All right, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our next guest is Eric Margulies.
He wrote the book War at the Top of the World and American Raj.
Liberation or domination?
Welcome back to the show.
Thanks, Scott.
Good to be back with you.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
Oh, I forgot to tell him also to look up your website, ericmargulies.com.
Spell it like Margolis and that's how to spell it right.ericmargulies.com.
And well, I want to start with this story of the FBI whistleblower, Shamai Leibovitz, who went to prison for a year.
He's in a halfway house now because he blew the whistle and leaked transcripts of the FBI's wiretaps of the Israeli Embassy, where they and then he provided a lot of the information to his friend, Richard Silverstein, another blogger I talked with on the show a couple of days ago, told us all about it.
And what he said was that these basically the reason that this guy felt it was so important to blow the whistle was because the American people he thought needed to know, and this is an Israeli working for the FBI, thought the American people needed to know that the Israeli Embassy is pushing hard all day every day to get this country into war with Iran.
Eric, what do you make of that?
Well, it's not nothing surprising there, except that it's commendable that an American citizen stuck his neck out, risked his career in jail for going public with this odious story.
It's no secret that Iran is straining.
I mean that Israel is straining every sinew to get the U.S. to go to war with Iran.
It has been for years now, and it's redoubling efforts at this point.
When I say Israel, I mean Israel's right-wing government, the current one of Netanyahu.
A former FBI director said some years ago that the Israeli spying and intelligence operations were certainly as great as those of Russia and China and the United States.
The U.S. is the primary target for Israel's search for technology and also to influence the U.S. government.
Well, it really is a supreme irony, isn't it, where that Rosen and Weissman from AIPAC, two Americans, were indicted and were guilty as hell of helping to arrange the theft of classified American intelligence documents describing the debate in the Bush White House over whether they ought to have a war with Iran or not, and funneling those documents through the Israeli embassy to the Mossad, to the Israeli government.
Barack Obama let them off.
And then here's an Israeli, and I don't know exactly, you say he's a citizen.
I'm sorry.
I didn't ever get clarification.
I think he's dual citizenship.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, so, but he is an Israeli, you know, American, and he liberates information to blow the whistle so that people know the truth about this, you know, foreign intelligence operation basically on American soil to get us into a war.
And Obama claps him in irons.
Well, you know, Obama has shown no spine whatsoever in standing up to pressure from Israel, now coming from Congress, too, and the approaching elections.
Nobody wants to tangle with the Israel lobby.
Nobody.
And I've known many well-placed American, highly-placed American officials who are gnashing their teeth over the amount of Israeli influence of spying in the United States, but don't dare do anything about it, because if you do, you'll be guaranteed to end your career.
Everybody who's tried has ended up in the doghouse or without work.
So, and Obama's certainly not going to tangle with the Israel lobby, which is, which is run by Israel's right-wing Likud party coalition.
It's not going to tangle with it in a, when elections are coming next year.
Yeah.
Well, speaking of votes, there's one coming up in the UN, and I don't know if they've decided yet in the General Assembly or in the Security Council exactly how it works.
But of course, the vote is whether Palestine should be admitted to the UN as a state and with the so-called rights that come with statehood under the UN Charter.
And America has vowed to veto it, while I think all of Europe and everybody else is on board for this thing.
And, and Prince Turki al-Faisal from Saudi Arabia said, this will be the end of our alliance.
He wrote it in the New York Times.
He said, you know, stop a state, end an alliance.
A very interesting warning from Turkey.
Faisal, a long-time head of Saudi intelligence.
So when you say that the Israeli lobby has, you know, this much influence in America that they can get away with spying and that kind of thing, too, they have the ability, I guess, Eric, to have the US government do something so contrary to what we all know, at least they perceive as their interest, is to jeopardize our relationship with Saudi Arabia over Palestine?
That's correct.
And that is amazing to me when it comes to the tail wagging the dog kind of thing.
I mean, still, we're the empire and they're the little country the size of Maryland over there.
You know, there's a story.
Maybe it's true.
Maybe it's apocryphal, but Ariel Sharon is a former Israeli prime minister, was said when somebody in aid said to him one day, yeah, but what about the United States?
How are they going to react to his, I don't know, his attacks somewhere?
And he said, don't worry.
I run America.
And well, on the issue of the Middle East, the partisans of Israel have titanic influence and they have the media backing them.
Look at the election that was just held in New York City, my hometown, where nobody, nobody ever heard of beat and this is in a long-term Democratic district, beat the Democratic candidate was also a nevish, I might add, too, but this unknown Republican beat him because the mayor, former mayor Koch, who's a rabid pro-Israeli partisan, came out and said, well, President Bush and the Democrats are throwing Israel under the bus, to use this term, and all of a sudden voters in the district, which was heavily Jewish, suddenly went and voted for the Republicans.
I mean, that if there isn't a stronger sign than that, I don't know what is.
Yeah, well, and I'll forgive the error.
I confuse Bush and Obama, too.
They all look the same to me, these presidents, but well, the power is called Obama-Bush.
It's an easy mistake.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I meant Obama.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm just poking fun.
But yeah, I mean, this is really incredible.
And now, so let's see how much time we got.
We still got a couple of minutes.
I guess, please, at least begin to explain what you predict the backlash is going to be over this upcoming American veto of a Palestinian state, what this is going to mean.
This is some earth-shaking kind of historical, holy crap going on here, it looks like to me.
It is shocking and it really violates most of America's values and beliefs.
Now, it's America, it's Canada, which under its new conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has aligned himself totally with Israel's Likud party, will also vote against it, and apparently Micronesia, one of these little rent-a-places out in the Pacific.
The results are going to be this.
The United States, there are going to be riots and demonstrations across the Middle East.
U.S. targets may be attacked in the Middle East.
The remaining U.S. allies, as you mentioned, Saudi Arabia particularly, are going to be put in an impossible position where their people are demanding and accusing leaders who cooperate with the U.S. of being stooges.
I think it's going to probably initiate more extremist attacks against the U.S. policy, and it's going to ruin America's reputation around the world because America is really alone in the world in defying world public opinion.
I believe 140 nations have recognized Palestine as a nation, which, by the way, was created by the United Nations in 1947-48.
And America's all alone, and it may even generate, as some people worry in the States, anti-Semitism because people are going to say, how did this happen?
Why is the U.S. alone on this?
What a shameful act.
Who's responsible?
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the whole thing, too.
If this breaks out with war in Iran at some point, I think it's so clear already and has been for years that there's basically no one in America who wants a war with Iran, not even the army.
The Pentagon wants a war with Iran.
There's only one force in America that wants a war with Iran, Israel.
That's correct.
You know, there are always people who just aren't sophisticated enough to discriminate between Jews and Israel.
Of course, the Israeli government does their best to perpetuate that for their own reasons.
But anyway, hold it right there.
We'll be right back, everybody, with the great Eric Margulies.
EricMargulies.com.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and on the line is Eric Margulies, author of War at the Top of the World and American Raj.
I want to know all about what's going to happen after this.
I think this is the biggest deal in the whole world, like the September 11th attack or something.
This is going to be one of those turning points in history when it finally came down to the Palestinians saying, look, we're tired of the pretended peace negotiations forever that are supposedly going to end in a state with no power whatsoever.
Forget that.
We're just going to go ahead and declare a state.
And as you said, it's the whole world united on opinion about what should happen here and America standing behind Israel because of the influence of the Israel lobby in Washington, DC, and because of the ignorance of the American people who have never had to explain to them on television that there is simply a long-term, as in two generations, long-term program of military occupation and colonization of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
And that's why the whole world is against us.
Not because they hate Jews because they're born evil, you know, from the North Pole to the South, but because of this unfair, most unfair policy that has continued for 40 years.
Well, that's right, Scott.
This is a supreme example of injustice.
And you know, across the entire Muslim world, which is 20% of the world's population, the cry is going up for justice.
They're demanding justice from the United States and instead they're getting this awful policy of caving into political pressure, which as I said before, blackens America's name.
Now, the 9-11 hijackers made a point of saying that they were attacking the United States to punish it for its support of repression of the Palestinian people and for occupying Saudi Arabia.
These were their two reasons, but the reasons have been covered up and spun differently by the Bush administration and now the Obama administration to make it seem like they're Islamic fanatics.
They did it because Islam hates our way of life.
That's what Bush said.
That's an outright lie.
And America's have got to understand that there are going to be now, they're going to make themselves even a bigger target for attack by angry people from the third world who see America now as the world's leading oppressor.
Well, and you know, honestly, and don't anybody get me wrong because I'm not trying to encourage this kind of thing or anything.
I just, I really am surprised how few terrorist attacks in America there have been.
I mean, obviously a hell of a lot of people have joined up the war against the US over there, but you know, I think about just make the simple comparison between the amount of blood lust and will for revenge and everything from the September 11th attack here.
Well, there are a million dead Iraqis just from the last decade.
Never mind the million dead Iraqis that got us attacked on 9-11.
We killed a million more.
And Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 either.
It was just a convenient target.
That had oil.
And then, you know, of course, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, now across North Africa, it's on.
And I just think that, you know, people had just the slightest bit of honesty in media that, you know, the 3,000 that died.
That's the price of Empire.
That's what happens.
There is no security at the top of the world.
Well, that's right.
The media won't tell the story and anybody in media who dares suggest it is quickly run out of town.
I can speak from personal experience.
The only person who's had the guts to say this openly is Dr.
Ron Paul, who said during the debates that America was attacked because of its policies in the Middle East rather than because of religious issues.
And he was booed, practically booed off the stage.
Americans don't want to know the reason and now they're going to be surprised when more and more anti-American groups pop up.
Meanwhile, what we're doing is the war party in Washington is continually identifying new Al Qaeda groups, which you alluded to earlier.
And now they're finding them in Nigeria and North Africa, in Somalia, Yemen, God knows where else they're going to be popping up.
South America is probably next.
And the more these people they believe are Al Qaeda, the more they need troops and money and everything behind them.
So it's a perpetual motion war.
America is creating its own enemies.
Right, which is perfect if you're in on it and it's horrible if you're one of the people who has to get an airplane crashed into you or if you're one of the people who now can't put food on his family and take care of business because the economy has been destroyed.
You know, there's this thing on NPR about how nobody cares about the wars anymore at all.
It's been going on for too long and they're just over it.
It's like, you know, a TV show that jumped the shark or whatever and they just don't care.
They're more concerned about things like the economy.
No connection whatsoever as to the price they're paying now for all the war of the last decade.
You know, it's a hidden.
It's a hidden war.
We've got young soldiers who are professional soldiers of all the mercenaries if you want from small towns in the American heartland when they get killed.
Nobody cares about their immediate relatives and the cost of the war as I keep saying has been hidden from the American public the trillion dollars.
For example, the Iraq cost and a half trillion that Afghanistan has cost so far are were never funded by taxes.
The money the costs were shoved down to the national debt.
And so no Americans have had to pay for these wars out there.
I always say if if every American had to pay $12,000 so far, which is the cost of these of Bush's wars to fund them these wars would end pretty quickly.
Yes, the miracle of central banking can buy now pay later.
That's right.
And and and boy do we pay well now and back to the the issue of the Palestinian state in the United Nations.
What exactly would this mean?
I read somewhere.
It means that they'd be able to press charges in the international criminal court against the Likud and things like that or what is this really about in terms of you know, international bureaucrats and their rules and regulations Scott what it looks like is one of two things are going to happen a the Palestinians will go to before the General Assembly where 140 nations support them already.
I believe that's the number and get a slight upgrade in their non-voting status into still a non-voting state or and political entity but not as a full-fledged member of the either the General Assembly or certainly not the Security Council where the US will veto anything.
So we get a slight bump up doesn't mean very much but it will certainly present the world with the whole the plight and the suffering of the 5 million Palestinians and revive this issue and ignite a frenzy of opposition to increasingly isolated Israel.
The other possibility is that the US is putting tremendous pressure on Mahmoud Abbas the Palestinian leader who his critics call a puppet of the US and Israel and he gets all the money from the US so they're putting great pressure on him to back down and accept some sort of the mealy-mouthed nothing resolution that will sort of go halfway.
I think there's a 50% chance that this could happen.
He says he's going to go ahead talk to the General Assembly and demand Justice.
Yeah.
Well, he never did have popular support in the West Bank.
Anyway, did he?
What difference does it make if he goes along or not?
No, he was installed by the US and Israel after Yasser Arafat either died or was assassinated.
Yeah, so it's not the kind of thing where you know, if this much happened then they'll have the legal basis to really be treated different be able to really somehow demand an enforceable demand that the Israeli army and and settlers withdraw from the West Bank for example with the siege on Gaza.
No, they won't.
They'll just have better observer status on some UN or member status in some UN organs, subsidiary groups, but it'll have no what?
I'll keep you another segment because I still want to ask you more about this and I want to ask about other wars too that we got.
I'll hold on.
Eric Margulies, everybody.
Hang tight.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Eric Margulies and I'm sorry.
I forgot to say this part a lot of it.
You heard out loud just now.
It's a really great one.
Americans need the truth about 9-11 at Eric Margulies.com and it's not about a bunch of bombs and building 7 crap.
It's a it's about the motivation of the people who got us into this mess and I remember Eric that you wrote an endorsement a review and an endorsement immediately of Michael Sawyer's book Imperial Hubris when it came out saying look everybody look look and you and I have just been agreed this whole time that this is the most important argument of all as you say in this article as you said earlier in the show the willful ignorance of the American people as to how we got into this mess just guarantees that we've gone along already for 10 years and we're apparently going to continue going along with the exact same policy that put those lives at risk in the first place and and continue to put the rest of us at risk and you know, we think about how much of the surveillance state has grown and the police state has grown but we haven't seen nothing compared to how it's going to be after the next one or two major terrorist attacks inside this country, which at some point it seems to me just are inevitable.
Well, we've we've we've decided certain elements in the United States have succeeded in pushing us into a confrontation or a simmering low-grade war with much of the Muslim world and that was their objective, but the US can't win this world and while while we are spending billions on this futile exercise and antagonizing people all 20% of the world's population, the Chinese are eating our lunch for us.
It's absolutely ludicrous and a recent poll in Pakistan just showed that 98% of Pakistanis now consider the United States the primary enemy of their country even more so than India, the old enemy.
So what we've got is a machine for breeding more anti-American groups.
Yeah.
Now, how much of this do you think?
Well, it's hard.
I know to come up with percentages or whatever, but is this you know, how much of this is because of the Israel lobby this conflation of well, not just describing the motive of Islam to the attack, but then the conflation of all people who believe in Islam with the attackers and all that is it just because Israel's enemies are Is this really more about Lockheed dividends?
It's primarily generated by the extreme right in Israel.
Now, the Israel lobby represents the right-wing liquid party and it's further right-wing, I call them neo-fascist allies in Israel.
There are many Jews, half of Israelis want a peace agreement.
Their voice is not being heard.
Many American Jews want a settlement to be made and don't like the policies of Netanyahu and his expansionists who by the way, according to the brilliant Israeli writer Uri Avnery, his contention is that the liquid party has never finalized Israel's borders and has many members in it who won't do it because they believe their manifest destiny is or command from God is to keep expanding Israel's borders.
So it's a very murky situation.
Yeah.
Well, and again, where we started was the push to get us into war with Iran, you know, it reminds me of something that I don't know if this is a joke or not just a Google image for greater Israel that had the eastern border at Iran, you know, like I don't know where all those Iraqis are supposed to go.
I guess we'll just make it one big, you know, West Bank or something or other.
Well, I that's bigger.
I think that Israel could swallow but you know, there are some fringe right-wing crazies in Israel who would like to grab Saudi Arabia or Iraq.
They don't represent the majority.
That's for sure.
But look, it's not only the Israel lobby in the United States.
It's the it's the fundamentalist Christians evangelicals who have been completely Zionized over the last 15 years since the early 1980s, in fact, and have become the second major power block both in Congress and the media and by voters in supporting Israel because they believe that until all the Jews of the world are in gathered into biblical Israel, which is much bigger than today's that the Messiah can't come.
So that's a very powerful block.
The Israelis have used them shamelessly these credulous Christians to promote their cause and their agenda.
Yeah, and that's something that really doesn't get enough attention is the power of the religious right on this issue.
And I guess they really just have, you know, Karl Rove's whole Southern strategy for the permanent Republican majority is basically these people will vote if we mail them things that say vote that say make phone calls that say do this and that they'll do it.
So we have to do whatever we can to cultivate them.
So that of course the Wall Street people can stay running the Republican Party for real, you know, that's quite right.
Well, the Republican Party is become almost a fiat theocratic parties Kevin Phillips has pointed out that 44% of core Republican voters are born-again fundamentalists who believe in all this Zionist story and that's very powerful and certainly the Republican Party is now wed joined almost at the hip to Israel's liquid party.
Hey, did you see where Dick Cheney was taking credit for the Arab Spring?
I think he deserves any.
However, he deserves to be faced charges for torture.
Well, yeah, but I'm just saying I think he's right that he deserves credit for the Arab Spring.
I think that as you put it in this article, the Americans Dick Cheney in particular thinking that he was taking great advantage and getting away with all he wanted to get away with was really the big dumb bull raging at the red flag that had a cliff behind it and that really this is exactly what 10 years of warfare in the Middle East and genders is enough domestic resentment.
First of all, the inflation for all the wars, but then also the resentment against the local puppets of the Americans who after all are the butchers of Iraq this whole time right in front of their faces.
You're quite right Scott in in that sense, the war is really pat himself on the back.
I think, you know, thanks to satellite TV, particularly Al Jazeera the Arab world, which has had all its news censored in the past now sees every night the misery of the Palestinians and the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan and the sufferings of the people there and of course his rage at the United States and at its puppets in the Middle East and it certainly this is a major role in the Arab Spring.
The other reason is because as I've been saying the first revolution was not in Tunisia was in Turkey to where I'm headed shortly and it was the the defeat and ouster of the Turkish military from running the government that by pulling strings that lit the fuse and show the Arab world that their military despots and rulers can be kicked out and there's a way to do it.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I saw this New York Times headline last night about this Mubarak tied steel tycoon who's going to prison over there in Egypt right now and I thought well, I wonder if we could do that put tycoons in prison say like the Board of Directors of Lockheed.
Oh, they don't go to prison.
They get to go ahead and charge us if anybody can do it the DOJ can right find him guilty of something lock them in solitary confinement.
I don't have much confidence in the DOJ, but what is happening in Egypt, of course, is that the the same establishment that ruled Egypt under Mubarak still in power and it's throwing these people to the wolves to assuage public demands for a real revolution and a real change of power.
We have yet to see what's really going to happen in Egypt.
Yeah.
Well, I sure don't do enough don't spend enough time covering that issue on this show, but I sure wish those people the best they it seems to me like the Egyptians have a better shot at it it being, you know, a modicum of self-government than anybody else in the region and they've proven that they can get a lot done.
I hope that they can keep their spirit up, you know, because it's going to be a long haul long one.
All right.
Thank you so much for your time Eric as always my pleasure Scott as always everybody the heroic Eric Margulies ericmargulies.com spell it like Margolis and read American Raj liberation or domination.
