04/29/14 – Sheldon Richman – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, this is my show.
And I'm so mad at Sheldon Richman, he wrote a defense of John Kerry.
Now, there couldn't possibly be anything in the whole world defensible about John Kerry.
Welcome back to the show, Sheldon, how are you doing?
I'm doing fine, and thanks for having me back.
All right, good, you're welcome, and thank you for joining us.
Sheldon Richman, he's the most libertarian guy in the universe, and he keeps a blog called SheldonFreeAssociation.blogspot.com, or just go to SheldonRichman.com, it'll forward you on there.
And the thing of it is, too, is that he is the editor of the Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of the Future of Freedom Foundation, where he is also vice president.
Okay, now that we got all that out of the way, he's also a friend of the show.
And he wrote a defense of John Kerry, sort of.
Well, sort of notwithstanding, this better be good.
Yeah, your sensational headline, I noticed, left out the word sort of, that was unfair to me.
Yeah, I know.
I see you've added it now, so I guess I have to forgive you.
Yeah, that's right, I'm saying, you know, even with the sort of, still.
It wasn't even two cheers for John Kerry, okay?
It was like one hand clapping for John Kerry, how's that?
All right, I'll take it.
But he's undone it.
Everybody knows the story by now, right?
He was speaking to some, they say, world leaders.
I don't know who that is exactly.
I wasn't invited yesterday.
And he was quoted on the Daily Beast saying that, well, I'll just quickly paraphrase it, that Israel better hurry up with the two-state solution, because if it doesn't do that, the unitary state's either going to be an apartheid state with second-class citizens, or it's going to end up being a state, quote, that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state.
By that, I assume he means the alternative to apartheid state is a secular liberal, you know, democratic state, which no longer would be, quote, the Jewish state.
So he said they better hop to it and get to work on the two-state solution.
Well, of course, Americans were running around with their hair on fire, because he used the word apartheid with respect to Israel, even though it was in terms of a hypothetical, right?
He didn't say it's apartheid now, although I think you can make an argument that it's very apartheid-like now, but he didn't say that.
He was saying that if they don't work toward a two-state solution, it could end up being an apartheid state.
So it was purely, you know, future and speculative.
But that wasn't good enough for AIPAC, and their people in Congress, like Ted Cruz and Barbara Boxer, they ran around saying, this is terrible, he's got to take it back, Cruz wants his resignation.
And, of course, you know, the way things work in Washington, he had to immediately express his regrets about this.
He used the word, it's an inflammatory word.
He assured people that he doesn't believe that Israel is today an apartheid state, or, and here's where he really is shameless, or is at risk of becoming one.
Well, obviously, it is at risk of becoming one, if you want to use that word, because he said it yesterday, and that's consistent with the facts.
So this is one of those, you know, theaters of the absurd in Washington, for anybody that says anything the least bit negative about Israel.
The funny thing is, this kind of statement that Kerry made yesterday, is routine in Israel.
Even some very staunch Israeli chauvinists want a two-state solution, for the very same reason they don't want the Palestinians part of a larger unitary state.
And yet, only in, you know, it's amazing that they have a much more open debate about this stuff in Israel than we have in the United States.
Right.
Alright, now, so there's a lot here.
Now, first of all, as far as the absurdity of this, let me ask you something.
Apartheid.
Now, that term, originally, I guess, I don't know if you know the exact etymology of it, but was that always a slander, a smear term, or that was just a word with a definition, and that's what they don't like about it, is that it's apt.
Well, it's based in the, you know, it's based in the same root, I guess, as the word apart, was the idea.
I don't know, originally, whether it was a word of condemnation, or whether it was used by the people in favor of it.
I'd have to go back and check that.
But the point is, you know, it was based on the idea that the two groups, the blacks and the whites, really couldn't live together equally in the same society.
In South Africa.
In South Africa.
And the minority whites ruled the majority blacks.
I actually, as I say in my piece on the Free Association, SheldonRichmond.com, I actually think apartheid is the wrong word, at least as it applies, it is applied in South Africa.
And I attribute this point, which I think is valid, to Gilad Atsman, who says that if you look at South Africa, they wanted the blacks there.
They thought they were inferior, and they thought they should do the dirty work, you know, the menial work, the heavy lifting, and the whites should not have to do that kind of hard work.
But they needed and wanted the blacks there for that reason.
In Israel, the point is different.
The hardcore Israelis, Israeli Jews, not Israeli Arabs, but the hardcore Israeli Jews want the Arabs out.
They would love them to leave.
They would transfer them themselves if they thought they could get away with it.
So it's really very different.
They don't want them around to do the menial work.
They want them out.
Because it's Jewish land, and it must be redeemed from non-Jews.
Well, you know, my thing, I thought that the discrepancy, when people talked about it could become an apartheid state, that they weren't denying the second class citizenship of Israeli Arabs, Christians or Muslims, or denying the third or fourth or fifth class citizenship that the prisoners of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are subject to there.
But I always thought the question was just technically a matter of majority or minority, that sooner or later, the argument went, there will be more Arabs, Muslims and Christians than Jews.
And then at that point, it will be, you know, they can't have democracy anymore.
And I guess at that point, their sovereign control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem, if not including the Gaza Strip, I don't know, depending on who's making the argument, I guess, would be so much under Israeli control, that at some point it would become de facto part of Israel, not just occupied territory, but really Israeli territory at some point, that then they'll have to completely give up democracy, because they'll just be outnumbered if they want to stay a Jewish state, which apparently would be the higher priority of the Israeli right.
But then I've seen a lot of people, you know, mocking Kerry and saying, well, what risk of future, because it already is, and they point to this kind of second class citizenship.
So I wonder if maybe I just had the definition wrong, that really majority or minority numbers isn't, you know, maybe apartheid, the definition of apartheid isn't contingent upon that.
So you could have called Jim Crow South apartheid in all the states, whether it was a black majority state like South Carolina or not.
Yeah, I'm not sure it's essential to the definition that the ruling group be a minority.
I think what people mean by that...
And it's already an apartheid state, and it has been.
Well, are we talking about inside the 67 borders?
Well, you know, I mean, it's shades of gray, obviously, it's taking one slogan and one definition from one society, and putting it on another kind of thing.
Yeah, I mean, to varying degrees, like I just said, second class citizenship for Israeli Arabs and third or fourth or fifth, or whatever you call it for the people of the West Bank.
There's no real science behind it.
It's all just accusations and terms, right?
I wouldn't put any nth degree citizenship on the residents of the West Bank or Gaza.
The West Bank is occupied territory.
So I don't think that's normally counted as apartheid.
It's an occupied territory, and Gaza is basically an open air prison.
So they don't have any kind of citizenship.
Now, if you want to talk about inside the green line, inside the 67 borders, that's a very good point, because the Israeli Arabs, Christian or Muslim, have never had the same rights and sort of representation that Israeli Jews have had.
The Israelis brag about how they can have their own party, they can elect people to parliament, they vote, all of which is true.
But no party is allowed to advocate that Israel not be regarded as the country, the nation of the Jewish people, the state of the Jewish people, no matter where they live.
In other words, you can't have a party that would be dedicated to the proposition that the country ought to belong to the people who live in it, the citizens, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, that such a party would be illegal.
And they get treated very badly in terms of public services.
Now, as libertarians, we may say, well, it shouldn't be government services.
That's true, but there are.
And Arabs do not get the same as Israelis in terms of water and other kinds of resources and money put into it, and that's always been the case.
Ben White has a book about this, and you can find other work on this.
They are second- or third-class citizens.
Actually, I think they're more like third-class, because I think the Sephardi Jews have tended to be the second-class citizens.
I mean, you know, I've got to tell you, Sheldon, I'm from Texas, but never in my lifetime has it been the case that somebody could or even really probably would, I don't know, I guess they would, but it's just not been a part of this society at all that someone could say, oh, no, I'm not renting to you because you're black or I'm not renting to you because you're Catholic or whatever.
That's just not part of how we do business in America, even in the South, not anymore.
And yet that's how they do it there all the time.
No inter-religious marriage, no property rights, no right for a property owner to decide who he wants to rent to if it's up to him, you know, but it's not.
Right, the land is controlled, and most of the land is regarded as Jewish land.
There's no civil marriage.
It's not just inter-religious.
There's no civil marriage, period.
It's all religious marriage and divorce because the Orthodox parties have always been given control of that in order to keep them in the coalition government.
And so, yeah, and if a Palestinian Arab who holds citizenship in Israel marries somebody from the West Bank, that spouse can't move to Israel, stuff like that.
Also, we should keep in mind that officially there is no such thing as Israeli citizenship.
There is such a thing as Israeli nationality, but you're recorded on the government documents, government computer bases, databases, not as an Israeli.
If you were born in Israel, you're not an Israeli.
You are either a Jew or an Arab or maybe other.
There may be some other categories.
And they used to actually say that on your ID card.
Under citizenship, it wouldn't say Israeli.
It said Jew, Arab, and whatever miscellaneous categories there were.
You stop calling them names, Sheldon.
They can discriminate all they want.
Now, hold it right there.
We've got to take this break.
We'll be right back with Sheldon Richman about Israeli apartheid or whatever you call it and the reaction to John Kerry's statement, too.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show.
We've got a good friend, Sheldon Richman, on the phone.
We're talking about Israel and discrimination and second-class citizenship for Israeli Arabs and this kind of thing.
And now, well, and the big controversy, of course.
Everybody, as you mentioned, Sheldon, everybody quickly denounced John Kerry.
Some called for him to resign.
The ADL said he must apologize.
And various senators, Cruz and Boxer, I think you named there, came out and said that he better apologize.
And then he does, bowing and scraping and what have you.
But so, you know, I don't know what all that's about because it's not just hurt feelings, right?
It's the drawing of attention to the fact that it never really was true that here's a land without people.
Jews worldwide, they had wanted no part of it.
The only thing that caused it to flourish really was Hitler and displaced persons in Europe after the terrible, terrible events before and during World War II.
But it wasn't originally started as a refugee movement.
The idea was that every Jew was supposed to pick up and move there.
And that was the idea.
Chaim Weizmann, who was the first president of Israel, said that he looked at tactics to justify injustice against another group of people.
You know, by this theory, the Palestinians, I guess, can go somewhere and oppress a new group, right?
Because they've been oppressed.
They're allowed to go pick out a group and do the same thing to that group for the next X number of years.
And then that group can go off and find a new group.
I mean, is this what this is about?
I don't see how anybody can not condemn what Israel has been doing for a long, long time to the Palestinians.
Well, now, so, damn it, Sheldon, we don't live in a libertarian world.
It's not going to be a no-state, private property anarchy solution to the problems of the Middle East.
Not for centuries and centuries for people over there to get their act together about it.
So one state or two, those seem to be your options.
No?
What do you think?
Well, that's the world we live in.
I agree.
And, you know, I don't want to tell the Palestinians what it is they ought to be striving for.
They have no reason to listen to me anyway.
I don't live there, and it's easy for me to speak here in Conway, Arkansas, safe Conway, Arkansas, because I am terribly optimistic about that.
I would go for some sort of Canton arrangement like Switzerland.
In other words, decentralization, real federalization, small jurisdictions with autonomy.
If they're going to have a government, a very weak central government.
But, of course, people would have to go for that.
I don't know if anybody over there is interested in that.
But short of statelessness, I guess that would be the second best.
All right, well, so if you don't call it apartheid, you've got to call it the road to hell one way or the other here, because it looks… And then, you know, worldwide reaction.
So I think that's stayed their hand.
You know, Bill Kristol likes to say, and I mentioned this in my piece, that what's wrong with the status quo?
Because he rejects the idea that they've got to do something.
You know, obviously he doesn't like any of the other alternatives.
So he's decided, well, the status quo is working fine enough, yeah, for him and for Israeli Jews, but not for the people in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
I mean, how would you like to live under military rule?
I mean, obviously you wouldn't.
This is a rhetorical question for the audience.
Were you a big Trail of Tears, Force March type thing?
It's because they seem so impatient to annex the territory, and they seem absolutely unwilling to have anything like an honest negotiation over giving the territory up.
But I guess maybe I'm just thinking too short term, like an American politician tends to do.
Maybe all of a sudden the Israelis are really farsighted, and they plan on taking the whole West Bank by 2065.
Well, I think there's still fear of the consequences of a Force March, of a Trail of Tears, or something even worse than that.
I think, I mean, I'm not inside their heads, but I just have a feeling they think they wouldn't get away with that.
That would be too much even for a lot of Americans.
You know, maybe they're wrong.
Maybe they could get away with it.
Maybe they've made a bad calculation.
So I think they are taking the crystal option and figuring, yeah, this will eventually work out.
If there's a violent uprising by Palestinians, they can always spin that to their advantage, right?
There go those terrorists.
Get this thing done.
And then they never gave him an ounce of authority to do it.
Hung him out to dry.
There was a guy who, among states anyway, he could have been called a statesman.
And they stabbed him in the back.
Yeah, because he didn't do, I guess, what he was supposed to do.
So they got a nice, safe guy like Indyk who, you know, smiled.
Yeah, because he wanted to do what they said they wanted to do.
And that was why they had to get rid of him.
He actually took it serious that he was supposed to go over there and hammer out an agreement.
You might wonder why the Palestinians went into it, given that it was rigged.
But to see if they had turned it down.
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