Factually! with Adam Conover - The Decimation of Gaza and What Happens Next with Rashid Khalidi

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Gaza has been decimated by atrocious violence. Since the war erupted in October, 1 in every 100 Palestinians has been killed, and nearly all of those who survive have been displaced. In order to imagine what could possibly happen next, we have to look back at a century of history leading up to this moment. This week, Adam is joined by Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East and Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, to discuss what led to the escalating violence in Gaza and what could possibly happen next. Find Rashid's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you for joining me on the show again. Since Israel declared war on Hamas, the Israeli government's bombardment of Gaza has killed nearly 24,000 Palestinians, 1% of the entire population there, one out of every 100 people. And at the same time, 1.9 million people, or 85% of the population of Gaza, has been displaced. A half a million people will have no home to return to when and if the war ends because the Israeli military has destroyed one-third of all of the buildings in Gaza. This violence is devastating and atrocious, and it's been hard for many of us to escape the sense that this is not a war on the political group Hamas, or not just a war on them, but also an attempt to displace and destroy an entire populace. As Americans, we need to look

squarely at the reality of what is happening in Gaza. And we have a special responsibility not just to understand it, but to speak up about it. Because it is our tax dollars that are paying for this war, even as countless organizations and nations demand a ceasefire. And it's just as crucial that we understand that the war that's happening today didn't come out of nowhere. It wasn't solely because of the horrific events of October 7th. It's also the product of a century of history, a history that is not beyond us to make sense of or understand or see clearly. So, here today to talk clearly and bluntly about not just what is happening in Gaza today, but what has been

happening in this region for a century. We have an amazing and distinguished guest on the show. Rashid Khalidi is a Palestinian-American historian and a professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia. He's the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and the author of many books, including his newest, The Hundred Years War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance. Please welcome Rashid Khalidi. Rashid, thank you so much for being on the show today. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. So as we're talking, it's January 12th. What is the state of Gaza right now,

after months of war by Israel there? The state of Gaza is a state of near famine. The state of Gaza is almost the entire population have been made homeless and are living in the southern, tiny southern area of the Gaza Strip. About 23,500 people have been killed and over 50,000 have been wounded. That's the state of Gaza. It's a state of complete misery. And I mean, is there, I almost don't know what to ask as a next question. Uh, like, is there any, uh, uh, reasonable, you know, military goal in causing that kind of devastation on the part of the, uh, you know, the Israeli army, first of all?

Well, the Israeli military said that it had three aims. One is to destroy Hamas. One is to save the hostages, the Israelis who were kidnapped, captured. And third was to make sure that Gaza is never a threat. And almost every analyst I've read says that the first is unrealizable. They certainly so far in the fourth month of this haven't rescued but one hostage. A hundred something were released, but in a hostage exchange, a prisoner hostage exchange. And I think the idea of destroying Hamas is a fantasy, as I think do most analysts. So they've certainly severely degraded the military capabilities of Hamas, but they have in the process immiserated over 2 million people and killed, as I've said, over 23,000

and wounded tens and tens of thousands of others. Could they have done it differently? The United States government says they could have, but hasn't tried to force them to do that. So that's an open question. So again, is there any reason then for, what possible reason could there be to cause this amount of devastation? If those three aims are unrealizable or aren't going to happen, why do this? I mean, I understand that many analysts said in the wake of October 7th, Israel had to do something. Why this? Yeah, I mean, there are multiple possible explanations. One of them is a desire for revenge, retaliation. So many civilians were

killed on the 7th, the largest Israeli civilian death toll in the country's history. And the Israeli military suffered one of its most humiliating defeats, not against a major army, against this supposedly ragtag force of Hamas. And so there was an enormous desire for revenge. And it could be that this is simply collective punishment. Now, obviously, Israel would deny that. They would say, this is because Hamas is hiding behind human shields, and so on and so forth. But at least the US military and the US government, and I'm no fan of this administration or its policy on this, have said this could be done in a more targeted way, going

after just the military without killing literally tens of thousands and wounding half 50,000 civilians. And I mean, I'm not a military person, but the level of devastation and the level of immiseration that's been caused is just, it's unprecedented, even in the urban wars of the Middle East, like Aleppo, like Mulsim, like Raqqa over the past 20 odd years. And I mean, let's just focus a little bit on that immiseration for a little bit longer because it's very easy to get into the geopolitics of it. But I mean, where, you know, a huge number of homes have been destroyed. There's widespread famine. I mean, what is the potential future for the people living in Gaza? Is this a city that is even livable? Say the war were to end today or in

three months or whenever it's going to end. There's millions of people living in rubble. What happens next? Well, I mean, you have to go back again to the beginning, because if you look at what Israeli leaders said at the time, they intended to make, they said they intended to make Gaza unlivable from the defense ministers down the chain of command. And they've done that. And so it is now unlivable. For people to live there, you're going to have to have temporary housing and eventually rebuilding. And that's going to take months in the first instance for temporary housing and years for the rebuilding process. I think that the other thing to say is that this immiseration was not an act of God. It was a decision of the Israeli military. When the Israeli defense minister said, we will not allow water in, we will not allow food in, we will not allow fuel in, he was saying, we are going to cause mass suffering. And they have done that. Now, the Israelis continue to argue, oh no, we're allowing things in and so on and so forth. The quantity of goods that are let in is about a fifth of what Gaza normally brings in every day. So that is not the case. Whatever the reason for

it is, and I would argue it's Israeli restrictions, certainly. The Israelis argue it's the United Nations is incompetent and the relief agencies are incompetent. I think it's intentional. They said they were going to do it and they've done it. And now they say, no, no, we never intended to do it. So the misery is the result of human decisions, essentially made by the Israeli government, possibly also the ineptitude of the Egyptians and the relief agencies. But I doubt that that's the main problem. How these people are later on housed and go back to work, I mean, this is a question that there's really no immediate answer to. People can't go back to work unless there's a security and governance framework, and there's

no agreement on that. The Israeli government isn't agreed on what it wants, let alone has it come to terms with the United States, let alone has it come to terms with the Palestinians themselves, who of course should be not just consulted, but make the major decisions on this. Yeah. I mean, there was news recently, I saw that, you know, the Biden administration was telling the, you know, the PLO to get ready to take power in a future state. And the whole thing seemed somewhat ludicrous, like, you know, take power over what, in what circumstance? And it's just, it sort of boggles the mind to imagine what the future is going to be there. Well, there's three things. The first thing is that this Israeli government does not want the Palestinians to be unified, does not want the PA or any Palestinian authority to be in charge of both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Netanyahu government has worked

for years and years and years to keep the West Bank and the Gaza Strip separated so they can argue, there's nobody to negotiate with. They're divided. And in fact, Netanyahu is reported to have said, the reason we support Hamas, i.e. the reason we allow money from Qatar into Gaza to support this government is to keep them divided. So the first thing is, the Israeli government does not want any kind of unified Palestinian governance over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, because that would defeat an aim of Israel, which is divide and conquer. And that would force the Israelis to come to terms with the fact that they have to negotiate with the Palestinians, which Netanyahu, his government, and what was a majority even before October 7th, do not want to do. The second problem is the Palestinians are divided. I mean, you can blame the Israelis as

much as you want, but this is a Palestinian problem. The Palestinian problem is the Palestinians are divided. I mean, you can blame the Israelis as much as you want, but this is a Palestinian problem. The Palestinian house is divided mainly because of Palestinian decisions, Palestinian foolishness, Palestinian selfishness, and the narrow political calculations of the different factions involved. And because external actors also interfere and try and keep the Palestinians separate. And unless and until the Palestinians can manage to unify their national movement and clarify what they want, you have a Palestinian side of the problem. The final problem is the United States. The United States talks sometimes a good game, and it doesn't do a damn thing. I mean, they will not insist, for example, that Israel end its occupation. Well, how are you going to end this if you don't end Israeli occupation, which has been going on now for 56 years?

So three generations have grown up under the boot heel of the Israeli military. And of course, that has caused a problem. Anybody who doesn't see that is blind and doesn't want to see. I mean, thank you for that. I will say, first of all, that, you know, the Palestinians are divided. It's hard to find unity when you're in the middle of being bombed. And also, you know, a political division is endemic to all human societies. It's a little difficult to say, hey, we could solve these problems if everyone would just agree. You

could say that about literally any democracy or frankly, any government on planet Earth that, you know, there's there's division and, oh, gee, wouldn't it be great if they could unify? That doesn't mean that, you know that you deserve to be bombed. You're absolutely right. But these divisions go back before this war. So the Palestinians are being bombed now, and obviously it's hard for them to get their act together in these circumstances. But this is a longstanding problem.

And you're also right. I mean, all kinds of societies are divided. Heaven knows our society is deeply divided over almost everything. The problem with the Palestinians is they don't have a consensus on what their national objective is. And they're in a situation where they really are in dire need of a clear strategic objective. Do they want to have a two-state solution with Israel, which was the PLO's position and still is actually? Or do they believe that they want to fight until they get a better deal of one-state solution, which everybody's an equal citizen or whatever, or a confederal solution or a binational solution? It's not clear at this stage what the majority wants. if not unanimity, at least some kind of consensus and a unified national movement. It's very hard for for the Palestinians to negotiate. The Israelis are divided, but they have elected government.

We know what the address is. The address is the Israeli government. We have a divided society. As of this moment in time, President Biden is the president. So the Palestinians don't really have that. And that's what they don't. They don't have a they don't have a clear leadership, which is again what, what makes it so strange to see the Biden administration go, hey, you guys should get ready to be the leader now. Well, is that leader going to have legitimacy? Are they going to be leader in anything other but name, et cetera? Right. Let's start.

Let's go back a little bit. How do you place these events into the history of the conflict in this region and the history of occupation and all that. Let's start talking about your view of that. Well, I mean, first of all, occupation has a lot to do with this. But we just say the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem and also the Golan Heights that started in 1967. So you've had a population in those areas that have lived under Israeli military rule. The Gaza Strip has been, sorry, the Golan Heights have been annexed. East Jerusalem has been annexed, but they're under military rule.

And that is part of the problem. But the problem actually goes back further than that, because the population of the Gaza Strip, most of them are not originally from the Gaza Strip. There are people in Gaza City. The population of the Gaza Strip, most of them are not originally from the Gaza Strip. There are people in Gaza City, I have relatives who are Gazans. They're great, great, great grandparents, lived in Gaza. But the overwhelming majority of the population of the Gaza Strip are the descendants of people who were driven there in 1948 from the areas of southern Palestine, which became Israel. Cities like Ashkelon today was called Askelan before. Ashdod was Asdod and so on and so forth.

So those people are actually the refugees and the descendants of refugees. And that's the beginning of the problem. The Gaza Strip is not a natural entity. There was no such thing before 1948 as the Gaza Strip. So you can go back to 48, you can go back, in my book, The Hundred Years War, I go back to the Balfour Declaration and the British and all that they did to enable the Zionist project and to make the creation of Israel in a country that was overwhelmingly Arab right up to 1948 to make that possible. So there are various starting points you can look at the beginning of nationalism. Zionism is a modern national movement. Arab nationalism is a modern movement too. So those ideas didn't exist 150, 200 years ago. The idea of a Jewish state in Palestine or the idea of a Palestinian state did not exist. The great, great, great grandparents of all Israelis and all Palestinians didn't think the way that Palestinians and Israelis think today in terms of, you know, national identity. So you can go back, it depends on how far you want to go back. I would certainly go back to 67. And I would certainly go back to 1948 and say, the conditions we see now, in large measure were created as a

result of those two, you know, cataclysmic events in Palestinian and Israeli history. And I mean, you know, for those who are not as well versed in the history, what, what were those events? And what was what were the mistakes that were made? Like if we laid the seeds for what's happening now back then, which is what it certainly looks like, you know, what what exactly happened that caused this to occur now? I mean, the core issue is an attempt to create a majority Jewish state in a majority Arab land. And very few people want to confront what trying to do that necessitates. It necessitates ethnic cleansing. You can't have a Jewish majority unless you have immigration of millions of people, which simply didn't happen before 1948, without removing the Arab population.

And you go right back to the beginnings of Zionism, and some Zionist leaders were completely clear on that. Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, says, we will spirit the populist population discreetly across the frontiers. In other words, we have to get rid of them. Others were more brutal in their understanding. They talked about transfer, expulsion, and so on and so forth. And that's what actually happened. In 1948, when the UN partitioned Palestine, 47 was the partition that turned into a war in 48, 65% of the population were Arab. How do you create a Jewish state in a country that's two-thirds Arab? Well, you have to move the Arabs. And that's what Israel did. It expelled about three-quarters of the million Palestinians from what then became Israel. And you can talk about mistakes made at

the time of partition. You can talk about decisions made at the time of the 1948 war, all of which contribute to where we are today. And you can say the same thing about 67. I mean, 350,000 or 300,000 Palestinians are expelled by Israel when it occupies the West Bank and Gaza. And so there again, you're creating another level of problem. People who are dispossessed, people who lose their homes and so forth, and people who are angry as a result. I mean, the idea that these are just Arabs and they will melt into the surrounding Arab countries is a fantasy. Yeah. They were people who had roots and they're people who had a connection. And the fact that they do is shown by the fact that Palestine is all over, whether they're in Jordan or they're in Chicago or in Chile, feel a connection to Palestine. Today, 75 years after 1948.

You know, I do want to say I have, you know, many Jewish friends. I read a lot of writing by Jewish writers. I understand the, you know, sort of sincere connection to Israel and to the area that those folks have and the sincere wish for, you know, a home for that period from 1948 to 1967 and thereon that could have gone better in your view? Was there a way to create that state or create a society in that region that would have served that sincere, honorable wish without creating such misery and without creating this sort of untenable situation that we have. I mean, there were different visions of Zionism.

There was a group in the mandate period in the 30s and 40s called Brit Shalom, which talked about some kind of binational solution. But they never ended up being the majority. The majority wanted a Jewish state with a Jewish majority. And you can't create a Jewish majority in a majority-hour country without some real demographic engineering, without some ethnic cleansing. So yes, it could have gone differently. And it still could go differently. I mean, you could have some kind of partition that's just, I don't know how you could do it today, given some of the developments that have transpired in the intro. And you could also have a setup, a binational or a cantonal or a confederal or whatever state where both people

have equal rights. I mean, I think the important thing is to come to an outcome, come to a resolution where both people have equal rights and individuals of both groups have equal rights. And there's now a, I mean, there's Israeli people and there is a Palestinian people and they have national aspirations. So how do you bring those two things together, either in a single state or in an equitable form of partition? And neither of those is going to be easy, especially after all the blood that's been shed even before the war that started in October. I mean, I feel like a lot of times when I talk to people about this war and what's happening, they say, well, what should happen? I mean, what do you think should happen? You know? And I sort

of, my perspective as someone who is not an expert in the region is like, I don't fucking know, man, this is the horror of humanity. You know, this is like, uh, this is, you know, one of the worst, uh, conflicts with the, with one of the most horrible histories that we have on the planet. And I don't know, there's a lot of, we're in for misery and I can decry the misery without, you know, me having to come up with a solution. You, however, as much more of an expert, like, do you see, like, you know, if you arrange the dominoes properly, we do X, we do Y, we do Z, is there, you Is there a solution to creating a state that makes sense to you? And is there any chance of us actually taking the steps towards it? Or are we just doomed for another

couple of decades of this? I don't know. I'm a historian by training. The job description of a historian does not include predicting the future. I don't know how the hell you get to the outcome that I would like to see. I would like to see an outcome of equal rights. And I personally don't give a hoot in hell, whether that involves one state or two states or confederation or cantons, I really don't care. I'm not that much of a nationalist that I'm obsessed with the idea of national sovereignty. But anybody who looks at reality says, these people have national aspirations, whether you're talking about Israelis or you're talking about Palestinians. But those things have to be squared in a way that one people's rights are not exercised at the expense of another people's rights, which is the current

situation, which has been the status quo ever since 1948. One people has established an independent sovereign state at the expense of the rights of another people. And the situation has to involve, so rights are part of it. And I don't know how you get there. I'm just saying, this is the building blocks. And the other thing is security. Right now, the idea of security essentially means Israel will have security if necessary, and in fact, necessarily at the expense of the security of the Palestinians. Neither of those things is sustainable. You can't say my rights are absolute and your rights are curtailed in order for me to have my rights. Ain't going to work. It's not going to work. It's going to create violence and conflict. And you can't say, I want absolute security, which requires that you be quarantined and checked

and imprisoned and under my control. You can't have security at the expense of the security of another group. It's not security. It's insecurity, actually. What Israel has created for itself is a situation of insecurity by the way in which it's dealt with the Palestinians. Now, you can talk about the Palestinians until the cows come home, but the Palestinians are the weaker party here. And the Palestinians are the ones who never have had independent statehood sovereignty and also have aspirations just like the Israelis. And also they want to live in peace and security. It's not just the Israelis who have a right to peace and security. So those are the elements I see. Now, how you get there, I have no idea.

But that's an important principle. And a lot of times when you read justifications for what's happening, the underlying logic of the justification, oh, well, the Palestinians did this and don't you know what they did then? The justification is always, oh, because of what happened in the past, the people today do not deserve security in the same way that the Israelis do. And it's just very obvious that that's the argument that's being made. I agree with you that it's unsustainable. It doesn't, I mean, I don't even understand from a practical basis the current strategy that Israel is using in the war.

Because after you have, you know, made a few million people homeless, they're still there, right? Like, what the fuck are you going to do with the millions of people? Like, you can't send them to another country. You can't kill them all. That's obviously an abomination. And so what are you going to do

with these millions of people who are- I honestly think, I mean, those are the right questions. And I honestly don't think that Israeli politicians and generals are facing those questions. I think that Israel reacted, the Israeli government and the Israeli military reacted out of rage and anger and pain, suffering and humiliation. Yes. The army was humiliated. The government was humiliated.

Everything that the Netanyahu government had done sustaining Hamas in the Gaza Strip obviously proves to be a terrible mistake. So there was a huge overreaction. And I don't think there was any thought about the kinds of things you're talking about. In fact, I'm loathe to quote any American government official, but Secretary of Defense Austin, who has some experience in these matters, said, you cannot win strategically by harming civilians. You do these things to civilians and you may win a tactical victory and you'll have a strategic defeat. And he knows where he speaks because the guy was involved in the war in Iraq, the retaking of Mosul from the

Islamic State. He's no fool. I'm not sure that that logic has fully penetrated either the Israeli government or the Israeli military, because I don't see a strategy in what Israel is doing that leads to any kind of, even a satisfactory outcome for the Israelis. And I'd say one more thing. You said, you know, if you could kill them all, or if you could get rid of them, you know, get them out, then maybe that would, you know, at least that's a clear result. I do believe that at the beginning of this war, there was an intention to expel as many as possible of the people of Gaza from the Gaza Strip into Egypt. We know this from Blinken's diplomacy with the Egyptians and the Jordanians and the Saudis in the first week of the war.

We know this from statements by Israeli government officials. And the fact that the Egyptians and the Jordanians and the Saudis in the first week of the war. We know this from statements by Israeli government officials. And the fact that the Egyptians and the Jordanians and the Saudis stonewalled that, I mean, they just rejected it flatly. They were clearly outraged. And the Egyptians have been fulminating about this ever since. We will not, under any circumstances, allow Israel to expel the Palestinians into the Sinai Peninsula, indicates that this was at least a possible objective of Israel at the outset. And the United States went along. I mean, if you look at the request for funding from Congress for the Ukraine-Israel arms, 14-something billion, 11-something billion dollars, it includes a request for money for people to be taken care

of outside of Gaza. I have the language right here. I can read it to you. That's the October 20th Office of Management and Budget request to Congress, which is today, still before Congress. The United States was going along with this crazy idea of dumping Palestinians from the Gaza Strip into Egypt. It was only the rejection, the absolute, utter categorical rejection of the Egyptians and the Jordanians of these ideas that forced the Israelis and the Americans to move to plan B. And God knows what plan B is, because I agree with you. It's not clear. What is their objective? So it sounds like then, I was going to ask you this, but I feel like you've already answered it. When you're talking about the events of the middle part of the last century,

there was a deliberate effort to remove the Palestinian population from large swaths and push them into smaller parts of the country, Gaza and et cetera. Or out of the country. Or out of the country entirely. Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. Yeah, exactly. So that those areas could be used for the majority Jewish Israeli state. My question was going to be, if you feel that the current military exercise has at least partially the same goal of continuing that project of, as you say, ethnic cleansing, do you think that's the case? Well, the Israelis have yet to accept allowing the return of the million plus people whom they drove out of the northern part of the Gaza Strip back to their homes.

The United States has been pressing for that. It said you have to allow these people out of this bottled up situation of a million and a half, two million refugees in the southwestern corner of this 20 by five mile area to their homes. The Israelis have yet to accept that. So what they decide they want to do in terms of disposing of the northern part of the Gaza Strip is not clear. Do they want to keep it empty of population? We don't know. They're not saying. So part of the problem is Israel has created for itself a set of dilemmas, which have to do also with the political survival of the Netanyahu government. And until those things work themselves out, we don't even know what they want. I mean, the blanket has been going back and forth to the Middle East, trying to extract

from the Israeli government, what is your end game? What is your day after scenario? And they will not say. They may not have one. I don't think they have one. what is your end game? What is your day after scenario? And they will not say. They may not have one. I don't think they have one. I think they're deeply divided on what, I mean, the right wing wants to resettle the Gaza Strip, put Jewish settlements there and push the Palestinians either into a tiny quarter of the Strip or ideally out of the Strip. And you have Israeli ministers who say that. I mean, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and all of the right-wing members of Knesset are

expressly talking about resettling the Gaza Strip with Israeli colonies, as was the case until 2005. There were a half dozen or more Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, and keeping the Palestinians out of that part of the Gaza Strip. So that's part of the governing coalition. And then the other part and the opposition presumably have different ideas. So I think you're right. I don't think these Israelis have a clear idea of what they want, or at least they haven't agreed on what they want. You use the phrase colonies. It makes me wonder. There have been a lot of confusing takes. I've seen a lot of back and forth about whether Israel is or is not a settler colonial state. Is that an important term to use? And if so, what are the components that would make it that or not? And why is it

important? Well, I mean, if you go back to history, and I know a lot of people are reluctant to do that, the early Zionists understood that what they were doing was both a return to Zion, but a European colonial project supported by European imperial powers. Herzl goes around to Germany and France and the Ottoman Empire to try and get support for this colonization. They talk about it as colonization. The agency that buys a lot of the land is the Jewish colonization agency. This isn't some fanatical Arab anti-Semites description of what they're doing. This is their description of what they themselves are doing. So, you know, is it a colonial enterprise in their view? Yes. Was it a colonial enterprise

objectively? Yes. Did they have a claim there, a biblical claim and so on? Did they have a legal claim from the Balfour Declaration and the mandate? Yes. But it was a settler colonial project. The problem is it was out of time. In other words, if you'd done something like this in 1800, it might have worked. You push the population out. You do what you did in North America. You do what you did in Australia. You do what the French tried to do in Algeria, and maybe it sticks.

But in the 20th century, a little bit of a problem. They end up trying to do this in the era of decolonization, when the imperial powers are withdrawing from the colonized world. And so, of course, Israel has beautifully camouflaged all this. Israel portrays itself as an anti-colonial power. Why? Because they fought the British for a couple of years. When the British changed their policy in 1939, there was a war between the Zionist movement and the British, and they blew up the King David Hotel. They killed 90 British and other officials. They assassinated the British representative in Cairo in 1944, Lloyd Moyne. So for a brief period,

when the British didn't do what they wanted, they turned against the British and found other external patrons. And I think that's the other element of this. It has a colonial aspect in that the project wouldn't have worked without the British in the first instance, and then without the United States and other countries more recently. Every shell they're firing from their 155 millimeter guns and from their Merkava tanks was shipped in the last two months by the United States. They don't make this, they cannot wage this war without the United States. And Israel couldn't have been created in 1948 without the United States.

Israel wouldn't have won its wars without the United States. So there is that element where Israel is a, and not more than just an ally, a protege, whatever you want to call it, of the Western powers, as the Zionist project was at the beginning with the British as their patron. So there are all of these allies. Finally, look at the West Bank today. I mean, what do you see? You see settlers who, of course, claim a biblical right. This is our land. God gave this land to us. And we are the only ones who have rights here. And if these people are here, they're here on sufferance because we allow them to be. And if they raise their heads, we'll get... And Smotrich actually put the man who's today finance minister

within the car, Israeli government, actually put out a plan in which he said, if they don't like it, we'll kill them or we can get rid of them. Or they can accept second-class status under Israeli sovereignty and Israeli supremacy and so on and so forth. And the process is clearly a colonial process if you look at what is actually happening every day in the West Bank. So I think that that's an aspect, though. Now, is Israel like every other settler colony? No. Most other settler colonies were extensions of the population and the sovereignty of the mother country. There were Brits sent out by Britain to colonize North America.

The Zionists had a national project. So they're both a settler colonial project and a national project and an independent national project. They weren't English people or British people with financial support from Britain. They were Jews from all over the world persecuted in Eastern Europe in particular with a national ambition because they felt they couldn't live in Europe anymore because of persistent century old European antisemitism, but who allied themselves. It was a marriage of convenience with British imperialism. So it's completely different than any other settler colonial project. I mean, you look at Northern Ireland. England was sending English and Scots people into Ireland as an extension of England, not to set up their own, you know, Ulster land.

Whereas Israel is a creation of the Zionist movement. I mean, it has its own national, its own independent origin. So it's unusual and unique in that respect. This history is so fascinating and you're really clarifying how it led us to this moment. I want to ask you about some of the other political actors here that we've talked about, specifically the United States and Hamas, but we have to really quick break. We'll be right back with more Rashid Khalidi. Okay. We're back with Rashid Khalidi. I want to ask about Hamas, which we have not discussed that much in this conversation. What did they, if anything, hope to gain on October 7th? would be bad to provoke an attack that would cause all of your people nearly to become homeless and cause, you know, the entire city to be essentially destroyed. Right. So what you spoke about

factionalism among the various Palestinian ruling groups. What, in your view, explains this attack? And did they actually accomplish something that they were trying to? Or was this an enormous miscalculation? It's going to annoy some of your listeners, but I'm going to go back to the founding of Hamas in the late 1980s. No, please do. That's wonderful. You know, Hamas is established in 1987 at a time when the PLO is moving in the direction

of a two-state solution, renunciation of violence, and a negotiated cell. a two-state solution, renunciation of violence, and a negotiated settlement. And Hamas says, you are betraying both the means that everybody has said was the means of liberation of Palestine, which is armed struggle, and you're abandoning the idea of liberating all of Palestine. And we're going to pick up that torch that you all are dropping. So Hamas, which is an Islamist movement, grew up in the Gaza Strip originally. That's one reason it's so strong in the Gaza Strip. That's where it came from. With, incidentally, at the very outset, the support of Israeli military intelligence, which decided that let's divide up the Palestinians. Let's support the Islamists as a means of weakening the secular PLO,

which is our real enemy, our main enemy. And that continues even a little bit after the founding of Hamas. And that's an approach that much, much later, Benjamin Netanyahu picks up again in the 2000s of supporting Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority, the PLO. Why did they see, let me just ask you quickly, and forgive my ignorance, why did they see the PLO as their real enemy when Hamas, you know, even at the time, was a more extreme group? Well, because first of all, Hamas was tiny. I mean, nobody expected it would develop in 1987.

We're talking about the Islamic movement before the founding of Hamas, and Hamas in its first couple of years. They could see that it was more extreme. But at that point, Israel didn't recognize it. It didn't accept the idea of negotiation with the Palestinians. The first Israeli leader to accept it is after 1992, Prime Minister Rabin. You're talking about at that stage, you're talking about the Shamir government and before

the Begin government, and even before that, Golda Meir's government, all of which are resolute opponents of the PLO and of the idea of negotiating with the Palestinians. So in any case, PLO comes along, has finally decided it's going to accept partition, two-state solution, renunciation of violence, negotiations, and the Hamas sets itself up as the opposition to that. And they become more successful because of the failures of the PLO in negotiating with Israel. I was an advisor to the Palestinian delegation that went to Madrid and that later on negotiated for almost two and a half years in Washington, right up to the summer of 1993. And what we all realized was that a Palestinian state is not on offer. The Americans and the Israelis don't have that in mind. They have some kind of Palestinian autonomous Bantustan under Israeli control. And with Israel, the only real Samaritan in this picture.

Washington were never, we recommended against accepting it. And Arafat then decided to go directly to the Israelis and Rabin reciprocated. And Rabin made several big concessions. He said, the Palestinians are a people which no Israeli leader had ever said. He said, the PLO represents the Palestinians, which no Israeli leader had ever said. And he said, I will negotiate with the PLO. And he ends up shaking hands with Arafat on the White House lawn in September of 1993. The problem is Hamas gets stronger because the PLO fails to establish a two-state solution. The PLO fails to negotiate with Israel. The PLO fails after renouncing armed struggle. And Hamas picks that up. They carry out suicide bombings in the mid-90s.

And they do the same thing again during the Second Intifada of 2000, 2005. And they do the same thing again during the second Intifada 2000, 2005. And so they grow as a function of the weaknessth of October. Yeah. So that's the background. They say, we are the ones engaged in resistance. Negotiations gets you nothing. You guys have just ended up under complete Israeli control on the West Bank, which is actually true. The PLO are appeasers, and we need to return to struggle. Exactly. They never renounced armed struggle, which the PLO did.

And they accepted for a while a deal whereby they were governing the Gaza Strip. They never stopped carrying out attacks, but they limited. And the Netanyahu government was perfectly happy with that outcome. They thought, we've pacified these guys. We've divided up the PLO because they're divided. There's nobody to talk to. There actually was a war fought in 2021 or 2022, where Islamic Jihad, another militant armed resistance faction, carried out attacks. And when Israel attacked or counterattacked or retaliated against Islamic Jihad, Hamas did nothing. And so the Israelis said, ah, it's worked. We've pacified them. Well, turns out they hadn't. And at some stage, they seem to have come to a decision that being pacified is not going to work. It's not going to lead to... First of all, it makes us look stupid. What are you just... You're a government... People were saying this. You're a government in the Gaza Strip that's no different from the Palestinian Authority.

You're basically working as security subcontractors for Israeli occupation and Israeli settlement, which, you know, occupation continues forever. Control of Gaza from without, occupation from without, and control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem through direct military rule. And, you know, you guys are appeasers, you've used the right term. You guys are appeasers just like the PA.

So at some stage, because Israel was pretty happy with the situation before October 7th, we've, they felt they had pacified Hamas. Okay. We've got a lid on everything. Everything's going pretty fine. We don't need to move towards any sort of solution.

And so now Hamas is in the same position that the PLO was in a way where, holy shit, we're just stuck here. We need to like, we have. Yeah. I'm not in the mind of these the PLO was in a way where, holy shit, we're just stuck here. We need to, like we have, yeah. I'm not in the mind of these guys. I don't know exactly what they saw, but I know that they were coming under this criticism. And it's very clear that whether some Hamas leaders were happy with this, some clearly, I would argue probably the most influential ones inside the Gaza Strip were, and were

really preparing. I mean, what we see now is the degree of preparation, not just for their attack, but for their defense, as it were, their resistance against an Israeli occupation. They seem to have known what was coming. I mean, that's what these tunnels are for. They seem to have known what was coming. That's what these enormous stockpiles of weapons. I mean, the Israelis have uncovered tons, huge amounts of weapons. Clearly, there are lots more. There are attacks every day on Israeli troops. There's a dozen or a half dozen soldiers wounded every single day, according to Israel, what the Israeli military says.

So they seem to have prepared for this. Now, did they expect the level of success that they had? I don't think so. Did they expect the level of success that they had? I don't think so. I don't think they expected Israeli military resistance to collapse and that they would be able to flood into these border settlements the way that they did. I don't think they controlled the situation after that happened. I think all kinds of horrible things happened, partly because they had no idea that the Israeli

military would collapse like that. And finally, I don't know that they therefore expected quite the degree of ferocity of the Israeli response, which partly is a function of the number of civilian casualties, but I think was to be expected. So they were prepared for something, or they wouldn't still be fighting in the fourth month from Tawil and from wherever they are underground. But I think that they probably underestimated the Israeli. They underestimated their own success and they underestimated the Israeli response. So perhaps that's a guess. I don't I have no idea.

But perhaps they they intended to start some shit, but not nearly as much shit as ended up being started. Perhaps. I don't know. I personally, from the moment I saw what was going on, I expected all hell to break loose. So I don't, and I'm sitting in New York a lot. What do I know?

You would hope that they would have expected the same, but I don't know, maybe not. When you say that you think it's impossible to eradicate hamas uh why is that you know hamas is not just a military outfit i mean they have an enormously developed military capability obviously but they are a a set of ideas an ideology, a political organization, which exists all over the Palestinian world. They're not just in the Gaza Strip. There's a Hamas organization in the West Bank. The Israelis have arrested 2,000 or 1,500 people whom they claim are Hamas in the West Bank in the past three months.

And I bet they haven't rolled up everything. And there are people who support Hamas in Jordan and in Lebanon among Palestinian communities. So it's a political organization and an ideology, which even if you kill every single member of the organization in the Gaza Strip, which is physically impossible, you would not have eradicated. The idea, the ideology, the organization, the politics are still there. The idea of resistance is still there. I mean, everything Israel has done since 1948, and in fact, even before, has led a lot of Palestinians to think the only way to deal with this is to fight them. And Hamas currently embodies that

idea. If they were to be politically destroyed, I'm pretty sure someone else would take their place who would have some of the same ideas. But in any case, I think eliminating them politically is impossible, physically impossible. It is defeating the militarily possible, maybe. But again, as I think Henry Kissinger once said, when you're fighting this kind of war for the conventional army, you have to win an absolute victory. For the unconventional army, all you have to do is stay in existence. Right.

And you win. I mean, again, I don't like to quote Henry Kissinger, but I think he knew where I was. yeah, he got a lot of shit done. You know, he he he was he was an expert in his in his field, despite how he used it. But, yeah, you cannot eradicate an ideology. You can't eradicate. I was like trying to eradicate, I don't know, uh or mormon the mormon church or something it's like well you can blow up all the cathedrals but there's still going to be a bunch of people who read the book out there who are like you know i'm not telling anybody but i'm still a

fucking mormon you know like that's i still believe in this and then you know the as you say the sort of political pressure behind it the desire to to fight struggle. I can't imagine that going away as a result of bombing a couple million people. into some kind of autonomy, which we'll pretend is a state, but if there were a real political path to self-determination, statehood, and sovereignty, and the Palestinians could get there, could get onto that, then you'd have an alternative to Hamas, which might lead to their political defeat. Not their eradication, but their political defeat. But in a situation where you have this inept Palestinian authority led by this very old man, who, by the way, was elected in 2005 for a five-year term, dude has had no legitimacy for the last 13, 14 years. He was president. He ain't president now. This is Abbas? This is, yes, Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Mazen. I mean, he was elected for five years.

Haven't been election since. There was a parliamentary election in 2006, no election since. So you have this weak, kleptocratic, corrupt, illegitimate, unpopular leadership in Ramallah, heading a Palestinian authority, which mainly serves to offer security to Israel and to the Israeli colonization of the West Bank and occupation of the West Bank. Well, to revive that would not be a solution. You would need something that represents all Palestinians. And they would argue and fight and so on, but presumably they might be able to come to a consensus. We want to go this way or we want to go that way. And that's, again, that's down to the Palestinians. You can't blame anybody else for the absence of that. You can say others have

tried to obstruct it, but it's up to the Palestinians to overcome those obstructions. They dealt with those kinds of things in the days of the PLL. There were lots of Arab countries that were opposed to the Palestinians getting their act together, and they managed in spite of that. It strikes me that, you know, if you really wanted to eradicate or eliminate Hamas, you would need to win a hearts and minds campaign. You would need to actually convince the majority of Palestinians, no, we don't want to use that tactic. And it also strikes me that if you are going to bomb a couple million people, that's the opposite of winning a hearts and minds campaign. I mean, that's what Secretary Austin said.

He said, you win, you're going to win tactically, baby, but you're going to lose strategically if you kill, if you don't protect civilians. And the degree to which Israelis seem oblivious to this argument, it's not a good thing. I mean, there's a sense of supreme victimization. There's a sense of deep trauma. There's a sense of a desire for revenge, which seems to be precluding clear strategic thinking. Now, there are Israeli leaders, the former Prime Minister Almer said it, you got to stop the war. The former head of the Internal Security Service and a former commander

of the NAMI, a guy named Ami Ayalon wrote a long piece in Haaretz two days ago saying, this is absurd. This is not Clausewitzian. You got to have a political objective. And you got to basically, if you want the hostages to be free, do X, Y, Z. Don't just keep bombing and bombing and bombing. So there are sane people in Israel, but lots of them. The problem is the public temper and the political leadership don't seem to be thinking of where do we go from here. And when they do, it's, you know, punish and discipline and discipline and punish, and you don't, you're not going to get anywhere that way.

Well, and I will say, you know, the, a lot of that sense of victimization and terror and revenge was caused by the attack, which is the problem with that sort of, you know, attack. It's very similar to what happened in, when people say that that event was, you know, Israel, September 11th, I find new ways that that's true every day because, you know, it's the sort of event that drives people to that sort of extreme reaction. Exactly. And it is Israel's 9-11 in another sense, in that that extreme reaction is irrational. I mean, what we did, what the United States did in Afghanistan and Iraq were two of the stupidest things ever done in American history.

Two of the worst, most misbegotten, immoral, stupid, strategically mindless wars the United States has ever fought. And everybody now recognizes that. Now, we don't even know the cost to Afghanistan and to Iraq of it, but we know the cost to us. We know the veterans who are homeless and still suffering PTSD on the streets. We know the trillions and trillions of dollars that were thrown away. And we know that the United States is still engaged in Iraq militarily, and American soldiers are still being attacked in Iraq today.

And you would think that, and in fact, to his credit, the president and Secretary Blinken, I do not want to give either of them ever credit, given their miserable performance during this war. But they did say this to the Israelis. We overreacted after 9-11. Don't do the same thing. You know, we overreacted after 9-11. Don't do the same thing. Yeah. Well, so what explains then, this is my last question, the United States' historic involvement? You know, you said that, you know, the state of Israel would have been created if not for United States support. You know, every round that's being fired from these artillery shells were shipped there two months ago by the United States. And, you know, a lot of people

in the U.S., especially folks who have not been following the history as closely as you, go, hold on a second, why? Like, we have a lot of allies in the world. You know what I mean? We're not doing this for all of them. The relationship is not that close. And so what,

what explains it in your view and why is it so, I mean, you know, people are, I, I do not give Biden high marks either, but also he's operating according to simply the political reality in the United States, which is that is this is the United States as relationship with, with Israel. And a lot of folks are asking why why the fuck are we, you know, in this position where we are, you know, doing this? So what is the explanation for it? Well, I think, first of all, Biden is operating in the political reality that he grew up in, which is the 60s and 70s,

which is a time when there was wall-to-wall support for Israel. And the only narrative available was an Israeli narrative. Israel is a miracle as a result of the Holocaust, only democracy in the Middle East, a desert globe. I mean, it can give you all of the propaganda lines. And he believed every one of those. He drank them in with his mother's milk. He drank the Kool-Aid, whatever you want to say. And he is a true believer. And these are men in his early 80s. Think about when his political formation took place. I think Napoleon said, look at where a person grew up when they were 16, and that's where their political formation is. So go back to when Biden was 16 or 20, and especially women, have a shifting perspective on this issue. So the whiter, the older, the richer, and the more male American citizens are, the more supportive they are of Israel in general. And if you go in the other direction,

the less supportive. So you go to red states and you find a population, some of whom are evangelical, some of whom just believe in force, whatever it may be. They're very supportive of Israel. The Republican Party is 100% supportive of Israel. The Democratic Party base is in a different place than when Biden was a young man. And so the party leadership and the old guys in the party are still 100% pro Israel. But go to the base and you see, go to the unions, United Auto Work, the electricians, the nurses, and the postal workers have all come out for a ceasefire in opposition to the position of the Biden government. So that's a lot of working Americans. You come to

a city like New York and you see the cops, the way they treat demonstrators, they're not hostile to pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Some of them are neutral. And that's the way I find a lot of people in the city, younger people especially, are much more open to a Palestinian narrative, which just didn't exist 20 or 30 years ago. Now, why is the United States historically committed to Israel? Multiple reasons. One of them is religion. For many people, the Bible is a living document. I mean, for evangelicals, certainly. They believe the return of the Jewish people to Palestine is an essential duty incumbent on Christians and will bring the Messiah. So that's one group.

And for people who believe in Judaism as a sort of land deed to the land of Israel. That's another religious reason. And then finally, you have strategic stuff. I mean, the hardheaded guys who made American policy in the 40s and the 50s and 60s and 70s, I don't think they were reading the Bible. I think they were looking at the strategic value of Israel during the Cold War. And they said, this is a reliable ally. This is a country that we're connected to in a variety of ways, whether politically or culturally or religiously or whatever. But their harnessed military is an asset in the Cold War against Soviet proxies. And so the United States backs Israel in 67 and the War of Attrrition, 73, the Lebanon war of 82, essentially for strategic reasons, as well as the sympathy that most Americans had. I mean,

the only narrative most Americans had access to until 15 or 20 years ago was a purely Israeli narrative. So they believe Israel's good and the Arabs are bad and the Palestinians don't exist. And that's changing, but it's only changing, I think, with younger people, minorities. It's not changing with the elites. I mean, the people who own our industries and our law firms and control our universities, they're all very pro-Israel. All the people on top of our political pyramid are all pro-Israel. The voters, at least democratic voters, by and large or not, I mean, the numbers are shocking. The degree to which there's alienation at the base of the Democratic Party from this, you know, blanket pro-Israel. It's going to harm, it's likely if the war continues and Biden doesn't change his policy, it's likely to harm his electoral chances in November of this

year because the base is so alienated. Young people, especially, I mean, I see people, young people in the Jewish community, young people amongst minorities are very alienated from the Democratic Party and from Biden in particular because of his policy on Gaza. You see a similar fragmentation at all on the right, on the conservative side? I mean, there is the certain, you know, isolationist group that says, you know,

why should we get involved in this? Yeah, I don't think they're as strongly committed on Israel as they are, for example, on Ukraine. And I think you're right to point to that, and it could develop. But remember, these guys are worried about evangelical voters, politicians on the right. And evangelical voters are hot to trot for Israel. I mean, they really believe that Israel is something that's vital to them for religious reasons, as well as political reasons. And so I think they are less likely to see that isolationism, that America first approach, impact Republican support for Israel. It will eventually,

I think. The way it has already begun to do on Ukraine, it's quite striking. And it might spread to... I would wonder how, to what extent Trump, assuming he's elected in November, I wonder to what extent he would be willing to follow Israel down the path towards another regional war, which the Biden administration may well have gotten us into in Yemen or heaven forbid, or Lebanon or even Iraq or I mean, heaven absolutely forbid with Iran. Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, Trump has certainly courted anti-Semites previously in his political career. And by the way, there is a rising tide of anti-Semitism that's happening along with all of this that is extremely real. And so, you know, you remember the sheriff's star and all that stuff from 2016 and his dog whistles. And so you have to wonder if you were outside.

Yes. You had neo-Nazis chanting Jews will not replace us. And he called them good people. Yeah. And so he might be a little bit wedged as a president. Like, who is he going to stand with? You know, the guys with the tiki torches or the the evangelicals, as you say, and the, and the people with the money, uh, who are, uh, you know, the, the sort of elites, um, very, uh, very difficult to say. I, however, I'm noticing a little bit of the shift that you're talking about, you know, in recent weeks, even, uh, you know, the New York times has had, you know, when I open it up, they will cover the amount of devastation. Right. And, you know, the op eds are not always on the side that you might expect them to be on. And, you know, I was watching the PBS NewsHour the other day and they throw up, oh, you know, 40 percent of homes in

Gaza have been destroyed. Oh, holy shit. Might have been 60 percent, actually. So I am starting to see the media narrative shift. You're starting to see articles about Biden has to reckon with the division of the Democratic Party over this. So as a final question, I guess, how much is people, you know, look, when I first saw people speaking up on social media, I was like, guys, Instagram posts, I don't know how far it's going to get us. Right. There's been a lot of emphasis on that. But maybe are these things moving the needle a little bit more than, you know, some initially thought myself. I mean, I'm going to give you a historical parallel. It took years before overwhelming public opposition to the Vietnam War forced the politicians to change policy. Yeah. And it took years before what soon became overwhelming public opposition to the Iraq war eventually forced the politicians to withdraw from Iraq. It took years and years and years.

So I think you could have an overwhelming majority of Americans, or at least a majority, I think you already have a majority of Americans who, for example, would support a ceasefire. The polls are unequivocal on that, for example. I don't think that that's going to move the needle politically. Now, eventually, sooner or later, at least the Democratic Party is going to have to recognize that. But sooner or later, it could be after another 10,000 people are dead, after the shambles post-war have led to such misery that you will have new forms of resistance. Heaven forbid, some of the things that I'm talking about happen, but they may happen. And so that change may be so late that God knows what will have happened in the interim. But yes, eventually it will move the needle. We eventually left Iraq. We eventually ended the Vietnam War, but after what suffering. So I think that's the real question. We have a political system, especially with foreign policy, which is enormously resistant to pressure from below. The foreign policy elites are impervious to public opinion. They have an absolute sense of self-righteousness and they're cross-party.

The same creeps fail and then are brought back into another administration. I mean, The same creeps fail and then are brought back into another administration. I mean, Victorian, Newland, Sullivan himself, all these people. And you'll have the same thing with the Democrats if the Republicans come back. And there's an incredible degree of insulation of our foreign policy elite from what people think. People don't want another war in the Middle East. And it looks like Biden may have started one in Yemen. I hope not. Hopefully not. But maybe. But those those things don't seem to affect our political elites or foreign policy. when it does finally coalesce affects them. I do hope it continues to grow, but the fact that

everything that you're saying rhymes so much with what we've seen in the past is why I felt it was so important to bring a historian like yourself on. And I really thank you for the perspective. And it's been a wonderful conversation. Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity. I appreciate it. Where can people find you and your work? You know, I don't have a social media presence. Um, so they're going to just have to go out and buy old fashioned books.

Oh, plug please. What's your most recent, most recent book is the a hundred years war on Palestine, which is published by Henry old and which is available at bookstores everywhere as well if you really want to make Jeff Bezos richer on Amazon. Well, or if you want to support this show and your local bookshop, you can go to our special bookshop at factuallypod.com slash books and we'll put a link up there to the book. Thank you so much

for coming on, Rashid. It's been an incredible conversation. Thanks so much for having me. I do appreciate it. Well, thank you once again to Rashid for coming on the show for that important conversation. If you want to support this show, bringing you conversations like that every single week, I hope you will support us on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. We have a community book club. We have a lot of other great events. Please come check us out. For 15 bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad-free. We have a community book club. We have a lot of other great events. Please come check us out. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name on this very podcast and put it in the credits

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