by Ralph Nader
RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR EP 375 TRANSCRIPT
May 15, 2021
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/fai ... e-in-gaza/
Steve Skrovan: Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Skrovan ... And we also have the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
Ralph Nader: Hello, everybody....
Our second guest will be Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, to discuss the escalating violence in Gaza. Hundreds of worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque were injured when Israeli forces fired on them with tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and stun grenades. This followed weeks of increased tensions over Israeli restrictions on Palestinians gathering to break the Ramadan fast and the forced evictions of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem.
Hamas leadership in Gaza launched rockets in retaliation for the violence at Al-Aqsa. And Israeli forces launched hundreds of airstrikes on Gaza. As of this recording, there at least 53 Palestinians and six Israelis dead and more than 300 Palestinians injured in Gaza. We'll ask Professor Khalidi to provide us with some perspective....
David Feldman: Dr. Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He's the author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Professor Rashid Khalidi.
Rashid Khalidi: Thanks, David.
Ralph Nader: Welcome indeed. Well, I guess the phrase is "here we go again.” The violence has erupted; the disparity in military capability is staggering in favor of the Israelis, internal domestic politics of Netanyahu, are very much involved. Where would you start to try to explain this, which seems to be escalating and may become much worse with huge casualties predominantly on the side of the Palestinians?
Rashid Khalidi: Well, I think it's worth looking at the casualties; it's worth paying attention to this, the horrible escalation that's ongoing--attacks on Gaza [and] the rocket fire into Israel. But I think it's probably useful to look a little deeper. And I would go back to the subtitle of my book, Settler Colonialism and Resistance. This started over several sets of issues in Jerusalem that are directly rooted in an attempt to displace and dispossess Palestinians, whether residents of the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah or Palestinians worshipping in the Al-Aqsa Mosque by a very heavy-handed, right-wing Israeli government that is following through on imperatives that have really driven the Israeli state and the Zionist project since the beginning.
The trigger for all of this was this attempt to displace a number of families in Sheikh Jarrah.
Ralph Nader: This is in East Jerusalem which is predominantly Arab.
Rashid Khalidi: It's an Arab neighborhood . . . exactly, an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem on the basis of old property claims that supposedly entitle the settlers who purchased these deeds from others the right to expel the residents who are set up there by the Jordanian government many decades ago after being driven from their own homes and property inside Israel in 1948. And the irony here, of course, is that well, property claims to property that was Jewish or supposedly was owned by Jews before 1948, are being enforced by the might, the repressive might of the Israeli state claims of Palestinians to their property in West Jerusalem which had large Arab neighborhoods before 1948 or in Jaffa or Haifa where many of the residents of this Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood come from. Those property claims are inadmissible under Israeli law. Similarly, the right of militant, heavily armed nationalist religious settlers to march through Arab neighborhoods and break into people's property with the protection of the Israeli security forces as part of a policy of intimidation is routinely carried out in Jerusalem. Whereas any attempts to do something similar would of course be brutally repressed. So we're seeing, I think . . . and then this in turn has led to the escalation out of Gaza and the Israeli attacks on Gaza. So I think that what we're seeing, whether in Jerusalem, in Gaza, or in towns and cities with Arab populations across Israel, where there's been a great deal of unrest and several people killed and a clear disturbance [wherein] people are deeply disturbed and angered, shows that we're talking about something that is bigger than just yet another round of escalation as between Hamas and Israel as part of it. But I think we have to look at the triggers and have to look at the root causes.
Ralph Nader: Given that, what's the internal politics here between Netanyahu and forming a coalition and trying to avoid a fifth election and the struggle between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority?
Rashid Khalidi: Yeah, I think that both of those dynamics are actually at work. In the Israeli case, Netanyahu is desperately trying to pull together. He failed in an initial attempt to pull together a coalition. Well, right-wing parties around his Likud Party which won the largest share of votes in the last Israeli election, the fourth in two years. And it's notable that what he's trying to do is to woo some of the most extreme religious nationalists, including a party that was inspired by Meir Kahane of Jewish Defense League fame or notoriety I should say. Trying to keep those people in his coalition, in a perspective coalition, and catering to the extreme settlers who are located in several of the major parties, including his own Likud Party, is part of the reason that this escalation has taken place. Israel has been pushing the Palestinians and squeezing them for decades. This is not new. Properties have been taken over in Sheikh Jarrah in the past. But the push in Jerusalem, whether shutting down celebrations outside the Damascus Gate on Ramadan nights by young Palestinians; whether it's offensive in Sheikh Jarrah to evict people with the support of the security forces, or whether attacks on worshippers in the Haram al-Sharif, the sanctuary, the esplanade around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, including attacks by Israeli forces on the mosque itself throwing grenades, sound grenades and tear gas grenades into the mosque while people are trying to worship. I think all of this is an attempt to cater to the extreme right- wingers whom Netanyahu is desperate to bring into a coalition with him. So that's the Israeli side.
On the Palestinian side, I think that the postponement of elections by Mahmoud Abbas, which was greeted with universal dismay by Palestinians on the pretext that Israel would not allow voting in Jerusalem, which while true, should not have prevented the elections from taking place, is one of the triggers of this as is the ongoing rivalry between Fatah and Hamas. And it's pretty clear that while the unrest in Jerusalem was grassroots, spontaneous local responses to what's happening in the mosque, around the mosque, and what's happening in Sheikh Jarrah, very clearly the politicians were caught unawares by this and were not prepared for it in both cases whether in Ramallah or in Gaza are responding--Abbas, with his usual ineffectual attempts at diplomacy, and Hamas with their tried and true policy of firing rockets. So Palestinian internal politics and, I think more importantly, Israeli internal politics and the incredible pressure that Israel has been putting on Palestinians in the last few weeks, in Jerusalem in particular, are what started this.
Ralph Nader: Well, the latest reports in that area until this eruption started was that the Palestinians were not being given vaccines for the COVID-19 epidemic. They were trying to get some from Russia. And under international law, you occupy a territory, you've got to protect the safety and health of the people. Now it's become the usual asymmetric warfare and two points here. One is, the story of the rockets has never been told, Professor Khalidi. Let me explain. These are garage built, homemade rockets. They fired thousands of them over the years into Israel. And fortunately, 99.9% have dropped on hard desert floors. There's been very, very few casualties. There've been more friendly fire casualties in the Israeli Army than these rockets. But the rockets give the Israelis the excuse for massive counterattacks, huge disproportionate killings, 400 to one in terms of deaths and injuries of innocents with the Palestinians taking the brunt. Now, the Israeli reporters and Israeli human rights groups have long pointed out that Gaza is under the greatest surveillance technologically in world history. The Israelis know every street, every home; in fact, they just attacked militants and they knew exactly what houses they were living in. They have informants. They have spies. They have DNA samples. And, of course, they have electronic surveillance and they know everything that's going on. [So] how do they allow these rockets to be built and fired? I was once talking to a technical specialist and I said, “How many seconds does it take for the Israeli Air Force to find out where the rocket was fired from to fire back? He said, “between three and five seconds.” So the argument is, Hamas needs the rockets to show that they have a pulse and they're defending their people and they're not totally powerless, but Israel desperately needs these rockets in order to say to the world we're retaliating and we have a right to defend ourselves.
Now, there are a lot of reporters in Israel who know this story; there are a lot of ordinary people who know this story; the human rights groups know this story [yet] it's never hit the US press. It's never gotten here. It's never gotten into the European press as far as known. And yet it is the key linchpin for the Israeli attacks on two million people in Gaza crowded into an area not that much bigger than the District of Columbia.
Rashid Khalidi: Well, I mean, I think that's right.
Ralph Nader: Let me back up and put the question to you. Don't you think the Israelis know where the materials are coming from for these crude rockets, who is assembling them, where they're being assembled in this tiny enclave in Gaza, and who's firing them, and when they're being fired?
Rashid Khalidi: I don't know the answer to that question, Ralph. I really can't tell you the answer to that question. I would suspect that they know a lot of that and I would suspect that they often refrain from acting on what they know. But I think that the essential thing to understand here is, first of all, that when you do to the Palestinians what Israel has been doing systematically for over 73 years, you are going to get resistance. You're going to get a push back. And that push back will take various forms whether it's stone throwing, whether it's peaceful demonstrations, whether it's violent action like the firing of rockets. And I think that what the dynamic that you've talked about has helped to skew what should be an understanding of settler colonials and dispossession and displacement will necessarily and inevitably provoke resistance. Two, this flat, superficial narrative of terrorism and of poor Israelis coming under rocket fire... Now obviously, I am not in favor of any civilian target being attacked by anybody, whether it's Israel or whether it's Hamas or it's anybody else, United States, anybody. And I think that that's not the way to wage war. War should be waged within the laws of war and that forbids indiscriminate targeting of civilians. But the two things that are constantly alighted from the picture and the way the media presents it, is that first of all, the population of Gaza didn't originate most of it in Gaza. They are refugees driven out of their homes and forbidden from returning to them or from regaining possession of their property by Israeli policies over all the years since 1948. And secondly, as you yourself, as you pointed out, the incredible imbalance in casualties. The last time that Israel engaged in a war on Gaza in 2014, close to 2200 Palestinians were killed; well over half of them were women and children and the overwhelming bulk were civilians, old people, people who are not involved in any way in combat, as against a number in the low double digits, I think it was 13 or 12 civilians killed inside Israel. When you have that kind of imbalance, which you just mentioned actually, I think 20 or more than 20 to one, or 30 to one, or whatever the number is, 2,000 plus to 13, this is what should be talked about. I mean, the terrorism, in terms of targeting of civilians, can be ascribed if you choose to use that term to both sides. But what about proportions? What about the use of force that's completely disproportionate? And this is not a coincidence or an accident. One listens to Israeli military spokesmen who say, “We do everything possible to avoid targeting civilians.” Well, go to the doctrine, the so-called Dahiya Doctrine, which was adopted by the Israeli armed forces and which specifically talks about disproportionate and excessive use of force as a means of imposing what the Israelis call deterrence. So you do actually have the targeting of civilians even though Israeli spokesmen constantly reiterate that they're not and with these proportions.
Ralph Nader: But they have the most precision instruments of warfare and how come these precision instruments are finding schools, hospitals, clinics, homes being blown up? So this is what you say is just propaganda. The Israeli government is losing public opinion in the US even among the Jewish-American population; that's been going on for some time. And J Street has been gaining strength going for a two-state solution. But just yesterday, the fervent Pro-Israeli government, head of public radio in Albany, WMAC, said that Israel should not be taking Arab homes. He said it twice. That is an extraordinary reversal for this man because he gives a lot of regular political opinion. And so why is the Biden administration still parroting the Clinton and Obama administrations with this phrase, "Israel has the right to defend themselves," as if the Palestinians don't have a right to defend themselves. And they're standing there in the State Department like hapless, indifferent people even though US weapons and US funds are being used to power this military and technological superpower called Israel.
Rashid Khalidi: Well, I'll give you one reason. If they didn't do that they would be admitting that they're in violation of US law because US law mandates that American weapons can only be used for self-defense. If those weapons are being used in an indiscriminate way or in a way that violates international law, that is not consonant with self-defense, then everybody responsible-- the Congress and the administration, for sending these weapons to Israel, is liable under US law. So one reason that you get this absurd statement that the killing of 2200 people in 2014 was self-defense, is because if they were not to say that, they would admit that the United States is criminally liable under US law for the transfer of these weapons.
The other thing that I would say is that this administration I think illustrates . . . I agree with you by the way. I think that there is a big change going on in American public opinion in the Jewish community among young people, in particular, and many other communities of color and other communities, which have moral concerns and have a conscience, you're seeing a big shift. And you can see this in all the polling especially as it concerns the base of the Democratic Party. People are changing. And the person you cited is only one of many, many, many people who shifted considerably in their view of Israel-Palestine. And I think that the extreme right-wing religious nationalist, unconstitutional, semi-autocratic nature of the Netanyahu government is something that's partly driven this change.
But I think that the Biden administration illustrates a serious problem in the Democratic Party, which is that the leadership of the party, which is mainly made up of much older people who are mainly concerned with things like fundraising and big, big donors to the party, and alienating the Israel lobby, is divorced from the base of the party, which is younger, which is not restricted to looking at the mainstream corporate media, but listens to an enormous variety of sources of information through social media and through its access to things like podcasts, which just didn't exist 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, cable news, [the] New York Times, [the] Washington Post, the news agencies, that was it. And the older generation of party leadership, the older generation of this country generally including the Republican Party, which is mainly made up of older White people, and largely made up of older White people, are in another world than most younger people are concerned. And I think the Biden administration faithfully reflects a view that's in fact only, only held by mainly this generation, that generation. I mean, look at Speaker Pelosi; look at President Biden himself; look at Chuck Schumer. You're talking about people from a generation for which 1967 and the way in which the war was completely misinterpreted as a war of annihilation against Israel. Or for that matter, the 1948 war or the Holocaust or the foundational elements.
And with younger people, they see Israel as a nuclear superpower that has acted as a bully against the Palestinians for decades, which is the time the people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s have been alive. So I think that there's a big change underway among major segments of American public opinion. And I think that Israel has furthered this by its missteps in Jerusalem and by its heavy-handed brutality, whether in bombarding Gaza, or in crushing the protests against the dispossession of the residents of Sheikh Jarrah or at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Ralph Nader: This escalation here is probably the most dangerous ever for the simple reason that the Netanyahu regime is coming off the Trump "you can do whatever you want to the Palestinians" policy. And now their eruptions among Israeli-Arabs, who are protesting the treatment of their fellow Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and the more extreme ascension of right-wing Israeli politicians and colonials who make no ambiguity in their desire to eventually create such an eruption as to drive the Palestinians into the desert and there is recorded statements in that direction. I mean, this is a much more dangerous escalation than prior Israeli-Gaza. And listeners should know, the Hamas was founded with the full support of the Israeli and US governments to counteract the secular Palestine Liberation Organization, isn’t that correct?
Rashid Khalidi: The Israeli Intelligence Services supported Hamas from the time it was created and helped to foster the people who eventually founded Hamas and continued to do that for many years thereafter. This is attested by Israeli authors by independent reporting that eventually the Hamas got out of their control. But they were very, very happy exactly, as you said, to divide the Palestinians and they have always tried to divide the Palestinians. And it's a basic principle of colonial policy, divide and rule.
THE MOSSAD'S FALSE FLAG AL QAEDA CELL
Rashid Abu Shbak, the head of Palestinian Preventive Security in the Gaza Strip said on Friday, December 6, 2002 that his forces had identified a number of Palestinian collaborators who had been ordered by Israeli security agencies to "work in the Gaza Strip under the name of Al-Qaeda." Al-Jazeera TV reported that the Palestinian authorities had arrested a group of Palestinian "collaborators with Israeli occupation" in Gaza, who were trying to set up an operation there in the name of bin Laden's Al-Qaeda. The Palestinian Authority spokesman said the members of the group had confessed that they were recruited and organized by the Israeli intelligence, Mossad. Sharon had personally claimed on December 4, 2002 that he had proof of Al-Qaeda operations in Gaza, and used the allegations to justify brutal Israeli Defense Forces attacks in the Gaza Strip the next day -- which was the start of the Islamic holiday, Eid, celebrating the end of Ramadan. Ten civilians were killed in the IDF assaults. Reuters published an extensive featured story on the affair by Diala Saadeh on December 7, 2002, under the headline "Palestinians: Israel Faked Gaza Al Qaeda Presence." The article quoted President Arafat, who told reporters at his West Bank Ramallah headquarters, "It is a big, big, big lie to cover [Sharon's] attacks and his crimes against our people everywhere." Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo explained: "There are certain elements who were instructed by the Mossad to form a cell under the name of Al Qaeda in the Gaza Strip in order to justify the assault and the military campaigns of the Israeli occupation army against Gaza." (Haaretz, Reuters and Al Jazeera, December 7, 2002) Sharon is of course a past master of false-flag tactics like these, having been implicated in the direction of the Abu Nidal organization and also in the setting up of Hamas.
On Sunday, December 8, 2002, Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Authority Planning and International Cooperation Minister, held a press conference with Col. Rashid Abu Shbak, head of the PA 's Preventive Security Apparatus in the Gaza Strip, to release documents and provide further information about the Israeli intelligence creation of a self-styled Al Qaeda cell. Shaath called on the diplomats to "convey to their countries that they assume the responsibility of exerting pressure on the Israeli government to stop the Israeli aggression," and announced that the PA had handed ambassadors and consuls of the Arab and foreign countries documents revealing the involvement of the Israeli Intelligence in recruiting citizens from Gaza Strip in a fake organization carrying the name of Qaeda. The goal of the operation was to create a new pretext for aggression against the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Shbak said that the PA had found eight cases of fake Al Qaeda recruiting over the previous nine months. Three Palestinians were arrested, while another 11 Palestinians were released, "because they came and informed us of this Israeli plot." The PA Security Service had traced mobile phone calls and e-mails, purportedly from Germany and Lebanon, back to Israel; these were messages asking Palestinians to join Al Qaeda. One e-mail even bore the forged signature of Osama bin Laden. "We investigated the origin of those calls, which used roaming, and messages, and found out they all came from Israel," Shbak said. The recruits were paired with collaborators in Gaza, and received money and weapons, "although most of these weapons did not work." The money was provided by collaborators, or transferred from bank accounts in Israel and Jerusalem. (Palestine Ministry of Public Information, Islam Online, December 9, 2002)...
Palestine -- After Israeli had occupied the west bank of the Jordan River, the Gaza strip and the Sinai peninsula in June, 1967, the Israelis found themselves ruling over some two million Palestinians. Under the United Nations system it is illegal to annex territory acquired through armed conflict without the approval of the United Nations Security Council, which in this case was not forthcoming. Rather, the UNSC passed resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw to the internationally recognized borders as they had been before June 1967. (In the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush spokesmen accused Iraq of having violated some 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions; they conveniently forgot that Israel was the all-time champion in that department, since Israel is currently in violation of some 30 UNSC resolutions regarded the territories it has occupied since 1967. But the US never proposed war to enforce compliance with those resolutions.) The Israeli occupation of conquered Palestine was oppressive and humiliating, and a national resistance soon emerged in the form of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Its leader was Yassir Arafat, a secular nationalist more or less in the Nasser mold. Since the PLO had few weapons, and since the Israeli army was a dominant presence, the PLO began doing what the Jews had done between 1945 and 1948 against the British occupation of the same territory: they launched guerilla warfare, which the occupiers quickly labeled terrorism. The official Israeli line was that there was no Palestinian people, but this was soon disproved. From the beginning, the Israeli Mossad was active in conducting provocations which it sought to attribute to the PLO and its peripheries: attacks on airliners and on the 1972 Olympic games in Munich are therefore of uncertain paternity. The more horrendous the atrocity, the greater the backlash of world public opinion against the PLO. There is no doubt that the Mossad controlled a part of the central committee of the organization known as Abu Nidal, after the nom de guerre of its leader, Sabri al Banna. In 1987-88, just as the first Palestinian intifada uprising was getting under way, there emerged in the occupied territories the organization known as Hamas. Hamas combined a strong commitment to neighborhood social services with the rejection of negotiations with Israel and the demand for a military solution which was sure to be labeled terrorism. Interestingly enough, one of the leading sponsors of Hamas was Ariel Sharon, a former general who was then a cabinet minister. These facts are widely recognized; US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurzer, an observant Jew, stated late in 2001 that Hamas had emerged "with the tacit support of Israel" because in the late 1980s "Israel perceived it would be better to have people turning toward religion, rather than toward a nationalistic cause." (Ha'aretz, Dec. 21, 2001) In an acrimonious Israeli cabinet debate around the same time, Israeli extremist Knesset member Silva Shalom stated:"between Hamas and Arafat, I prefer Hamas ... Arafat is a terrorist in a diplomat's suit, while the Hamas can be hit unmercifully." (Ha'aretz, Dec. 4, 2001)
This tirade provoked a walkout by Shimon Peres and the other Labor Party ministers. Arafat added his own view, which was that"Hamas is a creature of Israel which, at the time of Prime Minister Shamir, gave them money and more than 700 institutions, among them schools, universities, and mosques. Even [Israeli Prime Minister] Rabin ended up admitting it, when I charged him with it, in the presence of Mubarak." (Corriere della Sera, Dec. 11, 2001)
With incredible arrogance, the Bush administration has pronounced Arafat as unfit to be a negotiating partner. In effect, they are choosing Hamas -- or worse, an act of incalculable folly for Israel and for the United States as well.
-- 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley
Ralph Nader: Do you think that the Biden administration is going to change at all? Do you think there's going to be more activity in Congress with people like AOC and some of the more progressive leaders and Rashida Tlaib? Or do you think the dominance of AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] will continue?
Rashid Khalidi: Well, I think that we're going to see the beginning of a change. I don't think that the dominance of the kinds of views represented by AIPAC is going to end overnight. The Republican Party is solidly pro-Israel from top to bottom. And in this case, the leadership and the base are marching in lockstep. On the Democratic side, the leadership and many, many Democrats are still very, very wary of crossing the lobby, very, very wary of taking positions that they think will make them vulnerable to their own donors or just some of their own voters and to the kind of pressure that the lobby can exert with smears and with underhanded attacks on them, the kinds of things that have driven a number of people out of Congress in the past. However, on the other side, in addition to the people you mentioned, you have several senators speaking. You have Senator Van Hollen of Maryland. You have Senator Warren of Massachusetts. Of course you have Bernie Sanders of Vermont. And you have had a couple of dozen members of Congress, in the last Congress, willing to support a bill that would make American aid to Israel conditional on Israel ceasing to detain Palestinian minors. Betty McCollum of Minnesota was the sponsor of this and she had 24 co-sponsors in the last session of Congress. Every single one of them was re-elected in November. And she has a new bill, which would ban US aid from being used, not only for the detention of minors, but also for the demolition of Palestinian homes and for Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory. And she's collecting co-sponsors on this new version of the bill. And I think this is unprecedented that you had that large a block of congress people, congressmen and women.
Ralph Nader: The problem is the urgency of the escalating conflict, because Netanyahu and his military general said these airstrikes are just the beginning. So this could go completely out of control and, of course, the Syrians are convulsed in around. And Israel has, by its own admission, bombed Syria hundreds of times in recent years. And Iraq is demobilized and the Biden administration has the priority of restoring the nuclear accord with Iran as its top Middle East policy. And the Gulf Arabs are making good with Israel. This thing could blow sky high for the Palestinians because of the internal politics of Netanyahu forming a coalition in the next few weeks. What must the US do here in the United Nations as well?
Rashid Khalidi: Well, I think it's finally time for the United States to allow the international community to actually not just say things critical of Israel, but to do things that would inflict a price on Israel for its behavior. I think it's time to stop talking about the UN resolutions regarding settlement, for example, or regarding annexation or regarding Jerusalem, and to start to implement sanctions. That's a steep ask, but I don't think anything else will do. They may or may not be able to bring about a ceasefire. But every day that this continues, and hopefully it will not escalate as you're suggesting, Ralph. But every day that this continues, it's not just that the Palestinians become more unified and mobilized; it's not just that people the world over are horrified and support for Israel will continue to ebb, but it is also the case that in the Arab world, the autocratic and unrepresentative, the undemocratic governments that began a rapprochement with Israel are running scared of their own people. You should see the statements being issued by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, countries that have normalized with Israel. They are petrified by the storm on social media in their own countries in support of the Palestinians. These are countries that don't allow any expression of public opinion and that's how they were able to get away with what they did. But they are going to have to reckon sooner or later with the wave of anger that's going over the Arab world. What was done in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is an 8th century structure. It's the first direction of prayer for Muslims before it shifted back to Mecca. It's the third holiest place in Israel.
This is the Holy Month of Ramadan. People are praying in this mosque. Think of St. Peter's Basilica; think of the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem or the Hurva Synagogue. And imagine security forces firing tear gas into a mosque while worshippers are praying. And imagine the impact of that on co-religionists, of people who are praying in a synagogue or a church or, in this case, in the mosque. That's something that the Biden administration is going to have to contend with. Israel is creating enemies for itself, the world over, by its actions. They think that they have a lock hold on the United States. And as long as they have that, they can get away with this. I think that lock hold is beginning to slip, but in any case, they are creating for themselves endless problems and there are Israeli security analysts saying the same thing. Former Israeli national security adviser said the same thing, [i.e.] they have totally mishandled this. This is going to harm us and they're right.
Ralph Nader: And you know, we have some Israeli partisans in our audience; not many, but they let us know. And they should know that in 2002, 19 Islamic nations in the Middle East and Central Asia appealed to the Israeli government for a peace accord based on return to the 1967 borders, a two-state solution and diplomatic and trade relations will resume. They repeated that proposal again and again, put full-page ads in the New York Times, these 19 Islamic nations, and the Israeli government rebuffed them. That's often forgotten.
Rashid Khalidi: Right. No, you're absolutely right. Ironically, the Emirates . . . one of the chief Emirates spokesman for the United Arab Emirates just repeated that peace plan that you mentioned.
Ralph Nader: We're almost out of time. We've been talking with Professor Khalidi. How about some input from David and Steve?
David Feldman: You were talking earlier about how isolated the Palestinians are. Is there anybody who's stepping up, any country in the Middle East now? It feels like Saudi Arabia has abandoned the Palestinian cause? And which country in the Arab League is protecting the Palestinians?
Rashid Khalidi: Well, no country is protecting the Palestinians. I think that's part of the problem. You have an Arab world which is a black hole as far as democracy and a popular representation in constitutions are concerned. And among these autocratic regimes where public opinion is very supportive of the Palestinians.
David Feldman: Is Iran the only country that is supporting the Palestinians in a full-throated way in . . .
Rashid Khalidi: I would question how effective that support is. There are other countries. I mean, Algeria, Turkey, at least, are outspoken in their support. But in practice, I don't think that that is terribly effective. At this stage, I think it's really very much more up to the Palestinians themselves frankly. I think that what they're doing is having an enormous effect on international public opinion, on public opinion in the Arab world. And there are deep divisions among the Palestinians. I mean, I mentioned that in response to Ralph's question that it's not just Netanyahu who is operating on the basis of political calculations. I think that's also true for Hamas and it's true certainly for Abbas.
David Feldman: If Israel keeps killing the Hamas leadership, who speaks for the Palestinians, at least in Gaza?
Rashid Khalidi: This is not new. There's an extraordinary book entitled Rise and Kill First about Israel's assassination policy. They have been systematically murdering Palestinian leaders for decades and decades and decades and decades. Most notably starting in the 1970s, but ever since for the last 50 years and more, they have been doing this, murdering or imprisoning the most important, most effective Palestinian leadership. That's characteristic of every colonial regime fighting every national liberation movement. The French did this in Algeria; the South Africans did this in Southwest Africa, and the Portuguese did this in Mozambique. It is what they do and you have to just go on. The Palestinians will just have to figure out how to find new leaders. There's nothing --
David Feldman: Is Abu Mazen a legitimate leader of the Palestinians or is he being propped up by the Israelis?
Rashid Khalidi: Well, I think he's being propped up by the United States and Europe most significantly. And I think that he's lost his legitimacy and that he was elected so long ago that his term ran out a decade and a half ago, and I think his legitimacy is really quite limited.
Ralph Nader: Thank you. To be continued. Thank you, Professor Khalidi.
Rashid Khalidi: Very much appreciated. Take care.