Unmasking the Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Deep Dive with Robert Spencer

Are you ready for an enlightening journey into the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict? We've got Robert Spencer, the acclaimed author of The Palestinian Delusion, joining us to unmask the ground realities of the region. We will be traversing the complex landscape of the Gaza Strip, shedding light on the hardships of the Palestinians living there, including the reasons why crossing into Israel is a tough nut to crack. We will also delve into the controversial presence of jihadis in Gaza, as well as Egypt's decision to shut down its border - aspects that are often left unaddressed.

Moving beyond the immediate, we will be addressing the conflicting narratives of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the role of media bias, and the propaganda from both sides. Robert Spencer will help us decode these narratives, taking us closer to the reality of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Moreover, we will be analysing the manipulation in propaganda and media, revealing how powerful entities sway public opinion. Join us for this riveting conversation as we peel back the layers of one of the most complex conflicts in recent history. You won't want to miss it.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So about Israel? What is it that they are fighting over? What is it that is causing all of this issue?

Speaker 2: 0:09

Faith and Failure's podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:14

So we're going to watch another video from the same YouTube channel. I went stupid YouTube channel called what Do you Mean? He's a Christian guy. I highly recommend go look up his videos. He's always very informative, very just full of good content. So we're going to watch this right quick.

Speaker 3: 0:32

The war in Israel is said to be a fight over land and specifically for Palestinians to take their land back and be relieved of Israel occupying Palestinian territory, but others are saying that that's not true at all. With so many conflicting narratives and facts, what is the truth? Today, we're going to talk about the facts that no one seems to want to talk about. Let's get into it.

Speaker 3: 0:52

Today, I'm joined by Robert Spencer, the author of the book the Palestinian Delusion the Catastrophic History of Middle East Peace Process, and today we're going to go ahead and get his thoughts on an opposing position pumped forth by the commentator, mark Lamont Hill. Now, with so many opposing views going on over the last few days, it's hard to know what exactly what we should believe when it comes to the alleged facts surrounding who's the rightful owner of the land in Palestine. Now, robert, you have your position, of course, but before this interview started, I told you that I want for us to try to be as objective as possible and to just give the facts. So let's go ahead and watch this video by Mark Hill together and we'll get your input along the way.

Speaker 4: 1:34

As we discuss the events that have taken place in Israel and in Gaza over this past weekend, we have to be able to do several things at once. For me, that starts with sending sincere sympathy and condolences to all of the innocent men, women and children who were killed in the violence that took place in Israel and Palestine over the past weekend. Being civilians is a violation of international law. It's a violation of religious law. It is a violation of basic human decency. It must be condemned without excuse. It must be condemned without reservation, full stop.

Speaker 4: 2:07

But we cannot begin or end our analysis with what happened this past weekend. Long before Hamas ever sent a rocket, or even before Hamas was formed, palestinians have lived under Israeli occupation. Federal control of Gaza, which continues even after the departure of Israeli citizens in 2005, has transformed Gaza into an open-air prison. The conditions in Gaza are literally unlivable and have only gotten worse in recent days. The people of Gaza have consistently lived under military siege, daily violence and collective punishment. The broader Palestinian community has lived under oppressive military occupation, which has subjected them to dehumanizing conditions within an apartheid state.

Speaker 3: 2:48

What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2: 2:51

There's so many inaccuracies in that I hope we have time to cover them all. But the first thing is occupation. Gaza is not occupied. It's not occupied physically. There were Israelis there, but they all left in 2005. And the whole idea of their leaving was to bring about peace by ending any occupation, and so there has been no Israeli presence there since 2005. Now Mark Lamont Hill says nonetheless, even after they left, they have been oppressing the Palestinians and it's an open-air prison. Now, why is it difficult for Palestinians to pass from Gaza into Israel? Because many of them, when they get into Israel, have started killing people. Now, when you don't know who's going to kill people and who isn't, you have to have checkpoints.

Speaker 1: 3:47

And hello American border.

Speaker 2: 3:50

Search the people who are trying to come in. That is what the open-air prison is all about that he's talking about. It's also interesting to note that Egypt has a border with Gaza and Egypt just closed. It Is Egypt, an apartheid state that hates Muslims. Egypt is just concerned about its national security and Egypt knows as well as Israel knows that Gaza is full of jihadis and they don't want them in Egypt any more than they want them in Israel.

Speaker 1: 4:19

But nobody's talking about that.

Speaker 2: 4:20

So the fact that the border is closed does not make it an open-air prison. It makes it a recognition of the reality of jihad activity in Gaza. Also, from a legal standpoint, occupied territory suggests that somebody else owns the land. Who owns Gaza Now? If you ask Mark Lamont Hill, I imagine that he would say the Palestinians. It ought to be a Palestinian state, and the West Bank as well. Now, and actually since he got fired from CNN for saying from the river to the sea, palestine would be free, he probably thinks that all of Israel is occupied territory. But there was never a Palestinian state. There was never a Palestinian kingdom, republic, empire, anything you want to name. There was never a political entity that was Palestine. And then people sometimes have said, when I say this, wait a minute. In the 1939 World Book Encyclopedia there's a flag of Palestine. Yeah, but it's a star of David. And that's nine years before the founding of the state of Israel.

Speaker 2: 5:23

Palestine was the name of a region. It was the name given to Judea, which means land of the Jews, by the Romans in 134 AD, when they expelled the Jews from the area. Many of the Jews didn't leave and there has always been a Jewish presence in the land, but the last owner of the land was the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire fell shortly after World War I, when it, as before it, fell just as it was falling. The Ottoman Empire actually ceded legal authority over that land Gaza and the rest of Israel and the Holy Land, the whole thing, the West Bank, the whole thing to the League of Nations, which was the precursor to the United Nations. The League of Nations gave it to Britain as part of what was called the Mandate for Palestine.

Speaker 1: 6:12

The Mandate for Palestine was Just pause for a second If you're enjoying this video, if you would, if you don't mind, make sure to like this video, this live stream. Share it with somebody who wants some information about Israel. This is very informative and it took me a while to do research and find all this stuff. So if you would just give me a little thumbs up it's free of charge I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 6:37

I would like to give a specific directive to the British to create a Jewish national home in this land. What was the land that was set aside for the Jewish national home? All of what is today Jordan and all of what is today Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. The British immediately gave the whole Eastern part to the Arabs, and that's Jordan, but they set aside the rest for the Jewish national home. So what does that mean? Israel is the Jewish national home. The only country in the world that actually has a legal claim to the land of Gaza is Israel.

Speaker 2: 7:14

Now, egypt occupied Gaza from 1948 to 1967, and that's another interesting thing. You didn't hear a word about occupation then, and that's because this is really a religious conflict and it's all about hating Jews and all about not wanting to recognize Jewish authority over Muslims, because the Muslims, as Hassan al-Bana, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, said, islam must dominate and not be dominated, and so they didn't mind when Egypt was occupying and nobody talked about occupied territory, even though that was an actual occupation. Nobody minded and nobody talked about Palestinian rights. The Palestinians, as a matter of fact, are not mentioned in the history of the world. Until the 1960s, there were no Palestinians. When Israel declared its independence in 1948, they were the Arabs of the local area. The Palestinian nationality was created in the 1960s as a rhetorical weapon against Israel and it's worked very well. But the fact is, the non-anger Egypt while Gaza was under its occupation for 19 years is an indication that this is really all about Islam and the Jews and Egypt being Muslim. There was no problem about occupation while Egypt was in Gaza.

Speaker 3: 8:32

Okay, the interesting take. Okay, let's hear what he says next.

Speaker 4: 8:36

Even when the world isn't watching, especially when the world isn't watching. Palestinian villages are bombed, homes are demolished or taken, journalists are killed, protesters are executed. Under these conditions of ethnic cleansing, international law, human nature and just basic common sense all suggest that resistance is both reasonable and necessary. Now, that said, violent resistance has never been the first step. Palestinians have always made efforts toward nonviolent solutions. Every Palestinian attempt, though, at nonviolent resistance from peaceful protests to BDS to literature festivals, they've all been met with criminalization, violence or public smearing campaigns.

Speaker 4: 9:19

Even when Hamas hasn't recognized Israel and that's true other groups like the PLO and FETA have absolutely done so, and still Israel has refused to engage in reasonable good faith negotiations and, more recently, they have refused to negotiate with Palestinians at all.

Speaker 2: 9:35

This makes me wonder if Mark Lamont Hill has any knowledge of the history of the last 100 years. Probably not.

Speaker 1: 9:42

He's reading from a script. He's doing his job. I mean, can't fault him for that. I wouldn't do that job lying all the time. But that's what you get when you go to CNN. It's just you get lies and propaganda.

Speaker 2: 9:56

This is really an appalling level of twisting of the historical facts. In 1948, the United Nations offered to partition what was left of the mandate for Palestine, which was supposed to be for the Jewish national home, and create a Jewish state and an Arab state yet another Arab state. There were already 22 Arab countries, but that was not good enough. They had to have 23. And yet they rejected that. The Jews said, yeah, sure, we'll take that, and they took the little bit, the sliver of the original mandate that was left and they made Israel there. The Arabs rejected a Palestinian state in 1948. Then in 1967, the offer was made again after the Six-Day War. In the 70s, at the Camp David Accords. In the 90s, at the Oslo Accords. In the 2000s, there was an offer made by the Prime Minister of Israel for everything that the Palestinians were demanding. It was like 99 percent of the territorial demands they were making, plus extra for the 1 percent. The Prime Minister offered them compensation in other areas for the 1 percent that he didn't want to give. They rejected that.

Speaker 2: 11:16

The idea that the Palestinians have wanted to make peace and the Israelis have rejected it is completely ahistorical. It's just the other way around. When it comes to nonviolent initiatives. The idea that the Israelis have crushed nonviolent initiatives and are oppressing the Palestinians is likewise completely false. The fact is that when he brushes by it real quick, he says Hamas, yes, has not recognized Israel, but Fatah has. And the other side Fatah has never recognized Israel as a Jewish state. It's recognized the existence of the state of Israel, but left open the possibility of it being overwhelmed by Arab Muslims who would transform it into an Islamic state. Has never recognized the right of a Jewish state to exist on that land, and Hamas just wants to destroy it utterly. Fatah does too, really, if you read between the lines. So the idea of Israel being able to live with that it seems to me to be ridiculous. It's made the completely reasonable request that if we're going to make a framework for peace that's supposed to be a two-state solution in which we coexist peacefully with one another, then you have to recognize that we have a right to exist and be here. Otherwise it's just a hollow assurance and ultimately you're going to use the new state the way Gaza has been used as a new jihad base to launch attacks against Israel.

Speaker 2: 12:47

And that's the other thing. He says that Gaza keeps getting bombed and buildings blown up and so on. This is not some gratuitous action that happens out of the blue while the Gazans are picking daisies and singing folk songs and then suddenly the Israelis bomb the place. This is a reaction to the fact that Gaza keeps sending rockets aimed at Israeli civilians and keeps and the rhetoric, the hair-raising genocidal rhetoric that has been recognized in Palestinian textbooks again and again and again. Children of the youngest ages are taught to hate Jews, to want to kill Jews, to think that it's a noble thing to go on jihad and kill, and then interrupts into violence. The Israelis retaliate. Mark Lamont Hill is pretending as if these retaliations are gratuitous, out of the blue and are in response to nothing. Anybody who's been following what really happens there knows that's not true.

Speaker 3: 13:51

Now to push back a little bit, I would say that it does appear to seem that Israel is not necessarily innocent all the time as well, in the sense of this is, when I look at the situation I realize that there's a lot of tension going on, so like when a drastic, catastrophic attack of some sort happens, then the other side will respond with another attack and then hostility between each side continues to grow as the conflict continues to ensue. And so with that I mean, if we kind of look at what's going on right now, so there's no doubt Hamas is committed, obviously, some war crimes. But would you say that Israel's response in bombing Gaza and the marketplace and apartment buildings and that sort of thing, if that is true, would that also be considered war crime as well?

Speaker 2: 14:42

No, it isn't John, and I'll tell you why.

Speaker 1: 14:46

He might be a little biased on this, and the reason I say that is because life is life, so it doesn't matter what the conflict is between countries, there's always innocent life that ends up being lost, and that's why war is so terrible, because you have people that have nothing to do with whatever is going on and they end up getting caught in the crossfire, like you see that here in America with people in gang wars and stuff. You get innocent children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, grandmothers, grandpas get shot up in a drive by that had nothing to do with the people that got actually shot, and this is what happens in war. This is why war is so ugly and war is so terrible is because people who don't deserve to die, who are actually innocent in all of the conflict. It's always the people that end up getting the worst blunt of it sometimes.

Speaker 2: 15:39

Palestinians. Actually, even the UN, which is deeply anti-Israel, has recognized that Hamas uses civilian areas to mount attacks, and then it's deliberately trying to exploit any retaliatory fire.

Speaker 1: 15:56

And so the people that are in power, and this is what happens all the time. This is what happens in our government. This is what happens, obviously, in this war. It's what he's talking about, that people that are innocent are always put up in the front of the people who are guilty so that they can take the blunt of what's going on and they end up getting caught up in it and people are used as puppets. They're used as propaganda. The government since the beginning of not time politics, but since the beginning of Biden's takeover of the government when he was signing the 74 documents. I think I'm not going to go deep, but what I'm saying is he said that trans people are the backbone of this country. That was out of his own mouth Propaganda to try to push some sort of agenda. I don't know if it has something to do with his little perverted stuff that he enjoys in private. I don't know, but people end up getting used by people in power for their own agenda and propaganda For propaganda purposes.

Speaker 2: 16:55

So it puts the rocket launcher in a schoolyard, shoots the rockets into Israel, then Israel zeros in on the rocket launcher and bombs it. And then the Palestinians go to the international press and say, look, they bombed our school. And the press reports it uncritically All the time. If you look at the coverage of the establishment media, you see Israel kills five Palestinians and it doesn't tell you until paragraph 32 that those guys were jihadis who were firing guns at Israeli civilians or something. And it's it's. It's presented as if it were this out of the blue, gratuitous attack. So it's no wonder Marcus Mark Lamont Hill would think this is what's going on in Israel. This is how it's reported. But the reporting is Consistently inaccurate.

Speaker 2: 17:48

The Palestinians also have a very sophisticated Propaganda machine and I've been tracking this for many years.

Speaker 2: 17:54

You can find a lot of exploration of this in my book, the Palestinian delusion. But what you find is, for example, there will be a picture of a little girl pretty cute little girl and Some Palestinian journalists will put it up on Twitter and say this is so-and-so, who is two years old and was killed in an Israeli bombing last Thursday, and Then all the comments or expressions of sympathy and outraged toward the Israelis. And then you find out a week later that the same picture was used in Iraq in 2018, and it's an Iraqi girl who has nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinians, and there her picture was, was taken and the and misrepresented Deliberately by these Palestinian journalists in order to smear Israel. There was an American girl, as a matter of fact, who was used that way a few years ago, and the mom finds pictures of her on Twitter saying she's been killed, and she was actually alive and well in Minnesota or someplace and had no idea, but they'd gone into Facebook and found her picture at random and started using it in propaganda.

Speaker 1: 19:03

I think the same thing happened. I don't remember his name, I don't remember what the condition he was in he was a veteran and I don't remember if his body was burned real bad or what it was but I'm pretty sure the president the White House used his face and I saw a Video he made addressing this because he had never, ever, talked to anybody from the White House. Whatever they said about him was not true. It's just ridiculous. The the levels that people in power will go through to try to manipulate Everybody on every side to believe whatever they want to push. That's that's what we believe in. That we believe in, that's what we deal with right now. That's what's going on all around us.

Speaker 2: 19:50

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