08/24/16 – Ramzy Baroud – The Scott Horton Show

Superior blends of premium coffee, roasted fresh in Zionsville, Indiana.
Darren's Coffee satisfies the casual and the connoisseur.
Scott Horton Show listeners, visit www.
DarrensCoffee.com and use the coupon code SCOTT at checkout for free shipping.www.
DarrensCoffee.com Because everyone deserves to drink great coffee.
Alright y'all, Scott Horton Show, www.
ScottHorton.org for the archives, sign up for the podcast feed there as well.
Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Alright, introducing our friend Ramsey Baroud.
He is the author of My Father Was a Freedom Fighter and he keeps the website www.
PalestineChronicle.com.
We run pretty much everything he writes, I think, at www.
AntiWar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Ramsey, how are you doing?
I'm doing well, thank you for having me, Scott.
Very happy to have you here and I'm sorry for the occasion, but I know you're kind of used to it.
The story of the perpetual tragedy of the siege of the Gaza Strip, of course, is at issue this week after recent exchanges of fire.
And, of course, both sides always say the other guy started it, but there is a larger context.
Why don't you let us know?
Right.
Well, to begin with, this latest attack on Gaza, it consisted of about 50 strikes.
That struck quite, you know, not just in the border areas, but quite deep in Gaza this time, to the point that it's really the harshest set of strikes since the war in 2014, which killed over 2,200 Palestinians.
About 80% of them were civilians and included about 400 children.
But this latest attack carries a lot of political meaning to it, because it happened after two interesting developments.
One is that Avigdor Lieberman, the most extremist of all Israeli politicians, was appointed the defense minister of Israel.
So this is a man who is known for his fascist and racist statements and very violent past, has been giving perhaps the most sensitive post in Israel, a country that says security is its most important priority.
The other event is that the agreement between Turkey and Israel to reconcile and to end their political rift.
For some Palestinians, I think perhaps too optimistic or if not even slightly deluded, they were under the impression that the agreement between Turkey and Israel would naturally mean the end of siege in Gaza, or kind of a gradual lifting of the siege in Gaza.
The Israeli attack, in my opinion, or the strikes, were an Israeli message to the Palestinians that no, not at all.
This is not going to happen, not on our watch.
The war will continue, the strikes will continue.
So now Palestinians are kind of woke up to this, really, the reality of the matter, and that is Israel's business with Turkey is almost entirely separated from the situation in Gaza, and they would have to deal with this perpetual siege and the perpetual war on their own.
Well, you know, it's almost like talking about American treaties with the Indians in the 19th century or something.
It's almost just like trivia, but haven't the Israelis agreed, didn't they agree as the terms of the ceasefire, I'm trying to remember, there's so many different wars against Gaza, but at least in the 2008 war, at the ceasefire at the end of the, or 2008-09, right before Obama took power, wasn't part of the terms of that ceasefire that they would lift the siege?
Well, that's right.
I mean, I think your description of relating this to Native American treaties is actually quite poignant.
Yes, the 2008, the treaty or the agreement following the 2008 war, 2008-09, was kind of stipulated that they would start a process of lifting the siege, and at least it would be eased significantly, and it would be the beginning of ending the siege.
The same situation happened in 2012.
It was, comparatively, it was a minor war, but still a few hundred people were killed nonetheless.
2014 was supposed to be a victory for Gaza, in a sense, meaning that the fishermen can fish more than three nautical miles into the water, the farmers can actually go back to their farms without being targeted by snipers, and then we start talking seriously about lifting the siege.
Well, the fishermen are attacked daily, the farmers are shot at daily, and nothing has happened whatsoever.
So it just, and I think Palestinians at this point, especially in Gaza, know this very, very well.
Every time there is a ceasefire agreement, I don't think you have that sense of euphoria anymore, that we won and things are going to improve, not at all.
So, you know, one of the problems, of course, that the people of the Gaza Strip have, and look, it's always something, don't get me wrong, like I think this is an honest argument or anything, Ramzi, but hey, Hamas is the elected leadership of the Gaza Strip, and everybody knows that they're a bunch of radical Islamic terrorists, and so how in the world could the decent Western European Israelis deal with such a bunch of crazy terrorist savages?
What are they supposed to do other than keep all the people of Gaza under siege, as long as their will is that their leaders should be these monsters of Hamas?
That's right, that's the argument.
But, you know, Scott, you know that my main task, academically and intellectually, is that I'm a historian.
That's what I do for a living, I have a PhD in the subject, and I actually look more at what happened between 1948 and 1967 until today, much more than I actually look at what's happening right now.
And that argument, you just paraphrased, is pretty much the same argument that has been used ever since.
The fact is, Hamas and the Islamic dimension to this conflict is really rather new.
It really did not start until the late 80s, early 90s.
What was the argument that Israel used prior to that?
When the resistance was socialist, in the 60s and 70s, the core Palestinian resistance were socialist, they were communist groups.
The same argument was used then, but it was phrased differently, and it was placed within a different context.
Prior to that, when there were poor, rag-tag peasants, you know, selling their land to buy rifles and fight for their families, the same argument, Arab savages, we are civilized Westerners, we are here to, you know, with a new project to make this a civilized place, we are here to make the desert bloom, and those savages, those barbarians are preventing us from achieving our goals.
So, poor Palestinians actually have been dehumanized from the very, very beginning.
This has been going on for like a hundred years now, and the dehumanization continues.
Sadly, though, we usually don't look back that far in history, and we just look at it within our own convenient context.
Hamas, Beards, Islamists, strange names, angry people on Fox News, put it within the context of Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and it scares the hell out of so many people.
But if you actually put it within proper Palestinian historical context, the resistance makes perfect sense, and Israel will constantly find a way to provide the needed pretense to launch any war, any time.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I don't know what the situation, you know, how the politics in Gaza are on this question now, but I do know that it, speaking of, you know, historical facts and context and everything, that a decade ago, Condoleezza Rice helped engineer the election that brought Hamas to power, and not just, oh, whoops, we shouldn't let Palestinians vote, that's not it.
She engineered an election right at the time when the government, I guess it was Ehud Olmert's government, they collect all the taxes, all the border taxes and everything, and basically all the revenue for the Palestinian Authority is collected by the Israelis.
And they withheld all that money that the PA needed, that Fatah needed, to buy up all their votes.
And that's what really helped propel Hamas's win in the first place.
But even then, if I remember it right, it was just a plurality or it was a bare enough majority that they still needed to have a coalition government with Fatah.
But then this is where the all-important footnote comes in, David Rose and Vanity Fair, the Gaza bombshell, about how the Bush administration, led by Elliott Abrams, worked with the Israelis and worked with Mubarak's fascist dictatorship in Egypt to funnel a bunch of guns to Fatah in Gaza in order to betray and attack Hamas and drive them out of power.
Except, of course, it backfired and blew up in their face, and they're the ones who ended up losing out.
And it was only then that Hamas ended up inheriting a monopoly on political power in the Gaza Strip.
But now, oh well, never mind that, they're Islamic extremists, this, that, the other thing, and who cares what's America's fault here?
And who cares that we're basically describing a contest of an election for who gets to be the trustee in the giant open-air concentration camp.
Because whoever's the government of Gaza is basically just a go-between between the Israelis and the people of the Gaza Strip anyway, just the same as the PA is in the West Bank, right?
They're not the representatives of the Palestinians, they're the representatives of the people with the real power, the Israelis.
That's brilliant, Asher, that's a perfect context to what happened prior to the election.
I mean, the interesting thing, I mean, you mentioned Condoleezza Rice, remember Condoleezza Rice's main slogan, you know, she wanted to establish the new Great Middle East project.
She wanted to democratize the Arabs.
She wanted to bring democracy and all that.
And we saw what happened.
They destroyed Iraq, and democracy is a thousand years away from that country at this point, thanks to Condoleezza Rice and her henchmen.
But the thing is, what happened in Palestine, it was that convenient pretense at the time.
The pretense was, Palestinians are not democratic enough.
The Palestinian Authority does not represent the Palestinian people.
And since they don't represent the Palestinian people, we don't have a peace partner.
How do we know, and I'm talking as if I'm an Israeli, how do we know that if we sign an agreement with Yasser Arafat at the time, or Mahmoud Abbas, how do we know that this agreement is going to be honored, considering that the Palestinian Authority is not entirely a democratic institution?
Therefore, we need democracy.
They kept pushing that line, and they really made sure that Palestinians remain as divided as humanly possible, in order for them to constantly give Israel a reason to really just backtrack on its promises, and on its past treaties, past agreements.
Now, the outcome ended up bringing Hamas to power.
I think even, and I spoke to various Hamas leaders in the past for my work.
Even the Hamas leaders were taken by surprise.
And they were desperate to join any sort of coalition, because they did not want this to be seen as an Islamist government.
They know exactly how terrible that brand was and remains.
So they reached out to Fatah, and there were some elements in Fatah that actually did want to join the agreement.
I'm not talking about the warlords like Mohamed Ahlan and these other crazies.
I'm actually talking about genuine revolutionary Fatah members who did want to reach an agreement.
But Condoleezza Rice made it very, very clear that any agreement with a terrorist group means that the United States would not give Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, in the name of Allah, any support.
Even NGOs, Scott, NGOs that had nothing to do with nothing, had to sign papers with U.S. aid that they would not receive any American support if they don't declare that they renounce the Hamas government and terrorism and violence and so forth.
So Palestinian society went through this filtering process, thanks to the United States and Israel, and Condoleezza Rice in particular.
They went through this filtering process to ensure that Hamas will remain utterly, utterly isolated, even the socialists were too cowardly to join any form of agreement with Hamas.
Now when they were naked and isolated and utterly Islamist, at the end of the day there was no other option but siege and war.
And that has been the story ever since.
Well, and you know, this goes back to, again, the history of what's been going on this whole time all along.
You know, the story for a long time that Americans were told and believed was that nobody lived in Palestine.
It was a land without people, and here were people without a land, the refugees, Jewish refugees from World War II.
And, hey look, the Bible said this is their homeland where they came from a long time ago too and everything.
So it's perfectly great.
What a perfect fit.
And yet, it's the Israeli historians like Benny Morris and others who, and he's a real hawk I think on a lot of things, but who have shown that, yeah, no, that's not true.
The reason people, and people wonder, well, why are a bunch of people in such a miserable condition in Gaza anyway?
Well, it's because they're refugees.
And the sons and grandsons and great-grandsons and daughters of refugees.
And they're just locked up in this camp.
They have nowhere to go.
And I think anybody, and I think honestly, Ramsey, the reason that so much of the discussion of Israel and Palestine is changing right now is because of social media.
And if all we still had was Rader Jennings and Brokaw telling us what the news is all day, we'd never really know any of this.
But anybody who ever discusses Israel-Palestine online, if you find an honest Zionist who really will argue about this and make an honest point and stand on it, it's that the Palestinians ought to get over it and just go either die or move away somewhere else.
We defeated them, and the land is ours now, and screw them.
And that's Gaza.
That's the West Bank.
Of course, East Jerusalem on the West Bank and Golan Heights and whatever it is.
Zionists just told me the other day, history is full of examples of people being cleansed and being defeated and having to leave.
So in other words, what makes the Palestinians think they're so special that they should get to resist and stay even after they already lost?
That is the best honest argument that you can get from an Israeli about why this status quo is okay, I guess, for now until the final solution comes.
In fact, the Israeli arguments can all be placed within one page.
One page of a few talking points, dashed 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and that's it.
They keep repeating it over and over again.
And that includes, Israel is a very small country.
Palestinians can easily merge into the greater Arab expanse, and so forth and so on.
You know, your God is this, your Allah is that.
I mean, just really pathetic old arguments that they have been repeating ever since.
And it's not even worth a conversation.
Because it's not worth a conversation because there is no frame of reference.
What is the moral or legal frame of reference that Zionists speak by?
They don't have any, which makes it really impossible to hold any intelligent conversation with them.
But what social media has done, it has really changed the nature of the debate entirely.
It brought ordinary people, intelligent, ordinary, everyday people to the conversation.
They are asking questions.
Why did you kill 2,200 people in Gaza?
Why did you murder 400 child?
Why are you not allowing farmers and fishermen to go and fish and survive?
Why are you allowing, okay, fine, so God had promised you this land.
But why are you not allowing people to access food and medicine?
Why are they digging tunnels in order for them to bring food and medicine and weapons to defend themselves and to survive?
Why are you not allowing students to go to their universities?
Why are you putting an entire population on this standstill, on this arrested development of an endless suffering, unneeded, unnecessary, endless suffering?
Now, none of their arguments can actually challenge one single picture from a checkpoint, from a destroyed school in Gaza or a destroyed hospital.
Not all of their arguments.
This is why there is this sense of panic.
This is why Israel is now launching this huge campaign against social media and Facebook and Google and so forth.
You know a few days ago, actually, they managed to get Google to remove Palestine from the map.
And we began this campaign and we put it back.
But there is this desperate attempt to utilize the old strategies of intimidation and fear-mongering in order for them to actually win the argument.
But they are losing in so many platforms.
And they can't fight back using traditionalist type of thinking.
Right.
I'm sorry, man, I'm out of time.
I've got to get Landé on to talk about Iraq War III here.
But I really appreciate you giving us time on the show and helping explain the context of what's happening to the victims, the people of the Gaza Strip at the hands of the Israeli occupation there.
And I can't wait to talk to you again.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
All right, Sheldon.
That is the great Ramzi Baroud.
You can find virtually everything he writes at AntiWar.com.
And he also keeps PalestineChronicle.com.
Oh, and that's the show, ScottHorton.org and Twitter.com slash Scott Horton Show, etc.
Thanks.
Let TheBumperSticker.com help you get the word out.
That's TheBumperSticker.com at TheBumperSticker.com.
Mike Swanson can help.
Follow along on paper and see for yourself.
WallStreetWindow.com