Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/12/23 Ramzy Baroud on the Hamas Attacks

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Ramzy Baroud returns to the show to talk about the latest violence in and around Gaza. Baroud explains why, while unfortunate, these developments should not be surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention.  Discussed on the show: “The Gaza War is Lost: But Will Netanyahu Concede?” (Antiwar.com) Ramzy Baroud is a US-Arab journalist and is the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: The Untold Story of Gaza and The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story, These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons, and more. His new book is Our Vision For Liberation. Follow Ramzy on Twitter @RamzyBaroud and read his work at RamzyBaroud.net. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Pools Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already, time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line we have ramsie barrood long-time friend of the show regular contributor to anti-war dot com and a refugee from palestine author of my father was a freedom fighter these chains will be broken and other books about, an author and editor of books about the situation in Palestine.

And he's also the editor of the Palestine Chronicle. Welcome back to the show, Ramsey. How you doing, ma'am? I'm doing all right. Thank you for having me, Scott. I really appreciate you joining us today. It's a hell of a time I know for everyone. So essentially the floor is yours. The setup is that Hamas launched a major jail break, basically, on early Saturday morning, last Saturday morning.

They committed deliberate atrocities against civilians in Israel. And then, of course, were eventually chased back or killed the fighters who did it. And then so now the Israelis are having their revenge and have launched an assault on the Gaza Strip with the declared intention of the complete destruction of Hamas as a group,

which obviously would recognize. require an absolute full-scale invasion, not just an air war, but a full-scale invasion of the strip. The Washington Post says it's being prepared right now. And of course, your new article at anti-war.com addresses the difficulty that the Israelis will likely face in doing so. But all that being said, I'd like to turn over the floor to you. I know you're a leftist and no partisan of the right-wing Islamist Hamas movement in any way. And so do not feel like anyone's trying to make you answer for what they've done or anything like that. But the floor is your, sir, to talk about whatever, your take on the current situation.

Thank you very much, Scott. These are very, very difficult times. Unfortunately, though, we can't claim that they have been, that they are unexpected in any way. I've been on your show many times Scott and that's precisely what we have been talking about that the pressure has been building up for a long time and it's going to manifest itself in something if listeners go back to my articles

and the shows that we've done together and you will see that this cannot be a surprise for those who truly understood what is happening in Palestine But this is the worst possible scenario to feel vindicated because terrible things are happening. The first context is that of the Israeli siege on Gaza. It has been around for 17 years. And that siege has resulted in the death of thousands of people because of the lack of medicine, because of diseases resulting from the 100% polluted water of the strip.

The generation, and I think this is really interesting that nobody is talking about, that those fighters of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the socialist movement and everybody else who is involved in this war, these fighters were babies, they were children, they were toddlers when the siege was imposed on Gaza. They have never seen the world outside Gaza. They have never experienced a moment of freedom, nothing but dehumanization.

And the dehumanization is not just that of the siege, but it is that of the wars that interrupted the siege. repeatedly, 2008, 9, 2012, 2012, 2014, 2021. I remember the dates and the events and the names of all these Israeli attacks. I can't state them faster than I can state my own social security number. It's just printed in our minds and our memories because each war meant thousands of dead and wounded. Each war meant complete devastation and destruction. In 2014, if I remember that particular piece, exactly,

it was in the 2014 war that the Israelis were holding barbecues. And this can be very fine. This is not about, you know, Palestinians are chopping babies' heads, propaganda. This is something that you can easily Google of Israelis in these settlements, the settlements that were in fact attacked. And I will tell you in a minute why Palestinians describe them as settlements. It's a technical issue that is quite important for people to understand that Israelis were sitting on barbecuing and having music parties while watching the white phosphorus being dumped on Gaza,

high-fifing and cheering. We've seen that. The whole world's seen that. Some American media, you know, major corporate media denied that, or not denied that, but did not play or did not make a big deal out of it, but it's available. It's out there. So it's not only the dehumanization of Palestinians, the killings of Palestinians, the besiegment of Palestinians, but also the dancing and the celebration at that collective grave and open air prison that is Gaza. So is this really shocking to see a thousand to 1,500 will train young men rushing to Israel, taking over military bases, attacking settlements, shooting soldiers and civilians alike?

I am not surprised in the least. I am surprised by the dareness. It was during the day, not during the night. It came over ground, not underground. But I feel that the anger itself is not surprising. And I am yet to see a single Palestinian, a single Arab, a single Muslim, a single Middle Eastern, a single person who truly understand what's happening that would say, well, this was uncalled for, this was disproportionate.

It's unfortunate. It's tragic in many ways. but was it unexpected, not in the least. But also keep in mind what has been happening in the West Bank during that time. Militarily, Israel has been attacking Palestinian villages and towns in the West Bank for months. The Israeli government led by far right, and this is so critical to this narrative. Since December, Israel has been ruled by a far-right government. This far-right government is itself a culminating.

of far-right extremist, genocidal mentality that has been gripping Israel for years. And it manifests itself in the military, in the settlements movement, and now in the government itself. What do these guys want? It's not just about killing few Palestinians here and there. They want complete annexation of the West Spain.

They want ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They want, and they called out for it openly, religious war, to the point that Hamas itself was, warning, which is the irony of all ironies, considering Hamas's image in the media, Hamas was warning that the Itamar bin Vier and

his party and others in Israel are inching and closer towards a religious war. So, what did we expect that's going to be the outcome of this? What did we expect that when the United Nations comes and says 2002 is the most

violent year carried out by the Israeli military and settlers? against Palestinians since 2005, only to come mid-year, 2003, say, no, we take it back. 2003 is on its way to be the most violent year. So violence has been building up for such a long time. I think what took us by surprise is this. Palestinians are a number, Scott, let's be honest about this. Palestinians are victims.

Palestinians, when they resist, their resistance is usually follows Israeli attack at someone, at Janine, at Naples, at Balata, at God. When Palestinians initiate, there are single acts of individuals opening, fire, shooting, stabbing. But to see this kind of a collective resistance that is kind of like an army-like, an army-like, to the point that when people were saying, Ramsey, don't use the word war, this time I would say, you know what? No, this is war. This is the first truly Palestinian-Israeli war.

Every war we have experienced prior to that was an Arab-Israeli war. Israeli war. This time is a Palestinian-Israeli war. How did a group of people living under siege, operating in tunnels, lacking everything imaginable, are able to build this kind of military capabilities

to achieve what you refer to as a jail break and to actually be able to rush into Israel and do what they did? It is something that truly expresses the nature of of anger, absolute seething anger and humiliation that Palestinians feel.

Some, even on the left, yes, I am a leftist, but I am not truly happy with the way how some people in the left trying to understand this, because they too have been part of the dehumanization of Palestinians, or at least many of them have. They like to see Palestinians as victims. They like to feel sorry for Palestinians. When Palestinians fight back, it is not something that... that makes them feel that they can explain or justify. You can't justify to the point that in the first couple of days,

a lot of them perpetrated or perpetuated rather the propaganda coming from Israel and not fully understanding what is true and what is not. And I wasn't denying anything. I were just saying, let's be careful. Let's be cautious before we make allegations. It takes months, sometimes years to actually truly try to understand what has taken place. This has took every single time Israel attacked Gaza. It took months, sometimes, more than a year for the United Nations to issue a report,

mostly because Israel would never allow them to go and actually investigate on the ground. Why are people rushing to judgment in an hour or two after the Hamas attack on southern Israel? well folks sad to say they lied us into war all of them world war one world war two korea vietnam iraq war one syria afghanistan iraq war two libya syria yemen all of them but now you can get the e-book all the war lies by me for free just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at scott horton dot org or go to scotthorton dot org slash subscribe get all the war lies by me for free And then you'll never have to believe them again.

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Hey, if you just need some sound advice about sound money, they're there for you, too. Call Tim Fry and the guys at 800, 874-9760. That's 800-874-9760, or check them out at r-rbi.co. That's rrbi.com. You'll be glad you did. All right, well, let me stop here for one second because I know time is short here, and I want to make sure that you have time to answer to this. Because, or, you know, to have your say about this, because regardless of the worst atrocity

stories, which are already being debunked and all that, they clearly directly targeted civilians. They didn't go right after, they did go right after IDF bases, but they also went right after kibbutz's and targeted civilians as well and this rave and things. So can you speak to that? I mean, absolutely. I mean, nobody, Scott, nobody has ever claimed, nobody has ever claimed that neither the Palestinian resistance or any national liberation movement in the world has historically been known of being perfectly consistent with humanitarian rules and international law.

We have seen a lot of videos and I've seen them myself and they were not part of a kind of a post-attrocity propaganda. It's something we have seen immediately. And I have correspondence. I run the Palestine Chronicle. I have correspondence on the ground. They talk directly to these guys or they talked to them immediately after they came from Gaza. They uploaded videos. The videos were sent to the Palestine Chronicle. Many of them were published. And it seems that at least, at least in terms of the political discourse, Muhammad al-Dadev, the head of Hamas, made it very clear. Listen, we are Muslims. We don't kill women, children, or elders.

And these are the rules according to Prophet Muhammad. You don't destroy whales. You don't kill people of religion inside their houses of worship and so forth and so on. There's something that we Palestinians and Muslims have known all of our lives. Was this violated? I am pretty sure it was. And I'm not going to try to justify or even contextualize that in any possible way. I am sure it was violated.

But was it the policy, as in you ISIS hordes, go to Israel, kill every man, woman, and child you see in your way? No. And the reason we know that this did not happen is that they have taken over Keputzim. They have taken over settlements completely with thousands of people inside. Why didn't they kill everybody? They were there for a day or two. Why didn't they kill everybody? The number would have been 50 to 60,000, but it wasn't that number.

Again, for time's sake, I'm sorry to interrupt, but you're saying that the worst atrocities that are being reported here, you believe, at least at first glance here, seemed to you to be a lack of discipline among the forces rather than their standing orders to do? I am certain of it, even before a conversation or an investigation is conducted. I am certain of it. And I think by releasing the mother and her two children yesterday, because of the pressure, not by international media. By the way, nobody in Hamas

cares about Palestinian media, and nobody in the Arab world reads international media anyway. So it's not like, you know, there's been a lot of pressure and say, okay, let's release this mother and her two children. The pressure was coming from the Palestinian society itself.

This is not us. It's the same kind of pressure that many Palestinian intellectuals, including myself, in books and writings, put on Palestinians, to end the phenomenon of suicide bomb in 2000. to 2005, that we can't be using the same method methods that Sharon was using against

Palestinians. And if we lose the moral upper hand, what's the point of anything that we are doing? So this was pressure built in from Israel, from Palestinian society. And I'm glad that they did it. And I really hope that if they have any more children taken hostages, I really do hope that they are released. But that cannot in any way justify or explain the fact that there is an ongoing Hiroshima happening in Gaza. 12.5% of all of Gazan's homes have been destroyed. The entire infrastructure has been either destroyed or shut down, and the number of Palestinians killed are now closer to 15.

Well, isn't that the whole point, right? Isn't that the whole point, Ram's it? None of this violence can justify violence on the other side and back and forth in the way this is. And I understand, obviously, one side of the jailers and the others, the prisoners. But then, you know, the truth. trustees in that prison are some pretty mean bastards too. And so you just have a bunch of poor innocent stuck in the middle of a bunch of armed men killing each other. Right. But see,

this is where the issue of moral equivalence comes in. Then the Algerian liberation front carried out atrocities. They kicked out the French out of their country. Nobody is talking about the Algerian atrocities against the French because it was the French who had no business being in France, in Algeria, in the first place. The same thing in South Africa, the same thing all over the world. Again, I really don't want to be caught in this position where I seem to be justifying, but I am just saying what else did we expect when Palestinians have been killed for the last 75 years in which, and in which there are, you know, various bouts of genocide have been carried against them, whether in South Lebanon, whether in Gaza,

in the West Bank, Janine Naples, et cetera. So this was to be expected. And those who were normalizing, and those who were justifying, and those who were moving on without the Palestinians at all being part of the political equations, have a lot to think about, regardless how they feel about this. But nobody can now say that there can be peace and instability and screw the Palestinians. That cannot be said anymore, regardless of how people feel about what has taken place. They are back at the center of the political equation.

Justice has to be brought back to Palestine. Coexistence has to be achieved in Palestine, and pressure has to be put on those who are arming and supporting Israel in this war against the Palestinians. All right, listen, I'm so sorry that we're out of time because I think we could carry on this conversation all afternoon, but I know you've got to go. But everybody, listen, this is the extremely important writer, Ramsey Baroud.

He's one of our regulars at anti-war.com. His latest there is the Gaza War is lost, but will Netanyahu concede. He's also the editor of the Palestine Chronicle, where I'm about to go and look right now. And I hope that we can talk again soon. Thank you very much. Take care. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com.

Anti-War.com. Horton.org and libertarian institute.org.