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Global Research Wants to Hear From You!
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This interview was recorded for the Global Research News Hour. Published May 18, 2024. Find a link here:
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
This interview discusses the article King Bibi’s Land Grab. Here, Mr. Whitney describes the racism at the root of Israel’s cruelty toward the Palestinian people, and also how it is rooted in the same dynamic as other European nations and the settler tribes of North America.
Global Research: Your article states that eradicating Hamas is not the goal of the mission. I mean, the real goal is essentially to get Palestinians out of Gaza, your ethnic cleansing or your Nakba 2.0. You go on mentioning the cheers and the dancing from Israelis when Rafah was being hit. You even show of Norman Finkelstein, a Jew, lamenting about how 95% of Israelis support the war, and you maintain that all this springs from a deep-seated anti-Palestinian racism that goes way, way back to the origins of Zionism in the 19th century as a European Jewish imperialist phenomenon.
Could I get you to expand on that concept, what you’re talking about?
Mike Whitney: I mean, it actually goes back 50 years before the creation of the Jewish state, you know, when Theodor Herzl originated the idea. And it was realized at that time that if they transplanted this idea to Palestine, that eventually the immigration of Jews, European Jews and, you know, Russian Jews suffering from the pogroms there, European, Ukrainian, etc., that they still would not have the demographic numbers needed to be the majority to maintain a Jewish state. So you need a clear Jewish majority to be able to maintain that.
And that means that a certain number of the population of Indigenous people, the Palestinians, would have to be removed. And that was achieved, of course, in 1948 under Ben-Gurion. But a lot of people fault Ben-Gurion for not having been more expansive at the time and just completing the expulsion of Palestinians.
They also call it transfer from the West Bank and Gaza. Of course, they had limited resources, so that really wasn’t an option. But I think that’s basically why there’s so much support in Israel for this.
The average Israeli is not confused about the fact that Hamas is not going to be defeated by levelling all of Gaza and reducing it all to rubble. You know, Hamas is already making a reappearance in northern Gaza, and they’re fighting quite admirably. But regardless, they’re trying to make an inhabitable Gaza so that the people will have no homes, no hospitals, no schools, no infrastructure to return to.
And once it’s no longer a livable place, then they’ll be living in tent cities and they’re counting on the empathy from people around the world, other leaders who will take them 100,000 or 200,000 at a time and export them to their own countries. That’s essentially the plan. So I think the average Israeli is aware of that.
They don’t think at all that this Hamas is just basically a hoax.
GR: One of the people you referred to, Lawrence Davidson, had written an article way back in 2012, and he was talking about the roots of anti-Arab prejudice among the European Jews. That white supremacist attitude was really all the rage in Europe, right? It seems to have been preserved in Israel, whereas it fell away in the other countries eventually, right?
MW: Well, exactly.
I mean, the colonial period has essentially ended, but, you know, I mean, now we call it white supremacy, but that’s typical of the colonial attitude. Of course, if you come from a culture that can dominate another, say, third world country and you become the dominant force, you’re going to have all the high paying jobs, the government positions, all the power is going to be accrued to you and your group and your ethnicity and your religion. And so naturally, you’re going to bring up your children, etc., to feel like you’re superior to the people you are ruling over.
And that’s just typical of the colonial mindset. The thing is, is that Israel is really the last bastion of that form of settler colonial mindset. And you can see the impact of that over the decades, where the lack of sympathy and the lack of empathy that we see on Twitter and TikTok on a daily basis, these people taking food shipments, basically taking crusts of bread out of starving children’s mouth, throwing it on the ground and jumping on it with their feet, rolling over it with trucks and preventing any of these food and medical assistance trucks from even entering Gaza.
You wonder where this rash of sadistic behaviour comes from. And it comes from that years and years of colonial supremacy just steeped in these people’s bloodstreams. So it’s a very toxic environment that creates a very prejudicial mind.
And then eventually, when you see the other as distinctively inferior to yourself, then any form of crime can be perpetrated and justified because you are the superior being.
GR: Yeah, well, this phenomenon, if it is rooted in the racist roots of European settler colonialism, I mean, we’re looking at the past not only of Israel, but of South Africa, and also of the Canadian tradition of clearing the land of Indigenous people, so they can set up their own settler colonies. And there’s an article that was written in the National Post nine years ago, and it’s entitled, “Sure, John A. Macdonald, (that’s our first Prime Minister in 1867), was a Racist Colonizer and Misogynist, but So Were Most Canadians Back Then.”
If we are to understand the racism of Israelis today, should we just look at the racism of the White settlers in Canada 150 years ago? I mean, is it a direct cut and paste?
MW: Well, pretty closely. I think if we look at it, that’s why I think Americans should be at least sympathetic to what the Israelis are going for. It’s a terrible and vital predicament, but it’s not something that Americans haven’t experienced, and that its government still doesn’t foster by telling people how we’re the exceptional nation.
So the rules of international law don’t really apply to us. So we can have wars in Iraq and kill a million people, and Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and just basically disrupt the large swaths of the entire planet. And the rules of international law don’t apply to us because we’re exceptional.
We’re actually this bumbling force that never really does anything intentionally wrong, but we kind of stumble into things where innocent people are injured. So it’s a whole narrative that’s really deceptive. But I mean, look at what we did to Black African-Americans and enslaved them for two or three hundred years.
And then the Indian Wars, where we just mercilessly slaughtered one tribe after the other, some for no reason whatsoever, and then, you know, try to jam our own religion down their throats, etc., etc. And, you know, the story of that is quite incredible, because, you know, you have people like William Tecumseh Sherman, who, you know, finished the march to Atlanta, where he completely destroyed the civilization down there, killing many White, you know, women and children. And then as soon as he was done with the Civil War, he went out to kill Indians.
So it’s this kind of attitude of superiority is insatiable. It’s just blood-lust. So in the case of Israel, it’s in some ways, it’s not that extraordinary, but it has to be stopped.
It’s transparently immoral. And, you know, hurrah for the student groups that are, you know, basically the tip of the spear in leading the opposition to this madness.
GR: Yeah. You know, Israel’s assault on Gaza, and particularly now on Rafah, is not popular outside of Israel. I mean, tent encampments, as you say, they’re propping up everywhere, and yet major leaders, you know, seem to keep up this so-called ironclad support for Israel.
And the people they preside over aren’t directing their leaders on this front. How has the support for this anti-Palestinian racism managed to go in between the leaders and the people that vote for them outside of Israel?
MW: Well, I don’t think it can be explained other than money. And the money that is going into the coffers of these elected officials as such from AIPAC and some of the other powerful Jewish groups, Israeli-sponsored groups, is really having a dramatic impact.
And I mean, how, for example, could you explain that sending additional weapons and bombs, etc., etc., basically giving Israel a blank check for as much weaponry, lethal weaponry, as they need was supported by nearly excluding for every Democratic congressman in Congress. And when you realize that, according to the recent Gallup poll, 75 percent of registered Democrats oppose the policy in Gaza. So they’re departing from their own, they’re, you know, opposing their own constituency.
The people who got them voted into office, they’re ignoring. And the only explanation you can have is that their coffers are being filled by wealthy people who have an interest in that. Does that make sense?
GR: Well, yeah, to a certain degree.
But maybe I’m missing something. I mean, like, please let me stress that I do not condone anti-Semitism, even for a second, neither do you. But this racist Zionist viewpoint, which is not shared by all Jews, that’s what we’re confronting.
And I see in our own background that we have a kind of a common heritage in the 19th century. So maybe we can offer something that could kind of unite us in a way. How can we transform the individuals in Israel to wake them up, to stop, you know, cheering on killing civilians? And, you know, is there a lesson from our own past that could affect the Israelis in the future?
MW: Yeah, the most effective tool we have right now, one of the EU leaders said it just two days ago, he said, “the only way Netanyahu’s going to stop bombing Gaza is when he runs out of bombs.”
And this is basically what the United States is called upon to do, is just to cease all provision of lethal weaponry until they start coinciding with not just our policy and the intentions of the Biden Administration, but the official policy of Democrats and Republicans alike, dating back 57 years. It’s always been the two-state solution. This creeping annexation is making the possibility of a two-state solution impossible.
So that is what we should be emphasizing. And that is what is in U.S. interests. It’s only to be humouring Israel by sending them more weaponry when it’s clearly in violation of our own goals in the region is foolish beyond, you know, beyond anything.
GR: And in the minute or so we’ve got left, I understand you’re following these student encampments throughout the United States and actually around the world. I mean, do you see this as basically a major lens through which we can force a change of the guard, both within our own country and in Israel?
MW: You know, this is a very interesting issue because I mean, I think the protesters and the demonstrations have captured the imagination of people who are hopeful for the people to have a positive impact on the government’s policy-making. But here’s where I’m really confused.
And I don’t have an answer for this, but since the Patriot Act in 2001, the government has prepared itself for a moment like this and intensified its warrant-less surveillance of people, its penetration of groups, its isolation of leaders of political organizations. This is not 1965 and we’re not, you know, going through the opposition to the Vietnam War again. This is an entirely different experience and they have a lot of the tools of coercion that can prevent this thing from succeeding.
So we can’t sit on our laurels and think that this is an idea whose time has come because the government is preparing, not only preparing, you’ve probably noticed if you look carefully at what’s happening, they are going great guns to a full show of force, overwhelming force in each case on these peaceful protesters to intimidate them and to coerce them not into going back and pursuing the same activity. So I think that we have to make sure that this whole opposition is nurtured along so that it produces some, you know, basically performs what the American people want it to, because right now the majority, according to Gallup and some other polls of Americans do not support the existing policy in Gaza. So we need something that represents the will of the people.
And this movement is the one that is really pushing the government in that direction.
GR: Mr. Whitney, thank you so much for this enlightened perspective. And we should talk again soon.
MW: Thank you, Michael.
