All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Phil?
Good, Scott.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining me again here.
There's so much important stuff going on in Israel, and in American politics over Israel and Palestine.
The original sort of key here, I wanted to talk about the recent slaughter in Gaza, and then we could segue into the failure of Netanyahu or his primary opponent, Benny Gantz, to form a government.
But then now there's even more and newer breaking news since we arranged this interview, which is that Prime Minister Netanyahu has finally been indicted, has long been threatened on corruption charges and all these things.
So I guess I just want to hear your take on all of this stuff, and then we can segue into the Democrats and the Republicans and the way things are going in Washington, D.C. here.
Great.
Well, you know, I've been traveling lately, but I've kept up on the news.
I think it's, you know, to go with the latest news first, the indictment, I think, you know, it's a happy day for me.
Just, you know, the fact that that guy is being exposed, you know, his corruption is being exposed, I find him such an objectionable leader.
But it doesn't look like anything's going to change politically in Israel of any significance.
This indictment could have, as you know, there's been a deadlock since last April, the election then.
Netanyahu has not been able to form a government.
Netanyahu has not been able to.
They had a second election.
His chief rival, Benny Gantz, has now failed to create a government.
Each side has, of these kind of center-right politicians, Gantz and Netanyahu, both center-right, have minorities and have not been able to reach enough to get over the 61-seat threshold.
The indictment increases the likelihood that finally Netanyahu's firewall will break down and the 55 seats that he does control, some of them who are not ideologically that different from Gantz, will go into Gantz's arms rather than, because Netanyahu is now weakened.
I think that we are seeing the end of the Netanyahu era.
I mean, I think everyone would agree that we're seeing the end of the, and Israeli politics would say we're seeing the end.
The question is whether it goes on for another year or so in some crippled fashion with him in a power-sharing, being the de facto prime minister, which he is so long as they fail to form a new government, and whether he is able to hang on through some sort of power-sharing agreement with Gantz's Blue and White Party.
So hypothetically speaking, if, say, 10 votes announced they were switching today, is it too late for Gantz to form a government?
Because they were just announcing the other day that he had failed and it looked like they were going to new elections.
So would they definitely have to have new elections now?
No, they don't.
They don't have to.
No, there's...
So he could form a new government today if the votes switch.
Yes.
They don't go to a new election for another three weeks.
There was a period in which Netanyahu had the mandate from the president of Israel to form a new government because he had the most votes for the biggest bloc.
That was in September to October.
And that was followed by a period in which Netanyahu having failed, Benny Gantz got the mandate to form a new government.
And that was from October into November or all, yeah, October into November.
Gantz has now failed.
Now it's open season.
Now, for the next three weeks, anybody can come to Rivlin, the president, and say, hey, I can form a government.
Here's my proposal.
And I think that's where some of the sort of Mad Max type, you know, rogue operators, well, I mean, just where it becomes more of a free for all.
And some of these Netanyahu's forces are very dismayed by, you know, having an indicted prime minister are going to, you know, secretly be talking to, or just openly talking to Benny Gantz about forming a national unity government.
And there is certainly among Israeli establishmentarians, I mean, the kind of ruling class, for lack of a better word, they don't want a third election.
It's extremely expensive.
It undermines Israel's image as a democracy, a functioning democracy, and to be stalemated for a year in this manner.
And they want it over with.
And they sort of want, and I think that there is also Netanyahu fatigue, which has kicked in in Israel.
There is plainly Israelis, you know, are they're getting sick of this prime minister.
And I think some of Netanyahu's guys are going to say, screw it, we're, you know, we don't want a third election.
This guy's damaged goods.
Let's work it out.
Now, already Gideon Saar, who's a leading, you know, Netanyahu is, I don't know, 70 something.
And you know, Gideon Saar, there's a new generation of Likudnik right wing leaders that's just waiting to get into power.
And one of them has already indicated there should be a primary in Likud.
And if you have a primary, that would allow, you know, the sort of, you know, that's like Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg fighting it out with Biden for who is going to lead the Democratic Party.
So that I think a lot, I feel that a lot's going to happen in the next couple of weeks.
And we're seeing the end.
But I'm, I'm, I'm optimistic.
And once again, to emphasize, you know, if, if the inevitable happens, which is some type of national unity government power sharing, you know, the Palestinian parties will be completely cut out of power.
There'll be no real change in Israeli policy.
Benny Gantz was welcomed Trump's reversal on whether Israeli settlements are legal or not the other day.
So there's no, this is a right wing pro settler government, however you cut it.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
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Yeah, I saw that the Jerusalem Post editorial board was telling Netanyahu he ought to step down.
Oh, is that right?
I don't know how lockstep they are, but they certainly are a right-leaning paper, no question about that.
Yeah.
Scott, when was that?
Just in the last 24?
Yes.
In fact, I think it was in my morning email this morning.
So yeah, there's a lot of pressure now on Netanyahu to get out of the way.
So let me ask you this, and we're going to switch to Gaza in a second.
I don't want to give that subject short shrift because it's important.
But as long as we're still here, do you think the case against him he says is a trumped up political case, and I'm just as likely to believe that even though I'm against him?
I presume he's innocent if he's being accused by the executive branch of something, just like everybody should be presumed innocent.
But do you think that the evidence, as the indictment says, or as the news reports have said, that he's actually guilty of some crimes here?
You know, I haven't examined it closely.
I just know that people I trust say it's a very strong case, you know, and that this Mandelblit was himself, you know, he had to go with the facts.
And there's a pattern of these, you know, wealthy media guys getting favors out of him.
And and he and meanwhile, in terms of regulatory issues and meanwhile, he is getting favorable coverage.
I think it's, you know, I'm inclined to believe the conventional wisdom on this, that it is a strong case.
From what I read it, yeah, it sounded like it too.
In fact, it was in, I think I read the Washington Post version of it this morning, speaking of, you know, leaning pro-Israel.
And that was the thing they said the most serious charge was this one with this media company.
And it seemed like a pretty clear case of what have you.
So I don't know how political it is, but I don't care because Israel's not a state in the union.
I know that's breaking news, but I would like to see their prime minister, their current one removed.
Although, so this is something you've written about, is that this actually could be a problem because Netanyahu is actually a real Achilles heel for Israel when it comes to their relationship with American Jews and who are by super majorities liberals and Democrats.
And by super majority supportive of Israel.
And by super majority supportive of Israel and who, I guess, as you put it, they really would be desperate to have anyone else in that chair so that they can pretend that everything is okay.
Yes, that's true.
So that's been the big liberal Zionist rallying cry is that the United States and Israel are in the same boat.
We both have these awful leaders and all we have to do to get back to the good country that we love is to get rid of Netanyahu.
And so I think that, you know, however you cut it, it's not a good, you know, liberal Zionism is in a difficult way.
I mean, this country is, Israel is what it is.
It's a right wing settler colonialist government and it's the racism is pretty profound and inherent.
And I don't think that even the left, such as it is in Israel, is, is not, is very small.
And so the people who will stand up and say, we have to let Arabs vote, well, none of them wants Palestinians to vote across in the occupied territories or very few do.
But the ones who even want to allow Palestinians into the government is very small.
So we have 20 percent of the population.
It's sort of a Jim Crow type situation.
And the, the, the discourse of the United States on race from the 1950s and 40s and 60s is the one that exists in Israel now, where how much inclusion are we going to let Palestinians have?
We want separation.
We don't want integration.
And so that whole discourse that failed in the United States a long, long time ago is regnant in Israel.
All right.
So, and here's our segue then into the recent attack on Gaza is that Netanyahu's, you know, primary opponent here, primary meaning first, not in the primaries, opponent here is Benny Gantz, the former general who bragged in his campaign a few months ago that he had helped Netanyahu to reduce Gaza to the Stone Age was the quote.
I saw the video, although I don't speak or read Hebrew, but that was the translation.
And nobody seemed to challenge it as far as I know.
So man, so yeah, he's the dove in this situation here.
And actually compared to Netanyahu, I guess the idea is inside among those second class citizens you just described, the Palestinian citizens of Israel, that they were ready to join up their joint list to support Gantz in order to try to keep Netanyahu out.
Is that correct?
Yes.
The joint list is the Palestinian parties in the recent election, and they won 13 seats out of 120, a pretty high number for them because there was a large Palestinian turnout.
And the turnout was that high according to the leader of that joint list, because the Arabs in Israel, Palestinians, want to get rid of Netanyahu.
That's why we're in this.
We're trying to get rid of this racist SOB.
And so that's what, but even though they pulled 13 seats, they have not been, Gantz has said, I'm not going to, I mean, he's hinted that he might work with them in a kind of, it's called a vote blocking fashion in the Knesset.
They don't actually join the government, but they keep his government from failing.
And I don't think he's going to have to do that.
And not that he wants to do it, but I think in the end he's going to get a coalition of all Jewish parties, which, you know, is what those Israeli voters, the Israeli Jewish voters like.
I got you.
Okay.
So you talk about, it was two weeks ago that the Netanyahu government, such as it is this caretaker government, launched an attack on the Gaza Strip.
It must have been retaliation for something, huh?
Yeah.
I mean, they have had for years, they have had security officials have been saying, we have Islamic Jihad as a rising force inside Gaza.
Islamic Jihad is supported by Iran.
We have to go after Islamic Jihad.
And Baha Abu Atta, the senior commander whom they killed, has been on this kill list for a long time.
He's known it.
And finally he does, Netanyahu does it during this period of electoral wrangling.
So there was plainly a political motive here on Netanyahu's part.
He wanted to show that he's in command, that Israel is under attack by Iran.
We cannot change horses in midstream, that kind of stuff.
And so there have been strikes by Islamic Jihad in Israel, I guess, sporadic over the last few months.
Why he did it now, I think, had a political component.
And as you said at the beginning of this discussion, I believe it was some 40 Palestinian civilians were killed or something on that order.
And that's just collateral damage.
Yeah.
I read that the initial strike actually did not hit their target at all, but instead killed five children and others as well.
I guess their moms and whoever.
Yes.
And Israel's admitted there was a quote unquote mistake in one attack.
But I mean, you know, you wipe out a whole family and it's a mistake.
And you know, and and not only is it a mistake, but it's a mistake for which there will be zero accountability.
And you know, I learned yesterday from Adam Schiff, the United States is the indispensable nation and that we are we have a great reputation around the globe.
Well, the indispensable nation will for darn sure make sure that there are no there's no accountability for this type of massacre of civilians.
And there never is in Israel.
You know, maybe, you know, there's a slap on the wrist sometimes of an Israeli soldier.
But that's a security society.
That's that's what Israel has been is created.
That is what it is now.
That society is constantly beset by enemies, constantly fearful of its enemies, and cannot deal with the root causes of its unpopularity in the region, which is its oppression of Palestinians.
And so it's wrapped up in security issues and regards these Palestinian resistors of occupation as terrorists.
And you know that there's your cycle of violence.
There's your squirrel on the treadmill.
Yeah.
And lock these people in a cage and then whenever they rattle it, call it terror and pretend you're on the defensive.
What a racket.
Yeah.
And and just, you know, you, you know, bless your heart.
You know, you you don't want to just dismiss Gaza in a word.
And, you know, Gaza is about to be Gaza is unlivable.
The U.N. and other sort of World Health Organization have told us that it was going to be unlivable by 2020.
It's unlivable now.
The water is undrinkable and the unemployment is staggering.
It's over 50 percent for young people or 70 or 80 percent for young people.
The place is under siege from it by Israel for 12, 13 years.
And, you know, Bernie Sanders mentioned it in the debate the other night on unprompted, which was a great thing.
But, you know, this persecution of people in a ghetto that is reminiscent of the Warsaw ghetto that the Nazi occupiers imposed.
I know we're not supposed to, you know, use the Nazi analogy.
Well, that's what it feels like to walk into Gaza, as I did.
I had the privilege of doing 10 years ago was to enter this ghettoized space where people cannot have no freedom to move and where in some ways they're dying before our eyes.
All right.
But OK, you're familiar with American Jewish Zionist views and well, not just Jewish American Zionist views, but the other side of the story, broadly speaking, is that that's all their fault, man.
They're a bunch of terrorists and they why won't they just renounce their ideology of murdering civilians for Allah and all this stuff and then everything will be fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a point.
I mean, they do think that people think that I hear that from people that like, hey, Hamas, which is Al-Qaeda, which is coming to kill you.
Yeah.
I mean, and I just you know, what's the root of this conflict?
You know, the root of this conflict is simple.
It's a settler colonial expansion and occupation of territory.
And the only remarkable thing about the creation of Israel and its expansion over, you know, 70 years into more and more territory with trying to get more and more Jews in on land with fewer and fewer Arabs.
The only remarkable thing about that history is that the Palestinians accepted it in 1988.
They said, we will accept a partition in which we get one fifth of the land.
And that amazing restraint and openness to some sort of compromise was rebuffed by Israel has never responded sincerely with good faith.
I just don't, you know, call it terrorism, whatever.
You know, it's just that's what people do, in my understanding.
And whether it's cloaked in religion, with beards, you know, people don't like having their land and property taken from them and being ghettoized.
And you know, early Zionists said themselves we would, as Jews, we would do the same thing.
And I think as you and me as Americans know very well that if this happened in America with some, you know, group that whatever, you know, roots it had in America was trying to create a national sovereignty that oppressed other Americans.
We wouldn't go for that.
We'd be up in the hills with guns.
Yeah.
I mean, and of course, the Americans who support this at least as much as liberal Jewish Zionists are American right wing Christians who, one of their major fears in the world is that Mexican immigrants are coming in such numbers that they're going to eventually take the Southwest back and declare it part of Mexico.
And they just have the super majority to do it.
And that would be the worst thing of all would be for people to come, not just to come to America to become Americans, but to come in order to carve out their own Mexican state on our land, which of course America stole from Mexico in the first place.
But hey, who knows anything about that?
Not an American Zionist.
I know that.
Scott, I got to ask you one thing, though.
You know, I take that's a good point.
And I have to, you know, it's helpful to me to hear that.
I haven't, you know, that analogy is a useful one.
But I just want to say that, you know, Trump was desperate to win the Louisiana governorship and the Kentucky governorship.
I've read his speeches as those campaigns drew to a close, that he lost both.
You know, he mentions Jerusalem as a throwaway line in there.
I don't think it's about the Christians.
This is all about Christian evangelicals.
I think this Israel is low on their list of concerns.
They have other concerns.
And this is all for Sheldon Adelson's money and the Jewish vote in Florida, as Tom Friedman says.
I didn't realize that Tom Friedman had written that, but it makes a lot of sense.
That's for sure.
He said it.
Yeah.
He said it.
Over the top Zionism on the part of Trump is great politics for the state of Florida because it, you know, he has his right wing kind of populist base that supports him there in the north.
And then how to lock up southern Florida is with this kind of policy, which, after all, doesn't seem to be too much in conflict from the point of view of the northern Floridians, for example.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I mean, I think also a lot of and as I said earlier in this discussion, you know, Jews are overwhelmingly in favor of Israel in the United States, just notwithstanding their progressive politics.
And you know, the older Jews are more conservative, even more conservative and hawkish.
And I think that when you get into southern Florida, you're seeing a lot of older Jews, in my humble opinion.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I think that's actually a statistical fact.
But yeah, man.
So yeah, let's talk about the Democratic primaries and this kind of thing for a minute here.
I mean, you have I read the that Bernie Sanders actually said something critical about Israel in the debate the other night.
Yeah, I know that you're really interested in this topic overall about the conflict on the Democratic Party left between progressive principles, civil rights principles, which most American Jews believe in, you know, wholeheartedly, you know, right up against Zionism, which is a direct denial of all of those principles, you know, in order to rustle the Palestinians land.
And so how's that shaking?
And it's also, of course, as you as you implied, they're talking about the Republicans split between the donors and the actual Democratic Party voters.
And we got a year of this to go still, but we're already almost a year into it.
So give us a rundown on some of the ironies and some of the, you know, back and forth going on between the different factions here.
Well, I would just say that the fact that Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, I don't know how to pronounce his name, and Bernie have all spoken favorably of conditioning aid to Israel due to ongoing expansion or possible annexation of the West Bank.
All three have said that very serious, you know, political people, I mean, as, you know, very serious politicians and that Joe Biden and Michael Bennett, is that his name?
And I believe Cory Booker of all opposed that idea.
This reflects the fact that, you know, the discussion that you and me have, you know, and what, you know, people would hope is something of a marginal, you know, areas of the Internet, you know, be it, you know, the website I work for or any war or anybody, you know, just the sort of they want to keep this marginal, this discussion.
It's not marginal.
You know, this is a discussion that is happening now inside the Democratic Party.
They can't keep it from happening.
They've started new Democrats for Israel organizations to stop it from happening.
And yesterday I heard Rashid Khalidi say, hey, there were discussions we weren't allowed to have in academia 20 years ago that are now wide open in academia.
We would not be able to talk about certain things at Columbia.
Now we talk about them.
And similarly, he said that he had protested Golda Meir for being a warmonger and saying racist things about Palestinians in the 1960s, 50 years ago.
He described this yesterday.
He said there were four of us at Yale protesting her.
You know, what kind of nutbags did they, were they made to seem like at Yale when they said that this woman was a racist?
And today that's an established position on the left and indeed on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
And Pete Buttigieg knows this, Bernie Sanders knows it, Elizabeth Warren knows it, and so do all the centrists, I mean, pizza, mayor pizza centrists.
But so it's out, you know, the cat's out of the bag.
I think it's going to be, I have, you know, Scott, when we got on the phone, it's a really dismal day out here today.
And you said, hey, man, it's a beautiful day.
And I agree with you, you know, let's be positive.
This is going to be a great year for discussion of this issue in the Democratic Party.
They will not be able to keep it out of the platform.
We have the wind at our back, people who care about human rights of Palestinians.
And I am confident that there will be some real criticism of Israel and even Zionism.
And maybe the support for boycott, kind of a natural tool of human progress, social progress, support for boycott will break out beyond the three members of Congress right now who support it against Israel.
Yeah.
Well, and to be real clear here, I mean, when you're talking about racist, you don't mean in the sense that now everybody's a racist when it's kind of the overused term for racial prejudice and overused accusation anyway.
But racism really implies a structure based on, you know, the supremacy of one group over another.
In this case, it's not exactly race.
You have a little bit of Ashkenazi versus Arab, but not really.
I mean, I guess the majority of Israeli Jews are not Ashkenazis, they're 60 something percent are Middle Eastern Jews.
So it's not, you know, that's not exactly the split, right?
It's more of a sectarian thing.
But anyway, it absolutely is a system of supremacy for one group over another.
Explicit.
Legally explicit.
And when the prime minister says, don't let the Arabs take over our society, that's the prime minister saying it, you know, in an election to keep people from voting.
You know, that's no, it's not just expressing as, you know, a negative stereotype of another.
He is laying down the law about keeping one group completely disenfranchised.
Right.
And of course, he's talking about people who, as you said before, are only one fifth of the population.
And we're not talking about the occupied territories.
If you include the occupied, now we're talking about half the population.
But inside Israel, the Arabs who have the right to vote, they're one fifth.
So how are they supposed to take over anything?
Just a blatant lie to keep them completely on the margins.
Yeah.
Or and, you know, racial fear, you know, pure racial fear, stoking pure racial fear on the part of a, you know, a nuclear armed, you know, kind of society.
I mean, the degree of paranoia that exists in Israel, it's a is is, as one Israeli has said, a national psychosis and, you know, one that we that it's a form of entitlement that we create in the United States by giving them a blank check.
Yeah.
Well, you know, in my experience, a lot of libertarians come from the right.
And I think right wingers probably are less exposed to these kind of narratives.
It's funny, because as you're saying, you know, as we're talking about, most American Jews are liberals.
They're also Zionists.
So you have kind of both sides of this conversation taking place on the left side, whereas on the right, people care about it less.
But there's much more of a uniformity of opinion, I think.
And then people aren't really exposed to the idea that there's really another side of the story worth considering.
But then again, when I explain it from just a libertarian point of view, if we were talking about any other groups of people kind of beside the point, but just whoever it is, that this group essentially created a new state on the land that was owned by the old group.
And they did it by ethnically cleansing almost a million of them, three quarters of a million of them.
And then 20 years later, 25 years later, they took over the rest of the land, but they didn't cleanse the population.
They kept them.
And they've kept them essentially in prison there with no rights ever since.
And then people go, oh, OK, now I understand.
I never did understand how that went.
But OK, 48, 67, and ever since.
I understand that now.
West Bank.
It looks like on a map, like maybe the Arabs invaded and took out a chunk of Israel, right?
When instead, no, that's just the part they haven't finished conquering yet.
That's why it looks funny like that, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, we did a piece, a review about Israeli education on the issue in colleges and what the model is in the United States for teaching this issue.
And you know, the model is we want our students to feel it's really complicated and incredibly difficult to sort out.
And there are two narratives and this, that and the other.
They want their students in a state of confusion about this, Zionists do, because it's simple.
Like you said, Scott, it's simple.
It's not rockets.
You know, it's just that pattern has been pronounced from the start.
You know, it never ends.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And confusion is their ally because clarity doesn't help at all once you understand.
I think we discussed this before, but it came up recently in an interview about, you know, I kind of put off learning about this stuff last because it always seemed so complicated.
And it always seemed like since both sides were claiming that God had given the land to them, then that meant that it was completely an irreconcilable conflict and there was no side to take really on this and that.
But then only later I learned that no, the Palestinians weren't claiming the magical supernatural authority.
They just lived there.
They had natural property rights, the plain and simple kind, like all humans.
It was the European Jews who had to pretend that they had this magical supernatural superseding property right to this land over and beyond the people who live there.
Well, when you look at it that way, it's pretty obvious, regardless of whether you're religious or not, you know, that these people are invoking religion to override and cancel the natural rights of the people who live there in a way that probably wouldn't even be allowed by religious law.
If you were fair about how you interpret it, that's why they had to pretend nobody lived there, right?
It's a land without people.
That way they don't have to excuse it.
They just deny it.
Beautifully stated, beautifully stated and clearly stated.
And the thing is that, you know, and then, you know, you're surprised that, you know, ISIS is not, you know, response to this issue so much as it is to the, you know, the indispensable nation of the United States.
But whenever you inject religious and, you know, crusader type language into this, that there wouldn't be a religious reaction.
I mean, there's enough religion in that area.
You know, obviously that's one of, you know, the birthplace of three major religions.
And once you infuse this stuff with religious ideology, oh, surprise, there are guys with beards on the other side who are invoking religion.
But essentially it is a land issue.
And you know, it's, it's clear, it's clear which side we should be on.
And when, when, you know, again, you were talking about the discourse and what is the right wing and the left wing element, you know, I have seen the left, the left is unified on this.
I observed them.
And yesterday I heard Dorothy Zellner, a former civil rights activist saying, hey, you know, the democratic party can't be for, for this, this, this process, you know, of ethnic cleansing.
That's not what the democratic party stands for.
It goes back to the knock button, 1948.
And I think we're going to hear a lot of that in the democratic party this year.
Fireworks, man, because the reaction to that is just going to be crazy too.
Man, Vladimir Putin put you up to saying that, I bet.
Yeah, definitely.
That was, they actually said that someone, I forget.
One of these, it was either Batya Unger Sargon or Barry Weiss were saying that we've got a Russian script, you know?
Oh my God.
Oh, that, the, the taking the Palestinian side of the story is the Russian thing.
Yes, it's the Russian script.
And when you say Sargon, you're talking about the editor of The Forward and when you say Barry Weiss, you're talking about this major writer for the New York Times.
Yeah.
I should be careful because I'm ascribing one direct statement to them and I'm not, you know, I have to shake my memory to see who made that Russia comment, which was very amusing.
Yeah, I'm sure they retweeted each other.
They are the ones who are saying that the left is anti-Semitic.
Both of them are saying the left is, and by the way, it's not, it's just as dangerous as the Squirrel Hill synagogue massacre.
So you know.
Which is clearly not true.
I mean, to find a leftist who's avowedly against one ethnic group other than say white people is just almost impossible to find.
You know what I mean?
It's just that, no, it's almost always the intersectionality of this, that and other minority groups essentially on the same civil rights side, which is admirable enough.
Not the racism against white people part, but the part about, you know, we're all kind of in this together, even if we're not alike.
That's the good part, you know?
Yes.
I agree with you there.
It's fairly universal on the left from the center all the way to as far as you can get, pretty much.
I think that tends to be true culturally.
And I just want to correct myself.
That argument of the Russians are scripting us was from some sophomore at George Washington University who was writing for the New York Times.
And probably Barry Weiss, you know, put, well, assigned the article or had some role in it, but it's all about how the left is, you know, just taking its talking points from the Russians.
Well, which of course is the universal narrative from the center left about anyone to the left of them on anything or as they conceive it anyway, or anyone who tells the truth about any policy.
You know, it's funny because you look back, Vladimir Putin said, don't invade Iraq.
So if you were good on Iraq war two, then you are guilty of being Vladimir Putin's puppet, you know, essentially.
How dare you oppose America's agenda, even though America's agenda is the most corrupt and morally bankrupt and murderous and blood-soaked and in-debt thing you can possibly conjure.
Yeah.
And, and, and exact.
And you know, Fiona Hill, you know, now the hero of these liberals, you know, when she says that, didn't she argue that our policy is Trump's policy is pro-Russian?
I don't see any pro-Russian stuff there.
I think we should be talking to the Russians about the Middle East.
I think that that's where the grant, you know, the Russians were in on the Iran deal, which was a great thing.
You know, the Russians are, you know.
They helped avert war in 2013 when they said, we'll get rid of all of Assad's chemicals.
And they helped get rid of ISIS.
Why did they get in there?
You know?
Yep.
I mean, they were supporting Assad, but it was against ISIS.
Yeah.
And of course that was the first time they came back to the Middle East, this whole time since the end of the Cold War, 25, 30 years ago now.
And and it was only in response to ISIS, which America and its allies had essentially created.
They certainly didn't mind seeing them seize all of Eastern Syria if, I think they didn't really want them to invade Western Iraq the way they did.
But there's no question that America was on their side leading up to the point where it got way too big and then they turned around and destroyed them.
So anyway, I like bringing that up because it's kind of a big deal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We know whose side Syria, I mean, we know whose side Israel was on in that too.
And it took years of denials.
And then they all finally admitted it that, yeah, of course, Israel was back in the jihadists with America and Turkey and Saudi the whole time.
Hey, I'll just letting you know that we're doing a big end of the year fun drive at the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute dot org slash donate.
We've got some great projects in mind for the new year, including the publication of my next book, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism.
Sheldon Richman, Pete Quinonez and I also plan on bringing on more writers, hosting an event or two and some other big ideas we're working on as well.
So help the Libertarian Institute make the new year a huge one for the advancement of freedom at Libertarian Institute dot org slash donate.
And thanks.
I'm sorry, I totally forgot.
I wanted to double back to this important subject here, Phil, which was the recognition that you mentioned by the Donald Trump government and Pompeo State Department of the legality, quote unquote, of all of the settlements on the West Bank, which is a big change in at least the officially stated policy of the U.S. government.
But I wonder what you think that really means.
I think it will create greater, greater suffering for Palestinian people.
It will be a, you know, sort of carte blanche to further Israeli settlement of the West Bank.
I think that it will advance the ultimate solution of this, which is a democracy from the river to the sea, because there is one state there.
It affirms a reality.
There is one state.
And a lot of the claims that there isn't the two state solution is a delusion that people have that you could somehow carve two states out of what is one state.
So there's a good aspect, but it will create a lot of suffering.
And I think that it will help the Democrats politically in that they will be able to, it will further divide the Israel issue between the parties.
And so it will politicize the question and allow left wingers who believe in a democracy to speak up inside the Democratic Party and to call out the B.S. of anyone who supports a two state solution.
Where is your two state solution after 30 years of concerted, well, 70 years of official, you know, dedication to partition?
Does it really take 70 years to create a state in the post World War II climate?
A lot of states have been created, no Palestine, despite the will of the world to do so.
I think that discussion has to happen inside the Democratic Party and that this decision actually fosters that process.
Yeah.
Isn't that funny?
All the ironies here, you know, it really is like that where it's, you know, the admission really should be that, hey, not just that Israel is annexing, has annexed the West Bank, but they did in 1967.
We've all just been kind of, I don't know who we is.
It's been pretended this whole time that that wasn't the situation, that there was some other resolution going another direction here or somewhere.
But that really is the reality.
They annexed all the land and they annexed all the people and they refused to extend any political, civil rights or liberties or whatsoever to the people there.
They have no representation whatsoever.
And, and, and, you know, just to mention real quick, in case that raises a point of confusion, they do have a Palestinian authority.
That's sort of like a government.
There's Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
That's something like the people in charge there.
So can you differentiate maybe for a newbie about why that's not the same thing as having a Palestinian state already then?
Oh, I mean, there's just, there's so such limited sovereignty.
I mean, what kind of state can even protect its water resources from its neighbor?
If it was a real state, then, then it would have some, its own water would go to its own people and right now its own water is going to settlers who live in, of the other nationality and largely other religion who are, have, live on the hilltops inside your country.
I mean, it's just, the Palestinian authorities authority is, you know, starkly limited, starkly limited and it's not the, you know, electromagnetic space, airports, you know, borders, none of that do they control.
It's absurd.
So.
So it really is sort of a subcontractor of the occupation rather than any.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I am so sorry that we don't have time to discuss all the great articles that you've been writing lately, some of which we've touched on today, but it's been a pleasure.
I really, you know, I really hope people will take up Mondoweiss.net, sign up for the daily email list and keep track of all of the great writing going on there and all the important analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
It's really is a really great place, a one-stop shop for all things Israel-Palestine here.
So thank you again, Phil.
Great to talk to you.
Thanks, man.
I appreciate it.
Have a great weekend.
You too.
All right, you guys.
Mondoweiss.net.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at foolserrand.us.
