New Norman Finkelstein Inteview

Despite his lack of systematic class analysis, Norman Finkelstein always has some insightful things to say about Israel and the US in the Middle East, including this slightly abridged, recent ZNet interview. For instance, Finkelstein seldom makes references to the Persian Gulf, with its 2/3 of the world's easily recoverable oil reserves, and a vast armada of US bases and fleets, along with two ongoing US wars, active threats regards Iran and Pakistan, and two major political parties totally primed for expanded Middle East Wars. Likewise, other than the British Mandate he seldom sets the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the present, within the context of escalating great power competiton throughout the great Middle East.

Nevertheless, Red Eye is curious what Finkelstein thinks will transpire in the January 2009 and afterwards when the new administration will receive a "report" from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Brookings Institution which will be Walt-Mearsheimer light -- in other words more pressure on Israel to finally cut some type of deal so the US can get more Sunni support in the Persian Gulf. The CFR may even have contingency plans for folding Israel into a ME pax americana --once a deal is finally cut.

Power, Politics & Scholarship

Znet, April 23, 2008

By Norman Finkelstein, Jake Hess, and Margaree Little

Norman Finkelstein's ZSpace Page

The following interview took place on April 15 and 16, 2008, in Providence, Rhode Island. The wide-ranging discussion touches on the role of the Israel lobby in shaping US policy toward the Middle East, Finkelstein's forthcoming book on American Zionism, the history and politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Venezuelan politics, Finkelstein's approach to teaching, the Palestine solidarity movement in the US, and much more.

JH/ML: You have described the two-state solution as "The option which is embraced by the whole of human kind, apart from Israel and the United States... that is return to the June 1967 borders, mutual recognition between an Israeli and Palestinian State and some sort of mutually acceptable resolution of the refugee question." It's obvious why Israel would reject the two-state solution, but what about the US?

NF: Well, it's not really why obvious why Israel would reject the two-state settlement. That itself is a matter of perplexity, because what does it really have to lose with the two state settlement? First of all, there are significant forces - for example, among the people who backed what was Shimon Peres's ‘new Middle East' notion, that is, ‘Let's profit from being the dominate economic power in the area, and the way to profit from that is to simply withdraw, end the conflict. Anyhow, this Palestinian state will be completely dominated from one side or the other - by Israel or Jordan - so what do we even need these occupied territories for?'

So, I mean, even the premise of the question of the question is not entirely clear. Why are they persistent? There have been basically three theories put forth -- two, and then I have my own view on the topic. One is the ideological one, that these people are Zionists and they're not going to concede any of Eretz Israel - to which they believe they have title - so it's basically an ideological Zionist commitment. And then there's the school of thought which says it's a rational commitment to wanting to preserve the water resources, the land resources, and so forth.

My own view is, I don't really think it's either. I think it's more of a political issue. It has nothing to do with security and never has. The mentality of the Israelis is that you don't concede anything to Arabs, because when you give them an inch, they're going to take a mile. So once you have something you don't give it up unless you're forced to leave. And they control the occupied territories and they will not budge until they're kicked out.

You take the case of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. OK, at the beginning people said they wanted to keep it because they wanted the waters of the Litani. But after a while that was no longer a credible explanation. So why didn't they leave? I think they didn't leave because the Arabs wanted them to leave, and you don't leave because they want you to leave, because in their minds that shows weakness, and if you show any weakness, they're going to exploit it. So they stayed in Lebanon until May 2000, until when? Until they were kicked out. So I don't really think the ideological or the rational explanation is the right one. I think it's a political one, it's a whole mentality on the part of the Israelis.

So, let's just now get to the question. I don't see any obvious reason why Israel would want to keep the occupied territories. As for the United States, there is, in my opinion, no rational motive. You ask yourself a simple question. I happen to have been discussing it with Professor Chomsky the other day, because he doesn't really agree with me on this and he's pretty persistent in disagreeing. I said to him, ‘Ask yourself a simple question. If tomorrow, the Israelis said ‘We're packing up and we're leaving; we're going back to the June 4, 1967 border.' Is there anyone in the US ruling elite who would regret that? Is there anyone who would shed a tear? Is there anyone who would tell them ‘No, don't go'? I think the answer is obviously not. So if no one in the US administration feels a real commitment to those occupied territories, the pressure cannot be coming from here; that is to say, from within the US government. It's coming from the lobby. On the question of the narrower, or the local question of the Israel-Palestine conflict, to my mind it's pretty clear it's lobby that keeps the US supporting the settlements, the colonization, and so forth.

JH: How does Professor Chomsky respond to that?

NF: You see, the thing is, with any political issue, you can always find a quote/unquote ‘rational explanation' for anything. Benjamin Franklin famously said, ‘What a wonderful thing reason is, because you can find a reason for anything.' It's sort of like, in politics, you can always find a ‘rational explanation.' But the rational explanation might not be the right explanation, for a simple reason: Because you can have, in any given situation, multiple rational explanations. [In the case of Israel in the occupied territories], you can have a rational explanation for staying, you can have a rational explanation for leaving, you can have a rational explanation for anything. You can always find quote/unquote rational explanations.

So Professor Chomsky will give rational explanations; he'll say the water resources, he'll say land, he'll say it increases Israel's ability to have a dynamic society, dynamic economy. That's all true. And he'll say it keeps the tension up with the Arab world, which the United States likes, because the US doesn't really want an Israel at peace with the Arab world. That's all true. But then you can make a whole series of ‘rational explanations' saying if they withdraw, there will be a peace with their Arab neighbors, then they can dominate the Middle East economically, then they won't have to devote so much money to their defense expenditures, they can devote their money to this and that. You can find a rational explanation for withdrawal also. The rational explanation kind of argument, in my opinion, doesn't always work for two reasons: One, you can always find a ‘rational explanation,' and two, you can find rational explanations for any number of options.

You can make rational explanation why Rumsfeld or Cheney should be communists. I'm serious. You read Marx's Grundrisse, and he says the most alienated person in society is not the worker; he says the most alienated person in society is the capitalist, because they turn into money-making machines. There's the famous line by Marx -- he was very poor and was given an option for some sort of job -- and he said, ‘Come hell or high water, I'm not going to let the bourgeoisie turn me into a money-making machine.' So you can make an argument that ‘rationally,' every capitalist should be a communist, because then they wouldn't be so alienated. I'm serious; that's the kind of problem with these kinds of arguments. You can make ‘rational arguments' to prove anything.

JH/ML: We have a related follow-up question. During a recent talk at the London School of Economics, you said: "In my view, there's no evidence that Israel's colonization and annexation of the occupied territories serves any American national interest. However you want to configure the meaning of 'national interest' - it basically means nothing - there's no way you can say American national interest is served by Israeli policy in the occupied territories. And there's a lot of evidence - I've gone through it myself - that US policy on the Palestinians would be fundamentally different were it not for the lobby. That I think is clearly true." Can you elaborate on that, and maybe go through some of the evidence? And, building on your answer, talk about when and in what areas the lobby influential in shaping US policy, and when it is not.

NF: Well, it's basically what I said before: I think the lobby is influential on the local issue of the Israel-Palestine conflict. So one example is the whole issue of the [Israeli] withdrawal [from the occupied territories]. If you look at the record right after the June 1967 war, of course the US was thrilled that Israel knocked off Nasser; ‘cut him down to size,' as they said, and he was no longer a pin prick in the side of the Americans, with his anti-imperialist rhetoric and his pan-Arab nationalism. So they were very happy.

But the Americans wanted a full withdrawal by the Israelis; they were very clear about that. You can look at the internal record - and it's now available - and you'll see the Americans are telling the Israelis, ‘You have to withdraw.' But every time it came to a point of a clash with Israel - and they said in the internal record, ‘We have to go up against Israel's friends in the United States' as they called [the lobby] - they said ‘We don't want to do it. There's an election coming up, it's not worth it to us'. But in terms of preference, the US was on board for a full withdrawal from the territories Israel occupied. Whether it was willing to use its political power to impose that preference on Israel, the answer was no, for the simple reason it wasn't that important to the US.

Where there are big issues are at stake, yes, the US comes in hard. But you know, they preferred [an Israeli withdrawal], but there's a whole question of priorities. You can prefer many things, but where are you willing to bring to bear your political muscle? Here, they were not willing to, for the simple reason it wasn't that important. You have to remember [the Arab] countries had just suffered a huge defeat. They didn't pose any threat to the region, to the US; quite the contrary. All of the quote/unquote radical nationalist forces - in Syria, in Egypt - had suffered a crushing defeat. So they didn't pose any real threat, so the US didn't really care.

If [continued Israeli occupation] became a real, live political issue endangering US interests, the US would impose a full withdrawal, but they don't. I was just reading a book by one of the [US] negotiators at Camp David, Aaron David Miller. It's a horrible book; he's a complete imbecile. But he talks about how Rumsfeld referred to the "So-called occupied territories." This is after 9/11, they have bigger fish to fry - Iraq, Afghanistan, soon Iran - so the occupied territories mean nothing. If it were a big power which threatened their interests, it wouldn't be "so-called." We saw that after the October 1973 war, where Egypt was determined, ‘We're getting our Sinai back.' [The US] didn't say "so-called occupied Sinai." It was ‘Occupied Sinai, and the Israeli's are going to have to withdraw.'

JH: Can you give an example of an issue over which the US administration and the lobby clashed, and the US overruled them?

NF: You saw, for example, 1991, with this whole issue with this guy Shamir. They really couldn't stand Shamir; he was absolutely obnoxious, Yitzhak Shamir. I think they called him ‘That little shit.' He was this ideologue, very provincial, and he was very insistent about being in your face, about expanding the settlements. Well, there's the famous scene. The [Israeli's] ask for the ten-billion dollar loan, in 1991, in order to subsidize the settlement of the Russian Jews. Bush said no, and then he has the famous scene in Capitol Hill, he said, ‘It's just one lonely guy - me -- against thousands of lobbyists.' And everyone knew who he was talking about, he was talking about AIPAC and ‘The Jews'. It's very interesting what happened; the lobby did nothing. No Senators wanted to go on board - AIPAC was trying to push through a bill, denouncing Bush, because he was ‘making an obvious allusion to Jews undermining US national interests' - Senators didn't want to sign it; no. They knew - Bush, Baker - now, they're serious. And [the lobby] shut up. You know the next thing that happened? Shamir was defeated, because the Israelis knew too. This guy [was] getting in [the US administration's] face, they didn't like it, time to get rid of him. The speech by Bush was in February; June was the election in Israel; Shamir was out.

When the US feels like they have business to do, everyone falls into line. The lobby falls into line, Congress falls into line, and even the Israelis fall into line. When it's down to the crunch, everyone falls into line. It's also interesting -- just as a side note -- because I'm reading the Aaron David Miller book. You may know that the entire negotiating team of the US, in its meetings with the Palestinians, they were all Jewish - Malley, Miller, Ross - they were all Jewish. And there's all this talk about how these people are more loyal to Israel than they are to the United States. You know of these insinuations. It's total nonsense. First of all, remember: people like Ross and Miller, they all worked for Baker and Bush, and Baker and Bush were supposedly ‘the anti-Semites', very hostile to Israel.

I was very struck - Miller's a complete imbecile, of that there can be no question - what struck me is really interesting. There was a famous line by Baker. He was told, ‘If you block the ten-billion dollar loan, you're going to lose the Jews in the next election.' And the famous line which everyone quotes is - and Baker replied, "Fuck the Jews." It struck me. Miller -- and [his book] is a ‘tell all' - doesn't mention it. All he does is praise Baker; ‘Baker is tough, Baker is not an anti-Semite.' These people are completely loyal, faithful servants of power. The notion they're working for Israel - the Mearsheimer/Walt thing - is totally crazy. Ross, in 1988, he worked for Bush's election. He only came to Clinton as a hangover from Bush and Baker. There isn't one word of criticism of Bush and Baker [in Miller's book] - and this was supposedly the ‘anti-Semitic' administration. And I was waiting...is he going to quote the thing from Baker? Do you know the line? Do you remember it?

JH: Yes - the line was "Fuck the Jews."

NF: Yes. Miller doesn't mention it, because it would be very hard for him to reconcile his complete toadying to Baker in the book with that line. And that's why Mearsheimer and Walt - I like Mearsheimer, very nice guy - but they totally misread these people. They have only one loyalty: to power and privilege. That's their loyalty. And they don't derive their power and privilege from this little village called Israel; they derive it from here.

JH/ML: You've said the following about the 2006 invasion of Lebanon: "I agree with the analysis of the head of Hezbollah, Mr. Nasrallah. During the war he repeatedly said, ‘This is not an Israeli war, this is an American war. This is American financed, American planned, American executed and Israel's just doing the bidding of the United States.' I think that's a more accurate depiction. It is not the tail that's wagging the dog, it's the dog that's very much wagging the tail." Explain that.

NF: That may have been slightly exaggerated because there is, in my opinion, a complete confluence and overlapping of interests between the US and Israel on the question of Iran. They both want to knock out Iran, they both believed - and it was true -- a defeat of Hezbollah would have dealt a psychological blow to Iran, and would have militarily paved the way to an attack on Iran, because they were fearful of Hezbollah having the military option of firing missiles at Israel in the event of an attack on Iran.

There was a real fear among Arabs that if Hezbollah were defeated it was going to mean a big problem for Iran. People forget now, but the first thing that was said after the so-called ‘victory' in Iraq was ‘We're going after Syria and Iran next.' And so this was, at minimum, supposed to pave the way for terrifying Iran into submission - that is to say, a psychological blow - and at maximum, paving the way for a military attack by knocking out the Hezbollah missiles and therefore denying them any deterrent power in the event of an attack on Iran.

There was a confluence of interests, but it was a confluence of interests that was controlled by the United States. It was obvious. Does anyone need any brilliance of insight? The United States blocked the UN ceasefire resolution for three weeks, waiting and praying for Israel to knock out Hezbollah. And Israel couldn't. The war would've ended almost immediately were it not for the US.

JH/ML: You've also said the following about the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon: "To tell you the truth, I think a war was inevitable. It was inevitable not because there was no diplomatic solution possible. The war was inevitable for a separate reason. Israel will not allow the Arab world to modernize. That's the big problem." What did you mean by that?

NF: Whenever there's an independent, modernizing force in the Arab world, the Israelis get terrified, because the fact of the matter is - you don't need to be a mathematical genius to know this - numbers are not on their side. Resources are not on their side, if you take the whole Arab world amassed. And Israel is determined to control the Arab world, to be the dominant power there. The only way it can remain the dominant power is by keeping the Arab world backward, and that's always been their attitude.

If you go back and read David Ben-Gurion, he used to say his biggest fear was an ‘Arab Ataturk.' And they were terrified that someone was going to come along and modernize the Arab world. Ben-Gurion's view was, ‘They'll never accept us; we're a foreign implant, we came in here by force, and so the only way to remain here is by keeping them backward.' And so whenever there is a modernizing force that emerges in the Arab world - an independent force - they become terrified, and they want to knock it out. That's what they did with Naseer, and that's what they're trying to do with Iran.

These are formidable powers, whatever you think of their ideologies. It's so funny to read the [Miller] book; they love King Hussain. Sure; you know, the British used to call him ‘Our plucky little King.' They love King Hussein, they love Sadat, they love anyone who is slavishly pro-American - whatever it means - pro-Western. But anyone who is independent? It's funny; they hate them, but they respect them. Believe me, they respect Hezbollah; they hate them, but they respect them very much.

Hezbollah is one of those cases of wedding and adapting a traditional - some may even say a throwback - ideology, but wedding it and adapting it to the modern world. And they're pretty good at that. They're smart, they're technologically sophisticated, they're serious, and that worries the Israelis. Because ideology is very adaptable; you can pretty much adapt any ideology, in my opinion. OK, there may be limits. Even the question of women. In the south of Lebanon, they never really imposed...women wore western styles, they never really imposed ideology. There probably are some limits, but not so many. It's the content, and the content is, ‘Hezbollah is modern.' You see how they mastered all the technologies in the south, to the point which it kind of scared the Israelis. Broke into all of their radio transmissions, had everything figured out technically. They're pretty impressive. They have to be. They have about fifteen hundred to three thousand guerrillas who held off supposedly the fourth most powerful army in the world; it's an impressive show, if you think those things are impressive.

JH/ML: Returning to the question of a two-state solution: what a ‘mutually acceptable' solution to the refugee question would mean in practice is that Palestinians renounce their internationally-recognized right to return, a basic human right. Isn't this antithetical to the Palestinian right to self-determination? Why should the Palestinians be expected to renounce that right? And, on a related note, you say the refugee question is one of the few dimensions of the Israel-Palestine conflict over which legitimate controversy exists. But there's no question that the refugees have the right to return. So where does the controversy arise?

Well, I think there's a misunderstanding there. First of all, it's a fair question; I've had to think about it. There's no controversy in terms of what the historical record shows, that the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948. There's no controversy on the moral question; ethnic cleansings are an abomination, you don't have to belabor that point. And there's no question on the legal issue; under international law, like all other refugees, they have the right to return to their homes after battlefield hostilities have ended. But then there's a separate issue, and that's the political one, namely, politics is about what's possible. And as far as one can tell, there's what one might call a strong international consensus on the full Israeli withdrawal. You could say on the question of the Palestinian right of return, I would have to say the consensus is there - no question - but in terms of the political will, I would have to call it weak.

Now, where do I draw that inference from? The way I would draw the inference is by looking at the negotiations. So what do you see in the negotiations? If you look carefully at the record on Camp David - the 2000/2001 negotiations between Clinton, Barak, Arafat and their negotiating teams - what you see is the Palestinians hung very tough on the question of land. They wanted a near-total Israeli withdrawal, let's say ninety-eight percent, even ninety-nine percent, they had to withdraw. But, on the question of refugees, they were pretty much willing to give everything. As Clinton put it at one point, ‘They've conceded on the right of return.' And I think that's as good an indication as any that the Palestinians recognized they were on strong grounds politically - politically, we're not talking about the moral or legal question - when it came to a full withdrawal, but the amount of support they could muster for an implementation of the right of return was pretty feeble. How do we know that? As I said, I'm looking at the record.

But my guess is, if Israel announced ‘We're going to execute a full withdrawal, but no right of return,' most of the world community would then have put the burden of blame on the Palestinians. That's how I guess it. That's politics. Politics is you weigh a thousand different factors and you have to reach a judgment about what's possible and what's not. My sense is the Palestinians weighed the thousand factors and came to the conclusion which seems to me a reasonable one - they can win on a full withdrawal, they can't win on the right of return.

The international community is tougher on the issue of borders, because everyone recognizes the moment you say it's ok to take land by force, it causes - U Thant said, if we reject [the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war], we're back to the law of the jungle, because borders start changing because countries make war. So every country is willing to hold fast on this principle of no acquisition of territory by war, because it affects every country; you know, the United States would take the rest of Mexico. On the question of refugees, it doesn't affect that many countries of the world, and there's not that kind of will.

ML: One thing that strikes me in the analogy you're making is that you made that decision on your own behalf. I'm wondering if the Palestinian refugees will have a voice in this decision...

NF: I totally agree with that. I'm pretty tough on this issue; they have the last word. My responsibility is to defend their rights. What they choose to do with their rights is their business, not mine. I don't like it when people tell me what I should do with my rights. When I was at Brooklyn College in 1992, when they were getting rid of me and they went over to one of the "radical" professors - with heavy quotation marks, as with all "radical" professors - and they asked Steve London, ‘So, are you going to go to bat for Norm?' And London said, ‘I think Finkelstein would be happier somewhere else.' When I heard that I thought to myself, ‘Hey, I thought that was a decision I was supposed to make.' Your responsibility is, if the university is in the wrong, to defend my right. If I choose to relinquish that right, that's for me to choose, not for you to decide for me. I'm not telling the Palestinians anything. I told you what I infer from the record: that the Palestinians seemed willing to give up that right. Not completely - there's still the acknowledgement of wrongdoing, there's still the material compensation - but they were not willing to budge on the issue of borders. So as I said, I inferred from that that they recognized their weakness on that particular question. I wouldn't tell the Palestinians... absolutely not. Speaking again personally, I don't like it when people tell me what to do with my rights; that's for me to decide on my own. If someone's rights are violated, you're not supposed to go publicly and say, ‘Hey, I think he should give up that right.' No; your moral responsibility is to defend the right. Privately you can give your opinion; of course. Frankly, if you aren't asked, you should shut up. That's how I see it.

JH/ML: In Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, you write: "The inevitable but very distant future is one in which Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews, enjoying reciprocal communal and individual rights, coexist within a unitary entity." Why do you think that?

NF: Well, basically the Palestinian state will be such a piddling state, and the Jordanian state is barely viable, and I think the point that Meron Benvenisti makes; he's all along claimed this two-state idea is a chimera. Because, he says, Palestinians and Israelis share everything, that Palestine is an integral whole. They share the water, they're on the same electricity grids, the geography is, to break it up, would be artificial, and I recognize that. So at some point this artificially fragmented whole - assuming people can get along - will peacefully integrate.

And then there's the other fundamental issue - the demographic one - which is not going away. Palestinian Arabs constitute now about twenty percent of Israel's population. Assuming there's no new quote/unquote miracle - which would mean, it is unlikely there's going to be a miracle on the order of the Russian Jews, which was a million (although one third weren't even Jewish) - which temporarily put in abeyance the demographic problem Israel was facing in the ‘70s. Assuming that kind of miracle doesn't happen, and assuming the other type of ‘miracle' doesn't happen - an ethnic cleansing by Israel - then the demographics are such that Israel's going to have to learn to accommodate itself to a large non-Jewish minority, if not even parity.

Of course, one of the ideas that Israel has come up with is to do a land swap with a Palestinian state, whereby it rids itself of its large Arab minority. I don't think that's going to happen, because the Arab minority of Israel does not want to de-nationalize itself. And I don't think Israel can get away with it. I might be wrong about these things, but I don't think Israel's going to get away with it. In which case, the demographics are such that it's hard to imagine these ethnically-pure states - especially there - being viable. So for material reasons as well as demographic reasons, it seems to me that Benvenisti is right, that the two-state quote/unquote settlement is very makeshift, is jerrybuilt, and is fundamentally artificial.

JH/ML: Israel conquered the Sinai peninsula in 1967 and withdrew in 1981. Why did it conquer the territory and why did it withdraw? What was its policy there all about?

NF: Basically it was to knock out Nasser and to occupy a sufficient amount of territory in the Sinai to humiliate Nasser and to basically cause his downfall. At some point they decided - as they always do - that ‘We need this for security.' And there was the famous line by Moshe Dayan that the idea that they needed the area for security was a complete fantasy, but that's beside the point. There's an area called Sharm el-Sheikh - which is the Gulf of Aqaba - there's a famous line by Moshe Dayan, ‘We prefer Sharm el-Sheikh without peace more than we prefer peace without Sharm el-Sheikh.' And they discovered they had to keep Sharm el-Sheikh, and since Sharm el-Sheikh is at the bottom of the Sinai, they discovered they had to keep two thirds of the Sinai. And they wouldn't budge.

But I think that's the point I made earlier; they had it, and they weren't going to go. Most of the reason was that the Egyptians wanted them to go. They had no security interest. But the Egyptians wanted them to leave, and they decided ‘We're going to humiliate them; we're not going to leave.' There was no need; that's true of all these territories.

All this talk about the Golan Heights is complete nonsense. First of all, even if the Golan Heights were returned, it would be demilitarized. Everyone understands that, just as part of the Sinai was demilitarized after the return. It's all complete fakery anyway, all the talk about the Golan Heights and raining bombs on the kibbutzim. It's all nonsense, but that's a separate story.

They wanted the Sinai, they wanted the Golan, for the same reasons: to humiliate, to show the Arabs who's in charge, that's their standard. In the case of the West Bank, it's different somewhat, but it's not security.

JH: What is it about the West Bank?

NF: In the West Bank, there were, at the beginning, ideological elements; that's clear. At the beginning. And there was, at the beginning, the rational argument about water and land. I think they've diminished in significance. First of all, Israel is never going to give up the water. Whatever happens, there's not going to be some sort of agreement on that, I think that's pretty clear. I don't think it really is anymore; unless you kick them out, they won't go. Originally there was also Lebanon, they thought about the water - and also on the Golan, by the way, they wanted the land and the water. It's very funny. Do you know what separates an agreement with Syria? Do you know what it is? Four hundred meters. It's hard to believe; in total, twenty square kilometers. That's it. My friend Alan Nairn lives in this tiny hovel in New York. The little apartment is the size of a broom closet. I said, ‘Al, you won't believe it. This whole conflict with Syria is over the size of a broom closet.' People won't believe it, but read any book.

Why? Because the June 4, 1967 border was four hundred kilometers off of the Sea of Galilee. Israel is demanding that the border be within the Sea of Galilee so the Syrians cannot touch the water. Now, you may think it's about water; it's not. Egypt got one hundred percent; it got full Israeli withdrawal. And the Syrians want the same. And the Israelis are determined to humiliate the Syrians four hundred meters less. It has nothing to do with ‘rational argument.' I think that's where I disagree with Professor Chomsky. There's no rational reason for that. The Israelis say ‘We need the four hundred meters so we can drive our cars around the shore.' That's ridiculous. And you know what Hafez al-Assad said? ‘I need the shoreline so I can dip my feet in the water the way I used to as a kid, when I used to swim in the Galilee.'

Now, do you think it's about that? Do you think it's about so they can drive their car and dip their feet? No. It's Israel's determination...Syria didn't win a war like Egypt; Egypt did well in 1973. So Syria doesn't get the whole thing back. You read any account, there's no mystery. Assad wants the June 4, 1967 border. If it were an issue where Assad said, ‘If we give them ‘til the waterline edge, then they'll steal the water in the Galilee...' He doesn't say that; he says he wants to dip his feet like he did as a kid. It's all about dignity.

Personally, I agree with Assad. You have got to stop these Israelis. They always want to humiliate and degrade the Arabs.

JH/ML: In an interview with Chicago public radio, you said: "I don't say this with any kind of satisfaction, but I don't think Israel has a future there any more. It's turned into a crazy state." What did you mean exactly?

NF: You saw an example of it just a few months ago. The Bush administration was poising itself to attack Iran, and even within the US government, there were serious reservations about pursuing such a policy. And so the National Intelligence Estimate report [came out] saying that Iran hasn't been pursuing a nuclear weapons program since 2003. Whether they were even pursuing one in 2003 is very doubtful, but that's a separate issue. And the entire world, of course, breathed a sigh of relief, because (A) every rational person doesn't want war in the first place, and (B) least of all wants a war in the Middle East, because it would have terminal consequences.

Well, the whole world breathed a sigh of relief, except one country: Israel. Israel immediately began to denounce the NIE findings and was gung-ho for a war. Now, if you look at the polls, Israel was the only country in the world - not just the government, but the population - that relished the prospect of war. It wasn't even true in the United States. Israel, in its bellicosity, is so out of sync now with the rest of humanity.

When you take the case of the end of the 2006 war in Lebanon. There are seventy-two hours left in the war, the United Nations has already brokered a ceasefire agreement, and now the only issue is to implement it; the war is over. At that point Israel proceeds to drop about four point six million cluster bomblets on south Lebanon. And you can make an argument there is a rational - if lunatic - explanation for part of it: Israel likes to leave a ‘calling card.' It always does; it's been Israel's standard policy. So when they had to withdraw in 1974 - from Syrian land - they destroyed the city of Quneitra. That's their style; they're Vandals. Destroy everything in their path. To send a calling card to remind their neighbors, ‘Don't mess with us.'

But even if you accept that rationale, four point six million is still insane. You could have accomplished your aim with far fewer than that. This was the densest use of cluster bomblets in history. The only thing that came close was Iraq in 1991, when the US dropped twenty million cluster bomblets, but it was over an area more than twenty times the size of south Lebanon. There's nothing to compare with it. And that, to me, is lunatic.

This war hunger, this incapacity to even think in terms of diplomacy and trying to reach some sort of détente with your neighbors. No, you can't reach a détente with your neighbors; there is only one thing you can do with your neighbors, and that's break their kneecaps. That's the Israeli style. It's fine if you're mafia, but there, the stakes are getting much higher. They have a very serious adversary now in Iran and in Hezbollah. And when you play those games with them, the stakes start getting very high. This is not Jordan, this is not Nasser; these are not blowhards, they're serious.

JH/ML: In Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, you write: "There can be little doubt that, consigned to a footnote, Oslo will one day be dismissed as a sordid detour on the path to a just and lasting peace." Talk about the Oslo ‘peace process.' Why did it begin, and why did it ultimately collapse? How did the various parties view the process and its prospects?

NF: I think the main misapprehension about Oslo is that, in one crucial sense, it worked. Oslo was not a failure if you understand what its purpose was. Its purpose was, as Benvenisti put it in his book Intimate Enemies, to maintain the occupation by remote control. And I think he used the expression it was a ‘bantustanization' of the occupied territories. So the main purpose of the Oslo accord was direct Israeli rule was no longer viable. Therefore, they were looking for an internal Palestinian element to rule the occupied territories, acting at Israel's behest as collaborators. The Israelis recognized that it would take time to cultivate this internal collaborationist leadership. And that's why a five-year interim period was built into Oslo. The five-year interim period was to create a class of credible collaborators who, after five years, will have enjoyed all the perquisites of power, who were called back then - if you look at the Oslo II accord of September 1995 - they were called throughout the accord ‘VIPs.' By the end of the five-year period, they will naturally - like most human beings - want to cling to those privileges and power which they derived from the accord.

And it worked like a charm; they created a class - it was called Fatah - and then the day of reckoning came in Camp David, in 2000, where this class of collaborators was essentially expected to sign off the parts of the occupied territories Israel wanted to keep, and the remainders, they would be the so-called leaders of. And two problems arose. Number one was the problem that for probably mixed motives - you never know what goes in Mr. Arafat's head - but I would say probably a residue of Palestinian nationalism, and partly because he thought he wouldn't physically survive signing the Camp David accord, Arafat rejected it. And he was now the one obstacle - in Israel's mind - to this successful experiment called Oslo.

Well, Mr. Arafat, like all of us, was mortal, and he passed from the scene. And now you have a bunch of leaders who don't give a wit about Palestinians, Palestinian nationalism; they just want their Swiss bank accounts, good meals, photo-ops, and the rest. And so it seemed as if everything was now going swimmingly, like we were back on course. And we were going to sign the agreement, and Israel would get what it wanted and the Palestinians would rot in a bantustan.

But a new problem came: the problem of Hamas. They didn't really have much of a choice, but they waited too long, and by this time an opposition movement had dug roots among the Palestinians, and the rest, as they say, is history. American collaborators now are trying to dislodge Hamas and get on with the business of being collaborators.

JH/ML: Describe the on-the-ground legacy of Oslo in the occupied territories. In Hebron, for example, it has meant the forced division of the city and the slow ethnic cleansing of the casbah by settlers.

NF: What's happened has been exhaustively documented. The main features of the Oslo accord which have wreaked havoc on the Palestinians have been, number one, the growth of the settlements and settlers, which have doubled - now more than doubled, the last number was four-hundred sixty thousand settlers in the occupied territories. In 1993, the figure was about two-hundred thousand. So the number of settlers has doubled.

And then there's been the policy of closures - both internal and external - meaning the large number of Palestinians - it was over one-hundred thousand, plus the families they support - who were dependent on work in Israel have been completely cut off. Israel found replacement workers from Asia and Eastern Europe. And so that has been devastating. And then there are the internal closures, which basically mean it is impossible to carry on the economy when there are roadblocks everywhere. Deliveries can't be made on time, goods can't be transported abroad. The economy is, in the face of these internal external and internal closures, unviable. And basically Palestine has survived the last ten years by being on the international dole; it has no economy anymore.

JH/ML: If most of the major historical questions about the conflict have been answered, as you say, are there any important issues which still need more scholarly attention, in your opinion? Were you to lay out a research agenda on the Israel-Palestine/Arab-Israeli conflict, what would it look like?

NF: First of all, I have to be a little bit cautious here. The issues for which there are no longer any real political consequences, there is no longer any real controversy. So, for example, the 1948 war - apart from the lingering refugee question, which Palestinians have basically conceded they've lost - there are no open political questions left. What do I mean by that? Everyone accepts the borders after the war as being Israel's borders; it's no longer an open question. And because it's no longer an open political question, the scholarship is basically honest on it, because there's nothing to lose. Israelis can tell the truth about 1948 because it's a closed political question.

When you come to the 1967 war it's different, because it's still an open political question, namely the issue of occupation and withdrawal. And so on '67, I would say the scholarship still presents areas of controversy, in particular, two. Number one, did Israel face a to live or to perish threat in '67? And number two, did they intend to seize the territories, or was it another accident of war? And if you read the Israeli scholarship, there's still a certain amount of pretense about '67 being a to live or perish war, what they like to call a ‘war of no choice', and there's still a pretense they just happened to end up in a territory three or four times their size; it was an accident. So there's more controversy there. In my opinion, the record is clear, but I couldn't honestly say that the scholarship is completely clear.

Apart from '67, it's not really controversial anymore. 1973 is no longer controversial; why? Because '73 was about the occupation of the Sinai. Israel withdrew; it's over. It's a dead political issue, so you can write the truth about it. 1982, Lebanon, you can write the truth about, because Israel is out of Lebanon, at least it's on its own border. So, there's only real controversy in scholarship where politically it's still an open question; once, politically, it's a closed question, it's no longer politically-charged controversy. Obviously there's still controversy over what caused the US Civil War, or what caused World War I or World War II. But these are what you could call academic or scholarly controversies, which have no real political repercussions. And in that respect, the '48 scholarship is a dead issue, and everything is pretty much a dead issue except '67, because the occupation endures. And that's why you find, when you read the scholarship, that the area where Israelis are pretty tough - they still want to pretend that they didn't really want to occupy the West Bank, Gaza, and Sinai. Which is crap; of course they did. And that it was a war of self-defense, which of course it wasn't.

JH/ML: You're writing a book titled A Farewell to Israel: The Coming Breakup of American Zionism. What's your argument going to be?

NF: Basically the argument can be summed up pretty simply. American Jews are basically liberal - you see it in polls, you see it in party affiliations - for a simple reason. American Jews flourished and thrived in the United States on the basis of basically liberal principles: separation of church and state, rule of law, all that. Jews were tremendous beneficiaries of that, which is why Jews are by far and way the most prosperous ethnic group in the United States. And for the longest time, there seemed to be no conflict between the liberal values which American Jews espoused - you can sort call them the ‘Clintonite values', liberal on social issues, liberal on political issues, not so liberal on economic issues, at least not liberal in the modern sense - and for the longest time, you were able to reconcile your liberal values with Israeli policy.

But the argument I make in the book is, our knowledge of the Israel-Palestine conflict has substantially changed in the last twenty years, and there's much more informed criticism of Israel right in the heart of the mainstream of the political spectrum. You saw that in a pretty vivid way with President Carter's book. Carter may not be the heart of the Democratic Party establishment, but he's within the mainstream of American values. And he was hitting Israel not particularly hard from the point of view of the world community, but quite hard from the point of view of the United States. It was kind of striking; this morning I was looking at my e-mail, and today there was an editorial in Haaretz. The title is "Our debt to Jimmy Carter." And then it refers to his criticisms [quoting the editorial]: "Israelis have not liked Carter since he wrote the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Israel is not ready for such comparisons, even though the situation begs it." And they go on to say it is apartheid.

What's my point? My point is mainstream people are saying it's apartheid. Haaretz is saying it's apartheid. If you're American, if you're Jewish, you're liberal; how can you reconcile your liberal values with supporting what mainstream American and Israeli institutions and officials are calling apartheid? And so as a consequence, you see - especially among the younger generation, which I'm more familiar with because I lecture a lot around the country - on college campuses, Israel now has zero support, apart from that core around Hillel. Apart from that core, there's nothing. Even among college Jews, it's about one third and less hard core around Hillel; one third which are indifferent; and one third which are on my side when I speak. And that's among Jews. It's falling apart.

Now there have been different explanations put forth; I mean the polls show support for Israel is eroding. Some say it's because of the high rate of intermarriage among Jews, and things like that. I don't think that's it. I think it's the issue I just pointed to. When you have Israel's most influential paper saying it's apartheid, what do American Jews say to that? ‘Oh yeah, we support apartheid'? You can say that if you're Pat Robertson or Dick Cheney. But it's very hard if you're an American Jew who claims to be a liberal to be making arguments like that. And I think you see the erosion in particular among college students because they study and they're better informed, and they see that all of this stuff Israel is doing has now become morally indefensible. And so there's some who are just embarrassed, and they have become, as it were, indifferent; and then there are those who have become completely hostile, in an active way.

And I'm pretty confident about that conclusion because I lecture at forty schools a year; I know the campuses, and I see what happens. [Pro-Israel groups] have lost a huge amount of ground. There was a time when I came [to speak at colleges] and it was like a Daniel in the Lion's Den. But it's not like that any more; it really isn't. They're losing ground, it's obvious. I see it everywhere I go. They come to where I speak, there's one row, all primed to attack me, but they don't say anything at the end. Because all I do is say ‘This is what international law says, this is what Amnesty says, this is what Human Rights Watch says.' So do they really want to have to stand up and say ‘Amnesty, they're anti-Semites; Human Rights Watch, they're anti-Semites; the International Court of Justice, they're anti-Semites; all these Israeli authors, they're anti-Semites; Haaretz, they're anti-Semites.' Do they really want to go there? No, so they shut up.

JH/ML: You've taught at many universities and you constantly lecture on college campuses. What can you say about the state of student Palestine solidarity activism?

NF: I think the most noticeable difference is the Palestinian and Arab students are a very impressive bunch now. They're second and third generation here, they're at the best schools, very excellent students, very focused, and courageously and bravely committed to the cause. Not much trembling and fear, I think mostly because they're second and third generation, and I think they've realized that civil liberties here - whatever you want to say - are pretty solidly entrenched. Unless you're on a green card or something. But if you're American-born, they're pretty solidly entrenched.

I was at Penn State that students were picked up and questioned by the police, but it didn't scare them, it didn't deter them. They have a feel for their rights, and they know that unless they go seriously awry that their civil liberties are quite firmly entrenched, and so they're pretty courageous. So I think that's the most encouraging sign. And when you go to universities now, Palestinians are not at all afraid to be at the forefront, to sponsor their events, to bring in who they want, to face down the Hillel, and they are as smart and as articulate and much more courageous than the other side. So I'm very optimistic about where things are headed. You know, it's a race against time because there may not be anything left soon, but assuming we can beat the clock, I think it's a good sign.

And the other good side of course is many wonderful Jews working in concrete, collaborative ways with Palestinians and Arabs. Frankly, I don't even think the distinction means much anymore once they work together; that barrier is so quickly and easily transcended if you can agree on basic principles of solidarity. If you want to compare, for example, trying to transcend the barrier between blacks and whites in the United States is much, much tougher than Jews and Arabs. Blacks and whites, when they work together, there's always an element of artificialness. White people trying to be ‘cool' - they ‘love jazz' and all that crap - and black people always being suspicious, doubtful. I don't find that at all among Arabs and Jews. When they work together, there's no problem and no suspicion.

Yesterday at Brown was just terrific. An Israeli refusenik, as he's called, raised his hand and devoted the larger part of his remarks turning to the Hillel members in the audience and making direct eye contact with them, denouncing ‘rude American Jews who tell Israelis to go and commit murder.' And he said two things. Number one, ‘If you want to tell us what to do, why don't you go to Iraq and ‘bring democracy'? Stop sitting so comfortably in Providence. You need me to defend Israel against the Palestinians? Well we need you to defend Iraq for democracy. So go fight.' And then he really decided to go for the jugular. He said, ‘And then there are these Jews who wear the black yarmulkes.' He was looking at a student wearing a black yarmulke. And he says, ‘You tell me to fight, but how come in Israel the orthodox Jews don't fight?' And at that point one of the Hillel students said ‘That's not true!' But of course it's true. They do fight if they choose to, but they aren't drafted; they get an exemption.

And I thought to myself, ‘if we had a national organization, to have people like that hammering away at the Israeli lobby...' I was told last night was the first time he had spoken. He had been in jail for a year and a half. People knew it, but he was always silent. And I think, ‘Oh my God, we have this guy! Knock them all out!' That's what we need; we need an organization. We have real possibilities.

JH/ML: What about the state of public discourse more broadly? You've been lecturing on Palestine for a long time. Is it now easier (or more difficult) to criticize Israel, for example?

NF: Actually, to tell you the truth, I have a debater's impulse in me. I like people to make devil's advocate arguments against me to see how my own arguments fare against them. I mention this because, frankly, it's become too easy. No one challenges you anymore. There are no arguments on the other side anymore. Over and over again I discover it. I do the same routine, as it were, everywhere I go. I give a fairly lengthy talk and I ask for dissenters to go first [during the question and answer session.] And I even give them the option of making a statement; you don't even have to ask a question. And dissenters simply don't appear. There's no dissent, and there aren't even statements. It's become too easy; it's become embarrassingly easy, because Israel has no case anymore.