07/01/14 – Jason Ditz – The Scott Horton Show

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I got Jason Ditz on the line.
He's the news editor at Antiwar.com, news.antiwar.com, and he's keeping track of all the bad news in the whole world for us there.
Thank God.
Welcome back to the show, Jason.
How are you doing?
I'm doing good, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining us short notice like this and everything.
So listen, they found the bodies of the three abducted teenagers from the West Bank, and then all hell broke loose.
That's all I know.
Could you please fill us in what's going on over there?
Well, all hell kind of broke loose before they found the bodies.
Israel's been launching bizarrely aggressive military operations looking for these teenagers, even though it didn't seem like they had any idea where to look or, realistically, who took them.
Officially, they're blaming Hamas, which, when it was just a kidnapping, was at least plausible because, you know, Hamas has some history of kidnapping people and seeking to trade them for other detainees.
But now that they found the bodies, it seems like these teenagers were killed almost immediately after capture, which is completely not the Hamas way of doing things.
Hamas has always been a very patient organization in trying to make deals.
So it shoots a hole in the Hamas theory, but from the Israeli perspective, I'm not sure that matters.
It seems like launching revenge attacks is sort of the driving momentum in the Israeli government right now, and, you know, the three people that they named as potential suspects, they've already destroyed one of them's house just on the idea that he might have had something to do with it.
There's talk from some of the Deputy Defense Minister Danin saying, well, we should destroy every Hamas member's house now and destroy Hamas entirely.
Defense Minister Yalon is saying, well, we should found a brand new settlement right in the middle of what would have been future Palestine in honor of these teens.
So, I mean, the Israeli reaction, as usual, is spite.
Well, now, so first of all, on the question of Hamas, does anybody have a theory, much less evidence, which, you know what, I don't know, circumstantial evidence or any kind of good reason that anyone has explained to believe that this was Hamas other than, you know, we don't like those guys here kind of thing?
Not at all.
It fits into the Israeli narrative, and I think they sort of had their fingers crossed when it was a kidnapping that it was Hamas, because they could use that as a wedge to try to break up the unity government in Palestine.
But the only group that ever claimed any credit for it was a group calling itself ISIS Palestine, which, exactly how big they are, who they are, no one seems to know.
Presumably some sort of offshoot of ISIS.
It was a political group that did this rather than just, I don't know, somebody who did it or two somebodies?
There really isn't.
I mean, there's no good, at least not that Israel has released to the public, there's no good evidence of what happened at all.
Israel claimed to know it was Hamas, but they never offered any evidence to that effect, and Hamas has denied it, which, once again, Hamas is not normally the kind of group that denies doing something that they actually did.
Yeah, well, and of course, you know, by Israel you mean mostly Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, and what he says, right, and he's pretty much made it clear that, whatever, he just believes it was Hamas.
He never even tried to make an argument, right?
Just he says so.
It would have been extremely convenient for them for it to have been Hamas.
How much presence does Hamas even have on the West Bank anyway?
Pretty minimal.
I mean, they have a few, a few people, you know.
I mean, they don't have troops there, they don't have, or I don't know, what do they have?
I mean, they have, there are a few activists that are still, you know, politicians and the like that are still in the West Bank from back before the split between Hamas and Fatah.
Right, but brigades of fighters on the West Bank?
No, certainly not.
Yeah.
So, anyway.
And then, so, all right, now, before they found the bodies, go ahead and describe a little bit more detail.
Well, we're almost at the break.
God dang it, time flies so fast.
Well, and we got started late in this segment too, that's what happened.
But when we get back, I'd like to hear a little bit more of the narrative about the, you know, the way the IDF has been acting in the West Bank, and for that matter, in the Gaza Strip ever since they were abducted, since the boys turned up missing.
And then, of course, the real bad news is all the bombing overnight, and for all I know continuing right now, in so-called response, although, you know, just like in blaming Hamas, I think it's pretty clear they're just taking advantage of the opportunity to do what they want anyway, which is the same as always.
But anyway, I've talked us all the way into the music now, good.
So we'll be right back on the Scott Horton Show with Jason Ditz, news editor at Antiwar.com.
That's news.antiwar.com.
The military industrial complex, the disastrous rise of misplaced power.
Hey, all.
Scott Horton here.
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Would have been okay with a statement that Deplored the deaths of the Palestinians so long as it didn't make any mention of the fact that it was Israeli troops that killed them Yeah man, and then So I don't know what all effect this has politically other than as you said Earlier in inciting all these other examples.
I know over at the electronic intifada There are a huge round of really too big of a roundup of quotes Not just from people with power, but to random Yahoo's on Facebook and that kind of thing but but It sounds like what this serves to do more than anything is to move the entire foreign policy of the right-wing Israeli coalition further to the right now what was unacceptable to say two or three weeks ago is now acceptable to say You know what?
Let's just go ahead and reconquer Gaza like they haven't conquered it all along right now Let's go ahead and and end all pretense of peace with the Palestinian Authority Let's go ahead and and that's what this is really about right is this is their revenge for the unity government between Fatah and Hamas those forged after the failure of the complete joke of the completely dishonest peace talks on the part of the Israelis Toward the creation of some pseudo-palestinian state that they never meant to allow to exist in the first place All right, and and they've been pretty clear that this palestinian state's never going to happen even before the teenagers were found a Couple of days ago Prime Minister Netanyahu was making a speech about how Israel is going to have to keep the entire West Bank border with Jordan forever now because of Isis They're saying well Isis is on the Jordan's opposite border with Iraq Right might conceivably take Jordan out Which is pretty speculative I mean just think about that when George HW Bush said stay out of the Gulf War Because it'll ruin the whole coalition.
It'll make it'll be too obvious.
You know your role and promoting this thing from your occupied territory in DC and And same thing with Bush jr.
Like some ally we can't dare have them participate in our crappy foreign policy over there Because it'll just explode everything and just imagine if we actually have firefights on the ground With Israeli troops on the ground in Jordan fighting Isis, you know And what that'll do to all the different sides of this thing over there.
Just holy crap And it could easily happen that's the scary part, I mean it's all getting worse over there anyway I mean everybody's just waiting for the other shoe to drop Anyway, if the other shoe to drop is the Israelis getting in there?
Oh my god, there could be nukes going off at that point.
All bets are off.
I think I don't know Expanding everywhere They're launching attacks in Lebanon.
They're on the Jordanian border They've taken large chunks of Syria and Iraq and formed this Well what they're calling a caliphate, although their rivals don't see it as one Yeah, Isis guys claiming the flag in the Sinai Peninsula too, right?
Right?
Yeah It's not man.
I'm sorry.
We're out of time for this Jason because we're just getting into a very important subject there But we'll talk again soon.
Thank you very much for your time today.
Sure.
Thank you for having me It's Jason Ditz everybody, the great Jason Ditz at news.antiwar.com Hey y'all Scott here for Liberty.me the brand new social network and community-based publishing platform for the Liberty minded Liberty.me combines the best of social media technology all in one place and features nightly classes, guides, events, publishing and so much more Sign up now and you get the first 30 days free And if you click through the link in the right margin at scotthorton.org or use the promo code Scott when you sign up You'll save $5 per month for life That's more than a third off the regular price and hey once you sign up add me as a friend on there at scotthorton.liberty.me Be free.
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