Norman Finkelstein Returns: The Future of Israel's War in Gaza
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Interview with Norman Finkelstein (4:16)
Outro (1:17:25)
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight...
Many people have very strong opinions about Norman Finkelstein, but there's no denying that he is a dynamic, very independent, and highly informed commentator.
He was one of the most notable victims of campus censorship and cancel culture when he was teaching at DePaul University.
Near receiving tenure when the pro-Israel fanatic Alan Dershowitz launched a vicious and ultimately successful campaign to pressure the university to deny him tenure and drive him away due to his harsh criticism of the state of Israel and of various Jewish activist groups.
Notably, in his best-selling 2000 book, The Holocaust Industry, which argued that pro-Israel activists exploit the memory of the Holocaust to shield Israel from any criticism.
Finkelstein has always been a difficult person for pro-Israel activists to demonize and to apply their normal smear campaign against, calling critics of Israel racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, etc, etc.
Finkelstein is not only Jewish, but he is the child of two survivors of Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
And he often frames his criticisms of Israel as a byproduct of the universal principles he was taught in childhood by his parents.
Principles that were not meant to be utilized solely in defense of Israel, but rather as universal principles that no country, including Israel, should be permitted to violate.
Since October 7th, Finkelstein has become far more visible in the media than perhaps at any other time in his career, with the possible exception of publication of that 2000 book.
He has been, of course, completely excluded from mainstream corporate media, but he has become one of the most influential and important voices on the largest and most popular programs in independent media.
We sat down with him on Monday for a wide-ranging discussion of the Israeli war in Gaza, the possible escalation of the war with Hezbollah and Iran, the role of the Biden administration and the U.S.
generally in fueling this conflict, how he views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally, and how it can be resolved, if it can, in many other topics.
There are definitely many people who dislike Finkelstein and who are often enraged by his views.
But there's no denying that there are a few commentators on these issues more scholarly, well-read, and informative than he is, and I believe the discussion we're about to show you illustrates how true that is.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update with our interview with Norman Finkelstein, starting right now.
Norman, it's great to see you.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today.
I'm fine, thank you.
So, let's begin with the... I want to obviously spend a lot of our time on the Israeli war in Gaza, but before we get to that, there's obviously a recent issue which involves the Iranian retaliation against the Israelis for the April 1st bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
How do you see the Iranian response to that, and what do you think is the likelihood that we're on the verge of a major escalation in the war in the Middle East?
Well, nobody likes to sound like a Cassandra, the prophetess of doom in Greek mythology.
However, one also has a responsibility That if there is a significant danger lurking, in this case, one hesitates to say it, but a terminal danger lurking, then there is a responsibility to sound the alarm.
And I do believe that we are facing one of those moments where Israel is hurling towards the precipice and is determined, one way or another, to drag the rest of humanity with it.
The only point of departure, in my opinion, that's rational is to start with the theorem, not the thesis.
The theorem that Israel is a lunatic state.
And I don't say that In a glib way.
I don't say it in a emotive way.
I think one can say it in, for want of a better word, in a scientific way.
The state is certifiably crazy.
There are two poles for the entire Israeli spectrum.
It's a very small spectrum at this point.
At one pole, you can call it the pole of crackpot realists.
That was a term coined by the sociologist C. Wright Mills in his book, The Causes of World War Three.
And by crackpot realist, he meant those folks Who saw war as the only answer to every question, even as they acknowledged or were aware that the war wouldn't solve any problems.
It's just their first and their last reflex.
They were crackpots.
But they were also of completely sound mind.
So a typical, in my opinion, a typical exemplar or an exemplar of a crackpot realist would be someone like Professor Danny Morris, Israel's chief historian.
He's urbane.
He's engaging.
He's sophisticated, he's secular, and he's also a crackpot.
Again, I don't say that glibly.
He advocates an attack he has been for the past 15 years.
He's been advocating an attack on Iran.
He said that if the West, meaning the United States, doesn't join in, Israel will have to nuke Iran.
And he says that the population will have deserved the fate of being incinerated, the tens of millions of them, because they elected the government.
Now, Morris must know that such an attack will trigger a reaction, if not from Iran, then from Hezbollah, which will be terminal for Israel.
And yet, without in the least bit being phased by that prospect, he advocates A nuclear attack on Iran.
At the other end of this very narrow spectrum are those who advocate what's called the Samson Option.
And you can find an interesting analysis of the Samson Option in Professor Noam Chomsky's book, Fateful Triangle.
And the Samson option is very simple.
I should also point out the notion that Professor Chomsky pointed to was then elaborated on about, I guess, five or ten years later, I can't remember now, by Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter, in a book called The Samson Option.
And the Samson option basically is very simple.
Either pretend to be mad, to pretend to be crazy, so as to terrify your enemies and your allies, that if they don't do Israel's bidding, Israel is going to bring down the Temple on everybody's head.
And there are those who are not simply pretending to be crazy by advocating the Samson option.
They are crazy.
They're lunatics.
And I do believe there is a significant portion of Israel's political spectrum That is either pretending to be crazy or actually is crazy.
And as you know, there's a very tiny step from pretending to be crazy to then coming to actually believe the phantoms you've conjured and becoming crazy.
And you saw an illustration of that.
That's just an illustration.
You saw it yesterday in the Security Council.
If you listened to Gilad Erdogan's speech, it was certifiably lunatic.
It was lunatic.
He starts by saying the Ayatollah is Hitler.
The Islamic State is The Third Reich is hellbent on conquering the whole world.
Iran is hellbent on conquering the whole world.
He then says Iran is within weeks of acquiring a nuclear weapon.
And the world has to stop it.
And the upshot or bottom line is, if the world, to use his terminology, acts like Chamberlain, then Israel will have to act like Churchill.
Now, if you listened to his rhetorical delivery, It was as if he were saying, who dares to doubt me?
In this chamber, meaning the Security Council.
If you listen, he even at one point held up an image on his iPad of Israel intercepting a drone Over Al-Aqsa Mosque, allegedly intercepting a drone above Al-Aqsa Mosque.
And then he said that Israel is the true protector of Islamic holy sites and the Islamic Republic of Iran is the defiler of these holy sites.
This is, it's not even the subject of Monty Python.
It's not the subject matter of Monty Python.
This is lunacy run amok.
And if even half of Israeli society And only half of the Israeli political elite thinks this.
And in my opinion, it's much more than half.
The place is crazy.
You know, it's not too long ago that Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, he said that the whole idea of the final solution came not from Hitler, but from the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem.
I recently debated Benny Morris, and he was emphatic that the Mufti of Jerusalem played an important role in the final solution.
This is just its sheer It's an apology for Hitler and for Nazis to say, oh, they didn't really want to kill the Jews until the Palestinians persuaded them to do so.
Well, of course it's an apology.
But for me, the real question is, or the real problem is, I think they really believe it.
I do.
I think we're at that point where, as I said, this notion of the Samson option, it has two aspects.
Pretend that you're crazy in order to get others to do your bidding for fear that you're going to do something lunatic.
And then those who are beyond pretending and are prepared in the name of their holy cause, where their backs might be up against the wall, or they think their backs are up against the wall, that they're going to bring down the whole temple, meaning all the goyim, are going to go with us.
It's a very scary prospect now, and I don't believe that Iran has many options.
Now, some people will say, and it's perfectly rational, some people will say, Iran, for the sake of humanity, Should not take the bait.
But I do not believe that Iran has that option.
And I will explain to you why, looking at the historical examples.
Once Israel is determined to go to war It will keep escalating the provocations, escalating the provocations, until it becomes untenable for a government to react with passivity.
In 1954, The Israeli leadership, in particular David Ben-Gurion, the then Prime Minister, and Moshe Dayan, had decided that they were going to topple the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
And as many historians have reported, They escalated the provocations, escalated the provocations, until finally, when Nasser kept resisting what he knew was Israel's intention to launch a war, Israel joined in with France and the UK to invade Egypt.
In 1982, I should say in 1981, there was a ceasefire between Israel and the PLO.
It was signed in July 1981.
But Israel was determined to knock out the PLO, which was based then in southern Lebanon.
And even though the PLO kept resisting the provocations, Israel kept bombing South Lebanon, bombing South Lebanon, even though there was a ceasefire.
Escalating, escalating, until it became untenable for the PLO not to react.
It should be borne in mind That the reason Israel attacked the PLO was because it was too moderate, namely it supported a two-state settlement, and Israel was afraid that pressures would be brought to bear on it to resolve the conflict for once and for all, but that would force an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.
which he wasn't prepared to do.
So let me just interject, Norman, if I could just interject, just because I want to just focus a little bit on where we are with Iran and the U.S. a little bit more.
Before I do, I just want to make a couple of observations about some of the things you said.
We did a show last month in which we documented how many U.S. adversaries over the past 25 years have been declared to be the new Hitler.
Not by random think tankers, but by media outlets and the Government's at the highest level, and it's essentially every American adversary.
Saddam Hussein was the new Hitler.
Mahmoud Abbas Jinnahdad was the new Hitler, obviously.
Putin is the new Hitler.
Gaddafi was the new Hitler.
Assad was the new Hitler.
Ho Chi Minh was the new Hitler.
Hamas is the new Hitler.
In fact, worse than Hitler, we're being told.
And the one comparison you cannot make is Israel and comparing it to the Nazis.
But the other point I wanted to make about Benny Morris and this crucial point that you brought up with tone that I think is so important.
I remember 15 years ago when I started realizing this, I wrote an article about how if you use intemperate language or you speak passionately, Even if it's completely valid about an injustice, you're immediately deemed a fringe, radical, somebody who is almost in the realm of insanity.
But if you are able to speak in a kind of urban, sophisticated way, as you said for Benny Morrison, use the language of diplomacy, like Bill Kristol, You'll automatically be deemed somebody worthy of mainstream centrism even though the ideas they're presenting are bloodthirsty and deranged and insane.
But let me just ask you about what is going on with Iran at this point because when Israel Bombed the Iranian embassy on April 1st in Damascus.
Obviously, as you said, there was no way Iran could not react.
There's no country in the world that wouldn't retaliate if planes flew over their embassy and was deliberately bombed and killed senior military officials.
Imagine what the U.S.
And the Israelis would do if that happened.
Hold on.
The problem is, you know, because I discussed this with people who I respect a lot.
The problem is, if they didn't react, we know from past experience, exactly what Israel would do.
It would keep escalating the provocations up to and including assassinating The Iranian head of state formally denying it, but with a wink wink, as of course we did it.
There is no way to stop them.
Once they have resolved that a war is necessary and a war is inevitable, Once they have resolved that, there is no way on God's Earth to stop them.
That's what the historical record shows.
You can hold back, hold back, hold back as Nasser did until February 1955.
1955 hold back as the PLO did in July, from July 1981 till June 1982, as Hamas did after
a ceasefire was agreed upon between Israel and Hamas in June 2008.
In June 2008.
But Israel will provoke and provoke and provoke because it's resolved on that war.
So I do not believe the option of not reacting actually exists.
And that to me is a very difficult problem.
As of now, we're facing a moment where Israel It wants to resolve three problems.
Problem number one, it wants to execute its quote-unquote final solution to the Gaza problem.
The Gaza has been a pinprick on Israel's side Believe it or not, since 1949.
And as one senior official said in 2015, he said, quote, we can't keep having these wars of attrition in Gaza.
The next conflict has to be the last conflict.
So we have the Gaza quote-unquote problem.
Then there is the Hezbollah problem.
Hezbollah has gone one step too far.
It's caused 100,000 Israelis to have to relocate from the northern border, and it has targeted, albeit on military sites only, it's targeted When I quoted Penny Morris, I quoted him from 2008.
Israel keeps repeating and repeating and repeating.
I quoted Penny Morris, I quoted him from 2008.
Israel keeps repeating and repeating and repeating.
And Professor Morris has written one op-ed, a second op-ed, a third op-ed, a fourth op-ed in the U.S.
main newspaper saying, we've got to attack Iran.
And I do believe, because Benjamin Netanyahu, he knows the American media very well.
About that, he's really a virtuoso.
And he espies An opportunity now.
For example, as you can see, Gaza has vanished from the headlines.
Now everything is about Iran.
He aspires an opportunity now to carry out what you might or to win what you might call the trifecta.
Gaza, Hezbollah, Iran.
Another opportunity like this might not come along soon.
And it can achieve in their minds.
Remember, we're talking about lunatics, certifiable lunatics.
In their minds, they can achieve their three overarching strategic objectives in one fell sloop.
Let me ask you about that.
As you said, you know, Benny Morris is warning about how Iran is weeks away from a nuclear capability.
They've been warning of this.
Yeah, they've been warning of this for, you know, almost 15 years.
Netanyahu went and presented that primitive little chart at the UN quite notoriously.
When we had John Mearsheimer on our show, Professor Mearsheimer, last week and asked him about the attack on the embassy, he said it's clear that the Israelis want not only a war with Iran, but to drag the United States into the war.
That has been their goal for a long time.
President Biden, I haven't given him much credit lately over the past six months, but at least in this case, he and other Western leaders seem determined not to have this broad conflagration in the Middle East.
They are telling Israel, look, the Iranian attack did almost no damage.
There's no reason to go crazy and insane as you're suggesting that they want to.
How much at this point do you think The Israeli government cares about Western perception and Western opinion?
Look, that's an excellent question, and I think it's an unanswerable question.
Historically, Israel has been, since 1957, Israel has been hesitant about undertaking any major military action Without the green light or, as in 1967, what's been called the amber or the yellow light from the White House.
The reason being, famously in 1957, after Israel had conquered significant Egyptian territory, It was ordered by President Eisenhower at the time to withdraw.
So in 1967 came and 67-56 was basically the dress rehearsal in retrospect for the 67 war.
The Israelis sent many people to Washington Officially and unofficially, to make sure that LBJ, the president at the time, Lyndon Baines Johnson, wouldn't do what Eisenhower did, namely after Israel, and it knew it would easily conquer the territory of neighboring states, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.
They wanted it to be affirmed That the U.S.
under LBJ wouldn't force a withdrawal.
So in general, I think it's fair to say that Israel is cognizant of and hasn't to act in the absence of a U.S., at any rate, if not a green light, a yellow light, where I would somewhat
disagree with you, not fully, but somewhat, is when Netanyahu posted or held up that Looney Tunes picture at the UN and claimed Iran is near the breakout point, the usual Israeli spiel.
There wasn't a war going on.
This was Iran trying to, I think, To use the Samson Option idiom, they were pretending to be crazy so as to make everybody terrified at the prospect of defying this crazy state.
But now things are significantly different.
We are after October 7th.
There is a huge, insatiable bloodlust in Israel.
There is the fear in Israel that what it calls its deterrence capability, meaning the Arab world's fear of Israel, was significantly diminished after
October 7th, Israel appeared to be, I'm not saying it is, but appeared to be much weaker than had hitherto been imagined.
And three, it looked like, and looks like, an opportunity might be available to them.
Every crisis, as the cliche goes, is also an opportunity.
So, October 7th, the Hezbollah attacks, only on military sites, but that's a side point, on Israeli territory.
Now the Iran quote-unquote attack.
Of course, it was utterly innocuous.
Much more innocuous, incidentally, than Saddam Hussein's Scud missile attacks in 1991, which did a little damage, but it did some damage.
It was innocuous by design.
Clearly, the Iranians could have done a lot more had they wanted to.
Of course it was innocuous by design.
As one commentator pointed out, they mostly used slow motion drones, which they knew it's like a video game Shooting them down from the sky.
And, you know, Hezbollah has, I can't say I know what the reports are, it has 150,000 missiles, of which quite a few were told.
Again, I can't verify.
Quite a few are very sophisticated, which means for all the talk about Israel's air defense system, let's remember, Israel's a very tiny place.
150,000 missiles, if they're launched, it's curtains for Israel.
So, of course, it was purely symbolic.
But I would have to add, I imagine the Iranian leadership, together with Saeed Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, they thought very hard About how to react to what happened on April 1st.
That's what they came up with.
I have to assume they have a very sophisticated analysis before they undertook that action.
Nasrallah, I suspect, Yisrael knows Israeli society, I think, better than most Israelis because his mind is not corrupted by the delusions and hallucinations of this crazy state.
So I have to assume that they thought this was the most prudent move to make But my own sense, and I don't want to in any way give an impression of being omniscient or infallible, but my own sense is, if Israel has resolved,
as it did in 1954, as it did in 1954, 1982, and in 2008, if it has resolved that Iran has to be if it has resolved that Iran I would say no amount of restraint will stop them.
Let me ask you something that has been bothering me almost more than anything from Israel's defenders in the West, which is this attempt to depict the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians as having started
On October 7, 2023, very similar to the attempt to suggest that the war in Ukraine began only on February 24, 2022, as if the Russians just invaded with no provocation beforehand.
The argument is constantly made That there was this peace that had arisen between the Israelis and the people of Gaza.
There was a ceasefire.
Nobody was fighting.
Nobody was bothering anyone.
And Hamas, out of nowhere, decided to attack.
And that's the reason there's a war.
Can you respond to how you see that argument?
Well, I think the answer, not the answer, the response is fairly straightforward.
The typical question posed after October 7th was, well, and once Israel unleashed its murder and mayhem high-tech machine, the standard question was, quote, what did you expect Israel to do?
And of course, Everybody felt cornered by that question because it was, as it were, unthinkable that in the face of an atrocity or atrocities of the magnitude that unfolded October 7, it was unthinkable that any government would do nothing.
Okay.
But to my thinking, There is what you might call an antecedent question.
And the antecedent question is, what did you expect the people of Gaza to do after having been immured in a concentration camp for 20 years, when the leadership had attempted a diplomatic resolution.
They entertained the possibility of a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border in accordance with UN resolutions and the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2004.
When those attempts at resolving the conflict, I'm not saying what Hamas said was perfect, but it certainly was the raw material for resolving the conflict.
When all of those peace initiatives were rebuffed by Israel, and then when the people of Gaza On their own, originally, at the beginning, on their own, attempted a great, what was called a great march of return.
It began on March 30th, 2018, when they attempted a wholly nonviolent civil resistance to try to at least, at the minimum, To end the illegal, inhuman blockade of Gaza.
That was the main purpose of that great march of return.
Inhuman, illegal blockade of Gaza, which Israel instituted in January 2006 and then escalated in 2007.
and then escalated in 2007.
What was the reaction of Israel?
We know exactly what Israel did because a UN fact-finding mission made up of three very distinguished jurists went to investigate and produced a 250-page single-spaced document on the great march of return.
And what did they find?
They found that Israel assembled along the perimeter fence with Gaza its best snipers.
Israel later proclaimed that every sniper's bullet hit its mark.
There were no stray bullets from those highly proficient snipers.
And who did they target?
According to the same commission, the snipers targeted children, medics, journalists, and best of all, they targeted and best of all, they targeted disabled people.
They targeted double amputees.
They targeted demonstrators.
They weren't even demonstrators.
They were standing, according to the UN report, 300 meters, 300 meters from the perimeter fence, leaning against trees.
They targeted children, medics, journalists, amputees, and then according to the report, they targeted systematically demonstrators below the kneecap, no the kneecap and below, to inflict what the technical term is, life-changing
Injuries.
For those viewers not familiar with that language, it just means to permanently paralyze those who non-violently demonstrated.
Well, the Great March of Return, as you can imagine, in particular after May 14th, Of 2008, when Israel committed a massacre among the demonstrators, it rapidly deteriorated.
And now, come October 2023, it looked as if—and our memories are not so short that we will forget—it looked as if Saudi Arabia was going to cut a deal with Israel and the United States,
and that the whole Arab-Israeli dimension of the conflict would be solved over and that the whole Arab-Israeli dimension of the conflict would be solved over the heads of the And so as of October 6th, the night before the attack, the only prospect
The only prospect that the people of Gaza faced, confronted, was that they would languish and die in the concentration camp.
That's the fact.
And so before I'm ready to answer the question, What should Israel have done after October 7th?
I believe the antecedent question has to be posed and answered.
What were the people of Gaza supposed to do when all the diplomatic options had been exploited
All the nonviolent options have been exploited and now it looked as if the conflict was going to be, the regional dimension of the conflict, was going to be resolved and the people of Gaza, who were born into a concentration camp,
Who lived the whole of their lives in a concentration camp, where now the only expectation could be that they would die in it.
Yeah, it's hard to imagine a population anywhere that would accept peacefully and meekly, at least a population with dignity, being blockaded by a foreign army for two decades, one that frequently boasts of the reduction of food entering there on purpose to put them on a diet, the repeated bombing, the legal occupation of the West Bank.
Let me ask you, though, about Western politicians.
What's the point that you just made?
Can I just ask you this?
What's the point that you just made?
In the picture I laid out, I omitted a salient fact that periodically Israel went into Gaza and carried out what it called a I omitted a salient fact that periodically Israel went into Gaza and carried out What it called a mowing of the lawn.
That is to say, a high-tech murder and mayhem spree.
They did it in 2008-09 with Operation Cast Lead, 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, 2014 Operation Protective Edge.
Just as an indication, time doesn't allow me to go into the details, just as two indices of this lunatic state, Bear in mind, and I hope your viewers will bear in mind, one half of Gaza's population are children.
Now imagine using the metaphor of mowing the lawn.
I was just reading Aginsa, the Jewish Institute for National Security for America, an Israeli report, excuse me, an American Jewish report.
I was just reading the other day, and without the bat of an eyelash, they refer to mowing the lawn when the blades of that mower are cracking the skulls of children.
Can you imagine mowing the lawn?
You take your lawnmower Over the skulls of children.
So that's a perfect segue to what I really need to ask you, which is, we're seeing now so many Western politicians in Europe, in the United States, people who after October 7th stood up And without conditions, very vocally defended the Israeli right to go into Gaza, to bomb Gaza, to kill people.
They did so for months, including people like Bernie Sanders, when it was actually difficult to oppose it, when it might have mattered to actually oppose it.
And now here we are six months into this Massacre, this devastation of Gaza.
And you're seeing a lot of American politicians, Western politicians saying, OK, this is enough.
This is now immoral.
I personally think there's absolutely nothing Israel has done in Gaza that wasn't entirely predictable.
I mean, you look at the statements of its leaders.
They pretty much vowed that they were going to do this.
And two days after October 7th, the defense minister said, we're going to use food as a weapon.
So assuming you agree with that, that everything is predictable.
How do you explain this idea that so many American and Western politicians supported this for three months, four months, and now suddenly want to posture as opponents of it?
I would say there are two aspects.
There's the obvious cynical aspect, which I'll get to in a moment.
But I do believe part of the reason, part, I'm not saying it's the full reason.
Part of the reason is that most people, including senior officials, are not aware of the full magnitude of the horror that has been inflicted on the people of Gaza.
I can tell you With complete confidence that there isn't a tactic that Israel is currently using in Gaza that hasn't already used during Operation Cast Lead and Operation Protective Edge.
The targeting of ambulances, the destruction of civilian dwellings, the destruction of hospitals, All the sorts of things that horrify people now were already common currency back in 20 or 2008-9.
So I think in part there is a lack of awareness of just the magnitude of the horror That was inflicted on Gaza.
The second thing is we should bear in mind that the Israeli tactic has been adjusted upwards, and consequently you can say The magnitude, not the quality, the magnitude of the horror has changed.
Because up until October 7th, the Israelis were committed to mowing the lawn in Gaza.
After October 7th, by virtue of both bloodlust and also the crisis, which is an opportunity, They decided, we won't mow the lawn anymore.
We will extirpate, which is the fancy word for pull out by the roots.
We will not mow the lawn of Gaza.
We are going to extirpate every blade of grass from the roots.
And that could mean An ethnic cleansing, making Gaza uninhabitable by sentient life, or an outright, unmitigated genocide.
That's basically the spectrum.
So something did change, I believe, after October 7th in terms of Israel's objectives
And also I do believe, even I, I'll tell you the truth, even I, I forget the horrors of that past until I start to reread my books in preparation for speaking intelligently on the subject and becoming indignant again.
Over what has been done to those people.
And then there is the element which you already adumbrated, which is, as public opinion began to change, then the politicians had to, or some politicians, had to tack in a new direction.
And there has been many Inspiring, deeply inspiring developments the past six months.
I cannot talk about a silver lining in a genocide.
There is no silver lining in a genocide, period, full stop.
However, I would simply like to acknowledge The heroic, the dignified role of South Africa in rising to the defense of the stateless, powerless people of Gaza.
The incredible tenacity and conviction of the young people in our own country and around the world, where not a day passes
But a day passes when they are not inventively, creatively figuring out another way, another place, so as to prevent Gaza from passing into the inside pages of the newspapers.
And there have been the heroic journalists in Gaza.
The heroic doctors from abroad who have dared venture into a killing zone.
There has been so much.
Each day I get a new email or emails from people telling me, describing to me what they've been doing.
I got one yesterday from a fellow who was describing what they call kibbutz blinking.
Outside the home of our Secretary of State, where they've been there, I think, for 160 days, if my memory is right.
So it's developments like that, grassroots developments, but also in the case of South Africa, from the top, which have forced many politicians to I was not happy at all.
Quite the contrary.
in the leftist direction as the horrors unfold.
I was not happy at all, quite the contrary.
I was filled with disgust at Bernie Sanders apologetics the first couple of months.
But as Bob Dylan famously said, you don't need a weather vane in order to know which way the wind is blowing.
And it was clear that Bernie Sanders' place in the memories of the people who had so given of themselves Was his place was in serious danger.
And I do believe it was that realization on his part, not any kind of cynical calculation.
He's an old guy.
I doubt he gives a darn.
But it was the fact that he was being targeted.
For his cowardice and his apologetics for a crime of a very high order unfolding in real time.
I have two questions left.
I actually have a lot of questions left for you, which is why we're going to harangue you and harass you to come back on our show shortly.
But just for time management, let me just pick two.
You had mentioned these previous attacks on Gaza, the difference now being the duration, the magnitude, the numbers of people, the displacement internally, things we haven't seen before.
Obviously, there's a lot of...
Yeah, exactly.
But obviously there are a lot of atrocities that take place in the world.
But in terms of countries that are nominally in the democratic world that are American allies, countries that we support and help, where do these Israeli crimes taking place in Gaza rank with other atrocities that you've seen in your lifetime?
Well, you know, that's a very good question because the answer to that question is indicative of what's happening before our eyes.
One of the most notable features of the current horror unfolding in Gaza is by every available metric Number of children killed.
Number of women and children killed versus men killed.
Number of civilians killed versus combatants killed.
Number of homes destroyed.
Density and intensity of bombings.
Gaza.
Gaza is a very tiny place.
If you want to know what Gaza is, it's the length of a marathon and the width of the distance I jog every morning, including today before I came on with you.
The width is of Coney Island Seashore back and forth.
It's five miles.
That's Gaza.
In that tiny area, that tiny parcel of land, which has among the most densest populations in the world, all of these atrocities are being carried out.
I talked to you about several.
I mentioned now the density and intensity of bombing.
In this tiny parcel of land, number of journalists killed, number of UN workers killed, number of medics killed by every metric.
It's an astonishing fact.
It's a fact that's very difficult to mentally or emotionally assimilate Because it doesn't sound believable.
Let's take a simple metric.
Children killed.
How many children killed in Ukraine in two years?
500.
How many children killed in Gaza in six months?
13,000.
These numbers are not Assimilable to the mind or to the heart.
So you almost, as a default mechanism, think there's got to be some explanation for this, because this is insane.
But it's true.
So when you ask me, how does it compare to other conflicts, according to Everyone who's written authoritatively on the topic, there's no remote second in the 21st century to what Israel has been carrying on in Gaza.
And on issues like intensity and density of bombing, destruction of civilian infrastructure, it's said to have been worse than even Dresden or Hamburg during World War II.
Now, I agree, and I'll say it for the third time, if you'll forgive me, I myself can't quite, as Oprah would say, I can't quite wrap my mind around it.
I really can't.
I can't even conceive.
You know, I've been working nonstop since October 7th, and I am kind of exhausted.
And the one thing that keeps me going is the thought, if I'm exhausted, The people of Gaza expelled from the northern sector, the northern half being leveled, obliterated, pulverized.
According to the most recent World Bank report, two hundred and ninety thousand Dwelling units were destroyed, leaving 1.08 million people without a home.
And then Israel drops one ton of bombs on the area where it directed the civilians to go.
And then it instituted what Human Rights Watch called a policy of starvation as a weapon of war.
And now one half the population of Gaza is verging not on starvation, but on famine.
There is a very complex formula that international organizations use.
It goes something like from hunger to starvation to famine, and they have these, as I say, complex formulas for determining each stage.
And now Gaza is, I think, what's called stage five.
Which is famine.
And I don't know.
Honestly, I speak with you complete candor.
I personally would have given up.
I would have said.
The struggle to survive is not worth it.
I don't know where they get the inner wherewithal.
Maybe it's the parents who feel that obligation and responsibility to their children.
That mass of diminutive, now starving humanity.
And the parents can't give up because of their children.
And so I keep chugging along because I keep saying, if I'm tired, if I'm exhausted, what can be the state?
of those poor God-forsaken People of Gaza.
Yeah, I think about that often the fact that you have a complete destruction of civilian society, basically a hundred percent of people internally displaced, dealing with famine, dealing with bombs, but on top of that you have most of the population who has lost loved ones and so they're dealing with grief as well, the inability to protect their children.
It's hard to fathom how even the ones who survive ever return to any semblance of psychological normalcy.
Let me just, to conclude, ask you, when you talked earlier about the movement toward a more critical stance toward Israel, you described it as a kind of movement toward the left.
And of course it's true that criticism of Israel, the pro-Palestinian cause, has largely emanated from the left in the United States.
Recently, though, there is polling data showing that across the board in demographic groups, support for Israel is declining, empathy for Palestinians is increasing, including among even a lot of young conservatives.
You now have, I think for the first time I've seen, some of the most influential commentators and media figures on the right, like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and others.
I know you were on Candace's show.
Really severely questioning the wisdom and the morality of the U.S.
continuing to support Israel.
You have members of Congress now doing the same, who are being targeted by AIPAC.
How important do you think it is for the posture of criticizing Israel to become a kind of bipartisan, trans-ideological movement?
And do you think there's anything promising in these developments?
There are two critical considerations.
Critical consideration number one is, will it endure?
That is to say, in past Israeli massacres in Gaza, they do take a hit, so to speak, in public opinion polls.
But then the news moves on.
New horrors, new atrocities reported and it's forgotten what happened in Gaza and Israel bounces back.
Will it bounce back after this current massacre?
I would say less likely, less likely.
Israel will now wear the scarlet letter of genocide.
It's been pinned to it, and it will not be able, in my opinion, to rip it off.
So that's the first consideration.
The second consideration is, obviously, as everybody knows from Bernie Sanders' famous platform, there are a hundred issues out there
Where public opinion supports, say, Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and so forth, but that support has not been translated into political clout.
That is to say, at the level of our representative government.
It was not and has not been translated.
And the question is, right now, it's being felt for a very simple reason.
It's an electoral year.
And in an electoral year, the people do count.
And so the restiveness, if not outrage, within the Democratic Party base, where according to the most recent poll, Fifty-seven percent of Democrats believe Israel is engaged in a genocide.
So, in an electoral year, the popular sentiment does translate into political clout.
In a non-electoral year, it's basically, as you know and all of your listeners know, it's the lobbies And everybody else who decides what will and what will not happen in the inner sanctums of power.
So I think it's an important development that public opinion has radically shifted.
But I can't say with certainty it will endure.
And I can say with certainty that it will translate into political clout.
Well, Norman, you have become something of a media superstar over the past several months in a way that I am very enthused to see.
I think there's barely a better spokesperson and a more informed and a scholarly one on this cause.
So I appreciate your being able to squeeze in our show, our modest humble show, into all of those appearances.
Like I said, we will be more insistent and aggressive in the future about getting you back on because it's always enlightening to speak with you.
And I really appreciate you taking the time today.
I want to just enter one caveat because I do believe it's important to have a firm grip on reality.
I have not at all become a media superstar.
If you look at the mainstream in our country, whether it's the legacy media like ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, any of that.
I've never been on.
I've never been asked to be on.
If you look at the mainstream newspapers, the legacy media, the New York Times, Washington Post, or even New Yorker Magazine, New York Review of Books, any of the standard outlets, I've never been on.
I've never been on U.S.
national television.
And the only exception in the UK, the only exception, has been Piers Morgan.
So there's a bit of an optical illusion.
What's happened is, because of the web, number one, people think, because they've, you know, Googled me once, and then because of the algorithm, I keep popping up and popping up and popping up.
But it's within the very, very, very Tiny universe.
But the other thing is, because of the web, even as it is a tiny universe, a very tiny universe that I've been on, I've been getting a lot of views, which is to say that it is attracting a big audience, what I have to say, but not by virtue of me having become a quote-unquote media superstar.
It's just the technology of the web.
Yeah, I meant it a little ironically, and of course, I think it's a given that the corporate media, the range of views they permit is extremely narrow, and you're certainly not within it.
But I also do think that it's important not to overstate, but also not to understate the impact of independent media.
As you said, the numbers are very high, and a lot of these shows, including ones on which you've appeared, have a bigger audience than these legacy media brands, and I'm encouraged by that.
Norm, great to see you.
Hope to see you soon.
Take it easy.
Take care of yourself.
Thank you so much.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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