I devote a chapter of my forthcoming book, Gaza’s Gravediggers, to the point that describing the situation in Gaza as a “war” rather than a “genocide” egregiously distorts what is happening there.
Well-written, Prof. Finkelstein. When the dust settles, the evidence against those who aided and abetted and stood on the sidelines while their phones were buzzing with evidence after evidence of genocide will be overwhelming. There will be a reckoning, no matter where they run.
Comparing Zios to Nazis is like comparing a serial killer to a killer. Zios have systematically perpetrated war crimes since 1947 and even before. Palestinians endured and are enduring the one of the worst occupation of the modern era.
The governments of USA and UK were complicit in supporting the genocide of Jews since 1933 as well. They are complicit in the genocide of Yemenis by Saudi Arabia too. It's in their blood.
The governments of the UK and USA wanted control of access to all of the petroleum of the Middle East and North Africa in order to fuel their Navies’ stream-ships in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. During the WWI era, those ships would burn raw unrefined petroleum, replacing the coal in their coal bunkers. Some old ships still do.
The French, German, Italian and Japanese governments also wanted access to the petroleum but the British Empire also wanted to control the international shipping lanes into Russia, India and China. Not much has changed in that regard, in the past hundred years, other than advances in naval engines technologies.
Some old ships still burn raw dirty petroleum as the cheapest form of fuel, polluting the air and water in their wakes.
The mass media often mentions the petroleum-based wealth of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, but avoids mentioning that Palestinians and Venezuelans should also be wealthy due to their substantial petroleum reserves.
All of the wars in the Middle East and North Africa, for the past century have been fought for control of access to fossil fuels. Similarly, the US government has been engaged in conflicts in Central and South America for control of access to fossil fuels. The mass media portrays those as conflicts between democracy and tyranny or communism, but they are really all about fossil fuels profits for US-based corporations.
The necessary transition to clean energy poses an existential threat to the entire fossil fuels economy and business models. The petroleum of Palestine and of the entire Levant and North Africa will become irrelevant.
excelsior, ck! your golden bullet hit the quintessential morpheme, inspired by those w/ ineffable and intractable moral clarity like norman finkelstein. a shame that the zioxians and zioisraelis aren't morphINED into oblivion.
I am not allowed to say what I think of Israel since, just as in the U.S. GB have lost the freedom of speech and are not allowed to hold demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza as old retirees joining in these marches are classified as terrorists! What a ridiculous position for the government to take.
You cannot use the word WAR when an army exterminates civilians. Sadly enough they have declared their intention many times even using Biblical references to Amalek and Gerico.
This is a devastating and meticulously argued indictment. The Commission’s findings, as presented here, strip away the euphemisms of “war” and expose a systematic campaign of annihilation. Mr. Finkelstein’s framing—especially the contrast between Himmler’s grim acknowledgment and the celebratory cruelty on display—forces us to confront not just the scale of violence, but the psychology behind it. If this is not genocide, then the term has no meaning. The international community’s silence is complicity.
Good and necessary points. I fear that once the Genocide is stopped, there will be a concerted effort by the West to keep Israelis from being held to account. I can already hear Sanders droning on about the poor Israelis having been battered loose from their sanity by the evil October 7th attacks: let's show some mercy, please! Let's look forward, not backward!
Here’s some love & gratitude Norman Finkelstein, for your commitment to excellence. I have read and added most of your published artwork, into my Genocide section of our home library. For me your canvas is covered by fantastical illustrations that resemble a Dali landscape. Incredibly colorful, minutely detailed depictions of a bent and sardonic landscape, where the most bizarre distortions of behavior appear from out of the glowing serene horizons. I believe you’ve epically described, to the Nth degree, actions that should never be allowed to exist within a society that claims a chosen genetic superiority among the diversity of created populations. The melting liquid timepieces that have marked the ever so slow ticking and tocking of the minute hand; laboriously journey through the bell tolled high tech killing sprees that kept marking the hours before the now final solution. Since their founders earliest nightmares that prophesied the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population, the occupiers have annually added another hue of guilt to their undertaker’s garb. Inside the pages of your creations, every brushstroke has painted the perpetrators into a detailed corner; from which no escape is possible without walking through the evidence and coloring the souls of their foot of pride... leaving a trail of clues that even inspector LeStrade could use to convince the jury. There’s no escaping your finely defined knots that tie the occupiers to the crimes of Genocide.
I found it very cryptic that, the twisting synchronicity of life’s thread wove you back into the blood soaked tapestry of the Gaza Strip; after you were only several paces off the crossroads; drawing you back to the death march which you had abandoned. Leading you to the final conclusions which I look forward to uncovering when my copy of Gaza’s Gravediggers arrives.
There’s one more volume you, or someone else who has displayed such a strong bond to a beautiful people and majestic land, should create. I am hoping that the country I come from; which has been sending their disobedient, backsliding, Godforsaken child out into the playground of despair; to carry out the most heinously disgusting ideals of empire’s colonial rape. The Masters of Western War have pushed this I’ll fated child out the door year after year; with a we’ll equipped lunchbox of pain and poison. Supplied to overflowing with the poisonous nutrients of ever increasing devastation this obese neighborhood bully amped up it’s aggressive tendencies as the ring of hellfire melted the clock, blurring the time and enhancing this everlasting negotiated dramatic portrayal towards an illusory never-ending resolution. This country needs to have it’s gilded White House Ballroom wallpapered with the trillion dollar receipts. This red white and blue pill pusher has flown, more than enough atomic ordinance to darken the rays of our sun; supplying Dr. Evil and his morally psychotic ministries; unleashing them upon the warped stage of macabre theater that has always been playing The Massacre of the Innocents. Lighting up the circus performance with the burning Palestinian candlesticks night after Genocidal night. Never has a real estate venture cleared the land with the muzzles of tanks and bunker busting explosives from the sky. The country I come from has been running a marathon and is far out in front of the most despicable participants in this cross country effort to grab the trophy of the greatest Pariah State know to mankind. We wanted it, we allowed it, we ordered it, we coerced complicity, we funded it, we enhanced our coffers from it, we always were neck deep in the big muddy, and our big fools just told us ...Push On...as the millstone around our necks dragged us under ....
Fuck Bernie. He is just another zionist monster. Even MTG said it before Bernie could sync his lips.
Bernie wants to blame the genocide squarely on satanyahu and absolve everyone else. He thinks that he can trick us into letting everyone else go. His time will come too
Prof. Finkelstein writes: "Israel didn’t outright nuke Gaza, that’s because, functioning as Israel must within the constraints, albeit feeble, imposed by the vicissitudes of international public opinion, it couldn’t".
.
I would suggest, in addition, that the other powerful motivation as to why Israel did not nuke Gaza is that the Israelis regard the Gaza Strip, in their own words, as an important real estate opportunity, and probably did not want to contaminate their "real estate bonanza" terrain with radioactivity.
.
As Palestinians in Gaza continue to be murdered in uncountable multitudes every day, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently called Gaza a phrase "real estate bonanza":
Thank you, Dr. Finkelstein. Perhaps in a future post you can address the shame that only one (Bernie Sanders) of 100 U.S. Senators has finally stated that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.
Credit is also due to Shaun King who posted his letter to Senator Sanders that resulted one day later in a final acknowledgment from the Senator.
The question is how much longer until the majority of the U.S. Senate will ever make the same declaration.
And, typically, the liberal Zionist Sanders qualified his remarks. Sanders only did it after the UN released its report. He had denied it long, long after it was evident to anybody paying attention. That is unforgivable.
Bernie Sanders is the most dangerous Zionist in Congress. He whitewashes all of Israeli massacres with his progressive talks and “the right to defend itself”. He blames the genocide not on Israeli society that overwhelmingly supported, not on Israeli apartheid that allowed it, but just on the Israeli government. If it were bernie, he would just replace Netanyahu and continue the genocidal project with a better progressive mask and bomb children while advocating for a 2-state solution.
Was it on purpose that you ignore that the ONLY US senator who has called it a genocide before the UN report was released was not a Democrat? It was Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The left needs to recon with the fact that true change in US foreign policy will not come from the progressives, but from the heart of the MAGA movement with right wing commentators such as Tucker Carlsen, Candace Owens, Fuentes and Ian Caroll do for Palestine 1000 x more than what the “progressives” have done with their hollow empathy.
No, the Right are not going to foster "true change" in foreign policy, no more than the "progressives" will. (Jesus Christ, look at RFK.) Those people you listed, like Candace Owens, have done exactly zero for Palestine and Palestinians. They're talkers, currently obsessed with Kirk's murder, and their views on virtually everything are politically reactionary. The actual Left and socialists understand that both Parties and their media apparatchiks are in full agreement on crushing any real Left movement towards ending all wars, reining in Wall Street, stopping the genocide, providing universal single-payer, affordable housing, etc. None of those people you listed have any interest in actually improving the lives of ordinary working people.
I think you under appreciate the wave of anti-Zionism that is being spread among MAGA. The 1000 other trump scandals did not hurt the MAGA movement, but this anti-Zionism sentiment will obliterate MAGA from the inside and the true left should celebrate that.
Just like the new left movement is anti-Zionism (see Mamdani) the future conservative movement is anti-Zionism. These developments make it obvious to me that the once untouchable US-Israeli relationship is non-existent in a few years from now.
I think you don’t realize that a majority of MAGA are Xian Zionists. The white Xian Nationalists you mentioned, Carlson, Fuentes, MTG are critical of U.S. billions going to Israel more than the genocide. It’s about the money. They object to putting Israel ahead of the USA. Don’t be fooled. MAGA has no real love for Jews or Arabs - Xian or otherwise. They are antisemitic to the core. The only reason Xian Zionists support Israel is because of their apocalyptic mythology which is antisemitic. The people in the U.S. who are protesting the genocide are NOT MAGA. I agree that the U.S. progressives have been a failure - because they’re owned by establishment Democrats - who are Israel lobbyist and AIPAC whores.
Taylor Greene is a rep not a senator. But yes, Bernie was horribly slow in declaring genocide and still places the sole blame at Bibi's feet, a huge copout. His supporters and staff kept up the pressure from the beginning and to his credit he listened and shifted in the correct direction, but too little too late.
I think you are referring to the vast majority of MAGA politicians.
The people I refer to are racists, yes - but i do not understand why you specifically call them antisemites. They are against anyone who isnt alike them - that is racism. Antisemitism is not a worse form of racism.
The anti-Zionists on the right which I refer to are anti-Zionist because (not despite) they are all-round racists - they do not make exceptions to Jews or Israeli’s. They are genuine in their “America-First” rethoric and worry about the Israeli lobby while Trump and mainstream conservative politicians only talk about “America First” while they implement “Israel first” policy.
It is the internal consistency of the message of the awakened right that is fracturing the MAGA movement and freaking out Trump. It is this consistency that forms an existential threat to the US-Israeli relationship and which is pushing Israel in full panick mode - see Charlie Kirk. And it is this existential threat that should be celebrated by humanity.
My life parallels yours in so many details. The only difference being that I never adopted or accepted the identity of some of my ancestors and relatives, and, since childhood, I have consciously rejected the idea that a Jewish identity can be inherited or imposed on anyone against their will.
My concern is this: Will the Israelis, whom I know as well as I know any nationality, ever be brought to justice? Were the Nazis ever really brought to justice? If Netanyahu shoots himself in a bunker, and Ben G’vir and Smotrich are brought to trial and hanged, will the mass of grinning apes who shot children for sport, those who committed the actual killings, share the fate of the Germans who killed your grandparents and mine? Meaning, will they be allowed to reintegrate, dissolve into their own society, and be forgotten?
I don’t believe in vengeance, and I don’t believe justice has any practical meaning after crimes of this magnitude. But the idea that these criminals will find shelter in Brooklyn, or Argentina, as so many Nazis did, makes a mockery of laws and morals.
At the very least, the Six Pointed Star, like the Swastika, should forever represent everything civilized people abhor.
Many people don’t understand the difference between Jews and Zionists.
Many people don’t understand that the Nazis had the support of numerous US corporations and “personalities” including Thomas Watson (IBM), Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, General Motors, Texaco, Coca-Cola and more.
Lockheed-Martin and Boeing are major suppliers of weapons to Israel at the expense of US taxpayers.
We shall see who will be held to account, someday or never.
Thank you for mentioning these names. American senators were also applauding Hitler for handling the 'Jewish Problem' like a champ since 1933. These corporations engaged in this genocidal campaign with the bipsrtisan blessing of the senators. Let's not forget that either.
It is horrible but will not last forever. The “system” is due for a reset. When the wealth of the elites vastly exceeds that of the plebiscite, the plebeians must revolt as a matter of survival. That is according to the recorded of Western civilization of the past several thousand years.
People also say Parisians, San Franciscans, Londoners, etc without their nationality being undermined in any way. The attacks on the West Bank and on Gaza are not of the same kind and the populations of each region are facing very different threats, therefore the need to distinguish between them. As with the Londoners who underwent the Blitz while Manchester apparently did not.
Lazy language use. People are FROM somewhere. So the Palestinians in Gazza.
The people of London etc.
People From San Fran'.
Because people use it does not make it right, the powers that be use geography to seperate The People of the Earth, create conflict by calling us Gazzans, Brits, Yanks.
Any chance you will learn how to spell Gaza before you start opining that distinguishing people by the region which is particularly undergoing the attacks is somehow "lazy"? Yes, regional labels are "right". Local labels are correct, too. Words have different uses and I have explained the reason that people who need to refer to the other people who both live in Gaza and are being subjected to the specific attacks on "Gaza" will use, from time to time and when it is the most informative term to use, the word that describes their residency and their state of being under attack. That word is "Gazans".
"Palestinians" also refers to refugees the world wide, and they are not being subjected to the attacks on Gazans, for the simple reason that they are not there. They might be a Gazan in original residency, in which case someone might use the phrase "Gazan refugee" in discussing their particular situation, say for example if such a Palestinian were being interviewed. "Got it?"
Do not presume to dictate language use to those who understand it correctly.
So how is it possible the entire WORLD has no ability to do ANYTHING other than discuss the latest round of indignation? WHO could possibly have that much
Power to prevent accountability! it just might be the folks at Atrocities Emeritus
Thank you for this powerful piece. I've been noticing that even the word "genocide" has been batted around so much it is losing it's impact, and in the Western cramped and mentalized mind is in danger of becoming yet another unfelt abstraction. It should be coupled, in the same way this article does, with Extermination, a word that mirrors the way the Zionists repeatedly speak, and a word incapable of being turned into an abstraction.
The arguments over the technical classification of “Genocide” are a standard distraction technique for the Bret Stephens style apologists. Arguing about classification redirects any analysis about terrible facts to an argument about semantics.
To track the upcoming arguments regarding various atrocities that are currently being committed or are planned by Israel, JNS provides an insight into what they know is coming and how they’re going to attempt to rationalize it away.
Thank you for: "... describing the situation in Gaza as a “war” rather than a “genocide” egregiously distorts what is happening there." I find myself infuriated when Amy Goodman and others who should know better continue to describe the genocide of the Palestinians as a 'war.' It never was, not from the start. Beautifully written, thoroughly researched. All who paved the way, all who actively participated/supported, and those who could have put a stop to this and remained silent must be held to account. Even posthumously.
The evidence of this psychopathy is detailed in numerous volumes of scholarly investigation, and supported further by numerous scholarly investigations going back centuries. Again, expertly researched and laid out and concluded by Edward Gibbon’s 6 volume epic history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789); and recently “discovered” by Jewish scientists, archeologists, and historians: The majority of the world now knows that there was no Israeli kingdom of the ridiculous size sketched out by Theodor Herzl. The ancient Israelites (primarily Yemenis, Palestinians, and Iranians) simply moved and reformed as non-Jew (cf el Haik 2012; Oppenheim 2001). Israeli historians, archeologists, and scientists have stated matter-of-factly that there was NO Joshua, NO fallen walls of Jericho, NO David, NO Solomon, NO mass Jewish slavery in Egypt, NO Maccabees nor mass entrapped suicide at Masada, NO Diaspora, NO Greater Israel, and obviously, nor morals. At the time the Jews supposedly escaped from the Pharaoh, the entire land of Palestine was part of his empire, and you don’t think he could have recaptured such a mass of people “lost” in his desert for the common “40 years”; and that Moses, raised as a Prince of that empire, and familiar with the Pharaoh’s kingdom, was too stupid to read the sun and tell which way was North?!? It’s all a fairy tale for idiots like you, Zionist; and of course your idiot brothers & sisters of the Christian Zionist community. What has proved true is the Zionist penchant for lying and self-delusion.
Well-written, Prof. Finkelstein. When the dust settles, the evidence against those who aided and abetted and stood on the sidelines while their phones were buzzing with evidence after evidence of genocide will be overwhelming. There will be a reckoning, no matter where they run.
Absolutely agree. 💯
Comparing Zios to Nazis is like comparing a serial killer to a killer. Zios have systematically perpetrated war crimes since 1947 and even before. Palestinians endured and are enduring the one of the worst occupation of the modern era.
The governments of the UK and the USA have been complicit in supporting the genocide since 1948, if not longer.
The governments of USA and UK were complicit in supporting the genocide of Jews since 1933 as well. They are complicit in the genocide of Yemenis by Saudi Arabia too. It's in their blood.
The governments of the UK and USA wanted control of access to all of the petroleum of the Middle East and North Africa in order to fuel their Navies’ stream-ships in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. During the WWI era, those ships would burn raw unrefined petroleum, replacing the coal in their coal bunkers. Some old ships still do.
The French, German, Italian and Japanese governments also wanted access to the petroleum but the British Empire also wanted to control the international shipping lanes into Russia, India and China. Not much has changed in that regard, in the past hundred years, other than advances in naval engines technologies.
Some old ships still burn raw dirty petroleum as the cheapest form of fuel, polluting the air and water in their wakes.
The mass media often mentions the petroleum-based wealth of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, but avoids mentioning that Palestinians and Venezuelans should also be wealthy due to their substantial petroleum reserves.
All of the wars in the Middle East and North Africa, for the past century have been fought for control of access to fossil fuels. Similarly, the US government has been engaged in conflicts in Central and South America for control of access to fossil fuels. The mass media portrays those as conflicts between democracy and tyranny or communism, but they are really all about fossil fuels profits for US-based corporations.
The necessary transition to clean energy poses an existential threat to the entire fossil fuels economy and business models. The petroleum of Palestine and of the entire Levant and North Africa will become irrelevant.
excelsior, ck! your golden bullet hit the quintessential morpheme, inspired by those w/ ineffable and intractable moral clarity like norman finkelstein. a shame that the zioxians and zioisraelis aren't morphINED into oblivion.
Thank you, Mr. Finkelstein, for all your efforts (books, talks etc..) in bringing attention to this horrible situation.
You have done much towards awakening the global consciousness on the matter of this subject. This is the only way that change can happen.
Gd bless you and please continue your wonderful work.
I am not allowed to say what I think of Israel since, just as in the U.S. GB have lost the freedom of speech and are not allowed to hold demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza as old retirees joining in these marches are classified as terrorists! What a ridiculous position for the government to take.
Your government created Israel within its colony of Palestine, nearly a full century ago.
You cannot use the word WAR when an army exterminates civilians. Sadly enough they have declared their intention many times even using Biblical references to Amalek and Gerico.
This is a devastating and meticulously argued indictment. The Commission’s findings, as presented here, strip away the euphemisms of “war” and expose a systematic campaign of annihilation. Mr. Finkelstein’s framing—especially the contrast between Himmler’s grim acknowledgment and the celebratory cruelty on display—forces us to confront not just the scale of violence, but the psychology behind it. If this is not genocide, then the term has no meaning. The international community’s silence is complicity.
Good and necessary points. I fear that once the Genocide is stopped, there will be a concerted effort by the West to keep Israelis from being held to account. I can already hear Sanders droning on about the poor Israelis having been battered loose from their sanity by the evil October 7th attacks: let's show some mercy, please! Let's look forward, not backward!
Bernie Sanders has already declared that the Israelis are committing genocide against Palestinians.
Here’s some love & gratitude Norman Finkelstein, for your commitment to excellence. I have read and added most of your published artwork, into my Genocide section of our home library. For me your canvas is covered by fantastical illustrations that resemble a Dali landscape. Incredibly colorful, minutely detailed depictions of a bent and sardonic landscape, where the most bizarre distortions of behavior appear from out of the glowing serene horizons. I believe you’ve epically described, to the Nth degree, actions that should never be allowed to exist within a society that claims a chosen genetic superiority among the diversity of created populations. The melting liquid timepieces that have marked the ever so slow ticking and tocking of the minute hand; laboriously journey through the bell tolled high tech killing sprees that kept marking the hours before the now final solution. Since their founders earliest nightmares that prophesied the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population, the occupiers have annually added another hue of guilt to their undertaker’s garb. Inside the pages of your creations, every brushstroke has painted the perpetrators into a detailed corner; from which no escape is possible without walking through the evidence and coloring the souls of their foot of pride... leaving a trail of clues that even inspector LeStrade could use to convince the jury. There’s no escaping your finely defined knots that tie the occupiers to the crimes of Genocide.
I found it very cryptic that, the twisting synchronicity of life’s thread wove you back into the blood soaked tapestry of the Gaza Strip; after you were only several paces off the crossroads; drawing you back to the death march which you had abandoned. Leading you to the final conclusions which I look forward to uncovering when my copy of Gaza’s Gravediggers arrives.
There’s one more volume you, or someone else who has displayed such a strong bond to a beautiful people and majestic land, should create. I am hoping that the country I come from; which has been sending their disobedient, backsliding, Godforsaken child out into the playground of despair; to carry out the most heinously disgusting ideals of empire’s colonial rape. The Masters of Western War have pushed this I’ll fated child out the door year after year; with a we’ll equipped lunchbox of pain and poison. Supplied to overflowing with the poisonous nutrients of ever increasing devastation this obese neighborhood bully amped up it’s aggressive tendencies as the ring of hellfire melted the clock, blurring the time and enhancing this everlasting negotiated dramatic portrayal towards an illusory never-ending resolution. This country needs to have it’s gilded White House Ballroom wallpapered with the trillion dollar receipts. This red white and blue pill pusher has flown, more than enough atomic ordinance to darken the rays of our sun; supplying Dr. Evil and his morally psychotic ministries; unleashing them upon the warped stage of macabre theater that has always been playing The Massacre of the Innocents. Lighting up the circus performance with the burning Palestinian candlesticks night after Genocidal night. Never has a real estate venture cleared the land with the muzzles of tanks and bunker busting explosives from the sky. The country I come from has been running a marathon and is far out in front of the most despicable participants in this cross country effort to grab the trophy of the greatest Pariah State know to mankind. We wanted it, we allowed it, we ordered it, we coerced complicity, we funded it, we enhanced our coffers from it, we always were neck deep in the big muddy, and our big fools just told us ...Push On...as the millstone around our necks dragged us under ....
✌🏼🇵🇸🇱🇧🇸🇾🇮🇷🇮🇶🇾🇪❤️🙏🕉
Yeah, just a few days ago.
Fuck Bernie. He is just another zionist monster. Even MTG said it before Bernie could sync his lips.
Bernie wants to blame the genocide squarely on satanyahu and absolve everyone else. He thinks that he can trick us into letting everyone else go. His time will come too
TY for speaking what is also in my mind and my furiously broken heart 💔❤️🇵🇸🕊🕊🕊
.
Prof. Finkelstein writes: "Israel didn’t outright nuke Gaza, that’s because, functioning as Israel must within the constraints, albeit feeble, imposed by the vicissitudes of international public opinion, it couldn’t".
.
I would suggest, in addition, that the other powerful motivation as to why Israel did not nuke Gaza is that the Israelis regard the Gaza Strip, in their own words, as an important real estate opportunity, and probably did not want to contaminate their "real estate bonanza" terrain with radioactivity.
.
As Palestinians in Gaza continue to be murdered in uncountable multitudes every day, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently called Gaza a phrase "real estate bonanza":
.
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-gaza-real-estate-bonanza-bezalel-smotrich-donald-trump-2131757
.
Thank you, Dr. Finkelstein. Perhaps in a future post you can address the shame that only one (Bernie Sanders) of 100 U.S. Senators has finally stated that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.
Credit is also due to Shaun King who posted his letter to Senator Sanders that resulted one day later in a final acknowledgment from the Senator.
The question is how much longer until the majority of the U.S. Senate will ever make the same declaration.
And, typically, the liberal Zionist Sanders qualified his remarks. Sanders only did it after the UN released its report. He had denied it long, long after it was evident to anybody paying attention. That is unforgivable.
Exactly. He is a disappointment, so is AOC. This duo has been trying to cash in on the genocide and get into white house after trump.
Bernie Sanders is the most dangerous Zionist in Congress. He whitewashes all of Israeli massacres with his progressive talks and “the right to defend itself”. He blames the genocide not on Israeli society that overwhelmingly supported, not on Israeli apartheid that allowed it, but just on the Israeli government. If it were bernie, he would just replace Netanyahu and continue the genocidal project with a better progressive mask and bomb children while advocating for a 2-state solution.
Was it on purpose that you ignore that the ONLY US senator who has called it a genocide before the UN report was released was not a Democrat? It was Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The left needs to recon with the fact that true change in US foreign policy will not come from the progressives, but from the heart of the MAGA movement with right wing commentators such as Tucker Carlsen, Candace Owens, Fuentes and Ian Caroll do for Palestine 1000 x more than what the “progressives” have done with their hollow empathy.
No, the Right are not going to foster "true change" in foreign policy, no more than the "progressives" will. (Jesus Christ, look at RFK.) Those people you listed, like Candace Owens, have done exactly zero for Palestine and Palestinians. They're talkers, currently obsessed with Kirk's murder, and their views on virtually everything are politically reactionary. The actual Left and socialists understand that both Parties and their media apparatchiks are in full agreement on crushing any real Left movement towards ending all wars, reining in Wall Street, stopping the genocide, providing universal single-payer, affordable housing, etc. None of those people you listed have any interest in actually improving the lives of ordinary working people.
I think you under appreciate the wave of anti-Zionism that is being spread among MAGA. The 1000 other trump scandals did not hurt the MAGA movement, but this anti-Zionism sentiment will obliterate MAGA from the inside and the true left should celebrate that.
Just like the new left movement is anti-Zionism (see Mamdani) the future conservative movement is anti-Zionism. These developments make it obvious to me that the once untouchable US-Israeli relationship is non-existent in a few years from now.
Fuck AIPAC. Free Palestine.
I think you don’t realize that a majority of MAGA are Xian Zionists. The white Xian Nationalists you mentioned, Carlson, Fuentes, MTG are critical of U.S. billions going to Israel more than the genocide. It’s about the money. They object to putting Israel ahead of the USA. Don’t be fooled. MAGA has no real love for Jews or Arabs - Xian or otherwise. They are antisemitic to the core. The only reason Xian Zionists support Israel is because of their apocalyptic mythology which is antisemitic. The people in the U.S. who are protesting the genocide are NOT MAGA. I agree that the U.S. progressives have been a failure - because they’re owned by establishment Democrats - who are Israel lobbyist and AIPAC whores.
Taylor Greene is a rep not a senator. But yes, Bernie was horribly slow in declaring genocide and still places the sole blame at Bibi's feet, a huge copout. His supporters and staff kept up the pressure from the beginning and to his credit he listened and shifted in the correct direction, but too little too late.
I think you are referring to the vast majority of MAGA politicians.
The people I refer to are racists, yes - but i do not understand why you specifically call them antisemites. They are against anyone who isnt alike them - that is racism. Antisemitism is not a worse form of racism.
The anti-Zionists on the right which I refer to are anti-Zionist because (not despite) they are all-round racists - they do not make exceptions to Jews or Israeli’s. They are genuine in their “America-First” rethoric and worry about the Israeli lobby while Trump and mainstream conservative politicians only talk about “America First” while they implement “Israel first” policy.
It is the internal consistency of the message of the awakened right that is fracturing the MAGA movement and freaking out Trump. It is this consistency that forms an existential threat to the US-Israeli relationship and which is pushing Israel in full panick mode - see Charlie Kirk. And it is this existential threat that should be celebrated by humanity.
Free Palestine.
Professor,
My life parallels yours in so many details. The only difference being that I never adopted or accepted the identity of some of my ancestors and relatives, and, since childhood, I have consciously rejected the idea that a Jewish identity can be inherited or imposed on anyone against their will.
My concern is this: Will the Israelis, whom I know as well as I know any nationality, ever be brought to justice? Were the Nazis ever really brought to justice? If Netanyahu shoots himself in a bunker, and Ben G’vir and Smotrich are brought to trial and hanged, will the mass of grinning apes who shot children for sport, those who committed the actual killings, share the fate of the Germans who killed your grandparents and mine? Meaning, will they be allowed to reintegrate, dissolve into their own society, and be forgotten?
I don’t believe in vengeance, and I don’t believe justice has any practical meaning after crimes of this magnitude. But the idea that these criminals will find shelter in Brooklyn, or Argentina, as so many Nazis did, makes a mockery of laws and morals.
At the very least, the Six Pointed Star, like the Swastika, should forever represent everything civilized people abhor.
Many people don’t understand the difference between Jews and Zionists.
Many people don’t understand that the Nazis had the support of numerous US corporations and “personalities” including Thomas Watson (IBM), Henry Ford, Charles Lindberg, General Motors, Texaco, Coca-Cola and more.
Lockheed-Martin and Boeing are major suppliers of weapons to Israel at the expense of US taxpayers.
We shall see who will be held to account, someday or never.
Thank you for mentioning these names. American senators were also applauding Hitler for handling the 'Jewish Problem' like a champ since 1933. These corporations engaged in this genocidal campaign with the bipsrtisan blessing of the senators. Let's not forget that either.
It’s a two tier justice system…. The plebeians and the elite. For them
It’s more appropriately “just-us”
It is horrible but will not last forever. The “system” is due for a reset. When the wealth of the elites vastly exceeds that of the plebiscite, the plebeians must revolt as a matter of survival. That is according to the recorded of Western civilization of the past several thousand years.
https://ia801701.us.archive.org/6/items/durant-will-the-lessons-of-history_202012/Durant%20Will%20-%20The%20Lessons%20of%20History.pdf
My fears too.
They are PALESTINIANS, not Gazzans. Should know better ffs.
People also say Parisians, San Franciscans, Londoners, etc without their nationality being undermined in any way. The attacks on the West Bank and on Gaza are not of the same kind and the populations of each region are facing very different threats, therefore the need to distinguish between them. As with the Londoners who underwent the Blitz while Manchester apparently did not.
Lazy language use. People are FROM somewhere. So the Palestinians in Gazza.
The people of London etc.
People From San Fran'.
Because people use it does not make it right, the powers that be use geography to seperate The People of the Earth, create conflict by calling us Gazzans, Brits, Yanks.
Got it?
Any chance you will learn how to spell Gaza before you start opining that distinguishing people by the region which is particularly undergoing the attacks is somehow "lazy"? Yes, regional labels are "right". Local labels are correct, too. Words have different uses and I have explained the reason that people who need to refer to the other people who both live in Gaza and are being subjected to the specific attacks on "Gaza" will use, from time to time and when it is the most informative term to use, the word that describes their residency and their state of being under attack. That word is "Gazans".
"Palestinians" also refers to refugees the world wide, and they are not being subjected to the attacks on Gazans, for the simple reason that they are not there. They might be a Gazan in original residency, in which case someone might use the phrase "Gazan refugee" in discussing their particular situation, say for example if such a Palestinian were being interviewed. "Got it?"
Do not presume to dictate language use to those who understand it correctly.
An excellent and succinct summary of the current state the genocide in Gaza. Really happy Norman is back on Substack.
The other day, the UN had a vote to have a cease fire and return the hostages. Obviously the US vetoed it.
However, even if the cease fire resolution passed, what power do they have to enforce this? Israel could just continue bombing etc.
It's all for show and they use the single veto to pin blame on one scapegoat.
But they can't do anything. Makes you think why they got rid of the League of Nations to replace it with the toothless UN.
The USA and UK created the UN in order to rule the world. UN headquarters are in New York City, by design.
So how is it possible the entire WORLD has no ability to do ANYTHING other than discuss the latest round of indignation? WHO could possibly have that much
Power to prevent accountability! it just might be the folks at Atrocities Emeritus
Along these same lines of naming it a genocide yet manipulating the context, current intent, and historical data:
https://aje.io/j9qk5f
Thank you for this powerful piece. I've been noticing that even the word "genocide" has been batted around so much it is losing it's impact, and in the Western cramped and mentalized mind is in danger of becoming yet another unfelt abstraction. It should be coupled, in the same way this article does, with Extermination, a word that mirrors the way the Zionists repeatedly speak, and a word incapable of being turned into an abstraction.
The arguments over the technical classification of “Genocide” are a standard distraction technique for the Bret Stephens style apologists. Arguing about classification redirects any analysis about terrible facts to an argument about semantics.
To track the upcoming arguments regarding various atrocities that are currently being committed or are planned by Israel, JNS provides an insight into what they know is coming and how they’re going to attempt to rationalize it away.
https://www.jns.org/the-fine-print-of-the-famine-declaration-in-gaza/
Thank you for: "... describing the situation in Gaza as a “war” rather than a “genocide” egregiously distorts what is happening there." I find myself infuriated when Amy Goodman and others who should know better continue to describe the genocide of the Palestinians as a 'war.' It never was, not from the start. Beautifully written, thoroughly researched. All who paved the way, all who actively participated/supported, and those who could have put a stop to this and remained silent must be held to account. Even posthumously.
Dr Finkelstein, please, comment on the “recognition” of a Palestinian “state” as of yesterday.
Thank you for this most elucidating and thorough post.
The evidence of this psychopathy is detailed in numerous volumes of scholarly investigation, and supported further by numerous scholarly investigations going back centuries. Again, expertly researched and laid out and concluded by Edward Gibbon’s 6 volume epic history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789); and recently “discovered” by Jewish scientists, archeologists, and historians: The majority of the world now knows that there was no Israeli kingdom of the ridiculous size sketched out by Theodor Herzl. The ancient Israelites (primarily Yemenis, Palestinians, and Iranians) simply moved and reformed as non-Jew (cf el Haik 2012; Oppenheim 2001). Israeli historians, archeologists, and scientists have stated matter-of-factly that there was NO Joshua, NO fallen walls of Jericho, NO David, NO Solomon, NO mass Jewish slavery in Egypt, NO Maccabees nor mass entrapped suicide at Masada, NO Diaspora, NO Greater Israel, and obviously, nor morals. At the time the Jews supposedly escaped from the Pharaoh, the entire land of Palestine was part of his empire, and you don’t think he could have recaptured such a mass of people “lost” in his desert for the common “40 years”; and that Moses, raised as a Prince of that empire, and familiar with the Pharaoh’s kingdom, was too stupid to read the sun and tell which way was North?!? It’s all a fairy tale for idiots like you, Zionist; and of course your idiot brothers & sisters of the Christian Zionist community. What has proved true is the Zionist penchant for lying and self-delusion.
https://griobhtha1.substack.com/p/dear-zionist