Rev Left Radio - [UNLOCKED] Palestine on Fire II

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Breht returns with another monologue episode on the ever-evolving war in Palestine, this time with a focus on the history of the Nakba, the weakness of a two state solution, the widening global implications of the conflict, and where things might be headed...

All right, folks. I'm back. A lot has happened since the last time I've been able to put out an episode on the conflict happening in Palestine. I mean, to call it a conflict is too neutered. It's a slaughter, a genocide. I've seen more pictures this week of dead civilians, of dead babies than I've ever thought I would ever see in my life. And I think a lot of you are also seeing these pictures. And, you know, to say it's traumatizing is to understate the issue. Whether you are a parent as I am a father of three or you don't have any kids, you're just a human being with a fucking heart that beats. You can't stand looking at this shit. It fucking kills me. And I cannot imagine the depths of despair that these Palestinian parents have to endure. I saw one video of a mother laying her two children to rest. About a three year old, a two or three year old in her arms, a seven to nine year old on the, on the operating table, both deceased. How do you even begin to heal from that? How do you even begin to recover from that? And this is, this is something that is happening to countless

Palestinian families. Entire family trees are being eradicated in Gaza as we speak with the full backing of the so-called democratic freedom-loving West. Now, I don't want it to be all doom and gloom. It's hard to say. It's hard to even move it out of the realm of insane despair and heartbreak. The heartbreak is underlying everything that I'm going to say, and it's underlying all of this. But I do want to emphasize one thing, which is the incredible, incredible mass support that Palestinians have received from people across the globe. Now, we know the global south in particular, apparently except for India, but most of the global south already has a lot more clarity, right, living outside the imperial core, often being victimized by the imperialist powers by U.S. hegemony. they have a lot more clarity on who the good guys and bad guys are than the hyper-propagandized, completely brainwashed Western audiences, right?

But to see people in L.A., in Chicago, in New York City, in a million other other cities, smaller cities in the U.S., see people in London, in Paris, across Europe, across the Western world, and of course across the global south, it is staggering. And I've never seen it quite like I've seen it this time. In my entire life, especially coming into political consciousness, following this issue as anybody who comes over to the left eventually does. I've never seen not only the huge amount of mass support around the world, but the loosening of the grip of the ability to control the narrative by the corporate media and by Zionist propagandists. MSNBC, interestingly, just fired three, I believe all three were Muslim hosts because they dared show a little empathy for Palestinian people. They dared give voice for a second of the Palestinian perspective on this conflict, and then they've all three been suspended. France, Germany, other countries, to some extent England, are either passing laws or setting the police on these mass protests, trying to create laws where, Flying a Palestinian flag is illegal, is an act of terrorism.

They're trying to clamp down on various media outlets that give the voice of the Palestinian perspective, major social media outlets are doing it. And I think all of this suggests, and more, but all of this suggests, that Israel's losing the battle. This is not what a confident movement with truth on their side has to do. You don't have to turn to fascistic governance and quelling opposition. and putting your boot on the throat of people and making it illegal to show support for literally completely innocent human beings that are being slaughtered by a much more powerful military apparatus. If the truth is on your side, you shouldn't have to go out of your way to make laws to brutalize protesters in the street,

to try to quell this completely organic, bottom-up, spontaneous rebellion and revolt by people with beating hearts across this planet. Israel is on their back foot The U.S. is on their back foot Now they have all the political power They have all the weapons When push comes to shove They can tell us to shut the fuck up And do whatever they want

But they would much, much, much, much, much rather Them have control over the narrative To justify what they're going to do In the face of the world To justify the unjustifiable And they try with their media outlets And their politicians To shove down our throat

That Israeli lives matter more which is really the premise lurking under all of this shit, Israeli lives simply matter more. Sure, twice as many three times as many, four times as many innocent Palestinians, innocent civilians have been slaughtered. But that's okay because one Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives. That's basically the lurking premise under so much of this propaganda,

which the massacre that happened of certain. Israeli civilians, which we'll get to here in a second, that happened. It's over. And now there's no more Israeli citizens being slaughtered. There's some being held hostage. The onslaught against Palestinian civilians hasn't ceased in over a week. The constant slaughter of innocent human beings has not stopped. And these Zionists freaks will tell you it is never acceptable. And they're right to kill a child. Under any conditions, you will never catch me. sitting here defending the death of a single child. Children are definitionally innocent human beings. But to hear these motherfuckers say it as their government, the government of their

choice, is actively slaughtering entire families, eradicating entire family trees, indiscriminately bombing hospitals and schools and ambulance trucks and apartment buildings and caravans trying to flee northern Gaza when the IDF told them with leaflets, please flee south and And then they flee south and they get bombed and slaughtered. To hear these people say that all of this is justified because the taking of innocent human lives is so barbaric that it just cannot be stomached or accepted. And then they go and slaughter innocent civilians. History is on our side.

History will absolve the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian resistance. Every single person who is bravely speaking out. who is going to these protests, who are organizing any of these disruptive protests outside the White House, outside arms manufacturers for weapons that get sent to Israel. I've seen many wonderful organizations and comrades, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, rising up, putting their bodies on the line and taking a stand, trying to disrupt the status quo. Huge unprecedented protests where you can't even see the beginning or the end of these mass. stretches of tens of thousands of human beings coming out in support history is on our side never allow them to browbeat you into silence never allow them to to dominate you to make you to call you a terrorist to use their little tactics we've all seen this before this is what happened after 9-11

there wasn't a fraction of a fraction of the amount of people standing up in support of innocent in the Middle Eastern lives in general West Asian lives Afghani lives Iraqi lives there wasn't a fraction of a fraction there were some dissidents voices in the wilderness and even those voices

were too much to stomach and were completely assaulted and attacked I remember the Dixie Chicks just saying something critical about George Bush and it sent Americans off into like a one month frenzy

of like taking all of their CDs and crushing them and stuff so just the so we see the exact same psychological thing happening this bloodthirsty genocidal insanity taking over people and we're seeing 10 times it's almost as if we learned you know god damn and i'm proud to say it's almost as if human beings learn from 9-11 in a way and are saying fuck no not again we're not doing this again we're not giving you 20 years carte blanche to go slaughter people across the world because a couple

thousand of your people died as a backlash in that case of 9-11 for imperialism in West Asia. In this case, it is for the direct occupation, subjugation, oppression, domination of an entire people, of an entire ethnicity, who used to own that land, who used to live lives of decency on that land, and were violently purged from that land

and shoved into, in the case of Gaza, a literal concentration camp. If you're in a war with somebody, do you get to, at your whim, turn off their water, cut off their food supply, cut off their fuel supply, turn off their electricity. Is that what two equal powers going to war do to one another?

You don't have the chance to do that if the fight is anything like fair. This is not a war. This is a mass slaughter. This is mass murder. This is ethnic cleansing. This is genocide. And people across the world know it for what it is and are not going away. We're not going to be quiet.

We're not going to be browbeaten by the worst fucking people on the planet into not standing up for innocent Palestinian lives and more than that for their freedom. The goal here is not a ceasefire. That's a short-term temporary stop the bloodshed now move. But that is not the end goal. The end goal is a liberated Palestine, a decolonized Palestine. And that means no more Israel. I'm sorry. You don't get to have a violent.

militarized ethno state on a patch of land that diverse peoples for millennia have shared together. You don't get to say that because of your ethnicity or because of your religious beliefs, you are a first class citizen and because of that person's ethnicity and that person's religious beliefs, they're a second class citizen or a third class citizen or not even included in the realm of citizenry. You don't get to do that. I don't give a fuck. It's not anti-Semitic to say that you cannot have an ethno state on a land where other people that are not in that ethnicity live.

And you can't slaughter innocent people. You can't slaughter innocent people. How disgusting is it for these Zionists to try to tie Judaism with what the Zionist entity, the Israeli state does and is doing? I can't imagine anything more disgusting than to be associated by virtue of my ethnicity, my culture, my religious belief. to a genocidal fascist death machine. No, thank you. And we see brave Jewish people across the world. Beautiful, brave Jewish human beings across the world say,

fuck you, not in my name. And I applaud every single one of them, many of them putting their lives on the line, putting their bodies on the line to disrupt the status quo. While the most privileged, comfortable people, like a Sarah Silverman, like an Amy Schumer, we could go on. Plenty of these people. These are just two that popped in my head. Show you what liberal, progressive Zionism is.

Still completely debased, completely amoral, completely disproportionate, completely self-victimizing and solipsistic. You know, these incredibly comfortable people who have never known, you know, a moment of fear or violence, trying to make excuses to stand up with, to excuse the table. of the Israeli state. Now, having said that, I do think moral and spiritual consistency is important here as well. And I will say, I have a beating human heart. And I know there's a lot of pain for better or worse on all sides of this issue. I'm not talking about the Israeli state. I'm not talking about violent settlers. I'm talking about Jewish people in the diaspora. Many that I just

mentioned and applauded have extreme moral clarity and are amazing human beings fighting against this bullshit. Others waffle, right? And on a human level, I can get it. I can get the trauma, I can get the knee-jerk pain and lashing out to an extent, right? I'm talking regular people just voicing, venting, not hurting anybody or anything like that. There's a lot of pain that goes into this situation on all sides. And my heart can understand that. But that pain is never, ever, ever, ever an excuse to inflict more pain on other people. That pain is never, ever, ever an excuse to defend to any degree the existence, the right to exist of a genocidal, fascist, ethnic cleansing apartheid state? Israel has a right to exist? No, it does not. No, it does

not. If the premise of your state hinges on the domination, brutalization, oppression of a whole other people, of other human beings, you don't have a right to exist. Well, what? about America? Does America have a right to exist? No! No! No! This unholy land of blood and slaughter and murder where 80 to 100 million indigenous people had to be eradicated and whoever was left put into concentration camps of poverty called reservations, and then built and maintained by 400 plus years of brutal slave of chattel slavery, and then maintained to this day by insanely racist imperialist violence abroad and a disgusting surveillance police state here that will beat you bloody in the streets if you try to stand up and protest for Black Lives Matter or for

Palestine or for any other human movement? No, America doesn't have a right to exist and Israel doesn't have a right to exist. You have a right to exist if you exist peacefully and in harmony with the people around you and everybody in your country have completely genuinely equal social, political, economic, constitutional, human rights. If you don't meet that standard, you don't have a fucking right to exist. Israel in particular has no right to exist. Well, Israel has a right to defend itself. Does the slave master have a right to defend himself against a slave revolt?

No, fuck you. You can try, but fuck you. You don't have a right to defend yourself. You created a context, a master slave dynamic in which violence is inevitable. And then that violence blows back in your face And then you want to act like a victim and say No, we have a right to defend ourselves You want to defend yourself?

Dismantle Israel Dismantle a Zionist apartheid Create a singular democratic multi-ethnic state With equal complete constitutional and human rights For Jews, Muslims, Christians and the secular alike This would require full decolonization overthrowing and toppling every artifact of colonial rule

in order to clear the path for the functioning of such a truly democratic, truly multi-ethnic state in which every single human being has equal protections under the law, backed by hopefully, ideally, international organizations of integrity. Now, we don't have that.

We have the UN. It's often very toothless. But still, That is the goal. A two-state solution. Let's just do a two-state solution. No. A two-state solution is founded in the British partition of Palestine during colonization in which they split. They came into another people's land and told them, hey, we'll give you 20% of the land. But these new people from Europe, they get 80%. This is the fair partition. This is the premise, the foundations of the quote-unquote two-state solution. Accepting British colonial partition, accepting the theft of 80% of the land, or 70% or 50% or whatever it is, leaving the structures of colonialism completely intact and then putting two people with 75 years more, 100 years, of incredible hostility and heartbreak and bloodshed right next to each other with two functioning states. What is that going to do? What does that solve? You're keeping all of the structures in place.

Yes, giving Palestinians a state at all would certainly be an upgrade compared to what they have now. But we're not going for a mere upgrade from the abysmal conditions that Palestinians live now. We're going for real justice. And real justice requires decolonization completely. 100% of the land decolonized. Does that mean Jews are pushed out of Palestine? No. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have lived in Palestine for,

centuries, if not millennia, at various times to various different degrees, have lived together in relative harmony. It's a possibility. It can happen. Other countries have many ethnicities within them and are able to operate democratically, multi-ethnically, with full respect and constitutional rights for other people. Not America, but some countries out there, it's a possibility. So no, I do not believe in the two-state solution. I do not believe in any remnants of colonialism maintaining itself, settler colonialism, or otherwise. I do not believe in the British colonial partition of Palestine and its subsequent manifestation in the idea of a two-state solution. So there's that. Then the question becomes, what's the plan for Israel?

Zooming into what's happening right now, over the last eight, ten days, we had Palestinians break free from their prison cage and do incredibly heroic things to Israeli military outposts, taking on and surprising, taking off guard the Israeli military. And that was pretty much ended in a 24-hour period. You know, they retreated back into Gaza, and then ever since then it's just been a complete shelling and obliteration of human beings. And the numbers that we're getting now confirmed dead, you know there are so many more people under that rubble.

Look at any picture of some of these building blocks, some of these street blocks that have been completely decimated 5, 7, 10 buildings, 12 buildings, 15 buildings all around each other, completely reduced to rubble. You're not telling me thousands in the most, one of the most highly dense population centers in the world that thousands and thousands of people are not underneath that rubble right now as we speak.

More rubble being created as we speak. So what's the goal here? It is my belief that what we are witnessing now and this could change something crazy could happen anything could happen but what we're witnessing now

and what the trajectory seems to be is that Israel is basically attempting to do a second Nakaba a second Nakaba now what is the Nakaba the Nakaba? The Nakaba happened in 1948 and I'm going to

play a clip for you right now covering that history so when I say a second Nakaba you can be damn sure you know exactly what I mean. Now, what I'm going to use here is a video on YouTube from Vox. Yeah, Vox, liberal media outlet, whatever. It's not important that it's from Vox. This as a standalone piece of work just covering in a very quick and easy to understand

history of the NACBA is a useful tool. And I don't give a fuck about copyright claims or anything like that. I'll make this episode free on Patreon if needed. I think the information is more important than worrying about Vox reaching out and saying, you can't use our shit. I don't give a fuck. I'm taking information and I'm dispersing it to people. So I don't give a fuck about that. I'm going to play this. Many of you will have some understanding of this history. For those that don't have a lot of understanding, this will help a lot. And then we'll talk about what is happening with regards to the second Nakaba. My village is a very beautiful one. It has a mountain full of trees of figs and grapes.

And it faces the main road to Jerusalem. This is a story about what happened here in 1948. We are only 750 people, and everybody knows each other. I came from a big family. We lived a good life. We never expect to be a basket. It was a black spot in the history. That history has been carefully concealed, purposefully distorted, and in the West, largely forgotten.

They put our village as an example with what they can do. The massacre in this village was one of many in a series of catastrophic events that became known as the Nekba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were violently displaced

from their homeland in order to create the state of Israel. In May of 1948, a new Jewish state, Israel was born in a bath of blood. The borders of Palestine have been changed forcefully over time. But historically, this region has been home to Palestinians for centuries, with hundreds of villages and thriving cities, one of them being the central city of Jerusalem, with holy sites

important to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim people. By the late Ottoman Empire, Palestinians living here were overwhelmingly Muslim, with minority Christian and Jewish native populations, too. But regardless of religion, Palestinians were often referred to as Arabs, people of the Arabic-speaking world, despite their distinctive culture. Palestinians have long distinguished themselves as Ahead Philistine, or the people of Palestine. They developed a distinctive Arabic accent, they developed regional food, regional dress, and family ties.

But by the time World War I began, several key political forces were competing for control of these lands. First, there was a growing Arab political movement, looking for independence from the Ottoman empire in hopes of a unified Arab state that would include Palestine. Then there were Zionists, a political group that had one main goal, the creation of a Jewish state. Zionism was a response to an increasingly brutal climate for Jewish people, particularly in Europe and Russia, where there was a massive wave of anti-Semitism, including large-scale attacks in the late 1800s and early 1900s. After briefly considering other areas for a new state, including Uganda and Argentina, Zionist leaders

decided on Palestine because of its connection to early religious history. But there was a third key group with political interests here, the British. Control of the region would allow them to expand their spheres of influence and protect trade routes to India. During World War I, since both the British and the Arab independence movement wanted Palestine, they decided to go after the Ottomans together with an important pledge. Through a series of letters in 1916, an Arab leader and a British official agreed that if Arabs would help the British fight the Ottomans and give the British economic and other foreign privileges in Arab lands, in return, the British would recognize and support an independent Arab state.

Soon, the Arabs started doing their part in revolting against the Ottomans, making it easier for the British to move in. But the next year, the British issued a new declaration and betrayed the Arabs. In 1917, Lord Allenby conquered the Holy Land. And the Jews were promised a national home in Palestine. Without consulting the native Palestinian population, the British issued what's known as the Balfour Declaration, supporting the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. So instead of supporting the idea of Palestine as part of a unified and independent Arab state, the British pledged to help secure this land for Zionists. It was a strategic move. This declaration opened up a pathway for Britain to gain power in Palestine. Under the guise that it was supporting

the self-determination of another people, of a people in Palestine who don't reside there yet. As for Palestine's majority Arab population, the Declaration referred to them as non-Jewish communities, who would be given civil and religious rights, but not political rights. A few years later, after World War I ended, Britain gained control of Palestine through a mandate that also required them to put the Balfour plans for Jewish settlement in motion. And they did. Between 1920, and 1931, the Jewish population more than doubled. The migration helped the Zionist movement gain steam, and a slogan took off. A land without people, for a people without land.

And it sends a message to Western leaders that the people who had been living in Palestine for generations could just be easily moved elsewhere. The idea was that those inhabitants weren't a people with ties to that land. Palestine was, of course, a land with a people. In 1931, there were more than 850,000 Palestinian Arabs in the region, still the vast majority. But with the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party in particular, hate became a rallying call. Jewish flight from Europe became even more urgent, and Palestine started to see the biggest wave of Jewish immigration yet.

Violence broke out, rooted in tensions over land. Jewish settlers purchased swaths of fertile. land and evicted tenant farmers, creating a crisis of hundreds of thousands of landless, dispossessed Palestinian Arabs. Though Palestinians fiercely rebelled against both British colonial forces and Jewish settlers, they were brutally crushed by the British. They put in Palestine more troops to repress that rebellion than they had stationed in India at that time, all of India.

These troops killed thousands of Palestinians, including many of their leaders, and the British began training and arming Zionist militia. to suppress the rebellion too. But the rebellion continued. So in an attempt to prevent further Palestinian resistance, the British began to limit Jewish immigration into Palestine. This ended up angering Zionist extremists, leading to more violence. So in 1947, after decades of trying to manipulate both Palestinian Arabs and Zionists to keep their control over Palestine, Britain gave up and handed the question of Palestine to someone else. So came the problem of Palestine.

In recent years, this small country had been the scene of disorder and bloodshed. They figured there is this new thing called the United Nations. Here, in your lap, Palestine, first gift. So the United Nations has now to figure out how do you disentangle this thing that the British helped create? A UN special committee proposed the land be divided into two states, a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem as a separate UN-controlled entity. It was called the Partition Plan of 1947. The plan shocked Palestinians.

We could not accept the partition plan, because at that time, the population, we were almost two to one. But the plan proposed giving over half the land and often the most fertile areas to the Jewish state. From a purely pragmatic perspective, the partition plan didn't make much sense for Palestinian Arabs. That wasn't the only problem with the plan. Within this proposed area of the Jewish state

were hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs, including both Muslims and Christians, who had lived there for generations. On a moral level, the idea of making hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs minorities in their own homeland seemed unjust and unfair. In November, 1947, the UN put the plan to a vote. In the aftermath of the Holocaust,

and after lobbying from U.S. leaders and Zionists, the U.N. voted in favor of partition. And finally, a momentous decision to partition the Holy Land's 10,000 square miles. Britain announced their mandate over Palestine would end on May 15, 1948, even as Palestinians continued to reject the U.N.'s decision to partition the land. After the partition took place, you know, in 1947, you know, we really were scared. Something might happen to us. By the end of 1947, Zionists had the war. several well-developed paramilitary forces, the largest one known as the Haganah, and more extremist

militias like Irgun. On March 10th, a couple of months before the British mandate would end, the Haganah adopted what was called Plan Dalit, or Plan D. On paper, the main goal was to gain control of the Jewish state, as laid out in the partition plan, while also defending Jewish settlements outside of the borders. In reality, that's where the majority of these operations took place outside of the UN's proposed Jewish state. Some carried out by Haganah and others by more radical militias. Many of these operations focused on isolating Jerusalem and the roads to it. A set of brutal instructions called for the destruction of Arab villages

by setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines, especially those population centers which were difficult to control. In case of resistance, it called for the population to be expelled outside of the borders of the state. Villages emptied and for the occupation and control of Arab villages along main transportation arteries. One of the most widely publicized village massacres happened here in Dyrgyzine. We lived in Daryasin, which is about four miles west of Jerusalem. 91-year-old Dawood Assad was there the day of the massacre and was 18 at the time. We saw one night that night, the night before, a movement of lights.

It's armored trucks moving around, moving, moving like this. So we know that something is wrong. That's why we knew that something is going to happen to our village. On April 9, 1948, extremist Zionist forces, executing Plan D, closed in on Daryasine, even though the village had made a local peace pact with neighboring Jewish settlements. Friday morning, they attacked us. My uncles, they were shooting at them, and I was there. loading the gun for them and shoot him.

We fought about almost two and a half hours. They found my uncle, and they put him on the wall, and they shot him eight bullets in cold blood. My grandmother, she went in the village to see my mother. On her way, she got shot. My brother, Omar, fell from her shoulder to the floor, where the floor was a concrete one. Dawood escaped through a trench.

I went down all the way down here like this. So it was about four hours walking to Jerusalem. To this day, the archive of the Israeli army refuses to release many of the images and intelligence reports on Darienin. But one UN report detailed circumstances of great savagery, including women and children, stripped, lined up, photographed, and slaughtered.

Roughly 100 people, largely children, and the elderly were killed in the village. As for Dawood, he later reunited with the group of Dariusine captives in Jerusalem, including his sister and mother. My mother says, where is your uncle Redwan? He says, he was shot. Where is your grandmother? He said he was shot.

And Omar was with her. So everyone has a commotion, you know, where's Fatma, where's Abrahim, where's Abraham, where is Amaria, where is David, where is Ahmed, where is Ismae. I dream. I'm a dream about it, you know. News of what happened in Dariusene spread quickly, with far-reaching effects. The Zionist militias used it as a propaganda tool to tell people about it everywhere. The idea was that if you don't leave, we will do to you what happened in Dariusene. Stories came out about women being raped, about babies being killed,

and induced a great deal of fear among the Palestinian Arab population, many of them fleeing as a result. Jewish troops routed Arab forces from the city of Haifa. After taking Dariusin, Zionist paramilitary groups cleared major cities, including Haifa and Jaffa, and took hundreds of smaller villages and towns too. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee, pouring into neighboring states as refugees. Plan D became the blueprint for carrying out the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine to make room for a new state. And on May 14th, the day before the British mandate ended, Zionist declared this state as Israel.

But the creation of Israel, but the creation of Israel didn't end the Nakba. Neighboring Arab countries that were overwhelmed by Palestinian refugees immediately went to war with Israel. Now united in a league of Arab states, they're incestant that the entry of refugees into Palestine must be ended. The fighting lasted for months. Arab armies eventually lost while Palestinians continued to be killed and forced out throughout that time. Palestinians who fled often carried only enough to stay away for a few weeks, hoping they'd eventually return home. A lot of them locked their doors, put their key in their pocket, and then moved to safer ground. When you leave the house and you take your key with you, it's because you're planning to go home.

In the case of the Palestinians, those refugees weren't allowed to return. Refugees trying to return were often shot at. Zionist paramilitary operations also tried to prevent them from returning again by destroying the villages. That act of preventing their return compounded the Nekba. So the Nekba is both the forcible displacement of Palestinians from their homes and lands and country. as well as preventing them to return once the fighting was over. Palestinian society was dismembered, crushed. More than half of the Palestinian people became refugees, stateless, dispossessed of their land.

Over time, the state of Israel covered up the physical evidence of an Arab Palestine. Place names were often changed from Arabic ones to Hebrew ones. The Jewish National Fund embarked on a massive. effort to plant thousands of acres of pine forests and recreational areas on top of hundreds of ruined Palestinian villages. Even though these forests have now grown into big pine trees, Palestinians have not forgotten their homelands. While we know that roughly 6,000 Israelis lost their lives in the violence of the Nakhba,

records for Palestinian deaths weren't kept. It's estimated to be around 15,000. By the end of the Nakhpa, roughly 750,000 Palestinians had been forcefully. expelled, and more than 500 villages destroyed. Though the UN's partition plan allotted Israel 56% of the land, through the Nakhba, Israel captured 78% of the land. It was everything, except what's now known as the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, that's up to at least 85% of the total area, turning 6 million Palestinians into refugees without a homeland. It's why, around the same time that Israelis are celebrating Independence Day, Palestinians are out protesting on May 15th, holding

up keys as a symbol of the homes they lost and the hope to return. For them, the Nakhba isn't just a moment in history. It's a catastrophe that never really ended. I dream. I'm a dream about it, you know. We lived a good life until 1948 when we were displaced. Okay. So that's the history. For those that don't know, it's incredibly important and useful to understand that history. So much flows from it. So much is referenced back to it. It is in so many ways a sort of inaugural act of genocidal violence of ethnic cleansing. And so when I say that we're witnessing a second Nakaba, I'm saying that because Israel's goal seems to be like the first one, to want to ethnic, cleanse northern Gaza, pummeling it with bombs, with artillery, ceaselessly for

8 to 10 days now. And then there's a complete understanding that there is going to be followed by a ground invasion into northern Gaza, telling Gazans to flee south. And then, of course, you're taking a very dense population of 2.2 million people. You're telling a huge

section of it, the most populous part of it, to move south, where there's not enough room for anybody. And then you say, well, you can go cross the border to Egypt you can get out of here and then what does Israel do bombs bombs the border crossing into Egypt through Rafah bombs it just like they bombed caravans of fleeing citizens who took the leaflets and they read move south because Israel is going to fuck all this shit up up here so go ahead and move south so all these cars and and caravans and trucks are moving south Israel bombs them okay so to ethnically cleanse is to take a part a patch or

a whole entirety, a totality of land territory, and kill or push out the people there, and then take that over. So right now, Israel's goal seems to be ethnically cleansing northern Gaza, sectioning it off, all under the pretences of fighting Hamas, sectioning it off, claiming it, occupying it on security pretences. We're fighting a war against terror. We're fighting fucking Hamas. We need to take this area over. This is their base of operations, whatever. ever. And then when the time is right, and we've seen this happen over the course of Israeli history, unfolding northern gods at the least, into greater Israel. And then, importantly, and this is part of the first Nakabah, and this will be part of the second, denying the Palestinians right

of return. Right of return is this idea when you have been forcefully and violently ethnically cleansed from your homeland, pushed off of it by a violent force. You have, under international law, whatever that means these days, a right to return to the land that you were violently and ethnically cleansed from. Israel, since the Nakaba, has rejected and denied the Palestinians right of return. And so the Palestinians have over the last 75 to 100 years been living through a slow motion apocalypse. A slow motion apocalypse with everything that you've had, generations of your family tree have lived on this land, have eaten and drinking from this land, have survived on this land, have been productive on this land, and a foreign entity

comes over, and through extreme violence, pushes you and everybody you love off of the only place you've known as home. Segregates some Palestinians into the concentration camp of Gaza, pushes some into the western part of Israel, Israel, quote unquote, the western part of Palestine, called the West Bank. And then these violent, insane, far-right fascist settlers will be a sort of arm of the Israeli state taking over more and more land, stealing houses, stealing territory, stealing land, backed, of course, by the full power of the Israeli state. During the first Nakhba, many Palestinians were pushed completely out of Palestine into surrounding countries, creating a sort of localized diaspora of exiled, purged, ethnically cleansed Palestinians, right? And then, of course, there's a broader global diaspora of Palestinians. And that is a result, of course, of this scattering of Palestinians after this colonial invasion and domination, slaughter, and exile of human beings. And we just heard the history of 1947, 1948, the initial Nakuba.

And, you know, in that, I think something like 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. And right now, if I'm right about what's happening in northern Gaza, the second Nakhava. the second Nakaba, I don't know the exact numbers, but it has to rival if not overtake even 700,000, because you're talking about a very small strip of land, the most popular of 2.2 million people, the most populous part in the north, Gaza City, being completely pushed out. And there, I mean, what is the other option here, right? What else could Israel's goal be here? To launch a ground invasion, which seems inevitable, they've made it very clear, that's what they're going to do, right? Somehow hunt down all of Hamas, which swim,

swim among the people like fish in the ocean. So how are you going to isolate and hunt down Hamas? Well, they're not. That's the secret. That's a dirty little secret is that they're saying they're doing all this to kill Hamas. They're just killing civilians. The pretense of going after Hamas is what allows them to slaughter innocent civilians. And these bloodthirsty maniacs will scream their spittle into your face telling you to condemn Hamas as they kill babies, as they kill fathers and mothers and innocent human beings. so that's that's already bullshit they know that they're not going to go isolate hamas somehow from from all the masses and and completely and cleanly cut them off from the innocent civilians in

Palestine and Gaza and then just slaughter Hamas no that's not going to happen so they're not going to be able to succeed at that but they want us to believe they're going to launch a ground invasion they're going to hunt down all of Hamas somehow succeed impossible but somehow in their fantasy world they're going to succeed and then what hand the rubble Back over to Ghazan refugees and politely leave? Ask all the Ghazans that they just displaced. Come on back. All this rubble, all this falling concrete and bricks on the ground and stuff.

This is yours now. We're leaving. We got Hamas. We're good now. That's not happening. That's not happening. And you're a fucking fool if you think that's what's happening. Contradictions here have truly reached an apex.

Something big has got to give. something big has got to give and so I think we are witnessing what amounts to the second Nakaba and I don't know exactly how this is going to go one of the huge question marks as we speak and I touched on this a little bit in my Palestine

on fire episode a week or so ago is this bursting into a regional war and a world war because what we have is we have Iran So picture Israel in your head, right? And the bottom southwest corner is the Gaza Strip.

The northern border of Israel, on the other side of Israel, straight up, it borders with Lebanon. And Hezbollah is quartered in Lebanon, right over their northern border, right? Backed, of course, by Iran. Now, Iran has said, if Israel does a ground invasion of Gaza, they are going to have to strike back. They are going to have to get ready. What would that look like? Would it look like Iran shooting missiles over into Israel? No, I don't think right away at least.

What it would look like is unleashing Hezbollah from the north the moment the IDF starts marching into northern Gaza. So you imagine 300,000 infantry troops of Israeli troops down on the southwestern corner, the northern tip of Gaza, infiltrating and invading on a ground invasion coming south from the north into Gaza, right? And then the northern border of Israel, Hezbollah, a very professional, well-maintained, disciplined, completely capable fighting force coming over the northern border of Israel and descending southward. While all your military, all your best military assets are down in the southwest, right? Lebanon comes in from the north. And now you have a two-front war if you're going to maintain this ground invasion and continue going through Gaza, fighting Hamas in a guerrilla urban warfare in Gaza

while also having to turn around and then face Hezbollah troops coming from the north. Now, what would that do? Let's watch these dominoes knock over. Do you think America's not going to get involved? Do you think of Hezbollah backed by Iran invades Israel, quote unquote invades Israel, that America is just going to like do what it does in Ukraine

and just like give Israel money and guns, but you know, we can't put a boot on the ground else it could cause a bigger conflict. Fuck no. If Hezbollah comes into Israel, American boots will be on the ground. And when American boots hit the ground, we are having a world war. We already have Russia and Ukraine, the proxy war in Ukraine already happening. Then we're going to have multiple countries, countries that are consequential, like the United States of America and Iran engaged immediately, and then you have other Arab states in the area who have complete populations of Muslims who are going to demand in one way or another that their

government stand up for innocent Muslims being slaughtered. So it's going to go to a regional war. We saw this with the Yom Kippur war, or the Ramadan War, the October War, depending on how you know who you are and how you think about that. But the popular colloquial term is the Yom Kippur War. It burst into a regional war. so we have a situation again just repeat iran says if you do a ground invasion we're going to fucking come in israel says we're doing a ground invasion they're setting it up they're massing

the troops they're ready to go once that ribbon is cut i i truly believe it is a it is an almost an inexorable spiral into world war three we are close i said that we're i've said at various times we're closer to world war three than has ever been in my lifetime that's a bit of an understatement. I'm like, when really were we this close? Well, you had the Soviet Union. There were some pretty crazy times during the Cold War that could have led into the World War III. Okay, the Cuban missile crisis. That's a good one. That was, we were really on the brink there, right? But even then, it wasn't like the Soviet Union started shelling America from Cuba or anything. It was just the possibility that these missiles would be positioned in Cuba and could do damage to the U.S.

And that almost launched us into World War III. I think it's not crazy to say, we are closer at this moment to World War 3 than we've been since World War 2. We are closer to a world war than we've been since we were in the last World War. And I don't think that's an exaggeration. So things are going to happen incredibly fast. There doesn't seem to be any attempt to tap the brakes in Israel. The Israeli population is still, of course, deeply, deeply split, right? I think 80 plus people in an Israeli poll said that they blame all of this on B.B. Netanyahu. Not so fast Israelis. The cause is much deeper than that. It's the entire occupation and existence of Israel. But to shift the blame over to Bibi Netanyahu does show

extreme internal division. How will that play out? On the other hand, you have the most powerful militaries in the world led, of course, by the U.S., ready to jump in on the side of Israel. The question becomes, what does China do? Well, if I have to predict, I would guess China is going to try to, as best they can, maintain a neutral arbiter, peace, ceasefire, mature, responsible approach. I just guess based on how they usually act in these geopolitical situations that they're going to be a force of attempted de-escalation, showing that while Israel and America and European powers froth at the mouth and do another fucking stunt like they did in the war on terror after 9-11, slaughtering more innocent people that China will try to be the, to try to show

the world that, okay, now a new responsible country has emerged on the scene. I would just bet that. I don't know that for sure, but I would bet that. What does Russia do? Well, Russia's already fighting in Ukraine. They have allies that will be pulled into this. Iran amongst them. Does Russia

begin to send money and guns to these other forces? Does Russia just take this time to go full bore in Ukraine while America is distracted? I don't know. But suffice it to say, these are how world wars start. World wars have started for much less. And we're looking down the barrel of possibly World War III. And that is not an exaggeration. So we saw, we're seeing a second Nakaba and at least an attempted second in Akaba. We're going to see increasing resistance from Palestinians, from their various

organizations, and from their allied countries. Israel's number one allies of the United States of America with its whole array of allies that are going to get pulled into any conflict, as always. And that's the situation. And then, of course, we have this week, Janet Yellen, the head of the Federal Reserve, asked, can we afford to be doing all this? I mean, we're already funding an entire proxy war in Ukraine and we've been funding the Israeli assault on Palestine for our entire lives and that's only going to increase in the context of Israel going to explicit official war which they've already declared and are now doing and Janet Yellen says oh we can afford more wars we can yeah no that seems reasonable we can definitely afford more

wars more wars just shows the decrepit decaying corpse of the American-led order, the utter hypocrisy, the moral bankruptcy, the complete falling away of the facade of any of the bullshit they talk about and pretend to care about. Americans can't even get health care. We have a homelessness crisis. Kids can't even get free lunches at school. They go into debt for trying to eat at an elementary fucking school. Parents don't have child care.

We can go down the list. Housing. Down the list, student debt, predatory. loan debt in general medical debt we can go down the list of things that our tax dollars should be spent on and none of those things includes more wars we have a leadership class quote unquote leadership class that has completely lost the plot and Biden is the perfect representative of this decaying corpse like order that you could argue died its first fatal blow was was the response to 9-11 and its ultimately fatal blow was 2008, and we've been living with a zombie world order ever since then.

That's a reasonable argument. But this idea that we can just always be in wars, and this one in particular, just slaughtering innocent people. We're on the precipice of World War III. Another thing I wanted to say, and I just got one comment last time that pushed back gently and comradly on one error, which is the over emphasis on Hamas as if it's the sole organization involved in the Palestinian resistance and that is not true

these are multiple organizations communist nationalist Islamist alike coming together in a unified effort for Al-Aqsa flood the operation that they conducted the reason I emphasized Hamas in particular was simply because the media is trying to

collapse everything and everyone into the Hamas versus innocent Palestinian distinction if they even have enough humanity to do that the hardcore Zionists won't even make that distinction but to try to say Hamas and the Palestinians are two fundamentally separate entities

Hamas is somehow fun and this is how liberals talk fundamentally alienated from the Palestinian masses and any other organization that's sort of implicit right and they want to make this nice clean cut between Hamas bad guys and the rest of the Palestinians innocent civilians and that's not quite true

the Palestinian resistance is more than just Hamas but Hamas because it's the least sympathetic given its Islamist sort of belief systems because that's why it was consciously cultivated by the Israeli state as well against more secular more clearly and obviously heroic ones with better ideologies it's because they thought Hamas being the least sympathetic to everybody else around the world would be great to over-emphasize to help lift up to crush any secular

socialist communist communist or otherwise organizations that are attempting to fight back, and then to put Hamas in the face of anybody who tries to criticize Israel and say, do you support Hamas? Do you support terrorism? Condem Hamas before we can even continue this conversation. No, fuck you. Condem Israel. Condem the occupation from which all violence flows forth. If there were no occupation, if there were no ethnic cleansing, if there was no Nakaba, if there were no British colonialism in Palestine, if there were no apartheid state, none of this violence would, would happen. The foundation and material basis for such violence on either side would no longer

exist. Now, do the Palestinians have a right or the ability to end all that? No, all they can do is fight back. The boot is on their throat. Israel, and of course the United States, which has a lot of leverage on Israel, the responsibility is on those states to end the occupation, to end the apartheid, and to end this Israeli experiment of an ethno state on a lands, again, where many diverse peoples of different religions and ethnicities have lived for millennia. So to try to act like this violence is coming from Hamas initially, as if nothing else happens before that, and then to only say Hamas, and then to say, well, because only Hamas did this, Israel has a right to defend itself.

It's complete bullshit. And it is literally just an argument for, for, for, for, for, for, for, ethnic cleansing and the mass murder of civilians. So I wanted to make that clear, just the idea that it's more than just Hamas. I focused on that because of the rhetoric, and I wanted to give people ammunition to fire back against that rhetoric. But it is very important to state that many more organizations are behind here. And one other thing you'll hear from the Israeli Zionist argument a lot is like, well, you know, they had free and fair elections in 2006 and the Palestinians voted for Hamas. therefore the implicit logic is

Palestinians are obvious and clear and acceptable targets innocent civilians because they voted for Hamas so they're basically Hamas right now it's like a half half vote that happened in 2006 almost 20 years ago half of all Gazans are under 18 years old that means half of all Gazans

were not even born yet or were too young to have any say in even that election even though that argument is bullshit because of course people turn to extreme political movements in extreme conditions of oppression. Of course people do that. But you had one election in 2006 and that gives you the right to kill a two-year-old today? To kill an 18-year-old today? To kill anybody today? No, the fuck it doesn't.

I also wanted to say it should go without. saying. Biden is fully on board here. Biden is soaked in blood. This fucking rotting, decaying corpse of a human being, this weak, spineless piece of dog shit, this Zionist genocidal freak fuck.

100% on the charge. His press secretary said that calls for a ceasefire. His press secretary, the mouthpiece of the White House, just a day or two ago, said calls for a ceasefire. Not even decolonization, not free Palestine. but just like stop the bloodshed calls coming from like the squad and shit she said those are wrong these are exact words wrong repugnant and disgraceful so this is the biden administration stance on a ceasefire it's wrong repugnant and disgraceful a blood-soaked fucking maniac and what are liberals going to tell us in 2024 you have to vote for biden because it's harm reduction any argument for harm reduction was slaughtered in the streets of gaza

A vote for Biden. A vote for the Democratic Party. Look how Chuck Schumer is fucking talking. A vote for the Democratic Party. Active support for the Biden administrator. Or Trump, of course we know this, right? I'm not fucking playing dumb games. I'm not thinking the Republican Party is going to be any better. Fuck no. This also applies to Trump, but definitely to Biden because these are the arguments we hear most often from liberals and progressives. You guys are too far left. You need to vote for Biden. He's not great, but it's harm reduction. He's better than the other guy. is he? Is this harm reduction? We vote for the Republican. They're going to go to war with Mexico. Right? I mean, it was Trump that moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem, causing insane fucking problems and escalating and inflaming the conflict. It was Trump who bombed and slaughtered an Iranian general, right, almost causing another conflict. To think that this guy's going to come in and stop, this shit is bonkers. But Biden is just as bad. There's no harm reduction argument here. If you vote for Biden, you are consciously, wholeheartedly,

in direct support for what's going on in Palestine. You are, when you cast a vote for Biden, you're saying, yes, Israel, more money to Israel, more funding to Israel, more deaths in Gaza. So if I hear any fucking liberal piece of dog shit, wag their finger in my face

and tell me that I'm privileged for not voting for Biden right or that a vote for Biden is harm reduction and it's a lack of moral obligation to not vote for him I will spit in your fucking face both of these parties

need to be burnt to the fucking ground both of these parties are led by fucking criminals who deserve to be tried and prosecuted in the fucking hang a vote for Biden is a vote for ethnic cleansing a vote for Biden is a vote for mass murder a vote for Biden is a vote for genocide and we will not let you motherfuckers forget that

last thing I'll say I have to go I'm going to record an episode with people who are much more knowledgeable than me over at guerrilla history be on the lookout for that we need to get more information out We need to continue to get our narrative out. We need to understand this history, right? We have a lot of work to do, and I'm going to continue doing what I can.

My little tiny humble role, everybody else there, do what you can, you know, talk to your families, influence your sphere of social connections, your friends and families, your coworkers, join an organization, go out to these protests if you can. Wave that motherfucking Palestinian flag without a second of hesitation and tell anybody who comes up to you and talk shit to eat shit. do what you can do what you can where you are we all have a role to play nobody needs to be a fucking hero but we all can play our role the last thing i'm going to say beautiful precious innocent little boy in chicago stabbed 26 times by his zionist landlord in front of his own mother who was also stabbed and assaulted this little boy

Wadea has died from his injuries this little boy I have an eight-year-old son it's not about me I know but when I look into his eyes I see my son he looks like my son

and imagine his terror this landlord who he's seen a million times come over to his house right you think this person's safe this is not a stranger his mom answers the door gets choked and stabbed he hears this commotion he comes out he gets stabbed 26 times a little baby boy in chicago because he's Muslim we're going to see more of this We have to take a stand. Good people have to take a stand.

Don't apologize. Don't take a step back. Get in these motherfuckers face. We are on the right side of history. You are the genocidal murderous fucking freaks. History will be very clear about who the good guys and the bad guys are here. And usually it's a liberal fairy tale where you like to have the good guys and you like to have the bad guys nice and sequestered and there's no gray area. In this case, it's actually fucking true.

In this case, it's actually fucking true. We are on the right side of history. We will not be gaslit, propagandized, or browbeaten to take a single fucking millimeter step back. Fuck you. Free Palestine.