July 23, 2025 • 41 mins
This week, we are joined by activist, attorney, and Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat, to contextualize the ways the US is intrinsicly implicated in the genocide, and how the lies around Zionism mirror the lies around captialsm and racism.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Small help from small, small human areas.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Small It's so funky. So I have said this quite often.
My favorite small doses people that post October seventh, the
one positive thing about the algorithm was that it truly
(00:31):
opened my eyes and expanded my network to include individuals
that I never would have come across, who are brilliant
beyond their knowledge of Palestine and who have really just
become resources for me, not only just intellectually, but emotionally, mentally, etc.
And Etiquette is an example of one of those people.
(00:53):
Sonora is Palestinian. She is an activist. She is a
university professor, a legal scholar, a human rights attorney. She
is currently a professor at Rutgers specializing in international studies,
and her primary focus is unsurprisingly Israeli Palesinian conflict. Now
she was born here in Cali. However, she is very
(01:14):
much involved in the international world of politics on a
global level, and so today's episode Side.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Effects of the Politics of Palestine.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Is really important because I feel like so many of
us in the United States have a false understanding of
how we as United Statesians and how Palestine connect and
also how we exist in the grand global scheme of
things and who better to talk to about that than
(01:46):
an international lawyer and a professor, an educator who has
dedicated her life to really getting into the bare bones
and nuts and bolts of this which many people love
to say is such a convoluted difficult and it's no
more complicated than any other situation where a subtler colonial
(02:06):
state is trying to take and suggesting that it is
okay and that it should be done, and jumping through
all the hoops, doing all the simone biles mental gymnastics
to manufacture consent. So this episode is one that you're
going to have to listen to very closely, and I
don't even doubt that you'll probably have to listen to
it twice because it is so chock full of nuance
(02:32):
and of really having a broader conversation around how from
my experience as a black person in America, how we
are looking at the politics of Palestine, how I am
seeing folks that are considered my community misnomering the politics
of Palestine, and to be able to have those conversations
with other people is incredibly necessary. And when I say
(02:53):
other people, I mean other people who are not black.
It is absolutely I stand on this at this point
in time, when people are saying we're just hanging out
with other black people, We're just minding our black business,
et cetera. That deeply disturbs me because I feel like
it is so wildly counterintuitive to actually creating a safe community,
(03:17):
because we have seen on so many occasions that just.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Being black don't make you all at right.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We understand that skin folk is not always kinfolk, and
so it becomes more about your value systems being aligned
than anything. I also feel like you're gonna need your
dictionary because let me just tell you, I wrote down some.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Of the words that Norah uses in this interview.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Inculcate, obfuscate, proliferation, exogynous, qualitative, and intimate, not intimate like
Victoria's secrets intimate. So listen your dinner with an edge, KEDA.
All right, this is not this is It's not gonna
be somebody who is going to kind of hold your
(04:04):
hand through the conversation.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
But that being said, you're gonna learn.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And I don't do this often, but I will say
that I feel like it is worth the five dollars
if you have it to head on over to Patreon
for the Seal Squad only segment. Every time we do
the Seal Squad only segment, it's always dope because again
it's an expansion of the conversation, but this particular level
(04:29):
of conversation you can really only get from a few
people who have not only lived this, but studied this
and had to teach it. That last part is the part,
and so you're essentially getting a class from new to
etiquotts in a very safe space.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Which is the Seal Squad.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
So hopefully you will make your way over there, but
if not, you're still getting a robust episode right here
of the side effects of the politics of Palestine with
Nuda Edicuott. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome the Great nod To Etiquette to.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
All Doses podcast.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Thank you, Amende Fields.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, we worked hard to do this. This has been
in the works. But people not referring to myself are traveling,
they're speaking, they're they're educating, they're lawyering. I mean, you're
you're living a life of service. And I really feel
great that we were able to get you on the
(05:39):
show because I pride myself.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
On having like really smart friends and so.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Well, you know, I was saying this off air, but
you know, we're both teachers and students, Like I think
that that's what makes a teacher is being a perpetual student.
And so it's really great to be here with you.
The last time I witness you teach, you were teaching
us in your One Woman's show, Thank You. When our
ancestors came back, they had a lot of.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Things to say they do about them.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And the thing that really resonates with me, and I
know people say this all the time, but the thing
that really really resonates with me is when you embodied
Harriet Tubman, who comes back and is basically talking to
folks who don't want to get off the plantation because
the road to freedom is unknown, and there's a way
in which people continuously choose what they know, even if
(06:30):
they know they deserve far better, because they're afraid of
the unknown. And that just sticks with me all the
time when I look at the intransigence around us.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Listen, I mean the show is written in a fashion
where it is malleable to the changing times that we're in,
which change every five seconds. And I only do free
versions of the show now, and so I'll be doing
another presentation of the show shortly and one of the
things that has really kind of grown since that moment
is my awareness that a lot of people they don't
(07:03):
even realize like new forms of plantation that they're on,
you know.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I feel that's been a.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Thing that I haven't like even this the real in
the response to or the lack thereof to October seventh,
really just seeing how Democrats are full of it. And
I think that's something that for many people, they're just like, wait,
I can't accept that, because that would bottom out my
whole false sense of safety everything.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yeah, I think that there's a way in which, so
I guess if we're thinking about the US political establishment,
we'll keep American society on the side. And I was
born and raised here, but like obviously I'm Palestinian, and
so I also have a transnational identity, the daughter of
immigrants and so, but I don't exclude myself from a critique.
I have a scathing critique of the way in which
scathing those who are you know, in the United States
(07:51):
are inculcated in a particular way where they really buy
into empire and they invisibilize it. But for the political
establishment in particular, they're not only buying into it, but
they're not really serving their purpose because now their logics go,
how do we get elected? Are we meeting our fundraising marks?
You know, what are you doing? You know in a
(08:13):
way that principles fall out the bottom.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
They don't serve a purpose. Principles literally are in the way.
It's like it doesn't.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Oh yeah, that's for the naive and the idealistic right
for you to have principle, that's not who gets into politics.
Like those of us who want to be in service
serve outside of those frameworks. So it's not to be
swept up by them. But I remember, really, Amanda, like
I wake up every day like it's like a roulette.
Who am I going to be angry at today? Whoe's
going to be kissing me off? And be the most disappointing.
(08:43):
And there's a lot of competition in this field. Folks
are just scrambling over. But I remember it hit a
new kind of threshold when I saw Corey Booker do
that twenty five our filibuster and you know, you and
I are not going to be taken. And that wasn't
even what angered me because he showed us who he
(09:03):
was a long time ago. Yeah, but what angered me
were the folks and a lot of racialized humans right
in this world who have suffered from that kind of racialization,
who like fell over themselves to compliment him about saving democracy.
That man voted to continue arming Israel, and I just
(09:24):
thought to myself, we have been warning everybody for at
that point, what was it, seventeen months, that there's a fire,
there's a fire, there's a fire, there's a fire that
can consume us all protect yourselves and Democrats rather than
get in line and want to put out that fire,
basically talking out of two sides of their mouth are
funding Israel and pouring kerosene on the fire, and then
(09:47):
talking about how they want to save themselves from this,
you know, fascism. It's like, you're not going to get
it right for us. You're not going to get it
right for us.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I've been trying to make that as simplified a concept
as possible for folks, and they still say, you still
should have voted for Kamala.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I'm like.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
That, right, like you don't you know? I thought, who
was it, Albert Tiscano? I think it was who? Really?
You know, we call when we see Trump we can
stay with our chest out, this is what fascism looks like, right, yes, say,
strong military, racialized, megali manular authority, not a separation of powers.
(10:29):
But then what were the Dems doing, because that, if
you don't want to call it fascism, that was at
best liberal authoritarianism, yes, which is doing much of the
same things. There wasn't a balance of power. I'm sorry,
there was no.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
We were getting primary the candidate.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
They never primaried the candidate. They didn't listen to eighty
four percent of.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Their base base.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
They talked a whole talk having you know, Tanahasi wrote
about this where they had obviously, you know, but for
those where they had, like the Central Park five in
the audience who were historically excluded and maligned at the
same time that they wouldn't let a Palestinian member of
the Democratic Party speak for three minutes with zero irony.
Anthony Blincoln lied under oath, Joseph Biden lied twice about
(11:16):
seeing pictures of when a picture didn't even exist. They
didn't follow US law. They were denigrating international institutions. What
do you think that was? Because what they had, like
a black woman at the UN Security Council, that that
was okay, because they were, you know, diversifying our empire.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I don't even think people got that far. I genuinely
don't even think people got that far.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
That sucks.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I think ultimately they didn't get past themselves.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I don't even think people got as political, which is
why I wanted to do this episode with you, because
you are an expert at this and contextualizing how what
is happening and what has been happening in Palestine is
an international and global that's right issue and is not
solely My least favorite phrase I've been hearing from everyone,
is this thing happening over there.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
People love to say, oh, that's happening over there.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
We need to focus on the United States. When I
have conversations with people who push back on or have
some type of issue which is psychotic, but with me
saying I am about the forget a ceasefire, I am
(12:28):
about the complete liberation of Palestinian people from under apartheid,
from under Israeli rule. When people say, well, Israel has
the right to exist, and I'm just like, no country
has the right to exist. There's no all these countries
are made up anyway. For the record, Like if you
look at all the lines. They were drawn by people
that didn't know the people, and relatively young.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Even the concept of the name of the state is
relatively young. Our world has been historically organized under empire.
The idea that peoples would govern themselves is a relatively
new ideas and one that begins to crystallize really after
the First World War, which is so recent there it's
like one hundred and some years ago. Like the World
(13:10):
War ends in nineteen seventeen, right, that's when we in
nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Is that.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I just had journalist Karen Atia on Views from Amanda
Land and she was talking about how, in her research
for the course that she is teaching, since Columbia canceled it,
race and gender in international journalism, I think it's called
But she was talking about how, after the end of
World War One, Woodrow Wilson, and I did not know this,
Woodrow Wilson not only resegregated the federal government, but that
(13:38):
he also refused to include in the not the NATO,
the League of Nations agreement language about anti discrimination.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah, so this was the Japan introduced a racial equality
clause into the League of Nations charter. And yes, it
wasn't just the The US was certainly opposed to it,
but so is France, and so are the UK, and
Japan was a sovereign state at this moment and at
the time. It's also significant. Wodrow Wilson is often attributed
(14:11):
with the idea of the right to self determination because
of his fourteen points, but he was hand in hand
with Jan Smutt, who was, you know, an Englishman who
becomes a general an africannor general in South Africa, who
is basically insisting on segregation as the best way forward
because mixing of the races is not good for blacks
(14:33):
or for whites. So they're opposed to enslavement. But they
think that in order to actually have equality, you know,
other non whites, non Anglo Saxons specifically have to go
through a development like hundreds of years of development like
Anglo Saxons did before they're able to govern themselves. I mean,
(14:54):
this is explicitly racist, right.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
As if we have not had entire kingdom all over
this world.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Oh, come on, come on, forget about it. Like the
idea that the Dark Ages is European history correct, and
that they emerge from that dark age. Their enlightenment is
attributed to Islamic Empire, which translated Aristotle and other European
thinkers into various languages. Forget about it. But back to
(15:23):
this idea of the state being young, it's a really
young idea, and it was one way to organize ourselves
outside of the boot of empire, thinking that the state
would be a way to manifest our ability to govern ourselves.
But for the Third World. It was also for colonized
peoples in the Third World, because most of the world
is colonized. I mean, think about up until I think
(15:45):
it was by the time the Second World War starts,
there's something like less than sixty states in the world.
Today there's one hundred and ninety four. Like that proliferation
of the number of states is because of anti colonialism
and national self determination. For them, becoming a state was
on the road to ending empire. They figured out that
first step, but we're not done with imperialism.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
That actually rounds out my thought when I was saying,
like people never got past themselves because a lot of
people in the United States, a lot of black people
in the United States, cannot think of theirselves as sovereign
outside of imperialism. Like they're still only contextualizing themselves within
the framework of what has been set up here in
(16:27):
terms of this bipartisan bs in terms of one hundred
person is considered free. Like even the fact that so
many of my people will love to say like, okay, yeah,
but this person they need to go to a court
of law, Like you can't just be assigning things to people,
And I'm like, the court of law is not what
we should be looking to as how we are truly
basing judgment in this nation if we're black people, Like,
(16:49):
that's just I.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Mean, isn't that the lesson of the black radical tradition?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Right, isn't that the lesson?
Speaker 2 (16:55):
But that's what the bourgeoisie are definitely trying to undermine.
So many black folks have been tricked into ascension meaning
going towards being a member of the black Boujazi, versus
ascension meaning getting liberation by being a part of black radicalism.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I've been thinking about the same thing, Amanda. I love
that you put it in that way and then not
seeing past yourself, I've been framing it in a similar
but not like that, but like similar way where you know,
I realized that in this moment, the differences amongst us
are not like how you're gendered or how you're raised, right,
which are constructs obviously, but really how you identify. And
(17:32):
for those who are identifying as American in this moment,
they're harnessing their identity in empire, yes, and they're going
hard for empire and not being able to see past that.
Like the United States, you know, it has accumulated a
tremendous amount of resources and opportunity, a tremendous amount, but
(17:53):
it has accumulated it in the same way that elite
economic classes accumulate theirwell through theft, exploitation they dispossessed others.
Billionaires are billionaires because they are paying somebody shit wages
or no wages at all, in order to do minial label.
They're stealing their time. Right, the United States has access
(18:15):
to oil and to resources and to trade routes and
to jobs because we are impoverishing others. That is literally
explicit if you don't want to think about this on
a theoretical level, that was literally what the United States
did in Iraq. Yes, like it decimated a country, it
created isis as a result of the destabilization of Iraq, right,
(18:36):
and trying to move people around to steal its oil resources.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
By the way, I just had a vet appointment with
a new Vett who was like, in the middle of
examining my cat, was like.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
You know, the world has changed so much, This nation
has changed so much. And I was like, yeah, it has.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And he was like, man, I'm not even excited to
say where I went to high school anymore. When I
went to college. I said, where did you go to college?
He goes Cornell? And I was like, what's wrong with Cornell?
And he was like, well, they're just so anti smit now,
they're just so antisemitic? And I was like, how is
Cornell anti?
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Submit? Mind you, we're here for my cat. Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
I was like, how's Cornell antisemitic? And he said, well,
you know they've got an icist training camp there. You
know there's an icist training camp there at Cornell. I said,
you know isis was created by the CIA and he
was like, well, regardless, it's anti Semitic. And I was like,
I don't know anything about that. And he was like
even the news anyway, like what is he talking about?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
And what is he talking about?
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Training center? Are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
At Cornell? Then he went on to say that the
nudes is anti Semitic. I said, so, how is the
news anti semitic? He was like, I mean, just everything
on the news anti semitic.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And I had a.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Sweatshirt on, and then I pulled up my sweatshirt and
I had a free Palace signed shirt on. I said
this anti semitic, and he was and then I took
my cat and left.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
By the way, I would be really curious, like before
we continue this conversation to find anti semutinum.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
He couldn't. When I lifted my shirt up, he said, no,
that's not anti Semitic.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
That's just terrorists who won't let hostages go home.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And are allowing And I was like, let me get
my cat. I can go.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Give me my cat so I can go, and he's like,
I just won't talk politics, and I was like, give
me my cat so I can go, because we're not
talking politics, we're talking humanity and we're talking about a
human created starvation of people. So give me my cat
so I can go. And then on the way out,
I yelled and they're killing animals in paliside as well.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Bill me. So that was that I feel really really bad.
I'm not that surprised, like I get like a second
wind and my battery gets recharged every time I leave
the United States. Yes, you know, when I go to Europe.
I mean, let me just be real. I'm gonna be
real even when I go to Europe. There is a
particular kind of righteous ignorance in the United States that
(20:45):
not other people have, like you know in Europe, like
they are aware of their colonial history. You go to Belgium,
they know what Leopold did. King Leopold did in the Congo.
You go to Portugal. You know, in Portugal in nineteen
seventy four basically ended through a coup. Colonialism in Mozambique,
angla and Cape.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Verde, that's the Carnation the Roses.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
I'm not sure, but you know, like Ireland, Oh my god.
There is an awareness, yes, of a colonial history in
a way that it's offuscated in the United States, where
the world begins and ends in this universe, so much
so that we're not very smart. We're not very smart
when it comes to understanding ourselves. The fact that this
(21:27):
man can speak from his chest like that about things
he doesn't know and can't define is very sad and scary,
but I also get it because we're a country. Frankly,
we're a settler colony that's never declonized. And that's this
whole discussion about race in this moment. Like I teach
critical race theory and I teach about its relationship to
(21:47):
the criminal justice system as well. And one of the
most striking and yet consistent features every class that I get,
students can't define racism. Interesting they can't, and they can't
tell you the different between racism being prejudiced and discrimination.
They can't. They can't tell you what race is, and
so often for them it boils down to like an attitude.
(22:11):
You just can't have a certain attitude towards certain people,
where the idea of being colorblind is really the antitote
to racism. And what they've done is they've taken power
out the bottom. There's no analysis of power. So I
don't get that surprised that people can't talk about empire
when they can't talk about racism, even though it governs
our life. It's like a central organizing principle of US
(22:32):
government and they can't define it.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
So how does that carry over to how you feel
people are contextualizing Palestine here in this moment, because I
will say that I feel like a lot of people
did not have any kind of political understanding of Palestine
as much as it was like, oh, those are just
them people over there, and they don't really know what's
(23:00):
going on over there. But that ain't got nothing to
do with us. And it's really a fight in the
Middle East. It's a Middle East fight.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, right, that's our fight. I'm going to do a
little bit of I'll sit back, I'm going to do
a little bit of teaching. But let me start by
saying this, sip sipsy. Let me start by saying that
the same way I think I have a critique of
kind of a mnemic understanding of racism in the United
States that extends to how people don't understand anti semitism.
Anti Semitism is a form of racism, absolutely, historically and
(23:29):
in the present is a form of racism and should
be understood as such. And even the drafting of the
Convention for Elimination of Racial Discrimination is catalyzed that use
of a neo Nazi attack on synagogues in Germany. Do
you know what I mean? We lose that because now
the same way that a lot of people want to
(23:49):
make the Holocaust distinct from any other genocide. There's a
way in which there's a move to make anti Semitism
distinct from all other forms of racism.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Absolutely, yes, and so rather.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Than being able to analyze it is also stemming from
white supremacy, say it now, it becomes this mythological thing
about Palestinians are the problem, and it's like, no, white
supremacy is the problem. That's what the We could put
that on the side and get back to it. Absolutely,
it's not in the Middle East. This is the US. Okay,
the US as Empire has its hands in everything that's
(24:21):
happening today. When Israel is established in nineteen forty eight,
it's primary imperial benefactors. Right, These imperial powers that wanted
it to come into being were France and the United Kingdom,
and they oversee it, they fund it because it cannot
it cannot thrive on its own. It's a settler colony.
(24:43):
In the words of Malcolm X, it was imposed specifically
to drive a wedge and to separate the peoples of
the African continent and the Asian continent against their will. Okay,
it is a satellite to collect.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Oh ho Wait hold on now, Hold on, now, I
have that quote right here.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
The Israeli Zionists are convinced they have successfully camouflaged their
new kind of colonialism. Their colonialism appears to be more benevolent,
more philanthropic, a system with which they rule simply by
getting their potential victims to accept their friendly offers of
economic aid and other tempting gifts that they dangle in
front of the newly independent African nations whose economies are
(25:24):
experiencing great difficulties. Thus, the power and influence of Zionist
Israel and many of the newly independent independent African nations
has fast become even more unshakable than that of the
eighteenth century European colonialists. And this new kind of Zionist
colonialism differs only in form and method, but never in
(25:44):
motive or objective.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
That's right, that's right. Lift him up. We just celebrated
his birthday a couple of days ago as well.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Logic all Grenada, Mas said. His mother is from Grenada,
just like mine.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
And David be Gurion, who is the founding Prime Minister
of Israe. It was really clear, right. I hate when
people try to say that this is about Jews being indigenous.
They never claimed that they were indigenous. No, they literally
said Bengurian said, Israel is part of the Middle East
in geography only because they were claiming acceptance into whiteness.
(26:18):
That's what they were aspiring to. They were aspiring to
whiteness and acceptance within Europe by creating a nation state.
Because Jews otherwise were considered a diaspora that were you know, exogenous,
that lack that kind of juridical framing, and thus were
forever and frankly they were racialized in ways that Muslims
are racialized through oriental framework. They're too dirty, they're too primordial,
(26:42):
their languages, you know, not refined. They're too religious, they're
too insular, they live amongst themselves.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Okay. Now, it wasn't until nineteen sixty seven, however, that
the US assumes the role that it continues to play
to this day, which is as Israel's self proclaimed unique
ally or Israel's the United States most unique ally in
the Middle East. Why, up until that moment, the United
States had maintained a stalemate policy, which was to pit
(27:11):
conservative Arab monarchies, not democratic against Israel, not democratic but
to pit these two kind of power structures against one another,
which was like a no peace, no war framework in
order to achieve US interests in the region. When in
the aftermath of the sixty seven war, right where Israel
(27:32):
defeats singularly several Arab armies in a matter of six
days against US opposition, by the way, that's when the
United States realizes, oh my god, this is a key
Cold War asset in the Middle East. The US at
the time is up to its neck in Vietnam, and
really now it sees in Israel a way that it
can fight for influence against the Soviet Union through Israel.
(27:55):
And at that point, the Lyndon B. Johnson administration initiates
a two pronged policy to basically consecrate this unique alliance. First,
it will ensure Israel's qualitative military edge, which means that
it provides to Israel the military means necessary at any
point to defeat all of the Arab armies put together,
(28:17):
or Middle East put together, or any single one of
them at any time, which is why we spend billions
of dollars in US military support to Israel, and why
Israel is a nuclear power. That's it's open secret. The
second policy that it initiates is this quid pro quo
agreement where Israel, because it becomes an occupying power of
the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the
(28:38):
Palestinian territories that weren't occupied in forty eight, the West
Bank and Gaza. Now the US says Israel is obligated
to return those lands. This is after nineteen forty five,
when the UN Charter basically says no territorial acquisition through conquest,
so Israel must return these territories as a legal obligation.
(28:59):
The US in the UK don't want Israel to do that. Instead,
they want Israel to maintain the land as kind of
ransom or consideration, if you're thinking of contract law, to
return it to the Arab sovereigns in exchange for permanent peace.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
What does permanent peace really mean.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Normalization with Israel that you accept it as it is,
because when the Arab Israeli war ends in nineteen forty eight,
they are basically don't establish an armist disagreement, which is
a temporary truce between the Arab armies and Israel until
March nineteen forty nine, but between forty nine and sixty
seven it's an armists disagreement. They're just a truce. Permanent
(29:39):
peace means you enter into a peace treaty where they're
recognizing one another. And so the US through this basically
says no international law, Israel doesn't have to return any land.
It's almost like you have to accept our colonial presence
or we keep this land. Egypt is the first to
(30:00):
enter into this permanent peace in nineteen seventy nine. Jordan
enters into it in nineteen ninety four, and that's what
the Abraham Accords have been of late. But the Palestinians
never get the chance to do it because Israel's never
going to return the land to the Palestinians. They're going
to remove them. But this two pronged policy that happens
basically means that the United States is doing these things
(30:20):
all the time. One spending billions of dollars on military
weapons and support to Israel three point four billion dollars
because of Obama, he increased it to three point four
billion in a ten year MoU and two framing international
law as the enemy because if the law has anything
to say, Israel just has certain obligations. But according to
(30:42):
this quick pro CoA arrangement that the US has established,
Israel has zero obligations. Everything will be settled through political negotiation,
which is impossible when you have such a powerful country.
And so this is US. This is why the United
States Number one is at the Security Council. From sixty
seven to the present, we have vetoed forty nine Security
(31:06):
Council resolutions that would have ended this and ushered palacing
in self determination. The US in the past nineteen months
has vetoed five Security Council resolutions that would have ended
the genocide. We are literally the problem. Israel is not
a member of the Security Council, can't do shit. It's
the US doing it on its behalf. If it were
(31:27):
not for the US, Israel wouldn't have even had the
weapons to continue slaughtering and vaporizing and tearing babies apart
in Gaza. Those are US weapons. Every single plane that
Israel has, every single fighter Jet Amanda, is from the US.
Every bomb dropped is because of us. What do you
(31:47):
mean this is over there? This is our genocide. This
is us, and so why don't we know this? It's
so basic and it's precisely. The people who will tell
you are at universities, and that's why now the universities
are under a tap because of the fear that we
can tell somebody.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
We're going to go to our special Patreon only segment
and I want to hear from you what the politics
is inside of Palestine now, like I know, for people
like me who may still be learning about just like
who the Palatin the authority is, we see Hamas thrown
around all the time, but there isn't really I feel
(32:28):
like a clear understanding that Hamas has different wings, et cetera,
and so I would love to just get some more
insight on that. So we're going to be over in
our field squad crew with Miss Nora Irakat Esquire. Well, y'all,
if you did not go over to Patreon, you just
dis missed a very incredibly succinct and robust explanation of
(32:55):
the before and now of Palestine politics that I think
is really perative that you all go and check out.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
So where did we leave off here?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Well, you were telling me about folks that tell you
about the over there, and then I went off talking
about how so central it is to who we are
over here and that's before I even start to think
about how that's internalized. But I was just so curious,
why do they say that, Like, when folks say that
to you, who do they think we are? And why
do we care about Israel if it's so over there?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Well, they don't care about Israel.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
That's why I wanted to do this episode about the
politics of this, because I don't think people really grasp
that Israel is an incredibly invasive and destructive part of
United States politics on many levels, on a bipartisan level,
I think in their minds, even if they do allow
themselves to expand into like understanding that Israel does have
(33:49):
some level of influence here, there's a limitation that people apply,
like oh, it's only to Trump, you know, or it's
only to.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Rich people, not realizing like no.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
It is on so many levels that you can't even
comprehend it if you aren't actually making it your business
to do so. The fact that in a number of
states you cannot get FEMA if you as a company
are boycotting Israel, like that should be a bell to folks, right.
I try and tell people, listen, the NYPD has an
(34:21):
actual office in Israel. I try and tell people. Do
I try and tell people that, you know, Derek Chauvin,
he was able to impede the breathing of George Floyd
using a technique that he learned from IDF soldiers because
they have like training camps and they do exchange. But ultimately,
I think what it really on the real boils down
(34:42):
to is so many black folks in the United States
just feel like we have never gotten our just do
And whether they say it or not, what I feel
like they mean when they say that's over there is
like we can't prioritize taking care of them over us
because we haven't gotten ours, And that's wrong.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
That's the part that I'm so confused about. Who do
they think they are as the US? What do they
think the US is doing?
Speaker 2 (35:07):
I think that and I can say this as somebody
who believes this for a long time because I didn't
know any better. There is a really pervasive narrative that
the US is going out policing the world, and the
context is that policing is a good thing, so that
the US is going out and like saving or sticking
(35:28):
our noses in. Like I remember in the very beginning
of all of this, this has been. Like a few
weeks after October seventh, I spoke to a particular person
in the House of Representatives and I was like, you know,
what is going on? And they were like, well, basically
Biden can't tell them what to do.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Ah yai kid, Yes, with one phone call.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
I didn't know any better at that moment to be
able to push back, and now I do. But there
was this like, Oh, he doesn't want to seem like
he's being you know, paternalistic, so he's just trying to
let them do But we now know for those of
us who didn't know, we now know that that's actually
complete bollocks and told them what to do and write bollocks.
(36:13):
And so I just feel like this all really really
really really really really ends up boiling down to something
you said earlier, which is that there just is no education.
I mean, people are have been indoctrinated, people have been
lied to, Like it's at multiple levels, people have been brainwashed.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
I honestly two things about this. I think the way
that people are lied to about Zionism is the same
way that we're lied to about racism, and the same
way that we're lied to about capitalism. Like this is unique, like,
it's not like some particular but it's new. It's how
we're indoctrinated. It's how we can actually be a society
that lets people die when they don't die right. There
(36:53):
is no reason that FEMA is being gutted at a
time when natural disasters are rising. That is setting of
people to die. All we've been indoctrinated to do. Get
your bag, take care of yourself, take care of your problem.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yea da da do your self care.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
You know what I mean. I'm gonna get me in mind.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And so when I hear that, that's what that is
in response to Palestine, even though we are funding that
like and I say, we literally and it is imperialism.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
But we're also being enriched from it.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
That's what I'm saying. I'm in the United States.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
I want to talk to your audience, talk to them
for those people who don't really care and they just
want to get theirs in the US good. My ask
is that you get out of the Middle East. That
we're not asking you to do shit for Palestinians or
for people of the air world. We would like you
out of the Middle East. Do not overthrow our leaders,
(37:51):
do not invade our countries. Do not interrupt our democratic processes,
do not fund our colonizers to destroy our lives and
our people. Keep your billions of dollars. Okay, maybe use
them for reparations. Finally, right, and just stay out of
the Middle East. That's the ask. It's do no harm.
(38:12):
We don't need you to save us. You're the problem.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
That same request can be said for islands in the Caribbean,
for the continent, for Central America, one hund South Africa,
I mean Asia. The United States as a practice, and
this is something Americans do not know.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
The United States has bases, military bases, all.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Seven hundred and fifty military bases. No one else does.
The largest military base. And here's the other thing. The
largest military base is actually in Hawaii that oversees thirty
percent of the land mass from the Pacific rim. That
is the reason Hawaii is also under occupation. It is
a sovereign nation that we have been occupying that is
(38:56):
not a part of the United States. But we remain
there because we have one of our largest base, our
military base, in order to assert our dominance. People don't
want more from the US, they want less less. That's it.
So then the second thing that I'm going to say
is that there's a certain class that's being enriched from
this moment. Weapons manufacturers are being enriched from this business.
(39:19):
Weapons manufacturers who literally get to go out and sell
their weapons and call them battle tested, and you know
how they tested them on our babies, on our children
who are currently being pulled out from the rubble with
two limbs, no family, none, no surviving family members as
(39:40):
would be the case in a genocide, and find themselves
in a cage without food or water. So we're really
not asking right now for the sky. We are literally
asking for basic decency, and the inability to see us
as human beings is what creates a disco that makes
(40:00):
anything besides that imperative seem more important. There is nothing
more important than that bodily integrity and that survival period.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
The last.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I hope that this conversation helps to contextualize the grander,
deeper understanding that is needed for a lot of people
to tie Palestine to themselves, but also to tie the
global awareness to themselves, because that's the whole thing that
(40:39):
America has also United States has also been really effective
at doing, is putting us in a silo where we
extricate ourselves from the international existence that we are a
part of, even though we are benefiting from the international
disruption of our existence. So the only way that we
actually do gain safety and resolve and liberation is to
(41:02):
extricate ourselves from the lie and live in the truth.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
I mean, I mean, you know, and let's just go
back to where we started in the Black radical tradition,
which that was exactly it. That's why they were at
odds with the other formations like the Urban League and
the NAACP, because they did not see the Horizon as
being a perfect fit in the United States. They saw
the Horizon as not being a member of empire. And so,
(41:28):
I mean, may we continue that legacy. I'm so honored
in this dark, dark time to be able to stand
shoulder to shoulder with comrades like you, Amanda, and to
do this work and to carry on that tradition and
to plant these seeds and to know that there is
no other option besides our freedom.
Small help from small, small human areas.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Small It's so funky. So I have said this quite often.
My favorite small doses people that post October seventh, the
one positive thing about the algorithm was that it truly
(00:31):
opened my eyes and expanded my network to include individuals
that I never would have come across, who are brilliant
beyond their knowledge of Palestine and who have really just
become resources for me, not only just intellectually, but emotionally, mentally, etc.
And Etiquette is an example of one of those people.
(00:53):
Sonora is Palestinian. She is an activist. She is a
university professor, a legal scholar, a human rights attorney. She
is currently a professor at Rutgers specializing in international studies,
and her primary focus is unsurprisingly Israeli Palesinian conflict. Now
she was born here in Cali. However, she is very
(01:14):
much involved in the international world of politics on a
global level, and so today's episode Side.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Effects of the Politics of Palestine.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Is really important because I feel like so many of
us in the United States have a false understanding of
how we as United Statesians and how Palestine connect and
also how we exist in the grand global scheme of
things and who better to talk to about that than
(01:46):
an international lawyer and a professor, an educator who has
dedicated her life to really getting into the bare bones
and nuts and bolts of this which many people love
to say is such a convoluted difficult and it's no
more complicated than any other situation where a subtler colonial
(02:06):
state is trying to take and suggesting that it is
okay and that it should be done, and jumping through
all the hoops, doing all the simone biles mental gymnastics
to manufacture consent. So this episode is one that you're
going to have to listen to very closely, and I
don't even doubt that you'll probably have to listen to
it twice because it is so chock full of nuance
(02:32):
and of really having a broader conversation around how from
my experience as a black person in America, how we
are looking at the politics of Palestine, how I am
seeing folks that are considered my community misnomering the politics
of Palestine, and to be able to have those conversations
with other people is incredibly necessary. And when I say
(02:53):
other people, I mean other people who are not black.
It is absolutely I stand on this at this point
in time, when people are saying we're just hanging out
with other black people, We're just minding our black business,
et cetera. That deeply disturbs me because I feel like
it is so wildly counterintuitive to actually creating a safe community,
(03:17):
because we have seen on so many occasions that just.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Being black don't make you all at right.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We understand that skin folk is not always kinfolk, and
so it becomes more about your value systems being aligned
than anything. I also feel like you're gonna need your
dictionary because let me just tell you, I wrote down some.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Of the words that Norah uses in this interview.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Inculcate, obfuscate, proliferation, exogynous, qualitative, and intimate, not intimate like
Victoria's secrets intimate. So listen your dinner with an edge, KEDA.
All right, this is not this is It's not gonna
be somebody who is going to kind of hold your
(04:04):
hand through the conversation.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
But that being said, you're gonna learn.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And I don't do this often, but I will say
that I feel like it is worth the five dollars
if you have it to head on over to Patreon
for the Seal Squad only segment. Every time we do
the Seal Squad only segment, it's always dope because again
it's an expansion of the conversation, but this particular level
(04:29):
of conversation you can really only get from a few
people who have not only lived this, but studied this
and had to teach it. That last part is the part,
and so you're essentially getting a class from new to
etiquotts in a very safe space.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Which is the Seal Squad.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
So hopefully you will make your way over there, but
if not, you're still getting a robust episode right here
of the side effects of the politics of Palestine with
Nuda Edicuott. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome the Great nod To Etiquette to.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
All Doses podcast.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Thank you, Amende Fields.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, we worked hard to do this. This has been
in the works. But people not referring to myself are traveling,
they're speaking, they're they're educating, they're lawyering. I mean, you're
you're living a life of service. And I really feel
great that we were able to get you on the
(05:39):
show because I pride myself.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
On having like really smart friends and so.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Well, you know, I was saying this off air, but
you know, we're both teachers and students, Like I think
that that's what makes a teacher is being a perpetual student.
And so it's really great to be here with you.
The last time I witness you teach, you were teaching
us in your One Woman's show, Thank You. When our
ancestors came back, they had a lot of.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Things to say they do about them.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
And the thing that really resonates with me, and I
know people say this all the time, but the thing
that really really resonates with me is when you embodied
Harriet Tubman, who comes back and is basically talking to
folks who don't want to get off the plantation because
the road to freedom is unknown, and there's a way
in which people continuously choose what they know, even if
(06:30):
they know they deserve far better, because they're afraid of
the unknown. And that just sticks with me all the
time when I look at the intransigence around us.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Listen, I mean the show is written in a fashion
where it is malleable to the changing times that we're in,
which change every five seconds. And I only do free
versions of the show now, and so I'll be doing
another presentation of the show shortly and one of the
things that has really kind of grown since that moment
is my awareness that a lot of people they don't
(07:03):
even realize like new forms of plantation that they're on,
you know.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I feel that's been a.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Thing that I haven't like even this the real in
the response to or the lack thereof to October seventh,
really just seeing how Democrats are full of it. And
I think that's something that for many people, they're just like, wait,
I can't accept that, because that would bottom out my
whole false sense of safety everything.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yeah, I think that there's a way in which, so
I guess if we're thinking about the US political establishment,
we'll keep American society on the side. And I was
born and raised here, but like obviously I'm Palestinian, and
so I also have a transnational identity, the daughter of
immigrants and so, but I don't exclude myself from a critique.
I have a scathing critique of the way in which
scathing those who are you know, in the United States
(07:51):
are inculcated in a particular way where they really buy
into empire and they invisibilize it. But for the political
establishment in particular, they're not only buying into it, but
they're not really serving their purpose because now their logics go,
how do we get elected? Are we meeting our fundraising marks?
You know, what are you doing? You know in a
(08:13):
way that principles fall out the bottom.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
They don't serve a purpose. Principles literally are in the way.
It's like it doesn't.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Oh yeah, that's for the naive and the idealistic right
for you to have principle, that's not who gets into politics.
Like those of us who want to be in service
serve outside of those frameworks. So it's not to be
swept up by them. But I remember, really, Amanda, like
I wake up every day like it's like a roulette.
Who am I going to be angry at today? Whoe's
going to be kissing me off? And be the most disappointing.
(08:43):
And there's a lot of competition in this field. Folks
are just scrambling over. But I remember it hit a
new kind of threshold when I saw Corey Booker do
that twenty five our filibuster and you know, you and
I are not going to be taken. And that wasn't
even what angered me because he showed us who he
(09:03):
was a long time ago. Yeah, but what angered me
were the folks and a lot of racialized humans right
in this world who have suffered from that kind of racialization,
who like fell over themselves to compliment him about saving democracy.
That man voted to continue arming Israel, and I just
(09:24):
thought to myself, we have been warning everybody for at
that point, what was it, seventeen months, that there's a fire,
there's a fire, there's a fire, there's a fire that
can consume us all protect yourselves and Democrats rather than
get in line and want to put out that fire,
basically talking out of two sides of their mouth are
funding Israel and pouring kerosene on the fire, and then
(09:47):
talking about how they want to save themselves from this,
you know, fascism. It's like, you're not going to get
it right for us. You're not going to get it
right for us.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I've been trying to make that as simplified a concept
as possible for folks, and they still say, you still
should have voted for Kamala.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I'm like.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
That, right, like you don't you know? I thought, who
was it, Albert Tiscano? I think it was who? Really?
You know, we call when we see Trump we can
stay with our chest out, this is what fascism looks like, right, yes, say,
strong military, racialized, megali manular authority, not a separation of powers.
(10:29):
But then what were the Dems doing, because that, if
you don't want to call it fascism, that was at
best liberal authoritarianism, yes, which is doing much of the
same things. There wasn't a balance of power. I'm sorry,
there was no.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
We were getting primary the candidate.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
They never primaried the candidate. They didn't listen to eighty
four percent of.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Their base base.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
They talked a whole talk having you know, Tanahasi wrote
about this where they had obviously, you know, but for
those where they had, like the Central Park five in
the audience who were historically excluded and maligned at the
same time that they wouldn't let a Palestinian member of
the Democratic Party speak for three minutes with zero irony.
Anthony Blincoln lied under oath, Joseph Biden lied twice about
(11:16):
seeing pictures of when a picture didn't even exist. They
didn't follow US law. They were denigrating international institutions. What
do you think that was? Because what they had, like
a black woman at the UN Security Council, that that
was okay, because they were, you know, diversifying our empire.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
I don't even think people got that far. I genuinely
don't even think people got that far.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
That sucks.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I think ultimately they didn't get past themselves.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I don't even think people got as political, which is
why I wanted to do this episode with you, because
you are an expert at this and contextualizing how what
is happening and what has been happening in Palestine is
an international and global that's right issue and is not
solely My least favorite phrase I've been hearing from everyone,
is this thing happening over there.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
People love to say, oh, that's happening over there.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
We need to focus on the United States. When I
have conversations with people who push back on or have
some type of issue which is psychotic, but with me
saying I am about the forget a ceasefire, I am
(12:28):
about the complete liberation of Palestinian people from under apartheid,
from under Israeli rule. When people say, well, Israel has
the right to exist, and I'm just like, no country
has the right to exist. There's no all these countries
are made up anyway. For the record, Like if you
look at all the lines. They were drawn by people
that didn't know the people, and relatively young.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Even the concept of the name of the state is
relatively young. Our world has been historically organized under empire.
The idea that peoples would govern themselves is a relatively
new ideas and one that begins to crystallize really after
the First World War, which is so recent there it's
like one hundred and some years ago. Like the World
(13:10):
War ends in nineteen seventeen, right, that's when we in
nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Is that.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I just had journalist Karen Atia on Views from Amanda
Land and she was talking about how, in her research
for the course that she is teaching, since Columbia canceled it,
race and gender in international journalism, I think it's called
But she was talking about how, after the end of
World War One, Woodrow Wilson, and I did not know this,
Woodrow Wilson not only resegregated the federal government, but that
(13:38):
he also refused to include in the not the NATO,
the League of Nations agreement language about anti discrimination.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah, so this was the Japan introduced a racial equality
clause into the League of Nations charter. And yes, it
wasn't just the The US was certainly opposed to it,
but so is France, and so are the UK, and
Japan was a sovereign state at this moment and at
the time. It's also significant. Wodrow Wilson is often attributed
(14:11):
with the idea of the right to self determination because
of his fourteen points, but he was hand in hand
with Jan Smutt, who was, you know, an Englishman who
becomes a general an africannor general in South Africa, who
is basically insisting on segregation as the best way forward
because mixing of the races is not good for blacks
(14:33):
or for whites. So they're opposed to enslavement. But they
think that in order to actually have equality, you know,
other non whites, non Anglo Saxons specifically have to go
through a development like hundreds of years of development like
Anglo Saxons did before they're able to govern themselves. I mean,
(14:54):
this is explicitly racist, right.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
As if we have not had entire kingdom all over
this world.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Oh, come on, come on, forget about it. Like the
idea that the Dark Ages is European history correct, and
that they emerge from that dark age. Their enlightenment is
attributed to Islamic Empire, which translated Aristotle and other European
thinkers into various languages. Forget about it. But back to
(15:23):
this idea of the state being young, it's a really
young idea, and it was one way to organize ourselves
outside of the boot of empire, thinking that the state
would be a way to manifest our ability to govern ourselves.
But for the Third World. It was also for colonized
peoples in the Third World, because most of the world
is colonized. I mean, think about up until I think
(15:45):
it was by the time the Second World War starts,
there's something like less than sixty states in the world.
Today there's one hundred and ninety four. Like that proliferation
of the number of states is because of anti colonialism
and national self determination. For them, becoming a state was
on the road to ending empire. They figured out that
first step, but we're not done with imperialism.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
That actually rounds out my thought when I was saying,
like people never got past themselves because a lot of
people in the United States, a lot of black people
in the United States, cannot think of theirselves as sovereign
outside of imperialism. Like they're still only contextualizing themselves within
the framework of what has been set up here in
(16:27):
terms of this bipartisan bs in terms of one hundred
person is considered free. Like even the fact that so
many of my people will love to say like, okay, yeah,
but this person they need to go to a court
of law, Like you can't just be assigning things to people,
And I'm like, the court of law is not what
we should be looking to as how we are truly
basing judgment in this nation if we're black people, Like,
(16:49):
that's just I.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Mean, isn't that the lesson of the black radical tradition?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Right, isn't that the lesson?
Speaker 2 (16:55):
But that's what the bourgeoisie are definitely trying to undermine.
So many black folks have been tricked into ascension meaning
going towards being a member of the black Boujazi, versus
ascension meaning getting liberation by being a part of black radicalism.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I've been thinking about the same thing, Amanda. I love
that you put it in that way and then not
seeing past yourself, I've been framing it in a similar
but not like that, but like similar way where you know,
I realized that in this moment, the differences amongst us
are not like how you're gendered or how you're raised, right,
which are constructs obviously, but really how you identify. And
(17:32):
for those who are identifying as American in this moment,
they're harnessing their identity in empire, yes, and they're going
hard for empire and not being able to see past that.
Like the United States, you know, it has accumulated a
tremendous amount of resources and opportunity, a tremendous amount, but
(17:53):
it has accumulated it in the same way that elite
economic classes accumulate theirwell through theft, exploitation they dispossessed others.
Billionaires are billionaires because they are paying somebody shit wages
or no wages at all, in order to do minial label.
They're stealing their time. Right, the United States has access
(18:15):
to oil and to resources and to trade routes and
to jobs because we are impoverishing others. That is literally
explicit if you don't want to think about this on
a theoretical level, that was literally what the United States
did in Iraq. Yes, like it decimated a country, it
created isis as a result of the destabilization of Iraq, right,
(18:36):
and trying to move people around to steal its oil resources.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
By the way, I just had a vet appointment with
a new Vett who was like, in the middle of
examining my cat, was like.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
You know, the world has changed so much, This nation
has changed so much. And I was like, yeah, it has.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
And he was like, man, I'm not even excited to
say where I went to high school anymore. When I
went to college. I said, where did you go to college?
He goes Cornell? And I was like, what's wrong with Cornell?
And he was like, well, they're just so anti smit now,
they're just so antisemitic? And I was like, how is
Cornell anti?
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Submit? Mind you, we're here for my cat. Okay.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
I was like, how's Cornell antisemitic? And he said, well,
you know they've got an icist training camp there. You
know there's an icist training camp there at Cornell. I said,
you know isis was created by the CIA and he
was like, well, regardless, it's anti Semitic. And I was like,
I don't know anything about that. And he was like
even the news anyway, like what is he talking about?
Speaker 1 (19:25):
And what is he talking about?
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Training center? Are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
At Cornell? Then he went on to say that the
nudes is anti Semitic. I said, so, how is the
news anti semitic? He was like, I mean, just everything
on the news anti semitic.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And I had a.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Sweatshirt on, and then I pulled up my sweatshirt and
I had a free Palace signed shirt on. I said
this anti semitic, and he was and then I took
my cat and left.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
By the way, I would be really curious, like before
we continue this conversation to find anti semutinum.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
He couldn't. When I lifted my shirt up, he said, no,
that's not anti Semitic.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
That's just terrorists who won't let hostages go home.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And are allowing And I was like, let me get
my cat. I can go.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Give me my cat so I can go, and he's like,
I just won't talk politics, and I was like, give
me my cat so I can go, because we're not
talking politics, we're talking humanity and we're talking about a
human created starvation of people. So give me my cat
so I can go. And then on the way out,
I yelled and they're killing animals in paliside as well.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Bill me. So that was that I feel really really bad.
I'm not that surprised, like I get like a second
wind and my battery gets recharged every time I leave
the United States. Yes, you know, when I go to Europe.
I mean, let me just be real. I'm gonna be
real even when I go to Europe. There is a
particular kind of righteous ignorance in the United States that
(20:45):
not other people have, like you know in Europe, like
they are aware of their colonial history. You go to Belgium,
they know what Leopold did. King Leopold did in the Congo.
You go to Portugal. You know, in Portugal in nineteen
seventy four basically ended through a coup. Colonialism in Mozambique,
angla and Cape.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Verde, that's the Carnation the Roses.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
I'm not sure, but you know, like Ireland, Oh my god.
There is an awareness, yes, of a colonial history in
a way that it's offuscated in the United States, where
the world begins and ends in this universe, so much
so that we're not very smart. We're not very smart
when it comes to understanding ourselves. The fact that this
(21:27):
man can speak from his chest like that about things
he doesn't know and can't define is very sad and scary,
but I also get it because we're a country. Frankly,
we're a settler colony that's never declonized. And that's this
whole discussion about race in this moment. Like I teach
critical race theory and I teach about its relationship to
(21:47):
the criminal justice system as well. And one of the
most striking and yet consistent features every class that I get,
students can't define racism. Interesting they can't, and they can't
tell you the different between racism being prejudiced and discrimination.
They can't. They can't tell you what race is, and
so often for them it boils down to like an attitude.
(22:11):
You just can't have a certain attitude towards certain people,
where the idea of being colorblind is really the antitote
to racism. And what they've done is they've taken power
out the bottom. There's no analysis of power. So I
don't get that surprised that people can't talk about empire
when they can't talk about racism, even though it governs
our life. It's like a central organizing principle of US
(22:32):
government and they can't define it.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
So how does that carry over to how you feel
people are contextualizing Palestine here in this moment, because I
will say that I feel like a lot of people
did not have any kind of political understanding of Palestine
as much as it was like, oh, those are just
them people over there, and they don't really know what's
(23:00):
going on over there. But that ain't got nothing to
do with us. And it's really a fight in the
Middle East. It's a Middle East fight.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, right, that's our fight. I'm going to do a
little bit of I'll sit back, I'm going to do
a little bit of teaching. But let me start by
saying this, sip sipsy. Let me start by saying that
the same way I think I have a critique of
kind of a mnemic understanding of racism in the United
States that extends to how people don't understand anti semitism.
Anti Semitism is a form of racism, absolutely, historically and
(23:29):
in the present is a form of racism and should
be understood as such. And even the drafting of the
Convention for Elimination of Racial Discrimination is catalyzed that use
of a neo Nazi attack on synagogues in Germany. Do
you know what I mean? We lose that because now
the same way that a lot of people want to
(23:49):
make the Holocaust distinct from any other genocide. There's a
way in which there's a move to make anti Semitism
distinct from all other forms of racism.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Absolutely, yes, and so rather.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Than being able to analyze it is also stemming from
white supremacy, say it now, it becomes this mythological thing
about Palestinians are the problem, and it's like, no, white
supremacy is the problem. That's what the We could put
that on the side and get back to it. Absolutely,
it's not in the Middle East. This is the US. Okay,
the US as Empire has its hands in everything that's
(24:21):
happening today. When Israel is established in nineteen forty eight,
it's primary imperial benefactors. Right, These imperial powers that wanted
it to come into being were France and the United Kingdom,
and they oversee it, they fund it because it cannot
it cannot thrive on its own. It's a settler colony.
(24:43):
In the words of Malcolm X, it was imposed specifically
to drive a wedge and to separate the peoples of
the African continent and the Asian continent against their will. Okay,
it is a satellite to collect.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Oh ho Wait hold on now, Hold on, now, I
have that quote right here.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
The Israeli Zionists are convinced they have successfully camouflaged their
new kind of colonialism. Their colonialism appears to be more benevolent,
more philanthropic, a system with which they rule simply by
getting their potential victims to accept their friendly offers of
economic aid and other tempting gifts that they dangle in
front of the newly independent African nations whose economies are
(25:24):
experiencing great difficulties. Thus, the power and influence of Zionist
Israel and many of the newly independent independent African nations
has fast become even more unshakable than that of the
eighteenth century European colonialists. And this new kind of Zionist
colonialism differs only in form and method, but never in
(25:44):
motive or objective.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
That's right, that's right. Lift him up. We just celebrated
his birthday a couple of days ago as well.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Logic all Grenada, Mas said. His mother is from Grenada,
just like mine.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
And David be Gurion, who is the founding Prime Minister
of Israe. It was really clear, right. I hate when
people try to say that this is about Jews being indigenous.
They never claimed that they were indigenous. No, they literally
said Bengurian said, Israel is part of the Middle East
in geography only because they were claiming acceptance into whiteness.
(26:18):
That's what they were aspiring to. They were aspiring to
whiteness and acceptance within Europe by creating a nation state.
Because Jews otherwise were considered a diaspora that were you know, exogenous,
that lack that kind of juridical framing, and thus were
forever and frankly they were racialized in ways that Muslims
are racialized through oriental framework. They're too dirty, they're too primordial,
(26:42):
their languages, you know, not refined. They're too religious, they're
too insular, they live amongst themselves.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Okay. Now, it wasn't until nineteen sixty seven, however, that
the US assumes the role that it continues to play
to this day, which is as Israel's self proclaimed unique
ally or Israel's the United States most unique ally in
the Middle East. Why, up until that moment, the United
States had maintained a stalemate policy, which was to pit
(27:11):
conservative Arab monarchies, not democratic against Israel, not democratic but
to pit these two kind of power structures against one another,
which was like a no peace, no war framework in
order to achieve US interests in the region. When in
the aftermath of the sixty seven war, right where Israel
(27:32):
defeats singularly several Arab armies in a matter of six
days against US opposition, by the way, that's when the
United States realizes, oh my god, this is a key
Cold War asset in the Middle East. The US at
the time is up to its neck in Vietnam, and
really now it sees in Israel a way that it
can fight for influence against the Soviet Union through Israel.
(27:55):
And at that point, the Lyndon B. Johnson administration initiates
a two pronged policy to basically consecrate this unique alliance. First,
it will ensure Israel's qualitative military edge, which means that
it provides to Israel the military means necessary at any
point to defeat all of the Arab armies put together,
(28:17):
or Middle East put together, or any single one of
them at any time, which is why we spend billions
of dollars in US military support to Israel, and why
Israel is a nuclear power. That's it's open secret. The
second policy that it initiates is this quid pro quo
agreement where Israel, because it becomes an occupying power of
the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the
(28:38):
Palestinian territories that weren't occupied in forty eight, the West
Bank and Gaza. Now the US says Israel is obligated
to return those lands. This is after nineteen forty five,
when the UN Charter basically says no territorial acquisition through conquest,
so Israel must return these territories as a legal obligation.
(28:59):
The US in the UK don't want Israel to do that. Instead,
they want Israel to maintain the land as kind of
ransom or consideration, if you're thinking of contract law, to
return it to the Arab sovereigns in exchange for permanent peace.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
What does permanent peace really mean.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Normalization with Israel that you accept it as it is,
because when the Arab Israeli war ends in nineteen forty eight,
they are basically don't establish an armist disagreement, which is
a temporary truce between the Arab armies and Israel until
March nineteen forty nine, but between forty nine and sixty
seven it's an armists disagreement. They're just a truce. Permanent
(29:39):
peace means you enter into a peace treaty where they're
recognizing one another. And so the US through this basically
says no international law, Israel doesn't have to return any land.
It's almost like you have to accept our colonial presence
or we keep this land. Egypt is the first to
(30:00):
enter into this permanent peace in nineteen seventy nine. Jordan
enters into it in nineteen ninety four, and that's what
the Abraham Accords have been of late. But the Palestinians
never get the chance to do it because Israel's never
going to return the land to the Palestinians. They're going
to remove them. But this two pronged policy that happens
basically means that the United States is doing these things
(30:20):
all the time. One spending billions of dollars on military
weapons and support to Israel three point four billion dollars
because of Obama, he increased it to three point four
billion in a ten year MoU and two framing international
law as the enemy because if the law has anything
to say, Israel just has certain obligations. But according to
(30:42):
this quick pro CoA arrangement that the US has established,
Israel has zero obligations. Everything will be settled through political negotiation,
which is impossible when you have such a powerful country.
And so this is US. This is why the United
States Number one is at the Security Council. From sixty
seven to the present, we have vetoed forty nine Security
(31:06):
Council resolutions that would have ended this and ushered palacing
in self determination. The US in the past nineteen months
has vetoed five Security Council resolutions that would have ended
the genocide. We are literally the problem. Israel is not
a member of the Security Council, can't do shit. It's
the US doing it on its behalf. If it were
(31:27):
not for the US, Israel wouldn't have even had the
weapons to continue slaughtering and vaporizing and tearing babies apart
in Gaza. Those are US weapons. Every single plane that
Israel has, every single fighter Jet Amanda, is from the US.
Every bomb dropped is because of us. What do you
(31:47):
mean this is over there? This is our genocide. This
is us, and so why don't we know this? It's
so basic and it's precisely. The people who will tell
you are at universities, and that's why now the universities
are under a tap because of the fear that we
can tell somebody.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
We're going to go to our special Patreon only segment
and I want to hear from you what the politics
is inside of Palestine now, like I know, for people
like me who may still be learning about just like
who the Palatin the authority is, we see Hamas thrown
around all the time, but there isn't really I feel
(32:28):
like a clear understanding that Hamas has different wings, et cetera,
and so I would love to just get some more
insight on that. So we're going to be over in
our field squad crew with Miss Nora Irakat Esquire. Well, y'all,
if you did not go over to Patreon, you just
dis missed a very incredibly succinct and robust explanation of
(32:55):
the before and now of Palestine politics that I think
is really perative that you all go and check out.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
So where did we leave off here?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Well, you were telling me about folks that tell you
about the over there, and then I went off talking
about how so central it is to who we are
over here and that's before I even start to think
about how that's internalized. But I was just so curious,
why do they say that, Like, when folks say that
to you, who do they think we are? And why
do we care about Israel if it's so over there?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Well, they don't care about Israel.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
That's why I wanted to do this episode about the
politics of this, because I don't think people really grasp
that Israel is an incredibly invasive and destructive part of
United States politics on many levels, on a bipartisan level,
I think in their minds, even if they do allow
themselves to expand into like understanding that Israel does have
(33:49):
some level of influence here, there's a limitation that people apply,
like oh, it's only to Trump, you know, or it's
only to.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Rich people, not realizing like no.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
It is on so many levels that you can't even
comprehend it if you aren't actually making it your business
to do so. The fact that in a number of
states you cannot get FEMA if you as a company
are boycotting Israel, like that should be a bell to folks, right.
I try and tell people, listen, the NYPD has an
(34:21):
actual office in Israel. I try and tell people. Do
I try and tell people that, you know, Derek Chauvin,
he was able to impede the breathing of George Floyd
using a technique that he learned from IDF soldiers because
they have like training camps and they do exchange. But ultimately,
I think what it really on the real boils down
(34:42):
to is so many black folks in the United States
just feel like we have never gotten our just do
And whether they say it or not, what I feel
like they mean when they say that's over there is
like we can't prioritize taking care of them over us
because we haven't gotten ours, And that's wrong.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
That's the part that I'm so confused about. Who do
they think they are as the US? What do they
think the US is doing?
Speaker 2 (35:07):
I think that and I can say this as somebody
who believes this for a long time because I didn't
know any better. There is a really pervasive narrative that
the US is going out policing the world, and the
context is that policing is a good thing, so that
the US is going out and like saving or sticking
(35:28):
our noses in. Like I remember in the very beginning
of all of this, this has been. Like a few
weeks after October seventh, I spoke to a particular person
in the House of Representatives and I was like, you know,
what is going on? And they were like, well, basically
Biden can't tell them what to do.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Ah yai kid, Yes, with one phone call.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
I didn't know any better at that moment to be
able to push back, and now I do. But there
was this like, Oh, he doesn't want to seem like
he's being you know, paternalistic, so he's just trying to
let them do But we now know for those of
us who didn't know, we now know that that's actually
complete bollocks and told them what to do and write bollocks.
(36:13):
And so I just feel like this all really really
really really really really ends up boiling down to something
you said earlier, which is that there just is no education.
I mean, people are have been indoctrinated, people have been
lied to, Like it's at multiple levels, people have been brainwashed.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
I honestly two things about this. I think the way
that people are lied to about Zionism is the same
way that we're lied to about racism, and the same
way that we're lied to about capitalism. Like this is unique, like,
it's not like some particular but it's new. It's how
we're indoctrinated. It's how we can actually be a society
that lets people die when they don't die right. There
(36:53):
is no reason that FEMA is being gutted at a
time when natural disasters are rising. That is setting of
people to die. All we've been indoctrinated to do. Get
your bag, take care of yourself, take care of your problem.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yea da da do your self care.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
You know what I mean. I'm gonna get me in mind.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And so when I hear that, that's what that is
in response to Palestine, even though we are funding that
like and I say, we literally and it is imperialism.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
But we're also being enriched from it.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
That's what I'm saying. I'm in the United States.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
I want to talk to your audience, talk to them
for those people who don't really care and they just
want to get theirs in the US good. My ask
is that you get out of the Middle East. That
we're not asking you to do shit for Palestinians or
for people of the air world. We would like you
out of the Middle East. Do not overthrow our leaders,
(37:51):
do not invade our countries. Do not interrupt our democratic processes,
do not fund our colonizers to destroy our lives and
our people. Keep your billions of dollars. Okay, maybe use
them for reparations. Finally, right, and just stay out of
the Middle East. That's the ask. It's do no harm.
(38:12):
We don't need you to save us. You're the problem.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
That same request can be said for islands in the Caribbean,
for the continent, for Central America, one hund South Africa,
I mean Asia. The United States as a practice, and
this is something Americans do not know.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
The United States has bases, military bases, all.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
Seven hundred and fifty military bases. No one else does.
The largest military base. And here's the other thing. The
largest military base is actually in Hawaii that oversees thirty
percent of the land mass from the Pacific rim. That
is the reason Hawaii is also under occupation. It is
a sovereign nation that we have been occupying that is
(38:56):
not a part of the United States. But we remain
there because we have one of our largest base, our
military base, in order to assert our dominance. People don't
want more from the US, they want less less. That's it.
So then the second thing that I'm going to say
is that there's a certain class that's being enriched from
this moment. Weapons manufacturers are being enriched from this business.
(39:19):
Weapons manufacturers who literally get to go out and sell
their weapons and call them battle tested, and you know
how they tested them on our babies, on our children
who are currently being pulled out from the rubble with
two limbs, no family, none, no surviving family members as
(39:40):
would be the case in a genocide, and find themselves
in a cage without food or water. So we're really
not asking right now for the sky. We are literally
asking for basic decency, and the inability to see us
as human beings is what creates a disco that makes
(40:00):
anything besides that imperative seem more important. There is nothing
more important than that bodily integrity and that survival period.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
The last.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I hope that this conversation helps to contextualize the grander,
deeper understanding that is needed for a lot of people
to tie Palestine to themselves, but also to tie the
global awareness to themselves, because that's the whole thing that
(40:39):
America has also United States has also been really effective
at doing, is putting us in a silo where we
extricate ourselves from the international existence that we are a
part of, even though we are benefiting from the international
disruption of our existence. So the only way that we
actually do gain safety and resolve and liberation is to
(41:02):
extricate ourselves from the lie and live in the truth.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
I mean, I mean, you know, and let's just go
back to where we started in the Black radical tradition,
which that was exactly it. That's why they were at
odds with the other formations like the Urban League and
the NAACP, because they did not see the Horizon as
being a perfect fit in the United States. They saw
the Horizon as not being a member of empire. And so,
(41:28):
I mean, may we continue that legacy. I'm so honored
in this dark, dark time to be able to stand
shoulder to shoulder with comrades like you, Amanda, and to
do this work and to carry on that tradition and
to plant these seeds and to know that there is
no other option besides our freedom.
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