01/09/14 – Philip Weiss – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to The Thing Here.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Appreciate you tuning in.
If I sound like I'm slouching in my chair, it's because I am slouching.
I got a new chair, and it's kind of slouch-inducing.
I'm comfortable, though, so I hope it sounds okay.
Although slouchy.
All right.
Well, scotthorton.org is the website.
You can find all the interview archives there.
More than 3,000 of them now at scotthorton.org, and you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube at slash scotthortonshow.
Hey, you should do that.
All right, good.
Our next guest on the show today is the great Philip Weiss, keeper of the blog Mondoweiss, and a long-time accomplished journalist of many other different descriptions as well.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Phil?
I'm doing good, Scott.
How are you doing?
I'm doing good.
I'm very happy to have you back on the show.
Well, thank you.
I'm pleased to be here.
Cool.
And I like you slouching.
You're no slouch.
I'm sorry.
That was my line.
You're no slouch.
You scripted me.
You told me ahead of time about the joke, and I was supposed to say, you're no slouch, and I failed.
I'm sorry.
Did I give you that line?
I should have.
Didn't you email me that and said you were just a whole setup, and I was supposed to say that?
Whatever.
You'll still get paid.
Don't worry about it.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
Good.
All right.
Hey, so listen.
Yes.
This whole peace talks thing where John Kerry, the Secretary of State, is going to go over there and work out a Palestinian state-to-state solution type of a situation there.
What's the deal with that?
How's it going?
Working well?
Played it promptly?
No.
It's not going very well, and your listeners should understand that it's not going very well.
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A framework.
What does that mean, a framework?
I think a framework means, you know, without getting too semantic, which they do as soon as they try.
Any of these guys who tries to explain it, they're soon in a swamp of words.
So I'm going to just avoid that by saying, in 2000, there were the Clinton parameters.
In 2003 or 4, there was the road map to peace.
And then subsequently, there was Annapolis.
Each of these things, and before that, there was Oslo in 93, 94, the Declaration of Principles.
In each of these cases, you have, hey, we're going to work toward getting a state.
And these are the basic ways that we're going to try to do it.
So that has been set up several times over.
And this time, they can't even get to that language.
So in the other cases, they set up the language, sort of, these are our goals, this is what we want to do.
And in five years, we want to have a Palestinian state.
That's what they said in 94, the Declaration of Principles.
And you know, that produced nothing.
And the Clinton parameters produced nothing.
The Annapolis, the road map to peace, produced nothing.
This time, they can't even get the, sort of, blueprint, the playbook established.
And they can't even get these guys to stand next to each other and say, yeah, we agree on this is the framework.
And the framework, by the way, the quote unquote framework, is very similar to what the Clinton parameters were.
They were, hey, we're going to set up two states, basically along the 67 lines, but with various exchanges of land.
We're going to divide Jerusalem, that kind of thing.
In fact, this framework, already the Israelis are making demands they've never made before.
And the Palestinians are saying this is not, it's just that the thing's falling apart before our eyes.
What are the new demands the Israelis are making?
Well, one demand that the Israelis are making is that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
And Netanyahu, the right-winger at the head of the Israeli government, has said this on a number of occasions.
And the Palestinians have said, no way, we're not, we recognize, part of this process is we'll recognize Israel as a state.
But we're not going to recognize it as a Jewish state.
That would be like, in America, you know, expecting that blacks would say that this is a white state, you know, a white country.
20% of Israel's population is not Jewish.
So there are a lot of reasons that Palestinians would not want to do this, but basically it's an obstacle that the Israeli government has set up so that it doesn't have to come to an understanding with the Palestinians.
They don't want a Palestinian state.
They're dead set against it, this government.
So yeah, they're just moving the goalposts to make it harder and harder to kick through there is all.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, they've pretty much made up their mind that they want the West Bank, the program of Zionism since the 1920s or 30s has been, we want the land, we don't want the people who are on the land.
And we're going to do what we can to get as much land with as few Palestinians on it.
That program really kicked in in 47 and 48 after the UN resolution creating a Jewish state when they helped expel a lot of, they expelled a lot of Palestinians from, from lands that became Israel.
So, and this is their program, the West Bank, they want to grab the most fertile land that they can in the West Bank with as much water on it as possible and herd the Palestinians into towns, make life uncomfortable for them, get them out of there.
It's not a pretty picture.
Well, and so at this point it's just what they want is you can call it whatever you want.
They don't make up 10 new descriptions for some vague aspirations for ever doing the opposite of the actual facts on the ground, as they call it, as they're being created there.
And the Israeli position, are they going to just force march all these people into the Jordan River or they're going to put them on a, on a, you know, some future train all to the Gaza Strip or they're just going to keep it like it is and just keep expanding apartment complexes until it covered all West Bank and the, and the Palestinians are all just homeless living in the alleys or what are the, there's got to be some kind of plan here.
What the hell is the plan?
There's no, it doesn't make sense.
There's no vision.
There's no vision.
Because how many Palestinian people live on the West Bank?
Uh, I'd say somewhere, including East Jerusalem, occupied East Jerusalem, excuse me, we're talking about somewhere north of three, three and a half million people.
So, um, uh, that's a lot of people.
And I think there is simply no vision.
There's a hope that ultimately, um, the Palestinians will be, uh, uh, will, would accept some type of, uh, citizenship under Jordanian sovereignty.
That's what the right wingers want.
They don't want a Palestinian, they say, we can't trust the Palestinians to have a state just on our Eastern border, uh, because they'll be firing rockets.
So we've got to, uh, the, the, the only way that they can have rights is under, uh, someone else's sovereignty and not theirs.
So it's just a hopeless situation.
There's no vision whatsoever on the part of Israel's leaders with respect to this conflict that has dominated, uh, the kind of is, is Israel's existence from the start in 1948.
But Scott, I just want to ask you here, how much of an understanding of their, is there out there in, in the country as you perceive it about this peace process and, and what it's producing or not producing?
Well, the best I can tell, not very much.
Um, although, you know, I have a better answer now to another question you've asked me before, and this may be the same answer to the question you just asked me too, about, you know, what it is, uh, best I can tell other people believe about this.
And it finally did occur to me, this was the, the, the term, the jargon, uh, is all this, as he says, so wrapped up in semantics, the jargon, I couldn't quite recall that explained the way this subject was introduced to me anyway, was land for peace, land for peace.
In other words, the Palestinians are holding the Israelis hostage and unless the Israelis give up some land to them, the Palestinians are going to keep suicide bombing their children in the pizza parlor.
And then they're, they never explain where these Palestinians come from, where they are, what side of which border they're on or whatever.
They sound like they're coming across some frontier, um, and that, and how horrible is it that the whole world and the commie UN and everybody expect the Israelis to give in to this, these hostage takers demands that they have to give up their land in order to get a cessation, uh, from this terrorist onslaught.
And that's at least, you know, the right wing talk radio version of it.
And I would suspect that that with all of its unproven and, and many times in many cases unspoken, uh, false, uh, premises and, and assumptions in that, I think that that's pretty much what most Americans believe.
That's certainly the way the, the jargon with which the subject was introduced to me, you know, and what it meant to me, you know, vaguely anyway, you know, as a, when it back when Israel Palestine represented the subject that I was sort of interested in, but hadn't gotten to yet.
You know what I mean?
When I was younger.
Yeah.
But what about my belief that there are people out there who have a less, a, has a more historical understanding who are beginning to, uh, people in small towns, small cities, regional cities, big cities all over the heart of the country who would say, the Palestinians have gotten the shaft.
Uh, I'm tired of hearing this Israeli story about their terrorists and this and that.
These people have gotten the shaft there.
You don't think there's much of a reception about that.
You know, I hope you're right.
And I plead ignorance.
I mean, I certainly don't want to be the naysayer on that.
It seems to me just completely outrageous.
And you know what, you know, they call the crying and shooting, uh, to me there is nothing more obnoxious on planet earth than the Israeli government crying victim all day.
It's disgusting and it's laughable.
And if everyone doesn't see it that way, I don't know what the hell is wrong with them.
I mean, other than they just don't have, don't know where to look at a source that isn't just parroting whatever, you know, MSNBC would have Alan Dershowitz tell them, you know, uh, uh, uh, yeah, I mean, those to the facts, I mean, what are you going to do?
They've been occupying these people since 1967, never even mind the whole knock, but before that, but just look at these people living under a foreign martial law for 40 years.
Yeah.
I, I guess I just, I, I have to believe that some of this understanding is beginning to creep in because I mean, uh, I mean for no other reason than people have heard this talk about a Palestinian state now for, uh, 20 years and, uh, you know, American presidents have been saying they want a Palestinian state for, uh, certainly 14 or 15 years.
Uh, I guess George Bush was the first one to say it, but yeah, it was a scandal when Hillary first brought it up during her Senator election at the end of the Clinton years.
Oh, I said the word and it was a scandal, but they, that was when they really started moving that way.
Guys, I don't really know as much about before that as you, uh, hold on, we're going to take this quick break and we'll be back with the great Phil Weiss from Mondo Weiss.
That's Mondo Weiss.net.
Great bunch of writers over there.
Not just him.
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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show, and I got to make a correction.
The Israelis crying boo-hoo as they shoot is tied for first place with most obnoxious with the American government crying and pretending they're the victims as they rampage around the world.
Israel, I guess, I pick on Israel all the time so much just because it's like America's little mini-me with the exact same hegemonic designs and aggressive foreign policy and lies from dawn till dusk, you know, just on a little bit smaller scale regional instead of global hegemony.
But, you know, they're working on it.
And anyway, it's the very same thing as, you know, George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton or Bush Jr. or Obama crying boo-hoo about what a dangerous world it is that they have to kill all these people to protect us from, you know.
I thought we were their mini-me.
I thought we took these lessons from them, but, you know, that's because I believe in the Israel lobby theory.
Yeah, well, no, America had to be an empire to recognize and guarantee Israel's existence in the first place, I think, you know, but it's a vicious circle, you know.
It certainly goes around and comes around.
Yeah, but I don't think the good news is that I do not think they're going to get their Iran war out of us.
Well, now, so let me ask you about that, because there's some coverage on your blog about, you know, the Senate.
You're referring to Jim Loeb's work about how many Democrats and Republicans are lining up for sanctions in the Senate to try to sabotage the Iran deal.
And yet, as loyal foot soldiers they are to AIPAC, you say that they're not talking about it back home to their people.
They're not trying to brag about that at all.
And because as much as the American people dislike Obama, the one thing about him they support these days seems to be that he's trying to work out some sort of peace deal with Iran and end that Cold War enmity with Iran, which, you know, I'm proud of the American people for that.
Finally, to kind of have a little bit of a, let's knock this stuff off for a little while, take a breather from all the wars for a minute, you know?
But so, Scott, you think that the American people are having some influence over their government in that respect?
A little bit, anyway.
Yeah.
I mean, well, let's see, I read just not too long ago, just kind of anecdotally, Chuck Hagel saying, look, the American people just don't want any more wars over there.
Right.
And he's saying, hey, these are the constrictions that we public servants have to live within now.
Right.
But don't you think, I mean, on that one, don't you think that Chuck Hagel is actually sincerely committed in his heart that he's, you know, expletive deleted if he's going to allow America to get into another war?
No, I wouldn't say that.
OK.
Well, I have more faith.
I mean, I think that he knows better.
But will he stop it?
I mean, look at Robert Gates didn't do what it took to stop Obama from doing the Libya war.
And we all knew at the time that he was against it, but he couldn't win a fight with Hillary Clinton over whether to start a war when he's the secretary of war.
It's because he didn't do his job in stopping it.
He didn't do what it took to stop it.
And so that's the kind of thing that I would expect out of Chuck Hagel if it comes down to it.
In fact, he was maybe didn't do a great job, but he was right there next to John Kerry testifying to Congress about why we had to do Syria back September.
So, well, I mean, oh, you mean Hagel was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, back to the politics of it and the politics that I know about it, the as you said, you know, Jim Loeb said that has reported well, I mean, now everyone knows there are 47 senators have signed on to this legislation that would basically say, let Israel decide whether there should be a war over there and we have to support them if they want to go to war.
And so it's a Loeb has called it the wag the dog, the wag the dog legislation.
And there are 47 senators have signed on, AIPAC has supported it.
But the critical thing to remember is that AIPAC used to be bragged to be able to brag about getting 70 senators signatures overnight.
This time they've gotten 47 over a couple of months or over a month or so.
And those 47, according to Loeb, are not bragging on it.
They're keeping a low profile on it because they know how unpopular it is out there.
And even more important, you have people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who's really a foot soldier of the Israel lobby.
She led the ovations in the Congress when Netanyahu came to address the Congress a couple years ago, 29 standing ovations.
She's a congresswoman from Florida who also chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz is supporting Obama on this and saying, we don't want more sanctions on Iran.
We don't want this legislation.
We want to go ahead with a deal.
So in that sense, the Israel lobby has been divided.
And that's good news.
Yeah.
Diane Feinstein actually is good on the sanctions, too, at least at this point.
Correct?
Yeah, yeah.
She's been good.
She's been good.
There have been a number.
And, you know, I mean, I always am saying, look at these Democrats who are supposed to be liberal and anti-war, you know, several of whom, I mean, the generation's passing, but several of whom got in because of opposing the Vietnam War, and they've supported the Iraq War.
And, well, you know, there are like 13 or 14 Democratic senators behind this, including all these blue state powers like Cory Booker and Chuck Schumer.
But I don't think that, generally speaking, I think the kind of liberal Democratic group is not signing up for this thing.
So that's a good sign.
Yeah, it is.
Those dynamics are changing.
In fact, you talk about, oh, it's the Beinart piece.
I read that, too, in Haaretz.
Peter Beinart, who was a liberal hawk during the Iraq War days and then has basically been a sort of mild critic, I would call it, compared to you anyway, of America's Israel policy recently ran the Open Zion blog at the Daily Beast there for a while.
And he was saying that the Israel lobby's control in D.C. worked too well and that they have basically frozen themselves out of power after a fashion.
What exactly is that about?
Can you explain that?
Well, I think what he's saying, if I remember the piece correctly, the one that I, I've embraced a lot of his stuff.
And this one, I mean, he said that the American Jewish leadership, by supporting Israel and Netanyahu and the settlement program blindly, has alienated itself from American Jewish life where American Jews are more liberal.
So he's perceiving some of these sort of divisions and breakages that we see in Debbie Wasserman Schultz versus Chuck Schumer.
I think that, I forget exactly which piece you were referring to, but generally speaking, I think Beinart is, these guys are going to be saying in a few years, these guys are going to be saying, who lost Israel?
And they're going to have to say the Israel lobby and the right-wing Israeli government's overreached.
They wanted too much.
The Israeli government wanted too much land.
They wanted too much Zionism.
They wanted too much sort of Jewish superiority in that state.
And they overreached.
They thought they could get it with the support of the Israel lobby, and they're not going to get it.
And now, as you pointed out at the beginning of our conversation, they have no vision for the future.
And the central issue that they have to deal with in their society going forward, sort of like the South had to deal with Jim Crow, or the South had to deal with, the whole country had to deal with slavery, that central issue, which is essentially a racial question, racial ethnic question, they have not resolved.
They have no way to resolve.
And so they are just sort of cruising along toward a situation in which the slaves are going to be freed and are going to get to vote.
And as far as I'm concerned, it couldn't come a minute too soon.
Well, now, you know, I know that there's some who think that that's the worst possible solution because what it really means is another major war against the Palestinians, that Netanyahu will put on his mirrored sunglasses and his camouflage, and they'll just not accept that.
If they back themselves into the corner where they make a two-state solution impossible and a single-state solution the only thing, the last thing they're going to do is really relent and have one man, one vote.
They'll give up democracy before they give up the Jewish state, right?
Yeah, I mean, that may be.
I guess the important thing from my standpoint, I mean, first of all, obviously, I care about the Palestinian people and also the Jewish and Israeli people as I care about the people in the Central African Republic or in Sudan.
But, you know, you, like me, you know, I take your lead here.
There's a limit to how much we can prevent bloodshed in other places where people have not figured out their problems.
And the critical question in this, I say this is first an American, then as an American Jew, is I don't want my country having anything to do with further ethnic cleansing on the part of that government or their inability to resolve a fundamental constitutional question by, as you say it, you know, some type of genocide or ethnic cleansing or transfer.
I don't want any part of that.
As an American Jew, I say you are not representing me as a Jew when you do this.
You are merely representing, you know, fascist tendencies in a Jewish supremacist state.
Right.
And of course, American aid and subsidy for all this is the single most relevant factor.
If you look at, for example, these talks, if Kerry was able, they say he has a 10 hour conversation with Netanyahu.
I don't know what they're talking about.
As long as Kerry can't say to Netanyahu, you don't get any more money and you don't get any more free Lockheed products if you don't get the hell out of the West Bank.
As long as he's not saying that, the occupation is going to continue.
Netanyahu knows that he can continue taking America for granted.
We're easily moved.
It's absurd.
And Kerry's not telling him anything to make him believe anything opposite than that, is he?
Well, Kerry may be a doofus here, but the one thing I'd leave you with, Scott, is apropos of other things you've said here.
If you go back to Obama's speech last March, when he went to Jerusalem, he said, here's the deal.
This is how you can save your state.
I believe in the Jewish state.
This is how you can save it.
You want to do it?
You got to do it.
Cut the deal.
They haven't cut the deal.
They're not going to cut the deal.
And I think no drama Obama, the cool Obama, he will walk away from this.
And that is the great thing in all this is that the possibility exists now that there's a roadway for America to say, to brush it, wash its hands of this, and said, hey, we tried.
Obama, I don't think he cares the way Kerry does.
I think Obama would say, you know what?
I tried.
We tried.
I went there.
I stuck my neck out.
I told you what to do.
You didn't do it.
Screw you.
Yeah.
You know, Andrew Coburn wrote that and said on the show that Obama doesn't like Kerry at all, and he'll be damned if this is going to happen and work.
And Kerry's going to get the credit, not him.
So he'd rather have it not happen at all.
That's funny.
It wouldn't surprise me if that's a big part of this, really, you know, these guys, these politicians, they're all a bunch of lawyers.
All right.
Thank you, Scott.
Thanks so much, Phil, for your time.
I appreciate it.
All right, everybody, that's the great Phil Weiss, Mondoweiss.net for all his great writings there.
I wish I had more time to cover more, but please go and read his great blog there.
Oh, we didn't get to talk about Graham and McCain.
All right.
See y'all tomorrow.
Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
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