Former US senator and two-term Florida governor Bob Graham, who gained national prominence as chairman of the Senate intelligence committee in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks and as an early critic of the Iraq war, has died aged 87.
Graham’s family announced the death in a statement posted on X by his daughter Gwen Graham on Tuesday.
“We are deeply saddened to report the passing of a visionary leader, dedicated public servant, and even more importantly, a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather,” the family’s statement said.
Graham, who served three terms in the Senate, made an unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, emphasising his opposition to the Iraq invasion.
Public figures and officials on both sides of the aisle remembered the former senator Tuesday night.
Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott said Graham dedicated his life to Florida. “His legacy will live forever, not because of any title he held, but for what he did with those opportunities to improve Florida and the lives of families in the Sunshine State,” Scott said in a post on X.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Graham a “patriotic American” and great senator.
“He sponsored and led the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, and he bravely opposed entry into the war in Iraq,” the California Democrat said in a statement. “He brought his love for his family and for his state of Florida to the Senate, where he served with immense dignity and courage.”
Iraq’s PM Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s visit to Washington DC came as its neighbour Iran attacked Israel, raising fears of regional conflict ⤵️https://t.co/7RGZTP23Bb
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 17, 2024
Watch: #US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin welcomes #Iraq's PM Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to the Pentagon.
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) April 15, 2024
Read more: https://t.co/jizqbLFi0B pic.twitter.com/RfESsUQmLw
Sudani arrived in Washington on Saturday, marking his first visit to the US as the prime minister of Iraq. He was received by Biden in the Oval Office.
The two leaders stressed their commitment for comprehensive bilateral cooperation in accordance with the Strategic Framework Agreement, including political, economic, and security cooperation, according to a joint statement released following the meeting.
The Iraqi prime minister said this meeting shows the resolve of the Iraqi government to promote its relations with the United States.
"The Iraqi people really appreciate the efforts of the international community to support them to fight ISIS and militarism on its territory," he said.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show with journalist Peter Maass, who has written an opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them,” unquote. Until recently, Peter was a senior editor at The Intercept. He’s the author of Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. He covered the Bosnia war for The Washington Post and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq for The New York Times Magazine.
Peter, welcome to Democracy Now! You begin your piece in The Washington Post by saying, “How does it feel to be a war-crimes reporter whose family bankrolled a nation that’s committing war crimes? I can tell you.” Lay it out for us.
PETER MAASS: Well, my great-great-grandfather was Jacob Schiff, who was a financier at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, one of the wealthiest people in the country probably, who donated a lot of money and organized the movement of Jews, persecuted Jews, from Europe, largely from Russia but also from other countries and Russia, to any safe haven that would have them, including America, but also, significantly, British-controlled Palestine. And then, his son-in-law, my great-grandfather, Felix Warburg, who married Jacob Schiff’s daughter, continued that process of supporting and helping to organize the migration of persecuted Jews from Europe to British-controlled Palestine. This is before World War II, the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Yet you say they were anti-Zionists. Can you explain?
PETER MAASS: Well, they were non-Zionists, which was actually different, significantly different, from being anti-Zionists. There was a movement amongst American Jews and Jews elsewhere, in Europe, that was called non-Zionism. And for them, the non-Zionists, the point was Jews should be able to go to British-controlled Palestine. They need to go to British-controlled Palestine because they need refuge from the persecution they’re suffering in Europe.
But they were against the establishment of a Jewish state, for two reasons. One is that they were concerned that if there were a Jewish state, then all of the antisemites, in America and elsewhere, would look at Jews who are not living in this Jewish state and say, “Ah, you know, your loyalty is actually to this other country.” And that would kind of increase suspicions of Jews and make them seem lesser citizens in the countries that they were living in. And then, the second concern, which was one that a lot of people had but that non-Zionists also had and pronounced, was they were concerned about violence between Arabs and Jews. They just kind of said, “Look, you know, if one side, the Jews or the Arabs, for that matter, try to exert total control over a state that’s going to be established there” — because, remember, at this time, Palestine was under the control of the British Mandate — “then it’s going to be really violent.” My great-grandfather referred to it as a shooting gallery.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter, you also covered the wars in Croatia and in Bosnia. And could you talk about how your journalism there helps inform your perspective of what’s going on? Because many, of course, of our listeners and viewers are not familiar with those wars and the war crimes committed there.
PETER MAASS: In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia, which was a kind of conglomeration of different republics, five or six — I forget the precise number, actually — began to fall apart. And instead of falling apart peacefully, it fell apart violently. And there was first a war when Slovenia, one of the republics, seceded. And then there was an even larger war when Croatia, another one of its constituent republics, seceded. And then, when Bosnia did the same — this was in 1992 — this was, unfortunately, the largest war of all.
There were a significant number of Serbs who lived in Bosnia. And Slobodan Milošević, who was the leader in Belgrade of kind of all Serbs in the country, organized the kind of provisioning of military materiel and soldiers, guerrilla fighters, paramilitaries, to go in and basically fight against the Muslims and Croats in Bosnia who wanted to have an independent state and who voted in a referendum for an independent state. And the war there, which I went to cover, it was not your ordinary war of army against army. It was a war of paramilitaries committing atrocities against defenseless civilians, largely Muslims, some Croats, and it also consisted of sieges against the few cities that were able to resist the onslaught. Sarajevo was one of these cities. Srebrenica was another one of these cities.
And so, I was there covering this war, seeing terrible things happen that are not supposed to happen in war. I mean, wars are violent. Civilians get killed in wars. But it’s not always illegal. In this case, there were civilians right under my window in Sarajevo getting shot by snipers, and I wrote about that. There were civilians whose houses were getting bombed. There were civilians who were standing in bread lines who were getting bombed and killed. There were aid shipments of medicine and food that were being prohibited from entry into these so-called safe areas, because they were supposed to have been protected by the United Nations but were not. And so, I was there reporting on this.
And in 1993, a year after this war began, there was an international criminal tribunal that was set up to investigate war crimes and possible genocide that was occurring at the time in Bosnia. And that tribunal subsequently did hold a number of trials, including of senior Bosnian and Serb leaders — the military leader Ratko Mladić, the political leader Radovan Karadžić and the Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević — in which the charges included genocide. And both Karadžić and Mladić are now in jail for the rest of their lives on charges that include genocide. So I was reporting on this genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: As you compare what you saw in Bosnia to what you saw in Gaza, you write in that piece, “When I reported from besieged Sarajevo, I stayed in a hotel that was smack on the front line, with Serbian snipers routinely firing at civilians walking under my window. … On a spring day in 1993, I heard the familiar crack and whistle of a sniper’s bullet, followed by an awful scream. I went to my window and saw a wounded civilian trying to crawl to safety. Writing in The Post more than three decades ago, I described the man’s desperate shouts as 'a mad howl of a person pushed over the edge. It came from the lungs, from the heart, from the mind,'” you write in The Washington Post. You also write about disturbing video footage from Gaza that shows Hala Khreis walking on a so-called safe route in January with her grandson, 5-year-old Tayem Abdel, who was holding a white flag when she was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper. Talk about the comparisons, or what you call the rhymes.
PETER MAASS: Yeah. I mean, God, I remember those stories so well. This is the most — there are so many disturbing things going on in Gaza now and in the West Bank. But as the Israeli attack began, after the Hamas attack on October 7th against Israel, you know, we began seeing these videos and reports emerging from these very brave journalists in Gaza of what was happening — and, for example, that video of this grandmother being shot, obviously quite intentionally. And everything that I was seeing — flour line massacres in Gaza, for example, airdrops of humanitarian aid that killed some of the people they were intended to help because they landed on top of these people — also happened in Bosnia. I began seeing just the same kinds of incidents, that were the constituent elements in Bosnia of genocide, also happening in Gaza, but — kind of most disturbing in a way — at a scale that was larger than Bosnia. I mean, for example, you know, in Bosnia, over the course of its four-year war, there were something like 7,000 or 8,000 children killed, which is terrible. In Gaza, over the course of just six months, there have been more than 13,000 children killed. So, you know, I just could not help but see not only the parallels, but also how what seems to be unfolding in Gaza is even worse than what I saw in Bosnia.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And we have less than a minute left, but I’m wondering your perspective on how the U.S. media has been covering the war in Gaza.
PETER MAASS: It’s been a real mixed bag. And it was a real mixed bag in Bosnia. And we’re all kind of captives of our experiences. And so, I covered the war in Bosnia, and I also covered other wars. So, you know, I may be talking too much about Bosnia, but I think it is relevant. In Bosnia, there was exceptionally good coverage, I think — and I’m biased on this, but I think — from the journalists who were on the ground, largely foreign journalists, but also a lot of Bosnian journalists — really good coverage of actually what was going on. But then, in the foreign capitals, in Washington, D.C., but also London and France — France and Britain were very important elements of the international community at the time — the reporting was terrible, because it reflected the kind of briefings that the journalists were getting from all their government sources and all the think tank people, and they were just saying, “Oh, it’s a mess there. These people —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 15 seconds, Peter.
PETER MAASS: — “plan to kill each other.” So, we have the same problem now, where there’s a lot of bad coverage coming out of the capitals, such as Washington, although from the ground itself, reporting is quite excellent.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Peter Maass, journalist, former senior editor for The Intercept, author of Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. We’ll link to your latest piece in The Washington Post. He also covered U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq for The New York Times. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks so much for joining us.
A woman who lost family members in the Maghazi refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, has described the Israeli strike that killed 11 people, including several children.
“My brothers were sitting by the door, my brother was injured, and his cousin too. And I lost my son. I do not have a house, or a husband, or anything any more,” said Wafaa Issa al-Nouri, whose son Mohammad and husband were killed in the attack.
“He was playing by the door,” she said of her son. “We didn’t do anything, I swear we didn’t do anything.”
Gaza remains under assault. Day 194 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "The death toll in Gaza has risen to 38,899 after 56 people were killed in the last 24 hours, according to the enclave's Health Ministry. Another 89 people were wounded, taking the total number of injured to 76,664 since the war began." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said U.S. officials will bring to Israel findings of a new Washington Post investigation into the killing of 6-year-old Hind Rajab and her family in a car.
The Post found that Israeli armored vehicles were present on Jan. 29 in the vicinity of the family’s car in the afternoon and that gunfire was audible as Hind and her cousin Layan begged for help. Steven Beck, an acoustic analyst who consulted with the FBI for more than a decade, examined the recording of the gunshots at the request of The Post and found that the number of rounds per minute fired was faster than an automatic AK-patterned rifle, which Hamas fighters often use. The rate, he said, was more akin to weapons commonly issued to Israeli forces. Earshot also found that the rate of fire to be faster than an AK-patterned rifle.
In addition, damage to the family’s vehicle is consistent with rounds fired by Israeli tanks. The findings contradict prior statements by the Israel Defense Forces, who said no IDF forces were present in the area where Hind and her family — as well as the two paramedics sent to rescue her — were killed.
Hours after the investigation was published Tuesday, Miller said at a news briefing that the State Department will “take the information that is contained in that Washington Post story” and “go back to the government of Israel and ask them for further information.”
“When she first died and we saw the reports of her death, we raised the matter with the government of Israel directly. They told us that they had conducted an investigation and found that there were no IDF units in the area at the time of her death,” Miller said. “I read The Post report. The Post has concluded something to the contrary.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today condemned the latest Israeli war crimes in Gaza, including a massacre of children, reports that drones are broadcasting sounds of babies crying to lure Gazans to kill zones and massive Israeli destruction of homes in a so-called “buffer zone” in Gaza.
The WAFA News Agency reports that a new massacre in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza resulted in the killing of 11 people, the majority of whom were children.
Online reports indicate that Israeli drones flying over Al-Nuseirat refugee camp play recordings of screaming women and children to draw residents out in search of the victims so that they can be killed.
According to Israeli media, 90 percent of buildings within a so-called “buffer zone” being constructed by Israeli forces in Gaza were damaged or destroyed. That destruction could constitute a war crime.
In a statement, CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper said:
“These Israeli crimes against humanity are being committed daily – even hourly – with the active support of the Biden administration. Without concrete action to end the genocide, ethnic cleansing and forces starvation in Gaza, our nation’s reputation on the world stage will be irreparably harmed.”
Over the weekend, CAIR condemned the far-right Israeli government’s attack on Palestinian families – mostly women and children – seeking to return to their homes in devastated North Gaza.
CAIR also condemned widespread attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank by illegal Israeli settlers, protected by the Israeli military.
CAIR recently said the Biden administration must reject the far-right Israeli government’s “transparent” attempt to distract from the Gaza genocide by dragging the U.S. into a regional war and instead demand that the Israeli government de-escalate the crisis it started by bombing an Iranian embassy building.
Last Friday, CAIR said that President Biden must take action following comments by USAID Chief Samantha Powell agreeing with the UN’s assessment that a famine is imminent in Gaza and reports of massacres committed by Israeli forces at the Al-Shifa Hospital.
CAIR also condemned the killing of 25 people in an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza City.
Democrats, Republicans and independents have all become less supportive of Israel’s operation in Gaza than they were in December. Then, a narrow majority approved of Israeli conduct. The latest figures show that a majority, 55%, disapprove of Israel’s actions, while 36% approve.
CBS News poll: Rising numbers of Americans say Biden should encourage Israel to stop Gaza actions
END
CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, rmccaw@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com, CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com
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