This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have arrested at least 15 Palestinians after another night of raids, even as Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian homes north of Jericho and used bulldozers to level Palestinian farmers’ crops south of Nablus. The settler violence came as the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, visited an Israeli settlement in the West Bank after an unannounced visit to Israel with other Republican lawmakers. Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, but Johnson used his visit to declare, quote, “The mountains of Judea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish people,” unquote.
Meanwhile, family members of a U.S. citizen who was killed in a settler attack in the West Bank last week are demanding the Trump administration open an investigation into his death. Forty-year-old Khamis Ayyad asphyxiated after settlers set fire to cars outside his home Thursday. He died trying to put out the flames after Israeli soldiers arrived and fired tear gas in his direction. Ayyad is a former Chicago resident. He leaves behind five children. He’s at least the second U.S. citizen killed in the West Bank since July.
Meanwhile, Israeli authorities are continuing to refuse to release the body of the Palestinian activist Odeh Hadalin, who was fatally shot by an Israeli settler last Monday in the occupied West Bank. Israel is also still detaining seven members of his family. Sixty Palestinian women from the village of Umm al-Khair began a hunger strike Thursday to demand justice. Hadalin worked on the Oscar-winning film No Other Land. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have released the settler accused of killing Hadalin, Yinon Levi. He had been under house arrest. Earlier this year, the Trump administration lifted Biden-era sanctions on Levi. This is of Odeh Hadalin’s uncle Ibrahim, speaking the day after his nephew was killed.
IBRAHIM HATHALEEN: [translated] After October 7, we have been undergoing difficult times that include land annexation, prevention of herding, preventing people from accessing their lands, attacking people directly, sometimes even killings, like what happened to the martyr Odeh. … All these procedures that we have been through are all tools of the settlers so that they can annex the land and empty it from its people.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. Basel Adra, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, a Palestinian activist and journalist who writes for +972, he spent years documenting Israeli efforts to evict Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron. Odeh worked with him and Yuval Abraham on the film. He was also a close friend of Odeh Hadalin. And in Hebron, Ty Kavanaugh is a former U.S. Navy medic who’s a medical student at the University of Limerick, an international volunteer working with Palestinian public health groups in the occupied West Bank. Last Monday, he was in Umm al-Khair when Odeh Hadalin was shot and killed.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Ty, if you can start off by telling us the scene that day, if you can talk about what happened to Odeh?
TYNAN KAVANAUGH: Yes, I arrived there that day just by coincidence. I just wanted to visit this village, that I’ve been doing clinics in Masafer Yatta, in the area. A friend of mine who runs Project Walsh, he happened to know people there. I figured I’d tag along with him.
We get out of the car. Fifteen minutes later, the bulldozer, doing like construction, starts driving through their crops. People go out to try to wave it off and stop it. A man from the village is struck in the head and shoulder by that bulldozer. Myself, an American nurse and a Palestinian nurse are trying to treat him, at which point gunfire starts.
And then, seconds later, people start yelling that Odeh has been shot, at which point we go, we treat him. Very quickly, we try to take him to the settlement to get an ambulance at the gate. We lose a pulse. We’re starting CPR on him. Meanwhile, I later learn who — I didn’t see who the shooter was when it happened, but I later recognized the shooter as a guy who was just milling around, just standing over us while we were doing CPR.
Many of the settlers, especially those teenagers type, were jeering and laughing at us. I don’t understand Hebrew, but I’m sure they were spewing all kinds of things at us. Myself and the Palestinian medic are told to leave. The American nurse is detained and later deported by Israeli authorities, for God knows what their excuse is for that.
The moment I am done treating the wounded and told to leave, I turn around and I see — I don’t know what I expected, maybe that — I thought the seriousness of that would cause a change in behavior, but the IDF is immediately just attacking the villagers. I see people blindfolded and handcuffed. Everyone’s being penned in. And they’re just trying to — it seemed like they were trying to pen everybody in just to antagonize people. They want them to throw rocks. They want — they wanted an excuse to do stuff. And they were just dragging people out. And I see Levi pointing out people, too. And the IDF just goes in, drags them away.
At one point, a lot of — all the internationals and most the internationals are detained by the IDF. Of course, I’m covered in blood. Literally, I am covered in blood. They did not ask me a single question about what happened. The only thing they started doing is looking at my visa and passport and screaming about my immigration status, because they looked at the wrong date. Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re showing images, by the way, of Yinon Levi waving his gun, the gun that they said he used to kill Odeh. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And yes, I wanted to ask you, Ty: You’re saying that the IDF soldiers never asked you any questions about what actually had happened, but then began to actually target the victims rather than the perpetrator?
TYNAN KAVANAUGH: Yes, of course. Yeah, no, at no point was anyone who was, I’m sure, anyone who was Palestinian or not a settler asked any question about what happened. It was — that was not important to them. What was important was going after the people in the village, and they were trying to find excuses to arrest international observers or volunteers or the people who happened to be there, yeah. And I myself happened — despite coincidence, I was, like, doing a clinic in Umm al-Khair today, and we’re seeing the injuries of the people who were released, that were beaten and held in stress positions while they were detained, and all the women who are still on hunger strike and their health conditions.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring in Basel Adra also, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. Could you talk to us about what has happened in the past few days, especially with Odeh Hadalin?
BASEL ADRA: It has been crazy since Yinon shot our closest friend Odeh and killing him. Israeli occupation soldiers have been invading the mourn tent day after day, forcing journalists, solidarity activists and Palestinians like me who’s not residents of Umm al-Khair village to go out of the village. And they arrested activists from there. That happens during the day. And during the night, the army come again and invade the community, arresting people for three nights, arresting residents, Odeh’s brothers, cousins and other relatives, accusing them of, like, throwing stones, while the settler who killed Odeh is free. And yesterday, he was able to be back to work to dig and to provocate the villagers and the family of Odeh next to — basically, like, expanding the illegal settlement of Carmel into the the village, right next to Odeh’s family homes and community center.
AMY GOODMAN: Basel, our deepest condolences on the loss of your dear friend Odeh. You worked together on your film, the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. If you can talk more about Yinon Levi, the violent Israeli settler, very well known, who we’ve been showing waving his gun, who the eyewitnesses say just opened fire on Odeh, was taken, then put under house arrest, and even as Odeh’s family remains arrested, he has been freed? If you can explain the movement right now, the 60 women who are on hunger strike? I covered a big protest in New York last night. Odeh’s name was raised repeatedly.
BASEL ADRA: Yeah, Odeh was our close friend. He was a father for three beautiful kids. He was an English teacher. He hosted all the time solidarity activists from the U.S., from all over the world, who come to Masafer Yatta, to Umm al-Khair, and tell the story of his village, of our villages, have been traveling to different countries around the world to talk about Umm al-Khair, about his story, the story of the community of Masafer Yatta, the threats that we are all facing. So, he was the voice of the community. He was an activist that filmed — filming what’s happening. He filmed his own death when Yinon shot him. He was a person that’s optimistic, that liked the life, and he was really planning for a beautiful future. He dreamed for a beautiful future.
He was 35 meters away from this criminal, Yinon Levi, and he was standing with his son in a small basketball playground in the village when Yinon shot him. Yinon is a settler that created the illegal outpost in 2021 next to Zanuta, a village here in the South Hebron Hills, and kept attacking Zanuta and the village of Zanuta, day after day, night after night, destroying crops, attacking shepherds, going to people’s homes, smashing properties like solar panels, water pipes, cars, as well, attacking sheep and shepherds, as well, the families in the houses, threatening people: If they don’t flee, they will die there. So, 250 people who have been living in that village called Zanuta have fled for their life from Yinon and the settlers with him in that illegal outpost.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Basel —
BASEL ADRA: That’s why —
AMY GOODMAN: Basel, he has been released, but the body of Odeh has not been, which means you can’t have a funeral. Can you talk about the significance of this? Where is the Israeli military keeping his body?
BASEL ADRA: We don’t know where they keep his body, for sure in somewhere — somewhere in some hospital. They’re refusing to release his body unless the family would bury him outside of his village, just with the participation of 15 people, and he would be buried during the night, which the family rejected at all. They’re saying Odeh was not a criminal. He was an activist. He was killed in a crime. And he deserves a funeral where all of us, all of his friends, all of his family, would attend, and would be grief — in a grave that’s in his village and close to the family, as they are asking. So, his wife, mother and other 60 women from his community are now, since Thursday, in a hunger strike protesting the Israeli authorities’ holding Odeh’s body.
And not just that, yesterday, as I said, Yinon have been able to come back to the village, next to Odeh’s brother’s house, to dig again for the expansion of the illegal settlements. They brought him there in a provocate and to provocate the families. I mean, he just killed their son one week ago, and now he’s able to come and work again with a bulldozer next to their houses, while the body of Odeh, their son, is not released.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Basel, could you talk about the general situation in the West Bank as Israel continues its genocidal war in Gaza, the situation with the increasing settler attacks on the West Bank, in the occupied West Bank? Where do you see this going?
BASEL ADRA: Well, the story of Odeh is not isolated. As you know, nine Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the year in settlers’ attacks, killed by Israeli settlers. This is not random attacks happening here and there. There is daily attacks and harassments and expansion of illegal settlements and outposts on our land and attacking Palestinian communities. This is a policy. This is a state policy like Israel other policies of destroying our homes, our infrastructure, like the policy of, like, closing the West Bank, closing cities and towns.
So, everything is escalating here under the shadow of the genocide that’s happening in Gaza. Israel is using the policy of settlers’ violence, as I said, the policy of expansion of the Israeli settlements, the destruction of our own communities, like the village of Khalet a-Daba’a, have been totally destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. And they continue with this to annex our land, basically. They want as much as they can of our land, and they want to ethnic cleansing us as much as they can.
AMY GOODMAN: Basel Adra, I want to thank you for being with us, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, dear friend of Odeh Hadalin, whose body is being kept by the Israeli military. And Ty Kavanaugh, former U.S. Navy medic, international volunteer working with Palestinian public health groups in the occupied West Bank.
