09/16/15 – M.J. Rosenberg – The Scott Horton Show

Don't you get sick of the Israel lobby trying to get us into more wars in the Middle East?
Or always abusing Palestinians with your tax dollars?
It once seemed like the lobby would always have full-spectrum dominance on the foreign policy discussion in DC.
But those days are over.
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So this is my show, the Scott Horton Show.
On the line I have our friend M.J. Rosenberg.
He is now writing at The Nation.
I can't keep track of who all you write for or when, but M.J., I'm very happy to have you back on the show.
Thank you.
And now this one is called, APAC spent millions of dollars to defeat the Iran deal.
Instead, it may have destroyed itself.
And I thought it was unfortunate that the pictures of Netanyahu and The Nation didn't shell out the bucks to license a picture of Nelson from The Simpsons saying, Ha ha!
But anyway, I guess go ahead.
Oh, let me say this about you.
I know you hate it when I say this, but it's important.
And you say so in the piece.
You used to be a very high-level staffer at APAC.
And you know this business very, very well.
And so it gives you extra abilities to criticize.
You understand the context a lot better than anybody else could who didn't have the experience that you have there.
So I guess, first of all, let me ask you, what is APAC anyway, for those who aren't familiar?
Well, APAC calls itself and is the Israel lobby.
Or sometimes it's called the Jewish lobby, but more accurate is the Israel lobby.
It is the only lobby that's registered.
Ah, wrong.
It's not registered.
But it is the only lobby on Capitol Hill for the government of Israel.
The reason I have to make that correction is it should be registered as a foreign agent, because it's representing the government of Israel.
But it's just registered as a domestic lobby, which is ridiculous.
But nonetheless, it is what they call the Israel lobby.
And when everyone's talking about, or should be talking about, who Obama was up against on the Iran nuclear deal, the simple answer is APAC.
All right.
And so now you say that, you know, in this case, basically what you're arguing here is that they bid off more than they could chew on this one.
If you had been on their side on this and still working for them, you know, just from their point of view on this, what would you have done better to try to be more effective?
I don't mean to give them advice, but I'm trying to get to the part of, well, maybe I shouldn't ask you.
I just want to see what is it that they did that was so stupid here, other than just opposing the perfectly good Iran deal in the first place?
Well, with that caveat that they shouldn't have been opposing it in the first place because it's good for everybody and probably Israel most of all.
But let's just forget about that part and just accept the idea that they do things in really stupid ways and self-destructive ways.
But if I was in charge of APAC, I would have told them, look, if we want to defeat this deal, Netanyahu cannot come to the United States Congress to speak out against the U.S. president in the U.S. Capitol.
He should not be conniving just with the Republicans, but should try to make it a bipartisan effort to sink the deal.
And he should not allow Israel to become a Republican football or plaything, which it is now.
So the main thing is, I think they lost at the moment.
Netanyahu came to the United States Congress and stood there before the House and Senate and basically gave the finger to the President of the United States.
At that point, he lost.
Yeah.
They lost.
Yeah, well, and it sounds like, I mean, this is one hell of a silver lining on this whole thing.
I mean, and first of all, it should be said, too, for people who may be phased out for a minute in the last couple of weeks and missed it, they really lost.
It's not just that they were unable to override the president's veto.
They were unable to pass their crappy anti-deal bills in the first place, their resolutions.
And look, in the Senate, they couldn't even get a vote.
Right.
I mean, they had all these members of the Senate announcing in support of the deal.
So they knew they couldn't win.
But then when the Democrats said, not only that, we're going to filibuster the deal so we don't even have it come up, AIPAC couldn't even win on that.
So they lost on everything.
And what happened was the only votes they got against the deal in Congress, it was every Republican, every single Republican, and a couple of dozen Democrats, mostly from kind of Orthodox Jewish districts or states, like Chuck Schumer.
In his mind, he's from an Orthodox Jewish state.
Or sometimes he's from a Wall Street state, but he doesn't represent the state of New York.
Well, but then, you know, I think they said that Nadler, Gerald Nadler, belongs to the most Jewish district in America, right?
Yeah.
And he said no to this, no to them, and yes to Obama's deal.
Yeah, I think because they made it such a partisan thing, because Gerald Nadler is a Democrat who supports Obama, they turned it into a vote, you know, where if you voted against this, you were telling Obama to drop dead.
And that was just too much for Nadler.
It wasn't too much for other suburban, you know, New York people, a few others.
And for Carolyn Maloney, who's from the east side of Manhattan, whereas Nadler's from the west side, she went along with AIPAC, in other words, told the president to drop dead.
But it's a strange, you know, the votes, you know, it's kind of strange.
Schumer announced against, and everyone thought that when Schumer announced that he was against the deal, all these people would follow him.
Well, at the exact same moment that Schumer announced against, Christian Gillibrand announced for.
You know, that's his, you know, the other New York senator.
So it's like, this is a, if Schumer can't, if Schumer, who is AIPAC's enforcer in the Senate, if Schumer can't deliver his junior senator, things are really changing.
Yeah, well, and yeah, like you said, all this is because of Netanyahu, well, I don't know all, but much of this is Netanyahu's strategy of just, I'm not exactly sure why, but I guess just writing off the Democrats and saying, well, we'll just make Israel a partisan issue in America and it'll just be a Republican issue and go ahead and concede the Democrats to the, you know, less Zionist factions, which at least there are less Zionist factions inside the Democratic Party.
But that doesn't seem to make much sense to do from their point of view, because, you know, the Republicans lose sometimes because people hate Republicans because they're really bad.
So I'm sorry, music's playing.
We got to take this break, MJ, but hold it right there.
When we get back, we're going to be talking more about the politics of the Israel lobby in Washington, D.C. here.
Check out this great piece of The Nation.
AIPAC spent millions and lost on the Iran deal.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
Talking with MJ Rosenberg, this time writing in The Nation.
AIPAC spent millions of dollars to defeat the Iran deal.
Instead, it may have destroyed itself.
So where we left off, we were talking about the Republicans.
Did I oversimplify it?
Have the Israel lobbyists really painted themselves into the Republican Party corner here?
Or they still own the Democrats to a great degree.
They just lost big on this one just because, for whatever reason, the president decided he really, really wanted to see this through.
But what do you think?
Oh, I hit the wrong button.
I'm sorry, MJ.
I hit the Skype button, not the phone.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
Okay.
What I understand about the Israeli government is both the prime minister – the two big players on this stuff, on this sticking-at-the-United-States stuff, is the prime minister and the current ambassador to the United States from Israel, and the previous ambassador, all of whom were Americans.
That's why Netanyahu doesn't have any kind of an accent, and neither does Ron Dermer, the ambassador, or Michael Oren, the former ambassador.
They all grew up in the United States, and they are Republicans.
I mean, it's amazing.
The current ambassador, Ron Dermer, was a Republican down in Florida.
They're probably the worst Republicans.
And he worked for Newt Gingrich.
I mean, Netanyahu grew up in both upstate New York and in Pennsylvania and then worked in Massachusetts for a long time, but he identified as a Republican.
So it's like those are the people they're comfortable with, not just on Israel issues, but on the general issues of, you know, screwing poor people and, you know, hating the left, and all that kind of stuff.
So it's a natural fit.
And I think they're almost putting the interests of their own country behind their own personal affection and identification with the likes of Romney and Huckabee and, well, you know, all these guys.
It's really weird.
It makes no sense, because the support for Israel in terms of getting aid for Israel and all that has to be bipartisan, or they're not going to get it.
And second of all, they rely very heavily on American Jews to support them in their efforts in Congress and with the White House and everything.
American Jews are 75 to 80 percent Democrats.
That's how they vote, is Democratic.
So this is what they're creating.
Their tilt towards the Republicans is really creating not only a bad situation for them, but it's splitting the American Jewish community, which is liberal and Democratic, from the Republicans and the Likud party.
It's crazy stuff.
Well, it kind of sounds like, in other words, what you're saying is, before they had the ability to pretty well keep the Democratic Party locked on a right-wing foreign policy, and now that's what they're risking losing here.
That's it.
That's exactly right.
Okay, but now how big of a risk are they taking?
Because the Iran deal is the Iran deal, and it's a huge thing, and it's clear that the Israelis and their lobbyists, their fifth column here, they did everything they could to stop it and all that, but maybe that's just the one issue.
And we are talking about the Democratic Party here.
I mean, how hard is it to buy?
Well, you know, I see that Obama invited Netanyahu to come to the White House in November for a hug-it-out session.
I mean, I assume that's what he invited him for, and the Democrats are already pushing for more aid to Israel, which is, you know, the Israel aid package, which is mostly, you know, it's all military aid now.
We don't even provide economic aid.
It's military aid, mainly, you know, mainly used by the Israelis so they can, one, they can modernize their own weaponry and all that so they're, you know, so they're, as they say, second to none in the region, but also to help them with their arms sales to every despicable dictator on the planet, and we're going to help them with all that.
Who knows?
That may be more important to them than Iran.
I mean, the Democrats are going to try now to ingratiate themselves with Netanyahu because they don't learn any lessons and because the Democrats don't really have a soul.
Well, and their best guy, Sanders, is horrible on foreign policy on every issue, including Israel-Palestine, as far as I can tell.
Yeah, and he's the president's left candidate.
I mean, look at the rest.
I mean, he's, you know, on Sanders, you know, he screamed and yelled at Vermont voters who challenged him about his support for the Gaza war a year ago.
Yeah.
That's, you know, the Democratic Party is, you know, the Republican, it's, I don't know if I wrote this or not, I kind of forgive the Republicans on all this because they're not hypocrites at all.
They hate diplomacy.
They love war.
The more dead people, the happier they are.
They hate Arabs.
They hate Muslims.
Exactly.
They even hate Christian Arabs for being Arabs.
Exactly.
That's who they are.
So for them to vote unanimously against this bill makes perfect sense with what they're all about.
But for the Democrats, most of these Democrats tend to be more or less anti-war types.
They certainly were against the, you know, Iraq war, lots of them.
These are people who went, you know, past a certain age, they marched against Vietnam.
For them, Israel is the big exception.
They tend not to be militaristic except when it comes to Israel.
So they're the much bigger hypocrites than the Republicans.
Well, yeah, I mean, and yeah, the civil rights angle, the domestic civil rights angle here where these are all the people who at the very least would give lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement and all that.
And they never heard of a Palestinian before.
And don't you waste their time with one either.
Exactly.
If you dare make that comparison between Black Lives Matter and say, well, what about the Palestinians?
They'll say, how dare you make that comparison?
It's an obscene comparison.
You know, you have to be around as long as me to appreciate how this is just this never-ending double-talking hypocrisy.
I mean, I've been involved with this for like 40 years, and it just never stops.
And, you know, you just nailed one of its most, you know, blatant, you know, like Jews are always active for civil rights, except when it comes to, you know, they're still there.
Well, I wasn't saying Jews.
You can say it that way if you want.
I was just saying liberals in general, Jewish or not, honestly, just American, the American left of center at all, you know.
Actually, I can say Jews because the fact of the matter is it's not all liberals by any means are Jews, but almost all Jews are liberals.
And they're also the ones who have always been the most active in the left in this country.
I mean, you think of, you know, going back to the labor movement, even going back to the 60s, Mark Rudin, Columbia University, and Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and all those people.
I mean, that's what, you know, the Jews have always been about.
And then comes this big exception called Israel, which causes them all to or large numbers of them to like have this gigantic swerve, you know.
Well, but that's the news, though, right, is that that's really changing here, where American liberals, including Jews, have had enough of this.
Exactly, exactly.
And the polls are showing it, you know, the Pew Charitable, whatever it's called, did this big poll on attitudes towards Israel among Democrats and Republicans.
And Republicans are overwhelmingly, oh, we love Israel, which is what you'd expect.
But Democrats are split right down the middle between being pro-Israel or pro-Palestine.
That's new.
That really is new.
So, yeah, I think it's really changing.
I think AIPAC's being challenged by J Street, which is a moderate organization, way too moderate for me.
But it did a good job of conveying the message that not all Jews are behind Netanyahu by any means.
AIPAC is really on the ropes now.
I pointed out this thing in the article, which is their strength depends on the threats they make, that if you don't support us, we will defeat you.
I know they say that because I've been in the rooms where they say that.
They say, well, you know, we'll direct money to your opponents.
You will pay a price.
Well, what are they going to do now?
Are they going to try to make all Democrats pay a price?
Well, they can't do that.
They don't have enough money, even.
And if they don't do that, they're just shown to be a paper tiger.
If they go to these members of Congress, like, let's say, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and say, all is forgiven.
It's okay.
We're still not going to try to defeat you or anything like that.
Then it just shows that they have no teeth.
The one thing they have is that big threat.
We're going to cut off your money.
Although I guess if they picked, you know, a few strategic targets to really unseat, then maybe they could threaten the rest with that.
But still, you're right.
I mean, that would have to include people like Feinstein, who's basically unbeatable.
You know what I mean?
How are they going to get rid of her?
And there are so many like that.
And they go after Gillibrand in New York.
Okay, try.
Just try to go after her.
And I think, you know, the best, a really terrific thing that could happen as an upshot of all this is that if, like, MoveOn and organizations like that decide to fight against Schumer being the majority leader.
Well, there's been a little bit of that, right?
Can you describe a little bit?
Because there was a real reaction among, not the left, but among Democratic Party activists over Schumer's betrayal here.
Yeah, and it's, you know, originally, you know, when the word went out that Harry Reid was going to retire as the majority leader, it also went out that Chuck Schumer was going to be running against Dick Durbin for the majority leader position.
And Schumer did whatever Schumer does, which definitely involves money.
I don't mean bribes, but, you know, if you're on Schumer's side on anything, Wall Street helps you out and the banks and all that.
Anyway, so Durbin got shut down immediately, and he conceded without even a fight, just saying, okay, I support, you know, I support Schumer.
But I think, so then this Iran thing comes along.
It's a big deal for Schumer.
Schumer is on, you know, he doesn't know what to do.
But of course, in the end, he comes out against the thing.
And who effectively leads the Democrats in support of their president?
Dick Durbin.
So what a natural for people, you know, for liberals and for the move on crowd and whatever other, you know, liberals there are out there to say, hey, he didn't support the president.
That's the job of a majority leader.
If you got the guy in the White House is in your party, you're the majority leader.
You support his program.
Durbin did.
Schumer didn't.
He's personally obnoxious.
Nobody really likes the guy.
Yeah.
And all his excuses were completely hollow and stupid and were debunked by real experts.
Exactly.
So I don't know.
I think it's just possible.
And the way it would.
You should write a thing like that about how, hey, here's the thing for Democratic rank and file members to to focus on right now.
I know there's a presidential election going on, but there are some other things afoot going on here, too.
And who do we want to lead the Democratic Party next year?
You could have some real influence on this question, especially while the issue is hot.
You know, that's a good.
Yeah, it's true.
Am I right about that?
Because people might think that we don't have any impact.
But the way we have impact is by letting these Senate candidates, you know, is by putting them on the spot.
Like in every state that has an election and every state or primary.
Are you going to support Schumer or your support Durbin or whoever?
And like you say, MoveOn.org, hell, man, that's a lot of email recipients.
That's a huge number of people that can be mobilized, you know, in certain circumstances anyway.
I think I will write that.
Not always for good, if you ask me, but still.
Yeah.
No, I know.
That's something really important because it's absurd to have a neocon.
I don't want to call him a neocon.
He's just he's Chuck Schumer.
It goes wherever the money is.
I mean, I don't think he loves Israel about as much as he loves the Chase Manhattan Bank.
I mean, that's just who he is.
You know, he's like, what was that guy's name?
Willie Sutton, the bank robber.
I robbed banks because that's where the money is.
Yeah, that's what Schumer's politics is like.
That's great.
All right, man.
Well, listen, we're over time.
I kept you over into the break because I didn't want to interrupt you and stop you.
But this is a good place to stop it.
So thank you very much for coming back on the show.
It's always great to talk to you.
Thanks.
All right.
So that's great.
M.J. Rosenberg.
Find his article at The Nation.
Oh, I have it here.
It's APAC spent millions of dollars to defeat the Iran deal.
Instead, it may have destroyed itself.
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