Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpour & Company.

Here's what's coming up.

He's not the president of calm.

He's the president in many ways of unilateralism, of trying to keep the rest of the world off balance.

The world, according to Trump, after six months of MAGA in the White House, former U.S. diplomat Richard Haass joins me on the changing world order.

Then...

There's been a growth of younger, more frustrated bunch of people who have chosen to choose an unknown, but seemingly new political party.

The rise of the far right in Japan, how rights, immigration and social media propel the populist to surprising success in the latest election.

Plus...

It was so hard to see people struggling in the streets and begging on the level and with the frequency and the amount of people.

Everybody was hungry.

Everybody.

And American journalist in Gaza, Afeef Nessouli, talks with Hari Sreenivasan about volunteering as a medical worker and the suffering he saw with his own eyes.

"Amanpour & Co." is made possible by the Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Atwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism, the Family Foundation of Layla and Mickey Strauss, Mark J. Bleschner, the Philemon M. D'Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, the Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Charles Rosenblum, Ku and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

Donald Trump is one-eighth of the way through his second term.

And according to him, so far it's been a smashing success.

He claims credit for everything, like lowering gasoline prices to pushing for a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, not to mention India and Pakistan.

President Trump told reporters in Scotland this week that he's the key to bringing the calm.

Our hearts are in the right place.

We have some good news because the recent war that you just saw, they just announced, I see, the newest of the five.

Now, this would be six that we've stopped.

I've stopped six wars in the last...

I'm averaging about a war a month.

But the last three were very close together.

Those wars have been very, very nasty.

So we've done a lot of good work.

We've had great support from the prime minister anytime we needed help, anytime we needed any form of support.

You've been there.

We appreciate it very much.

And we're going to continue onward.

Trump proclaimed on social media, "I am the president of peace."

But peaceful the world is not.

The Gaza war continues.

Palestinian children are starving.

Russia's war in Ukraine grinds on.

And the global economy is in flux, with tremendous uncertainty over Trump's tariffs.

For veteran American diplomat and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, these are remarkable times indeed, as he watches the longtime world order morph on the MAGA.

And he's joining me now.

Richard Haass, welcome back to the program.

Good to be with you.

So let's just start by your snap analysis of President Trump talking about being the president of calm and a smashing success.

Briefly, before we dive into details, how would you rate it?

He's not the president of calm.

He's the president in many ways of unilateralism, of trying to keep the rest of the world off balance.

It doesn't mean on some occasions he doesn't accomplish some good.

But he's not really interested in a stable, predictable world order.

He's much more interested in a world that's on its back foot, waiting for the latest initiative from the United States.

I'm going to refer back to 2018, when you wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs called "How a World Order Ends."

So you called out signs of deteriorating liberal order, as it was, and increasing doubts even back then about the U.S. reliability in the world.

And you were writing again about 1.0, which we know saw Trump pull out of the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, JCPOA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and all of that.

What did you mean by "how a world order ends," and how do you think it's doing now compared to 1.0?

Well, just very quickly, to take a step back, a world order is a set of balances that discourage people from using force to challenge arrangements.

Or if they do use force, hopefully it means they fail.

And there are certain rules that are broadly accepted.

This has been the case after World War II.

There was a strategic world order led by the United States, in some ways maintained as well by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

And there's also been a larger order of economic and diplomatic arrangements.

What's so interesting in history, and what's so interesting about President Trump, is he represents, Christian, a real departure for this reason.

Traditionally, world orders end for one of two reasons.

Either they're overwhelmed by some powerful revisionist force, Germany and Japan in the '30s and '40s, or the country that maintains the order unravels.

We saw that to some extent, say, with the British Empire, to a lesser extent with the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire.

What's so peculiar about this moment is the country that for the last 80 years, for eight decades, has done the most to build, maintain the world order that we've known, the United States, has essentially decided to dismantle it.

Not because it has to, but because we have a president who has determined or decided that on balance it doesn't work to the interest of the United States, that the costs outweigh the benefits.

And this is really unprecedented in world history.

And what we are now is moving from an eight-decade-old set of arrangements to something, quite honestly, much unknown, unpredictable, much more uncertain.

So, listen, back in the 2018 article, you gave a number of pieces of advice, specifically stop weaponizing U.S. economic policy through the overuse of sanctions and tariffs.

That appears to be actually what's happening now in 2.0.

But you also said it's one thing for a world order to unravel slowly.

It's quite another for the country that had a large hand in building it to take the lead in dismantling it.

So, you just said this administration sees on balance it not working for the U.S. Do you agree with that, the liberal world order that the U.S. built?

Do you think it's not working for the U.S.?

I think it's worked remarkably well.

Not perfectly, but remarkably well.

The last I checked over the last eight decades, the world has avoided direct great power war.

That's pretty uncharacteristic.

The American economy has grown by orders of magnitude.

The average family enjoys degrees of wealth that are unprecedented.

The average person in this country and around the world live decades longer than they used to.

There's far more people with a degree of freedom in the world.

So, I look at the last eight decades and I go, not bad by any and every historical measure.

Sure, it's cost us some things.

But what we spent on it, again, we've got the return on investment has been remarkable.

And quite honestly, what we're spending now, as significant as it is in this country, as a percentage of our economy, of our GDP, we're spending at roughly half the rate we did during the Cold War.

And again, during the Cold War, we were able to have both guns and butter.

And we can have it now.

So, I'm not saying there's not problems in the United States.

God knows there are.

But I do not think you can fairly attribute these problems, for the most part, to what it is we're doing in the world.

Okay.

So, just for the White House position, they've called these past six months the most successful for any president in modern American history.

They talk about getting NATO to up its defense spending, bringing in billions in tariff duties.

Basically, they say, obliterating Iran's nuclear program.

And as I mentioned, securing ceasefires between India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, Rwanda, DRC, et cetera.

But as you mentioned, there's still the massive Russia war and the terrible Israeli war on Gaza that continues.

So, those are the facts.

And we've talked a little bit about them.

But Trump's style of diplomacy, I wonder whether we can give it a name or even say what is the philosophy of it six months in.

Because right now, we see, you know, a sort of back and forth over, okay, how am I going to deal with Putin?

Well, first, I'm going to try to cajole him.

Then I'm going to take his side and blame Ukraine for starting the war.

Then I'm going to talk to him several times.

Then I'm going to get frustrated because he is not ending it and coming to a ceasefire, Putin.

Then I'm going to give him a 50-day deadline for a ceasefire.

Now I'm going to give him a 10 to 12 deadline.

Then I'm going to say maybe sanctions and maybe secondary sanctions.

What's wrong with that or what's right with that?

What's wrong with it is it's not working.

The last I checked, the war with Ukraine continues, not only continues, but Russian assault, Russian attacks on Ukraine have grown in frequency, destructiveness and intensity.

It's not working.

So President Trump is right to want an end to the war, but he's going about it in the wrong way.

And he's not going to accomplish it with sanctions against India or anybody else.

If he wants to bring an end to this war, he needs to persuade Vladimir Putin that time is not on Russia's side.

The only way I know how to do this is for the United States to make an open-ended, meaningful commitment to Ukraine's security, to provide Ukraine with defense and intelligence support that it needs.

So Mr. Putin reluctantly concludes that more war will not give him more territory or more control in Ukraine.

Until the president's willing to do that, he will not get the ceasefire he wants in this war.

I wonder whether it'll come back to bite him, this idea of the stop-start weapons supply to Ukraine.

You've just said the key is to give Ukraine and defend Ukraine enough to bring Putin to the table seriously.

And yet that's exactly the opposite that's happened under Trump and his influence.

And I wonder whether America can survive potentially Ukraine losing that war because of what America did.

Well, it would be terrible both symbolically but also strategically.

The lessons China would draw I think would be truly dangerous, what they might do in the South China Sea or vis-a-vis Taiwan, what steps Russia might take further in Europe, what North Korea may make of it.

And I think also the fact that the United States would not stand by a strategic partner would probably do more to encourage countries to think about developing nuclear weapons.

When you think about it, the greatest bulwark against the spread of nuclear weapons has not been the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has not been U.N. weapons inspectors, it's been American alliances, American security commitments.

And if countries around the world come to doubt the strength of -- and the endurance of American commitment, they'll essentially think about either appeasing their adversaries or becoming self-sufficient, which could translate into a world of far more nuclear weapons.

Let me say one other thing, Christiane.

We talked about weaponizing American economic policy.

We can argue the economic effects of tariffs on slowing economic growth, adding to inflation.

What you can't argue are the strategic consequences.

What essentially this administration is doing is not just acting unilaterally, but it's sending the message that to be a friend of the United States doesn't count for anything.

We are just as willing, if anything, more willing to add tariffs against our friends, whether it's Canada, Brazil, and India, the Europeans, the South Koreans, the Japanese, whether the level is 15% or higher.

And so this has consequences not just for trade and economic arrangements, but it sends the message again that the United States is less and less a partner as essentially going about the world.

It's essentially just following its own compass and doesn't much care for the interests of our partners.

And for instance, you just mentioned Brazil and the others.

President Lula of Brazil is standing firm, and he's not saying that he's not going to be dictated to by an emperor.

The days of having an emperor in the world are over.

On the other hand, the Europeans, the EU specifically, did agree to a deal that quite a few of the European countries are very cross about, including the French President Macron.

But he said he believes the EU was not feared enough.

The recent trade talks with the US said Europe does not yet sufficiently see itself as a power.

To be free, you have to be feared.

Wow.

I mean, you know, he's basically saying what they worried about, that Trump will bring the survival of the strongest.

It's the law of the jungle back in terms of global affairs.

You know, it appears the United States is operating in a way to inspire fear.

It has not been successful, as I said, with Brazil or with China, its biggest competitor.

So what gives here?

Well, again, I think it's a calculus of America's place in the world.

What's different about it?

It's not just the unilateralism.

We've seen that before.

I think more than anything, and I've tried to boil it down in my own thinking, is the emphasis on things economic.

What matters to Donald Trump, as I watch what he does, is his pursuit of what he sees as America's economic interests, rather than strategic interests.

So one big question to come is what he's prepared to give up vis-a-vis China if he gets the Chinese to agree to reduce the trade imbalance between our two countries.

Or put it the other way, he's been willing to push countries with whom we have, say, strategic relationships, like India, but he'll push them with high tariffs if he disagrees with them there.

So it really is an economics-first foreign policy, more than anything motivated by Mr. Trump's views that trade deficits are somehow unacceptable.

But strategic considerations clearly take the back seat here.

OK, well, is that why you talked about dealing with his adversary, like Putin?

But what about dealing with his strategic ally, Bibi Netanyahu?

He's had zero effect in terms of, A, getting a ceasefire, I'm talking about Trump, B, opening up the lanes for humanitarian aid.

And people are starving before our very eyes right now.

It is truly a disgrace, and one that most people believe Donald Trump could end by picking up the phone and reading Netanyahu the Riot Act.

Do you think that?

And again, what will be the consequence to America if this starvation and this catastrophe in the Middle East continues?

I tend to think that the criticism of Mr. Trump in the Middle East is not what he's doing, but as you suggest, what he's not doing.

Donald Trump is far more popular in Israel than Bibi Netanyahu or anyone else, in part because of the Iran policy.

So Trump has tremendous influence there.

Also, if Bibi Netanyahu doesn't like the message he gets from Donald Trump, who's he going to complain to here?

There's no end run.

Remember the old line, only Richard Nixon could go to China, because only Nixon didn't have Nixon to worry about?

Well, Bibi Netanyahu cannot outflank Donald Trump in the United States.

So Trump has incredible room for maneuver here.

Again, great influence.

And I think he's making a major mistake by not pressing Israel to accept the ceasefire that Israel, by the way, months ago agreed to accept in Gaza.

He's also looking the other way.

The Israelis have started up, what, 22 new settlements in the West Bank.

So this policy of inaction, of looking away, it does no favor for the prestige of the United States.

But more important, I think it's bad for Israel.

And again, I think the president has, almost like Ukraine in both of these situations, I think he has great potential to be the peacemaker he claims that he is.

The problem is what he's doing or not doing is sabotaging his own ambitions.

And interesting, as we end this conversation, to see that quite prominent MAGA figures, i.e.

his allies, are including Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress's call, did a genocide.

I know there's a lot of argument about that legal term, what's happening in Gaza.

But also a lot of younger Republicans are turning off the traditional pro-Israel reflexive stance of the United States because of what's going on.

So I think this is all a very, very interesting time.

Thank you, Richard Haass.

Thank you for joining us, author, and also has a weekly substack called Home and Away.

Now, MAGA hits Japan, sort of.

Recent upper house elections there was hugely influenced by Trump and Rice.

The soaring cost of the food staple had people waiting in lines this spring.

Voters found themselves increasingly dissatisfied with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power almost continuously for 70 years.

Meanwhile, more and more young people were drawn to the populist parties, especially to the previously obscure far right San Sato, which won a surprising 15 out of 248 seats for its campaign to lower taxes and crack down on immigration.

As I said, kind of like Japan's MAGA.

Tomohiko Tanikuchi was a special advisor to the former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Mira Rapp-Hooper worked in the Biden White House on the National Security Council.

They both joined me to discuss what all this means.

Welcome both of you to the program.

Let me go straight to you in Tokyo, Mr. Tanikuchi, because it's been a big surprise.

San Sato is a party that, to us anyway, appears to have come out of nowhere.

What is it, and how surprising and unusual is this in Japan?

If this party looks new, very much new to you, it's also very much new to many in Japan.

The San Sato, the name itself, if you translate it into English, that's probably the party for political participation.

And it's drawn attention and it's drawn interest from mostly among younger generations because its activities have been based on social media network.

It's drawn a frustrated bunch of people, frustrated in many ways, the economy and the paralysis in the Japanese political making, and the fact that the LDP, the ruling party for many, many years, has been split into two, like a conservative wing and a progressive wing.

So there seems to be an intra-party dynamics playing out.

And in the meantime, it shows that no strong leadership will emerge anytime soon from within the ruling coalition.

Those things combined, there's been a growth of younger, more frustrated bunch of people who have chosen to choose an unknown but seemingly new political party.

Mira Rappuper, let me ask you from the US perspective, because Japan is a major US ally.

Would you say, how surprised were you?

I mean, you used to work in the Biden White House.

How surprised are you?

And would you say it's like the MAGA wing of the Japanese more conservative party?

Well, Christiane, it's a great question.

From the perspective of a US observer, the rise of San Sato is definitely a headline out of this upper house election.

But it's also important to keep San Sato's rise in context.

While there was definitely popular interest and popular support for this far right nativist party, the party still is not on its way to becoming mainstream or having a huge influence over the majority in Japan.

Rather, what I think San Sato's rise points to in this latest election is something that's actually more familiar to us as we look across other industrialized democracies and allied democracies, including in Europe.

And that is the fact that there has been more and more attraction to populist parties in general and more dissatisfaction with status quo ruling parties because of the perception that they are not delivering economically.

So while the ruling party in Japan, the LDP, did face a setback, along with its primary coalition partner, Komeito, so too did the primary opposition party, the Constitutional Democrats.

A lot of new seats went to these smaller populist parties across the board, not just to San Sato.

So this shows us that the Japanese people are expressing general dissatisfaction with the trajectory that they've been on.

Now, from the perspective of a US observer who herself has spent a great deal of time working closely with the Japanese government as part of this indispensable alliance, the prospect of a messier coalition-based future for the Japanese government is a worrisome one because it can be harder to take quick, decisive action, particularly on short fuse issues.

But I don't think we should over-extrapolate about San Sato's success when it comes to the future of politics in Japan.

OK, do you agree, Mr. Taniguchi, that we shouldn't over-extrapolate, that it may still be, and these are my words, a fringe party, that it may not come, like Trump has, come to dominate the Republican Party in the United States and his MAGA wing?

One of the professors at one of Tokyo's universities said, "Trump is empowering the primordial in people all over the world."

Your reaction to that, and actually San Sato's leader did say that, you know, Trump has been a big influencer for them, and the whole social media, as you mentioned, younger generation has really been inspired by that.

The San Sato party, may I say, still is an assortment of pretty much different thoughts represented by different kinds of people.

The thing is, most of those members are very much new in politics, and they have not dealt with anything concrete when it comes to political decision-making process.

They're not familiar with the parliamentary process either.

So we will see.

They have to mature very quickly, and they have to show more clearly to the Japanese voters what they stand for.

It's hard to see what actually is their party platform.

It's new, and it seems to be fresh.

That's the primary reason why the San Sato has been successful in drawing the attentions from the younger generations.

When it comes to the West-Japan relationship, notwithstanding San Sato's populist posture, there seems to be a broad consensus that the United States still is the most important partner for Japan, and will continue to be so even more going forward, given the precarious situation in Japan's close neighborhood.

You're talking about China and the threat from China.

China, of course.

North Korea and Russia.

Russia, North Korea, China.

You're looking at a neighborhood where those nations are lining up with each other and opposed to Japan and opposed to Taiwan, the United States-Japan relationship, and so on and so forth.

So there has to be a consensus.

There has to be a core of the Japanese politics that would lead the nation to the trajectory where the United States-Japan relationship remains robust.

I think when it comes to that, the security situation and the awareness that Japan's security situation is in danger, the members of the San Sato may not differ that much from what you're seeing from the ruling coalition.

Let's talk about some of the issues.

We know that rice is a staple, and there are huge queues, as we mentioned earlier, to buy rice.

Rice is set in terms of its price by the government, and it's a big issue right now.

But like in the other populist movements around the world, immigration is also a big issue.

And yet immigration appears to be relatively low compared to in other countries, and Japan does have an aging and a shrinking workforce.

So again, from your perspective, Meera Ravgupa, in other Western democracies where immigration has played an outsized role in the, I guess, success of populist parties, are you surprised, or is this par for the course to see it play such a role in Japan?

Well, again, Christian, I do think it was surprising.

It was novel that San Sato grabbed so many headlines and did appear to be attracting so much interest in this latest upper house election.

But again, worth keeping in mind that the total immigrant population of Japan is just about 3%, with a total population of 124 million people and less than 4 million immigrants.

So while it was arresting, a little shocking to see some of these policy platforms, I still think it's unlikely that this right-wing populist nativist agenda is really going to overtake or seize Japanese politics in a way that would mirror what we have seen here in the United States or in other Western democracies in Western Europe.

That's not to say that it won't be a significant thing in the future, but it is to say that it's important to also look at what else San Sato was offering that may have attracted voters.

In addition to being in favor of restricting immigration, San Sato was promising lower taxes.

And that's what several of the other more centrist populist parties were also promising.

So again, if you look closely at exit polling and polling in general in Japan, there is this overall climate of economic dissatisfaction and a desire to see the government figure out how to address rising prices and bring wages up to par.

And those kitchen table issues may explain as much about these election outcomes as anything else.

So let me ask you then, Ms. Taniguchi, if you agree with that.

I mean, some of the stuff that I was reading preparing for this was actually really interesting because there's also a backlash against tourism.

You know, maybe tourism and immigration sometimes gets mixed up in the whole foreigner basket.

But people complaining about how tourists don't respect Japan's traditions or its culture.

They jaywalk, they put graffiti on public places.

And then, of course, the additional problem, they say, of foreigners, immigrants taking up too much of the social welfare net.

And, you know, as we've been discussing, how much is this issue of foreigners, whether tourists or immigrants, playing there?

Put into a broader perspective, it is not so much a big, decisive issue, safe to say.

Nonetheless, the rapidity and acuteness of these phenomena have been a hitting major headlines day in and day out.

Those places that people in Japan have long cherished have been becoming, have become a sort of playground, if you like, for tourists.

And that is something that you might feel painful to look at.

So the acuteness and the concentration are the ones that you must put under more common control.

And let me point out that when it comes to immigration, the source, sources of those immigrants or workers from abroad have been concentrated very much in just three nations, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

And one out of four registered foreigners, that's what's called, what's called one out of four registered foreigners are the people from mainland China.

And that is actually giving a source of another concern that the influx of Chinese people to graduate schools, higher education institutions, research labs of major corporations, and indeed buying into corporate authority in Japan are giving a source of concerns for the Japanese people because they are from mainland China and it's common knowledge that when asked, they must report back to the Chinese Communist Party.

So in that sense, there is a peculiarity in the case of Japanese issue of immigrants or people from abroad.

Well, interestingly, Sohei Kamiya, who, as you all know better than I do, is the leader of the party, says, we are not promoting xenophobia.

He says, Japanese people feel unease and dissatisfaction because there are no established rules for accepting foreigners.

How will you then, if you don't have foreigners or established immigration quotas or whatever, cope with care for your elderly, a totally shrinking workforce?

So it is a question to strike a good balance between these two important demand, important conditions.

Certainly, Japan is going to have an even scarcer population and that must be filled by people from abroad.

But at the same time, no acute change should be encouraged.

And I think Mr. Kamiya, the party head, made a point that there is no actually established rule to screen people from abroad.

And when asking for naturalization, obtaining Japanese passport, there is no pledge to be made by those applicants.

They don't have to say they don't have to remember what the Japanese prime minister is and they don't have to be able to sing Japanese national anthem and so on and so forth.

So in the long run, now I think is the time for Japan to think really hard about establishing a regime of accepting people from abroad and treating them in a balanced way.

Otherwise, the de facto immigrants are increasing in number.

You used to be an advisor to the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was more to the conservative side of that party.

And I think you've said that the whole party is getting far too liberal.

So where do you stand on these issues?

The liberal Democratic Party has long been a broad church and a big tent party, if you like.

And since the sudden passing of the late Prime Minister Abe, there have been a major intra-party dynamics played out, that played out.

And the fact of the matter is, one of the previous prime ministers, Mr. Kishida, sort of engineered to purge the members of the LDP that were previously very much loyal to the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

So the conservative wing, by which it basically means royalist, monarchist, traditionalist.

That's how you could define conservatism in Japan, unlike in the United States.

But those conservative, that conservative wing has been outlawed, has been sort of ousted from the mainstream of the LDP.

I think that's been a source of frustration for those associated with the conservative wing of the LDP.

And I think by calling out loud that the Japanese first and so on and so forth, the new party, Senseito, has been to some degree successful in bringing those frustrated people to the new platform of the Senseito party.

And finally to you, Miro Rappaport, this all is happening in the context of America first, the Trump administration and the tariffs.

I think it's 15 percent on Japan, as it is for Europe and others.

What do you see as the end result of this?

How does it, you know, potentially hurt Japan, hurt the United States or not?

And do you see this U.S. government fully engaged with needing strong allies and not want and or in danger of turning them off strong allies in the Pacific as elsewhere?

It's an essential question, Christian.

And the first few months of the Trump administration have indeed been tougher ones for our good friends in Japan.

If we look back at the first Trump administration, we saw then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe really masterfully architect a strong relationship between himself and then President Trump, which helped Japan to protect a lot of its longstanding interests over the course of that administration.

But what we've seen since January is a much tougher lot for Japan and many other allies.

As you've already pointed to, the U.S. and Japan have recently agreed to an overall 15 percent tariff rate, including 15 percent on auto tariffs, which was essential to get the Japanese side over the line.

Although, I would note that there are many aspects of this deal that don't appear to be ironed out in practice, such as the nature of the investment funds that Japan will be setting up in the United States.

But more than that, over the course of recent months, we've seen the Trump administration push Japan and other allies very hard to spend more money on defense.

And while one understands that they want to see allies step up, it's also really important to take on both security and economic issues in the spirit of partnership and in ways that allow our friends in Japan and elsewhere to get to yes.

If we look at the prior four years, we really saw the alliance at a high watermark, with President Biden and Prime Minister Kishida working together to revolutionize Japan's approach to national security.

And my concern, as an interested observer, is whether or not we can keep up that strong alliance momentum in a world where Japan is both facing extremely high tariff rates and coming under pressure to spend more when its fiscal situation makes that very difficult indeed.

Well, we are very pleased that we've been able to drill down and put this issue in focus on our program.

So, Miro Rapp-Hoopa and Tomohiko Taniguchi, thank you both so much for joining us.

Great to be with you.

Thank you very much.

Major news organizations, including ours, are calling on Israel to allow international journalists in and out of Gaza.

Right now, the world depends on local journalists and humanitarians to get any information out.

Israel so far has not budged, but an American journalist, Afeef Nessouli, managed to get in volunteering as a medical worker, and he spent his off hours reporting.

He wrote about the suffering he saw in the intercept, and here he is talking about that with Hari Sreenivasan.

Christian, thanks.

Afeef Nessouli, thanks so much for joining us.

One of the reasons that we have you on is it's very rare, at this point almost impossible, to get any first-line reporting out of Gaza.

And you went there for seven weeks, and you went as an aid worker, but you were kind of reporting on the side.

In the last couple of weeks, well, logistics and aid delivery has come into the spotlight a bit more with the crisis of just starvation and access to food, however you want to put it, for the people of Gaza right now.

So tell me, what were you able to see?

Because what we are hearing is that there are -- the majority of Palestinians do not have enough food to eat and are in significant health risk of death.

Yeah.

I saw this sort of escalate as I was there.

The blockade started March 2.

I was there by March 27.

By the time I was there, people were rationing and thinking about how to make sure they would have food if it got worse.

And it was just getting worse.

It was just the beginning at that time.

So I experienced it as seeing 170 community kitchens dwindle and dwindle and dwindle until there were just dozens of them.

And then I experienced volunteering at one that eventually had to close down and just had potatoes on June 1, I remember, from some other organization.

So you see this population getting emaciated.

I had a friend who lost over 100 pounds in the last two years.

I have a friend at six foot who is 119 pounds.

People were just losing weight and we were all just eating as little as we possibly could so that we could eat again tomorrow.

Even I lost 10 to 12 pounds and got sick once because I was, like, subsisting on just a few calories.

And I was also sick from something else and I just couldn't sort of get through it.

But it looks like a million things happening at once.

It looks like doctors also operating on people that are skin and bones because it's different for everybody.

Everybody has a sort of a different privilege.

But then when there's a blockade for months, you're all just -- no one's privileged.

There's this equal suffering happening.

I remember people asking for tain or flour and just having -- being able to speak Arabic and telling them back, "We don't have flour either.

Just because I have this Glia vest on doesn't -- we just don't have flour either."

And I was thankful that we could speak Arabic and that I was with Nizawi colleagues because it was so hard to see people struggling in the streets and begging on the level and with the frequency and the amount of people.

Everybody was hungry.

Everybody.

Give me some idea of what somebody in Gaza subsists on for calories on an average day.

I would say it's changed over time.

It was always rice.

We ate a lot of rice, a lot of lentils, chickpeas.

There is produce that's fresh.

There was for a while.

It tripled in price because a lot of farmland is not -- there's nothing you can cultivate on it.

It's destroyed, like 83 percent, I think.

Because of the bombing, the farmland is no longer farmable.

Yes, exactly.

Because of bombing.

Fishing fleets destroyed.

So, what you have are like tomatoes and eggplants on the market, but they're so expensive.

And there are also -- there's not many of them.

So, we were eating food that we brought.

I brought a whole suitcase of canned tuna that I would mostly pass out and subsist on.

And there were biscuits that I think that the U.N. passed out for -- there was still stuff on the market when I was there.

I have not been there since June.

It has gotten considerably worse.

So, now people are subsisting on the same thing I was subsisting on, but for three -- for instead of eating once a day, I've heard a lot of people are eating once every couple of days at this point.

So, it's just -- it's catastrophic.

It's become catastrophic.

And then let's talk a little bit about what used to be part of the infrastructure and how people got food, which was the U.N. and USAID.

What have happened to those sources?

So, those seem to have been done away with over time.

I mean, basically, Israel coordinate is sort of in charge of whatever goes in, whatever comes out.

Every coordination you do is through Israel.

They replaced the U.N. MAC system with the GHF, which is American-run and also Israeli-controlled.

So, what happened was 400 locations across Gaza became four, four that are barely operational, semi-daily, have a -- has a Facebook site to tell people when they're operating.

If they're operating, they might not be because of security or maintenance.

I've had people go and it just not be open.

Also, it's just very disorganized.

The U.N. system was, you know, the type of system that delivered food to people, made hot meals.

Like, it was really backed by local experts who really understood what their communities needed.

And it was run by Israelis in many ways, doing the, like, sort of heavy lifting.

And now you just have these, you know, you're replacing expertise, a lot of care, a lot of, like, real social work, a lot of community care with men in weapons, men just, like, sort of holding machine guns from a distance and just sort of letting aid sit there and watching people fight over it because they're desperate and hungry.

It's definitely -- it's definitely, to me, an obvious -- an obvious strategy to further eradicate a people that are on a land that other people want.

>> So tell me, you probably talk to people who have made that trek to one of these four sites, right?

So if you force all these people away from 400 sites to four sites, I imagine the natural tendency is there's going to be a huge spike in demand and you see these huge crowds of people waiting.

What is that process like?

How do people describe that to you?

>> So I have one source who's in his mid-20s named Khalid.

And Khalid told me about -- I think it was mid-June that he was visiting a GHF site near the Nasserine Corridor.

He had gone really early in the morning.

It was still dark out.

And he was saying that by the time he got there, there were -- he went with his two brothers and his friends.

So it was, as usual, young men who are kind of given the responsibility to like sort of brave the trek.

They have to walk a few kilometers.

Wherever they are, they have to walk a few kilometers for sure.

And there's no fuel, nor can you drive, because the Israelis won't allow that.

It's very dangerous.

You might be targeted.

So you have to walk.

And you have to walk while you haven't eaten in a while.

At least -- if you've had something in your mouth, I mean, it's not been a lot.

It's not been a lot for the last couple of days.

So imagine Khalid, who has already lost nearly 50 pounds, from what I understand, since a year and a half ago, is with his brothers and his friend.

And it's early morning.

There's thousands of people already there.

They're, from what he told me, barefoot.

And sort of just it's intense.

It's intense because people seem really nervous.

Again -- not even again.

I don't think I've said this, but Gaza is loud.

The quadcopters are incessant.

And sometimes they're near and sometimes they're far.

But they're always, always a buzzing.

They're always buzzing.

And there's bombs always present.

They're ever-present.

And they're sometimes near and they're sometimes far.

So there's a lot of noise while you're doing this trek.

And you're getting to these people who are intensely hungry and hoping to find a morsel of food and are willing to do a lot to get it.

And I remember he told me that he was waiting in line, and there was just thousands of people.

And then shots rang out, and he just started running.

And that was his experience, basically getting in line, looking, seeing soldiers in the distance, seeing sort of other non-Israeli soldiers maybe nearer to the aid, and then like sort of waiting for it to start happening.

And then before it even -- sort of like even the aid distribution happened, gunshots rang out, and he just started running for his life.

And he said, "That day I got closer to death than a piece of bread."

And I thought that that was a really, really sad, sad way to have an experience with trying to get aid.

Like, this is an incredibly hard -- this is an incredibly impossible situation for someone to experience, to not only then try to get aid and then be shot at.

It's undignified.

It has nothing to do with peace or humanitarian -- sort of the humanitarian qualities of aid distribution and what they should be founded on, actually.

So it was just hard to hear.

And it's hard to keep talking to these people who are having just harrowing experiences on their way to trying to get food for their families.

You know, Israeli leaders for a long time, and also parts of the American press, have used this line of reasoning that Hamas has been in charge of the food that's coming into Gaza, and they have been either stealing it or they've been destroying it or they've been bargaining with it.

And I wonder -- I mean, there's a recent New York Times article that says that members of the Israeli military are now saying that they never found proof that Hamas stole the aid provided by the U.N.

In your time there with the people that you spoke with, what is the role of Hamas when it comes to gathering or distributing any of the food aid that is coming into the region?

I didn't have any reason to suspect or believe that anyone was experiencing anything or much of anything with Hamas.

Now, are there men in this scenario that might have worked in government or have an association with Hamas in some loose way who are also men who are unstable at this point after 21 months of a genocide and several months of starvation?

Are some of those men probably bullying other people and maybe doing that?

I'm sure they are.

In fact, I've heard stories of that.

But they're never connected specifically to Hamas.

And so my point is that I think that this is all a line.

I think it's a way to skirt responsibility, to justify ethnic cleansing, to justify forced starvation.

They keep blaming Hamas when it's really clear that it's almost like it's undignified for me -- it's hard for me to dignify that sort of line of thinking with a response because it just feels like it's completely made up to me.

Now, I don't want to overstate and say that there's no one stealing aid or that there aren't problems.

But I think that the disorganized thing -- the disorganized way that GHF is handling everything is really the problem.

It's not Hamas.

You are describing structurally a scenario where hundreds of people around you that you can see are visibly losing weight because they do not have enough calories in their body, right?

And at the same time, there seems to be this sort of war of words.

Is this starvation?

Is this famine?

And we kind of get caught up in that debate.

And I wonder -- I mean, look, we have David Mencer, an Israeli spokesperson.

He said, "In Gaza, there is no famine caused by Israel.

There is, however, a manmade shortage engineered by Hamas."

Right?

That was our last question.

Then you have Prime Minister Netanyahu saying, "There is no policy of starvation in Gaza."

And there is no starvation in Gaza.

We enable humanitarian aid throughout the duration of the war to enter Gaza.

Otherwise, there would be no Gazans.

So what's your response to that?

My response is that we often in the West, or even not in the West, get caught up in semantics with each other, as if it's important or meaningful at all.

If we're even getting to the point where we're speaking about genocide or anyone starving, it's probably really very -- it's just like so much later than it should be in the situation.

Right?

Like, if we're talking about genocide or whether something is starvation or if there's a policy of starvation, like, right, you can sort of, like, take these words and unpack them.

Ultimately, people are starving right now.

I've seen them.

I even was hungry for the nine weeks that I was there.

And it's because of a manufactured blockade.

There's an occupation.

There's also people -- community kitchens being -- there's so much destruction.

There's a way where you just have to stop listening to semantics that try to parse out whether something is bad enough, and understand that it's so much worse to talk about this for 21 months than to have done something a year-and-a-half ago, before this became a human catastrophe that, I don't know, probably has changed the trajectory of some of -- so many people's worlds, and probably the world itself as well.

This past weekend, Israel announced that it would pause fighting for 10 hours a day in populated areas to try to allow the food aid to get in.

A former Israeli government spokesperson, Elon Levy, said -- quote -- "Here are hundreds and hundreds of pallets of aid that the U.N. is letting rot in the sun, and instead of taking responsibility for that failure, they're blaming Israel and pretending that Israel isn't letting this aid in altogether."

What did you see?

Who's controlling the flow of aid into this area?

I mean, there are -- there were hundreds of trucks at the Kedem Salam border.

There's no way for aid to come in or out without coordination from Israel.

So, again, like, engaging with these sort of bold-faced, almost delusions of how this is working is hard for me, because my experience was that, for me to get to Nasset Hospital, which is 20 minutes away from David Balah, I'd have to coordinate with the Israelis when there was -- because it was in a red zone.

So any of these red zones, you have to go through their -- they're in charge of what is going on.

It took me five hours to get to Nasset and back, and it's 20 minutes away.

They are occupying every possible way for any of this to be solved.

So for them to sort of blame other parties makes no sense.

And I don't know how else to put it, because logistically speaking, you -- every single thing is green-lit by them.

So whether there is fuel that you can take a car to Rafa and pick up whatever you need to pick up or from whatever crossing, you would have to do that through the Israelis.

If it's not getting done, it's because the Israelis aren't letting it get done.

>> Did the Israeli officials that you reached out to have a comment for the story?

>> No, they didn't.

They didn't.

They refused to answer, and then they didn't answer our texts.

So -- but I think that they've commented a lot.

I think that, you know, we've talked a lot about what they've said.

And to me, it's -- we've got to start listening to Palestinians a lot more, because they're telling us a lot sooner than we're listening.

And then we're listening when it's almost too late.

>> You have the privilege of leaving.

And I wonder, Afeef, if now, even in the weeks and months that you've been home since, is there a story or a person that kind of gnaws away at you that you check in on often?

Tell us about that person or that story.

>> Yeah.

I have so many people now.

I have so many people there that are suffering in a way that is unimaginable.

And now I can sort of imagine it.

But what I want to leave you with, I think what is important to say is that every person I met in Gaza was extremely faithful, and they were also extremely capable of being appreciative even in the hardest sort of scenario.

And it's what made them capable of taking care of each other, even when there was no supplies to do so.

And so in the wake of my experience there, I'm trying to memorize how they lived, because we've learned a lot about how they die.

And I think what's more important, actually, is how they've been living and what's been being stolen from them, actually.

So there's a lot of stories that race through my mind all the time, and I'm texting people all day, every day.

So it's been -- and it was an incredible experience, because I think we're struck with how sad it all is, and it is very sad.

It's obviously harrowing, but it's also something I think that needs more spotlight, is the fact that these people are vibrant and alive, and that is what is so sad, is that that's being stolen as we speak.

>> Afeef Nessouli, thanks so much for joining us and for your reporting from the region.

>> I appreciate you so much for having me on the show.

Thank you.

>> And that's it for our program tonight.

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