All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
We can also sign up for the podcast fee.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, on the line, I got the great Grant F. Smith from IRMEP, the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, IRMEP.org, IRMEP.
And also, he wrote a ton of great books about the Israel lobby, including Big Israel, and the latest, The Israel Lobby Enters State Government, Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board.
You're not going to believe this, seriously, when you read this thing.
It's just something else.
And you can listen to our previous interview on this subject.
I think it's the last one in the archive before this is all about this topic.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Grant?
Hey, Scott.
Doing well.
Thanks for having me back on again.
Hey, I'm happy to have you here.
Before we talk about what we're going to talk about, you have a couple of things to say about the book that I just told them about, but you're going to tell them more.
Yeah, well, this book, I think it's important to know that you can now find it online at virginia.israellobby.org, and it's really a continuing saga.
This is definitely an important development in those who are watching Middle East policy in the sense that a very activist group of pro-Israel supporters are trying to create a self-sustaining ecosystem whereby Israeli companies get Virginia state grants.
They get fast track help and support to set up military contractors, food services, fish farms, glass makers for the armed forces, and all sorts of businesses that in turn will then self-sustain even more pro-Israel activism in this important state.
It's a fascinating story.
Of course, given the levels of secrecy and mainly campaign finance driven access, there's a whole lot of corruption going on as well.
As a public service, this book is now out on YouTube as well.
If you just put the Israel Lobby Interstate Government, you can join the hundreds, soon to be thousands of other people who have listened to the audio book.
If you like Audible, fine, go buy the Audible version.
But if you just want to listen to it right now after the show, or after you've listened to all of Scott Horton's shows, then you can certainly go and listen to that.
That's cool.
And again, it's called The Israel Lobby Enters State Government, Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board, and it really is a great read.
And I bet you it's a great listen, because after all, it's Grant reading his own book.
That's right.
That's right.
Very good.
I didn't hire out for that one.
And for those who are in the Washington, D.C. area, I will be giving a talk about the book.
At the same place you gave a talk somewhat recently, Scott, over at Middle East Books and More, over in Adams Morgan on February 26th at 6 p.m.
So if you want to come in and get kind of a personal briefing, there's a lot going on, even stuff that's happened after the book, in terms of solar energy development in particular.
So be sure to come on down to Middle East Books and More if you want to see me live.
Cool.
And that's next Wednesday, the 26th, you say?
Exactly.
6 o'clock p.m.
And there'll be a bunch of books there, and nice PowerPoints, and all sorts of discussion about the book.
And what's the name of the street in D.C. that this bookstore's located at there?
Yeah, that's 1902 18th Street Northwest.
So that's in Adams Morgan.
And if you go to Eventbrite, you can register for that just by putting in Israel Lobby, and that'll pop right up on your screen.
Cool.
Well, here's an event that's 100 times cooler even than that, your great talk that you're going to give at Middle East Books and More over there.
And that is the Transcending the Israel Lobby at Home and Abroad Conference at the National Press Club, May the 28th and 29th of 2020.
Can I come?
You can come, Scott, as long as you buy a ticket, and we can talk about that later.
But this is, as you know, we've been doing this every year since 2014.
Since the word tickets right at the top.
I think that must be where I right click and say open a new tab.
That's right.
But it is a mega event.
This is the largest of any type of conference that looks at the unique and ongoing and negative role of the Israel Lobby on U.S.-Middle East foreign policy.
It's therefore the most important Middle East foreign policy conference in the country because it's focusing on a major influence.
And unlike most other conferences, it is extremely well attended.
People are there for the entire day.
They stay for the reception.
And this year we're even doing a little gala fundraising dinner to help pay for this massive conference the evening before, which is May 28th, right there in the Press Club, the National Press Club, with all of the major speakers and some entertainment.
So this thing just keeps getting bigger, and we're really happy that the major speakers are going to be coming in early so that they can have a lot of face time with the attendees who want to go to that pre-conference speakers dinner.
Major speakers?
Who might they be?
Major speakers?
Well, I mean, every speaker who speaks is a major speaker in my view, but some of these people are actually somewhat well known.
And I'd certainly put Gideon Levy at the top of that.
He's been to a number of our conferences.
He's a columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, which he joined back in 1982.
He gives a great speech too, man.
He really does.
He was cracking me up last time, a couple of years ago, whenever that was.
He's funny.
He's really funny, but he's got this incredible stature as the dean of Israeli journalism.
And most people who come and hear him speak are blown away because he is all about human rights.
He's all about doing the right thing.
He's all about understanding the universal human tragedies taking place in the immediate vicinity of his location in the Middle East.
And so he's been writing about the West Bank, he's been writing about Gaza for three decades, and he's won all sorts of awards for his incredible journalism over the years.
And that's earned him the moniker most hated man in Israel.
And he is, you know, routinely the recipient of all sorts of threats and bad vibes coming his way.
But he really, if you watch any of the past speeches from the previous conferences or his other updates, he really is an incredible figure and, you know, we're lucky to have him come again.
Yeah, no question about that.
And then you have Stephen Walt.
Stephen Walt, realist foreign policy maven from Harvard.
Of course, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
Wait, what's that called?
The book is called The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, published in 2007 with John Mearsheimer.
And they can read the short version at Harvard dot whatever and at the London Review of Books.
Is that right?
Well, I mean, they were supposed to be able to read it at The Atlantic magazine.
No, you can't read it at The Atlantic.
Why not?
Well, apparently.
I'm sorry.
I'm not that funny.
Let's you just go ahead.
It's a little too hot for them, even though they chartered it.
They didn't like what it said.
And so they had to get it published overseas, so to speak, their first paper on this.
And it set off a firestorm because they essentially identified The Israel Lobby as a coalition of organizations that were absolutely charting a path and implementing with the help of their campaign contribution network policies that were inimical to the interests of all Americans in general.
So it was the book created a firestorm.
And the thing that Walt has been doing that's very interesting is that he continues to and I know you've had him on before you say that.
Let me tell you, I actually reread a thing lately.
It was called The Israel Lobby and U.S. foreign policy by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer there.
And one of the things that he talks about in there that is so interesting, Grant, that I bet was interesting to you when you read it and that I bet would be so interesting to our audience today here if they read it, is the part about how Colin Powell, after September 11th, convinced George W. Bush that we got to do the two state solution right now.
You got a 90 percent approval rating.
This is one of the major solutions to our problem and we got to do it.
And Bush said, OK, let's do it.
And then Ariel Sharon mobilized the American Christian right.
And Tom DeLay, Tom DeLay, the whip from the House, the whip, went to the White House and whipped the president right into shape and said, you want to be a one termer like your old dad?
You want to do whatever Ariel Sharon says, punk.
And George Bush figuratively got down on his belly and groveled and said, fine, just don't hurt me, whatever you want.
And Colin Powell had to back down and the whole thing was completely botched and canceled.
And that's the kind of thing that, man, it just sounds like, well, if you don't know the story and then you learn it for the first time, or even if you already knew the story and then you read it again like I just did, it's so impressive.
It's just something else to see that that's the way it works all right.
When George W. Bush, at his absolute height of power and authority, was absolutely helpless to have America's, you know, to enforce the declared policy of the United States of America for the 40 years leading up to his capitulation, including his own position.
But the interesting thing, and that's a great cogent piece of evidence, but this has been going on forever.
I mean, it happened with the Johnson peace plan and the Kennedy administration.
It happened with the battle over Israel's drive to get nuclear weapons.
And there was a plan by forthright people to say, you know what, we're not going to give you fighter jets if you do that.
What happens?
The Israelis mobilize the lobby in this country and everyone's terrified to implement a tough U.S. policy of no conventional weapons if you go nuclear, but they all back down.
I mean, this is the recurrent theme of American foreign policy in the Middle East and toward Israel in particular.
And it is something that, you know, it's all inevitably covered up, inevitably comes out publicly after it's far too late to do anything about it.
And that's, I think, the importance of seeing a conference focused on the lobby and its role and its responsiveness to a foreign government.
I mean, you know, the bigger theme to the conference could be easily foreign meddling in the U.S.
It's not it's not where you think it's coming from.
And so the thing that's good about Walt, though, is he's consistent.
He's continued to write about having a different set of policies in the region that's not so Israel-centric.
Of course, the key and the thing that we want to hear him speak about is, well, how do you get there given the current situation, which is the belling of the cat, so to speak.
So he'll be coming.
Well, and it's important to write that he's not a libertarian or a non-interventionist.
He's a realist who, compared to, say, Ron Paul or something, really is a hawk.
He's the kind of guy who, you know, Ron Paul would say that we should not exercise all the power we have.
We have way too much power.
We should just lay it down and do our humble commercial republic business.
And that's the way to be.
You know, Switzerland could afford to, you know, have a foreign legion.
They just choose not to.
That's how we should be.
Whereas, Walt says, nah, nuts to that.
I'm a realist.
I know that every state is going to do what they can.
And that's the rule of the world.
And that the U.S. should do that, too.
It's just, we should have in mind a more realistic idea of what we can do and what we can't.
And so, in a sense, that's to his credit, that he's not a radical.
He's not an ideologue.
He, in fact, in a way, is very much for the application of American power.
It's just, he's not enthralled to a foreign government.
That's all.
Well, and it really does reflect the wide range of different views at this conference.
There's no monolithic song sheet that everyone's reading off.
And one of the things that people typically find refreshing is there are a lot of different voices and a lot of differences of opinion about major cause and effect.
And so, he's obviously going to bring something to the conference that, as you rightly observe, is different and not at all going to be, you know, given praise by every other speaker.
So, I think that's important that people get different viewpoints.
And that's kind of been a consistent theme over the years, is trying to get as many different voices who understand the nature of the problem to come in and lend their expertise.
So, I'm excited to see him again.
And he has, you know, it's not like he's written The Israel Lobby 2 or anything like that, and that book came out a while ago, but he continues to be consistent on following what's going on.
He keeps blogging about it, and it's entirely consistent with his latest books in terms of what he's written about it.
Yeah.
Man, you know, I was looking at subscribing to Foreign Policy.
It's like $35 a month or something?
It's ridiculous.
Well, someone's got to pay the bills, you know?
There's got to be a better way.
Anyway, and with all their connections, anyway, like, aren't they sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment in the first place, Foreign Policy, or they used to be?
They got plenty of money.
Hope so.
Hope some of that money, yeah.
By the way, I'm sorry, I can't help it.
Tangent right here.
Did you see at Foreign Policy yesterday, John Hanna, Dick Cheney's man, neoconservative, Choluby handler, from the George W. Bush administration, vice president's office, John Hanna wrote a piece called Iraq Needs Another Regime Change, and the whole thing is about, get this, somehow the Iranian Shia factions have taken over Baghdad and are doing a really lousy job and need replacing.
Yep, musical chairs.
You got to get back in there and put the right person in the musical chair.
Yeah, of course.
I mean, this is standard Hanna affair and many other fellow travelers, so.
That's why they don't get my $35, man.
No way.
Can't do it.
Well, you know, no way you can't do it, yeah.
You don't want your money going to that.
Yeah, there's always a way to go outline.com or something.
I'll read the worst ones.
Clear my cookies.
Well, we sent the Washington Post and the New York Times have a potentially awesome new market.
If they will just sell the newspaper without the opinion page, sell it for more.
Add 10 bucks, take that out, and sell the news.
Not that the news is all that great, but it would be refreshing, too, so.
That's funny.
That's actually a really good marketing idea.
Like, look, no more Fred Hyatt and the boys, just the news.
It's Joby Warwick, but hey, it takes what you can get.
Less is more, and I'll pay more.
So, Roger Waters, he's coming.
Who now?
I don't know if you've heard of that guy.
Roger Waters.
Oh, no, you're skipping ahead now.
Wait a minute, I want to ask you about these other two main headliners, Sut Jolly and Joseph Massad.
Who are they?
Sut Jolly is doing some of the biggest student events at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, on this topic.
He did a May conference called Not Backing Down with Linda Sarsour and Roger Waters and a bunch of other people talking about the suppression of free speech on campus on all issues Israel-Palestine.
I just had thousands of people show up.
It wasn't really focused on the lobby like our conference, but he's done an incredible job in his own research as a part of the communications department in media literacy because he also runs an organization called the Media Education Foundation, and he did this phenomenal documentary called The Occupation of the American Mind, which is a documentary you can watch free online.
It's linked from our website in his bio.
Just looking at how there's this perpetual media campaign that is driving the Israeli point of view into the American mass media, and he's got these incredible clips where at any given moment, every newscaster and every major outlet is essentially saying the same thing, like missiles raining down on ...
You wouldn't put up with missiles raining down on your town, would you?
It's so obviously coordinated and so obviously unbalanced that it was very easy for him to split screen all of that within the documentary and then examine the nature of propaganda.
He's typically the moderator in a lot of these giant mega events he's doing over on campus, but he's actually going to come and speak about this documentary, whether things have gotten any better or whether they're getting worse, and some of the strategies that people can take for getting better informed.
He's quite a media critic, and he's right there at the center of it at UMass.
Cool.
Very cool.
That's a great flick, by the way, for people who haven't seen it.
Yeah.
Some of it is very ...
It's timeless.
You go in, I think he's going to discuss some clips.
You go in and you see the clips, and it's timeless.
Nothing's changed in the intervening years.
He's quite interesting.
Then Joseph Massad has less distance to travel.
He's at Columbia University.
He's been there since, well, for quite a while, but he's an expert on the Palestine question.
He's written a bunch of books on that.
He's constantly speaking on settler colonialism and the nature of what's really going on and perspectives like that, which are not typically made available to most people who are looking for information about this.
You have to really go and look for it.
Ilan Pape, who's also spoken at the conference, is also an expert on settler colonialism and the nature of a movement that does not want peace but wants land without the current occupants.
He's done a lot of work on that.
He writes about Arab politics and intellectual history.
He's written lots of things about identity, culture, and nationalism.
He's quite attuned to what the lobby's doing.
He doesn't always ascribe this or that action to the lobby.
He has a lot to say about the U.S. never necessarily having intervened on behalf of a national liberation movement.
You have to look far and wide for that.
He's got a perspective and a grasp of history on this question that is really quite impressive.
I've seen him speak at a number of events.
He's making time to come down to D.C.
I believe he'll also be at the speaker dinner, so if you want one-on-one with Joseph Massad, he'll also be there.
Hey, y'all may have heard that me, Tom Woods, Dave Smith, and a bunch of others are trying to do everything we can to recruit all our friends and audience members to join the Libertarian Party this year in order to support the candidacy of the great Jacob Hornberger.
We believe Hornberger is far and away the best candidate to bring our message of peace and liberty to the American people in this crucial and controversial election year.
But we need your help.
Step one, go to scotthorton.org to sign up for the National Libertarian Party.
Step two, find the Mises Caucus on Facebook or at lpmisescaucus.com to find out how to join your state party and make sure that you get a spot as a delegate to the National Convention here in Austin in May.
Bring your wives, father-in-laws, best friend Jimmies, and whoever you can as force multipliers.
Please, make sure we win this thing so we can take hardcore anti-imperialist libertarianism to the general election.
Who's with me?
All right.
Let's do this.
Go to scotthorton.org slash lp.
And thanks.
All right.
Now, tell me about your headliner.
Well, he is a somewhat well-known English rock musician who's done somewhat well-known albums with the rock band Pink Floyd, and that's Roger Waters.
And of relevance to us is that he's really emerged as probably one of the most prominent advocates for Palestinian human rights and is leading an artistic boycott of Israel that is gathering others into its fold, which is generating a lot of backlash.
So in 2009, he started speaking out against the wall that Israel was building on Palestinian land to separate.
He supported the Gaza Freedom March.
He joined the BDS movement in 2011.
And so, because he's so prominent, he has generated a lot of accusations of anti-Semitism from the ADL and other Israel advocacy organizations.
And he simply said that, you know, this is the nature of it, because none of these organizations can defend Israel's record.
And because they never do, and because they're never willing to put themselves in any sort of debate scenario where knowledgeable critics can address them directly, what they do is they drag critics into the public arena and accuse them of being anti-Semites.
And he's certainly gotten a lot of that.
If you Google him in the news, you can see that in his upcoming tour, these organizations I just mentioned successfully pressured Major League Baseball to cancel their support and promotion of his concert series.
There's a constant drumbeat of accusations and smear pieces all emanating from the lobby.
So he's coming in to talk about a number of things.
Can I just say real quick here, because I want to hear the end of that sentence, believe me, but it's just funny to me because, well, as you said, it's not like they have a bunch of great arguments they can use, other than some silly talking points and this kind of thing.
But to call this particular leftist activist an anti-Semite, out of all of them, is pretty rich considering that he's most famous for the album, The Wall, that he wrote pretty much alone.
I think maybe Gilmour wrote one of them or something.
And the whole story starts off with how alienated he is because his father died fighting the Nazis in Italy.
And so that's why he grew up without a father, because the Nazis killed him.
And then they want to go around and talk about what a Nazi he is, when it's the single most defining thing about his character to him, as he sang to us.
We already all know that about him.
You know what I mean?
And even in that story, the character becomes a Nazi for a minute and then realizes that, yeah, no, that probably shouldn't do that.
Anyway, the whole story of The Wall is the story of what a Nazi Roger Waters isn't.
That's what it's about.
Right.
And, I mean, it's just not...
That's not what it's about.
But that's in the background of the story.
You know what I mean?
It's not.
Yeah.
It's no barrier, though, for the smear campaign.
The smear campaign is all about economically taking away his ability to continue to be an artist, to punish him.
And so nobody likes to come in and talk about that sort of thing.
Here, here's a story of my enemies attacking me all the time.
So he typically comes in and talks about other things.
And I think he even read a poem at the last event he was at because there were others there who had already kind of covered his topic.
But anyway, he's an extremely interesting speaker.
He's not...
Again, proof again, we're inviting all types of people to discuss this.
Doesn't have much in common with Stephen Walt, that's for sure, doesn't have much in common with many of the others.
And yet he's out there and he's trying to raise these issues in his own unique way.
So yeah, he's also going to be great at the speaker's dinner and conference and just an incredible high profile person who to date is managing to stay on tour and keep delivering his messages.
So I guess he's got a major conference tour, us plus them tour, or no, I guess it's got a new name, but coming around the US and should be quite powerful.
He typically these days is even trying to educate his audiences more by throwing out some new props and all sorts of messages to them.
So he's definitely living the life out there.
Yeah, well, and you can see why they're targeting him as mercilessly as they are, because when you say he joined up the BDS, that also means he tries to bring up to any, at least, musical artists.
I don't know how broad it goes, but there's constantly controversy about Roger Waters and these other people with him are trying to shame this and that star into not going to play in Israel and that they're somewhat effective with that too.
I mean, I know people who go anyway, but there are a lot of people who said, you know what?
I didn't know about that.
But now that I do, I'm with you, right?
And he's not a bully, but there's some full scale contentious exchanges on Twitter and all sorts of visible public forums of him saying to this or that artist, you shouldn't go and here's why you shouldn't go.
It's something that nobody on the other side wants to see.
They don't want to see someone explaining in stark terms why it might not be a good idea to play in the country until there's at least some movement going toward just outcomes.
So it's amazing.
I mean, it's silly to even bring up, but it's at the crux of the whole thing for people who never get to hear this stuff and who the only time they ever do get to hear anything about anything like this is from the point of view of the Hawks, who would always just argue that the only reason anyone would ever criticize Israel is because of antisemitism or something like that.
If you actually ever listened to the critics of Israel, all they ever do is talk about the helpless, innocent Palestinian victims of their occupation.
That's not antisemitism.
That's just taken up for the natives who, you know, they don't even get to keep their little reservation.
Even their reservation is being occupied and taken from them.
That's all it is.
And why else would Roger Waters care?
Why would he be sticking his neck out for something like this, except that, oh, one side has all the power and is lording it over the other side and in the worst way.
And that something's got to be done about it.
That's all.
Give me a break.
I mean, all of them are, you know, essentially liberals.
There's no, like, ethnic, you know, motivation in here anywhere or religious or anything like that.
There couldn't possibly.
Where would it fit?
Between Stephen Walt and Roger Waters is some kind of hatred.
Give me a break.
It's stupid.
Well, it is, but it's one of the main arguments now.
Recently, the Washington Examiner, I guess in January, had a whole issue explaining as carefully as it could the exact point that you're arguing over, which is that, no, it really is.
This really is anti-Semitism looking for a human rights cover.
And so there are a lot of people hard at work trying to say it can't possibly be concerned about human rights.
It can't possibly be concerned about just the ongoing war and destruction and chaos.
It absolutely has to be that.
And so, you know, articles like the truth about anti-Semitism and also the virus spreads in America.
And it's, you know, I guess it's a sign that there's a lot of worry that a lot of these principled arguments are just getting heard too much.
It's a lot of, you know, it's a lot of responding to valid charges with smear and defamation, basically.
Yeah.
Well, and I mean, there you go.
Meanwhile, if you actually listen to any of these people, none of what they say has anything to do with criticizing Jews ever.
So boy, are they careful, huh?
With their deniability.
It can't possibly be that they're- Listen, let me ask you this.
How come you change the name of the conference every year?
It's kind of confusing.
Why do we change it?
Yeah, I guess it is.
You know, it's been called different things at different times.
The first one was the National Summit on the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship.
It was kind of a groundbreaking conference.
Then we switched into the Israel lobby, you know, is it good for the U.S., is it good for Israel?
Then we switched to other themes, and it's for a long time just been Israel lobby and American policy.
Why have we switched?
Because this one is talking about, in some speakers which haven't been announced yet but will next month, how you get above and beyond all of this.
Because unbeknownst to a lot of people, the lobby doesn't just continue to win and win and win.
There's a lot more pushback on it.
There's a lot more challenge on the ground to what they're trying to do.
And I don't think the lobby, in particular AIPAC, has been on the run as much as it has been as in recent years.
And so transcending the Israel lobby at home and abroad is about as much what's going on as what people are doing to fix the situation.
And it's not always about voting for this or that candidate.
It's in many cases about doing things to economically challenge, doing things to get out messaging, to change people's media consumption, all sorts of things to really get beyond some of these terrible policies and power configurations that have been doing so much harm.
So maybe we'll be able to stick with it.
The one thing we have stuck with though is the URL IsraelLobbyCon.
So if you just type IsraelLobbyCon into your browser, it just means the Israel Lobby Conference, the conference that's focused on the lobby.
You'll come up to our website 2.0, launched yesterday, which shouldn't break on your phone or web browser or tablet.
And you can see all that information.
And we've always, in the past few years, just been calling it IsraelLobbyCon so that people could use that short reference to get information, whether it's watching the live stream on the day of the conference, or coming to get information about going, or wanting to contact an organizer about some aspect of the conference.
So try it out.
If it breaks, don't tell me until we're off the air.
O'Reilly.
It looks good right now, man.
O'Reilly.
Good, good.
O'Reilly.
I'll say that on you.
O'Reilly.
So, yeah.
So, shorthand reference, IsraelLobbyCon.
And, you know, I think our theme, you know, the themes are always a lot of brainstorming.
Like, you know, we want to uncover this set of topics.
We want to talk about these developments.
We want to focus this Middle East policy discussion on these elements.
What should we call it?
And there's a lot going on to get to the right name.
And I like this one.
I like this one a lot.
Yeah, I like it too.
Transcending the Israel lobby at home and abroad.
Right.
And then I have to mention, you know, integrated into the logo are the organizers, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, which has had great authors like Sheldon Richman writing for it at times and me and all sorts of other people.
They're the conference co-organizer and then IRMEP is the other.
So two sponsors.
It's at the National Press Club, but it is not a National Press Club event.
We're doing it there for a lot of reasons, including the fact that it is a one of the kind facility dedicated to free speech and also a beautiful facility.
But it's they're not sponsoring it.
It's us.
Yeah.
All right.
And now tell me this, too.
Not to take away from the upcoming event here, which, again, is May 28th and 29th.
Right.
I mean, you don't have to go to the speaker dinner.
Oh, it's the dinner is the 28th.
The 29th is the conference, right?
The conference is all day.
It's a marathon event.
Registration opens at eight.
You could be there till 10 p.m. if you've got the stamina, because right after the conference and lunch and breaks and ideas fair, which I hope we talk about, is a giant reception with all sorts of beverage and orders that really I think it's been some of the central successes of this conference series, because various organizations have come out of that networking event.
It's really designed to get people together, whether from the same state or same idea, same vertical to discuss, you know, what they've seen and what they want to do.
Cool.
Yeah.
So that's extremely important.
But for the past two years, last year and this year, we have this group of activists and information and alternative media organizations that comes together for what we're calling the ideas fair.
Basically, you get a passport with all their names on it, and you can circulate around to them during the breaks and during the conference if you want to talk to every single one of the booths and get an idea of what they're doing.
So that's been a really incredible time.
You fill out your passport, you get another drink ticket.
So it's, you know, it's an amazing time.
You know what I like about going to it, too, is I've run into my heroes just sitting in the crowd.
Hey, look, there's Ray McGovern.
Hey, look, there's Jim Loeb.
Hey, Gareth Porter, my main man, and Max Blumenthal and whoever, all kind of great people show up at this thing.
Yeah, I'm just amazed.
Kerry Katowski?
Yeah.
I mean, it's amazing.
I can't out anybody who's got a ticket or register, but I'm just blown away by some of the names.
I mean, people who have legitimately, you know, sometimes they just show up when they should be on the stage.
It's like, it's amazing.
It really is amazing.
So that'll happen again.
Believe you me.
Cool, man.
All right.
And I was going to say not to take away from the upcoming event, but is it easy for people to watch videos of speeches of Israel lobby cons past?
Yeah.
It's not on the website 2.0 quite yet, but it will be soon.
A link to all of the past conferences, all the YouTube videos, they're also archived on C-SPAN, most of them, but it's extremely easy and some of them have, you know, hundreds of thousands of views and have been translated to other languages.
So if you go to the website by next week, you'll see the links to previous conferences and then yes, it is live streamed.
It's always live streamed on the organizer and the conference websites.
So if you don't have a chance to come, uh, you know, you can definitely watch that and get the archival video within, you know, a very short time.
Uh, it also goes out as a podcast.
Then later it's transcribed and published by the Washington report.
So the information gets out and we've been, you know, suitably impressed that people realize this is the place to put out their major point of view and research on the issue.
And so the speakers really step up to the challenge.
So it's, it's, uh, there's incredible content out there, uh, gets many, many views every day.
And, uh, it's part of the reason we do the conferences to develop this work.
Hey, you know, what is a really great speech from your conference that just happened to come to mind was Jim Loeb, neoconservatism in a nutshell.
And I love that speech.
And mostly also just cause I love Jim Loeb so much.
Um, and I, I happen to remember that the way he introduces it is like, well, it's going to try to see if I can briefly sort of, and then he just lays out this perfect, like you couldn't ask for a better explanation about what is going on with these kooks than what he explains in that thing.
It's just perfect.
And that's a good start for people.
If they want to go back and start watching those videos, see if you can get YouTube to serve them up in the margin, but start with neoconservatism in a nutshell by the great Jim Loeb there.
Yeah.
It's, that's an incredible videos, incredible, incredible presentation.
There's nothing he doesn't know about the neoconservative movement.
He's been following every twist and turn since they began basically since the seventies for real.
And there's no one who writes about it or, you know, blogs about it with that sort of in depth knowledge.
And so, you know, the fact that he gives an overview in 21 minutes and 40 seconds, it's like the Ted talk on neoconservatism.
I mean, you're just not going to see anything better than that.
And then it just stays and stays and stays.
Same with Lawrence Wilkerson.
He's got a hundred thousand views on his, uh, one of his videos.
He's spoken several times where he's talking about the Israeli influence on us foreign policy kind of in the vein that you were talking about with Colin Powell, just the incredible, you know, behind the scenes weight that, uh, Israel carries in major policy decisions.
So, you know, that's, uh, that's what I'm talking about.
That's the work that is what's getting out there.
Yep.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, thank you so much for doing this again.
And I very definitely will see you there.
It's May 28th and 29th, 2020 here, Transcending the Israel Lobby at Home and Abroad at the National Press Club.
Find out all about it at israellobbycon.org or of course, just go to IRMEP, the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, irmep.org and find all the links from there.
Thank you again, Grant.
Thank you, Scott.
Oh, and again, you guys, Grant is the author of the Israel Lobby Interstate Government Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board, which is on sale now, but also you can read the whole thing for free online and you can listen to the audio book on YouTube too.
He said, how do you like that?
The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com, antiwar.com, scotthorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org.
