Norman Finkelstein said in this video:

I'm very reluctant to condemn people who are in a position or in a condition such that were I in that position or condition I'm not sure what I would do now the 1500 young men who burst the gates of Gaza they were born into a concentration camp they lived for two decades in a concentration camp they had no past they had no present they had no future they had no jobs half of them according to humanitarian organizations suffered from what's called severe food insecurity and then on top of that Israel goes into Gaza and it mows the lawn and what mows the lawn means is a massacre in Gaza in 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead, in 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, in 2014 Operation Protective Edge and on each of these high tech massacres visited on the people of Gaza in some cases hundreds in some cases thousands of Palestinians are killed.

Norman Finkelstein said in this and this parts of a video:

This is not a particularly complicated situation right now, the Israeli government has openly unabashedly blatantly declared a war of genocide on the people of Gaza, that's not an exaggerated language. The prime minister of Israel said in a speech which been which has been reproduced everywhere said this is a war against Amalek referring to the Old Testament. What's a war against Amalek? well, just open up the Old Testament. It obliges Israel to kill every man, woman, and child. Can there be any doubt, now I mean this seriously, can there be any doubt in the minds of any objective observer when Israel declares a policy of prohibiting any food water, fuel or electricity from entering Gaza that it's a genocide?

Why do they do that? Because Gaza for Israel has always been a problem. Because they refuse to just languish and die in a concentration camp. The famous expression: wherever there's oppression there's resistance, so periodically there is resistance and Israel mows the lawn but after October 7th, it decided, number one this was obviously a resistance of a much higher magnitude and also it was an opportunity to solve the Gaza question. During the first week, and we're not talking about ancient history, they were hoping to expel all the Palestinians to Egypt and ethnic cleansing just clean out Gaza that was the goal it didn't work.

Norman Finkelstein said in this video:

So Israel is presenting all of these very sophisticated images to prove that there is a Hamas command and control centre under Al Shifa hospital and in every military operation they target Al Shifa. There's a very simple way to answer that question. there are 60,000 people in Alshifa Hospital. You just send an inspector. Show us where the command and control centre is.

So you know exactly where they are! Let's see it. Nobody even asks the question. Why aren't they just sending in inspectors to check whether the hospital is used as a command centre? Because everybody knows. It's nonsense.

Norman Finkelstein said in this video:

I don't want to bore your listeners with the technicalities of international law. Human shielding is what's called a term of art. It's not a technical term which has been codified into law. It basically means the conscription of civilians either to protect combatants or to protect a military site. That's basically what is meant by human shielding. If you take the most extensive investigation of human shielding in the case of Hamas occurred after operation Cast Lead from the 26th of December 2008 to the 17th of January 2009. It was called "22 days of death and destruction". It found no evidence that Hamas was engaged in human shielding. It's just not true. This is a factual question. Now there's a separate question, it's called: taking all these feasible precautions when in a civilian area. That is to say, according to the laws of war which is called international humanitarian law IHL, if you are firing from a civilian area, you have to take all feasible precautions so as not to endanger civilians and there it has occasionally been the case that Hamas has been accused of not taking all feasible precautions. Obviously, if you are living in the most densely populated place on God's Earth, it's very hard to take all feasible precautions.

So, that's one side of the equation but if you look at all the human rights reports. All of them, going back to Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, Israel always takes Palestinians as human shields. That's just a standard practice. So you have scenes of Israelis. They take over a building. They put the Palestinians in the window and they fire from behind them. They have tank emplacements and they drag Palestinians to surround the tank placements. This isn't my imagination. There's a voluminous number of human rights publications which document, yes there's a lot of human shielding going on there, but it's all going on by Israel. That's all vanished and airbrushed from the commentary on the Israeli mowings of the lawn in Gaza.

Norman Finkelstein said in this video:

There's another question: What did you expect the people of Gaza to do after being incarcerated in a concentration camp for 20 years? I know what you wanted them to do. You wanted them to just languish and die but did you not really expect that if they had the opportunity or made the opportunity that they would attempt to do something. Then there's the logic, if you look at World War 2, everytime the partisans, the resistance, killed a major Nazi officer, the Nazis retaliated in very bloody ways. The most famous of the killings was when the Czech partisans killed Reinhard Heydrich. What did the Nazis do? they went into the village of Lidice and flattened it and killed every male above the age of 14. There come Jack Tapper from radio berlin and he says What did you expect the Nazis to do? They killed Reinhard Heydrich! What did you expect them to do? The logic of his argument is the people of Gaza should do nothing. Because if they do anything, Israel is going to retaliate. What did you expect them to do?

The people of Gaza in the beginning of March 30th 2018, they tried nonviolence. They marched non-violently to the fence. What did Israel do? It targeted children, targeted Medics, targeted journalists, targeted people with physical disabilities, people on crutches and in wheelchairs and then comes Jake Tapper, well they were approaching the fence in Gaza, what did you expect the Israelis to do? That's his logic. The logic is, they should do nothing. They should just languish and die because if they do anything, what do you expect Israel to do!

I know the Israelis, that's exactly how they act but that doesn't mean that it is right! or that it's permissible!

Norman Finkelstein said in this video:

If the United States would send 3.8 billion in aid to Hamas for its military, then they would have money left over to build bomb shelters. Now, you might find what I just said factious. Under international law, an occupied people have the right to use force and violence to end an illegal occupation. Under international law, an occupying power doesn't have the right to use force to preserve an illegal occupation. So under international law, the 30 billion dollars that Barack Obama gave to Israel over a 10-year period should have been given to Hamas because they're resisting an illegal occupation.

That's the law. It sounds funny almost like I'm trying to score a debater point, no. Under international law, nothing is barring a foreign power from assisting people engaged in a war of self-determination. So, President Obama would have been completely in the right to allocate 30 billion dollars over a 10-year period to assist the Palestinians in their struggle for self-determination. However, international law does bar an occupying power from using force to deny a people the right to self-determination. If you are so upset by the fact that Hamas is devoting resources to building tunnels which are used for military purposes that we can agree on, if he's so upset that instead of building bomb shelters, there's a very simple solution, let the unites states pay for building the tunnels which are legal under international law and then Hamas will have resources left over to build the bomb shelters.

Norman Finkelstein said in this video:

What did you expect the people of Gaza to do after being incarcerated in a concentration camp for 20 years? I know what you wanted them to do. You wanted them to just languish and die but did you not really expect that if they had the opportunity or made the opportunity that they would attempt to do something. Then there's the logic, if you look at World War 2, everytime the partisans, the resistance, killed a major Nazi officer, the Nazis retaliated in very bloody ways. The most famous of the killings was when the Czech partisans killed Reinhard Heydrich. What did the Nazis do? they went into the village of Lidice and flattened it and killed every male above the age of 14. There come Jack Tapper from radio berlin and he says What did you expect the Nazis to do? They killed Reinhard Heydrich! What did you expect them to do? The logic of his argument is the people of Gaza should do nothing. Because if they do anything, Israel is going to retaliate. What did you expect them to do?

The people of Gaza in the beginning of March 30th 2018, they tried nonviolence. They marched non-violently to the fence. What did Israel do? It targeted children, targeted Medics, targeted journalists, targeted people with physical disabilities, people on crutches and in wheelchairs and then comes Jake Tapper, well they were approaching the fence in Gaza, what did you expect the Israelis to do? That's his logic. The logic is, they should do nothing. They should just languish and die because if they do anything, what do you expect Israel to do!

Norman Finkelstein said in this video:

There's a common expression: wherever there is oppression, there's resistance. Not a particularly original idea. So when Marzook says there's going to be another and another and another action like this, well there was another and another and another slave revolt. Not altogether shall be a shocking revelation that people who are oppressed will continue to resist. So allow me just to read the passage.

The British Empire and the french republic linked together in their cause and their need will defend themselves to the death on their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength even though large tracks of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule we shall not flag or fail, we shall go on until the end. This island or large part of it, even if it were, subjugated and starving, even then we would continue. When Winsoton Churcill says that that's heroic. It's in all the history books. We shall go on till the end even if we're subjugated or starving but when Marzook says we are willing to sacrifice. We are a nation of Martyrs, we will do what it takes to free ourselves, to emancipate ourselves, to break out of this concentration camp. It suddenly becomes fanatical Jihadi talk. One of the most famous lines from the American Revolution: Give me liberty or give me death. Isn't that a martyr? And that's supposed to be exemplary of the standard to which we should all rise?

The spokesman said: "Nations are not easily liberated. The Russians sacrificed 30 million people in World War 2 to liberate it from Hitler's attack. The Vietnamese sacrificed 3.5 million people until they defeated the Americans. Afghanistan sacrificed millions of Martyrs to defeat the USSR and then the US. The Algerian people sacrificed 6 million Martyrs over 130 years. The Palestinian people are just like any other nation. No nation is liberated without sacrifices."

Norman Finkelstein said in this video:

I interpret that as a factual account of historical events. He's correct. It took 27 million Russian people's lives just to defeat the Nazis. Does that mean that Stalin or any of the Soviet leaders was indifferent to the deaths of their people? Does it mean that the Vietnamese leadership was indifferent? The fact that he's saying that Hamas can't resist because large numbers of people are going to die is in effect to say the Russians shouldn't have resisted the Nazis, the Vietnamese shouldn't have resisted the Americans. A lot of people are going to die. That's just a factual reality but it doesn't follow from that that Zalinski is indifferent to the deaths of Ukranians in the course of the war.