From the River to the Sea: Ibaitik Itsasora (63)

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[Music]

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israel has blocked all food and humanitarian aid into gaza and cut off electricity so that the last water

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desalination plant no longer functions the israeli military has seized half of the territory gaza is 25 miles long and

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four to five miles wide and place twothirds of gaza under displacement orders rendered nogo zones including the

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border town of rafa which is encircled by israeli troops defense minister

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israel katz recently vowed that israel will quote intensify the war against hamas and use all military and civilian

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pressure including evacuation of the gaza population south and implementing

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united states president donald trump’s voluntary migration plan for gaza residents since israel’s unilateral

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ending of the ceasefire on march 18th which was never honored by israel israel has been carrying out relentless bombing

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and shelling against civilians killing over 1,400 palestinians and wounding

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over 3,600 according to the palestine health ministry an average of 100 children are

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being killed daily according to the united nations israel is at the same time accusing egypt of treaty violations

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to lay what may be the groundwork for a mass expulsion of palestinians into the egyptian sinai israel says it will not

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lift the total blockade until hamas is quote unquote defeated and the remaining 59 israeli hostages are released but no

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one in israel or gaza expects hamas which has weathered the decimation of gaza and sustained mass slaughter to

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surrender or disappear the question no longer is will the palestinians be deported from gaza but

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when they will be pushed out and where they will go joining me to discuss the crisis in gaza israel’s intentions in

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gaza and its ramifications in the middle east is the middle eastern scholar

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norman finkelstein professor finkelstein is the author of numerous books including the rise and fall of palestine

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and gaza and excuse me and gaza and inquest into its martyrdom let let’s

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talk about what we’re seeing uh it is absolutely horrendous everything has

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been cut off uh and it it it appears clear from numerous statements by the

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israeli leadership that they are quite intent on on depopulating

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gaza well i think the goal of the assault on gaza that began on october 8

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the goal or the objective is perfectly clear there hasn’t been really much in

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the way of disguising it and the goal is to once and for all solve the gaza

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question and they were prepared to use any means within the limits or

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constraints imposed by the international community and in particular the united

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states they were going they were basically there were three as you might

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call it modus operende and they flowed into each other these aren’t hermetically sealed compartments there

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was outright genocide which was uh actually carried out with greater

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efficiency than israel is normally credited for so to take just two

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examples number one and just so we can remain clearly focused i’m now dealing

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with the outright genocidal aspect of israel’s

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solution final solution to the gaza question

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uh between october 7th and october 31st the very first month of the israeli

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assault on gaza approximately 1,900 children were

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killed according to air wars which is a reputable military

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uh military assessment organization so 1,900 children between october 7th

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and october 31st if you take the very worst

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month of the situation in syria it was in

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2016 the worst month approximately

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250 children were killed

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versus,900 now if you take the very worst year in the syrian

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situation approximately 1900 children were killed

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almost exactly the number of killed in gaza between october 2 october 7th and

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october 31st so often you hear the argument well if israel was carrying out genocide how

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comes they haven’t killed the whole population dropped the nuke or whatever

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well in fact within the political constraints their achievement is

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actually quite impressive to take another

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example the israelis killed 300 times

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300 times more children than have been killed in

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ukraine proportionately if you take in all the factors size of population duration of

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conflict and so forth and you juxtapose the two 300 times more children have

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been killed in gaza and as you know chris if you take

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any metric number number of un workers killed number of medics killed number of

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journalists killed uh proportion of civilians to combatants killed

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proportion of children killed proportion of women and children killed if you take

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any metric israel for the 21st century is in a class all its own and in fact

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for some metrics some metrics like amount of tonnage of bombs

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dropped it surpasses places like dresden i mean we have to go back to world war

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ii to find the right comparison so we should not

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underestimate the extent or the effectiveness the extent and efficacy of

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the genocidal element of israel’s assault on gaza the second element was

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the ethnic cleansing aspect and that element was not as successful because

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there were no takers for it in the arab world whether it will ultimately be the

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final solution remains to be seen and the third metric is the most important

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one in my opinion it’s what you might call the fet ample metric that is make

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gaza uninhabitable and therefore by hook or

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by crook everybody save a handful of people

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you’re familiar with the expression of um mr netanyahu we have to thin out the

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population of gaza and i think that’s

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the stage we’re in now to leave no

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option no alternative except to leave now i would

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want to make a couple of additional remarks on that point number

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one to the extent that israel allowed for some humanitarian aid

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to enter or was

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somewhat some restraints were placed on for example its attacks on

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hospitals um those are all dependent on

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international news coverage now mr netanyahu he knows the american scene

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and he knows the american media and there have been very good very

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sophisticated political science studies done

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correlating israel’s military actions with news

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coverage i can give you one which i had written about but there are many examples when israel launched its ground

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invasion of gaza in 2014 they launched the day after the

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malaysian airliner was shot down i guess over ukraine if my memory is correct

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they’re always looking waiting for the cameras to move

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elsewhere and that in effect is what accounts for what’s happening now

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because now it’s kind of like a

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backalia of genocide i’ve stopped watching it and

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you probably know at this point more than me but do you know why it’s

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happening now it’s because all the newspapers all the media is trump trump

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trump trump trump trump trump and the israelis know

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it this is their opportunity when all the media is

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focused on trump it’s not so much incidentally that he gave them the green

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light that’s not why what’s happening is because the media stopped covering

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it it’s just trump and so it’s an opportunity which i don’t believe the

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israelis will let pass right now the aim is one to make gaza

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uninhabitable and two to break the will of the people so that they will start

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screaming you remember uh the famous line by henry kissinger when during the

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aende regime we’re going to make the economy scream and now the israelis their goal

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their objective is to make the gazins scream so as to put the pressure on the

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arab world to open the gates um but just bear in mind you mentioned

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absolutely correctly for now a month and a week i guess it is there’s been no

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food fuel water electricity admitted to gaza now you must remember that’s what

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exactly what defense minister galan said on the first week in october we’re not

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going to admit any food fuel water electricity the only reason they were

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forced to back away from that they started to back away in october 15th it

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was because of the international pressure which then forced biden and blinken to tell

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israel you have to accommodate to some degree international opinion it was the

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same order and biden and blinken would have gone along with it were it not for

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the international cover coverage right now there’s no coverage so they can do

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whatever they want there are two aspects of this uh

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potential population transfer one of the reports that both the united states and

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israel has been speaking to sudan somaliand and somalia somali land is a

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offshoot which wants diplomatic recognition uh all of these countries need money uh the sudan has said that

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they will not accept palestinians and the other uh factor is that you have

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israeli officials now attacking egypt for breaking uh the camp david accords

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by building military infrastructure and moving troops up into the northern sinai this is something the egyptians deny

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it’s israel that of course has broken the camp david by now occupying that uh

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uh you know the philadelphia corridor which is supposed to be demilitarized um

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but it does appear that you know the we’re watching this from the outside that they they are split uh as to where

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they’re going to go uh are they going to be shipped to africa i’m not sure how they get there i mean syria has also

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been completely uh destroyed israel has carried out numerous air strikes against

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what’s left of the syrian military since the overthrow of assad but gaza is not contiguous to

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syria they have to bust them there are just do you have any thoughts about no no no i never pretend to military type

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uh knowledge what i would say is

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uh i slightly i i didn’t disagree i think however the wording is

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critical says it will not stop until hamas is destroyed i don’t believe it

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has anything to do with hamas i know i’m a minority in that opinion okay it’s a marginal factor but this is not about

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hamas this is about the final solution to gaza you know and i know until every

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last gazin is gone israel can keep saying we haven’t destroyed hamas right well how does any how can anyone prove

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whether or not hamas has been defeated there’s no measure for that there’s no

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evidence for that you could say “okay the evidence would be when israel stops taking casualties.” well guess what on

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average israel’s taken one casualty a day in gaza so that’s not a huge number for 18

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months about 400 israelis have been killed so what is going to

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prove that hamas has been defeated i know what’s going to prove it when there’s nobody no one left in gaza that

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will be the proof so even using this language as if setting up that we’re going to use the

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standard of when hamas is defeated first of all in my opinion we can disagree on

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this i don’t think there was anything to defeat there was no war in gaza it’s

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been 18 months 18 months can you name a battle has any reporter any journalist

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reported a battle in gaza gaza there’s been no battles there have been about

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one casualty a day probably half of those were friendly fire so i think we just have to uh in

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the course of the what’s been happening in gaza there were basically two paradigms if i can use that big word uh

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two paradigms one paradigm was this is an israel hamas war and of course the

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media ran with that because well you know it’s a war and uh things happen in

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the war and then there was a second paradigm that was the south african paradigm this is not a war it’s a

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genocide and by calling it a war you’re effectively uh obfuscating the most critical aspect

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of what’s happening you’ll forgive me for repeating myself if i’ve said it

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before to you but i remember uh there was a famous book well you’re old enough to remember uh by lucy dwitowitch it was

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called the war against the jews now war lucy dwid is a complete [ __ ] she was

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just a hack her book was awful but there was a second paradigm the second paradigm was by a

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serious historian that was raul hillberg okay sociologist what did he call his magnum

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opus he called it the destruction of european jewelry it wasn’t a

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war it was a systematic destruction and my mother who was very sensitive to

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language uh for somehow she mastered english faster than i could at a much

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faster pace than me and she would always get indignant when anyone described as

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what she endured during world war ii as a war she would always say and i’ll just

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say it’s a it’s a point of personal if i might use the word gratification how over and over again my

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mother’s insights were later validated by books i read by serious individuals i

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could give you other examples if you’re interested but for the moment right now my mother would say very

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emphatically it was not a war it was an

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extermination we were like roaches the exterminator shines the

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light on us here we run there shines light as us there we run here it was an

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extermination and i think we have to be very careful as it’s unfolding in real

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time not to use the language of a war because once you start using that

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language israel wins 99% of the propaganda war so i don’t think it h you

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know people say i’m uh i’m i’m defeist on this i’m not

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defeist and of course if there were a resistance no one would be happier than

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me but sometimes in a tiny parcel of land as

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you described it the estimates are israel has dropped more than four atomic

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bombs the idea of a resistance in that situation if you read

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the descriptions before any of the israeli troops move a centimeter they

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obliterate everything ahead of them everything to the side of them

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everything is obliterated how in those circumstances can you real realistically

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speak about a resistance yes and we should also be clear that

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hamas does not have armor artillery an air force navy mechanized units all of

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the accutrants of a modern army that of course israel is deploying against them

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uh uh they have small arms nothing else uh i i i want to ask what are there any

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impediments that you can foresee that would stop israel from depopulating gaza

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any external impediments obviously there are none internally in israel look i

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think about that every day i really do you know you’re looking for that magic

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bullet you’re looking for that miracle i don’t see it i had some

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hope for a period in the student encampments and they were spreading with

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an unusual rapidity or solarity and they were spreading around

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the world and having memories of the

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1960s you see a potential there

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i was surprised at the

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ease with which they were crushed but on the other hand it has to

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be borne in mind the price was very high that the students were expected to

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pay first of all the encampments began at the elite

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universities where tuitions are in the stratosphere so if you get

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expelled you’re losing $80,000 in tuition

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then uh the encampments i’m not saying the broad support but the encampments

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which were the concentration of support in most schools even places like

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mit they were overwhelmingly non-white and i would say

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preponderantly they were foreigners and so they paid they

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were even a higher price which is exposion plus

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deportation and that was already looming in the spring

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so when you consider the ruthlessness with which they were

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crushed i guess it’s not altogether a surprise that when the new semester

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began this year they had already vanished

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uh from sight there were some internet struggles but that always happens when

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you lose masses of people you know the ultras take over and it always gets a

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little bit squalid but i don’t think it was the main factor main factor was

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brute force or force measure that was exerted on them and then you know at

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some points during the actual conflict there was hope with the hezbollah that they could escalate the

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price israel would pay that didn’t happen then people began to hope against

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hope that the houthies can turn the tide that didn’t happen and as you could

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see from my recital it became progressively more

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desperate the search for that magic bullet there was some hope from the

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international court of justice which in general acquitted itself with honor when

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you consider the failure everywhere else uh the fact that the judges in their

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overwhelming majority stood firm and i

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think they did the best they could under the circumstances it wasn’t enough

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uh but there was nothing to stop the

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killing machine and once trump was elected i think it’s incorrect to say it

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was because he gave the green light it was because the cameras were gone mhm if

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you open up the homepage of the new york times which i’m sure you do it’s just

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trump trump line two trump trump line

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three that’s all they needed that’s all israel needed and now we can get on with

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the business you remember when galant first gave the order no food fuel water

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electricity that evoked an outcry and they were forced to retreat by october

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15th and then there was a fuller retreat later i think by october 27th if my memory is right this time they weren’t

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forced to retreat i want to ask about the press because the new york times ran a story on monday

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about the universities and the way they characterized the protests was that they harassed jewish students i don’t believe

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any jewish students that i know of were arrested i don’t think any were beaten i don’t think any were sent to the

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hospital by being sprayed with a chemical on the steps of low library um but the press really laid the

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groundwork for what’s happening uh by mischaracterizing these encampments as

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essentially uh you know dens of hamas supporters and anti-semites i know you

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were in the encampments as was i it was completely untrue

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well now there is a new game being played that all the

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assault this brazen outrageous assault on academic freedom began with mr

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trump and so a uh the a large part of what happened is

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being deposited in george orwell’s memory hole it didn’t begin with

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trump we all have clear memories they haven’t yet been rinsed

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clean by the powers that be they began

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when the jewish supremacist billionaire class decided to do their share for the

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cause and they saw their share already some of the jewish suprem supremacist

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billionaires had done their share like cheryl sandberg so she made this she chneled

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her lenny reef and and made this uh propaganda epic called screams

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before silence or as i’ve recchristianed it sh

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before schllock which which purported that hamas had

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weaponized rape as a weapon of had weaponized rape mass rape

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um uh and she released it i guess it was

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february 2024 uh it was

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uh it was it was like birth of a

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nation if lenny re if she was channeling lenny reefenste because you know cheryl

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sandberg is a feminist its precursor in the us was birth of a

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nation the same theme we need white men to protect white

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womanhood from these uh feral darkskinned creatures

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you will perhaps know that uh birth of a nation was the first film

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ever shown in the white house and cheryl samberg’s sh before shock was also was

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shown in the biden white house so she was the first one to enter

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the ranks for the cause and then come this spring bill

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aman who’s married to an you know he has a trophy wife from israel

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um she’s an airline she was in the israeli air force uh barry stern at brown

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university robert craft at columbia university they reached for the

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blackmail weapon it was very straightforward it was not done behind closed doors either you

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crush the encampments or you’re not getting our alumni money and then began a saga which is

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unprecedented in american history we’ve had repressive eras for sure there was

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the era around world war i the red scare and um that was the era you’d be

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probably interested to know that the aap was born the american

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association of university professors which then wrote the famous principles

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of academic freedom and that was because the robert baronss or the billionaire

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class now the robert baronss back then were putting pressure on universities to

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fire professors just a few it wasn’t a large number a few professors who were

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showing some solidarity with the union movement uh during that era and then the

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second big of course is sold in academic freedom came with the mccarthy era but

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if you look back there is nothing like what happened in the spring of this past year not one

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not two three ivy league presidents were

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dispatched were ousted claudine gay at harvard mcgill at

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pennsylvania and shafi at colombia three ivy league presidents and

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bear in mind two of the three were women of color so they had all the

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protections of woke ideology and all three and there wasn’t

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a word of criticism you know they tried to m they didn’t i just want to they did not

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denounce the genocide they just didn’t gravel enough they didn’t gravel enough

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and claudine gay actually she was completely correct when she said before

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the house committee she said this question of a slogan like from the river

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to the sea she said it does pose a uh civil

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liberties issue even if it was directly genocidal it would still pose a civil

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liberties issue because everybody forgot what our own history on freedom

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of speech is you of course know that in

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our country you’re allowed to advocate the violent overthrow of the government

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that’s a right that the supreme court

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validated only if it comes right up against

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conduct does it become uh prohibit uh permissible to prohibit

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it but short of that actually i’ve read the supreme court decisions i think they’re quite well reasoned i was

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impressed by the reasoning because i myself i’m a person of the left as you know so i’m wondering why would a

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bourgeoa state allow you to advocate the violent

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overthanding of capitalism and the bourgeoa class and everything and then

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when you read the supreme court decisions how they’re reasoned the uh they were reasoned basically as follows

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that even though we disagree with the violent overthrow of the government say the justices they may have some

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interesting criticisms of what’s wrong with our society or our system of

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governance or our economic system so even though we don’t agree with

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advocating the violent overthrow of the government we would lose something

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valuable if we suppressed the speech and it was on those grounds that they

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justified the violent overthrow of the government now many people in this

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country i’m not uh criticizing them i’m not agreeing with them but many people

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in this country are very patriotic and they revere the american

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flag but our supreme court ruled during the vietnam war that it was a form of

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expressive speech to burn the flag so when claudine gay said she was asked

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a question if somebody was saying something outright genocidal would you know against jews what would you say and

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you that was a complicated question and that’s factually correct i mean i think

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most of these people sitting on these committees would be shocked what the

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supreme court has ruled in our jurist prudence on the subject of freedom of

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speech you might recall there was a funny and funny one i liked a fellow

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walked into court wearing a shirt saying “fuck the draft.” the judge didn’t like that well

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guess what that was upheld and now here’s the most interesting one chris because you’re old

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enough to remember these things most of the young people have not a clue they’re always shocked when they go through this

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history you must remember that the signature uh uh freedom of speech or first

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amendment case in the 1980s was the skoi illinois yeah whether

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the american nazi party had the right to

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assemble and march through a community of holocaust survivors in skoi

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illinois and lo and behold the israel excuse me the illinois

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courts ruled they had that right now compare because the the the standard

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now is if students feel unsafe unwanted or uncomfortable that’s grounds to

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suppress speech well chris how do you think survivors of the

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nazi holocaust felt do you think they felt comfortable do you think they felt

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welcome do you think they felt wanted when a nazi party marched through skoi

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illinois but our court said that was protected speech and because of in my opinion the

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disaster that befell our political left when the uh woke politics and

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cancel culture set in all of that history was

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erased and so it was easy it was so it was handing it to the

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other side in the silver platter for the jewish billionaire class to say we’re

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withholding our monies because jewish students feel unsafe unwanted and

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unwelcome and uncomfortable however uh you want to put it uh so the

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reality i speak honestly i’m not a i’m really i’m not afraid of the truth i got

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a i have a wonderful friend she lives out in north carolina she went for a

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solidarity with the uh palestinians event i guess a couple of days ago and

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she wrote me and she said they were chanting the from the river to the sea palestine will be free and she said

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“frankly i didn’t feel comfortable with it.” and i don’t like that slogan i i’ve

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said that on many occasions i don’t like that slogan uh but on the other hand

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there are a lot of slogans i don’t like you know and i have to learn to

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live with them of course if it comes from quote unquote my people my my

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comrades and so forth i try to reason and explain why i think it’s a wrong

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slogan but people have that right that’s the that that right is

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protected and therefore if you felt

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unwelcome uncomfortable unwanted it’s too bad well it’s also

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norm this isn’t about anti-semitism i think you know it has nothing to do with anti-semitism it has to do with shutting

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down the left and deforming universities into centers that cater to uh the power

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structure completely including taking departments at colombia and putting them which is just you know something out of

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fascist germany putting them under government control look chris i want to uh you know we’re

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both roughly of the same age cohort and i want to have a serious

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conversation about this i i am against any government

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intervention or interference i have come to accept the principles of

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academic freedom even as they never protected me but i still

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accept the principles as correct your peers are the only individuals competent

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to judge your competence in your discipline

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we don’t let arbitrary people decide who ch who teaches

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physics we don’t let just let them decide who teaches chemistry biology

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mathematics uh on the basic principle that only your peers possess that kind

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of competence and on reflection that seems to me a perfectly sensible

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uh um standard so i am even though i

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didn’t benefit from that protection actually i think my peers were the first ones who would judge me

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not competent uh as against the general population i

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would probably do better with i just i just want to interject because your peers recommended you for tenure at

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depal and then uh with in in overturning procedural procedures because of

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pressure from dura and all of these totally correct and i should and in my bitter occasional bitterness i shouldn’t

40:39

lose sight of that fact so the fact is you are correct and i’m never afraid to say i’m wrong the academic freedom held

40:46

up for me that’s correct except at at a level where it was outside

40:53

interference so i’m against any outside interference

40:58

but having said that there was a problem in the

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humanities there was a problem in the liberal arts there was a problem with people

41:11

carrying on with very

41:16

exiduous intellectual capacity carrying on like apparachics

41:24

now i would i would challenge you maybe for a future

41:30

conversation choose a university at random choose any university at random

41:35

and go to and go look at its course offerings in english department look at

41:42

the course offerings first of all it’s it’s all textual criticism it’s dered and all

41:50

this stuff it’s textual criticism but also in the course offerings not in

41:56

comparative lit but just in english you know where one once upon a time you read

42:03

shakespeare and you read dickens and you read austin and you read and you read

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now if i were to tell you what you read i would be get accused of

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uh any manner of uh sin so i’m not going to even name the titles you go and look

42:23

you know i had this conversation a few days ago with briana joy gray because it

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irks me it irks me that the same liberal

42:37

elites who champion this woke

42:42

culture they send their kids to schools where they read the

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classics and then when one of my students from say city

42:56

university a public university if he or she manages by some miracle to get into

43:04

a top grade law school or professional school they don’t know if they’re coming

43:10

or going because their peers are citing shakespeare and are citing plato and are

43:16

citing aristotle and i won’t tell you what they

43:23

read in my college i know this for a fact because i’ve mentored several

43:30

students who i tried to steer on a firm foundation because they’re very bright

43:35

and they they’re going places and we go through the course cataloges together

43:41

you know in my time and it’s not that long ago it’s long ago but not that long

43:46

ago in 100 level 100 level courses in english it would

43:53

be shakespeare’s histories shakespeare’s tragedy shakespeare’s comedies three

43:59

different courses histories that was 100 level and then of course it becomes more

44:06

sophisticated 200 and 300 level now in a choice of as many as a hundred

44:15

courses you might get one course in shakespeare maybe one one british

44:22

literature one course a survey course out of a hundred so you’re thinking well

44:28

then what are the other 99 well i say chris hedges brace

44:34

yourself brace yourself so why do i say all this

44:41

they need a house cleaning they do i want it come from

44:48

inside but trump and company it was served to them on a

44:55

silver platter because nobody likes those classes i talked to the students you

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can’t disagree there’s a party line and woe to

45:09

you if you are take if you are a male and you’re taking a course that includes

45:17

female authors no i’m serious you can’t open your mouth no i know i i’m with you that

45:23

and you know i spent eight years in a university and that’s all i did including greek and latin i know at

45:29

princeton they’ve banned richard wright uh you know uh black boys one of the

45:35

great works of 20th century literature that’s another show norm i want to talk just to end here about your book inqu

45:43

gaza inquest into its martyrdom because what you do in that book is document not

45:49

only the detailed uh reports the golstein report and

45:54

others that that that ex you know exhaustively detail the war crimes you

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have a chapter on the mari marva the turkish ship that was attacked by israeli commandos operation cast led a

46:08

and so all of this stuff was documented all these including of course lebanon uh the israeli incursion into lebanon the

46:15

bombing of west beirut etc etc it’s all been documented and has had no effect uh

46:21

and you write about the goldstone report uh but you also in the book write about

46:26

figures like hillary clinton who are proud of obstructing uh the any effort to act on those

46:34

reports and i think that that’s an important point because it totally paved the way for the genocide and i wondered

46:40

if you could as we end talk about that yes i think that um i don’t blame richard

46:49

goldstone because i think he was blackmailed because he had he recanted the he said

46:57

he wrote a column for the washington post that said if he knew now what he had known then he would have written the

47:03

report but this guy was under tremendous tremendous pressure

47:08

uh you know they they really went after him because he was jewish and a zionist but he’s he was honest yes well he was

47:18

honest it was an interesting story i’ll tell it to you very quickly because time doesn’t allow uh richard goldstone was

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jewish he was a zionist he was connected with many institutions in israel

47:33

and when he was asked to head the commission of

47:39

inquiry he said “i really couldn’t say no because they told me i could write

47:47

the terms of reference so whatever i wanted to investigate they were agreeable to.” so

47:56

he said “how could you say no in those circumstances?” and then he went it was

48:02

a fourperson commiss uh commission uh christine shinkin um not so important i

48:10

know the guys uh in any event and he wrote a very devastating report it was i

48:17

think something on the order of 400 pages it was a mammoth report and it was

48:22

very wide ranging it then limited itself to operation castled

48:27

uh august 26 to january 17th it looked at the history of the occupation it

48:33

looked at the west bank it was a very comprehensive and it was a totally devastating report totally

48:39

devastating uh just as a footnote to that whenever one people say “well uh

48:47

hamas blocked this and hamas blocked that and hamas blocked that.” hamas

48:52

always cooperated with the international commissions even though they were totally brutal to hamas they all found

48:58

hamas guilty of war crimes hamas never cared because they figured if we can get

49:04

something out of these commissions let them do what they want with us we’ll let it go just as they always

49:12

cooperate it was always israel that refused to cooperate with the international commissions of inquiry and

49:18

it’s not true the commissions of inquiry were soft in hamas absolutely not they

49:23

were pretty ruthless with hamas in any event he writes the report and he comes

49:30

under uh devastating attack now of course al

49:35

professor alan dersitz is always over the top and he compared richard goldstone to dr mangula okay that was

49:42

typical duritz but actually the other attacks weren’t much better uh he didn’t

49:48

fare much better richard goldstone and then uh he basically

49:54

retracted that report on april 1st 2011 initially i thought it was a april

50:01

fool’s joke i i couldn’t believe it i had written a lot on gold stone at that

50:06

point and i read the report at least four or five times because it was a gold mine

50:12

um and he claimed he got new information that forced him to retract and john

50:19

duggard who’s also a south african jurist and for your listeners he was the

50:24

person who led the delegation he was a senior counsel at the international

50:31

court of justice during the genocide case and john dugard has a very distinguished career he was the

50:38

barristister for the nelson mandela family when nelson mandela was in jail

50:44

he was the barristister for bishop tud who above and beyond all else he’s just

50:50

a very decent guy one of those rare birds a consistent

50:56

liberal i’m a radical he’s a liberal but my heart warms in his sight in any case

51:07

duggard among other things was a special raor on the occupied territories for the

51:13

un and when richard goldstone recanted duggard wrote i think it was in

51:20

the um it was in the british periodical he

51:25

wrote “there is nothing new mr goldstone

51:30

nothing new has been revealed since you published that report i know

51:37

it because he published simultaneously a report for the arab league he was their

51:44

chief investigator and fair is fair goldstones was more

51:52

comprehensive but duggard’s was more knowledgeable on the law dugard is

51:57

topnotch top of the shelf in any event he said there was nothing new and then he ended by

52:04

saying why richard goldstone retracted will go with him to his great

52:12

we’ll never israel is notorious for blackmail but i want to get into that i

52:18

want to get into that moment because i think you cite it as a pivotal moment by

52:23

which perhaps there was you know we israel could have been held to account

52:29

and it wasn’t and after that it was just a a free-for-all yeah it was people now

52:36

forgot or they’re too young to remember uh there was a huge outpouring against

52:42

israel during operation castled there were hundreds of thousands of people in the street we should just say what

52:48

operation castled this was this was one of israel’s periodic killing spreees in assaults in gaza yeah this was

52:56

200 uh 8-9 it ended january 17th 2009 and it’s

53:03

not without interest why it ended on that date

53:09

because obama was going to be inaugurated in january 20th and since

53:15

this was his anointment he didn’t want any distraction by gaza so he just called

53:22

netanyahu wasn’t that nahu it was um omar he just called omar and he said

53:31

“time to stop i don’t want my occasion

53:37

to be distracted from.” um so

53:44

uh just rec uh my train of thought just went uh well just why that was such a

53:51

pivotal moment yeah it was a huge outpouring of outrage at what israel was

53:58

doing you might recall at that point foreign minister tippy livy was having

54:05

trouble visiting the uk because claims were what’s called under international

54:10

law universal dis uh universal jurisdiction they wanted to prosecute

54:16

her and soldiers were having trouble

54:21

traveling so it seemed as if there was some

54:27

possibility and when gold stone retracted as i said i believe it was

54:34

blackmail i personally doubt it was him but he has a daughter who lives in israel and you could imagine if you look

54:41

for dirt on anyone you’re going to find it and they don’t find it on them by some miracle the person has a clean

54:47

slate there’s your relatives you know uh and then at that point

54:55

um israel was really never again seriously threatened there have been all

55:02

sorts of machinations i believe that the former chief prosecutor of the international

55:09

comm uh criminal court the ic fatu ben suda i believe she was blackmailed by

55:16

israel i wrote a book on that subject which uh sold fewer copies than the

55:21

fingers on your right hand uh and and the ones that i sold were the ones i

55:27

purchased so it was a closed circle i believe the

55:32

current vice president of the international court of justice julia

55:38

sabatendi i believe she’s being blackmailed by israel i believe that um

55:45

the former president of the court joan dunnhu uh who was presiding over the

55:51

genocide case i believe that she for careerist

55:57

reasons tried to sabotage the um uh icj

56:05

uh ruling on a plausible genocide in gaza so there’s still a lot of dirt it’s

56:12

the subject of a forthcoming book of mine entitled gaza’s gravediggers an

56:19

inquiry into uh gaza’s grave diggers into an inquiry

56:27

into you know my memory i’ve not been sleeping for weeks i’ve just been non-stop working and i’m will non-stop

56:34

working on the book that i an inquiry into something in high places um so i

56:42

think there’s still a lot of machinations going on uh in the

56:48

international community but in general i think they

56:53

actually they weren’t bad i mean if you remember the days of banky moon right

57:00

and you and you compare him with gutierrez gutierrez has been making very you know like just the other day the

57:07

gates of hell have been on the gates of hell have been open he’s been good the

57:12

whole un hierarchy i think fair is fair i think

57:17

they were okay i thought the icj they did the most they could under

57:24

the circumstances so um it just wasn’t enough

57:33

yeah all right we’re going to stop there thanks norm uh i want to thank thomas uh

57:39

diego max and sophia who produced the show you can find me at chrisedges.substack.com

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