Stay Free - Russel Brand - Why Oct 7th REALLY Happened | Norman Finkelstein MUST-SEE take on Israel-Palestine - Stay Free #268

00:00:00.000 you you

00:02:17.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:02:30.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.

00:02:31.000 Thank you so much for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand today.

00:02:35.000 We'll be streaming for the first 15 minutes with Norman Finkelstein, then we'll be exclusively available on Rumble.

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00:02:46.000 Live!

00:02:47.000 You 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.

00:02:56.000 Over the course of this conversation, we talked a lot about, obviously, the conflagration in the Middle East.

00:03:03.000 Norman 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.

00:03:12.000 As 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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00:04:48.000 So let's get into the conversation.

00:04:50.000 Norman, thank you very much for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:04:55.000 Thank you for having me.

00:04:57.000 First of all, Norman, I want to start by asking you a question that you requested we began with.

00:05:03.000 The 2014 operation known as Protective Edge.

00:05:08.000 Can 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

00:05:24.000 conflict, depending on how you frame it and why you have chosen that to be our starting point for the

00:05:30.000 conversation today?

00:05:31.000 In the current round of interviews that have been done on the current Israeli assault on Gaza,

00:05:46.000 everything seems to start on October 7th, as if everything were fine and dandy until October 7th.

00:05:55.000 And 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.

00:06:11.000 But for those who have studied the conflict, what happened on October 7th wasn't the beginning of the story.

00:06:19.000 It was really the climax of a chapter in the story.

00:06:24.000 And that climax in the chapter of the story begins really in 2006, when Israel imposed a brutal economic blockade on Gaza.

00:06:36.000 The effect of that blockade was that Nothing could go into Gaza and nothing could come out of Gaza.

00:06:44.000 No person could go into Gaza and no person could leave Gaza without Israel's permission. 0.82

00:06:52.000 Israel imposed in the course of that blockade a regime of a starvation-plus diet on the people of Gaza.

00:07:03.000 It literally calculated the caloric intake of the people in Gaza and then allowed food to enter Gaza at a starvation-plus level.

00:07:16.000 Gaza has suffered from among the worst economic Well, economic deprivation, but in particular, unemployment in Gaza.

00:07:28.000 Among Gaza in general, it's about 50% of the population.

00:07:33.000 Among youth, namely the people who birthed the gates of Gaza, the unemployment is at a level of about 70%.

00:07:39.000 About 97% of the water in Gaza is poisonous.

00:07:41.000 About 97% of the water in Gaza is poisonous.

00:07:47.000 It can't be drunk by the people.

00:07:50.000 Now, if you add up all of these factors, what do you get?

00:07:57.000 And I've just really just skimmed the surface.

00:08:00.000 I haven't mentioned that half the population of Gaza comprises children.

00:08:07.000 I haven't mentioned that 70% of the population of Gaza comprises refugees who were expelled from Israel in 1948 and their descendants.

00:08:20.000 I haven't mentioned that Gaza is among the most densely populated places on God's Earth.

00:08:26.000 I haven't mentioned that for the young people who burst the gates of Gaza, most of them were born into that place, which suffered from this economic blockade since 2006.

00:08:42.000 So what do we get when we put all these factors together?

00:08:48.000 Well, we take your own former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who now I understand is your foreign secretary.

00:08:56.000 David Cameron described Gaza as an open-air prison.

00:09:02.000 If you take Israel's senior security establishment official, he was the head of Israel's National Security Council.

00:09:15.000 His name is Giora Eiland.

00:09:17.000 And in March 2004, Giora Eiland described Gaza as, quote, a huge concentration camp.

00:09:26.000 And 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.

00:09:46.000 But that's only half the story.

00:09:49.000 The other half of the story is Israel periodically, quote, to quote Israel, mows the lawn in Gaza.

00:10:00.000 And what is mowing the lawn?

00:10:03.000 Well, mowing the lawn is these high-tech massacres that Israel launches against Gaza.

00:10:11.000 And a lot of people nowadays express the opinion that if Israel is conducting such massive death and destruction in Gaza, it's because of what happened on October 7th.

00:10:28.000 Well, it is true.

00:10:30.000 It is true.

00:10:32.000 that the quantitative magnitude of the death and destruction in Gaza is at a new level.

00:10:41.000 I wouldn't argue with that.

00:10:43.000 No sane person would argue with that.

00:10:45.000 But it's not true that the methods that Israel is employing in Gaza are new or that they suddenly emerged after October 7th.

00:11:01.000 So I asked your colleagues to just print out, you have in front of you, a list taken from not a human rights report, not from the United Nations, but just random testimonies of Israeli soldiers who fought in Operation Protective Edge in 2014.

00:11:29.000 Now I want you to bear in mind that this list comprises not soldiers who are peaceniks, not soldiers who feel guilty or remorseful about their actions.

00:11:47.000 On the contrary, these soldiers just randomly described What they did in Gaza.

00:11:59.000 And I want to reiterate for your listeners.

00:12:02.000 This is before October 7th.

00:12:07.000 This is standard operating procedure for Israelis each time they mow the lawn in Gaza. 1.00

00:12:18.000 So I'm going to ask you, Russell, because by profession you're an actor, so you have a much better voice than me, just for each I'm just going to ask you to go soldier, read one, soldier, read the next.

00:12:36.000 Because I think it's important for listeners to understand what drove those young men to burst the gates of Gaza and, we have to be honest, committed atrocities. 0.72

00:12:58.000 We'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.

00:13:07.000 Remember, 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.

00:13:19.000 Is 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?

00:13:32.000 Certainly that's my deep prayer.

00:13:33.000 Join us over on Rumble by clicking the link in the description.

00:13:36.000 You Awakening Wonders, we love you.

00:13:37.000 The link's there right now.

00:13:41.000 So, if you don't mind, just read it for the listeners.

00:13:45.000 Of course, Norman, I will happily comply with that.

00:13:50.000 At the bottom of page 219 in your book, Gaza, the source that is cited, is breaking the silence.

00:14:01.000 This is how we fought in Gaza.

00:14:02.000 Soldiers' testimonies and photographs from Operation Protective Edge.

00:14:07.000 And then afterwards, and because, you know, I don't know what context this will get subsequently used in, Norman, I'll be asking you what the oppositional view to everything we're discussing here is when people say that Israel is the only country that's ever shown any sort of clemency to Palestine that there never was a nation of Palestine pre-1947 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

00:14:43.000 Uninformed and just a, broadly speaking, an advocate for peace and solutions that go beyond military solutions.

00:14:53.000 So that we can have a conversation that has some tenacity and integrity to it.

00:14:58.000 So these are the sources that Norman Finkelstein has requested that I use.

00:15:01.000 Fearless Jay says I hope he doesn't do it in his alpha voice.

00:15:04.000 That would not be appropriate Fearless Jay.

00:15:06.000 I will do it in a neutral voice.

00:15:08.000 This is Soldier18.

00:15:11.000 When we left after the operation, it was just a barren stretch of desert.

00:15:14.000 We spoke about it a lot amongst ourselves, the guys from the company, how crazy the amount of damage we did there was.

00:15:20.000 I quote, Listen man, it's crazy what went in there.

00:15:22.000 Listen man, we really messed them up.

00:15:24.000 Check it out. 1.00

00:15:24.000 Fuck. 1.00

00:15:25.000 There's nothing at all left. 1.00

00:15:27.000 It's nothing but desert now.

00:15:28.000 That's crazy.

00:15:30.000 Source 21 soldier.

00:15:31.000 I remember that the level of destruction looked insane to me.

00:15:35.000 Source 22 soldier.

00:15:37.000 We entered Gaza with an insane amount of firepower.

00:15:40.000 Source 25 soldier.

00:15:41.000 It all looked like a science fiction movie.

00:15:44.000 Serious levels of destruction everywhere.

00:15:46.000 Everything was really in ruins and non-stop fire all the time.

00:15:51.000 30, soldier.

00:15:52.000 Before the entrance on foot to the Gaza Strip, a crazy amount of artillery was fired at the entire area.

00:15:58.000 Before a tank makes any movement, it fires every time.

00:16:02.000 Those guys were trigger happy.

00:16:04.000 Totally crazy.

00:16:04.000 31, soldier.

00:16:06.000 The explosions effects caused major amounts of damage, but that doesn't interest anyone.

00:16:11.000 Use it, use it.

00:16:11.000 Explosives can't be taken back, the platoon commander says.

00:16:14.000 I don't want to leave explosives with me.

00:16:18.000 36 soldier.

00:16:19.000 Our view was of the center of the strip.

00:16:21.000 Let's say it was a real fireworks display.

00:16:23.000 From a distance, it looked pretty cool.

00:16:24.000 If you looked through a night vision scope, you saw crazy wreckage.

00:16:27.000 It was a real trip.

00:16:28.000 38 soldier.

00:16:29.000 You're shooting at anything that moves.

00:16:32.000 And also at what isn't moving.

00:16:33.000 Crazy amounts.

00:16:34.000 It also becomes a bit like a computer game.

00:16:36.000 Totally cool and real.

00:16:39.000 49, soldier.

00:16:39.000 It was total destruction in there.

00:16:41.000 The photos online are child's play compared to what we saw there in reality.

00:16:45.000 I never saw anything like it.

00:16:46.000 70, soldier.

00:16:47.000 The unfathomable number of dead on one of the sides, the unimaginable levels of destruction, the way militant selves and people were regarded as targets and not as living beings.

00:16:57.000 That's something that troubles me.

00:16:59.000 74 Soldier, it's destruction on a whole other level.

00:17:02.000 94 Soldier, the Air Force carries out an insane amount of strikes in the Gaza Strip during an operation like Protective Edge.

00:17:08.000 96 Soldier, shells are being fired all the time, even if we aren't actually going to enter.

00:17:13.000 Shells, shells, shells.

00:17:14.000 What happens for seven days straight is non-stop bombardment.

00:17:18.000 That's what happens in practice.

00:17:20.000 These are accounts taken from Gaza, read by me, and of course it makes chilling reading, in particular the one that characterizes those events as being sort of the kind of homogenized and neutral events that might take place in a computer game.

00:17:36.000 And of course, like in my own sort of analysis of the depictions of violence, I've noticed that, for want of a better term, violence practiced by the West and, 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.

00:18:08.000 A child murdered is a child murdered.

00:18:10.000 A woman or an adult murdered is an adult murdered.

00:18:13.000 So how do you think, if you were not sat with Russell Brand but you were sat with Ben Shapiro right now, what do you imagine you would be facing?

00:18:23.000 I imagine he would say he would give you some descriptions and depictions of October the 7th, he would talk about the Various purges and pogroms and holocaust perhaps.

00:18:33.000 What 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.

00:18:47.000 Can you tell me what troubles you most about the arguments of those who do not share your perspective?

00:18:58.000 Well, first of all, I have welcomed the debate with Ben Shapiro many times. 0.99

00:19:04.000 He's stupid, but not so stupid as to appear with me on the same platform. 0.99

00:19:09.000 And so he has declined. 1.00

00:19:12.000 Now, what are the arguments to defend this sort of conduct that's described here?

00:19:19.000 One argument would usually be that it's selective.

00:19:23.000 But alas, this is not selective.

00:19:27.000 As you can see from the quotes, and I read the whole compendium by breaking the silence, there were maybe two or three people in the whole 200 pages who expressed any remorse for their actions.

00:19:42.000 As you can see from what you read, they're just casually describing, without remorse, without guilt, without pretending to be peaceniks, about what they experienced in Gaza.

00:19:55.000 So I don't think it's very easy to impeach these testimonies by Israeli soldiers themselves.

00:20:03.000 Now, you have to bear in mind, I am talking about, or I should say, you are quoting from One operation, one mowing of the lawn.

00:20:18.000 In fact, there have been at this point at least a dozen high-tech massacres visited on Gaza since the year 2000.

00:20:29.000 And I can quote quotes from soldiers, and I did in my book, in every one of the massacres that Israel has inflicted on Gaza that read exactly as the ones that you just recited for your listeners.

00:20:52.000 This is standard operating procedure for Israel in its relentless attacks on the people of Gaza. 0.63

00:21:04.000 Now, What else would be said in defense?

00:21:09.000 I suppose because I have to make, in order to ferret out the truth, you have to make the best case argument for the other side, what's called the devil's advocate.

00:21:21.000 So I will play my own devil's advocate.

00:21:24.000 The best argument is going to be that it was Hamas that broke the ceasefires. 0.98

00:21:31.000 Hamas 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.

00:21:48.000 Let's take the last issue first.

00:21:52.000 As you can see from these testimonies, the amounts of firepower Israel used Had nothing to do with human shielding.

00:22:06.000 They're describing what they call crazy.

00:22:10.000 Look at the words.

00:22:11.000 Crazy, insane amounts of firepower which are randomly, indiscriminately being fired on a civilian population.

00:22:26.000 Where does human shielding even come into play here?

00:22:31.000 It's not as if the combatants are saying we were trying to target combatants.

00:22:39.000 But they were being shielded by civilians.

00:22:44.000 That's not what the testimony says.

00:22:47.000 If it did say it, I would have put it in the book because I am not afraid of truth.

00:22:56.000 If that's what's said, I would have put it in the book and then attempted to explain it.

00:23:03.000 But that's not what's being said.

00:23:06.000 When you get away from the propaganda and the propagandists, The propaganda of the State of Israel and the propagandists like Mark Regev and Ben Shapiro, what you actually see is Israel periodically entering Gaza to mow the lawn, the lawn which your listeners should bear in mind.

00:23:36.000 The lawn, half of the blades of grass in Gaza, there are 2.3 million blades of grass in Gaza.

00:23:48.000 I see you're looking at me intently and I appreciate that.

00:23:53.000 Just like I appreciated from Candace Owens, and just as I appreciated from Mihaela Peterson, you listen and it gradually sinks in.

00:24:06.000 That mowing of the lawn means 2.3 million people, half of whom are children, You understand?

00:24:18.000 Mowing the skull of a child.

00:24:23.000 That's not being emotive.

00:24:26.000 That's not being histrionic.

00:24:29.000 That's not being theatrical.

00:24:33.000 That's being factual.

00:24:37.000 Mowing the skulls of 1.1 million children.

00:24:44.000 And are these children being used as human shields?

00:24:50.000 Look at what they say in this text.

00:24:53.000 We are indiscriminately, randomly using insane, crazy amounts of firepower directed at a civilian population.

00:25:09.000 So, that's one side of the question.

00:25:13.000 The other side is, who provokes these periodic mowings of the lawn?

00:25:20.000 Let's take one case, which is the best documented.

00:25:25.000 In June 2008, Hamas and Israel reached a ceasefire.

00:25:31.000 The ceasefire held up until November 4th, 2008.

00:25:37.000 What happened on November 4th?

00:25:40.000 President Obama won the presidential election in the United States.

00:25:45.000 So Israel knew all the cameras would be directed, the world's cameras, would be directed at the United States and the outcome of the presidential election.

00:25:57.000 Israel at that moment chose, elected, to break the ceasefire And go in and launch what was called back then Operation Cast Lead.

00:26:14.000 That lasted from December 26 to January 17.

00:26:17.000 There is no dispute whatsoever.

00:26:22.000 Even Israeli publications, official Israeli publications, acknowledge The ceasefire held until November 4th when Israel broke the ceasefire and what eventually ensued on December 26th was Operation Cast Lead.

00:26:45.000 So it's not true that Hamas breaks the ceasefires.

00:26:51.000 However, I want to make a point, because I said before, I'm not afraid of the truth.

00:26:59.000 It is not true that the only thing that's needed now is a ceasefire.

00:27:08.000 A ceasefire has to be number one on the agenda, no question about it.

00:27:14.000 But that number one has to be accompanied by or attended by number two, which is to end the illegal inhuman blockade of Gaza.

00:27:30.000 That medieval siege Which even the Goldstone Report, which was issued after Operation Cast Lead, described as verging on a crime against humanity.

00:27:48.000 That blockade has to end, or it's true.

00:27:52.000 These actions by Hamas, or as I prefer to say, the people of Gaza, will recur and recur and recur until and unless the population of Gaza has been wiped out, has been exterminated. 0.81

00:28:12.000 Now, Israel's goal now is to do just that. 0.85

00:28:17.000 It decided on October 7 that what happened, you know the cliché, a crisis is also an opportunity.

00:28:28.000 And Israel realized on October 7th the crisis of the atrocities that occurred on October 7th.

00:28:37.000 were also an opportunity.

00:28:41.000 And the opportunity was to once and for all solve the Gaza question. 0.89

00:28:51.000 And solving the Gaza question meant anywhere from an ethnic cleansing to expel the entire population to the Egyptian Sinai, To two, making Gaza uninhabitable from now until kingdom come.

00:29:13.000 To three, what Prime Minister Netanyahu said, you have to treat the people of Gaza like Amalek, referring to the Hebrew Bible, wipe out every man, woman, child and animal, every camel, every fox.

00:29:35.000 So that was the opportunity that Israel seized upon on October 7th to once and for all find a final solution to the Gaza question. 0.90

00:29:51.000 That Amalek rhetoric is of course incredibly loaded and customary usage of either religious national myth or the kind of colloquialism likely to elicit broad public support Is often mobilized in the immediate aftermath of crisis in order to curry political favor and to legitimize expedient military action.

00:30:19.000 I'm thinking of George W. Bush's sort of kill these folks in the post 9 11 era, which subsequently has been shown to have been a misguided approach and created more negative consequences than perhaps would

00:30:33.000 have been anticipated as well as being targeted in areas that are, in retrospect,

00:30:39.000 inadvisable and inappropriate.

00:30:41.000 To connect it again to your reference to Amalek and this Talmudic reference to extermination,

00:30:51.000 I wonder, Norman, and I think it's vital that your participation and contribution to this conversation is as vital as like when I've seen Hasidic Jews participate in advocacy for peace or my friend Gabor Mate talking about a requirement for peace because I think it has a particular resonance when survivors of the Holocaust, this Great scar upon the heart of the Jewish people and this is significant event in what has led to the establishment of the state of Israel.

00:31:19.000 I say this as a dilettante, as an outsider and a person who doesn't claim to have anything other than a superficial understanding.

00:31:24.000 It seems vital to me that people that could legitimately take up a strong position on the, let's call it the other side, advocate for peace, advocate for clemency, advocate for tolerance, compassion and solution.

00:31:39.000 I feel that, as I have you here, I'd love to ask you how you tackle the idea that enshrined within Hamas's raison d'etre is the extermination of the Jewish people.

00:31:49.000 That's something that I've continually used, heard, to legitimize extreme military measures, i.e.

00:31:55.000 you cannot negotiate with terrorists, a very sort of common maxim or axiom in conflicts of this kind.

00:32:03.000 I've heard people say that people seem to care less when other Muslim and Arab nations exterminate Arabs, i.e. within

00:32:10.000 Syria. I've also heard people say, like, when talking about the shield issue, that perhaps it's a,

00:32:16.000 as I've heard it rendered, is it's more that Hamas are within a civilian population

00:32:23.000 and, you know, me, my personal position is peace, peace, peace, stop war,

00:32:28.000 stop war immediately.

00:32:29.000 That's my personal position, just so you don't think that I'm advocating for these kind of what I would regard as extreme and agonizing actions.

00:32:38.000 But I would say, how do you cover Hamas's rhetoric around genocide, which rhetorically is comparable to the Amalek reference that you made?

00:32:48.000 The idea that just by being within that community, there is a degree of shielding.

00:32:54.000 And the idea that genocide, that sort of the Israeli people feel that there is a sort of a peripheral genocide that could be enacted by the sort of numerous hostile nations and people that are around them.

00:33:10.000 And that this somehow legitimizes the sort of ongoing threat of this presence.

00:33:17.000 Because I suppose you would have to Fear that, wouldn't you?

00:33:20.000 In order to be able to, you know, even the accounts I read earlier from your book, in order to legitimize violence of that nature, you would have to fear for your own way of life.

00:33:30.000 You would have to have the ultimate motivation.

00:33:32.000 So again, Hamas's MO and raison d'etre, the idea of shielding within Gaza, making it inevitable, And the fact that, yes, Israel could, if they wanted to, this is another common argument, they could wipe out all Gaza and the West Bank and they haven't. 0.81

00:33:46.000 Therefore, you know, like the Hamas are operating at maximum capacity and Israel aren't.

00:33:52.000 So in that gap is clemency and compassion.

00:33:55.000 How do you address those arguments, please, Norman?

00:34:00.000 Well, because I'm on the older side and you're on the younger side, you're going to have to refresh my memory for each of these questions, because you just overloaded my memory bank.

00:34:12.000 So I'm going to ask you, let's start with the first one, the Hamas charter. 0.91

00:34:18.000 I don't want to get into the technicalities here.

00:34:20.000 This is not an academic seminar.

00:34:23.000 I'll just try to make myself brief on this point.

00:34:27.000 Since Hamas won the election in 2006, the parliamentary election in Gaza, and even before that, but we'll start from 2006, Hamas has repeatedly made offers to Israel, either for what's called a Hudna, H-U-D-N-A, which just means a long-term ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians, a ceasefire along the

00:34:55.000 roughly about 20 to 30-year truths.

00:34:58.000 They'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.

00:35:18.000 All those peace offerings by Hamas We're completely rejected by Israel and backed by the United States. 0.97

00:35:27.000 So it's not true.

00:35:29.000 The factual record is very clear on that.

00:35:32.000 It's not true that Hamas was unwilling to reach a reasonable settlement of the conflict.

00:35:40.000 It was willing to do so, but those peace offerings were rejected by Israel and the United States out of hand.

00:35:49.000 There wasn't even an attempt at negotiations.

00:35:53.000 Which brings me to your second question.

00:35:56.000 And I want to encourage you, Russell, ask me the tough questions, because it's no point in preaching to the choir.

00:36:07.000 You want to reach new people and people who have legitimate doubts.

00:36:11.000 So you might answer to the question, to the reply I just gave, you could say, yes, it's probably true.

00:36:19.000 You know more than me.

00:36:21.000 It's probably true that Hamas made peace offerings, but of course Israel rejected them.

00:36:27.000 How can you negotiate with a terrorist organization?

00:36:31.000 And even people like Bernie Sanders in the United States, during the first month of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, he kept saying he's against the ceasefire because you can't negotiate with Hamas, because Hamas is a terrorist organization.

00:36:49.000 Now, I'm going to ask you and your listeners to answer a very simple question.

00:36:54.000 It couldn't be simpler.

00:36:56.000 Let's take what I mentioned earlier, Operation Protective Edge, between December 26, 2008 and January 17, 2009.

00:37:07.000 Let's just take that one example.

00:37:10.000 The estimates are that during Operation Cast Lead, Israel killed about 1,400 Gazans, of whom 350 were children.

00:37:24.000 Okay.

00:37:25.000 And.

00:37:27.000 And it also destroyed 6,300 homes and it laid waste all of Gaza. 0.93

00:37:33.000 OK?

00:37:34.000 And I think I can prove to you and all of your listeners what I said earlier.

00:37:39.000 This was a completely unprovoked attack by Israel.

00:37:43.000 It broke the ceasefire.

00:37:44.000 It launched the attack.

00:37:47.000 Now, I'd like you and your listeners to keep in mind, we're talking about one, just one of Israel's operations, Operation Cast Lead.

00:37:56.000 So now let's fast forward to October 7th.

00:37:59.000 On October 7th, the estimates are about 1,200 Israelis were killed, and of those 1,200, approximately 30 were children.

00:38:11.000 So, In terms of numbers, obviously the total number is roughly in the same ballpark.

00:38:19.000 1,400 in Cast Lead, Gazans killed.

00:38:22.000 1,200 Israelis killed on October 7th.

00:38:27.000 Children, it's a very big order of magnitude difference.

00:38:31.000 350 children in Gaza, about 30 children in Israel.

00:38:36.000 Now, here is the very simple question.

00:38:39.000 I do not think it can be any simpler.

00:38:44.000 If Hamas's terrorist action on October 7 disqualifies it from negotiating a settlement, it's a terrorist organization. 0.67

00:38:59.000 You can't negotiate with it, you have to destroy it.

00:39:04.000 Then why doesn't Israel's terrorist action, just in one operation, Operation Cast Lead, why doesn't Israel's terrorist action disqualify it from negotiating a settlement?

00:39:23.000 If Hamas has to be destroyed Then it seems to me the state of Israel has to be destroyed.

00:39:33.000 Now, I am not advocating that.

00:39:37.000 I am simply asking you and your listeners, what is the error in my logic?

00:39:47.000 In Operation Protective Edge in 2014, from which those testimonies you read occurred, 2,200, 2,200 Gazans were killed.

00:39:59.000 550 were children.

00:40:01.000 500 Gazans were killed, 550 were children, 18,000 homes were destroyed.

00:40:14.000 If October 7 disqualifies Hamas from any participation in a peace settlement, then Operation Protective

00:40:25.000 Edge, if we look just at the raw numbers, must disqualify Israel twice as much.

00:40:36.000 from any settlement of the conflict.

00:40:40.000 1,200 versus 2,200.

00:40:43.000 30 children versus 550 children.

00:40:48.000 Why do the acts of terrorism, which I do not deny occur, but why do they only disqualify one party to reaching a settlement, but not the other party.

00:41:04.000 Honestly, I like to play my own devil's advocate.

00:41:09.000 That's the way you find truth.

00:41:12.000 But try as I do, I cannot figure out a coherent answer to that question.

00:41:20.000 I suppose it must be because of the historic relationships between Britain and the establishment of Israel, a kind of a broader set of relationships between US-Israeli interests, in particular where it is acknowledged and understood that there are certain types of military violence that are taxonomized as rational, logical, necessary, and other sets of violence that are seen as provocative.

00:41:50.000 Whether it's the events around 9-11 or the numerous times that Britain as a former colonial power has enacted violence on people of India, various African nations, the people of Ireland legitimizing it as the necessary control against savages or Or groups of people that are regarded as having less rights.

00:42:13.000 I suppose if you don't have a general consensus that all human life has a particular value, then you are, I suppose, on the pathway to being able to legitimize certain types of violence and justify certain types of death.

00:42:28.000 And I think that we all understand that.

00:42:30.000 And 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.

00:42:42.000 It's almost, I suppose, comparable to the kind of climate arguments that we've made.

00:42:46.000 Why are you going to prevent India having an industrial revolution or China having an industrial revolution when our, I say our, I mean Western, sort of, anglophonic nations have had our industrial revolutions.

00:43:00.000 Now, 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.

00:43:17.000 I go back a long way.

00:43:19.000 I was involved in the anti-war movement against the war in Vietnam.

00:43:23.000 I was involved when I got older in the civil rights movement and by the time I was in graduate school I was involved in the anti-apartheid movement.

00:43:33.000 So, I would be the last one on God's earth to deny the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and in some cases, such as the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, they have to be qualified as acts of genocide. 0.67

00:43:52.000 I would be the last one to deny that ugly record.

00:43:56.000 However, I didn't support it.

00:44:00.000 I opposed it.

00:44:02.000 So I don't think I can be legitimately accused of holding a double standard or an anti-Semitic standard if I oppose what Israel's doing in the same way as I opposed the war in Vietnam, I opposed apartheid, and I opposed the vicious assault on African Americans before and during the Civil Rights Movement.

00:44:25.000 However, having said that, We have to be clear and honest about what's happening now.

00:44:34.000 Right now, there is a declared genocide being committed by the Israeli government against the people of Gaza.

00:44:45.000 It's not indirect.

00:44:47.000 It's not obscure.

00:44:49.000 It's not ambiguous.

00:44:51.000 It's a declared genocide being committed against the people of Gaza.

00:44:57.000 The magnitude of death and destruction that's been inflicted on the people of Gaza in the past two months makes every other war in the 20th century, and in part in the 21st century, and in part in the 20th century, in part in the 20th century, pale by comparison.

00:45:18.000 There's simply no comparison between the density of the bombing The ratio of civilian to military deaths, the percentage of children and women as against men who have been killed, there is no comparison with any other conflict in the 21st century, be it Afghanistan, be it Iraq, be it Ukraine.

00:45:48.000 There is a light year separate.

00:45:53.000 What I should say a chasm separates what Israel has been doing with any other conflict in the 21st century and in some cases even the 20th century in terms of combatant to civilian ratio of deaths.

00:46:11.000 I would also say that Israel has Crossed a negative threshold of barbarism, and I use my words very carefully. 1.00

00:46:28.000 Israel has crossed a negative threshold of barbarism insofar as this is the only conflict, to my knowledge.

00:46:41.000 Now, I cannot say for the Nazis during World War II because I'm not certain.

00:46:47.000 But it's the only conflict, to my knowledge, where, as a matter of open state policy, Israel has been targeting hospitals in Gaza.

00:47:03.000 Now, I want you to listen to me carefully, Russell.

00:47:06.000 I go back to the war in Vietnam, and I was active in the anti-war movement.

00:47:12.000 And I have a searing memory of that war.

00:47:16.000 There are many memories, but one in particular.

00:47:19.000 During Christmas 1972, The United States bombed Bachmai Hospital.

00:47:27.000 For your listeners who are interested, it's spelled B-A-C-H, new word, M-A-I.

00:47:34.000 Israel bombed Bachmai Hospital.

00:47:37.000 And that atrocity—excuse me, the U.S. 0.54

00:47:41.000 bombed Bachmai Hospital—that atrocity, which of course the U.S. 0.92

00:47:45.000 denied and said it was an accident and it was a mistake, is seared in the memory of everyone who passed through that war.

00:47:55.000 In fact, when I was a graduate student, I set up a table at the front of my library where I collected money to help rebuild Bachmai Hospital.

00:48:10.000 And Bachmai Hospital, by the way, was rebuilt by American donations.

00:48:14.000 People, not the government.

00:48:15.000 Forget Kissinger. 1.00

00:48:16.000 May he burn in hell. 0.99

00:48:18.000 No, it was by people, ordinary people, who gave to rebuild the hospital. 0.99

00:48:24.000 The bombing of a hospital Until this Israeli genocide in Gaza was literally unthinkable as an official, open state practice.

00:48:42.000 Let me enter those qualifiers again.

00:48:45.000 As an official, open state practice.

00:48:51.000 It was unthinkable.

00:48:54.000 And now Israel has crossed that negative threshold of barbarism by routinely, methodically, systematically bombing the hospitals in Gaza.

00:49:12.000 So even as I am the last person on God's earth Having been raised on a mental diet of reading Professor Chomsky's chronicling of U.S.

00:49:28.000 crimes around the world.

00:49:31.000 I am the last person on God's Earth to deny the magnitude and the horror of the crimes inflicted by my government on states and peoples around the world.

00:49:45.000 But the fact nonetheless remains that by some basic metrics, What Israel has been doing in Gaza is in a class, a category, all its own and certain of its actions.

00:50:03.000 The targeting of hospitals marks the crossing of a negative threshold into barbarism.

00:50:14.000 If you search your memory, now you say you're a lay person, that's fine.

00:50:19.000 Each person has his or her contribution to make humanity a better place.

00:50:25.000 And yours might not be sitting in a library or sitting at your desk reading books.

00:50:30.000 But if you search your memory hard, I do not think you can come up with a single example of an official state policy of targeting hospitals.

00:50:44.000 That is an innovation That Israel has now brought into the public domain and has now legitimized for all future wars and state actions.

00:51:00.000 What Israel has done, it has legitimated the targeting of hospitals in the course of a war. 0.77

00:51:11.000 I understand.

00:51:13.000 Also, I feel that we must talk about the nature of propaganda.

00:51:18.000 I've heard people say that when hostages were released that they were actors.

00:51:26.000 I've heard people say that the stories indeed of bombing hospitals were not true.

00:51:31.000 I wonder, Norman, from your somewhat unique position making these claims, given your personal history and your family history, if you believe that anti-Semitism plays a role in the criticisms of Israel and Israel actions, even if that anti-Semitism is being grafted onto, even if we were to take everything that you are saying as the only version of events that we can countenance.

00:52:00.000 In my mind, I'm trying to continually hold, if matters were as simple as they are described by either side, then we would not have conflict at all.

00:52:11.000 Indeed, conflict is where two realities are completely in collision with one another.

00:52:16.000 And this occurs only when one side has extremely powerful propaganda and influence, or when there are viable perspectives to be had.

00:52:25.000 I say this with complete and total respect for the version of events that you have conveyed, but also, as I've said throughout this, as a person from 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.

00:52:48.000 I refer entirely now to military industrial complex exploitation of both the Ukraine-Russia war and this escalating conflict in the region that we are discussing today.

00:52:58.000 I ask, do you believe That antisemitism is grafted on to this conflict, even if we take everything that you've said is entirely true. 1.00

00:53:08.000 And as you know, I'm not arguing with you.

00:53:10.000 I'm listening to you.

00:53:11.000 Do you think that antisemitism is on the rise?

00:53:15.000 Do you think that antisemites have a That there is an anti-semitic opposition to the state of Israel?

00:53:20.000 Do you think that there is a unique perspective and set of standards applied to Israel that are not applied to the United States?

00:53:27.000 And I've heard your arguments there about sort of what you regard as unique sort of targeting of particular public institutions.

00:53:36.000 As a Jewish man and as the child of Holocaust survivors, do you feel that Russell, you used the word grafted.

00:53:44.000 I would use the word inevitable spillover.

00:53:46.000 What do I mean by that?

00:53:47.000 to legitimise anti-Semitic tropes or arguments.

00:53:50.000 Russell, you used the word grafted. I would use the word inevitable spillover.

00:54:00.000 What do I mean by that? I'll give you a personal example.

00:54:04.000 My late father, as I suppose you know, he was in the Warsaw Ghetto and then he was in Auschwitz

00:54:10.000 and he was in the Auschwitz death march.

00:54:12.000 Thank you very much.

00:54:13.000 Now, my late father hated—not Nazis, let me be clear about it—my late father hated Germans.

00:54:22.000 Not Nazis, Germans.

00:54:25.000 So, I remember he was once reading a book by a Russian author.

00:54:30.000 My father knew Russian.

00:54:31.000 He was reading—he was Polish, but he knew Russian.

00:54:34.000 He was reading a book by a Russian author, and he recommended the book to me.

00:54:39.000 Why did he recommend the book to me?

00:54:42.000 He said, because in this book, they don't refer to Nazis, they refer to Germans.

00:54:49.000 I remember that.

00:54:51.000 I was not happy with that, with what he was saying.

00:54:55.000 But I recognized that given what happened to him, there was an inevitable spillover From hating Nazis to hating Germans because Germany was a Nazi state for a period of time.

00:55:15.000 We can't deny that.

00:55:17.000 Germany was a Nazi state.

00:55:20.000 In the 1950s, when the United States was carrying on all sorts of activities around the world to destabilize governments and overthrow governments, which it viewed as hostile to its elements, a famous book came out.

00:55:35.000 You can even Google it.

00:55:36.000 It was called The Ugly American.

00:55:41.000 It wasn't called The Ugly CIA.

00:55:44.000 It wasn't called The Ugly U.S.

00:55:48.000 Army.

00:55:50.000 The Ugly American, again, an inevitable spillover from the activities of our government, many of which, by the way, most Americans were completely unaware of, an inevitable spillover from the government to the people.

00:56:11.000 Now, how can it come as a surprise if Israel calls itself a Jewish state?

00:56:21.000 If Israel calls itself the state of the Jewish people?

00:56:26.000 If all the official organizations in the UK, the Jewish organizations, support the actions of Israel, How can it come as a surprise, given the examples I just gave, if there's not a spillover from the self-proclaimed Jewish state, which claims the genocide it's committing in Gaza is in the name of the Jewish people, and your British board of Jewish deputies

00:57:11.000 Backs to the hilt, all of these genocidal actions, it would be a very big surprise if there weren't a spillover from hating that genocidal state to also bearing a large amount of animus towards Jews in general.

00:57:37.000 But having said that, Having said that, I want to also say that one of the most redeeming, inspiring aspects of the horror currently being inflicted in Gaza is the number of self-identified Jews

00:58:03.000 in particular Jewish Voices for Peace, or the organization Not In Our Name, who now stand in the forefront, the vanguard, of the opposition to this genocidal war.

00:58:22.000 If you take any of, not any, but most of the big anti-genocide actions in the United States in the past two months, at Grand Central Station in New York, at the Statue of Liberty, at numerous sites, always in the front, in the vanguard.

00:58:46.000 And as a Jordanian friend of mine said the other day, he said, you have to be honest about it.

00:58:53.000 The most, the best organized and the most aggressive opponents of the Israeli genocide are Jewish. 0.97

00:59:05.000 So, in my opinion, number one, it puts the lie to the claim that this opposition to the genocide springs from anti-Semitism.

00:59:18.000 And I also have to say, by Jews being in the forefront, the vanguard of the opposition to the genocide, they do the most To dispel and dissipate the anti-Semitism, whereas the British Board of Deputies, that monstrosity named Dame Margaret Hodge,

00:59:48.000 They are the ones in the vanguard and the forefront of fomenting anti-Semitism. 0.53

00:59:58.000 In fact, they are, by a wide margin, the main fomenters of anti-Semitism in the Western world.

01:00:11.000 It's the Dame Hodges Not the Jews fighting the genocide, who are the main fomentors of anti-Semitism in the Western world today.

01:00:24.000 Norman, I've got two good questions, actually, both from one person on the stream here, Kay Kottwas.

01:00:31.000 He asks, how would you respond to people like Sam Harris and Bill Maher, who argue that you can't make an equivalency?

01:00:39.000 Can you just scroll back a little bit, guys, so I can just see that question again?

01:00:42.000 Thank you so much.

01:00:43.000 You can't make an equivalency, moral equivalency, between Israel and Hamas who don't accept women's rights, believe gays should be executed in theocracy.

01:00:51.000 That's one question about the moral equivalency from sort of public intellectual stroke media figures like Sam Harris and Bill Maher.

01:00:58.000 You can't make a moral equivalency because of the, let's call it, lack of progressivism sort of within Islam and presumably therefore within Hamas and also Kay Kotwas is asking about the influence of his term Israeli propaganda apparatus on Western media.

01:01:18.000 So 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.

01:01:42.000 And 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.

01:01:53.000 So two pretty big questions there, Norman.

01:01:55.000 I wonder if you want your thoughts on that.

01:01:57.000 I'm going to ask Russell to refresh my memory.

01:02:00.000 I don't want to appear to be evading a question, so if I forget to answer it—okay, just refresh my memory.

01:02:08.000 First 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.

01:02:19.000 That's being disingenuous, and I don't intend to be disingenuous.

01:02:24.000 However, first of all, I do not believe that bears on the question of whether a people has the right to self-determination.

01:02:33.000 And 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.

01:02:53.000 So everything that's what's being said can be and in my opinion is true.

01:02:59.000 However, it doesn't in the least Let's say it's all true.

01:03:04.000 And I'm not going to deny that large parts of it are true.

01:03:07.000 I'm not going to.

01:03:07.000 the Palestinian people have the right to self-determination and more to the point.

01:03:13.000 Let's say everything you say about women's rights and sexual rights in Gaza is true. 0.99

01:03:19.000 Let's say it's all true. 0.86

01:03:20.000 And I'm not going to deny that large parts of it are true.

01:03:23.000 I'm not going to.

01:03:24.000 Does that mean you have the right to confine people in a concentration camp?

01:03:30.000 Does that give you the right to immure people in a concentration camp? 0.75

01:03:36.000 Does that give you that right?

01:03:39.000 Now, before we act so superior to these people, I'll tell you something, and I'm not negating what the Sam Harrises and the Ben Shapiros and that ilk have to say. 0.98

01:03:51.000 I have never seen in the Arab world as much homelessness as in the United States.

01:03:58.000 What does that say about our culture?

01:04:02.000 In the Arab world, up until now, it may change, confining your parents in an old age home is that idea they can't even compute. 1.00

01:04:14.000 You put your parents in an old age home?

01:04:17.000 Where do you have more respect for parents?

01:04:19.000 Where do you have more respect for elders?

01:04:23.000 We should, before we carry on as if we're so superior to other parts of the world, you know the passage, clear the plank from your eye before you examine the speck in another person's eye.

01:04:43.000 And sometimes people don't see the plank in their eye.

01:04:47.000 All they see is the horrors elsewhere.

01:04:52.000 In my city, I don't want to get involved now in a tangent, but just as a point.

01:04:57.000 In my city, the streets are laden with homeless people.

01:05:02.000 The subways are filled with homeless people, and all these skyscrapers have gone up, these, you know, 50, 75 floor skyscrapers, and you know what?

01:05:14.000 You ready for this?

01:05:16.000 They're all empty.

01:05:17.000 They're all empty.

01:05:19.000 Because Arab sheikhs, Russian billionaires, Chinese billionaires, they buy the houses. 0.99

01:05:26.000 Now, I ask you, Russell, what verdict will be rendered on our civilization in a hundred years that we confined tens of thousands of people, my city tens of thousands of people, to homelessness in streets and subways when half the new buildings that have gone up are empty.

01:05:58.000 They're empty.

01:05:59.000 People purchase them just as an investment and never use them.

01:06:05.000 So unlike Mr. Harris and Mr. Shapiro, I try to be a little more humble or humbler before rendering judgment on other countries, other societies, other traditions, even as I acknowledge they have many regressive features.

01:06:27.000 Now, you said, how can I compare Hamas with Israel?

01:06:32.000 Israel is a democracy.

01:06:35.000 Let's ask ourselves a simple question.

01:06:40.000 The Israeli, the main Israeli human rights organization for the occupied territories, it's called B'Tselem.

01:06:48.000 B'Tselem, okay? 0.98

01:06:50.000 And B'Tselem put out a report a few years ago.

01:06:54.000 And the report said, I'm directing myself to you and to your listeners.

01:07:00.000 The report said, let's stop kidding ourselves.

01:07:03.000 There's only one state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.

01:07:08.000 Israel is not occupying the West Bank and Gaza anymore.

01:07:12.000 They're all part of one state.

01:07:14.000 Because it's been that way since 1967.

01:07:18.000 It's more than 50 years.

01:07:20.000 So de facto, it's one state.

01:07:23.000 So they said we have only one state.

01:07:26.000 It includes Israel proper, the West Bank, and Gaza.

01:07:32.000 There's one state.

01:07:34.000 That one state has about 14 million people.

01:07:39.000 Okay?

01:07:39.000 About roughly 14 million people.

01:07:42.000 Of those 14 million people, 5 million of those people, namely the citizens in the West Bank and Gaza, or the people in the West Bank and Gaza, they have no rights. 0.98

01:07:54.000 They don't have a right of voting.

01:07:56.000 They don't have a right of citizenship. 1.00

01:07:58.000 They have zero rights.

01:08:00.000 Zero.

01:08:00.000 Literally zero rights.

01:08:02.000 Okay?

01:08:03.000 And the Arabs in Israel, about 2 million, they have some rights.

01:08:09.000 Not equal rights, but some rights.

01:08:12.000 So now I have to ask you a question, or a simple question.

01:08:16.000 If you have 14 million people in the state, 5 million of those 14 million have no rights whatsoever.

01:08:25.000 None.

01:08:28.000 And 2 million have what you might call second or third class citizen rights.

01:08:33.000 Does that sound to you like a democracy?

01:08:37.000 Where half the population has either no or second or third class rights. 0.93

01:08:45.000 Does that sound to you like a democracy?

01:08:47.000 It doesn't sound to me like one.

01:08:49.000 Actually, I think you sort of opened a line of analyses when you said that we do not have the moral authority to arbitrate between different models of civilization that we are in a sort of in the kind

01:09:04.000 of lens that Edward Said would have applied, not able to presume that our

01:09:09.000 culture is more advanced and that there is but one trajectory or teleology

01:09:14.000 along which cultures progress. And it's plain that our own set of

01:09:19.000 somewhat nihilistic values derived from materialism and rationalism have left

01:09:24.000 us in the kind of cultural despair and uncertainty that means that there are

01:09:29.000 few people that are confident to condemn, few people that are confident in

01:09:33.000 taking up a position when our own democracies increasingly look like veils for

01:09:39.000 different types of autocracy whether that's the new and emergent

01:09:44.000 Digital tyrannies that we're beginning to experience, the new, heavily stratified nations that both of us are living within now, where new extremes of poverty are regularly tolerated, where life expectancy, that famous marker of progress, is finally descending in the United States of America, where people feel disconnected, lost and adrift.

01:10:10.000 Perhaps it's within this context that we are Unable to come from a position of legitimate moral authority, to even evaluate where our affiliations might lie.

01:10:24.000 Perhaps it's easy to take shortcuts and to support Just based on rhetoric and artifice, the kind of affinities that evidently exist between the nations that we are discussing, for plainly they do if the recent UN vote is anything to go by with the blocking of a potential ceasefire that's just taken place in the last couple of days.

01:10:50.000 So I would say, listening to you now, it sounds like Democracy itself is in trouble.

01:10:56.000 Progressivism itself is in trouble.

01:10:59.000 Neoliberalism has reached a kind of tipping point.

01:11:02.000 And indeed, whether we want to look at broadening cultural frames, genocide is genocide and the annihilation of a people is the annihilation of people, whether those people are Jewish or Arab or you know whatever other category of genocide. I

01:11:18.000 think there's a reason that word has such sort of incredible power within it.

01:11:22.000 But it seems to me that you know when we sort of look at when did this conflict start,

01:11:27.000 we've got a lot of questions to answer about how we found ourselves in this position, and how will this conflict end?

01:11:36.000 Even weightier questions, Norman.

01:11:38.000 And I have to say that the type of, let's say, compassion embodied in your own transition, at least culturally, is certainly a path that many, many people are going to have to walk if there's going to be anything like a resolution in this issue. Many, many people are

01:11:56.000 going to have to radically alter their perspective if there's going to be a solution beyond

01:12:01.000 unimaginable conflagration and genocide. Many people are going to have to take…

01:12:06.000 Well, I would say just on that note, actually, there's reason for optimism on that score.

01:12:14.000 The evidence is overwhelming that large masses of people in the United States, in the UK,

01:12:23.000 and elsewhere, they don't need to have their thinking renovated.

01:12:29.000 They 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

01:12:45.000 Criminal.

01:12:46.000 If you look at the polls in the United States, 70% of young people, 70% of young people oppose Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.

01:13:00.000 A large percentage of Democrats, judging from the most recent polls, oppose President Biden's blanket support for Israel.

01:13:14.000 And I suspect you'll find the same percentages in the UK.

01:13:21.000 My memory is that very large demonstration you had in London a few weeks ago.

01:13:27.000 It was one of the largest demonstrations of popular opposition to war in your nation's history.

01:13:36.000 So, in my view, the problem is not the thinking of ordinary people.

01:13:44.000 Ordinary 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.

01:14:09.000 There are places now in Gaza like Beit Hanoun, which used to have 35,000 people.

01:14:16.000 Now you go there, it's a howling wilderness.

01:14:21.000 A howling wilderness.

01:14:23.000 People understand that.

01:14:26.000 The problem is not that ordinary people are brainwashed. 1.00

01:14:32.000 The problem, it's the greed, the lust for power of a handful, a handful of parasites and murderers. 1.00

01:14:45.000 They're the problem. 1.00

01:14:47.000 That handful of parasites and murderers who have not a Corner of their heart, able to reach out to the suffering of ordinary people, be it a homeless person in the streets of London or a child in Gaza. 1.00

01:15:11.000 Their hearts have been so hardened and inert by their grief. 1.00

01:15:19.000 and their lust for power.

01:15:22.000 They are the problem.

01:15:24.000 If I can use the expression that came to pass beginning with the Occupy Movement, we, the 99%, we, the 99%, are not the problem.

01:15:33.000 Occupy movement, we, the 99%, we, the 99% are not the problem.

01:15:44.000 That 1%, they are the problem. 0.97

01:15:50.000 And I feel that over the course of this conversation, while plainly you have extremely clear, well-informed and passionate views, which we know that many people will strongly oppose, that is the nature of this conflict.

01:16:04.000 I feel that when we talk about establishment corruption, a billionaire class of all denominations beyond religious or racial affinity and the interests of ordinary people.

01:16:15.000 As 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.

01:16:35.000 Freedom from censorship, freedom from external control, the right to live without an exploitative class of people of any religious or denomination imposing violence, both military, ideological, political and financial upon them.

01:16:52.000 Norman, thank you so much for joining us today.

01:16:54.000 I appreciate the time you've taken, and I appreciate your passion.

01:16:57.000 Thank you so much for the opportunity to look at this book, Gaza.

01:17:01.000 And also, you can order Norman's new book, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It, Heretical Thoughts on Identity, Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom.

01:17:10.000 You can get that at normanfinkelstein.com.

01:17:13.000 Norman, thank you very much for joining us today.

01:17:15.000 Thank you so much for having me.

01:17:19.000 Thank you very much for joining us for this conversation.

01:17:21.000 Remember, 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.

01:17:29.000 All of these people put questions forward to Norman Finkelstein.

01:17:32.000 Some of them I read live.

01:17:34.000 You can order Norman's new book, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It, Heretical Thoughts on Identity, Politics, Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom at normanfinkelstein.com.

01:17:43.000 Join us next week for a beautiful Christmas special with Jonathan Pageau.

01:17:49.000 That 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.

01:18:00.000 We talk about Christianity suffering folklore.

01:18:03.000 We 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.

01:18:14.000 Hollywood 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.

01:18:23.000 If 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.

01:18:33.000 You 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.

01:18:56.000 New members upon the arc are Delray4me, Listening99, Karolina Burry UK, Cooey, Jodie Foosh and many many more.

01:19:05.000 Thank you for supporting us, thank you for being part of our movement.

01:19:08.000 Join us next week Not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - December 15, 2023

Why Oct 7th REALLY Happened | Norman Finkelstein MUST-SEE take on Israel-Palestine - Stay Free #268

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