Israel’s Extreme Far Right Government & the Palestinian Response, Live with Diana Buttu & Omar Baddar

Mark Seddon is live with Diana Buttu and Omar Baddar for a Deep Dive illuminating the latest iteration of Israel’s Netanyahu-led extreme right wing government.

They explore the nature of the ongoing Israeli protests against their government and look more closely at the rhetoric and actions of government ministers including Minister of National Security Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Smotrich. The guests also explore the nature of Israel’s apartheid within Israel itself and critique the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Read the show transcript below. Listen to the show as a podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.

TRANSCRIPT:

(This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.)

Mark Seddon: Welcome to Palestine Deep Dive, where I'm joined today by Diana Buttu and Omar Baddar. Diana is a lawyer and an analyst. She's based in Haifa, where she is today. Her commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Boston Globe, CNN, and The Guardian, among others. She's also a DAWN fellow. DAWN stands for, those who of you who don't know, Democracy for the Arab World Now. She is a former legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, and Palestinian negotiators, and a policy advisor to Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. She was also recently a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, more of which in a moment.

Omar Baddar is in Washington D.C. Omar is a Palestinian American political analyst. He previously served as communications director for the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Deputy Director of the Arab American Institute, a co-host and producer with Al Jazeera, and an executive director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Massachusetts. He holds a master's degree in political science with research focusing on US policy towards Palestine, Israel, and his media appearances include MSNBC, BBC, and Al Jazeera, and Palestine Deep Dive for the first time this evening.

We're very apologetic because we think we should have been speaking with Omar much earlier than this but delighted that you could join us, Omar. Delighted that you could do too, Diana, and to all of you watching, please send in your questions. We'll take as many as we can. Let us know who you are, where you're sending your question in, and I'm going to put them to Diana and Omar where we can.

I just was mentioning in passing, or we talked very briefly about Diana and being a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government because many of you who have been watching over the recent weeks will have known that Kenneth Roth was our guest, and we've been very active as have many people in combating these extraordinary claims that seem to have been made about him, and why his fellowship was turned down by that very same Kennedy School of Government.

Restituted, of course, the Dean has changed his mind, but I was just going to ask you, Diana, if I come to you first, did you run into any other problems that Kenneth Roth, the former Executive Director of Human Rights, has experienced when you became a fellow? We've seen that this dean was forced into a screeching U-turn, but he still couldn't bring himself to admit who actually persuaded him to block Kenneth Roth from being a fellow, and why couldn't he do that?

Diana Buttu: Well, when I was a fellow at Harvard, it was not under this current dean, it was under a different dean. That being said, I do have to say that the suppression and repression that Palestinians face is across campuses, across the United States as well as Canada, and I also assume in other countries around the world, but just in my own personal experience, yes, it was very difficult to speak out and to be Palestinian at virtually any campus in the United States.

Anything that you say is being hidden behind somehow this idea of the right to free speech, but that also being told that your views are abhorrent. I'll give you an example. In the year 2012, at the time that I was first a fellow at the Kennedy School, a group of students put together a conference on one state. Now, this is a conference that is calling for equal rights for everybody, from the river to the sea. There was such pressure from the Israel lobby at the Kennedy School and all throughout Harvard, that there were attempts to actually shut down this conference. So much so that it ended up making the news. People like the usual suspects, as I'm sure you know, professors at Harvard rushed and tried to get this conference shut down.

Unfortunately, the dean at the time did not cave in because, at the time, the response was, "Although we think the views are abhorrent, we still believe that people have a right to free speech." In other words, that is always cast as somehow on par with speech that is in fact abhorrent when it's not. All that one is calling for is for equal rights for everybody.

Now, that was just a flavor of some of the things that people experienced there. I'm sure there are more students who experienced much worse, but I can say that it wasn't just at Harvard. I personally did not experience any of the same difficulties that Ken Roth experienced. Again, it was a different dean and a different time, but I do know that other Palestinian students have had a very difficult time. I also know that my own personal experience across campuses in Canada and in the United States has been one of really trying to quash Palestinian voices to make it such that Palestinians are not able to speak out and not able to narrate. Instead, we have to hide behind statements of free speech, or that we have to have others narrate our own experiences for us.

Mark: Yes, I know we're going to get onto the main part of the discussion which is the new Israeli government and where that's heading. Omar, if I could come to you because just another couple of incidents over the past week, we saw and following on from what Diana was saying about free speech and the expectation, for instance, that the New York Times might have reported the Kenneth Roth affair, but failed managed to do so when he was restituted. As a liberal paper simply failed to cover the story, the sins of omission. This isn't the first time.

Also today, the attack from 11 congressmen and women on the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine for the occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, again this comes out seemingly out of the blue but seems also to be part of a pattern. On the one hand, we have a liberal newspaper that's just failing to report stuff that is fit to report. It's the paper that's fit to report the news makes the claim. Then on the other hand we have these congresspeople accusing the Special Rapporteur of being antisemitic. What do you see in all of this?

Omar Baddar: I think the example by the way of the Special Rapporteur is particularly interesting because the letter that the members of Congress wrote, accused her of incitement to violence for the statement that she gave to a Palestinian audience in which she said, "You have the right to resist occupation." Now, it's remarkable because you're talking about members of Congress of a country that is actually arming and funding that very violent occupation. The idea that resisting that occupation is what counts as incitement is absolutely disgusting and backwards for very obvious reasons.

I think you were pointing out to a really- you're putting your finger on a widespread problem in American discourse on this issue. Be it college campuses, be it mainstream newspapers, there is a level of internalized bias that has gone on for so long that this hypocrisy is simply invisible and does not occur to people at all. You can look at the fact that you've had 17 Palestinians killed in the first three weeks of 2023 and had it been 17 Israelis who were killed, that would be dominating the headlines from end to end. You would actually see it as a top headline on every single mainstream channel.

That's not what we're seeing right now. As harsh as it is to say it that way, it is a level of internalized racism of Palestinian life not being valued equally as Israeli life or American life, or any other lives. That really speaks to a very deeply ingrained problem in American discourse. That's beginning to change in positive ways, but we obviously have a very, very long way to go before we can start dealing with these issues in a way that is more fair and equitable.

Mark: Of course, when you were talking about resistance as the Special Rapporteur was doing and resistance against occupation, it is also the case that the US administration along the British and most of the Europeans are funding a resistance against Russian occupation in Eastern Ukraine. I think increasingly do you not feel, Omar, that people are seeing a lack of consistency and a beginning to say, "No, this is not on. This is unacceptable. There should not be one rule for one people and another rule for another."

Omar: Certainly for the people who are paying attention, that inconsistency is quite glaring. The difference is in the case of Russia and Ukraine, the US is arming resistance to occupation, and in the case of Israel-Palestine, the US is arming occupation [chuckles] at the expense of the people who are actually trying to resist it. It really would take your breath if you're paying attention.

Unfortunately, I think most of people's attention spans are fairly limited. Most people after a long day's work don't have the ability to investigate these kinds of issues more in-depthly and they take at face value what they see on mainstream media coverage. And if mainstream media coverage tells them what's happening in Ukraine is worth their concern, they will be concerned. If it ignores what's happening in Palestine, then unfortunately many people will just ignore it and go about their day.

It takes independent media, it takes places like Palestine Deep Dive and others drawing attention to that hypocrisy and those double standards to really catch people's attention and make them aware of the extent to which American policy is deeply broken when it comes to Palestine and Israel, and the extent to which it's morally indefensible for the US to continue funding occupation that is actually killing countless civilians and stealing their land and resources and so on at the same time that the US is claiming to care about issues of human rights and inequality and justice.

Mark: Thank you, Omar. Diana, coming to you, there's a question here. This is from Sheba. She says, I'm from the United States of America and I live in Iowa, and I don't understand why everyone is trying to make this new government seem worse than the past government when they are both very much the same. What do you say to that?

Diana: They are both very much the same, but there is a fundamental difference. I'll talk about the similarities and then I'll talk about the differences. The similarities are that each and every government that we've ever seen, each and every Israeli government that we've ever seen has always had it in its mind to continue Israel's military occupation. They've always believed in Jewish Supremacy, they've always believed in building and expanding settlements, they've always-- All of them have believed in demolishing Palestinian homes, all of them have believed in imprisoning Palestinians, including children, all of them have believed in maintaining a siege on the Gaza Strip, so yes, the question is correct. All of the governments are pretty much the same.

There is a difference though, which is that in the past, the governments used to hide behind all of these other measures. If they would, for example, pretend that they were focusing on the environment or they were both focusing on the economy or they're focusing on rights of women, et cetera. This government is not. This government has made it clear since the elections have happened and since during the election period, that it has one goal and only one goal and that is to attack us as Palestinians. That's it. They've made this clear.

While all of the other governments have had other issues at the forefront and attacking Palestinians as a machinery in the back, this government only has attacking Palestinians as its main objective. That's why this government is in many ways much more dangerous because they're saying it openly, they're saying it clearly, and they've already begun to implement it. We've already seen that.

They've called for the destruction of Khan al-Ahmar, a place that is home to about a thousand Palestinians. We're already seeing that by February 1st there, the Israelis are going to destroy Khan al-Ahmar, which including the United States have called for its destruction to be halted. We've already seen that Ben-Gvir has made it, that he intends to go on the Al-Aqsa compound and normalize these settlers going up there on a daily basis. We've already seen that this government, as Omar has already mentioned, killed 17 Palestinians, actually, it's 19 now just, just in the first three weeks of it being in office.

Now, I want to contrast and show you that 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005. 2005 was the year of an uprising. 2022 was the deadliest year and this was a government that was a so-called centrist government. You can imagine what it's like with this new government. We are already on par to surpass that number. So while I agree that it's important that we not give a pass to previous governments, we do have to set our sights on what this government intends to do. And this government intends to make life hell for Palestinians.

They've said as much, they're going to do as much. They've already gone full steam ahead when it comes to settlement construction. They're going full steam ahead when it comes to demolitions, they're going full steam ahead when it comes to ethnic cleansing. This is their only job at this point. They're not even masking it and pretending that there's other things that they're going to be working on. This is it.

Mark: Diana, I'll come to you in a minute, Omar, but I wanted to just to follow up on that, Diana, because here we've been reading about Ben-Gvir, the new National Security Minister, the fact that he's being convicted of racist incitement against Arabs and that he was also backing a group that was actually considered by the United States to be a terrorist organization. He's a particularly unattractive, dangerous figure, but there are others, aren't there?

Diana: Absolutely, yes.

Mark: Tell me, given that people are well aware of so certainly about Ben-Gvir, tell us something about some of the others that we should be watching out for.

Diana: The other one that you should be watching out for is the finance minister, a name a man named Smotrich. Now, Smotrich is like Ben-Gvir, he's a settler. He's a person who believes in the settlement project. He's a person who is now not only finance minister, but he's in charge of as they put it, construction in the West Bank, which means that he's in charge of the settlements, but he's also a very dangerous figure because he's the person who established an NGO called Regavim.

Regavim is the organization that has been pushing before the Israeli courts to have these Palestinian towns destroyed, so it was actually Smotrich who was one of the founders of Regavim who initially pushed for Khan al-Ahmar to be destroyed and here he is now in charge of it. It's the equivalent of putting the fox in charge of the hen house, right? This is what he is planning on doing.

This man has also very openly described himself as, get this, a fascist homophobe. These are his words, not mine and yet, even though he describes himself as a fascist homophobe, we don't see that anybody is doing anything against him. Going back to the question about what it is that these individuals are about, they don't have other policies except to attack Palestinians and now they are the ones who are in power in government and we see that instead of the world saying something, doing something, they've actually turned a blind eye.

For a Palestinian who lives in Palestine, you can just see what the future is going to hold for us. People are worried, they are scared because we know exactly what this government has- what these individuals have done in the past, and we see what it is that they intend to do in the future. Going back to somebody like Ben-Gvir, Ben-Gvir is not only-- He's a person who has been convicted. He's been charged 50 times but he's also, I don't know how to put this nicely, but he's kind of a clown in many ways. Even though he's a clown, he's a dangerous clown. He is somebody who, for Purim, which is a Jewish holiday, he dressed up-- It's a holiday in which you dress up as something. He decided for Purim to dress up as Baruch Goldstein.

Now, Baruch Goldstein was an American Israeli, a settler who during Ramadan in 1994, went into the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron and gunned down 29 Palestinians as they were praying the Fajr prayer, or the dawn prayers during Ramadan. Here, we have Ben-Gvir who not only dressed up as Baruch Goldstein but has called him his hero. He is a disciple of Meir Kahane, who is a person who called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and Ben-Gvir is somebody who very much believes it. We're now sitting with a government of people who believe in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and who are going to do everything in their power to actually implement this.

Mark: This is a government that the EU, the UK, the US have- they congratulated Netanyahu on his victory and look forward to working with him, as did Ukraine, as did Russia. Omar coming to you, the attacks on Palestinians that Diana was just outlining have also translated into other broader attacks on the Israeli judiciary, and there have been some very big protests. We've seen them in Tel Aviv.

Tell us now, is this a case of rather belatedly, more Israelis waking up to what is being done or what is it, and are they prepared to reach out, and work with Palestinians on this issue? Or is this rather an exclusive battle between sections of Israeli public opinion and the Netanyahu coalition government?

Omar: I imagine Diana might have a little bit more insight into the feeling on the ground being there directly but I will say that when you talk about a society in which anti-Palestinian racism has become completely normalized, it spans the entire spectrum in Israeli politics. There are no mainstream parties in Israeli politics that have a chance of holding power that don't have an anti-Palestinian agenda. The presence of this most extreme faction does really produce the risk of a very, very drastic escalation on anti-Palestinian violence.

You're talking about people who feel that the Nakba was incomplete, and this is essentially their vision. What they would like to do is escalate violence to a point that you could really see a mass campaign of ethnic cleansing take place before our eyes, because this might be a short opportunity in which they are currently in power, and that's the path that they pursue.

Unfortunately, as much as there is- it seems to me like there is a discourse within Israeli society about protecting Israeli democracy and what threat Netanyahu poses to it, the concern about Palestinians, even though it is the absolute darkest in terms of the prospects of what might happen next seems to be absent from that internal Israeli conversation, although I certainly would be curious of what Diana thinks of that as well.

Mark: What do you think, Diana?

Diana: The Israelis don't care. Their concern right now, and the reason that we're seeing large numbers of people coming out is because what Netanyahu aims to do is he wants to change the judiciary. He wants to change the system as a system. What that means and the ways that he wants to change it is he wants to be able to have it such that if the Supreme Court decides a case that they're a simple majority within the Knesset, within the Israeli parliament can undo that decision.

The reason that people are worried is that if you think about who goes to court, who goes to Supreme Court, it's usually people who are trying to protect their rights or to obtain rights or something along those sorts. It's rarely the government that's seeking to support itself, it's the other way around. And so what he intends to do is to undo that, is that in case that there's a decision where he doesn't like the ruling, a simple parliamentary majority will undo that.

Now, why is it that I say that Israelis don't care? For a couple of reasons. First is that we see at these protests that there is absolutely no mention of Palestinians and what Israel and Israelis have done to Palestinians for 75 years. That's just completely absent. The second reason that it's not at all affecting Palestinians is because we see just the sea of Israeli flags and them cloaking themselves and somehow claiming this is about democracy.

Israel is not a democracy, it is a Jewish state. What that means is that there is supremacy and protection for people who are Jewish and there are fewer rights for those who are Palestinian. What we see is happening is that Israelis are worried that somehow they're going to come within the crosshairs of this idea of their rights being taken away. Yet, I can tell you as somebody who lives here, that the system is never going to go against them. That's what it means to be living in a supremacy society, that is never going to turn against them.

The system will turn and continue to turn against Palestinians and will continue to harm Palestinians. That's why it's so shocking that in all of these years that Palestinians have been speaking out. For decades, Palestinians have been saying, "This isn't just about what Israel is doing to us. You're next, you're going to be next." Yet for all of these decades, nobody has ever paid attention because we, Palestinians, are considered to be lesser so much so that even public opinion polls are showing that more than 50% of Israelis actually believe that they are entitled to superior rights than Palestinians. [crosstalk]

Mark: If I might just cut-- Pursuing that debate, I'm continuing from what Diana was saying, is it not possible that there is a segment of Jewish opinion in Israel that really doesn't want a theological state, and might actually turn around and say to Diana, "Well, hold on a minute, we have rights as citizens. Essentially, if you're an Israeli citizen, Arabic, Christian, Jewish, you can all vote. We're going to lose all of that. By the way, we're also very worried about Netanyahu getting away with everything." Do you think there's a potential for a greater understanding of more liberal-minded Israelis that actually, they need to link up with the Palestinian brothers and sisters? Do you think there's any hope in that, or [unintelligible 00:26:03] Diana?

Omar: Yes, there's certainly every rational and logical reason to create those linkages and to have a genuine progressive state of unity for people who want to fight back against this fascist tendencies of this government. Unfortunately, unlike the United States, a place where I'm more familiar with, the trajectory in Israel seems to be the opposite. In the United States, younger people are much more progressive than the older generation. The trajectory in Israel is that younger people are much more right-wing, that the anti-Palestinian attitudes are consistently growing, that there was a time in which there was a peace camp in Israel and there were parties that were talking about what needs to be done to afford Palestinian some justice. Those voices have politically collapsed right now.

It is not literally absent, but it is so small as to not be able to speak of it as a genuine force in Israeli society, and that is really what's really disturbing and worrisome, and it's what pulls us back to the idea that only external pressure is going to change the dynamics vis-a-vis the Palestinians. We don't have anything on the ground right now. There is no path for self-correction in Israeli politics. That's why the campaign to place pressure on Israel externally to make it clear that perpetual occupation is not acceptable, is what's actually called for here. That means consequences for the fact that this occupation continues, that settlement expansion continues, that home demolitions continue. Those things cannot go on without meaningful and serious accountability. Be it at the United Nations, at the International Court of Justice, or the International Criminal Courts. Especially for the United States that funds this occupation.

Mark: That's it, Omar. I was just coming to that because this is a terrible thing to say, but what does it take in terms of the actions of this government, of settlers, of the more violent and extreme methods we are seeing that you've both been outlined? What does it take to shift opinion within the US administration because somebody said-- In fact, the Speaker of the House of Parliament said to me the other day, "Mark, this could all be stopped if the United States just turned off the financial tap."

Now we all know that's a pretty obvious thing to say and it seems to be fairly unlikely to happen. That would make a difference, wouldn't it? That's probably the only thing that would make a difference.

Omar: It would make a huge difference. The United States is the only country with meaningful leverage over Israel. Israel seems to not care about public opinion globally at all. It's about creating consequences. Certainly, the country most capable of creating those consequences is the country that's bankrolling that occupation. We have a pretty significant shift in American public discourse and public opinion on this.

It's not exactly where it needs to be, but you can see the obvious positive shift. Younger people are much more sympathetic to Palestinians. A majority of Democrats here, the more liberal party in the United States is opposed to this unconditional military funding to Israel and think there should be human rights conditions placed on it. We're seeing some movement in the right direction, but unfortunately, the Biden administration is stuck in very, very old thinking on this issue.

They're not aware of the shifting dynamics, and they seem to just want to not touch the issue of Palestine and Israel entirely. They don't want to expend any political capital there. They want to just maintain the status quo. Unfortunately, one thing is that the status quo was not sustainable to begin with. The second thing is that we don't have a status quo situation. We have a very drastic escalation that they're going to have to pay attention to.

You've had two American citizens who were killed by the Israeli military last year, and honestly, that should have been a cause for immediate outrage. That should have been where the administration steps up and says, "We have to protect Americans citizens." One of them was a very famous, renowned journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. What instead we got from the Biden administration is extreme reluctance and relying on an Israeli investigation and self-exoneration and took tremendous pressure on the Biden administration to finally reverse course on this question and to support an independent investigation into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh.

That's exactly what we need more of. We need to make clear to this administration that the status quo is untenable. That they cannot get away with this situation just as it is, and to say that people are demanding, meaningful change. Young people and Democrats at this point care about human rights, and they're demanding a policy that reflects that especially when the Biden administration keeps paying lip service to it.

You know, secretary of State Blinken keeps talking about the importance of affording equal measures of security and prosperity and peace to both Israelis and Palestinians. That's a wonderful slogan. It has no relationship to American policy in reality at all, and it's about holding the administration accountable to the words that they use, and demanding that their policy actually reflects what they're saying. That's all that is demanded at this point.

Mark: Thank you, Omar. Sandra in London emails in and this is to Diana, she says, "As a Palestinian living in Israel today, please can Diana explain to us, is Israel practising apartheid within Israel itself? If so, how and why is it important to people to understand this? Can Israel be both a democracy and an apartheid state?"

Diana: It's not a democracy, it's an apartheid state. That's the whole point. Is it practicing apartheid? Absolutely. I can just give you a couple of very quick examples of how that system of apartheid takes shape. Now, people oftentimes when they think of apartheid, they think of apartheid in South Africa, and they think of the very stark example of signs where it says roads for Whites only, or bathrooms for Whites only. That's not the system of apartheid that exists here. It's actually worse here because it is so part of society and ingrained in society and ingrained in the structures of society.

For example, there are places in-- I'm a Palestinian who holds Israeli citizenship. There are places in the country that I am barred from living in because I am not Jewish. It's not just some places, but there's a lot of places. On top of that, in some places where I am technically allowed to live, there is a law, and this is law that has been upheld as being valid by the Israeli Supreme Court. There's a law in the books that says that if a community is of a certain size, that community can decide whether I am suitable enough to be living in their midst. In addition to the actual land that I cannot buy because I'm not Jewish, there are places that I'm not allowed to live because I may be deemed to be unacceptable by the community that is in place there.

In addition to those two very simple laws that I'm talking about, I can also tell you the story about my family and how the system of apartheid has taken shape for them. My late father was born in the City of Nazareth but raised in the neighboring town of Al-Mujaydil which is about a kilometer and a half from Nazareth. His older sister was also born and raised there as well.

During the Nakba in 1948, she fled to Jordan. She was at the time, married and had a child. My aunt was married, she was born in Palestine, she was married in Palestine, she had her first child in Palestine and she fled in 1948 to Jordan and she was never allowed to return to Palestine because she's not Jewish. You contrast that with any person who is Jewish anywhere around the world has the ability to not only come to the country but to take up immediate citizenship. So my aunt who was born in Palestine, raised in Palestine, married in Palestine, had her first child in Palestine is never allowed to come back, and a person who is Jewish can.

Now, that's just some of the forms of apartheid. My father was also in 1948, expelled from his village of Al-Mujaydil and fled to the neighboring town of Nazareth. Until his death in 2021, and this is a man who held Israeli citizenship, was never allowed to return back to Al-Mujaydil  even though any person who's Jewish anywhere around the world can buy any property in Al-Mujaydil including the property that my father inherited and that he owned.

This is what it means to live in this apartheid state, is that there are systems of laws that prefer, that give preferential treatment to one class, in this case being those who are Jewish, and give secondary rights or lesser rights to those who aren't in that privileged class, so in our case, Palestinian. This is across the board. I've just given you the examples of just some small examples, but it extends across the entire spectrum.

Is it apartheid? Yes. It's not just me saying it. Amnesty has said it. Human Rights Watch has said it, B'Tselem an Israeli NGO has said it. Palestinians have been saying it for decades. I do think that it's about time that people listen and no, it is not a democracy. You cannot be a democracy and be an apartheid state at the same time.

Mark: Yes, it sounds very much like the old South African apartheid past laws, which have been further developed to make people's lives an utter misery from what you are saying, Diana. Omar in London's got a question for you, Omar, in fact. Omar says, "Should Palas--" This is kind of following on actually from the discussion we had earlier about the IHRA definition of antisemitism, racism, and apartheid. Omar wants to know, "Should Palestinians perhaps think of drafting their own coherent definition with examples of anti-Palestinian racism and push this in academic institutions, political parties, and elsewhere? Couldn't this be an effective, proactive step in the right direction?"

Omar: I honestly don't think that you need a formal definition. The issue of bigotry is rather straightforward. In fact, that's the main critique of the IHRA definition. Everybody understands that antisemitism is anti-Jewish bigotry and trying to form an elaborate definition that drags in Israel and whatever else is kind of what muddies the water and conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism when those things have no relationship with each other whatsoever. Antisemitism is anti-Jewish bigotry in the same way that anti-Palestinian racism is bigotry towards Palestinians that is pretty straightforward and frankly is very, very widespread.

It's widespread and we see it manifest itself in many, many different ways including the exclusion of Palestinian voices the demand that everybody can talk about their issues comfortably except when it comes to Palestinians, you're not allowed to talk about your own history, honestly, without a false accusation of antisemitism that comes through this IHRA definition. Maybe for the people who are not familiar with it, it might be worth explaining real quick.

The IHRA definition essentially posits that criticism of Israel is an inherent part of antisemitism. It plays a game about saying not all criticism of Israel is antisemitism this way.

That's the fig leaf that people can use to try to defend IHRA. However, it suggests that demonizing Israel is antisemitism, judging Israel by double standards is considered antisemitism and saying that Israel is a racist state, founded on racism, is also antisemitism.

Now, what you're effectively saying is that you are not allowed to speak honestly about Israel's history and avoid the charge of antisemitism. That is effectively what that does and that's deeply, deeply problematic. I don't think that there is a need to replicate any effort to invent, to have an elaborate academic definition of what anti-Palestinian racism is.

Even though anti-Palestinian racism is absolutely real and obvious and the examples are absolutely plentiful.

I do think that despite not thinking that there needs to be a definition, the issue itself does deserve and merit attention because frankly, it's the Palestinians are the only people who are told that they're not allowed to talk about their history honestly. That's a deep problem. The reality that Israel was established at the expense of Palestinians is a reality that is well documented in history. The massive ethnic cleansing that we've seen take place in 1948 is an absolute reality. We have to be able to talk about these things. To say that Palestinians are not allowed to talk about these issues is anti-Palestinian racism and that deserves to be highlighted and focused on. Absolutely.

Mark: It's very interesting, Omar, because it's taken quite a long time for people in this country to really talk about partition in India in any serious way. You hope and expect that the discussions about the partition of Palestine will also be taking place in much the same way and very soon. I just wondered if I could come to you, Diana, because a lot of people are seeing what this new government is doing. You've outlined what their intentions are. You've talked to us about some of these individuals in government.

What is the Palestinian response, and particularly from the Palestinian Authority? Because you do get the impression of speaking to people, there's a great deal of disappointment. The Palestinian Authority's being forced back onto the-- It doesn't seem to be reacting. There doesn't seem to be a really powerful voice standing up at the UN and elsewhere around the world for Palestine in the way that Yasser Arafat once did. What about the effectiveness of Palestinian political opposition right now, what has to change, do you think if it has to change?

Diana: Then when it comes to the Palestinian Authority, I think we should separate the UN from the Palestinian Authority. I do think that at the UN they have been pushing a number of efforts to try to hold Israel accountable. That's why we're seeing the efforts to go to the ICC. That's why we're seeing the most recent attempts to go to the International Court of Justice and that's why we're seeing successive UN resolutions that they're trying to pass.

When it comes to the government being on the ground here, it's important to keep in mind this is a government that isn't really a government. It's not even a representative body. It's the equivalent of having a mayor and not much more than that. That being said, even at this limited role that they have, they're also in Israel's crosshairs. We're in a place now where we see that the Palestinian Authority is both being told that it has to do Israel's bidding.

In other words, it has to be Israel's security collaborator, security subcontractor, arrest Palestinians and do what have you, whatever it is that Israel wants. At the same time, it's coming within Israel's crosshairs with everything from Israel taking away money from the Palestinian Authority, attempting to put sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, and now, also trying to make sure that people who are senior officials within the Palestinian Authority are also targeted and not able to travel.

You're right. I think that the response has not been nearly as loud as it should be, not nearly as strong as it should be. It should have been stronger, it should have been louder. At the same time, I've grown to not have any expectations of this government because it's a government that is so weak and that is simply just trying to make ends meet at the end of the month.

Remember Israel is supposed to under international law, Israel’s supposed to be doing everything that the Palestinian Authority does. In other words, Israel's supposed to be making sure that the hospitals are running, that the schools are running, that the roads are paved, that people are able to build their houses and have a decent life. When you have occupation, those are the responsibilities of the occupied. They're not meant to be the opposite, that Palestinians are supposed to fend for themselves.

Yet what Israel has done is they've said to Palestinians, "Here's this so-called government that doesn't really do anything, that can't do anything. It has no jurisdiction to do anything. Turn to them whenever you have a problem." This is what the world has done, is that they look to the Palestinian Authority as though somehow it is responsible for things when you can't even be able to get an official from the Palestinian Authority to leave Ramalah without getting a permit from a 19-year-old Israeli soldier.

Mark: Omar, [crosstalk].

Omar: Just on that question, Mark, real quick. I just will say that the range of reasonable opinions on the PA goes all the way from they are corrupt and inept and don't have the interest of the Palestinian people all the way to, they can't help the Palestinian people because they're under tremendous pressure from Israel. Either way, the result is that they are in effect not working to advance the interest of the Palestinian people and that's just the reality that we're facing.

If you want to have some sympathy for them, you can have some sympathy on the basis that they are operating under occupation and cannot do anything without Israel's approval. That just does not lead to a situation in which you can refer to them as any genuine leadership and whatever meaningful leadership that could emerge on the ground to serve the Palestinians' actual struggle for freedom and liberation and justice probably will not be associated with that particular leadership.

Diana: No, not at all. Israel has-- It's done its best. If you look in time, they've assassinated Palestinian leaders. That's the whole point, is they want to have these types of figures in place, who they're able to do whatever it is to do their bidding and to not raise up their heads and not speak very forcefully.

Mark: Diana, clearly, to a degree, it suits the Israeli government as we know to have a very weak Palestinian Authority to undermine it as it does to collude and what have you. For the international community, if the whole edifice finally collapses and periodically we are told that the PA's running out of money, can't do anything, what happens then? Doesn't that- that really makes the international community sit up.

Today you've probably seen the Irish foreign Minister has spoken out and said that they're fed up. The EU's fed up, the Irish governor's fed up of funding these projects in the Palestinian territories, only for them to be torn down by the Israelis, and they want the Israelis to pay. Do you think the potential collapse of the PA is the thing that's going to make the West take notice?

Diana: Not at all. Look, I've written about how the Palestinian Authority should have closed its doors many, many, many years ago, I think five or six years ago, I wrote about it for the first time. The problem is when you- and I still believe that the problem is that there's an underlying assumption that if the Palestinian Authority goes away, that somebody's going to magically come in and clean things up. That's not the case at all.

Before the Palestinian Authority existed, it was Palestinians who were doing everything. We were the ones again, who were making sure that the schools were running, that the hospitals were running, and so on. If the Palestinian Authority were to collapse, Israel's not going to somehow step in and be benevolent. That's not the case at all, nor is the international community ever going to say anything. We've seen that Israel has demolished, not just small structures, they demolished an entire airport. They demolished a seaport, and instead of Europe coming after Israel, they just turned a blind eye and looked the other way.

We know what Europe's pattern has been and Israel knows what Europe's pattern has been. They say that they're opposed, but they do nothing at the end of the day. There are things that they could do. This isn't just about the US being able to do things. There are things that the Europeans can also do but they choose not to because, at the end of the day, they want to make sure that as they put it, the lid stays on the joint and that there is there's quiet in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.

It's much more suitable to them. If it means throwing more millions, it means throw throwing more millions. They don't want to see us free. If they did, they have the tools. All they need to do is put sanctions on Israel and make Israel pay a price.

Mark: Well, look, we are entering the final furlong as it were, last few minutes sadly, and I know Diana, you've got to rush off. We're both grateful for both of you, for giving up this time. I wanted to try, if it's possible, to end on a slightly more hopeful note. Things are so terrible, so desperate, and sometimes, when it's darkest and at its worst is when things begin to change slightly for the better.

I'm just wondering if I come to you first of all, Omar, maybe Diana, you could answer this as well. If a hopeful sign is the change that you are witnessing in the United States with lots of younger people taking much more different view, the same as here in Britain and elsewhere, and of course more importantly right across the world, we've got the judgment that's going to come from the International Court of Justice. We've got a lot of very powerful campaigns out there, not least around BDS. Do you think that actually things can begin to move in the right direction looking forward over the next few years, Omar?

Omar: I think it is inevitable that things are going to move in a better direction. There is every sign of hope that we see. The only troubling sign that I see is the pace of that change, is that every single day that we are delayed in achieving that change is another day in which Palestinian children are thrown into dungeons, in which Palestinian land is taken away, in which mothers lose their kids. This is a reality in which we can't afford to just sit on our hands and say, "Well, the arc of history events towards justice, and we can just sit and wait this out. Then sooner or later that we're going to win."

There might be some truth to that but there is also a deep urgency to the idea that we can't just sit on our hands and wait for that eventual bend towards justice to happen, that we have to work as hard as we possibly can to make it happen. I think it is happening. I think there is every reason to believe when you look at the fact that members of Congress in the US now are increasingly talking about this. During the last presidential campaign, two of the mainstream candidates who were running for the presidency, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, had raised the prospect of conditioning military funding to Israel and Israel behaving better towards the Palestinians.

Those are clear signs of change. We see it in celebrities becoming more outspoken on this issue. We see it in all sorts of expressions of solidarity with Palestinians all across the world. It simply lights up an additional fire to say that despair is not an option here. There are signs of hope and we have to capitalize on them immediately and as aggressively as we can to try to bring about that change that we want to see. I think we can see it hopefully in our lifetimes.

Mark: Thank you, Omar. Diana, same question to you.

Diana: It's hard when you live here to be able to see signs of hope. I say this because we live in a daily tumult where on the one hand you know that tomorrow's going to be worse than today. On the other hand, you know that you're strong enough that you're able to fend that off. Having to live through this daily feeling of knowing that tomorrow's going to be worse than today and having to continually be strong places you in a cycle that is completely unhealthy.

We as Palestinians were always told how steadfast we are and how strong we are. We shouldn't have to be. We should just have the ability to be alive and not have to be thinking through whether our house is going to be demolished tomorrow, whether our neighbor is going to be arrested or our kid is going to be shot or a new settlement is going to go up or a new piece of legislation's going to come forward that strips your citizenship or that we're going to be- or another Nakba is going to happen.

Remember I was mentioning one of the politicians who said-- He came out and he said that Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship are only here for now because and only because they didn't finish the job in 1948. It's difficult to be hopeful when you live here but unfortunately, we live through this cycle where this is all that we can be because we have to continue to be. Otherwise, the alternative is just much, much worse.

Mark: Well, on that note thank you to both of you. There is actually- Ciara has sent in a message. She says, "Thank you, Omar and Diana, for this fascinating discussion. APAC in America has overplayed its hand by supporting election deniers, antisemites, and extreme right-wing American politicians." Don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to the YouTube channel and of course, thanks to all of you who've sent in questions today from all over the world. I'm so sorry that we couldn't get through all of them but we are very grateful to both of you. Omar, Diana, thanks so much for coming on our show from the United States and from Palestine and from here in the UK. Thank you very much and we look forward to next time and we look forward to both you, Omar and Diana, joining us again soon. Thank you.