ok well welcome very much i we had these troubles i'm really happy to be able to you and i hope your business goes well and i congratulate you on the birds man we're going to be looking forward to finding out about you know about the consul thank you very conversations it's a pleasure to welcome to the program eugene burton eugene bird is the president of an institution i guess is sixteen years or so in for me after his formation and it's located in washington it's called the consul for the national interest foundation and he's the president of that and we're going to be talking about that and eugene bird welcome very much to conversations in manhattan network thank you very much carol great pleasure to welcome you here we just  me if you don't mind show that the console is involved with questions of lobbying particularly what is called the design lobby or the jewish lobby in the power of a pact that it exerts in washington and so forth and it seems to be in many minds people's minds a subject that's not supposed to be addressed by anyone here consulate been doing that and you may recall some of those who are viewing two weeks ago i'm not sure of the date there was an advertisement on a very prominent page in terms of the sunday edition of the new york times the back page of the week in review and we're holding it up so maybe you could focus and let the people know what that looks like and this is the ad that appeared and it took the eyes of many people because it said it question brought up the issue that we ought to address the zionist influence on u s policy and  this is an ad that was appearing and it caught the eye of many people caught our eye and that's how we have to get in touch with you and find out about the console and i find is a great deal more going on and we're going to be talking about that and welcome very much to the program thank you very much being there any case that things have changed yes well maybe they have and not just here with a manhattan network and not a news network but also across the country we're finding a lot more receptiv discussing and having conversations and maybe even debating some of the issues surrounding the domestic influence on u s policy in the middle east domestic being a code word not just for jewish think a sea change when i took over this job thirteen years ago i said the pendulum will swing and it is swinging at this point we're getting into the real doing now and so what can you share your own personal background please a little well my personal background is i was a journalist at one time and i graduated to being a foreign service officer i went downhill shall we say being fourth service have of a change in the in the atmosphere is not just our advertisements but the controversy over the famous memorandum from professors her  around walt harvard and and university of chicago and it doesn't seem to go away from just the other day richard cohen had one which said it's not and it's not a for the israeli policy they'll say that they are either anti semitic if you're not jewish or yourself hating jew if you are yes and that's been the pattern for forty years or so it seemed good and that pattern will probably continue but what we're seeing now is that the american people because of what's happening in iraq and and with the regard to the war on terror and so on is the american people are beginning to question our traditional attachment to israel and what it means in terms of u s interests and that of course is very sensitive to jewish americans and others and i realized attacking the lobby attack something in their soul as far as they they think one of them said to me at a packed meeting one time a pack being made the move in israel public affairs committee of the opposite number very extremely powerful lobby and has been on the hill for a long time it's known they claim to be the eight hundred pound gorilla yeah of lobbying in washington and i think that's probably true and  was we no longer on the town in quite the same way and i think that that is good i think that jewish americans and christian zionists should welcome a balance in our policy or  them and are what i think those days will continue to a certain extent but it won't be the same at all nor won't be labelled name it might not be able to be so effective as it has been in terms of affecting policy and public conscience right because i think as you awaken the individual voter here in the united states to say why are we doing this why are we giving all this money to israel on the one hand and to egypt in order to keep the peace between israel and egypt and to jordan for the same reason and why do we make so many enemies iraq syria iran and so on the broader people they make were not enemies of ours at one time and not at all but but are and are now and it's not in the interest of israel to have the united states and in a position of having enemies in the muslim world because they do because they do and of course the famous little phrase that that i remember learning years and years ago in jerusalem was the enemy of my enemy team of their enemies enemies people that are in are not in accord with right and out in accord right and so this makes for a great complications and where we're now of a greater power than any other power  because it isn't just using it wisely but using it wisely not just on our own behalf but on behalf of the world behalf of the various countries in the world that  e major countries like india brazil soviet russia and and china you know that these are anchor countries that we have to have on our side in order to be successful as a hyper power if i want to put it that way and i think there's also a major challenge in a certain sense as we look at the tendencies of things on the planet to be able to have an opening up on a policy that is going to be able to have us relate as i think most of us who want to do with some of the least advantaged people of the world rather than a policy that only shores up those who are already powerful who observed their power over their people and that's a large theme there probably could is not terribly sophisticated some people say but i find them quite sophisticated and they ask a lot of good questions and they have i was at northwestern university very recently are very good very good questions they they're very much aware of what's happening in the middle east and what's happening in israel palestine i'd like to turn and you know my feeling is that there are four fears that drive to the israel palestine and our relations with the islamic world first fear is the fear of is by israel by israelis and that's backed by jewish americans here too in spades quite frankly that they may not exist thirty forty fifty years from now from now that the idea may have been a mistake well i don't think they've gone to that extent but they certainly feel somewhat trapped and in uganda why they would not yes yes of course they are and they're what five they have and then you've got a nation of arab adam ah city and islamic animosity directed at them and forget about the rest of the muslim world just the arab world is two hundred fifty million yeah and then you have iran and so on and so forth never taking looming they're taking on an awful lot and of course the israelis have not been very successful in dealing with islamic nationalism shall we say they encourage the creation of hizbollah i talked with the mossad officer who who was sort of in charge of that and lebanon while they were on the invasion in one thousand nine hundred two they they successfully got rid of the occupation the lebanese president was just here and i'm sorry prime minister was just here and and made that point that you know i don't agree with everything hizbollah does but frankly they got rid of the of the occupation by israel which we should have done years and years and years ago and the israelis should have done it wasn't in their interest to stay there in that southern border of lebanon and keep ten percent of lebanon and all of the difficulties that they face there the loss of twenty five hundred troops in the south and that's of military ability to port project power and that sort of thing so we are a superpower on the world scale and israel is a superpower in terms of these are in terms of the regional area in terms of the fact that and they are seen i wonder if they are you've had a lot of experience one talk some about your experience you served in saudi arabia and other parts of the world you had experience on the ground in egypt lebanon and you know let you talk about that a minute but if you look at the drift if you look at the sweep of history let's say in your coming out of the first and second world wars and so forth that it seems to me that we had had a period from columbus where there was a colonization of western colonization from europe where the people went out with the white man's burden to civilize as it were the whole world and it was after the second world war we withdrew the british had to withdraw under gandhi and so forth from the raj and from india and from africa and from so forth they were moving back to add to europe and the one exception to that and i'm wondering if in the arab world or in the islamic world seen this way that the one exception to that in terms of the western colonizing attitude of a group that comes in and takes over the that landed in population that are derisively called the wogs in the case of the indian that sort of thing you had the same thing in india but the one exception to that was the the the movement by ashkenazi europeans seen by the people in the local area as european colonizing coming in and taking the land over in the name of a narrative that they were able to project but that the rest of the world was moving away from that overt colonialism and it's seen that way by people in the arab world in your experience absolutely and one of the thing is you big issue big issue and one of the things that israelis will tell me when i press them to the wall and and they don't have a good argument for something about what they're doing to the palestinians and seizing their land and so on one of the things they say is you did it to the indians we did and we did absolutely and look at what happened i mean in a sense we got rid of twenty million twenty five million indians that's true but there are that many in north america but anyway you've got you know whatever the yeah some people say ten eleven million some people twenty five or thirty but and then all of the america and all the america that was in the nineteenth century by and large are eighteen thousand nine hundred seventy nine young and we didn't really reform until fifty years ago for our if we have been i don't think there's ever a treaty we kept is there and now they're getting back at us by selling us cigarettes over the internet and running their gambling casinos you know and maybe that's got a poetic justice you want one of it here right now one of the ironies of the oswal process if you were an israeli trying to and so hard yeah yeah rather and then it was extremely popular and very brave profitable for some time it's closed down now but you know but if i if i man that regard i mean every year i read a biography i have assessed the roads and then i go back and trace the racism that was so absolutely incredibly rampant in the nineteenth century with the colonizing of year of africa and the  know the idea that white man's burden and the carriers of truth and progress and technological development and they got this idea that is very much part of our you know turner the in this case but in the case of north america the europeans came a great wave there was no question of that but just a geo political reality is that that was the nation of very few people in the case of israel you come up against a nation that is arrogance stand of white man's burden colonizing imposing their will upon the local population of the airwork and they've got that attitude seen in many cases where out of our western frontier it was no good engine except a dead engine and the kind of attitude which seems to have been begin to permeate the west policy of the united states which reflected their sense of b c judgment as though they were out on the frontier that was of their own create one of the professors at haifa university recently published an article in the jerusalem post which and bester edward peck sometimes cites in which he said we must kill and kill and kill those people in gaza because there is no way for them to become allies or friends are of lowest they only understand brute force begun said let's break bones we have to brief them down like we did the american indian people and then we had overriding power and they have overriding power with apache helicopters supported by our there the six pack partial military power in the world that's right and they can in two weeks the israelis because of their system of organizing their army and reserves they can put on the field a larger army then all of the combined arab armies together and so there's no real existential threat to israel has it always been that they've been the superpower there even from the very beginning although the legend would want to be that they were busy fighting against the great david and a great goliath and they were the david it was the other way around almost from the beginning or almost from the beginning there there is some reason to scholarship that indicates that even in the one nine hundred forty eight war of independence where they were scrambling around to get you know arms from czechoslovakia because the soviets wouldn't sell them to him directly when they sent them from and we had people here in new york who were put in jail because they were sending pieces of tanks to israel and at that time in  forty eight so they they didn't have much of a modern army at this point by the british had had a lot of jewish soldiers in the second world war who were well trained and who who came back to israel and they became the nucleus of a very powerful sixty thousand man army much larger than any of the other armies right there wouldn't have been a west bank unless there had been  blub pasha and his arab legion so that they would have run over all of all of the west bank and to this day a lot of israelis feel that that's what's happening now that they're going to take over all and that's the second greater israel and greater really got a little extended up to your phrase river well there how they're halfway there now on the golan heights and not quite but you know you know it's a huge area and they and they have a narrative that has a great deal of paper they came out of the awful suffering on holocaust in europe at the end of it were their what and they've got a thing there's a great national think that have been a den of firing with that state and so forth but in the historical sense it may be as i suggested earlier you had some people have objected many of the arabs that were displaced and so forth there are many who would sign on with them because there is that material benefits and so we're but that  for the jewish colonies our jewish population of various parts of the arab world not to come into into israel itself that they not try to recruit everyone one remembers into israel right and one remembers even heard so when he first announced the idea most of the jurors community was against it because they would claim coming out of a tradition where they had great repaired to the t that if there's going to be a really even gathering of the jewish people it would be done in a way where it would be in a context of a universally just world and it would be done totally without any military might being there if you so forth which pretty early recognized if you're going to go and take that land you're going to get a reaction from the people that are there and we better do it with force and that's a different than than the traditional attitude that had been part of what kept the jewish community together over thousands of years i think will  be the second fear is that here the palestinians that they're going to lose everything they're going to be forced out they're going to be transferred or whatever and there is a party in the new government of israel and russian party which calls for transfer just openly hasn't they'd look who called for a transfer to nome occasions they never have said that individuals have but individual vote and i've never been at all if they ever been a policy ok they have been very russian policies calling for that attended four election the outer two palestinian well three thousand and five elections and two israeli elections so it gives you an understanding from both sides when you see them exercising democracy both in palestine and in israel and i was talking with this deputy to shore on ski and he i said well what do you feel about land for peace in two states and this  eight years ago yeah and he immediately came back he said you have to understand we come from a very vast line of very big land and to come to israel which is so small we just don't want to give up any helicopter well they have the military might they have the military might and there are through propounder in their own mind and they've got a narrative they believe strongly in and fervently in which makes it that much more dangerous if there is threat looming from a incensed and upper world arab and islamic and maybe beyond world against them which finds a great expression in votes in the security council where there's only two people united states and israel voting on one side and the rest of the world on the other you know hard for them to play in a world israel actually isn't in the security council but that's that's that's another subject i i think that the recognition by the israelis of of how self defeating some of their policies have been you know the head of shin bet general idea long once said just just two years ago he said they have pursued a military solution to a political problem right all the way through and you see it comes back to this extent as this then show i'm sorry this threat to their existence which is in their so rebuilds houses which the i d f the israel defense forces destroyed and he had to visit rebuild to fifty or sixty of these houses now and i said well how are you received in israel and he said i'm ignored and i said well how out of the what do they say about the palestinians in israeli society today he said they don't even talk about them there there's there's very little communication between them i was down t qalqilya just after they surrounded it with a wall yeah the wall and destroyed the commerce there and everything and and he he said you see over there there's kfar saba it's one of the oldest seem turned into a city it's a city of a hundred thousand out and he said the mayor of that city and i we have a very close relationship but now i can't get over there i have to go to rome to meet him and one of the worst things about the wall that they have erected and which of course comes out of their fear comes out of their fair let's just get rid of the problem by putting a chinese wall that aided community and yeah i know you did a gated i mean on is was becoming a good thing you know one of the people that are doing well against the math of humanity that is knocking on the gate of the gated communit possible had not been for the hyper power emerging the united states and the support that was able to be garnered through the congress in the position and the public relations capability to lay public opinion that makes this kind of a thing accept it isn't that but mr t g use of nuclear power and nuclear power by israel said to me a few years ago and he's a he's a liberal he's a you know on the left side of the labor party at that  point three years ago he said to me sharon has been proven right and i said you're saying this and sharon hasn't been proved either the thyme and the godfather settlements and so on he said yes yes he has proven really is on every american to try and change this system of making policy in the middle east so that we have an american component in it and perhaps this policy the b people who say what is this in the american interest and that's both to be the guiding light of a foreign policy responsibility and it seems to be is you in terms of this favored attitude toward this one country that seems to stand out in all of the rest in terms of our relations or the rest of all of the world like insurance legace or thumb will present a thought and in many ways how is it in your estimation that this has been able to come into being and why have that not been questioned by greater numbers of people americans and particularly political leaders and it is almost the death knell to say anything along the lines of what we're saying in terms of your political career  nuclear we might say activists who goes and stand outside dimona reactor and says it's time to shut this plant down and he's a paratrooper six foot four israeli and i took him to the holocaust museum or he took me and i've been there before but he we went through it together and i'll never forget what he wrote in the book i don't read hebrew but he  course and he wrote and wrote and wrote and i said what are you writing and he said i'm writing that this is a great museum but it should acknowledge more of the other victims besides jews in eastern europe relationship of that they have with the united states than a lot of supporters of the lobby whether they're christian or jewish have the lobby maybe it's worth talking about that because that the apac is  one now if not it was for a long time if not the most powerful lobbying element in washington incredible source of campaign finance contributions that are made to both parties and yet one huge impact and so forth  and i don't know if the n r a maybe has gone past them or something like that over their head they have every part of your budget yes but then you bring up to me if i may you bring up to me that the christian zine are now coming and saying that they're going to become even more powerful largely out of the south out of the out of texas and not all evangelicals about half of the born again christians are really very rational with regard to our relationship with israel about twenty million or maybe about twenty million there are hardly about twenty other a million who are not rational these are the christian what we call christian zionist one touted to become even more powerful today more of our you know yeah and then of much more organized and of course they are the base of the republican party christian zionists are not going to vote democratic right so there's a there's a hard core of their people the president's ratings are down to thirty percent it would be very fascinating the battle over thirty well thirty four i think it is hand and and i wonder how many of those are of angelical born again christians dedicated to israel right now these people are very strange to talk to because they will  go up to jerusalem they will be taken care of going into bethlehem they'll be taken in a bus they'll get off the bus they look at the church of nativity get back on the bus and go or go away they don't spend a dollar and in the palestinian areas they don't meet any palestinians and they have five hundred a week tourists coming from the united states  just who are born again christian zionists and they were given a big briefing and you know a wonderful wonderful tour of israel and huge amounts of money they are able to commandeer and gain yes robertson is building a fifty million dollar christian center in the in the in the galilee israel has recruited a church of latter day saints by giving them ten acres of arable land on know i i won't name any of the churches necessarily but there are several that are sending people to the christian embassy in jerusalem and you'll hear a lot more about that christian embassy in jerusalem which was started by a south african boy but these these christians i used to say when i was on the israel desk when i first got started in this business of israel palestine before i went to jerusalem i used to say it's much more difficult to work with governor mackell than of maryland who was a christian zionist and then to ten and then to work with the with the israeli ambassador and one of the many things that happened on our last trip there we we spent eighteen days going from cairo to beirut my car it's the first time i've been able to do that the rough a crossing made it possible and and we were we interviewed hamas leaders and we interviewed embassadors american and others the president of lebanon the president of syria and one one of their remarkable things coming out of that trip was that islamic nationalists also have a fear they have a fear that they're going to lose the arab world to the west along your colonial argument idea that they have to get rid of of the occupation in palestine they have to get rid of the occupation and iraq and the sense of confidence in these people hizbollah and hamas and so on the leadership sense of confidence that we know our people and we know what they will sacrifice in order for us to do this and of course that works back to the fear of the of the israelis that they will superpower people are in control there and there's a reaction on the global scale against the idea of one group super imposing their power upon another the occupation of the west bank be the  impetus toward the neo con obsession with iraq and the invasion of iraq to where we create a situation in iraq that is similar to the west bank well i know richard perle and  get an in with the new prime minister of israel netanyahu so they prepared this tween break memo in ninety six and they suggested that the real enemy of both the united states and israel was saddam  hussein and that israel should make use of it of the united states to get rid of saddam hussein and that that's what i know that would happen but of course happen nobody nobody macwrite said you know nobody in the lobby admits that they have and with egypt two very important countries but they're there creating terrible problems for themselves by holding on to the golan heights rise and worse problems in trying to hold on to absolute sovereignty over the temple mount and and over the old city of jerusalem and so on and they have the western powers that time is never used to dance with the natives the tommies would be sent in against the with the gotland gun again the down the mutiny and they're not part of their western european advance thinking and that sort of thing is like the americans do not have a very good policy of how to deal with the left advantaged or the mass of the people of the world that has some sort of meaning that the future might require nor does the israeli have that but they are ours that trap or something in that part of the world and that they are going to follow that kind of a course like it was done in the in the in the colonial period over mention over the local of the palestinian really as you are now three million and i met him in jerusalem as a matter of fact a he of course was not very popular in israel for what he had to say on that score but he said something then about colonialism in america that i have never forgotten he had just come from manila where he had been on a lecture and he came through in one nine hundred fifty seven in jerusalem and said you know  i think the americans are better at being a colonial power and we british or french work or they have had a more successful time and transmitting  their values into the philippines than we have into india or other places and i'm not sure that's entirely true but maybe it's partly partly true and of course the problem for israel is that she has no capability of transmitting even within her own one million muslims citizens shall we say a sense of a common culture camaraderie  common culture because they insist on it's a jewish state it's a jewish state and jewish it's not it's a jewish arab state when you have one out of five people who are palestinians they don't like to be called arabs and only they like to be called palestinians there and almost all of the others are almost all of those are muslim and they're now getting this law make nationalists in sight of israel sitting in the knesset they they really do have a problem of a change of mind the changes of attitude and i think they're going to do it of ventilate the gaza withdrawal is maybe a part of it i it's not not for withdrawal of course and there's a lot of problems with it these are got apache helicopters overhead and they still have when we were there they had stopped running the planes over at night waking everybody up at three o'clock in the morning and as we left the end of the election day the plane started coming over again and and their prime minister of lebanon complained bitterly to the  the president about the fact that the israel's israelis were still running their f sixteen is over beirut and causing very loud noises and so on and so forth and you know a lot of fear there and we get back to fear yeah that's right and then we've made this it seem to the big crapshoot or the big shoot a big roll of the died that they made with the idea that we're going to break the back of saddam hussein and iraq and we're going to get these people to get in line with us and it seems to come a cropper there that there is a you know insurgency that seems not to be contained and it's widespread in iraq is though there was a widespread insurgency in the west bank directed against of force and we have been drug into that attitude to use an old fashioned american expression by the attitude that was conveyed to us by a the israelis who were there experiencing it they did a preemptory bombing of iraq power plant and the idea is that you cannot have these people these left these less developed are mentioned people develop technologically or in any kind of way that they might possibly become a threat and that had a great deal to do with ultimately why from the seventy's they were ardent we will invade and break up iraq and they've been successfully able to do it but there's been an iraq there's been an insurrection and that vishy government they're trying to set up probably will not be able to hold and there's likely to be consequences from that with iran across the border as well hard to do predicted to stand behind but still you know getting back to the israel palestine where one of the headlines settlement on the west bank right so you have this this strange inability of the united states to talk to hamas we're not talking to the president of lebanon it seems to me an opportunity that we have an opportunity are some sense yes dean yes but we were the only americans in gaza you know the american government has refused to send any of their officials down there for about three years because of a big incident in which some americans from the embassy were were killed way one of his people not him himself we are putting the palestinians on a diet right well you know they haven't had enough already and then that is reflected and it's a metaphor the iraq it's a metaphor for the world in a certain sense because the west is of the mind that we have a system that is adequate for the whole world the neo liberal model in terms of policy at a level a level but in this openly colonialist attitude we've got forces in one hundred thirty countries around the world the united states but harold i'm thing you know or i hear you need to have a wake up call and it might be that you would there's no reason for us to just follow blindly the lead of the israeli lobby which has become so powerful and your constant is directed at that questioning the legitimacy as it were of the power of this of this group of people do what i just opinion i saw i saw president carter whom i worked for at one time  there for carter and so we've kept contact over the years in some extent and he was out in jerusalem on as an election observer and he said looking at he said what he's saying  and i said well let me put it this way it's an anti virus to the israel lobby and he smiled little bit said you know i can agree with that oh awful lot of people have come to the conclusion that  our hard president parallel role of supporting whatever israeli government whatever whatever is really got rather crude labor doesn't matter there the deciders there deciders on that and of course they're the ambassadors try to influence them but i left the foreign service because i could see that there was very little chance that you could influence foreign policy when even when you were an ambassador a very very basically maybe you can make something changes at the at the edges of basic changes and this is what's needed in the middle east a basic change a bit israel needs it we need it that the palestinians need it if i may suggest the planet needs it every day there is to be a way in which there might be some sort of something that will call the decision makers responsible for the powers that be that operate this planet to that not notion that they have to come up with something that relates to the less advantaged people of the world whether it's in africa or wherever there's something going to have to be because they don't have a vision now that adequate to what the future requires to avert possibly some sort of an unleashing of a destructive capability that could destroy the species there has to be a vision and this may be a way to get not only the israeli situation but the americans as you asian into a pattern where they'll start thinking and coming up with the vision thing they're not required of leadership max kampelman is article the other day with this very fact that the number one problem for the world is proliferation yeah and here we are i was in india when we built helped them build their first nuclear power plant and one of the atomic energy commission and specters said to me if anyone thinks that these people aren't india where we're now going to try to help them build a lot of nuclear power plants and same time we're telling the iranians you can't build one right and rainy and the arab realm is the islamic world and there's indonesia beyond that and beyond that there's a whole another right yes and we don't have enough so that the question is the time great tremendous challenge because though the weapons are totally destructive in a way that qualitatively new from anything coming out well i was talking with a physicist last night up on capitol hill we had a party for our alumni association up there and i and i had met him before but he was with the energy department for many years and i said what about the idea of converting the twenty six thousand weapons man let a pipe go right into a road or generating plant well you know it's a little more complicated than that but i was thinking of the rubber you have a reverse engineering yeah and then you and you create a we were trying to get a grasp on this now as to how much how many barrels of oil you could substitute yeah sure around the world sense to have atomic power but it's better than having atomic weapons technological development is inherently danger is brought to the point would destroy the species there also is looming there a capability that we have technologically  providing for everybody and they in an unprecedented liberating context that is jury is not it boarded we need the vision to that positive aspect of the our tenure here on earth and it would seem to me your institution the fire and ation is really helping and trying to set the tone for that and i'm happy to have been able to share that with you we didn't get a chance to go into your biography too much and we've run out of time to fight but i want to thank you very much we're going to that of the other a k o i better than your great good pleasure to have the perception by eugene bertie the president of the consul for the national interest mound ation located in washington we'll put up the contact information at the end grid you get in touch with him we would like to stay in touch with you and do more progress you have a series these advertisements are going to appear in the new york times maybe you could be talking about that as we go out is that we're going to have another more of these advertisement and that's already been arranged yes the next one will be probably on july second still i said this is may  as of losing their existence the fear by the palestinians of losing their land the fear of american politicians and others of losing an election well losing an election and losing