In this episode, Russell Brand sits down with Norman Finkelstein to discuss the Israeli assault on Gaza, and why he thinks it s a good idea to have a peaceable solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. They discuss the impact of the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2014, and how the situation in the region has changed since then, and what it means for the future of peace in the Middle East. Russell Brand's new book, "I'll Burn That Bridge" is out now, and is available for pre-order on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. You can also get a copy of the book on Kindle, iBook, Paperback, Hardcover or Audio Book format at amazon.co/I-Will-Burn-That-Bridge-Norman-Finkelstein-My-Book-Myths-and-Fiction/Myths and Factories/Mysteries/Mythology/ Myths and Facts/Mystology. And remember, if you press the red button on your screen, you can become an Awakened Wonder and join these conversations when they happen. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you re listening, and remember to rate, review and subscribe to our other shows! We can t make this content without the support of our commercial partners, and we can't make this work without the ongoing support from the people that support our content. Thank you for being part of this movement. -Rumble.co Forward slash Brand. Use my code BRAND=brand and get 15% off your first Galaxy Projector. Go to galaxylaxylamps.co forward slash Brand=brand& tag=brand=brand_brand&qid=1V&q=3a&qb=3q&qref=1AQQ&qID=1P&qA&q%3a=3Avenue=1&qw&qx&qq=1S&qk=1M&q_id=8&q We'll be streaming for the first 15 minutes of streaming exclusively on Rumble Stream, then we'll be exclusively available on Rumble. You're going to see the future! Stay Free with Russell Brand! You'll be an Awakening Wonder! -Your host, You're gonna See The Future? In this video, you're gonna see the Future!
00:02:47.000You can get Norman Finkelstein's new book, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it, Heretical Thoughts on Identity, Politics, Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom at normanfinkelstein.com.
00:02:56.000Over the course of this conversation, we talked a lot about, obviously, the conflagration in the Middle East.
00:03:03.000Norman Finkelstein has extremely strong Well researched views that some of you will no doubt vehemently oppose and others of you will be extremely interested to listen to.
00:03:12.000As I continually tell you when it comes to this conflict, I hope that we are able to form some kind of cartilage where we may make connections that could lead to peaceful solutions for all of us, which seems like a Pretty extreme ambition and nevertheless, with the divinity within us all, no lesser ambition will do.
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00:04:57.000First of all, Norman, I want to start by asking you a question that you requested we began with.
00:05:03.000The 2014 operation known as Protective Edge.
00:05:08.000Can you explain for us, our viewers that are live with us in the Locals community right now, and for our Rumble Stream viewers, what Operation Protective Edge was, how it's significant in the Israel-Hamas or Israel-Palestine
00:05:24.000conflict, depending on how you frame it and why you have chosen that to be our starting point for the
00:05:31.000In the current round of interviews that have been done on the current Israeli assault on Gaza,
00:05:46.000everything seems to start on October 7th, as if everything were fine and dandy until October 7th.
00:05:55.000And on 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.
00:06:11.000But for those who have studied the conflict, what happened on October 7th wasn't the beginning of the story.
00:06:19.000It was really the climax of a chapter in the story.
00:06:24.000And that climax in the chapter of the story begins really in 2006, when Israel imposed a brutal economic blockade on Gaza.
00:06:36.000The effect of that blockade was that Nothing could go into Gaza and nothing could come out of Gaza.
00:06:44.000No person could go into Gaza and no person could leave Gaza without Israel's permission.
00:06:52.000Israel imposed in the course of that blockade a regime of a starvation-plus diet on the people of Gaza.
00:07:03.000It literally calculated the caloric intake of the people in Gaza and then allowed food to enter Gaza at a starvation-plus level.
00:07:16.000Gaza has suffered from among the worst economic Well, economic deprivation, but in particular, unemployment in Gaza.
00:07:28.000Among Gaza in general, it's about 50% of the population.
00:07:33.000Among youth, namely the people who birthed the gates of Gaza, the unemployment is at a level of about 70%.
00:07:39.000About 97% of the water in Gaza is poisonous.
00:07:41.000About 97% of the water in Gaza is poisonous.
00:07:50.000Now, if you add up all of these factors, what do you get?
00:07:57.000And I've just really just skimmed the surface.
00:08:00.000I haven't mentioned that half the population of Gaza comprises children.
00:08:07.000I haven't mentioned that 70% of the population of Gaza comprises refugees who were expelled from Israel in 1948 and their descendants.
00:08:20.000I haven't mentioned that Gaza is among the most densely populated places on God's Earth.
00:08:26.000I 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.
00:08:42.000So what do we get when we put all these factors together?
00:08:48.000Well, we take your own former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who now I understand is your foreign secretary.
00:08:56.000David Cameron described Gaza as an open-air prison.
00:09:02.000If you take Israel's senior security establishment official, he was the head of Israel's National Security Council.
00:09:17.000And in March 2004, Giora Eiland described Gaza as, quote, a huge concentration camp.
00:09:26.000And so what you saw on October 7th was young men who had been born into a concentration camp and had lived for 20 years of their lives in that concentration camp.
00:10:03.000Well, mowing the lawn is these high-tech massacres that Israel launches against Gaza.
00:10:11.000And 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.
00:10:45.000But it's not true that the methods that Israel is employing in Gaza are new or that they suddenly emerged after October 7th.
00:11:01.000So 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.
00:11:29.000Now 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.
00:11:47.000On the contrary, these soldiers just randomly described What they did in Gaza.
00:11:59.000And I want to reiterate for your listeners.
00:12:07.000This is standard operating procedure for Israelis each time they mow the lawn in Gaza.
00:12:18.000So 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 I'm just going to ask you to go soldier, read one, soldier, read the next.
00:12:36.000Because 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.
00:12:58.000We're going to stop that conversation here because, as you can see, we're moving into territory that is difficult to discuss on a platform that is subject to some censorship.
00:13:07.000Remember, I'm aware of how hotly contested and provocative this subject is, and I would like to use this forum as an opportunity for us to find the areas where we do agree.
00:13:19.000Is there a way that we can possibly find some territory, some realm, some New Jerusalem where Christians and Jews and indeed Muslims, of course, might come together in some sort of concordance?
00:14:02.000Soldiers' testimonies and photographs from Operation Protective Edge.
00:14:07.000And 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 all 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
00:14:43.000Uninformed and just a, broadly speaking, an advocate for peace and solutions that go beyond military solutions.
00:14:53.000So that we can have a conversation that has some tenacity and integrity to it.
00:14:58.000So these are the sources that Norman Finkelstein has requested that I use.
00:15:01.000Fearless Jay says I hope he doesn't do it in his alpha voice.
00:15:04.000That would not be appropriate Fearless Jay.
00:16:47.000The 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.
00:17:20.000These 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.
00:17:36.000And 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, you know, 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.
00:18:10.000A woman or an adult murdered is an adult murdered.
00:18:13.000So 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?
00:18:23.000I 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.
00:18:33.000What kind of context do you think that your opponents and I recognize it as well you're not unique but very particular history as I understand your parents are holocaust survivors obviously you know your name and my knowledge of your history I understand that you are a Jewish man.
00:18:47.000Can you tell me what troubles you most about the arguments of those who do not share your perspective?
00:18:58.000Well, first of all, I have welcomed the debate with Ben Shapiro many times.
00:19:04.000He's stupid, but not so stupid as to appear with me on the same platform.
00:19:27.000As 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.
00:19:42.000As 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.
00:19:55.000So I don't think it's very easy to impeach these testimonies by Israeli soldiers themselves.
00:20:03.000Now, 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.
00:20:18.000In fact, there have been at this point at least a dozen high-tech massacres visited on Gaza since the year 2000.
00:20:29.000And 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.
00:20:52.000This is standard operating procedure for Israel in its relentless attacks on the people of Gaza.
00:21:04.000Now, What else would be said in defense?
00:21:09.000I 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.
00:21:21.000So I will play my own devil's advocate.
00:21:24.000The best argument is going to be that it was Hamas that broke the ceasefires.
00:21:31.000Hamas that's responsible for initiating the combat or the war, and that Hamas is engaging in human shielding, and that's why these things happen.
00:23:06.000When 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.
00:23:36.000The lawn, half of the blades of grass in Gaza, there are 2.3 million blades of grass in Gaza.
00:23:48.000I see you're looking at me intently and I appreciate that.
00:23:53.000Just like I appreciated from Candace Owens, and just as I appreciated from Mihaela Peterson, you listen and it gradually sinks in.
00:24:06.000That mowing of the lawn means 2.3 million people, half of whom are children, You understand?
00:25:40.000President Obama won the presidential election in the United States.
00:25:45.000So 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.
00:25:57.000Israel at that moment chose, elected, to break the ceasefire And go in and launch what was called back then Operation Cast Lead.
00:26:14.000That lasted from December 26 to January 17.
00:26:22.000Even 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.
00:26:45.000So it's not true that Hamas breaks the ceasefires.
00:26:51.000However, I want to make a point, because I said before, I'm not afraid of the truth.
00:26:59.000It is not true that the only thing that's needed now is a ceasefire.
00:27:08.000A ceasefire has to be number one on the agenda, no question about it.
00:27:14.000But that number one has to be accompanied by or attended by number two, which is to end the illegal inhuman blockade of Gaza.
00:27:30.000That medieval siege Which even the Goldstone Report, which was issued after Operation Cast Lead, described as verging on a crime against humanity.
00:27:48.000That blockade has to end, or it's true.
00:27:52.000These 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.
00:28:12.000Now, Israel's goal now is to do just that.
00:28:41.000And the opportunity was to once and for all solve the Gaza question.
00:28:51.000And 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.
00:29:13.000To 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.
00:29:35.000So that was the opportunity that Israel seized upon on October 7th to once and for all find a final solution to the Gaza question.
00:29:51.000That 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.
00:30:19.000I'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
00:30:33.000have been anticipated as well as being targeted in areas that are, in retrospect,
00:30:41.000To connect it again to your reference to Amalek and this Talmudic reference to extermination,
00:30:51.000I 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.
00:31:19.000I say this as a dilettante, as an outsider and a person who doesn't claim to have anything other than a superficial understanding.
00:31:24.000It 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.
00:31:39.000I 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.
00:31:49.000That's something that I've continually used, heard, to legitimize extreme military measures, i.e.
00:31:55.000you cannot negotiate with terrorists, a very sort of common maxim or axiom in conflicts of this kind.
00:32:03.000I've heard people say that people seem to care less when other Muslim and Arab nations exterminate Arabs, i.e. within
00:32:10.000Syria. I've also heard people say, like, when talking about the shield issue, that perhaps it's a,
00:32:16.000as I've heard it rendered, is it's more that Hamas are within a civilian population
00:32:23.000and, you know, me, my personal position is peace, peace, peace, stop war,
00:32:29.000That'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.
00:32:38.000But I would say, how do you cover Hamas's rhetoric around genocide, which rhetorically is comparable to the Amalek reference that you made?
00:32:48.000The idea that just by being within that community, there is a degree of shielding.
00:32:54.000And 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.
00:33:10.000And that this somehow legitimizes the sort of ongoing threat of this presence.
00:33:17.000Because I suppose you would have to Fear that, wouldn't you?
00:33:20.000In 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.
00:33:30.000You would have to have the ultimate motivation.
00:33:32.000So 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.
00:33:46.000Therefore, you know, like the Hamas are operating at maximum capacity and Israel aren't.
00:33:52.000So in that gap is clemency and compassion.
00:33:55.000How do you address those arguments, please, Norman?
00:34:00.000Well, 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.
00:34:12.000So I'm going to ask you, let's start with the first one, the Hamas charter.
00:34:18.000I don't want to get into the technicalities here.
00:34:23.000I'll just try to make myself brief on this point.
00:34:27.000Since 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
00:34:58.000They've 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.
00:35:18.000All those peace offerings by Hamas We're completely rejected by Israel and backed by the United States.
00:36:21.000It's probably true that Hamas made peace offerings, but of course Israel rejected them.
00:36:27.000How can you negotiate with a terrorist organization?
00:36:31.000And 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 the ceasefire because you can't negotiate with Hamas, because Hamas is a terrorist organization.
00:36:49.000Now, I'm going to ask you and your listeners to answer a very simple question.
00:38:44.000If Hamas's terrorist action on October 7 disqualifies it from negotiating a settlement, it's a terrorist organization.
00:38:59.000You can't negotiate with it, you have to destroy it.
00:39:04.000Then 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?
00:39:23.000If Hamas has to be destroyed Then it seems to me the state of Israel has to be destroyed.
00:40:48.000Why 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.
00:41:04.000Honestly, I like to play my own devil's advocate.
00:41:12.000But try as I do, I cannot figure out a coherent answer to that question.
00:41:20.000I 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.
00:41:50.000Whether 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 necessary control against savages or Or groups of people that are regarded as having less rights.
00:42:13.000I 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.
00:42:28.000And I think that we all understand that.
00:42:30.000And 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.
00:42:42.000It's almost, I suppose, comparable to the kind of climate arguments that we've made.
00:42:46.000Why 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.
00:43:00.000Now, I recognize it's a lot more emotive, evocative and important, perhaps, you know, when we're talking about the murder of children and no one can I would like to just briefly comment.
00:43:19.000I was involved in the anti-war movement against the war in Vietnam.
00:43:23.000I 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.
00:43:33.000So, 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.
00:43:52.000I would be the last one to deny that ugly record.
00:44:02.000So 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.
00:44:25.000However, having said that, We have to be clear and honest about what's happening now.
00:44:34.000Right now, there is a declared genocide being committed by the Israeli government against the people of Gaza.
00:44:51.000It's a declared genocide being committed against the people of Gaza.
00:44:57.000The 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.
00:45:18.000There'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.
00:45:53.000What 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.
00:46:11.000I would also say that Israel has Crossed a negative threshold of barbarism, and I use my words very carefully.
00:46:28.000Israel has crossed a negative threshold of barbarism insofar as this is the only conflict, to my knowledge.
00:46:41.000Now, I cannot say for the Nazis during World War II because I'm not certain.
00:46:47.000But it's the only conflict, to my knowledge, where, as a matter of open state policy, Israel has been targeting hospitals in Gaza.
00:47:03.000Now, I want you to listen to me carefully, Russell.
00:47:06.000I go back to the war in Vietnam, and I was active in the anti-war movement.
00:47:12.000And I have a searing memory of that war.
00:47:16.000There are many memories, but one in particular.
00:47:19.000During Christmas 1972, The United States bombed Bachmai Hospital.
00:47:27.000For your listeners who are interested, it's spelled B-A-C-H, new word, M-A-I.
00:47:37.000And that atrocity—excuse me, the U.S.
00:47:41.000bombed Bachmai Hospital—that atrocity, which of course the U.S.
00:47:45.000denied and said it was an accident and it was a mistake, is seared in the memory of everyone who passed through that war.
00:47:55.000In 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.
00:48:10.000And Bachmai Hospital, by the way, was rebuilt by American donations.
00:49:31.000I 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.
00:49:45.000But 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.
00:50:03.000The targeting of hospitals marks the crossing of a negative threshold into barbarism.
00:50:14.000If you search your memory, now you say you're a lay person, that's fine.
00:50:19.000Each person has his or her contribution to make humanity a better place.
00:50:25.000And yours might not be sitting in a library or sitting at your desk reading books.
00:50:30.000But 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.
00:50:44.000That is an innovation That Israel has now brought into the public domain and has now legitimized for all future wars and state actions.
00:51:00.000What Israel has done, it has legitimated the targeting of hospitals in the course of a war.
00:51:13.000Also, I feel that we must talk about the nature of propaganda.
00:51:18.000I've heard people say that when hostages were released that they were actors.
00:51:26.000I've heard people say that the stories indeed of bombing hospitals were not true.
00:51:31.000I 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.
00:52:00.000In 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.
00:52:11.000Indeed, conflict is where two realities are completely in collision with one another.
00:52:16.000And this occurs only when one side has extremely powerful propaganda and influence, or when there are viable perspectives to be had.
00:52:25.000I 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 Grey's in Essex in the UK, an English person, Who 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.
00:52:48.000I 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.
00:52:58.000I ask, do you believe That antisemitism is grafted on to this conflict, even if we take everything that you've said is entirely true.
00:53:08.000And as you know, I'm not arguing with you.
00:54:51.000I was not happy with that, with what he was saying.
00:54:55.000But 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.
00:55:20.000In 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.
00:55:50.000The 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.
00:56:11.000Now, how can it come as a surprise if Israel calls itself a Jewish state?
00:56:21.000If Israel calls itself the state of the Jewish people?
00:56:26.000If 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
00:57:11.000Backs 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.
00:57:37.000But 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
00:58:03.000in 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.
00:58:22.000If 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.
00:58:46.000And as a Jordanian friend of mine said the other day, he said, you have to be honest about it.
00:58:53.000The most, the best organized and the most aggressive opponents of the Israeli genocide are Jewish.
00:59:05.000So, in my opinion, number one, it puts the lie to the claim that this opposition to the genocide springs from anti-Semitism.
00:59:18.000And 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 anti-Semitism, whereas the British Board of Deputies, that monstrosity named Dame Margaret Hodge,
00:59:48.000They are the ones in the vanguard and the forefront of fomenting anti-Semitism.
00:59:58.000In fact, they are, by a wide margin, the main fomenters of anti-Semitism in the Western world.
01:00:11.000It's the Dame Hodges Not the Jews fighting the genocide, who are the main fomentors of anti-Semitism in the Western world today.
01:00:24.000Norman, I've got two good questions, actually, both from one person on the stream here, Kay Kottwas.
01:00:31.000He asks, how would you respond to people like Sam Harris and Bill Maher, who argue that you can't make an equivalency?
01:00:39.000Can you just scroll back a little bit, guys, so I can just see that question again?
01:00:43.000You 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.
01:00:51.000That's one question about the moral equivalency from sort of public intellectual stroke media figures like Sam Harris and Bill Maher.
01:00:58.000You 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.
01:01:18.000So the two questions are how would you address like Sam Harris and Bill Maher saying you can't compare Israel and 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.
01:01:42.000And then, you know, how also from Kay Kottwas on our stream, our live stream, how the Israeli, his words, Israeli propaganda apparatus influences Western media.
01:01:53.000So two pretty big questions there, Norman.
01:01:55.000I wonder if you want your thoughts on that.
01:01:57.000I'm going to ask Russell to refresh my memory.
01:02:00.000I don't want to appear to be evading a question, so if I forget to answer it—okay, just refresh my memory.
01:02:08.000First of all, I'm not going to deny that there are many regressive—in my opinion—regressive practices in the Muslim world, in the Arab world, and in Gaza.
01:02:19.000That's being disingenuous, and I don't intend to be disingenuous.
01:02:24.000However, first of all, I do not believe that bears on the question of whether a people has the right to self-determination.
01:02:33.000And the people of Gaza under international law—the people of Gaza and the West Bank, I shouldn't—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.
01:02:53.000So everything that's what's being said can be and in my opinion is true.
01:02:59.000However, it doesn't in the least Let's say it's all true.
01:03:04.000And I'm not going to deny that large parts of it are true.
01:03:39.000Now, 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.
01:03:51.000I have never seen in the Arab world as much homelessness as in the United States.
01:04:02.000In 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.
01:04:14.000You put your parents in an old age home?
01:04:17.000Where do you have more respect for parents?
01:04:19.000Where do you have more respect for elders?
01:04:23.000We 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.
01:04:43.000And sometimes people don't see the plank in their eye.
01:04:47.000All they see is the horrors elsewhere.
01:04:52.000In my city, I don't want to get involved now in a tangent, but just as a point.
01:04:57.000In my city, the streets are laden with homeless people.
01:05:02.000The subways are filled with homeless people, and all these skyscrapers have gone up, these, you know, 50, 75 floor skyscrapers, and you know what?
01:05:19.000Because Arab sheikhs, Russian billionaires, Chinese billionaires, they buy the houses.
01:05:26.000Now, 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.
01:05:59.000People purchase them just as an investment and never use them.
01:06:05.000So 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.
01:06:27.000Now, you said, how can I compare Hamas with Israel?
01:07:42.000Of 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.
01:08:49.000Actually, 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
01:09:04.000of lens that Edward Said would have applied, not able to presume that our
01:09:09.000culture is more advanced and that there is but one trajectory or teleology
01:09:14.000along which cultures progress. And it's plain that our own set of
01:09:19.000somewhat nihilistic values derived from materialism and rationalism have left
01:09:24.000us in the kind of cultural despair and uncertainty that means that there are
01:09:29.000few people that are confident to condemn, few people that are confident in
01:09:33.000taking up a position when our own democracies increasingly look like veils for
01:09:39.000different types of autocracy whether that's the new and emergent
01:09:44.000Digital 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.
01:10:10.000Perhaps 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.
01:10:24.000Perhaps 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.
01:10:50.000So I would say, listening to you now, it sounds like Democracy itself is in trouble.
01:10:59.000Neoliberalism has reached a kind of tipping point.
01:11:02.000And 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
01:11:18.000think there's a reason that word has such sort of incredible power within it.
01:11:22.000But it seems to me that you know when we sort of look at when did this conflict start,
01:11:27.000we've got a lot of questions to answer about how we found ourselves in this position, and how will this conflict end?
01:11:38.000And 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
01:11:56.000going to have to radically alter their perspective if there's going to be a solution beyond
01:12:01.000unimaginable conflagration and genocide. Many people are going to have to take…
01:12:06.000Well, I would say just on that note, actually, there's reason for optimism on that score.
01:12:14.000The evidence is overwhelming that large masses of people in the United States, in the UK,
01:12:23.000and elsewhere, they don't need to have their thinking renovated.
01:12:29.000They have a very clear sense that what Israel is doing in Gaza is utterly criminal and that the U.S.' 's support for that criminality is equally
01:12:46.000If you look at the polls in the United States, 70% of young people, 70% of young people oppose Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.
01:13:00.000A large percentage of Democrats, judging from the most recent polls, oppose President Biden's blanket support for Israel.
01:13:14.000And I suspect you'll find the same percentages in the UK.
01:13:21.000My memory is that very large demonstration you had in London a few weeks ago.
01:13:27.000It was one of the largest demonstrations of popular opposition to war in your nation's history.
01:13:36.000So, in my view, the problem is not the thinking of ordinary people.
01:13:44.000Ordinary people know there's something wrong when a high-tech stake is murdering in broad daylight women, children, old people, targeting hospitals, laying waste, laying waste To entire towns and cities.
01:14:09.000There are places now in Gaza like Beit Hanoun, which used to have 35,000 people.
01:14:16.000Now you go there, it's a howling wilderness.
01:14:47.000That 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.
01:15:11.000Their hearts have been so hardened and inert by their grief.
01:15:50.000And 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.
01:16:04.000I 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.
01:16:15.000As characterized by that great maxim emergent 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.
01:16:35.000Freedom 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.
01:16:52.000Norman, thank you so much for joining us today.
01:16:54.000I appreciate the time you've taken, and I appreciate your passion.
01:16:57.000Thank you so much for the opportunity to look at this book, Gaza.
01:17:01.000And 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.
01:17:10.000You can get that at normanfinkelstein.com.
01:17:13.000Norman, thank you very much for joining us today.
01:17:19.000Thank you very much for joining us for this conversation.
01:17:21.000Remember, if you're an awakened wonder, you can join these conversations live and put questions to our guests like Kay Cotsworth, Jim Earthsey, Kazo, Vered.
01:17:29.000All of these people put questions forward to Norman Finkelstein.
01:17:34.000You 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 normanfinkelstein.com.
01:17:43.000Join us next week for a beautiful Christmas special with Jonathan Pageau.
01:17:49.000That This chat will be up on local soon and you can see the fantastic conversation that we had about the pandemic era revealing a necessity for a new mythology to unite us.
01:18:00.000We talk about Christianity suffering folklore.
01:18:03.000We talk about, you'll love it, if you're sort of a Jordan Peterson clinical psychology Jungian analyst type person, you will enjoy us talking about folklores and meaning and cultural fissures and the need for purpose.
01:18:14.000Hollywood running out of ideas, the breakdown of deeper meaning in tales such as Jack and the Beanstalk, the Pied Piper, it's a really good conversation.
01:18:23.000If you eventually get sick and tired of watching dominated culture, mainstream placebo bullshit over the holiday period, join me for that conversation with Jonathan Pajot.
01:18:33.000You can watch it now or at least earlier if you press the red button to get early access to our interviews, readings from the great book like the Gita, From the Holy Bible so that we can awaken together, plus we as a community can talk about solutions so we can create a movement where we're somehow able to surmount the seemingly irresolvable conflicts and challenges the world faces now.
01:18:56.000New members upon the arc are Delray4me, Listening99, Karolina Burry UK, Cooey, Jodie Foosh and many many more.
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