The myth of Israel's 'democracy' w/Ilan Pappé | The Chris Hedges Report

easily and you will be stuck there. And to even maintain any kind of success, any kind of victory, they would have to remain there for years in direct occupation. And this could easily lead to an uprising in the West Bank and an attack from the north by Hezbollah, and who knows, even undercurrents in the Arab world that would change the Arab tolerance towards Israel that we have seen so far. This can lead to a regional war. On the one hand, that's the bleak scenario. The most positive scenario in the macro scenario is that civil society, which is now very pro-Palestinian and even supports boycott and divestment from Israel, may manage to convince some governments in the Global North, and definitely the Global South, to act. . beyond civil society actions towards sanctions and pressure on Israel, and perhaps have a whole new perception about the need to pressure Israel to abandon its supremacist policies, its oppression, etc.

It is too early to judge which of the two processes will unfold. They can even develop together, that is, the more violent the region becomes, the more willing the international community may be to change its basic perceptions about what the essence of the problem is and what the way out of it is. But isn't Washington the key? I mean that Israel, along with the United States, is already on this issue, they are pariah states, as we saw with the vote at the UN. As long as there is unconditional support from Washington, Israel can resist any kind of pressure, right?

Well, that's a very important question because I think the Global South has power too. Recently, in September, I taught at a Chinese university and it became very clear that China, for example, is still reluctant to get involved in the Palestine issue because, as you know, Chinese foreign policy, contrary to the way it is presented In America, he is interested in economic gains more than anything else. And rightly so, Palestine is not an economic bonanza these days. So I don't think they'll get too involved in this. But I do believe that there are other powers on the international map that could challenge American hegemony on the question of Palestine, that is one point.

And secondly, yes, the United States is still key, but something is happening in American civil society. Israelis and pro-Israels in America like to call it the rise of the new anti-Semitism, which is a very superficial analysis of the fact that the youngest generation of Americans, A, knows much more than the older generation about what is happening in Palestine. . B, is much more committed, some would naively say, but he is more committed to the moral dimension of foreign and security policies. And that includes large swaths of the young American Jewish community. So I'm also not sure that this deterministic view of American politics is the right approach.

I think there is also the possibility of a different American policy. But I think, Chris, that probably the best way to do it is to say that there are now two coalitions when it comes to Palestine. One I call global Israel. Global Israel remains Global South governments, multinational corporations, military industries, security industries, communities of Christian and Jewish Zionists who more or less continue to provide immunity to Israel for almost everything that makes, almost automatically, a kind of faith. And against that is global Palestine. And global Palestine is made of civil societies. Some governments in the Global South that are not just Palestinian, but truly believe that the fight for justice in Palestine connects very well with their own fights against injustice in their own societies.

And this   is the youngest generation in the world. And I think this is a battle that goes beyond Palestine, it connects ecological issues, poverty issues, minority rights issues with Palestine and so I don't think the balance of power is just the United States versus the rest of the world. I think there are two much more complex global coalitions, which are relevant not only for Palestine, but I see the relevance mainly in the case of Palestine because it interests me. But I am sure that they can also be exposed in other places of discord and where conflicts are still in full swing.

Let's finish by looking at Gaza. First I want to talk about intention. The UN says half of Gazans now face hunger. I was in Sarajevo during the war, that was 300 to 400 shells a day, four to five dead a day, about two dozen wounded a day. This is just for comparison, I don't want to minimize what happened in Sarajevo, I still have nightmares about it. But that is nothing compared to what is happening in Gaza in terms of the level of bombing. What is the intention? Is the intention to create a humanitarian crisis of such severity that the international community will be forced to intervene and become a partner in ethnic cleansing?

Good that? You know the mentality of the people around Netanyahu better than I do. Well, first of all, I think there was really a vindictive inertia to begin with, rather than very careful planning. And not everything should be attributed to clear and systematic planning. As the days passed, it became clear to at least one group within policymakers who thought the war provided a pretext for getting rid of Gaza, more systematic planning. So the end result, as far as they are concerned, is the depopulation of the Gaza Strip by as many Palestinians as possible to Egypt or other parts of the world, because Gaza, if not sustainable now, would not even be less sustainable. in the future.

I think there is a component among Israeli policymakers who believe they have the power to do it. There are more people, I don't know, even calling them more moderate, I would call them more pragmatic, like Benjamin Gantz, Gadi Eizenkot, it also depends. I mean, they joined the government at the last minute from the opposition. I don't know how influential they will be the day after. But if the next day they are still influential, they would like to see... They have a certain ultimate goal in mind, which is to annex part of the Gaza Strip directly to Israel, so what will be left will be a very small piece of land with a large number of people living there and waiting for someone else to run Gaza's internal affairs, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or a multinational force.

However, they do not believe it is even possible to discuss day-after scenarios before delivering on what they promised the Israeli public, something they cannot deliver. And that is one of the reasons for the carnage that we are seeing, that they could have this victory photo, a kind of triumphant photo that shows that Hamas is nowhere to be seen in Gaza, or at least it is not seen as a military force. . I don't think they can do it, but they still believe they can. And until that happens, they continue to do so relentlessly, by the way, [thereby further endangering the lives of the still 130-odd Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip].

They claim that the two objectives of what they call the ground maneuver are to destroy Hamas as a military power and to rescue the hostages. It's very clear from the way they are acting that they have given up on the hostages, but they still believe they have the power to get the image they want, whether it be a dead Sinwar or an expelled Sinwar, the Lebanon scenario of 1982 Arafat. leaving for Tunisia with the rest of the Palestinian leaders. These are the scenarios they have and all means seem justified in their eyes to achieve it. And you are arguing that they won't.

So what happens when they don't make it? That's what I meant before, that what happens is that they're going to be trapped there for a lot longer than they think, involved in a gorilla war that's a lot longer than they think, endangering every day a escalation that could bring other factors such as other actors. in that conflict with disastrous consequences also for Israel itself. Can you imagine, Chris, what would have happened if Hezbollah had coordinated a similar attack in the north with Hamas on October 7? Remember, Israel's main military problem was that most of its army was in the West Bank helping to defend the settlers and assisting them with their ethnic cleansing.

So there were not enough soldiers in the North and not enough soldiers on the Gaza border to prevent an operation like the one Hamas carried out. Imagine what would have happened if Hezbollah had joined and how Israel would have come out of that. And somehow Israeli policymakers are not learning this lesson. So I think they are going to lead Israel into a very terrible future, even for the Israelis themselves, in terms of casualties, international isolation and economic crisis. And relying all the time on the American Congress is not the best, strongest pillar in the world to build a future for a younger generation and tell them that they live in the best place in the world that Jews could be right now.

They are kind of digging their own hole here because they don't want to see what the problem is and what price they have to pay if they really want to build a different future. Excellent. That was Ilon Pappe, a history professor at the University of Exeter in Britain, author of The World's Largest Prison: The History of the Occupied Territories and the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. I want to thank Real News Network and their production team, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at ChrisHedges.substack.com.