Norman Finkelstein: The “Big Lie” about Gaza Is That The Palestinians Have Been the Aggressors

this is democracy now democracynow.org the war and peace report I'm Amy Goodman as we move into the second part of our conversation with academic Norman Finkelstein author of the new book Gaza an investigation into his martyrdom the book is being published as the confrontation of Israel a possible war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court into its 2014 assault on Gaza that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, including more than 500 children, in his new book Norman Finkelstein writes that Gaza is about a big compound lie of a thousand little lies, often apparently abstruse and arcane, what is the big lie about the Gaza norm the big lie about Gaza is that it is an aggressor Gaza is attacking Israel and Israel's reaction in self-defense is a double lie The first law is that most Israeli attacks on Gaza don't even

have

anything to do with Gaza, so if we take Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9, Wyatt Israel attacked Gaza not because of Gaza or anything it did.

Gaza, the Israelis were very honest, this is revenge for Lebanon in 2006, Israel suffered a huge defeat in Lebanon against Hezbollah, the self-part of God, and then the Israelis started to panic because they were losing what they they call their deterrence capacity and their deterrence capacity simply means that it is a fancy technical term for the Arabs who fear us and worried that the Arabs no longer fear them afterwards. This is not a heterogeneous guerrilla army, but it is not a big deal either, there are about 6,000 combatants. Hezbollah at that time had 6,000 fighters and they effectively inflicted defeat on the Israeli invaders in Lebanon, so they were looking for a place where they could restore. what they called their deterrence capacity they did not want to get entangled with a party of God with Hezbollah so they targeted Gaza and it had nothing to do with the notion that they are defending themselves against Gaza the second big law is what Gaza consists of when you read the official reports, even when you read the human rights reports, they talk about this huge arsenal of weapons that Hamas has accumulated number one, how do you know how many weapons they

have

?

If you knew how many weapons they have, then you should do it. you know where they are and if you know where they are then Israel would attack preemptively if it is not attacked preemptively it is because it does not know anything about the weapons that Israel draws numbers out of thin air and then all the official media and even the human critics Human rights organizations repeat these numbers. They talk about Grad missiles and fodder missiles. What is Gaza? What are your weapons? What is your arsenal? Let's take the last attack we have exactly. We know exactly how much damage these weapons caused.

There were 5,000 so-called rockets. and mm mortars fired mortar shells at Israel, so in total there are 7,000 shells, you know the damage caused. The Israeli Foreign Ministry had a diary that listed all the damage caused each day. 5,000 rockets, mm mortar shells. A house was destroyed. A house, what is it like? It's possible that 5,000 mm rockets and water projectiles can only destroy a house because they're not rockets, they're fireworks, their upgraded fireworks, what do you mean by that? Well, they are not rockets, the problem is that Hamas and Israel have a mutual interest in pretending that they are Rockets Hamas pretends that they are Rockets in order to show that their people resisting works, look how afraid they are of us and Israel pretends that they are Rockets, so I can say that we are acting in self-defense, but they are not rockets, they are just improved fireworks, even if you take into account the iron dome, okay, I don't have time to go into details, but your listeners are some of them, No, because you explained to them what the iron-to-iron dome was, they are anti. the so-called missile defense system and claimed that one of the reasons so little damage was caused was due to their technological wizardry, namely the number one Iron Dome missile defense system.

Iron Dome was only located near the main urban centers of Israel number two only 840 rockets were fired towards those main urban centers number three Iron Dome according to official Israeli figures diverted around 740 of those rockets according to the postal theater it had in its program the MIT anti-missile technology expert said that it is effective The effectiveness rate of the beams was around five percent, which means it deflected about 40 rockets, but let's even take the Israeli numbers, let's say it deflected 720 rockets, let's take that number that still leads to thousands and thousands and thousands of rockets that, if they went off course, landed 40 percent of them. in the border area where there was no Iron Dome, so how can it be the only house that was destroyed because it is not rockets?

So why does Hamas do it? Why does Hamas do it? I think part of it is because they are like that. They speak, they claim fame. Is there an armed resistance? They want to distinguish themselves from distinguishing themselves in the Palestinian Authority, which is why they claim that we are still resisting number two. I think they really believe in their own Buganda because they see Israel saying, "You know these rockets." You are causing us so much damage and destruction, etc. I think in part you have to remember that let's not offend them, let's not offend them, but they live in a hermetically sealed society, most of the Hamas leaders there recently stopped spending 10. years in prison 15 years in prison are very inexperienced because Israel eliminated that first line, the second line, the third line of the Hamas leadership, so don't attribute great strategic thinking to them, they are living in this little hermetically sealed isolation.

Enclave and I think they have actually internalized a lot of the Israeli propaganda that explains what happened first in Operation Cast Lead 2008/9 and then in Operation Protective Edge in 2014 and you reference this in the first part of our interview , but in terms of casualties in terms of the timing of these two attacks mm-hmm well, I don't want to go over topics that we've already discussed, so let me just look at the highlights for the purposes of interview number one. Operation Cast Lead begins in December. twenty-six twenty-two thousand eight ends on January 17, 2009 with Amnesty International called the 22 days of death and destruction there is a ceasefire implemented in June 2008 Official and unofficial Israeli organizations say Hamas was careful to respect the ceasefire I I am we were careful to respect the ceasefire Israel however is preparing is preparing is preparing is preparing for its attack on Gaza to take revenge on Lebanon when all the pieces are in place it took about a year of preparation when all the pieces They are in their place, they need a good pretext, they look for a pretext around them and They wait until the fourth historic election, when Barack Obama is elected to office, they know that all the cameras are fixed on the White House, they were fixed on the United States and then they kill six Hamas militants knowing full well that there will be a reaction and from that moment it descends to tit for tat and then on December 26 the assault begins that ends on January 17 and for the moment it was, by far, the largest Israeli massacre committed against Gaza and it must be endured. in mind, I'm not sure how vivid your memory is, even mine is starting to fade and I studied it, you know, very closely, public opinion changed radically against Israel after Operation Cast Lead, it created quite an international stir. , they were believing the casualties and death the destruction was around sixty-three hundred houses that were destroyed ten Israeli civilian casualties Palestinians 1,400 claimed that up to twelve hundred were civilians 350 children were killed they estimate that around six hundred thousand tons of rubble remained and there were around three Believe it or not there were about three hundred human rights reports issued about what happened and if you look at the proportions in my book you will see that Operation Cast Lead is exhaustively documented in four chapters, big chapters because there was a huge amount of information and a climax . in the Goldstone report and the Goldstone report was a catastrophe for the State of Israel Goldstone is a Jewish Goldstone as a Zionist Goldstone as a liberal dose and it was a change, he was a judge, a respected judge, one can even say renowned, and he Most importantly, he is a Zionist, is on the board of directors of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and so on, and now he presented a report that said the purpose of the caste LED was to punish, humiliate and terrorize the civilian population, a total disaster for Israel and, therefore, Israel.

He attacks it fiercely and this he published with the report and the report comes out in 2009. They say that Israel persecutes him fiercely across the political spectrum, at all levels of Israeli society and also in the United States. I go after Goldstone and then tragedy strikes. I review the record very carefully in the book. Goldstone was almost a joke because it was April 1st, it was April Fool's Day. He drops a bomb in The Washington Post 2011. He doesn't say it literally, but it clarifies the message he is transmitting, he is telling the report and he withdraws it, I tell you, I remember that day quite well, I was in the library, I don't remember where, and it was as if something died in me it was really like something died in me something that you believed in or wanted to believe in and maybe I was naive, but the Goldstone report was a very important document at a time Benjamin Netanyahu said that we face three existential threats Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, rockets and the Goldstone report. and it was a very big problem for them, as you remember, this is the time when Livni just visited the UK, she was accused of war crimes under universal jurisdiction and she explained, hey, she should be Livni, she was the minister of Foreign Affairs during Operation Castle - and she was a really miserable human being the day after Cass ran the day after it ended on January 18th she appeared on Israeli TV Channel 10 and bragged that we behaved like real hooligans in Gaza bragged that we went crazy in Gaza I ordered it and I'm proud of it because they are so shameless, they are so shameless because they have the United States protecting them and they continue with this kind of impunity and then the Goldstone report came, it was like an O moment because it seemed like for the first time they were finally going to be held accountable and that's why they went crazy, the Israelis had to arrest Goldstone, he recanted, he claims he recanted because there was new information available since the publication of his report , but I Review it systematically in the book, there was no new information available and then the question is, well, there was no new information available, why did the weekend happen?

One possible explanation is because all the pressure the Israelis and his family were putting on him they tried. to prevent her from attending his grandson's Bar Mitzvah in South Africa Goldstone, the South African, that is an explanation for reasons that I cannot explain now because it requires details. I don't find it plausible. I think he was blackmailed. You know which one is? The Mossad is an effective spy organization, everyone has skeletons in their closet and if you don't have skeletons in your closet, a relative did. Goldstone's daughter did it. Alya, she is an Israeli citizen. I think he was blackmailed.

That's where the evidence points. John, the guy, he's respected for human rights, he's considered the father of human rights in South Africa, a very principled guy he's really real, he's a principled liberal, you know, there's the Phil Ochs song, love me , love me, I'm a liberal about hypocritical liberals, he's real. a true principled liberal and has

been

very principled on this particular issue and wrote a very devastating article the day after the key retraction and said that the truth of why Goldstone told it will go with him to his grave and then the Israelis will start to leave After a lot of people remember the case of Robert Bernstein, who was the founder of Human Rights Watch, he then started attacking Human Rights Watch to try to, so to speak, defend them.

He dropped his own bomb, I think it was in the New York Times. He could be wrong to attack Human Rights Watch, so now all the pressure is on the human rights community, they start to act after respected jurists human rights like William Chávez, Christian Thomas, were shot, they all had to leave, as they were supposed to be. about the investigation of Israeli crimes by the Commission, for example during Operation Protective Edge and they are from the UN, there were UN officials, but the prominent jurists and respected jurists all have to leave because he will start digging dirt and everyone will have their to be dug up, we know, so now the human rights community is starting to panic and is in panic mode because the Israelis are just another control now and you saw the result after Operation Protective Edge.

I'm not happy to have to say it, it's the shortest chapter in the book, you know why no human rights reports were published Human Rights Watch for Operation Laid a Lead in 2008-9 published seven fairly substantial reports after Operation Protective Edge published a reportsmall a small report What fifteen pages Amnesty International was the only major human rights organization to publish major reports, but they were all whitewashing of Israel. It was a shame. I review them systematically, the amnesty chapters, when I simply review the longer chapters of the book, as I said. Gaza is a big lie made up of little lights and there is no other option than to analyze it point by point and show do you think that the lack of response to what happened in 2008/9, to what happened, the lack of investigation and to return to blame the casualties the number of victims was 1,600 and 1,400 Palestinians killed, of which up to 1,200 were civilians there are more than 350 of them children 350 children yes, do you think that the lack of accountability and reporting paved the way for what happened?

It's hard to say, but it was Richard Goldstone who allowed Operation Protective Edge to take place because the Israelis, so concerned after Operation Cast Lead, it seemed that prosecutions were in the offing. Universal jurisdiction was happening and then when he removed the report, it became a green light for Israel and allowed them to effectively go crazy. He also writes that the Obama administration as well as Hillary Clinton attempted to undermine the Goldstone report. Look, the pump administration played a really miserable role in all of this. Let's just take the obvious examples. Operation Cast Lead ends on January 17.

Remember that Obama was elected in November 2008. Operation Cast Lead ends on January 17, 2009. Obama didn't say anything after being elected. Do you know why it ends on January 17? Because Obama gives signals to the Israeli government. Don't ruin my inauguration on January 20th. I don't want any distractions, you have to finish the operation, that's why it's over now you go to Operation Protective Edge 2014 every day Obama or one of his officials said Israel has the right to protect itself Israel has the right to protect itself while Israel is razing Gaza no, actually there was no comparison between protective edge and kasa there was so much much worse the interesting point is for our purposes with Obama how it ends you know how it ends on August 3rd Banky Moon is under all this pressure because Israel keeps bombing the UN school in Ross schools that have

been

converted into civil aircraft, how long will the protective operation last?

The edge continued, yes. Operation Protective Edge in total lasted 51 days Operation Cast Lead 22 Operation Protective Edge 18,000 homes destroyed Operation Cast Lead 6,300 all figures are much higher and the number of people killed and protective edge protected is 2,500 dead at home. 1,600 worse 2,200 dead, of which 1,600 were civilians more than 500 children 550 children were murdered and on August 3, what's happening on the moon that corpse in a coma finally comes out there is so much pressure that you don't have to attack it the label something no no these people They are some unfortunates, so Banking Moon when he was secretary, when he was secretary general of the UN, he does all the bidding for the United States when it comes to Israel.

Palestine. I don't want to go through, I can't go through all this. It's a sordid record, but Israel attacked seven UN shelters housing civilians during Operation Protective Edge and then on August 3, finally the banking moon has to say something and says this is a shame, it's outrageous to attack shelters civilians on August 3. Obama no longer has one. a fig leaf Ban Ki-moon backed down, spoke out against the Syrians right now and now Obama is alone on the world stage, so on August 3, the same day, Obama attacks Israel for bombing shelters and now Netanyahu the day before or gives the second. says I'm not leaving Gaza after Obama said he can't do this, he leaves the same day, August 3, now it's true, it continued for another three weeks, it continued for another three weeks if you went into the period of negotiation, where he always puts his greatest strength to try to get the best terms, but there was also, you probably remember, the beheading, the beheading of the American reporter and when the American reporter was beheaded, all the cameras against which they are talking about the decapitation. by James Foley for Isis in Syria, yes, and then the camera changed again, like in the Malaysian airline incident, and also boarded in full force and then ended on August 26, technically the war was over , but Obama had the power if he wanted.

Instead, he came out and talked about how no country in the world would tolerate rockets being fired at them; no country in the world would tolerate these terrorist tunnels and he simply gave Israel all the pretext he wanted, without explaining the examples that were used in the terrorist tunnels. The rockets explain the terrorist tunnels that were, let's be clear about the facts, they were not terrorist tunnels, according to Israel, there are between 12 and 14 tunnels that were built under the border that separates Gaza from Israel. Here are the facts and the facts are. It is not trivial number one the UN Human Rights Council report found and respected Israeli journalists as military soldiers from Welli all said the same thing the tunnels did not target civilians every time Hamas militants came out of the tunnels they had shootouts with Israeli soldiers who were never The kibbutzim never attacked civilians.

They were in terrorist tunnels. I guess it's speculation that they were trying to capture a soldier in this reality to do what they did with Gilad Shalit to have a prisoner exchange, but there was never a question of them attacking civilians. It was interesting what happened, it was the Israeli propaganda that backfired on them when they started saying that they were targeting civilians, the so-called terrorist tunnels that the civilians fled from, they were scared that they were going to be these Hamas terrorists who They would come out of these tunnels and kill them. and then they report that they refused to return home and when they refused to return home, tell them the truth that they are not targeting you to return.

The same thing happened with Hamas rockets. They kept talking about how these Hamas rockets. they are terrorizing Israel how these Hamas is our existential threat well what happened was the tourist season, it was July August 2014 and then Israel's tourist industry took a nosedive so they realized we better stop talking of these terrorist tunnels, they are destroying our business there. I have never stopped talking about Hamas rockets, they are destroying our business, we remember what happened. They had Mayor Bloomberg go to Israel and he said everything is fine here, there is no danger, we should open at Gurion Airport because remember Ben Gurion Airport. was briefly shut down because a quote-unquote Hamas rocket landed nearby and they said it flew up to prove it was completely safe, so every time their propaganda backfired, the cat was let out of the bag and they told the truth in the run-up to the Israeli war.

The military invasion of Gaza was the murder of the three Israeli teenagers. Explain what happened in June 2014. What happened was that in June 2014 a Hamas rebel cell captured and apparently almost immediately we don't know for sure, but almost immediately killed the three Israeli teenagers. Now, the information we have, for example, I quote JJ Goldberg, who is the striker's former editor-in-chief and I know that he had him on his show. Goldberg said that, as the friend knew from day one, the children were dead, but they claimed. go on a search operation, explain who killed them, since I said it was Hamas, I don't actually know much more than that, apparently it was a senior Hamas official in Jordan who gave the order, but Hamas officials in Gaza did not They had nothing to do with it, but then Netanyahu used it as a pretext to launch what he called Operation Brother's Keeper, in which several Palestinians died, businesses were destroyed, and they were arrested.

I think it was about a thousand, I could be wrong about things, thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank, many of whom had been freed in the old prisoner exchange they arrested them and sent them back to prison and then the tit for tat started with Gaza descended quickly and the Israeli assault began and how do you know that Netanyahu knew that these young men, the three teenagers, had been killed almost immediately? Just like I said, you can only quote what the sources tell you and there are people like there were several sources that said you know Israel has a very, very efficient intelligence operation, first of all, the entire Palestinian Authority works with them, for what everyone is working in collusion. and if it's not a big place and it's for what it's worth, you know, all the direct US aid or the direct US aid to the Palestinian Authority, the direct aid is, I think, 36 million dollars, everything goes to the security services, the security services are trained by Jordan and there are very efficient operations, it is no longer nonsense, there are real terrorist organizations, the Palestinian security forces, professional torturers, etc., so It is not implausible that with their security apparatus working with Israel and all collaborators despise informal collaborators in some I said they would find out and Goldberg says and Goldberg obviously has no interest in working he is the chief formatter of the striker says Netanyahu knew almost immediately that the children were dead the fear was that they would be used for another prisoner exchange and that did not happen and then the full scale assault on Gaza began, so in the first part of this conversation you talked about former Israeli soldiers who gave the most vivid descriptions of what happened.

Now I was going to say a protective edge operation, but before we even get to the description of that attack that they gave, how do those names come up with Operation Cast Lead? Operation Protective Advantage, it seems like as soon as that word is used to describe what happened, it's already clearly a propaganda word that justifies what's happening well, they were actually disappointed without Raishin Castle and I guess I forgot, you know , I reviewed it and the book ran through my memories, they escape me now it comes, I mean, I remember it right before the American invasion of Iraq, U.S.

I was coming up with these kinds of names and they were going to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation, but then They had a problem because the acronym was oh I L, but how did they come up with these names? Well, they have a very sophisticated system, they call it has para, which is translated as public diplomacy, they were very what we would translate as official propaganda, never a very effective propaganda agency in the case of Operation Cast Lead, they created, the Ori were preparing, like I said, they knew they were going to attack for about a year, they had to. making sure all the pieces were in place and one of the pieces was their propaganda and they created an organization.

It took six months to develop and part of it is coming up with these names and a lot of people come in and how there's a type of what you could call I'm immature about the names they chose they had there was a series called hot winter or I don't remember but all of these kinds of strange names, but I think the important point is that you can laugh and you can ridicule, but propaganda is very effective, you know, because it's what stays with you if you take Operation Protective Edge. The three conclusions are the terrorist tunnels, the Hamas rockets and the Iron Dome, there were no terrorist tunnels, there were no Hamas rockets and there was no dome, the three main images that were projected but they were all media creations, they were only propaganda devices and The main propaganda, even or especially by human rights organizations, is the pretense that there is fault on both sides, there is blame, there is death and destruction on both sides. sites, but when you look at the numbers I mean it's just ridiculous to put them in the same category.

I gave you a graph you know to illustrate the numbers and Operation Protective Border. Civilians killed approximately 1,600. 1,600: six civilians killed. Destroyed houses. 18,000 to a child. killed 550 to one, down the list, how can you create balance from a balance like that? So, for example, take Amnesty International, a child was murdered, a child was murdered, they describe the death of the child in two pages, so you say, okay, you know it's the death of a child, what's wrong with two pages? Well, then let's take stock: 550 Palestinian children were murdered, right? Give it eleven hundred pages and when you say they gave the go-ahead, you know, then how do you address the claim that Hamas and Hezbollah are responsible for a large number of civilian casualties because they use civilians as human shields, in particular they use children as human shoes? a simple way to approach it look at the evidence there is absolutely no evidence we will start with Operation Cast Lead the most exhaustive analyzes were carried out at that time operations advisor 2008-9 the most exhaustive analyzes were carried out by Amnesty International and Goldstone report none of them found no evidence that Hamas was using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Let's be clear, there are a large number of supporters of the AuthorityPalestinians living in Gaza. They had a lot of harsh things to say about Hamas, but among the accusations they made was not the accusation that Hamas was using the Palestinians as human shields, you take back Operation Protective Edge. There is no evidence. I have read all the Human Rights reports. None of them find any evidence of human protection. What they do claim to find is that there is a technical relationship. term under international law that says that when you engage in military combat you must take all possible precautions to protect civilians and that if you fight in close proximity to civilians you are guilty of a violation of international law and it is not a war crime.

It is a violation of international law. They claim that Hamas shot at or attacked Israel near civilians, so it was guilty of not taking all possible precautions, which is different from human protection, which is a conscious practice of, so to speak, inserting a human being between you and the enemy of which there is no evidence but feasible precautions I will not make excuses I have my prejudices I have my prejudices but I am also scrupulous I am very careful with the facts because I know that when you make one or two mistakes Someone will come and say that this book It's packed with Evers, but for space reasons I can only mention two, so you're held to a very strict standard when you're in my position and you can't even make two mistakes, so I'm very careful and I'm not trying to make excuses, but we have to remember two facts.

What is Gaza like? What does the law say? Gaza, you are a little wrong in what you said during your visit. For the first part, it is not the most densely populated place in the world, but it is among the most densely populated. It's more densely populated than Tokyo, so it's very difficult to wage an armed struggle and not be close to the number two people. The law says that all possible precautions must be taken if you live in a densely populated area, then there is not much feasibility, so you have to prove not only that Hamas fighters were close to civilians, but you also have to demonstrate that they had no other option and that none of the human rights organizations could. do it, but then amnesty says something outrageous in my opinion, I'm not ready, you see, you know what it says, it says that Hamas should go to the open areas and fight in the open areas of Gaza, now at first glance, that might seem reasonable , except for number one. there are very few open areas in Gaza number two the law does not say that you have to do that the law does not say that you have to relocate all your troops to an open area but number three Gaza is not internally occupied by Israel Gaza is surrounded by Israel and that is an occupation that is executed externally so here is the problem explain that Israel will always say that Israel does not occupy the Gaza trolls that they took out in 2005 control the airspace control the exits control the entries control the water space there is a sea blockade of Gaza and then shows everything you know, it's the equivalent of a jailer throwing the keys to the prisoners in the cell, they get out of the cell, great, we're free, except the jailer then leaves the prison, locks tightly the surrounding prison doors.

The prison pit is that free pit that is Gaza, as Conservative British Prime Minister Cameron David Cameron said, Gaza is an open-air prison, so getting back to the point, it is externally controlled by the Israeli right and it is a unusual occupation because it is an externally controlled occupation. remote controlled occupation, very good, now international law according to these human rights organizations, they all say that all Hamas weapons are illegal under international law because they are indiscriminate, the law is that indiscriminate weapons cannot be used, Hamas is that weapons are too primitive to say. At least international law says that the so-called rockets are illegal, their so-called border projectiles, their mortar projectiles are illegal, so what is left with the amnesty?

He tells Hamas that he has to go to an open space but cannot use any. of your weapons, but if you can't use any of your weapons because they are indiscriminate, how do you defeat an externally controlled occupation? All the amnesty has to do is line up like ducks and let the Israeli plane in. and take them down now, you could smile like that, but that's literally where you stayed, that's where you stayed with what these human rights organizations say, it's not to defend Hamas, it's just looking at the law objectively and rationally and asking yourself If that's what the human rights organizations say, it's just true that all the human rights organizations will always say that Israel used disproportionate force.

They will say that Israel used indiscriminate force but there is one thing they will never say, you know what they will say. Never say that. you are directed at civilians because that is the no, it is international law. Indiscriminate attacks or war crimes. Disproportionate attacks are war crimes against civilians. They are war crimes. That is the law, but then there is public opinion, public opinion that is willing to turn a blind eye. beware of disproportionate attacks in reality I cannot even prove that an attack is disproportionate it is almost impossible to construct even let's say yes indiscriminate attacks because it is difficult to separate civilians from soldiers the only thing that public opinion will not tolerate is the attack directed at civilians , that's exactly what Israel does and every one of its massacres and that's exactly what human rights organizations now don't show Operation Cast Lead now after the Goldstone debacle, that's the one thing everyone avoids work, they do not mean that Israel targets civilians. anecdote short anecdote I was teaching a volunteer class at Grand Army Plaza Brooklyn on freedom of speech and an issue arose, I don't want to get into the circumstances and someone in the audience says Israel doesn't target children Israel never targets children and the person I am interviewing for this program highly respected professor at Columbia University believes that the liberal left has very good credentials I am sure it has been a new program what time someone else says yes yes Israel would never attack civilians, excuse me, It will never attack children, this is how it targets children, there are so many cases like children playing on the roof, right, a drone arrives.

Human Rights Watch says its report was precisely graded incorrectly after Operation Protective Edge, excuse me, Operation Cast Lead, yes, the drone comes in support of human rights, the drone says. I can see very clearly that he was aiming at the drone. I could until the last minute. Very last minute. It could forward calls directly to children. Children on the beach. There's another story from 2014 that's a very important story and I'm glad you brought it up. Upstairs you had four children who were playing hide and seek around the fisherman's hut a ruined fisherman's hut there were hundreds of reporters on the beach well it's right in front of our reporter hotel yes they all see what happens to the children tiny cabin ruined cabin Ezreal's children do it kill the floor to the children with a blow, yes it was, I come from a naval ship, so what's the new one?

The Human Rights Council reports say that Mary McGowan Davis Israel did not take all possible precautions, all possible precautions, there was no battle. going on there was no combat there were only children there we don't know why Israel should confuse these children with militants what do you mean you don't know why why do you suppose they did it why do you suppose they did it it was the same with the guy in the powerful ejek who was shot in the head you probably remember maybe you remember 2002 i was maybe 17 yes operation defensive shield outside jeanine there's a guy sitting in the wheelchair he has a flag holding it the white flag and the israeli tank come and just him they run over, the guy in the wheelchair, right, you might be great when I had a debate with Alan Dershowitz.

I said, well, Human Rights Watch document, you understood the national document, it didn't happen and that's it. a large portion of American Jews are over 50 and yet it didn't happen it's interesting that you say they are over 50 because American Jews have changed their minds in Israel they talk about the younger ones and they talk about the public in general. opinion here is a very simple way to say it who is President Trump's main ally in the world is Netanyahu 80% of American Jews find Trump or a disgusting creature and now they have a real problem this disgusting creature's main ally is the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, an incredibly popular Prime Minister of Israel who has been in office for a long time and now this is a real conflict for American Jews, therefore being loyal is a healthy support for Trump, it is a crisis of values ​​and that is what is happening before.

Trump, that's why it was happening before, but now we talk about young people, I would say that there have been several turning points from the eighties to Lebanon, more than the First Intifada, the repression during the Second Intifada and then significantly, as I said after Operation Cast. Mainstream public opinion, particularly among young American Jews, has been shifting. I wouldn't say he is against Israel. I would say that it is far from Israel, which is different. Jews have an ethic that I understand and I'm not exactly immune to it. airing dirty laundry in public, so there is a kind of resistance and reluctance to attack Israel in public because you feel like you are fueling anti-Semitism and you get the idea, so they are not going to publicly denounce Israel in large numbers and en masse . but they are not going to talk about it anymore and they are not going to support it unless, of course, it is an existential issue and that is one of my big differences, if I can mention it with BDS, the thing is that when you start the movement of cycling actions when you start to threaten the existence of Israel, whether through physical destruction or let's call it demographic destruction, then the Jews get very defensive, you know it's a red line, it's a red line if you say so, and the occupation, American Jews will support it if you say so.

Israel should not be committing crimes like it did in Gaza, most American Jews will be willing to go there, but if you say eliminate Israel, no you won't get it, so you will get resistance mostly now. We are going to have a slow drift towards indifference, a slow journey and it is no longer a less topic, incidentally, in fact, apart from going back quite a bit in the 1960s, before the June 67 war, Israel was never talked about, It wasn't a That's why, like I said, if you look at people like Chuck Schumer, his sister, those are the problems back then, when the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and American Jews were about to make it. , you were about to conquer America's inner sanctuaries. power, they were smart, they were ambitious and they knew they could do it.

They didn't care about a backwater called Israel, so this whole obsession with the Israel phenomenon is relatively new among American Jews and now I think it's fading. Israel has become like the slightly Meshuga. Yiddish for slightly crazy aunt Meshuga in the attic, you don't really want to talk about Israel anymore, you said that when you talk about the BDS movement, you talk about eliminating Israel, they're not talking about eliminating, like I said, there are different ways to say it. you can talk about physical destruction, you can talk about demographic elimination and therefore if the BDS platform were implemented, they talk about, let's say, seven million Palestinian refugees returning to Israel right now, the demographics are in the state of Israel, it is about 15 to 20 percent are non-Jews if there were a full implementation of the law of return, the right of return were a complete mutation of the right of return, the demographic balance would change approximately 70% Palestinian Arab 30 % Jewish, you are not talking about the occupied territories, well, if you take the total picture, it is about 50/50 now, if you include if the refugees return en masse, then of course again the demographic balance is going to change radically and that would be, I'm not saying I support it or I don't, that for me is a relevant issue because politics is not about personal preferences, politics is about what is possible and I am saying that the prospect of radical demographic change in Israel What would effectively mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state is demographic, not physical and I recognize that and the distinction is important, but the bottom line in a sense is that Israel will cease to exist as a predominantly Jewish state, so American Jews will never They will accept that I want to go. a I'm not saying that I'm not saying that you have to defer to the opinion of American Jews.

I'm simply saying that you are asking me about the views of American Jews. Yes, however, it has changed radically since I was a child. there is a red line and the red line is Israel as a Jewish state, so let me go to theLast few minutes, we have Israel publishing a blacklist of twenty different organizations that will not allow entry into Israel at this time, we are talking about groups like Jewish Voice for Peace American Muslims for Palestine code pink the American Friends Service Committee as well as groups of solidarity Palestinians in France, Italy and Norway Sweden Great Britain Chile and elsewhere their response to what Israel has done right now, the important thing is to try to I understand why they are doing it now some people say the reason is that they fear BDS , the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

I have not agreed with that analysis in my opinion, Israel has a problem, that is always the problem, the problem remains. It has bad press because when it continues to carry out these massacres or these shootings it has bad press and obviously what is the solution eliminate the press eliminate the witnesses so during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 they prevented reporters from coming for three weeks There was an opera of all against all, after Operation Protective Edge they did not let any human rights organization enter so that they could not see what the damage was caused, so what the human rights organizations did was in my crazy opinion, they said that if Israel doesn't let us in, we have to give another benefit of the doubt, maybe they didn't commit the war crime, but that just incentivizes Israel to not allow human rights organizations to get an agnostic verdict instead of an El guilty verdict then, as I said before, the big ones with their armor was that they broke the silence because these are Israeli fighters and they were not even leftists, but they were describing what is happening, so Israel went with a vengeance trying to break the silence defunded because they had a lot of European funding claiming that there were traitors, that there were enemies, etc., and I don't think that breaking the silence won't do again what it did after Operation Protective Edge.

It was very difficult. Do you know that Israel is a very nationalistic society and when you start being branded as traitors and about 60% of the population says they were traitors when they did the polls, these are Israelis, so yeah, you know, about 60 percent. Hundred said they were traitors, so what do you think? And that brings me to this point, they are using this moment with Trump in power, they are using this moment to try to eliminate as many witnesses as they can, they keep out everyone they want to do in the West Bank, what they did to Gaza, it is very difficult for an outsider to enter Gaza and now the Israelis are very brazenly laying waste to the land.

It takes over the ruthless killings of civilians, the brutal killings of civilians and that's why they want to clear the field of any witnesses and they are using the Trump presidency as a moment to isolate Gaza from any apology, isolate the West Bank from any possible hostility. witnesses to turn the West Bank into what they turned Gaza is hermetically sealed there is no way to witness the crimes as they unfold in real time Norm Finkelstein in her book Fire and Fury journalist Michael Wolf quotes Steve Bannon boasting about the implications of moving The US embassy in Jerusalem Benin reportedly said we know where we are headed on this: let Jordan take the West Bank, let Egypt take Gaza, well, you know, I have no way of getting balanced intelligence, such Maybe he's a smart guy.

I really don't know, do you think? It was expressing it with the Trump administration, he feels that they could sense it. I don't really feel like it has much of a connection to reality though. That was the solution until the 1970s. I remember that until the 1970s, Gaza and the West Bank were occupied territories and were supposed to be returned to the peoples who previously occupied them, i.e. Egypt and Jordan, but then that was replaced by the Palestinian national movement, the demand for an independent State, the man of self-determination and sovereignty in the West Bank, in Gaza and in the entire international community.

The community embraced him. I won't say it was a big hug, but technically they hugged him and you saw it again with the vote on Jerusalem, where the international community of about 128 states defied Trump and stood their ground, you know, there were some setbacks, but it's not that big a deal. debate remained quite in favor of the solution they have been defending, which is Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories. I don't think that Trump's announcement, personally, I don't think it's going to have much impact because historically the main acts that have had lasting repercussions, the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the partition resolution in 1947, were the product of a lot of deliberation, a lot of comings and goings, and when promulgated the Balfour Declaration the partition resolution they had a huge institutional force behind them in the case of Trump it was like a shit deal in Las Vegas Eagleson I will do it, what the hell do you know and those types of actions are not, in my opinion, not likely that have a lasting effect and, in fact, the result Was it the international community that remained firm that we are not going to accept Trump's unilateral measure?

Norman Finkelstein concludes his book by quoting Helen Hunt Jackson, a late 19th century American critic of our policy toward the U.S. and policy toward the Cherokee Indians, saying that there will come a time when the student of American history will find it almost incredible what was done to the Cherokee, then you are right, isn't it certain that one day the black record of Gaza's martyrdom will seem to you too, in retrospect? Well, almost unbelievable, yes, when he was finishing the book, it's funny to write. I remember that once you use the expression when we talk privately about something, you don't use the expression of reaching a critical mass when something suddenly changes.

I forgot what. the context was in what you were saying and that's something that's like me when I'm writing I walk thinking about thinking about thinking about shaking myself a lot shaking myself and then suddenly I just go down I start writing you know it's there and I wrote the The very quick conclusion for me , unusually, it was I think just one or two drafts, I'm usually a perfectionist and I go through it and I immediately thought you know what happened, what's going on, he says, how could it be that you have this medieval siege for Ten years there was a period in which Israel banned chocolate chip chicks from entering Gaza for security reasons, how could that happen?

And these people are just languishing there in front of the entire international community and I thought to myself. You know, remind me that it was a very nice book. Helen Hunt Jackson called it A Century of Dishonor. She wrote it in the late 19th century and describes how the United States is precisely the tree on which these signs of trade disruption sit. a Native American population and it is an interesting story because Teddy Roosevelt, who was a great defender of the conquest of the American West, dedicates all the pages, there are three volumes or four volumes, 5 volumes, perhaps the history of the conquest to attack it, attack her how. could you say this? how could you say this? and the book was forgotten, his little book and then when the whole Native American thing will survive in the United States, it didn't happen until the 1970s, you'll be surprised, even if you're not significantly surprised. different in age from me it didn't happen until cinematically it didn't happen until Dustin Hoffman I think Little Big Men was the first cinematic representation of what had been done to Native Americans when we were little.

I was always rooting for the cowboys kill those engines kill those savages you know I remember it, you know and there was a kind of Cultural Revolution in the United States and suddenly we discovered the Native Americans and when we had our Cultural Revolution, Helen's book Hunt Jackson was rediscovered and that's nice. What I feel about my book will be ignored now because everyone will hate it Not only did I persecute Israel but I was pretty tough on human rights organizations Kenneth Roth Amnesty International International Committee of the Red Cross this guy shocked the mile Richard Horton from the British Lancet the medical journal I'm very tough will be ignored with the exception of democracy now a couple of others I'm aware of that but I'm a bit old-fashioned I believe in I believe in memory I think these things should be remembered, it's the only thing What you can do for the dead, you know, is remember them, so for me the book was a big part of it.

I wanted to sit on the shelf, that's why I asked the University. Press to publish it because libraries nowadays and the photo on the cover will end up there well, I spent a lot of time trying to find a photo, it was a Jewish woman who took the photo of Gaza, she was in Gaza and she wanted, I said I wanted . To be simple, I wanted to be completely simple, I don't remember the third thing and I felt like it captured the experience. It's a photo of a Palestinian woman from Gaza and she is holding her dead baby and the baby is wrapped in, I guess, white. cotton cloth and you can only tell that he is dead because there is a little blood on his foot and I haven't been to Gaza much.

I've been there, I think about it two or three times, but what struck me about being there was that no. I know that if you have been there, people do not carry their suffering on their shoulders, they do not announce it, they do not talk about it, it is very natural, this is our life, what do we need now to move? I followed and felt that this was what recovery conveyed to scholar Norman Finkelstein, author of his new book Gaza, an investigation into martyrdom. To watch the first part of our conversation, you can visit democracynow.org.

I'm Amy Goodman, thank you so much for joining us.