Historic prisoner exchange demonstrates principled resistance, with Jon Elmer and Ali Abunimah

Let's uh let's start with the prisoner exchange over the last four days and now that we know that the exchange will extend another two days with this truce uh John what do we know about the prisoner exchange so far um we've seen Israel's attempts to obscure the public release of Palestinian uh women and children uh Ben gavier of course issued a dictat he said um it's prohibited to have expressions of joy for Palestinians returning home in occupied East Jerusalem what do we know so far yeah I mean the Israelis clouded um didn't tell the families of people who are going to be um released so in an effort to prevent uh large turnouts at ofer prison where people were being turned over but of course it did the exact opposite because people just said we don't know who's getting let out so we're all going to go and thousands thousand of uh of people showed up at the prison and Israel had to push them away with tear gas and firing into the air um but just gives you a sense of um you know what they went through to try to make it so that people couldn't show up and then what we saw especially that first day we've seen it every day but that first day when people just poured into the streets look at just surrounding the buses the buses couldn't move um everybody's cheering and it's I meant I remember we're talking about children that are being released here these these this release was um a small number of women many of them were young women um and then children uh under the age of 18 and these are the vast majority of them are not charged with any crime they're in administrative detention they don't know the charges against them we talked at the beginning of the show they're tortured they don't like to talk about it when they come out of prison out of respect for the people people that are still in prisons Palestinians don't come funneling out and tell us all the horror stories but they do they did tell us a little bit when we had this Mass exchange and they T they've told stories about for the last uh six weeks that they've been tortured in the prison since October 7th um the Israelis have cracked down on the prisoners knowing that they would be released um and tormenting them in that time and so this kind of footage would you see um families being reunited in this way um this is something that touches every Palestinian family everybody knows somebody um either in their direct family or their neighbors um that are imprisoned um and to be able to free them like this in this way um and this these footage of the people running it's um yeah I mean I think honestly it's just like it's a singular act in in in all of the world freeing people from prison um is a singular act understood by anyone particularly political prisoners political prisoners who are children who haven't been charged who are being tortured um and one day their Jailer opens the door and says um you're going to be leaving we've seen a lot of this footage the Palestinians are still in their prison uniforms they didn't let them change into their clothes um yeah they tried to keep keep it so their their families weren't there they tried to tell them when they were let out that if they partied that they would be rearrested and of course this is something that Israel does all the time they rearrested people released in the Shalit deal um they assassinated people released in the Shalit deal this kind of dirty um you know dirty tactics that don't um indicate good faith in exchanging prisoners which is something that needs to happen at this time um for this kind of an exchange to go through um you need a legitimate Authority on the ground which the Palestinians have in the cassam brigades to negotiate these um these releases in a principled um in a principled manner and this is this kind of footage that we're watching um this is the footage that people um suffered through in Gaza waiting for um this the the punishment um delved out onto Gaza um was an effort to prevent these moments this prisoner exchange could have happened right away particularly this phase of it this stage where the women and the children are exchanged for women and children this could have happened right away and now we're getting reports today that the this would have been day four of the release um and we're hearing today that there's a possibility of an extension of two days um and joh do you think do you think they've talked about an ex what what's been reported in terms of the terms of the the TRU deal was that for every day there was an extension 10 additional uh captives or detainees would be released from Gaza in exchange for um three times as many Palestinian uh hostages held by Israel uh do you have a of how many more detainees that fit the category of this exchange might still be in Gaza do we have any reliable sense of that no we don't know exact numbers but the Israelis are saying that from from their count um that there could be as many as 90 more that could fit in generally broadly fit into this uh this part of the exchange um so it's difficult to know because we don't know exactly how many have died um the number the Israelis have been saying is 239 um that are held the cassam brigades say they hold 200 so there's been something like 50 being held by other groups and part of the reason that they want um to extend the truce period um the pause period is so that Kasam can go and find um those other people that were taken by Gaza civilians after the wall was breached when we say oer 200 or 239 is that including the Israeli military prisoners of war or is that a separate that includes and we don't know how many of them are military um the Israelis have have at times said that there's only a couple of dozen military people that number seems too low um we know that there would have been people from the Nova Music Festival that were soldiers that would have raised that number we know that they overran um 12 bases and outposts and captured soldiers but we don't know the exact numbers because for the Palestinians that number is a super valuable number and for the Israelis they're trying to downplay how many of their soldiers are captured because that's where the long um uh discussions are going to be on getting those soldiers out so the numbers the numbers keep changing according to the official Israeli figures but last time I checked the official count it I mean and this was a few weeks ago but they they were saying it was only 30 of them were soldiers but yeah and as you said that's obviously a very low figure but well and that you know we go back to because this has come up from time to time and I've seen people commenting on this that you know people are saying well that they're only getting three Palestinians for every Israeli civilian that's released whereas when it was the gilad Shalit deal in 2011 the Israel's released more than a thousand Palestinians for one Israeli soldier John can you respond to that is this what's the difference here well the numbers are going to go up considerably once they get into the soldiers I think that the numbers that we're talking about about 10 and releasing 30 and 3 to one that's for the humanitarian stage then they're and they're calling it The humanitarian stage because they're giving people who are civilians um who are the foreigners um people who that Kasam right from the beginning said that they would have given up so that that's where that 3 to one is coming in is in this stage um that three to one isn't going to C I I don't I mean we're speculating but I don't believe that Yahya senoir is going to go 3 to one um for the soldiers that that number is going to be a completely separate stage of negotiations and I wouldn't be surprised if those negotiations went on for years but what but what Kasam I there's a benefit to the Israelis and to the cassam brigades both parties in this battle um there's incentive to turn over the the prisoners um the logistics of kassam holding these people that are un Affiliated and not soldiers is considerable whereas the value of the soldiers is what is valuable and you know like that's how you can always tell the Israeli announcers on uh an American TV when they tell you that they that that Hamas thinks the that the civilians are more valuable just gives you an idea that they don't know what they're talking about I mean Seymour hirs said the same thing the soldiers are considerably more valuable than the civilians and I'm I would argue that the from what we know at this point um the C civilians weren't captured um by the cassan brigades in these large numbers these numbers of people that are being turned over were were captured by other groups and by Gaza civilians and it takes a bit of time to get those people under um Kasam control but Kasam has taken the responsibility like a national government um of dealing with this and not saying no you have to deal with the other groups they're not us um which is the same as the um the ceasefire agreement um didn't mention the other Palestinian groups it just said Kasam and the Palestinian resistance um understanding that Kasam could bring to heal the other groups of the resistance to follow on um on their their ceasefire plans yeah and then after the ceasefire we saw kassam out in the streets in uniform their soldiers down in the Town Square we saw them set up checkpoints to look through the aid that was coming through just to make sure sure that there was nothing the Israelis were putting in the aid trucks that were coming through so acting like a national government um when we've been told that they're all hiding underground and that they're you know this war has been so successful targeting them um the day that there's a ceasefire cassan brigades are walking around in Gaza City because the Israelis aren't holding Gaza City um even though for weeks they've been telling us about the fight in Gaza City they can't hold one block away from sh hospital that's where the cassam Bri Gades were seen um but they can besiege shiffa Hospital attack the doctors arrest the doctors and apparently it looks as though they're trying to close down the institution itself and they but go going back to to those observations you made John the what they call the Optics I I hate that word but the Optics of this prisoner exchange and this truce have been remarkable if you look at we just saw some of the images the video of of Palestinians being released and some of the testimonies I've been listening over the last few days a lot of these young people and women have been interviewed by Palestinian and Arabic language media Al jazer and they give remarkably consistent accounts of just utterly horrifying treatment at the hands of the Israelis contemptuous treatment up until the moment of their release not even being told that they were going to be released being dragged out of bed at 5: in the morning uh being told you're you're being transported somewhere not told where some of the kids were told and I heard this from several of them that oh we're taking you to your Graves uh and then they would find out at the last moment that they were being released and they all said that at least the ones I watched that they had no idea that there was an exchange going on they didn't even know that there was a war in Gaza because that's how tightly Israel isolates them uh from the world H and and we just saw the scenes of you know heart heart-wrenching joy of the the the uh re uh reunification of of children with their parents and their families and mothers with their children because many of these uh female prisoners that were taken away from children when they were very young and then kept in Israeli prisons for years so that's been incredible and then on the other side we've seen I don't know if we're going to to to show them or not but there have been a number of uh of uh uh videos released by the kasan brigades uh let's show some of them okay we do have them yeah all right so these are the ones I'm talking about where they show the Kasam uh soldiers handing the the Israeli civilians over to the uh to the to the Red Cross and uh I'm sure those Israelis are very relieved to be going home as anyone would be uh but you can see at some point that they're waving or saying goodbye and of course I've seen people saying well they would wouldn't they they're just happy to be going or they've been put through hell or or brainwashed bya but I don't think we've seen too many Palestinians waving a a farewell to the Israelis uh at any time I mean I just can't imagine an Israeli uh a Palestinian prisoner thanking their jailers after the kind of treatment that Palestinians get in Israeli prisons and of course itar Ben the Israeli so-called national security minister who is in charge of the prisons who brags every day on social media about how brutally they're treating the prisoners cely to satisfy the bloodlust and Vengeance of benir himself and the Israeli public but we also saw in in the most recent videos I think yesterday what you were talking about John where the Handover didn't happen at the Rafa crossing right in the south on the border with Egypt as some of the others but Hamas actually handed the Prisoners the the captives over to the Red Cross in Gaza City in Palestine Square in the heart of Gaza City an area that until a couple of days ago had been uh had Israeli tanks in it and so what does it mean that we saw a large number of Hamas Soldiers with their vehicles with their weapons and in in those areas and we also saw civilians in Gaza City far from spitting at them or telling them you know you brought this destruction on us on us instead the civilians them were kissing them kissing their heads and also uh you know chanting in support of of of Kasam and we heard mm earlier mm Nas talking about you know nobody is celebrating in Gaza but nonetheless there was an element of that in in these videos is this carefully staged H is this pallywood that we're seeing as the Israel Lobby calls it no it's it's it's a brilliant move by Kasam they they they decided to change the route I mean in part they decided to change the route because um some there was kids in the South were throwing stones at the at the first groups that were U the groups of Israelis that were going to the Border um and so instead of kassam terrifying the people before they left by having kids throwing stones um Kasam changed the route um because they have the the um the coherence um the structural military coherence to be nimble to change their plans to act um on short notice to be able to find the exact number of prisoners Max match them to the list and then coordinate where they're going to be exited from the cassam brigades have led this process the whole time this isn't the Israelis saying and then you'll do this and then you'll do that it's Kasam saying we'll take them to the Red Cross the Red Cross will take them to the Rafa Crossing and then yesterday they said okay we're not going to do it that way we're going to do it out the Eastern side of Gaza City so Israel had to you could read in the Israeli papers of them being flustered oh we need a new route because Cam's giving us a new route um and and all that shows is uh is the cohesion and coherence of the command and control of this group um and the Israeli numbers themselves they're citing numbers excuse me this last um few days they cited numbers between one and 2,000 Hamas killed so they're saying Hamas they're not distinguishing uh cassam brigades they're saying Hamas probably including Municipal people um who have been targeted um because if they're saying that number then they're presumably have a list of those names and those names are going to be Municipal workers um and so even if we use that number why don't we double that number if we think the idf's number is low um there's still 36,000 Kasam Fighters there's a command and control structure that's per that's in place um a fixed in place um their Fighters have the ability after this devastating bombardment brutality that the world has never seen before since World War II The New York Times did a story yesterday where they tried to to come up with an example of who was the last Army to kill this many women and children and they couldn't do it it doesn't include any of the recent Wars um Israel killed more in two weeks than the Americans killed in the whole first year of the shock and awe um in Iraq the numbers are so brutal but the second the fighting stops Kasam is coherent and organized enough to pull off uh the largest prisoner exchange under combat um that we've seen in the conflict Israel's never had this number of people turned over um there's never been this logistical uh um this task of turning it over and the cassam Bri Gades after 50 days of War are are able to do it and able to do it smoothly in fact there there hasn't been one ceasefire violation in four days the Israelis haven't called one ceasefire violation um in this entire period so cassam is holding not just their own fighters in check but they're holding the fighters of the other groups that aren't Kasam um which just shows a level of leadership and coordination um and cohesion as a fighting force um that this is a military this isn't a a group that if you kill their Northern Commander which Israel did because they fight from the front um they killed the northern Commander the northern command's not going to collapse they have a coherent internal structure that will replace in the the important people people aren't disposable um but they'll replace them within the organization with people who are um equally capable of carrying out the task so you're not GNA um Pummel Kasam into submission and that's just the there's a lot of that I mean I heard it on the New York Times Daily their podcast talking about how Hamas Was Defeated um Seymour hirs writes every you know twice a week from his Israeli sources talking about where Yahya sinir is going to surrender um nothing could be further from the truth Kasam is in control of the territory in Gaza City on the ground walking around um able to help people facilitate um the exit of these um captives that they have who they treated well and we're getting all these uh testimonies from the um from inside Israeli jails where they they torture these children and they isolate them because they don't want the children to be mixed in with the actual Palestinian fighters who are in prison to teach them lessons and to have them have the camaraderie that Palestinians have in prison when they're older you know working groups teaching groups um using the prison as their Academy the Israelis don't want the 12-year-old kid that they just arrested being part of that and learning more about the struggle so they do this deprivation thing where they put them in solitary confinement they don't let them see the outside um they treat them like the most hardened criminals um when there's no charge against them and if there is a charge against them it's throwing stones at a tank which I think most of the world would consider just Flatout heroism if you're throwing a stone at a tank risking going to jail for years and years where you're going to be tortured um you've seen it happen from your friends your older Generations you know exactly the consequences and you still go out and throw stones ATT tanks um it says a lot about the Palestinian kids it says a lot about the fighters of the Som brigades but most importantly it says a lot about the Israelis and this Israeli project um that's built on torture and on breaking people and it never breaks people it makes them stronger the cassandre Gades are stronger today than they were six weeks ago more people are going to kiss them on the forehead in Gaza after 15 or 20 or 25,000 people are dead they'll still kiss them on their head nobody is going to blame the cassam brigades for what has befell them here if anything they'll credit them with freeing thousands of prisoners who I mean we still haven't gotten a chance on this show to talk about it but there's going to be later prisoner exchanges where very serious political leadership elements are going to be released from Palestinian prison and they're going to rejoin the political movements in the West Bank which is um if we have time to talk about it today is still locked in armed struggle um those prisoners are going to reintegrate into that movement and at the end of all this at the end of the tens of thousands of Civilian massacres the armed struggle the armed struggle groups are going to be in a better position than they were before the war um and all Israel has to show for it is a New York Times article where they dig through history to find out if anyone else massacred women and children quite like this and basically the answer is no thanks for watching this video please subscribe to our 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