Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Along the line, I got Grant Smith.
He runs the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy, IRMEP, I-R-M-E-P, IRMEP.
And what he does essentially is he writes books about the criminality and the less than criminal influence of the Israel lobby in the United States of America.
But yeah, especially on the criminal part.
And also he's an expert at suing in court for federal documents where they have to admit what they've known all along, such as, you know, about Israeli H-bombs and that kind of stuff.
And there's 10 million pages of PDF files that he's gotten through FOIA and Discovery and so forth at I-R-M-E-P.org.
His latest book is called The Big Israel.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Grant?
Scott, I'm doing fine.
Thanks for having me on again.
Yeah, man.
Happy to have you here.
You know what I left out of your bio is that every year for the past quite a few years now, you've held a conference.
The name is always a little bit different each year, but it's something to the effect of the people who are sick and tired of the Israel lobby lobby conference.
And they'll come together and give great speeches and talk about the Israeli government and their partisans' influence in Washington, D.C., and the negative consequences of it and these kinds of things.
And they're really great.
And you always have absolutely five-star lineups of guest speakers and these kinds of things.
They're incredible events you do every year.
I know you are working with Wormia, the Washington report on Middle East policy there or something like that.
And anyway, so tell me all about the one coming up here.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, this conference, we've kind of settled on the moniker Israel LobbyCon.
And you can get to the website, just go into IsraelLobbyCon.org.
But the full name of the conference this year, the official title is the Israel Lobbying American Policy Conference 2019.
And you're right.
It's really in a really key position because just two days later, after this conference on March 22, will be the convening of the policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
And this really talks about a lot of the policies that they've implemented over the year through what we would argue is undue influence that has had negative consequences on the U.S.
And the whole point of our conference is to present voices that have many of which have been locked out of mass media that have spent a significant amount of time studying U.S. policy and have important things to say to the American public.
So it's an extremely important conference, as you allude to.
We've done it more than once.
This will be the sixth time at the National Press Club in which we basically take over their ballroom and adjacent facilities for a nine till five conference with a reception to five to seven.
Maybe, you know, we've never run out of beer, wine and soda.
It's never happened before.
So we usually make it till seven.
But it's a really great event.
And it's not just the great speakers.
We've gotten a lot of feedback from attendees that what we really need to facilitate and something we're really doing this year is just programming more networking sessions right into the schedule.
So it's not just back to back speakers.
And so we have this new addition to the conference called the Ideas Fair.
And this is a chance for people to really sit down with the speakers, sit down with organizations that are behind some of the best initiatives to preserve free speech, to file the lawsuits that are really moving against a lot of the most negative programs to come out of the lobby, to get FaceTime with people from across the country to compare notes.
And so the Ideas Fair is a huge part of this conference.
I want to make some headlines with you today, Scott, by just telling you about some of the speakers who are coming.
And then maybe later sometime we can talk about all the Ideas Fair organizations that have signed up and are going to be present at the conference.
Please do.
All right.
Well, just kicking off kind of in alphabetical order.
A keynote speaker today, or excuse me, on March 22nd is Susan Abulhawa.
She's a Palestinian novelist who created a nonprofit organization called Playgrounds for Palestine.
She's one of the key plaintiffs in a lawsuit that just emerged from the Court of Appeals here in Washington, D.C., victoriously emerged from the Court of Appeals, which is suing Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, and a raft of organizations basically saying that they're committing genocide in the West Bank.
And so it's an extremely important lawsuit.
The plaintiffs on that case who have filed that lawsuit have been in court now for three years.
And she's basically going to talk about what is actually being done to Palestinian communities by the IDF and American organizations as the land upon which they are standing slowly dwindles under immense pressure and floods of money from the U.S.
So Susan Abulhawa is a keynote speaker.
We have Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, who's coming to talk about his news organization and some of the stories they've been covering this year.
And one of those most important stories is, of course, their release of the four-part undercover Al Jazeera-censored documentary, which they somehow obtained and released after basically the Israel lobby pressured the Qatari government to can it.
And so it's a lot of information, and what he's basically going to do is parse through it the parts about AIPAC organizing bundling parties to channel money to candidates, the parts about undercover sort of false astroturfing at college campuses, and all sorts of things that are going on.
Let me jump in just to say this documentary that they did was so important.
I mean, the lobby U.K. was great, but I don't live in the U.K., and so it was interesting and important and shocking even, but it wasn't that important compared to, wow, this one that they finally leaked, it's in four parts, it's on YouTube, it's at electronicintifada.net, and this thing is really something.
And in fact, I'd like to point out that regardless of the subject matter, if this was a story about the tobacco companies or a story about Lockheed Martin Marietta or any other kind of whatever the hell you got, a bank, something, this level of secret camera investigative reporting that was done here to accomplish this documentary was just absolutely incredible.
This guy, this young British undercover reporter deserves however many Pulitzers he can wear around his neck without falling down for this work.
It's just incredible to see.
I agree.
And if anyone really thinks that we have this wonderful amount of press freedom in this country, they should simply watch the documentary and listen to Ali Abunimah's observations and make their own decision about whether that's really true, because there's no American news organization that would have ever dared to undertake journalism at this level.
And the fact that not only was it censored by predominantly American organizations, but that the mainstream media won't even talk about it, that's something to find out more about.
But moving on, Saqib Ali is a former Democratic Party member of the Maryland House of Delegates, and he served in that position.
But then when he left the legislature, he founded an organization called Freedom to Boycott in Maryland, and it's an organization of solidarity activists with the Palestinians.
And in January of 2019, he sued Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and his attorney, General Brian Frosch, over Hogan's executive order forcing all contractors, which he is as a software engineer, to sign pledges that they won't boycott Israel.
And the minute he was asked or made aware of that, he sued both of them in federal court, and he's going to come in and talk about the raft of executive orders and anti-boycott legislation that has been passed in state legislatures, the federal law that's pending in Congress to legitimize all of that, and why it's important to stand up for the First Amendment.
So Saqib Ali's coming in.
An extremely important historian, Walter Hickson, who's author of a half a dozen books on U.S. history, U.S. foreign relations, the history thereof, who's taught for 36 years and is a distinguished professor of history at Ohio, is coming out with a new book about the Israel lobby, in which he examined AIPAC founder Isaiah Kennan's personal papers.
And really sort of debunks the idea that there wasn't always close coordination between the Israeli government and AIPAC as they worked to pass some extremely damaging policies in the ever-compliant U.S. executive branch in Congress.
So he's got an explosive book.
You can't get your hands on it.
I've got a copy, a dog-eared copy of photocopy printouts with my Post-it notes on it.
And I can attest, having written a number of books on somewhat of the same subject, that this is dynamite.
And he's going to come in and talk about that book, which is called Israel's Armor, the Role of the Israel Lobby in the History of the Palestine Conflict, published by Cambridge University Press.
So that's an extremely hot book.
Hickson has a very interesting background in that he's also studied American settler colonialism.
And he can go deep on some of the affinity that's allowed Americans to kind of be taken in by the messaging that Israeli and U.S. populations are similar.
He's got a lot to say about that.
So Hickson's going to be there.
James Metz, who's a retired I.T. guy and co-founder of Richmonders for Peace in Israel-Palestine, is on the ground in the Virginia state legislature fighting their state anti-BDS laws, as well as some of their other legislative initiatives, in particular to fund a new hybrid Israeli-slash-state-government entity called the Virginia Israel Advisory Board.
He's testified numerous times that this organization, which is headed by an anti-BDS evangelist imported from Israel, of all places, should be shut down.
And he's going to be talking about how local state actors can lobby against having their state government taken over and used by the Israelis for their purposes.
So he's extremely interesting.
Paul Norsey is with us, the same organization, the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights, which James Metz's organization is under their umbrella.
Paul Norsey is going to be talking about how to form a state-level umbrella organization to kind of take back government.
And he's lived and traveled extensively through the Middle East.
He's extremely active with Virginia state organizations involved in human rights, along with James Metz, to kind of monitor and watch and push back against some of the things going on in the state government level.
James North, whom you've interviewed and who's an expert on reporting and misreporting at The New York Times, who works for the illustrious Mondo Weiss as a contributing editor, is going to be telling us everything he knows about the particular subject of the techniques and why The New York Times is slanting news about the Middle East, in particular Israel-Palestine.
I can't think of anybody who's better about that and any location better than the National Press Club to talk about that.
The whole issue of ever passing anything productive in Congress, of course, is something constantly watched by you, by me.
Reports on anti-war talk about it as well.
Hey, could you actually have a resolution to get out of Yemen or stop supporting it?
Can you actually have a law banning this or that?
And Brad Parker actually got some legislation introduced.
He's the senior advisor for policy and advocacy at Defense for Children International.
And they put together a piece of legislation to protect Palestinian children's rights, in particular the right against incarceration, and got that introduced into Congress.
And so he's going to be talking about how they managed to do that, what the prospects are for getting good legislation to actually become law.
And the name of the law was—excuse me if I can find the note here—Palestinian Children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Act or something like that.
So he'll be coming.
And basically, I'll have some role introducing some topics and doing a little bit on the question of U.S. foreign aid to Israel vis-a-vis the Israeli nuclear weapons program.
So these are kind of two topics that are considered untouchable in Washington.
You can't really debate aid.
You can't really question whether it's not just the best thing in the world to have given more aid to Israel than was given to rebuild Europe under the Marshall Plan after World War II.
That's not even a topic.
But you really can't discuss the Israeli nuclear weapons program, and it never is in Washington.
So I'll be pulling out some of the recent research, much of which was already printed at antiwar.com, and use that as kind of some context for how these discussions are being actively thwarted, and how the lobby doesn't want them discussed, and some of the things it does to keep them from being discussed, and why it is so important to discuss them.
So those are the speakers we're announcing for now.
We've got some in the bailiwick, some in the bullpen.
Maybe we can talk about those sometime closer to the March 22 conference along with the Ideas Fair participants.
But I think that gives you kind of a taste for this year's conference, which was much more than previous conferences about things that are being done on the ground, things people can actually do.
So people who have gone to previous conferences are going to see some of their wishes for more of this sort of thing.
They always ask in the surveys after the conference, what can we do?
Well, this conference is all about what people can do.
And for those of us putting it on, it's extremely exciting because some of the people on the stage this year were out in the audience in previous years, working on books, putting together organizations, taking some of the things that they heard from speakers and putting them into action.
And so now it's really evolving in terms of being able to hear from them and some of the successes they've achieved.
Cool.
Yeah, that's really great to hear.
And especially when it's an emergency, when you're talking about stuff like the right to boycott.
What an outrage that you have state governments outlawing or not exactly outlawing, but essentially in a way, certainly punishing companies that they deal with over boycotting Israel.
Right.
And I think one of the things that people are missing is the reaction isn't coming from pro-Palestinian activists.
The reaction is coming from newspaper publishers who are going to run an ad for the university who asked them to sign this anti-boycott pledge.
It's coming from the nurse.
It's coming from the speech pathologist.
It's coming from, you know, the person who was going to tutor in math.
And most of them have nothing to do with the Middle East until the Middle East is being foisted upon them in the form of a pledge of fealty to one side of the conflict.
And I think this is an emergency, like you say, because finally, at long last, Americans who kind of feel like this doesn't ever touch them are being touched.
They're being hit, basically.
I mean, previously you mentioned the teacher there in the Pflugerville School District right near where I live.
Right.
She's a contractor, so they denied her contract because she wouldn't take this loyalty oath.
Well, this is not an issue in any other context.
There are no other loyalty oaths in Texas.
You don't have to take a loyalty oath to the state of Texas or to the U.S. government.
I don't think you even have to say the Pledge of Allegiance if you're a contractor working for the school district.
But you have to say the Pledge of Allegiance to Israel?
You have to put that in writing?
Under what, penalty of perjury on a government document that you promise never to boycott them or else you can't get this contract?
I mean, that is crazy.
And talk about overreach.
There are probably a lot of Americans never even heard of Israel until it comes to stuff like this.
Somebody telling me what I'm allowed to say or not say or whether I can deliberately not buy something or not.
What in the world?
Right.
Well, that was Bahia Amawi, and she basically is probably closer to these issues and more cognizant of the Palestinians than most.
But it is true that this is overreach because these types of anti-boycott laws are really hitting people and making them think for the very first time, what am I being asked to do here?
And I think it's also, though, symptomatic of encroachment that's been going on inside of government for years.
I mean, there's no federal employee or contractor right now who can talk about the Israeli nuclear weapons program because if they have any classified information or any security clearances, they absolutely will be fired and criminally prosecuted for doing that.
So these sort of gag orders and anti-boycott and other onerous oppressive measures have been in place inside the federal government.
And we only ever hear about them for the odd case where somebody was dumb enough or I would say smart enough to defy them and say enough and violate them.
And then they're prosecuted.
But this sort of overreach, this heavy-handed anti-First Amendment thing has been going on quietly, and now it's breaking out into the open.
Yeah.
Well, listen, I mean, this sounds like a great one, and it sounds like you have some more speakers you're holding in reserve there, as you say.
But this sounds, as you're saying, like a real substantive one for activists and this whole thing about the ideas fair.
We'll talk about that next time.
And I know you've got some student listeners, and students can definitely attend for free.
Just look up Israel LobbyCon, fill out a form, ask for a free ticket, go all day, get lunch, go to the reception.
So if you're a student in particular in the D.C. area, absolutely do that.
And, of course, journalists should apply for a press pass if they're interested in covering this sort of thing.
It's going to be like no other.
Cool.
All right.
So Israel LobbyCon, and it's IsraelLobbyAndAmericanPolicy.org.
And if you just go to IRMEP.org, I-R-M-E-P, IRMEP.org, you'll see a big banner ad for it right there.
The Israel Lobby and American Policy Conference 2019.
It's March the 22nd at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Thanks again, Grant.
Appreciate it, man.
Hey, thanks.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
You can 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.
