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.
Hey, guys, guess what?
On the line, I've got Grant F. Smith.
And you know him.
He is the founder and the director of the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P, IRMEP.
And he wrote a bunch of books, like this one, Divert, NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro, and the Diversion of U.S. Weapons-Grade Uranium into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program.
Uh-huh.
And he also wrote Big Israel, How Israel's Lobby Moves America.
And he also wrote, and this thing, I mean, all of them are so great, but this thing is like a funhouse mirrored, just, it's a total trip.
You'll laugh your ass off and maybe cry a little bit with ironic laughter when you read The Israel Lobby Enters State Government, Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board.
It's the most batshit thing I've read in 10 years or something.
It's just great.
The Israel Lobby Enters State Government by the great Grant F. Smith.
And also, guess what?
He's just published this book by a guy named Walter L. Hickson called Architects of Repression, How Israel and its Lobby Put Racism, Violence, and Injustice at the Center of U.S. Middle East Policy.
Man, I want to read that here soon if I possibly can.
Welcome back to the show, Grant.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
Doing really well.
Thanks for having me on.
Hell, yeah.
And listen, I didn't just have you on to tell everyone your bio for half an hour, which I could continue.
There's a whole list of books here, but, oh man, I just started thinking of all the reporting you've done and all the different tangents we could go on.
No, no, no.
We're not here for that.
We're here for this.
Expert Speakers to Discuss Israel.
It's U.S. Lobby and Apartheid, April 17th and 24th.
The Israel Apartheid Con, short for conference, might as well call it conference there.
I don't know.
Anyway, what is the Israel Apartheid Con?
Tell us all about it.
Hey, Scott, well, as you know, ever since 2014, we have been doing a conference that preempts the AIPAC national meeting in Washington, where all of their citizen lobbyists go up and demand things like moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, like giving the lion's share of the aid budget to Israel, like unconditional diplomatic support for whatever the Israelis are doing, including bombing, you know, Lebanon or the Palestinians.
And we've always had a conference right before their conference saying, that's not really what Americans want.
Here are some polls.
Here are some experts about better alternatives.
And so this year, AIPAC didn't meet, but we are preempting J Street, which is the liberal Zionist Israel lobby group, which has been pumping out announcement after announcement about how they are now going to step in and have a major influence on the Biden administration.
So we've got lots of great speakers talking about the recent B'Tselem reports on growing apartheid in Israel.
We've got all sorts of Palestinian speakers talking about what's going on on the ground, former congressperson, all sorts of great content split across two days.
The first session is April 17, coming right up at 11 a.m.
Eastern Daylight Time.
That is this Saturday, right?
Yeah, this Saturday.
And then the second one's coming on the 24th, same time, 11 o'clock Eastern Daylight Time.
And that'll be after the J Street conference.
And that's where we're going to have some real expert analysis on what they're trying to do.
Excellent.
And so, yeah, on the subject of J Street, I see here that that is what the great Phil Weiss from Mondoweiss.net is going to be talking about.
Can you explain a little bit about what's the controversy there with J Street to the left of AIPAC?
So that's good, right?
Well, not really.
I mean, they still support unconditional U.S. military support to Israel.
They think all of the problems that exist in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and this is to paraphrase a little bit, occur mainly in occupied territory and that there's really no issues with Israel itself.
And so it's been increasingly difficult to convince their progressive audience that they are actually doing anything much different than AIPAC.
And yet they've got this wonderful cover and have, you know, people like Bernie Sanders speaking at their conference and the head of the labor unions for teachers speaking there talking about straddling values.
And it's kind of a mess.
And so, you know, that's the reason why groups like Jewish Voice for Peace have split off and said, no, actually, you're not doing very well in terms of challenging AIPAC or challenging any of the horrific policies that the U.S. has been backing at the Israel lobby's behest in the region.
So Philip Weiss and crew have been on that case forever, basically, and he's going to be our key sort of speaker kicking off the 24th Session 2 right at the top of the lineup to go over that in depth.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
So you're constantly buying things from Amazon.com.
Well, that makes sense.
They bring it right to your house.
So what you do, though, is click through from the link in the right hand margin at ScottHorton.org and I'll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale.
Won't cost you a thing.
It's a nice little way to help support the show.
Again, that's right there in the margin at ScottHorton.org.
Hey, you want to know what industry is recession proof?
Yes, you're right.
Of course.
Pot.
Scott Horton here to tell you about Green Mill Super Critical Extractors.
The SFE Pro and Super Producing Parallel Pro can be calibrated to produce all different types and qualities of cannabis crude oils for all different purposes.
These extractors are the most important part of your cannabis oil business.
For precision, versatility, and efficiency.
GreenMillSuperCritical.com.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here to tell you about Zippix Toothpicks.
They're full of nicotine is the thing about it.
Personally, I miss the stuff terribly and I'm really looking forward to getting back on it.
Seems like they'd be perfect for smokers and vapors who can't afford to stop work and go outside for a break all the time or for those traveling in planes, trains, and buses and ferries and such.
It's the most affordable way to get your nicotine on the market and they taste great and come in all different flavors.
Use promo code Scott Horton and get 10% off Zippix Toothpicks at ZippixToothpicks.com.
Is it okay if I spoil my speech now?
Yeah, you just go ahead and do that, Scott.
What?
Are you coming to this thing?
Really?
You're going to be here?
Am I in the thing?
Did I make the cut?
Yeah, of course.
All right, Scott, and we cannot wait to have you talk about enough already.
And so we're going to ask you to cherry pick out some of the content you've written about the lobby in that wonderful book, which is getting so much attention and so many retweets and so much good press, but so many angles to start from there.
I guess I'll have to go with the clean break was meant to void Oslo.
This is why we have to do this so we don't have to give up the West Bank.
We'll just empower Jordan and Turkey in Iraq by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, thought Richard Perle and David Wormser.
But who did they do all that thinking on behalf of, Scott?
George W. Bush?
Or was there somebody before George W. Bush, Scott?
Well, yeah, him too.
But yeah.
No.
Then the then and present King Benjamin Netanyahu, of course.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So what?
That is a wonderful place to start.
I was wondering where you're going to start because you could have started in a lot of places.
There's a lot of places to start.
But I was thinking that this morning.
I thought, you know, I'm going to need a place to start.
I guess it'll be the clean break.
I thought it was going to be out of the clear blue sky.
Nothing had happened before 9-11 was going to be the title of your speech.
I suspect that wasn't going to be it, Scott.
Yeah.
No, they hate us because we're free.
They hate the poor Israelis because they're free, too.
Yeah.
It's freedom hating.
Yeah.
Anyway, that's going to be great.
And you're going to be definitely getting a substantial slot and questions from attendees that have been pouring in through Eventbrite saying, yeah, I want to be on the Zoom so I can ask questions.
So if anyone wants to put hard questions to Scott, just go over to Eventbrite and put in Israel Apartheid Con and register for session two, at least, so you could just grill Scott.
Hey, you know who else I like?
Asa Winstanley.
Very smart guy.
Yeah.
I just learned that he pronounces his own name Aza Winstanley.
Hey, I'm sorry, man, I said it wrong.
No, I've been pronouncing it that way forever.
And so I was just going off of the Simpsons with the fighting hellfish, you know?
Okay.
All right.
That's the old joke from a classic TV show from before your time, maybe.
No, no, I've caught some episodes, but I don't have comprehensive universal knowledge of all things Star Wars and Simpsons like you do.
So I got to admit ignorance on that.
But anyway, there's a lot of TV I don't know about, too.
But the Simpsons, I know.
The Simpsons, you know.
Well, I mean, it was one of the greats.
I think it's anyway.
So he's going to talk about the sort of dynamics that shape labor friends of Israel in the U.K. and now Democratic majority for Israel in the U.S., these sort of small groups that seek to pull the progressive parties of each country over into the Israel column through all sorts of nefarious activities.
And he's just like really the only expert who's been on that story, breaking news and covering why these progressive leaders have been purged whenever they speak out in support of Palestinian rights.
So these organizations exist to alter the orbits of these parties and never let them sort of reflect values when it comes to those issues.
So he's great.
And it's great to be able to beam someone like that in from his home base in the U.K.
And of course, he's writing for the Electronic Intifada.
So he's got to be good.
Right.
Yeah.
Great site.
Absolutely.
Great.
And a bunch of other outlets.
Hey, tell me, who's Congressman Brian Baird?
I don't think I remember him.
Yeah.
So he was the representative for Washington's third congressional district between 1999 and 2011.
And so he was very involved in understanding what was going on in Gaza.
He traveled there five times as a congressperson, which is extraordinary since, you know, congressmen do travel, but one in every three trips where they get on a jetliner, they're usually going to Israel and they never go to any Israeli occupied or controlled territories.
But he bucked that trend and he dared to investigate the death of his constituent, Rachel Corey, who was crushed to death when she was standing in front of a Palestinian home.
The Israelis wanted to bulldoze and he stood up for her.
So he continues to be outspoken and he writes op-eds and he's going to talk about, you know, from the perspective of a member of Congress, how Israel and its lobby really assert authority over Congress and what he thinks, given the increased amount of information Americans can access about these problems that they couldn't before, he's going to recommend some critical actions voters can take to elect better leaders who will be more willing to do the kinds of things he's done in terms of constituent service and not just following the special interest group around.
So he's great.
Yeah.
Awesome.
I can't wait to hear that.
And it's, you know, it's pretty rare that you have a congressman willing to tell the story of, well, here's what it was like when I had to deal with the Israel lobby while I was in there.
But it's always fascinating when it is always fascinating.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's probably it's probably not the first thing any ex member of Congress ever wants to talk about either.
So it's it's a real testimony to, you know, their willingness to stand up.
And the great thing is he's going to be speaking on Saturday.
So you don't have to wait till the 24th.
He's in session one.
Excellent.
All right.
Let's also, too, if you could, might have started with this.
The celebrated Palestinian writers, authors, Susan Abdullah, I'll let you say it.
And yeah.
Yeah.
Samaya Awad.
So Susan Abdullah has spoken at several of our conferences, and she's a really dynamic speaker and writer who's written bestselling novels based on her experience.
And from a Palestinian perspective, Mornings in Janine, she wrote The Blue Between Sky and Water, which was translated into 19 languages.
And her latest novel is Against the Loveless World, which is a Palestinian Book Awards winner.
So, you know, probably one of our most interesting speakers, because she also is an activist and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, which is an NGO that builds playgrounds for Palestinian children.
And she's also trying to get more Palestinian farmer products into the U.S. to finance that.
So she's going to be talking about why from all of her writing, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, how she's been informed by the advancing supremacy of one group, the Jewish Israelis over Arab Palestinians, and talk about how all of that plays out in terms of water resource allocation, housing permits, travel restrictions, you know, a lack of access to education, medical care when it comes to everything, but including COVID vaccines, all based on ethnicity, and the criminal justice system.
So she can speak knowledgeably about all of that and do it in a way that's extremely dynamic.
And then Sumayya Wad is more an activist on the social media front.
And she's based in New York, works out of the Adala Justice Project.
And she's co-founder of the Facebook We Need to Talk campaign.
And so she has been fighting all of the sort of blanket censorship of Palestinian groups reporting on the ground.
And she also led the campaign to stop Facebook from categorizing discussions of Zionism on their platform as being sort of inherently hate speech or anti-Semitism.
And so she is going to mainly focus on that.
She can speak about a lot of things, but she's going to talk about how that campaign became successful and how it can be used to stop online censorship.
So incredible person doing incredible work.
And she'll be, I think, extremely important.
She's also going to be speaking on the 17th.
And so it's at the bottom of the lineup toward the end and well worth staying for.
Great, man.
All right.
And by the way, let's stop here for a second and remind people.
As we say at the beginning, IsraelApartheidCon.org is where this is taking place.
Any and other all information that people need to know for tuning in to see all of this live this Saturday.
Great.
Right.
And this is again, this is normally a conference that we hold at the National Press Club and we still have, you know, reservations over there.
Unfortunately, we've had to push them into 2022.
But, you know, it's a this is a way to keep things going.
And the 2022 conference, which is a rescheduled 2020 conference, is still going on.
But, you know, that's we're putting the same level of effort into the lineup and the outreach and the marketing and informing people about this that we do to any conference.
And so it's a great way to keep things moving and keep the spotlight on these issues, even though we can't meet in person over at the press club.
Yeah.
Hey, I didn't like they called off apartheid for the germ.
They just made it even worse.
So we got to I mean, it's got to stay at it here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it is worth wrapping around J Street instead of a pack.
I mean, again, I was thinking I got a whole other speech about that.
I wonder how I can sort of work that in.
Well, you better you better start writing.
We've only got till the 24th.
I can do this off the top of my head, buddy.
Don't worry.
No.
Yeah.
We all know about your incredible memory.
I would hate to steal Phil Weiss's thunder, although I know he's got plenty to say.
Well, you know, that's that's why I say we invest a lot in things like lineup.
So if he misses something, hopefully you're monitoring and you can fill in the gaps because you're coming in later in the day.
So have at it.
I will definitely be watching closely.
Yeah.
Look, I mean, I'm always a broken record on this thing, man.
I think any American who doesn't even some who do have a dog in the fight, but certainly any American who doesn't have a dog in the fight, if you explain to him, yeah, look, here's the controversy, man, is it is apartheid.
You get half the population under the control of this government who have no control over that government back at all.
No.
You know, talk about taxation.
They got taxation and imprisonment and their entire penal code and their everything under foreign martial law without the slightest whiff of representation.
What's representation?
They would be slaves, except that the Israelis don't want them, but they have no more rights than slaves in terms of the way that the people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are treated.
And it's absolutely sickening.
And that's why people are standing up about this and are willing to be smeared as anti-Semites over it.
And whatever it is, is because this isn't right.
And I think and maybe I'm wrong, but I think that if the American people ever had the slightest idea of who was occupying who over there, that they would understand and they'd be on the right side of this.
They just need a chance to understand what the truth is.
That's all.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
You know, unfortunately for the Israel lobby, things have not been going their way in terms of public awareness and public opinion.
So it is it is the case.
And yet, you know, they're trying to maintain this front of solidarity that, no, the you know, all of this support from both parties is inherently the right thing to do.
And that argument is just crumbling.
It is important to keep on it and to keep focusing on the various news, the incredible news that comes out of the region and that takes place here in Washington, because, you know, before almost nobody was doing it.
But now, you know, I would say in the past 20 years, there's been an incredible growing number of people and news organizations and voices that have come out and really started focusing on this issue.
So it's great.
I don't attribute that to the conference, but I think the conference is part of that.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is.
Absolutely.
It is.
And, you know, the level of professionalism that you guys put into holding the thing at the press club every year and the, you know, level of expertise and importance that the various guests bring, you know, former FBI agents and former congressmen and important Palestinian intellectuals and activists and just the whole gamut of people.
Man, Jim Loeb.
Listen up, everybody.
Listen into this.
One time Jim Loeb gave a talk at the Grant Smith conference.
That's not what it's called.
It's the Israel lobby, some version of the Israel lobby, anti-Israel lobby conference every year.
And it was called neoconservatism in a nutshell.
And I just love it because Jim is such a gentle, sweet, humble little old man.
And he gets up there and he goes, look, I'm just going to say a couple of things and, you know, I don't know.
And then he's just perfect.
It's just absolutely perfect.
You want to know who and what is a neocon and what they're really about?
I see people even say, I used to be a neocon.
No, you didn't, dude.
You don't know what a neocon is.
Go watch Jim Loeb.
Neoconservatism in a nutshell.
And then that stands for the quality of all of this stuff.
But that's one that just really stands out in my mind.
But there's been, what, total, a couple of hundred of these speeches over the years now, all of which are available in your archives too, right?
Yeah, they're all there.
And now they're going out as a podcast.
So we have the newer episodes and we have the classics.
And so people can also just go to IsraelLobbyCon.org and subscribe to the podcast and then they'll get anything we do in the future, like starting next Saturday, plus things that we do between conferences and the classics.
Like if you want to hear Jim Loeb or if you want to hear other speakers that now their videos have a quarter million views.
All the clean audio of all of that is available in kind of bite-sized podcasts.
The beauty of these things too is people just don't go on and on and on.
They got about 20 minutes max.
And so they get to the point.
It's kind of like the TED Talks of peace in Israel-Palestine and why we can't have it.
So it's very compelling.
Not to compete with the Scott Horton Show though.
If you have to choose between the two, take the Scott Horton Show any day.
Get out of here.
You've only got so much listening time in a day, but you can probably make time for both.
I think so.
Listen, I'm really looking forward to this thing and not just participating in it.
I'm going to be traveling, but I'm going to make sure that the timing works and I will be set and I will bring all of my equipment with me and everything, and I will be all set to do my part of this thing on minus the 23rd, you say, correct?
24th?
Yours is on the 24th.
It's a little bit later on Saturday and we expect you to give us a clean video feed and it's via Zoom.
I will make sure everything is completely tested, running at 300 megajams upload speed and everything that we need.
So it's perfect.
Excellent.
That'd be great.
And so can I just plug a couple other speakers that are coming?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So John Dugard, who was a special rapporteur in hearings about apartheid in South Africa, and Richard Falk, who is also in that role at the UN, is going to comment on the new B'Tselem Apartheid Reports and the 2018 Basic Law.
We've got Zaha Hassan, who's a human rights lawyer and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
She's just put out a new paper trying to urge the Obama administration to ditch Israel lobby centricity for a rights-based approach, which is the kind of thing the U.S. claims it always wants, but in this case never follows.
The aforementioned Walter Hickson is going to be talking about the most important messages from his book, Architects of Repression.
Robin D.G. Kelly is going to be talking about Black Lives Matter and various movements to support Palestinian grassroots organizations and international grassroots movements.
Tom Suarez, who wrote the book State of Terror, How Terrorism Created Modern Israel, is going to be talking about the new Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which is an extremely important development also featured on Mondoweiss various times.
Ian Williams, who's a U.N. correspondent, will be talking about different aspects of U.S. policies in that forum regarding Israel.
And then Alex Awad is going to talk about Christian Zionism and how many Palestinian evangelical leaders are trying to stop the spread of misinterpretations in U.S. churches and how that's going.
So it's an interesting, again, diverse lineup of speakers, which is what we like, and you can definitely participate via Zoom or watch it on YouTube Live and send in questions or sign up for the podcast.
And we're just we're just really excited about this year's lineup.
Man, I am, too.
I can't wait to see all of this.
And and I'm really grateful that you've allowed me to participate this time.
I'll try real hard.
All right, Scott, we're going to count on you.
All right.
I'm just going to say true things.
Hopefully I won't stumble too much.
But then, you know, well, and you got to do video, too.
So you can't just hide behind your big mic with your baseball hat on.
You got to actually well, you can wear the baseball hat.
But now you're going to have a little hair.
I have left.
All right.
OK, now listen, tell us again the website.
Well, I'll say this part IsraelApartheidCon.org and they can register at.
Let's see, is it Eventbrite slash something complicated, though?
There's not an easy way to get there straight.
You got to go to IsraelApartheidCon.org first, right?
Yeah.
And don't forget the W's might not work if you don't put in WWW for some reason.
Oh, really?
WWW.
Yeah.
Now you got to talk to your guy.
There's that's I know.
I know you have some web firm over there that you've been playing.
I got a guy.
You need a guy.
I want to touch my guy right now.
All right, man, you let me know.
Yes, he shouldn't happen that way.
He absolutely can fix that.
Oh, well, that might be a male chimp problem.
I don't know if he knows the solution, but I'll ask him because he does know all about male chimps.
So I will talk to him about.
Got to support those Scott Horton Show supporters.
Yeah, well, on the Scott Horton Show, supporters need to be able to watch this thing, so W's or not, folks, Israel Apartheid Con.
And if you just search that in your search engine, it comes right up for you.
They're Israel Apartheid Con dot org.
And so you can register and be ready for the big show.
It starts at what time in the morning on Saturday, 11 a.m.
Sharp, 11 Eastern Time on Saturday.
And then the one after that, too.
All right.
Thank you, Grant.
Really appreciate it, man.
Thanks, Scott.
Appreciate it.
Oh, yeah.
I'll be watching.
All righty.
All right, guys.
That's Grant F. Smith.
He wrote a bunch of books about the Israel lobby in America.
They'll make you mad.
And he's at ear map dot org.
I are MEP ear map dot org.
That's the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy.
And again, Israel Apartheid Con dot org.
And use the W's if you need them.
W's, I thought those things were obsolete by now.
They still do W's.
The Scott Horton Show, anti-war radio can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A.
APS radio dot com antiwar dot com.
Scott Horton dot org and Libertarian Institute dot org.
