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- [00:01]
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- [01:05]
Martin DeCaro
it happens March 31, 2026 eyewitness to annihilation.
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Kelly Clarkson
The Israeli military has continued its bombing of the Gaza Strip overnight. Children have been lost and my son
- [01:20]
Jean Pierre Fillu
is still under the rubble.
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Martin DeCaro
Shada has frozen to death.
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Jean Pierre Fillu
We have no shelter and my daughter died from the cold.
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Charmin Announcer
Tents and makeshift shelters were soaked and flooded or washed away entirely. In Khan Younis, an eight month old bab girl died from hypothermia.
- [01:38]
Jean Pierre Fillu
The first meeting of President Trump's Board of Peace just wrapped up in Washington. If Hamas doesn't do what they promised they would do, and I think they
- [01:46]
Martin DeCaro
probably will, but they were born with
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Jean Pierre Fillu
rifles in their hands.
- [01:49]
Martin DeCaro
Israel's war to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza is not over. Deadly airstrikes, hunger, thirst, the lack of medicine. Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip continue to endure inhuman suffering as the world's attention has moved on to other problems. Enter historian Jean Pierre Fillu. He traveled to Gaza last year to bear witness to the devastation, to end our indifference to the deaths of others. That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:20]
Jean Pierre Fillu
What we see is now not only the Palestinian enclave of Gaza as a beacon of Palestinian culture, civilization, society has been erased, but the Palestinian society has been atomized in order to make them something less than a people, some kind of a vast collective of bellies to be fed or bodies to be cured. And this is certainly, certainly dehumanization on a scale that I've never experienced before.
- [03:00]
Martin DeCaro
For nearly 80 years now, Gaza has been known as a place where Palestinians are trapped, unable to return to their former homelands in the State of Israel, the country they were expelled from in the war triggered by Israel's creation in 1948.
- [03:14]
Historical Narrator
General assembly of the United nations has made its decision on Palestine. Soviet Union? Yes. United Kingdom? United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel. It is Camera Records from Palestine show heavy damage in and around the Arab city of Jaffa as Haganah troops move up to new positions along the war scarred roads. Jaffa itself has become an almost deserted
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Martin DeCaro
city, as historian Jean Pierre Fillu wrote for Foreign affairs in early 2024. By January 1949, the Israelis had not only defeated the Arab armies, but also driven some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in what became known as the Nakba, or catastrophe. The armistice sign between Israel and Egypt under UN auspices in February of that year created the Gaza Strip, a territory under Egyptian administration and defined by the ceasefire lines in the north and east and by the 1906 border with Egypt in the south. After centuries as a strategic crossroads and vital commercial hub for regional trade, Gaza had been reduced to a strip of land cornered by the desert and cut off from what had been Palestine. On top of that, the local population of some 80,000 was now overwhelmed by some 200,000 refugees from all over Palestine, who then described the Gaza Strip as their Noah's Ark.
- [04:37]
Historical Narrator
The young republic, born of war, now joins the Council of Peace. The blue and white star of David is added to the Flags of the 58 other member states simultaneously with her admission to. You know. Tel Aviv, capital of Israel, celebrates the first anniversary of the state's independence. Crowds are so big that a giant parade has to be cancelled in synagogues throughout the land. Thousands of worshipers attend.
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Martin DeCaro
In November 1956, wrote fil you the Israeli army took control of the strip as part of a coordinated offensive with France and the United Kingdom against Nasser's Egypt.
- [05:10]
Historical Narrator
Israeli contingents slogged through the Sinai Desert in the direction of the Suez Canal in an operation that eventually subjugated the area and mopped up nests of Fedayeen commandos whose raids precipitated the Israeli invasion. The Gaza Strip, long a source of friction, now is the road.
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Martin DeCaro
During four months of occupation, he wrote, around a thousand Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, including two massacres documented by the United nations in which at least 275 were executed in Khan Yunis and 111 in Rafah. The trauma was so profound, he wrote, that when the Israelis withdrew under US Pressure, the Palestinian population called for the return of Egyptian rule. Instead of the UN trusteeship that had initially been envisioned, a historic opportunity to build a Palestinian entity that could evolve into a state had been lost.
- [06:00]
Historical Narrator
After weeks of stalemate, the Suez crisis burst dramatically into the news again for Israel has invaded Egypt.
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Martin DeCaro
And again that essay was written in early 2024, just a couple of months after Israel began retaliating for the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023. It was already apparent then that Israel was doing more than going after Hamas fighters. The IDF was annihilating Gaza in an act of collective punishment. Today, talking about a Palestinian state in Gaza seems insane. Gaza's been destroyed, its entire population displaced, tens of thousands killed, maimed, buried under rubble, lacking food and medicine, Jean Pierre Fillu traveled to the enclave for 32 days. He and wrote a book about what he witnessed there. A historian in Gaza, he teaches Middle east studies at Sciences Po in Paris before becoming a scholar. Fil you was a diplomat for 18 years, serving in several posts for the French government in the greater Middle East. Tap subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads, get early access and enjoy all of our bonus content or go to historyasithappens.com to sign up and support the work we're doing here.
- [07:13]
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- [07:43]
Martin DeCaro
Jean Pierre Fil, you welcome to the show.
- [07:46]
Jean Pierre Fillu
Well, thank you so much for welcoming
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Martin DeCaro
me, joining us from France. Welcome back. I should say so why did you feel like you had to go to Gaza and see it for yourself?
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Jean Pierre Fillu
I felt compelled to go back by any way possible because as a historian, I had written Gaza history. I knew the place pretty well, pretty intimately. And as a human being, I had many friends over there, a lot of old and more recent relationships, and I was losing ground with what was happening in Gaza, that this reality was slipping away from me. And I had to go back. I had to go back as a historian, which is why the title of my book is A HISTORIAN in Gaza Gaza because what was being destroyed was destroyed in front of our eyes and would definitely never go back. And I had to bear witness, to bear witness as a historian, but also very simply, as a human being.
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Martin DeCaro
Israel to this day still does not allow foreign journalists into Gaza. By the time you were there, despite that ban on foreign journalists, most people with a smartphone could see anecdotally what was happening to Gaza. The widespread destruction, the death, the suffering. But then once hostilities died down a bit, some news organizations were able to get drones in the air and it looked like a lunar landscape. You could see entire areas totally leveled. How would you describe what you witnessed when you were there on the ground?
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Jean Pierre Fillu
Well, first, when I was on the ground, I couldn't imagine that 15 months later talking with you, the foreign press would still be banned. It's quite unique in contemporary history to have a major crisis whose access is forbidden to independent international media. So when you're on the ground, first you need a few days, even though you know quite well the place, like me, just to get around. Because everything disappeared, the streets, the cities, all my memories disappeared. What I was experiencing was a totally new reality. As you said, lunar landscape. You had a sea of tents, an ocean of refugees, but with no first floor, second floor, everything was at human level. So you couldn't get a perspective from afar, like the people you describe from the plane. So you had to go for hours, literally among, you know, this humanity that was totally abandoned and try to grasp the possibility of their survival. I have to insist on the fact that I was there working for humanitarian mission, Doctors Without Borders, otherwise I wouldn't have been allowed in. I was doing my job as a humanitarian, giving them, you know, advice about security, environment, context and so on and so forth. But I took this opportunity of being involved so closely, so actively with this tragedy, to bear witness with this book.
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Martin DeCaro
Humanitarian zone. That's a misnomer. There really wasn't a humanitarian zone, was it? That's where you spent most of your time.
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Jean Pierre Fillu
Yes. Well, you have to be when you in Gaza, in the so called humanitarian zone, otherwise it's a kill zone, so you don't have any alternative. And even crossing the kill zone, getting in and getting out, I got the scare of my life. And I'm not scared easily because it's really so dangerous, so scary. Gaza is an Orwellian world where all the worlds get the contrary. Meaning, you know, humanitarian zone is nothing humanitarian. It's a destitute area where nearly 2 million people were dumped, literally dumped, without any facilities. But drinking water.
- [12:09]
Martin DeCaro
People didn't have a cup of drinking water.
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Jean Pierre Fillu
You know, Doctors Without Borders, for whom I was working while there was delivering, because now they have been banned from Gaza again, something I would never have imagined possible for an organization that got the Peace Nobel Prize. The situation was so tragic that Doctor Without Border, on top of all the medical assistance it was providing, was providing one quarter of the water that was distributed in Gaza. Because clean water is literally a vital issue. Because in Gaza in history was an oasis. Everybody was coming to Gaza because of the water. The Wadi Gaza was the largest river flowing into the Mediterranean from Palestine since the antiquity. But because of the sea, because of the war, all this has been destroyed. So the water is either too salty because it's too close to the sea or too polluted when it's too close to the soil. So you have to purify the water and of course distribute it. The standard of clean water in Gaza are below any minimum. This is an average, which means that the majority of the population in Gaza doesn't even get that average. But that was only one of the many life or death challenges the ordinary Gazan is facing many times a day.
- [13:46]
Martin DeCaro
In your book, you describe how difficult it was for anyone to have a sip of clean water. That's everyone. Children, pregnant women. It's very, very painful to read how people are going through something like that. The genocide debate often hinges on intent. And people will point to statements that were made by Israeli political and military figures. But intent can also be observed in the conduct, in the damage. Indiscriminate destruction of entire neighborhoods, for instance. Do you consider it genocide?
- [14:23]
Jean Pierre Fillu
As a historian, I try to use the most sober words that induce debate, reflections that stimulate exchange. I never used that word that is so polarizing. I try to reach out to every kind of audience, but at the same time, I'm testifying about what I witnessed. And some people use it as an argument for their own position. What I'm sure convinced is that I've been on many war theaters. I've been in Afghanistan during Soviet occupation. I've been in Iraq, I've been in Syria, I've been in Somalia, I've been in Bosnia. I've never seen anything remotely like this because after an earthquake, they still one house somewhere still standing. Because nature makes mistake. But here it's purely human made. It's systematic, it's industrial. It's an annihilation war. This expression, I use it repeatedly because I think it's relevant. It annihilated every possibility of a decent Life, collective life. So what we saw, mentioning the humanitarian zone as an oxymoron or as a Orwellian use, what we see is now not only the Palestinian enclave of Gaza as a beacon of Palestinian culture, civilization, society has been erased, but the Palestinian society has been atomized in order to make them something less than a people, some kind of a vast collective of bellies to be fed or bodies to be cured. And this is certainly, certainly dehumanization on a scale that I've never experienced before. And the big challenge for me was to find the right words that could echo in the mind and soul and conscience of everybody who would read this
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Martin DeCaro
testimony you wrote here. Nothing had prepared me for what I saw and experienced in Gaza. Nothing at all. Nothing. Nothing. Not my regular trips to the Palestinian enclave since 1980. Not my studies, my research, my fieldwork, not the contacts, friendships and loyalties formed over the years. Nothing. Not even the works of Gazan artists that have so inspired me, their films, poems, art, or their manifesto against the nightmare within a nightmare of Islamist domination under Israeli occupation. Did you see any Hamas people while you were there?
- [17:18]
Jean Pierre Fillu
Well, it all depends on what you call Hamas people. You know, everything that is working as institution is connected to what was the Hamas government. So, of course, the Ministry of Health is a part of that structure. But what is sure is that I saw, and I was not very comfortable the moment the Hamas armed people came out of their cache during the first truce. Because I lived the first day of the truce of January 2025, the truce that was enforced just on the eve of Donald Trump returning to the White House. So at that moment they came out, they started to ban checkpoint, to intimidate people, to eventually kill opponents and to kill them in a very mediatized way, you know, with people filming the killing while they were doing it. So I've been knowing Hamas for many years. I wrote about them and I wrote, as you just mentioned it, about the nightmare within the nightmare, the nightmare of the Islamist domination within the Israeli occupation. And very early on, before the end of October 2023, I was warning the Israeli government, saying, the way you handle this war, you will make it Hamas stronger. You will not make it stronger in absolute terms, but you will make stronger in relative terms, because you will destroy much more Gaza and the society and the civil society and all the universities and all what could have been the counter powers to Hamas rule. You will destroy them, and Hamas will be weakened, but it will be hardened. It will be even more radicalized, even more thirsty for revenge. This is unfortunately What I witnessed on
- [19:24]
Martin DeCaro
the ground, all of this is still ongoing. It's not over. And as you say, Israel eliminated the possibility of there being an alternative to Hamas. There is a long historical pattern here of Israel killing potentially relatively moderate interlocutors or marginalizing them if they don't assassinate them. You know, Jean Pierre, you talk about how important it was to witness this and relay what you saw there to the world through your book. And as I mentioned before, anyone with a smartphone could see what was happening there anecdotally. Yet at the same time, it didn't help international governments. So there was international public outrage. But international governments, as you say in your book, Gaza had been abandoned and Gazans knew it. How is that possible?
- [20:16]
Jean Pierre Fillu
Well, it has been possible because the world had already got accustomed to Gaza being under blockade since 2007. It had been already, you know, a new abnormality. Gaza can be cut off from the world, and Gaza can be submitted to the decision of people sitting in the headquarters of the Israeli army in order to know how many calories or how much food or how many purification instruments for the water can get in during two decades. And nobody did anything about that because the idea was to have a peace process going on with Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and bypassing Gaza. The second thing is that Israelis were forbidden since 2007 to enter Gaza, except of course, during war operation, before they had a direct experience. But they lost that touch. Okay, you have it on your smartphone, but it's not reality. It's not something that you can feel deeply. And I can tell you, I don't want to brag about it, but being over there make it not only totally different, it's a totally new experience. I haven't recovered yet. I haven't come back yet from Gaza. Such deep was a shock. And if Netanyahu and his government consistently forbid the access of Gaza to the international press, it's because they know perfectly that any seasoned war reporter, when it will come together, he will understand that he never saw anything like this before. And if he has a heart and a soul, I bet you that no matter how seasoned he or she is, he will broke up in tears. Because what you see over there is really devastating. Not only the fact that the reality is devastating, but the fact that we all let it happen one way or another, and it's still going on. It's not over. It's not over.
- [22:26]
Martin DeCaro
And making it all worse, Israel's government denies wrongdoing, saying that they're trying to actually protect people, which is an abomination but even on top of that, here in the United States, the Israel lobby, pro Israel media figures like Barry Weiss, who now runs CBS News, they were accomplices in these lies. And you address some of this in the book. For instance, casualty figures, the number of children that were killed, a thousand a month. But here in the United States, people would say, oh, that's the Gaza Health Ministry, that's the Hamas Health Ministry. You can't trust those numbers. Or the fact that there was famine, an orchestrated famine in Gaza, starvation, malnutrition. Bari Weiss's publication, the Free Press, ran articles denying the famine, saying, these kids had other health problems and that's why they look so emaciated. How do you feel about that denialism, which is part of every war like this, right? People who commit war crimes don't say, yeah, we did it.
- [23:30]
Jean Pierre Fillu
But in that case, again, you know, the ground was prepared by two decades of blockades. The fact that you don't have access and that you're not even fighting for access is preparing for this denial. And the fact that you assimilate the population of Gaza with Hamas and the fact that you assimilate the civilian members of this or that ministry with military and terrorist groups, very depressing when you're over there, because you really have the impression that the voice of the women, men and children of Gaza is totally silenced, muted by the two conflicting propagandas, one of the Israeli government and the one of Hamas, because it's very easy to debunk their own propaganda of the Palestinian Islamist if you're on the ground, but you have to be on the ground, otherwise you're taking this or that. When it comes to casualties, I'm a historian. I mean, to date the casualties, the numbers that are circulating are minimal because they are based on the. And I saw the process of the process is painful in all meaning of the terms, which means that it's only at the hospitals, hospitals that have been bombed, attacked, besieged, deprived of the basic facilities. It's only at the hospital that the death certificate is delivered. And it's only once the death certificate is delivered that the casualty enters the official toll, which means that this toll is a minimum because you have thousands of missing, whether buried under the rubbles or somewhere in an Israeli jail, we don't know. On top of that, you have all the indirect victims, you know, the people who die because they can be cured, they cannot be evacuated, their injuries is not being treated properly. And of course, the hunger, the thirst that everything worst. So you probably can double the number of People who have been directly killed by the Israeli army, which bring us to incredible level of loss. But even the Israeli army, because they are, if I may say, practitioner, they don't engage now in the already lost battle of denial by the Netanyahu government, they accepted the proportion of 10% of people killed, injured or maimed in Gaza by their own doing.
- [26:11]
Martin DeCaro
That's right. That number came out.
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Jean Pierre Fillu
You can work on that.
- [26:15]
Martin DeCaro
That number came out. An Israeli military figure had said he estimated 200,000 people killed or wounded. 200,000 people, 10% of the population. And at a minimum. At a minimum. And it's not over because there's so many other effects of war and starvation, disease, malnutrition, the destruction of schools, hospitals, water purification, all of it. The death and suffering will ripple for years. So let's talk about the hospitals here, because that was another thorny issue here in the United States and elsewhere, of course, this debate over whether the hospitals are being used by Hamas as headquarters. So therefore it was okay for Israel to shell them.
- [26:59]
Jean Pierre Fillu
Well, first, in international law, hospitals are sacred. You don't attack them, you don't bomb them, you don't besiege them. And if you have any hint that they can be used by your military enemies, then you have different way to neutralize them or evacuate them. That's the basic principle. Second thing, with all, you know, tons of propaganda that have been produced about that, not one indisputable proof of military use as base by Hamas of the hospitals in Gaza has been provided, not one. On the contrary, obvious lies were debunked, like for example, the use of the 3D model of the Scottish Maritime Museum in Glasgow UK in order to reproduce the so called 3D headquarters of Hamas below hospital in Gaza City, the Shifa Hospital. I spent a significant time of that month in hospitals, you know, and I saw the conditions they're working in. I can only speak for what I saw, but I never saw anything remotely confirming this kind of terrible accusation because they are deadly accusations. Accusation. What happened even after I left at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis is that journalists that were at the hospitals were killed. That was last August by a triple strike. So more civilian targeting than that you cannot imagine. And it was not the only one. Doctors Without Borders with whom I was working lost 15 people. 15 people that were killed. Not talking about the injured, not talking about the maimed. Today, Gaza is and remains the most dangerous press on earth for journalists and for humanitarians. And just to end up with the argument, if the intelligence Israel is providing on that topic is so solid, why don't they distribute it? Why don't they give the name, the place and the data that never happened after any takeover of any hospital. And the 36 hospitals in Gaza have been all attacked at one moment or another. They have been all bombed at one moment or another. Half of them were occupied and dismantled. And still, if that was such a serious concern for the Israeli army, still they didn't provide any indisputable proof.
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Martin DeCaro
You know, a friend of mine reminds me not to resort to polemical thinking because that prevents clear thinking. Now, as I was listening to you there, Jean Pierre, and you said Israel hasn't provided the intelligence, the evidence to show that the hospitals were Hamas command and control centers. Because the reason is Israel was deliberately murdering healthcare professionals and murdering journalists, mowing down Palestinian journalists for the crime of reporting what was happening. Yes, I called it murder. And maybe that's polemical, but that's to me what it is.
- [30:29]
Jean Pierre Fillu
What is, sure and on the ground you feel it deeply, is that the only victory Netanyahu ever achieved in Gaza was to silence the foreign press and to avoid having CBS or TF1, an arte reporter in the middle of the ruins in a BCG hospital in front of dying children during the periods of famine and so on and so forth. That was over. And Netanyahu made it very clear my problem is not with famine in Gaza, my problem with images of famine in Gaza. So he did his job and. But his only victory was not against Hamas, it was against all of us. Because this victory prevented us collectively to get the real grasp of this horrendous reality, unprecedented, this lawless order, this new reality that is emerging from Gaza and that we see now echoing in various parts of the world. Instead of defending the freedom of the press, the Western governments didn't move at all. It took for Europe two years before eventually thinking about steps to be taken in order for the international press to be allowed. And the Foreign Press association in Israel filed complaints after complaints to the British Supreme Court and became quite not satisfied, but accepted the fact that they were all postponed. While everybody is standing his mic, his camera, to Israeli political and military leaders to make the news. That is a huge responsibility that was taken collectively and the result is abysmal.
- [32:25]
Martin DeCaro
It is cold comfort. But I do hope future historians will document how the Biden administration aided and abetted the annihilation of the Palestinian nation in Gaza. A nation without a state. And Israel pulverized the Palestinian nation, as you said, to turn it into some kind of atomized thing, just a number of empty bellies that would need to be filled as people roam from one refugee camp to another in their destroyed enclave. The Biden administration enabled that to turn Gaza to dust. But one strength of your book is the through lines that you draw. For instance, the checkpoints. You had to go through one of these checkpoints to enter Gaza. These checkpoints did not start on October 7, 2023. They actually go all the way back to 1967. Right is when Israel began its occupation.
- [33:19]
Jean Pierre Fillu
Yes. You know, I always try to put this historical perspective, and I have to insist, echoing what just said about the Biden administration, that what I witnessed over there was fully the responsibility of the Biden administration because I left the strip only one day after Donald Trump re entered the White House. So there's certainly a huge responsibility and historical responsibility when it comes to history. You had the occupation so paradoxically in the beginning, The Israeli occupation in 67 abolished any border between Gaza and Israel in order to absorb the working force from the Palestinian cliff into the Israeli market, thinking that if the people from Gaza would live better, then they will abandon their nationalist aspirations. That of course didn't work. But this is a peace process that paradoxically open an area of closure. Because peace process was never giving to the Palestinians their full rights and their whole territory. It was about defining new borders, new crossing point, new checkpoints. And this I experienced it over the years. I know all the routine and I saw getting it more and more solid and more and more inhumane. Because when you were entering at the beginning of the century, the era, it's a major checkpoint, There was somebody in a loudspeaker speaking to you, but you were not even interacting with a human being. I think this lack of human interaction is a key to understand disconnect from the human reality. So you add those various checkpoints, you open one, you close another one, and now it's even more rigid and it's completion of a long process of cutting off Gaza from the rest of the world. And very early on, 10, 15 years ago, I said, you cannot guarantee the safety of the Israeli people on the total unsafety of the people of Gaza. It's morally wrong, obviously, but it's strategically a failure. And all this, of course, exploded in the hour of the terrorist massacre of October 7th.
- [35:49]
Martin DeCaro
The conversation continues. Tap subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads.
- [36:08]
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The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's A new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.
- [36:38]
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- [36:45]
Martin DeCaro
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- [37:09]
Martin DeCaro
Another through line here is the imposed poverty on Gaza. Also, Hamas's intransigence, or its corruption and meddling as well, has relegated Gaza to this economic catastrophe over the years. So you bring up attempts in the past to open Gaza's economy to the world post 2007, when Hamas takes over the Strip, part of the security balance that Israel chose in agreement with Hamas. I mean, they had always negotiated with Hamas, despite what Netanyahu says, through Qatar, through Intermediate, or Egypt. Egypt as well. Because Gaza's economy failed to provide opportunities for the people in the enclave, they would seek work in Israel to earn better wages. So that's where the work permits system comes about. Right. And that becomes part of this security balance. Hamas winds up being empowered as a result of this. Right. So there'd be periodic outbreaks of violence. You document these in the book. Every few years another war would break out and then there'd be another series of negotiations. X number of Palestinians can enter Israel each day for work. This exploded, of course, on October 7, 2023. The mowing the grass strategy failed. But again, it's linked back to the failure years ago to establish a strong economy in Gaza where Palestinians wouldn't have to go to Israel for work every day.
- [38:39]
Jean Pierre Fillu
My distinguished Harvard colleague Saroy coined the concept of de development when talking about the political economy of Gaza. And I think it's de development.
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Martin DeCaro
De development, yes.
- [38:51]
Jean Pierre Fillu
It means that not only there is no growth, but every year is bringing you more below zero. You did develop. But you have to keep in mind that historically Gaza is a very rich territory. The land is very rich. It was an oasis, very fertile soil. And that the network of industry was of local industry was pretty Strong. And of course, after the blockade, any hope of a decent economy is over because you can only get what the occupier decides you can have. Of course, it will make the stronger player in Gaza, which means Hamas, even stronger. Just to understand why I was so shocked, I was so shocked as a human being, but because Gaza had some of the highest standards in terms of public services before this catastrophe. It had same proportion of students as in the French population, 4%. You had nearly a universal vaccination program. All the major diseases had disappeared. The basic health services were granted. So it really took this annihilation war to bring this, I wouldn't say prosperous, but certainly vibrant society to the state of atomization.
- [40:16]
Martin DeCaro
You've written a couple of pieces recently in Le Monde where you've argued that Gaza, in the broader context too, of what's happening in the world, Ukraine, now we have a war in Iran, that a beneficiary of all of this will be Russia. Can you, yes, connect all those dots for us now?
- [40:34]
Jean Pierre Fillu
Very early on I said by bringing Trump back to the White House and that Gaza was the best venue to do that because it would create so much problem inside the Democratic Party and expose the contradiction of the west when it comes to international. So it will not only damage Biden internally, but also damage the credibility of the west globally. When in Ukraine. So Trump came back and during the year 2005, European leaders, instead of confronting Trump both on Ukraine and Gaza, they tried to placate him on Gaza, abandoning Gaza, saying, oh, it's wonderful, your peace plan. Oh, oh, yes, you're bored of peace. Wow. Yes, of course they didn't believe a word of it, but knowing how narcissistic the US President, then they had to say that instead of saying, we have to get out from this impact, we have to have a decent, clear pathway to the two state solution with Gaza returning back to the world and therefore Hamas being mechanically weakened because there would be a Palestinian alternative, not only the Palestinian authorities, but at least a political horizon. So instead of doing that, they accepted Trump, literally closing the gate of any hope to the people of Gaza. While we were talking, there was one crossing point to Egypt that had been opened for few days before. Epic fury that has been closed ever since, maybe reopened, which means that only 10 people, 20 people, 50 people in the best day, 100 people can enter one way or the other. We're talking about 2 million people. This is still blockade. Another name, this is seal and all out siege. So if you don't open the political horizon, I Doubt you can open the geographical closure so the two are intimately linked. The other way is a world international relations without the United nations or with the United nations being bullied and humiliated and brutalized on a daily basis, and international law being disregarded and violated also on a daily basis. This, I saw it in Gaza. I saw a world not only without the foreign press, by the way, there's no foreign press in Iran. So we don't understand really what is going on because we have only the conflicting propaganda to feed over, but also a world without diplomats. I've been myself a diplomat for 20 years. Diplomats have their problems, their faults, their weaknesses, but they are there to promote negotiation. And at the end of the day, and I'm quoting Donald Trump, there's nothing cheaper than peace. There's nothing cheaper than peace. So in a world without diplomats, you won't achieve peace. I would not qualify Steve Witkoff or Jared Kushner as diplomat.
- [43:56]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, they're businessmen and they're amateurs. They don't understand the areas of the world. Well, maybe Kushner knows the Middle east from a business perspective, but Wyckoff is. He's clueless about what's going on.
- [44:07]
Jean Pierre Fillu
You know, even if they were genius, you know, you cannot handle Gaza, Ukraine and Iran. It's impossible. You need a bureaucracy. You need a whole apparatus of advisors, experts, specialists. Otherwise you go from one delusion to another, which is unfortunately the state we are living in.
- [44:33]
Martin DeCaro
My final question here, Jean Pierre, is it deals with history and where the current world might be going. You know, in history there have been cataclysms, world changing, transforming cataclysms. And at the start, very few people expected that it would really get as bad as it did. The First World War and the attempts to prevent another war after that one ended in 1819, 19 came to naught. The League of Nations was a failure. The rise of fascism, the retreat of democracy, the Great Depression. We get another war in 1939, and that was of course, a cataclysm. Some 60 million people killed and nations destroyed. But the world got together and tried to create a new order to prevent a repeat of that. I don't know what's going to come after this series of wars finally ends, if it ever ends. But I do feel like we have reached not necessarily a new era. I think we're going back to a past era. Checks on interstate violence and aggression, checks on violence towards civilians have been obliterated. The rules based order was never entirely rules based or orderly, but today I think it's even worse. Than that. I feel like all the inhibitions, all the checks are gone. It began with Gaza.
- [46:00]
Jean Pierre Fillu
In history, it's always possible to go back or it's possible to go worse, or it's possible to go down. History is open, history is what women and men are making it. So there's nothing fatal about it. But what is sure is that the taboo of violating what you just mentioned fell in Gaza without significant reaction or certainly without a reaction adapted to the magnitude of the violation. And there is a deep link between that and the fact that the press was not allowed or at least the international press, the Western press. Again, you know, if I came back with Gaza with something, of course a deep sadness, pain, but also the idea that I was there in a reality. And when I came out of Gaza, I've been living ever since in some kind of a parallel reality where people are talking about Gaza or using the word Gaza, but are basically talking about themselves and about what is their own priorities in their own environment of political struggle. They don't really connect. They lost this connection with the horror that is in Gaza that is at the same time worse and different from what they're talking about. So what is sure is that there is a clear parallel, a long standing clear parallel between Putin and Netanyahu in the fact that they want to go back to. They only speak about World War II and they want to go back to a pre UN, a pre Geneva Convention, a pre declaration of human, international declaration of human rights world that will totally release them for any kind of obligation. And Trump joined the band and was much welcomed by those two leaders who did everything to have him back at the White House. Everything, every tool in the book. So now we have the three leaders and it's a big scare because nobody see how they can be reigned. I've been three times in Ukraine since the Russian invasion. The Ukrainian resistance is absolutely admirable. Only Europe is now supporting earnestly Ukraine confronting an empire that is far stronger, far bigger, far more equipped than poor little Ukraine. So you have that and certainly this is a shock that I try always to keep the connection between Ukraine, Gaza, even though I am an Arabist, a specialist of the Middle East. But I see that everyone would like to put you in a corner. Okay, so you will speak about Gaza. So just speak about Gaza, don't speak about other topics. Or you can speak about Iran or you can. Well, it's obvious that all this is connected. It's obvious that all this is connected and what happened in Gaza and what keep on happening in Gaza. Okay, now there is a so called ceasefire, but people are dying on a daily basis nearly, and they are still cut off from the world. So that means that they are, you know, suffering all the plagues that I briefly described. It's impossible, you know, to go on like this. I think a clear sign that we would be changing path significantly would be the opening of Gaza. And the opening of Gaza will not just be an extraordinary relief for 2 million fellow human beings. It would be an extraordinary relief for our world. We need Gaza. We need Gaza back. We need Gaza back in its whole humanity in order not to lose more of our own humanity.
- [49:55]
Martin DeCaro
Jean Pierre, merci pour votre humanite.
- [49:59]
Jean Pierre Fillu
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for welcoming me again.
- [50:02]
World War II Historical Voice
Between the victory in Europe and the final victory in Japan, in this most destructive of all wars, you have won a victory against war itself. If we had had this charter a few years ago, and above all, the will to use it, millions now dead would be alive. If we should falter in the future in our will to use it, millions now living will surely die.
- [50:33]
Martin DeCaro
On the next episode of History. As it happens, we'll shift our attention from Gaza to the west bank, staying with the Israelis. Palestinian conflict, the annexation of the west bank is underway as Jewish settler terrorism goes unpunished every day. And in the meantime, keep a lookout for bonus content as the war in Iran continues. Sign up for my weekly newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for history as it happens.
- [51:12]
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- [51:42]
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