Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/24/23 Jonathan Ofir on the Israeli Elites Warning of Apartheid

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

Scott interviews Jonathan Ofir about a recent article he wrote at Mondoweiss. The article highlights the latest mainstream Israeli voice, a journalist named Ben-Yishai, to voice concerns that the current Israeli government may institute apartheid. Scott and Ofir talk about how hardliners gaining government positions has caused Ben-Yishai and other establishment Israelis to warn about the possible implementation of the so-called “Decisive Plan” authored by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in 2017. They go over what the plan is and examine its broader historical context.  Discussed on the show: “Another mainstream Israeli voice warns of Apartheid” (Mondoweiss) “No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense In International Law Against Occupied Palestinian Territory” (Jadaliyya) “Top PM Aide: Gaza Plan Aims to Freeze the Peace Process” (Haaretz) Haaretz article about the 2001 Netanyahu video Jonathan Ofir is an Israeli-Danish conductor, musician, writer and blogger, writing regularly for Mondoweiss.  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, Fool's 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 dot for 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 introducing jonathan afir he writes for phil wice over at mondo wice.net which means i like him friend of phil is a friend of mine and this one says another mainstream israeli voice war of apartheid. The Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, published a shocking plan. Oh, wait, that's a separate issue. Ron Ben Yishai finally recognizes the danger. Welcome to the show. Jonathan. How are you doing? Oh, thanks, Scott. I'm doing very well. Thanks for inviting me.

Very happy to have you here. So, listen, this is such an important and controversial topic. point to make about whether Israel is an apartheid state. And, you know, if you say that on Twitter, sometimes people get really mad and say, what in the world are you talking about? So, I guess let's start with that, Jonathan Offier. Why would anyone, much less another mainstream Israeli voice, accuse Israel, our friends, the Israelis, of maintaining an apartheid state? Right. Well, it's important to note here that this person I'm focusing on in this article, Ron Benny Shai, he's this, you know, this veteran journalist. He's now about 80.

And, you know, he's, you might have noticed him from the coverage on the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982. He was the first journalist to enter the camps following the massacres. So he's kind of known from that. And he's kind of the elite of the Israeli military journalist establishment. You know, he's the go-to on those things. So it's important to say he is not calling Israel an apartheid state. That's something I also point out in the beginning of the article. you know, this warning about Israel becoming an apartheid state, it's started all the way, you know,

even Ben Gurian, the first prime minister is cited for it. Itzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Ehud Almer, various prime ministers, they've been warning, you know, of Israel becoming an apartheid state. And their basic point, and I think that's also Benichai's, and. angle in this, it's a warning. They've been basically saying, you know, if we don't get a separation from the Palestinians, if we don't get the partition, if we don't get the two-state solution, you know, then we'll have a kind of binational state. And many have sort of claimed that if we'll be a minority, ruling a majority without rights, will be an apartheid

state, right? So it was used like this kind of warning of saying, you know, we've got to make this two-state solution happen somehow, otherwise we'll be an apartheid state. Which importantly, the argument is not that I've ever heard from any of those people that you've named there that geez, we really should give equal rights to all the Palestinians under our jurisdiction. The emergency is, and this is even, you know, from the liberal Zionist take in America, the emergency is we better let them go so that we're not responsible for them so that we don't have to give them equal rights in a single state, which is still an improvement over the status quo, but still pretty cynical take, too. Yeah, you're right. I agree. That's the attempt.

But the thing, there is nonetheless, you know, when I wrote this article from Anderweiss, we've had this discussion, you know, with the editorial, because I kept qualifying, like, What do they really mean when they say apart, hide? And the thing is that we need to see if there's a kind of development anyway in what's happening here in relation to when Olmert said it, you know, a decade and a half ago or when Eud Barak said it, or when Ben-Gurion or Rabin said it, you know, what is being responded to here? And what is being responded to here is basically what you started with kind of erroneous.

with this plan by the other guy, this finance minister, and he's actually not just finance minister. He's got a specifically, you know, like an especially tailored ministry in the defense ministry overseeing occupied Palestinian territories, basically. You know, he wants to control settlements and building approvals for settlements and prevent a Palestinian building and basically, you know, be responsible for distractions of them. So he's got that. They didn't let him become defense minister. There were reports about him wanting to get the defense ministry

and the negotiations with Netanyahu. But he didn't get that. They thought that would be a step too far, like too provocative, you know, this religious scientist for this messianic fanatical right, getting the defense ministry, but he got something in the defense ministry. And his plan, Smotrich's plan, is actually something that he published, and it's online. He published in 2017, when he was just a lawmaker, he wasn't a minister in the Jewish home party then. And yeah, I wrote about it at the time, and I called it, you know, his vision for apartheid. And now this Ron Benny Shai is saying,

look, these judicial revolution or overhaul or whatever that so many Israelis are demonstrating against, you know, there's this demonstration, these demonstrations for democracy I was going to ask you how much that has to do with the occupation or whether that's just, well, I can leave it at that. Yeah, well, there are those who say it's got, it should have a lot to do with the occupation. But that's, unfortunately, a very small minority, and it's a voice that is being kind of crushed here. Because in these demonstrations, you know,

there's been a group, you know, when there was 100,000, maybe there was like a couple of hundred that were grouping together with Palestinian flags. But the majority of those participants, they really didn't like that. Neither did the organizers. And some vigilantes went over and beat them up and took their flags and stuff like that.

But the organizers kind of did it in another more kind of elegant fashion. They simply decided to flood the demonstrations, which are basically like, you know, they've been weekly like Saturday demonstrations, flood them with flags, Israeli flags that they bought. and basically have the whole scene flooded with Israeli flags so that they would drown the scene of Palestinian flags

because they didn't like all the right, Netanyahu's right, was also mocking them for, hey, you're treacherous, you're waving Palestinian flags, you want the enemy to win. So they didn't like that. So basically, you know, the main dominant voice of these demonstrations is these, you know, this Zionist nationalist of, yeah, line, this Zionist line that we're patriots, but we want a strong judiciary, we don't want you to crush the Supreme Court. Now, what Benny Shai is saying now, back to this Smotridge plan, so the Smotridge plan is basically a plan. I'll make it very, very simple, very short, in very short summary.

It's saying, okay, we don't want to apologize anymore. We don't want to play like, maybe we'll annex, maybe we won't annex the, what he calls, you know, Ertz Israel, the land of Israel, the West Bank, the Judea and Samaria, the biblical names, what is really occupied Palestinian territory. No, we'll just, you know, we'll declare it. The Palestinians won't accept it. They don't want to accept it, but that's tough. That's our land. We don't want to apologize. It's all ours. From the river to the sea, it's all ours. Now the Palestinians have to, either, A, is accepted officially and they have to behave themselves. They have to officially accept that they are like a second class, even not even citizens. They're like residents somehow in these enclaves, in the urban centers.

Or two, they can emigrate voluntarily, as it were. Now, this is Mottrish's plan that you're describing here, right? Yes, yes. We might even give, Israel might even give them economic incentive to help them emigrate somewhere else, just get the hell out. Or three, if they show any sign of resistance, like especially armed resistance, of course, he says the army will know exactly what to do when given the directive, they'll kill whoever needs killing, collect all the weapons to the last bullet, and subdue them like that. So basically it's like,

accept apart, hide, emigrate, or die. That's basically Smartridge plan. And that plan is very, very explicit in this way. So that's why someone like Ron Benichai, who is not a leftist in any way, he's a very militaristic, you could call him a centrist in Zionist relativity, but he's, you know, he's a military establishment guy, a colonel, lieutenant colonel in the reserves. He's saying, oh, that's apartheid. He's already calling that apartheid in his title. Because if that was that explicit, then, you know, if everything was officially annexed, if it was all official accept apartheid or emigrate or die, then no one would be able to hide that it's apartheid. And he's saying, Benny Shai is saying that there's an aim in the assault on the, or the

wish to reform the judiciary that is coming from the government. And it's not just to help Netanyahu's corruption cases, it's also to prevent the Supreme Court from being a hurdle on the way to this plan. And he's saying Smotrich is now positioned to realize his, it's called the decisive plan, or he calls it also New Hope from 2017. he's positioned, he's in the right place now as a minister to actually make that happen. Yeah, so it's kind of, it kind of takes us back to the apartheid, right? Because when you asked your question about who's saying apartheid and how can you say apartheid, well, okay, at this point, a lot of people are saying apartheid. Basically, the human rights community, including human rights watch, amnesty, and also the Israeli Bitsy, Selim, who came out first, actually, with their apartheid report, have been saying this.

They've all issued reports that saying that Israel practices apartheid. They've had different focuses, but... Well, and importantly, in it, I think a big deal that they all did that in 2021 after the, I'm sorry, I forgot the exact name of it, but the, this is our land, not your land law was passed, and then they all said, all right, that's it. because now there's, and also I guess Netanyahu had announced a sort of half-aborted official annexation of the West Bank as well. And they said, okay, so now, in other words, the pretension that, okay, you don't have any freedom now, you don't have any rights now, but one day we're

going to give you independence and a state, and then you're going to have your rights then, that that pretext was now shot. And without that excuse for why they don't have rights now, that they're going to have them Sunday, then what does that mean? That means the status quo holds, and then as in you were citing Netanyahu's statement before. All of Judea and Samaria belongs to Jews, not to the Palestinians at all, the Christians and the Muslims there at all. And so that's the deal, right? It's been apartheid for a long time. But now the phony pretension that someday it's going to not be because there's this solution over the horizon, now that that's over, now human rights watch, and amnesty have to admit it?

Yeah, I think there's a great deal of truth in what you're describing there, Scott. And I'll just kind of buttress it with a few facts. So I think the law that you're referring to is the so-called nation state law. You called it the, this is our land, not yours land. Yeah, that's actually from 2018, mid-2018. And it kind of codifies Israel as a racist apartheid state, yeah. That's, you know, that's my reading of it. But it's a process.

And to support what you're saying, you can look at Ken Roth. Kenneth Roth, he was the director for three decades, I think, of the human rights. watch. He's left recently, and there was a big controversy about whether he would receive fellowship at Harvard, and they tried to prevent it at Harvard, and there was backlash, and he got it. He got it. But he is saying that, yes, this was a process, and what led, what kind of really led to doing this, actually calling Israel. in apartheid state, or analyzing how it practices apartheid as a singular state, it's that loss of prospect.

The two-state idea was kind of keeping them obey. He admits it. And he even admits that they discussed, I think Phil wrote about this in Mondo, as he reported on it. So Ken Roth said that they even discussed with Betel. Like, who would go first at it? And Betelam actually went first at it in beginning of 21. And then came human rights watch. And last year, 22, then came amnesty, if I'm correct.

So basically, they're not the first ones. That's important to say, I mean, human rights organizations like Al-Hak, Al-Mizan, they've been saying it before them. And there was, by the way, a great report from 2017 by Richard Falk and Virginia Tilly commissioned by a UN agency ESQA, Economic and Social Commission for West Asia. Great report about Israeli apartheid, basically from its inception. And this is something that Amnesty also joins. policy was actually present from the beginning. Human Rights Watch are a bit more cautious in that sense and Betelum a bit more vague in that sense.

But Betelum went out first of those three, I mean from Betelam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, and said, this is a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Mediterranean, sorry, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. So they called it a single apartheid regime, and that was also a definitive. They said, we've been monitoring human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories for three decades, but we've been looking at it as a one territory, and there's another regime there. And no, it's wrong to look at it as a dual regime. it's a one regime of Jewish supremacy. So that view of things, it did come out of the loss of that prospect of that supposed two-state solution.

And I think it shows also that also for people like Benny Shai, that idea of a two-state solution has been important to shield, you know, to shield from the accusation or the analysis of apartheid, because you're right, exactly like you say, if it was temporary, if the occupation is just a temporary matter, and never mind that it's gone on for, what, 56 years, if it's a temporary matter, then somewhere in the undefined horizon, you know, all of this is going to change. But if it doesn't change, then it's what it is. And Smotridge, back to Smotridge here, Smotridge...

Well, wait, hold that thought for just one second, because I want to dwell on this for just one moment because I'm trying to refer back to, you know, when I was much younger and didn't understand the situation, my kind of, you know, TV understanding of it, that I project onto at least newer members of my audience. I know that people really don't know this stuff and people really respond to learning it because there's so much confusion here. One of the main tactics, or I don't know if this is a

deliberate tactic, but one of the effects of the framing land for peace going back to the 1990s or, you know, this promise of a two-state solution one day. It sounds to American ears like terrorists are extorting land from Israel. And Israel, geez, for some reason, the horrible American government is encouraging them to give up land to this terrible extortion to these foreign invading Arab terrorists

who are trying to steal their Israel away from them. And they don't ever say on American TV, no, no, no. The Palestinians were there first and they're still there. And this Israeli state has sprung up all around them and they're essentially now kidnapped and locked in the basement on their own territory. And so there is always kind of this confusion where Palestine is already the state next door that's invading and harassing and using terrorist attacks against Israel.

But also someday maybe there will be a Palestinian state. And the reason why is because TV just doesn't say that, look, Israel controls all the land from the river to the sea. And millions of Palestinians are still there. They could cleanse a certain number of them, but not. enough for their purposes, hence the conflict. So, you know, I like to make the analogy, because of course, the Hawks in America love to make the analogy like Ben Shapiro loves to pretend that when there's a conflict between the Israeli government and Hamas, that what would you do, he'll say, if Mexico was firing rockets over the border? So now it's an international border. And now,

Of course, Mexico means the sovereign government in Mexico City, and they're armed military force. What would America do if Mexico attacked us? We'd kick their ass is what we do. But that's not what's going on here at all. These aren't Mexicans. These are Indians locked in a reservation, already conquered on U.S. soil, completely surrounded with a wall around them and constantly being bombed. And so, in other words, it's much more like an Attica prison ride. it than an invasion across a foreign border, that nobody ever tells the Americans that. So that's why I like to, and I like to go ahead and if I feel like I need to, if we're getting too deep in the weeds, I want to zoom out a little bit so that people understand. That's what we're talking about here.

I ask yourself, why would Phil Weiss and Jonathan Offier and so many other, even millions of American Jews be so critical of Israel? It's because what Israel's doing is wrong. That's why, right? It's not a fight about Jewishness or Judaism or who's in and out in the diaspora or this or that. It's the apartheid. It's the mistreatment of millions and millions and millions of essentially captive Palestinians. Yeah, I agree with you, Scott.

I just have to correct you if anyone got the impression or you got the impression that I was an American Jew, that I'm not. Oh, I'm sorry, I did have that impression. That's my mistake. Yeah, well, I was in the USA as a kid. That's another story. That's where I might have the accent from Houston, Texas, even. Well, you don't really sound like a Texan. But anyway, go ahead. No, no, I don't. I'm just teasing you. Go ahead. So where are you from? No, I come from Israel. I grew up in Israel. So never even mind, why would American Jews say that? Why would an Israeli Jews say that? that. Right? It's because there's a problem here, right? That's all it is. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's true. This is very

much a question of framing. And I think Nura Eracott, you know, her, I think. Yes, I spoke to one time a long time ago. Yeah, she wrote a great article about this, you know, this argument of self-defense. You know, every time Hamas fires rockets, you know, they, Obama or whoever it is, you know, come out and say, Israel has the right for self-defense, to self-defense, right? So she's writing this article that an occupier doesn't actually have the right of self-defense and international law, you know, to defend themselves against the people they're occupying. They might say they're doing it, but while they are occupying, they are still carrying out the act of aggression and of the occupation aggression.

So they can't defend against those who are resisting the occupation and whatever, you know, you can discuss the means of resisting that occupation. Okay. And it's true that Gaza, now Gaza is the most, you know, extreme case of Israeli occupation, because on that, on that, no. on that term. There's a big discussion. Is Gaza occupied? Yes, Gaza is occupied. The UN knows it. Even the U.S. State Department knows it. But Israel created this mirage, this deceiving image that Israel just left Gaza in 2005, because there was the disengagement, right? But Israel never really left Gaza.

What Israel did was it decided that it wasn't worth it, you know, maintaining the 9, 10,000 settlers in such a small zone that was, of course, hostile to them and having so many soldiers and not worth it too many Palestinians in Gaza now, about 2 million, better do it in the West Bank, you know. But they left the settlements, the colonies, basically, we can call them. They left them, and they left a couple of settlements in the West Bank. And then they said, okay, we're out of Gaza. But Israel kept control over Gaza all the time.

It still does. It controls the birth registry. It controls entry of everything, exit of everything. water, electromagnetic space, everything. And it basically chokes Gaza to a level of, you know, being unlivable, as the UN already estimated. It's officially unlivable, uninhabitable. Sarah Roy, you know, of Harvard, she was saying that, you know, people are, children are slowly being poisoned by the unpotable water that they consume.

Gaza is an extreme, extreme case. But what Israel did, if you want to get into those weeds just shortly, so what Israel did with Gaza, it's officially disengaged from Gaza. And shortly, around that time, an advisor for Ariel Sharon, you know, he was the prime minister at the time, his advisor, Dov Wiseglass, he explained. There's an article in an art, even, he explained like what the purpose of that disengagement was, he called it formal dehyde, that it would basically freeze the peace process because no one would ever, after Israel, you know, disengaged went out of Gaza, no one would ever talk about the West Bank anymore. And Israel would be free to realize its settlement plans. And there wouldn't be talk of a priest process.

He says, all this peace process, you know, it would be stopped until he said it would not be there until it would be there when Palestinians turned into Finns, he said, like Finnish people, right? It wouldn't happen. So there's this big misconception about Gaza, and I don't know what Israel will do with Gaza. I don't know if Israel knows what it will do with Gaza. But what Israel is doing, you know, its big arena of colonization is clearly the West Palestinian West Bank. Right. Hold that thought for just one second. I wanted to make sure that people can find this footnote easily. here around here just in case anyone missed it you know it's just an audio podcasting we pronounce it

formaldehyde that was the quote was the disengagement is actually formaldehyde it's okay it's okay um i just want to make sure people can find that it's dove weiss class worked for ariel charon was essentially laughing and mocking the palestinians that's right we oh we're disengaging but what we're really doing is we're screwing the Palestinians by doing this it means we don't have to negotiate with them anymore divide and conquer simple z that yeah and he's said it was with the blessing of both houses of Congress. That's how he said it. Yep. Sorry. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for Tennessee hot sauce company. Man, this stuff is so good. They get all different flavors. Garlic habanero,

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Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. That's right. He says, and all this with a U.S. presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. Ha, ha, ha. And to quote Netanyahu, the Americans are easily moved. 80% of them support us. It's absurd, he said. And in that, I agree with the prime minister. All right. So the West Bank, you're right. So this is the big deal, right? So people understand the, I guess if they could, they'd transfer all. the Palestinians from the West Bank to Gaza. They care much less about owning and controlling the

Gaza Strip as compared to what they call Judea and Sumeria. And now is that just for biblical reasons or just because the next step is conquering Jordan and Iraq and you got to start somewhere or what? That was a greater Israel joke. Go ahead. I think we've got enough And Israel has got enough on its plate with, you know, kind of conglomerating its plans for colonizing the West Bank. What about Gaza? Well, Gaza, you know, from the beginning, Gaza is right now about 70% refugees, yeah. it's it's where Israel threw away its refugees and it's where it still has them stored and it has them stored under lock and key and that's that's Gaza there are refugees in the West Bank a lot of them and a lot of them in Jordan and other places

But Gaza is like, you can call it a refugee, even concentration camp, like even, you know, even Israeli arts journalist Amira Haas has used that term, at least open-air prison. So about the West Bank, well, it, the reality in the West Bank looks actually a lot like, it looks, that's what I point out in my article. it's like scary how much it looks like Smatrich's plan because Israel actually controls the Oslo agreements of 93-95 they stipulated that there will be

you know a temporary they were supposed to be like temporary for about five years until so-called final settlement is negotiated within five years that there would be these areas like area A, B, and C. And that, those are areas in the West Bank and that Israel would control area C fully, that's 61% of the West Bank. Then there is another area, areas A are like Palestinian urban zones, controlled by the Palestinian

authority. And areas B are kind of surrounding those enclaves a little bit, you know, the periphery around those enclaves. that's area B. And that's even where that Netanyahu quote about how absurd it is that America goes along with Israel comes from is he's telling this family, I guess supposedly the video recorders should have been stopped, but it wasn't. And he's telling them, yeah, that Bill Clinton's such a sucker.

I made him do a Monica Lewinsky on me, man. I get whatever I want from that tool. Like, for example, I told him, oh, yeah, you know, but not Area C. And then guess what, Area C's the whole damn West Bank. ha ha ha he's so stupid yeah well that's a direct translation no it's close paraphrase

no that video yeah I know very well not that the Israelis tapping Bill Clinton's phone while he was compromising himself with Monica Lewinsky had anything to do with his position on Israel Palestine though okay sorry that was a joke too

go ahead okay I'll let you do that but no way that that video where he's talking to the settler family, I think it's in 2001, he's not even in politics at the point. And he's saying, yeah, he's saying, you know, I found a way how to, how to, you know, circumvent the problem of the Oslo Accords. Because the Oslo Accords, we're talking about gradual withdrawals of Israel, and eventually, you know, you'll have something that looks like a state, really. a Palestinian state, I mean, a contiguous Palestinian state eventually. But he said, oh, I,

I just said, well, you know, we have this clause there that military zones are not to be withdrawn from. And I said, you know, as far as I'm concerned, the whole damn Jordan Valley is a military zone, so we're not getting out of there and so on. Yeah. And he kind of brags about how he circumvented the problem of the Oslo Accords. And it's actually very, It's very general, but it's depictive of what Israel actually did. It used the Oslo Swiss cheese model, basically, because if you look at that area C, it's not a, it's not like a block. It's like it's the whole West Bank with holes in it.

So it surrounds all of those areas B and A as small. islands in this archipelago of, it's like 165 small islands inside this area sea cheese. So basically, when we talk about Smotrich's plan about, you know, those Palestinians being in those urban enclaves, he talks about, so it's Nablus, Janine, Bethlehem, and so on, you know, some, some enclaves, that, Ramallah and so on, that, that, that, those enclaves already exists in this frozen Oslo model. And, and Israel has so far, you talked about Netanyahu and annexation, Netanyahu is toyed with this annexation thing. Also, Betzal of the, sorry, not Bitzelsohn, Naftali Bennett, who was prime minister in the recent, so-called,

government of change. He also pushed for it, you know, a decade ago. He was talking about it very heavily. And Israel is kind of toying with this, shall we formally annexed or shall we not formally annexed? And the so-called Abraham Accords that Trump introduced, they basically, They had this stipulation that, you know, 30% of the West Bank is going, you know, to be annexed for Israel. And the Israelis said, hey, great. The big thing with the Abraham Accords, though, that Netanyahu kind of brags about is the ideology. You said land for peace. He brags that he made a new concept.

Everyone talked about land for peace, but he made peace for peace. So he's saying, yeah, I proved that we can get normalization, you know, we can get so-called peace. And never mind that those countries were never at war with Israel, like United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and then Morocco and Sudan, they're never in war with Israel. We got peace, but they, you know, it did. didn't involve giving away land to the Palestinians. So Israel is trying to get this kind of normalization of we're here and it's awaiting. It's waiting for the next move where it can sort of solidify its hold and say this is ours officially. It has done it in some areas. So Israel has formally annexed the Syrian Golan Heights.

It did that in 1981. It conquered them in 1967, formally annexed in 81. It annexed de facto it annexed East Jerusalem from the beginning, but it did it formally in 1980. And it's, East Jerusalem is actually kind of a model for, for what might, you know, what, what this plan by Smatridge might look like. And Ron Benny Shai is saying it, is mentioning that the East Jerusalem is kind of like we can see this model of Palestinians being residents, but not citizens. So when Israel annexed East Jerusalem, it actually, well, it increased the municipal bounds tenfold from seven square kilometers to 70. So it came to engulf like 28 or something Palestinian villages, called it East Jerusalem.

And then it gave them residency. It didn't want to give them citizenship. So residency permit. And it makes them much more vulnerable in terms of. expulsion yeah um all right now uh i guess the question is now that nett and yahoo is back in he has this new coalition and you know this guy is uh that you're talking about here he's not the only one right there's this whole group of much further right than before members of nettingahu's coalition and i read that this other guy who's a real fanatic is now in charge of security over there

which gives him control over the temple mount. And there's some people at least are real concern for the short-term future here. You know, I guess the question is how much further to the right compared to even the last Netanyahu government is this? And there's, I mean, tell me there's not a real risk. They're going to blow up the Alaksa mosque and build the third temple and start sacrificing animals and start a world war and stuff, right? yeah the blowing up you know there have been those who have wanted to do it and there's a whole they've tried before yeah yeah yeah i know the shin bet busted i think i read a thing where the explosives were in place when the shin bet busted them before yeah i can't remember if they were

in place but yeah it was imminent um and those people are basically walking around um and there's this whole movement, you know, the temple movement. And they're educated, they're basically, they have, you know, kind of tentacles in the education system and they have these education programs, at least were funded by the education ministry of, you know, about the educating about the love, love to the temple and kind of planting this idea of, you know, right now there's this the dome of the rock there and there's this Alaksa temple. But really, you know, really that's where the old Jewish, the Jewish temple is supposed to be re-erected. You know, how far that's going to be realized at any point before, you know, before we all die?

I don't know. But you're right, Ben-Gvier, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is now not just the, there used to be a post called the police minister or the minister of internal security. he negotiated a ministry that is called a Minister of National Security, and it's kind of expanded ministry, and it gives also more direct control over the border police, which is working more specifically or policing more specifically paramilitarily in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank.

So, yeah, he went up, one of the first things he did like five days, after he was sworn and he went up to the Alaksa temple and showed them whose boss and stuff. And the thing is that something very interesting happened with this guy, Itamar Ben-Gvier, who is a kahanist. I mean, he is admirer of the rabbi mayor Kahana, who is in your country, USA. He was a convicted terrorist for the Jewish Defense League. So he's a disciple of this Cahanism. Kahana was even banned from the Knesset in the late 80s for racism, believe it or not. And he was admired, this Ben Gvere is an admirer of Baruch Goldstein who massacred 29 worshippers at the Al-Ibrahimmi Mosque in Hebron or Al-Holil in 1994.

Um, he had a poster of him in, in his living room that he reportedly removed it because they told him that it was not good publicity anymore. Um, but, you know, he, he, he, he admires these guys. So, so the thing, slow that down, just say that again, a slow motion. He had a poster on his wall of a guy who went into a mosque and massacred a bunch of innocent civilians at prayer. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. So, it, And Ben-Gvier, he's himself convicted for support to a Jewish terrorist organization, an incitement to racism and so on. He has, like, I think, 50 indictments or something. And he's become Minister of National Security.

And the very interesting thing that happened here. So the Kahanism, this whole movement with Mayor Kahan, I mean, he was assassinated in New York in 1990. He came to Israel. He started up his kach fascist movement, Jewish supremacist movement, was banned from running. I think it was 87. And they basically outlawed him for racism. He was so explicit in it. And that whole movement was kind of outlawed and went into the underground, as it were. But it got itself mainstream through people who actually are part of the, even the Likud, even in the Likud, you know, like Kahanist ideologues within the Likud. And they, but they made, they slowly made their own revival. And this Ben Gvier's party is called Jewish power.

And Netanyahu worked hard to merge him. for the last elections, he worked hard to get him merged with Betzal of Smotrich's religious Zionism. So you get these two extreme right, Jewish extreme fundamentalists. And Smotrich is not even the furthest of them, Ben-Gvier is further right. And at first, Smatrich seems to have like more votes going for him, with his religious Zionism than the Jewish power, right? But when Ben Gvir came in, he started gaining votes and he started gaining popularity, and suddenly the polls were saying, hey, wait a minute, if Ben Gvir leads this religious

Zionism conglomerate, then he's actually going to have more votes going for him than Smatridge, sorry. Anyhow, they became like this Jewish. power, they became like the kingmakers of Israeli politics. So this religious Zionism, this Jewish power, and they had a little other party, which is an explicitly anti-LGBQ party, they went together and they got there, I think it was 14 seats, 14 mandates, as it called. And they became the king makers for Netanyahu's liquid. So, yeah, that's what we're seeing now. Oh, man. Jonathan, listen, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time on the show, and we're just about out of it now. But I really have learned a lot and happy to make

your acquaintance here. And I hope people will go and read this great article at Mondo Weiss, which for some reason I can't find now. What the hell happened to it? Oh, here it is. Another mainstream Israeli voice warns of apartheid. Again, that's at Mondo Weiss.net. Thank you so much for your time, man. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Scott. Thanks. 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.