democracy-now

The United Auto Workers union has reached tentative agreements with Ford, Stellantis and General Motors, and workers are returning as they end a historic six-week strike against the Big Three automakers based in Detroit. Under the deals, workers will get major raises over the length of the contracts, as well as improved benefits. “They will be life-changing for some of the lowest-paid members of the union,” says legendary labor journalist Jane Slaughter, founder of Labor Notes.

We speak with Israeli historian Ilan Pappé about Israel’s escalating war on Gaza, as well as a leaked document from the country’s Ministry of Intelligence that suggests permanently expelling Gaza’s entire population to the Sinai Desert in Egypt. “This is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing, of depopulation,” says Pappé.

As Israeli tanks and other ground forces enter Gaza, we speak with a doctor in the besieged territory. Dr. Hammam Alloh is working at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the area, and says tens of thousands of people have sought shelter to escape Israel’s heavy bombardment. He describes making harrowing decisions with rapidly dwindling supplies, such as not resuscitating a patient who went into cardiac arrest because of a lack of ventilators.

Amid growing alarm that more Israeli airstrikes will hit hospitals in Gaza, we speak with two physicians about Gaza’s medical system and Israel’s orders to evacuate key hospitals. Dr. Fadel Naim, head of orthopedic surgery at Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital in Gaza, says Israel has “bombed all around the hospital.” Dr.

We look at the reluctance in Congress to censure Israel despite growing grassroots pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza. “The narrative on both sides of the aisle is mostly about the right of Israel to defend itself,” says Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. “Congress has bought, completely, the framing which says that any Palestinian that dies in Gaza … that’s all on Hamas.

We speak with Illinois Congressmember Delia Ramirez, one of the 18 members of the U.S. House of Representatives who have signed a resolution calling for an immediate deescalation and ceasefire in Israel and Palestine. “The only way we move forward is deescalating,” says Ramirez. “The aid that we send cannot be used to kill innocent lives. It’s unacceptable, it’s not moral, and I can’t stand behind that.

We bring you the voices of Jewish Voice for Peace and their allies who shut down the main terminal of Grand Central Station during rush hour Friday in one of New York’s largest acts of civil disobedience in 20 years to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. The multiracial, intergenerational movement says about 400 people were arrested, including rabbis, famous actors and elected officials from the New York State Assembly and Senate and the City Council.

A free speech battle is playing out on college campuses, as students, professors and others advocating for Palestinian rights across the United States are facing racist attacks and retaliation that threaten their safety and livelihoods. These attacks aim to suppress criticism of Israel and U.S. support of its actions in Gaza. This comes as the U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution “condemning Hamas and antisemitic student activities on college campuses.

According to the latest update from the Israeli military, Hamas is still holding at least 229 hostages captured during its October 7 incursion into southern Israel. The group has stated that they will not release all hostages until Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. To discuss the release thus far of four hostages and prospects for future releases, we speak to Gershon Baskin, who helped negotiate a critical hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas in 2011.

Palestinian poet Ahmed Abu Artema was seriously injured in an Israeli airstrike on October 24 that also killed five members of his family, including his 12-year-old son. Artema helped inspire the Great March of Return, a series of nonviolent protests in Gaza starting in 2018 when thousands of Palestinians marched to the militarized fence separating them from their ancestral homes inside Israel, braving deadly Israeli sniper fire that killed hundreds and injured thousands more.

UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, says it is close to running out of supplies in Gaza, where it is sheltering over 600,000 displaced Palestinians. Israel has claimed that they cannot allow fuel to enter the besieged territory because of the supposed risk of it being appropriated by Hamas.

A free speech battle is playing out on college campuses, as students, professors and others advocating for Palestinian rights across the United States are facing racist attacks and retaliation that threaten their safety and livelihoods. These attacks aim to suppress criticism of Israel and U.S. support of its actions in Gaza. This comes as the U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution “condemning Hamas and antisemitic student activities on college campuses.

According to the latest update from the Israeli military, Hamas is still holding at least 229 hostages captured during its October 7 incursion into southern Israel. The group has stated that they will not release all hostages until Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. To discuss the release thus far of four hostages and prospects for future releases, we speak to Gershon Baskin, who helped negotiate a critical hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas in 2011.

Palestinian poet Ahmed Abu Artema was seriously injured in an Israeli airstrike on October 24 that also killed five members of his family, including his 12-year-old son. Artema helped inspire the Great March of Return, a series of nonviolent protests in Gaza starting in 2018 when thousands of Palestinians marched to the militarized fence separating them from their ancestral homes inside Israel, braving deadly Israeli sniper fire that killed hundreds and injured thousands more.

UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, says it is close to running out of supplies in Gaza, where it is sheltering over 600,000 displaced Palestinians. Israel has claimed that they cannot allow fuel to enter the besieged territory because of the supposed risk of it being appropriated by Hamas.

A free speech battle is playing out on college campuses, as students, professors and others advocating for Palestinian rights across the United States are facing racist attacks and retaliation that threaten their safety and livelihoods. These attacks aim to suppress criticism of Israel and U.S. support of its actions in Gaza. This comes as the U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution “condemning Hamas and antisemitic student activities on college campuses.

According to the latest update from the Israeli military, Hamas is still holding at least 229 hostages captured during its October 7 incursion into southern Israel. The group has stated that they will not release all hostages until Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. To discuss the release thus far of four hostages and prospects for future releases, we speak to Gershon Baskin, who helped negotiate a critical hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas in 2011.

Palestinian poet Ahmed Abu Artema was seriously injured in an Israeli airstrike on October 24 that also killed five members of his family, including his 12-year-old son. Artema helped inspire the Great March of Return, a series of nonviolent protests in Gaza starting in 2018 when thousands of Palestinians marched to the militarized fence separating them from their ancestral homes inside Israel, braving deadly Israeli sniper fire that killed hundreds and injured thousands more.

UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees, says it is close to running out of supplies in Gaza, where it is sheltering over 600,000 displaced Palestinians. Israel has claimed that they cannot allow fuel to enter the besieged territory because of the supposed risk of it being appropriated by Hamas.

Democracy Now! co-host Juan González discusses his new report on “The Current Migrant Crisis,” about how U.S. policy toward Latin America has fueled historic numbers of asylum seekers. He argues U.S. “economic warfare” against countries like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela is what motivates many migrants to risk the journey north. “We’re seeing this enormous increase from these three countries.

We speak with philosopher Judith Butler, one of dozens of Jewish American writers and artists who signed an open letter to President Biden calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. “We should all be standing up and objecting and calling for an end to genocide,” says Butler of the Israeli assault. “Until Palestine is free … we will continue to see violence. We will continue to see this structural violence producing this kind of resistance.

Palestinian diplomat and scholar Hanan Ashrawi joins us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and says the unfolding catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli bombardment has killed over 7,000 people so far, is equally the fault of the United States. “The U.S. is certainly a partner in crime with Israel,” says Ashrawi, noting that the bombs raining down on Gaza right now are largely produced in and paid for by the U.S.

We speak with Al Jazeera correspondent Youmna ElSayed in Gaza, where an Israeli airstrike killed the family of the news outlet’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh on Wednesday. The Qatar-based news network is one of the few international outlets with reporters in Gaza. The Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least 25 in total, and Dahdouh had fled to the refugee camp with his family after Israel ordered residents of northern Gaza to vacate their homes.

Democracy Now! co-host Juan González discusses his new report on “The Current Migrant Crisis,” about how U.S. policy toward Latin America has fueled historic numbers of asylum seekers. He argues U.S. “economic warfare” against countries like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela is what motivates many migrants to risk the journey north. “We’re seeing this enormous increase from these three countries.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen says a ceasefire is desperately needed in Gaza, where Israeli bombardment has killed more than 6,500 Palestinians since October 7. “Wars lead to an ‘us vs. them’ mentality: ‘We are good, they are evil,’” he says.

We are joined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen to discuss his new book, A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial. Last week the 92NY, a major cultural institution in New York City, canceled an event with Nguyen after he joined 750+ writers in signing an open letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. His memoir explores his family’s personal history as refugees from Vietnam dealing with the impacts of U.S. imperialism.

Despite growing international condemnation, Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire of its continued assault on Gaza. “Israeli forces carried out indiscriminate attacks, killing and injuring civilians, and in some cases that we documented, … entire families were wiped out,” says Amnesty International researcher Budour Hassan, who shares testimonies of Gazans from a new report on Israeli war crimes.

We speak with Noy Katsman, whose brother Hayim Katsman was a peace activist killed by Hamas militants in the village of Holit on October 7, about how they are demanding the death of their sibling not be used as a pretext for more bloodshed. “What Israel is doing now is very clearly not for the security of anyone,” Katsman says of the bombing campaign. “The real reason is just revenge and killing and distraction [from] the failure of Israel to protect its citizens.

World leaders are warning of the risk of a wider war in the Middle East as Israel’s assault on Gaza could spill over to other parts of the region. We speak to independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous about the negligible amount of aid that Israel is allowing to trickle into Gaza from the Rafah border crossing.

Hamas has released two Israeli civilians held hostage in Gaza, 79-year-old Nurit Cooper and 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, with the militant group saying they were let go for “humanitarian reasons and poor health grounds.” Hamas shared a video of armed fighters releasing the elderly hostages that shows Lifshitz reaching back to shake the hand of one of her captors and saying “Shalom” — the Hebrew word for “peace.