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The West Bank: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
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John Oliver discusses how the West Bank settlements came to be, what their presence means for everyone in the region, and why the weight of the world rests squarely on the shoulders of Ben & Jerry’s.
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John Oliver
British and American comedian and presenter
Transcript
Follow along using the transcript.
Show transcript
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Transcript
for our main story tonight I'd like to talk about Israel and Palestine a sentence rated number one by ways to
instantly ruin Thanksgiving dinner with your family magazine four months now global outrage news reports and whatever
it is that we do here on school plus cake bear ass eating with John Oliver has been focused on Israel's war in Gaza
which has killed tens of thousands of civilians in the wake of her mari's brutal attacks on October 7th but tonight we're just going to talk about a
different area in the region the west bank which is home to over 3 million Palestinians the eastern half of
Jerusalem as well as some of the holiest sites for Christians Jews and Muslims
the West Bank's been overshadowed by
Gaza lately but it is to put it mildly a critical part of the largest struggle between Israelis and Palestinians even
if you're not particularly familiar with the history of the region you're probably aware that everything concerning the West Bank and Israel's
occupation of it is incredibly contentious to the point that even small decisions concerning it can cause
headlines
Ben Jerry's is facing backlash the Morton Williams grocery chain is
pulling most Ben and Jerry's products from store shelves and moving what's left to the bottom of the freezer after
the ice cream maker announced it will stop selling ice cream in occupied Palestinian territories Ben and Jerry
says doing business in those areas is inconsistent with its values critics of the move say it does not move the peace
process forward yeah Ben and Jerry's was accused of failing to move the peace process forward which to be fair it
doesn't seem like something an ice cream can really do how can ice cream solve world's peace when it can't even do a
decent SpongeBob you think a yellow square with eyeballs would be easy to pull off and yet the reviews online for
those SpongeBob pops are just a nightmare after nightmare
after certifiable
nightmare a key reason things surrounding the West Bank are so tense concerns the hundreds of thousands of
Israeli settlers living there and while that tension can be expressed at the international level or by proxy via
weird fights over ice scream it can also be communicated face to face as in this viral video from a few years ago in
which a Palestinian woman confronts an Israeli settler who was living in the family home that she'd been forcibly evicted from Jacob
you know this is not
your house yes but if I go you don't go back so what's the problem what are you dealing at me I didn't do this you are
stealing my house and if I don't steal it someone else is going to steal it no no one no
one is allowed to steal it yeah no ycob
it is both ridiculous and tragic that that woman's only recourse against the man occupying her home in front of her is to try and do the Swiper no swiping
chance in real life but the outing of that woman from her home in East Jerusalem is just a microcosm of the larger issue of Palestinian displacement and Israeli settlements in the West Bank and what's happening there is important
to understand both because it's inextricably linked to the fate of any possible peace process and because
things there have recently gotten exponentially worse
so given that tonight let's talk about the West Bank
settlements
how they came to be who's living there and what their presence means for everyone in the region and before we get to where we are now
Israel was founded in 1948 fulfilling the long held hopes of the Zionist movement at a time when Jews were
reeling from the collective traumas of persecution and genocide in the Holocaust
it was established through what Israel calls the war of independence and what Palestinians refer to as the kna or catastrophe 700 th000
Palestinians suffer their own Collective trauma when they fled or were driven out of their homes amid violence and in some cases massacres of entire Villages some ended up in neighboring countries as refugees
While others settled in the part of Palestine now widely known as Gaza and the West Bank for decades there were significant tensions between Israel
and its neighbors
and then came The Six Day War in 1967 in which Israel fought and defeated Egypt Syria and Jordan and in doing so captured vastly more territory including the West Bank almost immediately it started building settlements there while also annexing East Jerusalem and to be clear both those actions constitute violations of
international law when you occupy territory as an outcome of War you are not allowed to expel people or move your
own citizens in and Israel knew this at the time it foreign ministry's own legal adviser warned in a top secret memo that
civilian settlements would contravene explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention but they built settlements anyway and continued for decades
although there was one moment in the '90s when it seemed that there might be a possible Pathway to a peaceful resolution with the Oslo Accords that historic peace process set up a new
framework for the West Bank dividing it into three distinct areas
area A gave Palestinians total control over security and government
area B was designated for Palestinian government control while retaining Israeli security control meaning the Israeli military remains very present there
area C remained completely under the Israeli military and government control it's about 60% of the West Bank right and that is what the West Bank map looks like today that is one of the most politically fraught areas on Earth colorcoded in a way that makes it look like what would happen if Shrek into a puddle and and if
you're thinking I don't know I don't know if I can quite see that how about now can you see it now and in a way will you ever be able to unsee it
now crucially this whole setup was only ever meant to be temp while a larger peace deal was hammered out but after Oslo fell apart for reasons including but not limited to continued settlement expansion
Terror attacks by Palestinian militants and Israeli hardliners
assassinating the Prime Minister who'd broken the deal ysac Rabin that temporary Arrangement was basically Frozen in place and Israel continued building more and more and more settlements in fact every single Israeli government has invested significant resources in expanding them and all of that brings us to where we are today
because while there were around 250 ,000 settlers in the West Bank when Oslo was signed there are currently around
700,000 and it's worth talking about the settlers themselves because when you think of them you may Envision someone
like the blundering guy you saw earlier or hardliners on an ideological mission to claim the Holy Land in the name of the Jewish people
but that is not the whole picture in fact 70% of those who live in the West Bank are so-called quality of life settlers and I will say the way they describe their communities does make them seem very attractive
spend 10 minutes in a settlement today and you sometimes feel that you could just as easily be in a New Jersey suburb clean roads big houses quality parks Good schools close by shopping a university you ask people why they moved out here and instead of the original Mission to push forward the Israeli
State you hear things like a very good educational system there is a very nice um country club we wanted to to have a bigger place it's a great place to raise kids we were looking for a Jerusalem suburb that we could afford that was a
manageable Community the quality of life is so much better it has nothing to do with politics
Well hold on it has nothing to do with politics I'm sorry but it very much does just because it's a nice place to live doesn't make it any
less illegal under international law it's not like the Geneva Convention says the occupying power shall not transfer
parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies unless there's like really convenient shopping
and a super manageable commute to Jerusalem also part of the the reason settlements can be so pleasant is
because the Israeli government wants people to move there life is massively subsidized in the settlements with the
government spending more per capita on things like education and infrastructure in them than it does within Israel
itself in recent years Israel housing Ministry has even offered subsidized apartments in the West Bank through a
lottery system the whole settlement project has been massively encouraged by the Israeli government to such a degree
that it is hard to argue that living in one is an apolitical choice building on Stolen land is an inherently political
act it is also by the way copyright infringement for what it's worth now the
Israeli government will say that it doesn't officially support all settlements its official line is there
are two different kinds so-called legal approved settlements and outposts created by Rogue settlers that are
illegal under Israeli law but for the record under international law both of them are illegal and also Israel
frequently offers all manner of resources to the so-called illegal Outpost too providing them with military
defense access to public utilities and sometimes even retroactively legalizing them so as this Israeli critic of the
settlements points out the line between the two types can get pretty blurry
settlement and outpost right what's the difference well the usually selon refers
to uh Israeli uh Israeli sement which are officially approved by the Israeli
government and the Israeli Outpost are Israeli settlements which had been built also by the Israeli government but
without official approval right settlements and outposts are nominally
different but can look strikingly similar kind of like helvetica and Ariel or Jessica Chastain and Bryce Dallas
Howard or this show in a Civics textbook that someone's drawn a bunch of penises on we're we're both basically just
charts plus dick jokes but some settlers will insist that none of this matters because all they're really doing is
building in an area that no one's using know for sure that we came here we did not take anybody's land because I saw
that there was nobody here you know it was a the whole the whole you mean this this hill was a hill nobody around it
nobody was using it nobody was wasn't bothering anybody okay
but it doesn't matter if anyone was using it if it's
not your land you can't just take it and I do know that is hard to take from someone using this particular accent but
there is a clear difference between property that nobody is using and property that nobody owns it's why we
call those big things outside of stores parking lots and not help yourself car buff face but while that argument is clearly
ridiculous it also speaks to Israel's largest strategy in the region because one of the official means by which
Israel takes Land There Is by claiming that if land hasn't been cultivated within the prior 3 years it can be
declared as state land and some of its tactics seem designed to ensure a lack of cultivation as settlers have driven
Palestinians off their land through violence or intimidation and also it can be hard for Palestinians in the West
Bank to build or cultivate in the first place due to the opaque permit process there as this man patiently explains
Israelis I've heard would say well the land is unused anyways it's on the top of the hills yeah
that's that's a good good excuse but why it's unused because we we are not
allowed to use it right and he's not exaggerating that Israel controls building permits in the West Bank and by
its own admission it rejects over 95% of Palestinian permit requests so it's not
that Palestinians don't want to use the land it's that they're frequently not allowed to which is different it's the
same way that it's not that JD Vance doesn't want to help you move it's just that he's not allowed within 50 ft of a
three-piece section it's not his choice at the end of the day and what this
means is that even as Israel has been heavily incentivizing construction for Israelis in the West Bank when it comes
to Palestinian homes this is what's been happening for years authorities have ordered hundreds of
Palestinian homes to be demolished because they were built without the proper permits which are almost impossible for Palestinians to get they
cost thousands of dollars can take years to process and rarely get approved which means Palestinians often end up building
illegally yeah of course and that is shocking even before you get to the brain seering hypocrisy of Palestinians
in the West Bank being told that their homes are illegal
it's like getting called a hot mess by the
Hindenburg hey I'm not taking that for from you in particular you gassy
but building permits are just the tip of the iceberg here there's also the physical obstacles plac in the path of
Palestinians everyday life from this massive winding separation wall to the endless Maze of checkpoints and Gates
Palestinians are forced to pass through which as this man points out can have extreme consequences you can't come to
my house I you know at the checkpoint they close it uh on the night uh it's
only Sunday Tuesday and uh Thursday 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the
evening we are allowed to pass the checkpoint no visitors no ambulances no kindergartens no schools no jobs if
there's an emergency what do you do nothing die holy look in some
situations all you can do is just sit there and wait to die like if you're stranded on a desert island or traveling
on a Boeing airplane but death shouldn't be an inevitable outcome just cuz you happen to live behind an Israeli
checkpoint these checkpoints are a nightmare pal Ian women trying to get to hospital to give birth have been delayed
at them so many times there have been dozens of documented roadside births as well as cases of maternal and infant
deaths and these delays and inconveniences can be deliberate as settlements are sometimes strategically
placed to cut Palestinian communities off from one another one Outpost placed
in a commercial hub openly declares on its Facebook page that the intent of its location is to disrupt contiguity
between three Palestinian Villages and the way certain Palestinians are fenced in can get truly absurd G's home sits on
his ancestral land surrounded by this imposing metal fence a house within a
cage encircled by Israeli settlements his 11-year-old son subri was detained
for 6 hours when his football rolled near the settlements sub just grins with
youthful bravado claiming he wasn't scared you get scared but I was his
sister pipes up yeah I bet she was and everything about that is bunkers from the idea of living in a house almost
completely surrounded by a military fence to a childhood that includes the possibility that a stray football could
land you in detention for 6 hours and what on Earth is the point of detaining an 11-year-old for 6 hours what are you
really hoping to get out of questioning him and answer to what Roblox is or are
because believe me that is all they talk about and there's good reason for that girl to
be scared because the legal rights of Palestinians in the West Bank are tenuous at best there are actually two
sets of laws there Jewish settlers enjoy access to civilian law due process and the full protection of civil rights but
Palestinians live under Israeli military law so if they're accused of a crime they're tried in military courts which
have to put it mildly significantly fewer protections and boast a roughly 99% conviction rate and that clearly
separate and unequal two tier justice system means Palestinians also have little recourse when they're the victims
of a crime because despite both Israeli and international law saying Israeli soldiers have an obligation to protect
Palestinian residents of the West Bank in practice when it comes to attacks by settlers on Palestinians there has been
a history of Silence avoidance and abetment by Israeli officials in fact when an Israeli Human Rights group
looked at more than 1600 cases of settler violence they found that just 3% resulted in a conviction and look I am
not a lawy or a statistician despite looking like what you would get if you smash those two jobs together with a
particle accelerator but even I can tell you 3% is too low and for sense of just
how extreme settlements can get take heon a city home to about 200,000 Palestinians and 700 Hardline Israeli
settlers who've chosen to live literally above them life in Hebron is full of constant reminders about whose safety is
prioritized just over a year ago a remote controlled gun reportedly for crowd dispersal was installed Above This
checkpoint so it's pointing towards the palan areans yes Palestinian authorities
have had to build an overhead fence to catch rubbish and projectiles thrown down by settlers so the Israeli settlers
live up here yeah they live here and they throw everything down 12 shops are closed the settlers they attack
Palestinians without any kind of accountability how does it make you feel to see this I feel very sad from the
most beautiful Market to closed shops and outpost and it for me it illustrates
that is really the way
Ty someone from the settlement above has thrown a beer bottle at is's head you
okay sir you okay I got the beer I think or maybe did it cut you that is terrible
and I'm not sure which part of that situation seems less livable saying hello to the barrel of a remote control
turret every day or the constant weather forecast of Cloudy With a Chance of tetus and settlers will argue that they
live in constant fear of violence and it is true that over the last 16 years 150 Israelis have been killed by
Palestinians in the West Bank though it is worth noting that in that same period more than 10 times that many
Palestinians were killed by Israelis the vast majority directly by Israeli Security Forces but maybe the clearest
illustration of the impunity some settlers feel is the practice of so-called price tag attacks on
Palestinians which are ostensibly acts of Revenge but can be utterly indiscriminate as this settler calmly
explains can you explain to us what these price tag attacks are what they mean after Arabs killed Jews and
anything wrong that happened uh we showed that we won't um
stay in quiet it has a price and it called price price tag and it could just
be any any random Arrow doesn't matter whether they were involved or not no it doesn't matter because they sit here and
because they believe it's theirs they all involved and for you that's guilty enough just just being here that makes
them guilty yeah yeah that makes them guilty wow it is a little jarring to
hear someone say something so wildly disturbing in such a sedate manner she's advocating for random violent hate
crimes there but doing it in the ultra relaxed tone of a yoga instructor on horse tranquilizers it is a truly horrendous
situation as that Israeli expert that you saw earlier points out there's actually a term that describes all
this when there are two groups that live in the same territory and they are officially separated in terms of
political economic and legal rights and the key to this separation is completely arbitrary whether you were born to an
Arab mother or not what would you call that if it smells like a parthe looks like aeid sounds like aeid then it's
aeid he's right although real quick if it smells like a parte does a parte
actually have a smell cuz I'll be honest until now I was pretty sure it had only produced the one kind of musk but but he
is not alone in that assessment a former head of Israel's intelligence agency Mossad has said in reference to the West
Bank there is an aparte State here and this former IDF General has called the situation total aparte adding the IDF is
standing by looking at the settler riers and is beginning to be a partner to war crimes and at this point we should
probably talk about the US's role in this whole situation because it is considerable America opposes settlements
officially but very much soft pedals its criticism of them as both Republican and Democratic presidents have referred to
them as illegitimate but declined to call them illegal to avoid the possibility Israel would face
International sanctions and some presidents have gone even further Trump was incredibly cozy with Netanyahu as
you can tell from the unknown IR inly smug look on BB's face there and his
administration not only moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 an incredibly provocative act on its own
but the next year it also did this in a major change of foreign policy the Trump
Administration said it no longer considers Jewish communities built on Palestinian lands known as settlements
to be against international law the announcement made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling the establishment of
Civilian settlements in consistent with international law hasn't worked it hasn't Advanced the cause of Peace you
know what it turns out Mike Pompeo and I actually agree on something the status quo hasn't worked I just think we might
disagree on what to do next it's one of the many things that we seem to disagree on along with what he should have named
his book because in my opinion never give an inch sounds like the autobiography of a micro penis but Mike
clearly feels differently but it's not just government support wealthy American
individuals have funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into settlements and it's worth noting many of Israel's
strongest Advocates aren't Jewish individuals or groups they're actually Evangelical Christians like this man
Pastor John haggy who has done more than you might expect Pastor hegy founded Christians United for Israel or a kufi
which is the largest pro-israel lobbying organization in America even bigger than APAC the organization most people assume
dominates the American Israel Lobby because it's the biggest Jewish one what's dicey about kfy is that a good
deal of their money for Israel is spent on buildings and organizations in the Israeli settlements God gave them that
land they own that land okay if you told me to picture a mega church pastor that
is exactly who I'm imagining slicked back silver hair headset mic looking like an elderly Chris Farley and Easter
pimp drag that is on the nose casting right there and interestingly the reason
many evangelicals are so invested in Israel is they believe Jewish people being in that region is one of the
prerequisites for their vision of Armageddon when that day comes the thinking goes Christians will be
raptured and I'll let this man fill you in on what he thinks happens to Jews in Israel afterward 2,000 years of
blindness is going to come peeling off the Jewish mind and those of us that have been up caught up in the Rapture
and come with Jesus here to oh cuz the Christians have been raptured out all who are born again will have been
raptured when Jesus comes we'll be caught up to meet him in the air yeah and then we will come with him to the
Mount of olice and so we're going to be watching this whole panoramic thing unfold uh as the Jewish people turn to
their Messiah we're going to be converting people by the hundreds of thousands during this time it's going to
be the best of times and the worst of times yeah that makes sense apparently
evangelicals will grow Victorious Secret angel wings flap up to Jesus and sit
with him in his Lisa Frank ball and smugly watch as Jews realize how wrong they've been and look on one hand I get why some in
Israel might encourage this there is a cynical utility to taking idiots money but someone expressing anticipation for
the day 2,000 years of blindness come peeling off my mind might make me want to keep a certain distance from them and
yet watch as haggi a few years ago introduced a special guest star to his followers would you please welcome my
friend and prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu thank you Pastor hegy
you are always there for us we have no better friends on Earth than
you no better friends you know what I guess that makes sense some friends drive you to the airport others see your
suffering as their ticket to getting Christ blasted by a flying Rapture Jesus friendship does take so many forms
doesn't it and in recent years everything I've shown you was only gotten worse in 2022 Benjamin Netanyahu
in order to hold on to power formed a governing Coalition by allying with Le leaders of far-right parties creating
the most right-wing government in Israel's history he put extremist politicians some of whom are setts
themselves in major positions of power his current Finance Minister bezel smotrich openly advocates for Israeli
annexation of the West Bank and his minister of National Security is mmar Ben gavier who not only lives in heon
you know the fun place with the flying bottles and remote control machine guns he's also been convicted of incitement
to racism and supporting a terrorist organization all this was a huge win for
Hardline settlers just listen to this Israeli soldier gloating to Palestinians in Hebron about what Ben's Ascent would
mean
[Music]
wow I decide what the law is and your actions are illegal that is a bold
attitude is the sort of thing an American cop would only be comfortable tattooing above their sleeve line so
things were already getting bad and then the appalling attacks of October 7th happened and since then things have
gotten considerably worse Israel imposed even tighter restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank with checkpoints increasingly closed and many
work permits canceled making it impossible for many Palestinians there to make a living meanwhile attacks on
Palestinians have only spiked from where they were already at historic highs to the point that the un's found at least
19 entire Palestinian communities have been displaced as a direct result of settler violence since October and in
the midst of all of this smotrich declared nearly four square miles of Palestinian territory to be state land
the single largest land grab since the Oslo Accords is it any wonder the Israeli security Chiefs have warned that
the West Bank could be on the brink of a major eruption of violence and when you take all of this together you do begin
to understand why so many Israelis and Palestinians have despaired of ever achieving a two-state solution and the
thing is as this settler pointed out nearly a decade ago for many of them that is basically been the whole
strategy you can basically kiss the two-state solution goodbye it's not going to happen uh we're going to continue to move in there and eventually
we are going to have more Jewish communities there more Israeli electricity more Israeli roads more
Israeli taxes and then in the end it's just going to be Israel right Relentless
expansion has made the idea of peace talks a joke and when I say joke I don't mean something that's funny haha I mean
something that is deeply depressing you know a joke in the same way that this show is a comedy which as this audience
that was excited to be in here half an hour ago will tell you is stretching that term to Breaking Point so where do
we go from here well at this point it does feel presumptuous to even talk about a peace process because we're so
far from being in a position to even start one there's actually a moment that I think sums that up pretty well it's
the then mayor of rala talking to a German delegation a few years ago they asked him if he'd be willing to take
part in some symbolic exchanges with his Israeli counterparts to show Goodwill and help facilitate peace you know the
standard meet them in the- Middle rhetoric and this is his incredibly diplomatic response when we feel that we
are not treated as slaves and they are Masters we are ready to do everything
but when I'm I have to take off all my clothes in front of all the people
because a soldier of 16 years old is asking me to to do so under under the
the threat of of his weapon then it's about dignity yeah and when it comes to
dignity I think it's something not negotiable right right human dignity has
to be a prerequisite for negotiating anything and Palestinians in the West Bank have their dignity challenged
hundreds of times a day from having beer bottles thrown over their heads to being detained for kicking Bulls near fences
to being stopped while crossing checkpoints in ambulances to having their homes stolen bulldozed and far far
worse and to be clear dignity is the absolute beginning of this what's required is Justice and the call for
that is getting louder just last week the icj issued an opinion that Israel's settlements and the regime associated
with them are in violation of international law the Israeli presence in the occupied territory should come to
an end as rapidly as possible and that Israel has an obligation to provide full reparation for the damage it's caused
but the US state department has already undermined that statement saying it concerned the breadth of the icj's
opinion will complicate efforts to resolve the conflict but I don't know man the conflict's already pretty
complicated is the world's highest court in interpreting international law accurately really
going to make things any worse look a phrase that gets brought up a lot with regard to Israel is never again an
anti-genocide slogan often invoked in memory of the Holocaust and it's always been open to two interpretations there's
the one that means this must never again happen to the Jewish people and the one that means this must never again happen
to any people anywhere and in the West Bank as in Gaza right now it's pretty
clear which one the Israeli government has favored especially as long as Netanyahu is in power he is clearly
going to do whatever he and the worst people around him wants but the US doesn't have to continue to abet that or
cover for it and the thing is we do have levers at our disposal here we could put
conditions on the billions in military aid we send to Israel we could stop vetoing un Security Council resolutions
critical of the Israeli government's actions which we've been doing for decades now and we could say what is playing for everyone to see these
settlements aren't just illegitimate or even just illegal they're immoral and
not only should we say that we should then act accordingly and I know the bar here is incredibly low but I guess at
the very least I just want my government to have the moral backbone that's been shown by Ben and Jerry's please
just try not to get morally outflanked by the makers of impressively fudged
that cannot be too much to [Applause]
ask e
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