The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Hamas and Israel - A contentious interview with Professor Rashid Khalidi

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Columbia professor Khalidi felt this interview was an "ambush." You be the judge.  We discuss all matters Palestine. *Two clarifications: 1. I think we talked past each other a bit on the issue of "indigenous people." I wish I had that part to do over. 2. He said the Israelis were killed in "settlements," he didn't use the word "settlers". I don't really think there's a difference though.  00:00:19: Ambushed? 00:09:52 The Hospital "Strike" 00:14:13 False Casualty Counts? 00:23:00 Has Israel Really Targeted Hospitals Before? 00:25:00 Does Hamas Use Human Shields? 00:34:00 Is International Law Used To Control the Oppressed? 00:44:02 Is Israel A White Settler Colony, Indigenous, or Both 00:51:00 Solutions? One State? Two States? 01:09:04 Were the Israelis Killed on "Settlements?" Order his book: "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine". https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Years-War-Palestine-Colonialism/dp/B083Z3YW4S/ref=sr_1_2?crid=DTV4RF6OW2XO&keywords=rashid+khalidi&qid=1697992719&sprefix=rashi%2Caps%2C297&sr=8-2

The Comedy Cellar Podcast, this week co-hosted by Michael Moynihan and our guest, Professor Rashid Khalidi. Okay, here we go. Ambushed. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, claims that I ambushed him with this interview. He never wants to do the show again. You be the judge when you listen to it. And note that at the end of the interview, he doesn't sing that tune. He's quite more willing to do the show in the future. Something changed maybe as he processed what went on. What would an ambush be?

I suppose it'd be something like bringing up surprise questions about something that happened personally with him, something with a student, something he wasn't expecting, dredging up some ridiculous thing he said 15 years ago or a tweet that he wasn't expecting without any warning. How about asking him straightforward questions about the Hamas-Israel war, including about things he said in a lecture like three days, four days prior? Because that's all we did.

We asked him very, very straightforward questions. He had done a lecture for a group of Palestinian scientists that I'm getting a feeling he didn't realize was going to be released on YouTube because he seemed to not at first know where this came from. And then he asked questions like, I don't know when I recorded that, but it was only a few days earlier. So how could he not do that? In some ways, how do you ambush Einstein with questions about physics? It's just you're speaking to an expert and you ask him direct questions. All right. Few notes.

There's a political argument going on here, but it's always important to remember that this is not just an academic argument. There's tremendous, it's not, you know,'s not just a um perfunctory disclaimer it's it's important to remember that people are suffering terribly on both sides and um at in some way you have to give people uh suffering some margin of error for emotional overreaction. Some of the statements we hear from people directly implicated by this, I think you should let go. Some of them you can't let go. Many people at first were measuring the attack on Israel

in kind of units of 9-11. 1,200 Israelis killed was the equivalent in American per capita of 12 9-11s. So I asked a statistician I know to calculate for me, and I think it's worth knowing that 1,200 Gazan civilians killed would be the equivalent to them of 36 9-11s for that community. Israelis say, Brett Stevens said the other day, that in Israel, everybody knows someone who was killed. Everybody knows a family who's been personally devastated by this. Well, imagine what that's like in Gaza. This is not in any way to argue that Israel shouldn't act to the contrary, but just to remind ourselves that there will be innocent victims on all sides, and the lives lost and the destroyed, heartbroken lives the dead leave behind are so horrible to think about that maybe we risk not thinking about it unless we force ourselves. I've said before, I feel personally that we're in some kind of war, especially in America, and I guess around the world, for the Jewish psyche.

I want my kids to enjoy the same carefree, matter-of-fact Jewish identity in college that I had. I could wear a Tel Aviv University t-shirt. I could go to any kind of Israel thing, basically embrace my nationality on campus the same way as any Italian or black person could. But from what I'm told and what we're seeing, that's not the way it is today. I know someone who went to Columbia recently, and they've told me it's anything but that kind of atmosphere now. I just dropped my kids off to Hebrew school just before I'm doing this, and I wonder if these days that I force them

to spend in Hebrew school, learning all this mumbo-jumbo that I don't even pretend to them that I believe, forcing them to go learn to chant in a language they don't even understand, is this going to backfire? Is this going to make them reject it? Or will it do what I hope, which is to connect them in some way?

I guess a lot of parents ask that. We're going to be seeing, we're already seeing daily videos bouncing around the world from Gaza as hard to look at as George Floyd's death. And the irrational defund the police reaction is predictable from the world, even without the kind of greased skids of antisemitism. It's bad for Israel, and I'm afraid it will rot the Jewish people, especially the Jewish people who live and so badly want to be accepted by people left of center. This yearning for acceptance in social justice circles can overpower whatever tenuous connections they still have to their people, especially since what I find is that they're completely uninformed about the details of this conflict and the details starting

from the 1880s on, particularly of 1948, particularly of 1967, particularly of the Clinton and Olmert and Barack peace talks. These details are essential to this matter. Pictures of atrocities are not the point. If I lived in Israel and my daughter wanted to devote her career, let's say, to fighting for Palestinian rights on the West Bank, I think I'd be tremendously proud of her. I don't for one minute doubt that people in uniforms, in a position of power over others anywhere in the world, including Israel, regularly abuse that power. It happens in our own country. And can you imagine in a place with tensions as high as they are in Israel, how this ugly side of human nature expresses itself. But recognizing and fighting those abuses simply cannot be confused with the rights

and wrongs of the underlying conflict. No more than fighting police abuse of innocence and of guilty undermines the reason that police forces must exist israel has very legitimate security concerns as uh the people like norman finkelstein who claimed that hamas was not actually a threat to israel must admit in light of recent events but they won't and again this requires people to be informed and what hope is there of that? They're not going to be informed. Okay. One more thought. I don't support people being fired for making statements or signing statements. It's a bad idea. These people learn this stuff in school.

I'm about to show you an interview I did with the main professor at Columbia. He represents probably the standard line that these children are taught in school, these kids, these young adults are taught in schools. How can we punish these people for repeating the stuff they've learned from their professors in school? Fire the professors. Fire the university presidents. Just this morning I saw that there's a writer from the New Yorker or New York Magazine, I forget which, who tweeted out something about Jewish complicity with the Holocaust. He chose this week to do it. Anyway, email me at podcast at commieseller.com and let me know what you think about this interview and, uh,

any comments you have on all of this. So Rashid Khalidi hit it. This is live from the table, the official podcast of the world famous comedy seller coming at you on Sirius XM 99 raw dog and the laugh button. I'm sorry. No longer with that network, but we are wherever you get your podcast. Anyhow,

uh, this is Dan Natterman, uh, comedy seller, regular here with Noam Dorman, owner of the Comedy Cellar. Noam, raise your hand so our guests all know who you are. We have Michael Moynihan. He's been on this podcast before.

We're happy to have him back. Thanks for having me back. He is co-host of the Fifth Column Podcast, which I think is a big podcast. It's a big one. Yeah. Periel Ashenbrand is here. Hello.

Periel is our producer producer and she's an on-air personality as well and we have with us via the miracle of teleconferencing not zoom but i think some other software uh zoom riverside we have uh rashid khalidi who is a palestinian american historian of the middle east and the the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University right here in New York, served as editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies from 2002 to 2020. Welcome to our show. And that's everybody, so we all know each other. So now we can get started with some interesting conversations about the week's events,

most of them tragic, but we'll try to keep cool and have a nice exchange if we can. So thank you very much, sir, for joining us on the show. You were recommended by my mother. My mother's a big fan of yours. Can you hear me? I hear you well, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You might assume with a name like Noam that my mother is a fire-breathing Zionist, but she's quite the opposite. And when I was asking her who we could have on the show to give us the most scholarly – it's kind of like other things. To have this give us the best version of the arguments that I think I disagree with and that I'm not as familiar with, she recommended you and Perry Elgash. So we really appreciate you coming on the show. But since there's major events that happened last night with this hospital

that seems to have been hit by a missile or something like that, and I think we should start with that I I did see you on the Amy Goodman show talking about how Israel had threatened to bomb hospitals in the past which made it easier for you to believe that Israel had bombed this hospital now it's not so clear what happened what are your thoughts on that well it wasn't clear when I was on Amy Goodman show and it's not clear now I don't know what happened. What are your thoughts on that? Well, it wasn't clear when I was on Amy Goodman's show, and it's not clear now. I don't know what happened. It is true that this hospital was hit earlier. It's true that other hospitals have been hit. It's true that Israeli spokespersons and

generals and so forth have said that hospitals and schools are used as hiding places or that there are tunnels underneath them. And there have been threats made to hospitals. So that's background that is factual. Who did this? I don't know. I tend not to believe Israeli denials because they always deny everything. I mean, they shot a Al Jazeera journalist a year ago, Shirin Abu Akri, and they spent nine months denying it before they finally said, yes, we shot her, but we didn't mean to. So their denials, I think, should be taken at least, you know, not necessarily at face value. Let's just put it that way. Now, the president and his people have apparently decided that this was not Israel. We'll see.

I would love to see a proper investigation by somebody outside of this conflict. Denials, I mean, everybody denies something that they don't want to admit to, but Israel hasn't just denied it, they presented evidence. That's not the same as a denial. They presented evidence at the time

of their assassination of Shinin Aba'ath. I mean, they're very good at producing. They produced a video which later was retracted because it turned out to have been made 40 minutes after this hospital was hit. So, again, I would like to see external investigation by an independent authority. But you think it's more likely than not they fabricated this radio conversation or phone call between the two terrorists and fabricated this video. I don't know. They have said, I mean, I've been reading the Israeli press since this started. I read it all the time.

They've been saying that they have absolutely no idea that this attack was coming because all of their signals intelligence and all of their collection of what's going on inside Gaza failed to tell them about two years of planning because everything was done face to face. Nothing was done digitally. No phones were used. Suddenly, they've discovered two dudes talking to one another. I don't believe any disclaimer of this in a real investigation. So you do think it's more likely than not that they're lying about it i didn't say that well it sounds like you're saying i don't believe them and you don't i don't i think a reasonable person i've seen until i've seen a proper

investigation uh professor kalini can i ask you uh by chance so you do have a native fluency in arabic and were you able to uh i do to speak to the translation that we were given? I never heard the recording, no. I haven't heard the recording. I do have native fluency in Arabic. Professor Clady, I... My New York accent notwithstanding. Thank you.

It's a great opportunity to talk to somebody who, you know, I presume I disagree with a lot of issues. Let's run a slight thought experiment. If a investigation is carried out, and I understand your skepticism, and what the Israelis are saying now turns out to be true, that it was an Islamic Jihad missile that fell short and caused tremendous casualties and damage. Which has happened which has happened correct yeah yeah and so what does that mean considering you know the response to this was was pretty vociferous i mean you had of course you know meetings that were scheduled between countries that were canceled we had a lot of you know response to this um embassies marched on and you know some of us are like god is this tehran in 1979 again um and if it turns out that that the initial assumption wasn't correct um how bad is that for hamas and you know islamic jihad too but how bad is that for um you know for gazans also and what does it mean

if it if it is if it turns out not to be Israel? There are several levels of meaning. The first level of meaning is in the Western world, the Israeli argument adopted by the United States is going to be accepted. So Israel has won. It's a piece in Haaretz this afternoon. Israel has won the narrative war over the hospital. That's true in the Western media sphere, United States, Western Europe, white settler colonies. Fine. The rest of the world, which is more skeptical about what Israel and the United States say, there'll probably be a different reaction. Whether the first group are right or the second group are wrong is not my point. My point is that the impact of this in

the Arab world, where people assume the Israelis are lying, whether they're right or wrong is not my point, is going to be the same. This will be seen as yet another massacre. I mean, they have killed 3,300 other people. So it's easy for people to believe that they may have been responsible for these 471, whether they're right or wrong. So I think that persistent, that, sorry, that perception will probably last in the Arab world, even if an investigation shows that it's not the case. So in one follow up. Yeah, no, I know it's an interesting position because a position to be in, because it doesn't matter what the investigation is of certain people because of, you know, the narrative is going. The narrative is the narrative. But when you say the number of Palestinians who have died, that comes from the Gaza Health Authority. Right.

Do you trust them? Yes. You do? Yes, I do. I have relatives there. I have people there. I have a close friend of mine who's a surgeon working there. The numbers are basically accurate.

So, but you have no skepticism that they would have the desire to inflate those numbers at all? They actually don't need to. I mean, we have the statistics on each of the previous attacks on Gaza. We know about the 2,300 people killed in 2014. Because after that, this was all checked, and that was approximately correct. Now, they may be trying to inflate a little bit they may have but i think basically the numbers are probably right i'm sorry excuse me um cnn says hamas which controls the enclave said more than 500 people were killed by the bombing

right palestinian health ministry earlier said estimates indicate that two to three hundred people died in the attack the the estimate that i have seen, the most recent one, is 471 people. Right, but I'm saying here's two agencies, presumably each of which you trust. I don't know what you're asking me about. In the middle of a horror like this, let me finish what I want to say. In the middle of a horror like this, I am sure Hamas is just going to issue a number. Now, what we eventually got was what more what seems to be a more precise number. I don't know if that's exact or correct. I'm just saying that's probably right. So let's

just cut in the latest casualty counts as of October 21st at around noon. Washington, a senior European intelligence source says a maximum of 50 people died in this week's hospital bombing in Gaza, according to Agence France-Presse. The newly reported death count is one-tenth the original number reported by major news organizations and politicians worldwide. So much less, but still awful. Something like that looks to have happened. Hospitals are where people are sheltering because they think they're safe from bombardment. This is a Baptist hospital, so they figured a Christian hospital is a place to be safe.

Whoever did this, a lot of people were probably killed. Okay, it's not, I'm sorry to say, it's not a number that's probably right because sometimes nobody dies when something happens. Sometimes 3,000 people die. There's no number that's probably right. But I know that you don't believe Israeli reports of their casualty numbers, correct? You think that's propaganda when they say... I believe Israeli reports of Israeli casualty numbers.

No, you said... Hold on. You said, I just heard you on YouTube today. You have that video that says civilian casualties? I didn't say anything about what Israelis that says civilian casualties. I didn't say anything about what the Israelis say about civilian casualties. Yeah, yeah. You said that you thought the Israeli numbers were probably inflated. Israeli numbers of what?

Maybe I'm wrong. Play it in the call. The numbers that Israel is using may be false. They may be inflated. Atrocity reports are a perfect tool of propaganda. We know this from the American war on Iraq in 1990, when Kuwaiti babies who were supposedly taken out of incubators to die never existed. We know this from World War I, when Belgian nurses were supposedly raped by German soldiers, never existed. Atrocities are grist for the mill of any propaganda machine. All right. So Hamas would never use propaganda.

Of course they would. Of course they would. So would Israel. I mean, we were told about beheaded babies there were no beheaded babies so so you do believe on the other hand there were hundreds of israeli civilians who were killed that you didn't need to that didn't need to be exaggerated that was true and i am sure that there are thousands of people who have been killed in gaza that doesn't i mean i'm sure there have been exaggerations but the basic fact is hundreds of people who have been killed in Gaza. That doesn't, I mean, I'm sure there have been exaggerations, but the basic fact is hundreds of people were killed inside Israel,

civilians I'm talking about, at least 900, more probably. But I was right in hearing you say that you think the Israeli numbers are likely inflated. I mean, I have to go back and listen to this, and I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get at. In wartime, there is inaccuracy. In wartime, atrocities are used for propaganda. That is a fact. What I'm getting at is that it's- That's what I think I was saying there. Does that exaggerate? Yes. You just heard, you just gave an example of that. They said 500. Later, the ministry said 471.

I'm going to tell you something, and you may not believe me. I'm just getting at to try to understand what you're saying. You could be right that Israel inflates its numbers and Hamas is – to the person. I'm not going to nail my flag to that mast. I don't – I'm not saying Israel is inflating numbers. I think their numbers of 1,400 are probably very accurate of their casualties in this attack. So and then the other thing is just quite understand why you're pursuing this rat me down this rabbit hole. OK, so the other thing is the hospital thing is it is an interesting jumping off point to a lot of issues because it's kind of like a center of all the issues that emanate from this.

And I would say that why I think it's important is somebody like me, I mean, you've been in this universe for, you know, your entire academic life. My entire life, not just my entire life. I mean, in the study of it, maybe your entire life, too. But those of us who haven't been, we're in this situation after a sort of you know from 2016 on we constantly hear um talk about misinformation etc etc how to adjudicate what is right and what is real so it is actually important to to me um who to trust and if you're saying well i do trust um the hamas authorities i want to know why i mean what is it i don't trust ha well, I do trust the Hamas authorities, I want to know why. I mean,

what is it? I don't trust Hamas propaganda. I do trust the health ministry. That's what you were asking me about. You were not saying, do I trust Hamas propaganda? No, I do not. Okay, well, so you're saying that they're... I do. Why? Because I know people there who are involved. That's why I trust them. Now, are they absolutely accurate? Probably not. Are they very close to being accurate? I think probably they are. Okay, so you're saying that the health ministry is separate from the government. But the health ministry is just a ministry of the government. Anyway, I'm not quite clear where we're going with this. Okay, so I tried to clear up why I thought that was important. So when you said that Israel's threatened to attack hospitals in the past, I looked this up and I traced it down with Michael.

So there was an MSF tweet. It's like an aid group. It's a French thing. I don't know if they're actually. It said Israel has given Al-AAuda Hospital just two hours to evacuate. Our staff are still treating patients. We unequivocally condemn this action. We are trying to protect our staff and patients.

So they didn't threaten the hospital as to compare to what this would be, an unwarned massacre. They threatened them that we think this is a legitimate target and we want to give you time to get out. And then, apparently, there wasn't enough time to get out. So MSF tweets again, clarification, Israeli forces have now postponed the demand to evacuate because it seems like Israel felt they couldn't bomb it because there wasn't enough time for these people to get out, which is a very different thing than I thought you were saying when you said, yeah, I believe Israel did this because they threatened to attack other hospitals,

as opposed to, I would have said, I don't believe Israel did that because in the past, when they bombed hospitals, they always warned them and gave them even extra time to get out. What am I missing there? What you're missing there is that this hospital was bombed previously, a couple of days ago, the same hospital, the Ahli Ma'amadani Hospital, which is a Baptist hospital, as it happens. It was bombed a couple of days ago.

Other hospitals have been bombed. Just let me turn this off, sorry. And it's not just the quote that you guys pulled up from Médecins Sans Frontières. Giora Island, who's a former national security advisor, has been saying hospitals and other Israeli officials, present and past, i.e. reserve officers, major generals like Island and others have been saying Hamas has underground facilities, headquarters and so forth underneath Underwood schools and hospitals. Is that true? I don't know. I'm not in Gaza. I'm just telling you what Island, Viola Island said in a piece in, I believe, Haaretz. I'm not quite sure where it was.

Is it possible that it's true to you? Do you think they do things like that? You don't know? You don't know? island, Viola Island, said in a piece in, I believe, Haaretz. I'm not quite sure where it was. Is it possible that it's true to you? Do you think they do things like that? I don't know. That's not the point. You don't know? You don't know? Do you know where the United States has underground military facilities? Do you know where Israel has underground military facilities? How am I supposed to know? I will guarantee you that the United States does not have underground facilities under hospitals. I'm not saying that. I'm saying do you know any military organization has underground facilities?

How am I supposed to know that? That's not what I asked you. I asked you whether you think it was possible that Hamas would hide. I have no idea. I have no idea. That I find hard to believe. You have no idea? It's a crucial question to the whole how can you analyze this conflict if you don't know they're doing something like that or not how am i supposed to

know that i mean i find your line of questioning highly objectionable okay i am supposed to know that hamas has facilities underneath hospitals and okay now okay is it possible yes do i know it no how am i supposed to know it i'm not quite sure okay so this is the thing that this may be propaganda i think you should go back to your mother and get a little more education man if she recommended me and she knows something about me and where i'm coming from maybe you need a little hold on these are not let me ask you these are not unfair questions i'm asking these are these questions any intelligent person wants to know. Israel's saying...

These are the most obnoxious questions I've been asked in 11 days. Maybe because you're not used to talking to people who agree with you, but... No, I'm talking to the mainstream media. If Israel says, we're going to bomb this hospital because there's military operations under there, and that's part of your argument as to why Israel can't be trusted, the most natural question in the world to why Israel can't be trusted. The most natural question in the world to ask the expert would be, do you think that could be true?

Do they do things like that? I don't know if they do things like that. That's weird to me. Nicole, play Human Shields 1 and Human Shields 2 and you tell me if this is the reason I think it could be true. You tell me if I'm wrong. Play Human Shields 1 and Human Shields 2. This is from memory. I did check with somebody to make sure.

Memory is one of the most sophisticated propaganda sites for Israelis. That's right. Don't accuse me of propaganda because I have you on as a guest, okay? I don't have on some right-wing Israeli. I didn't accuse you. I said I talked about memory. But I did have somebody check the translation for me to make sure that I wasn't presenting something that was mistranslated. Go ahead. Both of them call it.

It says the enemies of Allah do not know. Wait, stop, stop. Go back, Nicole. I didn't read. I forgot I had to read. I want to listen to the Arabic. You have to read it to the people who are on the radio. Okay, I'll translate it afterwards. Go ahead. The enemies of Allah do not know that the Palestinian people have developed its methods of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry at which women excel and so do all the people living on this land.

The elderly excel at this and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy, we desire death like you desire life. And I believe that memory is propaganda, but these videos are real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. I don't have any doubt that that's legitimate.

Are people still going up to the rooftops? Witnesses told us that there was a large gathering and people are still going to the Kowari family house in order to prevent the Zionist occupation's warplanes from targeting it. What is your comment about this? People are reverting to the human shield method, which proved very successful in the days of the martyr Nizar Rian. This attests to the character of our noble jihad fighting people, who defend their rights and their homes with their bare chests and their blood. So two different people, you would know their expertise of talking about how this is the strategy.

These are Hamas spokespersons. Certainly the first one was a Hamas spokesperson spokesperson I'm not sure who that guy is so when I hear Israel say that there's a military stuff under the hospital I say well that seems to perfectly jive with what I hear them saying but you say I don't know if that's possible why would you not why would you not know it's possible when they're saying that they do this kind of stuff? You mean they just wouldn't do it? I have no idea.

Okay. Can I just make a quick point? Can I say one last thing? The Gaza Strip is honeycombed with underground tunnels all over the place. That is part of the strategy that they have adopted. And they have, in effect, put the people of Gaza at risk by so doing. So if you want to enjoy being able to say that there are human shields, please enjoy it. I'm not saying that that's not necessarily possible. I'm just saying I don't know personally.

I have not been allowed into Gaza for about 11 years. I don't think it's nice for you to say whether I enjoy it. I'm listening to an Israeli spokesman, and I'm trying in good faith to decide, is he bullshitting me or is what he's saying – because it makes a big difference. If Israel's bombing a hospital, as you implied, because they want to kill people in the hospital, that's a fucking war crime. It could have been. But if they're bombing a hospital because they're being taunted to do so by people who would actually not be sad if Israel does it because it's a propaganda victory, as these spokesmen are saying, that's quite 180 degrees. And I want to know which it is. You're implying that this was an intentional that I'm saying that this was an intentional Israeli strike.

If the Israelis were striking something underneath this hospital, it would have been an entirely different explosion. You were implying it was an intentional strike because you said, yes, you did. I said I didn't believe what the Israelis said. That's what I said. No, you said you believe. I didn't necessarily believe what the Israelis said. That's what I said. No, you said you believe. Or didn't necessarily believe what the Israelis said. I'll prove it to you. Let me finish what I was trying to say, okay, before you show how smart you are.

Go ahead. What I was trying to say was that this could easily have been not just a Hamas rocket or an Islamic Jihad rocket fire. It could have been an Israeli misfire. If they had been trying to hit below ground, they would have used what's called a bunker buster. That would have caused destruction much greater and of a different kind than this. This could easily have been an Israeli misfire. It could have been an Israeli anti-aircraft missile. It could have been a Jihad missile that misfired.

It could have been any one of those things. You did say you thought it would be intentional because you said the reason you... They bombed 6,000 bombs on the world. I let you finish. The reason you found it believable was because Israel had threatened to bomb hospitals in the past.

Threatened is intentional. You didn't say Israel had accidentally hit hospitals in the past. They did. I believe this because they've threatened to do it in the past, They did. They said, yeah, I believe this because they've threatened to do it in the past, meaning I believe they would do this on purpose. I think that it is very hard to believe, given that Israel has threatened hospitals and schools in the past, and it's hit hospitals and schools in the past,

and that the kinds of weapons used by Islamic Jihad and Hamas have very limited warheads that this could have been, as the Israelis claim, a misfire. So you did say that. Do your fantastic research on Giora Island, E-I-L-A-N-D, former National Security Advisor to Prime Minister... Can I just say something? Major General in the Israeli Army Reserves. He's published a number of things recently.

You will be able to find him everywhere. See what he said about hospitals. See what he said about schools. Now, he's not in office right now. He's just making suggestions. But you've heard this kind of rhetoric from Israeli officials as well, that there are underground structures. Israel is telling people to leave these structures because it's going to hit them because they're military targets. That's what I'm saying.

That's what I meant to say. If I misspoke, this is what I meant to say. That's fine. If you misspoke, then you misspoke. You got a chance to correct it. So let's get on to the heart of the matter. In your interview, I interpreted you to say that you thought that, I'll just put it the way I interpret it, that targeting civilians as Hamas did in Israel is the way wars of national liberation are fought. And that international law, while it would be nice, is really just a way that the powerful people control the less powerful

people. And you don't really, I think you were saying that it shouldn't bind Hamas. No. Is that wrong? I didn't mean to say that, if that's how you interpret it. No. I was talking at that stage, if I remember correctly. I don't remember when that interview that you played was recorded.

A few days ago. Pardon me? A few days ago. Yeah, it was during this war, this recent war. It was probably about three days or four days ago. You're right. What I was talking about was this massacre story, the baby, the beheading of baby stories. And I was talking about the high civilian death toll inside Israel in the first few days of this

war. And I was giving background on what has been true of what the IRA did, what the ANC did, what the FLN in Algeria did. Do I endorse that? No, I do not endorse that. Do I think that international humanitarian law should not apply to national liberation struggles? I do not think it should not apply to national liberation struggles. I think it should apply to everybody. It, however, is, as a wonderful book by a colleague of mine, Nora Erechat, says, Justice for Some, it tends to be used by the powerful, which is unfortunate. It should be used by everybody. I think it applies to national liberation movements as well as to others.

I have to say, I don't think that's what you say to other audiences. Can you play Civilian Casualties 1 and Civilian Casualties 2? Now I play it. And you guys. I said on Amy Goodman on the Monday. I talked about this and I talked about war crimes and I wasn't just talking about Israel. You'll see what you said here. And I definitely didn't take it out of context or cut it in any way. Clearly, national liberation movements of the oppressed have always used violence, and many times civilians have unfortunately been targeted. That's a historical argument, and that is a comparison that can be made effectively. It has to be done carefully, but it does not outweigh the weight that can be made by the propaganda of people who are fighting against the cause of liberation and freedom and equal rights for Palestinians.

We are going to have to carry the weight of some of the negative aspects of this enormous event, which is to say the civilian casualties that have been a result of this attack, whether these were premeditated or not, whether these were under the control of the command structure of the resistance or not, doesn't matter. The fact that they are going to be played for all their worth for the rest of our lives probably by a Zionist propaganda machine that will fabricate, distort, exaggerate. That's not the point. The point is every war, in every war, these things have been used. That's part of war. And we have to develop effective strategies for how to respond to that. We also should be developing more effective strategies for trying to stay within the bounds of international law. It's impossible to do that completely. International law is structured to privilege those who have power and to deprive

those who do not have power of its protections. So I read that this is part of war. We should try, but international law is a stacked deck. And if we can't, we can't. That's how I that's how I interpret that in good faith. Yeah. By the way, you could say that, too. You know, I'm fine with that position. I'm just saying, is that your position? I mean, people can go back and listen to that and come to whatever conclusion they want. I'll restate my position. I think that national liberation movements should stay within the bounds of international humanitarian law. I think that international humanitarian law is stacked in favor of the powerful, not the weak. In this case, the powerful are the United States, Israel, and countries that use massive force and kill very much larger numbers of civilians than the other lot.

Both cases, I think, should be subject to international humanitarian law. I don't think that national liberation movements benefit in terms of something that's vital for them, which is winning over public opinion. This is a disaster in terms of the West as far as any hopes for Palestinian national liberation are concerned. Because the struggle is not just whatever is happening in Palestine. The struggle is also here and in Western Europe. That's the metropole for Israel. That's where Israel gets its support.

You lose that battle in the United States and in Western Europe, and you're losing an enormous part of the battle for the liberation of Palestine and for Israeli Jews and Palestinians to live together as human beings instead of as part of this endless struggle for supremacy. So I, you know, I'm somebody who doesn't live in Palestine. I live here. And I sincerely believe that the Irish won their independence partly because they won over American and British public opinion and the Algerians won their independence partly because they won over French public opinion. Now, they did that in spite of atrocities that were violations of international law as it later the IRA did in terms of killing civilians or what the, I'm talking about the war of liberation up to 1921, the Irish war of independence, or what the FLN did up to 1962 was a good thing or was not a violation of international humanitarian law or helped them in the sense that part of their struggle always was in the

metropole. And part of the Palestinian people's struggle is here and in Britain. I mean, this is where the, this, that was where the, there was where the Balfour Declaration was passed. This is where the Biltmore Program was adopted. You don't win here, you're not going to ultimately win. And winning means, among other things, not killing civilians. So do I think it's a good idea? No, it's a terrible idea.

Not just legally. For propaganda reasons. Sorry, not just legally and not just morally, politically, strategically. But you never mentioned that. Professor Kalidi, you had mentioned in the previous lecture that you gave that this was an enormous defeat for the Israeli military, the Israeli intelligence service, which it transparently is. When you talk about these civilian killings these atrocities

and obviously the difference between michael collins and now is michael collins didn't have a gopro i mean that makes things sorry yeah michael collins didn't have a gopro you can't see all this stuff so if this is a success in a way for hamas because it has to be a success if it's a failure for Israel how is this a success in that if you like this is obviously not doing well for them in the international stage I mean the wars I mean you look at 2006 and Lebanon I mean it seems very different to me because of these images because of the things that were yeah yeah yeah I mean so how is this a failure for for cause of, you know, whether it's a one state solution or two state solution, just peace in general? Klaus Witt said, war is an extension of politics by other means. This was a military defeat for Israel. Will it turn out to

be a political defeat for Israel? I think that that's a question that has yet to be answered. I'm not sure that whatever stage we were at on day two of this, in terms of Israel having suffered a temporary military defeat, is going to be the way this is going to be assessed. Because the political outcome is what's important. And it could well be that the negative impact of this politically will far outweigh whatever the impact of the surprise attack that led to whatever it led to on the 7th of October. That's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is that how this plays among different audiences will also determine how it ends up being judged. I mean, it's too early. This thing is not over. I think that in the West, that is pretty much decided.

Whatever happens, whatever casualty toll is inflicted on Gaza, I think that the narrative has been set as far as the West is concerned. So as far as that aspect of whatever the war aims of Hamas were, I don't know exactly what they were. I know what they said they were doing. I don't know exactly what they were. I know what they said they were doing. I don't know what they really were doing. There is no question in my mind that as far as the West is concerned,

which is only a fraction of the world, don't say the world or international opinion, say international opinion in the United States, Western Europe, and the white settler colonies. That group of people, this has been a defeat for the Palestinians as far as I'm concerned. Now, the rest of the world, the Western world, frankly, looks at these things differently.

They don't see the United States and Israel as paragons of virtue. And they don't see Israeli deaths or American deaths as having some kind of significance higher than the deaths of brown and black and Arab peoples. And when they look at it, they'll see,rael has carried out x y and z and i think they're going to look at it perhaps differently but as far as the west is concerned i i would argue that that you cannot say that this was a a victory certainly it wasn't whatever happens whatever we decide happened on the battlefield or will happen on the battlefield. Professor Kalita, you mentioned white settler colonies. Do you see this as a battle? Do you see the support that Israel has in the West as white solidarity?

No. I think that Israelis are seen as like us. I think people say, you know, they're Westerners. They're part of Western democracy. They are part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. I don't think it's a white settler. When I say white settler colonies, I'm it further. I mean, Israel is a national project, but it's also a settler colony. I mean, as early Zionist leaders frankly admitted,

Herzl, Jabotinsky, they had no qualms about saying that. We have a right to the land. They talked about biblical connections. They saw themselves as the rightful owners having rightful title or having rights, but they understood that they were Europeans. Herzl talked about,

we're going to create a barrier against the barbarism of Asia. I'm paraphrasing. Do you see? So that is a way in which, the frontier ethos that Americans have is seen as similar to Israel standing up against all these barbaric Arabs. But do you see Jews, European Jews in

particular, as having any cultural and genetic connection to that region? Probably, probably. I don't know. I'm not a geneticist. I can tell you that they have a religious connection for sure. I wouldn't go into the genetics. I'm not sure the Palestinians or the Israelis have a genetic connection. And by genetic connection, what do you mean? Are we going to go back to 1200 BC and dig up the DNA of whoever the hell is buried there if we can figure out who they are and compare it to current DNA? Well, there is science. I'm not sure that that's a way of providing a 21st century land deed in any case. buried there if we can figure out who they are and compare it to current DNA. Well, there is science. That's a way of providing a 21st century land deed in any case.

But there, well, I mean, how do you define indigenous then? You refer to the Palestinians as indigenous, but the Jews as not indigenous. What do you mean by the word indigenous? Let me play what I'm referring to. It's important to stress that settler colonialism and occupation are indeed at the root of everything that is happening in palestine it's not terrorism it's not islamic fanaticism it's not the any number of other false explanations that are being given what is happening um it happens that monday the first day that I had to do media about this, was a national holiday in the United States, which is officially described as Columbus Day.

People of conscience in the United States now call it Indigenous Peoples Day. This was an opportunity and is an opportunity to remind Americans that Palestinians are the indigenous people of the land, the indigenous people of their own country, the indigenous people of Palestine. It is an opportunity to remind people in the United States a settler colony, that the settler colony created by Zionism pushed the people of southern Palestine into the Gaza Strip. The people who are refugees in the Gaza Strip since 1948 are the descendants of the indigenous inhabitants of the now erased towns and villages and cities of southern Palestine. Are we indigenous in the United States now? We have a settler colony that's been here for

four centuries. At a certain point, you have to argue the settlers sort of become natives, have Israelis become natives in a certain sense they have. But the indigenous population of Palestine, when the political Zionism developed in the late 19th century, were Palestinian Arabs. Some of them were Jews, most of them were Muslims, many of them were Christians. That was the indigenous population at the time the Zionist political project began in the late 19th century. But some of them were Jews.

Absolutely. So then when you say, so then Jews are included in indigenous people then? Absolutely. So then- In Palestine and in many other parts of the Middle East. So then what's the criticism of other Jews joining their fellow Jews? They're not interlopers. They're not criticizing anybody. I'm saying it wasn't so itself as a settler colonial project.

That's all I'm saying. But you distinguished between the Israelis and the Arabs as being indigenous and non-indigenous. I also just said that you have to understand that there comes a point where even where you're talking about settler colonialism, you have to understand that these people become natives. But the Jews were there all along. But the Jews, it was a small population, but Jews maintained a population there, I believe, from before the time the Arabs were there, right? Very possibly continuously, yeah. As is even more the case with the Rockies.

I guess what I'm asking, if that's the case, then what is... But it's a political project that Zionism... What I'm saying, if you're acknowledging that the Jews were indigenous and they were there all along, then it kind of blunts the whole indigenous argument to me. It's like, okay, so these indigenous people and those indigenous people, people from around the world in desperate situations came to expand the existing indigenous population of this land. And then trouble ensued. But he's making a distinction between European Jews and Jews in the Levant. You're making that distinction. Well, I think he's making it.

No, he never said that. Did you say that? You are, you, is that Noam I'm talking to? Noam, yeah. Yeah. You are conflating the existing Palestinian Jewish population and the Jewish populations of other parts of the Middle East who are indigenous to the Middle East with persecuted European Jews who, for political reasons, and because they become nationalists, they've developed a modern 19th century national consciousness, believe in a return of the entire Jewish people as a refuge from persecution in Europe to Palestine

or to the land of Israel, as they saw it. Are they indigenous when they arrive? No. Do they see themselves as indigenous when they arrive? No. Do they believe they have a right? Yes. Are other Palestinian Jews or other Palestinians who are Jews indigenous? Yes. But you're conflating between the two. You see what I'm trying to say? of indigenous Jews somewhere and I find myself in trouble and I go to join my people, as it were. I'm not a settler or an interloper. I'm immigrating to a land which is indigenous to my people. That's not what that indigenous. I mean, that's right. So. So, OK, let's let's let's ask my people claim a biblical right. No, there is another matter. I don't have to endorse every zionist argument i'm responding to your what i thought was your um argument that the jews were not indigenous there so what is the solution do you believe in a one-state solution or a two-state solution

i believe in a solution where you have absolute equal rights for every individual and for both peoples whether that's one state or a multi-state or a confederal or a federal solution i i'm agnostic about well i mean practically given practically we have a one-state solution now in which jewish supremacy has been established by constitutional laws and where one people has human and political and civil and religious rights and most of one people is deprived of those rights. That situation is unjust and unsustainable. That's not what I meant. I mean, I think the Palestinians can demand tough concessions from the Israelis, things that the Israelis may never have conceived that they might have to do,

raising settlements, things like that, I don't think they can ever expect that Israel will allow the Jews to become a minority population in Israel. That would be the one-state solution. Nor do I actually believe that, in good faith, the Palestinians want to be a minority population in a democratic majority of Jews. We have a one-state solution, whether you like it or not, with a majority of Arabs. I mean, you're being semantic now. That's a different type of one state solution. I'm saying the end game here. Do So don't give me feasible. Feasible,

two-state solution is not feasible. Why is it not feasible? Because Israeli governments have been pouring concrete and settling Israeli Jewish citizens in the occupied territories to make sure that under no circumstances is a two-state solution possible. If you can tell me how it's feasible to remove three quarters of a million Israeli citizens who vote and have enormous political power, they dominate the current government. They've always been influential in the last half dozen governments. If you can explain to me how it's feasible to remove them from the 22 percent of Palestine, which is the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, I'll try and tell you how it might be. I don't think either is feasible at the moment. I was trying to handle them one at a time in terms of you have to work towards some solution. It seems to me that a one-state solution is obviously not feasible.

There is violence. I mean, now this might – I'm reluctant to say it, but this is my own feeling about it, which is probably ignorant, so you can correct me. But as a Jew, I say to myself, I look across the Middle East and I see sectarian violence among different Muslim sects and the way Christians are treated in Muslim countries as the, like nine out of 10 of the bloodiest conflicts that we've had in the last 10 years on the earth and and the idea that that the one people who would get along in this kind of brotherly love thing would be the jews especially when the the most powerful um political organization you know says things like a day of judgment will not come until muslims fight the

jews kill the jews when the jews will hide behind stones and trees. I mean, this kind of Hamas charter thing, you're not going to have a one state solution. No country with an atom bomb is going to agree to that kind of one state solution. So the only possible solution is a two state solution. If you've come with me that far, then let's talk about how to get to a two-state solution, why it's not feasible. Was it always not feasible? Was it not feasible when Allmert offered it? Was it not feasible when Barack tried to accomplish it then?

Was it feasible then? Okay. You really want me to talk about a two-state solution. I spent two years of my life trying to negotiate a two-state solution at Madrid and in the talks in Washington. And so at one stage, I hoped and believed that that was a possibility. I learned. I've written a book about this, and I have chapters about it in two other books in which I explained what I'm about to try and tell you right now, which is that at no stage was there an offer, either from Israel or from the United States, what I would call a two-state

solution. What was an offer was one state plus something else. That something else did not include sovereignty, control over borders, a capital in Jerusalem, and a number of other things that are attributes of statehood and sovereignty. So what was on offer, including Olmert, including Barak, including when I was engaged in the negotiations, including at Oslo, was an Israeli state which had security control over the entirety of mandatory Palestine, i.e. Israel and the occupied territories. That was all that was ever on offer. Rabin said that in his last speech in the Knesset in 1995. He said what? He said, we will never have a Palestinian state. We will

never allow. You can go back and read it. It was just weeks before they murdered it. And that was essentially the position of Israel. Rabin went further than anybody else. Rabin was the first Israeli leader to recognize that the Palestinians are a people, the first Israeli leader to agree that the PLO represented them, and the first Israeli leader to negotiate with them, and was willing to accept what he called a two-state solution. But as he said, and as all the others said,

this was not to be a real sovereign independent state. None of these offers ever included, nor did the United States ever push for that. Obviously, people went further than Rabin, but if that's the case, without getting into the weeds of all the different accounts, why is it that the people in the room, Clinton, Dennis Ross, Ben Ami, who many, many people who oppose Israel quote Ben Ami,

why do they say that you're wrong about that? Why do they say that the Clinton parameters work? I've laid out the argument, Noam. I've laid out the argument at length in stuff that I've written. I know all the people you're talking about. I don't know Clinton, but I certainly know. Shlomo was at Oxford with me. I've known him for decades.

And I know Ross, and I know Aaron David Miller and Kurtzer and all of these guys, these peace processors. And I can tell you what some of them have said. Read what Aaron David Miller has said. And that jives essentially with what I'm saying. Ross is much, much closer to the Israeli position, which is this is all Israel can offer and so on. Anyway, if you think a two-state solution is feasible, I think you should answer my question.

Who's going to roll up those settlements? 750,000 Israelis have been settled there. This has been the policy of the Israeli government since Golda Meir and you got on to settle the occupied territories. I want to ask you another question, but I don't know the answer to that. But I know that if a Palestinian Sadat or Martin Luther King were to say, listen, we're good with this, we're good with this, we're good with this, we never want another fight, but we want, you know, X number of settlements out, they would certainly put Israel on its back foot. It wasn't that long ago when 100,000 people gathered for peace now in the square in Tel

Aviv. There was a big constituency and you know, there's a lot of resentment. It would Royal, it would Royal Israeli politics. If a, if, if some Palestinian leader were to force that issue, I don't know whether or not, uh, it could happen, but I, I know that I would then maybe come towards your side of the issue if I said, what the fuck is with you, Israelis? They mean it. They want it. They want it to states.

They want peace. You're really going to continue this over a few settlements? Get rid of the settlements. Which leads to a question that I hope Professor Clady can answer, which is one that nobody seems to be able to answer now. And, you know, there's a lot of, it must be frustrating, the armchair pundits that are coming out in the past eight days, nine days, 11 days telling you what's happening in Gaza. But the one thing that I wonder about, and it's hard to gauge,

is how has Palestinian opinion on this moved? Because we're talking about the roadblock, the refuse. On what, sorry? On a two-state solution and because i mean obviously hamas has one election one time they don't win by a majority they win by plurality and so it's very very hard to judge if you can't say well you know they're all hamas i mean that that was 2006 right 2007 correct um yeah so right now, I mean, obviously, the kind of refused Nick for a two state solution on the Israeli side, you're talking about the settlers. What is the version of that on the Palestinian side? I mean, day. And most people go in and out and they don't follow the details in between the bloodshed. Okay. I'll just tell you a couple things.

When the PLO and Arafat renounced, quote unquote, terrorism in 1988, and when they agreed to negotiate on the basis of a two-state solution and eventually entered into the negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords, you had overwhelming Palestinian public support for a two-state solution. What happened? You have to, I'm sorry, to get into the weeds. I hate to get into the weeds. I know weeds are so annoying. The weeds are. I just asked you a question. I know. I understand. I don't want to get in the weeds. I have to get in the weeds. I'm sorry.

What happened between Oslo 1993 and 2000 when the second Intifada broke out. Well, Palestinian public opinion turned around. They turned around for several reasons. The most important of which, people realized settlements were expanding. Palestinian state was not on the horizon. Palestinian GDP per capita went down. The wall was built. And Palestinian movement, which was completely free,

I was living in Jerusalem in the early 90s. You could go anywhere. You could go to the Golan Heights with a West Bank license plate. You could go to the Gaza Strip into it without any restriction. By the time you got to 1997, 1998, the situation had deteriorated so badly for Palestinians that Palestinian public opinion started to turn away from a two-stage solution. That's why you had a second intifada starting in 2000. The second thing I would say is that after the second intifada, after the horrors of the second intifada, you're talking about suicide bombing,

you're talking about thousands of people killed, thousands of Palestinians, and I think almost 2,000 Israelis. Something very interesting happened after those elections of 2006. Hamas, first of all, changed its charter. Nobody pays attention to that. But secondly, more importantly, won an election and joined a coalition government which was authorized to negotiate with the Israelis and which at a time when Hamas offered a hundred years truth. Now, I am not, I not, and have never been a particular fan of Hamas. They're Islamists. They don't like people like me. I'm secular. They don't care for me or my ilk.

They would, their social and other policies are abhorrent to me. But I'm just telling you what every author who's worked on this, every analyst who's looked at this has said, something was opening there. They were in fact, like Fateh, open to a two-state solution at that point, 2006, 2007. What happens? The United States, Europe, and

Israel slam the door on that option. Partly in consequence of that, and partly because the hardliners are reinforced by the fact that the people who advocated that are systematically assassinated by Israel. Read Ronan Bergman's book. I want to ask you a very, very good book, by the way. It's a fantastic book. I want to ask another question about this whole thing with the Clinton thing. So and there couldn't be anybody who knows less about what he's about to say than i do but there is this letter out there from um what's his name nabil amr you know who he is i know who he is he who wrote an open letter uh

after the peace process um collapsed he is i'll read it an unusual act of public criticism the former palestinian cabinet minister wrote a letter to Yasser Arafat, and he says, among other things, didn't we throw mud in the face of Bill Clinton who dared to propose a state with some adjustments? Were we honest about what we did? Were we right in what we did? No, we were not. After two years of violence, we are now calling for what we rejected. So this is much more powerful to me than what Dennis Ross says. This is a guy who is there saying we weren't honest. We rejected what we should have taken.

So when I see that, if this guy is not like an uncle, then it says to me, well, this is at least quite debatable whether or not they had to turn it away. And then what it comes down to is, and I understand in some way how horrible it is to have to give up what you fucking believe you're entitled to but how many lives and how many generations are you ready to lose forever because you couldn't quite get everything you wanted but you will have a state and you know what would not have been a state and let me just you have a say and and time moves on and at some point when a country finds they have Canada on their border, not the people who were screaming, tensions relax and borders open. And people don't even bother arming themselves anymore because why bother? Why spend the money? And that's get on that track.

They could have gotten on that track. Israel is not going to have to have a militarized border forever. They have a militarized border until such time as they say, you know what, we don't need this anymore. Right. So why not start that? That's where it would lead if they meant it. No. That crazy talk. Nabil, I know Nabil. I've known Nabil since I was in Beirut back in the 70s and 80s, and I actually respect it. I respectfully disagree with him. I really think that the deal that was offered at Camp David was a bad deal. It was bad on sovereignty and statehood and borders.

It was bad on Jerusalem, and it was bad on refugees. Now, what about the right of return? Let me just finish. Do people go back and say the Palestinians should have taken the less than half of Palestine that they were offered in 1947? There are Palestinians who went back and said, we were two thirds of the population. We own 94% of the land. As far as we were concerned, it was our country. There were a bunch of Europeans coming here fleeing persecution. God bless them. But they're trying to take our country. They weren't trying to take part of it. They were trying to take the entirety of Palestine and turn it into the land of Israel. But we should have taken the scraps we were offered because look what's happened since. And that's what Nabil is saying, or was saying, I assume. I mean, I think that's a legit, I think that's what he believed at the time. I don't know if he thinks that now. He's always, by the way, been, ever since he was sidelined from the government, he's always been a critic of Renafet and of Aboumez.

So it's partly partisan political politics. But he's a patriot. But that's a legit, what I'm trying to say is that's a legitimate argument made by some Palestinians. Look, last thing I want to say, Noam, I'm not the decision maker here. I spent a lot of time trying to get something that was, in my view, unjust, unfair, absolutely historically, what's the word, unjustifiable. So it's not like I didn't have skin in this game. It's not like I was sitting there kibitzing with a pipe in my mouth saying, oh, we should do this and oh, we should do that. I spent a lot of time in Washington, weeks and months in Washington, trying to negotiate what you want. That has been cemented over. I'm really sorry. That bus has left the station. I tried it. I mean, decades ago when I

was young, I was involved in trying to achieve that. I'm not saying I want a one state solution. I don't know how in God's name these two people are going to live together in one or two or no states. I don't think anything is feasible right now. That's not my point. My point is, if you want to argue for a two-state solution, please argue the obstacles. The obstacles are not, just last thing I want to say, no. Sure, go ahead. They're not Israeli security. The obstacles are the greater land of Israel movement and the people who are radicalized, the religious figures who are radicalized by Rabbi Cook and his followers into what is now three quarters of a million Israeli Jews living in the occupied territories.

You figure out how to deal with that, and maybe you can talk two-state solution. The security issue is not easy, but this is not easy. This is impossible. I don't know how to deal with it, but I know – And Jerusalem is equally impossible in the same sense. I don't know how to deal with them, but it's kind of like I think what's the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago, what's the next best time? Tomorrow.

That problem is – we're on the same side of that problem, but that's only going to get worse and worse and worse. So that, that has to bring sober minded people to start thinking practically, even if it's, and even if it's painful, but listen, I like where this conversation is now. I know I don't want to keep it long. I have one more question and I'm sure Michael might have another question. Maybe in the future, I'll really try to bone up on the whole Clinton thing. The problem is that there's not even one set of facts that people agree on. So it's really hard to argue about it. You got Dennis Ross, read my book. I will read your book. Actually, that's what I'd like to read your book and then have another

conversation. But you do refer, one thing that kind of sticks in my craw, you refer to all Israelis as settlers. And I think that to people who don't know where you're coming from, they start thinking that the people that were killed by Hamas in the kibbutz, these left-wing peaceniks that were killed, were settlers, a la the people you've just described in this crazy Israel movement. Do you mean to refer to all Israelis as settlers? Look, we are settlers. In that sense, yes, all Israelis are settlers. We are part of a white settler colony established at the expense of the indigenous population. Now, you may quibble with my description of indigenous where Palestine is concerned. That's fine.

Do the Israelis constitute a nation yes do they have rights in palestine yes how do you mesh that with the rights of the indigenous population of the people who have been oppressed ever since this process began now that is another question when you talk about settler colonialism does that mean you don't recognize the national who have been oppressed ever since this process began. Now, that is another question. When you talk about settler colonialism, does that mean you don't recognize the national existence of Israel? It does not mean that. You don't mean that these people as civilians deserve to be protected under international humanitarian law? It doesn't mean that. Can I just put a little thing in your head as you're going to be talking about this, as you will in the future? Can you, if you could find it in your heart when you refer to what's happened,

not refer to the people who were killed as settlers? I never did that. Yeah, you did. You did. This tsunami of misinformation, which devalues Palestinian life. An example is the way in which the civilian casualties in Israeli border settlements, starting on Saturday, are being exploited by the Western media, taking their talking points directly from the Israeli media.

Maybe it's a slip of the tongue. Only because people are not informed enough to understand what you mean. The people who were killed by Hamas were not settlers. They were left-wing, largely commie, peace-nictized people. Can I say something to you last? Sure. Do you know where the people who live in Gaza come from? From the land of Palestine? No, no, no.

Palestinians, right? They're not Palestinians, but they're not Gazans. They're not Khan Yunis people. They're not Rafah people. Most of them. There are some. I mean, I have friends who are from Gaza families that have been there for 18 generations. But the overwhelming majority of the population of the Gaza Strip were driven there in 1948 from villages and towns, by the israeli army and our refugees from places where the you can call them villages or i can call them settlements now exist so i'm not calling them settlers they're israeli civilians okay

let me make that clear however this is part of a settler colonial process where people are driven off the land put on a reservation which is the Gaza Strip and then what happens is another issue I don't call them I'm not trying to ask you not to make your point that you want to make I'm asking you

not to say something which to an uninformed person they don't understand what you're saying. When I heard you say they killed the settlers, I know many people say they killed settlers? Like they don't understand who was killed. If you want to make the point that exactly what you made, that's, of course, this is legitimate discourse.

Go ahead, Michael. We have to wrap up. I don't want to keep them too long. No, you asked the question I was going to ask about settlers, who is considered a settler. I would just like to say when I was going to ask about settlers, who is considered a settler. I would just like to say when I was listening to the Arab, you know, you played the Arab clips, I recognized a couple of words because they sound like Hebrew. Chai, I think, or something like that was life, or bait, or buy, was how, what he said, house.

Underscoring the link between Jews and Arabs, I look at Professor Khalidi. He could be any number of relatives of mine. We are cousins. And what I say to Arab-American friends of mine who have come at me on Instagram because I posted pro-Israel posts, I'm not going to argue with them. I'm just going to say I'm hoping for peace in the family

because we are cousins. That's what I say to them without getting into anything that's what any good muslim believes anyway i do i did have one yeah there he goes yeah there was a french goodbye there's one other thing instead of jews when they're talking in arabic they say the cousins oh yeah the sons of your uncle your first cousins i i find the whole clinton barack olmer thing so fascinating because there's so many different accounts there's one thing ben ami talks about how our fight was constantly saying do you want to go to my funeral you're going to get me killed you're going to get me killed i'm wondering if you think that if he didn't have the

fear of being assassinated if he might have been more forthcoming. Do you think that played a part in it? No, he was responding to his public opinion. He knew that if he went home with an agreement, which was as bad as what I think he was being offered, I wasn't at Camp David. Okay. I am relying on other people's accounts. I can tell you what happened in the negotiations up to Oslo. And I've got a pretty good idea about Oslo now, but I wasn't at Camp David. However, I'm pretty sure that what he was saying is if I go back with an agreement which doesn't have sovereignty, an agreement, full sovereignty, which doesn't have what we need in Jerusalem, which is a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and if we don't have what I want on refugees, then it will be rejected by my people. And he, in his dramatic way, he was a very histrion And he, in his dramatic way,

he was a very histrionic character. In his dramatic way, that's what he was telling Shlomo, who, of course, is of Moroccan ancestry. So, you know, he was appealing to his cousin. Allmer claims to have offered... I have never talked to Shlomo about this, so I'd like to hear what he actually says rather than what he put in his book.

Allmer claims to have offered a capital in East jerusalem he said it was the hardest day of his life or something anyway wait one second wait one second professor quidi just i just want to say because my engineer is going to um kill me if i don't to please stay on the line until your files yeah yeah by the way riverside works at you i read that thank you yeah so listen thank you i think this conversation is ending quite nicely. It's, it's, it's the kind of conversations I like to have.

I don't mind getting a little testy with each other. I think that's, that can be fun and, and, and bonding in its own way. But I think that we're ending nicely. And I hope, I hope we have another conversation in the future and I want you to do your

homework. Read, read. Listen, one of my books, I don't care which one. No, I will. You give me a reading list and I will read it. And then maybe you're in New York. Maybe even you come down to the olive tree sometime and break pita and hummus with me. The book, The Hundred

Years War on Palestine. That's you could read the brokers of deceit on the negotiations or I could give you another one, which is the one that will make me come away thinking the Jews are the worst? None of them will make me come away. That's what my wife wants to read. They may make you think very badly of some American administration

seller. Sir, it's been a pleasure. Anybody else have last words? No, I'm all done. Thank you very, very much. Thank you very much. Good night.