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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Death Toll Mounts As Israeli-Palestinian Fighting Intensifies; Exclusive Interview With International Human Rights Lawyer Amal Clooney And Nobel Peace Prize Winner Nadia Murad As They Take The Fight Against ISIS To The Courtroom. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired May 16, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:30]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you live from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the show, the Middle East is on fire yet again. As the U.N. warns the conflict could turn into full scale war. What is behind this eruption and what is going to put the conflagration out? I will talk to Martin Indyk and Rashid Khalidi.

And Amal Clooney is on a quest to bring ISIS to justice for genocide. But she said the U.S. government is not interested enough.

AMAL CLOONEY, INTERNATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER: They deserve better than the response that they're getting.

ZAKARIA: I'll have an exclusive interview with Clooney and the Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first here's my take. The Republican Party's decision in effect to excommunicate Liz Cheney is a watershed event. It marks the final transformation of the party from an ideologically driven enterprise to one that is tribal, marked less by ideas and more by group loyalty.

Let's compare the voting records of Liz Cheney to the woman who replaced her as chair of the House Republican Conference, Elise Stefanik. The American Conservative Union gives Cheney a lifetime score of 78 out of 100 for her consistent conservatism. Stefanik gets a 44, which is one of the lowest scores for a House Republican these days. Cheney reliably voted for Trump's policies while Stefanik was one of only 12 House Republicans to vote against the former president's signature legislation, the 2017 tax cut.

But Stefanik has pledged fealty to Trump and his big lie about fraud in the 2020 election while Cheney will not. And Republicans these days care more about tribal loyalty than conservative principles. This is a big shift. During the 20th century, the party evolved from a

country club for wealthy elites, itself a kind of tribe, into a party animated by ideas. The struggle began in the 1950s. As "National Review" publisher William Rusher once noted modern American conservatism largely organized itself during and in explicit opposition to the Eisenhower administration.

Barry Goldwater railed against his own party for daring to compromise with new deal liberals. He thundered on the Senate floor in 1960, "We have said for nearly 30 years that the welfare state, centralized government and federal control are wrong. But in spite of that, say a little bit is all right.

We are against federal aid to schools but we have suggested a little of it. We are against federal aid to depressed areas but we have offered a plan for a little of it. We recognize that to increase the minimum wage would be inflationary and would result in unemployment, but we suggest a little increase."

Goldwater created the staunchly conservative base that would take over the party. But his free-market ideology was so extreme that it proved too toxic to implement. Conservatives were forever promising the repeal of the new deal and that the great society but never actually delivering.

This became the Republican dynamic. Fire up the base with visions of rollback and then once in power quietly accommodate to the reality that most Americans actually wanted the welfare state. It created what E.J. Dionne calls the politics of betrayal, a narrative in which conservative ideas get sold out because of Republican cowardice.

Enter Newt Gingrich, who found a way to keep conservatives charged up by focusing less on ideas and more on attitudes. Gingrich destroyed then Republican minority leader Robert Michael, an old-fashioned politician, often called Mr. Nice guy. He led the attack on George H.W. Bush for striking a deal with Democrats and raising taxes which ensured that Bush lost his bid for re-election.

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He ousted Democratic speaker Jim Wright on flimsy accusations, masterfully using innuendo, exaggeration and slander. He tutored a generation of Republicans to remake their rhetoric coaching them to use words like sick, traitor, corrupt and selfish when describing Democrats.

The Republican Party became the fight club party. Over time Republicans' dedication to their core ideas began to wear thin. It was difficult to claim fealty to fiscal conservatism when the party had consistently been instrumental in creating massive deficits.

Nixon and Reagan in various ways actually expanded the welfare state. And elder Bush was a lifelong moderate while the younger spoke of a compassionate conservatism that would use the federal government to solve social and economic problems, and the Iraq war discredited the ideological basis of Republican internationalism. So Donald Trump picked up where Newt Gingrich had left off. He again

energized the Republican Party around attitudes, mostly resentments aimed at liberal elites and foreigners, Chinese, Mexicans and Muslims, whom he painted basically as foreigners. Trump was socially conservative and yet economically he violated free market principles all the time.

Embracing tariffs, assailing big companies and providing generous subsidies to his favorite constituents such as farmers. But he understood the increasingly ethnic base of the party and his rhetoric was pitch perfect in exploiting the insecurities of the white working class.

Liz Cheney says she will fight to rebuild a Republican Party based on conservative principles but that battle was lost years ago. The Republican Party today is not a movement dedicated to ideas, but a tribe devoted to self-preservation, defined by anger and emotions, and organized around a clannish loyalty to its leader.

Go to CNN.com/fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column and for more tune in my new special, "A RADICAL REBELLION, THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE GOP" Tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. And let's get started.

The U.N. Security Council is convening this hour to discuss the increasingly dire conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas fired more than 120 rockets overnight according to the Israeli Air Force and Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 43 Palestinians so far on Sunday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Palestinian officials say in total at least 188 people in Gaza and 21 in the West Bank have died in the conflict. Many of the dead have been women and children.

Israel reports at least 10 dead including two children. Meanwhile on the diplomatic front, President Biden called for an end to the violence when he spoke Saturday with both Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.

Let's get the latest on the ground from CNN's great Nic Robertson who joins us live from Ashdod, an Israeli city just north of the Gaza Strip.

Welcome, Nic. Let me ask you, when people hear the numbers, you know, the disproportion in terms of casualties, so about 20 Palestinians for every Israeli who have died, about the same number injured. Does it feel like that on the ground?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: I think when you're outside of Gaza, there's an entirely different sense of the level of danger you face than if you're inside of Gaza. Gaza is a very densely populated place. It is a relatively small place. And the Israeli Defense Forces say that they know that Hamas put some of its operational equipment, people, material in amongst the civilian population.

The Israeli government makes the point of saying that they are defending the -- you know, the civilians that they go out of their way to make sure that they don't hit civilians whereas Hamas they say fires their rockets indiscriminately. But undoubtedly when you look at those figures and see 188 people killed in Gaza and 10 Israeli citizens killed so far, those numbers speak to a level of threat. I think it's hard to draw a conclusion.

But they don't mitigate, they don't eradicate that sense of fear and desperateness about the situation, but people on both sides of this conflict feel. They both feel fear. Whether you're sitting on this side or the other side.

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That disproportionality is what in the past has brought international pressure on Israel to back off, to try to find a peaceful solution.

ZAKARIA: This time what seems different, and you tell me if I'm wrong, Nic, is you are beginning to see clashes within Israel, within Israel proper, among Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews on a scale certainly that I don't recall having seen before.

ROBERTSON: There is a ferocity and an intensity there that really flashed a couple of days ago and that really has caught everyone by surprise. I think one of the other things about this time, this particular conflict around Gaza, is the speed with which it's happened, the massive number of rockets that have been fired in a relatively short space of time. That's certainly the IDF's perception of the situation.

The sort of speed with which the escalation has come and the consequences and the way that it's played out on the streets in Israel and mixed cities and towns is something that really, you know, speaks to some serious significant underlying tensions that are coming to the surface in the way that they haven't in the past.

I think if you look at the signaling that's going on here at the moment this weekend, last night Hamas signaled that they would not hit -- not fire rockets at Tel Aviv on the coast for a period of two hours between 10:00 p.m. and midnight and then right after midnight they fired those rockets.

But they signaled there their ability to pause, to, in effect, you wouldn't call it a ceasefire, but that's what it amounted to. On the Israeli side, the signaling today, the highest death toll so far in Gaza, signals that there are still a large number of targets that the Israeli Defense Forces want to hit. They struck the house of the leader of Hamas. That's a political message right there. They've struck today weapon source that Hamas uses.

So from an Israeli perspective, it seems that there is more to be done. From a Hamas perspective, it seems that they're signaling that their own political gains have maybe been achieved.

ZAKARIA: Nic, you've covered this conflict for a long time. You've covered others like Yugoslavia. When you look at this, does it feel to you that you -- are you hopeful that we are moving toward a ceasefire or does what strike you as this time is different, there seems to be this eruption of internal tension? You know, very quickly give us just your own gut feeling about all this.

ROBERTSON: My gut feeling is that there is a good possibility that this would de-escalate next week. Certainly the meeting at the United Nations will call for that and there's certainly pressure coming from the Biden administration for that to happen. So there is a good possibility for that.

Nevertheless, the actual root of the conflict remains in a cul-de-sac and the direction of travel is towards the end of that cul-de-sac. No one has opened the road out of this dead end, if you will, to really get to the root issues over land and find a lasting durable peace solution. What may happen now will likely just be a temporary band-aid again.

ZAKARIA: As always, brilliant reporting. Thank you, Nic, and stay safe.

Stay with us. Let me bring in now Rashid Khalidi and Martin Indyk. Khalidi is the professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and Indyk was the United States special envoy for Israel-Palestinian negotiations under President Obama. He also served two different stints as the U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Clinton.

Rashid, let me begin by asking you, what is the root of this -- and don't go back all the way, you know, decades and decades, what I mean is this didn't just begin with the rockets and the airstrikes. Explain to us what was happening in terms of what Israel was doing in East Jerusalem which seems to have triggered all of this.

RASHID KHALIDI, PROFESSOR OF MODERN ARAB STUDIES, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: That is what triggered it. The assault on the Al-Aqsa mosque, firing stun grenades and tear gas into the mosque while people are worshipping on a Ramadan night. And when the attempted evictions, the dispossession, the expulsion of Palestinian refugees who have been settled in East Jerusalem and homes which Jewish groups claimed set everything off, as did the heavy handed policing of the Israels in the streets of the Old City.

But those are linked to older issues. I know people don't want to go back, but when people who are refugees from 1948 are being evicted yet again, it strikes a chord with Palestinians everywhere.

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Everybody in Jordan, in Israel, Palestinians in Israel, Palestinians all over the world react to this and understand this. And so each of these actions, the attack on the Al-Aqsa mosque, on a night of Ramadan when worshipers were actually praying and other actions in Jerusalem, in each case, raised for Palestinians who were frustrated and angry, in any case because of the kind of oppression that they're subject to in different ways in different parts of old mandatory Palestine.

It raised for them all of these old issues and traumas, and things have been bubbling for quite a while and I think what happened in the Al-Aqsa mosque was actually the trigger. ZAKARIA: Martin, there were -- I saw Palestinian activists and

observers saying they felt that the reason this was happening was that the Netanyahu government was trying to essentially Judah-ize Jerusalem, that is to turn it away from a kind of place -- city that was in many ways a shared space for Palestinians and Israelis and make it more completely and wholly a Jewish city. Is that fair?

MARTIN INDYK, FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: I do think it's fair. The process has been going on for a very long time in Jerusalem. But I think it is been given a turbo boost as a result of domestic Israeli politics in which Netanyahu is struggling to find a way to form a government, has brought in and legitimized the most extreme right-wing racist organizations and their leadership into the mainstream and into the right-wing list and into the Knesset, and that's given a boost to these extremists who are pushing their agenda at a time when I think the political class was distracted by trying to form a government, and as a consequence of that, you see that in Jerusalem.

We've also seen it in the West Bank where the settler movement has been pushing to try to expand the settlements, building settlement outposts that are illegal under Israeli law and now trying to legalize them through the Knesset. So the recent period, so the last 10 years, has seen a swing in Israel to the right and that pendulum is still being swing further to the right and that has enabled this kind of chauvinistic extremism to gain a greater grip and that has roiled things with the Palestinians.

ZAKARIA: Let me quickly just ask a follow-up, Martin, which is, does that mean that Bibi Netanyahu might be able to use this crisis as a way to stay in power somehow?

INDYK: It's entirely possible. There have been four elections in Israel in two years in which Netanyahu and his right-wing religious coalition, notwithstanding what I've just said, have been unable to form a stable government and it looks like as a result of this outbreak of conflict that Israel will head back into a fifth election and we'll have to see whether the conflict will give him a boost because he's been tough in cracking down on the Palestinians, or whether Israelis will turn around and say, you know, you brought us these problems with your indulgence of the chauvinistic extremist right, racist right, and you're to blame for this.

It's impossible in the heat of the conflict to tell at this moment how it's going to happen. But, you know, you discussed with Nic this question of the surprising way in which this conflict has spilled over into Israel proper and the violence between Jewish and Arab mobs within Israel, that comes in the context of Netanyahu actually legitimatizing the move of Israeli Arab parties into the mainstream of Israeli politics, and I hope that the Israelis will come to see that that was the right path, that equal rights for Israelis, Israel's Arab citizens is something positive that should come out of this conflict.

ZAKARIA: And Rashid, when you look at the Palestinian side, is there also a story here of greater polarization? It seems that Hamas has gained a certain amount of the momentum. Abbas once again postponed elections.

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I can't remember when the last time was allowed elections in the West Bank was. Explain to us what the dynamic is on the Palestinian side.

KHALIDI: 2006 was the last election. Yes, there is no question. But the undermining of the Palestinian Authority by the kind of extremism that has developed increasingly in Israel. And as a result of the malign neglect by American policy makers of every substantial issue in Palestine.

Refugees, Jerusalem. The United States has not addressed these issues for decades. In fact, they would not allow Palestinian negotiators to address them in negotiations Martin himself was involved in decades ago.

The malign neglect by the United States of these issues and the humiliation of the Palestinian Authority which is weak and lacks a great deal of legitimacy because as you said the last elections were 15 years ago, 14 years ago. All of these things I think contributed. But the spark again was Jerusalem, the spark again is dispossession of people who have already been dispossessed.

If you don't address refugee issues, if you don't address property issues, if you don't address control of the holy places in Jerusalem, if you support normalization deals with Arab countries while ignoring all of these issues, sooner or later you're putting tinder place that's going to do lead to a conflagration and of course Hamas exploited that. There's no question of that.

As it exploited the increasing extremism of Israelis encouraged by this government, this Israeli government over the last 10 years, which has not just led to settlers burning Palestinian olive groves in the West Bank or attacking Palestinians, has not just led to these marches calling for death to the Arabs through the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, is leading to some of these extremists coming from the West Bank to cities like Haifa, like Lid, like Atka, like Java, and essentially provoking the Arab residents by trying to establish in Arab neighborhoods a Jewish presence, something that's been happening by the way in Jerusalem in the West Bank literally for 53 years.

So I think that you can talk about the internal divisions amongst the Palestinians which are a terrible problem for the Palestinians, but I think you have to talk about both the role of the United States, which I think has actually seriously exacerbated this conflict through everything that's been done by administration after administration and of course the things that are going on inside Israel are major contributor.

And who sends the police into the third holiest mosque in Islam to fire stun grenades and tear gas? We saw the images. CNN carried them. At worshipers on one of the holiest nice of Ramadan. I mean, who does that?

And what kind of government orders that kind of thing and with what kind of domestic shenanigans as the motivation? The desperation of Netanyahu to get people like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich into his government led him to curry favor with literally the most extreme, most racist elements in Israeli society.

Some of them were stirring up trouble in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood where people were about to be evicted. Some of them led these marches through the Arab quarters, neighborhoods of the Old City of Jerusalem, smashing down people's doors, calling for death to Arabs. These are people being courted by the prime minister.

So the prime minister of Israel and, I would argue, the United States government because of its malign neglect of the core issues, not putting a band-aid on this, not just getting a cease-fire, dealing with these issues over I would argue multiple administrations is where you get the situation that you have.

In addition of course I would argue, I agree with you, Palestinian division is an enormous problem but it's a problem for the Palestinians and it's a problem that's exacerbated by external support for different factions, not just by Iran, and everybody talks about Iran and Hamas, by the United States, by Israel, by different Arab counties, by Turkey. This is a Palestinian problem the Palestinians have to solve but the meddling by outside actors has muddied the waters and it kept the Palestinians divided which is a strategic objective of course of Israel.

ZAKARIA: Martin, Rashid brings up the United States. The Trump administration's Abraham Accord Initiative and really its entire policy was premised on the idea the Palestinian issue was not that important, the Arabs really cared more about an anti-Iranian alliance, an anti-Shiite alliance, in a sense. Does this demonstrate that that was all wrong or will we see that at the end of the day the Saudis, the UAE, Egypt will not do much to help the Palestinians?

INDYK: Well, I think that that is true and has been true for a very long time. But what the Trump administration did was not just to promote normalization between Israel and the Arabs, that was in fact something that the United Arab Emirates brought up. It wasn't their agenda. Their agenda was, if you remember, Fareed, the deal of the century.

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It was actually an Israeli-Palestinian deal and it contributed to the tensions that have exploited now because it took these core issues, some of which Rashid has been referring to, and that are part of the negotiation, a final agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, and it came in and sided with Israel on every one of these issues so there was nothing in it for the Palestinians, and that unfortunately undermined America's role as an honest broker, as a mediator in these negotiations.

In fact, the Palestinians didn't -- wouldn't talk to the Trump administration, something like for three years after they moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. So I think that the normalization process, while a good thing in itself, did nothing to deal with the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. And these --

ZAKARIA: Martin, I'm sorry -- I'm sorry to interrupt you but we're out of time. These are incredibly important issues that are not going away. Both of you have been so brilliant in explaining them to us. We will have both of you back. Thank you.

Next on GPS, my exclusive interview with international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad as they take the fight against ISIS to the courtroom when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice over): In August 2013, ISIS captured a 26-year-old American aid worker, Kayla Mueller. She ended up in the custody of Abu Sayyaf, a top ISIS leader, and his wife, Umm Sayyaf. Held alongside her were Yazidis, members of a long-persecuted ancient religious group.

According to Amal Clooney, the international human rights lawyer who represents some of the Yazidi women, the captives were enslaved by the Sayyafs and subjected to torture, rape, beatings and starvation.

(UNKNOWN): We all were scared and crying because we didn't know what was awaiting us. They were dragging the girls, beating them and taking them forcibly.

ZAKARIA: Clooney says the terror leader's wife facilitated the rapes.

In February of 2015, Kayla Mueller died while being held by ISIS.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're taking out ISIL leaders, commanders and killers, one by one.

ZAKARIA: In a U.S. raid three months later, Abu Sayyaf was killed.

(UNKNOWN): Abu Sayyaf is dead.

ZAKARIA: His wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured in the same raid, and in 2016 she was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS.

But in the ensuing five years, Clooney says, the case has gone nowhere. She wants justice for her clients, so she's now using a little-known law to try to get it.

AMAL CLOONEY, INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER: I call on states that believe in human rights to commit to holding international trials.

ZAKARIA: Clooney joins me, along with Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who was held captive by ISIS as a sex slave.

NADIA MURAD, FORMER ISIS CAPTIVE AND NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER: I'm fearful that survivors will never receive justice.

ZAKARIA: Murad won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for her work to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (on camera): Amal, Nadia, welcome.

Amal, let me start with you and ask you, how are you going to do this? Because what your plan now, as I understand it, is to use an American law to bring justice to an ISIS leader for something that happened in Syria. It sounds ambitious.

How will you do you it?

CLOONEY: Yes, well, thank you very much, Fareed, for having us on today. We are using a U.S. law, and the argument is that this is a case that should be before a U.S. court, because there was a crime, a very serious crime, committed against my clients who are members of the Yazidi faith but also against an American young woman.

The perpetrator was apprehended by U.S. forces and she was charged in the Eastern District of Virginia. And what my clients want to know is why was she then transferred from Syria to Iraq and instead of being brought to the United States to stand trial.

ZAKARIA: This is a larger struggle for you, Amal. You've been trying to get justice for the Yazidis. And it feels like you are, in this very inventive, piecemeal way, trying to find ways to do it.

Why isn't there -- why isn't there something simpler to do?

I mean, this is so clearly such a horrendous crime.

CLOONEY: Um-hmm.

ZAKARIA: Would there be -- you know, in an ideal world, would there be another way of getting justice?

CLOONEY: Yeah, absolutely. And we actually have the institutions that are supposed to be the answer to this. It's the U.N. Security Council and it's the International Criminal Court. But, of course, the problem is that, in the recent years, the U.N. Security Council has been blocked every time there has been a serious crisis and a serious effort to respond to that crisis. We've had vetoes in the council.

And although two-thirds of the world states are members of the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over these crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, for the time being, the United States stands with China and Russia in being outside of the court.

And so my hope is that, under this new Biden administration, we'll start to see some changes. And, you know, it's not inevitable for the U.S. not to be playing a leading role on these issues. Actually, the U.S. has a proud legacy of being a leader when it comes to international justice. It was the U.S. that pressed for trials of the Nazis. It was the U.S. that led the effort for U.N. trials after the genocide in Bosnia and in Rwanda. And there are indications from statements that President Biden has

already made and Secretary of State Blinken that there will be a new approach to foreign policy that puts human rights back in the center. And that can obviously make a world of difference.

ZAKARIA: Nadia, you know the -- the kind of horror stories that we have all just been hearing. You were yourself taken as a sex slave. When you hear these stories, what do you want the world to know about this?

MURAD: Well, thank you so much for having me again. It's great to be with you and Amal again.

I -- I came out, and it was not easy for me and other survivors to deal with. But we are doing it in the past seven years in hope that ISIS will be held accountable for -- for what they did to women and the whole community.

They -- they have committed a -- a genocide and sexual violence against more than 6,000 Yazidi women and children. So we -- we are doing this and we -- we hope that the world leaders will do their job and do what is right. It would deliver justice for survivors of sexual violence, not only Yazidis but all survivors in -- everywhere that they have been abused. And they hope that -- they hope that they will not just listen.

ZAKARIA: Nadia, thank you. When we come back, you will hear one of the women who was held by Abu Sayyaf and his wife, Umm Sayyaf, who will bear witness to the atrocities that were inflicted upon her.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: I am back now with Amal Clooney and the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, talking about the crimes perpetrated by ISIS.

I want you to hear something that is difficult to hear, a woman talking about how Umm Sayyaf, the wife of an ISIS leader, herself prepared this witness to be raped by the ISIS terrorist, her husband.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(UNKNOWN) (TRANSLATED): Before I was raped, Umm Sayyaf asked me to take a shower. Moreover, she put makeup and perfume on me and dressed me up. Then she took me to him and he raped me.

Umm Sayyaf was an ISIS member, just like Abu Sayyaf. They were like partners because she was preparing and taking us to them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Amal, you talked to so many of these women. You've represented so many like Nadia and the person we just heard from. How difficult was it to get them to talk about their experiences, these horrific experiences? CLOONEY: You know, it's actually incredible, Fareed. People have

really wanted to come forward. And, you know, I sometimes get asked, "But don't victims just prefer to move on with their lives instead of pursuing justice and having to go through these harrowing interviews?"

And the point is they can't move on. And they deserve better than the response that they're getting. But Nadia was incredible in her determination to achieve some justice for her community. And so Nadia and I, for years, advocated before the U.N. and with governments to say, "At least collect the evidence of these crimes so that the possibility of justice is preserved, so that there's a chance to have trials."

And, actually, just this week at the U.N., the U.N. body that was set up by the Security Council pursuant to this advocacy has released its findings in relation to crimes against the Yazidis. And, finally, we have an official determination that the crimes constitute genocide, that -- that ISIS had the intent to destroy in whole or in part this group because of their religion, because they prayed in a different way, and that it sought to destroy biologically the ability of women to give birth to the next generation of Yazidis.

And this milestone is incredibly important. We know from the Armenian example that it matters to victims for these crimes to be called what they are, and in this case it's genocide.

But that's not enough. What we said this week at the United Nations is, "OK, you had this investigation. The investigation has determined the nature of the crimes." They've also pointed to a staggering number, 1,444 potential named perpetrators. And they've developed 14 detailed case files against principal perpetrators.

And now what we're saying is, "You have to use this evidence in international trials. And the victims deserve nothing less."

And that's true for the Yazidis. It's true for the Rohingyas, victims of genocide in Myanmar. You know, it's -- it's -- it's just awful to watch, in each of the conflicts, even going back to the protesters in Syria 10 years ago who were holding up these banners, you know, "Assad to the Hague," and calling out to freedom-loving nations to help, and instead often they're left to be slaughtered.

And so if we can't, as an international community, prevent these crimes, the least we can do is try to punish them. And I think we have the beginning of a process. There are trials ongoing as well in Germany, including the first trial for genocide in Germany against an ISIS fighter. And I represent a victim in that trial.

So there are some governments stepping up to fill this gap, this impunity gap. But we have to do more. And I think the U.S. government can really make a difference if they choose to be defenders of international justice once again.

ZAKARIA: Finally, Nadia, how do you retain hope?

This has been such a long, drawn-out struggle for you. MURAD: Well, I -- I really hope that the world will send a clear

message that impunity is not accepted and that survivors of sexual violence will see their day in court. I hope that more than 2,000 Yazidi women and children that are still missing in captivity, including my -- my niece, my nephew, my sister-in-law, will be rescued from ISIS captivity and that survivors will feel safe when they -- when they talk about their personal -- sharing their personal stories.

I hope that the international community can help us to heal through justice, through right and justice, and that they will help communities like Yazidis to go back home and live a dignified life and feel secure to go back, and that ISIS will not be free, and that impunity will never be an option for -- for those who committed genocides and sexual violence against minorities and especially women and children.

ZAKARIA: Thanks to both of you for your extraordinary work.

CLOONEY: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: And we will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: I began today's show with a watershed event for the Republican Party that took place this week, the ousting of Liz Cheney. I want to end the show with another watershed event, one that explains the birth of the modern Republican Party. It's from my upcoming special "A Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP," which airs at 8:00 p.m. Eastern tonight.

The year is 1964, the setting San Francisco's Cow Palace, a massive arena built to showcase cattle. It was used that year to house the Republican National Convention.

It was a showdown. That's because the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, one of the most right-wing politicians in the country.

But the Republican Party was still the home of many prominent liberals like Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York. This was the party of Lincoln. It still got a sizable portion of the black vote. And many of those voters protested Goldwater's candidacy.

One of the most prominent of Goldwater's black Republican critics was also one of the country's most beloved figures, the former baseball great Jackie Robinson, the first black American to play in the major leagues. Watch this clip from the special.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Forty thousand people, half of them Negroes, demonstrate against Goldwater.

ZAKARIA (voice over): Those who felt unwanted took to the streets outside the Cow Palace, including Jackie Robinson. At the heart of their anger, the 1964 Civil Rights bill, signed into law just days before the convention began. Barry Goldwater was one of only 27 senators to vote against it.

FORMER SEN. BARRY GOLDWATER (R) ARIZ: We are being asked to destroy the rights of some under the false banner of promoting the civil rights of others.

(APPLAUSE)

ZAKARIA: Historians say Goldwater was not a racist. But most agree he did not do enough to denounce segregation.

(CROWD CHANTING)

ZAKARIA: At the convention, the racial climate is growing uglier.

(UNKNOWN): The Negro race sends a very...

(UNKNOWN): You see me first as a Negro and then as a human. I'm first a human being.

ANNOUNCER: They've got a (inaudible) demonstrator (inaudible) up the center aisle.

ZAKARIA: A black man protesting Goldwater is dragged out by security. Others are spat on, called racist names.

(UNKNOWN): It does represent to a lot of people watching on TV, you know, a Nuremberg rally.

(UNKNOWN): Jackie Robinson said he thought he knew what it felt like to be a jew in Hitler's Germany.

JACKIE ROBINSON, MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYER: Any self-respecting Negro must walk out of this convention.

ZAKARIA: America's most famous black Republican had finally seen enough.

QUESTION: Mr. Robinson...

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: ... President Johnson?

ROBINSON: Yes, I would very strongly vote for President Johnson over Goldwater. There's no question about that

ZAKARIA: He walked out of the convention and the party for good.

ROBINSON: We will not stand silently for any major party nominating a man who, in my opinion, is a bigot and a man who will attempt to prevent us from moving forward.

(APPLAUSE)

GOLDWATER: I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

(APPLAUSE)

(UNKNOWN): He called his supporters to be extremists, to be radicals. Was it a watershed moment in America? Yes, it was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: That call to extremism would lose Goldwater the election and the black vote, which fled the party en masse. But it would win him the soul of the Republican Party. Goldwater created what came to be called "the base," the conservative core of the party that would dominate it for the next six decades.

Then came Trump and his own remaking of the party.

Please do watch my new special "A Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP," at 8:00 p.m. Eastern tonight.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you tonight and then again next week.