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- [01:25]
A
Foreign. I'm Sharif Abdul Kus with dropside news. Dropside news.com Today marks two years of genocide in Gaza. Two years of the most violent episode in the modern history of Palestine. Israel has killed over 67,000 Palestinians, including over 20,000 children, and that number is a bare minimum. Thousands more are missing under the rubble. Thousands of deaths that we don't know about. There have been so many massacres. Flower massacres, aid massacres, Red Crescent massacres, school massacres, the massacres of over a thousand families and bloodlines that have been wiped out forever. We don't even know the number of deaths not caused by bombs or bullets or shells or drones, the number of preventable deaths caused by Israel's assault. We do know that at least 460 Palestinians, including 154 children, have starved to death. And more are dying every day from Israel's campaign of forced starvation and famine. Entire cities have been reduced to dust and broken concrete. Homes, hospitals, school, schools, universities, mosques, churches, bakeries. Everything that knits a community and society together has been destroyed. Even color seems to have been obliterated. Everything is now covered in gray dust. 92% of residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Over 500 schools and every university has been damaged or destroyed. Only 1.5% of cropland is still accessible and suitable for cultivation. Nearly every Palestinian in Gaza, 95%, has been displaced, most of them multiple times. Hundreds of thousands now live in 10 cities where they are still bombed and shelled and shot. The health care system has been devastated. Out of 38 hospitals in Gaza, 25 are completely shut down, while the rest are barely functioning. The number of doctors and medical personnel killed is over 1700. Over 360 have been detained. Journalists have been slaughtered. Israel has killed between 250 and 270 journalists and media workers over the past two years, an unprecedented number. There is so much that is unprecedented. And of course, Israel's massive colonial violence is by no means confined just to Gaza. Over the past two years, we've seen a huge escalation in daily attacks and dispossession in the occupied west bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been driven from their homes in the largest wave of displacement in the West bank since 1967. The number of Palestinians arrested in the west bank and Jerusalem over the past two years has topped 20,000, including over 1600 children. At least 77 political prisoners have died in custody. And it's not just Palestine, of course. Israel has bombed Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Iran, Qatar. We could spend hours listing facts and figures, and it would still not come close to capturing what has been wrought. And it has ruptured not just Palestine and the region, but it has reverberated across the globe. And all of this has been backed and supported and armed by the United States more than any other country. A new report by the Costs of War Project at Brown University found that the US has provided Israel with at least $21 billion in military aid over the past two years alone. And it concludes with the obvious, Israel would not have been able to sustain its wars across the Middle east without this massive US Backing. Today we're going to talk about all of this and more. And we're fortunate to be joined by renowned Palestinian human rights lawyer and legal scholar Noora Arakat. Yesterday, she addressed the UN Security Council, only the second Palestinian woman to brief the Security Council since October 7, 2023, and the first to present the legal case that Israel's war in Gaza is genocide. She spoke at the annual open debate on Women, Peace and Security. This is some of what she had.
- [06:05]
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Excellencies, you cannot allow brute power to unravel our humanity. I therefore urge you to insist that any solution to end the genocide not come at the expense of accountability or respect for international law. To ensure, as stipulated by the icj, that the end of occupation is overseen by the un, not Israel, and its allies. To protect the integrity of ongoing proceedings at the ICJ and the ICC to end the transfer of arms and other equipment or items, including jet fuel, to Israel to pursue prosecution of individuals, corporations and media companies complicit in genocide and to ensure that Palestinian women can meaningfully participate in rebuilding their societies and ultimately forging our collective futures. Should you be paralyzed by fear, I encourage you to look to Palestinian women. They refuse to surrender. Neither should you. Thank you.
- [07:19]
A
As Palestinian human rights lawyer and legal scholar Noor Arakat addressing the UN Security Council yesterday, Nora joins us now live. She's a professor at Rutgers University and the author of justice for Some Law and the Question of Palestine. Noora, welcome to Dropsite Livestream. Let's begin. Can you just take stock of where we are today? Two years into this genocide, what do you think is most important for people to understand and take in today?
- [07:52]
B
Thank you, Sharif, and thank you to the drop site team. It's been really wonderful to see you create a vehicle and an infrastructure in order to keep us informed, to report with integrity at a time when we've seen our journalistic core almost implode and fall out the bottom and its protection of genocide and its protection of a racist colonial ideology that it refuses to touch. And so it's been really refreshing and that we. We are reminded that if it does not exist, we create it, I think. And that touches on where we're at at this moment. I think that the primary takeaway is that after two years. Right. And the register of death and destruction that you narrow.
- [08:46]
A
I think we just lost Nora. We had a little bit of a problem with her connection. We're going to bring her back in a moment as she reconnects again. Today marks two years since the genocide began, and Noora is coming back right now. Hi, Noora.
- [09:10]
B
Sorry about that. I know that I was connected, so I apologize. But I was just saying that after, you know, two years of this register of death and destruction, there's an attempt in order to, you know, to push this revisionist history, to make this out to be a really severe hostage crisis that revolves around Israel. I mean, that's literally where we're at. That after we have seen, you know, what. What we. What I think we didn't expect because there have been. There have been the taking of captives, of Israeli captives and not necessarily civilian hostages, but of Israeli, like, soldier captives previously by Palestinian groups and including Hamas. And in those instances that has led to negotiations in some strange way that was treated as prisoners of war, obviously not by Israel. But if you graft onto it the laws of war, these are POWs, they're exchanging them and so on and so forth. In this episode of what happens after October 7th, I think it represented, you know, a few things, miscalculations that we couldn't have anticipated. I don't think that it was apparent to anybody how little Palestinian life cost or meant or was worthy. I mean, the extent and the ease with which we've been killed with zero consequence is. Is astounding. It's gutting, really. The other thing that we didn't anticipate is that even beyond that, you know, racist dehumanization is that there. There are rail guards that even if. Right. Even if we're moving towards the point where the logic amongst political and economic elite is, you know, kill them all. Which is really. It has been the attitude. They're telling us openly, like, too bad for those Palestinian kids, but we can't let them grow up because they might resist and fight for their freedom. Right. That there are norms, there are principles, Right. Both in international law, certainly, but also principles across, you know, in reference to academic freedom, in the freedom of speech, in the right to protest, in Democratic representation in journalistic, you know, representation. And we have seen literally almost all of these industries and these principles, you know, just collapse, collapse for the sake of allowing Israel to finish the job, to continue its Nakba as it wants. And so much attention is looking to international law and how it's failed, which I would completely echo. And I have things to say about the Security Council. But I just want to emphasize that it's not just like these legal institutions that we've seen become really impotent, incapacitated by US Threats and otherwise. But universities, even before the Trump administration had assumed the presidency, you know, on their own, were attacking their students and punishing their professors and firing their tenured professors. Right? There were snipers at the top of universities before there was a Trump administration threatening their funding. Reflects for us, right. What is the structure of university governance that now, you know, we're. Academic freedom is not the central principle. But instead, whoever serves on these trustees and these boards have become increasingly representative. CEOs of weapons manufacturers who are profiting, have become hedge fund, you know, managers, venture capitalists and otherwise, who have a tremendous amount of wealth and are also reflecting their financial interests. We have seen these boards, you know, donate. Members of these boards donate the canary mission to dock their own students. I mean, in journalism, you can tell us the story. Sharif, we just saw you again on Al Jazeera reporting on the direct targeting of journalists and yet the impotence of a journalist, you know, a journalistic core to even stand up and defend the life of their journalists. We've seen the same in the medical industry, like the medicine is meant to, to, you know, within, you know, an oath to do no harm. And yet you've seen medical associations writ large, with few exceptions, endorse genocide through complicity. And the same can be said, right, about what was the. I was rattling off journalism, academia, medicine, law. The same can be said about our political structures. Even the right to protest. Right. And freedom of speech is blatantly, blatantly gutted. You know, we hear, you know, a British, you know, parliamentarian say, you know, you've done too much protesting. You need. Just because you have freedom doesn't mean you need to exercise it every day. I mean, this is where we've gotten to. Nobody could have anticipated, I certainly could not have anticipated a suicide pact across industry and field ready to destroy itself for the sake of enabling Israel to finish the job of necba, to remove. They do not have to answer for their crimes at all and no longer have to deal with the fact of Their crimes that are necessary to sustain a Zionist project. I mean, Zionism is the establishment of a Jewish majority state on a land where Palestinian people seek to achieve their self determination and to be self determined. The only way Israel has been able to achieve that is through, through criminality, through prolonged military occupation, through apartheid, through genocide. And rather than attack these systems, right, Palestinians are attacked. If you get rid of Palestinians, Israel isn't any longer an apartheid regime because they're gone. Right. And there seems to be a suicide pact, unfortunately from us that that's, that signed off on this. And the upside of this is, wow, the resilience of civil society to fill in the void and to name this. But I think what's looming ahead of us is what does this mean for Palestinians? Certainly, but what does it mean for the rest of us?
- [15:59]
A
I mean there's certainly, yes, in almost every institution, cultural institutions, professional institutions, academic institutions, there seem to be this massive struggle between elites and leadership and the rank and file over Palestine that has brought these issues really to the fore in a way that we haven't seen in a generation. And you mentioned international law and the Security Council. I do want to hear what you, what you had to say. I mean, you obviously felt it was important to address the Security Council. Your legal scholar, international human rights lawyer. We all, you know, people keep speaking about this post Cold War order being crumbled now and being destroyed. This order kind of always was built and served the powerful, but it was used by people like you in different ways. But can you speak to like what what this architecture means, what the UN means, what the Security Council means, what international law means anymore in a moment when the most powerful countries in the world are backing and justifying genocide.
- [17:13]
B
So I'm going to just start from the moment of why I address the Security Council, despite all my cynicism and analysis of international law as a site of colonial oppression and so on and so forth. So I will say this, that as a legal scholar and advocate, I understand very well that the Security Council is the most significant body in terms of this international architecture that we have. The Security Council is the sole source of enforcement authority enshrined under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which affords to the Security Council comprised of five permanent member states and its 10 rotating members, the authority to declare peace. To declare when you know there's been a breach, that requires, you know, that justifies self defense, that affords to them the authority to impose sanctions, embargo on communication, diplomacy, trade, and affords them most significantly the right to mobilize collective force. Right. This is the only. So when you think about international law, that it's only words. The reason people say that is because law needs to be enforced. And in most domestic situations, we understand that if in the United States, let's say, for example, if legislature, the Congress makes the law, the judicial, you know, the judiciary interprets the law, and then the executive branch enforces the law through its monopoly on state violence, right? And so that's what law enforcement is and the rest of it. And. And that doesn't exist. We have a legislative body in the international system. It is the UN General Assembly. We have a judicial, you know, system, a judiciary in the international system comprised of many, many courts, but most notably the International Court of Justice, which is the primary organ of the un as well as the International Criminal Court, which has been created by treaty, as well as many regional courts and so on and so forth, and ad hoc tribunals as well. But we do not have enforcement authority. Right? NATO is not a global police. There is no global police. The closest thing that we have to that enforcement authority is the Security Council as enshrined in Chapter seven. Theoretically, it's the most significant. And addressing it is quite a big deal. And I wanted the opportunity. I knew that I would be the first Palestinian American woman to be making the case for genocide and to do it with an emphasis on the intensity of attack on Palestinian women and girls in particular, that targets our reproductive capacity systematically so that the way that Palestinian women have been attacked and have not been able to conceive, not been able to carry to full gestation, have not been able to deliver, have not been able to have their babies survive, Right. Is systematic as part of an effort to obliterate the possibility of a Palestinian future, which is genocide. It dissatisfied three of the six specific acts in the Genocide Convention. And for Palestinians, this is emblematic of the ongoing nakba. And, you know, to make that case and to insist this is not just like the tragic outcome of. Of a really gory war, but that this was the intent all along. And what was really disappointing, you know, was. And then obviously, I took the opportunity to take aim at the Trump Netanyahu plan, which we can talk about as well. But what, you know, it's really disappointing is that what I found in the Security Council, that they also don't see sources of power. Everybody after that, you know, we sat there for three hours listening to the statements, with the exception of the United States, right, Whose Deputy Permanent Representative amended her comments to come at me and Say that any, you know, genocide. My accusation of genocide is anti Semitic and that I've disparaged their wonderful peace plan. Right. With the exception of her, everybody just read their prepared statements and all their statements repeated. We need actions, not words, which is the most ironic thing to say in the Security Council, which is the source of action. And so it was, it was, it was emblematic of, wow, we're it, we're it. They are not going to do it for us. And, and so, you know, here we are.
- [22:03]
A
I mean, I actually wanted to read this is what the response by Ambassador Dorothy Shea, the deputy U.S. representative to the U.N. she said yesterday in response to you. I must address allegations of genocide made in this debate. These accusations are categorically false and fuel anti Semitic hatred and violence around the world. America fully supports Israel's right to defend itself. And then, then it goes on and on. The loss of civilian life in Gaza is tragic, but the responsibility for this conflict rests with Hamas, which could have stopped the fighting long ago by freeing the hostages and agreeing to the ceasefire terms accepted by Israel. I want, I do want to ask you about this latest, these latest ceasefire terms and what you think. Hi, are you. Can you hear me?
- [22:56]
B
Yes, yes. For some reason, it cut out. I don't know what happened.
- [22:59]
A
Oh, okay. Yes. Well, you know, I remember actually, In October of 2023, just a couple of weeks into the war, we were at a lunch with a few friends and you were explaining to some people why this is genocide. And this was just a couple of weeks into it beginning, why this meets the legal definition of genocide. Many Palestinians were saying this at the time. The rest of the world has very slowly caught up. And we saw groups like Amnesty International, Israeli groups like BIM, the U.N. finally, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders, association of Legal Scholars. And it's almost coming to be generally accepted that this is genocide, and yet it's still being allowed to happen. We're seeing now, and I don't know if this is. That's linked, but we're seeing now, yes, some sort of push for a ceasefire. It is a very. The plan put forward by Trump and his team is essentially a plan of surrender to Hamas. It's a. It's a pretty bad deal that they have to basically hand over all of their captives on faith that Palestinian captives will be released and that the genocide won't just resume again. And then there's all these, this talk of, you know, Tony Blair overseeing Gaza and different things.
- [24:40]
B
Zero irony, Zero irony.
- [24:43]
A
What do you make of this proposal? And, and what's happening right now. Of course we want the bombs to stop, and it seems to be the only way, but. And Hamas seemed to have given a way of threading the needle in its response, but it's a very precarious situation. So what do you think is happening right now?
- [25:03]
B
You know, I want to address first this thing about genocide. I know for my Palestinian siblings this is so frustrating because we have a name for it, it's Nakba. And this ongoing. What do you call it? And making that the primary argument, it's like almost a distraction. My goodness, call it what you want. And the only thing I will say in response to that, why that still, despite my deep frustrations, why that still unfortunately remains relevant is because this is literally about the legitimacy of Israel's attack on Palestinians in Gaza. Right? If this is a war, right then. And it features. Nobody's in denial. Even the apologists for Israel who deny there's genocide will. Will admit that it features war crimes and crimes against humanity, but ultimately want to defend the legitimacy of the campaign. Genocide indicates that it is not a legitimate campaign because whereas in warfare the military goals are legitimate to achieve as long as they meet right laws of war and prohibitions and international criminal law that protect civilians, that those military goals are legitimate. What those of us who have insisted that it's genocide, we're saying that the goal of the campaign is the destruction of the Palestinian people, which is never legitimate. Hence everything else is cover. Right? The destruction of Hamas is cover. The retrieval of the hostages is cover, because were those in fact the actual goals? There were other ways to achieve that far earlier, especially given that Hamas by October 10, 2023, said, Take back all the civilians. We want to keep the, the military captives because that. But take back the civilians. This wasn't, you know, and they refused. And so the purpose here has been the destruction of the Palestinian people. Specifically, in order, when they say they want to destroy Hamas, they want to destroy in Palestinians the audacity to resist in any way. And the only way to destroy that is to destroy Palestinians, to remove them. So that's why that becomes, you know, so relevant for Palestinians. You know, you know, for those of, we've been studying this, we see it, we live it, because we understand Necba, we understand genocide, because we understand settler colonialism, we understand native elimination. And it was, you know, easier for us quickly. I mean, you can immediately, you know, I, I've been, you know, I went to Gazd in the aftermath of the first large scale onslaught in 2008, 2009. So early in February 2009, with a legal delegation to investigate war crimes. And so I've been looking at this closely throughout the systematic war. And so knowing full well what was about to come and how Israel had changed the laws of war in the course of these attacks and all of the. All of the talking points that they had, we already knew what they were, so that's how we could respond. And we're able to say that in a way where those who were removed, who weren't paying attention to Palestine, are first and foremost taken by, you know, what Hamas did, the attacks on October 7th, and that becomes their primary compass. That becomes the beginning of history. Gaza has no geography. It floats outside of Palestine. It floats outside of the Middle east, period. Right? Hamas has no history. All of a sudden, you know. You know, and even the sympathetic at the top wanted to insist, you know, as they did with me on many interviews, can you come on to the program and explain why all Palestinians are not Hamas? And I would refuse and say that's a very racist line of questioning. Let's say all Palestinians supported Hamas. How does their support change their civilian status to make them into legitimate targets? Right? And so there was just this emphasis of somehow the refusal to even engage, like, who's Hamas? When are they founded? What is. And, and so I think that, that, that has been the primary frustration. Look how far we've gotten anyway. I mean, of course I say the we, but it's Palestinians that have been Samadu, who have been so steadfast, that have. Because they have been so steadfast and suffered something that no one should suffer. No mother, father, no parent should suffer the loss of their children in the systematic slaughter that now, you know, it's illuminated. Propaganda wasn't enough, and now repression isn't even enough. So now we're at the point where they've introduced. They've presented this proposal that's full of illegality, Sharif. It's full of. All of it is illegal. All of its terms, aside from the vagueness. But the part that stands out so starkly for me is the way that it whitewashes genocide. It's as if that hasn't happened. There's no accountability for Israel, only Hamas. Right? Hamas has the imperative to demilitarize and to step down from power. There's no accountability for Israeli individuals who incited genocide, who orchestrated genocide. There's no accountability for any of the weapons manufacturers that provided the technology in order to, you know, deliberately target Palestinians. There's no accountability for the media, corporations, who incited genocide and repeated lies. There's no accountability for heads of state like Biden, who repeated the lie that he saw 40 beheaded babies twice. That never exist in pictures that never existed. There's no accountability, period. And that part, what they're trying to do is to rehabilitate and save Israel in this moment in a way that is full of illegalities and that will set us up in what you call surrender. But what becomes a permanent occupation that is even more severe than preceding October 7th because it explicitly bifurcates Gaza from the West Bank. It's not a holistic. It will not be governed by Palestinians at all. Their right to self determination doesn't exist. Even the mention of Palestinians to stay in Gaza, right? That's kind of what the Arab states supported and wanted to see. They're not even referred to as Palestinians. Gazans will be able to stay in Gaza and live a good life. Those are Palestinians staying in Palestine. And that, you know, for, for just for those. I mean, I guess if we're going to get into the legal part of it, the vagueness of language here, read through, you know, a legal eye, aside from the illegality, Right, because all of this is, you know, there are preemptory norms of self determination, for example, that should be heeded, that are not here and so on and so forth. But the UN is supposed to oversee the end of occupation, not Israel and its allies. Aside from the illegalities. I mean, just looking at the terms of it, and you allude to this, the lack of specificity is deliberate. It was the same lack of specificity in 1967 around Security Council Resolution 242 in the line that stipulated that Israel will withdraw from territories recently occupied. It was the lack of the definite article, the, or all the preceding, all the occupied, you know, territory, all the territories recently occupied. Israel has used that loophole since 67 to basically say that as long as it withdrew a little, it's. It's fulfilled the Security Council resolution, right? They withdrew from the Sinai, which is such a vast land that they say that it exceeds the Gaza and the west bank and therefore fulfilled their obligation and can stay in the Golan Heights in Gaza and the west bank, right? But in Oslo we see the same thing. It was the lack of specificity. It was the tabling of the five permanent, you know, permanent status issues of settlements, Jerusalem, refugees, borders and. Why do I forget the fifth?
- [33:36]
A
Did I say Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
- [33:42]
B
Refugees, settlements and settlers, borders. Let me leave it at 4 for now. I mean, suffice you Know that those are left off the table. That lack of specificity is precisely why the outcome that we have now, somewhat 32 years after Oslo, is precisely what Oslo had stipulated. It's not despite Oslo, it's because of Oslo. And so here we have another agreement, that stipend setting us up for another God knows how many decades of violations and law in, in law and atrocity against Palestinians that will not remain stable. Right. But that ultimately saves Israel at this moment of reckoning and allows them to continue this, this harm, this systematic violations with impunity. That's where we're at. And the worst part, I agree, Hamas did thread the needle. They had to because even of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres endorsed this plan. The, you know, Arab and Muslim states endorsed this plan yesterday at the Security Council. It was celebrated. Right. I understand everybody wants the end to the genocide. Palestinians more than anyone. They need to eat and sleep. But it's coming, it's almost surrender because they're, they're, they're basically saying, we have no other power to do it any other way besides the way that the US is dictating US and Israel are dictating, even if it sets up this horizon. And so the message that I have is that the worst thing that can happen after now is for us to relent. Already the EU has suspended its talks over sanctions on Israel in light of the, in light of the plan right now, all attempts at accountability will be framed as undermining peace. We can't impose sanctions on Israel because that might undermine the peace plan. We can't prosecute war criminals. That might undermine peace plan. We can't continue at the icj. We can't continue at the icsd. And we have to make that impossible by not relenting.
- [36:07]
A
I just have a couple more questions before we wrap up. But I mean, there's so much to talk about. I think when you're, when you were describing that this is Nakba, you know, there was also, when you're talking about also the crackdown on academic freedom, we saw your colleague, a human rights lawyer, put forward a paper and an idea of, you know, moving towards Nakba as a legal concept. That was then, I believe the board of directors at Columbia Law Review didn't want it printed. And the Harvard Law Review also refused to print something like that to try and have necklace, if I remember, it was Harvard first.
- [36:50]
B
It was Harvard first, Columbia.
- [36:54]
A
But this idea that this is something that is actually different. It's a different method of oppression, repression, colonialism, all kind of Wrapped in this way that we have decades of evidence of. But you spoke recently an event organized, organized by the Hague group in New York at the Ethical Culture Society. And you spoke about Zionism is a racist ideology. But that's not all it is. It's a colonial ideology. And you link that also to apartheid as a racist ideology, but also important to understand. Apartheid in South Africa was also a colonial ideology. Can you explain some of that and why what we need is decolonization and what that means?
- [37:45]
B
Yeah, no, I mean, this is it. This is it. So just for folks to Understand this, on November 10, 2025, it will mark 50 years since Resolution 33 passed by the General assembly that declared Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. And this resolution was of really the Third World in revolt that was amending a decade against racism that was targeting the apartheid regime in south and southwest Africa. And what Palestinians did, led by Fayez Sayeh, right, are a Palestinian jurist, not the only, but one of the most significant, who is the PLO research director, you know, assumes becomes the first PLO research director and you know, first publishes this pamphlet in 1965 on Zionist colonialism in Palestine, providing racial and colonial theory, a racial and settler colonial theory, right? Where he says, whereas, you know, most European colonial regimes seek to dominate, the Zionist colonial regime seeks to eliminate. Right? And so we get, even though settler colonialism doesn't come into full view in kind of academic fashion, so to speak, until the early 2000s, was saying this in 65, in 75, the PLO really wanted to unseat Israel from the General assembly just as South Africa had been unseated by revoking its membership credentials in 1974. But because Egypt wanted to recoup the Sinai Peninsula through bilateral negotiations with Israel overseen by the United States, Egypt blocked the move, finding it that it might really upset the US and undermine their negotiation. And so instead the plo, together with the third world leadership, including Somalia, who makes this amendment in the Third Committee, presents an amendment to edit the decade against racism, condemning Zionism as a form of racism and racial colonialism alongside apartheid, alien occupation, colonialism, racism as such. And it was a hard fought victory. It was a hard fought victory and one that the PLO itself rescinds in 1991 as a precondition for entering Oslo. Right, which is how we then get Oslo to insulate Israel from this critique where we can't reach the core. We can't reach the lizing ideology that insists on genocidal expansion and territorial consolidation. And instead we end up talking about peacemaking, dialogue, getting along, right? You've dropped power out the bottom. You've dropped structure out the bottom. And now all we have to do is how do Palestinians and Israelis get along? And both sides need to compromise, right? And so. But 30 years of struggle and 32 years of Israel sabotaging the possibility of a Palestinian state, and 30 years of Palestinian struggle who by 2000 at the Durban Review Conference brought back Zionism as racism, which is why the US and Israel boycott the event in 2000. And then we see the culmination of this in 2021 in the unity in Trifalda and the declaration of dignity and hope by Palestinians that declare Palestinians are a singular people. Zionism is our singular enemy. And so we see this rehabilitation. And we're now in 2021 at a crossroads where you've got these institutions that have declared Israel an apartheid regime. You have the unity in Trifada which has made it clear, Palestinians are clear on this demand. We are at a fork in the road. We are either going to normalize apartheid or we're going to dismantle this regime. And Abraham accords normalization of apartheid and now genocide, which is an outcome of that. I insist on the colonial dimension of this because I'm, you know, unfortunately, I think that there's a misunderstanding of apartheid is really, really bad racism when, you know, a part that is first enforced most that was referred to by the, you know, South African Communist Party as a peculiar kind of colonialism and understood, you know, and part of the critique of the ancient right, the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela today remains in leadership. The, you know, the critique that remains of the ANC is that in negotiating peace and, you know, the first elections, multiracial elections, so to speak, you know, is that they dropped colonialism from the demand and instead democratized the settler colony, but without redistributing everything that the settlers had stolen. So that 70, you know, like some 7% of the population which identifies as white, owns almost 70% of all the land. And that's to say nothing of industry across all indicators. In South Africa today, inequality between black and white is so severe, bank ranks South Africa as the most unequal place on earth because of this lack of distribution. I mean, I think Ramaphosa, South African president today, Cyril Ramaphosa, now we see an attempt, you know, to do some of that which the, you know, Elon Musk and the Trump administration referred to as white genocide. And then they offered refuge for 50 africars self identified in the United States. But if you don't address the colonial dimension, this is what you get. You get a democratization of the settler colony without a redress of this original wrong. And so what does it mean to decolonize is redistribution, is repatriation, is return, is a dismantlement of obviously of the law, but also of the colonial institutions that continue to further a regime of racial supremacy and theft. And so I think we're at a point where we all need to develop a better vocabulary and grammar and discourse to be able to talk about this, to get out of this trap that we're in. And you know, much love and respect to all my comrades, but I think that the reliance has been on this, you know, those who study it. Like you don't need experts to understand that an ideology is racist and colonialist. Right? It's the same. You don't, you know, we understand white supremacy as such, we understand apartheid as such. And so I think that it's imperative on us now to move forward. And really that's, that's, this is the horizon now on the ground. We haven't been able to affect the change that we want on the ground. But you know, obviously from all the polling that we've seen, we've changed discourse and public opinion and I think that we can succeed in doing the work of delegitimizing this ideology, which we must. There's no room for any ideology that preaches a superior racial class under whatever auspices. Freedom, liberation, right, you earned it, you're chosen, you're richer than other people, whatever it is, we're smarter, we have more weapons, whatever it is, there's just no room for it. And so, you know, putting Zionism alongside, it's not the only one, but it's the one. I, I think I read this somewhere, it was really poignant. I'm sorry, I can't remember the name of the author, but she very, you know, Zionism becomes the, almost the ideological cover for a more repressive regime, whether it's used cynically or sincerely, but it becomes the ideological cover. So if you can't discuss Zionism, you won't be able to combat all these other systems that you care about because Zionism is used as the front because you can accuse those who attack it of being, you know, bigoted against Jews. That's going to be far more effective than using other GS that have been delegitimized. And so it's imperative on us to develop that language and discourse, not to, you know, self promote or anything. I would rec. You know, I recommend reading 1965, you know, kind of book, pamphlet. I also recommend Lana Tatur and Ronit Lenten's new anthology from Stanford on race and Palestine. I want to recommend that in terms of, you know, Dara Lee, John Reynolds and I have an article, an agel where we summarize this in really few words. 3,000 maybe. And then John Reynolds and I are now a book, we finished a book on this that we hope will help people develop the language and be able to do this work and so that they can study. And that book should be coming out with Haymarket.
- [47:44]
A
Just last question before we wrap up. We, you know, we are seeing this, this incredibly violent moment where, you know, it could be this other moment of, you know, post 1967, where, where things are really redrawn. You know, Israel has taken land in Syria. The Syrian regime has fallen, a terrible regime, but one now that has been replaced with a much more compliant one in terms of resistance to Israel. Hezbollah has been severely weakened. Yemen is, is being bombed. There's, you know, there has been, and, you know, Gaza has been all but erased. We see what's happening in the occupied West Bank. We see this, this very violent expansion happening and annexation and, and it's continuing. And the answer to any problem by Israel is just war. But at the same time, you know, I haven't seen this level of support for Palestine in my life. I remember covering the second Intifada. You couldn't say Palestine, saying Palestine was controversial, like that's not a country there. You would get attacked so viciously for anything you were. And you know that we had that acronym pep, progressive except for Palestine. You know, that was kind of like the norm. Now we're seeing this, you know, this groundswell of opposition to Israel, a groundswell of solidarity with Palestine. Massive marches, massive demonstrations. Thousands of actors and you know, media industry figures in Hollywood have signed a letter pledging not to work with Israeli state or anything linked to the Israeli state, which is incredible. We saw, you know, massive campus uprisings. We've seen, you know, people block ports. And so I, I guess my question is, yeah, do you have hope that there's actually some argue that this is the end of Zionism as like Elan Pape. And it's just a very violent and very long end. And it's very hard to predict or tell anything. But I guess yes, with all this darkness there is this, this, this light also that's, that's, that's happening. And yeah, how would you kind of gauge this moment, as we're entering kind of this, this third year of genocide.
- [50:38]
B
I get so emotional. It is our duty to have hope. It is our duty to resist. It is our duty to fight. There is no alternative. There is no alternative. Even if you believe in your heart and justice but feel hopeless so you don't do anything anymore. What's the point of the protest? What's the point of writing a letter? What's the point of this meeting? What's the point of publishing? You're basically stopping, right? And the truth is, is that we are the most hopeful when we're doing the most work together, and we are the least hopeful when nothing is being done. So understand that your work and labor is the source of hope. It's like this dialectic. You want hope, but you're the source of hope. Hope. So you just gotta, you know, this is the thing. And, and I get emotional because I also, I think I had a really hard time, especially this year. I mean, all of us go through ups and downs, through rage and despair and like feeling like. I think I had the hardest time around when Israel attacked Iran. And I just saw all, everybody, even the Dems, who, who for them, Obama is a darling and, and, and negotiated nuclear, civilian, nuclear power for Iran in the, in nuclear agreement with them, US Iran agreement that even Obama, I don't know what you call them, were creating a discourse around Iran as a nuclear threat. And I was like, wait a minute, just pull up your darling's, you know, documents. What are you talking about? And then seeing them totally rehabilitate Israel into a normal actor, even as it was, you know, practicing aggression against, you know, five different countries and committing a genocide. My, I think the, that was my lowest point and the way that I have since then been able to pull myself out of despair was to remind myself kind of what you were saying at the top, right? We couldn't say Palestine in early 2000 and look at us now, right? And I went farther than that. We have ancestors that have been doing this work for over 100 years who in their moment of deep despair, possibly could not imagine that there would be an entire generation and millions across the world in protest. And here we are. And so I, I remind myself I am a blip. I am a blip in the lineage of my ancestors and in the lineage of those who will be descendants, right? This continue. We continue. So this idea is at the end of Zionism, is that not? You know, I think the, I think we're right to be cynical to see the Arab World, I mean, completely reconfigured. And you mentioned Syria, but it's not, I mean, yes, Syria, because of its governance, you know, it's. It's, you know, current governance, but wants to disarm. You know, there's a faction in the Lebanese government that wants to forcibly disarm Hezbollah and enter into normalization with Israel. These states and people, it's not just the states. People are exhausted and don't know how war and create kind of. And, and to pursue life and are now entering into this phase where let's give normalization with Israel a chance. So it is as dismal as it is as hopeful. And I think that we need to hold those things in tension. It's not one or the other. These are happening at the same time. And right now, all the gains that we have, we have to protect because this plan in place is meant to rehabilitate Israel and to tell all those artists that took their music off Spotify and all those artists that refused, you know, to perform and all those, you know, universities said, okay, go back to normal, everybody. We're back on track. And you can't, you can't make Israel into an enemy. It's a peace partner and we can't do that. Let them do what they want. Do not take your foot off the brake. Israel has not stopped being an apartheid regime. Israel has not been held to account for genocide. It is not. The work is not done regardless of what our political and economic elite insist upon.
- [55:30]
A
Well, Noor Akat, thank you so much. Thank you for all your work, such important work and your words and your actions and. Yeah, we'll obviously keep the conversation going. Nura Rakat is a Palestinian human rights lawyer and scholar, a professor at Rutgers University, author of justice for Some Law on the Question of Palestine, and what's the title of the forthcoming book.
- [55:58]
B
Confronting Zionism.
- [56:00]
A
Confronting Zionism. Okay.
- [56:03]
B
Real subtle, but it comes, it comes from the manifesto of dignity and hope. I mean, it's really lift. You know, it's really intent on lifting up a Palestinian tradition. Palestinians have got this. They've been having this, they've been leading this. We do not want to be saved. We just want the space to be able to liberate ourselves. So we're asking, you know, the ask is basically take responsibility for the harm you're. You've created. You don't need to do anything for us. Just stop causing harm.
- [56:36]
A
Inshallah. Well, that does it for the live stream. We are usually here at Tuesdays at 9:30. We're going to be moving to Thursdays next week. If you want to support our work, you can subscribe@dropsitenews.com make sure to follow us on our social media platforms. Let people know about our work. On behalf of everyone at Dropsite, thanks for joining us. I'm Sherif Abdul Kutus.
- [57:07]
B
Sam, It.