NOVANEWS
- Akiva Tor: Arab Spring at fault for blocking a future Palestinian state
- Why I Am Not a Liberal Zionist: A response to the Huffington Post’s ‘Liberal Zionists Speak Out’
- Oren-Asali photo leads to call for Asali to resign from American Task Force on Palestine
- New Pew Center poll highlights growing Egyptian revulsion at peace treaty with Israel
- Al Jazeera’s ‘The Stream’ tackles racism against African refugees in Israel
- Standing up for equality at the ‘Equality Forum’ celebration of Israel
- Publicly-funded Hebrew charter schools serve as ‘vanguard’ for Israel –Forward
- Report from the Palestinian prisoner hunger strike, and the movement growing to support it
- ‘You see that we are rising–no longer in the shadows of the ghosts of Deir Yassin’ –Phil Monsour/Rafeef Ziadah
- Michael Scheuer says Israeli lobby has tied American gov’t down like Gulliver
Akiva Tor: Arab Spring at fault for blocking a future Palestinian state
May 09, 2012
Allison Deger
Akiva Tor spoke in San Francisco Monday, May 6, 2012.
On Monday, Akiva Tor, Israeli consul general of the Pacific Northwest, shed more light on the bitterness Israel feels towards the Arab Spring in a lecture at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Although the event was supposed to focus on the implications of political shifts in the region for Israel, Tor used the event to scapegoat the Palestinians for the stagnant peace process while all the audience wanted to talk about was Iran.
Beginning with Egypt, Tor decried the landslide of votes casted for the Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood, stating, “Political Islam won the elections.” Continuing, “even when this earthquake will cease its tremor,” relations with Israel will not likely improve. And while the former Mubarak regime was Israel’s insurance for “peace with the Egyptian government for more than 30 years,” the new leadership evoked apprehension for the diplomat. Tor then expressed concerns over the government not honoring treaties previously made with Israel because of their “religio-historical” worldview. Israel, by comparison he said, has a “secular historical” outlook.
Also relating to the Muslim Brotherhood, Tor stated Egypt would no longer act as an arbitrator between Hamas and Fatah, determining this will usher in the end of the possibility for Palestinian self-determination. “The opportunity for a peace process agreement has receded,” said Tor, elaborating, while “both Israel and the Palestinian Authority [PA] believe that the correct way to establish peace between us is the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” without an external push for unity, he explained, the peace process is over. Then again, Tor emphasized the moment for a Palestinian state has “receded.” Yet, he applauded the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad for “incredible work to decrease corruption.”
Moving on to the settlements Tor said, “Israel has not allowed new settlements in over a decade” stating they do “not at all,” a hinder peace with the Palestinians. Of course, during the past ten years there has been unprecedented settlement growth in the West Bank, however, exclusively from illegal construction. Even still, within the past two weeks Israel motioned to retroactively legalize Bruchim, Sansana, and Recheilim, violating the status quo settlement freeze, along with the 1965 Planning and Building Act, which forbids retroactively legalizing communities.
During the Q & A the audience was largely uninterested in discussing settlements, Palestinians, or the lecture’s topic (the Arab Spring). Rather, Iran was the centerpiece. (Incidentally the only question on the Palestinians was from me. And when my comment card on the hunger strikers was read, the moderators voice was accompanied by a low, audible hiss from the attendees who averaged as white, affluent and 40 years my senior.) Four questions in a row noted fears of an Iranian nuclear program and displayed a disdain for diplomatic efforts. Tor addressed their concerns and advocated to prevent the Iranian “worldwide” threat by using “deeper and more stringent sanctions” supported by a consumer protest; effectively he endorsed a movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Iran.
After the lecture, I asked Tor if the three legalized outpost violate the freeze? He said no, elaborating that they were “not illegal” to begin with. (this is false.) I then asked if that meant Israel viewed the outposts as already legal? Tor did not answer directly and reiterated that the settlements were “not illegal,” when they were established, though he did agree that their permits were changed. Tor then amicably handed me his card and offered to email me a position paper on this issue from the Israeli government.
Why I Am Not a Liberal Zionist: A response to the Huffington Post’s ‘Liberal Zionists Speak Out’
May 09, 2012
Anat Biletzki
In March 2001 I was interviewed on Israeli TV, on a prime-time talk show, which had the interviewer, Dov Elboim, talking leisurely and deeply with the interviewee for half-an-hour. Lots can be said in half-an-hour. Those were the early days of the second Intifada, a few months after the dismal failure of Camp David II, when Israelis of the Liberal Zionist badge retreated into their shells, went underground, or, most crudely, moved to the right. Those were the days when several mantras were established — by Ehud Barak, among other manipulators of public opinion — such as “we offered them generous concessions and they retorted with violence” or “there is no partner for peace.” Only a few of us held our ground, insisting that the offers at Camp David had not been generous at all (as several reports subsequently attested) and that the Palestinians were equally justified in claiming they had no partner for peace. Those of us who refused to be swept into the general right-swing that, as we now know, demolished the Israeli left were labeled “radical left.”
One of the first questions that Elboim posed, wanting to clear up the terms of debate, was, “What does it mean to be a radical leftist today in Israel?” I recall answering in three parts. First, I said, a real Israeli leftist believes that Israel is unequivocally in the wrong in holding on to any of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (the OPT) and must therefore vacate all those lands unilaterally. Secondly, a real Israeli leftist recognizes the Palestinian right of return. (Rights, as we know, can be realized in various ways; and when there is a clash between rights, solutions have to be worked out. But before any realizations and solutions can come about, the rights must be recognized.) And finally, a real Israeli leftist puts the democratic values that Israel purports to ascribe to before the Jewish values that it insists on ascribing to when these are in conflict.
Within the hour phone calls started streaming in — to the TV station, to my home and to my mother, who is of that unique generation, the Palmach generation, credited with bringing the Jewish State into existence. The consensual attack was based on stupefaction: How could I deny Zionism? As a matter of fact, I do not remember having used the word Zionism, or, for that matter having talked about Zionism in the interview. This was an immediate inference made by listeners: one could not say what I had said and remain a Zionist. So unspeakable was my transgression that a few days later, at a family event, then Minister of Finance, Avraham (Baiga) Shochat, came up to me with a derisive smile and said: “Would you really want an Arab living next door to you?” The stupefaction was then — and still is — on my part. That a serving government minister could so bluntly voice such a racist comment is something that any person with democratic proclivities shudders at. That far more racist epitaphs are now regularly expressed by Israeli officials, and that the possibility of refusing Arab citizens residence in certain communities has now passed into law in Israel, is a sign of where we’ve come since then, and where we’re headed.
*****
It’s been over a decade since those opening, unsettling times of the second Intifada. It has been over a decade that those of us who are accused of being post-Zionist or, god forbid, anti-Zionist have been working out the implications of our deeply held democratic convictions. Things have become clearer (though they are muddied up viciously by those who equate either post- or anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism). Although many would like to redefine Zionism, there is no getting away from the fact that Zionism was and is the articulated project of creating and buttressing a Jewish state for the Jewish people. So contrary to what Michael Walzer claims, that this being a project based on Jewishness (peoplehood) rather than Judaism (religion) makes it different, the insistence on a Jewish state makes it impossible for those who are not of that people, not to mention that religion, to be equal citizens. Minority groups in Norway can be Norwegian; minority groups in England can be English; even minority groups in Israel can be Israeli, but they can’t be Jewish! And if Jewishness is a matter of peoplehood rather than religion, then we are indeed saddled with a formal ethnocracy, not much better than a theocracy. (It is poignant to see that Walzer begins his thoughts by connecting to his Bar Mitzvah, an explicitly religious ceremony. Not for naught is this whole series taking place on the Religion page of the Huffington Post…)
More significantly, it seems that liberal Zionists will never forsake the Jewish majority as the essence of the State of Israel since precisely that majority is what — they think – makes the state a democracy. But no democracy should determine or foretell the identity of its citizenry. What shall we do in a century or two from now if or when Israeli Arabs, i.e., Palestinian citizens of Israel, just naturally become a majority (through natural reproduction rates, or Jewish emigration, or any other unforeseeable vagary of history)? Shall we cast all Arab sons born into the sea?
So, beyond all the casuistic debates and long-winded conceptual to-and-fros, the impossibility of being a consistent liberal Zionist derives, as I realized in that interview long ago, from the dead-end one reaches with the conflict between values. If Zionism has been based on a set of values — any values — that “override whatever injustices statehood has brought” (Walzer), then it has taken us as far as one can get from the set of values that undergird liberal democracy. Holding on to those values means cherishing the option of a Palestinian living next door, and rejecting Jews who refuse the Palestinian next door. I would rather be righteous than self-righteous.
This post originally appeared in the Huffington Post in response to its series Liberal Zionists Speak Out.
Oren-Asali photo leads to call for Asali to resign from American Task Force on Palestine
May 09, 2012
Adam Horowitz
Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and the American Task Force on Palestine’s Ziad Asali at an “independence day” celebration organized by the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.
Controversy has surrounded the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) since Haaretz’s Natasha Mozgovaya tweeted a photo of the Task Force’s President Ziad Asali at an “Independence Day” party held at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. ATFP’s Hussein Ibish has issued a response to critics at the Daily Beast’s Open Zion blog:
ATFP works to bring Palestinians and Americans closer together, and to maintain strong relations with Palestinian and American leaders and working relations with Israeli officials. This is the only approach that anyone based in the United States who seriously wants to achieve anything practical for peace, or to improve the lives of Palestinians, can actually take.
Mozgovaya’s photograph merely reconfirms what ATFP has always openly and frankly pursued: a public and strategic display of continued contact with the Israeli establishment to promote the goals of peace and ending the occupation.
Not sure that will assuage the critics. There is a petition at Change.org calling for Asali to step down. From the petition:
Dear Members of the Board of Directors of the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP):
We—Palestinian-Americans, Palestinians living, working, and studying in the United States, and Americans in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle—are writing to express our outrage at the conduct of Ziad Asali, ATFP President. Most recently, we are appalled by his decision to attend an “independence day” celebration organized by the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.
As Palestinians all over the world gather to mourn and remember the Nakba, the great trauma and crime of ethnic cleansing committed against our society, it is intolerable to find that Ziad Asali, a man who purports to represent Palestinians, chose to celebrate this time with the very perpetrators of the Nakba.
More than 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their historic homeland during the Nakba in 1947-48. These were our grandparents, our parents and their grandparents. Everything was stolen from them – from all of us. Our hearts have been carved out by this monumental crime that has never really ceased. The Nakba continues to this day with daily expulsions, home demolitions, and the constant death that rains on our people without mercy by a state with the most powerful military machine in the Middle East, the same state that Asali celebrated!
We are all baffled, stunned, and left feeling betrayed by the images of Asali posing with smiles in a suit next to Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. in what amounts to a celebration of the greatest wound in the Palestinian psyche – a boundless collective pain that we pass on from one generation to another in hope of redemption, of justice, and the restoration of our dignity as native sons and daughters of Palestine.
How dare he? At a time when Palestinian prisoners are on the brink of death by starvation to protest the endless injustice against our people, Asali poses with smiles next to Oren, an American immigrant to Israel and chief propagandist in the U.S. for Israeli state policies that are tantamount to war crimes.
By attending this Israeli celebration, Asali is complicit in the attempts to legitimize a monumental trauma that we have suffered as a people and a nation struggling for its very survival. There can be no retreat from such a disgrace. There can be no justification. And no credibility can be salvaged for ATFP as long as Asali remains associated with this organization.
Ahmed Moor sent along the petition and adds:
Ziad Asali, one of Washington’s dim-lit, flickering lampposts, made a silly blunder recently. The president of the American Task Force on Palestine recently attended an “independence day” celebration. But it wasn’t anything to do with the Fourth of July – the event was organized by the Israeli embassy in Washington. And the celebration was in honor of Israel – that light unto nations.
It’s worth noting that Asali’s lack of integrity and historical sensibility (what is the Nakba, anyway?) is nothing exceptional for ATFP. The organization has long been a integral part of the Israel Lobby.
Read the full petition here.
New Pew Center poll highlights growing Egyptian revulsion at peace treaty with Israel
May 09, 2012
Alex Kane
An Egyptian protester outside the Israeli embassy last August (Photo: AP)
Noam Chomsky’s analysis of US foreign policy after the Arab Spring boils down to this maxim: “The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.” Anewly released poll from the Pew Research Center on Egyptian political attitudes explains why Chomsky is right.
The Pew Research Center poll shows antipathy towards the US and Israel–an expected result if you follow data on Arab and Muslim attitudes towards the West and Israel.
Here are the relevant numbers: 60% of Egyptians say that US economic and military aid to Egypt has a “detrimental impact”; almost 40% want a distancing of the Egypt-US relationship; 80% view the US unfavorably; and 61% of Egyptians want to annul the peace treaty with Israel. That result is up from last year’s, which showed that 54% of Egyptians wanted to toss the treaty out.
The Pew Center also notes that “opposition to the treaty has grown significantly over the last year among young people and the highly educated. Support for annulling the treaty has increased by 14 points among 18-29 year-olds and by 18 points among the college-educated.”
The fact that about the same number of Egyptians dislike US aid and the country’s treaty with Israel is no coincidence. The $1.3 billion in funds the US transfers to Egypt’s military every year is, first and foremost, about making sure the military keeps the treaty with Israel, a sacrosanct pillar of US policy in the region.
There will be those on the right who say that these types of poll numbers show that Israel needs to hunker down in its fortress literally protected by walls on all sides. They will say that Benjamin Netanayhu, Israel’s prime minister, was right when he told the Knesset that the Arab Spring is an “Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave.” Netanyahu went on to say that the Arab uprisings show why Israel cannot move forward on peace with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s right on one thing: the new uprisings in the Arab world are not good for Israel. But it’s precisely because of Israeli policy that a new democratic region would mean a loss of Israeli power. Egyptians want the 1979 peace treaty to be overturned because of their disgust with Israel’s system of control over the Palestinians. The treaty spoke of moving towards “autonomy” for Palestinians, something that we’re not any closer to 30-plus years later. So in fact, the precise reason why Israel’s footing in the region is off-balance is because the masses of people in the Arab world are fed up with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
The Obama administration talks of democracy in the Middle East. But their actions speak to the truth that the US still wants to prevent authentic democracy. In March, the State Department “certified to Congress that Egypt is meeting its obligations under its Peace Treaty with Israel,” paving the way for the $1.3 billion to be forked over even as a dispute over a crackdown on NGOs in Egypt continued. The State Department announcement of the certification repeatedly praised Egypt’s new democratic turn.
Over a month later, Egyptian security forces killed 9 protesters calling for an end to the rule of Egypt’s military council. The weapons used to kill were made here and bought with US dollars–all for the purpose of quelling further protests that could destabilize an Egyptian regime eager to stay close to the US and Israel. No wonder why, as Chomsky says, “the U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.”
Al Jazeera’s ‘The Stream’ tackles racism against African refugees in Israel
May 09, 2012
Allison Deger
Over the past five years racism in Israel against Africans, Sudanese and Eritrean refugees, has swelled. In discourse, it rivals that of racism against Palestinians. And with 40,000 to 45,000 refugees entering Israel since 2007, coupled with no comprehensive placement policies for asylum seekers, racism against this group will only increase. Yesterday, Al Jazeera‘s The Stream covered the recent vigilante attacks against African communities in Israel, increases in prison terms for undocumented immigrants (up to three years incarceration before deportation) and the existential questions of Israel’s Jewish character. Guest of the program and writer for +972 Magazine, Mya Guarnieri, closes the show with: if Israel is a Jewish state, “where do non-Jews fit into it?”
Watch the program in full here.
All Tweets tagged with #ajstream appear live online in The Stream’s website Twitter feed.
Guarnieri was joined by fellow guests, Sanjeev Bery, Middle East Director at Amnesty International; Yohannes Bayu, Founder and Executive Director for the African Refugee Development Center; and Mondoweiss contributor David Sheen.
Exposing racism as a day-to-day practice, The Stream also showed this video clip first posted on the Electronic Intifada by Jalal Abukhater where an Israeli woman is asking people on the street to sign a petition to not deport refugees. The first petition is for a Danish girl and all of the people stopped sign it. The second petition is for a Sudanese child. No one signs it.
Standing up for equality at the ‘Equality Forum’ celebration of Israel
May 09, 2012
Matthew Graber
Members of Philly’s LGBTQ community protest
outside Equality Forum
Last Thursday evening, I was a part of a group of about 20 people gathered outside of the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Philadelphia to demonstrate against the decision of the “Equality Forum” to have Israel as this year’s “featured nation” and to partner with the Israeli Ministry of Tourism and the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
By collaborating with the Government of Israel, the “Equality Forum” is lending itself to a seven-year multi-million dollar advertising campaign by the state, called “Brand Israel”, which seeks to portray Israel as “modern and progressive”, and to distract from Israel’s violent policies towards the indigenous Palestinian population of segregation and expulsion. The “Equality Forum”, as a conduit to the Philadelphia LGBTQ community, is the ideal venue for Israeli government officials and those they have paid to speak to pinkwash Israel – to appropriate queer voices in an effort to portray Israel as a “gay haven”, and to silence critique of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians.
The majority of passersby were curious and supportive of the demonstration. They were also outraged by Israel’s continuing treatment of Palestinians, and they wanted to learn more about pinkwashing. But there were several individuals who confronted us and threatened us.
One woman passing by was disturbed by the prospect of granting equal rights to non-Jewish Palestinians living under military occupation. Invoking the holocaust, she said that the Jewish people must have a safe place to go. I agree completely with this, but the Zionist mentality behind this sentiment – the idea that there must be an exclusive Jewish state – is used to justify the Government of Israel’s home demolitions, evictions, and violence against Palestinians.
Another disturbing confrontation occurred between a worker at the Doubletree Hotel and one member of our group, Ahuviya Harel. The worker was telling us to leave the public sidewalk in front of their property. Harel, a transgender woman in our group, needed to correct his pronoun usage at one point, saying, “I am a woman. Use the ‘she’ pronoun when you are speaking about me!”
The Doubletree worker responded by saying, “Oh yeah? Let me go clock out and then I will show you what I really think.”
Then, as the “Israel panel” of the “Equality Forum” concluded, the moderator of the panel, Nurit Shein, came out as we were wrapping up our demonstration. We told her why we were there, and what she was supporting by collaborating with the Government of Israel. Harel then told Shein that she was threatened with violence because of her appearance in regards to gender and presentation.
“Don’t play the trans card with me!” Shein lashed back.
Such a statement takes the side of the worker of the Doubletree Hotel, and ignores Harel’s own need for safety and protection. Shein also repeatedly referred to Harel using the pronoun ‘he’, intentionally perpetrating transphobia. Shein justified her support for violence, transphobia, and transmisogyny by saying to Harel, “You disrespect the trans people I work with every day,” as though Harel’s status as a transgender woman who stands up for Palestinian rights precludes her from the safety and consideration of other transgender individuals.
Shein is the Executive Director of the Mazzoni Center, the largest provider of LGBTQ health services in Philadelphia. She previously served for 20 years as a Colonel for “Military intelligence” in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
The confrontations and conversations we had highlight why we were there in front of the Doubletree Hotel. Only by offering mutual support to victims of state and interpersonal violence and trauma – whether perpetrated in the name of anti-trans misogyny or ethnic cleansing and demographics in a Jewish state – can true equality be created.
Publicly-funded Hebrew charter schools serve as ‘vanguard’ for Israel –Forward
May 09, 2012
Philip Weiss
Great reporting by Naomi Zeveloff and Nathan Guttman at the Forward on the extent to which the Jewish charter school movement, which establishes Hebrew-language schools using public funds, is serving a frankly Zionist agenda. The piece demonstrates that Zionism has become central to American Jewish identity, and also, I hope, marks a turning point in American Jewish attitudes towards these schools, dedicated to helping a foreign country. Excerpt:
Yet, as Hebrew charters have overcome stereotypes of being parochial Jewish institutions, they’ve also positioned themselves as more than just schools. Many, though not all, Hebrew charters see themselves as fonts of Israel education that will cultivate students — both Jews and non-Jews — to serve as goodwill ambassadors for Israel in the years ahead.
“I often dream of what the graduates of our Hebrew-language charter schools will look like 20 years from now,” wrote Sara Berman, the chair of the Hebrew Charter School Center [HCSC] in the Spring 2011 issue of Contact, the journal of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. “I see them as a vanguard of understanding for Israel and for cultural respect in general.”
Charter schools are publicly funded but privately sponsored primary and secondary schools that pledge, in exchange for their taxpayer support, to meet certain standards put forth in charter agreements with state or local education boards. Many also receive private funds from their sponsoring institutions. Most charter schools operate on a lottery system; families who want to send their children to the schools are picked at random…
One goal of the curriculum at Brooklyn’s Hebrew Language Academy [HLA]— HCSC’s first school [Hebrew Charter School Center]— “is to foster a love for the country of Israel in all of its diversity,” said Principal Laura Silver.
At HLA, whose 306 students are 45% non-white, the Israeli flag hangs alongside the Stars and Stripes…
“A passionate, Israel-oriented, Hebrew-speaking community will almost certainly support Israel and stay connected to Judaism,” wrote [San Diego’s Jennie] Starr in the Autumn 2011 issue of Contact, describing Kavod
Report from the Palestinian prisoner hunger strike, and the movement growing to support it
May 09, 2012
Adam Horowitz
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is holding an emergency fundraising drive to cover the work they’re doing to support the prisoner hunger strike. From their website:
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is fighting for the medical rights of Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahala, among others, Palestinian administrative detainees in the advanced stages of a hunger strike. We are in urgent need of financial support. Following the submission of 16 court petitions on behalf of hunger strikers since January, PHR-Israel’s allotted legal funds for the year are now fully depleted.
We are concerned that we will not be able to continue to defend the rights of of prisoners on hunger strike, nor take on any more of the scores of new cases we are currently monitoring.
To learn more see here.
‘You see that we are rising–no longer in the shadows of the ghosts of Deir Yassin’ –Phil Monsour/Rafeef Ziadah
May 09, 2012
Annie Robbins
Look at the children’s faces. And the old people’s. “They pretend that it’s forgotten… You see that we are rising… Our day is surely coming… No longer in the shadows of the ghosts of Deir Yassin”
They pretend that it’s forgotten
But somewhere small flowers grow
On the weathered stones of destroyed homes
Somewhere the light’s still in the window
You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin
They change the names on the signs
But it’s in our hearts these words are written
Of the children who don’t know their homes
They will walk the streets from which they are forbidden
You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin
Of the old ones now passed on
But it’s their blood our hearts are pumping
They will walk with us when we return to their towns
Whose names will live again
You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin
You see that we are rising
You know the fear is gone
We will return
You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
We are no longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin
You see that we are rising our day is surely coming
No longer in the shadows
Of the ghosts of Deir Yassin
Michael Scheuer says Israeli lobby has tied American gov’t down like Gulliver
May 09, 2012
Philip Weiss
In Chicago, WLS drive-time radio interviews former CIA official Michael Scheuer (thanks to this neocon site and Mark). Excerpts:
Sixteen years after the start of this war, we still hear Mr. Obama and John McCain and Mitt Romney and the British Prime Minister and the rest of them teling their electorates that we’re at war because they hate women in the work place and they hate elections and liberties….
They’re at war with us because of what our government does, not the way we live at home. As long as we are not adult enough to accept that… it certainly means that we ought to know that our policies are having an immense cost.
Host: What policies?
Surely our support for the Saudi Police state, our presence on the Arab peninsula, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Afghanistan, our unqualified support for Israel. The intersting thing sir is that these were all outlined by bin Laden in his declaration of war in 1996. Our political leaders in both parties have consistently told Americans in essence, forget what our enemy is saying, we know better what they’re thinking than they do. So we’re in this position that we believe that they’re all madmen and there’s only a limited number of them that we can kill one at a time.
Host: Would you change our policy with Israel and Saudi?
We can’t sir, we can’t do either one. The Israeli lobby controls our politics and the Saudi Arabians controls the most important reserves of oil. The United States government is like Gulliver, it’s strapped to the ground…. We’re stuck in the middle east and we’ll have to keep taking the pounding we’ve been taking….
Because we’ve taken no cognizance of [our enemies’ motivation], we’ve given the next generation away to the Islamists. We’ve made no dent in the appeal of people who want to get us out of their neighborhood…
You don’t have to change your policies. If you want to support the Israelis [that’s fine].. But we ought not to believe that the enemy is not inspired by that…