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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 who's win?
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 Phil Weiss.
Mondo Weiss is this great website, mondoweiss.net, where he writes and along with a lot of other great writers too.
And so, yeah, it's to sum up, it's liberal Jewish, anti-Zionism, ex-Zionism in a lot of cases, I think.
That describes you pretty well, doesn't it, Phil?
Yeah, it sounds fine.
Yeah.
And you can't control your reputation, right, Scott?
I mean, so I think that that's a perfectly legitimate description and a nice one, but there's some pretty negative things out there about me too, but that comes with the territory.
Yeah.
Well, I wouldn't worry too much about that.
Thank you.
And look, I mean, the question is obvious, right?
Why would an American liberal Jew not be a Zionist or especially, you know, why would you be anti-Zionist or even an ex-Zionist when it's your guys versus the other guys?
So what the hell could explain that?
It either means you're a kook or there's something really important going on.
Yeah.
And, you know, I would point out just, you know, because I collect this type of information, but I mean, this is my area, but David Rothkopf is the former editor of Foreign Policy Magazine and said recently that American Jews once had a duty to support Israel, not long ago.
So here you have a leading establishment Jewish voice saying that American Jews have this duty.
Dennis Ross, the former White House negotiator, said American Jews must be advocates for Israel, not for Palestinians.
So this is a clear ordination within the Jewish community that many have bucked, as I have.
Anyone who cares about human rights has bucked it.
David Rothkopf himself has said, now I have to oppose Israel.
But it just reflects this historical demand on Jews.
Well, and also, I mean, it's pretty easy to see why a Palestinian activist would be on the side of the Palestinians.
But if American Jewish, you know, political people who are interested in this subject, right?
Like, you know, many American Jews don't care either way or aren't even political at all on any foreign policies or domestic ones.
For those who are interested, it might seem on the face of it like there must be something strange going on for you to have picked, quote, the other side in the conflict, especially then for somebody like David Rothkopf.
So what explains that?
I think that Israel is delegitimizing itself, in a word.
And that is becoming evident to everybody.
You've got to be a fool not to see that Israel is delegitimizing itself.
Its reputation has completely changed through its own actions.
Now it's slaughtering protesters, nonviolent protesters, on the border of Gaza, over 125 of them.
I mean, just, it's obvious.
And so this country that used to be seen as a valiant and plucky defender of freedom and the democracy in the Middle East is now understood to be just another right-wing dictatorship, one with strong ethno-religious discriminatory policies.
All right.
Now, so, I mean, obviously the big change here, supposedly at least, the big change in public sentiment seems to be revolving, or lately anyway, you talk about the massacre at the Gaza Strip against unarmed protesters.
But there's this also, also this nation state law.
And this is what David Rothkopf is reacting to.
And you even quote Ola Alan Dershowitz saying that this was the wrong thing.
But so in your article where you compare Brett Stevens to Stephen Douglas, in Mondo Weiss here, you talk about that he's really wrong.
He says in his defense that, you know, this law doesn't really change anything.
It already just reiterates what everybody already knew, that this is the Jewish state and this kind of thing.
But you say, no, that really is wrong, that this new nation state law does implement at least two severe changes in the way things are done in Israel.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that in fairness to these guys, some of it is image.
This has truly changed Israel's image in a dramatic new fashion.
And I am very grateful for that.
But the fact is that Israel has been the quote-unquote Jewish state for a long time and has tried to stay under the radar about a lot of its discrimination.
This puts the discrimination, makes it completely official and part of the constitution or basic law of Israel.
So I think that while Israel has, I mean, Israel has been an apartheid state for many years now, I believe, because I have gone there and seen apartheid on steroids, as the former chancellor of Brown University put it.
But, you know, a lot of people have had trouble coming around to that point of view.
This law makes it clear this is an apartheid state.
Now, I called out Stevens because Brett Stevens is part of this neoconservative pro-Israel faction in the United States that's trying to say, hey, nothing to see here, move along, this doesn't change Israel in any way, it's being misreported.
I don't think it is being misreported.
It's a dramatic shift officially, and it's already giving the settlers in the West Bank even greater freedom to legalize these outpost settlements.
And they're seizing on it.
And whether this is Netanyahu appealing to his right-wing base or a true reflection of what Israel's character is, I think those are indistinguishable.
His right-wing base is Israel's character.
Happily, there's some pushback in Israeli society now from Palestinians and liberal Jews.
That's a great thing, and one hopes that Israel will reform itself, but it doesn't look very likely.
And now, so as far as the settlements on the West Bank and the settlers already invoking the law, can you be a little bit more detailed about how that's working?
Sure.
An attorney for the state has said, look, there are these outpost settlements that you have declared illegal, the Supreme Court has declared illegal.
We, the government, don't think they're illegal.
We think that they're legal.
And we can point to the nation-state of Israel law, the new nation-state law.
That says at one point, it has many provisions, one of which is settlement is a value in Eretz Israel, the land of Israel.
Eretz Israel means the entire land of historical Palestine, from the river to the sea.
So this vague language that it offers a kind of carte blanche to the settlement movement, and the state's own attorney on these issues is seizing on it.
And Peace Now, by the way, is a Jewish group that has opposed settlement valiantly for a long time.
They've done a great job of that, and they are extremely alarmed by this.
Now, I think it's more of the same.
You have 600,000 settlers across the Green Line, so it's not like there's a big difference, but it's only fostering that.
Well, and the way he says it here, and again, I don't know that this is really a change, but what a great quote, where this state attorney, Haral Arnon, that you quote here in your article, it says here, he pointed out the nation state law gives Jewish settlement a, quote, higher normative hierarchy.
I guess, well, the sentence before that is important.
Arnon acknowledged that the rights of Palestinian property owners need to be taken into account.
However, he pointed out that the nation state law gives Jewish settlement a higher normative hierarchy.
Therefore, in other words, stealing's okay if it's me from you.
Yeah, and if you're of the right race.
And this is where the Bret Stephens thing comes in, because the New York Times runs these pro-Israel propagandists.
It has several columnists who are essentially pro-Israel propagandists, or two or three of them, anyway.
And Stephens is saying, nothing to see here, move along.
And yet he's defending language like this, which is, as you observed, and as David Bromwich, who made this insight, observed, it recalls what Stephen Douglas said in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.
You know, Lincoln says, all people are created equal.
And Stephen Douglas said, no, no, no, this country was founded by white people, and we are more equal than others.
And that's what Bret Stephens and the nation state law are doing.
This is a state founded by the Jews.
Jews are a higher status than any other people.
Full stop.
Well, and you know, I guess part of the confusion, we've talked in the past numerous times about just how ignorant Americans are about who's occupying who over there and the level of propaganda and that kind of thing.
I think part of it just in a very simple way comes down to, you know, the narratives of history, of pogroms and the Holocaust and all these things.
And even in America where, you know, Jews have had it typically a lot better than a lot of other places.
They still are excluded, right?
It was the WASP establishment that really ran everything and they were relegated to more upper middle classes rather than real ruling classes and that kind of thing.
I remember I was in high school when the last no Jews allowed country club was bought by Jews down in Houston, the last one in Texas, but that was in the 1990s, you know?
But so that just kind of leaves us with this sort of overall sense that like blacks or Hispanics that they're kind of somewhat in the oppressed minority, that that's the history is of being oppressed.
So, but in the story of Israel, it's just completely the other way around where the Palestinians are treated, you know, absolutely like blacks under Jim Crow or worse.
And the Israelis are in the role of the KKK.
And it just, it's hard, I think for Americans to wrap their head around that, that that much could have changed in terms of who has how much power over who with Jews in that situation, you know?
Yeah, I mean, it's all a giant puzzle.
But the fact is that that Jim Crow system regime is supported by a very powerful Jewish, largely Jewish lobby in the United States, the Israel lobby, and whatever the Christian Zionists are doing for that lobby, they're not having much influence over the Democratic Party.
And the Democratic Party has been four square behind those settlements and behind the occupation and in favor of the Gaza slaughter.
And that's because of the, I believe, the Jewish role inside the Democratic Party and the amount of Jewish access that there is inside the Democratic Party.
Now, that's something I'm trying to change as a Jew.
But, you know, three of the last four Supreme Court picks by Democrats were Jewish people.
And that reflects our amazing success in America.
And part of that success and access is a large role in foreign policymaking when it comes to the Middle East.
Dennis Ross, this guy who says American Jews must advocate for Israel, not Palestinians, he's been the lead negotiator in the White House for off and on for several administrations and has tilted totally to Israel's side.
So you can't undo the role of the Israel lobby from this remarkable oppression and persecution that goes on there.
And yes, the blindness to it, I accept that it has a lot to do with the collective memory among Jews of the tremendous persecution, an unrivaled chapter in human genocide, the Holocaust in Europe.
Absolutely.
That is what scars American Jews.
You look at, I was just looking up today, you know, someone like Wolf Blitzer, who's played such a role in defending Israel in the media, you know, his family escaped, his parents escaped Auschwitz, you know, I believe, or grandparents.
I think it was his parents.
So he's got a reason.
Doug Feith, who helped start the Iraq war, the stupidest effing man on the planet, his father's family was wiped out by the Holocaust.
That's the background to a lot of this bizarre thinking.
But I accept that people are trapped.
There's deep trauma in the Jewish community for a very good reason.
Yeah.
Well, and I don't know about Scarred, but I think, you know, the rest of Americans, you know, really think, you know, that that was the best part of World War Two was we saved the Jews from the Holocaust, which actually they didn't.
Right.
It was really American entry into the war helped get the thing going even worse, probably.
But anyway, but that was the idea, though, was that maybe our great grandfathers were anti-Semites, but we're not, you know, not since World War Two and that kind of thing.
And so it does carry over.
Now, I wanted to ask you, because the way that you said it was, it's something I'm trying to stop.
Was that Jewish access to the Democratic Party or what those what policies they prefer?
What policies they prefer the access?
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know what I'm going to do about that.
I mean, it was just the way that you said it.
I didn't want anybody misquoting.
Look, I mean, elites, they're always been elites in American political life.
And I think that, you know, right now, Jews are part of the elite, by and large, in the Democratic Party.
I don't know that I'm going to end that personally.
Certainly what I'm helping to end vigorously every day is that Jewish identification with Zionism.
And increasingly you see young Jews who are taking a stance against that.
And the Democratic Party is actually the party that seems to be heading towards a breakup over Israel, or that there is going to be a real factional dispute within the Democratic Party over Israel.
Those who are against Israel and those who are for it.
And I can't wait for that to happen, because finally the issue will be politicized.
Americans will get to discuss this.
Americans who don't like Israel's human rights record and want a balanced policy in Israel and Palestine are going to speak up and American policy will change.
Yeah.
Well, that's what I think, too, is, you know, I'm not counting on a lot of great changes soon or anything, but for there to even be an honest fight about it at all.
And you're right, I think implicitly here that nothing's happening on the right as far as this goes.
But in terms of the Democrats, I mean, it's basically old money bags in charge of the thing and all the old guard organizers of it versus the people, you know, the basic rank and file progressive voters out there, Democrat voters.
I mean, I don't think, you know, I don't know what the numbers are as far as how many of them are really good on this and have a principled take on a one state or a two state solution or something to make it not like this anymore.
But, you know, certainly their instincts are for fairness in whatever situation, you know, they would like to think anyway.
So, yeah, I mean, I and you know, but you look at the New York Times, which is the leading American newspaper.
It has we showed this today on our site.
It has over the last few months run several columnists repeatedly saying that Israel's slaughter of nonviolent protesters on its border with Gaza is perfectly legitimate and is the only choice it has.
Where else can you imagine four New York Times columnists, one after the other, and repeatedly defending the killing of nonviolent protesters?
It's just impossible to imagine.
Right.
And look at what happens when it's Iran in 2009 or something.
Oh, yeah.
You know, they freak out, beat him over the head with it for years afterwards.
Yes.
And of course, although I would point out that, you know, as you show in your book, Fool's Errand, when Obama was slaughtering, you know, helping to slaughter civilians in Afghanistan, including hundreds of children, just a couple of years ago, you know, the media doesn't really make much of that either.
So there are some blind spots.
That's true.
I mean, if anything, this is one of the silver linings of the Trump presidency is really helping to make this more and more of a partisan issue.
When it's Trump, Adelson and Netanyahu versus the world.
There's a lot of people on the outside of that.
And so people I noticed the media were paying attention to the human to the Saudi attack in Yemen that killed a bunch of school kids.
Yeah.
You know, when has that happened before?
That's because it can be pinned on Trump.
So good thing.
Yeah, a little bit.
And, you know, it's the partisan dynamic on the entire antiwar issue and including Israel and Palestine.
The partisan dynamic has really just been poisonous.
Oh, I agree.
You know, with with Barack Obama basically bribing, not the leftists, I'll give or at least the leftist writers stay good, but kind of the rank and file out there.
And then all the progressives and the liberals and the Democratic voters, they just all forgot they cared about war for eight years straight.
And now with the scandal being Trump's disloyalty to America, supposedly, and him being in the pocket of a foreigner that disrupts the whole left against intervention narrative, too, and makes them the hawks, you know, criticizing him for selling us out to the scary foreign enemy, which is just poisonous as hell.
You know, I mean, they were supposed to be slinking back to the antiwar movement now.
And now that's been delayed for a period of time.
Scott, having you been disappointed on that front for a long time, I don't think that I think liberal interventionism has been the kind of norm inside the Democratic Party for, you know, for since Bush, certainly.
I mean, well, since Wilson, you know, since Andrew Jackson.
But yeah, no, I mean, since James Madison and the invasion of Canada.
Yeah, no.
Yeah.
The Democrats, they're the warmongers.
They always have been.
But you know what?
I guess I like to think of, you know, that a lot of leftists are to the left, even, you know, much more than on the right.
You have a lot of people who are really to the left of the Democratic Party on a lot of in a lot of good ways, you know, which I don't want them messing around with, you know, property ownership and making us all go hungry.
But I am in favor of opposing a lot of the same things that they oppose.
So, yeah, I'm happy to see that there's kind of that always that that leftist pressure on the liberals that they always have to try to disown or try to co-opt or whatever it is.
And that's what's happening here with Palestine, too, is the liberals.
I mean, to me, a liberal just means a Democrat voter.
That's just, you know, and they'll vote Democrat no matter what.
But then to the left of that are progressives and leftists and other kind of, you know, different kinds of leftists and who knows.
But but that's where the support for the Palestinians comes from.
From the left of the Democratic Party, it's, you know, it kind of works its way in and has its effect inside the Democratic Party, as you're, you know, covering here.
And so then in that context, what's going on at The New York Times is this, you know, horrible, delayed and failed rearguard action to try to get out ahead of this.
Yeah, but but preaching from the top of The New York Times, nobody's listening, right?
I mean, are they?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, that's a good question.
I mean, I think The New York Times still has a great deal of influence over liberal attitudes.
And my coauthor on that post is a guy named Donald Johnson, who frequents a lot of liberal Democratic sites as a commenter.
He's very concerned with the discourse in the Democratic liberal.
And he points to that divide that you just said and says these Democratic liberals are really owned by Israel.
They do not see an alternative narrative.
So he's very pessimistic.
I'm very optimistic, as I think you are.
But the Democratic Party is still, you know, very pro-Israel, and they're afraid to take a step against it.
So and their readers and constituents aren't really woke on this one.
So that's changing.
But, you know, it's dismal.
Yeah, you know, I mean, I guess I have to be optimistic in the sense that I think, well, just like, you know, with everything, the reason they have to lie so much is because what they're doing is wrong.
It's pretty much as simple as that.
That's why the never ending stream of lying and dissembling and complaining and smearing on behalf of Israel in this issue is because they're in the wrong.
And anybody who like just got here from wherever and said, what's going on here, would take the side of the Palestinians because they're the ones who are the victims.
Doesn't mean that they're the good guys in any particular circumstance.
It just means that the Israelis are the aggressors and the Palestinians are the victims.
It's as simple as that.
Yeah.
And, you know, my cousin just went over there for the first time and I was and went over there to see for herself and that kind of thing.
She came back and said, it's just black and white.
It's black and white.
And her answer, she's a young person who's involved in, you know, progressive causes.
Her feeling was young millennials with social media are going to transform that can transform this issue in no time and ultimately will.
I hope she's right.
I mean, I do think that it's so blatant that when the word gets out in a sort of, you know, when you think of these other viral movements on the progressive side that have had a transformative effect, whether you like it or not, why couldn't that happen with Israel and Palestine?
Why couldn't attitudes shift dramatically?
We need more memes with maps.
I'm telling you, man, that's the problem here is nobody even has a maps bird's eye view of who's colonizing what over there.
If anybody would ever just say, look, this is the West Bank.
It doesn't belong to Israel, but they're taking it.
This is the 22% that they were supposed to have left.
And now they can't even have that.
Now I understand is the response to that.
But you got to show them, you know, I think that's a big part of it.
I agree.
And that's what the nation state bill does.
It opens the door on that too, because it's the land of Israel is the Jewish homeland, you know, given us given to us in the Bible.
So well, and as you have this story here from a couple of weeks back about the students, these young American Jewish students on the birthright trips over there, who, you know, tripped out over, you know, how blatant it is that, oh, I see the West Bank is all colored in on this map here as just being part of Israel, no more pretending, huh?
And this, I guess this one kid gets out of line and starts heckling the bus driver or something, right?
Right.
Yeah, it was great.
But you know, just to step back from that for a second.
So here are these Jewish kids getting this free trip to Israel, anyone under 26 and under, you know, can go to Israel on Sheldon Adelson's nickel.
Why are they taking Sheldon Adelson's money?
You know, if it was the Koch brothers, you know, the Jewish community would say, don't go near that money.
That's the Koch brothers.
You know, here you have right-wing Sheldon Adelson, who has called on Obama to nuke Iran, and he's paying for their trip over there, and these good young liberal Jews who care about human rights are taking his money to go over there.
What are they expecting, you know?
And God bless them, they're trying to break up his trip, some of them are.
But it is a little bit of a sad reflection on the state of the Jewish community that you have good young liberal Jews, progressive kids who, you know, care about human rights, taking money from this very fascistic...
Yeah, I guess I was looking at it like, wow, somebody did a little bit of homework before they went over there, and had enough, you know, enough wherewithal to stand up to the propaganda, but I guess, as you're saying, that's really just the exception.
Well, I guess, I'm looking at that angle, but yeah, it was a very funny story, and people should know about it.
It was just, it was, I mean, part of it...
Because that usually doesn't happen, right?
Usually it's like, oh, okay, I guess I learned something today, or whatever, you know?
Yeah, it's a propaganda trip, and these kids had the wherewithal to say on the last day, wait, you didn't show us the occupation, we're going to see the occupation, we're going now to Hebron to see what's going on.
And as soon as they said that, their tour guide turns on them and says, you won't be safe there, you can be raped there, you might get killed.
And one of the participants, one of their fellow kids on this tour goes up to them and says, you're going to get killed, you're going to get raped.
Horrible statements to make, just because they're going into a Palestinian area.
So the degree of racism and bigotry inside the organized Jewish community is shocking.
And that goes back to what John Mearsheimer, his challenge to me many years ago, the great political scientist, international relations at University of Chicago, he said, Phil, your people are the most educated, the most liberal, the smartest, the most cultured in America.
They always have been.
When I became an academic, he said, how come they're supporting apartheid?
Explain that to me.
Obviously, it goes to a lot of deep questions, but that's what's going on.
Right.
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Hey, so tell me about the Haaretz op-ed because it seems like, I mean, I guess the usual comparison is that Haaretz is the New York Times of Israel, is that right?
Yeah, but Haaretz, I would say Haaretz is doing what the New York Times isn't doing.
Haaretz is over there and is criticizing Israel vigorously and saying this is now an apartheid state, something you're not allowed to say in the United States, something the New York Times would not be saying, Haaretz is saying.
So yes, it's the elite publication of Israel in the same way that the Times is the elite publication here, but it's much more progressive.
You know, it seems like this nation state law is, you know, overall so far a good thing in the sense that, you know, I mean, I'm not sure why David Rothkopf couldn't say that it was the duty of all people who care about human rights to oppose what Israel's government has been doing since at least 67.
I mean, at least the Nakba was a sustainable enterprise with the ethnic cleansing and all, you know, much more so than the occupation ever since then, you know, like the right of return is only an issue because the occupation is still an issue too.
But if they'd taken, if the occupation had ended in 68, then this wouldn't even be going on at all.
But it seems like, yeah, as long as we're talking about apartheid, yeah, it's not just the nation state law.
Let's look at Gaza and the West Bank and all that.
But Scott, you know, this goes again to my feeling about, you know, how do you get so woke?
You know, here you are, you're in Texas, you know, you're doing your thing.
It doesn't take a, I mean, not that you're not a really smart guy, but it doesn't take a genius to figure this out, right?
I mean, where, where are our fellow Americans on this?
Why aren't they getting a clue on this?
And yes, I fault American Jews for being the reactionary forces here that are, you know, guiding the debate, controlling the debate to some degree or another, from Dennis Ross to the New York Times.
But, you know, the rest of America, there's a little bit of intimidation.
I don't know why they don't, you know, grow a pair on this, because it is obvious.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, and you know, I don't have anything to lose, not that, and, but I've made sure to keep myself in the position where I have nothing to lose.
I wouldn't compromise on something like this, but that's why I don't even try to really get on a real, you know, AM station in town or that kind of thing is they wouldn't let me on there with a anti-Zionist point of view.
And I wouldn't go on there, not able to talk about it.
So I just keep doing this, but yeah, I mean, it's bad for business.
No question about that.
But, you know, as far as why I get it right, it's because I'm a libertarian.
So it doesn't matter, you know, and Sheldon Richman, of course, has written, you know, all these great essays lately for the Libertarian Institute about this, where, you know, I really don't care what religion you believe in or what you look like, or what in antiquity was your tribal contest with some other tribe.
Everybody's an individual.
That's, you know, how the West reinvented itself a few hundred years ago.
And I kind of like it.
The libertarians, we have, you know, that kind of Declaration of Independence point of view, crystallized and perfected for the rest of you.
But that's where we start from, is everybody owns themselves and they own their property, and that's why it's wrong to steal from.
So, and then the Israelis say, no, because ancient religion means that I have a superior property right than you have.
What was the phrase again?
It's right here.
A higher normative hierarchy.
Then, yeah, no, I don't buy that.
That doesn't work on me.
It never could, right?
That's great.
That's a great tradition.
I mean, if you have a tradition that informs you on that, that's wonderful.
I mean...
And plus, it was all the neocons who lied us into Iraq War II, and they called it everything, but this is what Ariel Sharon wants us to do, which was, it was actually, I only found this out from reading J.J. Goldberg in the foreword, that it was really the Netanyahu faction of Likud more than Sharon.
Sharon was really much more obsessed with Iran.
It was the Netanyahu faction that was much closer to the American neocons, Richard Perle and them, that really favored the, you know, attack in Iraq as much as Bush himself did.
Yeah, and when Obama had the temerity to say that these are the same folks who tried to, who got us into the Iraq War, pushed us into the Iraq War, when the neocons were, and Netanyahu were gearing up against the Iran deal, you know, he was called an anti-Semite for doing that.
He was just pointing out the facts.
Yeah, and he was like, wait, I was only talking about Richard Perle and his six friends.
You're the one who pointed out what religion they supposedly are part of, or whatever, you know?
Yeah.
What does that have to do with it?
You tell me.
I know this is something that, you know, Jim Loeb, the great scholar of neoconservatism, you know, pointed out something that you talked about, that I think Paul Wolfowitz's family had been Holocaust survivors too.
I know that, you know, my wife, Larissa Alexandrovna, she interviewed Michael Ledeen numerous times back in the day, and she talked about how just absolutely crazy he was.
He was certain that all of the American Jews were going to be rounded up and put on cattle cars off to death camps at any time.
You know what I mean?
Like, you're talking about a level of paranoid schizophrenia.
You know what I mean?
He just couldn't be any further from the reality of what this country is like, you know what I mean, to believe that.
But that's really the mindset of the neocons.
Like, they really are completely nuts about that kind of thing.
And so you could see, and right, like, this is the story of what you guys have reported from Israel, is that they're so able, in kind of a 2002-type fever of fear and accusation, to convince themselves that everything they do really is in self-defense, and they really do have no choice but to do what, you know, to protect themselves by waging all this aggression against everybody else.
And I can relate, because I'm from America, so I can see it.
It's just, you know, an uglier little, you know, microcosm, not really uglier, so just a microcosm of the same kind of thing that USA does to everybody, too.
And a lot of times because the Israelis want them to, but yeah.
Yes, it certainly, there's a lot of reflection.
I mean, look, your book's chapters on some of those assaults in Afghanistan.
Hey, you know, look, look what we did for the American brand over there.
And yeah, Israel, was it a model or not?
No, we were doing that on our own.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I certainly don't chalk up the Afghan war to Zionism in any sense, you know?
No, no, I don't either.
But yeah, I think there's a psychosis and a paranoid streak that shows up.
You saw it when, you know, Israel will cite the Holocaust when they're destroying Palestinians.
And young Palestinians, they'll say, you know, it's just, there's a psychosis at work.
It's like Begin saying we're going to get Hitler in his bunker when they were going after Arafat in Lebanon.
It's crazy.
God, is that a real quote?
That's hilarious.
In a sick and twisted way.
Hitler in his bunker.
Give me a break.
Did not anybody say to him in Hebrew, give me a break.
You know, what the hell are you talking about?
I guess I should speak Hebrew because there are some sane voices over there.
Gideon Levy, good for him.
All right.
Hey, listen, man.
Oh, you know what?
Can I keep you one more second?
I want to ask you about Jeffrey Goldberg.
Oh, yeah, Jeffrey.
Yeah.
So tell me, it was some link I followed from something I was reading on your website this morning that led me to this piece by Dave Kleon about Jeffrey Goldberg and his role in the media as the editor of The Atlantic and former Iraq War II monger who lied about Saddam and Osama in The New Yorker and all that.
But he's really played this really important role in American media in kind of, you know, cracking the whip about who's allowed to say what and that kind of thing.
But you have talked about and written lately about that changing to his his role in the media.
And is it that he's covering his own ass now?
Is that it?
He's just a little bit ahead of the curve of his own curve?
I think so.
I mean, I think that my view and I'm curious to hear your take on the Kleon piece, which I have not read carefully.
I just glanced at it.
My view is that Jeffrey Goldberg is his main job at The Atlantic now is heading the Democratic resistance to Trump.
And that's the way he conceives his job.
He is going to do anything he can to take Trump on and to champion liberal human rights values.
And part of that means throwing Israel under the bus.
So I don't see him defending Israel anymore because he knows that the coalition that he's building, which is a feminist coalition, people of color, the Democratic base, you cannot really defend Israel's record in that base.
So I think he is abandoned Israel because he has a bigger job than that now, which is to, quote, unquote, you know, save the United States.
And now he didn't say anything bad about him.
He's just silent on all these issues now or what?
I mean, I admit I don't read him.
I guess.
I mean, I don't follow him super close.
But every time Israel does something really stupid, which it does a lot of lately from slaughtering nonviolent protesters on the Gaza border to passing this nation state of the Jewish people law, I don't see Jeffrey Goldberg popping his head up over the bunker anymore, because he knows this is indefensible and he has too much important work to do to create this progressive coalition.
You see him running stuff that is, you know, it's Democratic base and Democrat by Democratic base.
I mean, that progressive wing of the Democratic Party, very feminist, pro LGBTQ rights, people of color, the monuments that that is all part.
And, you know, the country's history of racism.
These are all things that he has to report and investigate now to sort of rally that base.
And that he's putting on the cover of his magazine.
So I don't see him touching the Israel issue.
Yeah, liberals, they're so ironic with all the crazy things they do and thinking the sides they take, you know, I got to take the good with the bad here, I guess, if he's, you know, backing down finally, a little bit on his role of commissar of who's allowed to write what in the world.
You know, I was reminded by Cleon in that thing of his smear against Walt and Mearsheimer and the way Cleon puts it, you know, he wrote 1000 words before he even mentioned their names.
First, he had to bring up Father Coughlin.
And yeah, you know, whatever.
I should reread that.
I because I remember that.
Well, that's a great point to bring up.
I wanted to get on Twitter for a second and slam Cleon, though, for smearing.
And quite ironically, I thought, you know, smearing Ron Paul in this piece for supposedly being associated with right wingers or whatever.
And then who does he link to?
Jamie Kerchick, the lowest slime bag, who just smeared Ron Paul with obvious nonsense, you know, about some trumped up old bullshit that somebody else wrote anyway.
And I mean, where's the anti war left?
That's there again, where's the anti war left?
Cleon was just making a point about, you know, Goldberg once saying, hey, Ron Paul's kind of Zionist because he's saying, you know what, we should just stop financing Israel.
We should stop telling Israel what to do, which is a pretty good non interventionist take for a Republican trying to stay in office, I guess.
But he's actually much more anti Zionist than that when it comes to like whose side he feels for or whatever.
And he said so in the past about that.
But but then so in other words, Cleon, he didn't need to slam Ron Paul at all.
All he had to do was say, here's a guy that Jeffrey Goldberg would oppose on any other thing, probably, right.
But he's willing to take his side if he says something that can be interpreted in a pro Zionist fashion or so.
So yeah, but instead, he has to cite Jamie Kertrit smearing the great Ron Paul, who's one of the greatest, you know, peacemongers and truth tellers in our society.
It's sick.
And you know what, you know, people like me, give credit to leftists like you and Dave Cleon all day.
But we don't ever deserve that same respect back whatsoever.
Somehow, you know, I mean, I'm not accusing you, but you know what I mean?
No, I understand.
And look, who's been one of the leaders of the anti Iran war run up stuff is Patrick Buchanan, and the left won't touch him, you know, and you know, I'm sorry, Pat has said some really smart stuff about this.
And you got it.
How are you going to take on the neocon liberal interventionist coalition?
These guys never lost their jobs, despite supporting the biggest foreign policy mistake of, you know, the last 50 years.
They're still in force.
They're still ensconced in Washington, in large part because of the Israel lobby, I believe.
And how are we going to take them on?
We got to build a coalition.
And that's going to include some, you know, diverse ideological segments.
And I mean, it seems obvious to that.
It's just great.
Great schtick for leftists.
Anyway, to say, look, we're so right about this, that even Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, the paleo conservative and the libertarians say we're right, that this is they even use the word empire, because that's how corrupt this project is.
This is not just a bad idea.
It's really wrong.
You know, that kind of thing.
We should be useful for covering their right flank.
But I don't know, I guess they don't feel that that's, you know, either necessary or desirable for whatever set of reasons.
But I don't, you know, there, you're pointing out this true intellectual compatibility of these two groups.
So, you know, I think Pat really is far to the right of Ron.
I mean, Pat is a paleo conservative for real isolationism in the sense of you know, less international trade and and using law to preserve the old way and make America great again and all that.
You don't get that from Ron.
Ron's, you know, a real libertarian.
But yeah, but I mean, where do you see this?
You know, the liberal intervention, the democratic establishment right now is liberal interventionist.
It just is.
And they like the American empire.
They love that idea because some of the elites are sustained by globalization.
And, you know, there's a lot of wealth that's been produced by globalization for 20 percent.
The neocons are so bad.
I mean, other than the fact that they put Israel first, it's that they're a bunch of liberal Democrats.
They're a bunch of, you know, they joined the Reaganites because the Reaganites were the ones who had access to the military power for a while.
But, you know, Richard Perle is still a card carrying Democrat.
You know, that's and you know, there's a great essay.
It may have been Murray Rothbard who wrote about how, you know, people always said about LBJ that, well, he had all these great social programs and everything, but then Vietnam really dragged down his legacy.
And that was the dark side of of what he did.
And then but the answer or, you know, this argument was no.
In fact, the Vietnam War was part and parcel of the Great Society that, you know, the great father, Washington in the east is going to come and make everything your way for you, including make sure that the people on the south side of the line down there vote Catholic or whatever, you know, and they're just going to make sure because they can.
They can do what they want.
They can make things better and right with power rather than with liberty.
And so, you know, in that sense, you can see where it's not confusing, right, why Samantha Power and Susan Rice would support using the military to stop a slaughter somewhere when, of course, they're just inducing worse ones.
But, you know, it's part of their ideology.
There's no this is all one big sociology class.
What can we do to make things the way we want them to be?
And so, you know, yes.
And whereas a true conservative like Pat Buchanan would say, look, we've got to face down those commies.
But once the commies are gone, well, who are we facing down now?
What is this?
You know, we're supposed to be, as even Jean Kirkpatrick said, a normal country in a normal time now that the emergency is over.
Instead, we go trumping up emergencies to go and solve.
And that's not conservative.
And in fact, you know, Michael Ledeen, we talked about before the great neocon, great in that bad way.
He was asked one time, how come you guys are called neoconservatives when all you preach is world revolution?
And he goes, you know, that's a real good question.
I never use that word.
I mean, because you're right.
It's not conservative.
We want to overthrow every government on the planet and remake everything our way.
And he sounds like Leon Trotsky himself, you know?
Yes.
I mean, that's that's how the neocon started with, you know, Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, Bill Kristol's dad saying, hey, we have to support America's war making powers.
We just because that is what is going to support Israel.
And that's what they've done.
They came out against George McGovern because he was going to sap American strength and that they jumped to the Republican Party over that.
So they're a war party.
Yes.
Well, Scott, it's been a pleasure.
I know I was just going to say something like that.
I always enjoy talking to you quite a bit, Phil.
Appreciate it.
Same.
It's the same man.
A real meeting of the minds.
So, OK, well, you can turn that air conditioner back on down there now.
I'm going to.
And I got to recommend to everyone, sign up for the morning email.
It's such a great way to start your day over at Mondoweiss.net.
I really mean that.
It's great.
And and it's not just Phil Weiss, but he's got a bunch of great writers there covering politics here and in Europe and in Israel and the occupation and the situation in Gaza and everything, man.
It's really great.
Thanks again, Phil.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, man.
OK, bye bye.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at Libertarian Institute dot org at Scott Horton dot org, Antiwar dot com and Reddit dot com slash Scott Horton Show.
Oh, yeah.
And read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan at Fool's Errand dot US.
