0:00

This. Episode of the Dig is brought

0:02

to Bear Lister she support us at

0:04

patreon.com and by Verso Books which has

0:07

loads of great left wing titles. Perfect

0:09

for dig listeners like you. When

0:12

that you might like is the

0:14

jail is everywhere. Fighting the new

0:16

geography of Mass Incarceration by Jack

0:18

Norden Lydia Pillow Hobbs in Judah

0:20

Shipped with a foreword by Ruth

0:22

Wilson Gilmore. Jails are

0:24

now the fastest growing sector of the U

0:26

S. Kaushal State. As they

0:28

grow. Be transform the regions

0:30

around them, subordinating health care

0:32

provision and employment opportunity to

0:34

carsharing Concerns with jails everywhere.

0:36

Resistance is to campaigns against

0:38

new or expanded jails have emerged

0:41

all over the U S.

0:43

While there's some coordination between

0:45

he struggles, they tend to be

0:47

isolated from each other and

0:49

broader movements. The. Jail is

0:52

everywhere. maps this new terrain

0:54

consolidating experiences from jail fights

0:56

across the country. It for

0:58

grounds to hard forged analyses

1:01

of anti jail organizers. As

1:03

they take us through campaigns. That

1:05

around the new center of the car shrill

1:07

state. The jail was everywhere.

1:10

Fighting. The New Geography Of

1:12

Mass Incarceration by Jack Norton

1:14

Lydia Pillow Hobbs in Judah

1:16

Shipped. With. A foreword by

1:19

Ruth Wilson Gilmore out Now

1:21

from Verso box. Welcome

1:32

to the Dead, a podcast

1:34

from Jacobin Magazine. My name

1:36

is Daniel Denver and I'm

1:38

broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island.

1:41

Over the first weekend in

1:43

April, I joined scholars from

1:45

all over the place in

1:47

Houston, Texas for the inaugural

1:49

World Academic For for Palestine.

1:51

We gathered as Israel's ongoing

1:53

campaign has in only a

1:55

few short months, killed more

1:57

than thirty three thousand Palestine.

2:00

Palestinians, wounding more than 75,000. Even

2:03

as those numbers are so

2:06

hard to fathom, they're

2:08

likely an undercount considering the

2:10

untold bodies, men, women,

2:13

and children lying under

2:15

the rubble. More than 62% of

2:18

homes in Gaza have been raised, the

2:20

vast majority of the population

2:22

displaced. This is a

2:25

clear effort to ethnically cleanse Gaza

2:27

of Palestinians, itself part

2:30

of a century-old campaign to

2:32

liquidate Palestinians as a people.

2:35

Scholars were gathered together amid

2:37

a genocide that is also

2:39

a determined campaign of scholasticide.

2:43

As the conference organizers note,

2:45

quote, scholasticide has

2:47

intensified on an unprecedented scale.

2:49

Israeli colonial policy in Gaza

2:52

has now shifted from a

2:54

focus on systematic destruction to

2:57

total annihilation of

2:59

education. There is indeed

3:01

an intimate relationship between genocide

3:03

and scholasticide. Raphael

3:05

Lampkin, the pioneering Polish-Jewish legal

3:07

scholar who first defined a

3:10

genocide and played a key

3:12

role in inserting the concept

3:14

into international law, saw genocide

3:16

as an effort to undermine

3:18

the fundamental basis of the social

3:20

order. Key to this

3:23

effort in Lampkin's conception was

3:25

the assault on the cultures

3:27

of national, ethnic, racial, or

3:30

religious collectivities. That was

3:32

me quoting the conference organizers. Every

3:35

single university in Gaza has now

3:37

been destroyed. Thousands

3:40

of professors and students have been killed and

3:42

severely injured. This is the

3:44

opposite of an accident. This is

3:47

not unfortunate collateral damage. Israeli

3:50

academia is complicit. We must

3:52

urgently end U.S. military aid

3:54

to Israel And pursue

3:56

boycott, divestment, and sanctions until

3:59

this genocide. It is over and

4:01

Palestine is free from the river.

4:03

To the see today we hear

4:06

from the Palestinian historian Abdul Razak

4:08

to creepy on the deep colonial

4:10

context required to understand Zionism in

4:12

the National Liberation struggle against it.

4:14

Arab Jewish historian Avi Shlaim on the

4:17

history of Israeli politics leading up to

4:19

this genocide. Palestinian. Legal

4:21

scholar new Era era cat on

4:23

the frameworks constructed still jew to

4:25

meet the increasing widespread to ability

4:27

of Palestinians. Lebanese Palestinian

4:30

historian Summer Mack Dc. On

4:32

how the Western elite commitment to Zionism

4:34

is a product of denying the capitalist

4:37

colonialists origins of the Holocaust. Anti

4:39

Zionist Israeli historian Ilan Poppy Unsc

4:41

last aside and then lastly we

4:44

will hear from gotta audio hum

4:46

than. A third generation

4:48

Palestinian refugee and political scientist

4:50

who will recounted the experience

4:52

of the mass murder and

4:54

displacement of her extended family

4:56

in Gaza. Next week

4:59

we'll be back with episode eight of

5:01

our. Are. Rolling Series on

5:03

Twentieth Century Arab Radicalism so which I'm

5:05

doing with none other than of Dollars

5:07

Off to Greedy who's featured in this

5:10

episode and play a lead role in

5:12

organizing this important conference. This next episode

5:14

of our I. Will. Focus on

5:17

the development of Palestinian national politics after

5:19

the Nakba throughout the Nineteen fifties, leading

5:21

up to the foundation of Factor. In

5:24

the meantime, please catch up on sour.

5:27

And. Visit he markets you

5:29

tube page to catch the

5:31

rest of this historic conference.

5:33

These excerpts are just a

5:36

handful of a much larger

5:38

number of really, really important

5:40

remarks. As. Always. If.

5:42

You appreciate what we do here at the Dig, and

5:45

I know many of you do. After all yours, you're

5:47

listening to the dig. Please. Support

5:49

the podcast at Ti Tree

5:51

and.com/the dig that's patreon.com/the did.

5:53

We really couldn't put this

5:55

podcast out there with no

5:57

pay while so that every

5:59

one can listen with out

6:01

you contributing today. I also

6:03

want to encourage you to

6:05

donate to Palestine. Legal Palestine

6:07

Legal protects the civil when

6:09

constitutional rights of people in

6:12

the United States who speak

6:14

out for Palestinian freedom. We.

6:16

Have a powerful solidarity movement in

6:18

this country but we are under

6:20

constant attack in we need lawyers

6:22

Are Palestine legal to defend us?

6:26

Donate to Palestine Legal

6:28

at Palestine legal.org. There's

6:30

a link in the show Notes: Okay,

6:33

first up is Abdul Razak Tikriti

6:35

who teaches history at Rice University.

6:37

a scholar of Arab and Palestinian

6:39

revolutionary movements. He's the author of

6:42

Monsoon Revolution, Republicans, So Times and

6:44

Empires and Oman. He is also

6:46

my guest in Cook creator a

6:48

stalwart are are rolling series on

6:51

twentieth century Arab radical isms. Are

7:08

so was. This

7:10

has been very difficult

7:12

conference to turn. Were.

7:14

All of us I believe. After hearing

7:16

what's going on and I'll assign. What's.

7:19

Going on with as a specific. It.

7:22

Is difficult. To. Come in

7:24

and give. A talk

7:26

about history. When

7:28

we must go back to

7:30

history is what we're seeing

7:32

now is an internationally authorize

7:35

and organize genocide. And

7:37

that idea that I want to communicate do

7:39

today. Is that?

7:43

International. Authorization.

7:46

For. The colonization and

7:48

destruction of Palestine. Is

7:51

a. Very. Very,

7:53

very old. Phenomenal. It

7:56

goes back actually to the very

7:58

beginning of this. Oreo, The Colonization

8:01

of Palestine, Perhaps one

8:03

is unique? About the

8:05

colonization. Look at it. To

8:09

participate colonial context. Is.

8:13

That this was a settler

8:15

colonialism that was enacted by

8:17

an international fourth. Game.

8:21

Or settler colonial cases.

8:24

Are carried out by one cat.

8:26

It occupies a space. It.

8:29

Authorizes the colonization of that

8:31

space by a settler route.

8:34

And it overseas that process. In.

8:37

The case of Palestine, it was a

8:39

very late example a settler colonialism. And.

8:42

It happened. In

8:44

the context of the post. World.

8:46

War One settled. Where.

8:50

The League Of Nations. Officially.

8:53

Authorized. The. Settler colonization

8:55

of that space. Under

8:59

the terms of the so bold

9:01

mandate says. Let's

9:05

consider the mandate system. In

9:09

the Palestine Mandate. Article.

9:12

One of the mandate. Was.

9:14

That the mandatory so have full

9:16

far as of legislation this was

9:18

barely typical and administration but article

9:20

to and as the one that

9:22

matters. Serve. Caused.

9:25

The Mandatory so be responsible

9:27

for placing the country under

9:30

such as an administrative as

9:32

economic conditions as will secure

9:34

the establishment of the Jewish

9:36

National Home. As. A doubt

9:39

and debris and they laid out in

9:41

the preamble the idea of creating Jewish

9:43

National Home and Palestine. Which.

9:47

Means basically transforming.

9:51

It or three that was predominantly

9:53

Arab. Into.

9:56

A third read that is predominantly

9:58

European. Is. The do was

10:00

in a low meant at the time was

10:02

the transference. Of. Europe's.

10:06

Jewish population into boast.

10:10

Wipes, And. Forget.

10:14

About all the legal for release. Forget.

10:16

About well, the historic

10:19

justifications. That one justification

10:21

for this. Is

10:24

connection. As

10:27

many people have many as direct connections to made

10:29

different parts of the world that doesn't mean tickets

10:31

com and take the place of. That

10:34

was the argument about the news. Said.

10:37

Over and over again. And you know

10:39

what? They're. Still maturing when it

10:41

when it comes to the. Know.

10:47

This must also I might affect the first.

10:50

There's an international decision when we used

10:53

words international By the way, we need

10:55

to. States that are in power doesn't

10:57

mean that it's the peoples of the

10:59

world's people's of the world where all

11:02

under the boot of these people in

11:04

power be away For a great powers

11:06

running the world. And.

11:08

We still have this phenomenon. Know who

11:11

did it with these? The global system.

11:13

Arms. Position

11:16

Of Power I'm back then. And

11:20

are responsible. For. The Gods

11:22

a genocide right now. And.

11:25

We see this. In.

11:28

The United Nations The success of

11:30

of the League of Nations We

11:33

see this. Nd

11:35

International. Coincidental.

11:40

That it is a great African country.

11:43

That. With this revolution, sister

11:45

Lucy put the Palestinian reviews.

11:48

That has come in to the age.

11:52

Of the Palestinian people. At the icy.

11:55

And an attack on. That

11:58

all the sabotage has done. End

12:00

of the U N. And

12:02

in. Lead

12:05

to spew new military.

12:08

And diplomatic. To.

12:10

Try to stop the just such a

12:13

all of this sabotage. Is

12:15

done. By. The listed. What?

12:23

Is their justification We've heard it over

12:25

and over again in that spot for

12:27

is it is racism. And

12:30

I will illustrate this with reference to

12:32

the man who set the terms of

12:34

the mandate. I keep

12:36

on repeating his foods I hit

12:38

Forty Get is a very durable,

12:41

able man named Winston Churchill. Winston.

12:48

Churchill when asked why

12:50

that incorporate. That.

12:54

Terms Of The Mandate And Nineteen Twenty Two.

12:56

Why? Did he do that? despite the fact

12:59

that there had been to. Rebellious.

13:02

A Senator Bullies that has been

13:04

investigated by British commissions. And.

13:08

These your buddies those that about the As

13:10

do not want their lead to be colonized.

13:14

His. Answer. To.

13:17

The Bill Commission which was asking

13:19

him to prison making thirty seven,

13:21

About nineteen, Twenty two. When

13:24

the man went it turns were

13:26

passed was briefly. He. says.

13:29

I do not admit that the.in

13:31

the manger as the final right

13:33

to the manger, even though he

13:36

may have lived there for very

13:38

long time. I

13:40

do not have. Them

13:48

America or the. Black. People

13:50

of Australia. I

13:53

don't. I admit that are wrong has been known

13:55

to these people by the fact. That a

13:57

stronger race, a higher grade?

14:00

race or

14:05

at any rate a more worldly wise

14:07

race to put it that way has

14:09

come in and taken their place. I

14:13

do not admit it. I do

14:15

not think that the red Indians at any

14:17

way to say the American continent belongs to

14:19

us and we are not going to have

14:21

any of these European settlers coming in here.

14:24

They had not the right nor had

14:27

they the power. I

14:31

repeat this quote in almost every talk I give

14:37

because this is at the heart of

14:40

what we're dealing with. This

14:47

is at the heart of what we're

14:49

dealing with today. Biden,

14:56

Brett McCurk was behind Biden. This

15:00

entire administration, their

15:03

views of Palestinians are

15:05

no different. Their

15:08

views of our people of Muhazza

15:10

are no different. That

15:13

is proven by

15:16

the practices that they

15:18

are authorizing by

15:21

the practices that they are arming.

15:25

They come in one day say we want

15:27

humanitarian supplies to enter and

15:30

at the same day they send

15:32

in weapons with which to destroy

15:34

our people, kill them with which

15:37

to murder our children, with

15:40

which to turn our

15:42

hospitals, schools, universities into

15:44

rubble. They

15:48

engage in another phenomenon and

15:52

this phenomenon matters which

15:55

is attempt to destroy

15:57

our political institutions and

15:59

to destroy our military

16:02

capacities, which

16:04

are the capacity for self-defense. In

16:08

the colonial logic you see, from

16:12

the very beginning of the story, from the time

16:14

of the British, only

16:16

the settler-coloness is allowed to be armed.

16:20

There are two categories of humanity

16:22

in this world. A

16:25

group of people who have

16:28

the so-called right of self-defense, who

16:31

have the right to bear arms, and

16:35

others who

16:38

might be

16:40

at the receiving ends of these arms

16:43

and sit there and accept

16:45

being murdered with them

16:47

without any resistance. Now,

16:50

you might be slightly familiar with this

16:53

logic living in this country. We

16:55

see it at a different scale in a different

16:58

set of communities. Remember

17:00

what the Black Panthers were talking about?

17:02

Yesterday we heard a very inspiring speech

17:05

by a great scholar of that movement.

17:09

That was part of the logic that we

17:11

have here. There

17:13

we have it on a

17:16

national level. Here it's

17:18

expressed in racialized segregation

17:20

terms. There it's

17:22

done on the level of colonizing one

17:24

people to another.

17:26

The logic is the same. Some people

17:28

get to defend themselves. Some

17:32

people do not get to defend themselves, they get to

17:34

be assaulted. And

17:37

should they ever

17:39

defend themselves, they'll be presented as

17:43

a religious, as

17:45

evil, as committers of

17:47

evils that are greater than

17:50

those committed by any

17:52

human population in

17:55

history. Now, let me

17:58

tell you why. It

18:00

proves to be a problem for these people. Those

18:03

that were trying to

18:05

destroy the ability of

18:07

Palestinians to express themselves

18:10

politically and

18:12

to defend themselves militarily. By

18:16

the way, it's a difficult conversation to have. Some

18:19

people will say, what is Professor Tikriti talking

18:21

about? How dare you talk about self-defense or

18:23

anything else? That is terrorism in this country.

18:26

Well, I'm a historian of revolutions

18:28

and counter revolutions. I'm

18:31

a historian of the traditions of

18:34

war as they're exemplified in colonial

18:36

situations. And whether it's

18:38

in Algeria or South Africa or Palestine, we

18:40

always have this dynamic going on. Every

18:45

colonized group was

18:48

presented in this country as not having

18:50

the right to defend itself. And

18:55

should you talk about it in absolute terms,

18:57

you're presented as promoting a certain strategy or

19:00

tactic. I'm not doing that here in this

19:02

book. I'm

19:04

just reflecting on

19:07

the history of this space where

19:09

one group of people is armed to the teeth

19:12

with nuclear weapons, with

19:14

the top fighter jets, with

19:18

rockets, and another

19:20

group of people is

19:23

totally expected to

19:26

be bombed and sit there silent. Reza

19:36

proved to be a problem for this

19:38

logic because Reza was the

19:40

space, as Adil has mentioned,

19:43

into which the entirety of the southern heart

19:46

of Palestine was distilled in

19:49

1948. That

19:56

happened over the course of an operation that took place in the

19:58

United States. place in October

20:00

1948, it's known as Operation Yoav. During

20:09

this operation, most

20:11

of the major cities of

20:13

southern Palestine and big towns,

20:17

ones that were mentioned by

20:19

Dr. Ahmed Judeh, our beloved Nakma survivor

20:22

who shared with us his testimony, his

20:24

very powerful testimony here. Most

20:26

of those spaces were ethnically cleansed during

20:29

that operation, including

20:31

his beloved hometown

20:33

is Judeh, but

20:35

also Be'er Sabah, also

20:39

Mejdal, also

20:41

Hanama, all of these

20:44

areas and many others. Dawayim,

20:50

this was Operation

20:52

Yoav. Guess

20:54

who's named after Operation Yoav? The

20:57

current butcher of

21:00

Gaza, the current Israeli defense minister

21:02

that they're presenting here as a

21:04

moderate, Yoav Gala. His

21:07

father was a war criminal who

21:10

participated in the ethnic cleansing of

21:12

all of these cities

21:15

and villages in 1948. He

21:19

expelled their inhabitants and placed them

21:21

in Gaza. The

21:24

Egyptian forces were

21:27

unable to defend those areas. And

21:32

moreover, they had

21:34

diminished the capacity of Palestinians from

21:36

being able to defend those areas

21:38

because the minute they entered those

21:41

forces that entered Palestine, their first

21:43

thing they did was disarm the

21:45

local Palestinian units that were defending

21:47

these villages. The

21:53

population of those areas ended up

21:55

in Gaza. They

21:58

ended up in the... small

22:00

territory that the Egyptian

22:03

forces were able to defend, which

22:05

was a very thin strip, 40 kilometers

22:10

long and

22:13

at most 8 kilometers wide. This

22:16

is what we're talking about. The

22:20

entirety of the southern of Palestine,

22:23

southern part of Palestine, was concentrated

22:26

there. Unlike

22:32

other parts of Palestine, that's

22:34

the only part that people

22:36

were allowed to call themselves, were still

22:39

allowed to call themselves Palestinian in after

22:44

48. Those that ended up in West

22:47

Bank, those

22:49

that came from the central health

22:51

country, those that ended up in Jordan, they

22:54

were absorbed into a different nationality

22:57

project. The

22:59

project that saw two annex the West

23:01

Bank to Ashmite Kingdom of

23:03

Jordan. Those

23:07

that ended up in Lebanon were

23:10

so oppressed that they

23:13

couldn't form political organizations.

23:15

Those that ended up in Syria became

23:17

absorbed into mainly Syrian

23:19

and Pan-Arab political dynamics. That

23:22

was special because that

23:25

was the place where you could say,

23:27

I am Palestinian and I'm going to

23:29

organize this Palestinian. I'll give you an

23:31

example. The Palestinian Palestine Communist Party, the

23:33

only place where you

23:35

had the Palestine Communist Party remaining, was in

23:39

Gaza. In 48 our compatriots

23:42

there, they had to join the

23:44

Israeli Communist Party. In

23:46

Jordan, they had to create the

23:48

Jordanian Communist Party. Only

23:51

in Gaza you had the Palestine

23:54

Communist Party. Fatah

23:57

started in Gaza for a reason, or was primarily

23:59

in Gaza. The only started by sons

24:01

of visit for his daughters were

24:03

the for is. Again,

24:06

because of as though as a space. Where.

24:08

You could that the formation. Of

24:11

a particularly Palestinian way of

24:13

thinking. That's

24:16

why all those directly their suits. Us

24:19

that formation which is the largest in

24:21

Palestine at the time for a long

24:23

time. Were.

24:26

Concentrated in as. The.

24:29

Muslim Brotherhood which is the origin

24:31

of party that as was. Also.

24:35

A disproportionately powerful Mls.

24:39

So. When we look. At.

24:42

That the today. We. See

24:44

that it's a blaze. I know that's

24:46

a deal as told us about it's

24:48

marginality a scholarship. but I'll tell you

24:50

something. A Palestinian political life and I'm

24:53

a scholar of us. The in political

24:55

like it is actually enormous reset. And

24:58

as central role historically persistently

25:00

to this very day. Old

25:03

A major Palestinian factions have something

25:06

to do with this. Even

25:10

the Pflp which is not start

25:12

undressing. Some. Of the

25:14

strongest moments of resistance in the

25:16

occupied territories happen in the early

25:19

Nineteen seventies image as it during

25:21

which was known as the. If

25:23

arrows as a period. So.

25:29

I was always a place. Because.

25:31

It as an active political life

25:33

and it was a sight of

25:35

resistance. It's a place where people

25:37

said no. You know why they

25:39

said no because also resistance. And.

25:42

Palestine is organized are

25:44

classed lines. And. It

25:46

primarily emanates from refugee communities

25:48

is the strongest. In

25:51

refugee communities. And

25:54

as as there is. None.

25:57

Of our marriage. Cases.

26:00

Which the average are concentrated. So.

26:05

What's your answer to? this? Is

26:08

disruption? Is

26:10

complete annihilation. They.

26:14

Don't want. Any

26:16

form of Palestinian independence from

26:18

Western control. In

26:21

the West Bank. The

26:23

Palestinian people. A second.

26:27

Time authorities that it's

26:29

enter Us and Israeli

26:31

diminish. Our

26:35

people there are very brave the been

26:37

trying to remove these circles for a

26:39

long time. But.

26:41

Their time. They're under

26:43

the boot. There

26:46

are no lot of pain. Now

26:48

they're watching their sisters and brothers big,

26:51

slaughtered, New.

26:53

Rear them all feeling powerless, the trying

26:55

to up again. And

27:00

a refugee camps zoning region. are

27:02

people trying to rebel For here?

27:04

I can. What they want

27:06

to see It. In Jordan

27:09

there were defeated Ninety Seven. Eleven

27:12

on there were expelled. Nineteen Eighty

27:15

Two. Oh

27:18

the only place where the bus

27:20

the as of add any independent

27:22

political or military capacity in this

27:24

world was. So.

27:28

That. Is the

27:30

sort of trucks. Today

27:35

and Palestine Visited presents a

27:38

concept record has. Led.

27:41

The. From. That's

27:43

why you're so many genocide victims to

27:45

day. You'd be followed Arabic

27:47

news. You'll never see them getting interviewed

27:50

on the U news because it on

27:52

interview people. Maybe the interview of humanitarian

27:54

kiss? a

27:57

you know where he watched arabic channels you

27:59

see them And they'll come and tell

28:01

you, you know what? I have Karame, I have

28:03

dignity. I am hungry, but I am

28:05

staying here. The

28:09

only way to defeat this colonialism is

28:12

to defeat this concept,

28:14

this racist concept. The

28:18

only way to defeat colonialism is

28:20

to accept that the Palestinians, like other

28:22

peoples in this world, have a right

28:24

to self-determination, have a right to independence,

28:26

have a right to control their faith,

28:30

have a right to return to their land, all

28:33

of their land. If

28:36

we apply universal rights to

28:41

Palestine, if we stop

28:43

obsessing about the welfare of the

28:45

settler at the expense

28:47

of the life of the native, then

28:53

we shall see a world in

28:56

which the genocide that we've

28:59

been discussing today is absent.

29:03

So that is what we're here for

29:06

today, to protect

29:11

our minds from the

29:14

distortions, but also

29:16

is to play our role as scholars

29:18

and thinkers, to

29:20

speak the truth, speak

29:23

the truth to power. Thank

29:28

you very much.

29:35

That was Abdel Razak Tikriti. Next

29:38

up is Avi Shlaim, an Arab Jew

29:40

born in Baghdad before the Zionist States

29:42

Foundation and one of the world's leading

29:44

historians of the region. In

29:47

the late 1980s, Shlaim became one

29:49

of Israel's so-called new historians alongside

29:51

Ilan Pape, who we'll hear from

29:53

shortly, and Benny Morris,

29:55

who unlike the other two, today

29:57

takes a staunchly Zionist

30:00

lain. The new historians

30:02

used Israeli archives to demolish the

30:04

prevailing national myths of the Jewish

30:07

state's founding, and to prove that

30:09

Israel, a settler colonial power backed

30:11

by Western imperialism, had

30:13

forcibly ethnically cleansed much of

30:16

historic Palestine with overwhelming military

30:18

force. The research

30:20

was important, but a significant part

30:22

of that importance was that the

30:25

research exposed to Israelis what Arabs

30:27

already knew. Here's

30:29

Avish Laim, an emeritus fellow

30:31

of St. Anthony's College, Oxford, an emeritus

30:34

professor of international relations at the

30:37

University of Oxford, and a

30:39

fellow of the British Academy. He's

30:41

the author of multiple books, including

30:44

the recently published autobiography,

30:47

Three Worlds, Memoirs of

30:49

an Arab Jew. Good

30:54

evening. I'd like to begin

30:56

by paying tribute to

30:58

Arbet Takriti and his

31:01

colleagues for organizing this remarkable

31:04

and truly important gathering

31:08

of scholars against

31:11

the war on Palestine.

31:21

Arbet suggested that I use my 15

31:23

minutes to put Gaza

31:26

in a historic context and

31:29

to focus on the Israeli side.

31:31

So I've decided to organize

31:34

my comments around the title

31:36

of Beyond

31:38

the Iron Wall, a

31:41

world of explanation. In

31:45

1923, Zarev Jabotinsky,

31:48

the spiritual father of the

31:50

Israeli Reich, published an

31:52

article called The Iron Wall, We

31:54

and the Arabs. In

31:57

it he wrote The

31:59

Palestinian You are the people.

32:02

That. Have to ramble. They're.

32:04

Not a rebel that people. Know.

32:07

People in history as ever

32:09

willingly made room for another

32:11

people to com and create

32:13

est on their land. And

32:16

therefore Palestinian resistance to the

32:18

Zionist Project is inevitable and

32:20

he was capable of one.

32:22

On to agreement between the

32:25

two sides is not possible.

32:27

The only way to realize

32:29

the Zionist Project is Judy

32:32

left early and binding force

32:34

stage one of the this

32:36

was. The basics and strategy

32:38

in the conflict since the

32:40

Nineteen Twenties. Stage one of

32:42

the strategy is to be

32:44

a Jewish military force. The

32:47

Arabs would not the head

32:50

against the wall eventually they'll

32:52

give up any hope of

32:54

the city's the Zionists on

32:57

the battleground and then would

32:59

come the time for states

33:01

to have a strategy which

33:04

she's negotiations with the Palestinians

33:06

about that the rights and

33:08

status in Palestine. So the

33:11

essence of a strategy was

33:13

to negotiations from strength. The

33:17

problem is that the politicians

33:19

to for I said in

33:22

love with the first part

33:24

of the strategy of building

33:26

up Israel's military force. Ah,

33:29

but they forgot about the

33:31

second part of the strategy

33:33

which is using this witnessing

33:35

posts as an instrument to

33:37

negotiate a settlement with the

33:40

Palestinians. It's tough

33:42

to have been. Was the only as

33:44

a leader went have a very modest

33:46

swings towards. Towards

33:49

a political settlement of the conflicts

33:52

with the Palestinians. it is is

33:54

by signing say I asked the

33:56

court in Nineteen Ninety Three. The.

34:06

Piano. Is.

34:08

Probably the most flexible, the

34:11

most moderate, National

34:13

Liberation Movement is. Expected.

34:23

Am each gates. Said.

34:33

He thought get an independent

34:35

Palestinian stays. On. Gaza and

34:37

the West Bank with a

34:39

capital city in East Jerusalem.

34:41

but it was not to

34:43

be. Robin.

34:47

Was assassinated and daily

34:49

could came back to

34:51

power. Ninety Ninety Six

34:54

under the leadership of

34:56

Benjamin Netanyahu. And

34:58

the of that for turned out

35:00

to be a trap for the

35:02

palestinians. The

35:05

to know his first

35:07

term in office in

35:09

a systematic and loudly

35:11

successful attempt to dismantle

35:13

the asked those accords.

35:15

he did this by

35:17

increasing expanding Jewish settlements

35:19

on the West Bank

35:21

and increasing the number

35:24

of to his senses

35:26

as a time of

35:28

was know that hundred

35:30

and thirty thousand Jewish

35:32

settlers today's seven hundred.

35:34

Thousand Jewish settlers on the

35:36

West. Death. In

35:40

two thousand and five on

35:42

a sarong carried out the

35:45

unilateral disengagement from Gaza. This

35:47

i'm not a contribution to

35:50

peace, this of not a

35:52

prelude to have some fancy

35:55

settlement of the com six

35:57

with his policies on. Contrary,

36:00

it was a unilateral move

36:02

undertaken in what he thought.

36:05

well, he raises national interest.

36:08

Is unfolding was to

36:10

redrow. unilaterally. I stress

36:13

unilaterally not by negotiations

36:15

the borders of Greater

36:17

Israel. Said.

36:20

Farm was. A

36:22

disengagement from cancer and

36:24

as a result he

36:26

thought he removed one

36:28

point four million Palestinians

36:31

from their democratic. Equation.

36:35

And. Sept two was to be

36:37

on the surface security barrier

36:40

on the West Bank. In

36:43

January, two thousand and

36:45

Six as Doctor Ross

36:47

Shire reminded us. For

36:50

months when a sad and

36:53

three election and proceeded to

36:55

form ago he say i

36:58

refuse to recognize this government

37:00

and he took measures to

37:03

undermine the democratically elected government

37:05

and the United States and

37:08

Europe in one of the

37:10

endless examples of Western hypocrisy

37:13

sided with Israel in refusing

37:15

to accept the democratically elected

37:18

on a skinny and government.

37:22

Netanyahu, Is no negotiator

37:24

bit on Yahoo is

37:26

a proponent of permanent

37:28

costly. But. Admits

37:31

and Yahoo. Is. Not. An.

37:38

Increasingly Jewish. Again, money or

37:40

Jewish supremacy? Is

37:43

like which is to

37:45

prevent emergence of a

37:48

Palestinian state. That

37:51

cameo believe that he found a

37:53

solution to the problem which was.

37:58

a two month And

38:00

the way he managed it was

38:03

by weakening the Palestinian

38:05

Authority in Ramallah, humiliating

38:07

it, treating it as

38:10

a subcontractor for Israeli policy,

38:13

gaining a completely free hand to expand

38:16

settlements, to carry out ethnic

38:18

cleansing, and to support escalating

38:23

settler violence with the protection of the

38:26

IDF, which is escalating all the time

38:28

as there is a war in

38:31

Gaza. And

38:33

as for Gaza, his

38:35

policy was to allow Hamas

38:37

to govern the street, to

38:41

allow the

38:43

government of

38:51

the Qatari government to

38:54

fund Hamas and

38:57

to keep the people

38:59

of Gaza contained in the

39:01

prison, the open-air prison of

39:04

Gaza. On

39:09

the 7th of October, a Hamas

39:12

attack took Israel by

39:14

surprise. He afflicted very

39:17

heavy damage and

39:19

it amounted to the

39:22

collapse of Netanyahu's policy

39:24

of managing the conflict. He

39:27

refused to accept any responsibility

39:30

for the security failure, but

39:32

the great majority of Israelis blamed

39:35

him for what had happened,

39:37

and 80% of Israelis would

39:39

like to seek him out

39:41

of power. So politically

39:44

speaking, he's probably a

39:46

dead man walking. As

39:50

a result of the Hamas

39:52

attack, a successful attack on Israel,

39:55

Netanyahu checked the his

40:00

policy towards Hamas. His

40:03

new warring is not

40:05

to allow Hamas to govern, but

40:08

to eradicate Hamas, to

40:10

destroy Hamas completely. This

40:13

aim is clearly unrealistic

40:15

and unattainable, but

40:17

Netanyahu needs it for

40:19

his domestic political reasons,

40:21

because he faces serious

40:25

changes of corruption, and

40:27

he knows that once he stops being

40:29

prime minister, he would stand

40:32

trial and he will probably, must

40:34

probably end up

40:37

in jail. So

40:40

Netanyahu, for his own very selfish

40:42

reasons, I would say psychopathic

40:45

reasons, needs a

40:47

long war in Gaza. The

40:51

undeclared aim of this war

40:53

is the ethnic cleansing of

40:55

Gaza, and there is indeed

40:58

a leaked government report,

41:01

government paper, which

41:04

calls for depopulating

41:06

the whole of the

41:08

Gaza stream. This

41:11

hasn't happened yet because of

41:13

Egyptian resistance to this plan

41:16

to push the Palestinians into

41:18

northern Sinai, but

41:22

it may yet happen. It

41:24

may yet happen, in which case there would be

41:27

a second matba which would overshadow

41:29

the matba of 1948. Another

41:36

Israeli war aim is to

41:38

render Gaza uninhabitable,

41:42

and this aim has been partly,

41:45

maybe largely achieved

41:47

already. By

41:50

my count, this

41:53

is the eighth

41:56

Israeli Military offensive in Gaza, so this is the

41:58

second one. Come

42:01

on hundred, two thousand and

42:03

eight. But it

42:05

is by far the

42:07

most violent, the most

42:10

bloody, the most destructive.

42:13

And the most sadistic.

42:15

Yes, the most sadistic.

42:19

And it's the first. Ah

42:22

offensive in Gaza which is

42:25

overtly. Overtly

42:27

genocide. The

42:39

idea. Has Moses.

42:42

Over thirty three thousand

42:45

people. About

42:48

fourteen, some sort of them,

42:50

children, many more thousand saw.

42:53

Buried is a rather. The

42:56

idea is injured over

42:58

seventy thousand gases. It.

43:02

Is A Displays.

43:05

One. Point Nine million eighty

43:07

five percent of the

43:09

population of Gaza And

43:11

remember them sociable be

43:14

stretched his face of

43:16

civilians is of all

43:18

kinds. Season for winning

43:20

or daily. And

43:23

he says has destroyed

43:25

sixty five percent of

43:27

house and of civilian

43:29

infrastructure. So the

43:31

main features of this Israeli

43:34

military offensive is. Done

43:36

with the destruction of. Edu,

43:40

the destruction of the

43:42

educational system, As.

43:46

As I'm we send

43:48

before scorn us decide

43:51

which is. The

43:54

destruction of higher

43:56

education cancer, genocide.

43:59

And. The out him. Crying which

44:01

is genocide. And

44:04

I was going to speak

44:06

about the America role in

44:09

all this, but I don't

44:11

have time. so just say

44:13

that America is. I'm simply

44:15

complicit. In. Israeli

44:17

war crimes? America?

44:20

is there an.

44:24

Enabler of the

44:26

occupation and the

44:28

enabler of the

44:31

genocide and America

44:33

vetoed Sweet Ass

44:35

Security Council seat

44:37

cushions. So there wouldn't

44:39

be as a ceasefire long time

44:41

ago and even the last one

44:43

when America of same as a

44:45

very same time as. President.

44:49

Reagan signed a deal to

44:52

transfer to Israel a

44:54

huge amount of weaponry and

44:56

munitions on top of the

44:59

three point eight billion dollars

45:01

in military aid that

45:03

America is Israel anyway. So.

45:08

Israel's. To

45:13

isolate the fattest city of

45:15

people, to smash them into

45:18

the ground. And

45:20

it is. Is Netanyahu's

45:23

not to the and showed.

45:26

To. Deny any independent political

45:28

existence to the Palestinians,

45:30

and any rounds, The

45:33

Palestinian now face to challenges.

45:36

One is funny to side

45:38

a systematic attempt of Israel's

45:40

to destroy the policy, the

45:43

authorities, to destroy Palestinians our

45:45

systems, and to prevent the

45:47

emergence of a unified. Palestinian

45:51

leadership leading to.

45:54

Sign. The

45:58

Palestinians now face. The

46:00

genocide real jealous made a

46:02

threat to the physical survival.

46:07

What? Does this mean for Israel?

46:10

I believe that he me

46:12

as the beginning of the

46:15

end of the kind of

46:17

violent racists zionist as as

46:20

practiced by As Netanyahu's government.

46:23

The Occupation destroyed walk

46:25

on Israeli Democracy is

46:27

the was a democracy.

46:29

The Occupation completely destroyed

46:31

that and as two

46:33

months' fine too long

46:35

ago and people that

46:37

have a cinema cannot

46:39

remain cannot be south,

46:41

remain free. I'm

46:45

really be a meal

46:47

Honey Bees Novel: the

46:50

strange disappearance of Som

46:52

st that the soft

46:54

in these waters. And.

46:57

I feel the same with.

47:01

His. I'm

47:04

pessimistic in the short of,

47:06

but I am completely optimistic

47:08

about the long term, and

47:10

he signed my hands on

47:12

a personal don't own an

47:14

Arab to. As. Morning

47:16

Baghdad and lived in Baghdad

47:18

for the first five years

47:21

of Nato and for my

47:23

it's so my family and

47:25

me know surgery or existence

47:27

of harmony wasn't a distance

47:29

stream, it was the everyday

47:32

reality. And

47:34

my own. Experience.

47:38

Encourage. Me to sense

47:40

that a better future

47:42

is possible. For.

47:45

Our return to replace

47:47

the present vicious. Genocide.

47:51

ongoing genocide in gaza today

47:53

and you for listening That

48:03

was Avi Shlaim. You've

48:06

heard Nura Erekat multiple times here on the dig.

48:08

Nura, a brilliant scholar of international

48:11

law and among the Palestinian liberation

48:13

movements, most eloquent proponents, is professor

48:15

in the Department of Africana Studies

48:17

and the Program in Criminal Justice

48:19

at Rutgers University. She's an

48:21

editorial committee member of the Journal for Palestine Studies,

48:24

a co-founding editor of Jadaliyah and

48:27

the author of Justice for Some,

48:29

Law and the Question of Palestine,

48:31

a book that I discussed with Nura here on

48:34

the dig. It's

48:36

day 184 of genocide. Officially,

48:40

six months along today

48:42

and only yesterday, the

48:44

BBC assessed whether Israel was any

48:46

closer to achieving its

48:48

military goals of retrieving captives and

48:50

decimating Hamas, stating

48:53

that of the over 35,000 killed,

48:55

Israel says 13,000 are fighters but has only

48:57

published the names of 113 names. And

49:02

of them, only one of them is

49:04

a significant military leader, Marwan Aisa. The

49:06

BBC goes on to interrogate that of the 253 Israeli

49:09

captives, 109 have been retrieved by

49:13

diplomacy, three by military

49:15

operations, 12 have

49:17

been killed, three of them by Israeli fire and 129

49:20

captives remain between the ages of 18 and 85, 34

49:22

are presumed dead. And

49:27

yet, they also highlight that the

49:29

cost of this war, this genocide,

49:32

is some 33,000 Palestinians,

49:35

70% of whom are

49:37

women and children, presumed to be not militants

49:39

because of their status as women and children,

49:42

although that obscures the number of men who

49:44

maintained and

49:47

retained their civilian status. 1.7

49:50

million have been displaced and there is only

49:52

one standing city.

49:57

56% of buildings have been damaged and destroyed. BBC

50:00

concludes, quote, it

50:02

is still unclear whether Israel has met its

50:04

aims in the war. And

50:07

yet indicating to us that they don't think

50:09

so, not brave enough to say

50:11

so yet, the Wall Street Journal is a

50:13

bit more brave also yesterday, when it

50:15

went farther in its editorial to note

50:17

that amid the destruction and the blowback,

50:20

Israel has quote, achieved neither of

50:22

its war goals of returning all

50:24

the hostages abducted on October 7th

50:27

and successfully routing Hamas from Gaza,

50:29

end quote. And concludes that quote,

50:31

despite many tactical wins on the

50:34

ground in Gaza, a strategic victory

50:36

for Israel appears far off.

50:39

The message is that there

50:41

is less stomach for Israel's

50:43

ongoing genocide. This shift is

50:45

undoubtedly catalyzed by the harrowing

50:47

attack on seven foreign nationals

50:49

who work with the World

50:51

Cafe Kitchen, who were systematically

50:53

targeted three times as they

50:55

moved from car to car

50:57

to car, giving

51:00

their coordinates to the Israeli army and

51:02

while traveling in a designated

51:04

safe zone. The outrage

51:06

to their assassination is fitting

51:08

and welcome waters for our

51:10

parched throats that have been screeching,

51:13

pointing, forensically analyzing,

51:16

providing in testimony, streams and streams

51:18

and streams of images and cries

51:21

that Israel is not fighting a

51:23

legitimate war. This is not a

51:25

war against Hamas with collateral damage

51:27

featuring war crimes and crimes against

51:30

humanity. This is a

51:32

genocidal campaign aimed

51:34

at destroying the Palestinian people

51:36

in Gaza. Israel is not

51:38

targeting Palestinians for what they did,

51:41

but for who they are as they have been

51:43

targeting them for 76 years. It

51:46

is not that they tragically destroy lives

51:49

in the misery of war with whose

51:51

purpose, the purpose of this war

51:53

is the destruction of a people and

51:56

it must be ended without condition or

51:58

equivocation. that

52:00

35,000 Palestinian

52:02

lives have not been enough

52:05

to compel this change. Neither

52:08

have been the 13,642 children who have been killed

52:12

or the remains of four premature babies

52:14

who rotted in the NICU. Neither

52:17

was the voice of Hendrajab pleading

52:19

for someone to save her in

52:22

a car surrounded by her

52:24

family who was murdered or

52:27

the image of what was left of

52:29

Sidraha Suna's body hanging from the beam

52:31

of what remained of her home shredded

52:34

without legs. The horrors

52:36

from Ashipa were not enough.

52:39

Not the 300 dead, not

52:42

the decaying bodies being feasted

52:45

upon by ravaged dogs and cats.

52:47

Not the corpses whose arms

52:49

were zip tied featuring bullet

52:51

wounds of execution. Not

52:53

the gutting of the largest hospital in the

52:56

north. Our lives were

52:59

not enough. We

53:01

did not even qualify for a

53:03

presumption of innocence. So

53:06

much of this can be explained

53:08

by racism and I have so

53:10

much to say about racism, racial

53:13

discrimination, about Zionism, about

53:15

apartheid, about the gaslighting

53:17

that we can't call

53:20

Israel apartheid because that's desecrating a

53:22

national liberation movement which is a

53:24

settler colonial project. But that's

53:27

not what I wanna focus on. I

53:29

wanna focus on a different part that

53:31

relates and continues what Nimr and Shehad

53:33

have shared with us about the law

53:35

which is how the steady development,

53:37

deployment and refashioning of the laws of war,

53:41

Israel has shrunk the category

53:43

of civilian, of the Palestinian

53:45

and civilian in particular so

53:47

that an increasing number of

53:49

Palestinians could be tolerated as

53:51

proportionate in Israel's deadly

53:54

war. So much that 35,000

53:57

Palestinians didn't cause the... had

54:00

a cosmic shift that seven foreign

54:02

nationals just have. Beginning

54:06

in 2000, during the second

54:08

Intifada, a militarized Palestinian uprising against

54:10

the Israeli occupation. The second Intifada

54:12

was a militarized Palestinian uprising

54:15

against the Israeli occupation. During

54:17

this time, Israel began to develop the

54:19

legal technologies that it would allow it

54:21

to use a greater amount of military

54:23

force against the population it occupied. Note

54:25

here, I'm echoing what Nimr said, that

54:27

Israel could very well just use brute

54:29

force, and yet does not do so

54:32

without mobilizing the law in order to

54:34

make a case not only for itself,

54:36

but a case in the law in general.

54:38

The legal advisors to the army innovated a

54:40

new category of armed conflict that it called

54:43

armed conflict short of war. It

54:46

allowed the Israeli army to use

54:48

military force against the population that

54:50

could not legally fight back, be

54:53

they targeting soldiers, military

54:56

installations, jeeps, army

54:58

jeeps, weapons depots, or civilians,

55:00

all of it in

55:02

this lexicon is considered terroristic and

55:05

criminal. Deliberately evading legal

55:07

regulations offered by the first and

55:09

second additional protocols to the Geneva

55:11

Conventions, which recognized the guerrilla combat

55:14

as a legitimate form of combat

55:16

and elevated the status of the

55:18

guerrilla to soldier in combatant with

55:20

the right to kill and to

55:23

be killed on behalf of a nascent sovereign. But

55:26

Israel's outstanding refusal to these additional

55:28

protocols and to become party to

55:31

these treaties has

55:33

stood in as

55:35

a proposition for now a new

55:37

form of war. Israeli legal advisors

55:40

argued that the conditions of resistance

55:42

that they faced were sui generis,

55:45

meaning unlike any other in law

55:47

without analogy or precedent, giving them

55:49

the latitude to create new law

55:52

where they insisted no law existed.

55:54

The novel framework permitted Israel to

55:57

use preventative force, preventative

55:59

as a policy. opposed to preemptive when

56:01

something is going to be done with

56:03

certainty or upon attack, which

56:05

is recognized as a legitimate use of self-defense

56:08

armed force in response to an

56:10

armed attack. And use

56:12

this preventative force to

56:14

extra judicially execute suspected or would

56:16

be assailants in what would later

56:18

be widely known as the neutered

56:21

concept of targeted killings in

56:23

national security circles. A cornerstone

56:26

of this legal technology is what I call shrinking

56:29

civilian, the steady and shrinking

56:31

scope of Palestinians

56:33

recognized as civilians, entitled

56:36

to immunity from attack, entitled

56:38

to the presumption of innocence, which

56:41

they have. The shrinking civilian

56:43

framework has enabled the Israeli law

56:45

enforcement officers to use excessive and

56:47

disproportionate force against Palestinians as

56:50

a matter of law and policy.

56:53

Two significant architects of the shrinking civilian

56:56

are Asa Kaysher, professor

56:58

of ethics at Tel Aviv University

57:00

and Amos Yadlin, major general of

57:02

the Israeli army and head of

57:04

military intelligence. Now this is significant,

57:06

especially for us as scholars against

57:08

genocide, because in so much of

57:10

the discussion around academic boycott and

57:12

academic freedom, we tend to think

57:14

that the Israeli universities are separate

57:16

from the institution of destruction and

57:18

harm, and yet they are central

57:20

to them. And here is

57:22

a paradigmatic example. In 2003,

57:25

these scholars and army officers began to

57:30

reformulate quote, how to fight terror, where

57:32

the laws and ethics of conventional war

57:34

did not apply. This is in the

57:37

crucible of the Second Intifada and before

57:39

unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Again,

57:43

they argued that there was no

57:45

applicable law, as I was saying above, despite the

57:49

plenitude of law to

57:51

regulate such combat. Instead,

57:53

they write quote, the other

57:55

side is fighting outside the rules, Israel

57:58

has to create new ethical rules International

58:00

Law of Armed Conflict in keeping with

58:02

the traditional IDF concept of purity on

58:04

arms. And so they continued

58:07

that this meant that Gaza had

58:09

to be considered a sui generis

58:11

upon unilateral disengagement two years later

58:13

when it was neither considered independent

58:15

now with the ability to control

58:17

its borders and have a standing

58:19

army and defend itself, nor was

58:21

it going to be considered occupied

58:23

as it is under effective control,

58:25

but instead it would be called

58:27

a hostile entity,

58:30

also subject to armed conflict short of war.

58:33

In this framework, Kasher and

58:35

Yadlin now proposed amendments to

58:38

the laws of war and to combat. One

58:40

of them, I'm going to tell you about two of them at least,

58:42

depending on time I can tell you more. One

58:44

of them is the concept of force protection. Force

58:47

protection is the idea that in

58:50

assessing proportionality or the military advantage,

58:52

how much force a belligerent can

58:54

use, which measures the military advantage

58:56

to be achieved by an operation

58:59

and the harm caused to civilians

59:01

and civilian infrastructure and protected

59:03

units. So here, the military

59:05

advantage versus the harm, military

59:07

advantage includes how many soldiers

59:09

as part of the belligerent

59:11

state are spared from harm.

59:14

So the more soldiers you lose in

59:16

combat, the less your military advantage is

59:18

diminishing. So here the

59:20

idea and the traditional approach

59:23

is that your soldiers' lives

59:25

are worth less than the lives

59:27

of your civilians. So Israel has no problem

59:30

with this. It's Israeli soldiers' lives are worth

59:32

less than Israeli civilians. Typically,

59:34

the lives of the enemy civilians

59:36

are also worth more than the

59:39

lives of the belligerent state, but

59:41

what Kasher and Yadlin proposed is

59:43

that enemy civilians, Palestinians here, their

59:45

lives are worth less than

59:48

the soldiers, and then the enemy

59:50

militants are worth even

59:52

less than them. This is a

59:54

radical proposition. This

59:56

is a radical dehumanizing.

1:00:00

dangerous proposition because it says that protecting the

1:00:02

lives of your soldiers is now worth more

1:00:04

than the protecting the lives of the civilians

1:00:07

who are not trained in war, who cannot pick

1:00:09

up arms to defend themselves, who do not have

1:00:11

the right to kill and be killed but should

1:00:13

be given in immunity

1:00:16

in all of these operations. And

1:00:19

yet, Kasher and Yablint argued that the

1:00:21

lives of prioritizing

1:00:24

Palestinian civilians was quote immoral

1:00:27

and that an Israeli combatant

1:00:29

is a civilian in

1:00:31

uniform whose blood is worth

1:00:34

just as precious as the blood of

1:00:36

all Israeli civilians. Now note that this

1:00:38

also is going to the heart of

1:00:40

how Israel creeds and stands its army,

1:00:42

which is a force of conscription, a

1:00:45

force conscription. And so for them, they

1:00:47

are not only militarizing and securitizing Palestinians,

1:00:50

but they're also turning their soldiers

1:00:53

into civilians and even infantilizing

1:00:56

them in need of protection.

1:00:58

And so hence, we get

1:01:01

a liberal killing policy that

1:01:03

includes declaring large areas as

1:01:05

kill zones to kill anything

1:01:07

that moves. According to

1:01:09

a soldier following the 2014 offensive, the

1:01:12

largest offensive, the longest offensive before this

1:01:14

one, 51 days. So

1:01:16

this is with significant precedent. The soldier

1:01:19

in 2014 says quote, the working assumption

1:01:21

states, and I want to stress this

1:01:23

as a quote of sorts, that anyone

1:01:25

located in an IDF area, an area

1:01:27

that the IDF took over, is not

1:01:30

considered a civilian. There

1:01:33

is no status assessment here, that the

1:01:35

declaration of an area becomes the declaration

1:01:37

of a kill zone. Somehow the revelation

1:01:39

of this right now in 2023

1:01:42

seems as shocking to people who are reading it,

1:01:44

but they have been telling us this for some

1:01:47

time, almost two decades now. This

1:01:49

is how three Israeli hostages were shot dead as

1:01:51

they were holding up their white flags and speaking

1:01:53

in Hebrew. This is

1:01:55

why we witnessed four unarmed

1:01:59

Palestinians Palestinian men walking

1:02:02

on a road in Hanyunas

1:02:04

to their homes to check on their status

1:02:06

were shot down as if we were watching

1:02:08

a video game Four times

1:02:11

the first strike killed two of them immediately The

1:02:14

second strike killed the second one who was

1:02:16

stumbling the third strike didn't kill the third

1:02:19

Palestinian man, but he had to be struck

1:02:22

twice in order to kill

1:02:24

him They were in a kill

1:02:26

zone and thus presumed to not

1:02:28

be civilians and other

1:02:30

technology of the shrinking civilian is the

1:02:34

concept of direct participation in

1:02:36

hostilities So this is part

1:02:38

of the additional protocols regulating

1:02:40

guerrilla combat under article 51

1:02:43

subsection 3 of the additional first

1:02:45

additional protocol civilians forfeit their immunity

1:02:47

quote for such time as they

1:02:49

take up arms and here the

1:02:51

idea is that because there is

1:02:53

not necessarily a formal Standing

1:02:55

army that civilians will take up arms

1:02:58

to participate in combat But and during

1:03:00

that time they forfeit their civilian immunity and

1:03:02

can be killed When

1:03:04

they put those arms down they are no longer legitimate

1:03:08

targets But Kasher and

1:03:10

Yablint proposed that this be amended so

1:03:12

that anyone who took up arms be

1:03:14

considered a direct participant in Hostilities not

1:03:17

merely for the time that they bore

1:03:19

arms, but for up to half a

1:03:21

year After

1:03:23

they've laid down their arms So someone

1:03:25

who participated in a firefight

1:03:27

say for one day put it down can

1:03:29

now be considered for up to six months

1:03:32

a legitimate target Anywhere that they

1:03:34

are regardless of what they're doing regardless

1:03:36

of the threat that they're posing to

1:03:38

anyone in 2006

1:03:41

the Israeli High Court their Supreme Court Which

1:03:43

Israeli society was up in arms about because

1:03:46

now there was going to be a right-wing

1:03:48

fascist takeover But of course it never and

1:03:50

again the minute has shown us that they

1:03:53

never were not fascist towards Palestinians They adjudicated

1:03:55

this question in the public committee against torture

1:03:57

in Israel versus the government of Israel and the

1:03:59

high The court concluded, quote, a

1:04:02

civilian who has joined a terrorist organization,

1:04:04

which has become a home. And

1:04:07

in the framework of his roles in that

1:04:09

organization, he commits a chain of hostilities with

1:04:11

short rest periods between them, loses

1:04:14

his immunity from attack for such

1:04:16

time as he is committing the chain of

1:04:18

acts. Indeed, regarding such

1:04:20

a civilian, the rest between hostilities

1:04:23

is nothing other than the preparation

1:04:26

for the next hostility. And

1:04:28

so here we have the high

1:04:31

court endorsing this idea that Palestinian

1:04:33

civilians who participate, directly participate, are

1:04:35

not merely targets for the time

1:04:38

that they pick up arms, but

1:04:40

maintain that as a status. They

1:04:42

are transformed into combatants. Add

1:04:44

to this the fact that there

1:04:46

is no distinction, that there is

1:04:49

no distinction between Hamas's military and

1:04:51

its civilian arms. It is a

1:04:53

government that was elected into office in

1:04:55

2006 with the

1:04:57

duty and the mandate to provide health

1:04:59

care, to provide basic services,

1:05:01

to provide a number of services

1:05:03

that are delivered through

1:05:06

public institutions, including law and

1:05:08

order. And yet because of

1:05:10

this lack of distinction between

1:05:12

civilian and military function of

1:05:14

Hamas, Israel justified the targeting in

1:05:16

2008 and 2009 of

1:05:19

a graduation ceremony of police

1:05:22

cadets in Gaza. 200

1:05:25

police cadets who were just

1:05:27

graduating were targeted in a

1:05:29

strike at their graduation alongside

1:05:31

their families. And according to

1:05:33

Israel's logic, they were preventing

1:05:35

them from then being subsumed

1:05:37

into Hamas's military arm later.

1:05:40

Consider that this is also why

1:05:42

Israel targets the hospitals, municipal buildings,

1:05:45

roadways. They target everything that they

1:05:47

say is associated with Hamas. They

1:05:49

also target now systematically low level

1:05:52

officers in their homes, low level

1:05:54

officers who may have picked up

1:05:57

arms once, their

1:06:00

homes, which has recently been revealed by

1:06:02

Yuval Abraham, as now it's

1:06:04

been happening, by the way, this is not

1:06:06

new, the targeting of low-level officers and the

1:06:08

targeting them in their homes alongside their families

1:06:11

in the middle of the night, knowing so

1:06:13

well they are surrounded by civilians

1:06:15

in residential buildings. But what's been revealed in

1:06:17

this genocide is that in 2023, Israel has

1:06:19

taken this to a

1:06:22

new level using artificial

1:06:24

intelligence technology described

1:06:27

as lavender, as well as

1:06:29

where's daddy to tartsosnakol, as

1:06:32

well as the

1:06:34

gospel, which is targeting the

1:06:37

buildings, but also targeting

1:06:39

Palestinians on a mass scale that

1:06:41

humans cannot compete with, with zero

1:06:43

oversight. The only level of oversight

1:06:45

is to confirm that the target

1:06:47

is a man, that the algorithm

1:06:49

got a target as a man

1:06:52

because the man is presumed as

1:06:54

a combatant. So this is, again,

1:06:56

there's no presumption of innocence. And

1:06:58

thirdly, the where daddy technology refers

1:07:01

to specifically because Israel is not

1:07:03

targeting, is not targeting

1:07:06

militants in the course of combat, but

1:07:08

is targeting those who are associated with

1:07:10

Hamas or anyone who fixed up arms

1:07:12

only when they know where they are.

1:07:14

And because they're not targeting them in

1:07:16

the field, contrary to what they're telling

1:07:18

us, that they're targeting them as they're

1:07:20

shielding themselves behind hospitals or homes, they're

1:07:22

actually targeting them in their homes because

1:07:25

that's where they, that's the location that they

1:07:27

actually know is secure. And this is what

1:07:29

they describe as where's daddy. This,

1:07:33

all of this, DPH force

1:07:35

protection. There's new

1:07:37

things in 2023 that Israel has offered, including

1:07:39

why it believes that it could prevent the

1:07:41

access to humanitarian aid. If there's any risk

1:07:43

of it being diverted to an enemy force,

1:07:45

they are also offering in 2023

1:07:48

that military advantage in an operation shouldn't

1:07:50

be assessed by the military operation in

1:07:52

that moment, but instead by the entire

1:07:55

military operation. And according to Israel, that

1:07:57

would be decimating Hamas,

1:07:59

which is now. They're not even

1:08:01

close, right? That that's how they're adjudicating

1:08:04

proportionality. This also, this

1:08:06

level of disruption is not new following

1:08:08

the 2009 operation when

1:08:11

1400 Palestinians were killed, including

1:08:13

300 children, while

1:08:15

nine Israelis were killed, including three civilians. And

1:08:17

I wanna do this again, 1400

1:08:21

Palestinians versus nine

1:08:23

Israelis. Six of those nine

1:08:26

were Israeli soldiers. In

1:08:28

the aftermath of that, this is obviously

1:08:30

disproportionate on the face of it. Kasher

1:08:32

and Yablun noted, quote, the concept of

1:08:34

proportionality has changed. There

1:08:37

is no logic in comparing the number of civilians

1:08:39

and armed fighters on the Palestinian side or

1:08:42

comparing the number of Israelis killed by Qasamrakis

1:08:44

to the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza.

1:08:47

So according to them, this is

1:08:50

proportionate. So, the

1:08:52

rest of my comments here is to demonstrate

1:08:54

how although this has been these

1:08:57

laws of war, right? Where this

1:08:59

shrinking civilian has mostly been changed

1:09:02

in the course of armed hostilities or

1:09:04

what we would call, you know, combat,

1:09:07

Israel also since 2015 has been using this framework

1:09:11

in its law enforcement proceedings.

1:09:13

So that what police do and what the

1:09:15

military do are increasingly blurred. Obviously, a lot

1:09:17

of people understand this in the United States,

1:09:19

but in Palestine, it's

1:09:21

accelerated to a degree where it's institutionalized.

1:09:24

So that in 2015, during

1:09:26

the height of sporadic attacks by Palestinian, mostly

1:09:30

using knives and other makeshift weapons,

1:09:32

the Israeli government amended its rules

1:09:34

of engagement regulating the use of

1:09:36

police force, blurring the line

1:09:38

between armed conflict and law enforcement. The

1:09:40

first, the former, where you can use

1:09:42

lethal force as a measure of first

1:09:44

resort, the latter where it's used as

1:09:47

a last resort. And here you have

1:09:49

a blurring on purpose. The amendment permitted

1:09:51

officers to use lethal force as a

1:09:53

measure of first resort of Palestinians for

1:09:55

quote, the sake of

1:09:57

preventing endangerment. As a

1:09:59

prevent... measure, Palestinians who is

1:10:01

about to throw a firebomb, about

1:10:03

to shoot fireworks, or about to

1:10:05

throw a stone using

1:10:08

a slingshot is a legitimate

1:10:10

target. In

1:10:12

2016, we saw that

1:10:14

Israel, responding to this

1:10:16

loosening of the rules of engagement, Israel

1:10:19

lethally shot 97 Palestinians, including 36 children.

1:10:22

And although Israel labeled the incidents as alleged

1:10:24

stabbings, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights found

1:10:26

that 95 out of the 97 documented

1:10:30

killings, there was no evidence that

1:10:32

the victims had any means to

1:10:34

carry out a means

1:10:36

of attack. The UN Committee Against Torture condemned this

1:10:39

in May 2016. In

1:10:41

2017, the Human Rights Council confirmed

1:10:43

that Israel uses lethal force against

1:10:45

Palestinians, quote, on mere suspicion or

1:10:48

as a precautionary measure. And

1:10:51

so here we see how Israel

1:10:53

has used the law in

1:10:56

combat, as well as police

1:10:58

and law enforcement to shrink who

1:11:00

counts as a civilian, using

1:11:02

this legal technology and terminology to

1:11:04

use preventive force, expanding

1:11:07

Israel's right to use

1:11:09

force. I won't continue here. But the last thing

1:11:11

that I'll say about it is that in 2018,

1:11:13

when Palestinians marched in

1:11:17

mass 30 to 40,000 Palestinians

1:11:21

weekly, marched on

1:11:23

a militarized perimeter that has been

1:11:26

holding Palestinians, 2.3 million

1:11:29

Palestinians hostage for 20 years

1:11:32

now, holding them captive, marched

1:11:35

in mass in what should have been

1:11:37

celebrated. They were shot down like birds.

1:11:40

And when Israeli human rights organization challenged the

1:11:42

military for sniping them down from a 300

1:11:45

meter distance, the Israeli High Court in 2018 said

1:11:47

that their marches were quote,

1:11:51

a new tactic in the struggle against

1:11:53

Israel used by Hamas and

1:11:56

further shrunk the

1:11:58

category of civilian. so that

1:12:00

the civilian now in the Gaza

1:12:03

Strip exists, but only as

1:12:05

a matter of exception, rather than

1:12:07

the other way around. And so

1:12:09

today it is why we have

1:12:11

these outrageous, outrageous outcomes, not merely

1:12:13

because of brute force, not merely

1:12:15

because of colonial hubris, not merely

1:12:17

because of politics that are blocking

1:12:19

the imposition and what international law

1:12:21

is supposed to do. Not

1:12:24

really. The UN Security Council passed

1:12:26

a resolution for at least a two-week ceasefire

1:12:28

that we didn't see any punishment for, for

1:12:30

its failure to adhere to it, right? But

1:12:32

precisely because there is a contestation

1:12:34

and a battleground in the law to

1:12:36

make this not only

1:12:38

possible in this moment, not only defensible,

1:12:40

not only as an exception, but as

1:12:42

a rule moving forward. Thank you. That

1:12:46

was Nura Erakat. Next

1:12:48

up is historian Usama Maudisi. A

1:12:51

few months ago, I did a

1:12:53

two-part dig interview with Usama on

1:12:55

Arab Muslim, Arab Jewish, and Arab

1:12:58

Christian coexistence in the Masjid and

1:13:00

how colonialism, imperialism, and

1:13:02

Zionism brutally undermined that

1:13:04

coexistence and generated

1:13:07

violent sectarianism in its place.

1:13:10

Here in these remarks, Usama probes

1:13:12

a profoundly disturbing question that's been on many

1:13:14

of our minds for a while now. What

1:13:18

explains a Western ruling class commitment

1:13:20

to Zionism that's so fanatical and

1:13:22

powerful that it leads to the

1:13:24

surreal, monstrous, and absurd denial

1:13:26

of a genocide that's as brutal

1:13:28

and sadistic as it is plainly

1:13:31

obvious? How is it,

1:13:33

Usama asks, that Palestinians

1:13:35

are resolutely and perversely excluded

1:13:38

from an American liberal moral

1:13:40

imaginary that has in recent

1:13:42

years been committed to memorializing

1:13:44

and righting past wrongs like

1:13:46

slavery and segregation? Usama's

1:13:48

answer is brilliant and disturbing.

1:13:51

But vehement support for Israel, he

1:13:53

argues, helped the West

1:13:55

make sense of the Holocaust of

1:13:57

Europe's Jews without implicating capitalist colonial

1:14:00

modernity in that ghastly crime. And

1:14:02

I would add to Osama's analysis that, in

1:14:05

fact, the exception made for Palestine

1:14:07

in liberal memorialization of past racist

1:14:09

crimes is not so much an

1:14:11

exception, but rather a point of

1:14:13

contradiction that illustrates something important about

1:14:16

the quality, substance, and function of

1:14:18

racial liberalism's purported commitment to memorialization

1:14:20

and reparation. In other words, what

1:14:22

the current moment around Palestine reveals

1:14:24

is that a lot of this

1:14:26

in this house we believe racial

1:14:28

liberalism was never about the sort

1:14:30

of transformative politics that justice would

1:14:32

require. On the other hand, American

1:14:35

liberals are diverging on Palestine with

1:14:38

the vast majority of Democratic voters

1:14:40

now disapproving of Israel's actions. And

1:14:43

so, to be fair, maybe

1:14:45

some of the in this house we believe

1:14:47

racial liberalism was about transformation, or

1:14:50

at least it holds out the possibility of becoming

1:14:52

about it. Lastly, Makdisi's

1:14:54

remarks echo those made by

1:14:56

Frederic Lordon in a stellar

1:14:58

recently published essay in New

1:15:00

Left Review's Sidecar blog, in

1:15:03

which Lordon argues that for the Western

1:15:05

bourgeoisie, quote, the fascination

1:15:07

is with the image of Israel

1:15:09

as a figure of domination in

1:15:11

innocence, to dominate

1:15:13

without bearing the stain of evil. This

1:15:16

is perhaps the ultimate fantasy of the

1:15:19

dominant. Here's Usama

1:15:21

Makdisi. All right,

1:15:23

well thank you very much Professor Ferguson, Sue,

1:15:26

and thank you of course to

1:15:28

Abid and Chandni and

1:15:30

Erica and everyone at UH and

1:15:34

Rice and Houston and abroad who

1:15:37

have made this world academic forum for

1:15:39

Palestine and the Scholars

1:15:41

Against War in Palestine event possible.

1:15:43

And of course, thank you to

1:15:45

each and every one

1:15:48

of the previous speakers for their

1:15:50

insights, for their testimonies,

1:15:53

for the context that they have provided

1:15:55

us, for their humanity, their passion, their

1:15:58

humility, their resilience,

1:16:01

their voices in the face of what

1:16:04

all of us either

1:16:06

have seen or witnessed or feel

1:16:08

deep in our bones as

1:16:11

an unmitigated evil occurring

1:16:14

in our time. And especially thank you to

1:16:16

all those in Palestine

1:16:18

and thank you to all those most

1:16:20

of all in the Residé in Gaza

1:16:23

who have endured what they have endured.

1:16:27

As Sue mentioned, I'm a professor here

1:16:29

at UC Berkeley, which

1:16:31

some of you know is currently

1:16:33

under investigation, not

1:16:37

for the fact that it has been silent on the

1:16:39

question of the genocide

1:16:41

in Palestine and

1:16:43

Gaza, but

1:16:47

because students and faculty and

1:16:50

others have been vocal in support

1:16:52

of Palestinian freedom and liberation,

1:16:54

so we're being investigated. I'm

1:16:57

a professor of history here at UC Berkeley and

1:17:00

like all of you, I feel that we have

1:17:02

a right to be angry, we have a right to

1:17:05

cry, we have a right to be outraged based

1:17:08

on what we have listened to and

1:17:10

what we've been witnessing. We

1:17:12

have a right to be upset about the injustice

1:17:14

and the genocide by the double

1:17:16

standard, by the silence, the complicity, but

1:17:19

we also have a right to be inspired, inspired

1:17:21

by everything we've heard before, by the people who've

1:17:23

spoken before me, by

1:17:25

the fact that Palestinians on the

1:17:28

ground still persist in living and

1:17:31

resisting, despite all horrors

1:17:33

that we've heard about today. What

1:17:36

I wanna make sense of today, most of all

1:17:38

in the few minutes available to me, is

1:17:41

the extraordinary situation that

1:17:44

all of us, each and every one of us

1:17:46

here today finds ourselves in, which is to say we

1:17:49

are living in the

1:17:52

face of an intolerable

1:17:54

contradiction. On

1:17:58

the one hand, there is a genocide. that's being

1:18:01

live streamed before our eyes, that

1:18:03

some of the previous panelists have

1:18:05

actually been in, involved in, have

1:18:07

seen, have witnessed firsthand, but

1:18:10

all of us have seen and followed for the past six months.

1:18:13

On the other hand, we

1:18:15

are living around us. There

1:18:17

are people who are in active denial

1:18:19

about this genocide. It's the most Orwellian,

1:18:22

the most obscene, the most absurd thing that

1:18:24

I have ever experienced in my life, this

1:18:27

double reality on the one hand, a genocide

1:18:30

that the entire world can see. And this is

1:18:32

the first genocide that I'm aware of in history

1:18:34

that's been live streamed in this manner, that's

1:18:36

been documented in this manner. On

1:18:39

the other hand, there are people all around

1:18:41

us who are participating in the genocide, who are

1:18:43

covering up for the genocide, who,

1:18:46

and these are people we interact with professionally,

1:18:48

personally, the society around

1:18:51

us participates in the genocide,

1:18:53

and our government above all is actively

1:18:56

enabling and funding and equipping

1:19:00

and continuing this genocide. And

1:19:02

so, it's this

1:19:04

extraordinary situation of on

1:19:07

the one hand, an obvious reality, on the other

1:19:09

hand, an obvious denial of this

1:19:11

reality. So how is it possible

1:19:13

that in the midst of this extraordinary

1:19:15

live stream genocide, my university

1:19:17

and virtually, as Abed mentioned at the beginning,

1:19:20

every university in this country that I'm aware

1:19:22

of has not taken a

1:19:25

single public, decent position

1:19:28

on this genocide, condemning this genocide,

1:19:30

yet virtually every university,

1:19:32

including my own, have publicly

1:19:35

come out several times identifying with

1:19:37

Israel and condemning Palestinian

1:19:39

violence. My association to

1:19:41

which I belong, the American Historical

1:19:43

Association, was immediate in

1:19:45

this condemnation of the Russian invasion of

1:19:48

Ukraine, and yet here we are six

1:19:50

months into the most extraordinary

1:19:52

genocide of our time, and not a word,

1:19:54

not a peep has come out of the

1:19:57

American Historical Association. So

1:19:59

on the one hand, we know. that Western governments are

1:20:01

hypocritical and engage in a double

1:20:03

standard and there's racism and

1:20:06

that's the nature of geopolitics. On

1:20:08

the other hand, we belong to Western academe,

1:20:12

which doesn't of course challenge this order

1:20:15

of things, it just polishes its most

1:20:17

aggressive edges. And so on

1:20:19

the one hand, we have an extraordinary, in

1:20:21

the last 20 years in this country and

1:20:24

in the West in general, an

1:20:26

extraordinary culture of memorialization of

1:20:29

past crimes, slavery, segregation,

1:20:31

especially for universities like Rice and University

1:20:33

of Houston and others in the South,

1:20:37

where there has been an attempt

1:20:40

to come to terms with, allegedly come to

1:20:42

terms with the past forms

1:20:45

of racism and slavery and yet

1:20:47

when it comes to contemporary current

1:20:50

genocide in Palestine, there's not only

1:20:52

silence, there's complicity in this.

1:20:54

So there's an act of denial going on. On

1:20:57

the one hand, there's no toleration

1:20:59

whatsoever in American academia for anyone

1:21:01

today who actively supports Jim

1:21:04

Crow segregation or

1:21:07

South African apartheid openly and yet we

1:21:10

have amidst us and around us in

1:21:12

every university that I'm aware of, people

1:21:14

who actively support and

1:21:16

apologize for colonial Zionism and

1:21:19

for the Israeli genocide against the

1:21:21

Palestinians. My own chancellor in

1:21:23

this university publicly said that the Palestinian

1:21:26

story is wrong. These

1:21:28

are the words she used, she said people may

1:21:30

believe in it, Palestinians may believe in it, but

1:21:32

their story of their politics and

1:21:34

their history is wronged, whatever. And

1:21:36

so the question for me then is to make sense

1:21:39

of what does it mean to

1:21:41

say that the Palestinian story is wrong in

1:21:44

this moment? What does it

1:21:46

mean that so many people who

1:21:49

actively condemn slavery and

1:21:51

racism of the past today

1:21:53

are so utterly invested in

1:21:55

either supporting colonial Zionism

1:21:58

that is wreaking such havoc? in

1:22:00

Palestine today or are silent

1:22:02

and intimidated in the face of what is

1:22:04

an obvious injustice and

1:22:06

depravity. So there are several

1:22:08

reasons I want to give in the few minutes left to

1:22:11

me. The first reason, the most

1:22:13

obvious reason perhaps is the material reason. In

1:22:15

other words, there have been decades and decades

1:22:17

of investment in the story

1:22:19

of Israel, in pro-Israel

1:22:21

lobbying, in donors, in

1:22:23

people who identify with Israel. And

1:22:26

they of course today put huge amounts

1:22:28

of pressure on universities across

1:22:30

this country and across the West for that

1:22:32

matter. And so there are

1:22:35

material costs of course for taking an

1:22:37

ethical position. But beyond the

1:22:40

material costs, there's something

1:22:42

fundamentally much deeper going on here, which is

1:22:44

to say there's a history, a much

1:22:47

older history of Western

1:22:49

Orientalism, of Western racism,

1:22:52

of Western demonization and

1:22:55

ignorance of the Arab and Islamic worlds

1:22:58

that is fundamentally much older. So it's

1:23:00

not just a material question, it's also

1:23:02

a question of culture. Culture,

1:23:05

in other words, Orientalism, demonization, de-historicization

1:23:08

of peoples in the Middle East

1:23:10

and especially the Palestinians because of

1:23:13

what they represent in terms of

1:23:16

an ongoing colonialism, the

1:23:19

victims of colonialism. A third

1:23:21

part of the reason is a third,

1:23:23

so one is material, two is a

1:23:26

deep sense of Orientalism, a

1:23:28

third is more complicated and this is probably what

1:23:30

explains to me the extraordinary

1:23:32

tenor of denialism all around us

1:23:34

that makes no sense otherwise. Which

1:23:37

is to say that after World War II, and

1:23:39

this is the history part, I'm a historian, after

1:23:42

World War II in the West and after the

1:23:44

horrors of World War II, there

1:23:46

was a phyllosimitic, this

1:23:49

is our colleague Daniel Cohen at Rice who talks about

1:23:51

this, there was a phyllosimitic

1:23:53

turn in the West, in other words,

1:23:56

Western powers, Western countries, Western philosophers, Western

1:24:01

scholars, Western leftists,

1:24:04

all sort of understood that the World

1:24:06

War II and the carnage of World War

1:24:08

II and the Holocaust

1:24:10

and the obliteration of European Jews

1:24:13

in the Holocaust needed some

1:24:15

kind of new thinking after World War

1:24:17

II. And so they came up

1:24:19

with this phyllosimitic humanism,

1:24:21

a phyllosynist humanism

1:24:24

that saw in Israel a recompense

1:24:26

for the history of anti-Semitism in

1:24:28

the West and the history of

1:24:31

the horrors, a partial recompense for

1:24:33

the history of the horrors of World War II.

1:24:36

But this phyllosimitic turn was conditional.

1:24:38

In other words, European

1:24:40

philosophers, historians, thinkers,

1:24:43

writers, leftists, liberals,

1:24:46

and others basically claim

1:24:49

to turn a page on

1:24:52

Europe's and the West's anti-Semitic past. But

1:24:55

at the same time, they generally refuse

1:24:57

to turn a page on the Western

1:24:59

history of colonialism and racism towards the

1:25:01

peoples of the non-West. In other words,

1:25:04

the continuation of colonialism, the refusal to deal

1:25:07

with the history of racism, the history of

1:25:09

colonialism, whether it was in America or in

1:25:11

Europe, or of course in the

1:25:13

colonial world. And so this bifurcation,

1:25:16

on the one hand claiming to be

1:25:18

against anti-Semitism, on the other hand, claiming

1:25:21

to not really deal with or actually

1:25:23

not dealing at all with the question

1:25:25

of colonialism and racism, there was a

1:25:27

bifurcation, in other words, in

1:25:29

Western humanism, which is why Aime

1:25:31

Césaire, the great sort of poet,

1:25:34

and the father, so

1:25:37

to speak, of Negritude, basically came

1:25:39

up, condemned this as a form of

1:25:41

pseudo-humanism. In other words, there was a

1:25:43

hypocrisy. He said deep at the

1:25:45

heart of Western post-war humanism, which on the

1:25:47

one hand claimed to atone for the

1:25:49

histories of anti-Semitism, but on

1:25:51

the other hand, refused to condemn the

1:25:54

histories of colonialism itself. And

1:25:56

they separated the fight against anti-Semitism

1:25:58

from the fight against the racism

1:26:00

and colonialism in the non-Western or

1:26:02

against the non-Western peoples. So

1:26:05

you add to that the fact that

1:26:07

the Palestinians then are expelled from

1:26:09

history, as Abed has said, at the

1:26:12

same time as Palestine itself

1:26:14

is destroyed and as

1:26:16

Palestinians are expelled from their homeland and from their

1:26:18

lands in 1948. So Palestinians

1:26:21

are decontextualized and de-historicized,

1:26:24

the whole history of Palestine as a place

1:26:26

of coexistence, the whole history of

1:26:28

the Middle East and the Mashlip as a

1:26:30

place of coexistence is erased,

1:26:33

is completely denied, and

1:26:35

Palestinians are ejected

1:26:37

from any sense of having a

1:26:40

history of their own. So the

1:26:42

only way Palestinians are made to fit

1:26:44

into this Western post-war humanism is

1:26:46

simply, as Edward Saheed says, in Orientalism

1:26:48

as a negative value. In other words,

1:26:50

Palestinians, because they have no history, they're

1:26:53

at least they're made to have to

1:26:55

become a people without history, they're

1:26:58

made to be a people without context, they're

1:27:01

made to be a people without

1:27:03

life, without love, without passion, without

1:27:05

history, without meaning, without families, without

1:27:07

archives, without anything

1:27:10

that's important. They're simply cast

1:27:12

either as nameless, faceless refugees

1:27:15

who have to be clothed and

1:27:19

treated as patients,

1:27:22

but not as people. And

1:27:24

on the other hand, if they resist

1:27:27

this reality, they're turned into demons and

1:27:29

they're turned into a specific form of

1:27:31

demons, a Nazi type of demon. And

1:27:34

so in the post-war West, you have this sort of

1:27:36

triad when it comes to the question of Palestine, you

1:27:38

have this extraordinary narrative that gets built up after

1:27:41

World War II. The West claims to

1:27:43

be a force of good and

1:27:45

morality because it fought against the Nazis on

1:27:48

the one hand. On the other hand,

1:27:50

it claims to have been the savior of the

1:27:52

Jews and the Jewish people who were persecuted, which

1:27:54

of course they were persecuted by the Nazis. And

1:27:57

third, Israel then And

1:28:00

this is the representation of Israel. And this is, of

1:28:02

course, how Israel represents itself, the

1:28:04

expiation of the sin of the Holocaust and

1:28:06

the sins of Western antisemitism. And

1:28:08

in this sort of triad, Western

1:28:11

saviors, Nazi evil and

1:28:14

Jewish and the Jewish victims of

1:28:16

World War II on the Holocaust, which Israel

1:28:19

then claims to be the representative, the Palestinians

1:28:21

have no place. And when they do try

1:28:23

to reenter history, they're always

1:28:25

represented as new Nazis because they

1:28:27

oppose Israel and in the West,

1:28:30

Israel is seen as the recompense

1:28:32

for the Holocaust. So the

1:28:34

only way the Palestinians have in

1:28:36

this Western narrative is to be always

1:28:38

to be represented as new Nazis, which

1:28:40

then, of course, brings

1:28:43

us to where we are today. After October 7th,

1:28:45

what did Joe Biden say? He said that the

1:28:47

events of October 7th, of

1:28:49

course, he didn't mention history, he didn't mention context, he didn't

1:28:51

mention the Nakba, he didn't mention 75 years

1:28:54

of history and dispossession and exploitation and

1:28:57

colonialism. All Joe Biden

1:28:59

said was that the events of October 7th were

1:29:01

a quote as consequential as the Holocaust, which

1:29:04

of course is absurd, but

1:29:07

on the other hand is extraordinarily telling

1:29:09

because it tells you exactly how Palestinians

1:29:11

are framed and fit into a

1:29:14

narrative that then allows for their

1:29:16

subsequent obliteration. Because

1:29:18

the narrative and

1:29:20

the racism of that kind of claim obliterates,

1:29:23

of course, Palestinian history and

1:29:25

identifies the obliteration of Palestinian humanity. It

1:29:28

allows for the justification all around us, that

1:29:30

all of us, each of us sees in

1:29:32

our own professional lives of people

1:29:35

who think that what Israel did after

1:29:37

October 7th was correct, was

1:29:39

righteous, and that the Palestinians

1:29:41

were evil and Hamas in particular becomes like

1:29:44

the new Nazis. It

1:29:46

then explains also the deluge,

1:29:48

the open deluge of hatred

1:29:51

and the obscene US and

1:29:53

Israeli statements against Palestinians about

1:29:55

erasing Gaza, about obliterating Gaza,

1:29:57

about destroying Palestinians, about denying

1:29:59

Palestinians. and civilians. And

1:30:02

then finally it allows for the reality

1:30:04

that the doctors before and the panel

1:30:06

before me, us, were

1:30:09

talking about this horrific reality that the whole world

1:30:11

can see. It allows people to see that or

1:30:14

not see that, but even

1:30:16

if they do see these images coming out of

1:30:19

Gaza, in their minds they put it in

1:30:21

a context of saying, well, it's

1:30:23

terrible, but this is what happens because of

1:30:25

the fact that Hamas attacked Israel. And

1:30:28

you start the story with the Israel

1:30:30

being victims. It allows people who support

1:30:32

colonialism to not

1:30:34

confront their own anti-Palestinian racism.

1:30:37

And in fact, it allows them to not confront

1:30:39

their own illiberalism and

1:30:42

the racism of colonialism. And

1:30:44

it allows them finally to

1:30:46

not see the perverse irony of where we are

1:30:48

today, which is that Israel

1:30:50

and the Zionists who support Israel

1:30:53

have inflicted on the Palestinians

1:30:55

everything that they genuinely,

1:30:57

I think, believe was

1:30:59

part of their own unique sense of victim,

1:31:01

which is to say, the

1:31:03

dispersion of the Palestinians, the

1:31:05

diaspora of the Palestinians, the Palestinians

1:31:08

being made second-class citizens, Palestinians being

1:31:10

subjected to pogrom, Palestinians

1:31:12

being herded into ghettos, and

1:31:14

of course the Palestinians today being subjected

1:31:16

to genocide. And the irony of

1:31:18

where we are is that all

1:31:21

this is happening, at a time when

1:31:24

the reality is so obvious. But

1:31:27

unless we change the narrative framework,

1:31:29

there is no way

1:31:31

to actually have any of the

1:31:34

testimony that we're giving actually have an

1:31:36

impact on these people. The hope,

1:31:38

of course, is not to appeal to these people

1:31:40

as such, because I think at some level it's

1:31:42

a lost cause. At a

1:31:44

much more hopeful level, the appeal should be

1:31:46

to the younger generation and

1:31:48

to people around the world who do, in

1:31:51

fact, see and have not been subjected to

1:31:53

this narrative quite in the same way, which

1:31:55

is to say that we see all around us today

1:31:57

an extraordinary momentous

1:32:00

there is a genocide of course and the

1:32:02

horrors that can't be that can't be pretended

1:32:04

away and can't be minimized. On

1:32:06

the other hand there is without any doubt

1:32:08

in my mind a huge generational shift taking

1:32:11

place right now all around the

1:32:13

world but especially here in the

1:32:15

west as well among the youth that

1:32:18

people who are seeing Palestinians for the

1:32:20

first time within their own

1:32:22

narrative because of social media because of the

1:32:24

testimonies that people here in this room have

1:32:26

provided and the doctors and

1:32:28

the journalists and the Palestinians especially

1:32:30

from Ghazi and the West Bank

1:32:33

and East Jerusalem and inside and outside are

1:32:35

all providing each person is making an

1:32:37

impact and there this this kind of

1:32:40

there's a cumulative effect that

1:32:42

is taking place that is helping to reshape

1:32:44

this narrative so I'd like to end

1:32:46

by just making making the the obvious

1:32:49

point that and to insist on

1:32:51

where we're going we have to

1:32:53

keep providing witness we have

1:32:55

to keep providing and being voices in the

1:32:57

wilderness that means

1:33:00

of course we have to keep arguing

1:33:02

for and historicizing and contextualizing and humanizing

1:33:04

the palestin and palestinians because

1:33:06

we're not afraid of the past we know

1:33:08

that we know the history and especially historians

1:33:10

amongst us know this history inside out we

1:33:13

have to avoid second the self-censorship

1:33:16

and intimidation because

1:33:18

ultimately those of us in the West are

1:33:20

privileged in other words those of us who

1:33:22

are providing witness are in fact privileged people

1:33:24

compared to the palestinians inside

1:33:27

third there is as I said

1:33:29

a generation change

1:33:31

taking place they are the future

1:33:34

and in a sense all those who

1:33:36

are advocating for palestinian humanity are advocating

1:33:38

for a future because

1:33:41

what's happening now is a complete realignment

1:33:43

taking place the palestinian

1:33:45

narrative despite the genocide is

1:33:47

going to become inevitably part

1:33:49

and parcel of what people and

1:33:52

how people think about justice morality

1:33:55

equality freedom in

1:33:57

the future and so I'd like to end on that

1:33:59

note and thank everyone, each and every one

1:34:01

of you, especially my

1:34:03

dear colleague, Professor Abba Tekriti, for all

1:34:05

the work that he's done in sort

1:34:08

of advocating and organizing this

1:34:10

conference. Thank you. That

1:34:13

was Usama not DC. I'm

1:34:16

Naomi Klein and you're listening to

1:34:18

The Dig, my go-to podcast for

1:34:20

the most thoughtful, in-depth conversation on

1:34:22

the left. It's an

1:34:24

incredible place to be exposed to

1:34:27

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1:34:29

you can, please become a sustaining

1:34:31

supporter at Patreon. This

1:34:34

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our listeners who support us at patreon.com and

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by Haymarket Books, which has loads

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up is the second legendary anti-Zionist

1:35:57

Israeli historian that we're featuring today.

1:36:00

Ilhan Pape. Pape will

1:36:02

discuss in some depth Zionism's

1:36:04

long-term commitment to preempting and

1:36:06

destroying Palestinian academic, intellectual, and

1:36:08

cultural life. A process that

1:36:11

has over the past half

1:36:13

year reached a grotesque climax

1:36:15

as Israel entirely wipes out

1:36:17

higher education in Gaza. Palestinians

1:36:20

are a famously extraordinarily well-educated

1:36:22

people. Dispossessed of their

1:36:24

land, Palestinians have picked up education

1:36:26

as a weapon in their struggle,

1:36:29

cohering their national identity against

1:36:31

attempts at its eradication and

1:36:34

bringing anti-colonial wisdom to academia

1:36:36

everywhere. Okay, here's Ilhan

1:36:38

Pape, a professor of history at the

1:36:40

College of Social Sciences and International Studies

1:36:43

and director of the European Center for

1:36:45

Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.

1:36:47

Among his many books is The Ethnic

1:36:49

Cleansing of Palestine. Hello,

1:36:52

I wish I could be

1:36:54

with you and thank you for

1:36:56

adding me

1:36:59

in the last moment because of technical

1:37:03

problems. I

1:37:06

hope I'm there. I can see myself in a

1:37:08

very weird image on

1:37:10

my screen. I hope

1:37:12

I look a bit more reasonable

1:37:14

on your screen. I would

1:37:17

like to remind ourselves

1:37:19

that the

1:37:22

attempt to

1:37:24

use a scholicide

1:37:27

and assault

1:37:30

on education, whether

1:37:32

it is elementary education or

1:37:34

higher education, was

1:37:37

always part of

1:37:39

the Zionist project since its inception

1:37:43

in the late 19th century.

1:37:46

It was not an immediate

1:37:48

concern of the Zionist

1:37:50

project when it just started in Palestine,

1:37:54

but it was a few

1:37:57

decades after the

1:37:59

foothold. was built became

1:38:01

part of the way or

1:38:04

part of the methodology of

1:38:07

the Zionist movement, eliminatories,

1:38:12

policies towards the

1:38:14

indigenous people of

1:38:17

Palestine. What

1:38:20

is quite incredible is that

1:38:22

during the British mandate, the

1:38:25

British authorities cooperate,

1:38:28

cooperated and

1:38:30

collaborated with the

1:38:32

Zionist movement in

1:38:35

an attempt to undermine

1:38:38

educational and particularly academic

1:38:42

foundation for the

1:38:44

Palestinian National Liberation. The

1:38:48

impulses of the British colonialist empire

1:38:50

were different from those of the

1:38:53

Zionist one and in

1:38:55

many ways were more important until

1:38:58

the end of the mandate because the Zionist

1:39:00

movement was not powerful enough to

1:39:03

affect the educational

1:39:05

development, especially higher education

1:39:08

development of the

1:39:10

Palestinian society during the mandatory period.

1:39:15

The British, and this

1:39:17

was common to their actions in

1:39:20

places such as India and Egypt, believed

1:39:22

that if colonized

1:39:25

people develop academic institutions,

1:39:29

that would lead to

1:39:32

political awareness or politicization

1:39:34

of the society which would make it

1:39:37

more difficult for the empire to control

1:39:39

them. And

1:39:43

this is why the British mandatory

1:39:45

authorities treated very differently

1:39:48

the two communities, the community of Jewish

1:39:50

settlers and the Palestinian community

1:39:52

when it came to higher education. While

1:39:56

Britain allowed and encouraged

1:39:59

the settlers' immunity to open

1:40:01

two universities, the Technion

1:40:03

in Haifa, and

1:40:05

the Hebrew University in

1:40:07

Jerusalem. All the

1:40:09

Palestinians attempt to open

1:40:11

a university during the

1:40:14

mandatory period were totally rejected by

1:40:17

the British. And

1:40:20

this is, I think, a very important message

1:40:22

from the past. And if I have time,

1:40:24

I will go from the past until today

1:40:26

when it comes to these attacks on

1:40:29

the Palestinian academic infrastructure.

1:40:33

While being unable

1:40:36

to open a university, Palestinian

1:40:39

intellectuals and activists

1:40:42

found an alternative

1:40:44

way of building

1:40:47

an academic infrastructure for

1:40:49

the Palestinian community in

1:40:51

Palestine during the mandatory

1:40:53

period. What they did,

1:40:55

they used the various

1:40:58

seminars, various

1:41:01

teaching seminars where teachers

1:41:03

were, people

1:41:07

were prepared for teaching careers

1:41:10

as clandestine academic

1:41:14

institution. The most important of

1:41:16

them was the Arab College

1:41:19

in Jerusalem, where

1:41:21

the curriculum was

1:41:23

transformed under the eyes of the

1:41:25

British, under

1:41:28

the noses of the British, rather, into

1:41:31

being much more than a

1:41:33

typical conventional program for

1:41:36

preparing teachers for a

1:41:38

career in schools. And

1:41:41

actually, a lot of other subjects

1:41:43

were added in order

1:41:45

to give a launching

1:41:48

pad for those who

1:41:50

participated and graduated

1:41:52

from the Arab College in

1:41:55

Jerusalem, a chance to continue

1:41:57

successfully in universities.

1:42:00

the region and in

1:42:02

the world. In many ways, this particularly

1:42:05

tactic ensured

1:42:08

that by the end of the mandate, despite the

1:42:11

continued racist refusal to allow

1:42:13

any proper higher education system on

1:42:16

the Palestinian side to develop, there

1:42:19

was already human capital of academics

1:42:22

who started their academic

1:42:24

career within these colleges like

1:42:26

the Arab College in Jerusalem,

1:42:29

and continued them in

1:42:33

universities in the Arab world and

1:42:35

in outside

1:42:38

the Middle East. Unfortunately,

1:42:40

of course, many of them,

1:42:43

they chose to continue with

1:42:46

academic career, could not do

1:42:48

it in Palestine itself and

1:42:50

contributed significantly and profoundly to

1:42:54

the development of academic

1:42:56

institutions in the

1:42:59

Arab world and beyond. After

1:43:03

Israel was established, the

1:43:07

Israelis, if you want, took over

1:43:10

this idea that an

1:43:13

academic infrastructure or an

1:43:15

intellectual or university component

1:43:19

in the

1:43:21

Palestinian society constitutes a

1:43:24

target or a danger, an

1:43:28

ammunition of the other side that has to be

1:43:31

dealt with, took this

1:43:33

kind of mission over from the

1:43:35

British. Of course, the

1:43:37

impulse here was different, was not to prevent

1:43:40

politicization, although

1:43:42

this was part of what was

1:43:44

behind it, but more to

1:43:48

contribute to the

1:43:50

elimination of the Palestinians as

1:43:53

a national movement or a

1:43:55

political force to reckon with, that

1:43:57

could endanger the objectives

1:44:00

and vision of the Zionist project or

1:44:03

the state of Israel. So

1:44:05

one thing we noticed

1:44:08

until 1967 inside Israel

1:44:10

is how few

1:44:14

Palestinian citizens of Israel were encouraged

1:44:17

at all to join

1:44:20

the Israeli academic system. There were

1:44:23

really very small numbers

1:44:26

and they were directed as

1:44:29

they still do today, directed to certain

1:44:32

career patterns in the academia

1:44:36

that were meant to distance them from

1:44:39

any enrichment of

1:44:41

knowledge both as students

1:44:43

of knowledge and then as producers of

1:44:45

knowledge that could

1:44:48

augment the Palestinian

1:44:50

national identity of the

1:44:52

Palestinian minority inside Israel. And

1:44:55

again, the Palestinian resilience emerged

1:44:58

once more how to deal with that

1:45:01

kind of attack and

1:45:04

that was done with the help of the Palestinian

1:45:07

Communist Party that found a

1:45:10

way of getting Palestinians

1:45:13

into universities

1:45:15

in the Eastern Bloc that

1:45:18

enabled the Palestinian minority inside

1:45:21

Israel to develop academic

1:45:23

capacities in all disciplines

1:45:26

despite the intention of the state

1:45:28

itself to keep it very

1:45:31

underdeveloped in

1:45:34

terms of higher academic education.

1:45:39

When we move to the period

1:45:42

after 1967 in particular, when

1:45:44

it's very clear that

1:45:46

the Palestinian Liberation Organization

1:45:49

and in particular when it settles in

1:45:52

Beirut as a center, it

1:45:54

also provides venues

1:45:57

and spaces for Palestinian economic

1:45:59

development. work, whether

1:46:01

it is the PLO research

1:46:03

center in Beirut or

1:46:06

the various individual Palestinians who

1:46:08

begin to produce

1:46:11

knowledge, and in the case of Palestine

1:46:13

and Israel, we know knowledge

1:46:15

that is within the humanities and

1:46:18

the social sciences is

1:46:21

not just for the

1:46:24

response to intellectual curiosity.

1:46:27

It is also part of the

1:46:30

struggle itself, whether you develop

1:46:32

the paradigm of settler colonialism

1:46:35

to explain Zionism, whether

1:46:37

you are fighting the allegation

1:46:39

that the PLO is a

1:46:41

terrorist organization, whether you

1:46:43

question the Israeli claims

1:46:46

for being a force for modernization

1:46:48