Alright y'all, welcome to the show, it's Anti-War Radio, on the Liberty Radio Network.
Third hour of the show, all week long we're sticking with our first two hours on Chaos Radio, 95.9 in Austin, Texas.
And we're doing our third hour here on the Liberty Radio Network, thanks to Mark and Ian for getting this thing going.
And then beginning all next week, well I guess starting Monday, we go to five days a week instead of four, and three hours a day instead of two, here on the Liberty Radio Network.
And so, there you go, that's that.
Alright, introducing our first guest, it's Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater, and fellow at the Nation Institute.
And you can find his blog at thenation.com.
Welcome to the show, Jeremy, how are you doing?
Good to be back.
Yeah, good to talk to you.
So, I understand you were on TV today, arguing with the former mayor of New York, Ed Koch.
Made famous by Johnny Royale, by the Beast Boys.
I wasn't aware that I was going to be on with Ed Koch, but that's fine.
I got there to the studio, I saw Ed Koch sitting there, and I know Ed Koch's politics well, about Israel.
You know, he's an unapologetic defender of the most heinous crimes that Israel commits.
And when I saw him sitting there, I knew that we were going to mix it up, and indeed we did.
And what happened on that show is generally what happens when you have someone presenting facts to the side of people that believe that Israel has a right to kill any Palestinians that it wants, to board civilian ships, to use chemical weapons against civilians, as Israel has done repeatedly over the years.
I presented him with facts, and he said, I don't want to debate you.
And then he said, that's nonsense.
When I started to read him the list of items that Israel has banned from entering Gaza, including basic spices, animals like boats and horses, children's toys, A4-sized paper.
And during the commercial break, Ed Koch accused me of being a terrorist supporter, was the phrase he used.
And I said, why don't you say that on the air?
And of course he didn't say that on the air, but he went off on a tirade that basically could have been written by a not-so-articulate spokesperson for Benjamin Netanyahu.
Well, now, I haven't had a chance to see the clip yet, been live on the air here, but from what I know of, well, my own previous interview of you, plus seeing you on Bill Maher and Amy Goodman's show, obviously for, well, more than 12 years now, something like that, I know that, well, and anybody who could just hear you talking knows you're a very no-nonsense guy, you make your points, you win your arguments.
I guess that's what really set him on edge, huh?
Well, you know, I started off by saying that the issue here is about the U.S.
-backed Israeli strangulation of Gaza, the collective punishment of 1.5 million people, 65% of whom are under the age of 18.
And this is a policy that the Israelis have against Gaza that's been condemned by every single member of the U.N.
Security Council, the permanent members of the Security Council, except the United States.
And the point I was making is that to say that this flotilla, or that these ships, were somehow a terrorist operation, that somehow you had a terrorist sponsorship of these ships, was ludicrous and false, especially given that you had two very prominent former U.S. diplomats, a member of the Israeli parliament, German politicians and others, on board these ships.
And no one's making the allegation, because it's not true, that there were any weapons being smuggled in for the purposes of handing them over to Hamas to attack the Israeli government.
I should say, not to go on and on, but one story that has not gotten a lot of attention today, but should, was done by my colleague Max Blumenthal.
He reported on how, on June 2nd, the Israeli Defense Forces blasted out a press release to journalists and bloggers with the headline, Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found to be Al-Qaeda Mercenaries.
When Max confronted them on it, they then changed it to, Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found Without Identification Papers.
So Koch just went ballistic when having to face facts.
The first thing he said to me was, I don't want to debate you.
And I said, well, that's because you can't debate these things.
Yeah, I mean, of all the most ridiculous lies, I mean, somebody must have got fired.
It must have been the most junior member of the Israeli propaganda machine put out that one.
Al-Qaeda on the boats?
Come on.
I don't even know if Republicans would believe that.
You know, I mean, you would hope that it was just a sort of error by someone low down.
But they actually, when pressed on it, the IDF spokespeople told Max that they had gotten that information from the Israeli National Security Council.
And they said they don't have any more information on it, but that's where they got it.
So clearly they're saying that they got it from someone in a position of power or knowledge in Israel.
And now they've had to back off of it, just as they've had to back off a lot of the initial claims about that ship.
And, you know, now the lingering question, as far as the pro-Israel crowd is concerned, centers around trying to make the issue Hamas.
Hamas didn't attack that ship, and there were no weapons for Hamas.
So the issue isn't Hamas.
The issue is collective punishment.
And that's what they don't want to talk about.
Well, and apparently the news is out today.
I saw it earlier this morning in some Turkish press.
But now apparently ABC News is confirming that one of the dead from the raid is an American 19-year-old kid shot four times in the head, Jeremy?
Yeah.
Well, this is bad.
I mean, despite the fact that he's 19, this is a kid that I understand is going to high school in Turkey.
And he was shot, I guess, four times in the head, once in the chest, according to the reports that are coming out now from Turkey.
When you realize that we are quite possibly facing a fact that one of the 10 individuals that we know about that were killed on that ship was an American citizen, and you juxtapose that with the U.S. response, with Biden saying last night on Charlie Rose's show, you know, what's the big deal about this?
Can you imagine any other nation, imagine if Iran or North Korea had killed a U.S. citizen, a 19-year-old high school student, shooting him four times in the head?
The response would not be anywhere near what we're seeing with Israel, where the U.S. is basically defending Israel's massacre of civilians, including apparently a U.S. citizen.
It's just, it's unfortunately, and I know you know this too, this isn't shocking.
It's always shocking to see this kind of life lost on a moral level.
But Israel's been doing this for so long for the Palestinians, assassinating people, including in third countries, using British passports, firing Hellfire missiles.
Unfortunately, we can't be shocked anymore by Israel's conduct.
Well, you know, I guess the most surprising part of it to me is that they didn't learn their lesson at MSNBC from having Glenn Greenwald on the other day, and then they let you on.
Why would they even let anyone who has the will and the capacity to refute somebody like Ed Koch even on MSNBC?
Well, you know, I certainly credit them for having me on, or Glenn Greenwald on.
I mean, Glenn Greenwald just destroyed Eliot Spitzer's attempt to defend Israel's heinous crimes.
And, you know, then they had me on this morning.
Look, I give them a lot of credit because I've been monitoring CNN's coverage.
And I mean, basically, I think Wolf Blitzer should change the opening of his show to, you know, from CNN, you're in the AIPAC room instead of the Situation Room.
Because, you know, I mean, it's basically what it is.
You're just getting Israeli propaganda peppered with phrases like pro-Palestinian activist.
And they're framing the issue of it as if it's just Israel versus Palestine.
We're talking about a massacre of an international flotilla that was delivering humanitarian goods.
This is not just about Israel-Gaza.
Yeah, well, you know, and the whole thing, if you watch Blitzer's show, you'd probably be under the impression that the horrific Palestinian occupation of Israel has continued on for 40 years now.
And when are the Palestinians ever going to just let Israel exist?
Well, I mean, that's sort of what Koch was doing today, where he starts talking about, you know, the missiles that are fired into Israel from Gaza.
And he said, you know, I believe it was two shells that were fired in there.
There's no doubt, I mean, Hamas attacks Israel.
There's no question about that.
But the violence is so overwhelmingly disproportionate.
The Israelis killed 1,400 people in Gaza in December of 2008 in three weeks.
Fifteen Israelis were killed.
Well, and even then, it was the Israelis that broke the ceasefire, and it wasn't Hamas that shot the first rockets.
It was another group, and Hamas went and killed them and said, no, we're trying to maintain a ceasefire here.
And the Israelis said, nope, too late, and started bombing.
Right.
That was in the fall of, oh, wait.
Right.
So within three weeks, they killed 1,400 Palestinians.
And that is not the origin of what we're seeing unfold right now in Gaza.
It's the current origin.
In other words, the Israelis decimated the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, and now are refusing to allow them to rebuild.
Israel is the pariah state here.
Israel is the rogue nation.
No one, I think, in their right mind can actually look at this and say Israel is anything other than a rogue nation at this point.
All right, everybody.
That's Jeremy Scahill from The Nation magazine, thenation.com.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
And the book is Blackwater.
Run out and get it.
We'll be back.
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