Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/26/24 Matthew Hoh on His Journey to Palestine

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Scott brought Matthew Hoh on Antiwar Radio to talk about his experience discovering the truth about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and his recent experience traveling to the border of Gaza. Discussed on the show: “These Last Eight Days in Palestine” (Substack) Matthew Hoh is associate director at the Eisenhower Media Network and formerly worked for the U.S. State Department. Hoh received the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling in 2010. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter @MatthewPHoh  This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; 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 Pacifica Radio, November the 28th, 2024, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com. And I'm the author of The New Book Provoked, how Washington started the new cold war with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. You can find my full interview archive, more than

6,000 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show and all the other podcatchers and video sites and things out there. And once again, you can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton Show. All right, and welcoming this week's guest, it's the great Matthew Ho. And he's great for a lot of reasons, but I have to point out every time I introduce him to someone that he was the great whistleblower of the Afghan War of 2009, a former Marine Corps captain and then a State Department official. And he went to Afghanistan. He saw the truth of what was going on. And there was a huge push all through the year of 2009, Obama's first year, to force him essentially, just strong arm him into escalating the Afghan war.

And Matthew Ho said, no, no, no, you don't have to do it. In fact, you should not do it. It's not going to work. It's going to be counterproductive. It's going to be bad. Please don't. Just hide behind me, sir. And then his boss, even, the ambassador who was a former general in charge of the war, said, yeah, listen to him. And so Obama could have hid behind Matt Ho. And he could have hid behind General Icombeary, but he didn't. And he ordered the escalation anyway. And then what happened, everybody? He killed hundreds of thousands of people, and he lost anyway. Matthew Ho could have stopped him. Matthew O did everything he could to stop him. And don't you forget that. All right. And now it's also important to know that he's been a great anti-war activist on all sorts of issues ever since that time as well, and including he just got back from the Gaza border.

Anyway, welcome back to the show. How you doing, Matt? Good, Scott. Thanks for having you back on. Very happy to have here. And I'm sorry, what, again, is your official position at the Eisenhower Media Network, sir? I am the Associate Director at the Eisenhower Media Network. The Associate Director. And can you tell us a little bit about that organization, please? Right. We're an organization of former military officers, diplomats, intelligence officers. I've got an FBI agent. People know her, Colleen Raleigh, of course, the great whistleblower, Colleen Raleigh. And we essentially are an organization that tries to get voices into the media that are opposed to a militarized foreign policy.

We argue for a diplomatic foreign policy, opposed to the trillion dollar a year militarized budget, you know, as well. well as to, of course, the endless wars, whether they be direct warfare or proxy wars. And so we try and get these dissident voices from people who've been there, who've done those things, who have the experience into the media where they're solely lacking. Of course, I'm speaking about, you know, the corporate media where we're still largely shut out. You know, and that's something we can talk about, too, Sky, as well. There's the role of independent media. You know, it's the fact that, you know, the work that folks like yourself have been doing these

many years, but really come in fruition these last couple years. Say we're going to talk about Palestine and Israel, but look at American public opinion on Palestine, look at American public opinion on Israel. And to think that we've had a majority for this last year who've argued for a ceasefire in American public, we have a majority of Americans who say we should stop sending weapons to Israel, including a plurality of Republicans, that's, you know, that's incredible when you size that up against what the almost all of our politicians and what nearly all of our corporate media have been saying they've been repeating just israeli talking points for the last 13 14 months but the majority of americans are in agreement with people like you and i agreement with with the with the

world essentially that what israel is doing against Palestine is wrong and the united states should not be supporting yeah absolutely and it's the difference absolutely is the media and of course for people who are Zionist partisans, they'll just say, yeah, because you know, China controls TikTok and they're brainwashing people with their algorithm and making them hate Israel and whatever, whatever. But that's

just a funny way of saying that people have direct peer-to-peer media access. So people can look out of Ghazan's eyes, Palestinian residents of Gaza's eyes. And so, geez, we just couldn't do that before. And you know,

that's not to play down October the 7th at all. What happened on October 7th is exactly what happened there. Never mind all the embellishments. Absolutely, Hamas killed civilians that day. Absolutely, it was horrible. There's no need for any critic of Israeli policy to play down the actual atrocities of that day. It's important to debunk the embellishments because Belgian babies on bayonets will get you into a world war sometimes. And so we got to not fall for babies and incubators and all these kinds of things that they do to us. But there's no need to play that down to point out the fact that we call it, Matt, October the 7th, because it didn't last past midnight. The thing was over by dinner time.

That's why we don't call it the second week of October, 2003, because it wasn't. It was one day. And they've been killing people 370-something days since then, pal, 80. so um not just in you know not just in gaza what you know when i was there these last uh this last week i spent eight days in palestine including getting down to the gaza border but you know what you saw was just uh levels of violence uh in the west bank uh levels of occupation and subjugation uh that haven't been seen in decades and then of course we've seen what's happened in lebanon The Israelis have killed about 3,3,500 people in Lebanon, several hundred of them, children, at least.

I mean, so, but the point, though, is that we have this technology now that allows people to understand the world, allows people to share their experiences. So we have the horror of it, of course, a genocide being live streamed to us every day, man. You know, we see photos and videos every day that we hope to God we never see again, and the next day we see that. them, you know. But, you know, even it's curious, though, not, I shouldn't say curious, but the Israelis understand this and the Americans understand this. I'll talk about the governments, right, as well as the major media outlets, because the major media hates this, the corporate media, they hate people like you because while you, when you do their job better than them, but you're also a threat to them. You're a threat to their profits. You're a threat

to their well-being. And if they're going to remain in the elite, if they're going to be a part of the upper-level structures of the American Empire, well, they better do their jobs well. And that means making sure the public understands the narrative, gets the information, has the facts that is in line with what the American government, the American Empire wants, right? But you see with the Israelis, the fear of this type of information, the fear of this type of media, and, you know, they surveil everything. So you've had Israelis, you know, teachers who have been arrested for posting online what would be called, when you read what they post, it's rather tepid, but they're accused of.

sympathizing with terrorists. You know, when we were in Palestine, we went to, you know, throughout the West Bank, out to Nabilis, went to a university, met with a number of college students. And these college students had had four friends who've now been in Israeli prison, likely getting tortured, because Israelis torture everybody that they put into prison, all the Palestinians. This is, you know, well confirmed, well documented by the UN, Amnesty International, by Israeli human rights group, Bessellum, I mean, by the Palestinians' own testimony, by journalists, There's no argument in that. Everyone who the Israelis put into prison is tortured systemically and deliberately.

But, you know, so these four young men were arrested by the Israelis because they posted on Instagram about Gaza. So everything is being surveilled. But you also see it as well, too, where the Israelis throttle the information technology that's going into Palestine so that you'll be, it was interesting. So I've got, I use my cell phone over there and I pay Sparison $12 a deal. day so I can use my cell phone when I travel overseas. And it works just like back here. As long as I'm connecting to an Israeli cell phone tower, because as long as I'm near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, I've got 5G coverage. But the minute I go someplace where those Israeli settlement cell towers don't reach me, like say into Ramallah or into Hebron, of course,

because Hebron has a settlement right there, but into Nablus, say, or Ramallah. My cell phone almost stops working. And one, it's because Verizon doesn't recognize the Palestinian cell network. It's part of this whole larger process, which includes the banks. This is why the Palestinians can't bank electronically because organizations PayPal are aligned, of course, with the American government and the Israeli government, and they don't allow that type of electronic banking. But what you have with the communications for the Palestinians is that they're stuck at 3G. They literally just got 3G for their cell systems or the cell phones in the last three years. You know, you see signs advertising it in these Palestinian cities at 3G as if it's something

great, something grand. And we had that 12 years ago, right? And so that's one of the things that they do is they surveil, but then they also throttle the technology to keep information from getting out as best they can. Of course, they're failing at it. But when we're in Ramallah, we saw a public information campaign really quite striking. People go to my Instagram page or on Twitter. I've posted some of the photos from that.

But, you know, the unmute Gaza campaign. It's not because the Palestinians aren't talking about it, but the Palestinians realize that the Israelis and the Americans are trying to do their best to keep it silent. And among the Israelis themselves, the conversation about Gaza is incredibly limited. In Israel proper, the discussion is only about winning the war or about getting the hostages back. The best you'll hear is some type of conversation about disengagement from Gaza, but there certainly is no conversation about the war crimes, the atrocities, where the actual government is. is going in terms of ethnic cleansing in terms of putting the settlers back into Gaza. There's no conversation about that. And the story itself about Gaza is on the third page.

It's not the front page in the Hebrew media. They talk about Lebanon or more especially. They talk about the scandals surrounding Netanyahu, the politics of the day. So you see this real emphasis to keep Gaza quiet by the Israeli government, just like you see with the American government and the American corporate media trying to do so, But it's losing because, you know, what we're doing here, Scott, what you and I have, you're one of the first, actually. I remember doing Skype with you 15 years ago or so long. You know, you were one of the first I ever did this stuff with, you know, in terms of being able to do it through this technology.

But this technology has gotten to the point where we're able to inform, we're able to understand, we're able to cooperate, organize, you know, communicate in a way that really puts to threat the power of governments and the power of, of corporations. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expandesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you.

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it's the scott horton show blend from moondos artisan coffee and all right it's santi war radio i'm scott horton this is kpfk in los angeles i'm talking with matthew ho the uh great afghan war whistleblower and peace activist and he's got a substack column matt's thoughts on war and peace it's called and he has a piece there called these last last eight days in Palestine, where he's been to the Gaza border and all over and talked to a lot of people. So just getting you caught up there on the conversation for people just tuning in. So now, especially that I'm back on Twitter, Matt, and I know you know how this goes. Things are so partisan. Right wingers are supposed to be good on Ukraine and left wingers

are supposed to be good on Israel. But if one side is good on the wrong thing, then they get in trouble with people and it's all funny social psychology the way it all goes but so i know that you're on the left but i also know that you're a former marine captain and state department official and so i must assume by default you were raised this way as an american and probably especially as a u.s government employee to think of israel as america's allies and good friends over there in the middle east but i just wonder if there's a story there about like how you came to understand that the situation maybe was one thing rather than another. Right.

There's a mythology around Israel's founding that dominates American, still does, dominates American culture or entertainment, certainly our news media, these tropes and narratives and myths, essentially. And I was, I believed them. And when I went to college, you know, Hollywood versions of everything, but also too, having read like Herman Wokes, the glory and the hope, Leanne Uris's Exodus, you know, these novels. about the founding of Israel that were modern mythology, essentially.

And I remember in college, there was a guy named Ian who had actually, a Jewish kid, who had actually gone and been in the IDF, and he came back to college. And we thought he was the greatest thing, oh, man, you know, you were a soldier in the IDF, you know, kind of the, wow, this guy's a hero, this guy's a, you know, he's been there, done that kind of thing. And he put us all, he dispelled a lot of it. And then a very good friend of mine, my best friend essentially, Jewish, and his family is very liberal, a father, a professor of European history.

And, you know, I remember him saying to me, no, this is all, it's all, it's all, it's all, it's all, it's all, it's sold to you. You know, I mean, so I always had that. And then I had my, my ex-wife, she was a human rights officer with the State Department, and she had lived for a couple of years in, in Palestine, in East Jerusalem. And so she understood the situation there in a way that, you know, someone like her would, of course, being there and seeing it. But I remember in 2008, because even then, you're so assault that you're so under the persuasion of our media, of our entertainment, of our culture, that even those

experiences I had, I still defaulted to, okay, but it's complicated, you know, when it's really not. It's a story essentially about land theft. That's all, that's it. That's all you need to know is that what's going on there has been going on there for more than 100 years is a story about land theft. That's it. And, you know, my Elizabeth, my ex, you know, I mean, she was a duty officer to State Department during Operation Cass Led. So 2008, 2009, as Israel was killing 1,500 or so, or 2,000, I can't remember I've talked about how many, but conducting, you know, this mass aerial campaign over the course of six weeks or so into Gaza, you know, she was relating to me what was happening, what the

State Department was getting, you know. And so that too, because what I would hear that, oh, you know, they're just wiping out Palestinians, just deliberately targeting civilians. And you think, no, no, particularly someone from like me coming out of the military taking part in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we killed a whole hell of a lot of civilians. Don't get me wrong. But we didn't lead, we, we didn't target them in the way Israel does. You know, and again, I'm not excusing what we did there, but there's a difference. And so I just couldn't imagine an Israeli military, do that and elizabeth you know explained to me and told me information and you know let let me slow you down there i'm sorry but i don't want to break your train of thought too much but can you explain a little

bit what you mean by that what like a severe disinterest in collateral damage compared like really blown a little kid's head off on purpose that kind of thing that's what's yeah i mean that's that's essentially it i mean certainly you're going to have it i think in war you're always going to have this destruction of life regardless i mean no matter how moral you think you can be in warfare is going to make it's your it's you're going to become the war's agent right so uh you think you're going to be moral and you became an agent of the war's immorality no matter who you are uh and certainly you know uh in iraq afghanistan uh the way we conducted ourselves at time particularly say in afghanistan the use of our air strikes certainly killed a lot of civilians and that was deliberate

in a way that's different than the deliberateness of the israelis the israelis pursue a doctrine called the Dehia Doctrine, which sees the destruction of civilian life, the killing civilians, as a military objective in and of itself, this idea that we will break the spirit, break the will of the people by mass terror through bombing campaigns. Also as well, the Israelis believe, Israelis, for them, the killing, again, is of itself an objective, isn't of itself a goal, that this is a war of survival for them. So the eradication of the other, what you see there's a continual ethnic cleansing of Palestinians I've gone on for decades is a goal in of itself. So, you know, I mean, I don't want to, you know, again, defend what we did in Iraq or

Afghanistan, but certainly we did not conduct ourselves in a way where we bombed multiple, multiple apartment buildings deliberately. We hit hospitals from time to time, but not in a way that the Israelis do it. We killed medical workers, but the number of medical workers we killed, you know, would run into the dozens, say, or maybe the low hundreds over the course of how many years of war in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the Israelis in the past year have killed just a thousand doctors and nurses alone and taking about 300 or so into captivity, torturing them, and many of them probably executed by now. So you just see a difference in how the killing of the Lavilians is a deliberate strategy by the Israelis, one, because they believe it will undermine

resistance to their efforts, but also, too, as part of what they're supposed to be doing. This is part of the greater Israel project. This is part of the Zionist effort here, is to rid this land of our enemies. And so, of course, that itself then leads into why, you know, in the words of the legal people, this genocide is so plausible. I mean, so that's, that's, that's what you see occurring there in this is a distinction between what the israelis are doing and how we carried ourselves and again i'll apologize and excuse myself for like a third or fourth time here in a sense of not you know doing that for the rock and afghan wars which are war crimes but there are degrees of distinction that we should identify yeah absolutely and then i'm sorry for

interrupting you with that for i really appreciate that elaboration but you were still on your story of what changed your mind about this do you remember remember where you were? Yeah, but basically I was, you know, and that's kind of the end of it. At that point, you know, I go to Afghanistan, I take part there, I resign as you so graciously described earlier, Scott. And, you know, then it's just a continual evolution in my understanding. You know, one of the things before I resigned from my post with Afghanistan was believing

that maybe the Obama administration would be different. Maybe the war in Afghanistan would be different. I hadn't been there yet, so I wasn't going to continue. allow myself to have that final judgment or verdict on it. And this is all stuff I was lying to myself about, right? It's all stuff that I had behind a closed door in my head that I didn't want to open. Certainly if you talk to me about the Vietnam War, talk to me about what happened in Central America, what the U.S. was doing, say, in the Mediterranean and Lebanon in the early 80s, you know, I would have described it very well in a way that I think yourself and your

viewers would agree with. But where I would lie to myself is not allow myself to understand that what I was taking part in was this continuous line of history, that, you know, I was able to disassociate my generation from previous generations, which I think is a pretty standard defense mechanisms that many people do to prevent themselves from realizing their complicity, their role, their part in these wars, that somehow this is different than previous ones. Oh, I would never have agreed with the Vietnam War, but the Iraq War it's different, you know, when it's not. And in this case with, say, what's occurring in Gaza and Palestine, what's been occurring in Ukraine, the people who are in charge of it on the American side, it's all the same people that were

involved with Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Libya and Somalia and Yemen and so forth. So, but you know, you see, one of the things you see that's interesting there, because we did meet with Israelis while it was there, the delegation I was on, we met with Israelis, went with rabbis, we went with October 7th survivors. So certainly people who were thinking this was a one-sided trip. It wasn't, and it wasn't meant to be. But even among those peace activists, we also met with Israeli peace activists, there's a line they won't cross. So it's the same thing occurs. It's a very human thing to prevent yourself from being complicit, from vent yourself from knowingly taking part in things that you disagree with, you know

are wrong, you know that historically are problematic, to put it mildly. When you meet with these Israelis, they would say, yes, we're in favor of ceasefire, two-state solution. Someone would say one-state solution, equal rights for everybody. Negotiations are the only way forward. A political process is the only thing that can undo this. We do need some type of reconciliation process, but they would stop at the line of understanding and acknowledging that what was occurring in Gaza was a genocide, as if there was a door that they couldn't open in their head. They would not open in their head. a line they wouldn't cross, because if they admit that, then this goes to their fundamental understanding of who they are as a people, that the Jewish people are, or I certainly say the

Jewish people, because what Israel is doing is separate from the Jewish people, but the Israelis who claim to represent the world's Jewish population are carrying out a genocide, or carrying out atrocities, or carrying out a historical event in line with those genocide, atrocities, exiles that had committed against the Jewish people, whether it was biblical history or modern history. And so I think there's this psychological aspect that occurs where people can understand what's occurring, but then are able to defend themselves from being complicit because that would then bring them on a moral injury, as it's core called, that they can't survive. So I think that having that understanding of how the psychology works and understands why people like me

kept going to war, even though we knew it was wrong, was counterproductive, I was there. I was in agreement with the Iraq war before I went. And when I got there within one or so, oh my God, what are we doing here? But I kept going because I was able to lie to myself, right, make up excuses or say, well, you know, if I'm not here, there's going to be somebody else and that guy won't do nearly good a job as I will and they'll get people killed or, you know, I can take care of people or when I'm a junior level or a mid-level guy, when I'm a senior guy, then I won't let this kind of stuff happen, all those lies, right? And you see that among the Israeli public that actually is willing to engage to a degree with what's happening with the Palestinian.

is willing to be open to this idea of we need something other than what we've been doing for these last decades. And there are many Israelis who recognize that Israel is destroying itself, that the cost of this, these last 13, 14 months, you know, economically, Israel is bleeding out. We can get into that and certainly saw those indicators wherever we went. I mean, essentially, the country is empty of tourists. But then also, too, politically, you know, the country is fractured. You've got these reactionary religious right-wingers who are gaining power, it seems like. There's nothing other than center-right. There's nothing to the left of center-right politically that's viable in Israel. People understand all this. Understand that they're being

isolated on the world stage. You know, I mean, so you have, you know, you see people understanding that, but then you also have the culture there, right? You have the whole ecosystem in which they live, which has been established over time and reestablished and reinforced to continue the Zionist storyline, right? I mean, and when we went down on the Gaza border, we got about as close to Gaza as I think anyone could get. We couldn't get to the crossing point that day, but we went to a town called Sederote where they have an observation post, a lookout post, essentially like something you'd see at a national park. This well-built platform with benches and memorial plaques and the big metal binoculars that you put a coin in, you know, to look at something. They had that looking into Gaza.

And we went down there. We had many religious leaders with us and the idea we'd have a vigil when we went there. And as we were there, a school group showed up. Teenagers showed up. And the first group of teenagers that rushed to the top of this hill got onto this observation platform. they were excited and they were pumping their fists and they were giving gods in the middle finger and they were proud to be there. They were celebrating if they were able to witness this genocide. And, you know, I mean, you see that thing. You see that the genocide, this aspect of the genocide is occurring

where the population views the destruction of the Palestinians, the destruction of the other, the destruction of Amalek, going back to the biblical, you know, prescription to destroy God's enemies, Israel's enemies, you know, you see it being carried out through the educational curriculum, right? You know, and it's part, and it goes to another point because it's entertainment to watch this. These kids have been brought from two hours away to come down and witness the genocide, you know, and hopefully maybe they'd see a drone or even better, an F-15 or F-35, drop a 2,000-pound bomb, right? I mean, like, that's the reality of Israel. And, you know, we know Israel through the English language media.

in Israel, like Haaretz and Wynet and some other sources. But the Hebrew language media doesn't tell the stories that the English language Israeli media does. And that's really where Israel lies within that understanding of themselves, that Zionist understanding, that narrative, that storyline. And, you know, so you see that being reinforced. But the horror, you know, you get down, Scott, you get down to the Gaza border, and you're not sure how you're going to comprehend what you're there, what you're going to see. And to be clear, we were 600 yards from the fence line and probably another 2,000 yards or so from the edge of the built-up areas of North Gaza.

So you really couldn't see much. And you certainly couldn't hear the screams of people under rubble. You couldn't hear children crying because they're starving in death. You couldn't hear or see any of that. But you could tell that once where there was buildings, there's rubble now. And you could see huge clouds of dust from the Israeli earth-moving equipment. some that may have been from their tanks and our vehicles, but there was so much dust in the air, they were doing massive efforts to remake Gaza into their image.

And the same day we were there, the Israelis had a big press conference. They had brought 40 trailers or caravans. And the idea being is that we will be in Gaza within the year. I mean, so, you know, I was expecting all of that, but it wasn't expecting to see a school field trip taken to Gaza to have these kids celebrate the genocide man something else i'm so sorry that we're out of time that's how it goes with live radio that's matthew ho everybody the american hero great whistleblower of the afghan waries from the eisenhower media network and he's got a substack matthew ho that's hath matthewho dot substack.com and it's called matt's thoughts on war and peace

and he's got this very important article, these last eight days in Palestine. He's just back from there. Thank you so much, Matt. Hey, thank you, Scott. And that's it for Anti-War Radio for today. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. I'm Scott Horton.

I'm from Anti-War.com, and I just wrote the new book, Provoked, How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Find my full interview archive at Scotthorton.org, and I'm here every Thursday from 230 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM. in LA. See you next week.