Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Why Gaza is Genocide" with Israeli Holocaust Historian Prof. Amos Goldberg

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"Why Gaza is Genocide" with Israeli Holocaust Historian Prof. Amos Goldberg · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans, welcome to The Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas.
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And it's one of the most dangerous questions that has plagued international geopolitics
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and really the morality of activists all over the world for the past 19 months.
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Is a Western liberal democratic country and ally of ours, a country that we provide weapons
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and funding to Israel, undertaking a genocide right in front of our very faces?
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I've spent a lot of time on this show and in newspaper columns trying to encourage
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people to understand the complexity of the issue in Gaza, trying to have people not
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fall for the images that they might see on social media, that are algorithmically fed
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to them by canny entities, the provenance of which we do not know, could be Iran, could
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be China, could just be the mindless AI is grinding away in Silicon Valley.
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And for us to step back and try to learn about the conflict, try to put it in a historical
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context.
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If you want to hear some of those conversations, I spoke with the incredible British comedian,
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Jewish activist comedian, I suppose, David Badil on the 3rd of January, 2024.
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On February 13th, I did an editorial called The Rise of Woke Snitches, which was about
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people dobbing each other in for being either pro or anti-Israel.
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On the 18th of April, 2024, there's a recording of me in conversation with Douglas Murray,
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the staunch defender of Israel, live in Sydney, we did a national tour together.
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On June 19th, 2024, there's an editorial that's interesting to listen to, which is about
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protesters at a signfold show that I was at, pro-Palestinian anti-Israel, really anti-Semitic
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protesters.
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I did an editorial called Josh on Trump on Gaza on February 7th of this year.
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I interviewed Senator Sharma, who is the former ambassador to Israel, called Trump,
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Gaza and Liberalism.
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That episode is called on March 11th, on March 12th, I released an editorial called Josh
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on Israel Palestine coverage.
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And immediately after October 7th, 2023, I released an episode called Josh's Thoughts on
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Israel and Gaza.
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And then October 25th, I interviewed Eli Lake, who's very hawkish and pro-Israel.
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October 27th, I did an editorial called Should Israel Exist at all.
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And probably my pierced a resistance on this particular topic, which I encourage all of
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you to go back and listen to if you were not subscribers back then, or if you missed
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it, or if you just haven't heard it in a year and a half, was an editorial to close
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out 2023 on December 13th.
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It was entitled Why Jews are literally Nazis, reflections on a collapsing conversation.
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And I spent an hour, an hour and a half, trying to wrestle with my conflicted ideas about
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all of this.
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I haven't cited the episodes that I've done with pro-Palestinian or anti-zionist activists,
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those episodes speak for themselves, but there does come a point at which you have to
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start to wonder.
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There are not the complexity and the insistence that we take the complexity into account begins
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to actually obscure more than it illuminates.
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At what point would Jews around the world abandon Israel and try to find a vision of
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Jewishness that is not saddled with the albatross of the conduct of that country, of that
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government?
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How bad would things have to get in Gaza?
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That is the question that Dr. Amos Goldberg has been wrestling with since October 7th,
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and before he was born and raised in Israel, he's a professor in the Department of Jewish
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History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
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He was the head of that university's research institute of contemporary Jewry until last
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year.
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He is a world-renowned expert on the Holocaust, on the cultural history of Jews, on the
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history of the persecution of Jews.
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He's a particular expert on the culture of the Warsaw ghetto, and he's been a visiting
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scholar at institutes all over the world, which devote themselves to the study of genocide
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and the Holocaust, Cornell University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and
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he has become a bit viral in Israel and beyond for his recent writing.
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Knowing in no uncertain terms that what's going on in Gaza is indeed genocide, legally,
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morally, politically.
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He's someone who can say this because he's not an arm-waving, crazy, hysterical, anti-Semite.
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He lives in Israel, that is his home, and it gives him a permission structure in which
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to speak about this, that is confronting and fascinating.
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This is sort of a lose-lose kind of episode for me, if I don't push back enough, which
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I suppose I don't, then I get accused of being too soft on someone and probably of being
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a self-hating Jew myself.
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If I do push back, which I did, perhaps too much, depending on your point of view, then
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I get accused of attacking a learned professor simply because I can't handle the message
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that he's trying to deliver.
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I hope this is stimulating for you.
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The newspaper article on which it's based is a piece that Amos Kho wrote in Haaretz,
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the Israeli newspaper entitled, There's no Auschwitz in Gaza, but it is still genocide.
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There's a link to that in the show notes.
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I hope you enjoy as much as I did.
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The one the only professor Amos Goldberg.
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Much of my professional work has to do with this about memory.
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I co-edited with a Palestinian friend to books on combining the Holocaust and the Nakaba
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memories together despite the differences.
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And I knew that a catastrophe is coming, would be coming.
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It's not sustainable.
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The occupation, the apartheid, the siege, the denial of the Nakaba, denial of rights.
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Or if we put this all together, if you have 14 million and something people between the
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river and the sea, and half of them have full rights, while the other half don't have
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rights or have partial rights, this is not sustainable, this is not just.
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This is, it will somehow change.
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But you know, we don't think of it intellectually, but also emotionally, you never expect the
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words to come.
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And when it comes, it shocks, it traumatized, it destabilized, and the seventh of October
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one, you know, we lived in Israel, which we thought could not be harmed.
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But there was a sense that Israel is very forceful, militarily, diplomatically, economically,
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and actually managed to wipe the Palestinian just cause of the table, and all of a sudden
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the seventh of October.
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And it was very personal, it was very personal, you know, I won't very close people who
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either killed or survived or taken hostages, the enormity of casualties.
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This is something that we, we, as Israelis, never experienced.
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So you can say, okay, this happened in 2014, 2021, it happened in Gaza all the time, but
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we never, it's a different thing to know and to experience.
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So it was shocking, it was really shocking, it was the first time since I think 1948
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that Israeli territory and settlements were occupied in Israel itself, not only not in,
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not attacks on casual attacks, but so it was, and it was really shocking, it was traumatizing,
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it was shocking, and so many civilians that had nothing to do with the war or with the
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children and elderly and children that were taken hostages, and then came out also, all
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those stories, some of them were lies, but we didn't know at the time, it took some time
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to defer between lies, and so it was, it was really devastating, and to put, to add to
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that, the state did not exist at that time.
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We felt that the army failed, the government failed, there is no help, civil society stepped
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in to, to take care of the, of the evacuees.
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So on top of the trauma, we also felt, I also, many felt that the state evaporated for
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many, many long months, and when it came back, it felt that it's even worse.
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If I had told you, I'm us in, on October 8th, that we would be speaking in May of 2025,
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and Netanyahu would be the Prime Minister, and the war would still be going on.
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Would you have believed that?
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Prime Minister, yes, because he's a very talented politician, able to manipulate the political
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scene according to his will and his partners, this is unbelievable, he wouldn't take responsibility
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for anything, for any, in any circumstances, and his government, they stick together, but
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I didn't think, I would say another thing, I didn't think it would take so long, because
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none of the Israeli wars took so long, and the international community always put an end
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to, to Israeli assaults, but I remember in the first week, after a second week, I, I
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have it recorded, I mean, I wrote in one of the WhatsApp groups, even the 7th of October
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cannot justify what the, what the bombardments were to actively, we know that the first month
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of the, of the war was the most lethal for children in the 21st century.
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Those were bombardments that they just threw everything, and actually they admitted the spokesperson
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of the, of the, of the IDF said, it's not about targeting, it's, it's not about precision,
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it's about destruction. And I understood that it's going in a very, very, very wrong direction.
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I, I just want to get clarity on a couple of things, because I can hear some listeners
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disputing a few things already, and I want to understand how you respond to them.
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The first is a partied, the, the idea that before October 7th, Israel was an apartheid state.
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No one can deny that the occupied territories that occupied Palestine is, I think, a moral stain
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on Israel. But when you use the apartheid word, some people say, well, the occupied territories
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are very, very complicated, and there are faults on all sides for the existence of the Palestinians
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not having a state, but within Israel itself, one-fifth of Israeli Knesset is Arab, there are Arabs
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on the Supreme Court, sorry, one-fifth of the population is, is Arab, there are Arabs in the Knesset,
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there are Arabs on the Supreme Court, lots of Arabs live in Israel, Israel is not itself
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an apartheid state, but it does find itself occupying this other country because they've,
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both sides have never been able to figure out an accommodation that suits both of them.
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What do you mean when you say apartheid? At least in the occupied territories, there is an apartheid regime
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because, as I said, you have half of the population Arab, half of the population is Israel.
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It has now become one territorial political unit between the river and the sea,
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all of it occupied by Israel. It's permanent, it's the most lasting occupation, and there is no
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evidence that anybody is going to change it on the country. If you look at the government's
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guidelines, it talks about only Jews have any political rights of cell determination in the whole
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land of Israel and the greater Israel. So what about Arab citizens of Israel?
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Okay, so let's talk about Gaza, which is still occupied according to international law,
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because Israel, even before the war, before the genocide, because Israel controls almost everything
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from the outside, including the borders, including the population registry, including everything,
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including if you will eat pasta today or rice tomorrow. This is, so it controls the electricity,
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it controls the water, it controls everything. And Egypt doesn't do anything either. There's a
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border with Egypt. Yeah, but Israel controlled, yeah, Egypt should not be taken off the hook, but
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it was under Israeli occupation, and it's still under Israeli occupation. So with Gaza,
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you have the West Bank, which is, it's under Israeli occupation, nobody disputes it, and you
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have East Jerusalem, which is according to the international law is also an occupied territory.
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In the occupied territories, there are two sets of laws, one for the Palestinians and one for
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the Jews, and that is apartheid. If you are in Hebron, for example. But it's not one for the Palestinians,
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and one for the Jews, one for the Palestinians, and one for the Israelis. It's one for, okay,
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one for the Israelis, and one for the Israelis are Arabs. It doesn't matter, it's a discrimination
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between two groups of people, and that is apartheid. So if you are settlers who live in the occupied
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territories are 100% Jews, to the best of my understanding. So if you are in Hebron, for example,
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a Jew throws a rock on a Palestinians, and a Palestinians throw a rock on the Israeli, the Israeli,
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if he would be tried, and this is a very big if, because there are statistics they don't come to
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trial, he will be taken to a civil court, while the Palestinian will take, will take into a
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martial court, and this is the big difference. So there are two sets of laws. Now the statistics are
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that 96 to 99% of the Palestinians are convicted, while only 96% of the allegations against Jews
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do not come to court at all. So you have two completely different judicial systems in the occupied
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territories, and two different laws. I think I think almost the vast majority of people would agree
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that the occupied territory, that the West Bank is an apartheid system, and then they would say,
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well, we had the Oslo Accords, and we had Sharon, and we had Rabin, and do you also mean that in
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Israel proper, there is apartheid where we're talking about the settlements. Let's start with the
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occupied territories, which is Gaza, is Jerusalem, you know, is Jerusalem, for example, the Palestinian,
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it was annexed, it was annexed to Israel, it was annexed by Israel, but the Palestinian
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population do not vote for the parliament, they are not allowed, they are subject, they are
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residents, like as if they come from abroad, you know, we occupy them, and they become permanent
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residents, you know, apartheid also you ask South Africans is in the bureaucracy, it's not only
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about rules, it's the bureaucracy that determines people's lives, and if you go into East Jerusalem,
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bureaucracy, and the unimaginable violence that is put on the rate, for example, of children's
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custody, it's a completely different world, we live in the same city, and we feel apartheid,
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so if that is okay, we can talk about Israel as an apartheid state, because it rules
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for many many years, and it's not going to end any time soon, so I think this assertion,
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this utterance, Israel is an apartheid state, it's certainly, and I think it's very difficult
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to doubt it in regard to East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, yes, and as I said,
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it's an official policy, it's a permanent occupation, which is discriminatory by its very definition,
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and it's not going to change any time soon, so we can talk about apartheid state very easily
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about those territories, I think it was human rights, right what, and Bethellem, which is an Israeli
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human rights organization, both of them reached the conclusion that apartheid legally according to
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international law, could be, not could, should be, this term should be applied also to Israel
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proper, and I will explain why, officially it's a democracy, and there is equal rights for all,
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but there is dozens of discriminatory laws from land owning, to immigration, to this
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division of the capital, I mean there are dozens dozens of laws that discriminate,
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explicit, I will give you an example if you, please, if you are a Jew in Australia,
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you are a potential citizen of Israel, once you come to Israel, I mean there's some procedure
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but basically immediately you become a citizen, if you are a Jew, you don't even have to,
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you have to be, you don't have to be a relative of anybody and there's almost no conditions,
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you just come, if you are Palestinians of course you cannot, but even if you have family,
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it is so difficult to, now, unification of families, to unite, and the supreme court when
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it dealt about it, it's not, it's not only about security, it's also about demography.
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I must, I'd like you just to pull back about the permanence of the, of the occupation,
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because so much of what has confused me since October 7th is the conflation, the merging together
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of a few different ideas. One is an idea that I think a lot of Jews, especially in the diaspora,
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would agree with, which is that Israel should have gotten rid of the territories as quickly
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after 1967 as it could have and should have done a better job of finding a way to create a Palestinian
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state in the 90s and 2000s, but that the Second Intifada made that understandably almost impossible
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and that the settlement building of the Netanyahu government is inexcusable and illegal,
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and that the blockade on Gaza is inhuman, and then there's another idea which is that
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Israel should never really have been founded in the first place because it was the Palestinians land
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and the Jews don't belong there, which is an extreme view, but is different from that one.
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And then there is a, I suppose, a distinct other idea which is even if Israel was founded,
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it should, there should be a single Palestinian state from the river to the sea,
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and it's wrong for there to be a demographic component to any nation state. It's a bit 19th century
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and old fashioned to have an ethno state that's just for one group of people.
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Do you think that the permanence of the occupation and the settlement building
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were always a part of the Israeli project or is this an accident of the past few decades?
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It's a cycle. The more Israel is discriminating, the more Israel is violent towards the
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Palestinian. The more Israel wants to wipe out Palestinians as a national entity with rights,
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the more it gets violence, and then the more people start asking what is the root cause of all this,
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and they go back to 1948 to 1917, today, but for declaration, they go back because they want
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to understand the sources, the root cause of this Israeli violence. Why is Israeli expanding all
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the time? Israel is a Jewish nation state law, which is discriminatory in its essence. It's just
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just Jews have collective rights here, not Arabs, not Palestinians. Yes, but the Arabs were supposed
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to have a state, and they, Israel instead of taking the state. They cannot practice the collective
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rights, and actually also since. But that's because they invaded Israel, Amaz. Because they invaded
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well, in the war of independence, I mean, after independence, the Palestinians did not invade Israel,
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because they were most of the Arab states. Most of the Arab states did not invade Israel. Most of the
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fighting was not on Israeli, according to the 1947, and in the south they invaded the
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Egyptian army. But okay, that was, I mean, we can talk about the decision of 1947. We jumped
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from one thing to another to quickly. But no, I don't think we're jumping. I'm just trying to,
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the there is a line of thinking that says that Israel is an entity that came into existence
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and embedded in its DNA was a sort of explicit or implicit genocidal annihilation of the local
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Arab population who we now call Palestinians. And then there's an alternative point of view
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that says Israel wanted to live in Israel. The Arab states didn't want the Jews there
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and repeatedly tried throughout the 60s and 70s to get the Jews out of the region and did not
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want there to be two states. And the reason why Israel is occupying all these people is because
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it's sitting on top of land that was supposed to be in Arab state and that most of the Jews in
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the 40s expected to be in Arab state and would have been okay with being in Arab state.
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But when they were invaded in 67, they had the good fortune from the Israeli perspective,
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I'm speaking from their perspective, not mine, to occupy those territories and tried to find a
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way to give them back in Oslo and Israel was not in 1967. Israel did not, it was not in
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close enough. No, no, even one inch because Israel started the war of 1967. It was surrounded by
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tanks. It was, when you are in a, but it was not invaded. We have to be careful with what we say.
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Israel was not invaded in 1967. There were preparations for a massive invasion in 67.
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No, there were no back and dead in 1973. There was army gathering on both sides. Yeah,
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they closed the Suez Canal and there was a escalation. Was it unavoidable to open the war or
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could it be some other way? I'm not an expert on that, but I know some historians say it's not.
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And it opened, it was not invaded. We have to be careful. Also in 1948, it was hardly invaded.
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It was in certain points in the north and certain points in the south, but it was hardly
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I should be more careful with my words. Invaded is the wrong word, but you have a few million
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people surrounded by a half a billion Arabs in states that don't want them to be there
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and they're getting all their militaries ready and pushing tanks to the border and intelligence
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says they're about to invade. So you preemptively try to avoid that scenario. It's not an invasion,
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it's not an invasion, but it's a, it's a, it's a mutual conflict. Yeah, you can say also of
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Afghanistan and Iraq are a mutual conflict between the terrorists and America. There is always
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this logic of war. Nobody goes to war without any, any self-justification and perhaps it was
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justified, but why keep it since since 67 for already 58 years and nothing is going and settle
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it and you know, it's not now. If you are asking me about 1948, I will tell you my views about it.
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There are two narratives and both have truth in it, but the Arabs are right. This region was
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Arab and since the end of the 19th century and Jews from Europe for most, for all kinds of
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reason, mostly escaping antisemitism or the notion that Jews cannot live in particularly East
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Europe and then also in West Europe within the new political order that was established in the
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modern times. And they wanted in some way to, I would say to, to establish some kind of a framework
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of self-determination, not necessarily an exclusive nation state. And this is my friend Dmitry
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Shunzky has shown that until the 30s, it was hardly debated and most of the
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most of the Zionist thinkers and leaders did not think until the 30s in an exclusive nation
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state as we have now, all kinds of binational or federation arrangement. For the Palestinian and
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the Arab perspective, there were invaders and there were colonialists and actually
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there were colonialists because they came from maybe for very good reasons to a land that they had
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were attached to by culture and religion very deeply, hoping to establish some kind of a political
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framework from their side, but from the Palestinians and the Arab indigenous population in the era,
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there were invaders that were backed by the superpower over that time, which was great Britain.
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Yes, I mean, it would not be the first time that the United Kingdom colonized or assisted
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to some, assisted to people in colonizing. I'm sitting on land that is colonized.
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This happened in New Zealand, it happened in Canada, it happened in the United States.
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The difference in Israel's case is that in 1967,
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call it an invasion, call it a military dispute, call it a
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couple of
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no invention. No, you cannot call it invasion.
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The Arab, whatever reason.
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Okay, the Arabs were fine with Israel. They loved it. They will love Israel.
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Don't conflict invasion with loving politics is not about love.
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An international law is not about love.
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They did not invade Israel. Of course, they gathered a lot of military in the Sinai Peninsula.
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They were talking war, but they did not invade Israel.
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Yes, I was joking. I was joking. There is no country in the world
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that would have tolerated the level of military buildup on Israel's borders
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without trying to do something about it. Maybe that's not just or fair,
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but the stakes are so high in the case of a small country like Israel
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that it's understandable that they would do something about it.
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Yes, I'm not saying in the relevant point that I want to hear.
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Be careful about what we say.
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Yes, well, I also covered it at the far left.
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But the fact of the matter is that Israel invaded Sinai twice and gave it twice.
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In 1956, and it gave it back under the pressure of the United States.
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In 1967, for a peace treaty with Sadat,
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which is not the case about the West Bank is Jerusalem.
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Yes, exactly.
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This is the core difference between Israel and other colonial societies,
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which is that it is now sitting and occupying a bunch of people.
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You can talk about South Africa.
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Let's just remember, a lot of people don't know that when Israel was founded
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as a Zionist state, as an ethno state,
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everybody assumed, correct me if I'm wrong, you're the historian,
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everybody assumed that there would also be an Arab state alongside it,
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that was in the United Nations plan, Jordan occupied the West Bank,
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Egypt occupied Gaza.
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And so the place where the Palestinians were supposed to be,
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the half that they were supposed to get between the river and the sea,
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was occupied initially by Jordan and Egypt.
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And after 1967 has been occupied by Israel.
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And it strikes me that that was the founding, not the founding Sin,
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but that was the original Sin of Israel.
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And the inability to figure out how to get a Palestinian state has led Israel.
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And then obviously the past 15, 20 years of Netanyahu
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and the Second Interfada didn't help, huge mistakes on both sides.
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But can we bring ourselves to the present day and talk about the moral and historical implications
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of what Israel is doing now specifically in Gaza?
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What is genocide?
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First of all, genocide is a very new term.
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It's a legal term. We start with that.
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I mean, there were huge debates.
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What is a genocide? What should be included?
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And they ended up in a convention,
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which is the convention to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide,
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which was accepted in December, which voted for in December 1948 in the general assembly.
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This is the, I would say, international legally definition of genocide.
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And it said, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to this,
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and this is very important, with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
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it does not have to be an intention to destroy in whole, but also to destroy in part.
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And then it lists the acts that the convention considers to be acts of genocide.
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That's killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm,
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the delivery and see deliberately inflicting the group condition that bring about these two.
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So this is the core definition in international law, when civilians are killed,
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or many excuses and justification, but you don't do this because it's a crime.
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So why destroy so many hospitals, for example,
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till this very day, Israel did not provide even one proof
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that there was substantial headquarters of terrorists,
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or even except for Shifa hospital tunnels under the, under those hospitals.
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Why staff people?
32:22
Why dismantle the whole system of dispersing food?
32:28
Why annihilate most of the agricultural, why bomb mosques and schools?
32:37
Why, why even a university, like Israel University, that was captured,
32:44
there was a headquarters and then was bombed.
32:47
Why do you want to expel all the Palestinians if you are so, you know, only want the Hamas?
32:53
If you just want to fight the Hamas, why total since March,
32:59
already more than two months, total siege, one grain of wheat did not enter the,
33:09
so you are fighting the civilians and you can go on and on and on.
33:13
There is so much, why destruct, why destruct, not only by bombardment,
33:19
the destruction of houses and in Gaza, which reaches 70% in the whole Gaza strip,
33:28
was not done only by bombs and airplanes, which is bad enough.
33:33
By by denies, bulldozers.
33:35
I remember one bulldozer driver who was quickly trained to do it and was bragging live
33:46
on Israeli TV that they go house after house after house to destruct,
33:51
so they do not have any, well, to come back.
33:56
Why is Rafa completely, why is Jibali is completely destructed?
34:01
Why is, I think, Bethanun, but I mean there are so many towns and cities,
34:07
and he brags about it, you know, eight buildings every day,
34:13
sometimes five, six stories high, it's very difficult,
34:17
and he really brags about it and he said, oh my God, the ceasefire came into,
34:21
so we had to stop, but why is that?
34:24
I mean, there's so much evidence when you go into the details that it's not about Hamas.
34:29
Why, why 100 American doctors that were all of them testified that they saw children killed by snipers
34:41
with a bullet in their head or in their chest, some by snipers, some by drones, you can't know.
34:47
Why is that?
34:49
It was not accident collateral damage.
34:51
Someone killed.
34:53
Why so many journalists?
34:55
You know, if you go back even before the war, Sharin El-Aklah,
35:01
who was a journal American Palestinian journalist, which was killed,
35:04
now there was an investigation by Al Jazeera just recently deliberately killed as a journalist,
35:10
and then you know, but that was even before the war, the amount of demonization.
35:15
And then you know what?
35:17
Not only that they don't say sorry about that, I'm sorry we killed a journalist.
35:21
Not only did the IDF and the Israel, you know, they sacrificed the funeral and the coffin almost said,
35:29
almost felt because of the Israeli police raiding this funeral.
35:33
Now, they put some of the units, not all put her face as target for training.
35:40
And this is the amount of demonization.
35:42
Now, you put this, you see what the Israeli's officials, media influencers, army officers,
35:51
army rank and file soldiers, all of them talk genocidal talk.
35:55
I live here, I live there all my life, and I sense there was a genocidal atmosphere everywhere.
36:01
And some of the journalists in the arts wrote about it.
36:04
And then you say the outcome, and then you see all those cases.
36:07
And then they say, oh no, no, we just want to fight Hamas.
36:10
Of course you say that because you have to somehow cover your behind, sorry, for international law.
36:16
You can say ah, it's okay.
36:18
Okay, but it's it's a completely, yeah, I mean, if you do genocide,
36:23
how can you cover yourself yourself?
36:25
Of course, it's a we fighting Hamas.
36:27
There are human shields blah, blah, blah, blah.
36:29
But there are so many, you said at the beginning, it's not about Hamas, it's about destroying Gaza.
36:34
You see the result, and you see the recurring patterns, and you see all those details,
36:41
and I can give you many, many more, that indicate it's not caring about the civil society
36:47
and trying to annihilate Hamas.
36:49
Now, genocide is not only about, as I read to you, the third act of genocide is creating the conditions.
36:56
We still don't know how many under the rebels are, and we still don't know how many died.
37:02
And this is because of the conditions that Israel created deliberately in the war.
37:09
So there are at least 53,000 who were killed that were accounted by the health ministry in Gaza.
37:16
But there are many, many more who, you know, think of one who needs the cancer treatment died.
37:25
Now we know, I don't know, it's very difficult, of starvation, of malnutrition, of people who infected.
37:37
I mean, all those are not counted, we don't know, but this is part of an act of genocide.
37:43
I saw recently on social media a very prominent activist who is very anti-Israel,
37:52
and perhaps anti-Semitic, in the extent of their focus on this issue, saying that we're witnessing in real time
38:03
for the first time the first live stream to genocide, and we're doing nothing about it.
38:10
And what struck me was not this person's criticism of apathy, which I think is valid,
38:18
nor maybe the use of the word genocide, because I trust the judgment of people like you on that.
38:24
What struck me was the fact that the word live streamed, because the person who is likely to defend the IDF here
38:37
is likely to say something like, this is outrageous because we can see it, because we live in 2025,
38:45
and we have videos that Hamas wants you to see, and that Iran probably wants you to see.
38:52
Jihadists have got pretty good at putting those videos in front of you.
38:56
They learned how, from ISIS, from the war in Iraq.
39:03
They sort of understand the mechanism of manipulating public opinion now.
39:07
All of these things are terrible that are happening in Gaza.
39:10
We don't know exactly what happened in the campaign against ISIS in 2015,
39:16
but I wouldn't have wanted to be living in one of the towns that was ruled by ISIS when the Allied forces, American forces, came in.
39:25
We don't know what happened in Fallujah in Iraq.
39:29
We don't know what it felt like to be in Nagasaki or Dresden.
39:35
War is terrible.
39:38
October 7th started the war, whatever you feel about the occupation, these were all big complicated political questions.
39:46
But the reason why this is occupying everybody's mind right now is because we're looking at it, and we're seeing it.
39:54
And we didn't see the others.
39:58
That doesn't necessarily make it an attempt to wipe out a people.
40:02
It may be the first time that we're looking at what it's like to conduct an intensive urban counterterrorism campaign.
40:11
What's your answer to that?
40:13
So why? I don't understand it.
40:15
We don't have to stop it.
40:17
It's a general side and it's live stream, the fact that it's live stream.
40:21
So it's okay because it was also, maybe it was also another ginger's hand living under ginger's hand.
40:27
The occupation was even worse.
40:29
I don't understand the logic here.
40:31
I don't think the logic is that it makes it okay.
40:33
I think the logic is that it makes people suspicious of why people are so focused on it in comparison to it.
40:39
You know, this is the only, they focused on partying in South Africa.
40:45
So Massachusetts is taking place in all kinds of, I mean, it's bad enough.
40:50
Even if there were worst cases, it's so bad you see it in front of your eyes.
40:54
And it's not only the pictures.
40:56
You have so many reports.
40:59
You know what?
41:00
Okay.
41:01
Give let Israel open the borders.
41:05
And for it doesn't let the media people go in.
41:10
If it's not so bad, let media people from CNN, Washington, you know, made mainstream and see from themselves and and and and describe Israel doesn't do it.
41:20
Why?
41:21
And the fact, I mean, you see the devastation.
41:25
I know, I know families that were completely wiped out.
41:29
I mean, what, what, what, I mean, I don't understand what kind of propaganda logic is it?
41:34
Because it's, you see in front of your eyes, mass and how I sat in the Israelis and Israeli Jew.
41:42
You don't know how.
41:44
I'm not saying it lightly.
41:46
I'm not saying it in order to, it's a, it's a huge stain on my society, on myself, on my family, on Jewish history that will not be wiped for generations.
41:58
I'm sure about that.
41:59
It changed Jewish history from my point of view.
42:03
I don't say it lightly and I don't say happy it happily.
42:07
It's a huge crime.
42:08
We see we commit in front of our eyes of two million people that have nowhere to live that.
42:20
I don't know what, I mean, all traumatized two to three people, at least two to three percent were killed.
42:27
Another three to four percent were laying the whole destruction.
42:32
And you say, ah, look, oh, why didn't you talk about Ethiopia?
42:37
Is this the moral reaction you will you expect when you see those horrible crimes on TV?
42:44
It's not a manipulation.
42:46
This happens.
42:47
Okay, I'm sure there is, I'm, no, I mean, I know there is also propaganda wall from both sides.
42:53
But you can go beyond the propaganda wall.
42:57
The count is account.
43:00
The endless, you have so many international reports and investigations of NGOs, of reporters, of mainstream and extreme media.
43:13
It's vast.
43:14
I, I really, I can't recommend more to look for example at my colleague from the Hebrew University, a professor, a limo the highs, a testimony, which she updates hundreds and hundreds more than a thousand sources to bring together the picture of what's going on in Gaza.
43:38
It's awful.
43:40
So, okay, maybe in 20, 1997, it was, or 1998, it was worse in Kosovo.
43:47
But this is how you morally react to what you see in front of your eyes unfolding.
43:53
What kind of an answer this is.
43:55
And we said the convention has to prevent.
43:58
You have to prevent if you even have suspicion that this horrible crime is you have the obligation to prevent.
44:05
Now, we saw already in January, 2020, 24, the ICJ, it is plausible.
44:11
We don't rule it out. Israel wanted to throw it out of it.
44:14
It's already then it was plausible.
44:16
And then you had ICC that never the, never issued arrest ones to Western countries.
44:26
You know, there was always two, two, none, not from the global south, issuing for extermination.
44:34
Eventually, but not before apartheid.
44:36
By the way, also for discrimination in apartheid, apropos, what you, and, and for starvation.
44:45
So, you have mass crimes in front of your eyes documented so well.
44:52
And then you said, oh my God, what we are seeing, we have to stop it.
44:55
It's like, ah, no, no, no.
44:57
Ah, why didn't you talk about the weaker as in China or the dad and this?
45:02
Is this how you will expect moral people to respond to this crime?
45:06
Well, I didn't say it was a very good argument.
45:10
It's not my argument.
45:12
I understand. I'm not talking to you.
45:14
I'm the one who's inviting you to have a question.
45:17
No, I'm Joshua when I clarify.
45:19
And yes, I understand exactly what you're saying.
45:22
And I suspect that it is a very different experience to be in Israel than it is to be elsewhere.
45:31
There is a, I mean, what is it like for you in Israel to see this and to know this from your perspective
45:39
and to be surrounded by a culture that is what oblivious?
45:47
As I told you, and this is also like this seventh of October that I said, when you ask this, it also, it's a very emotional because I'm part of the society.
45:57
I am part of, I, I see myself like my not only of this society of this history, I'm historians of Jewish, historian of Jewish history.
46:08
So it's not the Holocaust. We wrote in this article that you start, yes, of course, there is no extermination camps here.
46:14
There's no tribling on Auschwitz and still it's the same family of crimes.
46:17
It's a, it's a genocide undoubtedly from my point of view.
46:20
And today there is a growing consensus of some more legal and historians, certainly after the recent siege.
46:27
And genocide is not a word. Genocide is, is a situation is a process.
46:32
People, people live under a genocidal threat. It's unbelievable what they're going through. We have to understand the people there.
46:40
Can I just pause for one moment before you get emotional because I want to understand your emotional situation?
46:46
No, no, I want to, I want to say about how it is, okay, you're, you're asking the question, but I want to just, yes, I want, I want to get to that.
46:54
But I also know that there will be people who have missed the point that you just made, which is that you don't need an Auschwitz to have a genocide.
47:02
Because you talk about, as a historian, Myanmar, you talk about the Armenian genocide.
47:09
You talk about the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s. You talk about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
47:14
You talk about Rwanda, Shrebrenica, Darfur. You talk about ISIS's campaign against the Yazidis.
47:21
You talk about the French in Algeria in the 1950s.
47:25
As a genocide or a potential genocide, arguable, the Vietnam war maybe, Hiroshima maybe.
47:32
We can compare it, but no genocide looks like the other.
47:36
And we have, we think that only when it's a, the Holocaust, it's a genocide, but it's not true.
47:41
I read the definition. It says in whole or in power, killing or maiming, laiming, maiming, I just say, like injury.
47:50
Injuring part of the, or traumatizing, it's not, it doesn't have to be like the Holocaust.
47:57
Of course, and Myanmar, for example, is completely different.
48:00
So brandy size is completely different.
48:03
And there doesn't have to be a direct line of authority.
48:06
Another interesting point that you make is, you know, to take the French colonial occupation of Algeria,
48:11
where up to a million Algerians died of starvation.
48:14
Some people say, well, that's a genocide because there was such a careless disregard for local life.
48:19
And there was so, there was such impunity with which the soldiers were able to kill locals.
48:25
You'd make an analogy to Gaza where you say, it's not that an individual IDF soldier is necessarily given an order to kill a civilian.
48:33
It's that they know that they can and that they probably won't be held to account.
48:38
And you know what, many times this is how genocide, because if this is some, I mean, this is a big issue in genocide studies.
48:48
It's even in the Holocaust, which many say is the most radical case.
48:54
We don't have a written order from Hitler killed all the Jews.
49:02
And when historians, and you know, many historians for many decades tried to reconstruct the development of the final solution.
49:13
It was not top down.
49:15
It was a long process of escalation, but it was not a decision in the, in the, in the regular meaning.
49:25
And it's also the case when was the decision made in the Armenian case, for example.
49:30
And take, for example, Sabrina, it's a, Sabrina, it's only quoting quote, 8,000 men and youngsters or young adults were killed, the children and the, and the women were expelled.
49:45
But it was still considered the genocide, because it qualified to the convention, because there were an intent was proven.
49:52
And it's only in subrenates that it was there. And even after, you know, twice it was ratified this decision.
49:59
So you have all kinds of genocides. And each one is different, but the progress is so, and you talked about the double standard is completely the other way around.
50:10
Most always, those who commit the genocide, believe that they do it as an act of self defense.
50:18
And I can say to a large part, even the Nazis in their delusional, anti-Semitic, fantastic, fantastic world, the Jews were the worst enemy, security enemy.
50:30
And you have, you see it even in Imblers, 1943, notorious Pozen speech to SS officers.
50:38
He said, if we wouldn't have killed the Jews, they would have killed us by now. They are the worst enemy.
50:44
Yes. And of course, cycles of violence create greater paranoia. And, you know, when the conditions get bad enough and violent enough, people become less and less willing to tolerate any...
50:56
If I go back to your first question, at the beginning of the war, I wanted to write an article, but I lost the words. It took me some months to, you know, start to articulate myself.
51:07
I wanted to write an article. I wrote several drafts, but none of them was really good. But the idea was very, I think, very sound and sane to say, look, we were hit hard.
51:20
The huge crime was committed against us. This is exactly the point where we have to watch out from committing huge crimes.
51:33
Because this is the point where nations commit huge crimes. I didn't know yet how, I mean, it was in the first weeks, how it will unfold.
51:42
But exactly this is what happened in November, this is what happened in Myanmar, this is what happened in Armenia, this is what happened in many other places that mass killings and huge, huge crimes are committed when the strong party feels some kind of an existential threat. And here we have to watch out. And this is exactly what happened.
52:02
Tell me how you feel in your own society.
52:07
First of all, I'm devastated, really, I'm telling you honestly, I'm devastated. As I said, now, even in my close circles, not everybody agree, like my family and certainly my society.
52:22
If you, Israel is becoming, this is something I can say now, I don't know if I will be able to say two or three months down the road. Israel is becoming more and more really fascist, cracks down on rights and committing huge crimes.
52:43
And you're not even until recently, it was almost impossible to say it out loud. The crackdown of Palestinians is still, I mean, we can go into that. I mean, Palestinian.
52:58
I just would write, I don't know, my heart is with my brother and sisters in Gaza, 10 minutes afterwards, the police would show up on Facebook, 10 minutes afterward, the police would show up in his or her apartment.
53:13
And to a certain extent, it's still this way. Israel is screening, certainly in the West Bank, all social media, and you just say anything I heard horrible stories about, we can talk about it later.
53:28
So it's a very depressing and oppressing society, completely in complete denial and negation of the humanity of the Palestinians.
53:40
It was just a survey that most Jewish Israelis support starving children in Gaza.
53:50
So it is very difficult. It's the first time I see an experience, things I did not believe that I will experience. I understand. I now see I can believe it's not so far how societies go into processes of denial and negation of radical humanization.
54:10
And just yesterday or the day before an Arab member, Knesset member, so he wanted to say, look, what do you do in Gaza, 19,000 children were killed, who's taken off the podium by force.
54:25
So it's a deep denial, but the denial starts to crack. And you know what, it comes from right wing, from example, Bugi Alon, who was a defense minister in Bibi's former government, he was the chief of staff, and he said Israel is committing ethnic cleansing, which is against international law.
54:50
So there are more and more and more Israelis still a minority, I would say even a small minority, that understand that what is going on now.
55:02
Many, many Israelis, and it's a very, very justifiable cause that I fully support and dedicate myself are to stop the war. The majority of Israelis want to stop the war in order to get the hostages back.
55:17
I mean, I'm not saying it. And I pray every day that all hostages, including the dead ones, will be brought back to Israel.
55:27
And but only a minority, a small minority, used to be a very tiny minority. But now, even yesterday, Yair Golan was the head of the left, like the labor party was also general in the, in the idea of he said,
55:44
it's not a policy to kill just for the Palestinian, Palestinian children just for a habit. We didn't start even more and absorb and digest our catastrophe, because there was no time and it's an endless war.
56:00
And you know what, it really, of course, and I'm not talking, we didn't, okay, I'm talking too much, but in what happened in the West Bank, catastrophes, and it all goes under the skin.
56:13
I know many people who were, I mean, how many, even to our society, I'm not talking about what, how will Palestinian society in Gaza and the West Bank will look after this terrible war?
56:26
I mean, all our traumatized, but even the Israeli society, so many post-traumatic soldiers are working among us. Some of them I know, some of them, my circles were killed.
56:38
Well, all, it's under the flesh now. I see so many breakdowns around me, in students, everybody, institutions are breaking down, relationships are breaking down.
56:52
And for what, just to, to, so, so existentially, psychologically, politically and sociologically and culturally, it's a disaster.
57:04
And we, and we have to end this war to start not, not make peace with the Palestinian, which is beyond the horizon of the horizon, but, but to start, you know, for, first of all, for the Palestinians, but also for us to start rebuilding life.
57:24
Certainly, the Palestinian, I mean, I can't imagine what it is now to be in Gaza, how they will ever, even if they are not expelled and this threat is still on, on their heads, how will they rebuild any kind of normalcy after that?
57:41
So it's very, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not the major, I'm not the victim, of course, and I'm not the major, the Palestinians and, and, and, and also Israelis that were families that were killed, but we all feel it very, it's a huge pressure, it's a, it's unbearable anymore.
57:59
And, and in being in a society, genocidal society, when you, when you believe you see the truth and there are, it's, I don't know what to say.
58:09
Well, you said it well, Amos. Thank you for speaking with us. My heart goes out to you. I think you're incredibly courageous for holding these positions.
58:20
It's, I can't imagine, I can't imagine what it's like, because it's the whole experience is inverted for the diaspora, who are generally surrounded by people who vastly oversimplify the conflict against Israel.
58:38
You know, and, and almost, I think paternalistically or patronizingly have a glorified view of the conflict in which, you know, the, the, the gardens are almost robbed of agency or Palestinians are a pure angelic victims who have only ever been the victims of, of filthy Jews.
59:02
But I understand, I understand, I can hear how your perspective must be so shaped. Please, but we also have to go.
59:12
I love this word. Yes. History is always very messy. There are no saints on one, complete saints on one side and convene villains on the, but the decisions sometimes are very simple.
59:26
You have to stop and this Jews and non-Jews, whether they feel they, they are afraid of antisemitism sometimes justifiably or not.
59:35
And the motivation of some of the of those who support the Palestinians are not pure motivations. But when you have a genocide, you have to stop it.
59:44
And you have to make, and you have to provide minimal conditions for people to live in dignity.
59:50
This is very simple. Beyond the complexities. Sometimes political and moral decisions are very simple.
59:57
Amas, thank you. Love the people. Love the people. Love the people.