Норман Финкельштейн в Пантеонском университете Афин: два года после 7 октября

- Well, thank you for having me here this evening. Sometimes when I hear myself being introduced, I imagine that I'm coming across as a martyr and that's very far from how I conceive my life. There are some sacrifices along the way that I had to make, but if the price of success had been the loss of mental freedom, then I much prefer what I walked away with as compared to what I lost. So for young people in the room who are contemplating giving over their lives to a cause or the cause, bear in mind that you're not signing yourself off for martyrdom, but quite the contrary. You'll be able to experience the exhilaration of being mentally free. Secondly, speaking as I am in Greece, which I've been informed I was here before, I would be remiss in my responsibilities if I didn't mention, I do teach political theory, so of course I teach the Greek classics, not in the original, I never learned Greek, but it's always a great pleasure for me to teach them. I very much enjoy teaching Plato, Aristotle, and so forth. As a young man, I do remember many wonderful moments listening to Teodorakis, and I do recall when I was in graduate school and it was at a very austere ruling elite institution, Princeton. And when I would go to shower, I would turn up Teodorakis so I could listen to him, which was down the corridor while I was showering. and I remember once I heard the sound being turned down, somebody walked into my room. But it was listening to him and Marie Faranduri. How many know her by name, Marie Faranduri? I don't know because it's so long ago now, it's 40 years ago. It was deeply, it was deeply inspiring. And I assume Kostagavris is Greek, correct? Yeah. Yeah. I think just as a side note, I believe his little film, which got very little coverage, The Music Box. How many people have seen The Music Box? Raise your hand. I think that it's one of the, Kostagavris's, The Music Box, is a deeply insightful film about the Nazi Holocaust. It's very well done. And the actor, I guess the chief actor was Hungarian. Yeah, he was utterly brilliant. So, that's my list of credits to Greece. And I want to second what was said before. You have many people, persons in history to be proud of. And certainly one of them is that Sana Kasim decided to settle in Greece. If you could just stand up, so I'm sure most people know you. Sana is a genuine force of nature. And it's in her nature that everything she does, she does exceptionally. a very gifted person. If it were a just or world, she would have been Prime Minister of your country. But that's the way it works. And now, that leaves me. One thing I want to do before. If you have an empty seat next to you, raise your hand so people in the back who would like to sit can sit down. So just raise your hand high if you have an empty seat next to you and somebody wants to sit. Okay. What I'm going to do this evening, until somebody takes out the hook and pulls me off stage, I want to just try to review the events of the last two years. and try to make sense of them, at least as I've attempted to make sense of them. And my opinions have evolved over time.

Although, I think what I said in the very first couple of weeks holds up two years later. Actually, my one big slip at the very beginning was due to none other than Sana Kasim. Because she called me, she emailed me one morning early and she said, "Turn on the radio. There's been a big prison break from Gaza." And I then proceeded. I recognized I could be making a mistake. Because it was too soon. But I immediately posted something, or Sana posted something on the social media, celebrating the event. Now that was within 24 hours, maybe even less. And that particular statement cost me a certain amount of grief, and I had to defend it. And frankly, even to this day, I have to think through what happened on October 7th. As a moral, legal, and political question, I still can't claim I have resolved it in my mind. But that's where it began. And now we're more than two years after that. I think it was a Saturday morning when I got the message about what happened. So, what I would like to do this evening is, together with you, not speaking at you, to try to make sense of what has happened. And then obviously at the end, where are things headed, or seem to be headed. When you discuss any historical event, there's always the question of where to begin. If this were somebody supportive of Israel, up at the podium, they would want to begin 3,000 years ago. But skipping the middle 2,000 years, just going from when there was a Jewish kingdom, and then leaping to the Zionist movement, and forgetting the interim 2,000 years. Even if you are not a propagandist, there's still the question of where to begin. And my opinion is, it's as sensible as any other place to begin with 1948, when Gaza becomes Gaza, where Gaza becomes a physical and a political entity. In the course of Israel's establishment, beginning late 1947 and continuing up till March 1949, about roughly 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from the area that became the State of Israel, the State of Israel, and ended up in the Gaza Strip. Now, that's the first point of reference, that Gaza was and still is an overwhelmingly refugee population. And that's about roughly 70% to 80% of the Gaza population. The second basic fact about Gaza is it's an overwhelmingly, not overwhelmingly, it's significantly a child population. It's about 48% children. So, it should register in your mind, as I imagine for most of you it has, that when you hear about artificially induced famine in Gaza, and the numbers were about a quarter of the population was suffering from not starvation, but a higher level of food deprivation called famine. It's about, the numbers were about 500,000, where in that category, it's a very complex system that's been created by this organization called IPC, and they have food insecurity, extreme food insecurity, starvation, and then stage five, famine. About 500,000 Gazans have been suffering famine, which is about a quarter of the population, half of whom are children. So, that to me are the two basic facts that you have to bear in mind, as you see the events unfold, and overwhelmingly, refugee population, and half of whom are children. One of the things that's very striking when you look at the history of Gaza, since 1948, is the impressions of people who went to work there, or went to visit there. And one term, I was struck myself, that kept coming up, when you look at the memoirs, the memories. Many people keep describing Gaza. It's not my terms. It's not Hamas's terms. They describe Gaza.

Already, when it was under Egyptian rule, beginning in 1948, 1848, they describe Gaza as a concentration camp. So, if you take a senior UN official who went, who was in Gaza, he was sent to work in Gaza. His name was ELM Burns, and he described Gaza in his memoir. He describes it as a huge concentration camp. That was during already under the Egyptian rule. Come 1967, the father of the presidential candidate, some of you might remember, if you're old enough, the Democratic candidate Al Gore, G-O-R-E. He ran for president in the year 2000. And his father was also a senator. My memory is Al Gore, senior. And he visits Gaza right after the June 1967 war. And how does he describe Gaza? He describes Gaza as, quote, "A huge concentration camp on the Seine, if you will." That was his expression. You come up to 2004, the head of Israel's National Security Council. His name is Giora Island. And Giora Island is still among the living.

In fact, he's one of the principal advisors to the current government in Israel. His name is Giora Island. He has a conversation with some American officials. How does he describe Gaza? He describes Gaza as a huge concentration camp. So, whether or not the term is technically correct, the fact of the matter is, that's the image that came to everybody's mind who went to visit Gaza, a huge concentration camp. Now, that was before Giora Island, for example. He made his observation in 2004. That was before Israel imposed its brutal medieval siege on Gaza. After Hamas won the election in January 2006. Just as a factual matter, you can get back to it later if you're interested. When Hamas ran for election in 2006, the parliamentary elections embracing the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. I don't remember if East Jerusalemites voted. Maybe not. I can't remember right now. In any event, they didn't run on an ideological platform. They didn't run to impose Sharia law. They didn't even run with any particular focus on the state of Israel. They ran on the platform of reform. They decided that the Palestinian Authority was hopelessly corrupt and hopelessly incompetent. Hamas had a reputation for personal rectitude. That means honesty. And competence in the institutions they ran. The various charities and things of that sort. And that was their platform, a platform of reform. They won the election. And then Israel immediately imposed this medieval siege on Gaza. And then the United States and the EU went along with it. So, to begin with, you have this concentration camp. And then now the concentration camp is compounded by this medieval siege. The siege was such that Israel decide what went in, what went out, who went out. The list of things that Israel banned, the list of things Israel banned from entering Gaza, was so long, chocolate, potato chips, baby chicks, spices, coriander. The list was so long that at some point they just switched it around and produced a list of what could enter Gaza. Because the list was so long of what was prohibited from entering Gaza. So, what was the purpose? Before I get to that, I should also say, I said not only what went in and what went out, but who went in and who went out. Which meant, if you had a medical condition, say you had cancer and you wanted to go to a hospital, a facility, or a doctor abroad, Israel conditioned you going, being able to leave Gaza, on being a squealer. You had to rat on people. You had to be a collaborator in order to get permission to leave. And you can imagine that's a very difficult choice to make, between getting the medical care, which will decide whether you live or die, or collaborating with the Israeli occupation of Gaza. So, that was, what was the purpose of it? The purpose was perfectly obvious. They made no secret of it, and it was not a surprise. As for those of you who go back to my era, which is pretty much nobody in the room, when the popular unity, Unidad Popular, was elected in Chile, was elected into power in 1970. It was headed by a person named Salvador Allende. And he ran on the socialist platform, and he came to power on that platform. So, the United States was determined to make sure this experiment doesn't work. And Henry Kissinger, who was national security advisor at that time, who wasn't yet Secretary of State, he famously said, "We're going to make the Chilean economy scream." And turn the population against the experiment in order to rid Latin America of this popular unity example. And Israel, on a smaller scale, that was their goal. And they were very straightforward about it. They said, "We're going to put the people of Gaza on a," this is their words, "a humanitarian minimum diet." It may sound very science fiction-like, but Israel calculated the number of calories that each person in Gaza needed for physical survival. And the reason was, they said, "We want to keep the Gaza economy on the precipice, on the edge." And the reason was, they said, "We want to keep the Gaza economy on the precipice, on the edge between life and death." Keep it on the edge, so that people will decide to put an end to this Hamas experiment. And also, for people of Gaza, they said, "We want to keep the Gaza economy on the precipice, on the edge, between life and death." Keep it on the edge, so that people will decide to put an end to this Hamas experiment. They said, "We want people to want to end it, because it looked like the blame was on Hamas." They were incompetent, they were corrupt. And there was incompetence and corruption that set in. I think that's correct. But it was the same thing in Egypt during the short era of the Muslim Brotherhood under Dr. Morsi. They were never given a chance. From day one, the capitalist class in Egypt went on a capital strike. They were going to make sure that the economy would be destroyed, so that the blame would be incurred by the Muslim Brotherhood, and put an end to that experiment. So, on a practical note right now, that's almost certain what the money classes are going to do with Zoran Mangdani. They will wreck the city economy to make sure that people never make that mistake again. And you could predict it like you're reading a children's book for the 10,000th time, as if you were reading Hansel and Gretel.

They'll be saying in one year, "We told you so. These socialist ideas are crazy. This is all nonsense. We warned you he would wreck the city economy." As behind the scenes, they are wrecking the city economy. And that's exactly what the Israelis wanted to do. That's a very old script. It's not to make an apology for Hamas. It's to speak factually. They were never given a chance. They were destined or fated by Israel and its supporters in the U.S. and elsewhere. They were destined and fated to, let's call it, a losing popular support. I remember one year I was there. I think it was after Operation Cast Lead, so it would be about 2009-10. And I remember the typical taxi cab driver and I asked him whether he supported Hamas. And he said, the world was not, his words were, the world was not ready for Hamas. And he said, the world was not ready for Hamas. And he said, the world was not ready for Hamas. Which is, in a way, it was a correct statement. That they weren't ready to accept it. And when they don't accept it, they destroy it. And given those conditions, by October 6th, 2003, excuse me, 2023. By October 6th, 2023, about 60% of young people in Gaza were unemployed. It was the highest youth unemployment in the world. And in normal circumstances, you know what happens? People emigrate. They leave. Gaza was unique in that respect. As many UN reports pointed out, they couldn't go anywhere. They were incarcerated in that concentration camp. All they had to look forward to each day is to get up in the morning, and pace the perimeter of this tiny parcel of land. 26 miles long, which, as every Greek knows, is the length of a marathon. And five miles wide. And there was nothing else. There was no past. They were born into that concentration camp. There was no future. There was no future. They were just destined to die there, to live and die there. By October 6th, excuse me, by, yes, October 6th, 2023, politically, if we're honest with the facts, there was no future in Gaza. There was no possibility. Gaza, it's very strange now. But for those of you whose memories go back to before October 7th, 2023, Gaza had vanished from the political scene. There was no talk about Gaza. All the talk was about whether the Saudis would join the Abraham Accords, whether or not the Saudis would formally enter into a relationship with Israel and the United States. Gaza was gone. I know that for sure because, as I've said many times, but I do believe it bears repeating, I had given up on Gaza. Many people were not happy at my decision, but I was writing books which were focusing on more and more of these minute points, tiny little points, trying to win a verbal victory by showing this person's lying or that person is lying. But nobody was reading it. The last book I wrote, it was about a case before the ICC having to do with Gaza. It sold 370 copies, as my publisher unhappily told me. And of those 370, I myself had purchased half of them. It's true because I was trying to influence the decision, the ICC, so I wanted to send it to the people there. Gaza was gone. And it looked as if the conflict was going to be settled over their heads. The Saudis would enter into a relationship. At some point, every state in the Middle East, except for Iran, Syria at that time, were going to capitulate. And Gaza turned into what you might call an elephant burial ground. It was people who were just waiting to die. One aspect I didn't get to, so we have a concentration camp, hermetically sealed. Nobody can go in, nobody can go out, nothing can go in, nothing going out. Periodically, Israel launched in Gaza, they launched these high-tech killing sprees. They called them operations. Or, to use the colloquial, the common expression, they called it mowing the lawn. Now, if you fix in your mind the image of a lawn mower, it has these blades. And then you have to imagine the lawn mower, the blades cracking the skulls of children. Because that's what mowing the lawn was all about in Gaza. Operation Cast Lead, 2008-09. Operation Pillar of Defense, 2012. Operation Protective Edge, 2014. There were protests only for Operation Cast Lead. At a certain point, and this includes the left, they got used to the Israeli operations. They were just another season. And there were very little, few protests during Operation, and during Operation Protective Edge, there was very significant protest with the first major operation, Operation Cast Lead. It's interesting to see how things have changed.

Operation Cast Lead, about 6,000 homes were destroyed. About 350 children were killed. About 600,000 tons of rubble were left behind. When Operation Cast Lead happened, people were shocked at the magnitude of it. The title of the book I wrote after Operation Cast Lead was called, "This Time We Went Too Far." The title was taken from an article by an Israeli journalist named Gideon Levy, who was shocked at the magnitude of the death and destruction that was inflicted on Gaza. So that's 350 children dead, 6,000 homes destroyed. Operation Protective Edge, in 2014, it was 18,000 homes destroyed, about 550 children killed. And it was so shocking. The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, his name is Peter Morer. He toured Gaza after Operation Protective Edge. And bear in mind, his job was touring war zones. He's the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. And he said, and now I'm quoting him, "Never before have I seen the level of destruction I saw in Gaza anywhere that I have been."

Well, we come now to the last two years. It's not 6,000 homes destroyed. It's not 18,000 homes destroyed. The estimates are 250,000 homes destroyed. It's not 350 children killed. It's not 550 children killed. It's at minimum, and I think there is a recognition. The numbers they call the Gaza Health Ministry number. At minimum, it's 20,000 children killed. And that's directly killed. The number who are killed or died because of hunger, because of the assault, because of illnesses and diseases that couldn't be treated. So, probably -- I don't even want to say probably. I saw the latest numbers that are given, they range up to, up to -- up to, I want to make that clear, the limit. It's written that 600-something thousand Gazans have been killed, about a quarter of the population. It's a credible paper that was written, but they make the point, it ranges very far, the number of deaths that have occurred. So, that was the situation. Without going into the details now, what were the options that Hamas had? They tried international diplomacy. They did. They significantly moderated their program in order to achieve, if not a settlement with Israel, what was called a hudna, basically a long-term ceasefire. They were talking about 20 years. They tried that. Ignore it. They tried international law. Now, some people laugh, Hamas, international law. It's just not true. They did try it.

After each of Israel's killings, high-tech killing sprees in Gaza, various international organizations sent delegations to examine from the point of view of international law the nature of the crimes committed, who was culpable, who was guilty, who was not. There were the human rights organizations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty. There were the UN organizations, mostly coming out of the UN Human Rights Council. There were a large number of investigations towards legal accountability. Israel, of course, were not cooperating with any of them. They're all anti-Semitic. or Hamas, so forth. Hamas cooperated. It actually believed in them. It did. Now, those organizations were very harsh in Hamas. In my opinion, they accused Hamas of crimes that Hamas did not commit. That they were guilty of certain crimes? That they were guilty of certain crimes? Yes. No point in quarreling. We never quarrel with facts. They were guilty. But the organizations bent over backward to try to appear balanced. And they were in many significant ways, in my opinion, unfair to Hamas. Just as I think they were unfair, the UN Human Rights Council commission headed by Navi Pillay, they made allegations against Hamas, which in the last two years, the last two years, I don't think they're valid. They were, they were, they were silly. They were silly. They want to prove Hamas is guilty of sexual violence. There's no evidence whatsoever that there was rape on October 7th. There's zero evidence, apart from witnesses. But there's no material evidence. In American language, in US, or in English, there's no forensic evidence. There's no photographic evidence. There's no digital evidence. There's no digital evidence. Nothing.

Zero. Full stop. Zero. So, the UN Commission wants to show its balance. And it says, Hamas was guilty of sexual violence. So, what is their examples of sexual violence? They said, Hamas came in with, on scooters, motor scooters. Two people are seated on the motor scooter. And when they were leaving, 'cause they were taking hostages. No dispute about that. They placed the woman, the woman, between the two men on the scooter. And they call this quote, coercive, that means enforced intimacy. Look, that's just stupid. We should be honest. And I felt that Navi Pillay, she was a prominent international jurist from South Africa. My point is, these commissions were not pro-Hamas. Forget that. Hamas still believed in them. It thought, if it cooperated, it could extract some justice. A little bit of justice. They cooperated. They got nothing for it. The commissions wrote the reports. The commissions were very harsh in Israel. And then the reports were filed in the desk and forgotten. The only one who read those reports more than once is yours truly. It's true. I read them once, twice, three, four, five times. Yes, it's true. But they got nothing for it. They tried diplomacy. They tried international law. And then on March 30th, 2018, they tried-- I know people laugh. You know, this thing goes there. He must be out of his mind. They tried non-violent civil resistance. Ha, ha, ha. Hamas, non-violent civil resistance. They did. They joined in what was called the Great March of America. The Great March of Return. In fact, in the Great March of Return, they were a moderating force. Because the leaders, they were, with no offense attended, they were kind of poetic types. They were into poetry. And so they talked about a return of the refugees to Israel. We're going to march the refugees. Hamas wanted one goal. It was very practical. Let's aim to end the blockade. So they were trying to make a realistic goal, just end this blockade.

What'd they get for it? What'd they get? We know exactly what they got. What'd they get for it? A UN commission went to Gaza, wrote a 250-page single-space report. 250. It was very detailed. What did it say happened? It said the demonstrations were overwhelmingly non-violent. And then the Israelis, they brought along their best snipers. Their best snipers. And they lined them up along the perimeter fence with Gaza. Israel said, Israel said, not me, not the UN report. Israel said, every bullet hit its target. That's what they said. Every sniper's bullet hit the target. Who did they hit? I'm calling the UN report. I'm calling the UN report. They targeted children. They targeted medics. They targeted journalists. And they targeted disabled people. Yes, you heard it here. They targeted double amputees. Every bullet hit its mark. So, one of the astonishing figure, one of the astonishing facts, at least for me, I recently came across, we all know Israel was targeting children in Gaza, targeting them in the skull and in the chest. Every day in Gaza, I know this will come hard to believe. Every day the last two years in Gaza, 10 children had one or other leg amputated in Gaza. Every day, 10 children had one or another limb. Now, part of it you could say, yeah, never quarrel with facts. Part of it you could say is, well, Israel was indiscriminately, or I should say discriminately, indiscriminately targeting everything in Gaza. So, people are going to be wounded, shrapnel, amputations. It wasn't all an accident. It's not true. In Gaza, when they couldn't kill the child, they target, and I'm talking about now March, the great March of Return, they targeted the kneecap of the children to inflict what was called, the technical term is life-changing injuries on the children in Gaza. And I have every reason to believe that a large number of those 10 children each day who had to have one or the other leg amputated, they were targeted that way. And the amputations, incidentally, in a large number of cases, were done without any pain, anesthetic, any painkiller, because there wasn't, the supplies had run out. So, you're living in, under a medieval siege, in a concentration camp, with these periodic killing sprees, and no prospect for improvement. None. Zero. What do you do? I personally, meditating on it a lot, I can't see any options they had on October 7th. I just, I don't see what they could have done. Now, the objection to what I'm saying is, "Well, yes, anybody would support a prison break from Gaza." Why do they have to target civilians?

Why do they have to target civilians? There's a question there. I never quarrel with facts, and also, I don't believe it's useful to engage in, at least at this point, to engage in denial. About 1,200 people were killed on the Israeli side on October 7th. About 400 are classified as combatants. About 800 were civilians. And, based on the available evidence, I acknowledge the evidence is incomplete. But, based on the available evidence, a case has not been made that a significant number of those 800 civilians killed. A case has not been made that they were killed by Israel. A compelling case has not been made. They were almost certainly killed by Hamas, the civilians. So, you can make the argument, okay, fair enough, they have no options, but why do they have to kill civilians? I would say there are two answers, not answers, but two considerations. Number one, ask yourself a simple question. Simple question. Let's say Hamas had killed not 400 combatants and 800 civilians. Let's say they killed 1,200 combatants.

Let's assume that. Does anyone seriously believe Israel's reaction would have been less ferocious? If they killed 1,200 civilians? Mr. Netanyahu recently said, in praise of his country, that our country is a Sparta. And that's factually correct. And you know what distinguishes a Sparta? What distinguishes it is they attach more value to a combatant's life than a civilian's life. That's what makes it a Sparta. So, if Hamas had actually killed 1,200 combatants, I think Israel's reaction would have been more, not less ferocious. But the international community have said to Israel, well, according to the Geneva Accords, these are combatants. And so it was an occupation and therefore they had, does anybody believe that? So the reaction of support for Israel would not have been any less. But then you ask, still a separate question, how about morally, how about morally, should Hamas not have targeted civilians? So there, I think it's a little bit more complicated for two reasons. There is international law. I understand it. I teach it. I teach it. I teach it. I teach it. I teach it. I teach it. And to some extent, I get it. International law or the laws of war, it starts from the premise, it's the 1857 St. Petersburg Declaration. I teach it. I teach it. We can't abolish war. That's not possible.

But we want to try to minimize the damage done by the war, by war. So we're going to try as much as we can to limit war to combatants and military sites, and to the extent possible, free civilians from the destructiveness of war. I get that. We can't abolish it. Let's try to minimize the destructiveness. That's the origins of the laws of war. And the basic principle of the laws of war, obviously, it fills many volumes because lawyers like to talk. The basic principle is called the principle of distinction. The principle of distinction is you can't target civilians. You can only target combatants. You can't target civilian infrastructure. You can only target military infrastructure. No hospitals, no schools, but military bases and so forth. Those are legitimate targets. That's the laws of war. But then there's a separate issue. It's the moral issue. I don't think -- I do not consider a Hamas militant -- I don't think he -- because it was a he, it was he -- I don't think it's legitimate to kill him. Now I understand under the laws of war it is. But as a moral question, that young man doesn't want to die in a concentration camp. Why does trying to resist that situation automatically make him a legitimate target? I understand under the laws of war, I get the laws of war. But as a moral question, I think they're all innocent. They're just going to live a decent life. That's all they wanted. Now it's true, some of them, and I get this also, some of them wanted to exact revenge. I get that. I get that feeling. I am not free from human vice and sin. I know that feeling of revenge. I saw it with my parents. How they, to the last day of their lives, they hated Germans. Hated Germans. You would be risking of your life in my home. You said one of two things. That you believed in God, or a kind word for Germans. So, I get that feeling, the feeling of revenge. The other point is, it's hard to speculate what Hamas' goal was on October 7th. So, I am of the opinion, and here I know I have disagreements with many individuals.

I'm of the opinion they didn't have a grand vision of what they intended to do. It was a roll of the dice. Mr. Sinwar, whatever his virtues, I don't know, I haven't studied him. But whatever his virtues, he had been in an Israeli prison for about 20 years, and as he said, I went from one prison to another. I went from the Israeli prison in Israel to the Israeli prison in Gaza. He had a very narrow vision. How can you not, having spent your entire life inside a prison? I don't think he had any grand strategic vision or objective. They figured, we have nothing to lose. Let's try, you know, to shake up the table. Rock the boat. See what happens. Those who are knowledgeable had strategic vision. People like Syed Nasrallah from the head of the Hezbollah. And it was clear from, if you listen to the first speeches, yes, he lauded Hezbollah. Yes, it's a great act of resistance. But there was also, he said, I remember it very well, he said, they didn't warn us. They didn't tell us what they were going to do. And you could see there was a certain amount of discontent. Because he had enough vision, Mr.

Nasrallah, he's operating on the world stage. He knew this was not the time to do it. We weren't ready. He said that in his last speech before he was killed. He said, we have to be honest. The Israelis have the technological edge. He knew it wasn't the right time to do it. But if you're living in those conditions, when is the right time? When is the right time? The other thing is, in my own American history, in my own American history, the largest slave revolt was led by a person named Nat Turner. It occurred in 1831, which is, it's 30 years before the Civil War. So he was faced with basically the same dilemma as the people in Gaza. Born a slave, living a slave, and he was going to die a slave. That's what he saw. That's what he saw. Now, Nat Turner, very smart guy. Everybody agrees on that. White people, black people, they all said, Nat Turner? That Nat? Nat was a very smart guy. And one of Nat Turner's biographers, when he tried to figure out what motivated Nat Turner. He said, for Nat Turner, there was a huge gap between what he aspired to be, he was a smart guy. He had big aspirations. And what, given his condition, he was destined to be, fated to be.

A slave, with no future. Just born into a condition, and he would die in that condition. Now, Nat Turner was a deeply religious person. What was his first order when they go out to the slave rebellion? He was with about, I think my memory is 40 or so, 40 or so others. What was his first, his order? Order number one was, quote, I'm quoting it, kill all white people. Kill all white people. Kill all white people. That was his order. And, strange as it may seem, Nat Turner is now a celebrated figure in American history. I don't know how many of them know what his order was, but, assuming quite a few do. Because they recognized, by carrying out this act, and it was horrible. I mean, unlike Hamas in October 7th, they did kill babies on purpose. Smash their skulls, smash the skulls of women. It was very ugly, the Nat Turner rebellion. But, I once asked my friend, comrade friend, Muin Rabani, I asked him, what do you think the people in Hamas were thinking? Why did they do that, target civilians? And he gave to me what seemed to be a perfectly reasonable explanation. He said, they wanted to transmit the message, if our civilians aren't safe, your civilians aren't safe. You think you're going to carry on these high-tech killing sprees?

Every few years, every few years, your operations, your mowings of the lawn, you're going to laugh and joke about it, mowing of the lawn like some suburban home? No. Our civilians aren't safe. Your civilians aren't safe. No. Do I defend it? Do I support it? Let alone do I celebrate it? I don't know. That's for each of you to decide. That's the context as I understand it. I'm willing to take any challenge from any person. Tell me what they should have done. I don't see any options. After October 7th, Israel basically had three goals. Number one, revenge. The ubermenschen, the supermen, had been outwitted, outsmarted by these untermenschen, these subhumans in Gaza. They had killed a lot of us. This is a different quality of life. We're talking about the ubermenschen, the supermen. How dare they, how dare they touch one hair of one young woman's head. They were, the indignation was genuine. There's no doubt. There they weren't acting.

They were totally shocked, which is a normal human reaction. But the shock was in part because of that ubermenschen, supermen mentality. I'll just give you a simple comparison. In my own country after October 7th, excuse me, after September 11th, my own country after September 11th, a large part of the population went out of its way to show kindness and consideration to Muslims. I saw it at my university. I saw it at my university. And you know, one of President Bush's first acts was to visit a mosque. Even though people were totally shocked, as you can imagine, by September 11th, there were different ways to react. Even as you were indignant over what happened, at least by the population at large. That wouldn't happen in Israel. It's the supermen that ubermenschen mentality. So, a large part of the goal was just raw revenge. They evoked Amalek, and the biblical reference, they just said, they didn't claim invoking Amalek, that we have a strategic goal here. They invoked Amalek for revenge. You kill every man, woman, and child. Excuse me? And the animals, but I'll leave those aside, even though I am a vegetarian. We'll leave that aside.

So, the second goal, and I should say, that goal, that goal alone, that goal alone, was genocidal. You don't really need further evidence. Because the goal, Amalek, was revenge. Revenge, in and of itself, can constitute a genocidal goal, or genocidal intent. For those of you who know international, or the genocide convention, in order to prove genocide, you have to prove intent. The intent was already there, when they were invoking the biblical memory. Number two, they wanted to, what they call, the technical term is, restore their deterrence capability. That simply means the Arab world's fear of Israel. They believed correctly, in my opinion, that after October 7th, many people in the Arab world suddenly began to think, well, wait a minute, if this rag tag guerrilla army from Gaza could inflict such a telling blow on Israel, and if all of Israel's spy, technical intelligence, it all failed, then maybe there is a military option against Israel. Maybe we are giving in and giving up too soon. And so Israel wanted to restore the Arab world's fear of it. And after two years, if anybody gets into their head that they have a military option against Israel, the answer is, you think you have a military option against us? Look at Gaza.

You don't have a military option. And the third goal, which is, in my opinion, the main strategic goal, has been, was very succinctly put. The goal was, for once and for all, no more mowings of the lawn, no more operations. We're going to solve the Gaza question once and for all. It's the final solution to the Gaza question. And the final solution, as they saw it, was to expel the entire population from Gaza, but to use genocidal means to achieve the goal of ethnically cleansing Gaza. that uses much force, as much violence, as the international community will tolerate, principally the United States, as it's said about solving the Gaza question. And I don't believe that goal has been modified at all. Nothing has changed in the last two years. One of the most striking things when you read the most recent human rights reports on Gaza, one of the most striking things you discover is, you might recall right after October 7th, one of the most striking things that the Israelis were making all these genocidal statements. Senior leaders. Mr. Netanyahu, remember Amalek.

Defense Minister Galon, "We're not going to admit any food, fuel, water, or electricity into Gaza." President Herzog, he said, "This notion of civilians and combatants in Gaza is false. They're all Hamas in Gaza." And when you quote those statements, the standard response by Israel's defenders was, "Well, you know, it was the heat, the horror of October 7th, and they were just reacting very emotionally." The funny thing is, if you now look at those statements, after the fact, two years later, everything they said they were going to do, they did. They said, "We are going to make Gaza unlivable." They achieved that goal. They said that we were going to kill civilians. We're not going to make a distinction between civilians and combatants. They did that. It was in heat of the moment. Yes, they were angry. They were shocked. No doubt about it. But you know what? When you're a part of a ruling elite, the anger and the shock, they last for about five minutes. You saw it with 9/11 in my country, September 11th.

When you read the accounts of September 11th, yes, President Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary Cheney, the Vice President. Yeah, they were shocked, and they were saddened. You know, the Pentagon was targeted. That lasted about five minutes. And then they opened up a map of the world, and they looked around which country are we going to attack. And they had very big plans, if you remember. they were going to go to Syria, they were going to go to Iran. They were going to extract as much as they could from September 11th. And that was the Israelis too. The Israelis had very big plans. Solved the Gaza question. Solved the West Bank question. Solved the Syria question. Solved the Hezbollah question. And of course, the big one solved the Iran question. And so they carried on very rationally. And nothing has changed. There has been no modification in the plans of Israel. And that will bring us up to the present of where we stand right now. And then I'll hear from you. Where we stand right now is there was this 20-point peace plan. It was, even by the standards of Donald Trump, it was unusually sloppy. Just throwing in at random all these points. No coherence. No timetable. No coherence. No timetable. Nothing. It was just...

Because everybody knew there was nothing there. They were going to... Hamas had no choice. They had to sign on. Not so much because of the United States, incidentally. They had to sign on because the Arab states forced them to sign on. The Arab states would publicly condemn them if they didn't sign on. So they had no real options. The hostages, Israeli hostages, have been released. Some Palestinians have been released. I'm not sure if it's a better or worse fate to go from an Israeli jail to Gaza at this point. But we'll leave that aside. And that's it. Nothing else is going to happen. They're very determined people, the Israelis. Now, of course, the United States can stop them in the blink of an eye. But the U.S. is not. What the U.S. will do is... Mr. Trump... He is at heart a real estate developer. He started very young. His father, Fred Trump, actually started in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. Trump Village is still there.

He was a notorious racist, actually. The famous American folk singer, Woody Guthrie. Some of you may know the song "This Land Is Your Land Is Your Land Is Your Land." That's what he got. And he wrote a song about old man Trump. Trump was a really nasty racist when it went to black people. In any event, Trump's been a real estate developer since, like, he was 20. A leper doesn't change its spots. You don't teach old dogs your tricks. All of his language is the language of deals. Deals. Deals. They're all real estate. Deals. The deal. And he calls the deal with Iran. He calls it, he said it many times, the deal of the century. If you can get... And for him, the deal is very personalized. It means he's gonna get all the... He'll cash in on all the money in developing Iran. Excuse me. In developing Saudi. He'll cash in and get all the money. So he wants that deal. The Saudis can't do a deal while there's a genocide unfolding in Gaza in front of everybody's eyes. That's not a good look. It's not a good take. So Trump wants to end the formal aspect of the genocide, the bombing, the artillery shelling of Gaza. So the Saudis have a face-saving excuse. We ended the genocide in Gaza. The Saudis have a face-saving excuse to join the Abraham Accords.

That's all he cares about. And that means Gaza will return to October 6th. The siege will continue. The humanitarian aid will not enter Gaza. There is no possibility whatsoever. None. Zero. Zero. Zero. There's no possibility that Israel will allow Gaza to be reconstructed while the people are still there. That is not gonna happen. They just spent two years to flatten Gaza. To think that now they're going to turn around and say, "All we are saying is peace, give peace a chance. Kumbaya, let's all rebuild Gaza." Well, that's La La Land. So, I see the big fact, the bottom line is, it'll return to October 6th, but with no more Gaza. There's nothing there. If you take seriously all the reports from the World Bank, the UN Commission on Trade and Development, and so many other organizations, Gaza is now undergoing desertification. Parts of it are turning into desert. There's 50 million tons of rubble. And there's no possibility Israel will admit cement into Gaza. None. They'll just keep saying Hamas hasn't given up. They're using cement for tunnels. The usual excuses. So, it's very grim. Now, I was instructed by Tovarish, that's Russian for comrade, from Tovarish Kasim to end on a upbeat note. You have to be hopeful. I am going to end on an adult note. An adult note means you treat people with respect. You honor their intelligence. And you, the first way to treat a person with respect and honor their intelligence, is as the African revolutionary, who nobody here has heard of. And if you have heard of him, you should be embarrassed by how old you are. His name was Amakar Cabrao from the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau. Who knows him? Raise your hand. Shame on you. He famously said, and it meant, the fancy English word is, it resonated, which means it meant a lot to me. He said, a real revolutionary, he said, tell no lies, claim no easy victories. Tell no lies, claim no easy victories. When I read on the web, I don't bother to actually read it. I just see the headlines. Israel is coming to an end. Hamas' huge victory in October 7th. And you know, there are books being written in that vein now. I just, have you lost your marbles? Do you have any concept of what happened in these last two years? Some people say Israel dropped the equivalent of eight atomic bombs on Gaza. Some people say he dropped the equivalent of 12 atomic bombs in Gaza. And you're talking to me about the end of Israel and Hamas' splendid victory. That's just not silly. I mean, that just is silly. So, what's the mature adult way of saying all that without being pessimistic? I don't think it's a question of pessimistic or optimistic. I think it's a different question.

The question is, how much can you, as a human being, live with, tolerate, and do nothing about it? That, to me, is the question. You know, we have this folk singer in the 1960s. His name was Bob Dylan. He wrote this famous song, "Blowin' in the Wind." and one of the lyrics which struck me was, quote, "How many times can a man turn his head, how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?" If you're constitutionally incapable of turning your head, and you do see, then, in my opinion, that's a sufficient incentive to do something. You don't need optimism, you don't need pessimism. What you need is something very different. You need your incapacity, your lack of capacity to do nothing. You don't have the capacity to do nothing when something horrible is happening. And speaking very personally right now, that's what motivates me. I can't say it's optimism. Nobody reading those reports can possibly be optimistic. I mean, the grounds for optimism are so pitiful. No, really. Some of you may know, probably 99% of you don't know. There was another International Court of Justice ruling on Gaza about two weeks ago. You know what the ruling was? You're going to laugh. The ruling was whether or not, under international law, Israel was obliged to cooperate with UNRWA, United Nations Relief and Works Agency. That was the essence of the ruling. Now, as you know, Israel made a determined effort to demonize UNRWA, to destroy UNRWA, because UNRWA was the embodiment of the Palestinian refugee question. And that Palestinian refugee question has always been an albatross for Israel. It wants to get rid of it. And UNRWA represented the Palestinian refugee question, so they were determined to destroy it. And they used this opportunity to destroy it. And they used this opportunity to destroy it. Now, you're going to laugh. The vote was 10 to 1 in favor of saying Israel is legally obliged to work with UNRWA. I was almost moved to tears. The victories are so pitiful that just getting the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, to agree to it seemed like a miracle. That's what we're down to. That's what we're down to. Now, is Israel going to work with UNRWA? Of course not. Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Of course not. Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? Will the ICJ ruling have any effect? No, it really doesn't. I don't care. What's happening is an abomination. I'm not going to be part of it. I'll, you know, do my best. And then we'll see what happens. I could be wrong. And maybe there is more grounds for optimism. It was an interesting thing, and I'll leave off on that. On the ICJ opinion, the International Court of Justice opinion, I said the vote was 10 to 1. One, the number, the one against, was this lunatic from Uganda named Julia Seputindi. In my forthcoming book, I have over a hundred pages on her, and I look forward to my little revenge against that monster. But it was interesting, because Unruh had been so demonized. and I'm curious. Why did 10 judges agree to that? Because usually there are a large number of judges in the court who are sympathetic to Israel. In particular, not necessarily the American, the German judge, Judge Nolte. Why did they do that?

Because in previous decisions, it wasn't so unanimous. And you know what the reason was why it was 10 to 1? Because for the last couple of years, you could pretend that a genocide was not occurring in Gaza. You could pretend there was a war in Gaza. There was never a war in Gaza. A war means two armies. You're trying to defeat the enemy army to achieve a military victory. That's what a war is. That's what a war is. Now it's true, sometimes in a war, you target civilians. The Allies did that, and the Nazis did that during World War II. For the Allies, it was the terror bombing of Germany. They were hoping to break morale, but in order to achieve a military victory. At the end of the day, even though they targeted civilians, the goal remained a military one. So it was a war. A war breaking some of the rules of war, but still a war. That wasn't Israel's goal in Gaza. It didn't want to achieve a military defeat. It was carrying on a genocide. It's very different. They wanted to wipe out the civilian population. The actual war part in Gaza was so trivial. So, ask yourself a simple question. Most of you follow events closely there, I assume.

Can anyone name me a battle in Gaza? Can anyone name a battle? Did any of you read in the newspapers there was this battle in Gaza? There was no battle. It never happened. There was never a war in Gaza. There was a genocide in Gaza. And that was the main, so to speak, ideological victory that South Africa sought. When South Africa went before the International Court of Justice, it sued Israel not for violating the laws of war. That's not why it went to the ICJ. It went to the ICJ because it was suing Israel for violating the Genocide Convention. It was something very different. It was committing genocide. So, in the face of that, I don't think, as I said, it may—yes, I know it's over. It makes much sense to try to see something, a silver lining in the horror that unfolded on October 7th. But that being said, the victories are tiny. They're almost laughable, as I was about to say, and I'll leave it at that. Why did—why was the vote 10 to 1? Because now the train has left the station. Everybody's agreeing it's a genocide. There's no dispute about that anymore. So, the point of the contention in the International Court of Justice was, they said UNRWA is uniquely capable of meeting the needs of the people of Gaza. There's no organization that can replace it. They started in 1949. There are 17,000 members of UNRWA. They know their business. They know what it means to provide aid. So, if you voted against Israel cooperating with— if you voted that Israel doesn't have to cooperate with Gaza, you're voting for genocide. You're saying the survivors don't have a right to survive, because only UNRWA can help them.

There's no other agency. And so now, the courts, the members of the court, they didn't want to be associated with genocide, or denying the survivors of the genocide their basic needs. So, they decide, even though, as I said, people like Nolte— and there were quite a few others— had, in the past, tried to defend Israel's position. It was a war. They were against Hamas. This time, they all fell silent. They didn't want to be accused later of having facilitated the genocide in Gaza, or accused of denying the survivors their assistance. It's another victory, and I suspect some of you will ask me. As a bottom line, there's no silver lining in the genocide. Even to use that language, in my opinion, speaking as a resolute atheist, it's sinful. But, having said that, you can speak about effects of the genocide. And one of the effects was a massive change in U.S. public opinion, which resulted—and it's not a trivial fact— resulted in Zara Mamdani's victory in New York. That was an effect of Gaza.

There's no question about that. There's no question about that. There are those things, but I won't use the language of a positive result of what happened in Gaza. Gaza was a horror. It was a genocide. It still is. There's nothing good to say about it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.