01/18/17 – Stanley L Cohen on Israel’s unpunished crimes – up to and including genocide – against the Palestinian people – The Scott Horton Show

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Okay, introducing Stanley Cohen, another New York lawyer, two in a row on the show this morning here.
Stanley L. Cohen, here he is at aljazeera.com.
This very important article, I think, Israel's never-ending crimes.
It's not just settlements.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Stanley?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me back.
Well, I appreciate you joining me.
I've just been informed on Twitter that criticism of Israel is only cover for Jew hatred, so I hope you'll forgive me for my anti-Semitism, but I just wanted to interview you about this article that you wrote about Israel.
I'm not sure what it says about your anti-Semitism then.
No, no, no, no.
You see, I'm self-hating.
I actually, for the third time in the last ten years, apparently this year was selected as the number one self-hating Jew in the world.
Oh, really?
Good for you.
Yeah, I'm moving up on Noam Chomsky, who I think won it four times over the course of his many years of being objective, fair, critical, and honest about the entity of Israel.
Well, as Netanyahu once said in another context, it's absurd.
The entire conversation about Israel and its parameters is just completely crazy.
Well, I mean, you've got to keep it in its proper context.
It's interesting, because I have a friend of mine who is a minister from Pennsylvania who recently asked me if I could recommend any particular books on Palestine and on Israel and the whole struggle, and I said, I just picked out a couple of authors, and he sent me a couple of messages, and he's just completely blown away, outraged by what Israel's been able to get away with.
And last night he sent me a message that simply said, let me ask you, in one sentence or less, how have they been able to get away with it?
And I used one word, and the word is proxy.
Israel has served as an obedient, you know, it's interesting, because I have a very different view.
I don't look at, you know, there are folks out there that see, you know, Israel controlling the debate, the discussion, the world, the politics, I mean, look, clearly Israel has been very successful for 68 years in influencing and at some times controlling the dialogue and political growth and movement and direction.
But it's not because they've got so much that people want, as much as there's one huge thing that Israel can deliver.
And that's why they've been able to get away with what they've been able to get away with for 68 years.
They are the proxy for the West.
For 68 years, whenever the West has needed a bully boy to carry out its policies, to influence in the region, to flex its muscles, to sell the Western view of the universe, to be its boots on the ground, it's been Israel.
And as long as they have served as willing proxies, the West has largely blinked and allowed them to steal as much as they want, to inflict as much pain as they want, to get away with literally murder for 68 years.
And that's the gist of the article.
It's really not about settlements.
I mean, the settlements have popped up since the late 60s, the early 70s, realistically after the West Bank and Gaza were seized in 67.
And long before the settlements, Israel has been carrying out a systemic policy of genocide, which is nothing short of a plan to ethnically cleanse the entire region, from the river to the sea, and to relegate Palestine to a footnote in history.
All right.
Now, before we get into that, because that sure is a big word, and that's why I brought you on, is to talk about that accusation of genocide there.
But I should have stopped you about 30 seconds earlier, because I wanted to go back to the question of Israel's role in American foreign policy there.
Because I guess I couldn't dispute that a lot of people see it the same way you do.
I mean, factually, not necessarily their opinion on it, they're kind of for it, as you say, and think of Israel, as they say, the unsinkable aircraft carrier and that kind of thing.
But it seems like our two biggest wars over there, they had to beg Israel to stay out of the first one, the first Gulf War.
And the second one, they had to pretend that Israel had nothing to do with the second invasion of Iraq, even though it was all Ariel Sharon's men in America who were pushing it harder than anybody else.
And really, Netanyahu's friends in America pushing it more than anybody else.
And they had to stay out of that.
And then so I can think of the Israelis getting Americans into trouble, like in Beirut.
But I can't really think of, I guess, maybe the Israelis providing aid and comfort to Al-Nusra fighters in Syria.
I could see that as doing a favor for Barack Obama.
But do you have any other real examples of Israel being a benefit, never mind the American people, but to the American empire and its interests over there?
Look, look, you know, if you're looking for front page news stories of Israel, you know, serving the Western imperial design, you're not going to see it.
What Israel's done for all these years behind the scenes is it has propped up governments, supported governments that have been friendly to the United States.
It's carried out assassinations.
It's been involved in the overthrow of governments.
The battle of the invasion of Lebanon was not by accident, and it wasn't limited, obviously, solely with regard to going after Yasser Arafat or Abouammar.
It has, you know, received, I don't know, $200, $300 billion.
I've lost count of the money over the years as, quote, the only democracy in the region.
And if nothing else, it has always, for administration after administration after administration, when it's talked about, its support for, quote, democracy and liberty and justice and freedom, when it has become involved and insinuated itself in regional politics in Arab states, it's pointed to Israel as being the perfect example.
Those of us who aren't blind, those of us who think, those of us who smell and taste and see know it's nonsense.
But it's been an interesting relationship, and yes, we have empowered them to the degree that there have been at least one, if not two, perhaps more, occasions where they've gone marching off in their own direction because they viewed it as in their own interest when it clashed with the West.
In fact, it's interesting.
I was talking to someone recently.
The only example that I know of the U.S. really, literally reining Israel in was, you mentioned the first Gulf War.
You know, I have a friend of mine who was close to the State Department during the first George Bush administration, and he likes to tell a story, and I've heard it from a couple of people, about when the first Gulf War is getting ready to get underway, and, you know, it's obvious that there's going to be some degree of retaliation by Iraq, missiles, perhaps, rockets, whatever, into Israel.
And Baker goes to visit Sharon, or whoever it was at that point, I'm not quite sure, and says, look, you know, we've got this coalition of Arab states that are involved, and we don't want you to fuck it up, and if the rockets come in, you're going to have to suck it up and leave it alone and walk away, and the Israeli Prime Minister says, no, no, no, we can't do that.
I mean, obviously, if we are attacked, we have to defend ourselves.
Much to his credit, Baker got up, said thank you, shook the Prime Minister's hand, started to walk out the door, turned around, took out a blank check, ripped it up, threw it on the ground, and said, you know, let us know when you want to start getting money again, and goodbye.
And lo and behold, Israel was reined in during the first Gulf War.
The second Gulf War, on the other hand, you're absolutely right, was the neocons, which were influenced largely by AIPAC and Zionists in America, went after Saddam with anger and with vicious retaliation, primarily because he was giving $25,000 for every family of every martyrdom operation that was going on in Palestine, and that drove them nuts.
There were public displays when there was a martyrdom operation, what the West some call suicide operations, Saddam would turn around and give the family $25,000, a very public display of support for Palestinian resistance.
It drove Israel nuts.
It drove the neocons nuts.
It drove the Zionists nuts, and they pushed, and they pushed, and they pushed.
And when 9-11, and I don't want to get into a discussion about 9-11, who, what, when, or where, when it popped up, it became a very convenient opportunity for them to say, see, we need a regime change.
But I still think, by and large, that in a host of ways, and not necessarily public, Israel has very much served as a proxy for Western design for decades, just decades.
And now that, in particular, Europe is starting to try to rein itself in, there are all sorts of movements and activities happening behind the scenes.
I mean, one of the things that I'm sure you picked up in my article, it's not just about settlements, or it may have been actually in my previous letter, which was about an open letter to American Jews.
It talks about how, I think it was, it talks about how Israel has provided arms and training, and at times even boots on the ground, for 10, 15, 20, 25 different states that were defending themselves, for lack of a better word, against revolutionary or independista movements in Latin America.
They supported the Shah.
They supported Suharto.
They supported people in Latin America.
They supported the South African regime.
So Israel has served as a proxy, not necessarily even just in the Middle East or the West, but throughout the world.
So they've demanded pay, and that pay has been basically a free pass, a lack of accountability when it comes to the 68 years of what I consider, under international law, is ethnic cleansing, for sure, which is one of the signposts of genocide.
Right.
Okay, yeah.
So now let's talk about that, because when the Nakba happened, I don't know how many people were killed.
Usually I hear that three quarters of a million people were driven from their homes, and clearly the Palestinian people have suffered endless oppressions of every description since then.
But, well, for example, you bring up the Hutus and the Tutsis and the war in Rwanda in 1994, the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and I think people look at something like that or something like the Holocaust in Europe in World War II, and they say that whatever's happened to the Palestinians, it's maybe as bad as it could be, just this side of genocide.
But how do you call that genocide?
Well, I apply, you know, look, I'm an attorney.
I am trained to apply, to interpret international law.
We have grown, unfortunately, we've grown accustomed to these mountains of bodies.
We've grown accustomed to explosive acts of genocide where hundreds of thousands, millions of people are killed in a year, two, three years.
You know, in the case of Stalin, whether you support him or not, over the course of 30 years.
In the case of Rwanda, a year.
In the case of the Holocaust, whether it was four years, eight years, or ten years, it doesn't matter.
When you talk about Pol Pot, it was a certain period of time.
But under international law, genocide does not require a body count.
And there are slow burn genocides.
Talk to the Armenians about genocide.
Genocide under international law is targeting a particular group as a result of their religion, their ethnicity, their culture, their tradition, inflicting, by design, pain, and that can be weapons, that can be denying them medication, that can be denying them the right to education and to travel and the right to infrastructure.
And genocide is selecting groups on the basis of any number of variables, and with intent to remove them, to injure them, to cause harm to them, because of that unique characteristic, it becomes genocide.
Now, am I going to suggest that Israel has killed millions of Palestinians?
Of course not.
But when you take a look at the Nakba, which displaced 700,000 Palestinians, when you take a look at the mass theft of 90% of the West Bank, when you take a look at – and it ranges from 100,000 who lost their lives in the Nakba, all the way up to 400,000 who have lost their lives over the course of 68 years.
Certainly it's upwards of a million of people, Palestinians, who have lost their lives, who have been injured, who have lost their homes, who have been attacked and displaced on the basis of ethnicity, religion, heritage, culture, and tradition.
That's genocide.
Now, someone said to me, well, it may be ethnic cleansing, but how does it amount to genocide?
Well, ethnic cleansing is one of the signposts of genocide.
We are blown away by the sudden explosive, you know, Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as we talked about, and Cambodia.
But it doesn't require a certain number of people to lose their lives.
It doesn't require a certain period of time within which to carry out a vicious attack on the basis of ethnicity, religion, tradition, culture, or unique signposts.
Under international law, just about every trigger for genocide has been embraced, carried out, and enforced by Israel since day one.
Okay, now in your article, the article again, everyone, is Israel's Never-Ending Crimes, it's not just the settlements, it's at aljazeera.com, and the quote here from the Geneva Convention that you have here, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, I don't know how anybody could deny that.
That's the law!
I mean, they say now, it's not even called the West Bank, it's called Judea and Samaria, and Netanyahu before the last election said, look everybody, no matter what else you hear, this is what I really mean, there will always only be one state, ours, between the river and the sea, period.
Well, I mean, look, it is, you know, and the paradox that, you know, the early Zionists that played a very active role behind the scenes, and you know, publicly, in the Nuremberg Tribunals after World War II, from which the definition of genocide has evolved, is worth considering.
Look, Israel, people say, well, you know, they only killed 2,500 civilians in 2014, or 2,800 civilians in Gaza in the last attack, or the last, you know, act of genocide and ethnic cleansing, five or six hundred kids involved, and they say, how can you compare that to what happened in Sarajevo, how can you compare that to what happened in, you know, down the road, and there's a dozen other tragedies that are pointed to.
And again, that quote, I didn't make that quote up.
That quote is international law.
The problem is, when you start applying the literal definition of international law, you begin to see that there are other countries that have been involved.
Has the United States been involved in genocide in Iraq?
That's right, people can make a claim to have been involved in genocide in Iraq.
Has the United States been involved by supporting one side or another?
It doesn't really matter.
In the Syrian, what started as a civil war is genocide, of course.
There are classic examples of genocide that have popped up all over the world, largely carried out by the West or Western proxies.
But we tried to hide behind this notion that it requires a mountain of bodies and an explosive period of rage.
That's not the law.
All right.
So when I was interviewing Ramzi Baroud the other day, he's a Palestinian-American.
You may know him very well, as far as I know.
So he's certainly a one-state guy.
And I brought up the usual objection, which is, boy, if you think the Israelis are treating you bad now, can you imagine them ever standing for one state and equal rights?
Instead, it would be another worst civil war and another Nakba.
And he said, yeah, but that's our life all day anyway.
And so, sort of to paraphrase you, a big spasm of violence breaking out of just doubling down on that for a short amount of time or something like that makes no difference at this point.
They already are suffering the complete destruction of their civilization.
The best hope they have now is for people to stop believing that someday they're going to have their own independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip because they're not, and to demand equal rights as citizens of Israel daily, loudly, and with full consensus from now on.
And quit being distracted.
What do you think?
I have a different view.
I have been a one-state or a bi-national state supporter for going on 20 years now.
Now, we talked about the bi-national state a little bit, too.
I'd love to hear what you have to say about that.
Yeah, look, it may end up being the first step towards a one-state solution.
But the bi-national state, for example, of Switzerland, which has different provinces and different areas that are influenced by different cultures and traditions, but yet a part of one body, it may very well be the interim step that was once seen as, quote, the two-state solution as an interim step to the one-state solution.
I don't see the kind of, look, you know, and I'm writing a book right now in the midst of it that proposes, you know, and I'm really not going to get into it now, how we deal with the two biggest issues in the one-state resolution, which is the right of return of Palestinians and the settlement movement in the West Bank.
And I think they can be dealt with with traditional tort law as civil wrongs and remedies and relief.
I don't see the kind of explosive flashback with a one-state resolution.
Will there be extreme right-wing Zionist settlers, and perhaps they've become even systemic, that are going to resist, that are going to get ugly, that acts are going to be carried out?
I think what people keep forgetting is, you know, there's this notion that, you know, Palestinians are, quote, jihadis, and I hate that term.
You know, there's this notion, you know, people forget that Palestinians are an agrarian society per capita.
They are the most highly educated group in that region, if not in the world right now.
People don't understand.
It's not as if Palestinians have nothing better to do than to live or to die.
It took decades to learn how to defend themselves, literally, under international law.
I see the one-state resolution, one as long as there is full equality and there are no roadblocks and there's no state religion and there's one person, one vote, with Jerusalem as the capital and there's the ability to travel.
I see it as, I don't see it as Baruch Goldstein.
I don't see it that kind of explosive result.
My view is as more and more Palestinians and Israelis, particularly young ones, and both societies have lots of young women and men that are coming to power, as they get to reunite with one another, and I'm not talking about normalization in the absence of equality, as businesses transcend borders, as relationships develop, as marriage happens, as families develop, I see a very different resolution happening.
I think both sides, look, I am not going to begin to compare the daily pain and suffering, the anguish, the death, the destruction, the genocide that Palestinians are going through with the problems of gout.
That's the major problem that most settlers have.
But increasing numbers of Israelis are coming to grips with two factors.
Number one, it is very much Sparta.
Sparta died and Israel is going to die.
Now, I don't care whether it's called Israel, Palestine, or Detroit, there will be a one state resolution.
Sparta cannot continue.
It creates a state of siege and a mentality that divides families, it causes internal hatred and disputes and explosiveness.
The other problem that Israel is going to have to come to grips with is, you know, there are more Jews in the United States than there are in Israel.
And increasingly, American Jews are walking away from this myopic support of Israel.
And Israelis understand that.
You know, the endless blind support by American Jews is changing.
Now, is it going to happen overnight?
No.
We're seeing increasing breaks in the community here and less and less support.
So I don't view the one state resolution or the binational state resolution as being the sort of explosive civil war that most people fear or talk about.
One of the issues that's not discussed is Israel's concerned about what's called the demographic ticking time bomb, which is actually changing now.
There was a point where Palestinian families were coming in at six or seven or perhaps eight children per family unit and Israelis at one or two.
Palestinian statistics are dropping lower now and Israelis are dropping higher.
I suspect that the one state resolution or the binational state will essentially end up being basically very close in population, even with the right of return.
I think and I am comfortable with the notion that there is enough overlap in tradition and culture and history between groups that decisions, difficult decisions, are going to have to be made to find a way to break bread.
Maybe it's truth and reconciliation commissions.
They worked in South Africa.
And keep in mind, you know, people keep talking about the failed experiment that is South Africa.
Number one, South Africa's revolution is only 25 years of age.
And number two, the system of oppression and the system of Bantu stance and the system of discrimination, which is in every respect parallel between Israel and South Africa before the revolution, the South African, the African class, the African, the ANC class did not have the history and tradition of commerce and education and development and growth and freedom and movement and history that they did in South Africa that's going on in Palestine.
I just, I think there's some commonalities.
I think there's some overlap.
I do not expect, I think the argument that it's going to be an explosive civil war type development is, is, is for some convenient, uh, for some denial and ultimately for some, the excuse to maintain this, this false notion of there being a two state solution, which is impossible.
Yeah.
It will never be a two state solution.
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Well, I guess, you know, for me, it was on one hand, it's kind of just a devil's advocate position in the first place compared to what I think is right.
But also, it seems like if they fought so hard, and this is the most right wing government coalition in Israeli history now, and if they fought so hard to keep it this way, it seems like from the point of view of an Israeli nationalist, having a one state solution with actual equal rights for the Palestinians would be a much harsher loss for them than just giving up the West Bank, but maybe not.
Well, look, the reality of it is, it's a difference without a distinction.
The West Bank now has almost a million illegal immigrant settlers.
It's taken 90% of the West Bank, it's essentially annexed.
Gaza is also occupied under international occupation, doesn't require that Israel can be on the ground in Gaza to describe it as an occupied territory.
You've got 2 million people that are occupied because their borders, their air, their water, their sea, their access, immigration, exits, entrances, all controlled by a foreign state.
So you've got, what do you got, you got the 5 million, 6 million Palestinians one way or another living under occupation in Palestine, or what some call parts of Israel.
You've got another, what, one and a half, 2 million Palestinians that are clearly second class Israeli citizens.
You've got about 7 million Israelis.
The numbers are fairly equal.
The reality of it is, just as happened in South Africa, no matter how vicious, no matter how hate driven, no matter how reactionary, the settler movement and the Zionist movement and the right wing movement may be in Israel, as the markets close, as the BDS movement grows, as Europe, who is their largest trading party, begins to back off, as sanctions increase, and as the walls grow higher and higher around themselves, as much as Palestinians, as American Jews stop the blind support of Israel, I think that the right in Israel is going to have to take a very close, long, and hard look in the mirror.
And I think when they do, they're going to come to grips with the reality that they can't survive as Sparta, and that the two state solution is impossible.
I mean, the notion that you are going to, you know, walk away, leave 800,000 settlers, withdraw them, 90% of the West Bank already annexed that's not connected to Gaza, that somehow is going to be what's set up with a system of tunnels and walls and barricades.
That's not, those aren't two states, that continues to be another Bantustan, it continues to generate another generation of resistance and fight it.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a very important point here, too, that people don't often articulate very well, even if they know it, and I'm pleading guilty myself, that the best proposal for a Palestinian state ever had it a demilitarized, completely controlled and ruled little sub-state like an Indian reservation or something, nothing like a true nation of its own, so under Israeli control perpetually anyway, in other words.
No, no, no, look, look, Israel, you know, controls every aspect of life in Gaza.
Israel controls every aspect of life in the West Bank.
If tomorrow Israel woke up and said, we recognize two states, if tomorrow 800,000 settlers simply disappeared, if tomorrow Israel announced that it would recognize the equality of an equal state called Palestine, it would still control all of its borders, all of its resources, who could come, who could go, when and where, and that's not a state, it's a Bantustan, and it is a formula for continued resistance, it is a formula for continued armed struggle, which is recognized under international law, and it continues to be an occupation, because as I said, Gaza is very much occupied as we speak right now, despite the fact that there's not a single settler within the territory, the very small Bantustan of Palestine, I mean of Gaza.
Well, in fact, they're worse off now that there are no Israeli settlers in Gaza, because they were basically acting as de facto shields from the worst of Israeli brutality, they've turned it into simply an open air prison since then.
Well, I mean, that was the strategy all along.
I've been, you know, I haven't been able, I no longer get to go to Palestine, but I mean, I've been going to Palestine long enough that I remember the drive into Gaza, and once you crossed from Erez into Gaza, you would go down certain roads and you would come across in the midst of Gaza, Israeli tanks and barricades and barbed wire that were protecting settlements there.
You know, as I said, I, look, I've spent 40 years of my life, more than 40 years of my life, you know, pursuing resolutions of these types of crises based upon and driven by principle, I'd like to think, and, you know, in pursuit of justice and humanity, but the reality of it is at the end of the day, the two major blocking points besides the arrogance and ignorance and Islamophobia of the Zionist movement happened to be 7 million, happened to be, quote-unquote, 7 million Palestinians that are living in the diaspora outside of Palestine, outside of, quote-unquote, Israel, and a million settlers that are living in the West Bank.
Those are the two issues.
Everything else is relatively easy to deal with, and the reality of it is those two issues are not, in the long run, terribly difficult to approach if you take a different view towards them.
You know, one thing that I thought was a very important point that Ramzi Baroud made yesterday was that, hey, look, 60% of Israeli Jews are Arabs, or at least, you know, are from North Africa, you know.
I don't know if that means they're Berbers or what, but, you know, I guess Americans usually we think of Israel as full of all white, English-speaking Ashkenazi Jews from Europe, but in fact, you know, if you just, as you say, look at it from a different point of view for a minute, here are a bunch of Arab, Muslims, Christians, and Jews living in this land together with, yes, some European Jews too, and why, again, shouldn't they just have one man, one vote, and equal rights in an equal state?
I mean, I'm a libertarian.
I prefer a no-state solution, but I don't think anybody's negotiating that angle.
Well, look, you've got, and he's absolutely right, you've got, look, you have to factor in what are called Sabras that are now, we're now at a point where I don't know how many Sabras are native-born Israelis.
I don't call Jews Israelis that are now.
Those are, we're past the point of settlers that came in in the 60s and 70s and 80s, and married and started families, and, you know, we're now at a point where they're grandparents.
So you've got Sabras that are either recent vintage, or you've got Sabras that, I've got friends that are Sabras that are two, three, four generations old.
You've got increasing numbers of Sephardic Jews, and that's why increasingly Israel becomes even closer towards South Africa, because it becomes not only religion and ethnic-based discrimination or segregation or ethnic cleansing, but racial as well.
We keep forgetting that there is that outdoor prison.
We don't forget, but people kind of forget, overlook that there's this outdoor prison in the desert filled with, I don't know how many tens of thousands of, quote, undocumented, what Israel calls illegal immigrants that are from Africa, or from North Africa that are being housed in the desert while they try to resolve what to do with them, with families divided and split up with children and wives, mostly wives, deported, kicked out of Israel with 30 or 40,000, I don't know how many numbers of it is, men being kept in the desert.
So increasingly, Israel is now having to come to grips with the South African module as well.
You're talking about race-based discrimination, Sephardic Jews, race-based discrimination.
I mean, the battle between Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews is age-old.
The Ashkenazis have a very different view of Judaism than Sephardic Jews do.
They have a very different view of culture and tradition.
You also have a growing number, let's not forget, of Satmar Jews, or the ultra-Orthodox or Hasidic Jews, that are opposed to the State of Israel.
You know, it's something that most people don't understand, is contrary to common belief, the more religious the Jew, the less they support Israel.
It's the secular Jew and the Zionist, which was a movement started out by basically atheists or agnostics, that are the most supportive of the Israeli state.
They call it the Jewish state, but they could care less.
It's about land, it's about power, it's about resources, it's about political might, it's about control.
The most religious Jews, namely, for example, the Satmars, which is the group that the Tariq Atha comes from, who are the most opposed to Israel, fight against the Israeli government.
Now, they're divided.
There's a chunk of them that refuses to go to the State of Israel at all, and there's a chunk of them that live in Israel and refuse to recognize the state, although they live there.
Now, it's reduced, the claim is reduced to, oh, they just don't want to serve in the Israeli military.
That's bullshit.
That's just a convenient way to try to rationalize, who knows, a half a million or a million Orthodox or Hasidic Jews that are living in Israel, but don't recognize the Israeli state as a legitimate entity.
So Israel has to deal with a whole, a cross-section of developing problems of its own creation that cannot be resolved militarily.
Okay, but here's the thing.
So let's talk about the ruling coalition for just a minute then, because, I mean, everything that you say sure sounds right to me, and especially including the economic pressures and the international pressures and all of that, but it seems like the political response inside Israel, and this is, you know, the economics of politics there and the way it all shakes out, is that they just keep getting pushed further and further into a corner rather than, you know, recognizing all of these, you know, pretty obvious truths that you keep citing as to why they ought to get their act together.
Well, look, you know, there's a common strain among every fascist regime that has collapsed in history, especially in contemporary history.
Take a look at Latin America.
Take a look at the dozen nations that collapsed, that were controlled by the far right, even some that have now returned to the far right.
Toward the end, they become more vicious.
Toward the end, the siege mentality expands.
Toward the end, they continue to embrace more and more exploitation and control, but they all collapse sooner or later because they're based upon an economy of death and destruction, of siege that they can't support.
And particularly when money begins to dry up from outside of the siege, and when support begins to dry up out of the siege, sooner or later they have to take a look in the mirror and say, this can't go on.
And I actually look at the growing influence and power, the overt, the public face of fascism in Israel to some degree, as preferable to the neoliberals floating around there.
It's the neoliberals who end up killing us always.
It's the neoliberals who end up, you know, allowing eight years of Obama policies to disguise eight years of hell for working class people and people of color and poor and women and distinct minorities.
Look, it is ugly, it will continue to get ugly, it will get uglier.
I think yesterday, if it holds up, the integration of Hamas and Jihad with FETA into the PLO with a brand new umbrella organization, which is something that folks have been working on to accomplish for quite a while, which apparently has now at least moved forward and did in Moscow over the last few days, is a significant victory.
The Palestinian resistance will now, and we'll see if it holds up, we'll see if people like Tahallin or we'll see if Abu Mazen can hold on, that generation will be willing to defer to a grand political body under the PLO, which will in essence define the resistance and how it moves into the future.
But Israel has always survived or exploited the schism between various arms of resistance among the Palestinian community, and hopefully as a result of the last six months or year in particular, that separation is narrowing.
And in fact, as a result of what just took place in Moscow, if it takes shape and form, if the PLO is revitalized with Hamas and Jihad and FETA being, you know, absorbed by them as an active body of leadership, you're going to see a very different level of strategy and resistance.
And I think it's a prudent step for many reasons, not least of which, you know, with the coronation of Trump and his lunacy, who knows how things are going to play out right there.
Yeah, that's what I was just going to ask you, because we're recording this two days before his inauguration, and he's apparently going to have for his ambassador to Israel and also his new, I don't know exactly the title that he gave him, but the person in charge of negotiating a peace settlement there are two extremely right wing nationalists who completely deny the Palestinians' rights in the West Bank.
Well, look, that's that's fine.
I mean, look, that's a long lines of what you said about, well, hey, at least the fascists are taking their mask off and escalating and forcing the crisis.
So somebody's got to choose, but could get a lot uglier before it gets better, you know, it could.
On the other hand, I am convinced that increasingly, look, United States just gave Israel $40 billion.
So even if Trump one day got struck by a bolt of lightning and empowered him with some degree of wisdom, experience, knowledge, humanity, compassion, or even practical approach towards these incredible issues, even if that happens, with $38 billion in the bank, Israel can tell Trump to go, you know, go jump into the ocean, especially as American Jews are moving further and further away from blind support for Israel.
And especially as my open letter to American Jews spoke about with the Trump administration embracing anti-Semitism at its core in the name of support, you know, of Israel through the Trump administration.
So the notion that, and this is becoming problematic for more and more Jews, where he's surrounding himself with people that overtly hate Jews, but yet pull it off because they support Israel and because they are part of the, quote, alt-right.
Increasingly Europe is playing a more active role.
The ticking time bomb in the Mediterranean, and people forget that, you know, Gaza is the Mediterranean and Israel is in that area, is this tremendous flush of natural resources, which Israel is trying to steal.
The developing role of Russia and China in the region is changing the formula at this moment.
I suspect that increasingly Europe is going to begin to impose what may start out as very light, but I suspect could end up as significant sanctions against the Zionist government.
Again, I, you know, people are pessimistic.
I have actually been among, you know, I was speaking to a very dear friend of mine in Gaza the other day who's a member of the Hamas shore council, an academic, serious guy, a client of mine, someone I've known for 20 years, who's been living again in Gaza.
He lived in the United States for 14, 15 years and living in Gaza for about a solid decade now.
And on some level he's optimistic, and on some level serious people that have been involved in the resistance for years are optimistic.
While those outside of the resistance may be throwing their arms up and saying, this is not going to end.
And in fact, it's taking a backseat to so many other issues in the region.
I disagree.
I think there's some movement.
I think there's some growth.
I think the BDS movement has been successful.
I think the role of Europe has been successful.
I think the recent act in the United Nations was somewhat helpful.
I think populations and demographic changes are going to be important.
We'll see what happens in Syria.
I think ultimately what the West has to come to grips with until there is a just and an equal resolution of the Palestinian diaspora, there will be no peace in the Middle East.
People have to make a decision.
You've got 2 billion Muslims in this world that do not forget about what's going on in Palestine.
It is an oozing wound that has offended billions of, well, certainly a billion and a half Muslims for decades.
It is increasingly offending Western activists that are not Muslims, Jews and Christians.
I'm optimistic.
I suspect that it's more likely to end up as a first step, as a binational state, as a precursor ultimately to a one-state resolution.
I hate to be simplistic, but I jokingly said to a reporter from Dubai a couple of months ago, and some people actually got offended, I said, you know, the 2 things that are going to bring people together in Palestine and Israel, for lack of a better word, is doing business together and making love together.
There are lots of young women and men.
What's offensive about that?
Freedom?
Yeah, well, you know, the whole notion that sex is the most, sex would play an essential role for the resolution of, absolutely, it always has been.
Call it marriage, you know?
Call it love.
Well, you know, the funny thing is, it's not by accident that Israel has recently banned a series of books that highlighted intimate relationships, both in marriage and outside of marriage, between, quote, you know, Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims and Jews.
Yeah.
Well, and the business part is very important, too.
This is a...
Yeah, look, I do not, I'm not about normalization.
I fight it every step of the way.
Normalization is not a perk to produce a benefit or a result.
Normalization comes with justice and freedom and equality.
But I am convinced that normalization is within reach once there is equality and justice and respect.
I am convinced that, and, you know, we keep breaking down into, you know, Israelis and Palestinians, but look, just say I'm convinced the women and men of that shared state, that shared land, that shared tradition, even though that blinks the reality that in the early 1930s, there were probably no more than three or four or five percent of Palestine that had Jews, and they were largely Sephardic Jews and certainly not much more land ownership.
So I don't want to fall into that trap of describing, you know, that region as a region where there's been a commonality or an inequality of land ownership or numbers.
We saw the tremendous, tremendous increase in population and the theft of land because of the Balfour Declaration, because of what the British allowed them, because of what happened in 1948 with the United Nations.
All right, well, listen, I really appreciate you coming on the show, Stanley, and I appreciate your point of view.
It's, well, it's more optimistic than I've heard in a while on this, that's for sure.
And you make a good case for it, too.
And you also make a compelling case about international war crimes here as well.
The article is Israel's Never-Ending Crimes, It's Not Just Settlements at aljazeera.com.
Stanley L. Cohen, a lawyer and human rights activist in New York.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for inviting me.
It's always been a pleasure.
Really appreciate it.
All right, y'all, that's the Scott Horton Show.
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