TRANSCRIPT
So, Donald Trump has now said that he wants the United States to take over the Gaza Strip and expel all the people there. This, in a way, is what I feared. This is the nightmare scenario that has been like kind of haunting me for even before October 7th. And it’s something that gradually emerged for me over the years when I watched Israel do ever more terrible things, really even going back to Avigdor Lieberman when he became foreign minister in 2009. It’s quaint now, but that was considered kind of a shocking event.
I watched my community. I watched my people in the United States. And I began to notice something. There was no limit. There was nothing that Israel could do where the organized Jewish community in the United States would say: enough. There was no independent moral standard. Israel would act, and then there would be a post hoc justification of explaining why actually this was totally legitimate and in fact quite praiseworthy, or at the very least necessary.
So, people had said in the organized American Jewish community for years: Israel really, really wants a Palestinian state. No, they really, really want one. The Palestinians won’t accept one. When Netanyahu came back in 2009, you had Israeli governments that very frankly said: we passionately oppose a Palestinian state. We will never allow one to happen. And then the response from the organized American Jewish community said: well, how can you blame them? It’s far too dangerous to have a Palestinian state.
And you’re like, but wait a second. I thought just the day before yesterday, you were saying that Israel really wanted a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians wouldn’t accept one, right. This is just an example of what we see again and again. And because when you treat—this is the central point of my book—when you treat a state as a God, when you worship a state, when you see a state as having unconditional inherent value rather than having to be judged against something else, judged against the standard of international law, judged against the standard of the human dignity of the people under its control, then that state can do whatever it wants.
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