12/04/14 – Jason Ditz – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright you guys, welcome back to the show.
Headphones back on.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I got Jason Jetts on the line.
Hey, Jason.
Hi, Scott.
How are you doing, dude?
I'm doing good.
How are you?
I'm doing real good and especially now I got you on the line.
Very happy to have you here.
I've been meaning to have you on all week long.
Everybody, by the way, just finished, only a few moments ago, finished wrapping up that interview with Kate Crockford on the Boston bombing.
Had to go overtime into the break there.
So the full archive will be there with the rest of them at ScottHorton.org slash interviews.
You won't want to miss the end of that one.
Alright, so Jason, man I have so many things to ask you about but I'm going to have to narrow it down because there's only so much time in a show.
First of all, we got to talk about Israel and I guess we'll start at the top with the politics.
Can you please tell me about the end of the Netanyahu coalition and the beginning of what's next?
Well, sure, it's something that's been coming for a while as anyone who's followed Israeli politics knows.
Israel's had this sort of center-right, far-right coalition government since January of last year and it's had members that have been at each other's throats pretty much from the beginning.
So it was only a matter of time before something split them up.
What ultimately did it was this Jewish nation-state bill, which the original version pushed the idea of putting in the basic laws, which is sort of the Israeli equivalent of the Constitution, that Israel is a Jewish nation-state.
That version also included a guarantee of equal rights for minorities in sort of a vague way.
Former Justice Minister Zippy Livni, who's one of the moderates, blocked the bill saying that Israel has always defined itself as a Jewish and democratic state and always tried to balance between the two, which sometimes hasn't been so easy and sometimes hasn't been so successful, but defining it strictly as a Jewish state really undermines its claims to being a democracy and indeed its more ridiculous claims of being the only democracy in the Middle East.
So she blocked it.
Netanyahu reintroduced the bill, taking out even the pretense of equal rights for minorities, announced he was going to push it through the cabinet, fired Livni, fired Yair Lapid, who was another moderate cabinet member who opposed the bill, and it's essentially collapsed the government.
Now Israel has disbanded its parliament, dissolved its parliament for the term.
Elections weren't supposed to be until 2017, now they're going to be on March 17th.
So it's finally the straw that broke the camel's back here.
Yeah.
Wow.
So, boy, it's a good thing I have you for a cheat sheet.
I hadn't even gotten around to reading this.
So I knew that the coalition had fallen apart and I knew they were trying to pass this Jewish nationality law, but I didn't realize that it was the language of the law was what broke up the coalition.
And I just want to make sure I understand you right.
You're saying that Livni and another guy both opposed the law from the left, but the rest of the cabinet opposed the law from the right, or they were OK with it, the right, the people to the right of Netanyahu, like Lieberman and Bennett, they were OK with it, even though it had some lip service as to the civil liberties protections of the minority?
Right.
They were they were OK with the version that had the lip service to civil liberties.
That got taken out at any rate when Netanyahu reintroduced the bill.
So they were even more OK with it then.
But then at that point, Livni said, I'm out.
And that was the end of that.
Right.
Livni, Livni and Lapid and Lapid's party, he's the finance minister.
His party was was actually.
One of the top three in the coalition.
So which is his party, by the way?
Yes.
OK.
I don't know that one.
They were just formed for the 2013 election.
They were originally formed to be sort of a new version of the sort of centrist free market party that used to exist in Israel, which was run by his father.
But after the election, it it sort of became less and less clear what the party actually stood for, because they ended up joining the coalition alongside Bennett, supposedly because Bennett was going to weaken the ultra-Orthodox hold on on the Rabbinate.
Yeah, that's an interesting split between the secular right nationalists and the religious right.
You'd think that they would put their differences aside, but guess not.
Right.
And that's going to be a big problem going forward in the elections because it's it's unthinkable for the alternate ultra-Orthodox parties to be in a coalition with Lieberman.
I mean, they despise Lieberman and Lieberman despises them.
Well, thank God for that, because otherwise it'd just be a slam dunk at this point that without Livni and Lapid and their parties, that what's left of Kadima, I guess, and this other new party, that the coalition just be moving to the right.
But you're saying now they got enough problems on the right that that may not be the case.
Right.
And the early polling shows that it might still go that way.
But there's there's so much anger between these different far right parties, particularly the secular versus religious right parties, that it's going to be really tough to put together any sort of coalition that everyone agrees to.
Well, and now, you know, I want to mention to you this thing that I read in the Jewish Daily Forward that was a really smart.
I think it was just, you know, their editorial board kind of essay rather than, you know, with one person named on it.
But the point of it was that this law is not for the majority.
And I guess it's in jeopardy now, this law, but it's not for the majority.
They already rule.
They already know it's a Jewish state.
They're living it.
This is a law for the minority.
This is a lot of stick it in the face of the minority that this country is not yours.
And then they make the obvious parallel.
It's the Jewish Daily Forward, an American publication, after all.
What if they declared America a white Protestant state?
How would you like that, liberal Jews of America, who, you know, are what, two percent of the population?
Would that make you feel very comfortable?
Well, that's what they're doing in Israel right now, as though the Muslims and the Druze and the Christians of Israel, never mind the occupied territories, don't know that they're third and fourth class citizens, you know, as it is already.
They got to be reminded that, no, Jewishness predominates over democracy, enough of the pretense.
Right.
And, and the fact that they're all, you know, second and third class citizens, which nobody really questioned in the first place, I think is less the issue for a lot of the centrist Israeli parties.
I don't think Livni and Lapid have tremendous problems with that fact, because Israeli centrists are quite a bit different from centrists in most countries.
Centrist is kind of a relative term.
Yeah, absolutely.
Even the Labor Party, I mean, they're run by Ehud Barak, so, or I guess they were, he retired now or whatever, but that's his party anyway, so, you know, they're as militarist as Likud or anybody else.
Right.
And, and I believe it's Isaac Herzog runs Labor now, and he's a little more to the left than Barak was.
But the real issue was this sort of putting it in the basic laws as a Jewish state and not Jewish slash democratic state.
I think that was really the, the sticking point.
Or just leaving it alone, right?
It's already, as, as they said in the argument, right, as you, you cited Livni saying there, it's always been a Jewish and democratic.
Now, they ethnically cleansed all the non-Jews out of there so that they'd have their 80-20 super duper majority, but it is what it is, at least.
But to now just renounce the democracy part, that leaves them with what?
Sectarian nationalism, you know?
That old days.
Medieval times.
All right.
We'll be right back.
It's Jason Ditz.
I want to ask you all about the Iraq and Syria wars, too, here in just a minute.
News.
Antiwar.com.
I didn't even give you a proper introduction.
It's the great Jason Ditz.
News.
Antiwar.com.
He's covering everything.
Hey, I'm Scott Horton here for WallStreetWindow.com.
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All right, you guys.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Jason Ditz.
He's at News.
Antiwar.com.
He's the news director there at Antiwar.com.
He's the most important part of Antiwar.com.
News.
Antiwar.com.
Yeah, it's a judgment call and I'm making.
All right.
Listen, so one last thing.
I think I assumed a thing that I don't know for sure, but I think maybe I'm right.
Jason, was I right that because of the breakup of the government now and the call for new elections and everything over there in Israel that the new law is actually stalled or it's sailing on through anyway, or what's the status with that?
Right.
It's probably going to be stalled until after the new election.
Okay.
I think I was just assuming that, but thanks for clarifying that.
Okay.
And now, you know, I almost don't believe it, but I know that you wrote it.
So I do.
Planned Israeli bill would revoke.
Oh, and it's about Israel.
So yeah, I do.
Planned Israeli bill would revoke residency for, quote, bad people and their relatives would give broad authority to interior ministry to expel Arabs.
This is from November the 23rd at News.
Antiwar.com.
Please explain.
Well, this sort of came about and this bill hasn't passed either.
So whether it will or not with the government splitting up remains to be seen.
This was another thing that came out in the middle of sort of the crackdown on protests in occupied East Jerusalem, the government condemning everyone as rioters.
And the bill was initially sort of pushed as an idea by the mayor of Jerusalem who came up with this, you know, we need to get rid of the bad people, quote, in a speech.
And the bill is incredibly broad because it, you know, it covers, quote, unquote, terrorism, but it includes anyone who was involved in a riot, which is to say anyone that's been involved in any Arab protest in East Jerusalem.
I mean, basically they've labeled every single one a riot, whether anything happened or not.
People who've thrown rocks, which of course includes children.
People who incite, which is also an incredibly broad topic.
And I mean, that covers a vast chunk of the population to begin with, but it also includes the families.
And it doesn't really say how broad that definition is either.
So is it their extended family, is it just their immediate family, or what?
I mean, basically this law would allow, if it passes, would allow the Israeli Interior Ministry at its discretion to just wholesale revoke residency permits for entire neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and basically depopulate the area.
Yeah, well, let me ask you this, if I can figure out a good way to ask it.
Now that the whole Kerry thing has fallen apart, what I think everybody, even in D.C. and New York and all the, you know, fancy places that they write, agree that, well, that's it for the two-state solution, no more pretending that the Israeli government is ever going to negotiate in good faith for an independent Palestinian state.
I wonder if that's changed the conversation very much in Israeli politics about, well, so just what is the future of the West Bank?
I mean, obviously they're, you know, moving forward at all times in East Jerusalem and in the rest of the West Bank, but have they sort of shifted into a higher gear?
Is there sort of an understanding, you know, like we talked about before about that law that, well, we're just going to have to ditch the democracy thing because we can't pretend that it's an 80-20 split.
It's much more like a 50-50 split.
The Jews might even be in a minority now.
If you count the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the occupied territories, the Golan Heights and all the non-Jews inside Israel, quote-unquote, proper there, they might not even be the majority at all anymore.
And I just wonder whether they're talking about that.
Okay, fine.
Now it's time to go ahead and annex the West Bank and then deal with the new reality.
Stop pretending that, you know, it's a slow motion process.
We're at the end of the process.
Now it belongs to the state of Israel, that kind of thing, or what?
Well, I think that certainly that's how Bennett and the far right see it, and the more far right portions of Likud also see it.
But I think a lot of the other parties are, particularly with this long-standing threat of early elections, have been trying to position themselves in different ways for the sake of gaining votes this time around, because the polls still show that a two-state solution is quite popular in Israel.
Most Israelis are fine with the idea, particularly supportive if it ends all the violence that is constantly going on over these settlements.
And one of the particularly big surprises is Lieberman, who for decades has been one of the most staunch anti-two-state solution people, he's come out in the past week in favor of a two-state solution now, saying, well, and it's not an ideal two-state solution from the more moderate perspective, because he's coming up with the idea of ethnically cleansing the rest of Israel by expelling the minorities into the new Palestinian state.
But the fact that he's even open to the idea that, well, maybe some of this land is going to not be part of Israel in the future is a big change.
And that goes back to that right-wing split between the secularists and the religious types there, because he doesn't care so much about Judea and Samaria, he's more interested in playing real-world politics than superstition.
As brutal as he is, and as willing as he is, as you just explained, to violate people's rights to get his way, his way at least makes more sense in an evil way, but still rational.
He's much less interested in keeping this greater Israel conceit going, and he even says that, that it's probably time to abandon the notion of greater Israel, that Israel is just going to be expanding into this enormous state territorially, and to focus instead on unity, which is to say, getting rid of the minorities inside of Israel itself.
Because it's fairly obvious you can't easily do both.
I guess, theoretically, you could genocide everybody else, but that's not going to sell very well, even for the constantly pro-Israel US, it's not going to just sit by while Israel does God knows what to these people.
There's already tension about the settlements, so I think asked to choose between expelling the minorities and continuing to expand Israel's borders, he chose the former.
Alright, well, I'm sorry we're out of time, I wanted to ask you all about the war too, but Israel's wars are ours.
That's a great Jason Ditz, everybody, thanks very much for your time again.
Sure, thanks for having me.
Alright, y'all, news.antiwar.com, read everything he writes, he writes all day, every day about everything, news.antiwar.com, back in just a sec.
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