Transnational Institute
Phyllis Bennis is director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, focusing on the Middle East, U.S. militarism, and U.N. issues. A longtime peace activist, she is also author of the 2018 book Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, among others. She spoke with The Progressive on November 4 via the Internet from Washington, D.C., before participating in a national demonstration calling for an immediate ceasefire in the war on Gaza.
Q: Could you talk about the history that led to October 7? It’s been portrayed as a surprise attack—but actually, in many ways, it was not at all a surprise.
Phyllis Bennis: I think both of those things are true. There’s no question the level of brutality was surprising. Israelis had come to expect and accept very small consequences for their decades of occupation and apartheid. There occasionally were Israeli civilian casualties, but they were few and far between. And the notion we used to hear a lot, that the current situation is unsustainable, was simply not true on the Israeli side. It was quite sustainable. A small number of casualties on occasion would be mourned and grieved and accepted as the price to be paid.
On the Palestinian side, it was not anything close to sustainable. In 2012, and again in 2017, the United Nations warned the world that, by 2020, Gaza would be "unlivable." That was the word the U.N. used. It’s not a word that’s ordinarily used in diplomatic [discourse]. But that’s what they said: It will be unlivable, mainly because of the lack of water, but also because of a host of other restrictions and a lack of access to sufficient food, medicine, health care, all of those things.
The year 2020 came and went. Gaza has long been unlivable, and yet 2.3 million Gazans, half of whom are children, have been living there, and the world said nothing. Gaza organized a massive, two-year-long nonviolent protest in 2018 and 2019, known as the Great March of Return, within Gazan territory, not inside Israel. It was organized by a great, young Palestinian poet, Ahmed Abu Artema [who was recently seriously injured in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza]. When [the march] was announced ahead of time, Israel said publicly, “We will meet it with sharpshooters.” And [it] did. Two hundred and fourteen people were killed in those weekly protests, and thousands were shot with live ammunition, mainly in the legs, some in the arms, and in many cases requiring amputations. Who knows how many of them are even still alive?
So the notion that things were fine until, suddenly, October 7 happened out of the blue is specious. It’s simply nonsensical.
Q: There’s no question that the killings in Israel should not have occurred, but the response has been dramatically disproportionate. We’ve heard in the Knesset—the Israeli parliament—people talking about using this attack as an occasion to clear out Gaza, to have what one member of parliament called a second Nakba, a reference to the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in 1947 and 1948. Can you talk about that and the current rightwing government that is using this attack as an occasion to push that agenda?
Bennis: The agenda of mass expulsions, of making Gaza a land without a people, is an old goal of many in Israel. This is not some rightwing lunacy that you hear only on the fringes. This is the mainstream. This is the government of Israel now, the most far-right coalition that’s ever existed, under [Benjamin] Netanyahu, who’s been prime minister forever, it seems. It’s a coalition of a sort made up of the right, the far right, the extreme right, and I use this word deliberately and carefully, the fascist right, in the Jewish Power Party [Otzma Yehudit in Hebrew], which has long been legally prevented from even running members for the Knesset because of its extremist racism.
So this is what we are dealing with. Ethnic cleansing has been a longstanding goal [going back to former prime minister] Ariel Sharon [2001-2006], who talked about Jordan as Palestine and had a proposal to forcibly transfer the entire Palestinian population into Jordan, [which is] also a violation of international law.
Q: I want to talk about the role of the United States. Many countries are calling for a ceasefire for humanitarian reasons. The United States is softly mentioning the idea of a humanitarian pause, but even that is being ignored by Netanyahu. So what is the role of the United States in this situation, and what should it be?
Bennis: The United States, at least since 1967 and somewhat before that, remains the chief enabler of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law, the laws of war, and now crimes against humanity. We provide the weapons. We provide the money. We provide, crucially, diplomatic and political support and protection so that Israeli officials, political or military, are never held to account in the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, or anywhere else.
The United States remains the chief enabler of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law, the laws of war, and now crimes against humanity.
Changing U.S. policy becomes the single most important thing that can happen. Calling for a ceasefire has been, from the beginning, the most important thing we can do–[a] call for a ceasefire from the United States that’s backed up with consequences. “You know that money that’s in the pipeline? You’re not getting it. You know those weapons we promised you? You can kiss them goodbye.” That's when they start to listen.
Q: It goes without saying that not all Palestinians are Hamas. But also, not all Israelis agree with Netanyahu and the right wing of the parliament. What are the voices for peace in Israel saying right now?
Bennis: We should have no illusions about the extraordinary protests of the last year that have gone on in Israel. [These protests] really split the country down the middle [and are] unprecedented in internal Israeli politics. People are fighting the Netanyahu government’s extremism and its efforts to overturn decades of judicial independence, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, all of those important issues for mass pressure. [But] what those protests never called for was an end to the occupation. It was clear that the reason they could get 200,000 to 400,000 people into the streets every week was because they kept the issue of the occupation off the table. If they hadn’t, we would’ve seen protests of 5,000 people or less. It would not have divided the population.
The same is true now. The polls in Israel indicate widespread support for the war and widespread opposition to Netanyahu. But most of that hesitation about the war, to the extent that it exists, is focused on [getting] the hostages back. And that’s the framework. The humanitarian catastrophe affecting millions of people in Gaza is just not on the agenda.
Q: What is the possibility for the future? What needs to happen? What do we need to look for, to advocate for, and to push for, both from our country and the government of Israel?
Bennis: There has to be an immediate ceasefire. There has to be a huge opening. Tear down the wall that surrounds Gaza and flood it with humanitarian supplies, medical [supplies], water, fuel, food, trauma specialists, psychologists, and child development experts who can begin the process of dealing with this generation of absolutely traumatized children, so many of whom have lost their parents, so many of whom have lost everyone in their family.
Half of the housing units, houses, and apartments in Gaza were completely destroyed in the first month of the war. There’s nowhere for people to live. All of the people who out of desperation followed the Israeli demand that they move to the south have moved to the south, which is still being bombarded, and where there is no place for them to go. There’s no housing, no shelter, no security, no food, no water. There is no place safe in Gaza.
On the emergency side, it’s easy: Tear down the walls, flood the place with everything that’s needed, [and] all the people that are needed [to help with the crisis]. I think this is going to be a challenge that Palestinians have never faced, the United Nations has never faced, and Israel and the United States have never had to face, and may not again. They may simply wash their hands of it.
Calling for a ceasefire has been, from the beginning, the most important thing we can do–[a] call for a ceasefire from the United States that’s backed up with consequences.
Will Europe come back and say, “We'll rebuild Gaza, as we have so many times before,” and let the Israelis come back and bomb it again? I don’t think the Europeans are going to do that this time, but I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows right now. I think, speaking in this moment of desperation four weeks into the war, the only issues are a ceasefire and getting humanitarian supplies in. That’s all that anybody can focus on.
Q: The United States is currently supporting this war in Gaza to the tune of billions. We’re supporting another war in Ukraine, which has kind of dropped off the radar these last couple weeks. And we’re preparing for a possible war between China and Taiwan that the Biden Administration at least seems to think is coming, considering the gearing up of our naval fleet. What does all of this mean for our country?
Bennis: This is a very dangerous time. Militarism is running amok in the United States. This is when we go back to what [Reverend] Martin Luther King Jr. taught us: that budgets are moral documents, in this case, a profoundly immoral document, and all of that money going into the military, what could it be used for?
There are close to 140 million people in this country who are poor or low wealth, who are one paycheck away from a complete economic meltdown in their lives, and we’re constantly being told there’s not enough money for Medicare for All, or to pay for college loans, for jobs, for dealing with the climate. Well, yeah, if you give all the money to the military, there’s not going to be money for anything. That’s what we’re doing.
All of this is based on the primacy of militarism, the victory of militarism as not only the dominant component of our foreign policy, but the dominant component of our domestic policy as well. Sixty-two cents of every discretionary federal dollar available to Congress is going to military work, the Pentagon, nuclear weapons areas, militarization of the borders. This is what we’re dealing with. And it’s got to stop, because it’s incredibly dangerous.