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Amanpour
Interview with Journalist Christine Spolar; Interview with "War" Author Bob Woodward; Interview with Jewish Currents Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired October 23, 2024 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
The Pennsylvania prize. With less than two weeks to go candidates are barnstorming swing state with the most electoral votes. I speak with
journalist Christine Spolar, who's there.
Then dire warnings about Donald Trump from his former generals. Legendary reporter Bob Woodward joins the program on what's at stake and his new
book, "War."
Also, ahead --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARIELLE ANGEL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, JEWISH CURRENTS: When you have an Israeli government that is claiming to speak for Jews across the world, there is
going to be rising anti-Semitism.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Zionism, Judaism, and the war in Gaza. Editor-in-chief of the Jewish Currents magazine, Arielle Angel, shares her perspective with Michel
Martin.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in New York.
With just 13 days until the election, Donald Trump's former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, is speaking out against him. In interviews with
The New York Times, Kelly warns that the former president meets the definition of a fascist and would govern as a dictator if he wins again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KELLY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he's certainly an authoritarian,
admires people who are dictators, he has said that. So, he certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist, for sure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And Trump certainly has been admiring of various dictators. According to Kelly, more than once Trump remarked that Hitler did some good
things. Trump's campaign denies the comments, but it's the latest in a line of warnings from former aides.
Yet, the race to the White House is still so tight. The final result will surely come down to a handful of swing states, like Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania, which both candidates are trying to clinch. Veteran journalist, Christine Spolar, has been interviewing voters in the state for
months now, and she's joining us now from Pittsburgh.
Christine, welcome to the program. Can I just start by asking you a sort of a gut reaction from what you've been hearing gleaning from talking to
potential voters? These fresh warnings from John Kelly and others, particularly in Bob Woodward's book from former chief of staff -- former
chairman of the joint chiefs, Mark Milley, that Trump actually does fall into that fascist space. Do you think that affects voters at this time?
CHRISTINE SPOLAR, JOURNALIST: Hi, Christiane. Nice to be here. I think that's a very interesting question, particularly when you realize that
Pennsylvania is one of the top states for retired military. And Pittsburgh in particular has over 100,000 people who are retired military from various
wars. Pennsylvania is a good state to be retired military person.
The question is whether books and long articles and that sort of news is actually getting to that population. In my reporting here, both in 2020 and
now in 2024, I'm not finding that people are reading. I'm finding that they are getting their news from social media, largely, and an older generation
is on TV.
So, really, these big questions of values, are, you know, really debatable whether people were reacting to that. Because the military people are
bringing up these issues as a matter of integrity and values and understanding the different branches of government and why the military is
not answerable and it's not a friend of the president. They are answerable to the constitution and to their military service. It's unclear if that
message is, you know, getting through.
AMANPOUR: OK. So, let's get back to what are the things that are actual facts now from last election and this one, or different facts. One is that
Trump won Pennsylvania by a really slim margin in 2016.
[13:05:00]
President Biden, when he won in 2020, won by a really, really slim margin. And as we said in the introduction to you, and as we see, both candidates
are desperate to get Pennsylvania. So, what are you seeing, hearing in terms of these last few days of canvassing and how it's landing?
SPOLAR: Well, it's much more vibrant ground game than there was in 2020. I was here in 2020 for months watching how the campaign was working, was
turning out, but it was also COVID times. So, people were not leafleting. People were not out in the streets registering.
Last weekend in Pittsburgh, I was -- three people came up trying to register me to vote. There's leaflettings -- leaflets abound on our front
porches here. It's interesting. It's a stronger ground game. The issues that are coming out in conversations with people I have are the Roe v. Wade
and the Dobbs decision. And that gets to, you know, the gender split, will women be voting and particularly voting on that issue, both Republicans and
Democrats?
There are still more Democrats than Republicans, you know, in this county. But the question is, will that be changing? And because the -- both of
those campaigns, 2016 and 2020, were decided by tens of thousands of votes, tens of thousands of votes are, you know, part of that people who are
changing their registration or becoming independents.
As of this week, registration stopped, as of Monday. There's 1.9 million people who are now independents. That is -- I've been talking to analysts,
Lara Putnam from the University of Pittsburgh, has been looking at the data for the past two presidential campaigns, and she just has a new piece out
in New York Review of Books, and she analyzes rural women, rural white women, rural middle-aged women who were activated by the 2017 vote, but
further activated by the Dobbs decision.
Some of those people who were Democrats are now independents based on partly the President Biden's poor debate. But a lot of Republicans, because
of the Dobbs decision, also registered now or seem to have switched to be independent. And that crowd, that group of people, who knows how they're
going to vote.
The polls are showing -- CNN has done polls, The New York Times has done polls. We're all aware it's very close. And that anybody who says they know
what's going to happen, they're just telling a story. But what we're not really seeing is what are those independent voters doing and what are the
issues that are motivating them?
You had the January 6th, you know, protests that were resulted in a lot of criminal charges. Well, about two dozen people from Western Pennsylvania
were among those charged. So, you have a lot of different threads of, you know, thoughts about government, thoughts about how the government should
have agency over your body or not, and all of those are playing out in this election this year.
AMANPOUR: It's really interesting. And of course, again, in the state that you're in, which you've covered over the last several elections, it's so
close and so important. Now, we talked a little bit or you did a little bit about the gender gap and especially amongst young women and young men and
how they break for different candidates.
Kamala Harris has talked about it, and she hasn't run on gender, but she did just talk about it in her last interview, one of her latest interviews
with NBC. We're just going to play this little snippet.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: I will never assume that anyone in our country should elect a
leader based on their gender or their race. Instead, that that leader needs to earn the vote based on substance and what they will do to address
challenges and to inspire people to know that their aspirations and their ambitions can and will be achieved through the opportunity to do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, Christine specifically talking to men and women, maybe young men, young women, and even maybe black men and black women, white men and
white men, the whole race gender divide, which is being talked about a lot when it comes to this election. Are you hearing a consistent set of
feelings and stories?
[13:10:00]
SPOLAR: Well, this is interesting. I think what Kamala Harris was talking about was values. And that gets back to, you know, the running commentary
now on the revelations about Mr. Trump and the military and their opinions about him.
But what she is saying -- I spent an afternoon at Bat's Barbershop, which is in on East Liberty in a neighborhood of Pittsburgh that is predominantly
black. And the men were first time voters. I interviewed a 28-year-old first time voter. I interviewed a 43-year-old first time voter. Both black
men. Both -- one working in a juice factory and one working as a caterer.
And the caterer was quite interesting. He was watching everything. He was watching Fox News, CNN, social media. His issue was values. Now, he was
reacting to how -- what -- how President Trump has talked about some values. He said he was offended about the way he spoke about women, and
this was a 43-year-old man who had never voted before. So, that was interesting.
I've gone to rallies. I've gone just walking around neighborhoods and talking to people in different neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, wealthy
neighborhoods and not so wealthy neighborhoods. There is an interesting thing going on where everybody is nervous, as they were four years ago, but
they're also thinking, well, maybe that person is being quiet because they're actually voting for a way they think I'm not voting.
I interviewed a couple from Fox Chapel, which is probably the wealthiest neighborhood in Pittsburgh, and it was a lawyer, and it was a psychiatrist,
and they said that they thought that Kamala Harris was getting more votes. And I said, well, why would you think that in Fox Chapel? And they said,
because people won't talk. And they thought that meant that in their neighborhood where people have voted for Mr. Trump before, that people were
quietly changing Kamala Harris.
Is that scientific? Absolutely not. But, you know, people have lived in their communities here a long time, and they know how people react, and
that's their gut reaction.
I also spoke to an 80-year-old retired daycare worker who lives in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, a predominantly historically black area. And she
said that she was quite worried because she was going to be voting for Harris, but when she talked to young men, they got very quiet. And so, she
said to me, I think their silence means they're going to vote for Mr. Trump. So, you know, it's tense times here.
And I think the idea that the bigger issues of integrity and values, what is binding you as a community may be what brings it together. But I do
think that the Dobbs decision was potent and remains potent.
AMANPOUR: Really interesting. I mean, you're such a reporter's reporter. There's so much granular information that you're giving us. And I just want
to just ask you, again, a sort of a gut feeling. You and I have both been war correspondents. We've been to places with civil unrest. Where democracy
is either nonexistent or beleaguered. And of course, there is this fear about violence, about, you know, sort of conflict even after the election.
Are you hearing those fears at all this time?
SPOLAR: I heard -- I definitely heard those fears in 2020 based on some demonstrations. I -- this week, I was at a conference called Eradicate
Hate. It's a global conference that looks at hate crimes, and it was started because of the 2018 attacks on Tree of Life Synagogue here, which
11 people were murdered and other people were injured and shot at.
And there was a whole theme at this conference about the concern about domestic terrorism. They were using terrorism as a word and then they would
use extremism. And I think there is a fear, nobody spoke about the election, nobody was going to touch that third rail and bring in, you know,
the currency of today's events.
But I think people are cognizant, particularly after January 6th, that people in this region, there were two dozen people arrested, that people
are -- can, you know, be, you know, encouraged to do things that they otherwise would not.
I do wonder if the January 6th charges and the arrests have made people realize we don't want to go there again. But, you know, there's all sorts
of legal maneuvers right now, and you saw that this -- today that the Trump campaign is alleging that the U.K. Labour Party has interfered with the
election.
[13:15:00]
So, there are legal maneuvers going on, and we really don't know what will happen. You know, remember last time we were here for weeks with the
counting. That won't happen this time in Pennsylvania, or at least it won't happen in the second largest county, which is Allegheny County, where I'm
at. They have new voting tabulation machines. They expect the vote. They announced this yesterday. They expect the mail-in ballots to be ready by
the time the polls close at 8:00 p.m. That's really different than four years ago. It's even probably different than two years ago.
So, I think they feel very good, at least in this county and also Philadelphia, the largest county that they are prepared. And, you know,
Josh Shapiro is the governor here. He's been and was considered to be a vice presidential candidate at one point, and he has been pretty forthright
in pointing out how the election procedures have been improved.
AMANPOUR: Really interesting. Christine Spolar, thank you so much for joining us.
Now, as we pointed out earlier, former marine general and Homeland Security chief John Kelly was Trump's longest serving chief of staff. His warnings
about how Trump would rule in a second term are the latest in an alarming litany of allegations from other former White House officials. Vice
President Kamala Harris has addressed these comments outside the V.P.'s residence just today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable. And in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails
against his propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be
there to rein him in.
So, the bottom line is this. We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be what do the American
people want?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Now, of course, Trump's people have leapt to his defense and are casting aspersions against John Kelly and others. But others point out that
why should anybody be surprised because Donald Trump has said these things, very similar things throughout his time in public office and outside public
office.
So, adding to all of this, the findings of legendary investigative reporter Bob Woodward in his new book, "War," out just in time for the election, the
book is also a deep dive into the Biden administration and its handling of the wars in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Gaza. And Bob Woodward joins me now
from Washington. Welcome to the program, Bob.
BOB WOODWARD, AUTHOR, "WAR": Thank you.
AMANPOUR: What a day to be talking about this with all the news that's come out from some of the former officials who you've spoken to. But I
first want to start with your assessment of the Biden administration.
And you, I'm going to read it, basically in an epilogue, it's you drop the reportorial mask a little bit and you state your opinion. And this is what
you write about the Biden presidency, quote, "There were failures and mistakes. The full story is, of course, not yet known. But based on the
evidence available now, I believe President Biden and this team will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful
leadership."
So, what compelled you to come to that conclusion?
WOODWARD: Well, first of all, the decision that Biden made, which I think was critical to not send U.S. ground troops to Ukraine. And so, by Biden
age 81 was in politics, was in Congress during Vietnam and knows that shadow of sending troops abroad to fight in a foreign war. And he just
decided he's not going to do it. He's not going to do it. Why? Because it leads to an entanglement.
And just look at Vietnam. The idea, we sent 500,000 U.S. troops to fight in this foreign war. 58,000 American troops died in that war. Biden, having
observed that experience, just when Ukraine came up, he said, we will help them. We will supply them. In fact, now, the U.S. government has spent
billions of dollars to aid Ukraine, but we are not sending our own troops. That really insulates the country and -- not perfectly, obviously, but
significantly.
[13:20:00]
AMANPOUR: So, let's follow up because to that end, you also talked about Biden, you know, like Obama said, basically, we're not going to start World
War III over -- you know, over Ukraine. And this is because, as we've reported and everybody, that Putin has alarmingly regularly dangled that
saber-rattling when it comes to tactical nukes.
And you report some very interesting and important conversations between the Biden administration and the Putin administration, if I can say that,
particularly Defense Chief Lloyd Austin to his Russian counterpart, Defense Minister Shoigu at the time.
I'm just going to read this, because Austin speaking -- well, first of all, what led them to that? What kind of info did they have beyond Putin's
public saber-rattling?
WOODWARD: Well, they had information. This is 2022. It started out very low, that, 0.5 percent probability that Russia would use tactical nuclear
weapons. It accelerated in a matter of days, really, up to 50 percent. And in the White House, they realize that's a coin flip.
What's going to determine that? And they -- one of the things I was looking through some notes, will you bear with me on this?
AMANPOUR: Yes.
WOODWARD: Because it is a really -- it was a dangerous time then, it is a dangerous time now. One of the things, I found in my reporting, talking to
firsthand sources, documents, notes, that Bill Burns, the CIA director, went to China May and June, and he -- in a classified report to President
Biden, he said there's an increasing partnership between Russia and North Korea. Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, who is -- if there was ever
a rogue leader in the world, it is him.
And the intelligence showed that Kim and North Korea were capable of deploying a nuclear weapon on an ICBM, Intercontinental Ballistic Missile,
that could reach the United States. They had not yet perfected that, but they are focusing on that for years.
And so, Burns reported to the president and the National Security Council, we are now in a world of we have to deal with unplanned, inadvertent
escalation. And he said all the warning systems are blinking red. This is now. This is -- this spring blinking red. If you recall before 9/11, that's
what the CIA said about the anticipation of some sort of attack.
So, this is exactly like that and this is the assessment. And it turns out the intelligence agencies have better information than is generally known.
AMANPOUR: Well, to wit, as we know, the intelligence agencies, you know, released their intelligence on the impending Russian invasion of Ukraine
back in 2022, and that was made public. But on the nuclear issue, I was fascinated to read some of the quotes and conversations regarding Defense
Secretary Lloyd Austin, who doesn't often get quoted. He's not one of those who talks much and gets quoted, unlike some of the other administration
officials.
So, he spoke to his Russian counterpart, you say, Sergei Shoigu. I'm going to read this. He says, this could put us on the path of a confrontation
that would have existential implications for you and for us. Don't step on that slippery slope. And then you say, when Shoigu responded that he
doesn't take kindly to being threatened, Austin retorts, I am the leader of the most powerful military in the history of the world. I don't make
threats. And that appears to have caused them to back off. That's what you found out.
WOODWARD: Yes, it was a factor. But this was a moment when U.S. intelligence was able to demonstrate to Secretary of Defense Austin.
[13:25:00]
Now, that particular interchange, which is longer in the book, I took that a couple of months ago to Secretary Austin because, you know, you -- oh,
you've got something that somebody said at a crucial moment, you wanted to get their side of it.
So, I went into his office in the Pentagon and said, I understand this is what you said at this point. And I started reading it. He didn't know that
I had it. And he said, that's accurate. That's accurate. And at the end he said, where did you get that? From the Russians? I, of course, did not, and
I told him that I did not get it.
But this is a moment of great peril for the country, and we are now in that, and we should not kid ourselves to think that we're -- particularly
with the issue of tactical nuclear weapons, Putin -- go ahead, I'm sorry.
AMANPOUR: No, no, no. That's OK. You made it clear that, you know, your reporting puts us in a place of great peril. But -- or, and, I want to ask
you, therefore, about Trump, who you have also written, basically, a trilogy on, and the latest conversations that have been reported by The New
York Times and, you know, stories in The Atlantic right now reporting about what his generals have said about him.
In your book, you have Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who talks about a fascist tendency, worried about being court
martialed if Trump comes back. And now, John Kelly, former general, former Homeland Security, calling him, you know, somebody who fits the definition
of fascists, and who essentially reports him saying, I need the kind of generals that Hitler had, people who were totally loyal to him, who -- that
follows orders. So, that's Jeffrey Goldberg. Now, I'm going to put a little soundbite up of John Kelly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KELLY: He commented more than once that, you know, that Hitler did some good things too. And of course, if you know history, again, I think he's
lacking in that, but if you know what -- you know, Hitler was all about -- it would be pretty hard to make an argument that he did anything good.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Of course, the Trump people, his officials, his spokespeople have completely denied it. And they're trying to write off people like John
Kelly as disgruntled and Trump derangement syndrome. But it does fit a pattern of a lot of things that Trump has said publicly. So, what -- are
you concerned, when you talk about the danger abroad, are you concerned that this kind of character who has written and spoken about admiring
people like Putin, people like Xi, others, Orban in Hungary, are you worried about what they might do in office?
WOODWARD: Yes, if I may go back 50 years to the Nixon era, John Mitchell, who was Nixon's campaign manager and attorney general, once said, watch
what we do, not what we say. Fast forward to now, what they say is important, it's part of the story. But really, the core of it is, what are
they doing? And what does -- how does Trump operate?
I did books on him, spent lots of time talking to him, and here is what Trump doesn't do. He doesn't plan. He just says, oh, I'm going to pick that
off the shelf, that idea, I'm going to say this. There's no planning system.
You know, and I believe viewers know that in a national security environment, you cannot -- you're not running a roulette wheel where random
numbers come up. You need to plan. And the other element is you need a support team.
Look at the support team that Biden has, whatever you might criticize Biden for, it's got people in the State Department, people in the Defense
Department, people in the CIA, in the White House, who work together and say, OK, what are the orders? How are we going to execute them? And in the
case of Trump, there's no team. He just decides. The absence of a team, the absence of a plan, is what everyone should weigh and worry about.
[13:30:00]
I've spent years on Trump, and I tell you, that's the way he operates. And are we going to be in an environment, in a world where he's president and
he's just going to say, well, we'll do this, we'll do that? No plan. No backup team. He -- now, he has some people who are kind of supporting him,
hangers on, but there's no lasting people.
If you look at some of the current government of Biden, he's got people who've been there and they meet and they discuss and they try to say, hey,
this is the logical course of action approved by the president.
AMANPOUR: It's interesting you say that because just today, just before we spoke, the vice president, Kamala Harris, addressed these comments by
Trump, alleged comments that John Kelly has reported, and lamented that in a second term, he wouldn't have the so-called grownups, the experienced
team, the bench behind him, because he's -- he said that, that there are others that would be coming in.
WOODWARD: But all those people are gone.
AMANPOUR: Right, that's what I'm saying. He wouldn't have them. He wouldn't have them, exactly. They've gone. So --
WOODWARD: He wants to be -- as we know, he's an admirer of Putin, he's an admirer of an autocrat. And you know, this isn't the way you can run a
government. It could have tragic consequences. So, the words are part of the problem. The action in the fundamental style of making decisions and
carrying them out is the road to potential disaster.
AMANPOUR: So, you also then, in the book, write about Kamala Harris, the vice president and current democratic candidate. Do you think she is the
right one based on what you've seen and based on the experience she may have gained being in the room when all these wars and decisions and
difficult moments were being navigated?
WOODWARD: Well, she's gone to President's School. She's still going to President's School. I have some scenes in the book that are very detailed
in which, for instance, I think it was over the summer, July 25th, she met with the Prime Minister Netanyahu, and it was a kind of good talk about
what's going on in the Middle East and so forth. And then, she came out in public and said, the humanitarian suffering being caused by Israel in Gaza
is unconscionable. And then she said, I will not be silent. And she wasn't.
So, she will make her decisions and -- but I've -- I found in the reporting on this, she will step out and say what she thinks, and now, people get to
decide that. But that is an evidentiary trail about how she has operated and it is with a certain amount of independence.
AMANPOUR: And very finally and quite quickly, you basically illustrate the very fraught relationship with the president -- between President Biden and
Netanyahu. Here's a quote from Biden, "That son of a bleep Bibi Netanyahu, he's a bad guy. He's a bad bleeping guy. He doesn't give a bleep about
Hamas. He gives a bleep only about himself."
That's pretty revealing. How do you account for Biden not being able to influence Netanyahu as much as a U.S. president perhaps should?
WOODWARD: Well, as we know, Netanyahu's chief influence comes from himself. But that is the president of the United States expressing personal
frustration with Netanyahu. As we know, the policy is in alignment with Israel, and I -- the Biden approach is we will support Israel, but not
necessarily Netanyahu.
And this feeling of frustration is pretty widespread in the U.S. government and among other governments. Netanyahu is strong, he has views, there are
people who support him in and out of Israel, and there are people who criticize him in and out of Israel.
AMANPOUR: An amazing, amazing reporting. Thank you so much indeed. Bob Woodward and "War."
WOODWARD: Thank you.
[13:35:00]
AMANPOUR: Now, as we just mentioned, those reports of President Biden's private opinion of the Israeli prime minister come as Secretary of State
Anthony Blinken is in the Middle East pushing for peace amid that escalating war.
Our next guest describes this moment in the region as a humanitarian dark night of the soul. Arielle Angel is editor-in-chief of the Jewish Currents
magazine. It was founded 80 years ago and has established itself as a voice and a space for progressives looking to examine Jewish identity and issues
outside what they call a Zionist framework.
Since October 7th last year, the magazine has doubled its subscribers. Arielle Angel speaks to Michel Martin about its mission at this difficult
time.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Arielle Angel, thank you so much for talking with us.
ARIELLE ANGEL, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, JEWISH CURRENTS: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: It's not easy to talk about it, but October 7th was a shock. I think to everybody. If I could just ask you to take me back to a year ago,
what were the conversations within the magazine about where the magazine should stand? Like how you should deal with these events?
ANGEL: I mean, first of all, just say that like October 7th was a lot of things and very, very difficult, but I can't say for sure that it was a
shock, because we were watching events very, very closely. Their warning signs were flashing that we were ripe for an attack like this, that support
for armed resistance within Palestinian communities was rising because of the complete collapse of any diplomatic solution and the way that the
Abraham Accords in particular signaled to the Palestinians that there was no chance of them gaining their freedom.
And so, in fact, we were talking about exactly this within Jewish currents, because we were listening to the Palestinian commentators and analysts that
were speaking to us, we knew that this was coming.
MARTIN: So, hold on a second. You're not saying that this is what the benefit of hindsight. What you're telling me is those were active
conversations then, before October 7th.
ANGEL: Absolutely. I mean, I think anybody who's been watching the situation carefully can see that there was going to be an increase or
explosion of violence. I don't think anybody expected it to -- I don't think anybody expected the Israeli defenses to crumble quite as much as
they did, and that was really a surprise.
And of course, you know, the horror of the attacks is a shock to the system no matter what. But in terms of the existence of an attack like this, we,
in fact, were reading texts together that would try to help us prepare for such a situation. And we knew also that there was really no way for us to
prepare, that it was going to shatter our communities and that it was going to shatter our organizing communities that many people in the Jewish
communities that we -- you know, that read Jewish currents were going to have a slightly different emotional response to this event or profoundly
different than many of our Palestinian partners or readers. And we struggled with this.
MARTIN: You're a magazine, you're going to publish, you have thoughts. What were some of the conversations about what you should say?
ANGEL: It took us about five days to publish. And that was intentional because I felt like we really needed to slow down and not just be reactive,
but really think about what our responsibility was in this moment and how we were going to respond. The first thing that we did was we collected
questions from our readership about what they felt confused about. And we tried to systematically answer those questions.
But then there was also sort of more emotional work. How do I talk to my family? You know, how do I recommit to Palestinian liberation in this
moment, even if I know someone who was killed in the October 7th attacks, you know, parsing Zionism, non-Zionism and anti-Zionism, dealing with
people's rifts within their own families, severe, severe rifts that may never be repaired.
We started -- we had a number of in-person gatherings. The question of grief was really a hot button issue, particularly because many Jewish
people were feeling grief, especially because there are real connections, familial and otherwise, between American Jews and Jews living in Israel.
And -- but we didn't want that grief to be weaponized on behalf of a militant response from the Israeli government.
We really leaned into reporting because we really felt like there was a lot of information that needed to get out. We did a number of dispatches from
the West Bank and Gaza, what people were actually experiencing, but also alongside their political aspirations in the moment.
[13:40:00]
We did reporting on hostage families, because in the United States there's a sense that bringing home the hostages means more military action when, of
course, in Israel, the hostage families have been very, very clear that what they want is a deal and exchange of prisoners and hostages on the
Palestinian side.
So, we tried to really root in the questions that we were asking ourselves and the misconceptions that were circulating in the narrative.
MARTIN: I have to assume what I think it is a fact that contributors to Jewish Currents have been affected directly. I think one of your
contributors has a family member held hostage. And I think --
ANGEL: Yes. And --
MARTIN: -- you have other contributors who have people -- well, you also have contributors, I believe, who have lost family members in Gaza. I mean,
it would be hard not to, right?
ANGEL: Not only that, I mean, look, we've published dispatches from people in Gaza only for them to be killed the next week. You know, the carnage is
unimaginable.
MARTIN: What do you think is your job right now? Because as I read it, it seems like what you're trying to do is hold space for a lot of thoughts
that a lot of people don't want to hold together. But the grief, the intense grief of watching this massacre on October 7th take place in real-
time, and we were meant to see it in real-time. I mean, the perpetrators filmed it, they live streamed it, they wanted us to see it, OK?
And then, the carnage in Gaza. Some of us, as news organizations, still have people there who are still reporting. We are seeing that. And then, a
world that's increasingly critical of Israel, but also rising incidents of anti-Semitism.
ANGEL: It's a good question. I think that -- well, first of all, let me just say that 30 percent of the Jewish community generally holds views that
are consistent with non or anti-Zionism. And that number rises to 40 percent under 44 -- under the age of 44.
So, our job, in some way, is to hold this 40 percent of a younger generation, 30 percent of the community overall to allow them a way to be
Jewish and claim their Jewishness in the context of -- or in the framework of justice and liberation for Palestinians and also to fight for that from
their particular positionality, particularly as their positionality is being weaponized through accusations of anti-Semitism.
We know that anti-Semitism rises as -- like it directly correlates to the number of Palestinians that the Israeli government kills. Brown University
just put out a study that says that the death toll in Gaza may actually be closer to 100,000, if not more.
And so, yes, like I think when you have an Israeli government that is claiming to speak for Jews across the world, there is going to be rising
anti-Semitism. At the same time, the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti- Semitism is muddying the water such that it becomes very, very difficult to actually address that anti-Semitism in a way that has real credibility and
that addresses the real pieces of it.
MARTIN: So, can you talk about that for a minute? When you say Zionism, what do you mean? And when you say anti-Zionism, what do you mean? Because
as you've just alluded to, there are people who argue that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and there are other people who argue that closely related to
that, that anti-Zionism is a proxy for anti-Semitism. So, it doesn't matter if they're different because they're experienced in the real world the same
way.
ANGEL: Zionism is an ideology that was founded in the late 19th century by Theodor Herzl, we know this. Judaism is a religion and culture of thousands
of years. So, you know, Zionism was never hegemonic within Jewish communities and became hegemonic over the 20th century. But there was a
Judaism before Zionism, and there will be one after on some levels.
So, just as we would criticize any other state, and particularly a state that meets the legal definition of apartheid, as many human rights
organizations have asserted, meaning that there are different -- there's a different set of laws and a different experience of people of one group and
people of another, we can criticize that state.
Now, there are ways that people have parsed this saying, you know, we think it's OK to criticize Israel, but there are various ways that criticizing
Israel crosses into anti-Semitism. That's, you know, true. There is anti- Semitism in our movements, just as there is sexism and racism and homophobia and ableism, and we have to work to root those out. But that's
part of the culture. That's not part of our movements, and that's not inherent in anti-Zionism.
[13:45:00]
MARTIN: What is anti-Zionism to you?
ANGEL: I was raised Zionist, in a Zionist community, in a Zionist home. For me, what that meant was hazy. It just meant that I belonged to this
community on some level. I didn't really know. And so, when I started to do activist work for Palestine, I actually didn't call myself an anti-Zionist,
I didn't even think about Zionism because I didn't -- I barely knew what it was. And I think that that's fairly common within the Jewish community.
It's a marker of belonging without a very firm definition.
And essentially, what anti-Zionism means for me now is twofold. One, it means that I recognize what Palestinians have experienced as Zionism as the
primary way of understanding what Zionism means, because it has meant a different set of -- different standards on equality, the -- not having
freedom of movement being tried in different courts, according to different laws, not having the right to vote for the government that controls their
lives.
All of these factors are what Zionism means for Palestinians. It means, in many cases, being killed or massacred at will. And certainly, what we're
seeing in Gaza is that it has meant essentially ethnic cleansing and mass murder. And so, I see that.
And I also -- I have a diasporic interpretation of Judaism, which many ultra-Orthodox people across the across the world share, but also, I think,
many cultural Jews share, that there is something about being Jewish for me that is about understanding the stranger in a certain sense and that
nationalism and particularly ethnonationalism conflicts with that vision for me.
MARTIN: There's a well-known African American writer, I spoke to him on this program, named Ta-Nehisi Coates, who's written this book, you know,
"The Message," where he talks about a lot of these things. And people basically called him a terrorist for saying these things or saying he's --
he sympathizes with terrorism. When you say these things, do people call you a terrorist?
ANGEL: Absolutely. We also get called capos, like meaning the Jews who were, you know, put in by the -- put in charge in concentration camps by
the Nazis of other Jews and who oversaw their killing in many cases. I mean, we get called very, very nasty things within the Jewish community.
And without palpating Jew, un-Jews, ex-Jews, all kinds -- as the Jews, the list goes on.
And what is maddening about it is that what we're really trying to say, at its very basic level, is that Palestinians deserve basic human rights and
equality and dignity and reparations for the plunder of their homes and the right to return to those homes under international law.
These are international laws, first of all, that were created after the Holocaust to stop something like it from happening again. And precisely
because there's a perception of Israel as kind of like the inheritors of the Holocaust and Holocaust trauma, it's very, very hard to break through
that and just allow people to see the basics of what is actually happening.
MARTIN: It must be particularly galling to you and to others with whom you work, because as I understand it, your father's family were survivors of
the Holocaust. Your mother's family were Arab Jews from Haifa and what was formerly known as Palestine. And I'm just thinking that to come from a
heritage of survival and then to be called some of these names must be --
ANGEL: It's enormously painful. I mean, my dad's parents are survivor -- were survivors from Salonika of Auschwitz. But frankly, it's really not
about me. I mean, we're doing this work because of the images that we are seeing right now, just specifically coming out of Gaza, people being burned
alive, people being carried -- their remains being carried in plastic bags. I mean, we have to respond to this, not just as Jews, but as Americans as,
global citizens.
A world that allows this to go on is the same world that allowed these things to happen in -- you know, in the 1940s, allowed my grandparents, you
know, to be in concentration camps. And I understand now in a visceral way how that was allowed to happen.
[13:50:00]
MARTIN: How do you answer the question of those who argue that if Israel were to become a multiethnic, multiracial democracy as the United States
strives to be that sort of the tables would turn again and that Jewish people would be subsumed in this, particularly given that land is
surrounded in the Middle East by people who do not share this -- the same religion and who have been hostile to Israel for generations? How do you
answer that?
ANGEL: I would basically ask whether Israelis are safe right now. You know, there has been -- there have been attacks almost every day -- or not
every day, but there was one attack, I think, on the highway that killed a number of people. There were some attacks at a bus stop. We saw an enormous
number of people killed on October 7th. That's -- you know, is that safety?
And the Arab states directly around Israel have basically said that they would accept 67 borders, even Hamas has said that. And actually, what you
have is an Israeli government that has been saying, no, we want all of it. There's no two states, there's no negotiation, and we are going to slug
this out with force. I think that if you saw a shift towards Palestinian equality and freedom, Jews would be safer.
MARTIN: To the question, though, this is the question that constantly comes up is, do you question Israel's right to exist? How do you answer
that question?
ANGEL: That's a difficult question because I do not question the right for Jews to live in safety where they live, anywhere that they live. But the
right to an ethnostate or state that privileges the rights of one group of people over another group of people, I don't believe that you can
countenance that.
The question of rights who exist has become one of those questions that obscures rather than illuminates what's actually happening. The fact of the
matter is, is that you have 15 million people living between the river and the sea, half are Jews, half are Palestinians. And in order to create a
demographic majority, the right to for a Jewish State, you will need to do one of two things, ethnic cleansing and mass murder.
Many, many human rights experts and experts in international law are calling a genocide. So, I -- is that what we mean by the right to a state?
MARTIN: Do you feel as well? I'll ask it this way. Is there anything giving you hope in this moment?
ANGEL: This is a very dark moment. I don't know what to say. This is like a dark night of the soul. I think that the only thing giving me hope is
that it's so dark that maybe it's the dark before the dawn, that maybe, you know, people will be able to see what is happening and build something new
on top of, you know, the ashes of the old, out of the ashes of the old. You know, maybe this is the kind of old world struggling to die and the new one
struggling to be born.
But that does mean that now is the time of monsters that they say -- as they say. And I do think that -- personally for me, I do this work not
because I have hope of because I believe that it's the right thing to do and that we can't -- that we owe it to the people who are suffering not to
stop doing it.
MARTIN: Arielle Angel, thank you for speaking with us.
ANGEL: Thanks so much for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And so, finally, tonight we bring you a rare moment of hope and of real harmony in these divided times.
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AMANPOUR: The Rana Choir in Jaffa, Israel, is made up of Arab and Jewish women and aims to build bridges even in the most challenging circumstances
like now. Their version of the Italian World War II resistance anthem, "Bella Ciao," is sung here in Farsi, Hebrew, and Arabic. Originally
dedicated to the Iranian women. During their freedom protest, this new version is for all women who live in war zones.
[13:55:00]
And so, we want to leave you with this heartfelt rendition by the choir. Thanks for watching, and goodbye from New York.
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[14:00:00]
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