Holocaust survivor Gabor Maté: Gaza genocide ‘the worst thing I’ve seen in my whole life.’

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us once again.

My guest today is Dr. Gabor Maté. He’s a physician that was born in Hungary amidst the Holocaust. Family members were killed, imprisoned, and he was sent to live with others to save his young life. His life is dedicated as a physician, a healer, an author, a speaker, an activist addressing the trauma of life, war, and oppression. He’s the author of numerous books, which we’ll link to, and we’re going to talk a bit about an essay he wrote in 2014: “Beautiful Dream of Israel has Become a Nightmare”, and he’s written a more recent one for Toronto Star, and joins us now this conversation.

And Gabor, welcome back. Good to have you on The Real News.

Gabor Maté:

Hi, Marc. Hi.

Marc Steiner:

So one of the things that I was thinking a lot about with your coming on the program today and the work that you’ve done in the past is something I’ve been wrestling with, which is how the oppressed become the oppressor. And there’s no better example in our world today than Israel, a place you and I both grew up loving as young Zionists, but switched. What is that dynamic that allows us to become one of the most vicious oppressors on the planet?

Gabor Maté:

There’s nothing unusual about that. It happens all the time. People that are severely traumatized often become traumatizers themselves. Men who are abused in childhood often become abusers. Women who are abused often become abusers of their children. So when that trauma is not worked through, not grieved, and not healed, then it’s very common for it to be passed on then to somebody else who’s vulnerable. People then try to deal with their own vulnerability that they’re terrified by by becoming powerful and inflicting pain on somebody else.

Marc Steiner:

And this becomes a collective trauma. I mean, right?

Gabor Maté:

It can happen both individually, it can happen collectively. Now, it’s certainly true that in 1948, some of the Israeli soldiers who massacred Palestinians, they perceived themselves as fighting against just another antisemitic enemy, one such as they just escaped from in Europe. But you know, Marc, there’s only so far that I want to go in ascribing psychological causes only by themselves to a historical phenomenon.

Now, it’s certainly true that we have the sad spectacle not just of what’s happening over there, but around the world, how our fellow Jews are not believing it, denying it, or even justifying it. And yes, the psychological base of that is a traumatized, victimized sense of self. And so that the support for Israel and the denial of Israel’s brutal oppression of the Palestinians come out of deep Jewish pain and kind of a transference of that pain outward. That’s true. But that by itself does not explain what’s happening in the Middle East. You can’t understand what’s happening there without also looking at the larger question of Western colonialism, Western imperialism, and the force of the imperial powers without which Israel would not even exist. And, as The Wall Street Journal quoted an American official saying two or three days ago, that without the United States, Israel is nothing. And so that we’re not just talking about psychological dynamics here. That explains some of the attitudes, but it doesn’t by itself explain the events.

Marc Steiner:

So let’s talk about that for a moment, though. So, we are witnessing, there’s something that came out post Holocaust, Jews denied but then allowed entry into Palestine, took over the country. And, as I think people have described earlier, Jews were made into a beachhead for American imperialism, in many ways, in the Middle East.

Gabor Maté:

It did not begin after the Holocaust, it began in the 19th century. The Zionist movement first arose, it actually began with Christian Zionists. Before there were Jewish Zionists, there were Christians who believe that the Jews need to go back to Palestine to fulfill the prophecies. And that was very powerful in Britain, number one. Number two, the Jewish colonization, the modern Jewish, there have always been Jews living in the Holy Land, in Palestine, always, but they’re living in peace with the local population. They were part of the Middle East, the Mizrahi Jews.

But in terms of Western Jews from Europe coming there, that started in the 19th century, late 19th century. It was called colonial. They called themselves colonists, and [did] what colonists do. And so they bought land from absentee landlords, and then they kicked off the population of those lands. And there were Jews who then said, there were Jewish thinkers who [in the] late 19th century said that if this continues, all we’re going to do is create one small Levantine people tormenting another Levantine people. So this process goes back to the 19th century.

As far as the imperial interference is concerned, it was 1917 that the antisemitic British foreign secretary [Arthur] Balfour, who, in 1905, when Jews were being massacred in Ukraine and Russia, who was against Jewish immigration to save these Jews, the same guy, in 1917, issues the Balfour Declaration. And in 1920, Winston Churchill, that great democrat imperialist, says that the establishment of a Jewish entity in Palestine accords with the best interest of the British Empire. And that’s what allowed the Jews to come in from Europe before the Holocaust. After the war, as the British Empire wanes and the American empire waxes, rises, then that becomes the dominant. But the imperial project was one without which Israel could never have been established.

So what I’m talking about here is not just the question of antisemitism and the horrors of the Holocaust and the reaction to that. It goes back to Eastern European antisemitism, but it also goes back to the interests of the great powers that was served by the Jewish colonial movement. That’s why I’m hesitant just to explain everything in terms of trauma and trauma response. Yeah, that’s there, and it explains a lot about attitudes, but it doesn’t explain the events, not by themselves.

Marc Steiner:

That historical perspective is critical. That takes us to what we face today at this very moment. I interviewed earlier today doctors in Gaza, and what they’re describing. And I think this, in some ways — And maybe you’ll dissuade us or take it even deeper — I think we’re facing a very dangerous, critical moment, probably the most I’ve seen in my lifetime when it comes to Israel-Palestine and what this right-wing Israeli government is doing, what’s happening in Gaza, the absolute slaughter that’s taking place in Gaza now. So I’m curious where you think, in your analytical perspective, where this could be taking us.

Gabor Maté:

Well, you have a situation today where 31 leading Israeli figures, including a former attorney general, a former speaker of the Knesset, are calling for dire sanctions against their own country.

Marc Steiner:

I saw that just before I walked into the studio to talk to you.

Gabor Maté:

To stop the horror.

And then we have Jewish figures in America denying that the starvation is even taking place, and non-Jewish figures. So on the one hand, we have this horrible reality, and then we have even the denial of that reality. So, it’s such a strange situation, and it is the worst thing I’ve seen in my whole life.

I was in Auschwitz six weeks, six, seven weeks ago, at the very spot where my grandparents landed before they were sent to the gas chambers where my mother and I, me as an infant, and my mother and I almost ended up in June of 1945. We came very close. And nothing in the world ever resembles the horror of Auschwitz, but the spirit of it, the inhumanity, the cruelty of it, the starving of people, the killing of starving people, that’s going on right now and the world is watching now.

Where’s this going? Everybody talks about Netanyahu and the right-wing government. It’s not about Netanyahu. Netanyahu didn’t start the settlements. Netanyahu didn’t start the project of expansion. Netanyahu didn’t start the occupation. That was started by the left wing of the Zionist strain in Israel, by the labor movement. And so it’s not about Netanyahu, it’s not about this particular right-wing government. This right-wing government is just a logical extension, the logical outcome of the inevitable progression of the Zionist project.

Once you decide that this country belongs to me and not to the people that live here or have lived here for hundreds of years, once you decide that Marc Steiner and Gabor Maté have the right to go there tomorrow and get land on the West Bank the day after and be citizens and be given rights and the people living there have no rights whatsoever, once you make that decision, Gaza is inevitable.

And Primo Levi, the great Jewish writer, and he writes in his book, If This is a Man, or the American title is Survival in Auschwitz, he said that once you decide that the other is the enemy, then the lager is inevitable, the concentration camp is inevitable. What are they doing in Gaza right now, Gaza has been called, by Israelis, the world’s largest concentration camp.

So where is this going depends very much on what the world, and particularly the United States, is willing to put up with. Because the Zionist logic is driving the Palestinians out of the West Bank, out of Gaza, out of their homes. This happens every day in the West Bank. We barely even talk about it. We keep talking about Gaza, as we should, we don’t talk about it enough, but in the West Bank is going on every day as well. So where’s that going? That’s where it’s going. It’s going to ethnic cleansing and, if necessary, mass killing. And that’s been going on for 80 years now. That’s where it’s going unless somebody stops it.

The only people in a position to stop it are the Americans, and so far they have funded it, cheerleaded, it justified it, protected it, denied it, enabled it. So it all depends on what the US is willing to put up with and what it’s not willing to put up with, and right now the outlook is not good. So I don’t have high hopes for any kind of a just resolution.

Marc Steiner:

It seems to me, clearly the Democrats said nothing, what’s in the White House now will clearly not do anything to stand in the way of what Israel is doing. It makes me think that we are on a really dangerous international precipice for this beyond Israel-Palestine.

Gabor Maté:

What makes you say that?

Marc Steiner:

Because you see across the globe a right-wing surge politically, and this is one of the pinnacles, and one of the ones that’s [inaudible] of life at the moment. And it’s this weird, to me, confluence of this absolute oppression that Israelis are perpetrating on Palestinians that also bubbles up the hidden antisemitism that’s always there underneath just waiting to arise. And as I wrote the other day, this may be the first time in the history of Jews that we have caused it to bubble up.

Gabor Maté:

Well, there have been studies that have shown every time the Israeli defense forces, so-called, go into action, anti-Jewish sentiment rises. And now the Israelis say that’s because Jews are not supposed to defend themselves. No, it isn’t. It’s because when you massacre people and you torture them and you jail them, and when you starve them, and when you oppress them, when you demolish their homes, when you destroy their wells, when you burn down their olive trees, and then you send in the army… There was an article in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, yesterday. During the Iran war, the brief war with Iran, the Israeli army occupied some homes in the West Bank — Not Jewish homes, of course, Palestinian homes.

When they left, they left excrement in the cooking pots. When the world sees this, and then the Israeli government says, we’re doing this in the name of the Jewish people, and hundreds and thousands of rabbis around the world say they’re doing this in the name of the Jewish people, and the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith, and all manner of Jewish institutions say, Israel is acting in the name and the defense of the Jewish people, then what [is] the world supposed to think about the Jewish people? And then we complain about the rise of antisemitism.

No, there is antisemitism that has nothing to do with what Israel does or doesn’t do. There’s antisemitism with people who just hate Jews, just like there is anti-Black sentiment, which has nothing to do with anything Blacks have ever done or not done, or anti-Asian. So there’s a rise in racism all around the world. But in terms of the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment, consider that that’s at least in significant degree an outcome of horrific acts being committed in the name of the Jewish people, and justified by Jewish leaders as happening in the name of the Jewish people. Of course, that’s not true. You and I are Jewish people, they’re not doing this in our name, but they say they are. So if the average person believes them, who’s to blame them?

Marc Steiner:

So how important and significant do you think this rising movement of Jews, not in our name here in this country and across the globe, is in terms of the struggle that we’re facing now? Do you see it analytically as significant? Does it have a role to play? What’s your analysis of this movement and where it takes us?

Gabor Maté:

Well, it’s morally significant for sure. And there’s always been a strain in Jewish tradition that was a prophetic tradition that said that the state and the king and the rulers and the chauvinism, they’re not the high values. The high values are the godly virtues of justice and mercy. So there’s always been that Jewish strain, thank God. And so what we are seeing now is a requisiteness of that strain of Jewish culture in response to the horrors, and it’s very significant.

But of course, the fact that 1,300 Israeli academics have called Israel’s actions war crimes, the fact that Israeli Jewish scholars of Holocaust have called what Israel is during genocide, the fact that, within the last two days, B’Tselem, the Israeli civil human rights organization, and Israeli Physicians for Human Rights have said that what’s happening right now in Gaza is genocide, these are Jews, Israeli Jews saying this, that by itself won’t stop anything because politically, Jews in the United States who criticize Israel get fired from their academic jobs. In Canada, doctors who speak out against the torture of Palestinian doctors get fired. In other words, what I’m saying is there’s a system in place here that neutralizes, at least temporarily, it doesn’t matter how many beautiful Jewish voices speak out, how much morality, how much ethical outrage and concern many Jews have expressed — And they have. That does not affect the politics… So far.

Marc Steiner:

So far. I can’t even count the number of times over the decades that I’ve been called a Judenrat in public or in public gatherings when we speak.

Gabor Maté:

Oh yeah, well, you know, I’m a self-hating Jew, I’m a [inaudible], I’m a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, whatever the hell anybody thinks that is [Steiner laughs]. But there’s got to be some twisted psychological explanation for why any Jew would speak out against Jewish-committed injustice because they can’t argue with the facts, they can’t argue with the reality, so they have to disparage and invalidate the person. So that’s why we get called these names. That’s the cost of living, you might say.

Marc Steiner:

[Laughs] It is. As we were going at the start of this conversation, you talked about what’s happening in Canada right now. Talk a bit about that. I hadn’t heard of it, I’m sure people listening to us have not heard of it.

Gabor Maté:

Well, Canada, that’s supposed to be this sane alternative to the US. That’s rather exaggerated. Now compared to the US, almost anybody looks sane [Steiner laughs], so it’s an easy mistake to fall into. But let’s look at one thing only. Canada, in a few months, processed 1 million Ukrainian immigration visas, Ukrainians who were escaping from the war. In a few months, they processed a million. In three years, Canada has not processed 5,000 visas from Gaza.

This is not to take anything away from Ukrainians suffering. But if you look at the actual situation and threat to Ukrainian civilians, it’s not anything compared to the threat and the suffering experienced by Gazan civilians. And it’s not that Canada should not have processed those Ukrainian visas. Of course it should have, in the name of humanity. But what do you say about a country that can’t even process 5,000 Gazan visas?

And in Canada, physicians, medical personnel who ahve spoken out against the torture of Palestinian doctors, which is documented, and the death in captivity of Palestinian medical personnel, and the attacks on the hospital, and the deliberate assassinations of physicians, in Canada, medical people who speak out against that are fired or come under threat. So that’s Canada. We talk a very pretty game sometimes, but in practice, we’re in lockstep with the rest of the Western colonial world.

Marc Steiner:

That’s something that, only as we were starting, that I didn’t realize was happening, and I was, in my naivete, maybe was shocked.

So I wonder, as we conclude together today, in all the years you’ve been covering trauma, in all the years you’ve been talking about this issue and more, and when none of us are prescient, but I wrestle a lot with where all this is taking us, the world we’re sitting in right at this moment. We’re watching what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people in Gaza and in the West Bank to Palestinians. But we’re seeing, as I said earlier, this rise in the right across the globe. And I’m curious what you’re thinking about in terms of where this may be taking us and how we confront it.

Gabor Maté:

Well, the world goes through these cycles, so we have to take a long-term view here. We’ve seen before the rise of right-wing dictatorships, haven’t we? We have also seen the cowardice and the acquiescence and the collaboration of the so-called democratic West with those right-wing regimes. We’ve seen as democratic West foster and foment right-wing dictatorships all across Latin America, or in the 1930s in Germany, and in Spain, and in Portugal. We have seen the West allow fascist Italy to trample Ethiopia into the dust. We’ve seen this before.

We’ve also seen, at the same time as all those things are happening, people fighting against that, people trying to make a difference, people putting themselves on the line, people forming movements. And we’re seeing that now. So that Gaza has been a huge wake-up call for billions of people, hundreds of millions of people across the world, including in North America, including Americans who believe in the American dream, and they have this ideal of the American Constitution. This former Green Beret, lieutenant colonel who recently resigned from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and talked about the crimes against, the atrocities, that his people, the organization were committing. And he says, I believe in the US Constitution, and that’s why I’m opposing what’s going on. And so, people are waking up.

So, we’re seeing both the spread of right wing and the rise of right-wing dynamics around the world. We’re also seeing an increasing number of people waking up and standing against it. Ultimately, how history will decide, I can’t predict. I’m just saying I’m seeing both trends, and the only question is not what’s going to happen in the long term, nobody knows, it’s where do we stand today? Where does each one of us stand today? That’s the only decision that’s in front of us.

Marc Steiner:

And I do see a lot of hope in these movements that, here in Baltimore, every time there’s a demonstration sponsored by a younger Jewish generation opposing what’s happening, the numbers get larger and larger.

Gabor Maté:

Yeah. Well, that’s wonderful. That’s really wonderful. I just want to make one more comment, if I could.

Marc Steiner:

Please do.

Gabor Maté:

How should I say this politely?

Marc Steiner:

Don’t worry about it [laughs].

Gabor Maté:

It’s a bit of an obscenity that I’m asked so much to speak on this subject because I happen to be Jewish and because I happened to be, as an infant, to have survived the Holocaust. Why does that make me any kind of a special authority? If you consider the Holocaust, was the Holocaust validated because Germans came and said, I’m a German and I’m against this? Or did we believe the victims?

Why aren’t we listening to the Palestinians as they tell their stories, as they recount their history, as they tell you about their dire, horrible experiences for decades and decades in [Gaza]? What gives me, or for you, for that matter, any kind of authority? Because we’re Jewish? I mean, I understand it, I understand that, OK, here are Jews talking about it, so let’s listen. But I’m telling you, it’s a bit of an obscenity that voices like mine are listened to more than the authentic voices of the people who are experiencing this horror. Those are the voices we should be listening to. So as much as I appreciate any opportunity [to talk] about the subject, I’m saying there’s something out of balance here.

Marc Steiner:

That’s really, really a very critically important comment, statement to make.

Gabor Maté:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

We have to uplift these Palestinian voices now.

Gabor Maté:

Absolutely.

Marc Steiner:

That we try to do here and we’ll continue to do. I think that’s really critical. I think it was a little wake up call, too, for me. Spending so much time talking about Jews dries up. It’s important to really understand who needs to be heard.

Gabor Maté:

It’s not about us right now.

Marc Steiner:

No, it’s not about us. It’s not about us.

Well, Gabor Maté, I want to thank you once again. It’s always insightfully interesting and good to talk with you. I appreciate the work you do, your taking the time with us, and maybe the next time we meet, we’ll have a panel with Palestinians and Israelis and Jews, we’ll all talk together, which I think would be important to do.

Gabor Maté:

Thanks for having me.

Marc Steiner:

Thank you so much.

And once again, let me thank Gabor Maté for joining us today. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program, Stephen Frank for editing today’s broadcast, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show and bringing these guests to us, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at [email protected] and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thank you to Dr. Gabor Maté, and we’ll be linking to his work and more. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.