Tariq Ali on U.S. & U.K. Arming Israel's War on Gaza, Pakistan Protests & Macron's Shift Right
Tariq Ali on U.S. & U.K. Arming Israel's War on Gaza, Pakistan Protests & Macron's Shift Right
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00:00AMY GOODMAN.
00:01This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
00:04I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now!'s Juan GonzĂĄlez in Chicago.
00:09Hi, Juan.
00:10JUAN GONZĂLEZ.
00:11Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around
00:15the world.
00:16AMY GOODMAN.
00:17U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Britain to meet with the British
00:21Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
00:26The focus is expected to be on the Middle East, Ukraine and the Asia Pacific.
00:31Blinken's meeting comes just days after the United Kingdom announced it's suspending
00:36some arms exports to Israel, citing a risk they might be used to commit serious violations
00:42of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
00:45Britain's new prime minister, Keir Starmer of the Labour Party, defended the decision.
00:52This is a serious issue.
00:54We either comply with international law or we don't, and we only have strength in our
00:58arguments because we comply with international law.
01:01Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy told the British Parliament last week many
01:07weapons exports to Israel would continue, including parts for F-35 fighter jets.
01:14This is not an arms embargo.
01:17It targets around 30, approximately, of 350 licenses to Israel in total for items which
01:25could be used in the current conflict in Gaza.
01:30The rest will continue.
01:33Oxfam responded to the British government's move by calling for all arms exports to be
01:39suspended to Israel.
01:41To talk about Britain, Israel's war on Gaza and much more, we're joined by Tariq Ali,
01:46the acclaimed historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of The New Left Review, and the author
01:52of over 50 books, including the forthcoming You Can't Please All, Memoirs, 1980 to 2024.
02:01He's joining us here in our studio in New York.
02:05Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Tariq.
02:07It's great to have you in person.
02:09Very good to be with you and Juan, Amy.
02:11It's been a long time since I've been in this studio, but 12 years almost.
02:16Amazing.
02:17Well, today you're here, and Antony Blinken is meeting with Keir Starmer in London and
02:23the foreign minister, David Lammy.
02:26There have been massive protests in London around U.K. policy towards supporting Israel
02:33and its war on Gaza.
02:35And now you have this stopping of some arms shipments to Israel.
02:41Can you talk about U.K. stance and the U.K.-U.S. relationship, especially when it comes to
02:48Gaza right now and Israel?
02:51The U.K., Amy, has been totally complicit in this war.
02:55They've sent help.
02:56They've sent fighter jets.
02:59Their personnel are involved.
03:01So for them to pretend somehow that they're an impartial party is utterly ridiculous.
03:07This war has been supported by the conservative government, and it's now being supported by
03:12the labor government.
03:13Keir Starmer, the prime minister you just showed on the screen, as leader of the opposition,
03:21supported the genocide in Gaza, supported the cutting off of electricity, supported
03:26the cutting off of all water supplies.
03:29I think they have received legal advice that they have to do something, or they are liable
03:35to international law by the courts.
03:38Not that that amounts to very much, as we see these days.
03:42But I think that's the reason they've made a few cuts to the aid.
03:46But as they themselves say, these are meaningless.
03:49They're purely symbolic.
03:51And the bulk of the country now wants aid to Israel, and military aid particularly cut
03:57off.
03:58The anti-war movement in Britain is one of the largest in the world.
04:03We've had, I think now, it's almost a year, Amy, since this war began.
04:09Almost a year.
04:10And we've had dozens and dozens of demonstrations, some including a million people.
04:18So the country is opposed to this, you know, across the board.
04:23But we have these governments in power.
04:25I call them the extreme center governments, because right or left, they do the same thing.
04:31And why is Blinken visiting Sturmer?
04:34Normally they send orders online.
04:36So why the need for a personal visit is to boost each other's morale.
04:41I can see no other reason for it.
04:45And Tarek, it's not just the UK government, but most of the European Union governments.
04:51Can you talk about the wide gap between how these governments are dealing with Israel's
04:56war on Gaza and the rest of the world, especially the Global South?
05:00Well, the Global South is more or less uniformly hostile to it.
05:06This is the biggest divide we've seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War, that the Global
05:13South opposed to the war, and the West very much in favor of it, Juan.
05:21And this comes across very clearly.
05:23Now, the other thing is that the demonstratorsâyou know, Jews, non-Jews, Palestinians, non-Palestinians
05:32who've been marching in the streets of Western citiesâare identifying here very clearly
05:39with the Global South.
05:40So even in their own homeland, not to mention in the United States, the demonstrations and
05:45the campus struggles.
05:47So what we are seeing is a big divide on a global level and a divide on an internal level,
05:56where large sections, if not majorities, are against what their governments are doing in
06:02backing unconditionally what the Israelis have been up to for a year now in Palestine.
06:10And this divide is going to continue, given what is going on with the U.S.-China rivalries.
06:18And so, this gulf now, which has opened up, is going to be difficult to resolve.
06:24I mean, whatever else.
06:26On foreign policy, I don't think there will be any big change in the United States, regardless
06:31of who is elected.
06:33So, the demonstrations still go on, a year later, all over Europe, including France.
06:41The Germans have banned demonstrations.
06:44They don't allow them because of their special links to the Judeo side and Holocaust and
06:51the Second World War, for which the Palestinians are now being punished.
06:56That's what's going on, and it's quite a critical situation, because lots of young people, who
07:03I come across and speak to, are challenging and questioning the very nature of democracy,
07:10the nature of the system which exists, where one court, international court after the other,
07:17has said this genocide must stop, pressure on the International Criminal Court not to
07:23prosecute Netanyahu, which has been demanded.
07:27And so, international law itself has now been questioned.
07:32So, we are now in a situation where what the United States says goes.
07:39The decisions are made in the White House, in the Pentagon, in the State Department.
07:45These are the key institutions which determine what happens in Israel.
07:49And why the U.S. is doing this puzzles many people who are sympathetic to them.
07:55Why are they doing this when we've had presidents like Truman, like Reagan, like Bush Sr., stopping
08:04Israel from doing things like this when it was necessary?
08:08Now we not a single phone call.
08:11Both political parties totally complicit in this war.
08:14They might have other disagreements, but on the Gaza war, they are completely united,
08:22apart from indies like Jill Stein, who personally I would vote for, were I a U.S. citizen, a
08:28sort of excellent politician.
08:31But apart from her and a few others, there's no one else in the mainstream who's come out
08:37against this.
08:38And this is very disturbing, I think, for democracy itself and for all its legal political
08:44institutions.
08:45And, Tariq, I wanted to ask you, in terms of you're talking about the state of democracy
08:51in your own homeland of Pakistan, Imran Khan has been detained for over a year now, accused
08:59of inciting violence, a former prime minister.
09:02And the U.N. panel recently had findings that Imran Khan's detention is politically motivated.
09:08Do you think there will be any pressure on Pakistan to release him?
09:13So far, there hasn't been any pressure.
09:16And Imran Khan, when he was first dismissed from office, claimed that the United States
09:22was behind the dismissal because of the positions he had taken on Ukraine at that particular
09:30time.
09:31He directly accused the State Department of having engineered his dismissal.
09:36So, the fact that he is still in prison is a sign that the people who control Pakistan
09:43are the military.
09:46Politicians come and go.
09:47Political parties come and go.
09:49Politicians change sides in order to gain office.
09:53But effectively, Juan, it is the Pakistani army that has run the show for many, many
10:00decades.
10:01They make the decisions.
10:03They choose the politicians, including Imran.
10:05He was a military choice.
10:08And his successors are military choices.
10:10And now they are nervous, because normally they can discredit a politician very quickly.
10:16They haven't been able to do it in the case of Imran Khan.
10:18And all the opinion polls show that were there to be an election in Pakistan, Imran would
10:25win by large majorities throughout the country.
10:29The army have now made him a martyr.
10:31They've made him a popular hero.
10:34And he's been locked up in prison on completely frivolous and bogus charges.
10:39So there's also the discussion of banning the PTI party, the Khan party, talking about
10:44it, oh, inciting violence, leaking classified information.
10:50What would that mean?
10:51Well, the classified information he revealed, Amy, which should be of interest to viewers
10:58here, is that a senior figure from the Pakistan Foreign Office wrote a letter back home from
11:07the United States saying that in the United States he had been told in very clear language
11:14that Imran had to go.
11:16Well, in Pakistan, as in other parts of the world, these letters are notâthey don't
11:22remain secret for too long.
11:23So Imran referred to the letter in public, stating something which most people knew.
11:32And as a result of that, they've charged him with betraying official secrets.
11:38I mean, there was no official secret.
11:39Everyone knew this in the first place.
11:43And so, I think they're determined to get rid of him.
11:46Banning his party won't help, because his popularity will increase.
11:50And if there's another uprising, like we've seen in Bangladesh recently, that could erupt
11:56in Pakistan, then they've had it.
11:58I mean, they'll have to shoot people on the streets.
12:00And we'll see a repeat of the uprisings of the 60s and 70s.
12:05And, Tariq, I wanted to ask you about Bangladesh.
12:09The supporters of the former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, have claimed that the United
12:14States was behind that, as well, that it wasn't really a popular uprising as much as a color
12:21revolution.
12:22I'm wondering your thoughts.
12:23Is there any credible evidence that that is so?
12:25I don't think so, Juan.
12:26I mean, you know, because the United States has done these things in the past, it can't
12:32do them everywhere.
12:34And what we saw in Bangladesh was a very authoritarian government, confronted largely
12:40by students demanding democratic rights and freedoms, and an end to laws which they regard
12:48as anti-democratic.
12:50And they won.
12:51She ran.
12:52She was taken by a special plane waiting for her to India, and is now blaming the United
12:59States for this.
13:01In my opinion, there is no evidence to show U.S. involvement so far.
13:06Some may come out.
13:07We will see.
13:08But I think more disturbing is that the students who replaced her had no real alternative.
13:17So quite a few unprincipled parties, political parties and politicians, who were there and
13:24are now in power, or close to it, are mistreating Awami League supporters.
13:31And that, too, is unacceptable.
13:33But in Bangladesh, as in Pakistan, behind the scenes in Bangladesh, it's the military
13:39who rules, the appointment of a sort of banker who became a celebrity and won the Nobel Prize,
13:46Dr. Yunus, very, very aged man, older even than me.
13:51And he is not going to be able to deliver anything behind him.
13:56It's the army.
13:57I wanted to go to what's happening in France.
14:02Tens of thousands of people took to the streets Saturday protesting President Macron's appointment
14:07of the conservative Michel Barnier as the new prime minister, even though leftist parties
14:15won the most votes in July's snap parliamentary elections.
14:20This is the leader of the leftist Unbowed Party, Jean-Luc MĂ©lechon, speaking last week.
14:31And so the election has been stolen from the French people.
14:34The message has been denied, and now we're finding out about a prime minister that was
14:38named with the permission and maybe on the suggestion of the far-right national rally,
14:44knowing that the second round of the legislative election has been entirely concentrated on
14:48making this national rally fail.
14:51So that's Jean-Luc MĂ©lechon, head of Unbowed.
14:55You have the leftist winning and the president, Macron, who called the snap election and yet
15:00lost it, giving the prime ministership to the right.
15:05It's appalling, Amy.
15:06I mean, this is, you know, the sort of trend we see in most of the Western world, a very
15:12authoritarian approach to politics if they lose.
15:18And Jean-Luc MĂ©lechon was determined to fight.
15:21He created a new united front with the socialists and all progressive parties to make sure that
15:28the extreme right-wing party of Marine Le Pen was defeated.
15:33Macron had said before the election, let the far-right come to power, they'll discredit
15:39themselves.
15:40Well, that didn't happen, because of the campaign waged by La France Insoumise and
15:46Jean-Luc MĂ©lechon in particular, effectively they created a united front which defeated
15:53the far-right.
15:54And this spoilt brat, Macron, who belongs, who came up from nowhere, you know, sort of
16:01technocrat politician, now operates as if he's a statesman.
16:05I think he has discredited himself considerably.
16:09And we shall see.
16:10He had a meeting with the far-right.
16:12He has not met MĂ©lechon once.
16:14He's made it clear that he's not going to appoint a president from the group or the
16:18bloc which got the largest votes.
16:21And this is the trend I was referring to earlier, of they feel they can get away with anything.
16:28And there have been demonstrations.
16:29There have been a few strikes, as well.
16:32But there's been no big protest from the so-called international community, i.e., the State Department
16:38in D.C.
16:40You know, no protest from Foggy Bottom at all that this is intolerable behavior, because,
16:46you know, they tolerate it when their own allies do it.
16:50How it's going to turn out for Macron, we shall see.
16:53I think there is now 52 percent voted for his impeachment.
16:58I mean, in opinion polls, 52 percent of French people said that Macron should be prosecuted
17:07and impeached.
17:10So, he's divided the country quite sharply.
17:14So we'll see what he does.
17:15I mean, Barnier is a joke figure.
17:17He got 4 percent of the vote, and he's been appointed prime minister.
17:21I mean, what's needed in France, actually, to be serious, is an abolition of this Fifth
17:26Republic that was created by de Gaulle after he seized power as a general in 1958.
17:35And it was designed to give the president maximum powers.
17:40It's not a democratic state, you know, in any sense of the word.
17:44The democracy has tried to push through it.
17:47And so we need a new republic.
17:49And you know, MĂ©lenchon has been arguing, and many of us have been, let's have elections
17:54to a constituent assembly to choose and draft a new constitution.
17:59We need a sixth republic in France, because the Fifth Republic has failed.
18:05And Tarik, I wanted to ask you, though, across Europe, the extreme right wing, especially
18:11anti-immigrant parties, have been gaining strength, even though in Britain and France
18:16they've been beaten back.
18:18But even the center has become increasingly more anti-immigrant, anti-African, anti-Arab,
18:25anti-United States, Latin American.
18:28What's your sense of the prospects for progressives and radicals to win popular support, given
18:34that sectors of the working class and the middle classes are falling prey to this anti-immigrant
18:40phobia?
18:41Hollande, this is always the case at times of crisis, social, political, economic, that
18:49people from the working class and the middle class, as you call it here, get carried away.
18:56It's a simple propaganda.
18:58We don't have enough jobs.
19:00We don't have enough money.
19:01Look at these people coming from outside.
19:04Well, in Europe you can say that, but in the United States, as I always point out, everyone
19:10has come from the outside except Native Americans.
19:13So what is the big deal, that, you know, you now just want to exclude people of color?
19:18In Europe, of course, they went and searched for workers all over the former colonies,
19:25because after the Second World War, there's a big shortage of labor.
19:29And what they did, effectively, was to go and plead with West Indian black nurses to
19:35come and run the British National Health Surveys, for workers to come and run the factories.
19:41And this is a population which they're now targeting.
19:44But the most reprehensible feature of this, as you point out, is that mainstream politicians
19:52have not managed to frontally take on these arguments.
19:58In fact, in the new labor government, you have politicians sort of slyly saying, well,
20:05yes, there are problems.
20:07We have too many immigrants.
20:10Labor is working very hard to try and stop the flow.
20:15And the result of this is illegal gangs promising migrants in poverty-stricken countries or
20:23countries where you have large numbers of people dislodged by wars, as we see in the
20:30Middle East today and as we've seen for the last five or six years, who want to come and
20:35seek refugee.
20:37And they're being denied entry into the countries which have made these wars.
20:41And in effect, many of them are drowning in boats in the English Channel, just dropping
20:47dead, being pushed out by unscrupulous gangsters who promise them that they'll get the men
20:54illegally.
20:55So, it's a really grim situation on that front.
21:00And this is now in Germany, too, that in recent state elections in the former eastern Germany,
21:07Thuringia, the far-right party, AfD, won the largest vote.
21:14I mean, you know, they can still be outvoted, but they won a large vote.
21:19And this is spreading in other parts of Germany, too, which also takes in the fact that some
21:26of these far-right groups are saying, why are we backing a war with Russia?
21:31Why are we supporting Ukraine?
21:34It's not in our national interest.
21:36Why are we following the Americans?
21:38So, it's immigration and a lot of other issues actually being tied together by these parties.
21:47And the extreme center governments, center-left and center-right, do nothing.
21:51They're actually provoking this by doing nothing at all.
21:56Well, Tariq Ali, we want to thank you for being with us and in our studio.
22:00We look forward to having you back to talk about your memoirs when they are released.
22:05Tariq Ali is a British-Pakistani historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of The New Left
22:11Review, the author of over 50 books, including the forthcoming You Can't Please All, Memoirs
22:181980-2024, in from London, here in New York City.