Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/28/24 Trita Parsi: The Democrats are Not Serious About Reining In Israel

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Scott talks with Trita Parsi about the hollowness of Biden’s efforts to improve things in Gaza. They start with the Administration’s ridiculous framing, which seeks to admit that there are distasteful aspects of Israel’s Gaza campaign, but then to blame those aspects solely on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They also talk about how the war is affecting Democratic voters and the risk that this war will expand to southern Lebanon. Discussed on the show: “The US is trying to force the Israeli government’s collapse” (Al Jazeera) “Israel Abandons Its Tortured Soldiers Too” (Substack) “U.S. Support for Israel’s War Has Become Indefensible” (The Atlantic) Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy. Parsi is the recipient of the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. Follow him on Twitter @tparsi. 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

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 the 5,500 interviews since 2000. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up to the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys on the line i've got trita parcy from the quincy institute and of course you know he wrote that great book treacherous alliance all about america and israel and iran and the poor iraqi stuck in the middle what a man Yes. Great book, though.

And, well, he's got lots of great opinions about Iranian issues and broader Middle East stuff as well. And happy to have you back on the show. How you doing, Trita? Doing well. How are you? Doing good, man. I appreciate you joining us today. So you said a real smart thing in this interview with Al Jazeera here. Sounds a little hyperbolic, but I think maybe I know what you mean. And there's a very interesting couple of points you made about it. out of here. He says the U.S. is trying to force the Israeli governments collapse. They really want

Netanyahu out. Is that right? And for what reason? I don't know if that's the more hyperbolic piece of what I said. Look, I think it's quite clear. The administration knew very well when they gave that bear hog of Netanyahu that it was a short-term calculation on their end, that Netanyahu invariably would turn around and stab them in the back because he would prefer Trump or a Republican to come back into office, and that despite all of the excessive and wholly unjustified degree of support, at least, that Biden has given Netanyahu and his war efforts in Gaza, Netanyahu would never return to favor but would betray them. And the preference for the democratic side, of course, has been not to have Netanyahu in the government.

I think the main reason for that is Netanyahu is the Israeli leader that is most comfortable and most capable of interfering in U.S. politics and play domestic American politics against a sitting Democratic president. He did that with Obama. other Israeli prime ministers are both less capable and less inclined to go that far. And this is a problem that the Democrats have seen for quite some time with Netanyahu. The question, of course, has been how costly is it to start doing the same thing against Netanyahu and try to get rid of him? And I think the situation in Gaza and the tensions between the Biden administration and Netanyahu, which I don't want to overstate in any way, shape of form, has nevertheless,

created a situation combined with the fact that they know that Netanyahu will try to drag out the war and then campaign against Biden in November has led to a situation in which the administration wants to do something to help compel the collapse of the Israeli government. And also one important factor here to keep in mind is Israeli governments, as of late, never lasts particularly long anyways. They have a notoriously divisive political system with a very low bar for groups and parties to enter the Knesset. And they have a parliamentary system, so the prime minister has to keep a majority, so he has to make all kinds of crazy concessions to very small parties in order to keep his coalition in power. So this is going to happen anytime soon anyways, but now it's just politically much more important that it happens soon, I think, from by administration. perspective. And you've seen some public things about that, such as inviting guns, inviting

Galan to come and meet with officials at the White House. These are people who are in the current government because a war is going on, but otherwise are very bitter political enemies of Netanyahu. So at least there's a soft play that the administration has done. How far they will go with it, I'm not sure. But I do believe that they want to get rid of the Netanyahu government, but it's based on a very dangerous bet, which is the belief that whatever comes next will be less problematic. And I'm not so sure that that actually is the likely out problem. Well, let me get back to that in just one second here, because the point is not that the Democrats, especially the ones in charge, disagree with the policy or give a damn at all, right?

They're just worried about votes coming up here because it's an election year. but well i mean to the extent that they disagree with the policy i would like to see them do something about it and i'm not seeing that so okay well you're at least it's right it's safe to assume that it's not problematic enough for them to do something about it right but so this is essentially a stunt like a PR thing to try to get democrat voters to think well geez at least he's a little less worse than trump and them on the issue that kind of thing but and i mean that must be the case right i mean they coordinated this thing with Charles Schumer, given that speech in the Senate, and it's very political what they're doing there, trying to hedge their best. But one, doesn't it seem too late for

that in terms of democratic politics in America? And two, never even mind too late for it. That is never going to work when it comes to world opinion and how bad things have shifted against Israel just in the last few months here, right? I mean, remember, every time there has been a labor president that has come to power. or a non-liquid prime minister has come to power in Israel. There has been an effort to portray that person as a peacemaker and a visionary, all of these different things to essentially justify an American policy that is completely deferential to Israel when it comes to Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

as well as on many other issues, but particularly on the Israeli-Palestin conflict. And I'm not saying that there isn't a difference between Ehud Olmer and Erud Barak and others. And certainly with Shimon Peres and others. There certainly are differences, but it is overstated for political purposes. And in this case, they will try it. They will try it in order to reduce the pressure that exists on the Democrats from their own base about Israeli politics. But to just give you an example, when Gans was raised. running against Netanyahu a couple of years ago for the prime ministership position, which he lost.

One of his campaign videos was just a long video of devastation in Gaza as a result, if I'm not mistaken, of the war in 2014 and the devastation of the Israelis wrecked on Gaza back then through their massive bombings, which guns put out there as something that he bragged about, something that justified him being prime minister. Yeah, he said he bombed him back to the Stone age. Yeah, exactly. I mean, many of their statements are the ones that the South Africans have been citing in their genocide case.

So there is a, there's a self-serving desire to try to overstate the differences between them because of the manner that Netanyahu is willing to support Republicans against Democrats in the U.S., not necessarily because their actual policies in the West Bank in Gaza, towards the Palestinians, towards the region is necessarily that difference. I mean, these are all people that are part of the war cabinet right now. They are as responsible for the war crimes, the indiscriminate bombing, and perhaps, as may be concluded, the genocide that Israel is committing right now in Israel. And to just pin that on Netanyahu, not that he doesn't deserve a lot of brain for it,

but just to pin it solely on him, that's a political maneuver that it's just completely self-serving is not having any particularly strong relationship with reality. Yeah. Hey, and speaking of cynical moves here, what about making a big deal of abstaining on the UN resolution and then turning around and publicly announcing this one's non-binding, even though it doesn't say that, and look, I'm an anti-one World Commie here, but the hypocrisy is just insane. As Donald Trump might say, in public relations terms, it looks really shallow and even stupid and horrible, right? Well, I would say it's worse than that because here's a resolution.

First of all, just on the technicality, this is a Chapter 6 resolution, which means that it is binding. But compared to a Chapter 7 resolution, that's when the UN would have a resolution like this may contain language. to say that the use of force is also authorized in order to force the compliance with the resolution. So think Saddam invading Kuwait in 1991 and the resolution that was passed then. So yes, this is not a Chapter 7 resolution, doesn't have an arms embargo, sanctions, or certainly no authorization of use of force. But it is nevertheless binding on the Chapter 6. And the USI knows this very, very well. This is all of the about how they're trying to do something to essentially go along with or allow a ceasefire

to be passed in the Security Council because it's been so costly for them to, and so damaging to the US to have vetoed three of them already. But then on the other hand, say things in order to minimize any damage that this may have caused in the US-Israel relationship, because that is their top priority for reasons that I I think are quite flawed. Because you could see it afterwards, Kirby was saying that Netanyahu is trying to create the perception that there is daylight between the US and Israel.

There should be daylight between the US and Israel, mindful of the war crimes that Israel is committing right now. There should be daylight. And the fact that you're doing everything you can to pretend that there isn't or ensuring there isn't, that's the problem. That really is the problem. But the bigger missed opportunity,

there is that, you know, this abstention allowed there to be a bit of a reduction of tensions between the US and every other state and the Security Council. And then they turned around and ruined it by making these false statements that this is not binding. They're essentially signaling the US is not going to do anything to make sure that this is enforced.

And the thing that is really fascinating about that, It means that the call or the demand for the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages held by Hamas is also then not binding. Why would you say that? Because they don't give a damn. That's why. Man, um, hey y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts and Roberts brokerage, Inc. Who knew? Artificial bank credit expansion leads to price inflation and terribly distorted markets.

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That's rrbi.co. You'll be glad you did. Hey, y'all, you should sign up for my substack. It's Scott Hortonshow.substack.com and if you do that, you'll get the interviews a day before everybody else, but not only that, they'll be free of commercials. How do you like that? Pretty good, huh?

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same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's libertasbella.com. Yeah, it's completely crazy what they're doing here. There's a great little substack went out from M.J. Rosenberg today where he's talking about

these soldiers who are kidnapped and held by Hamas now and how their families are protesting. And I think it was his title, or maybe it was the article he was citing that loyalty to Israel is a one-way street. They don't give a damn about the people who serve them at all, clearly, much less their enemies. But anyway, so, but, okay, politics inside the Democratic Party, though, it's really unique this year. I mean, it's been going more and more this way. But the polls have 77% of Democrats are against this right now and with fervor, right? This is one of their big issues this year because, well, they're on the Internet and can see what's happening.

And so they're very upset. And so all the old guys are, you know, Biden-esque Zionists and worse up there. And so there's this huge crack up. And I guess the contest always is how to keep all the voters sheepdogged enough. How do you get, you know, Bernie Sanders or some kind of, you know, Hollywood environmentalist or somebody to convince people to still vote Democrat for them? But are they going to be able to pull that off all the way to November here? It doesn't look like it. You know, I think you and I talked about this 10 years ago.

Obama is JFK. That makes Biden LBJ, right? In other words, he's ugly and gross and young kids don't like him the way that they liked his predecessor. Yeah, I mean, the young kids never were never passionate or excited about Biden. They voted for him despite of Biden. They voted against Trump. And they were led to be convinced, and perhaps it was true at the time, that he was the one who had the best shot. at beating Trump.

That argument, I don't think, is going to be in any way, shape, of form as effective this year as it was in 2020. It's still going to have an impact on some folks, without a doubt. But when you're seeing the Atlantic Monthly running an article today, if the headline, if I remember correctly, said something that, you know, Israel is at this point indefensible.

It's indefensible to support Israel at this point. If you've lost the Atlantic Monthly, what do you think you've done with the Gen Z folks then? Wow, yeah, I hadn't seen that one. Yeah, so I think pushing the idea that, you know, Trump is worse, et cetera, it's gonna have an impact, it's gonna have a certain degree. The question is, did he even have close

to having the margins to be able to lose these people? And the White House, in my read, in my conversations, et cetera, were almost arrogant about this two or so months ago. Then Michigan happened. The uncommitted vote happened. It spread. And I think this point, they're near panicking because they realized that they actually don't have

the situation under control and they don't know how to get it back into control. Just allowing, I mean, even if the abstention was supposed to be something they did, did in order to reduce the pressure and kind of win back some of their own base, they ruined that too with all of these statements that is non-binding. So I really don't think they know what they're doing at this point. They've lost control.

They know it. They have not managed to regain control. And their only bet, I think, at this point is to make sure that Trump himself does something to self-implode because their own ability to actually win back people. And I've had conversations with folks from the Democratic Party to try to make the arguments. And it's just stunning to see how tone-deaf their arguments are, how they've profoundly misread their own base, not understanding why they feel this way,

not understanding that they're seeing things that the average American who only watches TV and mainstream TV is not seeing. They're not getting that. And they're not getting the fact that this is not, I mean, the fact that they're going out, they're saying that those voters would be single vote issues or what is it called single issue voters in the minds of a lot of people this is a genocide so yes that is going to be an issue that trumps everything else particularly mindful of the fact that the united states thanks to

biden is complicitive yeah all right so what are the chances of the war in lebanon get much worse. Sorry to ask you to make a prediction, but it seems like that's the real danger next step in regional war if we're going to have one. So this goes to a larger question of if Biden is trying to get rid of Netanyahu, how is Netanyahu going to react to it? On the one hand, I think Netanyahu actually welcomes having this fight with Biden. It plays well for him. He believes internally. It also moves him further to the right. But one of the things that he actually do as a result of all of this, and I'm not saying that he wouldn't have done it anyways, but it may actually happen sooner than otherwise, is to actually ramp up things militarily, both in Gaza, perhaps going into Rafo, but also with Lebanon. And there is a concern right now. It's been going up and down. It's been more intense at certain moments and then less, but it's going up now again because there seems to be a pattern now, which the Israelis are not just,

bombing Lebanon. They are targeting paramedics. They seem to be really angling to get a strong response from Hezbollah and then use that as a pretext to launch a larger war with Lebanon, which would be a devastating war, of course. And the administration has said from the outset that that is something that they've been trying to push Netanyahu not to do, which may be a reason for Netanyahu to do it, because he wants to show that Biden cannot. tell me what to do or not to do. But it will be devastating. It will be further devastating for Biden.

His base will lose further hope and faith in him, because Biden will have utterly failed to contain the indiscriminate bombings in Gaza, and now the war has further expanded. Once that happens, you're also probably going to see a breakdown of this uneasy truce that seems to exist right now, in which the Iraqi and Syria militias for now have stopped attacking U.S. troops. Yeah, and it was the Ayatollah who asked them to knock it off, and that would probably be canceled. I think also there's a real question of, if you take the stories from leading up to October the 7th where the consensus inside the IDF and whatever Israeli security forces was, Hamas are a bunch of punks. They're not going to do anything.

We're not worried about them. Now, Hasbala, those guys know how to fight, and they got a lot of missiles nowadays, and this kind of thing. And we've got to be careful about that. But anyway, so that's the part of the story to focus on is, Hezbollah's not Hamas. And they have not been locked into concentration camp this whole time or under occupation in the last 20 years. And I know Israel bombs the hell out of their guys

receiving weapons in Syria pretty often, but they seem to continue to receive them anyway. And in 2006, they did a hell of a job fighting the Israelis to a stalemate in a reversal over, what, four weeks in the summer of 06th, July? It was a humiliating defeat for the Israelis back in 2006. And it doesn't look like the IDF has gotten a lot stronger and more capable compared to them. The battlefield has evened out in comparison because now you have drones and other cheap but very

efficient technologies that were not a big part of the picture. back then. And the Israeli approach is going to be very similar to what they've done in Gaza, which is just, you know, carpet bombing the place, which of course will cause a tremendous, tremendous amount of human suffering again. I worry that they would need B-52s to carpet bomb the place with the kind of carpet bomb and that they would require to take out all those missiles. and Israel doesn't have to be 52. The Israelis, no. One number I heard from an Israeli expert is that their own estimation is that there

will be about 40,000 casualties on the Israeli side in a full scale board with Hezbollah. Yeah. Well. So it's obviously a very, very devastating war for the Israelis as well. But Netanyahu, let's also be frank, you know, he needs these things to stay in power and he needs to stay in power in order to stay out of jail. Yeah. And he also has then increasingly right-wing fanatic voter base. That so far is quite thrilled, not only with what is happening in Gaza, but who believes that it's not gone far enough that are pushing.

him to go into Rafa and who have also favored a war with Lebanon. And the narrative there, of course, is precisely because Hezbollah is way more powerful than Hamas. Imagine if Hezbollah were to try to pull off what Hamas did on October 7th. It would be far more devastating. And as a result, it is not tolerable to live next to Hezbollah. You have no choice but to have that war. And it's better to have that war on our choosing when it it comes to the timing rather than on as well as choosing of time the bush doctrine and the netanyahu doctrine which is the chicken and which is the egg yeah all right well thanks very much for your time uh treat i really appreciate you come back on the show thank you so much for having me

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