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Feb. 23, 2024 - Jim Fetzer
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Dr. Zachary Foster on the Patrick Henningsen Show - 22 February 2024
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Patrick Henningsen and TNT.
All right, folks.
Welcome to the program.
It is Thursday.
We are live and direct for the next two hours here on TNT Today's News Talk.
I'm Patrick Henningsen, your host.
Thank you for joining us.
We had a powerful program yesterday.
Those of you who were fortunate enough to see that, we've got that on the replays as well.
Just go to tntradio.live, put in Patrick Henningsen's show, and you'll see it listened back We've got another powerful show lined up for you today as well.
their audio and video.
We've also posted some of these interviews as well at 21stCenturyWired.com, some of the best ones we've curated there.
We've got another powerful show lined up for you today as well.
We're going to be joined in the first hour by Dr. Zachary Foster, who is really one of the preeminent resources, I would say, right now on the Palestine situation.
As it stands right now, we are facing a huge escalation by the Israelis that most certainly will trigger a wider war, more conflict in the region if they go through with what Israel is calling or referring to as the final solution.
to their quote Palestinian problem sounds familiar doesn't it well we've encountered these chapters in history before and this is one of those horrific moments will they pull back will the United States be able to restrain Israel, its ally in the Middle East, the one that is providing all the bombs, all the ammunition, and all the weapons, the jets, the satellite reconnaissance, everything.
The drones, everything.
It's providing all of that for Israel, who is now guilty of genocide, according to the International Courts of Justice.
Well, not a final verdict, but the interim ruling is that Israel is engaged in genocidal activities, must cease and desist immediately, but they're not.
Instead, they're doubling down and ramping up their ethnic cleansing program.
We'll talk about that with Dr. Zachary Foster, fantastic historian and analyst, in the first hour, actually.
We'll connect him very shortly.
And the second hour will be joined by Basil Valentine.
The Farrago in the UK House of Commons over the ceasefire vote.
Unbelievable!
Really unbelievable, and it really unmasks the level of corruption in government in London and Westminster.
This is a horrible, horrible exhibition that has gone on here, and critics are lambasting both the corrupt Labour Party and their Tory counterparts for what can only be described as a total abrogation of democracy.
There's no other way to put it, ladies and gentlemen.
And we'll also be joined by our research assistant for the show, Christian James, to talk about a number of breaking stories that are coming online right now.
There's protests that are clashing over various things in Europe.
One of them is the farmers issue that is on fire as farmers continue to rage across the EU, in the UK and other countries as well.
We'll talk to Christian about that and much more when we get him on the line in the second hour.
Let's go to some of the breaking news right now and Denise Schmeigel, no, I said that correctly, Schmeigel, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, has finally come out and admitted that all of those Ukrainian refugees and migrants who left the Western Ukrainian parts of the country and other parts of the country, well, formerly known as Ukraine as well, those who have left for Europe will not be coming back.
That's right.
So Ukraine, aside from hemorrhaging a third of its economy, I think it's probably more than that actually, a third of its population, again more, 3.5 million jobs lost.
You're witnessing one of the biggest brain drains and forced migrant labor fleeing into Europe, really in European history.
It's among the greatest upheavals ever in the history of Europe.
So, Schmeigel is admitting this publicly.
This is quite a big admission.
And what does this mean for the future of this country?
Well, whatever's left of this country, It seems as if, and we're just looking at the facts here, the longer the regime in Kiev, led by former actor and comedian Vladimir Zelensky, television star, sitcom TV star in Ukraine, the longer this goes on, the more damage is going to be done to the Ukrainian economy, the more they'll become dependent on Western handouts.
And so you have the US and Britain leading, as well as the other NATO member states, actively discouraging, actively discouraging the government, the Zelensky regime, if you will, actively discouraging them from pursuing any type of ceasefire or peace negotiations.
Very similar to what we see with Israel.
No peace, no diplomacy, nothing, just keep fighting.
So, but in the case of Ukraine, they're bearing most of the losses in this.
They can only lose and they're attacking Russia inside, which is antagonizing Russia and forcing Russia to wield a heavier hand against the Ukrainians to secure its own national security interests.
So this is where it's going.
It's just getting progressively worse economically, militarily, socially, all of these things.
Politically, it's getting worse and worse in Ukraine.
So there's no end in sight, unless perhaps the government in Kiev changes hands and someone new comes into power that wants to put a stop to the sort of general degradation of Ukraine and maybe sort of hit the brakes on this losing proxy war.
Let's face it, ladies and gentlemen, there is no victory for Ukraine, only losses in their mounting.
So to have the Prime Minister of Ukraine say this publicly is a pretty big deal.
It's just indicative of the reality that a lot of people are now facing, that this whole project, which we're coming up to the two-year anniversary just next week, the two-year anniversary of the Ukrainian conflict, that this has not gone well at all for Ukraine.
Not on any level.
Not on any level.
Not politically, not socially, not economically.
Not geopolitically.
On every level.
It's been a disaster for the country.
They could have avoided all of it had they come to the table as promised to implement the Minsk Accords.
That would have avoided all of this.
Wouldn't have lost any territory, etc.
They wouldn't have lost 350,000 of their men in trenches in eastern Ukraine.
Wouldn't have happened.
But it did happen.
And it continues to happen.
The question is, how long will this go on?
How long will the West and NATO fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian?
Because that's what's happening.
Like it or not.
Like it or not.
You want to keep going with this charade on behalf of NATO, on behalf of Washington, D.C.?
Because that's who the Ukrainians are fighting on behalf of.
They're fighting for Washington, D.C.
They're fighting for Joe Biden.
That's who they're fighting for.
Because if it was for the good of the country, this would have ended a long time ago.
Both sides, Ukraine and Russia, would come to the peace table, negotiate some kind of a settlement, and then let that be.
And people can get on with their lives.
But Washington and London don't want that.
And unfortunately, there's a lot of free cash swirling around Kiev, hundreds of billions, And unfortunately, that is keeping this whole thing going.
This is keeping this road show ongoing.
And there's nothing good that can come of it, quite frankly.
Certainly not for Ukraine.
In six months or a year, we'll be having this conversation again, where the losses will have mounted.
So there's nothing more we can say and add to that at the moment.
But anyway, just thought we'd bring that to your attention.
That's quite a big admission by the Prime Minister of Ukraine.
Now, there's other sort of stories rumbling to the pressure in America for Democrats to disown Joe Biden as their sort of presumptive nominee.
For the 2024 election.
This is increasing a lot more clips are circulating.
Now, this for common conversations going on the liberal media as well about how Joe Biden is suffering from cognitive decline.
He's having trouble with public speaking engagements.
He's often caught on camera as he was in the last.
A day or so.
Having trouble mustering the words to make a comment.
Really in distress.
Very sad to watch.
So as he deteriorates, as his mental faculties deteriorate, as his health deteriorates, the 2024 election is still in full swing and Donald Trump seems to be trousing Nikki Haley.
The only question is why is Nikki Haley still in the race?
Is she not auditioning for some role?
Maybe a vice president or a candidate?
Cabinet position perhaps?
Is that what's going on?
Nobody quite knows.
They expected Donald Trump not to be getting this far.
The lawfare doesn't seem to have worked so far.
Donald Trump is still on his two feet.
He's still standing.
He's still swinging.
He's still 30 points ahead in the polls to the nearest challenger.
The only one left is Nikki Haley.
So what are we going to see?
Are they still going to take Trump out and do a floor vote at the RNC convention in August?
If so, what will that entail?
All of these are valid questions right now.
The same goes on the Democratic side.
What's going to happen at the convention?
Are they going to dump Biden?
Your primaries are a non-event.
Write in candidates.
The Democrats deep-sixed their own primary so that nobody would run against Joe Biden.
Can you believe it?
This American democracy.
Is in a total shambles at the moment and very few people are willing or courageous enough to stand up and call it out as it really is.
And it is a complete joke right now on the Democrat side also on the Republican side.
Absolute joke.
So will Donald Trump make it as the populist candidate on the Republican side?
Is that what's going to happen if so?
Who's going to be the Democratic challenger?
Is it going to be Gavin Newsom?
Is it going to be Michelle Obama?
Who is it going to be?
Is Hillary Clinton going to wiggle her way onto the ticket somehow?
Is it going to be Kamala Harris?
It's very difficult to say at this point.
A week is an eternity in politics.
A month is a millennium in politics.
Six months, well, that's just a whole other thing altogether.
We'll be here to give you all the updates as we go along.
I'm Patrick Henningsen, your host.
This is TNT Today's News Talk.
We'll be right back with our guest, Dr. Zachary Foster.
Looking forward to this conversation.
Just a few minutes.
Stay right there.
TNT's Timothy Shea.
Ah, it was a great day.
The ratios, the ratios.
John Kennedy, Senator John Kennedy, who we thought was MAGA, who we thought was America First, who still continues to make all the right noises, and he does the wrong things.
And the last straw was him voting with the 22 turncoats to send more tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine.
Ukraine doesn't need any more money.
Ukraine doesn't need any more of our support.
We're the problem in Ukraine.
The Reckoning with Timothy Shea on today's News Talk TNT.
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TNT Radio.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome back to the program.
This is TNT Today's News Talk.
I'm Patrick Heinecker, your host.
We're still in the first hour of this live broadcast.
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For our team, for all of our viewers on the network, thank you very much for that.
Now, we're going to do a pivot right now over to the Middle East.
Now, yesterday we spoke to international human rights lawyer Mohamed Akunji about this very dire situation that is unfolding right now in Rafah, southern Gaza, where you have refugees accumulating internally displaced persons, those who have survived the Israeli where you have refugees accumulating internally displaced persons, those who have survived the Israeli onslaught in northern Gaza and southern Gaza, pushed into
And it does appear, at least from the statements by many Israeli officials, that there are plans afoot to push hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, whoever survives anyway, the upcoming Israeli assault into the Egyptian desert in the Sinai Peninsula.
That would be the most horrific outcome imaginable.
Certainly, it flies in the face of everything that was put on the table at the International Courts of Justice last month by the South African delegation.
delegation invoking the Genocide Convention, but yet here we are.
It is really the most extraordinary situation imaginable and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it to abate the fait accompli that we are watching unfold before our eyes.
But we're going to try to analyze this situation with our next guest who has been watching this closely and is also a scholar and a historian and very familiar with The history of the formation of the State of Israel and the history of Palestine as well.
He's joining us on the line right now.
Zachary Taylor.
Thank you.
I'm sorry, Dr. Zachary Foster.
Thank you for joining us.
Patrick, thanks so much for having me.
Thank you.
Zach, the situation right now, I mean, how can you sum this up right now, where we're at?
I know when we last talked, this wasn't really the issue, but now this is the issue.
What do you make of the situation that's building up in Rafa right now?
Well, we've known Israel's plan since late October.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense leaked a document already, what, three, four months ago, which outlined the plan.
And it's been the same plan for four months now, which is that Israel wants to ultimately take control over the Gaza Strip, and it wants to push all of its 2.2 million residents out into Egypt, into North Sinai.
And we're seeing We're seeing the final stages of that plan unfold in real time as we speak, which is that you have 1.4 million Palestinians displaced, living in open-air camps, in tents, if they're lucky, starving to death as we speak.
Every single Palestinian in Gaza is going hungry.
I think the numbers are something like 90% of Palestinians are skipping, are going at least one day, a 24 hour period without food.
That is the overall majority of Palestinians.
So they're starving.
They don't have access to clean water.
You have thousands and thousands of Palestinians sharing a single toilet, no access to any kind of sanitation facilities.
Um, and now, uh, the end is- is near.
The Israeli government has declared that without- unless all of the hostages will- will be released by- by Ramadan, which is early March, they're planning to push Palestinians across the border, ethnically cleanse, um, millions of people, uh, in what amounts to a kind of a knock-butt, uh, 2.0, the second ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
And we see on the Egyptian side, we- we have reports already from over a week ago, week and a half ago, That the Egyptian government is building another wall to be able to enclose these millions of Palestinians between basically the Israeli border on the one hand and a kind of a wall built slightly into the Egyptian side of the Rafah border.
And that is the fate that millions of Palestinians are facing.
Do you think there's a possibility here?
I mean, well, it's kind of a Obvious question, but that there's coordination behind the scenes between Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Washington, D.C., that this is in fact a plan.
It's just not being said publicly or admitted explicitly, but there's coordination because between all of these parties, certainly there'd be absolute uproar from other parts of the Middle East, the Arab world, The Muslim world, if you will, more broadly, Europe, other countries in the global south, that if this indeed is being formulated in advance, the collusion of these three states to do this, I mean, it's just unthinkable.
What are your thoughts politically on this?
I would be surprised if there wasn't collusion and coordination.
The Egyptian government is hundreds of billions of dollars in debt.
The Egyptian government is not able to repay its U.S.
dollar-denominated debt.
And so in the past number of years, every 5 or 10 or 15 years, Egypt devalues the Egyptian pound to inflate the money supply to be able to pay back its debts.
And so what you have right now is a situation in which the Egyptian government's hands are significantly tied by the United States and by Israel.
And so despite Egypt's pleas, despite Egypt's attempt to not want to be complicit, In the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people of Gaza, it appears as if they seem to be moving forward with plans to allow for the expulsion of however many hundreds of thousands or millions of Palestinians.
And I think the proof is in the pudding.
A government so deeply indebted, so already despised by its people, for having been complicit in the siege on Gaza for 16 years, And, you know, is now building a wall, is now investing however many millions of dollars in the construction of a wall.
I can almost guarantee you they would have never started constructing that wall if they weren't quite certain of Israel's intention and their belief that there's just nothing they can do about it.
This is kind of a trap in a way, Zachary, because if we look back in history, you've seen Israel's incursions into Lebanon during the Civil War, so-called Civil War in the 1980s, and that was to basically deal with what it saw as, you know, the PLO or, you know, Yasser Arafat-aligned factions, militant factions in Lebanon it saw fit to invade.
Uh, in order to deal with that problem.
So pushing Palestinians out historically, Zachary, has never been any kind of solution.
Really, all it does is invite more conflict.
Could we see the same thing happening?
I know I'm jumping ahead here, but could we see the same thing happening with Egypt, where Israel would turn around and say, well, we have extremists that we have located in the camps in the Sinai, and we feel that we need to go in and secure that.
What do you think about that possible future scenario?
Well, if you thought locking 2.2 million Palestinians into an open-air prison for 16 years was a recipe for violence and retaliation, Then pushing millions of Palestinians into Egypt would lead to probably much worse.
What we've seen here is that whenever Israel pushes Palestinians across the border, as it did in 48, when it expelled 750,000 Palestinians, leading to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in refugee camps in the West Bank, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria,
The result of that expulsion was that you had bases of Palestinian refugee camps, places in Gaza, in places like Rafah and Khan Yunis, where you had many thousands of Palestinians pick up arms and carry out cross-border raids, right?
And that's exactly what happened throughout the 50s.
Until 1956, when Israel entered Gaza as part of the neo-colonial war known as the Suez Crisis, in which it entered Khan Yunis on November 2, 1956, rounded up every male above the age of 15, lined them up in the city center, and executed them.
We're talking 150, perhaps as many as 200 Palestinians executed for having committed the crime of being an adult Palestinian male.
The same happened in Rafah in 1956, a few weeks later.
The same happened throughout the late 1960s and 70s, when Israel was actively engaged in now attacking Palestinians across the Jordanian border, right?
In Black September 1970, Palestinians are carrying out these cross-border raids, attacking Israeli targets inside Israel.
And in that case, it was the Jordanian government that went in, in 1970, and slaughtered thousands of Palestinians in a single month.
In September 1970.
And of course the same thing happened in Lebanon.
After Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to Lebanon.
They're festering in refugee camps.
No right to work in Lebanon.
Don't have access.
They can't buy property in Lebanon.
They can't establish businesses in Lebanon.
They're condemned to living in these refugee camps.
And lo and behold, Lebanon also becomes a base of Palestinian resistance.
Israel enters Lebanon in 1982.
Slaughters thousands of not just Palestinians in Lebanon, but also Lebanese.
So this is, you know, we've seen this over and over and over again.
Israel forces Palestinians across the border in order to preserve Jewish majority, its demographic Jewish majority inside Israel.
Palestinians don't believe they lose the right to live in Palestine just because they were violently ethnically cleansed from it.
So they carry out acts of resistance in order to claim their legitimate right to live in Palestine.
And Israel responds with grotesque violence, or the states that they're living in respond with grotesque violence.
And here we're likely to see the exact same thing unfold on the Egyptian-Palestinian border in Rafah in the coming weeks and months.
And on top of this, and what you said is really chapter and verse, I think a serious reality that we're looking at if this is allowed to happen.
But what's somewhat worse though, Zachary, is that, tell us about Israel's plans For expansion, because this isn't a conspiracy theory, especially with the current Likud coalition in government, you know, arguably the most far right extremist government in Israeli history.
There are plans afoot.
There have been plans afoot.
Maybe you could tell us about the historic Tell me how that factors into this situation, be it Sinai or Gaza or even beyond.
state of Israel, which has undeclared borders.
And that's probably why, so that they can leave the option open for expansion.
But tell me how that factors into this situation, be it Sinai or Gaza or even beyond.
Your thoughts on this?
Well, the goal of the Zionist movement was to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.
And Palestine has always been, for the Jewish community of Palestine, it has always been British Mandatory Palestine.
And so, the Zionists were not content with the 47 partition plan.
They expanded the state's borders beyond what was allotted to them by the UN in that November 1947 plan.
And so that state survived for about 18 years from 48 to 67.
And as soon as they had the opportunity, they expanded the borders of the state and took over Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem.
And of course, also the Golan and Sinai, but those were But Sinai was never really of interest to Israel.
In fact, in the aftermath of the 1967 war, the Israeli cabinet met in June 1967 and basically said, look, we're not really interested in Sinai.
We hope to give that back eventually to Egypt.
But we are interested in controlling Gaza, right?
Because Gaza is part of historic Palestine.
But we're not interested in the Palestinians living in Gaza.
We don't want them there.
They're a demographic problem.
They're a security threat.
So they made the decision on June 18th, 1967, that as soon as they figure out a way of ethnically cleansing the 400,000 Palestinians that were living in Gaza at the time, right?
So this is June 1967.
As soon as we figure out a way of ethnically cleansing the half a million Palestinians living there, then we will annex Gaza.
And they in fact executed on this, but this wasn't just a theoretical plan.
They actually executed on this, and from June 1967 until 1970, there was a secret agency established inside Israel to try to compel Palestinians in Gaza to leave voluntarily.
The way they did this was by buying up land in places like Paraguay, in places like Libya, where they would basically convince Palestinians, and they would also try and find jobs for Palestinians in these places, and they convinced hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza to leave Gaza permanently, to essentially voluntarily accept expulsion.
um based on some promise uh of some better life in another country and then of course they reneged on those promises right and in fact the reason that this whole plan came to an end in 1970 was that they made some promises to palestines in paraguay who and and reneged on those promises and then after reneging on those promises that those one palestinian in paraguay assassinated the secretary of the israeli uh consulate general in paraguay at the time and that led them to realize oh this is probably a bad idea
um and they abandoned that plan But this is one episode in a 56-year-old history of trying to get Palestinians out of the occupied territories.
They did this from 67 to 87.
They expelled another 2,000 Palestinians by force from the Palestinian territories.
In Jerusalem, they've expelled 15,000 Palestinians from Jerusalem, stripping those Palestinians of their residency permits.
They're doing this all around the West Bank, where they're expelling Palestinians from Mosul, Faryatta, where they're expelling Palestinians from Al-Ahmar, from Baita, from Homs.
Wherever there are Palestinians living in places that Israel ultimately wants to take control over, there are expulsions.
So this is nothing new and now we're just seeing the latest version of it on a much more violent scale at a magnitude we've never seen before.
And it's happening in real time, live streamed on Instagram, on Twitter, on TikTok.
And it's incredibly unfortunate that there's no government in the world that is willing to make a call to Netanyahu to end the madness.
And of course, Biden could make that call tomorrow.
Recall that Ronald Reagan himself called Israeli prime minister at the time, Menachem Begin.
He basically made a call to him in 1982 and said, you need to end the killing now.
And he did.
And that was the end of it.
And it just takes one call, probably no longer than 60 seconds, where Biden gets on the phone with Tana and says, the killing ends tomorrow or else.
You don't even have to actually make any real threats.
You just say or else and the killing would end.
But Biden is.
It is a stooge and he's complicit in the genocide and it doesn't really seem like that's likely to happen.
So here we are witnessing Nakba 2.0, the ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians.
We're witnessing it in real time.
No, it's very true.
The United States does hold all the cards, they hold all the leverage, they hold all the power, not just diplomatically, but Israel couldn't be able to prosecute any of these military campaigns without the assistance of the United States.
Militarily, they're supplying the bombs, they're supplying the ammunition, they're supplying the bullets, they're supplying all the technical support, For the American aircraft, they're supplying the satellite reconnaissance for targeting, for drone targeting, and drone technology itself is being supplied by the U.S., including operators of these technologies, which are embedded in various parts of the Israeli Defense Force.
Okay, so the U.S.
can, as you said, Zachary, they could make one phone call, Joe Biden, and it's happened before, as you said, and even George Bush Jr. intervened with the situation in Gaza, and they dismantled settlements.
Of course, that led to more settlements being built, of course, in the West Bank.
But the point is, everybody, Zachary, who's saying, well, you know, the United States is under, you know, the tail's wagging the dog, and they can't do anything about Israel.
Israel controls the U.S. government, when in fact, it's actually the other way around, in terms of leverage.
Isn't it interesting how this conversation's been flipped in order to kind of enable what we're seeing here?
Yeah, you're exactly right.
It's the tail wagging the dog.
I think that is the perfect analogy.
We have an organization called APAC, which I'm sure your listeners are very familiar with, who has raised $100 million to deploy To put to work in helping elect pro-genocide candidates to the U.S.
Congress.
This is the largest single issue spender, lobbyist organization, in the primaries.
Not for helping Americans get healthcare, not for helping fix our infrastructure, not for solving our education problems, but for getting candidates into the United States Congress Who are willing to send Israel a blank check every year.
Previously, it was 3.8 billion.
This year is probably gonna be more like 11 billion, plus the 3.8, so more like 15 billion.
So, this is what we've got.
And they're very active, and they're well-organized, and they're well-funded.
They target Israel's most vocal critics in Congress.
So, Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic congressperson from Michigan, They tried to convince both Hill Harper and Nasser Beydoun to accept $20 million in campaign financing to run against Rashida Tlaib.
And both of them, not only did they wisely reject the blood money, but they leaked the news of the amount of money that they were offered.
Apparently, to convince other Democrats to also reject the blood money.
But of course, this money offered to Hill Harper and Nasser Abedin was just one among many offers made to many, many potential candidates trying to unseat essentially every member of the United States Congress that opposes the genocide happening in Gaza.
You have AIPAC working to unseat them.
This is the case with Jamal Bowman.
This is the case with Cori Bush.
This is the case with Summer Lee.
This is the case with Ilhan Omar.
They're trying to unseat all of them.
It's incredible.
It's extraordinary, too, that there's not more pushback at the DNC level where you have a foreign entity or a foreign lobby that is, like, blatantly interfering in the U.S.
election process.
The very thing they constantly accuse Russia of doing.
I mean, it's really breathtaking.
Look at the U.K.
Look at the Labour Party.
It's been totally gutted.
In the UK, even the leader got thrown out, Jeremy Corbyn, of his own party, by the Israeli lobby, effectively.
So, you know, this is an incredible amount of influence from a foreign government, ostensibly a foreign government, that is micromanaging the internal politics of the United States and Britain.
I mean, Zachary, this is unprecedented.
We've seen lobbyists before We've seen the influence peddling and all of this stuff before, but now we're talking about total control of a major foreign policy piece here.
I mean, that's unprecedented, isn't it?
I'm certainly not familiar with any other lobbies associated with any other foreign governments that are deploying literally hundreds of millions of dollars to try to influence our elections.
I mean, when Russia did this, as you correctly pointed out, right, there was outrage when Israel does it.
But they couldn't even prove that Russia did it.
That's the problem.
But here we have the receipts.
We have the receipts.
It's a huge amount of money.
And it's money that is being spent to elect candidates that are not just pro-genocide, by the way, that also support an end to U.S.
American democracy.
In 2022, so AIPAC spent $30 million in the last campaign season, right?
During the midterm elections in 2022, they spent $30 million.
Which included providing campaign financing for 109 members of the U.S.
House of Representatives who voted to overturn the 2020 election.
If supporting Israel's policies of ethnic cleansing and apartheid and now genocide means ending American democracy, so be it.
No, this is the real test, I think.
Well, this is probably one of the biggest tests for the actual resilience of the U.S.
federal government in terms of its ability to be autonomous, to be sovereign, to make decisions in the best interest of the country, of course, but I would say for the world, in fact.
And I think it's failing badly, really failing badly.
Now when we come back, I want to talk about some of the talking points.
The propaganda surrounding this issue is like nothing we've ever seen before.
And I want to bring a couple of those arguments that are now being made in the mainstream media as to what justifies Israel's extreme operations that they're prosecuting right now against the native Palestinian population.
We'll talk about that with Dr. Zachary Foster after the break.
I'm Patrick Henningsen.
This is TNT.
Today's News Talk.
We'll be right back.
With his expert analysis and opinion, this is TNT Radio's Timothy Shea.
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Political commentator and investigative journalist, you're with Patrick Henningsen on today's News Talk Radio TNT.
All right, folks, welcome back.
Welcome back.
We're still in the first hour of this live broadcast.
Thank you for joining us.
We're having a very deep conversation about the deteriorating situation, the dire situation right now in occupied Palestine.
We're looking at the situation that's building up at the Rafah border crossing as Israel plans to push hundreds of thousands Or more native Palestinians into the Egyptian desert in one of the biggest ethnic cleansing exhibitions that we've ever seen in the modern era, if not of all time.
And this is a regrettable situation, should have been stopped a lot earlier, but because of the complicity and the total supine attitude and policies of the US, Britain and other EU countries, it's been allowed to progress unabated.
That's not to say anything about the Gulf States and their role in enabling this situation as well as Egypt and others.
But we'll get to that in a moment.
I want to bring back onto the program our guest, Dr. Zachary Foster, who is also a scholar and a historian on these matters, Middle East affairs and specifically with Israel and Palestine.
Now, Zachary, one of the arguments that are being made, that's being made in the mainstream media, you probably recognize some of these arguments.
One of them is that, well, you know, world wars happen and civilians die, and that's just part of war.
You can't avoid civilian casualties.
This sort of rank apologism of the collateral damage, as it's called, to use a military euphemism.
of this very argument being made on a top-rated show, the Piers Morgan Show.
Let's go ahead and roll this and then we will break down this what looks like a very fallacious argument but you have to see it to believe it.
Go ahead and roll this.
I suppose the analogy with World War II and the fact that indisputably, you know, many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of civilians died in that conflict, and the argument is it was for the greater good of defeating the Nazis.
Do you see any parallel with wanting, and I completely understand Israel's desire, fervent desire, to eliminate Hamas after what they did on October 7th, particularly as Hamas has stated again and again, they want to keep repeating it again and again.
On that particular argument about when you wage a war against whether it's the Nazis or Hamas, a lot of civilians tragically will get killed in the process, but ultimately that shouldn't stop you going ahead with the war to try and achieve your goal.
What do you say to that?
Zachary, where to start on this argument?
Have you heard this before and how would you respond if you were sitting there with the great Piers Morgan?
Um, comparing Hamas to the Nazis?
I mean, Hamas, before it was known as Hamas, it was called Al-Mujamma' al-Islami from 1973 to 1987.
It was a charity organization.
It funded schools and orphanages and health clinics.
It was contributing to women's empowerment and women's employment.
Okay, last I checked, the Nazi regime did not begin as a charity organization that evolved into a resistance movement, resistance to a brutal military occupation.
I mean, the comparison is obviously insane, and no serious human being would compare the a charity organization that evolved into a resistance movement resisting brutal military occupation to the nazis so i mean it's it's just insulting and um ahistorical and acontextual and ultimately if you look at hamas's evolution they took more like hamas
why did they embrace violence in 1918 It was after a year in which the Israeli military entered Gaza.
From December 1987 until December 1988, the Israeli military slaughtered 142 Palestinians in Gaza and suffered zero casualties.
And that is the reason they started to embrace violence beginning in 1989 and 1990.
Originally against military targets inside Israel.
They killed the Israeli police chief in Gaza.
They were primarily targeting military targets.
Their first attack on civilians was not until 1990, December 1990.
Which came two months after the Israeli military slaughtered 21 unarmed Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem in what would amount to a massacre.
That is what led Hamas to start to attack Israeli civilians.
So, I mean, the comparison is just disgusting, it's dehumanizing, and ultimately that is the goal here.
The goal, whenever you're comparing Palestinian resistance fighters to Nazis, the goal is to justify the wholesale slaughter of all 2.2 million Palestinians.
That's the goal.
And so Piers Morgan is, I think, also complicit in even making that comparison and making it sound reasonable.
He himself is complicit in making it easier for Israel to carry out its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Yeah, I mean, besides what you brought up, which are, you know, a valid historical context and analysis as to what an armed liberation struggle is in the world, and this is nothing new, it's happening all over the world all the time throughout history, but what's most shocking about this point, which seems to be repeated, I see it on other newscasts, it's almost like there's a memo going around,
is that it just shows a total void of ethics, a total void of morals, because I remember you could get fired for making arguments like this in the past, that you're basically endorsing the killing of civilians and saying, well, you know, it's too that you're basically endorsing the killing of civilians and saying, well, It's too bad, you know, whatever, 5, 10, 20,000, 27, 30,000.
It's just unfortunate.
And, you know, 30,000 isn't that much, Zachary, because during the Second World War, you know, many millions died.
So this is really just a drop in the bucket in terms of, you know, dead civilians.
So it shouldn't stop Israel from waging the war.
They need to wage against Hamas because they feel threatened.
I mean, that's essentially the argument that Piers Morgan and others are making.
They're trying to dress it up.
But to me this just speaks to the kind of degradation of the discourse in the West.
I'm seeing politicians parrot the same talking point.
I mean, I can't believe I'm actually watching this because this would have been totally out of bounds ten years ago.
And here it's just common parlance.
Unbelievable.
What do you think?
If the argument here is that Hamas is targeting innocent civilians on October 7th when they killed something like 764 Israeli civilians.
If that suggests that the organization is basically Nazi-like, And thus, no amount of civilian suffering, no number of civilian casualties matters.
And that the organization, again, through the wholesale destruction of Gaza, needs to be destroyed for that reason.
Well, using that same logic, then you could obviously say already back in 2008, When Israel killed more like a thousand Palestinians.
Again, mostly targeting civilians, just like Hamas did.
Mostly targeting civilians.
Then you would say that, well, in 2008, Israel was behaving Nazi-like, and thus Hamas had the right, according to this Piers Morgan logic, to go in and slaughter every single Israeli.
Kill all 10 million Israelis because the government carried out a massacre in Gaza.
I mean, that's the argument being made here.
That when the government carries out an atrocity, that when the Israeli government or when the Palestinian pseudo-government in Gaza carries out an atrocity, then the appropriate response is, or a potentially legitimate response, is to go in and wholesale massacre every single man, woman and child living in the country or living in Gaza?
I mean, that's the argument being made!
And yet, it's appropriate or acceptable to say these kinds of things when it's the Palestinian civilians who are the ones that would face the brunt of that retaliation.
But could you even imagine, could you even imagine, appears Morgan, after the 2008-2009 war, when Israel overwhelmingly targeted civilians, they killed A tiny number of Hamas militants.
The vast majority of the deaths were Palestinian civilians.
And in fact, the Goldstone Report that was produced by the United Nations in the aftermath of that war concluded, they assessed 11 strikes in which the Israeli military killed Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Out of those 11 strikes that were analyzed, 10 out of the 11 strikes had no military objective.
A military objective was killing innocent Palestinian civilians.
There was no other target.
So what you're talking about is a government that went into Gaza in 2008-9, slaughtering a thousand Palestinian civilians, and apparently, according to Piers Morgan, that means that in retaliation, Hamas has the right to go and commit a genocide against the Israeli people.
That's the argument he's making.
Well, you know, it wouldn't be so craven if not for the fact that active measures are being deployed by the media, by Western governments, to prevent any diplomacy, to prevent any ceasefire.
You saw this farrago in the UK House of Commons over the ceasefire, but we'll talk about that in the second hour with Basil Valentine.
But the active efforts on all sides to prevent Any diplomacy, any negotiations, any peace settlements, any ceasefire.
So you combine that with this rhetoric, you combine that with this type of discourse, and it really just seems like everybody is up for escalation.
I mean, where is this going to end?
It's almost like there are parties that would like to see a wider conflict.
They would like to see the whole region inflamed in a wider conflict, because I can't see any other better way to make that happen than what we're witnessing right now, Zachary.
Well, there are certain countries that are trying to bring an end to the violence.
South Africa, with the ICJ case.
The Ansar Allah movement, and the Houthis in Yemen, trying to block shipping through the Red Sea to Israeli, United States, and British ships.
Shipping?
You have Japan, you have multiple, we're not talking about Japanese state owned businesses, we're talking about privately owned weapons manufacturers in Japan, Itochu for example, saying that after the ICJ ruling, we don't want to be in violation of international law, so we're cutting our ties to Elbit.
The Israeli manufacturing company that is responsible for all these drone attacks and is the one building all these drones that are being used to slaughter innocent Palestinian children in Gaza.
So they cut ties.
You have in the Netherlands...
You also have a court order requiring the government in the Netherlands to end all military ties to the Israeli military, again, out of a desire not to be in violation of the ICJ ruling, which of course not only is an order to Israel to end its genocidal acts in Gaza, but thus As a result of that, requiring all states, right?
Because the 1948 Convention on Genocide requires all states, not just the state carrying out the acts of genocide, but requires all states to proactively prevent that genocide from happening.
So the Netherlands you saw, you saw in Spain as well, calls to investigate whether or not the European Union has any military ties to the state of Israel.
So we're seeing all around the world now that the ICJ ruling is having a real impact.
And that states are beginning to cut ties as well as companies beginning to cut ties to the Israeli military because I don't think any sane government, maybe you might describe the UK, the British government, the United States government, the German government, there are some insane governments in the world that do want to be held
I do want to be complicit in the genocide, but I think most governments, most sane governments, most ethical governments, most humane leaders around the world are saying, we want to have nothing to do with this.
No, this is true and I also see that the BDS effort as well and I'll sort of combine that with the South African ICJ efforts there.
That is actually making an impact at least on the corporate side with some of these companies and you also mentioned Elbit Systems providing that drone technology to the IDF.
And so that becomes a real political issue as all of these election cycles start to converge right now in 2024 and those fall foul of domestic legislation in so many different countries where there's an absolute prohibition of supplying arms and weapons to any country much less the state of Israel that's engaged in any questionable or, you know, genocidal activities or war crimes for that matter.
It can just be a simple case of war crimes that you need to rise to the level of genocide although it's going to get there uh with the evidence that's been presented of course so this becomes a political problem right across the western hemisphere uh zachary foster i really appreciate you joining us on tnt this week thanks so much for having me it's a great conversation and i want to continue that conversation going forward
Follow Zachary Foster on social media, ex-Twitter.
I've tagged him on our show post right now, at 21 Wire.
Definitely want to keep an eye on what Zach is doing, his great threads on this subject, all this and more.
Top of the hour news headlines coming up.
We'll be right back with more analysis, more breaking news, more headlines.
I'm Patrick Henningsen.
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