American media has barely budged on covering Palestine, but popular sentiment has moved A LOT. Yesterday at the Refuse Fascism march in Washington, DC one of the speakers -- a pastor whose name I do not recall, but he was a throat cancer survivor whose voice showed it (EDIT: apparently Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler) -- had as the theme of his talk unity in the opposition to the Trump regime. He called out various groups and religions -- straights, homosexuals, Blacks, whites, Latinos, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews -- as needing to drop whatever differences they had until after the fascist threat had been defeated.
And at the end of his list, he said, "We'll leave the Zionists out."
It was shocking to me.
Jewish Americans have always been at the forefront of progressive movements, but only very recently have I seen the dissonance between promoting racial justice, for example, in America but also apartheid in the State of Israel prominently called out. Previously it was almost as if problems in the State of Israel were a family matter for American Jews, and bad manners to bring them up.
Now I think the notion that you can be progressive but support the State of Israel is on life support. The immediate fallback position is opposing what Netanyahu is doing but otherwise supporting the State of Israel ... but that runs pretty thin: the Gazan Genocide is supported by an overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis; there might be opposition to Netanyahu because he's a crook, but not very much over him committing crimes against humanity.
Estimated cost of replenishing the US military's missile defense systems as used to defend the State of Israel against counter-attack from Iran is $2 billion. This on top of their annual $3.8 billion in aid and around $14 billion after the October 7 attack.
We don't have the manufacturing capacity to replenish our own, the State of Israel's, and Ukraine's missile defenses in less than a few years.
Thanks, Joseph. I agree we should organize to fight fascism, but the Gaza component is important to me. Just an example: MSNBC host Rachel Maddow wrote a book on fascism and spoke about and promoted the book in New York. I didn’t read the book, but watched the program she hosted about it. I don’t pretend to be an expert in fascism — although I think there’s enough evidence that we’re there with Trump and not just approaching it — but in Maddow’s program she included as an element of fascism, “antisemitism,” which had not been included in any of the scholarly articles and summaries I have read about it. All of those articles include as an element the existence of a dominant, favored group and a reviled minority group. Of course that would have been European Jews in the thirties and forties. Now, however, Israel seems to embody all the elements of a fascist state, with the Palestinians serving as the reviled, targeted group. Including antisemitism as a permanent fixture of fascism seems to suggest that by virtue of the definition, Israel could never be fascist. That seems to square with Maddow’s approach, as she has never uttered the word “Gaza”, much less “genocide” or even “ethnic cleansing” on her several times a week show during the 22 months since October 7, 2023. If you relied on her nationally televised show for news, you would never know that Gaza even exists. Because I don’t usually watch her, in part because of her silence about Palestine, I did a search to see whether my conclusion about her silence was unfair. What I found was that she has been criticized by others for her silence on the issue. Recently, Maddow was touted by someone who has his own Substack platform as someone to follow as a leader on the issue of fascism. When I responded on the platform with skepticism because of Maddow’s silence about Gaza, and what some scholars have described as the ultimate expression of fascism, that is, genocide, as being carried out by Israel, the platform host accused me of being a Trump supporter or apologist. So, the bottom line for me is that I don’t share the objectives of establishment democrats who are either silent about Palestine or openly support Israel by taking AIPAC money in exchange for votes, or the media that has faithfully published Israeli propaganda on the issue, and that includes the NYT. Maddow and other hosts on MSNBC can be relied upon to support genocide supporters like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden as an answer to “fascism.” What they don’t seem to get or maybe even care about is that if they persist in supporting such candidates they will lose again. Those politicians are more loyal to their donors than to their constituents. Vote blue no matter who is not an answer to fascism. Nor is following the lead of media celebrities like Rachel Maddow.
I guess it is historically true that all of the European manifestations of fascism have included an element of antisemitism, but it's obviously not an essential element.
I don't watch Maddow mainly because her program is almost always about a news item worthy of about five minutes of coverage that she stretches into 30.
Why she steers clear of Palestinian issues, I don't know. While it absolutely aligns with an antisemitic trope, there is an element of truth to the notion that Jewish people with money control things, at least with regard to the treatment of the State of Israel in American news and politics. I guess there is no need to look any further than Bill Ackman -- a Jewish person with money -- forcing his alma mater to take a hard line against ... anyone suggesting that Jewish people with money dictate policy to educational institutions.
In politics, even back in 2007, long before Palestinian issues were as prominent in the news as they are now, it was noted (by the Jewish magazine, Forward, just to be clear) that, "They (political strategists) say that money from Jewish donors constitutes about half the donations given to national Democratic candidates (an extremely large pot of gelt long coveted by the GOP)." https://forward.com/news/9915/hillary-the-favorite-in-race-for-jewish-donations/
I think the reality is that "Jewish power" over American politics is not, directly, as great as it might seem ... but Congress and even Presidents are kept cowed by the idea of it because AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbies are very careful about their targets: they go after vulnerable targets like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush so they can exaggerate their power.
But they failed to unseat Summer Lee and they didn't seriously challenge Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib.
As to media, one of the most shocking conversations I've ever had was hearing from some print journalists over beer about why American newspapers are so uncritical of the State of Israel, up to and including almost never reporting the extent of American foreign aid to that state. Very matter-of-factly, I was told in almost exactly these words, "They're all owned by rich Jews who make sure some things never get reported."
I tend to think that's an overstatement, but it apparently is true that any significant news outlet that is considered overly critical of the State of Israel will tend to get hit with coordinated complaints and even withdrawal of advertising. I recall a Christian Science Monitor follow-up to an article they published many years ago about the total amount of aid that America has given the State of Israel over the years where they noted that they had received a lot of letters of complaint about it "with similar language."
Anyway, can you blame people with money for using it to promote their interests? And can you blame Jews for carrying trauma from the Holocaust and from the history of European antisemitism?
I don't believe that supporting an ethnostate that required ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and an immense amount of foreign aid to be realized was a very wise direction for that anxiety and those resources, but I can't deny that the impetus for it was real.
Still, we are where we are, and as the Israeli chemist and moral philosopher Israel Shahak wrote of it, "Honest people of goodwill can only promote things which will not be overtly opposed to this system, because the system is very strong."
I didn’t know about the percentage of donations. Thanks for that. I’m primarily concerned about our politicians continuing to send weapons to Israel funded by our tax dollars. When I set out to write to senators who opposed Sanders’ bill to cut off funding, I was surprised that all the Democrats who opposed it not only received large amounts of AIPAC money (e.g., Adam Schiff has received more than $6 million), but were AIPAC endorsed, so I don’t underestimate the influence of the lobby. As for rich people trying to influence elections, ‘s that was enabled in 1976 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Buckley v. Valeo equating money with speech. Thus, even before Citizens United, billionaires were allowed to buy elections. I think money in politics is our biggest obstacle to democracy.
Thanks, Joseph. I wish I’d heard about the protest in advance, but I only read about it afterward. It’s frustrating, because I’ve participated in protests specifically about Palestine and some of the organizers have my contact information (at least I provided it previously). I also reached out to an organizer after one March suggesting that we picket the DNC, as most members of the Democratic Party (like the Republicans) take money from AIPAC and vote accordingly, but neither I nor any of my friends heard back. If you could provide links for one or more of the participating organizations, that would be helpful. I think as a whole we don’t organize well around the issue.
To be clear, I don't know that the group that organized the march has taken a strong anti-genocide position; just the one speaker and I would guess an overwhelming majority of the crowd just based on kaffiyehs worn.
I Like the idea of a grander BDS MOVEMENT especially since so many states have made that illegal. Hold their feet to the fire and make them squirm, figuratively of course as I agree with both of you on torture being inhumane and unacceptable. Thank you both for a sincere and enlightening discussion.
My own state (Maryland) has the flatly unconstitutional rule that the state will not do business with any company that will not sign a certification swearing that it has not "refused to transact or terminated business activities, or taken other actions intended to limit commercial relations, with a person or entity on the basis of Israeli national origin, or residence or incorporation in Israel and its territories."
Yet again John, fantastic interview. It never ceases to amaze me that countries worldwide will not condemn this barbaric torture of a people. As you both said, words like Getto and genocide are just words. We in the UK are now banning groups like 'Palestine Action' because they're to offensive. It's disgusting what is going on out there and we all sit back and watch. The UK is doing its usual of empire first and human lives second. We are all guided by this 'we must learn from our mistakes' bulls#t.
We never learn.
You and Ted and the other people you interview give us an overview of what is really happening. I'm not religious but God bless ya 👍.
As for Meta, let's hope your world tour goes without a hitch and you come back to the UK. The world needs your balanced view and I will be the first to book a slot. Keep up the great work, love listening to you and Ted, pass on my regards to him. Will more over to Rumble ASAP. Take care pal and keep speaking truth.
American media has barely budged on covering Palestine, but popular sentiment has moved A LOT. Yesterday at the Refuse Fascism march in Washington, DC one of the speakers -- a pastor whose name I do not recall, but he was a throat cancer survivor whose voice showed it (EDIT: apparently Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler) -- had as the theme of his talk unity in the opposition to the Trump regime. He called out various groups and religions -- straights, homosexuals, Blacks, whites, Latinos, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews -- as needing to drop whatever differences they had until after the fascist threat had been defeated.
And at the end of his list, he said, "We'll leave the Zionists out."
It was shocking to me.
Jewish Americans have always been at the forefront of progressive movements, but only very recently have I seen the dissonance between promoting racial justice, for example, in America but also apartheid in the State of Israel prominently called out. Previously it was almost as if problems in the State of Israel were a family matter for American Jews, and bad manners to bring them up.
Now I think the notion that you can be progressive but support the State of Israel is on life support. The immediate fallback position is opposing what Netanyahu is doing but otherwise supporting the State of Israel ... but that runs pretty thin: the Gazan Genocide is supported by an overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis; there might be opposition to Netanyahu because he's a crook, but not very much over him committing crimes against humanity.
@JDM the Rev Hagler has called for "Revolutionary Disruption in Response to What is Going on in Ghaza."
Estimated cost of replenishing the US military's missile defense systems as used to defend the State of Israel against counter-attack from Iran is $2 billion. This on top of their annual $3.8 billion in aid and around $14 billion after the October 7 attack.
We don't have the manufacturing capacity to replenish our own, the State of Israel's, and Ukraine's missile defenses in less than a few years.
Thanks, Joseph. I agree we should organize to fight fascism, but the Gaza component is important to me. Just an example: MSNBC host Rachel Maddow wrote a book on fascism and spoke about and promoted the book in New York. I didn’t read the book, but watched the program she hosted about it. I don’t pretend to be an expert in fascism — although I think there’s enough evidence that we’re there with Trump and not just approaching it — but in Maddow’s program she included as an element of fascism, “antisemitism,” which had not been included in any of the scholarly articles and summaries I have read about it. All of those articles include as an element the existence of a dominant, favored group and a reviled minority group. Of course that would have been European Jews in the thirties and forties. Now, however, Israel seems to embody all the elements of a fascist state, with the Palestinians serving as the reviled, targeted group. Including antisemitism as a permanent fixture of fascism seems to suggest that by virtue of the definition, Israel could never be fascist. That seems to square with Maddow’s approach, as she has never uttered the word “Gaza”, much less “genocide” or even “ethnic cleansing” on her several times a week show during the 22 months since October 7, 2023. If you relied on her nationally televised show for news, you would never know that Gaza even exists. Because I don’t usually watch her, in part because of her silence about Palestine, I did a search to see whether my conclusion about her silence was unfair. What I found was that she has been criticized by others for her silence on the issue. Recently, Maddow was touted by someone who has his own Substack platform as someone to follow as a leader on the issue of fascism. When I responded on the platform with skepticism because of Maddow’s silence about Gaza, and what some scholars have described as the ultimate expression of fascism, that is, genocide, as being carried out by Israel, the platform host accused me of being a Trump supporter or apologist. So, the bottom line for me is that I don’t share the objectives of establishment democrats who are either silent about Palestine or openly support Israel by taking AIPAC money in exchange for votes, or the media that has faithfully published Israeli propaganda on the issue, and that includes the NYT. Maddow and other hosts on MSNBC can be relied upon to support genocide supporters like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden as an answer to “fascism.” What they don’t seem to get or maybe even care about is that if they persist in supporting such candidates they will lose again. Those politicians are more loyal to their donors than to their constituents. Vote blue no matter who is not an answer to fascism. Nor is following the lead of media celebrities like Rachel Maddow.
I guess it is historically true that all of the European manifestations of fascism have included an element of antisemitism, but it's obviously not an essential element.
I don't watch Maddow mainly because her program is almost always about a news item worthy of about five minutes of coverage that she stretches into 30.
Why she steers clear of Palestinian issues, I don't know. While it absolutely aligns with an antisemitic trope, there is an element of truth to the notion that Jewish people with money control things, at least with regard to the treatment of the State of Israel in American news and politics. I guess there is no need to look any further than Bill Ackman -- a Jewish person with money -- forcing his alma mater to take a hard line against ... anyone suggesting that Jewish people with money dictate policy to educational institutions.
In politics, even back in 2007, long before Palestinian issues were as prominent in the news as they are now, it was noted (by the Jewish magazine, Forward, just to be clear) that, "They (political strategists) say that money from Jewish donors constitutes about half the donations given to national Democratic candidates (an extremely large pot of gelt long coveted by the GOP)." https://forward.com/news/9915/hillary-the-favorite-in-race-for-jewish-donations/
I think the reality is that "Jewish power" over American politics is not, directly, as great as it might seem ... but Congress and even Presidents are kept cowed by the idea of it because AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbies are very careful about their targets: they go after vulnerable targets like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush so they can exaggerate their power.
But they failed to unseat Summer Lee and they didn't seriously challenge Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib.
As to media, one of the most shocking conversations I've ever had was hearing from some print journalists over beer about why American newspapers are so uncritical of the State of Israel, up to and including almost never reporting the extent of American foreign aid to that state. Very matter-of-factly, I was told in almost exactly these words, "They're all owned by rich Jews who make sure some things never get reported."
I tend to think that's an overstatement, but it apparently is true that any significant news outlet that is considered overly critical of the State of Israel will tend to get hit with coordinated complaints and even withdrawal of advertising. I recall a Christian Science Monitor follow-up to an article they published many years ago about the total amount of aid that America has given the State of Israel over the years where they noted that they had received a lot of letters of complaint about it "with similar language."
Anyway, can you blame people with money for using it to promote their interests? And can you blame Jews for carrying trauma from the Holocaust and from the history of European antisemitism?
I don't believe that supporting an ethnostate that required ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and an immense amount of foreign aid to be realized was a very wise direction for that anxiety and those resources, but I can't deny that the impetus for it was real.
Still, we are where we are, and as the Israeli chemist and moral philosopher Israel Shahak wrote of it, "Honest people of goodwill can only promote things which will not be overtly opposed to this system, because the system is very strong."
I didn’t know about the percentage of donations. Thanks for that. I’m primarily concerned about our politicians continuing to send weapons to Israel funded by our tax dollars. When I set out to write to senators who opposed Sanders’ bill to cut off funding, I was surprised that all the Democrats who opposed it not only received large amounts of AIPAC money (e.g., Adam Schiff has received more than $6 million), but were AIPAC endorsed, so I don’t underestimate the influence of the lobby. As for rich people trying to influence elections, ‘s that was enabled in 1976 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Buckley v. Valeo equating money with speech. Thus, even before Citizens United, billionaires were allowed to buy elections. I think money in politics is our biggest obstacle to democracy.
Re: Maddow https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o-KnCRi24W8
She's still human.
Thanks, Joseph. I wish I’d heard about the protest in advance, but I only read about it afterward. It’s frustrating, because I’ve participated in protests specifically about Palestine and some of the organizers have my contact information (at least I provided it previously). I also reached out to an organizer after one March suggesting that we picket the DNC, as most members of the Democratic Party (like the Republicans) take money from AIPAC and vote accordingly, but neither I nor any of my friends heard back. If you could provide links for one or more of the participating organizations, that would be helpful. I think as a whole we don’t organize well around the issue.
Hi Nancy.
To be clear, I don't know that the group that organized the march has taken a strong anti-genocide position; just the one speaker and I would guess an overwhelming majority of the crowd just based on kaffiyehs worn.
But the group is https://refusefascism.org/
I Like the idea of a grander BDS MOVEMENT especially since so many states have made that illegal. Hold their feet to the fire and make them squirm, figuratively of course as I agree with both of you on torture being inhumane and unacceptable. Thank you both for a sincere and enlightening discussion.
My own state (Maryland) has the flatly unconstitutional rule that the state will not do business with any company that will not sign a certification swearing that it has not "refused to transact or terminated business activities, or taken other actions intended to limit commercial relations, with a person or entity on the basis of Israeli national origin, or residence or incorporation in Israel and its territories."
The "and its territories" part is truly extra.
South Sudan: the Al Sudd?? Crocodiles, mosquitoes and hippopotami.
Yet again John, fantastic interview. It never ceases to amaze me that countries worldwide will not condemn this barbaric torture of a people. As you both said, words like Getto and genocide are just words. We in the UK are now banning groups like 'Palestine Action' because they're to offensive. It's disgusting what is going on out there and we all sit back and watch. The UK is doing its usual of empire first and human lives second. We are all guided by this 'we must learn from our mistakes' bulls#t.
We never learn.
You and Ted and the other people you interview give us an overview of what is really happening. I'm not religious but God bless ya 👍.
As for Meta, let's hope your world tour goes without a hitch and you come back to the UK. The world needs your balanced view and I will be the first to book a slot. Keep up the great work, love listening to you and Ted, pass on my regards to him. Will more over to Rumble ASAP. Take care pal and keep speaking truth.
Thank you for this informative discussion and for introducing your audience to Mr. Peled. I will certainly check out his organization.