0:01

In the case of Ukraine, they estimate

0:03

500 children

0:05

killed in two years. In

0:08

the case of Gaza, 15,006 months. The

0:13

people in charge of Gaza could have handed

0:16

over the hostages by now, could have surrendered

0:18

the terrorists who committed the atrocities on October

0:20

7th, and this would

0:22

all be over. Let's say Hamas did

0:24

do what you said. What would happen?

0:27

The people of Gaza, half of whom are

0:29

children, will be confined in

0:31

that same concentration camp. Probably

0:34

it will be more brutal than

0:36

ever. We're missing a part

0:38

of the puzzle here, which is also Iran. Iran

0:41

could say we didn't know they were going to do that. Come on. No,

0:44

they didn't know. It's factually true. Come on. If

0:47

you value honesty, integrity and diversity,

0:49

all things that are increasingly lacking

0:51

in established media, then consider supporting

0:54

us at Trigonometry. As a member,

0:56

you'll get ad-free and extended interviews

0:58

plus exclusive content. Click the membership

1:00

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1:02

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1:04

your podcast listening app to join

1:06

us. Professor Norman Finkelstein,

1:08

great to have you on the show. We've been trying

1:10

to make this happen for a little while. Thanks

1:13

for coming on. One

1:16

of the things we talked about before we

1:18

started was our Basim Yusuf interview. We'll talk

1:20

about your frustrations about how that went. The

1:22

first thing we wanted to do is do

1:25

something that people often don't have a chance to

1:27

do, which is talk about what

1:29

informs their views on things. In your

1:31

case, one of the things that you've

1:33

talked about is both of your parents

1:35

were in concentration camps in Nazi Germany,

1:38

or put there by Nazi Germany at

1:40

least. You talk about

1:42

how that informs your views now in supporting

1:47

the Palestinians. Tell

1:49

us a little bit about your family history. Both

1:52

of my parents were from Warsaw. My

1:55

mother, I guess her

1:57

father, will own the tobacco store. She

2:00

had a very good education. She went to

2:02

a Jewish private school. She

2:04

knew Latin and she knew classical music. She

2:08

knew math. When

2:10

I say new math, not just addition,

2:13

subtraction. She studied at

2:15

Orson University and as

2:17

she put it, the mathematics faculty. It

2:20

only lasted about two years before the

2:22

war broke out. And she

2:25

told me that was impossible to study

2:28

because the Jews in the lecture

2:30

halls, they were, they had to not sit,

2:32

but they had to stand in

2:34

a certain place. And at the

2:36

end of the lectures, the Polish

2:38

fascists would beat them up.

2:41

If you ever saw the film, Julia, Julia

2:45

was with Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Fonda

2:47

and had a real resonance for

2:49

me because if

2:51

you remember the film and probably won't

2:54

remember the details, Julia

2:56

loses her leg. The

2:59

Vanessa Redgrave character loses her leg

3:02

in a Malay in an

3:04

Austrian college where the fascists,

3:09

it was the Orson, when the fascists

3:11

attacked, the Jews in the lecture

3:13

hall and it was

3:15

the exact description that my mother told me growing

3:17

up about what it was like in the university.

3:21

Anyhow, she had a wonderful carefree life

3:23

and she describes it. She was a

3:26

fascist, she said, totally supporting

3:28

Tilsudski in Poland. She

3:30

was president of her class and

3:34

president of her school. And by

3:36

all accounts that I heard,

3:38

she was very, very smart. My

3:40

father, his

3:43

father owned a lumber mill, I

3:45

was told. And

3:49

he and my mother were both in

3:52

the Warsaw ghetto from 1940, I

3:54

think to 1943, the

3:57

ghetto was gradually constructed. And

4:01

then in April 1943 was the

4:03

Wasselghetto uprising. Neither of my parents

4:06

were in the uprising. I want

4:08

that to be clear. I

4:10

don't want to misrepresent their past and make

4:12

it glorious where it's not

4:14

warranted. The

4:17

survivors, the estimates are between 20

4:19

and 40,000 Jews survived the uprising,

4:23

and they were deported to

4:25

Meisschenach concentration camp. Both

4:27

of my parents were deported there.

4:31

Now they did not, they apparently

4:33

knew of each other before

4:36

the war, but I don't know the exact

4:38

details. What I do remember

4:40

is after the

4:42

war, pictures of

4:44

my mother's family survived because

4:48

my mother's mother had a

4:51

sister in the United States, and

4:53

before the war she sent pictures. So

4:56

I have still, it was on the family

4:58

wall. I kept the pictures and they're now

5:00

above my piano in my living room. Those

5:03

pictures survived. No pictures

5:06

of my father's family survived. Nothing.

5:09

And in the Warsaw ghetto,

5:12

my mother saw my

5:15

father's sister in the distance.

5:18

She had thick blonde hair and she

5:21

was wearing white boots. And

5:24

periodically, during

5:27

the marriage, my father

5:29

would assume this very tense

5:33

pose, and

5:35

he would say to my mother, tell

5:38

me what she looked like. Tell

5:40

me what she looked like of. Because

5:44

it was the only visual

5:47

connection with his

5:49

family. My

5:51

mother, as I said, there were no pictures, but

5:54

on both sides every member was

5:56

exterminated. My

5:59

father, When I wrote

6:01

my first book, I wanted of course dedicated

6:03

to my parents and I

6:06

also wanted to say something about their

6:09

past and I asked my mother

6:13

And what camps were my father I knew my father was

6:16

in Auschwitz because he had a number and only if you

6:18

were in Auschwitz Did you have the number? So

6:20

I said what camps so I said

6:23

I dedicated to my father was so

6:25

ghetto Auschwitz And my mother

6:27

told me no your father was in seven

6:29

concentration camps. I Didn't

6:31

know I know he ended

6:33

up in Auschwitz and he was in the Auschwitz

6:36

death march my mother

6:39

ended up in two slave labor

6:41

camps and The

6:45

thing that they always And

6:57

then they ended up in the What

7:00

were called DP displaced people camps

7:03

in linds Austria and

7:05

that's where they met that's where they married and

7:07

that's where they

7:09

left my father was in the socialist

7:13

Zionist youth group called Hashem er

7:15

Haseer and My

7:19

mother was a both of my

7:21

parents till the last nine days. They were

7:23

fervent I mean

7:25

long after the Soviet Union the Communist

7:28

Party had put that chapter

7:30

behind them Beginning

7:32

with the Khrushchev speech and that was that

7:35

did not happen to my parents now as

7:37

I said, they were very smart However,

7:40

they looked at the world through the lens

7:43

of the Nazi Holocaust That was sort of

7:45

the beginning and the end, you

7:47

know, that was Being

7:49

there at the creation and it was the

7:52

Nazi Holocaust and so far as they were

7:54

concerned and factually it's correct I'm

7:57

fully prepared to go the

8:00

Soviet Union and it was the Soviet Union that

8:02

defeated the Nazis and that's all they

8:04

cared about. Well I'm from the Soviet

8:06

Union so the fact that

8:09

the Soviet Union, I mean four out of every

8:11

five German soldiers who died on the battlefield died

8:13

on the Eastern Front. So the fact that the

8:15

Soviet Union together with the United States and the

8:17

British Empire worked together to

8:19

destroy Nazism as well. Well I don't agree

8:21

with the together except as a cameo role

8:23

in defeating the Nazis. That's my opinion but

8:26

we're not going to get into an argument.

8:28

We'll get into the argument after the interview because I've

8:31

got a lot of people doing that. That's

8:34

how my parents viewed it and Stalin

8:36

was the leader of the Soviet Union

8:38

so you could not criticize Stalin and

8:41

if you did even I became

8:43

a Maoist and as you know the Soviets

8:45

and the Chinese were at

8:48

loggerheads, more than loggerheads and

8:50

I would sometimes make some

8:53

criticism of Russia and my parents

8:55

who become utterly livid.

9:00

For them the worst thing to

9:02

say about somebody, the worst episode

9:04

was to call them a traitor and

9:08

anybody who criticized the Soviet Union

9:10

in their minds was a traitor.

9:13

So I had to walk on

9:15

eggshells whenever we had discussions. I

9:17

had to compartmentalize my Maoism at

9:19

home. Well

9:22

let's not focus on World War II debate. We

9:24

can do that another time. The

9:26

reason I asked you about your family background is you

9:29

have talked about the fact that

9:31

it informs your views of the

9:33

Israel-Palestine conflict. What

9:36

does that mean exactly? How are your views

9:38

on that shaped by your family history? Well

9:42

there are two aspects. Number

9:46

one, there is a

9:48

distinction between

9:50

having an intelligent

9:53

discussion of something and

9:56

intellectualizing something. That

10:00

distinction might sound like hair-splitting

10:02

or parsing, but it's part

10:05

of my total being. Namely,

10:08

when you're talking about death,

10:11

when you're talking about destruction, when

10:14

you're talking about war,

10:16

yes, you have to make a

10:19

rational argument. You have

10:21

to persuade through reason, facts,

10:25

logic. However,

10:27

there is always the

10:29

danger that you start to

10:31

intellectualize the discussion or

10:33

the conversation, as it's called nowadays.

10:37

You start to intellectualize it, and

10:39

you lose sight of

10:42

what's at stake. To

10:44

give you a concrete example, during

10:48

the 1960s and 70s, there

10:50

was a very famous program

10:52

in New York called

10:55

Firing Line. The

10:57

host was the national

11:01

conservative, William Buckley. And

11:05

Buckley would have on

11:07

guests, lesson of the radical left. It

11:09

was actually a quite open program. You

11:12

would have the Black Panthers on, you

11:15

would have the famous radical lawyer, William

11:17

Kunstler on, and you would have Noam

11:19

Chomsky on. And

11:23

he would have some liberal

11:25

opponents of the war

11:27

in Vietnam on, liberal opponents of

11:29

the war in Vietnam, say John

11:31

Kenneth Galbraith, very famous economist

11:34

of our day, or Allard Lowenstein,

11:38

who was less well known. They

11:41

would argue about the war, argue about the

11:43

war, argue about the war, competing

11:47

facts, and then at the end,

11:50

they would stand up and

11:52

give each other a bear hug. And

11:57

my mother was mortified. Where

12:02

is the moral

12:05

core behind

12:07

what you're talking about? We're talking about death.

12:11

We're talking about destruction. The

12:14

estimates are about three million

12:16

Vietnamese were killed. Forget about

12:19

Laotians and Cambodians

12:21

about three. And

12:24

the scenes were horrible

12:26

daily because they were actually

12:29

televised every night in the news.

12:32

And to hug the person. So

12:37

yes, to facts,

12:40

logic, reason, you have to

12:43

persuade. But you

12:45

have to always be cognizant.

12:48

You can't just be at the back

12:50

of your mind. It has to

12:52

be in the foreground of your mind.

12:55

What we're talking about. We're talking

12:57

about snuffing out

13:00

life. And that

13:02

to me was very important. I

13:07

try not to exaggerate, but many of

13:09

my statements sound as if they're hyperbolic.

13:13

It was typical in my generation to watch

13:16

the nightly news. Even what

13:18

was called ABC News. NBC

13:20

News or CBS News. I can still

13:22

tell you the anchors on each program

13:24

because it was so deeply imprinted

13:27

in our mind. CBS is of course

13:29

Walter Cronkite. And

13:31

NBC was what was called Hot

13:33

Me and Brinkley. And everyone

13:35

watched the news, Night Me News. And

13:38

the top story would always be the war in Vietnam.

13:43

And when the scenes

13:45

came out, when the scenes

13:47

appeared on the screen of the

13:49

war in Vietnam, my

13:52

mother would go like this. Tell

13:55

me when it's over. Tell

13:57

me when it's over. She could

13:59

physically not. look at it. She was

14:01

not an emotive person, not at all.

14:04

And she was not theatrical. She was

14:06

the real deal. What you saw is

14:08

what you got. But

14:13

she couldn't physically look at it. And

14:16

so you could say, and I'm willing

14:18

to grant, there

14:20

was a hysterical

14:22

element to

14:24

how she reacted to war. What

14:27

others might say, that's

14:29

a normal human reaction.

14:31

And if you don't

14:33

react hysterically, there's something

14:35

wrong with you. That's

14:39

you can debate it. And

14:41

so I also

14:44

remember when I was in high

14:46

school, I was in debate society.

14:50

The debating team, it was called. And

14:53

the premise of the debating team is you

14:55

have to learn to argue effectively

14:57

on both sides. It was just

14:59

a flip of the coin where

15:01

you're going to be pro-proposition or

15:03

anti-proposition. And my mother was

15:05

very, very disdainful

15:08

of that. Jesus

15:10

now teaches you to be duplicitous

15:13

and two-faced. So

15:16

the moral,

15:19

the passionate side, even though they

15:21

were very smart, my parents, the

15:24

moral and the passionate side came from my

15:28

parents, my own

15:31

being. And then later

15:33

in life, you could

15:36

say I came under the tutelage

15:38

of Professor Chomsky. And

15:41

he became my mentor.

15:44

And I think it's fair to say to the

15:46

extent that he had friends, I

15:49

was a close family friend. I

15:51

was close to him and I was close

15:53

to his wife, probably closer to

15:55

his wife than him because with his wife I

15:58

could have thought I could talk to him. about

16:00

the real world, I should

16:03

say the mundane world. Sorry

16:06

to interrupt, let

16:08

me just move it closer to the Israel

16:10

and Palestine thing because what I'm really asking

16:12

you is, I should have said

16:14

it like this when I started, most

16:18

people would think that with two parents who

16:20

are Holocaust survivors whose entire families were wiped

16:22

out on the Holocaust, you would be on

16:24

the side of the Jewish state so to

16:26

speak. And the thing

16:28

that people find difficult about your position, particularly

16:31

in the Jewish Jews,

16:33

among other people of course, is

16:36

that to them

16:38

inexplicable contrast. How

16:40

do you explain that? I

16:44

would say there are two aspects to it. The

16:47

first aspect to it is that

16:50

I grew up in a home where there

16:52

was never any particular identification with the state of

16:54

Israel. Yes, it's true,

16:56

my father was in HaShan, Merhaz, Zayar, but

16:59

by the time I came into the world that was

17:02

in the past and my

17:04

parents didn't

17:09

inculcate in us any special

17:12

affection for the

17:14

state of Israel. And

17:16

to speak honestly, even though

17:19

my parents were resolutely Jewish in their

17:21

being, in their gestures,

17:24

their, you know,

17:26

even taking pride in intellectual

17:29

achievement and all those sort

17:31

of impalpable

17:34

ways, they were

17:36

resolutely Jewish. I can't

17:38

say we were raised in

17:40

a consciously Jewish home, consciously

17:42

Jewish, first of all

17:44

because God was an anathema, the notion

17:46

of God was an anathema in my

17:48

home. And

17:52

I wasn't Bar Mitzvot, which

17:55

was in my neighborhood, it was there.

18:00

devastating. Because

18:02

bar mitzvah was like a coming out

18:04

party for the non-Jewish world.

18:07

And it's where you display the

18:09

family well, the family achievement and

18:11

all of that sort of stuff.

18:13

And it wasn't even a

18:16

question by home. It's not like I went up to

18:18

my parents and said, why aren't I being born? You

18:20

don't even ask the question. It was

18:22

just not part of the system. The range

18:24

of thought, it's a funny story. I

18:27

was born in December. So

18:29

all of my friends are having their bar mitzvahs.

18:31

They're having their bar mitzvahs. And

18:34

I had to come up with an excuse

18:37

why eventually

18:39

it came to December. Why didn't I have

18:41

a bar mitzvah? And my excuse was I'm

18:45

having my bar mitzvah in Israel. Zionism

18:48

came in handy. So

18:53

there was that aspect that I didn't

18:55

grow up in a home that you

18:57

would call conventionally Jewish. And

19:00

the second aspect is, and I know

19:03

this is going to sound a little

19:05

bit pious and abstract. At

19:09

the beginning, it's true. And I try to

19:11

be as candid

19:13

and truthful as it can be. Yes,

19:16

the Jewish element came into play

19:19

because, remember, I was involved in

19:21

this conflict at the time where very few Jews

19:23

were back in the 1970s and 1982 with the

19:29

Israeli invasion of Lebanon. And

19:31

so being Jewish was an asset to the

19:33

cause. And so as it

19:36

were, and I don't like to use

19:38

the word, but it seems like it's plausible,

19:42

advertising your Jewishness in this

19:44

cause was helpful. But

19:49

over time, you could say a kind

19:51

of overtime, a

19:53

kind of moral refinement

19:56

set in, and I

19:59

became pretty emphatic, I'm

20:02

not pro or

20:04

anti-Israel, I'm not

20:06

pro or anti-Palestinian,

20:09

I'm not pro or anti-Arab.

20:12

And whenever I am described in

20:14

those terms, in particular when I'm

20:16

described as pro-Palestinian

20:18

or pro-Arab, I

20:21

recoil and I

20:24

manifest the fact that I'm

20:28

recalling by always emphasizing

20:30

I'm pro-truth and

20:33

I'm pro-justice. I

20:35

am anti-falsy and I

20:37

am anti-injustice. That's the

20:39

only thing that concerns

20:41

me. If the

20:44

facts fell on the other side,

20:46

then I have to go where the truth

20:48

tells me to go and where

20:50

justice directs me. And

20:53

I am very confident that

20:57

that is, but I acknowledge

20:59

it took time for

21:01

me to internalize that

21:05

it's about truth, it's

21:07

about justice, it's about spending

21:10

the whole of your

21:12

adult life, the

21:14

whole of your adult

21:16

life, pouring over

21:19

human rights reports, pouring

21:22

over legal texts, pouring

21:25

over books and books and

21:29

not reading them once. I'm

21:32

not boasting, I'm speaking

21:34

factually, and maybe it's nothing to

21:37

boast about. I have

21:39

a wonderful friend in the UK, Deborah,

21:44

her father was a very famous Jewish

21:48

historian the most, Thomas Mokobe,

21:52

and she's the daughter of Professor Mokobe.

21:57

I was reading Jane Anne

22:00

The first time I read it was in sophomore

22:02

year in high school. I was rereading it. And

22:05

the prose is just so

22:08

dazzling. Oh my God.

22:11

Every sentence. And

22:13

I was, Deborah knows English, the

22:15

English language. She was an Oxfordan

22:18

English. And I was

22:20

like, oh, how I wish I had

22:23

spent my life reading novels like

22:25

this instead of reading

22:27

these human rights reports. Over

22:31

and over and

22:33

over again and over

22:35

and over and over again, trying

22:37

to ferret out the truth, trying

22:39

to find a logic or illogic

22:41

in the argument. So

22:44

just complete the film. So

22:49

at the end, if it

22:51

weren't about truth and

22:53

it weren't about justice, then

22:55

I would have wasted my whole

22:58

adult life because that's what

23:00

I was searching for. I

23:02

was trying to find the facts,

23:04

the truth and follow

23:07

it. So it

23:10

long ago, I don't want

23:12

to deny any aspect

23:14

of truth where there is. Yes. At

23:16

the beginning, my quote

23:18

unquote Jewishness came

23:21

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And now back to the interview.

24:28

So Norman what

24:30

is the truth then? Because you've used

24:33

that words, those words again

24:35

and again. It's obvious that truth

24:37

motivates you. It's obvious that you are

24:39

motivated when you see injustice particularly when

24:41

it comes to this cause. So let's

24:43

talk about the facts of what's happening

24:45

on the ground. What is the truth?

24:49

When you say what is the truth

24:51

or can just be a little bit

24:53

more specific what would you like me

24:56

to address? I would like you to

24:58

address what is happening to the Palestinian

25:00

people on the ground because one side

25:03

says one thing one side says another and also

25:06

as well. So let's talk about

25:08

what we know

25:13

as far as possible. Okay I

25:16

would say a good place to begin because

25:18

people always ask what would you recommend?

25:22

I would say a good place to begin on

25:25

the events since October 7th. I

25:27

would say a good place to begin

25:30

is the South African application to

25:32

the International Court of Justice. It

25:34

runs to about 84 pages and

25:38

it's single-spaced with

25:41

literally hundreds of footnotes and

25:43

each footnote has multiple references

25:45

sometimes 10 or 15 references.

25:49

And the references come from what I

25:52

think are by consensus reputable

25:55

objective sources. Most

25:58

of the references not all I

26:01

would say the overwhelming predominance

26:04

of references are to various UN

26:07

agencies. And

26:09

the picture they depict, and I've read

26:11

that application several times, in

26:13

fact I just recently, a couple of days

26:15

ago, we read it for something I'm writing.

26:20

The picture they depict, first

26:22

of all, let's begin with the

26:24

beginning. It's a horrifying picture.

26:28

I am absolutely astonished.

26:31

Each time I read it, I have to take a

26:33

breath. It's not

26:36

only horrifying in terms of

26:38

the objective numbers

26:42

they present, whether it

26:44

be the number of children killed, the

26:46

number of children and women

26:49

combined versus men killed, whether

26:51

it be the number of

26:53

bombs dropped in a week,

26:56

the weight of the bombs, whether

26:58

it be the number of homes

27:01

that are killed, destroyed.

27:06

It's not just the numbers,

27:09

the objective figures. How

27:12

do you, as Oprah Winfrey

27:14

would say, wrap your mind around

27:16

15,000 children killed? How

27:19

do you do that? It's

27:22

not just the numbers, it's

27:24

the relative numbers, not

27:26

just the objective. In

27:29

the case of Ukraine, which I take

27:31

you're familiar with, they estimate

27:33

500 children killed

27:35

in two years. In

27:38

the case of Gaza, it's 16,006 months. If

27:44

you take the density of

27:46

bombing, it's

27:48

said that there was more

27:50

relative destruction in

27:53

Gaza than in

27:55

Dresden or Hamburg during World War

27:57

II. number

28:00

of medics killed, the

28:02

number of journalists killed, the

28:05

number of whatever

28:07

number you take. It's

28:10

in a completely different

28:13

category. It's in

28:15

a totally different level.

28:19

Every article, and I take

28:21

it you fellows read the British press. They're

28:24

constantly making the comparisons. I

28:27

read those articles. They're constantly comparing

28:29

it with other war zones. More

28:33

children killed in Gaza

28:35

in six months than

28:38

the number of children killed in

28:40

all the other

28:43

war zones, all

28:45

the other war zones in the world, over

28:48

three years multiplied

28:51

by four. You

28:54

hear what I'm saying? Yes. You

28:56

know what Gaza is? Gaza

28:59

is sometimes people need,

29:02

I think, to visualize it.

29:05

Gaza is 25 miles long. It's

29:09

less than the length of a marathon. It's

29:14

five miles wide. What

29:16

five miles wide is, would that number

29:18

resonate for me? I jog

29:21

every morning at the seashore, calling the

29:23

island seashore five miles. It's

29:26

the length of my jog by

29:29

the distance of a

29:31

marathon. Half

29:33

the population, half

29:36

is children, half

29:41

and 80% are refugees

29:45

or descendants of refugees. You

29:48

know what that means? In

29:51

1948, you lost your homeland. You were

29:53

expelled from the area that became Israel.

29:57

And now, according to the

29:59

last report, of the

30:01

World Bank. 300,000

30:04

homes have been damaged or

30:07

destroyed. 72% were just destroyed.

30:14

Okay? 1.3 million people have

30:18

nowhere to return. They

30:21

lost their homelands and

30:24

now they lost their homes. You know what it means to

30:26

lose a home? I

30:28

don't want to become emotive, but on the other hand,

30:31

you have to put, give

30:34

life to

30:36

the facts. They

30:39

not only lost their home, they

30:43

not only lost their block, they

30:46

not only lost their neighborhood, they

30:50

lost their city. What does that mean?

30:53

It means the

30:55

place has been pulverized.

30:59

They don't know

31:01

where to return to. Imagine

31:05

the block you

31:08

live on has been ground into

31:10

dust. That's what

31:12

happened. When

31:16

you drop these bombs at

31:18

the density and

31:21

intensity that Israel

31:23

has been dropping them, that was

31:25

a calculated policy.

31:29

The Israeli

31:32

officials kept

31:34

saying, we're going to

31:36

make Gaza unlivable,

31:42

uninhabitable. That

31:44

was a calculated policy as

31:47

one of Israel's senior

31:49

advisors, Giora Island, the

31:52

former head of

31:54

Israel's National Security Council.

31:57

He said, we are going to give them

31:59

two children, to

32:02

stay and starve

32:05

or to leave, to

32:08

make Gaza uninhabitable,

32:11

to reduce it to

32:13

rubble and dust.

32:18

That's Gaza. So,

32:22

looking at the

32:24

picture, not

32:27

trying to attach a

32:30

broader legal label

32:33

to it, whether to call it

32:35

genocide or ethnic

32:37

cleansing, we'll leave the

32:40

labels aside for a moment because

32:42

he asked me, what does Gaza look like? I

32:46

would say

32:48

there's very little left

32:52

in Gaza right now. There

32:54

really is. There's very little left. The only

32:56

area which they haven't

32:59

yet reduced to rubble is

33:01

Rafa, and that's their goal. They

33:04

want to turn all of Gaza. Maybe

33:08

somebody would use here a metaphor

33:10

like a parking lot. A

33:13

parking lot doesn't sound right to me because

33:15

a parking lot is too peaceful. The

33:17

image it conjures is too

33:19

peaceful. I'd prefer during

33:23

the U.S. war in the Philippines

33:25

at the turn of the 20th century, 1899, around there,

33:30

there was an order given by one

33:32

of the senior generals. He

33:35

said there was one province, Luzon

33:37

Province, El Uzeola, and

33:40

they said we're going to turn Luzon

33:42

Province into a

33:44

howling wilderness. When

33:49

I was reading descriptions of Gaza,

33:52

that's what came to mind, to

33:54

turn it into a

33:57

howling wilderness, and that's

33:59

what's been done. Norman, this

34:01

is a difficult question to ask, but I feel

34:03

that it needs to be said. The

34:08

events of October the 7th were vile,

34:11

awful, and you

34:15

cannot justify that in any shape or form. Not

34:18

to say that you are, I'm just saying that we both agree on

34:21

that. What should Israel

34:24

have done afterwards?

34:26

Because we

34:29

look at what's happened at Gaza, but

34:31

what Hamas did was an act of war,

34:33

and it was barbaric. And

34:36

Israel had to retaliate in some shape or

34:38

form. So

34:40

I guess my question to you

34:42

is, if you were Benjamin Netanyahu,

34:46

what would you have done? Okay,

34:49

I am not going to evade questions.

34:53

So do not take what

34:55

I'm about to say as a diversion.

34:58

And you're absolutely free to

35:01

press me and press me and

35:03

press me. But

35:05

I do have to convey

35:08

how I see the question. Your

35:12

question to me has

35:14

to be preceded by

35:17

what I would call an antecedent

35:19

question, which is,

35:22

what did you expect the people

35:24

of Gaza to do? What

35:27

do I mean by that? So

35:30

well, look, let's not get into that

35:32

for this reason, because in terms

35:34

of having this discussion, let's

35:37

accept. When

35:39

we had Basamon, for example, this was the nature of the

35:41

debate we had, right? He was saying, well, what do you

35:44

expect the Palestinians to do? And I

35:46

said, let's accept that while they're uprising,

35:48

as Francis said, you call that, I

35:50

think, a prison outbreak. Let's

35:54

say concentration camp outbreak. Let's say that that's

35:56

what it is. Nonetheless,

35:58

the fact is that Israel has been attacked. Israel exists,

36:01

Israel was attacked in this barbaric way.

36:04

Let's say that the Palestinians have every

36:06

cause to

36:09

try and free themselves in

36:12

this way. I don't know how killing

36:14

lots of raping civilians does that, but let's

36:16

set that aside. That

36:19

still leaves the question of what should

36:22

Israel do in this situation. It

36:24

still leaves that question on the table. So

36:26

let's say without going into the detail just

36:28

for time reasons that we accept everything you

36:30

say about the suffering of the Palestinian people.

36:33

Nonetheless, on top of that, what should

36:35

Israel do in this situation? I

36:40

have pondered that question. And

36:43

I recognize that to

36:45

say that we should have done

36:48

nothing except to

36:52

end the illegal and inhuman

36:56

blockade of Gaza, which

37:00

Richard Goldstone described as elements

37:03

of a crime against humanity to

37:07

endure two million people,

37:10

half of whom are children. In

37:13

what Israel's head of the

37:15

National Security Council, Giora

37:17

Island, described as, quote,

37:20

a huge concentration camp. What

37:26

your British economist, before

37:28

October 7, he

37:31

described Gaza as a

37:33

human rubbishy. The

37:37

Secretary General of the Union. Let's have we

37:39

accept all of this, just for the sake

37:42

of argument. I recognize that question. Okay.

37:46

So what's the answer? The answer is,

37:49

first of all, on one

37:52

level. It's

37:56

a little late in the day to be

37:58

asking that question. But

38:02

asking it, you

38:04

can still make the

38:07

argument that

38:09

whatever Israel did, whatever

38:12

Israel did, excuse me,

38:14

whatever was done to Israel, excuse

38:16

me, whatever was done to

38:19

Israel, if you,

38:21

for example, look at the South

38:23

Africa application, it begins by saying

38:25

what happened on October 7th was

38:27

horrible, awful, terrible, so on and

38:29

so forth. It said,

38:31

and I'm quoting it, paraphrasing,

38:34

whatever was done to

38:37

Israel on October 7th, nothing

38:41

whatsoever could

38:44

justify a genocide. We

38:46

can talk about that separately, but no, should

38:48

they have done. I don't think it's so

38:50

easy. That's not answering my question. That's the

38:53

only reason I'm interrupting you, as I think

38:55

you've observed. We're fair interviews. We've given you

38:57

lots of time. I'm no problem. So my

38:59

question is, what

39:02

you've described about what's happening in Gaza, what

39:04

you've described about happening in Gaza prior to

39:06

October 7th, for the sake of argument, let's

39:08

just say that that's all the case. I

39:10

agree with you. I think that's a fair

39:12

question. So do I. I've

39:14

wrestled with that question. So what should Israel have

39:17

done? I would say that

39:19

I'm not, again, I'm not trying to divert.

39:23

There's two concepts in

39:25

international war, Jus

39:27

Adelm and Jus in Delo. Jus

39:30

Adelm basically means who's the

39:32

aggressor, who's the defender. Okay.

39:34

That's Jus Adelm. Jus

39:36

in Delo is how

39:40

you conduct the war. And

39:42

you have to conduct the war according

39:44

to what we call IHL, international humanitarian

39:46

law, the laws of war. That's

39:49

conducting. I would say if Israel's,

39:52

I'm not going to say which side is right

39:54

and which side is wrong. That's Jus Adelm. I'm

39:56

not going to discuss it. Jus in

39:58

Delo, I would say if you're going to. carry out a

40:00

war, even if it's a war of aggression, even

40:03

if it's a war of aggression, let's say you

40:05

believe Russia is engaged in a war of aggression

40:07

against Ukraine, it's still bound by the laws of

40:09

war. And even if

40:11

Ukraine is defending itself, it

40:13

too is bound by the laws of war. So

40:16

I will say I'm going to separate out

40:19

the question of who's right

40:21

and who's wrong, and I'll

40:23

simply focus on then the laws of

40:25

war. And I would say

40:27

whatever Israel does, whether it's right or wrong,

40:29

it still has to obey the laws of

40:32

war. Israel is

40:34

carrying out what in my opinion, not

40:36

in my opinion, what the International

40:39

Court of Justice described as a

40:41

plausible genocide. So just

40:43

so I'm understanding what you're saying correctly,

40:46

are you saying that what Israel should have

40:48

done is retaliated

40:50

and destroyed the organization

40:52

that attacked Israel? No, I'm not saying that.

40:55

No, I'm not saying that. But what should

40:57

they have done? I'm not, I said if

40:59

they choose to

41:02

engage in a war, then they have to follow the rules of war.

41:05

But what should they have? Should they have retaliated?

41:07

Should they have attempted to take out Hamas? Should

41:09

they be trying to kill the people who attacked

41:11

the people? I would say I cannot

41:14

accept those judgments, the

41:17

ones you just sounded, I understand they're not

41:20

necessarily your judgments, but you're telling me. Should

41:22

they have? No, I can't accept

41:25

those judgments because it's like for

41:27

me, I'll

41:30

just give you the closest analogy

41:32

I can. When

41:35

the events of October 7 happened, the first

41:37

day, it was unclear

41:39

exactly the magnitude of

41:42

what had occurred. The numbers were being given

41:44

where 50 Israelis were killed. It wasn't clear

41:46

if they were combatants or civilians. It was

41:48

only about, you would say, about the third

41:51

or fourth day it was clear that a

41:53

crime of significant magnitude, the

41:56

current atrocities of a very

41:58

significant magnitude. had

42:00

occurred by the end by now the

42:02

figures about a hundred fifty civilians were

42:05

killed. That's a significant

42:07

crime by any standard. There's no question in

42:09

my mind about that. Even if

42:12

you allow for collateral damage and this and that,

42:14

there's something very substantial that occurred there.

42:18

And then I had to ask myself exactly

42:20

the question you asked. You

42:22

know, what should Israel have

42:24

done and how do you allocate

42:26

so to speak more responsibility? Let's

42:28

leave the legal question aside. More

42:30

responsibility. And after

42:32

thinking about very hard, the answer,

42:35

what resonated for me, what

42:37

seemed right for me, was to

42:39

see it in the terms of myself

42:41

as an American in terms of the

42:43

slave rebellions. And if you

42:45

look at, for example, the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831

42:47

in the United States, if

42:50

you look at the details, it's very ugly.

42:52

You know, Nat Turner, he

42:55

gave the order to his considerates kill

42:57

all whites. That was the order. OK.

42:59

And they went from house to house.

43:01

And unlike in Gaza, they did the

43:03

head babies. They took out a Nat's,

43:05

chopped off the head of babies, cracked

43:07

skulls, killed about 61 whites,

43:10

who was the rebellion was oppressed very

43:12

quickly. And once

43:15

I felt that was seemed like

43:17

a fairly reasonable analogy, then the

43:19

question for me became how did

43:21

the abolitionists, those who

43:23

oppose slavery, how did they

43:26

react to Nat Turner's rebellion?

43:28

And it was very striking to me when I

43:30

read, for example, the editorial

43:33

by William Lloyd Garrison, who

43:35

is one of the famous

43:37

abolitionists in our country, where

43:39

he wrote an article in the periodical,

43:41

The Abolitionist Called the Liberator. And

43:44

he began by saying, and this, I

43:46

think, is responsive to your question. It

43:49

began by saying, I told

43:51

you, we told you so. We the

43:53

abolitionists, we told you so. We

43:55

told you so. And

43:57

he said, we told you. If

44:00

you demean these people,

44:02

degrade these people, humiliate

44:05

these people, exploit these

44:07

people, rape these people,

44:10

if you do that,

44:13

then what happened with

44:15

Nat Turner was inevitable. And

44:19

then- But we've already built

44:21

that into the argument. No, I'm sorry. Yeah,

44:23

but he never said. He never said. Remember-

44:26

Listen, let me explain to you where I'm coming from, okay?

44:28

Okay, let me just complete the thought. We're just talking past

44:30

each other for- No, no, we're not. Allow

44:33

me to complete the thought. Okay. If

44:36

you read the Liberator

44:39

article or editorial,

44:42

he never says the U.S.

44:44

government should have retaliated Nat

44:46

Turner. Understood. Okay, so his

44:49

argument is probably you've got to free the slaves, then

44:51

none of this happens. That's correct. Fine.

44:53

Let's accept that. However, do you

44:56

honestly think that a leader of Israel is

44:58

in the position after the biggest massacre of

45:00

Jews since the Holocaust to

45:02

say, you know what we should

45:04

do in retaliation, in

45:07

reaction to this is

45:11

free the Palestinians, whatever that looks like. This is

45:13

never going to happen. And

45:15

I'm interested in living in the real

45:17

world, as I think you are. If

45:19

you care about the lives of Palestinians

45:21

and Israelis and everybody else, that means

45:23

there has to be some kind of

45:25

way of resolving this that is based

45:28

in reality. And in reality, whatever way

45:30

you look at it, you've got two

45:32

tribes that absolutely hate each other with

45:34

good reason for both sides to hate

45:36

each other because there's been atrocity against

45:38

both sides throughout history. You may argue

45:40

about who's responsible and blah, blah, blah. Reality

45:43

on the ground is this is where we are. So

45:46

my question is, how should

45:49

Israel have reacted in that situation in

45:52

the real world? In the real

45:55

world? Right. And

45:58

I think I have risk of it. I have responded

46:00

to you. You can of course quarrel with

46:02

me on that. I am quarreling with you.

46:04

As I said to you, your name is?

46:06

Francis. Francis. You can press me and press

46:09

me and press me. I'm trying. Yes,

46:11

and I will accept that. My

46:14

answer is what I've said before. What

46:18

in the real world should

46:21

the Palestinians have done if

46:24

they tried negotiations, they

46:29

gestured to supporting either a

46:31

two-state settlement here, referring to

46:34

Hamas, or what

46:36

they called a hudna, a long-term

46:38

ceasefire, when in March,

46:41

beginning March 30th,

46:44

2018, they tried

46:47

not least because

46:50

of my encouragement. They

46:54

tried nonviolent civil

46:56

resistance. And

46:59

what was the Israeli response? We

47:02

know exactly. There's

47:05

a 250-page single-space UN

47:07

report describing the

47:10

response. Israel took

47:12

its best snipers, lined

47:15

them up along the perimeter fence,

47:19

and while

47:21

there was this festive to

47:24

describe, to use the word of

47:26

the UN report, atmosphere among

47:29

the Palestinians. There was music,

47:31

there was dancing, there was

47:33

song. The snipers,

47:36

I'm quoting the report, intentionally

47:40

targeted children, intentionally

47:44

targeted medics,

47:47

intentionally targeted journalists,

47:51

intentionally targeted

47:54

disabled people. They

47:56

described double

47:58

amputees. 300

48:02

meters from the perimeter fence that

48:05

Israel shot, when

48:07

they didn't kill them, they

48:10

targeted them from the kneecap

48:12

down to inflict, to

48:14

use the technical term, life-changing

48:18

injuries, which

48:20

for the layperson translates as,

48:22

paralyze them. When

48:25

Israeli sniper boasted to

48:28

Harit's newspaper, Israel's most

48:30

serious newspaper, he

48:32

shot 42 kneecaps

48:35

in one day, 42 children

48:40

and adults paralyzed

48:42

for life. And

48:44

so, when all

48:46

the options

48:49

of diplomacy,

48:51

non-violent civil resistance,

48:55

when they have been exhausted, what

48:59

were they supposed to do? We

49:02

have already accepted that. For

49:04

the sake of this argument, I've said

49:06

repeatedly, let's accept everything you're saying about

49:08

the plight of the Palestinian people. None

49:12

of what you're saying though is going to solve

49:14

what's going on. Yeah, well, to solve it, I

49:16

would say you have to use the convey, I'm

49:18

not, by the way, just to

49:20

clarify, even though in our early,

49:24

our conversation before the program began,

49:26

I said I belong to the

49:28

Marxist, Marxist tradition, I see

49:30

myself there. I'm not a

49:32

radical on these subjects. If you

49:35

can hear me through this whole conversation,

49:37

I was just quoting international law. I'm

49:40

not suggesting you're radical. What

49:42

I'm asking is- I have a very conventional

49:44

answer to your question. Both

49:49

sides have to sit down. They have

49:51

to accept the terms of international law

49:53

for ending the conflict. You want to

49:55

end it according to the real world?

49:57

Fine. I'm not going to say we

49:59

have to wait for- communism to end it. I'm not going

50:01

to go through the... It might be way now, all

50:03

the time. Right. I'm

50:07

not saying that. I'm not saying we have to wait

50:09

for socialist revolution. I'm saying we

50:12

apply what everybody's been saying. Read

50:14

the South African brief. Read what

50:16

everyone says. We have to apply

50:19

the principles of international law to

50:21

resolve the conflict. And that to

50:23

me is perfectly legitimate. Now, if

50:26

you want to say that in

50:28

the real world, no

50:31

resolution of the conflict is

50:33

possible with Hamas after

50:36

October 7th, if that's

50:38

your position and I see you're shaking

50:40

your hand. I haven't said that. Right.

50:42

But if that's the argument I

50:45

have to say, then those settlements

50:47

is possible with a government

50:49

that's carrying out a plausible

50:52

genocide in Gaza. But I'm not saying

50:54

that. I'm saying those are

50:56

the parties to the conflict. Sit

50:58

down, resolve it. However, I will

51:00

say, according to

51:03

current international law, current principles,

51:06

every party has to

51:08

be held accountable for war crimes,

51:10

crimes against humanity, and the crime

51:12

of crime of genocide. So the

51:15

fact that they may resolve the

51:17

conflict, in my opinion, does not

51:19

preclude that they should all be held

51:22

accountable, except there is the

51:24

alternative under the current system of

51:27

what was first established in South

51:29

Africa, which was called the truth

51:32

and reconciliation method. Namely, we can't

51:34

prosecute every person who committed a

51:36

crime under apartheid. It's impossible. There's

51:39

not going to be

51:41

many people left in South

51:43

Africa. So we'll try what Bishop

51:45

Tutu attempted, the truth and reconciliation.

51:47

I could see that as an

51:49

alternative. I happen not to believe

51:51

in it. I believe never

51:53

to forgive, never to forget. But that's a

51:56

personal opinion. If you can resolve it

51:58

that way, fine. And then let's move on. I

52:01

think it's a hard thing I have to say but

52:03

I know no one can't just stop

52:05

you there because you said never to forgive Never

52:07

to forget. Yeah, but it look

52:09

if you look at what happens in Northern

52:11

Ireland What happened in Northern Ireland if everybody

52:14

in Northern Ireland were never to forgive never

52:16

to forget That situation would

52:18

never have been resolved and where is

52:20

now is unimaginable to where it

52:22

was in the 1970s and 80s Francis

52:27

I Try to be careful in my work,

52:29

of course, and I don't wish to mention

52:31

misrepresenting You're not I just

52:33

want to be careful. I'm clear what I

52:35

said. Yeah, I said as a

52:37

personal opinion I

52:40

don't accept it. I will

52:42

tell you why and you'll forgive

52:44

me the drama, but that's my

52:46

life my being so

52:50

after World War two in

52:55

there were there was a last major trial

52:57

at that time it was called the last

52:59

major trial of Nazi

53:02

war criminals the female

53:04

guards from my in

53:06

that concentration camp and my

53:09

mother was called to be

53:13

a witness at the trial and She

53:20

Were we weren't told I accompanied her to the trial We

53:22

weren't told that the guards were

53:25

released on their own but they walked freely in

53:27

the courthouse and they released

53:29

on their own recognizance at night and My

53:33

mother started to scream. Why

53:35

aren't they in cages? They're animals Now

53:38

bear in mind. It's 40

53:40

years later was 1979 And At

53:46

a certain point without going into the details

53:48

we confronted or one of the colors Was

53:54

walking about an inch away from the outside

53:56

the courthouse as my mother was on the other

54:00

side of me. It was such

54:03

a provocation, and

54:06

I confronted that situation. I

54:08

mention it because

54:12

40 years later, that

54:15

desire for revenge,

54:19

that unwillingness to

54:22

forgive or forget those

54:26

who put your mother, your

54:28

father, your two sisters

54:31

and brother in a

54:33

gas chamber. Never to

54:35

forgive, never to forget.

54:39

That's what I internalize. But

54:41

I perfectly respect what

54:44

you just said. There

54:46

couldn't have been peace in Northern

54:48

Ireland. There couldn't have been peace

54:50

in South Africa. If

54:52

that were the attitude taken

54:57

by the protagonists

55:00

in that historical drama, I

55:03

said, speaking strictly for

55:05

myself and in

55:08

deference to my

55:11

parents' suffering and

55:13

their legacy. But

55:15

as a practical matter, you

55:18

resolve the conflict according to

55:20

the principles of international law,

55:24

and you hold

55:26

accountable those who are

55:28

guilty of crimes under

55:31

international law, or you

55:34

seek some sort of truth and

55:36

reconciliation process. That's how I see

55:38

it. That's the only way to

55:40

be, because for a bit

55:42

of disclosure, half my family is South

55:44

American, but a large portion of them,

55:46

particularly my grandfather, is from the Middle

55:48

East. He's from Lebanon. What

55:51

always struck me whenever I heard my

55:53

grandfather talk about Israel

55:56

was, and this is a man who

55:58

is a historian, a very learned, very edgy, very edgy, educated

56:00

man, there's a lack of

56:02

rationality because of the heightened level

56:05

of emotions involved in

56:07

this particular conflict. And

56:09

it seems to me, and I think we're

56:12

in agreement here, if

56:14

we always tap

56:16

into the emotion side of it, if

56:18

we always look at the

56:20

atrocities that have been happened on both sides,

56:22

if we focus on the anger and the

56:24

rage and the injustice, we are never going

56:27

to be able to move forward. And

56:29

what is going to happen is that

56:31

future generations will suffer. Look,

56:35

I told you at the very

56:37

outset, I

56:39

have tried to

56:42

carve a path whereby

56:45

I am faithful to

56:47

facts, logic, reason,

56:51

but not to

56:53

intellectualize. So

56:56

when you say, if we

57:01

acquiesce to

57:04

passions and

57:06

emotions, I think

57:09

passions and emotions

57:12

are integral to

57:15

justice. They are not

57:18

an encumbrance on

57:21

justice. That's how I see it. I

57:24

can't intellectualize. I

57:26

can't. You know, the other day I

57:30

spoke at MIT, their encampment, really

57:34

impressive. You know, these are the smartest

57:37

minds on earth. And

57:39

most of them in the encampment, most not

57:42

all, were from the Middle East. There

57:45

were two young men from Gaza, two

57:47

young men from Gaza. And

57:53

after I was at the encampment for about three

57:55

hours and then I spoke, and

57:57

somebody asked me, what is your most...

58:00

distinct memory of Gaza. I was

58:02

only there very long. Very, very

58:05

significant time in the West Bank in

58:08

a place called, he brought an al-Haleel

58:10

and in a place called Beit Sohar. And

58:12

I said, I know

58:15

it's going to sound strange, I said, but

58:18

my most distinct memory is,

58:20

it was a beautiful

58:22

library in Gaza, a magnificent

58:26

structure. It

58:28

was donated by Saudi Arabia, it was called

58:31

the King Salman Library.

58:34

It was like

58:36

a castle, you

58:38

know. And when I

58:40

read in the newspaper, it

58:43

was reduced to rubble. It

58:46

really, it left,

58:50

it really, I would love it, you know, I

58:53

saw the kids in the library, I

58:55

saw the librarian. I had a librarian,

58:59

a dignified woman. And

59:01

that's part of the picture

59:04

for me. It's not just

59:07

the rubble, it's not just

59:09

another building

59:12

destroyed, it's

59:15

the children, it's

59:18

the librarian, it's

59:21

human beings, you know.

59:24

I can, and it's passionate and

59:26

emotion. And I don't

59:28

think it's sensible,

59:31

if I can use that word,

59:34

which refers to reason. I

59:36

don't think it's sensible to try to separate

59:38

them out. I don't think

59:40

we're suggesting that they should be separated out. I

59:42

think what Francis is suggesting, and I agree with

59:45

him, is that if we

59:47

fail to adequately look at

59:49

the situation and focus on the future,

59:51

more libraries will be destroyed, more

59:54

people will be killed, more children will be

59:56

made. And so I think the conversation that

59:58

we are trying to have have is

1:00:00

about how this gets moved forward. And you've said that

1:00:03

the way it gets moved forward is by the side

1:00:05

sitting down and talking. And ending

1:00:07

the conflict. And ending the conflict. On the

1:00:09

basis of international law. On the basis of

1:00:11

international law. We'll get to

1:00:13

that in a second. One of the other things that I

1:00:16

hosted a panel at a festival recently,

1:00:18

which was very intense about

1:00:20

Israel and Palestine. I was the moderator. I

1:00:22

was trying to press both sides on their

1:00:25

arguments. One

1:00:27

of the interesting things to me was that

1:00:29

actually everybody agreed, broadly speaking, on

1:00:31

the ratio of Hamas fighters who'd

1:00:33

been killed to civilians who'd been

1:00:35

killed. And it

1:00:37

was something like total killed 35,000. And

1:00:41

about a fifth of those were Hamas fighters. I

1:00:43

would say there's absolutely, I've studied the question. I'm

1:00:45

not pulling right. Just give me the numbers in

1:00:47

the ratio. I don't think that's any, nobody

1:00:49

knows. It's impossible. How

1:00:51

could you know how many Hamas fighters were

1:00:53

killed? Most Hamas fighters were

1:00:56

killed probably the same way that most

1:00:59

Gaza civilians were killed. In

1:01:01

the course of indiscriminate carpet bombing, there's no

1:01:03

way to know. The

1:01:06

Gaza health ministry never distinguishes

1:01:08

the numbers between civilians and

1:01:11

combatants killed. The number

1:01:13

of Hamas people killed in tunnels, nobody knows

1:01:15

because Israel just blows up the shafts to

1:01:17

the tunnels. They don't go down for obvious

1:01:19

reasons. The fear of being booby trapped and

1:01:21

so forth. So we don't have

1:01:24

any idea what the number of Hamas

1:01:26

militants killed is. Israel just throws out

1:01:28

numbers. One day it'll say 9,000. Another

1:01:30

day it'll say 12,000. At

1:01:33

one news conference in

1:01:35

Germany, Prime Minister Netanyahu said for

1:01:37

every civilian, for every militant killed, one

1:01:39

civilian was killed. You know, a nice

1:01:41

one-to-one proportion. And the person

1:01:44

interrogating him said, are you saying

1:01:46

one civilian, one combatant? He said, yeah,

1:01:49

sure. That's what he said. All

1:01:51

the numbers are just made up. That

1:01:53

wasn't the ratio that I was talking about.

1:01:55

I think people on the panel

1:01:57

that I was hosting, it was something like one to

1:01:59

five. 1 to 6. I

1:02:02

have no idea. I wouldn't pretend to know. Nor

1:02:04

would I. But let's just

1:02:06

for the sake of trying to understand this

1:02:08

situation, let's just say it is something like

1:02:10

that. The people

1:02:14

who liberated your parents, by

1:02:18

the way the Soviets committed some awful atrocities that

1:02:20

nobody should defend. Nobody should

1:02:22

defend the mass rape of German women, etc.

1:02:26

The collective allies

1:02:29

collectively together would

1:02:31

have killed a hell

1:02:33

of a lot of civilians. And what

1:02:35

I think we would agree was the

1:02:38

just attempt to end that

1:02:40

conflict. And the people who have

1:02:43

the ability to end that conflict without

1:02:45

those civilian casualties were the Nazi party

1:02:47

who continued to make their last stand

1:02:49

despite it being entirely clear that they

1:02:51

were going to lose. And they exposed

1:02:53

their civilians to that suffering quite deliberately.

1:02:57

I'm not sure of deliberately. You could

1:02:59

say recklessly. They

1:03:02

didn't want their civilians to be killed, but they didn't care

1:03:04

if they were. They didn't care. Isn't

1:03:06

that exactly what's happening in Gaza? Meaning?

1:03:10

Meaning that the people in charge of

1:03:12

Gaza could have handed over the hostages

1:03:14

by now, could have surrendered the terrorists

1:03:16

who committed the atrocities on October 7th,

1:03:19

and this would all be over. Well, I

1:03:21

would say if Hamas

1:03:23

surrendered, it would all be

1:03:26

over. I agree with that.

1:03:28

And they could declare as

1:03:31

Prime Minister Netanyahu has said, we

1:03:34

want an unequivocal total military victory over

1:03:36

Hamas. That's their goal. Which is what

1:03:39

we wanted in World War II. Exactly.

1:03:41

Exactly what we wanted in World War

1:03:43

II. That's why we kept fighting. We

1:03:45

wanted them to capitulate. So

1:03:48

isn't Israel doing exactly the same thing in response

1:03:50

to October 7th? Well, there's a

1:03:52

slight difference. If you allow me. Of

1:03:55

course. The slight difference

1:03:57

is, let's assume what you do is

1:03:59

a very good deal. describe happened, okay?

1:04:03

There are two, I should say, there are

1:04:05

two differences. Number one,

1:04:08

after October

1:04:12

7th, Israel was determined

1:04:14

that, as you know,

1:04:16

the cliche, every crisis is an

1:04:18

opportunity, and their

1:04:21

opportunity came with the crisis. What

1:04:23

happened in October 7th? And

1:04:25

they were determined, and they said this as

1:04:27

far back as 2015. I

1:04:30

quoted actually at the end of my book

1:04:32

on Gaza, because I was reading it, and

1:04:34

I noticed at the very end, they said

1:04:36

they said they're tired of what they called

1:04:39

these wars of attrition with Gaza. And

1:04:41

they said the next war will be the

1:04:43

last war. And

1:04:45

in fact, that seems to be turning

1:04:48

out to be the case. We don't yet know

1:04:50

how it's going to end. So

1:04:52

Israel was determined after

1:04:54

October 7th, that there

1:04:56

is not going to be another

1:04:59

what they call mowing of the

1:05:01

lawn in Gaza. This

1:05:03

time, they weren't just going to cut down

1:05:05

the blades in Gaza, they're mowing

1:05:08

of the lawn. They are

1:05:10

going to extirpate, pull

1:05:12

out by the root every

1:05:15

blade of grass in

1:05:17

Gaza. So their

1:05:20

goal, yes, their

1:05:23

goal is to defeat Hamas,

1:05:27

to inflict a massive military defeat

1:05:29

on Gaza. But there's a second

1:05:31

goal. The second goal

1:05:34

is to once and

1:05:36

for all resolve this

1:05:39

Gaza question. And

1:05:42

that means could

1:05:44

mean three things. It

1:05:46

could mean ethnic cleansing, which is what

1:05:49

they tried during the first two weeks,

1:05:51

as you recall, when Secretary of State

1:05:53

Blinken and Ursula Van der Leyen were

1:05:55

going to places like Egypt and telling

1:05:58

them to take in the The

1:06:00

Gazans, Egypt vetoed that.

1:06:04

So ethnic cleansing, at least

1:06:06

until now, can predict tomorrow, is

1:06:09

not an option. The second

1:06:11

possible goal is, as I

1:06:14

quote Giora Island, to

1:06:16

make Gaza uninhabitable. So

1:06:19

they have only two choices, to stay

1:06:21

and starve or to leave. And

1:06:24

the third goal is the one that Prime

1:06:28

Minister Netanyahu announced twice,

1:06:30

due to AMALEC.

1:06:36

Remember AMALEC. You kill

1:06:38

every man, woman, and child.

1:06:42

As Bet-Salem, the Israeli Information Center

1:06:44

for Human Rights in the occupied

1:06:46

territories, as Bet-Salem put

1:06:49

it in its most

1:06:51

recent report called Manufacturing Famine

1:06:53

in Gaza, it said,

1:06:56

every Israeli who's gone

1:06:59

through our educational system,

1:07:02

every Israeli who's gone through

1:07:04

our educational system knows

1:07:07

what it means to say AMALEC.

1:07:12

Everyone understands that means

1:07:14

kill every man,

1:07:17

woman, and child. So

1:07:21

I disagree with you that

1:07:24

if the hostages were

1:07:26

released, and if

1:07:29

even Hamas surrendered, it

1:07:31

would not be over for Israel. It

1:07:34

wants to make this war

1:07:36

the last war. So just to be clear,

1:07:39

let me just interject one thing, and I

1:07:41

want to clarify what you're saying, and then

1:07:43

please, Karen. What you're

1:07:45

saying is if Hamas handed over the hostages

1:07:47

and surrendered the terrorists who committed October 7th

1:07:49

attacks. Well, now you're having

1:07:51

another condition. Well,

1:07:53

I said that at the beginning. No,

1:07:55

you said if Hamas handed

1:07:57

over the hostages and the people who committed October 7th.

1:08:00

that right at the beginning. Maybe you didn't hear. So

1:08:02

if Hamas turns itself in. It turns

1:08:05

over the people who committed to the planet. I thought you were

1:08:07

the one that wanted to talk about the real world. Well

1:08:10

that seems to me, for

1:08:12

example, let's take

1:08:14

our World War II example. If

1:08:17

Hitler had said, you know what, we've

1:08:19

clearly lost the only way to save German

1:08:21

civilians from the suffering that's about to be

1:08:23

inflicted on them is to do

1:08:25

what will eventually happen to me anyway, which

1:08:27

is hand myself over or kill myself and

1:08:29

end this now. That would have

1:08:31

ended World War II. I'm not convinced

1:08:34

by the way that would that will

1:08:36

end the situation in Gaza. I think

1:08:38

Israel's well that's what I was asking.

1:08:40

Israel has two goals for sure to

1:08:43

inflict a military defeat on

1:08:45

Gaza and also

1:08:48

to once and for all put

1:08:51

an end to this Gaza nuisance

1:08:54

that's in a nuisance that's escalated

1:08:56

into a real problem. So this

1:08:58

is what I'm trying to clarify.

1:09:01

Is it your view that if Hamas

1:09:05

has handed over the hostages or if

1:09:07

today Hamas hands over the hostages and

1:09:10

hands over the key perpetrators, let's say

1:09:12

for the sake of argument of October

1:09:14

7th, Israel will carry on

1:09:16

killing people in Gaza. That's your position? I

1:09:18

would say if

1:09:24

they, I would

1:09:26

say in the real world, those

1:09:29

two goals can't be

1:09:32

disentangled because as

1:09:34

you said, Hamas was not going to

1:09:36

do that. And

1:09:39

Israel, as I said, saw October

1:09:42

7th as a crisis,

1:09:46

a disaster for sure, and

1:09:48

an opportunity. And

1:09:51

it was going to exploit

1:09:53

that opportunity to the help.

1:09:56

Now, there's a second point and

1:09:58

that's going to be responsible. to York, which

1:10:03

I accept. Of

1:10:05

course I accept it, because we have

1:10:07

to be honest and truthful in these matters. Let's

1:10:10

say Hamas did do what you said,

1:10:13

okay? What would happen? It

1:10:15

would be

1:10:18

a return to the status

1:10:20

quo ante. It

1:10:23

would be a return to

1:10:26

the people in Gaza being

1:10:28

confined to Gaza. I know you don't want to hear

1:10:31

about it, because you said you've already gone through this

1:10:33

with lots of music. But the people

1:10:35

of Gaza... It's not that I don't want to

1:10:37

hear about it.

1:10:39

It's that we accept that for the sake of

1:10:41

argument, and I don't want to waste time. The

1:10:43

problem is, I don't

1:10:45

want to fault you, because

1:10:47

there's no reason to doubt good faith

1:10:51

unless there's evidence of bad faith.

1:10:54

So I'm going to accept good

1:10:56

faith. But you understand, let's say

1:10:58

this particular interview goes to a

1:11:00

million people, right? Maybe

1:11:02

a hundred thousand of those million, or

1:11:05

even ten thousand, know about before October

1:11:07

7th. So when you say,

1:11:09

I accept it for the sake of

1:11:11

argument, 99% of the viewers

1:11:13

don't know what you have accepted.

1:11:16

Okay, in that case, let's help them. Why

1:11:18

don't you tell us which interview you have

1:11:20

done that best describes the plight of the

1:11:23

Palestinian people, and we will put a pop-up

1:11:25

right here on YouTube that they

1:11:27

can go and watch that. What's the best interview? I

1:11:29

don't pretend they saw one. They can't just own. So

1:11:31

people can go and watch the Candace Service Interview to

1:11:34

get the detail of what you're talking about. Okay. Set

1:11:37

it. So if Hamas were

1:11:40

to lay down its arms,

1:11:42

and for argument's sake, let's

1:11:44

say, that would preempt the

1:11:46

possibility of Israel executing its

1:11:49

other goal, which is to

1:11:51

solve the Gaza question. What

1:11:53

does that mean? It

1:11:56

means that we return to the status

1:11:58

quo ante, the people. of

1:12:00

Gaza, half of whom are

1:12:02

children, will be confined in

1:12:04

that same concentration camp. Probably

1:12:06

it'll be more brutal than

1:12:08

ever, the blockade will

1:12:11

be more brutal than ever because of

1:12:13

what happened on October 7th. And

1:12:15

then the people of Gaza will be

1:12:17

left in that concentration

1:12:20

camp to languish and die.

1:12:22

I don't think

1:12:24

that's acceptable. I don't. Do

1:12:26

you think if they keep fighting they're gonna get a better

1:12:28

deal? I would

1:12:30

say with a long

1:12:33

life experience, politics

1:12:35

is wholly unpredictable.

1:12:38

Who would have guessed, just to give you

1:12:41

two examples, who would have

1:12:43

guessed that South

1:12:46

Africa would rise

1:12:48

to the challenge, confront

1:12:50

the United States, because the US is

1:12:52

enabling the whole thing, and

1:12:55

go to the International

1:12:57

Court of Justice, and

1:12:59

go to bat for a poor,

1:13:02

powerless, stateless

1:13:04

people. Totally unpredictable.

1:13:07

Who would have guessed that the vote in the court

1:13:11

was 15 to 2? I

1:13:14

was asked many times before, I said

1:13:17

forget it, there's

1:13:19

no possibility the court's gonna

1:13:21

find in Gaza's favor or

1:13:24

South Africa's favor. Who

1:13:26

would have guessed with

1:13:29

young people facing

1:13:33

very formidable, redoubtable

1:13:37

challenges, daunting challenges,

1:13:40

climate change, mass...

1:13:46

I call mass unemployment because I don't consider

1:13:48

the gig economy real employment. Student debt piled

1:13:55

so high in the

1:13:57

midst of all of those challenges. the

1:14:01

young people on all

1:14:03

the college campuses seized

1:14:06

upon Gaza, a

1:14:08

poor, powerless, stateless

1:14:11

people halfway around

1:14:13

the world. They had no dog.

1:14:17

You said most of them are from the Middle East. Well,

1:14:20

the encampments are

1:14:22

from the campus sentiment. If you

1:14:25

look at, for example, I was at

1:14:27

MIT when they uphold

1:14:29

the students on

1:14:33

whether they support divestment from

1:14:36

the university because that's one of the demands. The

1:14:39

numbers are up to 60 and 70 percent. I

1:14:42

was very surprised. I

1:14:44

was very surprised. Politics, very

1:14:47

unpredictable. So when you ask me,

1:14:50

could they have done better? I can't

1:14:53

say it. I can't

1:14:55

answer that. I did.

1:14:57

I'm very interested in talking to people

1:15:00

from Gaza, young people. And

1:15:02

I asked them, I asked them over and over

1:15:05

again, what is the feeling? And

1:15:07

they said to me, we

1:15:10

all knew something

1:15:13

had to happen. Something

1:15:16

had to give. I

1:15:19

don't want to be dramatic. I'm trying to

1:15:22

be faithful to the facts. If

1:15:25

you're born into a concentration camp,

1:15:29

if you live in it, 60 percent

1:15:32

of the young people in Gaza were

1:15:35

unemployed because Israel

1:15:37

shattered the economy. There's

1:15:40

no exports from Gaza except occasionally a

1:15:42

few strawberries. They don't allow it. If

1:15:45

80 percent of

1:15:48

the population is dependent

1:15:50

on government handouts, if

1:15:53

50 percent are

1:15:56

insecure, food insecure,

1:15:59

secure, as the term goes.

1:16:02

The head of the UN, Gutierrez, is

1:16:04

no radical. He said in

1:16:07

May 20th,

1:16:09

2021, before October 7th,

1:16:12

he said, if you want a

1:16:15

hell on earth, those are his

1:16:17

words, if you want

1:16:19

a hell on earth, go

1:16:22

look at the children in Gaza. That's

1:16:25

what he said. That's the quote. Something

1:16:29

had to give. So

1:16:34

in the face of that, and

1:16:37

where there a Hamas

1:16:39

surrender, it

1:16:42

would just be a return

1:16:44

to that concentration camp, probably.

1:16:47

I don't

1:16:49

want to be exaggerating, that's called, I would

1:16:52

say a thousand times, but that's just called

1:16:54

significantly worse

1:16:58

than that human rubbish

1:17:00

heap. So

1:17:02

when you say to me, can they

1:17:04

do better? Death is

1:17:07

death. Nothing can

1:17:09

bring back those 35,000

1:17:11

who were killed. I

1:17:13

recognize that. There

1:17:15

is no silver lining in

1:17:18

a genocide, period,

1:17:21

full stop. It would

1:17:23

be an utter betrayal of

1:17:25

my parents and my family, where

1:17:27

I to try to discern or

1:17:30

espie a silver lining in

1:17:33

what's happening there. And

1:17:36

if you want to hold Hamas

1:17:38

accountable for it, I'm

1:17:40

not going to, I won't,

1:17:42

we've had that discussion. What

1:17:45

I will say is, if

1:17:47

the people of Gaza want

1:17:50

to take a roll of the dice and

1:17:53

maybe life for

1:17:56

some of them will

1:17:58

be better. Bar

1:18:01

be it for me to tell them not to try.

1:18:04

Norman, we're missing a part of the

1:18:06

puzzle here, which is also Iran and

1:18:10

the fundamentalist regime there,

1:18:12

which is intent on

1:18:15

obliterating Israel, which is

1:18:17

intent on funding terrorist

1:18:19

organizations around the

1:18:21

Middle East. If

1:18:24

we're talking about Israel's

1:18:26

retaliation and your argument that

1:18:28

it's what they're committing a

1:18:30

war crimes, Iran needs

1:18:33

to take some responsibility for this as

1:18:35

well, for stoking the fires and

1:18:37

for basically

1:18:39

helping this situation to come about

1:18:41

as well, surely. Let's

1:18:46

start with the factual question. There

1:18:49

seems to be a broad consensus among

1:18:51

all intelligence agencies, including Israeli,

1:18:56

that Hamas

1:18:58

did not inform

1:19:00

Hezbollah or Iran of

1:19:03

its plan on October 7. So

1:19:06

far as I've read, and I've read a lot,

1:19:08

but I can't say I've read exhaustively, but I've

1:19:10

read a lot. Nobody so

1:19:12

far as I've read makes the

1:19:14

claim that Iran was directly

1:19:16

responsible. Now

1:19:22

you might say, what about

1:19:24

indirectly responsible? So here's

1:19:27

how I see it, and we of course

1:19:30

can disagree and you should press me. It's

1:19:34

like saying the

1:19:39

Palestinians or the Gazans, they

1:19:41

hate Israel because of the

1:19:43

Hamas propaganda

1:19:50

in those UNRWA schools.

1:19:53

Now of course the claim about the propaganda in

1:19:55

UNRWA schools is nonsense, but let's say it's even

1:19:57

true. They say, look at this. these

1:20:00

videos that

1:20:02

Hamas puts out on its television

1:20:05

network. Okay? And

1:20:07

where children are taught that you're the pig,

1:20:09

then you should be killed and all that.

1:20:13

Right, right. Okay. Okay.

1:20:16

Let's assume I'm not going to get into the

1:20:18

question about the translations. I don't know about it

1:20:20

and references to the... Let's say it's true. Let's

1:20:22

say it's true. I think

1:20:24

to myself, do

1:20:28

you really need to be educated about

1:20:32

how horrible Israel is by sesame

1:20:36

street like programs? You

1:20:39

don't know from your daily experience.

1:20:43

Do you know what those mowings of

1:20:45

the lawn, what they look

1:20:47

like? I do. And

1:20:51

here I'm going to claim a certain

1:20:54

kind of high ground and

1:20:56

expertise. I

1:20:58

know Operation Cast Lead

1:21:00

2008-9. I

1:21:04

read there were hundreds, believe it

1:21:07

or not, hundreds

1:21:09

of human rights supports on

1:21:12

it. I read them all. I

1:21:15

read them twice. I

1:21:17

know about the 1,400 people killed,

1:21:19

1,200 of them

1:21:21

children. Excuse

1:21:26

me, 1,200 of them civilians, 350 of

1:21:28

them children. I

1:21:31

know about the 6,300 homes

1:21:34

which were damaged or destroyed

1:21:36

in Gaza. I

1:21:38

know Pillar of Defense. I

1:21:41

know Protective Edge, which

1:21:43

Peter Moore, the

1:21:46

head of the International Committee of the

1:21:48

Red Cross, described. He said after touring

1:21:51

Gaza in

1:21:53

the aftermath of Protective Edge, he

1:21:56

said, never in my career have

1:21:59

I seen this. instruction on the

1:22:02

scale of what I saw in

1:22:05

Gaza. I

1:22:07

know what it was like admittedly

1:22:10

intellectually through books,

1:22:13

but I know and reports, but

1:22:15

I know the details. You

1:22:17

don't need a sesame,

1:22:19

a Hama sesame street. I

1:22:22

don't think that's the point people make about it. No,

1:22:24

no, no, sorry, sorry, can I interrupt? You're

1:22:27

saying it's Iran. You're

1:22:29

saying it's Iran that's

1:22:32

fomenting the problem in Gaza.

1:22:36

No, it's the concentration camp

1:22:38

that's fomenting the rage in

1:22:41

Gaza. It's also Iran who

1:22:43

are who

1:22:45

are also making this

1:22:47

situation worse. Ayatollah Khomeini is not

1:22:49

interested in peace in the Middle

1:22:51

East. Ayatollah Khomeini is interested in

1:22:54

wiping his right hands off the

1:22:56

map and every dupe. This is

1:22:59

a fundamentalist Islamic fundamentalist

1:23:01

and rabidly anti-Semitic

1:23:03

regime. So my point is that

1:23:05

what they are doing is creating

1:23:07

ever more animosity. Maybe they are

1:23:09

and states have their own raison

1:23:11

d'etat. I'm not going to deny

1:23:13

that. I don't live in a

1:23:16

Never-never-land, but here's

1:23:20

what I would say. Number

1:23:22

one, well, I have to say several

1:23:24

things because I want

1:23:26

to be truthful to the whole record. Number

1:23:29

one, if you look

1:23:31

at the UN record on

1:23:33

a two-state settlement every year, there's a

1:23:36

UN resolution called Peaceful Settlement of the

1:23:38

Palestine Question. Okay, the

1:23:40

entire world votes for two states in the

1:23:43

General Assembly now, not the Security Council. So

1:23:45

we're talking about the entire world. The

1:23:47

entire world votes for two states on the June

1:23:49

67 border, except

1:23:51

Israel, the United States, and some

1:23:54

Pacific Islands, Tuvalu. Tuvalu,

1:23:58

the obvious. We'll come to mind. Iran

1:24:03

is with the majority. Iran

1:24:05

votes with the majority. The

1:24:08

organization of the Islamic Conference, the

1:24:10

OIC, it's 57 Islamic

1:24:12

countries, they

1:24:15

supported the two-state settlement. Iran

1:24:18

voted with the majority. Do they

1:24:20

dislike Israel? No question in my mind.

1:24:23

No question in my mind about that. Would

1:24:25

they like it to disappear? Yeah, I think

1:24:27

so. And I'm going to return to

1:24:29

that question in a moment. So just remind me

1:24:31

to get back to that. Because I'm not going

1:24:33

to deny facts. I have a credo in life.

1:24:36

I coined it. Never quarrel with

1:24:38

facts. Or as

1:24:40

Lenin like to say, he like to call it the

1:24:42

British proverb, facts are

1:24:44

stubborn things. And I

1:24:46

turn that into never quarrel with facts. So

1:24:49

I'm not going to quarrel. So first

1:24:52

of all, that has been

1:24:54

the Iranian position formally. Now, you may

1:24:56

say when it comes down to brass

1:24:58

tacks, they're not going to sign on.

1:25:00

And the funding that they give to

1:25:02

terrorist organizations. So on the one hand,

1:25:04

you can be forward facing and say,

1:25:06

yes, we agree with this. Behind

1:25:09

it, you're doing something pretty dodgy. OK.

1:25:12

I'd like you to hold that question. I want to

1:25:14

respond to it. Number

1:25:17

two, now I know this is, I'll be

1:25:20

accused of one aboutism as that expression

1:25:22

is now used for that occasion, one

1:25:24

aboutism. Take a

1:25:26

very sane, a very sane

1:25:29

Israeli historian, Benny Morris. He's

1:25:31

Israel's chief historian, educator, Cambridge,

1:25:33

written very solid

1:25:36

history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

1:25:39

He's come out for nuking Iran. Yes,

1:25:42

he has said literally, if the

1:25:45

United States does not

1:25:47

join in a conventional

1:25:49

war with Israel against

1:25:52

Iran, we

1:25:54

should use, I'm quoting him,

1:25:57

unconventional weapons against

1:25:59

Israel. Iran nuclear weapons,

1:26:01

unconventionalist, the euphemism for nuclear

1:26:03

weapons. And he

1:26:06

says, and then he asks himself the

1:26:08

question, what about all

1:26:10

the innocents that are going to be

1:26:12

killed? And you know what he

1:26:14

says? They

1:26:16

elected that government. They

1:26:18

deserve their fate. So

1:26:21

when you talk about the

1:26:25

Iranians want to wipe out

1:26:27

Israel, we ought not

1:26:29

also to forget that even

1:26:31

the sanest, most sober of

1:26:33

Israelis... Yeah, she's not in

1:26:36

charge of Israel. Yeah. Francis

1:26:38

was talking about Ayahalik and many... He's

1:26:40

speaking to a broad consensus. Isn't it?

1:26:43

As are you. You're speaking to a consensus of people. It

1:26:46

doesn't mean you're in charge of the United States. I'm not

1:26:48

saying in charge, I'm saying in the

1:26:50

Israeli mindset, especially

1:26:54

the leadership. Hold on. No,

1:26:56

no, no. This is a false equivalence. Hold

1:26:59

on a second. Ayatollah Khomeini,

1:27:01

what Francis is saying, is funding and giving aid

1:27:03

to terrorist organizations. I'm going to give you up.

1:27:05

That's the third question. No, no. It's

1:27:08

the same question. The comparison you've made

1:27:10

is false. What Francis is saying is,

1:27:12

here's a state in Iran that is

1:27:14

funding and aiding terrorism. And you've said,

1:27:17

well, what about the fact that an

1:27:19

Israeli historian wants to know? No, no.

1:27:21

No one in Israel is advocating in government

1:27:23

for the nuclear... I don't think that's

1:27:26

correct at all. Who

1:27:28

in the Israeli government is advocating for

1:27:31

that? I would actually think there's a

1:27:33

broad consensus. So what are you? I'm

1:27:35

saying, because they have two options. They

1:27:38

regard Iran as, as

1:27:40

they call it, an existential enemy.

1:27:42

Well, they keep saying they want to

1:27:45

wipe Israel off the map. I

1:27:47

wouldn't say they keep saying that. I don't agree with

1:27:49

it, but I'm not going to go into that. I

1:27:52

said, if you look at the documentary record, they

1:27:55

are on board supporting that two-state

1:27:57

settlement. That's what the record shows.

1:28:00

Now, I have to make one qualification to

1:28:02

that because I want to be faithful to

1:28:05

the facts, but on

1:28:07

this question that you raised, and now

1:28:09

you repeated, on the funding. So

1:28:12

you'll forgive me if I go

1:28:14

back to international law. International

1:28:17

law says, an occupying

1:28:20

power, there is nothing

1:28:22

in international law that

1:28:25

bars and occupy

1:28:27

people from

1:28:30

engaging in armed resistance

1:28:32

against an occupation. There

1:28:35

is nothing in international law, to

1:28:37

use the technical term, and you'll

1:28:40

forgive me for it, international law

1:28:42

is neutral on an

1:28:45

occupying people using

1:28:48

armed force to resist

1:28:50

an occupation. Number

1:28:52

two, nothing

1:28:55

in international law bars

1:28:59

a country, a

1:29:01

foreign country, from supplying

1:29:04

weapons to a

1:29:06

people engaged in armed

1:29:09

resistance against an occupation.

1:29:12

What international law does

1:29:14

prohibit, international law

1:29:16

it's not neutral, it

1:29:19

prohibits an occupying

1:29:21

force, an

1:29:23

occupying power, from

1:29:26

using violent force to

1:29:29

maintain an occupation.

1:29:32

Now you might not like

1:29:35

those formulas or formulations, but

1:29:38

the law is the law. Iran

1:29:41

under international law has

1:29:44

the right to

1:29:46

supply weapons to

1:29:49

the resistance in Gaza to

1:29:51

the occupation, the resistance in

1:29:53

Gaza to the occupation. Now

1:29:55

one question just about international

1:29:57

law, you're clearly more knowledgeable.

1:30:00

about them now when

1:30:02

you talk about the international law

1:30:04

allowing armed resistance and other countries

1:30:07

supporting that does that

1:30:09

armed resistance include massacring civilians no

1:30:11

of course not okay well

1:30:13

I think that's kind of important in this context what

1:30:15

Francis is saying to you isn't is why

1:30:18

is Iran supporting these people fighting

1:30:20

the IDF what he's saying is

1:30:23

Iran funded and aided the people

1:30:25

who committed the largest massacre of

1:30:27

civilian Jews since the Holocaust isn't

1:30:29

that a problem that's

1:30:31

what he's saying I would say that it's

1:30:35

we're going to end up going back to the

1:30:37

beginning and I still have to say one last

1:30:39

thing all right answer that one first I

1:30:41

would say on what happened

1:30:44

on October 7th I

1:30:46

absolutely acknowledge I've made that

1:30:49

very clear that atrocities

1:30:51

occurred yes yes

1:30:55

is that wrong that Iran funded

1:30:57

and supported the you know Iran

1:30:59

could say and it's actually true

1:31:01

Iran could say we didn't know they were going

1:31:03

to do that no they didn't know it's actually true

1:31:06

now you could say they're misrepresenting what

1:31:09

happened in October 7th and I would

1:31:11

say Syed Nasrallah the head of Hezbollah

1:31:13

because I listened to his speeches against

1:31:16

before Hezbollah itself as

1:31:19

an organization yes I think he's

1:31:21

misrepresenting what happened October 7th I

1:31:23

have no doubt about that and

1:31:27

the truth of the matter

1:31:29

I've studied it pretty closely

1:31:31

it's almost certain in my opinion

1:31:33

it's almost certain Hezbollah would not have

1:31:35

done that well no it's not

1:31:37

true because in Syria it's carrying out massacres so

1:31:39

no I take that back I

1:31:42

retract that but

1:31:45

the last question and here

1:31:49

I'm going to be very straightforward I

1:31:52

do believe that what's

1:31:55

happened in the last six

1:31:57

months has

1:31:59

changed the position of people like

1:32:01

Hezbollah and Iran, I do

1:32:04

believe as a

1:32:08

not just a metaphorical

1:32:11

statement like Israel will vanish from the

1:32:13

pages of history, I do

1:32:16

believe that the people in what's

1:32:19

called the Axis of Resistance and

1:32:21

mainly Hezbollah and Iran no longer

1:32:24

believe they can live with Israel.

1:32:26

I do believe that. I do believe. I've seen it

1:32:28

over and over again. I

1:32:30

don't shy away from my conclusions even

1:32:33

if they're unhappy conclusions. I

1:32:35

do think it's become

1:32:38

between Israel and Iran-Hezwell.

1:32:40

I do think it's become existential. Neither

1:32:43

one will tolerate the existence of the other. That's

1:32:46

why people despair

1:32:49

when I say I'm kind

1:32:51

of hopeless at this moment because

1:32:53

I don't see an exit. I think afterward

1:32:56

Israel did in Gaza over

1:32:59

the last six months, at

1:33:01

least on the part of the

1:33:03

Hezbollah, which has

1:33:05

a different mindset than Iran in my

1:33:07

opinion, but at least on the part

1:33:09

of Hezbollah, you can't live with them. The

1:33:12

official position of Hezbollah up

1:33:14

until October 7th was we

1:33:17

don't agree with two states. We

1:33:20

believe Palestine belongs to the

1:33:22

Palestinians. However, if the

1:33:25

leadership of the Palestinians decides

1:33:27

on a two-state settlement, we

1:33:29

accept it. That was

1:33:31

their position up until October 7th. Listening

1:33:34

to the speeches, and

1:33:36

I'm not happy to say this, listening

1:33:39

to the speeches, I think their

1:33:41

views now change. They can't live with

1:33:43

Israel. This

1:33:45

will, you could

1:33:48

say for good or for bad, but this case for

1:33:50

bad, what happened will

1:33:52

be a turning point. I

1:33:54

didn't see that at the beginning. At

1:33:56

the beginning, when it happened, friends of mine who are

1:33:59

very knowledgeable, they were like Muin Rabbani,

1:34:02

he said, it's a turning point. I said,

1:34:04

well, you know, I've seen these turning points.

1:34:06

I've seen Cassillate, I've seen Pillar of Defense,

1:34:08

I've seen Protective Edge, but now

1:34:11

I see it's a turning point. I

1:34:14

reluctantly acknowledge that.

1:34:17

And the same is true in Israel. No

1:34:19

one believes in the Tuesday solution in Israel.

1:34:21

Yeah, I don't believe large... No,

1:34:24

no one. No. The

1:34:26

overwhelming consensus is against it. Right.

1:34:28

So... So not aside. I don't

1:34:30

see... You see, that's one of

1:34:33

the problems with this particular moment.

1:34:35

Most of the time, you could

1:34:37

see the terms of

1:34:40

a settlement and then trying to

1:34:42

get people to it, both

1:34:44

sides to it. Now, I

1:34:47

don't see that. Because

1:34:49

both sides see that

1:34:51

we cannot coexist

1:34:56

with the other side. Norman,

1:34:59

it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming

1:35:01

on. Thank you for taking part in the discussion.

1:35:04

We really appreciate

1:35:06

it. The final question we always ask...

1:35:08

Before we go and ask your questions

1:35:10

to Norman on locals. Is

1:35:13

what's the one thing we're not talking about as

1:35:15

a society that we really should be? I

1:35:21

would say, speaking

1:35:23

as an older person, much

1:35:26

older person, that

1:35:28

the world that

1:35:31

we have carved out for

1:35:34

the new generations is

1:35:38

so, so unfair

1:35:41

and so wrong. And

1:35:44

we need a radical

1:35:47

transformation to

1:35:49

give the new

1:35:51

generations the

1:35:53

same chances and

1:35:56

opportunities in life that

1:35:59

I was blessed with wonderful

1:36:02

schools, a

1:36:05

plentiful society for all

1:36:07

the injustices of the capitalist system

1:36:10

for a large part, not the

1:36:12

whole. For a large part,

1:36:14

the system worked. And

1:36:16

for now, if in

1:36:19

my generation the system worked

1:36:21

for 80% of our country and

1:36:24

it failed for 20%, in

1:36:28

the new world of the

1:36:30

younger generations, it

1:36:32

works for 20% and

1:36:35

it's a catastrophic failure for

1:36:38

80%. And that

1:36:40

to me is what

1:36:43

we should be thinking about. And I'll

1:36:45

just say to round out the discussion,

1:36:48

that's why I think so many young

1:36:50

people identify with Gaza. Powerless

1:36:56

in the face of this juggernaut

1:36:59

of power. And

1:37:02

obviously it's at a whole different level in

1:37:05

Gaza, but the young

1:37:07

people have that same feeling. Poor,

1:37:10

powerless, hopeless, in

1:37:13

the face of this ruthless,

1:37:18

heartless juggernaut of

1:37:20

power. That's Gaza,

1:37:24

obviously on a vastly smaller level,

1:37:28

but it's also the young people in

1:37:31

my own country. And

1:37:33

that's why in my view, they have seized on this

1:37:38

Gaza issue because

1:37:40

they see themselves

1:37:42

obviously in a

1:37:44

different level, they see themselves

1:37:46

in it. That's

1:37:49

my impression. Norman Finkelstein,

1:37:51

thank you so much for coming on. Head on

1:37:53

over to Locals where we ask Norman your questions.

1:38:00

Islam. This version has a tradition or

1:38:02

hadith which describes an end-time prophecy in

1:38:04

which Muslims kill Jews. How

1:38:06

do you expect Jews to reason with Muslims

1:38:08

when they seem to be radicalised with such

1:38:11

suspicion and hatred when it's inbuilt in Islam?

1:38:30

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