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.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys, introducing Ramzi Baroud.
He is, of course, editor of the Palestine Chronicle.
That is at palestinechronicle.com, and he's the author of five books.
The latest is These Chains Will Be Broken.
And Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons, and writes regularly for antiwar.com as well.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Ramzi?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me, Scott.
Very happy to have you here.
So as we're recording this, it's July the 6th.
And so I guess the big annexation didn't happen, although I read that actually no one ever really said that.
All they said was that that would be the first day that the Knesset could get into gear and start working on the full annexation of the West Bank.
That being said, it's reported that Netanyahu is backing down on at least parts of the Jordan Valley for now, or some kind of thing.
What are the details as you understand them, and what do you make of it, sir?
Well, I'm not sure why there was even that kind of expectation that July 1st everything is going to- you can't annex such a massive amount of land just overnight.
It just doesn't work that way.
And the Israelis have never really done it that way anyway.
If we look back at the way in 1980 and 1981 when Israel annexed occupied East Jerusalem to become part of the so-called Israel proper, and the same thing they did with the Golan Heights.
When we say they annexed it, we mean that there was a Knesset, an Israeli parliamentary decision vote saying that this, you know, Jerusalem will be annexed or is annexed on this specific day.
Well, that has already been done.
It's a done deal.
The Israeli parliament have already agreed on the annexation.
The Palestinian government, the Israeli coalition government have already agreed and signed a document that, you know, agrees on the annexation of this Palestinian land.
So annexation has already been done from a political and even a legal perspective.
And for Palestinians who are living on those areas that would be included in the annexations have already reported that they have received letters from, you know, the Israeli government and the Israeli municipality, their localities, telling them that from now on that they are under new regulations and new rules.
Now, wait, but this is, this is fewer communities than they said in the first place, or this includes the Jordan Valley and everybody too?
Because I'm reading that it's going to be, well, it's going to be these three settlements and a couple of other things for now.
That kind of thing.
Well, this was my prediction from the beginning, that it will be a very gradual process.
You know, remember Ilan Pappi's incremental genocide.
I mean, that's how Israelis function.
The Israeli government, that's how it functions.
It doesn't come in.
Establishing facts on the ground.
You just make it true slowly.
Exactly.
So they are going to start by annexing or saying from now on all, you know, what is internationally recognized as illegal Jewish settlements.
They don't see it that way, but they are now under local Israeli laws and regulations and they are part of the larger Israeli municipalities within that area.
But guess what?
That has already been established too.
That happened years ago.
That Israeli settlements are not regulated by different set of laws as the, the, you know, Israelis living in, you know, in, in, in so-called Israel proper.
So in so many ways, God, the annexation has been taking place in bits and pieces through numerous laws that are almost never reported on by mainstream media.
So when they say, well, the annexation is, hasn't happened on July 1st, I don't even understand what that means and what, what were they expecting will happen on July 1st?
It, it has already been in motion and it will continue to be in motion for the next few months, if not even few years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess, well, what people were expecting was something along the lines of Donald Trump's new map being instantly implemented.
So in other words, they would be outright saying that these settlements are no longer settlements.
They are part of just Israel period.
Right.
And the perception like Karyat Arba, for example, or, or, you know, these massive settlements that exist in, in Jerusalem, the, the, you know, if you go to Jerusalem and you drive, take your car, you know, and drive from one of the settlements in West Jerusalem or East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem and then to Israel and back, do you think you are going to find yourself going from one zone to the other, from one different, you know, political topography to the other?
It's for them, it's Israel and it's been Israel for a long, long time.
And that's what's the whole idea when we keep talking about bypass roads, Jewish only roads, you know, what, what's the point of all of these is to create that normalcy so that for the Israeli citizen who is living in a settlement in, in Jerusalem or living in Tel Aviv does not really feel that he is or she is navigating between two different realities.
In fact, many of the settlers are not even ideological settlers.
These are people who are looking for a less expensive real estate.
It's like deciding to move from Texas to Seattle or back, you see.
So in the mindset of the everyday Israeli, many of these settlements have already been incorporated to Israel and we are looking at 132 major settlements.
Now, you have over 200 what they call outposts, Scott, and these outposts are the interesting things because the Israeli government has a blueprint of how these settlements should be constructed so that they are kind of following this logical line that can easily be incorporated in Israel whenever Israel is ready for that move.
And now obviously they are, the outposts are different because the outposts are dictated not by the strategic Israeli blueprint that is published or provided by the Israeli government, but by these fanatical extremist movements that are saying, no, this is important to us and this, and then they go there and they put a water, a water tanker and couple of, you know, mobile homes and fence that area and they kick the Palestinians out.
And the Israeli government come and say, no, no, no, this is illegal.
Now when the Israeli government says it's illegal, they don't mean this is illegal according to international law.
See, it's illegal because it's not consistent with our vision of how the settlements should be built.
Right?
So these are the problematic areas for Israel.
You know, they don't, they don't really care about building in settlements in areas that are not strategically important for them.
The areas that will be annexed or is in the process already of being annexed are the areas that are located within the Israeli blueprint that they have been working on since 1967.
Now they feel this is the perfect opportunity to declare this openly.
We know it as Israelis, all Israelis know it, but internationally it's not recognized.
Heck with the international community.
Now we are going to openly declare that these areas are part of the so-called Israel proper.
Well, if you look at, sorry, just one final thing I want to say about this.
If you look at the Jordan Valley at the map of the Jordan Valley, and this is something that I myself did not discover until a few months ago because I was always under, I know that the Jordan Valley is the food basket of Palestine, 60% of all Palestinian food and agriculture is produced in the Jordan Valley.
But what it turned out that for many years, 85% of the Jordan Valley is inaccessible to Palestinians and has already been confiscated and many parts of it have already been annexed and Palestinian farmers cannot get there.
Palestinians cannot.
You, if you step there, there's a sniper who's going to open fire.
There are electric fences everywhere.
So when you say they are annexing the Jordan Valley, I am sure that a lot of Palestinians in the villages over there say, what are you talking about?
It's already been annexed decades ago.
In other words, this is simply, and you could go back to 1967 itself, that this is simply now de jure annexation as opposed to de facto, which it has been all this time to varying degrees.
And as you're saying to a hell of a degree, depending on where you are there, right, that's absolutely correct depiction.
That's what it is, you know, and, and, and, and this is why, and now why is that even important?
You will say, well, okay, it is what it is.
It is important because if Israel decides not to annex in the way we, we thought they would annex, people are going to think, and this is the frustrating part that we are going to go back to a better status quo.
You know, like when the European Union and the United Nations and the Vatican that summoned American and Israeli ambassadors on the same day to reprimand them over this annexation, what are they saying?
Essentially they are saying, don't annex return to blank.
What is that blank?
The blank is, is, is a military occupation, apartheid and de facto annexation.
But that doesn't work for us either because either way we are subjugated, either way we are enslaved, either way we are mistreated and humiliated and militarily occupied.
It doesn't change anything for Palestinians on the ground.
So we are not seeking to go back to the status quo.
We are seeking to move forward to a better deal than this.
In fact, it seems pretty obvious that the most important thing about the question of de facto or de jure annexation here really is not about the Palestinian situation at all so much as about the understanding of American liberal Zionists, where the two-state solution was meant to put you off all this time, but really was meant to put them off.
And that as long as they can believe that, you know, in other words, secular, liberal, not necessarily all Jewish Zionists here in America who are very pro-civil rights in every other circumstance.
Their out was that someday the Palestinians will have independence, they'll have their own state and then their problems will be their problems and not my problem no more.
And in that way, that's a Zionism they can believe in.
But if it's going to be outright apartheid and you can't excuse your way out of it anymore, then that raises the giant question of what are they going to do about it?
What is that going to do for American Zionist support for, you know, the Israeli project when this is what it's come to?
Right.
Absolutely.
Brilliant.
And on all these years we have been saying, do not wait for anything.
It's already there.
If you have this illusion that, you know, the so-called peace process is being stalled because, you know, there are radicals on both sides and because Palestinians, you know, are no peace partner or yes, are a fat failed and accepting a hood barracks, generous offers and all these confusing historical information.
We've been saying, no, no, no, no.
This really has never been in Israel's calculation to give Palestinians independence.
That's never been on the table.
The whole idea was create this confusing discourse.
It people like Ramzi and Scott and many other people engage in this discourse while in reality never slow down the bulldozers, you know, destroy, you know, ancient olive trees, level mountains, kick Palestinians out, build settlements and expand the settlement in the name of natural expansion and keep doing it and doing it and doing it.
So this is what is actually happening on the ground.
And that never slowed down for a single day.
Yeah.
Never.
Not even the coronavirus stopped it.
It never slowed down.
And even when Joe Biden, when he was the vice president, comes to visit, they announce new settlements while his plane is landing.
Can you imagine how humiliating it must have been for that guy?
You know, and then and then on the other hand, engage in this pseudo intellectual and political discussion conferences, interfaith dialogues, press releases, statements, positions, thousands of organizations that came and went, all engaging in this pseudo reality that has nothing to do and has no impact on what's actually happening to the Palestinian on the ground.
And now the Israelis are doing something fantastic.
I mean, OK, I'm not pro annexation.
I'm just saying, finally, they are relieving us of this intellectual burden of having to yell at and scream at people saying, don't believe what they are saying.
Look at what they are doing.
And they are reconciling between these two realities.
Yeah.
So now we don't have to engage in this pseudo reality anymore.
This is what it is.
It's always been about annexation.
It's always been about land theft.
It's always been about exploiting exploiting Palestinian resources.
It doesn't mean if Mahmoud Abbas is a good guy or not.
If it doesn't mean if Yasser Arafat was corrupt or not, that is besides the point, it should have never even been part of the discussion.
It's about Israel as a colonial regime and what they wanted to achieve in the first place.
And now they are openly saying this is what we wanted all along.
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You know, this is just hearsay, but it comes from good sources.
I was talking with Sheldon Richmond this morning and he was telling me about a Norman Finkelstein interview that he saw where Finkelstein was saying that he thinks that Netanyahu is a sophisticated enough performance artist that he can see how on the picture on the map or outright officially de jure annexing the Jordan River Valley there, how that would make it too obvious how pinned in the Palestinians are and that as long as the color on the map of that Jordan River Valley doesn't change, then it sort of looks like there's this open possible contiguous land somewhere for the Palestinians to be or to go or something.
But once you get the Jordan River Valley officially there and change its color to yellow or whatever it is on the map, then now you can just see how pinned in the Palestinians are, how they are absolutely subsumed within Israel but don't have rights as Israelis at all.
And so that Netanyahu is smarter than that.
He's just not he's as you said, he's going to keep it exactly as annexed as can be.
He's just not going to change its color on the map and make that mistake, at least at this time.
All right.
And that will give us enough fodder, enough, enough hope, enough room for a conversation that we can continue talking about a contiguous Palestinian state.
Right.
Well, in reality, that should do that.
That conversation was never even on the table.
As Trump said, you know, Jerusalem is off the table.
That conversation should have never been on the table in the first place.
But as you say, though, the reality has caught up to the narrative so badly that it's kind of falling apart.
There's a new narrative now about which is much closer to the reality of, you know, what the situation is for the Palestinians there.
So whose move is it?
What happens next?
Well, the question is, like, why did why did Netanyahu take the risk, right, of exposing Israel's colonial ambitions that many of us already knew?
But we you know, we were not giving the chance to, you know, convince other people of this idea because of the way that Israel, Israeli jingoism, the way that they played this discourse so very well.
Like, why is he taking a risk now and putting Israel in this with this PR disaster?
And I think it has a lot to do with what is actually happening here in the United States.
This is this golden opportunity.
And the Israeli media, I mean, how are it in particular is just like for them, this is like a done deal.
This is a fact.
What is happening is the Israel is is at this, you know, trajectory of galvanizing on the blind.
I mean, we used to use the word blind and unconditional American support for Israel in every administration.
But I'm talking about a special degree of blindness that is happening to the point that the likes of David Friedman, according to her, it was actually urging Netanyahu, the American ambassador to Israel, urging Netanyahu to set an annexation date.
He told him, we need a deadline for annexation.
This is the Americans telling the Israelis, so we are talking about a whole different degree of American bias and support for Israel.
And we don't know if that's going to be sustained after this.
I have zero hope in Joe Biden.
I've written about about Biden and and I believe that antiwar.com published my writings about Biden's support for Israel that goes back to the early 80s.
Yes.
But even Biden, I doubt we'll have will give Israel this, you know, carte blanche to to do exactly what Israel is able to do under Trump.
So what do you do?
Do you wait and don't take the risk and just see what happens if Trump gets reelected or you move as fast as possible and galvanize on this unconditional support and heck with the Palestinians, heck with the international community and whatever happens, happens.
And I think he opted for the second he opt for for the second he opted to go the path of galvanizing on the American support and to seal Israeli gains and to create a final status quo and and then deal with the consequences as they happen, as opposed to miss this opportunity and get blamed in the future of being the Israeli leader who missed that historic opportunity that Israel has not been presented with for over 50 years.
Yep.
Better to regret having done something than regret having not done something is that might as well be the motto of Israel at this point.
Precisely.
Man.
All right.
So and now elaborate a little bit there about Biden and his history, because I think I would have to say that from my point of view, that, you know, Israel-Palestine has been the single very worst thing about Donald Trump's foreign policy, other than not ending the seven wars he inherited.
But he has taken affirmative steps to be deliberately worse in Israel-Palestine, as you say there.
But so who is this Biden alternative to Trump on this issue?
Well, you know, the best way to judge someone is to judge him by not only by the words he says, but by the deeds and the actions that he carried.
Joe Biden is not just a typical American politician, you know, who would just sign the dotted line of the lobby of anyone, you know, with the big money and the big guns and the big whatever.
Biden has been committed ideologically to Israel for many, many years.
And if you look at the language, you know, when he declared that you don't have to be Jewish to be a Zionist, well, thank you, Joe.
We already knew that.
But he kind of pronounced that.
And I'm talking about a speech he has given years ago in Jerusalem.
You don't have to be Jewish to be a Zionist because I am a Zionist.
OK, so we established that.
He went to speak in Jerusalem once and he gave a speech and he introduced himself.
My name is Joe Biden and everyone knows I love Israel, you know, to this massive applause.
When Barack Obama, when he was the vice president of Barack Obama during the two terms, you know, Obama was attacked quite repeatedly, you know, being a secret Muslim or being having an anti-Israel agenda, all of these things.
It was Joe Biden that was introduced, what was constantly pushed, you know, his alternative discourse to the Israeli, the Zionist, the pro-Israel community everywhere to kind of make up for the, you know, make up the damage that Obama has has inflicted on the relationship between both countries.
And he has succeeded in doing so.
He had perfected the discourse.
You know, in fact, he said in one of his speeches to AIPAC, I believe he said, if Israel didn't exist, we would have had to create an Israel.
I mean, that's how intimate he feels about his relationship with the country.
And you can't just dismiss that by saying, well, politicians say so.
Well, it's funny about this.
What exactly does America need Israel for other than maybe to provide medical care to Jabhat al-Nusra fighters in Syria or something like that?
Right.
And of course, the torture techniques in Iraq and the Palestinian chair and that sort of thing.
But but of course, America doesn't need Israel.
Israel has been tremendous harm to the American interest.
And even if you think from an American, you know, an America centric point of view, Israel has inflected a lot of damage on the U.S.'s relationship with the Middle East and and Asia as a whole.
But that's what it is.
So this is a man who had this consistent discourse for over 30 years.
His love affair with Israel is very well known.
And he has been asked, when you are a president, will you reverse the decisions taken by Donald Trump, decisions that violate international law?
What are these decisions?
The status of Jerusalem, moving the American embassy illegally from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the Golan Heights as if they are part of Israel, confirming the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem and so forth.
Will you reverse any of these decisions?
No, he won't.
When he was asked that Bernie Sanders has conditioned American support of financial support of Israel on the on the Israeli respective international law, he said something to the effect, and it's not an exact quote.
I hope it was a mistake.
I hope he didn't mean that he would.
I mean, he was so outraged that Bernie Sanders would even talk about conditioning financial and military support for a country that is gone rogue and it's in violation of international law.
And he wouldn't even entertain the idea.
No, no, no.
Bernie must have had some, you know, maybe drank something last night.
But this is not true.
So he is not willing to do absolutely anything, not to reverse Trump's sinister policies regarding Palestine and Israel and not to take any action himself to force Israel into line.
So in other words, regardless of whether Joe Biden will be the next president in a year or so or whether Trump is going to, you know, gain another four years, it will make no difference as far as American policies regarding Palestine and Israel.
It will not slow down the bulldozers for a second, although the final line.
Like you said, though, Trump has really given Netanyahu special license to go ahead and make some moves, certainly that Biden won't reverse.
And you know, it may be too late.
Maybe the that horse is out of the barn kind of a thing, too, where is it the cow out of the barn where now, even if it's, you know, where Biden, he wouldn't have felt as much leeway.
Now he will.
Now he'll be feeling like he can push things as far as if it was still Trump and and see what Biden would dare to do about it, which would probably be nothing still, you know?
Absolutely, because at this point, if Biden is to do anything that would hinder the new American policies, the post peace process and the post Obama policies on Israel, he is going to be seen as anti-Israel and he can't take that risk.
And I think and this is why Netanyahu is is just, you know, basically confirming all of these concessions from the from the White House.
You know, whether annexations happen now or happens during the Joe Biden era, it doesn't actually matter.
What really matters is that we have the American OK, and the Americans cannot change their mind now, regardless of who is in power, because that is going to be seen as an anti-Israel move.
And nobody, especially Joe Biden, is going to take that chance.
Yeah.
Well, you know what it is, too, is and I know you write constantly about the lack of leadership in Palestine and how they're saddled with a boss and the PLA there and don't seem to have a way around him.
And I saw you in a recent piece calling for the abolition of the PLA and a whole new re-institution of the PLO and a new broader democratic movement to figure out what to do to go forward there and that kind of thing.
But also, there's a real lack of international leadership.
And I guess, you know, this is sort of before my time, but I hear about Edward Said that like, oh, there was this guy who people would listen to him.
But and no offense to you, I mean, you do great work and there's a lot of your colleagues that also do great work.
But there's no great international figure who ever goes around saying, now, let me tell you about Palestine.
All right.
You know, they just don't.
There isn't anyone.
Was it the guy, the old priest from what's his name, that they used to make fun of on Saturday Night Live?
There used to be somebody who would bring it up.
But now, I mean, who's the most prominent person who really has their act together in speaking about this issue on a global level?
Well, the problem is that we do actually that that person is not a person is many, many persons and they are incredible and very articulate, but they will never be given access.
I mean, Edward Said himself, you remember when he spoke about why he no longer, you know, appears on CNN when he was accused of being an ambassador for terrorism, for Islamic terrorism.
The guy is Christian himself.
It was so ridiculous.
It was humiliating.
It's like he didn't do it.
And and Edward said, I mean, his main column was, you know, published in a small English, you know, Egyptian English language newspaper called Al-Ahram.
He's not like was appearing in New York Times every other day.
Yeah.
You know, occasionally his articles used to appear in The Nation.
And yet, please don't get me wrong.
I don't I didn't mean to say like, where are the world class people who know, but I'm OK for Palestine.
Where are the people who are of that global stature, who are good on it, not who are good on it, who deserve to have that stature?
Because, of course, that list is endless.
I fully understand, but we are just completely ignored and overlooked.
Right now, as we speak, there is a Palestine Expo taking place in in London.
I was there last year and the number of Palestinian intellectuals and academics and historians and artists and speakers of all backgrounds.
It was just absolutely astounding and inspiring and beautiful.
But you would never see any of them on CNN and NBC and ABC and such.
You will never see them.
They will never get published in The New York Times.
So there was a decision.
There has been a clear decision that that we should be excluded from the conversation in the same way that there has been a clear decision, especially under the Kushner, Trump, you know, and Friedman trio, that Palestinians should be excluded from the political process as well.
So not just intellectually and journalistically and everything else, but politically as well.
So they went to Bahrain last year.
Remember, they went to Bahrain and they held the economic forum to give those Palestinians, you know, some money and but they have to stay out of the process.
The corrupt Arabs will normalize with Israel.
They will be trade.
Forget about Palestine.
Forget about the Israeli occupation.
None of this matters.
We are going to overlook them entirely.
Right.
And that's what's happening.
Palestinians are being overlooked.
And that's the main reason of my first with my, you know, my frustrations with Mahmoud Abbas is that you don't understand.
This is not about you and your or, you know, your fancy lifestyle in Ramallah.
This is a better historical mission that you are failing.
Someone is trying to take the Palestinians back to the 40s and 50s when we did not exist as a political entity, where the word Palestine wasn't used, where there was no Palestinian leadership.
Say whatever you want about Yasser Arafat and I will sign the dotted line.
He was absolutely wrong about so many issues and he allowed for a massive amount of a racket of corruption to happen during his his time in power.
But in reality, it was Yasser Arafat and that generation that actually managed to take over the PLO, which was established by Egypt, by the way, and to turn it into a Palestinian organization and enforce the Palestinian national agenda as an agenda to be reckoned with.
And that kept happening until the Madrid talks in the early 90s, when Israel came and said, OK, we are ready to negotiate with the Arabs.
When the Palestinians came with their delegations, Israel said, we don't recognize you.
There's no such thing as Palestine and Palestinians.
We'll talk to the Jordanians, we'll talk to the Syrians, but not to you.
And the Palestinians insisted.
And eventually there was a Palestinian delegation.
It was the first time in history in Madrid that the Palestinians will actually were actually recognized as a political entity.
It took us many, many years to actually get to that point.
And everything is being squandered now.
Now Bahrain wants to speak on our behalf.
The United Arab Emirates, the Saudis, the Egyptians, forget about the Palestinians.
They don't exist.
So this marginalization of the Palestinian in all of his form or her forms, politically, intellectually, artistically, culturally, every other way is happening at a full speed right now.
And it's extremely dangerous.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
And you know, I was going to say, like, isn't there even one European prime minister who likes to talk about this or any kind of thing like that?
But then as you're saying, in a way that makes it even worse, where, and you know what, I really can vouch for the, oh, I don't, I don't know, you know, at the, at the beginning end of it, but it's, I guess, speculative, but I certainly agree with you, I guess, that it's clear that a decision has been made that you just won't hear from the Palestinians.
And it makes it seem like there must be a reason why not, like they're all in prison for doing something or something.
And that's why we can't talk to them.
And it reminds me, honestly, of when I first started listening to talk radio when I was like 16 and I heard a surviving Branch Davidian up there telling their side of the story.
And I thought, wow, such a thing exists as their side of the story, which had never been portrayed in any way whatsoever.
And it was like a miracle.
I mean, I knew some of them had survived, but wow, here they are talking and answering questions and taking calls.
And it's like the sun coming out.
It's like an epiphany.
Hey, well, there's more to what's going on here, which of course I never believed their lie about it in the first place, but, you know, rather Jennings and Brokaw never told anything but the FBI's point of view.
You understand what I mean?
And it is.
It's the exact same thing here, where it's just whatever you need to know about the Israelis and the Palestinians, you'll hear it from the Israelis and or right wing born again Christians here in America who agree with them 100 percent no matter what.
And then that's it.
And it goes even further, Scott.
Even the pro the supposedly pro-Palestinian point of view, generally speaking, cannot be said and articulated by the Palestinians.
And this is why, you know, at one point I kind of made that discovery about I mean, it was very obvious to me when I first came to the States that that even our story is not being told by us because we are a liability.
You see, we are we are we are that kind of particular, you know, skin color, shade and accent and and and religion that maybe we just don't fit.
We can't.
Plus, you have a conflict of interest, right?
It's easier to interview a liberal Jewish anti-Zionist like Philip Wise or something who will take your side or Sheldon Richman, who's raised Zionist and then change their mind because what's right is right and and can then tell your tale in a way where if they do have a dog in the fight, it would be on the other side.
But instead, the truth is the truth and justice is justice.
And so that's why they're on the Palestinian side.
So that it's kind of an inoculation.
It's like, hey, you won't listen to Ramzi Baroud, but maybe you'll listen to a guy named Weiss, you know, right?
And you know, this would work in an environment in which you have balance.
Right.
So you kind of see the likes of Ramzi Baroud and Mazen Qumsi and Ali Abunami and Susan Abul Hawass and these guys.
But you are also like, oh, if you have any doubt that what they are saying can, you know, it's a bit iffy.
It's not exactly what, you know, what you might expect.
We have also Philip and Richard and these guys who are going to also vouch for, you know, so that would.
But the problem is we don't exist on the intellectual map.
I mean, really, all the interviews I have done since the whole annexation thing and before.
I mean, aside from Russia today and Turkish stations and such within the West, within the United States particularly, we are talking about alternative media, CNN would never acknowledge your existence, period.
The New York Times asked me a while back to write an article about the March of Return, the Palestinian protests at the Gaza fence.
And I was really excited.
Like, wow, this is incredible.
It's a good opportunity to reach a different audience for once.
But it was incredible how much they tried to limit my speech.
They only wanted me to focus on how this is a reflection of the factionalism of the Palestinians.
And I said, but you can't expect me just to go the first time I get published in the New York Times to start tarnishing my people and kind of serving the stereotype that we are factional and disunited and dysfunctional.
Let me just put it within other contexts as well.
The fact that you have people who are occupied, besieged, they are victims of genocide and wars.
No, no, no.
They didn't want to have anything to do with it.
Two months of conversation over this.
And at the end, I pulled the article out and say, so if you are to be accepted with mainstream media, you have to be accepted within specific paradigm.
You have to present yourself in a certain way.
And this is the way that is consistent with their view.
Not the one that is going to indict Israel and to humanize the Palestinians.
That's funny how they thought that they could do that.
Just put your name on an article that they wrote about how the Palestinians need to be tamed better or something.
Right.
And, you know, this is what Edward Said used to refer to people who are willing to play this role as the, you know, the native informer, you know, because he has an accent.
He has a funky, you know, different name.
He has different looks.
And if he is going to say, you know, like this, you know, like what's his name, Al-Ajami.
I can't remember his first name.
He was a friend of George Bush and it was Bush that kind of learned from Al-Ajami the ways of Iraq.
And, you know, he is the one who invented the concept that when the Americans go to Iraq during the war, the Iraqis are going to throw rice and flour at them in celebration, you know.
And he was kind of the archetypical native informer.
And he agreed to play that role.
And at the end, it was, you know, he was everywhere, Fox News on a daily basis, Fuad Al-Ajami.
Now I remember his first name, Fuad Al-Ajami.
And and, you know, so imagine putting me in a situation where you want me to be a native informer.
Let me tell you about the ways of Hamas and Fatah and how these people are so dysfunctional and the Palestinians that the Finns are not really angry at Israel.
They are angry at Palestinian disunity.
No, thank you very much.
I'm not willing to play that role, you know, but it's a very reductionist role that they expect from us to play.
If we are to appear, there's going to be a lot of compromises that so the vast majority of us would opt to live entirely within the alternative, you know, media narrative as opposed to compromise morally on our positions in order for us to maybe, yes, you are getting some, you are losing some.
No, it doesn't work that way.
Of course, for the Israelis, Scott, they never, ever have to make that, take that position.
They never have to make that moral choice.
The craziest of the Israeli extremists published, get published on The New York Times and The Washington Post, and they say hideous things and nobody questioned them.
Absolutely right.
And over and over again, too, they will, for example, during the slaughter in 2014, they will do nothing but run justification after justification after why they have no choice, of course, but to defend themselves.
Don't you know the Palestinians are launching terror kites or whatever garbage they pushed, you know?
There's a brush fire, Ramsey, a legit brush fire.
Yeah, and that is The New York Times.
And hey, that's why they're the leading paper in America.
As Noam Chomsky put it in his propaganda model, you know, they are the agenda-setting media and the rest of them copy The New York Times and what those guys are saying.
That's the top of the heap.
They decide what's true and what you need to know and, you know, what fits and what doesn't as even worth arguing.
And that's the real thing, right?
Just like Henry Kissinger, I don't know, supposedly said, probably did something about he only watches the network news at night with the volume off because he doesn't need to know what they're saying.
He just wants to see what order they tell the stories in.
That's the most important thing because he told them what to say.
He knows what they're going to say, but it was just he needed to see, you know, he just wanted to kind of take the temperature of what people are being told and in order of importance and that kind of deal because they're setting the tone for everybody else.
And, you know, it's funny, too, because when you look at the ratings for cable TV news and stuff like that, not very high.
So it's pretty incredible how much, you know, top-down influence they still have really over this conversation.
And that is changing.
You know, you were saying that because that article was published in Al Jazeera that I was talking about.
Oh, the one that they wouldn't publish, they wouldn't in the original form was published on Al Jazeera.
And I know from friends at Al Jazeera that it received a massive number of readers that I know for a fact would have been a lot more than it would would have received in The New York Times.
So.
So the question is not about hits now.
I can go live on Facebook and I still can get ten thousand people listening to me.
That's not the issue anymore.
It's as what you said.
It's about the agenda.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It ain't the raw numbers.
It's who's reading them.
Exactly.
The New York Times are like the mouth of Sauron.
You know, it's the they're the official spokesman for power.
And this is what we believe in.
This is what our agenda is today, kind of thing.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Too bad, too, because they're always wrong about everything for good reason, but always very wrong.
Oh, man.
All right.
All right.
Well, anyway, listen, I've taken up enough of your afternoon, but I sure do appreciate you sharing some time with us again here, Ramzi.
Always a pleasure, Scott.
Thank you.
And keep up the good work.
All right.
You too, man.
All right, you guys.
And that is Ramzi Baroud.
You can find him again at Antiwar.com and The Palestine Chronicle.
And you can read his latest book, These Chains Will Be Broken, Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons.
