06/02/09 – Isacc Luria – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
And it's my pleasure to introduce our first guest on the show today, Isaac Luria.
He is the Campaigns Director at the Liberal Israel Lobby in Washington, D.C., J Street.
Welcome to the show.
Isaac, how are you, sir?
I'm doing fine.
Thanks so much for having me.
Well, thank you very much for joining us on the show today.
So, J Street, tell us all about it, starting with the name.
That's as opposed to K Street, is that right?
That's the idea.
So, about a year ago, we started J Street.
We consider ourselves a part of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.
We named ourselves J Street because we wanted to fill a gap in Washington.
There is no J Street in Washington, D.C.
You've got an I Street and a K Street.
It jumps right over J.
And we felt that there had not yet been a strong enough and political enough voice of American Jews and their friends saying, we need strong American leadership to bring peace to the Middle East, to bring about a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
And we wanted to start that movement that represents the majority of American Jews and their viewpoint.
Well, now, why is it that I've seen the polls, and, in fact, I think you guys did a poll not too many weeks ago, where you demonstrated with statistics that, in fact, the, I think, substantial majorities of American Jews share the liberal viewpoint on giving up the West Bank and Gaza for a Palestinian state, certainly opposed to war with Iran.
And yet, I guess, at least the conventional wisdom goes, and there's quite a bit behind this, the Israel lobby in general in this country is extremely right-wing, oftentimes directly tied to the Likud party in Israel.
How is it that that dynamic came about?
Well, it's a very potent myth that American Jews are, by and large, pro-Israel.
I agree that they're pro-Israel, but I think that they also have a sophisticated view of what is the best way to support Israel and the best way to be pro-Israel.
So I think that what's happened is that there have been very loud voices in Washington, D.C., saying loudly and over and over again that the best way to support Israel is to write Israel a blank check, to let Israel do whatever it wants in the territories, and to never be an honest friend about things like settlements, about things like the two-state solution, etc.
And I think that's what's happened, and that's that myth that, as you mentioned with the poll, we showed that 78% of American Jews want to see President Obama push strongly for a two-state deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Many more than we had expected also supported President Obama knocking heads together, making both parties come to the table for the tough compromises this agreement is going to entail.
Well, and let's elaborate on that for a minute.
No, in fact, let's put that off for a minute.
I want to go back to AIPAC for a second.
How come AIPAC is so right-wing when, as you just said, 78% of American Jews, for example, are for a two-state solution or working out something along those lines?
Well, I think, just to correct you a little bit, I want to make sure that we're making a distinction from AIPAC and what we consider as the kind of broader hawkish environment on Israel in Washington.
I mean, it's not just AIPAC.
You've got the Zionist Organization of America well to the right of AIPAC on these issues.
You've got Christian Zionists like John Hagee, etc., who represent large majorities of Christian evangelicals and who are staunchly right-wing on Israel.
So I think AIPAC is one part of a constellation of organizations that do this.
I think that one of the reasons that those organizations have been so effective at pushing a right-wing viewpoint on Israel in Congress, in Congress and during elections and in presidential campaigns, is because they are made up of a small minority of well-off, well-connected, loud people.
If you think about the average American liberal Jew, you don't think that Israel rates high on their issues.
In fact, our polling showed that.
If you said, so what do you care about?
Do you care about health care, the economy, the environment, foreign policy in Israel?
Israel was the top issue only from 8% of American Jews.
Wow.
So basically the richer you are, once somebody is a billionaire, then they become a right-winger, basically.
Well, I think the more they vote on Israel, where it's their number one issue, the more they tend to be hawkish.
So that means that many liberal American Jews have ceded the ground of the definition of what it means to be pro-Israel to that small minority.
Right.
And that's really what you guys are trying to address, right?
Exactly.
What we're trying to do is say there are more ways to be pro-Israel, that the majority of pro-Israel American Jews think diplomacy is a more effective policy for securing Israel and its future as a Jewish democratic homeland, than military action.
And that not only should we support Israel in times of conflict, but if we're not working hard to make Israel secure in times of peace or calm in order to bring about peace, then I don't think we're living up to what we say we are.
And now to Obama's seriousness on the issue, of course, Hillary Clinton grabbed headlines all around.
She gave, I'm sorry, I don't have the quote right in front of me, but she basically said, Hey, listen, I didn't stutter.
I said, and, you know, about the policy of limiting the expansion of the settlements that already exist in the West Bank.
How seriously do you take that?
Do you think that they're going to really stand by their guns there?
Well, I think they have put it out there and, you know, President Obama said on NPR, I think this morning or last night, reiterating his commitment to a settlement freeze, including natural growth.
So I think they're sticking to it.
And I'm really happy they are.
It's been way too long since an American administration said what needed to be said about settlements and how they're killing Israel and how they're making the peace process more difficult.
So I'm very happy about where he's at right now.
You know, I don't think it's going to be easy going, trying to come to an agreement on settlements, but I'm hoping that President Obama's leadership is going to make it easier for Israel and its political process and its politicians and leadership to understand what's necessary for real security.
I did read quite a bit of the Israeli press, and it seemed like, you know, the consensus was that Netanyahu had really been slapped down and had lost, and there were published reports that he was complaining to his friends, what the hell do they want from me?
And I thought that he was only saying that for the cameras, but then a bunch of congressmen came and told me the same thing.
Right.
I think Prime Minister Netanyahu encountered a very different political landscape when he came to Washington last couple of weeks.
It's very different from the 90s.
It's definitely different from the Bush years.
There's a sense of urgency here in the United States for achieving a two-state solution, not just having a peace process, but actually having peace.
It's going to serve American interests.
It's in Israel's security interests, long-term security interests.
So I really hope that, and I urge Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition to seize this moment, because it's not going to come again.
It needs to happen early in an American administration, presidential administration, with a popular president so he can face down congressional critics and those on the right who are going to call him anti-Israel while he tries to do what's best for Israel.
You've also got the Arab League proposal of normalization, you know, with all Arab states.
That's on the table right now for Israel.
That's the Saudi peace plan, the same thing?
Exactly.
And I really hope that he sees this moment as a defining moment for Israel, and Israel needs to seize this moment and to use it to make Israel secure for generations.
And now, how is the influence of J Street relative to the power of AIPAC or associated groups in Congress?
Are you finding more and more at least Democrats willing to give your position a hearing?
Yeah, and we also have seen the historic election in 2008, and also Congress in 2006 was a watershed year.
So there are many more members of Congress speaking out on these issues.
But one of the ways that we're trying to expand the universe of pro-Israel, pro-peace Congress people is through campaign funding.
We run a political action committee called J Street PAC that in the last election cycle endorsed 41 candidates for office.
33 of them won their election.
We raised $600,000 to help them win, and we did that because they were more in line with our values.
And it's also to provide political and campaign support for politicians who might think that, you know, if I don't take a hawkish line on Israel, my campaign funding is going to dry up.
If I don't take a hawkish line on Israel, I worry about a primary opponent that might come after me and call me anti-Israel and get funding from some of the traditional sources here.
So we're trying to show that there are broad majorities of Americans using the Internet to solicit small donations from pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans, Jewish and otherwise, and it's been really successful.
Well, yeah, I mean, when you talk about Congress people fearing that they just cannot cross the Israel lobby because they'll get their funds cut off, having a place for them to go and say, Hey, listen, I'm being punished by AIPAC.
Do you guys have my back or not?
Having some place for them to pick up the phone and call about things like that is very important, it seems like.
Yeah, and it's the intersection between campaign fundraising and finance and politics that I think is the crux of this issue.
I think that's what J Street is really trying to bring to the table, and by creating an alternative infrastructure so we can get progressive pro-Israel candidates elected too and defend them when necessary.
Well, what about the idea that AIPAC and J Street and all these associated organizations should have to register as agents of a foreign power?
We saw Dennis Hastert, the former Speaker of the House, go to work for Turkey and he had to register with the State Department as an agent of a foreign state.
It seems like, you know, I don't even know exactly what all restrictions come with that legal identification, but it seems like pretty much all the other countries' lobbyists have to register as agents of a foreign power, but Israel's don't.
Yeah, I don't know about that.
I mean, I wouldn't support that, mostly because I think that sometimes when we talk about the quote-unquote Israel lobby, that we paint with a broad brush, when I guess I would consider J Street as part of the quote-unquote Israel lobby, even though we're progressive and are two-state solution minded and favor diplomacy over military action.
And in terms of registering, I don't know, because I think that Cuban Americans and their organizations that support a certain kind of relationship with Cuba don't have to register.
So I'm not sure.
I think that that might be pushing limits of free speech, in my opinion.
I think that we should be able to, if we disagree with the current incarnation of those who lobby on behalf of Israel, I think we should, you know, fight them on their ground and try and use better arguments, use innovative tools like the internet, raise money for candidates.
I think that's where you fight back.
Well, you can see, though, why, you know, when you talked about the poll where Israel ranked so low in importance to the average liberal American Jew, what about all the average Americans who aren't Jews, who don't care about Israel at all, who find that the interests of this foreign state and the interests of Americans who care so much about this foreign state have such an ordinate influence over what America's foreign policy is going to be.
Now, don't get me wrong at all, because I would never try to assert that, you know, America would be a nice little peace-loving constitutional republic if it wasn't for Israel or anything like that.
But our empire seems quite often twisted to a policy that benefits Israel, not even the American empire itself.
And it seems like there are a lot of Americans who, you know, would consider this quite unfair.
The Irish lobby or the German lobby or the Latvian lobby or whatever don't have any kind of influence anywhere near like Israel carries in Washington, D.C.
I don't know.
I mean, I think that this is the argument I would make.
As a pro-Israel American Jew, one who believes that Israel and America's relationship is important, I would say that there are an increasing number of people frustrated with the way that the pro-Israel lobby exerts its influence in Washington.
And that group of people is growing.
And there are different kinds of incarnations of the response to that.
Some of them are, you know, I think in some ways beyond the pale of certain kinds of discourse.
I think that they approach a real anti-Israel position, which, you know, is totally understandable, or, you know, something that people can hold not where I'm at.
So that's one reaction to it.
And then the second reaction could be to say, now it's time to make peace because it's in America's interest, because it's in Israel's interest.
And that the best way to frame our arguments as we're dealing with that is to frame them in terms of what's best for the two countries, our relationship, and the security of both of our countries.
I think that's the argument that's going to win if we're going to get at that frustration about a hawkish kind of policy on Israel.
Sure.
And listen, that's fair enough.
I mean, from my position, I have a George Washington's farewell address policy on all of this, which is no entangling alliances with anyone.
But then again, I also understand that my point of view is not really represented in D.C. and isn't going to be part of this debate.
I mean, this country's government is involved over in that part of the world, and all of the debate about how it's going to be involved starts from that premise.
And I understand that that's the way it goes.
Although I do wish everyone would read George Washington's farewell address.
It's actually quite insightful on these points.
Let me ask you about Jay Street's position on Iran.
It seems like at least the neoconservatives have this meme that Hamas and Hezbollah and Syria make up an axis of evil with Iran, basically.
That they are simply fronts for Iranian power.
For example, for Hamas to have power over Gaza is for Iran to control Gaza, that kind of thing.
Do you guys believe in that conspiracy theory about the Iranians?
Is that your position there?
I do.
I mean, I don't know if I'd call it a conspiracy theory, obviously, but I think that Iran has lent support, financial and material support, to Hamas and Hezbollah.
Those organizations have then gone and committed acts of terror against Israel and civilians inside Israel, initiated military confrontations with Israel as well.
But I'm not as concerned about that, which I view as a fact, as I am about what do we now do about the problem that Iran presents for regional security.
Pardon me, I'll let you get back to your point.
Pardon me for interrupting you, but I think I would agree with the way that you just characterized it.
I don't think anybody disputes the idea that the Iranians provide material support to Hamas and Hezbollah and have an alliance with Syria and so forth.
I think the question is, are these groups simply proxies for the government in Tehran or not?
That seems to be the assertion.
Right.
I think that there's one way of approaching it where you say Iran and its supporters, Hezbollah and Hamas, are completely implacable and there's nothing we can do to stop them besides war.
That's one way of approaching it.
I think that's totally wrong.
If you take a sophisticated approach to the problem, you say Hezbollah and Hamas are homegrown political movements that have their own demands and interests, and Iran has its own demands and interests.
The key is to try and drive a wedge between them.
And you can do that in a sophisticated way by pushing diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear program.
We just saw today that Obama floated the idea that he would be comfortable with an Iranian civilian nuclear program.
Now what that does is it makes it harder to recruit for some of the most nefarious acts that Hezbollah and Hamas would carry out because the U.S. appears more conciliatory.
It recognizes that the Iranian Islamic Republic should have the right to nuclear power, not nuclear weapons, but nuclear power.
I think that President Obama is doing the right thing right now.
He's taking some time to assess the real diplomatic push with Iran, knowing that that is the way to reduce Iranian extremism.
You've already seen this start to take a toll in the internal polls in the Iranian elections that are coming up very soon.
And I think that that kind of approach where you say, it's not a bluster and no-talk and military confrontation on the horizon kind of approach.
It's saying, what are our wedges?
How are the ways that we can get inside some of these alliances we don't think are good for the world or U.S. or Israeli interests?
And how can we try and divide them from each other?
And I think that that is, through a diplomatic outreach, tough, smart diplomacy, not underestimating the challenges we face with Iran.
There are many, and diplomacy will take a long time.
But it's time that we tried it.
And it could resolve our differences.
It could help address those differences and at least stop making Iran an active underminer of the peace process between Israel and Palestine.
Well, you know, it seems, and it may be too early to tell, but it seems, at least to me, that the Obama administration is still sticking by the Bush demands.
Even though they're willing to meet, they're still saying you may not enrich uranium on your own soil.
You've got to, you can have a civilian nuclear program, but you've got to buy enriched uranium from Europe or Russia or somewhere else and not have that capability.
On the other hand, the Non-Proliferation Treaty guarantees them the unalienable right to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
And the IAEA, led by Mohammed ElBaradei, has continued to verify the non-diversion of any of their nuclear material to a military or other special purpose.
So I wonder, like, what exactly is y'all's position on that?
That, hey, that's all they have is a civilian program now.
So what demands are to be made anyway?
Well, there are different kinds of civilian programs.
Some of them can be, I think what worries me, and I think worries a lot of people, is that Iran is developing a sort of nuclear capability where they could, in a matter of months, reach a weapon.
Really?
And that means, you know, they could get on a crash course.
And that means, you know, they've never sworn off having nuclear weapons.
And I think that's another part of the equation that I think, you know, that I think it would be good to see.
Isaac, pardon me, pardon me, but haven't they said repeatedly that they're not making nuclear weapons?
Didn't Ahmadinejad say last week that nuclear weapons are a retarded policy?
Didn't the Ayatollah issue a fatwa saying that they're against them?
Now, I'm not saying that they're honest, but the assertion that they've never foresworn a nuclear program, publicly they've foresworn nuclear weapons repeatedly, haven't they?
They do both things at the same time.
I mean, they'll swear off, they'll say something like that, and then another, you know, minor minister or even Ahmadinejad himself will say something like, you know, we need all sorts of kinds of weapons in order to confront the Zionist entity.
Or, you know, there's like, I don't trust it, the way it's been carried on so far.
And look, you know, if I were an Iranian thinking about who to vote for right now, I don't know how much I'd trust the U.S. government either.
They've gone through, you know, the U.S. and Iran have not had a very good relationship for the last 40 years.
And it's time to turn that page, and I hope that Obama is the guy that can do it.
Well, and, you know, it seems like there's a possibility there.
Obviously, as you said, a lot hinges upon the upcoming Iranian elections, and whether, you know, Qatami, Rafsanjani types take power, or whether it continues to be Ahmadinejad, whatever they call him.
Ahmadinejad, yeah.
Well, and here's the thing, too.
As bad as a poster boy as that guy makes for the Iranian, you know, threat or whatever, he's not really in charge of anything, is he?
I mean, Juan Coles says he's basically like the American interior minister.
Not like a foreign interior minister, which means the head of the secret police or something, but like the American interior minister who's just in charge of national parks and, you know, dealing with government employee unions and crap like that.
He's not really in charge of the Revolutionary Guard forces or their atomic policy or anything else, is he?
Well, the Ayatollah does have the final say on nuclear policy.
Although, Ahmadinejad also is a public figure.
He's the one who gets sent abroad, as we saw, you know, in Geneva recently with the speech he gave to the Durban II conference.
So he's out there.
I think also he has political support within his country and don't, you know, as we're observers, don't think that they agree on everything, right, the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad.
So, you know, the Ayatollah needs to manage a guy who's been very good at exciting the Iranian street in Ahmadinejad and those politics.
So I don't know if I'd go so far as to underplay his power to call him an interior minister.
I think that there are other places of power, of course, and there needs to be an intelligent, sophisticated approach to dealing with that.
You know, and that means that we have to, you know, no matter what the outcome of the elections are, recognize that the key person is the Ayatollah and it's about influencing the Ayatollah.
And by the way, and we can, I guess this will be the last question to wrap up.
The war party's view of the Ayatollah, of course, is that he wants Armageddon and the Twelfth Imam to come back.
And, you know, it's basically the Iranian John Hagee over there is running the thing.
And then there are others, of course, who say that, nah, these guys actually are pretty pragmatic and reasonable and can be dealt with.
Does Jay Street have an official position on just how crazy and unnegotiable with the mullahs are there?
I don't know if we've ever really tried negotiation.
So I think that you've got to give it a shot.
And not only, okay, that's one thing.
Second thing is, I do think that they have interests and that they can be influenced.
Just after 9-11, I think right before or right after we went into Afghanistan, Iran passed the documents through the Swift that basically offered a grand bargain with the United States.
Stopping of terror, reduced their, you know, lack of support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Basically a beginning of normalization of relations.
I mean, they get it, but their government gets it.
What's that?
Turn over al-Qaeda members, including bin Laden's son, to us, right?
Right, like all these things.
And it's pretty sad that we're out there critiquing the Iranian regime as being completely irrational.
Now, don't get me wrong.
Their statements, many of them, make me very nervous about what a nuclear-armed Iran would do to the region and to the world.
But at the same time, there is a certain rationality there that you have to try and influence.
And I think it's there.
I don't think it's unlimited.
I don't think that they are eminently rational.
I don't think it's Bach, you know, over there.
But I do think, you know, it's something to try.
All right, everybody.
That is Isaac Luria from J Street.
The website is Jstreet.org.
They're the progressive pro-peace part of the American-Israel lobby.
Thanks very much for your time on the show today.
I really appreciate it, Isaac.
Sure.
Thanks so much for having me.