Massachusetts Peace Action:
The Hamas attacks in Israel and Israel’s war on and invasion of Gaza are the latest rounds in a long-running conflict. In this webinar, three leading historians of the region will explore how we got here; what is fueling the present conflict; and what we in the United States can do.
- Speakers:
Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and a specialist on the Middle East. He has maintained a weblog, Informed Comment, since 2002.
Sherene Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her book Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2016) explores economy, territory, the home, and the body. She is co-editor of the Stanford Studies Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures Series, the Journal of Palestine Studies, and Jadaliyya.
Commentator:
Zachary Lockman is Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and History at NYU. He has done a great deal of research and writing on the history of Palestine.
Massachusetts Peace Action: The Past, Present and Future of Israel/Palestine
Transcript (Auto-Generated):
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and with that I will turn it over to you Rosso thank you
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Brian and let me Begin by welcoming everyone it’s quite an audience over 400 people have registered for this webinar
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so let’s see how many we get by the end of the evening so welcome to the webinar
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the past present and future of Israel Palestine I get to moderate tonight’s
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webinar because I’m connected to both of the organizations that have put this program together I’m on the board of
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Massachusetts peace action and I’m on the steering committee of historians for peace and
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democracy let me tell you a little bit about these two groups Massachusetts peace
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action is an affiliate of the National Group peace action and we at MAPA focus
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on Grassroots organizing policy advocacy and Community Education to end us Wars
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interventions occupations and sanctions we also work to build a just Society at
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home with a smaller military budget historians for peace and
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democracy the second organization that’s organized this event um has a mission to
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stand up for peace and diplomacy internationally and for democracy and human rights at home to these ends
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historians for peace and democracy or hpad are are dedicated to fostering
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education on campuses and in communities encouraging activism and facilitating
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networking with organizations working for peace and Justice now if you’re in Massachusetts I
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urge you to join Massachusetts peace action if you’re an a historian anywhere
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in the United States or uh I urge you to join hpad and if you’re a historian in
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Massachusetts you should join both and really put your voice behind the demand
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for peace and Justice so we have an outstanding um
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program for tonight with three very distinguished historians of Palestine
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Andor the Middle East and let me give you a quick introduction to the three historians and then turn the floor over
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to them our first speaker is Sherene Seikaly she’s an associate professor of history
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at the University of California Santa Barbara where she’s joining us from her
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book men of capital scarcity and economy in mandate Palestine published in 2016
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explores economy territory the home and the body she’s co-editor of the Stanford
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studies Middle Eastern and Islamic societies and culture series The Journal of Palestine studies and
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jaia our second speaker is Juan Cole he is the Richard P Mitchell Collegiate
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professor of history at the University of Michigan and a specialist on the Middle East
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and he may be well known to many of you for the web blog that he has maintained
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since 2002 informed comment and we will receive a very
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informed comment from our third speaker and commentator Professor Zachary Lockman who’s professor of Middle
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Eastern and Islamic Studies at and history at NYU and he’s done a great deal of
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research and writing on the history of Palestine so this is the order in which
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our historians will speak and let me turn the floor over to
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sh thank you all and um thank you to the organizers it’s a it’s wonderful to be
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here with you all despite the very dark days that we are witnessing uh my talk today is titled
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the apocalypse is now telling history in the present a young girl narrates she is
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seven or eight her hair singed her brown eyes wide her clothes melted her hands
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burned her face layered with dust Yellow powder and blood she is composed
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confident it is the 12th of November 2023 she begins we went to Shifa we
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learned it was a Target my w my mother wanted to go to her cousins they were Sheltering at another hospital someone
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passes outside the eye of the camera Salam the young girl gestures and nods
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her story continues we found a room we took shelter the tanks were at the gate her
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voice Rises emotion fills her throat we were asleep she says when the bombing
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started the sound did not wake me the smoke did she does not Shake she does
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not cry she is calm pragmatic matter of fact she tells her story as a cautionary
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tale what did she see that day at chiffa did she see the wounded and the
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displaced crowded into the hallways and staircases did the smell of death envelop her did the reality of
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decomposing bodies confront her did she walk the packed corridors did she
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Glimpse the woman sitting on stools making life in the midst of catastrophe
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the woman who used the two tier electric ovens kneading dough putting it on the fire watching it r eyes Browning the
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loaf filling hungry stomachs with what little supplies were left did she get a piece of bread earlier on in these 45
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days that have lasted a lifetime the content creator turned reporter ban AA
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began her real as she does every day I am ban from Gaza Palestine we are still
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alive that day on October 18 her cheeks were Fuller than they are today her eyes
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still sparkling with an anticipation now worn down by an unsatiable grief by
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witnessing lives lost dreams annihilated she said that day I want to
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show how good people are a group of young men Bakers had started a free bakery in the shiffa courtyard using
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what dwindling supplies they had left to feed one another HS Arabi or Arabic
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bread is slightly leave-in flatbread it has five ingredients flour water sugar
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yeast and salt it has many permutations it responds to the conditions around it
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it requires care dexterity resourcefulness Palestinian bakeries
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like Palestinian hospitals have been a recurring Target of this war of
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annihilation among the thousands of lives ruined and maimed lie the remnants
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of the places that fed them on October 25 oxam declared starvation had become a
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key weapon of the war on Gaza 2.3 million people had access to 2% of the
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supplies they needed that day in the courtyard on October 18 bent stood facing this
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hospital that had transformed from House of healing to a place of Refuge to a mass burial site to a site of siege that
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day she explained we craft hope even if we will not live to see tomorrow
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catastrophe is not in the future and the neba is not in the past I speak with you
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today as a child of a Palestinian woman and man who became refugees in
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1948 I am a product and a scholar of what we call our ongoing nakba our
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catastrophe that spans the 100 Years of denial of Palestinian political rights
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and peoplehood and here I just want to give you a bit of that the history of that earlier moment on November 29
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1947 the general assembly of the newly established United Nations voted to terminate the British mandate on
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Palestine and partitioned Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State between
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November 1947 in May 1948 Zionist forces and the Palestinians
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were immersed in a war for the future on May 14 1948 David beneran declared the
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state of Israel the next day the army of Egypt Syria Lebanon trans Jordan and
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Iraq invaded Zionist forces were better prepared mobilized organized and
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centralized than the Arab armies and by the second stage of the war they were also better armed these forces these
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Zionist forces had an intimate Ally across the Jordan River King Abdullah of
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trans Jordan and the and the Jewish agency had nourished a 30-year
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partnership the Arab armies were for their part more concerned with their own
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national interests and did not coordinate militarily or diplomatically the NECA of 1948 took
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place in what historians now categorize as four stages stage one was from
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December 1947 to March 1948 the Zionist military organization
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or the hagana shelled neighborhoods and Villages and authorized the destruction and expulsion of The Villages of Arab
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suuk and karia south of haa in February of 1948 two militias Theon and the Lei
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targeted Palestinian Fighters and civilians at bus stops shopping centers
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and markets the Haugen’s military advances and psychological warfare
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marked this period as one of panic and fear during these four months
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Palestinians with the means to do so fled in hopes of return
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stage two began in March 1948 when plan deit or Plan D was dispatched to hag
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forces that plan was a shift to large scale highly organized and sustained
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operations the war of Conquest was in full force on April 9 1948 oun and lei
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forces numbering about 120 Troopers Advanced on a village near Jerusalem
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called de Yin the Troopers pillaged The Village shot fleeing civilians and
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killed 100 to 120 villagers including combatants later that month the hagana
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overpowered Arab forces in haa by May 1948 the expulsion of villagers had
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become regular practice and by the end of June 250,000 Palestinians had fled or
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been expelled under the force of fire stage three of the neba was between July
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and October of 1948 that July Israeli forces expelled 60,000 Palestinians men
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and women children and the elderly from the towns of LDA and rla southeast of
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Jaffa the refugee columns left behind a trail of belongings some refugees
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perished along the way stage four of the neba was between October 1948 and March
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1949 when Israeli forces conquered the nakab the neev the Jerusalem Corridor
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Corridor and the upper Galilee in December of 1948 Israel
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issued the quote emergency regulations on the property of absentees later
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embodied in law this emergency legislation facilitated the expropriation of the land and property
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of Palestinian refugees by the end of this period Israeli forces had destroyed
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470 to 530 Palestinian villages and emptied Arab cities and neighborhoods
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looting massacres and imprisonment prevailed as a result of the NECA of
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1948 approximately 750,000 Palestinians became stateless
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refugees the remaining 150,000 would become second class citizens under
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military rule in Israel they were now strangers in their own home for the Palestinians The Exodus and
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its aftermath were a full-fledged catastrophe the denial of self-determination and basic rights as
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well as dispossession and dis and displacement did not end in 1948 it
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continues in the present this is why Palestinians call our condition an
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ongoing Nea it includes separation subjection to premature death
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colonization brutality necro politics borders that cross and Define you the
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constant threat Erasure and denial of rights to basic politics and
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peoplehood that suffocating subjugation has never stopped it is now in a
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fullscale assault we all knew the lesson that things might always perhaps will
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always get worse today we live that lesson in entirely new ways today we
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rehearse yet another inventory of neba since October 7 another inventory has
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taken shape every day every day we grieve lost lives we grieve the loss of
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1,200 Israelis we grieve as the loss continues we grieve the 14,100
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Palestinians including nearly 5,000 children that we have lost we grieve the thousands missing under the rubble we
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grieve as More than 70% of gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians are now officially
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internally displaced persons we watch as the UN warns of a risk of genocide
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against Palestinians we cannot await a secular salvation or a Messianic apocalypse we are in the
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apocalypse from Perpetual climate crisis to the extinction of plants and animals
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to the forces of white supremacy misogyny and Global fascism we live in a
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world of generalized catastrophe in a condition of trouble Without End of transit in the wake of interminable
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events in this age of catastrophe Palestine is a paradigm it can teach us
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about our present condition of the permanent temporary we are all unclear what the future holds we are all
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suspended in time with no end in sight we are all uncertain if there is any normal to which we can return for some
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this realization is a rupture for most violence and dispossession are not
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interruptions they are rather temporal and spatial markers of the everyday
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Palestine is not a laboratory it is not a sight of sympathy and it is not only or simply a
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problem to be solved it is a place of abundant lessons about persisting in the
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looped and looping time of the present like many other struggles Palestine reminds us in the words of jod bird that
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the post has not yet arrived there is no postc Colonial postracial post sanist
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and as we witness experience understand a ocalypse we hold tightly to the
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lessons that the keepers of families and the keepers of stories teach us to break
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bread to tell your story it is these acts that we return to as we have
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learned from rosemary sa crisis and speech are inextricable crisis is motive
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content and structure of speech the stories of Everyday People witnessing
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extraordinary things are based on experience they are non-chronological and frag mented they exceed the
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geopolitical plots those storytellers they do not reflect history
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they make it we must listen as to these embodied polyvocal testimonies of
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storytellers like ban like the young girl I started with these stories are not as henna
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slayman reminds us only a register of resilience steadfastness and hope they
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are more than that they are cautionary tales like the young girl I started with
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the tellers of tales are calm pragmatic matter of fact they know that the worst
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is yet to come because the worst has never stopped Palestinian women and girls who weave their stories offer us a
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set of tools skills and mindsets they shape a histographic form a way of
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telling history in this 45th day of 75 years of NECA and 100 years of war there
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is a RAID every half hour a Palestinian child dies every 10 minutes today
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Palestine is the place where a world is unmade a world in which the Illusions we have
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held tightly to about international law about humanitarianism about the rule of law
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about the claims of civilization shatter ever further into an an inferno of
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hypocrisies and lies but even today amidst genocide we follow the lessons of
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the Bakers and the storytellers kneading dough crafting narratives making worlds
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even as they face the certainty of their death I am smiling bent says because I
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love life because I am still alive thank
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you thank you Professor
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SC let me turn the floor over to Professor Cole now
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well thank you so much uh for having me um these are troubling times and I’m
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sure we’re all weighted down by the horrific events uh from October 7th
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forward um I’m not even all that involved in in
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uh Palestinian Israel Affairs but I have several friends who have been personally affected by uh these uh uh
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horrid uh attacks uh they’re not just tragedies I
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mean tragedy uh I think is an impersonal way of putting it but it is
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a uh it is volition that’s involved uh
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and um uh volition of a Hamas
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organization which uh I have to say has been
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responsible for terrorism in the past terrorism as a tactic has been adopted by it back in the 90s uh uh they
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committed uh attacks against non-combatants but the scale of what
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they did on October 7th and the particular uh scenes of of their uh
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actions were unusual for them uh they they took an Israeli military base and
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if they had only attacked mil military targets uh they wouldn’t be in the kind
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of disrepute that they are now but they uh appear to have attacked a music
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festival uh in fact a pnik music music festival and to shot have shot down
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large numbers of people there uh the tactics that they used are reminiscent
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of the uh isil or Dash organization uh that had uh become
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prominent in Northern Iraq and Eastern Syria in and the teens of this Century
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uh and um uh were intended to to shock and intended to polarize and of course
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they got what they wanted um the Israeli response uh has broken
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every uh law or regulation that any International body has attempted to
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establish with regard to the prose ution of War uh since the end of World War
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II and let me just back up to that moment because during World War II
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Humanity behaved very badly um historians estimate as many as
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65 million deaths in those four years uh in some ways it began with an
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atrocity with the German air force pulverizing Warsaw raising it to the
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ground with bombing uh and then an invasion and occupation of Poland in which the
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Nazis were attempting to um daviz Poland uh to expel or kill
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poles and to bring in uh German arens to replace them and to make Poland a
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province of of Germany ethnically uh and um large numbers of
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poles were expelled uh Millions were killed uh and uh and large numbers of
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Germans were were brought in in an attempt to replace them uh so these
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kinds of events happened during World War II um disproportionate attacks were made the
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The Dresden and Tokyo were were firebombed uh and
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indeed the destruction rought on Tokyo probably was greater with these
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Conventional Weapons than what was done to Hiroshima with the Nuclear
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One um after the war uh the United Nations was formed the United Nations
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Charter was enacted an attempt was made to make aggressive War
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illegal uh to make the anation of a neighbor’s territory through War
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illegal uh and then there were the nurburg trials uh the Geneva conventions
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uh the Geneva Convention of 1949 which laid out uh following the hag
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regulations of 1907 but expanding on them uh the uh laws
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regarding uh the responsibilities of occupiers during war because during war
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territory is occupied until the end of the war uh and uh the framers of of the Gen
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Geneva conventions felt that the occupier must not bring their own
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population in and try to settle it as Germany did in Poland uh nor uh nor should it harm the
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the non-combatants in the occupied territories nor uh should it indeed even
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change their life ways in any significant way now these laws were made for uh conventional Wars of the 20th
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century would la which lasted four years uh they they they didn’t envisage an
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occupation that would last for decades upon decades these uh and and they were
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succeeded by further United Nations and other treaties and instruments many of
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which were incorporated into uh national law by the signatory
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uh and then beginning in the late 1990s an attempt was made uh to
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establish an international criminal court uh which uh had as its Charter the
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Rome statutes that took aboard uh the laws of the nurenberg and uh uh the
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Geneva conventions um and attempted to codify
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them and to make them a basis for positive law and to have an institution that could adjudicate it because one of
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the problems with these international law regimes that were established after World War II was that they very seldom
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could be adjudicated they were aspirational they were claims on values
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uh but if people disregarded them there wasn’t very much that could be done maybe some sanctions could be applied uh
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but the Rome statute envisaged Trials of individual officials who were guilty of
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war crimes and there have been of course such trials mainly uh of of former
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African dictators um the United
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States um Behavior towards uh Israel and the conflicts between Israel and the
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Palestinians uh and uh and and it’s and other uh Neighbors in the Middle East uh
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has undermined uh the entire thrust of international humanitarian law as it has
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evolved after World War II uh in every instance the United States has attempted to
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guarantee uh Israel impunity it has actually it seems to me
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gone further in guaranteeing Israel impunity than even it has itself that is
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to say it has accepted uh some of its own war crimes uh but uh has never
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admitted any of Israel’s um the relationship of the United States with Israel began with uh uh Harry Truman who
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recognized Israel and and famously remarked that he had Jewish constituents
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he didn’t think he had any Arab ones so it was a transactional event for Truman who by
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the way was an enormous Blockhead if you hear him speak very long you you begin
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to see just wasn’t a very bright man uh and um and so he made this
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calculation uh of of trying to get Jewish votes by supporting Israel which has been a standard operating procedure
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in Washington ever since um Ike Eisenhower having been Supreme
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Allied Commander and having been part of the attempt to establish a postor War II
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order uh was was a more upright uh figure and more dedicated to the the
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United Nations and to what it might mean for World Order and so was absolutely
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outraged in 1956 when uh Israel France and the UK conspired to get up a war
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against uh Egypt uh that would allow them to occupy the Suz Canal which had
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recently been been won by Egypt uh and and Eisenhower used the fact that these
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three countries were all indented to the United States to force them back out of Egypt he threatened to pull in the loans
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and to bankrupt their economies um so the US very occasionally
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acted in an you know an even-handed way but that was rare and of course in 1967
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war in 1973 the United States was a cheering section for the Israeli side
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and the conflict had been reconfigured to some extent as a cold war conflict with
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Egypt uh having Soviet backing and Israel being the U uh really the proxy
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for the United States um then at the end of the 1967
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war uh the Israelis uh seized the West Bank and and and and the Gaza Strip uh
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Palestinian majority territories uh which had been administered after
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1948 by uh Egypt on the one hand and and and the the hashimite kingdom of
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Jordan on the other hand in the West Bank uh these territories didn’t play a
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significant role in the 1967 war they they weren’t you know organized as
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combatants they were part of the territory that was administered by belligerent but there wasn’t a strong
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military reason to seize them and in the aftermath the Israelis began colonizing
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them uh sending in Settlers which since they were occupied territories was
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completely illegal according to the Geneva uh uh conventions um and the
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United States uh took the position that what Israel was doing was wrong and
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should be condemned but that it would never allow anyone to interfere with it and it
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wouldn’t interfere with it itself uh and for the most part the
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United States has been a handmaid in of Israeli colonization of the
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Palestinians uh and um the the you know one major attempt to
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step back from this H policy was George HW Bush who declined to offer1 billion
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do in loan guarantees for Israeli settlers in the West Bank uh squatters
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on Palestinian land who were doing something contrary to us stated policy at the time and the Israelis had the
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nerve to come to uh to Bush and Congress and to demand $10 billion in loan guarantees for these uh structures that
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were being established which the US considered illegal and so Bush uh uh took a stand on that but again this was
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extremely rare and everybody else Clinton uh uh Bush Jr uh Obama Trump and
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uh and Biden now ha have simply caved have have really given the Israelis
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whatever they wanted uh have run in inter interference whenever the UN Security Council wanted to condemn
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Israeli uh violations of international law in in this in the occupied
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territories for the most part the United States has vetoed uh those resolutions
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and so the world system you know does have some checks and balances if North
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Korea acts in a particularly threatening way towards its neighbors and develops nuclear weapons the United Nations
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security Council has put sanctions on it because even China was alarmed uh and
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the five permanent members of the UN Security Council could agree on that and and therefore North Korean ships can be
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boarded at will uh by by other powers uh on the high seas and and uh that’s nor
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normally illegal but but the UN Security Council allows it uh and under ordinary Circumstances
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had the US allowed the International System to function as as it should I
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believe Israel would have been subject to significant economic sanctions by the rest of the world and maybe even to
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security sanctions on the part of un security counil for its behavior in the West Bank and it wasn’t subject to those
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sanctions because the United States vetoed all of those resolutions uh and therefore there’s no
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feedback loop the Israelis don’t get any any push back from the rest of the world
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they have impunity uh so when uh people in Gaza
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six years ago or so uh began having marches uh for their
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freedom the great March of return for the right to return to their homes because most of the people in Gaza are
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descended from uh refugees who were pushed out of Southern Israel um by the
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Zionist forces and they some of them could walk home if they were allowed to from from Gaza uh they started marching
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and and and having demonstrations near the the fence that the Israelis have put up and the Israelis brought in snipers
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and they just shot them down uh these were not people who were armed or who were posing a threat to Israeli soldiers
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uh they were most often you know non-combatants who were simply demonstrating and they the the snipers
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were uh urged to aim for the knees and to disable these people uh many young
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men in in in and some women in in Gaza were injured by by this tactic and there
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was no push back this was completely illegal this was a war crime there there wasn’t so much as a as a a major parl
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parliament in the world that condemned it and so now they’re raising Gaza uh
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they they’ve committed more war crimes in in a month in a little over a month than uh
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than uh anyone but but Russia and Ukraine uh but Biden comes out and says
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uh that they’re not committing war crimes and this is necessary and John Kirby comes out and and and gives us the
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the uh Alice and Wonderland view of that that the Israelis are just defending themselves how are you defending
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yourselves you’re you’re bombing hospitals you’re bombing schools you you you’ve killed
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uh thousands and thousands of of innocent non-combatants that Shireen spoke about
33:55
so eloquently um so this this whole situation including October 7th is to
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some extent uh the fault of US policy because the US has set this up as a as a
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forever struggle uh it’s it’s allowed the israelies to act with impunity uh
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it’s ensured that the Palestinians are powerless in conventional terms and therefore uh you know
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um people who are powerless in conventional terms often turn to terroris as a tactic so it’s not a you
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know the United States didn’t call Hamas up and say do October 7th but the United States created the framework of history
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and Society in the Levant in which this uh this atrocity became imaginable and
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and and possible and um at any point along the way Washington I think really
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could have intervened to to settle this to ensure a Palestinian state to ensure rights for Palestinians and it would
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have uh it would have also helped Israeli security the one-sidedness the
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pusillanimity the uh the the lies that were told all of this
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has contributed mightily to this uh horrible situation Washington uh needs
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needs to change and um Washington is made up of the people that we elect uh
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so we need to elect better people and we we need to uh put pressure on the people
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that are there uh to behave like normal human beings instead of uh genocidal Psychopaths which is how they have been
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behaving in this conflict thank you Professor Cole let me
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turn it over now to Professor lochman who will provide some comments and
35:47
additional remarks thank you I’d like to begin by thanking the uh the organizers of this
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event uh for bringing us together in this uh very very Grim historical moment
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um and for all of you for participating um it’s been inspiring to see the the
36:05
The Surge of response to the horrors that have been unfolding in Gaza and not just in Gaza elsewhere in Palestine as
36:11
well uh not enough obviously to to stop the Israeli military campaign and and
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the US complicity with it but but still a sea change I think in important ways
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so um I’d like to do two things building on what Shireen and and Juan said or
36:30
certain aspects of what they said um do two things that that I think are quite connected maybe they’re really one thing
36:38
um on the one hand I’d like to say a little bit uh about another consequence of the aftermath of October 7th and the
36:45
Israeli War on Gaza um that’s unfolded here in the United States which is
36:51
manifested in uh an in many ways unprecedented tsunam
36:57
um if I were being more scholarly I would say storm of um attacks on
37:03
free speech and academic freedom um for our purposes on college and university
37:10
campuses across the country and this wave of attacks this effort to to silence expressions of concern for the
37:17
pal Palestinians in Gaza or for the Palestinian question altogether um
37:23
because the West Bank of course has also witnessed a of of killings and settlers
37:29
with the complicity of the Israeli Army going after Palestinians preventing the
37:34
olive Harvest several hundred people have been killed in the West Bank in the last five six weeks um so expressions of
37:41
concern expressions of opposition to the Israeli campaign in Gaza and complicity of the US government in
37:48
it um have been deemed to be unacceptable right universities have
37:53
been cracking down there have been several instances in which chapters of students for justice in Palestine have been suspended or or banned their
38:02
vicious attacks on on individual faculty uh and students doxing I’m sure you’ve
38:08
all seen the reports of these trucks going around with pictures of of people who were alleged to be anti-semites and
38:14
so on so there’s a wave of efforts to to silence um the the expression of certain
38:22
opinions which in many ways takes us back not to the aftermath of 9/11 but to the Red Scare of the 1950s right where
38:29
their efforts to criminalize to sanction the expression of certain kind of views and argue that they were Beyond The Pale
38:35
right in the during the Red Scare these were agents of Stalin they were agents of Moscow right to discredit certain
38:42
certain modes of belief today um uh certain modes of belief are deemed to be
38:48
uh uh supporters of terrorism Advocates of Hamas anti-semitic right and that’s a
38:53
key element of it and I’ll come back to that in a minute um and the flip side of this or or not
38:59
the flip side maybe but a key element of this is that um in this perspective
39:05
which is being pushed very very hard right and and this is not a conspiracy theory it’s pushed by organizations
39:12
which are well organized and well funded and have been trying for many many years to weaponize allegations of
39:17
anti-Semitism in order to silence views they disagree with right views they deem
39:23
as too critical of Israel or critical of Zionism so forth um a key element of
39:29
this is to argue that essentially history began on October 7th right so we can’t talk about context we can’t talk
39:36
about history basically which for a gathering like this which includes a lot of historians and which is co-sponsored
39:41
by an organization of historians um should be pretty outrageous now I’ll
39:48
start just by saying that I think all of us agree or certainly I think a politics must start from the premise that what
39:54
happened on October 7th uh was a massacre it was a war crime it’s not acceptable um within the moral political
40:01
universe that at least I care to operate in but it comes out of somewhere everything comes out of somewhere right
40:07
that’s essential to any historical understanding so um I won’t go into the
40:13
detail here Shireen talked about some of the the the longer term history the ways in which we can think of the Palestinian
40:18
experiences ongoing Kat catastrophe right in taking many different forms
40:23
1948 but uh taking different forms for the Palestinians who ended up within what became Israel in 1948 in Gaza in
40:31
the West Bank and and so on so let me just say a little bit about that and then return to the question of of um of
40:39
the um of what’s going on on our campuses today what’s going on in this country which I think must be a priority in in
40:45
challenging it which is very much bound up with our opposition to Israel’s campaign uh against Gaza and and again
40:53
the Biden administration’s complicity in it so I spent um and I’ll be brief I
40:58
spent the first two weeks after October 7th watching all too much Israeli television um until I couldn’t take it
41:05
anymore um not surprising you know people were in deep shock a huge sense
41:10
of victimhood this came out of nowhere from their perspective um and a desire for Revenge
41:17
not surprisingly and commentator after commentator talk show after talk show
41:22
said we have to go and smash Hamas with no thought about well then what what
41:27
happens next you destroy Gaza you destroy Hamas even if that’s that’s
41:32
feasible then what so very very little almost no conversation uh about any of
41:39
that but there’s a there’s a historical context to this because uh the term in Hebrew that people use for the
41:45
settlements that were attacked on October 7th right the kibit and other settlements surrounding Gaza the Hebrew
41:52
term for this is AA which means the Gaza envelope now why do you need an envelope
41:57
around Gaza right and these settlements go back to the 1950s right so as some of you may know
42:03
um Juan alluded to this um the Gaza Strip as was called Gaza right was the
42:09
one piece of Palestine which remained under the control of Egyptian forces uh after they unsuccessfully intervene
42:15
militarily in 1948 to prevent partition and the establishment of a Jewish State
42:21
um and its small population from before 48 was massively swelled by refugees
42:26
from other parts of Palestine so something like 2third of the population of Gaza are the some of them original
42:33
refugees but more often their children grandchildren great grandchildren who were stuck in this very small piece of
42:39
what was once Palestine before 1948 um and of course since 2007 have
42:45
been essentially blockaded by Israel with Egyptian complicity so to control
42:51
this border which Palestinians soon began to cross first to harvest their crops to to retrieve possessions um and
42:58
then to carry out raids against um Israel um Israel established a whole set
43:05
of kibuts and other settlements right the Gaza envelope um and let me just read you
43:10
something I’ll be very quick right from 1956 right again to show this this comes
43:16
out of somewhere right there’s a history to this um in April 1956 at at one of
43:22
the kibuts which was attacked on October 7th Nal o um one of the security guards
43:28
was killed by Palestinian Israel called them infiltrators people crossing the border from
43:33
Gaza um in many way in many cases to visit the lands The Villages they had
43:39
want the Farms they had had been theirs right on which these new settlements
43:44
including Nal was established uh his funeral was attended and the eulogy was delivered by General
43:51
mosha Dean who was then the chief of staff of the Israeli Army later defense minister right with that iconic ey patch
43:58
right seen as a as an icon of Israeli power and success he gave the
44:03
eulogy and here I’ll just read a couple of excerpts uh the guard’s name was Rory
44:09
rutberg early yesterday morning R was murdered the quiet of the spring morning
44:14
dazzled him and he did not see those waiting in Ambush for him at the edge of the furrow let us not cast the blame on the
44:21
murderers today why should we declare their burning hatred for us for eight
44:27
years right since 1948 for eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza and before their eyes we
44:34
have been transforming the lands and The Villages where they and their fathers dwelt into our
44:40
estate beyond the furrow of the B border a sea of hatred and desire for revenge
44:45
is swelling awaiting the day when Serenity will dull our path for the day when we will heed the ambassadors of
44:52
malevolent hypocrisy who call upon us to lay down our Arms This is the fate of our generation
44:59
this is our life’s choice to be prepared and armed strong and determined lest the
45:04
sword be stricken from our Fist and our lives cut down so this is a long time ago this is
45:12
1956 but it already sets the stage for understanding Gaza as in a way the
45:18
microcosm of the Palestine issue right this place packed with refugees crammed into a small area under egyp I rule and
45:26
then under Israeli rule since 1967 right with no hope of a future um
45:32
and then through complicated circumstances ending up under the control of Hamas um and and in a status
45:40
quo that many Palestinians found intolerable again this is not to justify
45:45
October 7th but as historians as Scholars as thinking people we have to
45:50
understand the difference between justification and explanation right we need to explain
45:56
things which doesn’t mean we agreee with them or accept them or think they’re moral but we want to understand the
46:02
context so these are the kinds of things that the campaign now underway in the
46:07
United States and Canada as well and in Europe certainly in many many European
46:13
countries um to to silence that history to make it disappear to Simply see this as a matter
46:20
of Israel defending itself which is the line of the Biden Administration with no
46:26
historical understanding with no historical grounding which would allow us to make sense of where this came out
46:34
of and and the larger issues this is this is an essential component of um and
46:41
much of the speech much of the campaign is also premised on the idea that
46:47
certain forms of speech are inherently an anti-semitic right now this is a serious
46:52
issue there’s certainly been a surge in anti-Semitic speech and acts uh in the
46:58
last six weeks in the United States and many parts of the world right as there’s been a surge in anti-arab anti-
47:05
Palestinian islamophobic speech and acts right this this has been generated by
47:11
this crisis and the Deep tensions and polarization it’s produced but the the classification the
47:19
demand that any criticism of Israel criticism of Zionism be deemed
47:24
anti-semitic um is is weaponizing a very serious allegation in an extremely
47:30
dangerous way it’s it’s again it’s it’s a poor analogy and you’ll forgive me but
47:35
it’s like saying every communist every socialist everyone on the left is an agent of Stalin is an agent of Moscow
47:42
right but here these these people who are critic are criticizing what’s going
47:47
on in Gaza what criticize people who are criticizing what’s going on in Palestine hate Jews and that’s all we have to
47:54
understand and therefore there’s speech is illegitimate and a lot of universities
48:00
uh responded after October 7th issuing statements condemning the attacks and seeking to reassure their Jewish
48:06
students right and that’s fine a lot of Jewish students have been freaked out and a lot of Jews in the United States
48:12
and elsewhere have been extremely distressed we can talk about what that means and why um but a lot of other
48:18
people have been distressed in other kinds of ways and it’s extremely dangerous I think to again weapon
48:27
allegations of anti-Semitism for a political end especially when it’s part of a campaign whose ultimate aim is to
48:34
silence opposition to the Israeli War on Gava on Gaza and um the the ways in
48:40
which the United States has for three quarters of a century been Israel’s enabler as as Swan talked about so these
48:47
are challenges we face in the United States that that are very urgent challenges in addition to demanding a
48:54
ceasefire demand an end to Israeli violence against the Palestinians in Gaza um and and understanding that
49:02
there’s no military solution to this conflict right there it’s there there simply isn’t there has to be something
49:08
else whatever that might be um we face this challenge that that that is to the
49:16
fundamental Free Speech rights and academic freedom that is is
49:21
is vital to us and that every College every University professes but hasn’t in the last 6 weeks
49:28
been very good at by and large at upholding and protecting and defending
49:33
so to me this is an important consequence this is a challenge we Face here in this country that I think we
49:39
need to be talking about and and engaging with I’ll stop
49:45
there thank you Professor lman let me ask if Professor cyle or
49:51
Professor Cole would have anything to add to or respond
49:56
or anything to respond to what Professor lochman just said in his
50:03
comment um sure i’ I’d love to say a couple of things with with with great
50:08
gratitude um to Zach um who has taught
50:13
me how to be historian so it’s my honor to be here with him and of course to um
50:19
Juan as well I I’ll I I just want to say three things um to kind of um reinforce
50:27
four things to reinforce what Zach has already been saying one I think it’s
50:32
really important for people to understand that the Gaza Strip is actually a construct it is a product of
50:39
partition you know it’s not just that Gaza existed as part of palestin it was also a large province that had an A A
50:48
really important commercial class that was very involved in Citrus capitalism
50:55
that was a really important port um historically and throughout the 19th and
51:00
20th centuries I’ll also point to the 1956 moment that um Zach pointed to and
51:08
read from and so powerfully is that also in response to and in that attack and
51:14
Counterattack um the Israelis bombed the shifa hospital so the kinds of recursive
51:21
ways that history repeats itself in this kind of ongoing I think is a really
51:26
important um takeaway that people have to that
51:31
people have to hold tightly too
51:37
um again as everybody has been saying Juan said this and Zach said this history did not begin in October 7 and
51:45
the conditions on the ground now be it for Palestinians who are second class citizens inside Israel Palestinians who
51:52
have lived in Gaza even before October 7 in a 16-year siege that was debilitating
51:59
and rendered half of the population under the poverty line or the people in
52:05
the West Bank who are now subject to increasing vestin isation as well as a
52:13
very explicit marriage between settler Vigilantes and the government right and
52:21
as as Zach noted um in this last 45 days I think the number of Palestinians
52:28
killed in the West Bank has surpassed um 200 at this point and we were calling
52:34
this year one of the bloodiest in West Bank history um because 223 Palestinians
52:40
had been killed by um Israeli forces um the number of you know another really
52:47
important uh uh factor in all of this is the carceral logic of is of the Israeli
52:53
State and that has meant that since 1967 over 800,000 Palestinians have been
53:01
um uh incarcerated in Israeli jails often times um under administrative
53:08
detention so you’re basically talking about the denial of basic rights to all
53:13
of Palestinians in this plot of land and and I think understand you cannot
53:20
understand October 7 um and everything that happened after it with
53:25
without understanding that Palestinians are not free they are colonized subjects
53:31
and every single Liberation struggle has taught us that no one is free unless we
53:38
are all free the last point I want to make about anti-Semitism because this is something that is very close to uh my
53:46
intellectual and political practice is that actually the struggle for Palestinian Liberation is completely at
53:54
its best form committed to fighting all forms of racism to fighting
54:00
anti-Semitism to fighting anti-blackness to fighting xenophobia and some of the
54:05
most exciting actions that have happened in the last 45 days have actually been
54:11
organized by people like Jewish boys for peace and if not now when they closed
54:17
down the Rotunda in in the capital um when they took on the Statue of Liberty
54:23
um across the country these actions have been so inspiring and I think it is
54:29
really important I see some of these questions in the chat about religion ethn nationalism and their relationship
54:37
and I think it is really important to remember that there is a long and honorable tradition of Jewish
54:44
anti-zionism that Zionism and Judaism are not synonymous categories and that
54:50
those are histories that we have to take very seriously and that the fight against
54:55
anti-Semitism is something that the Palestinian Liberation Tradition at its
55:00
best is devoted
55:06
to thank you Professor Cole would you like to add anything or can we turn to some questions just just very briefly
55:13
and and uh to give homage to my colleagues I’ve learned through my life
55:20
much of what I know about all this from Zach and and Shireen so um
55:25
let let me just say though in addition to what they have said is that October
55:31
7th didn’t not only didn’t happen in a vacuum and not only is there a long history behind it of uh of keeping the
55:40
Palestinian stateless and ultimately therefore without rights uh Hanah arent
55:45
I think was the one who said if that that rights come come out of
55:51
citizenship in a state you have a court to go to you have you have political rights you have you have a vote if you
55:58
if you’re stateless you you don’t have the right to have rights she said and I
56:04
think one of the Supreme Court Justices quoted her on that uh so the Palestinians not only don’t have rights
56:09
but they don’t have a right to have rights and that’s why they can be treated in the media and and and in
56:16
positive law in Israel as they are uh the other thing just that I’d like to underline is this these sets of of
56:25
events uh which are a gut punch and and stomach
56:30
turning uh both on the part of Hamas and on the part of uh the Israeli Air Force
56:37
um come at out of a background an immediate background
56:44
of a significant change in the character of the Israeli poity so that uh Benyamin
56:51
netan the leader of the lukud party when uh he uh was trying to get back into
56:58
Power last year this time actually brought into his
57:03
Coalition uh terrorists uh people who had
57:09
been on on terrorist watch lists of the state department and who had been tried and convicted in Israeli courts of
57:16
instigation and racism people who are the equivalent of The Proud boys and the oathkeepers in the United States uh who
57:23
rallied around Trump on January 6 those kinds of people were brought into the government and put in high POS positions
57:30
made minister of uh of National Security and given responsibilities over the
57:36
Palestinians and the West Bank uh developments uh which were extremely
57:41
disturbing to to much of the Israeli public against which hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated many
57:48
of them weakly uh all all through this year and which made the Biden Administration unwilling to have netan
57:56
into the White House for a dinner uh that this was a pariah government and
58:02
it’s designs the designs of its members on places like the West Bank are
58:08
predatory uh these things are not happening by accident that that that squatters are forming gangs and going
58:14
Wilding and and and shooting up Palestinian hamlets in the West Bank they’re they’re being encouraged to do
58:20
so by Ministers of the government that that netan with uh and the the ferocity
58:28
the viciousness the brutality of the Israeli aial campaign against Gaza which
58:35
cannot be justified on any military grounds uh is also a manifestation uh
58:42
that that the the the the hate groups are in control of the Israeli government
58:48
and this is a government then that uh that people want you not to criticize I
58:53
mean it’s as though you you can’t criticize amlo in Mexico without being a bigot against chos I mean this is crazy
59:01
uh and there’s something deeply wrong with the entirety of American discourse
59:06
on this subject thank you let’s turn to some of
59:11
the questions that have been submitted through the chat um let me start with one from Stephanie
59:17
Williams uh no Death Angel who asks what is the interest of the US in backing
59:23
Israel Within Unity so what is what is driving the us to do
59:31
this you want me to address it us but
59:37
any of the P to all three panelists well there are lots of reasons
59:42
for it it’s it’s what the marxists used to call overdetermined um and uh first of all
59:49
for the National Security Elite for the for the American equivalent of the deep state these the permanent bureaucracy
59:56
and the defense department and the intelligence services and so forth Israel is is America’s uh uh aircraft
1:00:04
carrier permanent aircraft carrier in the Middle East uh it it does a lot of
1:00:10
work for the United States it has excellent uh intelligence capacity
1:00:15
throughout the region it had an informant inside isil
1:00:21
which Trump let let slip and endangered the poor guy uh but
1:00:27
um Israel is a place that that the US has very extensive military and
1:00:34
technological relationships with so it’s an asset uh for American Security in the
1:00:39
Middle East and the Middle East is in turn an asset to us uh uh geopolitical
1:00:45
Power because it is the source of much of the world’s energy uh and although the US doesn’t import so much from that
1:00:53
region all of its allies Japan Japan uh Germany France Etc deeply dependent on
1:00:58
that energy uh so that’s one uh and then
1:01:04
uh in addition to the importance of Israel to the US National Security Elite
1:01:10
uh for those reasons uh and I should say I agree with n chsky that it’s it’s not
1:01:17
it’s not the Israelis that get the Americans to do things it’s not the Israelis that influence American public
1:01:23
opinion to do things it’s these National Security guys uh then there’s there’s the issue of Christian Zionism there’s a
1:01:29
very large Evangelical uh constituency in the United States that has these crazy ideas about the the necessity to
1:01:37
support Israel so as to have Gus come back uh and these people are now in
1:01:42
control of the Republican party uh one of the major parties in the United States uh and then in addition to all
1:01:50
that um there is a a constituency for Israel among Jewish am some Jewish
1:01:55
Americans about about a third of Jewish Americans say they don’t feel very connected to Israel uh but the other
1:02:02
some of the others are are very high on it some of the wealthier members of the community are important as donors and uh
1:02:10
um you would want them behind you in your political campaigns uh so you know
1:02:15
I’ve just mentioned three but there are even more Zach Shin do you want to add
1:02:23
anything um
1:02:28
yeah I’d like to I’d like to add a couple of things um I want to get back to the question of anti-Semitism because
1:02:36
I think it’s a really important and informing one and I think one of the ways to think about the question of
1:02:43
Palestine and the Jewish question more broadly is to think about it as a problem of Europe in this history you
1:02:51
have the coming together of Europe’s internal others and Europe’s external
1:02:56
others and that’s why you know when people will often say things like oh
1:03:01
well it’s simple right it’s simple to call to call for ceasefire it’s simple
1:03:07
to call for the liberation of all people and to have full basic inalienable rights this is a complicated history we
1:03:16
must read it we must understand it so I see a lot of questions about what next and someone has said history has its
1:03:23
limits actually you can’t be thinking about Visions for the future without
1:03:29
knowing and teaching this history the reason that that’s important how it’s linked to the question of the United
1:03:35
States is because the United States also has a problem with its relationship to
1:03:40
what it understands as its European Heritage and civilization let us not
1:03:46
forget that the United States is a settler Colony built on the foundations
1:03:52
of genocide and slavery so we have to actually hold all of those
1:03:58
lessons to account when we’re thinking about the way that power works in the 21st century and so in that regard I
1:04:07
think if you look historically while there have been really important
1:04:13
divisions within the US government at different moments so Juan mentioned um
1:04:20
Bush senior and his limitations that he tried to put on Settlers we know for and
1:04:27
settlement we know for a fact that there’s often division on policy on US
1:04:32
policy between let’s say the White House and the Pentagon we know that it’s not
1:04:37
all one thing and that we have to take those um divisions seriously we also
1:04:44
have to understand that since its Inception Israel and the United States
1:04:50
have been intimate geopolitical military diplomatic allies and one of
1:04:58
the things I want to also H tip to another person who’s in this room um Joel Vine who um I inherited from him
1:05:07
when I went to Au a class that he taught there to American University in Cairo which then became a school for me about
1:05:16
um how to teach the history of Israel Palestine and one of the things I learned from Joel’s syllabus was the
1:05:23
ways in which after 1967 in particular the kinds of ways that um the uh the
1:05:31
Israeli victory in 1967 con um constituted a a salv against
1:05:39
what was then understood as the Vietnam syndrome and the ways in which Israel became a military model at a time in
1:05:47
which the United States was in crisis because within the United States women’s
1:05:53
Liber women ‘s Liberation movements the Black Liberation struggle all of these different things were taking place and
1:06:00
there were a particular um challenge to the rising consolidation of things like
1:06:07
neoconservatism and the Evangelical movement so I think one thing I would
1:06:12
you know in this last 45 days as in every time there is a a kind of
1:06:18
crystallization of struggle people often ask us for elevator pitches and what I
1:06:25
would like people to take away is there is no elevator pitch you have to do the
1:06:30
work and I saw references to people like Tom seov I would humbly also offer the
1:06:36
people in this room Zachary lochman Joel baning many people an entire field of
1:06:43
Palestinian studies the Journal of Palestinian studies um uh people like
1:06:49
Rashid khi younger Scholars like mesna R Barakat there are people doing this
1:06:55
knowledge production and to understand how to move forward we have to do that
1:07:05
work thank you I mean there is a middle ground
1:07:11
between the complexity of the understanding the complexity of the past and elevator pitches and some of us in
1:07:19
the audience are involved in organizing um
1:07:25
so but I’ll come back to that I want to ask a question that that I am very uh
1:07:32
it’s engaged me which is um the the larger Global context for what’s going
1:07:39
on right now in Israel Palestine is really the rise of the far right across
1:07:44
the globe and do our panelists have any thoughts on the connections between the
1:07:51
rise of this far right far right movements in in so many parts of the world and um the
1:07:58
responses to the events of October
1:08:05
7th um I could try to say something about that I mean you know
1:08:10
people often um well it’s easy let’s put it this way
1:08:17
to to blame Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremely right-wing government right this is the most Hardline right-wing
1:08:22
government Israel has ever had that took office little less than a year ago right
1:08:29
um but there’s also been a great deal of continuity in Israeli policy going back to
1:08:34
1948 and and the the idea that things were wonderful and this is something a
1:08:40
good number of Israelis share Israelis Jews share things were great before 1967
1:08:46
and it’s only those crazy settlers and those crazy religious people who’ve you know taken Israel in this terrible
1:08:53
Direction that’s caused all these problems right and to some extent people in you know the Biden Administration
1:08:58
endorses this this is a popular view in the United States as well um and it’s too easy and out right for one just
1:09:05
historically right the the the expulsions and dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 was presided over
1:09:11
people um on the Zionist Left Right David Ben guran was the the key figure
1:09:16
in in the labor Zionist the Socialist Zionist movement and this movement um presided over the the wars of 1956 and
1:09:24
the conquest of the remainder of Palestine in 1967 and the beginnings of the settlement project now of course the
1:09:30
right when it came to power um and it’s been the dominant force in Israeli politics in the last you know 30 40
1:09:37
years escalated this quite dramatically right but this is not these crazy people this is a project of the
1:09:43
Israeli State um and endorsed def def facto um
1:09:50
by the United States which criticized the settlements which said their illegal under international law but kept
1:09:55
providing Israel with three or four billion dollars a year so Israelis are not stupid they pay attention to what
1:10:01
the United States does and not what it says once a year when the State Department issues its annual report on
1:10:07
the occupied territories so um I wouldn’t take it too far Netanyahu
1:10:15
is is culpable in his own special way right uh you know his main concern at this moment is to stay out of prison
1:10:22
because he’s facing charges of corruption and that’s certainly informed his policy but this is about the the
1:10:28
ideology and the policies of a state right and and not of one individual or not even of of of the right-wing of the
1:10:35
Israeli Jewish political Spectrum um are there features in common ethn nationalism sure right um and
1:10:43
Israel and this is also something that’s important I think to understand and then I’ll I’ll I’ll shut up right Israel
1:10:49
isn’t a a liberal democracy in the same sense the United States is right it’s often referred to in the United States
1:10:55
as the only democracy in the Middle East but it defines itself not as a state of its citizens regardless of their
1:11:02
ethnicity or their religion it’s a state it defines itself officially as a state of the Jewish nation of all Jews
1:11:08
everywhere right who have a right under Israeli law to get on a plane and arrive in Israel and claim citizenship it’s
1:11:15
sort of as if the United States defined itself as a as a white Christian Nation so anyone who wasn’t white and wasn’t
1:11:21
Christian was had a subordinate status was a second class citizen or maybe not
1:11:26
a citizen of of at all right and the reality in Palestine and this you know
1:11:31
the the term apart aparte has begun to be used by the most respectable human rights organizations right Human Rights
1:11:38
Watch and Amnesty International and even Israel’s leading human rights organization Bellum right to denote a
1:11:45
situation in which Jews are today a minority in historic
1:11:50
Palestine right um Palestinians are again a majority which they hadn’t been since
1:11:56
1948 um but Jews have the full rights of citizenship the kinds of Rights Swan
1:12:02
mentioned earlier right and Palestinians either have no rights at all right or they’re a second class
1:12:09
citizens referring to the Palestinians who who make up 20% of the population of of Israel the citizens of Israel so
1:12:17
that’s different from the United States right where racism persists where all sorts of forms of discrimination persist
1:12:23
but at least legally whether you showed up yesterday and became a citizen or your ancestors came several centuries
1:12:30
ago as enslaved people are on the Mayflower you’re an equal citizen before the law and have an equal status we know
1:12:37
the reality is different right but that’s not the case in Israel so that’s maybe not a direct
1:12:43
answer to your question but it’s it’s I think important to understand the you know the specificities of this state and
1:12:50
Society um which of course are Thor thly bound up with its relationship with the
1:12:56
indigenous Arab population of Palestine the
1:13:02
Palestinians can can I come in as well did you want to go ahead one yeah um I
1:13:10
want to quickly um say to get back to the question of apartheid so I want to
1:13:16
really um also remind people that that analysis of apartheid came from
1:13:24
Palestinian Civil Society organizations in 2003
1:13:30
2005 uh uh in which they were making the
1:13:35
analysis that the kinds of conditions and access to rights that that people
1:13:40
Palestinian that any people have in the land that Israel is Sovereign over
1:13:47
depend on how the state defines them okay and so this was a um a a a a the
1:13:56
launching of the boycott divestment sanctions uh uh campaign and that
1:14:01
campaign has seen many wins some of those wins have been about the uh uh
1:14:10
Heritage uh human rights organizations like b salm as well as Human Rights
1:14:15
Watch and Amnesty International all calling the conditions on the ground in
1:14:21
Palestine in in in Israel in Palestine as a partip we know in fact that Ariel
1:14:28
Chiron himself expressed these concerns and it was one of the reasons that he wanted a withdrawal from the gsus trip
1:14:34
um so I just want to remind folks because I think a lot of times the labor
1:14:40
of Palestinian organizers historians storytellers gets erased and I really
1:14:46
want to insist that we Center those voices number one I want to link that
1:14:53
a a a a non-violent movement of boycott divestment sanctions to the campus uh
1:15:01
censorship and McCarthyism that Zach talked about so powerfully because boyot
1:15:07
divestment sanctions has also been criminalized criminalized across the um
1:15:13
across the United States criminalized in many different countries right so this one of the things that Palestinians are
1:15:19
saying is that when we do use these forms of Civil Disobedience were also
1:15:26
criminalized and part of the reason I think that that happens is because of the way that racialization functions and
1:15:33
I totally agree and appreciate so much what Zach is saying because we cannot
1:15:38
locate this as something that happened with the Netanyahu government this is a long duray kind of racialization at the
1:15:47
same time I do believe that the fact that our own um the limits of liberal
1:15:57
democracy in this country are so Frid and that we are watching all of the
1:16:03
multiple ways that um uh me many many all of the multiple Notions that many of
1:16:10
us have taken for granted this is why I was talking about international law
1:16:15
humanitarianism the rule of law these kinds of things that we have been taking for granted we’re at a really uh a a a
1:16:24
critical inflection point at this moment and and what is happening in Palestine
1:16:31
is a part of that and constituting it and also reacting to it so I do believe
1:16:38
that the kind of right-wing uh um consolidation and crystallization that we’re seeing
1:16:44
globally is very dangerous and has also enabled the kind of greenlining that we
1:16:53
have seen to 45 days of shelling 45 days of shelling an onclave
1:17:02
a an enclave that has been talked about as the world’s largest open air prison
1:17:07
and we see this complicity not just from um the Republican party in this country
1:17:13
right uh all of you know all of the Republicans lindsy Graham Nikki Haley
1:17:20
annihilate them level them we see it also a different register of rhetoric in the Democratic party and we also see the
1:17:27
complicity in the media so we have a problem on our hands and that problem is
1:17:33
coming for us just as it is now battering the Palestinians in
1:17:40
Gaza yeah I totally agree with that and my point of reference is Narendra Modi
1:17:46
in India who’s radically shifted Indian policy in the region and is his
1:17:53
historically India has been a supporter of Palestinian rights and now it’s lining up direct directly behind Israel
1:18:00
at this moment at this terrible moment but um let me
1:18:07
ask our panelists what they think the role of religion is in this
1:18:13
conflict that’s a question that came through the
1:18:20
chat well um religion is a marker of identity and
1:18:26
this is a u ethnopolitical struggle so obviously it it gets invoked Hamas
1:18:32
claims to be a religious organization although um I know something serious
1:18:38
about Islam and Islamic law and I can guarantee you that uh hamas’s actions on
1:18:44
October uh 7th uh contravened uh Islamic law in every single way uh you’re not
1:18:51
you’re not allowed to kill non-combatants you’re not allowed to launch a sneak attack uh to the extent
1:18:57
that there are a set of codified uh uh laws of war and Islamic jurist Prudence
1:19:03
uh Hamas uh violated them and so I think the reference to Islam is is on hamas’s
1:19:11
part is is a um a form of propaganda um it so happens that most
1:19:18
people who live in in uh in in Gaza are Muslims and uh it has tried to appeal to
1:19:24
that marker of identity but many Palestinians are secular-minded people it doesn’t mean they don’t pray or they
1:19:30
don’t go to mosque or they they don’t believe in God but you know the center of their politics a lot of the time
1:19:37
they’re middle class people and uh the PLO was famously not terribly religious
1:19:43
and um um there are you know Marxist uh groups that uh that reject religion
1:19:50
among the Palestinians and so forth so so um and then the N netanyahu’s lud
1:19:57
party is a secular party it’s not it’s not from religious Zionism it has
1:20:02
brought into the the cabinet of religious zionists but the history of
1:20:07
the lud is is a as a secular history and netan has several political allies that
1:20:15
that are themselves not uh uh not religious uh so I I would say that
1:20:22
seeing this conflict through the lens of religion would be an error that it is
1:20:29
largely an ethnopolitical struggle and in which religion is sometimes in vote
1:20:35
but there’s nothing in religion that makes people behave this way and it’s not what what the the the the conflict
1:20:42
is over is over uh control of territory and uh how people will be treated on
1:20:48
that territory uh which are entirely uh secular uh concerns in the correct
1:20:54
meaning of the word secular thank you Zach do to add
1:21:00
anything briefly I have two more questions that I’d like to get to um I
1:21:05
mean I I would love to hear um Zach’s uh take on this question as well I mean I
1:21:11
think there the the the the struggle on the ground is a political territorial
1:21:19
struggle it articulates itself in ideological terms those ideologies are
1:21:26
informed by religious practice belief and conviction so we have to somehow
1:21:31
hold all of those things together and also understand that religion is never
1:21:36
one thing it’s constantly changing right and it is about how people practice
1:21:42
religion okay and so here it’s important to remember that when Zionism first was
1:21:49
established it was actually religious Jewish people who opposed it so there’s an entire
1:21:57
history around the relationship between Zionism and Judaism and how that has
1:22:03
shifted over time I also want to acknowledge that political Islam is a
1:22:10
phenomenon it’s a political uh uh ideological formation
1:22:16
that is heterogenous and that is historically Dynamic I think there are simplified
1:22:22
ways in which Jihadi movements have been compared and again I would say we need
1:22:28
to take these differences in history seriously so somebody I would encourage everybody to read is Sak bonei who’s
1:22:35
written a wonderful history of Hamas that actually takes it seriously and
1:22:42
narrates its history so the last thing I want to say here because I’ve seen a lot of this in the chat here and in other
1:22:49
places oh Israel and the United States created ated Hamas because they wanted
1:22:55
to you know um contain the the PLO as a
1:23:00
national uh secular option because they were more threatened by that certainly they had a calculus
1:23:07
around what was what was most threatening to them it’s important to remember that Hamas is established in
1:23:13
1987 it’s also important to acknowledge and AOW that Hamas is part of a
1:23:20
broader uh tradition of modern political Islam and that it
1:23:26
was born of the Muslim Brotherhood itself an organization that has been
1:23:31
Dynamic and shifted from a more in the beginning a more one could say socialist
1:23:36
kind of ideological Vision uh uh in the very beginning to one that in the 21st
1:23:43
century has become much more neoliberal again we’re all historians we
1:23:48
got to read about this stuff there’s no easy answers
1:23:54
thank you Zach do you want to add anything or can we no maybe you should move on to the since time is limited move on to the next questions yeah we
1:24:02
just have a couple of minutes but I I’d like each of your thoughts on how you think this mess is going to
1:24:11
end uh well um I I would I wouldn’t dare
1:24:16
to venture a prediction um I mean we’re I think the only safe thing to say is
1:24:23
that um people will be living with the consequences of this for for years
1:24:28
decades generations to come I mean these kids who watch their families being killed and suffer trauma and and you
1:24:37
know seen the world including the Arab world stand by and do nothing or or facilitate what Israel is doing they
1:24:45
will have a response to this and it may not be a response we like very much you know it’s been argued that the rise of
1:24:51
Hamas was a response to the the failure of of the world and Israel to
1:24:56
accommodate the the the compromise offered by the by the PLO right let us
1:25:02
have a little state in in a quarter of what was once Palestine um under conditions the
1:25:07
Israelis will dictate and that’s enough and Israel ultimately refused to take yes for an answer which of course gives
1:25:15
rise to people who say you know about the Israelis exactly what the Israelis say about the Palestinians the only
1:25:22
thing they understand is force right you kill us we kill you you stop killing us
1:25:27
we stop killing you so um the devastation of so far the the I mean all
1:25:33
of Gaza but especially the northern half the depopulation right the ethnic cleansing which you’re watching before our eyes right where this population of
1:25:41
you know million and a half plus people have been driven from their homes their homes have been destroyed there not many
1:25:46
homes and and buildings and offices and businesses you know left standing or undamaged and in in much of Gaza so it’s
1:25:55
not even clear how people can return um and you know if there’s a huge massive
1:26:01
displaced Refugee population double refugees right refugees from the rest of Palestine in 48 who are now refugees
1:26:07
from where they lived elsewhere in Gaza it’s going to be a horrific situation on a humanitarian level but
1:26:14
the political implications right people with nothing to lose who whose lives have been
1:26:20
destroyed once again um by Israel and with the support of the United States and European countries and
1:26:28
others so there’ll be a price to pay for this for everyone and it’s and and you
1:26:36
know and and it will you know strengthen those forces I suspect who believe that
1:26:42
you know there is a military solution to this right why should they why should they conclude anything otherwise right
1:26:48
watching what the Israelis have done watching what the world has done or not done done so that’s as far as I would
1:26:54
venture to go specic beyond that specifically right who knows it depends
1:27:00
how things develop over the next days and weeks and and months but um it’s it’s certainly an
1:27:06
inflection point in this as Shen said Century long struggle for for control of
1:27:12
Palestine um and um and and and doesn’t I think bring us anything that promises
1:27:19
much for the future all right we’re out of time so I think
1:27:26
it’s a very somber note to end on but I think an appropriate note thank you thank you can I say one thing I just I
1:27:34
just want to say one thing one thing go ahead one thing which is I I I also
1:27:39
agree that I don’t see how we come back from this um I also just want to say I
1:27:46
know it looks like Palestinians have nothing to lose but I also want to remind you of Ban’s work Words which is
1:27:54
I love life and I am alive and I that’s why I’m smiling and I think it’s really
1:28:00
really important to remember that these Palestinians who are suffering and have
1:28:05
been suffering for a hundred years continue to live and continue to embrace
1:28:12
ways of being that are it themselves in opposition to all of the subjugation
1:28:18
that that that we have lived under thank you shim that’s a much better note
1:28:24
to endle thank you so much and really we owe so much to all three of you for
1:28:31
taking your your evening to spend with us and to share your thoughts on this
1:28:36
really pressing and issue of world historic importance I’d say so please
1:28:42
join me in thanking our three speakers and thank you to the audience
1:28:50
for joining us and I’ll just announce that on November on November 30th there’s going to be
1:28:58
another uh webinar that’s sponsored by both Mass peace action and histories for
1:29:03
peace and democracy and that’s a webinar with Andrew basovich so that’s going to be next week on November 30th so the
1:29:10
conversation will continue so thank you and please join us again for Andrew basovich and please join me in thanking
1:29:16
our three speakers thank you for organizing this all of you thank you thanks so
1:29:25
much
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