Norman Finkelstein - on Oct.7 Attacks, Israeli Propaganda & Gaza
Joining me today is political scientist and author, Norman Finkelstein.We will be talking about Operation Protective Edge, Israel's attacks on Gaza, Israeli propaganda & Jewish opposition to the war in Gaza.You can order Norman’s new book I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom at www.normanfinkelstein.com --💙Support this channel directly here: https://bit.ly/RussellBrand-SupportVisit the new merch store: https://bit.ly/Stay-Free-StoreFollow on social media:X: @rustyrocketsINSTAGRAM: @russellbrandFACEBOOK: @russellbrand
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Norman, thank you very much for joining me for Stay Free
with Russell Brand.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
First of all, Norman, I want to start by asking you a question that you requested we began with.
The 2014 operation known as Protective Edge.
Can you explain for us, our viewers that are live with us in the Locals community right now, and for our RumbleStream viewers, what Operation Protective Edge was, how it's significant in the Israel-Hamas or Israel-Palestine
conflict, depending on how you frame it, and why you have chosen that to be our starting point for the
conversation today?
In the current round of interviews that have been done on the current Israeli assault on Gaza,
Everything seems to start on October 7th, as if everything were fine and dandy until October 7th.
And October 7th, this gang of thugs, hooligans, and insane people burst the gates of Gaza and proceeded to commit a high-scale massacre in Israel.
But for those who have studied the conflict, what happened on October 7th wasn't the beginning of the story.
It was really the climax of a chapter in the story.
And that climax in the chapter of the story begins really in 2006, when Israel imposed a brutal economic blockade on Gaza.
The effect of that blockade was that nothing could go into Gaza and nothing could come out of Gaza.
No person could go into Gaza and no person could leave Gaza without Israel's permission.
Israel imposed in the course of that blockade a regime of a starvation-plus diet on the people of Gaza.
It literally calculated the caloric intake of the people in Gaza and then allowed food to enter Gaza at a starvation-plus level.
Gaza has suffered from among the worst economic Well, economic deprivation, but in particular, unemployment in Gaza.
Among Gaza in general, it's about 50% of the population.
Among youth, namely the people who birthed the gates of Gaza, the unemployment is at a level of about 70%.
About 97% of the water in Gaza is poisonous.
About 97% of the water in Gaza is poisonous.
It can't be drunk by the people.
Now, if you add up all of these factors, what do you get?
And I've just really just skimmed the surface.
I haven't mentioned that half the population of Gaza comprises children.
I haven't mentioned that 70% of the population of Gaza comprises refugees who were expelled from Israel in 1948 and their descendants.
I haven't mentioned that Gaza is among the most densely populated places on God's Earth.
I haven't mentioned that for the young people who burst the gates of Gaza, most of them were born into that place, which suffered from this economic blockade since 2006.
So what do we get when we put all these factors together?
Well, we take your own former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who now I understand is your foreign secretary.
David Cameron described Gaza as an open-air prison.
If you take Israel's senior security establishment official, he was the head of Israel's National Security Council.
His name is Giora Eiland.
And in March 2004, Giora Eiland described Gaza as, quote, a huge concentration camp.
And so what you saw on October 7th was young men who had been born into a concentration camp, and have lived for 20 years of their lives in that concentration camp.
But that's only half the story.
The other half of the story is Israel periodically, quote, to quote Israel, mows the lawn in Gaza.
And what is mowing the lawn?
Well, Mowing the lawn is these high-tech massacres that Israel launches against Gaza.
And a lot of people nowadays express the opinion that if Israel is conducting such massive death and destruction in Gaza, it's because of what happened on October 7th.
Well, it is true.
It is true.
That the quantitative magnitude of the death and destruction in Gaza is at a new level.
I wouldn't argue with that.
No sane person would argue with that.
But it's not true that the methods that Israel is employing in Gaza are new or that they suddenly emerged after October 7th.
So I asked your colleagues to just print out, you have in front of you, a list taken from not a human rights report, not from the United Nations, but just random testimonies of Israeli soldiers who fought in Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
Now, I want you to bear in mind that this list comprises not soldiers who are peaceniks, not soldiers who feel guilty or remorseful about their actions.
On the contrary, these soldiers just randomly describe What they did in Gaza, and I want to reiterate for your listeners,
This is before October 7th.
This is standard operating procedure for Israelis each time they mow the lawn in Gaza.
So I'm going to ask you, Russell, because by profession you're an actor, so you have a much better voice than me, just for each Testimony.
I'm just going to ask you to go soldier, read one, soldier, read the next.
Because I think it's important for listeners to understand what drove those young men To burst the gates of Gaza and, we have to be honest, committed atrocities.
So, if you don't mind, just read it for the listeners.
Of course, Norman, I will happily comply with that.
And at the bottom of page 219 in your book, Gaza, the source that is cited is breaking the silence.
This is how we fought in Gaza, soldiers testimonies and photographs from Operation Protective Edge.
And then afterwards, and because, you know, I don't know what context this will get subsequently used in, Norman, I'll be asking you What the oppositional view to everything we're discussing here is when people say that Israel is the only country that's ever shown any sort of clemency to Palestine, that there never was a nation of Palestine pre-1947.
of the common arguments that come up so that we can even in this, God, I hope somewhat
neutral or at least the neutrality provided by me being somewhat uninformed and just broadly
speaking an advocate for peace and solutions that go beyond military solutions, so that
we can have a conversation that has some tenacity and integrity to it.
So these are the sources that Norman Finkelstein has requested that I use. Fearless Jay says
I hope he doesn't do it in his alpha voice. That would not be appropriate Fearless Jay.
I will do it in a neutral voice.
This is Soldier18.
Listen man, it's crazy what went in there.
When we left after the operation, it was just a barren stretch of desert.
We spoke about it a lot amongst ourselves, the guys from the company, how crazy the amount
of damage we did there was.
I quote, "Listen man, it's crazy what went in there.
Listen man, we really messed them up.
Fuck, check it out."
There's nothing at all left.
It's nothing but desert now.
That's crazy.
21, Soldier.
I remember that the level of destruction looked insane to me.
Source 22, Soldier.
We entered Gaza with an insane amount of firepower.
25, Soldier.
It all looked like a science fiction movie.
Serious levels of destruction everywhere.
Everything was really in ruins and non-stop fire all the time.
30.
Soldier, before the entrance on foot to the Gaza Strip, a crazy amount of artillery was fired at the entire area.
Before a tank makes any movement, it fires every time.
Those guys were trigger happy.
Totally crazy.
31.
Soldier, the explosions effects caused major amounts of damage, but that doesn't interest anyone.
Use it.
Use it.
Explosives can't be taken back, the platoon commander says.
I don't want to leave explosives with me.
36 soldier our view was of the center of the strip let's say it was a real fireworks display from a distance it looked pretty cool if you looked through a night vision scope you saw crazy wreckage it was a real trip 38 soldier you'll shoot in at anything that moves and also what isn't moving crazy amounts it also becomes a bit like a computer game totally cool and real 49, soldier.
It was total destruction in there.
The photos online are child's play compared to what we saw there in reality.
I never saw anything like it.
70, soldier.
The unfathomable number of dead on one of the sides, the unimaginable levels of destruction, the way militant selves and people were regarded as targets and not as living beings.
That's something that troubles me.
74 soldier.
It's destruction on a whole other level.
94 soldier.
The Air Force carries out an insane amount of strikes in the Gaza Strip during an operation like Protective Edge.
96 soldier.
Shells are being fired all the time, even if we aren't actually going to enter.
Shells, shells, shells.
What happens for seven days straight?
It's non-stop bombardment.
That's what happens in practice.
These are accounts taken from Gaza, read by me, and of course it makes chilling reading, in particular the one that characterizes those events as being sort of the kind of homogenized and neutral events that might take place in a computer game.
And of course, like in my own sort of analysis of the depictions of violence, I've noticed
that for want of a better term, violence practiced by the West, and in this context, perhaps
we can incorporate Israel into that synecdoche, is often characterized as rational and neutral,
whereas dissident violence is characterized as emotional, savage, barbaric, when ultimately
whether you are killed by a drone or an insurgent, it's ultimately a death, a child murdered
is a child murdered, a woman or an adult murdered is an adult murdered.
So how do you think, if you were not sat with Russell Brand, but you were sat with Ben Shapiro
right now, what do you imagine you would be facing?
I imagine he would say he would give you some descriptions and depictions of October the 7th.
He would talk about the various purges and pogroms and Holocaust perhaps.
What kind of context do you think that your opponents, and I recognise it as well, you're not unique but very particular history, as I understand your parents are Holocaust survivors, obviously your name and my knowledge of your history, I understand that you are a Jewish man.
Can you tell me what troubles you most about the arguments of those who do not share your perspective?
Well, first of all, I have welcomed the debate with Ben Shapiro many times.
He's stupid, but not so stupid as to appear with me on the same platform, and so he has declined.
Now, what are the arguments to defend this sort of conduct that's described here?
One argument would usually be that it's selective.
But alas, this is not selective.
As you can see from the quotes, and I read the whole compendium by breaking the silence, there were maybe two or three people in the whole 200 pages who expressed any remorse for their actions.
As you can see from what you read, they're just casually describing, without remorse, without guilt, without pretending to be peaceniks, about what they experienced in Gaza.
So I don't think it's very easy to impeach these testimonies by Israeli soldiers themselves.
Now, you have to bear in mind, I am talking about Or I should say, you are quoting from one operation, one mowing of the lawn.
In fact, there have been at this point at least a dozen high-tech massacres visited on Gaza since the year 2000.
And I can quote quotes from soldiers, and I did in my book, In every one of the massacres that Israel has inflicted on Gaza that read exactly as the ones that you just recited for your listeners.
This is standard operating procedure for Israel in its relentless attacks on the people of Gaza.
Now, What else would be said in defense?
I suppose because I have to make, in order to ferret out the truth, you have to make the best case argument for the other side, what's called the devil's advocate.
So I will play my own devil's advocate.
The best argument is going to be that it was Hamas that broke the ceasefires.
Hamas Let's take the last issue first.
are initiating the combat or the war, and that Hamas is engaging in human shielding,
and that's why these things happen.
Let's take the last issue first.
As you can see from these testimonies, the amounts of firepower Israel used had nothing
to do with human shielding.
They're describing what they call crazy.
Look at the words.
Crazy, insane amounts of firepower, which are randomly, indiscriminately being fired on a civilian population.
Where does human shielding even come into play here?
It's not as if the combatants are saying we were trying to target combatants.
But they were being shielded by civilians.
That's not what the testimony says.
If it did say it, I would have put it in the book, because I am not afraid of truth.
If that's what's said, I would have put it in the book and then attempted to explain it.
But that's not what's being said.
When you get away from the propaganda and the propagandists, The propaganda of the State of Israel and the propagandists like Mark Regev and Ben Shapiro, what you actually see is Israel periodically entering Gaza to mow the lawn—the lawn which your listeners should bear in mind.
The lawn, half of the blades of grass in Gaza, there are 2.3 million blades of grass in Gaza.
I see you're looking at me intently and I appreciate that.
Just like I appreciated from Candace Owens, and just as I appreciated from Mihaela Peterson.
You listen, and it gradually sinks in.
That mowing of the lawn means 2.3 million people, half of whom are children, You understand?
Mowing the skull of a child.
That's not being emotive.
That's not being histrionic.
That's not being theatrical.
That's being factual.
Mowing the skulls of 1.1 million children.
And are these children being used as human shields?
Look at what they say in this text.
We are indiscriminately, randomly using insane, crazy amounts of firepower directed at a civilian population.
So, that's one side of the question.
The other side is, who provokes these periodic mowings of the lawn?
Let's take one case, which is the best documented.
In June 2008, Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire.
The ceasefire held up until November 4, 2008.
What happened on November 4th?
President Obama won the presidential election in the United States.
So Israel knew all the cameras would be directed, the world's cameras, would be directed at the United States and the outcome of the presidential election.
Israel at that moment chose, elected to break the ceasefire And go in and launch what was called back then Operation Cask Lead.
That lasted from December 26 to January 17.
There is no dispute whatsoever.
Even Israeli publications, official Israeli publications, acknowledge The ceasefire held until November 4th when Israel broke the ceasefire and what eventually ensued on December 26th was Operation Cast Lead.
So it's not true.
That Hamas breaks the ceasefires.
However, I want to make a point, because I said before, I'm not afraid of the truth.
It is not true that the only thing that's needed now is a ceasefire.
A ceasefire has to be number one on the agenda, no question about it.
But that number one Has to be accompanied by or attended by number two, which is to end the illegal, inhuman blockade of Gaza.
That medieval siege Which even the Goldstone Report, which was issued after Operation Cast Lead, described as verging on a crime against humanity.
That blockade has to end.
Or it's true.
These actions by Hamas, or as I prefer to say, the people of Gaza, will recur and recur and recur until and unless the population of Gaza has been wiped out, has been exterminated.
Now, Israel's goal now is to do just that.
It decided on October 7th that what happened, you know the cliche, a crisis is also an opportunity.
And Israel realized on October 7th, the crisis of the atrocities that occurred on October 7th, We're also an opportunity.
And the opportunity was to once and for all solve the Gaza question.
And solving the Gaza question meant anywhere from an ethnic cleansing to expel the entire population to the Egyptian Sinai, To two, making Gaza uninhabitable from now until kingdom come.
To three, what Prime Minister Netanyahu said, you have to treat the people of Gaza like Amalek, referring to the Hebrew Bible, wipe out every man, woman, child, and animal, every camel, every fox.
So that was the opportunity that Israel seized upon on October 7th to once and for all find
a final solution to the Gaza question.
That Amalek rhetoric is, of course, incredibly loaded and customary usage of either religious
national myth or the kind of colloquialism likely to elicit broad public support.
Is often mobilized in the immediate aftermath of crisis in order to curry political favor and to legitimize expedient military action.
I'm thinking of George W. Bush's sort of kill these folks in the post 9 11 era, which subsequently has been shown to have been a misguided approach and created more negative consequences than perhaps would
have been anticipated, as well as being targeted in areas that are, in retrospect,
inadvisable and inappropriate.
To connect it again to your reference to Amalek and this Talmudic reference to extermination,
I wonder, Norman, and I think it's vital that your participation and contribution to this
conversation is as vital as like when I've seen Hasidic Jews participate in advocacy
for peace or my friend Gabor Mate talking about a requirement for peace because I think
it has a particular resonance when survivors of the Holocaust, this great scar upon the
heart of the Jewish people and this is significant event in what has led to the establishment
of the state of Israel, I say this as a dilettante, as an outsider and a person who doesn't claim
to have anything other than a superficial understanding, it seems vital to me that people
that could legitimately take up a strong position on the, let's call it the other side, advocate
for peace, advocate for clemency, advocate for tolerance, compassion and solution.
But I feel that, as I have you here, I'd love to ask you how you tackle the idea that enshrined within Hamas's raison d'etre is the extermination of the Jewish people.
That's something that I've continually used, heard, to legitimize extreme military measures, i.e.
you cannot negotiate with terrorists, a very sort of common maxim or axiom in conflicts of this kind.
I've heard people say that people seem to care less when other Muslim and Arab nations exterminate
Arabs, i.e. within Syria. I've also heard people say, like when talking about the shield issue,
that perhaps it's, as I've heard it rendered, is it's more that Hamas are within a civilian
population and, you know, me, my personal position is peace, peace, peace, stop war,
stop war immediately.
That's my personal position, just so you don't think that I'm advocating for these kind of, what I would regard as extreme and agonizing actions.
But I would say, how do you cover Hamas is rhetoric around genocide which rhetorically is comparable to the Amalek reference that you made.
The idea that just by being within that community there is a degree of shielding and the idea That genocide that sort of the Israeli people feel that there is a sort of a peripheral genocide that could be enacted by the sort of numerous hostile nations and people that are around them and that this somehow legitimizes the sort of ongoing threat of this presence because I suppose you would have to fear that
Wouldn't you?
In order to be able to, you know, even the accounts I read earlier from your book, in order to legitimize violence of that nature, you would have to fear for your own way of life.
You would have to have the ultimate motivation.
So again, Hamas's MO and raison d'etre, the idea of shielding within Gaza, making it inevitable.
And the fact that, yes, Israel could, if they wanted to, this is another common argument, they could wipe out all Gaza and the West Bank and they haven't.
Therefore, you know, like the Hamas are operating at maximum capacity and Israel aren't.
So in that gap is clemency and compassion.
How do you address those arguments, please, Norman?
Well, because I'm on the older side and you're on the younger side, you're going to have to refresh my memory for each of these questions, because you just overloaded my memory bank.
So I'm going to ask you, let's start with the first one, the Hamas charter.
I don't want to get into the technicalities here.
This is not an academic seminar.
I'll just try to make myself brief on this point.
Since Hamas won the election in 2006, the parliamentary election in Gaza, and even before that, but we'll start from 2006, Hamas has repeatedly made offers to Israel, either for what's called a Hudna, H-U-D-N-A, which just means a long-term ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians, a ceasefire along the
Roughly about 20 to 30-year truths.
They have made that offer, and they've also made offers to establish a Palestinian state along the lines of the international consensus, meaning the June 1967 border, Israel within its legal borders, and a Palestinian state within the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza.
All those peace offerings by Hamas were completely rejected by Israel and backed by the United States.
So it's not true.
The factual record is very clear on that.
It's not true that Hamas was unwilling to reach a reasonable settlement of the conflict It was willing to do so, but those peace offerings were rejected by Israel and the United States out of hand.
There wasn't even an attempt at negotiations.
Which brings me to your second question.
And I want to encourage you, Russell, ask me the tough questions, because it's no point in preaching to the choir.
You want to reach new people and people who have legitimate doubts.
So, you might answer to the question, to the reply I just gave, you could say, yes, it's probably true.
You know more than me.
It's probably true that Hamas made peace offerings, but of course Israel rejected them.
How can you negotiate with a terrorist organization?
And even people like Bernie Sanders in the United States, during the first month of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, he kept saying he's against a ceasefire because he can't negotiate with Hamas, because Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Now, I'm going to ask you and your listeners to answer a very simple question.
It couldn't be simpler.
Let's take what I mentioned earlier, Operation Protective Edge, between December 26, 2008 and January 17, 2009.
Let's just take that one example.
The estimates are that during Operation Cast Lead, Israel killed about 1,400 Gazans,
of whom 350 were children.
Okay?
OK.
And it also destroyed 6,300 homes, and it laid waste all of Gaza.
Okay?
And I think I can prove to you and all of your listeners what I said earlier.
This was a completely unprovoked attack by Israel.
It broke the ceasefire.
It launched the attack.
Now, I'd like you and your listeners to keep in mind, we're talking about one, just one of Israel's operations, Operation Cast Lead.
So now let's fast forward to October 7th.
On October 7th, the estimates are about 1,200 Israelis were killed, and of those 1,200, approximately 30 were children.
So, in terms of numbers, obviously the total number is roughly in the same ballpark.
1,400 in Kask led, Gazans killed, 1,200 Israelis killed on October 7th.
Children, it's a very big order of magnitude difference, 350 children in Gaza, about 30 children in Israel.
Now, here is the very simple question.
I do not think it could be any simpler.
If Hamas's terrorist action on October 7 disqualifies it from negotiating a settlement, it's a terrorist organization.
You can't negotiate with it, you have to destroy it.
Then why doesn't Israel's terrorist action, just in one operation, Operation Cast Lead, why doesn't Israel's terrorist action disqualify it from negotiating a settlement?
If Hamas has to be destroyed Then it seems to me the state of Israel has to be destroyed.
Now, I am not advocating that.
I am simply asking you and your listeners, what is the error in my logic?
In Operation Protective Edge in 2014, from which those testimonies you read occurred, 2,200, 2,200 Gazans were killed.
550 were children.
500 Gazans were killed, 550 were children, 18,000 homes were destroyed.
If October 7 disqualifies Hamas from any participation in a peace settlement, then Operation Protective
Edge, if we look just at the raw numbers, must disqualify Israel twice as much.
From any settlement of the conflict.
1,200 versus 2,200.
30 children versus 550 children.
Why do the acts of terrorism, which I do not deny occur, but why do they only disqualify one party To reaching a settlement, but not the other party.
Honestly, I like to play my own devil's advocate.
That's the way you find truth.
But try as I do, I cannot figure out a coherent answer to that question.
I suppose it must be because of the historic relationships between Britain and the establishment of Israel, a kind of a broader set of relationships between US-Israeli interests, in particular where it is acknowledged and understood That there are certain types of military violence that are taxonomized as rational, logical, necessary, and other sets of violence that are seen as provocative, whether it's the events around 9-11 or the numerous times that Britain as a former colonial power has enacted violence on people
of India, various African nations, the people of Ireland legitimizing it as the kind of necessary
control against savages or groups of people that are regarded as having less rights. I suppose
if you don't have a general consensus that all human life has a particular value, then you are,
I suppose, on the pathway to being able to legitimize certain types of violence and justify
certain types of death. I think that we all understand that.
That, sadly, is not something that is particular to Israel, which is another argument
that I've heard used that You know, that the United States of America, that Britain have all practiced this kind of pattern.
It's almost, I suppose, comparable to the kind of climate arguments that we've made.
Why are you going to prevent India having an industrial revolution or China having an industrial revolution when our, I say our, I mean, Western, sort of, anglophonic nations have had our industrial revolutions.
Now, I recognize it's a lot more emotive, evocative and important, perhaps, I would like to just briefly comment.
I go back a long way.
I was involved in the anti-war movement against the war in Vietnam.
I was involved, when I got older, in the civil rights movement, and by the time I was in graduate school, I was involved in the anti-apartheid movement.
So, I would be the last one on God's Earth to deny the war crimes, crimes against humanity.
And in some cases, such as the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, they have to be qualified as acts of genocide.
I would be the last one to deny that ugly record.
However, I didn't support it.
I opposed it.
So I don't think I can be legitimately accused of holding a double standard or an anti-Semitic standard if I oppose what Israel's doing in the same way as I opposed the war in Vietnam, I opposed apartheid, and I opposed the vicious assault on African Americans before and during the Civil Rights Movement.
However, having said that, We have to be clear and honest about what's happening now.
Right now, there is a declared genocide being committed by the Israeli government against the people of Gaza.
It's not indirect.
It's not obscure.
It's not ambiguous.
It's a declared genocide being committed against the people of Gaza.
The magnitude of death and destruction that's been inflicted on the people of Gaza in the past two months makes every other war in the 20th century, and in part in the 21st century, and in part in the 20th century, in part in the 20th century, pale by comparison.
There's simply no comparison between the density of the bombing The ratio of civilian to military deaths, the percentage of children and women as against men who have been killed, there is no comparison with any other conflict in the 21st century, be it Afghanistan, be it Iraq, be it Ukraine.
There is a light year separate What I should say a chasm separates what Israel has been doing with any other conflict in the 21st century and in some cases even the 20th century in terms of combatant to civilian ratio of deaths.
I would also say that Israel has crossed a negative Threshold of barbarism, and I use my words very carefully.
Israel has crossed a negative threshold of barbarism insofar as this is the only conflict, to my knowledge.
Now, I cannot say for the Nazis during World War II because I'm not certain, But it's the only conflict, to my knowledge, where, as a matter of open state policy, Israel has been targeting hospitals in Gaza.
Now, I want you to listen to me carefully, Russell.
I go back to the war in Vietnam, and I was active in the anti-war movement.
And I have a searing memory of that war.
There are many memories, but one in particular.
During Christmas 1972, the United States bombed Bachmai Hospital.
For your listeners who are interested, it's spelled B-A-C-H, new word, M-A-I.
Israel bombed Bachmai Hospital.
And that atrocity—excuse me, the U.S.
bomb-bombed my hospital—that atrocity, which of course the U.S.
denied and said it was an accident and it was a mistake, is seared in the memory of everyone who passed through that war.
In fact, when I was a graduate student, I set up a table at the front of my library where I collected money to help rebuild Bachmai Hospital.
And Bachmai Hospital, by the way, was rebuilt by American donations.
People, not the government.
Forget Kissinger.
May he burn in hell.
No, it was by people, ordinary people, who gave to rebuild the hospital.
The bombing of a hospital Until this Israeli genocide in Gaza was literally unthinkable as a official open state practice.
Let me enter those qualifiers again.
As an official open state practice.
It was unthinkable.
And now Israel has crossed that negative threshold of barbarism by routinely, methodically, systematically bombing the hospitals in Gaza.
So even as I am the last person on God's earth Having been raised on a mental diet of reading Professor Chomsky's chronicling of U.S.
crimes around the world.
I am the last person on God's Earth to deny the magnitude and the horror of the crimes inflicted by my government on states and peoples around the world.
But the fact nonetheless remains that by some basic metrics, What Israel has been doing in Gaza is in a class, a category, all its own and certain of its actions.
The targeting of hospitals marks the crossing of a negative threshold into barbarism.
If you search your memory, now you say you're a lay person, that's fine.
Each person has his or her contribution to make humanity a better place.
And yours might not be sitting in a library or sitting at your desk reading books.
But if you search your memory hard, I do not think you can come up with a single example of an official state policy of targeting hospitals.
That is an innovation That Israel has now brought into the public domain and has now legitimized for all future wars and state actions.
What Israel has done, it has legitimated the targeting of hospitals in the course of a war.
I understand.
Also, I feel that we must talk about the nature of propaganda.
I've heard people say that when hostages were released that they were actors.
I've heard people say that the stories indeed of bombing hospitals were not true.
I wonder, Norman, from your somewhat unique position making these claims, given your personal history and your family history, if you believe that anti-Semitism plays a role in the criticisms of Israel and Israel actions, even if that anti-Semitism is being grafted onto, even if we were to take everything that you are saying as the only version of events that we can countenance.
In my mind, I'm trying to continually hold if matters were as simple as they are described by either side, then we would not have conflict at all.
Indeed, conflict is where two realities are completely in collision with one another.
And this occurs only when one side has extremely powerful propaganda and influence or when there are viable perspectives to be had.
I say this with complete and total respect for the version of events that you have conveyed, but also, as I've said throughout this, as a person from Gray's in Essex in the UK, an English person who has has only the affinity of the heart with all of the people
that are suffering as a result of this conflict and all of the evident exploitation that's
happening throughout elite establishment interests. I refer entirely now to military industrial
complex exploitation of both the Ukraine-Russia war and this escalating conflict in the
region that we are discussing today.
I ask, do you believe that antisemitism is grafted on to this conflict? Even if we take
everything that you've said is entirely true?
And as you know, I'm not arguing with you.
I'm listening to you.
Do you think that antisemitism is on the rise?
Do you think that antisemites have a Do you think that there is an antisemitic opposition to the state of Israel?
Do you think that there is a unique perspective and set of standards applied to Israel that are not applied to the United States?
And I've heard your arguments there about sort of what you regard as unique sort of targeting of particular public institutions.
As a Jewish man and as the child of Holocaust survivors, do you feel that Russell, you used the word grafted.
I would use the word inevitable spillover.
What do I mean by that?
to legitimise anti-Semitic tropes or arguments.
Russell, you used the word grafted. I would use the word inevitable spillover.
What do I mean by that? I'll give you a personal example.
My late father, as I suppose you know, he was in the Warsaw Ghetto and then he was in Auschwitz,
and he was in the Auschwitz death march.
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Now, my late father hated, not Nazis, let me be clear about it, my late father hated Germans.
Not Nazis, Germans.
So, I remember he was once reading a book by a Russian author.
My father knew Russian.
He was reading, he was Polish, but he knew Russian.
He was reading a book by a Russian author, and he recommended the book to me.
Why did he recommend the book to me?
He said, because in this book, they don't refer to Nazis, they refer to Germans.
I remember that.
I was not happy with that, with what he was saying.
But I recognized that given what happened to him, there was an inevitable spillover From hating Nazis to hating Germans because Germany was a Nazi state for a period of time.
We can't deny that.
Germany was a Nazi state.
In the 1950s, when the United States was carrying on all sorts of activities around the world to destabilize governments and overthrow governments, which it viewed as hostile to its elements, a famous book came out.
You can even Google it.
It was called The Ugly American.
It wasn't called The Ugly CIA.
It wasn't called The Ugly U.S.
Army.
The ugly American.
Again, an inevitable spillover from the activities of our government—many of which, by the way, most Americans were completely unaware of—an inevitable spillover from the government to the people.
Now, how can it come as a surprise if Israel calls itself a Jewish state?
If Israel calls itself the state of the Jewish people?
If all the official organizations in the UK, the Jewish organizations, support the actions of Israel?
How can it come as a surprise, given the examples I just gave, if there's not a spillover from the self-proclaimed Jewish state, which claims the genocide it's committing in Gaza is in the name of the Jewish people, and your British board of Jewish deputies Backs to the hilt, all of these genocidal actions.
It would be a very big surprise if there weren't a spillover from hating that genocidal state to also bearing a large amount of animus towards Jews in general.
But having said that, Having said that, I want to also say that one of the most redeeming, inspiring aspects of the horror currently being inflicted in Gaza is the number of self-identified Jews
In particular, Jewish Voices for Peace, or the organization Not In Our Name, who now stand in the forefront, the vanguard of the opposition to this genocidal war.
If you take any of, not any, but most of the big anti-genocide actions in the United States in the past two months, At Grand Central Station in New York, at the Statue of Liberty, at numerous sites, always in the front, in the vanguard.
And as a Jordanian friend of mine said the other day, he said, you have to be honest about it.
The most, the best organized and the most aggressive opponents of the Israeli genocide are Jewish.
So, in my opinion, number one, it puts the lie to the claim that this opposition to the genocide springs from anti-Semitism.
And I also have to say, by Jews being in the forefront, the vanguard of the opposition to the genocide, they do the most To dispel and dissipate the antisemitism, whereas the British Board of Deputies, that monstrosity named Dame Margaret Hodge,
They are the ones in the vanguard and the forefront of fomenting anti-Semitism.
In fact, they are, by a wide margin, the main fomenters of anti-Semitism in the Western world.
It's the Dame Hodges Not the Jews fighting the genocide, who are the main fomentors of anti-Semitism in the Western world today.
Norman, I've got two good questions, actually, both from one person on the stream here, Kay Kottwas.
He asks, how would you respond to people like Sam Harris and Bill Maher, who argue that you can't make an equivalency?
Can you just scroll back a little bit, guys, so I can just see that question again?
Thank you so much.
You can't make an equivalency, moral equivalency, between Israel and Hamas who don't accept women's rights, believe gays should be executed in theocracy.
That's one question about the moral equivalency from sort of public intellectual stroke media figures like Sam Harris and Bill Maher.
You can't make a moral equivalency because of the, let's call it, lack of progressivism sort of within Islam and presumably therefore within Hamas and also Kay Kotwas is asking about the influence of his term Israeli propaganda apparatus on Western media.
So the two questions are how would you address like Sam Harris and Bill Maher saying you can't compare Israel and like yeah like you know Ben Shapiro as well would say like you know Israel's a democracy you know there are like sort of Palestinians are moving in and out of Israel he would say and You know, and of course, yeah, this idea about women's rights and ideas around sexual equality and sexual freedom.
And then, you know, how also from Kay Kotwas on our stream, our live stream, how the Israeli, his words, Israeli propaganda apparatus influences Western media.
So two pretty big questions there, Norman.
I wonder if you want your thoughts on that.
I'm going to ask Russell to refresh my memory.
I don't want to appear to be evading a question, so if I forget to answer it, okay, just refresh my memory.
First of all, I'm not going to deny that there are many, in my opinion, regressive practices in the Muslim world, in the Arab world, and in Gaza.
That's being disingenuous, and I don't intend to be disingenuous.
However, first of all, I do not believe that bears on the question of whether a people has the right to self-determination.
The people of Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinian people under international law, constitute what's legally called a people, and as a people they have the right to self-determination, and that right has been denied to them for 75 years.
So everything that's what's being said can be and in my opinion is true.
However, it doesn't in the least Let's bear on the question of whether the Palestinian people have the right to self-determination and more to the point.
Let's say everything you say about women's rights and sexual rights in Gaza is true.
Let's say it's all true.
And I'm not going to deny that large parts of it are true.
I'm not going to.
Does that mean you have the right to confine people in a concentration camp?
Does that give you the right to immure people in a concentration camp?
Does that give you that right?
Now, before we act so superior to these people, I'll tell you something, and I'm not negating what the Sam Harrises and the Ben Shapiros and that ilk have to say.
I have never seen in the Arab world as much homelessness as in the United States.
What does that say about our culture?
In the Arab world, up until now, it may change, confining your parents in an old age home is that idea they can't even compute.
You put your parents in an old age home?
Where do you have more respect for parents?
Where do you have more respect for elders?
We should, before we carry on as if we're so superior to other parts of the world, you know the passage, clear the plank from your eye before you examine the speck in another person's eye.
And sometimes people don't see the plank in their eye.
All they see is the horrors elsewhere.
In my city, I don't want to get involved now in a tangent, but just as a point.
In my city, the streets are laden with homeless people.
The subways are filled with homeless people, and all these skyscrapers have gone up.
These, you know, 50-, 75-floor skyscrapers.
And you know what?
You ready for this?
They're all empty.
They're all empty.
Because Arab sheikhs, Russian billionaires, Chinese billionaires, they buy the houses.
Now, I ask you, Russell, what verdict will be rendered on our civilization in a hundred years that we confined tens of thousands of people, my city tens of thousands of people, to homelessness in streets and subways when half the new buildings that have gone up are empty.
They're empty.
People purchase them just as an investment and never use them.
So unlike Mr. Harris and Mr. Shapiro, I try to be a little more humble or humbler before rendering judgment on other countries, other societies, other traditions, even as I acknowledge they have many regressive features.
Now, you said, how can I compare Hamas with Israel?
Israel is a democracy.
Let's ask ourselves a simple question.
The Israeli, the main Israeli human rights organization for the occupied territories, it's called B'Tselem, B'Tselem, okay?
And B'Tselem put out a report a few years ago, and the report said, I'm directing myself to you and to your listeners.
The report said, let's stop kidding ourselves.
There's only one state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.
Israel is not occupying the West Bank and Gaza anymore.
They're all part of one state because it's been that way since 1967.
It's more than 50 years.
So de facto, it's one state.
So they said we have only one state.
It includes Israel proper, the West Bank, and Gaza.
There's one state.
That one state has about 14 million people.
Okay?
About roughly 14 million people.
Of those 14 million people, 5 million of those people, namely the citizens in the West Bank and Gaza, or the people in the West Bank and Gaza, they have no rights.
They don't have a right of voting.
They don't have a right of citizenship.
They have zero rights.
Zero.
Literally zero rights.
Okay?
And the Arabs in Israel, about 2 million, they have some rights.
Not equal rights, but some rights.
So now I have to ask you a question, or a simple question.
If you have 14 million people in the state, 5 million of those 14 million have no rights whatsoever.
None.
And 2 million have what you might call second or third class citizen rights.
Does that sound to you like a democracy?
Where half the population has either no or second or third class rights.
Does that sound to you like a democracy?
Does it sound to me like one?
Actually, I think you sort of opened a line of analyses when you said that we do not have the moral authority to arbitrate between different models of civilization that we are in a sort of, in the
kind of lens that Edward Said would have applied, not able to presume that our culture is more
advanced and that there is but one trajectory or teleology along which cultures
progress. And it's plain that our own set of somewhat nihilistic values derived from materialism
and rationalism have left us in the kind of cultural despair and uncertainty that
means that there are few people that are confident to condemn, few people that are confident in
taking up a position when our own democracies increasingly look like veils for
different types of autocracy, whether that's the new and emergent.
Digital tyrannies that we're beginning to experience.
The new, heavily stratified nations that both of us are living within now, where new extremes of poverty are regularly tolerated, where life expectancy, that famous marker of progress, is finally descending in the United States of America, where people feel disconnected, lost and adrift.
Perhaps it's within this context that we are Unable to come from a position of legitimate moral authority to even evaluate where our affiliations might lie.
Perhaps it's easy to take shortcuts and to support Just based on rhetoric and artifice, the kind of affinities that evidently exist between the nations that we are discussing, for plainly they do if the recent UN vote is anything to go by with the blocking of a potential ceasefire that's just taken place in the last couple of days.
So I would say, listening to you now, it sounds like Democracy itself is in trouble.
Progressivism itself is in trouble.
Neoliberalism has reached a kind of tipping point.
And indeed, whether we want to look at broadening cultural frames, genocide is genocide and the annihilation of a people is the annihilation of people, whether those people are Jewish or Arab or you know, whatever other category of genocide. I
think there's a reason that word has such sort of incredible power within it
But it seems to me that you know when we sort of look at when did this conflict start?
We've got a lot of questions To answer about how we found ourself in this position and
how will this conflict end?
Even weightier questions, Norman.
And I have to say that the type of, let's say, compassion embodied in your own transition, at least culturally, is certainly a path that many, many people are going to have to walk if there's going to be anything like a resolution in this issue. Many, many people are
going to have to radically alter their perspective if there's going to be a solution beyond
unimaginable conflagration and genocide. Many people are going to have to take...
I would say just on that note, actually, there's reason for optimism on that score. The evidence
is overwhelming that large masses of people in the United States, in the UK and elsewhere,
they don't need to have their thinking renovated.
They have a very clear sense that what Israel is doing in Gaza is utterly criminal and that the U.S.' 's support
But that criminality is equally criminal.
If you look at the polls in the United States, 70% of young people, 70% of young people oppose Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.
A large percentage of Democrats, judging from the most recent polls, Oppose President Biden's blanket support for Israel.
And I suspect you'll find the same percentages in the UK.
My memory is that very large demonstration you had in London a few weeks ago.
It was one of the largest demonstrations of popular opposition to war in your nation's history.
So, in my view, The problem is not the thinking of ordinary people.
Ordinary people know there's something wrong when a high-tech state is murdering in broad daylight women, children, old people, targeting hospitals, laying waste, laying waste To entire towns and cities.
There are places now in Gaza like Beit Hanoun, which used to have 35,000 people.
Now you go there, it's a howling wilderness.
A howling wilderness.
People understand that.
The problem is not that ordinary people are brainwashed.
The problem, it's the greed, the lust for power of a handful, a handful of parasites and murderers.
They're the problem.
That handful of parasites and murderers who have not a Corner of their heart.
Able to reach out to the suffering of ordinary people, be it a homeless person in the streets of London or a child in Gaza.
Their hearts have been so hardened and inert by their grief.
And their lust for power.
They are the problem.
If I can use the expression that came to pass, beginning with the Occupy Movement, we, the 99%, we, the 99%, are not the problem.
Occupy movement, we, the 99%, we, the 99%, are not the problem.
That 1%, they are the problem.
And I feel that over the course of this conversation, while plainly you have extremely clear, well-informed and passionate views, which we know that many people will strongly oppose, that is the nature of this conflict.
I feel that when we talk about establishment corruption, a billionaire class of all denominations
beyond religious or racial affinity and the interests of ordinary people
as characterized by that great maxim emerging from the Occupy movement,
the 1% versus the 99%, perhaps we find territory where we might progress together
in decentralized autonomous communities where people have individual, cultural, traditional,
religious, progressive freedom, freedom from censorship, freedom from external control,
the right to live without an exploitative class of people of any religious or denomination imposing violence,
both military, ideological, political, and financial upon them.
Norman, thank you so much for joining us today.
I appreciate the time you've taken and I appreciate your passion.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to look at this book, Gaza.
And also, you can order Norman's new book, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It, heretical thoughts on identity, politics, cancel culture and academic freedom.
