Norm Finkelstein - on Gaza (2014)

Aaron Maté: It's The Real News. I'm Aaron Maté. The Gaza Strip is among the world's most densely populated areas. And for more than 50 years of Israeli occupation, it's also been one of the world's most continuously tormented. For more than a decade, Israel has imposed a crippling blockade and launched multiple military attacks, including two ground invasions. In these years, thousands of Palestinians have died and tens of thousands have lost their homes. More than 70% of Gaza's residents are refugees, or the children of refugees, and more than half are children. Just last year, the UN warned that Gaza's situation is so dire that it may be unlivable in the next few years. 95% of Gaza's water is unfit for human consumption. Now, one conventional way to explain all this is that Gaza's residents are caught in a crossfire between an Israeli government that sometimes goes too far and a ruling Hamas faction that rejects Israel's existence and terrorizes Israelis with rocket fire. Well, a new book challenges this narrative, and it argues that what has befallen Gaza is a human-made humanitarian disaster by Israel and Israel only. along with the backing of the U.S. and the complicity of many others. That complicity includes not just governments, but also international human rights groups. The book is called Gaza, an Inquest into its Martyrdom by Norman Ficklestein, author of many books on Israel-Palestine and one of the world's leading scholars on the topic. Norman is here in the Real News studio for his first interview on the book. Welcome, Norman.

Norman Finkelstein: NORMAN FICKLESTEIN Thank you for having me.

Aaron Maté: Thank you for coming down and joining us. Let's start with the subtitle, Why an Inquest Intuits Martyrdom? What do you mean by that?

Norman Finkelstein: Well it's very popular nowadays to talk about the agency of victims and that you shouldn't just cast them as victims but you should also see them as agents. And it is true that within certain limitations the victims of crimes they have a certain amount you could say of agency. So Nelson Mandela, he manages to preserve his dignity while in Robbins Island. Frederick Douglass manages at one point, one of the famous moments in his slave narrative, to actually engage in a fist fight with his slave owner. I think his name was Covey, C-O-V-E-Y. But the big picture is if you're a prisoner or a slave there are real limits to your agency. Your fate is being decided by somebody else. Gaza has been described even by the conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron. He said it's an open air prison. And when you're a prisoner you have very little agency. Gaza hasn't been an active agent in its history for the past 50 years. It's been on the receiving end. It's been the recipient of Israeli policy. And in fact most of the time what happens in Gaza, these what are called wars, they have very little to do with Gaza.

Aaron Maté: Okay, before proceeding, it might be useful just to give a little bit of a background sketch. I told a little bit of it in the intro, but just to flesh out a bit more. So, since 1967, Gaza has been occupied by Israel, along with the West Bank. There's a lot of history, but fast forwarding to 2005, Israel disengages from Gaza, pulls out its soldiers and its settlers there. And what now it will say is that it's no longer the occupying power because it withdrew. But instead of getting peace from Gaza, all it's gotten is rocket fire and attacks. So respond to that very widespread narrative.

Norman Finkelstein: Well, there are three aspects. You used the word disengage, which I would say is more neutral than a typical term, which is withdrawal. Israel didn't withdraw from Gaza, and with all due respect to you, it didn't disengage from Gaza. It redeployed. What it did was it removed its troops from the heart of Gaza, along with a relatively small number of settlers, about 6,000 settlers. and then it redeployed on the periphery of Gaza. So the proper analogy, in my opinion, is imagine you have guards in the prison, and then the guards in the prison, they take the keys, throw it to the prisoners, the prisoners get out of the cell, But then the guards, they leave the prison, slam shut the prison gates, and then they redeploy outside the prison. So would you say that they have left the prison? No. The inmates are still confined. They're still incarcerated. They may not be in their cells. So to continue the analogy, yes, for the first time after Israel redeployed from Gaza, Palestinians were able to use the beach. It's true. They had more space. But the essence hasn't changed. And it's important to keep in mind that without exception, without exception, every major human rights organization has characterized the situation in Gaza as an occupation after 2006 when Israel completed its redeployment. redeployment, continue to characterize it as an occupation. And even the quite conservative leading Israeli international law authority, Yoram Dinstein, he said the occupation continues. The claim that the occupation doesn't continue is, it's not even marginal. It doesn't exist among the respected, reputable, and responsible human rights organizations. And then there was just the second question as to Hamas, as you call it, the narrative says, continued firing rockets at Israel. It's just not true. What happened was the day after Israel completed its withdrawal, Hamas fired a couple of like victory rockets, you know, celebrating the end of the, what they call the end of the occupation, here I'm referring to Hamas. But after that, all the incidents, virtually all the incidents between Israel and Gaza were initiated by Israel, and it's well documented.

Aaron Maté: Okay, and you go through this in the book. Let's get into that. You argue that the reason why Israel initiated these multiple flare-ups with Hamas is not actually because Hamas was threatening Israel, but because Hamas was basically being politically pragmatic, coupled with the fact that Israel wanted to showcase for both the Palestinians and its neighbors that it could do what it wanted. It had a strong, quote, deterrence capacity. So explain that.

Norman Finkelstein: That's exactly right. You can't make a generalization about all the Israeli assaults or massacres in Gaza, but you can make some general points acknowledging that there are some deviations in the pattern. So let's take a concrete case. Let's take Operation Cast Lead, which began, I think, December 26, 2008. and continued to January 17th, 22 days of death and destruction, as Amnesty International called it. Why did Israel attack Gaza? In fact, it had nothing to do with Gaza in the first place. Israel had suffered a major setback in Lebanon in 2006, the party of God, the Hezbollah. And effectively, it's called a tie, but effectively it was a Hezbollah victory. And it was a huge humiliation for Israel, but beyond the humiliation, it was the political side. It diminished Israel's, what it calls, deterrence capacity. And deterrence capacity is just a fancy technical term for the Arab world's fear of Israel. There was now a feeling in the Arab world, well, wait, whoa, Israel can be defeated, and defeated by a relatively small guerrilla army. It was, it's not, it's, parts of it are... well equipped, but in terms of numbers, it's quite small. It was back then, I think it was about 6,000 fighters back then. And most of the fighters, incidentally, that Israel fought were not Hezbollah. They were militias. Hezbollah was saving its best fighters for an Israeli invasion that never happened. In any event, it was a huge humiliation to Israel and they were looking for somewhere where they could demonstrate their deterrence capacity, namely to show that it's still the mighty Israel and look out, watch out. They weren't going to tangle with Hezbollah again. They didn't think they were ready for another engagement with Hezbollah and so they chose Gaza. to prove their deterrence capacity or to terrify the Arab world. Now, I want to stress, I'm not speculating. One thing about the Israelis, until after Operation Castlet, until after Operation Castlet, Israelis were very straightforward. They didn't hide anything. were actually quite brazen in how they talked about what they were doing. They kept saying, Gaza is round two of the war in Lebanon. We're going to attack Gaza in order to reestablish our deterrence capacity. This has nothing to do with Gaza. I mean, they say it. They're very straightforward about it. And the other concern they had besides reestablishing the deterrence capacity There's a nice technical term by an Israeli political scientist who's since passed the scene, Professor Yaniv. I can't remember his last name right now. He'll come to me. In any event, he talked about the Palestinian peace offensives. that the Palestinians are behaving too peacefully, too reasonably, too diplomatically. And then Israel fears that the international pressure will then be exerted on it to settle the conflict finally.

Aaron Maté: Just to explain this, that term comes from the war in Lebanon in 82 when the Palestinian Liberation Organization was based in Lebanon. The same thing. And so when the PLO was moderating its stance and moving towards a two-state solution in the late 70s, Israel began, as you've documented, and also documented in Chomsky's book, The Faithful Triangle, Israel tried to provoke a PLO attack for close to a year before finally launching the invasion of Lebanon. So that's the background to it.

Norman Finkelstein: Yeah, now his name came back to me, Professor Avner Yaniv, and his book was called Dilemmas of Security. And he said back in, as you said, in 1982, Israel faced a peace offensive. The PLO under the leadership of Yasser Arafat was behaving too reasonably. He accepted the two state settlement of the conflict and then Israel feared the international reaction to force them to settle.

Aaron Maté: Right, okay, but now, even if you accept that about the PLO back then, people will look at Hamas and say, well, look, they have a charter that calls for destroying Israel. Hamas has never formally endorsed the two-state solution in the sense that they still say they will not recognize Israel. They have accepted a state within the 67 borders, but that's not actual recognition of Israel. So how has Hamas launched its own version of a quote-unquote peace offensive?

Norman Finkelstein: Well you can make the argument that Hamas hasn't been unequivocal in its stance towards resolution of the conflict and then you can make the complementary argument that it's been equivocal. But in international politics it seems to me equivocal is enough to negotiate. If they are equivocating then you go to the negotiating table and see well what are they going to offer. And if they offer nothing, then of course you can make the argument that the equivocation was a fraud, that in fact they never had any intention. But you have to go to the negotiating table first. Israel doesn't want to negotiate, not because it thinks they don't want a two-state settlement. They don't want to go to the negotiating table because they fear that it does want it. If you accept a compromise but you're not being offered anything then they say you're, then there are others who are going to say you're a traitor to the movement. So how do you publicly accept a compromise before the other side is making an offer? So you know it's politically, if you ask me of course they should just say we want two states but I understand that politically it's almost untenable because they know Israel will say no and then there will be other factions who will say you betrayed the cause because you made a compromise before the other side was willing itself to compromise. So it's politically I think it's a difficult situation though personally I wish they would drop the equivocation because it makes it much easier for us to argue, meaning people in the West.

Aaron Maté: Sure, and by the way, it doesn't help that Israel has never said, we will recognize a Palestinian state in all the occupied territories. They never said that. They never will.

Norman Finkelstein: That's the whole point, and that's why they're accused. If they were to come out for a compromise, then they'll be accused of being traitors. I should add, there is the unfortunate legacy, namely the Palestinian, the PLO, and then the Palestinian Authority, they did accept two states, and they got nothing for it. So then Hamas thinks, why should we do the same thing and get nothing for it?

Aaron Maté: They accepted two states and then they got roped into taking part in further undermining whatever the prospects are. But that's another story.

Norman Finkelstein: No, it's actually the same story. That's a very important part of the story.

Aaron Maté: What about Operation Protective Edge of the summer of 2014? Because there's a similar dynamic there where Hamas enters even more into the political arena.

Norman Finkelstein: Yes, there was a unity government formed between the two major factions, one essentially the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank and Hamas based in Gaza. They formed the unity government at the end of April 2014 and this enraged, well what enraged Prime Minister Netanyahu was not the formation of the government but the fact that the Europeans and the U.S. refused to break off relations with them, meaning the Palestinian Authority, break off relations with the unity government. So Netanyahu was furious and this was at the time of the Iran agreement also and he didn't want that agreement. The U.S. was at that point negotiating, the U.S. and what was called five plus one, the five Security Council members in Germany were negotiating with Iran. So they're negotiating with Iran, negotiating with Hamas now via the unity government. So Netanyahu's in a rage. And then some gifts fell into his lap. The first gift was some rogue Hamas faction kidnapped three I want to be clear about that. I don't want to be accused later of whitewashing three Israeli teenagers and almost immediately killed them. Netanyahu was aware that they were almost immediately killed, but then he found here was a perfect pretext to to provoke Hamas and then get it characterized again as a terrorist organization. So he launched an operation called Operation Brother's Keeper, killed Palestinians, rampaged- And that's billed as an attempt to find these three boys. Yeah, it was billed as an attempt.

Aaron Maté: Even though all reports indicate that he actually knew they were dead.

Norman Finkelstein: Exactly. It was billed as an attempt to find the kids, but he knew that they were dead. But he was a wonderful pretext. And that then set off a chain reaction, not worth going into the details, but it gradually degenerates and then begins operation Operation Protective Edge. It's interesting what happens next. It begins with the air assault, indiscriminate rocket attacks, artillery on the civilian population of Gaza, but then there's the question whether Netanyahu is going to launch the ground invasion. Ground invasion is always a problem for Israel because There's no way to stop these quote unquote rocket attacks except on the ground. So you have to send in troops. But if you send in troops you have two problems. Problem number one is if you destroy everything in sight indiscriminately, just you know flatten the place, there are going to be a lot of civilian deaths and that's not going to look, then there's going to be a lot of diplomatic pressure. But if you go in and you, so to speak, obey the rules of war, you're going to suffer a lot of military casualties and then there's going to be a lot of domestic pressure. So Netanyahu doesn't know quite what to do. And then a gift, another gift drops in his lap, another apple drops in his lap, the gift. One thing about Israelis which I don't think everybody understands, everybody grasps is they're extremely attuned to the U.S. news cycle. And so just as I mentioned earlier, the Obama election, they chose November 4th. On July 17th was the downing of the Malaysian airliner over the Ukraine. Now some people will think, what does the Ukraine have to do with Gaza? But in fact it had everything to do with Gaza because Netanyahu now knew all the cameras would be riveted on the Ukrainian airliner, the Malaysian airliner.

Aaron Maté: And the reason for that is because it was widely believed that the people who shot down the airliner were Russian backed rebels, which means we could blame this on Russia and it could become a big thing as it was that summer. It was a huge issue.

Norman Finkelstein: Right. And exactly at that moment, the same night, the night of the same day, the airliner was down in the afternoon and that night he launches the ground invasion. And the ground invasion was really quite horrible. The consequences of Operation Protective Edge, even though they're largely forgotten now, Operation Cast Lead stands out much more. If you make the simple comparisons, in Operation Cast Lead, 350 children were killed. Operation Protective Edge, about 550 children were killed. Operation Cast Lead, 6,300 homes were flattened, pulverized. Operation Protective Edge was 18,000. So everything that we remember from everything that we remember from Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9. It was sometimes in the order of 100-200% worse during Protective Edge. Protective Edge was a genuine nightmare. Oh, it's much worse, actually, than the massacre, I think, because I remember, just to tell you my own skepticism, when Operation protective edge began there was one of the uh... spokespersons from one of the human rights organizations in gaza can't remember now his name uh... he said i think it was on democracy now he was interviewed and he said what's happening now makes operation cast led like a party i thought no that can't really be But in fact, it was. It was very striking to me that the head of the, I think the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, I think he was the head of the ICRC, he toured Gaza after Protective Edge. And he's accustomed to war zones. He's accustomed to war zones. He said he'd never seen the level of destruction inflicted on the place as what was inflicted on Gaza during those 51 days. And then you take the comparison, because comparisons are meaningful. Israel, how many children were killed? Yes, it was 550 to one. 550 Palestinian children.

Aaron Maté: Children, one.

Norman Finkelstein: And that one, just by coincidence, was killed in the last hour of the 51 days. Homes destroyed. Gaza, 18,000. Israel, one.

Aaron Maté: let's get into the this is a a tough issue for many people but you take on which is the the morality of Hamas and all the other Palestinian factions of armed struggle. You write in the book that under international law, Hamas has every right, Hamas and all Palestinian factions, because by the way, it's not just Hamas that uses force inside Gaza. There are several factions there. But you write that under international law, they have every right to armed resistance. Can you explain that?

Norman Finkelstein: Well I was pretty careful in my choice of words because I went through the scholarly literature on the subject and the most authoritative opinions by say James Crawford at Oxford is that there's no law barring, there's no law barring, prohibiting people's under occupation and struggling for self-determination, there's no law barring them from using armed force to gain their self-determination or to end an occupation. On the other hand, international law is very clear and unequivocal that an occupying power or a power denying a people the right to self-determination does not have the right to use armed force. Now that raises two or the next level of analysis is two complications. Complication number one on the side of Hamas is even if they have the right to use armed force or there's no law prohibiting them, do they have the right to use weapons which are inherently indiscriminate and therefore cannot target military sites or military personnel but will end up causing significant civilian death? So there is a question that's a secondary level of analysis. They have the right, but do they have the right to use indiscriminate weapons? On the Israeli side, they don't have the right to preserve an occupation. They don't have the right to deny a people the right to self-determination, but do they have the right to use their weapons in self-defense. That's their claim. Okay. So if you'll allow me, let's look at each of those questions. Question number one, Hamas' use of indiscriminate weapons. First of all, as a factual matter, let's set aside the quality of the weapons. The weapons are basically symbolic. They're the equivalent of fireworks. As Khalid Michel put it at one point, the head of Hamas at that moment, he no longer is, he says they're our cry to the world. You know, it's a kind of, if I can use my language, it's a kind of SOS. They're sending these flares into the air, SOS, we're dying. SOS, we're dying. That's not an exaggeration. When Mary Robinson from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, when she went to Gaza in 2008, she said, a whole civilization is being destroyed. I am not exaggerating. A whole civilization is being destroyed. So if you send up flares saying SOS, we're dying, which have next to zero impact on civilians, next to zero, I think whether or not they're discriminant or indiscriminate, it's beside the point. They're doing no damage. They are almost entirely symbolic. Okay, but here's my problem with that.

Aaron Maté: To say that they're entirely symbolic and- Almost entirely symbolic. Almost entirely symbolic and that that's their SOS presumes that that's their only method of letting out an SOS. And firing rockets, even if they're futile, is not the only way. I mean, you've pointed this out, that they could engage if they wanted, they could organize a mass nonviolent campaign. uh... be right in the book You say the ultimate question is, do Palestinians have the right to symbolically resist slow death, punctuated by periodic massacres, or is it incumbent upon them to lie down and die? But why are those the only two options? I mean, why is an option, instead of exercising their symbolic right to resist, why is not, instead of directing your energies towards that, towards violence, in the case of Hamas, directing it towards organizing mass non-violence? How do you respond to that?

Norman Finkelstein: Well, first of all, I'm not a moral coward. And as I said at the beginning of the book, I've never taken foundation money, not that it was ever offered me, but I don't take the foundation money. And that's a kind of, or think tank money, or even university money. So it's a kind of a liberatory experience. If he who pays the piper calls the tomb, Nobody's paying this piper, so I get to call my own tune. And so I just want to look at the facts. Nobody has the right to tell Palestinians that they should practice nonviolence. I think it's a losing strategy, the strategy of armed resistance. And I've said it many times to them. Occasionally I do seminars over Skype with people in Gaza and I'm very forthright about that. I say it's just a mythology. There's no armed resistance. It's just something Israel exploits each time it launches one of its massacres. But there's a difference between telling them, I don't think this strategy is going to work, and telling them they don't have the right. The law is clear. They have the right. I'm not going to tell them they have to practice nonviolence. Gandhi did not do that. During the first Arab rebellion in Palestine in 1936 to 1938, He had a very heated exchange, you might say an unfriendly exchange, with Martin Buber, the so-called pacifist Zionist philosopher. And he said to Buber, well I think it was initially it began with an interview that Gandhi gave. He said, I wish the Palestinians choose nonviolence. but then he went on to say according to the accepted canons c-a-n-o-n-s according to the accepted canons of right and wrong he didn't say Palestinians at that point Arabs have the right to use armed force to resist their aggressors their occupation so I am dealing here in the book with the law and under the law they have no obligation to lie down and die. They have no obligation to do that under the law. They have the right to resist and they have the right to use force in their resistance. Now you know Gandhi advocated for the Jews during World War II, during the height of the Nazi Holocaust. He said they should have gone non-violently. He says that. I actually, I have mixed feelings about what he says there, but now is not the time to get into that. He's been very violently attacked for what he said about the Jews should have gone quietly to their death. The point I'm making is, does anybody tell the people in Warsaw not to have engaged in an uprising?

Aaron Maté: Well, the difference is it wouldn't have mattered what the Jews in World War II did anyway. They would have been forced to the ovens no matter what.

Norman Finkelstein: Yeah, but nobody denies them the right.

Aaron Maté: Of course not. Listen, that's not the point. It is the point to me. The point of contention here is that Hamas' two choices are not lie down and die.

Norman Finkelstein: It's politically inexpedient what they're doing.

Aaron Maté: Yeah.

Norman Finkelstein: I have no doubt about that.

Aaron Maté: And they're still responsible for the consequences of their decisions. Yes, they are.

Norman Finkelstein: They are politically responsible. They're not legally responsible and they're not morally responsible. They have the right. They have that right and they reserve that. And in my, not my opinion, the law is they have the right. Now there is the question, as I said, the weapons are indiscriminate. That's technically it's illegal under international law. In my opinion, as I said, their effectiveness is almost entirely symbolic. Number two, there's a second aspect. And here is the only place in the book where I do disagree with international law. Well, there are, you know, one place, there's another place where I have a partial reservation. And the problem is this, and I'm sure you'll understand, it's perfectly obvious. What does it mean to say a weapon is indiscriminate? What does that mean? A weapon can't be objectively indiscriminate. It can only be relatively indiscriminate. As compared to another weapon, this weapon is indiscriminate. But in and of itself, a weapon can't be indiscriminate because a weapon in 1940 which would have been described as discriminant, in 2010 it's described as indiscriminate. Why? Because technology has improved and what seemed to be discriminant fifty years ago now seems indiscriminate because we have what's called precision weapons.

Aaron Maté: And your point here is that if Hamas wasn't occupied, they would be in a position to access precision weapons, unfortunately because of their position.

Norman Finkelstein: Or if they weren't poor. It discriminates against poor, it discriminates, these laws discriminate against poorly endowed fighters. And richly endowed fighters get to conduct wars. So then where does that leave us? It leaves us in a kind of ridiculous argument or a ridiculous conclusion. It really is a case of a reductio ad absurdum. So you have the human rights organizations, for example, the UN Human Rights Council. What do they say to Hamas? Well, they say, Hamas, you can't fight in densely populated areas. which is not the law, incidentally, but let's leave that aside. So you should go to non-densely populated areas, basically vacant areas of Gaza. There are a couple, a few vacant areas. Now, go to the vacant areas, but you can't use any of your weapons because your mortars are indiscriminate. and your so-called rockets are indiscriminate. So you can't use any of your weapons. Now you have a problem. As John Dugard, John Dugard, the leading authority in international law on the Israel-Palestine conflict- TONY GUIDA- He was from South Africa. GARRY PIERRE- Yeah, South Africa. He's called the father of human rights in South Africa, an extremely principled, a very special human being, but that's another story. John Dugard says we have an unusual situation here. We have an occupation that's externally maintained. Israel occupies by virtue of the fact that it controls the airspace, the sea space, the borders. So, but it's all external. It's by remote control. So you have to go to vacant spaces, says human human rights council. You can't use those rockets. You can't use the mortars. because they're indiscriminate weapons, and we can only use precision weapons. And then how do you fight an external occupation? You can't do it. so in effect you're saying Palestinians don't have any right to armed self-defense then just be honest about it just say you don't have that right because you're not rich enough to afford precision weapons you don't have that right the only thing that wasn't recommended to them the Palestinians It's not just Hamas, it's the whole population. The only thing that's not recommended to them is they should line up like ducks to be shot down by Israeli planes and rockets.

Aaron Maté: That to me is a reductio ad absurdum. I get it. You're pointing to the hypocrisy and the... It's... Yeah, yeah. It's totally hypocritical and it's a flagrant double standard. There's no argument there. I guess the point of contention here is, again, even though Hamas is representing an occupied people, and occupied people have every legal right to defend themselves...

Norman Finkelstein: armed force to defend themselves.

Aaron Maté: To use armed force. My concern is conflating legal rights with morality, and morality includes being responsible for the consequences of your actions. So if you know, even if you have every right to launch rockets or to authorize the launching of rockets or allow it to happen, if you know it's going to provoke a response, I guess even though we're sitting here in the West, we don't live under occupation, do we have the right to say, to criticize Hamas?

Norman Finkelstein: But Aaron, you're really mixing cause and effect. You say it's going to provoke a response. They were provoked. into responding. It's Israel that breaks the cease fires. They were provoked into responding. And then what are they supposed to do? They don't have to fire rockets. They don't. They don't have to. And you know what? I wish they didn't. I do because I do believe it plays into Israel's hands. However, I will never criticize them for it. And you know why? And I'm going to tell you why. Because the people support it. And I'm not going to tell those people, if the people were to condemn Hamas, and right now there does seem to be a strong sentiment they want to avoid at any cost another Israeli attack. So if Hamas were to attack now, In violation of the will of the people of Gaza, I would oppose it.

Aaron Maté: You're confident that a majority of Gazans support Hamas' and the other factions' decision?

Norman Finkelstein: When Israel is attacking them, yes, they do. There's no question about that. Exactly as what happened in Lebanon when Israel attacked in 2006. Lebanon is a very divided country. But when the attack occurred, all the polls showed 70, 80% of the people of Lebanon supported their country when it was coming under a foreign invasion by these marauders, these vandals, this Mongol army. Of course they supported them. And it was the same thing in Gaza. At the end, you know, I'm going to be faithful to the facts because I don't fear the facts. My credo in life is I never quarrel with facts. By the end, yes, the people were broken. Their spirits were broken, and now they dread the prospect of another attack. And Hamas is very careful. Hamas is effectively not playing the role of the Palestinian Authority. It's policing Gaza to make sure there are no attacks from inside Gaza because they know another attack. First of all, it's a disaster for them, but the people don't want it. But so long as the people want it, I support it 100%. They have the right to resist that Mongol army. no challenging the right but again the question is it's not politically expedient it's not politically prudent I have no doubt about that but I will never tell a person in Gaza you don't have the right I won't ever tell them that when I hear you tell Jews they don't have the right to use you know maybe for all I know the Warsaw Ghetto they were using indiscriminate weapons who the hell knows and who the hell cares

Aaron Maté: They would have every right to. The question is only, again, I have to repeat myself. If Palestinians had been given a choice back in 2014, hey, do you want us to fire rockets back or should we try to organize under these horrible conditions some sort of mass civil resistance?

Norman Finkelstein: I wish they did. It wasn't at that point in time an option.

Aaron Maté: It's not so easy to do those things.

Norman Finkelstein: And the people don't believe in it. I talk to them all the time about it. Every time. And they don't want to hear from me. Whenever I talk about international law, even though we're separated by thousands of miles, I can see the eyes rolling. This guy's talking to me about international law? We've had a blockade here for 12 years. Nothing gets in. Nothing goes out. He's talking to me about international law. How about if he had to give his children water that's poisoned? As Sarah Roy wrote, the children of Gaza are being poisoned every day. 95% of the drinking water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption. Is that international law? He's lecturing me about international law. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going there. I'm going to be lecturing them about the law. I try, to be honest. I do. But I can understand. It's not just skepticism. It's disgust.

Aaron Maté: It's disgust. So, Norman, a large component of your book is how human rights organizations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and also the U.N. Human Rights Council and...

Norman Finkelstein: International Committee in the Red Cross, the British Medical Journal, The Lancet.

Aaron Maté: Especially some UN commissions of inquiry set up to look into war crimes in the occupied territories have betrayed the people of Gaza. That would surprise many people who would think of human rights groups like Amnesty and see them condemn Israeli actions many times, accuse Israel of war crimes. So Explain your criticism of the international human rights community here, maybe starting with the Goldstone Report, which was the commission that was established after the 2008-2009 Israeli attack on Gaza, Kaslet.

Norman Finkelstein: Okay. First of all, just as a context, I think the most important part of the book is the last quarter, which deals with the human rights organizations and their performance after Operation Protective Edge. Professor Chomsky, who even at the ripe age of 89, he did read the whole book. I know it because it took him some time. He started I think on a Sunday and he finished it on a Friday. It took him time to get through it, which for me was a gratifying sign. It showed me that he was reading it slowly, carefully. And he said the last part on the human rights organizations, I hope you'll forgive me for quoting a private email. and he is very proper about those things you're not supposed to but I think he'll forgive me he said the last part was spectacular the analysis of what the human rights organizations did and it was not I was not happy to write that part I was so angry I was so pained by what happened because anybody who knows my work over the last 35 years will note I've always relied on those human rights organizations. I'm a person of the left, and we're supposed to be skeptical of human rights, bourgeois human rights organizations, liberals, and I kind of rejected that. I thought their work was good. I thought it was honest. It had its limits, but it was good. When Operation Cast Lead happened in 2008-9, the human rights community really rose to the occasion. One person estimated, his name just slips my mind, he'll come back to me in a moment, that there were about 300 human rights reports on Operation Cast Lead, Desmond Travers. He was in the Goldstone Commission. And they were quite good. Human Rights Watch alone produced seven really solid reports. Amnesty produced one excellent report, the 22 Days of Death and Destruction. And then, of course, the climax was the Goldstone Report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council. And Goldstone, the Goldstone Report was devastating in its detail and in its conclusions, which found that Israel was Israel's goal was to punish, humiliate and terrorize the people of Gaza. But then, as we all know, it was a very painful day, almost as if the gods were mocking us on an April 1st, April Fool's Day. Goldstone dropped the bombshell in the Washington Post, and he recanted the report.

Aaron Maté: And he... Carefully recanted.

Norman Finkelstein: It was opaque. It was an opaque recantation, but recantation nonetheless. He did it without consulting his three other colleagues on the commission. Who stood by the findings. Who stood by the original findings. And I devote quite a lot of space to the Goldstone report itself, but also to his recantation. And it's quite clear if you go through it, the recantation was not based on any evidence. The only reasonable conclusion is that either he or a member of his family was somehow blackmailed into recanting. You can, you know, readers can read and judge for themselves.

Aaron Maté: Part of what made his conclusion so powerful is that he was a committed Zionist Jew, great friend of Israel. So his credentials, quote unquote, were impeccable. You couldn't accuse him of being a left winger or having a pro-Palestinian bias. Oh, no. Which then you're saying also then helps explain how he was ultimately blackmailed you say or pressured at minimum into recanting. So what was the impact of that recantation?

Norman Finkelstein: Well the impact actually was tremendous. The impact was the human rights organizations got scared. Why did he recant? So people think, well, it couldn't be what he said because he claims there was new information which Gaines said denied what was in his original report. There was no new information. He'd go through it. He didn't come up with any new information. So people think, well, we have to be careful of Israel. Hasm al-Assad has all sorts of supporters.

Aaron Maté: And so what happened was- MICHAEL STOLER In the case of Goldstone, he faced personal backlash. His synagogue in South Africa tried to ban him from his own grandson's bar mitzvah. So I'm sure even in a social circle there was extensive pressure after the initial- GARRY PIERRE- And his daughter is Israeli.

Norman Finkelstein: As I said, the circumstances of the recantation are murky. My conclusion, which I don't make explicit in the book but I'm just telling you now, is probably somehow blackmailed into recanting. And then the consequences were very noticeable. They were noticeable because of what happened after Operation Protective Edge, the next major Israeli operation, 2014. As you will perhaps have noticed in the proportions of the book, the first 100 or so, maybe about 100 pages are devoted to Operation Cast Lead because there was such a huge amount of material to work with. Whereas for Operation Protective Edge in 2014, it's just one chapter. And I have to admit, it's not a lot of sources. There were only about, literally, there were only about ten human rights reports. Human Rights Watch was missing in action. They wrote one unmemorable little report, 15 pages, on the attacks on schools. Amnesty It was in action. It did write four and then later a fifth report, but the reports were complete apologias for Israel. And then the Human Rights Council, originally there was a pretty reputable... Just amnesty quickly.

Aaron Maté: Your main contention with them is that, yes, they do document Israeli attacks on Gaza's civilians, but then they take pains to say they don't know whether or not Israel's military reasoning was, it may have been justified or not. And they also talk about, the farthest that they go in your rendering is this word disproportionate.

Norman Finkelstein: To put it simply, because I know we're rushed for time, they make the worst case for Hamas and the best case for Israel. And whenever Israel has no case to make for itself, because you have to remember, Israel barred human rights organizations from entering Gaza. So whenever Israel had no case to make for itself, amnesty took it upon itself to make the case for Israel, which makes no sense at all.

Aaron Maté: And you point out that they often even defer to Israeli, official Israeli press releases and briefs as sort of the- As evidence.

Norman Finkelstein: Do we consider Hamas press releases as evidence? So why would we attach any significance, any importance, any evidentiary value to an Israeli press release? But the worst part of it is they are fabricating pretexts for Israel when Israel itself doesn't make a case. If Israel doesn't make a case and Israel prevents human rights organizations from visiting the crime scene, then it seems to me the reasonable conclusion is you're guilty as charged. But what the human rights organizations, in particular Amnesty, did was it said, well, since Israel hasn't told us anything, we just have to wait and see. We have to suspend judgment. But if you suspend judgment, then you simply are incentivizing Israel not to admit human rights organizations, because Israel would have two choices. If it admits these organizations, then they're convicted of committing a crime. If it doesn't admit them, then it gets an agnostic verdict. We don't know what happened. If I were a state I would choose not to admit them and get the agnostic version rather than get the conviction. So what the organizations ended up doing was they incentivized Israel not to admit human rights organizations because instead of getting convicted of a crime they got an agnostic version. We'll have to wait to see what an investigation shows.

Aaron Maté: Right. And speaking of which, speaking of incentivizing, you also argue that because they refuse to hold Israel to account, unlike what they did in previous operations, which you say the criticism of Israel in previous operations did ultimately impact its operations and did get it to show some relative restraint. Because there was no such investigative zeal in this case, and in fact some exculpatory actions on the part of the human rights groups, that actually incentivizes Israel to carry out further atrocities in the future.

Norman Finkelstein: Yeah, because there's no- look, the human rights organizations, they did act as something of a deterrent. And let me just conclude, the biggest deterrent of Israel, ironically- turned out not to be Amnesty, which failed them, not Human Rights Watch, which failed them, not the International Committee of the Red Cross under Jacques de Mayo, the ICRC's representative, who was a disgrace, not Moreno Ocampo from the ICC, who was a criminal prostitute.

Aaron Maté: He's a former prosecutor, former international prosecutor for the- He was the chief prosecutor for the International Committee of the Red Cross. For the International Criminal Court.

Norman Finkelstein: International Criminal Court, excuse me. Not the Lancet, the British medical journal, the editor of which, Peter Horton, is another- The real, the really impressive ones were strangely enough an Israeli organization. It was Breaking the Silence. Breaking the Silence, its testimonies, were totally devastating.

Aaron Maté: This is an Israeli group that gathers the testimony of soldiers who served in Gaza.

Norman Finkelstein: Yeah. And the interesting thing is the soldiers' testimony, these are not leftists. They're not contrite. They're not apologetic. They're just, well, this is what happened. And they're very matter of fact. that what Israel did in Gaza, the word that keeps recurring over and over and over again, was insane, insanity, insane, crazy, nuts, lunatic. That's the words they keep using. But Israel had a real problem with breaking the silence because they were Israeli and they were the soldiers. They were there. And then Israel unleashed, till this day, till right now as we speak, this brutal campaign to crush breaking the silence because breaking the silence is the last line of defense by human rights organizations. Amnesty capitulated. HRW capitulated. all the NGOs capitulate, human rights council capitulate. So the last chink in the armor, the last barrier, excuse me, the last barrier for Israel is the breaking the silence. It was very interesting because all the human rights organizations, they ignored breaking the silence. Isn't that funny? This is an Israeli organization. It's Israeli soldiers. They have no motive whatsoever to lie. They served there. But when you read the human rights organization reports, the few that came out, they're not entirely, but they're almost entirely ignored. Why? It's for the reason you mentioned before we came on the air. They wanted to come out with an equivocal conclusion. They'll say, yes, some of it was disproportionate, some of it was indiscriminate, but they weren't targeting civilians, you know, because that's in the court of public opinion. It's the worst charge. Most people, they don't get very riled up by it. disproportionate attacks or even indiscriminate attacks, but targeting civilians in the court of moral public opinion, not the law, it crosses a threshold. And when you read the breaking of the silence, one report after another report, excuse me, one testimony after another testimony after another testimony after another testimony, it keeps saying our orders were shoot to kill anything that moves and even if it doesn't move. Shoot to kill anything that moves and even if it doesn't move.

Aaron Maté: Anything that moves, if I recall right, is a phrase that's repeated many, many, many times.

Norman Finkelstein: Yeah, over and over again. Well, it's hard to have an equivocal conclusion when you have operational orders like that or rules of engagement like that shoot to kill anything that moves. And what they did, what they did, you know, people of Gaza, as you mentioned in your introduction, 70% of them are refugees. and children of refugees. They lost their homeland. They lost their homeland. The last thing they have now is in the wreckage of their lives, the last thing they have is their home. They lost their homeland, but now they have the last possession is their home. Now when you read the descriptions of what Israel did, these homes, these eighteen thousand homes, they weren't destroyed in disproportionate attacks or indiscriminate attacks. Israel went into neighborhoods, roped off the neighborhoods, brought in the D-9 bulldozers, and just flattened whole areas till the horizon, just flattened entire areas. This was not collateral damage in a war. This was the systematic destruction and pulverization of a people and of their last possession. And that's what you see. I'll tell you in the longest chart I have in the book, it goes for three and a half pages, is describing what happened to the Holmes. Now, you'll laugh when I tell you this. I had to go around and ask five or six friends to choose the best passages, because it began as ten pages. ten pages of descriptions of how they systematically methodically flattened these homes that's what breaking the silence is all about and now the worst of it is Amnesty puts out a report called families under the rubble in which it pretends that each time Israel targeted a home it's because there was a Hamas militant there that was just such a fantastical, flagrant, despicable and disgusting lie.

Aaron Maté: Don't they just posit the question of whether or not there was a Hamas militant? They don't affirm every single time.

Norman Finkelstein: How would they know? How would they know? They go around, ask a neighbor, do you think there was a Hamas militant? Yeah, maybe there was a Hamas militant there, even if there was. There's another question. Did Israel know the Hamas militant was there before they bombed the home? And are you telling me there were Hamas militants in 18,000 homes? And is that what the Breaking the Silence report showed? There were no militants anywhere. No, it was disgusting, but I can't completely blame them. I have to be honest and I'm careful about it because I know they're in a difficult position. In the past, Amnesty used to back HRW, HRW used to back Amnesty.

Aaron Maté: In terms of they would both put out reports corroborating each other.

Norman Finkelstein: On all the controversial issues. On the controversial issues is I'll watch your back, you watch mine, okay? In this particular case, And I know Amnesty was scared. It was in the firing line. But what it did was unacceptable. It would have been better if they just shut up. You know? I want to just end on one point. Let me ask you, Norman.

Aaron Maté: Let me ask you two questions as we wrap. Why do you think Amnesty and H.R.W. capitulated as they did? And why do you think they did it? Even though they did, and even though their rendering of the Israeli attacks you think did immense damage, you still end the book with some hope. So why do you still hold out some hope for the people of Gaza, even despite not just the suffering they endured, but the fact that they were abandoned by people who were once their defenders?

Norman Finkelstein: Well, why the human rights organizations did it, I think first and foremost they were scared after what happened with Goldstone that the Israelis would dig up dirt. It's a real problem. I know that sounds not a particularly elevated explanation, but we're dealing with real human beings. Goldstone was a star and then Goldstone was destroyed. and they did it to several others i go through the record a guy named christian tamushad they did it to a guy named shabbos um they were they were taking them down so you know everybody's got skeletons in their closet and then you begin to wonder and especially in our age where so much information is on the web and israel israel is a pretty good on the computer, you begin to worry, you know. I think that's not elevated. It's not, it's not grand, it doesn't have grandeur. It's ugly. It's slimy, you know, but Israelis are good at that. I think that's the main reason. Second reason is because the Palestinian leadership itself killed the Goldstone report. And so there was a feeling among human rights organizations if nothing is going to come of our reports, because ultimately they're supposed to produce results. But if the Palestinian Authority itself is killing any action, which is what it did in the U.N., the Palestinian... At the behest of the Obama administration and Israel, who they were happily... You know, Hillary Clinton boasted that she killed the Goldstone report, and they worked together. But you have to remember, the Palestinian Authority were very happy to see Gaza attacked in 2008, 9.

Aaron Maté: So they thought it could actually wipe out Hamas.

Norman Finkelstein: Hamas, right. So they were happy. And the third reason was that by the time Cast Lead, excuse me, by the time Protective Edge came around in 2014, Israel didn't have a pure record. Its purity had vanished. And so it seemed almost redundant to to expose yet another Israeli massacre in Gaza because we have become kind of a nerd to it. This is what Israel does. It's a lunatic state. It goes in, destroys everything in sight. That's Israel's modus operandi. So there was a feeling, I think, of redundancy. Do we really need to document this again? We did it already during Operation Cast Lead. This is Operation Cast Lead maybe times two or times 1.5. So there was a feeling of redundancy. It's redundant. It's unnecessary. But I think the main reason was the fear of what happened to Goldstone can happen to one of us. I know they'll deny it and they'll say, oh, you have no evidence of that. It's true.

Aaron Maté: So given all this, and again, going back to my last question.

Norman Finkelstein: One last point. I'm just going to give you a brief, very quickly, an anecdote. I teach a course for free at a local library in New York. at the Brooklyn Grand Army Plaza Library, and not worth going into, I was teaching a class on free speech, and the subject of Israeli atrocities came up, and one person in the audience, he said, well, Israelis would never target children. would never target children. And then the person who I invited is a very prominent professor and also, as the expression has it, public intellectual. You would call him left liberal by current standards. And he says, yes, yes, of course they would never target children. And it's like, no matter how much evidence you present, once you have this thing fixed in your mind, There's no way to dissuade people. It's a very sorry commentary on the capacity of reason and facts to convince or persuade because you take the case. So it's reported last week there's a guy in Gaza. He has no legs. He's carrying a Palestinian flag and an Israeli sniper right through the head kills him, right? Fires a bullet right through his head, kills him. Okay, that seems pretty horrible. Israel would never do that. They would never fire a bullet in the head of a paraplegic. 2002, during Operation Defensive Shield, outside Jenin, there's a Palestinian in a wheelchair. He has a flag up, a flag. He's on the main road. A tank comes and it just flattens him. A guy in a wheelchair holding a flag just flattens him. And you might remember because I had a debate with Alan Dershowitz on Democracy Now! and Alan Dershowitz said Israel committed no war crimes during defensive shield. So I cite this incident. He says it never happened. It never happened. It's kind of like, you see this stuff, it's documented by Israeli soldiers who are not even leftists. Do you know what they write in their testimonies? They said, we dropped so many bombs, so many rockets. He said, it was so cool. It was so cool what we did.

Aaron Maté: They're not even- There's a video game later.

Norman Finkelstein: There's not even contrite.

Aaron Maté: So even if there are many people out there with the blinders that make them incapable of processing all the atrocities like those that are documented in your book, the point is that this book documents all of them, and it shows a moment in history in which people were attacked, massacred in your world,

Norman Finkelstein: Not were, are, continue. Are and continue.

Aaron Maté: So I guess, but given all this and given this horrible history and the obstacles there are to acknowledging it, I shouldn't use the word hope because hope is irrelevant, as Chomsky says, but what is the path, the possible path to justice, briefly, as we read?

Norman Finkelstein: I'm not a religious person, but I certainly go by the adage, God helps those who help themselves. You can't liberate Palestine from the outside, nor should you be able to. It has to be, I mean, well, at some level, of course, if they're facing a genocide, then, of course, liberate from the outside. But as a general rule, you neither can nor should you. People have to free themselves, because that's the only way that they will stay free. So there's no hope so long as the Palestinian people have given up. And right now their spirits are completely depleted. In Gaza, if you read the polls, all the young people want to leave. Anybody or anyone who can get out, they want out. The polls show about 80%, 70% of the young people wanted to just get out. It's an inferno. They want to flee the inferno. West Bank, it's a more complex strategy, more subtle strategy. What Israel and the international community did was it scooped up everybody in the West Bank with any talent, any ability, any skill as say an organizer, gave them a computer terminal and a cubicle in Ramallah and said you can be as revolutionary as you want on the social media, just don't do anything. And so there's no leadership anymore. There are no mass organizations anymore in the West Bank. And Ramallah has one of the highest living standards in the world. It's a good life there. So it's a different strategy, but the result is the same. There's no organization, there's no leadership, and the people have given up on collective action. It's every man for himself. There are obviously exceptions, the ever noble and inspiring Ahed Tamimi and her family, There are exceptions.

Aaron Maté: A Palestinian teenager who's currently detained by Israel for slapping an Israeli soldier who had assaulted her and also the- I don't care if they assaulted her.

Norman Finkelstein: They should smack every Israeli in the West Bank.

Aaron Maté: Her cousin had just been shot in the face.

Norman Finkelstein: They deserve ten smacks and they also deserve to be spit on. They're occupiers. There are exceptions, but right now the spirits are broken. Now, I'm despairing, but my close comrade and friend Alan Aaron, he keeps saying to me, these things happen in waves. It disappears, and then out of nowhere, You're just surprised, and there's a new insurgency, and the people discover the courage and the will to resist.

Aaron Maté: The book is Gaza, an Inquest into its Martyrdom. Author is Norman Ficklestein. Thanks so much for joining us.

Norman Finkelstein: My pleasure.