I was astounded when I came across this debate on RussiaToday’s CrossTalk between Dr. Norman Finkelstein, a thorn in the pro-Occupation extreme Zionist camp and Raanan Gissin, an ex-official with the Israeli Government. Raanan Gissin was formerly a senior adviser to Ariel Sharon and currently works as a PR man for Israel, making frequent public appearances on various cable and international networks.

He made statements that many Israeli spokesmen and PR gurus are reticent to make, at least to American and European viewers. If I was the Israeli Media Defense Force (yes, such groups exist) I would be praying and hoping he wont make anymore appearances on TV. In the encounter, Gissin essentially said the reason that Jews have rights over those of the Palestinians who lived on the land is because it was written in the Bible. He says his grandfather tried to be nice to the Palestinians and do business with them after taking their land but some of them had to meet his gun. He also goes on to justify the take over of Palestinian land by Jewish Eastern Europeans and Russians by saying American settlers did the same thing to Native Americans.

Norman Finkelstein calmly and logically obliterates him. This is high voltage ownage that you don’t want to miss. (Below is the video and a transcript of the relevant portion.)

Transcription begins from 6:20 of video one, up until 0:55 of the second video. Enjoy.

Video 1:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTJvx5Y-jkY&feature=related 350 300]

Video 2:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUFhWF7glJg 350 300]

Ranaan Gissin: When my great parents, came from Russia in a hundred and fifty years ago they came because there was a Bible in one hand, my grandfather came with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in another, and his hand was extended to the Arabs who lived here, some did make business with him and others who fought him had to meet the wrath of his rifle, and that’s how you live in the Middle East.

Norman Finkelstein: It is an oddity that you say you are coming and that you want to live in peace with someone you come with a rifle in one hand. I often have friends visit me at home and when they come to my home they don’t come with a rifle.

Ranaan Gissin interrupts: So did the settlers in America…

Norman Finkelstein: That’s correct. I appreciate Dr. Gissin’s comparison because I think it is exactly right, the first Euro-Americans who came to North America, came with rifle in hand because they came with the intention of displacing and replacing the indigenous population, that’s why they needed a rifle, and most Americans now a days at least acknowledge that what was done to the indigenous populations of North America was wrong and it’s exactly for the same reason that Jews from Eastern Europe had to come to Palestine with a rifle in hand because their intention was not to live with the indigenous population but to displace and dispossess it in order to create a Jewish state in an area that was overwhelmingly Arab, and uh, I think everything pretty much ensued after that, followed that basic fact. Now a days I would say there are possibilities for Israel to live at peace with what remains of the indigenous population but unfortunately Israel is unwilling to resolve the conflict along the lines of international law which would allow for some sort of co-existence between Israel and the Palestinian population that was displaced and dispossessed.

Peter Lavelle: Let’s go back to Tel Aviv, does Israel want to have peace with its neighbors and can the Palestinians have their own state as well? I mean, consistently the United States and Israel are the only two countries in the world that block this, consistently, consistently at the United Nations. So does Israel want to have peace? Go ahead Dr. Gissin.

Ranaan Gissin: Dr. Finkelstein’s formula is a formula for committing suicide, not for living in the Middle East. You have to live with the realities in the Middle East. I would like the Middle East to be like North America, I would like the Middle East, after four hundred years of bloody wars to be like Europe, but it’s not, it’s still a young region, it’s fraught with conflict, the Arab-Israeli conflict is not the only one, there are more conflicts than states in the Middle East, there are 22 states with one Israel and over thirty armed conflicts. Let’s face it, the largest conflicts are not between Israel and its neighbors but between Sunnis and Shi’ites, and Israel came with good intentions. Israel came with the intention to live alongside the Palestinians and let me say the way, when my great grandfather came from Russia, you know what he said, he had it very right and he had the Bible as his guide, he said the rights of the land are ours because this is our land. This is why I came back because this is our ancestral homeland, people who live on the land have rights and we tried to live with those people.

Peter Lavelle: We’re going to a break. Norman would you like to have a quick word before we go to the break?

Norman Finkelstein: Yes, I wonder Mr. Gissin if I came with a Bible in one hand and came to your home, I knocked on your door and said “according to my Bible, my family lived where your home is, my family lived there two thousand years ago,” would you pack up your bags and leave?

(Shouting)

I am waiting for your answer.

Gissin for some reason becomes obsessed with bringing his great grandfather into the picture. Maybe he was feeling nostalgic or reminiscing on olden’ time stories that he use to hear growing up, but it is quite chilling that he would think that the Bible is sufficient to justify taking another’s land. Just imagine a Muslim saying the same thing, “my grandfather came with a Quran in one hand and a rifle in another,” he would be branded a Jihadist terrorist in a split second. In fact, this is one of the stereotypical caricatures propagated by Orientalists and Islamophobes regarding Islam; the image of a Muslim warrior on an Arabian horse with a Quran in one hand and a sword in another.

Gissin has no intelligent rebuttal to Norman Finkelstein’s responses, his only retorts come in fumbling, high decibel, off topic spiels, at times he mumbles and stumbles over words. The most amazing portion might be where he justifies taking over Palestinian land by comparing what Jewish settlers did in Palestine to the actions of Euro-American settlers in North America. This is quite interesting because many pro-Israel defenders claim that it is not a correct analogy, and they say you can’t make that comparison; “it isn’t the same thing” we are told. There was just such a discussion in the comment section of a  previous article by our very own intrepid Danios, and yet here is an ex-Israeli official and one of their main PR men not only admitting that the comparison is true but using it as justification.

In my last article on Bill Maher I noted that one of the reasons for the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the claims that religious Jews hold on the land. For them there is no room to maneuver because as Gissin states, using the Bible as his guide, “the rights of the land are ours because this is our land.”

____________________________________________

For purposes of full disclosure, here is the third and final portion of the debate between Finkelstein and Gissin:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svENH7WGeMY&feature=related 350 300]

Max Blumenthal writes:

On April 25, over 1000 New York-area Jewish extremists gathered in midtown Manhattan to rally against the Barack Obama administration’s call for a freeze on construction in occupied East Jerusalem and to demand unlimited rights to colonize the West Bank

He video taped this hate-filled rally, and we’ll embed the YouTube clip below.  But before we do that, it’s worthwhile to comment on the issue of Israeli settlements.  It never ceases to amaze me how many Americans are so profoundly ignorant on this topic, and have no clue that “the consensus view of the international community is that the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law.”  Or as the BBC News puts it: “Settlement building in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law.”  This is the view expressed by none other than the United Nations and its judicial arm, the International Court of Justice.  Numerous resolutions have been passed against the state of Israel, demanding that illegal settlement activity be ceased.

There’s a very good reason why these settlements are illegal.  According to international law, that land does not belong to Israel; it belong to the Palestinians, who have lived there for hundreds of years.  That’s why the region is called the “Israeli Occupied Territories”.  And that’s also why they’re called Israeli settlers, not unlike the white settlers who pushed the Native Americans off their land.  Yet, we have Zionist extremists claiming that the land belongs to Israel, because “God gave it to them”, as one crazed man claims in the video below.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R611drTEHPA 300 250]

Blumenthal continues (emphasis is ours):

…The Republican Jewish Coalition was afforded a prominent role at the demonstration beside far-right groups like the Zionist Organization of America, Z Street, Americans for a Safe Israel, Christians United for Israel, and Manhigut Yehudit, an anti-democratic group that calls for theocratic rule over Israel.

Supporters of Manhigut leader and Likud politician Moshe Feiglin distributed fliers promoting Feiglin’s upcoming campaign for prime minister of Israel. An open advocate of ethnic cleansing who has proposed depriving the Palestinians of drinking water, Feiglin recently called Vice President Biden “a diseased leper.”

While the pro-settler elements rallied in Manhattan, their counterparts from the radical Kahanist movement in the Hebron-based settlement of Tel Rumeida rampaged through Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, inciting violent confrontations while announcing their intention to rid the area of its historical Arab presence…[There were] many hints that the events in Manhattan and Jerusalem were closely coordinated.

The Manhattan rally took on a distinctively Tea Party-flavor. Besides issuing maximalist calls for the expulsion of the Palestinians, demonstrators assailed Obama as a secret Muslim with no legitimate right to serve as President of the United States. When I was identified by a particularly ornery rally participant as “the self-hating asshole Max Blumenthal,” I decided it was time to make my exit.

However, as I walked down 44th Street towards the subway, an elderly man grabbed me and attempted to snatch my camera (I had seen the gun-toting Marzel use similar tactics on anti-settlement activists documenting his exploits in the West Bank). “You’re not a Jew! Give me the film!” the man exclaimed. A mob of demonstrators suddenly formed and began advancing towards me. Luckily, two NYPD officers were nearby. They pried the man off me and gave me enough time to escape. I paced for two blocks until I reached Grand Central Station then disappeared into the crowd.

Conservative blogger Matt Lewis; facts mean nothing to this guy!

Such rhetoric is not limited to street level protests.  Following the Obama administration’s call for a freeze on settlement activity, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks debated conservative blogger Matt Lewis on MSNBC; here’s what Lewis had to say about the Israeli Occupied Territories:

This is their territory.  They won it in 1967.  And essentially what we’re asking them to do is to turn over…part of their territory.  I think we should stand with Israel on this…You don’t get peace by giving away territory…Israel has continued to give away territory…You want them to give territory, [and] that’s not supporting them.

Mr. Lewis has the facts exactly wrong: it’s not their territory…at least not according to the consensus of the international community and international law.  Land acquired through conquest is illegal, and must be returned.  One can hardly imagine Lewis making the claim that the United States was forcing Saddam Hussein to “give away territory” when the demand was placed on the Iraqi military to leave Kuwait.  Israel has never given away any of its own territory, ever.  The West Bank and East Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians.  It’s amazing that neither Cenk Uygur nor the host Dylan Ratigan thought it worthwhile to mention this key fact in the debate, which just shows how biased the mainstream media in this country is when it comes to the question of Israel.

Prof. Martin Kramer advocated starving out Palestinians so that they cannot reproduce, a view that some have called "genocidal"

Prof. Martin Kramer, a right wing loon (who unlike the garden variety loon has a Harvard affiliation), advocated starving out the population of Gaza so that they could not reproduce–a view which flirts with genocide and is a form of eugenics.  We covered his hate-filled words earlier on our site.  I am a firm believer in Godwin’s Law and very rarely like using Nazi comparisons, but I think this is the rare exception in which it is more than fitting: one can well imagine Adolf Hitler contemplating blockading Jewish ghettos to starve them out and thereby prevent them from reproducing.

Anyways, this is old news.  So what’s new? Here’s what: a group of Harvard professors just published another response in the Harvard Crimson, condemning his statements:

Condemning Kramer

By Lori Allen, Vincent A. Brown, and Ajantha Subramanian
Published: Monday, April 19, 2010

Much has been made of Martin Kramer’s suggestion that Palestinians be denied food and medicine in order to weaken their opposition to the Israeli occupation. We, along with a group of 25 other professors, scholars, and Harvard alumni, add our voices to the chorus of condemnation directed towards Dr. Kramer and express our concern that the Weatherhead Center has lent him its credibility. As academics, we question both the ethical and scholarly basis of Dr. Kramer’s public statements. We maintain that this is not a question of protecting Dr. Kramer’s free speech, as was indicated by the Weatherhead Center’s response to criticism. Rather, it is about maintaining appropriate standards of ethical and intellectual conduct; Dr. Kramer’s repellent statements evince a clear failure to meet those standards.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira has been arrested for allegedly firebombing a mosque.  Rabbi Shapira published a book entitled The King’s Torah in which he claimed that it was permissible under Jewish law for a Jew to kill a non-Jewish civilian (including a child). He also advocated the expulsion or genocide of all male Palestinians above the age of thirteen.

One month ago, CNN reported:

Jerusalem (CNN) — Israeli police were questioning a relative of the late Jewish extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane in its probe of a Palestinian mosque firebombing in the West Bank earlier this month.

Today, BBC News reports:

Rabbi arrested, suspected in West Bank mosque arson

Israeli police have arrested a rabbi on suspicion of involvement in an arson attack on a mosque last month.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the head of a Jewish seminary in the settlement of Yitzhar, was arrested after he refused to co-operate, police said.

Mr Shapira denies any involvement in the attack, his lawyer was quoted in the Israeli media as saying.

Attackers burned the mosque’s carpet and a shelf of Qurans, and wrote slogans in Hebrew on the floor.

Police arrested some students from the seminary, the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva earlier this month, saying they wanted to investigate whether they were involved in the mosque attack.

Security sources said Rabbi Shapira was “suspected of involvement in an attempt to set fire to a mosque”.

Rabbi Shapira’s lawyer told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahranot that his client “denies any connection to the event”.

He was not co-operating with his investigators “in light of the Israel police’s conduct and their treatment of rabbis recently,” he said.

Rabbi Shapira published a controversial book last year which includes discussion of interpretations of the circumstances under which Jewish law permits Jews to kill non-Jews.

There have been protests by seminary students and a right-wing member of the Knesset outside the police station where he is being held.

The article then talks about extremist Jews who are threatening to attack Palestinians unless the Israeli government acts in a certain way:

Some hard-line settlers say they will attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.

It is a policy they call the “price tag”.

All Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The price tag for the settlements?  Palestinian blood.  (Sorry, VISA or Mastercard not accepted.)  The goal is to make it too costly to restrict illegal Jewish settlements.  That’s the textbook definition of terrorism:

(n) terrorism: (the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear

But I thought all terrorists are Muslims?

Native American

Daniel Pipes–one of the “Dirty Dozen” leading Islamophobes of the country according to FAIR–recently taunted Palestinian people in a hate-filled post, saying:

The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.

A sensible commentator voiced LoonWatch‘s opinion:

“Isn’t the charge (and belief) that the Palestinians are a defeated people, however true, incendiary, at worst; taunting, at best? And to what purpose?”

The dwelling of the Palestinian "defeated people"

Amazingly, Pipes sees nothing wrong with his comment, saying: “The world may quote me on it…”  Racists and bigots in general have this problem: they say something completely offensive and inappropriate, and then not only do they refuse to rescind what they said, but are actually completely unable to see what is wrong with it to begin with.  This is because their mind operates differently than the rest of us: they are oblivious to the obvious. They say what we could never say due to human decency.

However, Pipes’ comment is not without precedent.  In fact, there was another ethnic group which was constantly referred to by white racists as “a defeated people.”  I’m talking about the Native Americans.  This idea–that Native Americans are a “defeated people”–was started by the American settlers who wished to steal Native American land.  We read (emphasis is mine):

Iroquois delegates at Fort Stanwix tried to argue for the Ohio River as the boundary to Indian lands, but the American commissioners would have none of it.  “You are a subdued people,” they lectured the delegates..When chiefs of the Wyandots, Chippewas, Delawares, and Ottawas said they regarded the lands transferred by Britain to the United States as still rightfully belonging to them, the American commissioners answered them “in a high tone,” and reminded them that they were a defeated people. At Fort Finney, when Shawnees balked at the American terms [for peace] and refused…one of the American commissioners…told them to accept the terms or face the consequences.

(The American Revolution in Indian Country, by Colin Gordon Calloway, pp.282-283)

I must of course thank Daniel Pipes for using the exact same phrase and of providing the perfect analogy, as the Palestinians are in a similar situation as the one the Native Americans found themselves in when the American settlers tried to steal their land. Just like there were American settlers back then stealing land, there are today Israeli settlers trying to steal Palestinian land.

The dwelling of the Native American "defeated people"

The above quote fits the analogy perfectly: the Palestinians define their land as West of the Jordan River (consisting of the West Bank and Gaza with the right of return), just as the Iroquois argued for the boundary of the Ohio River.  The Native Americans regarded the land as theirs, despite the fact that the British had “transferred” the land to the American settlers; again, the Palestinians still regard the land as theirs, despite the British transfer of the land to Israelis after the mandate period.  And of course the American settlers were of the view that the Native Americans “must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”  It was necessary for the occupier and colonizer to imbue in the natives a learned helplessness, a feeling of absolute demoralization and self-loathing, so that they would accept terms of peace that were completely slanted against them.

It is the language of the white supremacist and colonizer which Daniel Pipes has adopted.  The object of denigration has simply changed from the “warlike” Indian “pagans” to the “warlike” brown Muslims. The American settlers indoctrinated the Native Americans with the idea that they are “a defeated people,” until they started believing it themselves:

In the past, many Indians saw themselves as a defeated people whose land was occupied and whose lives were dominated by their conquerors…[which] caused major psychological problems in Indian communities.  In some ways the Native Americans shared a defeated status with Mexican-Americans…

Their reservations became virtual prisons…At an Indian conference held during the 1950s, the speakers concluded that as far as the Siouan peoples of the Plains were concerned “most Indian assumptions are negative, unenthusiastic and fearful–the outlook of a beaten people.”

…[Whites] recognized the Indians’ precarious status…as “Persons of little worth…”

(The American Indian: Past and Present, by Roger Nicols, pp.130-131)

Daniel Pipes

This concept of “a defeated people” is intrinsically imperialistic and offensive, and is no longer appropriate to use in the post-colonial era.  People should not be conquered.  One can only imagine the reaction if the American president taunted the Iraqi people by saying that “the Iraqis are a defeated people.”  Governments and regimes may be defeated; but should we seek to defeat an entire people?  This idea of one people defeating another is archaic and incendiary.

Nowadays, Native Americans are fighting these horrible stereotypes of being “a defeated people”–a label placed on them by the settlers.  A writer for The Native American Community Explorer writes:

It was recently said by a commentator that American Indians are “a broken and defeated people” …In actuality, American Indians are probably the most stalwart people in the United States.  Consider this – the American Indians as a group of people have suffered and continues to suffer at the hands of an unjust civil and criminal system that began with Manifest Destiny and continues through today and are still a proud and strong people that are carrying on their traditions and culture with laughter and life.  Despite concerted efforts by the colonizers and the US Government to eradicate all traces of the Indigenous population – we are still here.

Palestinians can also claim to be a “stalwart people” who refuse to disappear despite the concerted efforts of another form of Manifest Destiny, i.e. Eretz Israel or “Greater Israel.”  The Palestinians can proudly proclaim: “we are still here.”

A member of the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation lamented that the racist attitudes towards Native Americans as “a defeated people” persists:

[They] see us as nothing more than a defeated, broken down race of people who constantly complain about being victimized.

In a similar vein, Pipes and company view Palestinians as a “defeated, broken down race of people who constantly complain about being victimized.”

So this is the racially loaded and highly offensive terminology that Daniel Pipes uses; in fact, it is the same language used by white supremacists.  Emmeric, a senior member and active donor to the Stormfront forum, says of the Native Americans:

They are a defeated and broken race.

Bravo, Dr. Pipes!  You are in good company!

The undertones in Daniel Pipes’s statement are racist.  His use of the demeaning phrase “a defeated people” is purposeful, and it is a slur that has a history of abuse by racists.  Therefore, he cannot hide behind the claim that it is merely a definitional understanding.  Rather, it has a deeper historical connotation, and an imperial “high tone” to it.