Tariq Ali & Rashid Khalidi on Israeli Elections, Palestine, Iran & New Book "The Neck and the Sword"

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We get analysis of the Israeli elections, the upcoming U.S. midterms, the pro-Palestine movement and more from Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi and Pakistani British writer Tariq Ali. They are co-authors of the new book The Neck and the Sword: Palestine’s Unfinished Struggle. The book, an extended conversation between Khalidi and Ali over two years, offers an overview of Palestinian intellectual and political history, drawing its title from a famous phrase used by the renowned Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani to describe the futility of “peace talks” between occupier and occupied, saying it was akin to a “conversation between the sword and the neck.”

Kanafani was assassinated by Israel in 1972, “murdered simply because his words were too dangerous for Israel to tolerate,” says Khalidi.

Public opinion about Israel has grown increasingly negative in the United States and across much of the world in the wake of the genocide in Gaza, and it’s “not going to shift back,” says Khalidi. “People have seen something that cannot be unseen. They’ve seen genocide. They’ve seen slaughter. And Israel has no defense.”

“Even in countries with no history of a Palestine solidarity movement, suddenly the Palestine flag emerges,” says Ali. “Why? Because their governments are trying to stop dissent on this issue, so they are defying their governments.”

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