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April 20, 2024 - Jim Fetzer
33:39
Norman Finkelstein: Israel Is Prepared to Drag the Rest of the World Down with Them
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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 Denny 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 hell-bent on conquering the whole world.
Iran is hell-bent 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 Well, of course it's an apologia.
It's apologia para 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 apologia, but for of course it's an apologia, 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, Or 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 the U.S.
not by random think tankers, but by media outlets and the governments at the highest level.
And it's essentially every American adversary.
Saddam Hussein was the new Hitler.
Mahmoud Abbasinad 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.
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.
I had to hold on.
I had to stop you for one half second.
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.
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.
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 Has to resolve, or wants to resolve, not has to resolve, it wants to resolve three problems.
Problem number one, it wants to execute its quote-unquote final solution to the Gaza problem.
The Gaza problem, the Gaza has been a pinprick on Israel's side, For since really 19, 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 US military.
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.
Remember, we're talking about lunatics.
Certifiable lunatics.
In their minds, they can achieve their three overarching strategic objectives in one fell swoop.
As you said, you know, Benny Morris is warning about how Iran is weeks away from a nuker 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 Sayed 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, Israel knows Israeli society, I think, better than most Israelis because he's not, 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 neutered, if it has resolved that Iran Iran has to be neutered.
I would say no amount of restraint will stop them.
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