06/19/15 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, it's my show, the Scott Horton Show.
I got Phil Giraldi on the line.
Seems like kind of pretty much a regular Friday thing, I guess because he writes on Thursdays.
Hey, uh, welcome back.
How you doing, Phil?
I'm fine, Scott, how about you?
I'm doing real good.
Hey, listen, uh, so you are the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
You write for UNS.com and the American Conservative magazine, which is where you wrote this one, Israel battles the boycotts.
The BDS movement is now drawing official opposition from Tel Aviv and its American allies.
I think we're running this on antiwar.com today or yesterday.
Anyway, so very well done piece here, very thorough investigation of what the Israelis are attempting to do about the BDS movement.
Can you first of all please just tell us about BDS, how long it's been around, how effective it is, what is the dang deal?
Well, yeah, basically it's a nonviolent movement.
It was founded by a group of, well actually a number of Palestinian organizations and individuals in, I think, 2005-2006.
And the idea was to put economic pressure on Israel, somewhat akin to the kinds of pressure that was put on South Africa and that Gandhi employed in India to bring about change in the political status quo in those places.
Essentially it focuses primarily on the settlements, because the settlements for Palestinians obviously is a big issue, and there's been a growing movement in Europe in particular and increasingly in the United States to not buy products or to avoid companies that operate in the occupied territories and not buy the kind of products that they're producing.
So it's a nonviolent, it's a non-confrontational way to pressure a government or a system to change.
And now, you know, I guess, I don't know, do you know anybody who knows how they treat this in the Israeli media?
When I read the Netanyahu himself and then, you know, all his sock puppets saying, oh yeah, see how much everybody just hates Jews and just pretending that they've never heard of the occupation.
What occupation?
Occupation doesn't have a damn thing to do with any of this.
I never even heard of that anyway.
Who's occupying who?
I don't know what you're talking about.
Is that the way they treat this in the Israeli media too?
That this is not a boycott because people are upset about the endless occupation of the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and they really just say, no, they just don't like it because of what racist they all are?
End of argument?
Is anybody buying that?
Well, I think clearly a lot of Israelis know what the score is.
And in fact, if you go to the Israeli media, the more liberal media, and I would cite Haaretz as being the exemplar of that, they have articles that are very specific on these issues.
And while not actually supporting boycotts, they're laying out the case in very clear terms.
I think the thing we have to watch here is that because Netanyahu and his friends are all now citing the boycott, the BDS, as being an existential threat to Israel, and also claiming that this is like Nazism, a return of Nazism, it shows that the Israeli ruling elite is panicking about this.
They recognize that this is something real.
I mean, this is something that actually can change things.
And I think that's the kind of panic we're seeing here.
Every Israeli, unless they're totally brain dead, knows damn well that what they're doing on the West Bank is wrong.
But they have self interest in doing it.
And just as the Americans had self interest in occupying the West and driving out the Indians.
So you know, there's always an argument.
But the fact is, I think you would have to be blind, deaf and dumb really to not understand that there are real issues here.
And the real issues are so clear.
And they're so critical of what the Israelis are doing.
The Israelis realize that they don't really have a good defense.
Well, I forget was Abraham Lincoln who said you can fool some of the people all the time.
And those are the ones you want to focus on.
I don't think he put it that way.
But yeah, that's probably what he meant.
I mean, that's what's really going on here is like, Oh, look, everybody, they're Nazis, don't look into it.
And so that'll work on some people, but not on everybody else.
Basically, it'll work on the US Congress, that's for sure.
Right.
Yeah, for sure.
But now, then again, it does seem like they're actually just conceding the argument.
They're not saying, hey, listen, we have to occupy the West Bank because of some bogus security reason or whatever, you know, make up something.
They're basically conceding.
All right, Phil, you're right.
We're stealing the West Bank and then the Palestinians can just lay down and die if they don't like it.
We're not going to stop.
And so, you know, full scale war against all who oppose us.
Well, basically, I mean, the this this new Israeli government has a bunch of bigots that are built right into it.
I mean, the previous one was no great shakes.
And with Natali Bennett, and you know, and Avigdor Lieberman, but now they have a deputy foreign minister who says, it's too bad, Palestinians.
The whole of historic Palestine belongs to us.
It's ours.
And then they have the guy who's actually spearheading the government effort against BDS for Netanyahu has more than once said that that the Israeli parliament that connects it should not have any any non Jews in it at all.
So this is the type of democracy that these people accept and and the kind of I would call a bigotry that they represent.
Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but their new justice minister, that's aka their John Ashcroft, their attorney general, their Eric Holder, I forgot the new lady's name, is the one who was saying, Oh, yeah, no, they're all our enemy, their babies and their grandmothers and everyone, they must be destroyed and all that kind of crap.
Is that correct?
Yeah, that's correct.
Yeah, we're talking about this is John Ashcroft doesn't talk like that even about Al Qaeda, right?
Or, you know, I mean, American attorney generals don't say that about grandmothers and babies in any context.
Yeah, well, unfortunately, this is the reality of the Israeli government, which of course doesn't come through in the media reports that we get here in the United States.
I mean, it's still they treat Israel like it's legitimate democracy.
Well, I mean, you know, when the Nazis took over in Germany, I hate to myself use the Nazi analogy.
But the fact is, when the Nazis took over, they took over democratically.
That didn't make them any more sane in terms of the policies that they were endorsing.
The fact that that government was elected in Israel, and had to move sharply to the right to get the kind of support it needed to have a majority in the Knesset.
It doesn't mean anything in terms of democratic principles, because there are no democratic principles there.
If you're, if you're an Arab, whether you're a Christian or a Muslim, you're a second class citizen, even if you have an Israeli passport.
And if you're an Arab living on the West Bank, you have no rights whatsoever, you're under occupation.
Yeah.
Well, how different is this?
I was too young back at the time, Phil, but the position now of these people in in Netanyahu's government, in his coalition government here, their stated positions, because don't get me wrong, Ashcroft and Holder, their governments, they sure kill grandmothers and babies all the time.
They just don't talk like that.
But I mean, that's pretty frank language that, as you say, is not shared with the American people on our TV news, for example, that kind of thing.
But how different is their position from that of the old Rabbi Kahane, who was actually the first al Qaeda target assassinated in America, New York City in 1989, who was once his party was banned by the Israeli Supreme Court, labeled him fascist and banned from participating in Israeli politics.
But did he say or do anything that was crazier and further to the right than the positions of the current attorney general and the current deputy foreign minister over there?
No, no.
And that's of course, that's the depressing thing.
This whole situation has moved dramatically to the right.
And things that were, you know, 30 years ago would have been labeled even by most sensible Israelis as racist are now common gruel in the media.
And it's the real tragedy of the situation.
We're having an openly racist regime.
And Netanyahu was a racist.
I mean, let's not be nice about him either.
I mean, the guy basically, his colors came out.
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm sorry.
We got to take this break, but we'll pick it up right there on the other side of it with Netanyahu's bigotry, because that is an important topic.
Hang on.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
Talking with Phil Giraldi from the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org and the American Conservative Magazine, where he's written Israel battles the boycotts.
And we're going to get into those specifics here in a minute.
But we're interrupted by the break, Phil.
We're talking about what a racist and a bigot Benjamin Netanyahu is.
And I'm actually a little bit glad of that because I think his obvious racial contempt for our president for the from the very beginning.
Oh, I don't mean our president like I love him or anything, but just I think the fact that he's always treated Obama like get down on your knees and shine my shoes, boy, is exactly why Obama's reaction has been, oh, yeah, you shine my shoes, dude.
Who's the emperor here?
Me, not you.
And has has helped to make things less bad than they could have been compared to, say, if we'd had Mitt Romney, Netanyahu's best friend in there or something like that.
Yeah, I mean, I was pointing out, you know, just before the break that the and then, you know, in the last election in Israel made very clear where he comes from.
And he basically said to get the vote out for his supporters that there will be no Palestinian state on his watch.
And that's a pretty clear statement.
And then I think more revolting than that, he also called his people to get out and vote, saying, if you don't do it, all these Arabs are rushing to the polls and they're going to vote.
And, you know, you can't if you give me the racist comment like that in the United States, you will be in big trouble.
But apparently in Israel, this this test is for normal.
And, you know, in fact, I wish I had it in front of me or something, but I read one translation of that where it was actually he used all militarized language to where, you know, there are legions of them descending or where I forgot the language, but it was all kind of military terminology, like they were all under some central command ordering them to march.
They're marching on the polling stations, you know, and all this kind of thing, invading them.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know if he said invading, but along those lines, I think you're right.
Actually, I did see a translation that that that was what it suggested.
And one of the commenters said something.
This is obviously a Masada complex type response from him to say that, you know, like the Romans were coming to to overthrow the Third Temple or something like that.
Yeah.
And yeah, exactly.
Put the shoe on the other foot.
Imagine a Republican or a Democrat said that about American Jews.
Oh, the American the Jews are coming out in droves to vote.
They're marching.
They're descending.
And and and what would happen to them?
I mean, that'd be their last day probably even living in the country, never mind running for office.
Exactly.
Absolutely insane to even imagine that someone would say that to think that they could get away with talking like that in this country seeking power.
All right.
So now they're doing something about it.
And by they, that is the government of Israel and the leaders of the Israel lobby in the United States.
The new de facto leader, Sheldon Adelson, tell us all about it.
Well, yeah, to me, the real scary aspect of all this is.
All right, fine.
Let's just accept the fact that the Palestinians are doing what they can legally and justifiably, I think, to put pressure on the Israelis and the Israelis are responding.
OK, that's business as usual.
But what's scary is that Israel's friends in the United States are picking up on this.
And Adelson is funding this effort, obviously.
And and Congress is on board.
I mean, Congress is basically attached to the recent omnibus European trade bill, an amendment that makes anybody engaging in an anti-Israeli boycott, meaning any country in Europe, that issue would be a primary issue in our negotiations with the country.
So in other words, it's no longer a question of what's good in terms of American interests in business.
It's a question of how are they what are they doing with Israel?
And and and during the past week we had two weeks ago, we had South Carolina legislature made it illegal for any business or any entity to do business with the state of California, of South Carolina, if they are in any way boycotting Israel.
And New York state has had a bill saying that, supported apparently by Ted Cruz, among others, that any college or university that passes a resolution boycotting Israel is going to be cut off from funding, is going to be cut off from any support from the federal government.
So this is this is something that goes way beyond any kind of disagreement about what is going on in the Middle East.
This is basically abridging our First Amendment rights and it also is abridging our rights to deal with situations in a peaceful way.
I mean, this is quite incredible.
Yeah, boy, that's that's really something.
Now, one of the things in there that I read, and it's in your piece, I believe, almost positive.
Yeah, yeah.
The make you unemployable thing here where they're actually targeting.
Is this correct?
They're targeting students active in BDS to where wherever you get a job, we're going to hunt.
We're going to follow you on your Facebook page, whatever it is, we're going to find out wherever you apply for a job.
We're going to do everything we can to intervene and prevent you from being employable in your future if you dare to protest against Israel while you're a college student.
Yeah, this is a website called Canary Mission.
And it's quite scary.
It basically it's a website that's funded probably by Adelson, although the funding is not public.
So you don't know whose money is behind it might even be the Israeli government.
What it does is identify Muslim Americans who support the BDS movement.
And it puts their picture pictures up on the website, puts their names, it puts in information on where they live.
And it basically it threatens that.
Let me quote it, because they say we believe in the right of employers to know which potentially threatening organizations prospective employees were affiliated with during their time on campus.
In other words, it's trying to make these kids unemployable.
It's going to harass them and go after them to make them unemployable.
I find this very un-American.
Yeah, no, it's McCarthyite kind of tactics.
But in that sense, I think it's going to blow up in their face.
They're going to be surprised how many employers say, oh, yeah, really?
Well, good.
I'm gonna give you a 10 percent bonus.
I hate Israel, too.
I'm so sick and tired of them.
Like that's tattletaling on someone to say that they're against the occupation.
Good for you, kid.
Welcome aboard.
Yeah, well, I hope that's true.
And I hope but I hope Americans kind of wake up to this.
I mean, this is, you know, essentially, we have people in this country who have a lot of political power and have a lot of money and basically are willing to use that power and use that money to abridge the rights of people who are doing things that are perfectly legal and perfectly peaceful.
And this goes way beyond arguing an issue with somebody about, you know, do you believe this or do you believe that?
This is basically threatening people in very open ways to make them change their political views and to change their their opinions of things that are going on in the world.
And now let me go back to the trade agreement thing, too, where is this are you talking about this could get between America and our biggest trading partners in Europe if they have anti or if they participate in BDS in any sense that that would prevent America from their previous trade relations or or upcoming adjustments to our trade relations with our European allies?
The intention of this is to have it as an element in the trade negotiations going ahead from now.
So basically, if, say, the say the Italian government decides to boycott products from the Israeli settlements, the United States negotiator with Italy would lay this out as an issue that he wants to have addressed.
He'll use it as a negative against the Italians.
And the interesting thing about this is it's the way the thing is is written by Congress.
It's not just Israel.
It includes any space occupied by Israel.
So that includes all the West Bank and includes anywhere that Israel deems to consider part of its part of its area of control.
The whole thing is is is astonishing.
Yet now, hey, did you see the letter?
And I take Phil Weiss at his word.
I think he must be right about this, that American Gentiles sort of feel like they need a little bit of a permission slip from Jews to oppose Israeli policy because they're afraid of being accused of being anti-Semitic and how important it is that people know the truth, that there are many Jews not only in BDS, but even leading the BDS movement.
And the question I was going to ask if I could ever get to it is, did you see the letters in The Washington Post where they published two pretty important letters to the editor saying from from leaders of Jewish organizations saying that we support this and there's nothing anti-Semitic about it.
Everybody else come on board.
Yeah, yeah.
There were two very good letters.
One of them was by Alan Braunfeld, and they made that point very clearly.
Israel is a foreign country.
Judaism is a religion.
And the fact is they're trying to conflate the two to make opposition or support of BDS anti-Semitism, which it's not.
But if you read today's Washington Post, there were two letters saying just the opposite.
So it's like, you know, this kind of game going back and forth.
But Braunfeld is absolutely right.
And of course, you've been saying this for years.
He says, you know, if you're an American Jew, you're an American and you're Jewish because that's your religion if you choose to worship it.
But he says, if you're an American citizen, your loyalty to the United States, it's not to Israel.
And essentially, this is something we're losing in translation.
And Braunfeld, he's no slouch either.
Can you tell us a little bit about his background?
Yeah, Alan is a very good guy.
He's very active.
He's the head of the American Council for Judaism, which is a major, major Jewish organization.
And it essentially represents, includes a lot of rabbis.
And it represents Jews that recognize this fact that that there is a separation between Israel, the country, and Judaism as the religion.
And he's been talking about this for years and years and years.
He's probably the best spokesman on it.
And of course, this goes to the heart of the matter.
I mean, to what extent can, can Netanyahu claim that someone who supports a boycott is an anti-Semite?
You know, it's, it clearly is an overreach on the part of Netanyahu.
But nobody in our system, meaning the mainstream media or the government, is going to challenge him on it.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I saw a thing, I guess I only saw the secondhand reports about a Rand Corporation study saying that BDS is really costing the Israelis a lot of money, and it could cost them tens of billions of dollars over the coming years.
And, you know, this is really why they're reacting like this.
This is.
And it's also the psychological factor.
You know, like two weeks ago, there was that the boy, there was an impending boycott of Israel by the Football Association, FIFA.
And that was disrupted by the United States intervening with those arrests.
And the Israelis were traumatized by that.
They were afraid that they were going to get kicked out of international sports and everything like that, which would be the same thing that happened in South Africa.
And it was it was a major element in getting the South African situation to change.
Oh, but I'm sure those arrests had absolutely nothing to do with the policy that was going on.
Yeah, right.
And I've got the Brooklyn Bridge to show you.
All right.
Well, how much?
I don't know.
I'll trade you some swampland for it.
Okay.
All right.
Hey, thanks for coming back on the show, Phil.
Appreciate it.
All right, Scott.
Good to talk to you.
See ya.
All right.
That's Phil Jiroli.
He's at the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org, unz.com, U-N-Z, unz.com.
And the American Conservative Magazine.
This one is Israel battles the boycotts.
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