don't want to get into that too much, but I do want to emphasize why exactly that they were disillusioned, the Palestinian youth, especially during this time, because the IDEF has been extremely violent and the PA still is really inactive and doesn't do anything. So that's kind of the reason why there.

terrorist site. But most of the people what the IDEF has killed are not engaging in any sort of violent activity, and in some cases they are clearly marked as press wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet, like El Jazeera journalist Sharina bu Akle, for one, she was shot dead by an Israeli sniper in May twenty twenty two, and in her case, the IDF said they were aiming at armed Palestinians who were shooting at them and responding with fire, and after I don't know a lot of inconclusive proof

in the IDF sticking to that story. A ballistics analysis proved that that story wasn't true and there was no fire coming from the other side. Regardless, no one cares about that, and this happened all in Janine. So I think it's very clear why this camp has become a symbol of resistance simply because the atrocities that have happened there are tremendous and they keep fighting back. And I think it's an example of how exactly a Palestinian symbol comes to be, like Gaza, like this, whatever it is.

Like I've never fucking shot someone with a camera, because it's a fucking camera, right, Like it doesn't it And that's not what cameras do. They take videos.

it's a fucking camera. If if your security is threatened by someone filming the ship that you do, it's because you shouldn't be doing it, and you know you shouldn't be doing it right, like and again, like I've experienced that, like people people you know, doing stuff they don't want to be filmed and getting mad that I'm filming it. But like maybe if you're not prepared to defend what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it. You don't, you know, you don't suggest that the camera is the camera is

it's a new straw object here. It's not the camera that shot a woman in the head.

the afternoon. Others died the following day because of their injuries. Several journalists were shot at and they were surrounded and one was injured. This raid ironically took place near the location where Sharin A Blockley was killed. Several ambulances were also fired upon with live ammunition, and at first they were denied access to the injured, which is nothing new to the IDF. They do this consistently with the block

medical aid to reach the people that are injured. The Israeli armies said the raid was to arrest two suspects, one of whom was a former Palestinian prisoner, Asim Abu ad Haija, who was the son of an imprisoned Hamas leader.

I just want a quick reminder of refresh. I know I say this in most of the episodes about Palestine, especially the ones I've done in the beginning of this year, but in twenty twenty two, Israeli forces killed more than one hundred and seventy Palestinians, including at least thirty children in occupied East Jerusalem and in the West Bank, and this is described as the deadliest year for Palestinians and those living in those areas since two thousand and six.

Since the start of twenty twenty three, Israeli forces have killed at least one hundred and sixty Palestinians, including twenty six children, and it's June. The death toll includes thirty six Palestinians killed by the Israeli army during a four day assault on the besieged Gaza strip between May ninth

and May thirteenth of this year. I just want to put that into contexts because if twenty twenty two was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the last twenty years and we're essentially already there by six months into this new year, it's just it's really disturbing and it's really heartbreaking that it's truly there's no slowing down. And this raid is a great example of them just like upping

the ante. And what was different about this raid. Israeli offences into Janine are nothing new, but it appeared that the raiding soldiers were caught off guard this time. Shortly after the raid began, videos showed an Israeli military panther APC being hit with a roadside improvise explosive device, and there is a video of this. I haven't seen it because I just personally don't want to, but I said

there if you choose to see it. Military helicopters then began shooting and launching rockets and flares while surveillance aircraft hovered above. It was the first time in twenty years that Israel deployed helicopter gunshow in the West Bank. By the end of the raid, reports suggested that at least five Israeli military vehicles had been damaged by explosive devices and bullets deployed by armed Palestinians. This was the first time the IDF was met with this understandable degree of

resistance and defense Enginine, and their response was overwhelming. In return.

as we're recording this. Just because there's been a significantly larger IDF incursion into the Genine refugee camp, and because we know this is coming out at the end of the week, we wanted to make sure you had a little bit more update to date information, so as best I can kind of bes together what happened is that some It'sraeli military vehicles were hit with an ID bomb, right roadside bomb and explosive device, and Israel responded by going fully ham on a scale that we haven't really

seen since the second to fighter. So there's air attacks, droned helicopters, armored vehicles. I saw them using like an anti tank missile against a house. Saw videos of armored bulldozers tearing up roads in the camp, and preps sreen you could kind of give a scale of what this has done, not just to roads obviously, but to the people who live there.

of life inside the city and the camp. Those being targeted now are not just the resistance fighters, but civilians are being killed and wounded as well, and water and electricity services have also been cut off from the camp. Since the attack has started. In the Palestine, RECRESCENTCE said that at least three thousand people were evacuated from the camp.

And then they estimate that Palestinia Request estimates that three thousand people have left the camp, which I think paints a picture of like emptying or cleaning or whatever colonial sort of word you want to use to make it seem less brutal than it is, but like emptying the space of human being so that it can be colonized or that other folks can move there, right.

But I just I think it's really fucked up and unfair. The White House meanwhile, so the United States quote supports Israel's security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic jihad and other terrorist groups, and they also highlighted the need to protect non combatants, which hasn't happened, and none of those people are actually being targeted or no, there's nothing to defend at this point. I really don't.

deep concern over the attack. They warned that it can trigger a new spiral of violence it already has, and they called the Israeli encouragion a heinous crime. Cut Her stress that the need for international community to move urgently to protect the Palestinian people was very necessary. And then Jordan condemned the escalation as a violation of international humanitarian law, which Israel has been breaking for years. So nothing has happened.

And then Egypt, on the other hand, it warned of serious repercussions and it called on other international people to intervene. And then the UN said the situation is very dangerous, like all these things I think have already been said every time. That's why. I just think it's so empty and I don't know, I nothing if it's just words and no actions, Like, how are we supposed to even take anything seriously? I guess I don't know.

form of resistance. Israel has made it clear that there are three options available for Palestinians. Option one is to leave. Option two is to remain as residents, but not as citizens of any state. And option three is if you resist, we are going to crush you. This is what they are implementing. Yeah, yeah, I think that's well said. Yeah.

Hassan Ayub, who is a Palestinian political science professor at n Nija National University in Nablus, he agreed with the lawyer's statement, and he said, the end game is to make Palestinians give up any hope of achieving self determination or being recognized as a people. Janine has a long history of resistance. It is a model for the masses that Israel wants to eliminate. But for Palestinians, the question is a matter of principle, and their endgame is to

end this occupation. And essentially Israel intends to crush what I you refer to as quote the Janine phenomenon or any form of Palestinian resistance. Yeah, the Israeli aggression it raised fears of an escalation that continues to happen in areas such as the Kaza Strip because that's another symbolic place of resistance for Palestinians. And yeah, that's where we are now.

Another person who's killed was a Sadil Natcha Nachia. She was fifteen, and a few days later her classmates attended her funeral, all in their school uniforms. It's pretty sad. There are obviously images of it if you want to go look them up. But you can see lots of little school girls burying their friend in a town which is covered in burned detritus. No one should have to bury their kids. It's a torrible kid shouldn't have to deal with this shit. But there are plenty of pictures

of little school girls standing by her grave. It's it's awful, so horrible. Yeah. The other victims were identified as Ahmed Saka Ahmed Da Rachma, Colored Dawish custom Pais Labusilia. They were fifteen, nineteen, twenty one, nineteen, and twenty nine respectively. They after this occurred, the aforementioned attack on settlers in Eli took place. Two gunman shown to a gas station or restaurant. One was killed on the scene and one was killed later. It was a response to the master

attack on Tulmasya that occurred a few days before. And I want to highlight how the NYT covered this because I think it's important to dissect how Palestine is covered by the US right because obviously the US is one of the biggest state supporters of Israel, and specifically one of the people who continues to equip the IDF to

do this stuff, so I'm quoting here directly. Last week, two Palestinians called for Israelis and injured four others near the Eli Settlement, escalating month long violence between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank. The next day, some four hundred settlers descended on several Palestinian villages, including tulmas Aya, a prosperous town near Romala, where reportedly they torched cars

and homes. I want to I want to stop right there, because it is not reportedly right, Like we do not have to qualify this with like maybe or like we've just seen this on Twitter dot com. Like you could probably see this shit on Google maps, right, Like they torched a town. There's there's massive damage done. Even the New York Times itself didn't qualify it as a reported incident in its own reporting, and that this isn't we don't hear the same thing with the two Palestinian gunmen, right.

Just to read the first opening sentence again, last week, two Palestinian carriers killed for Israelis. It's just stated as a fact, right, And these just within those couple of sentences, you can see so much of the bias in the way this is reported so much of the different perspectives through which state violence I would encourage you people not to use terrorism. I would encourage them to see things, especially in this context, in terms of political violence. Right,

there is political violence done by both sides. One of those sides is a state actor, the other side is a non state actor. But qualifying one and making it distinct from the other, I think is shoddy journalism, and I don't think it really helps us understand this situation. So what happened, right Like, fifteen homes were burned, sixty vehicles were burned, and the writer's sort of quote unquote, sort of saying this is reportedly. It's not true. It's

a thing that really happened. Another kind of phrasing that I've found really objectionable in this instance is clashes, right Like often you'll see clashes in Janine, and like that casts a lens of parity, or it looks at these things through a lens of parity, which I don't think is real on the ground. Like, it's not a clash when a helicopter is firing rockets, even if it's varying rockets at people with kalashnikovs, Right Like, that it's not

a clash. There's not really a parody there, right, Like, and it's it also kind of downplaced the violence of what's happening, right, it's an attack, it's an assault. I think the constant use of clashes, right, it's nearly always.

You don't really see it used anywhere else. If you if you do, it's for it's for much less severe violence, like like clashes between an arrival football fans, not that that can't be very violent, care, but you don't really see this word used to characterize like state violence on this scale anywhere else. And so I would really encourage people when they're reading, especially coverage of this, right, which is an issue that the US cannot get its head out of its ass about, uh, to look for this

bias language. And if you're reading coverage or anything else, right, if you're if you're reading coverage something, and you start to notice that, like I would perhaps question where you're getting your coverage from. And I know you had some shit to say about the New York Times sharing.

comes to Palestine. Is real reporting, and The New York Times in particular has been absolute dog shit and their coverage of Palestine for quite a while now. There has been a persistent pattern of bias when it comes to Israel and Palestine. I'm going to go in chronological order, and then James will jump back in with the recent article about the New York Times and this terrible thing that it has within it that I'm not going to

give away right now. But let's go back in time to February twenty eleven, when The New York Times published

a piece on JVP activism in the Bay Area. JVP stands for Jewish Voices for Peace, and this article said, the activists say they are not working against Israel, but against the Israeli government policies they believe are a discriminatory which is yes correct, But in the editor's note, the Times later wrote that one of the articles two authors was a pro Palestinian advocate and that he should not have written the article and should not have been allowed

to write it. So it initially seems like good reporting because it's true you're protesting against the Israeli government. But then to say that a Palestinian advocate can't write it is ridiculous, So fuck you New York Times. And then in twenty fifteen, a study was done analyzing the New York Times publications during the period of September tenth and

October fourteenth and twenty fifteen. At the time of the study in twenty fifteen, two thousand Palestinians had been injured while eighty three Israelis were injured, just for context of what the reporting was about, and the study analyzed thirty six articles. In these articles, the New York Times talked about Palestinian quote unquote violence thirty six times and Israeli violence two times. The word attack was used to describe Palestinian actions one hundred and ten times, in Israeli actions

seventeen times. They use the word terrorist forty two times to refer to Palestinian violence and one time one time to refer to Israeli violence. More than half of the New York Times headlines during that whole year depicted Palestinians as the instigators of violence. Zero headlines depicted Israelis as aggressors. None and nothing has changed. I know that's from a period in twenty fifteen, but that's basically consistent, if not more so prevalent.

and from whom. Of the two thy four hundred and ninety opinion pieces about Palestinians with The New York Times published between nineteen seventy in twenty nineteen, only forty six written by actual Palestinians, which is an average of less than two percent. With the lack of Palestinian and Arab columnists that are even employed by New York Times, a kind of group think has inevitably emerged there, and this group think consistently places Israel, Israeli framings and Israeli perspectives

above those of Palestinians. A keyword search of the Times editorials that discuss Palestinians is like this. Between nineteen seventy and twenty nineteen, the word piece appeared one thousand and one hundred and twelve times, but justice only appeared eighty six times. Terror was mentioned six hundred and forty nine times, but occupation was only mentioned two hundred and nineteen times, two hundred and nineteen times. I want to also remind

you this is from starting from nineteen seventy. Israel's security quote unquote was written ninety times, but Palestinian freedom was mentioned just three times. While keyboard searches alone do not tell the whole story, they do help us get a sense of the overall tenor of the Times coverage, and over the last five decades, Israel has been unquestioningly presented by Times editors as a close ally, while the Palestinians have been consistently framed as a problem.

Honest Reporting. What it is is a five oh one c. Three And essentially what they've done is is what Sharene describes right where they've they've found not I believe, mostly Palestinian reporters, perhaps also non Palastinian reporters who are reporting

from this. I guess from what I would described as the facts based approach to this, which is describing what's happening as an apartheid and they've dived into these people's background, their previous tweets, their previous writing, their other work to describe them as biased and get their articles taken down.

They've done this to some very like this has happened at the time, and this is at a time, like I know Sharen mentioned something that happened in twenty eleven, but I know that in twenty ten the Jerusalem bureau chief of the Times had a child serving in the IDF Right. So like you know, if if I had a you know, if I was a journalist, and I said, yeah, you know, I actually have a son who's in the Aleaxa Martyrs Brigade. Like then they're not going to not

going to commission my piece. But they've for instance, Hosam Salem. Have you seen Sam's work?

But yeah, Hossam is a fantastic photo journal Listen absolutely like it is. It's utterly ridiculous to have like have him blacklisted by a major news organization, which, like, whether we like it or not, that is where a lot

of Americans get their news. In one instance, this organization managed to get the Toronto Start to scrub all uses of Palestine from their stories to include shit like yeah, like the like they were profiling a DJ who was Palestinian and wow, which I think is like incredibly illustrative, right that, Like this is organization presents itself as fighting anti Israeli bias, which I'm sure that is a thing that exists. It fucking does not exist in the US media.

Like I'm I'm not a Palestinian person, by speak as a person who has pitched articles about conflict in various parts of the world, and they can tell you that that that is not a bias that I have come across, having worked with almost every big outlet that it is possible to work for in the US. And it's not doing that. It's trying to raise Palestine and Palestinian people

not only their perspectives but their whole existence. Right, And this is something that I hop on a lot, But like, I think we should do more conflict reporting that's about people, unless it is about numbers and battles and such like. That's why I want to write about little girls who's surfing Gaza and young men who do parkour, because like when Israel bombs Gaza, it doesn't just bomb people who are part of fatal or humas or whatever they want

to say. They're targeting, right, like the lions den or genymbrias, whatever they're When they're bombing these places, they're also bombing children. They're also bombing places where little kids want to go and play football. They're bombing towns where little boys want to I mean the hospitals and schools, and yeah, like

the this is where people just like you live. It's not like it's a very clear desire to kind of erase Palestinian civilians, I guess from my narrative, and it's really important that we as journalists and as people don't allow that to happen. I guess you can. We'll link to this in our sources at the end of the month, but I think it's an excellent piece. It's worth reading.

up settlement in the West Bank. Earlier in June, Prime Minister Benjamin then Yahoo ratified a policy allowing pro settler finance Minister that's Aleel Smotridge to bypass the six days process for building settlements, effectively giving him the ability to make settlement decisions on its own. In recent years, Israeli politicians as settlers have become more and more open about their goals annexing most, if not all, of the West Bank.

So March of this year, Smartridge claimed that Palestinian people were an invention of the last century. It's probably worth taking a moment to point out that all national identities are inherently constructed. If humanity did not come to earth with flags, those are things that came to exist in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Like, so is Israel right, we can kind of put a date on that one.

who are the Palestinians? He said, I'm a Palestinian, going on to describe his late grandfather, who he said was a thirteenth generation Jerusalem might as a true Palestinian, which is somewhat Look, these people are supposed to be contradictory, Like it's not really worth sucking pointing this out, but like you can't simultaneously say there aren't a Palestinians. Palestine doesn't exist. Also, I'm a Palestinian, right, it is again not the point. I guess he was a resident. He

is a resident one of the settlements himself. He's an advocate for theocratic law, the segregation of maternity wards. So he doesn't want Arab and Israeli women to give birth in the same ridiculous Yeah, it's his justification for it is like even worse, but I won't bother with that. He's also openly homophobic, and he supports the conspiracy theory that Jitzach Rabin was killed by Israel security agencies. All around.

Top guy Benjamin and Yahoo's party likes to use names for the West Bank that you might find in the Bible, and it's made accelerating a legal settlement there a priority. Since it took office that Yahoos coalition has approved seven thousand new housing units, many in the occupied West Bank. The government also amended law to clear the way for settlers to return to four settlements that have previously been evacuated. Within a week of having power to make these decisions,

smart Rich approved five thousand new units. We this is a great time to draw attention to one of the most fucking infuriating paragraphs that has ever been written, which I found in a New York Times article that.

Is it's really next level. But more people listen to our podcasts in their podcast because we're winning in the marketplace of ideas and so all in seven hundred and fifty thousand people live in these settlements. But being a legal under international law doesn't really mean anything unless that law is enforced. And it really is. We spoke earlier this before, right, just like the US, which frequently violates Domexican international law on its own border, Israel is simply

not held to account for its crimes. United Nations Special Reporteur and Palestine Francisco Albernesi told Al Jazeera international law has a quote unquote problem of enforcement. There is a problem of double standards because clearly when it comes to Palestine, there is a cognitive dissonance, especially among West countries and reticents in applying these coercive measures and all the prohibitions international law of thoughts are Benici said.

over the world. And laws are fundamentally backed up by violence. Right, Like in America, if you get a parking ticket and you don't pay your parking ticket and you go to court, and you don't go to court, eventually someone with a gun will come and kick down your door. And like all laws are based in violence. And there ain't no one kicking down Israel's door, right, and no one will. And so it doesn't matter. International law doesn't matter. It's

it's nice and it's there. We can point to it and say, look, we've all agreed this is bad, but we all know it's bad. That we don't really need a bunch of like old men suits to tell us it's bad. We knew it was bad. What we needed to fucking make it stop, and that's not happening.

of the Israel Palestine quote unquote conflict for decades. The framework of peace centers on identity politics and ignores the structural violence that the state perpetuates against oppressed groups and instead focuses on acts of spectacular violence committed by those groups in response to the oppression they face. And it also blames them for escalating conflict and then uses it to justify the repressive violence by the more powerful forces.

To go back to New York Times briefly, many of the Time's editorials over the last thirty years since the advent of the Oslo Accords have been steeped in the peace framework. They treat israelis a Palestinians as having equal power when they clearly don't. They praise Israel for minor adjustments to its daily structural violence against Palestinians, but in the same breath they scold Palestinian leaders and society for

acts of violence done in turn. And the word is also problematic in and of itself, because Palestine isn't some conflict or problem for Israel to sort out. It's a

cause for everyone to fight for. Since nineteen forty eight, the Israeli state has prevented Palestinians from living in their homeland with freedom and dignity, whether it's by banning refugees from returning to their homes, or discriminating against Palestinian citizens inside Israel, or keeping millions of Palestinians under military occupation. If there is a problem to be solved, that problem

is the regime itself. But this fact of bias and shitty reporting, and the fact that the truth is not out of there, that fact seems to have eluded the Times editorial board because, rather than recognize the systemic violence, discrimination, and colonization perpetuated by Israel against Palestinians, the board blames

quote unquote both sides for a vastly asymmetric situation. This both sides may give the appearance of balance, but it does not reflect the reality in which Israel holds almost total political, economic, and military power over the lives of every Palestinian in a system that growing numbers of scholars, human rights groups, and legal experts are defining as apartheid.

But I do hope some of this was at least helpful, and I mean probably be back to do the same kind of thing soon because Israel is relentless and stupid and I hate it. So until then, fuck the IDF and have a nice day.