Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/18/23 Hassan El-Tayyab on the Need for a Ceasefire in Gaza

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Scott brought Hassan El-Tayyab of the Friends Committee on National Legislation onto Antiwar Radio this week to discuss his organization’s push for a ceasefire in Gaza. El-Tayyab says the Hamas attacks of October 7th need to be unequivocally condemned. But on top of that, a ceasefire is necessary to contain the violence and prevent a wider war and a deadlier humanitarian crisis. He shares how you can help in this effort right now.  Discussed on the show: Take Action Here Hassan El-Tayyab is a musician and peace activist, who works as the lead lobbyist on Middle East policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. 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

For Pacific Radio, October the 18th, 2003, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, Joe, welcome to the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton, editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of the book, Enough Already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive,

almost 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003 at scotthornton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you'll follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. All right, you guys, next up on anti-war radio today is our good friend, Hassan El-Tayab from the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Of course, that's the Quaker Lobby for Peace

in Washington, D.C. Welcome back to the show, my friend. How are you? I'm well. Thanks for having me on, Scott. Great to have you back on the show. So tell me, what are the Quakers doing to get a ceasefire in Israel, Palestine right now? Well, this is obviously an absolutely horrific situation. We're seeing unfold. You know, I could tell you about root causes. We could have a whole conversation about that. But we are urgently focused on getting everyone to put aside all of their differences, whether or not there's Israeli, Palestinian, doesn't matter which side you're on. We need a ceasefire now to save civilian lives and prevent this from escalating into a wider regional conflict that costs the U.S. way more than we probably bargained for.

We have been contacting lawmakers all over Capitol Hill, the White House. We just sent a 70-plus org letter to every single member of Congress, and our demands are very simple. We want them to publicly call for a ceasefire. We want them to work to protect civilians, both Palestinian civilians, in Gaza, you know, through, you know, stopping this aerial bombardment, trying to make sure humanitarian aid gets into everybody into Gaza. And we also are working to protect civilians that include the Israeli hostages. that we'd like to see returned home to their families. And we're calling for respect for international law. That includes the Geneva Convention in Article 4, which says you cannot, you know,

use collective punishment as a strategy. And I think it's just urgent that people get the message. I'll say that we're having, you know, from the, you know, the initial attack on October 7, and now people are starting to say, you know, we appreciate, Israel's right to defend itself, but this has gone too far. This is not proportionate. This is not actually helping anybody. It's not helping Israel. It's not helping the United States. And you're seeing more and more members call for a ceasefire. They're doing that in a couple different ways. To leave and Cory Bush, they have a resolution that has, I think, about

15 or so signers. We just saw, I think McGovern says, actually Scratch McGovern. It was definitely Jayapal and Rep. Sazar that just jumped on yesterday. And we saw a rep to leave, you know, they're pushing that as much as they can. We saw Rep. Jaya Paul and Rep. McGovern. They issued their own joint statement calling for a ceasefire. And Senator Sanders was on the floor yesterday, you know, passionately pleading to his colleagues to say, hey, enough poor Palestinians have been bombed and killed. It's time to bring an end to the bombs and the missiles that are raining down on them. And, you know, Israel, your issue is not with the Palestinians, the Palestinian civilians of Gaza. And we agree. So we've got a lot of work to do. The politics

are very hard, but we're trying to create as much space as possible. Yeah. All right. Now, so look, one of the problems is the social psychology of the whole thing. And, you know, have, you know, the squad, the most leftist members of Congress out in the lead on this, which is great in and of itself and its pressure on the liberals, but it also kind of makes it more difficult for people on the center of the right to, you know, sign on to the same kind of thing. So I wonder if there's any effort to get maybe some sort of separate letter or separate effort going for people who maybe don't want to be associated too closely with the AOCs of the house? Yeah. So to me, I'm agnostic on the vehicle, right? What I care about is the growing

list. Rep. Pocan issued his own statement. Rep McCollum, she issued her own statement and just saying, hey, we got to de-escalate the situation before this turns into a much worse humanitarian crisis. that, you know, impacts the United States, impacts, you know, kills more civilians. So I'm fine with that. Let's get as many statements as possible. And if you want to do your own vehicle, that's great. I've heard that a few national security Democrats are potentially working on a, quote, unquote, de-escalation vehicle. I don't, I haven't seen it. I don't know what's in there. But that's fantastic, right? Saying the words de-escalation, you know, let's move, you know, back off the ledge, like a full ground invasion. Let's face it, we haven't seen

urban warfare, you know, on that scale in quite a while in the Middle East. And this is going to be horrific. The Israelis will suffer mass casualties. And they might be fighting on multiple fronts, including Lebanon, where there could be more casualties. And there's already been evacuation of several villages up on the northern side of Israel in that border. So, we definitely do not want to see this escalate. And that's what we're trying to do is create more space. You know, we can do that through a number of means. I think constituents reaching out to their lawmakers, their reps and senators, and just pleading and making the case for, you know, we've got to have a ceasefire now. Another thing that I think would be helpful is for libertarian

and, you know, more restraint-minded Republicans to really make the case, you know, if Palestinian human rights ain't your thing, well, let's make the case on behalf of, like, preventing World War III. I mean, it's pretty simple. We need a restrained foreign policy. There's already a massive conflict in Ukraine. We do not want to see more fronts of this escalation. You know, we just, you know, that's how empires fall as they start taking off.

on too much. And that's plenty of reason on its own to try to prevent a ground invasion in Gaza and to de-escalate the situation because the U.S. would, we're already involved. We have two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, potentially more to come. Marines are coming to the region. And, you know, that is going to embroil the U.S. and yet another war in the Middle East. We cannot afford that. Yeah. Hang on just one second for me. know that I consider the Defend the Guard movement led by the combat vets at Bring Our Troops Home.us and Defendtheguard.us to be the most important thing happening in American politics today. Simply put, this law would nullify the empire by preventing the state governors

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Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org. I'm the director. Then we've got Sheldon Richmond, Kyle Anzalone, Keith Knight, Lori Calhoun, Jim Beauvard, Connor, Connor, Conner Freeman, Will Porter, Patrick Me Farlane, and Tommy Salman's on our staff, writing and podcasting. And we've also got a ton of other great writers, too, like Walter Block, Richard Booth, Boss Spliet, Kim Robinson, and William Van Wagonin. We've published eight books.

So far, including my latest, hotter than the sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons, and Keith Knight's new Voluntarius Handbook. And we've got quite a few more great ones coming soon. Check out Libertarian Institute.org slash books. It's a whole new era. We libertarians don't have the power, but we do have enough influence to try to lead the left and the right to make things right. Join us at Libertarian Institute.org. Well, and seriously, you know, I just got off the line with an anti-war Israeli Jew who was telling me that the whole society there wants blood. They're just, you know, other than the far left peace movement, they are just, it would take international pressure. And in fact, it looks like Hassan, like the false attribution of the hospital

bombing the other night. The reality is that it caused a massive reaction that night with the first initial reports, blaming it on an Israeliirstrike. It caused a massive reaction across the Middle East, huge protests. And I'm sorry I don't remember the guy's name, but it was a think tank weeny from the CSIS, which is a very hawkish think tank. He said, hey, look, what's important now is that Egypt, Saudi, Jordan, and UAE. In other words, the four most powerful Arab states closest to Israel, have all told Netanyahu, stop. Call it off. You have to stop now. And that possibly, you know, maybe likely is the reason for the delay in the ground invasion. If more and more, there is a sense in the country and in Washington that, geez, we really don't want you guys

to go through with this this way. I mean, think about all those tunnels, you know, urban combat, cleansing the whole strip, and this could get so ugly. And then, like you're saying, it could spread immediately to Hezbollah, to all of the, you know, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. And then from there, all the Sunni militias got to compete with the Shiites for who loves the Palestinians more and all this. We could be on the day before the end of this war right now, or we could be on day five of a absolute catastrophe, you know, beginning like the Bush years, ending up with a rock war four or god knows what hasan yeah i i i couldn't agree more and to me you know i did actually put out a statement on my own personal twitter feed right after the the bombing of the

hospital i didn't blame anybody i said this is exactly why we need a ceasefire it doesn't matter like who cares you know uh like obviously it matters on some you know theoretical level but We need to end the fighting, end the bloodshed, prevent this from becoming a war that we don't need. We have our own problems here to deal with. We do not need this, right? And I just wanted to quickly, you know, turn to the humanitarian crisis that's happening in Gaza. You know, we've seen, you know, almost 5,000 Palestinians in Gaza killed, 12,000 injured. As of yesterday, you know, Ocha estimates that one million people are internally displaced.

I can't even imagine that. One million people in that small area being displaced. You know, that's including 350,000 people sheltering in UNRWA schools in central and southern Gaza, under really increasingly dire conditions. Gaza is under an almost complete siege. Total electricity blackout. The water is turned off despite what the Israeli officials are saying. And that's because electricity and fuel are needed to pump the water. So, yes, maybe taps are turned on, but the infrastructure is so damaged that you need, you know, desalalalization plants and these water pumps actually be working. That takes electricity, that takes fuel. That's critical.

Israel has said that it will allow Egypt to deliver, you know, limited quantities of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. there's a so there's a crack in the 10-day siege but we're talking 20 trucks about you know 300,000 tons you know of food but I'll just have folks and this is going to happen in the coming days if it goes to goes as planned but I'll just say that there there were a hundred trucks per day before this escalation so that just goes to show that this is not enough food to handle the crisis and Palestinians in Gaza were already suffering a mass humanitarian crisis where 80% of the population was living on, you know, humanitarian assistance to survive. So we've got a lot of work to do. We're hammering the halls.

We're having conversations. You know, I think there's a feeling, especially among some of the Republican offices that we've chatted with that, hey, you know, this is out of our hands. You know, we got Israel's back. We have to do, you know, they basically are running the show. And I think the real conversation among some of the folks I've talked to is not whether or not they'll invade, but what the invasion will look like. And that's where they think the lines of debate. But the longer we delay this, the longer we prevent that full ground invasion and push for humanitarian openings and corridors and safe zones. and the more and more Americans and lawmakers that speak out for ceasefire,

that political space for that full ground invasion is going to shrink. And I'm hoping that cooler heads will prevail. And the rhetoric I'm hearing on the Israeli side is straight up just dehumanization. And we have unequivocally condemned the attacks from Hamas. Unequivocally. It's inhumane capturing civilians is. inhumane, the atrocities that were committed in southern Israel were inhumane and absolutely repugnant, but so is a violent response that's killing 100 children a day by the Israeli warplanes.

So, you know, that's not the answer is cutting off food, water, medicine, two million Palestinians. That just cannot be the way. It's not good for the United States. It's not good for Israel. And that's what I've been telling lawmakers. I'm like, okay, you know, we know you do not like Hamas, but is this what you're doing now? What's happening now?

Good for America. Tell me. And you know what? I haven't gotten a good response yet. Yeah. All right, listen, we're out of time, Hassan. So tell the audience very carefully how they can get involved with the Friends Committee on national legislation.

You don't have to be a Quaker, do you, to help the Quakers fight for peace up there in D.C. Yeah, you do not. I'm in fact not a Quaker. But what you can do is send an email to your rep and senators. We set up a link. It's FCNL.org backslash de-escalate. I'll just say it one more time. F-C-N-L.org backslash de-escalate.

That will help you get an email right to your members of Congress. We've already got 20,000-plus people taking action in the past week alone, which is fantastic. We've got 70 national organizations calling for a ceasefire and calling for de-escalate. and restraint. So I hope you join us and thank you again, Scott, for all your great work. Well, listen, man, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your efforts, of course, on Yemen and other Middle East issues going back and your work and your organization's great work on this issue right now. I don't know if I ever talked to you about this, but in the book, Human Smoke, about the run up to World War II, the Friends Committee are the only heroes

in the entire story. That's just fantastic what they the role that the Friends Committee has played in American history fighting for peace. So there's nobody with a greater track record. I hope people will go to fcnl.org slash de-escalate. And thank you again for your time, Hassan. Appreciate it. All right, Sean, that is anti-war radio for today. Thank you very much for listening.

I'm your host, Scott Horton. You can find the full interview archive at Scott Horton.org. And I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on. KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.