Norman Finkelstein (11:00)
Basically, if I were to try to summarize it for the purposes of this conversation, I believe the place to begin is 1948. The state of Israel is created. In the course of its creation, about 90% of the indigenous Palestinian population of Israel was expelled. About 750,000 people. Of those 750,000, about 300,000 were expelled to Gaza. And that's when Gaza kind of became Gaza. It was right now, of the population of Gaza, about 80% are refugees from the 1948 war or descendants of those refugees. Under international law, a descendant of a refugee is still counted as a refugee. So it's 80% a refugee population, and it's also about 50% a child population. Now, from the moment Gaza came under Egyptian administration after the 1948 war, Gaza comes under Egyptian administration. It's a very interesting fact when you start going through the history. There are all these outside observers who go into Gaza either to work there, like under the auspices of the UN or just to see the situation. And one of the things that struck me was each time somebody goes to Gaza, they describe Gaza as a huge concentration camp. Now, this is still under Egyptian rule. So Elm Burns, the main UN official in Gaza, he writes a book between Arab and Jew others. He described Gaza, he described it as a huge concentration camp. In 1967, during the June 1967 war, Gaza comes under Israeli control. In July 1967, the father of Al Gore, the presidential candidate, his father was also a senator. So Al Gore or Senator Gore, meaning the father. He goes to Gaza, he comes back and he testifies before the US Congress. How does he describe Gaza? He says Gaza is, quote, a huge concentration camp on the sand, if you will. You now Fast forward to 2002. One of Israel's leading sociologists, his name was Baruch Kimmerling. He writes a little book. Little book is called Politicide. How does he describe Gaza? He describes Gaza as, quote, the biggest concentration camp ever. 2004. The head of Israel's National Security Council. His name is Giora Island. He's still around. He's active now behind the scenes in the Netanyahu government. How does he describe Gaza? He describes Gaza as a huge concentration camp. Now, bear in mind, bear in mind, this is before Israel imposed the blockade of Gaza. It was already a horror show. It's been a horror show since 1948. In 2006, Israel imposes a blockade on Gaza. It decides what goes in, it decides what goes out. It decides who goes in, it decides who goes out. They put Gaza on what they call a humanitarian minimum diet. You know what that meant? It meant they calculated, literally. We're not talking about hyperbole now, poetry. They calculated the caloric diet of everyone living in Gaza and they admitted just enough food to avoid scenes of starvation. That was 2006. We're not talking about after October 7th. They prohibited baby chicks from going into Gaza. They prohibited chocolate from going into Gaza. They prohibited potato chips from going into Gaza. They prohibited condiments from going into Gaza. No cinnamon allowed in Gaza. Why? They wanted to create such intolerable conditions that the population of Gaza would overthrow the government that they elected. So that was Gaza. Now you come to 2006, October 6th. Okay, you come to 2006. The Economist magazine, which you know, is not a flaming liberal magazine, it describes Gaza as, quote, a human rubbish heap. The leading. The leading UN official on Gaza describes it as, quote, a toxic dump. 60% of the young people in Gaza, the people who burst the gates of Gaza on October 7, 60% of them are unemployed. All they have to look forward to when they get up each morning is to pace the perimeter of this tiny parcel of land, 26 miles long, the length of a marathon five miles wide. That was Gaza. It was exactly what the UN officials said, exactly what Al Gore's father said, exactly what the head of the Israeli National Security Council said they were born into. They were born into. They languished in. And they were destined to die in a concentration camp. It was like an elephant Burial ground really. And when I struggled after October 7th, I've said this many times, but it's a fact. It's not a drama point. Know what happened October 7th was awful. There's no doubt in my mind about that. The magnitude was significant. 1200 people killed. About estimates. I'm. It's not estimates. Close to 800 of them civilians, 400 combatants, Israeli IDF, me, members of the Israeli Defense Forces. So significant number can't get around that. I know there are all sorts of stories about Israel having killed a large number I've investigated as best I can. And I'll admit, you know, there's still room on the margins for error, but I think was overwhelmingly was committed by Hamas. And so how do you, how do you reckon something like that? But in politics there are many levels. There's the facts, there's your political judgment, there's your legal judgment, there's your moral judgment. And they don't come directly from the facts. They do not. They go through many filters or sieves before you get a moral judgment. And when I started to try to think it through, I latch I. I came upon in my mind the Nat Turner rebellion. So for those of your listeners who are unaware, it was the largest slave revolt in American history. And Nat Turner, he gave the order. All the historians agree on this. There isn't a huge literature in that Turner, but there is a literature. They all agree in one point he gave the order, which he never denied. He did a famous confession. We don't know how much of the confession is actually him and how much is the person who's writing it. But this part seemed real. The order was kill all white people. Kill all white people. And that's what they proceeded to do. They went on what you might call a 70, no, no 48 hour rampage, less than 48 hours actually, and hacked men, women, babies. It was brutal. It was brutal. But then something struck me. One historian, his name is Stephen Oakes, and he's trying to understand Nat Turner's motivation. Why did he do it? And he said Nat Turner was a very smart guy. There was no question about that. The person who took down his confession, he said he was white. He said white or black. Everybody agreed. Nat Turner was a very smart guy. And then he said, the historian now, he said there was this huge gulf for Nat Turner, very smart guy, between what he aspired to be in life and what he was destined to be because he was a slave. That huge gulf. He knew he was smart. And yet he also knew, as the historian Stephen Oakes put it that this, his only earthly existence he was born into, languish in and would die a slave. And that was the people, the young people in Gaza. They knew. You see, now Gaza is in the News, but by October 6, 2023, Gaza had vanished from the news. I have made the point because I do believe it's relevant. I had spent about 15 years just chronicling the details of what's happening in Gaza. I began roughly in the early 2000s, and by 2020, I gave up. That's a fact. And it was not a fact I was proud of because I was writing books. They were getting more and more detailed. I mean, so micro detail and nobody was reading them. The last book I wrote was called I Accuse. My publisher not happily informed me it sold 370 copies of those. 370. I purchased half of them. No, it's a fact because it was about a case related to Gaza in the International Criminal Court. And I was hoping to influence the court through my research. So I was going to present it to the ICC. But by 2020, as at norm, you know, you have only one life to live. And am I just going to stubbornly persist in the face of the fact that nobody cares? And that was the situation in Gaza. Gaza had vanished from the political scene by October 6, 2023. All the talk was about whether the Saudi, Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords. Nobody was talking about Gaza anymore. And so the people of Gaza basically did what Nat Turner did. Now here's the thing. Imagine an account of Nat Turner that doesn't mention he was a slave, just this crazy religious fanatic. He was a religious fanatic. No question about that. Nat Turner was a religious fanatic. He used the language of the Bible to try to make sense of his condition. That's what a religious fanatic meant. You know, John Brown, who led the insurrection before the Civil War, he also was a religious fanatic. He deeply fanatically believed slavery was an abomination. To the point that, you know, I don't want to get off on a digression, but when Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, when he went to meet John Brown, Douglas comments in one of his. He had three autobiographies. In one of them, he comments, he just wouldn't stop talking about slavery. He said he was boring. He was a fanatic. He was Johnny Onenote, John Brown, only about slavery. And Nat Turner too. He was a religious fanatic. But imagine if you tried to make sense of the Nat Turner rebellion by focusing only on his religious fanaticism like the religiously fanatical Hamas, only focus on that and not mention the guy is a slave.