Episode 281 – Gaza: Unmasking Empire with Dan Kovalik

Dan Kovalik, author and human rights lawyer, joins Steve to talk about his new book, The Case for Palestine: Why it Matters and Why You Should Care. The conversation goes into the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the concept of settler colonialism, and the current situation in Gaza.  

They criticize the US government’s support for Israel and the lack of accountability for the ongoing genocide. They blame the corporate media for not adequately informing the public about these issues, allowing for a privileged perspective that ignores the suffering.  

They touch on the role of social media in raising awareness of the atrocities, discuss the need for the American public to unify around principles of peace & to call out the US for war crimes and also talk about the attempts to silence criticism of genocide by labeling it as anti-Semitic or terrorist sympathizing.

Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer and peace activist. He is the author of the recently released book, The Case for Palestine: Why it Matters and Why You Should Care. Some his other books include The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World, and The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State have Conspired to Vilify Russia 

@danielmkovalik on Twitter

Macro N Cheese – Episode 281
Gaza: Unmasking Empire with Dan Kovalik
June 15, 2024

[00:00:00] Steven Grumbine: All right folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. My guest is a returning guest, somebody who’s very, very close to the issues in Gaza today. And it’s with great pride and joy that I get to bring out his book as well. We talked about it before it was released, now it has been released, and that is The Case for Palestine, Why it Matters and Why You Should Care by Dan Kovalik.The foreword by George Galloway. Dan’s an author of critically acclaimed The Plot to Scapegoat Russia, The Plot to Attack Iran, The Plot to Control the World, The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela and No More War, and has been a labor and human rights lawyer since graduating from Columbia Law in 1993.

He has represented plaintiffs in the ATS cases arising from egregious human rights abuses in Colombia, and he’s also taught international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, from 2012 to 2023. Bottom line is,  that Dan is an expert, has traveled around the world lecturing, and I’m really, really thrilled to have him back on the show, especially now that his book has finally been released.

So with that, Welcome to the show, Dan. Thank you for joining me.

[00:02:02] Dan Kovalik: Thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure.

[00:02:05] Steven Grumbine: Yeah, absolutely. Hey, let me just tell you, this has been one of the most challenging experiences, to thread this needle, that I’ve been trying to thread with class analysis, modern monetary theory, and geopolitical discussion points.

And in this particular case for Palestine is an incredibly important one, because what I feel like it does, is I feel like it lifts the lid on empire, lifts the veil back and it shows exactly how little agency we have within the electoral system itself. How very, very deaf, if you will, the powers that be are, if in fact, their goal is to even serve us in any way, shape or form.

It feels like the AIPAC group has got absolute control of our government from every decision, every piece of propaganda that comes out, every news article that comes forth, the vast majority of the politicians that are quote/unquote “in office” are going around basically calling Hamas ‘the terrorist organization’, and basically explaining away all the dead children, all the dead Palestinians, the bombing of tent cities, you name it.

It’s almost like a uniform machine, just coming out and just propagandizing the world that, ‘Hey, Israel’s good.’ Doesn’t matter that they’re behaving as fascists. Doesn’t matter that Netanyahu is a right wing, ideological crazy man. It doesn’t matter any of that stuff. It’s like just pop-up, common nonstop propaganda, flooding every mainstream outlet, every corporate stream outlet, every political stream outlet, save for, I hate to say it, but like X and YouTube and other places where you get to see- you know, TikTok for all of its faults that people whine about-

I mean, we’re seeing a genocide happen in real time, like never before. And the kids aren’t having it, the kids are sick of this political operation.And they’re letting people know about it, and they’re getting beaten. We just had Bryce Greene come on here recently, and we had Aaron Good come on, but Bryce was arrested for being at the student encampments.

I mean, this is serious stuff. And there’s an entire political class, an entire careerist group of people that will stay mum on this, will be quiet about it, will literally defend Genocide Joe Biden, as he annihilates, through funding, the people of Gaza. Your book is very timely and that was a lot of words right there, but I hope that it expresses exactly how I feel.

I am beyond myself. I’m ashamed of what our country is doing. I’m ashamed, but I’m happy in ways that it shows it reveals so much.

 Your thoughts, sir.

[00:04:59] Dan Kovalik: Well, it does. And, this  podcast is ostensibly about my new book, The Case for Palestine. And I certainly hope people read it and we’ll go into more detail about it. I’d actually like to open my remarks discussing another book that I just finished and that’s Cormac McCarthy’s book, Blood Meridian, which is very timely and really could have been written about what’s happening in Gaza right now.

If you’re familiar with the book, it’s a fictional book, but it’s based on true story, for lack of a better term. It’s based on these American settler colonial, scalp hunters in the American Southwest, where they went out and murdered Native Americans and scalped them and collected them and got bounties for them, both fromUS and also Mexican leaders.

And why is that relevant? Because what you’re seeing in Gaza now, what you’re seeing in Palestine, is nothing but settler colonialism of the type that the US had, for example, in its early founding against the indigenous peoples. Where we came in to a land that was already occupied and decided that while we could have tried to cohabitate with the people who lived here, that that was not the goal.

The goal was, from the very beginning, to wipe out the indigenous population and take over everything, which we did from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And of course, in the case of Israel, what you have is the Israelis who came into a populated area with Palestinians, Arab peoples.

There were some Jews at the time, but they were a very small percentage of the population when the Balfour Declaration was made in 1917. And that was a British declaration saying that Jews should have a homeland in Palestine. It made some reference to the rights of the Palestinians already living there, at least made a nod to them.

But the goal was always to take over all of the land from the river to the sea, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, and that’s always been the goal. And in 1948, the U. N. passed a resolution, following up on the Balfour Declaration of 1917, to give Jews a homeland in Palestine. And of course, that was greatly motivated at the time by the Holocaust, which was obviously a terrible event which affected a number of different groups, but obviously, disproportionately Jews, who lost 6 million people in the Holocaust.

So the world was very happy to give them a homeland. But again, the problem was that it was to give them a homeland in a place that was populated mostly by Arabs, known as Palestinians. But even if you look at that U. N. resolution, it was only to give Jews a certain percentage of Palestine. And I’m forgetting what the, I talk about it in the book, what percentage it is, something around 50 some percent of Palestine. But of course, the settlers who were there, and they were there with the British by the way- because by that time the British had taken over from the Ottoman Empire- they decided to take more land than the UN even gave them, because the goal again, the goal was totally eradicate that Arab population from Palestine.

And so they carried out- the Israeli settlers, through these terrorist groups, really these militias, terrorist groups led by various people, including Menachem Begin, who would become prime minister in the seventies and early eighties- they carried out the Nakba, which was this mass ethnic cleansing of about 750,000 Pelestinians from their home, and from their land. And there were massacres carried out in the process.

 In fact, as I mention in the book, that was a very crucial part of the ethnic cleansing. They realized [and the main leader, Ben Gurion, his position was] that the only way to really ethnically cleanse them was to terrorize the population.

You had to put fear into them to get them to, what they claimed back then, “voluntarily move.” Netanyahu uses those words, “voluntary emigration.” There’s nothing voluntary about it. You go into- in the case of the Nakba in 1948- these armed gangs would go in and terrorize villages, destroy the villages, rape women,

by the way, that’s an untold fact that most people don’t know about, the rapes… massacre civilians and drive the people out of those villages and overtake them. And that’s what happened on a mass scale, in around 1947 and 1948. You know how they talk about ‘how the West was won’ in the United States, that’s how the West was won. And that’s how Israel was won.

Very quickly, the UN became horrified about what they had wrought. And even countries that had supported the UN resolution to create the state of Israel, like most notably the Soviet Union, began to regret what they had done, and they quickly passed resolutions saying the Palestinians had right of return. And those resolutions of right of return have been reaffirmed over the years, but they’ve never returned.

And again, just like the United States, where you still do have indigenous population, mostly living on reservations in horrible conditions with terrible lifespans and health outcomes much worse than any other population in America, in Palestine, they didn’t successfully ethnically cleanse everyone.

They put them into what is known now as the West Bank and Gaza, and even after 1948 continued to gain more and more land from them, even within those areas. The big land grab happened in 1967, during what’s known as the Six Days War, that’s when they began their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which had, at that point, been controlled by Jordan and Egypt, respectively.

Once they began occupying those areas again, they began gobbling up more and more land, to the point where now, and I have a map of this at the back of the book, where very little land now is left over for the Palestinians. And of course now, after this Gaza slaughter, that started in October 8th of 2023, they’ll even have much less land,if they have any land at all in Gaza. And in the West Bank, Israel’s also used the events of October 7th to start making more in roads, even there. So the long and short of it is, this is nothing but settler colonialism. where mostly Europeans and Americans have come to the land of Palestine and forcibly, and very violently, taken over land.

And just like the U S justified, on a strange religious notion of manifest destiny [that somehow God anointed the white people of Europe to take over North America from Atlantic to the Pacific], the Israelis have based their religious claim that somehow God gave them, what is now known as, Israel. Both of which being, in my own view, bad religion. These are not based  on anything really.

And now,  Israel really is an extension of the West, of the white West, and seen as this important beachhead of the West , particularly the United States, in the Middle East,which is otherwise an Arab world. From which the US and other Western countries can project their power, and gain access to the great resource of the Middle East known as oil.

That essentially is, in brief, an explanation.

[00:12:52] Steven Grumbine: So, I’m looking at the map right now, on the back of the book, and it starts off, Israel’s almost completely black, meaning Palestinian run, going back to 1947. And then I’m looking at the next iteration, the partition plan at 1947 splits it about 50-50, I don’t know if that’s right, but close enough.

Yeah.

[00:13:15] Dan Kovalik: More or less.

[00:13:16] Steven Grumbine: But then from ‘49 to ‘67, it looks like you’re down to 25 %Palestinian. And then over here in present,  it looks like maybe 15%?

[00:13:26] Dan Kovalik: Yeah, something like that. Yeah, and not even contiguous. The West Bank is all pockmarked with all these Israeli settlements. And for the most part, the Israelis have gotten the best land, and it tends to be on the top of these hills, overlooking Palestinian villages and towns. And the Israelis allow their pollution, and their industrial waste, and their sewage to run down those hills into the Palestinian towns.

And they have a series of walls, and gates, and highways that segregate the Israelis from the Palestinians. So again, even within the Palestinian territory, [and again, those maps show that] the Palestinians don’t have even contiguous controlof land. A big fight is over East Jerusalem, which under an international law is Palestinian. Israel has made it clear, they want all of Jerusalem to be their capital and they’re taking actions to make that a reality, and the US has been helping with that.

Most notably when Donald Trump moved, in a very provocative act to the entire Arab world, moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv [which is the official capital of Israel], to Jerusalem. And a couple other states followed suit, including, I believe, Guatemala.

And now I believe Argentina, with this new leader. And again, despite the fact that the international law recognizes East Jerusalem as Palestinian and it is ostensibly supposed to be controlled by the Palestinian Authority. It’s now being gobbled up by Israel, which is very- not only is it significant because it’s taking more land from Palestinians, but this happens to be the most important historic land. This is really the Holy Land in East Jerusalem. This is where the old city is, this is where the Al Aqsa mosque is, which is the third most Holy site in Islam. It’s where some of the most important Christian sites are. It’s where Jesus was crucified. It’s where his body was entombed in the  Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The tomb of the Virgin Mary is there. So you have these very important holy sites there,

and that is where Israel’s trying to take over. In fact, in the old city, they prohibit most Palestinians from even going inside it now, and again, the USis complicit. And by the way, Biden became president and he did not countermand the decision to keep the US embassy in Jerusalem.

He upheld Trumpism, let’s keep it real.  Blue and red MAGA, correct?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, again,  the difference between the two parties, on things like Israel, there’s no daylight between them. This is a joint project of both parties. This is a very essential part of US foreign policy. Very few presidents have tried to buck against that, there were a couple. I mentioned in the book, Eisenhower did during theSuez crisis, got Israel to back off of Egypt and to relent from taking over the Suez canal. John F. Kennedy, after Eisenhower tried very hard to do a few things to rein in Israel, he tried to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons. He tried to make AIPAC subject to FARA, the foreign agent registration act, which every other foreign agent that’s engaged in political activity has to register under. He tried to do a few things and that was greatly opposed, and of course, then he was assassinated.

 That was really the last time the US, in a major way, made any efforts to rein in Israel. There were a couple smaller incidents where that happened. Interestingly, under Reagan, Reagan told Menachem Begin, who I’ve already mentioned, to relent from killing civilians in Lebanon, which he did… just through a phone call.

[00:17:17] Dan Kovalik: By the way, at that same time, Joe Biden was applauding the killing of civilians in Lebanon by Israel, and said, “Hey, if we were in the same situation and Canada was attacking us, I’d be killing Canadian civilians.” Even Begin was ashamed by that remark by Biden, and had distanced himself from it, which shows how deeply Biden is supportive of the Zionist/Israeli project.

[00:17:40] Steven Grumbine: Wow, wow.

[00:17:41] Dan Kovalik: Despite his crocodile tears from time to time about the deaths of civilians in Gaza, he is full on-board in supporting this slaughter in Gaza. He has no interest in reining in Israel, which gets us to Gaza. I just want to mention, so we mentioned the Nakba of 1947-1948, which displaced about 750,000 Palestinians, killed thousands of others.

Gaza now is what many- even Israeli officials- are terming Nakba 2.0, and it actually is dwarfing the first Nakba. Because you now have about 1.9 million Palestinians that have been displaced within Gaza. That dwarfs the 750,000 of the first Nakba. And you now have the official figure being around 40,000 Palestinians killed again, which dwarfs the number killed

in the first  Nakba. I think, by the way, that- and I mentioned in the book, and I talk about why I believe this- I believe that even that figure, the 40,000, is probably a huge underestimate for several reasons. You have thousands of people still under rubble, that aren’t counted in that, and also, people are dying now, of starvation, of disease in their own homes.

Those people are probably not being counted, because all of the figures that we’re getting, are relying on the Palestinian health ministry to tell us how many people are dying… and Israel’s destroyed all the hospitals. That’s how deaths are counted, right? That’s how births and deaths are counted, right?

You usually get your death certificate from a hospital. You get your birth certificate from a hospital. Well, the hospitals are, for the most part, gone. So who’s counting the dead now?It’s not being well counted. So I think you could easily double that 40,000, or triple it, or quadruple it.

I think when this is all done, it will be in the hundreds of thousands of people dead, which again, makes the first Nakba much smaller in comparison. But this was always the goal. I mean, Israel is doing in Gaza, and also in the West Bank on a smaller scale, what they really wanted to do all along, and that is get rid of every Palestinian.

And not just get rid of them physically, but destroy their heritage, destroy any memory of them. And that’s why also in Gaza,  the Israelis have been methodically destroying churches. Christian churches and mosques. They destroyed the hall of records where all the records are kept. Birth certificates, again, death certificates.

They’re trying to wipe out any memory that these people existed. And in fact, over the years have denied that a group called the Palestinians ever existed. They would like to wipe out the Palestinians from the map, and pretend that they were never there to begin with. And again, that’s always been the conceit in the myth of Israel.

The myth has been, ‘a land without people for a people without land.’ But of course, there were people on that land, but we’re to believe that’s not true. And of course, the West has largely believed or given into that myth. This is the first time, with the protests we’re seeing, that on a huge scale, Westerners are finally waking up and saying, ‘Oh wow, there were people on that land,

they’ve been horribly treated, they’re being massacred now and we don’t accept it.’ And that gets back to my first remarks. I heard a very good, interview, and I forget who it’s with, I’m sorry, I can’t give an attribution for this statement, but I thought it was a very good statement of the problem Israel has with what they’re doing right now.

What he said is, ‘look, every Western country has had some form of settler colonial project.’ And again, the US, Canada are great examples of this. Where they went in, they massacred on a huge scale, literally millions of Native Americans, spread disease to them, killed all the bison, which was their main source of food and took over the land.

And he said, ‘look, that was immoral, even back when that was being done, but it was accepted amongst the Europeans that you could do that.’ What he said was, ‘in the 21st century, that’s not acceptable anymore. No one, outside a small group of people, would acknowledge that is a proper thing you can do.

So what the guy was saying is, well, Israel’s essentially trying to do this about a century or so too late. This is not appropriate anymore. And thenthat’s why you’re seeing this reaction on the college campuses, because they know that, these students, God bless them, understand you’re not supposed to do that.

We shouldn’t have done it to begin with in North America. It was done. We need to deal with that. We need to maybe have reparations and other things, but it was done, but it can’t be done anymore. And now we know, as you mentioned at the outset, we know that it’s happening, not because of the mainstream media, but because of social media, we’re seeing videos and photos every hour of babies being killed in Gaza.

And that’s why too, the entire Western narrative of moral superiority, and being the beacon of democracy, it’s completely falling apart. And you can see that at the state department press conferences, where the spokespeople for the government, they can’t even answer questions with a straight face.

They look horribly embarrassed, to try to defend the indefensible, and that’s a problem. The US has really never been in this position, even during terrible things the US has done in Korea, Vietnam, Central America, they always found a way to have some, at least colorable, explanation for what they were doing, that most people accepted…

fighting communism or whatever. That’s not working now. For the first time, there really is no ideological answer or moral answer for what’s happening in Gaza. And so, you see these officials being interrupted, being bothered on the streets because they’re in the wrong, and they can’t even tell people how they’re not in the wrong.

I think that also explains why we’re seeing really terrible violence against the student protesters and professors, by the way, who support them.

[00:24:07] Steven Grumbine: Oh my.

[00:24:08] Dan Kovalik: Because the universities, which are supposed to be these institutions of learning and education, I thought, [we all thought], can’t ideologically defend what’s happening. So, all they can do is billy club people. And the fact that that’s the answer on a university campus, at an Ivy League school, like Columbia, for example, tells you everything you need to know.

That this cannot be defended with words, with reasoning, and so they need to use violence. And it can’t even be defended by the highest institutions of learning in the United States. That is creating a crisis. There is a crisis. I mean, what is going to happen? This is leading to revolutionary change, I believe, in the West.

The Palestinian uprising is radicalizing the West. It has held up a mirror to who we are, and it ain’t pretty. It’s never been pretty. Again, going back to our own settler colonialist history, slavery, other things, it’s never been pretty. It’s always been ugly. And now, I really think, for the first time, in a profound way, people are seeing that ugliness for what it is and can’t abide by it.

[00:25:20] Steven Grumbine: You know Dan, normally we talk about MMT here, and I have not been able to bring myself to just do a pure MMT show. As we’re watching this happen, I know, because I understand federal finance, I know that Joe Biden is literally not raising a nickel of taxes on a single soul, is using this to fund Halliburton, and Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, and all these other military industrial complex vipers, these parasites. And they are, in turn, handing weapons over. Israel couldn’t do what it’s doing, if it didn’t have the US directly funding these things. And  as an MMT guy,

focusing purely on the economy, I see this and I say, ‘this is a perfect example of MMT.’Look, you’re watching public money go directly to the annihilation of a group of people that doesn’t have a standing army, doesn’t have major weapons going on, it doesn’t have any of the things that would need to defend itself.

[00:26:29] Dan Kovalik: No air force to defend itself, right.

[00:26:32] Steven Grumbine: Nothing. And yet the greatest, the greatest, the largest, most violent empire in human history, the US, is sitting there literally full funding, like as if Israel is, somehow or another, this child, this little baby that needs protecting , as this little teeny group of people trapped in a, basically a terrarium,

 throw stones at them, etc..  I think to myself, and I’ll just throw this at you, okay… if I was a slave and I started talking to my other fellow slaves at night about let’s break loose, and the slave owner came to me and tried to stop me from doing what I was doing, and we killed the slave owner… I am fully righteous in that killing.

I have alleviated my oppressor. The idea that these people have the ability for a diplomatic solution, I mean, they have offered to give back whatever hostages they had, prisoners, and Israel has rejected everything, straight across the board, as we watch. They literally told folks to go to Rafa, it would be a safe place.

And then subsequently, while they’re trapped there, bomb the bejesus out of them. And you see the beheaded baby, real, literal, live, now dead, beheaded babies, burned up babies. And I see people, genuinely, either A- ignoring this and going about life, and doing selfies, and smiling on vacation and living La Vida Loco. Or I see them excommunicating people that actually speak up on it. Or worse,

they’re out there talking about Joe Biden “sticking the landing”, or literally celebrating his state of the union, things like that, instead of taking this opportunity to describe that public money can be used for good. Which would be healthcare, ending student debt, fixing the climate, making reparations to descendants of slaves, whatever. Or it can be used to fund genocide, as is happening right now.

And I just, as an MMT person, I find it an opportunity lost. Either we’re against genocide – and here’s a great opportunity to explain the way federal finance works and what’s going on – or we’re silently complicit about genocide and going about our lives. And so, I just want to state unequivocally that we, at Real Progressives and Macro and Cheese, are decidedly against genocide 100 % and we’ll do whatever we can to expose that

as often as we can. And I really appreciate you, and your clarity of vision, and your clarity of the message. There is no wiggle room here. This is a genocide. And if you look, there’s not going to be anything left. There’s not going to be a need for a twostate solution. There’s not going to be a need for any kind of negotiation. They will be wiped out. They will be erased from history. Your thoughts.

[00:29:32] Dan Kovalik: No, it’s true. And what came to mind when you were saying, you were talking about the slave revolts and what not, there’s this cognitive dissonance in US culture where we, in the culture, we properly are trained to support David over Goliath, right?

I was thinking, when you mentioned the Slave Revolt, I was thinking of the movie Django Unchained, which is a very popular Quentin Tarantino film. A remake of an older film by the same name, where the protagonists, were hunting down slave owners. And it was a very popular film, and of course, everyone properly rooted for the guys hunting down the slave owners.

They weren’t rooting for the slave owners. And we watch a movie like Star Wars, where the rebels fight against the horrible Empire. And we know from George Lucas’s notes that, in fact, the Empire was the United States. When he wrote it, he was thinking United States, and the rebels were Vietnam.

He actually, explicitly thought that when he was making the film. And we rooted for the rebels, and we have rooted against the empire, of course. But in real life, in real life, many people continue to root for Goliath over David.

Now, some of that is though, because of propaganda, because they’re turned around, because they don’t really understand who the David and Goliath are in the story. And of course, in the case of Israel-Palestine, they’re very confused, because Israel happens to have the Star of David on their flag. They wrap themselves in the mantle of David. But that doesn’t make them David, in the circumstance, but people are confused.

Finally,that confusion is starting to break apart. And again, it is because of social media, which has been the best friend the Palestinians have ever had. Because for the first time in a long time, we are seeing the reality of these types of wars that the US is supporting.

Really, the last time before this that we saw that, was in Vietnam, when that mainstream press actually did some reporting.  60 Minutes went there and showed soldiers calmly setting huts on fire, and old women outside crying and sobbing.

And that made an impact on people. But since Vietnam, journalism has collapsed. Mainstream journalism is a joke, and it doesn’t cover wars like that anymore. We don’t see dying in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. We don’t see anything about it. I mean, we had this war in Afghanistan for 20 years.

 I remember very few segments about Afghanistan in the news. It was happening, but no one really paid attention to it. But now, again, with social media, people are seeing these terrible atrocities. And it’s very clear who David is in this story.

 The American people, for all their faults, have decent instincts, and their instincts are to side with the poor over the rich and what not. Our goal, people like you and me, is to spread the word about the true nature of these wars, and who the players are, and who David is, and who Goliath is.

And again, the mouthpieces of the government are unable to compete with the reality that we’re seeing, and that’s why they want to censor people. That’s why they want to get rid of professors who support Palestine. That’s the main reason they want to get rid of TikTok… and AIPAC’s been pushing that.

They don’t like these little videos of kids being killed in Gaza. And they try to portray that as propaganda, but that’s the, it’s the opposite of propaganda. It’s real. And when humans see other humans being treated that way, they recoil. And that’s what you’re seeing on the college campuses, and I only hope that it spreads.

We need a bigger peace movement because more war is coming, and we didn’t even get the other conflicts. But this government wants more war. It wants more direct war with Russia, maybe with China, and we need to stop that. And we’re the only people who can. And we’re privileged to live in this country that wants these wars, because maybe we can stop it.

[00:33:16] Steven Grumbine: Right.  I look at– Folks, I want to give a shout out to a few people that I’ve been following closely, that are not necessarily, they don’t get enough credit.  Obviously, The Gray Zone with Aaron Mate.

[00:33:29] Dan Kovalik: And Max Blumenthal too.

[00:33:31] Steven Grumbine: Exactly, Max as well. But then you look over at people that maybe go under the radar, folks that were once centrist shitlibs.  Advocates like Peter Daou, has been unapologetically frontline on this.  @ecomarxi A.K.A. Tiberius on X has been remarkably relentless in his attacks on the genocide.There have been folks like Ben Norton, who has been relentless on these things as well, yourself, on and on and on. I mean, seeing someone in particular, like Kate Willett, who is a comedian, but she’s also an unapologetic Democrat

And she’s out there leading frontline, like just to show that this is not about politics, this is about genocide. Right. And she’s out there literally saying, “Oh my God, I cannot believe the level of depravity that people are deploying to bully people around to overlook genocide, to not look, do not look here.” She’s, quite frankly, she’s like,’I’ll do whatever it takes.’

And this pier thing, oh my god, more aid was getting to the folks in Gaza before the fricking fraudulent PR stunt, called a pier, was put out there and has done nothing but create problems.

[00:34:55] Dan Kovalik: And now it’s floating away.

[00:34:56] Steven Grumbine: Yes, this is what I am saying.

[00:34:58] Dan Kovalik: I mean, we could not even do it competently. $50 million! It is a joke.

[00:35:03] Steven Grumbine: Think about this, the Democrats were traditionally the party of labor. That’s been a long time since that’s been true.

[00:35:10] Dan Kovalik: Yes, and civil rights. Yes.

[00:35:12] Steven Grumbine: On and on and on. But we’re trading off of the memories of these things. Let me just state, for anybody that’s wondering, I’m not focused on electoral politics in any way, shape or form. But the narratives that we have to fight through, to get people determined to fight against genocide. Folks,

genocide, like,  the never again of 8 million Jews being killed in Auschwitz. The never again is happening again right now. This is not political. If this is political to you, that’s disgusting to me. This is 100 percent simply about slaughtering people indiscriminately. I mean, we’re talking about AI drones, literally killing people. We’re talking about technology from the United States being used to slaughter children, in our name.

Not in our ‘tax dollars’, in our name. And in reality, we don’t have nearly enough. I mean, think about what kind of look and feel the aesthetic of all these protesters across- I mean, I see this stuff Jordan Chariton shows us. All the marches and protests and the violent beat downs that are occurring in New York.

[00:36:27] Dan Kovalik: Yeah, I saw.

[00:36:28] Steven Grumbine:  Columbia, you name it. I mean literally, Jill Stein got hit with a bicycle,  unbelievable.

I don’t care what you think about any of the individuals. I don’t care if you even like Muslim faith. I don’t care if you have issues of patriarchy. There are legitimate issues thatwe could talk about, after we’ve stopped the genocide. But a genocide, no matter who they are, I have a hard time watching people talk about the United States and these colors don’t run, and I’m proud to be an American, as we’re watching the indigenous people in this country, have all the ailments that you laid out in the beginning here.

I’m so disgusted with this kind of privileged perspective. And I don’t even know how to function in that.I go to bed at night feeling sick inside, that there’s not more we can do.

People run around with, I just voted sticker on their forehead, as if they’ve done something. But in reality, you should already know, inherently know, there has been study after study, after study, after study, after more studies, that show we live in an oligarchy. We do not live in a democracy. We don’t even really live in a constitutional republic,

quite frankly. We live in the “American exception” as Aaron Good would say. That the rest of the world has to follow these rules or be worried about bombs from the US. But the US doesn’t have to follow these rules. I mean, think about this brave groups of people, South Africa, I think Turkey, who all was it that stood up and brought a case?… Nicaragua, yep,

brought a case to jail Netanyahu for war crimes. What was the US’ response? “You do that, we’ll invade the Hague, we’ll take, we’ll do some…” What the hell man? This is ridiculous. On its face, it should be like, “Oh wow, we’re doing that?’ Why do you think that we’re not seeing the lights go on for these folks? Are they that propagandized?

Are they that mesmerized by the belief of American exceptionalism? It’s just unbelievable.

[00:38:40] Dan Kovalik: I think some are. I think many, who are only watching the mainstream news, are not really keyed into what’s truly happening, and that’s a lot of people. I think many Democrats are willing to look the other way because it’s ‘Joe Biden’s war.’ And they are so afraidof the prospect of Donald Trump, that they are willing to hold their nose and vote for Biden, and don’t want to criticize him.

I think that answers a lot of it. I think that’s a lot of the reason. And that’s why truthfully having a Democrat in office, again, in reality, can be worse than having a Republican, because the people who would naturally protest war, who are the liberals, look the other way when it’s their president that’s doing it.

Obama got away with murder, literally. Clinton did, and now Biden is. And if this were Trump’s war, you’d see maybe a lot more protest out there, because again, the people naturally inclined to protest over these things, would be protesting them. That’s why,  in part, there were much bigger protests, in truth, in the run up to the Iraq war.

And that’s because it was George W. Bush, because people hated him. And I’m okay with people hating them.But the point is, if something’s wrong under a Republican, it’s also wrong under a Democrat. That should be an obvious fact for people, but in this two-party system we live in, it’s not. That is not a reality.

The reality is, they root for their own team, such as it is. Even if their team does nothing for them. I mean, what have the democrats done, even on the other issues people care about? Have they defended abortion rights? No.

[00:40:16] Steven Grumbine: Absolutely.

[00:40:17] Dan Kovalik: If Biden had a democratic majority in both houses, they could have passed legislation to protect abortion. Did they do it? No. What are they really doing? Even on the social issues people care about? Nothing. What are they getting from Biden? Nothing.

I mean, it really is more a matter of style, more than anything. I joked, I thinkthe difference between Obama and Trump, was the difference between Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.One was kind of a handsome guy, and then the other guy was an unkempt clown. But they both killed people, sowhat’s the difference?

But apparently, those appearances matter to people Wwhich is sad. But again, on the bright side is, you do have significant protests happening.

[00:41:05] Steven Grumbine: What are they accomplishing? I mean this with like they’re not stopping the genocide, but maybe what we’re seeing is an American public unifying around a set of principles. And maybe that does change us for the better, long term. I don’t know.

[00:41:20] Dan Kovalik: It hasn’t stopped the genocide, that’s true. In truth, it hasn’t even slowed it down, or even sped up humanitarian aid. I mean, those are realities we have to confront. At the same time, it has forced the administration to try to answer some of these things, which is good,

the fact that they are being held at least somewhat accountable for what’s happening. But yeah, I think this is probably, the demonstrations are more important on the medium to long term. I think it will change the trajectory of this country and Israel’s too.

[00:41:51] Steven Grumbine: What do you think about the latest changes to the way that they’re pushing upanybody that speaks ill on this, that talks about genocide, will be considered a terrorist sympathizer or a terrorist.

[00:42:04] Dan Kovalik: And anti-semitic. Yeah.

[00:42:05] Steven Grumbine: Yeah. Talk about that.Because for real, these are the things that terrify us. We feel like our job is to inform people. I’m not a voter. I’m not telling people who to vote for. I’m saying I’m standing on principle and I’m saying, for God’s sake, people are dying now. Not in a month, not in six months, right here, right now, what are we doing about it? We’re accepting this.

And, to me, the idea of turning it into politics is where I depart. I can’t handle that. I don’t want to hear any ‘rah, rah.’ I don’t want to hear about your candidate. I don’t want to hear about your… I don’t want to hear about any of that. I want to see us not do these things that are truly, if you want to quote Hillary, ‘deplorable.’

I mean, this is as deplorable as it gets, is it not? I mean, what is the other thing that we could do beyond genocide that’s worse. I am trying to find it.

[00:42:58] Dan Kovalik: No, this is as bad as it can get. I mean, that’s why this idea, ‘oh, we’re afraid Trump’s going to get elected.’ It’s like, how worse could it be? I mean, Biden is doing the worst. Don’t worry about who’s going to be president in January, worry about the guy who’s in there now. That should be the focus, is stopping this genocide.

I think those memes that say, ‘if you wondered what you would do as a German during the Holocaust, you know now, because you’re doing it. If you’re not protesting this genocide, you are a good German.

[00:43:25] Steven Grumbine: That’s terrifying.

[00:43:26] Dan Kovalik: That’s just the fact. This is a moral litmus test for people and many people are failing it, some people are not. I applaud those people. I applaud people who are brave enough to stand up, as you say, against now new laws that they’re trying to outlaw speech, and that’s what those laws are. Again, because, the powers that be can’t defend what they’re doing, so they just want to quiet everyone who’s criticizing it.

But the good news is, the people who are protesting, are just ignoring that. It’s just background noise. And the claim of antisemitism, which is so overused, it’s a shame, because there is really antisemitism and that should be condemned. But this thing, whereanytime you criticize Israel for murdering people, you’re antisemitic, which is absurd.

[00:44:12] Steven Grumbine: Yes.

[00:44:13] Dan Kovalik: But that is the charge. People are not taking it that seriously anymore. It does not have the power it used to have, and you have plenty of Jews. And even Holocaust survivors are saying no, you are wrong, it is not antisemitic, it is human and if you oppose the Holocaust, you have to oppose this.

And you can’t hide behind the Holocaust to commit another genocide, right? I mean, that just stands to reason. And Israel has been very adept at using false claims of antisemitism, of misusing the Holocaust to defend its actions. But again, that is starting to slip away. That those defenses are starting to slip away.

People are not taking those as seriously as they used to, and that’s a good thing. I hope that in the medium to long term, what’s happening now, the protests, are going to have an impact on that discourse. And it’s a critical thing because this country needs some self-analysis, needs full throated discussion about who we are, where we’ve come from and where we’re going as a nation.

We have to have that come to Jesus moment, that we’ve never really had. And this is going to help do that.

[00:45:18] Steven Grumbine: I hope so sir, I really do. Dan, do me a favor, plug your book one more time before we get out of here.

[00:45:24] Dan Kovalik: Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed the discussion. The new book is The Case for Palestine:  Why It Matters, Why You Should Care. You can get it on Amazon bookstore near you. If they don’t have it, they can order it for you. You can also get it directly, publisher Skyhorsepublishing.com.

[00:45:41] Steven Grumbine: Thank you so much, Dan. And without further ado, we bid youadieu. My name is Steve Grumbine. I’m the host of Macro N Cheese, with my guest Dan Kovalik. For the organization and for the people of Gaza, we are praying for you. And without further ado, we bid you adieu, and we are out of here.

GUEST BIO

Dan Kovalik 

Our guest this week is American lawyer and Human Rights advocate Dan Kovalik. He graduated from Columbia University School of Law in 1993, then served as in-house counsel for the United Steelworkers, AFL-CIO (USW) until 2019. While with the USW, Dan worked on Alien Tort Claims Act cases against the Coca-Cola Company, Drummond and Occidental Petroleum cases -all of which arose out of egregious human rights abuses in Colombia. The Christian Science Monitor (referring to his work defending Colombian unionists under threat of assassination), described Mr. Kovalik as “one of the most prominent defenders of Colombian workers in the United States.” Mr. Kovalik received the David W. Mills Mentoring Fellowship from Stanford University School of Law, and was the recipient of the Project Censored Award for his article exposing the unprecedented killing of trade unionists in Colombia. He has written extensively on the issue of international human rights and U.S. foreign policy for the Huffington Post and Counterpunch; lecturing throughout the world on these subjects, also authoring numerous books on the subject.  

https://danielmkovalik.weebly.com 

 Twitter: @danielmkovalik 

From This Episode: 

“Because what you’re seeing in Gaza now, what you’re seeing in Palestine- is nothing but settler colonialism of the type that the U. S. had, for example, in its early founding against the indigenous peoples. Where we came in to a land that was already occupied and decided that while we could have tried to cohabitate with the people who lived here, that that was not the goal. 

The goal was (from the very beginning), to wipe out the indigenous population and take over everything. Which we did, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And of course, in the case of Israel, what you have is the Israelis, who came into a populated area with Palestinians, Arab peoples.” 

ORGANIZATIONS

AIPAC  

American Israel Public Affairs Committee which claims to have 3 million members lobbying for pro-Israeli interests. 

 AIPAC  

 Hamas  

A militant Palestinian nationalist and Islamist movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that is dedicated to the establishment of an independent Islamic state in historical Palestine, founded in 1987.

Hamas | Definition, History, Ideology, & Facts | Britannica  

Palestinian Health Ministry  

www.moh.gov.ps {link is not active, at this time (6/12/2024)} 

Following the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA), functioning through the Ministry of Health (MOH), were given responsibility for the administration of health care in the region. Yet, the PA’s stewardship over health care administration is by-in large symbolic. The health care system remains subservient to Israel, with the Israeli state retaining ultimate control over healthcare budgets, border crossings, building permits and pharmaceutical import/exports.6 Consequently MOH hospitals are basic in comparison to hospitals within Israel and lacking many resources taken for granted in the UK, particularly those relating to imaging and specialist personnel. Doctors practising in the West Bank have limited opportunities for training and continued professional development due to imposed permit sanctions and accordingly, Palestine has 8 times fewer specialist doctors when compared with Israel.6 

Medical Care in Palestine: Working in a Conflict Zone – PMC (nih.gov) 

Controversy & conflict over the Palestinian Health Authority Death Counts: 

When the war began after Hamas’s Oct. 7 mass atrocities, Hamas’s Gaza Health Ministry initially counted deaths through its hospital and morgue system, in which bodies are identified and information is entered into a central database. This system’s accuracy in previous conflicts is sometimes regarded as evidence of its reliability in the present war. But in the past, the Health Ministry’s count could be independently checked by the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, working with other U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations. That critical real-time verification, which also distinguished between civilian and combatant casualties, is absent now. An additional complication: The Health Ministry is using three separate methodologies of varying reliability. By early November, when the Israel Defense Forces’ ground operation necessitated the closing and evacuation of hospitals in northern Gaza, the Health Ministry began using a new and opaque methodology in that area: “reliable media sources.” This methodology, which has never been explained, quickly became the dominant input into the death toll, peaking at 45 percent of total cumulative reported deaths in late March. In January, the Health Ministry added a third methodology: self-reports, via a Google Form, from family members of those killed. The Health Ministry released the first tranche of that data in late March. As of May 3, hospitals and morgues accounted for roughly 60 percent of fatalities reported; media sources, 29 percent; and family member self-reports, 11 percent. The Health Ministry provided demographic data for hospital-morgue reports and self-reports in 41 Telegram releases published Dec. 11-May 3, along with four lists providing names of the dead, the most recent released May 5. Demographic analysis of the 24,682 names listed with a given age indicates that 45.6 percent of those killed were men, 23.1 percent were women and 31.3 percent were children. Since almost half of Gazans are children, and just over one-quarter each are men and women, this shows significant underrepresentation of children and overrepresentation of men, particularly those ages 20 to 45. (The latter is not surprising; these Gazans are the most likely to be combatants.) Among the self-reports from families, which seem more likely to reflect the deaths of combatants, men account for more than 55 percent. 

Here’s the Real Problem with the U.N.’s Revised Gaza Death Toll | The Washington Institute 

Columbia University  

A major private institution of higher education in New York, New York, U.S. It is one of the eight Ivy League schools, widely regarded for their high academic standards, selectivity in admissions, and social prestige.  

Founded in 1754 as King’s College, it was renamed Columbia College when it reopened in 1784 after the American Revolution. It became Columbia University in 1912.  

Columbia University | History & Enrollment | Britannica  

Episode 278 – Radicalizing the Youth: The Significance of Campus Protests with Bryce Greene (realprogressives.org) 

“Django Unchained”  

2012 Quentin Tarantino film: 

With the help of a German bounty-hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation owner in Mississippi. 

Django Unchained (2012) – IMDb 

*Note- “Django Unchained” was a remake of the international Cult Classic “Django” from 1966- 

In this definitive spaghetti western, Franco Nero (Keoma, The Fifth Cord) gives a career-defining performance as Django, a mysterious loner who arrives at a mud-drenched ghost town on the Mexico-US border, ominously dragging a coffin behind him. After saving imperilled prostitute Maria (Loredana Nusciak), Django becomes embroiled in a brutal feud between a racist gang and a band of Mexican revolutionaries… With Django, director Sergio Corbucci (The Great Silence) upped the ante for sadism and sensationalism in westerns, depicting machine-gun massacres, mud-fighting prostitutes and savage mutilations… 

Django (Blu-ray), Arrow Video, Western – Walmart.com 

“Star Wars”  

Wildly profitable Movie franchise.  

Star Wars Movies (In Order of the release date) 

Star Wars Movies (In Order of the release date) (imdb.com) 

Weird Al Yankovic “Star Wars” synopsis:  

“Weird Al” Yankovic – The Saga Begins (Official HD Video) (youtube.com)  

Grayzone  

independent news website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on politics and empire. It was founded and is edited by award-winning journalist and author Max Blumenthal. From January 2016 to January 2018, AlterNet.org sponsored the Grayzone Project. Since then, The Grayzone has been fully independent. 

About – The Grayzone 

CONCEPTS

Gaza  

Gaza Strip, territory occupying 140 square miles (363 square km) along the Mediterranean Sea just northeast of the Sinai Peninsula. The Gaza Strip is unusual in being a densely settled area not recognized as a de jure part of any extant country. The first accurate census, conducted in September 1967, showed a population smaller than had previously been estimated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) or by Egypt, with nearly half of the people living in refugee camps. Pop. (2017) 1,899,291; (2023 est.) 2,226,544.   

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a coordinated land, sea, and air assault that took Israel by surprise. At least 1,200 Israelis were killed in the attacks—the deadliest day for Israel since its independence—and about 240 were taken hostage. Israel’s response led to hundreds of deaths in the Gaza Strip on that same day. On the following day, Israel declared war for the first time since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.  

Gaza Strip | Definition, History, Facts, & Map | Britannica  

Empire

: a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority 

Empire Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster 

US Empire has no clothes: Episode 54- Empire with Ajamu Baraka – Real Progressives 

Fascist  

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition 

Fascist Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster  

Genocide  

: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group  

Genocide Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster  

Settler Colonialism  

“According to the Oxford Dictionary colonialism is “the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.” Settler colonialism more specifically is a term for when the colonizer comes to stay and as such the distinction between the colony and the imperial nation is lost. Settler colonialism as a structure requires genocide. It is enacted through practices like the creation of reserves, residential schools, enfranchisement and abduction into state custody as well as practices like the extraction of natural resources through mining, pipelines and more. In settler colonialism “colonizers impose their own cultural values, religions, and laws, make policies that do not favour the Indigenous Peoples. They seize land and control the access to resources and trade.” Settler colonialism involves the total appropriation of Indigenous life and land rather than the selective appropriation for profit (as is the case in other forms of colonialism). It is also distinct from other forms of colonialism because the colonizer comes with the intention of making a new home on the land and as such insists on “settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain.” In settler colonialism the most important thing is land (water, earth, and air), because it is the source of capital and the new home of the settlers. It is also key to settler colonialism because “the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence.” This violence continues with every day of occupation as settler colonialism is a structure and not an event.” (Written By Shreya Shah) 

What is Settler Colonialism? — The Indigenous Foundation  

American Indigenous 

At the dawn of the 16th century CE, as the European conquest of the Americas began, indigenous peoples resided throughout the Western Hemisphere. They were soon decimated by the effects of epidemic disease, military conquest, and enslavement, and, as with other colonized peoples, they were subject to discriminatory political and legal policies well into the 20th, and even the 21st, century. Nonetheless, they have been among the most active and successful native peoples in effecting political change and regaining their autonomy in areas such as education, land ownership, religious freedom, the law, and the revitalization of traditional culture. 

Native American | History, Art, Culture, & Facts | Britannica 

“It is known that all the so-called pre-Columbian peoples – spread so irregularly throughout the American Continent extension – had ancestral ties that were strongly rooted in the environment. The different ecological environments – from the Arctic Circle to the extreme south of Patagonia – influenced religious practices, customs, ways of life, artistic and artisanal production, social organization, worldviews, and traditions of the societies established here before the colonizers arrived…” 

Connection with the Environment – two different worldviews into perspective — The Indigenous Foundation 

Balfour Declaration 

(November 2, 1917), statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild (of Tring), a leader of the Anglo-Jewish community. Though the precise meaning of the correspondence has been disputed, its statements were generally contradictory to both the Sykes-Picot Agreement (a secret convention between Britain and France) and the Ḥusayn-McMahon correspondence (an exchange of letters between the British high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, then emir of Mecca), which in turn contradicted one another (see Palestine, World War I and after). The Balfour Declaration, issued through the continued efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, Zionist leaders in London, fell short of the expectations of the Zionists, who had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as “the” Jewish national home. The declaration specifically stipulated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The document, however, said nothing of the political or national rights of these communities and did not refer to them by name. Nevertheless, the declaration aroused enthusiastic hopes among Zionists and seemed the fulfillment of the aims of the World Zionist Organization (see Zionism). 

Balfour Declaration | History & Impact | Britannica 

Holocaust  

the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this “the final solution to the Jewish question.”  

Holocaust | Definition, Concentration Camps, History, & Facts | Britannica  

UN Resolution  

United Nations Resolution 181: resolution passed by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1947 that called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with the city of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum (Latin: “separate entity”) to be governed by a special international regime. The resolution—which was considered by the Jewish community in Palestine to be a legal basis for the establishment of Israel, and which was rejected by the Arab community—was succeeded almost immediately by violence. 

United Nations Resolution 181 | Map & Summary | Britannica 

British rule of Palestine 

The British mandate in Palestine from 1918 to 1948 … Palestine was arguably the greatest failure in the whole history of British imperial rule. The British, after thirty years of colonial rule, had failed to create a viable indigenous government of any sort in Palestine and could only evacuate the country and leave its future to be decided by civil war. The reasons for this failure are discussed based on the position and reactions of each of the three main actors: the Arabs, the Zionists, and the British. Any one of these might have blocked the road to an agreed inter-communal settlement. 

Palestine: The British Mandate, 1918–1948 | Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914-1958 | Oxford Academic (oup.com) 

Nakba  

Every year on May 15, Palestinians mark a somber occasion: the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) that befell Palestinians in the lead-up to and during 1948, when they were expelled from their historic and ancestral land by Zionist militias.  

The Nakba: Five Palestinian towns massacred 75 years ago | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera  

Right of Return  

 75 years since the Nakba – the event that shattered Palestinian lives and severed their ancestral connection to their land during the establishment of the State of Israel. Since then, they have endured forced displacement, dispossession, and disenfranchisement, with their rights to self-determination, restitution, and compensation repeatedly denied. For 75 years, their cry for justice, embodied in the demand for the right to return, has resounded with unwavering determination. For Palestinians, forced displacement has become part of their life for generations, tracing back to 1947-1949 when over 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee massacres and mass expulsions and forcible transfers during the birth of the State of Israel. The majority, along with their descendants, are still in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, while 40 per cent of them remain under occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. Progressively, Palestinian exile has scattered them across various nations globally. Since 1948, both the General Assembly and the Security Council have consistently called upon Israel to facilitate the return of Palestinian refugees and provide reparations. Despite these repeated appeals, Palestinian refugees have been systematically denied of their right to return and forced to live in exile under precarious and vulnerable conditions outside the borders of Palestine. The right of return constitutes a fundamental pillar of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. The fragmentation of the Palestinian people, both geographically and politically, through administrative methods of control based on residency and race, tantamount to apartheid, has obstructed the realisation of the right to return and self-determination. These practices serve the settler-colonial project pursued by Israel. 

Right of return of Palestinian refugees must be prioritised over political considerations: UN experts | OHCHR 

UN Human Rights, Country Page: Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel

American Reservations  

Modern Indian reservations still exist across the United States and fall under the umbrella of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The tribes on each reservation are sovereign and not subject to most federal laws. They handle most reservation-related obligations but depend on the federal government for financial support. On many reservations, the main sources of revenue are tourism and gambling. According to the BIA, 567 federally-recognized American Indian tribes and Alaskan natives reside in the United States. The BIA is responsible for improving their quality of life, providing them with economic opportunities and improving their assets which the BIA holds in trust. Despite their efforts, living conditions on reservations aren’t ideal and are often compared to that of a third-world country. Housing is overcrowded and often below standards, and many people on the reservations are stuck in a cycle of poverty. 

Indian Reservations – Map, US & Definition | HISTORY 

Six Days War  

Brief war that took place June 5–10, 1967, and was the third of the Arab-Israeli wars. Israel’s decisive victory included the capture of the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, Old City of Jerusalem, and Golan Heights; the status of these territories subsequently became a major point of contention in the Arab-Israeli conflict.  

Six-Day War | Definition, Causes, History, Summary, Outcomes, & Facts | Britannica  

West Bank  

Area of the former British-mandated (1920–47) territory of Palestine west of the Jordan River, claimed from 1949 to 1988 as part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan but occupied from 1967 by Israel. The territory, excluding East Jerusalem, is also known within Israel by its biblical names, Judaea and Samaria. 

West Bank | History, Population, Map, Settlements, & Facts | Britannica 

Manifest Destiny  

in U.S. history, the supposed inevitability of the continued territorial expansion of the boundaries of the United States westward to the Pacific and beyond. Before the American Civil War (1861–65), the idea of Manifest Destiny was used to validate continental acquisitions in the Oregon Country, Texas, New Mexico, and California. The purchase of Alaska after the Civil War briefly revived the concept of Manifest Destiny, but it most evidently became a renewed force in U.S. foreign policy in the 1890s, when the country went to war with Spain, annexed Hawaii, and laid plans for an isthmian canal across Central America. 

Manifest Destiny | Summary, Examples, Westward Expansion, & Significance | Britannica 

International Law  

In its broadest sense, international law provides normative guidelines as well as methods, mechanisms, and a common conceptual language to international actors—i.e., primarily sovereign states but also increasingly international organizations and some individuals. 

International law | Definition, History, Characteristics, Examples, & Facts | Britannica 

Episode 276 – What Democracy? with Aaron Good (realprogressives.org) 

East Jerusalem  

The biggest change to Israel’s frontiers came in 1967, when the conflict known as the Six Day War left Israel in occupation of the Sinai peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and most of the Syrian Golan Heights – effectively tripling the size of territory under Israel’s control. Israel effectively annexed East Jerusalem – claiming the whole of the city as its capital – and the Golan Heights. 

Israel’s borders explained in maps (bbc.com) 

The eastern side (*of Jerusalem) — including key Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites — was captured by Israel in 1967. It’s populated by Palestinians who seek it for their capital. Israelis are increasing their numbers there and it’s highly contested. 

Understanding The Map Of Jerusalem, Or Trying To : Parallels : NPR 

Holy Land  

The Holy Land, or Israel, is a revered location for many faiths, especially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Holy Land includes Jerusalem, the Western Wall, the Jordan River, the Mount of Olives, Bethlehem, Masada, and the Dome of the Rock. Visitors to the Holy Land explore the ancient towns and beautiful destinations such as Gethsemane, the Sea of Galilee, and the Dead Sea. Israel is called the Holy Land because it is the site of divine encounters between man and God and the land where Jesus lived, died, and rose again. 

Why is Israel called the Holy Land? | GotQuestions.org 

Al Aqsa 

Al-Aqsa Mosque, mosque in Jerusalem, located in the Old City at the terminal point of the Prophet Muhammad’s Isrāʾ journey. According to Islamic sources, the Qurʾān (17:1) indicates that Muhammad was miraculously transported one night from Mecca (al-masjid al-ḥaram, or “the sacred place of worship”) to this site in Jerusalem (al-masjid al-aqṣā, “the farther place of worship”). On that spot he led Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other messengers (rusul) of God in ritual prayer (ṣalāt). That same night he was taken up to heaven from the site of the Dome of the Rock for an encounter with God (see Miʿrāj). The term Al-Aqsa Mosque is often extended to denote the entirety of the plaza on which the mosque and the Dome of the Rock stand, although the plaza is known formally as Al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf (“the Noble Sanctuary”). 

Al-Aqsa Mosque | History, Religious Significance, & Facts | Britannica 

Suez Crisis  

(1956), international crisis in the Middle East, precipitated on July 26, 1956, when the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. The canal had been owned by the Suez Canal Company, which was controlled by French and British interests. The Suez Crisis was provoked by an American and British decision not to finance Egypt’s construction of the Aswan High Dam, as they had promised, in response to Egypt’s growing ties with communist Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Nasser reacted to the American and British decision by declaring martial law in the canal zone and seizing control of the Suez Canal Company, predicting that the tolls collected from ships passing through the canal would pay for the dam’s construction within five years. 

Suez Crisis | Definition, Summary, Location, History, Dates, Significance, & Facts | Britannica 

FARA  

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted in 1938. FARA requires certain agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities or other activities specified under the statute to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities.  

Foreign Agents Registration Act | Foreign Agents Registration Act (justice.gov) 

Reagan’s intervention in Israeli aggression against Lebanon  

From 1981 onward, the Reagan administration feared that conflict between Lebanese factions backed by Syria and Israel, along with clashes between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), could escalate into an Arab-Israeli war. Yet American policymakers differed over how to prevent such a conflict, especially over whether to commit troops for that purpose. Following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the advocates of military intervention won out. But by 1984, terrorist attacks, a lack of diplomatic progress, and congressional opposition led President Ronald Reagan to withdraw U.S. forces from Lebanon. 

Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations – Office of the Historian (state.gov) 

Zionist Israeli Project  

When in the late nineteenth century Zionism arose as a political force calling for the colonization of Palestine and the “gathering of all Jews,” little attention was paid to the fact that Palestine was already populated. Indeed, the Basel Program adopted at the First Zionist Congress, which launched political Zionism in 1897, made no mention of a Palestinian native population when it spelled out the movement’s objective: “the establishment of a publicly and legally secured home in Palestine for the Jewish people.” 

Zionist Settler Colonialism | The Institute for Palestine Studies (palestine-studies.org) 

MMT  

“Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) represents a lens from which to view the various operational levers within the macroeconomy. It is simply the observable and descriptive facts about how monetary systems work. Not “believing in” the insights coming from the MMT lens is, in essence, denying the institutional reality of how money is created and operationalized in today’s world.”   

End the FEDish: Redirecting Our Anger and Efforts to Save the World | Real Progressives  

Military Industrial Complex  

The term military-industrial complex was first used by U.S. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address on January 17, 1961. Eisenhower warned that the United States must “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex,” which included members of Congress from districts dependent on military industries, the Department of Defense (along with the military services), and privately owned military contractors—e.g., Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. Eisenhower believed that the military-industrial complex tended to promote policies that might not be in the country’s best interest (such as participation in the nuclear arms race), and he feared that its growing influence, if left unchecked, could undermine American democracy. 

Military-industrial complex | Definition, Elements, Influence, & Facts | Britannica 

Rafah  

city along the border of the Gaza Strip and Egypt that, for most of the 20th and into the 21st century, has been bisected with an eastern half in the Gaza area and a western half in Egypt. In 2023–24 Gazans displaced by the Israel-Hamas War crowded into the city as it became the final refuge for both civilians and what Israeli officials claimed was the “last bastion” of Hamas fighters. 

Rafah | Gaza, Map, Offensive, Crossing, & Population | Britannica 

CAIRO, June 13 (Reuters) – Israeli tanks advanced deeper into the western area of Rafah, amid one of the worst nights of bombardment from air, ground, and sea, forcing many families to flee their homes and tents under darkness, residents said on Thursday. Residents said the Israeli forces thrust towards the Al-Mawasi area of Rafah near the beach, which is designated as a humanitarian area in all announcements and maps published by the Israeli army since it began its Rafah offensive in May. 

Israeli forces advance deeper into Rafah as diplomacy falters | Reuters 

Two State Solution  

Proposed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by establishing two states for two peoples: Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinian people. 

Two-state solution | Definition, Facts, History, & Map | Britannica 

Cognitive Dissonance  

Cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by Leon Festinger, posits that individuals experience discomfort when holding conflicting beliefs or attitudes. This discomfort motivates them to reduce the inconsistency. 

Cognitive Dissonance In Psychology: Definition and Examples (simplypsychology.org) 

Humanitarian Pier  

March 11, 2024: The plan for the pier has two components: The first is a floating, offshore barge that would be able to accept aid deliveries. The US military would then move aid from there to a floating,550-metre-long (1,800ft-long) causeway anchored to the shore. Once it becomes operational, the pier would allow deliveries of about 2 million meals to Gaza every day, Ryder said. The US has delivered a total of about 124,000 meals during four airdrops in the past week. The latest airdrop on Friday delivered about 11,500 meals, the US military said. Gaza already has a small port near the Remal district of Gaza City. However, the port has been under Israeli naval blockade since 2007 when Israel also shut almost all of Gaza’s border crossings. Israel has claimed full control of Gaza’s coastline and territorial waters, blocking ships from reaching the strip since 1967. 

Why is the US setting up temporary port off Gaza for aid deliveries? | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera 

March 12, 2024 “… Delivering the capability involves the complex choreography of logistics support and landing craft vessels that carry the equipment used to construct an approximately 1,800-foot causeway comprised of modular sections linked together known as a Trident Pier. Once in theater, the unit will begin construction of the causeway off the coast of Gaza enabling the flow of critical aid from the sea to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict. The capability is expected to be operational in approximately 60 days. “ 

Specialized Army Unit Underway to Support Humanitarian Aid Delivery to Gaza > U.S. Department of Defense > Defense Department News 

Apriol 29, 2024: The US military’s cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a US defence official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The figure illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 US service members, mostly from the Army and Navy. Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

US military’s pier in Gaza to cost $320m – Middle East Monitor 

May 28, 2024: President Joe Biden is facing backlash after a U.S.-built temporary pier on the shores of the Gaza Strip, set up to provide a lifeline to the Palestinian territory, will now be removed for repairs after breaking apart rough seas and weather. 

Joe Biden Faces Backlash Over Broken Gaza Pier: ‘Humiliation’ – Newsweek 

Auschwitz  

KL Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers. Over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives here.  

Auschwitz-Birkenau  

Lethal Autonomous Weapons (AI Drones)  

The development of lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs), including AI-equipped drones, is on the rise. The US Department of Defense, for example, has earmarked US$1 billion so far for its Replicator programme, which aims to build a fleet of small, weaponized autonomous vehicles. Experimental submarines, tanks and ships have been made that use AI to pilot themselves and shoot. Commercially available drones can use AI image recognition to zero in on targets and blow them up. LAWs do not need AI to operate, but the technology adds speed, specificity and the ability to evade defences. Some observers fear a future in which swarms of cheap AI drones could be dispatched by any faction to take out a specific person, using facial recognition. 

Lethal AI weapons are here: how can we control them? (nature.com) 

Patriarchy  

: social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line 

Patriarchy Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster 

Oligarchy  

1: government by the few 

2: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes 

Oligarchy Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster 

Democracy 

1a: government by the people 

Democracy Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster 

Constitutional Republic  

The United States operates as a constitutional republic, a form of government that involves representatives elected by the people, who execute their duties under the constraints of a prevailing constitution that specifies the powers and limits of government. 

Republic vs Democracy – U.S. Constitution.net (usconstitution.net) 

“The American Exception”  

Book- “American Exception” (by Aaron Good) seeks to explain the breakdown of US democracy. In particular, how we can understand the uncanny continuity of American foreign policy, the breakdown of the rule of law, and the extreme concentration of wealth and power into an overworld of the corporate rich. To trace the evolution of the American state, the author takes a deep politics approach, shedding light on those political practices that are typically repressed in “mainstream” discourse. 

American Exception: Empire and the Deep State a book by Aaron Good and Peter Phillips (bookshop.org) 

Aaron Good Podcast “American Exception” 

Podcast – American Exception 

Episode 210 – American Exception with Aaron Good (realprogressives.org) 

US response to ICJ  

January 26, 2024: The White House has brushed aside the ICJ’s demand for Israel to cease its genocidal acts and reiterated its support for Israel 

US doubles down on dismissing genocide claim despite ICJ ruling | Middle East Eye 

May 27, 2024: The Biden administration has reacted with fury after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials and Hamas leaders. US President Joe Biden criticised  the move, saying that putting the two on an equal footing was “outrageous”. Meanwhile, his top diplomat, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, suggested the administration was willing to work with Congress to sanction members of the ICC and come up with a response to the World Court. Some defenders of Israel have gone further, warning the ICC against pursuing warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, citing a two-decades-old law that gives the US president power to directly challenge the court. “If you issue a warrant for the arrest of the Israeli leadership, we will interpret this not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States. Our country demonstrated in the American Service-Members’ Protection Act the lengths to which we will go to protect that sovereignty,” 12 US senators wrote in a letter to ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan. 

Explainer: US lawmakers threaten ICC with ‘The Hague Invasion Act’ – but what is it? | Middle East Eye 

Antisemitic  

: relating to or characterized by anti-Semitism : feeling or showing hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a cultural, racial, or ethnic group 

anti-Semitic Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster 

Deplorable  

Speaking at a fundraiser in New York City on Friday, Hillary Clinton said half of Donald Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables” characterized by “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” views. 

Hillary Clinton Transcript: ‘Basket of Deplorables’ Comment | TIME 

Also from this episode: 

“If Biden had a democratic majority in both houses, they could have passed legislation to protect abortion. Did they do it? No. What are they really doing? Even on the social issues people care about?  Nothing. I mean, what are they getting from Biden? Nothing. I mean, it really is more a matter of style, more than anything. You know, I joked- I think  you know the difference between Obama and Trump was the difference between Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacey. One was kind of a handsome guy, and then the other guy was an unkempt clown. But, they both killed people, so what’s the difference?” 

PUBLICATIONS 

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The Case for Palestine by Dan Kovalik & George Galloway 

The Case for Palestine: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care a book by Dan Kovalik and George Galloway (bookshop.org) 

The Plot to Scapegoat Russia by Dan Kovalik and David Talbot 

The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia a book by Dan Kovalik and David Talbot (bookshop.org) 

The Plot to Attack Iran by Dan Kovalik 

The Plot to Attack Iran: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Iran a book by Dan Kovalik (bookshop.org) 

 The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela by Dan Kovalik (foreward by Oliver Stone) 240 Pages/ June 25, 2019/ ISBN: 9781510750722 

The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela (skyhorsepublishing.com) 

No More War by Dan Kovalik & S. Brian Willson (foreward by Oliver Stone) 

No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using ‘Humanitarian’ Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interes a book by Dan Kovalik and S. Brian Willson (bookshop.org) 

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West a book by Cormac McCarthy (bookshop.org) 

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