The Martyrdom of Gaza and the Future of Palestine | Norman Finkelstein (2015)

I don't know what he said so I don't know what you're expecting okay well thank you for having me and I'm going to be speaking this evening on that never ending the drama which would be funny were not for the fact that it has entailed so much human suffering over such a protracted period for reasons which at this point they feel almost insane I was reading the past couple of weeks what's called the Foreign Relations of the u.s. FRUs the fruits volumes on the arab-israeli conflict and the two volumes that dealt with the period of the first Camp David that was 1977 to 1980 when President Jimmy Carter presided over and eventually succeeded in extracting and israeli-egyptian peace agreement and it's a fairly large collection it's 3,000 pages I've plowed my way now through 1,800 of the 3,000 pages and you begin to feel insane at a certain point I knew I had crossed the threshold to certifiable lunacy when I started to have dreams of King Hussein secretly marching in Israeli army some people might appreciate just on saying that is and the thing that really struck me is that that was 1977 to 1980 which is well before many of these people many of the people in this room were even born and Carter at one point he comments that he's determined to get something out of these negotiations because he said I've spent and you can see it's true I've spent hundreds of hours on this he said to the point that it means I've sacrificed the time I should have invested on the Sylvia Union on Cyprus on Nicaragua and he starts listing all these world crises that he had to sideline in order to just extract this agreement to get Israel out of the Sinai out of the Egyptian Sinai for those of you who don't have the historic memory when Israel launched the 1967 war by the end it had conquered not just the West Bank in Gaza which is our concern today with had also conquered the Egyptian Sinai and also conquered the Syrian Golan Heights and so Carter managed to extract from quite a lot of arm-twisting he managed to extract an Israeli withdrawal from the Egyptian Sinai but already back then hundreds of ours and now from then there has been since 1980 then 35 more years of this insane peace process and you can't achieve what is so perfectly obvious to be the resolution of the conflict it just doesn't require great genius or diplomatic insight to recognize that Israel has to withdraw through its legal borders and a story and let Palestinians allow Palestinians the same basic rights minimal basic rights as anybody else to what's called self-determination that's it and the big question mark is why can't this simple solution be affected finally for once and for all and for the rest of humanity to move on how can it be that at that point the greatest superpower in the world the United States has to devote more time to a place in the map that can pretty much fit in this room more time than to the Soviet Union does it make any sense and that to me is becoming the the most salient aspect of this conflict it has reached the point of certifiable in and nobody is going to convince me otherwise it's become insane not just the conflict but and I don't say this in a demagogic sense and I don't say in a enthusiastic sense the country itself Israel has gone berserk what is this lunatic Prime Minister I'm not a patriot at all I'm a person of the left but even as a person of the left who has no great investment in notions of nationalism and national loyalties even I can't help but just feel outraged that this head of state intends to barge into our country to give his lecture on Iran is there anyone here that thinks he knows something that Netanyahu knows something about Iran that President Obama and his advisers don't know do we really need somebody to hold up one of his Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoons of Iran what is going on what is going on it's country has gotten out of control and I do not say that happily and I do not say that as if it's a permanent fact there are many countries in the modern world who took complete leave of their senses for thank goodness temporary periods and managed thereafter to restore their sanity so I retain a hope I preserve a hope that Israel will one day gain control over its senses however having said that we shouldn't kid ourselves about the fact that it's gone completely berserk and this whole thing called a peace process has reached the point along with the conflict itself the process that engulfs it has become completely insane I read the latest statement of the European Union this morning we have to restore negotiations we have to start up negotiations again for what it's been going on 50 years negotiations for what we don't need to negotiate we need to end the conflict negotiate what is there anyone who doubts what needs to be done so why do we have to start up negotiations again to give Blair something to do well that's my way of introduction it's just to say honestly it happens I'm very ill I got a bad I enough combination of flu and hypoglycemia which was a pretty lethal cocktail so you're going to hear the splenetic side of me which is not my it's not the full gamut of my personality I'm known to possess a sense of humor but and it's also true that I've been immersed in this reading project with the foreign relations audience which are driving me crazy so there's going to be there's an element of distortion in my personality but I stand by every word of what I just said and someday you know star winds are going to look back and really wonder what the heck happened here and it is an interesting question what did happen that allowed this thing to drag on and on and on what I want to do this evening however is I want to go over what actually happened this past summer in Gaza because I think it's widely misunderstood what happened and then to talk about what in my opinion at any rate is the only way to resolve the conflict not the goal because I think the goal is clear but the mechanism the modus operandi to achieve the goal the events this past summer the Israeli attack that commenced on Jan you excuse me Israeli attack there commenced on July 7th and ended on okay got me let's see what we can do I'll be standing so that's not a problem how does this work are here the more of an echo no good how about you in the back yes you look like you're planning a terrorist attack it's it's not the hair or the beard no it's not it's your mustache the attack that began on July 7th lasted 51 days and terminated on August 26th it was the 3rd Israeli assault on Gaza in a little over 5 years in 2008-9 no no no I'm going 2007/8 Israel launched Operation Cast Lead and then in November 2012 Israel launched operation of a pillar of the fence that was a shorter one of the Israel's murderous assaults that lasted the week cast lead lasted 22 days and this was the third assault in a little over five years and it was of the three assaults in the past now six years it was the third assault it was the most deadly it was the most devastating and it's had the most enduring results the recent report of the IMF said Gaza economy for the first time since 2006 its contracted 15 percent and the levels obviously of unemployment and everything else are off the charts at this point because the brutal siege of Gaza continues as lethally with as much leaf Fowley as before which is doubly a double disaster because the siege continues but the siege continues after the massive destruction which means no building materials have been allowed in to repair for example the dwellings of a hundred and ten thousand people in Gaza who were rendered homeless by the last Israeli attack and now there are periodic reports for example of people in Gaza literally not figuratively literally freezing to death well the background to the last attack it begins in April 2014 when Hamas the Islamic movement in Gaza mostly in Gaza but also in the West Bank when Hamas and the Palestinian Authority they formed a national consensus government Hamas as you know is officially a terrorist organization and the accept expelled expectation by Israel is Hills expectation was that the US and the EU would break off relations with the new consensus government among the Palestinians surprisingly the US and the EU did not break off relations with the new government they took a wait-and-see approach partially in my opinion it was retaliation by Secretary of State Kerry and the EU retaliation at Israel for having sabotaged Kerry's peace initiative in which he had invested a huge amount of time then on top of that surprise on top of the surprise that the EU and the US did not break off relations on top of that surprise the second surprise was the new government under the authority of President Abbas we editor reiterated its acceptance of the three EU conditions or the three what's called quartet the three quartet conditions for negotiations namely acceptance of the conditions one renunciation of violence two recognition of all past agreements acknowledgement of all past agreements and three recognition of Israel and which meant the fact own Hamas has now accepted those three conditions as well under if it were a saying world you would think this would be grounds for hope and optimism Hamas has indirectly but nonetheless de facto recognized Israel renounces violence and acknowledges past agreements but what happened was Netanyahu or the Israeli government reacted in a rage first of all they were in a rage because once again Netanyahu's genius was being thrown into doubt by the US and the EU he says Hamas is a terrorist organization they want to destroy Israel blah blah blah blah blah and everybody is supposed to defer to him genial judgment and they didn't and for [Music] Netanyahu this was the second slight the second consecutive slight because the EU in the US or it's called the p5 plus p5 plus one the negotiators with Iran that the US and the EU effectively are negotiating with Iran even though Netanyahu is against answers Iran wants to destroy Israel and blah blah blah blah blah as your generation says yada yada yada or that maybe two generations ago on on telescoping generations at this point so and of course the very last thing Netanyahu wants is a reasonable Hamas that's a disaster for Israel because the moment Hamas starts to behave reasonably then the pressure begins to be exerted on Israel well they're being reasonable why don't you negotiate and end the conflict which is the one thing Israel doesn't want not that it doesn't want to end the conflict it doesn't want to end the occupation that's the problem and it needs an irrational it needs a quote-unquote extremist Hamas in order to justify its gradual absorption its incremental annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories there's a nice phrase that was coined by an Israeli political scientist the mainstream fellow named Abner Yan Eve he referred to these Palestinian peace offensives that's the big problem it's these peace offensives where the Palestinians are acting too reasonable to moderate and therefore they need to be sufficiently pummeled that they return to inflexible inflexible and [Music] violent tactics well Netanyahu raged ranted and raged why are you negotiating with Hamas but he couldn't do very much about it until an apple I dropped into his lap a gift fell into his lap and that gift was the abduction of the three Israeli teenagers in the middle of June of this past year what we know as of now is and what was known immediately actually where's two things number one the kids the three teenagers were killed almost immediately that was known by Israel at the time and number two that the Hamas leadership had not or cannot was organized the abduction there are Hamas members involved with lower-level Hamas members it was not something that the leadership had planned or prepared but for Netanyahu this was an opportunity and if you're a good politician and I suppose Netanyahu is a good politician I can't really tell people if he fills me with such loathing he knew this was an opportunity to carry on a second another agenda namely how do you radicalize Hamas and so D legitimize them as a credible negotiating interlocutor and so he launched what was called Operation brother's keeper allegedly to find the three kids even though as I said it was known almost immediately that they had been killed and they proceeded to kill a half dozen or more Palestinians blow up several Palestinian homes on the West Bank ransack businesses and the rest about 500 Palestinians overwhelmingly Hamas numbers and the purpose was perfectly clear for anybody who wanted to see it namely they wanted to keep provoking Hamas into a violent reaction provoking Hamas into a violent reaction so that mr. Netanyahu and then throw up his hands in the despair to the world and say you see I told you they're terrorists you can't negotiate with them or as he put it later to a state US State Department official he said that never second-guess me again when it comes to Hamas well initially Hamas resisted the provocations resisted but there are other factions in Gaza but you didn't resist the provocations they start firing the homemade I don't homemade weapons and at some point the whole thing spiraled out of control and the new round or the third major the third major assault began when it began for some of you may not recall now but between the period of July 7th and July 17th the big question was whether or not Israel would launch the ground invasion they had begun with their usual Air Assault very heroic launching her air assault against Gaza it's about as heroic as shooting fish in a barrel well but then the question began whether to launch the ground invasion and the ground invasion posed a significant dilemma for Israel which it's not been able yet to figure out how to handle and the dilemma is this these homemade projectiles which Hamas and the other factions they use these projectiles they cannot be disabled from the air the only way they can be disabled is if you send in a ground force to eliminate to them it was the same dilemma Israel had in 2006 when it invaded Lebanon it could not stop the Hezbollah rocket attacks without launching the ground invasion but the problem is this if you launch your ground invasion it's going to mean significant combatant casualties and Israeli society is not tolerant of or won't abide significant combatant casualties it's a Spartan like society where actually a civilian casualty is seen as less a cause of lamentation than a military casualty so the first problem is if we invade there's a serious problem of significant combatant casualties there's only one way to prevent significant combatant casualties there is a way and it takes very little imagination to figure it out the way you prevent it is as the army enters into this case Gaza you destroy everything in sight everything to the right of you everything to the left of you and everything in front of you and that way the product of the probability of combatant casualties is drastically reduced which is what Israel did in 2008 not okay now my memories go in 2008 9 yes 2008 9 which is what Israel did join Operation Cast Lead so when if you read the order as it is now is a extensive record the officers told the soldiers as they entered Gaza the during Operation Cast Lead just destroy everything if you see anything move you blow it away it's as simple as that and it worked quite effectively so in Operation Cast Lead there were 13 there were 13 Israeli casualties of the 13 10 were combatants and of the 10 combatants four were killed by what's called friendly fire where Israeli soldiers accidentally killed other Israeli soldiers so in all it was really only six combatant casualties on the Palestinian side about 1,400 people were killed of whom estimates are about up to 1,200 were civilians the problem was after Operation Cast Lead which caused a outrage of revulsion around the world and the threat of what was called back then the Goldstone report for those of you who remember it Israel was no longer able to get away with committing massive death and destruction on the order of Gaza because excuse me the order of Khalid because the international community said no that was the message of the Goldstone report so the dilemma Israel faced was if you invade Gaza and there are a large number of civilian casualties you have a domestic problem if you invade Gaza and you commit to much death and destruction you have an international problem so what do you do and Netanyahu held off held off held off until a new gift dropped in his lap and that gift I don't have time to go through all the details but the main gift that fell on his lap the main gift was the downing of the Ukrainian airliner excuse me did the mcdonnen of the Malaysian airliner over the Ukraine now some of you might say that's a little bit far-fetched what could one possibly have to do with the other but in fact they have everything to do with each other that's the nature of politics because a lot of politics is played out in the public media and the public realm and Netanyahu the current prime minister in 1989 for those of you who remember way back when there was this thing called the First Intifada among the Palestinians was a non-violent uprising among the Palestinians and it was giving the Israelis a very hard time a very hard time they didn't know how to manage it and then just in the middle of the First Intifada there's the Tiananmen Massacre in China now some of you are now thinking okay this is getting a little bit bizarre Malaysian airline Tiernan n what is this this is beginning to sound like one of those 911 truthers no no it really is not nearly as far-fetched you I think I could convince you in a half moment so why do I mention all that because Netanyahu at the time in 1989 he was already a known politician Netanyahu gave a famous speech at bar-ilan University in which he said Israel's big mistake was it's a big mistake was when all the cameras were riveted on the Tiananmen Massacre it should have used that moment to carry out an expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank that's politics you look for those opportunities and the opportunities are fleeting even you as the cliche has it either you strike when the iron is hot or you may not have another chance and Netanyahu realized this time that now all the cameras had shifted from Gaza to the Malaysian airliner and he said this was the time to go in for the kill we probably can carry out quite a lot of death and destruction without anybody taking much notice and for those of you who care to look at the calendar the night of the day the night of the day that the Malaysian airliner was downed that was the night that July 17th that the operation protective edge the ground invasion the ground invasion which is by far the most devastating Oh was launched already on July 7th when the air invasion began it was quite clear that this is not going to be a military operation in any conventional sense this is just going to be a terror campaign in order to do what the Goldstone report said was the purpose of Israel's attack on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead the Goldstone said were report said the purpose was to humiliate terrorize or to punish humiliate and terrorize a civilian population to punish humiliate and terrorize the civilian population and that was the purpose of this latest round or Israel from the very beginning was deliberately targeting civilian homes there's a report that just came out by bet Selim called black flag on Israel's targeting that's sounding the Israeli Center for human rights and the occupied territories targeting civilian homes targeting businesses schools mosques hospitals ambulances power stations sewage plants civilian shelters and fleeing and sit and gaussians who were fleeing attack there today been surprisingly few authoritative Human Rights reports that have been issued I mentioned the one a moment ago but that Selim there's a second one by physicians for Human Rights it's called no safe place pretty grisly or what it depicts in particular in areas like she Jaya and Gaza any here on here Arabic or khu CA how do you pronounce it KH u za cuz yeah my Arabic accident horrible and as Israel carried on this a wanton campaign of terror it made its usual I should also add that in concert and distinction to the past Israel has not allowed with the exception of physicians for Human Rights Israel has not allowed any human rights delegations to enter Gaza in order to document what happened so Human Rights Watch was turned away when it sent a delegation Amnesty International was turned away we had sent delegation the Human Rights Council delegation led by but no longer William Chavez they were turned away which is very convenient because then the future the only ones who can have documentation will be Hamas and an Israel saying can you trust Hamas so you deny any of the reputable human rights organizations access and then you pretend as if there's no credible evidence to document to sustain the claims that war crimes were committed as always Israel claimed that Hamas was using Palestinians as human shields and that's what caused accounted for the death and destruction and today there have been several there of course journalists reputable journalists who were in Gaza at the time including from the head of the Middle East division of BBC and they all attested to the fact that there was no evidence that Hamas was using civilians as human shields but just as an Operation Cast Lead the Human Rights supports have documented that Israel was using pow Estonians as human shields during Operation protective edge the purpose of the terror campaign was perfectly rational it's not an act of sadism and the purpose was to break the will of resistance of the people of Gaza or to turn the people of Gaza on turn them against Hamas it caused enough death and destruction eventually the people come out of there come out of there dwelling zhh they see all the deaths death and the destruction and there's a normal tendency to blame someone for it and the first person to blame of course after Israel is to blame Hamas and it's they've done it before and it's a successful tactic and so the hope was either to break the will of the people of Gaza at that moment or later in time to turn the people of Gaza against Hamas for having created the catastrophe that ensued and by the end of the attack 2200 gazans were killed 70 to 75% of them were civilians about 520 children were killed about 10,000 were injured and the destruction a minimum probably at this point the estimate is six billion dollars in infrastructure a damage on the Israeli side there were 67 Israeli soldiers who were killed and there were five civilian casualties the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross he said after turnover visiting Gaza at the end of the attack he said I've never seen such massive destroy ever before and this is somebody who's not alien to war zones the head of the Secretary General of the UN ban ki-moon he said the massive death and destruction in Gaza has shocked and shamed the world and probably the most compelling testimony comes from the world's leading authority on Gaza economy who happens to be a woman hmm who's Jewish she's a daughter of survivors of Auschwitz and she's also a superb scholar she's at Harvard her name is Sarah Roy and she writes she's within the standard works on the Gaza economy where she writes in the near three decades they have been involved with Gaza and her people I have never seen the kind of physical and psychological destruction that I see there today the wounds of this war could prove too severe to heal and the evidence as I said is that that's probably accurate not least because nothing is currently being done to allow the wounds to heal the illegal immoral inhuman blockade of Gaza continues there were some surprises good and bad for Israel during the last assault on Gaza it wasn't too much of a surprise that the United States gave Israel blanket support every day the State Department or Sun Obama official as I prefer to say Obama nation official would come out and say that Israel has the right to defend itself as if that were the issue Israel's right to defend itself even as the human rights organizations already the third week in July third week in July organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International they were saying Israel's targeting civilians Israel's targeting civilian infrastructure those are war crimes under international law and when Obama or one of his associates was asked he just kept saying Israel has the right to self-defense Israel has the right to defend itself the fact of the matter is that Obama was the enabler in chief of the latest massacre in Gaza the reason why is not hard no it's not hard to figure out the simple fact is that Israel had from the day started its latest assault on Gaza it had wall-to-wall support in Congress you know all 100 senators signed a statement supporting Israel even people who are so-called liberal like Bernie Sanders in Vermont and Elizabeth Warren made these hideous statements Elizabeth Warren is supposedly the leftist candidate she was actually justifying Israel attacks on hospitals you know that's a low life she ain't getting my vote not that makes a difference but ain't going to happen and in order to stand up to the whole Congress it would require spying it would require principle it would require courage and those are three areas where Obama suffers severe deficits and so he didn't do what was obviously the right thing to do and though you have to add he did worse because there was always the option of shutting up you have to keep going out each day and saying is they'll have the right to defend itself there was the option of you know even our New York is a Jewish town Jewish power brokers that we have a new decent mayor hard to believe bill de blasio when the attacks and Gaza began he made the usual remarks Israel has the right to defend himself the first day and I need your shut up I could accept I can understand if you have such big forces against Yunnan would take a lot of guts to stand up to them but it's not what Obama did he just kept giving the green light for the death and destruction that ensued that wasn't a surprise but other things were a surprise and they're actually quite significant Palestinians lost all regional support in the Arab world it was a first there was a point I'm only learning about it now we're appreciating it now there was a point in time some of the older people in the war room will know where the Palestinian cause had huge resonance in the Arab world you couldn't do anything publicly you couldn't do anything publicly that downgraded the cause of Palestine at least publicly you had to defer to it and that was referring now back to what I mentioned at the very beginning that was one of big problems on Maher Sadat had Sadat wanted to sign a separate agreement with Israel but a separate agreement meant abandoning the Palestinian cause because it would have meant the West Bank in Gaza would remain under Israeli control and Sadat began to panic as it turned out correctly because he was killed he began to panic if I sign a separate agreement with Israel and abandoned the Palestinians I'm going to be seen as a traitor in the Arab world and that's going to be my in his mind metaphorical death sentence in fact it turned into his literal death sentence that's how powerful the Palestine cause was about 40 years ago but things have drastically changed in recent years first of all Egypt and Saudi Arabia the Arab Emirates they openly supported Israel against Gaza they were calling for Israel to destroy Gaza in fact according to Hamas statements this past week they claimed and is and the Palestinian Authority hasn't denied it they claimed that 80% of the targets that Israel used in its attack during Operation protective edge 80% came from Palestinian Authority informers sending information to Israel that's a very sad commentary but the resonance that the Palestine caused once happened and once had enjoy in the Arab world has now pretty much evaporated as I said Egypt and Saudi Arabia supported the Israeli attack the Arab League met only once and in its meeting it effectively sided with Israel against Hamas and the rest of the Arab world will I don't have to tell anyone this world if you live in in this room if you live in Syria if you live in Iraq if you live in Yemen if you live in Libya Palestine is not a top priority item for you the Palestine cause has been politically in largely displaced and marginalized in the Arab world you can almost say it's been reduced to its actual proportions which is a secession movement that's its size now it's political and geographical size once resonating throughout the Arab world it's now been drastically reduced it lost also a lot of support because this is when the ISIS phenomena emerged writ large and it was very easy to assimilate Hamas to Isis to crazy Islam Islam assists jihadists and that also subtracted from the reservoir of support for the Palestinians strangely the strongest support for the Palestinians came from of all places Latin America where almost all the major latin-american countries Argentina Bolivia Brazil El Salvador Chile Peru Uruguay Venezuela they gave a lot of vocal support heroic and courageous support to the Palestinians because there was no self-interest involved they had nothing to gain from it it couldn't be because you know oil is south the Saudis it was just genuine solidarity but the bottom line is if we're honest about these things and the latest attack the Palestinians were alone and abandoned the things that came as a negative surprise to Israel were first of all what came to be called the terror tunnels are the terror tunnels or the tunnels system in Gaza there was a quite sophisticated ramified network no question about it it didn't come as all-together of a surprise to me because anybody who has who's familiar with the Muslim Arab world and I have a personal as against an intellectual connection to it knows that five out of every four Muslims majors in civil engineering so yes five out of every four I I know what I'm saying I'm trying to be ironic and so you have all of these civil engineers in Gaza and on top of that they're all unemployed so now you have a million unemployed civil engineers and unsurprisingly they applied their talents and their abilities and their training to building a quite impressive tunnel system it was not vulnerable to air assaults or artillery attack and it was also very it was done with very primitive simple instruments for example they need a way to so that the Israeli drones overhead couldn't hear the digging and they developed this device with a bicycle chain I couldn't quite know figure it out very simple basic but anyone who knows Gazans can tell you they're infinitely resourceful they can take this bottle and this cup and they can turn it into an automobile in about 15 minutes I was teaching in Turkey this past year and I had one Gaza in the class and every time something went wrong with the equipment I just come up you know how to do this in like five minutes and they all figured out and so they built the the tunnel system and it did cause Israel significant problems there's no question about that as I said during the first join the operation Operation Cast Lead there were ten combatant casualties of which as I said four were friendly fire this time it wasn't Stalingrad but it was 67 Israeli combatant casualties it was they were having a problem and the problem was these Hamas militants were popping out of the ground and giving the Israelis combatants of a run for their money Israel couldn't just destroy everything and move in the tunnels remained the tunnels were dug deeply enough and they were strong enough resistant enough that they were still there even after the Israeli bombardments what's not true is they said Israel invaded Gaza in order to destroy the terror tunnels that's complete they said because these tunnels were passing underneath the border from Gaza into Israel and that's why they went in the terror tunnels which had penetrated he is really border was complete nonsense and takes just two minutes of reflection to figure out why first of all and the question of the numbers Israel claimed 31 terror tunnels were destroyed of those 31 they they themselves to say only 12 went inside Israel but the more important point is it was a very simple way to handle that problem it doesn't require any great knowledge of earth-moving to figure it out all you have to do is go to look at the lunatic regime in Egypt so Egypt as most of you know it claims that there are all of these terrorists entering the Sinai through Gaza that's what they claim and it's responsible for killing all of these Egyptian soldiers so what did Sisi do the current president of Egypt what @cc do he built a moat along the border with Gaza filled it with water and that's the end of the tunnels he didn't have to enter Gaza he didn't have to blow up hospitals he didn't have to blow up schools I don't like what he did because a lot of people were displaced along the border on the Egyptian side I don't approve of what he did but certainly there was the option of simply building a moat along your border filling it with water and then divide by tunnels is there anyone here who can possibly believe that the people in Gaza who has only the most primitive implements that they were able to dig deeper into the ground than Israeli earth moving equipment is that really credible and act just yesterday just yesterday the Times of Israel reported that Israel discovered a new tunnel and they wrote and we destroyed it without even going into Gaza we destroy it in the Israeli side so then why didn't you have why couldn't you do that with the tunnels all the terror tunnels that you claimed you had to destroy and destroy Gaza in the process well the answer is simple the problem was not the tunnels that were going from Gaza into Israel the problem was the tunnels in Gaza because as Israelis like to say every once in a while they have to go into Gaza and mow the lawn mow the lawn means destroy everything in sight and they don't like for Israeli soldiers to get killed when they mow the lawn and so they wanted to destroy the tunnels in Gaza destroy the tunnels in Gaza so the next time Israel mows the lawn there won't be combatant casualties the problem was not the tunnels that go from Israel excuse me they go from Gaza into Israel which could easily have been disabled with a moat the problem was the tunnels inside Gaza ah that's what they wanted to destroy now nowadays you hear everybody agrees everybody agrees the EU agrees the Palestinian Authority agrees Egypt agrees the u.s. agrees everybody agrees that the construction equipment if it's ever allow construction material if it's ever allowed into Gaza it must not be used by Hamas to build the tunnels it must not be used that's census why is that does that mean the people of Gaza have to be defenseless every time Israel mows the lawn they're not allowed to have tunnels to resist a foreign invasion where is it written under international law that only one side has the right to defend itself even the tunnels that go inside Israel so what Israel's planes tanks artillery and win go into Gaza all the time so why can't Hamas tunnels go into Israel I don't see the logic of that only one side has the right to defend itself only one side has the right to launch attacks and in this case it's the occupier site not the occupied well before the tunnels as you remember the big talk was those horrible Hamas rockets a Hamas rocket attacks now there were no Hamas rocket attacks that's also pure nonsense I know some people are looking skeptically at that okay this is one step too far so let's go over the numbers and let's see whether at the end I could convince you that this notion of Hamas rocket attacks was a complete fraud first of all let's start with something Elementary what is a rocket at least maybe it's my generation but when I think of a rocket I think of something fairly formidable a weapon for example that might stretch from the ground to may be the seal that's a rocket in my mind maybe that's quaint but that's what I think of when I think of a rocket usually when I think of a rocket I don't think of a firecracker or something a weapon the size of a pencil that doesn't strike me as a rocket that strikes me as a pencil with an exploding eraser so let's go over closely the numbers and see what we get because there has to be I had lunch with two very sophisticated you see these students who are talking about Chopin our no.3 I have to include you you King late you can't he came fashionably late so fashionably late did I left already no and they were talking about Schopenhauer and mathematical logic so I know I'm dealing here with a very smart audience unless they're not representative of the rest of you for a bunch of losers and you're just sent to impress me so let's look at the numbers and let's see what we get let's figure it out Israel claimed that Hamas fired four thousand excuse me four thousand Rockets and is Hamas fired four thousand rockets at Israel I got the number wrong a moment ago and there were seven civilian casualties the number of civilians varies depending what they include foreign workers and things like that but let's just say seven civilian casualties and they say there was fifteen million dollars in property damage so I see we have an accountant here you were taking the numbers so let's put it down again four thousand Rockets seven civilian casualties fifteen million dollars in damage you got that down good work now we obviously have what's called a discrepancy here or to use a fancier word and incommensurability here namely four thousand Rockets four thousand Rockets yet just seven civilian casualties and only fifteen million dollars in property damage if one rocket hit this building it would be fifteen million dollars in property damage this building is clearly this room would cost fifteen million dollars in property damage so how how do you explain it well everybody knows the answer it's called Iron Dome that brilliant contrivance of Israeli Jewish genius Iron Dome and they said it was iron dome that accounts for the fact that's the anti-missile defense system it's iron dome that accounts for the fact that not withstanding the large number of rockets there were so few civilian casualties okay let's test the proposition I see there are some people here who are glued to this demonstration watching to see whether I can prove what seems to be highly implausible there were no rocket attacks so let's see four thousand Rockets caused seven civilian casualties and 15 million dollars in property damage during Operation Cast Lead Israel said there were 1,000 rockets fired 1000 rockets fired and there were three civilian casualties in Israel and fifteen million dollars in property damage by coincidence the same figure for property damage so let's I'm going to look for a mathematician here and I'm going to choose somebody okay you know don't turn around you I knew it that's why you turned around I've got you you can do it remember what Jimmy Cliff said you can get it if you really want if you try and try if you really try if okay now let's just get the facts clear so there's no misconstrue love my proof Operation Cast Lead in two thousand is it seven eight or eight nine two thousand eight nine one during Operation Cast Lead there was no Iron Dome Israel had no anti-missile defense system so if one thousand Rockets caused three civilian casualties without opera without iron dome how many civilian casualties would have been caused by four thousand Rockets yeah so okay I'm going to give you a clue here four times 312 so 1,000 Rockets caused a 1000 Rockets caused three civilian casualties 4000 Rockets would have caused 12 so what's the maximum number of civilian casualties that iron dome could have accounted for what's the maximum number 5 in turned out it was seven that were caused your seven civilian casualties had there been no iron dome it would have been 12 so the most iron dome could have accounted for is saving five civilian casualties but that's not even true itself because between Operation Cast Lead and this past summer Israel had upgraded radically its civil defense system its shelters and warning system and so the five who were saved they have nothing to do with iron dome it was the civil civilian defense system iron dome didn't account for that in fact the one of the world's leading experts on the anti-missile defense system his name is Theodore Postol at MIT and he has a impressive track record way way before almost everyone this room was born during the first Gulf War in 1991 the big thing back then was not Iron Dome it was called the Patriot missile and it was all of his ballyhoo about the Patriot missile which they said had an 80% success rate in knocking down the Iraqi Scud missiles that was the figure that we're using incidentally exactly the same figure that we're now using for Iron Dome and what did it turn out well Poe still examine the evidence carefully and he reached the conclusion he said at most at most the Patriot of the Patriot anti-missile defense he said at most might have hit one scud missile that was it and now postal examine the data on Iron Dome he said at most if we want to be very generous at most it had an efficacy rate of 10% but it was probably closer it was probably closer to 5% so now let's do the math 4,000 rockets were fired in Israel I'll accept that figure four thousand rockets were fired in Israel of those four thousand Iron Dome had an efficacy rate maximum ten percent so that means 400 rockets were detonated and exploded 400 rockets were detonated and explode humbling Rockets does that leave 3,600 now here's the $64 questions we used to call in my day $64 is a lot of money back don't laugh I'm serious I'm still trying to earn 64 though um 3,600 rockets but only 15 million dollars in property damage now you can explain the reduction in civilian deaths by Iron Dome you can claim or the shelter system but businesses schools residential homes they don't go into shelters so the shelter system can't explain the limited property damage 3,600 rockets and only fifteen million dollars in property damage what's the only thing that can possibly explain that in commencer ability what's the only thing that can explain it can somebody call it out they wired rockets they were enhanced fireworks unfortunately in this case it's a casualty for a truth that both sides had an investment in this notion of Hamas rockets for Israel you know we're under attack rockets self-defense and all that after a little while is real it backfired because they didn't expect it would last so long the engage assault on Gaza and then it start Israel's tourism industry took a very big hit and they didn't want to lose the tourism revenues so the New York mayor at that time Emperor Bloomberg he went he went to Israel he said everything is fine Tweel it's beautiful it's safer than any American city which of course make you wonder well it's safer than any American city why are you incinerating and devastating Gaza and then they switched the terror tunnels and that way they have an excuse to destroy Gaza and maintain their tourism revenues but also Hamas had an investment in this notion of Hamas rockets because it wanted to show that resistance works that it was having a real impact in terms of this armed resistance to the Israeli occupation it's not true in my opinion but certainly cause psychological disorientation in Israel but in terms of actual physical damage you know if you go on the Israeli websites and you can check yourself you know feel free to confirm it and they show the pictures of the damage from the Hamas rockets apart from one or two pictures we'll go look yourself one or two pictures which showed buildings which were significantly damaged everything else is just windshields on cars and things like that there was nothing because they were in rockets well the whole thing begins to wind down on August 3rd it was revealing exactly how it all ended the Israelis by the end were going completely bananas and they were targeting the UN shelters they targeted the D when there were UN facilities schools and other facilities which were converted into shelters and they targeted one UN shelter two UN shelters three UN shelters killing women and children who were have been directly to these shelters were safety and you could feel the pressure is beginning to build up in the like banking moon you wretched comatose puppet of the United States when are you going to say something and he stays silent he stays silent until finally on August 3rd ban ki-moon the pressure had you know it's like a pressure cooker on him he finally had to say something and he described the last Israeli attack I think was the sixth or seventh shelter he called it a moral outrage and criminal act at that point the puppet master had lost even his puppet and that was a big problem for Obama he was now isolated in the world uh and finally after banking moon turned on him Obama had to say something and the same day log his third the same day finally the United States State Department it called the Israeli attack appalling and disgraceful and interestingly it tells you something a lot about politics but we only have time now the Congress remained absolutely quiet the Congress which would be 100 percent behind Israel the moment the US was completely isolated in the world and they knew the country has a problem it can to go to bat for Israel anymore at that point even Congress shut up and what's-his-name and Netanyahu announced the withdrawal from Gaza the ground invasion however it then lasted unfortunately another three weeks because of the negotiations and also there was the Isis beheading of the US supporter again the attention shifted elsewhere and at that point Israel went completely insane it was like watching a computer game they were choosing the high-rises which housed mostly the Gaza middle class the high-rises and one building after another were just being demolished to break the will of the Palestinians and on August 26th it came to an end it's hard to make a balance sheet I would say neither side achieved neither sight achieved its objectives the Israeli objective to break the will of the people of Gaza did not succeed its objective of inflicting a military and political defeat on Hamas it did not succeed quite the contrary as several Israeli commentators pointed out is will enter the attack on Gaza because it was enraged that the EU and the US were negotiating with Hamas but by the end Israel was negotiating with Hamas in order to bring the conflict to an end so it didn't achieve its aims it didn't eliminate all the so-called rockets it didn't eliminate the so-called terror tunnels the only thing it did was it's a ceated albeit temporarily it satiate the bloodlust of Israeli society which seems to derive now just a certain kind of sadistic pleasure from the death and destruction that's inflicted on the people of Gaza on the other hand it has to be said that although there was the Hamas success was more successful in its military resistance than in the past politically it did not achieve any of its objectives and it's foolish in my opinion to pretend otherwise Hamas each time there has been a round with Israel it has always put one goal first the one goal has all has been to end the siege of Gaza to lift the siege of Gaza and each time they were promised when the conflict wound down that the siege should be lifted again they were promised this time the siege would be lifted and now we are how many months were six we're eight months after and the siege is as much in place as it was when the fighting began in July so Hamas did not achieve any of its objectives and I know what time is it so I'm going to just leave off with five minutes about what I think is possible and what I think is not possible about resolving the conflict first of all let's start with the basics as a formula how to end the conflict that to me is completely uncontroversial it's two states in the 1967 border what's called the 1967 border and a just resolution of the refugee question everybody in the world agrees on that except for the unites except for Israel backed by the United States so I'm not going to even discuss what should the Goldi there is no break in that consensus formally legally in all political institutions whether it's United Nations human rights organizations judicial bodies like the International Court of Justice they all put forth the same terms for ending the conflict and everything else to me is just flights of fancy having nothing to do with the real world the question is how do you budge Israel that's a real tough nut to crack they are tenacious they are tenacious and they are I hate to use a word that sounds like it some to Spock but there the baby doctor not Star Trek there are they're just spoiled silly and it's very hard to get them to budge there have been basically three strategies that have been tried one strategy is the international diplomacy and the international diplomacy is basically the strategy to the Palestine Authority or Palestine Liberation Organization would they have pursued for the last twenty and more years basically beginning with the Oslo accord of September 1993 an international diplomacy its cornerstone is that we can show the Israelis that we pose no threat to them if we show the Israelis we're happy to live within in fact if we cooperate with them in terms of security then the Israelis will recognize we pose no existential threat and they'll withdraw and give us our state and if they don't then the world will see United States in particular that we negotiate in good faith Israelis are acting in bad faith and the US will put the pressure on Israel to withdraw those are the basic premises and the bracelet basic premises is everybody knows are false because Israel is not staying in the occupied territories because it fears for its security and therefore all you have to do is make them feel secure and they'll leave they're staying in the occupied territories because they don't want to give up the occupied territories they want to keep them and so 20 years after the process began in September 1993 there were 250,000 settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories now the last numbers ISIL over 500 76,000 have more than doubled I would say looking at fact looking at actions and not words that's proof enough that this diplomacy thing will never work because Israel is determined to stay not to preserve its security but because it wants to keep the territory and the United States is not going to risk a frontal collision with Israel exactly why is a separate question they're not going to do it simply to placate the Palestinians they want so the international diplomacy strategy doesn't work the second strategy has been the Hamas armed resistance on the international law they have the right to use armed force to end an occupation so for me that's not a relevant question of course they have the right to use armed force to end that occupation not just an occupation but it's a double criminal a double criminality it's an illegal occupation and it's an illegal siege of Gaza so they have in my opinion of course they have the right but the question is not whether they have the right the question is whether it's a proven strategy does it work and I think all the evidence shows that the armed resistance won't work it can't work it's a dead end for the Palestinians and then you might ask what's been the only option is there another option and I think there is an the third option is mass nonviolent resistance but mass nonviolent resistance that's coordinated with the Solidarity movement in the West if they do it on their own Palestinians are just going to be shot down that's not that's pretty clear has to be done in coordination with a solidarity movement the West if we give our all obviously they're going to be getting a lot more than they're all that we many of them will be giving their life but if they can summon the internal resources about which I'm pretty skeptical now but if they could and I think in combination with a solidarity movement basically my own view is the strategy that can be most successful among the Palestinians is the strategy that succeeded in the American self to desegregate the American self you create enough national enough national embarrassment for the government and international because remember our civil rights movement was unfolding during the Cold War and it was just incredible propaganda for the Soviet Union that these black people were being they're beaten and killed just for demanding the right to vote and that put a lot of pressure on at the time President Johnson to do something about what was happening in the American South if if the civil rights movement had unfolded in the American South and it was just confined there if it was just confined there there was no resonance nationally or internationally and of course have failed the black people have just been mowed down it required not just incredible superhuman really astonishing courage of the people in the south that was a very scary place the American South as one person for that was mean country I mean the hatred of black people it's not you can't for your generation it's not even possible to convey just have to read about it and watch the newsreel footage it was a very ugly place it had just been confined to the South look in the south every governor a mayor police force it was all Ku Klux Klan that was what it was like there the white citizens councils but once you expand the arena the courage of the people there but then making it a national issue in the United States and an international issue they were able to succeed and I think the same thing can happen with the Palestinians right now it's not on the drawing board because the Palestinians in particular in the West Bank are defeated atomized cynical people but that's the only way I see it can end you you

Channel: UCD - University College Dublin

Views: 167,687

Keywords: UCD, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, UCD - University College Dublin, myucd, ucddublin, Palestine (Region), Gaza Strip (Administrative Division), Norman Finkelstein (Author), Iron Dome (Film Subject), Israel Defense Forces (Armed Force), Israel (Country), Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (Film Subject), Israelis (Ethnicity), Palestinian People (Ethnicity)

Id: NmjoCBBHec8

Length: 94min 3sec (5643 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 23 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Powerful, as usual.