Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, our next guest is Philip Weiss from the great Mondo Weiss blog.
It's not just him, there's a whole great stable of writers there.
I urge you to check it out.
He's been on a trip to Israel, so welcome back to America and to my show.
How's it going, Phil?
Pretty good.
Not bad.
A little jet lag, but I'm alright.
How's it going with you?
I've been thinking about you a lot, you know.
Oh yeah?
How's that?
Well, you know, I love your show.
Your phone sounds terrible, by the way, and thank you.
Well, my phone is?
Yeah, are you on some kind of headphones or speakerphone or something?
No, no.
I've got a landline.
Alright.
Well, that ain't so bad.
I don't know.
Go ahead.
Oh, well.
You know, your show's done a lot for me over the years.
So, you know, anything I can do for your show, now it's time for me to be standing up for you.
Alright, cool.
Well, I guess just let people know there is such a thing, if you want.
Okay.
I'm gonna.
I'm gonna.
That'd be cool.
Yeah, I have a couple of, well, I'm pushing for donations, but I'm also trying to round up some sponsors, and I basically have like a few almost deals made, but no actual deals made yet.
But I'm working on that, and I'm working on trying to figure out more and more ways to distribute the show out, that kind of thing, and just get more eyeballs looking at the website, that kind of stuff.
So.
Great.
Well.
I don't know.
I really live pretty cheap.
I mean, I do have a wife, and wives are expensive, but, you know, for the most part, I don't need to make very much just to keep going.
So, you know, it should work out.
I'm hoping.
I'm cautiously optimistic, though.
Great.
Well, I have to hump your donations, and I'll do that in the next couple of days.
Well, cool.
I would appreciate that very much.
I'll have the archive of this interview up tonight, so you can link to that if you want.
Thank you.
All right.
So you asked me a question, I guess, about, you know, going out to Israel.
Yeah, yeah.
How'd that go?
It was okay.
You know, I was there.
I met, I, well, I didn't really meet him, but I asked him a few questions, Sheldon Adelson.
I saw the guy up close.
Well, and tell the people who's that.
Sheldon Adelson is sort of Romney's biggest backer right now.
He's pledged millions of dollars to support Romney's campaign, and he's a casino magnate, and he's also a huge supporter of Israel and of the occupation in the West Bank.
So he's kind of a, he supports Rom, Adelson is pro-choice.
And of course, Romney is anti-abortion, but Adelson doesn't let that stand in the way of his supporting Romney, because the only issue he really cares about is Israel.
Yeah, no, Romney cares about his money, so.
Right.
So here's this guy who's having a huge effect on our politics, and, you know, they held a, he held a fundraiser for Romney at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which is a pretty bizarre experience to be at the King David Hotel when they're in a foreign country, when they are raising money for an American presidential candidate.
Now, all I know of the King David Hotel is that that's where the Irgun did their massive bombing, killed, I think, a bunch of innocent people, along with some British soldiers, to chase the British out of their Palestine mandate, as it was called then, and basically leave Israel to the Zionists.
And it worked, right?
Yeah, I mean, they fixed up the hotel since it was bombed in 1946, it's a beautiful hotel, but yeah.
But I wonder, does it have another, is it so important in other ways that it has kind of other symbolic meaning, other than that one big event?
Yeah, I mean, the symbolic meaning the King David has is sort of, it's like the plaza in New York, or the Pierre or something in New York.
So they were, I mean, it wasn't a specific reference to the bombing, that that's why they held it there, it's because they're celebrating terrorism.
No, no.
I mean, that sounded like a Mitt Romney thing to do, maybe, but a little too subtle.
Well, I ran a headline while I was there that Mitt Romney bombed at the King David, so, you know, it has that resonance for all of us, but it is like the leading hotel in West Jerusalem, and it's where, like, Hillary stays, I believe, and certainly Bill Clinton has stayed there, they've, you know, cut some famous deals there, so it's a beautiful hotel.
And now, why do you say that Romney bombed there, for people who missed it?
It is August, after all, a lot of people have been on a lot of trips, who knows?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, well, Romney made, you know, Romney, I think most readers will, or listeners will know about Romney saying, in London, that he didn't think much of the security arrangements in London, and that got him in trouble, so then he moved on to Israel on this trip, and at that fundraiser, which I did not attend, but I was sitting outside in the lobby during it, and met a lot of people afterwards, at that fundraiser, he said that Palestinians are culturally inferior to Israelis, and that the reason they are is because of the divine hand of Providence.
So it was this really kind of ugly, racist statement that he made about, you know, a whole group of people who were living under occupation, that even the liberal press back here in the United States, which generally promotes Israel at every turn, even the liberal press said, hey, this is out of line, you know, you can't just slander a group of people like this.
And it was a clear connection, the statement made a clear connection between Romney and this guy Dan Senior, who's one of his advisors, who's a relentless Israel lobbyist, who thinks that Israel is culturally superior to the Arab nation.
So it was pretty repulsive, and happily it got a lot of attention.
Yeah, now, do I have it right that, I just thought it was so strange that a presidential candidate, not just a congressional candidate or a senate candidate or something, a presidential candidate, nominee, pretty much, would go to a foreign country to hold a fundraiser, but is it right that he just brought a bunch of Americans with him and then they all donated to him there?
Or dual citizens, anyway?
That was my impression.
There were a couple of Israelis there, but generally they were Americans.
And so it was symbolic.
It was sort of symbolic in a lot of ways.
I mean, it was all these Americans saying, hey, we care about Israel as much as the United States.
Israel is joined at the hip with the United States, and don't forget it, and Romney understands that, and Romney cares more about Israel than Obama.
And you will notice that Obama and his people have done very little, have not criticized Romney at all on this stuff, because they feel vulnerable.
They feel like they have to be supporting Israel just as much as Romney is supporting Israel because of the importance of the Israel lobby in our political life, and the importance of Jewish donors and Jewish voters for the Democrats.
They just cannot go near alienating Jews.
And so what Obama should be saying, he should be saying, why is this guy making promises to Israelis about Iran and a military strike?
Why is this guy making foreign policy?
Why is this guy questioning our foreign policy vis-a-vis Iran in this incredibly volatile situation?
That's what Romney was doing, and Obama just kept his mouth shut because his party is actually trying to run to the right of Romney on these issues.
This really is amazing, isn't it?
It's a farce.
It's amazing.
Well, I appreciate also the total empty-suit nature of both of these guys.
Both of them are a couple of know-nothings up there, just sock puppets of whichever interest.
So you don't even have, like, you know, Bill Clinton at least was interested in things as much as I think he was a devil, you know, but neither of these guys care about anything at all.
They're just a couple of, I don't know, empty suits is the best term for them.
I know what you're saying.
I used to think that Obama cared about this issue, but, you know, for someone who cares about this issue, he has a great way of not standing up for anything that he supposedly thinks.
So it is like two empty suits, and who's moving the suits around?
That's really the question, and it's shocking that a guy could have a fundraiser in a foreign country and talk about supporting them in a military strike that would be devastating to American interests.
Yeah.
Well, at the same time, the official position of his own government, the one that he wants to be the head of, is that they're not even making nuclear weapons.
Everybody knows that.
All right.
We'll be right back with Philip Weiss after this break.
Mondo Weiss.
What?
Dot net?
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Scott Horton.org is the website.
Boy, we're getting close here to this giant Ron Paul festival in Tampa.
I'm speaking there.
Check it out.
It's all over the Facebook and on the interwebs and whatever.
I don't know the address.
Ron Paul festival.
It's going to be huge.
You think about how huge it was in 2008.
It was like a Slayer concert or something.
This one's going to be a lot bigger than that.
And I'm speaking at the 20 something of this month, 26th, I think it is.
Anyway, I'm talking with Phil Weiss from the Mondo Weiss blog, Mondo Weiss dot net, and we're talking about his recent trip to Israel.
And now, Phil, did you go to the occupied territories at all?
Yeah, a lot.
In fact, I stayed in the occupied territories because I was in East Jerusalem most of the time.
Oh, OK.
Well, go ahead and tell us all about it.
If you would say whatever you want.
You know, it's just it's it's it's a dark place right now.
I mean, they're just they're not these people have no rights.
The status quo is unsustainable, as Hillary Clinton says, and no one's doing anything about it.
And it's just kind of a grim situation to be there.
And, you know, one night I'm driving around with my friend and you see an Israeli jeep suddenly stop in the intersection in front of you.
Guy jump out and arrest some kid right on the street in front, you know, drag him back to the jeep.
It's you see that kind of display of power just all the time.
And it's always Israelis with the power inside what was supposed to be the Palestinian state.
And whenever you go into areas of the occupied territories, you're just always seeing Israeli soldiers.
So the whole idea that there could be a two state solution is just absurd at this point.
Everywhere I went, I saw Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers and one, you know, you go to the city of Mali, I do mean, which is a is an Israeli city inside the supposed Palestinian state.
It's as big as, I don't know, Columbia, Maryland or something.
It looks like it's just huge.
So it's a very, here's this political paradigm that we all believed.
Sorry, that was my keyboard flying off the desk.
Here's this political paradigm that we believed in the United States and our politicians sold us in the United States for the last 20 years.
Hey, there's a peace process, two states living side by side.
And you go over there and there's no, that's just horse manure, you know, there's there's not going to be two states living side by side.
And the Israelis political establishment doesn't want it.
And the news has just not been broken to the American people.
These are the facts on the ground they're always talking about.
Yeah, yeah.
The facts on the ground and you know, you too late.
Yeah.
And they've been very successful at putting down facts on the ground.
Now they, you know, Jerusalem, they're, they're surrounding it with Jewish settlements.
They never want to leave Jerusalem.
They say it's an under going to be undivided Jewish city for the capital of the Jewish people forever.
And they're slowly moving the Palestinians out.
So it's, again, I just find it a really dismal, dark situation.
And I think back to periods of our own history, in which there was a major injustice that was just kind of swept under the rug for years and years.
And our compromises were just kind of ignored or avoided.
The situation I think that is before the Civil War, when we were just trying to moderate the idea of slavery and sort of temporize on the idea that all people are created equal.
And that's what they're doing there.
And it just feels like a major violence could be on the horizon.
I just find it depressing to be there.
Well, now, if they succeed in, I guess, zoning and gentrifying and otherwise demolishing and occupying East Jerusalem and really making it a Jewish city, then how long before they go ahead and tear down the mosque and rebuild the temple and all that kind of thing and start World War Three?
You know, I think they would start World War Three.
And I mean, they're pretty crazy.
I guess I'm hoping they just won't do that, because they just know that that would be people would be willing to die for that immediately.
They'd just be.
I just assume there would be an intifada immediately if they started messing with that.
And then also they would have the enmity of all the Arab or of all their neighbors whom they've been able to play to some degree or have managed to, you know, hold that day for a while.
So I don't think they're going to be that crazy.
On the other hand, you know, you are dealing with a country that is constantly threatening war against Iran.
And I think it's doing it so it can annex the West Bank when no one is watching.
But because Iran doesn't represent a threat.
And as you said before the break, the national intelligence estimate, the United States says that they're not even trying to acquire nuclear weapons.
There's no proof that they're trying to acquire nuclear weapons.
So all this talk, endless talk by Netanyahu about it is, I think, just a giant distraction.
Well, I thought it was great the way Ehud Barak overstepped last week.
And, you know, maybe it was just a translation problem or what.
I don't know.
But he claimed that there was a new national intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear program, which was not true, which just provoked first the National Security Council spokesman and then the official White House spokesman to say, no, that's not right.
We'll let you know if they ever change their mind to begin to make nukes, which is the highest level admission that they're not making nukes ever so far, I think.
Right.
I think that's great.
Yeah, I think you're right about that.
And it was great to see them smacked around a little in in the United States.
I mean, how often does that happen?
It wasn't even smacked around.
It was just a correction.
But yeah, here they are.
They're monkeying with our political process nonstop.
And it just you know, when is the tail going to stop wagging the dog on this?
I just don't know.
I mean, it's just it's frustrating to watch our these empty suits, as you put it, responding to them again and again and again.
It seems very reckless because, you know, I think, you know, probably Obama doesn't want to have a war with Iran.
I think Obama and I mean, I always say Obama when I mean Romney.
That's funny.
It's not on purpose.
I'm not into gimmicks and stuff.
It really is just a Freudian slip kind of a thing.
I can't tell the two apart.
They just all look alike to me.
Like Hillary and Condoleezza Rice, you know.
That's funny.
That's funny.
Yeah.
But anyway, I think we could end up with one anyway with this regime change going on in Syria and with all the, you know, increased militarization of the Persian Gulf and threats all the time.
And for that matter, Benjamin Netanyahu and his will to power, we could end up in war with Iran.
And it seems to me like this is all very reckless and very short sighted on the part of the Israelis who don't they have as their first priority, keep Americans liking them forever and ever so that they're safe over there.
I mean, what if the American people decide we don't like Benjamin Netanyahu for getting us into a war with Iran?
Wouldn't it be great if the American people said that?
But I mean, I think they won't until after it's over and it's been a horrible disaster.
But yeah, but then I mean, hey, that's not too far into the future, assuming that's what we're you know, that that they would really do such a thing.
Yeah.
I mean, the problem with what you're saying is that, you know, it's just there's such hubris.
They have shown such hubris again and again and again.
And, you know, why not double down?
Because they've never been called on it before.
You know, they push us around on our foreign policy.
And when do they get called on it?
They don't get called on it.
So I think they've just become really hubristic.
And and maybe this will be the maybe finally the chickens will come home to roost on it.
I somehow doubt I mean, I certainly hope that it's not World War three and that they don't strike Iran or that we don't strike Iran.
But as you say, it's reckless.
And it's sort of like imagine the Cuban Missile Crisis where Kennedy couldn't say anything.
And meanwhile, foreign leaders were, you know, huffing and puffing all the time and and mow mowing one another.
You know, that's what it's like.
There doesn't seem to be anyone in control of the situation.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I'm looking at this blog that you did, Friedman, Krauthammer, Brooks and Crystal.
These are the leading intellectuals in America right now.
Yeah, this this is really heartbreaking in a way.
And it's kind of hilarious, too.
But I think this is the explanation that we're looking for here is, you know, what's wrong?
This is among a poll of political insiders and people of actual power in D.C.
Who do they read in order to understand what's going on in the world?
The answer is David Brooks.
Really?
Oh, man.
Right.
And I think part of what we're getting at here is that if you didn't support the Iraq war, if you supported the Iraq war, instead of that being a giant blot on your resume, they've you know, that's the only way you can work in Washington is if you supported it.
Even Obama has to sort of retrench on his opposition to the war.
And, you know, so until that until there's some accountability on supporting the Iraq war, our establishment is just screwed here, here.
Well, and that's the rest of us, too, at their disposal.
Thank you very much.
All out of time.
Appreciate your time.
Phil Weiss, everybody.
Mondoweiss.net, Skowron.org.
