All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our first guest on the show today is Rami, sorry, Rami Khoury.
Uh, website is RamiKhoury.com.
That's R-A-M-I-K-H-O-U-R-I.com.
And he is a Palestinian, Jordanian, and U.S. citizen.
His family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth.
He's on the phone, I believe, from Beirut right now.
Welcome to the show, Rami.
How are you doing?
Thanks.
I'm well, thanks.
Good to be with you.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
It says here you're director of the Issam Faris Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and editor-at-large of the Daily Star, nationally syndicated political columnist and author.
Very happy to have you here on the show.
And, you know, I thought that your article in the Daily Star last week, If It Smells Like Apartheid, was really good.
I really like the way it begins, sort of, with the two competing narratives that have played out really for the past century, as you say here.
And I was wondering if you could basically start with that for the people in the audience, the two kind of seemingly very different stories of the creation of the State of Israel.
Well, the central issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which includes Israel and its supporters and many Arab countries and their supporters, is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are the competing claims from both sides.
I'm a Palestinian, so I'm obviously on the Palestinian side of this narrative.
But for any conflict to be resolved, you've got to really have the ability to understand both narratives and find that middle ground that perhaps responds to both of them.
But the dueling narratives are the Israelis, of course, see the creation of Israel in 1948 as a great feat, a miracle almost, almost a divinely inspired miracle that was the reaffirmation of Jewish nationalism and created a country where they say Jews had lived forever, or not forever, but for thousands of years, ever since there were Jews, and that this was their natural home, and they've always been there, and it was normal for them to have a country there, and the UN supported it, et cetera, et cetera.
And they think this was a great feat, and they have the right to live as they are.
Of course, from the Arab side, the Palestinian side, the picture is very different, where we see the creation of Israel as being a great crime against the Palestinian people.
It was essentially built on land that was owned by the Palestinians, and most of the Palestinians, well, about half of them had to leave.
They were either forcibly thrown out by ethnic cleansing and massacres, or they fled during war, and there's other reasons.
And so you've got these two very different narratives that completely do not coexist.
The problem, as we see it from the Palestinian side, is that the deeds of Zionism and the Israeli state, wonderful as they are and heroic and moving as they are for the Jewish people, are a continuing catastrophe for the Palestinian people, with exile and occupation and disenfranchisement and colonization of our land and massacres and jailings and land expropriations, et cetera, et cetera.
And now we've got this most recent example where the Israeli parliament passed a law about two weeks ago saying that it was a crime in Israel, punishable by all kinds of terrible things.
It was a crime to support or call for any kind of boycott against anything Israeli or Israeli-controlled, which means the settlements, the colonies in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, which the Israelis say they annexed, but nobody in the world recognizes that.
So this latest incident strikes us as basically saying that Israel and Zionism can do anything they want, whether the whole world likes it or not.
In this case, the entire world, including the United States, thinks that Israeli settlements and colonies are illegal and against the law, against the Geneva Conventions about, you know, moving your population to the lands of other people that you've occupied.
And the Israelis are saying, well, we can do anything we want.
And if anybody even criticizes us in Israel, they're going to get, you know, sent to jail or fined or something, because it's illegal now to criticize Israeli actions by calling for a boycott.
And therefore, this strikes us as one more example of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for the last 64 years or so.
And that's why more and more people are saying, oh, look, this smells like and feels like and looks like apartheid, where a dominant race can do, or a group can do anything it wants, and anybody who criticizes it is automatically a criminal.
And this is not only bad for any chances of Arab-Israeli peace, but it's also pretty bad for the Israeli people and the Jewish people.
And that's why many Israelis have been critical of this law as well, which is a good sign.
Right.
All right.
Well, so there's a lot to go over there.
I would say that at least the way it was written in the article, not quite as much the way you spell it out there.
But even still, I think the way you spell it out there, it seems to me like those two competing narratives, I mean, obviously, partially, they cannot coexist.
But also, it seems like there is place for, you know, some kind of reconciliation there.
Maybe it's the Israelis were victims every time that they've had a war since 48, that they have to continue to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and from time to time, southern Lebanon in perpetuity, that these parts of the narrative are the parts that seem, you know, completely incompatible with any sort of long term peace.
Whereas if, you know, the Palestinian position is that the existence of Israel at even 48 borders or anything else, all amounts to an occupation that cannot be, you know, reconciled.
And basically, like, that's what Netanyahu would want to argue is that that's the position of all the Palestinians is that there can't be any, any Israel at all, when it seems like, as far as I can tell, that's really not the argument of hardly anyone, even Hamas anymore.
That's right.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
The Arab position, including the Palestinians is the Arab peace plan of 2002 is out there on the table, and it's constantly reaffirmed.
The Arabs have come to terms with the fact that Israel exists and should be allowed to exist.
But within its 1967 borders, without the occupation of West Bank, or Gaza, or East Jerusalem, or the Golan, or southern Lebanon, or other areas, Israel has been pushed back from southern Lebanon, and it's been pushed out of Gaza, it still lays siege to Gaza, does other things to Gaza, but physically, it's not controlling it as it used to.
So your description is correct, that we're willing to live with Israel.
Now, of course, we weren't 30, 40 years ago.
And neither was Israel willing to accept that there was a Palestinian people or live with a Palestinian state.
So both sides have made progress, I would say, both sides have become more realistic and come to terms with the reality.
So it's really the occupation of Israel, which is the criminal dimension of Israel.
And that's what, and that's where the apartheid is practiced.
There are other problems with Palestinians, who are actually Israeli citizens, like most of my family who live in Nazareth, which isn't a part of Israel.
Now, they're Israeli citizens by law.
And there's about a million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens, they have their own set of grievances about discrimination and unequal services and things like that.
But the basic problem, hang on one second, the basic problem is that there are two different standards of law and morality that are being used, one for the Palestinians and one for the Israelis in situations of occupation.
And that's where the work has to be done.
Right.
Okay.
So when we get back from this break, Rami, we'll talk a little bit more about that, the persecution of Arabs in the occupied territories, as well as the differences in how Jews and Arabs are treated inside Israel itself.
It's Rami G. Khoury, editor at large of the Daily Star in Beirut.
And we'll be right back after this.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Rami Khoury.
The website is ramichoury.com.
He is editor at large of the Daily Star in Beirut.
And we're talking about his most recent piece, If It Smells Like Apartheid.
And a big part of this is the boycott, which this sort of goes in and it's all part of the same discussion, the varying kinds of treatment of Arabs, whether they're Christian or Muslim inside Israel, or especially inside the occupied territories.
And how, you know, in many ways, this is, it does smell like apartheid, especially when you when you bring up the boycott.
So I guess I'll just let you take it from there, Rami.
Yeah, I think, you know, the central complaint that we have against Israel and Zionism is that we feel, we Palestinians and many Arabs feel that Israel wants to create a exclusively Jewish Zionist state, and they don't want any Palestinians there.
They want to get rid of them as much as they can, to have a state for the Jewish people.
That's what Zionism is about.
Zionism is about a state for the Jewish people.
They think this is something that is their right.
They think that the creation of Israel was a great heroic feat, and they're free to feel that.
We feel that it was a great crime that was done because it was done on our land.
And therefore, the consequences of what happened in 1947-48, in our view, continue to reverberate.
And you still have Israeli and Zionist policies, which treat the Arabs, wherever they may be, in a way that is so discriminatory that it's close to racism.
That's why years ago there was a resolution at the UN which drove the Israelis crazy, and understandably so it should drive them crazy, because it said that Zionism is racism.
That was later repealed under great pressure, but this is what many people are now saying.
Look, Zionism, Israel is treating the Arabs and Palestinians in a racist manner, by giving it rights to itself that it doesn't give to them.
The Israelis, of course, will come up with arguments for all of these points, and then that's an issue that should be debated.
But this is the basic point that I was making in the article.
If Israel says it is a crime to even to criticize what Israel is doing and suggest that something should be boycotted or sanctioned as a means of a legitimate legal protest and that becomes a crime, then I think, you know, Israelis and Zionists and Jews who support Israel should think very clearly about what is being done in their name.
If Israel is indeed the state of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people state is creating laws that give them greater rights than other people and deny other people their basic rights, including other Jews in Israel, deny them the right for peaceful, non-violent protest by, for instance, suggesting a boycott, which is a perfectly legitimate means of protest, then if that's not racism and apartheid, I don't know what it is, but it sure smells like racism and apartheid and looks like it.
And that's the basic point that I made in my article.
I should add that I'm all for a negotiated, peaceful settlement.
You should have an Israeli state, which is like it is now, a majority of Jewish people, but there's other people who live there.
I've always lived there for thousands of years.
It doesn't seem logical for us to have a state based on religion, but if that's what the Jews want, then they have a state and we have to live with it and we're willing to live with it.
But one of the tenets of the Jewish religion, as God told Moses to tell the Jewish people to tell the world, is to pursue justice and only justice.
And one of the great hallmarks of Judaism and the Jewish faith is the emphasis on justice and humanism and fair play, treating people justly, and all those great values that are the core of the Arab-Islamic-Jewish-Christian ethic, which is a common monotheistic Abrahamic ethic to the Christians, Muslims and Jews alike.
And it strikes me that this kind of law in Israel shreds that kind of morality so grievously that it should be a real wake up call for everybody.
Yeah, well, I think it proves what a line of bullet is put out constantly by the Israeli government, that they have a claim on what Judaism is, that they represent Jews just because they say so or something.
Most Jews don't live in Israel.
So just, I mean, that's it.
Argument lost on the part of Likud right there.
Yeah, I think so.
I think Israel is a contentious phenomenon in many respects among many Jews.
I think that obviously the vast majority of Jews want a place where Jews can live in peace and safety.
And Israel was created partly to address the issue of the subjugation, the pogroms, the discrimination, the killing, the massacres that Jews were subjected to in Europe even before the Holocaust and the Nazis starting.
Remember, Zionism started in 1895.
So there was a problem in Europe with white racist Christians predominantly who were treating Jews like animals.
And this was completely unacceptable.
And a few Jews wanted to create a state where Jews could live in security.
And they did.
They created that state.
But you've now got millions of Palestinians being treated with great criminality and insecurity and, in some cases, barbarism.
When you get an F-16 from Israel attacking a house in Gaza and killing 10 babies, I mean, that's pretty barbaric to me.
That's an extreme case, of course.
But it happens now and then.
There's a war going on.
Israelis are fighting Palestinians, and Palestinians are fighting Israelis.
So this is not just a one-sided event.
The two are fighting each other.
But this war has been going on for decades.
And Israel has to really define itself either as the warrior protector of a small encircled Jewish minority that will perpetually kill anybody around it or occupy them, or it will define itself according to the great morality of the Jewish faith, which is mercy and justice and equality and all those good things.
And even without principle, it seems like the latter is the best pragmatic choice.
If there's going to be such a thing as the state of Israel for hundreds and hundreds of years into the indefinite future, everybody wants their state to continue to exist forever, apparently, you know.
You've got to have a peaceful situation with the neighbors.
You can't just have military dominance as your one trump card to play on every issue from now into eternity, you know.
That's right.
And that's the argument that I and others have been making for years.
If you go back historically, in Israel now, they talk about Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah as their great threats.
Well, 35 years ago, Iran was ruled by the Shah, who was a close friend of Israel.
Hamas and Hezbollah didn't exist.
They came into being in the early 80s heavily as a response to Israeli occupation policies in Lebanon and the West Bank and Gaza.
So I think it's important for Israelis and supporters of Israel and friends of Israel to look back and say, well, okay, what has been the consequence of Israel's policies?
Sure, to protect yourself is a normal thing, and everybody has a right to do that.
But when Israel tries to protect itself with excessive zeal, disproportionate force, colonization, and all the other things it's been doing, it generates a counter-reaction, which is exactly what has been going on for the last 40, 50 years or so.
And hopefully more enlightened leaders in Israel will emerge who will recognize this.
And we've had people in the Arab world who've come to terms with Israel, and now we'd like to see more Israelis come to terms with Palestinian rights.
Well, you know, I know it's like this to some degree in Israel, but it's especially in America, the entire debate about Israel is just completely upside down.
You'd probably, you know, if you're just a regular kid growing up in this society, you might believe that the Palestinians have been occupying Israeli territory all this time, and when will their suffering ever end for, you know, the way it's portrayed here?
And there's a certain, you know, extreme brand of this narrative, the very type that seemed to have motivated this shooter in Norway on Friday, and that is this belief that really you and every other Muslim out there are all agreed somehow to, on this plan, to create an Islamo-fascist caliphate across Europe and North America.
And so Israel is our shield.
They are on the front line of our battle, our defensive battle against the creeping Islamo-fascist caliphate.
Oh no!
What a terrible place to lose my collar.
I was going to get him to comment on that, and now I don't have time because there's like less than a minute left in the show.
But I guess I'll use the last couple minutes here to recommend you go check out antiwar.com/blog.
There's been a lot of great blogging lately.
Everybody's back.
John Glaser kicked that thing into gear.
We got a new intern named Brian Byer who's writing great stuff there.
Matt Barganier is even back writing on the blog.
And I have two from over the weekend, both of them destroying pretended journalism by anti-Iran warmongers.
George John in the Associated Press and David Sanger in the New York Times.
If you go to antiwar.com/blog you can find them.
They are titled AP Iran Scarepiece Proves Itself Wrong and NYT Iran Scarepiece Just Lies.
Innuendo.
I don't like George John, I don't like David Sanger, and I don't like it when they write stuff.
And go read about that at antiwar.com/blog.
All right, see you guys tomorrow.
