08/08/14 – Alex Kane – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Check out scotthorton.org for all the stuff, etc.
All right, first up today is Alex Kane.
He's a great writer, assistant editor over there at Mondoweiss.
That's mondoweiss.net.
If I may be a little bit broad brush, if you're not familiar, I think it's more or less fair to say that Mondoweiss is basically the headquarters of ex-Zionist liberal Jews in America who are just over it now.
Pro-one-state solutions or that kind of attitude rather than old pro-Jewish state.
And not controversial for any good reason, really, but a very controversial, very important website.
And I hope you all will bookmark it and keep a very close eye on it.
It's Phil Weiss, Alex Kane, Adam Horowitz, not the Beastie Boy, another guy, and a lot of other really great writers.
They're mondoweiss.net.
Welcome back to the show.
Alex, how are you doing?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me on.
Thank you for coming back on the show.
I really do appreciate your time.
Can you please give us all the lowdown, good news and bad, and whatever is most important we need to know this morning out of the Gaza Strip?
Well, over the past three days, there was a ceasefire between Israel and the armed Palestinian factions, including Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
And so there was no fire for the past three days.
And this ceasefire expired this morning at about 1 a.m.our time, Eastern time, which is 8 a.m., I believe, in Gaza.
And so there have been a few incidents throughout the ceasefire of fire going back and forth.
Israel opened fire on people in Gaza, inspecting a park in a neighborhood near the border with Israel.
And reportedly, there were two mortar shells fired within this ceasefire period, although they didn't hurt anybody.
And the Israeli fire didn't hurt anybody either.
But this morning, Islamic Jihad reportedly, this is reportedly, Islamic Jihad fired rockets into Israel, and Israel returned fire with airstrikes, killing about five people today already.
So, however, there are tentative reports of perhaps another ceasefire coming into play very soon at 8 p.m. local time in Gaza.
So we will see if that happens.
Negotiations are reportedly still ongoing in Cairo.
And I'm saying reportedly a lot because a lot of this is kind of up in the air right now and tentative.
There's not a lot of concrete information coming out.
But it does seem that, you know, talks about a longer-term ceasefire are still going on.
And although the two sides, Israel and Hamas, are at loggerheads, basically the dispute comes down to Israel wants, Israel and Egypt, actually, allies in this, want Hamas to demilitarize, meaning, you know, give up their arms, which is basically not going to happen.
That is asking Hamas to commit political and military suicide.
And Hamas and actually the Palestinian people want principally a lifting of the air, land and sea blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza since 2007.
So, you know, fighting has resumed, not as intense as it has been over the past month.
But, you know, it's unclear what will happen right now.
All right.
Now, on the question of the talks in Egypt, who was even participating in those talks?
Is Hamas invited or they just got the Qataris sitting in for him or what?
No, Hamas is invited, along with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
So you have all the Palestinian factions negotiating.
Well, that's good, at least.
I mean, because this last ceasefire, I guess, I know, maybe I'm wrong, Alex.
I guess I had thought that this last ceasefire, that they had accepted it, but they didn't even really get to help agree to the terms in the first place.
Sort of like the first sort of non-offer offer.
They can't accept that they tried to pull a couple of weeks back.
That's right.
That's right.
When in the first couple of days when Israel launched its devastating assault on Gaza, Israel and Egypt announced, well, Egypt actually unilaterally announced this ceasefire and Israel automatically agreed.
Now, it seems reports after that indicate that Israel and Egypt were in constant communication before this assault and also during the beginning of the assault.
And so basically why Israel accepted it is because what they want is quiet from Gaza without disrupting the status quo of blockade of the economic strangulation of the Gaza Strip that has been going on since 2007, and which is kind of a root cause of why there's been so much bloodshed in Gaza.
And so Hamas said, look, you can't have a ceasefire, and I think they're absolutely right about this.
You can't have a ceasefire when you didn't actually talk to the opposing party that's also firing rockets and mortars, right?
So Hamas said, we learned about the ceasefire terms through the media and we're not going to accept this.
So Hamas rejected that sort of ruse a couple of weeks ago and the fighting escalated from there.
This time, it seems like Egypt may have changed its tactics and convinced Hamas to ceasefire for at least three days.
And so to sort of get negotiations going on in Cairo, which is what's happening right now.
I see.
So in other words, the ceasefire that's expiring right now that we hope can be prolonged despite these aberrations of Islamic Jihad firing off a couple of rockets and Israeli retaliation that this ceasefire itself was sort of a unilateral thing, too, that Hamas didn't really negotiate.
But now they're negotiating.
Do I understand it correctly?
Well, I mean, but they, Hamas, I should say Hamas agreed to stop firing.
And so did the other Palestinian factions, you know, three days ago.
I see.
But just but that was it, though.
That was all that they had agreed to.
They only agreed to three days.
And now and, you know, yesterday I said, you know, if the ceasefire expires without any of our demands met, then, you know, we will continue to fire into Israel.
And that's exactly what they what they did.
You know, we should say that, you know, these are legitimate demands of Hamas.
I mean, they're simple.
They're not even that, you know, these demands are not about the the overall Israeli Palestinian conflict.
This is just related to the Gaza Strip.
You know, Hamas and the Palestinian factions, they want a lifting of the blockade.
They are backed by the Palestinian population in this.
You know, people in Gaza want to live.
They don't want to be prisoners anymore.
And that's, you know, that's what Hamas is trying to do.
They're really in a bind.
Hamas is in a bind, really.
You know, Israel and Egypt want to crush them or at least really weaken that.
Not they really want to weaken them bad, although they don't necessarily want to overthrow Hamas.
They want to weaken Hamas bad and not change anything from how it was before this operation.
They want to keep it.
They want to keep the situation as it is, as it was from, you know, 2012 to 2014, which essentially, you know, no firing from Palestinian factions, meaning that, you know, southern communities in Israel can live, you know, in peace.
But the blockade kept, was kept in place.
You know, Israel routinely sort of bombed Gaza and did, you know, tank incursions into Gaza occasionally and so on.
And the occupation of Gaza continued.
So for Hamas and the Palestinian people, it was not so much quiet.
It was a slow death, as they have said over the past weeks.
They say, you know, better than a fast, better a fast death than a slow death is how some Palestinian factions explained why they were fighting.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, Sheldon Richman and I went over the the proposal from Hamas from, I guess, two weeks ago, where it was included a 10 year truce, but also had their their list of demands.
And it was all like, please let us trade and have a seaport.
And so there's no no no typical hostage type demands in there.
Just just the hostage itself asking to please be set free is really enlightening.
Just seeing what their list of demands is really casts a relief on their situation.
I'm sorry.
We got to take this break.
Please, everybody hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Alex Kane from Mondoweiss.net.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm talking with Alex Kane from Mondoweiss.net.
Mondoweiss.net.
And we're talking about the state of the negotiations and the would be, could be ceasefire.
I don't know.
Andrea Mitchell, Alex, just tweeted out that the war is back on.
The ceasefire is over and the talks in Egypt weren't going anywhere anyway.
And so forget it.
Um, which I guess, assuming that that's true, I kind of want to ask you, I'm not sure how to set this up right, really.
I mean, you mentioned that, um, you know, they want their demands now or that Hamas has to commit, you know, complete hairy carry and give up all their weapons and all of that kind of thing.
It makes me wonder whether the Israelis have accomplished anything here other than getting a bunch of coffins sold, uh, you know, in the local Gazan economy here, because like you said, they don't want to get rid of Hamas because, you know, I don't know if they hired some outside expert from somewhere, something to look two weeks into the future and wonder, well, who might come next after we get rid of Hamas and might they be worse, which is unheard of in Israeli politics, I think.
But wow, we looking, looking two weeks out.
That's great.
So, uh, they don't want to take, get rid of Hamas.
They know they can't get rid of every last rocket because the rockets are just plumbing pipe and, and household chemicals.
So there is no, there is no rocket infrastructure to get rid of.
Um, and, uh, you know, the tunnels of course can't all be found and then they can be recreated in the blink of an eye.
And most of those were for trade and not fighting anyway.
And so what in the hell is the point of any of this?
If all they have now is, okay, well, so you have to give up your life.
You have to all, here's, here's your, uh, you know, Rambouillet style offer you can't possibly accept.
And now we're going to bomb you some more.
Yeah.
Well, just one thing, the, the, the, the tunnels between Israel and Gaza were for fighting, I should say.
Um, the tunnels from Egypt into Gaza were, uh, for smuggling goods and, and weapons as well.
That was the super majority of the tunnels anyway, right?
I mean, how many were even headed toward Israel at all?
Right.
I think that the number that Israel says that they destroyed about 35, um, but, but, but you're right that the vast majority of the tunnels were on the Egyptian side, although many of them were also destroyed.
Um, when, uh, general Al-Sisi came to power in Egypt, but to get back to your original question, um, you know, uh, this is, you know, in, in, we saw this in, in 2009 after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Operation Cast Lead.
They, they, you know, they're sort of, uh, one of their main goals is in the very crude Israeli parlance, you know, mowing the lawn, uh, sort of, which is a very racist term, I think dehumanizing Palestinian people as merely grass to be mowed.
But this is, this is a euphemism to say that they want to restore their deterrence, uh, with Hamas, meaning that they want to, uh, pummel Gaza so bad that the Palestinian factions will, um, cease their, their fire because they know that they can't militarily win.
And also because they, they want to, you know, they don't, they don't, they don't want to subject their population to bombardment, but you know, this doesn't, this isn't a permanent solution.
And eventually, um, the Palestinian factions do resume firing because of the crippling blockade that is strangling, uh, Hamas and other, uh, uh, factions and Israel, you know, Israel put their goals, um, there were fairly modest goals, but I don't think they've met all of them.
I mean, their first, when they first started the air campaign, which was how, how this war first started, they said that they want to have quiet for quiet, meaning that, you know, they, they want to degrade Hamas's rocket, uh, capabilities.
Now the, the, the news that, um, a Palestinian faction, um, sort of shot rockets, uh, today.
And, and, you know, and the fact is that Hamas does have, uh, rockets that they can still fire.
I mean, they're largely ineffectual, but they can still be fired.
And it does place Israeli civilians, you know, in a sort of state of, of fear.
Um, you know, that objective simply can't be met.
I mean, there's no way that the, that the Israel can destroy it without a total reoccupation of Gaza and going house by house and, um, and, you know, door by door, et cetera, and to destroy, uh, every last rocket that they find, that's just not going to happen.
The other goal was to destroy the tunnels and they, you know, they claim that they have destroyed a lot of them, but you know, um, you're right that, that the tunnels can be rebuilt.
So, uh, uh, you know, is there, you know, basically, I think, I think a lot of Israelis are also asking this question, what was really the point?
And you have right-wingers, uh, in the Israeli cabinet pressuring Netanyahu saying, you didn't, you didn't go far enough.
You know, we have to crush Hamas.
We have to overthrow them.
We have to reoccupy Gaza and make sure that no rocket will ever be fired into Israel again.
Um, that, that, that is also untenable really.
I mean, the question is, I think the reason why we didn't see a full reoccupation of Gaza and even, uh, a larger incursion to, because the Israeli troops only went sort of into the border, the neighborhoods and the towns right on long the border with Israel.
They didn't go into Gaza city with troops, right?
They knew that if they went into the, into cities further into Gaza, that more soldiers would be killed and perhaps they would raise the risk of a captured Israeli soldier, which Israel is, does not want at all.
So you're, I mean, that's a totally different question.
What did re what really did Israel accomplish?
Not much, but again, what did Hamas really accomplish?
Not much right now.
You know, the, the, what Hamas wanted is the lifting of the blockade or, uh, at the very least.
And, and that's, that doesn't seem to be on the table right now.
Well, you know, the funny thing about that is, is, you know, not the people of Gaza, but Hamas in a sense is in a superior position when they act smart, um, in their asymmetric warfare.
Because like you're saying, yes, their goal one is to get Israel to lift the siege and to, you know, let them have, uh, their, you know, somewhat independence there and eventually a state and all of that.
Um, but their second order goals are to, if that's, if you're not going to go for that, then go ahead and sabotage yourself by attacking us, which is exactly parallel to Al Qaeda terrorism against the United States, or for that matter, IRA terrorism against the English.
It's to provoke a reaction, or first of all, it's to get you to wise up and leave us alone.
And if that won't work, then we'll provoke you into overreacting and hurting yourself that way, Judo style.
And so that's what Hamas has succeeded in doing is firing rockets over Israel enough to make every Israeli afraid, even if their lives aren't really in danger, it disrupts their whole fantasy that they live in a normal country in a normal time over there.
And at the same point it, and I hate to give the, the Likudinics, you know, credit on this, but I'll give them, you know, a quarter of a point or something that they are actually kind of right, that civilian casualties serve Hamas just the way that a civilian casualties serve the American empire or serve, or the same way the rockets serve Benjamin Netanyahu in, in solidifying support and, and helping to generate new support for, you know, the, the people that are their base.
And so, you know, it has actually Netanyahu has played right into Hamas's hands.
He says what they want is civilian casualties.
And then he has the tanks launch all their artillery shells at neighborhoods.
So, you know, that's true.
Bush invading Iraq.
That's true.
Although I do, I should say that I, I not quite so sure.
I don't think civilian casualties boost Hamas's support.
I think that, you know, the civilian casualties do sort of like, sort of make the population enraged at Israel.
That is, that is true.
But I, but if the population of Gaza thought that Hamas wanted, you know, civilian casualties in Gaza, I don't think, I think that Hamas would lose support.
I don't, you know, I, it's a tricky kind of analysis, but I, you're right.
Look at Al Qaeda in, in Iraq, even go back a few years to the, the days of the Bush war.
Zarqawi would bomb a Shiite marketplace full of women and children.
Why?
To get the Shiite militias to attack other Sunnis, to get the other Sunnis to go ahead and join up with Zarqawi.
Now it's bad PR for him and yet effective.
Right.
So same with 9-11.
It's all about, you know, overreaction, trying to provoke one.
But anyway, I mean, hell, point is that, in fact, and I've seen on Twitter where people are saying, Hamas isn't the one bombing me.
Israel's bombing me.
Hamas are the ones defending me, right?
These are people who are newly won over to the Hamas cause, basically.
Civilians of Gaza saying, well, Hamas is all I've got.
So I guess I like them.
Right.
And, you know, if you talk to people in Gaza, it's not even so much like Hamas itself.
It's, they refer to it, you know, as the resistance, right?
You know, they say, you know, it's not a question of Hamas.
And many people in Gaza don't agree with Hamas' Islamist politics.
It's not a question of supporting Islamist jihad.
Of course, some people in Gaza are sort of rank and file supporters of Hamas and so on.
But the vast majority of people, you know, don't want that.
And, you know, they refer to it as a resistance.
And the resistance, you know, the Palestinian factions are united together, whether they're left wing or Islamist and united in sort of waging battle against Israel.
It's not just that they're firing rockets over the wall.
You know, their casualties are Israeli troops who have been shot by resistance Hamas or otherwise fighters in Gaza, mostly with rifles and with, you know, short range artillery in battles inside the Gaza Strip.
So it is, you know, I'm not necessarily recommending any tactics for any side.
I sure as hell don't support Hamas' even existence in any way or anything like that.
But it absolutely I wouldn't want to imply that I don't think that the people of Gaza have the right to defend themselves.
I'm not sure firing rockets over the wall is defending themselves, really.
But certainly firing rifles at invading soldiers is.
That's that's true.
And if you look at the casualties, it really gives lie to Israel's claim that, you know, Hamas is this awful terrorist organization that that wants to kill every Israeli civilian.
I mean, I think if Hamas had the capability to kill many more Israeli civilians as they did during the Second Intifada, they probably would.
Yeah.
But the fact is, during this war, the vast majority of Israeli casualties, about 64, were Israeli soldiers.
And you look at the civilian death toll in Gaza, it's the complete opposite.
The vast majority of casualties, according to, you know, U.N. statistics, statistics from Palestinian human rights organizations and so on, say, you know, say that the vast majority of casualties were civilians, including about maybe 400 children, many women and so on.
So that is that that makes Israel take a big hit image wise worldwide.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Well, and that's a whole other topic I had here to talk about in the notes.
But maybe I will go ahead and ask you one quick question about it.
What do you think about this?
Something that Phil Weiss is always talking about is the change in the narrative.
Well, first of all, do you really agree that the narrative is changing?
And then if so, what do you chalk that up to?
Because this war is no more brutal, really, than Cast Lead or 2012, whatever.
I forgot what they called that.
Right.
Well, well, I actually think this war was is even worse for for Israel than Cast Lead.
I mean, Cast Lead was sort of the first straw for many people.
And you had many sort of left leaning Jews say, forget Israel.
You know, with this, this this needs to end.
This is horrific.
The white phosphorus raining down on Gaza and so on.
But this attack was even more brutal.
If you talk to people in Gaza, you know, whole cities were leveled.
Beit Hanun, Shujaia, neighborhood in Gaza City.
These places were leveled.
And, you know, it's awful for the people of Gaza and they have to rebuild and and and there's hundreds of thousands of people displaced and so on.
But I think Israel's image around the world and even in the U.S. is worsening.
I think, you know, Phil and other people talking about this narrative shift, I don't think it's a it's incremental.
It's not a huge shift.
Sure.
Much of the corporate media is still, you know, kind of sort of buying into much of the Israeli narrative.
But there are sort of glimmers of light in media coverage.
And also, you know, you look at the this striking poll that came out a couple I think last week or maybe a week and a half ago.
That's that detailed how young people, if you're between the ages of 18 and 40, you blame you think Israel's actions are unjustified in this war.
I see this, you know, with my own coverage of.
You know, people protesting in New York, which is where I'm based, you know, and and even within the Jewish community, you have this sort of very, very, just a total disgust with Israeli military operations.
And and people don't think that it's justified.
They you know, how can you know any rational person looking at this, even if you're not politically aware, you look at the pictures from Gaza, the civilian casualties, you can't but help but say this is crazy.
This needs to stop.
And Israel is unjustified in what they are doing.
And I think that that's what people are coming to.
You know, that's the conclusion they're coming to.
Now, the Congress is far behind.
I mean, you had a Senate vote 100 to zero.
Just it's incredible.
100 to zero backing Israel's assault on Gaza.
Now, you know, so the trick is to translate this groundswell of support for Palestinians into political change.
You know, people are some people are giving up on Congress and they're turning to civil society, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement targeting Israel.
And that's only going to grow after this.
Whether that will actually really change the calculus is another question.
I haven't changed the calculus yet, but but people want to act right now.
Congress is totally out of touch with young people, at least.
And so, you know, there's there's good and there's bad in terms of the whole question of narrative shifting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, all very good points.
I would only add that because I think maybe it'll be helpful.
And this is something that Phil and I have talked about for a long time now is what exactly is it that turns the key in people's brain?
And I think what it really is, is that unless you really look into it, you don't really get to understand.
You might hear the term, but they don't ever explain on TV, especially about the occupation that Gaza and the West Bank were conquered back in 67.
They already lost back in 67.
So like I like to say on the show starting recently, this isn't like even a battle against the Plains Indians.
This is a battle against Indians in their reservation 20 years at 40 years after they've already lost the the Plains Wars.
This is a canned hunt.
This is, you know, people who are already beaten and occupied still being shot.
It's not the country next door.
It's an occupied territory.
And I think that the difference on Twitter is, or for the young is, you know, first of all, like you're saying the images of what all is going on, it's not having to be filtered through what Dan Rather wants to show us or that kind of thing anymore.
But it's also that young people on the internet are exposed to just premise one, there's an occupation going on here.
Now let's talk about what else is happening on top of this occupation, which is a completely different narrative than everybody's grandma and grandpa has, which is that it's poor little Israel, land of Holocaust survivors pinned against the ocean with their back to the sea surrounded by hostile enemies.
They're the ones in the Gaza Strip surround, you know, occupied and bomb is what the old people think.
And they've just got it all upside down.
And I think that's the difference that the internet makes is people can really understand the fact of the occupation.
And once they do, there's just no way around who's zooming who here, you know, that's a great, that's a really great point.
And the regional equation has so changed.
I mean, that crap, I'm sorry, I'm so over time, I gotta go.
Thanks, Alex.
You're great, man.
Appreciate it.
Yep.
Sorry about that.
No problem.
All right.
That's Alex Kane, everybody.
He's at alternate.org and at mondo Weiss dot net.
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