I had the pleasure of speaking with Mike Leavitt, host of the And If Love Remains podcast, to discuss Israel’s ongoing onslaught in the Gaza Strip, the reasons why Hamas might have executed its “Operation Al Aqsa Flood” terrorist operation in Israel on October 7, 2023, the true root causes of the conflict, and what must happen for a just peace to be realized.
Topics we discussed include:
- The nature of the US government’s “special relationship” with Israel.
- How the means by which the “Jewish state” of Israel came into existence was the ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population from their homes in Palestine.
- How most of what people think they know about the conflict just isn’t true, which is because Western media tend to parrot Zionist propaganda narratives, which is because Western governments have always been complicit in the historical crimes against the Palestinian people.
- Why orthodox Jews in the pre-Mandate era opposed the Zionist movement, and why some ultra-orthodox Jews to this day remain anti-Zionist.
- Why Hamas named its terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, in which Israeli civilians were indiscriminately massacred, as “Operation Al Aqsa Flood”.
- Why four red heifer cows prompted Hamas to execute this atrocity against Israeli civilians (which included Jews who favored peace and Arab Israelis).
- How the US-led so-called “peace process” was the means by which Israel and its superpower benefactor always blocked implementation of the two-state solution.
- The important distinction between a two-state solution as advocated by Israel and the US under the “peace process” and the two-state solution premised on the applicability of international law to the conflict.
- Why the Western media descriptions of East Jerusalem as “disputed” territory and description of Israeli “offers” under the “peace process” as “concessions” on the part of Israel are ahistorical and false.
- How rampant anti-Semitism in Europe was a major reason for Western support of the Zionist movement.
- Why, contrary to the Zionist propaganda narrative, the root cause of the conflict is not inherent Arab hatred of Jews but the rejection of the right of the Palestinians to self-determination.
- How the Zionist Organization exploited feudalistic Ottoman land laws to deprive Arab inhabitants of Palestine of their property rights.
- Why the UN “partition plan” endorsed by the UN General Assembly with Resolution 181 was completely inequitable and in was in fact contrary to the principles of the UN Charter.
- Why the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, had no significance in terms of international law.
- Why the claim that in May 1948 the Arab states “invaded Israel” is ahistorical and false.
- Why the Palestinians’ acceptance of the two-state solution since 1988 represents a huge concession on their part, contrary to the false propaganda narrative that the Palestinians “have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity”.
- Why Hamas is a consequence and not a cause of the conflict.
- How and why Israel has, ever since Hamas’s founding, maintained a policy of treating the group as a strategic ally.
- How the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established under the “peace process” to serve as Israel’s collaborator in enforcing its occupation regime.
- Why Hamas’s rise to power in Gaza was a direct consequence of Israeli policies.
- Why the mainstream propaganda claim that Hamas came to power by executing a violent coup is precisely the opposite of what really happened.
- Why the failure of Israel’s intelligence and military to stop the Hamas terrorist attacks of 10/7 were a direct consequence of Netanyahu’s policy of treating Hamas as a strategic ally.
- Why international human rights organizations and UN agencies today recognize Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians both in the occupied territories and within Israel itself as constituting the crime of apartheid.
- Why I don’t believe the widespread belief that the Israeli government deliberately allowed the 10/7 attacks to occur.
- Why concerns about the current round of extreme violence in the Middle East causing World War III is not unreasonable given the explicit intent of Christian Zionists to bring about Armageddon.
- Why Hamas called its attacks on civilians in Israel on 10/7 “Operation Al Aqsa Flood”.
- My answer to the question, “Do you see a way that there could be peace?”, and why my immediate response to that question started with, “US support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians must come to an end . . . .”
- How the Israeli government uses the claim that Palestinian civilians in Gaza only ever die because Hamas was using them at the time as “human shields” to try to justify its war crimes.
Learn more about my book Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
This interview was recorded on November 2, the 106th anniversary of the infamous “Balfour Declaration”. Read my article explaining that document’s true significance:
The Legacy of the Balfour Declaration 106 Years Later
Watch my recent debate on the Tom Woods Show in which I argued the negative to the debate resolution “Israel is justified in doing ‘whatever it takes’ to ‘completely destroy’ Hamas in Gaza”:
