03/29/16 – Rob Bryan – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott Horton here for Liberty.me, the great libertarian social network.
They've got all the social media bells and whistles, plus you get your own publishing site and there are classes, shows, books, and resources of all kinds.
And I host two shows on Liberty.me, Eye on the Empire with Liberty.me's Chief Liberty Officer Jeffrey Tucker every other Tuesday, and The Future of Freedom with FFF founder and president Jacob Hornberger every Thursday night, both at 8 Eastern.
When you sign up, add me as a friend on there, scotthorton.liberty.me.
All right, y'all, Scott Horton Show, I'm him, and our guest today is Rob Bryan.
He is a journalist who's written for Jacobin and Mondo Weiss, and now he's got a new one at the Grey Zone Project at Alternet, which I think is just great, even just the title of it.
The Grey Zone, that's what the Islamic State calls civilization, where people of different faiths can get along and live side by side, the enemy.
And, of course, that's what we're for.
And great to see that that's a project that they're doing, and great to see this piece by Robert Bryan there at the Grey Zone Project.
APAC incognito, three days undercover at the Israel lobby's biggest policy conference.
Really great piece.
We'll be running it tomorrow on antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Robert.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me.
Very happy to have you here.
And, wow, interesting thing here.
So you went undercover, is that right?
Put on a nice blue suit and hung out at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting for three days, huh?
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, a lot of people we're trying to get, including people I know we're trying to get press credentials, and apparently there's a very strict screening process.
And, you know, if you have a history like I do of writing from an anti-Zionist perspective, you most likely, or almost certainly, will not be granted press credentials.
So I actually had a full-price ticket.
I got, you know, comms by alternate and went just kind of as, you know, another attendee.
And, yeah, you know, dressed up in a suit and shaved and tried to blend in, didn't look like a lobbyist or a college Republican or something like that.
All right.
And then, well, let's go ahead and start with how you start here.
The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee is a cult.
Now, I've heard it called a lot of things from a lot of perspectives, but that's pretty strong language.
Tell me what you mean.
Yeah, well, you know, I wanted to distinguish it from other lobbying groups and kind of talk about what makes it unique.
To me, you know, there are these sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the protocols of the elders of Zion and, you know, as I kind of jokingly refer to it, cabals of Jews in smoky back rooms pulling all the strings.
And this is nothing like that.
I mean, this is very much like, you know, doing politics in America, whether it's the NRA or the tobacco lobby, these sort of big, you know, private interests or special interests lobbying Congress.
But what made it cult-like to me was just sort of talking to the people there and realizing that, you know, a lot of them aren't particularly religious.
It's not about being Jewish.
A lot of the people weren't Jewish at all.
You know, they were evangelicals.
They had a bishop speaking who actually Max Blumenthal wrote something about this and had said that, you know, Obama can't be the Antichrist because he's not Jewish and the Antichrist has to be Jewish.
So really it had very little to do with Judaism.
But it was sort of its own cult in that it demanded this unquestioning allegiance to Israel.
Everything Israel does is good.
Every act of aggression they commit is in self-defense.
And it doesn't matter that, you know, they have these apartheid policies or that they're enforcing a brutal occupation, illegal under international law, etc.
All these things we know to be true.
It was just like that, you know, you were talking to someone who kind of had this glassy-eyed allegiance to Israel that nothing could break, basically.
Well, now, so I'm not sure if that just describes partisanship or a kind of religious belief or, you know, if it has to be as bad as a cult.
But I see what you mean where you're basically very impressed by their imperviousness to facts.
Like, say, for example, the occupation.
The Palestinians aren't just born hating Jews.
They're born under the occupation of a foreign military.
Right.
And, you know, another thing about being in a cult is you just sort of learn these things that you repeat and you adhere to these certain talking points.
And that's what AIPAC is all about.
They talk about how Israel is the lone democracy, how it's under attack, how Iran is going to bomb at any minute, even though that's obviously not true.
And, yes, facts don't really matter.
Political reality doesn't matter.
What matters is sort of absorbing these talking points.
And there's actually even a part of the BDS session that I mentioned that I didn't get to talk about in the article where someone asked, you know, what do kids do when they're faced with, you know, BDS activists and anti-Israel people on campus?
You know, it's basically like, you know, it's kind of an older crowd.
It's like, what do we tell our kids and our grandkids when they are, you know, facing people on campus telling them to boycott Israel?
And the Stand With Us woman, Roz Rothstein, was like, well, check our website.
We have a list of talking points, basically.
It was like, you know, check our website for the script that you have to follow.
And that's what it's really about.
It's about following the script.
It's not about actually learning things and making decisions on your own and using logic and reason.
It's about just sort of parroting what AIPAC tells you.
I've actually done a radio show pseudo-debate.
I mean, I don't know what other term to call it.
I mean, the thing was ridiculous.
But I've argued with Roz Rothstein before, and, yeah, she's certainly got no real argument.
And, I mean, that's the whole thing is really with anybody trying to defend the status quo or the direction it's going, they basically have to just be dishonest because there is no defending it from, you know, an American, you know, Declaration of Independence, everybody is born free with natural rights kind of point of view.
You know, you don't have to be a purist libertarian like me.
You could be a liberal or a conservative.
And basically to be an American means we all believe in the Declaration of Independence.
But how come that doesn't count for Palestinians?
They don't have the right to be independent.
So instead we get the Frank Luntz treatment, which is, well, you just have to lie and say the damn Arab supremacist Palestinians won't let the Jews live in their neighborhood.
The bastards, it's just like the Old South and the West Bank.
Yeah.
And there's a real sort of startling lack of self-awareness.
I mean, I mentioned Hillary Clinton criticizing Trump for trying to deport Muslims.
And, of course, you know, Israel is the most discriminatory state against Muslims you can imagine.
They don't let Palestinians born in Palestine return to their own homes.
But, you know, I, as a Jewish New Yorker, have a right to become an Israeli citizen just because of, you know, the religion I was born into.
So this is obviously a wildly Islamophobic state just, you know, in its inherent nature.
And yet, you know, Hillary is addressing the AIPAC crowd.
And as I said, kind of misjudging, I think, what their reaction was going to be and criticizing Trump for, you know, deporting Muslims.
Or you also have Netanyahu in his Skype chat address the next day who was saying, you know, freedom beats tyranny, which coming from Netanyahu is just insane.
I mean, it's like almost Orwellian, right, for someone who is enforcing a 50-year-old brutal military occupation that denies freedom to Palestinians to be talking about how freedom beats tyranny when he is essentially, despite the fact he was elected a tyrant, certainly a Palestinian, it just shows a complete lack of self-awareness and a total hypocrisy.
Well, and I guess this is the thing, back to the definition of cult again.
I mean, most of what you describe, you could say the very same thing about the Democrats and the Republicans on virtually everything.
And, you know, I certainly sit far outside the spectrum.
So I just sit there shaking my head.
As James Bovard said long ago about the Waco hearings, about the partisanship and all the sniping, the Republicans and the Democrats, it's like watching the drunks fight in a bar.
They swing and they miss.
Everybody is wrong about everything.
Nobody has any idea about the world that they even live in.
Everybody is caught up in their partisan narrative, which can lead to some pretty stark consequences when people are making their policy decisions based on these narratives that are wholly invented.
It can lead to some really harsh consequences.
Like, for example, we're at the point now where it's almost, or maybe it's already, a majority of non-Jews are ruled by the Israeli government in the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and plus the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
It's already about a 50-50 split, maybe even a majority on the non-Jewish side, which includes, of course, Christians and Muslims.
But, you know what, let's just close our eyes to that and let's pretend that's not true and it'll probably all work out.
In fact, it would seem to be an equation for destroying Israel.
It would seem like people buying into that fake consensus is going to lead to, within some period of decades, the disillusion of the so-called Jewish democracy based out of Tel Aviv.
Right.
And, I mean, that's why you hear these continual warnings, at least from Zionists speaking frankly about the so-called demographic threat.
And, you know, there's a real sort of affinity that Zionists have for, you know, white nationalists and the Trump crowd because, you know, I think there are certain shared aims, there are certain shared goals.
And just like Israel insists on sort of maintaining this permanent Jewish majority in order to maintain its Jewish character and still call itself a democracy, that necessitates deportations or, you know, as I mentioned, putting asylum seekers in prisons in the Negev Desert.
It necessitates essentially denying citizenship to, you know, all these Palestinians, all these Christians and Muslims who you mentioned, who would, you know, possibly not allow it to be majority Jewish.
And just like Israel is terrified that greater Israel would become majority non-Jewish, white nationalists are terrified of the day, and it's coming, when the U.S. is going to be majority non-white.
But, you know, people in this country who say, like, oh, I'm terrified when, you know, it's going to be less than 50% white, that's generally regarded, and rightly so, as a kind of white supremacist, white nationalist attitude, whereas, you know, an Israeli saying I'm terrified of the day when this, you know, isn't a Jewish state anymore and by implication doesn't have a Jewish majority, that's Zionism.
That's not even considered right-wing in Israel.
That's just the majority opinion, because that's what defines a Jewish state.
These people are, you know, having a permanent Jewish majority in the region.
Well, and more and more, I mean, if you spend any time on the Internet, you can constantly see white supremacists saying, how come ethnic supremacy in a nation state is perfectly good for Jewish people in Israel, but it's not good for us white nationalists here in the West, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Of course, the simple answer to that is because of the Declaration of Independence, stupid.
But anyway, that's what they constantly say is, and they blame American Jews for, you know, being hypocritical and supporting, let's be honest about it, white nationalism in Israel.
We're talking about mostly a European Jewish dominated colonial outpost in the Middle East here, after all.
White supremacy in Israel is the greatest argument that they have, you know, for why that's how America ought to be only for white Protestants and never mind the hundreds of millions of others that already live here.
Right.
And, you know, just going back to the sort of demographic threat idea, I just looked it up and I think they're saying, you know, the U.S. is going to be majority non-white by around 2043 or 2044.
And, you know, I think most people, you know, as on one level, right, I'm white, so I'm part of the majority.
But, you know, as a Jew, that's a very small percentage of the American population.
Even in New York City, where I live, it's still a relatively small portion of the population.
But the idea of living in a multicultural, multi-ethnic democracy is that you provide equal rights for everybody and then even if you're in the minority, you still have protection.
So, you know, I think most white people in this country, I would hope, realize that even if they are going to become less than 50% of the population, it's not like they're going to, you know, be wiped out.
And that's the language that Israel always uses.
It's like as soon as it doesn't become a Jewish state, they refer to that as Israel being wiped off the map or Israel being wiped out.
And there's this sort of weird conflation between, you know, talking about being wiped out by Iran, which isn't going to happen, or being wiped out by the demographic threat and not becoming a Jewish state anymore.
And they treat it as kind of equally dangerous things, right?
Both are going to lead to the destruction of Israel.
But I think it's important to separate the two and say, well, on the one hand, the Iranian threat is this built-up thing, and I heard about that endlessly at this conference.
And the other thing is that, you know, what if it becomes a non-Jewish majority in Israel and you give everyone equal rights and it becomes a secular democracy?
So what?
That's a good thing.
That's what we have here.
You shouldn't want a secular democracy.
You shouldn't want a Jewish state, because you shouldn't want theocracy.
If you believe in the separation of church and state, again, you know, going back to the Wu-Tang Declaration of Independence, etc.
If you believe in the separation of church and state in the U.S., why can't you believe in that in Israel?
And, you know, I heard people there criticizing Iran or Saudi Arabia for being religious states.
And I'm saying you're here, you know, supporting a religious state.
Israel is a religious state.
Well, and if thinking ahead they're that terrified about living in a democracy and giving Palestinians and Druze and whoever equal rights, then, you know, they could always just grant them independence and close down the settlements and let them have the West Bank.
But it was interesting in your article you talk about, you know, the most prominent argument against that is, oh, that's Samaria.
Never mind anybody who actually lives there.
Now we're going back, and never mind, you know, hey, Jewish refugees from the Holocaust needed a new homeland and it's so tough for the Arabs.
Now we're going back 3,000 years to, you know, mystical property rights, and so it doesn't matter if this is your olive tree grove or not.
Right, which would be one thing if it was coming from this crazy religious zealot.
But the guy who said that didn't even seem that religious.
He was like just this suburbanite from California who was like, oh, yeah, well, that belongs to the Jews because it's Samaria.
And the idea that you, you know, are basing property rights on a holy book from thousands of years ago, I mean, how is that substantially different from, you know, ISIS saying that we have a right to these parts of Iraq and Syria because of the caliphate?
Or Jerusalem for that matter, right?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just an absurd.
Or, you know, someone from Greece saying that they have a right to Egypt because, you know, of who lived there thousands of years ago.
It just doesn't make any sense.
But people who consider themselves relatively, you know, modern secular Jews will make these absurd arguments about Samaria and the ancient kingdoms and whatnot.
Yeah, it's interesting, you know, I read a piece by Yuri Avnery recently where he talked about how, and Yuri Avnery was, I'm not sure if you're familiar, but for the audience anyway, he fought for the Irgun and fought for Israel in the war of 48 and has been a peacemaker ever since and is a very old man now and always has a lot to say about the Zionist project.
And he talked about how back then, I mean, basically they were all atheist communists and it wasn't a Jewish thing as much as, in his words, it was a Hebrew project.
It was an ethnic project, but it wasn't so much about, you know, Abraham and the tablets and all this kind of thing.
And it really, according to him, it didn't really become, that didn't really become part of the narrative very much until after the war in 67.
And then, now that we occupy the West Bank, now we've got to dress it up in a religious excuse because or else, you know, we've got to justify how we're going to maintain this occupation over all these people.
So now all of a sudden, you know, the politicians, I guess he says, gave more credence to the narratives about Judea and Samaria and all this land belongs to us because of the Bible and all that.
Whereas that hadn't been as much a part of the narrative before.
No, I mean, it always kind of changes.
And there is a lot of friction between different elements in Israel, even if there is the general consensus about their rights.
So everyone has a different idea of why they have a right to the land, right?
One group of people might say, well, it's because of the Holocaust and we needed this safe, protected area, which of course didn't turn out to be safe at all because, you know, colonizers tend to be the object of violence from the colonized people.
But, you know, then there's the other argument, yeah, that there is some ancient religious justification for it.
There are people who, you know, believe in it along more secular lines.
So there are all kinds of different reasons people believe these things, but the general consensus is that, you know, Israel and that includes, you know, greater Israel occupied territories, all of it belongs to the Jews essentially.
All right now, so, well, I won't ask you to go too much in depth about the presidential candidate speeches because I actually have another interview along those lines.
And I'm more interested in your take about, you know, wandering around and talking with the other attendees there and the kind of the man in the crowd sort of perspective on this.
Did you find anybody who was willing to have a more or less honest conversation with you about the facts or everybody just simply resorted to rote slogans and nonsense?
Yeah, well, I mean, I say at one point when I finally pushed back a little on the last day, I was like, you know, it's my last day, I can say whatever I want.
And that's when I talk about, you know, asking the question of Palestinians living under occupation are free.
And he tells me to ask my local AIPAC representative, which I thought was a hilarious response.
And I said it was like pouring water on the head of a robot.
And it's actually, Max did a video report where he's asking his attendees just to nearly even acknowledge the existence of Palestinians.
Do Palestinians exist?
And they won't answer him.
And it's crazy because that's the point where, you know, they'll give you an honest answer about which candidates they're supporting.
I actually found that people were pretty open in talking to me and saying, but it was all just, you know, who's the strongest?
Who's the most pro-Israel?
Who's going to cater to Israel the most?
So it's this constant talk of strength, who's going to be the strong protector?
And there wasn't really much talk of, you know, specific political things.
It was all very vague.
Yeah, well, and you talked before about how, you know, the support for Trump because of his comments and boy, he did, you know, huge ovations and all that kind of thing.
That can really be counterproductive when it comes to promoting the kind of intolerance that he promotes.
Again, from their perspective, for whatever insane reason or poorly thought out reason, that's good for Israel.
But don't think you could get many American Jews to agree that that's the kind of intolerance we want here, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's just the word fascism gets used a lot with Trump.
And you can argue all day about the way ways it applies and doesn't apply.
But just seeing him in an arena full of people, you know, screaming their approval, and knowing that he appeals to the same thing that fascist leaders have always appealed to, which is fear.
Which is a fear of the other, a fear of the state, whether it's, you know, blacks or Muslims or the Chinese and the Mexicans.
You know, they're coming for you, they're coming for your wife, they're coming for your job, they're coming for your kid.
That's really the sort of psychological appeal of Trump, is that he appeals to this fear and he turns it into rage and anger against that scapegoat, against that other.
And, you know, there's some pretty horrible precedent for that, obviously.
Mussolini, Hitler, Franco.
And the fact that, you know, a stadium, an 18,000-person stadium, full of Jewish attendees, were hearing this man on is a pretty huge indictment of AIPAC in and of itself.
Yeah, you know, I have to say, I love watching him pick on and scapegoat Jeb Bush.
You know, as long as he's aiming up, I'm laughing my ass off, but you're right.
His willingness to...
Well, yeah, maybe too.
But, yeah, fighting, you know, fighting against power and accusing power is one thing, but being, his ability to switch from demonizing a Bush to demonizing the protesters in his own crowd as being on the same level of evil.
These are the people destroying America, he proclaims.
Yeah, that's not okay.
Not by a long shot.
And, yeah, you're right to see a group full of American Jews cheering for that kind of thing just because he promises to be a real hard ass on Iran, etc.
It's shameful.
And in a way, you know, kind of, it's a tragedy and a farce at the same time kind of a thing, I guess.
Yeah, yeah.
And he actually didn't write, at least didn't write all of the speech.
Because normally he just kind of rips and it doesn't even seem like he has the prepared speech.
But this time he was very, you know, kind of meticulous about his delivery.
And I found out afterwards he was co-written by Garrett Kushner, who's the publisher of the New York Observer, and also his son-in-law, and he and Ivanka actually, I think, just had this baby that they named Theodore, who he described as a beautiful Jewish baby, and the crowd went wild.
But I was thinking today, I don't think I've ever met a Jewish guy named Theodore, so he seems a little suspect to me.
I grew up in New York around a lot of Jews.
I'm Jewish, but I don't know.
I don't know, Robert Bryan isn't exactly that Jewish of a name, either, dude.
No, no, my dad is Irish Catholic, but I was raised Jewish, so I don't have the Jewish last name.
No, I understand.
I've met Jewish Robs before, but Theodore, it seems like about as waspy a name for a Jewish baby as I could think of.
Well, what's funny is that he's willing to invoke his grandson like that for a half a percentage point in the poll or something, you know?
Every speech to the quote-unquote Jewish community, the Jewish lobby, he talks about, before it was a Jewish baby, it was his Jewish daughter, because Ivanka converted when she married Jared Kushner.
Yeah, wow.
And people were actually very impressed by that.
I didn't mention this in the piece, but the Trump-supporting couple were like, oh, and I heard she's very observant, and she's a real orthodox Jew.
And I said, all right, she's safe.
I don't know if I believe that about Ivanka Trump.
Oh, well, yeah, it makes for good campaign theater anyway.
All right, well, listen, thanks very much for your time, Robert.
I really appreciate it.
Absolutely, likewise.
Very interesting stuff here.
Everybody check out Rob Bryant.
He's at Alternet.org.
The article is APAC Incognito, Three Days Under Cover at the Israel Lobby's Biggest Policy Conference.
Really interesting stuff here.
Thanks.
Hey, Al, Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new book by Michael Swanson, The War State.
In The War State, Swanson examines how Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy both expanded and fought to limit the rise of the new national security state after World War II.
If this nation is ever to live up to its creed of liberty and prosperity for everyone, we are going to have to abolish the empire.
Know your enemy.
Get The War State by Michael Swanson.
It's available at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com in Kindle or in paperback.
Just click the book in the right margin at ScottHorton.org or TheWarState.com.
Hey, Al, Scott here.
The thing is I need you guys to help me to get these download numbers up.
So do me a favor and sign up for the podcast feeds of this show.
You can choose the whole show or just the interviews at iTunes and Stitcher.
All the buttons you need are at the top of the right margin at ScottHorton.org.
The more subscribers I have, the more iTunes and Stitcher will help promote the show to new listeners.
If you're a hardcore fan, brand new or from way back, please leave them customer ratings and reviews, too.
Trying to get these wars ended.
Hey, Al, Scott Horton here to tell you about this great new e-book by long-time future freedom author Scott McPherson.
Freedom and Security, The Second Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
This is the definitive principled case in favor of gun rights and against gun control.
America is exceptional.
Here the people come first and we refuse to allow the state a monopoly on firearms.
Our liberty depends on it.
Get Scott McPherson's Freedom and Security, The Second Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms on Kindle at Amazon.com today.