Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax 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.
All right, you guys introducing the great Philip Weiss from Mondoweiss.net, that's his great website.
And man, he's got a whole great stable of writers covering Israel, Palestine and Middle East politics, but especially Israel, Palestine and U.S. politics regarding Israel, Palestine and all these things.
Essentially liberal slash progressive anti-Jewish, anti-Zionism, I think is in a nutshell what's going on over there at Mondoweiss.
Great stuff.
And sign up for their email list and start your morning off angry with your coffee like I do every day.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing?
Great, Scott.
And, you know, just so the crazies don't, you know, I noticed you were starting to say anti-Zionist.
So it came out as anti, you started anti-Zionist, then you say Jewish, anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist.
So people could say, oh, see, he's anti-Jewish, Phil.
So, you know.
No, I think, well, yeah, I wouldn't interpret it that way.
I would interpret it like, well, it's not just liberal and leftist anti-Zionism, that you're Jewish and you proudly identify as Jewish and you identify all of your politics as wrapped up in your identity as an American liberal Jew.
And that's your point of view that you're coming from is all.
Ain't a damn thing wrong with that if you ask me.
Yeah, yeah.
It was the hiccup that they'll think, oh, he said anti-Jewish.
Yeah, no.
Oh, I see just the way I stutter because I'm an idiot.
I understand what you mean.
Yeah, no, it's fine.
Don't worry.
Yeah, I won't worry about it either.
I don't care what anybody says about me, man.
Great.
Yeah.
How are you?
You know, identity politics, I'm, you know, it's true.
It's true.
I identify as Jewish and strongly.
And but, you know, there are other parts of my identity, including being an American citizen.
So.
Sure.
Well, I mean, and that goes kind of right to the heart of the whole false dichotomy there and the way that the Israeli government, to me, laughably, I don't know how other people take this, but the way they claim to be the government of all Jews in the world.
Right.
They've never been in Israel at all.
That's not how state authority works at all.
What is he talking about?
I don't know.
Yeah.
And I think that worked.
That worked for a while for them and for the American Jewish community that that that identity worked.
And we are one, as Melvin Yourofsky, a great scholar of Zionism, has declared in a book, but title of his book, but we're not one anymore.
So, you know, screw that.
Yeah.
Well, so that's why I have you on the show, because, you know, there's so much to complain about, about liberal and leftist politics in America right now.
But there's to me one really good thing, and that is the change on Israel, Palestine.
And, you know, maybe it's just this is the one thing where the overall social justice kind of campaign that mostly I think is off the mark happens to coincide with what I think about who's occupying who over there.
I don't know exactly what it is, but I really like it.
And you've been doing this great coverage of especially these two women, these two Muslim ladies elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
And, and, you know, talking about this whole fight, and this is something you've been covering for a while, but it really seems like there are exciting changes coming in terms, in the very short term, big fights over the Democratic Party stance on Israel, Palestine.
Yes.
And I mean, that's great to hear that you see that as one area of real change and hope, because I'm tunnel vision, and I definitely have been declaring it again and again.
Well, I'll tell you what, I identify you as just correct.
That's what it is.
I agree with you when I read and what it is, is what you said about note that this woman, and I don't watch TV anymore, so I don't know how to pronounce their names and what have you, but this one House member lady, the way you put it was, watch how when people challenge her over this stuff, she does not back down one bit ever.
And she, you know, she's, she's very clear.
She doesn't say anything anti the other side or whatever, but that is the real sea change here, right?
Is actually, let me explain something to you about the Gaza Strip and, and not afraid to stand, you know, proud about that and not back down and not allow themselves to be characterized in negative ways and that kind of thing, but just stick to their guns no matter what.
That really is the sea change, right?
Yes.
That's wonderful that you landed on that.
I think that's great.
It's true.
Her name's Rashida Tlaib and from Michigan and yeah, she's unapologetic and it's wonderful and she's giving other people space too.
That's what happens when someone stands up with so much, you know, prominence, it gives other people space and she's creating that space as the, you know, activists like to say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's definitely a good way to put it.
And, you know, well, I'm kind of like you with the tunnel vision thing too.
I pay a lot of attention to this issue, so I may not be the best judge of, you know, how much things are changing, but it does seem like there's sort of a reckoning coming with the reality, right?
As we've talked about, they'd like to pretend that Palestine's the country next door or some kind of thing and put off ever really detailing with, dealing with the reality of what's actually going on.
And that's, what's getting harder and harder to get away with.
Now they're having to, like, why would these people keep using the phrase Jim Crow?
Why would they keep saying apartheid?
It's not just a slogan, it means something.
And so it leads to, you know, it kind of helps to force grappling with the actual occupation of the West Bank as it has been this whole time.
Brilliant.
Yes.
Brilliant formulation.
I wish I could be, do that nutshell the way you do.
Scott, what I would add to that is that, in my usual, you know, loquacious manner, is that Eliot Engel is now the chair of House Foreign Affairs Committee.
And Eliot Engel said, declared, you know, 10 years ago, has been declaring it forever, Israel will never return to the 67 border, okay?
And guess what?
Eliot Engel, chair of House Foreign Affairs, represents the soul of the Democratic Party, and they have maintained that line.
And so Israel has continued to gobble the West Bank and East Jerusalem with the permission of the United States government.
And when anyone tried to step out of line on that policy, from Jimmy Carter in 1978, to Obama a few years ago, they got hammered.
And Israel got to continue the colonization project, and there you have it.
It's one state.
And Rashida Tlaib is saying, guess what?
Those people who live there all should have equal rights.
And that's going to drive the Democrats crazy.
That is going to divide the Democratic Party.
Now here, you know, my tunnel vision doesn't give me a lot of perspective, but you can clearly see that the Democratic Party is very nervous about this.
They're worried that the financial base of the Democratic Party, the donors, tend to be Jewish Zionists, and that they're going to lose them, and they got to hang on to them.
And that's going to be the big battle, is the base versus the donors.
And the base, actually, the reason the battle can happen is, it's not just a Jewish, non-Jewish battle.
There are a lot of Jews in the progressive base who love what Rashida Tlaib is doing.
And so it's not going to play out in that kind of, you know, populist anti-Semitic terms.
It's going to play out in American national interest and human rights terms.
By the way, let me ask you this, and sorry, because not that I think you've written about this particular point recently or anything, but I just wonder if you know, because I know that the polls have said for many years that a vast majority, maybe even a super majority of American Jews support, quote unquote, the two-state solution, but I wonder if they've ever really been polled on, since those days are over, since that ship has sailed, essentially, and the, you know, the reality is that Israel has already annexed the entire West Bank all of this time.
Do you now support equal citizenship for those Palestinians, even if that means the loss of a Jewish chauvinist state there?
What do they say about that?
Do you know?
Well, let me start by saying, I think you and I have both seen the figures on Americans overall on that, where surprising numbers, I think close to 40 or 50 percent of Americans would say, hey, if there's no two-state solution, we believe in equal rights.
I'd make it go to a majority, and among Democrats and progressives, it goes to a large majority are in favor of that.
As to Jews, I haven't seen the polling.
I think a lot of Jews would be, you know, upset about that, and the numbers might break a little, but there are a lot of Jewish progressives who are going to say, eh, what the heck.
And if you said to them, that means the end of a Jewish state, I think a lot of them would be indifferent, because these are young people who believe in the separation of church and state, who think that Jewish safety in the West, in the United States, has been ensured by that type of policy, and why shouldn't Palestinians have the same protection in Israel and Palestine?
Right.
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Okay, now, so speaking of Jim Crow, back to American politics here, let's talk a little bit about Michels, Alexander, and Goldberg in the New York Times.
And this is really important stuff, and stuff that you cover very well here.
So first of all, Michels Alexander is the academic, I forget which college she's from, who wrote the book The New Jim Crow about America's prison industrial complex and the essential slave labor is what it really is, people of all colors, poor people in American penitentiaries.
And so, you know, and she has a very established, incredible voice in liberal and progressive American politics based on that book, and I don't know what else she's done, but at least based on that.
And she wrote this incredibly important piece for the New York Times that said what, exactly?
Well, again, your nutshell is perfect.
The piece said that it's time to break the silence on Israel and Palestine.
And here you have this very brave person in a lot of ways, Michels Alexander, who, as you pointed out, regardless of what you think of any politics here, she changed the paradigm on some of the prison incarceration, on prison incarceration in our country.
On the left, she is a goddess for what she did.
And I work in prisons, volunteer work, and I know that prisoners have read her book.
So, this is a person of incredible power on the progressive side of politics who says, I was afraid to speak out about Palestine.
I was afraid to speak out about, because I would have lose my career opportunities.
And then goes on to describe the horrible conditions over there for Palestinians, all but apartheid, and says, I'm breaking my silence.
So, the significance of this piece was not that she was telling us anything new, really, about Palestinian conditions, but that she was admitting this very brave person, in other respects, was admitting that she was a coward on this question.
She wasn't going to be a coward anymore.
And it was in the pages of the New York Times.
And by the way, she said, the power of the Israel lobby has been amply documented.
And she said that in the piece.
So, it was a shocking piece to see this in the New York Times.
It was shocking for the Israel lobby to have to confront the fact that this person is going to be a regular or semi-regular columnist in the New York Times.
And it strikes fear in their hearts to think that this person who has so transformed the discourse on the left about prison incarceration is now applying her skills to apartheid in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.
So, it's pretty, it was a blow.
I'm sorry, a shot across the bow is the right word.
Well, you know, there's been, for generations, a Jewish and Black civil rights movement alliance, working together, you know, on various things.
And, you know, lately, there's been, well, I guess there was just many in a row.
And, you know, there was a very interesting piece in the, and I don't really know, I haven't read that much about this stuff, but there's a very interesting piece in the Forward by, I don't know, they have so many different titles for their different editors, but it was, I believe, a pretty important editor, this young woman, who I think she's fairly new, but pretty important there at the Forward, who wrote this thing about, you know, how is it that our community has essentially declared war on these Black civil rights leaders and saying that, you know, Alice Walker's Beyond the Pale, she said some kooky stuff about David Icke or something.
But then, but still, how does that hurt your feelings?
Somebody said something about David Icke, you do anything to laugh?
I mean, give me a break.
And then, Mark Lamont Hill, who, you know, got in real trouble over, well, you can talk about that, but then there are quite a few in a row, and including Angela Davis was disinvited from where she was going to win an award in her hometown for all her civil rights and anti-prison work.
And so, and what's at the root of all of this is the fight over Zionism.
And it's too easy for American Blacks on their side of the civil rights movement to identify on the Palestinian side.
And then, so that's a real question then for the American Jews of the civil rights movement of, you know, which side are they on?
The part about the rights or the part about the Jewishness?
Which I think, as you said, it's very easy and has been for a very long time for American Jews to side with the Palestinians, to side with rights for everyone, as opposed to, you know, picking whatever side they're supposed to be on because of who's who, and whose grandpa was who, and that kind of thing.
Right, right.
And your nutshell is fantastic, again, but I would just say that we all know about what coalition building is like in politics.
We all know how fragile coalitions can be and what kind of contradictions they can mask.
And they have to mask when you have, you know, very different constituencies coming together to form a political alliance.
And so, one of the understandings, the tacit understandings of the work between Blacks and Jews, you know, reducing it to those two categories over the years for civil rights has been, the Blacks are going to shut up about Zionism, you know, we're going to help you, and you're going to shut up about Zionism.
And, you know, for instance, and part of that was a financial deal.
You know, there was a lot of support in the Jewish community for, you know, civil rights causes led by Black people.
And if you look at this new book by Michael Fischbach called Palestine and the Black, I'm going to get the title wrong, but Palestine and the Black Cause, he makes it clear that even radical causes in the 60s, SNCC, you know, really on the left in the Black community and leaders on the left, they were financed, Jews helped finance those causes.
And they relied on Jewish donors and Jewish, you know, activist support.
And so, when SNCC broke the line on Palestine, it created a huge problem in the Jewish community.
And that kind of uproar has been contained over the years.
The alliance has been maintained of, you know, fervid support from the Jewish community and identification with Blacks as outsiders in American society, which, you know, that understanding is broken down, but also the financial support.
And it's worked, that alliance has worked, but now, as it always has been, it's subject to this tension over Palestine, and now it's just breaking out big time.
And that's what we're going to see in the next few years in the Democratic Party, because, again, you know, the leadership of the party is very involved with the Israel lobby.
The donor class of the party overlaps substantially with the Israel lobby, and the base doesn't like what Israel's doing to Palestinians.
Full stop.
Yeah, I'm really excited about it.
There's a big fight coming up here.
It's just, you know, as we talked about before, the gap between the truth and the narrative is so vast that it means that the reckoning that's coming when the reality finally is undeniable is going to be a really important one.
It's sort of like watching the way that they're already completely panicking about Tulsi Gabbard.
Not that she's particularly good on Palestine, according to my understanding, but just, they see her coming, and they just absolutely panic that she's not going to be 100% on board for every single thing.
And I mean the entire media establishment here.
I'm not picking on the Israel lobby or anything like that.
I'm picking on, yeah, the entire, but the reason why they're so afraid of her is because they know she knows what she's talking about.
And so, they don't know how to handle that, you know?
And she's against regime change, and the American people are against regime change.
That's the instability there, it seems to me, is that American people don't want interventions, you know?
So, there's going to be exciting fights over this stuff in the next year and two years, and all that.
And especially, it's interesting to see how this is only probably going to make the right wing even worse, but I don't know.
I don't know how much margin there is, really, to push there.
They're about as bad as they can be on all this, anyway.
You mean the Republicans are going to...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, only, oh, look how anti-Israel the Democrats are will be their position, you know?
Marco Rubio did it this week in the Senate, you know, with this anti-BDS bill they passed.
And, you know, he's saying, look at the Democratic Party.
It's been captured by Israel haters.
So, yeah, it is going to...
You know what's happening?
It's finally politicized.
And that is a great thing.
Yeah, it is, absolutely.
And, you know, as you put it before, too, this is in large part because of Trump and because of Netanyahu being so political and endorsing Romney and sidling up to Trump and identifying with him such a way.
They really sacrificed the Israel lobby policy of dominating both parties no matter what.
And also, I mean, they're trying, but it's, as we're talking about, it's just getting out of control there, and they don't know what to do about it.
And so speaking of which, talk about Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times, because they really are, as you talk about them, they really are enforcers of the party line here.
They're sort of Jeffrey Goldberg filling in that role, as they always have anyway, of who's allowed to say what about Israel and this kind of thing.
And so you've pointed to this young new writer, Michelle Goldberg, as saying some things that essentially means she's putting the marker down, that she says, therefore, in a sense, the New York Times editorial page is saying that the line is moved and saying this and that is now acceptable where before it was not.
Something like that?
I agree.
Yes.
I mean, yeah, I mean, they do define the four corners of acceptable debate in the establishment, or they help define it.
And so they had four columnists this year, all justify the slaughter of Palestinians protesting unarmed at the border.
You had people like Tom Friedman, Brett Stevens, Shmuel Rosner, I think Mattie Friedman, not going to get all, and justifying the fact that Israel was killing unarmed protesters who were just asking for their rights, who were caged in an open air prison.
And so suddenly, you have Michelle Goldberg coming into this mix and saying, no, anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.
And there are reasons that people want to be anti-Zionist, and there's a strong tradition in the Jewish community of anti-Zionism that goes back years, and a lot of people don't like what Israel's doing.
And so it was, I've tended to think of Michelle as a left liberal Zionist, but I think she's growing uncomfortable with Zionism.
And I've pushed her and others, when are we going to see people emulate Lisa Goldman, a former liberal Zionist, who said publicly, I went into the occupation, I saw what was happening, and I lost my Zionism.
How hard is it?
You know, yesterday, a friend of mine was telling me that his politics changed when he went to the South in the 60s.
He went down there, he saw what was going on, how much more information do you need?
And so I think Michelle has been to the occupation, so how much more information do you need to understand that Zionism doesn't work?
And I think that, obviously, I'm looking very hopefully to this columnist, but she is a regular columnist at the New York Times, and Michelle Alexander is a sometime columnist at the New York Times.
So yes, things are changing, and those are hopeful signs.
Sorry, hold on just one second.
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All right, now, so do you know Peter Beinart?
He's a pretty important guy in terms of this debate inside Jewish communities in the Northeast, I guess, right?
Yes, he is.
So he's the guy who famously pushed for Iraq War II and then wrote two books about how sorry he was for that, which you got to give him some credit for that, you know?
And you know what?
He read, pardon me, he wrote an article for The Forward where he had just this one solid paragraph, I think, where he recounted the various restrictions on the lives of the people of the Gaza Strip.
That was just incredible.
Like, their mom dies, and they're not allowed to go live with their father on the West Bank, and like, God knows what, just horror show stuff.
And denied medical care, and on and on and on and on.
And just hardcore.
I just wonder, do you know that guy?
Is this a strategic position that he's not, he wants to keep his spot in order to say these critical things, or he just refuses to have his mind changed?
Or what is the deal with that guy?
I think that Peter Beinart, whom I admire enormously, is a liberal Zionist.
And the challenge to him, and he is a liberal Zionist, because he's very close to his grandparents' understanding of what Europe did to Jews.
And so he thinks that Israel is necessary as a refuge for Jews.
I do not have the same historical framework.
I don't think that human rights violations of the past, the genocide, justifies human rights violations today.
He, so he is struggling with this question.
And the challenge to him is, I think, when is he going to, when is he just going to admit that this thing has failed?
How long?
It's like Stalinists.
How long are you going to be as honest as he has been, and as brave in detailing conditions on the West Bank, breaking with organizations that once supported him?
There's a guy who once spoke at AIPAC, and AIPAC hates him now.
How long are you going to be honest about these things without grasping the conceptual truth, which is, this was produced by Zionism, this was produced by Jewish supremacy ideals, nationalism.
We have to abandon that philosophy.
And what I think that we're talking, the discourse that we're talking about is important in the sense that, you know how competitive writers are.
I think there's going to be a race before long among some of these liberal Zionists to be the first to come out and say it, you know, or to declare this.
They don't like the company of me, you know, and the anti-Zionists, and some Palestinian activists.
They're too radical for them.
But Jeffrey Goldberg's in hiding.
That means something, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
It's great.
I think that Bynum will ultimately have to move, because nothing's going to change over there.
They keep saying two-state solution, two-state solution.
There's no two, as you said, it's effectively annexed.
Netanyahu's big competition right now is with a guy who, you know, says, well, I might remove some settlements, but look how many Palestinians I slaughtered during the Gaza war.
Right.
Yeah, wasn't that sickening?
And then, you know, this is something that, you know, I'm constantly interviewing the great Ramzi Baroud, who's this Palestinian intellectual and author and teacher.
I'm sure you may know him, but he's just the, he's the best.
He's great.
He's a refugee from Gaza, where his family were refugees from what's now called Israel, and this kind of thing.
And the poor guy, I'm constantly putting him through these paces about, well, I don't know, one time MJ Rosenberg said that they were all, wrote this great article about, there were all these opportunities for the Israelis to have done it the right way, to have gotten their 48 borders and then been happy with that and treated the Palestinians fairly and let the refugees at least come home to a free and prosperous and independent West Bank.
And Ramzi finally gets sick and tired of this and goes, look, man, the reality is that that isn't the reality.
This whole time, the Zionist project has been intent on making it the way that it is.
So stop giving me this whole, like they could have been fair about it.
The project is from the river to the sea.
You have to admit that.
And how can we pretend that two states is still a thing in 2019, 2018, or whichever, you know?
Absolutely.
And that's true.
And if you look from a distant view at the history of this conflict, there has been only one significant compromise politically in the history of this conflict, which is when Palestinians said, Yasser Arafat said, we will accept a state on 22% of the land.
Even that was not good enough for the Zionists.
But they said it.
They made that offer.
And they had, there was money on the table.
You and I have talked about this before, the idiocy, the hubris, the supremacy that allowed them to walk away from that deal.
And you know what?
They're going to regret that.
And they're going to lose the Jewish state, I believe, ultimately over this.
They can't maintain a, quote unquote, Jewish democracy.
All right, you guys, that's the great Phil Weiss.
Thank you, man.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
I really appreciate it.
Always fun, Scott.
I love your nutshells.
I just, I wish, I got to learn to, you know, I guess it's the time constraint, you know, that you learn how to do that.
Well, you're a talented writer.
I'm talented at remembering what you wrote and explaining it to other people.
And sometimes I repeat it back to you when you come on the show.
Thanks, man.
It works great.
No, thank you very much.
No, you've been a great, a really tremendous influence on me.
I've learned so much from you and from all your writers.
Great diversity.
Really appreciate it.
Okay.
All right, you guys, check out 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.
