The Young Turks - Biden Gets Backstabbed

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

A London surgeon has described witnessing a “massacre unfold” during 43 days spent under bombardment in Gaza. He says the destruction of the Palestinian health system was a military objective of the war. An interview with Rashid Khalidi. He is the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. In addition, he's the author of several books focusing on the Middle East including "The Hundred Years War on Palestine." Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu has been spitting in Biden’s face in private. He's been claiming that he’s the only one who can prevent a Palestinian state, and he's boasted about going against the United States' wishes. HOST: Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! Welcome to TYT. I'm your host, Anna Casparian, and we have a little bit of a surprise on the show today. It's not often that we do interviews. I'm picky with who we have on the show on the show.

But today we will have historian Rashid Khalidian to give us a bit of a history lesson in regard to the establishment of Israel, what that meant for the Palestinian people. A lot of people are unaware of how long this war has been going on. It didn't start in the 1940s. It actually began way earlier than that. So we'll discuss what happened in history and also give you some updates on what's currently happening today in the war in Gaza. Also in today's show in the second hour,

Wazni Lombray will join me to talk about a whole host of other stories, including Hunter Biden for the first time deciding that he's going to go on the offense in regard to House Republicans who have decided to exploit his legal troubles for their own political aspirations. So we'll discuss that. We'll also talk about how the Sandy Hook families are trying to work out a settlement with Alex Jones, who's trying to skirt his responsibility in paying liabilities following the, the trials finding him guilty of defaming those very family members. So we'll give you the details on that.

And the bonus episode is going to be a little nuts. Okay, we're going to talk about a political kink slash fetish that I am going to kink shame. I'm going to do it. I'm going to kink shame in the bonus episode. Go ahead. Come from me. All right. TYt.com slash join to become a member.

You have to be a member to watch that content. But in addition to getting that exclusive content, of course, you get to. to help support the show and keep us independent and free of corporate influence. That's the reason why you got this mouthy broad on the show every day. Speak in my mind without any fear and you're gonna get a lot more of that today. So without further ado, let's get started. Let's begin with our first story. By the time Shafat collapsed, there were over a hundred of these patients at Shaf Hospital.

And we started seeing phosphorus boats. That was London-based British Palestinian doctor, Gassan Abu Sita, who specializes in plastic and reconstructive surgery. He spent 43 days under bombardment in the Gaza Strip, risking his life to provide medical care to Palestinian civilians at Al-Shefa Hospital. But placing himself in harm's way isn't rare for this doctor. Abusita has worked in Gaza since 2009 and has provided medical care in various war zones in the middle of wars across Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. While speaking at a press conference in London on behalf of the International Center for Justice for Palestinians, Abu Sita described the horrific scenes at the Al-Ahtli and Al-Sheifa hospitals,

which later ceased to function due to repeated bombings by the Israeli defense forces and the restriction of fuel into the region, which of course is necessary. to run the machines in medical facilities. I want to revisit his claims about the IDF, allegedly using incendiary white phosphorus bombs in a moment. But it's worth getting into what Abu Sita experienced in regard to the victims who are suffering the brunt of this brutal war. During my time at Shifa Hospital, it became apparent that 40 to 45% of all the wounded

were going to be children. The primary target of the bombing was people's residential homes. Really by the day four, day five, half of my operating list, which was around 10 to 12 cases every day, starting at 8 or 9 in the morning and finishing at 1 in the morning, were children. My estimate is that there are now between 700 and 900 children with amputations of limbs. in some of whom multiple limbs have been amputated. On one night at an early hospital, I performed amputations on six children. His claim that 40 to 45% of the wounded and dead have been Palestinian children can be corroborated by breaking down the death toll numbers, as we've been doing on this show.

At least 14,800 Palestinians, mostly women and children in Gaza have been killed, per the minister. of health. About 6,000 Palestinian children are among those killed since October 7th. Abu Sita was working at the Al-Shefa hospital as it was under heavy IDF bombardment. In the next clip, he describes the suffering his medical staff both witnessed and personally experienced during the air raids. While in Shifa, the number of burns and the number of pediatric injuries were increased, one of the most horrific scenes that I witnessed in Shiffa Hospital was when after the air raid and the dead and the wounded were brought in. Members of the Shifa medical staff and nursing staff would be running frantically in the emergency department,

looking at the faces of the wounded and the dead to see whether their relatives had been amongst the wounded. And in many cases, their children had been amongst the dead and the wounded. So just place yourself in the shoes of the medical staff. Not only did they have to provide care in impossible, the absolutely worst possible conditions. But they too were confronted by the reality that they were losing members of their own families. In some cases, their own children. As the hospital was relentlessly attacked with Israeli airstrikes, children were being rushed in with serious and gruesome injuries. They suffered from shrapnel lodged into their small bodies. Many of them

had lost limbs or were in need of amputations without anesthetics because they had run out. Medical machines were losing power as Israel barred the entry of fuel into the Gaza Strip. It was a litmus test, Abu Sita claimed, for what the IDF had planned to do to the rest of the health system. Following the attack four pediatric hospitals were targeted, he said. Last week, Israel targeted the Al-Aouda and Indonesian hospitals in Gaza's north and arrested Shifa hospitals director and several medics. And while the two-day extension of the pause in bombing has been repeatedly described as a respite for Palestinians, Abu Sita said the recent supply of medicine, food, and water did not come close to dealing with the humanitarian crisis.

Now, as if the barbaric treatment of Palestinian civilians wasn't horrifying enough, Abu Sita then makes the stunning claim that the IDF has been using incendiary bombs that break international laws. We started seeing phosphorus burns. I had treated white phosphorus burns in the Gaza Strip during the 2009 war and was very familiar with the very characteristic injuries and burns that they make

as a chemical burn phosphorus burns burn right through to the inner core of the body and only stop when they have no exposure to oxygen and so the burns would be the patient would be

basically puckered with burns that core right into the ribs the bones and unlike thermal burns that spread from the surface more horizontally. Allegations of the IDF using white phosphorus bombs definitely seem shocking and unbelievable. And in fact, I had trouble believing that Israel would go so far as deploying chemical weapons that would burn the flesh of Palestinian civilians, including children.

However, as the Guardian reports, these claims are not new and have been corroborated. by other sources. Claims of the use of white phosphorus in Gaza were also made by humanitarian rights watch, or human rights watch, I apologize, in October, while Amnesty International claimed to have evidence of its use in southern Lebanon. Of course, Israel denies the use of incendiary weapons, referring to the claims made by human rights watch as unequivocally false. Like many Western militaries, the IDF claims, the IDF possesses smoke screen shells that include white phosphorus that are legal under international law. These shells are used by the IDF for creating smoke screens and not for targeting or causing fires and are not defined under law as incendiary

weapons. So they're denying it. But in a subsequent interview, Dr. Aboussita elaborates on why he firmly believes that the IDF is in fact using white phosphorus bombs. Take a listen. Israel insists it hasn't used white phosphorus. So can I ask you, are you absolutely certain these are a very distinctive form of wound that it wouldn't be mistaken about? Absolutely. So the phosphorus will continue to burn into the body.

And your job as a surgeon is to try to cut the burn tissue out. And what you end up with are cores of tissue that go all the way to the bone. So the dad had burns into and part of his ribs, and the child had multiple burns all the way in his back down to the bone. Wow, so that's, so that is a very, very serious thing for Israel to confront at some point. If it is in fact true that the IDF is deploying these bombs, the notion that Israel would have to confront it at some point is laughable as long as the United States continues to provide unwelcome. wavering support for its Middle East ally. So far the U.S. government has provided cover for Israel's war crimes. And until American voters make it crystal clear that there is a political price to pay for doing so,

there's no reason to believe that Israel will be deterred. But Scotland Yard is actually investigating the claims made by Abu Sita. My lawyer had been contacted by Scotland Yard to be interviewed as a British citizen who was the victim of a potential war crime as a survivor of the attack on the he hospital and as someone who had witnessed these wars these attacks on civilians and I we will be interviewed and hopefully for me Andrew as a parent if the world sweeps under the carpet the killing of 8,000 children in 40 days the world that we will be living in is a frightening place.

The sheer number of children who've been killed, there has to be some justice done for these children. You know, I have to say what Abu Sita is saying there sounds eerily similar to what we heard from the United States government. Not in regard to Israel, of course not, but in regard to the barbarism and use of chemical weapons by the leader of Syria. When Bashar al-Assad uses chemical weapons, well, it is a humanitarian crisis, a violation of

international law, something that needs to be condemned, something that he needs to be ousted for. I just wish that there was some consistency with the United States government and its condemnations, rather than engaging in these condemnations, specifically based on on which country they're talking about. If it's a ally of the United States, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia, oh, the barbarism is totally fine. If it is an enemy of the United States, a regime that the United States is not at all in

favor of, then all of a sudden, international law matters, war crimes matter, and something needs to be done. clearly the United States government considering these inconsistencies that I'm bringing up right now has really no moral leg to stand on but they love to talk about human rights abuses in countries that they're considering a conflict with whether it be a military conflict a cold war as we're currently engaging in with China just keep that in mind keep in mind the double standards that we're experiencing in real time. Now, Abu Sita left Gaza nearly two weeks ago. And he says that he feels an overwhelming sense of guilt for those left behind. He says the

following, quote, my fear is even those who are steadfast enough to stay will eventually leave on their own, and we will have what the Israelis want, which is another 1948. This war is the continuation of the 1948 Nakba. Obviously, that fear is shared by many. On October 13th, Israel's defense minister,

Yoav Galant, made Israel's intentions crystal clear. Quote, Gaza won't return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything. And guess what? The IDF's actions make that clear. What witnesses on the

ground in Gaza have experienced, make that clear. The dozens of Gazan journalists who have been killed during this war make that clear. It is precisely the fearless reporting provided by journalists like Aseil, Musa in Gaza that help us really understand the genuine plight of the Palestinians. He shares details of the terror witnessed by those fleeing northern Gaza through Salah al-Din Road. dogs biting at a human corpse, an exhausted, heavily pregnant woman carrying a toddler on her back, a seemingly lifeless body pushed on a cart. The sites of the Salah Aldeen Road, the main highway that runs like a spine through Gaza,

remain with those who have walked it. At some point, Americans need to ask themselves how comfortable they are, providing financial and military support to a country that publicly boasts about its annihilation of the Palestinian people. I know that I have a problem with it. I don't think any country deserves unwavering, undying, undying committed support, regardless of what they carry out, regardless of what war crimes they're committing. And the real question is, why is it that the United States government is so obsessed with providing that unwavering support to Israel, even despite what we are hearing about what is transpiring on the ground in Gaza.

Luckily, we're going to have a guest on in the next segment to help us make sense of everything. He's a renowned historian. And he's going to walk us through the history of Israel, the plight of the Palestinians, and give us a better understanding of how we got to where we are today. Stick around. We'll be right back. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's all. off in your body, but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones,

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For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. Welcome back to the Young Turks. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian. We've been covering the ongoing war in Gaza pretty much every single day since it started. But I think a lot of Americans are ill-informed on how we got to where we are today. the history of what happened in Palestine, how Israel was established is really important for Americans to understand. And luckily today, joining us is esteemed historian Rashid Kalidi to walk us through that history and talk a little bit about what's currently transpiring

in the Gaza Strip. Professor Kalidi is the Edward Saeed Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of several books focusing on the Middle East, including a book that I highly recommend everyone read. We're going to be talking about it quite a bit today. The Hundred Years War on Palestine. Professor Kalidi, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Anna. So as much as the U.S. media would like to have Americans believe that this war

began on October 7th of this year, the truth is that the persecution and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians really started at this point more than a hundred people. hundred years ago. And so I know this might take a little bit of time, but I think it's really important to start this conversation off by talking about the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. And there are a few other documents that I want to walk the audience through. But let's start with that. Well, the Balfour Declaration is important because it gives the support of the greatest power in the world at the time, Great Britain. It gives the support of Great Britain to the science movement, such that this small and relatively unpopular movement among Jewish communities

in Eastern Europe suddenly has the patronage of the empire, which not only is the greatest power globally, but is in control of Palestine in November. British troops actually take Jerusalem in December of 2017. And by the Balfour Declaration, the British say that they look with favor on the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. A national home for the Jewish people is the wording they use. The Palestinians are never mentioned, except as the non-Jewish population who are not considered a people and who do not get national rights, according to the British, and get only civil and religious rights. And so the Balfour Declaration sets and train a whole series of events whereby the British give themselves a mandate for Palestine through the

League of Nations and proceed to create a Jewish paristate or the embryo of a Jewish state in Palestine with a military, with educational system, with a parliament, with a foreign ministry, with all of the appendages of a state without sovereignty, obviously. The British are still the sovereign power under the mandate. And it is really, really important because it puts the two peoples, the Palestinians who are the overwhelming majority of the population, and the Jewish population of Palestine, which is increased over time by immigration, not on a footing of equality, but on a footing of profound inequality. One group is a people with national rights, rights to a national home. The other group are just religious communities without national or political rights.

And that's the system under which the British rule Palestine for the next couple of decades. I think the distinction between human rights and political rights needs to be made, because I think a lot of people kind of conflate the two. So just real quick before we continue, can you talk about the difference? Well, very simply, under the mandate, which is based on the Balford Declaration, the British give this growing Zionist project in Palestine a diplomatic rights. They can go to the League of Nations and petition as of right. They're a public body.

They have control of various aspects of government in Palestine, like education and some others. They're allowed to vote for an assembly of their own. All of these things are denied to the Palestinians. The British control Arab education. The British deny any Arab body elected or otherwise representative capacity. In other words, the Palestinians are denied not only self-determination in their own country, which the covenant of the League of Nations said they were supposed to get. But they see their country gradually being transformed into one in which this national project,

this Zionist national project, slowly but surely is taking over the country. You have an article in a Palestinian newspaper saying we're going to become strangers in our own country. So one group has national and political rights. The other group is denied those rights and is entitled only, as the mandate says, civil and political, sorry, civil and religious rights. One thing that I have been kind of searching for is a better understanding in regard to what motivated Arthur James Ball for. Like, why did he want to establish a Jewish state? Like, what was in it for him? Well, the Brits, you know, don't do anything because they love the brown eyes of subject peoples, nor Arabs, nor Jews.

The British did what they did, essentially for strategic reasons. They wanted to reinforce the defense of the eastern frontiers of Egypt. You know, Palestine is immediately to the east of Egypt. And they had been worried for years and years before World War I that Egypt might be threatened from the east. And in fact, during the war, the Ottoman army invaded Egypt from the east and arrived on the Suez Canal. They wanted, secondly, to control the shortest land route between the Mediterranean and the Gulf to ensure that they control all of the routes to India. They already controlled the Suez Canal through Egypt. They wanted to control the shortest land route, which ran from Haifa, Tabasa, and where they eventually built a road, pipelines, air bases during the interwar period.

So these were the strategic motivations for which they wanted Palestine, and Zionism was a useful tool to that end. In the words of a British official, what we were trying to create was a little loyal Jewish ulster in a sea of hostile Arabs. So it was a base for Britain, a strategic base for Britain. in the Middle East that Britain was coming to dominate almost completely at this time. Now, what followed the Balfour Declaration was Article 22 of the Convention of the League of Nations, which is an incredibly important moment in the establishment of Israel. So this happened in June of 1919. Can you talk a little bit about what that was and how the Palestinian people were not included in this?

Yeah, the Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations declared that the Arab areas of which had formerly been part of the Ottoman Empire were provisionally independent states. And this was the basis on which they were to be made mandates of European powers with a view to their eventually becoming independent. That's what the covenant said. And that's what was eventually done in Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Jordan, by the League of Nations. through the British and French mandatories. That was not done in Palestine. In Palestine, the Palestinians, who are the overwhelming majority of the population, never received self-determination,

never received self-government. Right up to the very end, the British ruled Palestine directly while leaving self-government and the building of an embryonic state to the Zionist movement. So the Palestinians were denied what under Article 22 of the covenant was allowed to every other Arab state, under European mandate.

You know, I want to just read a statement. It was part of a private memo that Arthur James Balfour sent to his cabinet members back in August of 1919, because I think this is the kind of stuff that most Americans have been kind of shielded from knowing about, from learning about. And it tells you the intentions from the very beginning by the very people who tried to create this Jewish state. So Balfour said in August of 1919 to his cabinet, it was a private memo that actually wasn't published until I believe the 1950s, if I'm not mistaken. That's correct.

He said, Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes of greater import than the desires and prejudices of these 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that land. I mean, it's just so transparent, so clear, the candor is incredible there, yet there's this denialism all the way to modern times to today, where there seems to be this, you know, rejection of what actually happened in history and why it is that the Palestinian people have been resisting, you know, the taking of their land, the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. And so, look, I, we're in a difficult situation now because I don't think that you can just dismantle Israel. And I'm not a proponent of that. However, I do want to ask you, following the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, okay? What happens after that? Because what we keep hearing over and over again by supporters of Israel and everything the Israeli government wants to do is, well, the Palestinians were offered peace deals. They were offered their own state.

But is that really true? Can you walk us through that and what the reality of these offers were? Sure. I mean, one of these great myths has to do with the partition plan of 1987. The British changed their policy at the end of the 30s. They eventually turn against the Zionist movement, and the Zionist movement turns against them. terrorism attack. There's terrorist attacks on the British. The British are forced out, basically. And 47, they throw the whole problem over to the UN. And the UN decides, the UN General Assembly,

decides to partition Palestine. Now, in 1947, the overwhelming majority of the population of Palestine were Arabs, over two-thirds. And the charter of the United Nations, much like the covenant of the League of Nations, talks about self-determination. And so the Palestinians said, well, We're the majority. It's our country. We want to be independent in our country. That's not what the United Nations decides. It has the same kind of biased approach to this that the League of Nations did for different reasons. And we're talking about a different era. And we're talking about different powers. Essentially, it's the United States and the Soviet Union that back the partition resolution of 1947. What does that resolution do? It gives most of a country, most of which is owned by Arabs and which has an overwhelming Arab majority to a putative Jewish. state, so 55% of Palestine, including most of the fertile land, most of which is owned by Arabs, and about half of whose population would have been Arabs, it gives that 55% of Palestine to the Jewish minority for a Jewish state. And it gives a little over 43% to the Palestinians, who are, as I've said, two-thirds of the population. The Palestinians naturally reject this. They say,

it's our country. We're entitled by the Charter of the United Nations to Self-Determination. We don't accept that most of our country be given to this minority, most of whom are immigrants to this country recently. And the result is the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. There is no way to create a majority Jewish state in a majority Arab country without reducing that majority. And that is done in 1948 by the process that Palestinians describe as the Nekva, which is the expulsion of over 750,000, over 750,000 Palestinians, and eventually the destruction of most of their villages, which are then, the lands are then given over to Jewish settlements,

which are established in the decades that follow. Now, you were involved in peace negotiations. You tried to broker a deal for a two-state solution. And I'm curious what that experience was like. What kind of obstacles stood in the way of accomplishing those goals? There were two major obstacles. The first was the United States and the second was Israel. I was involved as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation that went to the Madrid

peace conference and that later negotiated in Washington over 10 different sessions with an Israeli delegation. And what we realized very, very quickly is that the United States and Israel had together established ground rules, which essentially precluded the creation of an independent Palestinian state, which would be sovereign, which would be contiguous, which would be viable, which would have control over its own borders. In fact, we were not even allowed to discuss statehood, sovereignty, the expansion of Jewish settlements, Jerusalem, water, borders. We were not allowed to discuss any of those things. The ground rules established by the United States and Israel said you can talk about autonomy.

And all of those other issues are deferred until later. We eventually found out that behind our backs, the PLO had decided to negotiate directly with Israel. And those negotiations produced the Oslo Accords, which essentially were the bad deal that was offered to us in Madrid and Oslo. Autonomy over five years. And then after that, we will discuss what is to come. And what the PLO did was to recognize the state of Israel at a time when under Prime Minister Rabin, Israel recognized the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people. Israel never recognized the Palestinians as having a right of national self-determination. Israel has never recognized that the Palestinians are entitled to a Palestinian state, which would

be sovereign, contiguous, and viable. You had offers. from Rabin, and you had offers from other Israeli prime ministers, but as Rabin said in his last speech to the Israeli Knesset before he was assassinated by a right-wing fanatic whose heirs are today in the Israeli cabinet, whose ideological heirs are today ministers, he said what we are offering the Palestinians is less than a state, and it will involve our control of the Jordan River Valley and of the borders. In other words, Israel was going to give the Palestine in some glorified form of the autonomy that ended up being the maximum that the United States and Israel were prepared to grant in practice. They said state the Americans. And the

United States government has always had a true state solution. But if you look carefully, the ceiling of what the United States is actually willing to do is invariably whatever sealing Israel proposes. So you have President Biden now basically reading off an Israeli teleprompter And every time he opens his mouth on the subject. And essentially saying whatever the Israelis want to do is fine, as long as they limit the casualties and so on and so forth. But they want to destroy Hamas, that's fine. And when he says Palestinian state, again, it has those kinds of limitations that we came up against way back in the early 1990s in Madrid and in Washington. You answered my question before I could ask it, because I was curious what you thought about

Biden. You know, publicly he says he's supportive of a two-state solution. His administration claims that they're engaging in some real tough talk with the Netanyahu regime. But Netanyahu went to members of the Lakud Party recently. It's a story we're going to cover later today and bragged about how, you know, look, I'm going to go against Biden. He's calling for a two-state solution. But I'm the one who can fight the possibility of Palestinian statehood. And now everyone's clowning Biden.

But I mean, who's to say if Biden's genuine? or sincere in actually wanting a genuine two-state solution where the Palestinians really do have their own independent state and have full autonomy as a result of that. I mean, I'm skeptical at this point. Exactly. I mean, I have two things to say. The first is the United States has rarely gone above whatever sealing the Israelis have chosen as far as what the Palestinians are to be allowed. The United States has been willing to push Israel on many, many issues, but not on the Palestine issue. I could go back to the 1973 war, to Kissinger, to Secretary of State Baker, and times when the United States has forced Israel to accept things that Israel did not want to do.

Even President Obama did that with the Iran nuclear deal. But on Palestine, no American president has ever really pushed the Israelis. And that's even more true of this president, who I think is probably the most committed Zionist ever to sit in the Oval Office. The other thing is the Israeli side. This is a government which comes out of a tradition, which way back when it first came into power in 1977, had as its platform. I'm talking about the Likud Party, to which Netanyahu belongs, of course, as the leader of that party. They said, there will be nothing but Israeli sovereignty between the sea and the river. That's always been Israel's objective, absolute sovereignty in all of Palestine. And whatever happens to the Palestinians is under

that ceiling. And the United States has never challenged that. And my, my, what I say to people who say, two state solution, you want a two state solution, roll back settlements. You want a two state solution and occupation. Fifty-six years of occupation. The United States has done nothing to end it. In fact, we give them the guns to maintain the occupation. True. We give them 3.8 billion dollars a year with which they maintain that occupation. We allow tax free dollars to flow to settlements, 501C3s, headed by people like Jared Kushner, siphon hundreds of millions of dollars. to the settlement enterprise. You wanted to a state solution, stop settlement and occupation, and start arguing with the Israelis about real sovereignty for the Palestinians. No American president

has ever done those things. I want to move on to a moment in one of the lectures that you gave. This is literally from seven years ago, and it's kind of incredible how much you had your finger on the polls, probably because you are a professor, you're at Columbia, you're probably seeing some stuff on campus that we weren't privy to yet. But I want to go to this video and then ask you about what we're now seeing in regard to protests against the U.S. support. It's unwavering support toward the Israeli government. Let's watch. 38% of young American college age Jews who were surveyed feel that it's difficult or impossible to defend Israel. that's indefensible.

I mean, that's a striking and strange number. And obviously, the American political reality doesn't reflect that. Obviously, American media doesn't reflect that. And neither of them will for a very long time. But if that's what's happening at the base, if that's how people perceive things, and we're not talking about an uninformed public, we're talking about college-age kids,

then there's going to be some serious problems. for this project. So that was again in 2016, seven years ago, and you were referencing a poll that was conducted by Republican strategist Frank Luntz. He was doing this poll for a pro-Israel conference that he was going to do a presentation at. And I think he was probably surprised at what he was seeing in the polling results. What are your thoughts on what we're now seeing among college students today in the United States? And do you think that this movement can grow to a point.

where maybe the Democratic Party sees the unwavering support toward the Israeli government as a political liability. Well, let me say something before I talk about the change that's going on at the base of the Democratic Party and among young people generally. And this is that at the top of the Democratic Party, from President Biden on down, Senate, House party leadership, we have a absolute ironclad commitment to whatever Israel wants. In fact, these people are essentially reading talking points that are given to them by APEC. Their staffs don't even write this stuff. They have people writing in foreign writing. And if you listen to Biden, I mean, he's saying things that are almost identical to what Israeli military spokesmen and Netanyahu and Israeli ministers are saying. That's the top. That's our government. That's many other institutions in our society,

including most of the corporate mainstream media. The base is changing extremely rapidly. Biden's approval rating among voters aged 18 to 34 fell from 46 to 31%. And that was largely because of the Gaza war in the period over the last four months. That's an NBC poll. 70% of voters in this age group disapprove of his handling of the war in Gaza. 70% of voters in the age group from 18 to 34. And we see this on campus. I mean, a couple of years after that interview, you just ran.

There was a vote on the Columbia campus, and there were similar votes on campuses all over the country for the university to divest from companies that support the Israeli occupation. The divestment motion won overwhelmingly. The university administration treated the vote with utter contempt in a dismissive, arrogant fashion. President Bollinger acted as if this was a bunch of gadflies. It was disgraceful, the reaction of the administration. There was no respect whatsoever for the students. And there's been no change in this or other administrations. That's how very large numbers of students, Arab, Jewish minorities, students from all backgrounds feel about this issue.

The numbers that these polls have been revealing over the last seven, eight, nine, ten years are where young people stand, I think, overwhelmingly all over the country, not just on college campuses. But that is simply not reflected in the institutions that dominate our society, nor the media. nor the political system, nor God help us our university administrations, which are biased and extremely hostile to Palestinian activism, almost without exception. I mean, look, you're absolutely right about that disconnect. And what I'm wondering is at some point, what the people in power are going to have to realize is that it is going to hurt them. It is going to hurt them politically. And even Biden, I mean, in an incredible admission, members of his administration in a recent Washington Post piece talked about how, you know, the political liability of going against AIPAC is very real.

But now all of a sudden we have a sizable portion of the, you know, Michigan population consisting of Arab Americans who came out to vote for Biden in 2020. And it was an important population within a swing state that Biden absolutely needed. Now Arabs are saying, listen, we're going to sit it out. We're not going to support Trump, but we're not going to vote for him. But we're just not going to vote for president because we don't agree with what Biden is doing. And I sympathize with that. I'm Armenian, my ancestors went through a brutal genocide committed by the Turks. And I can't watch what's happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza and with a conscience cast a ballot for any presidential candidate that will continue the barbarism that we're seeing on our television screens, on our phones, every single day.

So what would your advice be to American voters who find themselves in this? conundrum. I mean, we're in a really difficult situation. This man has endorsed the Israeli plan to continue to attack the population of Gaza until they feel they've quote unquote eliminated Hamas, an unreal goal. But let's let's go with that objective. So this is an American-Israeli war. We are shipping huge amounts of ammunition to Israel for their 155 millimeter, their 175-millimeter

meter artillery for their Apache helicopters. Those are American weapons for their F-35s, their F-15s, their F-16s, those are American weapons. They're 2,000-pound bombs, like the ones they dropped on Jabalya camp a few weeks ago. It's an American-Israeli war. The president is about to get, when he eventually can get it through Congress, another $14 billion of essentially more bombs and more replacements for the weapons that may be used up killing Palestinians. people across this country, especially young people and minorities, feel this. I mean, I was talking to an Indian American student. She said the kind of colonial racism that you get here, it reminds me of what my ancestors

went through in India. African Americans say, you go to Palestine and you feel like you're what your grandparents told you about Jim Crow and segregation in the South. I mean, each part of the American population, especially younger people, are sensitive to these things. And how we vote, I'm not young, but how people who feel like I do and you do vote is going to be a real problem. I think he'll lose Michigan if he doesn't change his policy very, very quickly. I think he may lose Pennsylvania and other states where young people, where minorities, where Arab Americans, where Muslim Americans, where the very large number,

I talked about the number of Jewish students in 2016 who felt they couldn't support Israel. That number is even larger today. I think Jewish Voice for Peace on some campuses has more supporters than the groups that support Israel among Jewish students. Those people won't vote for Biden, or at least are going to have real difficulties voting for Biden. Most of them won't vote for Trump, of course. But that may hand this election. God help us over to Trump. So it's a dilemma. And I have no answer for it. But I don't see how I could vote for this man. I mean, he's going killing people. My niece's family is in Gaza. They're in danger every day. And many of my friends are there. I know people who are there. It's it's it's something that you simply cannot

abide that we are participating in this slaughter. Yeah, well, I clearly share that dilemma with you. I'm going to end on one final question because you, you mentioned something in the context of an interview you did with Novara media. Great interview, by the way. Everyone should watch it. But you made a reference to legislation having to do with this war. So let's take a look at that. And I'd like you to elaborate because I, this is news to me. Let's watch. It was the intention of Israel and of the United States to expel as many as possible of the people of Gaza to Egypt. We know that that's the case because the United States government put before, put before Congress, a budget request, which included forcing people out of Gaza. It's in the budget request of 20 October. We know that because the Israelis have been talking about it among themselves.

And ministers have been saying, you know, the only solution is for them to go to Egypt. Now, I'm very aware of the various statements made by members of the Lekud Party documents indicating that they do intend to push Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip to Egypt. But it always appeared as though the Biden administration was very much against that. So what you're referencing, I want to know more about. What did you read in the budget? The Biden administration has since turned against this because they were slapped in the face by the Egyptians and the Jordanians, who told them under no circumstances would be countenance, helping you to ethnically cleanse Palestine. And under no circumstances, would Egypt hand over a chunk of Sinai to be turned into a huge refugee camp for Palestinians who, as everybody knows, once they're expelled, will never be allowed to return. This is not a temporary project.

The budget request from the Office of Management budget to Congress on the 20th had a section under a heading called migration, migration, and refugee assistance. And the key passage said these resources would support displaced and conflict-affected civilians, including Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, and to address potential needs of Gazans fleeing to neighboring countries. Another passage says the crisis could well result in displacement across borders, in other words, into Egypt or into Jordan. And funding may be used to meet evolving programming requirements outside of Gaza. And then another passage says, ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza, later on the president, under pressure from the Egyptians and the

Egyptians, sorry, and the Jordanians issued statements in which he said that we will ensure that Palestinians are not displaced to Egypt or other nations. So the pushback from the presumed host nations that Secretary of State Blinken was asking the Egyptians and the Jordanians to accept the pushback from those countries is what forced the administration to change its policy. But this is a provision.

It's on page, I believe, page 40 of the very long document that was sent by OMB to the Speaker of the House on the 20th of October. That was their intention. Wow. We don't only have it from the Egyptians who were screaming bloody murder and the Jordanians who were screaming bloody murder. We have it from their own document. It's incredible. Professor Kalidi, thank you. It's disgraceful.

It's not just incredible. No, no, it is disgraceful. It's absolutely disgraceful. But what's also disgraceful is the fact that the first time I hear about it is watching an interview that you do, rather than hearing it from the wonderful political journalists here in the United States that are supposed to walk us through the various budget proposals that come from members of Congress and the executive branch. Of course we don't get that information. So that's also disgraceful. Professor Kalidi, thank you so much for being generous with your time.

I really appreciate this conversation. I would love to have you back on in the future. Thank you. I'd be happy to do it again. Thank you for having me. Have a wonderful night. All right, everyone, we have to take a brief break. When we come back, we have one more Israel-related story to get to. It's really important to know about what Prime Minister Netanyahu has been telling members of the Lakud party

and how he's basically boastful about not allowing Palestinians to form their own state. We'll get to that and more when we come back. Don't miss it. Welcome back to the show, everyone. We're going to do one more Israel-related story because it's super important for you to know about. And then we'll take a break and bring Wozni-Lambre on for the second hour of the show. In the second hour, we have completely different stories to get into. We're going to give you an up on the Alex Jones settlement as it pertains to the Sandy Hook families who were defamed by him relentlessly. We're also going to talk a little bit about how Hunter Biden has gone from

playing defense to playing offense against House Republicans who have basically exploited his legal issues for political gain. So we'll get to all of that later in the second hour. For now, though, let's talk about the conversations that Netanyahu's been having with members of the the Lakud party. While President Joe Biden keeps reiterating that he does in fact want a two state solution where the Palestinians will have their own independent state that they will have control of, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is actually appealing to members of the far right Lakud party, the party that he's from, of course, for support so he can remain in power

despite how unpopular he is, but more importantly, by arguing that he is the only one who can prevent a Palestinian state. That is what he is saying. So we first learn about this through a tweet or a post on X, if you will. So let's go to this. Yonatan Tuval is with the Israel Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, and this is what he posted. So he talks about how this is a scoop, Netanyahu to fellow Lakud members, quote, I'm the only one who will prevent a Palestinian state in Gaza. I'm the only one who can withstand U.S. pressure. I know Biden for 40 years, i.e. I can totally manipulate him and go against anything that he has to say. I know how to manage American public opinion. Do you? Do you Netanyahu? You can barely manage public opinion

in your own country. He is a deeply, deeply unpopular leader. I just wish the people of Israel would stop electing him. But nonetheless, Netanyahu's remarks, according to common dreams, fly in the face of the Biden administration's continued push for a two-state solution as the only way to guarantee the long-term security of both the Israeli and the Palestinian people. Now, in a recent interview that I did with Professor Rashid Khalidi, we really questioned how sincere Biden is in pushing for a two-state solution because his actions don't really seem to match what he's saying. But nonetheless, let's, for the sake of this conversation, except at face value, that Biden

does in fact want a two-state solution and for Palestinians to be able to establish their own independent state. Now, Biden has given unconditional, unwavering support to Israel's government, regardless of how far right wing the Israeli government is, regardless of the war crimes that it is accused of carrying out against the Palestinian people. Biden has shown unwavering support, okay? He says this, to make sure Israelis and Palestinians alike live in equal measure of freedom and dignity, we will not give up on working toward that goal, meaning a two-state solution.

Okay, well, your homeboy, Prime Minister Netanyahu is bragging about how he can manipulate you. And so I want to get into the details of what he had to say. Netanyahu reportedly also told the Lakud lawmakers, okay, and this is reporting from the Times of Israel, Netanyahu reportedly also told the Lakud lawmakers that the Biden administration did not want Israel to launch a ground incursion in Gaza and did not want the IDF to enter Gaza City Shifa Hospital where a Hamas command center is allegedly located underneath. We're still waiting on that evidence, okay? Nanyahu reportedly boasted about having gone against the U.S. wishes in both of those cases.

Yeah, how about you Americans, shut up? send us the billions of dollars in military aid, and we'll move on with our lives, okay? That's the message here, which is infuriating as an American, okay, as an American with an impotent government that provides cover for anything Netanyahu and the Lakud Party wants to do. So U.S. officials took this embarrassing moment to further humiliate themselves, okay? So they see what Netanyahu had to say about the ground incursion and how the Biden administration wanted to prevent the idea from doing the ground incursion. And here's what they said.

Two U.S. officials speaking with the times of Israel made no such indication that the U.S. opposed Israel's operations in Gaza, as Netanyahu suggested. Rather, Washington pushed for the IDF to ensure the protection of civilians, which of course they have not been doing. noting that they principally support expanding the ground operation into southern Gaza, into southern Gaza, as long as civilians are accounted for. So remember, southern Gaza is where the Palestinians residing in northern Gaza, were forced to evacuate too for their safety as Israel intensified its airstrikes in northern Gaza, demolishing buildings, demolishing homes, mosques, churches, hospitals. But the airstrikes continued in the south as well.

Let's be clear about that. And they're planning to intensify the airstrikes and the ground incursion in the south, where there is an even more densely populated situation because of the fact that somewhere between 2.3 million to 2.7 million Palestinians were forced to evacuate to. So how exactly does the Biden administration purport to protect Palestinians in a situation in which we're supplying them with 2,000 pound bombs and we're providing cover for them as they indiscriminately bomb Gaza, a densely populated region of the world. It's going to be impossible to minimize civilian casualties.

The Biden administration knows that. And instead of looking at what Netanyahu is boastful about, how he's bragging. about manipulating the Biden administration going against their wishes. You have members of the Biden administration looking at those very comments, those very statements by Netanyahu. And they're saying, oh, no, no, we actually we never went against Israel. No, no, no. We never said we were against the ground incursion.

In fact, we're in favor of him expanding the ground incursion in the South. Embarrassing. Embarrassing. Yona Lieberman, who's the co-founder of the Jewish, American advocacy group, if not now, posted the following on X, further humiliating Biden, and he deserves it. Look, Joe Biden, Netanyahu is spitting in your face. He doesn't take you seriously. Are you going to keep hugging him in public, or are you going to finally end the blank check and hold him accountable for his words and actions? Yonah, my guess is,

no, Biden is not going to do anything to hold Netanyahu accountable. Netanyahu, by the way, has been Israel's biggest obstacle to peace. And we need to be clear about that. It's probably one of the reasons why he's so unpopular among voters. Because if you want to know who propped up Hamas to begin with, it was Netanyahu. Okay? So throughout his career, Netanyahu has vociferously opposed a peaceful resolution and work to divide Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by propping up Hamas. This is a statement, direct quote from Netanyahu dating back to March of 2019.

This is what he said to his colleagues, he's a Lakud party colleagues in March of 2019. Quote, anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank. bank. And what's amazing to me is that as the Biden administration makes the case, that we really have no choice but to vote for him. Because if we don't vote for him, if we don't reelect him, Trump's going to get elected. And Trump's going to dismantle our democracy. He's a real threat to our democratic process, everyone. He really is. It's funny that Biden makes that case. Because if we lived in a country that had leaders that value our democracy and the voice

of the American people, Biden would really reconsider his unwavering support for Israel and Netanyahu's far right government. In fact, take a look at some of this recent polling. According to an August Pew Research Center poll, 42% of Americans said they have no confidence in Netanyahu. 32% said they have confidence in him and 26% of Americans said they had not heard of the Israeli premier. Views of Netanyahu varied by political ideology with Republicans more likely to have confidence in him than Democrats. So 49% of Republicans, I mean, it's not even a majority of Republicans who have faith for Netanyahu or support toward Netanyahu. Only 17% of Democrats support Netanyahu. 17% Democrats, the very voters that Biden is supposed to appeal to

to get elected, to get reelected. So if we live in a real democracy, The thoughts, concerns of American voters, especially in the Democratic Party as it pertains to Biden, would matter. But, you know, very clearly there is a disconnect here. And he's not hearing the American people. He is hearing the insults and the mocking rhetoric coming out of Prime Minister Netanyahu. And he looks at that and says to himself, how can I make it easier for them to access the weapons stockpile that we have based? in Israel. That's what he's doing. That's Joe Biden for you. And he's going to turn around and shame everyone who refuses to vote for him. Yeah, I don't comply. We got to take a break.

When we come back, we have more news for you, including Hunter Biden, finally fighting back against Republicans in the House who have been investigating him relentlessly and coming up with nothing. Come right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Heuger, and I'll see you soon.