Factually! with Adam Conover - The State of the War on Palestine with Rashid Khalidi

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

The war in Gaza has been going on for over a year, killing 44,000 Gazans and leaving countless others injured or displaced. With no ceasefire on the horizon, the question remains: where do things go from here? This week, Adam is joined by Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017, to examine the ongoing devastation in Gaza and what possibilities, if any, exist for a path forward. Find Rashid's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. People throwing parties, ugly sweaters everywhere, stockings hung up by the chimney with care. It could only mean one thing. McRib is here. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say.

Yeah, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me. You know, it's been a few months since we last spoke about the war in Gaza on this show. And in the time since,

things have only gotten worse in that conflict. After the October 7th terrorist attack against Israel that was led by Hamas, Israel declared war on Hamas. But in effect, that war has been against the people of Gaza themselves, the Palestinians. And you only have to look at the numbers to figure that out. Since the war began 44,000 Palestinians have been killed and countless more have been injured or displaced and

Even though Israel has killed two of Hamas's top leaders that has not ended the war it keeps going In fact, it has recently expanded to Lebanon and there are fears of a wider regional war breaking out. Now activists in the US and around the world have been demanding a ceasefire, an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza for a long time now. But all that has come of that demand has been a bitter debate over what are the appropriate limits of protests, should one protest on a college campus or not and other bullshit like that, while the war and the devastation and death continue. And now that Donald Trump has been elected, there's no more reason to believe that it is going to end anytime soon.

There have been rumblings of democratic resistance to America's blank check policy towards Israel. A number of Democratic senators just voted against sending further arms to Israel that they are prosecuting this war and killing people with. But will any of that matter? And is there any hope towards a peaceful resolution towards self-determination for the Palestinian people and meaningful safety for people in Israel? Well, on the show today, I wanted to bring back

one of the very best experts on the subject, on the region, and someone who has been on this show before. I'm thrilled to have him back to get into this. But before we do, I just want to remind you that if you want to support the show and all of the important conversations we bring you every week, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover.

Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad free. And if you like standup comedy, and by the way, I think it can be helpful to laugh during such bleak times, head to adamconover.net for all my tickets and tour dates. Coming up December 13th and 14th, I'm gonna be at Cobbs Comedy Club in San Francisco.

In January, I'm gonna be in Dallas. I'm gonna be in Toronto. After that, I head to Vermont. Bunch of other tour dates. Head to adamconover.net for all those tickets. And now let's get to this week's guest. His name is Rashid Khalidi. He's a Palestinian American historian.

And until recently, he was a professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia. He is absolutely one of the most eminent Palestinian American scholars of any type working today and an absolute expert on the region and its history. His book, The Hundred Years War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, is a key text for understanding the conflict,

and it has been a best seller for weeks now. I know you're gonna love this conversation. Rashid feels very passionately about this topic, as you're gonna hear in the interview, as well he should, and he brings a really wonderful level of insight to it that is gonna give you a broader way to understand what the hell is going on in this very difficult region of the world. Now, please welcome Rasheed Khalidi. Rasheed,

thank you so much for being on the show again. It is a pleasure. Thanks for having me. So let's jump right into it. What is the situation right now with Israel's war on Gaza and the broader situation in the Middle East? How do you describe it? Gaza and the broader situation in the Middle East. How do you describe it? Well, I mean, just reading the latest reports, it looks like we may have a ceasefire imminently in Lebanon. Whether that will happen or not is anybody's guess. But it looks like the war on Gaza is continuing and not likely to stop anytime soon.

The death toll there is appalling. Dozens every day are being killed. People are about to get hit by winter rains in swampy conditions with sewage overflowing. So you're going to have disease and death from things like bronchitis and pneumonia among children and people who are weakened by malnutrition. So it's going to be more genocide in Gaza for the foreseeable future. Hopefully the part of the war in Lebanon will stop, but that may not be a long-term thing. And I mean, I guess this is jumping to the end

at the beginning, but like, when do you feel that this war is going to end? I mean, Israel's already killed the leader of Hamas. What are their objectives remaining either, you know, and I know there's their stated objectives and then there's the objectives that might make them actually, you know, stop prosecuting the war

and, you know, which if any is gonna be the case, do you think? Yeah, well, I've killed several layers of leaders of both Hamas and Hezbollah. The top leader, the second leader, the third leader, I mean, they've gone pretty far down in the ranks in both. And that clearly hasn't stopped them. They're still at it. They tried to kill somebody in downtown Beirut and killed dozens of people in a building where he was not, apparently. What will it take to stop it? Well, it could easily be stopped if

the people supplying weapons would just say, enough. The Israeli army can't go on for more than a couple more months, two, three months, maybe four months without constant resupply of these 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs of tank ammunition, artillery ammunition. I don't think that's going to happen. It never happened in the Biden administration. It won't in the last two months of this administration, and I don't expect it to happen under Trump. So that's out. That would normally be the way these things stop.

The United States finally having endorsed, supported, armed, run diplomatic interference for Israel's wars would eventually say, okay, enough already. That hasn't happened and it doesn't look like it will happen. The only other possibility is the Israeli military finally tells the political leaders, you're just putting our men into a meat grinder for absolutely no purpose. There is no discernible military value to continuing this war, which has been true for six or four or five or three or nine months, but it's increasingly the case. I think that in the seven or six weeks since the 1st of October, about 90 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon and in Gaza.

Since this first of October. Pardon me? Since the 1st of October of this first of October. To no apparent purpose. Pardon me, since the first of October of this year. Yeah. Yeah, no, the army says it's lost, the Israeli army says it's lost about 800 soldiers since the beginning of the war, but just in the past six or seven weeks, it's been about 90. And as I say, to no apparent purpose. The continued attacks on neighborhoods in Gaza, after which the Israeli army withdraws, after which Hamas reconstitutes itself, after which the Israeli army withdraws, after which Hamas reconstitutes itself,

after which the Israeli army goes in again, are just absolutely pointless exercises. I'm not even talking from the humanitarian point of view, the swattering of all. I'm talking from any political point of view, from any even military point of view, from the Israeli perspective. And the military unfortunately has not said that to the political leadership, which has its own objectives, obviously. Some of the leaders of the Israeli government want to resettle northern Gaza. Others want permanent military occupation of Gaza. Some of them have similar ambitions, at least as far as occupation, for parts of Lebanon. And until and unless somebody tells them no,

whether it's the Israeli generals or conscripts or reservists or the Israeli public, they won't stop since the responsible adults in the room don't exist in Washington or any other world capital. Why is it first that Hamas is able to reconstitute itself almost indefinitely? Tell me a little bit about how that happens. One of the things that you have to look at when you look at Gaza is that this is the

area with the highest population concentration and the highest concentration of refugees in the entire world, or rather in the entire Palestinian world, I should say. Their conditions have been miserable since 1948, more miserable than any other group of refugees. You look at the refugee camps in Lebanon, you look at the refugee camps in Syria, you look at the refugee camps in Jordan, they've integrated into cities. They're part of the urban fabric. In Syria and Jordan, they have the rights of citizens. And They're not disadvantaged particularly. They don't have citizenship in Syria or Lebanon. Whereas even in the West Bank, there are more

opportunities for refugee camp residents than there were ever in the Gaza Strip. So this is the most immiserated population. It's always been the most cut off and so has been the most militant. So it is not surprising that Fatah and other PLO groups, the PFLP, had their most militant implantation in Gaza from the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s or that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were founded in Gaza. They are the crucible of Palestinian resistance, have always been since the 50s, since the Nakba. So it's not particularly surprising that they're able to reconstitute themselves since they have a strong base. They probably never had majority support, but they have a strong enough base that it's very clear that they have, you know, levels of cadres below the levels that have been killed by the Israelis.

And Israelis have taken out the entire political leadership, most of the military leadership, and several levels down to, you know, company commanders. And yet they still seem to be able to keep resuscitating themselves. Because more people in Gaza just keep joining and arming up and saying, well, we'll take on the struggle. One thing that I think is driving them is the fact that so many people feel they have absolutely no future.

Israelis are going to kill them anyway. If they don't die of starvation, they're going to die of pneumonia. Or they'll be picked off by these hideous armed drones, or they'll be taken off to Israel and tortured to death in these torture prison camps. The tales out of the prisoners who have returned are just horrifying, and everybody knows this. So if you're going to die anyway, might as well pick up a gun and take a pop at the guys or an anti-tank weapon and take a pop at the guys who are torturing. And there's no positive vision for, hey, if this war ends,

this is what good could happen to the citizens of Gaza, of Palestine. This is where I blame the world community. I mean, you force something on people if they won't do it. The Palestinians have a deep division and deep weaknesses in their leadership. Israel is led by people who do not recognize that the Palestinians exist as a people, who

believe that all of Palestine should be transformed into the land of Israel, who are doing the best they can to resettle or settle, settle the West Bank, possibly resettle the Gaza Strip. And somebody has to come down on them and say, this will not do. This is unacceptable. And nobody is willing to do that. And say, you have to offer Palestinians an alternative to death or this way or death that way, to subjugation and misery this way or subjugation and misery that way. And nobody is offering that. They bleed about a two-state solution. Nobody does anything to stop everything Israel is doing to make a two-state solution impossible. So you're right, there's no horizon for anybody.

That's the other aspect to it. Yeah, I mean, just from sitting here, it seems that there's no horizon for the conflict. I can't imagine if you were actually there on the ground being forced to move from place to place, family members dying, having no permanent home, and this war is ongoing and has no end date and has no vision for here's what's gonna happen afterwards where your life might be better, what would you do but grab a gun?

But let's talk about the political impossibility because that is, I think, what so many people have trouble wrapping their minds around, is why are we locked into, seemingly, this course of events? So, I mean, tell me a little bit about the political situation in Israel, as best you understand it.

Like you said, there's these various factions, some of whom want to resettle northern Gaza, some of whom want a permanent military occupation. Why is there no political will at all for a two-state solution or any sort of political solution that would recognize the Palestinians as a people and try to do right and create something sustainable? Well, the first thing is that, you know, parliamentary politics,

politics don't necessarily reflect public opinion. Right now, Israeli public opinion, if it had its druthers, would end the war in Gaza, would get the hostages home, would end the war in Lebanon, and would return the populations who were driven out of the settlements around Gaza and who had to leave the settlements on the Lebanese border back to their homes. That's what average Israelis want. That is what, according to the polls, a majority would seem to want.

But you have a very strong parliamentary majority, which actually Netanyahu just reinforced with a few more deputies a few weeks ago when he got Ghidhan Saad, who is now his foreign minister, to join the coalition. He has a solid parliamentary majority. He can ignore public opinion and assume things will turn around between now and the next election, which is more than a year away, a year and a half, almost two years away, a year and a half away. So that situation is frozen. And it's frozen in a context in which the most extreme elements of the government are running things. They're running a West Bank. They have a veto over stopping the war in Lebanon and stopping the war in Gaza. I mean, they may prevent a ceasefire in Lebanon. I think they probably will not be able to do that, but they certainly have made it very clear. There's a red line around the war in Gaza.

They want it to continue. And they're basically able to say to Netanyahu, if you don't go along with us, we'll bring down your government and you're going to go to jail. And so that's very simply the situation in Israel. It's more complicated than that. You also have an ineffectual, feckless, weak, backbone-less opposition. People who are afraid to counter the more extreme elements in public opinion. People who basically agree with 60, 80, 70% of what the government's doing. And who will not stand up for the most part and and chart the kind of course you're talking about. Force will not resolve this conflict. The

Palestinians have something of a case. There are two peoples in Palestine. I mean the Israeli Knesset passed a law in 2018 which said there's one people, the Jewish people, with the right of self-determination. So that's a majority of the Israeli Knesset in 2018. That is a constitutional law. That has to be overturned if there's going to be a settlement. Nobody wants to talk about this. Two-state solution? You can't have a two-state solution. The Israeli constitution, they don't have a formal constitution, but basic laws that act in lieu of a constitution prevent even recognition of the fact that Palestinians have national rights.

Wow. So you got to dismantle a whole lot of things. And this bleeding, this lying, hypocritical, meaningless blather about a two-state solution. Talk about rolling back 750,000 Israeli settlers. Talk about letting the Palestinians in the West Bank move around freely before you talk about a two-state solution. In their reservations, their bantu stands, the Palestinians are crammed more tightly than ever. Every year this gets worse and worse. Every year more land is stolen. Stop that. Insist that that stops. Stop financing that. Stop allowing American 501C3s to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars a year to these settlements. And then maybe somebody will take seriously

your meaningless, lying, hypocritical talk about a two-state solution. I mean, it is nauseating to listen to politicians blather on about this. Are you talking about American politicians now? The way American politicians talk about a two-state solution, is that what you're referring to? American and European politicians and others. Arab politicians. I mean, they're all lying hypocrites. They know that the fundamental

basics of a two state solution are not there. They could be there. I'm no fan. I don't think it's possible myself personally. but if they wanna try it, let them roll back the settlements. Let them free the Palestinians at the occupied territories. Let them lift the siege of Gaza. Let them let the Palestinians have a free election. I mean, he can give you 27 things that they would have to do if you were gonna have a two-state solution.

And they're not doing any of those things. Well, you're describing how, you know, in Israel, you've got a potential majority of people who want some kind of more of a reconciliation, or at least an end to violence and war. I'm not sure you have that majority, Adam. Okay, fair. You may or may not.

I mean, if you provided the right inducements, Republican opinion changes. It could change. And it's just polls that we're talking about. We're not talking about people's deep seated beliefs. We're saying what they reply to. The polls go here and there. Anyway, let's assume that could happen.

Okay, well, so what you're saying is even if there is a well of support for that among the Israeli public, you've got a far right that is pulling you know, pulling the strings or more importantly driving the bus, right? Determining what the policy is. Even if Netanyahu wanted to, you know, be a different, even if he woke up and had a change of heart, he would still have the right wing that would be saying, we're gonna, we're

gonna screw you, we're gonna kill you if you don't do what we want. You've got the right wing settler movement politically. Right, so this is the political reality. And so that has made a two state solution impossible for all the reasons that you've said. Why do you think, I mean, I was watching the DNC here in the US, you had people talking about a two state, that's literally the position of the Democratic Party. Why do we have this adherence to this idea?

Oh yeah, we should have a Tuesday solution. Here's another New York Times op-ed about it, despite the fact that, again, it's politically impossible in the country that we're talking about, because it's a huge gap between, you know, what is being said and the reality. How can it maintain? It's a lot of wishful thinking,

and it's also avoiding reality. They don't really wanna deal with the fact that the United States is the sponsor and co-conspirator in everything Israel does, and that it can't do these things without American support. They don't want to confront those realities. The Democratic Party is responsible for this genocide. A Democratic administration for 14 months now, or we're going on 14 months, has funded, supplied the weapons, and supplied the Security Council vetoes most recently five days ago for genocide.

The party never addressed that. It never addressed that and it never addressed the prerequisites for a two-state solution, which are dismantling this Israeli constitutional law, which is doing something about the settlers. By doing something about the settlers, I do not mean sanctioning Joe Blow or Jane Doe. I mean cutting off their money, which comes from Ivo 1, C3, charitable organizations that funnel hundreds of millions of dollars for this process. You think that the Israeli government is paying for this? We're paying for this. We pay taxes so a bunch of people can send money tax-free

to subsidize something which is against the American national interest, which is the building of settlements all over the West Bank. Wait, I'm sorry, are you saying that American tax money is going directly to those settlements or are you saying that it's private donors are getting a tax break?

Private donors get a tax deduction, pay less taxes, and we have to pay more taxes so these creeps can fund settlements that have completely undermined the possibility of a two-state solution over 57 years and that are meant to prevent the two-state solution. So either you're for it or you're against it. I think the United States is against it. American refusal to stop arming Israel when it protects the settlers, funding the settlers via 501C. These are not charitable institutions. These are aggressive military settlements to deprock the Palestinians of land.

What's charitable about that? Well, they're charitable, but you might not agree with the goals of the charity. They're not charitable. These are these are none. I mean, you know, frontier stockade preventing Indians from having Native Americans from having that's charitable. I think it's altruistic. It's just not for profit. But you can you can you can try to do a bad thing and have it be not for profit. We're about to go in the other direction.

And the Treasury Department is going to be mandated if this law that's currently passed the House and is going to the Senate to cut off money to 501c3s that are supposedly supporting terrorism. In other words, pro-Palestinian 501c3s. Right. So instead of doing what would be necessary as one of the basic prerequisites of a two-state solution, we're going to do the opposite.

We're going to help Israel to prevent anybody from protesting what they're doing by cutting off the money to 501C3s that are involved in activism around Palestine or supporting health. This is a law that was passed by the House, not yet as we speak, I believe, passed by the Senate, that would allow the federal government to sanction or otherwise punish charities that are seen as abetting terrorism. But the implication is that this is going to be funds

that are doing charitable relief for the Palestinian population. And then to their targeting. Or legal support or any other, or advocacy. Yeah. I mean, the law as it was written and passed the house basically leaves up to a bunch of apparatchiks in the Treasury Department,

a decision on whether group A or group B is terrorist or supporting terrorism. And there's no appeal for that. You just lose your 501c3 status and you become a pariah. Who's gonna give you money after that? So it's meant to destroy advocacy for Palestine. Meanwhile, the folks who are doing stuff on the other side, which in my view is terrorism, chasing people off their land, that's terrorism.

Stealing their land, that's terrorism. Shooting them down with impunity, that's terrorism. I mean, dozens of Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by settlers and the army. Some were armed and some were militants, but hundreds, scores, I don't know the numbers, are just civilians murdered. That's terrorism. I mean, depending on what your definition of terrorism is. If terrorism is only what non-state actors do and nothing that a state does is terrorism when then of course what sauce for the goose isn't sauce for the gander and you know states get away with murder and anybody else kills somebody and they're a terrorist. Well, you know, I don't accept that definition.

Well, I do think that is the definition as we use it because states are able to you know, define the terms. Depends on the state. If you're Russia or you're Myanmar, you might get labeled terrorists, but you know. The United States has never engaged in terrorism. Israel never engages in terrorism. Tell me a little bit about the settlements. I'm broadly familiar with them, but just tell me about what that project is,

who is doing it and why it makes the two-state solution so difficult. I know this is very basic stuff, but I want to make sure that we're giving our audience a full picture. The logic behind the two-state solution was that the territory that Israel occupied in 1967, the West bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, about 22% of mandate Palestine, would be the basis for a Palestinian state. That's more or less what Security Council Resolution 242 says.

It doesn't say exactly that. That's what everybody who talks about a two-state solution means, that Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem would be a Palestinian state. Now, ever since 1967, Israel has worked night and day to prevent that happening by seeding settlements strategically all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem to make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. That's why they did it. It was supposedly in the name of security initially, and then it was essentially to stop a two-state solution, to stop the Palestinians being able to take back the West Bank and turn it into part of

a of a of a Palestinians. Because now there's Israelis living there and they are not easily uprooted for the same reason it's not easy to uproot anyone. I mean, the three quarters, three quarters of a minion Israelis, more than one in 10 Israeli voters now lives in the occupied West Bank and occupied Arab East Jerusalem. Now, how are you going to, these are voters, these are Israelis. They are integrally linked to Israel. They are under Israeli law. They have highways, exclusive settler only highways. They have all mod conveniences They have electricity supplied by the state water supplied by stolen water supplied by the state and so on and so forth and As far as Israel is concerned as part of Israel. My adamim is part of Israel. Ariel is part of Israel And so on and so forth and some of them are are small cities. I mean my adamim is huge

I was there a year ago in March. It goes on for miles and miles and miles across the top of the hills on the right of the road as you go down to Jericho. Miles and miles and miles. It's huge. And there's several of these major urban conurbations that have been developed and dozens and dozens and dozens of smaller settlements on every hilltop strategically located to separate Palestinian population centers from one another.

I mean, there was a plan behind this. It was intended, it wasn't biblically driven. I mean, half of the proportion of the settlers are religious fundamentalists, but the guys who designed this were not religious fundamentalists. They were generals and geographers and strategists. It was designed to make a Palestinian state impossible. Anybody who doesn't... And Mehran Ben-Venesti wrote this stuff in the 70s.

This is not a new perception. Any jackass who looked at what they were doing 10 years after 67 could see what was up. And that's what has been completed. I mean, the project is basically complete. There cannot be a Palestinian state in the West Bank unless you're going to dismantle. How are you going to dismantle the dwellings of people, some of whom have been there for 30, 40, 50 years?

I mean, you have third generations born in some of these settlements. Yeah. And you have people like Huckabee saying, they're not settlements, they're communities. Well, in a sense, he's right. Just like you can't talk about the planters in Northern Ireland as settlers.

A loyalist leader gave a speech the other day a couple of years ago. And we said, we've been here in Northern Ireland longer than Joe Biden's people have been in North America. And he's right. They go back to Cromwell. They go back to Queen Elizabeth, some of them. And that's the problem you have

in these settler colonial situations. So anybody who talks about a two state solution isn't talking about reality. It's pure wishful thinking. It's such a fascinating strategy to me because it's sort of, look, when people live in a place, they have human rights, right?

And you sort of have to go, the people live there, what are you gonna do? That is the situation with the Palestinians themselves. There's millions of people living in Gaza. The state of Israel needs to contend with that fact. Well, it is doing that. But the same is true now of the settlers. And it's a, yeah, it's a very difficult thing to respond to.

Like, yeah, what would you do? The difference, of course, is that one group has one of the most powerful states in the world pushing them forward. Oh, of course. And the other has one of the most powerful states in the world bombing them. Yes. Or blowing up their homes in the West Bank or stealing their land. I mean, yeah, it's two, it's two groups. They're two completely unequal groups and one has legitimate rights and the other is basically living on stolen land. Yeah. But the brute fact of their existence in the space

geographically creates effects and makes certain outcomes harder if that's the outcome that you want because they live there and it's like there's children. That's the problem of any settler colonial project. At what point does the settler become a native? It's the title of an article and there's a book by a friend of mine, Mahmoud Mandani, and an article by a friend of mine, Ramoud Mandani, and an article by a friend of mine, Raif Israe, where they argue this. I mean, it is a real conundrum. And it's one of the reasons that

the eliminationist solution is actually impossible. Neither of these people is going to be able to eliminate the other. You're not going to have a North African, Australian, New Zealand solution in Palestine. However much the fanatics in the Israeli right want to do that, they're not going to be able to do that. What was that solution? I'm not familiar with it. Nobody's going to be able to drive the Israelis into the sea. This is a nuclear armed regional superpower. Nobody's driving anybody into the sea. Palestinians won't leave, can't leave, and the Israelis aren't going to leave. So you're right.

I mean, this is a long-term conundrum. And partition was argued to be one solution. And it didn't work in 47, 48. And I think it's even more impossible today, frankly. Guys, let's be real. Wearing nice pants can kinda suck, right? I mean, who decided that stiff, uncomfortable fabric squeezing your family jewels was the key to looking sharp?

Well, here's an early holiday gift from me to you. Those days are finally over. Public Rex Daymaker Pants are here to make sure you stay comfy and classy this season. They feel like your favorite sweats, but they look like tailored pants. That's right. Super stretchy with an elastic waistband so you can rock them anywhere. Whether you're kicking back with holiday movies, making your way through leftovers,

or watching bowl games with the boys, these pants have you covered. Heck, they'll even keep you looking sharp for that awkward holiday party with your in-laws. And let me tell you something, they sent me a pair of these pants, I put them on, and I have never felt so comfortable in my own home. I've also rarely felt like I look so good in my own home. I work from home a lot and you know it's easy to put on those sloppy PJ pants

when you're taking the Zoom meeting, but you know you feel better and you do better when you're wearing real clothes, right? And these clothes are comfortable enough to work from home in all day long. I love them so much. You gotta try them. The Daymaker Pants come in 10 unique colorways from navy, dark olive, and stone gray. You're sure to find the right color for you. And their proprietary blend of performance materials provides the perfect combination of breathability and stretch while still holding its form. You'll never want to take them off. So give the gift of comfort to yourself or someone you love this holiday season

with Public Rec's Daymaker Pants. And for a limited time, you can actually get 20% off your entire order with the code FACTUALLY at publicrec.com. That's 20% off when you use promo code FACTUALLY at publicrec.com. Folks, I'm so excited to tell you about this week's sponsor, Delete Me, because Delete Me is a service I've genuinely been using for ages before they ever started advertising on this show, and I love sharing them with you guys. So look, how much of your personal info do you think is floating around online?

Like maybe you got a public social media profile or an email out there, but that's probably it, right? Wrong. There's actually a mountain of your personal data being bought, sold, and traded by data brokers. Stuff that you never meant to be public, like your home address, phone number, and even the names of your relatives. And anyone with an internet connection and some bad intent can dig up everything they need to make your life miserable. We've seen an uptick in online harassment, identity theft, and even real-life stalking, all because of this easily accessible information. And you know, I in the past have become a target of harassment from people who found my details online.

And you know what I did? I signed up for Delete Me and it really worked. It's honestly one of the best things I have ever purchased online. Their team of experts works tirelessly to hunt down your information, remove it, and keep it gone. You, your family, and your loved ones deserve to feel safe from that kind of invasion of privacy.

So check out Delete Me, not just for your security, but for your friends and family too. You can get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteeme.com slash Adam and use the promo code Adam at checkout. That's joindeleteeme.com slash Adam, promo code Adam. EliteMe.com slash Adam, promo code Adam. So if the elimination of either population is impossible,

if you were to fast forward to the end of this conflict, what are the, sorry, I don't know if there's gonna be an end, if that's a good framing to use, but I mean, what is the next step? Right? Like there, we're in a period of war. The war presumably is going to die down to at least some extent. But when I look at it, it looks like the leadership of Israel has no plan to contend with the fact that there's millions of people who are simply alive, you know, in this area that they are pushing to a smaller and smaller space, emiserating more and more. What do they hope is going to happen? Are they going to drive them into other countries? How can this end? Well, two things. Before I answer that question, both the Israeli prime minister and his then minister of war don't

regard them as human. Galant was the minister of war. He said these are human animals. And Netanyahu said something about, I won't compare them to animals, that would be unfair to animals. So they don't really regard them as human beings. And I think that's basically true of a large chunk of the Israeli far right. The second thing is that they did intend to drive them out of Gaza. We know that. Blinken was sent around as an errand boy for this to Cairo and to Amman in the second week of the war, I believe it was. And you know this from an Office of Management and Budget proposed appropriation, which actually was appropriated by Congress later on.

It was attached to the big spending bill for Israel, $17 billion, whatever it was. It talked about funds for resettling people from Gaza, outside of Gaza. That was part of what eventually was passed as a law. The US government was intended to be party to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which was the original objective of Israel at the outset of the war. Now, they couldn't do that because the Egyptians and the Jordanians and the Saudis would not go along. Blinken was told no by President Sisi. Sisi gave a press conference where he basically, you know, wiped the floor with Blinken. The Jordanian king said the same. Because the plan was that these nations would have to accept

millions of Palestinians to be resettled into their countries? Precisely. I mean, I don't know the details of the plan. I know what was proposed as an appropriation. And I know that that's what the Israelis wanted. I don't know how they proposed to do it. But the Egyptians said no. Most importantly, the Egyptians said no. Because the initial plan was to drive as many as possible of them into Egypt. And for the Egyptians to be bribed with millions of dollars in debt relief. Billions, I should say. Tens of billions of dollars in debt, 17, whatever the number was. So that was their original intention.

And now their intention is to squeeze them into a smaller and smaller space, make Gaza utterly uninhabitable such that sooner or later maybe some of them will leave if some means can be found to get them out. And in the interim, take over as much land in Gaza as possible. The problem with that is, as you say, the people who there are not going anywhere, A, and B, they're continuing to resist. And a military occupation will have the result of every military occupation in history. It will produce resistance. Settling Gaza will produce what it produced last time, before 2005, when the settlements were removed. Resistance.

Just like is happening in the West Bank. So, I mean, you're right, there is no political logic to this, except a sort of nihilistic, we just push them and push them and push them and we'll see what happens. Yeah. We'll take as much land as we can, we'll establish a military occupation. I mean, it is, American diplomats to their very limited credit have been telling the Israelis again and again, you guys have to have an end game. You have to have a plan. Israelis refuse to have a plan, except what I just said. Squeeze them and squeeze them and squeeze

them. Hit them harder and harder and harder and continue the war for as long as we can get away with it. That seems to be the government's policy right now. They may stop the war in Lebanon, but they're not stopping the war in Gaza, as far as I can tell, not in the near future. It's just, it's bizarre to watch because, you know, I mean, this war, at least this stage of this many decades long war began with, you know, a terrorist attack against Israel where, you know,

countless people were killed, horrifying attack. We know how many people were killed, about 800 civilians and about 400 security personnel. Thank you very much. I didn't have the number off the top of my head, so thank you for providing. About 250 people were captured of whom probably a majority were civilians, but 70, 80, 100 were soldiers. So that's a horrifying event. If you're any state would want to prevent such events in the future. Any people, any average person in any country would say, this is horrible, something needs to be done.

And yet, what you've described, taking the same people, squeezing them into a smaller space, occupying them, I mean, what could that possibly do, but, you know, intensify the powder keg effect, create the conditions for more violence. It seems so intensely counterproductive to any possible goal of safety or security in the region. It's like saying, I put these people

in a pressure cooker since 1948, and it explodes in my face and kills all of these people. And so the solution is to put them in a bigger pressure cooker. Or a smaller pressure cooker. I mean, what you're saying is absolutely correct. Yeah. And that'll work real well. I mean, it is the blindest, most, most, it is the blind,

you know, you think of Clausewitz, you know, war is an extension of politics by other means. What is the politics behind this? What do you propose to do by using force and more force? It hasn't worked in the past with the Palestinians. You know, I think it was Golda Meir said, the old will die. The young will forget, or it may have been Ben Gurion. It doesn't matter. Well, the old died. Fine.

Clearly the young haven't forgotten. In fact, they're a lot nastier than their parents and grandparents were. Understandably, when you put them in a pressure cooker. You take their land, you squeeze them, you prevent them from leaving Gaza, you limit their caloric intake. What do you expect people to do? Well, Israelis don't look at this as if it's a human problem.

Unfortunately, they have a media that plays the game of politics just like in our country. They're shills for power. Israelis don't know and don't want to know or are not allowed to know what's going on. There are some who can find out and they're horrified, but the majority, they don't know, they don't care. Remember, they're angered and bittered and furious about what happened on October 7th, 2023. This is the largest loss of civilian life

in Israeli history since 1948. It was the most serious defeat. The entire Gaza division was not just defeated, it was overrun. The whole division of the Israeli army was defeated by Hamas. I mean, people whom they had complete contempt for overran the headquarters, overran the bases, a dozen or half dozen bases of the Gaza division of the Israeli army. 400 Israeli soldiers and security personnel were killed on the 7th of October. Yes. Israel's military losses so far, according to Israeli count, are about 800 soldiers killed since the 7th of October last year and over 10,000 wounded. That makes it the third most costly war in Israel's history after 67 and 73. So, the Israelis are angry and smarting at this. It was a humiliation. It was

a shock. They thought they had lorded know, they lorded it over the region and suddenly these people come pouring out of Gaza and overrun Israeli territory. They'd fought wars on Arab territory almost every single war since 48. And here these people are fighting the war inside Israel. Wow. And then Hezbollah is firing rockets into Israel. Israel thought of itself, Israelis thought of themselves as invulnerable. So the shock is just, I mean, it's still in my view, it's still reverberating in Israel. All my Israeli friends tell me that. My reading of the Israeli press tells me that. It's very clear that October 7th is an event that's gonna, you know, has changed the psyche of

many, many, most, I think, Israelis. Yeah. For a long time. I mean, here, often October 7th gets lost in the discussion because the war is ongoing. October 7th was, you know, one day, couple days, but, you know, now it's been... Four days. It took them four days to recover the territory that had been... Captured by Hamas.

But it has now been, you know, well over a year of, you know, daily death and misery, which in many ways, you know, that's been in the headlines longer, but October 7th sticks around. You know, they're wallowing in their own suffering. You have huge communities in the South and in the North who've been displaced, tens and tens and tens of thousands

of Israelis. You have 10,000 Israeli families or dealing with young men mainly who have been disabled. That's 10,000 wounded. They have the best battlefield medicine in the world. If you get hit, you're very likely to be taken out of the battlefield in an armored ambulance, moved to a helicopter almost instantaneously, and flown to the best medical facilities in the world, perhaps. So one out of every 12 soldiers who was hit survives. But those people are in many cases seriously disabled, suffering from PTSD. That affects the entirety of Israeli society.

And they pay attention to their own suffering, like most people. Americans don't talk about what happened in Vietnam to the Vietnamese. The Vietnam War happened to us. It was 58,000 American soldiers died. It was all these people who came back and became drug addicts because the VA didn't take care of them. That's the Vietnam War. It's an American war. And the suffering is American. The Iraq War is the suffering of American soldiers.

It's not tens and tens of thousands of Iraqis dying. And the Israelis are no different. Of course. Folks, today's episode is brought to you by Alma. Finding someone who truly understands what I'm going through has been a tremendous help during some of my toughest times. If you're thinking about getting a licensed expert help to navigate your own challenges,

I highly recommend giving Alma a try. You know, the thing about therapy is, it's really most effective when you feel genuinely heard and understood. And that's why Alma doesn't just help you find a therapist, they help you find the right therapist. You can easily browse the directory and filter based on what you wanna focus on,

like anxiety, relationships, or major life transitions. You can also choose based on preferences like gender, sexuality, faith, and more. And you know, another great thing is Alma can help you find a therapist who accepts your insurance. Over 95% of therapists at Alma take insurance, including Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, and others. People who find in-network care through Alma

save an average of 77% on the cost of therapy, and getting started is effortless. You can browse the directory without needing to create an account or share any payment information, plus you can book a free 15-minute consultation call with any therapist you're interested in. It is a perfect way to see if they're the right fit for you

so you can find someone you really click with. Alma can help you find the right therapist for you, not just anyone. So visit helloalma.com slash factually to get started and schedule a free consultation today. That's helloalma.com slash factually. Folks, are you planning to celebrate your holidays with your friend group and you wanna surprise them all

with something a bit more special and meaningful than, you know, a bottle of booze? Well, we have got the perfect gift for you. Skylight Frame is the touchscreen digital photo frame your whole family will love. You can upload thousands of photos with your phone and watch them appear in seconds. Here's how it works. After a quick 60-second setup, you can upload thousands of photos straight from your phone and voila, they show up on the frame in seconds. You can keep sending new photos anytime from anywhere

with just a quick tap on the free Skylight mobile app. Seriously, it's like having a constant highlight reel of your favorite memories delivered directly to the frame. And it's not just functional, it also looks amazing. They have five frame styles you can choose from. They've got HD photo resolution. It's a classy addition to any home. And plus you can set it up in portrait or landscape mode.

So it's always picture perfect. So if you're ready to wow your friends and keep the holiday spirit alive all year, well, Skylight Frame is the gift they'll never forget. And now as a special limited time offer for our listeners, you can get $20 off your purchase of a Skylight Frame when you go to skylightframe.com slash factually. That's S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T-F-R-A-M-E dot com slash factually.

Get $20 off your purchase now at skylightframe.com slash factually. ["The Big Bang"] Is part of the problem, like, international, let's talk about the international picture. Like you said that no one can tell them no. And you've also said that they're a regional superpower, which certainly appears to be true. I mean, you know, there's worry, there's been worries.

I was just going to develop into a regional war to me. I'm no, I'm no expert in foreign policy. Kind of seems like it hasn't because Israel's just been kinda kicking everybody's ass, you know? Like the other, none of the other regional powers wanna get involved, cause it's a nuclear power that's backed up by the US, but that means that no one can say no to the country.

Well, first of all, you're right about the regional situation. The Iranians really are afraid of the Israelis. They really do not want a war with Israel. And everything they've done has been measured and calibrated so as to not provoke the Israelis too much because of what you said. They're really scared of them. And nobody else is interested in taking them on, obviously.

Nobody else has any capabilities. I mean, Iraq is not really much of a state. Syria is not much of a state. They're in a state of civil war and internal chaos. The Yemenis are the only people who aren't afraid of Israel, frankly, besides the Palestinians and the Lebanese. And so you're right.

On a regional level, there's nobody who will stand up to them, certainly militarily. So that part of it is true. Globally, something really quite significant has happened, which is that they've completely lost global public opinion. And not just in the global South, in the West, in Europe. I mean, countries that were solidly 100% pro-Israel

are now deeply divided. Germany, some of the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, England. These are countries that never had public opinion that was strongly supportive of Palestine, or even mildly supportive of Palestine. Where people were pro-Israel, very pro-Israel, extremely pro-Israel, or blindly pro-Israel. That was the range of opinion in

most Western countries up until very recently, a few years ago. That's changed. I mean, you had four labor seats that went to anti-Gaza candidates in the last British election. Wow. You had North African and African French citizens, French citizens of North African and African descent, voting en masse and giving the far left party the largest

number of seats in the French parliament. I mean, that means there's political power there. And that's part of a shift in public opinion. Now, that's not to say that the French and the English media and French and British politicians are not by and large blindly pro-Israel. They still are. The elites haven't really shifted, but public opinion has shifted. And in most of the rest of the world, the elites are following public opinion. Most of the rest of the world, people see what Israel does as ghastly, horrific, unspeakable. That's the way people see it. And that's the way governments now see it, with the exception, as I've said, of the United States and a few Western governments. But even

there, you have half a dozen countries that have decided to stop selling arms to Israel. Canada, the Netherlands, Britain, Belgium. I mean, they don't sell large quantities of arms to Israel. And in the case of the British who do, they've exempted all the important ones. But still, you never had anything like that happen in the history of this conflict. So I mean, it's true, nobody is willing to stand up on their hind legs. And it's not just to oppose Israel, to oppose the United States. It's to tell Joe Biden to go to hell, that we are going to do X or Y or Z. And they won't do that Western European country.

The Russians will, of course, the Chinese will, of course, the Indians might or might not, the Indonesians, all these major countries, Brazil, South Africa, they'll tell Joe Biden to go to hell. But until Western countries do that, the United States will have no sense of how isolated it is. And of course, the United States will punish anybody who rebels against their hegemony in the West as they punish countries in the global South. If they don't say, yes, sir, and click their heels. Let's talk about the political situation in the U S I mean,

support for Israel has been bipartisan for as long as I've been alive and much longer. Uh, but you know, we are seeing a movement of resistance now, of people criticizing what Israel is doing in Gaza specifically. Is that politically significant here, do you think? It is and it is. It is in the sense that almost half of Democratic senators, 19 of 40 odd,

voted to cut off arms to Israel. Unprecedented. Unprecedented. Nothing like this has ever happened. I mean, from Woodrow Wilson until today, nothing like this, nor opposition to Zionism, nor opposition to Israel has ever happened on that level in the US Congress. Ever. Ever. So that's, I mean, that's significant. Now, has it changed anything that the executive does? No, no. Has it had a real political effect? No. But you have had a really, in my view, quite significant shift in public opinion. Well, we've moved from having- And that has affected at least the Democratic party.

Yeah. It's now a substantial minority view in the Senate and therefore in the American public at large. And that is new. Well, in the American public at large, it's a majority view. I mean, look at the polling. Majority of Americans want the war to stop. Majority of Americans don't like Netanyahu. Majority of Americans don't agree with Biden's policy.

Majority of Americans want to stop arms shipments to Israel. The polls have been consistent over six, seven, eight months. So that's the majority of public opinion. But politicians don't care about public opinion. They care about elections and money. And you know, the last elections did not illustrate, they could have, but they didn't illustrate. The fact that, for example, in a town in a city like Dearborn, where Biden won 70% of the vote, Harris won barely 42% of the vote.

Yeah. And she lost Michigan for multiple reasons, but one of the major reasons was she alienated young people and she alienated Arabs and Muslims. Yeah. So that's becoming politically significant, but it hasn't had an effect at the top. Look, I knocked doors in Phoenix

and, you know, trying to get out the vote and one young man opened the door, you know, Latino kid in his 20s somewhere in Phoenix and, you know, trying to get out the vote. And one young man opened the door, you know, Latino kid in his twenties somewhere in Phoenix, right? And he was like, I'm not voting. I don't like what's happening in Gaza. That was all he said. That was the only reason. He was like, I don't really want to talk anymore.

I was like, all right, no real room for argumentation. But you know, that was one out of a hundred conversations I had, but I was like, all right, this is just some dude in Phoenix who feels this way. I'm sure there are others. Look at the polling of people under 30, or people even up to their 40s on this issue. They're much, much, much more, what's the word,

favorable to the Palestinian point of view and less favorable to the Israeli point of view than the older Americans. Yeah. And look at youth support for the Democrats. It's a crucial element of the Democratic Party's support historically. They lost it. I mean, Nate Cohn has a piece in The New York Times this morning. You can go through every demographic, but that's a demographic they lost for many reasons, I would guess, but one of them is Gaza. I mean, look at what happened on college campuses. Now, like the college

stratum of young people, but there was overwhelming support for these demonstrations. Yeah. Overwhelming. The press didn't talk about this. They talked about it as if on the one side, on the other side. On the one side, they have a tiny number of people, literally a tiny number of people, dozens. And on the other side, you had hundreds and hundreds. And that was, you know, generally in that age group, I would say the breakdown, at least on college campuses where we could gauge it.

Now, probably in the general public, young people were that deeply affected. But I think a hell of a lot of people just didn't vote or voted for Jill Stein or even voted for Trump in part because of Gaza. Let's talk about the college protests because you recently retired from Columbia where you were a professor during those protests.

Columbia was obviously one of the, at the very least media hotspots. There were a lot of places that were very hot campuses around the country, but Columbia got an intense amount of attention for the crackdown that the university took. I looked at these protests and said, my God, these are organic protests. And yet what a shame it is that our entire conversation

is about what's happening on the campuses, not what is happening in the region in question. I'm curious, you know, given a little bit of remove from the hottest, there's still protests now, but from the hottest point of that, how do you feel they went? Did those campus protests have an effect? And how do you feel about, you know,

our institutions of higher education in the aftermath? Well, I agree with you by the way, in saying that it was a terrible shame that attention, and the media, as partly this is the media, that attention was immediately shifted to the protests and to a media, slanted media portrayal of the protests. Anti-Semitic, they weren't anti-Semitic. A huge proportion of the students involved were Jewish.

So you had some pro-Israel students who were offended and you had a very large number of non-pro-Israel students or pro-Palestinian students who were on both sides who were Jewish. And it was yet, it was portrayed as anti-Semitic. Yeah. Well, I mean- Insidiously, carefully tailored

to fit that lying description of it. There are certainly anti-Semitic things that were said or events that occurred, but to cast the movement or to cast an entire group of protests or the people who are putting them together as being anti-Semitic is not accurate. I did a video on this a few months ago. Anti-Semitic is hostility to Jewish people.

Anti-Semitic is not hostility to the state of Israel or to the political ideology of Zionism. There were virulently anti-Zionist things. There were virulently anti-Israel things. Those things are not necessarily anti-Semitic. If they are being emitted by Jewish students, I think you have a problem with arguing that they're anti-Semitic. These are students who reject an ideology. These are students who reject the politics and practices of a state. What is anti-Semitic about that? If the people who came and settled Palestine were a bunch of religiously inspired Danes who believed that they had a God-given right to the country and people opposed them, would the people who opposed them be anti-Christian? Of course not. They would be anti-Settler, anti the

state that they set up, anti the ideology of that state. They wouldn't be anti-Christian just because those people describe themselves as Christian and what they set up was a Christian state. They were opposed to the state, not to Christianity. People are opposed to what the state of Israel does, not to the fact that it's a Jewish state. I mean, other people oppose it as a Jewish state, mainly Jewish people who say this state doesn't represent us, or Palestinians who say, this is our country and you tell us we have no rights here. So a Jewish state is illegitimate.

Those are rational political arguments. Those have nothing to do with Jew hatred, which is what anti-Semitism is. It's a category mistake. It's an intentional category mistake by people who have no argument. If you have no argument, you shut down the argument by calling your opponent antisemitic, which is the worst thing you can say about somebody

in the 21st century, pretty much. Calling somebody a racist or a Nazi or a fascist, that's nothing. Calling them antisemitic is the worst thing you can do. Let me talk about your first question though, Adam. Please. I think that's the important thing. What was the effect of all of this?

I'm heating up here. I think the effect of it was quite profound in a couple of ways. I think it helped to validate and justify the strong feelings a lot of people had about Gaza. The fact that students were out there and the fact that they, you look at them, they're black, they're white, they're Jewish, they're Muslim, they're Arab, they're whatever. They're having Passover seders in the encampments, things like that. It enabled a lot of people to come out of their shell and say things and believe things and think about things that they wouldn't have otherwise done. I think

that was important in the shift in public opinion, which has taken place over many years, but accelerated over the past year. That's the first impact. That's still true in spite of the massive repression that started last spring and has only been intensified over the summer and the winter, but in a coordinated effort by all of the universities that are operating from the same playbook and which have succeeded basically in shutting down what existed last year. Yes, there are still protests, but they're feeble and they are viciouslyly savagely repressed by administrations. Kids are getting disciplinary notices now about events that took place a month ago. Their futures are threatened, their scholarships are threatened, their dorm privileges, their

ability to come on campus, their ability to graduate. They've come down with a hammer. So that's why things are quieter today. And on the right, everybody's happy. The Zionist students, they're thrilled. They don't have to hear offensive chants. Oh, so lovely not to hear offensive chants. Well, offensive chants are what you get in politics. Demonstrators against the war were called terrorists, Hamas supporters, baby killers. You support rape, and these are offensive. So what? Free speech, public space, tough noogies if you don't like being called a terrorist.

We were all called terrorists. Big deal. But their sensitive ears were harmed and then they mobilized Title VI and battalions of lawyers. The next thing you knew, the universities were jumping to that too, the politicians, the media and so on. Let me talk about the second effect, I think, of these protests on American campuses. They ignited a wave of campus protests across the world, across Europe and the rest of the

world. And I think that it was a world historic thing, in my view. We only pay attention to the United States, but if you looked at what happened in England or in France, you look at what happened in Scandinavia, you look at what happened in Spain and Italy, the students rose up against the policies of their own government. They rose up against the policies of the media, of the elites in their countries. They took terrible punishment, like many students on American campuses, but they made a point and they helped to push public opinion in each of those countries,

such that it is far different today than it was back in September of 2023 in every one of the countries in the West, in Canada, in the countries of Western Europe, in Australia. And so I think it had an enormous positive effect. I think basically that wave has died down under ferocious repression and for other reasons. But I think it had a very positive effect in its day. And so there's been a fundamental shift in public opinion around the world towards the state of Israel and what it's doing to the Palestinians.

I think the Israeli narrative has been permanently damaged. Hmm. The Israeli narrative being that... A haven for persecution. Making the desert bloom. Only democracy in the Middle East, all of which are partly true and mainly lies.

I mean, it was a haven for persecution. The rest is lies. And mean, it was a haven for persecution. The rest is lies. And then human shields and most moral army in the world, and we obey international humanitarian law. I mean, these are bold-faced lies. And everybody in the world can see it. They just have to pick up their telephones and look at the images out of Gaza and South Lebanon and see that they're killing 80 people in a building to kill one Hamas or Hezbollah leader. That's not discriminant, it's not proportionate. It's a violation of international humanitarian law.

You may not know the law, you may not know what proportionality or discriminate, the need to discriminate is, but you know that they're slaughtering hundreds of people for no apparent reason. Yeah. And you know that they're starving people in Gaza. How can you sell your brand when you're doing that stuff and people know you're doing it? They've done everything

possible to restrict reporting out of Gaza. You can't go to Gaza if you're a Western reporter. You haven't been able to go for more than a year. And the craven despicable Western media will not put at the top of every item. Israel prevents us from reporting on this so you're only hearing what they want you to hear. Actually, the Washington Post put something like that up on a lot of their reporting about Gaza from Israel. And so does the BBC. But the New York Times wouldn't do that.

CNN wouldn't do that. You are being systematically lied to by people who will not let us report this story, except embedded in the Israeli army after the Israeli censor sees it. And every time we say anything, we have to put the lies that the Israeli spokesman attaches to every true statement.

And yet the news is getting out, how? Well, most young people despise the mainstream media. They listen to alternative media, podcasts, and social media. Yeah. And that's where they get their news from. I used to be able to mention in class an article I'd seen in the New York Times like 15, 20 years ago in a big lecture course. And I'd look around and maybe 10, 20, 15% of the students had seen the article. You can't do that today. Nobody reads the New York Times under the age of 40. Nor should

they, nor would they. Nobody watches CNN. The other day I was talking about Iran, talking about 19th century Iran, modern Middle East history course. And I was talking about a British entrepreneur by the name of Baron de Reuter, the guy who founded the Reuters news agency. Anybody over 40 or 30 or whatever would have heard of Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, news agencies. I swear to you, Adam, not one single student in a class of 150 had any idea what I was talking about when I mentioned Reuters. Wow.

They get their news from other sources. Yeah. So they can lie through their teeth to the New York Times, and the New York Times will faithfully take it down and reproduce it. And they can lie through their teeth to Dana Bash and the creeps on CNN. And those people will repeat or regurgitate whatever they say or whatever American spokesmen say, which is basically taken from an Israeli teleprompter. Admiral Kirby and Sullivan, these spokespersons for state and NSC and so on.

Basically it's an Israeli script. Nobody believes that garbage. It's on. Basically, it's an Israeli script. Nobody believes that garbage. It's lies, they know it's lies. So young people are, not all of them obviously, but a very large proportion, I would say a large majority of young people are immune to that. They get bad news, they get disinformation

as well as good news and good, but they have the ability to see what's actually going on in Gaza. I guess that cuts both ways though, right? Because folks on the other side of the conflict also use social media and will say, oh, look what I saw on my WhatsApp group, look what I saw on my Telegram group.

And, you know, I have to say, you know, when I see, oh, here's Instagram stories about Gaza, I try to bear in mind, this is an Instagram story, right? Like, I don't know how much of this, maybe it's older footage, maybe it's from a different area. You know, that happens all the time on social media. And that's, I understand, hey, the gatekeepers are down and people can get their information directly now,

but it also, you know, at the expense of verifiability and having like bubbles that we cocoon ourselves within. And this is a, this is basic media criticism, at the expense of verifiability and having like bubbles that we cocoon ourselves within. This is basic media criticism, but it has an effect on this, doesn't it? I don't think that students are more gullible than older people though. Older people, I think, believe a lot of what they see

in the mainstream corporate media. Young people are skeptical about everything. Some of them are gullible, I'm sure. Some of them fall for exactly what you're saying. Mislabeled bill footage not giving the right dates, all kinds of all kinds of gimmicks that can be used by both sides. But my sense is that the outrage that you have around Gaza among young people is a result of the fact that they are seeing some of the reality, enough of it that

they're convinced. You follow somebody over months and years. I mean, the Israelis are systematically killing the people, the providers of this, of course. They've killed 180 journalists. They target people who are providing this information with their on the present drones. But you follow these young people in Gaza who are doing this over a long period of time. And eventually, you get a sense that more or less, this is more or less reliable stuff. Now, everybody's not that discriminating, I admit.

And you probably have a lot of gullible people among young people, just like you have among older people. Yeah, but it is a new dynamic in how people are getting their information about this that wasn't the case a while ago, and it is a new dynamic and how people are getting their information about this. That wasn't the case a while ago and it's shaping public opinion. I guess, what do you see the long-term effects of that public opinion being though? Because I mean, look, just to take an example, the ICC, I believe last week issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. Nobody thinks he is going to be arrested. No. At any point by any state.

But that is a condemnation from the international community, and it seems to have no effect whatsoever. So, you know, even though public opinion is changing, what effect will that have? I mean, I do not see Netanyahu or

former Defense Minister Gallant in handcuffs being brought before the Hague, that's not going to happen. So in that sense, you're right. But it has two impacts. The first you already mentioned, it is an international condemnation. The fact that together with a bunch of other war criminals, these people have been accused of war crimes is a fact. The second thing is there's a lot of countries they don't dare go to because they just might arrest them. And I think that's a good thing.

I think people who've carried out slaughter, like a lot of Israelis are responsible for the carrying out of slaughter or starvation, like a lot of Israeli ministers and a lot of Israeli general should be afraid to go to a bunch of countries. I think that's a very good thing. Scare fear got into them. They live in a media bubble. They're told that what they're doing is fine. Public opinion is with them because of the trauma of October 7th, which is lingering. Israelis are living in a doom loop of October 7th again and again and again. So they feel reinforced in what they're doing.

But once they step outside of that bubble, as a lot of them are beginning to realize, they could be arrested. Well, I think that's a good thing. Because it might, there's some level of personal accountability for them. It's a personal effect on their own lives. And B, maybe it'll pop the bubble.

Maybe it'll make them think, well, just because we suffered on October 7th does not mean we can slaughter 45,000 Gazans and 3000 going on 4,000 Lebanese. Maybe. I mean, wishful thinking perhaps. And I mean, maybe if the U S Congress changes from a hundred percent support of sending continued arms to Israel to 60% in support, maybe that changes the Israeli government calculus a little bit of, oh wait, there actually is a political

effect when we do things, perhaps. Remember something. In addition to these 19 senators, and in addition to the 20 or 30 or 40 members of the House who would vote the same way. On the other side, on the right, you have a very strong anti-war isolationist, stop wasting money abroad, tendency in public opinion. A lot of people voted for Trump for that reason. They don't want unnecessary neocon wars abroad. They don't want the wall to wall consensus of hawks who run American foreign policy to continue to do that.

Now, there are a ton of those hawks in and around Trump's inner circle. So I'm not at all optimistic that the United States is going to stop intervening everywhere all the time whenever it feels like it. But that sentiment exists. It exists in Congress among mainly Republicans but also among Democrats, on the left of the Democratic Party and on the right of the Republican Party. That does not bode well for Israel in the long run, because it's an interventionist American foreign policy and a willingness to see Israel as a tool in that interventionist foreign policy that gives Israel the kind of military support that it gets.

That plus the military industrial complex just wants to sell guns and planes. And Israel's obviously a very good customer. But that's a trend that I would worry about if I were them. But so then how do you- Isolationist trend. So how do you square that with, Trump is certainly an isolationist, and he himself says-

Frankly, it's the best thing about it. It may be the only good thing about it. Well, just looking at a matter of a political strategy, yes, he was able to take some of the anti-war mantle that the Democrats had. It's easy to forget that Barack Obama ran as an anti-war candidate and was a relief to the American public. Oh my God, finally someone who's against this particular war. Now he turned out to be a normal American centrist bomber like almost any other president.

Joe Biden also, I think people forget, Joe Biden is very against putting soldiers, American soldiers overseas. He feels very personally strongly about that. And yet his policy overall, sending arms, Ukraine and Israel, he comes off like a normal centrist, you know, let's- He is a normal centrist. Intervenches, yes. Whatever he said to appease public opinion,

he did what they all do. So yeah. Well, if you look at, I'm just talking about, you know, the, the surge under the Obama administration, Biden was against that. You know, there are personal feelings aside, right? The way he governed the country was as a centrist in that way. And so Trump was governing. There's some question as to whether for the last year

or so he was actually governing. I think this is a Woodrow Wilson situation. A lot of people have suspected something similar. My point being, Trump was able to take that mantle of being the anti-war person, the anti-war candidate. And yet there's this famous call between him and Netanyahu where he says, oh, well, I'll let you do whatever you want, right?

And presumably he doesn't mean he's gonna cut off arms. So how do you square that? He said that in. Adam, remember what context he said that in? Okay. He said two things. He said, finish it quickly and do whatever you want. Okay?

It was linked to the idea, I think that he really doesn't want this on his plate when he comes into the White House on the 20th of January. He wants the Israelis to finish it, meaning slaughter, do whatever you need to do. But I don't want this dragging on. Now, I think that'll have zero effect on Netanyahu. Yeah, Netanyahu has made a career of thumbing his nose and giving the middle finger to American presidents. He rides high in Israel on that. Bibi is the only guy who could stand up to

the American. Bibi is, you know, I mean, it works. It's a beautiful electoral ploy in Israeli politics. And he's going to do that to Trump. I doubt that Trump will actually try and stop it. But were the unbelievable to happen, and were Trump to try and stop the war, say, in Gaza, I don't think Bibi will pay him any attention at all. He'll lie to him like he lies to other American presidents. He'll pretend, and he'll continue doing exactly what he does because it's in his political interest domestically, which is all he cares about, like every politician. You want to reelected, you don't wanna get indicted. Or if you're indicted, you don't wanna be convicted. And he really worries about that, for his good reason.

Well, look, we have to wrap up. I just wanna end by zooming out pretty far, because I have to say, of all the issues we talk about on the show, this is the one that I have trouble having hope about, right? For all of the reasons that we're talking about. And again, I love talking to you because you describe the political binds

that all of these actors are in and the pressures that are on them and the reality of the people who live in Palestine and the reality of the Israelis and what their lived experience is and the pressure that this exerts on the political system and the way it creates the impossibility of reconciliation, because the political situation's in the countries.

And so, I've been looking around going, all right, the movement, the pro-Palestine movement is calling for an immediate ceasefire. Well, there's not gonna be one, great thing to call for, but there ain't gonna be one. Unfortunately, let's keep calling for it. It's not gonna happen. So my question is, where, I mean,

do you have any next steps that you would advise anybody to take to get us closer to anything approaching, not just a humanitarian solution, but a future that isn't so fucking devastating approaching not just a humanitarian solution, but you know, a future that isn't so fucking devastating to almost everybody involved. Like what is your hope for the future, if any, and what is your path forward?

You don't have to have one because it's not, I mean, how could you, but, but do you? No, I mean, I think you, you pretty accurately described the situation. I don't, I hate to say it. Yeah. But I have very little expectation that things are going to get better in the short run, unfortunately.

I mean, my prayer, my hope is that before the rains come and before the sewage engulfs everybody in Gaza, the war will stop. But I don't think that's going to happen. It rains in the fall and the winter down there, all over the Eastern Mediterranean. And people are going to die of pneumonia by the hundreds, by the thousands. They're going to starve to death. I only hope that first of all, that war will stop. And I don't see how it can stop given where the Israeli government is going and given where our government is. But I think anything anybody can do to put pressure on our government to make them stop, especially if things stop in Lebanon and the Gaza massacre, the Gaza slaughter grinds on.

I hope that pressure can be put on our government to stop it. I know a lot of Israelis would like to stop it. I mean, people who have hostages in their family, people who have soldiers, a lot of them are really against this war. I gave an interview to Haaretz a week ago, a few days ago. It was published a few days ago, and I was really shocked by the response that I got. It's not out in English. It was published a few days ago. And I was really shocked by the response that I got. It's not out in English. It was published in Hebrew. I was shocked by the response. It was almost entirely positive. So there's a lot of Israelis, sensible Israelis, and others who I wouldn't agree with on almost anything, who really realized that this war is absolutely pointless,

and that soldiers are being killed and other people are being killed, mainly other people. But from their point of view, the important thing is soldiers, to absolutely no purpose, to absolutely with no benefit to anybody except the politicians. And that plus pressure here could maybe stop it. I can't think of anything else. It looks like the Biden administration might be able to pull out a ceasefire in Lebanon. If they do, I hope that that's true. But that will allow the slaughter in Gaza to continue. And not just slaughter, the death by starvation, the death by injury, the death by disease of hundreds, maybe thousands and thousands of people. I only hope people can continue to put pressure on.

And I know how hard that is on college campuses because of the successful repression, the coordinated, organized, systemic repression that all of the campuses, I mean, they're doing the same thing. They obviously have manuals of best practice, how to stop people from having free speech, how to interfere with academic freedom, how to persecute academics and staff who dare to speak out. They're all doing the same thing from campus to campus. In spite of that, people are still trying. And I think people have to keep this in mind. And I

hope that the horrors will stop. And in the long run, I mean, there has to be a solution where everybody has their rights. I mean, Palestinians have national rights and they have to be recognized. I don't know how, I don't know when. Israelis aren't going anywhere. You know, they're not going anywhere. There's not gonna be an elimination solution. So people are gonna have to figure out after all of this horror,

how they can figure out how to live together. And that's gonna be much harder after the past 14, 13 and a half months, but there's no alternative. Yeah, it's almost the barest form of hope is the form where you say, look, these people are gonna continue to exist and people on both sides of the conflict.

Everybody in the region is going to continue to exist as are everybody in the United States with all of our differing opinions. And at some point you say, well, existence has to be reckoned with eventually. You know, the existence of- Right, existence and rights. Yeah.

It's not just bare existence. It's rights. People have rights. They have a right to food. They have a right to medical treatment. They have a right not to live in sewage, they have a right not to have drones on their heads and people being killed day in day out, and they have national rights and other rights, religious, human, and so on.

We're a ways away from that, unfortunately. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show to talk to us about it. You have a wonderful book called The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, which has been a best seller ever since the conflict began. You can pick up a copy at our bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books, if you want a history of the conflict. Where else can people find you or are you just enjoying your well-deserved retirement at this point? I mean, you're talking to us. So. I am not enjoying my retirement because this war is still on and because I'm doing a lot of media and a lot of podcasts and a lot of talks. I gave a talk in Sweden this morning.

I'm giving a talk at somebody's house this evening here in New York city. Um, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm all over doing stuff that you'll find on YouTube and doing stuff that you find on podcasts like yours. Well, thank you so much for being out there, uh, doing it and telling the story. Uh, thank you so much for being out there doing it and telling the story. Thank you so much, Rashid. A pleasure, Adam. Take care.

Well, thank you once again to Rashid for coming on the show. If you wanna pick up a copy of his book, head to factuallypod.com slash books. Your purchase there will support not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. Of course, if you wanna support the show directly, patreon.com slash Adam Conover is the URL.

Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad free for 15 bucks a month. I'll read your name in the credits. This week, I want to thank the Dusty Shredder, Thor Tron, Samuel Montour, David Snowpeck, Eric Carlson, Scooty Chimkinuggy, and MissMeWithTheFascism. If you want to make me read whatever dumb phrase you like, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover, chipping 15 bucks a month. Of course, if you want to see me do stand up comedy live in San Francisco, Toronto, Dallas, Vermont, a lot of other great cities as well,

head to adamconover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. I want to thank my producers, Sam Radman and Tony Wilson, everybody here at Headgun for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time on Factually. I don't know anything. That was a Headgum Podcast.