Listen now | Ralph speaks to historian Omer Bartov about his new book “Israel: What Went Wrong?” with special guest, international law expert Bruce Fein.
Settler colonialism is always violent, no exception throughout history. There is no legitimacy in European oligarchy deciding on the transfer of land (Lord Balfour & the Rothchilds) from indigenous peoples who lived in Palestine for 1,000+ years to European Jews.
All colonialists and their enablers are trespassory takers/violators of someone else's property! It is long past time that all indigenous peoples, regardless of their societal organization, be regarded as global citizens and protected by international law, against all such criminal "colonization".
In relation to the so-called Balfour Declaration circa. 1917:
"The Balfour Declaration, issued on November 2, 1917, was a public statement by the British government announcing support for a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Contained in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Zionist Jewish community, the declaration intentionally used ambiguous language regarding the exact borders and status of the territory.
To this day, the Balfour Declaration is still regarded as one of the great landmarks in Zionist Jewish history as the unofficial beginning of the modern State of Israel.
Enter, Jonathan Schneer, professor of modern British history at Georgia Institute of Technology, who explores and analyzes the fervent debates between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews following the publication of the Balfour declaration. The Zionists spoke in the name of Jewish nationhood; their Jewish opponents denied that Jews even constituted a separate nation. According to Schneer, the Arabs were as invisible to the early Jewish Zionists as Africans had been to Boers in South Africa; as were the indigenous tribal people to the early European colonists in the Americas. This world view was galvanized by the Arab narrative that the Zionists viewed the Land of Israel as a “land without a people,” that is to say, the Zionist ignored or disregarded the Arabs living in the land at the time. The late Palestinian professor of English literature, Edward Said took it one step further and shortened the phrase to “a land without people” to imply that Zionists actually believed there were no people in Ottoman Palestine.
I think it's pretty obvious why MSM everywhere doesn't cover the genocide. Zionism is a cancer that needs to be defeated. No ifs or buts. There will never be an honest discussion about the theft of indigenous lands and lives without it.
I think your analogy to cancer is perfect. And here is another one, a visual one: if you search "map of Israel" what comes up is Palestine, with a big blob in the middle, and little blobs all around. Cancer is exactly that. A blob in an organ that metastasizes and spreads, destroying it
What Bartov seems not to want to admit is that nothing went wrong, this is simply the logic of Zionism from its beginnings manifesting what it always wanted. Molly Crabapple has put this well. Just consider the difference between the words immigrant and colonist. There had been centuries of Jewish immigrants in Palestine. But the Zionists were not immigrants. Immigrants move into an existing society. The Zionists were and have always been ideological colonists. They have no desire to co-exist with the local population, their goal has always been the domination and destruction of the local population. They are colonists. Zionism is simply an evil ideology, the ideology of colonialism.
Nothing has gone wrong, we are just witnessing the full logic of Zionism.
I remember when 'evil' began being used in mainstream political analysis. It was to explain 911 and subsequently justify the Iraq War.
It was at best an unfair intellectual oversimplification and really a demagogic tool for demonizing an entire culture. And I can't quietly hear it used against something I am myself deeply opposed to because not only is it not fair, it also misses the point.
Zionism does have a great deal in common with Nazism, and while Nazism did grow in a climate of a people's percieved persecution, it was mostly an insidious ideology that exploited a relatively brief period of intense conflict and societal upheaval.
Zionism could be charachterized that way but the period of marginalization and persecution grew and festered over millennia. The Jews were subjected to much persecution and while instances of it can be cited in the Islamic world, most of it was in the Western countries Jews had assimilated into, while Islamic ones accepted and even enjoyed their Jewish communities. That's why I see the realization of Zionist aspirations as a product of Western societal pathologies, ultimately expressed in Nazism as the malfactor and Zionism as inflicted on the Jews
I agree that Zionism must be understood partly as a product of European antisemitism, persecution, and ultimately the Holocaust. Western societies created the conditions from which political Zionism emerged, then made Palestinians bear the cost of Europe’s crimes.
None of that excuses what Israel is doing today. Historical suffering cannot justify the dispossession, persecution, or genocide of another people. Palestinians were violently expelled from their homes in 1948, and for almost eighty years, they have endured occupation, displacement, military violence, imprisonment, and the continuing seizure of their land.
Western democracies have supported this system not only for strategic reasons, but also because Israel allowed Europe and America to transfer the consequences of their own antisemitic history onto an innocent population. Jewish persecution was real and catastrophic, but Palestinians did not cause it and cannot justly be made to pay for it.
History will judge Israel’s actions harshly, but it will also judge the governments that armed, financed, protected, and rationalised them.
I wish I had at least some authority on Zionism but alas no. Still as it's spoken to here,by most, I guess I'll venture a bit.
Increasingly since Oct 7, many have been talking about Zionism as something inflicted on the Jews, in the diaspora mainly. But how many before then, and from how many Jews, very few. So right there we see some forgiveness, and it hasn't necessarily been asked for either.
Before this deadliest segment of the eighty year process millions of Johnny come lately critics of genocide were sanguine with the status quo, even though they mostly knew something was wrong with it.
I'm grateful they stand against it now but they helped it along for a long long time. So can that forgiveness be extended to those who still do support Israel and its genocide? After all, reforming can mean salvation for a Jew in Seattle and ostracism for one in Rehoboth.
But, interesting questions aside, you said something I think I disagree with, 'that historical wrongs endured, cannot excuse the genocide we're experiencing today'. I mean I think that's true, or would be if the world decided to stop excusing it, but I didn't excuse it, I tried to explain it.
I'll take the bait though and remind you that the law that most of the world recognized, awarded Palestine to Israel, and it never managed to revisit its ruling.
An although there were many Jews emigrating to Israel from all over, the story the world knew was an irresistible one. The Zeitgeist then was only glimpsed by our generation and like silent cinema to today's.
The rest is a problem for the social psychologist, truth and reconciliation and a world court if we ever find one again.
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So my point of disagreement is that it's not the historical wrongs that make the best defense for the Zionists, it's our failure to apply the law. That is usually thought of in terms of the long drawn out genocide of the Palestinians but there's a flip side to that. There are also the people we plopped down amidst another people we had already shown disdain for. We did that with our law and in the blink of an eye and over the course of eighty years we snatched it away.
That didn't just rob the Palestinians of their birthright and civil rights. The impunity we shared with the newborn Israelis, the connections they enjoyed, the largesse, the ubiquitous development and investment we made in it, assured it would be a pariah in the holy land.
Something like Gernany had become by the 1930's.
Eventually the law caught up with Germany and it was saved from itself. Will Israel ever be?
And that's something that nobody could convincingly explain why they say that "Jews need a State". Why? Judaism is a religion. They don't NEED a State. They are everywhere and wherever they live is their State. As far as I could gather for the attempts to convince me is based on religion, not archeology. I am not religious, and even people who are would find hard to believe that a god decided that land belongs to one People. And if I believed in the bible, I would say that Abraham had an older son, but that son was the son of a slave, and then my conclusion would be that the Zionists, or the Jews that believe in the fantasy of the "chosen people", act out of racism. The son of a slave is the "father of the Palestinians" so they are forever second class. It is the simplistic conclusion of a simplistic and unconvincing explanation
To complicate it further. A lot of Jews living in Palestine, in the past, converted to Christianity and then to Islam. They might very well be the descendance of Issac.
The bottom line is that no one has a right to a state. Religion is not ethnicity. This is setter colonialism.
While recently debating some of the big tech corporate AIs on whether Gaza was a genocide, they were mostly contradicting themselves stating how it could be (intent, destruction of healthcare and societal institutions, etc) and refusing to acknowledge as fact what happened and continues to happen in Gaza. The fact that big tech has actually gone out of its way to program falsehoods into their AI models, coupled with the obvious gaslighting of MSM and practically all Western aligned governments is conclusive that the Western alliances are in so deep with the crimes committed by and on their behalf by the settler colonial project in the holy land. Religion is fundamentally an excellent form of controlling the masses so they can look away and not see any crimes by the atheists and add to that the distractions of work life and streaming life (shows and gaming) they might get away with the biggest heist of the millennium especially to seize the entire Leviathan gas fields which touch Gaza and southern Lebanon leviathanproject.co.il.
Greedy, ambitious people are committing theft and murder and convincing the masses that it’s the right thing to do. Thank you Ralph Nader for the excellent and unmissable information you disseminate 🙏🏼
Mr. Bartov said that every Israeli had a connection to someone killed by Hamas on October 7th. I just want to mention that they likely had a connection with the IDF soldiers that applied the Hannibal Doctrine and killed Israeli Jews, a lot of them according to some analysis.
Bruce Fein was right that those in power manufacture fear to control the masses. It was refreshing to hear him say he didn't know how to solve the problem.
He was wrong when he said the US has no existential threat. The big money interests that control our politicians and media are an existential threat not only to the US and it's citizens but also to the rest of the world.
We can solve both of these problems with just a little courage from Ralph to help organize citizens to do an economic and electoral cleansing of the big money interests from our political process and media.
We can cleanse the big money interests from our politics by demanding small donor candidates and enforcing that demand with our votes starting in 2026. If there are no small donor candidates on the ballot we can cast a write in vote to register a vote against the big money candidates on the ballot and to create and demonstrate demand for small donor candidates in 2028.
This requires no legislation so it can be effective much faster than any public financing scheme or a constitutional amendment to overturn CU which also requires legislation to be passed by the big money politicians which is as unlikely to happen for decades as proven over the last fifty years of no such legislation being passed.
We can form a non-profit media conglomerate selling shares for 100 dollars each. These shares can only be owned by citizens and no one person can own more than ten shares. The shares can only be sold for 100 dollars as the purpose of owning the shares is for ordinary citizens to control the media and not to make money on the value of the shares.
Just 6-7% of the 150 million voters investing just 100 dollars in one share would total 1 billion dollars and could be just the tip of the iceberg.
Bruce Fein has been on the Radio Hour multiple times.
Isn't it time that you had me on the Radio Hour as you said you would on Washington Journal (10-24-2018) and offer listeners someone that does know how to solve these problems and threats?
Please, Ralph, have the courage to not only take on the big money interests but also the courage to explore a possible solution that challenges your "religious" belief that legislation is the only solution to a problem.
including an honest assessment of the damage caused by not suspending his campaign by the late summer of 2000? Forgiveness must be sought through humility. To not, is to miss a second teaching moment and perpetuate a model of deception
You are out of touch. Ralph had every right to seek the presidency. And he never caused any damage at all. What you are doing is Scapegoating as well as Gaslighting.
I listened to Omer Bartov in another podcast and already got his book. I did question his position on when zionism went off the rails. I hope this was addressed in tis interview because he completely ignored the statements made by Herzl about complete ethnic cleanse in Palestine
sorry Steve, haven't had a moment yet. I am honored that you're interested in my opinion though and it looks to be a fine doc.
Sorry I came off as presuming to be anything much less a psychologist, I think it's one of those things, like the law, people want to feel they have a piece of and can opine. You know, society tends to freeze us up for lack of expertise on so much. But I really regret it if I said anything against Nader personally. My whole problem with him is that he didn't suspend his campaign tha August and no film is going to turn me round on that.
this was absolutely fascinating. I love Ralph Nader but I love this seriousness and the complexity and the nuance the details the history that help us understand why and how we got here. if there was more journalism like this the world would be so much of a better place thank you so much
I don't know how old you are but I can remember a different trajectory in our country. I blame Clinton too, for creating the conditions for the trajectory to change.
When 911 hit, we would have responded with a united front against only bin Laden and not expanded that international police action into a civilizational war. A war that may mean the end of civilization.
As for not being the spoiler, 6 states including Fla might have swung but certainly enough to get Gore out of recount range. The various rationale employed by Naderites indicate lhe othe shoe. Good people succumbing to such conative dissonance has become this century's theme.
Forget it though, old news and the GOP did steal the election withe help of the SCOTUS, another continuing theme. The whole catastrophe might have just occurred differently.
But I would like to have seen the 21st century begin with an environmental scientist at the helm instead of a silver spoon dope. A lot of us saw the danger signs, not enough I guess.
Does anyone in the end care how a group of murderous thugs and underworld characters became so violent and evil? No. And neither should we care how Israel became a criminal state. They don't have a right to exist at this point with the type of "regime change" wars that they've had the US instigate at their demand. With Gaza killings over a million very likely: https://karenkwiatkowski.substack.com/p/explaining-the-numbers-in-gaza With more and more attacks very likely in the Middle-East, they must be stopped.
Meanwhile we're supposedly celebrating the US's 250th anniversary which just seems like more Maga madness and nothing to celebrate. As even a libertarian said the American "Declaration of Independence" was based on the lie that America was being over-taxed: https://www.garynorth.com/public/16833.cfm Plus Jefferson complains in "The Declaration" about how Great Britain was siding with the American Indian "savages" against us, another bald-faced falsehood.
While you and I can probably agree that the murderous gynecide perpetrated by the Zionist Israeli government, with the obscene economic and material support of the U.S. government, on the civilian Palestinian population of Gaza is a horrible war crime. And, of course, the Israeli Likud Zionists partnering with Trump and his pseudo-administrative cabal on any matter is not a good prospect.
Your supposition that the recent celebration of: "the US's 250th anniversary which just seems like more Maga Madness and nothing to celebrate." is spot on sir. It is definitely hard evidence that Trump and his band of fools actually do not understand that the date of the colony's Declaration of Independence document IS NOT our national birthday! It is probable that both Ben Franklin and Tom Paine, were they watching that farce play itself out from their seats in the Higher House, were laughing their asses off at such a foolish charade.
By the way, prior to the actual Revolutionary War, which followed the Declaration, and many long months before the actual historical birthing day of the USA, the tax issue regarded the colonists being taxed by royal dictate without any legislative government representation. Samuel Adams, John Adam's brother, was one of the colonial proponents of this issue of taxation without representation.
Sometimes it's difficult to disconnect personal emotions from political reality and Lindsey Graham was a Senator that deeply understood the personal pain of the loss of those that remembered the Jewish Holocaust as his early life reflected that same type of pain, struggles and personal resolutions. Both of Lindsey's parents were not rich but hard working and they both died before Lindsey was 22 , his mother died of Hodkin's and Father of a heart attack and he raised his 13 year old sister by himself, she said " he was a mother, father and brother all rolled into one"
Unfortunately when politicians are tasked with the goal to solve world problems, sometimes their emotions must be set aside. For example: with the Ukraine war there could be a positive result with the Graham approach to end the war.but for the Israeli war it could be the continuation of a long United States Graham -Trump quagmire.
It's always interesting that old retired military geezers, constitutional scholars, expert international lawyers that have never unloaded an m16 clip ,face to face into an enemy are always willing to support wars and take the high ground like in those old John Wayne movies . Have you ever witnessed a retired general or commander or one of those constitutional scholars or lawyers signing up personally to take the high ground ?
Not in a million years .
How many of my Vietnam buddies on that Wall of honor in Washington were politians , academic scholars , lawyers or big shot military generals ?
It's the oligarchy and the globalist technocrat megalomaniacs!
The globalist technocrat ruling parasite class encompasses Zionists, Russia, China and everywhere on earth to serve its inimical life-destroying agenda which knows no geographical/national boundaries.
Divide and rule! Agents provocateurs anyone, FALSE FLAGS, propaganda social engineering psyops? Keeping us proles at each others' throats while the globalist technocrat predators laugh all the way to the BIS and The Bank of Rothschild's!
The Epstein Class criminals in charge of The Empire of Greed have been doing lawless outrages for a long time, overthrowing legit governments and assassinating or abducting their leaders: it's happened in Iran in 1953, Guatemala the same year, in the Congo, in Libya, in Iraq, in Indonesia, in Haiti, in Honduras and even more than I can name, and now Venezuela to get their thieving mitts on all that oil! And the "Greater Israel" abomination, it's all on them!
This horrifying Congress Critters, Gates, Governor 'Gruesome Newscum', 'Lone Scum', Soros, 'Benedict' Biden and Harris and even Trump, Vance, and 'Ramaswampy' et al are blatant fully owned and operated puppets of their globalist technocrat parasite masters same as other numerous 'PUBLIC SERPENTS' infesting by design from above, the bureaucratic apparatus.
WAKE THE F*CK UP! TOTAL SLAVERY IS UPON US!!
IT'S THE OMNIWAR! They can stick their f*cking damned AI, Wearables, Chips, CBDC/NO CASH, NANO, Digital IDs, and Jabs up their asses where the sun don't shine!
HELL NO TO GENESIS MISSION/STARGATE/DEEPSEEK! HELL NO TO AI! technocracy.news
Life everywhere is being assaulted by THE TECHNOCRATIC OMNIWAR! RESIST! DO NOT CONSENT TO ALL THINGS DIGITAL, 'SMART', AI, 5G, NO CASH - ALL OF IT! dhughes.substack.com Technocrat ruling class psychos get a sadistic thrill from their powers over life and death and hurting all who stand in their way and they need the resources worldwide to build their digital total slavery control grids (herd survivors into 15 minute city digital prisons)! iaindavis.substack.com
AI is designed to be anti-human/anti-life programmed by technocrat control freak psychos - garbage in = garbage out. Everyone got along just fine without all these absurd and downright satanic electronic gadgets that did not exist until recently. NOBODY NEEDS THIS AI CRAP!
CREATIVITY! ARTISTRY! IMAGINATION! SPIRITUALITY! HUMOR! LOVING KINDNESS! These are all BEAUTIFUL, the best ways to fight THEM!
I also have a landline, a wired laptop and a wired monitor screen, and I never had or will have those infernal mobile devices designed to enslave you. I also use cash as much as possible, no cash is TOTAL SLAVERY.
How to fight back against this TOTAL SLAVERY!
RESIST! DO NOT COMPLY! DITCH THE DAMNED 'SMART' PHONES AND THE DAMNED QR CODES AND GO BACK TO LANDLINES OR FLIP PHONES AND USE CASH AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! INSIST ON CASH! CBDC IS TOTAL SLAVERY!
It is heartbreaking to witness the holocausts happening and so many fellow citizens are brainwashed/bamboozled by the propaganda media, they are oblivious!
MISTAKES WERE NOT MADE! THEY can't get rid of the 'useless eaters' fast enough!
Peddling pure poison! Folks have to wake up to reality: health comes from organic diet, daily exercise and clean living and never from a needle or a pill except in dire, rare traumatic injuries.
It was NEVER about health! The Powers That Should Not Be were ALWAYS about they want you DEAD or a SLAVE! This is a painful truth to accept but we the people must wake up and fight back! And toxic injections/pills were/are a huge part of their arsenal!
Can't say this often enough! The Military/Industrial Complex and the Biowarfare/industrial Complex, WEF agenda and the evils assaulting humanity are from one and the same source - it is the 99% against the diabolical GREED of the 0.01% who should not be in charge of anything!
The monsters in human skin suits who rule the world get a sadistic vampiric thrill and boost from perpetrating the vilest most demonic crimes against the most vulnerable (babies and small children) and then corrupting the system to get away with it scot free! We the People must stop them, there are a lot more of us than them!
JAB INJURIES: GROSS CALAMARI BLOOD CLOTS/AUTISM TSUNAMI/SADS/TURBO CANCER/BIZARRE TERMINAL ILLNESSES: More tragic victims of the ruling parasite genocidal enslavement agenda, sacrificed on the altar of psychopathic greed and hatred of humanity.
And BIG pHARMa is an arsenal making permanently sickly addicted slaves dependent on their products - the complete opposite of actual health.
Can't say this often enough!
SCREW THE HYPOCHONDRIA GERMAPHOBIC FEAR HYSTERIA! DO NOT CONSENT! Avian flu is for the birds! RESIST!
KEEP FIGHTING! All the perps who pushed this greatest crime against humanity, all the way down to the local level, must get their comeuppances!
Proudly ANTI-VAXX! Reiterating for the sake of newbies and to support this post.
Ban all vaccine jabs! There has never been a 'safe and effective' vaccine since Edward Jenner's fraud over 200 years ago as per 'Dissolving Illusions' by Suzanne Humphries and 'Turtles All the Way Down' by Anonymous. Health can never come from a needle or pills, but from healthy eating, healthy exercise and healthy living! virustruth.net
I was looking forward to this interview as another Israeli voice for peace and hope. Unfortunately, I sensed too much hope on the part of Mr Bartov. He never seemed to acknowledge the Hannibal directive, or the possibility of Israeli collusion in the October 7th events.
I see a far darker future for the Israeli regime. How can anyone believe at this point that these psychopaths can be reformed? I’m using that word judiciously, as does Norman Finklestein.
Who could responsibly trust the Israelis ever to abandon their sadism, lust for power, and racism? I find Miko Peled a far more realistic, and therefore useful, voice. Having lived on a Kibbutz close to Mr Bartov’s home, I witnessed, in 1968, Israeli soldiers laughing about “One bullet, two kills”. Today, sixty years later, you can buy a tee shirt with that slogan and a drawing of a pregnant Palestinian woman. How do you reform that?
I think your comment is poignant and founded on what appears to be direct personal experience and thoughtful choices of informed sources of unbiased information. One might wonder what the grounds were for relegating your comment to the "hidden replies are , and by whom this apparent injustice was "moderated". Being a long term, over five decades, supporter of Ralph Nader, and especially considering his Lebanese heritage, I suspect he might likely agree with your personal "kibbutz" example.
Steve...If the "Comment" policy of this venue determines some comments are not germane by the staff, they are posted at the end of the comments chosen to be approved. Commenter Sera, as well as TomL and 2 others were designated "hidden comments".
Thank you. Yes my experience is not only personal, but far deeper than what I mentioned. My grandparents are buried in Jerusalem, and my parents met in Palestine before the Nakba. I have many memories of Arabs, Jews, and Zionists. I would remind everyone that the Jewish native communities which shared the land with Arabs and Christians were ‘Palestinian’ as well.
I never realized that the ‘hidden comments’ were a category. I thought it was just expedient use of space. I too have followed Mr Nader since Corvairs were still on showroom floors. I will look into this. Best wishes.
And Thank You Sera for your thoughtful reply! Especially your reminder stating: "I would remind everyone that the Jewish native communities which shared the land with Arabs and Christians were ‘Palestinian’ as well."
Ah yes, those Chevrolet Corvairs in the 1960's, according, to Ralph Nader as I recall, "Unsafe at Any Speed". I wonder if General Motors actually thought those things could actually compete with the Porsche of the day🤦♂️❓
will do, but I'll warn you that I'm pretty sure Ralph is somewhere between narcissistic and a Christ complex. But I've never met him. Saw him at the Orpheum in mad, WI in 2000 with Chris Matthews. Made mincemeat out of Gores mainstream boring views. Thank heavens for that right?
John, are you a professional psychologist who can diagnose narcissists and Christ complexes? My experience interviewing people for the movie twenty some years ago was that only people who didn't know him called him things like that. "Egomaniac" was the preferred term then. Everyone who did know him -- even the ones who were mad at him -- told me that was wrong. They may not have agreed with his strategy and tactics, but they insisted it had nothing to do with calling attention to himself. They told me he was always putting other people out front. In my own experience he seldom says, "I did this." It's always "We." Or "Our groups" He had to be drafted to run for president. At the '96 Green Party convention, I saw video of Ralph finishing a speech and the crowd chanting "Go, Ralph, go!" He stopped them and insisted they say "Go, We go!" This predates Bernie Sanders coining a similar chant. But I'd be curious to know what you think of the film.
Settler colonialism is always violent, no exception throughout history. There is no legitimacy in European oligarchy deciding on the transfer of land (Lord Balfour & the Rothchilds) from indigenous peoples who lived in Palestine for 1,000+ years to European Jews.
All colonialists and their enablers are trespassory takers/violators of someone else's property! It is long past time that all indigenous peoples, regardless of their societal organization, be regarded as global citizens and protected by international law, against all such criminal "colonization".
In relation to the so-called Balfour Declaration circa. 1917:
"The Balfour Declaration, issued on November 2, 1917, was a public statement by the British government announcing support for a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Contained in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Zionist Jewish community, the declaration intentionally used ambiguous language regarding the exact borders and status of the territory.
To this day, the Balfour Declaration is still regarded as one of the great landmarks in Zionist Jewish history as the unofficial beginning of the modern State of Israel.
Enter, Jonathan Schneer, professor of modern British history at Georgia Institute of Technology, who explores and analyzes the fervent debates between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews following the publication of the Balfour declaration. The Zionists spoke in the name of Jewish nationhood; their Jewish opponents denied that Jews even constituted a separate nation. According to Schneer, the Arabs were as invisible to the early Jewish Zionists as Africans had been to Boers in South Africa; as were the indigenous tribal people to the early European colonists in the Americas. This world view was galvanized by the Arab narrative that the Zionists viewed the Land of Israel as a “land without a people,” that is to say, the Zionist ignored or disregarded the Arabs living in the land at the time. The late Palestinian professor of English literature, Edward Said took it one step further and shortened the phrase to “a land without people” to imply that Zionists actually believed there were no people in Ottoman Palestine.
I think it's pretty obvious why MSM everywhere doesn't cover the genocide. Zionism is a cancer that needs to be defeated. No ifs or buts. There will never be an honest discussion about the theft of indigenous lands and lives without it.
I think your analogy to cancer is perfect. And here is another one, a visual one: if you search "map of Israel" what comes up is Palestine, with a big blob in the middle, and little blobs all around. Cancer is exactly that. A blob in an organ that metastasizes and spreads, destroying it
What Bartov seems not to want to admit is that nothing went wrong, this is simply the logic of Zionism from its beginnings manifesting what it always wanted. Molly Crabapple has put this well. Just consider the difference between the words immigrant and colonist. There had been centuries of Jewish immigrants in Palestine. But the Zionists were not immigrants. Immigrants move into an existing society. The Zionists were and have always been ideological colonists. They have no desire to co-exist with the local population, their goal has always been the domination and destruction of the local population. They are colonists. Zionism is simply an evil ideology, the ideology of colonialism.
Nothing has gone wrong, we are just witnessing the full logic of Zionism.
I remember when 'evil' began being used in mainstream political analysis. It was to explain 911 and subsequently justify the Iraq War.
It was at best an unfair intellectual oversimplification and really a demagogic tool for demonizing an entire culture. And I can't quietly hear it used against something I am myself deeply opposed to because not only is it not fair, it also misses the point.
Zionism does have a great deal in common with Nazism, and while Nazism did grow in a climate of a people's percieved persecution, it was mostly an insidious ideology that exploited a relatively brief period of intense conflict and societal upheaval.
Zionism could be charachterized that way but the period of marginalization and persecution grew and festered over millennia. The Jews were subjected to much persecution and while instances of it can be cited in the Islamic world, most of it was in the Western countries Jews had assimilated into, while Islamic ones accepted and even enjoyed their Jewish communities. That's why I see the realization of Zionist aspirations as a product of Western societal pathologies, ultimately expressed in Nazism as the malfactor and Zionism as inflicted on the Jews
I agree that Zionism must be understood partly as a product of European antisemitism, persecution, and ultimately the Holocaust. Western societies created the conditions from which political Zionism emerged, then made Palestinians bear the cost of Europe’s crimes.
None of that excuses what Israel is doing today. Historical suffering cannot justify the dispossession, persecution, or genocide of another people. Palestinians were violently expelled from their homes in 1948, and for almost eighty years, they have endured occupation, displacement, military violence, imprisonment, and the continuing seizure of their land.
Western democracies have supported this system not only for strategic reasons, but also because Israel allowed Europe and America to transfer the consequences of their own antisemitic history onto an innocent population. Jewish persecution was real and catastrophic, but Palestinians did not cause it and cannot justly be made to pay for it.
History will judge Israel’s actions harshly, but it will also judge the governments that armed, financed, protected, and rationalised them.
I wish I had at least some authority on Zionism but alas no. Still as it's spoken to here,by most, I guess I'll venture a bit.
Increasingly since Oct 7, many have been talking about Zionism as something inflicted on the Jews, in the diaspora mainly. But how many before then, and from how many Jews, very few. So right there we see some forgiveness, and it hasn't necessarily been asked for either.
Before this deadliest segment of the eighty year process millions of Johnny come lately critics of genocide were sanguine with the status quo, even though they mostly knew something was wrong with it.
I'm grateful they stand against it now but they helped it along for a long long time. So can that forgiveness be extended to those who still do support Israel and its genocide? After all, reforming can mean salvation for a Jew in Seattle and ostracism for one in Rehoboth.
But, interesting questions aside, you said something I think I disagree with, 'that historical wrongs endured, cannot excuse the genocide we're experiencing today'. I mean I think that's true, or would be if the world decided to stop excusing it, but I didn't excuse it, I tried to explain it.
I'll take the bait though and remind you that the law that most of the world recognized, awarded Palestine to Israel, and it never managed to revisit its ruling.
An although there were many Jews emigrating to Israel from all over, the story the world knew was an irresistible one. The Zeitgeist then was only glimpsed by our generation and like silent cinema to today's.
The rest is a problem for the social psychologist, truth and reconciliation and a world court if we ever find one again.
,
So my point of disagreement is that it's not the historical wrongs that make the best defense for the Zionists, it's our failure to apply the law. That is usually thought of in terms of the long drawn out genocide of the Palestinians but there's a flip side to that. There are also the people we plopped down amidst another people we had already shown disdain for. We did that with our law and in the blink of an eye and over the course of eighty years we snatched it away.
That didn't just rob the Palestinians of their birthright and civil rights. The impunity we shared with the newborn Israelis, the connections they enjoyed, the largesse, the ubiquitous development and investment we made in it, assured it would be a pariah in the holy land.
Something like Gernany had become by the 1930's.
Eventually the law caught up with Germany and it was saved from itself. Will Israel ever be?
My point exactly. Good to hear from you John.
thanks for liking my reply, can I take that to mean you're satisfied I wasn't excusing genocide? I don't want to be that guy!
Never thought you were or would John
And that's something that nobody could convincingly explain why they say that "Jews need a State". Why? Judaism is a religion. They don't NEED a State. They are everywhere and wherever they live is their State. As far as I could gather for the attempts to convince me is based on religion, not archeology. I am not religious, and even people who are would find hard to believe that a god decided that land belongs to one People. And if I believed in the bible, I would say that Abraham had an older son, but that son was the son of a slave, and then my conclusion would be that the Zionists, or the Jews that believe in the fantasy of the "chosen people", act out of racism. The son of a slave is the "father of the Palestinians" so they are forever second class. It is the simplistic conclusion of a simplistic and unconvincing explanation
To complicate it further. A lot of Jews living in Palestine, in the past, converted to Christianity and then to Islam. They might very well be the descendance of Issac.
The bottom line is that no one has a right to a state. Religion is not ethnicity. This is setter colonialism.
While recently debating some of the big tech corporate AIs on whether Gaza was a genocide, they were mostly contradicting themselves stating how it could be (intent, destruction of healthcare and societal institutions, etc) and refusing to acknowledge as fact what happened and continues to happen in Gaza. The fact that big tech has actually gone out of its way to program falsehoods into their AI models, coupled with the obvious gaslighting of MSM and practically all Western aligned governments is conclusive that the Western alliances are in so deep with the crimes committed by and on their behalf by the settler colonial project in the holy land. Religion is fundamentally an excellent form of controlling the masses so they can look away and not see any crimes by the atheists and add to that the distractions of work life and streaming life (shows and gaming) they might get away with the biggest heist of the millennium especially to seize the entire Leviathan gas fields which touch Gaza and southern Lebanon leviathanproject.co.il.
Greedy, ambitious people are committing theft and murder and convincing the masses that it’s the right thing to do. Thank you Ralph Nader for the excellent and unmissable information you disseminate 🙏🏼
Mr. Bartov said that every Israeli had a connection to someone killed by Hamas on October 7th. I just want to mention that they likely had a connection with the IDF soldiers that applied the Hannibal Doctrine and killed Israeli Jews, a lot of them according to some analysis.
Bruce Fein was right that those in power manufacture fear to control the masses. It was refreshing to hear him say he didn't know how to solve the problem.
He was wrong when he said the US has no existential threat. The big money interests that control our politicians and media are an existential threat not only to the US and it's citizens but also to the rest of the world.
We can solve both of these problems with just a little courage from Ralph to help organize citizens to do an economic and electoral cleansing of the big money interests from our political process and media.
We can cleanse the big money interests from our politics by demanding small donor candidates and enforcing that demand with our votes starting in 2026. If there are no small donor candidates on the ballot we can cast a write in vote to register a vote against the big money candidates on the ballot and to create and demonstrate demand for small donor candidates in 2028.
This requires no legislation so it can be effective much faster than any public financing scheme or a constitutional amendment to overturn CU which also requires legislation to be passed by the big money politicians which is as unlikely to happen for decades as proven over the last fifty years of no such legislation being passed.
We can form a non-profit media conglomerate selling shares for 100 dollars each. These shares can only be owned by citizens and no one person can own more than ten shares. The shares can only be sold for 100 dollars as the purpose of owning the shares is for ordinary citizens to control the media and not to make money on the value of the shares.
Just 6-7% of the 150 million voters investing just 100 dollars in one share would total 1 billion dollars and could be just the tip of the iceberg.
Bruce Fein has been on the Radio Hour multiple times.
Isn't it time that you had me on the Radio Hour as you said you would on Washington Journal (10-24-2018) and offer listeners someone that does know how to solve these problems and threats?
Please, Ralph, have the courage to not only take on the big money interests but also the courage to explore a possible solution that challenges your "religious" belief that legislation is the only solution to a problem.
Israel is an existential threat
Actually, Ralph IS still a truth teller.
including an honest assessment of the damage caused by not suspending his campaign by the late summer of 2000? Forgiveness must be sought through humility. To not, is to miss a second teaching moment and perpetuate a model of deception
You are out of touch. Ralph had every right to seek the presidency. And he never caused any damage at all. What you are doing is Scapegoating as well as Gaslighting.
bullshit
Ralph provides more truth than just about anyone.
While the evidence shows Ralph was not in truth a spoiler, I think we should embrace the label rather than object to it.
Being a spoiler means you have enough power to get attention and influence.
Using the write in vote could easily be viewed as voters being spoilers. This is the whole point as a tool to get action on the issue behind the vote.
Being a spoiler is a good thing and shows progress.
I listened to Omer Bartov in another podcast and already got his book. I did question his position on when zionism went off the rails. I hope this was addressed in tis interview because he completely ignored the statements made by Herzl about complete ethnic cleanse in Palestine
sorry Steve, haven't had a moment yet. I am honored that you're interested in my opinion though and it looks to be a fine doc.
Sorry I came off as presuming to be anything much less a psychologist, I think it's one of those things, like the law, people want to feel they have a piece of and can opine. You know, society tends to freeze us up for lack of expertise on so much. But I really regret it if I said anything against Nader personally. My whole problem with him is that he didn't suspend his campaign tha August and no film is going to turn me round on that.
this was absolutely fascinating. I love Ralph Nader but I love this seriousness and the complexity and the nuance the details the history that help us understand why and how we got here. if there was more journalism like this the world would be so much of a better place thank you so much
The time was
1947 and there were high hopes, but Harry met Weizman who roped the dope and led us into this wilderness.
So where's your international law now Moses?
'for all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, it might have been'
I don't know how old you are but I can remember a different trajectory in our country. I blame Clinton too, for creating the conditions for the trajectory to change.
When 911 hit, we would have responded with a united front against only bin Laden and not expanded that international police action into a civilizational war. A war that may mean the end of civilization.
As for not being the spoiler, 6 states including Fla might have swung but certainly enough to get Gore out of recount range. The various rationale employed by Naderites indicate lhe othe shoe. Good people succumbing to such conative dissonance has become this century's theme.
Forget it though, old news and the GOP did steal the election withe help of the SCOTUS, another continuing theme. The whole catastrophe might have just occurred differently.
But I would like to have seen the 21st century begin with an environmental scientist at the helm instead of a silver spoon dope. A lot of us saw the danger signs, not enough I guess.
Does anyone in the end care how a group of murderous thugs and underworld characters became so violent and evil? No. And neither should we care how Israel became a criminal state. They don't have a right to exist at this point with the type of "regime change" wars that they've had the US instigate at their demand. With Gaza killings over a million very likely: https://karenkwiatkowski.substack.com/p/explaining-the-numbers-in-gaza With more and more attacks very likely in the Middle-East, they must be stopped.
Meanwhile we're supposedly celebrating the US's 250th anniversary which just seems like more Maga madness and nothing to celebrate. As even a libertarian said the American "Declaration of Independence" was based on the lie that America was being over-taxed: https://www.garynorth.com/public/16833.cfm Plus Jefferson complains in "The Declaration" about how Great Britain was siding with the American Indian "savages" against us, another bald-faced falsehood.
TomL
While you and I can probably agree that the murderous gynecide perpetrated by the Zionist Israeli government, with the obscene economic and material support of the U.S. government, on the civilian Palestinian population of Gaza is a horrible war crime. And, of course, the Israeli Likud Zionists partnering with Trump and his pseudo-administrative cabal on any matter is not a good prospect.
Your supposition that the recent celebration of: "the US's 250th anniversary which just seems like more Maga Madness and nothing to celebrate." is spot on sir. It is definitely hard evidence that Trump and his band of fools actually do not understand that the date of the colony's Declaration of Independence document IS NOT our national birthday! It is probable that both Ben Franklin and Tom Paine, were they watching that farce play itself out from their seats in the Higher House, were laughing their asses off at such a foolish charade.
By the way, prior to the actual Revolutionary War, which followed the Declaration, and many long months before the actual historical birthing day of the USA, the tax issue regarded the colonists being taxed by royal dictate without any legislative government representation. Samuel Adams, John Adam's brother, was one of the colonial proponents of this issue of taxation without representation.
Sometimes it's difficult to disconnect personal emotions from political reality and Lindsey Graham was a Senator that deeply understood the personal pain of the loss of those that remembered the Jewish Holocaust as his early life reflected that same type of pain, struggles and personal resolutions. Both of Lindsey's parents were not rich but hard working and they both died before Lindsey was 22 , his mother died of Hodkin's and Father of a heart attack and he raised his 13 year old sister by himself, she said " he was a mother, father and brother all rolled into one"
Unfortunately when politicians are tasked with the goal to solve world problems, sometimes their emotions must be set aside. For example: with the Ukraine war there could be a positive result with the Graham approach to end the war.but for the Israeli war it could be the continuation of a long United States Graham -Trump quagmire.
It's always interesting that old retired military geezers, constitutional scholars, expert international lawyers that have never unloaded an m16 clip ,face to face into an enemy are always willing to support wars and take the high ground like in those old John Wayne movies . Have you ever witnessed a retired general or commander or one of those constitutional scholars or lawyers signing up personally to take the high ground ?
Not in a million years .
How many of my Vietnam buddies on that Wall of honor in Washington were politians , academic scholars , lawyers or big shot military generals ?
Good luck America have a great day my friends
It's the oligarchy and the globalist technocrat megalomaniacs!
The globalist technocrat ruling parasite class encompasses Zionists, Russia, China and everywhere on earth to serve its inimical life-destroying agenda which knows no geographical/national boundaries.
Divide and rule! Agents provocateurs anyone, FALSE FLAGS, propaganda social engineering psyops? Keeping us proles at each others' throats while the globalist technocrat predators laugh all the way to the BIS and The Bank of Rothschild's!
The Epstein Class criminals in charge of The Empire of Greed have been doing lawless outrages for a long time, overthrowing legit governments and assassinating or abducting their leaders: it's happened in Iran in 1953, Guatemala the same year, in the Congo, in Libya, in Iraq, in Indonesia, in Haiti, in Honduras and even more than I can name, and now Venezuela to get their thieving mitts on all that oil! And the "Greater Israel" abomination, it's all on them!
This horrifying Congress Critters, Gates, Governor 'Gruesome Newscum', 'Lone Scum', Soros, 'Benedict' Biden and Harris and even Trump, Vance, and 'Ramaswampy' et al are blatant fully owned and operated puppets of their globalist technocrat parasite masters same as other numerous 'PUBLIC SERPENTS' infesting by design from above, the bureaucratic apparatus.
WAKE THE F*CK UP! TOTAL SLAVERY IS UPON US!!
IT'S THE OMNIWAR! They can stick their f*cking damned AI, Wearables, Chips, CBDC/NO CASH, NANO, Digital IDs, and Jabs up their asses where the sun don't shine!
HELL NO TO GENESIS MISSION/STARGATE/DEEPSEEK! HELL NO TO AI! technocracy.news
Life everywhere is being assaulted by THE TECHNOCRATIC OMNIWAR! RESIST! DO NOT CONSENT TO ALL THINGS DIGITAL, 'SMART', AI, 5G, NO CASH - ALL OF IT! dhughes.substack.com Technocrat ruling class psychos get a sadistic thrill from their powers over life and death and hurting all who stand in their way and they need the resources worldwide to build their digital total slavery control grids (herd survivors into 15 minute city digital prisons)! iaindavis.substack.com
AI is designed to be anti-human/anti-life programmed by technocrat control freak psychos - garbage in = garbage out. Everyone got along just fine without all these absurd and downright satanic electronic gadgets that did not exist until recently. NOBODY NEEDS THIS AI CRAP!
CREATIVITY! ARTISTRY! IMAGINATION! SPIRITUALITY! HUMOR! LOVING KINDNESS! These are all BEAUTIFUL, the best ways to fight THEM!
I also have a landline, a wired laptop and a wired monitor screen, and I never had or will have those infernal mobile devices designed to enslave you. I also use cash as much as possible, no cash is TOTAL SLAVERY.
How to fight back against this TOTAL SLAVERY!
RESIST! DO NOT COMPLY! DITCH THE DAMNED 'SMART' PHONES AND THE DAMNED QR CODES AND GO BACK TO LANDLINES OR FLIP PHONES AND USE CASH AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! INSIST ON CASH! CBDC IS TOTAL SLAVERY!
It is heartbreaking to witness the holocausts happening and so many fellow citizens are brainwashed/bamboozled by the propaganda media, they are oblivious!
MISTAKES WERE NOT MADE! THEY can't get rid of the 'useless eaters' fast enough!
Peddling pure poison! Folks have to wake up to reality: health comes from organic diet, daily exercise and clean living and never from a needle or a pill except in dire, rare traumatic injuries.
It was NEVER about health! The Powers That Should Not Be were ALWAYS about they want you DEAD or a SLAVE! This is a painful truth to accept but we the people must wake up and fight back! And toxic injections/pills were/are a huge part of their arsenal!
Can't say this often enough! The Military/Industrial Complex and the Biowarfare/industrial Complex, WEF agenda and the evils assaulting humanity are from one and the same source - it is the 99% against the diabolical GREED of the 0.01% who should not be in charge of anything!
The monsters in human skin suits who rule the world get a sadistic vampiric thrill and boost from perpetrating the vilest most demonic crimes against the most vulnerable (babies and small children) and then corrupting the system to get away with it scot free! We the People must stop them, there are a lot more of us than them!
Please check out this substack! ponerology.substack.com
JAB INJURIES: GROSS CALAMARI BLOOD CLOTS/AUTISM TSUNAMI/SADS/TURBO CANCER/BIZARRE TERMINAL ILLNESSES: More tragic victims of the ruling parasite genocidal enslavement agenda, sacrificed on the altar of psychopathic greed and hatred of humanity.
And BIG pHARMa is an arsenal making permanently sickly addicted slaves dependent on their products - the complete opposite of actual health.
Can't say this often enough!
SCREW THE HYPOCHONDRIA GERMAPHOBIC FEAR HYSTERIA! DO NOT CONSENT! Avian flu is for the birds! RESIST!
KEEP FIGHTING! All the perps who pushed this greatest crime against humanity, all the way down to the local level, must get their comeuppances!
Proudly ANTI-VAXX! Reiterating for the sake of newbies and to support this post.
Ban all vaccine jabs! There has never been a 'safe and effective' vaccine since Edward Jenner's fraud over 200 years ago as per 'Dissolving Illusions' by Suzanne Humphries and 'Turtles All the Way Down' by Anonymous. Health can never come from a needle or pills, but from healthy eating, healthy exercise and healthy living! virustruth.net
BURN BACK BETTER!
PSYCHOPATHS! MEGALOMANIACS!
Bless and thank you for doing what you do.
I was looking forward to this interview as another Israeli voice for peace and hope. Unfortunately, I sensed too much hope on the part of Mr Bartov. He never seemed to acknowledge the Hannibal directive, or the possibility of Israeli collusion in the October 7th events.
I see a far darker future for the Israeli regime. How can anyone believe at this point that these psychopaths can be reformed? I’m using that word judiciously, as does Norman Finklestein.
Who could responsibly trust the Israelis ever to abandon their sadism, lust for power, and racism? I find Miko Peled a far more realistic, and therefore useful, voice. Having lived on a Kibbutz close to Mr Bartov’s home, I witnessed, in 1968, Israeli soldiers laughing about “One bullet, two kills”. Today, sixty years later, you can buy a tee shirt with that slogan and a drawing of a pregnant Palestinian woman. How do you reform that?
Sera,
I think your comment is poignant and founded on what appears to be direct personal experience and thoughtful choices of informed sources of unbiased information. One might wonder what the grounds were for relegating your comment to the "hidden replies are , and by whom this apparent injustice was "moderated". Being a long term, over five decades, supporter of Ralph Nader, and especially considering his Lebanese heritage, I suspect he might likely agree with your personal "kibbutz" example.
What was hidden?
Steve...If the "Comment" policy of this venue determines some comments are not germane by the staff, they are posted at the end of the comments chosen to be approved. Commenter Sera, as well as TomL and 2 others were designated "hidden comments".
Thank you. Yes my experience is not only personal, but far deeper than what I mentioned. My grandparents are buried in Jerusalem, and my parents met in Palestine before the Nakba. I have many memories of Arabs, Jews, and Zionists. I would remind everyone that the Jewish native communities which shared the land with Arabs and Christians were ‘Palestinian’ as well.
I never realized that the ‘hidden comments’ were a category. I thought it was just expedient use of space. I too have followed Mr Nader since Corvairs were still on showroom floors. I will look into this. Best wishes.
And Thank You Sera for your thoughtful reply! Especially your reminder stating: "I would remind everyone that the Jewish native communities which shared the land with Arabs and Christians were ‘Palestinian’ as well."
Ah yes, those Chevrolet Corvairs in the 1960's, according, to Ralph Nader as I recall, "Unsafe at Any Speed". I wonder if General Motors actually thought those things could actually compete with the Porsche of the day🤦♂️❓
Ralph Nader should have suspended his 2000 campaign by that Aug, or we wouldn't be in this mess today.
But I know we all got different ways..
Shameless plug: Watch my documentary on Ralph "An Unreasonable Man" and tell me if you feel the same way. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/unreasonable_man
will do, but I'll warn you that I'm pretty sure Ralph is somewhere between narcissistic and a Christ complex. But I've never met him. Saw him at the Orpheum in mad, WI in 2000 with Chris Matthews. Made mincemeat out of Gores mainstream boring views. Thank heavens for that right?
John, are you a professional psychologist who can diagnose narcissists and Christ complexes? My experience interviewing people for the movie twenty some years ago was that only people who didn't know him called him things like that. "Egomaniac" was the preferred term then. Everyone who did know him -- even the ones who were mad at him -- told me that was wrong. They may not have agreed with his strategy and tactics, but they insisted it had nothing to do with calling attention to himself. They told me he was always putting other people out front. In my own experience he seldom says, "I did this." It's always "We." Or "Our groups" He had to be drafted to run for president. At the '96 Green Party convention, I saw video of Ralph finishing a speech and the crowd chanting "Go, Ralph, go!" He stopped them and insisted they say "Go, We go!" This predates Bernie Sanders coining a similar chant. But I'd be curious to know what you think of the film.