All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is MJ Rosenberg, Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters.
Used to work on Capitol Hill for the Democrats of various names for 15 years.
Was a Clinton political appointee at USAID and in the early 1980s, I know you hate it when I say it MJ, but it's important context for this interview particularly.
He was the editor of APAC's weekly newsletter, the Near East Report, that's the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the Israel lobby or the center of it anyway, and he was from 1998 to 2009 Director of Policy at the Israel Policy Forum.
Welcome back to the show MJ, how are you doing?
I'm doing great, how are you doing?
I'm doing great, I really appreciate you coming on the show today and I should say MediaMatters.org and of course I have a great article archive at the Huffington Post and Al Jazeera and other places as well.
And they should follow me on Twitter.
And they should follow you as well.
It's at MJ Rosenberg, M-J-A-Y Rosenberg.
There you go.
Okay.
All right, good deal.
Maybe I'll do that too.
Good.
I think I have a Twitter tab open here, don't I?
Oh good.
Somewhere, yeah I do.
Hey look, I'm going to find you at least during the break, okay?
Okay, terrific.
Let's talk about things.
You've been accused of being a really bad guy or something, what's the deal?
Well, it started with an article in Politico by their top political reporter.
Politico is the big, you know, Washington insiders newspaper.
And their top reporter, Ben Smith, wrote an article about how two democratic think tanks, I'll use that term loosely, that's not really what we are, but two democratic think tanks, Media Matters for America and the Center for American Progress, which includes ThinkProgress, have broken with the Democratic Party by criticizing Israel and by criticizing the lobby.
And his whole point was, what's going on?
How can these democratic organizations, these progressive organizations, you know, not take the same position as the Obama administration or all these, you know, super pro-Israel types in Congress?
And so we wrote a whole article about it.
What happened subsequently, almost I think within 24, 48 hours, after this big article came out, we discovered it was so long reported that it was a put-up job.
The whole, this Apex former public relations director had, he had gone to Ben Smith, told him to write the article, and basically, you know, devised the article, and then sent around dossiers on all that he, and I think Apex, I mean this guy is so close to Apex, had compiled about me and the people at CAP, everything we ever wrote, every tweet I ever wrote that they considered offensive on Israel, they would, you know, what do you call it, photo shoot shop, whatever that word is, where you get a screenshot, and it was just like, and Salon printed the whole, the dossiers on all of us.
The whole point was to get us fired.
And me in particular, because, as they say in all the articles that have appeared about this in the Israeli press, in commentary online, and all the other right-wing sites, I mean it's been everywhere, that I use the term Israel firster to describe people whom I think will never criticize, you know, Israel or Netanyahu over anything, but always, you know, criticize Obama and the United States.
I mean, I'm really, they hate that term.
Well, I thought it was very kind of funny and interesting the way that in your article, the Israel firster brouhaha, which people can find at the Huffington Post, you say, well, you know, it really isn't right, because what they are is Likud first, and that ain't pro-Israel, and you give a bunch of examples of where, and we've talked about this on the show in the past, where the Israel lobby in America always chooses whatever the right-wing parties in Israel want, not whoever happens to be the prime minister at any given time.
No, that's right.
In fact, one would think that AIPAC and the other organizations associated with it would, you know, slavishly follow every single prime minister of Israel and everything he does.
Well, that's true, except in the case of Yitzhak Rabin, who they did not like his recognition of the Palestinians and the Oslo Agreement in 1993, and they worked with Republicans in Congress to subvert him.
And Rabin's response was to tell the American government not to deal with AIPAC, but to deal with him directly, because he couldn't trust AIPAC.
I mean, so it's exactly, they're not, they're, you know, they're a lot of things.
They're opportunists.
I mean, they're really out for, I mean, you know, we're sitting here in Massachusetts, you have UNDC, an office building right down, we have a, we have one floor, right, they're right down the street from us.
They have an eight-story building overlooking the Capitol.
I mean, they're, you know, their whole, so their game is not just, you know, dominating American foreign policy.
It's kind of like generating fear among the, particularly among the Jewish community, so that people will write checks to AIPAC.
You know, the head of AIPAC, the executive director, his name is Howard Korr.
It was just in the New York Jewish paper, the Forward.
His salary is $420,000 a year.
I mean, it's, to a certain extent, it's a racket.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I forgot who it was now, but, and I'm not saying it's entirely true.
In fact, maybe this was even a Chomsky thing, that, like, Israel isn't even really the land of the Jews.
Really, it's just an American military base that's there for laundering money into the airplane manufacturers and stuff.
And if the Jews get to have a homeland out of it, great.
But really what it's about is taking taxpayer money from the American people, funneling it through Israel into the bank accounts back at Lockheed and Raytheon.
Well, there, yeah, and the Israelis often make that case.
They say, it's not foreign aid, because ultimately all the money that you give us, we spend in Lockheed and Raytheon.
But Lockheed ain't all of us Americans.
Yeah, exactly.
I know, but they really say that aid to Israel is a jobs program.
It's also argued, well, if it's all these billions of dollars for jobs, why don't we just keep it here and use it for jobs?
I mean, it's a crazy way to spend money.
But, you know, to be fair, I mean, there's a lot of emotional attachment to Israel by American Jews and others, and they're being misled by this lobby that insists that, basically, that continuing war with the Palestinians and getting ready for a war with Iran is in the best interest of Israel.
It's hard to believe anybody would be stupid enough to believe this stuff, but they do believe it.
Well, it's sort of, you know, the premise of this is that all people who know what's right already know that this is absolutely necessary.
So there's got to be something really bad about you that puts you in the contrary position.
Oh, right.
Well, yeah, me in particular, because as you pointed out, I did work there at AIPAC.
Just for the record, I left there on really good terms.
I didn't change my views on Israel until seven years after I left there when Rabin became prime minister and said, okay, game over.
Let's recognize the Palestinians.
They're recognizing us, and let's start on this peace process.
That was the period, that was the point when I decided, well, what's wrong with my old employers?
They're not happy about this.
But they have a harder time with me because I'm 64 years old.
I've been involved with Israel my entire life.
I mean, I've been involved with Israel and deeply involved so much more than all these neocons and right-wing lunatics who are screaming all the time.
And my wife was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany.
Our parents were survivors of the Holocaust.
We think there should be in Israel a place, you know, a Jewish homeland.
I don't think these people care about that at all.
I think what they really care about is throwing their weight around in Washington, which in fact is what most lobbyists do.
They're not all that different.
They're no better, and they're no worse, except the extent that they're working for a foreign government, not just for an interest here.
Yeah, but that's a very important insight, that ultimately there really is no such thing as the national interest anyway, especially when it comes to power.
It's only individuals doing what they think is best for them, short-term or long-term or however they see it.
But everybody's still an individual.
All right, we got to hold it right there and take this break.
We'll be right back with MJ Rosenberg from Media Matters and the Huffington Post.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with MJ Rosenberg from Media Matters for America.
We're talking about this Politico hit piece basically attacking the ThinkProgress blog of the Center for American Progress, which is, a.k.a. the Democrats, and Media Matters, which I don't think is that closely defined as the Democrats, but pretty close.
And that's really the controversy here, is that some leftists said the Democratic underground wants to write what you write.
What are they going to do about it?
But it's not OK for centrist establishment Clinton Democrat types to say things contrary to the party line when it comes to issues of foreign policy, especially when it concerns Israel and Iran.
Well, you know, one of the interesting things that the reporter Ben Smith did was he called around to members of Congress, Democratic members of Congress, who I criticize for being in AIPAC's back pocket, to try to get them to go on record bashing me.
I mean, he only got one comment, and it wasn't that bad, but it's like, wait, what is that?
Like, what's that all about?
Ari Rabinoff, who is the manager here, his response to Ben Smith is, we're not a Democratic organization, we're a progressive organization.
And the fact of the matter is that the Democrats are no better and may be worse than the Republicans on this issue.
In fact, I would say the Republicans basically follow the lead of the Democrats on this.
I mean, all your favorite liberals, you know, are liberal on everything else, like, you know, people like Jerry Nadler, they suddenly become like, you know, super uber hawks when it comes to Israel.
It's so amazingly hypocritical, because I think you're judged, at least the way I see it, humanity is judged not by the easy cases of, you know, like, oh, well, Serbia, you know, like, well, no one has Serbian constituents, maybe, or whatever, or you're talking about the Horn of Africa, and all these causes that are important and everything, and you stick your neck out.
But you don't stick your neck out on Israel, because that, and the Palestinians, because that might cost you a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars from your campaign coffers.
That's the test.
And I've heard from, and I've talked to a few congressmen who are terrific on this issue, and there aren't many of them.
And what they say is, it doesn't matter.
My colleagues who are lefty progressives on this issue don't have to worry, because no one ever asked them about it when they do their town meetings.
You know, they'll go, they'll talk about how they're for, you know, gay marriage and for spending more money on the Horn of Africa, but no one's going to say, why do you support every single Palestinian bashing resolution?
There's really no one who raises that.
And if you say, you know, well, you think Congressman so-and-so is so great, but she's awful on the Palestinians and Iran, they'll just say, well, she's so progressive.
And my answer is, no, she isn't.
You know, I mean, this is a serious, you know, we could wind up with a war in Iran because of these people.
The Democrats, the Democrats went to sleep during the buildup to the Iraq war, and I think they're planning to do the same with this one, with Iran.
Well, and you know, it's interesting to me, and I don't have all the numbers in front of me, but I know Glenn Greenwald always does a great job of covering this.
He does.
And that is that American Jews by super-duper majorities vote Democrat, and by at least super majorities, more or less support your position, which I don't want to, you know, loosely categorize it for you.
I'd let you call, I don't know if you're Palestinian state or single state solution, but peace with the Palestinians is something that Jewish American Democratic voters agree with you and with Rabin.
But they don't, but these politicians, you know, it's not votes that count anymore, it's who's given the money.
And every issue is driven by campaign contributions, even more than by votes.
So you and I are just, you know, individual voters, which is very nice, unless we can afford to have every member of our family maxed out to a candidate.
And the fact is that the people who are most active on this issue, and are single-issue voters and single-issue donors, and the issue is Israel, tend to be right-wing.
There's no one comparable on the other side.
Like, for instance, I'm not single-issue on the other side.
I'm not single-issue.
I'm involved, you know, with a host of American domestic progressive issues.
The other side, the AIPAC crowd, only cares about this one issue, and they'll give it to the Democrat, they'll give it to the Republican.
They don't care which one it is, as long as that person is 100% behind Netanyahu.
And that gives them the advantage.
Single-issue people with money are the people who run this country.
And it's not just this issue by any means.
It's every single issue you can think about.
I mean, I really always have to make that point, because I don't like the idea of anyone thinking that I'm just picking on the pro-Israel community.
Nope, that's, you know, look at all the other issues.
I can't think of, you know, I can hardly think of an issue where money isn't the commodity that drives the debate and drives the policy.
Yeah, well, I mean, not in the bad way, but I think in the right way.
I blame America first for this, because it's the American people that have tolerated the creation of this world empire that then makes it, of course, the interest of every state in the world that can afford a lobbyist to do everything they can to lobby for our power or against it as best they can.
And, you know, just look at the way the media and the other politicians are all attacking Ron Paul for challenging this thing.
It's almost like, it's really like they think he's crazy.
Like saying, you know, this is not, you know, this does not work for us.
And, you know, he gets that cranky voice and he says, you know what, he'll be in another war in Iran.
What do we need that for?
And the commentators shake their head like, what is this guy smoking?
He doesn't want another war.
Well, you know, I was, I guess, only half surprised or something to see where Jeffrey Goldberg wrote, not even that Ron Paul's sentiments were basically Zionist sentiments, but Jeffrey Goldberg wrote, in a way, he is a true Zionist.
He is saying independence and self-reliance for an Israeli homeland over there.
And so isn't that what we're all for over here?
And that's Jeffrey Goldberg, you know, for people who don't know, look it up.
The context there.
People are, I think, you know, Jeffrey Goldberg, who tends to be real right wing on Israel issues, has been changing.
The watershed event of the last two weeks is Tom Friedman's column, which I forgot what the date of it was last week, in which he just hit a line that caused the lobby to go crazy.
He wrote, if Netanyahu thinks that the 41 standing ovations he got in Congress was because members of Congress like him, he should think again.
Those ovations were bought and paid for by AIPAC.
And people are going nuts.
Tom Friedman?
I mean, there's no one who's, you know, has this history of being involved with Israel and pro-Israel the way Tom Friedman.
Nor is there a, for better or worse, a more influential foreign policy pundit.
And he is defecting from this right wing cause.
But, you know, I don't know if these members of Congress read Tom Friedman.
They read Chex.
Well, what are the polls and the election results in Israel say?
I mean, I know that Ehud Barak, the defense minister under Netanyahu, is the leader of the Labor Party.
But I'm under the impression, maybe it's false from just reading Haaretz all the time or something, that your position is very mainstream in Israel right now.
There's a faction that wants permanent war and a faction that is over it.
I think it's about evenly split.
And, you know, it used to be a few years ago, I would totally agree with you.
But the secular, the secular liberal population is declining as compared to the very right wing Russian Jewish immigrants.
You know, there are a million of them.
And like a lot of people who came from the Soviet Union, they're super right wing.
The religious people, you know, there's a million religious people who want to keep the territories and all that.
There are a million Russian Jews, same thing.
There's 7 million people in the whole country.
I think it's pretty evenly split.
I don't think it was.
It's the way it once was.
But I also believe that if a prime minister of Israel said, I'm going for peace, I'm going to do this, he would have the support.
And that's where we drop the ball, because no prime minister of Israel is going to ever say that if the United States doesn't lean on him.
And this administration doesn't.
Well, you know, a lot of people predict a lot of different things that could happen.
Hell, they did war games about it at the Brookings Institution and everything.
If there was a war with Iran, what would it look like?
And it just seems to me open and shut that Israel would be in a worse situation for the long term.
We're trying to find another way around what they consider this existential threat of the nuclear weapons program that doesn't exist over there.
I know.
And that is I find so maddening because as someone who, as I said, who's been involved with Israel my whole life, been there, go in there all the time.
I'm a teenager.
I can't believe anyone who cares about the place actually wants there to be a war with Iran, because that war will never end.
That won't just end like the six day war in six days.
It will never end.
They'll be fighting on the northern border, the southern border, the eastern border.
It's insane.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm sorry we're all out of time, but I'll take this very last couple seconds.
I got to say check out M.J. Rosenberg at MediaMatters.org.
And at the Huffington Post, the pro-Israel riot loses it.
The Israel first or brouhaha.
The neocons have finally snapped.
Something or other about Tom Friedman and on like that.
Thanks very much, M.J., for your time.
OK, Scott, thank you.
OK.
All right.
