Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 12/30/21 Grant F. Smith on Israel’s Evolving Strategy to Sway American Politics

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

Scott is joined by Grant F. Smith to talk about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) new strategy for reaching U.S. politicians. AIPAC has largely operated as a lobbying group on behalf of the State of Israel. But, as Smith explains, they are now working to set up a network of Political Action Committees. This will give them more freedom to fund candidates they like, and support the opponents of candidates they don’t. Scott and Smith give possible reasons for the evolving methods.  Discussed on the show: “AIPAC forming political action committees to tighten grip on U.S. elections” (Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs) “Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons” (The Guardian) Grant F. Smith is the author of a number of books including Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America, Divert!, and most recently The Israel Lobby Enters State Government: Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board. He is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. 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 antivore.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 2000. 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 show hey guys on the line i got grant f smith he is the founder and the director of the institute for research middle eastern policy irmep irmeprmep dot org and what he does is he research

and publishes, well, firsthand journalism and documents, especially Freedom of Information Act documents on the controversial legal and illegal activities of the Israel lobby in the United States of America, and damn is he good. He wrote the book, Big Israel, get it like Big Tobacco or Big Farma or Big Lockheed, big Israel, and also the Israel lobby enters state government,

which is so much fun. That was one of the things I wanted to ask you about, too. You've got recent developments there. Oh, yeah. If you guys want to read something political but also absurd, but it's not a satire, it's actually real, but it reads like satire so you can get a good hoot out of it. You should read the Israel Lobby Interstate Government by Grant F. Smith. It's so much fun. But anyway, APEC, forming political action committees to tighten grip on U.S. elections.

That sounds important. Welcome back to the show. Grant. How are you, sir? Hey, I'm doing well, Scott. Thanks for having me on at the end of the year. Man, I'm happy to have you here. This seems important. First of all, let's say that I was the listener to this show, and I didn't know what APEC was. What would you tell me about what APEC is? Yeah, I would tell you it's not a PAC. I mean, you know, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee

has been around, you know, since 1963. And it's not a political action committee despite its name. What it does is it collects now $100 million a year, and it lobbies Congress for legislation favorable to Israel, like the Abraham Accords and moving the embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing a part of Syria as under Israeli sovereignty, stuff like that. And then the other part of the big program is having an annual policy conference in Washington where tens of thousands come here and then have a citizen lobbying day where everybody meets with their congressman and senator and says, hey, pass this legislative agenda, all singing from the same song sheet. So hugely influential organization.

And always ranked that way by Forbes or whoever counts these things that you have the, I guess, they probably don't mention the bankers, but you got Wall Street, you have pharma, you have agribusiness, you have weapons manufacturers, you have tobacco, you have the gun lobby, which specializes in selling weapons to the government, by the way, not protecting the rights of average schmucks like you and me. But anyway, and then the various most powerful lobbies, the AARP, they want their free things. And this is one of them, and they're always ranked up near the very top of those specialists of special interests in America. Is that not correct? Absolutely. They've got 11 to 12 full-time lobbyists.

who are engaged every hour of every day up on Capitol Hill, and they are. They're up there with the AARP, pharma, and the big weapons manufacturers, as you mentioned. So they're in the big leagues. They've been in the big leagues for a long time. And now they're making a bid to get bigger and more powerful, more influential. How does that work? Well, so it's not a political action committee, and although they've made many forays into steering money to favored candidates, whether it's publishing, you know, scorecards on

candidates saying this one's good for Israel, this one's bad for Israel. They have helped groups of donors in states form political action committees to coordinate spending and support for certain candidates over others, the so-called stealth packs with deceptive names that don't mention Israel at all, 30 to 50 of those. And they've even been involved at the executive level of fielding spoiler candidates like Ed Valens, who was in a California race and helped get an APEC-favored candidate elected. So they've been involved for a long time in politics, but they've never had their own political action committee being run out of their H-street headquarters. So now, just like they've got the American Israel Education Foundation, which is in

charge of bringing a third of the members of Congress to Israel every year as a junket travel agency. In another desk drawer, they'll have another sort of paper organization called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee political action committee. And that political action Committee will raise money and give to candidates directly. Their head of progressive outreach is going to be running that, Marilyn Rosenthal, progressive engagement director. So when they file FEC disclosures, you're going to see that this message of, oh, there's so much sort of democratic and liberal support, support for Israel candidates. Look, you can see right here in the FEC filing.

Meanwhile, Bob Bassin, Apex political director, is going to have a desk drawer that says Apax SuperPack. And this will be the dark money group that raises the real money in just unlimited amounts from virtually any source. But then because it doesn't coordinate with the candidate and does it spending independently in races that count, you're not really going to know. where those donors came from or what their names are, because they'll all be blanked out on their IRS forms 990.

So they're launching these two direct spending vehicles, which they've never had. And I argue it's because the stealth packs are just a monster to coordinate. I mean, you can tell they're all getting direction because they all donate the same way. but it's just kind of a mess and they've got these limits and you know

when APEC's director Elizabeth Schreier puts out a memo or put one out directing them to give to this candidate and not that candidate it got leaked and it was a mess and APEC had to go to court so that's a mess

but they can't afford to have people like Elliot Engel getting blown out of the water you know head of the Foreign Affairs Committee who cleared all their legislation with AAC before working it through Congress. They can't have that happen. They can't have tight races like they had between Chantelle Brown and Nina Turner. So they also can't have new upstarts like Democratic majority

for Israel, which raises GOP donor money and then funnels it and launders it into races for Democrats. And then it looks like they're doing something and APAC's not so they can't have upstarts like that out there. They need to slap them down. So it's really about being I say, more coordinated. And so that's one major reason why I think APAC is coming out. The other thing is some of their big donors, like the Schisterman family, who always funded the Junkets to Israel Organization of APAC. They're given to DMFI, Democratic Majority for Israel, this PAC.

And then they're getting all the credit for knocking down candidates more interested in human rights. and justice and those bad things. So I think there's a little competitive angst there. I think another reason APEC is doing this now is they want to keep people in line. You've got Rand Paul blocking Iron Dome funding, holding it up for four times in the Senate. You've got Thomas Massey calling APEC a foreign influence when they run sort of smear campaign ads against him for voting against Iron Dome on Facebook. So I think they're trying to win back a little more respect from people like that. Not so sure it's going to work.

And then finally, APEC's biggest legislative agenda, which are the Abraham Accords, where the U.S. gets to trade in its reputation and a bunch of developments, funding loans, recognition for illegal land grabs and arms sales, in exchange for Israel getting recognized. ignition from Arab regimes. That's not going very well. You know, the Sudan Accord is falling apart because that country went into a military coup and it's kind of leaving the Abraham Accord to recognize Israel as being irrelevant. You've got UAE canceling its order of F-35 fighter jets, which was kind of tied to the Abraham Accord recognizing Israel. And that trickles- buying Chinese jets instead?

buying French jets. Oh, French jets, I'm sorry. Yeah, the salt, I think they're mirage fighters, like $18 billion worth. So that's a major, major problem. If APEC couldn't even make that sale go through or help it along, it kind of leaves open to question what the whole point of the Abraham Accords is. Just selling out the Palestinians. Well, yeah, of course.

I mean, that's pretty much at the base of it. But paying for it with, you know, hypocritical American policies where, you know, the Trump State Department and then the Biden State Department is brokering, not brokering, recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara as part of the deal has nothing to do with Western Sahara or the peoples that live there. It's purely about promoting Israel and getting Morocco-Israel trade and diplomatic. recognition off the floor. So it's a really it's a horrible set of policies. The entire you know Abraham Accords have been just a I would say another way to show how blatantly unfair and corrupt these policies are. Apex number one agenda. But even that's kind of going downhill. The Polisario front of Western Saharan's are making a lot of noise and the UN's not going along with it. It's really another case of like in the

case of moving the embassy to Jerusalem or Israeli soluburnity over Syria, it's not getting any traction. They're not getting clear title from the organizations out there in charge of looking at the African Union or the UN Human Rights, High Commission on Human Rights or UN General Assembly. Nobody's going along with this stuff. So the U.S. is kind of looking a little bit isolated on that. And it makes it look like they're under the thumb of Israel in its lobby, which is, of course, true. And so I would say one of Apex's reasons for doubling down and being able to form a pack is to get more strength around some of these kind of slow-moving pieces of legislation. You know, one of their top pieces of

legislation was the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021, which makes the U.S. in charge of implementing the Abraham Accords as if they were part of some legitimate agenda, which they're not. But it's moving slowly. I mean, a lot of this stuff is just glacial. And some things, like in past years, don't even get out of committee, like the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which was going to equate all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. They couldn't get it out of of the committee. And so sloshing more pack money around can help with that sort of thing. I mean, APEC lobbyists can go up there. They can take people out to lunch. They can tell everybody how much their constituents are going to appreciate capitulating to Israeli government

demands. I mean, they don't put it that way, but that's basically what they're asking. And if they don't listen, if they don't move, if they don't act, then it's all for not. But if they have a pack, and if they have super PACs, pounding candidates, either on issues surrounding the Middle East or more likely just on other more timely, relevant issues, they'll probably be able to get much more responses from Congress. Yeah. So, anyway, like a lot of things, Grant, this all comes back at hinges on Iraq War II. And they were getting away with, as Steve Rosen had bragged to Jeffrey Goldberg. see this napkin. By this time tomorrow, I could have 77 senator signatures on this thing. But the American people are none the wiser whatsoever to...

Exactly. Yeah, the Israel lobby played a giant role in lying us into war with Iraq. And people still present that, like me, for example, and a lot of other people. And so then, you know, I think you kind of alluded to this, that they didn't exactly get their way on Syria. They would have liked to see a full regime change. In fact, I think the Israel lobby in America was out front of the actual Netanyahu regime on that. They seemed to want a long-term stalemate, you know, let them hemorrhage to death on both sides, type of war, as they told the times.

But the American Israel lobby, you know, on this side was like, red line, red line, you know. Material breach, man, you got to go in there. And they didn't get their way on that, thank goodness, as bad as it was. They did not carpet bomb Damascus and truly forced the regime out of power there. And think about the nightmare consequences that would have flowed from that. Holy crap.

Yeah. But it's hard to imagine more nightmares. But I think... But I see what you mean, though, that, like, the spell is broken in a way. And so now they're scrambling. That's what you're trying to tell me here, that they're realizing that they got to up their game

because now that it's a matter of public discussion and you can't just call everybody a racist still they'd be quiet because nobody believes in that anymore. The college freshmen ruined that even for the Israel lobby now. And so they're going to have to deal with the fact that people have real criticisms to level here. Yeah, it hasn't stopped them from over-relying, I would say, on anti-Semitism smears. But they just don't hold the weight they used to because I think more people know what anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish bigotry looks like. and criticizing a foreign country for engaging in human rights violations

just doesn't quite make any sense. Hey, did you see the new Louis C.K. bit? No. Oh, so there's a new... What's that up? Oh, it's so funny, man. He talks about a... I'm going to...

Spoiler alert for the new Louis C.K. thing. He talks about... Oh, he starts talking about a black woman buying groceries and because of COVID, he has to, like, wait for her to finish and this and that. And he's afraid to imitate her voice as the character on stage because, hey, you don't do that or something.

But then there's a Jew at the other counter and he's willing to imitate him. And why? It's because he's not afraid of Jews because Jews are harmless, you know, lovable little sidekicks or something like that. And then he goes, except for the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are like, ah, the Jews are killing us. And we're like, really? The Jews? Like, it doesn't seem all that terrifying to me. What's your problem over there? You know, great bit. And, of course, Dave Chappelle had a great bit about, you know, space Jews.

It was also about, you know, Zionism, to put it bluntly in his latest special on Netflix. So pretty good. And I sure hope nobody interprets that wrong. We're talking about Israel. But, yeah. And in fact, I think that's important, right? The way he says that is there is a little bit. of an unreality to that, where Jewish people in America are not armed to the teeth and

going around terrorizing people. You know what I mean? People don't see them that way. And it is maybe hard when people talk about Israel to imagine what it's like to be a Palestinian on the receiving end of the IDF's power, because in fact they do have power. Yeah, I'd say, I've got to admit, I haven't been watching enough Comedy Central or wherever these are appearing, but if the comedians are comfortable satirizing, to me, that's just another indication that's sort of the taboos broken in many places, whether it's Betty McCollum calling APEC a hate group, you know, Thomas Massey or Rand Paul. It's just, I think I think the job of trying to just maintain this sort of blanket narrative, it's just,

It can't, in this age of internet and the freedom of speech that it's given people, I don't know it's possible. I hang, keep it together. Yeah. Give me just a minute here. Listen, I don't know about you guys, but part of running the Libertarian Institute is sending out tons of books and other things to our donors. And who wants to stand in line all day at the post office?

But stamps.com? Sorry, but their website is a total disaster. I couldn't spend another minute on it. But I don't have to either. because there's easyship.com. Easyship.com is like stamps.com, but their website isn't terrible. Go to Scotthorton.org slash easy ship. Hey, y'all Scott here.

You know the Libertarian Institute has published a few great books. Mine, fools errand, enough already, and the great Ron Paul, too by our executive editor Sheldon Richmond, coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other. And of course, no quarter, the ravings of, William Norman Grigg, our late, great co-founder and managing editor at the Institute. Coming very soon in the new year will be the excellent voluntarious handbook, edited by Keith Knight, a new collection of my interviews about nuclear weapons, one more collection of essays by Will Grigg,

and two new books about Syria by the great William Van Wagonin and Brad Hoff and his co-author, Zachary Wingard. That's Libertarian Institute.org slash books. Good point. In fact, I mean, look at the totalitarian control over Twitter. You might think it all started with Russiagate, but it really started with the Gaza War of 2014. Because up until then, I think the State Department's take was cool. We can use this tool to help overthrow governments we don't like, and that's good, and let it run wild and kind of probably nervously watching it to see how, you know, normal people use it. The pores to them, I guess, would use it. outside of what they had plans for, you know? But then, in 2014, this is the first time ever that the polls showed that the American people sympathized with the Palestinians more. And it was because of Twitter and Facebook. And because the Palestinians themselves in the Gaza Strip were able to show what was happening to them

and get that thing hashtagged and retweeted and all of that. And that made the difference because, and of course, what does that reveal to you? you know when you can see actual footage on the ground from real people involved in the thing all of a sudden opinion changes entirely that means they've been lying to you all along that's what that means that that's rather than brokaw the new york times were not shooting you straight but here's who's occupying who and who's slaughtering who and so you know then the russia oh it was the russians and all of this stuff was the next excuse to kick you know start kicking people off including even the president while he was still sitting in the chair if you believe

that but but that's the thing about us the internet does give us the power to circumvent their narrative and just show what the truth is and so that's why really they're in a panic now as hillary clinton said way back i think in 1998 or something right grant you know this one that the problem with the internet is i think she was complaining about drudge and the Lewinsky scandal the problem with the internet is that there are no gatekeepers to prevent you know people from publishing this kind of thing and that's really where we're headed right now is the days of the free internet are over, and they're going to do everything they can. I mean, we're already surveilled.

They're going to do everything they can to marginalize people who disagree with the narrative. Yeah, I think there was a sense of people of her ilk that the internet was a massive broadcasting opportunity where you'd still have these narrow broadcast outlets with a huge amplification across the internet. And they're finding out it's actually two-way communication. And all that it shows is that NBC and its Tel Aviv press office sure as hell doesn't know what's going on in Gaza or the West Bank, like these journalists and sort of alternative media guys do who are coming out with all this video of bombings and all sorts of things going on there. It just makes them look worse and worse and worse. And, you know, so then you have bombings, precision guided bombings of media centers to try and shut them down. like that's going to work.

But yeah, it's amazing how it's not the tool that many thought it would be. It's not the broadcast medium that they wanted to make it into, whether it was Microsoft channels or all this attempt to turn the Internet into a television-like model. It's going totally the other way. So I think that helps a lot. And just the ability to end run and challenge. more than anything, challenge every Tony Blinken statement and sort of, you know, deception about

what's going on and all of these Iran threats. You just look at the comments now for the next Iran nuclear scare and just about everybody's citing facts and response and for every official pronouncement about the Iranian boogeyman. So I kind of have my doubts that they're going to be able to replicate the whole manufactured crisis we were talking about during the Obama administration. Yeah, I was just going to say, man, you know, I'm glad you brought that up because I'm seeing the headlines on anti-war.com about that. And sometimes I got to kind of kick myself in the butts even bother to click and read the thing because I'm just not worried about it. I mean, I knew they were bluffing in 2012 when I think Obama wasn't even sure if they were bluffing

or not. And I just was like, come on. You know? Some of our friends, the way I remember it, some of our friends were a little more paranoid than me that this was really going to happen, that they were going to launch a war and drag us into it or something. But, boy, you just can't cry wolf like that. This guy, Naftali Bennett, he don't have the Hutzpah to launch a war against Iran to force Joe Biden to participate in it against his, you know, express plans or wishes or whatever. The only way that would happen is if that was the plan all along was you guys get the first. strike in and then we'll move in on the flank and this and that kind of crap. But otherwise, there's no way they're going to, look, oh Netanyahu and I'm sure enough, Tali Bennett, they're

pretty brave, but they ain't that brave. Yeah, I still think that the real goal, though, as has been revealed in hindsight, Israel's real goal was to increase sanctions on Iran, meaning U.S. sanctions. Right. And, of course, not let any sort of independent U.S. relationship with Iran, come into being. I mean, that was probably the central strategy. It was never about their ability or desire or even belief that they needed to attack Iran. And the political timing was always around, well, you know, it sort of came to a head around Obama's re-election campaign. So that was extremely useful. And then they ditched it right after that pretty much in terms of this, just a massive propaganda and siops going on that Israel was.

was just chomping at the pit to go take out these sites that were a threat to the world. I mean, it was all revealed to be a political gesture. And, you know, and then Obama did manage to make finally some surrendering parting shot with, you know, not betwing or voting against the settlement's condemnation at the UN. But I don't think the playbook is all that different. I mean, even just taking out the old playbook and just absolutely slamming politicians with Iran nuclear scare stuff during the midterms. And then in the run up to Biden's election, I don't see that they can't run that again and saturate the media and just sort of, you know, drain all the bandwidth out of all the initiatives the administration would like to focus on. I mean, there's really nothing holding them back

and now they're going to have super packs and packs to do it with. All right, well, listen up, especially newbies here who don't know about this stuff. Well, I'm going to cut that. That sounded bad. Especially for new people who don't know about this stuff. The bottom line is the Aytol is not making nukes now,

and nor will he make nukes unless possibly after our next war with that country under the excuse that they're making nukes. And possibly has a reaction to that if we carpet bomb them, that maybe they'll start to make nukes then. But right now, with or without the deal that Obama got us into and Trump got us out of, they're still in the nonproliferation treaty. And they still have safeguards agreements. And they still have a religious edict from this Ayatollah and his predecessor that they will not make weapons of mass destruction under any circumstances.

And which we can see has been in effect. I'm not saying to take a politician, especially a theocrat's word for it. But then again, that has been demonstrated to have been their edict up until this point. And I'm not saying that can't change. But it would take an American and Israeli aggressive war under that fake excuse to make them change their mind on that. And that's what everybody needs to know. Because otherwise, remember, we're talking about 1940s technology here. The Ayatollah could make a nuke if he wanted to.

And we're having this discussion on the verge of 2020. And he still doesn't have a single one yet. That's because he wasn't making them all this time that they said that he was. And I think people can recognize that, at least if they hear it out loud one time. Well, and the other thing that, contrary to what United Against Nuclear Iran and all of these sort of Israel front organizations say they also are not irrational actors. So there's always this sort of ongoing, I guess, Kinnard that you can't trust Iran because, they're such irrational, you know, highly fundamentalist in their beliefs and actions that they just don't, they don't look at things, they don't believe, you know, in mad and other

sort of deterrence things. If they manage to get a bomb, it's headed right for, of course, the location of one of the holiest sites in Islam, even though that doesn't make any sense either. And none of that's true. An analysis of every single move, especially during the Iran nuclear scare, reveals that they are extremely rational and that they do know the value of pausing, and they also see all of the traps set for them by these various actors. I mean, they come from an ancient civilization far more sophisticated in many sense than some of the more recent nation states, and how are they going to fall into traps as simple and as obvious as have been laid for them? So I think, yeah, that does.

But, you know, I don't put it past an empowered, hyper-politically active Israel lobby spearheaded by APEC to kind of drag out some of those falsehoods and from behind the scenes just launch and launch and launch them until they get a Congress, just like it was last time, either braying for war or saying, look, we don't care what the administration's doing. We need to pass all of these new sanctions and torture every single Iranian civilian so that they really can't get medicine, so they really can't import any necessities. We're going to make them suffer so much more, which is what they were doing during the Obama administration, and we're going to, now, because of all these great PACs and super PACs,

we'll have the power to override any vetoes. You know, I would not put it past the lobby, doing that up to the midterms, and then ramping up for the whoever Biden perhaps re-election campaign. Yeah. All right. Now, real quick to wrap up here, tell us about the importance of the death and the obituaries about the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa and its involvement here, what this has to do with Israel and Palestine and so forth.

Yeah, well, so Desmond Tutu was kind of a reluctant advocate of the Palestinians and a reluctant person coming to the realization, the apartheid South Africa, where he battled for years for overturning the system and then having a reconciliation process, which was equally painful. and costly to him and everybody else. It finally came to support the BDS movement and said that in many ways the Palestinians were under a worse system of apartheid

than the South African blacks were, and he took a lot of heat for that. But he was also uniquely a voice in his essays for the Guardian in which he outright called Biden out, saying, look, you need to come to terms with the fact that you've got a nuclear apartheid regime, and you need to stop hiding the fact that Israel is a nuclear weapons state. And he wrote an article about that a year ago and everyone kind of ignored it.

but when he died on Sunday that essay because it was his last came right back and you know joe serencioni and all sorts of arm control walks immediately came out and said hey why is it we never really talked about Desmond tutu's you know wish for Biden to come clean on the Israeli nuclear program I mean he came from the country that was you know recipient of a an Israeli nuclear weapon and sales contract. I did a joint nuclear test in the Indian Ocean, the so-called Vela incident. And they were both seeing nuclear weapons as a way to keep their apartheid systems in place. I mean, who could have written that essay except for him? And of course, I'm remarkably grateful that he actually linked to some of my inflation-adjusted aid statistics. And he also made the

arguments. Don't know where he saw it, that that aid was illegal if it was going to a nuclear proliferator under U.S. law. Why are you ignoring that law? He made that argument. I mean, this guy, you know, so it's just amazing. He's gone now, obviously, and he was just an incredible voice. And they really omitted all that from his obituers, right? There's at least kind of mini scandal about how... Yeah, it's all been wiped, not just his final call to Biden, but anything having to do with the Palestinians, except for a couple of harsh Jerusalem posts slaps at him and one in Israeli national news in the U.S. where it should count for something they've wiped in most of the top media, the Palestinian advocacy, the BDS advocacy and this

nuclear issue, because they don't deal with that stuff. They don't want to deal with it. No. And so yeah, powerful voice is gone. And there's nobody of his stature that's behind him. So people should check out that essay. If they have a chance, Joe Biden should end the U.S. pretense over Israel's, quote, secret, unquote, nuclear weapons by Desmond Tutu. Wow, that's great, man. Yeah. That's really great. um well and you know you alluded to uh obama's abstaining on the way out the doors he's the lame duck in december 2016 on the u.n resolution about the settlements there yeah and uh that's a good little footnote for people to remember is that that was at least in my experience i'm pretty sure i'm right about this the one and only time in at least a very very long time that anyone on any prominent cable news channel, much less

broadcast, you know, major channel put up a map of Israel Palestine. Maybe 60 minutes has done a little bit of this over the years, but a long time ago. But they, on the occasion of defending Obama's choice from all the criticism,

Obama's choice to abstain and not veto this resolution. Right. You know, he didn't vote for it. But they said, well, you know, Obama's got a point. So it's MSNBC, and they brought in a guy and they threw up a map and they said well here's how it is and they told the truth about it and people can find this or they used to be able to find this anyway it's a fun little research project for people to go and look up right around that time and they go look

here's the Jewish only roads and here's the encroaching settlements that make it impossible to have a contiguous state here and here's how they're taking over east Jerusalem which means it can't be the capital of a future state they're going to kick them out to wherever the whole thing I forget all the details, but they essentially explain it. They lost the war already 50 years ago. 67. They lost the war. They've been occupied and colonized and brutalized ever since.

That's what the controversy is about. Not just these Israelis stealing all that land, but stealing all the people with it. And then treating them like absolute garbage under military occupation this whole time. You'd think it'd be controversial, you know? But then what's great about that is they did a pretty good job explaining it. but also they showed in relief that this is a story never told on MSNBC, CNN, or Fox News, and any other context, you know? At that time, they had a specific mission to defend the president that day.

Right. It's amazing. It's just another indication of the low bar and lack of context that usually accompanies these stories. But, yeah, I think you're right. it did serve. And again, it was an abstention. It wasn't a very principled stand. It just also shows how little power presidents perceive they have in these sorts of votes. And of course, it was treated as an outrage that the U.S. would be voting against settlements. And here we are,

once again, with all of these announcements of further Israeli settlements of the Golan Heights now, which has been, you know, the Biden administration is accepting the previous administration's designation of that captured territory as, you know, Israeli administered. So, yeah, for every small bit of justice, there's just routine everyday injustice, even as the U.S. harps on about Crimea and things like that. All right, man. Well, I'm sorry, I've got to cut it. What seems to me, like extremely short here because we got more to talk about, but I got to go. But thank you so much for doing the show again, Grant. Hey, thanks, Scott. Talk to you soon. Thanks, you guys. Find Grant at

EarMEP, irmep.org, and at antiwar.com. And here he's at Wormia. That's the Washington report on Middle East Affairs. We're Mia. And it's APEC forming political action committees to tighten grip on U.S. elections. And I don't know why we didn't run this on antiwar.com. It must have been an accidental oversight. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM, in L.A. APSRadio.com,

anti-war.com, scothorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.