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Yanis Varoufakis and Francesca Albanese on Israel, Palestine and Genocide

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    [Applause]
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    [Yanis] Well, Francesca Albanese, the
    United Nations rapporteur on Palestine,
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    it is not only a personal
    pleasure to be talking to you today,
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    but I want to convey
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    on behalf of our MERA25 friends and
    members that are watching this
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    their appreciation, our joint
    appreciation
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    for everything you've been
    doing so courageously
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    over months and months of
    this unfolding genocide,
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    which will stigmatise humanity
    for so many years.
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    So thank you on behalf of everyone,
    not just on my behalf.
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    Let me ask you, we are
    having this conversation now
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    less than 24 hours after
    the announcement, finally
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    of an agreement between
    Hamas and Israel,
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    to affect a ceasefire.
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    What are your feelings about this?
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    [Francesca] I don't know, I don't know.
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    Really I'm still processing it,
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    I feel, I feel so happy to see
    the Palestinians cheering,
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    especially the kids are looking forward to
    the return of a peaceful normalcy.
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    This is on the one hand.
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    I also mean, I also know that for many
    Israelis, this is the end of a nightmare.
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    But is it going to be the end of the
    nightmare for the Palestinians?
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    For the Palestinians, first of all, we are
    talking of the Palestinians in Gaza
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    and people saying, I mean, I was listening
    to the outgoing president of the US
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    saying, oh, now the Palestinians can
    return to their homes, to their life.
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    Yeah where have you been for the
    past 15 months President Biden?
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    For many of them
    there are no more houses,
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    and for many of them the houses,
    whatever, even the rubbles will be empty.
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    The entire, hundreds and hundreds of
    families have been exterminated.
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    And again, the genocide has happened.
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    I don't know how you feel, Yanis,
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    but somewhat, something, I say that,
    but I'm still processing what it is
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    something has broken this year.
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    Again, this was not a war;
    this was a genocidal war,
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    and all these images of all these people,
    all these children,
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    killed, amputated, brutalised, starved,
    left in flooded tents, frozen to death.
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    Yeah, they're still here, so what.
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    [Yanis] Well, a whole population has
    been placed on death row
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    for the first time
    since the Second World War.
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    But there is also another dimension,
    I just had word from the West Bank
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    that settlers under the cover of the IDF
    are attacking villages now.
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    as we speak!
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    This is not a ceasefire in Palestine.
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    It's a ceasefire only in Gaza
    from how I understand it.
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    And remember, the original
    idea of Ariel Sharon
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    was to move out of Gaza
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    in order to annex and complete
    the occupation of the West Bank.
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    So from your perspective,
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    the United Nations perspective,
    reporting on Palestine,
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    can you comment on, you know,
    what the Gaza ceasefire means
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    for Jerusalem, for the West Bank
    more generally.
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    [Francesca] Yeah, yeah, Yanis,
    you need it,
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    because as I answered the first question,
    I said this is only for Gaza,
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    there are some striking features
    in the agreement.
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    There is the liberation of, I think
    1,700 prisoners; they are all from Gaza.
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    But what about the thousands of people
    who have been kidnapped?
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    Palestinians who have been kidnapped,
    arbitrarily detained, tortured;
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    this includes children. this includes
    journalists and teachers,
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    professors from the West Bank.
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    Since the very beginning
    I've written about that.
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    This is why I've said we need to look at
    Israel's intent,
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    in terms of totality of conduct
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    and totality of crimes against
    the totality of the Palestinians
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    in the totality of the land that Israel
    illegally occupies and claims as its own.
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    Have you heard anyone talking about
    withdrawal of Israel's presence,
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    civilian and military tangible and
    intangible, material and immaterial
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    because this is what the ICJ has asked,
    has ordered in July last year
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    and the General Assembly has given
    a deadline to Israel is doing that.
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    And no one is talking about that,
    and this is the point: West Bank.
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    West Bank is the place where
    the colonial erasure is advancing,
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    through other means and through other
    crimes and through other actors.
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    Because there you have the Israeli army
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    the settlers, armed settlers,
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    and now you also have the repression
    from the Palestinian Authority,.
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    [Yanis] It was poignant that you said
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    that not all the Palestinian hostages
    are going to be released,
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    especially not the ones from West Bank.
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    And by the way, I'm talking about hostages
    so that I can be symmetrical.
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    There are Israeli hostages and
    there are Palestinian hostages.
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    There are no conflicts or prisoners;
    they are hostages;
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    they are the hostages by an army
    of occupation.
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    My thought, as we were speaking,
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    my thoughts wandered in the direction
    of the family of Marwan Barghouti,
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    who's been in prison for decades now
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    precisely because Israel does not
    want any leadership to emerge
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    within the Palestinians that
    are representative of the Palestinians
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    and which can actually
    pave the ground for peace.
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    because Israel does not want peace.
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    Do you know a white settler colonial
    project loaths peace.
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    I think that Israel somewhat wants peace
    as long as it implies the subjugation
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    of the Palestinians as a temporary
    measure toward their erasure.
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    The plan of this settler colonial project
    as it continues
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    is not the integration of or the weakening
    of the indigenous Palestinians
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    because, as non-Jewish, they have no
    place, no belonging in the Jewish State,
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    this is very clear, and this is the
    problem I have with the state of Israel.
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    It's not the state of Israel per se; it's
    how the state of Israel behaves
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    The state of Israel is quintessentially
    as an apartheid state,
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    I wish it was different.
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    This has nothing to do with
    the Jewish people,
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    It's about the design to subjugate,
    oppress, dominate another people
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    till annihilation.
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    And unfortunately Yanis, it's happening;
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    it has not happened for one reason,
    because the Palestinians do not give up.
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    The Palestinians could have, I mean,
    when Rafa was invaded.
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    I don't know what you think, but
    this is my two cents:
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    when Rafa was invaded in May
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    till then the push of the army through
    evacuation orders and safe zones
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    had been more southward from the
    north to the south.
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    When Rafa was, when Israel entered Rafa,
    it pushed Palestinians east and south
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    as much as it could and as it saw
    that the Palestinians were not moving,
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    and as it saw that the
    pressure was mounting
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    Then it gave up, and it started pushing.
    them to eastward,
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    um, sorry. westward, westward, not
    eastward, westward toward the sea
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    in an area like Forensic Architecture
    has documented
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    that is totally, totally unsustainable
    unlivable.
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    But the Palestinians have resisted
    in the little that remains of their land,
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    and still they resist in the little,
    I mean, not the little,
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    but in what remains of their land in east
    Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank
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    or in Israel itself.
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    But it's very hard, it is, and
    if we don't keep the pressure on Israel
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    it will be harder and harder.
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    [Yanis] Well, speaking of pressure and
    going back to your contribution
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    as a lawyer and a rapporteur for
    the United Nations,
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    one of the valiant contributions
    you've made
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    was - and I've seen you do this in press
    conference after press conference
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    from one country to the other -
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    you're taking your own views and beliefs
    out of the equation,
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    and when you talk about genocide
    you insist
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    that this is not a matter of opinion.
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    Can you speak to you know, is this
    genocide from a legal perspective?
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    Look, I was listening to you and as you
    were in introducing your question
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    I was saying it's something
    you put your opinions aside.
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    This is so true you have not even
    an idea of how true it is,
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    because probably you have not
    heard me saying that
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    but in the beginning, I was not sure.
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    I mean, I had really superficial back then
    understanding of what genocide was
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    because it's quite a niche.
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    When I went back to study what
    genocide is from a legal point of view
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    and look looking at the cases and
    the Juris Prudence
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    I realised where my mistake came from.
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    Is that we tend to associate genocide to
    extermination and mass killing
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    in Rwanda or the Holocaust.
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    But genocide is something really deeper
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    and in retrospect,
    and then I'll tell you why.
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    Um, from a legal point of view, I think
    that the Palestinian genocide,
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    the genocide of the Palestinians
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    is THE textbook of genocide
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    and as Raz Segal had really
    brilliantly put it
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    because it's what the conceiver of
    the term genocide had in mind:
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    the settler colonial genocide, erasure
    of a people annihilation of a people.
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    Which doesn't mean killing them all,
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    in fact, in the genocide convention, the
    act of, I mean the killing,
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    is one of five acts.
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    But Genocide is a crime constituting,
    to be made of, the intent to destroy,
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    in all or in part a national, religious,
    racial, or national group as such.
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    So the group is targeted as such.
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    And what does constitute genocide?
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    Several acts of killing members
    of the group,
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    inflicting several mental
    and bodily harm,
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    creating conditions calculated to
    bring about the destruction of the group
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    or also, not even these are
    prevention of birth
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    and transfer of children.
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    So you see there are genocidal acts
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    that resonate with settler colonial
    genocides like in Canada and Australia,
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    where the genocide was
    primarily carried out
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    by breaking the bloodline of the
    Aboriginal on the one hand,
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    and then the First Nations and
    Métis, etc. in Canada
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    separating the kids or preventing births.
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    [Yanis] I'm glad you mentioned
    Australia and Canada
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    and the United States ofcourse.
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    First Nations peoples, Aboriginals
    and so on,
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    because recently I was in a debate
    with a passionate defender
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    of Israel's right to
    implement genocidal policies.
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    he said to me: "Do you agree, Yanis,
    that, expecting of Israel
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    things that we don't expect of
    the great major Democratic
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    states of the the world, is racist?".
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    I said, we'll, go on
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    And he said, "Well, why should
    we expect Israel
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    not to engage in genocidal practices
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    when the whole of the United
    States was essentially
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    a grand genocide, as was
    Canada and Australia? ".
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    The point, the vile point is
    that what do we expect
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    of the Anglosphere in particular
    or Germany?
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    Think of what Germany did in
    Namibia right?
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    I mean, or Belgium in the Congo,
    they practiced genocide,
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    so why should they, if they retain a
    kind of allegiance to their past,
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    why should the representatives of
    these states think of Israel
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    as doing something out of the
    ordinary?
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    [Francesca] Why Israel should be
    held to a different standard
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    from the other liberal democracies
    born from genocides
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    or colonial powers that spread genocide,
    committed genocide across the world?
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    Different and several answers.
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    First of all because after 1948, the world
    enacted a legal framework,
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    which prohibits genocide.
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    So what was permitted in 1913 or
    in the 15th and 16th century
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    is clearly prohibited today, and it's
    prohibited to the point
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    that you, genocide to be prevented,
    stopped, and punished.
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    So Israel can commit genocide, and
    in fact it has committed genocide,
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    but now it will have to face the
    consequences.
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    [Yanis] You report to the
    General Secretary, the Secretary General
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    of the United Nations, to the
    United Nations,
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    how do you, what is your sense of
    the manner in which your reports
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    and ofcourse, what we see on our
    screens every day, is affecting
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    the atmosphere both within
    the Security Council
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    and the General Assembly of
    the United Nations, and finally,
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    would it make any difference
    if the United Nations
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    admitted the state
    of Palestine formerly in it's ranks?
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    [Francesca] So what kind of difference
    my reports are making?
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    Well, my reports to the Human Rights
    Council and the General Assembly
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    produce a response that reflects
    the state of the world.
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    In the sense there is fierce opposition
    by a small number of countries,
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    very, very small, no more than
    five, open opposition.
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    And then the rest is from
    the West, of course:
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    Israel, and four of it's best allies,
    closest allies.
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    Then there is sort of silence,
    silent appreciation,
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    happy that I said those things
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    but not courageous enough or not
    enabled enough,
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    because of lack of representation t
    o be able to say that, or just
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    for political convenience,
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    which is another good number
    of states in the West.
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    The abstainers, and then there is the
    absolute majority of member states
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    who support my work, who express
    admiration
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    and who takes those words,
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    the recommendations
    that I make, seriously.
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Title:
Yanis Varoufakis and Francesca Albanese on Israel, Palestine and Genocide
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Duration:
25:32

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