Joe Biden Leads a Western “Coalition of the Killing” in Backing Israel’s Gaza War

The U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza is entering its fifth month. As the brutal siege and bombing continues, the United Nations and other international organizations are warning of famine and the outbreak of diseases. Powerful nations around the world, led by the U.S., are not just supplying weapons and political support for Israel, but also have now joined in the campaign to further restrict vital humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Biden administration has led the charge to suspend funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the most important aid organization operating in Gaza. Israel has waged a smear campaign against UNRWA, baselessly characterizing the whole organization as a front group for Hamas. What began as an accusation that a few UNRWA employees may have participated in the October 7 attacks has now become a sweeping attack against the organization's very existence.

This week on Intercepted, Jeremy Scahill is joined by Mohammed Elnaiem, a political educator and director of the Decolonial Centre in London. Elnaiem discusses the ways pro-colonial narratives provide support to Israel's onslaught on Gaza, despite people around the world watching a livestreamed genocide." He also breaks down the major imperial powers' role in the conflict, connecting the historical thread of colonialism to the current war.

Jeremy Scahill: This is Intercepted.

Welcome to Intercepted. I'm Jeremy Scahill.

The U.S.-backed Israeli war against Gaza is now entering its fifth month. It would be impossible to overstate the horrifying destruction that has been unleashed on the people of Gaza. More than 27,000 have been killed. The vast majority - 70 percent of them - are women and children. More than 66,000 others are injured. And these statistics are likely a dramatic undercount; thousands of people remain missing, many of them are lying dead under the rubble of what was once their homes.

More than 80% of Gaza's Palestinians are now internally displaced, and are being corralled under threat of bombing into an ever-shrinking killing cage, as the Israelis begin to lay siege to Rafah, along the Egyptian border.

Hani Mahmoud, Reporter, Al Jazeera English: Overnight - when, in fact, it started in the early hours of last night - in the evening hours, with the heavy artillery shelling of the eastern part of Rafah City, and finishing at about midnight, with massive airstrikes on both different locations, in eastern Rafah and in the central part of Rafah city. Very crowded and densely populated, two areas. The one in eastern Rafah, a residential home full of displaced Palestinians...

JS: Two-thirds of Gaza's hospitals have now been rendered entirely inoperable. Famine is spreading, clean water is scarce. Doctors are performing limb amputations on children with no anesthesia. Some patients are dying from the shock of the excruciating pain. Women are having C-sections with no anesthetics.

Israel has enforced a wartime blockade on the entry of aid. That's resulted in only a tiny fraction of what the U.N. and other organizations say would be necessary to even begin to address the horrifying reality.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO: First, to Gaza, where WHO continues to face extreme challenges in supporting the health system and health workers. As of today, over 100,000 Gazans are either dead, injured, or missing and presumed dead. WHO has faced great difficulty, even to reach hospitals in southern Gaza.

Heavy fighting has been reported in the hospitals in Khan Yunis, severely impaired access to health facilities for patients, health workers, and supplies.

JS: The World Food Program has for weeks been warning that Gaza is facing catastrophic hunger and starvation. People in Gaza have on average just one-and-a-half liters of water per day; that's to drink, to wash with, to cook with. Chronic diarrhea is rampant among children; there has been a 2,000 percent increase since Israel launched its invasion and bombing in October. Milk and formula are now scarce, newborns are having to eat solid foods long before their bodies are ready for it, causing other health issues. There is an average of one toilet per 480 people in shelters in Gaza.

Steve Inskeep, Host, NPR: As they respond to the October 7th attack by Hamas, the Israeli forces have destroyed many Palestinian schools and universities. The places flattened include Israa University in Gaza City.

Reporter, France 24 English: With no shelter and limited supplies, these displaced Gazans have been living on the streets in Khan Younis. Some have seen their homes demolished by Israeli airstrikes, and fear that nowhere in the enclave is safe.

Anchorperson, Al Jazeera English: Well, we begin in Gaza, where Israeli forces are showing no signs of slowing their attacks. The main building of Nasr Hospital in Khan Yunis is amongst the latest targets. Troops are surrounding the facility and intense bombing has been taking place around it overnight. Gaza's health ministry says no one has been able to enter or exit the hospital, which was already struggling to treat the wounded.

JS: Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza's universities and schools, its healthcare centers, its archives and libraries. It is engaging in controlled demolitions of entire neighborhoods, blowing up apartment complexes, destroying farms and other agricultural areas. More than 60 percent of Gaza's homes have been destroyed or significantly damaged. There are reports of mass executions of prisoners and the widespread torture of other Palestinians. And, at every turn, Netanyahu and his henchmen have made clear they intend to continue their campaign indefinitely, even as their military forces face a quagmire in their military battle against the Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian fighters.

And Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, he's back in the Middle East, and continues to reiterate that the U.S. opposes a permanent ceasefire.

U.S. House: On this vote, the yeas are 226, the nays are 196. The bill is passed.

Reporter, Reuters: The U.S. House passed a bill to provide almost $15 billion in aid to Israel on Thursday.

JS: The U.S. continues to rush weapons and ammunition to Israel to continue this slaughter. And, at the same time, the Biden administration has led the charge to cut funding to UNRWA, perhaps the most important international organization operating on the ground in Gaza. The U.S. and other nations have accepted, without any actual concrete evidence, Israel's accusation that a tiny number of UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th attacks.

This is an organization with 30,000 employees, more than 12,000 of them inside Gaza itself, and the U.S. has admitted it has not even bothered to check the facts on its own, and yet, has now allowed the Israeli government's propaganda to replace any sort of independent U.S. policy.

The U.S. is outsourcing even the minimal semblance of independence to an extreme Israeli agenda against the most important aid organization in Gaza. That's the fact.

Catherine Byaruhanga, BBC News: The U.N.'s Humanitarian Coordinator for Gaza said it was vital for UNRWA to be able to continue with its work.

Sigrid Kaag, Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza, U.N.: There's no substitution for the humanitarian role that is played in Gaza. We need to all ramp up, given the totality of needs, and the scale, and the complexity of the crises. There is no substitution.

JS: And all of this comes as Biden is pushing for an additional $14 billion of new cash to Tel Aviv for Israel's war against the people of Gaza.

This is all happening as the International Court of Justice ruled that South Africa's genocide case against Israel can proceed. The court explicitly ordered Israel to allow with immediate effect the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The main U.N. humanitarian organization OCHA says that, in January, Israel blocked 66 percent of its planned missions to deliver aid to Gaza. Israel has intensified its attacks against UNRWA and the U.N. were a clear attempt to distract from the ICJ ruling. It also happens at a time when a federal judge in California has ruled that the Biden administration is plausibly supporting genocidal actions by continuing to arm and back Israel.

The U.S. is not some outside observer. It is complicit in all of this. It's an active partner in the carnage, the bombings, the attacks against defenseless civilians. And it's leading the international charge to defund the most important aid organization operating in Gaza. And yet, we are told that Biden - who apparently spends his mornings watching Morning Joe on MSNBC - is losing patience with Netanyahu.

This apparently is the Democrats emerging strategy for 2024: blame the war all on Bibi's extremism, and gaslight everyone by claiming that Joe Biden was somehow a voice of moderation. Well, in the real world, Biden almost cannot give a speech anywhere now without it being disrupted by protesters confronting him for his support of the scorched-earth war.

And the White House says it doesn't want a wider war in the Middle East, and yet its expanding its bombing campaigns in Yemen, in Iraq, in Syria, and says it will continue indefinitely.

Keir Simmons, NBC News: The bodies of Iraqis killed in this weekend's airstrikes were buried today. With speeches from pro-Iranian leaders calling for America to be clean from the country.

Iraq's prime minister visited the wounded in the hospital. The strikes, aiming to punish Iran and Iranian-backed groups for the attack that killed three U.S. soldiers. But the Pentagon admitted today, there are no reports of Iranians killed or injured.

JS: None of this is going to be neatly wrapped up in time for the 2024 election, and the White House knows it, because they are fueling it. They are hoping that Trump's insanity is going to somehow save Biden, that people will let him off the hook for supporting and facilitating this genocidal war because they are terrified of Trump.

But the indications - at least right now - is that this is far from a guarantee. Biden's ratings are in the toilet, and he has made clear he doesn't care about the concerns of so many voters in the U.S. who are appalled at what he is doing right now to the people of Gaza. This isn't just Israel's war; it's a joint US-Israeli war, and no amount of spin is going to wipe the blood off the hands of the U.S. officials who waged it.

But it's not just the U.S. that has steadfastly backed the scorched-earth war; it's virtually the entire Western establishment, with a few notable exceptions. Canada, they're all-in. Britain, all-in. France, all-in. Germany, enthusiastically all-in. It is this coalition of the killing, and what motivates these nations to support Israel's war of annihilation, that we are going to focus on on today's program.

Our guest is Mohammed Elnaiem, a political educator, and Director of the Decolonial Centre in London. He is an advocate of anti-colonial politics and works with his colleagues to amplify anti-colonial work and activism.

Mohammed, thanks so much for being with us. Welcome to Intercepted.

Mohammed Elnaiem: Thank you.

JS: Mohammed, I want to begin with narrative. The narrative that has been deployed by... Not just by Israel, but by the United States, and the European countries that are supporting Israel's war against Gaza. First of all, just start off by giving your broad reflections on the story of this war. How it began, how it's been waged, what that has looked like from the United States and European capitals.

ME: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, first of all.

One of the things that has been horrific for a lot of us to see is the ways in which a certain kind of narrative, a European exceptionalist narrative - and I say Europe and its offshoots," in the sense that the United States is an offshoot of it, it's part of the same global political culture - of almost needing to be entirely uncritical of Israel, and the way in which Israel is waging what's effectively - and, even by the ICJ, potentially - a genocidal war against the people of Gaza.

For the longest time, when you're looking at the media in general and other topics, Noam Chomsky's idea that the role of the media is just to manufacture consent for everybody to fall in line with the foreign policy of the United States and Europe seems to be a bit over-simplistic. But then, all of a sudden, you're watching the media, and this is a livestreamed genocide. The evidence is irrefutable, it's publicly available. And the way in which the media kind of tiptoes around it, both-sides it, makes it seem as if it's not important that a genocide is taking place, or sometimes just by omission, just pretends that this isn't happening... I mean, you start to really buy into the idea that Chomsky had, which is that the role of the media is to manufacture consent.

And I think, one of the things is that this is a ripe moment for the far-right to recruit, because this is also a moment where it becomes very easy to buy into conspiracy theories which are antisemitic, that the reason why we're seeing this is because there must be a conspiracy, Israel's controlling the media, etc.

And so, for me, it's like, I'm obviously someone of colonized descent - my dad was born during the time when Britain had still colonized Sudan - and I'm watching the media, and I'm watching, for example, the right-wing media. And they're just sitting down there discussing - Julia Hartley Brewer had a guest on, just casually discussing if ethnic cleansing is a potential solution to the Gaza question. Or when you watch a person who maybe has had tens of their family members killed in Israeli airstrikes, and they're asked to condemn Hamas.

The lack of shame, the lack of empathy. You have to try to understand, where is this coming from? And if you reject the conspiratorial antisemitic account, then you're probably going to come to the conclusion that there's something, culturally. What's the cultural reason for how, in the name of anti-antisemitism, which generally means in the name of being against genocide, people are being actively complicit in genocide.

And so, for me, a part of the way in which I'm seeing the narrative is, where is that coming from? And I think, for me, the diagnosis to that problem is quite simply that all of these people in the cultural industry, the curators, the journalists, there's no malign intent, there's no need to engage in some kind of double standard. There's a cultural problem here which is making them complicit in genocide, and that's kind of what I've been interested in when it comes to the narratives.

JS: A lot of times people focus on the fact that the United States, because it's the greatest bankroller of Israel in general, and the biggest sponsor of Israel specifically in this war of annihilation in Gaza, and, to a lesser extent, of course, the British government, which also is a very steadfast supporter of Israel, including when it's at its most violent. But what we're seeing is other European nations becoming very, very outspoken. Not just in their defense of Israel, but their specific defense of Israel's tactics in Gaza.

I'm speaking specifically of the German government, certainly its spending on weapons. We've seen that on full display in the NATO/Ukraine-Russia conflict, but also, now, Germany is talking about actually exporting offensive weaponry to Israel.

And, in fact, you received, Mohamed, a lot of attention for a series of posts that you made on social media. When the German government chose to announce its support for Israel as it faced its genocide allegations at the International Court of Justice brought by South Africa, Germany announced that it was supporting Israel in its case at the ICJ on the very day that, in Namibia, people were marking the 100th anniversary of the German genocide in Namibia.

I'd like for you to tell that story and offer your reflections on it, but also, to speak specifically to how you see Germany ... Which, of course, murdered 6 million Jews in World War II - and not just Jews, [but] also communists, Roma people, Slavic people, gay people, etc. - but the country that waged this genocidal war in World War II is now taking the side of the Israeli state, which was created in the aftermath of that genocide in Europe, at the expense of the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now forcefully defending what many in the world believe is an ongoing genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza.

ME: The honest truth is that when we're hearing what's happening to Palestinian and a lot of brown activists of diaspora descent who are fighting for Palestine in Germany, let's just talk about that. And, more broadly, the decisions that Germany's made on the international stage.

And you're hearing stories of police officers coming in and destroying candlelight vigils for Shireen Abu Akleh, or police officers engaging in coordinated campaigns in seven different states, going into offices and making sure people don't have the wrong literature and that they're not Hamas supporters.

When you're seeing these stories of peaceful protests happening in the area of New Koln in Berlin, and then the police just coming in and rampaging. I mean, these are moments and kinds of images which should make Germany ashamed, but also should give them pause, as to not reenact the historic crime which they committed upon the Jewish people and many others, which was the Holocaust.

And then, on the international stage, to see Germany supporting Israel unconditionally, even as Israel is potentially waging a genocide. And, on the day of the anniversary of the Nama and Herero genocide, these are all moments where you'd think ... This is, again, it's one of those moments where, don't they get it? And, for me, the question is, why don't they get it?

And so, the series of tweets that I wrote was an attempt to try to understand that question. And my conclusion is, is that a lot of people will claim that drawing any comparison of the Holocaust with another event is a form of relativizing the Holocaust. Whereas, for me, I think that one of the biggest problems for Europe, actually, and it's part of why they don't get it, in Europe and its offshoots, is actually exceptionalizing the Holocaust. In the sense that, of course, in many ways, the Holocaust was exceptionally brutal, a unique event, and one of the most horrific events to have ever happened; it's a stain on the history of humanity. But, at the same time, the logic which went into the Holocaust preceded the Holocaust, and it succeeded the Holocaust.

What I mean by this is, in the 1940s, Aime Cesaire, who was from Martinique, wrote this book called Discourse on Colonialism." And he made the claim that, actually, the thing that upset Europe the most about the Holocaust wasn't the techniques, he said it was the fact that those techniques were reserved solely for the people in the colonies, for African slaves, for what he called the Indian coolies, and that they were now coming to the soil of Europe. And he called it a boomerang effect.

And, a century prior to that, Amy Ashwood Garvey, who was an incredible thinker, and an anticolonialist who was a mentor to some of the first leaders of African independent countries ... When fascist Italy had invaded Ethiopia, went to Trafalgar Square, and stood on the stage and said, the only thing in between you and fascism is us, the anticolonialists. And the reason was quite simple, that, for example, just to take the case of the Holocaust and how it connects directly to the Nama and Herero genocide, a lot of the key ideas of Nazi ideology were formulated in response to the conquest of what's present-day Namibia.

And even the concept of a Lebensraum - and I may be pronouncing that wrong, and I'm sorry if I am - but the idea that there needs to be fertile land for the ills of industrialization, for Germany, the Volk, to be revitalized, which was an idea that made its way into Mein Kampf," was an idea that was developed by Ratzel in response to the Nama and Herero genocide, and in encouragement of it. But, more importantly, the Nama and Herero genocide was the first genocide that Germany committed in the 20th century. And it committed that genocide, obviously it developed a whole repertoire of ideas and techniques and ways of corralling people, concentrating them in certain places, killing them, depriving them of the their rights, and then eventually exterminating them. And, obviously, that went into German statecraft and informed the Holocaust.

But it's much deeper than that, because we're not just talking about the Nama and Herero genocide. We're talking about the techniques that the British used in Kenya, in the Mau Mau emergency, and also in the Boer War. We're talking about what the Italians did in Libya, we're talking about what the Italians did in Ethiopia. And, just to show you the difference between the case of the Nama and Herero genocide ... Germany only recognized and apologized for it a few years ago, and the amount of money that they sent as reparations - or so-called reparations - was a pittance, compared to the amount of money that the German state gave on the founding of Israel in the claims conference. And we're talking about something like what, three billion dollars?

Most German kids don't know about the Nama and Herero genocide. But so, then why is there this exceptionalizing narrative? Scholars have described many reasons for why, but I think one of the most important things is a form of self-identity, right? That, to be a person of a civilized country in Europe and Europe's offshoots, whether we're talking about the United States, etc., is to understand that, post-1945, this was an era where fascism was an aberration. It had nothing to do with, we are actually heirs of the Enlightenment. And we promised to say never again," and part of saying never again means unconditionally supporting Israel, because Israel is the incarnation of Jewish self-determination. I mean, this is the rationale, right?

But, for me, it's the main problem, and the reason why maybe Europe and its offshoots are doomed to constantly be complicit in genocide - and here we're talking about a difference of magnitude only - is because of the exceptionalizing narrative. It claims to seek penance for Jewish people, but it's actually about trying to absolve oneself, in order to continue a system which claims to be predicated on ideals of the Enlightenment - like humanism and freedom and liberty - but which actually, by necessity, has to desecrate all of those values. And the only way in which you can continue with a system like that is to tell yourself a nice, soothing story that you are post-Holocaust, that you've learned from that, and that proof of that is unconditional support for Israel.

And I think this is damaging, because what it means is that we're going to have to continue to see genocide as a permanent fixture of society, and we've got to push back against that. And so, that, for me, is one of the most horrifying aspects of the narrative which Europe tries to tell itself, and so-called Global North" countries.

JS: I want to just read from the post from the Namibian president - who, by the way, just passed away this past weekend - but, on the day that the German government announced, on the 13th of January, 2024, that it was going to be supporting Israel at the International Court of Justice, the president of Namibia posted on social media, Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention Against Genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza."

Various international organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have chillingly concluded that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, and the President of Namibia said that he was appealing to the German government to reconsider its untimely decision to intervene as a third-party in defense and support of the genocidal acts of Israel before the International Court of Justice."

Now, that's the Namibian president, but the overarching narrative that Israel promoted about South Africa taking it to the International Court of Justice on charges that it was violating the Genocide Convention, was that South Africa itself is the problem. That South Africa is a corrupt government, that South Africa has no moral standing to bring such charges against Israel, and that, in fact, it's a complete atrocity that South Africa would dare to use the term genocide against the Israeli state, which was established in the aftermath of the genocide of World War II.

A lot of what happened was this attempt to say, don't look at the 84-page filing, nine pages of which consisted of statements from Israeli officials clearly making statements that could be interpreted as genocidal intent. Instead, look at South Africa's problem.

What the Israelis also rejected was a notion that there was any historical significance to South Africa, a nation that suffered under an apartheid system that was backed by Western countries led by the United States for decades, that that had no relevance whatsoever to the proceedings in court.

ME: I mean, you just hit the nail on the head. One of the things about the narrative which I'm talking about right now is the fact that Netanyahu himself has said that this is a struggle between light and darkness, right? This is a struggle between civilization and animals. At the Decolonial Center we hold that, actually, the main ideas which made colonialism possible and justified continued until the present, and I think that this is a perfect example of that.

First of all, I am extremely critical of the current government of South Africa, right? The current government of South Africa has a lot to answer to its people. But the way to delegitimize that is actually also tapping into a part of the psyche which sees these countries as S-hole countries, like what Trump said. That these are corrupt, backwater countries. You can't trust them, and what do they know about genocide?

So that's one where it's basically a reiteration of, OK, if they're so uncivilized, how can you expect them to say anything? And if you look on social media, especially Israeli social media, and far-right Israeli social media, you'll see a lot more overt expressions of what I'm trying to explain.

But it's also this kind of moment, with Namibia challenging Germany, and it's kind of like we're seeing this rise, again, of a kind of spirit that's always been latent since the era of decolonization, but I would say even much earlier than that. Which is basically to say, you claim to stand with these concepts of international law, and international human rights, and rules-based order, etc. Why aren't you?

And the first challenge to this, or the first challenge to, for example, the principles of the French Revolution, came from Haiti. C.L.R. James, who wrote this book on The Black Jacobins," on the Haitian Revolution, said that, when the challenge came from Haiti, people in the National Assembly would shove the rights of man deep into their pockets. You know, they don't want to make this appeal.

And this is kind of what's at stake here, when South Africa comes up, and Namibia comes up, and all of these countries, regardless of whether or not whether it will actually prevent a genocide. The fact that it's happening is, I think, something that caught the Western world and Israel off guard. But it's also, again, part of that same tradition, third-world anticolonial tradition of saying, We believe in these concepts which you claim to profess more than you believe in these concepts, and we're here to rescue them from you."

And I think that that's why the default position to try to push back against that has to be that these people are uncivilized, these people are corrupt, these people can't be trusted. And I think that that's really what's at stake with these challenges.

JS: I want to ask you about the United Nations. Of course, the secretary general of the U.N. has been quite forceful in denouncing the record number of killings of U.N. personnel. And, of course, many United Nations officials have been very bluntly outspoken about the nature of the war that Israel is waging.

But, when it comes to what can the United Nations actually do, it's become more clear during these past four months, than I think ever in history, that the United States governs over a system where it alone decides who the bad guys are in the world, where it alone will decide whether bombs are dropped or cease to be falling. And you have this dance that plays out where nations of the world make their arguments, oftentimes based on legal precedent and the precedent of international law in the United Nations, as to why Israel must cease its operations against Gaza.

And, on the other side, you have the United States treating it as basically just a discussion society that the U.S. is forced to sit through. And then, at the end of the day, whoever happens to be sitting in the chair of the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. vetoes what the vast majority of nations and people of the world have made clear that they believe is a just course.

I want you to talk, though, about the role of the United Nations in everything that we're witnessing, and the message that is sent when, at the end of the day, the Secretary General of the U.N. can basically be begging for an end to this war, and yet the United States says, no, no, no, it doesn't work that way. It works this way. We say when things end, we say when the burning fire is put out.

ME: Actually, this is really interesting, Jeremy, because when I first learned about the Hague Act, that was actually from you, during the times when you wrote Drone Wars, and it just blew my mind that there was a law which said that if the United States is ever taken to the ICC that it could invade The Hague, and the diplomatic spat that happened afterwards.

I think what's more worrying is, for the longest time we've already known, and I think it's clear to everybody now, that international law is a tool that's wielded by the powerful, [the] former colonizing countries, and also the new empires of the world. But I think what's more terrifying is that now we almost feel like we also have to be on the defensive [to] the U.N.

Because after decolonization happened, there was a moment of hope that the U.N. General Assembly could be this place, one person, one vote. And you have, all of a sudden, for the first time in the world it's not just a few countries - Spain, France, Britain, and the United States, etc. - who are deciding the agenda on the world stage, but it's the entire world. And there were even hopes, when there was a proposal by Algeria in the early 1970s for a new international economic order, for the U.N. General Assembly to kind of be a legislative body of a world republic, for example.

Of course, that didn't happen, and the Security Council system happened instead, and that was a way in which the hegemony of the United States came into full gear. And then, of course, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has been virtually unchallenged when it comes to these kinds of things.

And so, right now, the best way to look at the U.N. is to see it as both an extension of Western power ... For example, we're talking about debt, global debt. The ability to forgive global debt would be so easy if the United States said [something], but it doesn't. When it comes to all sorts of things related to, for example, dealing with the biggest threat to the entire species right now - which is the life-supporting systems of our planet, which is climate change, and facilitation of loss and damages, and all of that stuff - obviously, the U.N. is an obstacle.

At the same time, the U.N.'s humanitarian organizations are the last lifeline for people in Gaza, for example, right now: UNRWA. And what we're actually seeing, which is even regardless of the fact that the United States and Western countries profess and claim to be standing for the rules-based order, we're seeing that the biggest assault against that rules-based order is being waged by the West.

It's no small thing right now, the pulling out of funding of UNRWA. It's no small thing that the heads of states of Western powers ... And it's even divided the West. I haven't seen something like this in a long time, where you have, for example, Norway and Ireland and Spain saying that it's a bad idea, what are we doing? Like, it's to that level.

And so, all of a sudden, for the first time, I'm even finding myself in a position where, on the one side, the U.N. legitimates and, like you said, it becomes a discussion room for all these countries. On the other side, I feel that the only groups of people - and this is one of the things that it's been a surprising turn - the only people who are defending the idea that there should be international norms and rules, and that you shouldn't be openly attacking the only thing that represents that aspiration, seems to be the Global South, you know?

And, whereas the biggest group to kind of attack the U.N. as biased... Israel is openly, openly hostile towards the United Nations, but the way in which people have fallen in line after this investigation on the... And not even an investigation; after the claims of the Israeli government on the UNRWA staff being involved in Hamas attack. And that's been really, really horrifying to watch.

JS: And you also had Israel first saying that 12 UNRWA staffers were involved in some capacity directly in the attacks of October 7th. And then you had Israel giving its so-called dossier to a number of news organizations, and the first news organization to do a significant report about this was the Wall Street Journal, and they sort of elevated it even higher, and said that a full 10 percent of the local staff - UNRWA is a 30,000-employee organization, 12,000 or so of its employees are Gaza-based - and so, the Wall Street Journal does this big story where they say, ah, it's not just 12 bad apples it's that 10 percent of the organization is in some way linked to Hamas. Which, in and of itself, is a risible thing to say, because Hamas is the governing authority in Gaza, and simply saying that someone is linked to Hamas without defining it means absolutely nothing.

But also, you had Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, saying publicly that the United States had not even done its own investigation into the veracity of the claims before very publicly vowing to suspend its funding to UNRWA, which then created a domino effect, and you had, then, other powerful wealthy nations say, we're going to do the same thing.

But then, you had the Financial Times, and Sky News, and some other media outlets, also review this dossier - and these are not exactly leftist publications - but they said that what Israel is alleging is not substantiated, even in the documents that Israel is providing. And now, you have a walk back where they appear to be saying, Oh, well, four members of UNRWA were involved in some capacity in the events of October 7th."

So, this is just the latest episode in Israel's campaign to bombard the marketplace of ideas with propaganda, with lies, with disinformation, misinformation. And, time and time again, we have seen the United States in particular not just repeat Israel's allegations, but often say, we actually have other intelligence to indicate that this is true. They did that with al-Shifa hospital, for example.

But, on this issue, I also wanted to transfer to asking you about the way that armed resistance is talked about, partially in this conflict, but in general, when you're talking about people who are facing down against oppression from either powerful nations or allies of powerful nations, as in the case of Israel. Now, we can talk specifically about the events of October 7th, and I think that we should separate the attacks that Hamas launched against military facilities.

I mean, Hamas has its own narrative, and it published its multipage defense of its actions. And it stated that its intent was to go after military targets, and they have their own definition of who's a civilian and who's not, that we don't need to get into. It's clear that there were war crimes committed by Hamas on October 7th. I don't think anyone reasonable could deny that. You don't kidnap children, you don't kidnap elderly people, you don't shoot unarmed people who are trying to surrender. This isn't a political thing I'm saying, it's a legal thing. These are war crimes.

At the same time, the overarching narrative about Palestinians in general - and we've seen it in a very acute way here - is that they are not allowed to have any form of resistance that Israel does not permit. And even when they've demonstrated nonviolently, they've been gunned down. But this notion that is being drilled into the public mind, that the mere notion that Palestinians would take up arms against what the United Nations continues to maintain is an occupation - not just in the West Bank, but in Gaza as well - is rooted in a very long history of criminalizing all forms of unsanctioned defense of populations that are the victims of colonialism; or, in this case, violent settler colonialism and an apartheid state.

ME: Yeah, that's entirely correct, and that's actually something that a lot of third-world countries in the 20th century tried to push for, to be recognized in international law. And, actually, the right to armed resistance against colonial occupation is a right that is actually protected under international law; many people don't know that.

But I think one of the things that makes this so much more complicated is that we now live also in an era of the war on terror. And one of the key ideas is that, because of the fact that so many countries went through these phases of national liberation - which may be some of the last key national liberation movements in the early 1990s, but generally the majority of it being the 70s and the 60s, whether we're talking about Algeria, talking about Mozambique, etc. - a lot of attempts to try to resist colonial occupations, which continue to exist today, are easily branded as terrorism.

And one of the reasons for that is because there's a template, which the United States has set, which equates resistance with terrorism, and which then plays into the geopolitical interests of that country. There's all sorts of discourses and ideas, in the media, in movies, on TV, television shows, which makes it very difficult today for any group to be legible as being a group that's legitimately fighting for its national liberation.

One of the things that the United States is very known for is that it is a country which sees its own war of independence as a canonical event in its history in order to have existed. And there was a really interesting conversation that Huey Newton had, I think, with William Buckley, where the first thing [is], Huey Newton catches William Buckley off guard, and he says, you know, would have you joined the revolutionary war? And William Buckley didn't know how to respond, and he waffled a bit.

And that's the thing. It's like, if you're going to condemn a country's ability to come out of a war, or an armed resistance, or an armed struggle, then the United States must condemn itself. And it does, it does, and it regularly does, because it's kind of like, we got here first, and closed the door behind us.

And that's kind of how Palestinian... But the thing is, is that we saw through the Oslo Accords. There was an attempt to go through the peaceful route, and the Oslo Accords ended up just providing a rubber stamp to the Palestinian Authority working with the Israelis as kind of like a proxy force for the occupation.

We saw just last year, when there [were] the peaceful marches and people were just getting sniped, one after the other. They tried the peaceful march approach, they tried the international law approach, they tried through the ICC. And then, of course, they've also tried, and there's been a history of trying armed resistance.

But I think this kind of ties in again with the UNRWA defunding. In this sense, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what they try because, at the end of the day, Israel civil society, very unfortunate for me to say, basically, the narrative is that Palestinian people, especially the people in Gaza, are, to use the language that has been popularized as of late, the civil wing of Hamas, actually, they are Hamas. They hide Hamas in their doors, in their homes. They sympathize with Hamas secretly. They're raising their kids to become Hamas. And so, it's fair game.

Yeah, it's fair game to deprive them of their rights, to deprive them of humanitarian assistance. Because, as far as the people who wrote that dossier are concerned, this is a formality for them. It doesn't matter. There's no need to prove UNRWA is Hamas; UNRWA is Hamas for the fact that it employs Palestinian people.

Obviously, this attack against UNRWA has .... We saw it. We saw it in the Trump administration. It's not new, you know? What's worse is that, effectively, because of what we talked about, about the flaws of the U.N. system, the way that the ICJ report was written - and this was the argument that South Africa made - it was written in such a way where the only way in which you could bring in humanitarian assistance to the people, which was one of the demands of the court, is for a ceasefire.

How Israel responded to that, the response was quite simply that, we will outsource the potential genocide which we're engaging in Gaza to our allies. And the allies, they joined in. And so, what ends up happening now is that those war crimes are being outsourced using the same discourses, which prevent Palestinians from even resisting. Which is basically that they deserve it. They deserve to not have aid, they're complicit in the attack. And if you do it, it's more like, they did it, not us. That's their crime, not mine.

I think that that's really what is at the heart of all of this.

JS: How has the war against Gaza been received in other countries that have been subjected to violent colonialism or apartheid? Maybe you can walk through a couple of notable examples.

ME: I think the best example, obviously, is South Africa, because I think South Africa, Namibia [much] of the entire world was just colonized, basically. Again, it's this opportunity to confront the West with the hypocrisy, but also, it really is about seeing the higher ideals that are actually a positive contribution of the West, for example, to the world. The ideals of human rights, the ideals of human liberty, and to confront that head on with a system which desecrates that. And Israel is a perfect opportunity for this.

I was watching COP28, and I saw all of the heads of states, and a huge amount of them condemned what was going on in Gaza in the first international meeting after the attack. And so, you saw [that] it was very clear. And you saw Gustavo Petro in Colombia, who has been very outspoken, and has even suggested that South Africa be given the Nobel Peace Prize. But you also saw Chile, which has a huge population of the Palestinian diaspora, the biggest outside of the Middle East. You saw Honduras. In general, it became a rallying cry for a host of other issues, because a lot of these countries were also fighting for loss and damages on climate reparations.

Basically, what Israel has done to Gaza has had reverberations, basically, on the multilateral level of a division that's happened since maybe the Bandung Conference, which is basically that you have a lot of these formerly colonized countries, third-world countries, saying that they're not interested in being pawns of a cold war, and that they're nonaligned, and that what they want is a complete redrawing of the architecture of the global economy, and the global systems of international law. And that's why it has been an event which has brought people back together, and reignited that spirit, and I think that that's why it's not just about what's going on in Gaza.

Gustavo Petro made the connection. For example, he said that Gaza is kind of like the future, and that in a world where the vast majority of the world's population is becoming redundant, and we are not prepared to tackle the risk of climate-induced disaster, there will be more Gazas. And that Europe will respond - this is what he said - to these waves of migration, etc., with the same doctrine of extermination which it is imposing on Gaza.

And so, in many ways, it's not just about the legacies of colonialism and existing colonialism, but it's about trying to create the new order, a new international order where everybody is seen as equal, and trying to use this as an opportunity to not just defend Gaza, but to defend the idea that every state and every person is equal, and that there are no hierarchies of who deserves justice and who doesn't. And to push back against the idea that the only people who should face justice are those who are geopolitically convenient to the United States.

JS: Just to clarify for people that might not be familiar with that history, when you mentioned the Bandung Conference of 1955, it was one of the most important early meetings of what would become known as the Non-aligned Movement. Yugoslavia was part of it, India was part of it, Egypt was part of it, Kwame Nkrumah and other revolutionary leaders were part of it. And the notion was that most of the world's people in what is now referred to as the Global South should not cast their lot with either the United States or the Soviet Union in an exclusive manner. Instead, they should develop a third way of functioning in international relations where you didn't become either a puppet for or a slave to either of these dominant spheres of influence that emerged in the aftermath of World War II.

But, speaking of colonialism, I wanted to ask you about Britain and its position on Palestine, and how the British government has proceeded over these past four months. Because it's not just the governing right-wing conservative government in Britain, but also the leader of the so-called Opposition Labour in Britain, and his full-throttled support for Israel.

Talk a bit about how this war has played out on a domestic level in the U.K..

ME: So, on the one side in the U.K., it's been a moment of radicalization for a lot of youth; and I say that in a positive sense of the word, radicalization in the sense that people are now understanding that there's a root cause problem in the way that the world order is structured, and they're ready to fight for what's right, and to fight for legitimate humanist ideals. On the other side, there's been a huge disenfranchisement, especially of Muslim communities.

There was just a poll that was released yesterday, which showed a dramatic drop in support for the Labour Party since Keir Starmer publicly said that he thought that cutting off water, food, and electricity to the people of Gaza is Israel's right. And the Labour Party tries to resolve its bad rep now with progressives and with a lot of Muslims by claiming that it supports a Palestinian state, but this is obviously a ruse. Because the illegal settlements continue to expand, the siege is never lifted on Gaza, but we support the idea of a Palestinian state. But then, when the Palestinian authority tries to lobby for one in the international sphere, they'll support [vetoing] it, or they'll abstain. Things like that. People are not buying it, right?

But there was one story which I found really horrific. There was a man who had lost lots of his family members in Gaza. He'd met Angela Rayner, who's a key figure in the Labour Party opposition, and he protested against her. And then, I think there was an interview with Sky News or something with Angela Rayner, and they asked, how do you feel? You know, did it remind you of the time when ... There was another politician called Joe Cox who was killed by a far-right person? Did it remind you of that? And she made herself out to be as if she's the victim of, again, the same tropes, you know: this brute Palestinian man.

And I think one of the things that I've also been really surprised with, and it's one of those things, again, it's part of the same episode, principle, dynamics. There's been this interesting thing about the criminalization of the Palestinian flag; it's something that's happening in Germany as well. And in the U.K. we have this non-binding definition by the IHRA of antisemitism, which says that attacking the state of Israel is a form of antisemitism, etc. And one of the things, also, is denying the right for Israel to exist.

But, for Palestinians, denying the right, the existence of a Palestinian people, is something which is socially acceptable and even encouraged. One of the things that's really interesting is that people say that waving a Palestinian flag is a provocation against Jews. And I think that that's very telling, in the sense that the existence of a flag, [which] symbolizes a peoplehood, it symbolizes the existence of a nation, the existence of a people, and to say that waving their flag is a provocation means that the existence of those very people is seen as a provocation.

And that should show you, more generally, that the existence of the Palestinian people is seen as an inconvenience, and that's why it's become morally and socially acceptable to speak of them, to speak of ethnic cleansing as a solution to the Gaza question, you know? I mean, that's kind of how they see it, that this is perfectly acceptable.

And so, there's this huge distance, and I think this is something you could probably relate to in the United States, between the commentariat, between the press, and the people who are on their social media, on Twitter, etc., and they're seeing this potential genocide being livestreamed on their phones. It's a livestreamed genocide.

And the Labour Party is just completely out of touch. I am someone who has been committed to the Labour Party. I'm not going to vote for the Labour Party in the next general election, and I think there are many people who feel the same. Because, if this is not a red line, then what is?

I think that this is a turning point for a lot of people, in the sense that the status quo in Palestine is being rejected and renounced. And if, in just a year, with all of the normalization agreements that were happening between Israel and the countries around it ... I mean, the fact that we passed the threshold where people said that Gaza would be an unlivable place by 2020, it almost felt hopeless.

But I think one of the bright things about this, regardless of the awful position of the Labour Party, one of the really great things that's come out of this is the fact that people are now demanding an end to that status quo. And I'm seeing that at least among young people here in Britain, and I think that also kind of contributes to why someone like Nikki Haley is saying that every 15 minutes someone spends on TikTok, they become antisemitic, or something silly like that.

JS: As we wrap up, I wanted to ask you about the movement for decolonization.

Now, of course, part of your work is dealing with resurrecting stories from history and making them current, but also addressing current manifestations of colonialism. Talk for a moment, as we wrap up, about your work on decolonization.

ME: Yeah. I'm part of a project called Decolonial Centre, which is a project of the Pluto Educational Trust here in the U.K. We started this project, and we have a team that's across the world, with some members in Brazil and Sudan.

In general, the main idea is that colonialism never came to an end, and that coloniality or the legacies of colonialism continue to inform present-day politics. There are some countries which are still under colonial occupation; Palestine being one, but there's a lot of other places, like Western Sahara, Puerto Rico, Hawai'i, etc. There's many, [as] colonialism still exists.

And so, what we need to do is, we're a political education outfit which tries to inform people about not just about colonialism - I think there's been great work already that's been done lately on colonialism - but, more importantly, on traditions of anticolonialism, and traditions of decolonization. And what we're trying to do, ultimately, is to inspire people to coalesce.

We don't claim to lead any decolonial movement, but we know that there are already movements working on decolonization in various ways. And what we want to do is we want to produce a space for them, as a forum for debate, for discussion, and to reignite that same spirit of Bandung, which you talked about, Jeremy.

Let's see where it goes. Right now we're going to launch our newscast soon, we've got a mini encyclopedia where people can learn about colonialism, and we've also got those videos which you're talking about.

So, we'll see where it goes, but I just want to take this opportunity to really thank The Intercept for being one of the few places and spaces to tell the truth. And there are consequences for telling the truth, there are lots of consequences, but that's the duty that a journalist makes. And so, I just wanted to thank The Intercept for constantly telling the truth.

JS: Well, thank you as well, Mohamed Elnaiem. We really appreciate you being with us here on Intercepted. We'll make sure to put links up to your organization and your work. Thanks so much for being with us on the show.

ME: Thank you.

JS: That was Mohamed Elnaiem, the Director of the Decolonial Centre.

You can find them at decolonialcentre.org. That's centre," spelled the British way: C-E-N-T-R-E, decolonialcentre.org.

And that does it for this episode of Intercepted.

Intercepted is a production of The Intercept. Jose Olivares is the lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. Roger Hodge is Editor-in-Chief of The Intercept. Rick Kwan mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow and Elizabeth Sanchez. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music, as always, was composed by DJ Spooky.

If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the size, makes a real difference. And, if you haven't already, please subscribe to Intercepted, and do leave us a rating or a review wherever you find our podcasts. It helps other people to find us as well.

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Thank you so much for joining us. Until next time, I'm Jeremy Scahill.

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