Rashid Khalidi on the Palestinian Cause in a Volatile Middle East, and the Meaning of Settler Colonialism

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour: Rashid Khalidi on the Palestinian Cause and Settler Colonialism

Podcast Information:

• Title: The New Yorker Radio Hour
• Host/Author: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
• Description: Profiles, storytelling, and insightful conversations, hosted by David Remnick.
• Episode: Rashid Khalidi on the Palestinian Cause in a Volatile Middle East, and the Meaning of Settler Colonialism
• Release Date: December 13, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, host David Remnick engages in profound discussions with two prominent figures: Rashid Khalidi, a renowned historian of Middle Eastern and Palestinian history, and Adam Kirsch, an editor at The Wall Street Journal. The conversations delve deep into the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the concept of settler colonialism, and the prospects for peace and reconciliation in the region.

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Conversation with Rashid Khalidi

Understanding the History of the Palestinian Conflict

Rashid Khalidi opens the dialogue by reflecting on the challenges of writing a comprehensive history of the Palestinian cause. He emphasizes the fluid and ever-changing political landscape, stating:

"I'm always asked to do that [write about the present]. I'm always asked to do that. And so I hesitate about starting on October 7th. I mean, it is a cataclysmic event." ([03:04])

Khalidi underscores the importance of examining both the antecedents and the sequels of significant events to grasp their full impact on the region.

Hamas and the October 7th Massacre

The discussion shifts to the motivations and intentions behind Hamas' actions on October 7th. Khalidi posits that the decision might have been localized within Gaza's military leadership without broader support from Hamas's external leadership or allies like Hezbollah and Iran. He remarks:

"They were not taken into the confidence of the people who decided on this." ([04:17])

Khalidi suggests that Hamas may have miscalculated the regional response, expecting broader support that did not materialize.

State of the Palestinian Movement

Khalidi paints a bleak picture of the current Palestinian political landscape. He describes it as fragmented and lacking unified leadership:

"The Palestinian national movement for the better part of two decades has been, in my view, in terrible shape." ([09:54])

He highlights the ongoing challenges posed by Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza, including land annexation, settlement expansions, and population controls, which further weaken the Palestinian position.

Impact of Israeli Policies and Settler Colonialism

Khalidi discusses the detrimental effects of Israeli occupation and settler colonialism on both Palestinians and Israelis. He explains how such oppressive measures inevitably breed resistance:

"Occupation, ethnic cleansing, Colonization produces resistance." ([11:19])

He also touches upon the internal traumas within Israeli society following the October 7th attacks, noting a shattered sense of security and heightened fear.

Pathways to Conflict Resolution

Drawing from his expertise, Khalidi outlines three historical pathways through which colonial conflicts have concluded: elimination or subjugation of native populations, expulsion of colonizers, and compromise with reconciliation. He emphasizes that:

"It is unavoidable and inevitable. There's no other way." ([33:21])

Khalidi advocates for a solution rooted in justice and equality, where both Palestinians and Israelis can achieve self-determination without the oppression of one group over the other.

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Conversation with Adam Kirsch

Settler Colonialism: A Differing Perspective

Adam Kirsch presents a contrasting view to Khalidi's interpretation of settler colonialism as it pertains to Israel. He critiques the oversimplification prevalent in settler colonial theory, which often categorizes populations strictly as settlers or indigenous. Kirsch argues that this binary does not adequately capture the nuanced realities of regions like Israel-Palestine.

Critique of the Settler Colonialism Model

Kirsch disputes Khalidi's characterization of Zionism as a classic settler colonial project. He contends that Zionism is unique because:

• It is not an extension of a mother country's sovereignty.
• It emerged primarily as a refuge for persecuted Jews rather than a traditional colonial expansion.
• The Jewish connection to the Holy Land adds a layer of historical and religious significance absent in other colonial contexts.

He states:

"Settler colonialism involves, in the classic examples, it involves the destruction of one people by another and their replacement over a large territory... that's not at all the history of Israel and Palestine." ([43:00])

Implications for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Kirsch argues that labeling Israel purely as a settler colony leads to eliminationist rhetoric, which only perpetuates conflict and suffering on both sides. He warns against zero-sum thinking, emphasizing that such perspectives hinder the possibility of peaceful coexistence.

"It's a fight to the death... that means more death." ([42:02])

Reconciliation and Future Prospects

Despite the grim assessments, Kirsch acknowledges the inevitability of reconciliation in the long run. However, he remains skeptical about the immediate prospects given the current political and social dynamics.

"There's no other way. Neither side's going to eliminate the other and nobody's going anywhere." ([45:44])

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Conclusion

The episode underscores the deep-seated complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, exploring it through the lenses of history, political theory, and personal narratives. Rashid Khalidi and Adam Kirsch offer divergent yet insightful perspectives on settler colonialism and the pathways toward a just and equitable resolution. As the situation remains volatile, the dialogues emphasize the urgent need for nuanced understanding and innovative approaches to foster peace and reconciliation in the region.

David Remnick wraps up the episode by highlighting the enduring nature of the conflict and the hope for future reconciliation, albeit recognizing the immense challenges ahead.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Khalidi on writing history:

  "It's almost impossible to do... I try to avoid predicting the future..." ([03:04])

• Khalidi on Hamas' intentions:

  "They thought everybody else would join in with them." ([05:22])

• Khalidi on Palestinian movement:

  "The Palestinian national movement... has been in terrible shape." ([09:54])

• Kirsch on settler colonialism theory:

  "Settler colonialism involves... the destruction of one people by another." ([43:00])

• Kirsch on eliminationist rhetoric:

  "It's a fight to the death... that means more death." ([42:02])

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Additional Recommendations:

David Remnick concludes by recommending two documentaries for listeners interested in further exploring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

1. "The BB Files" by Alexis Bloom – A scathing portrayal of corruption within Israeli leadership, available on Jolt Film.
2. "No Other Land" – A documentary depicting the eradication of Palestinian villages, currently seeking distribution.

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from the podcast episode, providing listeners with a clear understanding of the nuanced perspectives surrounding the Palestinian cause and settler colonialism in the Middle East.

Transcript

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[WNYC Studios]

Listeners support.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

It WNYC Studios.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The situation in the Middle east remains beyond complicated. It's volatile and it's deadly. The fall of Assad's regime in Syria removes a brutal tyrant from the region and also removes one of Iran's key allies. Israel greatly damaged another Iran ally, Hezbollah, in Lebanon before they agreed to a ceasefire. How these developments will affect the war in Gaza is impossible to predict. But today I'm going to talk to two people who have thought very deeply about the conflict and the way it resonates around the world. Later this hour I'll speak with Adam Kirsch of the Wall Street Journal, but first I'm joined by Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern and Arab studies and to my mind, the best historian of Palestinian history in English. Recently, President Biden was seen coming out of a bookstore in nantucket carrying Khalidi's 2020 book, the Hundred Years War on Palestine, to which Khalidi remarked, it's four years too late so let's start from not the beginning of things. Obviously, this is a story that's been going on and on and on, but how do you go about writing a history of this period? Would you even attempt it?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

The short answer is, no, I wouldn't attempt it. I mean, I'm obliged with new editions of my book that are published in different countries to update it with a forward or an afterword. And that's a very difficult job because it's shifting sands. You're standing in a river that's always moving. So it's almost impossible to do. The forwards that I wrote six months ago for three or four foreign translations are outdated already, which is why I try to avoid predicting the future and I try to avoid writing about the present as much as I can. I'm always asked to do that. And so I hesitate about starting on October 7th. I mean, it is a cataclysmic event. Heaven knows it's led to enormous changes in the Middle east, so it's going to be a marker for historians for a very long time to come. But I think the antecedents are as important as the sequels.

[Rashid Khalidi]

And we will talk about all of that. But I want to ask you what you think, looking back, Hamas intended to happen. They certainly its leadership seemed to be intent on some kind of cataclysm in the region and not just on the border with Israel. What do you think was planned?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

I think that a distinction probably is important about who decided on this and who knew about this and what the people who decided on it thought. I have a sense I may be wrong. I'm not in Gaza, I'm not in touch with these people. I really don't know. But I have a sense that the people in Gaza, the military leadership in Gaza, planned and decided on this on the basis of an estimation of the situation. That wasn't shared either, I think entirely with the rest of the Hamas leadership outside or with their putative allies in Lebanon, Hezbollah, or with the Iranians. And everything that the Iranians in Hezbollah have done and said ever since that reinforces this view. They were not taken into the confidence of the people who decided on this. I'm not sure about the rest of the Hamas leadership. The second thing is, I think they had a misestimation of the regional situation, that they could spark something which I think they thought would lead to a regional cataclysm, whatever.

[Rashid Khalidi]

What sort of cataclysm, though?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Well, I think they thought everybody else would join in with them. I believe that that's what they thought, I have some evidence for that. But let's wait. We'll see. The people in Qatar and Turkey and Lebanon will talk sooner or later, and we'll know. And the Iranians have already pretty much made it clear, and Hezbollah made it pretty clear, Hezbollah, that they weren't taken into anybody's confidence and they weren't party to this decision. I don't think they shared the expectations that the people, the military people in Gaza had. And I think they thought there would be an uprising across Palestine. I think they thought that their allies would join in. I think they believed in this rhetoric of an axis of resistance. And I think that they misestimated, to.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Put it very clear, Hezbollah did join in a day later.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Yes, the next day. But again, look at how they joined in. They didn't cross the border.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Rashid, where has this left the Palestinian cause?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

You know, some people have said that the Palestinians are now bereft and don't have any allies. I was never a believer in the idea that the what called itself the axis, or what the Iranians and their friends called the axis of resistance, was designed to support the Palestinians. I mean, it did in some respects support one faction of the Palestinians, Hamas and other groups, but it was to the extent to which it even existed as a real coalition of interests. It was designed by Iran to protect the Iranian regime, to protect Iran. And Hezbollah were willing allies in this, as were Ansar Allah in Yemen. They bought into the project and they had their own objectives, each one of those three actors, which had very little to do, in fact, in my view, with Palestine.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Were they using the Palestinian cause in some sense?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

I mean, governments all over the world have used the Palestinian cause in different ways and at the same time have sometimes rendered assistance to the Palestinians. But Iran was doing this for Iran, the regime's sake and for Iran's national interests. And I think this idea that Palestinians are bereft of allies assumes that they had people who were doing things for their interest, which I don't think was true. I honestly do not think it's true. And the way in which Hezbollah behaved, they sacrificed a great deal. I'm not denigrating them, but they attacked Israel in an entirely limited fashion. They didn't cross the border. They tried to avoid attacking civilian targets. They may have killed 50 people in 14 months. Civilians in Israel. They were clearly trying to target Israeli military installations and Israeli strategic targets and not kill civilians, unlike what Israel did in Gaza, does in Gaza and did and is doing in Lebanon and may apparently be doing now in Syria, where they attack military and civilian targets indiscriminately. There was a dosage to what they were trying to do. In other words, they weren't part of the project, in my view. They hadn't bought on to whatever it was that the military leadership in Gaza had planned for them.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Then why did they join it at all if they weren't interested?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

They had to. They felt they had to. You know, their, their commitment to Palestine obliged them to do that. They had no choice. The Iranians were obliged to do that. I. I don't think the Iranians wanted to. To get involved in a war with Israel. They're terrified of Israel, as is every country around Israel, by the way, and have been for decades. Since 1948, in fact, Arab countries have been scared of Israel. Most other countries, you know, Israel has bombed seven Arab capitals. Most of the wars have been fought on Arab soil. Arab governments are very afraid of Israel, and I think Iran is afraid of Israel. With good reason, I would add.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Recently in Israel, the leadership of the settler movement from the west bank had a conference where they talked openly about not only annexing the west bank, but also resettling Gaza. Israeli settlements in Gaza were abandoned in 2005, but they're talking about putting them back in.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Right.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Netanyahu is not necessarily supporting this, but he's allowing it to have real voice. It's normalizing the idea. And there are people in his cabinet who support annexation of the west bank and resettling Gaza as policy and ethnic cleansing.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

They all go together. You boot the population out, you occupy, and then you settle.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Moshe Yawlan, the former Defense Minister, who's nobody's lefty, has described what's going on in northern Gaza as ethnic cleansing. So I ask you, where is the Palestinian movement now? What are its prospects?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

First of all, the Palestinian movement is fragmented. There's no unified Palestinian national movement. There are two discredited factions, neither of which, it appears to me, today, has a viable strategy. So the Palestinian national movement for the better part of two decades has been, in my view, in terrible shape. It's in just as bad or worse shape today. The Palestinians are in worse shape today because what's going on in the west bank is almost invisible. The rolling annexation, the rolling theft of land, the rolling expansion of settlements, the ongoing incorporation of most of the west bank into Israel, whether it's formally annexed or not. And that process is about to recommence in Gaza. It started in 1967. It was partially rolled back in 2005 with the evacuation of the settlements and with the removal of the occupation to the frontiers of Gaza, rather than being inside of Gaza. So Gaza was controlled and occupied from without rather than from within. It's about to be controlled from within again. So the Palestinians are in that sense, worse off. Israel is also, in my view, worse off. Occupation, ethnic cleansing, Colonization produces resistance. If you don't eliminate the population you're colonizing, they will resist. Now they may try and expel them. In other words, ethnically cleanse them entirely.

[Rashid Khalidi]

You're not in the business of recommending policy decisions to the Israelis. But what should Israel have done after the massacre of October 7th?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

I mean, you have to rewind, David. You can't say, what should they have done after October 7th? You put people in a pressure cooker and you don't expect them to explode. Of course they're going to explode. The problem is the pressure cooker. The problem isn't the explosion. I mean, if you start from October 7th, there's only one set of answers, force and more force, which is Israel's almost universal response to the Palestinian resistance to the colonization of Palestine. There have been exceptions. Rabin, Barak, sort of, Olmert, sort of. But with those few exceptions, it's always been force and more force. And that's what they did, of course, after October 7th. But the problem was not starting. It did not start on October 7th.

[Rashid Khalidi]

I'm confused because you have not been without criticism of Hamas and Hamas's decision in October 7th. And so I'm not clear you've been critical of Hamas. To what extent?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

I mean, I've made a critique. I mean, if you believe in international humanitarian law, you don't kill civilians. And I've argued this previously. I mean, I quote Ikban Ahmed against this enemy. This kind of means, indiscriminate use of violence is counterproductive. Politically. It's also immoral, that is it violates moral laws and it's also a violation of international humanitarian law. And one would hope that both of those would be serious considerations. But it's also politically extremely unwise. And that political calculation was apparently not there. Or they just didn't control things. I would argue that's morally wrong. I would argue that's a violation of international humanitarian law. I've published this, I've said this repeatedly, but it's politically a horrific mistake, in my view, which doesn't justify or in any way mitigate the horrors that Israel inflicted 50 fold on Palestinians thereafter. But it helped to provoke that and it helped to justify that in the eyes of the world.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Rashid Khalidi is a Professor Emeritus at Columbia. We'll continue our conversation in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come.

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[Rashid Khalidi]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I've been speaking with Rashid Khalidi, a historian of the Middle east, specifically Palestinian history, and he's recently retired from Columbia University. In his work, Khalidi has applied the concept of settler colonialism to Israel's founding and history. In other words, the idea that Zionism is somehow comparable in some ways to the European conquest of North America and the conquest of Australia as well. That analysis has become very influential on the left, and not surprisingly, it's strongly disputed by, among others, supporters of Israel. Khalidi himself was born in New York to a distinguished Palestinian family known in Jerusalem for centuries. One of his ancestors, a great, great, great uncle, was an influential figure in the modern history of Palestine.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Yusuf D. Al Kheldi had been a Western educated liberal constitutionalist, elected to the first Ottoman parliament, opposed Sultan Abdul Hamid's autocracy, was exiled, got into trouble, went to Austria, taught at the university there, and later on became mayor of Jerusalem and had served all over the Ottoman Empire. Had taught in Vienna. After he studied in Vienna, he went back and taught there. He was a student, among other things, of Judaism. We have his books, so we know what he was interested in. And he obviously knew everything about Zionism. He had followed the first and second Zionist Congresses. He was apparently familiar with Herzl's book, the Jewish State, Der Judenstadt, the State of the Jews, Jewish State. It depends on how you translate to German. So he writes to Herzl in 1899, and he said to him, of course, you have a certain right to Palestine. We know your connection. We're cousins. It was a very friendly letter. We understand the persecution that you're subject to. I mean, he'd lived in Vienna. Vienna had for a very long time. This horrific, antisemitic mayor, Karl Laugher, horrific man. One of the things that Herzl personally was responding to was this antisemitism of Austria itself. And he knew all about that. He'd lived there, he taught there. And he said, but what you're trying to do in Palestine is impossible. It causes all these problems. There's a population here that will not be supplanted. I'm paraphrasing from his letter to Herzl, which he sent via the French chief rabbi, whom he apparently knew. And he said, for the sake of God, leave Palestine alone. Talking, in other words, about all the problems that we've seen.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Meaning what?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Don't come Oriental, Jewish Communities, Mizrahi communities for the Palestinians and for the Zionist project. He said, you know, it's a fine idea in principle, but doing it here is going to cause these problems. In other words, he didn't deny the idea that the Jews were a people, have a connection to the Holy Land, have a right if they want to be a national group suffering from persecution.

[Rashid Khalidi]

But a national group where?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Well, what he was saying is, don't do it here, because we are here now.

[Rashid Khalidi]

I hardly need to tell you that a lot of people would say, well, look what happened to the Jews in Europe and coming to Palestine and creating the state of Israel, which was a much smaller entity in 1948 than it is now, was a kind of salvation.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Yeah, a salvation at the expense of an indigenous population, which understood from very early on that it would be supplanted. I mean, he was saying that, and Palestinians were saying it before World War I in their papers.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Now, let's talk about the term that's much in use now, settler colonialism. Your book and your work has helped bring that framing into common use. You hear it all the time. It's not only students who use it. It's common parlance in political debate and scholarship. How do you define what you see as settler colonialism? And why is this, in your view, the right way to see this conflict?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Well, I mean, first of all, Zionism is many things. I argue in my work that Zionism is, among many other things, it's a national movement. It starts as a national movement. It has no original, necessary intention of developing into a settler colonial project. It's intended as a refuge for persecuted Jews. And it's based, as it develops, on an undeniable, incontrovertible connection between Judaism and the Jewish people and the Holy Land. So it's all of those things, of course, but as it developed, it understood that, first of all, these people saw themselves as Europeans. Yes, we are Jews. Yes, we are persecuted in Europe, but we are going to go elsewhere as Europeans. And we can only do that with the support of a great power. So Herzl spends his life trying to petition the Kaiser, trying to petition the Czar of Russia, trying to position the French Third Republic. And Weizmann. Chaim Weizmann hits gold when he manages to convince the British to become the patron of what they understand is a settler colonial project. The early Zionists, all of them wall to wall, understood that they were colonizing Palestine. You wouldn't have had the land purchase agency called the Jewish Colonization Agency. That's not Some antisemitic slur on a bunch of people who want to rescue the Jews from persecution. That's the description they gave themselves for what they understood they were doing and what they understood was their ancestral land and which they felt they had no choice but to colonize because of persecution in Europe. So you can walk and chew gum at the same time.

[Rashid Khalidi]

What's curious to me, though, is that it's lumped in by a lot of people. Not you, but it's lumped in by. With a lot of people, with other colonial projects like Algeria.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Right.

[Rashid Khalidi]

How do you differentiate or not between the Zionist movement and all these other colonial enterprises?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

It's unique. Let's start by saying that there are settler colonial projects that develop international projects. You and I are living in one. This is a settler colonial project. It's a national project. It's a nation state now. Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Others don't. Algeria didn't, Kenya didn't. Northern Rhodesia, Zimbabwe today didn't. So in that respect, Zionism is absolutely unique. It's unique in other respects. Every other settler colonial project I know of, Ireland, for example, involves an extension of the sovereignty and the population of the mother country. There's a mother country which Zionism doesn't have, and the project is an extension. The King sends Protestants to Ulster, okay. Or to Virginia, named for Queen Elizabeth, or to Jamestown, named for King James. It's an extension of the sovereignty of the English monarchy or of the French Republic into North Africa. Zionism doesn't fit that pattern at all. It's not an extension of the sovereignty of Great Britain. It doesn't involve an extension of the population. It's its own independent project, which, in a transactional relationship, hooks up with an imperial power to do its bidding as an ally, if you want, or a patron. So it's unique in multiple respects. I mean, it's not true that this is the only settler colony that involves people fleeing persecution. The Quakers, the Puritans, are refugees from persecution by the Church of England. So it's not entirely unique in that respect, but it is unique in having this connection to Palestine, to the Holy Land of Judaism and the Jewish people.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Which is entirely different from the American experience in the way you describe it. It seemed that the American experience and many of the other ones that you named are entirely more pernicious.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Yeah. There's the matter of can you succeed entirely in eliminating the native population or reducing them to subjection, which is what happens in Australasia and North America. It's not what happens in other Settler colonies. It's not what happens in Algeria, it's not what happens in Kenya, it's not what happens in South Africa or in Ireland.

[Rashid Khalidi]

But in Palestine there have been any number of attempts to divide the land. Do you think that that has run its course?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

You're talking about partition, some form of.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Division between Palestinians and Israelis.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Your problem is you have now two peoples and you have one country and neither are going anywhere unless heaven forbid, there's, I don't think Israel can be eliminated. Nuclear power, one of the strongest countries on earth. It's not going anywhere. Nor are the Israelis. You know, some may leave, but that's not going to change anything. Some Palestinians may leave. That's not going to change anything. You have two peoples in same place and both of them in their imaginary see it in its entirety as their ancestral homeland. I'm not talking about reality, I'm talking about imagined communities. Okay? That's how the Palestinians see it, that's how the Israelis see it. And I would argue on the one hand you could say there are various reasons why the Palestinians may be right and there are some reasons you might say the Israelis are right. But anyway, that's another issue. Okay, so how do you deal with that? There are two ways. You cut the baby in half Solomonic situation, which is what partition supposedly was directed at doing, or you figure out a way for these two peoples to live in some kind of binational situation. Personally, if it were up to me, I would prefer the latter. I don't see how you can partition this country. I think though, you have to go through some very painful processes to get to any resolution that's just inequitable and sustainable. I mean, you have a colonial reality. You have a situation where one people is supreme. You have the supremacy of the Jewish people as instantiated in a constitutional law of 2018. The Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people law, that's a law which says there's only one people that has the right of self determination. In other words, there's one people in Palestine. So all of the structures that are related to that view have to be dismantled. You cannot have a resolution unless they're dismantled. Whether you have two states or one state or a confederation. If there is an equitable solution in which both peoples can achieve their objective of self determination and in which everybody is treated justly and equitably, and we're so far away from that today, you have to decolonize, I'm sorry to use the term, you have to dismantle A lot of structures, very powerful structures. You want to get anywhere towards a just equitable resolution, a whole lot of changes have to happen and they're not going to happen quickly, unfortunately. And those changes include the Palestinian among within the Palestinian polity, but mainly in Israel and Israel's supporters, without which it cannot do what it does.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Tell me about the Palestinian polity and then we'll get to the Israeli.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Well, I mean the Palestinians are suffering a recurrence of a collective trauma as a result of the Gaza war. I mean, we all wake up every morning and we doom scroll to see how many more people were slaughtered and if anybody we know has had anything to happen to them and then we all go to bed doing the same thing. And they have a lot to overcome in terms of how they are going to figure out their strategy going forward. I mean, I mentioned the fact that you have a completely splintered Palestinian national movement. It almost doesn't exist. There's no real Palestinian diplomacy, there's no Palestinian public diplomacy, there's no Palestinian strategy. There are things happening that nobody's doing anything about in an official way. I mean, you have Palestinian civil society is active, is doing various things, but that's not something for civil society. It's something for political leadership, which the Palestinians do not have at this moment. So they have a long haul towards resuscitating their national movement. It's not the first time this has happened. It's been shattered at least twice in the last 50, 60 years, 70 years. That's a prerequisite for anything. Where do the Palestinians, where do we want to go? What is our objective and how are we going to get there? And I don't think there's clarity on this from these two discredited movements that dominate Palestinian politics right now. And I don't think there's a consensus and there has to be some kind of consensus around national objectives. So the Palestinians need to do all of that and at the same time resist this ongoing Moloch, this ongoing bulldozer of colonization and settlement and theft of land and this massive machine of occupation which is being reinserted from the borders of Gaza into Gaza and which is expanding every day in the West Bank. I mean, it involves things that nobody even thinks of, like the population register, like the fact that the general security services knows about every single Palestinian everywhere inside the occupied territories and in Israel and interferes with their lives at will. I mean, that's a mechanism of control and domination which the Palestinians have to resist and resist in various ways just by staying on the land, staying in Palestine, they're resisting, but they have to do it in active ways, in passive ways, in all kinds of ways. And that's not easy to do when you don't have a strategy or a leadership.

[Rashid Khalidi]

And the Israeli polity. I think we've seen the rightward march in Israeli politics for years and years. There's no question about it. But when you describe the trauma of the Palestinian peoples, there's no question about that either. But there's also trauma in the Israeli society. And one of the things that October 7th managed to do was to shatter. Shatter the sense of security in Israel.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Yeah, that's correct. It did more than that. It did more than that. I mean, tell me, think about it for a minute, David. After 1948, virtually every Israeli war was fought on Arab soil and the Israeli population was basically preserved. Iraq fired a few missiles into Israel. You had horrific suicide attacks in the 1990s and early 2000s. But with a few exceptions, Israel's population was relatively protected from harmony while Arab populations were pummeled in every war. And so this is. This is the first time since 1948 that you had an eruption into Israel and an attack on Israeli civilians. It is the largest civilian death toll in Israel since 1948. The Israeli military didn't regain control of these border settlements and of its military bases, all of which, most of which were overrun for four days till the 10th. That is obviously traumatic. I mean, and of course, it triggered all kinds of historic memories for Israelis and for Jews. I mean, obviously, just as Palestinians are triggered thinking of 67 and 48 and whatever else Israelis were triggered. I mean, we had these comparisons to pogroms. We had peculiar comparisons to the Holocaust. 800 people is not 6 million people, 800 civilians. But anyway, the point is that in terms of people's imaginary, that's what was going through their heads. And everybody in Israel is connected, just like everybody in Palestine is connected. Everybody knew what was happening in those four days, those three or four days. So, yeah, trauma, trauma. However, let us treat human beings as human beings. 800 Israeli civilians were killed. 50, 60, 70. We won't know until the rubble is cleared in a year or two how many Palestinians were killed.

[Rashid Khalidi]

The most common figure you hear from Gaza is around 45,000.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

So trauma is trauma. I'm not suggesting that people's suffering can be measured and compared, but I think if people are. If we have the same, I don't know, yardstick for humanity, we are talking about a level of tragedy which I don't think has frankly been conveyed as it should have been by the media.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Rashid, your book offers three pathways to how colonial conflicts end. You say it's one of these three things, and I'm paraphrasing, the elimination or subjugation of native people, as in North America, the expulsion of the colonizer, like the French in Algeria, or compromise and reconciliation. And here you mentioned South Africa, Zimbabwe.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

And Ireland as well.

[Rashid Khalidi]

And Ireland, of course, which you're working on now as your latest scholarly project. As I understand it from our last conversation, do you think compromise and reconciliation is still possible despite everything we've seen in the last 14 months and the last 25 years or more?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

It is unavoidable and inevitable. There's no other way. Neither side's going to eliminate the other and nobody's going anywhere. So, you know, it may take us another two generations or another generation. I don't know. I'm a historian. I can't tell you about what's going to happen, but I can tell you there's no alternative. There is no alternative and it has to be based on justice and equality. You cannot have one group that has rights that the other group doesn't have. And that's the problem right now. That's the core problem. You know, you've established a national entity, fine. It's there. That national entity cannot control everybody and everything forever, which is what the course that unfortunately Israel is currently on.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Rashid Khalidi, thank you so much.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Introduction]

Thanks, David.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Rashid Khalidi is a professor emeritus, recently recently retired from Columbia University, and his many books include the Hundred Years War on Palestine. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come.

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[Rashid Khalidi]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I spoke earlier with Rashid Khalidi, whose work has helped bring the term settler colonialism into wide use, especially on the left, at least as it applies to Israel. In a recent book called On Settler Colonialism, Adam Kirsch takes a very different view of that idea. Kirsch is an editor at the Wall Street Journal, and he's also a critic who's written about philosophy and poetry for the New Yorker. We spoke last week. So you've written a short book about the concept of settler colonialism, particularly as it pertains to Israel, or in your view, doesn't pertain to Israel. What is the concept?

[WNYC Studios]

It's a way of thinking about the history of countries started by European colonization, in particular Australia, the United States and Canada, which are sort of the classic examples, and then also by extension, Israel, which is probably the most controversial case or the one that is talked about the most, certainly in the last Year or so.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Why do you object to the term?

[WNYC Studios]

I think that settler colonial theory is usually studied by people who are not historians. They're looking at historical phenomena through a very simple lens. The lens is you're either a settler or you're indigenous. In the United States, that means anyone who's not Native American is a settler. And that has some surprising applications. Including descendants of slaves can also be settlers, or very recent immigrants can be settlers.

[Rashid Khalidi]

But Rashid Khalidi, who is a historian, uses the term settler colonialism where Israel is concerned and at the same time acknowledges that Jews have roots in that area, that he acknowledges the complexity of it. What's wrong with that?

[WNYC Studios]

I think that he's exceptional in that regard. I talk about his work in the book with respect and acknowledgement that he does make those distinctions. It's very common in settler colonial discourse about Israel to say Jews are white European colonizers and Palestinian Arabs are indigenous people.

[Rashid Khalidi]

I think some people at this late date, 14, 15 months after October 7, would say, who cares about this? There are 45,000 dead people in Gaza, dead Palestinians. There are hostages still in Gaza from Israel. There are. There was a massacre and all the other ramifications that came out of all the tragic ramifications, why does it matter? Why did you set pen to paper to write about the concept of settler colonialism, particularly where it pertains to Israel.

[WNYC Studios]

And Palestine, the only peaceful solution to the Israel Palestine conflict? And I think this is something that Khalidi says in his book the Hundred Years War and Palestine is one that does not involve the expulsion of either people. What I'm saying about if settler colonialism is that is a zero sum way of looking at the conflict. It says Jews are colonizers and that the goal is decolonization, which means getting rid of them. And you saw that in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack. Why was it that on October 7, as soon as the news of the massacre of Israelis came, you had a lot of people on the American left in progressive movements or non university campuses celebrating this and saying, as one person tweeted, who I quote in the book, Israelis are not civilians, they're settlers. And therefore all Israelis are valid military targets. There's no such thing as a civilian versus a soldier.

[Rashid Khalidi]

And you view that as eliminationist?

[WNYC Studios]

Definitely.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Here's what I would argue, certainly many people would argue, yes, there were people at demonstrations who engaged in that kind of rhetoric, but that was a very vocal, perhaps, but tiny minority in the large majority. Protesters on college campuses were engaged in justifiable Horror at seeing the amount of death taking place in Gaza and the notion that there needs to be justice for Palestinian people, that annexationist policies in the west bank and what seems to be, in the words of the former Defense Minister Moshe Ya Alon, ethnic cleansing in the north of Gaza is a moral catastrophe.

[WNYC Studios]

I don't dispute that at all. Obviously, the reason why these protests exist is because of the war. The way that this idea is used, when people say that Israel is a settler, colonial country, they mean this country should not exist. It has no right to exist. And many of those people would say the same thing about the United States. But of course, the United States is not in imminent danger of destruction. There's no one who's making war on it. But there are countries and groups that have been making war on Israel since it was created. It's not a matter of, do I sympathize with victims? It's really a recipe for creating more victims on both sides.

[Rashid Khalidi]

How do you mean?

[WNYC Studios]

Because it says to Israelis, we will never accept the existence of your state. This is a fight to the death. And if it's a fight to the death, that means more death. The greatest evil is settler colonialism. Israel is settler colonialist. Therefore, people who fight Israel are virtuous. And it leads to some very strange political bedfellows where people who claim to be progressives are waving the flags of groups that are religious fundamentalist.

[Rashid Khalidi]

You contest Khalidi's claim that Zionism is a classic 19th century European colonial venture in a non European land. Why do you take issue with that characterization? And how would you characterize it?

[WNYC Studios]

Khalidi shows that from the point of view of Palestinian Arabs, Zionism was a colonial enterprise. It came to their land and created a state there without their consent.

[Rashid Khalidi]

I mean, Jabotinsky and other Zionist leaders use the word colonialism to describe themselves.

[WNYC Studios]

And it's true. Jabotinsky in particular said, this is Vladimir.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Jabotinsky, who is the godfather in essence, of the Herud Party, which became now Likud and Netanyahu's forebearers.

[WNYC Studios]

Right. He was often attacked at the time in the 1920s and 30s as an extreme right winger and even a fascist by other Zionists. But I think that he was prescient about one thing. The Arabs will not welcome us here. The only way that we're going to create a Jewish country here is by fighting for it. In creating Zionism and creating a Jewish state, the Zionist movement did oppose Arab aspirations. It opposed Arab desires for the future of that land. The reason why I think settler Colonialism is not the right model for understanding this.

[Rashid Khalidi]

But how is that justifiable in your mind?

[WNYC Studios]

I think it's justifiable by, well, let's say the reasons why Zionism justified it were the historic claims of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, that this was the land where Jews had originated, there was the land that their religion was focused on, the biblical and European antisemitism. And the other was existential necessity. And I think that those two reasons are probably better than the reasons that 99% of states on the map were created. So if you ask why is Palestine an Arab country? The reason is that in the 7th century, Islamic Arab armies conquered it and spread that religion across North Africa and the Middle East. Before that it was mainly a Christian country under the Roman Empire.

[Rashid Khalidi]

So you're saying the Zionist sin is by being too recent?

[WNYC Studios]

I think that it's recent and it is unresolved. I think that's actually one of the main reasons why settler colonialism is not a good model for thinking about this conflict. Settler colonialism involves, in the classic examples, it involves the destruction of one people by another and their replacement over a large territory, really a continent wide territory. And that's not at all the history of Israel and Palestine. The history of Israel and Palestine is that now there are about equal numbers of Jews and Arabs between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, about seven and a half million of each. So the question is what future can be created for those 15 million people that is better than the current situation which involves constant war and occupation.

[Rashid Khalidi]

And what is the answer you come to? We're now sitting in a moment that I don't know. The situation has been more dreadful in my lifetime. With so many dead around, with so much destruction in Gaza, with the politics of Israel now reaching a point where talk of annexation of the west bank and even resettlement in Gaza is now quite common currency on the right. I just don't see for some long time to come, although history happens when it happens. A resolution here.

[WNYC Studios]

No, I agree with you and I say in the book that right now it's much easier to imagine one of the disastrous outcomes of the conflict than a better outcome. The disastrous outcome being expulsion or massacre. What I come to in the end is saying that if your goal is to undo the past, then you have guaranteed perpetual conflict. The reason conflicts come to an end is when the parties to the conflict agree to stop trying to undo the past and say a peaceful future is better. We will give up what we most want in order to have peace. Now, Right. Which your view is a two state solution. I think that that's an answer that has little credibility right now because no one actually involved in the conflict is for it. It's the solution that I think is the only one that I can imagine happening in a morally supportable way. Any other solution is going to involve great violence and suffering. So I think.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Including a binational state.

[WNYC Studios]

I think a binational state would almost immediately turn into the kind of situation you have in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia. Binational states don't work. The first thing that happened after the fall of communism was all the binational states in Eastern Europe broke up. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia. You might think the Czechs and the Slovaks should be able to get along, but no, they want their own countries. I think it's very unrealistic to say these groups of people who have hated each other for such a long time and inflicted so much damage on each other when living under separate regimes are now going to live together in peace under the same regime. That's simply not a realistic option. And I think that as a Jew, it's very important for the Jewish people for there to be a Jewish state. I think it's necessary. It remains true today as it was true in the early days of Zionism.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Why?

[WNYC Studios]

Because I think that otherwise Jews would be completely powerless. And we've seen in the 20th century what the cost of being completely powerless is. It means that when you're persecuted, you have nowhere to go. No one will take you in.

[Rashid Khalidi]

You had two diverging aftermaths to European antisemitism. One was nationalism in Israel. And here in this country was joining a pluralistic state. Each have their own problems. Tell me why in the modern world pluralism isn't the better option.

[WNYC Studios]

I think pluralism is something that's achieved in rare occasions. It's a great blessing when it is achieved. It's achieved in rare occasions. It. It doesn't look like it's in very robust health even here in the United States. And I think that for Jews it's been such a successful home, such a welcoming home, that there is definitely a cognitive dissonance involved in saying here pluralism there stayed based on religious identity or ethnic identity. And I think that that contradiction, especially for young people, is leading people to reject the idea of Zionism.

[Rashid Khalidi]

I think they're rejecting it not only because of the violence they've witnessed and the politics that you've seen in the last couple of decades or more, but also the notion of having a state where one people is supreme to the other and has the legal status of being.

[WNYC Studios]

So, yes, I think that that's one of the best arguments for a two state solution is that it's bad for, obviously bad for Palestinians, but also bad for Israelis to be in the position of occupying another people and holding them down. Jabotinsky said that a Jewish state has to have a Jewish majority. And in fact, what you have now, there is not a Jewish majority in the whole land. A Jewish majority only in when you.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Include the west, that's the state of East Jerusalem and Gaza.

[WNYC Studios]

Right. So it's sort of an artificially maintained Jewish majority. But I do think that there's no other country in the world for whom their politics and their cognitive war leads to the judgment this country should be wiped off the map, this country should not exist. It would be hard to have worse politics and worse conduct of a war than Russia. Right. Over the last two years, and no one has said this shows that Russians shouldn't have a state. This shows that Russians can't handle or shouldn't be allowed to have a Russian country. It's only the Jewish state that people say that about. And I think that it has to do with the very unique role that Jews and Judaism play in Western civilization and also the recency and precariousness of the country of Israel, that it's a country where you can imagine it not existing in a generation. I think that that would be an unacceptable price to pay. Not only would it forfeit the Jewish state as it is now, it would forfeit any kind of Jewish state that might emerge in the future that one might like better. And it returns the Jews to, as I said earlier, to complete powerlessness. And I think that that is something that people today find hard to remember because they don't study the history of what Jewish powerlessness meant before 1948.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Adam Kirsch, thank you.

[WNYC Studios]

Thank you.

[Rashid Khalidi]

You can find some of Adam Kirsch's [e-mail] and on the Wall Street Journal site. Kirsch's recent book is on settler colonialism. Now, I've been following and reporting on the Israel Palestinian conflict for a very long time. And our two guests today, Rashid Khalidi and Adam Kirsch, obviously disagree on many things, but it's quite clear that they both recognize one essential and deeply painful fact. Save for the most catastrophic development, the erasure of the Palestinians from the west bank and Gaza or the fall of the Israeli state, these two peoples are not going anywhere. And they are destined to find some form of reconciliation in the future. The question is, how will they ever reconcile? And when? How much more suffering is ahead before that can happen? The horrific events of the past 14 months certainly pushed that reconciliation, or even the idea of it, far into the future, far more than any of us would have imagined in the 90s, the days of the Oslo peace process. I reported from the region for a long time, and like many of you, I try to read widely and listen to the voices of Palestinians and Israelis and people of all politics and faiths in that region. And I recently saw two documentaries that I want to recommend to you. Though they may be a little tricky to find, neither will provide any easy assurance and nor will they indulge in false optimism. The BB Files, directed by Alexis Bloom, centers on the corruption investigations directed at the Israeli prime minister, and it features police testimony filmed police testimony from members of the Netanyahu family and their circle.

[David Remnick]

Early on.

[Rashid Khalidi]

Because showing such testimony is illegal in Israel, the film is at least nominally banned there. It's a scathing portrait of a leader whose commitment to saving his political future often outweighs any other political or human imperative, and you can find it streaming on the site Jolt Film. The other film is called no Other Land. It's a remarkable documentary that still lacks an American distributor. Filmed on the run and in difficult conditions by a team of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, it vividly portrays the slow erasure of small Palestinian villages in the southern west bank near Hebron. On a profound human level, it shows the effect that policy and the bulldozers that enact it have on the lives of the displaced and on history itself. In one of the film's most moving scenes toward the end we hear a young Israeli and a young Palestinian in dialogue, and mainly the Palestinian talking about the impossibility of imagining a future. So for now, keep an eye out for no Other Land at film festivals and the like, and I do hope it finds a distributor here soon. It's not easy to watch, but anyone who has any interest in the conflict will gain something from it, I'm sure. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. I want to thank you for listening. See you next time.

[David Remnick]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Sommer, with guidance from Emily Bottine and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the cherina Endowment.

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