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“I think the reasonable conclusion is that Gaza is no more. There's nothing left in Gaza.”
Monday the 7th marked one full year of genocide in Gaza, the darkest era of a decades-long occupation by Israel, which has now begun to spread into the broader Middle East region.
This week we’re joined by Gaza expert and Useful Idiots fan-favorite Norman Finkelstein to look back on this genocidal year.
Norm points out that this is not, as Western and Israeli media claims, an “Israel-Hamas war.” This is not war. This is genocide. And Israel is not targeting Hamas; they are killing civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, and picking off journalists, health workers, and children.
“I read this letter,” he tells us, “from sixty-five physicians from around the world who gave testimony as to what they observed. And every one of the physicians testified that the children who were coming into the hospital had bullet wounds to the skull or to the chest. No shrapnel. It wasn't bombs and shrapnel. It was targeted bullet wounds to the skull and to the chest of children. What does that have to do with war?”
“There were fifty-four disabled children who used the school in the convent complex. They fired two shells at it. What does that have to do with war?”
Norman also recalls meeting Hezbollah members, and shares what he got wrong about the organization. “Israel, he says, “is willing to kill for material benefit, and Hezbollah and Hamas are willing to die for survival” He also recounts his time meeting Hamas leaders, and explains Israel’s unfair advantage:
“Israel is the entrenched, concentrated manifestation of Western imperialism. It's got deep roots. It's got the whole Western system behind it, that Western system which won't let go. It will nuke China before it lets go of its global dominance. And in order to defeat it, it requires a very long-term struggle and intense calculation.”
Subscribe for the full interview where Norman explains this despair, and the generational hopelessness which lacks historical precedent.
“Our generation,” he laments, “has, for good reason, lost the belief, the conviction that we have the force of history behind us. That we have the force of justice behind us. Our generation believes there's a good chance we'll be defeated. There's a good chance we're not going to win.”
But that doesn’t mean we should give up.
“The only thing I can say as a conclusion is you never know. You can only know one thing for certain: If you do nothing, it can only get worse.”
It’s that certainty that he says keeps him going. “If you resist, there are moments where it looks very grim. And then there's that folk song, it's always darkest before the dawn. It's this hope that keeps me carrying on. It's always darkest before the dawn.”
“There's another reality. There's something in the human constitution that simply can't do nothing. In the face of such death and devastation, you just can't.”