Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/25/23: Norm Finkelstein GOES OFF: Israel, Hillary, Human Shields & Ben Shapiro

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

Krystal sits down with political scientist, author, and activist Norman Finkelstein to discuss the conflict in Israel Palestine. BP Holiday Merch LIVE NOW (Use code BLACKFRIDAY for 15% off Non-Holiday Items): https://shop.breakingpoints.com/collections/breaking-points-holiday-collectionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday. On the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The

murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the Hey, guys, hope everybody is enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend. a lot of the complexities and the mythology surrounding the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also, of course, the context of this current war on Gaza. And I thought to do that, we'd bring in Dr. Norman Finkelstein, who is an author, professor, political scientist, who's also studied this conflict for literally decades, devoted much of his adult life to it,

authored a number of books on the subject, in particular one that I'm reading right now, Gaza, an inquest into its martyrdom, to dive into all of these topics. It's so great to have you, Professor. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. And what I did in preparation for this conversation, because I really wanted to ask all the things that people have been wondering about, but maybe they didn't know who to ask, or they didn't know how to ask it, or they were embarrassed to ask it. So we opened it up to our subscribers to really ask anything that they wanted to about this conflict. So I hope this will be a wide ranging conversation that people find illuminating. I hope it'll be a challenging conversation. We'll tackle all of the things that are uncomfortable about it and get into all of those pieces.

Well, I'm glad and I hope that you'll do what Candace Owens did, where something doesn't sound right to you, something doesn't sound logical to you, something doesn't sound convincing to you, ask me. And I think I can connect the dots. But sometimes when you speak rapidly, you miss some of dots. And so sometimes you need to home in and look at each dot to connect the pattern. I will certainly do my best with all of that. So the first question does actually come from our audience, which I thought was a good starting point, which is about your origins.

Can we start with just having Dr. Finkelstein give basic info on himself growing up and what formed his thoughts, opinions on this issue? And I was also curious, you know, what led you to this lifelong interest and scholarship on Israel and Palestine? I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. My parents came over after the war, as we called it, the war, meaning World War II. They were in Warsaw Ghetto. They grew up in Poland. They were in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1940 until 1943. After the ghetto uprising was suppressed by the Nazis, my parents, having survived the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, were deported to Majdanek concentration camp. My mother then ended up in two slave labor camps. My father ended up, according to my mother, because I never actually asked my father, my father

was in seven concentration camps, ended up in Auschwitz, was on the Auschwitz death march. Every member of my family on both sides, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, everyone was exterminated during the war. As my mother used to say to us growing up, we are just five people in the world. And that was literally the case. I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood. My parents were not lower middle class. They were working class.

However, they were determined to give us, meaning the children, a crack at the American dream. And so we grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood, but excellent schools. The high school I attended among the graduates of my high school are Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Judge Judy. Five, believe it or not, five Nobel laureates attended my public high school. Norm Coleman, the senator from Minnesota, we got a very solid education, no question about that. And Jews were back then very ambitious. And they got to realize in large part the American dream. Most of my friends are spectacular success stories. So that was how I grew up. On the surface, I was just one of those graduates of James Madison High School in New York.

But if you scratch the surface, I was kind of an alien being because my parents were survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. They had by any conventional standards, very eccentric politics. They were totally pro Soviet Union totally pro Stalin, they wouldn't brook any criticism of the Soviet Union or Stalin in my home. And so I grew up having to adjust to the fact that in many ways I was an outsider and I had to accept that I had to learn to live with that status. Actually, the most traumatizing aspect of my youth, of my childhood,

because I could never really assimilate what happened to my parents. When I would read books about the Nazi Holocaust as a very young child, okay, not a young child, you'd say around 13 years old, I would be reading a book, an account of the Warsaw ghetto, say Leon Uris' Mila 18 or John Hershey's The Wall. And I remember I'm reading the book, glancing down at the text, and it's describing these

Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. And they're in these things called bunkers and these catacombs. And everybody's starving to death in this ghetto. And then I'm looking up and I'm looking at my mother. And I just couldn't, I literally, I couldn't make the imaginative leap from what I was reading to the, what you might say, the mundane existence of growing up in an ordinary home in Brooklyn, New York. But also, as I said, I learned to be an outsider from a very early age. The most traumatizing event of my youth, as I mentioned a moment ago, was I was in bar mitzvahed. And in a Jewish neighborhood, that was literally, it was

unthinkable, because a bar mitzvah was kind of the equivalent, if you're not Jewish, of say if you're a young woman, it's a coming out party where the family uses the occasion to display its wealth, display its earthly success and all of that. And I didn't get to pass through that ritual. And it was actually quite humiliating. So I would say from a quite young age, I had grown inured to the fact that I was, in many respects, an outsider. How I got involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict was really serendipity. I'm not sure if serendipity is the right word, because that usually means chancing upon a happy event.

It was all by chance. In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. The war lasted for three and a half months. The estimates are Israel killed 15 to 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians. I got involved in the protests around the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. And at some point, I started to study the conflict. And then it turned into my doctoral dissertation in graduate school. And then as I was doing the research for the doctoral dissertation, I stumbled upon this national bestseller. It had just come out. It was called From Time Immemorial, and it was heaped with praise. And this was the book, it was said, that was going to change our understanding of the whole conflict. I was curious because I was writing my doctorate dissertation on a related aspect, not on that aspect of the book. And I then, after assiduously examining the book, its footnotes and its internal logic and coherence,

I was able to demonstrate that this national bestseller, which the whole Jewish intelligentsia class had heaped praise on, the book was a hoax. And at that point, I guess you could say I now plunged into this area of intellectual inquiry and political activism. And if I stood by it for 40 years, it's because the conflict never ended. I'm not a quitter. It's just not in my nature. I am very stubborn, except when it comes to truth and facts. If you convince me I'm wrong, I will concede I'm wrong. My credo in life has always been never quarrel with facts if i'm wrong i simply have to acknowledge it and move on otherwise i'm betraying my principles sometimes i see a fact and i see i'm wrong and i try to weasel my way out of it in my mind. And at some point I say, Norm, stop.

You're wrong. Accept it. Acknowledge it because that's a bedrock principle for you and move on. So I will not be stubborn about facts if I'm wrong. However, I don't give up on the cause.

I'm not a fair weather friend, and I don't blow with the wind. And I don't think anybody has ever accused me of that. So we have, you know, everybody, many people at home with friends and family over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a lot of people with a lot of thoughts and opinions on what is unfolding right now in Israel and their war on Gaza. And, you know, a lot of people feel so overwhelmed by the details of this conflict because it is so longstanding. There's all these different potential peace deals. There's all these different facets of the conflict that they feel incapable of arguing

a position coherently. So one of the questions that we got was, can you give a sort of Cliff Notes version or give just the most essential facts so that people feel like they can coherently and intelligently take a stand on what's going on now? That's a very difficult question because any attempt to give a succinct or as you call it, cliff notes version of the history. And the first question always is, where do you begin? Israel likes to begin in 2000 BC, and if I were to go forward from 2000 BC to the present, we would need not two hours, we'd need about two years. So then the question is, where do you begin? For convenience's sake,

and I think for the sake of the essential context of what's happening now, you should, or you can, begin with 2006. In 2006, the President of the United States, as you recall, was George Bush. And one of his signature items on his agenda, or foreign policy agenda, is what he called democracy promotion. And one aspect of the democracy promotion was to encourage elections. And the Bush administration encouraged the Palestinians to hold elections. Hamas, the Islamic movement, originally didn't want to participate because it felt that these elections were within the framework, what was called, and I'm not going to go into the meaning of the terminology, it was called the Oslo Framework, which Hamas rejected. However, it did a vote face, an about face. It agreed to participate in the elections.

And, surprise to everybody, Hamas won the election. Now, there are two things to say about it. Number one, Jimmy Carter, who was monitoring the elections in the occupied Palestinian territories, he pronounced the elections completely honest and fair. In fact, those were the first democratic elections held in the modern Middle East. In the whole region, the first democratic elections held in the modern Middle East, Jimmy Carter, as I said, pronounced them completely honest and fair. The second thing to say about the election is that immediately as the election was, the results of the elections came in, and the result was not what the United States wanted. I should make one point about that.

The people of Gaza did not elect, or the people in the, because it was an occupied territories election, so it's the West Bank and Gaza. They didn't elect Gaza because it was a terrorist organization. They didn't elect Gaza because it had said as its objective to destroy Israel. It elected Hamas because Hamas ran on a platform that promised reform, and Hamas itself had a positive reputation for its role in various social institutions and the role in various religious institutions at the time. I won't say what came later, but at the time, it seemed to be a reasonably honest and less corrupt organization than what's called the Palestinian Authority. And it was because of the promises of basic reform that Hamas won the election.

When I say reform, I mean social reform, political reform, and most importantly, of course, economic reform. So that's the result of the election. As I said, the United States was not pleased with the result. For example, Hillary Clinton, who's currently making the rounds about how she was trying so hard to promote democracy in the occupied Palestinian territories because she cares so much about the Palestinian people.

At the time, or just shortly thereafter, Hillary Clinton stated that the United States made a mistake. It should have rigged the election. That's Hillary Clinton's commitment to democracy. That's democracy promotion for Hillary Clinton in the world. In any event, immediately as Hamas won the elections, the United States, I should say Israel, then followed by the United States and the EU imposed these brutal economic sanctions on Gaza. Now, before I get to those sanctions, the first thing I have to do for listeners is

describe what is Gaza. Gaza is about 25 miles long, less than the length of a marathon, and it's five miles wide. Gaza is among the most densely populated places on God's earth. Right now, it's by a wide margin, as we speak, the most densely populated place on God's earth, because half of it has been cleared out. And that population in the northern sector has now been pushed to the southern sector.

And now Israel has plans to take the most densely populated place in God's earth and push all the people, and I hope you listeners will take it in because it's going to be unfolding as this program airs, and push all the people in Gaza into an area the size of Los Angeles Airport. The population of Gaza, Israel now wants to shove into an area the size of Los Angeles airport. In any event, Gaza, among the most densely populated places on earth, wants the Israelis, or I should say the population, 70% of the people of Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees.

They were, 70% of the population and its descendants were expelled from Israel in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war. And they ended up in Gaza as their descendants and they lived in refugee camps for the last 75 years in Gaza as their descendants and they lived in refugee camps for the last 75 years in Gaza. Half the population of Gaza's children. That's another point that should be fixed in everyone's mind when you hear about the indiscriminate bombing, the indiscriminate murder, the targeted murder in Gaza, about half of those targeted are children. As of now, 70% of the 11,000, well now it's about 11,500, 70% of those killed in Gaza

are children and women. That's called targeting Hamas in the official media accounts. 70% are children and women. That's the population of Gaza, overwhelmingly refugees and descendants of refugees and 50% children. Now, what does this blockade of Gaza mean? That to me is the most salient fact which whenever I mention it even people who are reasonably well informed they're absolutely dumbfounded. Once Israel imposed the blockade on Gaza nobody could go in and nobody could go out except on the rarest of occasions. Israel controls everything that goes in

and everything that goes out. There was a period in time when Israel prohibited so many items from being accessible to the people of Gaza that they finally reversed the list and just provided a list of what was permissible to pass through the gates of Gaza. Israel banned chocolate from entering Gaza. Israel banned baby chicks from entering Gaza. Israel banned potato chips from entering Gaza. There was a period where Israel calibrated the diet, the caloric diet of every person in Gaza, so as to enable a starvation plus diet to be limited to the people of Gaza.

Half the population of Gaza is unemployed, has the highest population rate of any area in the world, excuse me, the highest unemployment rate of any area in the world. 70% of the youth in Gaza are unemployed. So, when you add up all the discrete facts that I've just enumerated for you, what do you get? Well, the former British Prime Minister, the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, he described Gaza as an open-air prison. Then there's a senior Israeli security official. His name comes up a lot lately as he lays out his maniacal plans for Gaza. His name is Giora Island, E-I-L-A-N-D. And in 2004, which is to say before the blockade was even imposed on Gaza. In 2004, he described Gaza as a huge concentration camp.

So if you look at the spectrum, the spectrum goes from open air prison to concentration camp. That's Gaza. So when we come to the events of October 7th, we have to bear in mind that those young men who burst the gates of Gaza, overwhelmingly and maybe entirely, they were born into a concentration camp. All they had to do, day in and day out of their existence, was wake up in the morning and pace the perimeter, those 25 miles by five miles, pace the perimeter of the concentration camp. That's all they had experienced in their lives.

They had no past. They had no past. They had no present. And as things looked on the eve of October 7th, they had no future. However, that's only half the story. The reasons of this program, with me not speaking through eternity, I'll give you the other half very quickly. The other half is, periodically, Israel goes into Gaza. I can't list all the times, because frankly, I've never been able to commit all their operations to memory. Much as they try, the list is too long. But every few years, Israel conducts what it calls an operation in Gaza. What is the operation in Gaza?

Israel coined a very happy locution. It's called mowing the lawn in Gaza. Now, my memory is correct, Crystal. You have three children. Correct. Correct? Yep. Right.

So I'd like you to bear in mind, I'm not trying to be emotive. I'm not trying to be dramatic. But I also am trying to paint for your listeners a realistic picture of what's been done to those people. Israel mows the lawn in Gaza. And that lawn has 2.3 million blades of grass. That's the population of Gaza. One half of those blades of grass, 1,150,000 are children. And Israel coined, if I dare say, and the listeners can decide for themselves, whether I'm being emotive or whether I'm being factual. It coined this satanic phrase which it repeats on every occasion with a certain amount of humor. It's funny. We're going to mow the grass in Gaza and everybody smiles. Isn't that a clever, cute expression? I wonder if you would smile, the mother of three,

knowing that among those blades of grass that are going to be mowed are the heads and skulls of your children. 2009, December 26 to January 17, Israel killed 1,400 people, 350 of whom were children, demolished 6,300 homes, mowing the grass of Gaza. Then 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense. Then 2014, Operation Protective Edge. 51 days of mowing the lawn. Operation Cast Lead in 2008 to nine, Amnesty International wrote a large report on what happened. It called it 22 days of death and destruction, mowing the lawn in Gaza.

2014, Peter Moore, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, he visited Gaza. And he saw what Israel had inflicted. 2,200 people killed, 550 of them children, 18,000 homes vaporized. He came out and he said, now bear in mind, Peter Moore's job is to visit combat zones. And he said never in his entire professional life had he seen destruction of the magnitude that the story begins on October 7th. Because that's, we're told, where the story begins. It's as if in a slave uprising, like our own Nat Turner slave uprising, you have to begin the story because Nat Turner and his band of insurgents, they killed a lot of innocent men, women, and children, no question about that, in very brutal ways. But it's as if you have to begin, hey, Nat Turner was born a slave. He was born a slave. He lived a slave. That was his past, present, and future. Is that an irrelevant aspect of the story? Of course not. And so for me, I think that you can

understand the history and the context and how it led to these events while also abhorring the loss of innocent civilian life. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions

that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network

every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened.

And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like I feel the

moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my god, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you go to find your podcast. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people.

Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right?

And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There was a question directly in response to this analysis from you, a combative question, let's say, from our audience that I wanted to get you to respond to. This person writes, given that you essentially cannot hold Hamas accountable for anything past or present and suggest they are simply acting under the conditions they find themselves in, how many Israeli civilians would be too many for it to continue to be considered a simple consequence of freedom fighting? So far, there might be 1,400.

They've revised to 1,200. But let's say it's just a few hundred. Would 14,000, 140,000, 1.4 million, at what point would Norm say that the loss of Israeli civilians was too great to justify a resistance movement? What's your response to that question? I guess my response is as follows, and those are fair questions. I've heard them. Those are fair questions. I'm not going to provide a threshold where it becomes intolerable. I've said there does not seem to be any doubt as of now that significant atrocities occurred on October 7th. I have said that

in every interview, and I think my reputation is as such that it won't be construed as me me trying to protect myself. I don't protect myself with anything except facts, logic, and truth. And facts, logic, and truth compel me to acknowledge where I resisted to the fact, compel me to acknowledge atrocities occurred. So there's no dispute between myself and your interrogator and your questioner. There's no dispute about the atrocities. The question is understanding those atrocities. You couldn't find a single word said, I won't condone, but I won't condemn. Now, you might say, Crystal, and your questioner, you both might say that that doesn't sound consistent. If you acknowledge atrocities have occurred, then how can you not condemn the perpetrators of those atrocities? And I do see a logical problem there. And that's why when I was trying to think through this question, I

went back and looked at how the abolitionists, those white folks, not entirely white folks, obviously there were black abolitionists, but to celebrate white abolitionists, people like Thaddeus Stevens, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, the heroes of that era, how they reckoned morally parched the Nat Turner Rebellion, in which, as I said, 60 white people were hacked to pieces. The heads of babies were chopped off. That's a fact. And William Lloyd Garrison in the journal he edited, The Liberator, he had an article on Nat Turner Turner and he acknowledged atrocities occurred.

But you can look through that, read every sentence of that article. He does not condemn Nat Turner rebellion. He couldn't. He couldn't in morally good conscience because every day of his life he bore witness to the degradation, to the humiliation, to the laceration of the black slaves. He bore witness to the auction blocks where these slaves were measured, examined, and sold off. And in good conscience, he couldn't find it in him to condemn what, Nat Turner. He condemned the atrocities for sure, but he would not condemn Nat Turner. And when I read that, I have to say it morally resonated with me. Because unlike a lot of people who are now weighing in and judging the young men who burst free the walls of Gaza concentration camp, and unlike myself, who spent 40 years reading those human rights reports on what has been done to the people of Gaza,

they're all quick to pass judgment on those 1,500, maybe 2,000, we really don't know, men who burst free. I, in good conscience, could not. The difference between myself and others is one, the knowledge. I find it very painful to this day when I reread my own book, my own book in preparation for the past month passing judgment on this God-forsaken people. contradictory, it's number one, because I don't think it's an easy moral question to resolve. And number two, unlike everyone else, I don't have in my mind this image of Hamas, this evil criminal organization, in my mind, I see the young people with no past, no present, no future, periodically this satanic power mows the lawn of Gaza, kills their mother or kills their father or kills their sister or kills their child. Would I, on October 7th, not be filled with rage? Would I, on October 7th, not be determined to exact revenge for that horror,

that nightmare that had been inflicted on me for no reason on God's earth from the day I was born. You know the biblical adage, there for the grace of God go I. I don't know how I would have reacted, and I won't pretend to be better than the people of Gaza. I won't. So one of our questioners, again on the same topic, said, why not simply apply and uphold Geneva Conventions in all instances, when it comes to Israel, when it comes to Hamas's

actions. And they point in particular to the Geneva Conventions Law of Armed Conflict, Article 51, Subsection 2, or Additional Protocol 1, which states the civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. I think there's a confusion here. I just said, I think three times, I acknowledged atrocities occurred. I applied the Geneva Convention. I acknowledge atrocities occurred. But that, to my mind, and we can disagree, It's a separate question from the moral judgment I am going to pass over those young men in Gaza. So I would also say,

I'm all for applying those what's called IHL, International Humanitarian Law. I'm all for its application. My problem is, where do you begin? Under International Humanitarian Law, the blockade of Gaza is illegal. It's a war crime. It is collective punishment, a war crime. In fact, since it's lasted nearly 20 years, it began in January 2006, since it's lasted nearly 20 years, it constitutes a crime against humanity. So I have to ask you a question. Why do we begin with the atrocities that began or unfolded on October 7th without remembering that the impetus of that event on October 7th was the fact that these young men were the victim of a crime against humanity that had endured from the day of their birth till October 7th. We're all so eager, we're all so eager to condemn the crime on October 7th. But I was around and I was documenting that

crime against humanity that began in 2006. That's the part that's forgotten. I condemned the atrocity on October 7. How many people condemned the two-decade-long crime against humanity that these young men endured? How many people even cared? Frankly, how many people even knew about it? So you mentioned a little while ago that our former Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton has been making the rounds, laying out her argument for why she is opposed to a ceasefire, even after all of the many civilians who have been killed by Israel in this conflict.

She laid out her argument in Atlantic Peace. She said that ceasefires freeze conflicts rather than resolve them. In 2012, freezing the conflict in Gaza was an outcome that we and the Israelis were willing to accept. But Israel's policy since 2009 of containing rather than destroying Hamas has failed. A ceasefire now that restored the pre-October 7th status quo would leave the people of Gaza living in a besieged enclave under the domination of terrorists and leave Israelis vulnerable to continued attacks. It would also consign hundreds of hostages to continued captivity. She also made an appearance on The View where she bolstered this argument with her version of some of the recent

history. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what she said there. The problem predates October 7th. And I think that's what President Obama was talking about, because let's remember, this is a very long and complicated history. My husband, with the Israeli government at the time, in 2000, offered a Palestinian state to the Palestinians, at that time run by Arafat, Yasser Arafat. And the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which, by the way, took out of its charter violence against Israel. So you've got to separate the Palestinians who believe that there is some future of peace with Hamas, which believes it has to destroy Israel. Those are two different

organizations and they have to be viewed in that way. Arafat turned that down. There would have been a Palestinian state now for 23 years if he had not walked away from it. There was another attempt when I was Secretary of State to try to bring the Palestinians and the Israelis together. That didn't work out. Hamas came in and basically destroyed all of that and killed a lot of other Palestinians. So I think when President Obama says that, it requires us to look at the

history. And of course, history holds all of us accountable. So what is your view of Hashish? Except Hillary Clinton, who destroyed Libya. History holds all of us accountable, except Hillary Clinton. But let's leave that aside. What I would like you to do, Crystal, is simply ask me one specific question from that. She made many, many statements. She talked about 2000 when her husband presided over the attempted peace agreement. She talked about Hamas, how Hamas destroyed everything. She talked about ceasefires don't exist. You would not have time for another question if I were to go into all of that. So you use your intelligence. You're very smart. Which aspect do you find most challenging? And then I'll try to answer it going through the details. Well, one of the claims that she made there, which I hear repeated often, is that it was on the Palestinian side that peace has been rejected. And she says there that Palestinians could have

had a state now for 23 years had Yasser Arafat not walked away from the deal that her husband was attempting to craft. So do you agree with that assessment? What does she get wrong there? Well, she gets everything wrong. And I'm going to try to explain why. I do know the details. And I hope the listeners will forgive me for going into the details. There have been four basic issues to try to resolve this conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Okay?

Issue is, number one, borders. Where should the borderline be drawn between Israel and the Palestinians? The Palestinians accepted the position of the international community. The borderline should be drawn where it was before the June 1967 war. That is, the whole of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, would form an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. The Palestinians accepted the position of the international community. All the legal bodies in the world, the International Court of Justice, all the political bodies, the UN General Assembly, everybody accepted the border should be what's called the pre-June 1967 border,

or the whole of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza would be the Palestinian state side by side with Israel. Israel rejected that position. Israel wanted a part of the West Bank. In its last offer, in its last offer, it wanted approximately 8% of the West Bank. So it rejected the international community's position. Number two, under international law, East Jerusalem belonged to the Palestinian state because under international law, it's inadmissible to acquire territory by war. Israel acquired the East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza in the course of the 1967 war.

It had no legal title to East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. Israel rejected that position of the international community. It said it wanted parts of East Jerusalem. Number three, there's the question of the settlements that Israel has built in the occupied Palestinian territories. Approximately now 700,000 illegal settlers under international law in the West Bank. All of those settlers are illegally in the West Bank. Right now, as we speak, engaging in a low-level, at this point, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Israel wanted to keep under its sovereignty approximately 80% of those settlers. And finally there's

the question of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants since 1948. Israel said that it would not allow any of those refugees to return under what's called the international law, which says refugees have the right to return to their homes after the cessation of hostilities. Israel said no. On all of those questions, borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees forth what were called the parameters, December 2000, parameters for resolving the conflict. All of those parameters required concessions from the Palestinians on the basis of international law. None of Clinton's parameters required concessions from Israel on the basis of international law. I want the listeners to hear the bottom line. In January 2001, both the Israeli side and the Palestinian side accepted what were called the Clinton parameters with reservations.

Both sides said we accept with reservations. It is factually untrue. President Clinton, who's an extremely smart guy, extremely smart guy with a voracious intellectual appetite, he's unfortunately also an exceptional liar. And in his memoir, which I read, he simply lied about what happened to his parameters that he put forth in December 2000. And Hillary Clinton, who is apparently quite smart also, as smart as her husband, I'm not sure, but no question, a very smart woman, she is also an inveterate to the point of pathological liar.

That's not, you know, I'm not talking, I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to be ad hominem. I think there's quite a lot of evidence going back to why she lost the election that she's a pathological liar. She literally can't see the lies that she's uttering. So those are just factual questions where I can say with a great deal of confidence, because I've read the entire diplomatic record, and I'm willing to debate anybody on it, that what she's saying is false. It's doubly false. It's false because the Palestinians accepted the terms for resolving the conflict, which have been developed and ratified by the whole international community. Just to give you one example, every year, every single year, the United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution called Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question.

And every year, it lays out the terms which I just described. The terms of the settlement are anchored, embedded in international law. Every year, the vote is the whole world, which is to say approximately 190 countries on one side embracing those terms, including the Palestinian representative organizations. And on the other side, it's usually the United States, Israel, and several South Sea islands, the Marshall Islands, all they have to do is Google peaceful settlement of the Palestine question, United Nations General Assembly.

And that resolution will come right up on the screen. It's a little more complicated to get to the voting record, but with enough conscientiousness and ingenuity, which I lack on the web, I don't know anything about computers, they can easily find. The whole world on one side, the U.S., Israel, and some South Sea island atolls on the other side. That's the real record. And if Hillary Clinton wants to debate me on it or her husband, I'm perfectly happy to do so. Well, and I would be perfectly happy to moderate that debate. I think that would be great for the country to see. And I would say, you know, with Bill Clinton, it will be a challenge. But he's a very smart guy, no question about it. But I'm willing to take that challenge. that hindsight is 2020, and we have the advantage of sitting where we are in 2023 and looking over this entire historical record. Are there any moments where you feel like Palestinians were failed by their leadership, where if a different decision or a different action had been taken,

we might be in a better place today? I would say there are two separate questions. One is the goal. And in my opinion, the goal was completely legitimate, because it was trying to settle the conflict on the basis of international law. And I don't think there is really an alternative framework for trying to settle the conflict. And then there's a separate second, a separate question, whether the Palestine leadership made maximum use of its opportunities to force Israel to the negotiating table. And there I would say the record of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, and then subsequently the Palestinian Authority,

the record is not great. However, I want to be very careful about this. I do not believe they made the maximum use of available opportunities. However, it should never be forgotten that both the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO, and Hamas. They both attempted nonviolent civil resistance. And in both cases, that nonviolent civil resistance was brutally suppressed by the Israeli government. Now, I don't even know how far your memory stretches back, but in 1988, the Palestinians engaged both in Gaza and in the West Bank. They engaged in nonviolent civil resistance. It came to be called the first intifada, the first revolt, nonviolent civil revolt against the Israeli occupation. The Israelis under then Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin imposed a policy which was called in public

the force, might, and beatings policy, in which they brutalized the Palestinian population, engaged in nonviolent civil resistance. They engaged in massive, massive torture of Palestinian detainees during the first intifada. According to Human Rights Watch, they tortured tens of thousands of Palestinian detainees during the first intifada. In fact, the current editor of Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg,

he was a guard in one of those detention facilities. And in his book, his memoir called Prisoners, he describes how he personally, this is the editor of Atlantic magazine, which currently features the article by Hillary Clinton. He describes how he personally escorted Palestinians in the detention center to the torture chamber. He was personally an accessory to torture during the first intifada. And then let's fast forward to what Hillary Clinton calls in that article, she calls Hamas an extreme terrorist organization. So this extreme terrorist organization in March 2018 attempted nonviolent civil resistance. The men and the women in Gaza marched to the perimeter of the concentration camp. What did Israel do?

I hope people's memories aren't so short. It assembled along the perimeter of the concentration camp its snipers. And who did the snipers of that beautiful state, who did it target? Well, we have a very excellent human rights report which describes who they targeted. Here for your listeners is a list of the types of targets. Beautiful Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. Who did it target? It targeted children. It targeted medics. It targeted journalists. And it targeted people with physical disabilities. It targeted young men in wheelchairs. It targeted young men on crutches. So you can fault both groups, the PLO and the Hamas leadership, for not maximizing the opportunities to force that state backed by the United States to settle the conflict. But let it never be said that one, their goal was beyond reason. No, their goal or their goal was extreme. Their goal was what the international community in all of its manifestations called for, namely a settlement based on the principles of international law. And number two, let it never be said that they didn't try

nonviolence. They tried it, and they tried it, and they were brutally, mercilessly mowed down by the Israeli state. That's the fact. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country

begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try.

She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast,

brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens.

I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, dad, all I was doing was talking about your thing in class.

I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh, my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network,

the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that

to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I wonder if you could give the strongest possible case for the Israeli view of the conflict.

You're not only a scholar of the Israel-Palestine conflict, you're also a scholar of the conflict. You're not only a scholar of the Israel-Palestine conflict, you're also a scholar of the Holocaust. So coming out of that history of deep trauma that your own family was afflicted by, I wonder if you could lay out how you think they're viewing this conflict and why it ends up being so different from the way that you and I are looking at it. I'm listening closely to your questions, and those are reasonable and important questions. I would have to say two things. Number one, if we were talking about the past, I could see, because I strongly believe in the principle of trying to establish a devil's advocate argument and then trying to argue against the devil's advocate.

However, I don't think that's possible now. Because right now, at this moment, we are talking about a genocide unfolding in Gaza, and it would be a sin against man and a sin against God to make a devil's advocate case for genocide unless you're willing to accept Nazi principles as a point of departure, namely legitimizing extermination. Since I don't believe any of your listeners would accept that bedrock principle, as one bedrock principle, that extermination is okay, then it makes no sense to lay out, so to speak, a devil's advocate position because there'll be no agreement on the baseline. Israel is trying to commit a genocide in Gaza right now. About that, it's very clear. It doesn't even pretend to hide it.

It's saying we're not going to let in any food, water, electricity, or fuel. Well, that's genocide to a civilian population. Well, that's genocide. That's not complicated. So at the moment, I couldn't lay out a position because nobody would accept the bedrock argument that genocide is okay. It's okay to exterminate a people. In the case of the past, what's the best argument against Israel or for Israel? What's the best argument for Israel?

The best argument for Israel is it has the right to break the law. And that's what Israel has said all along. Israel has said all along, because of what Jews endured, experienced during the Nazi Holocaust, they should not be held to the same moral standard as other states, that they should get a pass because of what happened to them. So if Israel did as it did, if Israel did as it did do, it legalized torture. There was a period in Israel's history where they legalized torture. Well, they would say, what about the Holocaust?

There was a period where Israel legalized the demolition of homes as a form of punishment. When they were asked, well, what about the Holocaust? So they've about the Holocaust? So they've used the Holocaust not just as a moral alibi, but as a right that they have been endowed with because of what happened during World War II. And so then it's up to your listeners whether you accept that, that Israel has the right to break the law because of what it experienced during World War II.

Israel was the only country in the world to have legalized torture. Israel was the only country in the world to legalize hostage-taking. The high court, Barak, he called it bargaining chips. Israel was the only country in the world to legalize house demolitions as a form of punishment. It's very unique. And the argument has always been by its apologists, well, what about the Holocaust? And then that's a judgment that your listeners have to make. I say by the standard of international law in all of its dimensions, be it the human rights dimension, be it the terms for settling the conflict, Israel is and has been an egregious violation of the law.

And you can see that in the International Court of Justice decision in July 2004, which I'm not going to go through right now because it will be going into the weeds and I will lose listeners. So I think the record is unambiguous, unequivocal, that Israel is a systematic and egregious violator of international law in all its dimensions. And then the question comes to what you just said. Okay, but then what's its best case? And that's a fair question. And I think its best case is the cases Israel has made all along.

Namely, that in light of what happened to Jews during World War II, they have a right to do that. And there it's just for your listeners to decide. Some of them are going to say, well, yeah, you know what? I think they do have that right to break the law. And others will say, well, the law is the law. And nobody gets a free pass. Now Israel wants in the name of the Nazi Holocaust to commit a Holocaust.

Well, that's what they're doing. I mean, that's not exaggeration. They are right now turning Gaza. During the Filipino War in the turn of the 20th century, 1900, there was a province in revolt called Luzon. The United States was trying to occupy it. And one of the generals during the Filipino War, he said, we're going to turn, the densest resistance was in Luzon province, L-U-Z-O-N. And one of the American generals said, we're going to turn Luzon province into a howling wilderness.

That phrase always stuck with me. And that's what Israel is doing now to Gaza. I woke up this morning and I was reading an article and it said Beit Hanun, which was a place I knew, had 35,000 people in northern Gaza. And it's not there anymore. There's nothing. There was a very vivid article by Patrick Kingsley of the Times, who I loathe, but occasionally a word of truth passes through his lips. And he said he was taken on a tour of northern Gaza by the Israeli army, a control tour. And he said at one point he was in this completely level land.

And he said, he turned to the general, the commanding officer. He said, where are we? And their fellow named the name of the place. And he describes in the article, he was bewildered because he had spent a lot of time in that place as a journalist for the Times. He had no idea where he was. There's nothing there. He said the only constant is the Mediterranean. The sea. There's nothing there. You could not find your home in Gaza. That's Israel's goal. That people will have nothing to return to. And so they'll leave. Leave where? We don't know yet. Right now they're trying to put all the people, the 2.3 million people of Gaza, into an area the size of Los Angeles airport to force Egypt to open the gates of Rafah and take them.

So, and why? Well, the Holocaust. Did you see the Times coverage? One day it would say, one of the people taken hostage was a survivor of the Holocaust. Oh yeah, that's very possible. My parents survived the Holocaust. I buried them 30 years ago, 1995. But they managed to find a survivor of the Holocaust. Always dragging it in, dragging it in.

What became the mantra of the latest event? What's the mantra? The worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Can you tell me what 1,400 people being killed has to do with the Holocaust? Auschwitz killed, no, I'm serious. In Auschwitz, 10,000 Jews were gassed to death a week. 10,000 a week. What does that have to do with 1,400? Yes, 1,400 is a horrible number. I'm not going to deny it. But can you tell me what that has to do with the Nazi Holocaust?

But always drag it in, drag it in. Abba Eben, the former foreign minister of Israel, he famously said, you know, the Hebrew word for Holocaust is Shoah, S-H-O-A-H. And he famously said, there's no business like Shoah business. And that's what you see now. Let me ask you. You're always dragging it in to extenuate, excuse, exonerate. Let me ask you a question related to that, because this is something I hear a lot and something that are a number, we had a number of questions about this. What's a good response when someone proposes that while it is undeniably true that Israel, quote, does bad things, it only gets a disproportionate amount

of attention because of anti-Semitism? For example, how to respond to someone who says there are Muslims that are severely persecuted, ethnically cleansed all over the world, but only Israel incites this kind of international ire and it's because people hate Jews. What is your reaction to that? Well, there are many arguments you could have made in the past, but now Israel is in a very unique situation. Number one, by the third week, by the third week of the current operation, Israel had killed, by the third week, more children than children killed in every war zone in the world combined for the years 2020 or the year 2021 or the year 2022. I remember I was in one debate with a fellow named Eli Lake. I mentioned that statistic. At that point, the number of Palestinian children killed was 3,500. And very skeptically,

Eli Lake said, more than in Ukraine? And then I went home and checked. Do you know how many children have been killed in Ukraine in 20 months? 500. At that moment when I was in the debate, you know how many children were killed in Gaza? 3,500. Number two, now we can disagree about this, and my memory may not be perfect. As I say, I don't quarrel with facts, but I cannot remember a single conflict in my lifetime where a state was openly, blatantly, and flagrantly targeting hospitals. That's a new threshold of barbarism. The most sacrosanct institution in any society do every manner and form of protection inviolable under international custom has target of legitimate attack by this state in terms of density of bombing. It's the most densely bombed area, Gaza, of any war zone in the 21st century. So if it's now getting disproportionate attention by some people's

reckonings, it might possibly be because it's carrying on disproportionate crimes in real time before our eyes. To your point about the targeting of hospitals, we got in a question that asked, what do you think was Israel's real motivation to storm al-Shifa hospital? Did they really expect to find a complete Hamas command center? If not, what could be their actual objective? And just as a side note, we're recording this Monday, November 20th, just this morning. There's been an additional IDF release of a tunnel system that they claim that they located some 50 meters long and some video that they claim shows hostages being led into the hospital for treatment. Okay. Let me get to the goal and then let me get to the specifics.

The goal is, in my view, this is speculative. I can't enter the minds of the Israeli leadership. I would say, number one, Israel is always testing the threshold. How much will the international community tolerate? can get away with targeting hospitals, that sacrosanct edifice of civil society, then you can get away with genocide. If you can target injured people, dying people in a hospital, then why can't you kill everybody? So right now, in part, it's a probing operation. How far will the international community let us go? Number two, Al-Shifa Hospital is the largest hospital in Gaza. It was at the time of the Israeli attack,

al-Shifa was holding 60,000 people, not a small number. And if you target al-Shifa, you're targeting what remains of Gaza's civilization. It was the, as it were, epitome. It summarized Gaza civilization. I know some people in the audience are laughing. Gaza civilization, very funny. Yeah, it epitomized Gaza's civilization, and therefore, by destroying it, you are dealing a lethal blow, a death blow, to all that Gaza stood for. Now about that al-Shifa hospital. Let's remember as the New York Times wrote the other day that Israel claimed there was this sprawling command and control center in which were ensconced the leadership of Hamas and the hostages.

And the Times wrote that the 11,000 people killed at that point, which was last week, those 11,000 people killed were, quote, in part because of the claim that Al-Shifa hospital housed beneath the ground the command and control center. And then Israel produced all these fantastic images and videos of this Hamas command and control center, this intricate, ramified control center with multiple stories that was beneath the hospital. And of course, that was completely lunatic. And from early on, I was engaged in this thing called tweeting. I don't know what Twitter or tweeting are, but I have a very nice young crew of techies who have connected me to social media. I've never been on Facebook. I've never been on any of that stuff. So I began to tweet. I feel humiliated even saying that. I began to tweet

from early on. This is completely ridiculous. girl is always claiming Hamas has got Hamas leadership in its basement. And I went back to 2008, went through the whole thing. So what did we find? Well, here's what we found so far. They were in the hospital for three days. Now, you really have to listen to this because the credulity, I would say the pathological credulity of the media has to make you laugh. So they bring in reporters and the reporters see a hole in the ground, a hole in the ground.

And they're told this probably leads to tunnels, but we can't go in the hole because it's booby trapped. Really? We can't go in the hole because it's booby trapped. Well, every time Israel goes into Gaza, it claims that homes are booby trapped. That's why it says it blows them up. And I'm thinking to myself, well, let me see here. Israel invented this miracle they call Iron Dome, right? That's the anti-ballistic missile system, anti-missile system.

So these geniuses, the Israelis, they invented Iron Dome, the miracle, they called it, of Iron Dome, which deflects incoming missiles in the sky and shatters them to smithereens. But Israel hasn't yet figured out how to deactivate a booby trap. Hasn't figured out. Every time Israel mows the lawn in Gaza, it says we have to blow up all the houses because they're all booby trapped. They've been doing that since 2008. Probably much earlier, but I don't know the record. And they haven't yet, they've figured out how to smash to smithereens incoming ballistic missiles.

But they say to the reporters, you can't go down because it might be booby trapped. And we don't know how to deactivate a booby trap. I would suggest that if you go into any town of more than 1,000 people in the United States, the police know how to deactivate the booby trap. But Israel hasn't figured it out. Now, Israel says it discovered a tunnel, 55 meters long. 55 meters is about half a city block.

Okay? Okay, half a city block. That doesn't sound to me like a Hamas command and control center, which has multiple stories. And we're told, if you look at the images, and when you put this program up, you can flash, just say, just Google Israel images, Hamas Command and Control Center. Yeah, we played it, their animation of what they projected it look like. Right. For me, I'm obviously 10 times your age. So there was a program when I was growing up

called The Man From UNCLE. UNCLE stood for United Network Command for Law Enforcement. It starred David McCallum and Robert Vaughan. And it was a spectacular command and control center. And the way you entered it, there was a tailor shop. It was called Del Florio's Tailor Shop. And then you went into the dressing room, you closed the curtain,

and then you entered Del Florio's, you entered through the dressing room, a trap door, you entered the man from uncle headquarters. And this was like the man from uncle headquarters. And this was like the man from uncle. So here's the news story. Here's the news story. They showed us 55 meters. And then they said, there's a door there. And we can't go through the door can't go through the door because behind the door that's where the command and control center is but we can't get past the door it's a very thick door you know very thick door it began to sound like if you remember one of those pornographic films from the 70s or 80s was called Behind the Green Door.

Not familiar with that one. It was famous, like I Am Curious Yellow. These were landmarks when I was growing up. There was a lot of pornography litigation. There was I Am Curious Yellow, Deep Throat, Behind the green door. In any event, so this was like behind the Hamas door. You know, I used to live in an area, a very tough area called Washington Heights. And there was a lot of drug activity in my area. Actually, the drug dealers finally drove me out, literally. I was running down the street. Not pleasant, not a happy memory. I wasn't a happy camper that day. In any event, the steel doors were very common. Any NYPD team knows how to knock down the steel door behind which are the drug, the armed drug dealers.

But the greatest army in human history, the IDF, it executed a war that defeated all the Arab armies in 1967 in six days. All the Arab armies in defeat in six days. But they haven't figured out how to knock down the door. And behind that door is the command and control center. You know, the whole thing is so laughable. It's so idiotic.

But that's the Israelis. They count on it. You know why they count on it? Why is that? They count on it because they know they can get away with it in the United States. They know they could say anything and still get away with it. They only need they only basically need Joe Biden to be buying it at this point. And apparently it seems like he is thus far. I wanted to ask you, though.

I would say that's a very technical term, what you mean by him buying it. That assumes he's mentally able to process it. And at this point, I don't think that's that should be assumed. Fair. I want to ask you, though, this related question of human shields, quote unquote human shields. And I've heard you speak about this before and your analysis and your review of, you know, international human rights organizations and the evidence on the record. You say you don't find any evidence that Hamas has used human shields. And the reason I have a question about this is because, first of all, some of their statements, which I'll get to in a minute. Gaza is so densely packed, it almost seems to me like it would be impossible not to have military assets close to civilian populations, even if that wasn't, you know, if human shield wasn't the goal. So I wonder, just speak to that and give us maybe what your definition of a

quote unquote human shield is. Well, look, excellent question. And these are the questions which I spent 40 years of my life trying to come to grips with, understand. And so I'm very happy that you're asking those questions because they will lend clarity to the truth. Under international law, there are two relatively distinct concepts. One is human shielding. Now, human shielding has not been, to my knowledge, and I think I'm right on this point, has not been legally defined. It's what you might call a term of art. And human shielding basically means, as it's understood by most human rights organizations, though as I say it's not been legally codified, it basically means the conscripting, the forcible conscripting of civilians to either shield a combatant or to shield a military site. That would be human shielding.

The evidence on Palestinian militants, Hamas fighters, engaging in human shielding is near near zero. I have quoted at length, but I won't do so now, the findings of Amnesty International during the 2008-09 Operation Protective Edge. And they found in a report, I referred to it earlier, the 22 days of death and destruction, they found no evidence of human shielding. Now, there's a separate concept, as I quote, taking all feasible precautions to protect civilians if you're fighting in a civilian area. So sometimes, as you point out, if you're dealing with or you are amidst the most, among the most,

densely populated areas in the world, you inevitably are at some point going to find yourself resisting from population centers. And then the rule of international law is you have to take all feasible precautions. Now, of course, because you have a facility and fluency in the English language, the key word is feasible. What at any particular moment might be feasible to protect civilians if you're engaged in fighting in a civilian area? The only thing I could say is human rights organizations have accused Hamas in situations, not every situation, but in situations of not having taken all feasible precautions.

Now, that's only half the story, because the other half of the story is human rights organizations have voluminously documented Israel's use of human shields, Palestinian human shields. So let's take an example that goes back to something we just talked about. Occasionally Israel enters a house which it fears might be booby-trapped. What does it do? It uses Palestinians as human shields to precede them as they enter the house and say, walk down a staircase. So the fact is, yes, there are voluminously documented instances of human shielding. I remember the instances during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 when they invaded Jenin in the West Bank. And they took Palestinians, they would enter a home and then use the home as a base, fire from windows, and they would put Palestinians in the windows and fire from behind them. So yes, there has been human shielding in the occupied Palestinian territories, human shielding committed by Israel. But the only

question we're allowed to entertain is how extensive is Hamas' use of human shielding? That's the only relevant question. Is real human shielding? It's not even a question because it's not acknowledged. It exists. It's like before nothing happened in Gaza. The whole history, the whole documentary record is whited out. As your generation likes to call it, it's erased and erasured. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country

begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask

the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica.

And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe.

With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school.

And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't.

I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Related to the human shield question, the Hamas official Ghazi Hamad recently said in an interview,

this was a translation, we must teach Israel a lesson. We will do it twice and three times. The Alexa flood is just the first time. There will be a second, a third, a fourth. He continued, will we have to pay a price? Yes. And we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs. How do you interpret those sorts of comments? Number one, in the United States, anybody who's to the left on the political spectrum, we always like to use the piece of the wisdom.

Wherever there's oppression, there's resistance. So as a factual matter what he's saying is true, except if the whole population is exterminated. Which is I think there's a reasonable possibility that large numbers will be wiped out, Gaza will turn into a howling wilderness, and Egypt will have to open its gates. And resistance at that point in Gaza will be very difficult because there won't be a Gaza. But barring that eventuality, yes, he's correct. There will be one, there will be two, there will be three. Guess what, Crystal, ready for this? Brace yourself. There was one, there was two, there was three many slave revolts in the United States. Are you shocked by that?

Are you shocked that slaves kept revolting? Is that a shocking admission when he says we're going to continue to revolt until the walls of this concentration camp are broken down. I'm not shocked by that. The second part of his admission, oh my God, he said, we as a people are going to resist until we get our freedom. Hey, maybe he heard Patrick Henry say, give me liberty or give me death. That's such an odd notion. I was reading Winston Churchill's famous speech during World War II the other day, where he said, we're willing to starve.

We're willing to die in order to veed the Nazi horror, menace, whatever he called it. When we say that, that's heroic. That's courageous. It's a hallmark of our civilization that we're willing to be martyrs in the pursuit of freedom. But suddenly when he says it, it conjures up jihadis, suicide bombers, it suddenly becomes sinister to say that you're going to fight to the last for your freedom. Give me liberty or give me death. Another question that I thought was a good one and worth tackling with you. This individual writes, if you think there should be a ceasefire, what is your plan for afterwards?

A ceasefire and then what? Look, excellent question. Because people don't ask those questions. That's an excellent question. Now if a ceasefire means that the Palestinians are going to continue to live in peace in the concentration camp, that ceasefire is obviously not going to hold up. That's perfectly obvious. Because if you freeze the situation as it is now, the concentration camp remains in place. So I'm not going to pretend that Palestinians, Gazans, the Gaza leadership, is going to acquiesce to a ceasefire into eternity. That's obviously a morally depraved and an intellectually insane proposition,

unless you assume, as Israel has always hoped, that the Gazans will simply languish and die in Gaza. They will be forgotten. They will just languish and die. But barring that eventuality, of course a ceasefire can't on its own, of course a ceasefire can't be sustained over a long period of time. And I'm not going to pretend that people in Gaza are going to abide by a ceasefire that leaves them to be born, live, and die in a concentration camp. So in my view, the demands now, at this moment, have to be ceasefire now,

end the blockade of Gaza, and stop the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. But those are immediate demands. What has to come afterwards is what I've said already to you, to the point of tedium. There has to be a settlement on the basis of international law because there's no other framework for resolving the conflict. The international community agrees on that framework. There's not been any significant dissent except for the United States and Israel. And therefore, the ceasefire has to be followed within a reasonable period of time. I can't give the time because the figures, the statements now coming out of Israel are

in order to rebuild Gaza would take five years. The northern part, there's nothing there. It's gone. It's been vaporized. So I can't tell you when, but I will not pretend that even if a ceasefire is reached, which Israel opposes and the United States opposes and Hillary Clinton opposes, even if it were reached, that it would be permanent. Because permanent means the people of Gaza permanently confined to a concentration camp. Last question that I have for you, which is another audience question that I thought was very interesting. Do you believe it is permissible that as an American with no familial or ancestral ties to Israel or Palestine, that a person cannot side with either group during this conflict? Both

groups have and are doing wrong to one another. Both have understandable grievances that should be heard. Or is there a moral and civic onus on an otherwise apolitical and nonpartisan American to do enough research, to have strong enough reasoning, to choose a side? So in other words, do you think it is morally incumbent on people to educate themselves on this conflict sufficient enough that they take a side? Okay. Number one, that's nothing to do with familial or blood or lineal connection. I hate to sound like an Old Testament prophet. I am old, but I'm not a prophet. Nonetheless, for me, and I think it should be for everyone, the issue is not blood tie, lineal tie, or any other tie. It's just about what's true and what's just. If Israel, what we're doing were true, and it was just, whatever my personal feelings about it might be,

I would have to support them. But number two is the question you asked. I should say the second part. What I'm talking about was implied in the question. Now let's get to the literal question. Obviously, it's not within any individual's capacity, except maybe Professor Chomsky, it's not within any individual's capacity to master every conflict in the world and to possess sufficient factual information to render a judgment of right and wrong. For most mortals, here I'll exclude Professor Chomsky, that's not possible. However, I have to enter two caveats, two reservations. Caveat number one, this current moment does not require mastery effects a genocide

is unfolding in real time before our eyes and so all you have to do is ask yourself a question. Do you think it requires a mastery of facts to render a judgment on whether or not it's right to deny food, water, fuel, and electricity to a civilian population, one half of which is children. Can you, I'm asking you, I'm asking you as an intelligent woman, as a mother, can you imagine any circumstance in which you would say such is the circumstance that I have to agree to deny any food, water, fuel, electricity to one and a half million children? No. To me, the current the current moment is not complicated at all. The history is very complicated. You know, the details of all the peace deals, all of that, very complex. But the current situation to me is very cut and dry, actually. Exactly. And number two, the problem is not that people don't know the facts. The problem is the people in power lying and lying and lying and lying about the

facts. That's the problem. I excuse ignorance. The other day, I was on with two, I did two interviews, not two, I've done so many, but with both Michaela Peterson and Candace Owens. And each of them began by saying, I really don't know anything about this conflict. And I appreciate that. I appreciate the humility. You come in and I thought, of course, why should you know? You know, Gaza is a postage stamp on the world's map. Why would you know more about Gaza than you would know about a country in Africa? I get that. So that to me, it's completely understandable and doesn't raise any significant moral questions. But her father, Michaela Peterson's father, Jordan Peterson,

is a very sick liar. That's a problem to me. When he comes up and he says, he's asked by Piers Morgan, what caused this conflict? He says, well, I'll tell you what caused it. It was Iran rattling the chain of Hamas. What are you talking about? Israeli intelligence doesn't say that. And then you get Candace Owens' colleague, Ben Shapiro, who puts out these videos with one ignorant lie after the other. Not even sophisticated lies. So ignorant, so imbecilic, so shameless, so ridiculous, so preposterous. That to me is the problem. On a moral level, I remember my mother once said, we were talking about Poland, no, during the war,

her experience during the war. And she said, I never held it against Poles, Polish people, who wouldn't help us. Because she said, you know, in Poland if you help the Jew, they just shot you dead. You don't get a trial. You are aimed at the Jew, boom, you're shot dead. And my mother never pretended to be a hero. And I think in the back of her mind, she thought, I wouldn't open the door. Okay? So she didn't fault them. She said what she faulted was the Poles who stood along the wall of the ghetto and were gleeful as they saw what was happening to the Jews. Those are the ones she passed judgment on.

But my mother held by the adage, there but for the grace of God go I. I wouldn't let them in my home if a Jew is fleeing and looks to my place for, looks to my home for refuge. And it's the same thing here. Ignorance is an excuse because the world is a big place, many conflicts. You can focus on one or two most mortal people, but everyone, no, not possible. a person of power or prominence, and you're using your position to disseminate the ugliest, the stupidest, the most idiotic lies.

I have a friend. In Ben Shapiro's current video, the first two minutes, it's about ancient biblical history, okay? My friend, her name is Deborah McAbee. She's the daughter of Chaya McAbee, the famed British Jewish historian. And she happened to look at that video because I had been writing about it.

And she went through just the first two minutes. She said, I couldn't find one statement that was even remotely accurate. Not one about Joshua, about the name Palestine. And then she mapped out for me this huge scholarly undertaking. She's going to expose every lie in the first two minutes. In the first two minutes. And these people use their power and their position to lie as Israel conducts its genocide in Gaza. Those people are revolting, revolting. They're also revolting cowards. Mr. Shapiro, you know so much. Why don't you debate me?

Where's the problem? You like to debate college students. I suppose you debate people in their second trimester. But how about debating an adult who studied it? They won't. Complete cowards. Cowards and criminals. Criminals.

Dr. Norman Finkelstein, I know that you are very much in demand right now. And so I'm extremely grateful to you and our audience is grateful to you for taking so much time with us. Anywhere you want people to follow you on Twitter, is there any one of your books in particular you would recommend to people? My tactics will kill kill me but the answer is i don't even know how to tell somebody to follow me all right because you have to go through these steps on the web and

i don't know what what it requires my books i i try not to i don't like to come across as profiting from misery but if you want background mine is really the only book out there. It's Gaza, An Inquest into Its Martyrdom. And that's the one that I've been reading, and I would also recommend it to people. So it's great to see you. Thank you so much. And again, thank you for spending so much time with us. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Of course. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms

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podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've

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