All right, y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Phil Weiss from the Mondoweiss blog, that's mondoweiss.net.
Welcome back, Phil, how are you doing?
Good, Scott, how are you doing?
I'm doing good, man.
So, the war of ideas in the Middle East as opposed to the war of occupation.
Yeah.
I guess the war of ideas about the occupation.
And speaking of which, it's a central issue on Earth, not just always, but especially, you know, right now, because there's a UN Security Council resolution, which I don't know when the vote is supposed to be or what, but it's a renewal of a previous resolution condemning the colonies in the West Bank as illegal.
And then there's a big question over whether Obama will have Susan Rice veto it or not.
Isn't that about right?
Yeah, that's right.
There's a lot of people putting pressure on Obama from the kind of realist side, and even from J Street, the new Israel lobby, to, you know, finally let this one go through, condemn to allow the condemnation to occur.
I mean, this is the, these colonies, as you put it, you know, settlements, as they claim, you know, these colonies are completely illegal, and they've been the knife in the back of the two-state solution, whatever the two-state solution is worth.
It's a joke at this point when you go over there.
There's, you know, there's one entity of sovereignty, really, and Israeli colonies are all over the West Bank.
Well, now, this has been American policy in the past, right?
Was that the settlements were illegal, and colonies, whatever, were illegal, and then, I guess, they vetoed these same resolutions saying the same thing from time to time, right?
Yes, they did.
I mean, the thing is, it has been American policy, but it's not clear what that means.
You know, if you have a policy that you never enforce, what does it mean?
The United States likes to say, well, we don't have any power in this situation.
Of course they have power in this situation.
They could condemn.
They could actually stop giving military aid.
They could get on the bully pulpit, none of which they've done.
So this could be, there have been suggestions from the Obama administration that they wouldn't use the veto, and now it's, you know, looking like they're going to have to be tested, and we'll see.
And we'll see.
I mean, Obama himself said in Cairo a year ago, a year and a half, almost two years ago, sorry, a year and a half ago, the settlements must stop, and the settlements have just continued endlessly.
And last year was one of the biggest years ever for settlements, and hundreds of Palestinians displaced through house demolitions in the occupied territories in East Jerusalem, which is occupied.
So basically Netanyahu, after Obama threw down the gauntlet in Cairo, Netanyahu just basically said, all right, well, I guess we'll see about that, and just kept right on.
And so the president's push for, you know, anything to really happen there is basically dead in the water.
As long as Netanyahu figures that he's in the position to say hell no, then he can just continue right on.
Yes.
I mean, Netanyahu had a better sense of the politics of the situation than Obama did.
This guy who's from a country of, what, 5, 6, 7 million people, another, you know, 5 occupied, 5 million under occupation, he had a better read on the international politics and his power in the United States, because when push comes to shove, the major Jewish organizations would not come out against settlements.
And even J Street, which I mentioned a little earlier, kind of waffled on settlements a little.
And so there's no political pressure on Obama to oppose settlements and colonies, as you put it.
The political pressure on him to support colonies is chiefly financial, or concerns, political concerns, that the money's going to get cut off for the Democratic Party.
And that's been the apprehension.
Phil Giroldi, in his article on antiwar.com today, points to this piece by Laura Rosen about how Barack Obama has these two task forces working on this.
And they're made up of Sandy Berger, Stephen Hadley, Martin Indyk, and Dennis Ross.
And apparently, as Giroldi puts it, former Senator George Mitchell, who's supposed to be in charge of this whole thing, is nowhere in sight.
Right.
I mean, that's the word.
First of all, I mean, the shocking thing there is Stephen Hadley was the national security advisor or head of the NSC for George Bush.
Yeah, he's the guy who said, yep, it's true, I'm the one who gave the Niger uranium forgeries to the special plans after they funneled them through the Italians for us, or whatever.
Right.
I mean, how much more discredited can you be than this guy?
And Obama's picking him up.
Obama's picking up Dennis Ross, the former chairman of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute.
Obama's picking up Martin Indyk, who's been involved in the peace process for decades with nothing to show for it.
Sandy Berger was involved in the Camp David peace process that, again, did nothing and was going to give Israel control over the West Bank, or huge swaths of the West Bank.
I mean, it's just like, this is just, it's a surrender.
He's just surrendered.
And yeah, George Mitchell, imagine if during the Irish peace process, imagine if the Northern Ireland negotiations, if Bill Clinton had said, you know what, we need someone who's a little closer to England involved with this process, so we're going to move George Mitchell out of this.
You know, that's essentially what's happened.
He's found people who, Haaretz says, the Israeli press says, that Obama has turned to people who have greater credibility in Israel than George Mitchell.
And so it's the Israel lobby.
Well, as far as the peace process itself goes, the whole thing, it's funny, it kind of reminds me of Sarah Palin-level conservative politics in the sense of just the complete disconnect from reality, right?
It doesn't matter what's true at all or not.
We've got our slogan for the day and we're sticking with it.
And the slogan for the day for the decades in the Israel-Palestine thing is somehow, the Palestinians, it's completely on them to make everything okay for the Israelis.
And yet, who's occupied and who's the occupier?
It's like we're pretending that the Palestinians are occupying Israel.
That's ridiculous.
And that's sort of the premise for this whole thing going in, and that goes for my whole lifetime anywhere, paying attention at all, the end of the Bush senior years, Clinton years, and through today.
It's the same thing.
All the time the Palestinians have to do this, this, and that in order for the foreign country occupying them to move the towns that they've built in occupied territory out.
Right, exactly.
And the thing is that I just read a statement from 1960 in North Carolina when blacks were fighting desegregation.
And someone said, and they were starting the sit-ins at the lunch counters, and they were doing what they called nonviolent resistance.
And it was said to them, why don't you negotiate with the sort of white authorities?
And one of the black editors said, if we negotiate, my grandchildren will still be trying to get a cup of coffee here.
And that is exactly what the process you've described.
If you negotiate where you have no power, if you go into a room and negotiate and one person has no power and the other person has a lot of power, you're going to get nothing.
And that is what has happened to the Palestinians.
They have seen these colonies grow and grow and grow for 45 years close to, or 43 years, 44 years.
You know, they've been negotiating.
And so that's why we see all these processes of nonviolent resistance that are sort of renewing themselves.
Boycott movement and protests across the West Bank, international protests.
That's the only thing that's going to change Israel.
That's all they'll listen to.
All right, y'all, it's Phil Weiss from the Mondo Weiss blog.
And we'll have more discussion of Israeli politics and America's relationship with Israel, of course, as well after this break.
Stay tuned.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm talking with Phil Weiss from the Mondo Weiss blog.
Phil, you know, I read this thing by Noam Chomsky where he says, look, it's actually, in a way, the silver lining.
I think he says something about, you know, basically the silver lining of the American inability or unwillingness to do anything really to change the situation there is that at least now there's no longer pretense that America is some kind of independent negotiator here.
And now hopefully this will diminish American influence in the question, and it'll be left up to others who can make better decisions.
And there's kind of been what looks like not just the beginnings but maybe even the middles of the rest of the world saying, well, fine, forget you guys.
We're going to go ahead and recognize Palestine as a sovereign state anyway.
And how do you like that?
Yeah, I mean, certainly that initiative, I think Chomsky's right.
And that initiative is underway.
I don't know if it will produce, you know, an end of suffering or any freedom for the Palestinians.
That's the ultimate question.
Well, what do you think it would do to the political situation in Israel if basically the whole world, less the U.S., recognized Palestine and attempted to treat them like a sovereign state?
You know, the problem is that it could serve Israel in that you suddenly recognize a state and the state doesn't have borders and Israel says, okay, these are the borders.
So it's kind of like, I mean, I don't know that that's going to happen, but there are ways in which this could work out to Israel's advantage.
I think it's great.
Generally, I think the movement is a great one.
It just shows that, yeah, the United States has lost all credibility here.
The world has been promising these people a state for 64 years now and has never delivered, and we're sick of it.
And meanwhile these people lose more and more of their land.
So I think that part of it is great.
And Brazil and Russia and Argentina and, you know, other countries have said, you know, we're just tired of this crap.
And Turkey is now becoming much more of a regional player.
Turkey is playing a role in the Lebanon crisis.
So I feel like, you know, American influence is diminishing and it's because we've lost all credibility and it's because of the Israel lobby, although Chomsky will not say that part.
He thinks it's just American imperialism at work.
Well, why don't you actually explore that?
Because I've noticed that about him too, that he'll mention the Israel lobby just to say, yeah, right, don't let them take the blame for it.
We all know this is really Lockheed and the generals and whatever.
He has a very traditional materialist understanding of how things work.
I don't think, I mean, there's obviously, you know, corporate influence is a huge factor in our policy in the Middle East.
But, you know, oil companies weren't pushing for an invasion of Iraq.
And look who's getting the concessions now.
It's not just American companies.
It's not Halliburton that's benefiting from this.
It's, you know, Russia and China and Turkey have all benefited from this.
So I think that his is a simplistic materialist analysis that just does not reckon with forces of devotion, which is what the Israel lobby is about.
Just like the Cuba lobby is about it.
You have devoted people who are devoted to a cause.
And the people who are devoted to the Israeli cause are actually a lot more powerful in American politics than the American establishment in the Cuba lobby, say, or even the gun lobby.
Although the gun lobby is very powerful.
So, I mean, I don't know.
If you want, I can let you go on about the lobby, because I hate to interrupt you talking about the lobby.
But on the other hand, I kind of wanted to ask about your opinion about the situation in the West Bank in terms of, well, like I talked with, I think your friend Max Blumenthal on the show.
He, I think, was pretty pessimistic, if I can try to characterize what he said.
I think he was pretty pessimistic that the IDF would even be able to remove the settlers from the West Bank if that deal was ever struck.
And, in fact, the settlers run the army anyway.
And it seems like, you kind of referred to this earlier, the West Bank has been so divided up by these settlements and, of course, the highways and the giant walls protecting them, that it's already too late.
It's a done deal.
Eventually these Palestinians are going to be either killed or forced into Jordan, I guess.
Yeah.
I mean, the thing is that for 25 years, beginning in the 70s, people talked about a two-state solution.
And at first it was the most heretical, horrifying thing in the world, that the Palestinians would get a state.
And opinion in the United States was against the two-state solution.
Well, then in the 90s, finally, people came around to the idea of a two-state solution.
And Oslo happened, and they believed in a two-state solution.
We're in the same process now with a one-state solution, I think.
It's completely verboten to talk about it still in establishment circles.
You destroy your credibility by talking about the one-state solution.
But that's the reality.
That's what Max is talking about, is a situation in which Israel controls the destiny of 3.5 million people in the West Bank.
These people have no rights.
It's just a simple, true statement that these people have no rights.
They're under occupation.
And Israeli sovereignty runs from the river to the sea, and they're not going to give that up.
So I think that increasingly realists in the United States are just going to have to accept the death of the two-state solution.
The condemnation of the settlements that may take place in the Security Council is being embraced by advocates for the two-state solution in the United States, who still want a two-state solution.
And, you know, maybe it's the last gasp of the two-state solution.
I don't know, but I just don't think anything's going to come of it.
And even if something did come of it, the degree to which Israelis and Jews are all over the West Bank, yes.
I just don't know how that's going to be reversed.
The problem with talking about a one-state solution, of course, is that the future is so grim.
But the past has been incredibly grim for these people, the Palestinians, and the present is incredibly grim.
And I don't know how we get there, but there has to be some deliverance from essentially a tyrannical system, which we have right now.
Well, and, you know, to get back to the lobby, I guess, what they want is a no solution, a just permanently continue on like this.
Why not?
Yeah, I mean, they're just crazy, and they want the United States to be involved in a clash of civilizations for however many decades with every one of Israel's enemies and a fault line right across, you know, the Jordan River.
And, you know, so that rationalizes anything Israel does to its minority population, which isn't a minority even now.
I mean, there may be more Palestinians between the river and the sea than there are Jews.
Really?
It's right about the line is being crossed demographically there, huh?
Yes, it is.
And part of that reflects the fact that many educated Israelis are leaving, have left that country and are now living in Europe or the United States.
People with opportunities have come over here.
People want second passports.
They don't like the state of that society.
You wouldn't want to live in a society where rabbis are calling for Jews not to rent apartments to Arabs.
I mean, it's a very right-wing society.
There are real fascist trends in that society.
A lot of people are fighting the good fight against that, but it's just grim.
All right, Shaul.
Well, you can keep up on The Permanent Crisis at Mondoweiss.net.
The War of Ideas, Adam Horowitz and others.
Join Phil Weiss over there as well.
Always great stuff and always great to have you on the show.
Thank you very much, Phil.
Great.
Thanks, Matt.
All right, Shaul.
It's Santa World Radio.
We'll be right back.
