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Amanpour

Alleged Syrian Chemical Weapon Use Discussed; Talking with Palestinian Rap Artists Who Express Anger and Dissent Through Their Music

Aired April 26, 2013 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone, I'm Christiane Amanpour, and welcome to the special weekend edition of our program.

Our top story: major developments in Syria. After months of speculation, finally the United States and its allies have publicly said they believe the Assad regime has used chemical weapons against the opposition.

Here's Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in the Middle East.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK HAGEL, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The U.S. intelligence community assesses with some degree of varying confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So the Obama administration is calling it small-scale; and it's calling for more concrete proof. Here's the head of Israeli military intelligence this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGADIER GENERAL ITAI BRUN, ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORATE (through translator): According to our professional assessment, the regime has used deadly chemical weapons against armed rebels on a number of occasions in the past few months.

For instance, on March 19th, 2013, victims suffered from shrunken pupils, foaming from the mouth and other symptoms which indicate the use of deadly chemical weapons. The type of chemical weapons was likely sarin.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: This is the red line President Obama laid down in Israel last month.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: .we have to make sure that we know exactly what happened, what was the nature of the incident, what can we document, what can we prove?

So I've instructed my teams to work closely with all of the countries in the region and international organizations and institutions to find out precisely whether or not this red line was crossed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Now the White House says the president's red line will actually be crossed when there is absolute proof.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Last month, this video was released by rebel forces. But while CNN couldn't verify them, just before the White House went public with its assessment, the leader of Syrian opposition forces, General Salim Idriss, told us exclusively that his forces and his doctors had evidence of chemical weapons use, that they've taken blood and soil samples.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: I spoke to him by phone from rebel-held territory inside Syria.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: I want to know whether you can confirm whether the Syrian government forces have used chemical weapons, sarin particularly, as Israel says?

GEN. SALIM IDRISS, CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE FREE SYRIAN ARMY: Yes. I can confirm that the tubes (ph) from that regime used the chemical weapons many, many times. They used the chemical weapons against the Old City in Homs.

And they used it repeatedly in Aleppo, again, the -- in Aleppo, in many places; they used it in Khan al-Assal and in -- and in Sheikh Maqsoud. And another time they used chemical weapons in -- at Otaiba, near Damascus.

AMANPOUR: All right.

IDRISS: And the kind -- and the kinds of the chemical weapons that were used is some gases, some poisonous gases.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): The British foreign office has released a statement, saying the evidence is, quote, "extremely concerning," calling the use of chemical weapons, quote, "a war crime." Now the United States is waiting for the special U.N. investigative team to get into Syria and find further proof. That team, though, is being prevented from getting in by the Assad regime.

In a letter sent to Congress, the White House was careful to set out the caveats that we've mentioned and the Obama administration is cautiously looking over its shoulder at the recent faulty WMD evidence, namely in Iraq before the war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Its letter to Congress says, "Given the stakes involved and what we have learned from our own recent experience, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: After what General Idriss, the commander of opposition forces, told us yesterday, we want to go back to him now for his reaction to the assessment now from the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: General Idriss, welcome back to the program. You're inside Syria.

IDRISS: Thank you. Thank you very much.

AMANPOUR: I want to ask your reaction to what the White House today has said, issuing a letter, saying that they have variable confidence that, in fact, the Assad regime has used chemical weapons.

What is your reaction?

IDRISS: I'm happy to hear that they have evidence. I told you yesterday that today -- that there are a lot of evidence. And we know exactly that Assad regime used chemical weapons many, many times in Syria till now.

AMANPOUR: General Idriss, first I want to ask you, the administration believes it was two times, on two occasions.

Can you be specific about how many times you think it happened?

IDRISS: Yes. It happened more than three to four times. The first time was in Homs against the Old City. The second time was in Aleppo, Khan al-Assal, and the third time was near Damascus. And the last time was again in Aleppo.

AMANPOUR: The United States has not said that it has full proof and full evidence. Its assessments say that it has some confidence that chemical weapons have been used.

You told me yesterday that you were going to try and get more evidence.

Have you found anything?

IDRISS: Yes. I was in contact with my officers. And maybe in a short time, we will give you the names of the doctors who took the samples, the name of the injured, the name of those people who are witness, who saw everything.

AMANPOUR: Do you know what happened to the original soil samples and blood samples?

IDRISS: No. No, I'm sorry, I don't know.

AMANPOUR: So what is the next step then, do you think?

What do you think is going to happen next?

IDRISS: We are afraid that the regime will continue to use chemical weapons and we are very concerned that when the regime feel that he is going to lose everything, he will use the chemical weapons very heavily. Now he used some kind, some gases. And we are afraid that he will use all kinds of chemical weapons against the civilians.

Now we hope that the international community give this regime a very clear signal that it is really a red line. The chemical weapons mustn't be used again in Syria.

AMANPOUR: The White House says that its red line is really when it gets absolute proof. And it's waiting for the U.N. team to go in.

IDRISS: I hope that we don't have to wait till the regime uses the weapons very clearly and there are 100,000 of dead people, then we can say that it is really proof. And then we start to act.

We hope that our friends in the Western countries and in the international community now -- and right now -- give the regime a very clear signal that he has used the chemical weapons and that he crossed the red line. And he must -- and he must be punished.

AMANPOUR: And what do you think that signal would be?

IDRISS: I think the right signal now is to have a non-fly zone over Syria and to send a clear letter to Bashar that he -- when he think to use Scud missiles against the civilians and the -- to use chemical weapons, that will be the end of everything in Syria.

AMANPOUR: General Idriss, thank you very much for joining me again.

IDRISS: Thank you. Thank you. Good luck. Bye-bye.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So I spoke to Senator John McCain, who's long faulted the Obama administration's hands-off approach to the carnage in Syria. He says the red line has clearly been crossed and now he wants to see support for the recognized opposition and also a no-fly zone, a safe area imposed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Senator McCain joins me from Washington.

Welcome back to the program, Senator.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZ.: Thank you, Christiane. It's always good to be with you.

AMANPOUR: It does seem to be an incredible day after all these really -- these allegations and more and more evidence coming out and Israel and France and Britain saying it this week, now the White House sends you a letter and your colleagues in the Senate to confirm your worst suspicions.

What do you expect to be the next move?

MCCAIN: Well, I hope the next move is that we will make plans to give the Syrians, the resistance, the wherewithal to break what our intelligence community also believes is a stalemate that is -- will probably last for a long time under the status quo.

I hope we will establish a safe zone, supply weapons to the right people and allow the resistance, the Syrian National Council, to be in Syria, protected, and organize, equip and train and make sure that all of that goes to the right people, not the jihadists who are flooding into the country.

AMANPOUR: Now with regard to the chemical weapons assessment, the administration further clarified its position on what the red line was after this letter that it sent to you all, basically saying that the red line will have been met once there is full and corroborated proof and evidence, that obviously they're hoping for the U.N. to go in to figure it out, but that they have their own separate means as well.

How do you feel about that red line definition?

And can you tell me how the U.S. will get that proof independently?

MCCAIN: First of all, in answer to your last question, I don't know. But I do know that the Israelis, the British and the French and, by the way, also the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee stated today unequivocally that, according to her, that the Syrians had crossed that red line.

Here's the danger here now, Christiane, and that is that it is now strongly believed that this red line has been crossed. Now the Iranians and Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will be watching to see what the United States of America does.

If we equivocate now and not give the Syrian resistance the level of support that they need to break the status quo, then I think the United States of America is going to have a huge credibility problem.

AMANPOUR: Senator McCain, thanks very much indeed for joining me.

MCCAIN: Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And with the stakes rising in Syria, we'll turn later to another troubled part of the region, Israel, where Arab citizens of Israel, young people, have found a peaceful outlet for their rage and frustration in, of all places, hip-hop music. The voices of resistance rap when we come back.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. And turning now to rap and resistance, so often rap music is born on the fringes of society. It's the voice of the repressed and the marginalized. It originated here in the United States and it has caught on as a means of protest across the world, playing a role in the Arab Spring in places like Tunisia, Bahrain and Morocco.

It's also alive and well in Israel, which is home to more than a million and a half Arab citizens.

Three of them make up the hip-hop group DAM. They are brothers, Tamer and Suhell Nafar, and their friend, Mahmoud Jreri.

The Palestinian artists rap in both Hebrew and Arabic and in England sometimes, and the themes of oppression and injustice are prevalent in their songs about struggling to survive in the Jewish state. The American rapper, Tupac Shakur, is their inspiration. Tupac's imagery of violence and crime in poor neighborhoods in the United States resonated with what they say they were feeling at home.

DAM's lyrics, like those in many hip-hop songs can be controversial and, to some, even offensive. I spoke with them here in the studio at the beginning of their U.S. tour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Suhell, Tamer, Mahmoud, welcome to the program. Thanks for joining me.

You say the quintessential American hip-hop rapper, Tupac, was your inspiration and that it was very similar to what you lived every day.

I want to play part of one of your songs that actually recorded in Hebrew, and it's called "Born Here," and then we'll talk about it.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

AMANPOUR: So this is in Hebrew, presumably directly aimed at the Israeli Hebrew-speaking population.

What are you trying to tell them?

TAMER NAFAR, DAM MEMBER: Back then, it was part of a campaign called Born Here.

Just to give a reference, "Born Here" is a very known Israeli Zionist song. The actual lyrics in this Hebrew song was, "I was born here; this is where my sons were born here, my grandson will be born here and this is where I built my own house."

And we, the natives, that we were born in this land before Israeli even, we took that song and we flipped it, in that song, as you saw.

And we said, "We are born here, my grandfather was born here. My great-grandfather -- "and this is the way you demolish the house in your both hands.

And basically that song is to talk about the neighborhoods, about the -- we are talking about Israeli citizens, which you are. We -- yes, we carry the Israeli passport; we pay the Israeli taxes. And we live in neighborhoods without no -- sometimes no water, sometimes no electricity -- sometimes, of course.

Poverty, no streets, walls in between us and the Jewish neighborhoods, like the separation, the big separational (ph), 70 houses were demolished back then when we did that video clip because the Arabs built without license. But at the same time, they don't give license to Arabs.

So --

AMANPOUR: So, Suhell, are you trying to make a political point or a social point?

Are you talking about the bigger Arab-Israeli peace process?

Are you just talking about your own neighborhoods?

SUHELL NAFAR, DAM MEMBER: I mean, we're talking about our reality, whatever we see when we open our window, whatever we talk to our families, whether they're in Gaza or in the West Bank or even the refugees that are there in Lebanon.

So what we talk about is we're talking about one solution for everyone, which is like everyone under one peaceful state. And so we talk to everyone.

TAMER NAFAR: But we do consider ourselves as part of the Palestinian people.

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: You know, a lot of people don't often focus on Arab Israelis. So let me just put out the statistics. There are about 1.6 million of you who live inside Israel as Israeli citizens, of a total of nearly 8 million Israelis.

Do you feel part of Israel, Mahmoud?

MAHMOUD JRERI, DAM MEMBER: Well, we have -- we have a song called "Stranger in My Own Country," and this is what we feel. We are targeted citizens. And we are targeted because we all live in a country that defines itself as a Jewish country, which deletes (ph) everyone else. And this is how we feel and this is how we are being treated by this country.

AMANPOUR: Let me read some of these lyrics.

"Stranger in my own country. Who cares about us? We are dying slowly controlled by a Zionist, democratic government. Ya, democratic to the Jewish soul and Zionist to the Arabic soul."

Do you worry that this will be seen as anti-Semitic, that you will be criticized for saying these kinds of lyrics? What is the reaction to this kind of singing?

TAMER NAFAR: I don't think it's anti- -- I'm Semitic first (ph), so I cannot be --

JRERI: You're Semitic.

TAMER NAFAR: Yes. So, yes, exactly. So I cannot be anti-myself. My -- I --

AMANPOUR: Anti-Jewish? Anti-Israeli?

JRERI: I'm not anti-Jewish; I'm anti-Zionism, because I think Zionism is racism. And Zionism is deleting any other culture and any other religion living in Palestine. And this is what I'm criticizing.

I don't have problem with Jewish people. I'm calling for a country that their citizens is the important thing in the country. I'm not his religion. I'm not his background. And this is what we are calling for.

TAMER NAFAR: I must add something if possible.

I don't know how it got through the history to that point, where I should defend myself of being anti-Jewish. I mean, we are sitting on a land that have Christians, that it have Jews, and it have Muslims. Most of the Muslims and Christians were kicked out of this land.

And the 20 percent that was left, the Christians and the Muslims are being defined under Jewish country that is ignoring them and canceling them.

How the hell we are being anti-Semitic if it's not the opposite? I don't know how -- what's the process --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: So you think -- you think the process (inaudible) you --

TAMER NAFAR: Yes, definitely, yes.

AMANPOUR: Obviously that's your feelings; it comes out in your music.

What is the reaction inside Israel amongst the Jewish population and amongst Arab population to your music?

TAMER NAFAR: Some like it. We have a big following of the Jews.

(CROSSTALK)

SUHELL NAFAR: It's mostly activist people who are following us. But when you have --

TAMER NAFAR: -- the army, activists --

AMANPOUR: Well, thank you all for coming in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And I want to turn now to journalist Robin Wright. She's covered the Middle East extensively, including the role of rap music as a form of protest and expression.

Robin, welcome. And you are also, of course, the author of "Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Arab World."

You've written a lot about rap and you've seen DAM perform.

What's your analysis of their role in society?

ROBIN WRIGHT, JOURNALIST; AUTHOR OF "ROCK THE CASBAH": Well, I think the most important thing about them is they reflect the attempt to create a different way of expressing their anger. They're not using Molotov cocktails; they're not donning suicide vests. They're using music.

And it reflects this vibrant culture of change that has been given birth across the Middle East in music, in theater, in comedy, in trying to find other ways of achieving your goals, of tackling whether it's autocrats or extremists or fighting for your rights in Israel.

AMANPOUR: So given the fact that they're not advocating violence -- and, in fact, a lot of their songs are about coexistence and wishing they could -- is some of the offensive language, whether Zionism is racism or whatever they might be saying -- is that fair game? Or is that something that people should take offense at?

WRIGHT: Look, their lyrics are controversial and they're going to offend some people. This is where -- we're kind of in a transition period as we work our way, hopefully, at some point, down the road to a peace process.

But the mere fact that they are singing to an Israeli audience as well as a Muslim and Arab audience, the fact that they have performed in Israeli clubs and the fact that they have sung with Israeli rappers tells you that something has changed and that's really what they represent.

AMANPOUR: And what do you think is the future of this?

Is it just now because of this monumental sort of political upheaval that's going on?

Or is it something that's, you know, like her, is going to be the wave of the future?

WRIGHT: In many ways, the culture of change tells us really what happens next. We get so absorbed in the daily headlines and the gruesome pictures of a protest or a confrontation or the tragedy of Syria.

And the fact is, whatever happens politically, it is this culture of change produced by the young, who are the majority across the region, that really reflect the guts of what's happening and this epic convulsion and the positive side of it, that people are turning to -- whether it's song or theater or comedy -- as a means of communicating their message and sending out something very different than the kind of extremism that you and I covered 20 years ago.

AMANPOUR: And to that point, you obviously are not just a music and rap reporter. You have looked and covered all these revolutions -- and for decades now.

What is your feeling for the young people who had these revolutions for their own economic betterment and things are really stuck in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere?

WRIGHT: Look, this is a time of tremendous disappointment for all of them, because they can't translate their dreams into political reality, and they feel they're not getting the rewards for their courage and initiative.

And one of the interesting things -- most interesting barometers of change -- will be to hear the lyrics of the rap a year from now and five years from now and what they're singing about, how much anger there is in their voices and what they're demanding.

And are they going further than they -- than they were today and just calling for peaceful coexistence and change?

That's the danger that we get the old edginess and violence back into the music as well.

AMANPOUR: So rap is the third intifada?

WRIGHT: It's the third intifada. It's the rhythm of the resistance across the region.

AMANPOUR: On that note, Robin Wright, thank you very much.

WRIGHT: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Thanks for being here.

And we'll be back with a final thought, after a break.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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AMANPOUR: And finally, what my guest Robin Wright called "the rhythm of resistance" has become the pulse of a generation, from the hip-hop music of DAM on the West Bank to the defiant rap of the young Tunisian who helped spark the Arab Spring.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Back in 2010, El General, the name he gave himself, posted a music video on Facebook and YouTube. It was an angry appeal to Tunisia's then dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and it sang of the suffering of a people, as he says, living in filth and fear.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Because hip-hop was banned in Tunisia, the young artist had to go underground literally to record his music. With primitive camera work and a makeshift studio, he produced an Internet sensation with the soundtrack, if you will, for the uprising that brought down Ben Ali and an anthem of outrage.

END