Member of Israeli Parliament: “After Sinwar’s Killing, Netanyahu Doubles Down on Genocide” – MK Ofer Cassif Pt. 1/2

Talia Baroncelli
Hi. You’re watching theAnalysis.news, and I’m your host, Talia Baroncelli. Today, I’ll be joined by Dr. Ofer Cassif, who is a member of the Israeli Parliament. We’ll be speaking about Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip and its invasion of Lebanon, as well as the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

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I’m very excited to be joined by a member of Knesset, Ofer Cassif. He is a member of the Hadash–Ta’al Party, which is a left-wing coalition comprised of both Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens. Hadash is also a movement founded along the lines of communism, inspired by communism. The party or the coalition also calls for equality for all people living in Israel and Palestine and has called for an end to the occupation.

Thank you so much for joining us again today, Ofer.

Dr. Ofer Cassif
My pleasure. Thank you.

Talia Baroncelli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has affirmed the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. I wonder how you see this playing out. Do you see this as contributing more to a rallying around the flag, around Netanyahu supporting the government’s genocidal endeavors, the genocidal war in Gaza, and enabling further settlements in the West Bank and additional invasions and incursions into Lebanon?

Dr. Ofer Cassif
Well, I’m afraid, yes. Netanyahu has been doing this for many years, especially since October 7. He has done everything possible in order to preserve his own coalition and government. He’s not interested in anything else but his own good. All the slogans he’s been using as if he cared about the well-being and the very basic lives of anyone, Israelis and let alone Palestinians. Those were used by Netanyahu simply as excuses, but he cares only about his own good. He doesn’t care about the security of Israel and the Israelis. He doesn’t care about the lives of the Israeli hostages and soldiers. He definitely doesn’t care about the lives and well-being of the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and others.

He is going to use the Sinwar assassination as yet another excuse or another proof, as it were, of his own power, which is a sham. I’m afraid because in the last year, and especially in the last few months, we’ve been witnessing, and I say this with great pain, with great pain and horror, that Israeli society, not all of it, of course, but too many segments and millions of people in Israel celebrate death and bloodshed of Palestinians and Lebanese, primarily, but also they don’t care. It seems many of them, of course, again, not all of the people, but too many don’t even care for the lives of the Israeli hostages. Netanyahu is manipulating it. Is he going to continue with this manipulation, given the death of Sinwar?

Talia Baroncelli
It did seem like a few months ago that approval ratings for Netanyahu had reached an all-time low, that people were so upset that the hostages are still being held in Gaza, that there’s no end to this war. Of course, a distinction can be made between those people who call for the hostages to be brought home and those people who want both the hostages to be brought home, as well as an end to the suffering and the bombardment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. I think those are probably maybe two segments of society. Aside from that, you had people like [Benny] Gantz and even Yoav Gallant saying that the strategy isn’t really going anywhere and that there needs to be a different strategy and perhaps even calling for Netanyahu’s resignation. Now that eyes have been shifted and attention has been shifted to Lebanon, how do you think that is changing?

Dr. Ofer Cassif
Well, first of all, you are totally right in the diagnosis you made. The Israeli society is very, very polarized. It is polarized between those who support the continuation of the genocide in Gaza. We have to mention also the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the massacre in Lebanon, and even a call for, so to speak, retaliation versus Iran.

On the other side, there are also thousands, even millions of Israelis, Jews, and Arabs who oppose the government, who oppose the genocide, who call for a total end of the attacks, the continuation of the genocidal attacks on Gaza, and for a deal to release the Israeli hostages. This polarization plays, at the moment, into the hands of Netanyahu because he manipulates, as I said before, the situation, and he manipulates the situation in Lebanon as well. He’s been using, not to say abusing, the situation in Lebanon in order to get power and support from those segments, which I mentioned, that are not against the government and against the genocide but seek more fire and more blood.

Unfortunately, apart from us, Hadash–Ta’al in the parliament, and of course, out of the parliament in the streets, there are many other organizations, civil rights organizations, anti-occupation movements, etc. Apart from us, there is no opposition. You mentioned Gantz; I can add [Yair] Lapid and even Yoav Gallant, the newly elected chairperson of the so-called “Democrats,” which is basically the labor and merits parties. They support, at least to some extent, the ongoing violence of Israel against its neighbors, especially against the Palestinians. They play into the hands of Netanyahu as well.

In one phrase that I tweeted last November, exactly one year ago, I tweeted a phrase which, I’m afraid, proved to be right on a daily basis. The Israeli government, and unfortunately, great parts of the so-called opposition, too, hate the Palestinians more than they love the Israelis. Because of that, they are inclined to continue the violence and bloodshed even if it comes at the expense of, as I said before, Israeli soldiers and hostages.
Going back to your question, Lebanon, in that sense, is no more than another instrument in the ends of Netanyahu to gain support and power. He’s a cynical psychopath who doesn’t care about anything but his own good. Unfortunately, he’s surrounded by even more fanatic psychopaths who dream, which is actually a nightmare, about the greater Israel, what they see as greater Israel, and even acting, not only imagining to reoccupy Gaza and South Lebanon but also to settle there. This is a crazy situation, which, unfortunately, is done under the auspices of the international community, primarily Biden’s administration.

Talia Baroncelli
Well, you’re speaking of settlements, and now we could turn to what’s called the Giora Eiland Plan. Giora Eiland is a retired General who contributed to a plan, I think it’s also called the General’s Plan that was published in September in a publication formed by an Israeli NGO, which is comprised of, I think, 1,500 Israeli military officers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like this plan wants to essentially eliminate Palestinians from the north of the Gaza Strip to create what they would consider to be a buffer zone. After ethnically cleansing and killing people in this part of Gaza, they resettle it with extreme Jewish-Israeli settlers. It seems like it’s already underway because there’s virtually no aid getting into the north of Gaza. Even after this letter that [Antony] Blinken and Lloyd Austin, the Defense Secretary of the U.S., wrote to Netanyahu, which was then leaked, we haven’t really heard any proper analysis or discussion on this paper, but we can leave that aside. Aside from that so-called warning, which probably isn’t a warning if it doesn’t concretely threaten all arms to Israel, do you think this is already underway in the north?

Dr. Ofer Cassif
I’m afraid it is, although the Israeli government denies that, but I’m afraid it is. I’d rather call this so-called plan, and I published it, tweeted, and posted about it a few weeks ago. I call it very bluntly and straightforwardly the new Wannsee Conference, which echoes the Wannsee meeting that took place in Germany about 85 years ago before planning the so-called final solution of the Jewish issue in Europe. I do compare the so-called General’s Plan to the Wannsee and the final solution. We should call this plan not the General’s Plan but the “General Extermination Plan” or the “Official Genocide Plan.” I think that Eiland and his companions are war criminals who should be tried alongside others, Israelis and Palestinians, by the way. Let’s not forget that those who are responsible and took part in the massacre of October 7. They are also war criminals who should be tried.

Going back to what’s going on in Northern Gaza, this is a clear war crime and a crime against humanity initiated by this creature you mentioned. It is underway. I’m afraid that it’s going from bad to worse on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, I had to call Blinken, Mr. Blinken, Mr. Blink-eye, because they do blink eyes. What are they doing? The gap between the rhetoric, not only now vis à vis the “General’s Genocide Plan,” but throughout the genocide in the last year. On the one hand, there is the rhetoric of Biden’s administration and some other governments and figures in the world, especially the so-called Democratic West, that speak, not too often either, but sometimes speak against the death toll, against the destruction, against the starvation, some other stuff, against the violence of settlers in the West Bank, but practically do exactly the opposite. They continue to arm the Israeli genocidal machine. They continue to support, practically, the Israeli government by vetoing decisions that are brought or resolutions that are brought to the Security Council of the United Nations. The practice, in that sense, as it normally is, is more important and more influential than the rhetoric. By the way, the only practice, positive practice that Biden’s administration and some other governments, like the British government, have been doing is to sanction some of the Judeo-Nazi settlers in the West Bank. But those are the riffraffs. They don’t touch the real ones that should be punished and tried.

In a sense, they just focus on those who are easier to go against, and they refrain from confronting and tackling the real criminals. In that sense, we should bear in mind that is exactly what allows the massacre that goes on at the moment in Northern Gaza under the title of the “General’s Genocide Plan.” The blame should be put on the Israeli government and those governments across the globe, especially the United States, which allow those crimes to go on.
The creature you mentioned before, General Eiland and his companions, are criminals, too. Let’s not forget that they are not in the government nor in the military at the moment. Those who are really responsible are the government, the generals who are still in service, and those who support them.

Talia Baroncelli
Well, it almost seems like the U.S. keeps saying that they’re trying to constrain Netanyahu’s government. If you cut away that facade, if anything, they’re doing the complete opposite, and they’re enabling the worst elements of Israeli society and the Israeli government. It almost seems like they do want the complete destruction of Gaza, of parts of Lebanon, and of the West Bank. What agenda are they pursuing? How do you assess that?

Dr. Ofer Cassif
Look, unfortunately, the United States, throughout modern history, has always been responsible for the worst massacres and war crimes across the globe. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that since the end of the Second World War, the United States, the different administrations, Democratic or Republicans, it doesn’t matter; Democrats or Republicans, have been responsible for so many war crimes, and everything is in order to preserve power and to control the world. This is called, poetically as it were, American imperialism. It’s still on.

I’m currently in South America, in the state of Uruguay. The state of Uruguay, like its neighbors in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, everywhere, and more to the north, too, Nicaragua, Mexico, and other places, has been suffering for so many years, especially during the ’70s, ’80s, but even before and sometime after. This North American imperialism supported, practically, by arms and, in some other ways, the worst military juntas that were responsible for torturing and killing thousands and thousands of innocent people who struggled for liberation and democracy. That’s exactly what the United States has been doing now in the Middle East. It’s not something new. What they’ve done here in South America 50 and 40 years ago, and what they’ve done later on in Iraq, for instance, and other places, they are doing now in the Middle East. They want to control the Middle East with Israel by proxy. Israel is the proxy. They want to change the regime and the political structure in Lebanon, in Iran, for sure, in Syria, and everywhere.

Now, that is not to say that I sympathize with those regimes. I obviously do not, to say the least. I do not sympathize with the Iranian regime, for instance. But the United States, it’s not its role to decide for anyone else which government will be in power. It is up to the people of Iran, of Lebanon, of Syria to decide. Let alone the intervention of the United States was never for the benefit of the people, never in favor of democracy, but only in favor of having its own proxies to pursue its own interests, political, economic, etc. It’s more of the same.

I’m proud to be part of a political camp that has been struggling against American imperialism and its proxies for about 100 years. We’ll continue to do that because that’s for the benefit of all, including, by the way, the Israelis, I must say. My struggle and our struggle is for the benefit of all. When we struggle against the genocide in Gaza and the other crimes that the government of Israel is responsible for, we do it for justice. Justice is universal. That is to say that it is for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Our struggle is for the people, all people, and we continue that.

Talia Baroncelli
In the past, when I interviewed you, you were talking about rights not being a zero-sum game. Of course, there’s a segment of the population in Israel that might have full access to democratic rights, but if their neighbors or even Arab-Israeli citizens within Israel don’t have rights, Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza are being oppressed, then it means that everyone is actually suffering from this collective lack of rights. There are many examples of this with, for example, restrictions on the freedom of the press. There are both Jewish and Arab people in Israel who have been protesting or questioning what’s going on in Gaza and who have been silenced. The Al Jazeera office in the West Bank was recently shut down for 45 days, and Al Jazeera has not been allowed to operate from within Israel. I believe they had to shut down their Jerusalem office. There are numerous examples of this erosion of various freedoms within Israel.

I think what I wanted to ask you about is something you mentioned with regard to imperialism because a lot of people when they speak about Israel’s relationship with the United States, a lot of people say that it’s all AIPAC. It’s money being funneled through the Israel Lobby that is creating this policy. But would you say it goes beyond that? It’s a much larger question of the military-industrial complex of massive defense contractors who are so reliant on the continuation of these conflicts that it can’t just be explained by the Israel Lobby. This also ties into the regional framework we see in the Middle East. A country like Egypt is, in a way, also a client state of the United States. They receive an incredible amount of military funding in exchange for this relationship that they have with the United States. It can’t just be pinpointed on the Israel Lobby. It’s a much larger issue. Would you say that’s the case?

Dr. Ofer Cassif
Yes, absolutely. First of all, I must say that to some extent, the accusation that AIPAC or the Jewish pro-Israeli Lobby in the United States or anywhere else is more powerful than others, to some extent, it amounts to anti-Semitism as if Jews have more power than others throughout the world, which is obviously nonsense. It is a conspiracy theory that I can never endorse. We must be very cautious with such sayings. The real issue is the power of those who are powerful, given their control of materialist powers, of those who control the economy. This is a class issue. This is not a national issue, an ethnic issue, or a religious issue. This is a clear class issue. If we understand and analyze the situation globally and locally by using class analysis, then we understand that the real power is the unholy trinity of imperialism and reactionary regimes, especially Arab reactionary regimes and the Zionist regime.

We’ve been saying that we, the Communist Party of Israel, before Israel existed as a state, the communist parties in the Middle East, the Palestinian one, now the Israeli one, and others, we’ve been always saying since at least the ’20s, ’30s, or the 20th century, that there is an unholy trinity of those three that I mentioned: imperialism, Zionism, and reactionary Arab regimes. I think it’s still the same. You can see that the interests of America now, North American imperialism, and Arab reactionary regimes in different places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Zionism are all intertwined in their interests, especially economic and political ones. That is the thing that drives the ongoing crimes that go on in Gaza and in the region as a whole. This is how we have to understand that in order, not theoretically or academically speaking, it’s not an issue of academic analysis, although it might also be; it is primarily what we should confront and how we should struggle against those crimes and against those reactionary dangerous deadly regimes. Once we understand it, then we know who and how we should struggle. I think that’s the most important thing.

I go back to what you mentioned, the non-zero-sum game. It is indeed a non-zero-sum game because in a zero-sum game, if there are two sides in confrontation, once one wins, the other necessarily loses, and vice versa. That’s not the issue here. The issue here is a win-win versus lose-lose situation. Either everybody wins by ending the genocide, ending the war, ending the violence, the bloodshed, and ending the occupation, obviously liberating the Palestinian people from the oppression, occupation, and a class that the Palestinian people will get their independent sovereign Palestinian state besides the state of Israel, which is the core of everything that goes on in the Middle East.

We all heard, by the way, just recently, the Foreign Affairs Minister of Jordan saying, I think it was in an interview at the UN, he said that once the occupation is over, the vast majority, almost 60 Islamic and Arab states are going to normalize their relations with Israel. This proves what I said before, that it is in the interest of Israel as well, not only of the Palestinians. This is a win-win situation. The only alternative is a lose-lose situation, which means that everybody is going to lose. Everybody is going to drown in rivers of blood and destruction. When I say everyone, I mean not only the Palestinians who have been drowned in such rivers of blood and destruction already, but I also mean the Lebanese, the Israelis, the Syrians, the Iranians, even Jordanians, Egyptians, etc. Everybody in the region is going to drown in rivers of blood unless we stop this madness now. That means stopping the genocide and the other crimes and immediately moving towards a political solution to the Palestinian issue, which means liberation in the sense that I mentioned before. That’s the key.

If the world doesn’t understand that, by the world I mean governments because the people around the globe seem to me to understand that. Not everybody supports that, but many do. I assume that perhaps even the majority of the people in the world support the liberation of the Palestinians and a peaceful solution to the ongoing massacre in the Middle East. The governments, especially the United States, either do not understand or do not care. They must understand that it is not only just the liberation of the Palestinian people and their independence. It is also the interest, eventually, as opposed to what seems to be the interest. It is the real interest of all the people, including the American ones, because unless we get there to this peace, everybody is going to pay the price. Perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not even next year, but sooner or later, everybody is going to pay the price.

Just look at what’s going on now in the Middle East. Because of the ongoing insistence of this criminal fascist government of Israel to continue with the criminal genocide in Gaza and the other crimes in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Lebanon, etc., there is a serious risk of a regional war that will begin in Israel versus Iran, but will easily spread into the whole region and beyond. It’s up to the world to stop it because, eventually, the whole world is going to pay for that. I’m afraid we are on the verge of such a catastrophe because of those cynical, self-interested minority governments in so many places that I mentioned before, this unholy trinity.

Talia Baroncelli
That was part one of my discussion with Ofer Cassif. In part two, we look at the fascistization of Israeli society as well as Palestinian self-determination. See you next time.