21/01/2024
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow. org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn to Part 2 of our conversation with the scholar Norman Finkelstein, author of the new book, Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom. The book is being published as Israel is facing a possible International Criminal Court war crimes probe over its 2014 assault on Gaza, which killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, included over 500 children.
In his new book, Norman Finkelstein writes, “Gaza is about a Big Lie composed of a thousand, often seemingly abstruse and arcane, little lies.” What is the “Big Lie” about Gaza, Norm?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The Big Lie about Gaza is that it’s an aggressor, that Gaza is aggressing against Israel, and Israel is reacting in self-defense. It’s a double lie. The first lie is, most of the Israeli attacks on Gaza don’t even have anything to do with Gaza. So, if you take Operation Cast Lead, in 2008, '09, why did Israel attack Gaza? Not because of Gaza. Not because of anything Gaza did. The Israelis were very honest. This is revenge for Lebanon. In 2006, Israel suffered a major defeat in Lebanon against the Hezbollah, the Party of God. And then Israelis began to panic. They're losing what they call their deterrence capacity. And their deterrence capacity simply means—it’s a fancy, technical term for the Arabs’ fear of us. And they worried because the Arabs no longer fear them after this—you know, not a ragtag guerrilla army, but it’s not a big thing, either. It’s about 6,000 fighters, the Hezbollah—at the time, it was 6,000 fighters. And they effectively inflicted a defeat on the Israeli invaders of Lebanon. And so they were looking for somewhere where they could restore what they call their deterrence capacity. They didn’t want to tangle again with the Party of God, with the Hezbollah, so they targeted Gaza. Had nothing to do with Gaza. The notion that they’re defending themselves against Gaza.
The second big lie is, what does Gaza consist of. When you read the official reports, even when you read the human rights reports, they talk about this big arsenal of weapons that Hamas has accumulated. Number one, how do you know how many weapons they have? If you knew how many weapons they had—have, then you must know where they are. And if you know where they are, then Israel would preemptively strike. If it’s not preemptively struck, it’s because it doesn’t know anything about the weapons. Israel plucks numbers out of thin air, and then all the official media, and even the critical human rights organizations, repeat these numbers. They talk about Grad missiles and Fajr missiles.
What is Gaza? What are its weapons? What is its arsenal? Let’s take the last attack. We have exactly—we know exactly how much damage was done by these weapons. There were 5,000 so-called rockets and 2,000 mortars fired at—mortar shells fired at Israel. So, altogether, that’s 7,000 projectiles. You know the damage done? Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it had a diary, listing all the damage done each day. Five thousands rockets, 2,000 mortar shells. One house was destroyed. One house. How is it possible that 5,000 rockets and 2,000 mortar shells can only destroy one house? Because they’re not rockets. They’re fireworks. They’re enhanced fireworks.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by that?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, they’re not rockets. The problem is—the problem is that Hamas and Israel have a mutual stake in pretending they’re rockets. Hamas pretends they’re rockets so it can show its people armed resistance works. “See how afraid they are of us?” And Israel pretends they’re rockets so it could say, “We’re acting in self-defense.” But they are not rockets. They’re just enhanced fireworks. Even if you factor in Iron Dome, OK? I don’t have the time to go into the details, but your listeners, or some of them, know, because you had Theodore—
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what Iron Dome is.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: OK. Iron Dome was their anti—so-called anti-missile defense system. And they claim that one of the reasons so little damage was done was because of their technological wizardry, namely Iron Dome anti-missile defense system. Number one, Iron Dome was only located near the major urban centers of Israel. Number two, only 840 rockets were fired towards those major urban centers. Number three, Iron Dome, according to the official Israeli numbers, it deflected about 740 of those rockets. According to Theodore Postol, who you had on your program, the expert on anti-missile technology from MIT, he said its efficacy rate was about 5 percent, which means it deflected about 40 rockets. But let’s even take the Israeli numbers. Let’s say it deflected 720 rockets. Let’s take that number. That still leaves thousands and thousands and thousands of rockets which weren’t deflected. Forty percent of them landed in the border area where there was no Iron Dome. So how can it be that only one house was destroyed? Because they’re not rockets.
AMY GOODMAN: So why does Hamas do it?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Why does Hamas do it? I think part of it is because their, so to speak, claim to fame is they’re an armed resistance. They want to distinguish themselves from—distinguish themselves from the Palestinian Authority. So they claim, “We’re still resisting.” Number two, I think they really believe their own propaganda, because they see Israel saying, “You know, these rockets, they’re causing us, you know, so much damage and destruction and so forth.” I think part of it, you have to remember—no offense to them—no offense to them, but they live in a hermetically sealed society. Most of the Hamas leaders, they’re just recently out of spending 10 years in jail, 15 years in jail. They’re very inexperienced, because Israel eliminated the first line, the second line, the third line of the Hamas leadership. So, don’t attribute, you know, great strategic thinking to them. They’re living in this tiny, isolated, hermetically sealed enclave. And I think they actually have internalized a lot of the Israeli propaganda.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what happened in, first, Operation Cast Lead, 2008, ’09, and then Operation Protective Edge in 2014. And you referenced this in the first part of our interview, but in terms of casualties, in terms of the timing of these two attacks?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Mm-hmm. Well, I don’t want to go over ground that we’ve already looked at, so let me look at the salient points for the purposes of, you know, an interview. Number one, Operation Cast Leads begins December 26th, 2008, ends January 17th, 2009—what Amnesty International called “22 days of death and destruction.” There’s a ceasefire implemented in June 2008. Israeli official and unofficial organizations say Hamas was careful to respect the ceasefire. Hamas was careful to respect the ceasefire. Israel, however, it’s preparing, it’s preparing, it’s preparing for its attack on Gaza to revenge Lebanon. When all the pieces are in place—they spent about a year of preparation. When all the pieces are in place, they need a pretext. Well, they look around for a pretext.
And they wait 'til November 4th, the historic election, when Barack Obama is voted into office. They know all the cameras are riveted on the White House, riveted on the United States. And then they go in, kill six Hamas militants, knowing full well that there's going to be a reaction. And from that point on, it descends into tit for tat, and then, on December 26, begins the assault. It ends January 17th. And for the time—for the time, it was by far the biggest Israeli massacre committed against Gaza. And you have to bear in mind—I’m not sure how vivid your memory is, even mine is beginning to fade on it, and I study it, you know, pretty closely—public opinion radically shifted against Israel after Operation Cast Lead. It created a huge international uproar. There were, believe it or not—
AMY GOODMAN: The casualties, the number?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The death, the destruction.
AMY GOODMAN: What was it?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: There were about 6,300 homes that were destroyed, 10 Israeli civilian casualties. Palestinians, 1,400, of whom up to 1,200 were civilians. Three hundred fifty children were killed. They estimate about 600,000 tons of rubble were left behind. And there were about—believe it or not, there were about 300 human rights reports issued on what happened. And if you look at the proportions in my book, you’ll see, on Operation Cast Lead, it’s exhaustively documented across four chapters, large chapters, because there was a huge amount of information.
And it climaxed in the Goldstone Report. And the Goldstone Report was a catastrophe for the state of Israel. Goldstone is Jewish. Goldstone is a Zionist. Goldstone is a liberal.
AMY GOODMAN: Goldstone was a judge, right?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Right, he was a judge, a respected, you can even say renowned, judge. And so—and most important, he’s a Zionist. He’s on the board of directors of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and so on and so forth.
And now, he came out with a report that said the purpose of Cast Lead was to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population. Total disaster for Israel. And so, Israel goes at him ferociously.
AMY GOODMAN: And this—he came out with the report in?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The report comes out in 2009. They go—Israel goes after him ferociously. Across the spectrum, across the political spectrum, all levels of the Israeli society, and also in the United States, they go after Goldstone. And the tragedy then occurs. I go through the record very carefully in the book. Goldstone—it was almost a joke, because it was April 1st. It was April Fool’s Day. He drops a bombshell in The Washington Post.
AMY GOODMAN: This is 2011.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: He doesn’t say it literally, but it’s clear, the message he’s transmitting. He’s recanting the report, and he’s taking it back. I’ll tell you, I remember that day quite well. I was in a library—I don’t remember where—and it was like something died in me. Really, it was like something died in me, something you believed in, or you wanted to believe in. And maybe I was naive, but the Goldstone Report was a very weighty document. At one point, Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We have—we’re facing three existential threats: Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, and the Goldstone Report.” And it was a very big problem for them. You might recall, this is the point when like—when Tzipi Livni visited the U.K., she was hit with an indictment for war crimes under the universal jurisdiction.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain who she is.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Tzipi Livni was the foreign minister during the Operation Cast Lead. And she was a really wretched human being. The day after Cast Lead, the day after it ended, January 18th, she went on Israeli television, Channel 10, and she boasted, “We carried on like real hooligans in Gaza.” She boasted, “We went wild in Gaza. I ordered it. I’m proud of it, because they’re so brazen.” They’re so brazen because they have the United States protecting them, and they carry on with this kind of impunity.
And then, along came the Goldstone Report. It was like an “uh-oh” moment, because it seemed as if, for the first time, they were finally going to be held accountable. And that’s why they went mad, the Israelis. They had to stop Goldstone. He recanted. He claimed he recanted because new information had become available since the publication of his report. But I go through it systematically in the book. No new information became available.
And then the question is: Well, if no new information became available, why did he recant? One possible explanation is because all the pressure that was being put on him by the Israelis and on his family. They tried to prevent him from attending his grandson’s Bar Mitzvah in South Africa. Goldstone is South African. That’s one explanation. For reasons which I can’t go into now, because it requires detail, I don’t find it plausible. I think he was blackmailed. You know, it’s the Mossad. They’re an effective spy organization. Everybody’s got skeletons in their closet. And if you don’t have skeletons in your closet, a relative does. Goldstone’s daughter did Aliyah. She’s an Israeli citizen. I think he was blackmailed. That’s where the evidence points.
John Dugard, the respected human rights—he’s considered the father of human rights in South Africa, extremely principled guy. He’s actually the real thing. He’s a principled liberal. You know, there’s the Phil Ochs song, “Love Me”—”Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” about hypocritical liberals. He’s the real thing. He’s a real principled liberal and has been very principled on this particular issue. And he wrote a very devastating article the day after the recantation. And he said the truth of why Goldstone recanted will go with him to his grave.
Then, after that, the Israelis started to go after a lot of people. You might recall the case of Robert Bernstein, who was the founder of Human Rights Watch. Then he started to attack Human Rights Watch to try to, so to speak, defang them. He had his own bombshell he dropped—I think it was in The New York Times, but I could be mistaken—attacking Human Rights Watch. So, all the pressure is now being put on the human rights community. They start going after human rights respected jurists, like William Schabas, Christian Tomuschat. All of them have to drop out. They were supposed to be on commissions investigating Israeli crimes, for example, during Operation Protective Edge.
AMY GOODMAN: And they are from?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: U.N. They were U.N. officials, but, you know, prominent—prominent jurists, respected jurists. All of them had to drop out, because Israel started to dig up dirt. And everybody’s got dirt to be dug up on. We know that. So, now the human rights community begins to panic, enters into panic mode, because the Israelis are—they’re just out of control now.
And you saw the result after Operation Protective Edge. I’m not happy to have to say it. It’s the shortest chapter in the book. You know why? There were no human rights reports. Human Rights Watch published—for Operation Cast Lead in 2008, '09, it published seven quite substantial reports. After Operation Protective Edge, it published one tiny report, one tiny report of 15 pages. Amnesty International was the only major human rights organization that published major reports, but they were all whitewashes of Israel. They were a disgrace. I go through them systematically. The Amnesty chapter is one of the longest chapters in the book. Just going through it, as I said, Gaza is a big lie composed of tiny lies. And there's no option except to go through it point by point and to show—
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that lack of response to what happened in 2008, ’09, to what happened, the lack of investigation and holding accountable—again, the casualty—the number of casualties was at 1,600?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: There were 1,400 Palestinians killed, of whom up to 1,200 were civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: More than 350 of them children.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Three hundred fifty children, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that lack of accountability and the reports paved the way for what happened in 2014—
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Absolutely. I mean, I don’t want—
AMY GOODMAN: —with Operation Protective Edge?
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: It’s a harsh thing to say, but it was Richard Goldstone that allowed Operation Protective Edge to happen, because the Israelis were very worried after Operation Cast Lead. It looked like prosecutions were in the offing. Universal jurisdiction was happening. And then, when he killed the report, it became a green light for Israel, and it enabled them to effectively go mad.
Extended interview with scholar Norman Finkelstein, author of the new book, “Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom.”
