07/10/15 – Philip Weiss – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, the Scott Horton Show, here weekdays, noon to 2 Eastern Time, 11 to 1 Texas Time, on the Liberty Radio Network.
Our first guest today is Phil Weiss from the great Mondo Weiss blog, The War of Ideas in the Middle East.
Welcome back to the show, Phil, how are you?
Good, Scott, how you doing?
I'm doing real good, appreciate you joining us on the show again today.
Hey, you're doing a fundraiser there at mondoweiss.net.
Why don't you tell me all about it?
People know what a fundraiser is.
They could help us out if they like us, but yeah, we're doing a fundraiser.
Very subtle.
Well, everybody, the deal is, if you don't read the Mondo Weiss, you should.
If you haven't signed up for their morning email, you should.
You want to stay up on Israel-Palestine, American politics regarding Israel-Palestine, the boycott and divestment movement, and all the rest of this stuff.
Mondoweiss.net, can't go wrong.
They've got great stable writers over there, including the Grateful Weiss, of course, and so, hey, go help support.
All right, cool.
Thanks.
You know, the thing is, I do find it amazing that, you know, you and me both follow the news, you know, from very different parts of the country, and it's kind of amazing that this issue that, you know, you and I both care about, and people said we were nuts to care about, it is getting more and more into the mainstream, and people are not being able to avoid talking about it, and that is a great thing, and you and I can both, you know, say, take some credit for having pushed it into the mainstream conversation, and also marvel that, you know, and maybe democracy is working a little bit on this, where something that is so important is finally beginning to be talked about.
Yeah, well, I don't know.
You can certainly take credit.
I don't know about me, but it is an important issue, and I do come at it from a point of view, most of the time, from the assumption that most people really don't know anything about it, because I assume that most people get their news from TV, and TV never really tells the tale, so that's why I think it's so important to have you and your associates and others who take this issue so seriously on the show all the time, is give people a chance to hear this stuff for the first time.
I mean, people don't even know that there's a real... who's got a gripe with Israel anyway?
What's Israel ever done?
I thought they're our greatest ally in the whole wide world, you know, as far as TV goes.
That's all anybody knows about it, so...
Yeah, yeah, and you know, we have a line on our site today that...
I'm just gonna try to find it right now.
We have a line from a guy, an activist, who says that he discovered in 2006 that the dispossession of Palestinians in 1948, and its continuation since then, is the cause of Palestinian resistance.
How many Americans have that understanding?
I mean, that is just a simple and profound truth about this conflict, is that these people were just ethnically cleansed, dispossessed, lost their homes.
How many Americans understand that?
Very few.
Yeah, very few, definitely, and you know, this reminds me of the article that you guys published just last week, I think it was, by your editor, co-editor Adam Horowitz, not the Beastie Boy, but the Mondo Weiss writer, who... he told the story of how he became an anti-Zionist activist, the way that he is, and you know, to ruin the story, basically what he said was he learned the facts, and then he applied common decency to the facts, and he decided he was on the side of the Palestinians, basically as simple as that.
Yeah, I mean, Adam has a very clear thinking personality, and the idea that he grew up in the heart of the Jewish community, the Zionist Jewish community, which was sort of, you know, instilling this and indoctrinating him, and just said, hey, that doesn't work, you know.
He's very clear-thinking.
I think it was a lot harder for me, and it took me...it's still a hand-wringing journey for me, as we say.
Yeah, well now, and as far as what you're talking about, the success of getting this issue out there in America, it seems like probably the biggest part of that is the BDS movement itself, because it comes with that giant question, why?
Why a BDS movement?
What's going on here?
And I don't know if you saw this great article in the Jewish Daily Forward, I think on Monday or Tuesday, something like that, four reasons why the Sheldon Adelson attempt to destroy BDS is going to backfire.
And the bottom line, basically, was because the BDS movement is run, in great measure at least, by liberal Jews, who are, as we've talked about on this show over and over again, who have basic American civil rights type principles that just will not allow for the current apartheid system in Israel.
There's just no room for it in there.
Yeah, the one, I don't think it's run by them, but there's a prominent place for liberal Jews, yes, in that movement, and they can't get away with this anti-Semitism charge.
And, I mean, the other great thing that Jay Michelson said in that article in the Forward is that, oh, you're going to throw money at it, you know?
Throw more money at it, you billionaires, and just, you're going to corrupt more Jewish institutions.
And, I mean, this is just a very, you know, parochial concern of mine that I share with other Americans, that, you know, I'm worried about my community when it's just so married to this idea of, you know, things are fixed by having big donors jump in and, you know, give millions of dollars.
They're going to fight BDS by raising 20 million dollars.
You know what?
Change the policies.
Treat people with decency.
Don't just throw money at it to get better Hasbara.
I mean, it's just really, it's a horrifying situation.
And Michelson said they are going to drag the Hillel's into this, these sort of college chapters of Jewish life.
And so, they're going to be completely married to Zionism, those Hillel's, and young Jews are going to go elsewhere.
So, again, that's a parochial concern, but this crisis is going to be America's crisis.
It is America's crisis, and Jews have a position of leadership in that kind of moral struggle.
Now, explain that a little bit more.
Would you please, the Hillel groups and whatever, I'm not really familiar, but I guess what you're implying there, it sounds like what you're saying is these are groups that are about Judaism and about Jews in America and not necessarily Zionism.
But now you have people like Sheldon Adelson coming with his money and trying to recruit all these groups that are just Jewish groups and trying to pervert them and twist them and make them anti-BDS groups, pro-Likud groups.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, let me emphasize, you know, my own life in college and, you know, and after, I just, you know, I didn't spend much time with Jewish groups.
I mean, I was at the Harvard Crimson newspaper, and that was, you know, we were almost all Jewish kids there, and we were plotting our careers.
But I wasn't involved with religious education.
Hillel is involved with religious and kind of communal life, and so young Jews who go to college get involved, a lot of them get involved with these organizations.
Well, with that organization, well, these big donors are committing that organization, which is already a Zionist organization, but committing it to even more Zionism, even as a group of young Jews have started an open Hillel movement to allow discussion of non-Zionist and anti-Zionist positions.
So the reason that I feel licensed in talking about parochial stuff to a general audience is, you know, Jews, Americans seek permission to some degree to talk about these issues.
They seek permission from Jews.
Because of the history of the Holocaust, because of anti-Semitism, whatever the reason, Americans seek permission, and I think it's this crack that's occurring inside the Jewish community in a big way is giving Americans permission to look at our foreign policy.
Now, obviously, brave Americans were looking at their foreign policy, were looking at Israel's influence long before they got permission.
John Mearsheimer, Steve Walt didn't need permission as scholars to look at the history of the Israel lobby and write their groundbreaking book nine years ago.
But, you know, that's, so we're all working together.
And the BDS movement, by the way, is led by Palestinians.
And I think part of the understanding is that, you know, civil rights struggles are led by the people who are oppressed.
That is just the way it works out, you know?
I mean, they know better than anyone else what their experience is.
They're making the request and other people are following.
And, yeah, you know, as far as the permission, I mean, mostly what that is is people are afraid of being called anti-Semite.
Yes, exactly, exactly.
You know, where it's completely ridiculous when Jews are, what, two or three percent of the American population, but the other 300 million Americans, you better never have anything bad to say about Israel or else you're a Nazi.
I mean, that's ridiculous.
Yeah, I know it is ridiculous.
I think it's changing.
I think it's changing.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds, it's so ridiculous.
It sounds like the kind of accusations that Nazis make that actually have no tie to the truth, but in fact, it's pretty accurate.
There's a big lie element to it.
Yeah, all right, hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Phil Weissel.
Hey, Al Scott here.
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I love this.
Robert Greenwald, the liberal fascist, tweeting out a picture of, oh, Al Qaeda's gonna buy guns at a gun show if we don't pass more gun laws.
Yeah, tell me more about Al Qaeda's coming to get me, Robert Greenwald.
What do you think of the Iran deal?
Oh, I love the Iran deal.
I mean, if they actually do it, I don't know if they will or not.
What do you think's happening right now?
Hmm.
Well, my guess is that they're pretending that it's kind of difficult here at the end, but that they basically have it all worked out.
I mean, the reports are that Kerry's moving goalposts and making things more difficult.
I want to believe that that's not true.
I mean, if they screw it up at this point, I'm going to be so pissed off.
But I do worry, though, about what their plan is after that.
I mean, right now they're willing to back a Saudi war in Yemen, just slaughtering men, women and children all day, every day for weeks and weeks.
So well over a month, a couple of months now, I guess, in order what to make the Saudis feel a little bit better about guaranteeing the always peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program.
Seems like a pretty bad tradeoff.
So I don't know if Obama actually has a plan for, you know, how this fits into the rest of his Middle East policy.
We're still fighting for Iran in Iraq, but fighting against them in Syria and in Yemen.
And so I don't know if anybody up there knows what the hell they're doing.
I mean, what I do want to see is an end to the economic war against Iran in the name of a nuclear program that never was a threat.
That's a manufactured crisis.
So I don't know what's going to happen next, but I know it's the right thing to stop doing the wrong thing.
Yeah, no, I'm with you all the way on that.
I guess I have the hope that if they manage to pull this off, that, you know, we begin to see major shift in the whole politics of the region, you know, and the balance of power in the region.
Yeah, I mean, you know, with these guys, though, it's like, well, geez, I don't know if they're switching back to Iran.
What does that mean?
Something may be really bad, right?
Maybe they're going to help the Iranians really take it to the Islamic State in former Iraqi Sunni stand, which is just going to make matters that much worse, as we've already seen, wherever the Shiite militias go there, they're cleansing all the Sunnis and, you know, kicking them out of Tikrit and keeping them out and that kind of thing.
So that's part of what drove all the Sunnis into Islamic State arms in the first place was America's support for the Iranians in Iraq.
So, yeah, that's why my answer is always just, you know, really better than a nuclear deal would be for the U.S. government to just stop existing anymore, stop doing anything to anyone, threatening anyone, sanctioning anyone, employing anyone to do anything to anyone, just go on vacation and leave the world alone.
Exactly.
I mean, the belief that somehow we're going to make things better by getting in, you know, just what the hell, you know, call me, call me anything you want, call me an isolationist, you know, call me a peacenik, pacifist, just nuts.
You know, I don't go into my neighbor's house to tell him how to run his herd, to run her.
Yeah.
Well, and again, I mean, if the policy was coherent, it would be even worse.
Right.
So, you know, if we if we didn't have Israel's interest in Syria to take care of, we would be at full scale war with the Islamic State right now.
But Israel hates Iran more.
And so we're still backing al Qaeda in Syria against Assad.
So as horrible as that is and as even though it means that Obama is guilty of the highest of treason, supporting the cousins of the 9-11 attackers, it still is preventing a worse war in Iraq right now.
So, yeah, as crazy as that sounds, by the way, back to Israel, Palestine and all that for a minute here.
Can you please tell us about the controversy about Michael Oren?
I'm always playing the clip of him saying how much Israel prefers ISIS and al-Nusra to the Baathist regime in Damascus here, former Israeli ambassador to the United States.
But he's gotten himself in some real hot water.
And and according to what I've been reading on your website here lately, Phil, it sounds like it's all to the good that actually Michael Oren has come out and spoken quite frankly about what the Likud thinks of America and thinks of American liberal Jews.
And he's sort of dug himself a little bit of a grave here.
Yeah, it's been a great moment.
And I mean, if you think about what I was talking about earlier, which is the need for American Jews to openly disagree about Israel, that that's leaving aside that whole permission conversation you and I are having.
No one needs permission.
You know, don't let anti-Semitism stop you from having an opinion about Israel and Palestine, folks.
OK, but looking at the Jewish community, that community has said we have to maintain absolute unanimity on Israel in order because we're only two percent and we have to influence American policy.
That's the heart of the Israel lobby.
That's the the Israel lobby believes everything that Walt Mearsheimer wrote and more.
And so here you have and part of that ideology is, hey, these are our cousins, you know, and actually they're a little better than us because they're over there serving in uniform in Israel.
We're, you know, just going to law school and living good lives, easy lives and not serving in the military.
And they're on the front line there and we have to support them.
So that has worked.
That has held that alliance together for a long time is that type of indoctrination, which I even got from my mother's best friend who moved to Israel.
She would, you know, she would explain why we were lesser and they were better.
And I kind of believed it.
Anyway, so here is Michael Oren, who moved over there.
He's born the same year I was, 60 years ago.
He moved over there because he thought anti-Semitism was so bad in the United States.
And now he's come out with this book and he said, you American Jews are not tough and we are tough and you're kind of weenies.
And he has contempt for American Jews and thinks that they're assimilated.
They don't know what it is to be Jewish.
They've not been in uniform.
They don't know what it's like to have bombs.
And so he's expressed this book he wrote in a hurry in order, he says, he wrote the book in order to maintain support to get American Jewish support against the Iran deal.
He knew the Iran deal was coming out and he wanted the book to come out now to muster opposition to the Iran deal.
Well, he couldn't help but express his contempt for American Jews, a group of which he was once a member in that book.
And American Jews are going ape, you know, expletive deleted over it.
And that has been a great thing.
It's just a complete own goal.
The guy had no idea what he was doing.
Obviously, he would have rewritten the book completely if he'd known how much.
But there was this kind of unconscious hatred for American Jews coming out in it.
And the larger point is that Israelis and American Jews are completely different.
It's two different countries.
You know, these are militant, racist people, by and large, you know, have nothing to do with Palestinians and American Jews generally aren't that racist, you know, like they're like other Americans in that respect, I think, you know, they are there.
They're generally struggling to have a liberal, live in a liberal society that tolerates minorities.
And so this is really driven a wedge.
And it's been a great thing.
Yeah, I think it's hilarious, especially when he's going after people like Thomas Friedman and what's his name, Weissleiter or whatever, formerly of the New Republic.
I mean, these are the kinds of guys who call anybody who's not a Jew who criticizes Israel anti-Semites.
These are yeah, these are exactly the guys who I would have called them all Likudniks, you know, Thomas Friedman.
What's the difference between Weissleiter and a and a neoconservative?
Enlighten me.
Yeah, Bieseltier is a neocon.
And he's the guy who's gone around calling people anti-Semites, you know, smearing me and others, you know, for daring to criticize Israel.
Well, because he doesn't like Netanyahu, he's criticized Netanyahu.
Orrin says he's a self-hating Jew.
So it's kind of like you were laughing at the absurdity or saying it's absurd to call people who criticize Israel anti-Semites.
Right.
And this is showing that the anti-Semitic smear is just this tool that is used.
I mean, there is real anti-Semitism.
No doubt there's real bigotry.
But this is a tool that is used to stop criticism of Israel.
And in this case, he's calling fellow Jews, American Jews, anti-Semites because they've dared to criticize Israel.
So he's exposed the kind of absurdity and hollowness of that charge.
Well, and he's accusing him of that because they support a two state solution and they're against Netanyahu for opposing one.
But Netanyahu's story is that he does support one.
He was only pretending to oppose one for a minute there to get reelected, he says.
Yeah, well, the fact is that and Oren is now a member of Knesset over there.
Anyone in the power structure there, they don't support a two state solution.
The best that they can say is when you talk about a two state solution, Oren will say, I understand.
I understand.
Let's just have a two state situation right now.
We can't have a Palestinian state right now.
They're going to block a Palestinian state at the U.N. this fall.
That's going to be a giant deal.
And they all they want is Bantustans and, you know, people living in apartheid conditions forever and, you know, with the skirmishes now and then and a giant wall and fence around them.
Amazing.
Now, so this guy, Haim Saban, who made his fortune off the mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
Now, is he even an American citizen or is he or he's a dual citizen?
Is that it?
I believe he is.
I mean, I think he was born in Egypt.
He moved to Israel.
And then I think he came to the United States, if that's how it worked out.
I'm pretty sure he's an American citizen.
Yes.
OK, but it's in L.A.
You know, he's the guy who gave he gives more money to Democratic Party candidates than just about anybody.
And he's the guy who, you know, the Brookings Institution was formerly known, whether rightly or wrongly, I don't know.
It's kind of a center left kind of an institution.
But then he gave him a bunch of money and created the Saban Center, which is always proposing very kind of right wing policies and that kind of deal.
So he does.
He's very happy to throw his weight around.
And we've talked about this a little bit on the show before.
But is is it right?
Did I read your your site right here that he is the single biggest donor to the Democratic Party and specifically to Hillary Clinton?
I don't know that he's the single biggest donor to the Democratic Party.
He has been one of the leading donors.
He is absolutely vital to Hillary's run, just as he was absolutely vital to Obama's run.
And Obama had to there was a, you know, Alan Dershowitz had to stand up for Obama in order for Saban to come on board.
Obama had supported Hillary in 2008 and didn't trust really trust.
Obama finally came on board and ultimately held fundraisers for Obama.
So he's but he's a right winger on these questions.
No question.
Right winger.
Yeah.
And so, you know, this is the kind of thing where, yeah, maybe you do have to be Jewish to talk about this, that, hey, there's a lot of Jewish money into the Democratic Party and it matters a lot to Democratic candidates.
And these are the kinds of things that, you know, you don't have to use any bad words or anything to kind of sound like, you know, you're on the protocols of Zion or whatever.
You don't have a last name like Weiss to provide the cover that, hey, we just crunched the numbers and that's what it says.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, Michael Martin Indyk, leading supporter of Israel, calls it the Jewish factor in American politics.
And, you know, Jews address this openly now that this is just there's a huge amount of Jewish money involved in the political process that is tends to be Zionist.
Now that, you know, because these people are right wing conservative Jews who really care about Israel, they're pouring money into the political process and they have it.
So, I mean, we are one of the richest groups, the richest group, I think, by religion in the United States.
So it gives us that ability to do that.
And again, I think the answer is that the war has to begin inside Jewish life.
And people like me have to question why are you using money to try to sway elections in favor of a racist apartheid state?
Well, you know, I don't know what the polls say about the two state solution and that kind of thing, but I know that the polls say that American Jews are vastly in favor of the Iran deal more than the average, because, as you said, they're by super majorities, they're liberal Democrats.
So they're not really, you know, when it just comes to raw numbers, it's the very richest who, of course, are the most right wing.
But when it comes to just American Jews in general, they're actually really good on peace issues most of the time.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, this is the contention of the kind of liberal Zionists and, you know, Jewish voice for peace, too, a non-Zionist group where they say you're misrepresenting, this is real, all these rich billionaires who are, you know, corrupting the political process.
You're misrepresenting American Jewish opinion.
You know, my only problem with that is, you know, stand up and be counted, darn it.
You know, be like me, you know, be like Adam Horowitz.
You know, if you feel misrepresented, hey, you know, you're you're you know, you're not living in a jail cell.
You're in one of the freest countries in the world.
Stand up and say what you don't like.
That's what I'm saying.
All right.
Hey, thanks for coming back on the show and saying what you got to say.
That's a great weekend, man.
All right.
That's Philip Weiss, everybody.
He's at Mondoweiss.net.
He's got a great stable of writers over there, Andy Robbins and Adam Horowitz and a bunch more, too.
So check him out Mondoweiss.net and it's their fundraising time right now.
So go help them out.
We'll be right back after this.
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