Yanis Varoufakis: Palestinian Genocide - Gaza, Resistance, Truth, and Europe’s Role

Hello, I'm Yanis Varoufakis
with a few thoughts on what

we should be watching out
for as the Palestinian

genocide unfolds.

Watching, on the one hand,
the Israeli soldiers' video

confessions of their genocidal
intent and acts, and on the

other hand, the Palestinians'
live streaming of their own

deaths and devastation, it is
ever so easy to throw one's

hands up in the air, to
despair, to want to shut the

cruelty out, to disengage,
to find solace in oblivion.

But it is not only ethically
wrong to surrender to

despair, it is also
factually wrong that nothing

good can be expected.

Things change every day, and
yes, in the midst of this

misery, of this inhumanity,
the seeds of hope are already

planted on the blood-soaked
soil of the ancient

land of Palestine.

They may only be seeds, but
that's how new life is born.

Let us begin with a
difficult to discern,

yet indubitable reality.

Israel is not winning
on the battlefields.

Gaza has been destroyed, yes.

Its population, its entire
population, the entire

population of Gaza
is on death row.

And yet, the smarter amongst
those in the Israeli military

know full well that the
destruction they wreaked does

not translate into a victory.

15 months after they
re-invaded the open prison

that was Gaza us since 1948.

They still cannot
control more than a small

portion of it at a time.

Armed resistance, including
the regular blowing

up of Israeli mighty
tanks, is continuing.

Israeli military officers
also know that their political

leaders' stated aim of
eradicating Hamas can never

be demonstrably achieved.

However many Hamas fighters
they kill, as a former Israeli

general put it to me, even
if we kill most of the Gazans

before we declare victory.

A single teenager raising
a single Hamas flag over

a pile of rubble will
prove that we failed.

Similarly in Lebanon.

Yes, Israel has killed much of
the Hezbollah leadership and

yes, the ceasefire it imposed
on Hezbollah succeeded

in stopping the Hezbollah
missile launches in solidarity

with the Palestinian
resistance further south.

However, the Lebanon ceasefire
was also forced upon Israel

by its army's inability to
venture without massive losses

by more than a few kilometers
into Lebanese territory.

And lest we forget, it is
simply not true that Hezbollah

had to accept the ceasefire
because its missile

arsenal was destroyed.

Israel signed the ceasefire
hours after missiles,

you remember that?

Missiles of Hezbollah hit
Haifa and indeed Tel Aviv.

In other words, the past
year will be remembered

as a cruel paradox.

Israel destroyed Gaza and
much of South Lebanon,

mainly from the air.

But Israel failed abysmally
to control the ground.

The time is fast approaching
when Israeli society will

realize that the thousands
of Israeli soldiers that were

killed or seriously wounded
were the victims of an Israeli

leadership that ultimately
placed the interests of those

soldiers and the people of
Israel very low in their

own list of priorities.

This is also confirmed by the
readiness of the Netanyahu

government to lie through
its teeth about its own

casualties on the battlefield.

Compare the low number of
casualties officially admitted

with the more than 20,000
soldiers that Israel's health

authorities are telling us
they have admitted to veteran

rehabilitation centres.

Turning now to the medium and
long-term impact of the war on

Israel's economy, which, after
all, is of great significance

from the perspective of the
apartheid state's capacity to

reproduce itself through war
and devastation, its financial

capacity to reproduce itself.

Well, it isn't instructive
to read a letter signed by

more than a hundred Israeli
economists, including Dan

Bendavid, who explained in
full technicality how Israel's

economic miracle is now in
peril, how it hinges,

iit always hinged, on a high-tech
sector that numbers at

most 300,000 souls,
including doctors,

scientists,
technologists, academics.

And Ben David's point being,
well, if only 10%, he says,

of these 300,000, in other
words, if only about 30,000

of those experts and
high-tech, well-educated elite,

if around 30,000 of
them leave the country,

Israel's already
hugely indebted economy

will simply fade out.

In Ben David's even starker
words and I quote:

'We won't become a third world country,
we just won't be anymore.

Only 0.6% of the
population are doctors

but who trains them?

The senior staff in
research universities

are 0.1% of the people.

High-tech workers are
6% of the population.

Altogether, this is
what I said before,

it's 300,000 people.

It's enough that a critical
mass of this group chooses not

to be here tomorrow morning
and the state of Israel

leaves the developed world.'
Close quotation marks.

Are they leaving?

You bet they are.

Leaving behind them, in a more
influential position, more

dominant than ever, the
low productivity bigots

who are driving the fascist
settler movement in the

occupied territories.

And the more dominant these
low productivity bigots

become, within government
and in society,

the greater the exodus of the
high-tech, secular,

more liberally-minded Israelis.

This is the definition
of a spiral of collapse.

This spiral is, of course,
utterly connected with the

precipitous reputational loss
of Israel, the massacres,

the genocide of Palestinians,
and in particular, the manner

in which so so many Israeli
soldiers and politicians

celebrate it in videos, in
speeches, in posts on X.

All that has claimed what
is left of the illusion of

Israel as a European liberal
democracy embedded in

a hostile Middle East.

That illusion has been a
central underpinning of

the propaganda that helped
Israeli lobbyists succeed in

Washington and in Brussels.

Now it is gone.

It has drowned in the sea of
flesh and blood the Israeli

military has strewn all over
Gaza, wherever they went.

And of course the trail
of destruction, hatred and

viciousness that the settlers
have unleashed across the

West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

Once Israel's cleverly
constructed reputation

has gone solid, it
cannot be reclaimed.

And that is good news in the
sense that the first step

towards a just peace is
the ethical fall from

grace of the aggressor.

Turning now to the situation
in the West Bank, it is

utterly heart-wrenching to
watch the non-stop violence

against the Palestinians
who live under the brutal

apartheid regime in the
West Bank in East Jerusalem.

The violence against the
Palestinians in the West Bank

and in East Jerusalem comes
from three quite separate,

but of course interlinked
and connected quarters.

It comes from the Israeli
military, from Israeli

settlers, and most tragically,
from the Palestinian

Authority's own security
forces who are in the midst of

the genocide of their people
by the apartheid state,

they are cooperating fully
with the security forces of

that same apartheid state.

Why the Israeli
army is doing it?

We know.

Why the Israeli
settlers are doing it?

We know.

But why oh why is the
leadership of the Palestinian

Authority doing it?

It's important to note that
this is not the first time.

The Palestinian Authority,
the leadership has cooperated

fully with the Israeli
occupiers for a

very long time.

With occupiers, remember, who
are steadfastly rejecting any

prospect of the Palestinian
Authority becoming the

government of a Palestinian
state, which contradicts the

very raison d'etre of the
Palestinian Authority,

which, ostensibly, is to
set up a Palestinian state.

But now, in the face of
the fully-fledged genocidal

campaign by Israel, the
Palestinian Authority's

excuses are becoming
transparent, thin,

impossible to fathom.

The unelected,
unrepresentative, patently

corrupt leadership of the
Palestinian Authority is

behaving as if to impress
Netanyahu, and soon Trump,

that they, the Palestinian
Authority, can do Netanyahu's

and Trump's dirty work
for them, with a veneer

of legitimacy, that they
have a role to play.

That's what they are trying to
convince Netanyahu and Trump.

It is a pathetic plea to
the genocidal US-Israeli

establishment to give them a
job to do, especially now that

the Palestinian people have
seen through them,

nothing else explains why they, the
leadership of the Palestinian

Authority, are turning
even against Fatah

members who continue
to resist in Jenin

and elsewhere.

This, I have to confess, is
the saddest, most depressing

aspect of the Palestinian
tragedy, so I shall not dwell

on it, except to reiterate the
urgent need for the election

of a representative and thus
legitimate leadership of

the Palestinian people.

No peace can be imagined, let
alone be negotiated otherwise.

I hope and trust that the
Palestinians will find

a way to speak with
one representative,

non-sectarian voice.

Nothing short of that is
called for as the Palestinian

people face genocide.

As for the rest of us, we
must stand by to help give

this voice, their voice,
a chance to be heard.

To sum up, to conclude,
days before Donald Trump

enters the White House.

I'm speaking to you on the
9th of January, to give

you the precise date.

Donald Trump is about to
enter the White House.

A man who has never
not liked any war crime

aimed at eradicating the
Palestinian resistance.

The Palestinians as a
people, native to Palestine.

Just before this man
enters the White House,

we are at a crossroads.

Not just as Palestinians,
as Europeans, Americans, as

humanity, as a humanity that
is watching a genocide unfold

in real-time on our screens.

And what is this crossroads?

Allow me to paint it
with a few brush strokes.

We have mega-deaths and
uber-destruction on the

ground, wreaked by a
US-armed and European

Union-supported Israel.

A spiral of collapse within
Israel's social economy.

Arab countries split between
complicit regimes and

enraged population citizens.

A Global South that is
becoming increasingly powerful

and increasingly intolerant
of the Western Israeli

self-awarded right ethnically
to cleanse the non-Jewish

native population.

And a Western public
opinion that can no longer

pretend not to know.

What is the upshot of this
picture, of these crossroads?

If I were to issue an educated
guess, it would be this.

Things will get even
worse for the Palestinians

in the short run.

But, in the longer run, the
possibility of liberation,

of a just peace for Palestinians
who refuse to go gently

into the good night, and for
Israelis, who understand the

trap into which the Netanyahu
regime has ensnared them seems

stronger than it has been
for at least 30 years.

Thank you and let's keep up
the campaign for a just peace

in the Middle East, which
is a prerequisite for

the liberation of us all.

Carpe diem.