FINKELSTEIN: Israel's a 'Satanic State'

Middle East scholar cites the Great March of Return and 2014 Operation Protective Edge

Norman Finkelstein, the Middle East scholar, said in an interview this week that he stands by his comment that Israel is a “Satanic state” based on the culmination of his work reading human rights reports for the last four decades.

Finkelstein gave an extensive interview on “Robinson’s Podcast” and used the 2018-2019 Great March of Return in Gaza and Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge as two instances to bolster his claim.

He noted how the Great March of Return was vastly non-violent. Al Jazeera noted that the protesters demand the “right to return to their ancestors’ homes, which they were expelled from in 1948 when Zionist militias forcefully removed 750,000 Palestinians from their villages to clear the way for Israel’s creation.”

Finkelstein said he thought at the time that non-violent civil resistance would be effective, but he admitted he was wrong. The Israelis responded with deadly force documented in a lengthy UN report that found the protest was overwhelmingly non-violent.

“What did Israel do? Read off the report. Targeted children, that’s a fact. Targeted medics, that’s a fact. Targeted journalists, that’s a fact, and it targeted disabled people.”

Israel said its troops only responded when threatened.

The UN report identified some of the casualties during the protests.

Bader Sabagh (19) Bader, from Jabaliya, was killed by Israeli forces when they shot him in the head as he stood smoking a cigarette 300 m from the separation fence

Mohammad Ayoub (14) On 20 April, Israeli forces shot Mohammad, from Jabaliya refugee camp, in the head while approximately 200 m from the separation fence. He died the same day.

Izzedine Samak (13) On 14 May, Israeli forces shot Izzedine, from the Bureij refugee camp, in the abdomen after he and two friends slung stones at Israeli soldiers. They shot him as he sat resting with his back to the fence 150 m from the separation fence. He died later that day.

Israeli security forces wounded demonstrators as far as a kilometre away from the separation fence. In one case, they shot a 21-year-old student in both legs minutes after he arrived at the Bureij demonstration site.

No Israeli civilian deaths or injuries were reported during or resulting from the demonstrations. According to Israeli sources, four Israeli soldiers were injured during the demonstrations.

With the exception of one incident in North Gaza on 14 May that may have amounted to “direct participation in hostilities” and one incident in Central Gaza on 12 October that may have constituted an “imminent threat to life or serious injury” to the Israeli security forces, the commission found reasonable grounds to believe that, in all other cases, the use of live ammunition by Israeli security forces against demonstrators was unlawful.

“It wasn’t the fog of war,” Finkelstein said, noting how far the Palestinian victims were from the fence when shot. “Israel’s top snipers were lined up along the border and they were picking off, like fish in a barrel, children, medics, journalists, and disabled people.”

@geraldcelenteThou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property #FYP #Israel #Gaza #Iran

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

He continued, “Targeting the skulls of kids…targeting amputees…it goes into a region, which A) I can’t comprehend and B) I don’t want to comprehend. I just don’t want to enter into that diseased, pathological, mental universe.

Finkelstein said he has been confronted about identifying Israel as a Satanic state and referred to human rights reports and a report from Breaking the Silence on the IDF’s 2014 operation called Protective Edge. (Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli military.)

Finkelstein noted how IDF troops are met at home with questions about how many Arabs they’ve killed.

“You leave [the Gaza Strip] and the most obvious question is, ‘did you kill anybody?’” the former soldier said. “What can you do – even if you’ll meet the most left-wing girl in the world, eventually she’ll start thinking, “Did you ever kill somebody, or not?” And what can you do about it, most people in our society consider that to be a badge of honor. So everybody wants to come out of there with that feeling of satisfaction. That’s what shocked me the most. We have guys in our company walking around with X’s marked on their straps, it’s a sort of culture. Maybe it sounds to you like I’m exaggerating, but… I’d like for this whole thing of X marks – even if it’s somebody who just saved an entire Israeli family – to be forbidden. Because when it comes down to it, when we don’t need to use fire, then people – even if they are very good people – something in their mind just jerks.”

Finkelstein said that’s the mentality in Israeli society.

“I think it’s worse, actually” he said. He continued, “I think Israelis would show more remorse at shooting a dog in the skull than shooting a child.”

He said he told a colleague that he “can’t hold back…that’s a Satanic state.”