08/10/15 – David Bromwich – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
All right.
Hey, on to our first guest on the show today.
It's our old friend David Bromwich, professor of literature at Yale University and author of many books, including, I believe, the editor of, where is it, Edmund Burke's Selected Writings on Empire, Liberty, and Reform.
Believe that.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, David?
Very good to be with you.
Very happy to have you here.
Very important piece, very probably controversial piece you've written here at the Huffington Post, Netanyahu and his marionettes.
Well, so I was reading in the tablet about how you are an anti-Semite.
If you say that.
I hadn't found that yet.
No, not you personally, but anyone, I meant to say, who says that Jewishness or the Israel lobby or Israel have anything to do with Israel trying to get American Jews to join the Israel lobby to stop the Iran deal.
So how do you defend yourself from that horrible accusation?
It's a secret in plain view and declared with great pride by the people who are executing the connections.
I mean, when Sheldon Adelson went more than public, went exhibitionist with his support of Mitt Romney in Jerusalem, bringing with him several other billionaires to defeat Obama and to do that in Jerusalem, not in Washington, D.C.
I mean, that made things pretty clear.
And we've seen since then the host, or should I say, you know, series of Republican aspirants to the presidential nomination, you know, making their way to Las Vegas to do sort of auditions for Adelson.
I mean, it's well known that that's what's on his mind.
He has said that he served the U.S.
Armed Forces in uniform, but he wishes he had been in an Israeli uniform.
So, I mean, you know, that's connecting, connecting the links, dotting the I's and crossing the T's.
But it's already been done in newspaper stories.
Well, and this is almost unbelievable.
I don't know.
Maybe it's not.
Netanyahu addresses American Jews, three reasons to oppose the Iran deal.
So not just anybody could tune in.
Sure.
It's like the president of the United States giving his weekly radio address.
Anybody could tune in.
It becomes a podcast that's universally accessible.
But it was billed as an address to American Jews.
And I don't think that's ever been done.
I don't think the leader of a foreign power has ever picked out an ethnic group or a nationality or a race among Americans and said, from the foreign power to the Americans, I'm talking to you within America.
So you'll know how to act on our behalf, the foreign power.
All right now, but see, you sound like an anti-Semite again.
Well, I'm I'm simply stating that this is historically unprecedented in the United States.
As far as I know, it's not unprecedented that there be, you know, interest external to the United States, interest backed by large, you know, finance internal to the United States that want to throw their weight around that.
And that's allowed, of course.
But Netanyahu is in a different category from previous leaders that we've seen in Israel or elsewhere.
And I would distinguish him from all previous Israeli leaders.
He was indeed criticized on Friday in an interview published in the Israeli paper Ma'arif by the president of Israel, Ruben Rivlin, who said that Netanyahu's conduct was terribly worrisome to Israelis.
And that the kind of conflict he was setting up between Obama and himself was something to be avoided.
So I think he's felt to be extreme by all except the settler movement that are his party base, his coalition base in Israel.
But in the United States, in the mainstream media, the coverage is much more subdued, almost.
I don't know what to say.
I mean, there's a degree of understatement or slant in the mainstream coverage of this that really prevents Americans who aren't very attentive from seeing quite what's happening.
Well, and although I'm not so sure that I mean, this seems like I mean, the president himself said it in his speech that, look, there's only one force on Earth that's against this deal, the Israelis and their lobbyists in D.C.
I mean, he wasn't exactly that explicit, but pretty much he was.
And Obama hates to be polemical.
And I mean, I've criticized him for this before.
I think he has a kind of aversion to sharp definitions of anything.
It's the it's the way his personality and his politics are built.
He co-opts.
He does not separate.
But in this case, he was very explicit, very sharp and with great warrant.
He spoke with complete propriety when he said and he didn't name the neoconservatives, but he all but named them when he said these are the people who pressed for the Iraq war and they were wrong then.
And you should be suspicious whether they're right now.
All right now.
So in the article, and I want to get back to D.C. and the politics some more in a minute, but you tell some really important history here when you talk about Netanyahu's first term in office and how it was that he even came to power, what it was that he was about back then in 1996.
Yeah, well, in 1996, he was the, you know, the anti Oslo candidate, the the alarmist about, you know, the dangers of giving into the Palestinians in any way.
And he was, in that sense, in rebellion against U.S. policy and Israeli stated policy at the time.
The defender of the Oslo Accords was Yitzhak Rabin, who had a great and respected military and political record in Israel, but took the risk and said, we have to get this problem solved.
It's a longstanding one, and we have to come to terms with it.
He was assassinated by a greater Israel religious fanatic.
And Netanyahu ascended to power in the election that followed.
He was accused by many of playing up to the dangerous right wing crowd sentiment that was, you know, how to say it, not unrelated to the politics of the assassin.
But anyway, that was where that was where he came into power.
And shortly after that, he received I don't know when it was publicized, but it was publicized not too long after he received a memorandum from a group of American conservatives, mainly Richard Perle, the author of it, but also David Wormser, Douglas Feith, notable other names on the document, advising to make a clean break, that was the title of the memorandum, a clean break with its previous stance in the region and its previous stance toward the United States and to devote itself to removing Saddam Hussein from Iraq, attacking the interests and assets of Syria wherever possible with a view to separating Syria into several parts, and making sure that it weakened Iran with a view to whatever in the distant future on Iran.
So I mean, as I see it, but again, this is hardly more of a construal than the business of Netanyahu's connections with American financiers.
It is a plan that disclosed in 1996 to, you know, let Israel stand alone as a solid potential partner in the region and subvert all the other conceivably stable, conceivably advantageous countries to be allied with for the US.
And I think he's been following that plan.
I think that Netanyahu is in close accord and consultation with the neoconservatives has been since the late 90s.
And I think he believes that they are political geniuses.
And he follows pretty much the same steps, or they follow his interest, it's not important to say, which is the initiator.
All right.
So in other words, if I can oversimplify this, you tell me if I'm oversimplifying it too much, but they're basically saying, forget peaceful coexistence with our neighbors, other than maybe Egypt and Jordan, maybe not even them.
Let's go ahead.
And we rather just have permanent enmity, but with us in a position of so much power that nobody else can do anything about it.
And that's it.
That's the clean break.
Yeah.
And I could continue maybe after the break.
Yeah.
Well, we'll let you be more specific when we get back.
It's David Bromwich, writing at the Huffington Post, Netanyahu and his marionettes.
We'll be right back after this.
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All right, y'all, I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with David Bromwich.
Writing at the Huffington Post, Netanyahu and his marionettes, their attempt to scotch the Iran deal.
And we're talking about the basis of Netanyahu's worldview here back when he was the prime minister the first time in the famous clean break document.
Oh, this is a slight quibble, David.
I think David Wombster was actually the principal author of that document that they all in the No, it was Pearl.
No, are you certain?
I'm looking at it right now.
Yeah.
Group lead.
So study group leader.
Wormster was one of the group.
Well, I think he's the one that wrote it and then put everybody else's name on it.
I'm not sure what they call themselves, but there's an interview with Wombster with the Wall Street Journal.
Yeah, it is a disagreement then, Scott, because I think Richard Pearl is the sort of charismatic character among all that lot.
Well, there was a fight.
There was a fight where Feith said, well, I didn't even write it all.
He asked me a couple of questions and then he put my name on it and I didn't even write the thing.
And when crying about it, and then they kind of explain, I think there's an interview in the Wall Street Journal.
I'll try to find it.
It doesn't matter.
It's a minor.
They did all sign on to it.
Pearl and Wombster certainly are of the same mind on the question.
Pearl is the name at the top.
It says study group leader.
So that's why I said I did.
All right.
Anyway.
And everybody, you can find that.
And also the companion article is called Coping with Crumbling States.
And they're both at Scott Horton dot org in the fair use category there because the original think tank took them down.
Also in Information Clearinghouse, it used to be available at the Project for the New American Century outlet, and it's related to the group of people who were involved in that.
Right.
Very same guys.
And now.
So and here's what's funny about this to me.
And you could disagree all you want and say whatever you want about it.
But this seems completely foolish and ridiculous to me.
Of course, Israel could have peace with all their neighbors and last for hundreds of years.
Probably if they would go back to 48 or 67 borders, whatever you call them, and treat their neighbors with respect.
And this goes back to the Yanon plan, Oded Yanon from 1980 or 81, where he goes, oh, all is lost.
World Communism is going to conquer the whole world and we're all going to starve and die.
And there's there's no hope at all except for, you know, complete and total retrenchment against our enemies everywhere that surround us.
And it's just crazy like that's not the world that we're living in at all.
Well, I understand Israel's fears or the fears of Israelis.
They have been attacked, often surprise attacks in the past, in 67, where they launched a preemptive attack against the armies massing around them.
But in 73, during Yom Kippur, it really did hit them hard.
And again, in the second intifada, where you had terrorists setting off suicide bombs inside restaurants and whatnot.
It is a dangerous place.
It is a hard part of the world to be living in.
But that's where the state of Israel chose to set up and for reasons to do with ideas about the ancient covenant, which only religious fanatics in Israel would defend as a political basis for what the state wants to be.
But I agree with you and with all the sensible people in this argument, including a great many in Israel who are not heard from in the United States, that given that that's their neighborhood, they have to try to live in it.
And the effort hasn't been made, not convincingly, since 1967, when they took the territories they now occupy.
And you know, this document, the Netanyahu founding document, let's call it from 1996, essentially advises him to discard the boring and unavailing policy of conflict management, their word for diplomacy, get rid of that.
And try to appeal to the US as your only significant ally, a shared philosophy of peace through strength.
It also advises Netanyahu to use familiar American watchwords, it says that appeal to them in the language they understand, such as self-reliance and so on.
And in a remarkable sort of rhetorical turn near the end of the thing, it says that this will lead to peace, even though we're going to separate ourselves from all our neighbors and try to subvert them, it will lead to peace, because we no longer have to simply manage the Arab-Israeli conflict, we will transcend it, transcend it because we're beyond all wars because all of our neighbors have been rendered completely incapable by us.
And what's funny, too, of course, is just how completely Christolian their predictions are about how this is all supposed to take place.
The Shia majority of Iraq, once we get rid of Saddam Hussein, they're going to put in a Hashemite king, because they love stuff like that.
And then that's going to inspire the people of Iran to rise up against the Ayatollahs and this is going to, getting rid of Saddam is going to be the worst thing that ever happened to the Ayatollah, they say.
Right.
That word Hashemite is used again and again to lend a veneer of scholarship and deep Middle Eastern lore to these extraordinarily shallow and fast shot American recommendations.
Anyway, that's the past.
When I used the word marionettes, I didn't mainly have in mind, well, just the Israel lobby and its hundreds defending on Congress, but also the congressmen and congresswomen themselves who, in the middle of this difficult period when a vote is pending, the Iran review vote by Senate, actually agreed to take a paid-for trip to Jerusalem, 58 of them.
And this is, I mean, this to me is the most mouth-opening aspect of our peculiar moment.
How could you do this?
How could you be a member of Congress at this moment, at this exigent moment, and say, alright, we know that there's a division between the Israeli Prime Minister and the American President, a lot hangs on this, say I want to vote for the overturn of the Iraq agreement, say I want to oppose the President on this, say I hope that we get two-thirds and we can really knock it down.
Still, just for the appearance of the thing, what on earth would drive me to go to Israel at this moment?
And again, I find that unprecedented.
And it would be so easy for any member of Congress to say, hey, I'm with you, I'm going to vote the way you want me to, but this just looks bad.
I can't go to Israel right now.
Let me go next year.
But they don't do it.
Well, and the lobby's answer is, no, it looks bad to us if you refuse to come.
And so that's what they're weighing.
Obama's going to be gone in two years, but Israel's not going anywhere, neither is AIPAC.
And especially the House members, they've got to keep running, basically, perpetually.
They're re-elected every two years.
There may have been a lot of pressure for them to do it right now, I don't know.
But one of my thoughts, it's not in the article, but, you know, might prompt others to think it too, is that Netanyahu here is playing the long game.
That's just what you're saying, too, now.
I mean, he doesn't necessarily expect to overturn the agreement by a two-thirds or more vote, sufficient to override the president's veto in Congress.
But he is trying, with all the massive force and funds at his disposal, to change American opinion so that it is so convincingly against this treaty that no American politician will want to venture to oppose public opinion.
It will be much harder to take a stand in favor of the treaty than it had been before.
I mean, what this will mean in international politics isn't clear at all, because the European powers and Russia and China, having signed on to it, it's really hard to believe that they will just keep the sanctions in place against their own economic and political interests.
But Netanyahu dwells with great familiarity in the element of chaos, and I think the disorder of the world that would follow from American politicians feeling unable to go with the agreement in the future, I think that would suit him fine.
And it's just this that has made more prudential members of the Israeli defense and security establishment almost unanimously turn against him.
It's only people in his cabinet who support him, and as I was just saying, the president of Israel has already registered a dissent, but he's a rather ceremonial officer.
But the stories about this you do not find in the Washington Post or the New York Times or CNN or CBS or NBC, you find it in the American Jewish newspaper Forward in a couple of excellent articles by J.J. Goldberg, where he says, you know, all the weight of the mind and knowledge of the Israeli defense and security establishment that's not in power right now is in favor of accepting the deal.
In other words, all of the former heads of Mossad and Shin Bet and the highest ranking generals.
Mossad, which is their CIA, Shin Bet, which is their FBI.
Yeah, the people and, you know, a guy like Amos Yadlin, who is the, you know, defense.
I don't know what to say.
You know, they're they're master of defense in Israel.
And, you know, in America, you've had the letter from several past ambassadors to Israel and Foreign Service officers, including Frank Wisner, who's, you know, practically all but there at the founding of the CIA, Thomas Pickering, Nicholas Burns and others supporting the deal.
And then what the Times reported just yesterday, the 29 U.S. scientists, including what is it, six Nobel Prize winners, including people who worked on nuclear weapons, saying that they support the Iran deal.
And these are the people most qualified of all in the United States to say whether the inspections regime is adequate and rigorous enough.
And yet, public opinion, with all the money Obama rightly spoke of, and with all the weight of Netanyahu's will behind it, American opinion is turning little by little against the deal.
It's not clear it'll go all the way.
But, you know, Chuck Schumer's weighing in, opposing his own party leader is a symptom.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
We're just over time and got to go.
But thank you so much for coming back on the show, David.
I hope to talk to you again soon.
OK.
Thanks.
Appreciate it.
All right.
So that is David Bromwich.
We've got a lot of things to ask him, obviously, there, but a lot of time, HuffingtonPost.com, Netanyahu and his marionettes.
We'll be right back in just a sec with Brad Hoff.
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