Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 9/6/22 Ramzy Baroud on the Deliberate Misrepresentation of Palestinians and the Siege of Gaza

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Scott interviews Ramzy Baroud about two articles he wrote recently for Antiwar.com. The first examines the media’s role in distorting the truth about Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. Scott and Baroud get specific, looking at how the subjugation is often falsely framed as a conflict where both sides are on equal footing. Next, they look at how the current situation in Gaza came about, which Baroud describes as a literal siege right out of the middle ages.  Discussed on the show: “Deliberate Misrepresentation: Western Media Bias Makes Israeli War on Palestinians Possible” (Antiwar.com) Our Vision For Liberation by Ramzy Baroud “15 Years of Failed Experiments: Myths and Facts About the Israeli Siege on Gaza” (Antiwar.com) “The Gaza Bombshell” (Vanity Fair) Ramzy Baroud is a US-Arab journalist and is the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: The Untold Story of Gaza and The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story, These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons, and more. His new book is Our Vision For Liberation. Follow Ramzy on Twitter @RamzyBaroud and read his work at RamzyBaroud.net. 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 show all right you guys introducing ramsie barood regular contributor at antiwar dot com editor of palestine chronicle and author of six books including his latest our vision for liberation engaged

Palestinian leaders and intellectual speak out while he edited it. You know what I mean. Welcome back to the show. Ramsey, how are you doing, sir? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me, Scott. Very happy to have you here. Okay, so we have two very important articles to talk about here. Deliberate misrepresentation. Western media bias makes Israeli war on Palestinians possible. I guess I want to do this one first because then we got to talk about, yeah, I think that'll help set the context probably. For this most important, piece. I really hope people will take a good look at this and help pass it around. Fifteen years of failed experiments, myths, and facts about the Israeli siege on Gaza.

And of course, we have to discuss the recent slaughter there. So, first of all, deliberate misrepresentations. Oh, sir, I think you make a pretty strong case here. Go ahead. Talk about it. Well, you know, for a long, long time we've been believing and, you know, conveying these false ideas that Western media is just bias. And in order for you to overcome this bias, you just have to maybe talk the language that Americans understand or you have to make yourself more appealing. Maybe you have to have a different frame of reference. You know, you see, because once mainstream media gets your point of view in a way that they can understand, then everything is going to be okay and it's going to be balanced and, you know, Palestinians will finally have some fair representation of their narrative, their story, of their struggle. After all these years, I tell you that this is not the case at all. This is not a simple case of bias.

This is intentional. And regardless of the Palestinian point of view, regardless of who's conveying it, whether someone who's speaking with broken English or a Harvard professor at the end of the day, we are going to continue to be ignored by mainstream media. And mainstream media is actually corporate media. Let me put it in a different way. Corporate media has an agenda, and that agenda is pro-Israel, and it will continue to be pro-Israel. I'm not saying we should give up. We should not try to hold them accountable. But that's the truth of the matter is that they have a pro-Israel agenda and it's just part of their editorial line.

And they are going to continue to push that line. Now, you would say, well, you know, what are the alternative sources I should read or listen or watch in order for me to overcome this bias? Well, it's not so simple because we are talking here about some bloody outcomes of this bias. We are talking about mainstream media justifying, explaining the Israeli people. point of view that it's allowing Israel to perpetuate its crimes against the Palestinian people. You know, this idea that Israel, you know, nothing will hold Israel accountable is actually not true. Israelis are very vigilant and cautious when it comes to their image in the media.

And the, you know, Israeli PR, Israeli so-called Hasbara is a fundamental component of the Israeli approach to, you know, presenting itself to the world, its foreign policy, constantly remain aware of how Israel is perceived internationally. And that is the biggest fight. So when you are constantly concealing Israeli crimes, not just concealing it, but covering it, not just covering it, but rather blaming the Palestinians, the victims for it, you are giving Israel so much space in order for them to

operate in any way they find fit. So, Palestinians are to be blamed. Palestinians are the aggressors. Palestinians are the militants. Israel is in a constant state of self-defense. When you keep pushing these ideas, you keep creating this space, Israel keeps

doing what it does. More colonization of Palestinian land, more illegal Jewish settlements, more wars, more killings, more victimization, more aggression. And that's the relationship between Israel and corporate media. And it's not a haphazard relationship. It didn't just happen that way.

It happened by design. And it will continue to happen if we are not aware of it. And if we don't hold the parties involved accountable. Well, so in your article, you have all these examples, especially in the New York Times and BBC, right straight from the top, the official sources of record here and the way that they portray it. And I don't think you exactly phrased it this way, but essentially what they're saying here, they would have you believe that these are more or less equal powers that were with each other here. Right? If you just got here, you read this, their coverage, you might think that Gaza plus the West Bank, Palestine, something, whatever you call it, is the country next door, right? rather than explaining that this is all this territory is under Israeli control.

You know, a guy on the Twitter, we may have talked about this before, a guy on the Twitter asked, has anyone ever changed your mind with an analogy? And someone responded and said, yes, Scott Horton did when he said that the Palestinians aren't like Mexico shooting rockets over the Rio Grande. They're like Apache on the reservation, shooting rockets over the wall on the reservation, we already whooped them. And then I understood, right? But what you're describing here is how they obscure that and make it seem like there's, well, you know, Egyptian Islamic jihad is this gigantic, you know, bin Ladenite nation state on Israel's border. That's harassing

them, I guess. Well, that's not just relevant to this particular discussion. And your analogy is absolutely perfect, by the way. But it's not just relevant to this discussion. It's relevant to the entire so-called Arab-Israeli conflict. And I say so-called for a reason. First of all, what Arab-Israeli conflict are we talking about? The Arabs are not involved in this conflict. They are normalizing. They are lining up to normalize with Israel, and they are exchanging, you know, and they have trade, you know, surplus values of billions of dollars. And what conflict are we talking about? When you are. a country or a nation or a people that is received, you know, at the receiving end of

military occupation, apartheid and aggression, you are not in conflict. You never talk about the black-white conflict of South Africa. You talk about apartheid in South Africa. You don't talk about the, you know, the French Algerian conflict. You talk about the French colonization of Algeria. You apply this to any situation. in which a disadvantaged group is at the receiving end of aggression and violence, you never use the word conflict. In our case, in the case of Palestine, somehow, despite the fact that there are really no elements of conflict, but in elements of people struggling for basic human rights and

basic freedoms, and they are just basically fighting back. That's not a conflict. That's the right of people to fight back that is enshrined in international law, but also in common sense. Gaza is not in a state of conflict. Gaza is a region that under a perpetual Israeli siege that has been going on for many years, they are basically pushed to the brink of starvation on purpose. And I've written about this for anti-war.com previously about how the Israelis, according to Israeli newspapers,

how arts and others, revealed information that they were calculating calories so that Palestinians wouldn't die. They would starve but wouldn't die. So they'll always be at that brink, that state of malnutrition, in order for them to kind of stay at an Israeli leash, basically. And that applies to every other, you know, basic rights, the right to freedom, the rights to education, to travel, to have access to life-saving medications. Water rights, for example, 98% of Gaza water, according to the United Nations, is polluted. Imagine 98%. I mean, it means that practically all of Gaza's water is polluted. How do they run their hospitals?

Hospitals that are running on generators because they don't have electricity more than four, five hours a day. And these are like in good condition. So you're not talking about a conflict here. You're not talking about an equal, like parties of equal strength fighting against each other. You are talking about a besieged nation. you know, that is trying to survive and is constantly under Israeli aggressions and attacks because the Israelis want to make sure that those living in Gaza knows whose boss,

that we are in control, that you have no right to develop any sort of resistance mechanisms or weapons or whatever. And by the way, this latest attack in Gaza was particularly interesting because Israel quite often use the pretense of the Palestinians fired first. Okay, forget about all this context that I just explained, you know, but if Palestinians, you know, dared throw one of these homemade rockets at Israel that usually lands in the middle of nowhere anyway, I mean, not a single Israeli was even wounded in this latest war, but that's a different story. Israel then comes back with its military, with its American jets, with its American this and that, and then they demolish

half of Gaza. This time around, Palestinians didn't fire anything. So technically, technically, even per the standards of corporate media, it's an unprovoked attack. Why nobody used that term? Why nobody used that term? Why was it presented as if just another bout of violence between Palestinian militants in Gaza and Israel, which, as we already know, is constantly in a state of self-defense. So the degree of bias have reached a point where history was entirely rewritten regarding this particular incident. It was Israel that actually initiated the attack. It was Israel that killed 49 people, including 17 children. It was Israel that targeted hundreds of Palestinian buildings and various infrastructures.

throughout the Gaza's trip. Yes, Palestinians threw rockets, but there was no reported casualties as a result of it. And they were still in a state of self-defense. Why do we not hear the word Palestinians have the right to defend themselves? I mean, forget about Palestine and Israel for a minute here. And just think about it in just simple human terms. People have the right to defend themselves. That should be a basic human rights. Why does this right apply to any situation, any scenario, anywhere in the world. But when it comes to Palestinians, you never see that being used in a context that Palestinians have the right to defend themselves. And if Palestinians who are under military occupation, under racist apartheid regime, living

within this expanding Israeli colonial enterprise, if they don't have the right to defend themselves, then nobody does. Because this is the perfect example of people have earned the right, the legitimate right to defend themselves and to resist foreign aggression. No, not when it comes to Palestine, not according to the New York Times, not according to the BBC or CNN. Yeah. Well, look, if anybody ever bickers with a Hasbarist on Twitter for a minute back and forth, it only takes a minute before they get to, well, why can't the Arabs all just move and go live out in the Iraqi desert somewhere? They have all these Arab countries, and we only have this one Jewish country.

So why can't they all just move somewhere else? which at least is being honest now finally about what we're talking about. I want to rustle this here land. And the people who live on it, they're inconvenient. I'd like to transfer them away somewhere. Okay, good. Now at least we're speaking in honest language instead of this Hasbara nonsense. And I challenge people to argue with an Israeli on, or, you know,

someone taking the Israeli side on this, a Zionist, on any kind of social, media. It only takes a minute before they'll turn to fine. Just get out. Why don't you just leave, go away somewhere else. Go live in Saudi Arabia or Iraq or something like that. Go live in a refugee camp in Jordan somewhere. But that's the thing. I mean, it's not only it's horrible, just the sounding of it is horrible. I mean, just because we come from the same Arab race, you know, that of Saudi Arabia. Do we just go to Saudi Arabia? Do we just go to Saudi Arabia. I mean, this is how it works. If you are a white guy living in New York and I come and take over your city and your house, you know, do I say go to Canada, go to Britain, go to Yugoslavia?

I mean, how does this work exactly? Just people, various races have to congregate together. And just imagine the moral panadores box that's going to open up. And there's no no such reference to this in international law or in anything, you know, or people have, you know, Like, well, you know, you have to accept that you've already lost and now get the hell out of this land and go somewhere else. So it's it reeks with racism, with foolishness, with, but there is something else to it as well. This assumption that we Arabs are all the same. I mean, this is so untrue, you know, like any other region in the world, we're not the exception. We're not a shining example of unity, but we are also not the exception of this unity.

Any region in the world, look at Europe right now. They are trying to put on a face of unity, but in actuality, they are divided in numerous issues. They speak various languages or various accents. They have different historical frames of references. They have different priorities. Just because Arab, it doesn't mean that I belong in any space that is claimed to be an Arab. So it doesn't work that way. And on the other hand, this also gives the impression that the Arabs are united in the face of Israel.

As I said earlier, there's really been very few examples. in history that shows that. In fact, this is the main Palestinian beef with the Arabs. It's like, how come we have been living these horrible conditions for all these years and you rarely, if ever, come to our rescue, right? So there is no thing as Arab unity that would allow people just to, you know, just leave in mass and just go live in any other Arab country. Look at Lebanon, for example, where you have this demographic war going on between various sects, various, you know, religious sects, various ethnicities, and religions. It's been going on for such a long time.

The French did not help with that situation when they divided the country, particularly around sects and, you know, and sectarian lines. But Palestinians find themselves at a huge disadvantage in Lebanon. That's why they are not allowed to work over 60 type of professions because people in Lebanon don't want Palestinians to settle. If Palestinians settle and they acquire Lebanese citizenship, it's going to mess up the demographics of a country that's always on the brink of civil war, right? So you can't just simply say, oh, okay, well, why don't you? Well, you know what?

If Palestinians do go somewhere else and now they are pretty much half of the population between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. So you have millions of people just marching into Jordan and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and Iraq and so forth, you know what that's going to create? That's going to create civil wars, all sorts of conflicts. It's going to open up a bloodbath that's not going to finish. All of this, because we don't dare till Israel, come on, Israel, you've got to respect international law. You've got to respect basic human rights for Palestinians. apartheid should not remain in place in the 21st century. We shouldn't be talking about countries that are divided based on.

on race, religion, color. This is behind us. This is all news now. They just be better. Let's be more civilized. Because we don't dare push for that such a paradigm shift. We are willing to sacrifice millions of Palestinians and just throw them into some sort of a desert, which is, again, another racist concept. I mean, you know, Lebanon is not a desert.

Syria is not a desert. But just this whole idea of the Arab desert, wherever that is located in the imagination of some Twitter user who's never been outside of the country. So this is the kind of ignorance we have to deal with at a popular level. And the kind of, you know, back to the article about corporate media, that's the kind of a bias that we have to deal with at an institutional or at a media level. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, enough already.

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Yeah, well, it sure is a powerful narrative that they've got going on all the time and it's, I guess, mostly just because the Israeli Jews are wider and speak English better and have better public relations but I'll tell you I know it sounds silly

but when you see Palestinians wearing American style Western clothes it sure to set a whole different kind of idea you know in the mind you know watching TV compared to watching everyone wearing these weird robes and

all this stuff just makes people seem so alien and distant you know can I tell you something about this Scott can I tell you something about discussed so very quickly because this this was indeed a debate within the Palestinian community during the second intifada of 2000 to 2005 a lot of criticism within Palestinian intellectuals and organizations that we Palestinians are not living the role we are not dressing up we're not talking we're not appealing by the way I wasn't saying that you know you guys should do

this or that I was just saying it seems like it's part of the result of just seeming like a more distant culture, you know what I mean. Bravo, but I've heard that. I've heard that actually from people who care so much about Palestine. But here's the thing, the example I usually give regarding this. In 1991, Palestinians went to Madrid, and they got engaged in negotiations with Israel, and they made no references but to international law, UN resolution, 242, 3, 3, 381, all the good stuff. These dressed up in western clothes.

When one of them, Saabarikat, who passed away recently, there were a kufia, the Israeli, the traditional Palestinian scarf over his western suit, the Israeli delegation made an official protest that they do not want this simple of terrorism to be used in the negotiations, trying to force Saabarikat to take over his just a single element of Palestinian traditional clothing. And you know what? What happened since then? The Oslo Accords, 1993, the Paris Accords, 1995, all the way until Ahud Barak and Bill Clinton and Nogh.

Palestinians did exactly that. They dressed up in the world that, you know, they dressed up like Westerners. They took like Westerners. They hired, they hired Palestinian advisors, whether legal advisors or whatever kind of political advisors, you know, who were born in Canada, in the U.S., born in Australia, so they speak with accents that are more appealing to the people. And what did we get at the end of the day? Nothing. We did exactly everything, nothing, absolutely not just that we actually lost a lot more.

Well, yeah, and what you got was a promise of an independent state that then was never fulfilled. But meanwhile, for the 30 years since then, they've just been colonizing more and more of the territory. That's the loss we're talking about that. And the death rate among Palestinians in terms of. of Israeli wars have, you know, been amplified at a very, very high rate. I mean, like, I lived in Palestine during the first Intifada. I lived in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip during the first uprising, 1987 to 1993. And I remember the daily deaths and attacks and snipers and all these things and been

chased after a thousand times by Israeli soldiers. But what happens in Gaza right now terrifies my generation. We would have never expected. Okay, so Apache helicopters used to come and blow things up once in a while. But seeing the kind of destruction that I see from a distance happening in Gaza right now, it would have been unimaginable for my generation. For the last 15 years, yeah. Okay, so now here's the thing.

We got two major topics, and I don't know how press for time you are. Yeah, I have about 10, 15 more minutes. Okay, cool. So we've got to do two things here. So first of all, I'd like you to address the one state, two state, question here and this does get right into the subject of this piece about the Gaza Strip and the history since 2005 and you'll probably want to go back and do a little bit of prehistory before 05 too but it's such an important story the way you tell it here but i wanted to touch

on the question here of the the one state two state thing because as you were making the case before that you don't see anyone anywhere else saying oh yeah this is how we should divide it if If they said they would let, you know, someday we're going to let North Mississippi secede from the union and have their own, you know, independent black state or whatever, no one would have believed them and they never would have really done it, right? That's just a delaying tactic, essentially. And now we have from the most powerful prime minister, the former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, avowed and said, well, he vowed and said that there will be one security force from the river to the. the sea. Everything west of the Jordan River was the way he put it. So the Palestinians say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. The Israelis say, from the river to the sea, there will be one government. It'll be the Israeli government and nothing about freedom in there. And so,

but that means, though, right, from your point of view, that the two-state solution, whether it was ever, sorry, I didn't mean to combine solution and illusion there. That was the Freudian thing. The two-state solution there, whether or not you think, and I'd like to know, well, you think it was always just a fraud and an excuse, or, you know, maybe it was going to go somewhere for a while until Rabin got killed or some kind of thing. But at this point, I'm pretty sure your point of view is if that was ever a possibility, an independent state in Gaza and the West Bank in East Jerusalem, that that ship has sailed, and it's got to be a one-state solution now with equal rights for everyone. Is that correct? Absolutely. I think the ship has sailed a long time ago. In fact, some people, and I've made that argument myself,

that there was never really a ship over there in the first place. That, you know, from the very division, the whole idea of dividing historic Palestine, that's the land of my ancestors. That's where my grandparents came from and there was no such thing as Israel or a Jewish state or anything. There were Palestinian Jews. They were Christian, Palestinian Christians.

They were Palestinian Muslims. But they were all Palestinians. They were all Arabs. They all lived in that area, and they traced their heritage hundreds of not thousands of years. But the thing is the first time that the discussion became, you know, a bad division of Palestine. That's in the UN Resolution, 181, which I think was in December, 1947, the thing was clearly manufactured to serve the interest of the Zionist movement at the time. The Zionists wanted something to claim that this is mine. So now I have some territories.

I have some legal foundation for a territory within historic Palestine that is Jewish and therefore I can build a state on this land. And of course, Palestinians completely, not just Palestinians. Actually, many, like I was reading an editorial in the economists from back in the day that was saying that it's outrageous that Palestinians or Arabs expected. to give away 58% of their territories, the ones that are coastal, beautiful, arable land to some other people coming from Europe and just handed over just really, nearly like that. So a lot of people thought it's not workable, it's outrageous. The Zionists love the idea, of course, because now they have something that they can claim as

theirs, and the Arabs rejected it wholeheartedly. Now, since then, until today, two things have been happening. Number one, Palestinians and Arabs are being blamed. Remember, when you rejected the division of Palestine, see, it was your fault. You should have accepted it. Of course, they understand nothing about how historical contexts work. Yes, now we are in a hugely disadvantaged position, and some Palestinians still demanding a state-on portion of Palestine.

But back in the day, it was nothing but a Palestine. Someone is coming to take nearly 60% of your land and you can do absolutely nothing about it. It was an absolutely ludicrous idea. Since then until today, we have been... Well, and wait, let me just interject here real quick. That's very important that at the time of the 48 war there, that the Israelis made a secret deal with the King of Jordan, that he would take the West Bank to prevent the Palestinians from even having their whatever percentage it was at that point left. Right. So it's not even just that.

So the remainder of that Palestine, you have the desert, you have the Nakhab Desert, you know, they call it the Nakhav now, and you have the West Bank. And that's the, you know, the West Bank will go to Jordan, Gaza will go to the administration of Jamal Abdin Nasser in Egypt, and, you know, the Nqab is a desert. Who cares? So that was kind of supposed to be the end of it. But since then until today, they are still kind of using that character. of the two states, the two states, the two states, not even the Biden administration in his

latest visit to Palestine, well, you know what, we are still pro a two state solution, but we don't think this is the right time. I mean, they are so lethargic and tired of this deception and this lie that they tell you, well, in conceptually, we see this is working somehow, we're not going to even invest a minute even talking about it. So I think at this point, All the parties are aware of the fact that this is not going to happen. And when we say as Palestinians that the nature of our struggle against Israel has changed, we really mean that. It's a different type of struggle. And you can sense that in the kind of political discourse emanating from Palestinians.

I have never in my life seen the political discourse coming from Palestinians who are Israeli citizens living as second or third class citizens in Israel. close to mine being born and raised in Gaza, and mine being so close to people in the West Bank and people in Jerusalem. We used to have this divided political discourse, divided ambitions, divided political aspirations. Yet at the end of the day, there was not a single unified Palestinian political discourse and a Palestinian doctrine that covers all aspects of the Palestinian struggle and preserves the rights of all Palestinian communities everywhere. Now we are beginning to see the start of this new thinking on Palestine. And this is why my new book, and really this is not an attempt to, you know, to insert the book into this discussion.

But when we decided to write our vision for liberation, engaged Palestinian leaders and intellectuals speak out with Ilan Pape, the idea behind this was we knew that we are at the cusp of something brand new in the political discourse of Palestine. Definitely hasn't been seen since Oslo, but arguably hasn't been seen even prior to Oslo, prior to Madrid, where Palestinians are now finally everywhere speaking, not necessarily speaking in one voice, but are aware of some sort of a unified context of their struggle. And they are kind of organizing and mobilizing around these ideas. So the Palestinians are now aware of this. And the Israelis themselves have made it very clear. There would be no Palestinian states.

And they are not just saying it. They are not writing books about it and giving speeches. They are actually making sure that this is not going to happen on the ground. They are building and expanding illegal Jewish settlements. They are annexing Palestinian land. They are destroying Palestinian resources. And they are pushing Palestinians behind various fences and walls throughout the West Bank. And, of course, there are those who are under siege and military occupation in Gaza.

So the Israelis made it very clear that there. will be no Palestinian states. And I think even though you still have, you know, from a legal, like international law and the political wisdom, they're still talking about two states, but even the degree of enthusiasm that we used to witness back in the day in the Western and American political discourse, that too has disappeared. Nobody is really pushing for it in any active way because they know deep down, or rather on the surface, actually, that there will be no Palestinian states.

So eventually they will catch up with reality. Those of us in the independent media and, you know, intellectuals, civil society organizations, people on the ground are aware of the fact that reality has changed. It takes politicians a while to catch up. But I think they will eventually catch up. And the nature of the conversation on Palestine is going to change fundamentally. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I remember when Hillary, I'm almost certain it was when she was first running for Senate, she uttered,

the words two state solution and people were appalled oh my god what a faux pa for her to use that word that term out loud to say that one day there will be a Palestinian state like it was really controversial and i don't forget if she took it back or just shut the hell up about it after that and she's hardly a radical on this issue you know i think i think you are referencing the a speech she had given to some sort of a youth conference in Switzerland or something like that and yeah I do remember that

the backlash and really for a while there some Palestinians thought that Hillary is our greatest ally and then later on we kind of realize because don't forget that Hillary and Bill they visited Gaza at one point

and thousands of children through other Gaza's trip lined up with the American and Palestinian flags and they were There was so much hope that the Americans are finally seeing things from our point of view and there's some kindness in the way that they perceive Palestinians. But, you know, the rest is history and two-state solution is also history. Yeah, Frayto. Hey, y'all, Scott here.

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signed copies of enough already and hotter than the sun are available at Scott Horton.org slash books. Okay, so we got to talk about the Siege of Gaza, which you alluded to before, and especially the first few years here and how it developed from the time that,

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided on the unilateral disengagement from Gaza. Sounds good. They forced, in some cases, they used force to remove Israeli Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip and grant Gaza independence. So what's wrong with that, Mr. Baroud? Well, yeah. So there was really, they never granted Gaza any independence. And international law was very clear in the United Nations came up with a report. that, then they said, no illusions regarding this whatsoever. Gaza remains an occupied territory, and Israel's remain the occupying party, and nothing changes. But for Israel, they felt that they were engineering something massive here.

They wanted to, you know, hit too many, you know, not only two, but many birds with the same stone. Number one, they thought, okay, Gaza is, we don't have that much strategic interest in Gaza, unlike the West Bank. Gaza is very small. The whole thing is about 180 plus, you know, square miles. Strategically, it's not very significant. It doesn't have a lot of resources that we can exploit. And it has a population that is growing exponentially all the time.

Now, Gaza is over two million, right? So keeping Gaza as part of Israel is going to make the math very difficult. Israel wants to remain at an advantage in terms of demographics. They want more Jews to be living there than Palestinian Arabs. So losing Gaza, yeah, there's an element of sacrifice. You know, a few thousand settlers were taken from Gaza and placed in settlements in the occupied West Bank. The story ended there. And we are doing it without these two million, you know, this demographic bomb that is Gaza.

And not just that. We are going to continue to treat Gaza. Of course, they declare Gaza a hostile intent. So it's not, we are not occupying Gaza anymore. It's a hostile entity, which means that we can go there and bomb and do whatever we want, whenever we want. But what they did not anticipate is that, first of all, international law never went on the side of Israel regarding this. And Gaza remained Israel's demographic nightmare. Number two, they never really assumed that Gaza was going to develop militarily in terms of its resistance, building tunnels,

under, you know, the Bissij-Ghaz Strip, to the extent that they could actually become, you know, is somewhat fighting force. Now, we know that they are not equal parties to Israel. You can't compare the Israeli army, one of supposedly one of, you know, the greatest in the world to homemade rockets in Gaza. But they can actually create the kind of damage that could destabilize the Israeli economy. Indeed, in 2014, 2008-9, 2014, but also in May 2021, just the fact that Palestinian rockets were falling into Israel, it meant that the Bingarion Airport had to be shut down. All industrial areas on the coast has to be shut down. No tourists were going to Israel or leaving Israel during that time. So Israel included billions of dollars of losses.

That wasn't Sharon's plan. Sharone never anticipated that this could ever be a factor in his, in his country's relationship with Gaza. The idea was, as Bill Clinton said it once, we need to support Israel militarily so that they have an edge over the Arabs so that they have some sort of superiority in terms of their military equipments. Yeah, they even have initials foreign unions. It's the qualitative military edge they call. Qualitative military edge, bravo, exactly. Exactly. But Gaza, he was actually talking about Egypt. He was talking about Iraq. He was talking about Lebanon. He wasn't talking about Gaza. Gaza wasn't even a factor. Yet here we are in a situation where if Gaza actually retaliates to Israeli aggressions, Israel is going to be shut down entirely. And Palestinian rockets could potentially reach all the way to north of Jerusalem, of course, Haifa, Yafa, etc.

So this is really a huge dilemma that Israel has. On the one hand, they can't not have the siege on Gaza because removing the siege from Gaza is a sign of defeat. It means that the Palestinians have won. And Israel cannot allow this to happen. But on the other hand, keeping the siege on Gaza without being militarily present in Gaza means that the Palestinian resistance has the power to shut down Israeli economy at well. And this is really where the element of, you know, the element of Israeli failure comes in. You know, this whole idea that, oh, Israel controls all the pieces. Israel has, you know, the power.

No, no, no, no. This has changed. Palestinians too have the capability of striking back. And Israel can incur real economic damage. And this is really, I think, I'm not sure how much of a game changer it's going to be, But it's definitely a fundamental change from what has happened in 2005 when Sharon decided to so-called disengage from Ghana. Well, you know, at the time, the director of anti-war.com, Eric Garris, I remember him telling me that, oh, this is bad. Because, in effect, these Israeli settlers were serving as de facto human shields, protecting the population of Gaza and limiting the ability of the government of Israel to assume.

assault these people. And now that they've gotten them out of the way, it's just going to be a bloody siege and et cetera, et cetera. And he just predicted every single thing that's carried since then. That's absolutely right. Absolutely right. And he said, and in fact, the whole thing of the declaring Gaza hostile foreign entity, you know, kind of further validates that idea. They were so eager to be out of Gaza in a sense, but also keep Gaza under their control. So last time I was in Gaza when I opened the window, the curtains to my hotel room, and I saw the sea in front of me. There's just very surreal, very strange sight of numerous little Palestinian fishing boats operating within three, you know, nautical miles. And at the horizon, like, the freaking entire Israeli Navy there just all covering the entire horizon.

You don't, like, there is no gap. Like, you can't even imagine a Palestinian escaping or anybody coming to Gaza. So it's like, like, when we talk about a siege, we actually mean, like, siege in its most raw and most complicated form. And this is, you know, this is what Palestinians have to deal with. And if a fisherman, theirs, goes slightly above that three nautical miles, you will have this automatic, you know, rifle. or this, you know, Israeli bullets come to just, you know, all around him, you know, poking holes in his boats, sinking the boats and so forth. So there is no escape. It's an actual siege. And as I said before, it's the dilemma that not only Palestinians have to deal with, but now Israelis have to deal with it as well. Yeah. And now, so can we talk a little bit about Connolly's Rice and the election of 06 and the failed coup and all of that?

the Gaza bombshell is what David Rose called it in Vanity Fair. I think people should read it. It's very instructive about the way that they set up. I mean, think about this. I don't know exactly what those statistics are, but I know that back then the majority of the population of the Gaza Strip were minors. So they actually weren't minors. They were the majority. We're the people under 18. So they couldn't vote anyway. And that was in 2006 anyway, which was 14 years ago. So

and oh wait no that's 16 years ago and but so you know how could the people of the Gaza strip somehow be collectively responsible for voting wrong if that was their sin that justified the siege and all of this but even then they didn't really vote wrong did they that Hamas had to form a coalition government with Fatah because they were just barely ahead by a couple of votes right That's right, yes. And, you know, but again, you know, context is very important here. You mentioned Condoleezza-R-R-I. What was happening in the Middle East around that time?

That was soon after the Iraq invasion, right? And the Bush administration was, you know, being, you know, attacked by media everywhere, that, okay, well, you had a plan for war in Iraq, but it doesn't seem that you have a plan for peace and stability in the Middle East. So they began talking about a wave of democracy, a wave of democracy, because the Americans are there. Everybody wants to claim his democratic rights and everybody want to vote. So Gaza was, and along with Egypt, by the way, I mean, we rarely kind of link these issues. There was an election in Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood won like quarter of the seats in the parliament

and Hamas in Gaza and the rest of Palestine, one majority of the vote. So that was supposed to be the American contribution. the Middle East. But what happened is that they were not prepared for this particular result. They were not prepared. And then they began working through their henchmen in Gaza to overthrow the Hamas government. And you're right, there was a lot of interest in a coalition government. Hamas is not that stupid. They knew that they will not be allowed to operate single-handedly. They needed to enter into coalitions. They made. with the socialists, they actually start hiring Christian ministers and, you know, just

really trying to send messages that, you know, you can work with us. We don't have any intentions. But Condoleezza Rice made it very, very clear to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian authority at the time. Any coalition government with Hamas means the cut off of American aid. We want Hamas completely isolated in order for this coup that was to be led by Muhammad Dahlan in Gaza is to be carried out. Now, the thing is, even though the vanity fair, I mean, like, it was very credible, very excellent investigative reporting, the rest of mainstream media did not pick up on that. And so we still, whenever we think of what has happened in Gaza, 2006, 2007, the main

frame of reference is this. Hamas, the terrorist group, Hamas, has won the elections. and 2007, they overthrew the government of Fatah in Gaza's trip. It doesn't make any sense. First of all, why did you ignore the Vanity Fair report entirely, even though the lacks of John Bolton and others are saying, yes, we try to conduct a military coup. Why are you ignoring this entirely?

And number two, how do you overthrow the government if you are the government? Hamas was the government at the time. So what does it mean that they overthrew the government? not just, you know, insanity in reporting and intentional omitting of facts, but also it doesn't even, you know, it doesn't even make sense the way the story is being reported. And as a result, we continue to think, well, Israel has to do what it has to do because Hamas has done terrible deeds in 2006, 2007, and they have to pay the price for it. But when you actually look at the American media saying is the exact opposite of that.

Well, Netanyahu would say, listen, Hamas, is al-Qaeda. Okay? Was that right? Yes, of course. Of course. I mean, Nathanielo played a very important... No, not that he would say that. I know he would say that. But I'm saying, is he correct that Hamas is no different from Al-Qaeda? They look pretty scary with their face masks on TV. Those aren't COVID masks. Those are scary terrorist masks.

Absolutely. Sadly, after 9-11, there was basically... It was just this massive opportunity for the Israeli government to create all sorts of false connections, you know, between Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and later ISIS and all of that. And for the unexamined eye, well, I mean, they all have beards, and some of them wear turbans. So they have to all be the same, you know, because, you know, I don't know that the Christian Democratic Party of Angela Merkel in Germany is the same as a Christian, I don't know, revolutionary group in Nicaragua. They are all the same because the word Christian is there, for example. This insanity sadly registered, and it has allowed Israel to win a lot of friends and allies thinking that they are jointly fighting this so-called war on terror. Palestinians who are baffled by these comparisons, not just that.

I mean, Hamas, ISIS believes that Hamas, ISIS and al-Qaeda declared Hamas repeatedly to be acting against the will of God. and Hamas is not a Muslim organization, and they actually fought actively. They fought in Syria. They fought in Syria. So this whole idea that they are all the same is just, it's predicated on the assumption that these claims would have to be made in American media platforms where nobody is there to push against these false ideas. Nobody is there to challenge the false Israeli narrative.

Now, if I come on your show or you go on anybody else's show, and that audience is never exposed to any other viewpoint, you are going to think whatever I say, it has to be the truth. But your audience are discerning audience. They are going to read mainstream media. They are going to listen to me. They are going to go to anti-war. They are going to go to other sources, and they are going to say, well, either this guy is right or wrong or partially right or wrong.

But in mainstream media, you don't have that kind of diversity. You have the likes of Netanyahu and Netanyahu's friends and allies all promoting the same idea over and over again, and the likes of us, we don't exist in that paradigm. Therefore, we have to deal with these kind of ridiculous notions, and we have to try to constantly prove that Hamas is not al-Qaida, Palestinians are not. It's completely disconnected, geopolitical conflicts, completely disconnected, ideological and historical countries. have nothing to do with anything. One is fighting a liberation struggle in Palestine, and the other is fighting an ideological struggle with very little, if any, grassroots base. Hamas and other Palestinian groups, be it, you know, socialist or not, each one of them

have a very strong and rooted social base in Palestine. What is al-Qaeda social base? Who are the supporters of al-Qaeda that come from represented in various NGOs and communities and cities and towns? So there's no comparison, but of course, Netanyahu doesn't appeal to people who are able to tell the difference. And from his point of view, he took advantage of this messy situation. And he did pretty well in confusing people even further. Yeah. And of course, what's funny about that is al-Qaeda denounces Hamas.

for being a bunch of Uncle Tom's and, you know, sucking up to the Americans participating in democratic elections. You might as well renounce Mohammed, according to I'm an Al-Zawahiri. And then at the same time, America and America's allies in Israel's Lakut there,

led by Netanyahu, they support al-Qaeda, like the Al-Nusra front in Syria, right during this same time frame from 2011 on, the suicide bombers and headchoppers of the Sunni-based insurgency going on in Syria. At this very same time, that they're marginalized in Hamas as being as bad as the people that they actually... And hell, who they still support to this day in their little mini-state in Idlib province.

And yet, it was actually the Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas government in Gaza, that cracked down on ISIS in Gaza. And this has been, you know, a very interesting issue playing out in Arabic media, never reported in Western media, of course, or rarely, if ever reported in Western media. And that is they cracked down. They shut down their mosques. They arrested them. There were clashes. They were outfought clashes.

People died. Many people were wounded. Numerous people were arrested. And doesn't that predate ISIS even where it was some sort of, because I'm thinking of, you know, I guess they didn't really, I guess, in. Iraq, they renamed themselves Islamic State in 06, but they didn't really call themselves the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria until like 2012 or 13. But I seem to remember Hamas cracking down on proto-ISIS, like al-Qaeda-type groups in Gaza

before that, too, right? They did try to start ISIS bases in Gaza, but they wouldn't. They wouldn't. Neither the people know the government would allow them. And people can find that. You can find that where Hamas cracks down on the bin Ladenites in the Gaza's, and just goes and kills them, right? They don't even arrest them. They attack them and wipe them out. Absolutely. And, you know, I conducted a series of interviews recently when I was in Turkey. And I met with

people from various, you know, I don't want to go into too many specifics here, but I met with people from various parties. And some of, some of these guys are extremely bitter. Hamas are traitors, they tell me, because they have done this and this against us in, in Gaza. And, you know, really incredible to think that Hamas has done this against ISIS and al-Qaeda, yet at the same time, in the mind of the average consumer of Western media is under the impression that Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS are one and the same. I mean, just see how, you know, strange and odd this whole story is. Yeah, absolutely.

All right, listen, I'll let you go. I kept you over time, but thank you so much for doing the show, as always, Ramsey. He really appreciate you. Thank you very much, Scott. Keep up the good work. I appreciate that. Okay, guys, that's Ramsey Baroud. He's a regular right there in the right-hand margin at anti-war.com.

Check out deliberate misrepresentations. Western media bias makes Israeli war on Palestinians possible and 15 years of failed experiments, myths and facts about the Israeli siege on Gaza. The Scott Horton Show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, scothorton.org, and libertarian institute.org.