Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the fingered at FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America, 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 hacked.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like Say Our Name been saying, saying 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, it's Friday morning.
Time to talk with Sheldon Richman, my partner at the Libertarian Institute.
Welcome back.
How you doing?
I'm doing fine, Scott.
Great to be back.
Great to have you here, and great to have you writing about Israel and Palestine, man.
You set such a great example for everybody here in our movement about what we think about property rights and the question of Palestine.
So, TGIF today, the goal is freedom.
Trump, Spinoza, and the Palestinian refugees.
Go ahead.
I thought I'd put a few things together that might get people scratching their heads and therefore reading it.
Well, everybody knows, I guess, by now that Trump has been making this assault on the Palestinians, the refugees in particular.
He's not been very friendly to the Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza and inside Israel.
But he's recently announced that they're going to cut off the funding to the UN Relief and Works.
Sheldon Richman, you one-world communist.
Well, I'll get to that in a second.
Okay.
So he's cutting off annual $350 million humanitarian assistance to the 5 million Palestinian refugees.
These are people who live outside of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Syria, Lebanon, a few other places, in camps.
They've been in camps and various kinds of settlements, refugee places, since 1947.
And then a whole bunch of them ended up there after 1968 and then 1967.
So there were really kind of two waves of refugees from Israel's wars.
So Trump is ending this annual appropriation, a few hundred million dollars, to what's called UNRWA.
It's the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
It's a long name, but UNRWA.
And then previously, I mean, just a couple weeks earlier, he cut off a $200 million package for Palestinian aid to people, I think, in the West Bank and Gaza, mainly Gaza, where, you know, people are really suffering because that's an open air prison.
It's been called the Gaza ghetto, actually, Gaza concentration camp.
And the Israeli government, through a blockade, limits the amount of goods, foods, and medicines that can get in there intentionally to keep people sort of down toward the starvation end of the spectrum.
Now, they're called mowing the lawn or putting them on a diet.
They always use these callous phrases.
And also, since they can't rebuild things like water plants, sewage and sanitation plants because of the Israeli wars on Gaza, people are drinking water that's not fit for human consumption.
Half of the 2 million people, almost 2 million people in Gaza are children.
They're under 18.
So give you an idea of the situation.
Anyway, he's cutting that stuff off.
He's also said lately that he wants 90% of the people who are, you know, kind of registered refugees declared non-refugees.
So we can see what's going on here.
And, in fact, he admits in a Haaretz story today, and I believe you find this at antiwar.com, that this is a device to get the Palestinian leadership to agree to his so-called deal of the century, which I've written about previously, we've spoken about previously, which means he's holding all these people hostage.
We're holding 5 million hostages, Mr. Abbas, who's, you know, president of the Palestinian Authority, until you agree to our package, our deal of the century, which I showed was, and a lot of people have showed, is a bogus deal.
I mean, it's basically saying, look, the Saudis and other Gulf states will give you some economic development money if you give up your dream of an independence from Israel with a capital in East Jerusalem.
And they're not going to do that.
So that's what's going on.
It's a callous treatment.
I think it reveals Trump for what he is.
As I say in the beginning, we already knew it, but it certainly is definitive proof that he's a cruel, spiteful little man who's trotting, you know, he's trotting on the least powerful people in the world.
For what?
So he can have his obituary someday say the man who, you know, mastered the broker of the deal of the century to end the Palestine-Israel conflict, which of course it's not going to do.
It's not a deal of the century.
It's bogus.
And everybody knows it.
Yeah.
Well, and what's the point of being hated by all the neocons when he's worse than them on their signature issue, you know?
Well, they should be loving him.
I mean, I never really understood why they didn't like him.
I know.
Me either.
I mean, I guess they figure he's just too erratic to be counted on.
But it seems like if they can count on him for anything, it's to be horrible on Palestine.
Well, I don't know why the neocons aren't taking their lead from Netanyahu.
He seems to be in love with Trump.
And Trump's son-in-law is Netanyahu's virtual godson.
You look at their relationship when he was a kid.
Did you see this thing where Trump said, yeah, the Israelis, they're going to have to give a lot, too.
And this causes massive panic in Israel.
What?
We're going to have to give anything?
We're going to have to compromise on anything?
No way.
Is he betraying everything that he's promised us?
And it's like, guys, he's just bullshitting.
Take it easy.
You're not going to have to give up anything.
He's just going to call it that.
Give me a break.
He's saying in return for the move of the embassy to Jerusalem and the recognition of undivided eternal Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which means half of it can't be the capital of any future Palestinian state, that Israel is going to have to pay big time.
Right.
He never had anything specific.
And in later comments, he said nothing about that.
I had a conference call yesterday with a bunch of Orthodox Jewish Jewish rabbis and Orthodox leaders.
By the way, for some reason, Reform and Conservative weren't invited to this conference call.
And he said nothing about any kind of price to be paid.
It was all about how I'm doing this to twist the arms of the Palestinians to accept my deal.
In other words, hostage taking.
It's a hostage taking.
I read a thing where one of the Israeli.
I mean, pardon me.
One of the Palestinian authority people, I guess it was, was saying that basically the way they're doing this is like the worst kind of, you know, I guess real estate deal or, you know, lawsuit threat or this kind of thing where, look, you can take 25 percent.
You have 15 seconds to agree, take it or leave it, or else we're going down to 5 percent or, you know, this kind of thing where they're just like, they don't know how to deal with this.
You know, they talk about what a great deal of a century they were offered back in 2000, which was a ridiculous hoax.
Well, this has got to be far less than whatever was going on there.
And they're supposed to just take it or leave it.
And then and you know what?
It didn't just Trump, right?
The rest of the American media and establishment will go along with that just fine.
Look at how intransigent these Palestinians are.
You try to give them a state and they won't even take it because they'd rather complain.
You know, that's how it will be spun.
And another way it's revealing about Trump is how he thinks his will remakes reality when he when he moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and declared it the the Israel's eternal and undivided capital.
He said these are basically his words.
I've taken Jerusalem off the table.
That's always been the stopping point in negotiations.
In fact, it was always supposed to be one of the final things talked about.
But he says it was always the stumbling block to negotiations.
I've now taken that off the table just by waving his hand.
And he's now saying the same thing about the Palestinian refugees with the right of return.
The idea of refugee means that's not your permanent status.
You're longing to go home.
He's now saying, no, by the wave of a hand, there are no more refugees or a whole lot fewer.
He's going to count, I guess, 10 percent of them, no more refugees and therefore no really no issue of the right of return.
And so this is the way he operates.
It's like he's got the magic.
You know, he's the magic emperor, the wizard.
He just needs to say the words and reality changes.
And he doesn't seem to get that the things don't work that way.
The Palestinians aren't buying it.
So it's not off the table, these various issues.
But, you know, again, this is the way this guy works.
Yeah.
They're supposed to just say, well, OK, we've been defeated on that.
We better rush to take whatever he's offering now because it's only going to get smaller and smaller.
But, yeah, like you're saying, they're going, yeah, well, we've been occupied all this time, pal.
So what's really changing here?
We're still not going to give up any more than we were before.
Why would they?
Well, that's right.
You know, the Israeli security apparatus and military seems worried about all this.
I mean, they've not been in favor of just a cutting off of the UNRWA money by the U.S.
And this was this was used to be Netanyahu's position because he was in agreement with the security people because they were afraid of how it would provoke resistance, outright resistance.
And, you know, Israel never comes off looking good when there's an intifada or there's protest or protests in Gaza.
Israel, you know, shows itself for the brutal force it is and the whole world sees it.
And there's this universal outcry and UN resolutions against it.
And that's what's bad PR that, you know, they feel they have to do those things when the time comes.
But in a way, they don't like to do it.
They'd rather the Palestinians would just roll over so they don't have to use violence against them because it's bad PR.
And it's hurt.
And I should really focus this.
It's very bad as far as the effect on American Jews who because Netanyahu has driven such a wedge between Israel and American Jews, especially younger Jews for now for years.
And every time he does something like, you know, a new war in Gaza operation, cast lead or protective edge or something like that or breaks bones of kids, Palestinian kids in the West Bank.
Other, you know, more young American Jews say, what the heck is going on here?
This is not any country I have any interest in.
And they're worried about that.
Older American Jewish leaders, the older generation is also very worried about this.
So this change now doesn't seem to be endorsed by the military people, the security people.
And in fact, one of the politicians, I quote him in my piece, I think it's I forget where what article it came from, but scoffed at the military people saying, no, no, this is the right thing to do.
Don't listen to those military people.
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Mm hmm.
Well, there's even that documentary, The Gatekeepers, right?
About this and about the media.
This is about I think it's five former directors of Shin Bet, which is their internal civilian security force and internal, including all of the occupied Palestinian territories.
And and they're saying, no, we shouldn't annex this and figure out just a way to dominate these people better.
We should set them, cut them loose, set them free.
Wait.
So I got two things.
We got to talk about the right of return in a minute.
But first, I wanted to ask you about your one world communism here.
How dare you complain about the U.S. cutting funding from a U.N. agency in any context?
Sheldon, what's going on there?
Well, to just to put in a plug for one of my favorite philosophers, Spinoza, there is only one world.
So what else?
There's no alternative.
But that's not that's not your man to your question.
Yes.
As I say, you know, I was going to write a whole section on that aspect because I know that some libertarians will say, no, any spending cut to a U.N. or any, you know, any any foreign aid spending cut is fine.
Why would you complain about it?
Well, because it's not a spending cut.
So I decided I was only going to handle it in one phrase because that's all it deserves.
It's a spending redirection.
So it's not a spending cut.
So it's not like money is going to go to the taxpayers or the government's going to borrow less money.
It's not going to happen.
So that's a moot point, really.
So now it's a question of would you rather spend it on that or whatever, you know, the wall or, you know, a new drone or whatever you could buy with three hundred fifty million dollars.
Yeah.
Or even just forget the recommendation part, but just let's look at what they're doing with this money and how they're using it as a weapon here, because that's the real point.
Right.
Yeah.
And then I fit it into this general treatment of the Palestinians and the refugees in particular to show that you can't just judge it by, oh, he's he's reducing, you know, an expenditure to a to an agency, to a U.N. agency or some foreign agency.
That doesn't capture anything.
It doesn't tell me anything.
And any libertarian gets excited about that.
I got to wonder about priorities and also just capacity to understand.
Yeah.
Well, or even just education on this subject, which, after all, TV never shoots people straight whatsoever.
They don't have a deliberate plan to dive in and read as much as they can about it for some length of time.
They're just going to be lost on it.
This is about sticking it to the Palestinians.
That's the whole story right there.
You don't need to know anything else.
Right now.
So on the right of return, then, you know, I've always been of the opinion that they could have a two state solution.
Maybe even now they would have to, quote unquote, evacuate a hell of a lot of settlers from the West Bank.
And, you know, they would have to have a real turnaround in policy to do it.
But it seems like they could have something like the 67 borders and go ahead and let the Palestinians have independence.
You know, the other solution being the one state solution to equal rights for everyone, which, you know, sounds like just another civil war starting to me, because I don't think the Israeli Jews will accept that.
I think they'll kill them all first in another Nakba.
But anyways, it seemed like, OK, so if I'm right, that they could have done the the two state solution, at least up until now or something, maybe even still.
It seemed like, you know, the big problem with that then is the right of attorney of all these Palestinians elsewhere who they're not from the West Bank.
They don't want to return to the West Bank.
They want to return to where they're from and what we now call Israel, which, of course, to the Israelis who are determined to maintain their super majority Jewish status so they can claim to be a democracy, too, in the middle of enforcing apartheid here, where they just can't stand the numbers and they won't that they won't give into that.
And I always thought that, well, you know what, if they gave if that was the last thing on the list and the first things on the list were grant independence to the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, let them have their capital, let them develop their economy and have independence and lift all these sieges and all this oppression and occupation that then, hey, at least those refugees in Jordan and Syria and wherever else all they are would at least have a nice West Bank to return to.
You know, something like that, and that that could be the compromise.
I know Yuri Avnery talked about, you know, the right of return, the Palestinians.
I think I'm quoting Avnery right that that the Palestinian leadership at different times has made it clear that they would settle for a token few hundred thousand to be allowed to come home to their grandma's house and whatever, and that the rest would have to go to the West Bank or Gaza.
But that that would be acceptable to the leadership at whatever periods of time.
Anyway, I don't know about now, and I don't know about how the rest of the Palestinian people would feel about that.
But so what's your opinion about that?
And I'm sorry, because we only have well, we still got like, oh, no, we do have five minutes.
So what do you think about?
I mean, that's that's enough to talk a little bit about it.
What do you think?
You know, it's not my place to come up with, like, the preferred way to deal with this.
But just muse about it.
But but but it's but it's true that the Palestinians and you can argue about how representative their negotiators have been.
But as we know from the Palestine papers in the talks that Condoleezza Rice was was running at the very end of the Bush administration, the Palestinians came up with a detailed plan, which included, yes, a token.
I don't know.
I forget what it was to back to Israel.
But but what's now Israel with this was a two state offer.
And I guess with the rest, either being able to go to Gaza or the West Bank, I guess, preferably the West Bank with more space and or cash compensation, something like that.
So they were they were showing the flexibility.
I mean, I don't know if I've ever seen polls of just Palestinians, regular Palestinians in the West Bank and or sorry, among the refugees asking, you know what they would like.
So at least from the standpoint of the negotiators, there's there's certainly been this openness and offers of flexibility.
The problem is Israel doesn't want to talk about that.
They don't even want to recognize it.
They don't take responsibility for the fact that there are refugees.
I mean, in fact, you know, I deal with it in my article.
One of the officials saying, you know, Bush's Trump's move puts an end to the the Arab lie about the refugees.
And I say, what's the lie that they left voluntarily?
We know they didn't leave voluntarily.
We're driven out even if they left voluntarily.
You know, property owners have a right to go back to property.
They leave voluntarily.
But so that wouldn't even change it.
But Israel's responsible for this.
That's why I end up saying in the piece that this whole thing needs to begin with an apology, literally by Israel to the Palestinians.
Then you sit down and work out the terms of coexistence.
But it needs to get off on the right foot, which it never has done.
Apologize for the Nakba.
There's no alternative to that as a starting point.
All right.
But so, I mean, that ain't going to happen because there is no clerk.
There is no anybody anywhere near power in Israel who'd be willing to turn this thing around at this point.
And if there was one, they'd kill him again, like happened to Rabin.
Yeah.
And Rabin didn't even give up much.
He's he's Oslo and Oslo just made quislings out of the Palestinian Authority.
Right.
If they did that to Rabin, what are they going to do to somebody who actually was interested in peace through justice?
I'm calling for not a peace process, a peace through justice process that we've never had.
Well, you know, it's it's a bit thick and disturbing reading, kind of a little bit dry reading.
But I'm now working on Obstacle to Peace by Jeremy Hammond about America's role in this whole crisis.
And, you know, Israel's lawyer, the USA preventing what, you know, Gideon Levy said that, you know, if America withdrew support for all this, it would dry up immediately.
That the Israelis would cuss and spit until about noon.
And then they would be like, OK, I guess we've got to get out of the West Bank.
Bye.
And then that'd be it.
Because what else are they going to do?
There's no way they could do this without America.
I'm not so optimistic.
Yeah.
Well, let's try it.
Well, right.
I'll try it.
But I think that's I think it's wishful thinking on Gideon Levy's part.
I'm a huge admirer of his.
He's a very smart man.
I'd love to discuss this with him sometime.
Maybe he could convince me.
I'd be very happy to be convinced.
Well, hey, so tell me real quick about Spinoza here, Sheldon.
Spinoza was one of the first radical liberals, 17th century, great, great man, great philosopher.
And one of his main points was that the emotions and appetites and desires can can cloud our rational thinking, keep us from being rational and seeing things clearly.
So that person then is more the person who's clouded like that is more interested in hatred and envy and spitefulness and all these bad things.
And he ends up describing Trump.
So people read the end of the article.
You'll see how it's a perfect description of Trump.
These these kinds of feelings go away or certainly diminish when when reason is in the driver's seat.
But when you're somebody like Trump, what drives you is your your resentment, your envy, your wanting to engage in derision of humanity.
It's a whole bunch of descriptors of Trump.
It's unbelievable.
It was uncanny when I read it.
So I refer everybody to the second or the last part of the article.
There you go.
OK, so that is TGIF, Trump, Spinoza and the Palestinian refugees at the Libertarian Institute.
We're going to run it next week on Antiwar.com, too.
And so, yeah.
Hey, thanks very much.
I appreciate it.
My pleasure.
Talk to you soon.
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.
