The Electronic Intifada Podcast 7 July 2020
On episode 20 of The Electronic Intifada Podcast, Nora and Asa are joined by leading Palestinian intellectual Joseph Massad, professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York.
We discuss Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and the current Trump-Netanyahu annexation plan.
Added to previous annexations, Massad argues that the plan could mean about 70 percent of the West Bank is declared as under Israeli “sovereignty” – far higher than the 30 percent usually discussed by the media.
The plan is being presented as a major break with history and the so-called peace process.
But in reality this is just Israel’s latest phase in the ongoing process of violent settler-colonialism, Palestinian expulsion and apartheid.
European governments have said they condemn the plan, and more than 1,000 European parliamentarians have signed a letter calling it “fatal to the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace.”
Massad argues that Zionists who claim to support a two-state solution “would be the equivalent of white South Africans who would call on the South African apartheid government to withdraw from occupied Namibia and grant Namibia independence while maintaining white supremacy in South Africa.”
“Left wing” Israelis and their supporters around the world “want Israel to leave the occupied territories, while maintaining its right to be a Jewish supremacist racist state in its 1948 territories,” Massad explains.
“It would be laughable if white South Africans” made such a proposal and claimed to be on the left.
South Africa’s apartheid regime occupied neighboring Namibia and imposed racial segregation there until the resistance in that country won independence in 1990 after a decades long struggle for self-determination.
Apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994.
Relevant articles
- “EU ramps up rewards for Israel’s crimes” (Ali Abunimah)
- “Resisting the Nakba” (Joseph Massad)
- “The future of the Nakba” (Joseph Massad)
- “Anti-Semitism vs. anti-colonialism” (Joseph Massad)
- “Nakba: The forgotten 19th century origins of the Palestinian catastrophe” (Joseph Massad)
- “Why are Israel’s allies suddenly concerned about its latest annexation?” (Joseph Massad)
- Read more of Massad’s columns in Middle East Eye
- Massad’s most recent book: Islam in Liberalism (University of Chicago Press, 2015)
Image: Palestinians in Gaza City demonstrate against Israel’s annexation plans, 1 July 2020. (Ashraf Amra/APA Images)
Theme music and production assistance by Sharif Zakout
Subscribe to The Electronic Intifada Podcast on Apple Podcasts (search for The Electronic Intifada). Support our podcast by rating us, sharing and leaving a review, and you can also donate to fund our work.
