Israel/Palestine: The History and What’s Real? Opposing Views with Norman Finkelstein and David Brog

Intro

hey guys I did an opposing views on the Israel Palestine conflict coming up now where I speak to two people on each side of a controversial issue first off I'm not the person to go to to get wisdom on this war my opinion shouldn't really matter to people because I don't have the historical knowledge needed to have an intelligent perspective on what's going on I know what I've read and seen online but I don't know how skewed that is in either direction or how much of it is straight up propaganda just because I have a platform or anyone has a platform doesn't mean they're an expert on whatever the newest topic is all I really have to say is I don't trust the mainstream media on anything so it's hard to figure out what's going on a few days ago a hospital was bombed in Gaza and a lot of innocent people died initially a bunch of media articles came out saying it was Israel then a bunch of media articles came out saying no it was Hamas misfiring literally impossible to know what's going on and if the media has lied to us about everything else for the last at minimum 5 years why are they telling the truth now anyway either way the situation is horrible people are really hurting and very angry all over the world I've experienced thousands of actual threats in the last week from people telling me I want babies dead mostly from being my dad's daughter and not listening to his actual perspective on the war this is happening even though I haven't commented on the topic at all if you don't comment you get people telling you you need to comment because you have a platform if you do comment you get told you don't know what you're talking about and if you comment and it's not what someone wants to hear then you get told you should go to hell anyway I have friends on both sides of this and all I know for sure is it's terribly sad uh I don't usually know much about the opposing views episodes I host which is why I find them interesting although I had my suspicions for the coid episode I believe conversation and talking to people is the only way to figure things out and I wanted to know more about this horrible conflict so I spoke with David brog who gave his perspective on the Israel side he spoke about the current and historical events that led to this and I spoke to Norman finlin on the Palestinian side where he spoke about the same events from a different perspective I'd recommend listening to both if you're interested in this conflict Norman's conversation is right after David's hope you guys are okay this has been an insane couple of weeks and I do hope it gets better soon although that seems naively optimistic uh life's already so hard without multiple Wars political instability and massive health and mental health crises basically worldwide uh obviously I'm grateful to have never actually experienced War so take it easy on yourselves and try not to burden yourself with the news if you can't handle it if the news is ruining your life and there's really nothing you can do about what you're seeing anyway take a break get off of social media don't let it impact your personal lives and the lives of your family especially if you can't do anything about it anyway being educated ated about what's going on in the world is one thing but becoming angry and hateful because of that and impacting the people around you and yourselves negatively isn't good for anyone social media can be horrible that way and remember Tik Tok doesn't show you the truth it shows you more of what you already watch which is likely what horrifies you right now you can easily get into an algorithm and only see half of a story because it thinks that's what you want to see anyway here's the episode apologies for the lengthy intro and AP if I stumbled through questions or didn't address things properly I tried my best here's the episode David brog welcome to the podcast thanks so much for having meel appreciate it so I think we should get started by can you can you give me a brief background can be brief about What's led up to the war today going back uh I mean as far as you see fit whether that's 2000 years or back to the 40s whatever you think explains it the best sure sure um lot of history here but I I I would I would actually go back to the beginning of the Zionist project in in in the late 1800s um Jews had been returning home to their Homeland to the little piece of God's green earth to to which they are indigenous ever since the Roman Exile began in 78 um but that return accelerated with the birth of the Zionist movement in the late 1800s and lots and and then when the British conquered this territory from the Ottoman Empire that return accelerated early on patterns were established that continue to this day and the pattern was as follows Jews wanting to build their country in their Homeland to which they're indigenous recognized that there were other people living in this land arabic speaking people living in this land who had not yet identified themselves as Arabs they had yet to develop a national Consciousness but that came in the early 1900s and then later they they they developed a more narrow National Consciousness they started calling themselves Palestinians but early on from day war the zionists understood there were other people in this land and so they said we need to find a way to live with them and accommodate them and so from Early Times there was a the the Zionist movement said we need to find a way to split the land two people claiming the same land with with powerful claims the only way to piece is to split the land and and to have two homelands for two peoples from day one the Arabs of palestin rejected that idea from day one they said no there are not two Valley claims to this land there's only one valid claim our claim and so we see this pattern and and to summarize for for EAS a summary there are five points in history I like to point to when an offer was put on the table to split the land to create a Jewish homeland and and a Homeland for the Arabs of Palestine who later called themselves Palestinians 1937 1947 1967 2000 and 2008 are the five main examples each of these times the Jews of Palestine later the Israelis said let's split the land the earliest offers were the Jews got 30% the Arabs Got 70% and each of these times the Arabs Palestine later the Palestinians rejected the offer when they rejected the offer with words that was a good day very often they rejected the offer with violence and sustained violence that took thousands of victims the the the offer made in 2000 by prime minister edun Barack to yaser Arafat of the PLO to split the land have a Palestinian State side by side with the Jewish Israeli state was rejected not only in word but in deed it started this violent inat in which the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and we're going to get to Hamas in a second competed with each other to see who could blow up more Israelis and and this was the response to an unprecedented offer by prime minister Barack and so this is the pattern the Palestinians since they they're they're birth as a as a as a people as a as a separate people have only had three leaders the first leader was the muy of Jerusalem who was their leader before and during and after World War II the Muti spent World War II in Berlin sending out Nazi propaganda to the Arab world and his main mission while there was to plead with the Nazis to please take the final solution to the Jewish communities of North Africa when they conquered North Africa and then hopefully to Palestine when they conquered pal after him was yasar AR an unrepentant terrorist whose final Act was to reject peace and to engage in a sustained terrorist campaign against the Israelis and now mmas um none of them ever recognized the Jewish claim to the land therefore they have to refuse they they cannot acknowledge there was a Jewish temple in Jerusalem they won't acknowledge that Jewish connection they cannot acknowledge that Jesus was Jewish because that would be a Jewish connection to this day they insist that Jews are just European Interlopers in their land they even reject the fact that most Jews in Israel don't come from Europe there are Jewish refugees from mus the Muslim Middle East who were thrown out of their homes after the birth of Israel in 1948 so in this big background Hamas comes to continue that tradition and Hamas comes to oppose violently any chance of Peace in the region and to fulfill their Charter which says very clearly at the outset of their Charter it sets forth their goal it says Israel will exist until Islam obliterates it later in the charter it invokes a Hadith a saying of the Prophet Muhammad calling for the killing of all Jews so this is part of this pattern of Jews looking for peace hoping for peace willing to make tremendous compromises for peace and rejectionists taking control of the Palestinian side and ensuring that there is no peace but rather a full rejection of the Jewish claim full rejection of Jewish rights full rejection of a Jewish connection to this land which has led to so much tragedy and is leading now to one of the greatest spikes in murder and death we've seen in the conflict okay well that summed it up pretty cly um the Palestinian side is claiming that in 1947 the offer put forth uh offered Israelis 56% of this area is that accurate um I I would say my understanding was around 52% however okay 52 56% 70% of that was Desert there was the Jewish 50 5 52 56% was overwhelmingly desert the netive desert the Arab 50% was the beautiful Highlands of Judea Samaria Galilee it was a it was a very good offer Jerusalem with it Jewish majority Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since the mid 1800s was not given to the Jewish state so this this this was a an offer that could have ended the conflict but instead of accepting the offer splitting the land working together to develop their respective countries and the entire Middle East and and by the way throughout this period there have been Palestinians who've wanted peace throughout this period there have been Palestinians who wanted compromise who wanted to work together build together live together unfortunately none of them lasted very long when they got to positions of leadership because the Palestinian national movement has been dominated by three leaders who I mentioned all of whom were violent rejectionists who refused to compromise and refus to live in peace so when I speak about the Palestinians I want to be clear I'm talking about their leadership I I I personally know Palestinians I love Palestinians who would love they see what Israel's doing they see what Israel's doing now with the Gulf States to develop their economies to create this new high-tech startup Middle East they want to be a part of that but they are cursed by a leadership that refuses to embrace the path of building a future together and constantly dredges up complaints mostly false about the past to justify violence in the present okay and then uh for for like the current situation for Hamas uh the the Palestinian side is claiming that they're Freedom Fighters right and that their story if I can sum it up badly is they're fighting back against the this is Israeli power that's slowly forcing them them into smaller and smaller areas that's that's what that side is is saying and I looked at the stats about how people in America who I don't think are very like I'm certainly not educated in this matter at all when it started I had almost no background information about what was going on it was just you know Chaos online and you're getting thrown different stories from both sides um what is Gaza like for people who live there because from what I've been told Israel's kind of separated this area and landlocked it and is horrible for people there yeah of all th those people complaining about the map need to take some some responsibility um Palestinians rarely take responsibility for their mistakes the decisions their leaders made they could have had a state that would have been 70% of this land in 1937 they rejected it and rejected it violently murdering hundreds if not thousands of Jews Holocaust happens United Nations gets involved decides this time we're going to make another two-state offer this time we're going to give the Jews 50% the Arabs 50% although like I said the Jews 50% was 70% desert they could have said yes instead they said no and and and the very next day I they launched a war of annihilation against the Jews of Palestine they like to complain about the NABA the disaster of 48 they never take responsibility for the fact that they were the ones who rejected the offer of estate and they launched a violent attack against their Jewish neighbors the very next day this was a war Israel did not want this was a war Israel did not seek they wanted to just rescue the people in displaced persons camps in Europe and bring them into a state to build instead these people came off the boat often wearing their y their ALS schwitz uniforms was the only clothes they had and then right to the front a third of Israel's dead in that war of Independents were Holocaust Survivors they didn't want the war seek the war it was imposed upon them by Palestinian Arabs who rejected the offer of estate so again they they want to complain about the results of their ression you know I look back in history and I think you know Germany did Terrible Things in World War II Japan did Terrible Things in World War II but after the fact after the United States defeated them they never came back and blamed the United States for their suffering they at least had the decency to say this was the outcome of a war we chose and we started but the Palestines will never admit to having made these terrible tragic violent Arabs and instead like to blame the Israelis for the suffering that came from the wars they chose and could have been avoided you know just just as an as sign during this period when Jews were returning to Israel under the British mandate the great the highest years of Jewish immigration were from 1914 to 1930 uh 37 um the highest years of Jewish immigration when the Brit British were letting Jews in Jews were coming in by the hundreds of thousands you know what happened to the Arab population of Palestine during this period did Jews have to kick them out to take their homes did Jews have to kick them out to take their fields to the Arab population plummet it grew dramatically it grew it was a population explosion but the population only exploded in those areas to which Jews were returning so if you look during this period the population of Jaffa to which Jews were returning grew by something like 120% the Jewish population of H to which Jews were returning grew by something like 130% the the Arab population of these places the Arab population of cities to which Jews were not returned like Bethlehem or nablas grew by like 30% natural increase what was happening was the Jews were creating economic opportunities and Arabs were immigrating into Palestine and IM migrating from the Arab areas to the Jewish areas so it was the beginning what could have been a wonderful partnership a wonderful partnership where Jews brought Economic Opportunity Arabs dreamed in and together they built a modern beautiful state it was a choice to reject this it was a choice to instead launch a war of annihilation and the people who made that choice need to step up and bear some of the responsibility by the way in none of this am I saying the Israelis are perfect the Israelis never made mistakes what I'm saying though is there is a clear pattern over the history of offer after offer Jews saying yes Arabs saying no quite often violently so to get back to your asking about Gaza uh Israel was attacked in 1948 the Arabs rejected a state and attacked Israel the um the Palestinian Arabs started the war but then the neighboring Arab Arab countries joined in that war to destroy Israel and they announced the war of annihilation will throw the Jews into the sea Egypt conquered some land um uh in the British what was the British mandate for Palestine that was that that wasn't Egypt and that's called Gaza they conquered this strip along the coast next to Egypt Jordan conquered land uh called the West Bank Judean Samar they didn't create a Palestinian state in this land they conquered it they annexed it Egypt stayed in Gaza and uh Jordan stayed in the West Bank when they attacked Israel again in 1967 in an effort to destroy Israel again in 1967 Israel once again defended itself and in this war of self-defense Israel took Gaza and Israel took the west bank and then there's question emerged of what do we do with these territories in 1967 the Palestinians for the first time a majority of them started to feel that they weren't just members of the larger Arab nation that spans from IO to Iraq they started to feel that they were a separate people and they started to call themselves Palestinians so after Israel liberated this land from Jordan and Egypt in 1967 and were trying to debate what to do with it the Israeli cabinet actually split half the Israeli cabinet said we should give the West Bank back to Jordan in exchange for peace but another half said no no let's not give it to Jordan let's give it to the Arabs who actually lived there who are starting to call themselves palestin inian and they actually found Palestinians living in the land who said sure we would like to be independent we'll take your offer of Independence and that's when the Arab League met in cartoon Sudan and issued its Infamous trinos no peace with Israel no negotiation with Israel no recognition of Israel the same Palestinian interlocutors got back to Israel and said the Arab League has spoken we can't talk to you we'll be killed so Israel stayed in control of this land and isra stayed in control of this land until another Peace effort was made in 2000 where they brought the Palestinian Authority in and gave them autonomy in the West Bank and autonomy in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority ruled in Gaza until M staged the bloody coup and Hamas took it over and so that's more or less the story of Gaz and how we have situation today we have these two pieces of land that were proposed as a Palestinian state that could have been a Palestinian state but it was rejected by the Palestinians repeatedly so now the Palestinian Authority rules the West Bank with autonomy and Hamas rules Gaza completely they could have turned it into a Singapore of the Middle East Israel was ready to work with them build with them construct with them they chose instead to turn it into a large Terror base their choice like every other bad choice the Palestinian leadership has made what a mess so so uh I've heard online that the reason that they Israel's bombing civilian areas like hospitals Etc is because Hamas is actually hiding weapons in these areas is that is that true yeah Hamas has a strategy Hamas doesn't think it can defeat Israel militarily he wants to defeat Israel in in the court of international opinion so it has a very clear strategy to attack Israel and provoke a response but then Hamas chooses to operate out of fire missiles out of hide arms within civilian areas it's a double War Crum when they attack Israeli civilians with their missiles or when they Massacre over a thousand like they just did clear War crime but then when they hide in civilian areas and operate out of Civilian areas it's another War crime so Israel three choices when Hamas attacks them like this it has to do what every other country on Earth would do in attack like this it has to defend its citizens so it has three choices one one extreme it could say oh no Hamas is smart they're operating out of Civilian areas if we go in and try to pinpoint and take out Hamas we may harm civilians and we don't want to harm civilians therefore well played Hamas fire as many rockets at us as you want murder as many of our civilians as you want our hands are tied because we don't want to harm civilians that's one option it's an unacceptable option no country on the face of the Earth will let a terrorist organization murder its civilians and not fight back that's option one option three let's go to The Other Extreme Chia Russia Israel has the ability to wipe out every single building and every single human being in Gaza just destroy it pound it into the Stone Age teach them a lesson that's what Russia did in grne to stop the chin Rebellion unacceptable if you care about international law and human rights you are not allowed to Target civilians that's what separates the Hamas terrorists who intentionally gy Target civilians from a moral Army that targets the terrorists you're not allowed to Target civilians you're not allowed to indiscriminately bomb and Israel refuses to do that so it leaves Israel with the middle option Choice number two and this is how Israel behaved in every one of its Wars up till today and this is how Israel will behave in this war and that is they will do everything possible to go after the terrorists of Hamas while protecting the innocent Palestinian civilians of Gaza this means giving warnings like they've been doing to flee areas into which the Israeli Army will enter this means when they want to bomb a specific building calling everyone in that building and saying please leave we're coming this means if you know that some people have not left the building they do what's called roof knocking they drop a bomb on the roof that makes a very loud scary sound but doesn't kill anyone to let everyone know we're serious we're coming and then when they see that all the civilians have left they will they will destroy the building they will do everything and by the way in doing this they give up the element of surprise in doing this in protecting Palestinian civilians Israel puts its own civilians at risk because what happens when you drop leaflet saying we're coming what happens when you call a building saying we're coming what happens when you drop that knock on the roof the civilians know to flee but so too do the terrorists and they do flee and they do take missiles with them and they live to fight another day and that means more missiles will be fired on Israel more attacks will be made against Israel every time Israel does this it knows it's putting it's taking a risk on its own civilians but it does this because it doesn't want to harm innocent Palestinian civilians it goes through enormous lengths to avoid Palestinian civilian deaths but it can't go so far as to say we're not going to fight Hamas so if Hamas attacks us and it attacks us from civilian areas and fires from civilian areas we'll do our best but if there are civilian deaths that is on Hamas and its double War crime of attacking Israeli civilians from palestin and civilian areas want to quote a friend of mine Richard Kent he's uh he was the British commander of British forces in Afghanistan who witnessed a lot of this studied it and he said in history of warfare there has never been an army as moral as Israel's Army that goes to Greater lengths than Israel's Army to protect innocent civilians on the other side um it's it's it's it's really um quite amazing what Israel does and has done to avoid withan deaths but they happen they will happen I'm I'm I'm afraid in this conflict and everyone will be click to quick to blame Israel and ignore the provocation the intentional Slaughter rape decapitation of of of over over 1000 00 Israelis by Hamas and they'll be quick to overlook the fact that Hamas is now operating from civilian areas hiding in civilian areas and when Israel warned civilians to leave North Gaza Hamas is telling them not to leave Hamas does not want them to leave Hamas wants them to be In Harm's Way because they know when civilians are killed they'll be able with no shame to claim this is Israel Israel's fault and two-thirds of the world will believe them and never bother look into who started this and who's causing this none of this would have happened if Hamas didn't wake up a week ago and say hey let's go into Israel and start slaughtering kids at a music festival going door-to-door in communities and shooting women children their husbands they chose this war Israel has no option but to respond they'll be careful they'll be as careful as possible but there will be civilian deaths and that's on the Mons okay okay so just one followup for that area so uh what I've read is that and like I said I don't trust anything I read online just generally speaking because everybody has an opinion and they're all different so it's so hard to to understand what's going on especially if you don't have a historical firsthand perspective um when when Israel gives out warnings to say hey we're going after this one building or this is where we're going to go what I've read uh two things one that Hamas will say no stay there um and two that the people in there actually have no place to go to because there's a lack of bomb shelters Etc in that area so what do you think about that let's be clear Hamas is filled with bomb shelters filled with a network of safe tunnels underground unfortunately uses that for itself doesn't give its civilians access to that there are Israel has always made safe corridors like like now safe Corridor here are the hours when you can leave on the safe Corridor and here are times when you can go Hamas is small Hamas is narrow but there's still plenty of places to go if your build building is being targeted it's a tragedy right if if I were a Palestinian living in a building and Hamas moved into my building and started firing missiles from from my building and started hiding missiles in my building or using it as a command center I'd be very upset um I feel for people innocent people caught in this situation but it it doesn't mean that it's Israel's fault it's hamas's fault that it chose to operate from a civilian building and did so because it wants the Palestinian deaths because it knows it will earn the sympathy of the world with the Palestinian deaths because it knows the world is never going to bother to look at who started it and we'll never bother to look at how well Israel conducts its counterterrorism operations compared to Britain and the United States let alone compared to a monster like Russia and so um it creates these tragedies it wants these tragedies yeah that makes sense and and if someone doesn't believe that well what else did amas hope to accomplish when it sent over 1500 troops amas terrorists across the border with explicit instructions to slaughter Israeli civilians what else did they want to accomplish other than to force Israel to respond was was there some other military objective there there was no valid military objection by the way I should add Israel abides by international law of War Hamas doesn't you're not allowed to Target civilians that that's all they do is Target civilians but when you defend yourself you are allowed to Target military targets legitimate military targets even if there will be civilian casualties everyone talks about proportionality is oh Israel's response has to be proportional the only time the international law of War speaks of proportionality is to say that in any operation you conduct the number of civilians killed has to be proportional to not an excess of your legitimate military expectation of that operation that's what it says these are the international rules of law if Israel ever targeted a civilian with the goal of killing a civilian it would be in violation of international law it would be a terrorist like Hamas and people like me would never defend it but Israel doesn't do that Israel only targets military targets legitimate military targets and in the process there are sometimes civilian casualties the international laws of war allow for that recognize that permit that otherwise you'd never be able to defend yourself from a terrorist entity like Kamal okay I mean all that's pretty clear uh one of the questions I had on here is were Israel's security measures such as the West Bank barrier and its blockade on Gaza Justified because part of what I'm hearing in the news is so there's been this blockade on Gaza and it's in order to protect Israeli citizens from Hamas but it's isolating all the people in Gaza and creating this you know 2 million person resentment pile that's just building up and I mean has exploded recently was there was this like that was the only thing that was the only option basically yeah they they love to confuse cause and effect right so Israel's blockade of Gaza was not the cause of Hamas terrorism it was the effect of Hamas terrorism there was no blockade until Hamas took over Gaza and started using Gaza to attack Israel and fire missiles into Israel and at that point Israel did what it is allowed to do under international law what any other country on God's green earth would do he said you know we're not so sure we want to let you get material to build more of these weapons and bombs and they put a blockade around it people criticize Israel's security fence around the West Bank they say this is what causes unhappiness in the West Bank it wasn't the cause of terrorism and unhappiness it was a response to terrorism the border between Israel and the bank was more open than the border between the United States and Canada I used to spend a lot of time on an Israeli M right on the border you'd walk you wouldn't even know you were now in in in an Arab Village abla right right across uh in the West Bank there was no border and Palestinians came in by the hundreds of thousands to work in Israel Israelis went into the Palestinian territories to shop to eat at restaurants to go to the dentists which were less expensive in the West Bank they used to go to Gaza too for dead less expensive there was no fence until Arafat rejected aood barack's offer of a Palestinian state in the West Bank did so violently with the second in tiata suicide bombers came in and blew up over a thousand Israelis and then finally belatedly Israel said Gee we might need to do something to stop these suicide bombers from coming in and blowing up our civilians then they built the fence so it it's stupendous the gal of trying to cry victim and trying to claim that what Israel was forced to do by your terrorism is the cause of your terrorism again the tragedy here Mela is that none of this had to be there could have been a very different Middle East and what we see emerging now between through the Abraham Accords with Israel and the Gulf States and the investment and and and the cooperation that could have been from day one W back in the day when hundreds of thousands of Arabs were streaming into Palestine to be closer to Jewish cities with Jewish economic opportunities it was a win-win Jewish Jewish businesses Arab labor Arab Enterprise Jewish investors it all could have created this wonderful new country but instead Palestinians got leaders determined to reject the Jewish presence reject peace with the Jews reject partnersh ship with the Jews and insist instead on Wars of annihilation and created this new reality and to this very day Gaza used to have an open border with Israel too there hundreds of thousands of gazin used to work in Israel and there were better wages in Israel than Gaza Israelis used to go into Gaza all the time and it only stopped tragically not because Israel wanted a wall not because Israel wanted a barrier but because Hamas Terror forced Israel's hand and by the way something else I'll add when I speak about Palestinian Terror I I don't call the the victims Jews Like many people do yeah 95% are Jews but they're Israelis you know during the second inata when Arafat rejected barack's offer for Palestinian State one of the restaurants they blew up was a restaurant in hia hia is a mixed Arab Jewish City it was one of these cities that flourished with Arab immigration uh until Palestinian leaders rejected uh the Jewish state and attacked it in 1947 so there's still a MX City still a lot of Arabs and Jews and there's a restaurant there known the fact that it's a mixed restaurant Jews and Arabs like to get together and eat humus and fap there Palestinian terrorists blew that restaurant up during the second inata and they targeted it on purpose because it represents everything they're against it represents tolerance coexistence and a future together one of the people killed um by Hamas rocket fire at Jerusalem two days ago it fell short and it hit the city of Abu go Abu go always had wonderful relationships uh with Jewish leaders it stayed there it's a big thriving an Arab sitting next to Jerusalem Arab resen of Abu Goos with his whole life ahead of him was just killed by by Palestinian rocket fired one of the people they slaughtered the other day um was an Arab ambulance worker who went with his colleagues in the ambulance Squad to take care of of of of of all the injured at the music festival they slaughtered him too so the people killed are not just Jews I I think I think it would be a lot easier for the world if these were just Jews sorry world they're not just Jews they're also Arab Muslims and Arab Christians all people who have decided on a different path than Hamas people who want to live together work together Thrive together Build Together Hamas has chosen a different way why do we give them a veto why do we give them our sympathy why do we let their disgusting tactics work why do we let them shift the blame to Israel the ones who have rejected peace they're the ones who rejected statehood they're the ones who rejected coexistence they should bear the blame but the world is so quick to listen to their cries and and and and and and by by the nonsense that the only reason they're targeting Israel is because Israel took some action I will remind you what the Hamas Charter says the Hamas Charter their founding document says Israel will exist until Islam will obliterate it they don't want a two-state solution they want to destroy Israel and it cites theth the saying of the Prophet Muhammad calling for Muslims to kill all Jews it has nothing to do with the blockade Israel imposed after Hamas started its Terror campaign the terror campaign was the point behind Hamas in the first place and you know and it's not just Jews who suffer it is peaceloving Arabs who suffer on both sides of them so does this all kind of chalk up to just just a religious war and it's just manifested in this way now like is it a fundamental disagreement between certain not all Muslims but certain Muslims well yeah I I I I I think that's fair to say the Palestinian national movement started as a secular movement it was a secular nationalist movement under yaser araa that embrac terrorism as a tactic so rejectionism we reject that that Jews have any right to be in there ancestral Homeland Jews Jews among all people on Earth do not have the right to self-determination and and our tactic in in rejecting Jewish self-determination will be terrorism and they and they they Pioneer terrorism the the intentional targeting and murder of innocent civilians and and that was their goal they and that's how they proceeded until they found Rivals from Islamic movements and that main rival is hamam and supposes this from a more Islamic perspective an extreme Islamic perspective a lot of my Muslim friends are very adamant don't you dare let them take my Islam don't you dare let them discredit my Islam my Islam is is not a religion that that celebrates decapitating babies and raping women don't let them steal my Islam but this is what they do in the name of Islam Hamas and so today I would argue the the the dominance strain of rejectionism the dominant strain of Terror within the Palestinian Camp is from this religious perspective again it's an abuse of Islam much like uh Isis was was an abuse of Islam much like the mulas in Iran are abuse of Islam this is not the interpretation of Islam that many Muslims have uh but unfortunately there are many who share it many who embrace it many who will kill for it and many will happily die for it I think we should touch briefly on the Abraham Accords because you mentioned them earlier and I think they're important uh and I think a lot of Americans don't even know that they exist or that they were going to exist do you uh could you describe what they are what their goal was and whether or not that's even a possibility now yeah um so you know like I was saying before when when the Jews you know they find their waves of return throughout history Jew Jews never you know the Roman rans exiled the Jews in 70 AD but but it wasn't a very successful Exile there were always Jews living there they were probably the the majority until 500 the plurality until 1000 and whenever local rulers um would let would let Jews come back they streamed back so when Jew started streaming back in this latest wave um they reached out to the King of Jordan King Abdullah the grandfather of the current King and they spoke about hey you know we Jews want to build our homeland and our ancestral home um we're Jewish nationalist who want to build a home here you're an Arab nationalist you want to build an Arab Homeland in your country don't you think we should do this together don't you think together we can build something even better and King Abdullah at first embraced that and there was lots of talk about together building this new Middle East and then there was a violent rejection of that by Palestinian leaders and King Abdullah turned his back on that and this idea of Jews and Arabs joining hands to build a new Middle East was was put on ice it was always the dream of the early zionists was put on Ice um through war after war after war of annihilation until the Abraham Accords and the Abraham Accords was sort of the taking out of the freezer this original Dream It's A Beautiful dream where Arabs and Jews look at each other and say we're both the children of Abraham you know we're cousins really Arabic and Hebrew are similar Semitic languages Jews and Arabs are similar Semitic people here we are Jews back in the Middle East to which were indigenous Arabs having achieved Independence in the Middle East let's do this together let's build this together let's be the brothers we were meant to be let's be the Kindred Spirits we were meant to be so the Abraham of course was this beautiful realization of this ancient Zionist dream and it was going so well with the United Arab Emirates with Bahrain with Morocco all of a sudden they were they were getting together trying to solve the Region's problems can we solve the problem of too little water in the region can we solve the problem of too too few jobs and parts of the region can we build companies together infrastructure together and it was going so well and it was pointing the way towards the new Middle East but there's a problem with that new Middle East there are those in the region who don't want to see peace who don't want to see cooperation who don't want to see coexistence and they are led by ARA haven't mentioned Iran up till now but you know we need to understand Hamas is an Iran client esbah is an Iran clent they are funded by Iran trained by Iran and directed by Iran Iran is afraid of Peace in the region it wants to destroy Israel and it wants to destroy Saudi Arabia and it wants to destroy the Emirates so when it saw this block forming this peace block with the potential for all this Economic Development and everything that came with it it decided it needed to stop it and it had a and if you ask me why did they decide to slaughter over a thousand Israelis last week it was to to stop this peace process once again and I'm so sad to say that it seems to have had that intended effect before two weeks ago Saudi peace with Saudi Arabia was only a matter of of weeks if you know months if not weeks it was going to happen and transform the region Saudi Arabia announced yesterday it's putting the peace on hold they knew what they were doing they knew if they could provoke Israel to respond if they could show Palestinian dead it would intimidate Saudi Arabia into banding peace and it might even show the Abraham Accord so once again in our day the same extremist that stopped peace in 37 that stopped peace in 47 that stopped peace in 67 that stopped peace in 2000 that stopped peace in 2008 have once again stopped peace in 2023 and and they do it through the same means each and every time by targeting civilians by slaughtering civilians by murdering civilians it's very sadad to seat because a lot of us saw a little light at the end of the tunnel of the Abraham cours one thing I want to note too this investment didn't just go outside uh there's an entrepreneur um who started investing a lot of money in building startups um with Palestinian Partners in rala and the goal is to turn rala into which is the capital of the Palestinian Authority moest Bank into a little Tel AV and this Israeli entrepreneur was investing a lot of time an effort to help Palestinian entrepreneurs do this so maybe finally the Palestinians would give up these old grievances that are most made up anyway and clinging to the past and start looking towards the future and built it uh his daughter was just murdered at that Music Festival this entrepreneur oh man Visions Clash so Michaela I people are going to you're going to hear a lot of people saying well there's two sides here um you know Israel Israel blockaded Gaza um Israel um kill civilians um true Israel blockaded Gaza but again why did it do it why it wouldn't have done it if Hamas wouldn't have used Gaza to to hit Israel with Terror Israel does kill civilians why because Israel's provoked to defending Itself by by by Hamas rocket fire or by Hamas Slaughters and though it is better than any other Army on the face of the Earth at targeting the guilty and bearing the innocent it cannot do it perfectly when Hamas hides among the innocent so these things are true but the context is key and I will tell you this I am confident that anyone who comes with a complaint about Israel if you peel back if you look behind it you'll find that the driving force behind all of this is the tragic leadership of the Palestinians who are bent on stopping peace any way possible including primarily Slaughter of civilians called terrorism do you think the the Abraham Accords so that was something that was done under the Trump Administration so years ago right that this was kind of organized is there a reason that it wasn't finalized like sooner seems a little urgent well I think I think for years um Arabs were hostage just like the Arabs of Palestine thousand L Bank are Hostage to this Palestinian leadership that's really not interested in peace and compromise the Arab world was Hostage to them too they were afraid to make peace with Israel when they could be accused of having betrayed or abandon the Palestinian cause but after time after after the Palestinians kept rejecting offers after the Palestinians kept resorting to Terror to intentionally slaughtering Innocents Palestinian civilians many of them got tired of their leadership and many leaders of the Arab world got tired and said we're no longer going to be held hostage to this Palestinian leadership that has no interest in peace and well interest in coexistence and so finally it took a push but finally they said yeah we are willing to make peace with Israel we are willing to join hands with Israel because it's ultimately governments are responsible to their own people and their safety and their prosperity and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and Morocco and Sudan all said you know what this development will help create Economic Opportunity for our citizens and this Alliance will create defense for our citizens and then the final piece of course is Iran Iran looms out there as a as a as a power bent on the destruction of Israel and the dominance Shiite dominance of sun kingdoms like Saudi Arabia and like the United Arab Emirates and finally it was that fear of Iran that helped them overcome any fear of being accused of abandoning the Palestinians to say no we're going to act now to defend our people and ensure the prosperity of our people and we're going to move forward um Iran is pulling the strings behind all this which once again those who who get too CAU up in the idea that somehow this is a response to some Israeli grievance they're missing the big picture the only grievance uh Iran has with Israel is its very existence and they don't mince words they say it constantly we will wipe Israel off the map we will destroy Israel we will obliterate Israel and they need it and so they're the ones who armed Hamas Hamas and gave Hamas this order if War breaks out with hisb in the north it won't be because of Any grievance on the border with Lebanon Israel took out every last civilian Soldier and any presence in Gaza back in 2005 Israel withdrew every last TR from Lebanon before that this is not anything to do with any madeup grievance this is a direct order from Iran as an overriding geost geostrategic goal of dominating the region and destroying Israel okay like I say I have a lot of dear Palestinian friends uh who suffer under Hamas and who suffer under the PA and would like to have different Palestinian leadership it makes their blood boil when these people don't sit in gazel and suffer um sit outside in some Western academic institution and rationalize the leadership that has ruined their lives nothing makes them angrier than some apologist getting on the show and saying oh you have to understand this is Israel's fault um so these people are out there but we all need to think critically everyone needs to think critically about everything I've said everyone needs to think critically about everything people from the other side say but the the guarantee I make to people is if you study this history if you take the time and learn this history you will see this pattern emerge and you'll find that every excuse every rationalization given for the murder of in inocence melts away under under further screwing there is no rationalization for intentionally slaughtering civilians to begin with there is no rational of justification but even if you want to claim one that melts away last thing too Israel's blockade the Gaza that it it installed only after terrorism everyone forgets Gaza Gaza has a very long border with Egypt Egypt closed that border too I wonder why they were exporting Terror to Egypt as well but no one seems to blame Egypt for closing the border and trying to stop terrorism only Israel gets blamed when it dares to defend itself when it dares to survive and this double standard also gets a little tired no one ever defends other people and then defend them criticizes other people and then defend themselves from terrorism it's natural it's accepted when Russia obliterated half a grne Chia which was a war crime which did Target civilians which Israel would never do where where were the complaints on college campuses in America China today is perpetrating a real genocide against the Muslim Wagers in in in its West a real genocide putting them into camps we don't hear anyone complaining but only when Israel dares to defend itself and said we will not be slaughtered like sheep we will do what any other people on God's green earth would do is there this outrage that's why so much of this outrage to me is false doesn't ring true doesn't ring sincere um why do you think this has permeated the college campus so effectively like I I saw in in New York Times Square and in Toronto where I'm from there are pro Palestinian protests yeah like downtown why is it working why is the propaganda if if it's propaganda working so well here well I think again at the very superficial level this plugs very well into a woke mindset was on college campuses today if you're a victim you're innocent um if you're not a victim you're guilty um people of color are are are considered to be you know innocent victims if if you're if you're considered white not so and Indigenous people are of course uh evaluating if you're from outside of a region come to that region on L so so there is a popular anti Israel narrative that has come to dominate woke circles in these spaces on college campuses none of it's true so I'm going to say the narrative now none of it's true but the narrative is that a group of Jews in Europe with no connection to the land of Israel Jews have no connection to the land of Israel said hey that's some nice land there let's go take it and they went to a nation called Palestine and they expelled all the Arabs that were living there in Palestine and took it over for themselves and so you have have the oppression of indigenous people people of color by white Europeans and since they're suffering uh they they causes just and and and and the Israelis are the oppressors so their causes unjust now that's wrong on every level of course the European Jews who came back to their ancestral Homeland to which they are indigenous came came to land in which they have the deepest of connections they were never considered white in Europe they were considered another race that's why they were slaughtered by the Nazis because they weren't White they were another race they were submitted for centuries Jews living in Europe were told go back to Israel go back to Palestine so they did but the majority of Israelis don't come from Europe they are refugees from the Muslim Middle East because after Israel dared to survive the war of annihilation in 1947 and 1948 every Arab country kicked out its Jews Jews used to be between a third and a half of Baghdad all expelled my father-in-law who I'm here with right now was SP from Tripoli Libya Palestinians complain about what happened to them after the war they started in 1948 my my father-in-law's family was extraordinarily wealthy in Libya trip when they were kicked out they ended up Living 10 brothers and sisters and two parents in a one room apartment they they lived in utter poverty there are complaints on both sides the difference is Israel doesn't live in the past and nurse these Grievances and dream of Revenge one day from day one the Israelis had tried to build a future and get and get over the past and the Palestinians have gone in a different direction so this is a myth that Jews are from Europe and have no connection to the land it's a myth that they came in and kicked anyone out like I said the Palestinian the the Arab population of this land did not decrease when Jews came back it exploded when Jews came back and then the whole Refugee crisis was not because Israel started a war to kick them out it's because the Arabs lost the war of annihilation that they started to drive the Jews out but not knowing all of this this fits very well into the Western imagination the victim mentality they see the Palestinians victims of a settler Colonial genocidal Israeli regime and they do what I would do if that narrative were true if this narrative were true I'd be protesting Israel too it's just not true it's the opposite of the truth and by the way I know one of the things I do in my day job is is I run a group called The makabe Tas for and we bring College leaders uh to Israel and we try to bring people who dominate campus politics which means these days on most American campuses these are people of the left and they all they're Israel skeptical if not outright Israel critical and the amaz and we bring them to Israel and the Palestinian Authority by the way we want them to see both sides the amazing thing is how this trip changes them and transform them because what they see is that the reality of isra Isel is starkly at odds with the anti-israel narrative they were fed and so this trip changes them um and again a lot of them don't don't come back waving the Israelite FL but almost all of them will say you know what this is a lot more complex than I was led to believe and the answer is not to single out and scapegoat Israel as I was told to do the answer lies elsewhere and the answer lies where it always lies in trying to talk to one another trying understand one another recognizing the humanity of one another and in daring to dream of a region where Jews and Arabs are not enemies but these cousins these Semitic peoples join hands and build a Middle East that's more Dynamic and prosperous than any other region in the globe it was the dream since day one the Zionist dream it was a dream we just tasted during the Abraham Accords but at every turn including today extremists violent extremists have killed the dream and my only hope for the future is that the dream will live that this two shall pass that Israel will defend itself will dismantle Hamas and that one day the Palestinians may get leaders who don't want to murder and Destroy Israel but actually want to build Palestine that's the day there'll be peace that's the day there'll be Prosperity that's the day when the Zionist Vision will come to pass and the region will become what it always should have been okay well thank you for joining me that was very informative much appreciated thanks for having me I appreciate the opportunity Norman finl welcome to my podcast thank you for having me on uh so I wanted to bring you on to get um a different perspective of what's going on in the Middle East I'm not educated in this area at all uh so I have a list of questions to ask you but let let's get started I think I think we should start with just a brief background of the history of the Israeli and Palestine conflict and what led to today obviously when you try to give a background story of a conflict the question is always where do you begin because depending on where you begin it can be seen as a partisan issue um I will take where we begin at 1948 the indigenous population of Palestine numbered um about 1,300,000 the what were called back then the Zionist settlers namely Jews who came to Palestine roughly from the beginning of the 20th century on they numbered roughly 600,000 by 1947 there was a irreconcilable conflict between the indigenous Arab population and the Zionist Jewish settlers that conflict was then thrown into the hands of the newly created United Nations and the UN was its designated responsibility was to try to work out a resolution a settlement of the conflict not necessarily applying the highest principles of justice but trying to combine as in most conflicts principles of Justice with practicality what's possible the United Nations General Assembly in what's called UN resolution 181 it divided Palestine or proposed that Palestine be divided into two states an Arab state which would compromise approxim comprise approximately 44% of Palestine and a Jewish state which would comprise approximately 56% of Palestine on the Arab side did not accept that recommendation for two main reasons one they were the indigenous population and number two that and therefore their rights should have priority uh or their desires and aspirations should have priority and number two because the division did not remotely correlate with the demographic balance in Palestine the 600,000 Jews were allocated 56% the Palestinian Arabs were allocated 44% a conflict then ensued What's called the first Arab Israeli War in which neighboring Arab states also intervened by the end of the war uh Israel had absorbed not the 56% that was allocated it in the partition resolution 181 but they absorbed 80% of Palestine two areas were not absorbed by Israel number one the Gaza Strip which came under Egyptian administrative control and the West what came to be called the West Bank including East East Jerusalem which came under Jordanian control in the course of Israel's Creation in 1948 it expelled about 90% of the population within the Border 90% of the indigenous population within the borders that became Israel of those 90% roughly 750,000 p Indians were expelled from the area that became Israel of those 750,000 about 250 to 290,000 they fled to Gaza and they are the origins of the Gaza population today the population of Gaz at the time was about 880,000 so now that that population of Gaza was swamped by the refugees who were expelled in 1948 without wanting to anticipate too much of what's going to come in a few moments so those refugees and their descendants now constitute now meaning today they constitute approximately 7 % of the population of Gaza so when we hear today about the population of Gaza roughly now 2.2 million people of those 2.2 million people approximately 70% constitute refugees and their descendants now to go back to where we were in the very uh condensed historical record in 1967 there was another war between Israel and the neighboring Arab states and the course of that war two things happened it was the second if you want if the term can be used it was the Second Great exposion about 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from the areas that Israel now count conquered and the areas Israel now conquered were the Gaza Strip and the West Bank including East Jerusalem so the bottom line is in 1900 Palestine was the population was about 90% Palestinian Arab in 1947 the population was about 1,300,000 Palestinian Arabs and 600,000 Jews and in 1947 before the popular partition plan Israelis owned about 6% of the land in Palestine the partition resolution awarded the newly created state of Israel 56% of Palestine by the end of the war of 1948 Israel controlled 80% of Palestine after the June 1967 war Israel now controlled all of Palestine the whole of Palestine had now come under Israeli control under international law uh because these territories were conquered by Israel in the course of the war under international law they weren't part of Israel as a legal fact they constituted what under international law is called occupied territories and the abbreviation that eventually came to be used was opt occupied Palestinian territories in addition to the West Bank in Gaza in the course of the 1967 war Israel also occupied the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai once again the question of how to resolve this seemingly intractable problem was thrown into the court of the United Nations and there were very uh protracted deliberations both in the general assembly and subsequently in the security Council and the proposal put forth by the security Council it was embodied and probably the most famous resolution in the United Nations history it's called UN resolution 242 and the essence of UN resolution 242 is very simple it's based on un principles international law principles and the principles of the UN Charter those principles are number one which is spelled out in the Preamble to UN resolution 242 first principle is it's inadmissible to conquer territory by War it's inadmissible to con conquer territory by War Israel acquired the West Bank Gaza Egyptian Sinai Assyrian G Heights in the course of a war and therefore according to international law and un principles Israel have no title to those territories that was the first prong of UN resolution 242 the second prong was that Israel as a state had the right under the UN Charter to live at peace with its neighbors and therefore the Arab states the neighboring Arab states and any other part parties to the conflict had a legal obligation to accept Israel as a state in the region that came to be called the land for peace land for peace solution to the conflict namely Israel had to relinquish control of the West Bank in Gaza now talking strictly about the Palestinian Israeli Dimension because there's of course still the Egyptian Dimension with the Sinai desert the Syrian Dimension with the Golan Heights but from here on in I'm going to put them to the site because obviously we're talking about this topic now in light of the most recent events so right at this point I'm going to hone in just on that Palestine Israel dimension of the conflict having said that the terms of UN resolution 242 were very straightforward number one Israel had to withdraw from all the Palestinian territories it acquired during the 1967 war what I referred to isra a moment ago as the occupied Palestinian territories the opot and in turn the Palestinians were obliged to recognize Israel as a legal State a member of the United Nations and as a member of the United Nations here I'm referring to the state of Israel it had all the rights and responsibilities all the rights and all the duties of any other member State and that was and strange as it may sound to you it's already more than 50 years later a half century it's more than a half century later those have remained the terms for settling the conflict and now the question becomes which side has been the obstacle to that settlement of the conflict it could be one side it could be the other side and of course it could be both sides on the Palestinian side the leadership that emerged to represent the Palestinians soon after the June 1967 war a leadership was called the Palestine Liberation Organization or the PLO and that was led by a fellow who may be familiar to your listeners namely yaser Arafat beginning in the mid 1970s so once again we're talking about a half century ago beginning in the mid 1970s the Palestinians accepted the terms of UN resolution 242 those terms I spelled out to you a moment ago B withdrawal in exchange for full recognition the Palestinians accepted those terms Israel did not Israel was not prepared to relinquish control over the territories or at any rate parts of the territories that they had conquered in the 1967 war their attitude after 1967 was the same as their attitude after 1948 you recall I said the uh UN resolution 181 allocated 56% of Palestine to the Israelis they conquered 80% and by holding f pass to that 80% the International Community eventually aced accepted the Israeli fed are complete so the expectation of the Israelis after 1967 was If We Hold Fast we can retain control over the whole of what they call the Israel called the land of Israel namely the West Bank Goa and so forth so Israel was determined not to relinquish control over a large part of the territory let alone recognize a Palestinian State living side by side with it come 19 82 what one very good Israeli political scientist avner Yan coming by 1982 Israel faced a very big problem and a Yan called it the Palestinian peace offensive namely the PLO was determined with the support of the International Community to gain recognition support and eventually the application of pressure to force Israel to accept the terms of international law and the UN Charter Israel faced with the escalating pressure on it then provoked the Palestinians or attempted to provoke the pal Ians into a war what was called the 1982 Lebanon war sometimes it's called the first Lebanon war and at that point the Palestinian leadership was headquartered mostly refugees no entirely refugees excuse me headquartered in Lebanon Israel launched the war and in the course of the war Israel killed roughly 15 to 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese overwhelmingly civilians it's worth noting for your listeners that actually the Israeli Death kill rate back in 1982 was actually much higher than any of the recent Israeli assaults on Gaza or any of the recent Israeli conflicts armed conflicts with its neighbors after the 1982 War the Palestinians were defeated in the course of that war as I said about 20,000 Palestinian and Israelis were killed overwhelmingly civilians and the PLO went into Exile in Tunis at this point a pal Indians in the West Bank in Gaza who were under occupation realized that nothing is going to happen externally in order to abet their aspirations to statehood Independence self-determination and so in 1987 the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank went into civil Revolt overwhelmingly nonviolent it was called you listeners who are not old enough to remember uh it came to be called the first in i n t f a d a uh a civil nonviolent civil Revolt I happened to be there during that civil Revolt I lived in a Palestinian Christian village outside Bethlehem called B Sor and I lived in a Palestinian refugee camp or right across the street from a Palestinian refugee camp uh in Hebron called faar Camp uh and that first in Israel exerted a huge amount of violent force uh and that too suffered a defeat and that defeat climaxed in what came to be called the oo Accord so your listeners I think at this point I've gotten the key uh dates and numbers they'll remember when conversation comes up UN resolution 181 that's 1947 you on resolution 242 that's 196 7 and they'll now remember another term that constantly comes up namely the Oslo Accord now under the terms of the Oslo Accord it was signed between the Israeli Prime Minister Yak Rabin and the head of the PLO yaser Arafat and it was presided over by US President Bill Clinton some of your listeners and viewers will recall what's come to be called the Great h Shake on the White House lawn when President Clinton is flanked by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders the essence of the Oslo Accord there is a written Accord but then there is a political reality uh the Palestinians as a result of that Accord were not granted a state or even the right to a state what they were granted was a five-year interim period that was to climax in 1999 in the course of which some sort of settlement would be worked out and in return the Palestinians gave Israel that full recognition so as your listeners by now will I think gather the Palestinian was responsibility under UN resolution 242 was fulfilled to allow Palestinians to exercise their right of self-determination and statehood in the 20% of Palestine that remained namely the West Bank including East Jerusalem and Gaza well the Palestinians never got that from Oslo in fact they didn't get anything from Oslo in fact they got the reverse because in the course of those years from 1993 on Israel started to Annex territories on the in the West Bank by creating another term which will now Enlighten your listeners by creating je uh Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the sement came to occupy more and more territory in the West Bank Israel confiscated more and more land in the West Bank until about half of the West Bank was now under Israeli control effectively annexed to Israel in so nothing came of that Oslo Accord on the Palestinian site uh and then in 2000 uh in 2000 September 2000 for reasons which time will not allow me a new Uprising occurred in the occupied Palestinian territories what came to be called the second in and uh the second inter father began just as the first intera in 1987 it was overwhelmingly nonviolent but Israel fearful of a second protracted civil Revolt akin to the first in they then exerted maximum amount of violent Force to repress it uh to use the cliche to nip it in the bud so just in the first few days of that second inata just in the first few days Israel fired approximately 1 million rounds of ammunition to repress that second nonviolent civil revolt and God second nonviolent civil Revolt then quickly spun out of control and it became quite the violent on both sides the kill ratio that first three weeks of the second in father was about 20 Palestinians to East to each Israeli 20 to one as it happened I lived there at the time not a long period but I was there and on one of my visits I did meet with the then head of uh Hamas his name was Dr rentis now I want to be careful my memory is not perfect on these things so it's pretty good um I don't know if he was the the fhe head or he was one of the leaders he was eventually assassinated by the Israelis on in that event I did meet with him as with all of those leaders at the time I don't want to speak about later a very simple life very humble guy uh he would say his kitchen or his home looked like a what we would say in the United States a tenement from the N you know 1930s and when I talked to him about the situation it had already gotten quite violent um on both sides I do remember when I asked him about what was going on I said do you think this is the right strategy your strategy and he said to me when the first intera began the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed was 20 to one and then he said now it's I think don't get I could be wrong I try to be very I'm a stickler for facts I think he said now it's down to six to one and I remember thinking at the time and commenting the Palestinian friends I I thought to myself this wasn't really a political strategy it was just eye for an eye tooth for a tooth who was calculating the E efficacy of the strategy he chose or Hamas chose just in terms of trying to establish an equality not of human life but an equality of death or corpses I of course can understand that uh it's not for no reason that we have that saying an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth a still part of our moral vocabulary even though many people repudiate it it still Rings loudly it resonates for a large number of people uh and so I didn't think then it was oh political it was a kind of moral calculus in any event Israel once again exerted massive death and destruction on the Palestinians destroying huge amounts of land homes incarcerating thousands of Palestinians in fact uh carrying out a pattern of systematic massive torture of Palestinian detainees somewhere on the order of tens of thousands were being systematically and methodically tortured by the Israeli prison guards and professional torturers and by 2000 6 2005 we will say the second andata have been defeated come 2006 there were elections held in the West Bank and Gaza Israel had set up in the occupied Palestinian territories after the uh September 199 three oo Accord they had set up an Palestinian administrative government in the occupied Palestinian territories it were came to be called the pa the Palestinian Authority you will recall earlier I referred to the PLO the Palestine Liberation Organization the PO pretty much now disappeared from the scene and it was replaced by what came to be called the Palestinian Authority and the elections were held and surprisingly for everybody amas agreed to participate in the elections and surprisingly to everybody they won because the Palestinian Authority this administrative unit up by Israel was very corrupt and self-serving and so the Palestinians hoping for a government that represented them and not individuals simply cashing in on new status of executors of Israeli policy they came to be called Israel's subcontractors uh Hamas one and that's where the story really begins which I'll try to bring up to the present now United States had urged Palestinians including Hamas to participate in the election but the United States and Israel were not pleased with the come former President Jimmy Carter was in the occupied territories to monitor the elections and he pronounced them and now I'm quoting you completely honest and fair elections when you when Hamas won Israel immediately imposed a brutal economic blockade on Gaza uh that blockade was then uh supported by the United States and the e e the European Union Palestinians were never given a chance Hamas was never given a chance the moment the results came in the screws were turned in the expect hope and expectation that the Palestinians knowing that the screws would not be unturned until they disposed of hamus and reinstated the Palestinian Authority Under the control of the preferred Authority ities of the United States or the preferred figures of the United States in fact Hillary Clinton at the time she was the senator from New York she said we made a big mistake by not rigging the election that's what she said we made a big mistake by not rigging the election wow so the palestin were now faced with a brutal blockade Gaza is five miles wide and 25 miles long or at least it was that until today when it seems it's going to be cut in half again without get to you get to that in a moment what does five miles by 25 miles mean I'll just give you my personal mental image of what that means I jog five miles along the Cony Island Seashore every morning so it's the distance a person uh nearing 70 he jogs in the morning at the beach what's the length of Gaza it's less than a marathon a marathon is 26 .2 miles and God say or yeah five it's about the size of marathon uh guysa just a little less uh and in that territory there are 2.1 million people or 2.2 that's some give or take on the action number uh that makes Gaza among the most densely populated places on God's Earth it's more populated than Tokyo I don't want to anticipate too much yeah now Israel says it's going to take control of the northern half of Gaza which means among the most densely populated places on God's Earth will now be twice as densely populated uh after the current blood leing uh nobody is allowed nobody for 20 years nobody with the rarest of exceptions nobody was allowed in and nobody was allowed out so for for the purposes of today's conversation it means most of those Palestinians who cck through the gates of Gaza it was their first time ever leaving Gaza they were in their 20s it had never seen anything except via the web he had never seen anything of the outside world they had been confined to this space for 20 years that's not hyperbole that's not exaggeration about half of Gaza half the population for the past 20 years has been unemployed that figure or that percentage Rises to 60% on when you look at the youth so now your audience should Ponder here is a population where a large part has been left for 20 years to just Pace back and forth in an area that's among the bestest most densely popular in the world with nothing whatsoever else to look forward to that's the fact you get up each morning there's no work there's nowhere to go you can't even try your look immigrating see what happens come to the United States come to France no C Le that's why David tamaran the former British conservative prime minister he described Gaza as an open a prison where Ru Kimberling a respected Israeli sociologist at the Hebrew University he described Gaza as the world's largest concentration camp the largest concentration camp ever the most of the water in Gaza is undrinkable non uh of Goa is by International humanitarian agencies it's labeled severely strong and secure now collect all these facts with one other fact every listener should remember as Israel is now proceeding to annihilate by their own admission to annihilate all human life in the nor all breathing life in the northern sector of Gaza that half of Gaza half comprises children one half of Gaza are children if you can imagine the accumulated rage the accumulated anger at being trapped being born into the largest concentration camp ever and then after 20 years they have that moment where they can exact revenge on October 27 excuse me October 7 but that's still not the full picture in fact as ghastly as that picture is it doesn't even begin to touch the surface of the reality because periodically Israel launches these Hightech massacres on Gaza and in the course of which they kill very large numbers of civilians in operation cast lit from December 26 2008 to January 17 2009 they killed about 1300 1,400,000 Palestinians 350 of them children and demolished level flattened 6,000 homes uh then that was called operation cast lead I'll skip a large number of other operations because time doesn't allow it I will only say that try as I made I can never remember in names of even half those murderous high tech destructions visited on Gaza what Amnesty International call it's not my title bear in mind after operation castled they issued a mammoth report titled 22 days of death and destruction in 2014 July August 2014 Israel initiate operation protect protective Edge in the course of protective Edge it killed about 550 Palestinian children it demolished 18,000 the head of the international Committee of the Red Cross Peter moer is his name m a r r for those of you listeners who wanted to check my what I'm saying now it's the icrc international Committee of Red Cross Peter Mor he went to Gaza after operation protective Edge as the Israelis called it and he said quote in all my life I have never witness destruction on the scale that I've now observed in Kasa that's quite a statement just as Baro Kimberling describing Gaza as the largest concentration camp ever is quite a statement but from a very responsible sociologist Peter Mo describing the destruction as the most the magnitude of the destruction remember the job of the president of the icr is to visit War zones so he must have visited an awful lot and he said he had never seen the magnitude of Destruction in Gaza which means and here for the first time for the first time in everything I just told you I'm happy to present the documentation for every word I it I wrote a book called Gaza an inquest into its martyrdom which nobody has ever faulted for lack of not just documentation but voluminous documentation from reading through thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of Human Rights reports I started in 1982 it's 40 years later and I don't say it with pride indeed I say with a little bit of embarrassment that's all I did with my life document what happened there so I'm quite confident that every claim I just made can be documented not by one source but by voluminous sources with that as a side note let me get to my one point of speculation every one of those youths who crash through the gates of Gaza I would bet every dollar I owe every dollar that everyone because they knew they weren't going to come back there was nowhere to hide in Israel even if they managed to escape they were going to be tracked down they knew that Daniel was going to be their last day on God's Earth and the night before they left Gaza I would guess everyone of them kiss their mother goodbye kiss their father goodbye and inside of them inside of them they vow to Revenge not only the life of misery Agony anguish and torment that they experienced from the day of their birth because they were born into that concentration camp but they also vowed to Revenge the death of their brother their sister their niece their nephew all those persons who perished whose bodies were incinerated mangled and destroyed during Israel's operations as they like to call it in gosip so and this is where I'll leave off and my shocked by what happened on October 7th I cannot say I was I cannot I was shocked by the Ingenuity displayed by the people of gazu gazu was probably the most surveilled place on Earth Israel has a very sophisticated not just external security system but also internal there are many collaborators with Israel inside Gaza many and that the people of Gaza eluded it it's very impressive you know Israelis are now stunned how could that have happened so that part surprised me however even as I was surprised don't I don't want to claim to be any kind of Clairvoyant I was surprised by the magnitude of the deaths yes for sure was I surprised on reflection at the Vengeance that Inspire those killings no I can't say so and I will leave you with one last thought and then you take over because I've taken more than probably what might call be called a generous amount of time I want to be clear about this I hope your program has a wide reach and we have a time you know an opportunity to discuss things these things I'm going to just tell you something personal which I've not said to anybody this is a very hard week for me I'm good at assembling effects I'm good at putting them in a logical coherent order I can't say I have the greatest moral judgment it's not bad but moral judgment is like any other faculty requires study reflection you know it means knowing the whole of moral philosophy and I'm not competent in that area and most of my adult life I was a kind of you might call acolyte disciple of N chsky I think it's fair to say he was for 40 years a very close friend of mine for reasons which I can't get into now he wasn't available for moral judgment not the facts the facts I feel confident about but the moral judgment how does one if I can use the Expression position oneself morally in light of what happened October 7th I really didn't know I was very confused when people asked me how are you doing I would say well physically I'm very tired but morally I'm much more tired I'm struggling with it so I went back to American history I went back to American history I wanted to see what was just briefly for your listeners because I don't know how uh America whether it's an American audience or an international audience so in the American context we had slave revolts and the slave revolts were quite bloody so for example the best known slave revolt in the US or the largest was Nat Turner in 1831 the Nat Turner Rebellion now Nat Turner was a relig he black obviously he was a religious stic he was a zealot he was convinced that this rebellion was inspired by God and all of his actions were sanctioned approved by God he gave the order to his Confederates to kill all white people kill all white people in your path and a lot of white people were killed scores of white white people were killed by current terminology would call them Innocents were killed I wanted to know how did the abolitionists those who oppose slavery what kind of moral judgment did they render on that Turner and so I went back one of the greatest of the abolitionists white was a fellow named uh Garrison William lloy Garrison he was the editor of a newspaper called The Liberator and I want to see what did he write and I have to say to me have to say to you it was very consoling to me because he did what I did after Gaza number one he said I told you so we warned you and warned you and warned you and warned you we meaning the abolitionists this was going to happen number two he denounced all the Hypocrites the pious self-righteous Hypocrites who were denouncing what happened in not Turner's rebellion and number three and I hope your listeners will pay close attention number three even though he said what happened J did not Turner Revolt was horrible it was very clear he never once condemned the slave revolt he did not he did not I posted on my substack I posted on my Twitter account the full statement by William Lloyd Garrison he did not and the na Turner rebellion and I describe it to you just a moment ago quite accurately it now occupies an honored place in American history it does and William Lloyd Garrison is a revered figure there were three there were basically William Lloyd Garrison Charles sner uh uh Fus Stevens and Garrett Smith there are a few but he's one of the revered figures of the Abolitionist Movement to end slavery so uh I felt assur even in the absence of my mentor Professor chsky I felt confident that I had applyed even though my moral faculty is not finely owned I apply the right judgment in this situation I've gotten some very ugly back backlash uh from people who meant a lot to me in life uh however I if the judgment is right I won't Retreat okay that was Heavy let me see if I can Cobble together some follow-up questions to that uh um I just have a few I think going back to 1948 um if we go before that was the idea that Jewish people had originally been displaced from that area so they were already entitled to that area in 1948 and that's why the UN ruled to give them the 56% okay yeah that's a completely fair question and since I'm speaking before an audience that she doesn't know much of the history uh and is not obliged to it's a tiny corner of the map uh I will do as best as I can to answer these what you would call Elementary questions because yeah uh people just don't know Israel stake the claim to Palestine or I should say the Zionist movement stake the claim to Palestine on many grounds one ground was that's the homeland of the Jewish people from 3,000 or 2,000 years ago another claim was made that Palestine was basically empty another claim that was made was well the people in Palestine they're Arabs and there are all these other Arabs all over uh what's called the Arab world and so it's no big deal to tell the ones in Palestine to move and make room for us there were various kinds of claims when it came before the United Nations I think it's fair to say that they which CL climaxed that 1947 resolution 181 I've read the record closely I would say they didn't really try to make moral sense of who had title or who had the deed to what they were faced with a practical problem or they conceived it as a practical problem there are two substantial populations living in the same parcel of land it doesn't seem like these two part these two populations can live together and so we're going to divide up the land now you might ask why was it so unequally divided especially in light of the demographic balance at the time as far as one can guess uh remember this is after World War II it's 1947 and there are Jewish refugees in Europe and so there was some expectation that a large proportion of those Jewish refugees would come to Palestine and so the land was unequally divided to accommodate the Jews who would eventually come to Palestine from the refugee camps in Europe that makes sense that answers that uh and then I think just one more question so you were you're talking about missile strikes that have just been throughout this period of time um from what you read online this is what I've read online anyway is that hamus is hiding their weapons in civilian areas and that the Israelis are targeting those areas and the casualties are because hamus is hiding behind their civilians so what do you think what are your thoughts on that well my answer to that is pretty simple I don't think we should believe anything that Hamas says I don't think we should believe anything that Israel says I think because they're obviously partisan and their claims are worthless unless they make a claim which is in legal terms called a claim against interest that is to say they say something that doesn't serve their interest then that claim obviously carries more value than a claim that you say with your interest if you say I didn't steal that money obviously that claim has no value if you say well yeah I did steal that money well that claim does have value so we make a distinction between evidence based on interest and evidence against interest and we attach a lot more value to evidence against interest so leaving aside the interested party there are a third place we can look and the place most people normally look is human rights organizations we have Israeli human rights organizations like betel the Israeli information center for human rights in the occupied territories we have Amnesty International we have Human Rights Watch and we had in the past some Israeli reservists namely those who fought put out Publications in which they documented what was done in Gaza and the the main organization was called breaking the silence it was Israeli soldiers who documented in reports the horrors they observed in the course of the Israeli op operations I should note that most of those who gave testimony to the breaking the silence group they were not peaceniks they were not leftists they just matter of factly described yes this is what happened that's what happened and my conclusions are based on and were reached on the basis of reading those human rights reports and right now I haven't looked at the Gaza book in three years and I have to now refresh my memory but my memory is pretty good uh there is no evidence that Hamas used Palestinians as what's called human Shields there's no evidence of that what there is voluminous evidence of is that Israel used Palestinians as human shields for that there's a large amount of documentation now for those of you listeners who doubt what I have to say and I think you should you should always question authority however however authoritative The Authority you should always leave a corner of your mind open to the possibility that the authority is either dishonest or simply wrong I would simply recommend uh show me evidence from the authoritative human rights organizations from the authoritative un investigative bodies that looked at the evidence show me the evidence that there was human shielding by Hamas so far as I know remember I'm lming myself to a separate category I'm not saying what Israeli government officials alleged what the Israeli military alleged what various organs that repeat what the Israeli government and the milit I say I look at what most people do when I try to assess the factual situation in combat zones they look at what reputable human rights organizations say and there is so far as I know and I as I said it went through thousands and thousands and thousands of pages and years and years and years of my life um now in four decades uh going through it there isn't evidence of that um what are your thoughts on the Abraham Accords uh and do you think that matters and is that a still a possibility or are those doomed now I think we should in terms of what's unfolding now we should try to play them in the context as I told you earlier after Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 the Palestinian leadership was forced into Exile and the Palestinian people were left to their own devices when I say the Palestinian people I mean the West Bank and Gaza they were left to their own devices and that's from the first into f began when the Palestinian people realized there was no one to count on no one to help us God helps those who help themselves we have to take our state and future into our own hands now um in the present situation the uh Palestinians realized that what the United States and Israel were're doing was trying to create agreements and settle the conflict outside them so Saudi Arabia Bahan the United Arab Emirates they would all make agreements with Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank right now we're focusing on Kasa would be left to languish and die so I would say I would speculate that this attempt at what's called normalization between the Arab states and Israel was perceived by Gins as one more nail in the coffin that it meant that the whole quot unquote Israel Arab conflict would be resolved except for the Palestinian people would be left to die so I think that was a factor in what happened okay I guess last question then is there is there any way forward for peace or is this going to get a lot nastier like what do you what do you see ahead I know you're not a clairvoyant but for the next 5 years are things going to get worse or is there any way to resolve it well right now we're entering the stage of the third great explosion there was the explosion in 1948 about 750,000 Palestinians were expelled 1967 between 3 and 400,000 Palestinians were expelled after the 1967 war and now about a million or more Palestinians in Gaza will be expelled from half of Gaza that will be annexed to Israel about half of Gaza as its new quote unquote the term they use is security Zone and probably the international pressure will become overwhelming on Egypt to open the border with Gaza and about half the population will be forced into Exile again that's my guess it does not at this point seem that the International Community will stop Israel from carrying on its next great explosion the one that's unfolding now and then the next item on Israel's agenda will be a will be to carry out a mass exposion in the Westbank of Palestinian Arabs and thereby sell the AR the Palestinian or as they call it the Arab problem uh and send the Palestinians into Exile again and do you think so I guess I have one more question then I'll let you go I promise um do do you think the response from Israel could be warranted from Hamas bombing them on occasion throughout this period of time or do you think it's something more what happened on October 7th was a slave revolt and then you have to ask the question you know after the Nat Turner the whites went completely lad they went berserk they were on the homicidal rage killing black people in the South left and right when you get off the air it'll be useful for you go look at what they did to that Turner's Body oh you you can't even conceive it so then I tried to weigh what was the right response you know not turn said kill all the whites and I thought I would look to the highest moral authorities that they being the abolitionists the white abolitionists who gave over their lives to fighting slavery they're trying to abolish slavery you go read what Garrison wrote I posted on my website posted the whole article in his magazine called The Liberator he did he hit ridicule he he disgust at all those who attacked Nat Turner and even he expressed shock at what happened you can read the article from the first word to the last he never con condemned the Revolt that took a lot of moral courage because you could imagine the abolitionists were not the most popular guys in town and refusing to denounce the Revolt though those are inspiring historical figures who have been Vindicated by history thank you again for coming on my pleasure and I wish you the [Music] best

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