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The Chris Hedges Report
Deconstructing Trump's Gaza 'Peace' Plan (w/ Norman Finkelstein) | The Chris Hedges Report
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Foreign.
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The US Peace Plan President Donald J. Trump's comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict in an act of stunning betrayal of the Palestinian people, was endorsed by most of the UN Security Council in November. With China and Russia abstaining, member states washed their hands of Gaza. They turned their backs on the genocide. The adoption of Resolution 2803, as the Middle east scholar Norman Finkelstein writes, was simultaneously a revelation of moral insolvency and a declaration of war against Gaza. By proclaiming international law null and void, the Security Council proclaimed itself null and void vis a vis Gaza. The the council transmuted into a criminal conspiracy. The next phase is supposed to see Hamas surrender its weapons and Israel withdraw from Gaza. But these two steps will never happen. Hamas, along with other Palestinian factions, reject the Security Council resolution. They say they will disarm only when the occupation ends and a Palestinian state is created. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows that if Hamas does not disarm disarm, it will be done the hard way. The Board of Peace, headed by Donald Trump, will ostensibly govern Gaza along with armed mercenaries from Israeli allied International Stabilization Forces. Although no country seems anxious to commit their troops, Trump promises a Gaza riviera that will function as a Special Economic Zone, a territory operating outside of state law, governed entirely by private investors such as the Peter Thiel backed Charter City in Honduras. This will be achieved through the voluntary relocation of Palestinians, with those fortunate enough to own land offered digital tokens in exchange. Trump declares that the US will take over the Gaza Strip and own it. It is a return to the rule of viceroys, though apparently not the odious Tony Blair. Palestinians, in one of the most laughable points in the plan, will be de radicalized by their new colonial masters. But these fantasies will never come to fruition. Israel knows what it wants to do in Gaza. It knows no nation will intercede. Palestinians will struggle to survive in primitive and dehumanizing conditions. They will, as they have so many times in the past, be betrayed. December saw an average of 140 aid trucks allowed into Gaza each day instead of the promised 600 to keep Palestinians on the edge of famine and ensure widespread malnutrition. In October, some 9,300 children in Gaza under five were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition. According to UNICEF, Israel has opened the border crossing into Egypt at Rafah, but only for Palestinians leaving Gaza. It is not open for those who want to return. And as stipulated in the agreement, Israel has seized some 58% of Gaza and is steadily moving its demarcation line known as the Yellow Line. To expand its occupation, Palestinians who cross the arbitrary line, which constantly shifts and is poorly marked when it is marked at all, are often killed. 92% of Gaza's residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed, and around 81% of all structures are damaged from According to UN estimates, the strip, some 20 miles long and about 7 1/2 miles wide, has been reduced to 61 million tons of rubble, including 9 million tons of hazardous waste. That includes asbestos, industrial waste, heavy metals in addition to unexploded ordnance, and an estimated 10,000 decaying corpses. Although the number may be higher, there is almost no clean water, electricity or sewage treatment. Israel blocks shipments of construction supplies, including cement and steel, shelter materials, water infrastructure and fuel, so nothing can be rebuilt. Compounding the humanitarian crisis, Israel has revoked the licenses of 37 international NGOs, including Doctors Without Borders. And this follows Israel's banning of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or unrwa, which provides most of the humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza, the west bank and the Diaspora, and the cutting off of water, electricity, fuel and communications from UNRWA facilities, as well as the passing of legislation that gives Israel the ability to expropriate UN properties in East Jerusalem, including UNRWA's headquarters and his main vocational center. Joining me to discuss the continued assault on Palestinians and the failure by the international community to intervene is Professor Norman Finkelstein, author of numerous books on the Middle east, including An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom, the Holocaust Industry, and his forthcoming book, which will be released in March, Gaza's Gravediggers. So, Norm, let's begin with the Security council vote on November 17, 2025, 13 votes to 0, 2 abstentions. As I mentioned in the introduction, I was as stunned by it as you were, precisely because this isn't in any way a serious proposal. Other proposals have been ignored in terms of ceasefires, agreements, et cetera, but there was just no validity to this at all. And you really, I think, correctly excoriate the member states for supporting it. And I think you make the point that this is a watershed moment in terms of the United nations itself, as you have pointed out, at least, has traditionally attempted to uphold international law. And this is just a complete tossing away of any pretense of international law. Can you explain this moment?
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Well, I think here it's good to begin with the statements by Russia and China when they abstained from the resolution. Now, Russia and China are obviously great powers, and there's a great deal of cynicism and calculation in anything they're going to see. On the other hand, I personally found the Russian statement in particular, though the Chinese statement was also very good. I found it believable. You know, some people said, oh, the Chinese abstained because it was a quid pro quo, Gaza for Ukraine. And I'm sure that calculation entered into the picture. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not naive. I'm not a babe in the woods. But I thought the Russian statement. The Russian statement said two things of interest to us. Well, three things, really. Number one, basically, Trump said to them, or Trump's people said to them, if you don't sign on to this, we're going to give Israel the green light to annihilate Gaza, that it's either this game or ceasefire is over and Israel goes in and we're not putting any restraints on it, any constraints on it. Well, that was a problem. We have to be honest about the problems. I was furious at what happened. I can't tell you. I was walking the streets cursing these people. But I have to be honest about the problem they faced, the dilemma they faced. Number two, the Russians said all the Arab and Muslim states, and then the Palestinian Authority, the state of Palestine, welcomed the resolution. What were we supposed to do? We would come off as more pious than the Pope. We had no choice. They hated the resolution was clear, as did the Chinese. But they said they brought out Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, all the Gulf states, Jordan. What do you do? That was a real problem. Have to acknowledge that they had a real problem there. So the Russians were cornered, as were the Chinese. And then the Russians did say, however, they said that there was a lot of arm twisting. They used those words. There was a lot of arm twisting in the capitals and in the un, on the officials, the representative officials. And they said. I was surprised by the bluntness. They said, quote, this is a black day in the history of the United Nations. And you know what their last words were? The last words were, don't say we didn't warn you. I thought that was pretty telling. You know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of romyko's speech in 1947, where, you know, Gromyko is Stalin's henchmen. Not many warm spots in his heart, but he gave a very moving speech.
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And I think this was on the establishment of the state of Israel, Right?
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Yeah. And it was a deeply moving speech. Every Jew remembers it from that era. And I felt there was a certain amount, yes, it's a great power, yes, It's Russia. Yes, Putin is this and Putin is that. But still, I thought there was a degree of candor by Russia that something terrible had happened at the United Nations. A thug, a criminally deranged megalomaniac, this human wrecking ball had just destroyed the un. The UN is for me, at this point, I don't want to say for me, I'm not the issue. The UN is now a rotting corpse. It's dead. Because what that resolution did for those who follow these things, and you know, I've devoted a lifetime to following them at the level of hyper minutiae, it abolished 70 years of UN history. It did the General assembly, the Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and all sorts of other divisions, committees in the union. The UN record was an accumulation of debate, discussion, compromise over 70 years. That whole history vanished in this UN resolution. If you were to go put up on your screen now, you go, for example, to the standard UN resolution called Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine question. It comes at the end of November, early December each year. Right. You know what it begins with? It begins with like a five to seven page preamble, rehearsing the whole record, what this body has resolved in the course of decades. There's no preamble in this new UN Security Council resolution. It begins as if from a tabula rasa, that there was no history. It was abolished by this UN Resolution. It vanished. So it was a somber moment. Now, in the face of that fact and the fact that we're dealing with. My late mother used to use the expression pigs with white gloves to refer to the ruling elites. This was a pig without the white gloves. A thug. You know, no polish, no panache. A thug. What do you do here? My opinion is if you sign on, because, one, you're dealing with a thug, two, the thug is threatening if you don't sign it, we're not going to break your kneecaps, but we're going to let Israel break Gaza's kneecaps. And three, all the Arab Muslim states, the largest states in the world, we're talking about Indonesia. You know, Indonesia is the fourth most populous country on Earth. Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. What do you do? Well, what you could have done, if you had some backbone, you could have signed on. We want to save Gaza from Israel's annihilatory assault. Okay, but then you could have told the truth. Algeria didn't have to sing the praises of Trump. You know what Algeria said? Trump has brought peace to the world. He didn't have to do that. No, Algeria went on to be critical of the resolution, but you really have to kiss the master's feet. No, it was pitiful. It was pathetic. You could have pointed up the dilemma, which is what Russia did, but you didn't have to grovel. You didn't have to be a sycophant. That was unacceptable.
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Michael Kirk, I just want to explain what you do in your piece about why this is such a devastating moment. Because up until now the UN at least paid lip service or fealty to entrenched law that Israel is an occupying power, that this is you. Israel must refrain from impeding the Palestinian people from exercising its right to self determination, including its inalienable right to territorial integrity over the entirety of the occupied Palestinian territory. That Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal. Consequently, Israel has an obligation to bring an end to its presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible. You're quoting the icj. This, and this is you. This robust and enduring legal consensus crystallized after protracted deliberations spanning almost eight decades among multiple UN organs and was anchored in fundamental norms of international law, the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by war and the right of peoples to self determination. The new UN resolution deposited this comprehensive legal framework into the dumpster.
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That's correct. That's what happened. There is, if you read, Listen. Everybody who has even a faint knowledge of the subject knows we have express, you know, we have acronyms like opt. Occupied Palestinian Territories. There's not a word about occupation in this resolution. There's no occupation. Gaza is not in this resolution. Gaza is not occupied territory. Gaza is nothing in this resolution. There's no connection with the West Bank. Gaza is just suspended in midair in this resolution. Gaza is in the era of the European conquest of Africa. They used an expression, it was called res nullius, which means belonging to nobody. Africa belonged to nobody. And therefore everybody is entitled to carve out a piece of it.
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This was the League of the League of Nations, right?
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This is the Conference of Berlin at the end of the 19th century. League of nations comes along after World War I and Gaza has no. It has no legal existence in this resolution. And I have to say it was kind of breathtaking. It was kind of breathtaking, the UN resolution. Now everybody has a predilection for exaggeration, hyperbole, poetry. This is no exaggeration. It's not hyperbole. It's not poetry. The UN resolution gave Gaza to Donald J. Trump. It literally did that. It declared that the presiding body in Gaza is What they call a Board of Peace. The modalities of this Board of Peace, who belongs to it, how is it structured? There's nothing in the board. Nothing there. There's only one thing. Donald Trump is the head of the Board of Peace. Now, bear in mind, he was given personal title to Gaza. In fact, it was reiterated by the UN Representative, excuse me, the US Representative after the vote was taken. Donald Trump is in charge of the Board of Peace. The Board of Peace is not in charge. I should say Donald Trump is not responsible to anyone internally in the Board of Peace. There are no modalities of the Board of Peace and he's not responsible to anyone externally. The only thing that was required of Trump was that he produce every six months. They say we request. We don't even order. We request that he provide every six months an update on the situation. That's it. Gaza is now one more property in the Trump Organization's portfolio. That is not an exaggeration. When Trump said in February 2024, he said Gaza is going to belong to the United States and we're going to turn. Everyone thought this is a lunatic blowhard. Well, the lunatic blowhard turned it into a UN Security Council resolution, which is the final word. The UN Security. I don't agree with people who are saying that the UN Security Council resolutions are superseded by the body of law. I don't think that's correct. The Secure Council resolution is the last word. Even if it wasn't, it doesn't make a difference. You can get into the technical argument till the end of time. The fact of the matter is, as I tried to point out, and I pointed out over and over again, over the years, there was a robust consensus on how to resolve the conflict, which means that Israel didn't have a leg to stand on. But guess what? It now has a leg to stand on. It has.
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You liken it to the decision to turn the Congo over to King Leopold.
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It was exactly the same thing. The Conference of Berlin, the great powers assembled at the Conference of Berlin gave the Congo to one person, King Leopold. It was given to him. Technically, it was given to the International association of the Congo. But then the Belgian legislature subsequently designated him. He was owner of the Congo. And now we have. And by the way, for the viewers who are not aware, in the course of his tenure as president or presiding officer of the Congo, the estimates are between 10 and 15 million. Not a small number. 10 and 15 million Congolese were killed off during the ivory and then the rubber trade. So it's a Famous story. Unfortunately, in the English language, there's only one book and it's not a great book. The book King Leopold's. King Leopold's.
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King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild.
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It's not a great book, but there's only one book on the subject. The famous two individuals who campaigned to end the horror in the Congo were EM Worrow and Roger Casement, in any event. Yeah, it was just. Was the Congo all over again. I had some correspondence with the great international lawyer John Ducard and he said the analogy I made with Leopold, he said it hadn't occurred to him, but it really ought to be developed. What happened?
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Let's talk about the provisions. We can begin with the call to disarm Hamas as a precondition that Israel has said. Israel, of course, will judge whether Hamas is disarmed or not. In the introduction I said that, I quoted Netanyahu who said that if they didn't disarm, they'd do it the hard way. But let's talk about that caveat and the other caveats in there that just give Israel utter and complete control with no, you know, everything comes down to Israel's decision. Israel's. Israel's pronouncements about Gaza. The resolution is organized in such a way that they're the final authority.
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Well, it says that the IDF and the among the powers, there's the so called international security force, the idf, Israel's so called defense forces, they have veto power on any withdrawal. Unless Israel agrees that Hamas has been disarmed according to the resolution, it's under no obligation to withdraw. Now, first of all, Netanyahu doesn't want Hamas to withdraw. To disarm Hamas has never been the issue. From October 8, Israel made very clear what the issue is. We're going to ethnically cleanse Gaza or if we're not successful in stimulating a stampede, we'll make Gaza unlivable. So as they said over and over again, there was no secret. This is not a state secret. This is not like the final Hitler's Final Solution, where you're looking for the Hitler order. Did Hitler issue an order? That's always been a big question. Raoul Hilberg, he was among those who still held out. He thought Hitler had issued an order, but it was still, if he had issued one, it would have been a secret order. But there's no secrets here. The Israelis from day one were saying, we're going to give the people of Gaza two to stay in, to starve or to leave. That was very straightforward. So when you listen to the talk, Netanyahu says, remember Amalek. Amalek is about every man, woman and child, as well as oxen. Is that Hamas? If you say that you are not going to emit any food, fuel, water or electricity, is that Hamas? If you say you are going to make Gaza unlivable, is that Hamas? It had nothing to do with Hamas. From. The ones who understood that from the get go were the South Africans. They didn't prosecute Israel on the grounds that it was violating the laws of war. No, they didn't call, for example, for a meeting of the signatories to the Geneva Convention. You could have called that. A meeting of the signatories of the Geneva Convention to prosecute Israel's violations of the laws of war. What's called international humanitarian law. Ihl that's not what South Africa did. It prosecuted Israel for the crime of genocide. If you read their application, the one that was submitted on December 29, 2023, and all their other statements, Hamas is barely mentioned. Not because they are trying to aid and abet Hamas, but because they understood that given what was unfolding In Gaza from October 8, Hamas was a sideshow. Hamas was an irrelevance. The issue was, I don't believe, you know, we want to be careful about formulations. I don't believe their goal was genocide. I think their means was genocide. The objective was to ethnically cleanse Gaza. However, they were willing to not only destroy a part of the population, but they were ready to destroy the whole population to achieve that end. There was no compunction on the part of Israelis. So I don't believe Hamas ever had much to do with what's been unfolding. Now. The Israelis say, you might recall at the beginning, they said there were 20,000 Hamas terrorists. Right where they got that number just pulled out of thin air, you know, like all the numbers, all the numbers are. They're just fake, fakery. How many Hamas terrorists they've killed, they don't have a clue. How many they've. They don't. How would they know they were engaging in saturated bombing, carpet bombing of Gaza? 95% of the people they killed who belonged to Hamas was just because they happened to be besides somebody else, you know, completely indiscriminate. They don't know how many Hamas terrorists they kill. They don't have a clue. But they said 20,000. And then you know what they said last month? Their new figures show there are still 20,000 Hamas. That's what they said. They're 20,000. Because for them, the more, the merrier. The more Hamas terrorists there are, the more they can say, we're not withdrawing, we're not reconstructing, we're not admitting humanitarian aid because the Hamas terrorists are going to confiscate it. So Hamas is just. It's just a prop in the exterminatory enterprise.
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I want to ask you about humanitarian aid. You write, the resolution charged the Board of Peace with coordinating both humanitarian aid and reconstruction. Neither will come to pass as a 2025 ICJ advisory opinion found that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency unrwa, was the only humanitarian organization in Gaza technically competent to provide aid at scale, and that Israel must coordinate it, coordinate with it. But of course, they have banned Hamas and now just recently announced that they're going to legislated the ability to confiscate their property in East Jerusalem. And you write a little later on, Israel won't admit more than a humanitarian minimum of aid, if that much, and probably a lot less. The days of weaponizing starvation as a method of warfare won't be over until and unless the Gaza question has been solved. The reconstruction of Gaza won't happen because it can't happen and because Israel won't let it happen. But within the Board of Peace, there is this provision of providing aid and there is a number, isn't it 600 trucks a day that are supposed to come in.
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They were supposed to resume the level during the last ceasefire. It's never going to happen. I have to say, there was so much naivete, even by people who should have known better about the resolution. Just take the question of reconstruction, okay? Israel just devoted two years plus to turning Gaza into. Into a parking lot. Can anybody in his or her right mind believe that suddenly they're going to start chanting om, give peace a chance, singing Kumbaya, linking arms and rebuilding Gaza with those people, with the people of Gaza. It was just so stupid how anyone could possibly believe these things. So they said Trump was going to have a meeting with Netanyahu and they were going to discuss reconstruction. That's what was said last week. First of all, he does that all for theater because he has to placate Saudi Arabia. Not that Saudi Arabia cares. But they need a fig leaf. They need a fig leaf because they want to sign on to the Abraham Accords. So that was the whole purpose of the ceasefire, to enable MBS to come to the White House. Because he can't come to the White House in the middle of a genocide. That's just a really bad photo op. So he needs, so he has to put on the pretense that he's going to talk to Netanyahu about reconstruction. And you know exactly. First of all, it's all wink, wink, it's all wink, wink. And you know exactly what Netanyahu says, we can't begin reconstruction until Hamas has disarmed. That's in your 20 point peace plan. So. And Trump says yeah, now of course there will still be the need to placate in a peace the Saudis with face saving gestures. The thing is the moment it's no longer front page news, it's over. Israel does what it wants. And so occasionally there'll be some flare up, there'll be some remonstrance from the White House, but it will be business as usual until Gaza has been emptied.
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Which you say, well now Israel had hoped that it would be a flood. That's what they're trying to orchestrate. But now it'll just be a trickle, I think are your words.
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I think they were when they set up what was called the Gaza Humanitarian foundation or fund or foundation, I can't remember now. There were four sites. One was in the center of Gaza, but the other three were right on the border with Egypt, with the Sinai. And the purpose was obvious to force everybody to go to the humanitarian sites and then to provoke an expulsion. It didn't work. It didn't work. Probably Egypt put a lot of pressure on the US so then they have to reconcile themselves to a trickle. But reconstruction, humanitarian aid is never going to happen.
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I want to ask about the International Stabilization Force. You write the resolution authorized the establishment of a temporary International Stabilization Force, isf, the charge of which was to, quote, stabilize the security environment in Gaza by ensuring the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip. The ISF was to operate in close consultation and cooperation with Egypt and Israel. And you write, it might be conceded that the resolution recruited a pair of virtuosos at pacification. Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah El Sisi seized power in a military coup that climaxed in one of the world's largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history. While Israel had invested the previous two years in in comprehensively stabilizing Gaza by erasing it. Although emphatic that Gaza must be disarmed using all necessary means, the resolution was conspicuously mute as to why it must be. The reason for this silence wasn't hard to find. If Gaza had to be demilitarized because of the 7 October massacre, then the obvious question arose. After Committing a genocide that killed incomparably more innocence. Didn't Israel also need to be demilitarized?
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They were at least discreet enough to leave out certain things. How can you possibly argue that Israel, excuse me, Hamas has to be demilitarized because of October 7, 2023, whereas Israel doesn't have to be demilitarized after October 8 unto the present 2025? That doesn't really make very much logical sense. I mean, I even managed to convince Piers Morgan that if you demilitarize Gaza, then Netanyahu can't be returned to power. I mean, he understood that basic quid pro quo, though I think it goes well beyond Mr. Netanyahu culpability for the genocide. Genocide was unusual because it was not a state project. That's incorrect. The genocide in Gaza, I won't say it's unprecedented, but the genocide in Gaza was a national project, was endorsed, embraced and executed at the grassroots, at the actual physical implementation by the country. It was executed. It was a genocide that was executed by a citizen army.
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Which means we know from the poll numbers that the vast majority of Israel, half of all Israelis, if I have that right, in one poll, said they should all be killed.
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There have been several polls. Let's just begin with the basic ones. From Beginning right after October 7, the poll showed that roughly 95% of Jewish Israelis thought that Israel was either using sufficient force or too little force. Only 5% thought Israel was using too much force. That was consistent over the whole two years. Number two, one poll showed that 47% of Israeli Jews said that Israel should commit genocide in Gaza, the army should commit genocide. They were asked a very specific. When the army enters the city, should it kill Everybody? And the 47% of Israeli Jews said yes. Then there was another poll that asked, are there any innocents in Gaza? That was across all of Israeli society, about 15, depending on what you count. East Jerusalem, 15 to 20% of Israelis are non Jewish. It showed 62% said there are no innocents in Gaza. Bear in mind one half of Gaza's population are children. If you just, if you factor out non Israeli Jews, it would come to about 70 to 75% supported that. So this is a national project. And that poses a question which is it's not just about Netanyahu. It's not even just about the leadership class. It's about a whole society that's been effectively Nazified by. There's no sane person would say this gleefully. On the other hand, it would be extremely dishonest to avoid those sects this was a national undertaking, the destruction of the people of Gaza.
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B
And as you point out, a people under occupation are not legally debarred from armed resistance.
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That's the consistent finding of all international lawyers. I should bear in mind they reached this conclusion on the basis of UN General assembly resolutions. When you try to determine what the law is, UN Security Council and un I don't want to get into the technicalities about UN General assembly because it doesn't have legislative power. Yes, that's all true, but the UN can still, if there's an overwhelming majority in the General assembly, it does speak to the broad consensus on whether or not a certain undertaking is legal or illegal. And there is no, there is no aspect of international law that debars people living under occupation from using armed force to free themselves. On the other hand, occupying powers are debarred from using armed force to suppress a mass uprising. They are debarred from doing that.
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B
Talk about the political roadmap. So the resolution states that the Board of Peace will cede sovereign power over Gaza only when, quote, the Palestinian Authority has satisfactorily completed its reform program and after. And that after the PA or Palestinian Authority reform program is faithfully carried out and Gaza redevelopment has advanced, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self determination and statehood. Talk about that provision.
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Well, first of all, I mean, every step of the way, not just to laugh, but to guffaw at what's being said there. First of all, it provides no benchmarks. And how, you know, whether or not the Palestinian Authority has reformed, who's going to judge? We have to reach the august standards of Egypt or the divine standards of Jordan or the incomparable standards of Saudi Arabia. Is that the benchmark? You just came back from Egypt. I was talking to a friend yesterday from Iran and he has an Egyptian doctor as a friend and he said, my friend, he's afraid to go back because you get just snatched for no reason. Just get snatched off the airplane and you disappear.
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B
Yeah, and let's be clear that the Sisi regime, like the Jordanian regime, are deeply hostile to Hamas. They hate Hamas.
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A
They hate Hamas. And I don't think they are the best judges of when the Palestinian Authority has achieved a degree of reform. So that's number one. Then what are the benchmarks and who's going to decide when the benchmarks have been met? Number two, it says it may lead if the Palestinian Authority reforms. Can you just read the wording again? It may lead to a pathway, it may lead to a pathway. So even if it reforms, that doesn't mean Palestinians will have the right to exercise self determination. It may and it's not. It doesn't say it may lead to a state.
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B
It may finally be in place for a credible pathway.
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A
That's what the wording, a credible pathway. And then a pathway to what? Well, to what? That has to be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. So as you could see, the entire record of the United Nations Security Council and General assembly and the International Court of Justice calling for two states and the Palestinians inalienable right to self determination and statehood, all of that has been annulled. All we have now is if the Palestinian Authority reforms, it may lead to a credible pathway to, well, to what Israel decides when it negotiates with the Palestinians. It's, you know, you can laugh, it's just really sickening.
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B
You write, in other words, were Palestinians to meet all the nebulous demands put on them, they still could not exercise their inalienable right to self determination standard even in the distant future until and unless Israel agreed to it. And then you say based on standards, milestones, timeframes linked to demilitarization, that will be agreed between the IDF and the ISF and the guarantors of the United States, save for a security perimeter, that in essence, Israel has veto power over both the exercise of Palestinian self determination and any withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, thus ensuring that neither would ever come to pass.
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A
Yeah. Does anyone believe that the Israeli government is going? Not just the government. The polls show the people overwhelmingly oppose the Palestinian state. Does anyone believe they're going to agree to it now?
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B
So I have to ask you, why the member states? I mean, Trump is making war on the un it's defunding it. He is no friend of the United Nations. And yet the member states essentially.
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You.
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Know, knelt before the Trump administration to pass this farcical supposed peace agreement, abetted it. I just wonder if you have any idea of the motives.
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Well, the motives I think are pretty straightforward. Gaza has no power. At a time when Gaza had what you might call symbolic power, namely the cause of Palestine, resonated throughout the Arab world. It somehow embodied, incarnated the aspirations and the sufferings of the people in the Arab Muslim world. But that all has pretty much disappeared, not least because the Arab world endured so many catastrophes in the meantime. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, that in many ways the horrors in Gaza paled beside what was endured elsewhere. And so Gaza was depleted of its symbolic power and without any material power and having lost its symbolic Power. It's not surprising that states would put their own self interest first. And second of all, you're dealing with a Mafia thug. Now, I want to be clear that as my late mother used the expression you're using, you're dealing with a pig without white gloves. But even with white gloves, you're still a pig. Now, you might remember, I don't know if you remember, till long ago now, during what was called the first Gulf War, President George Bush Sr. And his Secretary of State, James Baker, they tried to do everything in conformity with international law. And so they were very proud. They carved together what was called an international coalition. And they had managed to pass from the time that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, until when they launched the first Gulf War, I believe it was March 1991. They managed to get past eight UN Security Council resolutions condemning Saddam Hussein. And then came that last resolution. And the resolution was, even though it didn't literally say it, it clearly could be read to say that it empowered the US to launch the war. And they wanted a unanimous vote because these are sort of what you might call old school. They like the finesse of having a Security Council resolution. One country dissented. Do you remember what country that was?
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B
I do not. I was in the Gulf. I went into Kuwait with the Marine Corps, and then I was in Basra with the Shiite rebels until I was taken prisoner by the Iraqi Republican Guard. So I wasn't in the States.
- [50:25]
A
I don't remember. It was Yemen, which, bear in mind, Yemen is the forest country in the Middle East. And Baker went over to the Yemeni representative. You know what he said to him? You can Google it. This is going to be the most expensive vote you have ever had in the United Nations. He ever made in the United Nations. Why do I bring it up? That's doing it with subtlety. You could imagine, Trump said to the other countries, like Algeria, you can easily imagine him saying, we're going to increase your tariff by 300%. We'll bankrupt your country if you don't vote. Because he. Because he's a criminally deranged megalomaniac. And the people around him want to please the criminally deranged megalomaniac. They got to get no negative votes. So you can imagine. And the Russians are very straightforward. They said there was a lot of arm twisting. Now, you know, there's always arm twisting at the UN this is the UN but it must have been of a magnitude, pretty high for the Russians to call it, because Russians, you know, armed list also. But it must have been of a kind of really brazen magnitude that the Russians called attention to it. So I don't think, as I said when we began the conversation, I don't really fault them for having signed on, but you had the option of telling the truth. You really did. And they were such cowards. Except for the two powers which have power, you know, Russia and China, they didn't shy away from speaking in their statements, from speaking to what actually happened.
- [52:33]
B
I just want to close by what this means for Gaza. I mean, I think in some ways it's obvious, but I want you to address it. Israel has seized, what, 56, 58% of Gaza, which is, I mean, already one of the most populated spots on the planet. It's blocking any kind of reconstruction aid. As I mentioned in the introduction, as you write, humanitarian aid is at subsistence level at best. No clean water, no medical facilities, people are not living in dwellings. What's going to happen?
- [53:10]
A
I see no grounds for optimism. I see no grounds for optimism. On the other hand, that doesn't mean we give up. People, I think, draw the wrong conclusions from some of the things I see. Things are terrible. I think they're lost, in my opinion. On the other hand, all history shows us is however bad it is, it can always be worse. We. We can be doing our best just to keep things the same. You know, the. From not Alice in Wonderland, but what was the sequel to Alice in Wonderland? Through the Looking God. Was it through the Looking God? Yeah.
- [53:55]
B
Through the looking Gods, yeah.
- [53:56]
A
Where the Queen, I think the Queen of Hearts says, I'm running as fast as I can to stay in place. Well, we're doing everything we can so it doesn't get worse. It can always be worse. So nobody should think that by giving up, you are because you think it's hopeless, that it's not going to have consequences. It has consequences. It definitely has. It could be worse. Israel is a lunatic state. I've said that for 10 years. Israel is a lunatic state. And if they're left with a completely free hand, or they have largely a free hand, if they're left with a completely free hand, it could give them even worse. So I'm pretty hopeless. But there are. Look, I've always said, because I'm careful about this, out of deference to my parents suffering, there's no silver lining in that genocide. There's no silver lining. So I'm not going to look for a silver lining. I'll just say, in addition, we should pay attention to phenomena like the Mamdani phenomenon, that was a huge blow to Israel and its supporters. And we have to, in my opinion, as you remember Che Guevara saying in the 1960s, 1, 2, 3, many Vietnams. Well, right now, we need 1, 2, 3, many Mamdanis on the local level, strike while the iron is hot, and try to get elected into office. People who are unequivocal on the question of Israel and Gaza and the west bank, obviously. So that's something to do. It's something to do. One of the things that struck me I'll just mention, too, because this may seem far afield, but I don't believe it's far afield at all. I've been reading a lot of Charles Sumner, the great abolitionist, who is really a person of extraordinary intellect and extraordinary character. And a number of things come to mind. I was reading one of his speeches last night where he says everything looked hopeless for the struggle against slavery until he said, we finally won the battle for free speech. Was a very deep insight for me coming reading it in him because he said there was a period where states had successfully illegalized abolition societies, so you had lost the right to free speech. But he said, over a decade, we struggled the abolitionist movement, we struggled. And he said we won the right to free speech. And for him, this was a turning point. He said now victory was inevitable. Why was it inevitable? Because he said, we can match any one of their arguments when it comes to free speech. Once they have to confront us in the battle for public opinion, we are going to win. That's why they crushed the free speech. And to me, beginning in the spring of 2024, when I met with students and I spoke and I talked to audiences, I kept saying, you have to wrest back that right to free speech, because if we win that right, we're going to win. We're going to win the battle. They have nothing to stand on anymore. So that, to me, is another lesson. One of the things we have to do now, in addition to 1, 2, 3, many mamdanis, one of the things we have to do is we. We have to put at the top of the agenda to win back that right to free speech. What did Mamdani do yesterday? His first act of office? He canceled the IHRA definition, the International Holocaust remembrance association definition of anti Semitism, which was just a writ to cancel free speech. That's what IHRA was first act. Cancel Ira, annul it. It's over. You know, that was a good victory because our strongest weapon right now is free Speech. That's why the bill Ackmans the, the whole crowd of them, the Jewish supremacist billionaires in the Upper east side. That's why their objective was to crush on college campuses the right to free speech. Because they know that you have that free speech. They lose. They lose. So I thought it was a deep insight by Sumner when he said it looked hopeless. It looked hopeless. It looked hopeless until he said we had won the right to speak. Because he said from any angle, we're going to win. We have no life to stand on. Another interesting thing to watch him is in 1850 the US signed into law the Fugitive Slave Law. He didn't consider it a law because it was illegal under the Constitution. He meaning Sumner, so he refers to it as the Fugitive Slave act because he thought it was illegal under the Constitution. In any case, it was interesting to read because he said he was very eloquent, he was mesmerizing. You know, back in those days, people in Congress, I know you're going to find it hard to believe. They gave three hour speeches. They gave three hour speeches. You know what? Sumner never looked at notes, memorized everything. It was a very impressive standard. I was humbled. I was humbled. I did not recognize the degree of erudition, the command of language back then in the U.S. in any case, Sumner said was asked once in Congress by one of the Southern states, I think it was Virginia. The person from Virginia, he said, will you implement the Fugitive Slave Act? And he replied, is thy servant a dog that he will carry out such an act? And that create a huge hullabaloo, Is thy servant a dog that he will carry out such an act? Meaning Sumner was advocating he has an oath of office to uphold the Constitution. And was now Sumner saying he was not going to uphold the law. And he gave one of his most famous speeches and he dwelled on it and dwelled on it and dwelled on it the Fugitive Slave Act. And you know, they called those who enforced the slave hunters. They called them bloodhounds. Frederick Douglass called them biped bloodhounds. Why do I mention all this? Because that Fugitive Slave Law in the Fugitive Slave Law says states have to give up runaway slaves who have fled to their states. So if somebody flees from South Carolina to Virginia, South Carolina to Massachusetts, Massachusetts has to give up the slave. Okay. And that Fugitive Slave Law was our ice. Our ice. It's exactly the same. Biped bloodhounds. And they summoned the wherewithal. Some they're with grand erudition going through the Constitution to try to explain why. But at the end of the day, with all due regard for him, a lawyer is a lawyer. They find they make a case. You can make the same cases he made not to enforce the fugitive Slave Law. I'm sure you can make the same case to not enforce ICE and not give up these people. He made basically the same arguments. He said, you have a right to trial by jury. He said, a slave has the right to. Well, then, so does an undocumented worker have the right. So there's a lot that we could still do now. And there's actually, in my opinion, speaking humbly because I'm only now reading this. I'm too old to read what I would love to have read. Sumner's collected works run to some 20 volumes. I would really love to have, but I've not read them. That's not going to happen. There's a lot to learn from our own history. And you know what's the most important thing to learn? When Sumner was asked what's needed now, what we need now, you know what his answer was? Backbone. Backbone and more backbone. He said, we need three. Backbone and backbone and more backbone. And that's the bottom line. Backbone. If we have the backbone and we have the numbers in our sight, we can win. I do believe that. I don't say these things. These are not exhortations to raise the hopes and spirits of the masses. I really believe it. I really believe it. The biggest challenge now for Mamdani, obviously he needs competence and obviously he needs efficiency. There's no question. But the most, the biggest challenge is very. Is my opinion. It's the last thing he said in his speech. I wish he had emphasized it more, but it did come at the very end. He said, this is not the end. This is the beginning. We've got to organize. If we organize and organize and organize and we have backbone and more backbone than Marbach, it could happen. I don't know how far he can get. You know, these people in power. I won't be surprised if they blow up a subway tunnel and blame it on him. Not serious, buddy. When you got that kind of money, you're not giving it up. You're not giving it up. If Mr. Mumdani, I don't know. But if Mr. Mamdani thinks he's going to seduce them with his smile, that's not going to happen. And they don't really fear him. They fear an energized population. They want hopeless, despondent people, for the poor to be hopeless and despondent so that's what they fear, that these people are entertaining, hope that they may get a piece of the piece. So with a combination of organize, organize, organize and backbone, backbone, backbone. We could do things. We could do things. I'm not going to say maybe I'll be wrong and maybe there are ways to undo the horror that was inflicted on Gaza. In this case, I'll use the I'll be glad to be proven wrong. Great.
- [66:39]
B
Thanks, Norm. And I want to thank Diego, Thomas, Max, Sophia and Victor, who produced the show. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com.