Demand a Cease-Fire in Gaza – Shir Hever pt 1

Paul Jay

Hi, I’m Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news. In a few minutes, I’ll be back with Dr. Shir Hever. He grew up in Jerusalem. He now lives in Germany, and we’re going to discuss the continuing Israeli assault on Gaza and the roots of this conflict. Be back in just a second.

Shir Hever is an economist and journalist. He’s the coordinator of the Military Embargo campaign at the Palestinian BDS Movement. Shir grew up in Jerusalem, and he’s now joining us from Heidelberg, Germany. Thanks very much for joining us, Shir.

Shir Hever

Thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul Jay

In this interview, we’re going to divide it into two parts. The first part is going to be about the current situation and what could be done to stop the bloodshed, particularly the assault on the people of Gaza. In part two, we’re going to talk more about the political and economic roots of this conflict, why the occupation of Palestinian territory has gone on for decades, why Hamas is in power in Gaza, and more about Israeli society and how it’s responding to this conflict. Shir, the audience hasn’t seen you for a while because you haven’t been on theAnalysis for a little while. Tell us a little bit about your background, and then we’ll get into what’s going on.

Shir Hever

Well, I don’t want to get too deep into my background right now, but let’s just say that as much as I enjoy speaking with you, I’m coming now on the show because it’s burning for me right now to call for a ceasefire because people are dying as we speak. The way that it connects to my background is that people that I know have been killed and possibly taken hostage. The thing is that I don’t know who they are because there is so much chaos. It’s often the case on the Palestinian side in Gaza, where the names of the dead take some time to be released. I know that good friends of mine have lost family members, and this time also on the Israeli side.

I lived for a year in the town of Sderot. Sderot is very close to Gaza and was one of the places that was attacked on October 7. I worked in a school, and some of the pupils in that school who were in primary school when I was teaching them are today adults. Statistically speaking, it’s clear that their names are among the people who were killed. Some of my pupils must be on these lists, but the lists are not published. Even the Israelis are not able to list the victims yet. This is a very difficult time, and I think it’s important that we have this conversation so people will know what’s going on and take action.

Paul Jay

The position of the American government is as aggressively pro-Israel as one has seen in a long time. The vote in the UN Security Council, where, in fact, even the Western countries that traditionally vote in support of Israel did vote to have a kind of ceasefire and allow humanitarian aid to get to Gaza. The Americans vetoed this. The Americans seem to be trying to turn this into another East versus West controversy. Even the Chinese were– I shouldn’t say even the Chinese– the Chinese on Ukraine have not said much, but on this, the Chinese were in support of aid to Gaza. What do you make of the aggressive position of Biden while he was there? He paid a little bit of lip service to innocent Palestinians who shouldn’t be lumped in with Hamas, but that’s exactly what’s happening.

Shir Hever

Yeah, I take some criticism when you say that this is a pro-Israel position to veto the ceasefire as if it is in the interests of Israel that more bloodshed will happen. Even though the current atmosphere in the Israeli public is very much bloodthirsty and calls for vengeance and calls for genocide, that doesn’t mean that it’s in the interests of Israel. Yeah, the United States, especially Biden, made it very clear that their interest is to increase the bloodshed. The sending of two aircraft carrier groups to the region or very close to the Israeli coast in order to threaten neighboring countries not to intervene is, in fact, giving the Israeli government the permission and the umbrella to go on a ground offensive.

Biden said that the ground invasion shouldn’t happen while he’s visiting, but his visit is not there forever. So he left. Then British Prime Minister Sunak has taken his place, but he’s not going to stay there forever either. When Sunak leaves, then who’s going to stop the Israelis from launching a ground invasion? We’re already at the stage where the UN published a genocide warning. The OIC, the Organization of Islamic Countries, which represents 57 states around the world and more than 2 billion people, has said this is the beginning of a genocide. What’s going to happen when ground troops enter Gaza?

The real question is, why is the United States pushing for so much bloodshed? This is something that is not completely clear to me. I think there are other voices coming from the United States as well. One explanation is the military industry. The big arms companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman, their share prices increased by 30% when Israel launched its offensive. Yeah, it is American weapons that are being showcased, that are being sold, but this is a very short-term perspective. There is no way that the Israeli offensive is going to be successful at a strategic level. It’s only shedding blood in the name of vengeance and killing innocent civilians.

The thing is that Biden last year made a call, an executive decision, to ban the use of Israeli spyware on U.S. citizens. These are very dangerous programs that are used to hack phones. Israel is the only country in the world that allows private companies to sell spyware because it’s a very dangerous tool for spreading disinformation. Biden has nevertheless himself been a victim of Israeli disinformation. On the one hand, he’s saying we want to protect American citizens from disinformation spread through spyware. But when the Israeli institutions, the Israeli military, started to spread fake news, atrocity stories about the attack of October 7, things that have been refuted so far– I’m not going to repeat the details because they are gruesome and offensive. I don’t want to do this to the listeners to listen to those details. Biden repeated those lies in his speech. He didn’t recant it. He didn’t apologize for that. Then, there was the bombing of a hospital, the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, in the northern Gaza Strip. Once again, just before leaving, Biden made another statement repeating the Israeli lies. So either he’s very, very stupid, or he knows that these are lies, and he willingly spreads them because it gives the Israeli army a free hand to use more violence and kill more civilians.

Paul Jay

I take your point about not lumping this all as Israel’s interests. Israel is a class society, as is every other country on Earth. We’ve seen some splits about what’s going on in Israel and some interesting ones. Former Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert came out and said the reason there is a Hamas that committed– and I’ll say this in my own voice– terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians at the very beginning of all this. Hamas is more or less the government of Gaza. You can call it a form of state terrorism, but it has to be seen within the context of decades of Israeli state terrorism against the people of Gaza. We can get more into that, maybe in part two. Olmert says that Bibi Netanyahu and the far right of Israel have for decades deliberately nurtured Hamas and wanted Hamas as the enemy in order to avoid any legitimate negotiations with the Palestinian Authority [PA] and other forces in Palestine. PA isn’t the only organization or force that could have been negotiated with if there was any serious intent to negotiate. What do you make of this? Olmert is not the only one who came out and denounced this morbid relationship between the Israeli far right and Hamas. What do you make of that going public like that now? What do you make of the substance of it?

Shir Hever

Yeah, let’s put aside Olmert’s own opportunism here because let’s not forget that he commanded an invasion of the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-2009.

Paul Jay

None of these guys are peaceniks.

Shir Hever

At the time, he was criticized by Netanyahu, who said what is the point of invading Gaza and killing so many people if you’re not going to destroy the Hamas movement? But then people have reminded Netanyahu that he has not destroyed Hamas, and of course, he cannot. That’s not something that can happen any more than the U.S. can destroy the Taliban; that’s simply not a physical possibility. But of course, the very simple quote from Netanyahu where he said openly that anyone who wants to prevent a Palestinian state should support Hamas as a kind of divide and conquer strategy. This is something every Israeli knows. You don’t need to go to Olmert for this. It’s common knowledge, but that’s not the point.

I think what you say about the causes, let’s put aside the issue of moral judgments. In the end, we can have this discussion, and we can have our opinion on this, but we cannot change the reality. If a Palestinian uses violence, they’re not brought to trial; they’re killed. Of course, for each Palestinian who is killed in this way, there are ten Palestinians who are killed without resorting to violence at all. There is no idea of justice here. The same applies to Israelis, who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity and kill thousands of Palestinians. They’re also not brought in front of a judge. They’re also not charged with a crime. They’re simply allowed to get away with it.

This is not, I think, the time for moral judgment of which Palestinian faction is good or bad. The question is, what can be done? Of course, you’re correct about the issue of–

Paul Jay

I want to jump in on something you said. I think there is a way to root out Hamas, and I think there was a way to root out the Taliban. The way is to actually give a damn about what happens to the people. 

I was in Afghanistan. I made a film there in 2002. If there’d have been any serious intent on the part of the U.S. to actually rebuild schools, to actually rebuild people’s lives, to actually give people a living, there was a way to rebuild the Afghan economy by getting it off poppies and use the poppies for legitimate pharmaceutical needs. If Afghan society, even half or a quarter of what had been promised, the Taliban never would have come back because the people hated the Taliban on the whole. No, the U.S. much preferred to chase the Taliban around, to have a war go on for 20 years and do next to nothing to rebuild Afghan society. I would guess it’s not that different. If there had actually been life for people in Gaza, if it wasn’t a desperate ghetto for decades and people had a way to have their own sovereignty, rights, and livelihood, I don’t know how much there would be or at least there would be a very different Hamas, if there was still a Hamas. This was solvable, obviously, if the Israeli elites wanted to solve it in a different way, but clearly, they didn’t.

Shir Hever

Yeah, I agree with you. It is, in fact, a very important point that you make when you say the word ghetto because you and I are Jews, and we have some concept of what a ghetto is. The slow starvation of a population in an open-air prison where they don’t have access to enough water, enough food, and enough medicine is something that is akin to a very gradual death sentence for the civilian population. This is something that started before Hamas was even created. So that’s true.

But also, what do you say about what way it is to defeat Hamas? I’m not an advisor to the Israeli military or to the Israeli government. I’m not going to tell them what to do, and I’m not going to advise them in any way. But I do see what Palestinian public opinions say about public support for the Hamas movement, which is about 20-30% of the population who express support. What I hear from all of my Palestinian friends is what would actually eliminate Hamas completely is not material goods, as you say, but freedom, just basic equality and human rights. That is much more important.

They say if there’s going to be just a voting right, “one person, one vote,” in a democratic situation, then Hamas will get zero votes because nobody would support them under these conditions. So, yeah, in that sense, I completely agree with you. I don’t think the Israelis are capable of even contemplating that kind of approach right now. What makes them so strong in their aggression, in their blindness, and in their willingness to intensify the violence indiscriminately is the United States. Not just the United States but other Western countries as well. Germany, absolutely. They are willing to basically send bombs. Germany is sending naval bombs to Israel. Britain is sending warships and other ammunition. The United States is sending more than everybody else combined with the clear understanding that these are weapons which are going to be used to kill civilians. The Israelis understand it as well.

Within the Israeli discourse right now, every gesture of support, when the German Minister of Foreign Affairs said, we are all Israelis now, or when Biden held his speech, then they say, okay, this means international law doesn’t apply to us. This is how they interpret it. They’re saying it. I’m listening to the news reports in Hebrew, and they are saying it with these words.

Paul Jay

As far as the American situation goes, whenever you analyze U.S. foreign policy, you have to begin with American domestic politics. It’s not just about the military-industrial complex. I mean, of course, it’s always about the military-industrial complex, but they’re doing quite well right now with Ukraine. I don’t know that they needed an assault on Gaza to get what they wanted out of American foreign policy.

No, I think the main thing driving this is Biden’s absolute number one priority. Don’t look weak. Don’t look weak on China. Don’t look weak on Russia. Don’t look weak in your relationship with Israel. Of course, there’s a factor that doesn’t get talked about enough. We don’t need to get into it much now. But just to say it, the forces of white Christian nationalism in the United States are very strong, and it’s what’s giving Trump his momentum. They’re very scared of these forces. They being the Democratic Party and the elites associated with them. Legitimately and rightly, they should be afraid, although they helped give birth to these forces with their economic policies toward, at least, the 75 million people who voted for Trump.

One of the concepts, as you know, of white Christian nationalism is the role of Israel and support for Israel because Israel has a role to play in the final apocalypse and so on. It’s an important part of the narrative.

Shir Hever

It’s a very bloody role.

Paul Jay

Of course, I don’t know; it’s a crazy, unholy alliance.

Shir Hever

 [crosstalk 00:18:56] enlightenment for the Christian Evangelical.

Paul Jay

It is nuts. Why the Israelis play ball with this and the right-wing Jews is amazing because they’re all going to hell when this happens. It’s not like all of a sudden, these Jews are going to be accepted next to the lap of God, but whatever, none of this has to make sense. Let’s set the U.S. politics aside for now.

Let me just ask: understandably, given the Hamas attack on civilians, and especially the way Israeli media has been pounding a bloodthirsty response, are there forces calling for a ceasefire? Don’t the Israelis get to see that even in the U.S., the media is starting to get sympathetic to the situation of the Palestinians? If you watch American mainstream media right now, you would actually conclude there should be a ceasefire, at least for humanitarian aid. It’s been an interesting switch in the U.S. media.

Shir Hever

There are absolutely these voices within Israeli society. First of all, of the 199 families of the people who have been taken hostage, we don’t know exactly how many hostages are there and how many are still alive after the Israeli bombing. It is very likely Israel is killing the Israeli hostages with the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian homes. There are 199 families, and some of these families have more than one person who was taken captive. We don’t know how many, but these families, most of them are saying with a very clear voice that there must be a ceasefire and they want a prisoner exchange. There are a lot of Israelis who support the idea of a ceasefire, humanitarian corridor, and prisoner exchange. Israel is holding about 6,000 Palestinian political prisoners. Over a thousand of them are held without a trial. There are no charges pressed against them. There’s no reason that Israel shouldn’t just release these people. They should have released them anyway, and this is now a good time to get the hostages back. These voices are certainly strong. The voices that are the strongest are coming from the survivors of the kibbutz and the towns close to Gaza, who have really suffered the most and lost family members.

There are heartbreaking videos and statements by these people, not just the ones who say, please bring the hostages home because they’re family members, but also those who don’t have family members who are hostages at stake. They’re saying, look, this attack on our home, on our family, it was completely the responsibility of the Israeli government. What else were they expecting to happen? Palestinians are held in ghetto-like conditions. If there is now continual violence and indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza, just a couple of kilometers away from us, what reason do we have now to think that this will be over, that it’s not going to happen again and again? We’ll never have safety as long as this happens. So, these are the voices that also exist in Israel.

There is a problem with the Israeli media which I’ve never seen before, a level of silencing, a level of McCarthyism that is unprecedented in Israeli society, even though, of course, it has never been a democratic and freedom of the press. There was military censorship, but now the Minister of Communication used an emergency order according to the state of emergency that exists in Israel, which allows the government to seize the equipment and to arrest journalists if they express opinions that the government does not approve of. People are being arrested. Mostly Palestinian journalists with Israeli citizenship. Israeli citizens, but not Jewish citizens, are being arrested already. Because of this, what you described, this shift in the U.S. public discourse and the media discourse in the United States is not reported in Israel. Israelis who don’t read English and are not able to look at the international media don’t know that this has happened. They still read the Hebrew translation of Biden’s speech, and that’s what they believe is still the case in terms of public opinion in the United States.

Paul Jay

Egypt has announced they’re going to have some trucks with some aid sent to Gaza. The Arab countries, on the whole, have some rhetoric in support of the Palestinians, but there is not much concrete pressure, it doesn’t seem. Yes, the Saudi-Israeli detente seems to be on the back burner for a little while, but everybody expects it sooner rather than later to get back on board again.

What’s happening amongst the people, especially in the neighboring countries, in Egypt, and in Jordan? Jordan has a massive Palestinian population. To what extent are people in or are going to be in the streets? Are these governments feeling some pressure from their own people?

Shir Hever

I’m not the best guest for you to pose this question to. You should find a guest who’s an expert on these Arab countries and can read the newspapers in Arabic and so on. What I read is absolutely yes. There were several mass demonstrations in Jordan that the German police were crushing with violence because people felt a strong solidarity with Palestine. 

Egypt is also in a very difficult dilemma in a way because there’s pressure on them. The U.S. has offered a large bribe if they would allow and absorb Palestinian refugees from Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula. Everybody knows that if this happens, these refugees will never be allowed to return. It’s going to be a second Nakba. Palestinians will be expelled from their homes once again. Some of these people are already refugees, most of them actually from inside Israel from ’48. Now, they’re going to become refugees again.

On the one hand, Egypt says, okay, we’re not going to open the border and are not going to allow these people through. Then again, this could mean that these people are going to be killed.

You mentioned the humanitarian assistance, which is very desperately and urgently needed. The Gaza Strip has been split by the Israeli forces into two parts. In the northern part, the Israelis said everyone had 24 hours to evacuate, or they would all be killed. Everyone was trying to get to the south. There were several convoys of people taking their families and trying to escape to the southern part of the Gaza Strip. Those convoys were bombed by the Israeli air force. People don’t know what to do. In these conditions, how can you send trucks of aid to the northern part? They could be bombed along the way. It’s not enough that Egypt will allow the aid to go into Gaza. There also has to be pressure on the Israeli government to allow the trucks to actually get to the people who need food, medicine, and water very urgently.

Paul Jay

To get back to how this unfolded, there have been reports that Hamas never expected to meet so little Israeli resistance in terms of the Israeli military. They never expected to be able to actually take over the kibbutz and be in a situation, I don’t know if you know, but it sounds like they lost control of their own fighters to some extent. Some of the bloody stuff that happened wasn’t planned. The objective was to kidnap people, if you want to use that term, and use them as hostages as part of a prisoner exchange. Then, the whole thing spiralled into something far bigger.

I know there are theories that, to some extent, Netanyahu or part of the far right military, because, like society, all countries’ militaries reflect the fractions and factions within the society. It’s the same thing in the U.S. You’ve got a far-right faction in the U.S. military, and then you have another one that’s more centrist. Certainly, it seems in the short term, at any rate, what has happened benefits the far right. Whether it’s Netanyahu personally or not, the far right seems to benefit. In Israel, they’re going to have a kind of stronger, at least for a time, even if they get condemned for what happened, a far more overt theocratic dictatorship emerges out of this with a more united, anti-Palestinian Israeli society. It already was pretty racist to begin with. What do you make of this?

Shir Hever

Yeah, the first part of your question referred to the Hamas fighters maybe overestimating the resistance on the Israeli side and not expecting it to be so easy. I think we have to be a little bit careful. I’ve heard these arguments from Israeli generals for many, many years, where they again and again underestimate Palestinians and underestimate their intelligence. They think, okay, Palestinians don’t know what we’re capable of. They don’t know how to organize an effective strategy. Again and again, the Israeli generals are proven wrong because Palestinians are human beings and just as intelligent as Israelis and capable of understanding. If anything, in this colonial relationship between a very arrogant and powerful colonial state and the indigenous population, the indigenous Palestinian population, Palestinians have a much deeper understanding of Israeli society than Israelis have of Palestinian society. There are a lot of Palestinians who speak Hebrew much more than Israelis who speak Arabic. So because of this, I am very careful about saying, oh, Hamas didn’t know exactly what they were going to find on the other side.

Paul Jay

Well, listen, attacking a concert of kids, a music concert, and slaughtering kids does not seem part of a very smart, coherent strategy to me.

Shir Hever

It could have been their intention, but I don’t know. We’re not talking about kids exactly, young adults. 

Paul Jay

Yeah, well, either way.

Shir Hever

One of the things that Israelis were surprised about was how Hamas fighters even knew about this concert. How did they know about this party? Well, because they can read the online invitations and the advertisements just like anybody else. That’s something that didn’t even occur to them.

What you said about the far right in Israel and the far right in Israel is now part of the government in an unprecedented way. Smotrich, the Minister of Finance and the Chairman of the Party of Religious Zionism, referred to himself as a fascist homophobe. This is something that we’ve never seen before so much in the mainstream. There have always been far-right parties in Israel and far-right movements, but they’ve never been allowed into such key positions such as the Minister of Finance.

What you said about them becoming stronger, that actually didn’t happen. That’s very interesting. When those far-right politicians were confronted with an indigenous population which is capable of uprising and using force, they panicked themselves.

Their concept is that Palestinians can be swept out of the way with overwhelming Israeli force. They assume that the power relations are so overwhelmingly on the side of Israel that it’s going to be very easy. Now they realize it’s not going to be very easy. The public is responding in a very similar way. One of those ministers made the mistake of going to one of the kibbutz and trying to speak to the survivors and show support and solidarity with them. They shouted him out. It’s very interesting what he was trying to say to them. He said, look, the state needs to provide you with support and relief and protection. They told him, you are the state, and you failed in doing all of that. You come to us and try to protest what the government is doing when you are a government minister. This is just untrustworthy and unbelievable.

Paul Jay

We’re going to do a part two, as I said, to conclude part one for people watching this. I am sure most were outraged to see the attacks on Israeli civilians and are now, I would think, even more, outraged at the collective punishment that’s happening against the people of Gaza. What should they say? What should they do?

Shir Hever

We have to stop a genocide. There is a very clear recipe for genocide that we see. First, there is dehumanization of the Palestinian side. There is outright racism, a fervor of nationalism, overwhelming military power, and a feeling that there is a free hand and there are not going to be any consequences. Then the killing starts, the blood is spilled, and, of course, disinformation is part of it. Blaming the victim and saying, oh, Palestinians have brought this upon themselves. These are the components of genocide. This is already happening. What we need to do is to stop it in whatever form we can. Whether it’s through our unions, churches, synagogues, if we have access to political actors, if we have connections with political actors, but also through economic pressure, by just showing that the eyes of the world are watching and the Israelis are not going to be allowed to get away with committing genocide against Palestinians.

Paul Jay

Okay, thanks, Shir. So, in part two, we’re going to talk more about why the occupation continues decade after decade. There was another way for this to happen. I mentioned this to Shir off-camera just before. There could have been a more, quote-unquote, “normal capitalist development” here. A more South African style where the Palestinians were incorporated into, whether the state would have been called Israel or even a two-state solution. But one way or the other, a solution that reinforces capitalist relationships and allows a certain amount of the Palestinians into the elites, as has happened in South Africa. Some Blacks have now entered the South African elites and help rule on behalf of the tiny minority that actually owns stuff. There could have been that kind of development in Israel, but clearly, there were forces in Israel that didn’t want that.

One of the questions I will be asking Shir, not now, but just to tease it. When I was in Israel 30 years ago, I went to a film festival. I went because I was told a dozen Palestinian filmmakers were going. I figured if they’re going, I’ll go. They actually pulled out a couple of days before I got there. What I heard at that point, and I’m guessing is still true, that if it wasn’t with a, quote-unquote, “existential threat of Palestinians to Israel,” and I put quote-unquote because I don’t think there ever was or is an existential threat to Israel from the Palestinians. But without that as a threat, Israeli society itself would explode with the secular versus religious sections at war at just who and what kind of society Israel is going to be. So we’re going to talk about that in part two. For now, thank you, Shir.

Shir Hever

Thank you, Paul.

Paul Jay

Thank you for joining us on theAnalysis.news. Please don’t forget, that without your donations, we don’t get to do this. So go over to our webpage at theAnalysis.news, click donate and get on the email list. Thanks again.