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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
The website is scotthorton.org.
Keep all my interview archives there, more than 2,700 of them now, going back to 2003.
Now our next guest is the great Philip Weiss from the Mondo Weiss blog.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Great, man.
How are you doing?
I'm doing real good.
Great to talk to you again.
Yeah, it's good.
It's good.
All right, so first of all, you keep a hell of a great website, and you've got a great stable of writers here, and I sure hope that people will bookmark this RSS feed and all that high-tech stuff.
Well, thanks, Scott.
Oh, well, yeah, sure.
You deserve it.
Appreciate it.
Okay, so first of all, I was hoping I could ask you about the outcome of the recent Israeli elections and news stories beginning to trickle through about their starting to form their coalition, and I was wondering if you could do a little bit of explaining who's who and what it's looking like there.
Yeah, the big question in the Israeli election was whether Netanyahu, who called the elections early for late January, whether he would be able to maintain his coalition, and it looks like he will be able to.
It had been thought that his coalition would include a surging right-wing settler party called the Israel Home Party, headed by this guy, Naftali Bennett, who's a rising star of Israeli politics.
Well, it probably will include Naftali Bennett, but it also will include the latest surge candidate, a centrist named Yair Lapid.
So it's been a – this centrist, Lapid, revived a party that had sort of fallen, no one really cared about, but he revived it, and it's called There is a Future, the party, and the liberal Zionists in the United States and people who want a peace process and a two-state solution are grasping onto this in the hope that Yair Lapid's gaining 15 seats will mean that he's going to drag Netanyahu to the left.
Well, it looks like Netanyahu will make a coalition with Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, but it's not going to drag him anywhere to the left.
Netanyahu doesn't believe in a Palestinian state.
Four years ago he mentioned a Palestinian state, said that there should be one in one speech at Bar-Ilan University, but since then he's done nothing but just continue to build settlements in the West Bank, and Naftali Bennett said that speech doesn't mean anything, we don't agree with it, he doesn't believe in it, and that's not our future.
Right, that's what Bennett said back when he worked for Netanyahu?
Oh, Bennett said that recently.
Yeah, Bennett said lately, hey, there's no such thing.
Yeah, he gave that speech, it was lip service, it's not going to happen.
And that's his opposition, right?
So in other words, he's giving Netanyahu credit.
Oh, come on, I know that he didn't mean that.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
He said it's not happening, he didn't mean that, and he said directly to Netanyahu, you bring up that speech, you put it as part of your platform and your coalition falls apart.
So that's the big hope now in the West among people who want a two-state solution.
They say that if Obama just puts a little pressure on Netanyahu to the point where he says, yeah, I believe in a Palestinian state, then the coalition will fall apart, the right wing will be disgraced, and the surging center in Israeli life will come out and say we want a Palestinian state.
I don't think that's going to happen, but that's the hope.
Yeah, boy, I mean, it sounds pretty far-fetched when you put it like that, but I don't know a better way.
Well, first of all, can you explain to me, what's the difference between this guy Bennett's party and, say, Avidor Lieberman's Yisrael Betanu or whatever?
Because they're basically secularist right-wing nationalist types, right, or not?
Yeah, I'm not quite sure of the difference.
I mean, I think Israel Betanu has a longer pedigree, but Naftali Bennett is firmly, the thing about his party is that it's just more open about there's never going to be a Palestinian state and we need to annex the land of the West Bank.
So Lieberman never really was saying that, right?
He always talked about land swaps and this and that kind of thing.
He gave lip service to the two-state agenda, Lieberman did, as foreign minister.
But Bennett is just baldly out there.
His racism is even more frank than it was under Lieberman, and the settler constituency is even more naked than it is for Lieberman.
So I think it's a refinement of that right-wing racist tendency that wants to transfer Palestinians, move them out of their land, which, of course, is a great tradition in Israeli history.
Right.
Well, let's get back to that in just a second, because, of course, there's certainly a lot to cover there.
But the guy, Lapid, now he's the TV star guy that just got into politics, right?
Yeah, he's very, you know, they say he's charismatic.
But then have there already been talks or all indications are he's not going to be part of the coalition, he'll be in the opposition?
No, I thought he was going to be part of the coalition.
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm misunderstanding.
I thought that the coalition was going to be more toward Bennett.
Bennett's going to be in the opposition.
Oh, no, no, the thing is that there is no contradiction in the end.
That's the key to Israeli politics, is that, you know, first of all, the point is that even though he's centrist, even though Lapid has indicated we need to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, indicating that they should have a state by such comments, even though he is this, you know, the two-state hope, he will join a party with far right, because they're all Jewish parties.
That's one thing that people don't understand about Israel, is that they don't want to make a coalition with any Arab parties.
There's 20% of the population is Palestinian Arab, and a lot of them vote in the elections.
But it's just like Mississippi back in 1964.
When they go to the nominating convention in Atlantic City that year, the democratic convention, they didn't have blacks in the delegation, and so it's segregationist.
And what you'll see in this coalition that they're creating in Israel is they won't have Palestinian parties in there.
20% of the population is disenfranchised from jump.
And Yair Lapid, this centrist, has already said that he wants to join a party with Netanyahu.
Now, will he drag Netanyahu to the left?
Maybe somewhat to the center.
It's true.
But he has said, don't worry about me.
I'm a trustworthy member of the coalition.
His game is Lapid wants to be a minister.
Lapid wants power.
So he has to form a coalition with Netanyahu, and it's going to include the far right.
That is the way things are looking.
And what you were describing before as the hope is that the people to the right of Netanyahu, that they'll be somehow turned off by the rhetoric enough to leave the coalition, and then that will give the moderates even more influence, but still it will amount to basically nothing.
Yes.
The Rube Goldberg device of getting a two-state solution right now, that liberal Zionists, people who believe in the need for a Jewish state, their dream is that Obama or the Europeans will finally start to put pressure on Israel over its settlement policy.
We'll say, hey, this is an illegal policy.
You've devoured the West Bank.
And that Netanyahu will be forced to make a concession to the United States or to Europe, and as soon as he makes any concession, that he will lose the far right.
And either he will have to call for a new election or try to rearrange his coalition to make it more centrist.
And then when you speak as though there really is no one to the left of TV guy, there's just the Arabs, but there's no Labor Party to speak of, right?
Kadima is just, oh, what's-her-face that nobody listens to anymore.
There's a left.
I don't know how big it is.
I think it's, I mean, there is Tzipi Libni, the one no one pays any attention to, as you say, and there is Merits Gain More Seats, which is a left-wing party.
Labor is really on its knees now.
But I think the thing that I would say about Israeli public opinion, which is kind of critical here, is it's very fluid.
And right now this guy, Lapid, no one had heard about.
Everyone was talking about Bennett was the surging candidate, the far right.
Well, who turned out to be the surging was the centrist candidate.
And so the American, even Elliott Abrams is saying, see, you were wrong.
It's not the far right.
This neocon who loves Israel and, you know, American neocon, Abrams has said, oh, see, Lapid is the centrist.
Israeli politics is moving toward the center.
And I think there's some truth to that.
I think it is moving to the center.
And there are indications that Lapid would gain, I think he got like 15 seats, that he would get 20 seats if it was, if the election were held today, they say, the latest polls say that Lapid would crush Netanyahu's party.
So this is the hope, that this move towards the center is going to be solidified in Israeli political life, that Netanyahu's government will collapse and that they will be able to put in a, that Lapid would be able to become independent of Netanyahu.
Well, let's hope so, although, as you were mentioning before, the facts on the ground still say that there are how many hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank?
And how in the hell are they ever going to be removed without a civil war?
Yeah, there's no question.
I mean, there's somewhere between, I mean, the numbers vary, but between 600 and 750,000 settlers, including in East Jerusalem.
So that's about the population of Austin, Texas, which is used to be.
Yeah, how would Austin feel if you said, you know, they're not going anywhere, they've buried, you know, their children there and their dead soldiers.
I mean, the thing is that if you go there and you look at what they've done to Jerusalem, the two-state solution is over.
They have, they've destroyed it.
There's just no way that you are going to be able to carve a viable Palestinian state.
I mean, if someone could prove it.
It makes a great red herring, though, doesn't it?
Instead of confronting that truth and moving on from there, we'll just talk about two states forever until there's just, you know, nothing but sand for the Palestinians to live on and starve.
Exactly.
It is a total, it's an indulgence of the Israeli right wing that this is even, that people say there could still be a two-state solution rather than reporting the reality.
And so there's no reflection whatsoever of the Palestinian, the conditions of Palestinian life.
There's no reflection of the fact that kids grow up there, millions of kids grow up there, being able to see the Mediterranean Sea from their rooftops and not being able to go to the Mediterranean Sea.
And Israelis can go anywhere they want.
They can go to the beach.
These kids who are in the occupation cannot go to the sea.
And it's just, it's insane.
You know, they live 10 miles from it.
And that type of reality, or the fact they have to go through cattle grates, checkpoints, if they can get permission to go into Jerusalem, if they can get permission to get out of Bethlehem, they're going through the type of chutes that we use for livestock here.
It's just, the whole thing is disgusting, and Americans don't know about it.
The humiliation that is practiced on a racial, ethnic basis.
Yeah.
Well, no, I completely agree, especially with that last sentiment.
You know, just remembering myself growing up watching TV, they never explain on TV, which is how the general public learns about things like this.
They never explain in a movie.
Well, this land was conquered back in 67, and the people there still live there, but they're occupied and they're under foreign martial law, like the occupation of Iraq, only for 47 years.
They never, ever explain that.
You have to read about it.
You have to want to know.
Yeah, and you know what?
How many times have you heard that Iraqis don't deserve to have a government because their people practice suicide bombing against occupiers?
We've never heard that.
We lost a lot of soldiers to suicide bombing when we were occupying Iraq.
And, you know, Americans sort of understood that that was a horrible price, but that it was the result of occupation.
And meanwhile, the fact that Palestinians have been occupied ten times as long, and they have sometimes, rarely, but sometimes resorted to suicide bombing, some of them, has meant that they are completely disqualified from ever being enfranchised.
And it's just a completely racist double standard.
And it reflects the Israel lobby in our politics.
Right, yeah, because, of course, America is the 800-pound gorilla and the whole thing.
But now, so as far as the future of the West Bank, you seem pretty clear.
But then, you know, this is the kind of thing that apparently the neoconservatives, the Israel lobby, and the Likudniks in power over there never ask themselves, which is, then what?
You know, like the regime change in Syria.
Yeah, and then how's it going to be after that?
You know, they never ask themselves.
But when I talk to Max Blumenthal, for example, who I think sees the world a lot like you do, he says that, well, forget it for Israel.
Israel's doomed because they've let Netanyahu, et cetera, put them on this path toward full annexation of the West Bank, and then they will be the minority ruling the majority in an apartheid system, and then they'll be out of business within, however, a very short amount of time after that, once it's official that the West Bank is part of Israel rather than separate occupied territory.
I think it's a very reasonable scenario that he's offering, and one that even lovers of Israel, which Max is not, have said is a likelihood.
And I don't see how, I mean, the deep concern that many of us have is that Israel, once it annexes the West Bank, would continue its policy of ethnic cleansing to the point of trying to push Palestinians into Jordan or something.
I mean, they want the land.
They don't want the bodies.
That's always been the policy, and they're getting the land and they're getting the bodies.
And that's going to be the problem.
There will be an apartheid.
An apartheid struggle has begun.
What we're seeing in the West Bank right now, this week, we're seeing a lot of demonstrations in the West Bank.
I'm not saying it's the third Intifada, but there is thoroughgoing resistance inside the Palestinian activist and youth community.
There's thoroughgoing resistance to a policy of occupation.
And Obama's going to be there in Israel for two days a month from now.
He's going to visit the West Bank for three hours.
But believe me, there are going to be big demonstrations around Obama's visit.
And the Hagel hearings have focused American attention on the occupation, and I believe the Obama visit will also focus attention on the occupation.
Well, yeah, I sure hope so.
What did you think about this thing where Ariel Sharon wanted to leave two-thirds of the West Bank?
That's what they're saying in the Times of Israel.
Yeah, I saw that.
I don't know what to make of it.
I mean, certainly, the thing about Israeli leaders is that the polity just moves to the right.
It just keeps moving to the right, so it makes a guy like Ariel Sharon look like a reasonable guy.
What's more, I mean, this movie, The Gatekeepers, which is nominated for an Oscar, is a documentary based on six intelligence chiefs from Israeli government over decades.
Yeah, I read about that.
Yeah, these guys all say, let's get out.
We've got to get out of the West Bank.
Let's get out.
Let's get out.
Let's get out.
They're the former heads of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency.
Yeah, security service.
And what it says is just what you're saying about Sharon, just what Max Blumenthal is saying.
Any reasonable person who wants to save the Jewish state says, we've got to separate.
The world is not going to tolerate apartheid.
We've gotten away with it because, you know, Uncle Sucker, as John Mearsheimer puts it, has been supporting us.
But there's going to come a time where Uncle Sucker won't.
All right, now, you did have a piece.
And by the way, I would say, you know, the other night on 60 Minutes, Robert Simon, even though he was promoting this military alliance between the U.S. and Israel and this Iron Dome military missile defense system, he badgered Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, over how do you figure this?
Why do you do this?
You know, we give you money and you build more settlements.
What's that about?
And he said that a few times.
And any reasonable American has got to wonder how long we're going to take this.
Yeah, I mean, assuming that they're minimally informed on the issue.
But, yeah, so that's actually where I was going to go next was Israel's changing image because as pessimistic as I think we both sound about this, you've been writing about how, you know, things are changing.
CBS News went ahead and ran a story about that Instagram picture of the IDF soldier with a child, a Palestinian child's head and his crosshairs.
Was that on the nightly news?
Oh, I don't watch the nightly news.
I read it at your blog that they ran it, right?
Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.
It certainly has gotten a lot of attention.
It was on their website anyway, I guess.
Great, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's a little something.
And like you're saying here on 60 Minutes, apparently the guy asked, what, a reasonable follow-up question?
You know, I saw on CNN International, for some reason they're just showing BMWs doing donuts all morning.
But they did interview Stephen Walt earlier about, I think, Obama's trip coming up.
Really?
On CNN International?
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Well, they're just doing the soccer player who's killed or some sports star is accused of killing his girlfriend, and then these African guys are doing donuts in their BMWs, which looks like fun, but it's the same thing that's been on for about an hour and a half now.
Wow.
Thankfully, at least it's on mute, you know.
But my other choices are MSNBC or Fox.
So what am I supposed to do, man?
I have to have something on in the background over here.
I understand.
I agree with you.
I watch a lot of CNN.
But, I mean, you're not thrilled about the Oscar Pistorius story, I can see.
The who?
He's the Blade Runner who's accused of murdering his girlfriend, isn't that?
Oh, yeah, no, I don't know or care about things like that at all.
I know you don't.
You know, Scott, I admire you for that.
And you don't even like Chuck Hagel, too.
So I know you've got to focus.
But I think the great thing about this Hagel hearing is that it's really blown up the lobby, and people have gotten to talk about the lobby.
There have been a number of humorous anecdotes.
I mean, The Onion did a big thing saying that Israel was going to exercise its veto power over U.S. foreign policy confirmations for only the thousandth time in the history of the United States or something like that.
And then Saturday Night Live did a skit, which did not air, but which is out online and millions of people, I think, have probably seen or hundreds of thousands, in which John McCain, a guy who plays John McCain, badgers a guy playing Hagel to agree to perform oral sex on a donkey if Netanyahu asks him to do it for Israel's national security.
You know, that would have been so much funnier if they had had the Hagel character the whole time say, Oh, yeah, no, no, you're totally right.
Yeah, no, I totally agree with you.
And then that's still not being good enough the whole time, right?
And then still being really skeptical.
Are you sure you would?
Oh, I swear I would.
Anything you say.
Right, right.
Because that's more like it.
I agree with you.
It might have actually made the air if they'd done it like that, but that's all right.
It was a little too long.
It wasn't that funny.
Yeah, it really wasn't that funny.
All right.
But, yeah, no, I mean, it does seem like it is.
It's sort of what I was going to ask you.
Do you think that they've really overdone it with this Hagel thing?
Because I even saw it was in McClatchy newspapers had a political cartoon.
Usually the political cartoons that get published in the paper, very conventional kind of wisdom.
And there's something about, you know, there's no such thing as the Israel lobby, but then there's a hundred billboards and the signs of signs on the sides of buildings and there's airplanes flying overhead, trailing banners all against Joe Cagle, you know.
Yeah.
Oh, that's funny.
Yeah, I saw that.
It was great.
I mean, I think the great thing here has been that finally, partly because Democrats are saying we're against the Israel lobby, which is kind of ridiculous, but because they're part of the Israel lobby, but there is a break in the Israel lobby.
And there's some there's the Republican Israel lobby, which is all for the settlements, all for devouring the West Bank.
And then you have the Democratic Israel lobby, party Israel lobby, which has never criticized Israel military option against Iran.
But maybe these settlements aren't such a good idea.
So that break is starting to happen.
And I think that's a good thing.
It may it will lead to more, especially when people realize that they can get a two state solution.
Yeah.
I mean, if it like you were saying before, if it just leads to more discussion of the issue, that would be a nice step forward.
Huge.
Yeah.
So I'm encouraged on that score.
I think Americans are waking up.
It's just too obvious.
And, you know, even Chris Matthews can't continue to pretend like this is not a major force in our politics.
Right.
Well, and, you know, they picked a fight and they won it pretty easy over Chas Freeman, because whoever heard of the national or the director of the National Intelligence Council, what the hell is that?
Nobody knows about that unless they live in D.C. and care about stuff like that.
Regular Americans don't.
But the secretary of defense, Vietnam war hero and this kind of thing, like they might have bit off a little bit more than they could chew on this one.
Looks like he's going to go ahead and be confirmed.
And I don't know if Bill Kristol will ever have a Waterloo, but, you know, it seems like it's another notch, another strike against him and his crew.
I think that's a great line, Scott.
I think that this really is maybe there, that we're going to see the neocons finally being eclipsed.
I mean, the Democrats are finally running against neocons.
Chuck Schumer is bashing the neocons, even though he's might as well be a neocon himself.
But the willingness of Democrats to bash them means that they recognize Americans don't want another war.
They can't run with that kind of platform.
I think the great thing about the Hagel confirmation is he will be confirmed and there will not be a war with Iran.
I've got my fingers crossed, but that's the way I interpret it.
This guy doesn't want it.
Yeah.
Well, I think there are really very few interests in America that really want a war with Iran at this point.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they won't.
I mean, there's always World War I.
I was just talking with Eric Margulies the other day about the dispute between China and Japan and the Pacific and all that, and this is how wars start, really, a lot of times.
Iraq was an aberration where they announced a year and a half beforehand that our policies, regime change, we're going to make up 10,000 lives between now and a year and a half from now to get it done and then do it that way.
Usually it's maybe a little thing gets blown out of proportion.
Some politicians' feelings get hurt or something terrible like that.
I agree with you.
I think that that's the way the world works.
It is the way World War I happened, and better communication maybe can keep us from that kind of thing from happening.
It's just a lot of American and allied firepower near Iran all the time, just lots of little tripwires waiting for something to blow up.
And, of course, the lacunics.
I don't know how crazy Netanyahu is.
Maybe he's just mean.
Oh, yeah.
I know.
He does seem like he has a pragmatic streak, but just the same.
These guys, they've set their red line, and I'm scared of what they can do.
They're nuts.
All right.
Well, listen, thanks very much for your time.
We've got to go, but I sure appreciate talking to you again, Phil.
Great.
Okay.
Talk to you soon.
Everybody, that's Phil Weiss.
Mondoweiss.net is the blog, and he's got a whole great stable of writers there, too.
Lots of great stuff.
Mondoweiss.net.
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