Gerald Horne - The Genocide in Gaza, Impact on International Affairs (2024)

Gerald Horne: thank you so much for joining us professor gerald horn thank you for inviting me i certainly appreciate it so this morning what i plan to do is try to compare the events that have unfolded since october 7th 2023 in historic palestine to an analogous situation in 1956 oftentimes denoted as the Suez Crisis in terms of the impact of both 2023, 2024, and 1956, the impact on global and domestic affairs. First, I will discuss briefly 1956 in the aforementioned context. The bulk of my remarks will focus on October 7th and its aftermath in a similar context, And if I have time, I will talk about what is different. That is to say, the analysis that has come from the US left in particular of Israel as a settler colonial regime leads unavoidably and inevitably to seeing its patron, speaking of the United States, in a similar context. And seeing the United States in a similar context also points to the essence of settler colonialism, which involves class collaboration, which in turn helps to shed light on the Trump phenomenon, the rise of right-wing populism in the United States, and perhaps, as shall be discussed, an incipient fascism. And as suggested, if I have time, I will venture into the weeds of US history to provide further context for my remarks. Now, to 1956. Britain, France, and Israel attack the Egypt of G.A. Nasser for, in part, control of the Suez Canal, and in part because of Egypt's role as a supporter of liberation movements on the African continent, particularly in Kenya to the southeast and Algeria to the west. President Eisenhower of the United States intervened, as did the then Soviet Union, and as a direct result of the collapse of this proposed coup against Nasser, Britain moves closer to the United States, tying its apron strings closer to the U.S., while France, accelerating a previous trend, seeks to develop independently something that is unfolding as we speak, as I shall allude to shortly. This French trend was accelerated further when then Senator John Kennedy sought to undermine French rule in Algeria, which did not end until 1962. And of course, to that point was seen as a part of France, just as Hawaii is seen as a part of the United States. Actually, Eisenhower pulling the rug out from under Israel, Britain, and France can be seen in the cold light of history as the United States ratifying presently the new stage of neocolonialism and away from bare-knuckles colonialism. In other words, Washington stole a march on London and Paris, which still maintain colonial empires in Africa in particular, which did not begin to crumble until 1957 with Ghana, then 1960, the year of Africa, 1963, the year of Kenyan independence. And so by pulling the rug out from under these European powers, the United States had positioned itself to take advantage of the independence of these newly emerging African states. However, President Eisenhower's action in 1956 provides context for the clumsily worded United Nations resolution, just submitted and voted down a few days ago, that is to say a US resolution on a ceasefire in Gaza, vetoed by Russia and China and also rejected by Algeria, which by the way has become increasingly militant on this front since October 7th, while Guyana also did not support this US resolution. President Eisenhower's action in 1956 suggests that we have yet to hear the last of U.S. action on a ceasefire in 2024 or, heaven forbid, 2025, particularly as shall be seen given the pressure from the United States grassroots, including of late the United Auto Workers. Simultaneously, in 1956, another erstwhile Bostonian, speaking of the man once known as Malcolm X, led the Nation of Islam away from its previous reliance upon Japan, as embodied in the now somewhat elliptical idea of the Asiatic Black Man, and towards Egypt and Africa. The decline of the left, particularly the Black left, in the midst of the Red Scare in the 1950s, contributes to the accelerated rise of this kind of Black nationalism, just as the simultaneous assault on left-wing labor, such as the West Coast Longshore led by Australian-American Harry Bridges, also led to the acceleration of right wing populist trends embodied in subsequent decades by Albert Shanker of the Teachers Union and yet to be extinguished to this very day. There were other important events of 1956 that also are worth mentioning. Foremost perhaps is the devaluation of Soviet leader Stalin by Nikita Khrushchev, and that along with the 1953 execution of Julius Ethel Rosenberg, the so-called purported alleged atomic spies on behalf of Moscow, helped to contribute to an exodus, especially of Jewish Americans from the US Communist Party, and more so towards nationalism and Zionism. The devaluation also marks the acceleration, if not the onset, of the rift between the then Soviet Union and China with monumental consequences for the small planet, just as the reconciliation of Moscow and Beijing today has similar consequences. Hungary also plays a role given its eruption in 1956, and it would not be outlandish to suggest that that nation's current leader, Viktor Orban, a close comrade of Donald J. Trump, a visitor to Mar-a-Lago, a man who has supped with the U.S. Republican right, can be seen as a legacy of the 1956 unrest in Budapest. Today, of course, the U.S. left is yet to recover from the rat scare One issue, of course, as suggested previously, is that the destabilization of gigantic figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, as Jim Crow is being eroded, made Black participation in foreign policy spotty and episodic at best. empowering within the Democratic Party to which Black Americans glum to post the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Their spotty participation in foreign policy debates in the Democratic Party led to the empowering of neoconservative figures like Victoria Nuland. And of course, she's just resigned from the State Department perhaps because she did not receive the second ranking position behind Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of State. Instead, it was handed to Kurt Campbell, whose specialty is China, and there might be an obvious signal there. Given this Black American spottiness in terms of debating foreign policy, and given the concomitant rise of conservatism in the United States, even so-called liberal Zionists, such as Bill Ackman, who destabilized President Gay at Harvard, are fanning the flames of conservatism, strengthening this trend, making more ironic the fact that the organized left supported the formation of Israel in 1947, 1948, including Du Bois and Robeson, Whereas Zionism today, as Peter Beinart suggests in this morning's New York Times, is in the vanguard of leading a U.S. stampede to the right, making more poignant the last book by former U.S. Secretary of State, late U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, entitled pungently, Fascism, a Warning. That is to say that the Israel-Palestine crisis today, in terms of monumental consequence, may be having a similar impact as the previous crisis of 1956. And of course, it is our job to tease out the consequences so that we will not be ambushed, waylaid, or surprised by unfolding trends and developments. Now to October 7th, 2023, we all know by now that there have been tens of thousands killed in Gaza with a related crisis unfolding on the West Bank as we speak. The International Court of Justice in a case brought by South Africa in a very important development that I'll allude to shortly, have found that there has been a plausible case for genocide brought against Israel by South Africa. In a recent speech in the halls of Congress, the ranking Jewish American legislator and elected official, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Brooklyn, singled out for castigation the ultra-Orthodox in Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and Netanyahu. Mr. Schumer's speech is revealing insofar as it can be interpreted on the one hand as pointing the finger of accusation at Israel for its role in jeopardizing the US's overall global position, given the fact that Israel has been spared vetoes of Security Council resolutions in recent months because of US intervention. Or alternatively, Mr. Schumer's speech can be viewed as akin to cosmetics, that is to say, firing the captain of the ship, speaking of Netanyahu, rather than changing the direction of the ship. However, Mr. Schumer is correct to suggest that support for Israel is increasingly not bipartisan, This is nothing new, as suggested by my previous remarks. It only represents an acceleration of preexisting trends. For example, Mr. Netanyahu coming to Washington, not at the invitation of President Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry, but at the invitation of the Republicans on Capitol Hill in order to denounce their nuclear accord, that is to say the Democrats' nuclear accord with Iran. And of course, we all know about these remarks Mr. Netanyahu just gave to the Republican caucus just a few days ago. Trump and Netanyahu, of course, represent an odd couple insofar as we know that Mr. Trump still harbors resentment towards Mr. Netanyahu for not endorsing his so-called Stop the Steal campaign beginning in November 2020. And the question we now have to ask ourselves is will that previous peak of Mr. Trump override all else? Of course, what they have in common is support from powerful elements within the U.S. ruling elite, particularly the Zionist wing of the U.S. ruling elite, speaking more specifically of the Adelson family of Las Vegas casino's fame, and increasingly, I should say, of Macau casinos fame, Macau, of course, being a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. And of course, they also have expanded into professional sports with an ownership state and the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Yet so-called non-conservative Zionist billionaires, such as William Ackman, aforementioned, have been in the forefront of campaigning against diversity, equity, and inclusion. And of course, this once more represents how this Israel issue and the question of Zionism is dragging the United States further and further to the right which is a slap in the face to those like Du Bois, Robeson, and in fact, the international organized left, which supported the formation of the State of Israel in 1947, 1948, which of course is a issue we may want to revisit at some point. On the other hand, with reference to the grassroots pressure from the United States of America, we would be remiss if we ignored the votes in the Democratic Party primary for president, including the stunning 13% plus voting uncommitted in the Michigan primary, similar votes in other key states, Karl Rove, Bush's brain, as he was called, the campaign strategist for the Bush the lesser, Bush the son, in the Wall Street Journal just the other day, listed Michigan as one of seven battleground states. And given the concern, if not alienation, on the part of Arab Americans, In that particular state, it is possible that that battleground state will be lost to the Democrats and Mr. Biden in November 2024. With regard to Israel, the news may be dire if you take seriously the words of the well-known analyst, Ilan Pape, who suggests that we are at the beginning of the end, in the foothills, if you'd like, the beginning of the end of the entire Zionist project. Now, I know why he takes that point of view. If you look at southern Israel, since October 7th, a good deal of the Israeli population has been evacuated and locked a major port in southern Israel. has been denoted by a recent observer as akin to a ghost town with its beaches virtually deserted and its port basically emptied of incoming vessels. This is due to the militarized sanctions imposed by Ansar Allah of Yemen. which has been assaulting ships traversing the Red Sea, headed to the Suez Canal to Israel, which, by the way, has hampered Egypt, which has accumulated a handsome sum over the decades from tolls imposed upon ships going through that choke point. Northern Israel, and there's a recent article once again on the New York Times website that alludes to this, is also on the verge of virtual abandonment given rocket thrusts from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. I should also mention, of course, the fact that Israel has killed a number of Hezbollah militants in Southern Lebanon, which may in the long run bring Lebanon and Israel once again to the brink of a sharper conflict The last one in 2006 did not end well for Israel. Since that time, Hezbollah has accumulated even more rockets. And of course, we know that it is allied to what could well be called Israel's public enemy number one, speaking of Iran. The so-called Abraham Accords painstakingly negotiated by the 45th US president seemed to be crumbling. Recall that this was a kind of de facto treaty involving Morocco and Bahrain and Sudan, which of course is now plunged not unrelatedly into one of the most bloody conflicts on our small planet. Israel's economy is also crumbling. Dependent as the Israeli military is upon reserves, that is to say forces who ordinarily are stocking grocery shelves or sitting in cubicles, but are now on the front lines of combat in Gaza, if not the West Bank. Just as Mr. Netanyahu raised eyebrows a few years ago when he came to Washington, not at the invitation of the US administration, the Obama administration, in a parallel maneuver in the last few weeks, one of the key members of the so-called war cabinet, speaking of Benny Gantz, was in Washington, DC, The Netanyahu forces were quite upset by this. They see this as part and parcel of what could be called the Schumer-Biden plan of pulling the rug out from under Mr. Netanyahu himself. Simultaneously, you see that the Israeli lobby led by AIPAC, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, DC, along with the National Rifle Association, is going after a number of members of Congress. Interestingly enough, many of the members of Congress they're targeting are members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Speaking of Jamal Bowman, of Bronx Westchester, Summer Lee of Western Pennsylvania, Andre Carson of Indiana, Cori Bush, of St. Louis, Missouri. And of course, to that list might be added subsequently, Al Green of Houston, who, as Mr. Biden was landing in the Bayou City for a fundraiser, took out a full page ad in the local newspaper, implicitly criticizing Mr. Biden's policy with regard to the crisis in Gaza and West Bank, at the same time, in a sense, thumbing its nose and belying the strategy of the Zionist wing of the US ruling class, you have, in Houston at least, Nazis on the march, marching under the banner of the so-called slogan, of quote, down with Jewish supremacy, unquote. At the same time, throughout Dixie, which is the heartbeat of the US right, you have the proliferation of allied groups, such as the Blood Tribe in Tennessee, which has a similar political platform as the Nazis. And yet we see that the Israelis' lobby is saving some of its most powerful punches for Jewish Voices for Peace, for If Not Now, for J Street, and other elements within the Jewish community that do not go along with their Netanyahu-like massacre and ICJ-denoted genocide in Gaza. As suggested, this puts Washington in a very delicate position that is to say, trapped, bogged down in Israel, suffering reputational damage as a result of this so-called alliance, which is hampering its focus on Ukraine. Note here the linkage of aid to Israel and aid to Ukraine now bogged down in congress and of course it is also hampering focus on the big enchilada which is the people's republic of china and the rebel island that is taiwan off the southern coast of china speaking of reputational damage you need look no further than the denunciation of israel policies in gaza by brazil's lula which of course in return brought a sharp rebuke from the Israeli authorities. But Lula was not alone as President Petro of Colombia spoke in similar, if not more harsh terms about what Israel is doing in Gaza. Also, an emblem of this reputational damage is the already noted South African case before the International Court of Justice concerning genocide by Israel in Gaza. Of course, every cloud has a silver lining. And I dare say that when you begin to look at recent US foreign policy towards Southern Africa, the warming of relations with Angola, for example, the easing of sanctions with regard to South Africa's immediate Northern neighbor, speaking of Zimbabwe, for example, that this is a reflection of Washington seeking to gain leverage against South Africa, particularly since this ICJ case raises implicitly, if not explicitly, a similar castigation of those who are aiding and abetting genocide, where we would have to look in the first instance towards the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House. I don't think that the visit to Washington recently concluded by South Africa's foreign minister, Pandora, helped to allay the growing tensions between Pretoria and Washington, which undoubtedly will reach a fever pitch as South Africa approaches elections in May, the 30th anniversary of the first democratic elections in 1994 that brought Nelson Mandela to power. And I should also say that South Africa-U.S. relations are not only being shaped by the ICJ case, but also by South Africa's ever closer ties to the BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and of course, the S for South Africa, with the recent addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran. Israel is viewed by some as less than helpful to Washington on the Russian-Ukraine front, Recall that before the special military operation launched in February 2022, that Mr. Netanyahu was a regular visitor to Moscow to the point where some thought perhaps he should rent an apartment there. There are credible allegations of Israel leaking US advanced military technology to China. This development perhaps is causing US allies to become even more adventurous when it comes to the all-important Ukraine front. Recall that France has threatened to put boots on the ground. Władysław Sikorski of Poland, a prominent figure there, has said that it's a notorious and open secret that there are already NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine already. This, of course, recalls the admonition of then US President Barack Obama, who cautioned against US intervention in Ukraine because he said, his words, Russia had, quote, escalatory dominance in that region, which apparently is the case. Now, back to the US of A. Despite the Balfour Declaration, circa 100 odd years ago, coming from Britain, promising a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine, it's important to note that the United States of America has been critical to this larger story, not only in being one of the first states to recognize Israel, But also, if you look at the historic relationship between the United States and the Jewish diaspora, in my book, The Dawning of the Apocalypse, which deals with the 16th century, I ask the basic question, How did London prevail north of Florida over the Spanish, which after all, at the first mover's advantage insofar as they sponsored Christopher Columbus in 1492? I point to a number of turning points, 1517 with Martin Luther's secession from the Vatican, the Catholic Church, and the rise of the Protestant faith in London, which ignites a round robin of religious conflict between Protestant and Catholics. London, which expelled this Jewish population at the end of the 13th century, was under siege by the 1500s. For example, witness the fact that in 1588, Spain only barely avoided defeating and seizing London itself during that pivotal year. And so London under siege was part and parcel of the beginning of the settler colonial project in North America in what was called North Carolina in the 1580s, whereby a diverse conglomeration of English and Irish and Scots of various class backgrounds, sponsored by the 1% in London, transported themselves across the Atlantic in order to dispossess the indigenous population. This leads inevitably to the construction of this militarized and monetized identity that we know today as whiteness, which is still with us. That is to say, those who had been warring on the shores of Europe, English versus Irish, English versus Scots, British versus German, German versus Pole, Pole versus Russian, Serb versus Croat, Northern Italian versus Southern Italian, of course, Protestants versus Catholics. All of a sudden, when they crossed the Atlantic, they assumed this new identity, that is to say whiteness, which involves class collaboration, which inherits in settler colonialism. And that class collaboration was necessary to effectuate the goals of seizing the land of the indigenous and then corralling the enslaved Africans who then began to build these settlements. Of course, this construction of whiteness was eventually expanded even beyond the shores of Europe. For example, on your morning TV, you were greeted by the comrade of Jenna Bush, the daughter of Bush the Lesser, speaking of Hoda Kotb, who is of Egyptian descent, but in the popular imagination is constructed as quote, white, unquote, a ditto for those of Lebanese descent, such as Ralph Nader. Thus, you saw the Jewish diaspora was integrated with others into whiteness and even into the US ruling class, as evidenced by my previous references to Ackman and the Edelmans, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, in this context, recall the remarks of then Senator Joseph Biden, who spoke of Israel as a state that we would have to invent, that is to say, Washington would have to invent if it didn't exist as a kind of unsinkable aircraft carrier. One of the eras of the US left, a number of eras that I could elaborate upon, was seeing this integration of those who had been despised in Europe, Catholics, Jewish diaspora, et cetera, as somehow being a precedent for the integration of those of African descent into various levels of US society. Not paying careful and close attention to the history would suggest that this integration of others of European ancestry and non-European ancestry was actually designed precisely to ensure that that particular integration of Black Americans or even Native Americans would not take place. In any case, there has been a lot of scholarship on that that I could elaborate upon, but for those who doubt the thrust of that analysis, you need look no further than January 6, 2021, when you had the attempted destruction of the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another, effectuated by, once again, a diverse conglomeration of class elements, including CEOs flying in on airplanes, shopkeepers, military veterans, working class elements, although disproportionately they hail from Dixie. So where does that leave us? I think where it leaves us, number one, is sharpening our analysis of how we reach this perilous point when we have to pay careful and close attention to the last book of Madeleine Albright speaking of fascism and mourning. Secondly, we must buttress and bolster those forces who have been in the forefront of protests of these disturbing trends, speaking of United Auto Workers, Jewish Voices for Peace, If Not Now, etc. And as my remarks suggest, We need a similar trend as represented by the United Auto Workers to be spreading not only through the entire labor movement, but perhaps spreading into a wider black community, which has been suffering incessantly. despite the fact that on May 17, 2024, we'll be marking the 70th anniversary of Brown versus Board of Education, which some had thought was the beginning of the end of said suffering. So I will stop here, and thank you for your attention.