All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
And our first guest on the show today is Dr.
Steven Zunis.
He is a professor of politics and international studies at the university of San Francisco, where he chairs the program in middle Eastern studies and he writes for the Huffington post and a lot of other places like that.
The latest one there is bipartisan assault on middle East peace.
Welcome back to the show.
Steven, how are you doing?
Be with you.
Better question.
Where are you doing?
Well, actually, right now I am in Benicacin, Spain.
Right.
I'm overlooking the Mediterranean as we speak.
I, I have a four week teaching gig at the Joan, the first university in Castellon, working with a wonderful international group of graduate students and their master's program in peace, conflict and development.
And, um, uh, decided to come down where there's wifi service and talk to you, which happens to be in the sister of cafe of a historic old hotel where Ernest Hemingway and Dos Santos and a lot of other literary and other folks used to hang out years ago.
Uh, I don't think they came for the wifi like I do, but it's still a very nice place.
Well, right on.
I think that's really cool.
It makes a nice little bit of scenery for our discussion here.
If, uh, you know, people have imaginations, which I'm pretty sure they do probably, um, even if they've never been there to remember what it looks like.
And then of course, there's always Google images too, if they're that curious.
All right.
Anyway, so Huffington post.com bipartisan assault on middle East peace.
Uh, this is about the Israeli occupation of Capitol Hill, uh, both parties, Capitol Hill, something like that.
Yeah, this is ridiculous.
You know, public opinion in the United States has been evolving over the years, especially with younger people, uh, you know, more and more Americans having more balanced view, you know, saying that their rights and wrongs on both sides, you know, generally supporting Israel's right to exist, but saying, Hey, this kind of occupation and colonization or oppression is uncool, no matter who you are.
Um, and, but, and a lot of liberals used to have this real idealistic view of Israel, you know, the Paul Newman and Exodus kind of cowboy and Indian thing.
Uh, now take a more balanced perspective.
I mean, there's been a lot of movement in public opinion, but my God, Congress is just, seems to be getting worse and worse and worse.
Uh, this resolution, um, passed by a vote of 411 to two, 411 to two with eight abstentions, uh, that, you know, it was Ron Paul, as you might expect voted.
No, John Dingell is a Democrat from Michigan, probably the largest, longest serving Democratic member.
You know, he, um, he's in a district that has a large, uh, Arab American, um, uh, constituency and suburban Detroit.
He voted no, but, uh, everybody else seemed to support this thing.
And it just is dangerous on a whole number of levels, including increasing United States, um, uh, ties and military ties to Israel.
You know, the arms control community is basically saying, you know, there's already too many arms in the middle East, but you have, you know, 98% of the Congress saying, oh, there's not enough arms.
We need this.
We need to provide even more.
Uh, and you have, um, well, it reiterates us support for Israel security, which is not unreasonable in and of itself, except that it specifies for the first time ever Israel as a Jewish state.
In other words, the first time in history, uh, to, to my knowledge that the United States has ever placed itself on record of having an obligation to defend the religious or, or cultural or ethnic identity to a particular country.
Um, you know, I mean, it's, we can call itself whatever it wants, but to say that the United States has the obligation to defend it as a Jewish state is, is, is, is, is, is a, is a, what I think is a pretty dangerous and as far as I know, unprecedented state.
Yeah.
Well, you know, there used to be all kinds of politics and maybe there still is all kinds of politics of racial supremacy here at home, but yeah, outright pledging ourselves to racial supremacy in some other or ethnic, as you say, uh, whatever, however you want to classify it, religious supremacy in a foreign country.
Um, I, as far as I know, that's a new one too.
And by the way, it's not all Jews live in Israel.
Hey, you know, 20%, 20% of the population is not Jewish.
Uh, Israel itself, not to mention the millions of Palestinians, which are under de facto occupation, either directly in terms of Israeli military control or in these various cantons where the Palestinian authority is the local authority, but they're surrounded by Israel and Israel can tell them where they can come and go and, and all that kind of stuff.
They're effectively still under occupation.
Uh, and, and in fact, the resolution also related to this, it says the United States should press, press Arab countries to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Again, this is unprecedented.
The, the Camp David Accords with Egypt, which have held firm for 30 something, 34 years at this point, there's no demand that Egypt recognized Israel as a Jewish state, the Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement, which has been in effect for something like 18 years, no demands that Jordan recognized Israel as a Jewish state, but now the United States has raised the bar saying that peace with Israel is not enough.
You have to specifically recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Again, this is, this is unprecedented.
Think of all the US treaties we've had with other countries.
We had these arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.
We didn't recognize it as a communist state or anything like that.
You, you, you make agreements with governments.
You don't, you don't say you don't identify them for any kind of particular identity.
That's up to them.
It's not up to a foreign country to, to validate a particular kind of identity.
This is, this is ridiculous.
And again, this is unprecedented.
Yeah.
Well, you know, you just kind of identify the problem too, which is that all of their neighbors are willing to recognize Israel, at least within 67 borders, including the Hamas government of the Gaza Strip is willing to recognize Israel.
And so they just have to keep upping the ante and moving the goalposts further back because otherwise there'd be peace and we can't have that.
Exactly.
Exactly.
You know, every time the Arabs agree to a new concession, Israel and Congress then ups the ante to say, you have to add this other thing too.
And, and the fact is, is, you know, the Arab countries and the Palestine authority have made clear, we will recognize Israel, make peace if they withdraw from the occupied territories.
In fact, even if they don't, you know, withdraw from all of them, but have some mutual and reciprocal minor border adjustments, I mean, the Palestinians are compromising all sorts of things, but, but, but, but then to up the ante and say, no, not only have to you do that, you have to recognize them as a Jewish state knowing full well that no Arab country is going to be willing to do that, basically Congress is saying, we don't want peace.
We want it.
We want to continue the state of war.
We want to continue, uh, uh, insecurity where American arms manufacturers can continue to sell and provide things to Israel.
And this, the other piece of this interest, this piece of legislation, it calls for increasing military aid above the already record $3.1 billion, you know, by an additional 600 million.
Uh, and, and at a time where they're cutting back, not just on foreign aid programs to help the poor, after all Israel, which is only one in one thousands of the world's population gets about a third of us foreign aid, more than all of Africa combined, but you know, it's not only cutting off foreign aid for programs that actually help poor people that might need oral rehydration, AIDS prevention, sustainable development, food aid, that kind of thing, of course, cut off and cut back to the programs here at home.
We're saying we should increase aid to Israel even further over the record amount of money that's already under Obama's budget.
Yeah.
Well, and here's the thing too, and this is, well, it's not shocking other than it's shocking and how tone deaf these people are to their own tyranny.
And that's the American Israeli public affairs committee that's behind this thing and the Congressman that all went along where they outright bemoan.
I think only Rick Santorum was so crass during the Republican, uh, uh, campaign there, uh, to outright publicly decry anything, but the staunchest support for each and every one of our Middle East sock puppet dictators.
Even if that means, you know, somehow coercing Mubarak or Mubarak's army to massacre the people in Tahir Square, I guess we cannot have any kind of Arab spring.
They just outright bemoan it.
They don't even give the slightest bit of, um, uh, you know, lip service to people, power and democracy over there in this thing, despite whatever Hillary Clinton likes to say on TV.
That's this is America's real policy.
All right.
We'll be right back with Steven Zunis right after this y'all.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
We're talking with Steven Zunis.
He's halfway around the world in Spain right now.
Wrote this piece for the Huffington post.com bipartisan assault on Middle East peace.
Now I'm going to be as quiet as I can and let you talk more about this resolution.
I guess where we left off was where they outright complain about the Arab spring.
They don't even pretend that America cares about democracy in the Middle East at all.
Yeah, I, this part really, really riled me, to be honest, because, you know, they, there's the opening clauses of the other resolution, basically bemoan that it is destabilizing traditional U.S. allies, that Iran is taking advantage of it.
You know, here you have this, this movement for freedom, you know, which is, you know, clearly incomplete, clearly does have complications.
There's a lot of struggle to come.
But, you know, my God, this is one of the most exciting things that has happened that far of the world, you know, since forever, you know, and instead of celebrating that this was popular movement for freedom, they basically put it in the light.
Oh, no, this might conceivably, theoretically have harm, have harm to alleged U.S. and Israeli strategic interests.
Well, of course, a big part of the reason why America spends so much money and ever backing the dictatorships of the Middle East is so they'll leave Israel alone.
Mubarak is the perfect example of that.
So they're right to fear that, hey, if things change and the people of the Middle East actually have a say in the policy of their government, maybe it won't be what we want.
You know, we talk with Adam Morrow from Interpress Service on the show from time to time, who's reporting from Cairo about how, well, there was more pressure before and less now, but still it's a major issue about whether they're going to open up the Rafah border.
They don't.
Nobody's talking about, you know, abrogating the entire peace treaty with Israel or anything like that.
But when it comes to doing what Netanyahu wants, you know, at the checkpoint there, maybe not so much.
So, yeah, things might change, but still.
So what are you going to do?
Put Omar Suleiman, the torture monster, in charge instead to keep everybody down and to keep them from having their way when it's their Egypt, you know?
Yeah.
What are we, the British or something?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, and it shows, you know, in a sense, the colonialist mindset of Congress, you know, that they are, you know, that they see, you know, that they're unwilling to celebrate a struggle for human freedom and then say that the moan of the fall of regimes long considered to be stabilizing forces and blaming Iran for seeking to exploit the political transition and undermine government traditionally in the United States.
I assume that's a reference to Bahrain, where the freedom struggle there was brutally suppressed, you know, by the U.S.
-backed dictatorship and by the Saudis, which invaded the country to suppress this pro-democracy movement.
And even though the Bahrainis' own internal investigation found that the Iranians were not behind the uprising, that it was a genuinely broad-based pro-democracy movement, here we have Congress weighing in by this 411 to 2 majority, you know, implying that this and these other things are some kind of Iranian conspiracy to threaten Israel and the United States.
That's ridiculous.
And, you know, of all of the government that I'm the enemy of, right, you got to start at the top, right?
So I want the presidency strict of its power first and to have, you know, the imperial presidency, the presidency that can start a war on its own without even the congressional rubber stamp as it's been since Korea.
You know, that's the kind of thing that has to end if we're ever to have any kind of limited republic as opposed to a world empire.
And yet, man, I'm kind of glad that we have the calm patience and wisdom of George W. Bush and Barack Obama keeping these decisions out of the hands of the guys that run the Senate.
I mean, they are.
I mean, thank goodness we can't get elected to the presidency.
That's why they're still in the Senate.
And thank goodness for that.
They're completely off their rocker, man.
I mean, it's amazing.
Just just a few days ago, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed this resolution that basically called in the United States to no longer recognize like 95 percent of Palestinian refugees as refugees.
And the Obama administration said, hey, look, you know, historically, you know, the children and grandchildren of refugees are considered refugees.
If they're not allowed to return to their own country, they are, by definition, refugees.
But but the bipartisan majority of Congress is saying, no, we have the right to say that the only true Palestinian refugees are the people who were the folks who originally left Palestine in 1948, of which are only about 30,000 left because they're like 80 something years old now.
I thought you were going to say that originally left Palestine two thousand years ago.
And you're right, right.
Yeah, but it's a great way to do to absolve the the Palestinian refugee camp problems and saying, oh, all the original people who left, so they, you know, who in fact were forced out.
But but, you know, that those who are ethnically cleansed that but once those guys die off, hey, there's no more Palestinian refugee problem.
The Israelis no longer have any obligation, et cetera, et cetera, along these lines.
You know, it's a very, very convenient, you know, for Congress to unilaterally make this declaration.
And the Obama administration has actually said, hey, this could be real complicated.
This could cause some real problems.
This get a lot of people upset us.
And it is just not it doesn't really make sense.
This is something that should be in the peace process, et cetera.
And and Congress is saying, no, even the Democrats are saying, to hell with you, Obama.
We're going to support this Republican resolution and push it through anyway.
So as critical as I am of President Obama and some decisions he's made, at least on this case, he's being a little bit more rational than they than than both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
Yeah, well, basically what's happening is he's smart enough.
That's his calm leadership is he's trying to give a little bit of a puppet show of anything like a pretended peace process here to just throw a bone to not even a bone, a pretend bone to somebody.
And then the Israel lobby, and especially in the Republican Party, they take that as, oh, look at him taking the side of the Palestinians or whatever and freak out and attack him as though he's betraying the cause, when all he's saying is, I want to do the exact same policy, only, hey, let's, you know, hold a conference every once in a while.
And, you know, like Condoleezza Rice, pretend like we mean to get somewhere just to kind of, you know, keep the Fuhrer tamped down a little bit.
That's all.
Exactly, exactly.
And in the fact that, again, this is yet another area where the United States is totally out of sync with the rest of the world, which reminds me, there's also a provision in this resolution, past 411 to 2, that the United States should veto any so-called one-sided resolutions in the UN Security Council directed at Israel, even those that are reasonably critical of Israel's ongoing violations of international humanitarian law and previous UN Security Council resolutions or possible future crimes against humanity and other war crimes.
And, you know, it's just amazing.
I mean, even under Reagan and Carter and Nixon and Ford and Bush Senior, you know, the U.S. was willing to say, hey, if Israel really goes off the wall and does something totally crazy, we'll at least pass a resolution critical.
Now, we won't put sanctions, we won't put any teeth in it, it'll be essentially meaningless, but at least we'll say something.
And now Congress is saying, you can't even say something, you have to veto it anyway, even if it's meaningless and toothless.
Yep.
And Obama has only one choice, and that is pander worse and more, and that could cause another war.
Anyway, that's the subject for the next one, I guess.
Thanks very much for your time.
It's great talking to you as always, Stephen.
Enjoy it a lot.
Thanks a lot.
Stephen Zunis, everybody.
HuffingtonPost.com.
