Akwe Amosu: Hello and welcome to Strength and Solidarity,
I’m Akwe Amosu, back with Season 6! It’s episode 47 of our podcast about the tools, tactics and strategies being used to defend human rights. And this time… we’re wondering about the impact of the genocide in Gaza on the world’s human rights system.
AA: Before we get into that, let’s just review where we are. Last month, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the US published a paper detailing the human cost of Israel’s war on Gaza.
AA: Citing figures issued by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, it looks back to October 7 last year and notes that that 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed by Hamas in the attack on that day, and that a further 346 Israeli soldiers have been killed during ground operations in Gaza.
AA: On the Palestinian side, the report said, deaths as a direct result of Israeli attacks amounted to 41,615, to which might be added an estimated 10,000 missing or dead under the rubble, perhaps bringing the total to nearly 52,000. But those are the deaths directly due to violence. Regarding indirect deaths, a group of American medical professionals wrote to President Biden early last month, October 2024, to tell him they believed 62,413 Palestinians had died from starvation, and that a further 5,000 from lack of access to care for their illnesses. The total of direct and indirect Palestinian deaths reported by the Watson Institute is therefore 109,028, or perhaps 119,028 if we include the estimate of those missing or under the rubble.
AA: In a different report a few days ago on November 8, the UN, the Human Rights Office said that 70% of the fatalities it has so far verified are women and children.
AA: And one more datapoint: The Watson Institute issued a second paper last month on the anniversary of the Hamas attack and this one focused on what the United States has contributed to support Israel’s war; by September 30 this year, Washington had spent $22.76 billion dollars on military aid to Israel, and on associated US operations in the region.
AA: I’ve gone into some detail here to provide some context for the conversation I’m about to share. Back in September, I had the chance to sit down with two deeply experienced human rights leaders in the Middle East region – Hossam Bahgat, executive director of The Egyptian Institute for Personal Rights, or EIPR, and Nabeel Rajab who has played a key role in founding and building the human rights movement in Bahrain and spent many years in prison for his activism. I wanted to learn from them how the Gaza conflict was being seen from their respective countries, and how it is impacting their work. But we quickly found ourselves shifting to a much larger question – whether the credibility of the global human rights system could survive this moment. I should say that since we were recording before the US election result was known, it doesn’t feature in this conversation.
AA: Welcome, Nabeel.
Nabeel Rajab: Hello. Nice to be here.
AA: And welcome, Hossam.
Hossam Bahgat: Thanks for having me.
AA: So, I’d like to start by just asking you to give us a sense of what this past year has felt like for people at street level, citizens in your countries. What you are seeing people express, hearing them say, how they feel about what’s happening in Gaza?
NR: Well, as you know, that Israel, since it launched the war, the people are really very angry. And they are almost every week in the street, they are very active in organizing events, organizing protest. They do whatever the local law allows them to do to highlight and to oppose what’s happening in Israel and in Palestine.
AA: Is that permitted? They can come out in the street and protest about what’s happening?
NR: Yeah. Frankly, saying, although my government has a relation with Israel, but in that regard, it allowed us to protest every week in Bahrain.
AA: Thank you. What about you, Hossam? What are you seeing in, in Cairo and other Egyptian cities?
HB: There is obviously a lot of anger, but what is less obvious I think to the outside world when it comes to Egypt, there is a sense of complicity and humiliation as well. We’re at the border we share with Gaza, their only exit to the outside world, but also the only entry point until, of course, Israel bombed the Rafah crossing we shared and administered, at least on our side, the only entry point for humanitarian aid, for life-saving support. And since the beginning of this genocide, I mean, Egypt basically accepted Israel’s ground rules, you know, participated in these negotiations for a ceasefire versus hostage deal, at the expense of what everyone felt Egypt had – both a humanitarian, legal, and also even nationalist duty to do, given its historical role also in the region and in this particular conflict, you know, leading the worldwide coalition pushing for a ceasefire to enforce it, pushing for lifesaving, humanitarian access, allowing the exit of cases, at least the humanitarian, the injured, the ill, etcetera. Instead, Egypt has, you know, in the eyes of many, been colluding with Israel. You know, no-one gets in without being vetted by the Israeli army. No one gets out, of course, even Egyptians seeking, you know, a rescue to their own country, those that were trapped in Gaza, they had to be approved by Israel for exit first. It’s not a coincidence that not a single journalist managed to get into Gaza. It’s not because Israel denied them entry alone – we don’t even know, because Egypt never allowed them entry to start with. And the problem is, of course, the Egyptians that have tried to protest, many of them have been detained, many of them are still in pretrial detention since October 23, the first month of the war. Some of them are still in so-called pretrial detention which is our government’s form of political imprisonment. They were charged, under the terrorism law. They remain in detention until now, never tried, and obviously never convicted, but it was a very early message to the population at large that, you know, just because there is a genocide at the border doesn’t mean we’re going to end the 10-year firm grip that the Sisi regime had imposed, since it came to power.
AA: So I mean, we are obviously not going to be able to get into deep enough detail of the history to understand all the dimensions of this. But I think for people who don’t follow the politics of the region, what you say is confounding. And so perhaps you could just say a little bit about what the Egyptian government is motivated by, to understand why, both the kid gloves at the border but also the repression of activist voices on its own side of the border.
HB: I mean, it’s, it’s complicated, but really not that much. I mean, on the one hand, this is a regime that, when it first came to power 10 years ago, was, you know, worshipped, welcomed, you know, coming to save the country from the years of chaos, in many people’s views, that followed the Arab, revolutions. And, you know, 10 years later, it is one of the least popular regimes in our history. You know, for the past couple of years before the war, Egyptians have been going through the worst economic crisis in modern history. People, have been facing soaring prices, the rising cost of living, there is a foreign currency crisis. The Egyptian pound has been at free fall. But also at the same time, this regime has been excessively borrowing, against all advice. And, you know, ruling really without opposition, without media or judicial oversight, without a real parliament, having eviscerated the civic space completely. And as a result, much of this borrowed money, much of these foreign loans have been going to vanity mega-projects like building a new capital, and, again, many Egyptians, have been increasingly bitter, they feel like they’ve been deprived of the value of their savings. They’ve been, for the first time, unable to afford milk for their kids because, you know, the Pharaoh wants to build his own city again. So the war came on the tails of this. And it doesn’t need analysts or experts to explain the linkage to the wider audience.
AA: What is the linkage?
HB: They know that Egypt’s lifeline, that this regime’s lifeline is the IMF, is the US military aid. We are the second recipient of military aid, after Israel, globally from the United States. We get 1.3 billion dollars every year. and notably, every year there was some, a small amount of that money conditioned by the US or withheld by US administrations, both Democratic and Republican, for human rights conditions except this year in September, US Secretary of State said Egypt gets the full amount because of its important role in regional stability. That just tells you everything you need to know about what motivates this regime. You know, people know that it’s because this regime is so heavily in debt. It is because this regime, because the country is so economically dependent, that, you know, we can’t afford to have an independent foreign policy and we definitely can’t afford to threaten Israel with a reduction, not even, a freeze, of the diplomatic relations. And at the same time, the regime is fully aware of how deeply unpopular it is but also its conduct and response to this genocide has been, and that allowing any protests on the street, would immediately and automatically turn into anger being vented at this regime itself. The trauma of the Arab Spring is still very much controlling those that rule us right now, because they were in power back in 2011, and they know that the anti-Mubarak movement that led to his ouster after 30 years of rule was initially born out of the pro-Palestinian solidarity after the second Intifada started in 2000. That’s actually the first time that Egyptians took to Tahrir Square was 11 years before the Arab Spring that ousted Mubarak to protest the events that led to the second Palestinian intifada.
AA: Well, I think that does give us a pretty, deep insight into the dynamics that are playing out. And I’m just wondering, Nabeel, this, ambiguity between the critique of what Israel does on the ground, but Israel’s importance as a strategic ally of the West, of the United States, has it had this constraining effect that Hossam is just describing across the board in the region?
NR: Well, Israel is unpopular among people of the region. And the agreement with the Bahrain government as with the other states, is not popular among people. And people cannot change that, that is something that the government has decided. We cannot change it. But, for sure, the government knows this is one of the most unpopular agreements they have done. And I hope it comes to an end. It’s, I think, the United States who impose this condition for our government to have such a relation with Israel. But I don’t know, is it going to continue to be the same? This is what we need to see in the coming months, and especially with Israel committing such crimes, being a friend of Israel not a good thing nowadays. Not only here, but it’s around the world. And it is, upsetting, as my colleague was saying, seeing some protest being oppressed or not allowed to come out against the Israeli, and what is more disappointing, seeing the similar thing not only in our Middle East countries, but seeing that in Europe also, seeing protests like in Germany and Netherlands and the United States, and universities being oppressed, being attacked by police. This is happening in a country we, as human right defenders, we used to present as a model of democracy, model of human rights, that we have been always asking our government in the region to see the European countries as an example, but it’s a very great disappointment, seeing how they deal with peaceful protest. And I think the West have lost a lot of reputation and image in the past months due to their silence regarding what’s happening and their support of Israel at international level with the UN mechanism, with the many other areas. We are witnessing something very disappointing, and I’m sure it’s going to leave some negative impact on the future reputation and image of those European countries, as much as it will leave negative impact in our government who been silent in the crime committed by Israelis and that makes people very angry and government are aware of this, are aware that every crime committed by Israel makes people more angry, not angry at Israel only, but angry at the silence of our governments in the region and the international community.
AA: So, I mean, as somebody who’s played a pivotal role in founding or developing a, a voice for human rights advocacy in your country, it sounds as, as though what is happening is not going to just discredit the Western countries, or your government, because of its relationship with Israel, but actually your own ability to advocate for human rights – that those are “Western practices,” these human rights activism and advocacy practices. And so I’m curious about what it does to your own sense of credibility and the credibility of the movement you’re committed to.
NR: For sure it has made our work more difficult as a human right defender, being seen for many years as a promoter of Western values, democracy and, and human rights, it has made our human rights movement in the whole region weaker. Although we say human rights is something born with the human being, it got nothing to do with the Western government. But seeing how the Western governments react to human right violation when it happened in Iran or in Russia or in China, which they have to do, but now the crime committed by Israel is far bigger and bloody massacre against children, women, elderly people, you know, and seeing complete silence, I think this has weakened our human rights movement and the human rights groups, also, even the human rights mechanism, the UN being affected by what’s happening. Because the Europeans – many of them not only being silent, but they force the other countries, and they force the human rights groups to be silent. Many groups’ funding were suspended because they have talked about Israeli crimes, or they highlighted the genocide, even Palestinian human rights groups being threatened, and some they have stopped even financing them. So what has been required now by some Western government, [is] that we have to cover up the crime of Israel, as a condition for the groups and human rights organization to get funding. This is, this is very much frightening and disappointing.
AA: And Hossam. If you are looking from Egypt as the leader of a storied organization that’s defended rights in Egypt, are you having the same sense that the credibility of the human rights practice itself is damaged by what’s happening?
HB: It’s a massive setback. and what I don’t think many outsiders realize is, I mean, it is wrong to think that this is an episode and that we’re going to move past this, you know, like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib or the Iraq War, etcetera, that, you know, this is a temporary thing that we would outlive. No, this is a big hit, and yes, the future of the system is at stake, and I’m not 100% sure that the system will survive. And it’s not just in our region. This is global. In our region in particular, but, and also in most formerly colonized countries, our movement collectively spent the last four or five decades, defending human rights as universal, fending off accusations that these were Western agendas for political gain, applied with double standards, etcetera. We called out the double standards, I mean, we are not naive. We are not new being introduced to the geo-political realities for the first time. Of course, we never believed that there was only one standard being applied equally across the board. I mean, we understand, but this time it’s really gone too far. It’s not, you know, the language is different or the measures are different, this time it is the self-appointed, widely perceived at least, champions of human rights financing, arming, defending, defending literally in court, intervening in court, in defense of a genocide that has been so protracted, but also so well documented. So, I mean, that, and that everyone is watching, and they’re not doing it behind closed doors. I mean, they are doing it on the stage, on the global stage. And so of course there is a very bitter taste that has been making it hard also to work on all our other issues.
AA: Say more about that. What’s getting in the way?
HB: The first few months were particularly difficult. They were particularly difficult even on our staff. I mean, it’s not just the shock of the civilian toll and what is happening, but also the reactions – the way the mainstream media in the West was covering it. Governments like the US and Germany who coincidentally are the countries that, you know, until then were the most vocal on the human rights crisis in Egypt, as well, taking the side of Israel, but also a number of international and Western human rights organizations, either not dealing with the issue at all, or applying a, a very visibly distinct language, you know, compared to the language they often use on other conflicts or grave human rights violation situations, or the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War, or even the language they used in the past on Israel-Palestine. I mean, this side-
AA: In the sense that they’re downgrading or softening the critique and avoiding acknowledging the language of genocide?
HB: Yes, or “both siding” the whole thing, or resisting even our calls for them to surface, you know, longstanding recommendations and policies that they’d had on this subject in the past. So, you know, just to give you an example, you know, we had planned a full campaign, around October 10th, which happens to be the World Day Against the Death Penalty. We had all the statistics, Egypt, of course – for listeners, who are less involved in this – has been one of the top countries in terms of the number of executions. And, two years ago was the number one country in the world according to Amnesty’s full survey in terms of the number of death sentences by courts. So we, you know, documented all the cases of executions and death sentences, and of course, we had to strike all this and shelve the entire campaign because, you know, already by October 10th, you know, our numbers would have looked embarrassing. I mean, like you know, the numbers for the whole year in Egypt, you know, there were victims in one strike in Gaza that exceeded the toll. And then in November, so a month later, Egypt was appearing for the first time in 20 years before the UN Committee Against Torture to review its complying with the Convention Against Torture, you know, an opportunity we had spent the whole year planning for – we had a full coalition with, you know, local and national and international organizations together. And our whole submission, in fact, our report was called “Torture in Egypt, A Crime Against Humanity,” because we had a full legal analysis about how torture in Egypt actually constituted a targeted and nationwide campaign of targeted persecution. You know, how can we say “crime against humanity?”
AA: It was completely upstaged by what was happening in Gaza.
HB: And the whole UN also was not something that we could mobilize around. So I mean, we didn’t even put out a press release. And then December came, and it was not just the International Human Rights Day on December 10th, but it happened to be the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration. And I’ve been doing this for over 22 years, and I think it’s the first year that no Egyptian human rights organization says a word on Human Rights Day. And it wasn’t just because it would have been tone deaf, or that the audience wasn’t there. We were too disgusted, ourselves, you know, we had our own problems with the system, and we were reflecting about it. And I think that’s something, I mean, that was also a wake-up moment for me. I mean, I realized that this, you know, was a problem, but I also realized that there was indeed a rising anti-Western, I mean, I dare say anti-white sentiment, that also was not representative, frankly.
AA: But basically you felt that, in the face of it, you couldn’t act?
HB: So we decided to organize an informal event, you know, at the house of the ambassador of one of the Western countries that actually had been good on this issue on human rights, both in Egypt and on Palestine. And we decided that, you know, that we had been shouting and grieving for three months, and that we needed to bring it into the room and invest actually, as human rights activists, in building a new coalition of “like-mindeds,” one that is not led by the USAs and Germanys of the world, but one that brings into the room, you know, South Africa and Ireland, and Spain and Belgium, you know, you know, these countries, but also Latin American countries, uh, you know,
AA: Chile…
HB: …New Zealand and, and others that have actually stood with international law and with principle, but particularly those European countries like Norway, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, et cetera, you know, it’s really important to show that it is not just the West versus the rest and that, you know, there are countries in the West that are democratic, and because they are democratic, they actually stood against the crimes in Palestine and against human rights violations in Egypt. By the end of December when South Africa really initiated its case at the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide, and, in January, the hearings, the pleadings, the response even of the Israeli defense team and the first round of provisional measures – that changed the dynamic a little bit. It sort of accentuated the need for us not to just give up and sit in a corner and lick our wounds, but also turn this anger into something and, you know, fight to reclaim these spaces, reclaim these institutions, use those tools of international law and accountability to hold the powerful accountable, not just the, you know, so-called rogue states, enemies of the West.
AA: That’s where I wanted to go in fact – Nabeel, you’d raised this point about the association with the West, and I think Hossam has given us a pretty vivid picture of how it’s playing out in practice. Can these two ideas get decoupled – the idea of human rights, which are human, not Western, and Western interests as being dominant in the equation so that the rights get forgotten as soon as their interests are challenged? Can you see in this moment, perhaps it’s too much to call it a silver lining, but a way in this moment of detaching this toxic association? So what are your thoughts about how to decouple these two?
NR: There are a couple of things. First of all, now we can see clearly there is a gap in Europe and the United States between the people and government in the issue of Palestine, Gaza, West Bank. And this is the first time we witnessed, we see people in the street, and we see public opinion very strong, but public opinion is not having an impact on the decision-making bodies, whether it’s Congress or the Administration. But that, I don’t think it’s going to last for long. Sooner or later, people have to have an impact – this is one thing. The other thing – the Western governments, they’re going to get tired in covering up for Israel at the time where Israel is not trying to cover up its own crime. And as they continue doing the crime, day by day, it’s becoming very embarrassing for those governments to defend Israel. So I think slowly, slowly, I’m not trying to be very much optimistic. What I’m trying to say is that, for the past many months, we have seen United States, Germany, and the UK and France trying to cover up, but this cover-up has been embarrassing them day by day, because Israel did not care for them, did not care for their image and reputation. Israel, day by day it continues committing war crimes, genocide, killing of children. It’s becoming very much embarrassing. This from one side. From the other side. We’ve seen continuous protest in the streets, universities, institutions in Europe. That makes me – or at least I start seeing some changes in the language because they realized covering up Israel so much when Israel doesn’t cover itself it’s going to be very costly, and it is very costly for them.
AA: I mean, it’s already costly, as you say. Just the whole South African initiative and the way that other countries have been lining up against the United States, against Western countries that have been supporting Israel, that’s a, a shift or a break that we haven’t seen before. Hossam?
HB: Yes, to answer your question, I do see the silver lining. Uh, obviously it’s incredibly hard right now because it’s a year later and we’ve tried everything and nothing worked. I mean, the genocide continues unabated. The massacres are daily, the schools are still being bombed, entire families are being wiped out, and the numbers are worse than at the beginning. And, uh, because of course, Israel, the army and the government, they bet on the fatigue and the normalization and the long haul of it – you know, the first time a hospital is bombed there is global outrage, you know, when it’s the hundredth time, when there are no hospitals left standing, then it becomes just a small story on page five, right? So it’s really hard to see the silver lining right now until you pay attention to the generational element of it. There is a shift in public opinion that was unimaginable, especially in the West. Globally, public opinion is not only vehemently opposed to these crimes. There is close to unanimity that it is a genocide, that it is a Western-supported genocide. And young people in many of the governments that have been the strongest supporters, financiers and arms suppliers for this genocide are disgusted by their own government, and that includes Jewish public opinion and that’s really important. And it also is really noticed in my country. I mean, of course we pay attention and are encouraged whenever we see street mobilizations in the West, in Europe and the United States and Canada for Palestinian lives, that is important, and it helps offset this part of the damage. But, you know, it really stands out when it’s Jewish Voice for Peace, when it’s Rabbis for a Ceasefire, when it’s really the Jewish students on US university campuses that are leading this fight. That is important. It’s important not just to signal this shift in public opinion that is, to a big extent, generational, but to also prevent, of course, the antisemitic backlash, that, you know, we are all dreading as, as a result of this Western complicity
AA: Yeah that has been a significant concern
HB: …but it’s not just a shift in public opinion. I mean, Palestine was almost lost as a cause before the war started. I mean, even the Arab governments were being pressured by the United States to normalize ties with Israel as, as a condition for accessing benefits from the US government, of strategic alliances. But now not only is Palestine back on everyone’s mind and conscience but it has been reframed. People are not now talking about the territorial conflict, or protracted armed conflict, or the Middle East issue. They really see the situation now in terms of decolonization. They understand this as an indigenous movement, you know, against settler colonialism. Young Jewish people are asking, are challenging the very basis of all of this, ethno-religious supremacy of one people over another, and they see it in apartheid terms, and that is a threat to the entire project but also it is the source of tremendous power. Everyone is waiting now for, of course, the killings to stop, but something big will definitely come out of this. So Israel may be winning this war, of course with a tragic cost, but ultimately there is no long-term stability in this region, unless we really challenge this colonial basis for the whole project.
NR: This, one of the positive things, my colleague Hossam was saying – the Jewish voices now we are seeing around the world protesting, in fact heading a lot of protests in Europe and United States. And they’re saying what we’ve been trying to tell the international community all this year. The conflict is not about religion. We are equal, whether Jewish or Muslim, Christian, Hindus, Buddhists, we are all equal. The conflict is all about Israel violation of international law, Israel violation of United Nations resolutions, Israel’s illegitimate and illegal occupation of Palestinian land. That whole issue is about this. The Israelis for many years tried to convince many that, “they are against us because we are Jewish.” It’s not like that. It’s not, it’s not that. It is all about occupation, illegal occupation, and violating of international law. Second point, maybe I forget to highlight, some Western governments, now we have to talk about it, they have paralyzed many international institutions, international judicial system. Imagine till today, arrest warrant cannot be issued by the International Criminal Court. I’m one of people who were campaigning in the Arab region for our countries to sign and ratify the Rome status so our governments become part of the International Criminal Court. Tell you today, no, no, I think I was mistaken. To me and to many people, International Criminal Court, it seems that it is just made for the African regimes or, or what –
AA: Which is what the Africans were saying all along, by the way.
NR: I know, I mean, we’re not believing them at that time, but now, after many months, Netanyahu and his government committing such crimes, and there is no demand by the public prosecutor, not even, because if they have moved from the beginning, we could have saved many lives. Even the International Court of Justice, why things are being late, why being delayed, why they have not asked very clearly Israel to stop this war where they could do that? Why the International Criminal Court not issuing any arrest warrant until today? All this because of the Western governments. Because it is their project, the International Criminal Court was their project. So they are the most influential in this institution, as they paralyze the Security Council! Where is the Security Council which will come and get together and issue a resolution for anything done by this country, or that? Why, why is it now it’s paralyzed?
AA: Well, I think this is why there’s uncertainty about what kind of a lining it is. Is it silver or not? Because you are looking at, somewhere in the future, the probable dismantling or failure of these institutions, and a lot of the human rights expert system is rooted, is embedded in these commitments.
HB: Maybe that’s the problem.
AA: That’s exactly my question. I don’t know whether it means that this is a good thing that we can decouple the Western interests from the human rights system, or whether indeed, with the Western credibility goes the human rights system, that these institutions fail to deliver, they fail to uphold the rules and if that keeps going, we end up in a situation where there is no infrastructure. So I’m not sure where we go from there, except that staying in a broken system, just because you have nothing else, is not really to be recommended.
HB: I think it’s a step ahead that we now agree it’s a broken system. I mean that’s, I guess the first step towards the solution, is realizing that whatever we have right now, we’ve always known was imperfect, but we now know it’s not working. And we’ve been saying this over the last year, you know, quoting Gramsci, that the old is dead and, we know that the new is struggling to be born. It’s time that, you know, we really start imagining the new, even if realizing that imagination is going to be a job for generations to come. But I don’t think what we have right now is worth passing on to the next generation.
NR: I wouldn’t go that far, as you say, dismantling those institutions, because I always say a weak law [is] better than we don’t have law, you know, completely. So we have to see a way to reform those institutions. I mean, the Western leadership of the international community has failed. And then we have seen a new power like South Africa, like, Chile – why they are not involved in the decision-making at the Security Council level? We have seen very clearly, the Western governments that lead the Security Council have been covering up for Israel. And the whole veto system, the Security Council – this all has to be revised. The international system has failed, international law and international institutions, and UN mechanisms – all fallen in this war in Gaza. So that leads us to say that things have to be redone, or reformed.
AA: Let me come back to you just for one last reflection. You are waking up every day in your own countries trying to figure out what, as human rights leaders, to do today to improve what is an appalling crisis? If you think about what tools are in your hand for today, what can you do, Hossam, about this situation?
HB: Well, Egypt is not really your typical, example. because for the last 10 years it had moved from being, you know, your typical authoritarian regime with a troubling human rights record and systemic human rights violation, into one of the worst violators of human rights in the world, and one of the most restrictive environments in the world. The tools left are still social media, even though it’s a whole other fight on its own when it comes to Palestine. Now, many of us have been facing, you know, shadow-banning and, you know, content removals and accounts suspensions, et cetera, by the biggest platforms. But it is still relatively free compared to the mainstream media. It’s almost the only space that is available for people to be critical also, not just of the genocide, but of the Egyptian government’s response to the genocide. I mean, what we’re doing in our work when it comes to this issue daily, is really strive to show how it is precisely the lack of a civic space, the lack of media oversight, the lack of access to information – you know, we don’t know what our government has or has not agreed to since this war has started, or what the policy for humanitarian access, or, or, you know, we can’t sue our government to allow journalists, even Egyptian journalists into Gaza. This is the first Gaza war that is not covered by Egyptian media. You know, we receive the coverage from the wires or from the incredibly brave Palestinian journalists who are being systemically wiped out, targeted really with their families. So it’s an opportunity really to show how it is this regime’s economic policies that have put us in this weakened position. It is these restrictions on access to information that is allowing this regime to be completely unaccountable. And it is this blanket ban on protests that is not only making it impossible for us to put any pressure on our government to change or improve its response to the genocide, but we haven’t even been able to protest the Americans or the Germans. You know, in the recent past, you know, we would be demonstrating every day, like the rest of the world, you know, young university students are being arrested for raising banners or for wearing t-shirts. I mean, things that are perfectly legal acts, and that’s again something that is now resonating with the public. They realize that the cliche is true. You know, no liberating Palestine before liberating Egypt, and no liberating Palestine without liberating Egypt.
AA: Okay. Thank you both very much.
NR: Thank you.
HB: Thank you.
AA: Hossam Bahgat is the executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo. And Nabeel Rajab is a longstanding activist who played a foundational role in building the human rights movement in Bahrain. You can find a transcript of our conversation and some background reading suggestions, on our website, strengthandsolidarity.org.
AA: And that’s Episode 47 … it’s great to be back. A big thank you to all of you who filled in our survey – we got an excellent response rate and the results have been incredibly useful. I’ll be reporting back on some of your suggestions and requests in my regular newsletter. If you aren’t on our mailing list but would like to be added, please send a note to pod@strengthandsolidarity.org. – we’ll drop that address in the shownotes. For now, from producer Peter Coccoma and me, Akwe Amosu, take good care.