Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/26/23: Norm Finkelstein UNLEASHED On Bill Maher, RFK Jr, Netanyahu

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

Krystal speaks again with author and political scientist Norman Finkelstein on Bill Maher, RFK Jr., and Netanyahu. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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He is an author. He is an activist. He is a political scientist, author of many books, including Gaza and Inquest into Martyrdom. Great to see you again, sir. Thank you for having me. So I wanted to start with, I know there were a few interviews recently, including one that occurred on our program that caught your interest and that contained some inaccuracies or claims that you thought were worth responding to. And so the first one that I wanted to get you to take a look at was a recent monologue from Bill Maher. Let's take a listen to a bit of that. But eventually everybody comes to an accommodation except the Palestinians.

Was it unjust that even a single Arab family was forced to move upon the founding of the Jewish state? Yes, but it's also not rare. And no one knows more about being pushed off land than the Jews, including being almost wholly kicked out of every Arab country they once lived in. Yes, TikTok fans, ethnic... Ethnic cleansing happened both ways. In Fiddler on the Roof, the family is always moving to stay one step ahead of the Cossacks, but they deal with it.

When they're leaving Anatevka, they say, hey, it wasn't so great anyway. Nobody was a bigger colonizer than the Muslim army that swept out of the Arabian desert and took over much of the world in a single century, and they didn't do it by asking. There's a reason Saudi Arabia's flag is a sword. Arafat was offered 95% of the West Bank and said no. The Palestinian people should know your leaders and the useful idiots on college campuses who are their allies are not

doing you any favors by keeping alive the river to the sea myth. I mean, where do you think Israel is going? Spoiler alert, nowhere. So the sort of core of the point he is making is Jews got kicked out of a lot of countries too, and it's effectively time for Palestinians to get over it and move on. Well, just as a general point, I find it rather amusing when I hear Bill Maher pontificating about,

if you see the longer clip, about Byzantium, about the Roman Empire, about Muslim expansion. He knows as much about these topics as Joy Behar. The only difference between him and Ms. Behar is she reads her factoids off of index cards while he reads them off of a monitor, and neither of them is, in my opinion, particularly funny. And I find it in very poor taste.

In the midst of a genocide, making these rather impoverished attempts at humor, where half the audience laughing uproariously sounds as if they were paid to laugh. But let's leave all that aside. Let's get to the factual matters. Here are the facts. The Palestinians, the Zionist project, I'm not going to go through the whole history, I promise you, listeners. The Zionist project begins roughly at the end of the 19th century. Their aim was to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Palestine was not empty. obvious to the indigenous population that the realization of the Zionist enterprise to create a Jewish state would at minimum reduce them to second-class citizens in their

own place of birth or at worst result in their expulsion. And the Zionist movement coined a locution. They called it transfer. They didn't want to use the vulgar, gross term. Expulsion, so they called it the transfer. And as Israel's leading historian, who, by the way, at this point is extremely right-wing, his name is Benny Morris, and you'll see him in all the right-wing talk shows like Coleman Hughes and others. Benny Morris said, and now I'm quoting him, the idea of transfer or expulsion, the idea of transfer was inbuilt and inevitable in Zionism.

Okay? Now, it happens I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Zionism. I know about the subject, but I never belabored the terminology because sometimes I think it obfuscates the critical facts rather than enlightening them. Sort of like nowadays when Palestinian supporters talk about settler colonialism.

I don't find this kind of terminology enlightening. I think it obscures more than it enlightens. But as a factual matter, as Benny Mara said, the idea of transfer or expulsion was inbuilt and inevitable in Zionism. Okay? And so the indigenous population of Palestine, the Arab later, they came to define themselves as Palestinian, but the Arab-Palestinian population of Palestine

naturally revolted against that prospect. In fact, Benny Morris writes, remember, he's now a right-wing historian, but Benny Morris writes that the driving force, the motor force of opposition to Zionism was the prospect that the indigenous population was going to be expelled if this idea were realized. Now, skipping far ahead and not to tilt the scale in my direction, but just to bring us to an end before this one question consumes your whole program.

Come 1948, a war breaks out. I'm not going to talk about who's right and who's wrong in the course of the war. But now, as David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the state of Israel said, he quoted the famous French expression, which is still quoted, when in war, do as in war. Namely, here is a prospect. Now we have the opportunity to realize the Zionist dream, and the population from the area that became Israel, 90 percent of the population from the area that became Israel was expelled. Exactly what you would expect given what the ideology was, and an opportunity now availed itself.

And they became the Palestinian refugees. So now Bill Maher says, well, basically he says, it's a done deal, get over it. I'm not going to pass a judgment on that. Now, you know, Crystal, and if you don't mind, I'd rather look at you than I look at myself, because I'm more concerned about persuading you than persuading myself. I'm already persuaded. And body language is sometimes indicative, so I'd like to look at you. And where I see you're demurring, I'll stop and we'll continue. So he says basically get over it. Now, you know, Crystal, let's say you were fired from a job wrongly. What do you expect your friends to do? Do you expect them to support you? Or do you expect them to say, Crystal, get over it?

I would hope they would support me. Exactly. So there is an obligation, a kind of moral obligation among those not directly the victim to support those to the extent they're able to rectify a wrong. That's, to me, a moral moral responsibility and then you might come to the conclusion you know what this is going nowhere and i hope this person understands it's going nowhere and move on okay the fact of the matter is and i have to tell you i i watched the Bill Maher segment this morning, and several times I had to just, you know, take a breath, because he's such an ignorant sack of shit. It just nauseates me when I'm listening to this. He hasn't a clue what the history is. He really doesn't know anything. This is the reason Bill Maher doesn't want kids to go to college. He says it's a waste

of time. Yeah, in college you learn that before you speak your mind, you should actually know a few facts. You're supposed to read books, not just have note cards passed to you. So what are the facts? And I'm perfectly willing now to say to Bill Maher, to his face, if you disagree with me, have me on your program. Have me on your program. And we'll go through it step by step. Already as early as 1976. Now, if I'm not mistaken, you were probably born around that time. A little bit later, but yes.

Okay, later. So before you were born. And I'd like you to sort of let that sink in. You're an adult woman already. You have children. I'm talking about before you were born. Already in 1976, the Palestine Liberation Organization, which at that point was a representative organization of the Palestinian people, was supporting two states on the June 1967 border.

They were supporting the compromise. They were already giving up. Before you were born, the representative organization of the Palestinians universally recognized, the PLO, they already were ready to compromise. They gave up, and I hope this will sink into the minds of your listeners. It's impossible that they'll sink into the mind of Bill Maher because there isn't a mind. There's a blank space that's filled in with desperate attempts of being clever and funny

for his paid listeners. But for everybody else, before you were born, the Palestinians had already compromised. They had already moved on. They had given up on 80% of Palestine, the area that became the state of Israel. And they had resigned themselves, reconciled themselves to the prospect of a state just on the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. But the whole area that became Israel, before you were born, they had acquiesced in that reality. Now, there is a question about the fate and future of the Palestinian refugees, those who were expelled. And I will grant, because I am an old-fashioned believer in truth, and as a radical, I like to quote the better part of the radical tradition that says the truth is revolutionary. Namely, there is no contradiction between the truth and having revolutionary or radical aspirations. So I'm not afraid of the truth.

It's not like truth is the enemy of revolution or truth is the enemy of a radical transformation of our society and our world. So it is true that this refugee question has been a gray area. But if you look at all the negotiations, and I've studied it very closely, in virtually, not virtually, or the representative organizations, were willing to make drastic, colossal compromises on the question of the return of the Palestinian refugees. So any honest reckoning of the factual record will show you that the Palestinians had already compromised, had already given up the aspirations of one state from the river to the sea. Now, if there were any doubts, just let me give you a few examples. So in the 1980s, we're now going ahead, okay, we're going from 1976 to in the early 1980s.

The Palestinians were making it very clear they were ready to compromise on two states in historic Palestine. Their state would only constitute 20%. The Israelis began to panic because they were afraid that international public opinion would force them to relinquish control of the West Bank and Gaza, which they were determined to keep. And so an Israeli political scientist, his name is Avner Yaniv, a very mainstream fellow. He's since passed. Actually, I think I'm the only one still alive.

Everybody involved in the conflict is dead already. He said what the Israelis feared, and I'd like this expression hopefully to sink into the minds of you listeners as well. What the Israelis feared was the Palestinian peace offensive. The Palestinian peace offensive. too moderate, and therefore pressure would be exerted by the international community to force on Israel its withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza to its pre-June 1967 borders. So what did Israel do? Israel fabricated in June 1982 an excuse to invade Lebanon. Why did it want to invade Lebanon? Because that's where the PLO was located at the time,

the representative Palestinian organization. They wanted to destroy the PLO, not because it was radical, not because it wanted to create a state from the river to the sea. They wanted to destroy the PLO because it was between 15 and 20,000 Palestinian and Lebanese overwhelmingly civilians. As a matter of fact, this last Israeli genocide in Gaza, it for the first time exceeded the amount of death and destruction since the Lebanon war in 1982. People already have completely forgotten.

And what was the cause of the war? Why did Israel kill 15,000 to 20,000 Palestinian and Lebanese overwhelmingly civilians? Because of, and Bill Maher, I'll be happy to come on your program, take out Avner Yaniv's book and shove it in front of your face. Now, I know that will be torture. I understand that will be torture, not the phrase, but having to look at a book, having to look at a book.

Maybe you think you're protected under the Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. Okay, we'll go through that in court. But yes, the Palestinian peace offensive. Now, come 1987, the Palestinians absolutely despairing of ever ending this occupation of their lands, they went into a civil revolt. It was called the Intifada. Okay? Here's a side note for you.

And, Crystal, I like you. I know you're a good listener. And I know you suck in information. And I appreciate that. I saw you with Robert Kennedy. It was a new generation, a generation that's not afraid of the label anti-Semite, even though RFK kept trying to use that particular weapon in his arsenal. You didn't recoil, you persisted. It's a new generation. I mean, my generation, you were terrified of doing what you did,ified because of the charge of anti-Semitism and then the practical repercussions. Well, you were never terrified, Norm. I wasn't terrified, but, you know, I don't have physical courage, but I have moral courage.

That's clear. I will never say something I don't believe. It's not possible. I got that from my parents, and I will take that to my grave. In any event, so 1987, December 7th, 1987, Noam Chomsky's birthday or December 8th, some people say December 8th, my birthday. So in any event, the first intifada, it's a civil revolt. Literally, it's the Arabic word for when a dog shakes off its fleas. And the quiescent Palestinian people for so long are now shaking off their fleas and going into civil revolt. I know I'm digressing aada, intifada means genocide. They say intifada, intifada, the only solution is revolution.

Intifada was a civil revolt. I lived there at the time. I was there every summer from 1988 to 1995, every single summer. Everybody knew I was Jewish. Everybody knew I was Jewish. And the only ones I fear, I'm not trying to make jokes. I mean, I have a sense of humor, but as Ecclesiastes says, there's a time and place for everything. Now is not the time for humor.

The only one I was afraid of was the Israeli army. It was very scary. You know, they were killing with abandon during that civil revolt. There were times when I was in my apartment at night because I lived with Palestinian families in Beit Sahour, which is right outside Bethlehem and in Fawar refugee camp, right outside Fawar refugee camp. And the Israeli army invaded at night, came into my apartment. I was completely terrified.

And there were roads you don't want to travel down because the settlers were throwing these stones. But I wasn't afraid for stones. Genocide. The people were so wonderful, so forthcoming, so generous. Even Hamas numbers. Though I have to admit, there was some concern with Hamas at the time when they found out I was Jewish. In any event, come November 1988, Yasser Arafat, I mean, I have to laugh at how stupid Bill Maher is. Really,

he's Joy Behar. He's Joy Behar without the dreg. November 1988, Arafat formally, oh, I should say, because I use these terms like everybody knows, the head of the PLO at the time, Yasser Arafat, he formally declares a Palestinian state, calls for a Palestinian state, on the June 1967 border, a two-state solution. That's just a commonplace piece of knowledge. Anybody who knows anything about the subject knows November 1988, he declares for two states. And he felt that, I don't want to get into all the dynamics, but people are willing to compromise from a position of strength, not from a position of weakness. That's just the nature of politics. Because from a position of weakness, you feel like, well, if I'm not going to get anything, why not ask for the whole thing? Because it makes no difference.

If I can't hope to get a half a loaf, if I can't hope for half a loaf, then why not ask for the whole loaf? Right. In November 1988, it was during the first intifada. And it did become a global issue, the first intifada. It did seriously dent Israel's public relations image. Because I'll tell you, I was teaching at that time. And I remember one student who was neither pro-Palestinian nor pro-Israeli, whatever those terms mean. They're just totally stupid.

He said one day in class, he said like this. The Palestinian civil revolt was famous for what was called for throwing stones, you know. And he said like this in class. Stone. He held up his hand and he goes, stone. Uzi. That was the known Israeli weapon. It's sort of the brand of Israel, the Uzi.

Stone, Uzi. That's not fair. Stone, I remember, you know, 30 years ago, more than 30 years ago. Stone. And that was the image that was being communicated, transmitted internationally. So Israel was facing a major PR problem. And Arafat, from a position of strength, because he thought he could win something now, that the civil revolt had shifted international public opinion, he thought he could win something. And he announced for formally, publicly, unambiguously two states on the June 1967 border.

Now, come 1993, the civil revolt was effectively repressed by the Israelis. They were very brutal in their repression of it. And Arafat entered from a position of weakness, not strength, what came to be called the Oslo Accord. And basically what the Oslo Accord was, it said we recognize Israel, meaning Yasser Arafat, we recognize the state of Israel and its June 1967 border, all of that forgotten by Bill Maher, who's so clever, he's so smart with his factoids supplied to him by the Israeli consulate. The Oslo court has vanished.

And he says, and what did the Palestinians get in return? Well, actually, they got nothing in return, because he was negotiating from a position of weakness at that point, Arafat. What he got was a promise that we'll figure out what to do sometime in the future. It was supposed to be five years, what was called the interim period, and the five years passed, they got nothing. I've already gone through in a previous show what happened in 2000 where Hillary Clinton's imagine she got carried away.

So I'm not going to not that she's ever been very well, yeah, a certain point in her life. She was actually decent. But her memory is now very selective to the extent that it ever makes any connection with reality. But the bottom line from the period afterwards, now, we have a very simple way of testing who is and who isn't, or which side is and which side isn't, willing to compromise on this question. I would say we have an unequivocal record.

And the record is this. And I would hope your viewers who have an interest in the subject would simply go and check out what I have to say. Every year for about two decades, maybe a little more, every year, let's just check. If you'll allow me. I have it. Okay.

No, actually, it's from 1997. So if I can ask you in my book, Gaza, an inquest into its martyrdom. Turn to page 28. Okay. Okay. Now, the United Nations General Assembly, based on international law. Can I look at you again? I find it troubling looking at myself because it becomes a distraction. Thank you. Every year the United Nations General Assembly contrived a resolution, Terms for Resolving the Conflict, as the title of the resolution says,

peaceful resolution of the question of Palestine. And its resolution is based on international law. Now international law recognizes the state of Israel. That's not a quarrel in international law. It's a member state of the United Nations. As a member state of the United Nations, it has the same rights and duties, rights and obligations as any other state. So the General Assembly contrives a resolution

based on all the elements of international law. I would stress that the International Court of Justice itself in 2004, July 2004, it made a determination on all the critical questions bearing on the question of Palestine. So this resolution is a synthesis of the opinion of the General Assembly on the one hand and the International Court of Justice on the other hand, okay? The supreme political body in the world and the supreme legal body in the world, all right? Supreme and most representative. So if you look at the voting record, I know, Bill Maher, this is going to be very painful. I recognize it's a printed document and having to go through a printed document may constitute torment and torture for you. print the document, I have here the lineup of how did the world vote on this compromise resolution based on international law. Because Bill Maher says the Palestinians don't want to compromise.

The Palestinians are so stubborn in trying to return to the past, and why can't they just get over it? They want from the river to the sea. They want to return to the status quo anti-1947. Well, this resolution calls for two states on the June 1967 border in accordance with international law and all the other aspects of international law. Time doesn't allow me to go through each one, though if you ask me, I'm happy to go through it. So let's look at the voting record. 1997. So the record is the number of states who voted for it, those who abstained, and those who opposed.

Or I should say, excuse me, the number of states who voted for it, those who abstained, and those who opposed. Or I should say, excuse me, the number of states who voted for it, the number who opposed it, and the number of abstentions. Okay, what was 1997? We had 155 yes, two no, and three abstained. Right. Who are the two no? That would be Israel and the United States of America. Okay. So who is it that's the obstacle to peace? Is it the world? Or is it the United States and Israel?

Let's look at 2001. Or you know what? You do it. You choose arbitrarily. Because I have to do it every year. Choose a day. Choose a year. Yeah. I mean, every year it's basically, you know, everybody in the world against Israel, the U.S., and a few of our close allies. So, for example,

We're not even our allies. We're South Sea Islands. 2006, it's 157 yeses, 7 noes, 10 abstained. The noes were Israel, the U.S., Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau. 2008, what's the vote? 164 yes, 7 no, 3 abstained. The noes are Israel, U.S., Australia, same group, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, now RuPaul. Yeah. But according to Bill Maher,

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A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.

But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I wanted to ask you, because this has been a persistent, I think, mythology in American politics, American media, with, you know, and a lot of Americans have bought into this mythology that the Israelis are deeply interested in peace. They want a peaceful settlement.

This goes back to the conversation we had where Hillary Clinton says it was all there on the table for Yasser Arafat, and he walks away. And this is repeated routinely by any number of the political media class. There were some interesting comments recently from Bibi Netanyahu, which should surprise no one, but still would land as shocking, I think, to a lot of the American public. If we could put this up on the screen, guys, this is the fourth tear sheet that we have. I'm proud I blocked a Palestinian state. Looking at Gaza, everyone sees what would have happened. And what I was curious about with you, Norm, is, first of all, were you surprised that he made those comments so nakedly? And second of all, do you think that some of this mythology surrounding who the quote-unquote partner for peace is and who has been the primary obstacle to peace may break down with the American public?

I can't say I'm surprised. Look, Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest-sitting prime minister in Israeli history. He's as representative of Israeli opinion as anybody ever has been in Israeli history. If he keeps winning, it's because even despite all the scandals, it's because people, when they see Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israelis, when they see Benjamin Netanyahu, they see themselves. He's a representative of Israeli public opinion. And Israeli public opinion, it's true, it's shifted. There's no longer a veneer in Israeli society of being civilized.

It's shifted to the far right. You could say in Israel nowadays there's a right, there's a far right, and there's an ultra right. There's no center. You know, you take, the other day I was debating, to the extent it was debate, Alan Dershowitz on the Pierce Morgan program, and he says that Netanyahu, he's not going to be an orphan because Pierce Morgan made the same point as you just made. Netanyahu says he's against a Fatah land. He's a Fatah, meaning the main secular Palestinian faction.

He's against the Hamas land. He's against anything. And Dershowitz, who likes to pretend he supports a two-state settlement, he said, well, he's not going to be prime minister. It's probably going to be a national coalition after Netanyahu. And Gantz, the solo Gantz, is going to be the new head of state. Yeah, who is Gantz? Gantz was the chief of staff during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, where Israel killed about 2,200 people in Gaza, destroyed 18,000 homes. And when he ran for office, when he ran against Netanyahu, do you know how he ran? He ran on a video showing the destruction of Gaza. Wow.

A video and boasting. That was his achievement, that he had leveled Gaza. And this was the person who Professor Dershowitz was touting as being more humane and reasonable than Benjamin Netanyahu. That's been the Israeli position. Now, let's be clear. And here you have to have, I don't like the word so very much, but okay, I'll use it. You have to be attentive to nuances and subtleties. It is true that when Israel was under a, what's called a labor government or, you know,

roughly labor government, quote unquote, left wing, there were more forthcoming than the current leadership. As I said, the spectrum has shifted. Israel is an ultra right society. It's actually, to my knowledge, I could be wrong. I always admit to the possibility of error. It's very unique in the world because in other countries you have ultra-right. Let's say, take Brazil.

You have characters like Bolsonaro, okay, an ultra-right figure. But the societies are generally divided between an ultra-right figure. But the societies are generally divided between an ultra-right and a left. So for each Bolsonaro supporter, you have a Lula supporter. There is a real solid opposition. There's no opposition in Israel. There's a right, there's a far right, and there's an ultra right. There's no left. Nobody talks about a left candidate coming into power in Israel. So it is true that labor was under the so-called left in Israel. There were more forthcoming. I won't deny that. My credo in life never quarrel with facts. I won't deny that.

But we have to be clear that no government in Israel, no government in Israel has ever accepted the international consensus, the legal consensus for resolving the conflict. So when you were reading off that list, bear in mind that was during a period, because we're going back to 1997, that's going through a period where the so-called peacenik Yitzhak Rabin, okay, he was assassinated in 1995. But his successors, they were in power. And they always, whether it was Labor, the Peaceniks, or the Warhawks, across the spectrum, they all oppose the legal consensus. Mr. Maher, I'm not talking about the PLO program. I'm talking about the International Court of Justice. Fifteen judges, fifteen justices.

No, in the International Court of Justice, they're called judges. 15 judges, even the American judge, his name is Bergenfeld, at the time his name was Bergenfeld, even he said there can be no question under international law that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law. All 15. Now, no Israeli government, none, has ever entertained the possibility of eliminating the settlements that were illegally planted in Israel. Not the labor, not the Likud, not the left, not the right. Now, here's the kicker.

Now, brace yourself for this. This is the Palestinians who won't compromise, who are the obstacle to resolving the conflict, you sick sack of shit, Mr. Mayor, whatever your name is. You sick sack of shit. If you look at the negotiations, the Palestinians offered to let 60% of the settlements remain in place. 60% of the settlements remain in place. They were presenting maps. We have the maps. And the maps show that according to where you draw the border,

60% of the illegal Israeli settlements would remain in place. The Palestinians on the settlements compromised, even though under international law they were illegal, including the judgment of Judge Bergenfeld and the ICJ, the International Court of Justice. They were willing to compromise the question of the refugees. Right now, according to the official count, there are about six million refugees. The Palestinians were willing to accept a figure in the hundreds of thousands returning back. Maybe something like, I have to admit, you know, there's gray area here, but you could say roughly. If you look at the figures that were thrown around, maybe half a million to return. On the question of borders, Palestinians were willing to rewrite the border so long as they got, in exchange, equal-sized, what they're called, land swaps. Had to be of equal size, had to be of equal quality.

So we're not giving up the best arable land in the West Bank, so you're going to give us some desert in the south of Hebron. So it had to be roughly equal size and equal quality, but we'll rewrite the border. We're willing to rewrite the border, make minor border adjustments to account for facts on the ground since 1967. And they even made some compromises on Jerusalem, even though under international law, Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, is occupied Palestinian territory because it was acquired during the June 1967 war. And therefore, as occupied territory,

it belongs to the Palestinians. Israel has no title to territory. It acquired in the course of the war. That's international law. So across the board, if you go through it, they were willing to make compromises on the basis of the UN resolution. They were willing to accept less. They were willing to accept less than the UN resolution.

Now, if there's any question, if there's any question, it's very simple. Why is the whole world on one side? The whole world. And the United States, Israel, and the South Pacific atoll holes on the other side. Why is that? Are they all anti-Semitic?

Now, the other day I saw an interview with Professor Dershowitz and a fellow from Al Jazeera, a very intelligent young man. He didn't know all the facts, but he knew enough. Okay? So he starts quoting something from UNICEF. Professor Dershowitz says they're pro-Hamas. He says, quote something from UNESCO. They're pro-Hamas. Then he quotes something from the Human Rights Watch.

They're pro-Hamas. Then he quotes Greta Thunberg from the climate change movement. She's pro-Hamas. Oh my God. At this point, the interlocutor, the Qatari fellow, he said, Professor Desch, is there anyone in the world who's not pro-Hamas except for Israel and you? And that's Bill Maher. You may think it's funny, but that's Bill Maher. You see, according to Bill Maher, all the countries in the world, except the United States and Israel, all the countries in the world, and all the justices in the International Court of Justice, they must all be, well, not pro-Hamas, but pro-Palestinian.

There wasn't even a Hamas at this time, really. Right. Not politically significant. Right. They must all be pro-Palestinian or anti-Semitic. The whole world must be anti-Semitic. On the International Court of Justice at the time, there was a woman, a British judge named Rosalind Higgins. She went with the majority on the ICJ.

There was Bergenthal, who calls himself a Holocaust survivor. He's just passed. Obviously Jewish. He went overwhelmingly with the majority. There were a couple of points not worth going into where he had differences. But everybody in the world must be a spoiler. They must all be like the Palestinians. They must be, according to Bill Maher, that the Palestinians are the obstacle. But the Palestinians were willing to compromise even more,

even more than what the United Nations General Assembly and the ICJ said legally they were entitled to. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits

as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free

on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.

It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news

show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull

will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, Norm, I want to get to, I know you also took an interest in the interview that we had with presidential candidate RFK Jr., where he made

a variety of claims. I pulled two different clips that I wanted to get you to respond to, because they both contain elements that, you know, I haven't just heard from him. These are things that I hear repeated rather often. The first one has to deal with his assertion that, you know, the Palestinians, I'm paraphrasing here, we'll let him say it himself, but essentially the Palestinians are so bad that even the neighboring Arab states like Egypt didn't want them. Let's take a listen to that piece. So President Biden's administration, they have said that they have no red lines for the state of Israel and their conduct in this war. Do you have any red lines for Israel? Well, you know, the red lines are that, you know, you don't

deliberately, you do everything you can, which I think Israel is doing right now to avoid civilian casualties. But, you know, there's collateral damage in every war and they're fighting an implacable enemy. I mean, I don't think there's any country in the world that would go as far as Israel has gone to not invade Gaza. I mean, Israel was being bombed by Hamas, took over Gaza. Israel walked out of Gaza. There's no occupation of Gaza. There's a blockade, though. Well, there's a blockade because Hamas declared war on Israel and sent suicide bombers off.

So they put up a fence. So it's like the guy who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan. For them to say that they're blockaded, they're like, yeah, they're blockaded. And it's not just Israel that's blockading them. It's Egypt. Everybody has a problem with Hamas. In fact, after the 73 War, after the 67 War, Israel tried to give Hamas back to Egypt. And Egypt didn't want to take it because of it.

You mean Gaza? I mean Gaza, sorry. Gaza back to Egypt. Egypt didn't want to take it because of the high level of militant Islam. So I wonder what your response is to that last piece in particular where he asserts, you know, the neighboring countries don't want to deal with these people either. And so it's not just on Israel. And this is illustrative of how magnanimous Israel has been towards the Palestinians. Okay. There are three questions there, and I'm going to ask you to remember them because my memory is shot. Okay. I'll write them down. From a combination of old age and mental exhaustion since October 7th, I'm thinking of going to small claims court and suing Hamas for senior citizen abuse because the last two months have been just a horror in my life.

So there are three questions that Robert Kennedy raised. Number one about Israel doing all it can to avoid civilian casualties. Number two, the claim about Israel having withdrawn from Gaza in 2005. And number three, the question of Egypt. So because I respect you and I noticed that your last interview with me, or one of the last interviews with me, got a lot of viewers and the point is to educate and try to persuade. I'm going to say you take, I'll stay here until the end of time, which in my case may not be too long from now, to clarify these issues. So let's start with Israel's doing everything it can to avoid civilian casualties.

First of all, there have been many comparative studies with Israel, the number of deaths in Gaza as compared to every other conflict in the past 25 years in this century. And Israel is just in a category all its own. So let's just take one example, which would be familiar to all of your listeners. You know, I'm going to go off in digressions, but I have to, because everything is really important. I was very angry at Bernie Sanders after what happened on October 7 and how he acquitted himself. I was furious. I was furious with him on a political level because I invested a lot in his candidacy, as did a large number of young people.

And I was also disgusted with him, and I'm not trying to play the Jewish card, but as a Jew. He had said, he didn't boast about it, he wasn't wearing it on his shoulder, but he said that, you know, a large part of his family perished in Poland during the Nazi Holocaust. There obviously was, it resonated, it was a sensitive chord for him. And then the statements he was making, you know, it was just ghastly, ghastly.

I was walking around the streets cursing him. I was so angry. But, you know, if you'll allow me, I know these will seem like digressions, but everything comes together in my mind, and I'll try to bring it together in your mind. A long time ago in our own country, there were the abolitionists, the white abolitionists who fought for the rights of African-American people to end slavery and then after to fight for their equal rights in the joint reconstruction. There was one fellow named William Garrison. He was a very famous abolitionist. And after the Civil War, he opposed giving the rights a vote to black people. He said they weren't ready. And he was criticized heavily for it. Eventually, he changed his mind and he recognized he was wrong. And Frederick Douglass writing about Garrison and the fact that he opposed the vote and then reversed himself. He had a very nice line. Douglass was a brilliant stylist, writer.

He said, a man's head will not long remain wrong when his heart is right. A man's head will not long remain, will not long remain wrong when his heart is right. And that was Bernie. I said to my friends, I think he's going to backtrack. He's going to backtrack. And then one night I was exercising and watching. I said, oh, Bernie on C-SPAN, let's see what that guy has to say now. And I expected the usual and then suddenly he said, there have been more civilians killed in Gaza in two months than have been killed in Ukraine in two years. Ukraine in two years, the current figure is 10,000 civilians killed.

In Gaza, it's 20,000 in two months. Yeah. Two years, two months. Yeah. Okay? And that phrase from Douglass came to mind. A man's mind cannot be wrong long if his heart is right. Robert Kennedy, on the other side, is a complete sleazebag. A sack of shit like Bill Maher.

To be saying that Israel is doing everything possible. When you look just at the number of child deaths in Israel, in Gaza, it's 136 per day. And the next conflict area in the world, the next goes from five per day downwards, 136 if you look at the bar graph, the next conflict is five per day going downwards. And this sack of shit, this revolting opportunists, this genocide apologists. Robert F. Kennedy says they're doing everything possible. 50%, 50% of all of Gaza's civilian infrastructure, houses, factories, 50% has been leveled. Imagine if you were walking down the street and you're going for miles, let's call it 27 miles, which is Gaza's length.

And you discover as you're walking down the street, everything to the left of you is flattened. Every single building to the left of you for 27 miles is now a parking lot. You would call that doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties? Now, Human Rights Watch is not by any stretch of the imagination a radical organization, okay? It's very mainstream. It issued in the past two weeks a couple of reports. One report is entitled Gaza, unlawful Israeli hospital strikes worsen health crisis. has systematically, methodically targeted all the hospitals in Gaza. Of 32 hospitals in Gaza, which we would call real hospitals. I talked the other day to Dr. Ghassan Aboussita, who knows the medical system in Gaza very well. He goes back there during every siege.

He's a real hero, I told him. Don't praise me because I don't have your physical coverage. He was in Abu Al-Ali Hospital during that attack and he was in al-Shifa.

He said of the 32, I asked him how many hospitals are still operative? He said of the 32, I asked him how many hospitals are still operative? He said of the 32 hospitals, four. Okay? Now, there is no example in modern history, none, of the systematic and methodical targeting of hospitals. It doesn't exist. That crosses a negative threshold into barbarism. A negative threshold into barbarism. The targeting of the wounded and the lame, the newborn and the near dead. That's what hospitals are. And that's what they're targeted. What did the Human Rights Watch have to say? Quote,

Human Rights Watch has not been able to corroborate or see any information that would justify attacks on Gaza's hospitals. No information that would justify Israel's attack on Gaza's hospitals. Now, Robert Kennedy talks about warning people to leave. What other country would issue warnings for them to leave? For example, the hospitals, okay? What does Human Rights Watch say? Those warnings are absolutely meaningless because there was nowhere to flee.

And how can people in hospitals flee? Here, Mr. Kennedy reality check. You know why they're in hospitals? Because they are immobile. That's why they're in hospitals? Because they are immobile. That's why they're in hospitals. It says that Human Rights Watch is concerned that the purpose of these warnings was not to protect civilians, but to terrify them into leaving. That's a mainstream human rights watch, or Human Rights Watch, which is a mainstream organization.

Quoting again, Israel's broad-based attack on Gaza's healthcare system is an attack on the sick and the injured, on babies in incubators. These actions need to be investigated as war crimes. But according to Robert Kennedy, no other country in the world in the history of humankind has ever done more to protect civilians and to act discriminately than Israel. Look at the numbers. Just look at the numbers. If you were to randomly, indiscriminately attack or target any area in Gaza, any area in Gaza, you would, any area randomly, you would get roughly 50% would be children, 25% would be women, and 25% men, roughly, okay? Right. men roughly okay right if you look at the actual statistics what is it it's 43 children

about 25 women and 25 men you know what that means it means they're being targeted indiscriminately yeah that's why you have those proportions because that's the proportion of that's the proportional breakdown of children, women and men in Gaza. So if you just overlay the actual demographic breakdown in Gaza with the casualties in Gaza, it's exactly the same. Why? Because they're indiscriminately being attacked. That's why you have those proportions. There's no other conflict in the modern world where you have those percentages for women and children. Not even close.

Now, Human Rights Watch released another report yesterday about this country that's doing everything it can, according to Robert Kennedy or Shmuley Bodiash, his puppeteer. Israel is doing everything possible. Israel announced the first week of its assault on Gaza, it's going to bar any food, fuel, electricity, or water to enter Gaza. Now, did they say they're going to bar it just to Hamas? That's not what they said. No. Now, Mr. Kennedy, in your compound, your Kennedy compound, if all the food, fuel, water, and electricity were turned off

and there was a blockade, what do you think would happen to everybody in your compound? How long would they survive? Would they survive two months? So what does Human Rights Watch say? The report issued yesterday, December 18th, the headline, Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza.

Starvation used as weapon of war in Gaza. What's the first bullet point? The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip. It's depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival. And then it says the people of Gaza are now suffering severe levels of hunger. In fact, the World Food Program, it stated two days ago that 50% of Gaza's population, as we speak, as Bill Maher is making his sick jokes, humoring his sick audience of sick sacks of shit like himself. In the middle of that, he's so funny and they're so uproariously laughing, though I do believe half of the people laughing are paying to laugh, but that's aside from the

point. Or it's not in exchange, you know, about tickets in exchange for promising to laugh at that moron. He's making all his jokes. Oh, it's so funny. It's so funny, you sick sack of shit, that 50% of the population of Gaza is starving today. Oh, that's so funny. That's so, so funny. Just think of a Nazi in a nightclub or a cabaret in Germany making those kinds of jokes while Jews were dying to the left and right, dropping like flies in the Warsaw Ghetto. I remember my mother. My mother never really talked about the worst acid. She didn't talk about the concentration camp. She didn't. What she constantly talked to me about was the hunger.

Hunger. The walking through the ghetto because there were all the typhus and the other transmittable diseases. So people were dying on the left and the right. And walking through and she said, the pangs of hunger. And just imagine a Nazi, a Nazi comedian in a cabaret, like Bill Maher, his horn-rimmed glasses,

thinks he's going to look intelligent. By putting on those glasses, he suddenly becomes serious. Making those jokes as half the population in Gaza is, according to the World Food Program, now suffering from starvation. Or according to Robert F. Kennedy,

they're doing everything they can to protect civilians. And then they quote, they quote from this country that's doing everything they can to protect civilians. So here's one quote, there are many, there's a long list, human rights watch quotes. Here's one from a senior Israeli official in the civil administration. He says, this is from November 4th, whoever returns to Gaza, if they return here, if they return here, will find scorched earth, no houses, no agriculture, no nothing.

They have no future. Yes, Mr. Kennedy. Yes, Mr. Kennedy. They're doing everything in their power not to kill civilians. They're very discriminating. Whoever returns here will find scorched earth, no houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future. Wow. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of

Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now.

Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.

But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Norm, what about the claim that he made about Egypt? Okay, I was just, I'm going to get to the second and I'll get to the Egypt. Sure. The second was that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

There's no dispute about that among international lawyers or international organizations. Even Israel's senior expert in international law, who's very conservative, Yeram Dinsti, he said Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza. It controls everything. It controls who goes in, who goes out, what goes in, what goes out. It controls the population registry, who qualifies as being a Gazan. It controls the waterways. It controls the airspace. It controls the water. Just for your listeners, just for your listeners, I just want them to know what it meant, what it meant for the people of Gaza. What this blockade of Gaza meant when Israel no longer controlled it.

It's not an occupying power, says the lawyer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So at certain points, here is a partial list of the things Israelerves, nuts, biscuits, potato chips, musical instruments, notebooks, writing implements, toys, chicks, and goats. But Gaza's a free country. Israel left, says Robert Kennedy. Israel doesn't occupy Gaza. There was a point where Israel put on people of Gaza a humanitarian minimum of calories. Humanitarian minimum of calories. That means they put the people of Gaza on a starvation plus diet

But they have no responsibility What's going on in Gaza they withdrew the occupation is over as I said as far as I know no international organization or international law specialist claims that the occupation ended when Israel, what Israel did was very simple. Anybody can understand it.

A child can understand it. Israel got tired of policing Gaza because they said there's no future here. We have 8,000 settlers. There are 2 million Arabs here. So we're never going to get rid of these Arabs. And we'll never be able to do what we hope to do in the West Bank, you know, change the balance of population. So just forget it. So you know what they did?

So there are things like in Gaza, Gazans couldn't go to the beach. Okay. So they said, we'll throw the keys in the jail cells and let them out of the jail cells. Okay. And then they withdrew from the jail or the prison. They withdrew from the prison, slammed shut the gates, and then encircled the whole prison. Okay? Now, yes, the prisoners had more freedom of movement.

I'm not going to deny that. They now could go to the beach. It's true. But they can't go anywhere else. They can't go out. Nothing can come in. Jam, chocolate, nutmeg, sage, coriander. Would anyone in his or her right mind describing that as Israel left Gaza?

What they did was they encircled it. They didn't leave Gaza. I'll just give you an example. People don't like to hear my examples. Unfortunately, my examples don't come from my head. They come from the Israeli heads. Okay? So the head of Israel's National Security Council, his name is Giora, was, not now, was Giora Aylan. You can Google it. Just go right now. Go in front of your computer. Just Google G-I-O-R-A and then

the last name, E-I-L-A-N-D and then enter March 2004. March 2004. And the document's going to come up, the first choice. The first one is Gaza the Ruin. Gaza is a huge concentration camp.

Right. Deora Island, if you look at it, it's item number 12 in this memorandum. He was the head of the National Security Council, okay, of Israel. The equivalent of our James Burns, the current head of the CIA. So in 2004, 2004, this is before the blockade, before the blockade. If you go to that item, he describes Gaza as, quote, a huge concentration camp. A huge concentration camp. And then you hear people saying, there's this young man who I got into a long correspondence with. I'm not going to name him because I don't want to resume that correspondence.

He keeps saying Gaza is a developing country. Developing country. Nothing can come in, nothing can go out. It's a huge concentration camp. It's before the blockade. He described it, Giora Island, as such. So we can dispose of that issue whether or not Gaza remains occupied.

Let's go to the third question. Now, I'll tell you, I admit, and maybe this, I struggle between my political side and my humanitarian side. Now, under international law, Egypt is a sovereign country and has the right to decide who comes in and who goes out.

It's called immigration and immigration. Well, they don't have the right to decide who goes out, but they have the right to decide who comes in. And there is an entry point, the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza. Now, Egypt's position, I don't defend the Egyptian government. Sisi's a monster. He came to power in the military coup, and the course of that coup, he committed the largest massacre of Egyptians in Egyptian history, the, well, I can't remember now. They'll come back to me.

In any case, killed at least 1,000, maybe as many as 2,000 nonviolent protesters to get into power. So I'm making no brief for Mr. Sisi. Right. However, there is a real problem here. The problem is, and I admit, it's a moral dilemma. Once you leave Gaza, you're not coming back. It's over. We know that from Israel's history.

We know that from the refugees in 1948. We know that from the refugees in 1967. Once you're out, it's goodbye. Egypt doesn't want to help Israel, assist Israel in committing an ethnic cleansing. So now you have really, I consider it, it is a dilemma. On the one hand, people are being starved to death. They're being murdered from the skies. And they need refuge. On the other hand, it's a permanent refuge. And so Egypt says it won't facilitate, it won't abet, it won't assist Israel in its ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

What do you do? On the one hand, I say, oh, f politics. These people are being killed. These people are being murdered. Let them go. You know? But on the other hand, do you want to wittingly and unwittingly, because it's at the same time, wittingly and willfully and unwillfully assist Israel in ethnic cleansing? I don't think that's an easy question. I don't have an answer to that. Am I going to start demanding that Egypt open its border and let all the people of Gaza pour into the Sinai Desert? No, actually, if I had a choice, I would rather demand that Israel stop committing genocide. Rather than saying, open up, Rafah, I'll say, stop committing the genocide.

If I had to choose between the two. And let's be clear about it. Professor Chomsky would always distinguish him and his analyses of any world situation was he did basically what you did when you talked with Robert Kennedy, because you were insisting because he kept trying to insinuate you're an anti-Semite, why are you focusing on Israel? And you kept replying because we're paying for the whole thing. And Professor Chomsky would always come back to, it's our responsibility because we're making it happen.

Now, let's be clear, and I don't want there to be any doubt about it. As a factual matter, the whole thing would end if the United States, if Mr. Biden picked up the phone right now and said stop, it would be all over. It wouldn't last one second more. If Biden said stop, remember, Israel's dependent on our arms. And right now its economy has become dysfunctional because there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers who are fighting. Or they're not really fighting, they're committing a massacre, a genocide.

Whose Israeli society would cease to supporting the ceasefire. So the whole thing couldn't happen without the U.S., literally. Biden said you have to pretend that you're doing some humanitarian gestures, you know, 1140 trucks. Immediately they did it. Immediately they did it. They knew they had no choice. So if you ask me, if I had a choice, just let me finish, and of course I want to hear you. If I have a choice between advocating Egypt open up route for Crossing and saying Biden stop the genocide, because it is his genocide. It is his genocide. And Bernie, you know, is coming pretty close. It's too late. It's too late. Or I should say, it's too little, but it's never too late. You have to be clear

about that. Half the population is now starving. So if it were to end tomorrow, and if Bernie has joined the bandwagon, it has to end tomorrow, then it's not too late. He has 5,000 children's deaths to account for, because there was only, I think it was five or six thousand when he started to change his tune. And now, you know, he's going for congressional legislation to restrict, you know, he's not been dead. You know, I have to be attentive to facts and I have to recognize, you know, he changed. I think it was unbearable for him because he was all these young people saying how he let them down. And, you know, people have egos.

And he was the hope of a generation. He was the hope of a generation. And he became an abomination. And you can imagine his children and his grandchildren. Daddy, Grandpa, why are you opposing a ceasefire? You know, and he couldn't, obviously it's very hard to plumb the human mind. And so what's the point of being a psychoanalyst from afar? Yeah. I think for a while people could kind of like fantasize that maybe there was some more ethical targeting

of Hamas that was on the table. But at a certain point when you see the numbers, I mean, very quickly and just knowing that it's the Netanyahu government, knowing, you know, any of the history you could immediately see that was never some targeted, you know, raid to just take out a few top Hamas leaders and try to win over the civilian population. That was, it was never going to be, that was never on the table as a response to what happened on October 7th. I, now that you brought that up, you know, people act, I don't fault them. You know, I devoted the whole of my adult life to this against my will i never knew what i was getting into you know wars begin and wars end and then you figure you'll move on

yeah i got involved in 1982 who would think that would consume my entire adult life wow and um so i can understand people not knowing all the facts. How would they? It took me intensive study 24-7, 365 to learn the facts. So I'm not faulting anyone. I'm just saying it's a factual matter. Let's say this whole thing that came up with Israel fighting, firing, killing three civilians who were carrying white flags. And everyone's shocked.

And then I posted on my website, in 2009, Human Rights Watch put out a report right after Operation Cast Lit between December 27th and January, December 27th, 2008 and January 17th, 2009. And the report was entitled White Flag Killings. It's always shoots people with white flags. There's nothing new there. Right, Right. It's not like it was what's new is they killed Israelis. Right. That's why people paid attention. Exactly. It always shoots people with white flags or shoots Palestinians with white flags. people say oh because of the special circumstances of what happened on october 7th it's enraged

israelis and it's uh it's because of that that they're acting carrying on this way so i would like to ask you let me check the time okay i would like to ask you uh turn to page of my g book, turn to page 2009. All right, in the Gaza book? Yes, it's table four. All right, here we go. I found it. Okay.

Table four, how Israel fought Operation Protective Edge, a selection of IDF testimony. Is that one? Yes. Now, I'd like you to bear in mind, before I ask you to read it, that these are soldiers who fought in Operation Protective Edge before October 7th.

We're talking about 2014. OK, ordinary soldiers are not peaceniks. Right. You'll see, except for one, there are no apologies, no feelings of remorse. They're just matter of factly describing what they did in Gaza, okay? Now, I'm just going to ask you to read down, skip the numbers, because that's just the page numbers, and for each different testimony, just do this, because it'll be easier for the listener. Just go soldier, and then read a testimony. Soldier, read another testimony, just read them for the

listeners. Okay. So soldier, when we left after the operation, it was just a barren stretch of desert. We spoke about it a lot amongst ourselves, the guys from the company, how crazy the amount of damage we did there was, I quote, listen, man, it's crazy what went on in there. Listen, man, we really messed them up. Fuck, check it out. There's nothing at all left. It's nothing but desert now. That's crazy. Next, soldier. I remember that the level of destruction looked insane to me.

Soldier, we entered Gaza with an insane amount of firepower. Soldier, it all looked like a sci-fi movie. Serious levels of destruction everywhere. Everything was really in ruins and nonstop fire all the time. Soldier, before the entrance on foot to the Gaza Strip, a crazy amount of artillery was fired at the entire area. Before a tank makes any movement, it fires every time. Those guys were trigger happy, totally crazy.

Do you want me to continue? Yes, yes. Soldier, the explosion's effects cause major amounts of damage, but that doesn't interest anyone. Use it, use it. Explosives can't be taken back, the platoon commander says. I don't want to leave explosives with me. Soldier, our view was of the center of the strip. Let's say it was a real fireworks display. From a distance, it looked pretty cool. If you look through a night vision scope, you saw crazy wreckage. It was a real fireworks display. From a distance, it looked pretty cool. If you look through a night vision scope, you saw crazy wreckage. It was a real trip.

Soldier, you're shooting at anything that moves and also at what isn't moving. Crazy amounts. It also becomes a bit like a computer game. Totally cool and real.

Soldier, it was total destruction in there. The photos online are child's play compared to what we saw there in reality. I never saw anything like it. Soldier, the... You get the idea yeah yeah no crystal you know i don't like to play the mother card because

fathers also care about their children yeah but as a mother this is what mowing the lawn meant in gaza this is what those kids who burst the gates of Gaza experienced every few years from that satanic state. That's what they experienced. That's what they underwent. This wasn't because of October 7th, what we're seeing now. Yes, it's in the higher scale because in the past, Israel just wanted to mow the lawn. Now it wants to extirpate, the fancy word for pull out by the roots. Now it wants to extirpate every blade of grass in Gaza before it just wanted to cut it down every few years. This is not because of October 7th. Any more than shooting people with white flags and bare chested has to do with October 7th.

That's Israel's modus operandi in Gaza. That's always been its modus operandi in Gaza. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself

outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship

is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Boy Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action.

And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.

Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, Norm, I really am grateful for your time, as always, and your patience in explaining things so people can have a sense of the history and a sense of the facts. Is there any of your books in particular you would recommend to folks to read at this time? Yeah, look, I don't like to make money off of the dead. So I'm always very careful about promoting myself. But there is an educational value. Of course. And so the Gaza book, that's the fruit of,

I started researching Gaza about, just focusing on Gaza about 2008. So it's the fruit of about 15 years just on Gaza. I never thought, I wrote the author, meaning myself. Actually, I'd rather you read it because I prefer you. You have a good reading voice. Page 355. The very last page. Right before the appendix.

355, you said? 365. 65, okay. Mm-hmm. That I am finding. Okay. You'll start from, it's around eight lines down. The author holds...

The author holds out fate hope that it will find an audience among his contemporaries. Still... This book will find an audience, yes. Still the truth should be preserved. It is the least that's owed the victims. Perhaps one day in the remote future, when the tenor of the times is more receptive, someone will stumble across this book collecting dust on a library shelf, blow off the cobwebs, and be stung by outrage at the lot of a people, if not forsaken by God,

then betrayed by the cupidity and corruption, careerism and cynicism, cravenness and cowardice of mortal man. There will come a time, Jackson anticipated, when to the student. Jackson was, just let me clarify. There was a woman named Helen Hunt Jackson, and she chronicled the destruction of the Native American people in the United States. And the book was called A Century of Dishonor. A wonderful book.

And so I'm referring back to her book when she describes what was done to the Native Americans in our country. And I say there will become a time. When to the student of American history, it will seem well nigh incredible what was done to the Cherokee. It is not certain that one day the black record of Gaza's... Is it not certain? Will seem well nigh incredible what was done to the Cherokee. Is it not certain that one day the black record of Gaza's martyrdom will, in retrospect, also seem well nigh incredible. Yeah, I never thought people would read the book.

It was a chronicle for the future. I never saw it as selling more than, you know, at most a couple thousand copies. That wasn't my goal. I felt that it was what Helen Hunt Jackson did. You know, there was a, after World War II, there was a famous book by two, I guess one, maybe both of them were Jewish. One was Ilya Ehrenberg, and I can't remember the other fellows.

It was called The Black Book of Nazism. And it just described, they were Russian, described what was done to the Russian people by the Nazis. It was a chronicle. A very fat book. Obviously not many people are going to go. And that's how I saw this book. And it was just totally

it was so strange because when October 7th happened, I had already moved on. I thought the whole situation was hopeless. And as you know, I started my book on cancel culture and other things. And I was very excited by that because I felt like, I know it's a horrible thing to say, but I felt like my mind had been emancipated, had been liberated.

Because for 40 years, I couldn't move. I had this feeling of, I'm the only one that's going to do this kind of research. I'm the only one that's going to read through all these human rights organization reports. I'm the only one that's going to show every lie, you know, because most people don't have that kind of patience. I have the discipline. I don't have a great mind, but I have a disciplined mind, which is to say I can focus and go through everything with a fine-tooth comb. And then all of a sudden, October 7th, it was like all of it became relevant again. I thought I was past it. And so when I recommend a book to people, it's not because I expect to make money.

I mean, I'm at that point in life where making money doesn't make much of a difference. But I do feel it has an educated value, and it's a horror. I mean, what has been done to the people of Gaza is simply beyond belief. But most people, you know, everything began October 7th. Yeah. Yeah. And so much of the history, there's so many lies that are just pervasive in American culture about the reality of the history and the details of what's actually unfolded. And you might say, well, that doesn't matter. You know, the past is the past. We just, like, focus on what's happening now and into the future. But I mean, one thing that really comes clear when you study this conflict at all is just how much getting the facts straight about the past matters for some kind of an eventual hopeful resolution. Dr. Norman Finkelstein, it's always

great to see you. Thank you so much again for spending time with us. Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity. I mean that. You know, you're serious. There's been a pattern, I have to say. I know people aren't going to like it. It's probably politically incorrect. But the female commentators, don't ask me why, whether it's Michaela Peterson, Candace Owens, yourself, Brianna Joy, great. They've just been much more, and I mean this in a very positive sense, they've just been much more humble.

They recognize, you know, well, we have a lot of things to cover, and so we don't have your depth of knowledge. And we'll listen. We'll listen. We'll ask questions, and we'll listen. And that's the common characteristic. You listen, you watch Candace Owens, whatever you think of her. I don't know anything about her because I don't watch her social media. It's not common characteristic. You listen, you watch Candace Owens, whatever you think of her. I don't know anything about her

because I don't watch her social media. It's not my thing. Or Michaela Peterson, who I never heard of. So, and beyond George Gray and yourself. So you listen, you take in, and then you see these guys. I know it's probably politically correct. You know, there's Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, there's Bill Maher, the, you know, I accept arrogance with people who are smart,

okay? No, I have to accept this guy knows what he's talking about, even though he's an arrogant son of a bitch. But this mixture of arrogance and complete stupidity, complete ignorance. It is an incredible combo, isn't it? Yeah. It's ridiculous blowhards. Acting as if they know anything. Bill Maher lecturing on Byzantium. So it's been especially gratifying to have interlocutors who show the humility. And obviously they have the knowledge. I mean, you were, as I said, you were very good with Robert Kennedy. I went and thought of that. They were good.

But still listen. You. But still listen. You know, still listen. And I don't demand that you agree with what I have to say, but a little humility. You have no clue what you're talking about. It's like me talking about particle physics. Okay, so, so, so nice to talk to you. Great to see you, Norm. Take care and happy holidays. You too. Have you ever thought about going voiceover?

I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.

Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves.

This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.