Also media.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast.
It's me James today and I'm joined by my friend and yours, Charles McBride, documentary filmmaker, humanitarian activist, writer. And you've just been in Palestine, is that right, Charles, Yeah, just got back like a week and a half ago. Nice, welcome, Welcome to America and the Free Damn, that's a rough transition. Actually, thank you for thank you for joining us so soon
after you got back. So there's a lot to talk about, right, Like I feel as if in like legacy media, when there is less discussion of Palestine recently, maybe just because I'm seeing so much domestic US coverage like twenty four to seven, right, we're in another like Trump news cycle,
but especially with reference to the West Bank. Actually, like can you look update people on the last maybe you know, maybe in the time you were there, and then what's especially what's happening in the West Bank, Cause I think that's going to even less coverage.
Sure, So I've taken two trips for the West Bank in the past year. Yeah, So August of last year May of this year. I noticed a rapid deterioration just between those two time periods. So, I mean, it was
bad last year when we went. That was right when I was when my team went there to begin our documentary, they had just launched this new operation in the West Bank, which was pretty much the largest ground operation they'd launched the Israelis had launched since the Second Antipada, and it was targeted at the northern refugee camps of Tolkom, Nurse Shams, and Jeanine. A lot of people know Janine, they've heard
that in the news. You know, it's relatively familiar. Not a lot of people realize that the situation in Tolkoom and in Norsham's is quite similar, and those three camps in particular were targeted by the IDF operation. On the second trip, we couldn't even we couldn't even get to those places, not with the UNREP personnel that we were supposed to go with our documentaries on unrout the United
Nation Relief Works Agency for Palestigne Refugees. And last time we were there, they were able to bring us to the camp. They showed us where the Israelis had you know, bulldozed their facilities and done various air strikes in the camp. This time they couldn't even take us there. So we went to other camps and said camp, everyone's spirits were low. Lots of people were talking about West Bank annexation as if it seemed like an inevitability.
Yeah.
Yeah, And I actually spent some time inside forty eight on this trip, and I went down to Yafa and to Tel Aviv and interviewed some long time kind of liberal journalists from Aritz, and they were just talking about how the shift in Israeli society over the last year has been quite marked as well, particularly around the question of just generally ethnically cleansing Gaza, which was something that was, according to his telling, like really only heard in very
right wing circles like Connie circles over the past a couple of decades and is now just pretty routinely heard across the spectrum Israeli society that the best solution to this is to just deport everyone from Gaza.
Yeah, that's pretty bleak, Like, I mean, I guess the process of manufacturing consent has been pretty pretty successful and pretty complete in that sense, Like just the dehumanization of Palestinian people has been pretty successful at least there. I guess if people aren't familiar. We should just like explain
that Palestine is well. The areas which are now like legally allotted to Palestinians, I guess, are not contiguous, right, Gaza in the West Bank at different areas separated by Israel, and like the bulk of what you have seen in the last two years has been Israel's war on the people of Gaza, but the West Bank is a different and larger area which has also seen significant is really like military aggression and violence from settlers, right, like a
paramilitary aggression, I guess you could call it. People I think maybe have heard of ANRA or maybe will at least be familiar with seeing it. Can you explain what the agency does? It's a unique agency, right, Like it doesn't work anywhere else in the world. It's quite a unique thing to this Israel Palestine context.
Yeah.
So ANRO is probably the most controversial UN agency, and that has everything to do with the context in which it was founded. It was explicitly set up in coordination between the United States, the newly founded State of Israel, and the Arab League, coming to the United Nations and presenting a plan to deal with the displacement of seven hundred thousand Palestinians from their home as a result of Nakba in nineteen forty eight. So out of that context,
it's designed as a temporary aid refugee organization. Yeah, it actually it's it's set up before un HCR, so it's mandated specifically for the Palestinians, and the Palestinians don't end up falling under UNHDR when it's established. So a lot of particularities about UNRA that make it different from other UN agencies, which is also something that the Israelis like to highlight because they're engaged in a multi decade credibility campaign against UNRA.
But to the extent that it is.
Almost entirely staffed by Palestinians, it is quite different than other UN agencies, which typically involve multinationals international personnel. Now, a lot of the higher leadership at UNRA is still kind of your same international diplomats, but in the words of the Zionist academic that I interviewed for this documentary,
most of those have quote unquote gone native. So most of the international diplomats do tend to, you know, obviously be quite sympathetic to the conditions which the Palestinian staff are working under. So my documentary is a it's an investigative documentary to some extent, and it uses the frame narrative the Israeli allegations that UNRA had been infiltrated by Hamas and that unrepersonnel had taken place in the October
seventh massacres. Yeah, it uses that as a hook and a frame narrative to talk about what is this organization?
Yeah?
Why did it go from something that was set up as a temporary relief organization to seventy seven years later it is responsible for maintaining the livelihood and well being of five point nine million registered Palastinian refugees, not only in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but also in Syria, in Lebanon, and in Jordan. So the politics
of it get very hazy, very quickly. But it's kind of an inconvenient thing for everyone because the organization was explicitly designed to end after a few years, but the assumption was after a few years there would have been a political resolution to the Israeli Palacinian conflict. There has not been, and here we are seventy six, seventy seven years later, and we're still at that point, so UNRA
still exists. One of the ironic things we found when filming documentary is that everyone involved in this process wants this organization to go away. Yeah, Israel Is, the Palestinians, the staff themselves. The only thing they disagree on is when and under what conditions? Why?
Yeah, I think it's Yeah, it's very interesting, like as refuge agencies go. Because like just I was recently reading Sally Hayden's or rereading Sally Hayden's book about refugees in Libya. Right, it's called My Fourth Time We Drowned. It's an excellent book. If people haven't read it, that you read it, very good audiobook as well that they incorporated some of the voice notes you got from the refugees, which I think
is good. And as it's typical of United Nations refugee workers in many areas, the bulk of them end up living or spending a lot of time in Tunisia, right, like not in Libya and coming in like in you know, the typical image that you see of the United Nations is like a bunch of people in white land cruisers, right, and they pull up and they do their thing and they leave they're not either part of the population or even with the population, and they often criticize for this
around the world, right, And they're very susceptible to like state narratives, right, Like in Libya there's there's all kinds of evacuations of corruption or like sort of state capture. I guess, so an agency that is supposed to be international and supposed to be impartial, and they're supposed to, above all things, advocate for refugees, right, And sometimes you can see at tension between the IOM and the UNHCR
of this kind of shit. It's different with UNRA, right, Like, like they are from what I've heard from Palestinian friends, like more respected by Palestinian people because of the work that they do and the value that they provide.
Yeah, I mean, I would say like trust in UNRA is probably higher than in the Palestinian authority. The PA is largely seen as a contractor or subcontractor for Israel, right, and UNRA is seen, you know, as flawed. I mean, there are a lot of Palestinians who are deeply critical of UNRA, particularly the constant efforts it takes to sort of remain neutral on all of these political questions. Yeah, and you know, inefficiencies that are going to come with
any multinational institution in Goo. Yeah, of course, but in general they seem to I mean, at this point, we've interviewed dozens of people who had various relationship whether they had gone to unreschools or they had taken you know, they had been to unrehealth clinics, and by and large they preferred these and they saw the value in UNRA.
They liked the unreschools, they liked the unrahealth clinics. UNRA is largely responsible for the fact that Palestinians are one of the most literate populations in the Middle East, and many of them speak English incredibly well. I mean, like, yeah, it's wild talking to an eight or nine year old girl who grew up in a refugee camp and she's speaking to me in perfect English talking about how she wants to move to Los Angeles and become an actress, and it's just it's wild. And that's kind of a
testament to what UNDRA has done. And that's very inconvenient for Israel because when you educate a lot of refugees who can then learn English and turn around and speak to the world very eloquent ways about the nature of their oppression and their suffering. It becomes an ideological barrier to your particular political project.
Right, And this is one of the things that has distinguished the genocide in Gaza in terms of like how it's been perceived in the US at least, right, is that, like, you have a very literate population that is able to articulate what is happening directly via social media and to traditional media, right, like to people like yourself making documentaries like this is distinct from populations like I think of the Rahinga right, Like, you know, I speak to Rahinga
people pretty often, but I don't think most Americans see Rahingah folks if they go on TikTok or or Instagram, and you know, as a result, I think people would
have cared as deeply. You know, people would have been in the streets for that, but that communication wasn't that And yeah, it is extremely inconvenient if your project isn't an ethno state, right, and you're willing to cleanse areas of other ethnicities to build your ethno state in it, which is what's happening, then it's very convenient if there's people you're trying to cleanse can talk to the world, you know, in a language of the world understands and
very eloquently and make their case for not being ethnically cleansed.
Yeah.
No, it is tribute to the work that ANRA has done. You know what, I guess we should do. I guess we should take an advertising break right now. So let's do that.
We'll come back.
All right, we are back. Let's talk about the alternative to UNRA. Alternative is a wrong word. Let's talk about the attempt to make an end run around unrous existence by installing this fascical NGO.
I guess you could call it an d O or like AID Provider.
This is a gaza humanitarian fund people who aren't familiars synthetic GENRA alternatives. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's unstitute, like the zine of UNRA. You know. Okay, so what what's going on with the guy? Let's talk about what it is and what it claims to do first, and then we'll talk about how it's not doing it very well or at all, Like people are fucking dying in droves.
Yeah, Mile High View.
UNRA maintains most of the aid going in and out of Gaza. Everyone I know in the humanitarian world has had to interface at least to some degree with UNRA during the aid process, and that's difficult because it has been essentially been declared a terrorist entity by the Israeli government and has been banned from operating inside what Israel considers to be its territory, including occupied East Jerusalem and
increasingly in the West Bank. They're trying to limit its operations and in Gaza they say they can't work with them because they're Hamas. So it's the UNER people are quite confused because they they've had to deconflict with the Israelis for this entire time, and recently as a result of this law, it's actually become illegal under Israeli law for the Israelis to like coordinate with UNRA, and so the UNRA of people don't have been Actually they don't
really understand what's going to happen. There's been some limited coordination, but still we talk to people who are very high up in the organization and they essentially had no idea what the Israelis were planning to do to replace NRA or to coordinate with them in Gaza, and so They just kept kind of doing their thing until the Israelis
literally made them stop in certain instances. Right. Yeah. My documentary is called the War on UNRA, and part of this war has been the propaganda efforts and the Israelis going after this organization and everyone in the humanitarian aid world has sort of been asking the question, well, what are you going to do to replace it? This is an organization that deals with like two million people in
Gaza and like three million in the West Bank. Not all of those are registered with UNRAP, but it's dealing with all of the refugee camps there in Gaza itself is a refugee camp, like it only exists as such as a result of the AKA, because it's where they put all of the displaced people who weren't in Jordan.
Yeah.
And so the Israelis basically.
Had their backskins wall and they're like, Okay, well we have to come up with some alternative to this because we can't come out and say, actually, our main goal is to depopulate Gaza and settle it. Yeah. Yeah, and so they cooked up this idea of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, which was kind of this public private partnership backed by the Israelis and the Americans, and the intention was to entirely subvert not only UNRU, but the entire UN infrastructure
that goes into the Gaza strip. For instance, every UN agency in the world actually piggybacks off of the World Food Program because they're always the first ones in. So it's WFP infrastructure, trucks, you know, vehicles, everything like that that goes in first, and then UNHCR, UNISEF all this thing they're piggybacking, coordinating with WFP. In this instance, WFP is coordinating with UNRA.
The Israelis.
One did not only buy RA, they wanted to just put the entire UN system out of that. So to do that, they formed this sort of collaborative partnership under the management of the Israelis, which was supposed to be kind of an amalgam of all of these different private NGOs. And I don't want to get too much into the specifics of like who sort of was involved in that, but a lot of people kind of took them at
face value. They wanted this to be a real solution, and so they offered to help and kind of set up this system which was supposed to be overseen entirely by the Israelis and the Americans from a security perspective.
Yeah.
One of those was Jake woodho was the founder of Team Rubicon, which is an organization that does a fair
amount of excellent work all around the world. He resigned from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund a day before it launched and went on record saying we cannot actually do this while keeping to humanitarian principles of humanity and neutrality, which was a signal to the world that this was a highly politicized project, which is precisely what the World Food Program under the leadership of radical leftist activist Cindy McCain
has been saying about this from the start. And you know, UNROE, Felipe Lazarini, the head of UNRA, said this is this is a clearly political sized event on the only the un system is the only one capable of actually dealing with this in a humanitarian way. All those concerns were brushed aside. American contractors were brought in. Yeah, and the
results were relatively predictable. We've seen at this point two pseudo massacres, I mean the first one with that four Palestinians were killed in just this morning twenty seven Palestinians were killed at a GHF distribution after gunfire was opened up on them.
Yeah, we're recording on the third gene, so that was
when this this second massacre occurred. And yeah, like, I mean just today as we're recording this, I've seen that Boston Consulting Group again, like not exactly, like a bastion of wokeness has terminated this relationship with the Gods Humanitarian Foundation, right, Like, the kind of see that this is a replacement for UNRA to begin with was somewhat fascical, right, But people who were prepared to go along with that, either because they can make money doing it or because they thought
this was the only way to stop people starving, are still deciding that, having seen the way that this is run, it's not worth it, right, right, And.
There's also some political heavy handedness going on with this, one of the most obvious features being specific aid distribution points in the south of Gaza, which are designed to bring you know, whereas UNRA and WFP were going to people, they were trying to get food through as much of the Gaza strip as possible, including people who wanted to return to their homes in the North, the GHF is like, nope, you starving population will need to make the journey to
this distribution point and this distribution point only, which you know has the political effect of depopulating these areas that you know, Israel is operating in. Yeah, which of course is also met criticism. There are some videos going around so impalston In celebrating yeah, you know, the relief efforts of the of the JHEF. I think some of them have been like verified by Reuters. You know, Israeli media
is making hay of that. You know, people praising Trump in Gaza, right, which you know, these people are starving and they're very happy to get aid.
Yeah.
That doesn't mean that like everything is above board and cool, right. It means that like the people who need a food got food.
Yeah, I mean, and that's the political complexity. The situation is that the people of Gaza have just been abandoned by everyone, right, I mean, there's there's there's a lot of criticism to be a haad of how Hamas has handled this. There's a lot of criticism to be had of obviously the way in which Israel has behaved and the UN system and the international system. So I mean, I'm glad that like some of them are getting food. Yeah, that is that is an improvement of none of them
getting food. But everyone in the AID world is starting to go on record saying the main problem is Israel preventing AID from going into the Gaza strip. And actually I want to harp on that a little bit because the reason that has been given primarily for that is that Hamas is stealing the AID. Every time they're asked about this, they go back to, well, we want to get into people gaza. Unfortunately Hamas keeps stealing the aid and so we can't allow it. We need to allow
us to trickle in. Yeah, that's interesting for two reasons.
First of all, the yet to provide any evidence that that's actually occurring, and second because all humanitarian experts agree that even if that was the case, say everything is real said about Hamas was true, and they were stealing you know, ninety ninety five percent of the eight that's coming in and selling it back, the humanitarian solution to that would be to flood the strip with so much AID that it would literally be impossible for them to like to stop that, which we can't do, Like, yeah,
it would be possible for us to flood the Gaza strip with so much aid that it would be like an abundance of food. So the decision not to do that is a political one.
Yes, definitely, Like I was going to say, on the face of it, it doesn't matter. There are lots of situations, to be clear, where people steal aid. It's undesirable, of course it is. But yeah, the solution is more aid, not like unfortunately the aid has been stolen, so now they children must have. Yeah, that only works if you're prepared to accept the outcome in which little children die of starvasues.
Which the Israelis are. They're perfectly I mean this near was a University of Pennsylvania poll. I'm not saying eighty four percent of Israelis are in favor of the idea of just simply either killing or displacing everyone in the gardsa eighty four percent.
Yeah, it's wild to see.
Like it's been such a strange couple of years in that sense, right, because more people in this country are aware of the plight of the people of Palestine than ever have been, and more people are engaged with it. That is mostly good. Some people have been gaged to it in a way which is far from good. Right, Like, I don't think there's really very much be gained. Fucking throwing molotov cocktails people in Boulder is not making anything
better for anyone. It's just making everything danger more dangerous for everyone. And it's fucking stupid.
And I would extend that to gunning down yes, so would I. Yeah, Israeli a couples outside the Jewish music in DC. I don't think that's necessarily the best way to help people in Gaza.
No, Like, yeah, standing outside the ventf Jewish people in fucking shooting random people.
It's not that.
Again, it doesn't make anyone safer. It makes all of us left safe, And like it does nothing to stop people dying and starving in Gaza, and like that's it's not the crux of the problem, I guess, But like that is a problem, right, that people are engaging with Gaza, but nothing is helping people here. Know how bad it is that children are starving in Gaza, but that hasn't
changed the fact that children are starving in Gaza. In fact, like you know, I've said it's a lot of times that I moved her in two thousand and eight, and I had engaged with the movement before that in the UK right and the situation passed time to be was very different then, but like it wasn't something that people had heard of here for the most part, unless you were within like certain leftist or sort of people have maybe they're like Middle East an extraction would know about it.
Of course, now people do know, and all over the world people know, and we've seen huge marches. Right, Like, the situation is worse than it's ever been, I mean, not ever being the knuck boll is pretty fucked too. But as the world looks on, right, like, the gender side continues and people continue dying, and seemingly the acceptance of the Guard of Humanitarian Foundation by states of the world is really troubling, right, Like we're concentrating this starving
population in a small area. It's contrary to everything that humanitarian principles stand for. And oh no, we don't see I mean, there is a very ready alternative. It's whether anyone is willing to step up and tell Araee to stop stopping aid entering the Guard like this could end in my estimation, like very quickly. Right, we have enough aid and even aid in the regent to feed all those people right now if we needed to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's there's tens of millions of pounds of food rotting and warehouses and Jordan and Egypt right now just waiting to go across the border.
Yeah, and people dying.
It's the lack of political will, mostly on behalf of the United States, you know, but also I think the members of the Abraham Accords and the EU. Yeah, it's a devastating indictment. And I think the interesting thing about it is it truly pulls the mask off of the
quote unquote rules based world order. Yeah, the US led rules based world order, because you just I mean, it's just so obvious that no matter how many people want this terrible thing to end, that we're saying this very obvious genocide is being livestream to our phones, the powers that be are too invested to to let it stop.
You know, they're they're into the hill. We've already seen the degree to which the United States is compromised in its in its media and and government storytelling in relation to Israel Palestine. Did the long unwillingness of people to speak up about this followed by the very rapid turnaround of people who are now rats fleeing the ship. Yeah, seeing the unmistakable reality of this genocide. And you know it's like everyone says, once this is done, everyone will
pretend they were against it from the start. And you're now starting to see that, right, you know with like the former White House Press secretary.
Yeah, yeah Miller, Right yeah, Miller.
Was like, yeah, they've been committing war crimes than they were doing it while I was there, But I didn't speak on my behalf. I was speaking on behalf of the United States.
Government, right, yeah, the old the old Neumberg defense. M Yeah, they like I was just doing my job thing, which like is not actually don't actually excuse for participating in war crimes, and like should have been an excuse for apologizing or excusing them, might there.
Right, It's I know that you guys have talked about and that Wi'll have spoilers for this, but I know you guys have recently had a series Unpacking and Or, which is my favorite TV show. Yeah, and I was just so happy that they snuck that one line in about when Cyril asks what they're doing here and she just says following orders.
Yeah, how often we can I hear that in the next few years, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's so predictable, right like, every time this happens, right like, And this isn't the first time the United Nations has basically allowed it. Genocide tappened right under its nose. No, and it probably won't be the last, because, as you said, right like, the idea that we have a rules based world order, it's a lie. It's a myth that exists to make people feel better and feel like this stuff
couldn't happen again. But like you know, we have ICC warrants for people who are traveling freely around the world. It doesn't matter that the ICC can't enforce its own warrants, right like you can say something for war crime, it doesn't matter, Like, no one's the war police aren't going to go and arrest all the people doing it.
Yeah, it's mostly just kind of a Yeah, it's kind of a placebo, and I'm not really sure what the function it serves. I mean, I'm not a big international institutions enjoyer. Like, I'm deeply skeptical of the United Nations
in almost every one of its aspects. My team and I've taught several times about the point that this documentary has that weirdly, like it's improved our trust in international and geos just because we're seeing like the degree to which UNRA is operating on increasingly less budget every year and still managing to be effective.
Yeah.
I think a huge part of that is again, it is staffed by the local population who are from these areas, and they have a duty and a commitment to care to their people.
Yeah.
But in general, no, I mean, I don't understand what the point of the UN is if you don't give it the US military, Like I mean, if as an anarchist, I don't believe that this is a great solution to things. But like, if you wanted to enforce the U in you would need the World Police, Like you would need to just use the United States to like hunt down these people, Yeah, and utilize it's eight hundred military bases in every country to enforce these rules.
And we don't really yet we allow these things to happen. But yeah, I'm the biggest national institutions enjoy either, Like I've seen the UN be fugging useless in most continents that people live on. I would really like it though, if they would do something to stop the suffering of the people of Palestine. Like, it doesn't mean I wouldn't
be happy. It doesn't mean I'm not happy when I speak to guys from PK, guys that we've had on our show several times, right, Like when they talk to us about like where should we send money, They'll be like, oh, Unerawa able to get my family some food this week or whatever. Like I'm happy to hear that, and I'm glad that they're there, Glad that they were there at that time. I guess. So, like, what does the future
hold for the guys of Humanitarian Foundation? Seems to be falling apart within a very short period of this whole thing being stood up, which is unsurprising, Right, can you explain, like what does it take for a that lives up to basic humanitarians to get in there?
I think that's a really difficult question to answer because we have bribed so many options. Yeah, I mean truly, I mean the last time I think I was on this podcast, it was to talk about my colleagues at the World Central Kitchen who got killed in Gaza. That was an attempt to try and alleviate the suffering of the Palace sitting people and it had predictable results. You know. There's all these groups have been operating in there to the extent that they can and the result has been
too little, too late. And everyone is saying, from Sydney McCain at the World Through Program, to Philippe Lazarreni, to you know, Lese andres like from the private sector, everyone is saying, the reason this is a problem has nothing to do with the moths. It has everything to do with about that Israel is restricting the amount of aid going to the Gaza Strip. And now everyone's waking up and asking the obvious question of like, well, why are
they actually doing that? And in the answer corresponds to those polls we see that indicate that, you know, yeah, fifty percent of Israeli society is open to killing everyone in the Gaza Strip. Any four percent are open to displacing them all. This is just what Israel wants. And I think the humanitarian world is slowly swallowing that very difficult pill. And I don't I can't really tell you what comes next outside of a political resolution.
Yeah, which seems higher and how to come by in the current international climate, Like certainly it's not coming from the US, right, Like.
Yeah, I mean like something to watch would be that Senator Welch from Vermont introduced a bill to immediately refund UNRA. Okay, yeah, and it has it has a house a correl it with I think, yeah, Congresswoman Jayapaul and a few others who are trying to kind of push that through. I mean, the United States funds three hundred million dollars, which is about over a third of un annual budget, and we've
restricted that funding for the past year and a half. Yeah, so if we restore that, I think that would be a big signal to Israel that like, we're not playing ball anymore.
Yeah.
I just think when you have a rubber stamp Congress and a fascist president that's probably unlikely to pass.
That's a big reach. Yeah.
I actually think this is an area where elected officials are to the right of Trump supporters on this one.
I think, like, you.
Know, I spend a lot of time in rural East County San Diego, right, Like, I talk to people who have very different politics to my own. Yeah, it's a nice way of saying that, but like I've had people who straight up I'm sure voted for Trump. Be like, man, they're letting little children staff, Like what the fuck is wrong with you know? Like like I think it's an area where a more sensible politics would be able to build consensus.
But here we are, right, yeah, I mean, and there is no opposition, Like the Democrats are not an opposition party. They're just happy being like the junior partners in fascism.
Now.
Yeah, they're having a little party today where they're giving out tacos because they're trying to somehow encourage Trump to go ahead with more sanctions and tariffs and more genocides. I guess, like I don't quite know what the Trump always chickens out, like, well, I'm glad you stick it out with the tariffs, isn't isn't that a good thing?
Yeah?
Like yeah, like what are you trying to what are you trying to say here? I think maybe I don't want to confront what they're trying to say. But this is a thing that like at the current time, like it needs state action to stop it. Yeah, we do not have an organization which which is able to mobilize people in such a way that they can stop it.
Like and that is it's really desperate.
If you care right, because the states of the world very clearly for decades and decades and decades have been unconcerned with Palestinian people and their wellbeing, and they're not doing shit about it now. I think there are still people who are able to make a meaningful benefit to the lives of people in the West Bank. Right. I understand why people are hopeless when they when they look at what's happening to you guys, and I understand why it seems bleak and it seems like there's nothing you
can do. Are there things that like concrete actions, organizations, groups that you think people can engage with and we've heard from some them on the show before, right to be in a sort of dearity way or to help people.
In the West Bank.
Yeah, you know, I think, like I honestly, I think there are people who could probably better answer this question for me who've actually gone and done protected presence operations in the West Bank. I know that they're like the people in Massafayatta are often asking for foreigners to come and do that, and a lot of people will go through like Jordan Valley Solidarity or ism or something like that.
I'm usually one to discourage foreigners from jumping feet first into a HoriZone with great intentions and no knowledge of the language or everything that's going on. Yeah, but there does seem to be a genuine call from amongst the Palestinian community in the West Bank to have people who are willing to physically get in between you know, Alistinian villages and settlers and the IDF. Yeah, so that is a concrete thing you can do. That's a dangerous thing to ask somebody to do.
Yeah, I don't think it's something people should rush into, right, Like we've interviewed people who have been shot.
Doing Yeah, exactly. A young woman was killed doing that, Yeah, a shunar Agi. She was shot feet away from my friend who was just in the West Bank and he just got banned from the entire territory for ninety nine years. And I was talking to him about that because I wonder about, like, you know, my work, and sometimes I feel like I'm not going far enough of my solidarity because I'm doing this investigative documentary and I'm not physically
putting my body on the line. Yeah. Sure, but I can still go to the country, Like my support for the Palestinians is still ongoing. So I think people need to ask themselves, do I want to take one drastic measure to like show this is my solidarity with Ausiginn in an instant. Yeah, whether it's joining like a flotilla that might get airstrikes, or you know, setting yourself on fire outside the Israeli embassy, or do I want to like contribute in the ways that I can as best
I can. I mean, I'm a storyteller, right, so I said, I need to find a story that I can tell about the Palestinian that will humanize them. Yeah, in the eyes of people who are not naturally sympathetic. And I think a lot of people think that they need to be putting their body on the line. Or it's like I talk about this with disaster relief all the time, Like disaster happens and people see you on the TV, They're like, I need to be wearing a high viz
best and distributing a box of aid to someone. Yeah, It's like, no, you probably don't. Actually, Like the thing that you can best do to help people is probably the skill that you've been perfecting in your own career as well as like, yeah, in your own life, right, if you're good at spreadsheets, you can help people get access to housing.
Yeah, one hundred percent. You know, if you're good, if you're good at.
Lifting things, then maybe you should be lifting boxes. But like, I have a friend who's the Emmy Award winning director of photography, and he's like, I have a truck and I can lift everything's and like show me where to go. And he was hitting me up the entire like first two weeks of the LA fires, being like where should I go? And I was like me, you're an Emmy Award winning videography. Tell the story of the fires, find the survivors, like bring their stories to life and let
the world see what our community looks like. And he did that and it went amazing. Yeah, So, like I think people should think about when they want to help. You know, if you are a seramicist or you sew, or you're a musician write a song about gods. Like, there's so many ways to help that don't involve physically putting yourself in between a settler and they're in for and a Palestinian family whose language you can't speak.
Yeah, I totally agree.
Like there's and we see that with border stuff, right, Like everyone wants to do hike out to the border and drug water, or you know, everyone wanted to in Cumber right, Like a lot of people wanted to help us, and people did help us, and it was amazing, it was really beautiful. But like people were also able to help the skills they had, like making jewelry and selling
it or baby doing a benefit gig. Right, there's a long tradition of anna kiss benefit gigs, like it's a thing that we do do a zine, yeah, like you a punk concert, you know, yeah, yeah, many many such cases like within doing that, there's the intangible benefit of showing people that people care about them, like all around the world.
I remember, you know.
Just recently, I saw people from the Karini Nationalities Defense Force, right, so one of the revolutionary organizations in Miamma making a statement about solidarity to people of Palestine and to their children.
And you know that they too have experienced their children being killed, they too have experienced these bombing runs and state oppression, and that like they see them and they care about them, and even in their own time of war, like the front in Karini state is hot right now, that they are still thinking of the people of Palestine.
I saw Palestinian people were very touched by this, right, Like it does Obviously you can't eat someone's good thoughts, but like there are things you can do, like because yeah, you can't be down there right now giving people a sandwich as much as you'd like to, and for some people that's either not possible or maybe just not the best use of their time. And like, I think it's a really good message. Everyone's good as something do, like, find the thing that you're good at and use that
to help people. I think is really valuable. Is there anything else you'd like to share with people before you finish up here?
Yeah, I just think I would.
This was a dark conversation because I don't really see a way out of this humanitarian situation. But I think there's a degree to which that's been the case from the start. Right. The real trick of the imperial thought machine is that the pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it. Yeah, to quote theory Twink charisenemic. But don't lose hope, right, because the world does care about
Palestine more than it ever has. Yeah, they feel that the people there feel our love, they feel our solidarity, and that is not valueless right, Like, ye, no human is useless. Who lightens the burden of another. I was depressed as hell coming back from this recent drip to
Palaestigne and I went to the mountains and mets. We met with a bunch of people who were just really energetic about like Kalesidian solidarity and really cared about it, and it was like, yeah, it was so nice to go from that and just be able to tell my Palestinian fans like, hey, by the way, we just spent an entire week talk about what we can do to alleviate to some small degree the suffering that your people
are going through. That matters. Yeah, Like every small act, every little thing, right, the small deeds of ordinary folk. That's what keeps the darkness is bay.
Yeah, and that's really deprescient. Often, like refugees will say to me, scientias will say to me, in the last six months, now, I guess that I think Americans don't care about them anymore, and that really fucking breaks my heart, like more than I can express with words, because I care about those people so much.
And like it does.
Make a difference when they see people doing things, and they can be small things, but like I know how much set lifts up somebody in dark times, Like, yeah, because I've been with them in pretty dark times. So yeah, it does make a difference. And like if that's what you can do, then then people shouldn't think is valueless.
Yeah, and also UNI pressure people, you know, continue to make people embarrassed for the Yeah, for believing in genocide. Call your congressmen and remind them that they are their shills and cowards. I think a lot about you know, you mentioned like nineteen you mentioned World War two earlier.
I mean, if we had had TikTok in the age of Dacau and Treblinka and Oschwitz, I think about like the American government knew about the final solution, We knew that the box cars were going to these extermination camps, and we refuse to bomb them. Yeah, we focused on military targets. If we've been able to live stream, you know, some from inside Auschwitz, and we were also able, because of pro public or whatever, to find out that FDR was choosing not to bomb the concentration camps, there would
have been outrage. There would have been a huge amount of outrage I think in the American population as there is in Gaza and that's an important thing. It's something we have access to. Now we can put that external pressure onto people and make them uncomfortable. That's what brought down South African apartheid. The like it's the BCGS pulling out of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund. Yeah, basically British companies just got so embarrassed to work with South Africa that
they just eventually stopped. And that's what brought down.
Right, Yeah, because people wouldn't shut the fuck up about it, right, and they wouldn't let them do other stuff and be like, we're not talking about that today, And like people in the case of South Africa wouldn't play sports with South Africa until it fucking stopped doing its apartheid. Right. Like I was gonna say it was global and a boycott, It wasn't quite global. It's Rael was not boycotting apartheid
South Africa. But yeah, that stuff does make a different Charles, when's your documentary coming out?
Where could people find it? What can they view it on?
I'm still in the editing space, so I think give me two months and I'll have a better idea when it's coming out. I'm hoping like before autumn. Damn twenty twenty five. It is a time only piece, right, it has some relevance that's time sensitive, but you can follow it on Instagram. It's just at the war on enra you n rwa. Yeah, and my personal account also posts a lot about it. That's Charles McBride with a y.
Yeah.
And it's the same on substack TikTok YouTube.
Yeah.
Like child said, you don't have to be there getting an in full pointed at you to make a difference, and so like, yeah, I would encourage people to do the little things too. They're not that's small legedly, but just yeah, the things that aren't going to Palestine necessarily.
Absolutely, Yeah, and like take heart, you know, don't despair.
Yeah, yeah, find some joy.
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