Gaza versus Israel: irtenbiderantz (7)

(Michael Hudson-en bidetik)

… the only way of stopping what’s happening in Gaza happening in the rest of the world is to create an alternative to the United Nations, an alternative to the World Bank, to the IMF, an alternative to all the organizations that the United States has controlled to turn the whole rest of the world into Gaza, …

Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1791878145764667883

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Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1791706162829865227

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Bideoa: https://x.com/i/status/1791381080055935291

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Angelo Giuliano 安德龙@angeloinchina

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Ilan Pappe in Detroit: Truth is on Our Side .. Truth is on the Side of the Palestinians

Invited by AlNadwa Freethining Society

Transkripzioa:

0:00

[Applause] [Music]

0:11

thank you so much for your kind introduction thank you all for being

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here thank you for the organizers of the whole three lectures and particularly

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thank you this evening for those who organized this meeting here I have two

0:30

big challenges one is uh I know that some of you attended my first lecture and I

0:37

don’t want to bore you but that won’t be fair to those who didn’t attend the

0:43

first lecture so uh I will summarize the main points of my first lecture uh and

0:50

try to add something new so that those who attended the lecture yesterday would not fall

0:55

asleep uh the Second Challenge is this amazing chair which makes you feel like a king

1:04

and you would like to give orders and uh for one at least for one hour feel that

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uh you are not an ordinary human being but uh I’ll get over it I I I I promise

1:18

you the main point I made uh yesterday was the importance of the historical

1:25

context for both understanding the events of of the last 7 months and also

1:33

uh in order to try and look uh as clearly as we can into the

1:40

future and by looking into the future as I mentioned yesterday I meant not only

1:48

towards the near future which I’m afraid to say is quite Bleak and not very

1:54

promising but rather looking also into the more distant future

2:00

which I think brings hope for Liberation for

2:05

freedom and uh for a uh a just solution

2:11

for the Palestine uh question so I will try and highlight

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some of the points which I just summarized briefly yesterday and give

2:24

more depths into them today but all in all the same framework would be

2:32

kept I mentioned yesterday that from the very moment the world learned about the

2:39

Hamas attack on Israel uh on the 7th of October quite a few world leaders

2:47

notable among them the Secretary General of the United Nation were very quick to

2:53

mention to whoever was willing to listen that there was a context to the ACT

3:00

even before people knew exactly what happened whether uh the facts were clear

3:08

I still think that most of the things that happened in those 7 to eight hours

3:15

from the early morning on the 7th of October until the afternoon are still a

3:21

bit in a haze I don’t think we we have a full picture we cannot trust the Israeli

3:26

version that’s for sure uh and and I think that it was a very natural

3:33

reaction of Someone Like The General Secretary of the United Nation to say

3:38

that regardless of what he knows or doesn’t know that happens on the 7th of

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October he is educated enough and knowledgeable enough to understand that

3:51

this is a kind of action that is typical to an

3:57

anti-colonialist struggle and situ ation where you may have events where which

4:03

are not always easy to digest maybe could generate some criticism but all in

4:11

all could not be taken out of context if you really want to make sure that events

4:19

like this are advancing equality human rights civil rights and Justice rather

4:26

than perpetuating violence and bloodshed and this context is very

4:33

important and it’s not surprising that the Israeli reaction to

4:38

the General Secretary of the United Nations comments that one should understand that what happened did not

4:44

happen in a vacuum that there was an historical context to that it’s not surprising that the Israeli reaction was

4:51

so harsh and in immediate demanding his resignation calling him an anti-site

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and actually exerting pressure in some places in some cases successful pressure

5:07

on institutions such as universities mainstream media Outlets political

5:14

establishments not to mention context as if the word context became uh a kind of

5:22

a a defamatory uh entry in in in our vocabulary

5:31

and uh this is not new this whole idea that you are not allowed to use the

5:38

context in order to understand what Israel is doing and what the Palestinians are doing but I think the

5:46

particularly demand of Israel and its allies in the last seven months that we

5:53

should not talk about the context allows us to bring the context

5:58

back into the the conversation that we should insist on bringing back the context into the conversation and I’m

6:06

sure that many of you know the context but I think that it would not be useless

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to mention at least the major points of this context and I began by talking yesterday

6:19

on uh the early uh emergence of the idea

6:24

that Palestine actually does not belong to the indigenous people of Palestine

6:29

and this was not a Jewish idea this was an idea of a movement that called itself

6:36

the restorationist which was part of the Evangelical uh churches uh on both sides

6:42

of the Atlantic that seow the return of the Jews to Palestine as they called it

6:48

the return of the Jews to Palestine as God’s Will and part of a Divine scheme

6:54

that meant to bring back uh uh the Messiah the resurrect of the Dead the

7:01

end of time I won’t go into the whole Dogma but it was a powerful Dogma it still is by the way a powerful Dogma

7:08

that feeds those we call in this country in other places in the world the Christian

7:14

zionists what is important about this uh Dogma that it was shared by people with

7:20

power with power to influence the fate of the people of Palestine without

7:27

anyone among those who lived in palestin like during the emergence of this

7:33

ideology being aware at all that in high places in the United States or in

7:39

Britain or in Germany people were discussing their future without telling them without

7:47

consulting them without taking into account their aspirations their rights

7:54

in many ways I would say without taking into account the very existence

8:01

this became a more powerful uh concept

8:06

with the emergence of what the late Edward S called orientalism when the west or the global

8:14

North as we can call it became interested in taking over from the

8:19

otoman Empire large areas of the Arab world including

8:25

Palestine and you needed that kind of redu ction of who is an Arab who is a

8:33

Muslim who is a middle eastern person in order to continue this debate about the

8:41

future of Palestine as if the Palestinians don’t exist because the orientalists were not only religious

8:48

people they were also laymen and secular people so you suddenly see the jelling

8:54

of a very powerful Alliance that regards Palestine as a

9:00

trophy either for ideological reasons strategic reasons or theological

9:06

reasons and you can see how throughout the 19th century these ideas began begin

9:13

to be began to translate into a strategy into a proper political program which

9:21

meant to take Palestine back to the Western World Incorporated in the

9:28

western world and by that if you want uh restore the glory of the time of the

9:35

Crusaders all the time of Christ and I think that’s a very important point

9:40

because it’s not an ancient idea it’s still very relevant

9:46

idea to many people around the world unfortunately these ideas

9:52

influenced the rise of Zionism among the Jews and I also stressed that yesterday

9:58

that for most of the Jews the idea that uh their

10:04

future or their well-being in the future is connected to

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building a nation state in Palestine for most of the Jews throughout the 19th

10:15

century this was an alien idea either because they were religiously opposed to

10:22

that idea or because they were looking for a more Universal solution for racism

10:29

that would deal with racism not only as a problem of the Jews but by anyone else

10:35

who was deprived because of their race color or religion so a very small

10:43

minority of Jews were hooked on these ideas that were brought by these

10:49

powerful non-jewish groups and together they formed a Global

10:55

Alliance that eventually persuaded Britain already in 1915 to see

11:03

Palestine as part of the British Empire and persuaded Britain that if Palestine

11:11

has would be part of the British Empire it better be a Jewish Palestine rather

11:16

than an Arab Palestine and and that was a work of a Lobby this was not something

11:23

that the British easily accepted and I think we should understand how how early

11:29

on this Lobby began its work because the longevity of this

11:37

Lobby in this country and in Britain explains its power

11:42

today when you are already 100 years lobbying effectively you can rely on

11:49

inertia of the politicians to understand what they should do without even

11:55

investing the same kind of power intimidation bribery that you invested in the first

12:02

place in order to let them accept your interest as their own

12:10

interests these ideas became a a read strategy on the ground once Britain

12:16

occupied Palestine in 1918 and the way Britain

12:23

enabled the Zionist movement to become a classical case of settler Colonial

12:30

movement namely a movement of Europeans that were themselves victim of

12:37

persecution believing that their only salvation is by taking someone else’s

12:46

Homeland and getting rid of the people who live there this was a very important

12:52

part of the mainstream Zionist ideology to turn Zionism from a project that

12:59

seeks solution for anti-Semitism into a displacement and replacement project displacing the

13:06

nating people and replacing them with the Jewish immigrants who came from

13:13

Europe This is why today a lot of Scholars rightly say this is not that

13:18

different from the way the United States was created Canada Australia New Zealand

13:26

South Africa so we we have here a a phenomenon that is not particular to

13:34

the colonization of Palestine but is different from the others because even

13:39

until today a lot of people deny that this is the right way of raming

13:45

Zionism and this is a project that began very late in the day historically

13:52

compared to the other settler Colonial uh movement which is why there is a different kind of anti-colonialist

13:59

struggle going on and this is why uh this is a project that attracts so much

14:07

attention from so many people around the world and the context the historical

14:14

immediate more immediate context what happened uh on the 7th of October and

14:20

especially the Israeli reaction to what happened in the 7th of October is the

14:25

history of 75 I would say the 95 years

14:31

by which the move the political movement of Zionism on the ground in Palestine

14:37

tries to implement the idea that is at the heart of every set of colonial

14:43

project we know in the world which is to eliminate the native

14:49

population now how you eliminate the native population depends on the

14:54

historical moment that you try to implement it on the capacity on the

15:00

circumstances so in the 1920s when the First Act of ethnic

15:06

lensing occurred in Palestine it was very limited it was limited because the Zionist movement was not very strong and

15:13

the British government was still responsible for Law and Order but it was

15:19

quite a successful project given the circumstances so in the mid

15:25

1920s from two very important areas in

15:32

and the Zionist movement succeeded in persuading the British to change the

15:39

law the land laws the land regime in Palestine in order to claim that land

15:46

that they have bought usually from absentee landlords in beut was not only theirs but they did

15:54

not have to respect the ottoman custom that because these lands were huge and

15:59

on them there were Villages that were there for 1,000 years that they had the right to evi these

16:06

Villages so the first victims of this ethnic cleansing in 1926 were 11

16:12

Palestinian Villages inis and Ma and what is important this was done

16:19

according to a European law of ownership at that time it was important

16:26

for the Zionist movement to say our dispossession of the Palestinians is

16:32

according to the Civilized law of the land regime in in Europe

16:38

and very soon after that the Palestinian realized that these immigrants that they

16:43

had received taught them how to cultivate the land because they have no idea how to cultivate the land uh and

16:51

received them because they they really thought there were poor refugees that needed a sanctuary a place safe place

16:58

where the inan movement began to resist this kind of method of taking land

17:05

through purchase and went on uprisings and so on

17:11

uh this kind of land purchase stopped and by 1948 and this is

17:18

important to remember the zist movement was able to purchase less than

17:25

6% less than 6% of palestin and this is the moment when the Zionist

17:32

leadership decided that this kind of method of buying land is not going to

17:38

work and they opted for removing by force the Palestinians So within one

17:44

year they planned to expel every Palestinian from any part of Palestine

17:51

that they could take over so they wanted as much of historical Palestine as

17:56

possible with as few Palestinians as possible they did it 3 years after the

18:01

Holocaust and that immunized them from

18:06

even I would say criticism from more Progressive elements in Europe and the

18:13

United States that probably would have otherwise felt a bit uncomfortable about

18:20

this kind of expulsion but because of what happened in Europe uh and the way

18:26

the Zionist diplomacy very CLE LLY utilized what happened in Europe to

18:33

almost say as one of the famous diplomats of the Zan said well we

18:39

created a small Injustice to rectify a much bigger Injustice and that kind of

18:46

immoral explanation uh would explain to us why

18:52

the very few voices that thought that what was happening in Palestine in 194 8 the NBA

19:00

the ethnic cleansing was immoral and should have been contested or at least

19:06

rebuked that’s why these voices died out very very quickly uh because the

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Holocaust was the Holocaust memory I should say was used in order to silence

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this is not just an historical chapter the Holocaust memory is used today to silence us not allow us to tell what

19:27

happened and within that ethnic cleansing of 48 Israel created the Gaza

19:32

Strip and it created the Gaza Strip as part of a master plan of how to get rid

19:39

of the Palestinians you push them to the north to Lebanon and Syria you push them to

19:45

the east to Jordan and they wanted to push them to the South to Egypt which

19:51

will remind you what’s happening today uh in Gaza that the Egypt is

19:58

ambivalent of how to react to what is surely going to happen which is a

20:03

massive or an attempt to massively ethnic lens the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip into the Sinai Peninsula

20:11

Israel is trying to persuade Abdul fatahi to build a huge Refugee City on

20:18

the other side of Rafa offering billions of dollars uh uh in order to see whether

20:25

he would go along with such a program and there still a VI the Egyptians and they were ambivalent in 1948 as well but

20:33

they closed the Border they didn’t allow one Palestinian Refuge Refugee to cross

20:39

into the S so the Israelis decided if this is the case we will give up in

20:44

adverted commment part of Palestine that we wanted 2% of it to be exact and we will

20:53

create it as a huge Refugee can so they pushed intentionally the Palestinians

20:59

into that strip that you see today uh and and created an huge refugee camp

21:08

already by the end of 1948 and part of that history uh is

21:16

connected also to the places that were attacked on the 7th of October by the Hamas because they they were on these

21:25

places were built on the ruins of the village VES the last Villages that were

21:31

pushed into the Gaza stream so you have a first generation of people in Gaza who

21:36

not only come from Palestine proper but quite a few of them come from the areas

21:44

that are around the street and like the Palestinian refugees inside Israel that

21:50

became internal refugees they could do could could see daily how their former

21:56

Villages is turning into a settlement if you know the stories of the internal

22:02

refugees in Israel people who came from a village like safura they went to a neighborhood in Nazareth and could see

22:10

every day how that V how their Village becomes a Jewish uh settlement and and

22:17

and it’s difficult enough to be a refuge but to see what’s happening to you and

22:23

as you know they try to go back and take back their animals their crops and they

22:32

were shot as terrorists they already were called as terrorists when they tried to retrieve and not many people know that

22:40

in 1949 with the agreement of the Egyptians the Gaza Strip was shrunk even

22:45

more it used to be 350 km square kilometers and Israel Dem mended another

22:53

100 square kilm for the kibuts that it built on the ruins of the Palestinian Village

22:59

because the the land was very fertile and these movements by the way of the Zionist left the most Zionist

23:06

left mam were pressuring the Israeli government to take these lands and Annex

23:13

them to Israel because uh of their fertility so the the this refugee camp

23:22

became even more dense in that respect and in that history of course we have uh

23:28

uh a chapter which is usually forgotten half a year of Israeli

23:33

occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1956 which was very brutal occupation

23:39

that included uh an Untold massacre in Junes that only

23:45

recently uh we have discovered the documents which unfortunately the

23:51

Israelis have now either destroyed or reclassified but at the time it was

23:57

possible to get a lot of information about uh the brutality of the Israeli

24:03

occupation on the 6 months that they ruled the Gaza Strip in 56 which also is

24:09

branded in people’s Collective memory not just as Palestinians but also as

24:14

people of the Gaza Street and then you come to a much longer occupation since

24:19

1967 where everything that happens in the West Bank is felt also by the people

24:24

of the Gaza STP and had everything that happens in the Gaza STP is being felt by the Palestinians in the West Bank as

24:31

well and that is a history of Oppression and I don’t have to give you the whole

24:37

repertoire of what the Israeli occupation meant both to the people of the West Bank and the

24:43

Gaza but we know that most of the people that took part in the operation of the Hamas on the 7th of October were young

24:50

people so their main historical context is the memory of

24:57

the parents and grandparents but also their own personal experience and their

25:02

own personal experience is 17 years of Siege of blockade of Four Deadly

25:11

assaults on Gaza from the air from the sea from the land bombarding uh civilian

25:20

areas as if uh there were military bases killing many people wounding many people

25:27

and strong traumatizing a whole population many of them women and

25:33

children and and this is a context by which you you understand that people in

25:42

such conditions that reminds us of the ghettos of Europe these kinds of conditions cannot

25:51

be tolerated by people and it’s not surprising that they will do everything

25:56

they can toing break out of this kind of

26:01

life and if people don’t want the Palestinians to use violence in order to

26:08

liberate themselves from such an oppression and brutality so let them at least allow

26:15

them the nonviolent methods of the boycot the divestment and sanctions and don’t turn

26:23

it into an illegal action when this is the most peaceful nonviolent action that

26:30

people have at their disposal in order to end that kind of historical context

26:36

that if it continues of course would breed more violence and more blood chain

26:44

now this is more or less what I was talking about yesterday but I want to say something about the future which I

26:51

think is very important for the near future you have unfortunately still the the Israeli

26:59

position as probably the most important factor unfortunately in determining the

27:07

fate of the people not only in Gaza in the Gaza state but also in the West Bank

27:12

and also the Palestinian minority inside Israel so these are millions of

27:17

Palestinians that their future in the next 2 three years is going to be very

27:23

much influenced by actions policies and Decisions by the Israeli government

27:28

government and that Israeli government or that Israeli political system is

27:35

quite uh United unfortunately in adopting a de

27:41

humanized perception of the Palestinians at best and this is not at

27:46

best at all it has a pragmatic section you can call

27:52

it as such that might win the next election might not win the next election

27:58

that really believes that the model that it established in the West Bank the Oslo

28:05

model with the Palestinian Authority with the partition of the West Bank into

28:10

area a b and c area a being uh supposedly under the rule of a

28:16

Palestinian Authority but in practice of course it’s also under Israeli control area B with a joint control of the

28:24

Palestinian Authority in Israel and area C which is the ly controlled by Israel this is the pragmatic Israel pragmatic

28:31

Israel has a vision of either bringing the Palestinian Authority or a similar

28:38

body or a similar body that would rule pal the Gaza Strip on behalf of Israel

28:46

this is also supported by the state department and by the European Union as a program

28:53

unfortunately even countries that are a bit more critical on Israel such as Russia China uh are going to support

29:02

this idea as well and uh there’s additional things that they

29:09

want to do these problematic Israelis which is to Annex part of the Gaza Strip

29:15

to Israel and to encourage as much as possible people to leave the

29:21

Gaza the less pragmatic the more fanatic uh which is a powerful force in

29:29

Israel today uh Israeli political forces plan to do something else they want to

29:37

restore Jewish settlements as they call it to rej judaize the Gaza Strip and to

29:45

inflict a much more massive ethnic lensing and and the worrying part of it

29:50

is that they want to transfer this model also to the West Bank uh uh we tend that

29:58

to look at these people as lunatics as being On The Fringe of being hallucinators Messianic

30:07

but there are people with political force in Israel not just because of their relative success in the last

30:14

elections in Israel much more important is their prominent presence in the

30:21

Israeli Army in the Secret Service uh in all these strategic Elites that make the

30:29

decision and implement this decision with regard to Israel as you know Israel

30:34

has a a a a force of about 300,000 people that are daily policing the

30:41

Palestinians about 300,000 Israelis are engaged on daily policing the Israelis

30:48

either monitoring sorry the Palestinians either monitoring their

30:54

conversations or uh regulating their right to move to work to uh leave the

31:01

country to enter the country decide whether to punish them individually or

31:08

collectively this is a huge uh uh group of people in terms of

31:13

numbers because otherwise you cannot oppress so many so many people for such

31:20

a long time so in these mechan in these kinds of uh uh or

31:28

organizations the power of a particular version of Zionism the version that

31:34

believes that Zionism has the right to implement fully the idea of the ethnic

31:40

lensing now in 2024 and uh and doesn’t really pay much

31:47

attention to International uh uh uh opinion on what

31:52

they are doing is a powerful force to recognize

31:59

with an ability to impact the life of all of us who live uh in historical

32:05

Palestine and those who are committed to

32:10

Palestine of course this will not be done without any without

32:17

resistance uh we don’t know yet how would a group Lalah in Lebanon react to

32:24

such policies we don’t know how the people people in the West Bank would be

32:29

able to organize themselves in reaction to such uh policies we can see that

32:36

despite everything Israel tells us the Hamas still resists the Israeli

32:42

operations uh in in the Gaza Strip uh we are very encouraged by the international

32:50

reaction at least by the Civil Society and we hope that we can

32:55

accelerate the influence of these groups in the Civil Society on the governments

33:01

on the policy makers to change their policies uh towards Israel we I think we

33:08

all were disappointed with the international court of justice in the first round the way it responded to

33:15

South Africa’s demand to recognize what Israel is doing as a genocide there are

33:20

now re as you probably know South Africa has re re readdressed uh the problem to

33:27

the international court of justice once more uh I’m not very hopeful about the

33:33

way the icj would react or would react differently but it’s an important

33:39

Landmark the very fact that they were willing to discuss it even if the final

33:44

uh conclusion was not that promising but

33:50

however the next two years are going to unfold and as I said it seems like this

33:56

long night of Ness which I’m sure we all are fighting against with all our might

34:01

and we will triple and double and triple our efforts in every way possible to

34:07

stop it and and that of course goes without saying a thing talking to people

34:13

here I think it is also important to see the longer term uh uh development which

34:22

are more hopeful much more hopeful there are correct

34:28

white cracks in the building that is called the zist project in Palestine

34:34

there are huge these cracks and uh they are they include uh the inability of the

34:41

Israeli Jewish Society to uh cohes to jail into a nation state as much as they

34:49

wanted the whole idea of Judaism as a national

34:54

identity has totally failed this has nothing to do with the Palestinians it just doesn’t

35:00

work uh and um this is now translated into a c civil war in Israel between two

35:08

camps of uh the Jewish society which uh implodes the Israeli Society from within

35:16

this is coupled with a huge economic crisis huge economic

35:22

crisis uh with a government that doesn’t function with an army that proved that

35:29

it can hardly face theilla movements and one wonders what whether it can really

35:35

face proper army with an International Community as we mentioned that is much

35:42

more willing to consider Israel as a parah state and is much more interested

35:50

in comparing it to a part South Africa than to any of the so-called members of

35:57

the city civilized uh community of Nations as Israel wanted it uh uh to do

36:03

and with uh a Jewish communities especially younger generation of Jewish

36:10

communities that are jettisoning the idea of Zionism as a

36:16

relevant factor in the way they Define the Judaism so they’re not only showing

36:22

indifference towards Israel or negate the definition of Judaism that Zionism

36:30

offers they are also taking active part in the solidarity movement with the

36:35

Palestinians and the fusion of all these processes together which I call the

36:41

cracks the cracks will bring the collapse of the zist movement I I’m and

36:46

I’m not saying this as wishful thinking and I’m not saying this is an activist I

36:52

really say it as a scholar who has analyzed Israeli and Zionist Society for

37:00

the last 40 years as a scholar I’m convinced that I’m

37:07

witnessing the beginning of the end of the Zionist project

37:13

[Applause]

37:20

now but we are not just onlooker or scholarly analysts of such a process

37:27

process we should be part of the process we should contribute to that process

37:33

because uh these CS of the wall if they don’t collapse if they

37:39

don’t bring down the building the building is still there and what is the

37:44

building the building is oppress brutal oppression of the Palestinians genocide

37:49

of Palestinians imprisonment of Palestinians without trial demolition of

37:55

houses discrimination laws against the Palestinians inside Israel and denying

38:00

the Palestinians the right of return return so this is a building that as long as it doesn’t fall it is a monument

38:08

of Injustice that victimizes the Palestinians every day so we have to

38:15

help to bring it down uh and and I think that what really uh motivates me in all

38:23

these conversation that I’m trying to push forward to that people would replace the

38:29

conversation about the peace process the two-state solution that is around the

38:35

corner the kissing cousins you know all this language that says oh there’s a

38:41

peace camp in Israel there’s a peace camp in Palestine if only the reasonable people on both sides would meet there

38:47

would be a solution in order to get rid of this language we need to start the conversation about the end of Israel not

38:55

just as a slogan in our demonstrations but is telling everyone

39:01

who’s interested even those who are afraid of this scenario to say to them

39:07

this is going to happen if whether you like it whether you’re excited about

39:12

this idea or whether you are afraid and you’re entitled to be afraid if you are part of a privileged society and after

39:19

more than 100 Year 20 years of repression you should be afraid of Retribution and revenge you should be

39:26

and and you yeah exactly and and and I think you had a taste you had a taste on the 7th of

39:33

October what happens when you treat people the way you treat them so you should be afraid of such a scenario but

39:40

if you are not engaged in this conversation you will have no input in it and you can have even an input in

39:48

this conversation as a Jewish citizen of Israel if you want to be part of a much

39:53

better future a future that uh is acknowledging I always call it the Three

39:59

A’s the future of the Three A’s the first a and this is our job if at all uh

40:07

we are going to succeed with the Israeli Society with this I’m not sure but definitely we are succeeding when facing

40:15

the world the first a is acknowledgement acknowledgement This is

40:20

highly important and I think many of us have devoted Our Lives as academics as

40:28

activist to try and let people acknowledge first of all the crime

40:33

against humanity that was perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people

40:39

first of all in 1948 and since 1948 we don’t want just an acknowledgement to

40:44

the genocide in Gaza we want an acknowledgement for the incremental genocide of Gaza that began in 2007 to

40:52

the incre to the uh ethnic cleansing in 1948 that never end

40:58

uh in many ways I think Palestinians have trapped themselves with the term nakba NBA is a bit like a natural

41:05

disaster it doesn’t have anyone who’s responsible this is not a NBA this is a crime against humanity it’s much more

41:11

powerful than a NBA this is a crime because in the nakba nobody is

41:17

responsible in the crime we know who the criminals are and we know who are the victims of the crime so we should call

41:24

it the crime against the Palestinians not only the war against [Applause]

41:32

Palestine and I think that this this kind of uh acknowledgement the first aid

41:40

is something that uh should be done through University campuses and it’s not

41:45

done yet that’s how Palestine should be taught in our universities in our

41:50

schools that’s the way the media should talk about Palestine we’re not there yet

41:56

we have done great job I remember Coming to America in 1980 you couldn’t mention the word Palestine without being called

42:02

a terrorist so we are in a better place we’re in a much better place but we need

42:07

even to do more the second a is accountability acknowledgement without

42:13

accountability is useless and the only way that you I can

42:19

imagine how people who acknowledge either the crime itself or even

42:25

complicity in the crime or even complicity of their parents or their grandparents I don’t care I mean we we

42:32

we have to have fine tuning for the acknowledgement of course there’s a different when the criminal acknowledges

42:38

the crime and where someone from the outside Witnesses acknowledge the crime

42:43

but we need the acknowledgement of the crime of everyone but the accountability is of everyone who has

42:50

been complicit in the crime itself and this of course begins with

42:55

the Zionist but it’s not only the arist there are people in the Arab world who are complicit in this

43:05

crime there are people in the Muslim world who are complicit in this crime there are people in the western

43:13

world that are people in this country who are convinced in this crime and

43:18

accountability is finding the restorative justice that makes the acknowledgement

43:26

into a new reality the easiest way to try and begin to talk

43:31

about it is the right of Return of the refugees of course a return of the ref but it’s not only the return of the

43:37

Refuge it’s redistribution of the natural resources it is re it’s building

43:43

a political regime that the people of Palestine themselves would tell us which they want as a vision for the future and

43:51

will tell the Jews who stay in Palestine how they see themsel how they see them

43:57

in in the future which was exactly the opposite way as the what I used to call

44:03

the peace Orthodoxy in this country looked at Palestine and Israel they

44:08

always looked at this as an Israeli uh uh problem and that the Palestinians

44:14

have to react to so Israel was the one that produced the peace plans and the Palestinians reacted we want the

44:20

Palestinian not peace plan we want a Palestinian Liberation plan decolonization plan and in colonization

44:27

plan you also tell the settlers you tell the settler Society how you see them in

44:34

the future and that can decide whether they want to go along with this or not to go along with this finally and I

44:40

think this is important for not just for the Jews of palestin because there are other minorities that were not treated

44:46

that well in the last 10 years especially in the mashrek where Palestine is located and this is

44:52

acceptance acceptance I think that uh despite 120 years of Oppression of

45:00

brutality and so on you would like to accept those who are willing to go through the process of acknowledging and

45:08

accountability and building a a a joint future together because otherwise

45:14

decolonization becomes a violent project that does not produce a better reality

45:20

even if it’s a more liberated one as we’ve seen elsewhere and I think this is

45:26

something which is not just relevant to Palestine it’s relevant to all the different

45:31

communities uh in Syria and Iraq that really suffered in the last I don’t want to mention all the names but you know

45:38

them who suffered in the last 20 years and was not recognized as legitimate

45:43

members of that society and it all goes back to the moment before Zionism

45:49

arrived in Palestine when coexistence was not a dirty word invented by

45:55

American political science but was a genuine way of how people

46:02

lived acknowledging each other’s communal identity respecting It sharing

46:08

its troubles Jo rejoicing in its moments of of of

46:14

success showing solidarity I don’t want to romanticize it I don’t want to

46:19

idealize it but it was a very different reality it was a different reality in

46:25

Palestine it was a different different reality in Lebanon in Syria and all in

46:31

all this whole political structure in which Israel strived will have to change as well as

46:39

part of this process of acknowledging being accountable and accepting and I

46:45

really think that the slogan Palestine should be free from the river to the sea

46:51

is a very good uh way of encapsulating this idea not only for

46:57

Palestine but really for the whole people first of all in the mashrik in the Eastern Mediterranean but also for

47:03

the Arab world as a whole uh which is like a huge ship in a rough sea that is

47:10

looking for a safe anchor and I always say to the Israelis even if you have the best cabin

47:17

on the Titanic if it drowns drowns you will drown with it and if it will reach

47:23

a safe haven you will also benefit from that thank you

47:30

[Applause] [Music]

47:38

[Music]

48:00

as you wish I mean whatever whatever the organizers

48:09

up do wish I’m I’m

48:18

easy yeah okay let’s have one more round of applause for

48:34

I know you’re getting excited for Aladdin food but I think we’re going to take we’re going to do a Q&A in the

48:39

other room while we eat and have wine or iszy fizzy drink if that’s what you prefer but I think we’re going to take

48:46

one or two questions right now from Dr Pape soone

48:57

yes so if you have a question why don’t you walk right up here so that uh everybody can hear you and see you and

49:03

I’ll give you the mic uh just to give everyone a chance to hear some of these um general

49:15

questions can you come here turn to the okay just three questions here and

49:22

then we’re going to go into the other room can you come here and T this way

49:27

told you it’s the seat of the king

49:36

[Music]

49:42

it’s thank you I want to ask uh Dr

49:49

P uh yesterday I listened to uh the

49:54

sobering uh expectation and I thought

50:00

the movement here in the Jewish community in the among the youth is a

50:07

strategic breakthrough for development of of free

50:14

Palestine in that we don’t have the unanimity of the Jewish community in the

50:19

United States in support Israel and APAC now my sensitive question

50:27

in parallel is the leftwing or any

50:32

Progressive Movement of comparable uh ideality or Outlook in

50:40

Israel is almost nonexistent I understand there is a left there was a

50:45

left even stronger but it has diminished to a point where it is non-existent my

50:52

question is what are the elements

50:57

that could be pushed within the Israeli Society to have that be

51:05

realized much quicker than what I’m witnessing thank

51:12

you thank you um first you’re right the uh the left

51:19

and of course here we are not just talking about uh a movement with an is socialist

51:27

economic perception but we usually when we talk about the left in Israel we think about people who would share our

51:34

ideas about Zionism in Palestine so let’s call them an anti the anti-zionist

51:40

in Israel is a better term because the the left in Israel can be a bit

51:45

misleading uh Zionism always had socialists that believed that Zionism

51:51

and socialism can go together which of course they can’t um so this movement is

51:58

hardly existing that’s absolutely true I do think that uh it’s a dynamic

52:04

situation because uh if governments would have joined

52:10

societies uh and moved from boycott to sanctions I think that that would

52:16

increase the number uh not dramatically but it would increase increase the number of anti-zionist Jews inside

52:24

Israel uh I think that the the events of the last s months although they do not

52:30

produce immediately a change they can have a longer effect again I’m not I’m

52:37

not saying here because I I said I I say it was exactly the opposite you don’t have you you shouldn’t wait for a change

52:45

within Israel as a precondition for the liberation of Palestine no The Liberation of Palestine probably would

52:51

precede inshah the uh change of the of the jewi perception of Zionism inside

52:58

isra it would not be the other way around but I think what the the the person who asked the question is right

53:05

the more this process progresses the better and and I think that um I can

53:13

sense some change uh but it’s not good enough it’s not strong enough but I

53:20

really think that the other processes which I described in the end of my talk

53:26

would also lead to a change within the Jewish Society not a significant one but

53:32

an important one uh it takes time to to talk to deprogram people who are

53:40

indoctrinated from Cradle to grave with Zionism it’s not easy uh when I I moved

53:48

in 2000 into a new place in Israel and the local newspaper wrote that uh people

53:55

should be careful that night because Ive moved to the neighborhood and my wife who is more

54:00

clever than I am said uh let’s invite people to our living room they would see

54:06

who you are because this would be we had children and this was complicated right

54:12

so we opened the living room once a week about 50 uh kind of middle class Israeli

54:21

mostly European Jews came to my living room and for 2 years I think I did quite

54:27

a good job with 50 of them one of my son is very good in arithmetics so he said to me don’t lose

54:34

hope I I calculated all you need is 550 years and and your vision of a free

54:43

Palestine will be coming so this is more or less what I think about

54:48

Israel yeah okay

54:57

yes so we saw what happened with the Arab Spring they had a plan to dissolve

55:04

the governments but no plan for the day after so if we’re building this what are the are there historical models for us

55:12

to build this new vision how do we do it what are the tactics what what would you

55:17

suggest yeah I’m glad you brought the don’t think we should call it an Arab sping

55:24

this is a term in American journalist in

55:29

v it was Arab but it was not a spring uh I I I think it’s it’s it’s important I

55:37

think it’s connected because what we saw is two elements one is that decolonizing a

55:45

country is not decolonizing a people that’s for sure and this is a lesson that Palestinians I think are

55:51

internalizing now that is not enough because uh you’re not enough to liberate

55:57

you know to get rid of the occupier if you don’t get rid of the occupier in your mind and we had some great teachers

56:05

like France about this but the second thing is that the all the energy that

56:11

doesn’t have a vehicle to carry it with it

56:17

creates a vacuum that some other forces can fill not exactly the forces you want

56:23

and and it’s very difficult to convince young people people about the need of organization of structures and so on

56:30

because rightly so they have they’re very skeptic about organization because it creates hierarchy and it produces

56:39

corruption as well but I don’t I think there’s there’s something that I hear

56:44

the younger Palestinian generation of activists are much more aware of it so I

56:49

think there is a lesson of history but there’s also a third lesson of history

56:55

that you know revolutions and DEC colonizations have moments of success

57:00

and moments of failure and it’s usually very difficult when you’re on the ground

57:05

to realize whether what you have experienced is such a big set up setb or

57:11

really something that leads for a much better period so I think also in the

57:16

Arab world the revolution there has not ended yes we have counter Revolution

57:21

this is expected in history we have counter revolution in the Arab but that doesn’t mean the revolution there would

57:28

not be reignited I’m sure it is but I remember being being in Egypt and

57:34

talking to some of the activists and I said to them you you hate uh uh

57:42

structures and I said you’re like people who found a fountain of great Sweet Water and you want to bring it to

57:49

another place but you hate bottles so you bring it with your hands and you’re

57:55

surprised that the water has not arrived its destination so if you don’t like bottles use I don’t know use something

58:00

else uh the this is very very important and you know I’m I’m not a

58:07

Palestinian uh and I’m not going to interfere in these uh discussions yeah

58:12

okay I’m ideologically palestin not biological um but I think that uh it’s

58:19

very important to have the discussion that I hear that there is whether to renew the PLO

58:26

whether to invite Hamas and Jihad to enjoy join the PLO whether to create a new Liberation Organization these are

58:34

question that are not as exciting as protests and so on but they’re highly

58:39

highly important strategically for the future of Palestine the kind of

58:44

political Vehicles because we understand that the present political vehicles that

58:50

carry the Palestinian Liberation are not working are not working and the question

58:56

is is it enough to have this positive energy to to change without it and and

59:02

this is a Palestinian question I I have a small story about whether I’m a Palestinian or

59:08

not I have a very good Palestinian friend and she was traveling to Qatar from benon airport and she was worried

59:15

that the Israelis will not allow her to attend a conference in Qatar so she

59:21

consulted uh a human rights lawyer m spff in in Israel whether she will get

59:30

there will be trouble for her in the airport so he asked her other any Jews participating in that conference and she

59:37

said yes Elan puy said no no I asked about

59:48

Jews she got there she got there they friends the friends EX

59:56

exactly exactly yeah yeah

1:00:03

okay it seems to me that a big obstacle to a a dialogue and a discourse and

1:00:10

we’re certainly far away from it now is that uh uh Israel’s leaders uh and its

1:00:18

its people and its supporters in the United States and in the West in general

1:00:23

uh don’t recognize the occupation that is I I heard a foreign minister of

1:00:30

Israel say uh on the air uh a week ago

1:00:35

that we don’t call it that they don’t call it an occupation or a military occupation the word I’ve heard is the

1:00:42

situation which is indeed very V uh so I think that I’m asking you uh how can we

1:00:50

bridge that Gap so that people say in the west stop talking about anti-Semitism and start talking about

1:00:56

the occupation yeah thank you by the way I I think that uh I I I remember talking

1:01:03

to people I even remember even myself in 63 64 when I became aware of the

1:01:11

situation in the Galilee don’t and Professor May would correct me if I’m wrong I don’t remember Palestinians in

1:01:19

the Galilee talking about the nagva they were talking about occupation and I think that’s where it starts we had long

1:01:27

time ago we should have used the term occupation for the

1:01:32

creation of the state of Israel this was the this was the the first kind of

1:01:39

occupation and we then didn’t call it and with the help of international law we called it the legal establishment of

1:01:47

the state of Israel and and I think that’s that’s that’s the original sin if

1:01:52

not talking in the Church of this is the original sin this is the original sin uh

1:01:59

of this kind of uh reference but I think you’re absolutely right the vocabulary

1:02:05

that we are using is something that we should insist on and it doesn’t matter what people tell us we should insist we

1:02:13

are not talking about peace we’re talking about decolonization we’re not talking about the only democracy in the

1:02:18

Middle East we’re talking about the only aparte states in the Middle East and we

1:02:24

are not talking about an enlightened occupation or a progressive ethnic cleanser or a liberal occupier we’re

1:02:32

talking about an ethnic cleanser occupier and an oppressor and and the more we insist about these VES the

1:02:40

[Applause] better hi um I um I’m a little nervous

1:02:50

because I’m gonna um present sort of a u a different

1:02:57

perspective um for years I turned a blind eye to the situation in Israel and

1:03:04

Gaza because it just seems so freaking complicated uh with with you know oh oh

1:03:13

um I said I turned a blind can you hear me now yeah yeah I I said for years I turned a blind eye to to the situation

1:03:20

to uh to uh Israel and uh Gaza because

1:03:26

it’s so freaking complicated and decades and Decades of history involved and gee

1:03:33

what can I one one person do anyway so now um we can’t ignore it anymore those

1:03:42

of us who who did um and so I’ve been trying to learn

1:03:47

I really want to learn more about this complex

1:03:54

history what can concerns me is there’s there’s there’s not just

1:04:01

three main parties involved Israel the Palestinians and the US

1:04:09

there’s this massive party that I’m not hearing

1:04:15

people talk about I was ignorant I did not

1:04:20

know that Iran uh Qatar

1:04:28

Russia I I guess sometimes Syria sometimes um well anyway there

1:04:35

Venezuela I mean there there are several states that have been funding and arming

1:04:42

Hamas for years not to take on the mighty Israeli

1:04:48

Army you know they can’t but to continually to embed themselves amongst

1:04:54

Palestinians and constantly constantly here you know these incursions you know

1:04:59

to to poke the bear I’m just going to call it a bear poke poke the monster and

1:05:06

um also at the same time when there were opportunities apparently years ago for

1:05:12

to for the formation of a Palestinian these same parties these same parties

1:05:18

blocking blocking um that what is your question I I I am about to ask my like

1:05:25

question okay well I mean there there I I I get one you know one different

1:05:31

perspective here for the even okay so my question is and why did they block the

1:05:37

formation of a Palestinian state yet keep you know having Hamas do the

1:05:42

gorilla Warfare so so why why are we not talking

1:05:48

and and and Lincoln when he’s trying to get the the um the cap the uh you know

1:05:54

the captives back uh the hostages and trying to negotiate

1:05:59

why is he negotiating with these other countries to get the hostages and get so

1:06:06

my point is why why are we not hearing about these other parties because if we really really really want to end

1:06:15

this why are we not calling out these public why are we not try calling out

1:06:20

these puppeteers as well you know why are we not saying boycott guar Airlines

1:06:26

boycot this that the other okay I think I I think I I I I

1:06:34

understood okay okay

1:06:41

okay answer yeah thank you I think that uh first of all it’s

1:06:46

not a complicated situation at all Israel has

1:06:52

created Israel has created a F of complexity uh complexity in order to

1:07:01

exactly to tell people we are the only one who understand exactly what’s happening so when you know ordinary

1:07:08

people in the world said you know if you came to someone else’s Homeland and you kick them

1:07:14

out and you are still occupying their Homeland this is not complicated you are

1:07:20

the occupier and they are the occupier you are the colonizer you are the colon

1:07:27

now all over the world people who were colonized stag in anti-colonialist War

1:07:33

of Liberation against the colonization Palestinians are not different if someone comes and settles in your

1:07:40

Homeland you will fight against them now who are the allies of the colonizer

1:07:47

first of all it’s the United States of America every dollar of your tax money

1:07:53

goes to the oppression of the Palestinians almost every dollar of your taxpayer

1:07:58

that’s every every uh uh country in the west is supporting Israel India is

1:08:05

supportting Israel so the Palestinians were looking over the years like every un other antic

1:08:12

colonialist movement to some powers in the world that might help

1:08:17

them and it started with the Soviet Union it started with Soviet Union

1:08:23

because in some perod the Soviet Union was willing to help the Palestinians to

1:08:30

face what became the strongest military power in the Middle East representing

1:08:35

the strongest military power in the world that doesn’t mean that doesn’t

1:08:41

mean that Palestinians were not aware of violation of human rights in the Soviet

1:08:47

Union but they were also aware that without the Soviet Union they would be totally destroyed didn’t have at least

1:08:54

some weapons to defend the and that is true about after the end of the Cold War so those Regional powers

1:09:03

that support the Palestinians are very small in comparison in what they can

1:09:08

offer the Palestinians to the huge military aid that Israel gets from the

1:09:15

United States and the West so yes Palestinian appreciate the help that

1:09:22

they get does it mean that you have Palestinians who appreciate everything that is done with

1:09:29

the record let’s say of Human Rights or civil rights in Iraq or in Kata no no it

1:09:34

doesn’t but the whole narrative that says that the 7th of October is an

1:09:40

action by Iran to change the the Middle East is is an Israeli

1:09:47

fabrication Iran is [Applause] developing Iran is develop Iran to

1:09:55

remember Iran was willing to sign with the United States a nuclear deal who failed the nuclear deal with Iran Israel

1:10:04

Benjamin nany came to the house to the Capital Hill and and and succeeded in uh

1:10:11

with the help of trump to change that kind of an agreement that would have this led at least to some

1:10:18

deescalation in the tension so this is the reality now if you want to deal and

1:10:25

want shoot you by the way with a problem of human rights and civil rights in countries such as Iran in Syria that

1:10:32

definitely human rights problem there don’t exclude Israel from this

1:10:37

conversation if you have to proper conversation about violation of Human Rights you have to include Israel in it

1:10:45

now finally about I don’t know where you got the information about Iran foiling the two-state solution no

1:10:54

was just no Israel doesn’t want the two

1:10:59

[Applause] states isra doesn’t want the two [Applause]

1:11:10

Stan State no no that is not true if uh they they some some people including

1:11:18

myself believed that the two-state solution is not a good solution so you have some people in the Arab world who

1:11:24

also in a one state solution but that’s a Palestinian State solution so I don’t

1:11:30

know about anyone in the Arab world who doesn’t want a Palestinian estate so

1:11:35

that that’s not an issue so really I think so that I really think that it’s

1:11:40

very important not to look all the time at the of at Iran and and and and before

1:11:49

that about Syria and other places as places that only produce aggression these are are countries that

1:11:56

were colonized and attacked by American imperialism again and again and they are

1:12:03

fighting and I wish I wish also for them that they would have a better uh uh

1:12:10

regimes and more equal regimes and so on but that doesn’t change the the fact

1:12:17

that uh at least on the question of Palestine they showed a much higher

1:12:22

level of morality than ever the United States [Applause]

1:12:34

so I’m seeing that people are getting empty and needing to to get up and and

1:12:39

move I want I want to take a poll of the crowd do you want these gentlemen have been waiting in line do you want to take their two questions yes okay all right

1:12:46

we’ll take these two questions thank you very much for the

1:12:53

leure uh I’m from doctors against genocide as you can see and as we are

1:12:59

speaking here you know kids and women in Gaza are being killed right now they’re

1:13:04

being slaughtered the blood is all over the place so my question I have two questions that I’m not going to take

1:13:10

that long I seen you talking about uh uh massacr and War crime and all that kind

1:13:16

of stuff you didn’t mention genocide was that intentional or it just slipped you

1:13:21

know and he didn’t mention it because from what I see that it is it is an obvious genocide and it has been going

1:13:28

on since neba actually is supposed to be called genocide to start with the second

1:13:34

question is uh Israel will be will be uh will be held accountable for this

1:13:40

genocide in Gaza now the countries are complicit in this genocide do you think that they will be held accountable and

1:13:47

does that cause a conflict in The International Community does that cause a division and thank you thank you first

1:13:55

I did mention I said not only we should call what’s happening now in Gaza in genocide I said there was an incremental

1:14:02

genocide before to so I did

1:14:07

mention you missed that particular sentence which is fine um as for the

1:14:13

international I I think you you know this is this is a big moment for international law it’s a huge moment for

1:14:19

international law and uh the rest of the world so to speak as Stuart Hall used to

1:14:26

call it uh is looking at both the icj and ICC the international court of

1:14:32

justice and the international criminal court to see how they would react to what goes on in Gaza because already

1:14:40

before that they had very little confidence that these supposedly Universal tribunals of international law

1:14:47

are really Universal and and Palestine was always one of the most the strongest proof for

1:14:55

them that these bodies are not Universal and they think that there’s

1:15:03

this is a historical moment for those bodies and jurists who represented the

1:15:10

national law to show them that they were wrong to think that this is really not a

1:15:16

universal body that really judges equally people around the world but they

1:15:21

actually serves the interests of the West and the global so it’s I don’t want to to predict I

1:15:28

don’t know I think they’re really debating it they’re really debating it it’s not a

1:15:35

coincidence that not one country in the global nose would have dared to go to

1:15:40

the IJ and say we want you to pass a ruling on genocide in Gaza it’s not

1:15:47

surprising not one you you you know we cannot even imagine even the most

1:15:52

Progressive country I don’t know like nor way when it comes to to Palestine they would do that they wouldn’t dare to

1:15:58

do that so you needed South Africa and you needed Venezuela in Colombia we needed them we

1:16:06

needed them otherwise who would go to the icj now they are in

1:16:12

trouble because uh what do they do so Germany immediately said we’re with

1:16:18

Israel Germany was once on the wrong side of History it wants to be once again on the wrong side of History

1:16:25

that’s the problem of the Germans not it’s not our problem it’s the problem of Germany very educated people behaving

1:16:31

like infantiles in Germany it’s unbelievable unbelievable what goes on there um but uh putting that aside I

1:16:40

think it’s a moment of truth now I don’t know I don’t know if they will you know

1:16:46

seize that moment but if they don’t which is possible this is not over this is not

1:16:53

over uh 20 30 years ago nobody in the international court of justice heard

1:16:59

about the indigenous people of America now they heard now they know about them

1:17:04

they haven’t heard about the first nations in Canada now they know about them they don’t do much about that but

1:17:10

they know about they know about them things sometimes move too slowly but at

1:17:15

least they’re moving in the right direction [Applause]

1:17:23

you do you mind hand not at all honor to meet you thank you thank

1:17:30

you very much uh my name is Dr Nal Jabor me and my brother Al and few other

1:17:36

doctors Palestinian doctors co- founded a new organization called doctors against genocide we the Palestinian had

1:17:44

to do it because the politicians and the world failed us and we the doctors have

1:17:51

to do it because also the politicians failed us so we think it’s time for the doctors to step in and do the work so

1:17:58

thank you Dr Pap thank you for all the hard work you do and you did you have been doing for Palestine we really

1:18:04

appreciate your work we read all your books we actually have a conference in deor at the Civic Center uh on Saturday

1:18:12

from 10:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. it’s called A Century of genocide on Palestine it’s uh

1:18:18

mostly by the medical community we have some genocide Scholars also some lawyers so please everyone welcome to uh attend

1:18:25

you can go on our uh website drors genocide. org to

1:18:30

register uh now my question to Dr pape I think Dr Allah mentioned some of it but

1:18:37

we as Palestinians think the genocide started at the first Zionist conference

1:18:42

at pesel 1987 the first minute they said land with no people for people with their no

1:18:49

land they raised our existence that was the first intent of genocide Rael of the

1:18:54

Palestinian people and putting the plan and the program to get rid of these people by any means

1:19:02

possible uh then the British helped them with this and the program of genocide started then the nakba the catastrophe

1:19:10

is not an abstract as Dr Pepe mentioned it is not an incident of war the product

1:19:16

of the was not an incident of War it was a all pre-planned crime of genocide by the Zionist entity

1:19:24

against the Palestinian people and when we say the Palestinian people say nak was a genocide then everyone should

1:19:32

please accept or at least respect what we feel we feel it was genocide we are

1:19:37

the one who feel the pain and we are the one who are going to decide we are not going to wait for the International

1:19:43

Community for 20 years from now to say that what’s happening in Gaza and genocide we own this

1:19:51

struggle and we make the rulings what is happening is genocide it has been a

1:19:56

genocide we have to call it as such the only reason we have an ongoing nakba is because as Dr mentioned

1:20:04

acknowledgement accountability and acceptance the Naka has never been acknowledged if it has been acknowledged

1:20:11

as a genocide then I think would have been in a much better situation they all

1:20:16

lied to us and they said it was a war one part one one party one the other

1:20:22

party lost and that’s it no it was not it was pre-program pre-plan genocide it should have been acknowledged them and

1:20:28

treated as such and the perpetrators should have been held accountable at that time so the whole International

1:20:35

Community the United Nations the West the whole International people failed the Palestinians and did not acknowledge

1:20:43

our genocide which is similar to denial of the Holocaust it is a denial to our genocide which was committed in 1948 and

1:20:51

we demand that and we uh would like all our supporters to start

1:20:59

uh presenting the conflict it’s not a conflict it’s a genocide as such use the

1:21:05

right language the right terms because language matters uh and uh thank you thank you

1:21:11

very much thank [Applause] you you want to WR one final comment and

1:21:18

then I think we’ll head over there’s incredible food waiting for all of us and we can continue our question answer

1:21:24

period there yeah yeah definitely I I I think that it’s true that uh before you

1:21:29

eliminate people you talk about elimination so definitely this was a formative period I think we still have

1:21:36

to be careful uh because there are definitions legal definition moral

1:21:43

definitions of of genocide that definitely are appropriate what’s happening now uh and as Dr his name um

1:21:55

mention this is a legitimate position as well I think that ethnic cleansing is

1:22:02

also a terrible crime and that is to my mind what happened in 1948 because

1:22:07

elimination of the Native can be achieved by removing the expelling

1:22:14

massively expelling by massively killing so definitely Palestine was genocide the

1:22:20

country people were not genocided in in 1948 they were ethnic land but that’s a

1:22:27

huge crime against humanity but what we are witnessing now is genocide and the

1:22:33

reason is that the ethnic cleansing did not work half of the Palestinians

1:22:39

remained in Palestine and many Palestinian remained near Palestine and

1:22:44

when the ethnic lensing is not working the perpetrator moves to more brutal

1:22:51

inhuman action such as genocide and I think accuracy here is important we we

1:22:57

should be accurate we should know the facts we should know our definitions

1:23:02

it’s good to have a sense of justice it’s good to have a sense of morality but it’s also good to be professional

1:23:09

and accurate like a doctor should be accurate in their medical treatment we should be accurate as historians as

1:23:16

professionals to make sure that uh we know what we’re talking about because

1:23:23

truth is of our side really it is on our when it comes to the truth the

1:23:28

Palestinians are very little to lose thank

1:23:35

[Applause] you one more real big round of applause

1:23:44

for thank you so much for being here with us

1:23:51

today there incredible spread of

oooooo

Israel as a Landed Aircraft Carrier

By Michael Monday, November 13, 2023

Interviews Middle East Permalink

(https://michael-hudson.com/2023/11/israel-as-a-landed-aircraft-carrier/)

Transcript

BEN NORTON: Why does the United States so strongly support Israel?

In this video today, I’m going to be explaining the geopolitical and economic reasons why Israel is such an important part of U.S. foreign policy and Washington’s attempt to dominate not only the region of the Middle East, but really the entire world.

For this analysis today, I had the privilege of being joined by the economist Michael Hudson. I will bring him in later to provide further details about this topic. But first, I want to highlight some very important basic context to understand this relationship.

It is crucial to stress that Israel is an extension of U.S. geopolitical power in one of the most critically important regions of the world. 

In fact, it was current U.S. President Joe Biden, back in 1986, when he was a senator, who famously said that, if Israel didn’t exist, the United States would have to invent it:

BIDEN/VIDEO: If we look at the Middle East, I think it’s about time we stop, those of us who support, as most of us do, Israel in this body, for apologizing for our support for Israel.

There is no apology to be made. None. It is the best $3 billion investment we make.

Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region; the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.

I am with my colleagues who are on the floor of the Foreign Relations Committee, and we worry at length about NATO; and we worry about the eastern flank of NATO, Greece and Turkey, and how important it is. They pale by comparison…

They pale by comparison in terms of the benefit that accrues to the United States of America.

BEN NORTON: First of all, it goes without saying that the so-called Middle East, or a better term is West Asia, has some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas, and the entire economic infrastructure all around the world relies on fossil fuels.

We are gradually moving toward new energy sources, but fossil fuels are still absolutely critical to the entire global economy. And Washington’s goal has been to make sure that it can maintain steady prices in the global oil and gas markets.

But this is about something much bigger than just oil and gas. The U.S. military’s stated policy since the 1990s, since the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union, is that the United States has tried to maintain control over every region of the world.

This was stated very clearly by the U.S. National Security Council in 1992 in the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. The U.S. National Security Council wrote:

[The United States’] goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated, nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security.

Then, in 2004, the U.S. government published its National Military Strategy, in which Washington stressed that its goal was “Full Spectrum Dominance – the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations”.

Now, historically, when it came to the Middle East, the U.S. relied on a so-called “twin pillar” strategy. The west pillar was Saudi Arabia, and the east pillar was Iran. And until the 1979 revolution in Iran, the country was governed by a dictator, a shah, the monarch, who was backed by the United States and served U.S. interests in the region.

However, with the 1979 revolution, the U.S. lost one of the pillars of its twin pillar strategy, and Israel became increasingly important for the United States to maintain control over this crucially strategic region.

It’s not just the massive oil reserves and gas reserves in the region; it’s not just the fact that many of the world’s top oil and gas producers are located in West Asia. It’s also the fact that some of the most important trading routes on Earth also go through this region.

It would be difficult to overstate how important Egypt’s Suez Canal is. This connects trade from the Middle East going into Europe, from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, and around 30 percent of all of the world’s shipping containers pass through the Suez Canal. That represents around 12% of the total global trade of all goods. 

Then, directly south of the Suez Canal, where the Red Sea enters the Arabian Sea, you have a crucial geostrategic choke point known as the Bab al-Mandab Strait, right off the coast of Yemen. And there, more than 6 million barrels of oil pass through every single day.

Historically, the United States has tried to dominate this region in order to maintain control not only of energy supplies, but also to ensure these global trade routes that the entire globalized neoliberal economic system is built on.

And as U.S. influence in the region has weakened in an increasingly multipolar world, Israel has become increasingly important for the United States to try to maintain control.

We can see this clearly in the discussions over oil prices through OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has essentially been expanded and is now known as OPEC+ to include Russia.

Now Saudi Arabia and Washington’s archenemy, Russia, play a key role in determining global oil prices.

Historically, Saudi Arabia was a loyal U.S. proxy, but increasingly Riyadh has been maintaining a more non-aligned foreign policy. And a very big reason for that is that China is now the biggest trading partner of many of the countries in the region. For a decade, China has been the largest importer of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf.

Furthermore, through its global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, China is moving the center of world trade back to Asia. And in the Belt and Road Initiative, the “road” in particular is a reference to the New Silk Road.

Can you guess which region is absolutely crucial in the New Silk Road and the Belt and Road Initiative? Well, of course, it’s the Middle East – or, again, a better term is West Asia, and that term actually much better explains the geostrategic importance of this region, because it connects Asia to Europe.

This also explains why the United States has been so desperate to try to challenge the Belt and Road with its own attempts to build new trade routes. In particular, the U.S. is trying to make a trade route going from India into the Persian Gulf, and then up through Israel.

So in all of these projects, Israel plays an important role, as an extension of U.S. imperial power in one of the most important regions of the world. That is why Biden said back in 1986 that if Israel didn’t exist, the U.S. would have to invent it.

That is also why Biden repeated this in a White House meeting with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on October 27, 2022:

We’re also going to discuss the ironclad commitment – and this is, I’ll say this 5000 times in my career – the ironclad commitment the United States has to Israel, based on our principles, our ideas, our values; they’re the same values. 

And I have often said, Mr. President [Herzog], if there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one.

And even as recently as October 18, 2023, Biden once again repeated the same thing in a speech he made in Israel: “I have long said, if Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it”.

In that speech in 2023, Biden traveled to Israel in order to support the country as it was carrying out a brutal bombing campaign in Gaza, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians as part of what many experts around the world have referred to as a “textbook case of genocide”.

Top United Nations experts have warned that the Palestinian people are in danger of genocide by Israel. 

And the United States has steadfastly been supporting Israel, because once again, as Joe Biden said, Israel is an extension of U.S. imperial power in West Asia; and if it didn’t exist, Washington would have to invent it.

Now, on that note, I am going to go to the interview that I did with friend of the show Michael Hudson, the brilliant economist and author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.

Here is a brief clip from our conversation:

MICHAEL HUDSON: Israel is a landed aircraft carrier in the Near East. Israel is the takeoff point for America to control the Near East…

The United States has always viewed Israel as just our foreign military base… When England first passed the act saying that there should be an Israel, the Balfour Declaration, it was because Britain wanted to control the Near East and its oil supplies…

And then after that, of course, when Truman came in, the military immediately saw that America was replacing England as the chief of the Near East…

What we’re really seeing is, having fought Russia to the last Ukrainian, and threatening to fight Iran to the last Israeli, the United States is trying to send arms to Taiwan to say, wouldn’t you like to fight to the last Taiwanese against China?

And that’s really the U.S. strategy all over the world; it’s trying to fuel other countries to fight wars for its own control.

BEN NORTON: Michael, thanks for joining me today. We are speaking on November 9, and the latest death toll in the war in Gaza is that Israel has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians.

The United Nations has referred to Gaza as a “graveyard for children”. More than 4,000 children have been killed. About 40% of the casualties are children. 

And the United States has continued to support Israel, not only diplomatically and politically, not only by, for instance, vetoing resolutions in the U.N. Security Council that call for a ceasefire, but furthermore, the U.S. has been sending billions of dollars to Israel.

Not only the $3.8 billion that the U.S. always gives to Israel every year in military aid, but additionally, tens of billions of dollars more. 

So I am wondering if you could provide your analysis of why you think the U.S. is investing so many resources in supporting Israel while it is clearly committing war crimes.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, certainly it is supporting Israel, but it’s not supporting Israel because this is an altruistic act.

To the United States, Israel is its landed aircraft carrier in the Near East. Israel is the takeoff point for America to control the Near East.

And from the very time there was talk of creating an Israel, it was always that Israel was going to be an outpost, first of England, then of Russia, then of the United States in the Near East.

And I can give you an anecdote. Netanyahu’s main national security advisor for the last few years has been Uzi Arad. I worked at the Hudson Institute for about five years. And I worked very closely with Uzi there.

Uzi and I made two trips to Korea and Japan to talk about international finance. So we had a good chance to get to know each other. And on one trip, we stopped over from New York to San Francisco. And in San Francisco, there was a party or a gathering for people to meet us.

And one of the U.S. generals came over and slapped Uzi on the back and said, you’re our landed aircraft carrier over there. We love you.

Well, I could see Uzi feeling, tightening up and getting very embarrassed and didn’t really have anything to say. But the United States has always viewed Israel as just our foreign military base, not Israel.

So of course, it wants to secure this military base.

But when England first passed the act saying there should be in Israel the Balfour Declaration, it was because Britain wanted to control the Near East and its oil supplies.

When Israel was formed in the United Nations, the first country to recognize it was Stalin and Russia, who thought that Russians were going to have a major influence over Israel.

And then after that, of course, when Truman came in, the military immediately saw that America was replacing England as the chief of the Near East. And that was even after the fight, the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953.

So from the United States, it’s not Israel’s wagging the American tail, just the opposite. You mentioned that America is supporting Israel. I don’t think America is supporting Israel at all, nor do most Israelis, nor do most Democrats.

America is supporting Netanyahu. It’s supporting Likud, not Israel. The majority of Israelis, certainly the non-religious Israelis, the core population of Israel since its founding, is opposing Likud and its policies.

And so what really is happening is that to the United States, Netanyahu is the Israeli version of Zelensky in the Ukraine.

And the advantage of having such an unpleasant, opportunist, and corrupt person as Netanyahu, who is under indictment for his bribery and corruption, is precisely that all of the attention now of the whole world that is so appalled by the attacks going on in Gaza, they’re not blaming the United States.

They’re blaming Israel. They’re blaming Netanyahu and Israel for it, when it’s the United States that has been sending plane load after plane load of bombs, of guns. There are 22,000 machine guns, automatic guns, that are banned for sale in the United States that America is sending for the settlers to use on the West Bank.

So there’s a pretense of good cop, bad cop. You have Mr. Blinken telling Netanyahu, when you bomb hospitals, make sure you do it according to the rules of war. And when you kill 100,000 Gaza children, make sure it’s all legal and in the war. And when you talk about ethnic cleansing and driving a population out, make sure that it’s all done legal.

Well, of course, it’s not the rules of war, and there are war crimes being committed, but the United States is pretending to tell Netanyahu and the Israeli government, use smaller bombs. Be more gentle when you bomb the children in the hospital, when actually this is all for show.

The United States is trying to say, well, we’re only there to give help to an ally. The whole world has noticed that the U.S. now has two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, right off the Near Eastern shore, and it has an atomic submarine near the Persian Gulf.

Why are they there? President Biden and Congress say we are not going to have American troops fighting Hamas in Gaza. We’re not going to get involved. Well, if the troops are not going to get involved, why are they there?

Well, we know what the American planes are doing. Yesterday, they bombed yet another airport and a fuel depot in Syria. They’re bombing Syria. And it’s very clear that they’re there not to protect Israel, but to fight Iran.

Again and again, every American newspaper, when it talks about Hamas, it says Hamas is acting on behalf of Iran. When it talks about Hezbollah, and is there going to be an intervention from Lebanon against northern Israel, they say Hezbollah are the Iranian puppets.

Any time they talk about any Near Eastern leader, it’s really that all these leaders are puppets of Iran, just like in Ukraine and Central Europe, they talk about Hungary and other countries as all being puppets of Putin in Russia.

Their focus, really – America isn’t trying to fight to protect Ukraine. It’s fighting for the last Ukrainian to be exhausted in what they’d hoped would be depleting Russia’s military. Well, it hasn’t worked.

Well, the same thing in Israel. If the United States is pushing Israel and Netanyahu to escalate, escalate, escalate, to do something that at a point is going to lead Nasrallah to finally say, okay, we can’t take it anymore. We’re coming in and helping rescue the Gazians and especially rescue the West Bank, where just as much fighting is taking place. We’re going to come in.

And that’s when the United States will then feel free to move not only against Lebanon, but all the way via Syria, Iraq, to Iran.

What we’re seeing in Gaza and the West Bank today is only the catalyst, the trigger for the fact that the neocons say we are never going to have a better chance than we have right now to conquer Iran.

So this is the point for the showdown, that if America is to control Near Eastern oil, and by controlling Near Eastern oil, by bringing it under the US control, it can control the energy imports of much of the world.

And therefore, this gives American diplomats the power to cut off oil and gas and to sanction any country that tries to go multipolar, any country that tries to resist US unipolar control.

BEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, I think you’re really hitting such an important point, which is how this is one of the most geostrategic regions of the world, especially when it comes to hydrocarbons.

The entire global economy is still very heavily reliant on oil and gas, and especially considering the US is not part of OPEC, and especially now considering that OPEC has really expanded essentially to OPEC+ and now includes Russia.

That means that Saudi Arabia and Russia essentially can help control global oil prices. And we’ve seen this really, in fact, in the United States in the past few years with the rise of consumer price inflation.

We saw that the Biden administration was concerned about gas prices, in particular in the lead up to the midterm elections. And the Biden administration has been releasing a lot of oil from the strategic oil reserves of the United States.

And we can also see these kinds of statements in particular when we go back and look at the Bush administration. There are numerous people involved in the Bush administration and the so-called “War on Terror” who openly talked about how important it was for Washington to dominate this region.

And I’m really thinking of, in 2007, when the top US general and NATO commander Wesley Clark famously disclosed that the Bush administration had made plans to overthrow seven countries in five years. And those were countries in North Africa and West Asia. 

Specifically, he revealed in an interview with journalist Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that Washington’s plans were to overthrow the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran:

WESLEY CLARK: About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me. 

And one of the generals called me and he said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second”.

I said, “Well, you’re too busy”. He said, “No, no”. He says, “We’ve made the decision; we’re going to war with Iraq”.

This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq, why?” He said, “I don’t know”. He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do”.

So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no”. He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They’ve just made the decision to go to war with Iraq”.

He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments”.

And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail”. 

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. 

I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that”.

He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper, and he said, “I just got this down from upstairs”, meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office today, and he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran”.

I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir”. I said, “Well, don’t show it to me”. 

And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” And he said, “Sorry, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry, what did you say his name was? (laughs)

WESLEY CLARK: I’m not going to give you his name. (laughs)

AMY GOODMAN: So go through the countries again. 

WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and then back to Iran.

BEN NORTON: And since then, we of course saw the U.S. war on Iraq. We of course saw the proxy war in Syria that still goes on in many ways. The U.S. is occupying one-third of Syrian territory, including the oil rich areas.

And Trump himself, President Donald Trump, boasted in a 2020 interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he was leaving U.S. troops in Syria to take the oil:

DONALD TRUMP: And then they say, “He left troops in Syria”. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. 

LAURA INGRAHAM: We’re not taking the oil. We’re not taking it. 

DONALD TRUMP: Well, maybe we will, maybe we won’t. 

LAURA INGRAHAM: They’re protecting the facilities. 

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know, maybe we should take it. But we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil. 

So they say, “He left troops in Syria”. No, I got rid of all of them, other than we’re protecting the oil; we have the oil.

BEN NORTON: We also saw the U.S. impose sanctions on Lebanon, which contributed to hyperinflation and the destruction of the Lebanese economy. And that was largely because Hezbollah is part of the government, and the U.S. has been pressuring the Lebanese government to create a new government without Hezbollah.

We also saw, of course, that NATO destroyed the Libyan state in 2011. Somalia also has a failed state. And Sudan was divided in no small part thanks to the U.S. and Israel supporting South Sudan’s separatist movement on ethno-religious lines, using religious sectarianism.

So if you look at the list of countries that Wesley Clark named in 2006, the seven countries in five years, again, that was Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran; the only country that really has been able to maintain state stability, that has not been completely devastated by the United States, is Iran.

Of course, it took longer than five years, but the U.S. was pretty successful. And of course Israel has played an important role in this U.S. goal to destabilize those governments in the region.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, let’s look and see how this was done. Remember after America was attacked on 9/11, there was a meeting at the White House, and everybody knew that the pilots were Saudi Arabians, and they knew that some of the pilots had been staying at the Saudi embassy in Los Angeles, I think, in the United States.

But after 9/11, there was a cabinet meeting, and Rumsfeld said to the people there, look and find any link you can get to Iraq, forget Saudi Arabia, no problem, Iraq is the key. And he directed them to find it, and 9/11 became the excuse for attacking not Saudi Arabia, but Iraq, and going right on with it.

Well, you needed a similar crisis in Libya. They said in Libya, there was some, I think, fundamentalists in the suburbs of one of the [cities], not the capital city, that were causing problems. And so you have to “protect” the innocent people from [Muammar Gadhafi], and you go in and grab all of their gold reserves, all of their money, and you take over the oil on behalf of France’s oil monopoly.

Well, this is the role of the fighting in Gaza today. Netanyahu’s fight against Gaza is being used as the excuse for America moving its warships there, its submarines, and bombing, along with Israel, the Syrian airport so that the Syrians are not able to move weapons or any kind of military support either to Lebanon, to the west, or Iran, to the east.

So it’s obvious that all of what we’re seeing is somehow to soften up public opinion for the fact that, well, just like we had to invade Iraq because of 9/11, we have to now finally fight and take out the oil refineries of Iran and their scientific institutes and any laboratories where they may be doing atomic research.

And Iran realizes this. Last week, the Iranian press TV said that their defense minister says that if there’s any attack on Iran, whether by Israel or by anyone else, the U.S. and its foreign bases are going to be hit hard.

Iran, Russia, China have all looked at the Gaza situation not as if it’s an Israeli action, but as if it’s the U.S. action. They all see exactly that it’s all about Iran, and the American press only says when it talks about Gaza or Hamas or Hezbollah or any other group, it’s always the Iranian tool so-and-so.

They’re demonizing Iran in the same way that the neocons have demonized Russia to prepare for America declaring an undeclared war against Iran. And they may even declare war.

Last night, on [November] 8, the Republicans had their presidential debate without Trump, and Nikki Haley said, you know, we’ve got to fight Iran, we’ve got to conquer it. And DeSantis of Florida said, yes, kill them all. He didn’t say who the them was. Was it Hamas? Was it everybody who lives in Gaza? Was it all of the Arabs in the Middle East?

And we’re really seeing something very much like the Crusades here. It’s a real fight for who is going to control energy, because, again, the key, if you can control the world’s flow of energy, you can do to the whole world what the United States did to Germany last year by blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.

You can grind its industry to a halt, its chemical industry, its steelmaking industry, any of its energy-intensive industries, if countries do not agree to U.S. unipolar control. That’s why it wants to control these areas.

Well, the wildcard here is Saudi Arabia. Well, in two days, I think you’re going to have the Iranian president visit Saudi Arabia, and we’re going to see what’s going to happen.

But Saudi Arabia finds that while its role is key, Saudi Arabia could simply say we’re not going to export more oil until America pulls out of the Near East. But then all of Saudi Arabia’s monetary savings are invested in the U.S.

The United States is holding the world hostage, not only by controlling its oil and gas and energy, but by controlling its finance. It’s like you have your money in a mafia bank or in Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency mutual fund. They can do whatever they want with it.

So I think what would happen is it’s very unlikely that Saudi Arabia is ostensibly going to visibly break with the United States because the U.S. would hold it hostage.

But I think what it would do would be what has been talked about ever since the 1960s, when similar problems came with Iran. And Iran’s ace in the hole has always been the ability to sink a ship in the Hormuz Strait, where the oil goes through a very narrow little strait, where if you sink a tanker there or a warship, it’s going to block all of the sea trade with Saudi Arabia.

And that would certainly, number one, take Saudi Arabia off the hook for saying, we can’t help it. Of course, we’d love to export oil, but we can’t because the shipping lanes are all blocked because you, America, attacked Iran and they defended themselves by sinking the ship. So you can’t send your aircraft carriers and submarines to attack Iran. That’s very understandable.

But the United States is causing a world crisis.

Well, obviously, the United States knows that that’s going to happen because it’s been discussed literally for 50 years. Since I was at the Hudson Institute working on national security, it was being discussed what to do when Iran sinks the ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

Well, the United States figures, okay, oil prices are going to go up. And if Iran fights back in this way, we then will have the power to do to the world what we did to Germany in 2022 when we cut off its oil. But in this case, we don’t take the blame.

We’ll say, oh, we didn’t block the Saudi and Arab oil trade. It was that Iran that blocked it, and that’s why we’re going to bomb Iran, assuming that they can.

So that, I think, is the contingency plan. And just as America had a contingency plan just like that, waiting for an opportunity, like 9-11, they needed a trigger, and Netanyahu has provided the trigger. And that’s why the United States has been backing Netanyahu.

And of course, Iran says, well, we have the ability to really wipe out Israel. And in Congress, General Miley and the others have all said, well, we know that Iran could wipe out Israel. That’s why we have to attack Iran.

But in attacking Iran, you send its missiles off to Israel, and again, Israel will end up being the Near Eastern equivalent of Ukraine. And that sort of is the plan, and I think a lot of Israelis see this, and they’re the ones who are worried and are opposing Netanyahu and trying to prevent him from triggering a whole set of military exchanges that Israel won’t be able to resist.

And even though Iran, I’m sure they can bomb some places in Iran, but now that you have Russia, China, all supporting Iran through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, you’re having the lines being drawn very, very clearly.

So it seems that this scenario is inevitable because Mearsheimer pointed out that it’s impossible to have a negotiated solution or settlement between Israel and Palestine. He said you can’t have a two-state solution because the Palestinian state is going to be like an Indian reservation in America, all sort of cut apart and isolated, not really a state.

And you can’t have a single state because a single state is a theocratic state. It’s like, again, it’s like the United States in the Wild West in the 19th century.

And I think the way to put it in perspective is to realize that what we’re seeing today in the attempt to split the world is very much like, excuse me, very much like what happened in the 12th and 13th century with the Crusades.

BEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, you raise a lot of very important points there. And I know you want to talk further about the Crusades and the historical analogy. And I think you made a really good point about the US empire standing in as the new Crusaders.

But before you move away from the more contemporary political discussion, I wanted to highlight two very important points that you stressed. 

One is not only the hydrocarbon reserves in the Middle East, which are so important for the world economy and in the US attempt to maintain control over oil and gas supplies and in particular energy costs.

There’s also an election coming up in 2024, and the US is concerned about gas prices and inflation. And of course, energy inputs are a key factor in inflation.

But furthermore, this region is strategic because of trade routes. Of course, the Suez Canal, according to looking at data here from the World Economic Forum, 30% of the world’s shipping container volume transits through the Suez Canal and 12% of all global trade consists of goods that pass through the Suez Canal.

And we saw this in 2021 when there was this big media scandal when a US ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. And this, of course, also came at the time when the world was coming out of the pandemic and there were all these supply chain shocks.

So we can see how sensitive the global economy is to even small issues in the global supply chain. And when you talk about shipping routes, we’re not only talking about the Suez Canal, we’re also talking about in the Red Sea toward the south.

You also have the Bab al-Mandab. This is a very important strait off of the coast of Yemen. And in the war in Yemen, starting in 2014 and 2015, a lot of the fighting back by the U.S. in this war was in the south, off of the Bab al-Mandab, because this is such an important strait where every single day millions of barrels of oil flow through this strait.

And this also reminded me, Michael, you were talking about the historical context. And if you go back to 1956, Israel invaded Egypt. And why was that? Israel invaded Egypt because Egypt’s leftist president, Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal.

And at that moment, what was very interesting is that the U.K. and France were strongly supporting Israel in this war against Egypt because they were concerned also about Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez. At that moment, the U.S. wasn’t as deeply pro-Israel as it later became.

Of course, in 1967, in the Six-Day War, Israel attacked the neighboring Arab states and occupied part of Egypt, the Sinai, and then also what became Gaza. Israel occupied the Golan Heights of Syria, which remain illegally occupied Syrian territory today. And Israel occupied the West Bank, what we call the West Bank today.

But another important detail about that is, after the 1967 war, Israel increasingly became much more of a U.S. ally.

Whereas the first generation of Israeli leaders were much more, many of them were European, whereas the later generations of Israelis have been really American.

I mean, someone like Netanyahu, he is an American. Netanyahu was raised in the United States. He went to high school in Philadelphia. He went to high school with Reggie Jackson, by the way. He spent his most formative years in the U.S. He went to college at MIT.

He then worked in Boston, and he worked with many Republicans that he became friends with, like Mitt Romney, like Donald Trump. And then when he went back to Israel, he was sent to the U.S. to be a diplomat in the United States.

So the new generation of Israeli leaders is much more American, essentially.

And another detail you mentioned about Iran is so important, because, up until the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Iran of the Shah, the U.S.-backed monarchy, was such an important ally in the region.

And in fact, Saudi Arabia and Iran were famously referred to as the twin pillars. Saudi Arabia was the west pillar and Iran was the east pillar. The U.S. used to try to dominate this region, of course, with the support of Israel as well.

Well, with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the U.S. lost that crucial east pillar, which meant that Israel became even more important from the perspective of the U.S. imperialism to maintain control over this region.

So I just wanted to mention those details of the strategic importance of the trade routes, like the Bab al-Mandab Strait, like the Suez Canal, and also the fact that the Iranian Revolution fundamentally shifted U.S. policy in the region and made Israel even more important from the perspective of U.S. imperialism.

And now we’re in a moment where, as you mentioned, the U.S. is even losing control over Saudi Arabia. So it’s losing both of its pillars, which is, again, why Washington is so desperate in propping up Israel, despite the fact that the entire region is completely against these settler-colonialist policies and these ethnic cleansing policies that Israel is carrying out right now, as the entire world is watching.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, to U.S. diplomats, .

It’s all about oil. America is not giving all this money to Israel because it loves Israel, but because Israel is the military base from which the United States can attack Syria, Iraq, and Iran and Lebanon. So it’s a military base.

And of course, it can frame this in terms of pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish policy, but this is only for the public relations view of the State Department.

If American strategy is based on energy in the Near East, then Israel is only a means to this end. It’s not the end itself. And that’s why the United States needed to have an aggressive Israeli government.

You can look at Netanyahu as being, in a way, a U.S. puppet, very much like Zelensky. Their positions are identical in their reliance on the United States against the majority of their own people.

So you keep talking about America’s support of Israel. It’s not supporting Israel at all. It rejects the majority of Israelis. It supports the Israeli military, not the Israeli society or the culture, have nothing to do with Judaism at all. This is pure military politics, and that’s how I’ve always heard it discussed among the military and national security people.

So you want to be careful not to be taken in by the cover story.

There’s one other means of control, I think, that we should mention, and that is, you’ve had in the last month or so all sorts of statements by the United States that as soon as Russia conquers the Ukraine and solidifies its control, it’s going to bring up claims against war crimes, crimes against humanity, against Russia.

America is trying to use the crooked court system. The International Criminal Court is a branch of the Pentagon in the State Department, and it’s the kangaroo court. The idea is that somehow the kangaroo court can give America judgments against Putin as they’ve declared him to be arrested anywhere he goes of people who respect the kangaroo court, and they can have all sorts of sanctions against Russian property elsewhere.

Well, look at how on earth are they going to justify these claims of war crimes against Russia if in the view of what’s happening between Israel and Gaza right now, and in fact, the arms and the bombs that are being used against Gaza are U.S. bombs, U.S. arms. The U.S. is fueling it all.

How on earth can the United States not accuse itself of war crimes on the basis of what it’s trying to accuse Russia of? Part of the splitting of the world that you’re going to see, whether or not the United States can actually bomb Iran, is going to be a whole setup of parallel courts and an isolation, not only of the United States, but as Europe is coming in.

Basically, there’s a fight for who is going to control the world right now, and that’s why I mentioned the Crusades. 

I want to say I’ve been writing a history of the evolution of financial policy. I’ve done two volumes already, one on the Bronze Age Near East, …and forgive them their debts, and the other on classical antiquity, The Collapse of Antiquity. I’m now working on the third volume, which covers the Crusades to World War I.

It’s really all about an attempt by Rome, that had hardly any economic power at all, to take over all of the five Christian bishoprics that were made. Constantinople was really the new Rome. That was the head of Orthodox Christianity. 

The emperor of Constantinople was really the emperor over the whole Christian world. It was followed by Antioch, Alexandria, and finally Jerusalem.

The Crusades really began, before they attacked the Near East it began in the 11th century. And Rome was finally being attacked by the Norman armies that were coming in and grabbing parts of France and had moved into Italy.

So the papacy made a deal with the Norman warlords, and it said, “We will give you the divine right to rule, we will recognize you as the Christian king, and we will excommunicate all of your enemies, but you have to pledge feudal fealty, loyalty to us, and you have to let us appoint your bishops and control the churches, which control most of your land, and you have to pay us tribute”.

The papacy all during the 10th century was controlled by a small group of aristocratic families around Rome that treated the papacy just as they treat the local political mayor of a city or the local administrators. 

The church was just sort of run by a family. It had nothing to do with Christian religion at all. It was just, this is the church property, and one of our relatives, we’re always going to have as the pope.

Well, the popes didn’t have any troops in the late 11th century, and so they got the troops by making a deal with the Normans, and they decided, okay, we’re going to have an ideal, we’re going to mount the Crusades, and we’re going to rescue Jerusalem from the “infidels”, the Muslims.

Well, the problem is that Jerusalem didn’t need a rescue, because all throughout the medieval world, throughout Islam, no matter what the religion of the governing classes was, there was a religious tolerance, and that continued for hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire.

There was only one group that was intolerant, and that was the Romans, that said, “We have to control all of Christianity, in order to prevent these aristocratic Italian families from taking over again”.

And so they mounted the Crusades, nominally against Jerusalem, but they ended up sacking Constantinople, and two centuries later, by 1291, the Christians lost in Acre.

The whole Crusade against the Near East failed. 

I think you can see the parallel that I’m going to be drawing. 

So most of the Crusades were not fought against Islam, because Islam was too strong.

The Crusades were fought against other Christians. And the fight of Roman Christianity was against the original Christianity for itself, as it existed over the last 10 centuries.

Well, you’re having something like that today. Just as Rome appointed the Normans as feudal rulers, William the Conqueror in Sicily, the U.S. appoints Zelensky, supports Netanyahu, supports client oligarchs in Russia, supports Latin American dictators.

So you have a U.S. view of the world that is not only unipolar, but in order to have unipolar U.S. control of the world, the U.S. has to be in charge of treating any foreign state, any foreign president as a feudal serf, basically, that they owe feudal loyalty to the United States’ sponsors.

And just as you had the Inquisition formed in the 12th century, really, to enforce this obedience to Rome as opposed to independent southern France, and independent Italy, and Arab science in Spain, you have today the U.S. using the National Endowment for Democracy, and all of the organizations controlled by Victoria Nuland with her cookies, to support things.

Well, you’re having the whole strategy of the Roman takeover, how it was going to take over other countries, how it was going to prevent other countries from becoming independent of Rome, is almost sentence for sentence what you get in American national security reports, how to control other countries. And that’s really the fight that we’re seeing there.

And against that, you’re finding the fight of other countries, the global majority. But in this case, whereas Constantinople was looted in 1204 and sort of destroyed by the Fourth Crusade, Russia, and China, and Iran and the other countries have not been looted.

The only thing that the United States can do right now is it’s setting up this military plan to attack Iran. What is the role going to be of, for instance, India? The attack on Iran and on oil is at the same time an attack on the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative, the whole attempt to control transportation, not only oil, but transportation by the global majority for each other’s mutual growth, mutual gain, mutual trade.

And the United States is trying to have an alternative plan for all of this that would run from India, essentially largely through Israel, and making a cut right across Gaza, which is one of the big problems that are being discussed now, to the Israeli control of Gaza, which would control its offshore oil and gas.

So you’re having the wild cards in the U.S. plan, India, Saudi Arabia, what will it do, and Turkey, because Turkey also has an interest in this oil and gas. And if the Islamic countries decide that they’re really under attack, and this attack by the Christian West against Islam is really a fight to the death, then Turkey will join with Saudi Arabia and with all of the other countries, the Shiites and the Sunnis and the Alawites will join together and say, what we have in common is the Islamic religion.

That is really going to be essentially the extension of America’s fight against China and Russia.

So what we’re seeing, I’m going to try to summarize now, what we’re really seeing is having fought Russia to the last Ukrainian, and threatening to fight Iran to the last Israeli. The United States is trying to send arms to Taiwan to say, wouldn’t you like to fight to the last Taiwanese against China? And that’s really the U.S. strategy all over the world.

It’s trying to fuel other countries to fight wars for its own control. That’s how Rome used the Norman armies to conquer southern Italy, England, and Yugoslavia.

Israel, and what is in the news over the whole attacks in Gaza, is only the opening stage, the trigger for this war, just as the shooting in Sarajevo started World War I in Serbia started everything.

BEN NORTON: Well, you raised so many interesting points, Michael, and I think your analysis is very fresh and unique and very insightful. I wish we had more time to go into some of these topics, but we’ve already been speaking for about an hour.

So I think we’re going to wrap up here. But I do want to thank you, Michael, for joining us. And of course, we’ll be back very soon for more analysis.

For people who are interested, I actually have interviewed Michael. I did an interview recently on classical antiquity, and Rome and Greece. And he’s also written about the history of debt up through the creation of Christianity in his book And Forgive Them Their Debts. And now he’s working on this political, economic, materialist history of the Crusades.

MICHAEL HUDSON: I didn’t realize when I began the book in the 1980s, drafting it, I didn’t realize how critical the Roman papacy was and how similar it was to the State Department and CIA and the blob today in its plans for world conquest.

BEN NORTON: Well, I’m sure in the future, we will have many opportunities to discuss that research. Of course, for people who want to get more of Michael’s very important analysis, you should check out the show that he co-hosts here with friend of the show, Radhika Desai, and that is Geopolitical Economy Hour.

If you go to our website, geopoliticaleconomy.com, or if you go to our YouTube channel, you can find a playlist with all of the different episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour. So thanks again, Michael, and we’ll definitely have you back very soon.

MICHAEL HUDSON: It’s good to be here. Thank you.

Photo by Michael Afonso on Unsplash

oooooo

PS:

… to create an alternative to the United Nations, an alternative to the World Bank, to the IMF, an alternative to all the organizations that the United States has controlled to turn the whole rest of the world into Gaza,

Argi dagoenez, maila geopolitoakoan Michel Hudson apartekoa da, berak daukan informazioagatik eta aspalditik daukan buruagatik

Maila ekonomikoan, bera ez da MTM-koa, zentzu hertsian, nahiz eta Randall Wray-ren oso ezaguna izan, eta biok elkarri estima handia eduki.

Randall zen nire ibilbidean topatu nuen lehen MTM-koa, 2006 jadanik argitaratu nuen zertxobait.

Asko erabili ditut Wray-ren lanak. Lan batzuk hemen: Randall Wray euskaraz

Baina hori hasiera besterik ez zen izan. Geroago, Bill Mitchell eta Warren Mosler topatu nituen.

Eta Mosler-en eta Hudson-en arteko eztabaidak markatu ninduen, maila ekonomikoan noski, ez arlo geopolitikoan…

Ikus Warren Mosler en eta Michael Hudson-en arteko eztabaida sakona, ‘super-inperialismoa’ dela eta:

Mosler-en eta Hudson-en arteko eztabaida (https://www.unibertsitatea.net/blogak/heterodoxia/2011/06/10/mosler-en-eta-hudson-en-arteko-eztabaida/)

eta

Poesia? (https://www.unibertsitatea.net/blogak/heterodoxia/2014/02/20/poesia/)

Gehiago, hemen:

Nazioarteko ekonomia eta ‘Inperialismoa’: https://www.unibertsitatea.net/otarrea/gizarte-zientziak/ekonomia/nazioarteko-ekonomia-eta-ainperialismoaa

Arlo geopolitikoan berriki Hudson berriz topatu dut Palestina dela, Gaza dela, Israel dela eta AEB dela… Zorionez!

Beraz, arlo geopolitiko berria ikertzeko, egin kasu Michael Hudson-i

Ekonomia hertsian, egin kasu MTM-koei: Randall Wray, Bill Mitchell eta Warren Mosler-i.

Hasierarako, ikus (2013an, Diru Teoria Modernoa eta finantza-ingeniaritza)

Liburua:

Diru Teoria Modernoa eta finantza-ingeniaritza

Deskargatu: http://ueu.org/download/liburua/DiruTeoria.web.pdf