Western nations' moves still fall short of real pressure on Israel, but there are more options
By Americas editor John Lyons

While the Israeli government resents countries such as Australia recognising a Palestinian state, it is more of an irritant than a substantial setback. But there is one thing Israel dreads the prospect of: economic sanctions.

From my six years living in Jerusalem and talking to hundreds of Israelis — senior politicians, army officers and ordinary Israelis — sanctions are seen there as the main game to be prevented.

Israel and its lobby groups in countries like Australia spend many millions of dollars every year with two objectives in mind: to minimise criticism of Israel from people in power and to convince politicians, editors and journalists around the world that any sanctions against Israel would be wrong.

The main Israeli lobby group in Australia — the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) — even protested in June when the Albanese government sanctioned two of Israel's most influential far-right ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

AIJAC said the sanctions against "two democratically elected but controversial ministers" represented "a major escalation of the ongoing regrettable trend by the current ALP government of abandoning our long-standing bipartisan tradition of good relations with the Jewish state."

What the AIJAC statement did not mention was that, in fact, it is Israel — rather than the ALP — which has dramatically changed. Governments of former prime ministers Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin would have tried to rein in ministers who called for the "annihilation of Gaza", as minister of heritage Amichai Eliyahu did recently.

And to give a sense of where AIJAC's executive director Colin Rubenstein stands politically, during an earlier Gaza war in 2014, he stood on the steps of the Victorian parliament and said: "Israel does more than any other country to avoid killing civilians."

The effect of his words was to give the Israeli army a higher ranking in terms of protecting civilians than that of the Australian army.

In that speech, Rubenstein went on to list the measures he said the Israeli military used to avoid civilian casualties, including "phone calls, texts, leaflets and the knock on the roof to warn civilians, even if that means it loses some military advantage."

Public comments by both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have long been blatantly racist and anti-Palestinian, with the US State Department under Joe Biden — normally loathe to criticise Israel — describing them as "inflammatory" and "all racist rhetoric."

Both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have questioned whether Palestinians are in fact even real.

Smotrich has made clear that he does not believe Palestinians have any place in Israel — a place where 20 per cent of the population is of Palestinian heritage.

As he told Arab members of the parliament in 2021: "You're here by mistake, it's a mistake that [founding Israeli prime minister David] Ben-Gurion didn't finish the job and didn't throw you out in 1948."

It is a sign of how far right the Israeli government is today that a man who made clear he thinks Palestinians should have been ethnically cleansed upon the formation of Israel is now one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's key advisers.

And it is a sign of how far right AIJAC is that it condemns the sanctioning of "two democratically-elected but controversial ministers."

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are driving much of the direction of Israel today — they do not want an end to the war in Gaza, and have argued against humanitarian aid.

Several Israeli ministers no longer try to hide their desire to "cleanse" Gaza of Palestinians. Eliyah declared recently: "The [Israeli] government is in a race against time to annihilate Gaza. We are in the process of eliminating its inhabitants. Gaza will be entirely Jewish."

In most normal democracies, a minister who spoke about "annihilating" a place with 2.1 million inhabitants would not keep their job. Not today's Israel.

The Albanese government's decision to recognise Palestine and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in line with the policy set out by John Howard in 2006 when he was prime minister.

Howard said at the time: "Australians want the fighting to stop, and Australia also wants everybody to address the root cause of the problem, and the root cause of the problem is still, in the whole of the Middle East … the settlement of the Palestinian issue."

He was correct in 2006 and that analysis remains correct today. As bruised and damaged as the two-state model is, it still appears to be the only tenable option. The choice is either a two-state solution or a forever war.

The Albanese government has returned Australia to a long-accepted bipartisan policy — supported by Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.

Israel's conduct in this Gaza war appears to reflect a view that it can act with impunity.

Few other countries — if any — are able to kill five media workers one the grounds they claim one of the journalists was a member of Hamas.

At the weekend, Israel targeted Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, claiming that he had headed a Hamas militant cell.

Al Jazeera, press freedom groups and the journalists who worked with Al-Sharif categorically reject the claim, but even if it were true, why should the driver, two camera operators and a fellow journalist who walked into the tent with Al-Sharif be blown apart because of an Israeli army?

The Committee to Protect Journalists says 186 journalists in Gaza have been killed since October 7, 2023.

The fact that it is only now — 22 months into the war — that governments such as Australia are moving against Israel is itself noteworthy.

On UNICEF's figures, Israel killed more than 17,000 children and injured 33,000 others in the first 21 months of the war. Or, in the words of UNICEF's executive director Catherine Russell, Israel is killing the equivalent of a classroom of children every day.

"Consider that for a moment," Ms Russell said.

"A whole classroom of children killed every day for nearly two years."

While Israel had killed 17,000 children until July, by August it had killed a reported 18,500. The Washington Post took the extraordinary move of publishing the names of every one of the dead children.

Few other countries — if any — could kill the equivalent of a classroom of children every day and continue diplomatic relations with countries such as Australia.

In terms of the decision to recognise a Palestinian state — taken in recent weeks by France, the UK, Canada and now Australia — Israel and its supporters claim that "the timing is not right."

"This rewards Hamas and terrorism" is the standard Israeli line.

One thing I learnt from my years working in Israel is that as far as the government is concerned — and the public who has elected Netanyahu three times — the time is never right.

For those in power in Israel, there always seems to be a reason that a Palestinian state cannot be created.

When I first arrived in Israel, in 2009, Israeli politicians told me that they wanted a Palestinian state but that the time was not right: how could they agree to a Palestinian state when the Palestinians were divided, with Fatah, or the Palestinian Authority, running the West Bank and Hamas running Gaza?

To me this seemed a fair point. To address this concern of Israel's, Palestinian politicians from both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza began "unity talks." If the Israelis wanted to negotiate with a unified Palestinian leadership, then the Palestinians made moves to remove this obstacle to peace.

So in 2014, the Palestinians agreed upon an in-principle "unity government." Having taken Israeli leadership in good faith, I assumed that negotiations for a Palestinian state could begin.

But then Israeli politicians said they could not have talks with a Palestinian government that included Hamas.

Then the Palestinians arranged affairs so that no-one with a Hamas affiliation could be part of a unity government. Then the Israeli politicians said the Palestinians could not be taken at face value on this.

Despite several efforts by Palestinians, no serious peace talks were resumed. At every turn, Israel had a reason they could not.

And then, of course, came October 7. The new refrain was: "How could we sit down and negotiate with such savages?"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-12/palestinian-statehood-benjamin-netanyahu-analysis/105640700

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Backing Netanyahu, Trump Suggests Israel Needs To Ramp Up Military Pressure on Hamas
The president told Axios that it's up to Israel what to do next
by Dave DeCamp

In an interview with Axios on Monday, President Trump provided backing for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to escalate in Gaza, suggesting that Israel needed to ramp up the pressure on Hamas.

The report said that Trump stopped short of directly endorsing the Israeli government’s plan to take over Gaza City but “seemed to agree” with Netanyahu’s “argument that more military pressure on Hamas is required.”

Israel’s plans to escalate its genocidal war have faced widespread international condemnation as the humanitarian situation in Gaza is as bad as ever, and Palestinians continue to starve to death every day. But the Trump administration has not wavered in its support for Israel.

Many people inside Israel, including senior military officials, have raised concerns about the plans to escalate in Gaza due to the threat it will pose to the remaining Israeli captives. Trump told Axios that it was always going to be “very rough to get them” because Hamas “are not going to let the hostages out in the current situation,” although Hamas’s long-standing position is that it’s willing to release the remaining captives in exchange for a permanent ceasefire.

Echoing earlier comments, Trump said it was up to Israel what to do next, signaling he will continue providing military aid no matter what Netanyahu chooses to do. The president said it was also up to Israel whether Hamas can remain in Gaza, but said that in his opinion, “they can’t stay there.”

“I have one thing to say: remember October 7, remember October 7,” Trump told Axios.

Trump’s conversation with Axios came a day after he spoke with Netanyahu by phone to discuss Israel’s planned escalation. “The two discussed Israel’s plans to take control of the remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza to bring an end to the war by securing the release of the hostages and defeating Hamas,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on the call.

According to Israeli media reports, Israel’s plans involve forcibly evacuating Palestinian civilians from Gaza City to the south with the goal of driving them out of Gaza altogether, as Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have made clear that ethnic cleansing is their ultimate goal.

https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/11/backing-netanyahu-trump-suggests-israel-needs-to-ramp-up-military-pressure-on-hamas/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

SEE ALSO: 

was in Auschwitz 6-7 weeks ago,” world-renowned author and physician Dr. Gabor Maté says, “at the very spot where my grandparents landed, before they were sent to the gas chambers, where my mother and I almost ended up in June of 1945. We came very close. And nothing in the world ever resembles the horror of Auschwitz, but the spirit of it, the inhumanity, the cruelty of it, the starving of people, the killing of starving people—that’s going on right now, and the world is watching.” In this urgent installment of our ongoing series “Not in Our Name” on The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Dr. Maté about growing up Jewish in the wake of the Holocaust and being Jewish in the midst of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Guest:

• Dr. Gabor Maté is a Hungarian-born Canadian physician, Holocaust survivor, and a world-renowned expert on addiction and trauma. Dr. Maté has written several bestselling books, including the New York Times bestseller The Myth of Normal, the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction; When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress; and Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. He is also the co-author of Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. His works have been published internationally in more than forty languages.

Additional resources:

• Dr. Gabor Maté, Toronto Star, “Beautiful dream of Israel has become a nightmare”

Credits:

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us once again.

My guest today is Dr. Gabor Maté. He’s a physician that was born in Hungary amidst the Holocaust. Family members were killed, imprisoned, and he was sent to live with others to save his young life. His life is dedicated as a physician, a healer, an author, a speaker, an activist addressing the trauma of life, war, and oppression. He’s the author of numerous books, which we’ll link to, and we’re going to talk a bit about an essay he wrote in 2014: “Beautiful Dream of Israel has Become a Nightmare”, and he’s written a more recent one for Toronto Star, and joins us now this conversation.

And Gabor, welcome back. Good to have you on The Real News.

Gabor Maté:

Hi, Marc. Hi.

Marc Steiner:

So one of the things that I was thinking a lot about with your coming on the program today and the work that you’ve done in the past is something I’ve been wrestling with, which is how the oppressed become the oppressor. And there’s no better example in our world today than Israel, a place you and I both grew up loving as young Zionists, but switched. What is that dynamic that allows us to become one of the most vicious oppressors on the planet?

Gabor Maté:

There’s nothing unusual about that. It happens all the time. People that are severely traumatized often become traumatizers themselves. Men who are abused in childhood often become abusers. Women who are abused often become abusers of their children. So when that trauma is not worked through, not grieved, and not healed, then it’s very common for it to be passed on then to somebody else who’s vulnerable. People then try to deal with their own vulnerability that they’re terrified by by becoming powerful and inflicting pain on somebody else.

Marc Steiner:

And this becomes a collective trauma. I mean, right?

Gabor Maté:

It can happen both individually, it can happen collectively. Now, it’s certainly true that in 1948, some of the Israeli soldiers who massacred Palestinians, they perceived themselves as fighting against just another antisemitic enemy, one such as they just escaped from in Europe. But you know, Marc, there’s only so far that I want to go in ascribing psychological causes only by themselves to a historical phenomenon.

Now, it’s certainly true that we have the sad spectacle not just of what’s happening over there, but around the world, how our fellow Jews are not believing it, denying it, or even justifying it. And yes, the psychological base of that is a traumatized, victimized sense of self. And so that the support for Israel and the denial of Israel’s brutal oppression of the Palestinians come out of deep Jewish pain and kind of a transference of that pain outward. That’s true. But that by itself does not explain what’s happening in the Middle East. You can’t understand what’s happening there without also looking at the larger question of Western colonialism, Western imperialism, and the force of the imperial powers without which Israel would not even exist. And, as The Wall Street Journal quoted an American official saying two or three days ago, that without the United States, Israel is nothing. And so that we’re not just talking about psychological dynamics here. That explains some of the attitudes, but it doesn’t by itself explain the events.

Marc Steiner:

So let’s talk about that for a moment, though. So, we are witnessing, there’s something that came out post Holocaust, Jews denied but then allowed entry into Palestine, took over the country. And, as I think people have described earlier, Jews were made into a beachhead for American imperialism, in many ways, in the Middle East.

Gabor Maté:

It did not begin after the Holocaust, it began in the 19th century. The Zionist movement first arose, it actually began with Christian Zionists. Before there were Jewish Zionists, there were Christians who believe that the Jews need to go back to Palestine to fulfill the prophecies. And that was very powerful in Britain, number one. Number two, the Jewish colonization, the modern Jewish, there have always been Jews living in the Holy Land, in Palestine, always, but they’re living in peace with the local population. They were part of the Middle East, the Mizrahi Jews.

But in terms of Western Jews from Europe coming there, that started in the 19th century, late 19th century. It was called colonial. They called themselves colonists, and [did] what colonists do. And so they bought land from absentee landlords, and then they kicked off the population of those lands. And there were Jews who then said, there were Jewish thinkers who [in the] late 19th century said that if this continues, all we’re going to do is create one small Levantine people tormenting another Levantine people. So this process goes back to the 19th century.

As far as the imperial interference is concerned, it was 1917 that the antisemitic British foreign secretary [Arthur] Balfour, who, in 1905, when Jews were being massacred in Ukraine and Russia, who was against Jewish immigration to save these Jews, the same guy, in 1917, issues the Balfour Declaration. And in 1920, Winston Churchill, that great democrat imperialist, says that the establishment of a Jewish entity in Palestine accords with the best interest of the British Empire. And that’s what allowed the Jews to come in from Europe before the Holocaust. After the war, as the British Empire wanes and the American empire waxes, rises, then that becomes the dominant. But the imperial project was one without which Israel could never have been established.

So what I’m talking about here is not just the question of antisemitism and the horrors of the Holocaust and the reaction to that. It goes back to Eastern European antisemitism, but it also goes back to the interests of the great powers that was served by the Jewish colonial movement. That’s why I’m hesitant just to explain everything in terms of trauma and trauma response. Yeah, that’s there, and it explains a lot about attitudes, but it doesn’t explain the events, not by themselves.

Marc Steiner:

That historical perspective is critical. That takes us to what we face today at this very moment. I interviewed earlier today doctors in Gaza, and what they’re describing. And I think this, in some ways — And maybe you’ll dissuade us or take it even deeper — I think we’re facing a very dangerous, critical moment, probably the most I’ve seen in my lifetime when it comes to Israel-Palestine and what this right-wing Israeli government is doing, what’s happening in Gaza, the absolute slaughter that’s taking place in Gaza now. So I’m curious where you think, in your analytical perspective, where this could be taking us.

Gabor Maté:

Well, you have a situation today where 31 leading Israeli figures, including a former attorney general, a former speaker of the Knesset, are calling for dire sanctions against their own country.

Marc Steiner:

I saw that just before I walked into the studio to talk to you.

Gabor Maté:

To stop the horror.

And then we have Jewish figures in America denying that the starvation is even taking place, and non-Jewish figures. So on the one hand, we have this horrible reality, and then we have even the denial of that reality. So, it’s such a strange situation, and it is the worst thing I’ve seen in my whole life.

I was in Auschwitz six weeks, six, seven weeks ago, at the very spot where my grandparents landed before they were sent to the gas chambers where my mother and I, me as an infant, and my mother and I almost ended up in June of 1945. We came very close. And nothing in the world ever resembles the horror of Auschwitz, but the spirit of it, the inhumanity, the cruelty of it, the starving of people, the killing of starving people, that’s going on right now and the world is watching now.

Where’s this going? Everybody talks about Netanyahu and the right-wing government. It’s not about Netanyahu. Netanyahu didn’t start the settlements. Netanyahu didn’t start the project of expansion. Netanyahu didn’t start the occupation. That was started by the left wing of the Zionist strain in Israel, by the labor movement. And so it’s not about Netanyahu, it’s not about this particular right-wing government. This right-wing government is just a logical extension, the logical outcome of the inevitable progression of the Zionist project.

Once you decide that this country belongs to me and not to the people that live here or have lived here for hundreds of years, once you decide that Marc Steiner and Gabor Maté have the right to go there tomorrow and get land on the West Bank the day after and be citizens and be given rights and the people living there have no rights whatsoever, once you make that decision, Gaza is inevitable.

And Primo Levi, the great Jewish writer, and he writes in his book, If This is a Man, or the American title is Survival in Auschwitz, he said that once you decide that the other is the enemy, then the lager is inevitable, the concentration camp is inevitable. What are they doing in Gaza right now, Gaza has been called, by Israelis, the world’s largest concentration camp.

So where is this going depends very much on what the world, and particularly the United States, is willing to put up with. Because the Zionist logic is driving the Palestinians out of the West Bank, out of Gaza, out of their homes. This happens every day in the West Bank. We barely even talk about it. We keep talking about Gaza, as we should, we don’t talk about it enough, but in the West Bank is going on every day as well. So where’s that going? That’s where it’s going. It’s going to ethnic cleansing and, if necessary, mass killing. And that’s been going on for 80 years now. That’s where it’s going unless somebody stops it.

The only people in a position to stop it are the Americans, and so far they have funded it, cheerleaded, it justified it, protected it, denied it, enabled it. So it all depends on what the US is willing to put up with and what it’s not willing to put up with, and right now the outlook is not good. So I don’t have high hopes for any kind of a just resolution.

Marc Steiner:

It seems to me, clearly the Democrats said nothing, what’s in the White House now will clearly not do anything to stand in the way of what Israel is doing. It makes me think that we are on a really dangerous international precipice for this beyond Israel-Palestine.

Gabor Maté:

What makes you say that?

Marc Steiner:

Because you see across the globe a right-wing surge politically, and this is one of the pinnacles, and one of the ones that’s [inaudible] of life at the moment. And it’s this weird, to me, confluence of this absolute oppression that Israelis are perpetrating on Palestinians that also bubbles up the hidden antisemitism that’s always there underneath just waiting to arise. And as I wrote the other day, this may be the first time in the history of Jews that we have caused it to bubble up.

Gabor Maté:

Well, there have been studies that have shown every time the Israeli defense forces, so-called, go into action, anti-Jewish sentiment rises. And now the Israelis say that’s because Jews are not supposed to defend themselves. No, it isn’t. It’s because when you massacre people and you torture them and you jail them, and when you starve them, and when you oppress them, when you demolish their homes, when you destroy their wells, when you burn down their olive trees, and then you send in the army… There was an article in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, yesterday. During the Iran war, the brief war with Iran, the Israeli army occupied some homes in the West Bank — Not Jewish homes, of course, Palestinian homes.

When they left, they left excrement in the cooking pots. When the world sees this, and then the Israeli government says, we’re doing this in the name of the Jewish people, and hundreds and thousands of rabbis around the world say they’re doing this in the name of the Jewish people, and the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith, and all manner of Jewish institutions say, Israel is acting in the name and the defense of the Jewish people, then what [is] the world supposed to think about the Jewish people? And then we complain about the rise of antisemitism.

No, there is antisemitism that has nothing to do with what Israel does or doesn’t do. There’s antisemitism with people who just hate Jews, just like there is anti-Black sentiment, which has nothing to do with anything Blacks have ever done or not done, or anti-Asian. So there’s a rise in racism all around the world. But in terms of the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment, consider that that’s at least in significant degree an outcome of horrific acts being committed in the name of the Jewish people, and justified by Jewish leaders as happening in the name of the Jewish people. Of course, that’s not true. You and I are Jewish people, they’re not doing this in our name, but they say they are. So if the average person believes them, who’s to blame them?

Marc Steiner:

So how important and significant do you think this rising movement of Jews, not in our name here in this country and across the globe, is in terms of the struggle that we’re facing now? Do you see it analytically as significant? Does it have a role to play? What’s your analysis of this movement and where it takes us?

Gabor Maté:

Well, it’s morally significant for sure. And there’s always been a strain in Jewish tradition that was a prophetic tradition that said that the state and the king and the rulers and the chauvinism, they’re not the high values. The high values are the godly virtues of justice and mercy. So there’s always been that Jewish strain, thank God. And so what we are seeing now is a requisiteness of that strain of Jewish culture in response to the horrors, and it’s very significant.

But of course, the fact that 1,300 Israeli academics have called Israel’s actions war crimes, the fact that Israeli Jewish scholars of Holocaust have called what Israel is during genocide, the fact that, within the last two days, B’Tselem, the Israeli civil human rights organization, and Israeli Physicians for Human Rights have said that what’s happening right now in Gaza is genocide, these are Jews, Israeli Jews saying this, that by itself won’t stop anything because politically, Jews in the United States who criticize Israel get fired from their academic jobs. In Canada, doctors who speak out against the torture of Palestinian doctors get fired. In other words, what I’m saying is there’s a system in place here that neutralizes, at least temporarily, it doesn’t matter how many beautiful Jewish voices speak out, how much morality, how much ethical outrage and concern many Jews have expressed — And they have. That does not affect the politics… So far.

Marc Steiner:

So far. I can’t even count the number of times over the decades that I’ve been called a Judenrat in public or in public gatherings when we speak.

Gabor Maté:

Oh yeah, well, you know, I’m a self-hating Jew, I’m a [inaudible], I’m a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, whatever the hell anybody thinks that is [Steiner laughs]. But there’s got to be some twisted psychological explanation for why any Jew would speak out against Jewish-committed injustice because they can’t argue with the facts, they can’t argue with the reality, so they have to disparage and invalidate the person. So that’s why we get called these names. That’s the cost of living, you might say.

Marc Steiner:

[Laughs] It is. As we were going at the start of this conversation, you talked about what’s happening in Canada right now. Talk a bit about that. I hadn’t heard of it, I’m sure people listening to us have not heard of it.

Gabor Maté:

Well, Canada, that’s supposed to be this sane alternative to the US. That’s rather exaggerated. Now compared to the US, almost anybody looks sane [Steiner laughs], so it’s an easy mistake to fall into. But let’s look at one thing only. Canada, in a few months, processed 1 million Ukrainian immigration visas, Ukrainians who were escaping from the war. In a few months, they processed a million. In three years, Canada has not processed 5,000 visas from Gaza.

This is not to take anything away from Ukrainians suffering. But if you look at the actual situation and threat to Ukrainian civilians, it’s not anything compared to the threat and the suffering experienced by Gazan civilians. And it’s not that Canada should not have processed those Ukrainian visas. Of course it should have, in the name of humanity. But what do you say about a country that can’t even process 5,000 Gazan visas?

And in Canada, physicians, medical personnel who ahve spoken out against the torture of Palestinian doctors, which is documented, and the death in captivity of Palestinian medical personnel, and the attacks on the hospital, and the deliberate assassinations of physicians, in Canada, medical people who speak out against that are fired or come under threat. So that’s Canada. We talk a very pretty game sometimes, but in practice, we’re in lockstep with the rest of the Western colonial world.

Marc Steiner:

That’s something that, only as we were starting, that I didn’t realize was happening, and I was, in my naivete, maybe was shocked.

So I wonder, as we conclude together today, in all the years you’ve been covering trauma, in all the years you’ve been talking about this issue and more, and when none of us are prescient, but I wrestle a lot with where all this is taking us, the world we’re sitting in right at this moment. We’re watching what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people in Gaza and in the West Bank to Palestinians. But we’re seeing, as I said earlier, this rise in the right across the globe. And I’m curious what you’re thinking about in terms of where this may be taking us and how we confront it.

Gabor Maté:

Well, the world goes through these cycles, so we have to take a long-term view here. We’ve seen before the rise of right-wing dictatorships, haven’t we? We have also seen the cowardice and the acquiescence and the collaboration of the so-called democratic West with those right-wing regimes. We’ve seen as democratic West foster and foment right-wing dictatorships all across Latin America, or in the 1930s in Germany, and in Spain, and in Portugal. We have seen the West allow fascist Italy to trample Ethiopia into the dust. We’ve seen this before.

We’ve also seen, at the same time as all those things are happening, people fighting against that, people trying to make a difference, people putting themselves on the line, people forming movements. And we’re seeing that now. So that Gaza has been a huge wake-up call for billions of people, hundreds of millions of people across the world, including in North America, including Americans who believe in the American dream, and they have this ideal of the American Constitution. This former Green Beret, lieutenant colonel who recently resigned from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and talked about the crimes against, the atrocities, that his people, the organization were committing. And he says, I believe in the US Constitution, and that’s why I’m opposing what’s going on. And so, people are waking up.

So, we’re seeing both the spread of right wing and the rise of right-wing dynamics around the world. We’re also seeing an increasing number of people waking up and standing against it. Ultimately, how history will decide, I can’t predict. I’m just saying I’m seeing both trends, and the only question is not what’s going to happen in the long term, nobody knows, it’s where do we stand today? Where does each one of us stand today? That’s the only decision that’s in front of us.

Marc Steiner:

And I do see a lot of hope in these movements that, here in Baltimore, every time there’s a demonstration sponsored by a younger Jewish generation opposing what’s happening, the numbers get larger and larger.

Gabor Maté:

Yeah. Well, that’s wonderful. That’s really wonderful. I just want to make one more comment, if I could.

Marc Steiner:

Please do.

Gabor Maté:

How should I say this politely?

Marc Steiner:

Don’t worry about it [laughs].

Gabor Maté:

It’s a bit of an obscenity that I’m asked so much to speak on this subject because I happen to be Jewish and because I happened to be, as an infant, to have survived the Holocaust. Why does that make me any kind of a special authority? If you consider the Holocaust, was the Holocaust validated because Germans came and said, I’m a German and I’m against this? Or did we believe the victims?

Why aren’t we listening to the Palestinians as they tell their stories, as they recount their history, as they tell you about their dire, horrible experiences for decades and decades in [Gaza]? What gives me, or for you, for that matter, any kind of authority? Because we’re Jewish? I mean, I understand it, I understand that, OK, here are Jews talking about it, so let’s listen. But I’m telling you, it’s a bit of an obscenity that voices like mine are listened to more than the authentic voices of the people who are experiencing this horror. Those are the voices we should be listening to. So as much as I appreciate any opportunity [to talk] about the subject, I’m saying there’s something out of balance here.

Marc Steiner:

That’s really, really a very critically important comment, statement to make.

Gabor Maté:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

We have to uplift these Palestinian voices now.

Gabor Maté:

Absolutely.

Marc Steiner:

That we try to do here and we’ll continue to do. I think that’s really critical. I think it was a little wake up call, too, for me. Spending so much time talking about Jews dries up. It’s important to really understand who needs to be heard.

Gabor Maté:

It’s not about us right now.

Marc Steiner:

No, it’s not about us. It’s not about us.

Well, Gabor Maté, I want to thank you once again. It’s always insightfully interesting and good to talk with you. I appreciate the work you do, your taking the time with us, and maybe the next time we meet, we’ll have a panel with Palestinians and Israelis and Jews, we’ll all talk together, which I think would be important to do.

Gabor Maté:

Thanks for having me.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you so much.

And once again, let me thank Gabor Maté for joining us today. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program, Stephen Frank for editing today’s broadcast, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show and bringing these guests to us, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thank you to Dr. Gabor Maté, and we’ll be linking to his work and more. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

https://therealnews.com/auschwitz-survivor-gabor-mate-gaza-genocide

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