Israel is confronting a crisis of legitimacy, political scientist and prolific author Norman Finkelstein observes, as international pressure on Israel grows from both global protesters and the UN.
He flashes back to before the current war for context: “Another war was inevitable, senior Israeli officials observed in 2016. We cannot conduct a constant war of attrition. Therefore, the next conflict has to be the last conflict.”
This conflict will be the last one. They are not going to “mow the lawn” again, Norm explains. They’re going to extirpate every blade of grass from Gaza.
“It’s not about Hamas,” he says, shedding light on Israel’s real plan to solve the Gaza question. “It’s about the refusal on the part of the people of Gaza to accept the fate that has been meted out to them by the state of Israel to languish and die in a concentration camp.”
That is the dark part, but Finkelstein also explains why we can’t give up. “During the Iraq War, many young people concluded in despair that here are the largest anti-war demonstrations in world history and nonetheless, the Cheney-Rumsfeld administration goes ahead with the war in Iraq. That to me is a naive understanding of how formidable and concentrated the power we’re up against is. It’s a very long battle.”
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But though it’s hard to see, the protests are working: “The pressures on Biden gradually accumulate and accumulate until they reach the proverbial critical mass and have a real political impact.
“You’re not going to see it. You’re not going to see the connection between your demonstration in your town square and the abstention in the UN Security Council, but it’s there. And so we should always remember not to despair.”
Produced by: Useful Idiots
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