Speaker 1: All the media. Welcome to Klappened Here, a podcast that
Speaker 1: is once again about Palestine. Hopefully you listen to yesterday's
Speaker 1: episode of this. One's going to be a little bit
Speaker 1: out of sorts, but yeah, we are continuing and finishing
Speaker 1: up a conversation about Israel and setular colonialism. So strap
Speaker 1: in and enjoy the show. If you were trying to
Speaker 1: generate in a lab a place where you could turn
Speaker 1: a bunch of people into fascists, it would be it
Speaker 1: would be these settlements. This has a bunch of downstream
Speaker 1: political effects, right. One of them is that, okay, so
Speaker 1: whose lands are you taking here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: The answer here is it's a lot of Palestinian farmers.
Speaker 1: And you know, once you kick farmers off their land,
Speaker 1: they can't be farmers anymore. And this leaves them with
Speaker 1: two choices. One slee Palestine altogether. And this is really
Speaker 1: really hard. We talked about it on this show. It
Speaker 1: is really really difficult to get out or your other
Speaker 1: option is to become cheap labor for Israeli capitalists. And
Speaker 1: this is another another part of the sort of self
Speaker 1: reinforcing dynamic of these engines, right, is like, you know,
Speaker 1: if if you're dealing with the population that doesn't have
Speaker 1: the means to support themselves except for you know, these
Speaker 1: these Israeli like work passes that they like, you know,
Speaker 1: like bestow upon the benited population. Like it's it makes
Speaker 1: it incredibly hard for there to be any sort of
Speaker 1: physicist movement. And you know the other thing that David
Speaker 1: Grea was pointing out that you know, he was, I
Speaker 1: think like ahead of the curve on in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Is I mean, this has been happening for
Speaker 1: a long time, but the Israeli like electoral left is
Speaker 1: just gone. Israelly Labor, which is like the like Israeli
Speaker 1: Labor is the party that built Israel right, Like it
Speaker 1: was Israeli Labor guys who like pulled together this the
Speaker 1: entire Zionist coalition and like turned them in to the
Speaker 1: engine that could actually win the war. In forty eight,
Speaker 1: Labor was outperformed by fucking Handash in the most recent election.
Speaker 1: This has happened several times. Hadash is an alliance of
Speaker 1: the Israeli communists and like left Arab nationalists. And when
Speaker 1: I say they do better, and it's not to say
Speaker 1: that Hadash is doing well, but like you know, they're
Speaker 1: both pulling at like four percent right, and Israeli labor
Speaker 1: again like has ruled is ruled Israel for like a
Speaker 1: like a very magnificant part of his history. They are
Speaker 1: now nothing. Right, there's four percent of the vote. They
Speaker 1: have the same amount of vote as the oldest as
Speaker 1: the Israeli like and specifically I should mention this is
Speaker 1: this is the this is the like anti occupation communists.
Speaker 1: This is another one of the sort of dynamics of
Speaker 1: settlerism that you know, this is sort of is universally true, right,
Speaker 1: this is It's not just Israel where a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who are normally leftist, a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: like you know, fought in their own liberation struggles and
Speaker 1: get turned into just like absolutely fanatical right wingers. There
Speaker 1: are an enormous number of United Irishmen, rebels from the
Speaker 1: Rebellion of eighteen seventy eight in Ireland who go to
Speaker 1: the US and you know, wind up a bunch of
Speaker 1: these people wind up in the American Army to a
Speaker 1: bunch of these people wind up like I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess it's technically not the Indian Wars, but like a
Speaker 1: lot of these people wind up like fighting the Creeks
Speaker 1: in eighteen twelve. These people could become the front line
Speaker 1: of settler expansion in the US. And this this happens
Speaker 1: again with like German and French like liberals and socialists
Speaker 1: who flee the crushing of the eighteen forty eight revolutions.
Speaker 1: It actually almost happened to Marx. He wound up not
Speaker 1: going to the US. But there's a lot of settlers,
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of like of European socialists who
Speaker 1: come to the US and see all of this land
Speaker 1: and they go, oh shit, we can solve like we
Speaker 1: can solve the problems of the old world. But it
Speaker 1: is taking this land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, having our little like k utopian socialist settlements. Was
Speaker 2: it Owens or Jones or someone they had.
Speaker 1: These like, yeah, they.
Speaker 2: Quake k utopian sort of settlement towns in someone else's land. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's one of the ways has happened. There
Speaker 1: there are other ways this happens too, where it's just people,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not it's not even always utopian communities.
Speaker 1: People a lot of and and this this is also
Speaker 1: so okay. There are people who come over from the
Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight revolutions who like, you know, like August
Speaker 1: Van Willich is probably the most famous one, Like he's
Speaker 1: he's a communist who ends up like fighting for the
Speaker 1: union and then notably not fighting in the Indian Wars after.
Speaker 1: But you know, a lot of these people they come
Speaker 1: to the US and they're like, okay, well, so they're
Speaker 1: like the fundamental contradiction of capitalism or whatever is that,
Speaker 1: like you know, people like people, people are forced to
Speaker 1: become like, as they would literally call it, like the
Speaker 1: wage slaves of capital, right, And so these people take
Speaker 1: a bunch of just incredibly bizarre stances, Like one they're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're against the abolition of slavery because they
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, well, if you free the slaves, these
Speaker 1: people are going to compete with us for wage labor.
Speaker 1: So either either they're pro slavery or they're like slavery
Speaker 1: the like ending slavery is the thing they can only
Speaker 1: happen with the end of capitalism, so we don't care
Speaker 1: about it. Or and this is a very common thing
Speaker 1: that this is one of them. This is i think
Speaker 1: much closer to the Israeli dynamic. Is these people become
Speaker 1: convinced that like the you know, The problem with Europe,
Speaker 1: right is that you know, Europe is entirely ruled by
Speaker 1: either feudalist or like feudal bearerans or capitalist right and
Speaker 1: so there's no way for someone to like make like
Speaker 1: make themselves in the world, right, there there's no way
Speaker 1: for them to be independent like of the capitalist class.
Speaker 1: But in but in the US there is because all
Speaker 1: you have to do is, you know, instead of being
Speaker 1: part of the like the industrial proletariat or whatever and
Speaker 1: getting like crushed by the Buddha capital, you can just
Speaker 1: go become a settler farmer. And this is this is
Speaker 1: one of the defining ideologies of the US, Like Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln talks about this, like the thing that makes the
Speaker 1: US different from Europe is that like, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: you can go be a settler, you can get your
Speaker 1: own land. And this is something you can also trace
Speaker 1: back to the foundation of Israel. Israel is created you know,
Speaker 1: there are there are there are right wings Zionists, right,
Speaker 1: but it's also created by liberal socialist communists and even
Speaker 1: anarchists who fought the span a civil war who go
Speaker 1: to Israel become Zionists, are armed by Stalin and these
Speaker 1: people create like you know, these are the people who
Speaker 1: do the knapa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lots of people were also, there were Jewish I
Speaker 2: guess socialists is probably the best term for them who
Speaker 2: would come to fight in Spain and then returned to it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: people interested. Ranan Reign has done a really good paper
Speaker 2: about some with people in international brigades. So not all
Speaker 2: of them turned out to do the knakpa. To be clear, yes,
Speaker 2: something some of them were. It's actually also it's actually
Speaker 2: really sad to follow the plight of It's a slight divergence,
Speaker 2: I guess. But Jewish people who had fled programs in
Speaker 2: the early twentieth century grown up largely in New York
Speaker 2: an extremely impoverished neighborhoods, fought facism in Spain, came home,
Speaker 2: fought fatuism again in the rest of Europe after like
Speaker 2: pointing at it in nineteen thirty five and going bad,
Speaker 2: and in America going now dog were good, and then
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty one going who could have foreseen this?
Speaker 2: And then they come in the meantime they see Stalin
Speaker 2: signing a pact with fascism, right, and they feel horribly
Speaker 2: betrayed and have to have to deal with either leaving
Speaker 2: the Communist Party or working out in their own head,
Speaker 2: how the fuck the people who kill their friends and
Speaker 2: now their friends and then they come home after the war,
Speaker 2: they're blacklisted under McCarthy and they see the nuck but happening,
Speaker 2: you know, like later on, and they they're disgusted, right
Speaker 2: like they everything that, like every sort of like identity
Speaker 2: in group that they've had, they feel has turned against
Speaker 2: the things that they think are morally right. And they
Speaker 2: have these really difficult lives despite like pursuing what most
Speaker 2: of us would agree as in moral good throughout their lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, being being consistently world fucking sucks and that is.
Speaker 2: A yeah, Terrald will leave you behind.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it was a fucking awful time to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Okay, we should take another ad break and.
Speaker 2: Then yeah, adverts are not consistently Marl who very unlikely.
Speaker 1: And we are back. So we've been talking about the
Speaker 1: capacity of settlements to change someone's politics, right, So it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's as these labs of consciousness that produce
Speaker 1: certain kinds of right wing politics and mentalities and you know,
Speaker 1: and produce right wing soldiers, right, But the settlements also
Speaker 1: do other things. And one of those things that they do.
Speaker 1: Is the settlements are a big reason, you know, if
Speaker 1: you were invested in the peace process, like this is
Speaker 1: a big reason why the peace process failed was that
Speaker 1: the settlers never had any intentions of abiding by any
Speaker 1: of the treaties that were being signed by the Israelis. Right,
Speaker 1: And this is something that is true transhistorically, right. This
Speaker 1: is a dynamic you see in American history too. The
Speaker 1: US science like hundreds of treaties with like like just
Speaker 1: incredible numbers and indigenous nations. And do you know how
Speaker 1: many of those trees I end up upholding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's none.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, I mean you can look at
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, right, and you know the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: will uphold laws from like seventeen ninety five, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The one kind of law they will not uphold is
Speaker 1: their treaty obligations, at which in which case they will
Speaker 1: go literally they will just go, well, we are obligated
Speaker 1: to do this under treaty, but it is too hard,
Speaker 1: so fuck you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, they'll go previous to that and
Speaker 2: treat site the fucking Doctrine of Discovery or the Treaty
Speaker 2: of Cso yeah, good old Rethpeed against the liberal hero. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so you can look at this from sort of
Speaker 1: two perspectives, right, you can look at this from this
Speaker 1: perspective of the state, and you can look at it
Speaker 1: from the respective of the settlers. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: and I think I think I think there's a there's
Speaker 1: a third view that's kind of sees them both as
Speaker 1: an extension of the same thing, which is what we're
Speaker 1: gonna sort of come to. But you know, you can
Speaker 1: you can look at this treaty stuff, and you can
Speaker 1: look at the fact that you know, both the settlers
Speaker 1: and the Israeli governments like sign the Oslo Accords fully
Speaker 1: intending to do more settlements, right, And this is this
Speaker 1: is something that that like the Palestinians are watching, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you're a Palasidian, like you are watching these
Speaker 1: peace accords get signed, and then you are watching the
Speaker 1: Israelis fucking bulldozing your house. Yeah, and and this is
Speaker 1: this is this is a thing in the US too, right.
Speaker 1: It's like everyone who signs a treaty get like, like
Speaker 1: all of the nation to sign treaties get a get
Speaker 1: a watch as the US is like oh well, actually,
Speaker 1: like no, we never had any intention of like fulfilling this,
Speaker 1: like no, We're just gonna keep exterminating you and like
Speaker 1: chasing the sort of like like shattered remnants of your
Speaker 1: tribes like literally across the entire fucking continents. And you know,
Speaker 1: so so you can look at this from the from
Speaker 1: the perspective of the state, and you know, like like
Speaker 1: dealing dealing with the American state, Like it is well
Speaker 1: known by every day and every race that has ever
Speaker 1: had to deal with them that the white man is
Speaker 1: duplicitous in a state is built on lies, and that
Speaker 1: is only kind of a joke. Like everyone who fucking
Speaker 1: deals with the Americans just like what the fuck is
Speaker 1: wrong with these people? Like do you like do people
Speaker 1: like not understand what an agreement is?
Speaker 2: Like what you know, Yeah, this is something that like
Speaker 2: I know, if you travel abroad and you work in
Speaker 2: places where American forces have been nine times out of ten,
Speaker 2: someone will sit you down in a tea house or
Speaker 2: a coffee house and unbidden just be like what the
Speaker 2: fuck is wrong with these people? Like like why do
Speaker 2: they treat us like that? Like we fucking did everything
Speaker 2: you asked and then you fucking abandoned us or killed us,
Speaker 2: like like yeah, like everyone, and of course Sprain does
Speaker 2: it too. I'm not saying like America spectrum, but fuck me,
Speaker 2: America in the last two hundred years is really setting
Speaker 2: you precedent for just like Jane has faced bullshit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, and and and this, and it
Speaker 1: is particularly bad when you're dealing with when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with settlers, because you know, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the things about the state is that the arc of
Speaker 1: the state policy and settler colonies always bends towards injustice
Speaker 1: in general, and in particular the thing it always bends
Speaker 1: towards land seizures. It seeks to expand its base of power,
Speaker 1: it's territorial base in its economy, which leads it to
Speaker 1: push as far as it possibly can towards dispossessing the
Speaker 1: indigenous population. Now, this is also the interest of settlers,
Speaker 1: who act as a kind of extension of the state
Speaker 1: that goes beyond its normal capacity to do what it
Speaker 1: wants to do. And you know, in the US, the
Speaker 1: human manifestation of this is Andrew Jackson, who is a
Speaker 1: man who completely illegally on multiple occasions, just like conquered
Speaker 1: Florida and you know, conquered Florida specifically. And this is
Speaker 1: one of the like a couple of things. This is
Speaker 1: what I have. I have a very good friend who
Speaker 1: talks about this a lot because they're they've they've been
Speaker 1: studying this period immensely. You're probably not listening, but love you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but talking about this a lot, which is that Andrew
Speaker 1: Jackson is like big part of the reason why he's
Speaker 1: going into Florida is specifically because he he wants to
Speaker 1: smash these these like indigenous like black indigenous like like
Speaker 1: Bauruin communities there. And so Jackson, you know jackx Jackson
Speaker 1: like is is like under orders not to invade Florida.
Speaker 1: He invades Florida. Anyways, you know, we we we get
Speaker 1: were there's a very similar sort of tension between like
Speaker 1: the courts and you know, like the courts in the
Speaker 1: settler state that you have with the sort of international
Speaker 1: community in Israel now, where like the courts are like
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson, you cannot do the trail of tears. Andrew
Speaker 1: Jackson is just like fuck you, Like we're doing the
Speaker 1: trailer of tears. We're going We're going to do a genocide.
Speaker 1: And you know, and the thing the thing about what
Speaker 1: Jackson represents, right, is that Jackson is is the human
Speaker 1: embodiment of of all of these sort of structural like
Speaker 1: he's the human and political embodiment of all of these
Speaker 1: structural tendencies et cetera. Colonialism. Now. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that that's I think is interesting about this is
Speaker 1: that there are like all of the settler states, right,
Speaker 1: you see this in like every single one. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about the US because that's the one
Speaker 1: that like other than that I know the best. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't probably probainlays like the US better than Israel.
Speaker 1: But there are always times when this when when this
Speaker 1: the federal government tries to crack down on settlers, right,
Speaker 1: this happens like repeatedly. I mean this, And this is
Speaker 1: the thing even like like the British are like spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time trying to stop the colonists from
Speaker 1: like moving like from moving west. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who like have come to
Speaker 1: believe that if they if the British had won the
Speaker 1: American Revolution, that they would have been able to stop
Speaker 1: the settlers. And no, like they wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to they would have been able to maybe they could
Speaker 1: have delayed it by twenty years, but no, there was
Speaker 1: there was no one has ever really been able to
Speaker 1: stop these people. And you know, the IDF, like we
Speaker 1: talked about this a bit earlier, right, the IDEF in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five did pull Like when they pulled
Speaker 1: out of Gaza, they dragged like eight thousand center settlers
Speaker 1: with them. But again, this is this is the dynamic
Speaker 1: to like that's incredibly familiar to anyone who studied the
Speaker 1: history of settlers in the US, is that government at
Speaker 1: tempts to control settler expansion inevitably fail when convented with
Speaker 1: the the you know, the these unstoppable twin economic and
Speaker 1: twin imperatives of the economic benefit to the settlers and
Speaker 1: also the sort of speculator, the speculative value of these
Speaker 1: of this new land, the land speculators. But then the
Speaker 1: the other problem is the inevitable rise of the settlers
Speaker 1: themselves as the political bloc, which in the US, the
Speaker 1: man who is the champion of the settlers is Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 1: And this is you know, and when he comes into
Speaker 1: and when he starts taking power, when he starts getting
Speaker 1: power in the army, you get the conquest of Florida,
Speaker 1: and when he becomes president, you have the you have
Speaker 1: the trailer tears and Israel. This is this is represented
Speaker 1: by Israel's overtly genocidal finance bitsiness at Betsiel Simotrich who
Speaker 1: represents the Religious Zionist Party, And uh, I'll give you
Speaker 1: all three guesses what those guys believe and if if
Speaker 1: your guesses are they are unhinged settler racists and like
Speaker 1: turbo home phobes, you're you're right on the buddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's a conspiracy theorist, like yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 2: guy is unhinged.
Speaker 3: They're very open with their generalcidle.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, once.
Speaker 3: Like there's no there's no subtlety. They're just like, let's
Speaker 3: let's flatten what, let's flatten gus, let's kill them all,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. It's just like theycourage seem
Speaker 3: like with a very Trumpian thing that's like encouraging the
Speaker 3: hate that is there too fester.
Speaker 2: It's particularly like to try to diverse again. I found
Speaker 2: the fucking like, you can't support Palestinia liberation if you're
Speaker 2: queer dunk that we see from like Zionist neoliberals to
Speaker 2: be one of the most frustrating a like, you can
Speaker 2: support what the fuck you want, Like you don't need
Speaker 2: a condescending, fucking like resist mum in a minivan to
Speaker 2: tell you what you can and can't believe, and like,
Speaker 2: b go look up some of this guy's statements, because
Speaker 2: fucking you ain't gonna find anyone who's more genocidal towards
Speaker 2: queer people openly than this motherfucker.
Speaker 3: I mean, Israel is like very well known for like
Speaker 3: pink washing and pretending they're very progressive and supportive of yeah,
Speaker 3: of queer people, when they're really not. I mean, this
Speaker 3: country also is not, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: it's I think I think that argument is a very
Speaker 3: privileged elitist one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like like yeah, just like haha, homophobia exists there,
Speaker 2: it's not. It's not a win for anyone. Yeah, if
Speaker 2: you want to get married to someone of the same
Speaker 2: gender as you in Israel, you do it on zoom
Speaker 2: in fucking Utah like that that Like, when you've been
Speaker 2: outflanked to the left by Utah, you've done fucked up.
Speaker 2: You don't get to wave your pride flag at anyone.
Speaker 2: Fuck off.
Speaker 1: This is one of the sort of progressive veneer of
Speaker 1: the Israelis has been you know, like fading because these
Speaker 1: the people who are coming to power. And then Yahoo
Speaker 1: in some ways was one of the sort of anger
Speaker 1: to this. But like this, and this is the thing
Speaker 1: you're seeing in India too, right, Like whatever you get
Speaker 1: a far right guy, right, the thing that inevitably generates
Speaker 1: is people who are even further right than they are.
Speaker 1: And that that's that that's what these these settler people are.
Speaker 1: And and the thing is, like these settler guys, you
Speaker 1: can't cover for them, like if you if they are
Speaker 1: on camera for longer than about thirty seconds, they start
Speaker 1: saying stuff like just the most unhinged, like We're gonna
Speaker 1: kill all the Palestinians. They start saying like we're gonna
Speaker 1: kill every Arab, like they start talking about various and
Speaker 1: varies basically like their their their platforms that they you
Speaker 1: know they're and then this is this is so part
Speaker 1: of the reason that there are there there's a coalition
Speaker 1: of of these like of these like far right settler
Speaker 1: parties that are now backing net and Yahu. And this
Speaker 1: is this is how net and Yahu has been able
Speaker 1: to stay out of prison. Is that he's been able
Speaker 1: to back enough, he's been able to buy off enough
Speaker 1: of these people that they're backing his government so he
Speaker 1: can stay Prime minister, so they can't charge him. But
Speaker 1: the the you know, the the concession basically for this
Speaker 1: was that these like this guy was just basically just
Speaker 1: given control of a bunch of state military power, like
Speaker 1: from the army in the West Bank. It's been given
Speaker 1: to him in his settler fanatics. And you know, like
Speaker 1: especially since like the Hamas attack, like these, the government
Speaker 1: has been handing out guns these people like candy, yes,
Speaker 1: and they've been using it just murder Palestinians and cold
Speaker 1: blood and you know, I mean the things people do
Speaker 1: a lot, right, so sometimes they just kill people. The
Speaker 1: thing they do all the time is just in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night, like if you're if you're living
Speaker 1: in the West Bank, like a bunch of mass guys
Speaker 1: will show up, they will break into your home. They'll
Speaker 1: beat the shit out of you, and they'll say like
Speaker 1: if you don't leave tomorrow, will kill you. And you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes those guys are settlers, like are just like non
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like non military settlers, right, they're
Speaker 1: like settler civilians or whatever. Sometimes those guys are just
Speaker 1: like the army, and there's no fucking way to tell
Speaker 1: which one like, because again it's just a bunch of
Speaker 1: people in masks appear in the night and break into
Speaker 1: your house and start beating the shit out of you.
Speaker 1: And these people, these are these are the people that
Speaker 1: increasingly the Israeli political system is being run by and
Speaker 1: and you can't and it is in a similar way,
Speaker 1: just the way that Andrew Jackson just like rips off
Speaker 1: this mask of sort of like New England gentility that
Speaker 1: the US had like had had under like John Adams
Speaker 1: and uh or like John Quincy Adams and like Minroe,
Speaker 1: well Monroe's I guess, like a like Minroe's like a
Speaker 1: you know, like another one of these like dignified Virginia
Speaker 1: planter guys, and like you know, those people have do
Speaker 1: a lot of the same violence that that Jackson does.
Speaker 1: But Jackson is the guy who just rips the mask
Speaker 1: off and is just you know, this completely unhinged settler
Speaker 1: mediac who like this is the guy you killed it
Speaker 1: like just murdered a bunch of people in duels, like
Speaker 1: you know, and these are the kind of people who
Speaker 1: are who are coming to powered. Is there a right now?
Speaker 1: And this is this is a self reinforcing dynamic because
Speaker 1: the more power these people get, right, the more they're
Speaker 1: able to, you know, just carry out genocides. And the
Speaker 1: more genocides are able to carry out, the more of
Speaker 1: that they're the more people that they were able to
Speaker 1: push into these territories that they've taken, and the more
Speaker 1: people they put in these territories, the more of the
Speaker 1: more of these like settler fanatics there are. And this
Speaker 1: this is one of the big things that is driving
Speaker 1: the entire conflict.
Speaker 3: Well, I think a good thing to remember is that
Speaker 3: last year there was an election like going into twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, and uh, Israel like put into power a
Speaker 3: bunch of these right wing people. Was it twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three with twenty twenty two? And was in track of time.
Speaker 2: He came in last he came in twenty Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think he was a minute he was point to a
Speaker 2: minister in twenty twenty two. But okay, sorry, the years
Speaker 2: a time election is real, Yeah, I remember when.
Speaker 3: My point is that, like in recent history the last
Speaker 3: couple of years, these extreme right wing racist people are
Speaker 3: in power all the all the places of power, all
Speaker 3: the ministers, all the whatever the shit they're all shared.
Speaker 3: They all share this ideology that like Arabs must die.
Speaker 3: Basically that's like they're the point is that they are
Speaker 3: superior to Arabs and then they must die, and that
Speaker 3: this is a diionus place that is.
Speaker 1: Theirs and you know, and what these people are doing
Speaker 1: when they're in power, and this is the thing that
Speaker 1: this is one of the things they were trying to
Speaker 1: do before the sort of like the current war started,
Speaker 1: was they were trying to annex the West Bank. This
Speaker 1: is a very explicit goal. Now this is a very
Speaker 1: explicit goal of the settler parties. They will kind of
Speaker 1: they know it's pretty hard for them to like leally
Speaker 1: annex it, so they will talk about like effectively annexing
Speaker 1: it and stuff like that. They do these sort of
Speaker 1: like subtle metaphors, but like, yeah, what they want to
Speaker 1: do is to kick people out of what's called Area See,
Speaker 1: which is the majority of the West Bank, and they
Speaker 1: want to kick all the like the immediate plans, I
Speaker 1: want to kick all the people out of Area Sea
Speaker 1: and push them into just like increasingly tiny corners of
Speaker 1: the West Bank. And presumably because again if if you
Speaker 1: listen to all of these people talk, right, it's that
Speaker 1: they talk about like Jews have the right to live in.
Speaker 2: In look, Judae and Samaria, Yeah yeah yeah, the West Bank,
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, they have a restricted right.
Speaker 1: To live there. So and the thing is like, if
Speaker 1: you believe that right, that means you have to kick
Speaker 1: all the Penalusinians out of the West Bank entirely. Now
Speaker 1: the places people have stopped. Sort of before the war,
Speaker 1: the places people had stopped was like, well, okay, they
Speaker 1: can live in Gaza. But now they're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean just like taking over most of like just
Speaker 1: taking over most of Gaza and driving the Palestinians out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it doesn't have to lead like Jews have
Speaker 2: a right to live in this place, doesn't have to
Speaker 2: lead to thus we must genocide the people who live there,
Speaker 2: right like we it like it. This is what happens
Speaker 2: when we get a state that understands existence as destroying
Speaker 2: anybody who is not in agreement with this right wing
Speaker 2: genocidal fucking Outlook like it has been possible for people
Speaker 2: of different faiths to live in different places, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly existing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this the ideaogy that is inherent to like
Speaker 2: a Zionist militarized state will never allow that coexistence to happen, right,
Speaker 2: because it relies on coexistence not being possible as part
Speaker 2: of its narrative. For like Mia said, taking dominating and
Speaker 2: appropriating that land and gaining the value from it.
Speaker 3: But it's the narrative that they need to say stuff
Speaker 3: like oh, all the gardens should just go to Egypt
Speaker 3: or whatever. It is, like it's all part of the
Speaker 3: plan to kind of just like expel them so they can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't even have to be like it's not
Speaker 2: like an explicit plan that they have a whiteboard and
Speaker 2: they're like it is you know.
Speaker 1: They do actually occasionally just write it out. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: do actually explicitly write the plans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can say on ex dot com from time
Speaker 2: to time. But it's inherent, as Mia said like several times,
Speaker 2: to state and to a capitalist state that is a
Speaker 2: settler colony, right, Like it's inevitable. It happened here, it's
Speaker 2: happening there, It's happened all over the world. Like, it's
Speaker 2: not possible to construct a capitalist state on someone else's
Speaker 2: land and someone else's bodies. It doesn't do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean and this this is this is
Speaker 1: also one thing I wanted to emphasize too, is that
Speaker 1: all of the shit that's happening in Palestine happened here, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess like we, like the US, didn't
Speaker 1: have the kind of surveillance technology in like the the
Speaker 1: eighteen teens, right that the Israelis have now. But you know,
Speaker 1: like we we did all this shit too, right, like
Speaker 1: this is this is all of the land that we
Speaker 1: live on. That's that's where that shit came from. There's
Speaker 1: there's this great uh. I really love Daniel Connon the
Speaker 1: Painted Bird. It has this great line in one of
Speaker 1: his songs that goes because he's the one who did
Speaker 1: the stealing and named you as the heir whose filthiness
Speaker 1: provided you the privileges you bear. And this is this
Speaker 1: thing in the US, right, like in Israel. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're a settler on the border, right, there's no
Speaker 1: there's no escape from what you did to take this place.
Speaker 1: Right like you are you are looking down on the
Speaker 1: people who you've like whose houses you've taken. Right in
Speaker 1: the US, we have this sort of luxury of like, wow,
Speaker 1: this happened a long time ago, Like we don't have
Speaker 1: to sort of we don't have to see the consequences.
Speaker 2: Of it, but we still do it right like we
Speaker 2: didn't just like we're doing it at Oak Flat for
Speaker 2: instance right now. Or yeah, look at how Trump fucking
Speaker 2: did indigenous people during COVID, Like it's an ongoing process.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, it's it's so much easier for Americans
Speaker 1: to pretend that it's not happening, and you know, like no,
Speaker 1: like it turns out in fact like this, this, this,
Speaker 1: and this is where the sort of sub of colonialism
Speaker 1: of structure not an event stuff comes from. And it
Speaker 1: applies to both Israel and the US because guess what.
Speaker 3: Israel literally took notes for what the US did and
Speaker 3: just did it, you know what I mean, Like it's
Speaker 3: just the same thing in the end, Like we're the
Speaker 3: bad guys, like we've always been the bad guys.
Speaker 2: Are the bad guys? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm Chinese, right, And this is one of
Speaker 1: the things that has informed a lot of my sort
Speaker 1: of perspective on Palestine, because all of the things that
Speaker 1: are happening to Palestine is shit that was done to
Speaker 1: us by the Japanese Empire, right, And we fought a
Speaker 1: war to stop them, and that war was hideous. That war,
Speaker 1: the war in China sees some of the darkest moments
Speaker 1: in human history. And there's this tendency among I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, as a tendency among both both the communists
Speaker 1: and the nationalists want to sort of sanitize it, right,
Speaker 1: They want to turn it into this sort of glorious
Speaker 1: war for liberation, and like, yeah, like there are moments
Speaker 1: of like, you know, glorious anti imperialist struggle, but that
Speaker 1: war mostly was just a horror. And it's a horror
Speaker 1: not just because of the atrocities committed by the Japanese right.
Speaker 1: The Chinese side in that war also does things that
Speaker 1: are unforgivable. And I'm not even talking about Hiroshima and
Speaker 1: Nagasaki here because you know, like we as in like
Speaker 1: Chinese people, like we didn't do that right, like you
Speaker 1: know Mao, like on the one hit. It is true
Speaker 1: that when Mao found out about the nuclear eruptions, his
Speaker 1: reaction was, way, you had a third bomb and he
Speaker 1: didn't drop it on Tokyo. But like, you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't do that, right, Like that was that was the
Speaker 1: Americans that wasn't like that wasn't like us in China.
Speaker 1: But you know, the things that I'm talking about that
Speaker 1: the Chinese side of that war did that were just unforgivable,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I think the best example of
Speaker 1: it is Shangkhai Shek blew up a dam on the
Speaker 1: Yellow River, and his goal was he was trying to
Speaker 1: you know, he was trying to flood like several provinces
Speaker 1: to cut off the Japanese army and to like slow
Speaker 1: down their troop movements, right, and he slows down the
Speaker 1: troop movements, and he does it by killing four This
Speaker 1: is this is this is this is the low end
Speaker 1: estimates is that he killed four hundred thousand people. That
Speaker 1: is a an amount of death that is unimaginable. He
Speaker 1: killed like in a single act, he killed four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people. It is two Hiroshima and Nagasaki's And that's
Speaker 1: that's the low end estimate. Right, People, people, people fighting
Speaker 1: against Japan, people fighting against colonialism, did unforgivable crimes. And
Speaker 1: you know, and the people of of China like never forget,
Speaker 1: like to this day, like in the provinces where like
Speaker 1: where this shit happened, like Chang Kai Shek is fucking despised,
Speaker 1: and you know, and like when when like when the
Speaker 1: Allies won the war and when China drove out the Japanese, right, like,
Speaker 1: the next thing they did was they drove out Shan
Speaker 1: Kai Shack because he was you know, because because he
Speaker 1: had done things in that war that were so terrible
Speaker 1: that people willing to be like fuck it, Like Mao
Speaker 1: didn't fucking blow up a dam and kill four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand of US, right, you know, and so like, and
Speaker 1: this is the thing about colonial resistance is that it
Speaker 1: is the things that people do are unforgivable. Also that
Speaker 1: that word that Japan fought in China they killed twenty
Speaker 1: million of US twenty million. And this is one of
Speaker 1: these things, right where like colonialism makes monsters of us.
Speaker 1: All suffering does not make you knowable, just makes you suffer.
Speaker 1: And so you know, again like the are like China's
Speaker 1: anti colonial freedom fighters right like fucking killed killed numbers
Speaker 1: of like Chinese people that are it's just unimaginable. And
Speaker 1: then you know, these same freedom fighters who fought the
Speaker 1: good fighting against Japan, you know, within twenty years they're
Speaker 1: bulldozing Moss and shing John and murdering communists in Tibet, right,
Speaker 1: and they've built two, you know, after successfully repelling Japan's
Speaker 1: attempt to turn China into a settler state, they have
Speaker 1: made two of their own. And you know, so like
Speaker 1: there's there's no I think the point that I'm trying
Speaker 1: to make here is that, you know, like anti colonial
Speaker 1: resistance is not this sort of like it doesn't look pretty.
Speaker 1: It's a fucking horror most of the time. But you also,
Speaker 1: you know, when when you're looking into like when you're
Speaker 1: looking at these wars, you have to look at the
Speaker 1: direction in which colonization is moving. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that is crystal clear in Palestine, right,
Speaker 1: is you can just look at like which in which
Speaker 1: direction is is colonization moving?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like who is taking whose houses?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Who is who is forcing a million people from what
Speaker 1: population to flee their homes? Who is you know, who
Speaker 1: has been steel he has been seizing people's land. And
Speaker 1: I think it clears up. I don't know, clears up
Speaker 1: isn't the right word, but specifically the fact that this
Speaker 1: is that this is active colonization, that this is this
Speaker 1: is this the center of colonial state waging a war
Speaker 1: against you know, people like people who are fighting against colonization.
Speaker 1: That is the sort of that that that is the
Speaker 1: the the underlying current of everything that happens. And and
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know, like people people in
Speaker 1: anti colonial wars do things that are unforgivable and they
Speaker 1: get you know, and like often like their own people
Speaker 1: will eventually come for them one day. And also I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, I've no one has to agree with me, It's fine,
Speaker 3: But I personally really dislike when it's called a war
Speaker 3: what's happening in Palestine because I just think it's the
Speaker 3: clearest case of genocide I've ever seen. And like I
Speaker 3: don't care how it started or whatever, I feel like
Speaker 3: at this point in time, it's a genocide. Like if
Speaker 3: Palestine's out of country, Palestine does not have an army,
Speaker 3: they can't no one can leave Gaza.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: I think that is the current state of what the
Speaker 3: violence is going on over there.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, just like particular, like I think I
Speaker 1: think you're like, I think you're right about that. And
Speaker 1: that's the thing that that's the thing that's different than
Speaker 1: like the stuff that was happening in China was like
Speaker 1: at least we sort of had like at least we
Speaker 1: had a state, right, and we had armies, and our
Speaker 1: armies got fucking stopped. But you know, we had like
Speaker 1: we we we had actual weapons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I must have some now, But I think you're
Speaker 2: to your greater point. Yeah, I think, like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: it sounds very similar to like have you read Challenges
Speaker 2: Introduction to the Rest of the Earth, Yeah, like where
Speaker 2: he talks about violence and the state talking in the
Speaker 2: language of violence and people responding in the language in
Speaker 2: which they're spoken to. I think I'm paraphrasing that relatively accurately.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be like the violence has to
Speaker 2: be good for it to be like an inevitable consequence
Speaker 2: of violent colonialism, right that, like it sparks violent decolonization movements,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't imply like a moral like goodness to
Speaker 2: the individual acts. It's just an inevitable consequence of people
Speaker 2: fighting against colonalism in the only way that that colonialism
Speaker 2: kind of leaves for them, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think I think another part of this too
Speaker 1: is that like just being in contact with colonial powers
Speaker 1: makes everyone worse. Like this, this is the thing you
Speaker 1: see in the US with a lot of with a
Speaker 1: lot of indigenous groups. Is that like you know, like
Speaker 1: like bye bye bye by by the time the trail
Speaker 1: of cheers is happening, like the Cherokee or like have
Speaker 1: adopted chattel slavery, like like American style plantation chattel slavery,
Speaker 1: and that fucking sucks, right It's like it being in
Speaker 1: contact with these settler empires like brings out the worst
Speaker 1: in everyone, mm hmm. And there's no winning from that position, right,
Speaker 1: like the best I don't even know if it's the
Speaker 1: best case stereo, Like I guess occasionally you get like
Speaker 1: an Algeria where you know, they kill it off people
Speaker 1: and like the other Algeria, like you know, the settlers
Speaker 1: in Algeria all like went back to France. But that's
Speaker 1: not an option in Israel, right like, and we wouldn't
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want it to be a solution either, So
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's one of these I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's one of the sort of dilemmas of how you
Speaker 1: deal with a.
Speaker 2: Colony is that it's harder to decomnize the set of economy, right, yes,
Speaker 2: like it implies a removal of one people or in
Speaker 2: other people and either of those things are in any
Speaker 2: way desirable, Like and it's so hard to see like
Speaker 2: a path to a peaceful coexistence now because all we
Speaker 2: see is like the entire world ratcheting the fucking like
Speaker 2: violence level up, Like, yeah, Israel carrying out genocidal violence
Speaker 2: in Gaza is not the way we reach a way
Speaker 2: for people to like children to grow up without fucking
Speaker 2: fearing if the sky is going to kill them in Gaza, right,
Speaker 2: like this will happen for generations to come because you've
Speaker 2: emotionally scarred field children.
Speaker 3: Well, how would you. I think it's a very human
Speaker 3: response if anything, Like I I don't think we have
Speaker 3: the the right to judge how someone that has been
Speaker 3: through that hell how they respond because it's I don't know,
Speaker 3: we haven't lived their nightmare. It's just a nightmare.
Speaker 2: And like it's not like like there it's not like
Speaker 2: there haven't been attempts at non violent resistance in Gaza,
Speaker 2: because they have. And look what fucking happened like.
Speaker 1: That there was a big one like like three or
Speaker 1: four years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you know, they like the fucking crass and
Speaker 2: stein take the why can't they all disorganized? The arch
Speaker 2: in the water holding Kansas and come by they fucking
Speaker 2: like I tried to do that, but like, yeah, people
Speaker 2: people kept killing them. Like I say this every time
Speaker 2: we talk about guards, but say again, Like when we
Speaker 2: were talking to the PK guys of guys and I've
Speaker 2: known them for a few years, Like one of them
Speaker 2: was telling me about how they used to do sleepover
Speaker 2: camps for kids there so the kids could learn parkour
Speaker 2: and not have to pay for the travel and like
Speaker 2: you know, take their time and risk to travel, so
Speaker 2: they do sleep over camps in the summertime. And he
Speaker 2: was explained to me like it was the most normal
Speaker 2: thing in the world that the six eight year old
Speaker 2: children would wake up at night with night terror screaming
Speaker 2: because they thought they were being bombed, because they are
Speaker 2: having like a flashback from being bombed, I guess, And
Speaker 2: like that's something I recognized from from PTSD, from from
Speaker 2: you know, other texts, but like it really fucks me
Speaker 2: up that an eight year old child is like we
Speaker 2: can't expect these people to like develop into come by
Speaker 2: us singing like peace activists, like that they they have
Speaker 2: taken on massive amounts of trawl where they've seen the
Speaker 2: neighbors and families die, Like it doesn't mean that we
Speaker 2: have to be like, oh, well, like violence is going
Speaker 2: to happen like that we should do everything we can
Speaker 2: to make a world where like people aren't killing and
Speaker 2: dying there because it will always result in more of
Speaker 2: the least empowered people dying. But it's something that I
Speaker 2: think a lot of us are so far detached from
Speaker 2: that I think is as like, you know, if you
Speaker 2: lived a whole lot in the United States relative safety
Speaker 2: and prosperity, it's it's hard for you to understand, I.
Speaker 1: Think, yeah, And I mean like this is a like
Speaker 1: gaza is a place where it reiins body parts, Like
Speaker 1: that's what happens when it is really bomb goes off,
Speaker 1: It rains body parts, and like that is a.
Speaker 2: I don't know, like.
Speaker 1: The kind of person who has to grow up with
Speaker 1: that is just not going to be the same as
Speaker 1: like even people who have been through a lot of
Speaker 1: like really messed up stuff, Like it's not going to
Speaker 1: be the same as like experiencing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if you like I have visited was to
Speaker 2: report on them, but then I get to go home
Speaker 2: and be safe. And sometimes that juxtaposition is hard, and
Speaker 2: it takes me a long time to not be afraid
Speaker 2: of the sky or a park car is going to
Speaker 2: kill me. But I'm home and I'm safe, and once
Speaker 2: I can adjust to that, then I can I can
Speaker 2: get on. You know, change things like that change you,
Speaker 2: but you continue with your life. But if you're never
Speaker 2: home and you're never so or your home is never safe,
Speaker 2: that's something I can't understand, right, That's something that I
Speaker 2: haven't experienced, and very very few of us probably.
Speaker 3: Have, a lot of doctors have said that all the
Speaker 3: child I Gaza, they haven't they can't quality, they can't
Speaker 3: be quantified of having experienced PTSD because they haven't reached
Speaker 3: the post part yet, Like they're still they're like in
Speaker 3: a perpetual state of PTSD because that's just how they
Speaker 3: their entire lives have been. Most of them have never
Speaker 3: known life outside of the blockade. So it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean I think I think that's a
Speaker 1: good place to end of. Just you know, this is
Speaker 1: what this is what this this is what the reality
Speaker 1: and the eternal president of cetera colonialism is right, and
Speaker 1: you know, this is one of these things where in
Speaker 1: a lot of weird ways, like, like there are ways
Speaker 1: in which we like people like if you live in
Speaker 1: the US, if you like even the subset the UK,
Speaker 1: like you are probably in a like maybe a better
Speaker 1: position to actually stop this than anyone who lives in
Speaker 1: palestign is. So yeah, yeah, this is but and and
Speaker 1: the problem is if we don't right the self, the
Speaker 1: mutually self reinforcing dynamics of Seidler colonialism are just going
Speaker 1: to keep like carrying on and keep spiraling on. And
Speaker 1: this is going to go on until everyone is dead
Speaker 1: or everyone is gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if you can't stop it, Like I sent
Speaker 2: the video. I'm sure you guys saw the video of
Speaker 2: the Jewish Wis of Peace people in the Grand Central Terminal,
Speaker 2: New York, And I said that to the palest in
Speaker 2: your journalistic because they're like, god, this is great to see.
Speaker 2: And if something we spoke about the interview too, how
Speaker 2: like it makes a meaningfully difference to someone's state of
Speaker 2: mind to see solidarity even if like you know, we
Speaker 2: can get in the streets and we can say something
Speaker 2: and maybe that will make a difference. Maybe it won't,
Speaker 2: but like, at least if it makes someone understand that
Speaker 2: you're kind of standing with them in a moment of darkness,
Speaker 2: and maybe that helps them in a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think when when a whole population is not
Speaker 3: able to share what they're going through, their journalist are
Speaker 3: killed when the internet is out, and the one thing
Speaker 3: they're saying is like, please don't stop talking about this.
Speaker 3: I think that's the easiest thing that we can do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and hopefully maybe this would impel us to like
Speaker 2: as Miya said at the start, right, this keeps fucking happening,
Speaker 2: and like, as ethnic cleansings go, this one's got more
Speaker 2: coverage than most in the US, And like I would
Speaker 2: encourage you to look at what you're seeing in Gaza
Speaker 2: and understand how inhuman and unemangeable it is. And like
Speaker 2: maybe follow that shouldn't happen anywhere. It shouldn't happen into Gray,
Speaker 2: and it shouldn't happen in Kurdistan, it shouldn't happen to
Speaker 2: the ra hinge of people, and like, yeah, try try
Speaker 2: and extend that. It's not to scold people, like if
Speaker 2: you weren't in the streets in twenty seventeen, fuck you,
Speaker 2: Like it's it's just to say that, like we've all
Speaker 2: had a window opened, even with every fucking attempt to
Speaker 2: shut that window, right, like but cutting off the internet
Speaker 2: to Gaza, et cetera. This has been the most photographed
Speaker 2: ethnic cleansing, whatever you want to call it, in probably
Speaker 2: in human history. We're seeing more of it than we've
Speaker 2: en't seen before, a lot of it in certain ways
Speaker 2: or fucking footage and video games, past office, real life.
Speaker 2: But we're still seeing it, and we're still bearing witness
Speaker 2: to it to a limited degree. Right We're not seeing
Speaker 2: it in the sense people seeing it firsthand. And I'd
Speaker 2: encourage people to like remember this moment and the shock
Speaker 2: and the terrible things that you felt, and like to
Speaker 2: not forget that next time you hear about something happening, because,
Speaker 2: like anywhere has happened, it's a tragedy. In anywhere it happens,
Speaker 2: we should do everything we can to stop it.
Speaker 1: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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