Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/25/24 Kyle Anzalone on the Foreign Aid Bills, Campus Protests and Brutality in Gaza

Episode Date: April 27, 2024

Kyle Anzalone was on Antiwar Radio to discuss the big foreign policy stories of the week. He and Scott discussed the four foreign aid bills that just passed Congress and the antiwar protests spreading across America’s college campuses. Anzalone also gave updates on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the status of Israeli-Iranian tensions. Discussed on the show: “Netanyahu Calls for Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Protesters in the US” (Antiwar.com) “Israel's Day of Infamy” (The Wayward Rabbler) “They Knew There Was No Bomb” (Seymour Hersh) Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, April 25th, 2024, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of the book, Enough already time to end the war on terrorism you can find my full interview archive more than six thousand of them now going back to 2003 at scott horton dot board and i'm here every thursday from two 30 to three on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a introducing the great kyle anselone he is the news editor at the

institute and he is the opinion editor at antiwar dot com welcome back to the show kyle how you doing very well scott thanks for having me me. Hey, I should let you know that when I drive around a lot of the times, because I live in Texas outside of the KPFK listening area, I will be listening to your great podcast conflicts of interest, which is so good and people can find on all their great podcatchers and everything. So anyway, great to have you back on the show. And very sorry to have to hear the bad news, but we need to know what's going on. So, but let's start with Washington. DC. It may be even a worse place than Gaza. Congress. They went ahead and everybody who was

against everything lost and the coalition, the moderates who were for funding every war got everything that they wanted, huh? Yeah, absolutely, Scott. The Republicans didn't even get the immigration reforms or the spending on the border that they wanted. So it was a really a complete win for the Democrats. And Chuck Schumer said as much. He says people called Biden too old, but he just got everything he wanted in these negotiations, so ha ha Republicans. Now, $95 billion of aid was passed, and this was done in four bills in the House, which they shrunk to one bill in the Senate. I think there were something like 14 Republicans who voted against all four bills in the House and about 20 who voted against it in the Senate. That was a combination of Republicans, Democrats, and then a few who abstained.

So I think there is $79.79 votes for it in the Senate. The $95 billion in total foreign military aid breaks down a little bit differently than it sounds. Ukraine gets $61 billion, but only 14 of that is for purchasing weapons in the future. A lot of that money is to replenish American stockpiles to replace the weapons they already sent to Ukraine but didn't actually have funding for. So for almost the past year now, Scott, the Biden administration has been relying on this accounting error to continue to fund and ship and send weapons to Ukraine, where they say that how we evaluate the weapons is the value when we send them to Ukraine. However, it costs more for the U.S. to replace them in their own stockpiles with the newer weapons systems. And so they were running, I think, about a $10 billion deficit on procuring new weapons. So a lot of that money went to that.

And then $8 billion is for financial support for the Ukrainian government. So I'm sure a lot of that money will just go to corrupt purposes. $26 billion is for Israel. I think about $17 billion of that is military aid. A lot of it is for missile defense systems and bombs and things like that. And then $9 billion is for aid in the Middle East region. So a lot of that would be aid that is seemingly earmarked to rebuild Gaza after Israel's done destroying it.

But, Scott, there is some concern that Israel would work with Washington to use those funds to maybe resettle Palestinians from Gaza. Earlier in this war, we had Netanyahu and the Israeli government talking with several African nations, Congo, Chad, Rwanda, are three that come to mind about paying them a certain amount of money to take Palestinians from Gaza and resettled displaced Palestinians there. There's also $8 billion in that bill for the military buildup in the Asia Pacific, with a lot of it going to Taiwan, and specifically money going to Taiwan through the State Department's foreign military financing. And this is seen as particularly provocative to China because this is not only the U.S. selling Taiwan weapons, but providing the U.S. is providing Taiwan with a significant amount of weapons through our own funding, right? Taiwan isn't even paying for them. we're paying Taiwan to and giving them the weapons.

And so that's a major problem. And then the fourth piece of this legislation is a ban on Tittok, which they say Tittok's parent company, Biden, says nine months to divest from China or it's going to be banned for U.S. users. And that's very unlikely to happen. So it's an essential ban. And it also allows the Biden administration to invoke whatever kind of powers they want to seize Russian assets and then sell them off to either repay the Ukrainian loans that they're not going

to be able to repay the U.S. or to give Ukraine the money to them buy more U.S. weapons in the future. All right. So I want to talk a little bit about the partisan politics in D.C. here before we actually talk about Gaza. But it's really important and interesting that it's the conservative right that are opposed to the war in Ukraine and funding the continued war in Ukraine. supposed moderate compromisers in the middle who are for it, and the Democrats are lockstep on the

thing. Then, at the very same time, they're voting to fund the war of Israel versus the Palestinians in Gaza, and the Republicans, I gather, are much more at least, or maybe all the way lockstep on that one in support, and the dissent comes from the Democrats. And it's interesting that this is going through at the exact same time and that they can't form an actual America First non-interventionist coalition around both of these issues together. They have to completely divide it. And then the leadership of both parties are, of course, always bad on everything. But then I guess Taiwan is something where they can also agree, right? It's like the North and the South teaming up to go to war against the Indians. It's like, well, at least we can agree. All of us can agree on funding Taiwan.

Right. And I think, Scott, actually, if you combined all four votes in the Congress, the number of congressmen that voted against it wasn't a majority who voted against any single one of those. And so I think this would have passed the House as a combined measure anyways. This was more of something to appease some Republicans for Mike Johnson, who was really taking a hit from his own party because as he became House Speaker, he pledged to hold this firm line on immigration, that he completely failed to do yeah and then importantly donald trump weighed in on this and said well yeah we'll just make it alone and then that'll do it and that became like the flashing yellow light for the rest of the republican congress to go along with it so that's something the america firsters don't want to hear but he is really just as bad as any of every time that guy opens his mouth he raises the question of why they don't like him he's just like them Right. And Scott, it's almost hard to believe that Trump could somehow be worse on this and how making it alone may actually make it worse. But it could because if it was just aid that we're giving to Ukraine with no expectation to repay it, the U.S. would never see to find that $8 billion or whatever the loan money is to Ukraine, which, by the way, the law just allows the president to exempt Ukraine from repaying because they're never going to be able to repay it. Even if Ukraine wins the war, they would be reliant on. tens, if not hundreds of billion dollars of American aid to rebuild their country at this

point anyways. And so they're never going to have that money to repay the U.S. But what they're going to do is they're going to use that loan to then seize Russian assets to pay off the loan. And this is even more escalatory towards Moscow. Now, this morning, I was listening to Anti-War News with Dave DeKamp. And he had the quotes. I see the headline here on anti-war.com. I hadn't had a chance to click on it yet. Netanyahu who wants crackdown on protesters in U.S. Geez, it seemed like he could have just had somebody else say that for him or something. I don't know.

The Prime Minister of Israel insists on a crackdown against college student protesters in the United States of America. Am I reading that right, really? Well, yeah, absolutely. And he did have somebody say it for him first, and that was President Joe Biden. So Dave, the day before had an article out at anti-war.com detailing how Biden condemned the protesters as anti-Semitic. And then he also said he condemns the people who don't understand what's happening in Palestine are to the Palestinians, which is just really confusing as to what that is even supposed to mean. But Netanyahu is very fiery, calling them an anti-Semitic mob. And, you know, we have this idea that the Democrats are trying to portray.

to us, Scott, that there's a moderate opposition to Netanyahu, but that opposition is led by Yar-Lepeed, the former prime minister, and he also called for a crackdown saying that what is happening on American college campuses is unforgivable and not to forget the hatred that Hamas has for the LGBT community and, you know, really trying to stir up trouble there. So the full spectrum of the Israeli government is coming out to condemn this. Yeah, I think it's a little too late for that kind of pink washing stuff, you know. But so what is going on at the campuses? Are there left-wing anti-Semites doing anti-Semitic things or not?

I haven't seen a whole lot of examples of anything that you could really label as anti-Semitic Scott. And then also it's at times hard to really nail down who's saying what and maybe if there's provocateurs in the crowd. I certainly haven't seen really examples of any organized, led, anti-Semitic, anything on these college campuses. What they've really been is pretty explicitly pro-Palestinian camp-ins. And what they're demanding is that the universities divest from companies who benefit from, you know, the Israeli state, the settler colonialism, particularly anything in the West Bank or companies that are selling Israeli weapons. and profiting there. And so those are the demands of the protesters that started at Columbia University. And I think a part of that is that university's particular history of leading protest movements against war, including Vietnam. And so they were holding a camp in. And now it's

spread across the country. And Scott, it seems to be having this effect where the harder they crat down, the more, you know, these particular college students are really escalating, not, you know, in any violent kind of way, but there's just more and more attention paid to it in, spreading more and more across the country. Well, you know, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, just identified the entire thing as ipso facto anti-Semitic. And so anyone involved is essentially, you know, a danger to any Jew around the campus. It's just a ridiculous, blatant lie.

I mean, we're talking about left-wing college. kids here. You know, I don't know. It's sort of like Iraq is going to attack us or Putin's going to invade Germany or, you know, these just ridiculous kind of lies. It's all they peddle in all the time. These things that are virtually unbelievable, as in not believable, right? That, you know, a bunch of college kids sitting down at the University of Texas deserve to be carded off clearly just because someone is following orders not because they did anything and you're right that that usually backfires and makes protest movements bigger and so you know here's the thing of it too is even if they did for the sake of argument have some clips of some ill-conceived chance

that hurt someone's feelings or something as you said there's been no organized violence against any Jewish students at any of these places and so therefore having no less than the Prime Minister of Israel himself

and all of his American minor birds going after them this way is a completely ridiculous and transparent attack to anyone involved on the protest side at all. They're like really That's all you got. You're just going to call them all anti-Semites or call us all anti-Semites when, again, we're talking about left-wing kids who are, you know, not.

And in a lot of cases, Scott, we should point out disproportionately Jewish. A lot of these anti-Semited smears are being thrown at young Jewish Americans who are just students on these college campuses, which, you know, seems really unfair. And I want to say there's one violent incident that people have pointed out. And there's a group that seems to be marching through and some counter protesters standing next to them. And one, it looks like a girl is waving a small Palestinian flag, kind of like one of those little Ukrainian flags that they had on the floor of Congress. So not a large flag by any means. And as she's walking by and waving it, she poached someone in the eye.

It looks unintentional. maybe it was intentional at the same time that's the only violence they could point to somebody being poked in the eye probably with a plastic stick holding a small plastic flag i i think there's a overwhelming assumption that a lot of the protesters are overwhelmingly left wing because they all are wearing uh covid style mask right the surgical mask well just because they're college kids maybe and they're college kids too right but but they do look i think a lot more left wing because it looks like they're taking COVID precautions. And I spoke with a faculty member at Columbia University who said that isn't very common

among the student body. And he really didn't see it until after APEC. And I believe even the Israeli government put out a tweet saying that they're using facial identification to identify the people participating in the protests and they would have a hard time gain jobs out of college. And so it's actually more of a way to conceal their identity from these, you know, facial recognition programs not about COVID

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with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com. by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at scott horton dot org so keep that in mind and don't worry about the mess your wife will clean it up well folks sad to say they lied us into war all of them world war one world war two korea vietnam iraq war one syria afghanistan iraq war two libya syria yemen all of them but now you can get the e-book all the war lies by me

for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Anyway, so this whole controversy is really about what's happening in Gaza and that's so that people who are falsely accusing these kids of anti-Semitism are afraid to talk about, it's the actual issue that they don't want to address is the killing of tens of thousands of people, helpless people, in what's not really a war, but it's a violent assault by a government over a territory that they occupy and control. And so we need to get the latest on all of that.

I know that, you know, some of the news was that the Israelis have pulled their forces back in order to prepare for their final assault on the South. and then I know that there have been some strikes there and I know that there are also all kinds of news stories coming out of northern and I guess mid-Ghasa where some people are going back and finding the disaster area the Israeli forces had left behind and all of this so I hope we can get a good summary of all of that

can we start with the numbers as far as you know from the best sources, how many casualties on the Palestinian side as of now the last week of April 24? Yeah, I guess the total number of casualties would be up over 110,000 at this point, Scott, with, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, 34,000 dead and another 76,000 injured. And it's important to remember, too, that these are significant injuries. Surgeons who were in Gaza said that about half of the injuries they would call severe or worse. And so that means that, you know, repeated surgeries, lifelong disabilities coming from these injuries. We're not talking about a lot of people who had, you know, serious scrapes or something like that.

We're talking about serious burns amputations to a lot of these people's counted at as injuries. And in fact, there was a study done on the potential excess death toll in Gaza. and that could hit 100,000 in August. And that's if the Israelis don't move forward with the invasion of Rafa. 120,000 would be the death toll if they do move forward with the invasion of Rafa. And they had spent about half of those excess deaths to be people who die with injuries that would be treatable if they weren't in Gaza. You know, amputations, again, developing because it's not treated properly,

you can't get the follow-up surgery. So you're developing infections, which eventually leads to sepsis. and people are dying from that, particularly children with serious burns or amputations because they require a lot more surgeries. And so that plus the famine and everything else, there's going to be a lot of dead Palestinians in the coming months. It does look like the invasion of Rafa is on the horizon. Now we have the Israeli government saying it's in the coming days and the Red Cross putting out a major warning that this cannot happen. It will be an absolute disaster. I think what the Israelis will probably do is drop leaflets over the

the city instructing the Palestinians were to go, but then start bombing the city pretty quickly, far too quickly for the number of people living in the city to evacuate. And as the right cross points out, there's no infrastructure left in the strip for them to return to. So it's not, there's nowhere

for them to flee. All right. So it's anti-war radio. I'm talking with Kalanzlone from anti-war.com. The thing of it is, is they just spent six months bomb in the north and the middle part of the strip and telling everyone, go to Rafa, this is the safe zone and that's where everyone's gone. Now they're going to invade that and you're saying

people have nowhere to go because they already raised everything to the ground, you know, in the time leading up to now. Yeah, absolutely, Scott. And it looks like it's going to be in the coming days. Israel has started to build up military installations in southern Israel near the Gaza strip where, you know, they would move in to invade Rafa. We've seen an increasing number of airstriets, including slaughtering entire families. There are two airstrikes, I believe, on Monday or maybe Sunday over the weekend, that killed a total of 18 children in one night. So we're continuing to see the horrors that we've seen throughout this entire war.

And so even with the troops out of Gaza, it's important to point out that Rafa is still being bombed pretty regularly, and it's just a matter of when Israel really steps up the operations and do what they've done to the rest of the Gaza Strip, which is essentially completely annihilate and destroy everything. Well, you know, I read the news pretty carefully and I haven't really seen anything from Israeli sources or otherwise about just how much success they've had against Hamas. Is Hamas destroyed? Are they about to win the Israelis?

Absolutely not, Scott. And in fact, we've had reports from the Israeli military saying that there's no way they could eliminate Hamas with this war. They're not going to take out the senior leadership, it looks like. at this point, they claim that they're going to take out the brigades or whoever is trapped left in Rafa. Certainly, they've probably killed a few thousand members of Hamas at this point. I've seen estimates as low as 5,000 to 3,000 and as high as 13,000.

I have no idea what the true number is. It's probably on the lower end of that estimate. I think the highest number I've seen from the Israeli government is about 9,000 or 11,000 at this point. So, you know, they're not claiming that they've even. killed half of the actual members of Hamas, and those are the ones that existed before the war. Imagine how many Palestinians may be willing to take up armed resistance against the Israelis at this point after their entire family or their entire neighborhood was destroyed and slaughtered

and they have nothing left to live for. Yeah, I mean, someone gets Stanley McChrystal on the phone and do the insurgent math for us and see what we get. Right, and this was warned about by the current chairman of the Joint. chiefs of staff who warned the Israelis in either October or November of last year that you're going to end up creating more members of armed groups against Israel by laying waste to Gaza in the way that they're doing. Yeah. And all right. Now, what's the latest on the aftermath of the tit for tat there between Israel and Iran, Kyle? Well, Scott, fortunately, it looks like things have

simmered down. Of course, you had the Israeli strike. on the Iranian consulate building in Damascus on April 1st. That was the same day, of course, that they killed the seven members of the World Food Kitchen's team in Gaza, and also the day they withdrew from the Al-Shifa Hospital. And we saw the absolute destruction that was committed by Israel there.

There's a really good article by Brad Pierce, who's one of our writers at the Institute, called Israel's Day of Infamy, on all the horrific things Israel did on that day. But the strike on the Iranian consulate certainly had maybe the most repercussions for Israel because then Iran carried out a massive missile and drone attack on Israel, although they forewarn the U.S. about it. They told U.S. allies, Turkey, Arab states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, about what they were playing to do.

The U.S., U.S., U.K., Jordan, all were to shoot down the drones and missiles before they got to Israel. Once there, Israel shot down almost all of those that got into their airspace, a couple hit. Israeli bases. And then in response, Israel was saying that they're going to do something big, something big is going to happen. And it turns out three small drones are launched against an Iranian base from inside of Iran. And the Iranians say, we declare victory here. We defeated the Israeli attack. And so we come out better in this change. And that's what Biden told Netanyahu to do after the Iran attack on Israel, didn't do a whole lot of damage, didn't kill anyone. It's just to declare victory and move on and the Israelis refused to do so and then gave the Iranians the opportunity

to do just that. Yeah, it was funny in the Washington Times, which is the more conservative paper there. They said, geez, what does this reveal about Iran's overall intentions and posture in the region? They're kind of a little cognitive dissonance there after all the hype of the Ayatollah just waiting for a chance to induce Armageddon somehow or something. And then Seymour had a piece that said, yeah, see, why didn't they attack Natanz? Because they know there's not a nuclear weapons program there. Why do they attack at all? Because they know Iran doesn't have nukes to deter them with. So that pretty much ends the argument right there, doesn't it? Yeah. No, it's a great point, Scott, that supporters of Israel really don't like to talk about is

this would have given Iran a green light for a massive chance to attack on Israel to start a war against Israel and do what they claim that Iran has always wanted to do, which is wipe out Israel. Obviously, they were able to overwhelm the Israeli defenses and an attack that they telegraphed. And so I'm sure the Iranians feel like they're holding a lot of cards and the ability now to deter Israel from an attack on Iran because the Israelis have to assess that an Iranian attack would do a lot of damage to Israel and they wouldn't be able to stop all the incoming Iranian missiles. Yep. All right, you guys, that's Kyle Anzalone. He is the news editor at the Institute and Opinion Editor at Antiwar.com. Check out his great podcast, Conflicts of Interest. Thanks very much, Kyle. Thank you, Scott.

And that's it for anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. Again, that's antiwar.com for the bad news and Scott Horton.org for the full interview archive. More than 6,000 of them now going back to 2003. And I'm here every Thursday from 230 to 3 on KPFK. 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.