Is Israel Unfairly Held to a Higher Standard? Norman Finkelstein on Reality Asserts Itself (1/5)
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FINKELSTEIN: Mhm. Well, there are many things to say to that, and it’s hard, really, you know, it’s hard to figure exactly where to begin.
First of all, Israel has accumulated a quite ugly record if you even compare it to its neighbors. We’re talking about now, as we sit here, Israel has conducted, in the last six years, three major operations against the people of Gaza. And by any reckoning, the Israeli policy towards Gaza is just so abominably criminal that I don’t see how any circumstance can mitigate that fact. Yes, it’s true that gays are treated awfully in Gaza and Iran. Okay, fine. And in Saudi Arabia. But how does that mitigate the fact that Israel has been launching these operations against, basically, a defenseless and impoverished population in an almost—at this point you would have to describe it as a sadistic fashion.
I recently read a new book by a Frenchman—can’t remember his name right now [Jean-Pierre Filiu]. It’s called Gaza: A History. And it’s not a great book. It’s basically a political history of Gaza. And I myself was astonished at just how many massacres, how many bloodlettings those people have endured at the hands of the Israelis. Probably in the last ten years, let’s say in the last 14 years, there’ve been, I would guess, at least ten major, quote-unquote, operations. An operation is just a euphemism for a massacre or a slaughter. There have been ten major operations against the people in Gaza, with all these crazy names—Operation Summer Rains, Operation Fall This, Winter That. No, I’m serious. It’s not a joke. I don’t see how any kind of comparative perspective is going to mitigate the magnitude of the Israeli criminality.
But let’s just take another example that’s currently in the news. So I was reading the torture report that came out—I’ve not completed them; only about a third of the way through. And the torture report, it focuses approximately on 119 cases. That’s what they say, the 119 cases. And it describes the repertoire of tortures. Most of the torturers are pretty much what Israel inflicts on Palestinian detainees. The loud noise, the sleep deprivation, forcing people to hang in, suspended from the ceiling, putting them in what the Israelis call the refrigerator here. They call it, like, a box, a coffin. No, the Israelis also call it the coffin.
There were a few things in the torture report which Israel, to my knowledge, hasn’t done. So, for example, they didn’t strip people naked, which was pretty common as far as one could tell, in the 119 cases. The Israelis didn’t practice waterboarding, to the best of my knowledge. And the waterboarding was pretty shocking. In the case of, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the report said he was waterboarded at least 183 times, which is mind-boggling.
But in general, in general, the torturers were quite close to each other. I’m not saying the Americans learned it from the Israelis, but that’s pretty close.
Why do I mention it? Because in this particular report we’re dealing with about 119 cases. In the case of the Israelis, these torturers, the same repertoire of torturers, Human Rights Watch estimated that between 1987 and 1993, during the period of the First Intifada, about, they estimate, 20-30,000 Palestinian detainees had been tortured or ill treated by the Israelis. So we’re talking about a completely different level of magnitude when we’re talking about Israel and the United States. So the U.S. torture report elicits or evokes such gasps of shock at what the U.S. did. Well, then, compare it with the Israeli—basically the same torturers, with some differences, but we’re talking about an order of magnitude, 119 verses 20-30,000.