04/30/09 – Philip Weiss – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Now on to our next guest, it's Philip Weiss.
He's a journalist and author who runs the blog Mondoweiss at philipweiss.org.
That's one L in Philip, like in Philip Drew, you know?
P-H-I-L-I-P-W-E-I-S-S dot org.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing?
Good, Scott.
Thanks for the plug there.
I appreciate it.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I love this blog.
Thanks, man.
I don't know how you write so much all day.
It's really great.
Unemployment.
Unemployment helps, you know?
Oh, yeah.
Now it's just a hard time to be in the media right now and all newspapers going under and stuff.
Boy, isn't that the case?
I think I just heard, was it the Baltimore Sun just fired 20 people or something?
Oh, I didn't hear that.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah, that's on.
Well, anyway, I hope you make it.
Thanks.
Same to you, man.
Yeah, well, we're just at the dawn of this Great Depression.
It's funny to hear him talking on TV about, oh, has the recovery begun?
I know.
It's cruel.
I think so.
All right.
So, anyway, let's talk about what I thought was the big scandal was going to bring the whole house down.
But how naive am I?
It seems like a pretty big scandal.
An American congresswoman apparently caught by the police state on the phone promising a deal with an Israeli spy.
Is that not news or what?
It's pretty good.
It is pretty good.
I mean, I wish the story had more legs, too.
But it was first reported in 2006 and not with the kind of inflammatory quotes from the wiretap that we're getting now.
But the story did come out three years ago and certainly died then.
And now it's kind of just dribbling along and isn't getting that much attention.
Yeah.
Well, I kept asking about it, but they were all just rhetorical questions.
Whatever happened to that Jane Harman AIPAC FBI thing?
That's just me.
Nobody heard it.
All right.
Anyway, well, what was the deal, actually?
Tell us the story kind of in the broad outlines as best you can.
And then I'll try to think of your questions to ask.
There isn't a lot of information.
But what's clear is that I think your listeners are familiar with the fact that a few years back, actually in 2005, the Justice Department charged two former lobbyists or two lobbyists who worked for AIPAC, the leading Israel lobby, under the Espionage Act for secrets that they had gotten from a Defense Department analyst on the Iran desk, a guy named Larry Franklin.
They got these secrets from him and they passed them on to both reporters and to the Israeli embassy.
So this case was brought by the Justice Department four years ago, and it's been a highly controversial case.
The Israel lobby has said, hey, these guys were just getting this information from a government employee the way lots of lobbyists do, lots of way reporters do, and they pass it on to somebody else.
Hey, it's free speech.
And some judges have set a very high standard for the prosecution of this case.
And there's indications that the Justice Department is just going to drop this case after four years of not doing much with it.
So in the middle of this speculation that this highly – it is a very volatile case.
It's basically charging these lobbyists with espionage.
So there have been sort of two huge sides on this.
On one side, people in the federal government who want to limit the role of the Israel lobby or its effect in our politics, and people outside the government too, like myself.
And on the other hand, the Israel lobby, which doesn't want to have its powers curbed.
And so just when we think this case is about to be dropped, what emerges is one of the plums of this investigation.
And during this investigation, while the Justice Department was sort of wiretapping various individuals associated with the investigation, who shows up on a tape but Jane Harmon, a very pro-Israel congresswoman from California, who had the top job minority then for the Democrats, the top minority position, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee back in 2005.
And Harmon is saying to a person who's only been identified as a suspected Israeli agent, she's saying to him, hey, I will try to get these charges against these Israel lobbyists dropped.
The case had just been brought.
I'll try to get this case dropped.
I'll work on the White House to get it dropped.
If you can help me keep my ranking member position on House Intelligence.
So Jane Harmon, a very powerful congresswoman, obviously thought that this suspected Israeli agent would have influence over Nancy Pelosi, who was the minority leader.
And in fact, what was going to be the lever of this influence but Chaim Saban, who is, I guess he brought Power Rangers to the United States, he's a toy manufacturer, hugely wealthy, and an ardent Zionist, gives tons of money to the Democratic Party.
So, wow, I've gotten into a lot of detail here, but the point is that you have merging here a congresswoman's ambitions, the Israeli lobby, Jewish money in the political process, conservative Jewish money, Zionist money in the name of Chaim Saban, and it's a corrupt deal, according to the Justice Department, which called it a completed crime.
What they heard Jane Harmon say, they characterized as a completed crime.
Now, that case was never pursued against Jane Harmon, because the White House saw her as an ally in the war on terror.
But it's come out, it's been incendiary.
Harmon has hired Lanny Davis, the old Clinton attorney, now a leading Israel lobbyist himself, to defend her.
She's trying to poo-poo it.
She's called for the release of these tapes, and the press has been sort of chewing at the edge of this.
It made the front page of the New York Times.
The story was exposed by Congressional Quarterly, and it's gotten a lot of attention on the Foreign Policy blog and in the blogosphere, but it hasn't really gone that far yet, even though it really exposes how the Israel lobby works.
Here's a congresswoman turning to a suspected Israeli agent to help her with her promotion in the House.
Wow.
How has Israel had gotten that much influence in our political process?
And is that good for this country?
I don't think so.
Well, you're just an anti-Semite.
Well, you know, I guess.
I'm a Jewish one.
I'm certainly a critic of Zionism, but unfortunately being a critic of Zionism these days is, you're called an anti-Semite.
They'll throw anything at us.
Well, and on that most important point, this congresswoman looking at her ambition, how am I going to get to become the chair of the House, not just the House something committee, the House Intelligence Committee?
What is the path to do this?
What lobby is there outside of government that could influence government better than the Israel lobby itself?
A foreign government's lobby, that's who she goes to.
And interestingly to me, involved in the same case, this is what apparently enticed Larry Franklin, who they say was a neoconservative ideologue anyway, but this was one of the things that enticed him to steal secrets and betray his country, was that they promised that they would go around his bosses at the Pentagon and talk to some people to get him on the National Security Council and get him promoted to the White House.
Scott, I just read that today myself.
I'm surprised you knew that.
I mean, I find that part of the most shocking part of that case.
Yeah, this guy who's, you know, an Army or an Air Force Colonel Reserves, Larry Franklin, he's going to the Israel lobbyist to get, you know, a job at the White House.
He works at the Pentagon.
I mean, it's like, wow.
Well, and as Juan Cole wrote on his blog immediately, this is all about Iran.
Let's go back to why this Larry Franklin guy, which documents he was stealing and what for in the first place.
This was about helping put the Israeli government in a better position to manipulate or for whatever reason set up the structure of the so-called diplomacy or whatever to better be able to get us into a war with Iran.
That's right.
I mean, if you look at the documents that, I mean, I haven't looked at the documents, but I've read about them.
Larry Franklin is on the Iran desk at the Pentagon.
And a total insider is Steve Rosen, the former lobbyist who is said to have said about him.
And he's faxing this stuff to Rosen, according to the indictment.
And it's helping Israel make this case that, oh, this is, you know, this terrible threat that we've got to, you know, take immediate action.
And this thing, obviously the Iran thing hasn't gone away.
It continues to be this drumbeat of paranoia and hysteria four years on.
Yeah, well, and more specifically, continues to be a policy based on the idea that there's a nuclear weapons program in the country which is contrary to the official intelligence estimate of this government.
Right.
That's right.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess we all have a prayer that Obama is going to proceed in a more conciliatory and thoughtful manner on this and, you know, work with the Iranians on this and achieve our objectives without starting another war in the Middle East.
Now, tell me about this.
I was trying to catch up on this Harman story and figure out what it is I've missed over the past couple of days.
It seems like all I've missed is that the few bloggers who are paying attention to this thing are trying to come up with the excuse that evil old Porter Goss is just out to get poor old Jane Harman.
Yeah, I mean, the problem with this story is that some people are trying to turn it into this kind of Washington farce of political retribution and that, yeah, she was on opposite sides of Porter Goss and she had criticized at one point Jane Harman who has supported the Iraq war, supported this war on terror.
She did take exception to some of the torture methods to her credit and there have been suggestions that, well, this is why she got mixed up in this is because she had alienated Porter Goss who was then head of the CIA.
I think that that is really truly a distraction.
This is not about retribution.
This is about the Justice Department investigating an issue of undue influence and possibly crossing the line and she got caught up in it.
And it is unfortunate that it turns into this kind of Washington comedy in some people's views.
I mean, to his credit, John Stewart did the story on The Daily Show the other night.
Even he, I thought, made it into kind of a comedy rather than getting at the heart of it, which is, geez, what is the Israel lobby doing here and why do American politicians understand that it can affect their futures so positively?
You know, what is happening?
Yeah, and you know, it is interesting.
I am kind of two minds about that, too.
I had missed the clip originally, but I saw that on your blog there.
And he really does explain the whole story pretty well.
But you are right that the whole spin is, oh, what a bunch of government doesn't work, what a big joke or whatever, rather than, wow, so our greatest ally in the Middle East has a massive covert operation going on inside Washington, D.C.
Is that right?
Yeah, I mean, he did treat it as a humor.
I mean, I don't know how large the covert operation is, but it is certainly, you know, something is going on.
And without sort of public pressure, these things are not going to come to light.
And, you know, without public pressure, the Rosen-Franklin-Weisman case, that is not going to be prosecuted.
And there is a real question right now about how much of an appetite people, the press has for this.
It has shown some appetite for it now.
And, I mean, God bless them.
But I think that, you know, when it is treated as farce or intramural politics, people tend to close down to it.
Well, let's see.
Scott, I'm just curious.
I'm curious.
How did you pick up that angle that, you know, Larry Franklin was aiming for a job on the National Security Council, and he thought that these guys were going to help him get the job?
Are you kidding me?
I read Raimondo.
Wow.
Wow.
So he was on it.
That's great.
Yeah, nobody has written more about the AIPAC case than Justin.
Yeah, I know.
I read it.
It's up in the American Conservative.
In fact, even the very first day it happened, he says, oh, yeah, right.
We sort of just happened to end up with Andrew Mitchell Greenspan got it.
This was clearly damage control is the way it was leaked into the press in the first place.
Wow.
He's been on it ever since then.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
Wow, that's great.
And, in fact, I think that's even in the indictment.
Oh, it is.
It is.
It's funny because I read the indictment today in getting ready for our conversation.
Oh, I certainly didn't.
Yeah, but I thought, I saw that.
I saw the national.
You know, here they are saying, we'll put in a word for you.
You know, what is going on?
You know, why is he turning to an Israel lobbyist to get a job at the White House at the elbow of the president, as Rosen says?
Right, especially when he's right there working for Doug Fyfe in the policy shop.
He's tied right in with Scooter Libby and the whole crime ring there.
Yeah, you'd think he'd have quite an in there.
Yeah, I don't know.
Well, there's some kind of broader politics about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel related to this issue as well, which is that apparently Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign minister, Avigdor, as I say, Lieberman, they have both hired the Israeli spies who were the recipients of the Rosen, Weissman, Franklin documents who were funneling them back to Israel.
It was the Iraq and New York.
Yeah, I mean, I guess they're confident that this case is going nowhere.
But I think that, you know, that is an indication that Netanyahu and Lieberman, they are a little tone deaf about what's happening in the United States, which I think is a good thing because I think that they are doing a number of things.
I mean, first of all, Israel is a, you know, who knows what that country is like right now, but it's taken a sharp turn right and they're not really in touch with the cultural atmosphere of Obama America.
And here they're doing this stuff that is only going to alienate the American Jewish community.
And I think that's a great thing because it will make the American Jewish community, which is so vital to American political life and to media life, it's going to force American Jews to wake up to the fact that, hey, this is a militarized country with some policies that are racist, Jim Crow policies across the West Bank, and they don't seem to get it over there.
And I think that that, as I say, is, you know, it's helpful politically.
Yeah, well, it's too bad that things have to be worse for people to recognize, but I guess that is the way it goes.
Good point.
Well, so J Street was founded, what, about a year and a half ago now or something?
Yeah, yeah.
Tell me about J Street.
How big of an effect does J Street have?
That's the liberal, pro-peace, give up the West Bank, Israel lobby in D.C., right?
Yeah, it's the new alternative.
It's the trend that I just described, the sort of division within the Jewish community.
The Jewish community has always sort of tried to act as one voice.
The leaders of that community have said, hey, hey, hey, don't any of you go off the reservation.
We have to address this government, American government, with one voice, and that's how we can help Israel.
And finally, there's division within that community, and AIPAC, the leading Israel lobby, is about to have its policy conference on Monday, starting on Sunday, and J Street today sort of issued a challenge to AIPAC, said, hey, we're on Obama's side, you're not.
We're for working with Obama to have a peace process that's meaningful in the Middle East and not to confront Iran, and you're going against Obama.
So J Street, I think, has become very effective, and one reason it has is I think it's raising money.
Well, you know, an important point that you're implying there, and I think there really may be something to this, although I'd really like to hear you flesh out the details of what you're considering there, is that Obama really is quite a bit better on the status of the West Bank and Gaza than the Bush administration.
He sent Hillary Clinton over there to at least say some pretty stern things.
Yeah, I mean, anyone is better than George Bush.
I think the fear and concern is how much better is Obama going to be, and what is it going to take?
And I don't know whether you're for a two-state solution or a binational solution or one state, whatever you want to call it.
We've got to stand for Palestinian rights of self-determination.
That is what's crucial.
These people have been denied that for 60 years, and guess what?
It's hurt us in countless ways.
As you've pointed out in one of our earlier conversations, it played an important part in the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9-11.
So is Obama going to make a difference?
Obviously he's going to make a difference.
It may be too little too late, but what is crucial is that he's not going to do a thing without political cover, and political cover means he can't alienate the Jewish community.
It's just too crucial to the Democratic Party, too crucial to the sort of establishment leadership of the movement that he represents.
He can't alienate the Jews.
And J Street offers the real possibility that he's going to get political cover within the Jewish community to put pressure on Israel, and that's the only way anything's going to happen, is if we put pressure on Israel.
Well, I wonder about, do you think the American Jewish community by and large has the same sort of contradictory belief system, you know, like right-wingers want limited government that can torture at will, and that kind of thing?
I mean, it seems like when I read the polls that break down the American population by religion and ethnicity and whatever, it seems like American Jews are pretty good on American foreign policy issues.
They're not good on the Gaza War, but on pretty much everything else.
Yeah, well, I mean, the contradiction you just got at is absolutely the central contradiction of Jewish political life, which is on the one hand, you know, we've been the sort of leadership and rank and file of liberalism for the last, you know, four years, and when it comes to Israel, you know, we're right-wingers in terms of supporting Israel, right or wrong, not dividing Jerusalem, supporting the Gaza slaughter, and even allowing the settlements on the West Bank.
Now, there are, J Street is calling on real progressive tendencies within the Jewish community and misgivings about all those policies, but we've been too monolithic about this, and we've scared the Democratic Party and the Republican Party so that they supported this really wicked colonization project of the West Bank.
And it's changing.
It is changing.
Again, is it going to be too little, too late?
Yeah, well, that is indeed the question.
Well, let me ask you this.
Is there any other reason or any other real, you know, whether it's propaganda or whether you think there's actually some legitimacy to it or anything, is there any other reason why Israel must control the West Bank other than it's in the Bible?
Because, you know, I think there are people who would say that it's, you know, that's where they launched the war 30 years ago, started from there or something, and this is the top of the hill, and we need this for purely, you know, earthly, topographical, geographical, security reasons, that kind of argument.
Well, but, Scott, you know, we're all in the same war as Israel right now against Islamofascism, and, you know, they've got to, that's the argument they made successfully throughout the Bush years, is that they were fighting terrorism there.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
I mean, I think it's just land lust.
You get, I think Robert Frost once said it, you own a piece of land, the next thing you want, your neighbor's land.
You just start to, and Israel has been able to get away with that for, you know, 60 years, and it has been because of statelessness.
These people have no right to it.
It's oppressing.
And so it just takes more and more land, and it rationalizes it on the basis of were your aircraft carrier in the Middle East, or were your sort of the most important ally in the war on terror against Islamofascism and World War IV, and, you know, any rationalization you want, or Judea and Samaria, as you pointed out, the biblical one.
But it's gotten our state, the crucial thing is we've signed off on this, and, you know, our politicians have signed off on it for just too long.
You and me are going to change that.
Well, I don't know about that.
At least try to shed light on it anyway.
Call the store.
That's all I can do.
Yes, you're doing a great job.
Well, one of the things that you pointed out on your blog that I thought was really important, and this goes back, again, to the contradiction between most Jews in American society falling on the political left, and giant numbers would consider themselves civil libertarians and so forth, but if an anti-foreign aid group puts up a billboard under a contract with another private company to say, hey, we shouldn't keep paying for Israel's military for killing people with, Jewish groups will get together and force the billboard company to break the contract and take the sign down.
I know.
Isn't it shocking?
It is shocking.
It ought to be shocking to everybody.
Hey, if me and my people get a sign together, and it doesn't say the F-U word on there, then that's it.
It's nobody else's business.
Absolutely.
And you know, that's the thing.
What a contradiction.
And as you point out, a complete contradiction.
My people, I grew up with just strict adherence to free speech, civil liberties.
I remember Madeline Murray O'Hare trying to get God out of the schools.
My mother was on her side all the way.
And here's a free speech issue, and the Jewish groups are trying to shut these people down.
And they have.
They've torn down those billboards.
And they're going after this professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, because during the Gaza War, he compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto.
That's anti-Semitic, they say.
And they're getting an investigation at the school.
It's crazy.
It's having a real effect.
It's limiting the public conversation in the United States about these issues.
It's not you and me are hip about this, because we've put in the time.
We've made sacrifices to look into it.
We've been animated by the Iraq War.
What about people who don't have the time we have, or aren't in this business, who are just out there and are not learning the truth about this?
It's horrible.
And it's partly because these billboards get torn down, or the media get intimidated, or professors get intimidated.
So I'm with you all the way there, man.
Well, and you know, the thing is, too, is I'm an individualist.
I can't stand anti-Semitism or any kind of bigotry and racism.
It's stupid, but you can't beat people over the head with the weakest allegations of anti-Semitism every time they say something bad about the Likudnik government over there, because then it becomes meaningless.
Well, Scott, don't you think there's a change?
I mean, that's bad news that they tore down these billboards.
They were up for three weeks.
Don't you think there's a change going on in America right now?
I sure hope so.
I mean, I do think that actually the wolf crying about anti-Semitism has worn quite thin and that people are starting to get over it.
But that kind of assumes that anybody is paying any attention or cares at all in the first place, which I'm not sure is, you know, not assuming too much right there.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Although that generation of Jews who just sees anti-Semitism behind every door, that generation is dying off.
And the kids just, it doesn't mean the same thing to them.
They just haven't experienced anti-Semitism in their lives.
And they know this is a crock when these people go after a professor or a billboard, you know.
And, you know, I don't think that anti-Semitism runs all that deep in America anyway.
I think that people who are actually, like, avowedly Jew haters are, you know, half of one percent and meaningless, not really even part of the conversation anyway.
So who cares about that?
I'm with you.
I'm with you.
And we've changed.
This country's changed.
I mean, why couldn't we have elected a black president 30 years ago?
Why not?
I'm sorry.
That's it, Phil.
We're all out of time.
Great interview.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks, man.
Everybody, that's Philip Weiss.
The blog is mondoweiss at philipweiss.org.