03/12/15 – Grant F. Smith – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
On the line, I got Grant F. Smith.
He wrote a whole bunch of books.
The latest one is called Divert.
It's about the Israelis stealing American weapons-grade uranium.
Anyway, he runs the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy.
That's IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P dot org, I-R-M-E-P dot org.
And, hey, they're putting on a special conference with the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
This one is called the Israel Lobby.
Is it good for the U.S.?
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Grant?
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me on.
Very happy to have you here.
So, April the 10th, what day of the week is that?
Oh, that falls on a Friday, so the next day you can go to the National Cherry Blossom Parade, the festival parade.
But the most important thing is the 8 to 5 action at the National Press Club Ballroom, and that's where we're having the event.
Okay, great.
Now, is this going to be a gigantic shindig like we had a year ago?
It is.
Hopefully, I think we've got it structured so that people don't have to speak 600 words a minute.
There's a little bit more slack in the program, but it's every bit as big and important and a whole new raft of speakers, a couple of repeats, and we're really excited and hoping people come.
It's a really great event all day, lunch included, breakneck action.
Great.
I want to go.
Well, you're going to have to save up $75, get here, and we'll keep a slot open for you.
You're a journalist, you get in free.
Students and journalists get to come free.
I don't have a press pass.
Okay.
Just photocopy your picture onto a press – yeah.
We're accepting all comers in terms of media.
Our media list is quite long, and people can go to the website IsraelLobbyUS.org, request press credentials, and also students.
We've got a lot from American University, George Washington, a lot of locals, and some from the Midwest and West Coast as well.
It's shaping up.
The crowd will be a nice mix of old hands, neophytes, young, old, middle.
That's what we've always hoped for is to get a really good crowd and not necessarily people who just follow the issues.
Well, can you give us some names of who's already accepted invitations to speak there?
Sure.
Should I start with the ones that are always on your show, or should I just not say – Yeah, sure.
Whatever order you think is best.
Okay.
Well, Guinness Porter is coming, and that's good because he can give an update on the manufacturing crisis, and he always does a good job of that.
We're hoping to get some good information from him.
MJ Rosenberg, who's been on your show quite a bit, he's coming, and he's going to talk a little bit about his experience working at AIPAC and his observations of the organization since.
So that should be very exciting.
We've got Richard Falk, who was a UN High Commissioner looking at human rights in the occupied territories, is coming.
He was targeted by UN Watch, so he's going to talk a little bit about what it's like trying to do a job like that while you're under a constant campaign to fire you.
Congressman Paul Finley and Mick Rahal are going to be there, and they're going to talk a little bit about what it's like to work in Congress, again, under pressure from various pro-Israel organizations, including AIPAC, and trying to pass legislation in that environment.
Seth Morrison, who's worked at a lot of different organizations that one can consider to be Israel-lobbying type organizations, like the Jewish National Fund, J Streets, and now he's at JVP, is going to be there and talk a little bit about what sort of broken promises that these organizations drove him out and made him become a BDS campaigner with JVP.
Mikko Pelled, who's the son of a general, is going to talk about his experience and transformation in getting to know the issue from all over the world.
He's an Israeli now based in California.
Paul Pilar, who was there last year, he's a former high CIA official.
He's going to hopefully do the same thing he did last year, which is deconstruct the AIPAC agenda for this and next year, and Netanyahu's speech and other observations that he has.
He's always been a keen observer of that sort of thing.
Alice Rothschild, who's a doctor, is going to talk about humanitarian concerns in the Middle East.
Ahmad Saladin is going to be there.
He's a guy who's an activist and movie producer.
He's going to talk a little bit about some of his work and how younger people on campus are organizing and looking at what's going on in the region.
Jack Shaheen, who's got a comprehensive study of how Arabs and Muslims are depicted in U.S. media and how that contributes to the overall feeling about them in politics and in just regular society.
Dima Khalidi is coming.
She's with a legal support firm of lawyers that do all sorts of protection of free speech on campus and other legal rights for people who are kind of under the gun now.
Amani Al-Katabeh is coming.
She's the editor-in-chief of MuslimGirl.net, which is a blog talking about stereotypes of Muslim women and her activism and targeting.
And Jeff Blankford, who's a radio guy out in California and a photojournalist, is going to be talking about the Anti-Defamation League campaign against him and some anti-apartheid activists and how they won a legal settlement against that organization, and kind of talk about the tactics then and now of that particular organization.
So it's Gideon Levy from Haaretz.
He's a leading journalist.
Yeah, he's coming.
He wrote a book called The Punishment of Gaza, and he does a lot of information about the Israeli side and the Palestinian side in peace negotiations.
So it's a really interesting group of people.
Nobody's getting a script to read, so it's not going to be like going to an AIPAC conference where people are reading teleprompters and making statements.
There will be more genuine debate and probably disagreements, but that's good.
As far as I know, it's the only conference being organized to really look at the lobby, how big it is, what it's doing.
And of course, I'll be speaking about that as well, since it's my intense focus as well, research focus.
So it should be pretty good.
And then there are also some new ads in terms of moderators.
Aski Muhammad is a local radio person.
WPFW is going to be moderating some panels.
We have some other moderators who we're not totally sure of yet, but who should be quite interesting contributions to keeping the show going and doing informed moderation of the panels.
Cool.
Man, that sounds really great.
You know, there's only one omission that's kind of glaring here, it sounds like, to me.
Grant, maybe you just skipped over it, or maybe I wasn't paying attention.
But isn't someone going to give a talk about how important Palestine was to Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the guys that knocked our towers down?
And how we wouldn't even be in this mess if it wasn't for the Israel lobby convincing the U.S. government to pay for all their sins against the people of Palestine and southern Lebanon.
And now the music's playing, and I'll have to get your answer to that awesome question.
The music's playing.
The music's playing.
So we've got to go to this break.
But when we get back, we'll be talking more with Grant F. Smith, author of Divert and leader of IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P dot org.
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Hey, I'm Scott.
Welcome back to the show here.
This is the Scott Horton Show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Grant F. Smith.
Did I already say that?
I'm talking with Grant F. Smith from the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy.
Really, what he does is he files Freedom of Information Act papers all damn day, including Susan, if he has to, to get the paperwork to document Israeli crimes in the United States.
Not crimes of Israelis, but crimes of the Israeli government in this country.
Overall, the power of the Israel lobby, licit and illicit, but primarily specializing in the laws they break.
We're talking about this new thing they're putting on.
It's on Friday, April the 10th at the National Press Club, the Israel lobby.
Is it good for the U.S.?
Now, that's kind of a narrow question.
The question isn't just entirely about Israel.
It's about the Israel lobby in the U.S., but that's a pretty broad list of speakers that you already named there.
But it seems to me like, I don't know, maybe the first talk should be given by someone who might be willing to explain the importance of America's support for Israel in causing terrorist blowback against the United States.
After all, at least according to the official story, that's why Sirhan Sirhan killed RFK back in 1968.
And it sure as hell why Mohammed Atta joined Al Qaeda.
It's in the book Perfect Soldiers by Terry McDermott.
He would do nothing but sit around his apartment in Hamburg all day long talking about how Americans must die for what Israel did in Palestine and in Lebanon that day.
And that sounds crazy to Americans maybe because they don't understand that every bullet Israel fires is an American bullet.
Every rifle they shoot is an American rifle.
Every plane, every helicopter, all of that comes from the United States of America.
And it was, of course, in Bin Laden's fatwas of 96 and 98, his interviews with ABC News and CNN.
I'm going to kill you because you keep paying the Israelis to keep killing Palestinian babies.
That's what he said in the first place.
And it seems like, well, the only reason I'm going on and on is for the same reason you want to have all these guys speak at this thing.
It's because these are the facts the American people don't really know.
And we're left to base our conclusions about what it is that we would have our government do on erroneous.
Clearly I'm plagiarizing Bill Hicks here, but you understand my point.
Nobody ever discusses the truth of this, that it's not our support for Israel being a bunch of really nice guys and minding their own business all day.
It's American support for Israeli war crimes against people's tiny, helpless babies.
No, that's a good point.
And we, in some of the iterations of the program, wanted to have kind of at least an Iraq to Iran continuum and try and mention some of the history there.
You're probably the only guy, though, who speaks and reminds us of all of this on a constructive basis.
So I'm going to take that under advisement because you're right.
It is a very, very important piece of this.
Nobody does know about that.
Nobody could rattle off the dates, the motivations, the statements.
And so you're right.
That's missing.
But, hey, we've got a month still.
And believe me, we're still working on this.
So observation accepted.
Yeah, there you go.
Well, good.
I hope it makes a little bit of a difference because to me, you know, I don't know, man.
I'm always trying to figure out what are the details that the people don't know that maybe if they did, they'd look at things a little bit different.
Like, for example, did you know that Palestine's not the country next door?
It's occupied territory under a foreign government's martial law for the past 50 years.
And people go, oh, actually, no, I didn't know that.
Maybe I should look into it just a little bit, that kind of thing.
And it seems like, you know, there are a lot of people, so-called experts, who claim that, oh, bin Laden was Johnny-come-lately to the Palestine issue, and he only glommed on to that later to try to get some more support.
That's just not true.
And that was what he complained about from, I don't know, at least 1996 on, I think publicly even probably before that, that American support for Israel was right up there with the occupation of the Arabian Desert and the bombing and blockading of Iraq and the reasons why al-Qaeda needs to attack the United States.
Yeah.
No, that's spot on.
And you're right, that's outside the narrative, and that is not the kind of thing that's ever brought up.
There's always a starting point.
Just like, you know, the lobby's starting point is always Israel's this great strategic asset, but they'll never explain why.
In terms of blowback, you don't even get this.
So you're right, that is something that needs to be explored.
And it's not much in dispute either.
I mean, you've got bin Laden's own words, but you also have the very legitimate journalism of people like Lawrence Wright and Terry McDermott, who have explained this as well, you know?
Well, it's even in the 9-11 Commission's report.
But again, the number of people who can access all of that and have it in hand and put it in any sort of sensible order to explain all this is, of course...
Well, I know you can do it, but nobody else can.
So that is a very good point, and that's a missing piece.
But I would tend to have that, you know, some of the first things that we're doing as we put this into the chronology is just explain, you know, what is the lobby and where did it come from?
And try and go through some of the basics first, and then finally get into the nitty-gritty, what's it doing to Congress and, you know, why is it moving us into this intense focus on Iran and that sort of thing.
Yeah, I'll tell you what the second half of my speech would be, is why is America supporting the jihad in Syria right now, when it would seem to be directly contrary to our interests.
They're even talking about renaming the al-Nusra Front a bunch of moderates, so we can give them smart guns.
Yeah, I've noticed you've been focusing on that in some of the recent shows, and that is a very good point.
Well, we're going to buff this thing up, and we've got some more conference committee meetings.
You know, we've had a lot of really good advice from a lot of people who'll be named and unnamed at this thing, and everyone's got an idea about what it needs to cover.
Well, I'm sure that's true.
I'm sure I'm not the brightest of those coming up with better ideas either.
No, no, you are, you are.
Believe me, you are.
Well, so let me ask you this about, I talked with Phil Giraldi on the show yesterday, and we were talking about that famous quote from Steve Rosen about the lobby works best in the dark as a night flower, and it shrivels when exposed to sunlight.
And I wonder whether you think that things are really changing in Washington, D.C., where it used to just go completely unremarked outside of the most, you know, kind of wonky insider circles, that Israel even has any influence in Washington, D.C. over American policy whatsoever.
It's just not the kind of thing that Americans usually ever hear about.
And I wonder whether you think that's really changing.
Oh, I think it's changing a lot.
And, you know, M.J. Rosenberg, he was the guy who was told that, and so I hope he goes into that when he covers it.
But there's just so much more in your face now.
I mean, really, all the full-page ads in the New York Times condemning Obama and all these full-page ads saying people need to go and hear Night in Yahoo, you know, to the extent that they used to be a little bit more night flowerish, there are now so many organizations, and a great deal of real competition between organizations, that they don't seem to care, at least the new ones, about having a dust-up and maybe creating problems for themselves by being so outspoken and insistent.
I mean, for an organization like this new one that you've talked about a little bit, the Israeli-American Council, to get out there and be talking about buying newspapers and putting more messages out for how much they're going to spend on the presidential elections, I mean, they're really becoming so noisy and out front, and doing things that so many people find objectionable that, you know, it's not smart, but it is having a very good effect in terms of transparency.
I mean, people really are starting to sit up and notice, and I get messages from people all the time who I don't think follow this, but they're following it, and they're out in heartland America, and they're suddenly beginning to see who's posting all of these massive campaigns and really trying to saturate the media with all these messages, and they're starting to say, wow, this isn't good.
So, yeah, and I hope this conference does that as well.
I hope that by really having a conference not focused on effect, but on cause, these are the organizations, this is what they're doing, this is why Americans are so under-informed about this, this is why X number think that Iran already has nuclear weapons, blah, blah, blah.
People really, really start to pay attention and insist on not having so much.
I mean, I think it's fairly telling that you probably already covered this, but the White House poll on their page, a petition, has been asking for Logan Act prosecutions for all of these senators.
People don't know about that, and yet suddenly 125,000 people are signing a pretty esoteric petition on Middle East policy and standing up and taking notice within days.
And so that's also really interesting.
It's just another example that people are paying attention.
But anyway, people really need to come to this conference if they can.
We'll find a way to get you a seat.
It's a great venue.
The time of year is perfect, and they can go to IsraelLobbyUS.org and see the speakers, and in a few more days they're going to release the program.
So hopefully we'll have it totally finished and fill all the gaps.
Okay, great.
And again, that's IsraelLobbyUS.org, IsraelLobbyUS.org for this upcoming conference, the Israel Lobby.
Is it good for the U.S.?
That's Friday, April the 10th at the National Press Club.
Thanks, Grant.
Thanks.
Hey, Al, Scott Horton here.
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