Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent
Speaker 2: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,
Speaker 2: it just means the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, hope everybody is enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend. I
Speaker 1: wanted to do a bit of a longer interview where
Speaker 1: we had some real time to flesh out a lot
Speaker 1: of the complexities and the mythology surrounding the long standing
Speaker 1: Israeli Palestinian conflict and also of course the context of
Speaker 1: this current war on Gaza, and I thought to do that,
Speaker 1: we'd bring in doctor Norman Finkelstein, who is an author,
Speaker 1: professor of political science who's also studied this conflict for
Speaker 1: literally decades, devote much of his adult life to it,
Speaker 1: authored a number of books on the subject, in particular
Speaker 1: one that I'm reading right now, Gaza An Inquest into
Speaker 1: its Martyrdom.
Speaker 3: To dive into all of these topics. It's so great
Speaker 3: to have you, professor.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, And what I did in preparation for
Speaker 1: this conversation because I really wanted to ask all the
Speaker 1: things that people have been wondering about, but maybe they
Speaker 1: didn't know who to ask, or they didn't know how
Speaker 1: to ask it, or they were embarrassed to ask it.
Speaker 1: So we open it up to our subscribers to really
Speaker 1: ask anything that they wanted to do about this conflict.
Speaker 1: So I hope this will be a wide ranging conversation
Speaker 1: that people find illuminating. I hope it'll be a challenging conversation.
Speaker 1: We'll tackle all of the things that are uncomfortable about
Speaker 1: it and get into all of those pieces.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm glad and I hope that you'll do what
Speaker 4: Candy is.
Speaker 5: Oh. Instead, whereas something doesn't sound right to you, something
Speaker 5: doesn't sound logical to you, something doesn't sound convincing to you,
Speaker 5: ask me, and I think I can connect the dots.
Speaker 5: But sometimes when you speak rapidly, you miss some adults,
Speaker 5: and so sometimes you need to home in and look
Speaker 5: at each dot to connect the pattern.
Speaker 1: I will certainly do my best with all of that,
Speaker 1: So The first question does actually come from our audience,
Speaker 1: which I thought was a good starting point, which is
Speaker 1: about your origins. Can we start with just having doctor
Speaker 1: Finkelstein give basic info on himself growing up and what
Speaker 1: formed his thoughts opinions on this issue. And I was
Speaker 1: also curious, you know what led you to this lifelong
Speaker 1: interest and scholarship on Israel and Palestine.
Speaker 4: I grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 5: My parents came over after the war, as we called it,
Speaker 5: the war meaning World War Two. They were in Warsaw Ghetto.
Speaker 5: They grew up in Poland. They were in the Warsaw
Speaker 5: Ghetto from nineteen forty until nineteen forty three.
Speaker 4: After the ghetto.
Speaker 5: Uprising was suppressed by the Nazis. My parents, having survived
Speaker 5: the war so ghetto uprising, were deported to my the
Speaker 5: Neck concentration camp.
Speaker 4: My mother then ended up in two slave labor camps.
Speaker 5: My father ended up according to my mother because I
Speaker 5: never actually asked my father, my father was in seven
Speaker 5: concentration camps, ended up in Auschwitz. Was on the Auschwitz
Speaker 5: Death March. Every member of my family on both sides, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents,
Speaker 5: everyone was exterminated during the war. As my mother used
Speaker 5: to say to us growing up, we are just five
Speaker 5: people in the world, and that was literally the case.
Speaker 5: I grew up in the lower middle class neighborhood. My
Speaker 5: parents were not lower middle class. They were working class. However,
Speaker 5: they were determined to give us, meaning the children, a
Speaker 5: crack at the American dream. And so we grew up
Speaker 5: in the lower middle class neighborhood, but excellent schools. The
Speaker 5: high school I attended, among the graduates of my high school,
Speaker 5: or Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Judge Judy, five believe it
Speaker 5: or not, five Nobel laureates attended my public high school,
Speaker 5: Norm Coleman, the senator from Minnesota. We got a very
Speaker 5: solid education, no question about that. And Jews were back
Speaker 5: then very ambitious and they got to realize in large
Speaker 5: part the American dream. Most of my friends are spectacular
Speaker 5: success stories. So that was how I grew up. On
Speaker 5: the surface, I was just one of those graduates of
Speaker 5: James Madison High School in New York. But if you
Speaker 5: scratch the surface, I was kind of an alien bean.
Speaker 5: Because my parents were survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. They had,
Speaker 5: by any conventional standards, very eccentric politics. They were totally
Speaker 5: pro Soviet Union, totally pro Stalin. They wouldn't brook any
Speaker 5: criticism of the Soviet Union or Stalin in my home.
Speaker 5: And so I grew up having to adjust to the
Speaker 5: fact that in many ways I was an outsider, and
Speaker 5: I had to accept that I had to learn to
Speaker 5: live with that status. Actually the most traumatizing aspect of
Speaker 5: my youth, of my childhood, because they could never really
Speaker 5: assimilate what happened to my parents when they would read
Speaker 5: books about the Nazi Holocaust. As a very young child, Okay,
Speaker 5: now young child, you'd say, around thirteen years old, I
Speaker 5: would be reading a book in account of the Warsaw Ghetto,
Speaker 5: say leon Uris's Leon Heuris Is Mila eighteen or John
Speaker 5: Hershey's The Wall, and I remember I'm reading the book,
Speaker 5: glancing down at the text, and it's driving these Jews
Speaker 5: in the Warsaw Ghetto and they're in these things called
Speaker 5: bunkers and these catacombs, and everybody's starving to death in
Speaker 5: this ghetto. And then I'm looking up and I'm looking
Speaker 5: at my mother, and I just couldn't I literally, I
Speaker 5: couldn't make the imaginative leap from what I was reading
Speaker 5: to the what you might say the mundane existence of
Speaker 5: growing up an ordinary home in Brooklyn, New York. But also,
Speaker 5: as I said, I learned to be an outsider from
Speaker 5: a very early age. The most traumatizing event of my youth,
Speaker 5: as I mentioned a moment ago, was I was in
Speaker 5: bar Mitzford and.
Speaker 4: In the Jewish neighborhood.
Speaker 5: That was literally it was unthinkable, because bar Mitzvah was
Speaker 5: kind of the equivalent if you're not Jewish, you have
Speaker 5: said you're a young woman. It's a coming out party
Speaker 5: where the family uses the occasion to display its wealth,
Speaker 5: display its earthly success and.
Speaker 4: All of that.
Speaker 5: And I didn't get to pass through that ritual, and
Speaker 5: it was actually quite humiliating. So I would say from
Speaker 5: a quite young age, I had grown inured to the
Speaker 5: fact that I was, in many respects and outsider. How
Speaker 5: I got involved in the Israel Palestine conflict was really sevendipuity.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure if seven diputy is the right word,
Speaker 5: because that usually means chancing upon a happy event. It
Speaker 5: was all by chance in June nineteen eighty two Israel
Speaker 5: in Lebanon. The war lasted for three and a half months.
Speaker 5: The estimates are Israel killed fifteen to twenty thousand Lebanese
Speaker 5: and Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians. I got involved in the protests
Speaker 5: around the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and at some point
Speaker 5: I started to study the conflict, and then it turned
Speaker 5: into my doctoral citation in graduate school.
Speaker 4: And then as I was doing.
Speaker 5: The research for the doctoral dissertation, I stumbled upon this
Speaker 5: national bestseller.
Speaker 4: It had just come out.
Speaker 5: It was called From Time Immemorial, and it was heaped
Speaker 5: with praise, and this was going This was the book,
Speaker 5: it was said, that was going to change our understanding
Speaker 5: of the whole conflict. I was curious because I was
Speaker 5: writing my doctor dissertation on a related aspect, not on
Speaker 5: that aspect.
Speaker 4: Of the book.
Speaker 5: And I then, after assiduously examining the book, its footnotes,
Speaker 5: and its internal logic and coherence, I was able to
Speaker 5: demonstrate that this national bestseller, which the whole Jewish intelligentsia
Speaker 5: class had heaped praise on, the.
Speaker 4: Book was a hoax.
Speaker 5: And at that point, I guess you could say I
Speaker 5: now plug into this area of intellectual inquiry and political activism,
Speaker 5: and if I stood by it, for forty years. It's
Speaker 5: because the conflict never ended. I'm not a quitter, It's
Speaker 5: just not in my nature. I am very stubborn, except
Speaker 5: when it comes to truth and facts. If you convince
Speaker 5: me I'm wrong, I will concede I'm wrong. My creedown
Speaker 5: life has always been never quarrel with facts. If I'm wrong,
Speaker 5: I simply have to acknowledge it and move on. Otherwise
Speaker 5: I'm betraying my principles. Sometimes I see a fact and
Speaker 5: I see I'm wrong, and I try to weazle my
Speaker 5: way out of it in my mind, and at some
Speaker 5: point I say, norm stop, you're wrong, accept it, acknowledge
Speaker 5: it because that's a bedrock principle for you, and move on.
Speaker 5: So I will not be stubborn about facts if I'm wrong. However,
Speaker 5: I don't give up on the cause I'm not a
Speaker 5: fair weather friend and I don't pullowp with the wind,
Speaker 5: and I don't think anybody has ever.
Speaker 4: Accused me of that.
Speaker 1: So we have a you know, everybody, many people at
Speaker 1: home with friends and family over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend,
Speaker 1: a lot of people with a lot of thoughts and
Speaker 1: opinions on what is unfolding right now in Israel and
Speaker 1: their war on Gaza. And you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people feel so overwhelmed by the details of this conflict
Speaker 1: because it is so longstanding. There's all these different potential
Speaker 1: peace deals, there's all these different facets of the conflict
Speaker 1: that they feel incapable of arguing a position coherently. So
Speaker 1: one of the questions that we got was, can you
Speaker 1: give a sort of cliff notes version or give just
Speaker 1: the most essential facts so that people feel like they
Speaker 1: can coherently and intelligently take a stand on what's going
Speaker 1: on now.
Speaker 5: That's a very difficult question because any tempt to give
Speaker 5: a succinct or as you called, cliff notes version of
Speaker 5: the history.
Speaker 4: And the first question always is where do you begin.
Speaker 5: Israel likes to begin in two thousand BC, and if
Speaker 5: I were to go forward from two thousand BC to
Speaker 5: the present, we would need not two hours, we need
Speaker 5: about two years. So then the question is where do
Speaker 5: you begin? For convenience and sake, and I think for
Speaker 5: the sake of the essential context of what's happening now,
Speaker 5: have you should or you can begin with two thousand
Speaker 5: and six. In two thousand and six, the president of
Speaker 5: the United States, as you will call was George Bush,
Speaker 5: and one of his signature items on his agenda or
Speaker 5: foreign policy agenda, is what he called democracy promotion. And
Speaker 5: one aspect of the democracy promotion was to encourage elections,
Speaker 5: and the Bush administration encouraged the Palestinians to hold elections. Hamas,
Speaker 5: the Islamic movement originally didn't want to participate because it
Speaker 5: felt that these elections were within a framework what was
Speaker 5: called and I'm not going to go into the terminal
Speaker 5: going to the meaning of the terminology, it was called
Speaker 5: the Oslo framework, which Hamas rejected. However, it did a
Speaker 5: volte face and about face it agreed to participate in
Speaker 5: the elections, and surprise to everybody, Amas won the election.
Speaker 4: Now there are two things to say about it.
Speaker 5: Number One, Jimmy Carter, who was monitoring the elections in
Speaker 5: the occupied Palestinian territories, he pronounced the elections completely honest
Speaker 5: and fair. In fact, those were the first democratic elections
Speaker 5: held in the modern Middle East, in the whole region,
Speaker 5: the first democratic elections held in the modern Middle East.
Speaker 5: Jimmy Carter, as I said, pronounced them completely honest and fair.
Speaker 4: The second thing to say.
Speaker 5: About uh the election is the immediately as the election
Speaker 5: was the results of the elections came in, UH, and
Speaker 5: the result was not what the United States wanted.
Speaker 4: I should make one point about that.
Speaker 5: Uh. The people of Gaza did not elect or the
Speaker 5: people in the because it was an occupied territories election,
Speaker 5: so it's the West Bank and Gaza. They didn't elect
Speaker 5: Goza because it was a terrorist organization.
Speaker 4: They didn't elect Gaza.
Speaker 5: Because it was had sit As as objective to destroy Israel.
Speaker 5: It elected Uh, i'm us because i'm us ran on
Speaker 5: a platform that promised reform, and Hamas itself had a
Speaker 5: positive reputation for its role in various social institutions, in
Speaker 5: the role in various religious institutions at the time. I
Speaker 5: won't say what came later, but at the time it
Speaker 5: wasn't seemed to be a reasonably honest and less corrupt
Speaker 5: organization than what's called the Palestinian Authority. And it was
Speaker 5: because of the promises of basic reform that Hamas won
Speaker 5: the election. When I say reform, I mean social reform,
Speaker 5: political reform, and most importantly of course, economic reform. So
Speaker 5: that was why that's the result of the election. As
Speaker 5: I said, the United States was not please. The result
Speaker 5: for example, Hillary Clinton, who's currently making the rounds about
Speaker 5: how she was trying so hard to promote democracy in
Speaker 5: the occupied Palestinian territories because she cares so much about
Speaker 5: the as Indian people. At the time, or just shortly thereafter,
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton stated that the United States made a mistake.
Speaker 4: It should have rigged the election.
Speaker 5: That's Hillary Clinton's commitment to democracy. That's democracy promotion the
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton in the world in any event. Immediately as
Speaker 5: Ahamas won the elections, the United States, i should say, Israel,
Speaker 5: then followed by the United States and the EU, imposed
Speaker 5: these rural economic sensions on Gaza. Now, before I get
Speaker 5: to those sanctions, the first thing I have to do
Speaker 5: free listeners is to describe what is Gaza. Gaza is
Speaker 5: about twenty five miles long, less than the length of
Speaker 5: a marathon, and it's five miles wide. Gaza is among
Speaker 5: the most densely populated places on God's Earth. Right now,
Speaker 5: it's by a wide margin, as we speak, the most
Speaker 5: densely populated place in God's Earth, because half of it
Speaker 5: has been cleared out, and that population in the northern
Speaker 5: sector has now been pushed to the southern sector. And
Speaker 5: now Israel has plans to take the most the dense,
Speaker 5: most densely populated place in God's Earth and push all
Speaker 5: the people and I hope you listeners will take it
Speaker 5: in because it's going to be unfolding as this program airs,
Speaker 5: and push all the people in Gaza into an area
Speaker 5: the size of Los Angeles Airport. The population of Gaza,
Speaker 5: Israel now wants to shove into an area the size
Speaker 5: of Los Angeles Airport. In any event, Gaza among the
Speaker 5: most densely populated places on Earth. Once the israelis I
Speaker 5: should say the population seventy percent of the people of
Speaker 5: Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees. They were seventy
Speaker 5: percent of the population and its descendants were expelled from
Speaker 5: Israel in nineteen forty eight during the First Arab Israeli War,
Speaker 5: and they ended up in Gaza as their descendants, and
Speaker 5: they lived in refugee camps for the last seventy five
Speaker 5: years in Gaza. Half the population of Gaza's children. That's
Speaker 5: another point that should be fixed in everyone's mind when
Speaker 5: you hear about the indiscriminate bombing, the indiscriminate murder, the
Speaker 5: targeted murder in Gaza. About half of those targeted are
Speaker 5: children as of now, more seventy percent of the eleventh thousand.
Speaker 4: That it's about eleven thousand.
Speaker 5: Five hundred, seventy percent of those killed in Gaza, our
Speaker 5: children and women. That's called targeting humas and the official
Speaker 5: media accounts seventy percent our children and women. That's the
Speaker 5: population of Gaza, overwhelmingly refugees and descendants of refugees, and
Speaker 5: overwhelming and fifty percent children. Now, what does this blockade
Speaker 5: of Gaza mean? That to me is the most salient
Speaker 5: fact which whenever I mentioned that even people who are
Speaker 5: reasonably well informed, they're absolutely dumbfounded. Once this will imposed
Speaker 5: the blockade on Gaza, nobody could go in and nobody
Speaker 5: could go out, except on the rarest of occasions. Is
Speaker 5: Real controls everything that goes in and everything that goes out.
Speaker 5: There was a period in time when Israel prohibited so
Speaker 5: many items from being accessible to the people of Gaza
Speaker 5: that they finally reversed the list and just provide a
Speaker 5: list of what was permissible to pass through the gates
Speaker 5: of Gaza. Israel band chocolate from entering Gaza. Israel band,
Speaker 5: they beat chicks from entering Gaza. Israel band potato chips
Speaker 5: from entering Gaza. There was a period where Israel calibrated
Speaker 5: the diet, the caloric diet of every person in Gaza,
Speaker 5: so as to enable a starvation plus a starvation plus
Speaker 5: diet to be limited to the people of Gaza. Half
Speaker 5: the population of Gaza is unemployed.
Speaker 4: Has the highest population.
Speaker 5: Rate of any area in the word excuse me, the
Speaker 5: highest unemployment rate of any area in the world. Seventy
Speaker 5: percent of the youth in Gaza are unemployed.
Speaker 4: So when you add up all.
Speaker 5: The discreet facts that have just enumerates for you, what
Speaker 5: do you get. Well, the former British Prime minister, the
Speaker 5: Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, he described Gaza as an
Speaker 5: open air prison. Then there's it's a senior Israeli security official.
Speaker 5: His name comes up a lot lately as he lays
Speaker 5: out his maniacal plans for Gaza. His name is Gueora
Speaker 5: Gio r A island e I L A N D.
Speaker 5: And in twenty two thousand and four, which is to say,
Speaker 5: before the blockade was even imposed on Gaza. In two
Speaker 5: thousand and four, he described Gaza as a huge concentration camp.
Speaker 5: So if you look at the spectrum, the spectrum goes
Speaker 5: from open air prison to concentration camp. That's Gaza. So
Speaker 5: when we come to the events of October seventh, we
Speaker 5: have to bear in mind that those young men who
Speaker 5: burst the gates of Gaza, overwhelmingly and maybe entirely, they
Speaker 5: were born into a concentration camp. All they had to do,
Speaker 5: day in and day out of their existence was wake
Speaker 5: up in the morning and pace the perimeter those twenty
Speaker 5: five miles by five miles, pace the perimeter of the
Speaker 5: concentration camp. That's all they had experienced in their lives.
Speaker 5: They had no past, they had no present, and as
Speaker 5: things looked on the eve of October seventh, they had
Speaker 5: no future. However, that's only half the story, the reasons
Speaker 5: of this program. Not with me, not speaking through eternity,
Speaker 5: I'll give you the other half very quickly. The other
Speaker 5: half is periodically Israel goes into Gaza. I can't list
Speaker 5: all the times because frankly, I've never been able to
Speaker 5: commit all their operations to memory much as a try.
Speaker 4: The list is too long.
Speaker 5: But every few years Israel conducts with the calls and
Speaker 5: operation in Gaza. What is the operation in Gaza? Is
Speaker 5: reel coined a very happy locution. It's called mowing the
Speaker 5: lawn in Gaza. Now my memory is correct, Crystal, you
Speaker 5: have three children?
Speaker 3: Correct? Correct, yep.
Speaker 4: So i'd like you right.
Speaker 5: So I'd like you to bear in mind. I'm not
Speaker 5: trying to be a motive. I'm not trying to be dramatic.
Speaker 5: But I also am trying to paint for your listeners
Speaker 5: a realistic picture of what's been done to those people.
Speaker 5: Israel mows the lawn in Gazam, and that lawn has
Speaker 5: two point three million blades of grass.
Speaker 4: That's the population of Gazam.
Speaker 5: One half of those blades of grass, one million, one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty thousand are children. And Israel coined if
Speaker 5: I dare say, and the listeners can decide for themselves
Speaker 5: whether I'm being emotive or whether I'm being factual. It
Speaker 5: coined this satanic phrase, which it repeats on every occasion
Speaker 5: with a certain amount of humor. It's funny, We're going
Speaker 5: to mow the grass in Gaza and everybody smiles.
Speaker 4: Isn't that a clever, cute expression.
Speaker 5: I wonder if you would smile the mother of three
Speaker 5: knowing that among those blades of grass that are going
Speaker 5: to be mode are the heads and skulls of your children,
Speaker 5: Operation and cast Led two thousand and eight two thousand
Speaker 5: and nine December twenty sixth to January seventeenth, Israel killed
Speaker 5: fourteen hundred people, three hundred and fifty of whom were children.
Speaker 5: Demolished six thousand, three hundred homes mowing the grass of Gozam,
Speaker 5: then twenty twelve Operation Pillar of Defence, then twenty fourteen
Speaker 5: Operation Protective Edge, fifty one.
Speaker 4: Days of mowing the lawn Operation cast Led.
Speaker 5: In two thousand and eight to nine, Amnesty International wrote
Speaker 5: a large report on what happened.
Speaker 4: He called it twenty two days.
Speaker 5: Of death and destruction mowing the lawn in Gaza. Twenty fourteen,
Speaker 5: Peter Moore, the head of the International Committee of the
Speaker 5: Red Cross, he visited Gaza and he saw what Israel
Speaker 5: had inflicted. Twenty two hundred people killed, five hundred and
Speaker 5: fifty of them children, eighteen thousand homes vaporized.
Speaker 4: He came out and he said, now bear in.
Speaker 5: Mind, Peter Moore's job is to visit combat zones. And
Speaker 5: he said, never in his entire professional life had he
Speaker 5: seen destruction of the magnitude that was inflicted on Gaza.
Speaker 4: In twenty fourteen. So we're told now.
Speaker 5: That the story begins on October seventh, and when a
Speaker 5: moderator has a guest done the first point of businesses,
Speaker 5: of course, you have to condemn what happened on October seventh,
Speaker 5: because that's we're told where the story begins. It's as
Speaker 5: if in a slave uprising like our own, not Turner
Speaker 5: slave uprising, you have to begin the story because not
Speaker 5: Turner and his band of insurgents that killed a lot
Speaker 5: of innocent men, women and children, no question about that,
Speaker 5: in very brutal ways. But as if you have to
Speaker 5: begin by condemning Nott Turner.
Speaker 4: Because of those.
Speaker 5: Horrible deeds he had committed.
Speaker 4: But you're not allowed to mention the fact.
Speaker 5: That, hey, Nott Turner was born a slave. He was
Speaker 5: born a slave, he lived a slave, and as things
Speaker 5: looked on the date of his rebellion, he died, he
Speaker 5: would die a slave. That was his past, present, and future.
Speaker 5: Is that irrevant? Is that an irrelevant aspect of a story?
Speaker 3: Of course not?
Speaker 1: And so for me, I think that you can understand
Speaker 1: the history and the context and how it led to
Speaker 1: these events while also abhorring the loss of innocent civilian life.
Speaker 1: There was a question directly in response to this analysis
Speaker 1: from you, a combative question, let's say from our audience
Speaker 1: that I wanted to get you to respond to. This
Speaker 1: person writes, given that you essentially cannot hold Hamas accountable
Speaker 1: for anything past or present, and suggest they are simply
Speaker 1: acting under the conditions they find themselves in. How many
Speaker 1: Israeli civilians would be too many for it to continue
Speaker 1: to be considered a simple consequence of freedom fighting. So far,
Speaker 1: there might be fourteen hundred they've revised to twelve hundred.
Speaker 1: But let's say it's just a few hundred. Would fourteen thousand,
Speaker 1: one hundred forty thousand, one point four million? At what
Speaker 1: point would norm say that the loss of Israeli civilians
Speaker 1: was too great to justify a resistance movement. What's your
Speaker 1: response to that question?
Speaker 5: I guess my response is as follows, And those are
Speaker 5: fair questions.
Speaker 4: I've heard them. Those are fair questions.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to provide a threshold where it becomes intolerable.
Speaker 5: I've said what there is no There does not seem
Speaker 5: to be any doubt as of now that significant atrocities
Speaker 5: occurred on October seven. I have said that in every interview,
Speaker 5: and I think my reputation is as such that it
Speaker 5: won't be construed as me trying to protect myself. I
Speaker 5: don't protect myself with anything except facts, logic, and truth.
Speaker 5: And facts, logic and truth compel me to acknowledge, where
Speaker 5: I resistant to the fact compel me to acknowledge atrocities occurred.
Speaker 4: So there's no dispute.
Speaker 5: Between myself and your interrogatory and your questioner. There's no
Speaker 5: dispute about the atrocities. The question is understanding those atrocities.
Speaker 4: You couldn't find a single word by me.
Speaker 5: In which I condone what happened on October seventh. I
Speaker 5: have repeatedly said I won't condone, but I won't condemn. Now,
Speaker 5: you might say, Crystal and your questioner, you both might
Speaker 5: say that.
Speaker 4: That doesn't sound consistent.
Speaker 5: If you acknowledge atrocities have occurred, then how can you
Speaker 5: not condemn the perpetrators of those atrocities? And I do
Speaker 5: see a logical problem there, and that's why when I
Speaker 5: was trying to think through this question, I went back
Speaker 5: and looked at how the abolitionists those white folks not
Speaker 5: entirely white folks.
Speaker 4: Obviously they were black abolitionists.
Speaker 5: But to celebrate white abolitionists, people like that Ye Stevens,
Speaker 5: Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, the heroes of
Speaker 5: that era, how they reckon morally parse than that Turner rebellion,
Speaker 5: in which, as I said, sixty white people were hacked
Speaker 5: to pieces, the heads of babies were chopped off.
Speaker 4: That's a fact.
Speaker 5: And William Lloyd Garrison, in the journal he edited, The Liberator,
Speaker 5: he had an article in that Turner and he acknowledged
Speaker 5: atrocities occurred. But you can look through that look read
Speaker 5: every sentence of that article. He does not condemn the
Speaker 5: now Turner rebellion.
Speaker 4: He couldn't.
Speaker 5: He couldn't in morally good conscience, because every day of his.
Speaker 4: Life he bore a witness.
Speaker 5: To the degradation, to the humiliation, to the laceration.
Speaker 4: Of the black slaves.
Speaker 5: He bore witness to the auction blocks where these slaves.
Speaker 4: Were measured, examined, and sold off.
Speaker 5: And in good conscience, he couldn't find it in him
Speaker 5: to condemn what condemned not Turner. He condemned the atrocities,
Speaker 5: for sure, but he would not condemn not Turner. And
Speaker 5: when I read that I have to say it morally
Speaker 5: resonated with me because unlike a.
Speaker 4: Lot of people who are now weighing in.
Speaker 5: And judging the young men who burst free the wall
Speaker 5: of Gaza concentration camp, and unlike myself who spent forty
Speaker 5: years reading those human rights reports on what has been
Speaker 5: done to the people of Gaza, they're all quick to
Speaker 5: pass judgments on those fifteen hundred maybe two thousand. We
Speaker 5: billy don't know men who burst free. I, in good
Speaker 5: conscience could not. The difference between myself and others is
Speaker 5: one the knowledge I find it very painful to this day.
Speaker 4: When I reread.
Speaker 5: My own book, my own book in preparation for the
Speaker 5: past month to speaking our what happened on October seventh,
Speaker 5: my innerds ry. They rise in disgust at the whole
Speaker 5: world passing judgment on this god forsaken people. So if
Speaker 5: my position seems contradictory or contradictory, it's number one, because
Speaker 5: I don't think it's an easy moral question to resolve.
Speaker 5: And number two, unlike everyone else, I don't have in
Speaker 5: my mind this image of hamas this evil criminal organization.
Speaker 5: In my mind, I see the young people with no past,
Speaker 5: no present, no future. Periodically, this satanic power mows the
Speaker 5: lawn of Gaza, kills their mother, or kills their father,
Speaker 5: or kills their sister, or kills their child. Would I,
Speaker 5: I'm October seventh not be filled with rage? Would I
Speaker 5: I'm October seventh not be determined to exact revenge for
Speaker 5: that horror, that nightmare that had been inflicted on me
Speaker 5: for no reason, on God's earth from.
Speaker 4: The day I was born?
Speaker 5: You know the biblical adage, Therefore the grace of God
Speaker 5: go I. I don't know how I would have reacted,
Speaker 5: and I won't pretend to be better than the people
Speaker 5: of Gossip.
Speaker 4: I won't.
Speaker 1: So one of our questioners, again on the same topic, said,
Speaker 1: why not simply apply and uphold Geneva Conventions in all
Speaker 1: instances when it comes to Israel, when it comes to
Speaker 1: Hamasa's actions, and they point in particular to the Geneva
Speaker 1: Convention's Law of Arm Conflict Article fifty one, subsection two
Speaker 1: or Additional Protocol one, which states the civilian population as
Speaker 1: such as well as individual civilians shall not be the
Speaker 1: object of attack.
Speaker 4: I think there's a confusion here.
Speaker 5: I just said I think three times I acknowledged atrocities occurred.
Speaker 4: I applied the Geneva Convention.
Speaker 5: I acknowledge atrocity occurred, but that to my mind, and
Speaker 5: we can disagree. It's a separate question from the moral judgment.
Speaker 5: I am going to pass over those young men in Gaza.
Speaker 5: So I would also say, I'm all for applying those
Speaker 5: what's called what's called IHL international humanitarian law. I'm all
Speaker 5: for its application. My problem is, where do you begin
Speaker 5: under international humanitarian law? The blockade of Gaza is illegal.
Speaker 5: It's a war crime. It is collective punishment, a war crime.
Speaker 5: In fact, since it's lasted twenty nearly twenty years. It
Speaker 5: began in January two thousand and six. Since it's lasted
Speaker 5: nearly twenty years, it constitutes a crime against humanity.
Speaker 4: So I have to ask you a questioner, why do we
Speaker 4: begin with the war?
Speaker 5: Excuse me, why do we begin with the atrocities that
Speaker 5: began or unfolded on October seventh? Without remembering that the
Speaker 5: impetus of that event on October seventh was the fact
Speaker 5: that these young men were the victim of a crime
Speaker 5: against humanity that had endured from the day of their
Speaker 5: birth till October seventh. Also, eager were also eager to
Speaker 5: condemn the crime on October seventh. But I was around,
Speaker 5: and I was documenting that crime against humanity that began
Speaker 5: in two thousand and six. That's the part that's forgotten.
Speaker 5: I condemned the atrocity on October seventh. How many people
Speaker 5: condemned the two decade long crime against humanity that these
Speaker 5: young men endured. How many people even cared rankly? How
Speaker 5: many people even knew about it?
Speaker 1: So you mentioned a little while ago that our former
Speaker 1: Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton has
Speaker 1: been making the rounds laying out her argument for why
Speaker 1: she is opposed to a ceasefire, even after all of
Speaker 1: the many civilians who have been killed by Israel in
Speaker 1: this conflict. She laid out her argument in Atlantic Peace.
Speaker 1: She said that ceasefires freeze conflicts rather than resolve them.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, freezing the conflict in Gaza was an
Speaker 1: outcome that we and the Israelis were willing to accept.
Speaker 1: But Israel's policy since two thousand and nine of containing
Speaker 1: rather than destroying Hamas has failed. A ceasefire now that
Speaker 1: restored the pre October seventh status quo would leave the
Speaker 1: people of Gaza living in a besieged enclave under the
Speaker 1: domination of terrorists and leave Israeli's vulnerable to continued attacks.
Speaker 1: It would also consign hundreds of hostages to continued captivity.
Speaker 1: She also made an appearance on The View where she
Speaker 1: bolstered this argument with her version of some of the
Speaker 1: recent history.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to a little bit of what
Speaker 3: she said there.
Speaker 6: It's a problem predates October seventh, and I think that's
Speaker 6: what President Obama was talking about, because let's remember this
Speaker 6: is a very long and complicated history. My husband, with
Speaker 6: the Israeli government at the time in two thousand, offered
Speaker 6: a Palestinian state to the Palestinians at that time run
Speaker 6: by Arafat, Aasser Arafat and the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization,
Speaker 6: which by the way, took out of its charter violence
Speaker 6: against Israel. So you've got to separate the Palestinians who
Speaker 6: believe that there is some future of peace with Hamas,
Speaker 6: which believes it has to destroy Israel.
Speaker 3: Those are two.
Speaker 6: Different organizations and they have to be viewed in that way.
Speaker 6: Arafat turned that down. There would have been a Palestinian
Speaker 6: state now for twenty three years if he had not
Speaker 6: walked away from it. There was another attempt when I
Speaker 6: was Secretary of State to try to bring the Palestinians
Speaker 6: and the Israelis together. That didn't work out. Hamas came
Speaker 6: in and basically destroyed all of that and killed a
Speaker 6: lot of other Palestinians. So I think when President Obama
Speaker 6: says that it requires us to look at the history,
Speaker 6: and of course history holds all of us accountable.
Speaker 3: So what is your view of.
Speaker 5: Except Hillary Clinton, who destroyed Libya? History holds all of
Speaker 5: us accountable except Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 4: But let's leave that aside. What I would like you to.
Speaker 5: Do, Crystal is simply ask me one specific question. From that,
Speaker 5: she made many many statements. She talked about two thousand
Speaker 5: when her husband presided over the attempted peace agreement. She
Speaker 5: talked about Hamas. Hammas destroyed everything she talked about. Ceasefires
Speaker 5: don't exist. You would not have time for another question
Speaker 5: if I were to go into all of that. So
Speaker 5: you use your you know, you use your talents. You're
Speaker 5: very smart. Which aspect do you find most challenging? And
Speaker 5: then I'll try to answer it going through the details.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the claims that she made there, which
Speaker 1: I hear repeated often, is that it was on the
Speaker 1: Palestinian side that peace has been rejected. And she says
Speaker 1: there that Palestinians could have had a state now for
Speaker 1: twenty three years, had Yaser Arafat not walked away from
Speaker 1: the deal that her husband was attempting to craft. So
Speaker 1: do you agree with that assessment? What does she get
Speaker 1: wrong there?
Speaker 5: Well, she gets everything wrong, and I'm going to try
Speaker 5: to explain why. I do know the details, and I
Speaker 5: hope the listeners will forgive me for going into the details.
Speaker 5: There have been four basic issues to try to resolve
Speaker 5: this conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Okay, issue is
Speaker 5: number one borders, Where should the borderline be drawn between
Speaker 5: Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians accepted the position of
Speaker 5: the international community. The borderline should be drawn where it
Speaker 5: was before the June nineteen sixty seven board, that is,
Speaker 5: the whole of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and
Speaker 5: Gaza would form an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. The
Speaker 5: Palestinians accepted the position of the international community. All the
Speaker 5: legal bodies in the world, the International Court of Justice,
Speaker 5: all the political bodies, the UN General Assembly, everybody accepted
Speaker 5: the border should be so it's called the pre June
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty seven border, or the whole of the West Bank,
Speaker 5: including East Jerusalem and Gaza, would be the Palestinian state
Speaker 5: side by side with Israel.
Speaker 4: Israel rejected that position.
Speaker 5: Israel wanted a part of the West Bank in its
Speaker 5: last offer.
Speaker 4: In its the last.
Speaker 5: Offer, it wanted approximately eight percent of the West Bank,
Speaker 5: So it rejected the international community's position.
Speaker 4: Number two.
Speaker 5: Under international law, East Jerusalem belonged to the Palestinian state
Speaker 5: because under international law it's inadmissible to.
Speaker 4: Acquire territory by war.
Speaker 5: Israel acquired the East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza
Speaker 5: in the course of the nineteen sixty seven more, it
Speaker 5: had no legal title to East Jerusalem, the West Bank
Speaker 5: and Gaza. Israel rejected that position of the international community.
Speaker 5: It said it wanted parts of East Jerusalem. Number three,
Speaker 5: there's the question of these settlements that Israel has built
Speaker 5: in the occupied Palestinian territories, approximately now seven hundred thousand settlers,
Speaker 5: illegal settlers under international law in the West Bank. All
Speaker 5: of those settlers are illegally in the West Bank right
Speaker 5: now as we speak, engaging in a low level at
Speaker 5: this point ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
Speaker 4: Israel wanted to keep.
Speaker 5: Under its sovereignty approximately eighty percent of those settlers.
Speaker 4: And finally, there's the.
Speaker 5: Question of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Their descendants
Speaker 5: since nineteen forty eight, Israel said that it would not
Speaker 5: allow any of those refugees to return under what's called
Speaker 5: the right of return, the international law which says refugees
Speaker 5: have the right to return to their homes after the
Speaker 5: cessation of hostilities.
Speaker 4: Israel said no.
Speaker 5: Now on all of those questions, borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees,
Speaker 5: on all of those questions, the Palestinians were will to
Speaker 5: make concessions.
Speaker 4: And in.
Speaker 5: Two thousand, the year two thousand, President Clinton put forth
Speaker 5: what were called the parameters December two thousand, Parameters for
Speaker 5: resolving the conflict. All of those parameters required concessions from
Speaker 5: the Palestinians on the basis of international law. None of
Speaker 5: Clinton's parameters required concessions from Israel on the basis of
Speaker 5: international law. Now, I want the listeners to hear the
Speaker 5: bottom line. In January two thousand and one, both is
Speaker 5: the rally side and the Palace in the inside accepted
Speaker 5: what we're called the Clinton parameters with reservations. Both sides said,
Speaker 5: we accept with reservations. It is factually untrue President Clinton,
Speaker 5: who's an extremely smart guy, extremely smart guy with a
Speaker 5: voracious intellectual appetite, he's unfortunately also an exceptional liar. And
Speaker 5: in his memoir which I read, he simply lied about
Speaker 5: what happened to his parameters that he put forth in
Speaker 5: December two thousand and Hillary Clinton, who is apparently quite smart,
Speaker 5: also as smart as her husband, I'm not sure, but
Speaker 5: no question, a very smart woman. She is also an inveterate,
Speaker 5: to the point of pathological liar. That's not, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm not talking. I'm not trying to be I'm not
Speaker 5: trying to be at hominem. I think there's quite a
Speaker 5: lot of evidence going back to why she lost the election,
Speaker 5: that she's a pathological liar. She literally can't see the
Speaker 5: lies that she's uttering. So those are just factual questions
Speaker 5: where I can say with a great deal of confidence,
Speaker 5: because I've read the entire diplomatic record and I'm willing
Speaker 5: to debate anybody on it, that what she's saying is false.
Speaker 4: It's doubly false.
Speaker 5: It's false because the Palestinians accepted the terms for resolving
Speaker 5: the conflict which have been developed and ratified by the
Speaker 5: whole international community. Just to give you one example, every year,
Speaker 5: every single year, the United Nations General Assembly passes a
Speaker 5: resolution called Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question, and every
Speaker 5: year it lays out the terms which I just described.
Speaker 5: The terms of the settlement are anchored, embedded in international law.
Speaker 5: Every year, the vote is the whole world, which is
Speaker 5: to say, approximately one hundred and ninety countries on one
Speaker 5: site embracing those terms, including the Palestinian representative organizations, and
Speaker 5: on the other side it's usually the United States, Israel,
Speaker 5: and several South Sea islands the Marshall Islands allow to
Speaker 5: Volu Tonga.
Speaker 4: On the other side.
Speaker 5: Now, if any of your listeners have doubts, which surely
Speaker 5: they have their right to, all they have to do
Speaker 5: is google peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question, United Nations
Speaker 5: General Assembly and that resolution will come right up on
Speaker 5: the screen.
Speaker 4: It's a little more.
Speaker 5: Complicated to get to the voting record, but with enough
Speaker 5: conscientiousness and ingenuity which.
Speaker 4: I lack on the web, I don't know anything about
Speaker 4: the hues.
Speaker 5: They can easily find the whole world on one side,
Speaker 5: the US, Israel, and some South Sea island eight tolls.
Speaker 4: On the other side. That's the real record.
Speaker 5: And if Hillary Clinton wants to debate me on it
Speaker 5: or her husband, I'm perfectly happy.
Speaker 1: To do so well, and I would be perfectly happy
Speaker 1: to moderate that debate. I think that would be great
Speaker 1: for the country to see.
Speaker 5: And I would say, you know, with Bill Clinton, it
Speaker 5: will be a challenge, but he's a very smart guy,
Speaker 5: no question about it.
Speaker 4: But I'm willing to take that challenge.
Speaker 1: So with you acknowledging that hindsight is twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: with the advantage of sitting where we are in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three and looking over this entire historical record, are
Speaker 1: there any moments where you feel like Palestinians were failed
Speaker 1: by their leadership, where if a different decision or a
Speaker 1: different action had been taken, we might be in a
Speaker 1: better place today.
Speaker 5: I would say there are two separate questions. One is
Speaker 5: the goal, and in my opinion, the goal was completely
Speaker 5: legitimate because it was trying to settle the conflict in
Speaker 5: the basis of international law. And I don't think there
Speaker 5: is really an alternative framework for trying to settle the conflict.
Speaker 4: And then there's a second, a separate.
Speaker 5: Question, whether the Palestine leadership made maximum use of its
Speaker 5: opportunities to force Israel to the negotiating table. And there,
Speaker 5: I would say, the record of the Palestine Liberation Organization,
Speaker 5: the PLO, and then subsequently the Palestine Authority, the record
Speaker 5: is not great. However, I want to be very careful
Speaker 5: about this. I do not believe they made the maximum
Speaker 5: use of available opportunities. However, it should never be forgotten
Speaker 5: that both the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO and TAMAS,
Speaker 5: they both attempted nonviolent civil resistance, and in both cases
Speaker 5: that nonviolent civil resistance was brutly suppressed by the Israeli government.
Speaker 4: Now, I don't even know.
Speaker 5: How far your memory stretches back, but in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 5: the Palestinians engaged both in both in Gaza and in
Speaker 5: the West Bank. They engaged in nonviolent civil resistance called
Speaker 5: it came to be called the First Intafada, the first revolt,
Speaker 5: non violent civil revolt against Israel, the Israeli occupation. The
Speaker 5: Israelis under then Defense Minister Defense Minister Yitzak Rabin imposed
Speaker 5: the policy which was called in public the force, might
Speaker 5: and beatings policy, in which they brutalized the Palestinian population
Speaker 5: engaged in nonviolent civil resistance, engaged in massive, massive torture
Speaker 5: of Palestinian detainees during the First Into Father. They according
Speaker 5: to Human Rights Watch, they tortured tens of thousands of
Speaker 5: Palestinian detainees during the First Into Father. In fact, the
Speaker 5: current editor of Atlantic Magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, he was a
Speaker 5: guard in one of those detention facilities, and in his book,
Speaker 5: his memoir called Prisoners, he describes how he personally, this
Speaker 5: is the editor of Atlantic Magazine, which currently features the
Speaker 5: article by Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 4: He describes how he personally.
Speaker 5: Escorted Palestinians in the detention center to.
Speaker 4: The torture chamber.
Speaker 5: He was personally an accessory to torture during the First
Speaker 5: Into Fadom.
Speaker 4: And then let's.
Speaker 5: Fast forward to what Hillary Clinton calls in that article.
Speaker 5: She calls hamas an extreme terrorist organization. So this extreme
Speaker 5: terrorist organization in March twenty eighteen attempted nonviolent civil resistance,
Speaker 5: the young people and the older people.
Speaker 4: The men and the women.
Speaker 5: In Gaza marched to the perimeter of the concentration camp.
Speaker 4: What did Israel do?
Speaker 5: I hope people's memories aren't so short. It assembled along
Speaker 5: the perimeter of the concentration camp. It's snipers. And who
Speaker 5: did the snipers of that beautiful state?
Speaker 4: Who did it target?
Speaker 5: Well, we have a very excellent human rights report which
Speaker 5: describes who they targeted.
Speaker 4: Here for your listeners.
Speaker 5: Is a list of the types of targets. Beautiful Israel,
Speaker 5: the only democracy in the Middle East. Who did it
Speaker 5: target It targeted children, It targeted medics, It targeted journalists,
Speaker 5: and it targeted people with physical disabilities. It targeted young
Speaker 5: men in wheelchairs, It targeted young men on crutches.
Speaker 4: So you can fault both groups, the PLO.
Speaker 5: And the Hamas leadership for not maximizing the opportunities to
Speaker 5: force that state, backed by the United States, to settle
Speaker 5: the conflict. But let it never be said that won.
Speaker 5: Their goal was beyond reason. No, their goal or their
Speaker 5: goal was extreme. Their goal was what the international community
Speaker 5: in all of its manifestations called for, namely, a settlement
Speaker 5: based on the principles of international law.
Speaker 4: And number two.
Speaker 5: Let it never be said that they didn't try nonviolence.
Speaker 5: They tried it, and they tried it, and they were brutally,
Speaker 5: mercilessly mowed down by the Israeli state.
Speaker 4: That's the fact.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could give the strongest possible case
Speaker 1: for the Israeli view of the conflict.
Speaker 3: You're not only a.
Speaker 1: Scholar of the Israel Palestine conflict, you're also a scholar
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust. So coming out of that history of
Speaker 1: deep trauma that your own family was afflicted by, I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could lay out how you think they're
Speaker 1: viewing this conflict and why it ends up being so
Speaker 1: different from the way that you and I are looking
Speaker 1: at it.
Speaker 5: I'm listening closely to your questions, and those are reasonable
Speaker 5: and important questions. I would have to say two things.
Speaker 5: Number One, if we were talking about the past, I
Speaker 5: could see because I strongly believe in the principle of
Speaker 5: trying to establish a devil's advocate argument and then trying
Speaker 5: to argue against the devil's advocate. However, I don't think
Speaker 5: that's possible now because right now, at this moment, we
Speaker 5: are talking about a genocide unfolding in Gozam, and it
Speaker 5: would be a sin against man and a sin against
Speaker 5: God to make a Devil's advocate case for genocide unless
Speaker 5: you're willing to accept Nazi principles as a point of departure,
Speaker 5: namely legitimizing extermination. Since I don't believe any of your
Speaker 5: listeners would accept that dead rock principle as one dead
Speaker 5: rock principle, that extermination is okay, then it makes no
Speaker 5: sense to lay out, so to speak, a Devil's advocate
Speaker 5: position because there will be no agreement on the baseline.
Speaker 4: Israel's trying to.
Speaker 5: Commit a genocide in Gaza right now about that, it's
Speaker 5: very clear. It doesn't even pretend to hide it. It's
Speaker 5: saying we're not going to let any food, water, electricity,
Speaker 5: or a fuel. Well that's genocide to a civilian population.
Speaker 5: Then well that's genocide. That's not complicated. So at the moment,
Speaker 5: I couldn't lay out a position because nobody would accept
Speaker 5: the rock argument that China side is okay, It's okay
Speaker 5: to exterminate the people in the case of the past.
Speaker 5: Why what's the best argument against Israel or for Israel?
Speaker 4: What's the best argument for Israel?
Speaker 5: The best argument for Israel is it has the right
Speaker 5: to break the law, and that's what Israel has said
Speaker 5: all along. Israel has said all along, because of what
Speaker 5: Jews endured experience during the Nazi Holocausts, they should not
Speaker 5: be held to the same moral standard as other states,
Speaker 5: that they should get a pass because of what happened
Speaker 5: to them. So if Israel did as it did, If
Speaker 5: Israel did as it did, do it legalized torture. There
Speaker 5: was a period in Israel's history where they legalized torture. Well,
Speaker 5: they would say, what about the Holocaust. There was a
Speaker 5: period where Israel legalized the demolition of homes as a
Speaker 5: form of punishment.
Speaker 4: When they were asked, well, what about the Holocaust.
Speaker 5: So they've used the Holocaust not just as a moral alibii,
Speaker 5: but as a right that has been that they have
Speaker 5: been endowed with because of what happened during World War Two.
Speaker 5: And so then it's up to your listeners whether you
Speaker 5: accept that that Israel has the right to break the
Speaker 5: law because of what it experienced during World War Two.
Speaker 5: Israel was the only country in the world to have
Speaker 5: legalized torture. Israel was the only country in the world
Speaker 5: to legalize hostage taking the High Court Barak he called
Speaker 5: it bargaining chips. Israel was the only country in the
Speaker 5: world to legalize house demolitions as a form of punishment.
Speaker 4: It's very unique.
Speaker 5: And the argument has always been by its apologies, well,
Speaker 5: what about the Holocaust?
Speaker 4: And then that's a judgment that your listeners have to make.
Speaker 5: I say, by the standard of international law in all
Speaker 5: of its dimensions, be it the human rights dimension, be
Speaker 5: it the terms for settling the conflict. Israel is and
Speaker 5: has been in egregious violation of the law. And you
Speaker 5: can see that in the International Court of Justice decision
Speaker 5: in July two floor, which I'm not going to go
Speaker 5: through right now because we're going into the weeds and
Speaker 5: I will lose listeners. So I think the record is unambiguous,
Speaker 5: unequivocal that Israel is a systematic and egregious violator of
Speaker 5: international law in all its dimensions. And then the question
Speaker 5: comes to what you just said, Okay, but then what's
Speaker 5: its best case, And that's a fair question, and I.
Speaker 4: Think it's best cases.
Speaker 5: The case is who has made all along, namely that
Speaker 5: given what happen in light of what happened to Jews
Speaker 5: during World War two, they have a right to do that.
Speaker 5: And there it's just for you, you know, it's your
Speaker 5: listeners to the side. Some of them are going to say, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know what, I think they do have that right
Speaker 5: to break the law, and others will say, well, the
Speaker 5: law is the law, and nobody gets a free pass.
Speaker 5: Now as we're once in the name of the Nazi
Speaker 5: Holocaust to commit a holocaust, well that's what they're doing.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's not that's not exaggeration. They are right
Speaker 5: now turning Gaza. During the Filipino War in the turn
Speaker 5: of twentieth century, nineteen hundred, during the field, there was
Speaker 5: a province in revolt called Luzan, the United States is
Speaker 5: time to occupied and one of the generals during the
Speaker 5: Filipino War he said, we're going to turn the dnsest
Speaker 5: resistance was in Luzon Province lu Zealm and one of
Speaker 5: the American generals said, we're going to turn the Luzon
Speaker 5: province into a howling wilderness. That phrase always stuck with me.
Speaker 5: And that's what Israel is doing now to Gaza.
Speaker 4: I woke up.
Speaker 5: This morning and I was reading an article and it
Speaker 5: said bait Hanoun, which was a place on you had
Speaker 5: very five thousand people in northern Gaza, and it's not
Speaker 5: there anymore.
Speaker 4: There's nothing.
Speaker 5: There was a very vivided article by Patrick Kingsley of
Speaker 5: The Times, who I loathe, but occasionally a word of
Speaker 5: truth passes through his lips, and he said he was
Speaker 5: taken on a tour of northern Gaza by the Israeli Army,
Speaker 5: a control tour. And he said, at one point he
Speaker 5: was in this completely level end, and he said, he
Speaker 5: turned to the general, the commanding officer, he said, where
Speaker 5: are we? And the fellow named the name of the place,
Speaker 5: and he describes the article. He was bewildered because he
Speaker 5: had spent a lot of time in that place as
Speaker 5: a journalist for the Times. He had no idea where
Speaker 5: he was. There's nothing there, he said. The only constant
Speaker 5: is the is the Mediterranean. To see, there's nothing there.
Speaker 5: You couldnt find your home in Gaza. That's his real's goal,
Speaker 5: that people will have nothing to return to, and so
Speaker 5: they'll leave, leave where we don't know yet. Right now
Speaker 5: they're trying to put all the people, the two point
Speaker 5: three million people of Gaza into an area the size
Speaker 5: of Los Angeles Airport, to force Egypt to open the
Speaker 5: gates of Rafa and take them. So and why, well,
Speaker 5: the Holocaust did you see the Times coverage one day
Speaker 5: it would say one of the people taken hostage was
Speaker 5: a survivor of the Holocaust. Oh yeah, that's very possible.
Speaker 5: My parents survived the Holocaust. I buried them thirty years ago,
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety five. But they managed to find a survivor
Speaker 5: of the Holocaust. Always dragging it in, dragging it in.
Speaker 5: What became the mantra of the latest event? What's the mantra?
Speaker 5: The worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? Can you
Speaker 5: tell me what fourteen hundred people being killed has to
Speaker 5: do with the Holocaust? Awshitz killed? No, I'm serious, and
Speaker 5: alshits ten thousand Jews were gassed to death a week,
Speaker 5: ten thousand a week. What does that have to do
Speaker 5: with fourteen hundred, Yes, fourteen hundred, it's a horrible number.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to deny it, but can you tell
Speaker 5: me what that has to do with the Nazi Holocaust?
Speaker 4: But always drag it in, drag it in.
Speaker 5: And the former Foreign Minister of Israel he famously said,
Speaker 5: you know, the Hebrew word for holocaust does show it shoah?
Speaker 5: And he famously said, there's no business like show a business.
Speaker 5: And that's what you see.
Speaker 3: Now let me ask you.
Speaker 5: You're always dragging in to extenuate, excuse, exonerate.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question related to that, because
Speaker 1: this is something I hear a lot and something that
Speaker 1: are a number. We had a number of questions about this.
Speaker 1: What's a good response when someone proposes that, while it
Speaker 1: is undeniably true that Israel quote does bad things, it
Speaker 1: only gets a disproportionate amount of attention because of anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: For example, how to respond to someone who says, there
Speaker 1: are Muslims that are severely persecuted, ethnically cleansed all over
Speaker 1: the world, but only Israel incites this kind of international ire,
Speaker 1: and it's because people hate Jews.
Speaker 3: What is your reaction to that?
Speaker 5: Well, there are many arguments you could have made in
Speaker 5: the past, but now is Isel is in a very
Speaker 5: unique situation. Number One, by the third week. By the
Speaker 5: third week of the current operation, Israel had killed by
Speaker 5: the third week more children then children killed in every
Speaker 5: war zone in the world combined for the year's twenty
Speaker 5: twenty or the year of twenty twenty one, or the
Speaker 5: year twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: I remember I was in.
Speaker 5: One debate with a fellow named Eli Lake. I mentioned
Speaker 5: that statistic. At that point the number of Palestinian children
Speaker 5: killed was thirty five hundred, and very skeptically, Eli Lake
Speaker 5: said more than in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: And then I went home and checked.
Speaker 5: Do you know how many children have been killed in
Speaker 5: Ukraine in twenty months?
Speaker 4: Five hundred.
Speaker 5: At that moment when I was in the debate, you
Speaker 5: know how many children were killed in Gaza?
Speaker 4: Thirty five hundred number two.
Speaker 5: Now we can disagree about this, and my memory may
Speaker 5: not be perfect, as I say, I don't quarrel with facts,
Speaker 5: but I cannot remember.
Speaker 4: A single conflict in my lifetime.
Speaker 5: Where a state was openly, blatantly and flagrantly targeting hospitals.
Speaker 5: That's a new threshold of barbarism. The most Sankro sank
Speaker 5: institution in any society do every manner and form of
Speaker 5: protection inviolable under international custom, has become a target of
Speaker 5: legitimate attack by this state. In terms of density of bombing,
Speaker 5: it's the most densely bombed area Gaza of any war
Speaker 5: zone in the twenty first century. So if it's now
Speaker 5: getting disproportionate attention by some people's reckonings, it might possibly
Speaker 5: be because it's carried gone this proportionate crimes in real
Speaker 5: time before our eyes.
Speaker 1: To your point about the targeting of hospitals, we got
Speaker 1: in a question that asked, what do you think was
Speaker 1: Israel's real motivation to storm Alshifa Hospital? Did they really
Speaker 1: expect to find a complete Hamas command center? If not,
Speaker 1: what could be their actual objective? And just as a
Speaker 1: side note, we're recording this Monday, November twentieth. Just this morning,
Speaker 1: there's been an additional IDF release of a tunnel system
Speaker 1: that they claimed that they located some fifty meters long,
Speaker 1: and some video that they claim shows hostages being let
Speaker 1: into the hospital for treatment.
Speaker 5: Okay, let me get to the goal and then let
Speaker 5: me get to the specifics the goal is. In my
Speaker 5: view as a speculative, I can't answer the minds of
Speaker 5: the Israeli leadership. I would say number one, Israel's always
Speaker 5: testing the threshold. How much will the international community tolerate?
Speaker 5: If you can get away with targeting hospitals, that sacrosanct
Speaker 5: edifice of civil society, then you can get away with genocide.
Speaker 4: If you can target injured people, dying.
Speaker 5: People in a hospital, then why can't you kill everybody?
Speaker 4: So right now, in part it's a probing operation.
Speaker 5: How far will the international community let us go?
Speaker 4: Number two?
Speaker 5: Al Shifa Hospital is the largest hospital in Gaza. It
Speaker 5: was at the time of the Israeli attack, Al Shifa
Speaker 5: was holding sixty thousand people, not a small number. And
Speaker 5: if you target Al Shifa, you're targeting what remains of
Speaker 5: Gaza's civilization. It was the as it were, epitome. It
Speaker 5: summarized Gaza civilization. I know some people in the audience
Speaker 5: are laughing, Aha, Gaza civilization.
Speaker 4: Very funny. Yeah, it epitomized Gaza civilization, and therefore, by
Speaker 4: destroying it, you are dealing a lethal blow, a death
Speaker 4: blow to all that Gaza stood for.
Speaker 7: Now about that Al Shifa Hospital, Let's remember, as The
Speaker 7: New York Times wrote the other day, that.
Speaker 5: Israel claimed there was this strolling command and control center
Speaker 5: in which were ensconced the leadership of Hamas and the hostages.
Speaker 4: And the Times.
Speaker 5: Wrote that the eleven thousand people killed at that point,
Speaker 5: which was last week, those eleven thousand people killed were
Speaker 5: quote in part because of the claim that Al Shifa
Speaker 5: Hospital housed beneath the ground the command and control center.
Speaker 5: And then Israel produced all these symtastic images and videos
Speaker 5: of this hamas command and control center, this intricate, ramified
Speaker 5: control center with multiple stories that was beneath the hospital,
Speaker 5: and of course that was completely lunatic. And from early
Speaker 5: on I was engaged in this thing called tweeting.
Speaker 4: I don't know what twitter or tweeting.
Speaker 5: Art, but I have a very nice young crew of
Speaker 5: techies who have connected me.
Speaker 4: To social media.
Speaker 5: I've never been on Facebook, I've never been on any
Speaker 5: of that stuff.
Speaker 4: So I began to tweet.
Speaker 5: I feel humiliate even saying that I began to tweet
Speaker 5: from early on.
Speaker 4: This is completely ridiculous. This was always claiming.
Speaker 5: Howmos Is got Commas leadership in its basement, and I
Speaker 5: went back to two thousand and eight, went to the
Speaker 5: whole thing. So what did we find. Well, here's what
Speaker 5: we find so far. They were in the hospitals for
Speaker 5: three days. Now, you really have to listen to this
Speaker 5: because the cridulity, I would say, the pathological credulity of
Speaker 5: the media has to make you laugh.
Speaker 4: So they bring in reporters and the reporters see.
Speaker 5: A hole in the ground, a hole in the ground,
Speaker 5: and they're told this probably leads to tunnels, but we
Speaker 5: can't go in the hole because it's booby trapped. Really,
Speaker 5: you can't go in the hole because it's booby trapped. Well,
Speaker 5: every time Israel goes into Gaza, it claims that homes
Speaker 5: are booby trapped. That's why it says it blows them up.
Speaker 5: And I'm thinking to myself, well, let me see here.
Speaker 5: Israel invented this miracle they call iron dome, right, that's
Speaker 5: the anti ballistic missile system, anti missile system. So these geniuses,
Speaker 5: the Israelis, they invented iron dome, the miracle. They called
Speaker 5: it an iron dome, which deflects incoming missiles in the
Speaker 5: sky and shatters them to smitherings.
Speaker 8: But Israel hasn't yet figured out how to deactivate a
Speaker 8: booby trap, hasn't figured out.
Speaker 5: Every time Israel mows the lawn and gaza, it says,
Speaker 5: we have to blow up all the houses because they're
Speaker 5: all booby trap.
Speaker 4: They've been doing that since two thousand and.
Speaker 5: Eight, probably much earlier, but I don't know the record,
Speaker 5: and they haven't yet they figured out how to smash
Speaker 5: the smitherings incoming ballistic missiles.
Speaker 4: But they say to.
Speaker 5: The reporters, you can't go down because it might be
Speaker 5: booby trapped, and we don't know how to deactivate a
Speaker 5: booby trap. I would suggest that if you go into
Speaker 5: any town of more than one thousand people in the
Speaker 5: United States, the police know how to deactivate the booby trap,
Speaker 5: but Israel hasn't figured it out.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: Israel says it discovered the tunnel fifty five meters long.
Speaker 5: Fifty five meters is about half a city block. Okay, okay,
Speaker 5: half a city block. That doesn't sound to me like
Speaker 5: AMAS Command and Control Center, which has multiple stories. And
Speaker 5: we're told if you look at the images and when
Speaker 5: you put this program up, you can flash just say,
Speaker 5: you just google Israel images Hamas Command and Control Center.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we played it.
Speaker 1: Their animation of what they projected it look like right
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 5: I'm obviously ten times your age. So there was a
Speaker 5: program when I was growing up called A Man from
Speaker 5: Uncle Uncle stood for the United Network Command for Law Enforcement.
Speaker 5: It started a star David McCallum and Robert Vaughan, and
Speaker 5: it was a spectacular command and control center. And the
Speaker 5: way you entered it, there was a tailor shop. It
Speaker 5: was called Del Floria's Taylor Shop. And then you went
Speaker 5: into the dressing room. You closed the curtain and then
Speaker 5: you entered Del Floria's. You entered through the dressing room,
Speaker 5: a trap door. You entered the Man from Uncle headquarters.
Speaker 5: And this is like the Man from Uncle. So so
Speaker 5: here's the news story. Here's the news story. They showed
Speaker 5: us fifty five meters and then they said there was
Speaker 5: a door there, and we can't go through the door.
Speaker 5: Can't go through the door because behind the door that's
Speaker 5: where the command and control center is. But we can't
Speaker 5: get past the door. It's a very thick door, you know,
Speaker 5: very thick door. It began to sound like if you remember,
Speaker 5: one of those pornographic films from the seventies or eighties
Speaker 5: was called Behind the Green Door.
Speaker 1: Not familiar with that one.
Speaker 4: It was Fame.
Speaker 5: It's like I Am Curious Yellow. These were landmarks. You know,
Speaker 5: when I was growing up, there was a lot of pornography.
Speaker 5: There was I Am Curious Yellow, deep throat behind the
Speaker 5: Green Door.
Speaker 4: And any offense. So this was like behind the Hamas door.
Speaker 5: And you know, I used to live in an area,
Speaker 5: a very tough area called Washington Heights, and there was
Speaker 5: a lot of drug.
Speaker 4: Activity in my area.
Speaker 5: Actually, the drug dealers finally drove me out liberally and
Speaker 5: I was running down the street. Not pleasant, not a
Speaker 5: happy memory. I wasn't a happy camper that day, and
Speaker 5: any event, the steel doors were very common. Any NYPD
Speaker 5: team knows how to knock down the steel door, behind
Speaker 5: which are the drug the armed drug dealers, but the
Speaker 5: greatest army in human history, the idea.
Speaker 4: It executed a war that defeated all the.
Speaker 5: Arab armies in nineteen sixty seven and six days. All
Speaker 5: the Arab armies it defeated in six days. But they
Speaker 5: haven't figured out how to knock down the door. And
Speaker 5: behind that door is the command and control center. You know,
Speaker 5: the whole thing is so laughable, it's so idiotic, But
Speaker 5: that's the Israelis.
Speaker 4: They count on it. You know why they count on it?
Speaker 4: Why is that they count on it because they know
Speaker 4: they can get away with it In the United States.
Speaker 5: They know they could say anything and snow get away
Speaker 5: with it.
Speaker 1: They only need they only basically need Joe Biden to
Speaker 1: be buying it at this point, and apparently it seems
Speaker 1: like he is thus far.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you, though, I.
Speaker 5: Would say that's a very technical term where you mean
Speaker 5: by him buying it, that assumes he's mentally able to
Speaker 5: process it, and at this point I don't think that's
Speaker 5: that should be assumed fair.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you those related question of human
Speaker 1: shields quote unquote human shields, and I've heard you speak
Speaker 1: about this before, and your analysis and your review of
Speaker 1: you know, international human rights organizations and evidence on the record,
Speaker 1: you say you don't find any evidence that Hamas has
Speaker 1: used human shields. And the reason I have a question
Speaker 1: about this is because, first of all, some of their statements,
Speaker 1: which I'll get to in a minute, but because, as
Speaker 1: you said, Gaza is so densely packed, it almost seems
Speaker 1: to me like it would be impossible not to have
Speaker 1: military assets close to civilian populations, even if that wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know, if human shield wasn't the goal. So I
Speaker 1: wonder just speak to that and give us maybe what
Speaker 1: your definition of a quote unquote human shield is.
Speaker 5: Well, look, excellent question, and these are the questions which
Speaker 5: I spent forty years of my life trying to come
Speaker 5: to grips with understand and so I'm very happy that
Speaker 5: you're asking those questions because they will lend clarity to
Speaker 5: the truth. Under international law, there are two relatively distinct concepts.
Speaker 4: One is human shielding.
Speaker 5: Now, human shielding has not, been, to my knowledge, and
Speaker 5: I think I'm running this point.
Speaker 4: Has not been legally defined.
Speaker 5: It's what you might call a term of art, and
Speaker 5: human shielding basically means, as it's understood by most human
Speaker 5: rights or organizations those I say, it's not been legally codified.
Speaker 5: It basically means the conscripting, the forcible conscripting of civilians
Speaker 5: to either shield a combatant or to shield a military site.
Speaker 4: That would be human shielding.
Speaker 5: The evidence on Palestinian militants hamas fighters engaging in human
Speaker 5: shielding is near.
Speaker 4: Zero. I have quoted at length, but I won't do so. Now.
Speaker 5: The findings of Amnesty International during the two thousand and
Speaker 5: eight nine Operation Protected Edge, and they found in a
Speaker 5: report I referred to it earlier, the twenty two Days
Speaker 5: of Death and Destruction, they found no.
Speaker 4: Evidence of human shielding.
Speaker 5: Now there's a separate concept, as I said, relatively distinct.
Speaker 4: The second concept is.
Speaker 5: Called quote, taking all feasible precautions to protect civilians if
Speaker 5: you're fighting in a civilian area. So sometimes, as you
Speaker 5: point out, if you're dealing with or you're you are
Speaker 5: amidst the most among the most densely populated areas in
Speaker 5: the world, You inevitably are at some point going to
Speaker 5: find yourself resisting from population centers. And then the rule
Speaker 5: of international law is you have to take all feasible precautions.
Speaker 4: Now, of course, because you're uh, you have a.
Speaker 5: Facility and fluency in the English language.
Speaker 4: The keyword is feasible.
Speaker 5: What at any particular moment might be feasible to protect
Speaker 5: civilians if you're engaged in fighting in a civil area.
Speaker 4: The only thing I could say is human.
Speaker 5: Rights organizations have accused Hamas in situations, not every situation,
Speaker 5: but in situations of not having.
Speaker 4: Taken all feasible precautions.
Speaker 5: Now that's only half the story, because the other half
Speaker 5: of the story is human rights organizations have voluminously documented
Speaker 5: Israel's use of human shields, Palestinian human shields. So let's
Speaker 5: take an example that goes back to something we just
Speaker 5: talked about. Occasionally, Israel enters a house which it fears
Speaker 5: might be booby trapped.
Speaker 4: What does it do.
Speaker 9: It uses Palestinians as human shields to precede them as
Speaker 9: they enter the house and say, walk down a staircase.
Speaker 4: So the fact is, yes, there are.
Speaker 5: Voluminously documented instances of Palestinian of human shielding. I remember
Speaker 5: the instances during Operation Defensive Shield in two thousand and
Speaker 5: two when they invaded Janine in the West Bank and
Speaker 5: they took Palestinian They would enter a home.
Speaker 4: And then use the home.
Speaker 5: As a base, fire from windows, and they would put
Speaker 5: Palestinians in the windows and fire.
Speaker 4: From behind them.
Speaker 5: So, yes, there has been human shielding in the occupied
Speaker 5: Palestinian territories, human shielding committed by Israel. But the only
Speaker 5: question we're about to entertain is how extensive is Hamas
Speaker 5: is use of human shielding. That's the only relevant question
Speaker 5: Israel human shielding.
Speaker 4: It's not even the.
Speaker 5: Question because it's not acknowledged that exists. It's like before
Speaker 5: October seventh, nothing happened in Gaza. The whole history, the
Speaker 5: whole documentary record is whited out. As your generation likes
Speaker 5: to call it. It's eras and erasure.
Speaker 1: Related to the human shield question, the Hamas official Gazi
Speaker 1: Hamad recently said in an interview this was a translation.
Speaker 1: We must teach Israel lesson. We will do it twice
Speaker 1: in three times. The Alexa flood is just the first time.
Speaker 1: There will be a second, a third, a fourth, he continued,
Speaker 1: Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we
Speaker 1: are ready to pay it. We are called a nation
Speaker 1: of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs. How
Speaker 1: do you interpret those sorts of comments?
Speaker 4: Number one?
Speaker 5: In the United States, anybody who's on to the left
Speaker 5: on the political spectrum, we always like to use the
Speaker 5: piece of the wisdom. Wherever there's oppression, there is resistance.
Speaker 5: So as a factual matter, what he's saying is true,
Speaker 5: except if the whole population is exterminated, which is I
Speaker 5: think there's a reason possibility that large numbers will be
Speaker 5: wiped out. Gaza will turn into a howling wilderness, and
Speaker 5: each you will have to open its gates, and resistance
Speaker 5: at that point in God's will be very difficult because
Speaker 5: there won't be a guzza. But barring that eventuality, yes,
Speaker 5: he's correct, there will be one. There will be two,
Speaker 5: there will be three. Guess what, Chrystal ready for this?
Speaker 5: Brace yourself? There was one, there was two, there was three.
Speaker 5: Many slave revolts in the United States? Are you shocked
Speaker 5: by that? Are you shocked that slaves kept revolting? Is
Speaker 5: that a shocking admission? When he says, we're going to
Speaker 5: continue to revolt until the walls of this concentration camp
Speaker 5: are broken down. I'm not shocked by that. The second
Speaker 5: part of his.
Speaker 4: Admission, Oh my god, he said we as a people
Speaker 4: are going to resist until we get their freedom.
Speaker 5: Hey, maybe he heard Patrick Henry say give me liberty
Speaker 5: or give me death.
Speaker 4: That's such an odd notion. I was reading Winston Churchill's.
Speaker 5: Famous speech during World War Two the other day where
Speaker 5: he said, we're willing to starve, We're willing to die
Speaker 5: in order to beat the Nazi horror menace whatever he
Speaker 5: called it. When we say that, that's heroic, that's courageous.
Speaker 5: It's a hallmark of our civilization that we're willing to
Speaker 5: be martyrs in the pursuit of freedom. But suddenly, when
Speaker 5: he says it, it conjures up, she hatties, suicide bombers.
Speaker 5: It suddenly becomes sinister to say that you're going to
Speaker 5: fight to the last for your freedom.
Speaker 4: Give me liberty or give me death.
Speaker 1: Another question that I thought was was a good one
Speaker 1: and worth worth tackling with you, this individual rights. If
Speaker 1: you think there should be a ceasefire, what is your
Speaker 1: plan for afterwards? A ceasefire, and then.
Speaker 5: What look excellent question because people don't ask those questions.
Speaker 5: That's an excellent question. Now, if a ceasefire means that
Speaker 5: the Palestinians are going to continue to live in peace
Speaker 5: in the concentration camp, that these fires.
Speaker 4: Obviously not going to hold up.
Speaker 5: That's perfectly obvious, because if you freeze the situation as
Speaker 5: it is now, the concentration camp remains in place. So
Speaker 5: I'm not going to pretend that Palestinians, Gossens, the gods
Speaker 5: of leadership, is going to acquiesce to a ceasefire into eternity.
Speaker 5: That's obviously a morally depraved.
Speaker 4: And an intellectually insane.
Speaker 5: Proposition, unless you assume, as Israel has always hoped, that
Speaker 5: the Gossens will simply languish and die in Gaza, they
Speaker 5: will be forgotten, they will just languish and die. But
Speaker 5: borry that eventuality. Of course, the ceasefire can't on its own.
Speaker 5: Of course, the cease fire can't be sustained over a long.
Speaker 4: Period of time.
Speaker 5: And I'm not going to pretend that people in Gaza
Speaker 5: are going to buide by a ceasefire that leaves them
Speaker 5: to be born, live and die in a concentration camp.
Speaker 5: So in my view, the demands now at this moment
Speaker 5: have to be ceasefire now, and the blockade of Gaza
Speaker 5: and stop the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. But
Speaker 5: those are immediate demands. What has to come afterwards is
Speaker 5: what I've said already to you to the point of tedium.
Speaker 5: There has to be a settlement on the basis of
Speaker 5: international law, because there's no other framework for resolving the conflict.
Speaker 5: The international community agrees in that framework. There's not been
Speaker 5: any significant descent except for the United States in Israel,
Speaker 5: and therefore the ceasefire has to be followed.
Speaker 4: Within a reasonable period of time.
Speaker 5: I can't give the time because the figures, the statements
Speaker 5: now coming out of Israel are in order to rebuild
Speaker 5: guys who would take five years. In the northern part,
Speaker 5: there's nothing there. It's gone, it's been vaporized. So I
Speaker 5: can't tell you when.
Speaker 4: But I will not.
Speaker 5: Pretend that even if a ceasefire is reached, which Israel
Speaker 5: opposes and the United States opposes, and Hillary Clinton opposes,
Speaker 5: even if it were reach, that it would be permanent,
Speaker 5: because permanent means the people of Gaza permanently confined to
Speaker 5: a concentration him.
Speaker 1: Last question that I have for you, which is another
Speaker 1: audience question that I thought was very interesting. Do you
Speaker 1: believe it is permissible that, as an American with no
Speaker 1: familial or ancestral ties to Israeli Palestine, that a person
Speaker 1: cannot side with either group during this conflict. Both groups
Speaker 1: have and are doing wrong to one another, both have
Speaker 1: understandable grievances that should be heard. Or is there a
Speaker 1: moral and civic onus on an otherwise a political and
Speaker 1: non partisan American to do enough research to have strong
Speaker 1: enough reasoning to choose a side. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: do you think it is morally incumbent on people to
Speaker 1: educate themselves on this conflict sufficient enough that they take
Speaker 1: a side?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 5: Number one has something to do with familiar or blood
Speaker 5: or lineal conduction. I hate to sound like an an
Speaker 5: Old Testament profit.
Speaker 4: I am old, but I'm not a profit.
Speaker 5: Nonetheless, for me, and I think it should be for everyone,
Speaker 5: the issue is not blood tie, lineal tie, or any
Speaker 5: other tie.
Speaker 4: It's just about what's true and what's just.
Speaker 5: If Israel what we're doing, we're true, and it was
Speaker 5: just whatever my personal feelings about it might be, I
Speaker 5: would have to support them. But number two is the
Speaker 5: question you asked, I should say the second part what
Speaker 5: I'm talking about was implied in the question. Now let's
Speaker 5: get to the literal question. Obviously, it's not within any
Speaker 5: individual's capacity, except maybe Professor Chomsky. It's not with any
Speaker 5: individual's capacity to master every conflict in the world and
Speaker 5: to possess sufficient factual information to render.
Speaker 4: A judgment of right and wrong.
Speaker 5: For most mortals here I'll exclude Professor Johnsky.
Speaker 4: That's not possible.
Speaker 5: However, I have to enter two caveats, two reservations. Caveat
Speaker 5: number one, This current moment does not require a mastery effects.
Speaker 5: A genocide is unfolding in real time before our eyes,
Speaker 5: and so all you have to do is ask yourself
Speaker 5: a question. Do you think it requires a mastery of
Speaker 5: facts to render a judgment on whether or not it's
Speaker 5: right to deny food, water, fuel, and electricity to a
Speaker 5: civilian population, one half of which is children. Can you
Speaker 5: I'm asking you, I'm asking you as an intelligent woman, Yeah,
Speaker 5: as a mother. Can you imagine any circumstance in which
Speaker 5: you would say, such is the circumstance that I have
Speaker 5: to agree to deny any food, water, fuel, electricity to
Speaker 5: one and a half million children.
Speaker 1: No, to me, the current, the current moment is not
Speaker 1: complicated at all. The history is very complicated. You know,
Speaker 1: the details of all the peace deals, all of that
Speaker 1: very complex, But the current situation to me is very
Speaker 1: cut and dry, actually exactly.
Speaker 5: And number two, the problem is not that people don't
Speaker 5: know the facts.
Speaker 4: The problem is the people in.
Speaker 5: Power lying and lying and lying and lying about the facts.
Speaker 5: That's the problem. I excuse ignorance. The other day I
Speaker 5: was on with two I did two interviews, not to
Speaker 5: have done so many, but with both Mikhaeleb Peterson and
Speaker 5: Cands Owens, and each of them began by saying, I
Speaker 5: really don't know anything about this conflict, and I appreciate that.
Speaker 5: I appreciate the humility we come in. And I thought that,
Speaker 5: of course, why should you know? You know, godsas a
Speaker 5: postage stamp on the world's now, why would you know
Speaker 5: more about Goza than you would know about a country
Speaker 5: in Africa. That's I get that. So that to me,
Speaker 5: it's completely understandable and doesn't raise any significant moral questions.
Speaker 5: But her father, Mikhaela Peterson's father, Jordan Peterson, is a
Speaker 5: very sick liar.
Speaker 4: That's a problem to me.
Speaker 5: When he comes up and he says, he's asked by
Speaker 5: Piers Morgan what caused this conflict, he says, well, I'll
Speaker 5: tell you what caused it. It was he ran rattling
Speaker 5: the chain of Hamas, what are you talking about? Israeli
Speaker 5: intelligence doesn't say that, And then you get.
Speaker 4: You get.
Speaker 5: Kenda's Owens colleague Ben Shapiro, who puts out these videos.
Speaker 4: With one ignorant lie after.
Speaker 5: The other, not even sophisticated lies, so ignorant, so in
Speaker 5: thisci silic so shameless, so ridiculous, so preposterous, that to.
Speaker 4: Me is the.
Speaker 5: Problem on a moral you know, on a moral level.
Speaker 5: I remember my mother once said we were talking about
Speaker 5: Poland no during the war, during her experience during the war,
Speaker 5: and she said, I never held it against Poles publish
Speaker 5: people who wouldn't help us, because she said, you know,
Speaker 5: in Poland, if you helped the Jews during World War too,
Speaker 5: they just shot you dead. You don't get a trial.
Speaker 5: You were aimed, the better the Jew boom, you're shot dead.
Speaker 5: And my mother never pretended to be a hero, and
Speaker 5: I think in the back of her mind she thought
Speaker 5: I wouldn't open the door.
Speaker 4: Okay, so she didn't fold them. She said what she
Speaker 4: faulded was the Poles who's stood along the.
Speaker 5: Wall of the ghetto and were gleeful as they saw
Speaker 5: what was happening to the Jews.
Speaker 4: Those are the ones she passed judgment on.
Speaker 5: But my mother held by the addity there but for
Speaker 5: the grace of God go I. I wouldn't let them
Speaker 5: in my home. If a Jewish flee and looks to
Speaker 5: my place, looks to my home for refuge, and it's
Speaker 5: the same thing here. Ignorance is an excuse because the
Speaker 5: world is a big place, many conflicts. You can focus
Speaker 5: on one or two most mortal people, but everyone.
Speaker 4: No, not possible.
Speaker 5: But when you are a person of power or prominence and.
Speaker 4: You're using your.
Speaker 5: Position to disseminate the ugliest, the stupidest, the most idiotic lies.
Speaker 5: I have a friend and Ben Peter Ben Shapiro's in
Speaker 5: his current video the first two minutes it's about ancient
Speaker 5: biblical history. Okay, my friend. Her name is Deborah MacCabe.
Speaker 5: She's the daughter of Hyam Maccabee, the famed British Jewish historian,
Speaker 5: and she happened to look at that video because I
Speaker 5: had been writing about.
Speaker 4: It, and she went through just the first two minutes.
Speaker 5: She said, I couldn't find one statement that was even
Speaker 5: remotely accurate, not one about Joshua, about the name Palestine.
Speaker 5: And then she mapped out for me this huge scholarly undertaking.
Speaker 4: She's going to expose every lie.
Speaker 5: In the first two minutes, in the first two minutes,
Speaker 5: and these people use their power and their position to
Speaker 5: lie as Israel conducts its genocide in Gaza. Those people
Speaker 5: are revolting, revolting. They're also revolting cowards. Mister Shapiro, you
Speaker 5: know so much, why don't you debate me? Where's the problem?
Speaker 5: You like to depend college students. I suppose you debate
Speaker 5: people in their second trimester, But how about debating an
Speaker 5: adult who studied it. They won't lead cowards cowards and criminals, criminals.
Speaker 1: Doctor Norman Finkelstein, I know that you are very much
Speaker 1: in demand right now, and so I'm extremely grateful to you,
Speaker 1: and our audience is grateful to you taking so much
Speaker 1: time with us. Anywhere you want people to follow you
Speaker 1: on Twitter? Is there any one of your books in
Speaker 1: particular you would recommend to people?
Speaker 4: My technics will kill me.
Speaker 5: But the answer is, I don't even know how to
Speaker 5: tell somebody to follow me because you have to.
Speaker 4: Go through these steps on the web, and I don't
Speaker 4: know what it requires. My books, I try not to.
Speaker 5: I don't like to come across as profiting from misery.
Speaker 5: But if you want background, mine is really the only
Speaker 5: book out there. It's God's an inquest into its smarter.
Speaker 1: Them, and that's the one that I've been reading, and
Speaker 1: I would also recommend it to people.
Speaker 3: So it's great to see you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, and again, thank you for spending
Speaker 1: so much time with us my pleasure.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me, of course,