WEBVTT - Collapse or coexistence: Avoiding Israel and Palestine's bleakest futures 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.880 Hi. I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven. 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:14.160 AM as cease fire negotiations with Hamas stall Israeli Prime 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:18.160 Minister Benjamin Netnia, who was expected to hold a security. 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:21.520 Cabinet meeting to finalize a new plan for Gaza. Netnya, 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:25.160 who has been calling for a full military takeover of Gaza, 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:28.760 that that plan is highlighting a rift in Israel's government. 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:33.280 The security meeting has been postponed. Military officials are warning 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:36.720 it would be dangerous and costly and risk further isolating 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:40.239 Israel on the international stage. This all comes as the 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:43.800 International Court of Justice is still weighing South Africa's genocide 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:47.280 case against Israel. According to the Health ministry in Gaza, 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:51.760 the death toll has now surpassed sixty one thousand people today. 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:55.480 Israeli American scholar and professor of Holocaust and genocide studies 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:59.600 Omer Batov on what constitutes a genocide and why only 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:10.520 a new paradigm can save Palestinians and Israelis alike. It's Thursday, 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:19.400 August seventh. Omer I thought we could start with the ICJ, 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:23.680 the International Court of Justice. It's currently considering the question 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:27.480 of whether or not Israel is committing genocide against the 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:31.600 Palestinian people. So, as a scholar of genocide, can you 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:33.839 tell me exactly what that means? 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:39.440 So, the ICJ is considering genocide as it is defined 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:43.240 in the Genocide Convention of nineteen forty eight, and that's 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:46.640 the only definition of genocide that actually matters in this 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:49.800 case and in any case of international law. And that 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:56.120 definician says that genocide are acts committed with the intent 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.920 to destroy a particular group, and that can be an 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:04.120 ethic group, a racial group, a religious or a national 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:08.840 group in whole or in part as such. So what 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:13.480 that means is that in order to find that genocide 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:16.160 is happening, you have to show two things. You have 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:21.080 to show that there's a clear intent to destroy a group, 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:26.200 and secondly, that this intent is being implemented to the 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.320 extent that people who are subjected to genocide are not 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:33.040 subjected to it as individuals, but as members of the group, 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:35.880 because the goal is not to kill all the people, 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:39.280 or name other people, or harm all the people, but 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.360 rather for that group to be destroyed as such. 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.440 And so do you think that Israel's actions now meet 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:47.200 that definition? 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:50.800 Well, I think Asrael's actions have met that definition, at 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.640 least as far as I could tell by May of 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:59.720 twenty twenty four, and the way I saw it because 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:04.839 I about it's already in November twenty three and I 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:07.720 wrote an op ed in the New York Times, and 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:11.480 at the time I argued that it appeared that Israel 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:16.600 was engaged in war crime and crimes against humanity, and 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.720 that there had been general side of statements by leaders 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.720 of Israel in the immediate aftermath of October seventh. 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:29.800 We are putting a complete siege on Gaza, no electricity 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:34.040 in Muzzlim, no food, no water, no gas. It's all 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:37.080 closed with fighting animals, and are acting accordingly. 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:44.280 But these could have been interpreted as simply people were 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:48.280 very really outraged by what happened on October seventh, and 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:52.160 so you could expect, especially in the political climate and Israel, 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:56.480 for people to make very strong statements. They appear to 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:58.920 have a general size of content, and they could also 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.680 have been seen as insight went to soldiers. So in 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:05.400 that piece at the time I said that this could 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.280 develop into genocide, that my intent was to warn to 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:12.760 stop things before it happens. By May of the following 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:16.080 year of twenty twenty four, is very defense for US 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:18.720 as the IDEA decided to move into Rufa, which is 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:22.839 the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip, in which about 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:26.760 half of the population of Gaza was concentrated a million people. 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.320 Israel says it plans to proceed with its planned military 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:35.280 operations in the southern city of Rafa, that despite two 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:40.040 separate International Court rulings this week condemning Israel's actions as 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:41.840 well as the attacks by Hamas. 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.640 And at that point, because the IDEA wanted to move 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.440 into Rufa, it moves all those people, a million people 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:52.840 to another area along the beach so west of there, 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.800 to the Mawasi area, and then went to Rafa and 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:00.719 destroyed it. And BIOLOGUSI was the standard. And at that 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:03.960 point I started examining the following. What is the relationship 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:06.840 between the statements that were made by these politicians and 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:13.360 generals immediately after the massacre and the official war goals, 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:16.640 and the official war goals were to destroy Hamas and 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:17.880 to release the hostages. 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:22.040 I've set three war goals. The first is to release 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:26.200 the hostages, the second is to destroy Hamas, and the 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.080 third is to ensure that Gaza does not pose a 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:31.440 threat to Israel in the future. 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.240 And it appeared to me by then that the ideas 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.760 was not then and is not now actually engaged in 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:42.280 an attempt to destroy Hamas and release the hostages, but 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:47.080 rather to systematically destroy Gaza so as to make it 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:51.240 entirely and inhabitable for its population, and to the extent 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.359 that it's possible to remove it from the Gaza strip altogether. 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:57.919 And as well as the country was founded in the 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:02.080 aftermath of the Holocaust for which the of genocide was created, 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:04.960 so many people in Israel think that it's impossible that 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.160 the country could ever commit a genocide or be found 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:12.440 guilty of doing that. So what would a finding like this, 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:15.640 What would it do to the country, What would it 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:17.719 mean for Israel and for its government? 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:21.120 So you know, this is the sort of the paradox 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:25.480 and the outrage of the whole thing. For many people, 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:29.440 I think, and for me too, the fact that Israel 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:33.400 is now engaged in what appears to be a generocide 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:37.640 or action is an outrage. It's a scandal because it 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.680 does fly in the face of everything that you would 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:43.159 have wanted to believe in. We have a kind of 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:47.400 belief that people learn from genocide and the lesson that 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:50.520 you would draw from having been a victim of one 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:54.479 is to do everything you can to avoid that from 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:58.880 happening right or from participating in one. And in fact 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:03.080 that Israel. For many years, the Holocaust became something else. 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:07.400 It became a warning of imminent danger, not only something 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:13.360 to remember and commemorate and research, but also a clear 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:18.119 and imminent danger that behind every threat to Israel, whether 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:22.200 real or perceived, whether major or minor, behind the corner 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:29.679 Auschwitz was lurking. And that created a state of mind 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:35.480 where the Holocaust is actually a license to violence against others, 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:40.280 rather than something that would prevent you from ever contemplating 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.760 carrying a genocide out like. 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:49.120 This, after the break the two very different futures ahead 0:07:49.120 --> 0:08:02.120 for Israel and Palestine, let's talk a little about what 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:07.000 might come next. For Israel. It's still experiencing significant support 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:11.240 from powerful allies. So while that is the case, what 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:13.000 does the future of the country look like? 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:16.760 Yeah, it's hard to say. You know, I'm a story 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:20.600 and I look back, but I think the future is bleak. 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.840 I can think of two scenarios. Basically, one is likelier 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:29.200 than the other. The first is that this at some 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:31.800 point will end it's actually not a war at all 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:35.120 what is happening in Gaza now because there's no organized 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:37.280 resistance to what the idea of is doing. It's just 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:43.000 a campaign of demolition and ethnic cleansing. But this may 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:46.880 end at some point. But if Israel is unable to 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:50.520 come to terms with this, if the international community just 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.440 sits back, what this has done to Israeli society itself, 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:59.319 quite apart from destroying Palestinian society, is that Israel is 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:05.080 becoming increase seemly violent within its own borders. It will become, 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:09.800 I think, a fore blown apartheid state. It's become increasingly authoritarian. 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:12.480 There's a great deal of police violence, not only against 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:17.320 Palestinians but also against protesters, against people who oppose the government, 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.720 and I think it will become a pariah state. It 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:24.240 won't be able to survive as such for very long. 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:28.319 It will implode. What will happen then is hard to say. 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:33.600 So that's the dire scenario. There is another scenario, which 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:37.640 is that Israel will be forced because there's no internal 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.600 dynamic in Israel now to force this change, but that 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.000 Israel will be forced by pressures from outside, from its 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:48.719 own allies. For its own good, to change the political paradigm, 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:53.200 not out of anti Israeli, sentimental anti Semitism or any 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:56.520 of that, but rather to save it from its own demons, 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.599 to change the political paradigm, and to seek out a 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:03.240 waigh for seven million Palestinians and seven million Jews who 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:06.520 live in that area to share that space, rather than 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.720 to try using bombs to resolve this dispute between them. 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:13.600 Can you tell me a bit more about what that 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:17.040 pressure could look like? As you've said, you're historians, so 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:21.480 what moments in history can we draw from in thinking 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:21.959 about this. 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.400 You cannot expect the country that's carried out genocide against 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:31.440 another group too simply after some years to say, Okay, 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:35.080 we're really sorry about it and we won't do it again. 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:37.880 There has to be much more of a process. One 0:10:37.920 --> 0:10:40.960 of course, is the example of South Africa. And South 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:45.319 Africa is important here because South Africa, no one, I 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:50.040 mean most people anticipated that apartheid would collapse into a bloodbath, 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.800 and that's not what happened. So I would not want 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:58.040 to idealize South Africa now. It's not an ideal place. 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:02.920 But the way that apart the Aparthe regime fell was 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.120 a combination of several factors. Two of the most important 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:11.000 were first, huge pressure on South Africa and second that 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:14.920 there were people there who could take up this leadership 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:18.760 and lead their own nation to a distant future. And 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.839 that too is crucial. There's a moment in which you 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:25.560 need those people and you need to support them, you 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.560 need to stand behind them. And in the case of 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:32.720 South Africa, the international community played a huge role. And again, 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:36.520 I mean, if you think about what happened in nineteen 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:40.000 forty five in Europe, the Allies could have come into Europe, 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:44.320 into Germany and destroyed it because it thoughts out such 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.200 a terrible war. There could have been a politics of 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:51.920 retribution and destruction and mass arrest and even genocide, and 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:54.960 they could have done that. And instead the institute the 0:11:54.960 --> 0:12:00.000 Marshall Plan and rebuilt Germany. And that's why you became 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.520 what it is today. And so you can see that 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:08.080 vision and generosity and understanding that you cannot go back 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.560 to the past, that you must build something new actually 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:14.120 can work. It's not just some kind of you know, 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:18.840 liberal pipe dream. It has actually worked in the past, 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:21.720 and it could work in the Middle East as well. 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.160 Most people, most is rarely Jews and most Pedestinians don't 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:29.200 want to live in this kind of reality that they're 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:32.640 living in now. They don't love it. They would like 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:34.760 to see a different future, but nobody is offering it 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:35.079 to them. 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:38.840 Yeah, for something like that to work, you need outside pressure, 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:42.280 but you also need people within those countries to be 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:45.680 willing to push for that kind of change. So how 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:48.320 do you see that happening? Given the state of the 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:50.440 relationship between Israel and Palestine. 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:55.040 There is a group of Pedestinians and Jews, Israeli Jews 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:57.680 who have been thinking now for several years, since started 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:01.679 before October seventh, of a different way of rethinking this. 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:04.880 Because so many politicians always say, well, we'll support the 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:08.839 two state solution, it's a kind of fig leaf to saying, well, 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:11.720 we'd like to see something, and the two state solution 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:15.079 as it is now seen is not going to happen. 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:19.640 This group is thinking about the creation of a consideration 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:23.720 between Israel and Palestine, two sovereign states that would be 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:27.280 in consideration with each other. They would have open borders, 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.320 and they would make a distinction between citizenship and residents, 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.120 so that people could be citizens of one state and 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:36.800 live in the other, but they would vote and be 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:40.880 politically active in the state of their nationality. There is 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:43.920 a lot of creative thinking behind that, and I think 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:50.560 that countries like Australia, like Norway, like Germany can actually 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:54.319 help the people who are trying to put together these plans, 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:58.920 who are trying to advertise them to the rest of 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:04.920 the world, together with pressure on Israel itself. I'm trying 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.959 to be hopeful. Of course, this is not something that 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:14.239 would happen tomorrow, but if they were international assistants, combined 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:17.600 with real pressure on its role, with economic pressure, so 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:20.800 that people would know that if they continue on this path, 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:25.880 they will become increasingly isolated, I think something at least 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:29.640 we can see that not as the opportunity that Israeli 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:33.640 policymakers saw October seventh as, which was the opportunity to 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:38.000 destroy Pedestinian existence in Gaza, but rather as an opportunity 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:42.680 to change entirely the relationship between Jews and Pedestinians in 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:43.280 that region. 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:51.200 Oma, thank you for your time, Thank you very much. 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:07.880 Also in the news today, US President Donald Trump indicated 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.280 he would not interfere with possible Israeli plans to occupy 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:14.840 the entirety of the Gaza Strip. Asked about reports of 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:18.520 a potential military takeover of Gaza, Donald Trump stated it 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:22.440 was pretty much up to Israel, saying his administration's focus 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:27.160 was on increasing food access to Palestinians. And An indigenous 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:29.960 group has launched an appeal to prevent the construction of 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:32.120 a stadium that would be used for the twenty thirty 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.800 two Olympics in Brisbane. It follows the Queensland government fast 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:40.160 tracking legislation to override fifteen environmental and Heritage Acts in 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:44.520 order to build the stadium. The Yugara Mrganjin Aboriginal Corporation 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:48.040 lodged a protection application with the federal government, saying the 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:53.360 site contains stories, ancient trees and possible ancestral remains and 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:55.880 Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening. 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:03.000 A blow of money