"One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this."
- Omar El Akkad

A brilliant analysis of academic freedom as the cornerstone of the real education that is essential to and for democracy.

Thank you Omer Bartov...

"...LAW IS JUST, ONLY IF IT IS REASONABLE..."

Thank you Omer Bartov, for helping to inform us about the horrid dehumanization of an entire society. You're a Righteous Jew Among the Nations, one of many (like Ilan Pappé, Ori Goldberg, Gideon Levy, Antony Loewenstein, Avi Shlaim, Amira Hass, Dr. Finkelstein, and Daniel Levy) who give us invaluable insight regarding the depravity of a supremacist ideology running amok.

Every genocide is facilitated by a conspiracy of silence and denial. It is only after the killings have stopped that people ask how it could have happened.

Thank you for this interview and for creating a platform with focus on understanding and shedding light upon how orchestrated dehumanisation of a defined group of people is used to prime a society to accept, and finally commit, a geno$ide!

Let’s be clear: the US is not just totally complicit to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, it’s obviously a US-genocide carried out by Israel

There was no need for anecdotes here, there were real world examples for all of them.

One of the things i noticed in many European countries that have larger Arab Muslims populations are thinking about getting Arab recipes so they can offer more Arab foods that they offer in these peoples home countries.

Our Pope has said we are not to stay silent in these troubled times. I prefer silence however he is correct.

People conflate crimes against humanity with genocide. Crimes against humanity is an equal awful crime. When is ago identity and the other is not, they are legal definition to extend them to be as said, it is to rob them of their ability to have real world legal impact.

The enemy of the [common] people is a strategy, not another human being. That strategy is divide-and-rule. It is practiced by the 1% everywhere. Divide-and-rule always unfolds the same way.
Since the end of World War II, a period often referred to as a golden age of peace, the United States military has been involved in actions that have resulted in the deaths of roughly 20 million people.
According to the American Journal of Public Health, the USA has engaged in 393 interventions in other countries since 1776. Over 200 occurring since 1945 when Washington DC took over as Western global hegemony from London, and 114 in the post-Cold War era (1990s on), by using the POWER of the divide-and-rule technique on the globe in areas within its REACH. Furthermore, of the 248 wars started worldwide since 1952 in 153 countries, the USA initiated 201, operating from one of its more than 800 three-letter-agency spy centres, or military bases globally. The US has been at war with various countries for 234 of its 250 years of existence. Note here that according to the narrative, it is ALWAYS the "other guy to blame" (blame shifting), or as the comedian Norm Macdonald once quipped, What are the chances of that being so?  Throughout this time, the US has played a role in overthrowing at least 36 governments, meddled in no fewer than 86 foreign elections, made attempts to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders, and conducted bombing campaigns in more than 30 countries. Specifically, the US is responsible for the deaths of around 5 million individuals in Chile, Ukraine, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, as well as over 1 million fatalities since 2003 in Iraq. These figures highlight the extensive and often controversial impact of US military interventions across the globe.
All of the above, have been only since WW2, and these events are part of a global strategy of divide-and-rule, with the intention of systemic expansion of the own self-centred systems of gain and exploitation (corporate/military/political/ideological). Many nations require protection from US aggression rather than from Russia or China.

Before that, in its phase of its territorial growth, the USA has a history of genocide against its native peoples, support of imperialism. After WW2 such overt and covert imperialist actions and interventions were hidden behind the ubiquitous MSM anti-communism-narrative. The frequent mass murders perpetrated by the military in regions like Asia, like Korea and Vietnam, pervasive violence in its "backyard" all too numerous to mention, apologized for as a "few misguided bad apples" (sic.) on the "eternal right side of history" nonetheless. On the home front, a lack of universal healthcare, poor education, a flawed democracy influenced by lobbyists and the Electoral College (an old slavery-era institution), absence of freedom from abject state violence, dishonesty in politics defended as "normal", inauthentic Christian ideology acting as global money-funding conduit for wars of expansion, neglected infrastructure, self-centred corporate expansionism, dividend chasing upper-class greed, social fragmentation, are forms the domestic tier of the divide-and-rule setup favouring the giga rich and the top 10-20% at most. These elites, either directly or indirectly, support crimes against humanity all over the globe, its institutions disrespect international laws regularly, and ignore democratically decided upon global consensus as "exceptionalism as a right." The minimal credibility and respect which the USA internationally receives in the meantime (international use of divide-and-rule on the global tier), is simply ignored via the age-old imperialist axiom of "might makes right." The West’s economic system mainly benefits a small elite and relies on divide-and-rule tactics, using deception and biased media narratives to undermine other countries’ growth, and to destroy the potential to create generational wealth for billions of people in the "global South", with "forever wars" in the regions the USA/collective West looks down onto as "jungles" (Borrel/2022).

This is a gen0slide.  It’s a lot bigger than McArthyism.  The failure of Western institutions to speak out is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  It’s already over.

It's not  Called A tension
It's called an on going Genocide and Atrosoties
It's been going on for the past
Eighty years or so

and yet... the serious media reports (things like oxford union debates) show us tons of academics who can't stop talking about gaza.

We do have to create a "privileged position" on our own even though we lose everything. We should speak out when there is a genocide or even just injustice. Apparently Holocaust is something different as the genocide in Gaza in a sense that only Holocaust is worth to remember a speak out until today. The current genocide in Gaza? Well, let's wait two years to be able to recognise it as such. Mr. Finkelstein spoke out long ago as did Mr. Pappe. What was the prise they payed? So do we speak about the price we pay or about humanity? I do not need to be an expert to speak out when I what I see in Gaza. It's obvious, it was obvious since 1948 especially for people who grew up in so called Israel.

A MOST BIZARRE TANDEM. The Palestinian People are being destroyed ; and , at the same time , the Ideals of Israel are being self-destroyed . This Inverted Dialectical Process is a swirling DEATH DANCE TO NOWHERE , plunging deep into the DARK HOLE AND BOWELS OF PURE NOTHIN 10:23 GNESS . [ Lost.Lost.Lost. Something Truly Lost .] . HORRENDOUS .

Our knees have been buckled knocked down by all sides by Trump placing threats to other countries, to deploying monster enforcement on the ground, to changing the law to prosecute anyone using the "anti" this and that justification for the entitlement of the whole of Palestine and the ultimate 2 complicit powers enabling and expediting The Gaza Master Plan and the ethnic cleansing, via blocking aid only allowing some carbs so that they are so fatally deficient in nutrients, is deliberate genocide.
They are surrounded by mountains of waste to further being exposed to diseases.
No medical aid.
All the above constitutes genocide.
We should be able to stop the genocide by speaking out and those who are responsible should be prosecuted.
When and who, will?

Thank you for answering that one professors charge that Zionism in and of itself has always been genocidal.  You answered that question ( which seemed more as an accusation than a question) with patience and logic and historical accuracy.  It is currently Israel's right wing government which is supporting such far fetched beliefs from so-called academics which seem to know a lot about the last 25 or so years, without having a nuanced and balanced view of what went before.