Hub Talks: Chris Hedges, Dr. Noam Chomsky & Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl

good evening welcome to our hub talks with Chris Hedges dr. Noam Chomsky and dr. holida booth phuddle on religious nationalism and the american israeli saudi alliance I'm your host Zachary mark with and I'd like to thank our speakers for sharing their research experience and wisdom with us this evening we have a Christian Presbyterian minister critiquing American militarism and the Christian Right an eminent Jewish linguist critiquing the Israeli occupation and Zionism and a Muslim jurist critiquing the Saudi royal family and Wahhabism apologies that this ecumenical gathering of ours could not also include Hindu and Buddhist critiques of Hindu and Buddhist nationalism in India and Myanmar there does however seem to be a common ethical impulse that runs through all cultures and religions the heart of which is the golden rule we read in the Hebrew Bible love thy neighbor as thyself and in the gospel in as much as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me and in the quran whoever slays a soul it is as if he has slew all of humanity and whoever saves a life it is though he has saved the life of all of humanity yet we have failed ourselves are very humanity if we think that the Golden Rule ethics or human rights only apply to those in our tribe our race our religion or our nation indeed nationalism is the new Golden Calf what are the connections between religious nationalism in the United States Israel and Saudi Arabia how are these three nations allied and should we reconsider these alliances these are questions for our speakers but I would first like to offer a few preliminary reflections all three nations are outgrowth of British imperialism at the expense of indigenous peoples the United States formerly British colonies was built by exterminating Native Americans and enslaving Africa Israel was built with the support of the British government through the Balfour Declaration in 1917 which was addressed to Lord Rothschild and announced support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people at the expense of Semitic Muslims Christians and Jews in Palestine and the greater Middle East Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism were also supported by the British during World War one against the Ottomans as well as moderate Sunnis Shia and Suzi's of Arabia today even though they still enjoy British support Israel and Saudi are for all intents and purposes protectorates of the united states which supplies billions of dollars in financial aid and arms to essentially rule the region by proxy before we commence I would also like to remember Jamal khashoggi may he rest in peace who was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd likely at the behest of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman we can also remember the 40 Yemen each school children whose bus was bombed by the Saudi government with u.s. arms on August 9th and thousands more who have died in other attacks we can remember the hundreds of peaceful protesters in Gaza who were killed by the Israeli military this year with American financial support and political cover while the Trump family celebrated moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem among the killed was an unarmed Palestinian nurse Rosanna and a job who was killed on June 1st by an Israeli sniper while helping wounded a wounded protester and as we know wars and crimes against humanity are also waged directly and at a much greater scale by the by the United States with bipartisan support if there is one thing that links the u.s. Israel and Saudi today it seems to be their desire to isolate and threaten Iran with a new war the moment has come for us to speak up for peace justice truth and human rights to not allow neoconservatives the Christian Right and hawks in both wings of the military-industrial complex to define America and Christianity to not allow settlers and hawks in Israel to define Judaism to not allow wahabis and the Saudi royal family to define Islam the time has come to pledge ourselves to building and sustaining of a viable anti-war movement and culture to pledge to ourselves our children our neighbors in the world that we will not support politicians and businesses that profit from war that we will teach and embody peace and justice with one another as individuals and nations it's my pleasure to turn to our eminent speakers were first joined by Chris Hedges a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist New York Times bestselling author professor at Princeton University activist and ordained Presbyterian minister he has written 11 books including war is a force that gives us meaning American fascists the Christian Right and the war on America and America the farewell tour please join me in welcoming Chris Hedges so I'm going to talk about the Christian right and American militarism and they are inextricably linked I come out of a religious tradition my father was a Presbyterian minister my mother was a Seminary graduate and a college professor I graduated from Harvard Divinity School for the last ten years I've taught in a prison in New Jersey where most of my students are Muslim and was ordained for that work the ordination sermon was given by America's greatest contemporary theologian dr. James cone and Cornel West spoke and we throughout the Presbyterian hymnals hired a blues band and invited the families of all of my students who had teach in prison it's on YouTube you can watch it my father was very involved in the anti-war movement he was a world war two veteran had been in North Africa and Palestine and later Iran during world war two in fact he was a Farsi speaker very involved in the civil rights movement we lived in a farm town in upstate New York where at that time Martin Luther King and these rural white enclaves was one of the most hated men in America and he was very close to the Catholic Worker movement he was a member of Concerned clergy and laity started by Phil and Daniel Berrigan this was the formation of my understanding of belief that it was a constant struggle for justice and that you stood with the oppressed and that when you truly stood with you eventually you would be treated like the oppressed this is what it meant for me to have a religious life it was coupled with the understanding that when you held fast to that moral imperative the principalities the powers would always seek to silence marginalize you and that if you spoke in the kind of prophetic voice that Martin Luther King spoke in or Malcolm X spoke in they would often kill you when I was at Harvard my great mentor was James Luther Adams in 1936 and 37 he was in Germany during the Nazi rule at the University of Heidelberg he was in the lecture hall watching Martin Heidegger begin his lectures with a Nazi salute he once told us that if the Nazis took over America 60% of the Harvard faculty would willingly begin their lectures with the Nazi salute and when we laughed he said no I I watched it within the universities in Nazi Germany he dropped out of the university he joined the underground confessing Church led by niemoller Bonhoeffer Albert's fights are in Carl Bart until he himself was picked up by the Gestapo and expelled from Germany a year later during that year he took rolls of home movie film not only of Germany and the confessing Church but the so called German Christian Church which was pro-nazi and which had a huge following especially among Protestants and on one side of the altar was the Christian cross and on the other side was the Nazi swastika and that experience in Germany deeply revolutionized him and formed his understanding of faith and he told us this was 1983 that when we were his age and he was 80 years old at the time we would all be fighting the Christian fascists because he understood that when you dispossessed your working class when you created economic misery and stagnation when a cabal seized power and directed all of the institutions of government towards the further consolidation of that power and wealth eventually you would vomit up figures and movements that replicated what he had seen with the breakdown of vimar Germany I left Harvard Divinity School I was gone for 20 years overseas on the outer reaches of Empire I was the Middle East bureau chief I spent for the New York Times I spent seven years in the Middle East and largely divorced from America and American culture until I returned and when I returned the Christian Right in that two decades had exponentially grown into a powerful and frightening political movement and so I set out to write ten years ago a book called American fascists the Christian Right and the war on America I was trying to reach out to them I went into that investigation and I heavily report I'm at heart remain a newspaper reporter I like reporting I like listening it it forces me to confront and often demolishes my own assumptions that I carry into a project and it's only I find with that visceral contact that I begin to understand what cultures and societies and movements which are foreign to me are truly about so I went into my study of the Christian right with the prejudices of the Christian left I'm not even sure I would call it liberal I don't think the berrigan's were liberal but I think they were an expression for me of what the Christian religion at its best is about although I would say that I have seen in my 20 years abroad out of every culture and every religion and every ethnicity magnificent figures rise up to fight the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed and for me these are always expressions of that deep religious impulse that I admire that understanding that there are things that do not have a monetary value but have an intrinsic value a fight and a protection of the sacred and so in many ways although I was biblically literate theologically literate the movement that I entered was a foreign entity and I went with a fair amount of disdain towards this movement and yet after interview and numerous interviews dozens of interviews with followers of this movement I could not walk away on moved by the tremendous suffering dislocation and pain that the rupture of social bonds in American society had done to these individuals addictions domestic sexual abuse chronic underemployment unemployment jail time their lives had disintegrated because of this corporate onslaught because of the corporate coup d'etat that's taken place within our culture the seizure of power by a corporate cabal I was also appalled at the way the leaders of these megachurches almost invariably white men like Donald Trump preyed on the despair of these people to become incredibly wealthy and to hold these people in a system that is probably most accurately described as a cult I was at a pro-life weekend in Valley Forge Pennsylvania with 400 women and the organizers of this event asked the post abortive sisters to stand and the room stood and when I went around and did interviews it turned out that these women had not had one abortion but multiple abortions and what did the Christian Right do they gave these women dolls and they told them that these were the children they had murdered and they were told to name the dolls and dress the dolls and bathe the dolls and sleep with the dolls and at the end of the weekend they had to hold up those dolls and begged for forgiveness and pledged to fight the culture of death which is us it was the manipulation of their guilt and their shame and so while I had an unexpected empathy and compassion for what these people had suffered I also understood how dangerous this movement was one of the fascinating aspects of that work was that I'm always upfront about Who I am and where I came from and what my religious background is and as soon as they knew that I came out of a religious background they never wanted to speak about the Bible with me because they don't know the Bible any more than Isis or al-qaeda knows the Quran they are fed selected bits and slogans they are selectively literalists and they use this to feed in ideologies and of course what the Christian right has done is sacralized the worst aspects of American capitalism white supremacy racism and American imperialism it is a political movement and if you doubt me go home tonight if you have a television I don't and watch an hour of Pat Robertson on the 700 club or any of these other Chris quote/unquote Christian networks that's the reason 81% of evangelicals voted for Trump and why he has to this day a 75% approval rating now what this movement does is is essentially play on that despair that desperation and petals magical thinking magic Jesus I mean the whole idea that Jesus came to make us rich or shower us with consumer products is heretical and one of my frustrations even anger at the liberal Christian Church is that they have failed to call these people out for who they are which is Christian heretics I was in the Middle East immediately after 9/11 I covered al Qaeda for The New York Times in the aftermath of the attacks and I had frequently heard denunciations which actually were untrue leveled against Muslim leaders for not denouncing a crime against humanity that was carried out on 9/11 in fact and I was there Muslim leaders throughout the Middle East announced the crimes of 9/11 but I couldn't help thinking where are those Christian figures who are denouncing the Christian heretics the Christian fascists now I don't use the word fascist lightly in fact when I finished the book Bill Moyers tried very energetically to talk me out of using that word in the title and I went to two great scholars of fascism for its stern who wrote the politics of cultural despair and fled Nazi Germany when he was 18 and Robert Paxton who wrote anatomy of fascism and is the great scholar on VEISHEA Colombia and I spent hours with both of them essentially laying out for them what I had found and allowing them to try and argue me out of the using the word fascist all totalitarian movements as Hannah Aaron understood embrace magical thinking they are non reality-based belief movements and the system of creating cults within these megachurches the system of divorcing tens of millions Americans from the fact-based world the world the real world the system of preaching magic set the ground for Trump and is born out of despair I was in Detroit with Tim LaHaye who wrote the endtime series there was a conference on the end times with all of the fantasies of the Christian Right peddle about the end times like the rapture which are not is not in the Bible and the only word I could use to describe the mood in that Hall was exhilaration about the apocalypse because it was that fact-based world it was the reality-based world that almost destroyed them that was now being destroyed you cannot argue these people out of their magical thinking I was in the creationist Museum in Peterborough Kentucky it's a huge museum with large lots for the school buses and they brought in the people who did the anatomic the the the models for Universal Studios so they recreate the Garden of Eden with a waterfall and Adam and Eve plastic figures but of course position so you can't see Eve's breasts or anything and there's a t-rex in the Garden of Eden with a saddle on it and the guide is taking the group around and explaining that I'm sure you all wonder why the t-rex has such big teeth it's because Adam and Eve used the t-rex to open the coconut which is funny here but it's not funny when you're with 50 or 60 people who believe it I came to the conclusion that the only way to break the back of that movement was to reintegrate these people back into the economy and then the latest book that I wrote which is about the pathologies that are rippling across the United States the opioid addiction sexual sadism were a pornified culture suicide gambling I was especially rooted in the sociologist Emile Durkheim's book on suicide where he asked the question what is it that drives individuals and societies to carry out acts of willful self annihilation and he said those individuals and societies that were rooted in communal structures for whom the social bonds were not broken who had the possibility of self actualization were the least susceptible to suicide but once those social bonds were broken once people fell into a position of stagnation and despair then they began to carry out pathologies of self destruction what sociologists call diseases of despair so that Trump is not the disease Trump is the symptom of a decayed society just as I saw in the former Yugoslavia now the danger of these Christian fascists is that they externalize evil anyone who studies philosophy or theology or ethics understands as primo levy wrote that the greatest struggle within us is to grasp our own capacity for evil I saw this in war how the line between the victimizer and the victim was often razor thin and primo levy probably articulates this most eloquently in his essay on the Lodz ghetto ghetto with Rahm Kowski and that it is that awareness of our own capacity for evil that is the best protection against our participation in projects of evil but when you externalize evil the way the Christian Right does or the way Trump does then evil becomes embodied in individuals or groups that must be eradicated a gnome and I have both been very outspoken against the New Atheists Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens I debated Sam Harris at UCLA I debated Hitchens at Berkeley not an experience I would wish on anyone in this room and they our secular fundamentalists Noam has called them religious fanatics for the state religion fundamentalism can come in any form it could come in secular form it can come in religious form it can come through totalitarian ideologies communism fascism and that's why of course the there is a convergence of political beliefs between the quote unquote new atheists and the Christian Right the Christian Right wants to support and expand our wars in the Middle East to attack Muslims who they say embrace a satanic religion and Sam Harris and the New Atheists want to attack Muslims because in the name of Western civilization because they're barbarian but it's all at its core fundamentalism and the projection and the sack realization of military power which is at the core of the Christian right and we are watching within the military a huge expansion of quote/unquote evangelical or Christian Right preachers we are watching the ideological void because Trump has no ideology we are watching that vacuum being rapidly filled by these Christian fascists that is why they pushed so hard to get Kevin on the bench and the Christian Right made it very clear to the Trump administration that he had to be placed there before the midterms because they knew that he would revoke Rovi wait so what how do we respond we are not going to break this movement which I think has a huge crossover in terms of the 70 million people who support Trump I think Trump in many ways embodies the cult-like character of the people who run the Christian Right and I was in a room with many of these people including James Dobson who is as evil as he looks we are going to have to grapple with what Durkheim calls the enemy within american society which literally translated is rule less nests and what Durkheim understood is that it's when the rules as they're laid out however imperfectly within the society no longer work you work hard you get a good education you obey the law there is a place for you and in fact as Matt Taibbi wrote in his book called divide which is a study of the legal system for the 1% for the Wall Street financier and criminals Goldman Sachs in particular and what the judicial system does to the vulnerable and the poor so these people have an essence organized attacks boycott and you have poor counties like st. Louis County which are extracting 30 or 40 percent or depend on 30 40 percent of their budget by extracting money from poor people in Ferguson by imposing ridiculous fines that's how Eric garner was killed although he was charged with selling loose cigarettes but he wasn't and you're fined for having an open container or not mowing your lawn I'm not making any of this up or my favorite is obstructing pedestrian traffic which means standing too long in a sidewalk there is nothing now to halt the corporate disemboweling of the United States and that disemboweling is expanding the kind of despair and anomie that propels people into the arms of demagogues who peddle magical thinking and people wonder how can the Christian Right make an alliance with Trump and I say you don't understand the Christian Right Trump embodies all of the characteristics of the leaders of the Christian Right with at least from my anecdotal observation one exception and that is the sexual proclivities of the leaders in the Christian Right or probably kinkier it's a seamless fit and it's a dangerous movement and it is fascist and it is heretical and it needs to be called out and as Noam has pointed out we may get rid of Trump but pence who is a creature of this movement is even more dangerous and so we must stop personalizing our problems in the figure of Trump however repugnant and vile and vulgar and imbecilic he is he is a creation of a failed democracy and we must mobilize to fight these predatory systems of corporate power which means sustained acts of mass civil disobedience non-cooperation and organization so that we can pit power against power because if we do not address the root cause of our decline which is anime which is the externalization of evil and the sack realization of military force then we will continue on the road to tyranny thank you [Applause] thank you Chris for that story and talk it's my pleasure to now introduce professor Noam Chomsky who's laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT he's a public intellectual and leading critic of u.s. foreign policy the mainstream news media neoliberalism and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in Gaza dr. Chomsky is the author of numerous works including the fateful triangle the United States Israel and the Palestinians manufacturing consent and Gaza in crisis reflection on Israel's war against the Palestinians please join me in welcoming one of the great geniuses of the 20th and 20th for 21st century dr. Noam Chomsky [Applause] thank you very much first comment can you hear me okay if I get too far from the microphone start waving your hands that often happens well as you just heard I wrote a book 35 years ago called fatal triangle the three and the triangle were of the United States Israel and the Palestinians there were others in the background Saudi Arabia among them and what I'd like to do now is say a few words about a different fateful triangle the United States Israel and Saudi Arabia with others in the background and in the background now or the Palestinians the shift and focus over 35 years reflects changes in policies and practices so 35 years ago the United States was presenting itself rightly or wrongly as an honest broker seeking to resolve the israel-palestine confrontation again whatever the merits of the claim but no longer the current u.s. stance is captured succinctly by two leading specialists on the region with long government service Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller and in their words boiled down to its essence the administration's message to the Palestinians is you've lost get over which is pretty fair enough so let's a few words to look into the background of all of this begin with World War two which led to a radical change in world order the United States emerged from the war and a position of power that had absolutely no historical precedent the primary concern in the Middle East of the United States since World War two has been to maintain its dominance over this critical region it's a major center of the fossil fuel energy production is also a geostrategic prize and the u.s. Israel Saudi Alliant triangle which is now emerging is the centerpiece of this strategy so Washington is in fact constructing a reactionary alliance which includes the most repressive harsh Arab dictatorships the oil dictatorships of the Gulf Egypt now under the most brutal dictatorship of its history they fall together and Israel is among them and the goal is to confront the influence of Iran which is regarded in the United States as a grave threat that's unique to the United States the fact of the matter is that in the world there's a different country that's regarded as the greatest threat to peace we're part of it there was actually one poll there are international polls every year that are study world opinion Gallup Organization major organisation in 2013 for the first time they asked the question which country is the gravest threat to world peace the United States had no competitors way behind and second place was Pakistan inflated by the Indians other countries are barely mentioned some likely that many people know about this because that pole wasn't reported in the United States you could find out about it elsewhere and also that's the last time that that question was asked in the polls you can ask why but in the United States commonly Iran as the greatest threat to world peace why well we can turn to US intelligence they give the answer regularly presentations to Congress and so on quite different from public discourse since the overthrow of the US backed a tighter ship in Iran in 1979 Iran has pursued an independent course and it poses a deterrent to the free exercise of force by those who want to rampage in the region there are two the United States and its Israeli client that's a serious threat and in fact that's the for the public there's a different rhetorical stance of course confronting as Iranian terror and aggression but US intelligence is very much on target actually the government of Iran is a threat to its own population but beyond that the threat is the threat of deterrence to those who want to be free to use force without constraints in this respect US intelligence is much more accurate than the public discourse well in this emerging system Palestinians are simply a nuisance it kind of like Native Americans to whom they're often compared in fact their fate some analogies thanks in no small part to massive US support over many years in Gaza two million people survived barely survived half of them children the territory will very soon be literally uninhabitable according to international monitors UN and others this is after years of brutal siege regular destructive assault and carefully administered diet as it's called officially by the occupiers the diet is designed to keep people barely alive because it doesn't look good if 2 million people die but barely but to survive this 5 barely beyond that there has been one so called lifeline for Palestinians namely the relief agency the international relief agency Unruh Trump has responded to this by cutting the lifeline that's the way to deal with the impending catastrophe no more funding for the relief agency and Trump was kind enough to announce his reasons what he said is Palestinians show no appreciation of respect for him as he offers them what he calls his ultimate deal which in fact ends all hopes for minimal rights well handing Jerusalem over to Israel actually it's greatly expanded vastly expanded Greater Jerusalem about five times as large as Jerusalem ever was including Palestinian villages in the surrounding area and as a special gesture of contempt he accompanied this by cutting funding for Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem well--that's Gaza that's how you teach them to show respect for their torturer turn to Lebanon and the miserable Shatila refugee camp and Beirut Shatila still reeking of the Israeli coordinated slaughter that culminated its murderous 1982 invasion happened to be the occasion for the book faithful triangle that I heard 35 years ago in Shatila where I've been children play in the mud in dark alleys where they're gonna spend the rest of their lives as will their children visitors are invited to the small rooms where the families try to survive are shown their major treasure the key to the home and Galilee where from which they were expelled during the knock I've seen many scenes of misery and terror around the world not like Criss I've seen far more but enough however I've seen very few that evoke such pathos these little children playing in the mud and the dark alleys with that being their fate forever they did have one ray of light of the Unruh school unruhe funded school in the slum that's now extinguished thanks to the leader of the free world and thanks to our silence about it Turing of the West Bank Israel is pursuing the systematic policy in which it's been engaged since 1967 and shortly after the 1967 war the program of creating a greater Israel that will take over everything of value in the West Bank and effectively incorporated in to Israel with vast settlement and infrastructure projects it's kind of de facto annexation which will sooner or later turn into the jury annexation all of this is illegal has been determined by every relevant high authority but laws are for the weak if power is not confronted that's our task well as in neo colonies generally Palestinian elites are offered refuge they can enjoy a western-style of life in Ramallah well I'm now quoting 90% of the population of the West Bank live in a hundred and sixty five separate islands ostensibly under the control of the Palestinian Authority but actual Israeli control that's Nathan thrall who's the senior Middle East analyst for the International Crisis group's final occupied area the Syrian Golan Heights which Israel annexed in violation of security counter council orders that's been forgotten along with its inhabitants most of whom were expelled the Syrian Golan Heights I should say well these policies have been pursued systematically by all governments in Israel what are called left-right including the moderate those government of Shimon Paris for example former president considered a leading peace activist he's the one who happened to have initiated settlement deep inside the West Bank they've all relied crucially on the enormous economic military and diplomatic support of the United States and one might say it's to Trump's credit that with the vulgarity that he's mastered that at least he has exposed what has been the essence of US policy for many decades now I don't mean suggest that the Palestinian cause is lost in fact quite the contrary but the picture today is pretty grim can be changed this u.s. Israel Saudi triangle is it's not actually new Saudi Arabia has been the closest ally of the United States in the region since the discovery of the incomparable oil reserves there back in the 1930s during World War two that was actually a kind of a mini war going on between Britain and the United States as to who was going to take over this extraordinarily valuable prize the united's our relations dictated the outcome of the United States replaced Britain and in the following years it gradually displaced Britain which had been the former hegemonic power and the u.s. took that over Britain became a kind of client state in 1948 Israel won its independence this as you know was accompanied by the expulsion or flight and terror of the vast majority the digitus population and that impressed a number of people including the US military the Joint Chiefs of Staff were impressed by Israel the success of Israeli organized violence and concluded that back in 48 Israel is the second major military power in the Middle East second after turkey and that it could become a solid base for a projection of us power well took some time for this to become realized but the Alliance was formed really took shape in the current farm in 1967 in 1967 Israel performed a major service for the United States and Saudi Arabia namely it destroyed their main enemy of the main center of secular Arab nationalism and it's worth noting that very much like Britain before it the United States has overwhelmingly tended to support radical Islam against secular nationalism which is considered a much more dangerous force well since that time the us-saudi Alliance has the u.s. Israel alliances will they've solidified in numerous ways theoretically Israel and the Arab oil dictatorships have been at war but informal relations have developed over the years and under Trump there are no longer concealed this is an open alliance of reactionary States well turning Saudi Arabia of course is the center of radical Islam also a missionary missing missionary states its devoted to spreading its version of extremist Islam throughout the Arab world mosques madrasas Quranic schools and so on which happened to be the main ideological source of what we call Islamic terrorism turning to the other two legs of the triangle United States and Israel there are some interesting similarities namely in the rise radical religious right-wing nationalism it's actually studied in an interesting study that came out in Israel quite recently as a report of it you can read it in Israel's leading journal arts and it shows that the United States and Israel are remarkably similar to Saudi Arabia in certain ways namely in right wing religious extremism study fund that study is actually studying the US and Israel and Saudi Arabia takes for granted and it finds striking parallels between the US and Israel in religious extremism right-wing religious extremism a differing from the rest of the West and let me just quote its main conclusions Israel Israelis and Americans lead the West in their belief in a right wing version of God a factor that can help explain their unique relationship and shared animosity towards secularizing Europe in Israel 80% of the dominant right wing north religious right wing regard Jews as the chosen people with a god-given right actually that's 60 percent of the whole country eighty percent of the religious right God given chosen people god-given right to the country that's a view shared by us evangelicals who form a as chris mentioned the substantial popular base for the republican party and by now the main center of support for israel in the united states used to be liberal democrats but that's shifting going on with a quote from orit's it's hard to escape the conclusion that religion in this particular version has assumed the more pivotal voll role than ever in the special relation ship between the US and Israel here's another backdrop to the rapidly warming relations between Israel and Eastern European countries in which religious religion again right-wing religion plays a central role usually in tandem with nationalism and ethnocentrism and the tense political relations between both Israel and the European Union and recently between the European Union and Washington can also be delineated by religious beliefs Israelis and Americans view Europe as godless and decadent but for the European Union Israel and the United States are drifting into fundamental fundamentalist crazy land that's hearts so the us-israeli Saudi triangle the Alliance has cultural foundations alongside the dominant geopolitical and economic concerns which go far back well in Israel this is an increasing tendency in recent years there is one difference between the United States and Israel in that respect in Israel it's the younger generation that's increasingly drawn to a religious extremism which is not true in the United States actually these tendencies were predicted long ago they're right at the outset of the occupation in 1967 by a number of astute Israeli observers most notably most famously the respected Israeli sage Yasha oh sure he understood and warned a shift of the far-right is a rather natural outgrowth of the colonization project just as doctrines of white supremacy or a very natural outgrowth of slavery and extermination or dispersal of the native population when you have your jackboot on somebody's neck it's not very good for the psyche labor that's in fact predicted back in 1969 that as long as the occupant as the occupation continued Israelis would become what he called Judea Nazis some somebody other than labor hoods couldn't have gotten away with that phrase but he was so respected that he could well about 90 years ago from Mussolini's prison cells Antonio Gramsci described the roots of the emerging fascist crisis of the day and as he put it the crisis is that the old is dying and the new cannot be born and in this interim a great variety of more bird morbid symptoms appear well today is not the 90s not the 30s but as Marc crane once observed history doesn't repeat but it does often rhyme these are insights that merit some thought and concerted action [Applause] thank you for professor Chomsky it's now my pleasure to introduce another giant intellectual dr. Khalid Abu el fadela he's one of the world's leading authorities on Sharia Islamic law and Islam a prominent scholar in the field of human rights and one of the world's leading critics of the Saudi royal family and Wahhabism his professor of law at UCLA and founder of the asougi Institute he is the author of numerous works including the great theft wrestling Islam from the extremists the search for beauty in Islam and reasoning with God reclaiming Sharia in the modern age please join me in welcoming dr. Khalid Abu [Applause] thank you very much one hardly knows where to start what I thought of they are the most iconic moments that I'm actually sad to say that I I rather predicted in probably an undirected God knows the soldiers an iconic moment in which your representative of the Israeli military the IDF delivers a message in Arabic to Muslims and in this message the IDF's representives reminds Muslims the mohammed bin abdul wahhab is a great reformer and a great theologian and quotes mohammed bin abdul wahhab he thinks he accurately quotes a bit a mere but she doesn't manage that but he does accurately quote Muhammad Abdul Wahab calling him the great reformer of Islam this just happened about a year ago or even less now it's an iconic moment because you can all the the the deceptions are removed all the camouflage is removed and you can see the natural and even umbilical relationship between the outlook of Zionists and the outlook of waha bees internally the way Wahabis see the Muslim world see themselves the truth of the matter is is that mohab ism has and in this my way it's rooted in its very origins has a part of its theology known as in well bara or the theology of pure monotheism in you reject any fertility or any loyalty to anything but and an Islamic ideology and so on the one hand you have that but the other hand it is coupled with a focus nearly obsessive focus on ritualism and opposition to ethical rational thought and human autonomy and even human creativity and inspiration at the social level and i underscore at the social level at the political level what mojave theology adopts an absolute pragmatism and realism in which this theology teaches Zi and whanau al bara or this strict monotheistic loyalty cannot be applied critically to the ruler so on the one hand it has this sort of revolutionary activists component in which you are supposed to denounce any loyalties to anything and anyone but Muslims who follow the true Creed on the other hand there is an obsessive focus on ritualism and a a doctrine of absolute obedience to the ruler the in hobbies in the case of Wahhabism of course it's a Saudi monarchy and it had never resolved this tension within Wahhabi theology and on the one hand you can easily co-opt this theology into a doctrine of open warfare and open jihad if you will against not just heretical Muslims but all Muslims are all non-muslims Christian Jews at satsang but on the other hand is a remarkable emphasis an obsessive influence on the ruler cannot be questioned and criticized or criticized so I'll even give you just so you get a I'm shooting with the Muslims in this in this room you probably know what I'm talking about immediately but to give you insight into the world people like me live in since the keshavjee thing very famous or hobby clergy like siddhis and his IP these are people who are recognized all over the Muslim world as theologians with a substantial amount of authority in the case of surveys he is actually the formal official Imam of Mecca he leads prayer and macabre in Mecca is a drama baba in friday congregation prayer they all appeared recently on various media sites including Saudi funded television reminding Muslims that it is a grave sin not just a great sin to criticize the ruler but a grave sin to think ill of the ruler whatever the ruler tells you you must accept as an Islamic obligation they even went a step further and said that the only possible way that you can interact in or holdin a ruler accountable rather is that you counsel the ruler privately now what if of course if you try to get an appointment with some man or his grandparents to counsel him privately good luck so what do you do if you can't meet with some man or the Crown Prince counseled them privately well say fee and city s and a whole host of them had an ready answer to that he said well you talk to a trusted Imam like themselves and trust them to communicate the message to the ruler but your job as a Muslim is absolute unquestioning obedience now I'm not gonna bore you with the theological juristic debates about this this is sort of a the bread and butter of what I live with all the time but this brings why the this brings us to a sort of the heart of the matter the big question why were all the camouflages stripped why was it at this point in history that the Saudis decided that they will no longer go with the pretense of caring about the Palestinians they will no longer go with the pretense of not having sold the Palestine and Jerusalem decades ago why is it that they felt desperate enough to lay naked deeply the entire dynamic and entire relationship towards our colonial power and their disdain towards their if their own native culture and the center of the exploration in my view is quite simple the Saudis and the Emiratis especially the Saudis and the Emiratis saw the Arab Spring remember that the Arab Spring you had masses of people saying hurray Sharia direct my freedom dread and justice and since the Iranian Revolution there has been an obsession with something akin to the Iranian Revolution taking place anywhere in the Arab world or the Muslim world for that matter and Arab streamed terrified Al Saud and the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai leave I mean far more than even the king of Jordan or the Moroccan King far more than the natural tension between the monarchy and any revolution as we remember from British and French history the way Britain reacted to the French Revolution and so on far more than that to have a Muslim ego that is unbroken and unsub gated and uncomplete is unacceptable to the monarchies that have for decades monopolized the resources and finances of the richest countries in the Muslim world to have anything akin to these cores freedom justice and bread remember Saudi Arabia has a very high unemployment rate and has a serious problem with poverty if you go to Saudi Arabia you will meet tons of people who are homeless who literally eat from the garbage at the same time that they will waste billions I mean there is a video on YouTube you couldn't fish out where Crown Prince Salman gives his mistress a gift of two million two million dollars and someone took a undercover film of the whole gifting process and it's you can find it on the net like you could find a lot of other stuff it mean a ruling family and theology exploited and wasted the natural resources and the human potential and energy of the of its own native population when Mohabbatein arose early on and II in in the 17th century what was embedded in what the hobby movement itself and I wrote all of this material in the 90s at a time that no one talked about Wahhabis and I'm sad to have lived long enough to see everything that I feared actually materialized Wow he's saw themselves as returned to a pristine and pure Islam but they were thoroughly permeated with a attitude of absolute inferiority as an ethnic and nativist and racial group towards their colonizers that seemed race or ethnic paradigm permeates everything else our wood and Emiratis who by the way are in write English and speak English much better than we can write or speak Arabic especially classical Arabic they were educated in Western institutions in the best British institutions that trained royalty their culture is a fairly westernized colonial culture rather than anything that emerges from the native roots of the Islamic civilization itself and as such the always saw the white colonizer as naturally superior and saw their own people with a prism of inferiority and absolute lack of confidence and ego the only thing they want from their own people is to shut that's the only thing they expect from Muslims shut the hell up and do what you're told the entire Hazuki affair is a really good example on the one hand like all of you your heart is broken for her sake on the other hand the sense of degradation and absolute humiliation as you see all the media that is not friendly and I emphasize not friendly to Saudi Arabia all they care about all they care about is what the West thought of the murder of Egyptian what matters is whether Americans or Europeans are going to make it an issue or not make it an issue no one cares about what Muslims think we even our most enlightened intellectuals have ingrained in them the racist attitude the a Muslim by definition is exotic and foreign an alien the Wahabis play amazingly well I'll give you another wonderful example for years this is from the time that I came to the United States early eighties thanks to a heavy influence as a jurist I got sick and tired of listening and responding to Muslims that come and say brother listening to music is Haram you cannot listen to music you cannot have this you cannot have that ad nauseam now let me tell you this position this Wahhabi position was maintained for decades decades listening to music is Haram leave alone singing or rapping that's you know now you've got a one-way speed ticket to hell right lo and behold sent man decides that music is no longer Haram and has a fee and others like and machete who are famous chronicler situs by the way they recite the Quran and I don't like the recitation of the Quran because my ear is used to talk system I don't like Saudi recitals of the Quran those reciters of the Quran sing songs praising Sandman and the crown prince and exalting the verses of Saudi they turned from chronic reciters sworn I have a volume this big about 12 volumes of the Fatah WA the responsa telling me that all music is Haram all dancing is Haram everything is Haram Haram Haram and an instant like that in an instant overnight not only is it not Haram anymore but they're actually performing songs writing songs and writing music and performing yeah is Wahhabism for muslims the danger of Wahhabism is not because they're going to commit terrorist attacks terrorism has a whole ideological menials that you can find rooted in the nearest movement in Russia in the early russian terror campaigns and the early terrorists in france that belong to the anarchist movement and and so on so forth a lot of these thrilled in the ideologies of those who blow themselves up and revel in the orgy of violence and blood goes back to the french an artist and the National Russian anarchist and of imagery that they created but the risk of Wahhabism for Muslims is that it suffocates the hell out of us and it makes us is subjugated racially inferior people no one gives a what a Muslim says or feels as the think was going on I have been keeping track of assassinations of a journalist in Jordan the disappearance of people famous writer who is a good friend of mine and economists disappeared in Egypt and even because of a dispute with and one of my Egyptian singers in the modern age suck overall you know there is one possible exception what was her name again no no I'm Casull she's God no no no stuff for Allah how can you say that you can never die no I'm consumers the class herself yeah I'm a man no I'm talking about not even ten percent of workers on consumer woman called a man my hair who at least was not trash okay any of you listen to show of hands okay which is not trash because of a dispute with a Saudi prince the Egyptian government bans the music of a man matter simply be she supposedly married a Saudi prince of secret secret marriage he beat her up in the street in front of Egyptian guards when she filed a complaint against them the Egyptian government responded by banning the music of America and the appearance of a man man in any media outlet and then a student of mine and a friend just told me that in fact she is disappeared in Egypt this is the life this is the logic that Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia rings to Muslims all over shut the hell up and do what you're told I will tell you to me I understand the Treaty of Westphalia and Vienna conventions and all that stuff about the sanctity of consulates and embassies something that but at the same time that we are outraged at the torture and murder of Hisashi who by the way think about it was light-skinned did it look like an Arab and wrote in The Washington Post if he did not write in The Washington Post and he did not have the skin he did he would be like many of my friends that were killed or disappeared and no one cares at the sign that hisagi is killed 15 million people in Yemen are dying Sisi murdered five thousand people in rabaa and no one cares a bomb is dropped on Muslims somewhere around the world every 10 to 15 minutes and no one cares as a Muslim and I'll tell you my stories were Saudi Arabia since I promised my wife I would share it they tried to kill me three times once with a bullet once with a bomb and the once with a pin was a poison pill that was stuck in the back of my neck I assure you and mark my words if Salman comes out of this thanks to trump and Christian nationalism and Jewish nationalism and thanks to the fact remember that in the same way the IDF had a spokesman praised muhammad bin abdul wahab as a true reformer of Islam Israel made clear in the current events that they trust hobbies and they don't trust the Turks and they made very clear and continue to make clear right now that if you want to favor with Israel then support the crown prince who's going to accept the deal of the century the dealer the Sentry which ends the Palestinian issue forever gives Jerusalem to the Israelis a footnote did you know that the Emiratis have been buying up property all over Jerusalem and selling it to Jewish settlers did you know that why are they doing that I'll tell you because they want to end the whole issue of Jerusalem do you want to end the ghost the threatening phantom of political Islam or the Islamist which basically translates for the one thing that they are scared of is an Islam that accepts and adapts itself to a democracy that's the real threat that's why they tried to kill me and killed cuts ugly and will kill many others and as the crown prince said man survives because I do think he will survive mark my words he will come after the rest of us and meaning rest of us Muslims with a vengeance I promised my wife that I would stand here and say if I disappear all of you know who did it and or if you find me dead and they say he killed himself I have no intention of killing myself this is the gripping fear and the object racism that we live with as Muslims you look into the eyes of any Muslim who has not joined the terrorist organization you will find them broken broken as a human being thanks to hobby theology and thanks for the death the dream of democracy and thanks for the deaths of the call of Egyptians Syrians Yemenis Libyans Bahrain ease who said freedom bread and social justice and the so called protectors of democracy in the West didn't give a thank you very much [Applause] thank you doctor up who a father I'd like to begin by asking each of you a question and and first - - Chris can you speak about the significance of Trump moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem in Israel and Palestine what is the significance to the Christian Right and to Christian Zionists in the United States how's that okay so it's a huge issue for Christian right because of their bizarre apocalyptic theological view that the end times will occur which is located according to them and Israel of course advances the Zionist agenda which is now fused with the Christian right and it is just one more blow towards Palestinian rights of course it's illegal under international law to in any way bolster the Israeli occupation but I mean I think you're right that the the kind of benefit if there is a benefit to Trump is that he's lift the veil Barack Obama did nothing for the Palestinians in no way advanced the peace process which was always a joke in fact of course settlements were expanded in the West Bank more and more territory was seized in East Jerusalem and I think it's part of this long campus kind of slow-motion ethnic cleansing that has been in place since 1948 and is now accelerating to keep Palestinians trapped in ghettos or Bantu stands where they struggle had such a basic subsistence level in the eyes of the Israelis that all of their energy goes into finding enough to eat and clean water of which there is almost none in Gaza thank you and don't mind like to ask you another question that we discussed earlier recently you said on Democracy Now that Israeli intervention in u.s. elections of vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done can you accelerate on that how is it that both Israelis themselves and the Israeli Lobby in the u.s. functions it's kind of mind-boggling so you may recall that the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu showed up at the invitation of deliver an address to the joint session of Congress without notifying which he condemned he used his address to condemn Obama's policies initiated the negotiations joint program a nuclear deal and this is an a summit Netanyahu wants the u.s. to support an attack on Iran so here's a prime minister of another country showing up in Congress ignoring completely ignoring the state executive the White House telling them we've got a you you guys have got to completely reverse his policy it's impossible to think of a form of intervention the legislative process that exceeds this is only a very small part a cat the main funders ultra-right a supporter of the ultra-right Israeli the Democratic huge another huge supporter you look through the rest of the donors basically agencies the Israeli government which are constantly twisting the arms of people in Congress so far beyond anything that is attributed to the Russians that and I should say that come when we're considering the intervention and our pristine democratic process it's worth bearing in mind that even the Israeli intervention which is far beyond any other country is miniscule as compared with the corruption of the political process by simply funding candidates this is not just since citizens united that opened the faucet a little wider but it goes back over a century you go back to 1895 it was a great famous campaign manager was asked once what are the important things the first thing is money political science which shows that you can literally predict the outcome of an election with remarkable precision simply by looking at the one variable that's president done for Congress and it runs through the to 2016 campaign incidentally and that's just a small part of it since electability depends on campaign funding that means your congressional representative once he or she is elected the first task is to get funding for the next election that means well what happens to the legislative process well corporate lobbies are invited to talk to the staff congressional staff and instruct them about what the legislation oughta be and this reaches the point where they actually write the legislation they're written by this is one reason why other work demonstrates that about first about 70% of the voting population on the income scale are completely disenfranchised literally in the sense that their own representatives pay absolutely no attention to their opinions they were listening to the donor clips you know talking about interference in the elections in a system like this is kind of ludicrous in the first place but if we want to talk about farm interference there's nothing remotely Thank You dr. Okoye thought I'd like you to speak about the we hear a lot less about the the Saudi Lobby in the US but we know that it's present anyone who's been in academia knows how difficult it is to write a critique of Saudi Arabia in the United States because of the endowed chairs that the Saudi government supports here you're one of maybe a handful of scholars who have written anything we also see in Mohammed bin Salman recent PR tour of the US this this sort of close relationship with with government Washington DC media Silicon Valley can you speak to how the Saudi alliance functions in the US I mean there's one level where there are the actual professional lobbyists Saudi Arabia spends billions of dollars under Emirates and actually now Qatar has as well on lobbyists they're about 100 lobbyists registered as lobbying on behalf of the Saudi government right now and that's public information but the other level we cannot ignore the fact that the the Saudi royalty is also have the title of the guardians of the holy sites Mecca and Medina and they that's a very powerful moral position that you can leverage and they do leverage now that coupled with the venues for funding through Saudi Arabia don't necessarily through go through the government directly in other words if you are starting some type of organization or opening up an Islamic Center or whatever in the u.s. usually your best financers your best sources of raising funds will be people from Saudi Arabia that are donating money with the approval of the government but it's not officially coming from the government it's the would not dare donate to anything that the government doesn't approve of but at the same time the money is not real leveraged directly up until 9/11 very few Muslims dared say anything critical about the Saudi ruling family because simply of ostracism if not direct violence it was a very open secret that the Saudis had funded numerous institution muslim institutions and the West's and these institutions were not going to give you a platform if you will be critical of Saudi Arabia that type of that was broken a bit the the shield that against criticism constructed by Saudi Arabia was was cracked a bit after 9/11 where through critiques of lob ISM people started accepting critiques against Saudi Arabia what in the past five years there has been a very aggressive thrust by Saudi Arabia to restore that sense of what is the word I'm looking for Hilo around the Saudi ruling family so that people would feel that if they critique the Saudi royal family that they're also critiquing the guardian of the holy sites and they're critiquing their if not committing a major sin then on risking falling into some major sin I mean so this and in his last call came right out and said called the crown prince divinely inspired that and even said that the crown prince he quoted the Prophet the the report attributed to the Prophet that God sends a reformer to rejuvenate the Islamic faith every hundred years and he said well that's the Crown Prince Sandman so we should all celebrate the the savior of the Islamic face for the century has been revealed you know that position towards the holy sites plus the finances gives him an amazing amount of influence what has materialized in the past since country in the past five years specially is the threat of physical violence and abductions with which I believe that the Emiratis and the Saudis have become far more vulgar about and of course the election of Trump has given them a sense of immunity and that's for is also of us who live in this world is quite frightened Chris I'd like to ask you to speak about nationalism we've discussed tonight religious nationalism but you've alluded to the dangers of secular nationalism and what might be called secular fundamentalism how is this Wed so closely to war in our society and how can we essentially not allow those in this country or any other country to define what it means to be an American well nationalism is a disease because the flipside of nationalism is always racism I was in New York for the attacks on 9/11 and like other reporters from the New York Times I stuff notebooks in my pocket walk down the West Side Highway I was almost there when building seven collapsed and my son who was 10 at the time asked what's the difference between the people in their cars who have the big American flags and the people waving the small flags and I said well the people waving the big American flags are the really big the tragedy of 9/11 is that and I was in the Middle East almost immediately afterwards where the huge majority of Muslims were palled at what had been done in the name of their religion and if we had not drunk deep of that dark elixir of nationalism if we had had the courage to be vulnerable if we had understood that the only way to defeat terrorism is to isolate terrorists within their own society we would be far safer and secure than we are today but we reacted in a mirror image of al-qaeda and began dropping iron fragmentation bombs all over the Middle East and nationalism as Dany Lokesh the great Serbian writer said is always espoused and promoted by ignoramus people who are culturally linguistically and historically illiterate who see the world solely through the eyes of the nationalists and therefore see everyone outside of their nationalist circle as nationalists like them and it's no great surprise to anyone in this room that we have been the most effective recruiter for radical jihadists throughout the Middle East we have created one failed state after another we've uh turley up ended in 17 years of war the very go rules that we purported to embrace to justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in Syria we flooded the place with weapons and then started bombing the people we gave the weapons to in essence acting as Hezbollah's Air Force since Hezbollah was fighting with Assad Iraq as a unified country is never coming back Libya is a failed state and we are just pushing outwards with no understanding or even questioning of what our goals are and so nationalism and we have unfortunately a president who has just declared himself a nationalist he's not particularly sentient about many things but he certainly understands what using that word means and it is a signal to his rabid neo-fascist base so yeah nationalism is and I watched it in war after war it's it's a deep disease and and it it always entails the elevation of us and the denigration of everyone else professor Chomsky you've been a leading critic of u.s. imperial wars in Vietnam Iraq Afghanistan and you've also spoken about how many Americans when asked you know how many people died in the war in Vietnam I think answered 200,000 and you said it's actually closer to three to four million and and compared this to a denial of the Holocaust and yet since the first Iraq war through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the sanctions it's estimated that about six million Muslims have died in the Middle East through u.s. bombing campaigns what does that tell us and how do we steer this country in another direction away from violence well I think the just the main study of estimates of Vietnamese dead was a hundred thousand and that was in a university setting which is what you'd get if you ask this question across the country but that was hundred thousand which is a tiny fraction of during the war itself that was probably close to four million and many are continuing to die from the effects of chemical warfare so it's it is very much like in Germany at an elite University people were asked how many Jews say a hundred thousand you think there's a problem in Germany a cultural social educational problem that's something that we have to face going back to the very entropy there was a sanctions you mentioned the sanctions this is before the war this is under Clinton not Bush under Clinton there was a sanctions program administered by the UN but of course it was a u.s. program there were two there were the administrators of the program distinguished international diplomats the first one resigned in protest because he described the the sanctions as genocide 'el he didn't want to be part of it the second one hunts fun spawning also a distinguished international diplomat who both had detailed information about what was happening in Iraq that investigators all over the place they certainly knew more about Iraq than the CIA but probably had the best information about any Westerners they were fun sponeck also was completely appalled after a few years resigned in protest charged that they were Jenna Seidel and went on to write a book an important book called a different form of war you probably haven't read the book or heard about it and one of the reasons is it wasn't mentioned in the United States the reviews no commentary scholarship doesn't refer to it it's a detailed examination very close examination of the way the sanctions were carrying out we're destroying the society carrying out what he called genocide killing hundreds of thousands of people and furthermore strengthening the tire people were compelled to rely on Saddam's fairly efficient rationing system simply to survive it's very likely that this save Saddam from being overthrown from within which has happened to dictators over and over Somoza Marco's do Ceausescu you know one after another has been overthrown by popular movements within even though they were brutal and harsh dictators might very well have been the fate of Saddam but he was strengthened by the sanctions which were carrying out virtual genocide and fun spontex words against the population the population was forced that was decimated and forced to simply rely on well that's a particular form of the horrifying case of the estimate of the toll that are you can add this case after case just take a look at the days of newspapers huge uproar about a what's called a caravan of people from Central America coming to the United States according to our leader an invasion of the country sending a thousand troops down there about one soldier for every child in the caravan who are these people these are people from fleeing from regions that we destroyed the Reagan's wars in Central America were vicious brutal the hundreds of thousands of people killed the masses tortured widows orphans every form of atrocity think of the Trump in fact is imitating his hero you may recall that in 1985 Ronald Reagan strapped on his cowboy boots and declared a national emergency because the Nicaraguan army was two days march from Harling in Texas just about to overwhelm us and the country was terrified just as many people are terrified now this for whatever reason is probably the most frightened country in the world it doesn't take much for the most ridiculous claim to be made and this is a case where people are not just playing but fleeing forward recreated it's not just reagan's wars which were bad enough and most of them are coming from Honduras it's been a pretty awful state for many years because of long term u.s. domination but something happened in 2009 there was a mildly reformist president Zelaya was kicked out in a military coup he's condemned all over Latin America most of the world with one notable exception of the Obama administration would not call it a military coup for a very simple reason if you call it a military coup you're forced by congressional legislation to terminate military aid to the military that's ruling it so they're very quickly turned into a real world of American States American countries again one exception it was praised by the United States as a move towards democracy that just increased the end-result people sleep well and therefore we cringe in terror because we're being invaded by these miserable families fleeing from thank you my last question is for you doctor there seems to be a contradiction with this alliance many contradictions actually but one of them is that each of these extremist groups persecute any group that is different from them people of other denominations within the faith people of other faiths secularists women and so and other other nations that their war with yet they're allied together how can we express solidarity across the religious divide at a grassroots level and also among people of goodwill who may you know may be agnostics or atheists how can we express solidarity with the peoples of saudi of yemen of palestine and and voices for peace in israel and the united states so that we can work together you know under before adversarial solidarity you pointed something that is really important and that's that the role of the pathology of hate in settler nationalism and also in the type of theological paradigm that has predominated in Wahhabism and and the irony is that it's a sorry while hobbies introduced a theology that undermined and systematically uprooted centuries-old theological doctrines of pluralism and Co Islamic or coexistence within an Islamic umbrella and that's sort of the the fascinating thing is that the Mojave is and also found dead bodies in Islamophobes because it's aslam affirms presented and the type of Islamic history that an Islamic history of intolerance and dogmatism that they actually found quite appealing for very different purposes I you know of course I came in with it was a lecture that I completely scratched and used none of because I said to Chris and Chomsky and then I thought you know I'll trash the lecture but I want to read you one quote that it's it's rather this is from a British fellow called Palgrave sorry this is Philby phobia was a British agent that played a very important role in the birth of Saudi Arabia at one point he supposedly converts to Islam but even as a even when after he reportedly conversed aslam he he continued to have a remarkable racist disdain towards Muslims he has a wonderful quote describing sort of the the nature of wahhabis of course what she actually liked here's a quote the most compromising characteristics of the Wahhabis which again i remind everyone he actually liked the most remarkable characteristics of no hobbies their uncompromising hatred of their Muslim neighbors the Shia are frankly condemned as infidels and policies but it is for the Orthodox congregation of the four Sunni churches Turks Egyptians Hijazi Syrians Mesopotamians Indians and the like that the Wahhabis reserved under their undiluted venom of their hatred this was written in the late 18-hundreds early 1900 or remember exactly that's that see a logical Paragon never departed from autism it and it it is a wonderful gift to the elite that monopolizes power because if you can demonize everyone else's chris said externalized evil as belonging and everyone else and then you can whoever stands with our monopoly of power can be the wonderful epitome of goodness it lends itself to you to colonialism to ratio them to capitalism to elitism to consumerism in in a fascinating and endlessly fascinating way if it didn't have such tragic consequences I would write poetry about it so fascinating I don't know how you express solidarity I know one thing that definitely breaks the back of every Muslim who tries to stand up and take a position and do as the Quran says justify and justice even if it's against your own self and your loved ones and your family and that is when you find non Muslims endorsing either explicitly or implicitly Islamophobes like that supposedly bro follow you mentioned them in your talk to us know today was a TV show Bill Maher yeah it breaks your back and so if you want to express solidarity with Muslims think about how you can resist Islamophobes and condemned the ratio so for what it is I'm a strong supporter of the BDS but I don't see any other mechanisms the Israelis are terrified of it obviously it's had far more currency in Europe than it is here but I'm also a strong supporter of a BDS movement for Saudi Arabia [Music] [Applause] I think that there have been legitimate critics of those of us who support BDS who have asked that question well if you promote BDS for Israel what about Saudi Arabia and I was with Medea Benjamin and others at a conference in Washington a couple years ago to call precisely for that but I you know I've spent a lot of my life in Gaza I've seen those bodies of children lined up in the corridors of Shifa Hospital it's not an abstraction to me I will never vote for a political candidate who betrays the Palestinian people which is why I did not vote for Barack Obama who got up and gave a speech to AIPAC that was written by AIPAC so my personal response has been to speak in support of BDS thank you would either of you know it's actually it was initiated back in 1997 by Marion Shalom in Israel and I think it's been supporting it since but we have to be careful when we support it's a movement we have to start asking questions a movement has principles I have to be careful that they don't turn into a catechism you have to begin to ask yourself which of the tactics of the program are the successful ones and effective ones and which tactics are just following some principles that somebody established and that's a significant question so I think there are elements of the BBD programs which have been extremely successful so take say the Presbyterian Church that's a very important move for a major oh the Presbyterian Church yeah well the Presbyterian Church was after all a pretty big organization took a very strong and I think extremely sensible position there they called for boycott and divestment of anything connected to the Israeli occupied occupied territories including firstly US multinationals that are involved in the in the occupation which brings the matter home in ways that we should be not only acting but it's educational and other programs that are program that are oriented against the occupation I think I've been very successful and I think those are the ones that can affect policy and they can go far beyond what they have so for example US military aid to Israel happens to be in direct violation of US law explicit violation of US law the so-called lay law Patrick lays the law part of US law stipulates that no military aid can be given to any military unit that is involved in systematic human rights violations well Gaza alone is a testimonial to massive human rights violations it's by no means the only case same in Lebanon the West Bank and so on that's a very this this actually supported by major human rights groups the Human Rights Watch Amnesty International called for an end the military aid to Israel folk activism and education focused on that could bring in large segments of the American population who don't like the idea of military aid anyway if it was known these are things that could be really effective techniques I think a lot of there are many others now there are some that I think are what are sometimes called feel-good rather than do good tactics and you've got to be careful about those so for example takes a academic no Israeli policy in fact what it does is drive them to the right and it has a negative effect for Palestinians because the as soon as those are initiated immediately there's a backlash which often overwhelms the protest but furthermore diverts attention away from the plight of Palestinians - irrelevant questions like academic freedom are big debate about academic freedom that's not the issue here and it also raises obvious questions of hypocrisy if you're going to boycott Tel Aviv University why not buy Cod Harvard which is much more deeply involved in atrocities all over the world not just so you're often directions that go away from the issue of the Palestinians and their plight if you keep to those issues I think it would be an extremely effective tactic and a way of organizing protests and activism and have an educational impact which can lead further directions but as in the case of all such programs tactical issues have to be thought about very seriously they're not trivial you have to ask what are the consequences of the tactic um pursuing for the victims not does it make me feel good to do it the consequences for the victims these are issues and one of the flaws of the immune that's these things you have to be careful about and as soon as I hear the word movement why is it not just a set of tactical choices that we have to decide on case-by-case with careful evaluation of consequences those I think are things to be worried about and I'd like to ask this question to dr. Khalid Abu fadhl as an expert in US law international law Islamic law what do you think about BDS boycott divestment sanctions in history of Palestine or even Saudi Arabia I'm one of the academics who has been targeted by these fascist watch groups for adding his name to you I took to agree with with non-pom ski that I have very good relations with some economics at Tel Aviv University and one of them for instance is is one of the most inspired critiques critics of Arabs performing whiteness and the whole racial dynamics of the type of psychology where Arabs increasingly try to pretend to be why and anyway so she's written some amazing work and I enjoy it when I invite her to the United States and I tend to think that yes we did would get more than in these issues of academic freedom but part of the problem is that the US has has laws that criminalize social boycotts of of certain countries specifically Israel there is a famous appellate court decision that said that that law does not violate the First Amendment so the technicality in the law is that if if the boycott is instituted in order to back up if foreign boycott of Israel so for instance if you are supporting an Algerian boycott of Israel or the the Attorney General can make that type of allegation against you then it's a felony and somehow it's not a violation of the first so I always think it's a priority to become active in fixing our freakin laws because not be even before the Patriot Act some of our laws that were legislated to protect Israel are mind boggling and people don't know about them and even there is ZERO discussions and law schools I mean one of the amazing things and I don't think my law school isn't is an exception when it comes to anything that has to do with Israel it's a taboo we have faculty that will do epileptic fits if we even try attempt a discussion of certain things but even there is a psychological oblivion towards the the topics like the ha the genocides that we've inflicted and in Iraq and Afghanistan and even the international law faculty and and human rights faculty talk as if these are not as if these are not realities I mean you rarely find an actual Human Rights discourse about what we've done and are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq in all of our top law schools including my own and I have one other point during Muslims and Arabs were targeted in a variety of ways from 9/11 after the passage of the Patriot Act and again our law schools even law schools that have very good civil liberties program and civil rights programs very little was produced about what was going on was our and Muslim population I tie all of this to a colonial racism and Imperial racism that we have never rid ourselves off and we can praise our legal minds we can say this is a brilliant constitutional orator national law professor although there are dishonest in this course although they will ignore that reality is as gruesome as the Holocaust and he'd still be touted as a brilliant legal mind and a brilliant international law professor I have a you know then I would understand that a lot of people not a certain but I agree with me but I believe that people who is a humanitarian principle and in and focused on Muslims I believe that Muslims must wake up to the importance of engaging academia funding the academia starting to introduce their voice as American Muslims in u.s. academic institutions or even Western academic institutions and until that happens until you know the Dean knows that there are Muslim donors that will be impressed if there is a discussion about what is going on with Palestinians and there are Muslim donors who will be very upset if there is no discussion about what's going on nothing will change I think that's just the reality of what happens in our academic institutions actually quite curious what Chris think of that because we have far more experience was that we may have to cut the evening short but hopefully we'll pick up the conversation after I'd like to thank everyone for joining us tonight and thank our speakers

Channel: Hub Talks

Views: 36,163

Rating: 4.9014087 out of 5

Keywords: Noam Chomsky, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Hub Foundation, Hub Talks, Zachary Markwith, Hub Talk

Id: 416LaP4j-5o

Length: 136min 46sec (8206 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2018