For Pacifica Radio, April 14th, 2019.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
Alright, y'all.
Welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I'm the editorial director of Anti-War.com.
You can find my full interview archive, almost 5,000 interviews now, going back to 2003, at ScottHorton.org.
Alright, you guys, on the line, I've got the great Phillip Weiss from the Mondoweiss blog.
That's Mondoweiss.net.
And there's a great group of writers over there, including Phillip.
Welcome back to the show.
Thank you.
Thanks, Matt.
Excellent.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great, man.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Listen, there's all kinds of important things going on in Israeli politics and American politics about Israeli politics.
So let's start with the re-anointment of King Bibi over there, they call him, Benjamin Netanyahu.
What's the deal?
Well, he won re-election despite a strong challenge from a centrist.
He won re-election on Tuesday night.
And it had been thought that he was going to lose to this guy or get a lower percentage and have trouble building a ruling coalition.
In fact, Netanyahu beat Gantz and Blue and White, that was the name of the opposition, by one seat.
He got 36, they got 35.
And not only that, Netanyahu has a very strong right-wing coalition.
That seems to be stronger than ever.
And the ways that Americans have traditionally seen Israel, meaning labor and even socialist left-wing party like Meritz, those traditional Jewish left-wing parties are down to 10 seats and the Palestinian numbers are down to 11 seats.
The Palestinian parties had held around 13 seats in the last Knesset and they didn't come out this election.
So that was another big part of it is that the Arab voters were turned off.
The Jewish left is finished.
It's a very sad day for those who support the Jewish left in Israel.
Are you of the opinion or do you know if the Labor Party had stayed more labor-y instead of moving to the right in that Bill Clinton third-way type of a way that maybe they would have more strength?
Or really they were forced to move to the right because the whole damn society over there is so right-wing now, there's just no place for people of that view anymore.
It's funny.
So you picked that up, Scott, that they had kind of tried to triangulate by going right.
Yes, that's what they did.
And everyone's saying that's a mistake.
The only – yeah, the whole society is right-wing.
Young people are right-wing.
Overwhelmingly, this is one of the tragic aspects of what I think is a result of Zionism, but certainly it's a tragic trend in Israel, is that young Jews support Netanyahu overwhelmingly.
So it's not just the older ones.
The older ones actually are far more skeptical of Netanyahu.
It's the young ones who are sort of even more indoctrinated.
It's part of what the fascistic trend in that society.
So back to your question, what about idealists?
What should they have done?
Well, they should have been more idealistic.
And this is their challenge going forward.
They should have reached out to the Palestinian parties and run as a bloc more.
And I think to do that, they have to abandon the Zionist plank.
But certainly they did not.
They were told by their own young idealistic supporters on the left, hey, reach out to the Palestinian parties.
Work with them.
Reach out to Palestinian voters.
And they didn't do it.
They didn't do it.
They were trying to, as you say, do the Clinton straddle.
And here they are down at—Labor has, what, six seats.
It's incredible what used to be the ruling party in Israel.
All right.
So a couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump, specifically at Benjamin Netanyahu's request, obviously gifted the Golan Heights, which you might be shocked to learn didn't really belong to Donald Trump to give away.
But he gave them to Israel, recognized Israel's annexation, which I guess they declared back in 1981, but that I guess the U.N. and no other state in the world recognizes.
But now the U.S. does.
And then Netanyahu said—again, just like he does right around every election, and I take him at his word for this.
This is Horton's Law.
You can always forget any good promises a politician makes, but you can take all the bad ones to the bank.
And so when he says, hey, look, one state between the river and the sea, the Palestinians will never have their own security force, not even a pseudo-pretend-a-partial-Bantustan state, so just forget it, that's the truth.
And he's saying he wants to begin to annex some of the settlements.
I don't know if he's really going to do that or not, but at least he's saying that in a way to really show, to kind of preclude the idea of any real Palestinian state.
And right on the eve of supposedly the great, you know, what the deal of the century or whatever they're calling it, that's made to be rejected, but that, you know, if they were going for that year 2000 narrative that, oh, we gave Arafat everything and he refused to accept it, they're not going to get away with pushing that this time.
I mean, maybe among some segments of the American population, but no one on earth is going to believe that narrative now when it's Donald Trump and Jared Kushner doing it.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
But so I say all that to say this then, and this has been your point for a while now, is that Donald Trump and Netanyahu, and for that matter, Golan and the West Bank announcing annexation, all this, they are severely controversializing Israel in American politics for really the first time, at least in my lifetime, and they're making it a real partisan issue.
And right on the eve of an extra long two-year presidential campaign season, year and a half.
So fun, right?
Maybe?
Silver linings here?
Yeah.
Big silver lining.
First, let me emphasize, I just want to say that you are on it again, Scott, when you say the paradigm has shifted.
I think that that was the narrative we heard again and again.
There is no partner on the other side.
We gave them these great offers and they turned them down.
And, you know, leaving aside the flaws in that narrative, as there are flaws in any narrative, and I think it's an inaccurate narrative, that narrative is now around the world, is now Israel is rejecting the two-state solution.
So that is very significant.
And as to your question on the larger issue, this is now becoming a partisan issue in American politics, and that's what I've always pushed for.
I've wanted Americans to debate our support for Israel.
I want anti-Zionists to be in the Congress.
We have a couple, but mostly I want an open debate.
And I think we will get anti-Zionists ultimately when that debate is happening.
And state of the main event here, it's happening.
And Democrats, like it or not, and I think some of them like it, have Netanyahu as a punching bag for the 2020 presidential race.
And this might be one of the leading foreign policy questions of the 2020 presidential race, and of the Democratic primaries, and then of the general.
And when we saw that timid opposition four years ago by Bernie Sanders, really the strongest candidate on the issue, had to say in April of 2016, you know, he said in New York in a debate with Hillary Clinton, Netanyahu is not always right.
We got to say that.
Well, this time around, you have Beto O'Rourke saying Netanyahu is a racist.
So this issue has become partisan, and it's great.
It's great.
That's amazing.
He says something with substance.
I'm sure he'll climb down pretty soon.
Yeah.
The point being, in fact, maybe that's even the most important point here, is this guy is nothing but a big rooster weathervane up there on the roof of the barn.
Absolutely.
And if that's what he thinks, then he thinks that because he thinks he has to think that.
So, all right.
You know?
I think you're right.
I think that, yeah, I mean, Beto, I think we have to concede, has some pretty good political instincts.
And regardless what you think of him, he's shrewd politically.
And, yeah, he sees these fields are ready to be tilled, you know, and he's going to go out and till them.
And he sees that's where the base is.
And I read today in a Jewish publication tablet where they said, hey, the Democratic Party, you've got to be against Israel in the Democratic Party now, it seems like.
And that is news.
That is great news.
And especially because of the whole silly, funny irony of the thing.
We have Donald Trump, who's kind of the right-wing nationalist, and his party playing the Philo Semites and accusing the Democratic Party that about 85% or 90% of Jews vote for every two and four years is the party of anti-Semitism.
And he keeps saying that over and over.
If you're Jewish, you have to vote Republican now.
American Jews have got to be so confused by that.
What is going on?
I know.
It's fun.
Isn't it funny?
And, you know, Israelis are making the same argument to American Jews.
And Zionists are making some of that.
So they're really confused.
And I think most American Jews know where they stand on this.
They don't want Trump.
So it's a delicious moment for a lot of reasons.
And, I mean, it's just going to be a pleasure to watch.
Sorry.
Hang on just one second.
Hey, everybody, buy my book, Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
And it's available all over the place in EPUB format and, of course, in paperback and Kindle at Amazon.com.
And you can also get the audiobook version at Audible.com.
If you want a signed copy, check out scotthorton.org slash donate and help arrange that for you there.
It's Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
Find out all about it at foolserrand.us.
All right.
Tell me about Dianne Feinstein.
You quote her in your piece this morning.
Yeah.
I mean, I thought that, you know, Feinstein has been a strong supporter of Israel.
So I'm not in her camp at all.
But she has been a leader in terms of that kind of timid criticism and sometimes strong criticism.
Dianne Feinstein has criticized Israel.
And she is now leading this critique from the center left of American politics that don't annex the settlement blocks.
Netanyahu, as you said in the last days of the campaign, promised his right wing, I'm going to annex parts of the West Bank, some outposts maybe, but those big settlement blocks that are closer to Israel, I'm going to annex them to Israel just like you want.
And he also said, again, touching on something you said at the beginning of our discussion, I don't want to do this without Trump's backing.
Hint, hint.
You know, this is going to be all right, right, Donald?
And it looks like Donald Trump is going to give him the freedom to do that.
Mike Pompeo doesn't want to stop him from doing it.
He indicated in Senate hearings.
But the Democratic Party has now thrown itself into this, and liberal Zionists have said, hey, do not annex those settlement blocks.
And the United States must not allow this to happen.
That's the official end of the two-state solution.
So kind of another fascinating political battle, but important to me and I think us, because once again we see the issue becoming very politicized and two starkly different sides, and that opens up the room for people who are far more critical of Jewish nationalism, apartheid, shooting nonviolent protesters.
Israel has killed 260 in the last year.
We are finally getting a voice in the American discourse.
Right.
And that's the whole thing about this, what you just mentioned there with Gaza, where this is some academic discussion about this, that, or the other thing.
This is about millions of people being deprived of their most basic rights, occupied longer than the Soviets occupied Eastern Europe.
These people essentially enslaved in the West Bank.
They're not being forced to work for free, but they're being deprived of their civil rights and liberties and natural whatever, however you describe all of these things, essentially altogether.
I was watching a clip the other day of the IDF chasing a nine-year-old boy at his government school that they broke into to kidnap this young boy and take him off on the accusation that he was throwing stones.
And they tried to get his seven-year-old brother, but luckily they hid him in a back room where the IDF monsters couldn't get to him.
And they only held him for a few hours and then let him go.
But imagine if you're a nine-year-old boy.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
And let's – I mean, two points off that.
I mean, first of all, this type of – Wait, wait.
People in the audience, do you know any seven-year-olds?
OK.
Think about them for just a second.
OK.
Sorry.
Go ahead, Phil.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
OK.
So first of all, this is visited on every Palestinian, not necessarily at seven years old, but by the time that they're 17 or 23, they've all had some type of experience like this under occupation.
And, you know, it makes them hate Zionism, as it would make you hate – anyone who has to live under that hates Zionism.
And secondly, this is seen – you know, you've seen this in Texas.
I've seen it in New York.
You know, we're not – and we've seen it on the Internet.
Americans might not be seeing this in The New York Times, but the world is seeing it.
And this is hurting America.
I go back, of course, as I think you do, to an American interest.
And this is the country we're more closely aligned with than any country really in the world whose interests we've stood up for again and again.
And this is what they do to the populations of a different race and ethnicity.
This is – you know, not that America has done such great things lately around the world.
It's done a lot of terrible things.
This is sort of – you know, our branding, this is like the second thing people think about.
And it touches on something else, that just before the election – you know, I think you mentioned this too – Noam Chomsky has said that Trump gave this election to Netanyahu by interfering in the Israeli election.
And whether – how determinative Trump's interference was, I don't know.
But certainly he interfered.
And the way he did it was that he gave Netanyahu one gift after another going up to the election.
And Netanyahu even said that he thanked Trump for giving me another thing that I requested.
Right.
Referring to the Golan Heights.
And so that was in Hebrew.
He said to the Israeli people, look, this is another thing I requested I got from Donald Trump, meaning the opposition can never get these things from Donald Trump.
And yet when he wrote it in English, he said, thank you, Donald Trump, for all you've done for us.
He didn't say he'd requested it.
So that's the way the deal goes down.
You know, Netanyahu requests.
Sheldon Adelson is his biggest backer.
And he's also Donald Trump's biggest backer.
So Donald Trump delivers.
And does anyone talk about that collusion?
Hmm.
I wonder.
Yeah.
You would think it kind of matters.
And especially – you know, this is the real ripoff about Trump, too, is that supposedly he's so rich that nobody can buy him.
Right?
Remember that?
Jeb and Hillary, they'll be the slaves of the special interests, but not me.
And yet I guess somebody told him, you know what, though, is who's going to pay for the rest of the Republicans in the House and the Senate?
They've got to get reelected or else you have nothing anyway.
And so that's why you need Sheldon Adelson and his $100 million a year over here.
And then – I mean, Trump's always been his highness anyway, but it just seems like he's so blatantly married to Sheldon Adelson and his view and, you know, his agenda now.
Yes.
And for the money.
Like as simple as that.
Just as he would probably put it.
Right?
Well, it gives me a lot of money.
Yeah.
And he said about Marco Rubio like four years ago, Marco's going to become Sheldon Adelson's perfect little puppet if he takes Sheldon's money.
And Trump knows transactions.
And now he's the perfect little puppet.
And he's staying bought.
You know, he's going to stay bought as long as he needs that money.
And he needed it last year to try to hold the House.
And, you know, it didn't work out.
But it wasn't as if Sheldon Adelson didn't deliver, I think, close to $100 million on that.
Him and his wife, Miriam, she got the Presidential Medal of Honor.
And then, you know, he got the Golan.
It's crazy.
And it's just so patent.
And people don't talk about it.
Well, and Adelson is an American.
And, you know, I've heard Israelis complain before that, you know, if Americans didn't meddle in our elections, then maybe we wouldn't have nonstop Likud over here.
Yeah.
You know, but essentially you have right-wing American Jews are interfering in Israeli politics just the same way as Israelis intervene in American politics.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a great point.
I mean, that's where I think both you and I would like more of a two-state solution, you know.
Yeah.
Between America and Israel.
Yeah, exactly.
There's a two-state solution I'll get behind.
And then so speaking of that, I think I've been won over to this view.
I know that you're of this view, too, that, you know, outright annexation of these settlements are not – the two-state solution is obsolete at this point.
They've just colonized too much.
There's 600,000 Israeli Jewish settlers, you know, essentially trespassing on the West Bank right now.
And there's not going to be an Israeli civil war over removing them or not.
And so I wonder what you think about this.
Which there would be.
I think about this, and I understand the objections, and I know it's not exactly your position that you're in, but you know a lot about this.
I was talking with Ramzi Baroud, and I was thinking, you know, maybe one of the big problems is instead of saying we need a single state, instead of all of that, maybe, I mean, we recognize the reality that the Palestinians did lose.
They lost in 1948, and they lost again in 1967, and that essentially it is de facto and it should be recognized de jure by the Palestinians that Israel annexed the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights in 1967.
That they are Palestinian citizens of Israel, or they should be, just like the 20 percent population of Israel proper that are Palestinian Muslims and Christians.
And just say, instead of we want some new state, some new single state where every single thing changes, and it's essentially premised on ending Zionism itself, my way is more like an end run.
Where it just says, look, we are all Israelis.
We're recognizing you did annex us all this time.
We simply want the right to vote.
You know, no more Plessy versus Ferguson.
We want Brown versus Board of Education, and we want the right to vote for the Knesset, and that's it.
And limit their demands for that.
Israeli citizenship, full stop.
And I said that to Ramzi Baroud, and he's like, well, yeah, no, because we don't want to be Israelis.
Well, you know, and he's a refugee from Gaza, so certainly it's his opinion that counts.
But it seems to me like that's really the solution, and it does it in a way that really sticks it to the Israelis because it frames it in the most simple terms, in the most simple American civil rights terms, essentially.
Yeah, well, first of all, I think that what you're describing is the inevitable progress of this question.
And Palestinians have said it in their own way for some years now that we don't care how many states you have between the river and the sea.
We want equal rights.
That's the issue.
We want equal rights.
And that's a big part of the BDS call is we want equal rights.
So I think that this natural progression that you've described, the progression you've described is actually a natural one.
And I tend not to be that prescriptive beyond wanting equal rights because, you know, it is for them to sort out these people to sort out.
I have even been tolerant of a two state solution which preserves Jewish democracy, quote unquote, Jewish democracy, preserves a ethnic supremacist religious state as a as a kind of a realistic solution.
I had been in the past.
I mean, I think a lot of people had been if if this is the exit ramp from this, you know, 100 year conflict or whatever in which the Palestinians, by the way, offered that exit ramp.
You know, as you and I have discussed before, the greatest example of compromise in this whole conflict is in the late 80s when the Palestinians say we will accept some Zionist presence, you know, nationally in land that belonged to us.
We're from which we were ethnically cleansed.
Amazing compromise.
Well, that was actually Israel has never acted on that compromise.
So but that was always seen as a, you know, let's end this.
And now I think what's happening more is you heard Chris Van Hollen say it to Mike Pompeo the other day.
Hey, if there's going to be one state, don't you believe in equal rights and dignity for everyone in that one state?
Can you say that you believe in that, Mr. Secretary?
And so here you have Chris Van Hollen essentially making your argument.
And as you say, guess what?
That's pretty homegrown argument.
You know, we're we're pretty used to that argument.
And, you know, we've had our struggles with it, but that works.
Well, you know, I do fear the worst from any kind of one state solution, because it seems like as we've been talking about Israeli society is so right wing on this issue that they'll have another knock.
But first, I'm terrified of what they might do to the Palestinians on the West Bank and drive them all another knock into the Jordan River or something like that if it really came down to it.
And yet at the same time, I'm convinced, you know, it's been years now, but at some point I became convinced that the two state solution is nothing but a ruse and not just even amounts to a ruse, but it really is a ruse.
It kind of always has been.
You know, Tony Hammond and his great book, Obstacle to Peace, really goes to show that even the best thing Rabin was ever going to offer was a fake thing that we would never really accept.
That's not real independence for them and never was meant to be.
That the whole point really is, as as Dave Smith put it, the comedian Dave Smith on his show the other day when he was interviewing me, the point is to never have a one state solution or a two state solution.
To just keep it how it is, slowly, you know, adding to the facts on the ground, changing things one little thing at a time.
But as long as you call it the two state solution, then it's something that you can just keep in the future forever and just pretend that you're trying real hard while you're just kicking the can down the road, devouring the pizza as you're negotiating over it, as whoever it was that coined that said.
Yeah.
And I think it's a cruel delusion.
It's a very cruel delusion to hold over the heads of people who, you know, are seeing their seven year old children terrorized by, you know, full SWAT team commandos coming into your house in the middle of the night to hold over those people.
The possibility that someday you'll be free when you have no intention of doing so.
So that is why it's important to blow up the two state solution paradigmatically.
You know, I yeah, I it's we have to acknowledge where we're at.
It's just what you said.
It's not going to happen.
And the more that Americans can make that adjustment, the better.
And that is something that Chris Van Hollen is doing.
Others, I think, are doing is wrapping their hands around the idea that, yeah, their heads around the idea.
Effectively, this all was annexed a long time ago.
They had no intention of disgorging it.
They just wanted to cherry pick the nice part, the hilltops, and then hold the people under apartheid and and concentration camps, whatever, in other parts.
The one counter I'd have to.
Yeah, the one state solution looks like a bloody roller coaster ride, as some people have said.
And every other outcome also looks that way.
I mean, this is just a horrible situation and it's not going to end well.
There's just no way it's going to end well.
And it's a little like the Civil War situation in the late 1850s.
That wasn't going to end well.
You know, there were possible there was a two state solution in Kansas, Nebraska, the Missouri Compromise, which was, you know, nullified by Kansas Nebraska Act.
And so they lost their two state solution and the two sides fought it out.
And I just don't see how, you know, history doesn't wait around is the problem.
And I just am.
Yeah, it does look pretty awful.
One state solution.
What would happen on both sides?
But what's happening now is pretty awful.
Yeah, well, something's got to give in.
And you know what?
You deserve so much credit for helping to bring attention to this and help to controversialize this issue that for so long there's been this pretension that everything's fine.
There's nothing to see here.
And or if there is, it's too complicated for you to worry about.
So leave it to us in this kind of attitude.
And you've really done a lot to help to change that.
And I know you do your best every day.
So thanks.
Thanks, Scott.
I really appreciate that.
That is the great Philip Weiss.
Everybody, this one is called Things Could Move Very Quickly.
Democrats are now the anti-annexation party taking on Netanyahu and Pompeo.
He writes every day over there at Mondoweiss.net and he's got a great stable of writers over there, too.
All right, you guys, and that is anti-war radio for this morning.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
You can find my full interview archive, almost 5,000 interviews, now going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org.
See you next week.
