The Gaza Genocide is Changing America | Norman Finkelstein

## Introduction The conversation traces a tectonic shift in how the Gaza catastrophe is reshaping American politics, culture, and identity. Far from an isolated humanitarian crisis, the assault on Gaza has become a catalyst for reassessment across the political spectrum: revulsion among parts of the American left, a reworking of right-wing allegiances and rhetoric, and an existential debate within Jewish communities about Zionism and Judaism. The exchange centers on the claim that Israeli policy after October 7 was not merely punitive but intended to "solve" the Gaza question — a program whose methods and aims, according to the discussion, amount to ethnic cleansing and, in practice, genocidal tactics. This framing forces a reckoning: for foreign-policy elites, for media institutions, and for ordinary citizens whose loyalties and identities are being tested by images and statistics they cannot unsee. ## Gaza after two years of genozide The conversation begins with a stark diagnosis: what unfolded after October 7 was not an episodic use of force but a change in objective. The operation, as described, moved from periodic "mowing of the lawn" to a program of extirpation — an intent to remove or annihilate the population of Gaza. Practically, that intent showed up in a deliberate blockade of food, fuel, water and electricity, and in tactics that human rights organizations characterize as using starvation as a method of war. The speaker frames these measures within the legal architecture of the Genocide Convention: when policies are aimed at destroying, in whole or in part, a protected group, the language of genocide is not rhetorical excess but legal categorization. At the same time, the conversation is careful to note external constraints. No state acts in a vacuum; international politics, regional actors, and the power of the United States condition what a government can do. The most lethal phases were followed by pressures — diplomatic, economic, logistical — that transformed the campaign into what one interlocutor calls a "slow-motion genocide." Importantly, the conclusion is sober rather than sensational: objectives may remain unchanged even when tactics adjust to external limits, meaning the long-term implications for the region and for international law remain dire. ## Tucker Carlson and the right One of the more surprising political currents mapped in the discussion is the right-wing pivot on Israel, most visibly embodied by figures like Tucker Carlson. The phenomenon is double-edged. On factual claims about U.S. policy and Israeli actions, much of the right's critique has been blunt and sometimes accurate; media figures have amplified information that previously remained marginal in mainstream American discourse. Yet the framing matters. Where the left has historically located Palestine in anti-imperialist and anti-colonial terminology — a national liberation struggle against settler-colonial practices — the right often couches its criticism in conspiratorial terms: an image of Jewish power manipulating American institutions and dragging the United States into wars for foreign advantage. The difference is consequential. A left critique can be incorporated into broader solidarities with oppressed peoples and framed as a struggle for universal rights. A right-wing critique that traffics in dual-loyalty tropes or conspiracism risks reviving antisemitic narratives even as it opposes specific state policies. The exchange highlights an ambivalence: acknowledgement that the right has shifted public discourse and brought uncomfortable truths to wide audiences, coupled with a warning that the current rightward critique repurposes age-old prejudices and could produce outcomes that are hostile to Jews themselves. ## Zionism Judaism and Jewish identity The conversation moves to the fault line between Zionism and Judaism. Here the speaker distinguishes historical Zionism — a political response to perceived absence of safety or future for Jews in non-Jewish societies — from the religious or cultural life of Judaism. Zionism, in this rendering, was a pragmatic and sometimes tragic conclusion: some Jews believed assimilation might erase Jewish distinctiveness, while others feared extermination. The modern Israeli project emerged from that logic. But the current crisis has exposed another layer: the corrosive effect of political Zionism on Jewish identity and communal norms. The discussion posits that many American Jews who formerly saw Israel as an unalloyed benefit are now confronting evidence that challenges that calculus. For some, Israel's actions have eroded the moral standing that sustained transnational Jewish solidarity; for others, a reflexive Jewish exceptionalism persists. The point is not to collapse Judaism into a single political orientation, but to note that the association between Jewish identity and unwavering support for Israeli state policy is fraying — and that fraying has cultural and political consequences. ## Jewish elites and the New York Times Media institutions and elite gatekeepers appear as both barometers and producers of the changing conversation. The exchange singles out the role of prominent Jewish elites and influential media outlets in shaping American discourse about Israel. The combination of financial power, institutional control, and cultural prestige has long insulated certain narratives from critique. Yet the Gaza catastrophe is forcing cracks to appear in those defenses. Where once coverage and editorial lines conformed to an uncritical alignment with Israeli policy, public exposure to civilian suffering and the scale of destruction has precipitated editorial soul-searching, reader backlashes, and even resignations. This erosion of unchallenged elite narratives has political consequences beyond newsroom ethics. It changes which voices get amplified, which arguments become acceptable in polite society, and how political leaders understand the electoral risks of unconditional support for current Israeli policy. The speaker emphasizes that the decline in elite consensus is not complete — powerful institutions still shape debate — but it is unmistakable: legitimacy is being contested, and that contestation alters the politics of advocacy, philanthropy, and diplomacy. ## Conspiracies and the Kennedy debate Conspiracy narratives, the exchange warns, lurk at the intersection of critique and bigotry. The conversation traces how some strands of right-wing rhetoric recycle classical antisemitic tropes — blaming Jews or Israel for everything from wars to presidential assassinations — while presenting themselves as courageous truth-tellers. This pattern illustrates a slippery rhetorical slope: a critique that begins with valid factual claims about policy quickly veers into collective blame when framed as the work of a cohesive, malign group. The interlocutor’s example of the Kennedy assassination debate shows how contemporary critics can simultaneously surface genuine geopolitical questions and advance fantastical, dangerous explanations. The lesson drawn is that precision matters: the distinction between criticizing a state's policies and endorsing conspiracist accounts that attribute vast malevolence to an entire people is not merely rhetorical hair-splitting but a moral and political imperative. In a polarized media ecosystem, the temptation to conflate elite influence with ethnic collective culpability must be resisted if the goal is principled accountability rather than scapegoating. ## UN legitimacy and Iran The conversation turns outward to international institutions and regional dynamics. One theme is the erosion of the United Nations' perceived legitimacy as a neutral arbiter. When powerful states selectively apply norms, the credibility of global institutions diminishes. The Gaza case, according to the discussion, has exposed the UN's limited capacity to check state violence when major powers block acti

The Gaza Genocide is Changing America | Norman Finkelstein The wind is shifting. And the rulers of the Empire don't like it at all. First and foremost the lobbyists who are so accustomed to calling the shots in "their" democracy. Pascal and Felix Marquardt from @TheBlackElephantExperience speak with scholar Norman Finkelstein about Gaza after two years of genocide, Israeli goals, genocide claims, Tucker Carlson and the right, Zionism and Jewish identity, the New York Times, the fading use of Holocaust framing, the UN’s loss of legitimacy, and Finkelstein’ s upcoming book Gaza’s Gravediggers, including his critique of the October 7 rape narrative. Links: Felix's Channel: https://youtube.com/@TheBlackElephantExperience Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com (Opt in for Academic Section from your profile settings: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/s/academic) Merch: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:27 Gaza after two years of genozide 00:09:08 Tucker Carlson and the right 00:20:15 Zionism Judaism and Jewish identity 00:32:13 Jewish elites and the New York Times 00:47:18 Conspiracies and the Kennedy debate 00:53:53 UN legitimacy and Iran 01:01:15 Gaza's Gravediggers and October 7 claims #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to a collaboration today between Neutrality Studies and the Black Elephant Experience YouTube channel. My name is Pascal Lottaz, and I'm joined today by my co- host, Felix Marquardt. We are delighted to have with us today one of the United States' most important and outspoken activist scholars, Dr. Norman Finkelstein. Norman, welcome. #Norman Finkelstein Thank you for having me. Welcome, Pascal. #Pascal Thank you very much, both, for doing this. Felix, this was your idea, and it's a brilliant idea. Norman, you are one of the United States' top experts on what is actually going on in Israel, in Palestine, and the genocide in Gaza. Can we maybe start with your reading of where we stand after two years of genocide? #Norman Finkelstein -- 1 of 20 -- Where we stand? I think that the basic fact is Israel set a certain objective on October 8th. And the objective was to once and for all solve the Gaza question. What solving the Gaza question meant in practice, in my opinion, was the following. Israel had carried on periodically these high-tech killing sprees in Gaza, the best-known manifestations of which were Operation Cast Lead in 2008–09 and Operation Protective Edge in July–August 2014. Those were the two operations that fell above the radar, but there were a good ten or so of these murderous high-tech killing sprees. And the goal was, as Israel put it, to mow the lawn in Gaza. That's the metaphor they use, the slightly pathological metaphor, when you bear in mind that the lawnmower was cutting the blades of a population, half of whom were children. Yeah. But after October 7th, Israel decided it was no longer going to mow the lawn in Gaza. It was going to extirpate, which is the fancy word for pull out by the roots. It was going to extirpate every blade of grass in Gaza. And that, in legal terminology, meant it was going to carry out an ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Now, the ethnic cleansing, however, in order to execute it in the first few weeks, Israel hoped to expel the entire population to the northern Sinai. That didn't work. There was a veto by the Arab states. And then Israel embarked on a genocide, but a genocide not as the objective. Genocide was the means, the modus operandi for carrying out the, if we can use the term, the final solution in Gaza. The modus operandi was a genocide. So I don't think there's any serious dispute anymore that Israel's tactics were genocidal in nature. Everything from the order to bar any food, fuel, water, electricity from entering Gaza, to, as the human rights organizations put it, using starvation as a method of war, to denying Gaza access to any water — all of the tactics, when you aggregate them, come down to a genocidal intent. The intent was to destroy a part or the whole of the Gaza population. And that, to me, is the definition in the Genocide Convention. It applies easily to the situation in Gaza. So that was its goal. And the goal obviously had to accommodate external constraints — that in the real world, no state can carry on with complete and total immunity. Even if you take the current situation in Iran, Mr. Trump made several clearly genocidal statements — that he was going to return Iran to the Stone Age, that he was going to destroy Iranian civilization. But at the last minute, he recognized he couldn't do it. There are constraints imposed by the international system. Now, we can agree that they are honored mostly in the breach. We can agree that the constraints are relatively feeble. We can agree that the constraints are more rhetorical than practical. But at the end of the day, the constraints exist. And the same thing in the case of Gaza. It went through periods of intense death and destruction, basically the first six months. And then various constraints kicked in until Trump finally, for reasons having nothing to do with humanity — a concept totally alien to him and his administration, but also alien to almost every president's administration — imposed a kind of ceasefire on Gaza. As Amnesty International stated, the genocide continues, but now it's a slow-motion genocide because of constraints imposed from the outside, constraints imposed on Israel. I don't think the -- 2 of 20 -- objectives have changed at all. Netanyahu is still determined to solve the Gaza question, within the limits placed by the Trump administration on him. As I said, there are limits. I'm not going to deny that. The most barbaric phase of the Gaza genocide, to date, has passed — the most barbaric phase. The goal hasn't changed, but it's a slow motion one, where Netanyahu was hoping to trigger a stampede out of Gaza. He's now resigned to, he has to accept a trickle going out of Gaza. But two things I think are clear. I said them at the time. This so-called Board of Peace and International Stabilization Force, the Trump plan — the Trump plan, which he almost certainly never read — the claim that there's going to be an increase in humanitarian aid, that there's going to be reconstruction, that's all complete nonsense. I said it at the time, and I think what I said has been borne out. There will be no reconstruction. There will be no restoration of necessary humanitarian aid. There will be none of that until the Gaza question is solved. That is, it's emptied out. #Pascal Hey, very brief intermission because I was recently banned from YouTube. And although I'm back, this can happen anytime again. So please consider subscribing not only here, but to my mailing list on Substack. That's pascallottaz.substack.com. The link's going to be in the description below. And now, back to the video. #Felix Marquardt Maybe I'll jump in with a question, Pascal. I want to start by mentioning that in the early 2000s, I read one of the books that really impacted me the most on the question of Palestine, which was *The Holocaust Industry* that you wrote, I think, right after 9/11. Am I right on the timing, or not at all? A few years later. #Norman Finkelstein I wrote *The Holocaust Industry*. I think it came out in June 2000. #Felix Marquardt Okay, so right before. I spent the next many years basically selling my soul as a sort of underling of the Epstein class. So when the Epstein files came out and I saw that there was only—I can't think of one figure apart from you that came out sort of on top of those files—and I was really thrilled to reconnect with you. But I wanted to ask you about, because of what you said in recent interviews, the way Tucker Carlson and the right have been talking about, have been sort of producing a reaction on Israel that is quite novel, and you were sort of pushing back on that in these interviews. -- 3 of 20 -- I mean, seen from Europe, and I think from many other places, we're all dreaming of having a movement on the right that goes towards anti-Zionism of any sort. Um, and so I was a bit sort of curious about—can you see the difference between what's happening in the U.S. on this front and what's happening everywhere else? Because the conversations in Europe, as you know, probably— there was a law that was almost passed a couple of weeks ago in France that would have criminalized criticism of Israel and would have indeed, with up to five years in prison. So it's a very different conversation. And yeah, aren't you welcoming this? #Norman Finkelstein Well, I've said on many occasions that many things Tucker Carlson has said, many things that he said over the past year, are correct. They're accurate. I never quarrel with facts. And there's no doubt in my mind that he was not only correct, but he played a crucial role in bringing his understanding of the situation—a significant part of which is correct—before a large audience. I know that, and I don't quarrel with that. The problem is that I don't like these terminologies, but I'll use it. The way he frames the issue is never anything that had anything to do historically with the left. And I am a person solidly and firmly of the left. He frames the whole issue as: here is this innocent, pure United States that has been tricked, duped, seduced, blackmailed—and that's an important aspect of their claim—that's been blackmailed by these Jews in Israel. That's how he frames the question. For the left, Palestine is or was a national liberation struggle. It's a story about oppressed people. It's about imperialism. It's about colonialism. It's about all these sorts of things. I don't particularly like the term "settler colonialism" because I don't think it's particularly productive intellectually. However, that's the broad framework of the left, and that's how Palestine became an issue of the left: a national liberation struggle, a struggle against imperialism, one of the last struggles against European colonialism akin to the South Africa question. That's how the left frames it. I think the right frames it as basically Jews, wire-pullers, international wire-pullers, who now control and actually have for a long time, according to these people. They were responsible—they meaning the Jews in Israel—were responsible for the Kennedy assassination. So far, they haven't blamed Lincoln's assassination on Israel. I could see that coming down the pike. They blamed the 2003 war in Iraq on the Jews in Israel. And the bottom line is that the Jewish question historically, in the hands of the right, has never had a particularly happy outcome. I'm not saying there haven't been problems on the left, and people say, what about Stalin, and what about the doctor's plot, and this and that and the other. Yes, that is true, but historically, Jews as a leftist question—they fared very well. The Jews, you know, you take World War II, there was a very strong identity between the international left and the suffering, the martyrdom of the Jewish people. You take a figure like Paul Robeson or W.E.B. Du Bois—they were of the left, and they were very close to the Jews. So there was always a sense of -- 4 of 20 -- commonality of struggle between oppressed peoples, which included, at that point in time—referring to World War II and also the anti-fascist movements before World War II—between Jews and the left. But the right, no, Jews and the right—Jews have not fared well on the right. I think everybody can agree on that. #Felix Marquardt No, no. Fair enough, Norm. Fair enough. But what I would say is, first of all, I would argue that Tucker is very careful to make a distinction. He doesn't say "the Jews." He really doesn't. #Norman Finkelstein I'm perfectly aware of Tucker Carlson. I don't know if you're familiar with the TV program Columbo. You know Columbo? Yeah, of course. And Tucker Carl