John Maersheimer: [09.00] the idea that Hamas or Hezbollah represent an existential threat to Israel is not a serious argument. Just take Hamas, for instance. There’s no way Hamas could capture for any sustained period of time territory inside Israel. Much less threaten its survival. With regard to the fact that Hamas is interested in launching terrorist attacks against Israel: [09.35] from Hamas’s point of view this makes perfect sense because the Palestinians are basically enclosed in a giant open air prison. And what they’re trying to do is in effect break out of that open air prison. And one of the ways they do that is through terrorist attacks at Israel and this of course is what happened on October 7th. [09.52] It’s not like October 7th happened in a vacuum. It’s not like the Palestinians in Gaza were a bunch of «Nazis» who were just simply interested in crossing the border into Israel and murdering large numbers of Jews. The Palestinians were basically prisoners in this giant open air prison and what they were trying to do was get out of that situation. And one can hardly blame them.” (“«Israel Does Not Give a DAMN!» John Mearsheimer On Middle East War & Trump”, Piers Morgan Uncensored, 24 september 2024, Timecode 09.00-10.20:
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John J. Maersheimer is een gewezen luchtmachtofficier van de VS en vooraanstaand expert in politicologie en internationale betrekkingen (o.a. Universiteit van Chicago). Hij was reeds lang bekend vooral van het boek dat hij in 2007 samen met Stephen M. Walt heeft geschreven, getiteld “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”., maar is het afgelopen jaar door talloze (online) journalisten geïnterviewd over de genocide die momenteel door de Israeli wordt gepleegd. (Zie op TC 7.28 van voornoemd YouTube video voor zijn verklaring van geldigheid van het gebruik van die term, toch ook maar hier in voetnoot even geciteerd in transcriptie).
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Noot: “If you look at what they’re doing in Gaza it’s clear to me that it’s a genocide. That they are actually trying to murder huge numbers of Palestinians and effectively drive the Palestinians out of Gaza. This is a clear case of a state Israel pursuing ethnic cleansing in Gaza. They want to drive the Palestinians out. They want to make Gaza unlivable and in the process they are murdering huge numbers of civilians. And this is why the International Court of Justice ruled this past January that there is sufficient evidence to make the case that the Israelis are plausibly committing genocide in Gaza.” (ibidem, TC 07.20-08.12)