By Kevin Barrett and Press TV
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Watch the video – click here.
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Over 160 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed and about 1,200 others were injured in the Israeli attacks on Gaza that were carried out during the eight-day period of November 14-21.
In an interview with Press TV, Kevin Barrett, author and Islamic Studies expert from Madison, shares his thoughts regarding the issue.
The video also offers the opinion of two additional guests: Harry Fear, filmmaker and activist in Gaza, and Kenneth Katzman who is a Middle East analyst in Washington. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Kevin Barrett, we need to expand on this more when you cannot sweep this under the rug regarding what has happened to these people in Gaza, these Palestinians who were killed, some women, some children, many below the age of 5.
This is what the Israeli military spokesman has said, Targets are exact; Every Israeli missile has an address. But if you recall, there was a house in which 11 civilians of the same family were killed; among the 11 dead were 4 small children and 5 women, including an 80-year-old and when asked about the presence of a Palestinian fighter, it could not be verified. What can be done in terms of what has occurred regarding these deaths and these injuries on Israel?
Barrett: Of course what needs to be done is for the international community to stand up for the United Nations resolutions calling for the right of return of all Palestinian ethnic cleansing victims, or we might even say genocide victims, to their homes and properties in occupied Palestine – and the payment of full restitution for their many, many years of suffering. That is what needs to happen and that is what eventually will happen.
But as we stand today, I agree with the first guest, Kenneth Katzman in Washington, that this is a victory for Gaza and for the Palestinian people. And I agree with our other guest as well that obviously Israel was targeting civilians intentionally, brutally and murdering, slaughtering, wounding innocent men, women and many, many children. And the question becomes how do we make sense of all this? Well, the guest in Washington, Kenneth, is absolutely wrong in claiming that this was intended by Hamas, that somehow Hamas tricked the Israelis into slaughtering these hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
In fact, the problem is that Netanyahu, the current leader of Israel, is a psychotic. This man is absolutely bent on starting a war with Iran, a large-scale Middle East war. I believe that he and his people want to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under the cover of the fog of war and they were desperate to get that full-scale Middle East war started. They did everything they could to get Mitt Romney elected president of the United States.
Mitt Romney is a tool of — let’s call it — the drug-smuggling Zionist criminal cartel that is associated with Netanyahu. He is also associated with blowing up the twin towers on 9/11 but let’s not go there now.
In any case, Netanyahu needs that big Middle East war not only to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine but also to cover his tracks and tracks of the other neo-conservative Zionists on 9/11 and to continue the larger Israeli strategy that they have been pursuing for the entire 50 plus years of their existence of living by the sword before they eventually die by the sword.
So this irrational strike against Gaza was purely and simply the decision of Netanyahu and his people. He was taking out his frustrations on the people of Gaza for his inability to attack Iran thanks to Obama’s victory.
And it was, as both guests agree, completely irrational from a strategic perspective. But Netanyahu and his people are not rational actors. They are, as I said, psychotics. They are psychopaths. They are lashing out and slaughtering people for no particular strategic reason, and they need to be removed from power as soon as possible.
Press TV: Let’s expand on some of the statements that were made at that press conference. First of all, when we look at what the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said but overall the US posturing. First of all, she said the ceasefire deal between Israel and the Palestinians had come at a crucial time for countries of the Middle East. Why would she say that? I mean are we looking ultimately at the fact that they are placing all that weight on Egypt as being the country that they can work to keep as an ally in terms of somewhat maintaining the status quo when Mubarak was there?
Barrett: Yes, I think that here once again we see another clear instance where the US interest and Israeli interest, as they are being defined by the current psychotic, yes psychotic, Israeli government, are absolutely at loggerheads. They are completely opposed.
The US has an interest in stability in the Middle East so that it can do business with the countries that are producing energy. That is the US interest and the only US interest in the Middle East.
The Israeli Zionist Likudnik neocon regime that has seized power in Tel Aviv as well has quite a bit of power here in the occupied USA has a very, very different interest. Their interest is in destabilizing the Middle East and making it more amenable to Zionist expansion and domination. This is the country that vastly exceeded the borders that were not awarded to it by the United Nations in 1948.
That was simply an advisory vote by the General Assembly that has no force of law. This is not a legal country. The Zionist entity in occupied Palestine is not a legal country, and the only way it can continue to thrive in the minds of its crazy leaders is to keep butchering Palestinians, continuing the genocide and continuing to steal more and more land. That is why it won’t even define its borders.
Israel is not an official US ally. You can check that fact anywhere you want and the reason it is not an official US ally is that Israel refuses to declare its borders, because it wants to keep stealing more and more land and murdering more and more people until it ends up with greater Israel, everything between the Nile and the Euphrates.
That is the “Israeli interest” of the lunatics in Tel Aviv. And you (Kenneth) are telling me that the Iron Dome is an Israeli defense system? Give me a break! The phrase Iron Dome came from the Iron Wall of Jabotinsky, the godfather of Zionist genocide, the man who wanted to exterminate all of the Palestinian people, the so-called Iron Wall. What that is really about is this apartheid wall that is stealing even more Palestinian land, crowding the Palestinians onto what amounts of less than 15 percent of their land.
It is once again an aggressive war that is designed to dismember Palestine and complete the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the people of Palestine. And the US interest does not support this and that is why I am hoping that President Obama who has a blood feud going with Netanyahu, who hates Netanyahu’s guts, considers him a liar, as he said on television, when he pretended that he did not know his microphone was on, will force Israel to finally make peace with its neighbors.
Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.
He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard driving weekly radio show funded by listener donations at Patreon.com and FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN); an audio-video show produced by Tony Hall, Allan Reese, and Kevin himself. FFWN is funded through FundRazr.
He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.
Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.
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