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.
You can also sign up for the podcast feed.
The full archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthorton show.
All right, you guys on the line, I have got the great Phil Weiss.
Welcome back to the show.
Phil, how are you doing?
Good, Scott.
How are you doing?
Man, I'm doing good.
I've been wanting to talk with you about this.
Everybody, you know Phil, he runs Mondoweiss at mondoweiss.net.
Nice new website, by the way.
Thank you.
I like it very much.
Thank you.
And it ain't just Phil, who is such a great writer, but he also has an entire stable of people worth reading over there.
I don't know, a dozen or more or something.
I don't know where he finds them all, but there's so much important Israel-Palestine everything politics and in Israel and Israel lobby politics in the United States and every aspect of it and really great stuff.
Thank you.
So I admit, I'm sorry, I forget if I admitted this to you before.
I got what Biden's got and I can't remember things anymore, but I had to unsubscribe from your morning email because I was spending all morning reading all of this great stuff and I just can't, I had to, I'm going to get back to it at some point, but I got to get my book done first.
You got it.
You got it.
It's too good.
It's too engrossing.
It's so interesting.
It's so terrible and just God dang it.
I'm glad that you understand.
Thank you for understanding.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I completely respect, you got to set your boundaries in this world because there's just not enough time.
I know.
That's the one thing, man.
It's just that 24 hour limit on every day is just that hard break every time.
You know, it gets to be, it's 1130 or midnight and I think, oh my God, I haven't had a moment's breath.
I don't know.
Who am I to complain?
I can't complain.
I can't complain.
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Now, so it seems important, and this is something that I think capacity buying didn't say and I read the long version in Jewish Currents too that I think he didn't really articulate well enough, but it seems really important here, and I'm not exactly sure if this is an area of disagreement between you and I or not, but at least theoretically, there was a time when they could have given up the West Bank and let the Palestinians go and let them have their state.
And I think that needs to be the point, is that you could have let them go, but you wouldn't.
You wanted their land so bad, you kidnapped them too.
Now you're stuck with them, and so these are the breaks, but you've got to be able to put the responsibility and the cause and effect in the right place.
Because that's the whole thing of it, is, in other words, the reason he changed his mind is the collapse of the two-state excuse.
So you've got to reiterate that, well, the excuse is expired.
That's why I'm here, right?
This is what happened.
Brilliant analysis.
I completely agree with you.
And let's review this.
Let's review the fact that you have a quote-unquote intractable conflict between peoples.
Yes, I regard as an intractable.
And what is the largest concession that occurs in this hundred-year history of Palestinians refusing Zionist colonization of their land, as we would resist settler colonial colonization of our land?
Immigrants coming in and taking our land, taking sovereignty What was the greatest concession in this long battle?
It was in 1988 when the Palestinians said, guess what?
We won't fight.
We will take a state on 22% of the land.
Just, I mean, one of the most remarkable concessions in the history of, you know, modern world history, accepting you take three quarters, more than three quarters of this land that we think is ours and you can have your state and we'll have our state.
And, you know, regardless of how, you know, full-throated that embrace was, it has been embraced again and again by Palestinian leadership.
And these hubristic entitled dicks, you know, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv thought, no, we want more and the United States will support us.
And they were correct, sadly, in the view that the United States would support them.
But they could have taken the money and run if they had declared, if they had accepted a Palestinian state back in the nineties, when, you know, this was supposed to happen, they might have, they would be in a far different place than they are now in terms of world opinion and where this is headed.
And in terms of the BDS movement too, they would be able to buy off liberal opinion and say, hey, they have a state, Palestinians have a state, they have sovereignty and no, they didn't accept it.
They didn't accept it.
They wanted more.
And in terms of hubris, you know, they just thought, hey, this is, we can continue to eat, take as much land as we want.
And someday they'll get a little bantustan and we'll call it a state.
And guess what?
It may have backfired on them.
And that is a wonderful thing in my view.
Yeah.
Well, and back to the thing that I spaced out on earlier that I wanted to say was you brought up the election of 1992.
And I'm wanting to mention to the audience that Phil has written at length about H. W.
Bush and how he crossed the Israel lobby and how he blamed the Israel lobby for his loss and how there was real substance to that.
And there, there was more to it than just Clinton attacked him from the right.
And it worked.
It worked very specifically in terms of money and media coverage.
And, you know, I guess I'm not sure what all in terms of power in Washington, D.C.
Oh, and in terms of, of evangelical support for Bush, which was, which was turned against him, which delay later used against W. Bush, that you better back off Ariel Sharon, pal, or I'm gonna tell the evangelicals that you're a lot more like your dad than we thought.
And you don't want that.
You have mentioned this to me before and that's in your book too.
I think you have that in your book.
Yeah.
Fool's errand book.
You know, at least I have Powell back.
Oh, I do.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
I do.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, cause you looked, you told me that in a whoa delay said that I checked it out and then, well, anyway, so let me just quote one.
I got that from mere Shimer and Walt.
That's where, that's where people can find that is in the lobby that it's in the essay and in the book.
Well, let's bring in another great writer.
And it is, you know, Tom Friedman has said my, you know, I can't stand the guy, but he said he he's the best witness on this whole thing.
When, when he said a few years ago, George W. Bush said, because my father lost no one, we're not going to be out Israel again.
And that's what he did in 2000.
He got Sheldon Adelson behind him and he, you know, shut down the peace negotiations that, uh, uh, Bill Clinton had been undertaking.
And, um, it went against his own conscience, such as it is.
I think George W. Bush actually believed in greater fairness here.
And that's partly why he gave Condoleezza Rice her head, you know, in 2006 or so very late in the game to do Annapolis and nothing came of that.
And Elliott Abrams went nuts, but.
That was against Powell's advice too.
And Powell was saying, who is the secretary of state and was general Powell and all of those things with all of that stature.
And he was telling him, look, Bush, your approval rating is 1 million percent now since September 11th happened on your watch.
For some reason, people just love stuff like that.
I guess anyway, they love you and you can now do whatever you want.
And so this is the time, you know, we've got to get the Israelis to give up the West bank.
It's such a major cause of Arab animosity against the American people among the regimes we want to obey us and among the civilians who join terrorist groups to slaughter our civilians.
This is a real problem.
And Bush said, OK, pal, let's do it.
And then said, OK, Tom DeLay and Ariel Sharon, sorry for offending you.
I didn't mean it and told Powell to back down.
And that was it.
It was over.
Is that in your book?
Yeah, yeah, that is.
Yeah.
The power part is in the book.
OK, OK, thank you.
But, you know, it's it's it's true and obvious that that this is something that has hurt America across the world and in the Middle East.
I'm looking it up in your book right now.
So so the question I so I don't take much, you know, Ali Abunimah said this week, Palestinians don't care what Peter Beiner his shift.
He's being a little dismissive, but it goes to the point that this is a little it still is inside Jewish baseball, inside the Zionist community.
This is a major betrayal.
And how long before it resonates in the mainstream?
I don't know.
Liberal organization, Zionist organizations like J Street, Peace Now, are doing everything they can to shut Beiner down and say, hey, this is meaningless.
We disagree.
Israel policy forum.
We believe in separation, separation, separation, you know.
So it's still the canary in the coal mine.
It's page 10, by the way.
I'm looking at it.
I just found at the same time.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's good.
OK.
Control F does wonders for you, you know, when you need stuff.
So let me see.
There was a thing that I was going to bring up.
So I got.
Yeah, I mean, I got to ask you, I mean, what about the fact that annexation didn't happen July 1st?
What do you take from that?
You know, Netanyahu said we're going to start annexing July 1st.
Nothing has happened.
The reports from the Israeli media are that they can't get Trump on the phone right now.
They can't do it without Trump's backing.
And Trump is not.
He's got a lot of other things on his plate right now.
And the Israelis just will not take a move without the green light from Washington.
And there's some suggestion that the Trump administration itself is split over this with the Jared Kushner wing being moderate and on the question, relatively moderate.
And David Friedman, the ambassador to Israel, wanting to go full speed ahead.
Hmm.
Yeah.
You know, in Bolton's book, I guess the reports were I hadn't read the whole thing, but the the reports were that Jared Kushner prevented Netanyahu from talking to Trump when Trump was planning on meeting with Javad Zarif.
And he thought that that was unseemly that a foreign leader would tell Trump who to meet with or not when it comes to other foreign leaders.
I thought, all right.
Yeah.
Good for all.
You know, I thought the entire reason he was there was to protect Israel's interests.
This kid.
But a good old Jared Kushner standing up to Netanyahu.
How do you like that?
Just a little bit.
Just a little.
Yeah.
Kushner who fired me, you know, 15 years ago or whatever over these issues.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Even he has a line.
Yeah.
I just I just got to say, Scott, you have a hard job.
You told me you're reading Bolton's book.
You told me you read all of Peter Beinart's essay, Seven Thousand Words.
You know, that's hard work.
So, you know, I'm way behind on a lot of things.
So if that makes you feel any better.
OK.
OK.
No.
And Sheldon's book is coming out.
And, you know, let me segue into Sheldon's book.
Then we talked about this just before the show.
My partner at the Libertarian Institute, of course, the great Sheldon Richmond and his previous book is Coming to Palestine, a collection of his essays all about Israel and Palestine and why he's a one state equal rights guy himself.
Raised Zionist and now no longer.
And I know you've read that great book.
And his new book is called What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.
And it might be out by the time people hear this.
I'm not sure.
It should be very soon.
It'll be coming out here for the at the Libertarian Institute.
We'll be publishing it.
And it's a collection of essays from going back 30 years or however long, 25 years or something just about libertarianism and about how individualism and liberty works.
And, you know, I'm not trying to convert you to libertarianism and individualism necessarily as a philosophy right here, right now.
But I'm just saying that his point of view, I think, is a very powerful one.
And it seems to me like it holds a lot of instruction for the Israel-Palestine situation now, too, where when even Peter Beinart says we have to reimagine Zionism to mean that, well, Jews can live in the Middle East, they don't necessarily have to have a Jewish state that, that, yeah, you know what, that's really right.
And if the only purpose of that state, and not that Sheldon is a minarchist, but we do live in a world of states, so all other things being equal, if there is a state in Israel, Palestine, whatever you want to call it, if its only job is protecting the rights of individuals to be free and do their job and to, its only job is to be their security force, essentially, and nothing else, then it shouldn't matter if Jews or Palestinians have the majority in the Knesset.
It shouldn't matter, you know, even if, you know, when it comes to the shrines, obviously, everybody has to share open access for different civilians to come to the religious sites, and that kind of thing, all that self-explanatory, and then nothing else should really be anything to fight about, what the textbooks say, or anything else.
Let people work that out on their own, write your own damn textbook, read whichever one you want, you know, and so liberty is the solution to problems here in our society, and for Israel and Palestine, too.
Forget all this ancient tribal stuff.
It's not about Jews and Palestinians, it's civilians versus their government.
That should be the real way that everybody looks at it, I think, and then if, and in fact, from the Israelis' point of view, geez, if they would really scale back their state, then they wouldn't have to worry so much about if Palestinians took control of it, right?
You know, it's like Jacob Hornberger likes to joke about, like, oh no, what if the Russians took over America and then created the IRS and Homeland Security and all these things that we already have?
These terrible tyrannies that we already suffer under, you know?
That's funny.
That's funny.
Yeah, I mean, my own response on that is partly, you know, what is, Zionism is a form of identity politics, you know, a huge form, massive authoritarian, militarized form of identity politics, and look what a giant error it is, and look at all the resources that pour into, they live in a terrible neighborhood.
Yeah, they live in a terrible neighborhood in good measure because they went in and expelled 750,000 Palestinians, and they didn't like that, the Palestinians, who didn't get to go back to their homes.
So, you know, that's what identity politics can create when you create a state that's devoted to it, and look at all, again, look at all the resources, look at all the money that they spend on the army, look at what happens, how many of their children die, let alone Palestinian children.
I mean, their own kids are getting, you know, destroyed by this system, and yeah, imagine a system in which, you know, everyone had equal rights.
Wow.
So, that's where Sheldon and I think would really agree, you know?
Well, and that's what's so great about it, like in this piece, I'm sorry I didn't mention the title at the beginning I meant to, liberal Zionists use arguments that echo white nationalists, and the quote is, there's no equality between us and the Palestinians, and they really do sound like 1950s, 1960s Southerners trying to hold on to the old order of segregation.
But, you know, so here's the thing too, and those are liberals, those are liberals I quoted, right?
Yeah, the labor side, as opposed to everybody else, who are further to the right than them on the same issue, in other words, even worse in that sense, on the same issue of nationalism over the Palestinians.
And, you know, I read a thing, it wasn't the Times of Israel, it was some, it was kind of a right-wing Israeli type site, where they were criticizing Beinart, and the criticism was that he, and they're really angry, and that the quote was that, you know, he needs to admit that he is talking about trading he is prioritizing Palestinians, you know, in brackets, their very lives, right?
Their very lives, and right to their own lives, and freedom, and property, right?
He's prioritizing the Palestinians over Jewish comfort, and Jewish, I forgot, thriving, or some kind of thing, Jewish privilege, I forgot the exact word that he put, but it was that blatant, it was like our rent-seeking that we're getting away with, is being threatened here, you know, kind of thing.
Yeah, it's tragic, it's tragic what's happened to my people.
You know, Sheldon and I agree on that too, you know, Sheldon is kind of like a former Jew, he's being a libertarian, I don't think he believes in religion that much, you know?
Yeah, he is an atheist.
Yeah, he's an atheist, okay.
But, you know, look what it's done to the Jewish people, that they, that we've, you know, fallen hook, line, and sinker for this nationalist ideology.
It's really sad, it's just sad, it's tragic.
And it's the kind of thing that sounds completely crazy coming out of somebody's mouth too, they're like, you're trying to trade my comforts for somebody else's rights?
Are you crazy?
Like, no, you're crazy, self-evidently.
I mean, what are we talking about here?
It's the same thing, I love the quote, I'm sorry I'm redundant, poor audience that's heard all these interviews.
The famous Jefferson quote from, I probably know it's on Virginia, where he says, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither safely hold him nor let him go.
But the thing is, is that he's not a wolf, he's a human man, and you don't have the right to hold him by the ears, and so if you get bit tough, you're the one who put yourself in that situation anyway.
And there's no reason to think that he's trying to bite you anyway, just let him go, but you just won't do it.
You pretend like you're the one in danger, but look, you're the slave master, you know?
That's good, Scott, you're good.
You can say that again and again when you're talking to me, because I like it.
Oh, man.
All right, so one more thing is this, man, and I'm really not sure what to think about this, Phil, but it's something that the way that Beinart puts it, and as seriously as he takes it, you know, really made me think about it again, that he says that he knows that outright apartheid, as in annexation, two states off the table, tiny Bantu stands with no independence or power, and just total occupation and subjugation, that that won't work.
He knows it won't work, everyone knows it won't work.
We're talking about half the population of Israel at that point, with no rights whatsoever, and he says that he doesn't even think that that's what anyone has in mind.
He thinks that what it will obviously come to is expulsion, that once they're done stealing the land, that then out come the box cars and ship them all off to the east for Lebanon's round, and that this would be absolute hell on earth, and that is what he is trying to stave off, is a trail of tears here, rather than permanent apartheid.
He's, you know, obviously expulsion in his view being even worse, and so I wonder if you think that, I have to say, that sounds right to me, and that's why, for a long time, I was kind of a two-state guy.
It wasn't anything about just right and wrong, it was a utilitarian thing that I just thought the Israelis will kill you all before they give you equal rights, or they will expel you all and watch and laugh as you drown in the Jordan River before they give you equal rights.
Maybe don't push them, you know, I don't know, but I wonder what you think about that.
You know, I think that Beiner knows Israeli society and knows how right-wing it is, and knows how racist this society has become, and knows what Zionism has done to the Jewish people.
He's going to get there.
He hasn't said some of these things.
He's still a Zionist, I'm adhering to this and that, you know, he's not for BDS yet.
He's going to have to be, because he is describing a society that is really tough and brutal, and not that appealing.
And that is the large block of right-wing Israeli society, which keeps, as I say, re-electing Netanyahu, he knows that.
And yeah, those people believe in that kind of thing, happily pushing these people into Jordan.
So you think that is a real danger?
Yeah, it is a real danger.
And you know, Scott, I'm ashamed to admit it, I have to go find that now in Beiner's piece, because I should do a piece about that.
It's a brilliant spot.
You know, if that's his motivation, you know, rather than just apartheid, apartheid's bad enough.
Yeah, ethnic cleansing.
They've done it before.
They've been doing it all the time, slow ethnic cleansing.
Well, the objection is, how could they do that?
That's just so crazy and such a bridge too far.
But I'm thinking, you know what?
I don't know.
Sink a couple American boats in the Far East, and then while nobody's looking, do whatever you want.
Well, Scott, I see my...
I mean, I'm not saying the Israelis would sink American boats, but I'm just saying, wait till something happens, something big happens somewhere else.
Yeah, grab the distraction.
They've done it before.
I have to read that Beiner piece more closely.
Oh man, I'm sorry, because it's like 7,000 words long.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
I know.
But yeah, so, okay, so back then to the beginning, is this a real bellwether?
This is, you know, waves of panic, or it's just, you know, one more guy who's kind of seeing the light?
I'm an optimist.
Zionism is collapsing from within.
All the attacks from outside don't matter.
Jews are seen as the special pleaders here.
We have our lobby.
We have our special place in American society and in world opinion because of the Holocaust.
We are granted special rights from that.
I understand why that happened.
And yet now even the Jews are turning on Zionism, and that will give other people permission to turn on Zionism.
So back to Joe Biden, the self-proclaimed more Zionist than anybody he's ever met, or whatever it is, and trying to outflank even Trump, who recognized the seizure of the Golan and moved the embassy to Jerusalem and has this crazy deal of the century and all that.
But also not just Biden, but then his party.
And the entire progressive, is it half or two-thirds of the party, the entire left half of American politics has really been radicalized.
Everybody's moved a couple of clicks to the left over there.
So there's a real crack up that, unfortunately, because of the virus and everything, we're not probably going to be able to get to see it really play out in a street fight at the convention.
But it is a real problem inside the Democratic Party at this point, isn't it?
Yeah.
I think the base is going to rebel on this question.
I hope they do.
I mean, the party leadership is trying to say, no, we're staying right on Israel.
And the base is saying, no way.
And let's have the fight out.
Right now, Biden is riding rough shot over him.
He'll talk about immigration.
He'll talk about climate change.
He'll talk about minimum wage, talk about Medicare for all.
I'll deal with you, Sandersites.
We ain't talking about Israel.
So you're getting too close to the crown jewels of the Democratic Party.
All right, man.
And I know you got to go.
So everybody, that, of course, is the great Phil Weiss.
Thank you very much again for your time on the show, Phil.
See you soon.
Appreciate it.
And this article is Liberal Zionists Use Arguments That Echo White Nationalists.
Scott Horton dot org and Libertarian Institute dot org.
