07/02/14 – Max Blumenthal – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, Max, welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Good, good.
It's great to be back with you.
Good, good.
I was just explaining to the people about how you wrote this book, Goliath, Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, and as well as Republican Gomorrah.
And then I was going to say to you, man, I'm sorry, because I read and I'm realizing now I was almost halfway through it.
And then I got distracted for whatever reason last fall, and I never did finish the book.
And then I never did interview you about it.
And that's pretty crap, because you put a lot of work into this thing.
And then I was going to say to you, man, I'm sorry, because I read and I'm realizing now I was almost halfway through it.
And then I got distracted for whatever reason last fall, and I never did finish the book.
And then I never did interview you about it.
And that's pretty crap, because you put a lot of work into this thing.
And then I was going to say to you, man, I'm sorry, because I read and I'm realizing now I was almost halfway through it.
And then I got distracted for whatever reason last fall, and I never did finish the book.
And then I never did interview you about it.
And that's pretty crap, because you put a lot of work into this thing.
And I was interviewing you all along while you were writing it about a lot of the stuff that's in here.
And so I'm an idiot, and I'm sorry, and I'm going to finish the book, and then I'm going to interview you about it.
Yeah, well, no, don't worry about it.
I mean, I had so many interviews, and it was so overwhelming that thanks to all the crazy attacks I got that you don't even have to worry about it.
Yeah, well, and so many books, man, I...
And, you know, this makes up for it, because, like, no one is injecting any sanity into it.
Yeah, well, no, don't worry about it.
I mean, I had so many interviews, and I'm sorry, and I'm going to finish the book, and then I'm going to interview you about it.
Yeah, well, no, don't worry about it.
I mean, I had so many interviews, and it was so overwhelming that thanks to all the crazy attacks I got that you don't even have to worry about it.
Yeah, well, and so many books, man, I...
Yeah, well, listen, so, well, let me say, I really was enjoying the book.
I admit, it was very frustrating.
It's probably part of the reason that I put it down and didn't pick it back up, is it's just like, oy vey, on every page, I'm so fed up, it's just, I can't bear it, kind of, it just pisses me off, but, nah, I need to get it read, because I want to know what all is in there.
That's most people's reaction.
Anyway, so, so listen, now I'm going to be quiet.
You tell me for two segments, what in the hell is going on over there?
You got free reign, please.
Well, what's happening right now is that Israelis, out of uniform, are taking matters into their own hands, and one of the rented generals on CNN actually defended this, and said, you can understand that Israelis are going to extract their revenge right now, which is, you know, consistent with CNN, resembling Israeli media, so I'm glad that you're doing this segment.
Israelis are, have been organizing lynch mobs for the last day or two, chanting death to Arabs in the streets of Jerusalem, pledging to attack Palestinians, and there have been several attempts to kidnap Palestinian boys, and this is following basically the abduction of over 500 Palestinians, basically all people loosely affiliated with Hamas, most of whom have no record or very little record of militant activity.
About 25, 30 percent of those who were released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap were recaptured.
Six Palestinians were killed.
All of them were unarmed.
Two Palestinians died of heart attacks during Israelis barging into their houses in the West Bank.
Much of Nablus was raided in the north, although the bodies were found in the south, and Hebron.
Hebron was kept under curfew and lockdown.
Several universities were raided.
Israeli forces even made off with hundreds of flags, green Hamas flags at a university.
Apparently waving a flag in the West Bank is, you know, an act of terror, and so they basically rampaged through the West Bank while bombing the Gaza Strip, just as punishment for these three teens who had gone missing and were found dead, and it's all led, it led to a huge wave of incitement from Israeli figures, including Netanyahu in his official statement.
He invoked the Holocaust, citing a famous poem about Jews slaughtered in Europe, and then calling the killers in Hamas human animals.
His deputy minister, Sipi Hotzevelli, called for eradication of Hamas.
Benny Dayan, a settler leader, called for a war of annihilation.
There are hundreds and hundreds of active-duty Israeli soldiers posting photographs of themselves next to messages calling for revenge.
Some have posted photos of themselves with masks on next to the message, Death to Arabs, Served in Mobs, Rampaging through Jerusalem.
And I, you know, I previously covered this.
I wrote about this in my book, Beliath, and I was attacked particularly by liberal Zionists, but also by Jewish organizations for a chapter called The Night of Broken Glass, in which I explicitly alluded to Kristallnacht, the attack on Jews in 1930s Germany, the pogrom against Jews by racist thugs, in light of an anti-African riot in Tel Aviv where African windows were smashed by racist thugs who wanted to expel them and put them in camps, and now there are thousands of Africans in camps in Israel for the crime of not being Jewish.
And now we see some of those same liberal Zionists comparing what's happening in Israel to 1930s Germany.
The crisis has gone that far.
And what I really want to do is talk about how the government and the intelligence services of Israel manipulated the killing of these three teens in order to produce what I just described, the whole wave of incitement and hate crimes and violence and the assault of Jews on the West Bank, which is deep in the occupation.
I really think this is the intended result, because it props up the right-wing government, and it actually also helps Mahmoud Abbas by crushing Hamas right after he entered into a unity government with them.
So this is how it happened, and these are established facts that I've been able to establish.
The teens went, the Israeli teens went missing on, I believe, July 13th.
There was a phone call that was placed to Israeli police by one of these Israeli teens who was hitchhiking.
They were hitchhiking at the Gush Etzion, the Kfar Etzion, outside that settlement in the West Bank, which is 10 kilometers from Hebron.
They'd apparently gotten into a car with two kidnappers, two Palestinian militants who had spent a lot of time in prison, whose relatives had been killed by the occupation, and who were looking to kidnap these teens in order to hold them as ransom for a release of Palestinian prisoners, who the Netanyahu-admitted government had refused to release under the, you know, carry framework agreement, which led to the collapse of the framework agreement.
And so immediately, one of these teens calls the cops.
His abductors see that and shoot him, but shot is heard in the call to the cops.
The shot is recorded in the call to the cops, and the other teens are killed.
The Israeli intelligence service, the Shin Bet, hears that phone call.
They have the recording of the phone call, and they immediately suspect who the two killers are, because they have the West Bank on complete lockdown.
The West Bank is heavily penetrated by Palestinian collaborators, and one of those who is accused of the killing is from a family, the Qawasme family, which represents a rogue Hamas faction, has very, very rarely takes any direction from Hamas, acts in contravention of what Hamas wants to do.
And they had gone missing two days before the kidnapping took place.
They immediately suspected them, and their names were reported in Palestinian media two days after the killing, because Israelis had showed up at their houses, Israeli forces had showed up at their houses looking for them.
So we have two points.
They had the recording of the call of the shot, meaning that Israeli intelligence and police knew that the kids were probably dead.
They'd been to the house of those they suspected of the crime, meaning they knew who the perpetrators were, and they knew that they were not acting within Hamas guidelines.
Finally, the bodies were found in a shallow grave on the property of one of the family, which makes it likely or possible that they had the bodies, the Israelis had the bodies, right away.
But instead of informing the public of all of this and conducting a police action to catch the killers, the Israeli government imposed a gag order barring all Israeli media from reporting details of the crime, which I just described, including the phone call, and allowing Israeli leaders to whip up their public into hysteria, to incite them to calls for blood revenge in order to prop up this right-wing government and justify a widespread campaign against Hamas in the West Bank.
And so two weeks later, after the hysteria started to die down, the Israeli government finally announced that it found the three bodies in a shallow grave.
It finally named the perpetrators, and it finally announced that it knew that the teens were dead all along, which didn't seem to matter to the Israeli public, which was just ready for revenge at that point.
And that's where we are right now.
So to me, it appears that the Israeli government has manipulated this killing for political reasons in order to produce the political and human catastrophe that we're seeing unfold right now in Jerusalem and across occupied Israel-Palestine.
To what end?
I mean, I guess you said it took to hurt Hamas and the new joint government with Fatah, most of all, huh?
That's the most immediate end.
And Mahmoud Abbas, the chairman of the PA, played along, providing intelligence to the Israelis.
The Palestinian Authority police even attacked Palestinian protesters attempting to prevent Israeli forces from entering Ramallah.
So Abbas is part of this.
And Abbas, of course, his fiercest enemy is not Israel.
He's paid by them.
He's working for them.
He's a subcontractor for the Israelis.
His real enemy is Hamas and any Palestinian faction that seeks to resist him and the occupation.
So this benefited him.
But there is another factor, which is Israel's international image, which is just sinking by the day.
The killings, through the political manipulation and staging, the Israeli government thought that it could elicit international sympathy.
And it managed to do so from the United States, from the Obama administration, which has pandered to the Israeli government more than any American administration in history.
I mean, you had Susan Rice, Ambassador Susan Rice, comparing the three killed Israeli teens to her own son.
Samantha Power made similar statements.
And John Kerry blamed all of Hamas, justifying what the Israelis did.
But, I mean, I want to reiterate, and there's a great piece by Shlomi Eldar, who's a Israeli...
I disagree with much of his writing, but he knows a lot about Israeli intelligence, and he knows a lot about...
He's worked in the West Bank, and it's in Al-Monitor, and it's about the history of the Khawazmi family, and how they've always acted in contravention to the imperatives of Hamas, even while identifying with Hamas.
That's who's behind this.
So it's just...
It's deeply cynical, what the Israelis have done with U.S. support.
And it's led us to the current crisis, but I think that the more hysteria they can whip up in their own society, the more Netanyahu and the coalition, which comprises the current Israeli government, which is heavily comprised of settler elements, the more they benefit and the more they can unite this extremely right-wing public behind them.
Throughout this whole, what I consider to be a staged crisis, Netanyahu appeared on Israeli media looking at maps, and his team around him filtered reports of Netanyahu staying up all night, losing sleep over the teens, even though the Shin Bet knew the teens were dead.
So this was an attempt to stage-manage Netanyahu's image, and make him look like this great crisis manager.
Netanyahu is not respected in the Israeli military.
He's not respected in the same way that Ehud Barak, an Israeli war hero, was, a highly decorated military veteran, or Ariel Sharon.
And so this is a way for Netanyahu to appear tough, and to handle a domestic crisis, because his strength among the Israeli public has always been his ability to manipulate and control the conversation in Washington, and dominate Obama.
So this is all about Israeli politics, and it's completely cynical to the core.
And we look at who's truly suffering, it's Palestinians under occupation, and Palestinians in Jerusalem.
And these three families of these Israeli teens were just used as political props.
Now tell me, Max, have you written this up yet, or if not, where's it going to be, or what's the deal?
I'm going to work on putting this all together for the Electronic Intifada, which is one of the essential websites, news sites, that your listeners should be following on Israel-Palestine.
It's electronicintifada.net.
Another important website is mondoweiss.net.
And what I want to do is put together just a factual narrative of how this crime, a low-level crime but a tragedy nonetheless, was manipulated to lead to the current crisis.
I wouldn't say a low-level crime, it was a murder, but it wasn't, I mean, this is a murder that was isolated and could have been solved and prosecuted through police action, and instead was manipulated to justify military action, something we're familiar with in the United States, in the post-9-11 United States, this kind of political manipulation and staging.
And then like you say, if they knew who the guys were that did it, and they knew the kids were dead, and then they came up with the bodies later, it's just as likely that they knew all along where the dead bodies were.
Maybe even had them in custody.
The dead bodies were in a shallow grave on the land of one of the perpetrators, whose house had been searched dozens of times by police, military, and Shin Bet, and the Shin Bet has the West Bank on complete lockdown.
Every corner of the West Bank is known to the Shin Bet, if not to them, then to their collaborators.
Just having spent extensive time in the West Bank, I know that, and I also know that Palestinians who weren't even paid collaborators would have reported the whereabouts of the teens just to avoid the kind of campaign of brutality that they witnessed for the last two weeks.
And, you know, if you heard Palestinians wonder whether, you know, these teens were killed by Palestinians at all, it was because of that belief that the Israelis would have found them right away, since they usually find any Palestinian who throws a rock right away.
A 12-year-old kid who throws a rock is going to be visited by soldiers at night in his own bed.
So this is incredibly shady and just cynical to the core.
Yeah, well, I'm sorry, I don't know if you mentioned this when you were kind of rattling off all the horrible consequences there.
Do you have an estimate, or have you heard the latest word on casualties from the airstrikes in the Gaza Strip?
I think there were two, I mean, there have been dozens of injuries.
The Gaza Strip was attacked, I think, two days ago, and within 10 minutes about 32 bombs fell.
It was sort of a limited bombing campaign.
I understand that a rocket was launched into some kind of empty space in Israel, so there could be more bombings in the Gaza Strip.
But the total of Palestinians killed in the Israeli campaign was six or seven, with over 500 arrested, not arrested for any particular crime, but basically abducted.
And over 200 are being held now without any charges.
In other words, they're being held under administrative detention, sort of like people are being held in Guantanamo Bay.
And finally, Israeli intelligence services have declared that all who have been arrested or abducted are ticking bombs.
And under the Israeli rules, torture is only permitted if someone is considered a ticking bomb.
So we can safely assume that scores of those taken from their homes were subjected to torture under the false premise that they were ticking bombs.
And another point is that Israel has reinstituted its policy of collective punishment.
Well, you know what?
Hold that point for a second.
I'll let you go on as long as you want about that.
But I got to stop you on the ticking bomb thing there for a second.
Boy, is that every torture monger's excuse in the whole wide world.
And here in Israel, they actually have it where it's legal to torture somebody if it's a ticking bomb.
And then when the rubber meets the road, we find out that's just words.
And they could say, Max Blumenthal is a ticking bomb.
It turns out that doesn't mean anything.
And so therefore, it can mean anything and they can torture whoever they want.
That's what it means.
Well, that's like an episode of 24.
I mean, it's not an actual scenario that takes place.
There's never been, in my knowledge, a situation where someone had had knowledge of a bomb that was that was literally ticking and was about to explode and provided the location only under torture.
It's just, you know, it's something that we see Kiefer Sutherland do, but it's not something that happens in real life.
And you know, the funny thing is that this rule was put in place by the Israeli Supreme Court in order to limit torture just because it was such a widespread practice.
And now it's becoming widespread again, along with the policy that Israel had briefly abandoned of demolishing or exploding the houses of the families of those who were accused of terrorism.
So Israeli forces, after the bodies were announced, found, arrived at the Khoazmeh and Abu Aisha families, the families of those accused, blew up their homes and prevented Palestinian ambulances and fire crews from arriving at the scene.
And they're going to continue demolishing more homes of those who are simply accused of terrorism.
This is another policy that doesn't work.
A substantial percentage of Palestinians who committed suicide bombing attacks during the Second Intifada actually had their homes demolished under this policy during the First Intifada and grew up with that trauma and with the desire for revenge.
The violence, any violence from the Palestinian side is, you know, seen as sort of manageable and beneficial by Israeli intelligence, because it justifies harsher action, deepening the occupation.
And one of the other forms of retaliation that Israel uses is building more settlements.
The defense minister of Israel, Moshe Yaron, has called for memorializing the three kidnapped and killed teens by authorizing thousands of new settlement units.
Many settlements throughout the West Bank are named after Jewish-Israeli victims of, you know, Palestinian militancy.
So it seems to me like there are many benefits that the right-wing government is reaping from this scenario.
And it's pretty apparent that they manipulated it in order to bring us to the current crisis.
That's a sad story.
Thank you for keeping such a close watch on it for us, Max.
And I sure hope that, well, I'll definitely keep my eye open for whatever you're writing about this.
And I'm definitely getting back to you.
Thank you.
And thanks again for having me.
I mean, you know, it's amazing that even shows like Democracy Now!
are not reporting on this.
So I really appreciate you taking time to do it.
Well, there's nothing exceptional about it all.
It's just the news, man.
Come on.
I don't know.
It's a sad state of affairs that nobody else wants to talk about it in any kind of fair way.
It is sad.
But anyway, keep doing your thing.
All right.
Thanks.
You too.
That's the great Max Blumenthal, everybody.
He's the author of the book, Goliath, Fear and Loathing in Greater Israel.
Again, read him at electronicintifada.net and read him at mondoweiss.net as well.
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