Does Israel have a right to use the Holocaust to justify its bombing of Gaza? And how is the global silence towards its crimes hindering the establishment of a Palestinian state and halting Tel Aviv’s plan to annex the occupied territories? Join us as we discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza ahead of the ICJ hearing.
In this week’s MEMO in Conversation we speak to renowned historian Professor Omer Bartov, the author of Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis, Professor Bartov offers invaluable insights into the ongoing genocide, challenging perspectives on Israel’s actions. We explore pressing questions including the impact of South Africa’s genocide proceedings at the ICJ. Professor Bartov delves into the exploitation of the Holocaust in justifying policies, the role of international pressure for a just resolution and the potential future for Palestinians amidst annexation and forced displacement. Don’t miss this eye-opening conversation on accountability, power dynamics and the path to ending Israel’s illegal occupation.
Born in Israel and educated at Tel Aviv University and St. Antony’s College, Oxford, Omer Bartov’s early research concerned the Nazi indoctrination of the Wehrmacht and the crimes it committed in World War II. He is Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University in the US and has been published numerous times, including Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples.
Conversation with the Middle East mon I spoke to Professor Omar bov he is an Israeli born historian professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University where he has taught since 2000 BTO is the author of genocide the Holocaust and Israel Palestine first person history in times of
Crisis during our conversation I asked Professor BTO to share his insights on Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza we discuss uh the recent legal action against Israel at the IC uh filed by South Africa uh accusing Israel of uh the crime of genocide we I get his views on that uh
We talk about the role of the Holocaust in shaping Israel’s policies and the pervasive demonization of Palestinians within Israeli society and how that’s fueling the the kind of radical policies we see in Israel uh bto’s insight into the cost of impunity in how to hold Israel accountable for its illegal OCC occupation and
Subjugation is also I think worth uh listening to uh and also we spoke about the future um how the conflict may end um with an eye on the future we look at what a positive Judgment at the Isis J could mean for the Palestinians and Israel uh while also considering the need for
External pressure to change the the incentive structures uh which has allowed Israel to enjoy uh the level of impunity it has and the cost preoccupation that he has enjoyed uh all these decades so I hope you enjoyed the conversation and uh speak to you for another conversation with the Middle
East Monitor welcome to the show and thank you for joining us Professor BTO thank you very much for having me um I’ll call you Omar if that’s okay yeah please okay om so um let’s just’s jump straight into your book actually um what is your book about I mentioned it Um the Holocaust Israel and Palestine first person history in times of Crisis what is your book about uh I think it was published last year and what do you think are the most valuable insights from your book that can can help inform our understanding of what’s happening over the last 3
Weeks um yes sorry three months yeah thank you for this uh question um you know the book was was written before all of this happened uh but in some ways at least for me it it helps me understand some of what we are watching right now um it does several things he
Tries to talk about the relationship between the Holocaust as a particular event and the phenomenon of genocide more generally and we have heard as you know now there been um a great deal of talk about genocide and a great deal of talk about the Holocaust and so what is
The relationship between them that’s one discussion another discussion has to do with the relationship between Jewish history in Eastern Europe and uh the history of Zionism and of Palestinians in Palestine Israel uh and how those are connected not only historically and not only by analogy but also by the fact
That many Jews came from Eastern Europe to Palestine and created what became the state of Israel and were also among other things uh as a displaced population themselves those who displaced others that is those who displaced Palestinians uh in vast numbers in 1948 and finally the book talks about
What I am very interested in is the question of firsters history that when you tell history from the level of individuals when you see it through their eyes and when you listen to them carefully and empathize with what they say whether you agree with them or not
But you just see them as human beings then you begin to understand histories of conflict uh very differently you begin to come to I would say a level of empathy that is possibly the first step toward some kind of reconciliation so I I’d say that’s the three most important insights of that
Book certainly as regards the current conflict I I was looking at a book today I actually read it a number of years ago Arab and the Holocaust by a professor from s University I think he has since retired actar I think his name is and it’s interesting how this book dispels a
Lot of the myths about um you know one of the common tropes about the Israeli um Zionist narrative is that the Arab helped in the genocide and Holocaust of Jews and Netanyahu went as far as to say that you know Hitler did not want to kill the Jews it was husseini who
Convinced him which was one of the most shocking thing You’ ever hear from an Israeli Prime Minister but there we go he said he said that uh and the book uh basically shows how the Arabs were very sympathetic towards the plight of the Jews in Europe he covered all the major
Newspapers all the Arab leaders by Li they were all very sympathetic and hostile to Nazi Germany uh but that doesn’t really get shown within the Israeli narrative so I was wondering is that story never told and are we it are Israelis focused on simply one aspect of
The genocide or Holocaust which is that the whole world’s kind of came together to um you know uh kill the Jews or align annihilate the Jews is that a story that’s is is a beneficial for going forward is that in in your point of view are we telling
This wrong story of the Holocaust so to speak you know that’s that’s a very good question and it’s a very complicated question um the I think that for many Israelis um the Holocaust is the main justification for the state of Israel uh they understand uh the history of the
Holocaust is one in which there were uh Jews persecuted in Europe who were trying to get out and nobody would let them in uh so that sense of betrayal the sense that when you don’t have your own country and you’re a minority in a continent that is trying to either to
Exterminate you or just to get rid of you in one way or another you’re not wanted but you cannot go anywhere else uh that is very deep within an Israeli Collective uh sense of history of memory and of identity and it’s not entirely false of course and so Israel sees
Itself and presents itself as the safe haven for Jews so uh after the establishment of the state if Jews are persecuted anywhere they could always come to Israel be protected by that country so that’s one side of it the other side of it is that I would say since especially the 1980s
The Holocaust has become a kind of instrument for Israeli politicians particularly on the right uh as a tool uh to ward off any criticism of Israel uh claiming that any criticism of Israeli policies policies of settlement of expansion of Oppression uh is by definition uh anti-semitic and that any
Threat to is isi security be it the first or the second or any other war is a threat to the existence of the very state that is it is a threat of potential Holocaust and if you think about your own history your own reality through that kind of prism you are
Imprisoned by it that is you see your enemies not as people that you can negotiate with that you can compromise with but rather as potential Geno there as potential people who are uh commit genocide against you and therefore the only way to deal with them is to fight
Them off or to kill them and that has made um I’d say the The View by Israelis of their own reality greatly distorted uh and it has had since October 7th it has come up often that sense that we have to do everything to protect ourselves from massacres and
Therefore we have licensed to do whatever we need as we Define it and nobody can tell us how to behave and we we saw that playing out here in the UK as well a number of pro-israeli commentators were sympathetic to Israel like Douglas Murray they’ve gone to Great Lengths to
Um make the argument that Hamad is worse than the nazist that’s another form of genocide Denial in my point of view when you say something like that that Hamas is worse than Hitler um to which kind of as you said gives license to do and say
Anything you want uh With the Enemy um but on that conflict itself do do you think uh I know you take slightly different view to some of the other people I interviewed like uh rev seagull who said that what we’re seeing in um Gaza is a textbook case of genocide and
Other have mentioned that as well I think you take a slightly different view to that um so can you explain your view on that and is it accurate to describe what’s happening in Gaza what’s been happening over the last three months is is genocide look again this is a very
Complicated issue and I’m I’m I’m trying to uh understand what is going on on the ground as things evolve over time uh based on whatever information we have and information is incomplete of course um I warned already in early November uh that Israeli actions in Gaza uh could develop into
Genocide uh I think that if we look at um at what has happened since we can reach some conclusions uh they are of course um you know um dependent on facts coming out uh but my sense is the following that the kind of policy that the um or tactics that the Israeli that
The IDF has been using uh have caused uh major destruction uh in Gaza and particularly Northern Gaza much of which has been flattened has brought about um uh enormous uh population displacement uh that is about 85% of the population that’s been displaced and has been concentrated in a very small more part
Of Gaza now this is not a coincidence this is part of a policy of a tactics by the Israeli Army and that can be interpreted in two different ways it can be be interpreted as so to speak humanitarian actions that is you remove the population from areas of operations
Of military operations so as to protect them uh and that’s what the Israeli Army is claiming it is doing or or you can say it is a policy of intentional displacement and destruction of the areas from which the population is being displaced with the goal of never letting
Them back in and potentially removing them entirely uh from the Gaza Strip or from large parts of it which appears to be what is actually going on so what does that mean in terms of um you know crime International crimes or crimes under international law I think there’s
Good evidence that Israel has been involved the IDF has been involved in war crimes and because of the very high numbers of civilians killed it’s now around 23,000 at least 2third of whom are civilians half of whom are children uh that it’s also crimes against humanity uh whether it’s genocide as far
As I can say right now it depends on the next few weeks because if this policy that is carried out right now by the Israeli military and the state continues it means that there’s now a humanitarian crisis in these camps where now internal refugees internally displac people find themselves the death rate
May rise very quickly it is of course already very high and there may be an attempt to push them out that will look like ethnic cleansing or forcable uh remov displacement of population which comes under um could come under crimes against humanity and or genocide uh if that is stopped and uh
Things are reversed which I don’t predict happening but may happen because of external pressures especially by the us then things will look different so I think we are right now right on the verge of of this becoming a clear policy of ethnic cleansing uh which can result in
Genocide um and of course we know that this is now has been handed over to the um International uh court of justice and will be deliberated by a panel of Judges there which may give us also some more clarity at least as to how uh a group of of distinguish jurist um understand
This yeah we we we’ll speak about that the icj case that’s uh been lodged by South Africa I mean it is interesting uh what you said I mean in 3 weeks time it’ be more clarity I mean I myself at the beginning I I observed my My Views as
Well of course we very critical of Israel and I saw how my perspectives have changed based on what happened on the ground I I did not envisage this level of bombardment and to me it seemed like um it was a clear um intent to ethnically cleanse or even commit
Genocide uh right from the beginning based on what the Israeli leaders were saying and some of the figures that came out uh and I did a historical comparison I found it quite shocking uh one of them being you know Palestinians are being killed at a higher rate uh by the
Israelis uh in the so-called targeted bombing of Gaza then Brits that were being killed by Germany during the um during Nazi bombing and and I found that quite shocking at that time in the eight months of bombing by the luta German luta 40,000 civilians were killed during
That war in eight months um and uh if Israel was to continue its current rate of Destruction on Gaza there would be more than 880,000 Palestinians killed so so even though Israel claims to be carrying out its bombing a targeted way whereas the German bombing was seen as
Being indiscriminate so I I found those kind of figures to be wow quite quite shocking and it kind of changed my view pretty quickly that let me say just you know I mean uh I think that there’s no question uh by now that Israeli bombing has been indiscriminate and not only
Indiscriminate but in uh quite a number of cases uh uh intentional uh intentional bombing of civilians and intentional destruction of Civilian structures including schools and hospitals and so forth I don’t think there’s any question about that uh the the problem with the definition of genocide is that it’s it’s not a question of
Numbers uh now numbers of course matter they matter a great deal uh and and one should not you know dismiss that uh but it’s not necessarily a matter of numbers the the the Allied bombing of German uh in World War II not the German bombing of Britain but the British and
American bombing of Germany of Open Cities intentional bombing of civilians uh killed about 600,000 German civilians uh but it would probably not come under genocide because there was no intention to destroy the German people as such which is part of the definition of genocide cause to show
An intention to destroy a group as such it is possible that you could show now that what Israel is doing in Gaza is the the intention is already been expressed is an attempt to destroy the Palestinian people as such in whole or in part so at least it’s part in Gaza if
That can be shown then this would be genocide uh and and there have been statements by Israeli politicians and by Israeli generals indicating that uh but that’s a difficult thing to show because you can claim that many of these statements were done In the Heat of the Moment they are for propaganda purposes
But the actual policies not that um so unfortunately even if the numbers go up that is not what would necessarily mean that it’s genocide but I think that we are very close to that because the policy appears increasingly to be a policy of REM removal of Palestinians
From the Gaza Strip and that could come under genocide so talking about the I I was wondering if I can get your views on that the international court of justice case um lodged by South Africa accusing Israel of uh genocide and um basically trying to get restraining order on Israel and trying
To stop the current campaign um as seems to be as you said it’s not a slum dunk um because there are 15 judges not all will be U judging on the basis of the Merit of the case there’ll be lots of political calculations there so just
Give us your thought on that do you think uh this we could see or we could expect a positive judgment by the icj judges in favor of Palestinians given difficulties you just mentioned and also given how uh the judges um are representing their own specific countries and the politics of their
Country I can’t can’t expect for example a German judge to uh judge in favor of the Palestinian and say there is genocide or an American judge to do the same so given the proportion of the judges uh and what we know of the case what what are your thoughts on
That well listen I mean I’ve I’ve I’ve thought a fair amount about this and I think first of all uh the move by South Africa to file this with the icj was very important and as you know very quite unique I mean this is a very rare
Case um and there there there are two levels to this one is whether the icj would um uh pronounce an injunction on Israel to stop military action while it deliberates this question of jde because the Del liberations themselves could take years uh but the call to stop Israel uh
From continuing its campaign in Gaza and potentially from leaving Gaza uh that can come quickly uh now uh the icj has no way to enforce that so this would go to the security Council and the security Council uh it is possible although not certain that the US would then veto this
Uh however the very fact that you have the icj deliberating this question and the potential that it would then that there would be a a call by the icj for a at least a temporary h on operations and that it would go to the security Council all of that has major implications for
What is going on uh it’s um I think one of the most important things is that Israel is highly dependent on both uh diplomatic cover by Israel and other count by the Us and other countries and Military supplies and a huge amount of supplies streaming from the United
States to Israel uh many countries uh have their own laws that say you cannot Supply arms to countries that are suspect of breaches of Human Rights uh and Israel would be at least a suspect of that because would have been uh lodged with the icj and therefore this
This can have both a sort of in the international arena in general and specifically regarding assistance to Israel this can and probably will uh have a major impact on whatever happens on the ground uh so I think while it also shows that the you know International humanitarian law is international and therefore States
Decide and States decide according to their own national interests the fact that it has come to that uh will already have an impact will it change things allog together I don’t know but I can tell you that in Israel uh people who are in the military and in various
Politicians are very worried about this and one uh indication of it is that Netanyahu has a point prime minister nany has appointed Aon Barak who he saw as his enemy the the the former Chief Justice in the Supreme Court as the judge who would be the Israeli judge on
The icj according to the icj the country lodging the complaint that the country that the complaint is against can have a judge of their own there and Barak will be the Israeli judge there that means that netan is very worried about what will become of that so I think it is an
Important move it won’t be a game Cher but it will have uh an effect and probably a substantial effect Yeah you mentioned it yah and a lot of times it’s um we’ve seen politicians here in in UK for example uh it’s easy to blame Netanyahu from from where I’m sitting and we know
That he had has been the longest serving Israeli Prime Minister and recent polls I’ve seen a number of polls coming out showing that uh israeli’s themselves uh they think that the government is not going hard enough on on the Palestinians on Gaza so I think the question I’m
Asking is going back to what we SED off with the the memory of the Holocaust and seeing your enemy constantly as as the Nazis is there something in the psyche which um makes Israel feel that um or there’s a Neal ethos within Israel um that sees enemies as something that
Needs to be obliterated destroyed uh or at least section or or factions within the Israeli Society uh to to view military conflict in such a way because polls are say suggesting that Netanyahu is not going um far enough he should be more uh aggressive towards the Palestinians um so it’s
Doesn’t seem to be simply a case on netanyahu’s problem Netanyahu is doing it’s something which is something uh more ingrained within sections of Israeli Society so look I mean I think you can uh talk about this on three levels uh the first is uh we do have to remember
That what happened on October 7th was totally shocking to isra society uh nothing like that had happened before uh not even in 1948 which Israeli certainly remember as a kind of War of existence uh that close to a thousand civilians were killed murdered uh old people babies children there were many
Documented rapes uh and the Israeli Army didn’t show up for hours and hours and hours uh took eight hours nine hours 12 hours um that created both a sense of deep insecurity uh that uh Hamas militants could just walk into the country and take over an entire part of Southern Israel uh with
The IDF incapable of responding uh in time uh and a powerful urge for Revenge um revenge is never a good motivation for anything uh not for personal Behavior not for war and not for politics but it does exist um and an urge by the IDF which let’s let’s be
Clear screwed up big time uh to show that it can uh win over again the Israeli public and its own honor and and there’s a lot of talk about honor there so that’s one thing and we have to remember that that’s very different from anything else and the response to it
Therefore has also been very different the second thing is the issue with Nan n is probably the most unpopular man in Israel today if there were elections today he he’s he would probably get 15% of the vote or something like that if he’s lucky uh and not only because of
What happened on October 7th but because of what happened before October 7th uh where he tried to carry out a Judicial coup uh to basically weaken the Supreme Court and to uh expand the power of the executive meaning himself because because he’s indicted and he’s known to be deeply involved in corruption and
Because of the incredible incompetance of the Israeli government after October 7th uh much of you know about 150,000 Israeli citizens have been displaced in the north and in the south on the Lebanon border and on the Gaza border and who who is taking care of those displaced people it’s mostly volunteers
Who were those who were protesting against Netanyahu before October 7 because the government can’t get its act together so netan is highly unpopular now the last issue I think yes I think right now in Israel including in those who perceive themselves as being more liberal more in
The left uh there is a real strong urge if not to for Revenge certainly as Israeli see it to dest whatever that means and whatever it takes and a kind of um indifference to what is happening in Gaza much of which is not being reported on the Israeli
Media you’d be hard put to find any actual reports on Israeli media about the mass killing of civilians in Gaza they’re reporting about heroic soldiers but but not about what they’re actually doing there I think that is um I mean to me of course it’s it’s
Deeply saddening to see this uh but I think that that uh can and probably is already changing and the reason it’s changing is that it it is becoming clear that the IDF did not only have a fiasco on October 7th it’s it’s it’s it’s actual military operation it’s attempt
To win over now uh a sense that it can do things well uh has not worked the operation itself from the military point of view from the point of view of how the Israeli government and the IDF uh defined their goals to release the hostages and there’s still 136 hostages
Being held now for three months by Hamas uh has failed and the their uh the second stated uh goal of destroying Hamas uh as a political milit organization has also failed they’re still fighting them and the and and the number of Israeli casualties is growing uh so I think that if the current
Political leadership and one has to understand nany wants the war to continue as long as the war continues he stays in power so he is a main obstacle not because Israelis like him or not because Israelis don’t want revenge but he is a main obstacle because he wants
The war to go on he and he doesn’t care about the hostages or anything he wants this to continue and the war now may well evolve into a war also in Lebanon and also with Iranian militias in Syria and also with the huthis it can become
You know a regional War he doesn’t care because he can stay in power if nany is removed and Israel has a more rational it it won’t be a liberal government but a more rational government actually looks to the interest of the state of Israel then that war will change its
Nature and the Israeli public will be happy about it but right now under his leadership I think this kind of constant incitement uh from the government itself uh is only making things worse uh so I think you know I’m not optimistic uh I don’t know what the mechanism will be to change the
Government but from my point of view if major International pressure particularly American pressure is put on the Israeli government it can eventually also bring about the downfall of the netan administration I think that’s what the Americans would want and I think netan would not be able to make concessions
Which the Americans should insist on without losing his his Coalition going back to October 7th what kind of uh what level of scrutiny from your course you follow the Israeli press quite closely and you before October 7 you you headed a group to um sign a letter public letter condemning netanyahu’s attempt to
Overhaul the Judiciary and in that you described Israel as being um practicing the crime of aparti and ethic cleansing and you got a lot of support for that letter um so there is of course resistance and opposition to Netanyahu uh what kind of resistance and scrutiny are we seeing uh on October 7
Itself uh because one of the questions lot of people are asking is how how can Israel uh Israeli Army have taken 6 hours to respond to something like that so are there more probing questions like that and also the Israeli allegations the Israeli soldiers themselves shot
Down and killed Israelis in in some of the settlements um is that something that is being asked uh these kind of questions probing questions within the society at the moment yes there are and again you know you you touching on two on two issues um
Uh one is that you know uh a number of colleagues and myself um issued that statement on August 4th so two months before uh the Kamas attack and what we said uh we C it the elephant in the room and what we said was that the the the the attempted judicial
Overhaul meaning judicial coup by the government was not simply to in order to uh uh increase the power of the executive and weaken the Judiciary but actually it was about the occupation that the occupation was the elephant in the room and most of the protest in
Israel at the time was not refused to talk about that those who were protesting against the judicial overhaul did not want to talk about the occupation they said that’s another issue and we said no it’s not another issue it is the issue that the government under nany and with the more
Even more radical settler ministers uh to his right want to uh um uh enhance the settlement in the West Bank want to ethnically cleanse as much as they can the West Bank and want to Annex large parts of the West Bank and that’s why they want to remove any
Judicial oversight of these policies that is what it was about and at the core of everything we are seeing now is the occupation that is the main engine of everything we are seeing now without dealing with that issue nothing can be resolved so that’s that’s crucial to understand now is the
Scrutiny uh of October 7th in Israel there there there are two sides of it on the one hand October 7th is constantly being recycled in the Israeli media every day there are different stories of what happened there and that so triggers all the emotions in the Israeli public
About the horrors that occur there um and and that in a sense gives more sort of time for operations in Gaza because it’s saying look what they did to us but on the other hand more and more information is coming out about how badly the Army conducted itself how
Unprepared he was there were of course many you know individual cases of heroic actions and so forth as they’re reported in the Israeli media but also uh several first of all the entire framework of the lack of response and secondly all kind of particular actions uh one of them is
An action that happened in a kib where I actually have relatives myself in kibutz B uh where a tank uh was ordered by a commander by a general to fire probably at least two uh tank shells at a house where there were both Hamas militants and
Hostages uh and that now is known as has been reported uh there may have been some other cases I would say that shows incompetence a lack of preparation this was reported also in the New York Times in a very important sort of investigative journalism that they did I
Don’t think it takes Hamas of the hook though and I don’t think that Hamas will be taken off the hook and just as I’d like to see Israeli generals and other officers and politicians uh put uh in front of a an inter National Court I would like to see it’s unlikely that
It’ll happen some of these Hamas militants who raped and mutilated uh also uh charged with with crimes against humanity and war crimes uh but again we have to think about the context of this to me the context is important it does not condone what Hamas did but it’s
Important to understand the context of this is that Gaza had been under Israeli siege for 16 years that people are being brutalized by The Siege that Hamas in its own way um U prepared to make a statement so that the Palestinian issue would not be swept
Under the rug and it succeeded in doing that it succeeded in bringing back the Palestinian issue to the four at a huge cost uh enormous cost to everyone but especially to Palestinian civilians in Gaza and that leads us neatly to a final question on um on the on the context and
The incentive structures let’s just say that has created uh the cycle of violence that we’ve seen over the decades and the occupation so given the situation given the power imbalance um can you see Israel ending its occupation especially given that it has shifted more and more to the right and you and
Israel’s major allies the US and UK have uh been almost indifferent and allowed this impunity to go on without saying anything doing anything and on top of that we’ve seen Arab regimes Arab countries who have normalized relationship despite the fact that you know the occupation still exist Israel
Is illegally occupying West backck and Gaza um there doesn’t seem to be any push back against that so do do you think that will we we’ll see the kind of incentives that’s required to break the status quo and create a situation an impetus for the ending of the occupation
And pal and Palestinians given the right to self-determination I think we have now um unfortunately under under horrific circumstances we have now the best opportunity to do so in decades and the question is whether this opportunity will be seized uh so in Israel yes Israel has been moving to the right and
Possibly it’s moved even more to the right since October 7th but Israel also is filled with a huge sense of fragility and insecurity uh no one feels secure in Israel right now this is a completely different Israel from what he was before October 7th where people could simply
Ignore what was happening in Gaza what was happening in the West Bank and live their own comfortable lives uh this has changed it’s a completely different world and and the the the the chance of it getting even worse with you know hundreds of thousands of reservist coming back from Reserve service and
Finding that they don’t have their jobs that the state is not helping them there is a sort of I would say uh a potential political and social earthquake in ital itself so so that is one thing that that we have to take into account yes a sort
Of shift to the right but also a great fragility in the society but the change will not come from within it won’t come from within not among Israelis and unfortunately also not from Palestinians it has to come from the outside and this is an opportunity now for the United States
Together with its major allies with Germany with France with the UK to understand what is happening now is that can spin out of control entirely the entire Middle East now is is no one knows what’s going to happen and once things start rolling they may get out of
Control entirely what the United States has to do now is to devise a strategic plan which includes negotiations toward a settlement of the conflict between Israel and Palestine that has to happen now and they’re talking about it but they’re not actually following up on their own rhetoric which is weak and not quite
Decisive this is known by the way this is being said by some circles in Israel itself that Anthony blinkin is traveling around the Middle East with an empty suitcase he has nothing to provide what he has to provide is force what he has to provide is sanctions Israel depends now more
Than at any other time since 1948 on the United States it depends on it for political cover it depends on it for war the United States has to use that not simply to force its hands and not simply for a ceasefire because the ceasefire would be good but it’s not is hardly
Sufficient but to devise a plan which is not very hard to come up with really to solve this issue once and for all it won’t happen from today to tomorrow but there has to be a political Horizon toward it if that happens I think Israeli Society because it is so fragile
And insecure right now will be willing to and in many ways forced to accept that and I think Palestinian society which is undergoing horrendous suffering will also be open I’m hoping will be open to looking at a positive political Horizon rather than an ongoing intransigence on both sides and ongoing
Violence which each time there’s a cycle gets even worse I think it’s an opportunity and it has to be ceased thank you for that Professor B and let’s end on that optimistic note I want to thank you and also the viewers at home for joining um see you for
Another conversation with the Middle East Monitor thank you very much bye-bye thank You