Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/16/24 Kyle Anzalone on Biden’s Weapon Hold, Rafah, the West Bank and Linsey Graham’s Unhinged NBC News Appearance

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Kyle Anzalone was back on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss all the news related to Israel and the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians. They begin with some developments in American politics such as the temporary hold on some specific bombs slated to be transferred to Israel and Senator Lindsey Graham’s unhinged appearance on Meet the Press. They then move on to Gaza where they review what’s known about the ongoing assault on Rafah. Anzalone also provides details on recent flare-ups in the West Bank and in southern Lebanon. Discussed on the show: Connor Freeman Libertarian Institute Author Page  “ISIS Kills Five, Including Commander, in Attack on Eastern Iraq” (Antiwar.com) 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, May the 16th, 2004, 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 editorial director of anti-war.com, an author of the book, Enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive. More than 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org. And this is where I used to say follow me on Twitter, but I quit Twitter to write a book. I'm here every Thursday afternoon. How about that? All right. Introducing anti-war.com's opinion editor and the host of Conflicts of Interest,

the great podcast. It's Kyle Anzalone. Welcome back to the show. Kyle. How you doing? Doing great, Scott. me back on well thank you very much for joining us i know there's a ton of bad news to cover in uh the war in gaza our subject of discussion today but can we start in washington dc and the politics of i guess the president and the democratic party and the white house's policy here there was some sort of temporary suspension of weapon sales in protest over the invasion of of Rafa. What's the latest on that? Right. So before Israel started the invasion of Rafa, the White House lead to the Washington

Post, that they were holding up a transfer of 2,500 pound bombs to Israel. But at the same time, was saying that Israel hadn't violated any of Biden's red lines on attacking Rafa. And, in fact, most recently Jade Sullivan earlier this week, confirmed that even though Israel has moved taints into population centers in Rafah, Israel had not violated those U.S. red lines. Sullivan had also only mentioned specifically the 2,000-pound bombs. And our news editor at anti-war.com, Dave DeKamp, actually emailed with the State Department. And they said refer to Sullivan's comments when talking about what weapons are actually being held up going to Gaza. So it does see, our Israel, excuse me.

So it does seem to be that the White House is only holding up the 2,000-pound bombs and not the 500-pound bombs or the artillery shells that Biden mentioned in his interview with CNN as him being possibly willing to hold them up. But still, this minor policy change by the White House has invoked a major reaction in Washington, D.C., and not just among Republicans. So the Republicans have introduced this bill that would force Biden to transfer all the weapons to. Israel that they've approved. So this would include the 2,000-pound bombs. And Corey Mills, the representative from Florida, has actually introduced articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, saying it's illegal for the president to place any conditions on the American aid to Israel.

And somewhat ironically, he, of course, invokes the Democratic impeachment of Donald Trump for conditioning aid to Ukraine. So he's saying that that's his premise for this impeachment. articles of impeachment now some democrats including richie torres a democrat from new york have said that they will vote in favor of this republican resolution even though biden says he will veto it unbelievable and that'd be amazing if they impeached him for that even the fact that a guy would file in that manner is one for the books anyway right and if it was purely uh you know some kind of satire irony to poke ha ha at the democrats

Well, I might find that actually a little bit comical, but this guy is serious. Yeah. All right. Now, in a way, I'm sorry for wasting yours and everybody else's time on this because it's just so stupid. But then again, it seems to be at the center of a lot of the thinking going on here. Lindsey Graham on the Sunday morning news saying, if America can nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then Israel can do anything to anyone. that's the law. Everyone knows that.

Right. Well, I think this is Lindsay Graham really looks at World War II as almost a religious test right of, this gives you the right to do this. And so when they're talking about Israel laying complete waste and destruction to Gaza, he has to go back to this biblical story for him of World War II of the Americans righteously nuking, hundreds of thousands of Japanese, vaporizing them from the face of the earth, innocent women and children, not specifically targeting military targets. So he goes back to justify that, to justify what the Israelis are doing now. Because, Scott, that's really one of the only comparisons that you could come up with in recent decades of what Israel is doing in Gaza. And that's just how Lindsey Graham, you know,

is a monstrous war hawk. Yeah. And it's funny that this is all in the name of universal principles, when we better hope that the other side doesn't believe that these same principles are transposable on to us. Think about what they have the right to do to us, if that's the standard, you know? As though the Geneva Conventions were never signed. As though Gaza is the Third Reich, the most powerful mechanized imperial force on the planet that had conquered all of Europe. I mean, not Spain because they were lied with them, but otherwise, I mean, when in fact, it's so obvious, it almost doesn't even need to be said. The comparison here is that Israel is the Third Reich, and Gaza is the Warsaw ghetto with this helpless, trapped population being exterminated. obviously

is that what Lindsay Graham would argue well if America has the right to nuke Japan Germany had the right to nuke the Warsaw ghetto and so Israel has the right to nuke Gaza and then how are they going to build

all those condos on all the land that they covet and want to steal if it's all full of radiation did anybody talk to this Graham about that about how small Israel is and how close they are to the Gaza Strip that they haven't yet completed the theft of? Well, Scott, well, Graham is a lunatic war hawk.

Here, this position that you just described has been adopted by the House of Representatives. They actually passed a resolution that adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Museum's definition of anti-Semitism, and that includes drawing parallels between, you know, what the Nazis did and what the Israelis are doing, now and comparisons that just condemn the Israelis, well, not also, you know, you have to condemn what other people have done, say, the Azeris, what they did to the Armenians in Norgoor Karabakh. Or if you're not drawing those same comparisons at the same time, then what you're doing

is anti-Semitic. And by this, again, resolution dotted by the House of Representatives would make it illegal. So this is a widespread belief in the U.S. government. Yeah. Well, look, I think there's a very real risk that if Trump wins, that he's going to tell the Israelis to just go ahead and cleanse the West Bank to America has your back, go ahead, build some railroads, put them in box cars, and ship them off for the Levin's Round, and who's going to stop America and Israel? And why would Trump not do that? We'd be perfectly happy to do that. I'm not sure what was stopping him last time.

the only reason that they prevented Netanyahu from officially declaring the annexation of the West Bank in 2020 was because it was an election year and they didn't need the controversy. But as far as giving a damn, come on, Trump don't care about that at all. He knows where his bread is buttered. And that's Israeli lobby donations and Republican evangelical voters. So as far as he's concerned, you know, Golan Heights, move the embassy. I don't know why he doesn't just make Netanyahu prime minister of the Senate. Well, Scott, I do think political dynamics would change quite significantly in the U.S.

if it was Trump administering this policy instead of Joe Biden. The way the political dynamics work in the U.S. right now, you had the mainstream liberal cable news networks like MSNBC and CNN, mostly condemning these protests. On the Morning Joe program, you have Joe Scarborough calling these protesters pro-Hamai. that they want like some kind of violent insurrection against Israelis and to go out and kill Jews when really they're just sitting around in tents on grassy lawns while the police try to beat them up and drag them around. You know, it's completely reversed of the political narrative around the Black Lives Matter

protest in 2020. And while I think some of that has to do with this being an issue with Israel and a lot of these people are diehard supporters of Israel, I think a big part of it is, too, is who's sitting in the White House. And because it's Joe Biden that's overseeing and endorsing this policy, the liberals don't want to protest against Biden. And they want to defend Biden from these campus protesters. And I think that would completely reverse if Trump were the one in office. And so there may be real pressure for the U.S. to draw and enforce red lines. Not that Trump wouldn't be more supportive vocally of what Israel's doing, but maybe the political

pressures in the U.S. would have some constraint on him. Yeah, I don't know about that. I mean, it would drive the leftist crazy and maybe he helped to further divide the leftists from the liberals, which is good. We need that division. The way Trump had forced them together back four years ago was really terrible. But I think the liberals probably will just praise him. And Donald Trump became presidential today when he went ahead and carpet bomb Gaza himself because that's what they always do. That was the only time they ever praised him when he was present before was when he was.

attacking Israel's enemies in Syria. You're probably right, and I'm being too optimistic. Yep. Sorry, buddy. It's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton, KPFK in Los Angeles, talking with the great Kyle Anzalone from anti-war.com about, well, the bad news in D.C. about Gaza. But let's talk about Gaza. For months, there was a threat of the invasion of Rafa and warnings from the Biden administration, at least publicly. Who knows what they're really talking about? at least publicly, that, geez, we really wish you guys would not do that.

As we talked about, they temporarily or possibly suspended sales of some of the biggest bombs because of this, causing this political controversy here. But then so how is the fight for Ratha shaking out? What's the fate of the refugees? I'm sorry, I should have said at the beginning, folks, that this is the place where the Israelis told the Palestinians to run to. This is the safe zone for all of these months of war, seven months of war. Now they're being told you have to run away because we're bombing there, supposedly to root out the last of Hamas, Kyle. What's going on? Yes, Scott.

So at one point in time, I think there is upwards of 1.7 million Palestinians in Rafah. That number before the Israeli assault had dwindled some. I think some people went bad to con units in other cities. And so before the Israeli assault, the number of Palestinians in the city was between 1.4 and 1.5 million. The city had a pre-war population of about a quarter million. So five, six times the size of the city means a lot of these people were living in 10 cities around the outskirts of Rafa. And so Biden initially told the Israelis that there was a red line around attacking Rafa

unless they had a plan for the civilians on how they were going to evacuate them and where they were going to go. And as Israel was opening up their attacks on the city, the Biden administration continues to say they have not seen that plan from the Israelis. The Israelis have dropped leaflets on areas of Rafa telling people to evacuate to a safe zone that's in the middle of the desert. There's no infrastructure there. And the Palestinians who are already there reported is overcrowded and there's not enough aid.

So, you know, there's no viable plan for the Palestinians in place. Then the Biden administration changed the rhetoric some. They said the red line was around attacking population. centers. And so this was what gave Israel the green light to seize the Rafa border crossing. And you'll remember from about a week and a half ago, this cartoonishly evil scene where you have Israeli taints running over the I-Heart Gaza sign around the border crossing and the welcome to Gaza sign as Israel was seizing the border crossing. And again, the Biden administration said, well, this doesn't violate our red line because they're not attacking population centers.

But Israel then started attacking population centers. They're attacking the east side of the city and have taken the road that divides the city and they're holding it with taints. But not only this, Scott, Israel has stepped up their operations in central and north Gaza as well. So the Jabilia refugee camping around Gaza City, there's some pretty intense fighting going on. And a lot of areas of Gaza are reporting the highest bombing activity in months. 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

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money here. Man, Starbucks support for Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign is almost disgusting as their coffee. Don't you just hate them? You, me, and a lot of other people, too. It's time to boycott and divest from those genocidal blood-drinking traders at Starbucks. But you're still going to need your caffeine

in the morning. Well, you guys are going to love Moondos coffee. It's so good, and the price is right. Check out a massive variety of awesome tasting coffees at Moondosartisan coffee.com. You'll be glad you did. That's Moondos artisan coffee.com and so can you compare expectations versus reality here as far as how bad the

casualties are and maybe like compare it to earlier phases of the conflict no I don't think it really is comparable because you don't have people in houses anymore they're staying in tents and so when you think about dropping artillery shells bombs taint shells on tents versus homes I mean that number of casualties is going to skyrocket. I'm sure there's a lot of chaos in Rafa right now. You've had about a half million people flee the city so far. So about a third of the population. I'm asking about the tempo of the attacks, right?

Like, are people who are just being absolutely mowed down right now? Or it's targeted laser guided strikes here and there around all these people with some horrible collateral damage or something in between? Something in between. There certainly are dropping bombs. in residential areas and killing a lot of people. I just think it's so hard to report on right now, Scott, because there's not... Because they killed all the journalists already.

Sorry. So, yeah, that's a huge part of it. They killed all the journalists already. And what's replaced the journalist recently in Gaza has been Western aid workers. And they're not able to get into Gaza because the Rafa border crossing has been closed. And those who are in Rafa are just sheltering in place right now. They can't go out and look at the destruction going on. Additionally, there's about 20 American doctors in Gaza that are stranded, and they're just

isolated because they're suffering from dehydration. Some of them are taking IVs just to stay alive right now and stave off the starvation. Additionally, one of the hospitals and Rafa has been shut down, and the other two are limited to emergency services. And so the reporting has to be almost zero, right? They don't have time to report. It's just pure chaos and trying to survive. Okay, so I guess let me ask you real quick about the West Bank here.

I mean, I'm interested in the international part of it. I want to skip to Lebanon in a moment. But, you know, for people not too familiar with this, you know, overall, I think it's a truth that the Israelis, meaning the government and the right-wing parties in power there, representing some major percentage of the agreement of the people of that country as well, I suppose. They want the West Bank, much more than Gaza. You know, we've seen Jared Kushner's proposal for like, oh, yeah, what we'll do? We'll just build some condos, and it'll be like South Florida and blah, blah, blah, this kind of thing. That's their thinking about Gaza. But they're thinking about the West Bank is that this is Judea and Sumaria, and the creator of the universe gave it to them,

and they have the right to kick anyone else off of it that they want to. And yet the Americans, their allies, and the Europeans, their allies, tend to stand in their way of such. an egregious thing as a total ethnic cleansing campaign against three million more people and the seizure of the last of the holy sites at the expense of all Muslims in the world essentially right which could very easily lead to world war three right there and so but while all the slaughter is going on in Gaza which is of course commanding everyone's attention because it's the immediate absolute catastrophe that's being inflicted upon those people there's a lower level knockbook going on in the West Bank right now. Isn't that right, Kyle?

That's absolutely right. And if anybody, you know, if people want more information on this, our colleague at the Institute and Anti-War.com, Connor Freeman, has probably written between one and two dozen stories on what's happening in the West Bank since October 7th. And, Scott, if you read these stories, it goes from 100 to 200 to 300 to now. Over 500 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7th. And so in any year, that would be a horrific level of violence, and it's gained almost no attention. There's been thousands of Palestinians who have had their homes destroyed, and they've been the displace for that reason, and tens of thousands of more who have been run off their land. Others have had their livestock attack, their farms at tat, their olive trees a tat.

They've been subject to arbitrary detention and the cruel, most brutal type of humiliation on a daily basis. If you look at the kind of searches that these Palestinians have to go through when they go through checkpoints, they're almost forced to grovel at the knees of their Israeli overlords as they, you know, frisk them down and force them to kneel as they, you know, rifle through their pockets and their cars and all their possessions. So this has the militancy of the IDF has really stepped up in the West Bank. But in addition to that, the militancy of the settlers has really stepped up. It's placed a lot of Palestinians forced them off their land, taking their jobs, their livelihoods away. And so, yeah, there's a real, as you said, slow-moving Nakma going on in the West Bank right now. And it really is being overlooked, right? It's overshadowed in great part by what's happening, certainly in the news.

But is there anything about the lawyers, like in Europe at the UN or whoever saying anything? I guess there was a new resolution. by, was it the General Assembly in the UN to recognize Palestinian statehood? I know it's only to some effect, but there is, in a way, a reaction to benefit the Palestinians going on here, besides the death of Saudi's Abraham Accord. Right. So the U.N. vote, that was last Friday, and the U.N. General Assembly voted somewhere around 140 to 9 with 25. abstentions in favor of the Palestinians being qualified for membership. Now, initially, they were going to actually vote. The General Assembly was going to vote to circumvent the U.N. Security Council, where the U.S.

was the lone member of the U.N. Security Council to vote against and veto Palestinian membership into the United Nations. And so, of course, this would be the government in Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority, that would get the membership we're talking about here. So initially the UN General Assembly was going to vote to give them voting rights and full rights as a member. The only rights that they wouldn't have are the ones that could only be granted by the UN Security Council. But the U.S., China, and Russia objected to this. Russia felt like, oh, if we do this for Palestine, then the U.S. will do it for Taiwan or Kosovo to ram through membership for those places.

And so that was the concern there. And so they just gave them a, I think now they could join committees and speak on all issues, not just issues related to Palestine. And they told the UN Security Council, hey, it is really the will of the General Assembly for you guys to go ahead and pass this. The U.S. responded by saying that if this comes up at the Security Council again, they will veto it again. And so it doesn't seem like Palestine will get full membership anytime soon. No, of course not. But anyway, what's the latest from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon?

So Jason Ditz has been covering this near daily at anti-war.com. The small ratcheting up attentions between Hezbollah and the Israeli defense forces along the border there. The strides are getting deeper into Lebanon and deeper into Israel. That seems to be the major escalations this week. But still, Scott, it seems that both Hezbollah and Tel Aviv would prefer at this point in time to avoid a larger conflict, and they're really still just engaging in these tip-for-tat type of attacks. There's been scores killed on both sides, particularly military targets. Lots of civilians killed in Lebanon as well. Israel has been fairly indiscriminate with their bombing

or maybe intentionally bombing civilian targets, including paramedits, striking ambulances on their way to the scene of Israeli bombing attacks and things like that. and also killing a few journalists in Lebanon as well. So the tensions are still ratcheting up, Scott, but at the same time, there does seem to be indications that no one wants this to turn to a major war at this point. And now, so what's the latest from Khatib Hezbollah in Iraq, which is a separate organization,

but it just means party of God, but these are an Iranian-controlled militia in Iraq. Right. A few weeks ago, there was, I think, one, two, maybe three rounds of attacks on U.S. bases that didn't result in any casualties. And those seem to have subsided sense. Complete Hezbollah did say that they are unhappy with how the negotiations have progressed between the U.S. and the Iraqi government on the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

I think we both know, Scott, that the U.S. really isn't going to give up their foothold in Iraq. but the Shia militias demanded that their government negotiate the exit of the U.S. forces, and both Baddata Washington say, oh, we're engaging in the process right now, but that process doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So at some point in time, they may start to carry out attacks again to bring some attention back to this issue of, we want the American troops to have a withdrawal plan to start following it. Yeah. Look, I think this one is huge.

We've been buried the lead at anti-war.com, although Jason wrote a great article about it yesterday. ISIS kills five, including commander, in attack on eastern Iraq. It reminds you about who's zooming who here. Every time we bomb the Shiites are essentially on bin Laden's side, and these guys still exist. What's left of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, I'm not saying they justify America's presence there, but they justify the Iraqi army fighting them. You know what I mean? So, and here they are getting killed by them.

while america is still on the wrong side of this war right and over the past few months it's been far more happening far more often in syria where mainly the isis jihadists but also the al-qaeda groups in idlib have been carrying out tats against the syrian army and a big part of this scott i think is looking at the situation in the middle east and recognizing that a strong syria or a strong iraq may want to stand up to israel and what they're doing to the the Palestinians and part of keeping those states weak meaning me or you know this may be a consequence of it and not something intentional but if you have a weak government in damascus a weak government in bad dad it gives a lot of room for these uh isis and other jihadist militants groups to fester

out in the desert and to take hold and we're seeing their attacks on uh the the government there that would prefer to bring order stability and stop out these militants yeah it goes back to the Yanan plan from 1980 where that's exactly what he says is just break all these nation states into smaller and smaller warring tribes if we can and what do they care if these are the guys that knocked the towers down didn't knock their towers down yeah right and sky I think this kind of goes bad to what we're seeing from Israel in the west bank I think Tel Aviv may calculate that there will be a never be a better time for them to expand their settlements and more territory and dispel more Palestinians from their land. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, a lot of

states in the region, Yemen, are in the middle of civil wars. They're historically divided and weak. The U.S., you have Joe Biden in charge. You still have a good number of older Americans who support Israel. But if you look at younger Americans, they're increasingly at least disfavorable of Israel, if not outright pro-Palestinian. And so, in some way time may not be on Israel's side. And Benjamin Netanyahu may be sitting there thinking there's never going to be a better time for Israel to take more and more land from the Palestinians. And so I think there probably should be real concern that Israel is thinking about doing a real, another real Nakhba in the West Bank and trying to expel the Palestinians or at least

kit them all into just a few little Bantu stands across the West Bank. Yeah, I've always thought they would need for America to be tied up in a war. in China or something like that but not really they could just run rough shot over Joe Biden and they could probably get I mean they might even really get his acquiescence anyway they're like okay just do it quick or something you know and I think probably the same for Trump it's just you know as Ariel Sharon's advisors told him back 20 years ago it's a demographic problem we got to do something to get rid of these people and so that's the way they look at it strictly business you got to leave the same as it was you know they just celebrated independence day it's the

same as it was in nineteen forty eight we're putting our state here later's for you and simple as that law the jungle geneva conventions never heard of them international law u.n charter or any of this stuff doesn't apply to us doesn't apply to them simple as that yeah and in washington sky i think you have a president that at least for a democrat is his story pro-Israel, and maybe more so than nearly any other Democrat. And so you have the Republican running to his right, and you actually have a third candidate in the U.S. that has some standing this year, an RFK Jr., and he's running to be even more hawkish than Biden on Israel as well.

And so from Israel's perspective, there's really no array in choice as far as Americans, a political candidate in their support for Israel. They're all just, who could be more in support of Israel is what they're. the boats are gone by for. I know. Isn't it just crazy? Joe Biden, like, let that sink in that he's even in charge at all, and especially at this age, but him ever, the worst senator for half a century, in half a century, you know,

and then Donald Trump, are you kidding me? You know, never mind. Everybody can elaborate the rest of that sentence themselves. And then, as you say, even the spoiler is to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu. So what the hell? anyway we're out of time good luck everybody uh thank you very much for your time on the show i appreciate it thank you scott all right joan that's it for anti-war radio for today i'm scott horton find the archive at scott horton dot org and at youtube dot com slash scott horton show and i'm here

every thursday from two 30 to three on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a see you next week Thank you.