Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/19/22 Philip Weiss on the Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

Scott talks with Philip Weiss about Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist slain by Israeli soldiers back in May. Likely because of her profession, the media has taken an unusually honest look at the events leading up to Abu Akleh’s death. Though it was always clear that she was unjustifiably killed by an Israeli sniper, further investigations have only made the IDF look worse. Weiss details what we now know, and lays out how the Israeli and American governments have responded.  Discussed on the show: Enough Already by Scott Horton The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt “Israelis justify killing of Shireen Abu Akleh — and Biden aides echo the talking points” (Mondoweiss) “Israel’s denial of accountability for Abu Akleh killing may require cutoff of aid — Leahy” (Mondoweiss) Philip Weiss is the long-time editor of Mondoweiss.net. Follow him on Twitter @PhilWeiss. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and Thc Hemp Spot. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey you guys on the line i've got the great phil wise just like once upon a time that kind of rhymes uh course he runs mondo wice dot net welcome back to the show

how you doing phil great scott how you doing i'm doing great you know um I'm so sorry that we haven't talked in so long. Sometimes my stomach gets full of this Israel-Palestine stuff, and I just can't take it no more. And then plus, you know, I like to interview Ramsey Baroud just because he's so brilliant and eloquent and from there. And, you know... No, it's great.

There's a lot of people you should be talking to, and also we all get a belly full of this because it's just unending, whoa, you know. And it's like, you know, you see these videos day after. day of people getting their arms broken and kids getting killed and it's just really demoralizing dispiriting. It is completely crazy. All right, we're going to get to the arm break in here in a second. But first, can we talk about Shereen Abu Ackla? Is that how you say it? Yeah, that's, yeah. I don't speak Arabic, but that is, that's how I've learned to pronounce it.

Shereen Abuakla. So she was an American citizen, right? Was she born here, do you know? I don't, I'm not sure, I don't know. But she was an American citizen, and she was shot in the head and killed by the Israeli defense forces back a couple months ago? May 11th. On May 11th, okay. Can you go through and tell us that story? I know they always end up admitting that they were the ones who did it, but they always lie at

first. Yes, they lied at first. I mean, she was killed at like six in the morning as a group of journalists outside Janine refugee camp in occupied territory. signaled to the Israeli forces 600 feet away down a road and clear eye, you know, sight line of them that they were, you know, walking over to the entrance of the camp to see what was going on. And she was wearing a press vest, as were other journalists and a helmet. And yet these Israeli soldiers fired her very tight groups of shots,

so hard to argue that it wasn't targeted. and one journalist was struck in the back, her producer, forgetting his name, I think Alia Moody, and from Al Jazeera. She worked for Al Jazeera. A very popular broadcast journalist was Shereen. She was 52. She was struck in the head and fell over,

and people tried to carry her out of the line of sight, and then brought her to her hospital, but she was dead. And so from the beginning, Israel said, oh, she was killed by Palestinian militants, one line of bullshit, BS after another, and finally, around a week ago, under pressure from the United States government, the Israeli government finally allowed that it was likely that one of her, their own soldiers, had killed her. Something that had been clear to eyewitnesses that day, something that leading media organizations, including CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times uncharacteristically, all it said was the case that an Israeli soldier killed her, judging it from doing forensic, sonic analysis

of ballistic, you know, record, whatever, the recordings of the shots. And so the United States government actually put pressure on Israel in this case because there was so much pressure of a political character from progressives in the Congress, maybe a couple of Republicans, too, but also from these media organizations that here was another case, something like the Jamal Khashoggi case, in which journalists, you know,

stand up for a leading journalist who's been killed in this wanton fashion. And so the United States under pressure repeatedly said, well, we are getting information from our Israeli partners. That's the language that they used over and over again. And we trust them, and initially they said we can't conclude anything.

And finally, under further pressure, as I said, around 10 days ago, the Israeli government admitted that it had shot her. And the U.S. government is saying it's a tragedy, a horrible tragedy, and accepting the Israeli claim that a soldier did not intend to do this, and we're not going to give out that soldier's name, and there will be no consequences for that soldier. Yeah, they said something about a firefight, but there's no firefight. No, they said firefight. I mean, obviously, I mean, not obviously.

I mean, your listeners might, but there are militants, you know, in Janine refugee camp. It's one of the places where Palestinian militant resistance to occupation has been extremely strong. So they had this reason for them to be there, these soldiers, they say, you know, they say, you know, to sort of quash, quote, quote, terrorism. But quashing terrorism has meant since February or so that 100 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed. Israel is clapping down on all resistance in the occupied territories because, in part, because the new, Prime Minister, Yair Lepid, who has no sort of military background to speak of and is considered a, you know, kind of a softy potentially by the Israeli public, has to show that he can be brutal towards Palestinians. He's up for re-election in November. Yeah, of course. That George H.W. Bush,

don't call me a wimp syndrome, right? You got to get out there and crack some skulls. Great point. Great point. Yes. You know, he was in World War II. It seems like he could have just said, hey, I was in World War II, and they would have shut up. But no, he had to invade Panama on Iraq. But anyway, I digress. Yeah. Good digression.

I forgot that one. You know what? Somebody asked me recently, is it really true that H.W. Bush got crossed with the Israel lobby, and that had anything to do with him losing the election in 1992, and you know what I said? I said, you can read it at Mondo Weiss.net. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

That's a hell of a story. And I think I told you before, I was only in, I guess, ninth grade, 10th grade, ninth grade. But I was paying close attention to this whole, you know, end of the Republican era thing that I was watching here. Not that I liked Bill Clinton, but I wanted to see the Republicans going and all that. But, man, I don't remember Israel being a controversy during that. And the Democrat out flanking the Republican on the right and the Christian right turning against H.W. Bush. Nobody said that. Not where I could hear it.

I mean, maybe on specialized proto-blogs at the time or something, but... Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. That was never covered, and as you point out, Bill Clinton ran to the run. He supported settlements in that run, and that's one of the reasons he was able to defeat George H.W. Bush, and even Tom Friedman has admitted this or said this in recent years, that George W. Bush, who obviously came in in 2000, George H. W. Bush's son, he vowed, after seeing what happened to his father, I am never going to get out Israel. And the result was, of course, that he had all those neocons in his administration,

and we got the Iraq war. And as we talk about enough already, and of course, Mearsheimer and Walt do the best job in their book, the Israel lobby, where they show how, you know, Cole and Powell, after September 11th, told W. Bush, we got to do a two-state solution right now. You got all the political capital in the world because of the greatest failure in American history, right? So now's our chance to do this and that they were working on it. In fact, if you read Romando columns from early 2002, it's like the Powell Neocon showdown, Ariel Sharon versus the Secretary State, who's going to win?

And then by summer, yep, Ariel Sharon won and Colin Powell screwed, and that's the end of that. Wow, that's fantastic. And I forget that's in enough already, too. You have it in there? Yes, sir, absolutely. because I quote from Karen DeYoung, the Washington Post reporter, who did the very official biography of Colin Powell, talks about how he worked so hard on this. And then also I have Hemi Shalev, who talked about how Ariel Sharon's men couldn't help but brag about it and how they had beaten Powell.

Yeah, I'm looking at that, but I'm looking at both books on my shelf right now. I'm going to check that. See, I mean, there's so many great details in this history. that, you know, I sometimes forget or haven't seen, and they're just crucial and show how the United States is folded again and again. And, you know, in the case of Shereen Abouacquay, the United States is putting no pressure on the Israeli government whatsoever. And the settlement project and enterprise is just going forward stronger than ever right now. This sort of centrist government that includes left-wing Israeli parties, left-wing Zionists, merits, and labor,

they are approving more settlements than Netanyahu did, and the predecessor, and in areas of Jerusalem that are, you know, killing the two-state solution. Obviously, there's never going to be a two-state solution. It got killed a long time ago, but they're, excuse me, nailing the, you know, the last nails into the coffin. And I'm not talking about QE to Queen Elizabeth here. Yeah. Well, listen, in fact, did you see the thing? I bet you probably covered this, where she was, good on this to some degree and had refused to visit Israel or entire reign because of their oppression of the Palestinians. That was what they said. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, I mean, I...

Based queen of England. That person. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah. And I know Charles has also shown a similar reluctance, right? Pretty incredible. Yeah. Now, I want to go back to something that you were saying about the race of the dead reporter here. Her nationality, not as an American, but as a journalist. And so where the Post and CNN and the New York Times, they wouldn't give a damn at all if she was Furkan Dogan, who was murdered by the Israelis during the Mavi Mamara, right?

Or if she was Rachel Corey trying to protect a family in a house from a bulldozer. in this case, it was part of their fraternity, even though I'm surprised they respected her as one of them at all, but good. I'm glad that they did. And so they went so far as to prove, and they all show the exact same thing from their own separate investigations, the Post of the Times and CNN, as you mentioned there, about what really happened to her. And the closest Palestinians firing weapons were far away and not adjacent. And that was, you know, one of the things originally claimed by the Israelis was, oh, we were shooting at these guys over here, even though, or it was these Palestinians here who shot her, but they were not in anywhere the line of sight

of her, this kind of thing. So it was all, their lies were debunked, and the truth was established from the very beginning, which means that they've been lying this whole time. Yeah, and I mean, I mean, one thing about this that's remarkable is that you look at all the resources that, I mean, these incredible investigations where, you know, Sonics experts were hired to study the, you know, the separation between the rifle, I mean, I'm sorry, the barrel sound and the actual bullet going, you know, these milliseconds in order to determine how far the shot was. And, you know, all these, what I'm getting at is all these resources were devoted spent by

journalistic organizations for something that was obvious from the start. And I'm glad that they did that, but it just shows how much wasted. effort there is in this whole Israel-Palestine conflict because the impunity of the Israelis. And they, you know, as you say, they lied from the start, and they get away with it. And the United States had busted them on the lie from the start. Bitzelam, the Human Rights Organization in Israel, busted them from the start on the point you just made. There was no firefight anywhere near there.

But Selim said, we had a researcher in that area. Here's the Palestinian, there was Palestinian fire, militant fire. But it was way over here, you know, half a mile away or something. And they put that out that very day. And so you had these kind of official lies that have been circulating for four months and have had a lot of power. And it just is a reflection. I mean, we talk about how we got hoodwinked into the Iraq war invasion. I mean, obviously, a lot of Americans participated in that hoodwinking.

But some of that was, you know, official, it was probably. Opaganda lies. And here again, you see it on a small scale that for four months, Israel can, you know, lead the United States around by the nose on these lies. And it's really, I mean, it's pretty horrifying. And the actual conditions for Palestinians are just terrifying. And as you say, the ordinary people who get killed by the IDF, it's not like there are any investigations around that, but a lot of those killings are just equally horrendous. and often include 16- and 17-year-old boys, and lately it included this settler attack on Hafez Harani, where they broke both his arms with sticks, and some of that's on video, and the Israeli soldiers do nothing. So there is apartheid in the West Bank.

That's what we're talking about here. There's apartheid. There's a regime of apartheid where Jews are first-class citizens and Palestinians have no rights at all. Yeah, it really is. like a Jim Crow type parallel, like if you took Mississippi in the 40s

and they said, oh no, one day there's going to be a separate black state in North Mississippi and so we don't have to end segregation and we don't have to give them civil rights or any decent respect whatsoever because one day we're working on it sooner or later than they'll have

independence and then that'll be their own kind of thing. But then never doing it. Never giving them independent to just keep in chloe anyway that's a great analogy i i yeah i mean that's amazing because that's the same thing that israel is doing now is claiming we're for a two-state solution and the united states goes along with it you know we have politicians saying well there's going to be a two-state solution you know and and on that basis you can deny yet another generation of Palestinians, any rights to dream, any, you know, freedom to travel, movement, it's, it's, it's

awful, and it's only, you know, the American government is, is licensing it. Hey, you guys, on October the 15th, I'm doing a Defend the Guard rally in Somerset, New Jersey. Find out all about it at defend the guard.us. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books, real good ones. So far, we've got Will Griggs's no quarter, Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine, and what social animals owe to each other, and four of mine, fools Aaron, enough already, the great Ron Paul, and my brand new one, hotter than the sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons. And I'm happy to announce that we've just published our managing editor Keith Knight's first one, the Voluntarius Handbook, an excellent

collection of essays by the world's greatest libertarian thinkers and writers, including me. Check them all out at Libertarian Institute.org slash books. And for a limited time, signed copies of enough already and hotter than the sun are available at Scott Horton.org slash books. Hey guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model 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

assault 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.org so keep that in mind and don't worry about the mess your wife will clean it up and you know i just come across this all the time too i'm sure that you do too um but people just really don't know they really do sort of kind of it's confusing but they think that palestine is the country next door and when you tell them no no no they were already completely licked

whooped, beaten, occupied for the last, you know, X many decades, if you want to go back to 47 or to 67, right, that, you know, before 67, the West Bank was dominated by Jordan. It's not like they had independence then, but they've been dominated by the Israelis ever since then. So it's not like Ben Shapiro says that, oh, man, they're firing rockets across the Rio Grande from Mexico and implying it's the Mexican government doing it in his analogy. No, no, no. This is like the Navajo on the reservation out in Arizona, completely surrounded by the Anglos who now built this wall and bombed them constantly and all these things. And support the rise of Hamas among them to divide and conquer them, et cetera. And how, you know, Scott, I always go to this question

when I'm talking to you, but I mean, how obviously, you know, this was important enough to you, how important is it to other Americans? I mean, I'm in it because I'm Jewish, and that's how I got, and, you know, was protesting the Iraq War, but, you know, it's my problem because, you know, my people are, you know, the leaders of this Zionist project, so it's in my name, and so. But how much do you think Americans care about this?

We're not Jewish, not Palestinian. You know, I don't know. I mean, I think, honestly, like what we were just talking about, when you just tell them, look, man, I know obviously just by default, we're all supposed to be on Israel side, but here's the other side of the story for a second. I think people generally, my experience is they're pretty shocked by it. And they think we should not be a part of that. That's not right. We all more or less as a society regret what happened to the Indians. What do you mean? We exterminated every last one of them, you know, took every bit of their land in the way. All of that is regretful, but somehow we're supporting this all happening in real time right now in front of us. Yeah. Yeah. And especially, you know, in the whole post-World War II era. Yes. America outlawed countries invading each other and taking land from each other. But then this is the one big exception is our friends of the Israelis get to do whatever they want and steal whatever they want and just land, rustle, whatever they want, and call it the Bible says we can, which is completely preposterous, right, which we count in no other circumstance.

And then also, you know, I don't know, I think when I explained to people how this is why Mohamed Atta crashed his hijacked airliner into the South Tower there, or was it the North Tower, I guess he hit, they go, oh, I thought they hit us for a freedom or something, or that's what I was told. I thought just Dick Cheney hired a hologram to do it or something, but oh, I get it. It wasn't the Israelis did the attack. It was the Israelis motivated the attack with their absolute merciless brutality against the people of Palestine and of Lebanon. That's why. It's a fact. That's in the book, too. Both of them.

Yeah. That I'm aware of. Yeah. You know, what I think is great about your comments today is that, you know, the American people have taken moral arms against Jim Crow. they took up moral arms against South African apartheid. Public opinion shifted on South Africa, and public opinion just mounted and mounted against the Jim Crow South. And I think that process, I think we are in that process now in the Israel-Palestine

under sort of awareness, the consciousness of it. And that's what terrifies APEC, the Israel lobby, and its proxy Democratic majority for Israel, and even terrifies Jay Street, the liberal Zionist lobby. They know that progressives are turning against this whole thing and that Americans are going to follow. There's going to be, and

broadly, American sentiment is changing in answer to my own question to you. I mean, it wasn't a fake question. I always wonder, but I think that is, American sentiment really is changing among young, progressives,

Democrats, women, you know, people of color, all these sort of segments of traditional sort of, or, you know, somewhat progressive opinion or Democrat, you know, that's changing. And I think a lot of Americans who are independents and Republicans are going to go along with that. Yeah, I think that's changed too. I think there was sort of a narrative anyway. This was never really the case. But there was a story that everyone on the right supports Israel unless they're so far to the right that they really don't like Jews, something like that. But that's really just not true. And there's all kinds You know, Regnery Publishing famously, originally had published, you know, four or five books against Israel.

Back then, that was the conservative consensus first. It was Harry Truman's project, after all, you know? And, of course, you know, just look at their role in Linus into a rock or two. The American right absolutely regrets going along with George W. Bush on that. But if they were going along with George W. Bush on that, they were going along with Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter. be and Richard Pearl, aka. And Douglas Fythe and David Wormsler, these were Benjamin

Netanyahu more even than Sharon. But these were the couped agents in America acting on behalf of a foreign power. And yeah, I got a grudge about that, and I think a lot of people do. This is the worst. Man, they started the entire, not just century, but

Millennium, off on the wrong foot with this horrible, stupid thing that was absolutely against America's interests. and it was for the interest of this tiny little country. None of us have ever been to and don't even know or care anything about. Right. And, you know, a couple things you brought up, Regnery, you know, did great books back in the 50s on the Palestinian refugees.

And how, you know, unjust that was. You had 750,000 people displaced who should have been able to go back to their homes. And the Republican Party was strong on that issue. And even Nixon was for bringing the refugees. back, and I think Johnson, too, and certainly Eisenhower. And, of course, it never happened, but, you know, these, it has been a pattern for now, you know, 75 years, and hopefully it's changing. And I think it, I think one big thing that's going to change is that when the American

Jewish community, if it shifts, that's what gives people permission to say it's anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. You've got this strong American Jewish community post-Holocast saying, with a lot of influence in the United States saying you can't criticize Israel. And when that community starts criticizing Israel, and I'm just one of many in that community that starts, you know, it starts giving other people permission. That's true, and I do use that as a talking point to them. Look at how many American Jews side with the Palestinians.

I mean, why would they do that? You don't hear the Irish siding with England? What do they do? And why would they do that? They do it because what Israel's doing is wrong. And they care about it. It's as simple as that. There's no other motive. There's no such thing as a self-hating Jew. What a ridiculous thing for one person to say about another person. Give me a break. What a hollow excuse that is. That's fantastic. Yeah. As Max Blumenthal says, I have a lot better reasons to hate myself than the fact that I'm Jewish.

That's funny. Now, tell me about Senator Patrick Leahy's best day of his life here. Oh, wow. You liked it. Yeah. Leahy, who's leaving office, of course, gave a speech last week saying, hey, there's been no accountability whatsoever in the Shereen Abilakla killing. And there's no proof that this wasn't intentional. How can you say this was not intentional? You know, these bullets were close to one another. How can you say it's a horrific tragedy?

He blew up everything about the U.S. line on this. There's no proof this isn't intentional. We haven't heard from the soldier. He gave a speech on the Senate floor saying that the Leahy bill should come into effect if it's shown that this was intentional. And there has to be an investigation. The Leahy bill bars U.S. military aid to gross violators of human rights. And Israel is certainly a gross violator of human rights, you know, within an apartheid system inside the West Bank that is militarily enforced. and Shereen Abouacla's death was one part of that.

And Leahy, God bless him, is saying, hey, the Leahy Law should kick in here. So that was last week, and it was a great speech. And I think... Wait, tell us about the Leahy Law real quick, would you? You know, I don't know it in any... I just understand that it bars U.S. military aid going to violators of human rights with impunity. And that's the question here.

There's impunity. here. You know, there's no consequences inside Israel for killing this leading journalist. You know, so that, you know, even in Saudi Arabia, there were consequences for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, you know, even if they stopped somewhere. And that's, I think that's helped. I think Shereena Aguacla's death has had a major effect on American awareness of how sort of brutal Israel is and oppressive. And the arrogance here. Why can't they just say they're sorry? Doesn't it matter to them whether Americans resent them or not?

No. And they can't. I did a piece last week on these intellectuals in Israel. They're saying, we're not sorry for this. We need to go down, our boys need to attack these terrorists because if we don't, the terrorists will be in Tel Aviv. So there's this hysterical security argument. Yeah, but they're talking about shooting a journalist, a female journalist, civilian in the face. and killing. That's right. That's right. That's what they're doing. They are justifying that, and the Israeli government is justifying it. That's how far gone that society is because they have been conceded and gotten away with everything by the United States. That's what impunity does. That's what entitlement does. And, you know, that's why we're hated, because we're helping

to bring about the end of that. You and me and a lot of other people of conscience. All right. Now, people can read that piece at Mondo Weiss. Net, Israelis justify killing of Shereen Abu Akla and Biden aides echo the talking points. And, of course, there's the Leahy piece, too, is Israel's denial of accountability for Abu Akla killing may require cutoff of aid. And I'm sorry, I know we're both out of time here, but I love talking with you. It's great to catch back up with. Have a good one, man. I appreciate it.

It's always great to talk to you. Absolutely. You too, sir. Have a good one. Okay. Bye. Bye. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on K-P-F-K 90.7 FM in L.A.

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