11/05/13 – Philip Weiss – The Scott Horton Show

Why does the U.S. support the tortured dictatorship in Egypt?
Because that's what Israel wants.
Why can't America make peace with Iran?
Because that's not what Israel wants.
And why do we veto every attempt to shut down illegal settlements on the West Bank?
Because it's what Israel wants.
Seeing a pattern here?
Sick of it yet?
It's time to put America first.
Support the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org and push back against the Israel lobby and their sock puppets in Washington, D.C.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the Thingamajig here, man.
It's my show, the Scott Horton Show.scotthorton.org is my website.
Keep all my interview archives there.
We're streaming live, of course, three to five weekdays here at the Liberty Express and No Agenda Radio, as well as scotthorton.org, Anomaly Radio, and others too.
Our next guest is the great Philip Weiss, journalist and columnist and keeper of the excellent blog.
I shouldn't really call it a blog.
It's more than a blog.
It's a website, mondoweiss.net.
And he's got an excellent stable of writers and new ones all the time too.
And a lot of great stuff going on there at Mondo Weiss.
I sure hope that you guys will bookmark it and look at it all the time.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing?
Great, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
And I appreciate the book plug that you just gave.
I want to buy that book, YPs.
Oh, yeah.
It's really good.
I think you'll dig it.
It's a great collection of essays, really.
There's like 50 of them or something.
That's great.
It's really something else.
That's great.
Yeah, good.
You hear that, Mark?
All right.
Hey, by the way, speaking of promoting things, maybe it's over now, maybe it's over now, or maybe my script blocker just blocked your script.
But you guys were doing a fun drive just the other day, at least, anyway, right?
Is that right?
We're always doing that, but I don't want to plug that.
Thank you.
But yeah, we're always doing it.
They should check it out.
Check out the site.
If they like it, then they should support it.
But whatever.
Well, man, I have no problem promoting it at all.
I think it's great.
Thank you.
And I think as long as people are reading it, they will want to support it.
So it's not a very hard sell or anything.
Just look at Mondoweiss.net.
The looking is free.
The support comes later if you feel like it.
You know, that's fair enough.
Great.
All right.
So let's talk about the most important thing going on.
Well, one of the most important things going on right now that is not getting much coverage, anyway, and that is the so-called peace talks.
Well, I don't know.
I don't want to prejudice it too much.
Maybe there's some real peace talks going on, but they've been meeting anyway, right?
Something's going on over there.
What's the latest from the Palestinian Authority and the Netanyahu government and their negotiations?
Well, I think the peace process is hobbling along at this point.
It's hard to take it too seriously, although certainly John Kerry just made his sixth trip out to Israel in the last six months or so.
So his shuttle diplomacy is continuing.
But at the same time, the Israelis announced that they're going to be demolishing another 2,000 homes in East Jerusalem, Palestinian homes, of course, causing 15,000 Palestinians to be homeless.
They've announced 1,500 settlements in the West Bank and others in East Jerusalem.
So and this was necessary politically for Netanyahu to do this, just so he could release some Palestinian prisoners as part of his negotiations or as one of the conditions for the Palestinians to even talk.
So in order to meet a Palestinian condition, he has to basically, to maintain his coalition, he is basically foreclosing any possibility.
I mean, there hasn't been a possibility of two-state solution for a long time, but he's just making it more and more clear to the world by taking over East Jerusalem, which is supposed to be the capital of a Palestinian state.
And not just taking it over, but foreclosing the possibility of the capital being there, but ethnically cleansing it, Judaizing it.
So it's a really ugly process that's taking place before our eyes.
And that's what the peace process is.
And the United States mumbles stuff about, we do not see settlement construction as productive.
It's counterproductive.
But then they do nothing about it.
So it's really kind of laughable.
And even the chief Palestinian negotiators were reported to have resigned the other day and are sort of, it's all hanging on by a thread.
Wow.
So it sounds like the kind of thing that they would do just to sort of sabotage the negotiations or something, kind of a big middle finger to the Americans for trying to make them even deal, a big middle finger to the Palestinians for thinking that they're ever going to have any sort of independence there.
But you're telling me Netanyahu pretty much had no choice but to do this.
Yeah.
Well, I think that it's very important for Netanyahu and for the Israel lobby in this country to be engaged in, quote unquote, peace talks.
There has to be a, quote unquote, peace process.
There's been a peace process for nearly 25 years.
Yeah, just don't agree to anything.
Just keep processing.
Yeah, they don't agree to anything.
And meanwhile, they take more and more of the Palestinian land.
Yeah, they don't have to do it right in the middle of the negotiations like this.
I mean, they didn't negotiate at all for a couple of years there.
It seems like they could have waited until this round was over.
Oh, no, because the right-wing coalition, it's basically, they've got a settler coalition.
They've got to appease the settlers inside their coalition.
So, I mean, the whole thing is kind of a joke at this point.
It's just, it is strictly conflict management.
And the problem is that if they really do abandon any pretense of having a peace process, then the Israelis could be blamed for what they're doing.
But since they maintain this kind of charade, they can claim, well, we're just trying to negotiate.
We don't have a real partner for peace.
It's just absurd.
And the fact that the United States rubber stamps all this is what's truly pathetic here.
Yeah.
I guess let me go back to what you said about the possibility of a Palestinian state is now impossible.
By that, you mean it would be too difficult to remove the settlers, even if you had an Israeli government that wanted to remove the settlers from the West Bank, is that what you're saying?
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you drive around the West Bank, I mean, you're just seeing an area in which in substantial portions of the West Bank, there's a lot more Jewish settlement than there is Palestinian life.
And that's because the Palestinians have been forced out into Area A, these urban areas.
They've been cantonized.
And there's just there's Israelis who vote in Israeli elections all over that territory, and close to 600,000 of them all told in East Jerusalem and West Bank, or 650,000.
And, you know, you're just not going to remove them and you're not going to remove the ideology that inside Israel that all this land is ours, this land was given us by God, Jerusalem was given us by God.
That ideology has really taken root inside Israeli-Zionist culture.
And it's just, it means there's not going to be a viable Palestinian state.
You could create a Bantustan, that's what they want to do.
But any semblance of rights for Palestinians, including the right of refugees to return to their homes, is just off the table.
But, Scott, I wanted to tell you about my biggest scoop of my life, which I had last week.
Well, okay.
I read what you wrote.
Which was the biggest scoop of your life?
Well, I was there at Yeshiva University in New York when Sheldon Adelson said we shouldn't talk to Iran, we should nuke it.
And Obama shouldn't talk to Iran, he should be nuking Iran, firing an atomic weapon into the desert, and killing, you know, just a bunch of salamanders, but then saying the next one's in Tehran.
Anyway, this threat issued by the casino mogul who pays for Republican presidential candidates, I got it on videotape and it went viral.
So that was the biggest scoop I've ever had.
I was really pleased.
And the point that I think is really shocking about this is, that I mentioned that touches into the peace process, is first, this is the guy who paid for a lot of Republican expenses in the 2000 election that got George Bush into the White House.
And George Bush...
And that's an understatement.
He spent how much money?
Hundreds of millions of dollars, right?
Well, in 2000, I don't know about...
In 2000, he spent several hundred thousand that I'm aware of.
But that's 13 years ago.
The reason I bring it up is that he did that because he was so frightened by the Clinton peace process, the Camp David peace process.
And the result was that George Bush said, he said to Sheldon Adelson, well, I can't be more Catholic than the Pope.
I can't be more Israeli than Netanyahu or Omer, he was saying.
But I'll do what you want.
And basically, he shut down the peace process that Clinton had started.
And that was what Sheldon Adelson achieved.
And now we see what the quality of this man's thinking is.
This is a guy who says we should nuke Iran.
And he's had so much power over American policy.
It's incredible.
Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood.
I thought you're talking about the last election, but you're talking about back in 2000.
No, in 2000.
And I mean, he got close this last time because, you know, he was supporting Gingrich and Romney.
I mean, he was the leading backer of these Republicans.
But it's just, if one of them had gotten in, I mean, I know, you know, we don't care for the Democrat either.
But if one of them had gotten in, would they have been nuking Iran?
I just don't, you know, this is, you're seeing a thug issuing threats on this, on the stage of a leading American Jewish institution and the people there are smiling and clapping.
It's really a horror show.
Yeah, well, it was amazing.
I'm sorry that I did not put together that was your scoop.
I saw the video.
I'm just giving you a hard time.
No, no, but I brought it up just because I'm proud and because it touches into these other things.
And then, you know, then you throw in the fact that Obama's Iran policy, you know, I think it's the best thing Obama ever did was backing down on the Syria threat.
And the consequence has been an opening to Iran.
Well, the Israel lobby's going nuts over this.
Sheldon Adelson's going nuts.
And who did Obama meet with last week?
He meets with four leaders of the Israel lobby and basically agrees that he's going to, he won't, he says, I don't want Congress to tighten any sanctions.
And I won't lessen sanctions during the next round of negotiations with the Iranians.
So they're tying his hands for these negotiations.
The Israel lobby is, by all reports.
Well, yeah, I mean, and they're making it pretty plain, too, in all the different newspapers or whatever.
It's not any kind of underground thing.
They're marching right up to Capitol Hill.
They're making it known to all of their friends and all the major papers to write an essay about what a great job AIPAC is doing, trying to get and having great success in getting congressmen on board for them and how, oh, yeah, Obama's had to beg them to allow him to.
Can you guys please freeze with the anti-peace lobbying?
Give me a week to try to just get through the next few days.
He's got to beg them and grant audiences to all their leaders in the Oval Office to get them to listen to him and stuff like that.
It's embarrassing.
It's crazy to watch, I think.
I mean, Israel's the size of Maryland or something.
And New Jersey.
Yeah, my whole attitude is take a hike.
I don't care.
Why should I care any more about this whole country than any other country in the world?
You don't see Mongolia lording it over the U.S. Senate like this, you know?
No, and you don't see our secretary of state meeting six times with, you know, the prime minister of a country of six million.
And then the other part of it is that the other week, John Kerry had the temerity to say, well, our Iranian policy is not going to be governed by fear tactics.
No reference to Israel in that statement.
But immediately the Anti-Defamation League came out and blasted Kerry, saying that he should not be criticizing Israel publicly.
And what happened?
Foxman, the guy who made that statement from the Anti-Defamation League, he goes to the White House and meets Obama.
Samantha Power, the ambassador to the U.N., is praising him.
Why do these people have power?
That's what we have to ask.
And the reason is simple, because they are perceived to deliver a lot of money from wealthy, conservative Jews to the Democratic Party and people who are conservative on Israel, people who love Israel and the Jewish community.
And that's my problem as a Jew, because I have to break that Jewish identity with Zionism.
But it's also a major political problem, because these right-wing ultra-Zionists have so kind of intimidated the politicians and convinced them that there's only one way to get Jewish support, and that is to be a hardliner on Israel.
And the Jewish community organizations bear responsibility here, because they've signed off in large part.
The thing of it is, though, every time I hear liberal Jewish critics of the Israeli state, it seems to me like you guys are all way more Jewish than the Pope, man, because the Likudniks are, well, they're like Republicans, and they have their little kind of miniature version of the American empire there.
And just like the American empire, they're killing their own society.
You don't have to be brilliant to just apply your imagination to the short-term, even, or medium-term, whatever you call it, future of Israel, to see how Netanyahu today is writing Israel's tow-tag, you know?
At some point, they're going to have to outright admit that they have annexed the West Bank and Gaza, and then at that point, they are still going to, obviously, completely refuse equal citizenship to the Arab, Muslim, and Christian communities living there.
And then they're either going to have to force march them out, like Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears into the Jordan River, or they're going to have to outright admit that they're not just Jim Crow, but Mississippi during the Jim Crow, South Africa, minority rule.
And how are they even going to last until 2025 like this, or 2030?
I mean, you would think that if anybody cared about Israel, they would be telling all these right-wingers that they're ridiculous and dangerous.
But everybody seems to go along like, well, like it's 2002 in America, and whatever George Bush thinks, he's the most grown-up guy in the room.
I guess he knows what he's doing.
Right.
And there's a lot more.
I mean, when you talk about the American empire, there's actually a lot more criticism of the American empire in our discourse than there is of this suicidal Israeli empire, which is dragging us down.
Yeah, you know, America can afford it a lot more than Israel can, you know?
We're safe way over here in North America, and we got a trillion dollars and all that.
Right.
But, I mean, tell me the truth, God, if Israel went down the tubes, you wouldn't really...
I mean, how much would you...
I mean, down the tubes, you'd obviously care if a lot of people got hurt.
No one wants to see people hurt.
But if, you know, the Jewish state of Israel ceased to exist and a democracy existed there, I think both of us would be happy.
Yeah, yeah, I don't care.
I mean, it seems to me like if they would just...
Well, and see, I'm a libertarian, so at the very most, I want the most minimal state.
So if the state's only job was just actually guaranteeing the rights of the people and being their security force of everyone equally, then you could have a no-state solution or a one-state solution, and it would be fine.
The only reason it matters whether Jews or Arabs are in charge is because of how they're going to use the state to lord it over each other and slave each other.
And that's the problem with the one-state solution, too, is there'll just be a civil war.
I mean, that's the whole thing is the disruption of all of this is people are going to die in this one way or the other.
This is a really bad way of doing it.
And I can't help but think that as mean as it is and as unfair as it is, that they could just go back to the 67 borders and deny the right of return to inside the 67 borders, give up, you know, force all the settlers out, give up the West Bank and Gaza, let them have their little Palestinian state, and Israel could probably survive as a so-called Jewish democracy for at least a much longer term if they actually wanted that.
But it seems to me like they would rather destroy themselves trying to build a greater Israel that they don't even have the people to populate anyway.
And there's a bunch of red Indians in the way.
What are you going to do with them?
Yeah, I think I think it's a brilliant analysis you made, because the truth is that these people could have gotten away with this.
They would have reached a deal with the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Palestinians inside Israel to say, hey, basically, let's divide this up among ourselves in a, you know, not a fair way.
You're just going to get a small chunk of it.
But we're going to sell out the refugees and who also have a right to be there.
And I think the Palestinians of the West Bank might have gone along with that at some point and said, OK, we don't want them back either or whatever they might have said.
If we get, you know, so much territory out of the deal and maybe Israel could have pulled it off.
But at this point, I agree, they're surrounded by the, you know, native, the indigenous population and a lot of different countries who regard them as an illegitimate state.
And they're succeeding in delegitimizing them because they're delegitimizing themselves.
Yeah, well, and their population is falling as they're trying to expand into territory where other people live.
I mean, the whole thing just doesn't even make sense at all.
And and, you know, I think and I'm not the world's expert on all of this, you know, Phil, you know, I have a lot more about it than me.
But yeah, but more or less, Arafat back in 88 and Hamas back in at least 06 or something, I saw Hamas on the freaking Charlie Rose show saying, just give us 67 borders.
And then I think he said, forget the right of return.
But his silence meant, we'll even say, forget the refugees from inside the 67 borders, just give us 67 borders, and we'll recognize Israel.
As soon as he says that, Netanyahu says, yeah, but you also have to tell us how Jewish we are.
Like, what are you even talking about?
Just moving the goalposts now.
Outrageous.
And I think what I would emphasize that that we should understand in this whole business is that not only was Hamas saying that, not only was the Fatah and the PA saying that, but the Arab Peace Initiative, you had 22 Arab countries basically saying, hey, we'll massage this refugee issue.
We'll help you deal with it.
We will back you up on it so that there's not this doesn't become a festering issue.
So they were going to help sell out the refugees.
The Arab countries were just to end this problem.
And Israel could not grab that deal or could not try to effect that deal, the Arab Peace Initiative 2002.
And so when we ask somebody who lost Israel, I think we're going to have to say that Israel lost Israel and the Israel lobby lost Israel.
Because the Israel lobby didn't muscle them on this and say, hey, you know, we're sick of carrying the water for you here, holding the bag, cut the deal.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, MJ Rosenberg had a piece a few years back where he said the peaceniks were right.
I forget the title, but something like the peaceniks were right.
And he goes back in time to the 50s or something.
Like, I don't even think he goes back to the founding or anything.
He goes pretty far back in time.
He's every single time the Israelis, the Israeli government got into a mess with their neighbors.
The peaceniks before it happened said, no, don't do it, because here's what's going to happen if you do.
And every time the peaceniks were right and the warmongers did it anyway, and the terrible results happen.
And then he goes through 15 examples or whatever that leads us up to the present day where Israel's about to cease to exist at the hands of those who claim they're protecting it the most.
You know, it's amazing.
It's really amazing.
And I mean, I don't know how many I mean, the question is, I mean, I'm always amazed by your degree of understanding about this.
I guess I then it leaves me wondering how many Americans do you think have any understanding of this question?
Is that awareness growing?
And when is that awareness going to make it easier for politicians in this country to say, no, I'm not standing with Israel on this.
I'm actually I don't like what Israel's doing.
Well, I mean, basically, my judgment on that is always what did I used to think?
And what I used to think was I don't know much about it because TV will never shoot it straight and just give you a basic even outline of what the hell is going on here.
So as far as I used to understand, I guess Palestine is more or less sort of a city state next to Israel there.
And they won't quit with the suicide bombing or something.
That's basically my impression.
You know, back when I was going off my impression, there was never any explanation on.
And so I assume that this is what everybody else thinks, too.
They have never had it explained to them that ever since 67, there's been this permanent martial law, military occupation of the next door neighbors, the ones who were pushed there in the first place, but are now even under martial law, even longer now than the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe and that it's a pretty raw deal.
I don't think people understand that.
I only really started to understand these issues after the Iraq war when I come to find out just how much of a role not just the neoconservative Israel first years, but even Ariel Sharon himself had in getting us into that war.
And that pissed me off.
And then also I ended up learning a lot more about how even since 1996 and even before that, bin Laden had said that his war against America was because of our support for Israel and not that they're good Jews living happy lives, but that what they're doing is wrong.
And we're helping them do things that are horrible to people.
And so I really, really, really resent not only that, but then Sharon and Netanyahu, both, especially in all their alcohol acolytes in America, taking advantage of September 11th to ban American policy, even worse to their worst goals like screw them, man, let them be pushing to see at this point.
And I don't mean every civilian there, but as far as the Zionist project, right, all of them, you know, I used to not care.
Now I'm against it.
Yes.
I, you know, the funny thing is, I got into it the exact same way you did.
You know, I'd never been to Israel.
I was, I grew up in the American Jewish community, but not not intimately involved in that community, but certainly very strong sense of myself as Jewish.
I didn't get to Israel till I was 50 years old in 2006.
And the reason I went there is the Iraq war.
The reason I went there is because my brother had said to me before the Iraq war started, what do you think of this war?
I was against the Vietnam war, but my Jewish newspaper says that this war could be good for Israel.
Well, that word went out in the Jewish community.
And that was a big reason of that, why that war happened.
And certainly the neoconservatives wanted that war in some large or small measure, because it would, they thought it would help Israel's security.
And that is what I had to unpack.
So I was a very similar place to you.
And I've come out of a similar place to you where I think, you know, if this place ceases to exist as a, whatever, a Jewish state, whatever they call themselves, and it becomes a democracy, fine.
I think what we both understand is that there's, there's violence in the future.
They've created a situation where there's, the only answer is violence, unfortunately.
And that's why I support the boycott movement, which is nonviolent.
Well, my ultimate argument is simply that the U.S. government has to stop intervening in these things, because it's sort of like with economics, they lend their weight to this side or the other, they end up kind of creating a bubble that can't really sustain itself, but for their intervention, sort of like propping Karzai up in power in Afghanistan.
Once the inflation of his power goes away with our military might and our inflation, then his power will go away.
And it's the same sort of thing here where it's going to, it's going to work itself out, however it works out, but it's going to work itself out quickest as soon as the U.S. government takes a handoff and stops back on one side over the other.
I agree with you.
And stops infantilizing other people.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the other thing is, well, there's a few different things, but I guess I'll just add a couple of footnotes since I said that Ariel Sharon helped liaise into war.
Agents of Influence by Robert Dreyfuss and The Spies Who Pushed for War by Julian Borger both talk about Ariel Sharon's special project where he set up his own office of special plans in Israel, where they made up fake intelligence in English to funnel straight into the, you know, Fythe, Wumser, Pearl, Hadley stovepipe, vice president's office stovepipe there.
So if anybody wants to look at it, check it out, Scott.
Hey, listen, your blog is so great.
And congrats on the Adelson scoop.
I'm sorry.
I didn't even realize that was your scoop when I saw the video there.
But no, no, don't worry about it.
It's the great Bill Weiss and his great crew there at Mondoweiss.net.
Thanks again, Phil.
I'll talk to you soon, man.
All right.
See you guys tomorrow.
Thanks for listening.
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