Pulitzer Winner Nathan Thrall on Israel’s “System of Domination” and Biden Pausing Bomb Shipment DemocracyNow! May 10 https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/9/nathan_thrall_west_bank_violence
*Jerusalem-based journalist and author Nathan Thrall has been awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy. It tells the story of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank through one Palestinian father’s quest to seek answers and accountability after his 5-year-old son is involved in a deadly accident. We speak to Thrall about President Biden saying for the first time that he would not supply certain weapons to Israel to be used in an all-out invasion of Rafah. “It is too little, too late,” Thrall says. “It is a step in the right direction, but the administration has said that it has not made a final determination even about these paused weapons.” Thrall also discusses Israel’s ceasefire talks with Hamas, anti-Netanyahu protests led by families of Israeli hostages, Israel’s intensified crackdown in the West Bank, how criticism of Israel is conflated with antisemitism, and why debates over the future of a Palestinian state are an “enormous distraction from the reality on the ground” — Israel’s “system of domination that is extremely bureaucratic and elaborate, [that] has lasted for over half a century and [is] not going anywhere.”* . . . NERMEEN SHAIKH: Nathan, I was asking you about why you think the discussions around a two-state or one-state solution are the wrong discussions to be happening. NATHAN THRALL: You know, these conversations are premised on the notion that Israel eventually has to choose: It has to either give the millions of Palestinians living under its control without basic civil rights — it has to give them either citizenship, with equality, or statehood. And so many people in the diplomatic community would like to have, as they have been having for decades, debates about what a two-state outcome should look like, whether there should be two states or one state or confederation or what have you. And all of that is an enormous distraction from the reality on the ground, because the fact of the matter is, Israel does not have to choose between two states and one state. It doesn’t have to choose between giving Palestinians sovereignty or citizenship. It has a third option, which is to continue on the path that it’s going down. The path that it’s going down is slow, *de facto* annexation of the West Bank, an absorption of the West Bank settlements in Area C, a takeover of Palestinian land, and a constriction of Palestinians into small walled-off or fenced-off communities, like the town of Anata, where my book takes place, or like Gaza. And so, rather than focusing on the reality, which is a movement in the opposite direction of either two states or equality in one state, but rather a deepening of this system of control that leading human rights organizations, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and the U.N. Human Rights Council and Al-Haq and B’Tselem, have all described as a system of apartheid — rather than addressing that system, Israel would very much like for everybody to debate what would be the ideal outcome, what is the future utopia that we would all like, and let’s only address this structural inequality, this systematic domination, once we’ve all agreed that we’ve landed on the right, perfect outcome. . . . AMY GOODMAN: ... And you’re in Berlin right now, in Germany. Germany has been a remarkable scene, where you have German police arresting Jewish protesters, saying that they cannot criticize Israel. What has happened with your events, from Germany to the United States, as you raise questions about Israel’s war on Gaza? NATHAN THRALL: In Germany, I had an event that was to take place on Tuesday in Frankfurt that was canceled at the very last minute by the Union International Club in Frankfurt. And none of the people who canceled the event had read the book or knew a thing about it. And none of them had or provided any substantive reason for the cancellation. And the same thing was happening to me in the United States. And the reason in Germany is everybody is afraid of being accused of antisemitism. And what they’re really being accused of is not antisemitism, but criticism of Israel that is described as antisemitism. And Israel has spent years — Israel and its allies have spent years, in the United States and in Germany, putting forward a definition of antisemitism that includes criticism of Israel, entirely legitimate criticism of Israel, and trying to get around our basic democratic commitment to free speech by describing speech that is entirely legitimate as antisemitic. And so, that’s what’s happened here. And who, of course, is the close ally of Israel, the most pro-Israel force here in Germany? It’s the far-right party. As we see elsewhere, ethnonationalists love Israel as a model for the kind of place they want to become: an ethnonational state that will dominate over people who are not like them. . . . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#30302): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/30302 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/106053420/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
