07/30/14 – Philip Weiss – The Scott Horton Show

Oh, John Kerry's Mideast peace talks have gone nowhere.
Hey y'all, Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
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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 the next guest on the show is Philip Weiss.
He keeps the all-important blog Mondo Weiss, the war of ideas in the Middle East.
And he's got a great group of writers over there, including Adam Horowitz and Alex Kane and a whole bunch of others there.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Good, Scott.
How are you doing?
Sorry, you can tell I'm a little bit distracted.
I'm doing okay.
Thank you for joining us.
Listen, so you guys are doing such great coverage of Israel's war on Gaza.
If it's got to be called a war, I think I'll put it that way.
I like it.
So thank you for that.
I really do appreciate it.
And it's important, the voices that you give access to over there and all that, too.
Anyway, so could you please tell us the latest on the ceasefires?
Who's proposing and accepting and rejecting what?
It's hard for me to keep track over here.
You know, I don't know.
I haven't followed that real closely.
The latest I heard is that Hamas had rejected a ceasefire proposal from yesterday, but I don't know what the latest is today.
I know that for Hamas, it's essential that they get something out of this ceasefire, that they get a lifting of the blockade that has been with them for seven years now that has not allowed Palestinians to live normal lives, anything like a normal life under occupation.
So I think both sides are kind of dug in at this point.
You know, Palestinians in Gaza have lost so much at this point.
You know, nearly as many people as who has died and cast lead five years ago.
And they want something for that.
They want some change and in conditions.
So I think that there is some willingness on the part of the people there to continue this fight from their standpoint, from Hamas standpoint, if they can't get an improvement in conditions.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I mean, to me, it's frustrating just because it means that this law will continue.
And I can understand, though, of course, from their position.
And I don't mean Hamas, but I mean, the people of Palestine, why at some point they would say, you know, the status quo is unacceptable.
We rather keep fighting.
And yet there's no fight to it at all.
It's just a slaughter, a one sided slaughter is just going on.
And in fact, I I heard a CNN reporter live on CNN say, well, 90 percent sure Philip was CNN, I guess that, you know, quoting Palestinian civilians as taking that exact position.
They just said not Hamas members taking that position.
Yeah.
Palestinian civilians saying no, we'll go ahead and keep fighting.
Thanks.
Rather than, you know, lay down to your terms that are at least as bad as we were all four weeks ago.
Yeah.
Now, and I would say that I think that I heard that on NBC, actually, or a similar line on NBC.
And I think that the the the good thing about this conflict this time, it's a horrifying thing to have to say.
But the the what all these deaths and injuries are producing is a change in the Western attitude.
And so today we saw the White House, according to the Associated Press, the White House today condemned the Israeli attack on a Palestinian school that killed, I think, a dozen or maybe more people yesterday.
And this is the first time that I've seen the White House condemn an Israeli attack.
And it was the way for that was paved by Obama expressing anger about all the Palestinian deaths earlier this week to Netanyahu.
So we're seeing a shift in the American mainstream.
And I think that's vital.
It's the shift that that happened on the left and the center and, you know, on the libertarian right to with the cast lead massacre of five years ago, I think is beginning to happen now in the mainstream.
Yeah.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry.
It is speculation.
And I'm just asking you to speculate.
But do you have a educated guess as to the tension between Obama and Netanyahu there and just how stern a lecture Obama game?
Of course, there was what everybody seems to agree was a hoax transcript of a phone call between them that begins with Obama saying, I demand that you stop and Netanyahu saying no.
And and that was why I knew it was a hoax right away was because it seems like Obama would never talk to Netanyahu like that.
But then I wonder, well, I don't know how just how stern of a talking to do you think Obama gave him and just how stern resistance do you think he's getting back?
How do you measure that?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, I love the question.
I'm sorry, but I love the hoax.
You know, if it is a hoax, I don't know.
I mean, it reads to me.
It makes sense that they would be acting out those parts in that way.
That being said, what we know for a fact is that this week, the Netanyahu government high officials have characterized John Kerry is aiding terrorists by pushing for a ceasefire on terms that are, you know, favorable to the people of Gaza or allow people to live a normal life in Gaza.
So and and John Kerry struck back yesterday saying, hey, I have a I had a great voting record for Israel when I was in the Senate for twenty nine years or whatever.
And so you see this kind of open hostility between Israel and the United States.
That's a great thing.
I think that it's just a wonderful, wonderful thing that the special relationship might actually begin to fall apart.
And we will see this ally for what it is, which is a rogue militant state.
It's funny, though, that all Kerry can say is, no, I'm more Likud than Likud instead of, hey, listen, in this case, you guys are really out of line and you need to get back in.
You know, right.
Although, you know, he's a diplomat and presumably in private, he's saying some of that.
And I think they've I mean, you know, from my lips to God's ears, but I think they've had it with these folks.
They they they warned them again and again that they were alienating world opinion with their behavior and their occupation.
And maybe now they're finally washing their hands of Israel.
Obviously, the Congress is bought and paid for.
The media has a lot of embeds, but we're reaching a point where even the media you cited CNN, I cited NBC.
The politicians will be able to take a stance against Israel or critical of Israel when the media begin to give them cover.
And that is what we're seeing.
We are seeing endless images of Palestinian children blown to smithereens by the Israeli forces.
And the Israeli government and its friends in the United States are involved in this absurd question of whether you're showcasing civilian deaths or overplaying them on the media.
When you begin that type of argument, you have lost.
And I think Israel has lost.
Yeah, got that right.
Yeah.
Every time one of these Israeli trolls tries to come after me on Twitter, I just tell him, keep typing, pal.
He's digging your own grave.
That's great.
That's great.
So, OK, I guess, you know, my former stupid question there a minute ago is coming from a presumption that Obama is the president of the world.
He is the global dictator.
What he says goes.
And I'm thinking back and you could probably help me straighten out my anecdote a little bit.
But wasn't there something like Ronald Reagan called Menachem Begin and said, stop bombing Beirut?
And the guns fell silent within a minute and a half or so.
And Reagan said, hey, I could do that.
Wow, cool.
And I guess I just thought that if any American president says, hey, listen, now I'm not asking you.
Now I'm telling you, knock it off, that that would be the end of that, because how can the Israelis resist that when America is all they got?
Well, I agree with you about the logic.
I didn't know about the Reagan Begin.
I may have my prime minister wrong, but I like it.
But no, I mean, that was the right era.
But I think, you know.
Yeah, I'd probably screw that up.
Well, we're dealing with a spineless.
I mean, our president has shown himself to be spineless on a number of occasions.
And yet we know that he cannot get along with Netanyahu.
We can see it in the body language.
We can hear it from the inside reports.
This guy does.
They don't they don't get along and they don't get along for good reason, because Netanyahu is destroying our image in the world.
And he's not worried about it.
That's the thing of it.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, we'll be right back.
Just one second.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Philip Weiss from Mondoweiss.net.
And of course, you can find Max Blumenthal and Alex Kane and all kinds of different people writing over there as well.
Annie Robinson.
All right now, Phil, let me ask you about this.
It's a controversial kind of thing.
And I guess again, I'm asking you not necessarily for cold, hard facts unless you got some great quotes and footnotes or something like that.
But maybe more I'm asking for your impression of what you think is going on here.
And that's the question of precision strikes that happen to kill a lot of kids because there's a lot of kids around or whether perhaps the policy is like it sort of seems on its face to be to kill the kids, to target families and to destroy them in order to terrorize the parents of the dead kids into changing their politics from Hamas to something else.
I guess I you know, you can't be sure in these circumstances.
And Richard Goldstone, the last time around, when did a major report on it and said Israel was targeting civilians, then retracted that allegation later.
I think what's happening, my best judgment here is that Israel is showing complete disregard for civilians who are near Hamas targets.
That's basically what's going on.
They're targeting Hamas militants or officials whom they regard as bad actors.
And they are showing not any care for whether civilians are in the areas in the house, etc.
And in some cases, so I don't think that they are willfully go trying to kill children.
I think they understand that there is a liability in that in a lot of ways, including its war crime and making a lot of war crimes.
But I think the war crime that they they are guilty of is showing a lack of discrimination, lack of a sense of proportion when they are going after Hamas target.
Yeah, but what about hitting these UN schools and these refugee camps and all this stuff?
You know, I think that once again, they, they will they would rationally they would say that there are rockets being fired from nearby or whatever.
But I think what's or that rockets have been stored in schools.
I think they're just showing contempt for civilian life when they're going after a military target.
And in some cases, I don't think they're being that precise.
That's just the nature of their operation.
And now, to be clear, there have been some documented documented instances of actual revenge killings of civilians.
And when there was a massacre last week, in Shujaia, outside of Gaza City, 60 people were killed.
Apparently, that followed on a bunch of Israeli soldiers being killed the day before.
So in that case, I think you can and there's evidence that they were shooting at civilians who are trying to find their families.
So in that case, they blame the neighborhood for the fact that it's their Hamas strongholds in that neighborhood.
So I think that there are cases that are closer to your second model, which is, hey, you folks are Hamas sympathizers, we're going to blow you all up.
I guess there is evidence of that in, you know, a few instances or a couple of instances anyway.
Well, and nothing unique to Israel.
I mean, they're just be copying America's policy toward Iraq, for one example, or, you know, I guess, well, remind me, how much of that did we how many civilians did we go after in Iraq?
Well, Bill Clinton starved and strangled about a million of them to death, half of their children.
And, and, of course, collectively said it was worth it.
And what was worth it, the policy explicitly was to make the people the civilians of Iraq so desperate that they would revolt, they would blame Saddam and revolt against him, which, of course, made no sense, but collect a punishment.
And, you know, I'm sure you saw that article in the Daily Beast where the guy Jesse Rosenfeld.
Yeah, good.
He says he quotes a professor here.
I don't believe he's being critical.
I think he's just explaining the rationale saying that, well, you know, we're trying to create enough Palestinian suffering so that Gazans will rise up against Hamas or force the leaders to come to terms with Israel on Israel's terms.
Obviously, they're crazy.
Yeah, they're crazy.
Yeah.
And then someone else is saying, I see Peter, Peter Bynard saying, well, we have to empower the people in Palestinian life who want to reject Hamas and recognize Israel.
Well, good luck.
You're not going to do it through this kind of conduct.
You know, you're going to empower Hamas.
That's what's happening here.
And furthermore, I want to say I was at a pro-Israel rally two days ago in New York City, and I heard the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, David Seth Kirshner, he said, if you voted for Hamas, you can be killed.
So he said, if the quote, his quote was, if you participated in an election process in which Hamas was elevated, i.e. the election in 2006, then you are not a civilian.
So that would justify killing anyone who supported Hamas.
Yeah.
And which, of course, they don't know who all voted for Hamas.
So they mean is blank check for collective guilt of everyone in Gaza, whatever age they were at voting time 2006 and whatever ballot they cast.
Oh, it's crazy.
It's crazy.
And that's what they mean about all this human shields thing.
You know, it's not very thin propaganda there.
You know, on one hand, they're just blaming Hamas.
You know, on the surface, they're blaming Hamas for getting the kids killed.
But what they're really doing is they're writing themselves a permission slip.
They're saying, therefore, it's OK for us to go ahead and shoot, because what are we supposed to do?
All of our targets are hidden by human shields.
So right behind them.
So we have to go ahead.
Yeah, I think it's highly indiscriminate.
And, you know, if we're Jews, if these people were terrorists operating in a Jewish neighborhood, they would never be so ham handed and sort of haphazard.
They would be very they would go in and they would take a lot more risk.
But no, these are Palestinians, so they don't count.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's an amazing thing.
And of course, you take this entire situation and pretend that the history had gone the other way for a minute, that this is now the Jews of Palestine are rounded up in the Gaza concentration camp and treated this way by the Palestinian Christians and Arabs.
Holy crap.
Would there be a war going on right now?
Oh, my Lord.
Yeah, of course.
Can you imagine?
Yeah.
Hey, that would be wrong.
What the hell?
Right.
But you see people Richard Cohen in The Washington Post saying is Jews are the Israelis are the real victims here.
Excuse me.
You know, they're the victims.
It's nuts.
Well, it's back to what you're saying about how desperate they're getting.
You know, you're losing when John Kerry in Israel's defense has said, you know, all of Israel's under siege right now by Gaza.
I just come on now, John.
Right.
Right.
You and I both know that ain't quite the way it is, you know.
But you see the changes in the mainstream media that I see.
Sure.
I was just going to ask you, did you see the clip of Andrea Mitchell asking the Israeli ambassador whether Israel is losing its soul over this?
Oh, no.
When did she say that?
I guess it was yesterday.
Wow.
I'll email you the link.
Wow.
That's great.
I'll tweet it to you.
It's a media-ite link.
And she says, no, of course not.
We're being so restrained and we're only doing what we have to do and whatever.
But she actually seems pretty concerned that she's heard some opposing points of view here lately.
And she's wondering whether there might be anything to them.
You know, I think what's essential to understand here is that, you know, Andrea Mitchell, who for all I know, I suspect is a Zionist at heart.
You know, she believes in the need for a Jewish state, like many people in the media, many Jews in the media.
She believes in it.
I don't.
I'm a Jew in the media.
I don't believe in it.
But I think that she is an American and she sees things from an American perspective.
And this is a different country.
They believe all this stuff.
They believe all this crap.
And this is the great thing about this conflict, is that Americans are seeing these people are nuts.
They do not understand what they're doing.
They have convinced themselves that it's a national psychosis about we're under attack and we don't have to subscribe to it anymore.
And that is the great thing about Andrea Mitchell's question.
So I think that's going to be happening on a much broader basis.
And, you know, then these people will have to look back and say, well, when did Israel lose its soul?
Maybe it had something to do with ethnically cleansing 700000 people to form the state in the first place and then make a declaration of independent of equality when it was when the state was announced.
So there's no equality there.
There's never been equality there.
Yeah.
Well, it seems like they even tried to have an honest peace process this whole time since the end of the Cold War era, for example, even taking into account 67.
You can only go back with your counterfactual so far.
Right.
But say at the end of the Cold War with Oslo and this and that, if they'd actually just gone ahead and given up the West Bank and Gaza and tried to have a peaceful let's get along kind of attitude, an honest one, how different things could have been, you know, take the money and run.
They didn't do it.
Now they're losing.
Yeah, there you go.
All right, y'all.
That's a great bill.
Thanks so much for your time.
I appreciate it.
All right.
That's Mondoweiss.net, guys.
Mondoweiss.net and at Mondoweiss, of course, on Twitter as well.
Thanks for listening.
See you tomorrow.
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