Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/10/25 Max Blumenthal on Israel’s Control over America’s Middle East Policy

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

Scott brings Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone back onto the show to discuss developments in the Middle East. They start with a recording that The Grayzone recently published in which AIPAC leaders were bragging internally about having total control over Trump’s foreign policy team. That leads into a broader discussion of AIPAC’s playbook when steering Washington’s Middle East policy to the Israeli government’s benefit. Scott and Blumenthal also discuss how a war with Iran would most likely play out, what Israel is currently doing in Syria, the health of Turkish President Erdoğan and more.    Discussed on the show: Leaked audio: AIPAC leader details control over Trump natsec team Big Israel: How Israel's Lobby Moves America by Grant F. Smith Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project and the author Goliath, Republican Gomorrah and The 51 Day War. Follow him on Twitter @MaxBlumenthal. 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, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archives. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and X at Scott Horton Show

All right, you guys, on the line I got Max Blumenthal, the editor of the Gray Zone. Welcome back, how you doing? Doing well. Good, happy to have you back on the show, man. So, we got a lot to talk about. I guess

first we got to do the top headline. Leaked audio, APAC leader, details control over Trump, Natset team everybody can find that on youtube and wherever else i'm sure um at the gray zone um substack and the regular website the audio is terrible so i'm not going to play it in your interview here for everybody to ruin their ears in the cars but you can pull it up on on on youtube we'll put it in the show notes i guess there um but so tell us what we got here because it's a lot of fun well we have as you said very distressed audio

recorded by an attendee of APAC's 2025 congressional summit. And there is some video online from that summit, Benjamin Netanyahu's speech. His, like Yair Lapid, the head of the Israeli opposition spoke, a few others. But then, you know, hundreds and hundreds of APAC members, like rank and file of that organization, go to breakout sessions, and those are off the record. and you have Israel lobbyists delivering panels to them, which are more candid than you would get on the main stage with the cameras rolling. And one attendee provided audio to the gray zone of one of those panels in which the new CEO of APEC, whose name is Elliot Brand, boasts about essentially controlling top national security officials. on in the Donald Trump administration. So Elliot Brandt said that one of the key advantages

that they have here with John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, Elise Stefanik, whose nomination to UN ambassador was withdrawn. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, Mike Waltz, National Security Director, is that all of them served in Congress. And to get into Congress for most members of Congress, you rely heavily on pro-Israel money.

And then once you get in there, you are answerable to an APAC person who is sort of an APAC professional in your district. And throughout your entire time in Congress, they're telling you, we'll support you for re-election. We're going to make sure you outspend your opponent. No one will be able to get in as long as you do our bidding. And then they get into an administration as a top national security official after serving on like the foreign affairs committee, various appropriations committees where they vote for aid to Israel. And what Brandt said that I thought was so revealing was that if anything unusual takes place, for example, if the administration starts diverging from the Israeli agenda, then we have,

good lines of communication and we can get access to the conversation. That's what he said and find out what's going on. So basically, let's say the Trump administration rebukes Netanyahu and demands a ceasefire to get the hostages out and doesn't allow him to abrogate the deal as they did. What Brand is saying is we'll just go call the CIA director. We'll talk to Marco Rubio and we'll find out what's going on internally in the Trump administration, who's driving this agenda, then they can organize, I don't know, they can organize attacks on those people, they can get stuff out to the media. Certainly, they're going to notify Israeli intelligence. That's my reading. And it reminded me of the various espionage scandals from the past in APAC

and the fact that APAC is not an American organization, although its membership is American. Its foundation was sponsored by Israeli intelligence when it was formed as the American Zionist committee by Isaiah Kennan as the researcher and historian Grant Smith documented. I'm sure you've had him on your show. So that's pretty much just the first batch of comments that I was able to get in this audio. Yeah. It's really just incredible. It's what we already knew, but that's how it goes and that's how they talk is and i don't know i like it it's it's it's great because it's uh it's two things that we could already guessed you know the the role of the israel lobby or its influence with the members of trump's cabinet it's pretty obvious what they all had in common all the people

that got picked there you know and then also seeing that of course yeah like the house is the easiest to control because they're small little districts and it doesn't cost that much money to win an election or to jam up the other guy and so they can wield a lot of influence there and uh you know everybody's got their apac minder already in place everybody has their speed dial already set and so yeah it's perfect from their point of view thomas massey one of the few members of congress who isn't controlled by apac or influenced by APEC, a libertarian Republican from Kentucky said in an interview with Tucker Carlson that everyone in Congress has an AAC person who minds them. And he was denounced and ridiculed as a

crazy conspiracy theorist. But here you have from an alternate opposing angle, the CEO of AAC saying exactly the same thing in an unguarded moment. without the cameras rolling. Now, Max, help me remember. Was it the Al Jazeera special investigative report on the lobby where they talked about when you even run for Congress, somebody from APAC comes to you and says,

okay, here's a piece of paper, sign it, and it's about your pledge of loyalty to Israel and our goals and how it's just, it's on from there. You either say yes or you say no. And if you say no, you're doomed. They're going to pour a ton of money into your opponent, And if you beat him in the primary, then we'll see you in the fall. And if you went in the fall, then we'll see you in two years.

Vandetta. Nobody crosses us. Nobody tells us no. And it's just like that from the moment you even say you're running for the U.S. House. In any district in the whole country, basically, you know, we're maybe excluding somewhere in Alaska or something, but maybe not. Yeah. And, you know, even if you go beyond APAC, you know, into Chris Van Hollen territory, the senator from Maryland, you get supported. by J Street, which is a liberal Zionist organization, which denounced Rand Paul when he said

the U.S. should cut off arms and aid to Israel, just because it should be consistent about foreign aid. And so you have, there's no way out of adhering to some form of the Zionist agenda. And Apex's job, they openly say this, is to pursue the line. of whatever Israeli government is serving. Now we see the Israeli government that's in power now. The coalition is the most right-wing government in Israel's history, just most fanatical, most messianic, most genocidal. And they're going to pursue that line, no matter what, because it's Israel's government. So if you are, you know, if you say a word against them, they're going to go nuclear on you. That's what they did to Jamal Bowman and Corey Bush,

members of the squad who opposed Netanyahu, opposed the genocide in Gaza, they spent a combined $20 million to take them out. With Cory Bush, they found a local party hack and just pumped money into him until, you know, Corey Bush's voice was drowned out in her district. And with Bowman, was it? With Bowman, they did the same, but I think they ran someone who had more, who had been the alderman or had been a, he had run the party machine for a long time in a more conservative part of the district. George Latimore, Hillary Clinton came in and endorsed him, and that was it.

But Latimore wasn't even going to run. And the person who ran against Cory Bush, Wesley Bell, he also. also had promised Cory Bush he would never run against her. But APAC comes in and it incentivizes them to run and guarantees them victory. And then they changed their mind. Latimore was completely comfortable as this local artie hack. But now he's in Congress. I mean, he never thought Hillary Clinton was going to come in and endorse him. Hillary Clinton is also someone who has received millions of dollars in speaking fees from the Israel lobby throughout her career. But the most interesting thing about this audio isn't just the electoral congressional component of it.

It's that you have a speaker on this panel named Dana Strahl, who is a functionary in the Pentagon bureaucracy, has been a Pentagon, high-level Pentagon civilian official on the Middle East Bureau under the Biden administration, and she was one of the chairs of the Syria Study Group, which was issuing recommendations on basically how to destroy. Syria to the Pentagon and State Department. And on this panel, you listen to her, and it sounds like you're listening to an APAC employee. I mean, she just sounds like a straight-up Israel lobbyist. She's saying, Israel, flip the script on what you can do to our enemies in the Middle East. The pager operation was awesome. They're using the F-35 more than we use the F-35, so they're testing it in battle. We get as much intelligence from Israel as they give, as we give, as we

to Israel. There's only, so, you know, if the far left and the far right doesn't want American men dying in conflicts in the Middle East, there's one strong country that can take out our enemies and is willing to take casualties for us. It's Israel. And I'm listening to it thinking, this person served in the Pentagon as the highest ranking civilian official in the Middle East Bureau. It's basically like an Israeli agent was in there. Well, she doesn't see any daylight between the U.S. and between American and Israeli interests at all. Yeah, no, of course not. Even though they're completely opposite, you know, they have us fighting on the side of the guys that knocked the towers down against their enemies who never did really anything to us or, you know, it's kind of proto-Hazbalah that bombed the Beirut barracks in 1983.

but then again the Israelis knew it was coming and specifically chose not to warn the United States about the impending attack so that kind of makes that one a wash wouldn't you say yeah I mean just look at the whole Cobar Tower's trial

which it was blame the US government blamed it on Iran and the trial consisted of one expert witness after another cultivated and paid by the Israel lobby to blame Iran when Al Qaeda was responsible. Yep. And bin Laden proudly took credit for it, told Abdel Bari Atwan, you're damn right, I did it. Yep. Exactly. And who is the target? Who is the target? 1996 Cobar

Tower's attack. 19 American airmen. Right? So talk about getting right to the point. That was what it was all about. American airmen stationed in Saudi Arabia. It was literally those men whose job it was to bomb Iraq enforcing the no-fly zone over the south of the country and that was what it was all about that and support for Israel of course and of course why why the dual containment policy because Israel Martin Indick who is Yitzhak Shamir's guy was the one who insisted that Bill Clinton adopt the policy yep and Martin Indick founded Winnap the Washington Institute for Near East policy which is now Dana Strahl's employer oh along with Robert Satloff and all the other, I think the most influential pro-Israel think

tankers in Washington who are feeding the policy through APEC to Congress. He announced the dual containment policy in a speech at Winnep, or at Winnep. I flubbed that line, in a speech at Winnep, which he had found it, as you said. Amazing. I mean, yeah, I could go on and on. about Cobar Towers, but I just think it's... No, it's a huge one. I'm so glad you brought it up. It's indicative of a wider problem

of where the U.S. believes that its enemies are identical to those of Israel, and they've created just now a security vacuum in Syria, along with some of the worst human rights crimes we've seen in recent years, simply because Israel didn't want weapons being transferred to Hezbollah

across Syrian soil now Israel is threatening a new war in Syria against Turkey Yeah, tell us more about that I saw where they had bombed an air base that the Turks were preparing to claim that was the last I knew

so tell me lots Well Syria is now I mean it has been kind of the a chessboard for a great game, the Syria Dirty War failed in its objectives because Russia and Iran came in in defense of the Syrian government and momentarily ended the great game. But now it's restarted with the capturing of government by Ahmed al-Sharae, Mohammed al-Jolani, who is a, was an ace up the sleeve of Rysip Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, who's really right now in failing health. A lot of Turkish people don't even know this because their media is so censored.

And his administration is being run by the head of Turkish intelligence, MIT, named Ibrahim Kalin. And they're carrying out a series of deals right now that look like political expediency. looks like they're letting Abdullah Osalon out of prison, who is the longtime PKK Kurdish leader considered the worst terrorist in Turkey, which is stunning. And one reason is that Kurds are a kingmaker as voters and Turkish elections are coming up. So the AKP party of Erdogan wants the Kurdish vote. But there seems to be something else taking place. I mean, the Turkish intelligence sees the Kurds as kind of like a base for U.S. and Israeli influence, and they want to negate it. The Kurds have also cut a deal with the new government in Damascus.

So there's a power play going on there. And then you have Israel. So basically Turkey, through this Syrian rebranded al-Qaeda leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa or Mohammed al-Jalani, it controls the most populated areas of Syria, the four most populated cities. But Israel's moving in and trying to establish what it calls a security buffer, but which is really a military occupation of the entire Syrian Golan. They've moved their forces in with no resistance at all from Al-Shara in the new Syrian government. Not one bullet has been fired at them.

And they've gotten as far as Drew's towns in the Damascus suburbs, And what took place there was Israel started saying, hey, we're here to protect the Druze from this crazy Al-Qaeda government that's threatening them. But Al-Sharah with Turkish management came in and gave the Druze some security guarantees, some financial support, and cut a deal and winkled the Israelis out. But the Israelis are trying to encircle Damascus. And at the same time, they are attacking Syria constantly to wipe out what's left of the military hardware left over from the government of Assad, which was like the last time that Syria posed

any threat to Israel. And they most recently destroyed an entire airbase known as the T4 airbase. They were attacking this airbase constantly under Assad. And that's because the IRGC and Iran had officers there and were using it to bring in military hardware to support the Syrian government. And some of it was going into Lebanon to defend Lebanon against Israel through Hezbollah. But now Turkey is seeking to take over that airport. It's just outside Homs, one of the four major Syrian population areas. And Israel has declared that Turkey cannot bring in.

any military support at all. They're warning Turkey not to get involved in Syria. And I don't know where the U.S. comes down on this because this was at the top of Netanyahu's agenda when he met with Donald Trump on, what was it, like three days ago? And Netanyahu sort of expected Trump to denounce Erdogan. And unexpectedly, Trump said, I like Erdogan a lot. I've been his friend for a long time. We've done great things together. And that sort of irked Netanyahu. He wants to be the dominant force in Syria and consolidate this vision of greater Israel. They want to get control of everything up to the Latani River in Lebanon, get Hezbollah disarmed, get the Lebanese government to be so weak that it signs a normalization deal, and they want to make sure that Turkey doesn't fortify

the Syrian government so that it could actually resist Israel's control of the southern part of that country, which extends all the way up to the Damascus suburbs. And Netanyahu wants Trump to attack Iran. That's clear. We don't know if Trump is going to attack Iran. We should expect that that is a likelihood until this April 12th meeting between Steve Whitkoff, Trump's negotiator in Oman and the Iranian foreign minister, Aragchi. Until then, I mean, the U.S. has like one-third of its B-2 bomber squadron positioned at the Diego Garcia Air Base, ready to strike Iran. And I think, you know, all the signals are flashing red. However, the negotiations in Oman at a place of Iran's choosing are encouraging.

And Iran definitely doesn't want this war. Does Trump want this war after the whole tariffs chaos? I doubt it, but Netanyahu is pushing. He's pushing. This is like what he wants, his legacy to be, is an attack on Iran. Because Netanyahu is like nearing the end of his life, nearing the end of his tenure. regional war would make Netanyahu it would not only fulfill his lifelong vision, it would ensure that he can stay in office for as long as he wants.

And if he leaves office, he faces all these corruption trials and possibly even prison. Yeah, you know, we've talked for a long time about the potential consquoise. I'm going to switch back to Syria in a minute, but since we're on this, We've talked about the potential consequences of a war with Iran if it's really a full-scale air war against them and an attempt to completely destroy their nuclear program and things that we would expect them to go ahead and launch all their missiles that they can at American targets in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi, and then probably economic and UAE, and economic targets all up and down the Gulf too, close the straits of horror moves, this kind of thing.

But then, I don't know, I'm so used to saying. in that, I rarely stop and go, and then what's going to happen after that? You know? What are Saudi and Bahrain and Qatar? I mean, not that they can do that much about it, but it wouldn't just be Americans

getting hit there. It would be their countries getting hit. And that is like the Netanyahu doctrine has been trying to line up all these Sunni kings on his side against Iran. So then not just to contain Iran, but to make them all fight. I could see that.

too you know it makes sense that as long as you're going go for broke um but at the same time it served his interest to play bad cop to america's good cop this whole time remember in 2012 there are a lot of people who really thought that israel was going to attack iran and force obama into a war i think obama was afraid of that but he was just bluffing he was just trying to get Obama to, you know, play harder ball in the diplomacy and that kind of thing. You know what mean? So I don't know. Definitely. I mean, there's a strong, there's very good reason to believe that Trump and CENTCOM in frustration in Yemen have gotten the Saudi and Emirati militaries, which are basically mercenary forces

to agree to a land invasion of northern Yemen with U.S. air support to restart the war that had ended early in the Biden administration. This would be a test run for Iran and to see the entire Yemen project is like a pilot program for Iran testing bunker bus.

and so on. And it would also be a test of those militaries, which failed miserably, miserably, relying heavily on Sudanese mercenaries during the first Yemen war. So what are those countries capable of doing if Iran strikes them? They have the Thad system, they have Patriot batteries, but are they really capable of doing anything? They're basically glorified oil companies. And can they defend all of their oil installations as well as their shipping? I think that's the key here. A lot of people are focusing on whether Iran can defend its nuclear sites and whether Iran can repel cruise missiles fired by the U.S. as well as the B2 bunker busters. And I don't think that's the issue.

I think you're looking at, you know, a month's long war with attacks on shipping and shutting down the Straits of Hormuz and it's an economic war that would break the back of the global economy. And Donald Trump would be singularly blamed for it along with Israel. Israel, I don't think, would care as much. But it would, after the tariffs chaos, be the final discrediting episode. in Trump's career. I can't imagine that he would politically survive it. Yeah, I mean.

And that's where Israel is leading us. You know what? This is the silver lining on this, right? Is that if you go back 20 years to them line us into war with Iraq, man, they had all these reasons. And then they'd say under their breath, yeah, and he backs, you know, he gives money to Hamas, you know, this kind of thing.

Whereas here, the contrast is just so stark. there's only one war party now in as far as middle east policy and everybody can see it it's just the neocons it's in other words the vanguard of the israel lobby right uh there foreign policy um device device you know there whatever you call it apparatus in the united states and so um so it's yeah it's either america first or israel instead You can't, you know, confuse this with, oh, it's the Muslim caliphate again or what, you know, go back to Glenbeck propaganda, circa 2007 or whatever. It's not going to stick, right? This is just about what Israel wants.

It is. And if you look at this new pupil, which shows that most Americans have a negative view of Israel. 50% a little over 50% of older Republicans have a negative view of Israel. Wow. Oh, no, over 50% of Republicans. Thanks. Republicans of a certain generation, I want to make sure I get it. So I'm going to pull it up.

But in the last two years, negative views of Israel have surged among groups of Republicans that were wildly pro-Israel. And I mean, whatever the specifics are, that's the America first base. I got it right here. It says, so overall with Republicans, it's 37% disfavor. But among Republicans under 50, they are about 50, it says, 50 to 48, unfavorable. 18 to 49, it has gone, negative views of Israel have gone up from 35. to 50% among Republican and leaning Republican.

So basically that's the social media generation. So I was going to ask you about that too, man. So here's the thing about it, okay, is on the liberal left side, the Democratic Party side, right? There's just the most obvious bifurcation in the world. It's just night and day. You get the donors versus the voters. Simple as that. And everybody knows it.

And then on the right, it's becoming more and more that way, especially, you know, part of the Republicans' problem is, don't. Donald Trump always speaks in such hyperbole. I brought peace. I'm such a non-interventionist. Oh, we got to do all these things Israel wants us to do instead real quick first. It's just such a blatant hypocrisy. You know, George Bush never talk like that.

He always promised interventionism. You know what I mean? But the contradiction here is so bad. And so many people believed in MAGA because it meant America first. And America first really meant defend America first. leave the world a hell alone, which is what that term really means from before Trump times. To betray that now, it's just, it's so stark, even to threaten to. Like all, you know, everybody's talking about the threat of war with Iran.

And it's already got everybody split. It has to. And more and more, because it's obviously such the wrong thing to do. More and more people are just going to get better on it. And so then we're going to have the same situation again. where it's more and more just the donors versus the voters on the Republican right and the Democratic left. And then what, Max?

What does that mean for American politics? How sustainable is that? Where it's just the Israel lobby has captured the parties, but the populations of both parties just don't want it anymore. Yeah, that's why I went to the Democratic convention when Kamala was nominated. And I snuck down into the area, in an area where VIPs were passing through.

And I just threw cameras in the faces of all the VIPs, all the speakers, Corey Booker and Terry McAuliffe and, you know, Stevie Wonder came through. I mean, it was really? Who's who? Pete Buttigieg. And I just asked them, I was like, how are you able to defend this genocide? Like, do you have anything to say against it?

Chuck Schumer passed by me? Is there any amount of dead children that will lead you to change your? your mind on this? Like, how, and then I just would start, if I caught them where they couldn't escape physically from my camera, I would just start saying, how much money have you taken from the Israel lobby? How much? And, you know, I asked Denny Hoyer that. He's one of the biggest recipients of Israel lobby money. They refused to answer the question. They've never been asked that question by a reporter before, ever. Corey Booker couldn't answer. I mean, I made

Cory Booker shut up. I'm like the only man in America who is, I should get like a huge trophy. I'm the only man in America who has made him shut up. This is a guy who can talk for 17 hours straight without going to the bathroom. And it's just because I asked how much Israel lobby money he's taking. And, you know, it looked like everything was normal, business as usual arena filled with drooling fanatics

for the Democrat, for cheering on Kamala as she went up on stage and claimed that, you know, all these women had been sexually assaulted on October 7th and hideous things had happened and the U.S. had to support Israel no matter what. But it really didn't resonate with the broader American public and with the Democratic Party's youthful base, that part of the base that supported Bernie in 2016, they turned their backs. so it isn't even a question of how much longer can this continue like it it ended there is there's no democratic candidate at a national level who can get up there and start issuing pro-Israel bromides

in debates and in convention speeches and expect young people to just come along and vote for them And I've been a part of this whole Palestine solidarity scene for 15, 20 years, going from campus to campus, talking about my work, what I've learned, my books. That's the way I'm going to get out there. Traditional bookstores aren't going to host me. I'm not allowed on the networks. So I got to know all the students who were like the first generation of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapters.

I was the first speaker at Students for Justice in Palestine's Brandeis chapter, a traditionally Jewish school, my father's alma mater, named after the Jewish Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis. And it was a great event. A lot of pro-Israel students were there. We had a debate, but it was like, it wasn't like a mob scene. It wasn't crazy. It was productive.

that they were banned after October 7th tear gassed when they tried to host a sit-in arrested by local Waltham police brutally arrested just for trying to maintain this student chapter no well you're all pro Hamas they're all getting banned they're all getting criminalized they're not going to come out and vote for some presidential presidential candidate or congressional candidate who's supporting that and what I'm saying is that what I was seeing at that time was so much more niche than what I see now where when I'm like in the streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn, you know,

where young people live, gentrified neighborhoods or areas near college campuses, everybody's pro-Palestine. You see Kofia's everywhere, signage supporting Gaza everywhere. And you didn't have that before. It's sort of becoming, it's becoming, It's becoming mainstream among youth culture. And there's just no way the Democrats can deny that any longer. They're just going to have to rule by force,

but they can't win elections like this. Yeah. Hey, guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at Expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable. Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements. all along. Make a deal with expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in

school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level, and it's all very reasonably priced. Just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Tom Woodsett's Liberty Classroom, Real History, Real Economics, Real Education. Scott Horton Coffee. It's a thing. It's really great stuff, too. The Scott Horton shows Supreme Breakfast Blend from Moondose Artisan Coffees at moondoseartisan coffees.com. I drink a lot of coffee, and I drink a lot of Folgers and things over the years, but I'm never going back now.

Moondos is so good and they have great wholesale deals for all you restaurant tours and Quickey Mart managers out there as well they're now doing online commercial sales to coffee houses, coffee trailers, restaurants, and bakeries so help support this show drink anti-war coffee

click the link in the margin at Scott Horton.org or just go to Scotthorton.org slash coffee seriously, buy some and thanks and so it's interesting because I mean this is just Wall Street Journal reporting, so don't anybody get me wrong. It's just the facts that

it's a small handful of Jewish donors fund two-thirds of the Democratic Party, and they happen to be Zionists. But I want to ask you, I don't think I've ever really asked you too much about this before, but it goes to the whole question of Jewishness and Zionism and all of that. I gave a speech at Princeton the other day, but hardly anybody showed up because Naftali Bennett crashed my party. Oh, right. Somebody invited him to give a speech a couple of doors down in the same building. So he sucked up all of that oxygen, but it was still okay.

But then when I was leaving, there's a big protest outside. It was at least a few hundred people, and it was cold and rainy out. And there was still a few hundred people out there. And it was funny because I was on the wrong side of the barricades. So I was joking with my friend, like, geez, I hope they don't think I'm a Zionist. Because they didn't know who I was because none of them saw my speech. anyway that was that was my should have been audience right there was out there protesting but at the front and you know they had uh you know all their signs and whatever and at the front were a bunch of jews and i could tell because they were wearing black hats and cloaks and stuff like that you know for whatever exact sect that they were representing there and they were right there with Zionism with a bloody skull on it and whatever with the rest of them and so but then i wanted to contrast that with another thing that i saw which was probably the best thing

that Tucker Carlson's ever written and he's been pretty good for about a decade now but man he wrote this great thing I'm sure you saw it on Twitter about how we better not do this and anybody says we should attack Iran they're not your ally they're the enemy of this country

like yeah all right that's what I want to hear man America first for real and then this lady Caroline Glick who you're probably more familiar with than I am but I remember her from the W Bush years as being a Warhawk Neocon fellow traveler type wrote for the whatever papers.

And so I saw where a friend showed me, she quote tweeted Tucker Carlson's great thing where he attacked the neocons. He named the neocons as the ones pushing this policy. And she says, call us who we are. The Jews

and the Jewish people and the people of Israel. That's our name. And I thought, like, I'm not exactly sure what she's getting out with that. If she's just trying to put those kind of words in his mouth to make him seem anti-Semitic or if really she's just that presumptuous to speak for yes of course i and all other jews say we must bomb iran immediately no matter the cost to america or what exactly

is going on there but i just thought you know it was such a contrast with a bunch of jews uh you know helping to lead at least the big protest at princeton the other day which i happened to be eyewitness to so i just and of course uh you and many of your friends are anti-zionist jews So I just wonder what you think about all that and what role it all plays in the conversation going on now, especially when you have what students being, you know, removed from the country for going to a protest with the likes of you, you know? Yeah, I remember during the run-up to the Iraq War,

David Brooks, who was a neocon, said the same thing and said, you know, what are they saying when they're talking about the neocons? They're basically saying we're a Yiddish trilateral commission. And he actually had to publicly apologize for saying that for whatever reason. But that's what all the neocons thought is. This is really about anti-semitism. It's pronounced A.E.I, dude. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

Not A.E. Pye, which is the Jewish fraternity. But there's a crossover. I mean, most neocons traditionally have been Jewish and are dedicated to using American power. as a basis for consolidating greater Israel. I mean, it's their fault that anti-Semitism is rising, if it is. And it's the fault of the self-proclaimed Jewish state. They have captured a large part of a large segment of Jews across the West, from London to New York to L.A.

Most of them are Zionist to varying degrees, but most of them just cannot accept a world without Zionism. And they're in a quandary, a moral and political quandary because Israel is committing a Holocaust. Their children get the chance to say, hey, I'm not going to participate in this, or you'll see with maybe some of the Gen Xers, Jewish Gen Xers, they'll say, you know, I'm not going to send my kid to Hebrew school. I just am not going to put them in a

Jewish communal place because this is just getting too ugly and I don't want them to be indoctrinated into Zionism. Maybe we'll find like an alternative setting or we're just going to kind of move on because I don't want them subjected to pro-Israel education and go on birthright Israel. And the overall effect of most Jews being Zionist and then most neocons being Jewish and the self-proclaimed Jewish state declaring that it is the voice of the Jewish people worldwide is increasing anti-Semitism. I mean, more and more people are going to say, why how can I distinguish between Zionists and Jews? I mean, you and I can do it because we know so many anti-Zionist Jews. And I can also do it because I know a lot of, you know, being in a large

Jewish family and knowing that some of them might say that they, you know, support Israel, but in private, they're just like disgusted. You know, you see the shades of gray there. But most Gentiles, I don't think they can see it any longer. And the more and more, more they exist on social media, the more stark the picture becomes. And they develop attitudes which would be considered anti-Semitic. Hey, what's up with Jews? They're like the sledgehammer of fascism. They're calling for banning and censoring anyone who talks about Israel.

And that does create a certain level of peril for Jews in the West. I still think we're living in a golden age in the United States. But it creates a certain level of insecurity. and what Jews need to understand, what everyone needs to understand, but especially Jews, is that it is Zionism that demands that we live in insecurity. It requires that we live in a state of insecurity, instability, and existential peril for as long as we are in the diaspora and refuse to participate in the in-gathering or make Aliyah and move to Israel and join us. the Israeli military. Why would they want us all living here scattered when they need manpower,

when their reserve forces are depleted, when they're in a demographic trench war with Palestinians, when they're suffering a brain drain and their economies based around research and development and tech, when they need professors and so on, doctors. I mean, they imported all these Russian Jews because they were skilled labor. it was like basically the equivalent of a Zionist H-1B visa. They got 1.5 million Russian Jews, many of them with no connection to the Jewish religion who went to church.

And they're all like nurses and doctors in Israel. That's what they want. So they want to destroy Jewish life as we know it in the West where like my neighbors aren't Jewish but I still observe the holidays. They don't want that. They want me in the settlements.

When I was on the birthright Israel trip, Scott, I got offered to move into a settlement, like with a sweet deal, practically for free. They were like offering me my own place. And they would have like put a wife in there too if I had wanted it. So what Jews need to understand is that this whole crisis that they're experiencing is the product of Zionism, that they are living through the fulfillment of the terminal logic of Zionism. You know, it's funny, too, to even use the term

diaspora when the vast majority of American Jews' families have been in the United States since long before Israel existed. Yeah, I don't even know why I call it that. It's just like the... It's just funny, but... My family never lived there. Yeah, yeah, American Jews aren't from Israel.

I mean, some of them are, but very few, obviously, you know, relatively speaking. They're, like, Israel has no claim. That's so funny. Listen, Donald Trump. Trump go, oh, I can't believe how disloyal you American Jews are to Israel. It's like, what loyalty should American Jews owe Israel at all? What a weird presumption that any Americans should owe any loyalty to any foreign state, especially coming from the president of the United States to

say that. You guys aren't good enough at being devoted to a foreign power. Really? Jeez. Yeah. All right. Wait. So I'm going to go. back to smart things you says about the Syria thing there so I'm just fascinated about the new situation in Syria and the role that

al-Qaeda and the new regime in Damascus plays exactly as you are characterizing it in the power play between Israel and Turkey now over who's dominant there and I wonder whether I don't know

It's also speculative about the future, I guess, but I wonder whether there even will be a Syria or just eventually Netanyahu and Erdogan are going to sit down and draw a new line and just divide it between the two of them. I don't think the Israelis want the whole country all the way up to the Turkish border, right? No. But how much, like on the on the map of the wild-eyedist greater Israel project there, where exactly is the last? line about halfway across it includes which cities or do you know like how how big their eyes are here i mean cunetra they took mount hermon which is the highest point in syria and they're like building ski slopes there but it's they're putting military bases and like surveillance stations up there and then they're taking the cunetra which is the biggest population area in southern syria

And once they believe that once they have that buffer zone, they can get all the way up to the most distant population areas around Damascus, which is the next largest city on the way into like the M4 highway, which connects the four major population areas leading all the way to Aleppo, which is the northernmost city, which has always been sort of contested between Syria and Turkey. is right below Idlib and then you you pretty much just you block the Syrian you block the Syrian contiguity with Lebanon which helps encircle and strangle Hezbollah or any resistance faction which includes Shia tribes in the Bikha Valley and you starve Syria of its water supplies there are like 20 important reservoirs in the Golan. They've done that. And you prevent the Syrian state from being reconstituted. At the same time, you just sit back and watch the Sunni supremacist regime that has come into power, slaughter Aloites, and just hope that Muslims keep killing one another instead of resisting you. That's what they've gotten so far, but it's pretty clear Turkey wants to

stabilize the Syrian state. So Israel's going to do everything it can to prevent that. Israel would also love to see like an independent Kurdish state. Israel and anarchists also want that, which is funny. So in northeastern Syria, Israel is very concerned about the United States military leaving. That would lead to probably a, like either it would force the Kurds to have to deal with Turkey. And so Israel is meddling in U.S. politics and the Trump administration to prevent him from pulling those troops out, even though he's announced that he wants to. But a Kurdish state would be a base for Israeli and U.S. control. It would be like another Israel in the region. Israel's always supported that. It would be directed against Iran and Turkey.

simultaneously, I'm not going to be able to forecast the regional picture, except to say that, like, I expect Syria to be in a state of instability for years. Yeah. I mean, I wonder what's the best Al-Qaeda can do, even with Turkish support, in terms of running a country? And everybody says how Abu Muhammad Al-Jalani has been to Turkish public relations school and all that but yeah if he's that much of a suck up then somebody's just going to cut his head off and take his place you know literally or figuratively and remove him and i mean because they are all

a bunch of cooks i mean look at who he's the leader of is an army of guys who they can't all have gone to PR camp you know what i mean they're they still got swords and shit like planet of the apes like he was selected by a military council of some of the worst warlords that the region has ever seen there was no popular vote in support of him he's definitely done what his masters and uncora want him to do uh but he he unleashed the dogs on the aloites and tens of thousands have just been slaughtered in their homes the interior is it tens now just what's that is it tens of thousands now i mean the official count was like 4 000 but i'm hearing that it's much much higher okay you should have josh landis on i should yeah that was i think the last number i saw was from him

but that was a few weeks ago but i mean this is one of the worst human rights crimes of our time outside of gaza and you it was there was just a muted response if anything you know i debated Roy Gutman about it the other day. The governments just tolerated it and kept relieving sanctions on Jolani. But yeah, as long as, I mean, he's the perfect guy to have there for Israel and the West for a lot of reasons. One is that his presence in the undemocratic state of his military junta, the fact that, like, his justice minister was presiding over street executions of women accused of being, uh, and having sex out of wedlock in idlib the fact that he's just surrounded by barbaric figures it justifies sanctions which keep the syrian state from reconstituting yeah and what i mean that's

i think that is a mutually shared objective between the u.s and israel is to keep arab states as weak as possible and man i'm sorry i know we're uh out of time here but real quick can you elaborate a little bit on the state of erdogan's health because that's the first i've heard of that but i'm out of touch this is just the rumor mill in turkey that he it's it's sort of like the rumor mill in the united states a much more open media environment about joe biden that he had dementia but his handlers and the sort of official stenographers and the media refused to acknowledge it and dismissed it as a conspiracy theory that's what's happening in turkey and erdogan is said to have been fighting cancer that he does appear a little bit frail in public and it's very clear whether or not

he's healthy that he's being run by a series of characters from behind the scenes like ibrahim colin who was the first turkish official to enter damascus after Jolani took over the city, like two days later, he walked through central Damascus and basically said, like, yeah, I'm running the show. He's the one who's presiding over all the deals with the Kurds. And, you know, interestingly, you see these huge protests in Turkey, like millions of people barely registering with Western media, which is interesting. I mean, if this was happening in Moscow, it would be like the front page story. They'd be like, could have. it happened? Could freedom happen? And Erdogan is extremely repressive, but he's in NATO and he's served

NATO well. A lot of those protesters are nationalists who don't like the fact that they're cutting deals with the Kurds, who they consider to be non-Turkish. Is there a specific set of grievances? And then also, are they sponsored by the USAID too or what? Yeah, I mean, Imamoglu, like, like what is his agenda? Is he going to be more of a stooge for NATO than Erdogan? I can't really speak to that. But Turkey clearly, other than outside of Israel, Turkey's not seen as a threat to Western hegemony. Yeah, of course not. They're a member of NATO. Remembering NATO and their economy is so integrated into the Western financial system,

which runs through Tel Aviv that there isn't much they can do without having their currency tanked and their inflation rate is through the roof. Yeah. Man. All right. Well, listen, I'm sorry we're out of time because I got a lot more questions on all of these topics, but it's been great. And thank you for all your great journalism and your time on the show again, Max. Thanks a lot, Scott. All right you guys, that's Max Blumenthal. He's the editor-in-chief over there at the Grey Zone. That's the Greyzone.com. And they also have a substack. And he wrote a bunch of books,

including Goliath, all about Israel and things like that. Thanks for listening to Scott Horton Show, which can be heard on APS Radio News at Scott Horton.org, Scott Horton Show.com, and the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org.