Gutsy Women- Eva Bartlett

Good morning to the UK column, listeners. Well, actually, it's an early good morning. It's reasonably early. It's 8:00 here. I'm in a very dark, rainy Plymouth. It's still pretty dark outside. It's raining very heavily. Poppy the dog took a little look outside the door, decided that she didn't need to go out. So I'm here to do a little bit

of work from home. Today's a special day because I've got a very special guest, a lady, well, a woman who's agreed to speak to me under my Gutsy Women series. And I'm really pleased to have Eva Bartlett with me this morning. And Eva, you're there in Moscow. Thank you for joining me. What's the weather like? Thank you so much, Brian, for your kind introduction and it's really an honor to speak with you. I admire the work you've done over the years.

So thank you for, for doing this and for thinking to include me as a gutsy woman. So I'm in Moscow, oblast the countryside, I'm in a lovely, serene area. It's it's it's very quiet. It's my, I love the city. It's a beautiful city but I prefer to live in the countryside with my two dogs, which I adopted after moving to Moscow and we've had beautiful snow. In fact you'd think I had cross country skis before now. I I did as a teenager back in Ontario.

But the other day I finally went and bought myself a pair of cross country skis, my third year in Russia, and decided I'd finally get back on the snow because it's just been absolutely picturesque and gorgeous. It's it's a bit warmer today so I'll have to wait for the next snowfall, but when it happens I'll be out there. Yeah, excellent. Well, I've never been to Russia. I've always found it a fascinating country.

When I was doing my military time in the UK many, many years ago, I wasn't allowed to go. I wasn't allowed to go into the Warsaw Pact areas or Russia. That was all due to security clearances, but it was pretty strict at that time. So Russia's the place I've never been to, but it's a fascinating. Clearly it's a fascinating country and in my mind, well, maybe not surprisingly, I'm always fascinated when I see the pictures with a really heavy frost and snow, and particularly

some of those iconic buildings. First question, sorry, how do you get from, how did you get from Ontario to living in Moscow? I know this really takes you through a big chunk of your life, but you you're there living, living in Moscow, you're working as a journalist, you're covering some really troubled spots in the world and you're putting yourself at great risk. How did that journey start? Just take us back a little bit to, yeah.

I'll I'll take you back a little bit further given that I was born in Michigan in the US. My my parents were musicians and by the time I was around three 3 1/2, they decided they wanted to move to Canada. So we did. We moved to Western Canada. They taught at a university in British Columbia for a couple of years and then we moved to Winnipeg, MB, where I lived for five years.

So you know, this icy, cold, snowy weather you're describing, It's something I'm very familiar with from my childhood, from Winnipeg and then Ontario. We moved to Ontario, a very small town in Ontario when I was 10. And that's where I spent the next, you know, well off and on until 2015 when we moved to the family home and my mother to a different city in Ontario. But when I was, I forgot now. So basically when I went to high school in Ontario, we were the

only province to have 13 grades. Every other province had 12 grades. And our 13th grade was supposedly to prepare us for university. And in in the 12 and 13 years, a lot of the students took what we called spares and they were in theory supposed to be for studying. But most people played cards in the cafeteria. I didn't take any spares. I was kind of a nerdy high school student. I did well in school. I'm not a critical thinker by any means. I just.

I got decent, good grades. I was in the band, in the choir, on the basketball team. It was generally a good high school experience. But I did. I I went through my 13th year quickly so I finished one semester early and around that time my family decided to have a my mom's side of the family's Irish. They decided to have a meet up in Ireland and I thought that

would be cool. So I started working to save money to go there and by the time I finally did make it there the the family meet up had already come and gone. This is all this is all a lead up to tell you how, in a very roundabout way, how I actually got involved in anything political. I I did make it to Ireland. I ended up working there on Inishmore Island, if you know that side of western Ireland, beautiful Gaelic area. And then I started hitchhiking around the country and

volunteering on farms. And all that to say, in high school I thought I would be a marine biologist, but I really sucked at science. I really had to work hard to get decent grades at science and I had a very romantic vision of, you know, what I thought I would do. So then I came back to Canada after 1/2 year in Ireland roughly. Didn't know what to do with myself. I already played piano. As I mentioned my parents were musicians. I was also musical, so that's what I did.

I went to school on the East Coast, I studied. I was going to do a degree in music, but then after a year in my third year of university, I I studied in Strasbourg, France on a French exchange program. And so I altered my degree slightly and ended up with a major in music and minor in French. Nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with journalism. And I say that both to be clear

about how I came to journalism. But also I'm actually thankful in a sense because I I am a product of the Western education system. I mentioned I wasn't a critical thinker. We're not really encouraged to think critically, at least not where I went to school. And I would say that's a general, a general fact, but also I didn't absorb any of the the nonsense history and and political stuff we would have been taught in high school.

I just wasn't interested. So I to me, that's a blessing because when I finally, in my late 20s, did start becoming politically active, the first issue being Palestine, I simply was naive. I simply had no information whatsoever. And so the information I was taking in, of course, you know, you do have to parse. Maybe I was taking in incorrect information, but I see in in, in hindsight what I was, what I was reading and and viewing on

Palestine in my late 20s. It was correct and it was what motivated motivated me to finally to go to Palestine, which I did in May 2007. I went there on my own. I went via Jordan on my own dime, my own dollar, and this is after I had spent some years in South Korea teaching English and also just travelling very simply in Southeast Asia. So I had started to wake up to the world.

And that's when I started looking at news and coming across the issue of Palestine, which when I first saw anything to do with it and heard anything to do with it, I was, like I said, naive. I didn't know anything about it. And when I started watching videos, for example during the second intifada of Israeli soldiers methodically breaking arms of Palestinian farmers, this is part of their quashing of the Palestinian uprising, was just to oppress the entire

people as much as possible. I would. I remember sitting at my computer and just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and thinking, you know, very naively, how can this be happening? How can the world be like this and also deciding that at some point I had to go and see for myself and I don't know why, but that's always been kind of a drive in me to the places I have been reporting on to actually over there and and talk to people and see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears.

Even if if I can just just come in there, if I may, key question you, you say you were looking at material that was talking about Palestine. Since you're a journalist, where where did you go to find at that time? Where did you go to find information about Palestine? So I will, I will answer this with a caveat because whereas Democracy Now at the time was reporting in my opinion.

Well, I mean, I don't remember all the nuances of their reporting at the time, but I was an avid listener to Democracy Now at the time. This is in the early 2000s. I was still living in South Korea and every day I would TuneIn to Democracy Now and there was a lot of coverage of what was happening in Palestine and from there from whatever

links they had. I don't honestly remember the other sites I was looking at. I I did at some point come across the International Solidarity Movement, which I eventually would join in 2007 in in the West Bank and later in Gaza. But I have to say, yeah, Democracy Now was the 1st place I was I I started hearing about it. And the reason I give this caveat is that whereas you know whatever reporting they did at the time did awaken me to the issue of, you know, issues of

what was happening in Palestine. They're later reporting for example, on Syria or on Libya or on pretty much anything to do with Russia. I don't, I don't even know their really their take on Ukraine and Russia. I can imagine what it is. But because they're later reporting basically aligned with Western or NATO narratives on critical issues. So that was, you know, in all honesty that's where I first started hearing about things And

then the ISM. I don't know if your listeners are aware, but in in summary, it's a I'm no longer affiliated with them, but I do respect the concept of what ISM volunteers were doing. Basically internationals from all over the world, all faiths, all ages going for however long they can go to to Palestine. Most area, most of the time it's it's in the West Bank because Gaza is impossible to reach.

I will tell you how I got to Gaza, but most of the time it's the West Bank. And they they go and they bear witness to the various aspects of the Israeli occupation. And they put out, you know, to the best of their abilities. They put out journalistic reports and what they're seeing, whether it's Israeli invasions or the attacks of the illegal Israeli colonists on Palestinian civilians, etcetera, etcetera. So that's also one of the prime sources.

I was getting information and that's when I said I decided I would go to Palestine. It was because I'd seen the reports of such activists. OK. So, so your journey started there in 2000 and 2007 and you've already, you've already told us a lot of interesting things there because you've you've had a lot of experience, you're describing a lot of experience, you've lived in different countries, you've had different parts to your education and then ultimately you've you've moved abroad.

So I'm smiling to myself because I'm thinking yes, this sounds like the background of somebody who wasn't going to accept the the the norm was was going to going to get in amongst it. So so 2007 you you took the decision to go to Palestine. So tell us how, how did that actually happen and how did you get into the country? So let's see, 2007. I'm just trying to remember it was my own, my own funding.

I would have been working various, you know, simple jobs like I'd worked as a waitress back then. I wasn't writing anything. I wasn't publishing anything. And in journalistically, I had been helping a journalist from Gaza who I'd met in Washington DC I'd been helping him with editing nuances in English language. So doing that I was, I was learning some journalistic concepts. But again, that was just my own initiative. When I went to the West Bank, I went to Jordan, to Amman, Jordan.

I spent a few days there and then I crossed over the Allenby Bridge and was granted a three month visa. Now I I state that when I went there, I anticipated not being allowed in because I had spoken with other international activists and I'd read the accounts of the many being banned, entry or deported because it was generally understood that Israel didn't want people there to witness what was happening, what they're doing, the Israeli forces, the

the crimes of the occupation. I went there anticipating it wouldn't be allowed in. My my my feeling is that I looked like enough of a young backpacker tourist that I was allowed in. I was granted a three month visa for the first two or three weeks. I had already made contact with a group called Combatants for Peace that comprised Palestinians and Israelis who in some capacity had taken part in fighting. So the Israelis would have been for the most part.

If I recall, they were members of the Israeli forces, which every Israeli citizen has to be in any case. And Palestinians. It could be something as little as throwing a rock to being active combatants, Palestinian resistance fighters, and now I'm no longer in touch with them.

But I thought it would be interesting to start my experience in Palestine by by hearing their sides, hearing the Palestinian side, hearing Israeli sides as much as I could, before then going on to join the international solidarity movement, which I decided that I really wanted to do because I figured that I would see what I've been reading about and that I could write about it.

So again, I don't remember exactly how long I joined meetings with this Combatants for Peace, but I will say one interesting thing that I do remember. I don't remember the man's name but I remember going with this group to some Israeli neighborhood and the a former Israeli soldier spoke about his awakening moment. He basically said something like he was ready to kill. I don't remember the number if it was 100,000 or 100 thousands,

hundreds of thousands. Arabs they they he wouldn't say Palestinians just Arabs for the safety of his country. And again paraphrasing that's effectively what he said and then he had his aha awakening moment. These aren't just animals or people that I can kill, you know, without remorse. They're actually people. When he had his gun pointed at a child who was roughly the same age as his own kid, and that's what jolted him awake as he

said. And from that moment on, he realized, you know, he had been heavily propagandized. He I don't remember his whole evolution, but there's there's many such stories on the Breaking the Silence website of former Israeli soldiers and things, even acts of monstrosities or certainly violence, they participated in and you know felt the need to speak out about.

So that was my my experience like one of my experiences with this group and then I I went and I had non violence training with the ISM cause the whole principle of the ISM. Now I'm again paraphrasing, I don't want to speak on their behalf but basically it is they go to places where there is violence. They they violence primarily being from the Israeli army or illegal colonists. They document they don't fight back. So if if a colonist is attacking us, we don't fight back we turn

away. So that was one of the non violence techniques was just turning your shoulder away, walking away if need be. OK, I think there's a line where you could protect yourself if you're absolutely being beaten, which many international activists have been. But anyway, there were a a a couple of two or three days of non violence training. And then we basically as activists lived in different areas of the West Bank. I spent a couple of weeks in Hebron or the Arabic Khalil.

I spent a lot of time in Nablus. I spent off and on months living in tents of Palestinians in an area called Soussia, South of Hebron. These Palestinians had been displaced from their homes in the 80s, I think it was 80s or 90s by an Israeli closed military zone order, so they've

been expelled from their homes. Their homes had been old stone homes, even cave homes, and they were forced to live like hundreds of meters away in ramshackle tents, always at risk of being demolished by the Israeli military. Again under these pretexts like you don't have the right to be here and also being attacked by Israeli colonists, nearby colonies. So we would sleep in the tents to document when these things happened when and and and hoping

to deter such attacks. Now there are Israeli groups, rights groups. One I remember is to Ayush. I think it was TAYUSH and they would go down there and document this, this kind of thing quite a bit. They would bring internationals, Israeli activists there to see it as well. But at the time, we were in nationals sleeping around the clock in these tents. So that was very, I don't know, it was harsh to see. And it was in that area that I saw Israeli colonists literally

taking over Palestinian land. They basically aggressed. They'd beaten and aggressed the older Palestinian farmers that had deeds to land to such an extent that farmers were afraid to go on their land because they'd be beaten again and nobody would protect them. The Israeli police won't protect them, the military won't protect them. They were trying to get the rights to their land back to the Israeli legal system. And as they did that, the

colonists were given permission. I don't remember, you know, the bodies that do this, but they were allowed to work on the land, and they were doing so. They had fenced it off. They planted grapevines, and they were bragging about the money they were going to earn by by stealing that land unabashedly. And this kind of thing is happening all the time. But, you know, that's one instance I saw with my own eyes over the course of several

weeks. We spent time in villages, for example, around Nablus, that would come under Israeli raids and they would announce what they called curfews, which meant if you set foot on the street as a Palestinian, you could be arrested or shot. And the curfews. It was pretty terrifying. When the Israeli military would blast into the town, particularly at night, it was they'd have their sirens blaring their their their announcements blaring that they'd often fire tear gas or shoot up at, shoot

at homes. They'd barge into homes and abduct Palestinians under you know some promise of self-defense or these people had committed some alleged crime. And as I would see and if you follow Palestine in closely at all in in many case in in what's happening in Gaza now is a perfect example. The Israeli side, the Israeli authorities can allege something they never have to provide any

sort of evidence. And then they can commit heinous crimes, whether it's abducting people from their homes, killing people in their homes, bulldozing homes or destroying homes by other means. Or in the case of Gaza, as we're seeing plain out now, destroying hospitals, bulldozing hospitals, you know, bombing schools with refugees in them, et cetera, et

cetera. Also in the West Bank, I went, I don't remember, maybe 10 times to the village of Bill Lane, which has lost at least 60% of their land to the wall. The what what many people would call the apartheid wall, what ISRO calls its wall for security and every Friday now I'm not sure. I haven't been there since 2007 and unfortunately you know my my attention has been diverted to

many places. I still of course follow and and and very concerned about Palestine, but I'm not sure if they're still demonstrating every Friday, but at least back then, every Friday they would demonstrate nonviolently and very creatively on their land protesting the theft of their land. And at least 10 times I went with them and was usually at the front with the leaders of these demonstrations and the leaders being people, there was not one

leader. I I should rephrase that there were a few people who were perceived as leader, but it was almost the entirety of the village that would go to these demos and we would walk down the road and Israeli soldiers would put razor wire across the road and then they'd start firing high velocity tear gas canisters, rubber coated metal bullets and even live ammunition at the crowd. And I saw this on on many, many occasions.

And they again, later they would say, well, you know, there was a security threat, so we had to do this. But when I was there, I saw they always started firing before any young Palestinian took a slingshot and lobbed Iraq. You know, So that's the kind of things I could talk more and more for actually many hours about what I was seeing. Eva, just just let me ask you a question there. Were you scared? Did you find it frightening? What? What was happening around? You. Absolutely.

There was 1 village I was in. OK, so in this in Baleen I'll finish talking about that. One of the things we would as activists would do would try to prevent Palestinians from being abducted because as I mentioned the whole village, pretty much the whole village was protesting.

But what the Israelis army will do is they'll do raids, day or night raids into the village and they will abduct in prison those who they perceived to be leaders because they think that if they take the person A or B then the village will stop protesting. But of course that didn't happen because the whole village knew

what it was protesting for. One of the things we would do, it's if we saw the army was taking someone from the village and it was for no reason whatsoever they had done nothing wrong. We would latch onto them, We

would physically grab onto them. There was one time when about four people I was holding on to one man and three other activists I think were holding on to him and the whole pile of people fell on top of me. This as soldiers surrounded us and were kicking at us. I I don't remember, but I was told they were kicking at my head. Quite have heard. And then they threw, they lobbed a tear gas canister right at us when they couldn't take the man.

And so, you know you're in a massive cloud of tear gas. That was at the time frightening, but then it would get worse. Months later, I was in a village called Azun. This is one of the villages that was coming under night raids, and Israeli soldiers fired some sort of flash or flare directly at the window of the apartment I and other activists were staying in. So that was at the time, scary. But, you know, I was the first time I was detained. I was in Hebron.

I was with a female activist. We had been standing at a checkpoint. So I'm sure your listeners know, but if not, there's, I don't even know the number of checkpoints, hundreds and hundreds of checkpoints throughout the West Bank, which is supposed to be Palestinian territory. They can be full on turnstiles. They could be two jeeps parked together. They could be checkpoints and roadblocks.

And this one in Hebron was a turnstile checkpoint, and it was near the main mosque, the Ibrahimi Mosque, and we're standing there. And Israeli soldiers were doing what is a common tactic. They'd taken the the Huiyas, the IDs, So the Palestinians, they were holding them for hours. And so if the Palestinians don't have their IDs, they can't go anywhere because if they're stopped without an ID, they're

straight to Israeli prison. So they're standing there detained because the Israeli soldiers, for no reason other than pure harassment, are holding their IDs. And so we confronted them and said, you know, we're watching you. We see what you're doing. Why are you doing this? You know, I can't remember all the legal aspects behind like what you can say in that instance. So we were detained and we were taken to some police installation for a couple hours.

That was scary. But then the next time I was arrested for two days, handcuffed and shackled for all that time. That was scary. And that was because we had been with Palestinians who were protesting illegal roadblocks in their village, Sara leading, which would cut off a road that would lead them to Nablus and it would be like a 5 minute drive. But because that road was cut off, this meant they had to take a very roundabout route with many roadblocks and checkpoints in the way.

So meaning what should have been a 5 minute drive could take one or two or more hours. And of course, obviously this is an annoyance, but if you have like an emergency, a medical emergency, then it could be life or death. And that's the other aspect of these roadblocks is that people do die at them for want of medical attention. So we had been with Palestinians.

They had removed these big concrete roadblocks by chains and pulling and then the Israeli military returned or they arrived and they said, OK, this is now a closed military zone, which is one of the things they can do to say anybody here is going to be arrested. This is a village. It's a village Rd. And so we protested and we were taken and held in a a, a police station in one of the illegal colonies near Nablus for two days.

And then finally we had, we had an Israeli, a lawyer who worked with the ISM without, you know, fee. She finally was intervened to help us and secure our release. So that was, that was a little bit scary. But I mean, you know, the real, the real scary things that I endured were in Gaza. We can get to that.

But eventually I was deported. I was arrested another time and deported and and told I was banned from returning to Palestine. I spent several months, maybe four months, in Egypt in 2008, a couple of those, almost two of those at which of which I was near the Rafah crossing trying to enter Gaza. I'd actually had an offer from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights to go work there in the English department. I had tried to go while still in the West Bank through from the West Bank.

I hadn't been granted permission, so I didn't physically go, but if I had, I'd wanted to go from the West Bank through Israel into the Aras crossing and into Gaza. But in my experience, the Aras crossing is notoriously impossible for people to cross unless you're like the really official international organization. Fast forward to 2008, there was a Scottish delegation trying to deliver medical supplies into Gaza. They had said I could go with them if they could get in.

They they weren't able to get in. At that time there was a a boat movement trying to highlight the siege Israel's imposed on Gaza since, well, 2006 really, but fully since 2007. So they were sailing from Cyprus to Gaza, and to be honest, none of us really thought they'd make it. But astoundingly, they did.

And I think the first two boats arrived in August, if I recall 2008, and I'd I'd met some of the organizers the previous year in Hebron. And so I contacted them and said, hey, I've been waiting, you know, in Egypt for a while to try to get in. Could I join your movement? They said yes. So in November I sailed from Cyprus to Gaza and our boat also arrived. Now I don't understand why it wasn't stopped.

We did have an Israeli gunboat flanking us about a kilometer to the north and communicating with the the communicating with the boat. And we had all collectively decided that if they tried to intercept us, we would go forth, even if it meant being arrested. There were a number of European MPs on board that boat. Lord Ahmed Nazir, you might know, was on that boat. And also Israeli journalist Amira Haas, who writes for Haaretz. She was on the boat That was very interesting.

And so that was the way I first got to Gaza because, you know, the rest of the rest of occupied Palestine was off limits to me now. And having got there in November 2008, I stayed for another for a year and a half, eventually left through Rafa and went back for another year and a half over the course of the next few years. That's that's quite an adventure and you just you describe being held for two days, shackled and held for Tuesday for two days as as rather scary.

I I know people who've been taken into police stations here in UK and held for a few hours and the effect on them is, is quite considerable because this is them being taken out of their, their frame of comfort. They're under the control of other people they don't trust. And I know people who found just that experience of going into police custody here in UK as

being very scary indeed. So I can imagine that you were actually under some some stress because you're in a foreign country, you can't trust the people. You don't know what's going to happen, where we're getting getting to with this this this takes a lot of guts to do so. Eva, I admire you for doing that and you're on this journey in order to understand first hand what's actually happening in in Gaza and the West Bank. All credit to you. So what? What happens next then?

How do you get deeper into this? So, so I arrived in Gaza in November 2008 and I rejoined the ISM. And I think I, I differ politically with ISM on their stance or at least some members of the ISM on their stance regarding Syria, which is one reason why I'm, I don't think I'd be welcomed back in that organization. But I respect what they do in Palestine and I was proud to

work with them. And so in Gaza, it's, I mean you can imagine that it's in it's in it's greatly intensified what Palestinians endure in Gaza because Israel can bomb there at any time as we're seeing now. But I think what maybe people don't know if they're not falling so carefully is that the things that Palestinian, for example, farmers and fishers endure on a near daily basis. So that's that's 11.

Those are two areas where we devoted a lot of our time as activists accompanying farmers, accompanying fishers. And the reasons we did so was because when they venture, when the fishers venture out into the water, whether on one of their small trawlers with a an inadequate motor, because they're not allowed to have them powerful motors.

Because the Israeli Navy will chase them, and they, the Israeli Navy basically will attack them with if they're if they're lucky, it's only high-powered water cannon, often laced with some chemical compound smelling like excrement. This is it is a powerful can water cannon and does break structural elements. It destroys navigational equipment, etcetera, Shatters

windows. But if they're lucky, it's only that because otherwise the Israeli Navy will attack Palestinian fishers with machine gunfire and with cannon fire. So we would accompany the fishers to document that kind of thing. Now I got there in November. The 1st activist arrived in August and they spent months accompanying the fishers. When I arrived in November, I went out only the one time and then I don't remember the exact

date. I think was around November 18th, there were maybe three, sorry, six or seven of us there. And so we had decided one day, OK, three people will go out with the fishers and the rest of us will go to a demonstration

against the siege. And I think the demo is going to be in northern Gaza. So we went there for the same reason, to be there to document when Israeli firing on protesters would commence, because that was another aspect that I saw many times over with farmers and with unarmed protesters is the Israeli army doesn't use tear gas, they just

start with sniper fire. So that day the three internationals went out with the fishers and they were abducted by the Israeli Navy along with, I think it was 15 Palestinian fishers. The internationals were eventually released. Most of the fishers were. But this this is an aspect that gets almost no attention. When the Israeli army attacks fishers, if they don't only fire on them, they will abduct them. They will take their boats. They will keep their boats or destroy them.

And they often keep the fishers imprisoned. And then they'll ask them, because I we we interviewed a number of fishers later, and many of whom have been repeatedly attacked or abducted. And they would be asked, the Israeli soldiers would be asking them for questions like intelligence questions about Hamas or tunnels or stuff that they had no idea. They're simple poor fishers. These are like some of the poorest people in Gaza, and just one other point before I move on to farmers.

But the even the Israeli Navy will even fire on and abduct or injure fishers that are on what they call a hasaka, which looks like a surfboard. The Fisher paddles out, like however far a kilometer or whatever drops their net. And later from shore they pull the Nets in. And so you can imagine a skinny Palestinian Fisher standing on what looks like a surfboard. You know, there's quite visibly no threat whatsoever to this massive Israeli gunboat and yet

they fire on them. So this whole pretext of Israel firing on fishers as because the fishers, you know, are are terrorists or, you know, a threat to their security, it's

just absolutely ridiculous. And that example, I think highlights it with the farmers, and not only farmers, but anybody in regions in the north or east, anywhere up to 1 or even more more than one kilometer from the fence imprisoning Gaza. Anybody in that region are at risk of being fired upon by Israeli soldiers, either from who've gotten out of their jeeps and assumed sniper position on earth and mounds that surround the fence, or from remotely

controlled gun towers where the soldiers firing are nowhere near Gaza. So what we used to do is accompany farmers. And now Israel at the time had, I don't know exactly now, they first had imposed a, what they called a buffer zone and no go zone on on the Gaza side of the fence. It was initially 50 meters and then they increased to 300 meters.

It would fluctuate, but basically at that time when I was there, the maximum they said was 300 meters, but we were always accompanying farmers 45600 meters or more and we'd still came under Israeli gunfire. So even this, this, this pretext like, OK, 300 meters is illegitimately imposed by the Israeli side. There's 300 meters you can't go to.

But if you're 45600 meters, why is Israel firing or Israeli soldiers firing at unarmed Palestinian farmers, including elderly men and women, including children? Entire families, you know, would be on their land and they'd come under Israeli fire. So that's something we did for over the course of the three years I was there, I accompanied farmers. And Eva? Eva, can I ask you here, you you're experiencing this, you're amongst it. Were were you actually reporting

on this as well at this stage? I was writing about it. I I wasn't on on TV reporting because I, you know, I started as an activist. When I was in the West Bank, I was blogging. I didn't even use my real name because who was I? I had a A blog. I I OPT 2007. When I went to Gaza, I started my current blog called In Gaza, but again, nobody knew who I was, so I was blogging. I was sharing as much as I

could. I didn't actually start writing for publications until, I don't know, maybe 2009 for rabble Canadian publication. I wrote obviously reports for the ISMI, started writing for Inter Press Services, So I did report a lot for Inter Press Services. This is 2009 or 10 on Israeli's policies in the buffer zone, the border areas. So I was reporting on that, and actually this might be of interest to you, but there was on many occasions, Brian, when I was with Palestinian farmers, we

were under intense Israeli fire. And you know, they would say these were warning shots. Warning shots, my understanding, would be fired in the air. They were firing at our bodies. OK, they could have killed us if they wanted to, but they're trying to intimidate us and frighten us from accompanying the farmers. They shot around me and hit a Palestinian farmer in his leg. So they they can definitely shoot. And they three weeks prior to that they shot his cousin in the neck and killed him.

And this was from southern southeastern Gaza, extremely poor, poor family. These two men were working as paid laborers, earning a pittance for their extended family. So this this farmer that lived but he was, you know shot in the leg. The What we learned is OK, you can't stand too far ahead of the farmers because they'll just shoot around you. But on many occasions we had bullets whizzing past our head or puffs of dust rising near us from the impact of the bullet

nearby. On one occasion, the activists from the media office had contacted our respective embassies and somebody from the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv called my mobile. I had an old Nokia back then and they said, hey, we understand you're under fire, blah, blah, blah. And when they realized it wasn't from Palestinians, their tone changed. Because I guess initially they thought Palestinians were firing on us. And because they'd asked a number of questions like, you know, where are you?

I'm like, well, I'm we're on farmland. You know, what's what's near you? I said, well, half demolished houses from Israeli destruction. And then when she, this woman I was speaking with from the Canadian embassy realized that when I said it's Israeli soldiers firing at us, she said, well, how do you know it's Israeli soldiers? I said because I saw them get out of their Jeep as they always do, and start firing. This isn't, this is common. And she said, well, we can't

help you. And some minutes later somebody who was her superior superior called me and he said we just want you to understand, you know, Israel has security measures. And I said, hey, his name was Jordy, you understand I'm an unarmed Canadian citizen with other internationals who are unarmed, with Palestinian civilians who are unarmed, and we're all being fired upon by the Israeli military. He said, oh, there's nothing we can do, you know? So like literally that blase

about it, which says a lot. I think we have. We have countless videos of this. You know, I wasn't always filming. Sometimes one of us would be holding the the bullhorn. And for the sake of videos we would be saying on the bullhorn we are internationals with unarmed Palestinian farmers who are simply working on their land. There's no one here with a weapon.

There's no need to fire at us, you know, just to make the point, if it wasn't already clear enough that the Israeli soldiers were firing on unarmed civilians. So one of us would have the task of being in bullhorn, others would photograph, others would video. So sometimes I'm in the video, sometimes I'm doing the video. But we have. We have so many instances of video footage showing the Israeli army firing on us on on

Palestinian most important. So to ask the the question you're you're starting to put out information and now you're talking about videos. Did were you getting any reaction from anybody? Do you think you were getting at that time? Were you getting any engagement from people who were, who were learning from your reports and who then who then approached you? What what about those MPs, for example? Were you able to make any contacts with them? I I honestly, I I didn't follow up with them.

I guess, you know, maybe strategically that wasn't a a great idea. But my focus was on, because there was so much happening, not only the farmers and fishers. But bear in mind, November 2008 was a month and some weeks right before Israel started its 2008, 2009 war on Gaza, what they

called cast LED. During which time we rode in the ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent and I was I was in northern Gaza. I was in Beitanoon, Beit Lahia, Jabalia, which is in the news these days, you know, sometimes in Gaza City they let the power was cut to the only places. We had electricity and Internet was one of the standing media buildings. My time was divided between

going with the medics. And the reason we went with the medics was because we knew Israel historically would attack Palestinian ambulances and kill or maim medics. So we were going there effectively to act as deterrence if possible. Like we made a press conference and we said we're going to be riding in the ambulances.

If you kill the medics, you could potentially kill an international, which I'm, I don't think my life is worth more than a Palestinian. But I know that in terms of media, we we knew that international being injured would have more media interest than unfortunately I don't like it. That's the reality that a Palestinian being injured. And Eva did did you did you come into contact with any any sort of proper major media journalists? Were were was CNN around or BBC

did were there? Were there any established media outlets who were also reporting that you came across? Now, do you mean specifically during that three weeks of war? Well, you can expand it a bit because this is one of the things which I think our listeners will be interested in. You are there as a as a a single woman, you're in a very dangerous and scary environment and you are there to learn and

ultimately report. Where were the mainstream journalists and and you know you can expand it over over time in the years ahead. When, when did you manage to see some of the mainstream people reporting? In my time in Gaza, I didn't, so I was there from November 2008 to mid 2010 and then I left for a year. I came back in mid 2011 and was there off and on until March 2013. No, that's now. I have to correct myself. I did. I did. See. Now I remember a Canadian, I think it was CTV.

After the war I'd have to dig through some blog posts, but after the war I remember going to an eastern, eastern Gaza, east of Gaza City area where the Wafa rehabilitation hospital was. And at that time, I remember I had a CTV crew is, I mean this is so far back, so sorry for forgetting that following me. And I was pointing out where Israel had fired white phosphorus on this rehabilitation hospital which still had patients in it.

And I knew one of the patients, a young young boy, a teenager who had been injured in a previous Israeli war and who ultimately died many years later. But I I don't remember much about the quality of their interview. I was still very new to needy at that time, Brian. I was, I was blogging. I was, I had only started writing for various for free, you know for various publications. My main interest was getting information out. So I don't remember, you know, the quality of of whatever CCTV

did. I will also say in the in the in the December 2008, January 2009, three weeks of Israel's war in Gaza. I was contacted by CBC because at that time in in the weeks before that Israel had closed the Arabs crossing, which was the only crossing mainstream journalist would go through. And so I don't believe. Now, I might be wrong, but I don't recall there being any mainstream journalist there during that war. There might have been one journalist, but I have no idea

what outlet he was with. But it at any rate, the CBC did contact me. And I remember again being new to median, being like they said, you know, we're thinking about interviewing you next week. And I remember just being like, well, why next week? Why not right now? I'm ready to speak right now. You know what? I don't always have electricity and Internet. Why don't you want to speak to me?

And the reason was they want to line up a Canadian in Israel so they could have a balanced report, which actually ultimately backfired on them. Because whenever I didn't know that, I didn't know until later. And my brother told me he'd listened to it. And then I understood. But basically I was reporting to them saying, you know, I'm riding with medics. We're one ambulance I was in, We came under Israeli sniper fire. A medic was shot in his leg.

The 14th bullet hit the back of our ambulance. So we speed away. This is during cease-fire hours, when, you know, nobody should have been shot and medics should never be shot. I talked about a medic I had worked with one night, and the next day he went out on call and Israeli soldiers fired a dart bomb at his ambulance, and he was killed. So I was talking about that. I was talking about what we're seeing in Gaza now, although now is just so much worse than what I saw.

And what I saw was horrible, but so I was, I had just endless things to say. In the CBC interview I was talking about how there was no safe place that there's no bomb shelters hospitals were being targeted, the Kurds hospital. Now I don't remember when the CBC interview was so this might have happened after that interview but the point being I was saying a lot of horrific things and apparently the Canadian volunteering on Israeli base was just talking about you

know is having a great time. People are really nice they're like different dynamic. I I was going to mention the Kurds hospital. So during that three weeks of war Israel did similar to what it's doing now, except now of course it's worse. It had the land invasion had occurred and the Israeli soldiers had invaded the Tel Hawa region of Gaza City where the Kurds hospital is located and they had shelled it numerous times.

And I believe if I recall correctly at least one shell had white phosphorus and I have other experience with white phosphorus. But so the medics were going from Shifa hospital, which is the main hospital, to Kurds hospital to evacuate patients. And we were under risk of Israeli sniper fire because the soldiers were firing on anybody

coming near. But nonetheless, these courageous medics were going to do what they could to evacuate patients and take them to Shifa, which is already overflowing with a similar situation, just no space for people. But it was all they could do. They could just take people and put them on the floor. So anyway, back to your question, CBC. That was the only mainstream media that talked to me. RT actually interviewed me during that war. I had no affiliation with RT.

I'd never written for them. Somehow they became aware of me. I did an interview with them and shortly after that interview, the Israeli, I think it was tank fire or helicopter fire shelled the building I was in seven times. So we ran down 10 or 12 flights of stairs. Thankfully nobody was injured, but that was, you know, these are some of my first experiences of like just crazy. When I was saying to the CBCI don't think I had, I I don't think I was together. I think I sounded pretty crazed

because it was. I'd never experienced anything like that before. Eva, I'm fascinated by by what you're telling me. You have so much detail and of course these are all your personal memories. And already I'm I'm thinking, yes, all of the time, all those years ago when I was, what would I be doing? I'd be listening to the BBC or reading newspapers and and and obviously the information we were getting in the West.

You used the term balanced. You said they wanted to do a balance report, and I smiled slightly because it seems to me that balance has a wonderful way of of suppressing what's the important truth and overlaying it with what is the comfortable truth. But maybe my opinion's not fair on that. But that's what came into my head. But yeah, I'm.

I'm thinking, yes. So I was one of the people who was getting this, this sanitized news coming in as to what was what was really happening on the ground. Can we just move you on through your life a bit? When did you get, when did you go from reporting on Palestine to starting to get involved with Syria? Just just take us into that a bit. But, and I also want to move you on to Donbas. OK. Yeah, I'll try to. I'll try to summarise more quickly, so.

No, don't apologise. Because, because the aim of the the aim of the game isn't it for the audience is, is to get out as much information as we can about your experiences and what what you what you saw and why you felt it was so important to put yourself at risk to report. Thank you.

But tell us about Syria and and how then you got on to Donbass as. Well, OK, Well, I did just make a mention of RT. So I just want to say I think my first article op-ed for RT was in 2013 and was actually on Israel's harassment and abuse of Palestinian fissures. So that was the first time I ever contributed to a major platform because prior to that it had been like I said, dissident Voice, Rabble and some other, you know, independent

media. And so I I left Gaza in March 2013. I actually, I didn't mention this, but it is kind of, I've said it publicly, so I'm not, you know, nothing to hide. But when I went back in in in 2011, I couldn't get in through Rafa. This is important actually, because one of the reasons it's so difficult for journals who want to report honestly to do so from Gaza is, like I said, to go in through errors is virtually

impossible. Errors is the northern crossing controlled by Israel, and Rafa is the crossing ostensibly controlled by Egypt, but over which Israel has considerable influence. And so when I went back in to, I tried to go back to Gaza in mid 2011.

I couldn't get in through Rafa, so I ended up going in through a tunnel and spending think two months there and leaving by tunnel and then later going back and finally being able to get in through Rafa. So just to to make the point, I think one reason, well not I think for sure one reason I haven't been back is that now last time I checked, getting to

Rafa period is impossible. I know there's a delegation of Westerners trying to go from Cairo to Rafa with aid, and they as far as they didn't make it. And I I unfortunately already knew they wouldn't make it because it's just impossible to

get there. So Gaza for now is off limits to people who want to go and support, and I would be there in a heartbeat if I could, but there's just literally no way for me to get there but in. So after I left in 2013, I went back to Canada. Now when things started in Syria, I remember talking with other activists and and people I knew and whose opinions I trusted and saying like, I knew nothing about Syria. And this is kind of goes back, Brian, to what I was saying at the beginning.

You know, I was so naive about so many places, which was in a sense of blessing because I didn't have the propaganda bits in my head. I didn't automatically think, aha, this is what aligns with the propaganda I was told. I just didn't know it. So I didn't have any any ideas about the president of Syria or anything like that.

And I saw the reports, you know, in in Gaza, the main channel is primarily Al Jazeera. And and fortunately, while they do good reporting on Palestine, on Syria, they were utterly complicit to have blood on their hands for putting forth the NATO propaganda on Syria and for so much misinformation and war propaganda that protracted the war on Syria. But you know, at the time, I wasn't aware of that. All I knew was I was asking questions.

And early on, because I remember going back to my Facebook post and as early on as 2011, I was with, you know, sharing things like no war on Syria, no, no intervention in Syria. In 2012 I created an e-mail list, I think it was called No Syria Intervention. It's been a while. And then sometime the following year a number of other older activists myself formed the Syria Solidarity Movement, not to be confused with the UK one which was pro war, but ours.

The main premises were we wanted to share accurate information, we were anti intervention, we were pro, you know, serious right to resolve the crisis itself, etcetera. But then I I wanted to to go to Syria for the same reasons I wanted to go to Palestine, to see for myself, to hear for myself. At that point I understood quite a bit of Arabic, having lived in Gaza for a while. And so in 2014 I went for my first time to Syria as part of a

large peace delegation. And then, since I was already now you, as you I'm sure are aware, Canada, like many other Western nations, closed Syrian embassies in like 2011 or 2012. So if I wanted to apply for a journalist visa here in Canada, I'm not in Canada. In Canada I couldn't because there's no way to do so. And I'd actually inquired. So I I joined this peace delegation. And then after that I stayed in Lebanon, I went to the Syrian embassy there and I applied for a journalist visa.

And other journalist told me, you're not going to get it, you're not going to get it. I said, well, you know what? I'm here. I might as well try because I can't do it in Canada. And I did get it actually. And again, I didn't have any sort of affiliations. Nobody was paying for me. I was doing it myself.

I got a journalist fees and I went back to Syria, and this is back to Syria in June 2014. So my first visit was April 2014 and I went to some pretty important places like Malula, which had been liberated one month prior, I believe it was. So the the destruction in that ancient Christian Aramaic speaking village was still very fresh. So I was able to document that and speak with people there.

And I went to Homs. I went to old Homs which had also just been liberated 2 months prior, and spoke with the, you know, people in the old city of Homs which had been devastated and which at one point had been called the capital of the revolution. And I use revolution in quotation marks. Obviously I don't endorse that

narrative. I spoke with people there who they said the same things I would later hear in Aleppo, in in Ghouta, in various areas of Syria that had been occupied by the various terrorist groups backed and and supported by the West. And these civilians I spoke of said, you know, they terrorized us, they stole from us. In Homs, I remember meeting an older brother and sister who lived together who they said we nearly starved to death because they came and they stole everything from us.

I went to the church where a father, he was a Dutch I believe Father Franz Vanderloot, he had been an honest observer of events and he he, he wrote on his blog, I think or in an interview. He said like from the beginning I saw armed men amongst the the revolutionaries. So he was very critical of what the West was portraying as an

unarmed revolution. And he was assassinated in, I think it was in 2014, 2014, June 2014 when I was there, was actually also just after the the presidential elections then. And the interesting thing, Brian, is that during the actual elections, I was in Lebanon waiting for a visa to be issued or not be issued. I didn't know if I would get it.

And since I was in Lebanon and the elections were taking place there, I was like, OK, well, I guess I'll just go to the embassy and see what's happening. So I got on a local bus in Beirut. Yeah, I knew how to do this by that point. The first time I'd taken a taxi was quite expensive. And then I learned how to take local transport. So I got on a local bus, went as far as I could, got talking with Syrians along the way. They were all super happy to be

going to the embassy. They had their flags. They're chanting, they're singing. There's so much traffic on that road that the road was clogged and we had to walk for three or 4 kilometers to reach the embassy. And then it was like a festival,

like the atmosphere. So the reason I make this point is that the Western narrative, just like they did with Donbass in September 2022, during that referendum, they would say, oh, this is illegal or they were forced to vote, OK, you can, you can make these claims about Syria.

Although if you go to Syria and you spend any time there, you will very quickly learn that people who went to vote did so because they wanted to. And it was the same in Lebanon because if they, if the propagandists make this claim about Syria or they were forced to vote. So why did millions of Syrians go to vote in Lebanon? Why did the embassy have to stay open for a second unplanned date

till midnight, not 7:00 PM? You know, but it's not logical if, if, if, and these are many of them are Syrian refugees and many of them might have been undocumented, you know, Syrians in in Lebanon who forced them to vote, then how did Bashar al-Assad manage to force them over there to vote? You know, it didn't make any sense. So it was interesting to be there at that time. I went back another 13 times to Syria in 2016.

I spent two months in the summer and two months in the winter in Syria going to very interesting places, like going to Aleppo in July and in August. In July I went to Aleppo for my first time. Now what Western media wasn't reporting, what my dear friend and colleague and your friend and colleague Vanessa Bailey also reported. We went together in August was that that city was being bombarded by terrorists on a daily basis And no, you know, Western media weren't reporting that.

They were only reporting the the sources, the unnamed sources they had in eastern Aleppo, which was occupied by various terrorist gangs. But, you know, by the end of the 2016, the chief of forensics had told me nearly, I think it was nearly 10,000 or nearly 11,000 civilians alone had been killed by terrorist bombings and snipings. And that was completely unreported by Western media. So in in 2016, I spent, like I said, four months in Syria.

And then every year I went back 3 * 2 times for a cumulative 15 times. So that was, you know, and and along with Vanessa, who now lives there, we were going to places that media was completely fabricating. And in Syria, I did see Western journalists. We saw, at least you say, of the BBCI saw her in 2014. She was at the French Hospital in Damascus interviewing children who had been at a school, the Menar Elementary School, that had been shelled by terrorist mortars.

This is April 2014, and she was challenged by somebody. Are you going to report honestly? And she nodded her head and I filmed it. So I was like, I know who this is. I don't believe she's going to be honest. And she wasn't really honest. She later wrote a report, something titled Russian Roulet or something and she said, you know, something to the effect of the regime blames the rebels. But locals believe it's the regime. And I don't use the word regime. I'm.

I'm quoting her or paraphrasing her. And if you've spent any time on the ground in Damascus or other areas being shelled, you know damn well where it's coming from. We knew it was coming from Eastern Ghouta. They knew they were shelled every day. They knew where it was coming from. This is utterly dishonest and intentional on Lise Desai's part for the BBC. Whether it's her or her editor at the BBC, it was completely

dishonest. If I can just come in there, because what's immediately in my mind here is, is the BBS, sorry, the BB, CS charity, BBC Media Action, which we the UK column started to pay attention to. And what did we discover? We discovered that this, it calls itself a charity, but that's ridiculous because The thing is completely politically active. But BBC Media Action was

boasting via a lady. If I remember correctly, she was called Julia Harkin, she was one of their effectively project managers in Syria and she's on. Public record was saying, well, we worked with people, we we sought out and we worked with people who were against the regime in order to assist change. So what?

What this was was a declaration that the BBC wasn't just reporting remotely and impartially on what was happening under the surface, They were actually involved in trying to help the overthrow of the Syrian government. Yeah, I mean that that's absolutely what they and Allied Media were doing. Channel 4, for example, Krishna and Guru Murthy appeared various times in Syria. I actually was in an elevator with him. I just didn't know who he was at the time, but he would, he would

do the same thing. You know, he would totally whitewash the the terrorist factions and actually Syrian MP, well he used to be MP and and businessman Farah Shahabi called him out after after Aleppo was liberated. Because, you know, these type of propagandists were saying things like, oh, you know, now that the, that Aleppo has fallen, as they described the liberation of Aleppo from Al Qaeda and ISIS and other terrorists, the Western media would say Aleppo

had fallen. And they'd say, you know, all the civilians have left the city, which was the opposite of truth actually, people were coming back to Aleppo.

And there's a funny clip of Farah Shahabi saying this to Krishnan Guru Murthy, who's trying to get some sound bite from Farah Shahabi. And you could tell by the body language from Guru Murthy that he knew he was lying and he he hated being caught out in his lies and he just wouldn't answer the question of Farah Shahabi. He just said let's not get into history. It wasn't history. It was literally a couple of months prior.

And the and the the this, this is all the nuances that most people, most people in the UKUSUSA, the West, simply don't appreciate. The extent to which their, you know, their belief that they have free media in the BBC or wherever, whatever it's going to be, Fox or CNN, it doesn't really exist because there's immense spin put on things if

it's not outright propaganda. I mean this, this has been the big shock for me in my life, to discover that the country that that I serve for 21 years in the military was was not, was not what I thought it was. And as I've dug deeper, one of the things that that becomes more and more apparent is the extent to which our media is propaganda. You know, there are, there are so many examples from Syria

alone. Like again if we look at Aleppo in 2016, throughout 2016 there were so many lies told in course by Western media, you know, last pediatrician in Aleppo, last doctor in Aleppo. That was actually my first trip to Aleppo in July 2016. That was my mission, My personal mission was to go and talk to doctors there. So I went to the Aleppo Medical Society and found there was over 4000 doctors and an 800 specialists working actively

working in the city. You know, so it's just like the media were telling this talking point because they wanted to generate a a dramatic headline. They were referring anything any of their coverage on Aleppo was referring exclusively to areas occupied by these terrorist factions. And you know, they they relied on these anonymous sources, always anonymous sources. Or if they had, if they had a a spokesperson, a media activist, they would often call them.

It didn't take much, Brian, to look at their Facebook presence and and very quickly discern where their allegiances were. ISIS, Al Qaeda, they had photos bragging about it, you know with the different Insignia of these terrorist groups or with there was one particular case and I know you've probably spoken about this with Vanessa, but there there were two boys.

There was a boy named Amran Daknish and in 2016 his name and his face was shown around the world and he was the he was the the cute little boy sitting in an ambulance. He was known as ambulance boy. And that the and the White Helmets played a critical role in in lining up the story and

framing it literally. And the story was that the Russians had bombed his house and you know, he, he'd been saved by the White Helmets. And, you know, he was the face of Syrian suffering because he sat in an ambulance with the trickle of blood on his forehead and he looked confused and and sad. And, you know, CNN Christian Amanpour did a thing with Sergey Lavrov, handing the photo of Amran to him and asking if if Lavrov thought Amran was a terrorist or something like that.

Another CNN reporter, when she was reading her script, was just crying as she stammered on her script for Amran. But literally some. I forget the timeline, but there was another boy, a Palestinian boy who had been beheaded by a terrorist some months prior. Abdullah Issa, his name, and he got no media attention whatsoever.

And one of the worst kind of ironies, I guess, is that one of the photographers who got all his attention for taking this photo of Amran sitting in the ambulance was literally friends with the same terrorist who held Abdullah Issa in a pickup truck and savagely cut his head off. He has grinning selfies with with these terrorists. And then he would later go on to say he cried for children like Omran. Now Omran actually wasn't injured in a Russian air strike.

He wasn't even gravely injured. I was. I by fortune I was in Aleppo in 2017 when his family spoke out, when his father spoke out. And so the second day, the next day I went, I requested to go to the house and I spoke with the father and I met Omran, healthy little boy. And the father said he had refrained from speaking to media precisely because he knew they were lying.

He said the the the terrorist affiliated media, the local media, you know under that would be called by by western you know source factor or Ned backed different organizations like Aleppo Media Center. They would this type of media which would be pushing the NATO narrative. They had tried to intimidate Amran Daktish's father into telling the story they wanted him to tell.

And the story he told me and and other media, it was that there wasn't an air strike and that his son was snatched from him. His son didn't have a serious injury. There was some sort of blast and that his area was known to be supportive of the Syrian government and Syrian Army and they were routinely under fire from terrorist groups.

So you know that that was a story that you still find media using this image of Amanda Beach because it's a powerful image, but the story's distorted, you know. And none of these major networks that sobbed for Amran Dakmeech ever corrected themselves. And even the Independent on Twitter X until some years ago, they still have had Amran's

photo as the cover photo. So it's just like now I can, if I can just, I'll I'll say it quickly, but I saw in terms of B to B somewhere having information, not reporting. I saw this also in Dunbas. So I first went there in September 2019, again of my own accord. I had visited Russia for my first time. I was interested to come here, and I also was very interested in going to Crimea and going to Donbass, which I did. All my everything I arranged myself, I paid for myself.

I went at my own risk, without any sort of body armor. In fact, the only time I first had body armor was was in the Donbass, and it was lent to me by a media office there. At the media office there, who saw that I had nothing. I've never had body armor before that, not in Syria, not in Gaza, whatever had become normal to me not to have body armor. And after Gaza, frankly it seemed like pointless anyway. In in Dundas. I went there in 27 in 2019 and

spent a few weeks there. Went to hard hit areas near Gorelufka that were being shelled on a daily basis. Spoke with the the head of the village, this one village site, Saber, who said the Ukrainian forces are destroying houses house by house, street by St. in this particular village. And you know, I just took some testimonies from people who are being affected by the Ukrainian shelling and then I wasn't able to go back there until March last year again for my second

time. That time I went with a Russian Ministry of Defence delegation. It went for two days, One day in the Donas People's Republic at the time, One day in the Lugansk People's Republic. And there were there were Arabic media, there was myself, there were a couple other Westerners reporting on who had been to the done best before, or who wanted to, and there are two mainstream French channels. I don't remember their names now.

One I think was Teve One. Anyway, Vanessa could fill me in on that and I I wrote about it so I could find it in my article. But they were mainstream French channels and so we we went to sites that were pivotal to understanding that that at the time since 2022 we went.

So at the time it had been eight years of Ukraine's war on the Donbass. So we went to sites and talked with people that highlighted this and highlighted also places like in Mariupol or Volna Baja. The destruction there had occurred due to Ukrainian shelling, not exclusively, but for example, the hospital in Volna Baha, which is in between Donetsk and Mariupol, had been occupied by Ukrainian forces and they'd mind the ICU before leaving.

And actually I would later go back to Volna Baha and and talk with other staff there. And they said before any Russian forces entered that town, Ukrainian forces were shelling the hospital. That's an aside, but this French, these two French channels, I followed up on the reporting and they didn't report on any of what we saw. They didn't report on, for example, we went to the site of Ukrainian bombing 2 weeks prior, which killed with with a touch missile with classroom munitions in it.

They had killed 21 civilians 2 weeks prior in the center of Donetsk. We saw the impact point, we saw the memorial and the photo of the civilians killed. We talked to the head of the DPR, Pushelin, you know, and we saw that. And we we talked with the head of the LPR. And also now her name escapes me. I'm sorry, but people who could detail Ukraine's crimes against civilians there.

And these two French channels didn't include a word of it because I looked at all the reports I could find from them at that time. And after, the only thing they basically did was put out very short clips saying this is what Russia wants us to see, which was Russia's humanitarian efforts, you know, giving out food and water to these villages like that had just been liberated. That's it. This is what Putin wants us to

see. They included like a few seconds of the doctor from this town, the city of Ulna Baha speaking. He had very clearly, he was the one that very clearly said Ukrainian troops had occupied the hospital and mined the ICU. But they included only a few seconds of him stammering and sounding stupid. You know, that was cherry picking, intentional cherry picking.

So that's that's one example. You know, they've been given access, they've been given a tour around that everything's been made so easy for them to talk to people. And yet they only include this these two bets to to basically whitewash Ukraine's crimes. Even am I right in saying that one of one of the places that you went to, you you got there soon after one of the attacks and there there was still bodies on the street? Many times, yeah.

So in April of last year, I was back in Donbass, so that I mentioned the the Ministry of Defence delegation. That was for two days in March. And then I kept going back over the course of last year into this year, and I would spend a few weeks there. I would rent an apartment. There was one time where I did stay in a hotel, but most of the time I would rent a nondescript apartment and I would travel by

foot or hire a taxi. And so in April, another activist journalist and I took a taxi to a western Donetsk district where during midday it was Ukrainian forces had shelled a busy market. And so we went there not knowing what we would see. And in fact, there's still two bodies lying in the market. Five people had been killed that day. We spoke with somebody. I now I forget his official position, but he was affiliated with the market, like overseer of the market or something.

And he was like, yeah, they're always shelling this area. It's a working class area. This market was a large sprawling outdoor market and it would have been, especially in the mid midday. It would have been filled with people because it's a cheap place for people to get everything they need. But because of the danger of Ukraine striking as Israel does, you know, double strike, triple,

triple strike. They I guess the emergency services had taken injured away, but they hadn't cleared all the bodies away. So there's still two bodies lying there a couple hours later when this man and I went. But then throughout the course of last year, when I was reporting from there, particularly in September, in the space of five days, three different Ukrainian attacks on the center of Donetsk killed 26 people. And in each case, the bodies I went immediately after.

And on one day sixteen were killed. And in one area 13 were killed. And honestly, I saw and and smelt the bodies and the parts of the bodies, and I could not tell how many were there because they were so mutilated and they were just in one area. They were a pile of bodies, and you couldn't tell they were disfigured. You couldn't tell what part belonged to whom. It was horrific, you know? And I did film it.

Not out of disrespect for the dead, but because precisely I feel that people need to see this. Yeah, this this is a very important point, isn't it? And it's it's a fine balance because if people are going to really understand what's happening, they need to, they need the accurate on scene reports and they need the photos

or the footage. Yeah. So three days later, I'm sorry, but three days later, these were all central Donetsk. 3 days later the Ukrainian forces fired right next to the Central Market in central Donetsk, where there's also a tram line or trolley bus line. And I was renting an apartment like a 5 minute walk away. So I this time I had body armour and I and another journalist walked there. He was also renting an apartment nearby. We walked there and this is within half an hour of the strike.

And so there were six. I saw five. There was two bodies in the the minibus that got hit, I saw one. I didn't see the driver's body. The bus was burnt out and there were two bodies inside and there are four other bodies on the ground. And I don't normally appear in my videos. I don't feel I need to be in them. I don't feel I'm the subject.

But that particular day I turn my phone around and I film myself for like 30 seconds saying this is real, this is not staged because you have, you have the trolls, you have the shills that will say, oh, this isn't real footage, oh, their hands moving. And I'm like, these are real body parts. This woman running behind me, traumatized and screaming is really traumatized because she's just, I experienced something very traumatic. This is happening all the time. That's just not staged.

And then I turn the camera back, you know, on the corpses I was seeing, the the pieces of their bodies I was seeing. I don't think people understand. And this is I I want to also make one other point that for a period I shut down comments in my Telegram channel because I got so sick of people calling for death and people who, you know, call for, oh, Russia should just flatten Kiev. I don't agree with that.

I I agree with what Russia is doing its military objectives in demilitarizing Ukraine and putting an end to Ukraine's bombing of Donbass and also a peace for Ukrainian civilians under the the Kiev regime. But I don't agree with these calls. You should just bomb Kiev. You should bomb Tel Aviv. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with slaughtering civilians. And I think that people who say this, they're living as if they're in a video game world. They've never smelt death.

Important point, and I'm so pleased that you've brought it up because yes, there are these people and they they seem to get a particular thrill out of calling for more violence, the violence that you and others are trying to report in order to get it stopped. But it takes many forms. I look at some of the channels and people are putting good information out on social media channels.

One particular one, regular updates which come in every hour, multiple reports, and usually they're very accurate. But something I find very distasteful is that quite often if there is a picture of combat where anti tank weapon is exploding or a bomb is going off, that little video clip has been put to usually heavy metal rock music. And I find this very, very distasteful because it isn't a video game. Whenever these weapons hit, somebody is dying and others are being injured.

And to put it to music of that form is I think just well, I find it difficult to describe. So I completely understand what you're talking about. You're putting your life at risk in order to get the real truth out. And other people sitting in their warm, comfortable rooms make it into a sort of, yeah, a a sort of quasi video game. It's bad. I think it's also disrespectful. To the people if. If if I take for.

Example, the forces on the ground in Donbass, you know they're, they're, they're living in horrific conditions, very difficult conditions. And you know, they're I I've, I haven't been on the front lines that much. I've only been, I would say, one time last year I went to interview one of the particular groups, not that I I can't remember their Russian name, and another time in Gorluka, close

to the front line. So what my focus has always been is has more been trying to convey the human side, the suffering and also to combat war propaganda. But this one time that I did go to meet Donbass forces on a frontline outside of Donetsk, I wanted to. I wanted to hear their perspective. And one of the things I asked them because the way the Western media depicts everything to do with Russia, I asked them, do you hate Ukrainians? And they're like, no, they're

our brothers. They're our brothers and sisters. We, we don't want to kill Ukrainians. We want this to stop. But we're going to defend our land, you know, and that's just a that I make that point because it kind of aligns with what we're talking about. They're not saying, yeah, we want to kill every last Ukrainian. They're saying no, we wish they would lay down their weapons. We could return to peace, you know.

And then you have these bombastic comments from people who've never been anywhere near war or violent death like this. You know, it's just, I don't know, it's just it it really is a disgusting part of our our. I don't know if it's exclusively Western culture, but it's a disgusting, disgusting part of the this sort of culture. That celebrates death. Yes, and Eva you you were. Put on the Ukrainian hit list as a result of your reporting from Donbass.

Is that correct? Yeah, in 2019 after I went to. Donbass and also to Crimea, I was put on there. Now an interesting thing about that, I guess a couple of points, June last year, I think this is completely, I don't for a moment believe that I was a target, the target. But in June, the hotel that I was staying in, I mentioned earlier, I usually rent an apartment when I go to Donetsk.

But I was at one point staying in one of the main hotels because I wanted to be near a journalist, because if something was happening, I don't have a car and I figured I could get a ride with them, go with them, you know. And also my Russian has improved quite a bit since then, but I honestly didn't understand much Russian back then.

So that was another element I wanted to be near journalist who could potentially translate, whether from Russian to English or Arabic to English, because there are journalists that speak Arabic there as well. And I I do. Anyway, in the course of staying in that hotel, was it June or August? I'm sorry, it was August.

I think it was August 4th. The Ukrainian forces bombed about 200 meters away, and then they bombed directly next to the H2 times, once like 50 meters away and once directly next to the hotel. And the only point I make in terms of like journalists being targeted is number one, it was known to Ukrainian forces that that journalists stay there. Also. The weapons they were using were precision weapons, NATO weapons and like the the last shell was the last of five. So they got incrementally

closer. But the other point was that some days or a week or so prior to that. Now what's her name? Totally blanking. I had, I had gone to the site, the Yelanovka prison South of Donetsk, which had been bombed as according to Russian authorities and by all credible reports. I do think this is the truth. It had been bombed by Ukrainian forces and there had been Azov state not staying there.

Azov Azov that had been in Azov stall were being imprisoned there and some of them had been, had started talking about, you know, the crimes they had committed. And soon after that Ukraine bombed this Yelinovka prison.

Louise Mensch, that's her name. And anyway, so I had tweeted about it and then somebody, somebody asked me if I was there and I I stupidly replied, yes, I mean I didn't need to because I'd already tweeted about it. And then Louise Mensch tweeted at Special Forces Ukraine, hear that The implication being, you know, deal with her, kill me. And then it was again sometime after that. Well, it would have only been some days after that because that was the end of July.

And then the hotel bombing right next to the hotel occurred on August 4th. So that that could have been coincidental. I'm not going to say I was being targeted. I don't believe that. I think it's highly possible. Ukraine was definitely targeting the hotel, knowing there was journalists in it because they've also bombed other hotels in Donetsk and other areas knowing full well journalists for staying there.

So there's that. But what other I think is really interesting, Brian, is that last year, so before that incident in June, I think it was, CBC contacted me about a week after two independent journalists in Canada had interviewed me and they were highlighting the Killis The Mired for its entry on me. Then a week later, CBC Canadian Broadcasting Corporation contacts me saying, you know, we want to do an interview with you.

And by this point, I know when mainstream media send you an e-mail it it's best not to respond or else I just mock them. But I don't engage with them because I know they won't be honest or fair. And they didn't. They had they ended up contriving this absolutely ridiculous smear on me, including scary music, just to show how evil I am. But what was really interesting is they chose to highlight my participation in a panel in Moscow back in March on Ukraine

war crimes. And so they are basically trying to depict me some fool under the, you know, the stupefied gaze of a Russian researcher, Maxim Grigoriev, basically trying to stay. You know, I didn't know what I was talking about. I was just taking talking points from him, even though I had started going to Donbass in 2019. But that's apparently not information that was important to them.

But they said this is the interesting bit, They had been contacted by the two Canadian journalists who interviewed me. And these two Canadian journalists were really worried about me. And they said we're going to contact all major Canadian media and ask them to take up your case instead of taking up my case. CBC did a smear on me and they used information from the Kill List entry on me to do the smear.

And the reason I know this is because they stated my participation in the panel was April last year and so does the kill List entry. But actually they included a screenshot of my participation in that panel.

And I could easily find the Russian website where, you know, the video was posted And it was March and I remember it being March. So the only place that they would have shown, seen that it was April was the kill list entry on me. So I mean not only did they not advocate for me CBC, but they smeared me using information from a kill list entry on me. And as I've said before, I feel at this point, you know it, it could be very risky to go back

to Canada because the national media has has basically flagged my name to Ukrainian nationalist, of which there are many in Canada. And I don't believe I would be safe in Canada. I don't believe I would be protected by my government, which openly supports Nazis in Ukraine. Yeah, Eva, this is, this is. We're really. We're really.

Getting into things. Now and I've got, I've got to say to you very gently I think we we're going to have to we're going to have to bring this particular interview to close in a minute. But but I if if if you're agreeable, I would love to do more with you. But yes, we're now into some some really. It's amazing stuff, isn't it? Because we're now. Starting to see what the media of the Western world really is and the idea that it's it's independent and fair and

unbiased is is just ridiculous. It's it's that's not a sustainable position anymore And maybe there's a difference, slight difference between some of the media outlets, whether CBC is better than the BBC, who knows. But what we do know is that they are all working to very tightly controlled government agendas. There's no question of this. And yes, in here in UK we are seeing the BBC.

We can take a young lady called Mariana Spring as a prime example, targeting people who were daring to speak out. So I'll mention The Light newspaper as a team of people that have been publishing expose articles and highlighting facts and producing government reports and and drawing people's attention to it. And what is their reward? A vicious smear campaign by Mariana Spring from the BBC. So this would be a topic that we could really focus in on.

And and I'm sure that I'm sure we would be able to come out with a lot of information, which I think people in the West should know, but just very gently, because I think on this one we probably need to come to a close a little bit. Let's come back onto the theme, Gutsy women. The more you've told me, Eva, the more obvious it is to me that you are indeed a very gutsy woman. You've you've, you know, been in serious positions in West Bank and Gaza, and that hasn't deterred you.

You've gone, you've gone on into other dangerous areas in inside Syria, and then you've moved on to Donbass and paid a price for that. Because not only have you been close to the frontline and the live shelling, but then ultimately you've been attacked, as you've just said by the by the press. You're a gutsy woman, There's no question about it. So I I have, I've got two

questions here. The first one is, what would you say to other women who perhaps are now starting to see that the world around them isn't quite as they thought? Maybe they've already come into some form of of conflict with authorities in whatever country they are. For me, this is often in relation to the fact that women and families, parents, have had children taken away from them. But as a gutsy woman, what would you say to other women to get them to stand up and be counted? It's, it's.

A hard question. Because what has primarily motivated me is at first, you know, when I mentioned going to Palestine because I wanted to see for myself. And once you're there, whether Palestine, Syria, Donbass and many other places, I have found that you experience, you get a sense of the suffering they've endured, but also their immense

humanity. And it's it's I I think it's very difficult when you've seen the kind of things that they're enduring and yet they're they're still very loving, generous, kind people. It makes it impossible for for me, for Vanessa, for people like us to just resume a normal life.

So I guess what I want to say is my personal motivations have been out of a desire to give voice to these people and to counter the propaganda, which I've become more and more acutely aware of. And that's been my my driving force, a sense of injustice and doing what I can to combat that.

But I mean if you're, if you're talking about women who are in positions where they are themselves being oppressed, I think that's for me, it's difficult to give advice to because I mean if you're depending on how you're being oppressed or attacked, it could be dangerous to you. I guess what I would say is in terms of when it comes to worrying about what people say about you, if it's if it's merely worrying about your, your, your reputation.

I when I was first smeared by media, I was kind of like what? And it happened all at once. The whole a bunch of media jumped all over me and said all these things about me. So at first it was jarring, but it really doesn't matter because I I believe, look, I'm not taking talking points from a government or an intelligence agency agency. I'm reporting what I see and what I hear, and I I believe in what I do. Nobody's perfect.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but my point is I I believe that if you're really doing something in all sincerity that you believe in that if people are going to attack you verbally or you know in in writing, yeah, can be demoralizing. But my I guess my advice would be stand with what you know to be true and you know it it it

takes time. Maybe it won't take time for you, but the the whole intent with this name calling in whatever capacity or the smears is to demoralize you is to make you not want to speak out or stand up. So if you're in the position where you can safely do so safely, meaning like I'm not talking about reporting from a war zone necessarily, but like without, you know, if you're not at risk of of, let's see, like violence in the home or

something. But if you're in a position where you can speak out politically and do so, then I wouldn't be swayed by, you know, fears of name calling or what have you. Eva, thank. Thank you for that. I think there's something else there, which you clearly have, which would be of benefit to other people, and that is to have the courage to do those things, to have the courage to stand up and speak out, have the courage not to back down when the pressure starts.

But I absolutely take your point. The last question might be a tricky one, but I asked Vanessa Bailey this question and that was that. If, if, if I could put you in a room with Israeli women, with Israeli mothers, what would you say to them? After all your experience. Of what's gone on in Palestine and Gaza. I would say let's go together to. Gaza, let's go together to Nablus. Let's spend a week living with a Palestinian family. I will guarantee your safety.

Let them see what it's really like living under occupation or in the case of Gaza, under bombings. I mean, I don't want to speak on behalf. I can't possibly speak on. Behalf of all Israelis, I will speak on behalf of experience of I've had and also like I was saying at the beginning, this former Israeli soldier and what he had to say about his own indoctrination. And I've heard this time and again from Israelis and or reading it, you know, as I mentioned the Breaking the

Silence type groups. There is a heavy amount of indoctrination which can be powerful to those hearing it. And I think from my experiences, Israelis are not permitted to see the Palestinian side. And I think that if they were permitted to sit down with Palestinians to hear what they're living under, I think there would be compassion. I I I think that the absence of information leads to judgment or or fear or hatred or what have you.

But if they were able to, to go for again let's say not even a time of bombing, let's let's go to Gaza when the war has stopped and let's go talk with farmers, let's go talk with mothers, let's go talk with young women who aspire to study abroad but can't because they're locked down under siege. I think that if I would hope that if Israeli. Woman or other people. Who would other Israelis who would be open to doing that, could hear these stories?

I think it could impact their understanding what they think they understand about Palestinians. I think there has been such a huge, huge operation of dehumanization of Palestinians that you, I mean you see it from the Israeli leadership unabashedly saying we don't

consider them human beings. If you, if you're hearing it from your own leadership and you know, war propaganda heightens, especially right now, it's it's more and more difficult for them to humanize Palestinians. And I think that's what's really missing for them. Excellent. Thank you very much for that and and.

Maybe that answer also, I'm sure it does impacts on on your comment about Russia and Ukraine and the fact that I believe if we could, if we could stop the fighting and get people down to talk, they would actually recognise that the Brotherhood was greater than the the angst and the division which clearly the West, the West has helped to sow in that region. But very poignant comment, Eva, I've got to say, I've been utterly fascinated by your commentaries and the journey

through your life. So I'm going to say thank you very, very much for sharing that with me and the UK column audience. There's a lot of the points that you've raised that I'd like to ask more about and this particular issue of, of how this vast worldwide propaganda machine works and the the trouble that it causes. I think we could have some really good discussion on that.

So I'm, I'm going to say if you feel that today's experience hasn't been too bad and you might be able to join me again, I'd. I'd very much like you to do that. Oh, I would love to thank you very much. You're an excellent. Interviewer and listener. And you ask. Wonderful, excellent, I should say questions. So I would be very happy to to come on your show again. OK, lovely. Thank you very much for that well. Thank you for joining me today.