- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Coming up next, after last weekend's brutal terror attack in Israel, we'll talk with local leaders of the Jewish and Muslim communities about this area's ties to the region and how the groups are being affected by the fighting.

And a Florida commission planning what could be big statewide changes in the court system is meeting in secret.

All this and more next on Florida this week.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) Welcome back, last Saturday, Hamas militants in Gaza launched an extensive surprise attack on Israel murdering civilians in border communities and at an electronic music festival.

More than 1,200 Israelis were killed and an estimated 150 taken captive.

Among the dead were at least two dozen Americans.

Among those kidnapped were women, children, and foreign workers.

President Biden called the killings the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Israel retaliated with thousands of air and artillery strikes, killing more than 1,350 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, injuring more than 6,000, and pushing hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes.

With 2.3 million people living in a 141 square mile area, Gaza is densely populated and only slightly larger than St. Petersburg, which covers 137 square miles.

Prime Minister Netanyahu compared Hamas to the terrorist group ISIS and his defense minister vowed this week to wipe Hamas off the face of the Earth.

US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, traveled to Israel this week and he said this.

- And every day the world is seeing new evidence of the depravity and the inhumanity of Hamas, depravity and inhumanity directed at babies, at small children, at young adults, at elderly people, at people with disabilities.

The list goes on.

And on a basic human level how anyone cannot be revolted and cannot reject what they've seen and what the world has seen.

It's beyond me.

- On Friday, Israel ordered the evacuation of 1.1 million people from Northern Gaza.

The residents have no place to go.

The evacuation order came after days of Israeli air and rocket strikes on Gaza as Israel blocked food, water, fuel, and electricity to the strip's 2.3 million residents.

Jonathan Ellis is an attorney and the Chair of the Tampa Jewish Community Relations Council.

He joins me now.

Jonathan, nice to see you.

Thank you for coming by.

- Thank you for having me.

- So, what is the connection between Tampa Bay and Israel, and do we know whether or not any Tampa Bay families have suffered as a result of this violence?

- So, the connection actually runs deep.

I mean, Tampa has a number of sister cities.

One of 'em happens to be in Ashdod, Israel.

As with any community in America, there are ties with Israel.

There's a number of Tampa youth that go over every year, or Tampa people that go over to Israel.

There's a number of Israelis that come to Tampa.

We have FIBA, which is in Israel, Florida, Israel incubator for businesses in Tampa.

And then you have people here that have suffered loss and tragedy as a result of what's happened on October 7th.

I mean, the probably the key one is that most people have seen at the rave or at the outdoor concert music festival.

You know, some young woman being driven off on a motorcycle into Gaza with her boyfriend in cuffs.

I believe relatives of that woman are actually residing in Clearwater.

- What does it say that Hamas attacked a rave, a dance concert of young people, civilians, and attacked a kibbutz.

What does it say about Hamas?

- This is where you wind up having issues.

And I think there have been people in Israel have always been indicating that Hamas is not a peace of movement.

It's not a movement that when you get down to the base level of it there is just a level of a terrorist organization.

And what makes it particularly difficult is what were you trying to accomplish when you wind up killing, you know, 260 people at a music festival.

You know, what was the military target?

What did you want to accomplish?

What was the goal?

Or when you go into a kibbutz and you're trying to make a decision, do you shoot the children before the parents or do you shoot the parents and then shoot the children?

Or is the answer is we just need to shoot everybody.

And if that's the goal that tells you everything about Hamas that you need to know.

The answer is the goal is to kill.

And that is the fundamental problem with Hamas.

And that's not to implicate every Palestinian everywhere, but it does implicate Hamas and those that support it.

- So, would you compare Hamas to being the same kind of evil as ISIS?

- By the time you do these atrocities, you can start to measure the level of atrocities, but the atrocities that you saw that took place on the kibbutz on the music festival to the Israeli citizens that they killed, you know, it goes down in some of the most horrendous activity.

The only thing that has it at some level with something like ISIS relates to the fact that it's more than just a one-off person.

It is an organization with organizational activities.

It's not a government, but it's an organization and it has a level that has contributed to it, trained it.

And to actually get 1,000 or 1,500 people behind something like this, not one person, not three people, not a small cell, but 1,500 people to in unison do this, lets you know this is significant institutional evil.

- So, what should the US response be?

- The US at this point has a number of different options.

I think the first option and what it's doing now is the best it can do.

And that is supporting Israel.

It is indicated to Israel, you know, you are gonna need to do what you're gonna need to do to sort of help your people in safety and survival, because anybody who looks at this understands that is in Gaza now can't stay in Gaza.

And when I say that again, that is not the innocent Palestinian person, but it is a Hamas network that has to be eradicated.

- How do you protect the civilians in Gaza?

Because Israel has asked that a million people leave Northern Gaza, they've cut off water and food and electricity.

Isn't that also harming civilians?

- There is inevitably going to be harm to civilians, if you need to eradicate Hamas.

The question is how do you do it with the least harm to civilians?

So, the problems you have when you're dealing with Gaza, number one, control centers, entity, you know, establishment areas, control groups, meeting places, places that you operate this out of, they're all centered in civilian buildings and civilian centers.

So the answer is that it's not that you are trying to avoid a civilian building.

If you wanna hit Hamas, you gotta hit the civilian building, because they've placed themselves in there.

Same thing with mosques, which wind up not being necessarily and maybe being operated as a mosque, but it's also storing weapons.

Same thing with ambulances that are moving back and forth.

You're transferring weapons, you're transferring soldiers.

You wind up having a major hospital in Gaza that is the control center for Hamas underground.

How do you eradicate Hamas without having to hit these areas?

And the trouble that the IDF has and I wanna go for sort of the difference of the two organizations at this point.

Probably IDF has is how do you do that with the least amount of civilian casualties, but at a time period where it's just become absolutely apparent that it's gonna have to be done?

And that's compared to trying to avoid the civilian casualties compared to when you have Hamas, which is the goal is not to avoid civilian casualties, but to rack up as many civilian casualties as you can.

It is a dilemma for any military, any military with any level of morale to try to figure out how do you go into an area populated as Gaza is without creating civilian casualties.

- So, you're saying that Israel doesn't surprise attack.

It issues a warning ahead of time.

- To the extent that it can and the extent it becomes a viable military option trying to save civilian lives, you are giving a level of warning that you can do, but at the same time, you have to have the military objective at this point.

And that is, you know, eradicating those who are behind what happened.

- We're running outta time.

- Sure.

- But I wanna ask you about the demonstration that happened near USF in Tampa this past Sunday.

What did you think of the timing of that pro-Palestinian human rights demonstration?

- So, I looked at that demonstration and I'm thinking to myself, you know, two things.

One, it was, the timing of it was surprising.

Why would you demonstrate, or cheer, or support Palestinian rights after something like this?

Meaning the message shouldn't have been cheering is if you had just won a football game.

It should have been, while we're for Palestinian rights, we absolutely and unequivocally in no different language object to and condemn what took place by Hamas.

And that is not what Palestinian rights is about.

And it was surprising that, that didn't take place.

It was surprising that at the announcement you didn't have, we demand as Palestinian Americans, that toddler hostages be freed immediately.

- And Jonathan, I wish we had more time, but we are up against the clock.

So, thank you very much for coming by Florida this week.

- Okay, thank you very much.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Well, now for the Arab American perspective, we're joined by Ahmed Bedier, the co-host of the True Talk program on WMNF Radio.

He's also the President of United Voices for America.

Ahmed, nice to see you.

Thank you for coming.

- Thank you, Rob, for having me.

- Tell me about the connection between Gaza and the Tampa Bay area.

Are there many people from Gaza living here in the Tampa Bay area and what are they hearing about their families over in Gaza?

- Tampa Bay is home to thousands of Palestinians.

Many of them are from Gaza, and those that are not from there, they're from the West Bank.

They have families and loved ones in Gaza.

So there's a lot of concern for the safety of those individuals.

As right now, there are airstrikes happening and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which is a very densely populated area, smaller than the size of New Jersey, but at least 2 million Palestinians that are there in what even President Cameron had previously described as an open air prison.

There's nowhere to get out, very densely populated.

So, they're really worried about their loved ones as they're seeing residential building or tower after tower getting demolished by Israeli airstrikes.

- Israel has cut off food, medicine, water, and electricity to Gaza in order to try to force the release of the hostages and put pressure on Hamas.

It's ordered people to leave.

They want a million people to leave Northern Gaza and go somewhere else.

What do you think about that?

- This was just announced last night, which is just impossible.

The United Nations has said it's impossible to relocate over 1 million people in a matter of 24 hours.

You're giving 'em 24 hours to leave Northern Gaza to Southern Gaza, or Gaza's already the most densely populated place on Earth.

Where are they going to go?

And the border is, all the exits are shut, they're closed.

Some people, like I said earlier, describe it as a concentration camp or an open air prison.

There's nowhere to go.

So, it's almost like giving a some sort of fake warning, because they know there's nowhere to run to.

And there are no bomb shelters, unlike Israel, are no bomb shelters within Gaza.

So, people don't have any place for refuge.

- Would you agree though, that this attack on the Israeli civilians was horrendous and unjustified?

- Any attack on any civilian is horrendous.

However, let's put things in context.

The United Nations and international law allows for people that are under occupation that their, you know, lands have been taken to resist.

There are thousands of Palestinian civilians that have already been killed now, including at least I think over 2,000, 400 of which are children.

They also, that's also horrendous.

However, we're not seeing the same condemnations of that, but obviously, of course.

And this is something that we often just see whenever they discuss the Palestinian narrative or the Arab narrative, they always just want to hear whether do you condemn what, you know, the attacks on civilians?

As if somehow Arabs and Palestinians are not human beings and they somehow inherently condone attacks on civilians, which is not true.

There's a lot of disinformation out there early on from, you know, from the early hours that somehow the Palestinian fighters were chopping off baby's heads.

Even it got to the point that this disinformation reached the White House where President Biden himself repeated this claim and said he saw the pictures.

- But Anthony Blinken said yesterday that, yes, indeed there there were some brutal killings of infants.

So, the Secretary of State... - Well, the White House retracted that and CNN and multiple outlets, including quoting Israeli military officials saying they don't have any confirmation of it.

Where are the images of this?

Where is the proof?

Where's the evidence?

So, many people have debunked it, but this was the rallying cry for so many politicians.

Oh, these are worse than ISIS.

They deserve the worst.

You know, kill them all.

We're hearing basically calls for genocide from people like Nikki Haley, from Marco Rubio, from others, and Lindsey Graham even calling, you know, to level the place.

- The day after Israel was attacked, Palestinians in the Temple Terrace area near 56 and Fowler in Tampa held a big demonstration for Palestinian rights.

Some people say it was too soon.

It was insensitive to the concerns of the Israeli people.

- You know, I wasn't there, I happened to be outta town at the time.

However, in America you have the right for freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

I think they were calling for restraint and no, you know, no to war, because right away, within the early hours, it was already predicted that Israel would start, you know, assaulting that assaults started.

So, you know, there's a lot of spin doctors on the air and pundits that are, you know, calling for different things.

However, the one narrative that seems to be consistent is that there are efforts to try to silence the Palestinian narrative, the Arab narrative, or anything that's even questioning what Israel is doing.

It feels, the atmosphere, feels much like, you know, post 9/11.

Even though, you know, the attack did not happen here.

But there was this feeling after 9/11 in America that you can't question what the authorities are doing.

You can't question what happened.

You can't question the efforts to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There was this fear mongering and war mongering that was happening that ended horribly after 20 years.

Nothing, you know, that region is even worse off than it is today.

- I wanna get your comments about something that Governor DeSantis said this week in New Hampshire.

He was confronted by an Arab American businessman who had spent time in Gaza.

This man asked the Governor several questions and let's play the soundbites.

- Sure.

- [Speaker 1] Israel has been killing Palestinians for the whole time Gaza has existed.

And they've been contained in prison.

- Hamas, Israel put in a warning, we're gonna go in this area, civilians leave.

Hamas tells 'em not to leave.

Hamas wants them to be human shields.

That's their tactic, technique and procedure.

How many other armed forces give warnings to get out before they go?

I think Israel's probably the only one in the world that does that.

- [Speaker 2] Absolutely.

- [Speaker 1] I don't condone the killing of any innocent civilians and I don't condone what Hamas did in the kibbutzes, but Israel is doing the exact same thing with Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a radical right wing, crazy person.

And I see hundreds of Palestinian families that are dead and they have nowhere to go, 'cause they can't leave the Gaza, 'cause no one's opening their Borders.

- Well, that's the thing.

You bring up a good point though.

You bring up really good point.

Why aren't these Arab countries willing to absorb some of the Palestinian Arabs?

They will not do it.

Egypt will not do it.

Saudi will not do it.

- 'Cause all the Palestinians- - None of them will do it.

- They were all displaced from their homes in 1948, I was there.

- Governor DeSantis says the neighboring countries should take in these refugees from Gaza.

What do you say?

- This is ushering some sort of ethnic cleansing or removing a population from one area to another.

They're not Egyptian, they're not Syrian, they're not Jordanian, they're not Saudis, they're Palestinians, that's their land.

They've had generations and for centuries they've been on that land.

And in 1948, the United Nations partitioned the land of the Palestinians and who were the majority and gave half, more than half of it to the Jewish immigrants that came from Europe after World War II.

Since then, Israel has a state, it's called Israel.

Palestine has not had a state.

And in 1993 in the Oslo Accords the Palestinians came to the table and agreed for peace and non-violence in order to have their own state.

More than 30 years later, they still don't have a state.

And since then, they have these populations inside an open air prison.

It was a ticking time bomb.

And more recently, with the new government that's been there for the past few months or almost a year with Netanyahu, with the most far right government.

Many of them are fascists that have just been killing and humiliating and oppressing Palestinians at a very high scale.

Just in the West Bank, not even in Gaza, 250 Palestinians, many of them are children that have been killed in the West Bank where Hames does not exist whatsoever.

So, it's come to a boiling point.

And people, some people are saying they're breaking outta prison.

So, if you beat somebody so long, oppressed them so long, 17 years Gaza has been under siege.

People are already, you know, without the resources to live, whether it's food, water, electricity, this new siege about not allowing water and food and electricity come in is already an ongoing process, or program, or policy, to try to get Palestinians to leave the land.

- One last question that is, have there been an uptick in anti-Arab violence or anti-Muslim incidents here in Florida since this attack by Hamas on Israel?

- There's a lot of fear.

And you know, the Governor issued a state of emergency yesterday to protect synagogues and reaching out to the Jewish community.

As he should protect the house of worship, but has not reached out to any Arab, or Muslim communities, or mosques.

I feel, and many of us feel, that the mosques are actually the ones that are more at jeopardy, more at risk.

And yes, yesterday one organization has reported that they received the highest number of anti-Arab complaints since 2003 at the height, you know, post 9/11.

So, it's numbers are escalating high.

There's a lot of fear out there.

And you know, the Governor of Florida should act as the Governor for all Floridians, not just some, and, you know, protect the state and represent everyone equally.

- Ahmed Bedier, thank you for sharing your point of view.

- Thank you so much.

- A committee that is looking into whether to shrink the number of judicial circuits in Florida is doing some of its work in secret.

The committee is composed of judges, lawyers, and state officials.

It was appointed by the Florida Supreme Court at the request of House Speaker Paul Renner, a Republican.

Renner says consolidating some of the state's 20 judicial circuits would save money and increase efficiency.

But there are critics who say the idea is a politically-motivated move to gerrymanders circuits in favor of Republican prosecutors.

Others say it will make it harder for people to access the court system by forcing litigants to drive longer distances.

Justin Garcia is the state and local accountability reporter for the Tampa Bay Times.

He's covering the story.

Justin, nice to see you again.

- Thank you for having me.

- So, let's talk about what happened at the meeting on Friday in Tampa.

Tell us what's the latest.

- Yeah, so I just came from that meeting actually, and I was there for about an hour before coming over to the studio.

And it was very interesting, because people from all walks of the legal system were there to speak out against the consolidation of districts.

Nobody really talked about the private meetings during the meeting today, because at the last minute the committee tasked with the reviewing the judicial circuits decided not to hold today's private meeting.

But everybody who showed up today from public defenders to state attorneys were adamantly against the consolidation.

- Are more private meetings scheduled?

- Yes, in November, there are two more private meetings scheduled currently, but we'll see if it does come to that, yeah.

- So, we have a strong sunshine law here in the state of Florida.

All meetings, government meetings, are supposed to be open to the public.

But I understand that this committee says, "Look, we're a judicial committee so we're exempt from some of the sunshine laws."

Is that what they're saying?

- Yes.

- And what's the other side saying?

- Yeah, so they're saying that the body is a judicial body, which means that a judicial body can meet in private under the sunshine law.

However, not everybody on this committee is judicial, there are lawyers, there's a public defender, there's a state attorney.

So, the other side is saying, "Well, actually, you're not judicial.

You might be quasi-judicial, but you are making a big decision for the public and that should be open in the sunshine."

- Something interesting happened on Friday when the state attorney in Hillsborough County, who was recently appointed by the governor, Susie Lopez, sent a letter to the Attorney General.

What is she asking for?

- Yeah, so late yesterday, Susie Lopez's office sent a letter to the Attorney General's office and I obtained that letter.

And it basically, asked the Attorney General to review whether or not the private sessions that are planned are legal under the sunshine law so.

- Well, she's an appointee of Governor DeSantis, you'd think that she'd be allied with the Speaker of the House, Mr. Renner.

- Yeah, and back in August actually, she said on the record that she supported the review of the districts.

And today though, at the meeting, she was adamantly against it just like everybody else that I saw so far at least.

And same thing with Public Defender Holt, they actually, spoke back to back and they both fully agreed on why this is a bad idea.

- Were you surprised by the range of people who came out to speak out against this idea?

- Yeah, definitely.

Sheriffs from all around the state, like I mentioned, public defenders, attorneys, judges, Hillsborough County commissioners, you know.

It was basically, everybody who's anybody in the legal system had made their way.

And there were, I think over 80 plus speakers signed up to speak today.

And I'm still going back there after this interview to see who else is gonna... - So, what's at stake?

What's a good reason for wanting fewer judicial districts around the state, and what are the opponents saying?

- That's a funny question, because one thing that kept being brought up this morning is that no good reason has been presented.

I guess, Renner, the House Speaker, did say that it would help make things more efficient within the judicial system, but didn't explain how.

Just kind of made that claim.

But everybody who actually works within the system is going, tell us how this would make it more efficient.

If anything they're saying it would disrupt the system for not only constituents, but for prosecutors and for public defenders, because it just merges these districts that are far apart where the people who would be overseeing certain parts of the district, if they were to be merged, wouldn't know anything about that area.

The constituents would have to travel further.

It would disrupt, you know, their process, their judicial process.

So, everything that I'm seeing from everybody who spoke today, from everybody I've talked to for the story I wrote about the private sessions is, you know, really against this whole idea.

I haven't seen one good argument for it.

- Some of the opponents call it gerrymandering.

Why do they call it gerrymandering?

- It would give Republicans more control over the judicial system in Florida in general, if it were to pass.

But even Republicans are coming out against it, right?

Like they are not in full support of it.

Even when the idea was first floated earlier this year, you had Republicans saying, "Wait a second, this doesn't add up.

Like how would this actually work?"

And that's everybody's question is, how would this really play out?

It seems like it would be a logistical nightmare, you know?

And that's what everybody was talking about today, at this morning's meeting, or at Friday's meeting I should say.

- Justin Garcia, thanks a lot for coming by Florida this week.

- Thank you, thank you for having me.

- Thank you for joining us.

Send us your comments at FTE@wedu.org and like us on Facebook.

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