06/15/07 – Vineyard Saker – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, I'm Scott.
Welcome to the show.
Hi, Scott.
This is Vineyard Saker.
Hey, how's it going VS, sir?
It's going pretty good.
I'm watching with amazement the events in Gaza, and I just can't believe these, you know, the Empire screwed up the way it did.
Yeah, I know that, well, everybody, Vineyard Saker, he's a blogger at my blog, thestressblog.com, and it seems from what you've been blogging in the past couple of days that you have a pretty in-depth understanding.of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in, well, definitely a greater capacity on this matter than I do.
So let me ask you some questions about how it got to this point.
Okay.
Do I remember right that George Bush and the Israelis had a policy that the Israelis did not have to make peace with the Fatah leadership until they were democratically elected.
They had to have an election, they forced the election, and then secondly, am I right, that during that time the Israelis refused to turn over all the tax money they had collected to the Palestinian authorities so that Fatah was completely unable to buy the votes that they needed to buy.
That they were waging basically the war against Yasser Arafat and isolating him, surrounding his headquarters with military and that kind of thing, and then throwing this election that basically just handed the whole situation to Hamas.
And then they decided that, oh, well, we don't care if you're democratically elected or not, if you're Hamas, then we can't have peace with you either.
Is this stupidity or is this a little piece of a longer-term strategy or what the hell is going on over there?
Well, it's hard to tell, but my best guess is that this is actually, yeah, this is stupidity.
I don't think this is a well-thought-through plan at all, and the takeover in Gaza is just another proof of that.
I mean, it's a huge intelligence poo bar.
I'm amazed that more people didn't seize on that, that everybody seemed to be very surprised by what happened.
If you look at intelligence, it goes through three main phases.
One is acquisition, that is getting the intelligence itself, the info.
You can use drones, intercepts, agents on the ground, recon units, whatever.
The second phase is called analysis, where you make sense of the info, you make predictions, recommendations.
The third is acceptance, the getting of the national authorities to listen and act.
Well, if you look at that case, in Gaza, it's 130 square miles only.
It's really small.
It's completely surrounded by the Israelis.
There's no way the acquisition did not work out, and they couldn't target and monitor what was going on.
So either it's analysis, and they're just wrong in the way they understood the events, or it's acceptance, and they're not making their case.
Either way, it's a phenomenal screw-up.
I mean, they're just stupid the way they let that happen, because now Israel is in a horrible position.
Well, and they're telling The New York Times that, oh yeah, we decided to let this happen, right?
Well, that's crap.
I mean, that's just no way.
Think about this, just a very simple thing.
What are the options for Israel now?
Wait, let me stop you.
What about all that I said about how the election was thrown and how it basically handed the whole thing to Hamas?
I mean, was that a semi-accurate description of the lead-up to this?
No, it was actually pretty accurate, except for the real sanctions and the financial, the holding on taxes really happened after the election, as far as I remember.
But yeah, they really demanded elections, and they got Hamas in power there.
The way I remember it was...
By pumping money into Fatah, etc., their bet was that Fatah would be having quote-unquote democratic legitimacy and just didn't go their way.
The same thing happened in Algeria.
Right.
Now, Joe Lieberman, the senator from Connecticut, of course, on Face the Nation, Sunday, said in part of his accusation against Iran that Iran backs our enemies, Hamas, against our allies, Fatah.
And I thought America or Israel, I don't know, it's hard to tell when Joe Lieberman is talking about who we are, but is anybody allies with Fatah?
Well, the Iranians do give them, you know, moral support.
I mean, everybody hates Fatah, let's put it this way.
So as long as you're against Fatah and you're basically patriotic, the way Hamas is, you will find Shias, such as Hezbollah, Sheikh Fadlala, or the Iranians giving them support.
That does not translate into weapons, shipments, and IEDs and stuff like this entering into Israeli-controlled Gaza Strip to explain what happened.
I mean, the support is purely moral.
And blaming it on Iran or, you know, as I've seen this morning, an article saying that Al Qaeda is now responsible for what happened in the Gaza Strip is just garbage.
Yeah, I saw that.
You posted a link to that article on thestressblog.com, and yeah, talk about unbelievable.
It was a bit too easy to imagine the goofballs sitting there making it up as they wrote it.
You know, maybe that's just me.
I'm a little bit more cynical than the next guy.
And you know, I have a basic understanding that I've learned from Dr. Robert Pape.
I think he's a doctor anyway.
Professor Robert Pape, the author of Dying to Win.
Yeah, he's very good.
That though Hamas, rhetorically at least, sometimes supports Al Qaeda and vice versa, never has Al Qaeda struck Tel Aviv and never has Hamas taken part in attacks against the United States.
They share weapons and training sometimes, but never targets these different terrorist groups.
They're always focused on the enemy that they are focused on with very little cooperation when it comes to that kind of thing.
Well, they have things in common.
I mean, their faith for one thing.
There's definitely a Salafi component to Hamas's ideology, but Al Qaeda is essentially Wahhabi Saudi.
They care about, you know, the two holy cities, getting them infidels out.
Hamas is really a local Palestinian phenomenon.
It's quite different.
So they do, of course, they support each other, at least ideologically, but that does not make it one organized entity that acts together.
Absolutely not.
Now, isn't it the case that the Israeli government actually created Hamas in the first place as a counter to the people Joe Lieberman calls our allies, the Fatah guys?
Absolutely.
But it's also Israeli policies in the Lebanon that created Hezbollah as a split off from Amal at that time.
Right.
Now, that was as a consequence rather than a deliberate plan to do so.
Correct.
In that case.
Correct.
But in either case, policy creating new enemies.
Yeah.
Now, I don't understand, I guess, is this whole thing, is this still somebody acting out the clean break, the clean break plan of David Woomser and the guys from 1996?
Or are they just trying to clean up the mess that that's created?
It seems to me, just in kind of basic common sense, if I go into a neighborhood and say, well, you know, this used to be my grandfather's house, kill the people who live in it or throw them out at gunpoint and occupy that house and then proceed to go around bullying all my neighbors and threatening them, that that's really not a good way to secure long term peace in my neighborhood.
And, you know, it's not a good way to guarantee that I'm going to be able to continue living my life without more trouble and blow back from them.
It seems like the obvious policy for the government of Israel would be to try their very best to shake hands and make up with all their neighbors, rather than, you know, continuing this seemingly unending process of occupation and low intensity warfare for decades.
I mean, what the hell?
Well, but keep in mind that the neo cons and the likes of Lieberman are not long term thinking people.
I mean, they're driven by ideology.
And it used to work in the past.
I remember once Robert Fisk wrote in an article that when the Israelis crossed the border into Lebanon, you know, the Palestinians jumped in their cars and ran away from the combat.
And now it's the opposite.
When the Israelis crossed the border, the Arabs in Beirut jump in their cars and drive south to fight the Israelis.
When the secular Baathists and, you know, the social communists or whatever were opponents of Israel, that kind of approach worked.
Now they're dealing with a completely different phenomenon, which is religious, deeply committed religious Arabs who are willing to actually slug it out and fight hard.
And they're not afraid of them.
And that strategy now doesn't work.
But what else can they do?
They don't have much of a good option.
And they don't have much of a long term plan at all.
Neither does Israel have any long term plan that has a conceivable success outcome in the Gaza Strip or the U.S. and Iraq, etc.
It's the same thing.
The French call it the Frito Navar.
They're running forward, doing more of the same while trying to deny, politically trying to protect their butts by saying, you know, we're going to do more and this is going to work.
But it's not going to work.
Well, so what's going to happen now that, I mean, assuming that the secular communist types, the FATA, PLO types are, you know, completely done, basically, have lost their authority in the Gaza Strip.
What's the future?
We're going to see reinvasion and reoccupation of Gaza by Israel or is the whole thing going to turn into escape from New York, you know, prison by the sea or what?
Well, I've just seen that they appointed Barak, again, Minister of Defense, which is certainly a step better than Peres, who was just a terminal idiot.
Sort of, they're doing the same thing as the U.S. did.
You know, they got rid of Roosevelt, put Gates in.
But does it change their options?
Not really.
Reoccupying, well, they can do it.
They can certainly enter.
But, you know, you don't want to engage in a military operation where your entry is easier to understand than how you're going to exit.
There's no strategy.
I mean, what would be the point of reoccupying the Gaza Strip?
It just makes no sense.
Yeah, well, but I mean, aren't they, do they have a real problem if there's a monopoly on control of Gaza and it's in the hands of Hamas?
Yes, they do.
And the real problem, okay, let me just go through the two other options.
Get the U.N. or the Arab League to go in or control the border, as the foreign minister of Israel said this morning.
That isn't going to work either.
It's not going to change anything on the ground.
And as soon as you get any Arab country involved, there is real danger of collusion, weapons coming in and, you know, it's not going to work either.
And do nothing is the worst of all options, because you keep in mind there's one very important thing to realize here.
If Hamas remains in control of the Gaza Strip, it's going to be the first time that the Palestinians actually liberated their own land.
It's forcibly liberated Palestinian territory.
They negotiated nothing for the Israeli withdrawal, and now they're negotiating nothing and getting rid of Fatah, which are basically Israeli stooges.
That's going to send a tremendous message to the rest of the region.
First time it was Hezbollah who showed that they don't fear Israel.
This time it's Fatah doing the same thing, going, we don't, we're not afraid of you guys.
I really don't see a good option for that.
At the same time that America is being defeated in Iraq next door.
Absolutely.
And all the, what I call, you know, the studios of the imperial high command.
You look at Karzai, you know, he's in deep trouble.
Maliki in deep trouble.
Senora in deep trouble.
Abbas in deep trouble.
They're all sinking.
And it's a kiss of death to get the support of the U.S.
And what did Condi rise to yesterday?
The first thing she calls Abbas to express the firm support of the United States.
These people are delusional.
They don't understand how bad it is.
The worst thing that could happen to Abbas is get Condi rise to support that way.
And they're still doing that same thing.
I think it's, you know, people very often think that there's a refined plan at work there.
I don't think so at all.
I think they're plain stupid.
Imperial hubris is the perfect expression that Michael Schur uses for that.
These are completely delusional people.
They can't come to terms with the fact that they cannot, you know, terrorize and oppress an entire region and hope to get away with it.
Well, so if you were somebody's national security adviser or something in Israel and you wanted to at least start turning the ship around and start heading toward a peaceful policy, what kind of direction would you advise that they go?
I mean, you say there's no good options.
There's got to be one or two that are the least worst.
Well, by definition, the first thing to do is to negotiate with the representative of the Palestinian people, which is Hamas, negotiate with the representative of the Lebanese people, which is Hezbollah, to sit down with these people.
Admittedly, they're not going to like that, but that's the people to talk to.
God, I can hear the right wingers in the radio audience just ripping their hair out.
What did he just say?
Recognize Hezbollah as the leader of the or the voice of the Lebanese people?
Well, the right wingers have two options.
They can rip some of their hair out hearing that or all of it by denying that this is the only way to talk to anybody there.
I mean, there's nobody else to talk to.
Talking to Senora and Abbas is just about as good as talking from somebody from the Heritage Foundation or, you know, some Likud think tank.
It makes no sense.
There's nobody to talk to.
Oh, man.
A deal with these people is the only way out.
By continuing to kill them, you know, they're only asking for a stronger and stronger reaction.
Yeah.
Hey, what about from the point of view of, say, the average guy in the West Bank?
Would you advocate to him to push to just go ahead and recognize that Israel's never going to give up that high ground?
I learned that listening to G. Gordon Liddy.
I've never been to Israel.
G. Gordon Liddy says the West Bank is the high ground, tactically speaking, militarily speaking, and Israel's never going to give it up ever, so forget it.
And, you know, I'll take G. Gordon Liddy's word for that one.
So if you were a Palestinian in the West Bank, the average guy, would you try to accept that that's the case and push for Israeli citizenship and a vote in the Knesset?
Or would you continue to advocate for a two-state solution?
Or what do you think is the right way to go from the point of view of the West Bank Palestinians?
Well, if you're asking tactically what the best political decision is, you know, I suppose negotiating for a two-state solution makes sense.
But on the long term, really, the thing that's left unsaid, and which is at the core of all of it, the Israelis need to accept that the very presence of the state of Israel in the Middle East needs to be acceptable to the majority of the people living there.
And if they can't accept that, if these things can impose their presence there forever by force, they're doomed to failure.
Do you believe that the people of the Middle East, in some form of majority, could be made to accept Israel for the long term if they were to, say, for example, withdraw to their 48 borders and elect Barack instead of Netanyahu next time for prime minister?
Yes.
And the reason for that is that I think the people in the Middle East recognize, often better than most people outside the region, that the Israeli government is not the Israeli people.
And to fight the Israeli government and the Israeli ideology of Zionism is one thing, but to take the entire Jewish population of the Middle East and force them, you know, to fight for their lives and give them no solution is also a non-feasible outcome.
I mean, that's why Ahmadinejad said, you know, we've got to get rid of the regime in Israel, not get Israel off the map.
I mean, people are, even his audience, is quite aware that these are two different propositions.
And, you know, throwing them all into the water is not something that they're going to achieve either.
It's just not doable.
So it would take both sides to accept that certain things are just not going to happen.
All right.
Hey, thanks a lot for calling in, everybody.
Vineyard sake or blogger at thestressblog.com.
Appreciate it, bro.
Thank you very much.
Bye bye.