 Hello, and welcome to another crucial live discussion by DM25, featuring radical ideas you won't hear anywhere else. Our world is at a critical juncture where human rights, peace, and justice are being put to the test not only in Palestine and Israel, where all eyes have understandably been for the past few days, but globally. For over five decades, the Palestinian population has endured an occupation that leading human rights groups characterized as nothing short of a apartheid, a crime against humanity. Leaving under these conditions to present a bleak choice between silent suffering and active resistance. In the past few days, we've witnessed unprecedented scenes. Hamas, the organization governing the Gaza Strip, launched attacks well inside Israeli territory, marking a critical turn in an already fraught situation. The devastating loss of life, including hundreds of civilians, calls for an immediate and urgent dialogue. Tonight, we ask the pressing questions. How can we halt the dreadful loss of innocent lives on all sides? What actions could exacerbate the situation, especially considering the warring statements by the far-right government in Israel and their indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian homes? And how does this conflict intersect with other global crises such as the ongoing war in Ukraine? To discuss this and more, we're joined by our brilliant panel of activists and thinkers. And we invite you, of course, to join us in this vital conversation by leaving your questions and comments in our chats as usual. Let's dive into it. Yanis. Thank you. Thanks, Lukas. We are talking about yet another example of humanity's capacity to dive into moral voids and into a basis of inhumanity. Just when we thought we had done our West, we surprised ourselves with a capacity to do even worse. The emphasis here must be on the word we. It is very natural. I'm not going to take partisan sides here. It's very natural when we have vicious conflicts, like the one in Israel-Palestine, for us to have a natural tendency to take sides. But the scale, the breadth, and the long-lasting nature of this tragedy has been going on for decades. Decades should concentrate our minds, and we should start talking about our collective responsibility for what is going on. Now, some of you may have heard that recently, when I was in Berlin, with some of you, in an interview, I refused to condemn Hamas. And as you can imagine, quite naturally, that stirred up just a torrent of criticism of abuse. There is no doubt that if I were one of those visitors in the music festival near the fence separating Gaza from Israel, by the way, it's not a border. Let's not make this mistake. It's not a border. It is a fence. It's not an international border. And the people who've been living on the other side, the Palestinians, were not always living there. They were living on this side until they were expelled from their homes to be living in that patch of land called Gaza. I close the parenthesis here. Nevertheless, if I were, we were some of us in one of those music festivals, one of which was dedicated to peace. And the Gaza militants arrived. I have no doubt they would have gunned me down. There's no doubt that they would have even, maybe, taken me hostage. Those scenes are atrocious. There can be no justification. And there can be no, absolutely no way of presenting it as justified. But I am not going to condemn the Hamas assault on Israel. Those who want me and you and others to condemn Hamas killing Spree are insisted that we, for whom every loss of a human being, every severed limb, every blinded eye, every broken finger is a tragedy for which we consider even ourselves to be responsible. They want us, effectively, to take the side of the state of Israel. That I shall never do, speaking for myself. And who exactly are they who are demanding of us to condemn Hamas? Let's be clear. These are the same people who look the other way. When Israel, Israeli army soldiers, kill unarmed journalists. They kill nurses, doctors, children. There's the people who remember international law, remember the United Nations and its charter. They remember the Geneva Convention on War Crimes only when the victims are Israeli. Somehow, it escapes their mind. All these things, we went charter, international law, Geneva Convention, it escapes from their mind when it's Palestinians. The people who are actually insisting that we shouldn't condemn Hamas are the very people who are outraged that women and children are victims and hostages. Well, I am outraged, but are they outraged that for years, women and children are kept in Israeli prisons? Where was their outrage about them? They are the same people who support. And maybe the press, they will not say that they're supported, but at least they tolerate. They tolerate the ritual humiliation to which West Bank Palestinians are treated every day, every night of their lives by an apartheid regime much, much worse than anything that the boys introduced to South Africa. And that is not something I say as a supporter of Palestine. This is admitted to by Tamir Pardo. Tamir Pardo is Mossad's former director by Abraham Berg, a former speaker of the Israeli parliament by Benny Morris, an Israeli historian, and more than 2,000 Israeli public figures, some of them of US citizenship, who signed the public statement declaring that Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid. The people who were insisting that we should condemn Hamas or the ones who turn a blind eye every single time murderous settlers are on page in Palestinian-occupied territories killing Palestinians at will. They are the same people who whistle in the wind while Israel's authorities illegally evict Palestinians from their East Jerusalem neighborhoods. Now these people have lived there for generations. They throw them out, evict them, and they hand over their homes to people who had just arrived for the first time in Israel on the basis of the right of the return for Jews, but not Palestinians. They're the same people who accept uncritically just now. Israel's declaration of war against Gaza, which by the way is not a state. They were never allowed to have a state. So it's a declaration of war not against the state, but against unoccupied people, whom the same army has been terrorizing and starving for decades. The same state which they announced that they will condemn one million children, because that's how many kids there are in Gaza, to life without electricity, without food, without water, constantly being bombarded. These same people who demand that we condemn Hamas they think that is okay, that this is a legitimate action by the Israeli apartheid enforcers. Yes, comrades, friends, ladies and gentlemen, who might be watching this, these same people who demand the past condemn Hamas, demand that the Gaza Palestinians lay down their arms and that they return quietly back into the world's largest open air prison. To do what? To return to Gaza, to lead what? A life? You can't live in Gaza. Life in Gaza is impossible. What you can do is you can vegetate. You can exist somehow in Gaza. That was before this turn of the never ending tragedy of the Palestinians in Gaza. So effectively they want them to lay down their arms, stop causing trouble and to die slowly under siege, surrounded by an armed clad army that for decades has been starving them and they shoot at them like fish in a barrel. They practice their different weaponry. They try it out on them. I've been doing this for decades. No, we shall not be condemning Hamas even though we consider what they've done to be atrocious. Even though I have no doubt that if I were in Gaza, I would probably be on the hit list as an atheist, as a feminist, as an opponent of fundamentalism as a great supporter of the Jewish people's long, long struggle against anti-Semitism. I think I would be one of Hamas's targets but I'm not going to be condemning Hamas. Just like I would not condemn Ukrainians or Yemenis or Syrians who fight back when their homes are invaded by British armies, even if I disagree with them on many things, even if in the process of defending their lives, the territories, their villages, their neighborhoods, they do terrible things. So let's be abundantly clear on this. Nothing justifies deliberate killings, rapes, maiming, especially of noncombatants. Every loss of a human being, I'll repeat what I said before, every severed limb, even a small finger, tiny little finger, this little finger, being severed or being broken is a tragedy. And in this case, we Europeans and Americans who have been watching our respective governments support is this construction of the circumstances that inexorably lead to these crimes, I think above all else, the grand crime of apartheid, we must consider ourselves. I consider myself to be responsible. I've done everything I could to support the Palestinian cause for decades. I've clearly not done that. So let's be properly responsible, shall we? Let's embrace our responsibility to the Jews, to the Bedouins, to the Palestinians, to the Christians, the Muslims who live on that land. What does that mean? What does it mean today, especially at this junction to take our responsibility seriously? Does it mean parroting yet another condemnation of Hamas like that of our governments here in Europe? We did not even slap the wrist of the hand that has been strangling the Palestinian nation, thus bringing it to the brink of despair. Some say to me, but Yanis with guns and with bombs, there will be no solution. Remember Yasser Arafat who laid down his guns? Remember the PLO authorities that signed the Oslo treaties hoping for a peace process? How did Israel treat them? Well, we know how they treated Arafat. We know how they humiliated Fatah, the Palestinian authority. We know that some of us have long memories. Effectively, they created Hamas, the Israeli state, when in the early 1970s, read Ilan Pappe's fantastic book on this, on how Hamas in Gaza was to a very large extent sponsored by an Israeli state trying to create an antagonist to the PLO and to Yasser Arafat in particular personally. So let's not have any of this. The Israeli apartheid state is determined to crush those who lay down their arms and it is determined to crush those who do not lay down their arms. The apartheid state of Israel is all about fencing off, caging the Palestinians until either they die a slow death or they migrate. It's pure ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid. I close the bracket, the parenthesis. And I finish by reminding those who do not know, the DM25, well, we've tried to respond to the question, what does it mean to be properly responsible in face of this tragedy? By means of a declaration, it started in Athens in May of 2021 with the Athens Declaration in the response to Ukraine. Now we have a declaration updated and I just read it out for you and then I will stop. The declaration which came out yesterday reads as follows. The wars in and around Gaza, as well as in Ukraine cannot be resolved militarily. There can be no military victory that will not spawn more war crimes, more suffering, more injustices against the weakest, the poorest and therefore more wars. The governments of the world's leading powers, the United States of America, China and the European Union, those governments are failing in their duty to set up a parallel peace process under the auspices of the United Nations for a just resolution of both wars. DM25 and our political parties called Mera25, extending our Athens Declaration, call upon the world's progressives to demand of our governments that this parallel peace process begins today with a cessation of hostilities as its first step. Any excuse to delay it constitutes a monumental service to the normalization of war crimes and the instrumentalization of inhumanity which generates new hordes of refugees. Hearing the European Commission, the government of the United States, the governments of the members of the European Union, hearing them effectively indoors in advance, a major assault on Gaza by the Israeli forces that have been terrorizing the people of Gaza for 25, 26, 30, 40 years now, brings us to the brink of despair. What is the end game? If the end game is to exterminate the people of Palestine, there is a logic to it, a cruel final solution logic. But if the end game is to end apartheid, that cannot happen by projecting the flag of Israel on the buildings of our governments. Thank you. Thank you, Yanis. You did joining us from Berlin. Thank you, Lukas, and thank you, Yanis, for the introduction. You actually made a lot of the points that I was also going to stress. My main concern is, well, I don't have the knowledge of the people on the ground, so what I see is the online reaction that really concerns me, that there are so many people who are very eager to condemn one side or the other, condemn them for killing innocents and committing war crimes, but always just condemning one. So a lot of people take Israel side. I think that's the majority, the vast majority. And then they say, okay, what Hamas did is horrible. So now we need to turn Gaza into a parking lot. Or they say apartheid is horrible, so now let's kill all Israelis. And that is just, it despairs me to see this. It feels like 90% of commenters online take one or the other position. And that despairs me because it is not an ethical stance that you can defend in any way, no matter whether you derive your ethics from Aristotle or from Kant. You can't say that targeting innocents is an atrocious crime when one side does it, but it's okay if the other side does it or that the other side should be doing it, like these people are saying. And this is, I believe that this is a major reason why the conflicts are so hard to resolve. Because when you hear someone make excuses for war crimes against your side, of course you hate them and you think they lack all moral feeling. So how are you two supposed to build trust based on that? We have to avoid this trap. It's very easy to fall into, but we have to agree that nobody has the right to target innocents. Only on that basis can we build a broad humanist coalition of Jews and Arabs and everyone else that will work together against all those in Israel and in Gaza who want to kill innocents. Thank you very much, Judith. Couple of questions from the chat. Renato Pereira says, I understand the need not to be needlessly partisan, but is the violence of the oppressed the same as the violence of the oppressive colonizers? And whatever asks, how can Palestine ever be realistically liberated if the American empire thanks, it needs it for geopolitical interests? Amir, Amir Kiayi joining us from The Hague. Thank you, Lukas. We see that this events of the past few days, the tragic events, the constant bombardments, the cutting off of food, water, electricity, complete embargo, complete blockade of Gaza, the images that's circulating in social media. All of this has had, unfortunately, in a sense, we can see how it's taken the pressure of Netanyahu. He is now creating a war cabinet in the midst of his corruption trial, et cetera. So that's probably gonna be put aside for a while. And we, the protests against the judicial reform and so on is probably being suspended, et cetera. So this is definitely light and the tunnel we can see for him and for the policies that he is supporting. So the case in point being one of his finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, he came up with a plan called the One Hope Plan. And there's a very interesting view of where the Israel wants to go, assuming that it continues on this path of, what else can we call it, but the fascism and settler colonialism, et cetera, as we know. So this plan broadly entails, and we saw this when Netanyahu presented the map of the new Middle East at the United Nations a few weeks ago, full Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, as they mentioned. And then leaving the Palestinians broadly with three options, one option being staying under what's called the living management in the state of Israel. And those that don't agree will be expelled by force or given financial aid to leave anywhere in the world. And whoever remains there will be treated as legitimate targets for murder, for death. And this is the direction that the path that we see is being set. And we already see this ongoing now in Bezalel, where Yanis mentioned of the population is our children and the bombing is indiscriminate. So this is where we are at the moment. Now we need to, we'll probably talk about this in a lit on tonight, but our own responsibility is of course to, as DM25 members is to promote and to share our committee developed plan for Palestine. And we've talked about this before in terms of how we've come to the realization and solution of a single democratic state on the land of historic Palestine with equal rights for everybody. Anything that's deviating from that or the powers that be going with the final solution option, unfortunately, will lead to mass murder, as we know, as well as trigger a wider possibly conflict in the region because we can also see the drums of war being beaten up against Iran and lots of headlines about Iran being behind Hamas, et cetera. And oftentimes there's a lot of pressure as well on Biden because of this alleged support, et cetera. So we have to really be aware of the situation is becoming a bit of a major public effort which it was even bigger than that now. And we have to be careful and hope that's the actors in the region. Remain cool and calm and don't enter into the war. Thank you Amir. And we'll leave a link to the DM25's one state proposal for Palestine in the chat. So if you're not familiar with that, you can take a look at it. Federico, Federico Docher joining us from Turin. Yeah, I'd be quick because even though this conflict has been there for decades and was never over, we cannot ignore the timing of what is happening and we are clearly facing escalation of many war scenario like the Serbian border with Kosovo, the Armenus-Bakistan and other set places all over the world. This happens when major superpowers are involved in never ending and atrocious and tiring wars that keep them otherwise occupied. My opinion when one country stands as a guarantee or the world call Eastman when it is under military effort other scenarios are reignited because they lose restraint. That's why we need a multi-polar balance in the world. That's why we need it, we need it now. Now we're here in the West, we live in a toxic media environment and at least here in Italy. But I'm reading similar tropes in all of Europe and the United States. Now media pandits can hardly tell one act of violence from another but choose to define what is common day by day routine from unacceptable atrocities depending on the actor who commits them. Usually in this case, the hypocrites demand condemnation from us from the people who hopes for peace, from the people who hopes for expecting human rights in order to give them a patent, sort of a patent to participate in a public debate. And I just like to turn the table on this one. I personally would not want to hear a single word on the matter from people who stayed silent during all the other days of every year where the tortures, the killing, and the apartheid were enforced. The Western government stayed silent while all of this happened. I think they must now take responsibility or history will do it for them. Thank you, Fad. A couple of quick notes before we move on. Couple of appeals really first and foremost and much more importantly, we urge you to support the victims in Gaza in this moment, the current victims and the unfortunately upcoming victims as a result of the Israeli attacks and the siege. Gaza has been blockaded for a very long time but it's not also in the siege. We'll leave a link in the chat for you to do that. And then also if you like what you're hearing from us at the M25, which as you, I'm sure you've noticed is very different from what you hear from our European political leaders and foreign mainstream media. There's one reason that we're able to stay so independent and so courageous in what we say, which is that we are independent financially as well. We're completely funded by people like you and small donations, small amount at a time. So we also ask that if you like what you hear, if you like this voice, if you want to make it louder, join the M25, the link is dm25.org slash join and also donate to help supports the M25's work with a link that is pinned to our chat. Daphne, Daphne Dalcada joining us from France. Hell, I'll be extremely brief. I don't know if my connection will hold but I think lots have been already been said so well by others. I just want to say that it's really typical. I mean, I think when we will look past, historians will look past. These decades have been such decades of hubris and like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just such a great example of that. I don't want to really vote Kennedy right now but those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable. And this is just like so emblematic of the moment and so hard not to notice that. And it's so frustrating that despite all the voices that have been going on so long and all the efforts that been so often and great expense of the people that been advocating for Palestinian rights to their own selves. It's just been hitting a brick wall and it's very devastating that we are here today and discussing this. But at the same time, there's an inevitability. There's a sterility in this politics of our days of this politics that are of hubris on democratic and cruelty as like a catalyst for everything. So that's just it for me. Thanks. Thank you Daphne. Eric. Eric, joining us from Brussels. Thanks, Lucas. Hi everybody. One of the surprising facts I came across these days as my sort of for you page has been flooded with information about the Israel-Palestine conflict is about all the things that are banned by Israel for importing to Gaza. Famously Israel controls everything that goes into Gaza, including water, electricity and food and you'd expect things to be banned such as, I don't know, gunpowder or material you'd need to create bombs. You know, some of the things that are banned, ginger, sage, potato crisps, these things are banned for importing to Gaza by Israel. This is for no other reason than to remind Palestinians who is in charge. There's no other reason to ban potato crisps from Gaza. We need to keep these small facts in mind when we talk about this conflict, about who is in charge, who is in a position to ban potato crisps from the other side when we look at what is going on today. It isn't, the two sides are not the same. Violence is horrific no matter who it's perpetrated against, that goes without saying. But we need to keep balance and we need to maintain a view of the bigger picture. There are 2.5 million people in the Gaza Strip, the most tightly populated place on the planet and half of the 2.5 million are underaged, they're children. So keep that in mind when you hear about, you know, the Gaza war in 2014 when 2,200 people died in Gaza of which 70% were civilians. The equivalent on the other side in 2014 was something like 600 people killed of which 15% were civilians. Again, the Great March of Return, 2018, 19, one person killed in Israel, 10 wounded, 220 killed in Gaza, 9,200 wounded in Gaza, civilians. These are all fact, you know, again, 2021, you have more, I'm not gonna bombard you with the numbers, we know these numbers, we just need to remember and keep balance about what these numbers mean and to instruct with that balance our reaction to what is going on right now. And what is the bigger picture beyond Gaza? What we're seeing is a general approach by Arab nations to try and normalize their relations with Israel, right? Including under pressure from the United States, Saudi Arabia itself. And the Palestinians are seeing all the political support they were getting from their neighbors dwindle away with no reaction, of course, from the international community. The, these what we are seeing with their backs against the wall under this boycott with these humiliating rules imposed on them with their land being confiscated, with settlements, the rest of it, with these killings and injuries that I just described. They're also seeing the political support for their cause dwindle away and then people are talking about how this desperate move by Hamas is hurting their international diplomatic standing. Their diplomatic standing is already at a very critical stage and this is an attempt to try and bring the Palestinian struggle back into the forefront, back into the conversation which it has done. Again, in horrendous fashion, but it has. So we keep talking about what needs to be done, what we in Europe need to do. Well, you know, the place to start is at home. The European Union in 2014 with the Gaza War in 2018, 19 with the Great March of Return in 2021 with the unrest during all these killings that I mentioned by Israel, we didn't stop the funding, the funding, we didn't impose sanctions on Israel. And yet now within 24 hours of the attack by Hamas, we have announced we're gonna stop funding Palestine. I mean, if you don't think that is biased, if you don't think that Europe is clearly on the side of the oppressor in this struggle, then I don't know what will convince you. It's painstakingly obvious. So what we need to do first and foremost is hold our own governments accountable, make them act on our own principles, make them put their money where their mouth is, not this one-sided fashion that they've been following systematically since Israel's creation really and more and more in the last decades. And of course, we need to decouple Europe as Diem has been saying for over a year now. We need to decouple Europe from the influence of NATO in the United States of America because Israel is a clear foreign policy priority of the US. And we as an appendix of the United States foreign policy are not allowed any freedom in our own positioning on this matter. And as we've become essentially a stooge to the NATO alliance, especially since the war in Ukraine, we can forget our principle stance on the matter of Israel-Palestine. If we truly care about this, we also need to talk very seriously about non-alignment, about Europe not joining military blocks, standing for its own principles and using foreign policy as a tool for peace and not for further aggravations and for the systematic oppression of minorities as we're seeing in Palestine. I think that's a good place to start. Thank you, Eric. Couple of questions from the chat just before we move on. Boris says, a two-state solution is impossible now. That's during the Netanyahu years, hundreds of new settlements happen in the West Bank. There is no point in its fantasy. And then Tom Bottle says, you're telling me taking people's land and home by force, calling them terrorists and gathering them into an open prison isn't going to incite resistance. Maya, Maya Pellevich. Thank you all for all that you said. I mostly agree with everything. And I think you gave a very good coverage on what we can do and what we can as the M25 do. I would just maybe add a couple of points that are maybe from my position as I'm coming from Serbia, which is a country that is used to these rising conflicts that are happening all the time. And as Fed also mentioned, there was a big tension between Serbia and Kosovo recently and all of us from the Balkans were looking in a way, what other war are we going to have here in the next couple of months? And of course, with these rising tensions, we cannot not look at the media coverage that is happening during these conflicts. The media coverage in Serbia that I have been following and probably most of you have had the same experience was very much in a way similar to, as you would remember the famous piece by Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the conflict between us and them, which I think can be in a way said about most of the conflicts that we had in the recent years. And in this clash of civilizations, well, in class and ideological conflicts, the key question is which side you are on. And in the conflicts between civilizations, the question is, what are you? And as Huntington pointed, this is a given that cannot be changed. And of course, Edward Said was very much against this myth of the class of civilizations because most of this would go, and as I was seeing in most of the media coverage, we were seeing people talking about them, the Muslims, that do not want to live in the same way as us, the Christians. I don't know if you had the same experience in your media, but in our mostly even liberal media, we had the same kind of a coverage, talking about Palestinians as people that cannot live in this kind of a world, of course, calling the Western world and making the whole thing. Of course, we heard, we know historically what happened, but now because media is so powerful as it is, this kind of coverage brings us that we can see the Palestinians as the serges, as the ones that are doing all the things, of course, Hamas did, which we would always condemn. But as Yanis very nicely pointed out at the beginning of this conversation, the part of the media coverage that we did not have and that we do not have is the coverage of all the things that are happening in Gaza. And if we would look it through the prism of the myth of the clash of civilizations, we would see a lot of things that are much worse than we saw in the last couple of days. So I would not repeat all the things that all of you already said, but I would maybe point out just a couple of things that we as the M25 can maybe do and what we should stand for in this conflict. So as we condemn, of course, every kind of occupation of land like we did with Ukraine, we should always stay by the weekend occupied. Also the Palestinians deserve the rights to sell determination and the right to have their own sovereign state, but also the Israelis deserve peace and security and a government that is not racist and fascist as their government now is. And we should insist on the end of the occupation of Gaza. And in that sense, this will not only be the liberation of Palestinians, but it will also be the liberation of the Israelis that want to live in peace, which of course are the Israelis that are against the government that is happening in Israel now. That is all I want to say. Thank you very much, Maya. Noma Zulu from Germany, from Bremen in Germany. Thank you. When I saw these bombings today in Gaza, reminiscent of what I went through myself as a girl in Lusaka, Zambia, I felt difficult. I felt helpless, but helplessness is something else. Can I start? Yes, Noma, if you could switch on your camera, if that's possible. Yes, thank you. So what I wanted to say is when I saw those bombings in Gaza today, you know, the very bombings that we went through in Lusaka, you know, it brought back those experiences, you know, the trauma that we went through and believe me, my soul, my heart and soul is in Gaza because I know exactly what they are going through. And yeah, it's defeated position. This helpless position does not help, does not assist. What I can say in my means is to support that the M25 has already documented supporting the Palestinians in Gaza, only. And I can also perhaps say that, you know, Germany should remove itself away from this guilt, you know. And go out to support what is correct and right because, you know, I've spoken to Germans. They will never come out and all out condemn Israel because of their historical policy. I wish they could do so. They should be in a position to say, this is our position. This is what is right. Wendy, I will stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Norma. I will stay in Germany with Juliana and Tita. Thank you, Lukas. Yeah, a lot has been said. I don't want to repeat anything. It's like, I feel like I resonate with what Norma said, that you'll watch this and you feel helpless and you're kind of, you know, it's not great to watch human being suffering. And I go back also to what Yanis said, that this is kind of, it feels like a failure of humanity, this continuous death and destruction. But to be honest, I'm very, very pessimistic on the what we can do side. Because to be honest, if I look at both sides and I imagine like myself growing up and second generation, even third generation in Gaza, for example, I mean, my view on Israel will be a particular one. Maybe also full of hate, full of resistance to even believe that the other side could have a peaceful intention towards me. On the other hand, if I'm in Israel and I'm kind of, you know, I've read these comments a lot on the internet the last two days, the comments about Hamas and goal of dismantling Israel, of Palestinians being supported by Iran and so on and what their goal is for Israel. And so you're in Israeli and you believe that the support and help that Palestinians are getting is primarily interested in you vanishing from the face of the earth. So how do we go from there? And I mean the people in particular. Now what comes on top of that is an Israeli government and any kind of leadership that the Palestinians might have in form of the Hamas, although I do not believe they have a choice. You know, I think it's a matter of choice. And my counter argument also to saying that radical groups support the Palestinians as well, that's the only groups they have. I mean the Western world doesn't particularly engage themselves in this and they leave it kind of up to those authoritarian states to be the supporters of the Palestinians. So I will defend them in that argument strongly because I think if that's the weapons you have to defend yourself, that's what you have, right? But what I deeply ask myself when you count in all of those factors and you on top take religion into it, which is also a huge factor in this conflict. How, even with the best peace proposal in the world, how do you make a start? Who do you sit at the table? Like who, how can you even reach to the hearts of people and give them a glimpse of hope that the peace process might be something they should look out for? This is where I might be very pessimistic and I fear that in time in history this will go on as long as Palestinians are decimated to just a few who will then be one of the many nationless people walking around the earth without a land to live. I probably be gone of Gaza or West Bank or anywhere. So it's very pessimistic view but I just don't have the fantasy to see how really the best, even the best peace proposal can be put on the table and maybe some of you have the idea who can be leading these negotiations and how can we even put a first foot to turn this thing in a different way. Thank you, Juliana. Thank you. Thank you, Lucas. Trying to understand what's going on and how we can be constructive from now on. I'd like to go back to what Yanis said that Israel was instrumental in the creation of Hamas. Here we're looking at the conflict between Israel and Hamas. So what they wanted to do is they much preferred an Islamic radical opponent as opposed to the secular, more conservative PLO. I would also like to add to that that much more recently, Benjamin Netanyahu in 2019 speaking to his Likud party members actually said that if we want to thwart the establishment of the Palestinian state we should be supporting and financing Hamas and that this is our strategy. This has been reported by the Israeli newspaper Haarex. Also, there is information reported by another Israeli newspaper, Yediyyotha Horanoth, that the Egyptian Intelligence Minister contacted Netanyahu himself 10 days before Saturday when the event started, warning him that they had information that something big was being prepared by Hamas. Yet we saw a complete failure of the Israeli Defense Forces, of the Mossad to predict and to respond to this eventuality. So what emerges here is a situation whereby autocrats create, in a sense, their own enemies, create the opposition in order to manage the narrative in order to control developments. And we should see this as part of the story and as part of their strategy in order to see what we can do. By the way, Erdogan in Turkey does the same thing with the Kurds, you know, creating events, creating his own enemies in order to control the population. So in that sense, if their plan is to have, as enemies, something people that they want to portray as extremely radical terrorists, violent, et cetera, et cetera. So this tells us what we should not do. So I cannot tell you what we should do. And I understand the indignation and the anger that all of us will feel when they start, when they continue to bomb Gaza or when they make a landing person and all the deaths that this will mean. But we should definitely refrain from the most extreme manifestations caused by anger. And I'll go back to what Varoufakis and Temel Kuran touched upon in Berlin just this Saturday that our reactions, I mean, we feel anger about a lot of what is happening in the world, should not be deformed by rage and anger. We should feel anger, but our actions should be premeditated. So it's the first thing to do is to attack their plans in that way by not pulling into the strap. The second thing we can do is to get rid of the alliances. And that's exactly the point made by Eric. I think that we here in the EU should be exposing our own governments for their hypocrisy and their support, blind support for Israel, which rests on an absolutely no ethical ground. Thanks. Thank you Panos. Johannes, Johannes Fair Berlin. Thank you. I just want to add something quickly to the fact that the media plays such an important role in this because they rightfully will report on atrocities that are done on one side and very little on what's happening for the future. And I want to put your attention to something that is just very obvious in Germany is that the media plays such an important role in this because they rightfully will report very little on what's happening, for example, when the Israeli army bombs Gaza. So that is the big reason or one of the big reasons why there is that reaction that Noma has described. So one thing that we can also do next to holding our governments are responsible and struggling ourselves as 25 members and with our mayor 25 parties is to hold our media responsible. And since Joanna was a bit bleak in her outlook for this, I think yes, you can be like that and I also just want to remind everyone that we are also, when we are in Germany speaking from a country that waged a war against the whole world more than 70 years ago and now is living quite peacefully although not everything as well with German foreign policy with the direct neighbors and there is absolutely no hate left towards the French, the Polish people in Germany or almost none. And I think if you look at that, I think there can be a bit of hope that a lot of wars, conflicts can be resolved if enough people have the courage to stand for peace even though it might be hard at some times and you might even be attacked for it. Thanks. Thank you, Hannes. Janis. We are already doing what we can. Do not make a mistake of making the distinction between the kind of discussion we are having now in front of an audience and the decisive action. Words are powerful. Over the last few days, those of us who have been engaged in the media who have called out journalists who demand of us that we condemn Hamas in order, effectively, and they don't care so much about the condemnation of Hamas by demanding the condemnation of Hamas, they want us to take the side of Israel. For us to wear an Israeli flag essentially to condone in advance the flattening of Gaza, as you did said, the turning of Gaza into a parking lot hoping that the problem will go away if only that final solution is implemented. By saying no to that, we are already doing our bit. DM-25 comprises tens of thousands of people, not enough, but that's who we are. And tens of thousands of no to this legitimization is a bulwark against the demolishing of Gaza and of thinking of the demolition of Gaza as a solution, a resolution, an endgame. I was reminded this morning I don't know why my mind went to the bombing of Yugoslavia to 1999 because there was a similar pressure on me personally by members of the generalist press corps to condemn Serbia to take sides again. Back then I thought something which now is again pertinent that this ritual condemnation of one side has the purpose of effectively making us white Europeans feel superior to the barbarians who are being bombed. That has always been the case. You know you find or they find our powers that be find some crime committed maybe a heinous crime by a black person a Muslim, a colonial subject in order to call for a condemnation that will do what it will greenwash or wash out or cleanse colonelism. It will cleanse apartheid it would cleanse the idea that Yugoslavia had to be broken up. Back then I was astonished by the manner in which you know the west the western press the western mindset the western imperialist doctrine constantly tries to segregate victims between fashionable victims and unfashionable victims. It's not so much racist. Because for instance today if you're a Muslim Uyghur in China and you're being ruthlessly oppressed by the Chinese communist party you are fashionable you're a fashionable victim but if you're a Muslim in Kashmir in Indian control Kashmir under the Modi regime you're not a fashionable victim. Nobody talks about you nobody cares about you. They will only talk about you if you take up arms against your oppressors. So it's not even anti-Muslim it's not even racist it is a centralized segregation of victims into fashionable and unfashionable victims and the only way you can be thought of today as an innocent victim is if you somehow are categorized and made to belong to some kind of fashionable victim group that I think is something that we have at the back of our mind but let me now finish off with a more interesting take. It is of course as we like to say that in the depth of the night at the night's darkest moment when the first light is around the corner when I lived in Britain and I experienced the horrors of the troubles in Northern Ireland the sequential effective suicides by starvation of the prisoners in the Maze Prison with Bobby Sands and the rest I never imagined that there would be peace in Northern Ireland in my lifetime. The hatred between the nationalist community and the unionist community was so strong. I remember a guy Ian Paisley the leader of the democratic unionist party very fiery, very articulate speeches full of racism against the Catholic nationalist community and I remember the rage of the IRA symphane against the Protestants you know it never, never occurred to me that there would be something like the Good Friday Agreement. It is precisely because here we have two peoples we have Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs I can think of no other people perhaps the Kurds perhaps the Kurds who have been so hard down by history over the last 150-200 years no people other than Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have felt the weight the boot of racism of holocaust of concentration camps of prison camps of beatings of abuse more than the Jews and the Palestinians the Israeli Jews and the Arab Palestinians well maybe this shared experience is what is necessary to bring those two peoples together I do not see how this can take place in the context of a two-state solution anymore because I don't believe that either it's coming from an atheist get this right, this is an atheist saying those words I don't believe that God and Allah could get together and draw a borderline in the land of Palestine that would make for a sustainable peace that's why I support the one-state solution with civil liberties for all and in equal measure so here is hoping against hope against the president the historical president I mentioned whereby it is extreme civil war because that is what it is in Palestine, in Israel it's a civil war these people are much closer to one another than any people in the world they may think that the other is the alien the other the different, the enemy the devil incarnate but essentially this is a civil war for the people who have no reason not to live together really I mean the mind bogus just to think that that might be the case but because of the intensity of the conflict and the hatred and the pain there is a chance, a dialectical Hegelian chance that this conflict can spawn a surprising peace thank you very much Yanis for this thank you finishing off the discussion on an inspiring note and with that I'd like to also add to all of our viewers that one of the first steps in bringing about any sort of radical fundamental political change is to join forces with other people who want the same thing and demand them and work towards them with that in mind if you like what you heard tonight in this discussion please do join GM25 and help us bring about this change that we've been talking about and these ideas you just go to dm25.org and you can join us and be part of what we're trying to build here thank you very much for joining us we'll see you for our next live discussion two weeks from now same time, same place