Norman Finkelstein Cuts Through Israel’s Propaganda: Gaza Genocide, Oct. 7 & Netanyahu’s Corruption

40:23So 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? Now, 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 wake of the crushing of the encampments. I sit down. I read it. I'm curious. I'm ready to believe maybe an incident here, maybe an incident there.

41:28I go through the report. There's nothing there. it's a nothing burger there's nothing there so i said no i must have gone in with a prejudiced eye i mean i said i must have gone with a prejudiced 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 encampment they said that's obviously anti-semitic well i'm not sure where that came from yeah yeah they said another person had a map of palestine where israel wasn't there so i think to myself well mr netanyahu holds up not Palestine in the UN, and there's no Palestine there, and there's just Israel there.

42:28So that can't be really anti-Semitic. So what is the anti-Semitism? What is it? And 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 to 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 all for being pluralistic. I'm all for a big tent. But you know what? My big tent does not include child killers.

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45:23After 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 to be inclusive of the people that exterminated my family? I'm not going there. And it's the same thing. You're going to have to bear that burden. I'm not going to be inclusive of child killers. Israel has become a nation of child killers. They 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.

46:44who 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 noticed two of your producers or 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 it was overwhelmingly a poor army.

48:05And then it became an even overwhelmingly more poor army because it was a volunteer army and 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't, 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. You know, 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.

49:00a 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, I mean, that's his phrase, a large part of what was called anti-Semitism, he said, 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 our jurisprudence in our country uh i was going to give my uh 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 It's violent overthrow.

50:22And 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, fucked the draft. It went to the Supreme Court. They 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 court, it's all over.

51:25They succeeded in their goal. They silenced all dissent on our college campuses, in our cultural institutions, in our hospitals. They succeeded in their 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 the president of Harvard later conceded that. He called it a large part. A large part of what some said was anti-Semitism is merely criticizing. That's what he said. Criticism of foreign government. Yeah. That's obviously true.

52:05Why would, it seems very short-sighted, in fact, self-destructive to equate criticism of a foreign government, a foreign politician, Netanyahu specifically, who's not even that popular within Israel, to say that's 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. Well, of course. The other thing is, I mean, I think we have to be honest about these things. Because Netanyahu is the longest sitting crime minister in Israeli history. Okay? Every few years, or even every few months, you hear, he's going to be outvoted.

52:50He's going to be voted out of office. This is the end, the end, the end. And it never happens. And the reason why, in my opinion, it never happens, 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.

53:49I was denied entry in 1989, and then I did get in. and then in 2004, I was denied entry again and I never returned because they 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 it.

54:51Acqueous. 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?

55:04I 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 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.

55:44What has it done to your life here in the United States to take the positions you have?

55:52I would say, first of all, I'm not Edith Piaf. Je ne regret rien. Fair. 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 corny expression, role models, 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 the great scheme of things, I'm now 72 years old.

57:01I 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't say it's caused me any, by comparison to the people I admired and the suffering of others, I can't 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 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.

58:01So 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. Yes. It has major premises, minor premises. It's very complicated to work out. And it requires a classroom to do that. And it 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.

59:14I'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 joys 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're trying to get people to think for themselves. And getting people to think for themselves, 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 arguments from the other end of the spectrum and force them to work through an argument and reach a conclusion based on the evidence.

1:00:51I think Bertrand Russell, the great British philosopher, he once said, there are always good arguments to be made on both sides. There are always good arguments to be made on both 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.

1:01:59It'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. 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.

1:03:04No, 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 the 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 has the right to do with her body as she pleases. That's protected by the 14th Amendment, the Due Process Clause of our Constitution, liberty. the liberty they sometimes call it the liberty clause and um uh this is a personal right that falls under the liberty clause of the constitution but it says um you have uh to take into account when the potential life enters the picture so obviously the question is when does the potential life enter the picture?

1:04:21Is 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 begins but if it's a potential life or a real life then you lose your right to abortion how do you decide how do you decide when a woman has the right to her body and when the 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.

1:05:32But that's a technical question. It just means when machines can keep the fetus alive. It doesn't tell you when life begins. No. So the whole Roe case was so poorly argued. And you could see, and 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 is 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 going to go into now how it was finally decided.

1:06:26But 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 are your attitudes in the classroom. I think it is. Now, I will tell you something, except i believe for two classes when i was at the pool university which eventually denied me tenure i was never allowed to teach the israel-palestine conflict what yeah i was never 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 totally unemployed 13 years yes it was a dark period for me because most people their structure in life is determined externally yes i have a job have to get up exactly go to work and i had to every morning wake up and try to rationalize a purpose to my existence and it was not easy how did you not go crazy uh you want to know the truth i've forgotten those years yeah i've forgotten those years but i will 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.

1:08:43And then recently at Brooklyn College. So it was scattered. It was very demeaning. Yeah. You know? 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. This had a family tragedy. So you hire, and it's usually a graduate student. And 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 pittance, pittance. They didn't pay me for six weeks.

1:09:56I 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, It's just my age to be an adjunct. No. You're also not to be vulgar about it, but the most famous person at Brooklyn College by a lot. I'd rather not say that. It's for others to say. Well, that's my characterization. You're certainly, I don't know if anyone else at Brooklyn College is more famous than you are. How did that happen? I mean, can you get specific? One, 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.

1:10:59And then a bunch of outside forces, including donors and Alan Gershowitz, intervened and the university, the president, if I'm remembering this correctly, denied you tenure. Is that correct? I think the final decision was made by the president, Father Holt Schneider, 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. It was not, the last year was really pretty terrible. Do you have any idea in specific terms how you were prevented from being a college professor?

1:11:47Remember, we're living in very different times now. Israel is 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 mashugah? Yeah. 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.

1:12:40And 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, about 1984, 83. and the book was a sensation.

1:13:41It 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. Or 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. Yes. I sat down. I worked at that point a part-time job. I was writing 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.

1:14:44I 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 forth. I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to figure this out. And then one night, I discover one key number, one key number in the tables was fake. It was a fake. It was a eureka moment a eureka moment chills down my spine i lived in this tiny studio apartment like

1:15:32and i'm pacing the apartment back and forth back and forth i'm saying i did it I did it. I did it. I was just overwhelmed. It was like 1 o 'clock in the morning. Who can I call? Who can I tell? Well, I'm Jewish. I called my mother.

1:16:04I said, Mom, I did it. I did it. It was 1 in the morning, and she said, Norm, I'm so happy for you. What did you do? Now, there 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 the 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 DeWidowicz, they don't mean anything to yours. They do. Well, they were very big names. and so i remember i sent out my findings to several around 20 prominent people who supported 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 are not going to give the time of day to a graduate student.

1:17:28They get too many other 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 the 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.

1:18:37As Gandhi would often say, I have 10 ,000 faults. and I do and I 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 a lot to justice. And 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 she sympathized with my 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.

1:20:12He did warn me, but there 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. And the New York Review of Books was by a wide margin, the most influential journal among the intelligentsia. Yes. 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 um i had to calm down so i went out for a run okay 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 a gash a long gash and it started to bleed i'm not going to miss this appointment i'm not going to miss it this is it my chance in life you know like they say in britain's got talent uh simon towel says These three minutes might change your life.

1:22:01So I stopped the bleeding. I went, and he told me to meet his friend, a fellow named Rabbi Berger. No, Rabbi Hertzberg, Arthur Hertzberg, who was a rabbi and an academic at Columbia. I go down to meet Hertzberg, and he says, we Zionists. I'm thinking like, so 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'm 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 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 still got the idea and i know you know it's what you call the do or die moment.

1:23:20I 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, everybody knows those moments where you know the door may open. Or it may shut in your face. Oh, yes. And everybody faces those moments in life. It's called life. And the doors kept shutting. And I tell you, I was bitter because I liked to teach. I was bitter because it was so demeaning. I remember once at Harper, 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.

1:25:04through 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. I was already in my 50s. No. 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 Ecoparticle des Euditudes in Paris. That was my three periods of education. Otherwise, I've basically been home. So, that's the story. Are you bitter about it now? Now I laugh.

1:25:56You wouldn't know I laugh now. I know it's not a bitter laugh, but let's say I wrote the only scholarly book, the only scholarly book on 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. It 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.

1:26:43Never mentioned. Never mentioned. You know. So now I left. So Gaz's Gravediggers, which you've written. How do you expect that to be received? No, it's a question mark. Because of the social media, it's very hard to pretend I don't exist. Yes. It's a challenge. Places like New Yorker Magazine, no possibility. Atlantic Magazine, no possibility. Maybe the Times will do a hit job. it's possible. But in general, I'm 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 media has become the alternative media.

1:27:44So, I think there are prospects. It's a um, um, I think it's a good book. It's not an easy book, but I believe it's a good book. And I do a kind of research that nobody does. You know, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, he once said, the more valuable you become to yourself, the more valuable you become to others. which is another way of saying the more you hone 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 don't have the opportunity yes to discover they never find out what it is They never find out what it is.

1:28:50And 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 errors 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 prima facie implausible 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 this book for example one example that will be familiar to listeners, there is no question that atrocities of a significant magnitude were committed by Hamas and other militant groups on October 7th.

1:31:22And I am not a denier of any sort of atrocity, so far as the evidence shows as of now, 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 that 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, Goddesses 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.

1:32:27so it's just totally made up yes yes i 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 yes 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 okay after my book came out this very i should i'm sorry the claim has been widespread i mean widespread you hear it everywhere right and i'll get to that just remind me as i continue and remind me of the name sheryl sandberg which i'll get to if you remind me i know sheryl sandberg okay good so let's take after my book came out this new israeli report was published by what they call a civil commission.

1:33:21And the main author of the report is somebody named Dr. Okotsov. I forgot, Levy, her last name. It'll come back to me. So here's what she says, okay? She says Hamas committed widespread rape on October 7th, widespread systematic sexual violence on October 7th. You're familiar with those claims, of course, as is your viewers. And then she said that Hamas had weaponized this sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, 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 disseminated all this evidence.

1:34:40Okay, that's an interesting claim. So what do you discover? I hope your viewers are all ears. They say that they have 10 ,000. 10 ,000 photographs and digital segments of what happened on October 7th. 10 ,000. 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 1800 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 a day, every day of the week. It would take you more than seven months to go through all of the photographic and digital evidence of October 7th.

1:35:55Now, here is the kicker. There isn't one single image, one single frame of Hamas committing rape or sexual violence on October 7th. 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 Hamas body cams. We have Hamas 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.

1:37:14how 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 no image how can that be how is that possible so the only 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 any or then preserve significant forensic evidence That seemed plausible to me.

1:38:14But no digital evidence? That didn't sound right. That didn't even sound, not only didn't it sound plausible, it didn't sound 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 a caravan. A caravan. The room was sealed. A vehicular hiding place. She said, sitting in the room, I heard, this is her words I'm quoting, I heard a gang rape here, I heard a rape here, and I heard another rape there.

1:39:11then she starts giving more details of these rapes how is that possible she heard in the loo a rape here a rape she said here here and here there there and there that's their best evidence did she 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 that was their star witness if you look at in 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 raped they did not read what they said the woman hostage survivor she became quite prominent uh anathusana she said something terrible was done to me maybe i'm not going to dispute that something awful was done to me but she never says she was raped she does not But there is a claim by a male that he was raped on October 7th.

1:40:53But if you read his testimony to the so-called Civil Commission, he doesn't say he was raped. 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 survivor of hostages, Anat Susanna, she doesn't say she was raped. I tell you, at my age, the memory can slip. The author of the report is Dr. Kochav El-Khayim Levy. She's the author. And I want to say, look, your program has breach, obviously. it's not BGT.

1:42:04Neither 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. El-Khaim levy let's debate it let's go to a public venue and debate it i say the same thing to cheryl sandberg now of facebook cheryl sandberg was the mate meta yeah coo chief operating officer and she's a bright woman no question about it i never deny people I can loathe them, but I never deny 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 a significant achievement.

1:43:07Now, she makes a film, a documentary, she calls it. It's called Screams Before Silence. and its claims that there was mass systematic rape and sexual violence on October 7th committed by Hamas. Systematic widespread sexual violence. And she stars in the film and she emotes and she's in tears and she's 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, what are they called? Forensic specialists, whatever they're called.

1:44:21They said you couldn't tell anything from those images. those images screams before silence should be called schlock before scheisse your listeners can go to their can go get a dictionary to find out yeah yes 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 what 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 um but the question is will there ever be a reckoning so your your parents were poles and were both put in nazi camps including auschwitz and and your family was murdered but there was a reckoning a reckoning 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 it's impossible for there to be a reckoning that's why places like south africa pioneered the idea of a truth and reconciliation committee commission, because if you're going to prosecute everybody implicated in apartheid, it's a large portion of society.

1:46:45So as a general rule, even in the best of cases, it's only a handful of people who are going to be held accountable. In the case of Israel, nobody will ever be held accountable. that 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 question because they enabled the genocide if it weren't for uh 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 uh claimed that it was written by a fellow Fitzpatrick, his name just, I think it was David Fitzpatrick, a former Times reporter.

1:47:58And he said, oh, they tried so hard, they 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. Don't supply the weapons. So there's always the fear of the domino effect. Right. If Israelis are indicted, where does that leave? The Biden administration. So that makes it improbable that's going to happen. Same thing with Donald Trump, because the attack on Iran was the most brazen, flagrant aggression in the modern history.

1:49:07there'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 pre pretense of a pretext right a pretense even hitler in 1939 when he attacked poland he fabricated a border incident of course you always have to claim self-defense You got a gulf Tonkin in it. I was just going to say, you beat me to the draw. In 1964, the U.S. 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, And in, I believe it was August 1964, the claim was made that a North Vietnamese vessel attacked an American vessel.

1:50:17And that was then, there were only two senators who voted against it. It was Ernst Gruening, and I forgot the second. And that became the piece of legislation that enabled the ground war in Vietnam. The U.S. was already heavily involved during the Kennedy years, but it enabled the ground war in Vietnam. In the case of Israel and the U.S., there wasn't a pretense. No. There wasn't a pretense of a pretense. It was the most brazen, flagrant breach of the UN charter in modern history. In the middle of a negotiation. In the middle of a negotiation. See, I was listening to your interview with Daryl Cooper, and that was emphasized in the middle of a negotiation.

1:51:10What'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 the silence. You know what else was dishonorable? On November 17, 2025, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2803. And you know what that resolution did? amidst all the horror that the godforsaken 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.

1:52:21The UN Security Council handed the deed of Gaza to Donald J. Trump. He got the deed to Gaza. He was designated the head of the Board of Peace. He was subsequently given total veto power over any decision made by the Board of 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 Gaza. 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.

1:53:38And as you discussed with Daryl 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 possible it's possible there are two crazy people with the helm yes one in tel aviv and one in the oval office that's correct and it's absolutely impossible what 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 that infamy of what has been done to the people of Gaza, but with the recognition

1:54:41that unlikely anyone is going to be held legally accountable for what was done to those God-forsaken people. Sad. Well, in the absence of that, I'm glad you wrote this, and I'm grateful that you took the time for this conversation. Well, 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 ficklestein thank you