Norman Finkelstein Reveals Shocking Discoveries While Researching History of Israel’s Gaza Obsession

I want to ask you about the October 7th attacks, or in the aftermath. So the October seventh attacks happen, and for those of us who are not really following Gaza, I was definitely in that category, it seems to kind of come out of nowhere. And the main question that I had was, well, how could Israel not have seen this coming? But what I didn't think enough about is why did the attack happen? What was the context for that, which is not to excuse it. I just want to be clear. I'm not excusing that or any killing of innocence, but what was happening in Gaza right before that? Well It's not just right before that. Gaza becomes Gaza in 1948, after Israel expels roughly 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from the area that becomes Israel. Of those 750,300,000 are expelled to Gaza, and they become roughly 80% of Gaza's population, obviously swamping the original goddess and population.

Now there are all these gossips from who hold Egyptian citizenship at that. UGH In 1948, Gaza is simply part of mandated Palestine, a British mandated Palestine. So about 80% of the population are now refugees. If you go back and look at the literature, it's quite interesting that already in the 1950s. UN officials were stationed in Gaza. Now, this is when Gaza is under Egyptian control, okay, because Egypt gains administrative control over Gaza after the 1948 war. Already it's being described as a concentration camp. Now, THIS is under EGYPTIAN control. If we fast-forward to 1967...

In July 1967, Al Gore Sr., the father of the person. From Tennessee. Correct. Al Gore Sr., he goes to visit Gaza. That's correct. And then he comes back and he testifies before Congress on what he observed. And he describes Gaza as, quote, a concentration camp on the send, if you will. So, already... Beginning in 1948, outside observers coming to Gaza, that's their reference. Now in 2004, the head of the Israel's National Security Council, his name is Giora Eiland. Giore Eilande is not a peacenik. He's still among the living, still very active, advising right as we speak.

The Israeli government. He was the one who said around 2024, he said, if epidemics break in southern Gaza, that's a good thing. It's a good thing for the epidemics. Epidemic of disease? Yes. Now, in 2004, he's having a conversation with senior U.S. Officials, and he describes Gaza as, quote, a huge concentration camp. Now, bear in mind, the first individuals I mentioned, that's fifties, early mid-sixties. Concentration camp had a very definite resonance. And yet, those are the words that leapt to mind, or those are descriptives that lept to mind. Giro Ailand is Israeli, he's Jewish, he is the chief of Israel's National Security counsel, as a Jew and as an Israeli, surely he knew.

The resonance of describing a parcel of land as a concentration camp. That's the descriptive he used. Now. Here's the, not footnote, but here's the big qualifier. That was Gaza in its best days. That's a fact. That was in Gaza in it's best days, in 2006, our President George Bush, he embarked on what he called democracy promotion. You might remember that phase. And part of democracy promotion was he told the guys that Palestinians, they had to hold elections. Hamas did not want to participate in the elections because they saw it as part of what was called the Oslo Process, namely when President Clinton, Yasser Arafat, and 1993 which Hamas felt was a sellout.

So they didn't want to participate in the elections because they thought it was part of what was called the Oslo Process. Pressures put on them, pressures put on then. They finally agreed to participate. Well, they run on a reform platform because the Palestinian Authority is hopelessly corrupt, and they win the election. Well... Wrong side won. Hillary Clinton later said, we made a big mistake. We should have made sure that Hamas didn't win, which is her concept of a democratic election. So, the moment Hamas gets elected, in what Jimmy Carter, who observed the election, he called it, quote, free. And completely free and fair elections. That's how he described it. It was actually the first free and fairly democratic elections in the Arab world.

The first time. Some people say Tunisia before, but I think it's credible to say these were the first fully free and fair elections, Israel at that moment, it imposes, and then followed by the US and the EU, imposes this medieval blockade on Gaza. It draws up this long list of things that you can't allow into Gaza. You can't in chocolate. You can allow in baby chicks. You can not allow in potato chips. You can' t allow in any condiments. You can t allow musical instruments. You can't allow in notebooks. And they said they were very open about it, but the documents were eventually released. They were going to put the people of Gaza on a, quote, humanitarian minimum diet, which is another way, is the euphemistic way of saying a starvation plus diet.

And they were saying they were open about their goal. We're going to keep the Gaza economy on the precipice of collapse so the people will ultimately remove Hamas from office. What was called, if you remember, and you don't go back that far, but in the, when the Popular Unity government came into power in Chile in 1971, and the U.S. Was very upset about that, and they said that we're going to turn the screws on Chile until the economy screams. And that's what Israel attempted to do in Gaza. And by 2008, the UN humanitarian chief, Mary Robinson, she visited Gaza and she said, Quote, a whole civilization is being destroyed.

I'm not exaggerating. A whole civilization is being destroyed. By October 6th, I think it was The Economist magazine described Gaza as a sinking ship. A UN official described it as a toxic slum. It was a disaster, a disaster zone. A human-made disaster, so... That illegal inhuman blockade of Gaza. And then every few years Israel launched what they called an operation in Gaza. They used the term, we're going to mow the lawn in Gaza, which is a kind of humorous metaphor until you factor in. That one-half of Gaza's population are children.

And then, if we connect the metaphor with the reality, that means the blades of the towers are cracking the skulls of the children of Gaza. So how do you pray? Well for a lot of people the answer is complicated. Our friends at the Hallow app are ready to help make it much simpler. If you're uncertain about where to start your prayer journey or what to say when you talk to God, then Hallow's newest prayer challenge is perfect for you. It's 21 days of prayer designed to help you intentionally make time for faith. Probably the most important thing. It will change your life. 21 days a prayer, you will hear from people from totally different backgrounds and how they pray. Pastors, nurses, athletes, like Dion Sanders, all answering the same critical question of how they communicate with Jesus. It's not an abstract theological exercise, it's a comprehensive experience that brings you closer to God, that's the point.

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When it ended, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, his name was Peter Moorer, he went to Gaza. Now bear in mind the job description of the head of the ICRC, the International Committee on the Red Cross. Is basically to tour war zones. He walked out of Gaza and he said, never in my life have I seen the level of destruction that I saw in Gaza. Now just to give your listeners, a juxtaposition. That means placing side by side. In Operation Protective Edge, 18,000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged. Morris said, I've never seen levels of destruction like that. In Gaza now, 325,000 homes were destroyed since October 7th.

In protective edge. There was left behind roughly 2.5 million tons of rubble. In Gaza now, 61 million tons of rubbles. Back then, it was unparalleled in conflict zones in 2014. Now, it's not even a blip on the screen. Compared to what Israel has done. A reliable estimate of the number of people, all aggregate number of people killed in Gaza since October 7th. No, I mean, there are all sorts of projections on the number of persons killed, everything from the numbers that the Gaza Ministry of Health give, to... As I said, there's so many different projections that it's hard to know which are credible, which are not credible.

And also, how do you calculate it? Are they deaths from bombing, artillery shells? But then what about all the deaths from people who, because of hunger, their immune system, the children, their immune systems are significantly compromised and they die, technically. Not from direct fire, they die from medical reasons. So I don't think there is a good number. One number which I found interesting, I've not made the comment publicly, I only recently started to think about it, there are all sorts of denials that Israel has made a genocide in Gaza. And I'm happy to engage with you on that question. But on a strictly statistical level, the most recent UN report on Gaza deals with the targeting of children in Gaza, and also the West Bank, or the targeting of children, in particular, in Gaza.

Now, if you take the case of the Nazi, And they also say, that's a key indicator. Of whether or not we're dealing with a genocide or we're dealing with war. If large numbers of children are being targeted, then the argument that this is a war begins to questions are raised about whether it's a war or whether it is a genocide. The percentage... Of the current statistics we have, the Gaza Ministry of Health, the percentage of children killed is put at 30%, roughly 30%. In the Nazi Holocaust, the estimates are 6 million Jews were killed, of whom 1.5 million were children. So roughly 25% of those killed children.

If it's correct, and I believe there's certainly a plausible argument that the number of children killed, the percentage, is an indicator of whether we're dealing with a war or whether we're deal with a genocide, I would say if we're all agreed what happened during the Nazi Holocaust was a genocide, and 25% of the victims were children, then Certainly, by analogy, a plausible case is, in Gaza, if 30% are children, that's a strong argument that it's a genocide. I should warn you that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism includes comparing the actions of the Israeli government to those of the Nazis. So you've just committed anti-semitism. Well, the problem with the IHRA definition is, Israelis are all the time comparing their enemies to Nazis. That's a great point.

Why do they get to do it? Why do the get to make the comparison, but nobody can compare them to Nazis? That's just totally inconsistent. And you go back in the history, they said Nasser in Egypt, the first president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, they said he was Hitler. They said Saddam Hussein, you might recall, head of state in Iraq, they say Saddam Hitler. All the time they're actually saying the mullahs in Iran are worse than Hitler. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, Hitler only wanted to conquer Europe. But the Mullahs in Iran, when they conquer the world, they're worse than Hitler. A Hamas is Hitler, everybody is Hitler. But the moment you say, they carry on like Nazis, it suddenly becomes a taboo, a red line.

But that doesn't make any sense to me. Imagine it's 3 a.m., you're dead asleep, you wake up to a weird noise, it sounds like it's coming from inside your house. Well, that's terrifying. Is it a home invasion? How do you react? By panicking? Well, not if you have StopBox Pro. StopBox pro is probably the best way to store your firearms. It's built for actual people who want real protection without giving up speed or control. There are no keys and there are no batteries, and that means you'll always be able to get the StopBox open. There's a five button interface that gives you, and just you, immediate access when you really need it. That means your firearms will be 100% secure, but always right within reach. StopBox Pro is made proudly in the United States by Americans. Real jobs, no child labor in some weird country. It's totally American. For a limited time, this show's listeners can get 10% off at StopBox when using the code TUCKER at checkout. Visit StopBoxUSA.com and use the code TUCKER for 10% off the whole order.

After you purchase, feel free to say that you heard about it right here on this show. So you think it is fair to say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza? I would say the following. If you take the accumulation, the cumulative effect of what Israel has done, you don't look at it discreetly—this action, this action, this action, this action. You take the total picture. Israel's, the density and the rate of Israel's bombing in Gaza, unprecedented in modern conflict. In some cases, even as far back as World War II, if you take the worst cases in World War II like Dresden, the intensity and rate of destruction is higher in Gaza. That's a fact. Then Dresdn? That's correct. Not just Dresden, there's Dresde and a couple of other major cities, but they've slipped my mind.

Number of children killed. Oh, that's shocking what you just said. Number of Children killed. If you take all combat zones in the world, combine for the years, say, 2020, 2021, 2020, 2021, and combine them. All the combat zones, more children killed in Gaza. Amputees. Child amputees! I'm not sure if it's child or maybe it's all amputee. It's now the densest concentration of amputeees anywhere in the world. Schools. 97% of Gaza's schools have been destroyed or severely damaged. Targeting of hospitals. Targeting of medical personnel, targeting of UN workers, targeting of journalists.

They're all in a totally different category. They're in a total different universe than the closest second, closest third, closest fourth. So then what are you to conclude when you add up, as I said, you take the cumulative picture I don't see how you can possibly reach any other conclusion. The one qualification I would make is, it's not so much a qualification, it is a clarification. I don t believe Israel's goal is genocide. Its goal is empty out Gaza. They were very clear about that. They want to ethnically cleanse Gaza. But the means they are using their modus operandi is the destruction of the Gossack population until they leave.

Now you could say, but they can't leave because the border is sealed and nobody wants them, and that's true. So they will continue killing until they achieve their goal. And if it's to kill everybody, they will kill everybody. They are dead set on, for once and for all, solving the Gaza question. They want to solve the Gaza Question. And for them, solving The Gaza Question means the expulsion of the population, and the only way they can persuade the population to leave and persuade neighboring countries in the world at large to take them in is to commit a genocide. So I have spent quite a lot of time going through the human rights supports and various other documents. When you see the cumulative effect of what's been done, I don't see how you can reach any other conclusion, which is why, as I'm sure you know, not only many, if not most, leading authorities in international law, not a few of them Jewish, even Israel's.

Major human rights organization for the occupied territories that sell them. Persons like, I believe, Arya Nyer, who founded Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth. Arya is a refugee from the Nazi Holocaust. Kenneth Roth, who was the former head of Human Rights watch in various venues. They have all concluded that it's a genocide. But there's another factor. Now, I'm not saying it's authoritative, but I would certainly say it's indicative. The estimates are 30% to 40% of American Jews believe it's a genocide. That's a kind of astonishing fact, bombarded as they are from youth to love Israel, attending synagogues where support for Israel is a key, a tenet of belonging, and yet—and to their absolutely eternal credit—it's genuinely

a sight to behold. And maybe I should, but I kind of rebel against it, take pride in as a Jew. Thirty to forty percent believe Israel is committing a genocide. It's a credit to that community. And I would add, as I'm sure you're aware, because you told me before the interview that you have been in, so to speak, a Jewish milieu, a large part of your life. Very educated. These are not people who are easily bamboozled or duped or tricked, and yet they have reached that conclusion. So here again I say if you look at the cumulative picture, experts, human rights organization, International Court of Justice, which reached the preliminary conclusion that Israel was plausibly committing genocide.

That was back in January 26th, 2024, so it's long before the horror that unfolded since January 26. I think It's the other side that has to make a case. The broad consensus is there now. It's a horrible consensus. Well, instead of making the case, what I see happening is attacks, not just verbal attacks, but attacks on people's employment against anybody who says, wait, this is cruel and awful. Those people, the Trump administration, stripped them of their green cards in a bunch of cases. So I don't see anybody trying to make the case for Israel. I see supporters of Israel attacking anyone who questions Israel. I guess that's what I'm saying. That's absolutely correct. What was new after October 7th was that before October 7, when There would be...

I won't call them flare-ups because, you know, with high-tech killings, it's not much more than a flare-up. When they were before, usually Jewish organizations, Jewish supremacists, billionaires, they operated behind the scenes. They would call the university president, I don't think you should give that guy tenure. Or do that happen to you? Yes, just kidding. No, famous, famously. But I think it happened with a certain amount of frequency, but it was behind the scenes. What changed after 2007, for the reasons that you just suggested, it was very hard anymore to make a case in public. Too much was known, too much was seen on the social media, and too much of it Israel carried on in such a flagrant... And brazen fashion, with its own citizens in their citizen army, posting on the social media the horrors they were committing.

It had become so flagrant and brazen, it was impossible to conceal. Well, the big difference, I think, was... I want to give you a chance. And so they started in a very brazen and flagrant way to play the blackmail weapon. People like Bill Ackman, and there were many others, but he sort of was the public face. They would call up, they would say publicly, There would be petitions that were publicized. Saying, if you don't crush the encampments the students who were supporting Gaza were withholding alumni contributions. We're not going to give you money. Now, it's true places like Harvard have large endowments, very large endowment. However, it is also true to say that that alumni money was not small change.

People like Bill Ackman, he gave Harvard, I believe, 50 million dollars. Two Jewish alumni of Harvard gave it, respectively. One gave $200 million, one gave $300 million. That was big money. Though, as I say, still next to the endowment, it's not so big, but still, absolutely, it's money, okay? And then they went from school to school by the end of 2024. Encampments were in the spring of 2024. They had succeeded in ousting Claudine Gay at Harvard, Elizabeth McGill at U of P, Chafique at Columbia, and then there were many, many, many others. I'm just giving you the Ivy League, the big names. When McGill was ousted from U of I happened to be friends with somebody who knows her well from business connections, and he met her, and he conveyed to her his sympathies, and two words came forth from her mouth, quote, money talks.

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They're called America's home for home loans for a reason. Call 800-685-5696. 800- 685- 5696 or visit americanfinancing.net slash Tucker. It wasn't just universities, by the way. I have friends who work in hospitals. Everybody was terrified, terrified, terrorized to take down anything on their social media in support of Gaza. I have friend at Lincoln Center. The good side of the Jewish tradition is, They give generously to cultural institutions, libraries, arts institutions, universities, and so forth. You can walk into a library in New York City, they list the main donors, 95% Jewish.

And it's true across the board. Hospitals, obviously, but the bad side is it's a lot of cultural power. It's a lot of cultural power. And it was then used for, in my opinion, nasty, sinister purposes. You mentioned, and it's true of course, the Trump administration went after people threatening deportation, disappearing them, throwing them into places of confinement which were not accessible. But here's the thing. That was all spearheaded by the Jewish supremacist billionaire class. And here's another thing, did they ever protest it? Did they ever say what was done to Mahmoud Khalil from Colombia was wrong? Did they register a single word of dissent?

This was the most audacious and stupendous assault on academic freedom. I am I'm ready to argue with anybody. I've studied academic freedom in our country. I have written a large amount on it. There hasn't been nothing like it in the modern history of the United States. The concept of academic freedom begins at the beginning of the 20th century, the early 1900s. And there have been waves of assault on freedom in general, and academic freedom. The Red Scare in the early part of the 20th century. Obviously, the McCarthy era, where alleged communists were persecuted and lost their jobs.

But there's never been anything. I know people are going to say I'm engaging in hyperbole, but I ask you the question and I asked the listeners. Three Ivy League presidents were ousted. They were all women. Two of the three were women of color, so they had all the so-called, you can call it, ideological protections of woke culture. It didn't protect them. They had all of the protections. Do you know how the New York Times would have. Screamed to high heaven at three women, two women of color, being ousted, not a peep. And that reign of terror, it is a reign of horror, that continues to this day.

I can tell you factually, since that spring of 2024, I've only been invited to speak at two colleges in the United States, that's a fact. Too. What's your normal? Oh, there was a period, mine, it's gone up and down for various reasons which are not worth going into, but there were periods where I spoke at 40 schools a year. That's true, about 40 schools per year. And I'm talking about collectively, I spoke in University of Massachusetts, that was last year. I actually was nicely greeted at Cornell University and the president of the university showed up and he Introduced me. Which was, I thought, courageous on his part. He was actually friendly to me. I was very tough. Iwas very tough. But he seemed to believe in the principle of free speech, the John Stuart Mill principles, and he had me there. But that's it.

Now remember, I've not been anywhere in New York. I live there. I live there, there's a tower. Where does it come from, I wonder? I think it's perfectly rational. I mean, I have to be honest with you. Look, let me give you a couple of examples. At Harvard University, okay, as you probably know, the Israel supporters, they rented trucks. Put students' pictures on the trucks. And went through Boston, Cambridge, calling them terrorists. Okay. Students who are mad at the Israeli government. Students who were active in the encampments. Now, let me tell you something. They also went to the neighborhoods 500 miles away where the kids' families lived.

Do you get that? Yeah. If Collective punishment, we call it. If that truck came to my parents' house, my parents would kill me. Now my parents were in the far, I'm serious. My parents were on the far left. I told you they were Stalinist diehards till their last breath. But could you imagine a truck going up and down the Jewish neighborhood saying Norman Finkelstein terrorist with my picture there? No. So when you ask me why did they capitulate, it's amazing. Remember, these schools cost $80,000 a year, and the kids are being threatened with suspension, expulsion, and even deportation. So what do you think is going to happen? No. On that point, was there any grounds for it, these claims about these students being supporters of terrorism or terrorists or anti-Semites?

Let me give you one example, an exemplary case, and that's Harvard. Harvard produces a report, 312 pages, on anti-semitism on Harvard campus in the rushing of the encampments. I sit down, I read it, I'm curious, I am ready to believe, maybe an incident here, maybe an incident there. I go through the report, there's nothing there. It's a nothing burger. There's nothing here. So I say, no, I must have gone in with a prejudiced eye. I mean, I say I must've gone in a prejudice eye. Let me reread it. I reread it. They said, at the encampment, somebody had a picture of Alan Garber, the president of Harvard, as a devil. As a devil, somebody had a poster in the encamptment.

They said that's obviously anti-Semitic. Well. I'm not sure where that came from. They said another person had a map of Palestine where Israel wasn't there. So, I think to myself, well, Mr. Netanyahu holds up maps of Palestine in the UN, and there's no Palestine there. There's just Israel there. So, that can't be really anti-Semitic. So what is the anti-semitism? What is it? Here I'll tell you what it is. It's that they said that Israeli Jewish students, in particular Israeli Jewish students, don't feel wanted at Harvard. They feel shunned. They feel like they're pariahs. And they said, Harvard has to be pluralistic.

Harvard has the be inclusive. So in order to correct for anti-Semitism at Harvard, we have to embrace diversity, embrace everyone. I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm all for being inclusive. I'm more for being pluralistic. I'm all for a big tent, but you know what? My big tent does not include child killers. I'm not going there. You lose me. Lots of people are using peptides to get in shape. Not all peptides are the same. If you take them, do you really know what you're ingesting? Probably not. Joy in Blokes makes it very simple. You start with an easy online health assessment. Then, if necessary, your licensed clinician will order comprehensive lab work to understand exactly what prescription is best for you. Not everybody, just for you, it's a complete review to ensure the best results.

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Available in 4 mg and 8 mg because if you're going to use nicotine you ought to have some options. Get the new Frontier collection now at AlpPouch.com slash Tucker. After World War II, for all I know, this or that guard in a Nazi concentration camp went back to school to get a degree. You want me be inclusive of the people that exterminate my family? I'm not going there. And it's the same thing. You're going to have to bear that burden. I'm going to be inclusive to child killers. Israel has become a nation of child killers that kill children for play, for play. And there's ample at this point, ample documentation of that. Of snipers killing children, of drones killing children.

Even in March 2018, during the Great March of Return, when the people of Gaza attempted nonviolently to end that medieval siege, the UN report found that Israel was targeting children, journalists. Medics, brace yourself, targeting double amputees who were 300 meters away from the perimeter fence. That's 2018 before the horror that was unleashed after October 7th. And now you're telling me that I have to be inclusive? And pluralistic with these child killers, a nation of child killers. To its credit, Israel has a citizen army.

And that's how it should be, because everybody—I notice two of your producers are tech people, They were in the Marines, they mentioned to me, everybody. Should have to bear the burden of the ultimate sacrifice to keep their country free of foreign occupation. So, in my opinion, that's a correct principle, unlike in my day during the war in Vietnam, where students got that deferment, college deferment and so was overwhelmingly a poor army. And then it became an even overwhelmingly more poor army because it was a volunteer army who volunteers overwhelmingly—those who don't see a future otherwise. So that's to its credit. But then it becomes to its discredit if the army is committing genocide, because that army is a cross-section of Israeli society.

You can. As I did when I was a young man, think of those who were carrying out the murder and mayhem in Vietnam as having nothing to do with me. We were anti-war. But this is not the Israeli army. The Israeli army is representative of the Israeli Jewish population, with one tiny exception, representative of the Israeli-Jewish population. And so, they are a nation of child killers, and even Garber admitted, it was about six months ago or a little more, he said a large part, that's his phrase, a large of what was called anti-Semitism, he says, it was just criticism of Israel. He acknowledged it. Now, you might say, what about slogans like, from the river to the sea, okay?

We're Americans, we're Americans. In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled it's legal to advocate the violent overthrow of your government. That's our jurisprudence. In our country, it's illegal to burn the American flag. That's how our juris prudence, In our country, uh, I was going to give a couple of other examples, but you can criticize the United States all you want. You can criticize, you know, listen. You can not only criticize it, you can call for its violent overthrow. And you're completely protected by the law. So the slogan from the river to the sea is so pale by comparison. I mean, even in our country, there was a case, a fellow walked into a local courthouse with a t-shirt emblazoned on it. Fuck the draft.

It went to the Supreme Court. I said, it's protected speech. So next to our jurisprudence from the river to the sea is so pale by comparison. How could it possibly be illegal to shout that slogan in the United States? So there was no basis for these claims. The problem is, as I'm sure you understand, the other side doesn't care. Because by the time these cases make their way through the courts, it's all over. They succeeded in their goal. They silenced all dissent on our college campuses, in our cultural institutions, in our hospitals, they succeeded in there goal. It won't be upheld. I'm confident of that. There have been several rulings, as you know, supporting the dissenters. It won't be upheld, but... It already did the damage. It'll be too late once it's undone.

So you said, um, the president of Harvard later conceded that a large, he called it a large part, a large of what some said was anti-Semitism is merely criticizing criticism of foreign government. That's obviously true. Why would it seems very short-sighted, in fact, self-destructive to, to equate criticism of a foreign government, a foreign politician, Netanyahu specifically, who's not even that popular within Israel. To say criticizing him is the same as hating all Jews. Why would anybody make that case? That seems crazy. Well, on the one hand, it's to delegitimize all criticism, obviously. The other thing is—I mean, I think we have to be honest about these things. Netanyahu is the longest sitting prime minister in Israeli history, okay? Every few years, or even every few months, you hear, he's going to be outvoted out of office. This is the end, the end.

And it never happens. And the reason why, in my opinion, it never happened is because Netanyahu is the perfect reflection of Israeli society. He's an obnoxious, self-righteous Jewish supremacist. That's Israeli society—obnoxious, self-righteous Jewish supremacists. So when they see him, they see themselves. And that's why he keeps winning, despite all of these corruption allegations and despite all these other attacks on his person. Israelis don't really care. Do you go to Israel? I went there en route to the occupied Palestinian territories at the time. I was denied entry in 1989, and then I did get in.

And then in 2004, I was the denied entry again, and I never returned because they I don't tell you. I was denied for 10 years, but the governments moved progressively to the right, so I decided it was pointless to fly. How could you be denied entry into Israel? I thought that all Jews had a right to return. In fact, I thought it was called the right of return. I'm not sure on what particular law I was denied entry. There must have been some security exception to the right of return. I never really investigated it. It wasn't important enough to me. I just accepted acquiescence. Huh seems a little strange though. No like you're not Jewish anymore because the government doesn't like you or something Why do they get to decide?

I recognized that they would be displeased with the things I said, so I wasn't altogether shocked. Gradually, I started to deny entry to a lot of Jews. I may have been at the head of the queue. Is that true? Yeah. There were a large number of Jews who were active in one way or another, opposing the occupation, who were denied entry. My recollection is a couple of years later, Professor Chomsky was denied entry. And there were many other people I know personally who were denied entry. I never considered it particularly significant. What has it done to your life here in the United States to take the positions you have? Um... I would say, first of all, I'm not Edith Piaf, je ne regrette rien. Yeah I have my regrets, but the overall trajectory, this is what I resolved to do as a young man, probably around the age of 16, not having to do with Israel-Palestine, but fighting for a more just world and the people who were important in my life as, to use the They had committed

themselves to the cause. Many of them passed or were killed early in life because of their commitment, and those are the ones who inspired me. And so I recognized that I would pay a price, and I was prepared to pay it. And... In a great scheme of things, I'm now 72 years old. I still have a roof over my head. I am not wanting for the basics in life. And I lived most of my life of sound body and I like to believe also of sound mind. So I can say it's caused me any by comparison to the people I admired. And the suffering of others, I can say I've paid a big price. I would say the only frustration, if I can put it that way, is I happen to like to teach.

I like it. The interaction with young people who are old enough to think for themselves, which comes with roughly college age, 18 to 22, and also they are not yet jaded or cynical about the real world. They still have ideals. So it's a wonderful age to interact with and also to teach the excitement of the life of the mind ideas. Thinking through problems, not tweets. A tweet is not an argument. Oh, it's not? No. An argument is quite complex, it has major premises, minor premises, it's very complicated to work out, and it requires a classroom to do that, and requires a text to go over together.

And so it's really a wondrous experience to be a college professor. It's a responsibility, but it's also an experience. And I was significantly. Denied that opportunity. I don't take it so much personally, as I think I could have inspired many more young minds, not propagandized them. I'm totally against propaganda in the classroom. I'm pretty much a stickler about that. Not propagandize them, but trying to convey to them The choice. Of the life of the mind, and I think I was deprived of that right because of political considerations. Why are you against propaganda in the classroom? Because a lectern is not a soapbox.

There is a place, if you have political convictions, When you're trying to persuade others of your beliefs. But I don't believe that's the place of a classroom. You're not trying to persuade. You are trying to, uh... Get people to think for themselves, and getting people to think for ourselves, in my opinion, is making the best arguments on both sides if the student is decidedly of one political end of the spectrum, to make the best argument from the other end of a spectrum, and force them to work through an argument. And reach a conclusion based on the evidence. I think Bertrand Russell, the great British philosopher, he once said, there are always good arguments to be made on both sides. There are always arguments to be made on all sides.

It's rarely the case that in a major issue of contention, Let's say it's abortion. Or affirmative action. It's rarely the case that all the arguments are on one side and there are no arguments on the other side. There are always arguments on both sides. And then, you... Have to make the best case and let each student decide for him or herself not who is right and who is wrong. No. What the student has to do is weigh the arguments on both sides and decide on which side is the preponderance of better arguments. It's never like this, the scale. The scale is usually like this, there's always arguments on both sides. You have to weigh the arguments and then decide who has the better case.

Uh, so. That's your view. Yes, it's my view based on, you know, I read the Supreme Court decisions. I thought, I know this will sound like sacrilege, I thought Plessy versus Ferguson, which legalized separate but equal in our country, was a much better argument than Brown, the 54 decision that ended separate but equal. Brown wasn't even really a court decision. It was an administrative decree. It was so poorly done, and they call it—liberals like to call it the Mona Lisa of Supreme Court decisions. No, it was very poorly done. The abortion, the Roe case, is, in my opinion, It's a complete disaster.

It's a disaster for a very obvious reason for anybody who reads it. The Roe says a woman has a right to do with her body as she pleases until another life enters the picture, or what they call potential life. So they say, of course a woman had a right with her life as she please, that's protected Bye! Duh 14th Amendment, the due process clause of our Constitution, liberty, the liberty, they sometimes call it the liberty clause, and this is a personal right, it falls under the liberty clause of the Constitution, but it says you have to take into account when a potential life enters the picture. So obviously the question is, When does the potential life enter the picture?

Is it at conception? Is it at- Viability, yeah. Right. When does it enter the picture? The court says physicians disagree, theologians disagree, doctors disagree, philosophers disagree. The court says we can't take a position. We don't know when it is. Because nobody knows when life begins. Well, we have a problem here. If nobody knows when life beings, but if it's a potential life or a real life, then you lose your right to abortion. How do you decide? How do decide when a woman has the right, you know, to her body? And when state has the right to interfere. You said you don't know when life begins.

So they say, we'll decide its viability when the fetus can survive on its own outside the mother's body. But that's a technical question. It just means when machines can keep The fetus of life doesn't tell you when life begins. No. So. The whole Roe case was so poorly argued, and you could see, you know, I go over it with the class, and by the end, there's probably a large amount of agreement that it should be viability, but there's a recognition that as a legal issue, it's a disaster. And so it was pretty easily overturned. And I would say the Bakke case, the affirmative action case, I thought that was pretty well argued, I grant that. But it also was a very complicated case.

I'm not gonna go into now how it was finally decided. But in general, as a general principle, I believe that one of my important responsibilities as a professor, to the extent I was able to practice my profession, is to show students that there are always arguments to be made on the other side. So I think we have different politics or I thought we did, but I would be thrilled to have you teach my children if the attitudes you just explained or your attitudes in the classroom. I think it is. No, I will tell you something, except I believe for two classes when I was at the Poole University, which eventually denied me tenure, I was never allowed to teach the Israel-Palestine conflict. What? Yeah, I never was allowed to teach it. Why? I think that's pretty obvious. I was at Brooklyn College, Hunter College, those are City University of New York.

The pool I recall, there were two senior seminars where I taught the Israel-Palestine conflict. Then I was unemployed from 2007 to about 2020. I had no work. Long period of my life. You were totally unemployed for 13 years. Yes. It was a dark period for me because most people, their structure in life is determined externally. I have a job, have to get up, go to work, blah, blah. And I had to every morning wake up and try to rationalize a purpose to my existence. I know it's not easy. How did you not go crazy? You want to know the truth? I've forgotten those years. Yeah. I've forgot those years, but I...

Would say they were a dark period. And then I was doing some adjuncting that's a substitute teacher, for those of you who aren't in the academic world. And at Hunter College again, they let me go. And then recently at Brooklyn College. So it was scattered. It was very demeaning. You know what? An adjunct, allow me to explain to your viewers, is usually graduate students who they hire at the last minute to fill a class because a professor got a grant, had a family tragedy, and is usually a graduate student. I am very far from a graduate student in just physical years.

And to be an adjunct and to be treated. I know I shouldn't say this, but I don't much care. At Brooklyn College this last semester, I hadn't been paid. I get paid. They didn't pay me for six weeks. I was so incensed, so enraged, treated like garbage. So it was a very humanly demeaning position for a person. Let's leave aside my quote unquote. Academic achievements, just my age to be an adjunct. No, we're also not to be vulgar about it, but the most famous person in Brooklyn College by a lot Uh, I'd rather not say that.

It's for others to say. Well, that's my characterization. You're certainly, I don't know of anyone else at Brooklyn College who's more famous than you are or, um, how did that happen? I mean, can you get specific? I won the DePaul case about 20 years ago was relatively well covered, not as much as it should have been, but basically the department and then the college voted to give you tenure pretty overwhelmingly, and then a bunch of outside forces, including donors and Alan Gershwitz. Intervened and the university, the president, if I'm remembering this correctly, denied you tenure, is that correct? Um, I think the final decision was made by the President, Father Holtzschneider, I believe. I'm not sure in the allocation of responsibility who makes that last decision. That, too, is kind of a blur in my life. The last year was really pretty terrible.

Do you have any idea in specific terms how you were prevented from being a college professor? Remember, we're living in very different times now. Israel's on the defensive and those who are supporting the rights of Palestinians and opposing the various Israeli aggressions, they are on the offensive. When I first got involved in the conflict, which was in June 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, we're talking about a handful of I think it's fair to say. You know the Yiddish expression of Meshuggah? Yeah. Correct. Crazy people. A handful of Jewish Meshuggahs opposed Israel's actions. The only notable exception was Professor Chomsky, who sort of gave stature to our cause, but it was just a handful of people.

And early on, I had written my doctoral dissertation on the theory of Zionism. And while writing the doctoral dissertation, there was a book that came out way before your time. It was called From Time Immemorial, and the major thesis of the book was that Palestine was empty. The Jews came, made it flourish, and then all these Arabs from neighboring states infiltrated into Palestine and pretended to be indigenous to it. The book became an instant national bestseller. It was endorsed by the who's who of the American intelligentsia, which largely consisted of Jews at that period. We're talking about 1984, 1983, and the book was a sensation, it was a national sensation, because now we've proven that this whole thing about Palestine has been contrived by anti-Semites in order to discredit the Jews and so forth.

I sat down and I read the book. I should also say the book was certified for its accuracy by a fellow named Philip Hauser, who was the head of population studies at the University of Chicago, which is an imposing title. Definitely. Yes. I sat down. I worked at that point a part-time job. I was reading my doctoral dissertation. I came home every night. A lot of it was demographics, numbers, tables, numbers tables. I would sit at home and take out my pad and paper. I didn't use calculators. And I'm Flipping the pages, the tables are in the back, the text is in the middle. Going back and forth, back and forward. I'm gonna figure this out. I'm going to figure this up. And then one night.

I discover one key number in the tables was fake, was a fake. It was a eureka moment, a eureca moment, chills down my spine. I lived in this tiny studio apartment, like... Raskolnikov, and crime and punishment. And I'm pacing the apartment back and forth, back and forth, I'm saying, I did it. I did. Did it. I was just overwhelmed. It was like one o'clock in the morning. Who can I call? Who can tell? Well, I'm Jewish. I called my mother. I said, Mom, I did it!

I did It was one in the morning, and she said, Norm. I'm so happy for you. What did you do? No. Was no way I can explain to her how I proved that this is a demographic fraud. In any case, then it became a real battle, because I had the goods. As they say nowadays, I had their receipts, and that was going to mean I was just a graduate student, and all of these experts had lent their name to the book. All of these authorities, these Saul Bellow, Elie Wiesel, Barbara Tuchman, Lucy DeWittowich, they don't mean anything to you. They do mean something, yeah. Well, they were very big names. And so, I remember I sent out my findings to several, around 20, prominent people who support the rights of Palestinians.

You know, it was a different era. You type it up, you have to Xerox it, you send it in the mail. Most of these people, they're not going to give the time of day to a graduate student. They get too many other uh, pieces of correspondence from important people. And one Saturday morning I got a call and the call was, hello, is this Norman Finkelstein? I said, yes. And the person then said, this is Noam Chomsky. I have read what you wrote and I found it convincing. And that was... Beginning of a whole new chapter in my life, he became a friend, a close friend, and most importantly, a mentor. But he warned me on the very first correspondence.

He said, Be aware that if you continue on this path, there will be many brickbats coming your way. Honestly, I am not a saint. I am very far from a saint, as Gandhi would often say, I have 10,000 faults, and I do, and will never pretend otherwise. But of one thing I can say with a certain amount of conviction I cannot be bought. And I attach a lot to truth. I attach to a lot, to justice. And I don't, I'm not open to compromising those values.

So with all due regard to my mentor, the great Noam Chomsky, it was not a tough decision. At all. To pursue it. His wife, Carol, his first wife, who I was close to, we were family friends. She would occasionally say that she was, and she liked me, you know, she sympathized with situation. She would occasionally say, I'm angry at Noam that he didn't discourage you. Because I paid, you know, relatives, I paid some price, okay? And I would say, no, Carol, you're wrong. He did warn me, but. Was no way I wouldn't persist.

At the beginning, I was called up by Robert Silvers. I'm not sure if that name means anything to you. He was the editor of the New York Review of Books. The New York review of books was by a wide margin the most influential journal among the intelligentsia, okay? And he called me down to his office, a door was opening, a big door. You know, I was so excited. My heart was palpitating. And He said to come down in, like, two hours. It wasn't an appointment in the future. I had to calm down. So I went out for a run. OK. It was in Washington Heights, the bodegas with the aluminum awnings, if you remember what they look like.

Yeah. And I ran under one and I cut a gash in my skull from here to here. Oh, come on. I swear. I cut the gash, a long gash and it started to bleed. I'm not going to miss this appointment. I'm now going to Miss it. This is it, my chance in life, you know? Like they say in Britain's Got Talent, Simon Cowell says these three minutes might change your life. I stopped the bleeding, I went, and he told me to meet his friend, a fellow named Arthur Berger, no, Rabbi Hertzberg, Arthur Hertzberg who was a rabbi and an academic at Columbia. I go down to meet Hertzberg, and he... He says, we Zionists, I'm thinking to myself, where did that we come from?

We Zionists? Like, me and him? And then he said, he'll be my dissertation advisor. I said, no, I am at Princeton, you're at Columbia. He said, I'll take care of that. And then he asked me a question. He said, I'm quoting now, a long time ago, 1984, but I remember. He said are you in Chomsky's stable? I didn't know what that expression meant, but I sort of got the idea. And I know it's what you call the do-or-die moment. I knew if I said yes, the door was going to shut in my face, but there was no way on God's earth. That I was going to say, no, that's not going to happen.

And I said, I consider him my mentor and a friend. It was the last time I ever heard from the New York Review of Books. So to answer your question, to answer you question, everybody knows those moments where you know the door may open or it may shut in your face. And everybody faces those moments in life. It's called life. And the doors kept shutting. I tell you, I was bitter because I liked to teach. I was biter because it was so demeaning. I remember once at Hunter College, I was mimeographing some papers for the class at that time, long before to your viewers.

Long before electronic, you know, send a syllabus and everything through electronic technology. And one of the professors came into the offices at night, said, what are you doing here? I said, well, I'm an adjunct. I'm just Xeroxing some stuff for the class. She called security on me. You know, I was already in my 50s. And just to establish for viewers who may not know, you were at Princeton, where were you educated? Undergrad I went to Binghamton University, then Princeton, and then I studied at the École Partique de Solitude in Paris. That was my three periods of education. Otherwise, I've basically been home. So that's the story. And uh Are you bitter about it now? Now I laugh.

You wouldn't know I laugh now. I know it's not a bitter laugh, but let's say I wrote the only scholarly book in Gaza's political history. The only one. Sarah Roy of Harvard University, she wrote the Only Scholarly Economic History of Gaza. Excellent book. Okay? I wrote The Only Political History. I came out in 2018, okay? It's still the only one. Not reviewed anywhere. Nowhere. Never mentioned. You know how sometimes newspapers like the New York Times, when an event becomes front page news, they'll have a little list of books you should read, you know, background books? Never mentioned, never mentioned. So now I left. So, Gaz's Grave Diggers, which you've written, how do you expect that to be received?

You know, it's a question mark because of the social media. It's very hard to pretend I don't exist. Yes. It's a, it, it it's, it a challenge. Uh, places like New Yorker magazine, no possibility. Atlantic magazine, No possibility. Maybe the times will do a hit job. Uh, it is possible, but in general. On pessimistic, but on the other hand, there is the, I think what they call the alternative media has now sort of become the mainstream media and the mainstream has become the alternative media. So I think there are prospects. It's a, um... I think it's a good book. It's not an easy book, but I believe it's good book, and I do a kind of research that nobody does.

The philosopher John Stuart Mill, he once said, the more valuable you become to yourself, the more you become valuable to others. Which is another way of saying, the more you home, your God-given gift. And I believe, I'm old fashioned, I believe everybody has a God- given gift. Yes. It's, most people, they go through life, it's latent. Yes, I strongly agree. They don't have the opportunity to discover. They never find out what it is. And some who do find out, never find the time or resources to apply it. So I have a skill. It's a small skill. It's an attention to detail. It's checking every footnote. It's applying my mind where I think something is implausible to finding the hers. In the argument.

The great advantage that truth has over falsehood is this. Truth holds together, because it's true. Falsehood, if you apply your eye in a conscientious, almost maniacal way. And it requires a certain amount of fanaticism. You can prove it's false, because at the end of the day, it doesn't hold together. And That's been kind of my life's, I won't say vocation. It's my gift. It's not a big gift, but what I like to say is what I do is not much.

I acknowledge that, but, what I do, I do well. I can take any text. Which is implausible at first glance, Pramafasi, implausable, I can put my eye to it page by page, sentence by sentence, and I can demonstrate this is not true. And that's what I largely do in book. For example, one example that will be familiar to your listeners, there is no question that atrocities of a significant magnitude were committed by Hamas and other militant groups on October 7th. Yes. And I am not a denier of any sort of atrocity.

So far as the evidence shows, as of now, Um, it happened. But then there were claims made, as all of your listeners know, that Hamas had weaponized rape and sexual violence. I found that, for reasons not worth going into right now, I found it implausible. And then I started to go through the evidence, and there is no material evidence to support that claim. I devote the first chapter of the new book, God is His Gravediggers, the chapter is called Rape Fantasies. I go through all the alleged evidence and I find it not only non-persuasive, I find the evidence non-existent. It's just totally made up?

Yes. Yes, I have to be careful about my words. You asked me the question, is it totally made up? I would say the evidence, based on the evidence that's been adduced, it's totally made-up. So let's give you one example. And then you judge for yourself, assuming what I'm telling you now is true, is accurate. After my book came out, this very I'm sorry, the claim has been widespread. I mean, widespread, you hear it everywhere. And I'll get to that. Just remind me, as I continue, and remind me of the name Cheryl Sandberg, which I'll get to if you remind me. I know Cheryl's number. Okay, good. So let's take, after my book came out, this New Israeli Report was published by what they call a civil commission. And the main author of the report is somebody named Dr. Levy, her last name.

Oh, come back to me. So here's what she says, okay? She says Hamas committed widespread rape on October 7, widespread systematic sexual violence on October seventh. You're familiar with those claims, of course, as are, as is your viewers. And then she said that Hamas had weaponized this sexual violence, including rape and and grape? In order to shatter the Israeli national esprit, spirit. So it posted all of these acts of rape and sexual violence on the social media, even contacted the families of the victims using their own cell phones, the family cell phones which they seized, and so forth, iPhones.

And disseminate all this evidence. Okay, that's an interesting claim So what do you discover? I hope you are Viewers are all ears. They say that they have 10,000 photographs and digital segments of what happened on October 7th. Ten thousand. They also say that if you were to view it, it would take 1800 hours. To view all of their photographic and digital evidence. It would take 1,800 hours. That means if you're a single researcher and you go through this evidence, it would take you, and you did eight hours a day, eight hours every day of the week.

It would you more than seven months to go through all of the photographic and digital evidence of October 7th. Now here is the kicker. There isn't one single image, one single frame of Hamas committing rape or sexual violence on October 7. How can that be? How is that possible? Not one image. They say Hamas was posting. The images of sexual violence in order to demoralize, shatter the national spirit. They said, we have Hamas dash cams. We have Hamás body cams, we Hamás GoPros.

We have it. They said we have extensive Images from Hamas. But none of those images show sexual violence or rape. There has not been one image, not one, put forth by Israel. And Amnesty International said, nobody even claims they have such an image. How is that possible? By their, I should also add they have CCTV imagery, digital evidence. They have traffic camera evidence. They have iPhone evidence from October 7th. There's no evidence. There's not image. How can that be? How is that possible? So...

They have no physical evidence. Now, part of it seemed plausible to me. They said we have no forensic evidence because they weren't prepared for a massacre of the magnitude of October 7th, so they processed the bodies very quickly to prepare them for Jewish burial, ritual burial, and they didn't preserve significant forensic evidence. That seemed plausible to me. But no digital evidence. That didn't sound right, that didn't even sound, not only didn't it sound plausible, it didn't seem possible. The only thing they have is witnesses. So they have this witness. She says, I was sitting in a little room. I was hidden. The room was sealed. They call it a caravan, a caravane. The room is sealed.

A vehicular. Hiding place. She said, sitting in the room, I heard, this is her words, I'm calling her, I heard a gang rape here, I hear a rape here and I heard another rape there. Then she starts giving more details of these rapes. How is that possible? She heard in a little, a rape here, a rape there, she said, here, here and here. There, there and there. That's their best evidence. Identify the victims of these rapes? She was sealed in the room. There were no windows. There was no windows! You know, you have to ask her, did she hear the Vienna Boys Choir here and Boston Pops here and the Beatles reunion there? It was, like, completely—and that was their star witness.

If you look at the current report, I mentioned to you, the 300 page report. She's listed first. Of the survivors, there are two alleged survivors, one of October 7th, one a hostage survivor. But if you look at the report, neither of them said they were right. They did not read what they said. The woman hostage survivor, she became quite prominent, Ahnad Susanna. She said, something terrible was done to me, maybe, I'm not going to dispute that. Something awful was done me, but she never said she was raped. She does not. There is a claim by a nail. That he was raped on October 7, but if you read his testimony to the so-called Civil Commission, there's no...he doesn't say he was rape.

So we're stuck with the following problem. No forensic evidence, no digital evidence, no photographic evidence, and of the survivor testimony. The one survivor from October 7th who's touted as a victim of rape, he doesn't say he was raped. The one survivors of hostages, Anat Susana, she doesn't she was raped. I tell you, at my age, the memory can slip. The author of the report is Dr. Kochav Elkayam-Levy. She's the author. And I want to say, look, your program has reach, obviously. It's not BGT.

Neither three minutes nor three hours are going to change my life, because my life is over. It's in the past. But it has reach. So I say, You disagree with me, Dr. Elkayam Levy? Let's debate it. Let's go to a public venue and debate it." I say the same thing to Sheryl Sandberg. I'm not going to tell you how I did it. I'm just going to give you a few examples. I'm gonna show you a couple of examples. Now, let's go ahead and get started. Of Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg was the Chief Operating Officer, and she's a bright woman. No question about it. I never deny people, I can loathe them, but I never lie people their achievements. She attended Harvard. She was an economics major. She was the top student in her economics class for her year. That's how significant achievement.

Now, she makes a film, a documentary, she calls it. It's called Screams Before Silence, and it claims that it was mass, systematic rape and sexual violence on October 7, committed by Hamas. Systematic, widespread sexual violence. And she stars in the film and she emotes and she's in tears and she is going, oh my God, she's looking at these images of sexual violence and rape on an iPhone. But Cheryl, I hope you're listening. You're a bright woman. But excuse my English. You're full of shit. There were no images.

There was one image, but the independent, or they called forensic specialists, whatever they're called. They said you couldn't tell anything from those images. Screams before silence should be called shalaks. Before shice. Your listeners can go to their, you can go Google. Get his dictionary to find out. You know, schlock before scheiss. These are Jewish supremacists who have no regard, whatever, for facts. Because for them, it's the cause and the cause is more important. Than any passing fact.

She attended Harvard. She was in the economics department. She knows what evidence is. She knows with evidentiary standards are. It's the cause. Israel must live. So last question pertains to what you just said. Outside the United States, I think it's very, there's a consensus globally, pretty much, that what Israel is doing is totally indefensible. These are crimes. But the question is, will there ever be a reckoning? So your parents were Poles and were both put in Nazi camps, including Auschwitz, and your family was murdered. But there was a reckening, I mean, some of the people who committed those crimes were. Held to account. Will that happen in this case? Well, let's start from basics. When the whole society is implicated in a genocide, apart from a few senior figures.

Impossible for there to be a reckoning. That's why places like South Africa pioneer the idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, because if you're going to prosecute everybody implicated in apartheid, it's a large portion of society. So as a general rule, even in best of cases. It's only a handful of people. Are going to be held accountable. In the case of Israel, nobody will ever be held accountable. That, for that to me, is pretty transparent. Why? Well... Because first of all, the United States won't allow it to happen. Part of it, as you know, is the domino effect. If they're held accountable, Trump is in a very... First of all Biden and Blinken are in a very difficult situation because they enabled the genocide.

If it weren't for Joe Biden and Tony Blinken, there couldn't have been a genocide. In Gaza. It was funny, the New Yorker magazine wrote this article, I believe it was the New Yorker, in which it—this is very recent—in which it claimed that it was written by a fellow, Fitzpatrick, his name just—I think it was David Fitzpatricks, a former Times reporter. And he said, oh, they tried so hard, they I tried so hard... They couldn't do anything, you know, meaning Biden, Blinken, and the others, Jake Sullivan, to prevent the genocide. And then in the course of the article, they have a line that reads, 70% of the weapons for the Gaza genocide came from the United States. You certainly had one option. Yeah. Don't sell the weapons. I'm supplying the weapons, so...

There's always the fear of the domino effect. If Israelis are indicted, where does that leave the Biden administration? So that makes it improbable that's gonna happen. Same thing with Donald Trump, because the attack on Iran was the most brazen flagrant aggression in the modern history. There's not been, to my knowledge, no, my knowledge is not unlimited. To my knowledge there's never been a case in the modern world of a state attacking without a pretense of a pretext. Even Hitler in 1939, when he attacked Poland. He fabricated a border incident.

Of course. You always have to claim self-defense. Got it. A golf tonk in it, yeah. I was just going to say, you beat me to the draw. In 1964, the US had to essentially fabricate, or LBJ, Lyndon Johnson, the president, fabricate the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in order to, for those of you who don't go back that far, and luckily for you if you don't, for I believe it was August 1964, the claim was made that a North Vietnamese vessel attacked an American vessel. And that was then, there were only two senators who voted against it, it was Ernst Groening, and I forgot the second. That became the piece of legislation that enabled the ground war in Vietnam.

The US was already heavily involved during the Kennedy years, but it enabled the groundwater in Vietnam in the case of Israel and the US, there wasn't a pretense. There wasn't the pretense of a pretext. It was the brazen flagrant breach of the UN Charter. Uh, in modern history. We're in the middle of a negotiation. In the middle of a negotiation. See, I was listening to your interview with Darryl Cooper, and that was emphasized in the middle of the negotiation. What's so dishonorable? It was outrageous. But you know what's also dishonorable and outrageous? There was no reaction by the UN Security Council. Nothing. Nothing! You could hear a pin drop in silence. You know what else was dishonorable? On November 17, 2025.

UN Security Council passed Resolution 2803. And do you know what that resolution did? Amidst all the horror that the God-forsaken people of Gaza have endured since back in 1948. The concentration camp in which they have been immured for 80 years. After the genocide over the past three years, the UN Security Council, I know this will sound like hyperbole, exaggeration, the U.N. Security Council handed the deed of casa. To Donald J. Trump. He got the deed to Gaza. He was designated the head of the Board of Peace. He subsequently was given total veto power over any decision made by the Board peace, and the UN Security Council only put one condition, one, every six months The Board of Peace should, not has to, should report to the Security Council on the situation in Gaza.

He owns Gaza. He owns Gazza. So there have been many shameless episodes, and in fact that's what the purpose of My new book is... To... Preserve for future generations, assuming there will be future generations. And as you discussed with Darrell Cooper, there are all sorts of apocalyptic scenarios that are plausible in the case of the current aggression against Iran. But assuming—and those, by the way, They are plausible. I've written about them. Oh, it's definitely positive. That's possible. There are two crazy people with the helm, one in Tel Aviv and one in the Oval Office, and it's absolutely impossible to predict what they might do.

But assuming the worst doesn't come to the worst, what I've written is to preserve the record of had infamy. Of what has been done to the people of Gaza, but with the recognition that unlikely anyone is going to be held legally accountable for what was done to those God-forsaken people. Well, in the absence of that, I'm glad you wrote this and I'm grateful you took the time for this conversation. But thank you so much. And I hope that- You are vindicated. I don't need that. Broadly. Well, I hope so. You don't seem to care. No. Too late in the day. Thank you. Roman Finkelstein, thank you. Thank you