Christopher Hitchens on Israel and Palestine

christopher hitchens let's go to cambridge maryland good morning good morning good morning thank you very much mr higgins i have three direct questions short questions for you please do you feel that israel has a right to exist within secure borders do you feel that the united states should intervene should iran or and or russia try to close the straits of hormuz and would you seek relief from a 24-hour shoot on-site curfew from any quarter in which relief might be found thank you all right thanks for the call very good questions and and i think i know what you're trying to pin me down on uh on the first yes i do um but i think the securely recognized borders should not allow for israeli colonization or occupation of the territory of its neighbors which is what it's doing now the right to exist argument has been um has been used now to the point where what it's going to mean is that the israeli you're talking about will include the annexed and illegally occupied west bank so the right to exist argument is going to rebound on those who use it unclearly and who don't say what they mean by israel it's very interesting the israeli government has never said where it thinks the ball is israel really ought to be and what it would settle for i think it would be an immense help if israel is going to insist on the right to exist if it tells us where it thinks israel's boundaries should be every other country does do that i better give you the straight answer i think zionism the idea of building a state of jewish farmers on arab land in the middle east it's a stupid idea to begin with i've always thought my mother wanted to go and be a zionist at one point i tried to talk her out of it it's been a thing in my family i think it's a bad idea i think it's a messianic idea i think it's a superstitious idea all right so so the idea of israel's right to exist is well no now there's no no there's no play with you many states are founded on injustices or foolishness and bad ideas doesn't mean that anyone can just come and evict or destroy them and i'm not saying that but i think i'd have to say so as not to seem shady yeah i've always thought it's a silly messianic superstitious nationalist idea and it's a waste of judaism and it guaranteed a quarrel with the arabs because it meant we're going to take away from you what's most precious your land by trying to make jews into peasants already a silly idea that's not the way to rescue central european jewry make them into farmers in palestine guaranteed an injustice to the arabs which now anyone can see and is now entering his third fourth generation fourth generation of palestinians brought up either in exile or dispossession or under occupation and humiliation and now we know something has to be done to address what is part of the original lesson called original sin original misconception of the thing so i've been writing in favor of palestinian homeland all my life and i i'm no more no less in favor of it than i was because of recently that and now the bush administration it's a matter of privilege now the bush administration is in favor of it well yes they were edging towards it it's a pity about the time because they're edging towards it before i don't want it to look as if they did it as a concession but it should be a matter of principle if the if jews born in brooklyn have a right to a state in palestine then palestinians born in jerusalem have a right to stay in pakistan anyone who doesn't agree with that principle i think is uh is suspect i think most people do they do but they but why in that case do we have the one and not the other after all it's america that pays for all this and arms the israelis and is very much involved in it if it's a matter of principle then we should witness to it a bit more forcibly on the point of purchase i'd like to take up on a single word very important you wouldn't say would you that the united states has no purchase on the government of israel no i wouldn't i mean in other words if the israelis are going to continue to build settlements in an identifiable just a single suburb of jerusalem which where most of the arab population can produce documents proving they've owned their homes since before the british mandate if you notice if american policy can't get them to stop building in that one identifiable suburb of jerusalem then there's no such thing as leverage or purchase and obama went to all the trouble to point out that this is a terrible thing it's he should have said more than he did in my view that it's theft as well as an obstacle to negotiations and then walked away from that so that a punk government like that of netanyahu under the influence of a ratbag religious party the shas party crackpot orthodox party happens to run the ministry of housing is allowed to humiliate the united states and not just in the person of its vice president who was there at the time but its president and its congress and its voters and immediately the president backed pedals and now he's being attacked by some leading american jewish organizations as being in principle anti-israel so he's had a fight with one of the democratic party's most important voting blocs he's done nothing for the palestinians and he's made himself look like a jerk this is not impressive but when was american policy in the middle east impressive well actually when i'll give you an example when george bush senior said to the israelis if you go on like this we i will ask congress to suspend your loan guarantees i thought that was extremely impressive and so did everyone else in the middle east it led to the nearest we've ever had to a proper peace conference that was in madrid bill clinton chose to run that year from the right against bush saying that he wanted he thought bush was being soft on cuba just like kennedy uh thought i don't know how nixon were being soft on communism in cuba and also from the right on israel saying if he was president the israelis would not be subjected to this kind of pressure so the last time that there was an impressive american policy it was a republican administration it was undone by the hero of every liberal in this room good morning great uh i like your type of argument you basically have intellectual discussion instead of a screaming argument i'm a i'm a libertarian i'm basically on the opposite side of the spectrum of you but uh i wonder if you could clarify a couple things for me i believe palestine was the entire area covering israel and jordan i wonder if you could tell me at what point the palestinians went to jordan and i realized they were kicked out when they blew up some passenger jets or something and uh are you familiar with that oh yes i think more than you are um by the sound of it i'm not sure i don't well go ahead basically revolved around the palestinians that were from israel i don't understand the uh there's 22 arab states why they have to take over israel uh-huh um well there are 49 american states if someone told you you couldn't apart from the one you're sitting in if someone told you actually we would rather have your bit of los angeles for ourselves from now on this will only be this you can only be a landholder or a householder here if you profess the let's say muslim or buddhist faith otherwise get out this bit sounds you're happy to go to colorado on that basis i don't think so and i think if you think about it you wouldn't insult anyone else by treating them their society or their country as as disposable as that the palestinians do not feel uh that god gave the land to someone else and they therefore have to be flung out and i completely agree with them the they've every right to resist that ridiculous proposal cape cod massachusetts go ahead please good morning a question for mr hitchens please you're going you're on passed away do you believe it's healthy for the united states to be so much influenced by israel we are a large country they are very small but they have much influence in the media and especially in politics thanks well believe me i i know um i believe i understand the question and there are various tones of voice in which it can be asked including a tone of voice that i don't like that suggests that there's a sort of covert jewish hand that directs u.s policies which is not true and uh very often clusters with other forms of unpleasantness i do think that the united states gives far too great proportion of its military aid budget to israel and in return asks for insufficient israeli responsibility the israelis are the custodians of the west bank by an act of war their occupation of it is not recognized as legal i've already said what i think should happen about that there should be a west bank state the united states could make that difference you could say to the israelis we will defend the existence of a jewish community or a jewish state in palestine we will not underwrite it becoming an expansionist and colonial state if you want to do that you pay the difference yourself that would that that alone would have probably solved the problem by now and i do wish yes if you wanted to query like that there was more um cogent discussion along those lines in both the media and in congress and as for the israelis everybody knows that because i mustn't seem to duck that question because i know how toxic it is everybody knows that if you want to occupy people against their will if you want to be the the governor of another people who haven't chosen you you will end up visiting terrible cruelty on them they cannot certainly cannot be a humane occupation the majority of jewish people in the diaspora and in israel for a long time favored a two-state solution to this problem it's a national question it's a land question this is also the expressed view of the united states congress of american jury of the united nations of the european union of that really and of the palestinian liberation organization it's what the majority of people involved in this view want why can't they get what we all want why is it made impossible because in both communities the veto is held by the party of god in the first case by the messianic settlers who think that by establishing fate accompli by violence and stealing other people's land in the name of the jewish people and in the name of god they can help to bring on the messiah if only they say we'd get all the arabs out of this area all the jews in gathered then the messiah would come finally after such a long sweaty weight is foreign foreign foreign

Channel: Bucketheadhead

Views: 1,781,711

Keywords: Christopher Hitchens, Hitchens, Palestine, Israel, Zionism, Zionist, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Middle East, Occupation, Occupy, BDS, Hamas, Gaza, Edward Said

Id: ejadhwDB-OY

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 11 2016