you know two weeks ago was the twenty fifth anniversary of the first u s war against iraq in one thousand nine hundred one it's hard to imagine that it was that far away it's twenty five years but if we look back at that we can really see there the origins of the set of policy catastrophes of our country that led directly to the creation of isis in two thousand and four there's a direct line i want to ask a question but i can't see a thing with these lines how many of you have heard i'm not asking if you believe it but how many of you have heard that isis was created when president obama pulled the troops out of iraq heard it not believed it come on admit it most of you know you've all heard it anyway you're just not willing to admit it ok we don't have to go there but the point is we know exactly when and how isis was created we know its origins that part unlike some others is not a mystery and it and eleven when president obama pulled out the troops for a brief time it was in two thousand and four when president bush was supervising one hundred fifty thousand u s and nato troops that were occupying iraq that's what gave rise to isis not the withdrawal of troops the presence of troops and if we look back twenty five years we can also see a trajectory that has led to what we're now seeing the crisis in syria the eight or nine separate wars all being fought to the last syria the disaster of libya as a result of us nato regime change these crises across the middle east that has led to a new global war on terror this is today is an anniversary as well you all know this this is groundhog day so what's the deal with groundhog day it's not the little thing they pull out of his you know i mean these guys are nocturnal they don't want to come out in the middle of the day anyway it's so it's like where's peta saying this is animal abuse but it's not really about that it's about this notion of repeating things you know it was einstein who had this great line about the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result that hasn't changed the u s is repeating its policy over and over again and thinking that because it's a different president doing the same thing with a slightly different tactic that somehow it's going to work better when we found out we have a new report saying that conditions in afghanistan are worse than ever and the taliban now has control of more territory than at any moment since it was overthrown in two thousand and one and the answer is well let's send more troops yet because we did so well the first time around you know it's this notion of einstein was wrong we can do the same thing over and over again and we will get a different result oh really how's that working for you so far you know this is a serious problem that we're facing here in groundhog day this notion of repetitive action is very much at the root of what we have to challenge today you know one of the things that happened when president obama took office on the second day in the white house he sent a memo they're very big on memos in the white house the memo went to the state department to the pentagon to the white house staff to everybody saying we don't want to use the term global war on terror that was bush's war we're not doing that we want to call it something different we're going to call it overseas contingency operations how orwellian is that this notion that you can call it with such a benign name overseas contingencies it's like there was a flood and we're sending some operators to help rescue people know this is a war call it what it is i was like the term global war on terror partly because the the initials the acronym go out always have that evil sound right this isn't exactly the same certainly it's not relying on hundreds of thousands of troops from the vantage point of u s troops that's a good thing from the vantage point of how many iraqis and syrians and afghans are dying not so great today is where yesterday's new york times had a fascinating up bed by a former army captain and the little jump quote in the middle of it it's an article about special forces and how critical they have become how central they have become to u s strategy in the region and it describes top secret missions mythical warriors and the state of perpetual warfare that's what u s policy looks like today we hear from president obama a very important point which is absolutely true and crucially important and i so wish he would make it good he says over and over again there is no military solution and you want to shake them and say well then why is it that every action we see is a military action because  something that isn't true he says you know the military action isn't enough we also are going to need some diplomacy and negotiations and economic things and some other things that's wrong the problem isn't that the military isn't enough the problem is that the military actions make all those other crucial actions impossible because if you are an ordinary sunni iraqis say and you see the u s coming in and bombing maybe it's a nice his camp not far from your village and maybe they get some isis people but in the meantime they've also bombed a few others and the response in washington is yea we got the bad guys and the response in iraq is yeah there's the americans again bombing the sunni's in the interests of the shia and the kurds so we're exacerbating the sectarianism we're furthering the divide among the iraqi people that we helped put in place when we overthrew a regime a repressive regime no doubt but left this new system in place that was based deliberately consciously on imposing a sectarian based system of political parties that had never existed in iraq before that's the challenge that we face now and this is now a global war again yes the u s is leading not a surprise we spend more than the top nine other countries including china including all of our so called enemies more than all of them together we spend billions and billions of dollars hundreds of billions of dollars on the military every year something most other countries are smart enough not to do so it's not surprising that our assumption is that if there's a problem it's going to be the military that has the solution it's the old hammer in the nail if you're a hammer everything looks like a nail if you're the pentagon everything looks like it needs a military solution the problem is that seems to be the problem in the white house and in the state department and in congress as well for any of us if we have a problem call the marines that's a serious problem because put aside international law put aside the morality of killing innocent people in never to bully and just look at the success can't find it because the military solutions are failing they've failed in the past they're failing now and there's absolutely zero reason to think they're going to succeed in the future so this notion of saying that wells san bernardino changed everything paris changed everything anchorage changed everything none of these incidents change everything except for the victims and their families for them yes it changes everything but it doesn't change the world it was the same for us on nine eleven we had never experienced no one in this country was alive the last time the united states was attacked pearl harbor was not in the u s state hawaii wasn't even a state at that time nobody was alive when we were attacked from outside so it was not surprising that people were paralyzed with fear but the reality was as horrific a crime as nine eleven was a crime against humanity it did not pose a an existential threat to the united states it did not threaten our democracy it did not threaten our country what threatened our country and continues to threaten what threatened our democracy and continues to threaten is what happened on september twelfth not september eleventh when the president announced that the response to this horrific crime would be to take the world to war we were given the choice we either go to war or we let him get away with it you're either with us or you're with the terrorists and if you're not with us we will treat you as if you too were a terrorist and we have treated people around the world and in our own country as if they were terrorists from that day forward the problem is you can't bomb terrorism out of existence you can't bomb terrorism at all you can only bomb people you can bomb cities sometimes you might get lucky you might hit a terrorist you might kill a terrorist but that doesn't eliminate the terrorism it just creates more there is no military solution the solution lies in changing the conditions that give rise to terrorism in the first place and that make people's lives so desperate that they're prepared to embrace a level of horrific violent terrorism because it still seems better than what they have at home that's what we can change not fast it's not sexy it doesn't make good television but it's the only thing that will work the talks that began in the last couple of days in vienna of the syria talks i don't know if it's going to work it's hugely problematic because it's really nine separate wars that are being fought all to the last syrian but the people who are at the table first are not any syrians it's the supporters the outside supporters now maybe that's what has to happen first maybe there has to be an agreement on the ceasefire between the u s and the saudis and turkey on the one hand and russia and iran on the other hand before you even bring in the syrian regime in the syrian opposition is that fair of course not is it just of course not but the goal here is not about winning the war it's about stopping a horrific war and those who are trying to win it are not going to be happy by simply stopping it where it is stopping it in place but that's probably what needs to happen first and it's not at all clear that de mistura and his team from the united nations are going to be able to pull that off what we do know is that the potential for broadening the diplomacy over war that was represented in the u iran nuclear deal the potential for broadening that to a much bigger level of normalization between those two countries is not a done deal it's still a possibility but it may be that there is just not the willingness more likely in washington than in tehran there's problems in tehran too but the problems are more likely to come from congress then from the hardliners in the iranian marj least in the iranian parliament we don't know if that's going to work it is a possibility but the u s has been responding militarily bolstering its military support of the saudis as they take on iran in the region bolstering u s support for the saudi war in yemen none of this is going to help in the effort to broaden the victory of diplomacy over war that was represented in that iranian nuclear deal the military strategy is still failing and every time we hear a presidential candidate saying i would do it better i would light up the sands i would use nukes i would take them out this is a serious problem this is what the world is hearing from our elections who can outdo the next one in the talk of killing more people around the world in the name of keeping americans safe when the reality is it puts us at much greater risk it doesn't keep us safe it's what in genders more anger and more terrorism at the end of the day if we look right now we have been at war against terrorism for fifteen years and where do we stand now suddenly isis is controlling territory the taliban according to new military reports two days ago now control more territory than they have since two thousand and one the pentagon spends five hundred million dollars to create and train a syrian opposition force that would be loyal to the united states that would go after isis and wouldn't go after us and would do things our way and be democratic and secular and not touch any of the islami forces and what happened they couldn't find any well not entirely true they found fifty four no they found fifty four they sent them into fight and within two days half of them had either defected been killed or put down their weapons and fled the other twenty six went back to fight and they were almost all killed five hundred million dollars it comes out to pretty much i can't do the math but it's like more than a million dollars each to train these guys i mean talk about a bad use of money and ice is still controls territory yes they have lost some territory in recent months in the us tells us that's a great victory has been free of isis well you could argue that's a victory defeating isis pretty much anywhere should be seen as a victory but what does it really mean on the ground isis had done enormous damage not only to people but to the to the city of ramadi but it was the u s bombing that finished it off those who have survived the siege of ramadi have nothing to go back to their town is in ruins it goes back to the vietnam era we had to destroy the village in order to save it but this was no village this is a city of three hundred thousand people and the survivors of those three hundred thousand have no say no city to go back to it's been destroyed and in the meantime isis is now going back to its old form of soft target terrorism as they lose more territory yeah we can use the military for that that would probably work we can reduce their control of territory and what happens they go back to another form of terror that's not a solution because it's done nothing to change the conditions that result in an ordinary sunni dr going off to join isis because it seems like a lesser evil than the horrific sectarian government in baghdad that we are keeping in power so obama is right when he says there is no military solution the problem is there's no one holding him accountable to his own words and that failure it means that you have to do something different you have to learn from what the genius taught us that you can't keep doing the same thing and expect a different result so what does that look like in afghanistan the new report that just came out from the special investigative the special inspector general the taliban controls more territory that of the hundred thirteen billion dollars the u s has spent on education this is supposedly the great thing we've achieved right at least we got the kids in school well turns out not so much of the hundred seventeen billion dollars sorry hundred thirteen billion dollars seventeen billion is just over three years is already lost to corruption and the main claim we've got the kids especially the girls into school it turns out that right now forty two percent of afghan children of elementary school age have either never been to school or have already dropped out we have failed and we have been lied to about what the war has brought to the people of afghanistan so when we look at this question what was the origin of isis there's a reason that i start sometimes by asking you know how many people have heard this line that isis began when the troops were pulled out well they became visible in syria around that same time but their origins were years before they changed their name they changed what they believed in their very changeable batches of fighters but their history began fighting against foreign occupation in two thousand and four so when we look at that we have to look at the impact that that has had on people in the region on people around the rest of the world and recognize what it means why are they so powerful how did this happen it's because they don't fight alone because when the u s went into iraq and invaded iraq the first thing it did was to dissolve the military and throw out all the generals and all the colonels and quite a ways down i think as low as the sergeants and all those people suddenly had lost their job lost their privileges sent home with no way to support their family nothing but their weapons that they took with them and they've been see them ever since they've been angry ever since they've been looking for revenge ever since and isis shows up and that's where they find so that's who's providing the military strategy and the training and the weapons training of all of that it's not the isis militants themselves they didn't just figure out how to do all this stuff it's they've got the top generals that fall under saddam hussein and those generals quite frankly were pretty good generals they knew how to fight that's why isis is having success now so what does what does all this mean what what do we do about all this we can look at all the origins of the crisis and there are many the the role of climate change is huge here the drought that began in syria in two thousand and six and went through about tw someone like eight hundred thousand farmers off their land syria was once the bread basket of the region that's where the wheat grows and suddenly there was no rain so there was no wheat farmers couldn't make a living so they flooded into the cities looking for jobs but neoliberalism had come to syria in those last years so there were no jobs there were a few but the few jobs go to somebody who knows somebody in power that was more likely to be an alawite who knew some other al family because the alawite were privileged and so you're exacerbating again the sectarianism that hadn't really been that much of an issue in syria before the crisis syria had had a huge middle class it had the smallest wealth poverty gap in the whole region so now there's people that are desperate that's what leads to an uprising that's what created the initial what seemed so optimistic the arab spring coming to damascus and then the repression sets in by this dictatorial regime and then the war begins and suddenly it expands and it's now as i said it's at least eight or nine separate wars it's regional wars between iran and saudi arabia being fought to the last syrian it's also a religious war between sunni and shia also between iran and saudi arabia being fought to the last syrian it's a war between the u s and russia over things like naval bases at the moment it's also a war between turkey and the kurds partly being fought to the last syria so the question of how do we stop this war and what do we have to do to stop isis and stop the syrian war become enormous challenges what are we doing wrong well if you look from august of two thousand and fourteen when the u s began its war against isis the people of washington state alone have paid one hundred fifty four million dollars in taxes your money just for that brief period just for the war against isis that doesn't count the war in afghanistan that doesn't count the war in iraq that was already under way it doesn't count the military budget it doesn't count the bases it doesn't count the nuclear weapons it doesn't  anything except for just the so called war against isis if you had kept that money at home here's a couple things you could have done with it you could have had one thousand five hundred twenty four kids in head start every year for ten years you could have had one thousand six hundred twenty four veterans getting health care every year for ten years you could have four thousand two hundred one thousand students getting four years scholarships to the university what makes us safer jobs and health care and education at home or wasting our money on wars around the world that make people hate us and turn against us and turn to terrorism we hear so often no one wants war it's not true it's never been true there are powerful forces who want war because they profit from war the old saying cooee bono who profits still follow the money that's still the answer here those who profit are the ones who want the war you know in in all of history people who produce war goods the weapons that sort of thing have always been wealthy always been powerful the war profiteers but if you look at u s history more recently in the period right after nine eleven in that first year the war  profiteers the c e o s of war producing companies got a two hundred percent raise on average all the other overpaid c e o s got a seven percent raise now you tell me they don't want war they want war because it's profitable they want war because they want to market for all of their military goods and they find it because we are told over and over again it's either war or nothing and that's the lie it's the lie that george bush told us overtly it's the lie that current administrations and congresses continue to act on so we have this ongoing conflict in the region across the region some of them new some are old the question of israel palestine central to the crisis in the region if you look at the positive days of the of the arab spring when it looked so hopeful so optimistic that citizens organizations citizens movements democratic movements were rising all around the region and the demands with the demands of the rights of citizenship and the demands were for jobs and for bread they were basic rights but if you talk to any of those activist you didn't have to scratch the surface very hard to find out that part of the anger that motivated it was seeing how palestinians were being treated over the decades seeing the expansion of settlements seeing the siege of gaza continuing over and over again and every two years  assault on gaza with thousands of palestinian deaths and no accountability no one held accountable war crimes identified and seen around the world and no one held accountable because the united still the united states continue to protect israel in the united nations so we have this colonial reality that shapes so much of the history of the rest of the world the arab world has not forgotten british and french colonialism you know we hear about isis saying that the colonial border between iraq and syria is no more of these sites pico lines in the sand should be abolished but they hardly the first ones to say that they're the first ones to take up arms to make it happen at a horrific human price but they're not the first ones to say the colonial powers have destroyed our region stolen our oil destroyed our people and the left over colonial expansion is going on inside israel enabled by the united states with the european union rebuilding gaza every time it's destroyed and then standing back and not holding israel accountable where it goes in and destroys it again the irony of course we're talking about extremists we're talking about the extremism of isis that operates in the name of islam in the settlements in the west bank and east jerusalem it's about six hundred fifty thousand people who are violating international law every morning just by getting out of bed because their houses are built on the illegally expropriated land but only about twenty percent of that maybe twenty five percent are extremists either religious or nationalist extremists the rest are what we might call yuppie settlers they move to the west bank for the same reasons that people in this country move to the suburbs the air is cleaner the houses are bigger the lawns are greener the swimming pools are sparkling or what's not to like and it's all subsidized by the israeli government helped along by our tax money we pay three point one billion dollars a year directly to the israeli military it's soon going to go up to five the new ten year agreement is being negotiated right now and it looks like that's going to be part of the payoff to israel after the iran deal the consolation prize is that it's going to go from three point one billion dollars a year to the military to five billion dollars a year to the military five billion dollars every year of our tax money going to the military of the twenty sixth wealthiest country in the world for their military which is known around the world for committing war crimes that a good use of our tax money is that going to make us safer these are the questions that are not being asked enough we use the term apartheid when we talk about this colonial enterprise not because it's a shocking term and it gets people talking about how can you say israel is apartheid it's not like south africa the answer is of course it's not like south africa it's completely different that's not why we use the term we use the term because it's the exact definition of apartheid that's included in the un covenant against the crime of apartheid that was passed in one thousand nine hundred seventy three that says that when you have a single territory with two separate legal systems governed by the same government where people are divided on the basis of race or religion national origin or language that's the definition of apartheid look at the west bank imagine a twelve year old kid on the west bank throws a stone if that kid is an israeli kid she's going to be or he's going to be taken to a juvenile court very much like our courts they don't work well all the time but the idea of juvenile courts is they are built to to work in the interest of the child the child is considered a child even if they have committed a crime the goal of the court is to help get the kid education and help whatever is needed to get the kid back on track that's appropriate that's what would happen to an israeli kid in the west bank if that kid in the west bank who throws a stone is a twelve year old palestinian kid that kid appears before a military court israel is the only country in the world that has created a juvenile military court at fourteen palestinian kids israeli kids are in a juvenile court up to eighteen at fourteen israeli kids go before the regular military court with all that that implies so this is the definition of apartheid and it's the reason that we talk about solutions that apply across the board we need a solution to the war in syria that's based on international law human rights equality for all we need an end to israeli occupation and apartheid and a solution to the israeli palestinian conflict that's based on international law and human rights and equality for all whether it's  blue state that's not our call that's not for the u s i'm a jewish girl from california i don't live there why should i get to say how many states there are it's not my job my job is to hold my government accountable for a policy to be based on international law and human rights and equality for all instead of a policy that's based on supporting occupation and a part in syria my job is to say we need to stop supporting militarization and war and start supporting diplomacy and negotiations we need to stop paying billions of dollars to buy weapons and start paying billions of dollars to rebuild the countries we have destroyed that's our job that's the kind of work that we need to focus on i want to end with two points one is something that former senator george mitchell taught all of us i think after his work in the good friday accord in northern ireland that he was instrumental in helping to craft and after that very long process which had been almost impossible at the beginning partly because the british view was the provisional ira are terrorists and we will not talk to them they cannot be in the room and the lesson that senator mitchell brought back and what he had imposed at the time was if you're serious about diplomacy everybody has to be in the room not because you like them but precisely because you don't and if they're not in the room they're not bound by whatever you decide so this notion that we can have talks in syria with the kurds the syrian kurds who are admittedly the u s is best friend in the region who are fighting isis more than anybody else but they can't be there because turkey won't come if they're there that's not going to work you don't have to like what the kurds stand for you don't have to like what turkey stands for but they're on opposite sides and if they're not both in the room one or the other is going to  so that's the pragmatism of it that's the pragmatic part that everybody has to be in the room that's not idealist that's being pragmatic the one other thing i want to say is that this notion that the only option is the option of war is a very dangerous reality for our country the idea of american exceptionalism which is now touted as a given something to be held up with pride by every every candidate for president of every party no one is willing to say no we are not exceptional we are exceptionally wealthy and exceptionally powerful but we are not an exceptional  are a nation struggling to do what we claim to believe in that we claim to believe in things like equality and we struggle to make that real we are not exceptional we've got a lot work to do but we do have obligations the obligations that come with power and that come with money all of those things that we have too much of we don't have too much humility we could use a little more of that but it means that we need real policies it's not enough to say we can't go to war it's not going to work the option is not walk away the option is not this is not a rand paul isolationism you know once in a while he said something very interesting on on the need to end wars the need not to send troops i'm like yeah that sounds good until he gets to yeah we have to pull out of the united nations and stop dealing with any other countries ok this is you know that's not going to work so well either so what would a policy look like if we are talking about a policy based on human rights and equality for all and international law maybe we start with the hippocratic oath first do no harm stop killing more people if you're trying to stop a war that has already in syria killed more than two hundred fifty thousand people stop killing more people in the name of stopping the war that could be number one that's not a bad idea number two you claim there are no boots on the ground make that real pull them out pull out the thirty seven hundred troops that are on the ground in iraq and the fifty or so that are officially on the ground in syria we don't know how many more all those special forces and cia ops maybe they were sneakers and not boots but get them out to get them all out get all the shoes out get all the shoes out there making it worse and not better number three stop sending more weapons for all these forces to be killing each other sending more bombs and bombers to the saudis to kill more yemenis stop sending more whatever they're sending in tanks and trucks and more bombs and more bullets to the so called syrian opposition that the u s doesn't even know who they're sending it to not least because almost all of it ends up in the hands of isis because isis is stronger we remember why one they don't fight alone they fight with others number two they pay higher wages to their militias that's one of the ironies of it all number four five six ten do better diplomacy put all of the money and energy and high level attention into the diplomacy that we're now putting into the war and in the meantime stop the war to make that diplomacy real use the money to to vastly increase our contributions to the united nations to take care of refugees the vast majority of refugees don't want to come here they're not trying to invade our country they don't want to be in the united states they want to be able to go home some of them do have to be resettled and we should take more we should be taking twenty eight percent of those refugees who do need to be resettled why because we represent twenty eight percent of the wealth of the world even though we only have five percent of the population of the world the least we could do is say we will take twenty eight percent of those refugees who need resettlement are small things we can do we could overturn the supreme court decision holder versus humanitarian law project why because that law makes it illegal for anyone in the united states to provide nonviolence training to any organization on the terrorism list so if somebody could get to the p k k the turkish were the kurdish workers party in turkey or i for that matter and trained some of them in nonviolent techniques of protest instead of war that would be a crime punishable by twenty years in a federal prison how sensible is that that's a small thing we should be able to do that we can increase economic pressure on the oil companies that are making a killing on ice is oil now what government is going to be prepared to put the pressure on the oil companies that shouldn't be so hard given that we claim that everything about our country is mobilized to stop terrorism except the oil companies they're kind of exempt there's a lot to do and at the end of the day we still owe a huge debt to the people of syria we still owe an enormous debt to the people of iraq and afghanistan and yemen and somalia the peep the countries where we are sending drones the people of the countries that we have destroyed some of you will remember looking around i think many of you will remember colin powells claim during the iraq war a member his famous statement that he used to say over and over again the the pottery barn line you break it you fix it we have to fix iraq it was the wrong analogy it's not about pottery barn the right analogy is the bull in the china shop what do you do when the bull gets loose in the china shop you don't go in and ask the bull to fix all the cups you get the bull the hell out of the china shop and write a check for the damage that's what we need to be doing in iraq that's what we need to be doing in afghanistan it's going to be generations before these countries can reclaim their social existence their lives rebuild their cities it's not going to help to have us standing there with guns telling them how to do it that's the guarantee of failure we need to guarantee success we've had fifteen years of a failed war on terror i think maybe it's time for fifteen years of paying the price for what we did wrong thank you and i guess we have time for questions yeah and just a reminder to come to when these two might be about fifteen questions or fifteen minutes for questions just keep them short and concise and one of the questions we can get to as many as we can thank you and then you c in your dreams sure sure i'm not sure his secret service people would like ok i appreciate all of your seeing but i am from the area as well and i lived here in the us long enough to have two questions and i would like please israel is central to new york approaches for both the jews and the christians so i think that's the issue we need to deal with his neo conservative theories that have given rise to these wars it's not the fact that they're jewish it's that they  supporters of israel that's the problem supporters of the militarist the most militarist tendencies in israel no doubt now the broader question you raise the first question i think is a very very difficult and very important one what has happened to the peace movement i wish i had an easy glib answer i don't there are movements that are on the rise across this country at this moment the movement in the fight for fifteen seattle has played a huge role in that the black lives matter movement has transformed our understanding of racism in a new generation the renewed fight to defend women's reproductive freedom is taking a whole new level of energy it's incredibly exciting the labor movement is actually growing for the first time in a long time the restaurant workers another of the other parts of the movement in the immigrant rights movement hugely important the anti war movement is not and i take that as a personal failure because it's the work that i've done for many many years and it's what i struggle with literally every day of my life these days i don't have an answer i have some theories of why the movement collapsed in size and capacity when it did around two thousand and eight around the time of the collapse of the economy and the time of the election of president obama all of those were factors but i also recognize that even at our height of power and influence and size we never then and we will never have money to compete with cons or pro israel forces or other lobbies like that nor do the fight for fifteen or black lives matter they don't have money either we need a different kind of movement we need in my view and the question is how to build it a movement that rather than focusing on building a very strong independent separate peace movement at an in an era like now when despite all the propaganda the wars are not the main thing affecting people's lives across this united states it's the economic inequality that is destroying people's lives and that's the focus we need to be getting information about the cost of wars the cost of militarism like those examples i gave you about the cost to washington state and the trade offs of how those decisions get made into the hands of every one of those movements we need to be looking at how war policies like  the drug war in colombia for instance the anti gang war in this country that led to the violence that is wracking hundreds in the el salvador what that does to the immigration crisis all of these things are linked and we have an obligation to get one set of that information into the hands of broader movements that's not the whole answer but i think it's part of what we need to be doing there are amazing levels of work going on particularly on the question of palestine where the discourse shift has been extraordinary in recent years the the normalization of opposing israeli occupation and apartheid is unprecedented for me after thirty years on working on this issue the last five six seven years has been amazing it has not yet translated into any change of policy the discourse has to change first but that can't be the end of the day we still have to move to the harder stage of transforming a discourse shift into a policy shift on the war issues we're not even at the at the level of discourse shift we don't yet have a moment where we could say people understand why going to war against terrorism will never work so that's still the level of education that we have to be doing i wish i had a better answer i wish i could tell you oh we need a new peace movement yeah here's my checklist one two three i don't know the answer i don't know the answer but i'm glad you asked the question because i think it's one that all of us have to take very very seriously so thank why are you leaving out the elephant in which is the active support creation funding by the united states biased allies saudi arabia turkey israel of isis and these other elements like isis how does not hold on not on parenting and the rich and why this is going on and how displace into the proxy war being directed against the emerging nations of the brics china russia india and there are moving for massive development in the middle east i don't know people know what he did in china did in middle east but he's saying we will build your build you up all the way ok thank you very important question the question of u s and south i mean saudi support for isis is a longstanding issue the u s support came in the form of creating the conditions which gave rise to isis and imprisoning the people who would ultimately create isis the issue of where the money comes from is a very complicated one much of it if you had to pick one country that the money for isis comes from it comes from saudi arabia we've known that for a long time that's one of the big questions of what are the saudis doing and not doing to stop the money from going through it goes to the question of what is turkey doing or not doing to provide to prevent fighters from going through that's an ongoing question these are countries allied with the u s this is a huge challenge to the u s claims that it is against isis in all its forms when its allies have been responsible one of the things we don't know because the system in saudi arabia is so opaque is the degree to which the money that goes from the saudis to isis comes from the royal family versus coming from some government officials versus coming from pro government institutions of various sorts versus coming from wealthy saudi individuals or businesses no one's been able to track that we know it comes from saudi arabia we don't know how much of it comes from the government or not the government what we do know and what i've nobody is hiding this is all over my book which you can read one of the things that we do know is that the saudi system is tightly controlled enough that regardless of whether the money was coming from government sources or not the government does have the capacity to stop it it's choosing not to do that the u s is choosing to not pressure them to do that because of relations of oil and relations of weapons sales those are still the things that define the us saudi relationship so yeah that hasn't changed i don't think that's the only elephant in the room but yeah it's one of the things that hasn't changed yet i'm i'm sure you have some thoughts about how this could happen in a wonderful world but the way things are actually playing out i'm curious as to what you think the future of israel is go i think israel is going through a very rough time on one level but it hasn't quite i think internalized that in terms of the majority from what polls indicate  and the government the government as you all know has been moving farther and farther to the right netanyahu is very much a centrist in israel it's really a mistake to see netanyahu as as the right wing because in the context of his government he's very much a centrist his accountability is to three parties that are much further to his right and the unfortunate really terrible part is that the polls all indicate that the youth in israel are far further right far more consolidated right wing than the older people so that's a very bad sign as is the fact that that again according to polls forty percent of the i d f now are either settlers or people who identify with pro settle parties which makes the military a much more in a logical instrument than it used to be all of this i think is very very dangerous i think that one of the great values of the b d s movement the boycott divestment sanctions movement which has been initiated originally by palestinian civil society back in two thousand and five and is now a global movement for bringing nonviolent economic pressure to bear on israel both directly through israeli banks and that sort of thing and by pressuring corporations who are profiting from israeli occupation and apartheid it's the first time that ordinary israelis are just beginning to see that they are paying a price for the occupation in general israelis have not paid a price the new report that just came out from human rights watch some of you may have seen it it just came out about two or three days ago indicates how much of a profit israel is making from the occupation with enormous cost of course being borne by the palestinians but the problem of a country in which twenty five percent of its population is explicitly and legally second class citizens there are fifty separate laws that discriminate between the rights of jews and the rights of non jews or palestinians inside israel let alone occupying another entire people illegally is becoming something that will start to force israelis to pay a price and i think that's where we'll see the parallel with south africa when white south africans who are obsessed with sports suddenly realize that because of apartheid their beloved springboks were not going to be able to play in the world cup that was a dramatic lead to a dramatic shift in white support for apartheid it began that that enormous slide down that allowed the banks to start negotiating their way out of it in israel it's not so much sports sports aren't that big of a deal in israel culture and science is and so the academic and cultural boycotts that are part of the b d s movement are having an enormous impact so you have for example the radio foundation it's a kind of centrist think tank something like brookings i suppose in the israeli context issued a report year and a half ago about about what are the what's the biggest threat to israel and this was at the moment when netanyahu was saying the biggest threat to israel is iran it's an existential threat etc and they said no the biggest threat to israel is the b d s movement which is kind of shocking when you think about it a nonviolent movement that's never even been you know accused of any sort of violence is being identified as the biggest threat because it threatens the legitimacy of the israeli project of expanding settlements of expelling palestinians of all of that so that's where i think israel is in trouble and i think what's ultimately going to happen i think in my view the you know i said before and i believe that it's not my call whether it's one state or two states i don't think i have any say in the matter but as an analyst looking at the situation i don't see how a two state solution is going to happen i don't think there's any any land left you know they just announced another three hundred fifty acres south of jericho is now going to be defined as state land the entire jordan valley has now been identified as a military zone i mean this is this means there is no land for a viable state so that means a some version of a civil rights movement for equal rights for everybody living in that territory under a government how that plays out i'm afraid is going to be very very very harsh for palestinians far more than fo israelis but for israelis it's not going to be so easy either it's going to be a rough time for everybody my question is is about the i'm saying it wrong but the armageddon are something that people say that isis is is saying it's you know that you know we need a world war and in fact it gives rise to the movement known as christian zionist them which is based on a religious belief that the second coming of christ can't happen until all the jews are gathered in one place and then they either convert or die which i got to say as a jew is not my favorite choice to have but whatever you ask israelis about that and they say well yeah but we believe we don't believe that we don't think that's true but we will take them as allies in the meantime you know this is i mean this is not a funny thing this is actually very serious it is thoroughly anti semitic in that classic sense that it really calls for the death of jews  but it's it's based on it's the reason that organizations like koofi christians united for israel under reverend hagi organizations like that support not only israel as a state but the zionist project of the in gathering of all the jews the encouraging of all jews to go to the promised land and once they're all there there will be this choice they will either convert or die and then the second coming can happen so it's kind of a precursor the isis version which comes out of a kind of it's a particular version of islam has a similar view of what the they what they've done with the caliphate they are not prepared to wait to caliphate we're just going to build it now you know we're going to build it on this land that we're going to steal from some other people and create this caliphate and there will be a final battle the name of their magazine their english language online magazine is called beak and that's the name of a small town a village really in syria that isis claims is going to be the site of the final final battle between good and evil or between the their side and the crusaders you know it gets defined in different ways but it's basically the final battle of armageddon so that the sort of apocalyptic view and  see themselves living through those in times this is one of the ways that theologically they differ from say or other extremist muslim organizations they have a entirely different view o this that isn't shared you know beyond that