Norman Finkelstein
speaker
305 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard Mar 2024
Norman Finkelstein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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After World War II, the British decided that they didn't want to deal with the Palestine question anymore, and the ball was thrown into the court of the United Nations. Now, as I read the record, the UN was not attempting to arbitrate or adjudicate rights and wrongs. It was confronting a very practical problem.
There were two national communities in Palestine, and there were irreconcilable differences on fundamental questions, most importantly looking at the historic record on the question of immigration and associated with the question of immigration, the question of land. The UN Special Committee on Palestine
which came into being before the UN 181 Partition Resolution, the UN Special Committee recommended two states in Palestine. There was a minority position represented by Iran, India, Yugoslavia. They supported one state, but they believed that if forced to, the two communities would figure out some sort of modus vivendi and live together.
United Nations General Assembly supported partition between what it called a Jewish state and an Arab state. In my reading of the record, and I understand there's new scholarship on the subject, which I've not read, but so far as I've read the record, there's no clarity on what the United Nations General Assembly meant by a Jewish state and an Arab state
except for the fact that the Jewish state would be demographically Jewish, and the Arab state demographically would be Arab. The UNSCOP, the UN Special Committee on Palestine, it was very clear, and it was reiterated many times, that in recommending two states
Each state, the Arab state and the Jewish state, would have to guarantee full equality of all citizens with regard to political, civil, and religious matters.
Now that does raise the question, if there is absolute full equality of all citizens, both in the Jewish state and the Arab state, with regard to political rights, civil rights, and religious rights, apart from the demographic majority, it's very unclear what it meant to call a state Jewish or call the state Arab. In my view, the partition resolution was the correct decision.
I do not believe that the Arab and Jewish communities could at that point be made to live together. I disagree with the minority position of India, Iran, and Yugoslavia, and that not being a practical option, two states was the only other option. In this regard, I would want to pay tribute
to what was probably the most moving speech at the UN General Assembly proceedings by the Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko. I was very tempted to quote it at length, but I recognized that would be taking too much time. So I asked a young friend, Jamie Stern Weiner, to edit it and just get the essence of what Foreign Minister Gromyko had to say.
During the last war, Gromyko said, the Jewish people underwent exceptional sorrow and suffering without any exaggeration, This sorrow and suffering are indescribable. Hundreds of thousands of Jews are wandering about in various countries of Europe in search of means of existence and in search of shelter. The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference.
Past experience, particularly during the Second World War, shows that no Western European state was able to provide adequate assistance for the Jewish people in defending its rights and its very existence from the violence of the Hitlerites and their allies. This is an unpleasant fact. But unfortunately, like all other facts, it must be admitted." Gromyko went on to say,
In principle, he supports one state, or the Soviet Union supports one state. But he said, if relations between the Jewish and Arab populations of Palestine proved to be so bad that it would be impossible to reconcile them and to ensure the peaceful coexistence of the Arabs and the Jews, the Soviet Union would support. two states.
I personally am not convinced that the two states would have been unsustainable in the long term if, and this is a big if, the Zionist movement had been faithful to the position it proclaimed during the UNSCOP public hearings. At the time, Ben-Gurion testified Quote, I want to express what we mean by a Jewish state.
We mean by a Jewish state simply a state where the majority of the people are Jews, not a state where a Jew has in any way any privilege more than anyone else. A Jewish state means a state based on absolute equality of all her citizens and on democracy. Alas, this was not to be. As Professor Morris has written, quote, Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist.
And then he wrote in another book, transfer, the euphemism for expulsion, transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism because it sought to transform a land which was Arab into a Jewish state. and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population.
And because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs, which in turn persuaded the yeshuv's leaders, the yeshuv being the Jewish community, the yeshuv's leaders that a hostile Arab majority or a large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure. Or as Professor Morris retrospectively put it, quote, a removing of a population was needed.
Without a population expulsion, a Jewish state would not have been established, unquote. The Arab side rejected outright the partition resolution. I won't play games with that. I know a lot of people tried to prove it's not true. It clearly, in my view, is true. The Arab side rejected outright the partition resolution. While Israeli leaders, acting under compulsions, inevitable and inbuilt
into Zionism found the pretext in the course of the first Arab-Israeli war to expel the indigenous population and expand its borders. I therefore conclude that neither side was committed to the letter of the partition resolution and both sides aborted it.
I would like to engage Professor Morris. If you don't mind, I'm not with the first name. It's just not my way of relating. You can just call me Morris. You don't need the professor. Okay. There's a real problem here, and it's been a problem I've had over many years of reading your work, apart perhaps from as grandchild, I suspect nobody knows your work better than I do.
I've read it many times, not once, not twice, at least three times, everything you've written. And the problem is it's a kind of quicksilver. It's very hard to grasp a point and hold you to it. So we're going to try here to see whether we can hold you to a point. And then you argue with me the point. I have no problem with that. Your name, please?
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