Oct. 21, 2023 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, I encourage you to buckle up for a blockbuster broadcast this Saturday evening, October the 21st, when Mark Weber, the director of the Institute for Historical Review, our good friend, kicks things off this evening as he provides expert opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
As you know, from his regular appearances on this program, Mark is an accomplished historian, lecturer, current affairs analyst, and author.
He was educated in the United States and Europe and holds a master's degree in modern European history.
My friend, you have your work cut out for you tonight.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Yes, this has been a topic that's gotten the world's attention in the last few weeks.
That's for sure.
Well, as I've said before, not only could we not find someone better suited to have on the program tonight to break it down, I don't think anyone could.
As I've said before, and I'm happy to say it again, if we lived in a country with a serious media, you'd be anchoring your own Sunday morning current affairs program.
But you are particularly well prepared to provide reason perspective, given your keen decades-long interest on this intractable conflict, and more importantly, the development and character of the U.S.-Israel special relationship, quote-unquote.
So, again, so many facets, so much history behind this thing.
This isn't something that just kicked off this week.
I hardly know where to begin.
So, Mark, you sent me an outline.
Let's start there.
Well, gosh, where to start?
Maybe we can start with Joe Biden's talk the other night.
Two nights ago, he gave a radio address, a television address to the country.
And in this talk, he gave the justifications for the continuing U.S. support for Israel, standing with Israel.
As I listened to the talk, I was reminded about who this guy is who's doing the talking.
How anybody can believe he's any person to follow with regard to the Middle East or anything is an astonishing thing.
This is a person who supported the Iraq war, which now, of course, everybody's embarrassed by.
He was wrong about that, as he supported the calamitous Afghanistan war and claimed, oh, we've got to keep going there because if we don't defeat Taliban in Afghanistan, it's a vital interest of the United States that we keep that too.
Well, of course, it isn't a vital interest, and he got out.
Most people are happy we got out after 20 years.
But he's been so wrong about so many issues in the past, it's no surprise that he has very little credibility in this case.
But he gave the usual reasons for the United States supporting Israel at a time when Israel's policies are under tremendous and increasing criticism from around the world, and increasingly even here in the United States.
You know, he talked about supporting Israel as a vital interest.
It's not a vital interest of the United States.
Israel didn't even exist until 1948.
The United States somehow cranked along pretty well up until 1948 without Israel.
And to put it in those terms is completely wrong.
The essential problem is that the U.S. strong support for Israel, in fact, stronger than that of any other country, I mean, both on the side of the United States for Israel.
And this is not motivated by any clear-eyed, reasonable assessment of what's good for America or the world.
It's based on the tremendous power that the organized Jewish community has in the United States.
And that's why when Benjamin Netanyahu comes to the United States and speaks to the Congress, he gets more rapturous applause than the American president of either party ever gets.
He gets more applause from the American politicians than he does from his own parliament in Israel.
And that's a reflection of this grip that we've had on the American foreign policy, but particularly in the Middle East for many, many years.
I was reminded, I was looking this just up, in 1957, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles commented privately.
He said, I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy in the Middle East not approved by the Jews.
He said, he talked of, and I'm quoting, the terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage with the Jews, which the Jews have built up on Congressmen.
I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get Congress to do anything they don't approve of.
The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the Congress through influential Jewish people in the country.
And that was the Secretary of State of the United States in 1957.
Already in 1948, the Secretary of State George Marshall, who had been the chief of staff of the U.S. military in World War II, he warned that even recognizing Israel was putting partisan political interests ahead of the interests of America and ahead into the interests of the world.
That was already in 1948.
The situation has continued since then.
Now, there is a change because the credibility of the United States leaders of both parties has fallen tremendously since 1948 and 1957.
And there's a lot more pushback and a lot more skepticism of these kind of claims by Biden that he made the other day than there would have been by an American president 10 or 20 years ago.
Anyway, the big thing is that this is, again, the typical kind of way that Joe Biden presents things.
And you're supposed to forget what the calamitous results of his policies have been in the past.
It's incredible that an American president like Biden talks about how, I'm quoting, he said, American leadership is what holds the world together.
Well, that's just crazy.
Some people would argue his kind of leadership isn't even holding America together, much less the world.
China and India and Russia, they're going to continue on and go their way regardless of what the United States does or doesn't do.
And Joe Biden is trying to hold on to a position of the United States in the world that's no longer feasible.
It was workable during the 1950s or 60s or 70s when American power was much, much greater in the world relative to the rest of the world than it is today.
The United States doesn't have that ability.
In the last 30, 40 years, America's efforts to uphold what they call democracy or whatever around the world have been failures.
There's much more to be said about this, but the important point is that not only is it unrealistic for the United States to take this position, it's against American interests and it's less and less even tenable in the world.
And that's A main thing to keep in mind about what Biden and the U.S. Congress are doing when they justify a policy that's not based on any clear-eyed idea of what's good for America or the world, but rather who pays the bills, who funds re-election campaigns and so forth.
How about that for an opening salvo, gang?
Mark Weber, IHR.org.
Just to recap, and I'm reading from Mark's notes there about this segment that he just delivered to you.
He's talking about this special ironclad, so-called ironclad U.S.-Israel relationship not being based on a clear-eyed assessment of what's good for America or the U.S. national interest or even what's good for the world, but rather an expression of the enormous power and influence of this country's organized Jewish community.
And then, yes, of course, Mark, I saw this thing and I saw where Biden was giving this prime time address from the Oval Office, which is, of course, rarely done.
And when it is done, you know, something exceptionally unique is happening.
And I guess could have surmised that it was going to be about what's going on there.
But with interest in funding the war in Ukraine, failing, he goes on television and asks for what, $100 billion for Ukraine and Israel.
We'll pick up right there when we come back with Mark Weber.
Stay tuned.
Hey there, TPC family.
This is James Edwards, your host of the political cesspool.
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In message one, we said that Satan, the father of lies, John 8:44, gave the left evil spiritual power the more they use the lies.
The political left today is the beast.
Now, the Bible confirms that the dragon gave him the beast his power.
Revelation 13, 2.
The extra evil spiritual power that comes from the beast by their lying is what accounts for the string of the leftist criminals in the government that have never yet been prosecuted.
It also explains why American capitalists support communism in the 21st century.
Note one, that behavior of capitalists was predicted by Vladimir Lenin, a sell of the beast.
Note two, Henry Ford was a capitalist and he would have never gone communist.
The difference between Ford and the present day end-time capitalists is that Ford was born and educated in the kingdom of Christ, 19th century America, the New Jerusalem, Revelation 21.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, Mark Weber, our guest, IHR.org, Institute for Historical Review, offering opinion and analysis as only he can to the latest manifestation of the seemingly never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine.
what's happening over there in Gaza, taking some broad strokes there in the first segment.
But yes, Mark, where we ran into the break, we were talking about Biden going on this national television address to the whole country a couple of days ago, asking for another $100 billion that's going to be split somehow between Ukraine and Israel.
And you touched on this, but I found a recent poll that you and I were looking at via our email exchange.
And what do you think that this portends?
That this was a CNN poll, finds that 81% of Americans aged 64 years and older stand with Israel, whatever that means.
27% of those aged 18 to 34 do.
So I think if you look at that, your quick takeaways would be that this Jerry Faldwell, Pat Robertson-style Christian Zionism and Israel-first dispensationalism is sort of dying away with that generation.
And the people who would be enlisted to fight in a war against Iran don't seem to be up for it.
27% aged 18 to 34 seem to feel as though Israel is our greatest ally and we must stand with them no matter what.
What does that mean going forward?
That's a very important poll.
I'm glad you brought it up, James, because the reason that there's such a drastic fall in support for Israel over the generational groups is twofold.
First of all, it's changing because younger people are far more skeptical, far more cynical, far more distrusting of official pronouncements of any kind.
They've grown up in their lifetimes seeing American foreign policy one calamity, one calamity after another.
Older Americans remember a time when America was still sort of on top of things.
America was much more powerful.
Older Americans remember the Reagan years when America was still seemingly on top and the Berlin Wall fell down and so forth.
Younger people, they see American politicians of both parties so untrustworthy, and this is borne out by any number of polls, they don't trust these big pronouncements about we've got to continue this policy or that policy or whatever.
They're far more skeptical.
The second reason is demographic.
As the population becomes more and more third worldish, more Hispanic and so forth, these people cannot be influenced in the same way that white Americans can about guilt, about we should remember the Holocaust or World War II.
People of Asian background, people of Mexican background, those issues, those kinds of slogans, those kinds of appeals don't resonate with them in the way they do with white Americans.
The third, I mean, in addition to that, older Americans were subjected to almost nonstop, relentless pro-Zionist propaganda, disinformation during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
And that's less so, less true than it used to be.
There's more, albeit it's still very, very pro-Israeli, very, very pro-Zionist, and so forth in the United States.
Nevertheless, it's less solid than it was during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
And I remember that.
I mean, it's hard to convey to younger people just how enormously one-sided the American media was pro-Israel.
And now there is at least some effort to say, well, why is there this problem?
Who are these Palestinians?
Why are they angry?
What's going on?
But anyway, so those are, I think, the reasons why not only is support for Israel falling, the younger people are, but it will play out in political terms in the years ahead.
That is, inevitably, American support for Israel is going to decrease.
And we're going to see that not only in the United States, but even in those countries that are still more or less supportive of Israel, in Europe and so forth, that will decrease as well.
And then, of course, I guess also playing into it as we enter into a more post-Christian America, some of these older demographics who still cling to the faith are, again, it's the greatest generation, the so-called greatest and silent generations are gone.
And with it, it goes a lot of that mindset that the younger generations just don't have.
James, I want to disagree a little bit with that.
This idea of Christians have to support Israel is a uniquely American idea.
It's not a universally Christian view.
It's not the view of Christians in Orthodox countries.
It's not the same view that Europeans have.
They have a very different one.
This expression, so-called Christian expression of support for Israel in the United States is a uniquely American version of Christianity.
It's not Christianity, certainly, as Christians practiced it for centuries in Europe and other countries.
It's a uniquely American thing, and it translates into a kind of civic nationalism.
America is a special country.
We're a Christian country.
What we do is good.
And so whatever our policy is, it's more or less a good one because we're good people.
It's a good country.
That's not the view that Christians around the world necessarily have.
And that's decreasing for that reason because the civic nationalism is also decreasing.
No, Mark, I think there's no disagreement at all.
I agree with everything you just said.
I think we're just talking about Americans and the older Americans.
And I think those would be the ones that might have this mindset, which, as you say, is uniquely American even amongst Christians.
And of course, it's relatively new because Israel itself as a nation didn't even exist until 1948.
So this is all sort of a novel thing.
But nevertheless, let's yeah.
Well, I was just going to say that it's an odd thing that American Christians support Israel even when they're oppressing fellow Christians.
Remember, a minority of the Palestinian population is Christians.
Israel doesn't make a distinction between Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians.
For them, they're non-Jews.
And it's a kind of shameful thing, I think, that American Christian leaders seem more concerned when Jews die in Israel or any other country than they do when fellow Christians are killed around the world.
The credibility of the Christian Zionists would be a lot greater if they showed the same concern for fellow Christians that they show for Israelis and Jews.
Well, as you said, and as you wrote, most Americans, especially older Americans, support this, again, quote-unquote special relationship due to the decades of pervasive pro-Zionist disinformation, propaganda, and messaging in our mass media, television, and from Hollywood.
And of course, they got the seminaries just like they got the media and all of the other institutions of power.
But I would like to ask you, we have another more larger point of discussion that we don't have time to get into this segment, but we just mentioned the word propaganda.
I mean, I said this last week when Kevin McDonald was on and we were talking about this issue.
There's no propaganda like wartime propaganda, but I don't know if I've ever seen propaganda that reaches the levels that we're seeing here.
And maybe it's just because in previous wars, not everybody had a cell phone that was connected to global media and social media.
But I think if you just had to look at one thing with regards to the propaganda war that we're seeing, it's the situation involving the hospital.
Our friend, we have a listener in Arkansas who sent in a message.
Israel did a media presentation showing how the hospital was hit by a Hamas missile and not by the IDF.
Al Jazeera Jazeera then did their own broadcast showing that it was not a Hamas missile.
How do you know?
I mean, I guess this is a question for all time, but how do you see this thing clearly?
How do you know what's real?
Right, right.
Yeah, I mean, Israel has a long record of lying and deceiving to the American public and to American officials.
That's one of the reasons why, in much of the world, they just don't aren't going to believe what Israel says.
It may have been a missile that failed.
We don't know.
However, it should be kept in mind that Israel does have a record of attacking hospitals in the past, indisputably.
There's no dispute about this.
The very hospital that had this particularly terrible thing, I think it was on the 13th of October, it had been attacked earlier by Israel.
And Israel has done this in the past.
By far, the greater number of Palestinians who are being killed over the last several, excuse me, yeah, Palestinians who have been killed over the last several weeks have been women and children.
Israel has openly proclaimed they're going to impose on the Palestinians in Gaza, but in general, but especially in Gaza, what they call a second nakba.
That is a second catastrophe.
That's the Arab word for catastrophe.
And as they did in 1948.
And what Palestinians know, and certainly what Hamas has made a point of, is the only time American public and much of the European public pays attention to the Israel-Palestine issue is when Jews die.
Palestinians have been attacked and killed and mistreated, oppressed for decades.
But the United States' more or less position is we're not going to really get very excited about it or say anything about it until Jews die.
Then it's a big media thing.
And that's one of the reasons why, you know, the big point in all of this in recent weeks has been this continually talking about terrorism.
Terrorism's bad.
Well, of course, terrorism's bad.
Nobody likes terrorism.
But the United States has a very two-faced record on this issue of terrorism.
I remind people that Nelson Mandela, who's now considered practically a saint, was a terrorist.
He was on the U.S. terrorism watch list.
And he was in prison in South Africa, not because he opposed apartheid, but because he had carried out and supported terrorist actions.
Hold on right there.
We'll be right back with the one and only Mark Weber, IHR.org.
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The U.S. is advocating for the release of all hostages currently held captive by Hamas.
This plea follows the recent release of two American hostages to Israeli authorities on Friday.
Over the coming hours, they'll receive any support and assistance they need.
And of course, we're very anxious to be able to reunite them with their loved ones.
We welcome the release.
We share in the relief that their families, friends, and loved ones are feeling.
Secretary of State Anthony Blanken stated that there are 10 additional unaccounted for Americans in the conflict, and it's suspected that some of them may be among the roughly 200 hostages held by the Palestinian militant group in Gaza.
More than 100 people were arrested Friday night in midtown Manhattan during a demonstration calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
They also demanded more aid for Palestinians and Congress to stop military aid to Israel.
Participants told ABC7 their reasons were clear.
We have to do what we have to do for justice and for peace.
We're out here.
It's pouring rain.
We're wet, but they have blood on their hands.
Those arrested were put on buses after blocking traffic outside Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's office.
Disruptions on Spirit Airlines are expected to last for several days after the airline pulled some planes out of service for inspection, leading to the cancellation of about 100 flights on Friday and more than 80 on Saturday.
The FAA says the inspections involved looking for signs of cracks in brackets on the plane's airframes, which could lead to reduced structural integrity and possible rapid decompression of the airplane if undetected.
Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan has withdrawn his candidacy for Speaker of the House.
This decision comes after a confidential GOP ballot yesterday.
But I thought it was important that we all know, get an answer to the question if they wanted me to continue in that role.
And so we put the question to them.
They made a different decision.
With Jordan's withdrawal, the Republican Conference is currently without a nominee over two weeks after Kevin McCarthy's historic removal.
Lawmakers are set to reconvene on Capitol Hill on Monday in an effort to determine a new nominee for the leadership position.
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Mark, you were talking about what is terrorism and who's it.
When is a terrorist a terrorist and when is he something else?
You were using Nelson Mandela as a right, right?
I'm making a point because oh, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
No, no, finish that thought.
I've got something here that you've got to hear, but I want you to continue to develop that.
Okay, the point is that denouncing a group because it's a terrorist group is meaningless, really, because the United States and all countries support quote-unquote terrorism when it's the side that we want it.
When Afghanistan was controlled, taken over by the Soviet Union, the United States supported the Afghan resistance, which carried out terrorism.
A hundred years ago, when Ireland, there was a struggle by the Irish for independence from England, from Britain, they were terrorists, and they were considered terrorists.
They blew up people, they killed people and so forth, and they were called terrorists.
But they won.
And later, one of the so-called terrorist leaders, Eamon de Balera, became prime minister and president of Ireland.
When the Zionists were trying to get the British out of Palestine in the 1940s, their leaders were so-called terrorists.
Two of them, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, later became prime ministers of Israel.
But during the British period, they were terrorists.
They carried out bombings of civilians.
They were unwanted posters.
And again, in South Africa, everybody applauds now South Africa's overthrow of the apartheid regime.
Nelson Mandela was hailed by left and right, Republicans and Democrats in the United States.
But for years, he was on the U.S. watch list as a terrorist.
He wasn't imprisoned by the South African white government because he was against apartheid.
He was imprisoned because of his role in terrorism.
And the South African government said they would release him if he just made a public statement that he no longer supported terrorism.
Terrorism is used by people who don't have power because they don't have armies.
They don't have airplanes.
They don't have submarines.
They don't have the equipment of fighting a major war.
So that's what they do.
So all of it, and again, Biden made this reference to we have to can't allow terrorism.
Well, terrorism, the people, the Taliban, the United States said they were a terrorist in Afghanistan.
They were in power.
I remember as a young man, the Vietnamese, Viet Cong, the communists were called terrorists.
Well, they were.
And now the United States has an alliance, has a very good close relationship with the government of the people that we used to denounce as terrorists.
Anyway, the point isn't that the United States should support or not support terrorism.
We should evaluate U.S. foreign policy in terms of what's good for America, what's good for the world, in that order.
That should be our foreign policy.
And that was the foreign policy of the founders of America.
It was the way Americans looked at the world for a long time.
Now, America plays the role of a world policeman.
And we're going all over the world fighting bad guys, I guess, or supposedly, and that's a recipe for endless war, because there's always going to be governments that we don't like.
But at the same time, the very people who say that think it's all right to have alliances with countries that are, well, certainly not like the United States, such as Saudi Arabia.
It was Joe Biden that claimed that, oh, because Saudi Arabia killed this journalist and cut him up and killed him, they're going to pay a price.
Well, that was all forgotten.
And again, foreign policy of the United States and of any sane country should be based on a realistic evaluation of its real interests, what's good for their country, what's good for the world.
That's not the U.S. relationship with Israel.
It's an ironclad.
In fact, the American President Biden now and the Secretary of State claim America will always support Israel.
Really?
No matter what they do?
I mean, I guess that's the implication.
But it's crazy to even put things in those terms.
No, it is.
It is.
An unconditional blank check.
Well, let me ask you this.
A simple yes or no will do, or maybe a 30-second, because I want to read something that I think is relative to our discussion on terrorism that I read in the Wall Street Journal, and it almost made me choke on my food a couple of days ago.
But you're seeing Biden again go on, ask for another $100 billion to fund not just Ukraine, but to give more aid to Israel now.
Do you think that there is a perception in parts of the world that America is simply Israel's golem?
Yes, of course.
I mean, America simultaneously claims that we're going to try to be a fair arbitrator, a referee, a umpire in the struggle between Israel and Palestine.
But the United States isn't that kind of country.
It's already completely committed to supporting one side in the conflict.
And so its ability to be any kind of peacemaker is just about zero because it already says to Israel and has for years, we're with you basically no matter what.
The United States, Biden appealed to the Israeli leaders, please don't commit war crimes.
Don't break international law.
Well, Israel knows that they can do and have done that, and there'll be no consequences.
In 1969, when Henry Kissinger was a national security advisor to Nixon, he wrote a memo, which we put on our website.
It's now, it was later redacted and made public, in which he said, Israel has been lying to the United States.
They're deceiving us.
They're acting contrary to our interests.
They said that the nuclear program of Israel is not only dangerous, it's especially dangerous because Israel, Kissinger wrote to Nixon, is the one country most likely to use nuclear weapons.
But he warned that if we press Israel on this, we will pay a very high price politically.
That is Nixon and the Republican Party.
And so we try to get some private, that's what he said, try to get some private assurances from Israel.
But basically, our hands are tied because, again, as Dulles would say, and as many other U.S. officials have admitted privately, Israel or its supporters, the organized Jewish community, has such a grip on America's political life that basically our hands are tied from being any kind of real fair arbiter of the situation.
And the world knows this.
The world is very aware of this.
It's only the Americans who are as deceived as they are.
And that's why this is reflected over and over in the United Nations.
When votes come up before the General Assembly or even the Security Council, the United States and Israel and a handful of other countries like Micronesia and the Marshall Islands will be on one side and the whole rest of the world is on the other.
Why is that?
Is it because American leaders are more wise, more dispassionate, more just than leaders of Japan or Argentina or Norway or Finland?
No, it's because of this tremendous power, this grip that the organized Jewish community has on the American political life and cultural life.
I was talking with Sam Dixon earlier this week, and we were talking about history, and I think it pertained actually to this issue that we're discussing now.
And he said something that I jotted down.
It was a simple thing, I guess, in some ways, but also quite profound.
He was talking about how important history is.
He was saying that history is our collective memory, and it's as important to a nation as an individual's memories are as important to him or her.
And in Western nations, not only is our history or our memory being erased, but even worse, it's being replaced with false memories.
And keep that in mind now, folks.
When I read this next thing to Mark from the Wall Street Journal, the headline reads that this is from the October 18th edition of the Wall Street Journal, Hamas's Hospital Lie and the Laws of War.
The jihadists directly target civilians, which is a war crime, is the subheadline.
And then if you go down a little bit into the article, Mark, I was reading this.
And this is a paragraph that begins by reading, which brings us to the larger context regarding the laws of war and casualties.
There are two bedrock principles in war that civilized nations developed over centuries.
The first is that you cannot target civilians.
On that standard, every Hamas, Islamic, Jihad, and Hezbollah rocket attack on Israel is a war crime.
They are aimed at cities with the hope of falling on an unlucky home or cafe.
When I read that, Mark, what do you think the first thing I thought of was?
I can imagine several, but what was it?
Well, it was Dresden.
I mean, how in the world can Americans take the high ground when you look at what happened to Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden?
I mean, that was nothing except that civilian.
Yeah, that shows a more historical sense than some people have.
But you can make the same point about the Ukraine war.
American claims that when Russia shut off electrical power or water power to a town or a city in Ukraine, that's a war crime, America said.
That's what the head of the European Commission, European Union, said.
That's a war crime.
Israel does that routinely.
They've announced they've cut off all electricity and water and fuel to Gaza.
It's like an open-air prison.
That's a war crime.
Israel is guilty of numerous war crimes and has been for years.
This point can't be emphasized enough.
But it's not only Israel violating these international standards, they violate even American law.
One example is Israel uses phosphorus bombs and cluster bombs.
That's illegal by American law.
They're supplied to Israel only for use in defense against an invasion or a threat to their very existence.
Israel has violated this for years.
We had a talk by a former congressman, Pete McCoskey, who made this point that, and Israel simply denied it for a long time until it was finally obvious that it was true.
In fact, they got the hardware and so forth.
And then Israel just by that time hopes, as they often correctly do, that Americans will forget and our politicians will forget.
Israel has been violating international law and even American law for many, many years with no consequences, and they know they can get away with it.
All right.
Let's take one more break with Mark Weber, ihr.org, to stay up on the latest of his wonderful organization and to stay in touch with Mark himself, ihr.org.
And we'll continue this discussion right after these words.
Hello, TPC family.
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Always an enthralling and informative conversation when Mark Weber is our guest, talking again about this situation in the Middle East, the most recent flare-up in a seemingly never-ending state of unrest.
Mark, I want to go back very quickly to this Wall Street Journal article from this week that I quoted from just a moment ago.
I'll reread just the first couple of sentences from that last paragraph that I shared as a reminder.
And it reads, which brings us to the larger context regarding the laws of war and casualties.
There are two bedrock principles in war that civilized nations developed over centuries.
The first is that you can't target civilians.
And then skipping down to the next paragraph, the second principle is proportionality, which is that incidental casualties have to be balanced against the war aims.
This is based on the expectation that in any war there will be some innocents killed, but that they must be related to the goals of self-defense.
The standard isn't zero casualties, which is impossible, but it is as few civilian casualties as possible.
So again, you don't have to go back to World War II, Mark.
You're quite right.
What about Iraq?
Was that the sort of model that America exhibited during the war in Iraq?
And if our national memory, our history is being erased and replaced with false memories, that doesn't mean that that's the case in the rest of the world.
The rest of the world remembers these things, which leads me to my next question.
What are the odds, in your opinion, that this will be just another flare-up, as I said, in this decades-long conflict?
Or what are the odds, in your opinion, that it may spiral into a regional conflict or even greater than that?
Well, that's a big concern that the entire world has, that it will not expand into a larger conflict.
And in fact, I'm very confident that when Biden was just recently in Israel, by the way, he wanted to visit other countries, but the leaders of Jordan and Egypt refused even to meet with him because they're too embarrassed to be seen with him.
But that's another matter.
No, I mean, I'm sure one of his big pleas with Netanyahu is don't do things that are going to make this expand into a larger war.
One of the most ridiculous things, voices that have been heard in Washington in recent years comes from especially Republican leaders.
Lindsey Graham says the United States and Israel should bomb Iran now.
We should expand the war to Iran because Iran supports.
An Israeli official was on RT television talking about how Russia is going to be made to pay a price for its neutrality or kind of support, I guess, for the Palestinians over time.
This is very, very dangerous because as American officials warned even before Israel is established, that if we side with Israel, Israel's enemies will become America's enemies.
And that's very, very blatantly contrary to the interests of any American who really cares about America.
But anyway, that's one big danger that could expand.
It probably will not.
I mean, I'm hoping, knock on wood, that it will not.
But that will take some careful thinking because people are furious.
The second point, though, is this uprising or this latest round of violence, you might say, something's changing.
The world is increasingly aware that there is not just one side, the good guy's side in this thing, and that's the Israelis, but that Israel has been carrying out policies which are contrary to the principles that the countries that support Israel claim they uphold.
Supposedly, they're in favor of democracy.
But Israel carries out a, it's an apartheid state.
That designation has been made by the world's leading human rights organizations.
They discriminate on the basis of ancestry, and they've done that since the very beginning.
The United States says that any European country that has an ethno-nationalist outlook and an ethno-nationalist policy is completely unacceptable to Americans, but it's okay if Israel does it.
It makes a mockery of America's pretense to support this idea of liberal democracy in the world and especially in the United States.
You know, during the break, there was a news report talking about America's calling for the release of hostages by Hamas.
I understand that.
That's understandable.
But people don't want to know.
Israel holds thousands of Palestinians as hostage, thousands, many of them without even the pretense of any judicial hearing.
I mean, but the United States doesn't say anything about releasing people who Israel holds as prisoners without even the pretense in many cases of any even kind of judicial hearing.
But that's, again, another example, this one-sided way in which the news is presented in America.
Another point that on that news break they talked about was U.S. citizens in Israel.
Well, yeah, they're U.S. citizens.
They're probably dual citizens.
They have both Israeli and American citizenship.
But these people obviously and clearly are Zionists.
That is, they believe their primary loyalty isn't to the United States.
It's to Israel and to the world Jewish community.
That's the essence of Zionism.
The Zionist outlook is that Jews constitute a distinct nation.
They're not just Americans who happen to have a Jewish religion or a background or an ancestry.
Zionism says they are members of a supranational peoplehood and that their primary loyalty should be to that, not to the country in which they live.
But America's gotten into this situation because America has, since the 1940s, proclaimed it's a country for everyone.
So even if you're Chinese or Arab or Jewish or whatever, we're all Americans.
Well, a country doesn't hold together like that.
And of course, consistent with that, Biden and most American politicians say they celebrate what they call diversity.
Well, it's so diverse, there isn't any real concept of even by most American politicians and our media of what it means to be an American, except people have a piece of paper or passport saying they're an American citizen.
But again, even the news break that you had in this show reflects this very one-sided way in which the news is presented in the American media.
Absolutely.
There's no doubt about that.
And what else would you expect from something that piped in like that?
But yeah, I don't know who does our news breaks at this town hall.
We've used some different ones over the years.
But nevertheless, yes, I mean, you don't see.
Well, I will tell you this, though, that is interesting.
I mean, yes, on one hand, from that tier of media, you're getting it.
But there is a lot of diversity of opinion for a change on this amongst the people.
I mean, you're seeing it on college campuses, even some of these.
I mean, I don't know, you know, politics make strange bedfellows.
You know, you got some of the squad that are saying some things that I have a little bit of common ground with on this one.
But you have seen more of a backlash amongst Americans that wouldn't normally be running mates politically that has been, well, I don't know if it's surprising, but it's certainly noteworthy.
Yes, yes, it is changing.
But there's very, very few even, especially Republican Party, who have anything like a balanced or pro-American real view of the whole thing.
They're so, I mean, Nikki Haley claims that the Hamas attack is an attack on America, and it's not that Israel needs America, she says, but America needs Israel.
This is turning reality really on its head.
Somehow, America existed for a long time before Israel was even founded.
But this is typical of the kind of crazy talk that you'll find of leaders of the party that Sam Francis used to call the Stupid Party.
I've got a question for you.
About this, Mark.
Please.
They say that all the time.
Yes, they're our greatest ally.
They're our indispensable ally.
What do they actually do for us?
I'm not asking that as a joke, but I mean, they everybody go and you're just supposed to accept that as a fact.
But what does Israel actually do to help America?
Right, right.
I mean, it's a one-sided relationship.
In fact, Zionist leaders and pro-Israel leaders in America insist that America must support Israel.
On balance, it is a very, very negative relationship for the United States, for those people who care about real American interests.
But already for many years, certainly since the 1940s, American foreign policy has reflected not what's good for America, but who has power in America, who helps politicians get elected, and what that is.
That's an indictment really of our entire political system of both parties.
And Biden is a prime example of that.
In 2015, he gave a speech to a Jewish group.
He said, no group in America has had such an influence, such a power to shape the thinking of Americans as the Jewish community.
He was complimenting them and he still got reprimanded.
I remember that.
He was reprimanded only for saying it, not because they disagree with it, but he doesn't want the Gentiles to hear it.
But again, I mean, Biden knows that, and he's a politician.
His whole life has been a career as a politician.
And politicians, their first and primary job is to stay in power, to get re-elected, and they'll say and do what's necessary to make that happen.
And so the interests of America, certainly even in the short term, much less in the long term, take a big back seat to their own stature, their own prestige, their own power, their own position.
All right, closing this thing out, another hour gone by far too quickly with Mark Weber.
We have about two minutes remaining.
You can stay up on the latest news at ihr.org.
But Mark, if someone wants to sort of follow this and follow the developments from a fact-based perspective, where do they go?
Well, you can find an awful lot on our website.
There's an enormous archives and library of material.
And we have, of course, a search feature.
You can go in and find a lot about that.
There's also a study guide of books that I recommend on a number of different subjects, including the Middle East, including Israel-U.S. relations and so forth.
There's any number of very good books on this.
And so you can find, again, guide about that on our website.
And there's other websites too that even focus much more on the Middle East than we do.
I mean, our primary purpose is not just the Middle East.
That's only one aspect of a much larger issue.
No, no, exactly right.
And having a firm grasp on the history of this conflict is important.
We've been talking about history off and on this entire hour.
But with regards to the current conflict as it evolves day to day, what's a current news website that people could go to to kind of cut through the propaganda?
Is there one?
Well, there's a lot of pro-Palestinian ones.
I mean, the BBC is more balanced than certainly Fox News or CNN and so forth.
But I do urge people, though, to stay away from those which are highly speculative, which are much more emotional and driven by that than ones.
So, yeah, I don't have any one particular one.
Yeah, I think it sounds like you're either going to get Palestinian propaganda or pro-Israeli propaganda.
Again, Palestinian websites and Arab ones, they're going to be much more website.
There's very little from a point of view of, you might say, a perspective that Americans used to have up until the 1940s.
Mark, thank you so much for coming back with us.
We appreciate it.
Always appreciate your time, and we'll look forward to talking to you again very soon.
Mark Weber, ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Institute for Historical Review, ihr.org, one of the best of the best.