My blog this week is taken almost entirely from a speech given by author and activist Norman Finkelstein, titled Did Israel Have the Right to Self-Defense After October 7th? The subtitle for the speech is: Palestinians Tried EVERYTHING before October 7th – A Slave’s Case for Resistance. It is viewable on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_wcyGPMDh0.
Dr. Finkelstein has a PhD in political studies from Princeton University and has written extensively on the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this talk, he poses the questions as to whether there was justification for the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, and whether Israel has been justified in treating its response as self-defence.
His talk centres in part around the difference between war and genocide. Specifically, war aims to inflict a military defeat on the enemy army, which can at times include targeting civilian infrastructure and while civilians might be killed, that’s not the aim. A genocide is the opposite; it’s aim is to annihilate a civilian population. That is the primary goal.
Given that there was no military engagement with Gaza after October 7th, he affirms that Israel’s attacks on Gaza were not a war of self-defence but a genocide. Israel’s actual goal has been to get rid of the Gazan population.
Dr. Finkelstein then goes back to the question – which he notes is a legitimate question – did Israel have a right to self defence after October 7th?
First, he confirms that significant atrocities did occur during the attack, saying it is pointless to deny that fact. The question is, how do you understand what happened on October 7th?
He begins by presenting a hypothetical situation in which an African-American and 40 others together go on a murderous rampage. The leader’s order is to kill all white people. They go from house to house and they kill everybody. Any reasonable, sane person would condemn this murderous rampage.
He then qualifies the scenario by specifying that all 40 of those individuals were slaves for their entire lives. In a last fit of desperation, they engaged in this revolt to overthrow the system of slavery. This is what occurred in the 1831 slave rebellion, which was led by Nat Turner.
Abolitionists — those who fought to end slavery – refused to condemn Turner. They acknowledged that horrible things had happened during the rebellion but countered that by treating people the way those slaves had been treated, there should be no surprise that there was retribution.
Dr. Finkelstein then goes on to ask if our reaction would be any different in those circumstances. He wonders what history’s final verdict is going to be about the October 7th Hamas attack.
He raises the question about whether it is valid to compare the conditions suffered by U.S. slaves to the conditions faced by people in Gaza? In answering, Finkelstein reviews Gaza’s situation since the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. Details include:
- During the forming of the Israeli state, approximately 300,000 Palestinians were expelled to the Gaza Strip, where they were increasingly restricted and controlled.
- By 1967, Senator Albert Gore Sr. (Al Gore’s father) visited Gaza and then reported back to the U.S. Senate that Gaza was a vast concentration camp in the sand.
- There was no improvement over many years. In 2004, the head of Israel’s National Security Council, Giora Eiland, once again described Gaza as a huge concentration camp.
- In 2006, an election among the Palestinians in the occupied territories produced a surprising win by Hamas.
- Shortly thereafter, Israel imposed a complete blockade on people and goods in and out of the Gaza Strip. Residents of Gaza were placed on a starvation plus diet. Israeli leaders calculated the caloric intake of the population of Gaza and then admitted just enough food that there wouldn’t be malnutrition or starvation.
- As early as 2007, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, said Gaza’s whole civilization has been destroyed.
- Subsequent years saw futile attempts to create a separate Palestinian state, punctured by numerous Israeli military incursions and killings in the area. Targets were often residents, including children, and much needed civilian infrastructure.
- Did Hamas bring this upon itself and upon the people of Gaza? Hamas has tried to find diplomatic solutions. A 2009 study by the U.S. Institute of Peace concluded that Hamas had been had sent repeated signals that it may be ready to begin a process of coexisting with Israel. Israel would not accept anything short of defeat by Hamas. Hamas has also tried working with international human rights organizations. Israel has refused to cooperate.
In the end, Dr. Finkelstein says that every avenue Hamas tackled to free Gaza from Israel’s catastrophic treatment proved to be a dead end. With the consequence that “Gaza’s young militants had been born into, languished in, and would almost certainly have died in that huge concentration camp.”
He concludes by stating, “Israel had forfeited any moral right of self-defence, just as the slave south forfeited any moral right to hang Nat Turner.”
Even after Norman Finkelstein’s lecture, I still unequivocally and without qualification condemn the terrorist acts of Hamas on Oct. 7th. But I must admit Dr. Finkelstein does give us food for thought.
What do you think?
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